Dark Obsession

by Valerie Marsh

  Dark Obsession

  By

  Valerie Marsh

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  DARK OBSESSION

  It wasn't until after they were married that Fran discovered just how much Grant still cared for his first wife, who looked so like Fran. In fact, it was an obsession with him one that Fran found she couldn't live with...

  Another book you will enjoy

  by

  VALERIE MARSH

  ECHO OF BETRAYAL

  After her betrayal by Trevor seven years ago, Lauren had carefully avoided any entanglements with men—romantic or otherwise. So the last thing she wanted was to get involved with her boss, Warwick Sinclair; he was precisely the heartless kind of womaniser she had been at pains to avoid. And in any case, how could she ever let him find out about Mandy?

  First published in Great Britain 1985

  by Mills & Boon Limited

  © Valerie Marsh 1985

  Australian copyright 1985

  Philippine copyright 1985

  This edition 1985

  ISBN 0 263 75036 1

  CHAPTER ONE

  Fran gazed round the packed room and prayed that someone would open a window before she collapsed. The air was stifling; thick with cigarette and cigar smoke, and shrill with voices from the weaving, jostling mob. From her corner retreat she watched them elbow each other mercilessly out of the way with cries of, 'I'm so sorry, darling!' before proceeding, drinks held on high, to shove a grimly determined passage through another group.

  God, what was she doing here anyway? She had always hated these sort of parties with their frenzied, false animation. Nobody ever actually listened to anyone else. They were always too busy putting on an act, or casting round in case there was someone more important they had missed—whose notice they must attract if there was the remotest possibility that it could take them a step further up the ladder in their career.

  But she was in no position to throw stones, Fran admitted, turning her cynicism on herself—she was here for the same reason. Except that she had only come because she was afraid that if she backed out of another of these affairs, Seth would wash his hands of her altogether. He was already finding it hard enough to get work for her without her making his job more difficult by non-co-operation.

  'Be there or else,' he had told her flatly, and in spite of their friendship she knew he meant it.

  So she had donned her long white boots and borrowed Sacha's new white fur jacket, swearing to preserve it with her life from cigarette burns and spilled Americanos.

  The boots were killing her, and she suspected that whatever originally lived inside the fur had turned white and expired from old age. It was moulting frantically. The long hairs stuck to her sweating neck, making it itch, and she couldn't take the coat off now because her black top was plastered with hairs all down the front. She brushed at them irritably, but her efforts only created static electricity in the synthetic fibre, and a fresh lot flew out of the fur and attached themselves with an audible crackle. She sighed and picked up her drink again. Seth had disappeared; prowling round the room for contacts, she supposed. He would be doing it more because he liked her than from any real hope, and dispiritedly she wondered why she didn't go home and save him the trouble. Really home. Not just back to the flat she shared with Sacha, but back to the valley where she had grown up. She could try to get her old job back in the library and live in peaceful obscurity among people who were more concerned over the effect of the weather on the crops than anything else. No one would notice or care that Fran Lucas had failed to make it in the chancy modelling business.

  But in five years the library would be changed like everything else, and the reason she couldn't go back was the same reason she had left in the first place. Because of Grant.

  Fran knew what had caused the train of thought. That glimpse of the back of a dark head, seen through the arched doorway into the next room. She didn't go in to get a closer look as she would once have done. It had happened too many times before—that sudden lurch in the pit of her stomach, the wild leap of her pulses and the jolt of hope and fear that died when a head was turned to reveal the face of a stranger instead of the one imprinted in her memory.

  If ever it was Grant, she thought, she…

  What would she do? Turn away, probably, as she had done the last time when their eyes had met across the foyer of the theatre. He had recognised her instantly, even though it had been years since he had last seen her, and the encounter in the heart of London was completely unexpected. As it would have been to her if she hadn't idly read the report of the new play and suddenly his name had leapt out at her.

  Grant Mercier. It had to be him, though remembering him from the old days she found it difficult to credit. She would never have dreamed that she would one day see his name up in a West End theatre, the author of a highly acclaimed play. She could only think of him as she had known him, with his mired Range Rover and the trio of Jack Russell terriers at his heels.

  But perhaps a landowner and farmer turning playwright was no more surprising than the blacksmith's niece with the tangled, silver streaked mane of hair becoming a model. The difference, of course, was that Grant had emerged successfully from his unlikely background and was now famous. In the last four years he had been photographed, interviewed and quoted until he was familiar to everyone. He was a household name, even in Fran's circle, though it was due less to his ability as a writer, she reflected caustically, than because women everywhere raved over him. Even those who had never been to a serious play in their lives would stay up late to watch him in literary discussion programmes on the television. It didn't matter that they understood no more than one word in three of what was being said; they watched because they were hypnotised by the dark good looks and the quality of his beautiful voice.

  Seeing him on the screen gave Fran a curious feeling. To her, it was the cultivated, well-groomed writer who was the stranger, while to all those other women, the powerfully muscled man she had so often seen stripped to the waist, sweating and dusty at harvest time, would have been unrecognisable.

  But that was an image shared by few. To the rest he was the celebrity he appeared, and who by contrast had ever heard of Fran Lucas? Only a handful, and those unimportant.

  Until these last few weeks Seth had always managed to get her enough work to keep her going, but the brilliant career had never materialised. The vital, vivid looks which turned heads in the street didn't translate on to film. Something was lost, the spark somehow extinguished, and instead of the arresting beauty of her eyes, the camera showed up her less than perfect nose and too wide mouth.

  To Seth's continuing exasperation, the one asset she undoubtedly did possess she was reluctant to exploit. He had told her right from the beginning that if she would take her clothes off he could find her as much work as she could handle. Last week she had given in to his impatient insistence and had a new set of photographs taken, and viewing the result she had to admit he was right. Nobody seeing her portfolio now would give a damn that her mouth was too wide, but still she hung back. Nude modelling had a bad image. Most people—men in particular—associated it with the revolting, girlie mag type of thing rather than advertising, and she had enough problems with men already without adding to them.

  Sipping her drink as she pondered, she admitted to herself that basically she didn't like the life anyway. She hadn't got the dedication needed to make her accept the hours of discomfort and boredom. The trouble was that at twenty-three s
he wasn't trained for anything else and there were few enough jobs for those who were.

  She shifted uncomfortably, aware of a pain in her stomach again. She'd been intending to see a doctor about it, but like toothache it disappeared when she actually got as far as picking up the phone to make an appointment. Either that or the bossy receptionist informed her that the doctor was so busy he couldn't see anyone for three days unless it was an emergency.

  Clenching her teeth, Fran began to wish she hadn't allowed herself to be fobbed off. This time it was far more severe and it was beginning to make her feel sick. If she didn't get out of this airless room soon she really would collapse.

  Glancing round she caught sight of Seth righting his way towards her through the press, a trendily dressed, red-haired man in tow. Someone to be nice to, Seth's expression warned her, and she took a deep breath. Flash your smile, she told herself—make an impression. It's what you're here for.

  She tried to compose her face, and reaching her at last, Seth said heartily, 'Here she is! The hottest little property in the business at the moment!'

  The man's sparse hair was combed carefully forward to disguise his advancing baldness, and his straggling beard half hid a small boil with a greenish head. Fran found herself staring at it, nausea rising in her. She couldn't, she simply couldn't, smile and talk and flirt with this revolting man, no matter what it meant in terms of money.

  With only part of her attention on what Seth was saying, she vaguely gathered that the job was a promotion for a new range of shampoos. He was extolling the virtues of her curtain of silver blonde hair, but she scarcely heard him as she took in the other man's expression.

  She had seen it often enough before; that look which assessed her in a way that had nothing to do with her suitability for the project. She was sick and tired of it, and of all the other men who presumed she was available when they heard she was a model. She didn't know what other kind of job she could do, but suddenly her decision was made.

  Seth went into his sales routine, lifting her hair to display it, but without warning the room dipped and whirled round her and she interrupted him to say desperately, 'Seth, I'm sorry but I feel ill! I shall have to get out of here!'

  He frowned, exasperated, but she was beyond caring. The pain in her stomach had become violent and the nausea was overwhelming. She felt her face grow clammy, and Seth's frown changed to one of sharp concern.

  He grabbed her arm and piloted her towards the other room where the crowd was marginally less, clearing a path with a forceful shoulder, and ordering, 'Make way for the lady! Somebody find her a chair!'

  Someone did, and half-fainting, Fran was lowered into it. Seth tried to make her swallow some water, but she pushed it away speechlessly, convulsed with pain and willing herself not to be sick. Her face was burning with heat now, and eyes closed, she felt a hand placed on her forehead.

  Curt with authority, a voice said, 'Call an ambulance!' and hearing it through the waves of pain she knew she must be delirious. Then the spasm of agony passed and she opened her eyes for a second before another wave hit her.

  But the brief glimpse was enough to confirm what those deep tones had told her disbelieving mind. This time it wasn't imagination or wishful thinking that had given rise to that sense of familiarity. She felt his hand gripping hers and clung to it weakly; heard the well-remembered voice saying quietly, 'Hang on, Fran. I'll get you out of here.'

  She nodded to show she understood and he commanded everyone to stand back. From her other side, Seth demanded resentfully, 'Do you know this guy, Fran?'

  Trying to escape the advancing unconsciousness, she managed to whisper, 'Yes,' before blackness claimed her.

  She remembered little until she was helped, groaning and wincing, to sit up in bed. The nurse arranged her neatly against the pillows and smiled at her with professional sympathy, brightly offering the consolation that at least she knew she would never have to have her appendix out again.

  Some time later a vase of red roses appeared on the window sill and the nurse passed Fran the card with the cryptic message, 'You've really torn it now, darling!' There was no signature, but even if Fran hadn't known Seth's writing it wouldn't have been necessary. The first time they changed the dressing over the incision she knew what he meant.

  'It will fade,' the nurse told her. 'In a year's time you'll hardly see it.'

  So that was one decision taken out of her hands, Fran thought fatalistically. She couldn't change her mind now if she wanted to. Even Seth would have problems in finding an advertiser who didn't object to a bright, fresh, new appendectomy scar.

  Sacha came to see her in the evening, causing a flurry of interest as she strolled down the ward, her lean, thoroughbred body held with conscious elegance as though she were still on the catwalk and her black hair in an impeccable chignon.

  'I hope you got your coat back safely,' Fran greeted her. 'Though before you wear it I should spray it with a fixative.'

  'I wondered why it was so incredibly cheap, darling,' Sacha said gloomily. 'I ought to know by now that my super bargains always turn out to be disasters.'

  She disposed herself gracefully on the bedside chair and studied Fran with commiserating interest. 'You do look most frightfully peaky. I thought appendixes rumbled or something first. I was shattered when this unbelievably dishy man appeared and said you'd been borne off amidst all the drama of sirens and flashing blue lights.' She grinned widely. 'It must have been a wow of a party stopper!'

  'Involuntary, I assure you,' Fran returned with a wince. She relaxed herself carefully back against the pillows before adding, 'What unbelievably dishy man?'

  Sacha met her eyes, her own bright with interest. 'Why, Grant Mercier, darling. You never told me you were acquainted with a famous playwright.'

  'Since I haven't spoken to him in nine years it's hardly hot news,' Fran said evenly. 'I can bore you with my fourteen-year-old recollections if you like.'

  She kept her eyes lowered as she spoke. Sacha was her closest friend, but not even to Sacha was she prepared to reveal what only the mere mention of Grant's name could still do to her.

  Sacha's expression was inquisitive when she eventually looked up. Raising her beautifully plucked eyebrows, she said, 'He seemed frightfully worried for someone who hasn't seen you in nine years, darling. Terribly in control and unflappable and all that, but worried. He's ringing me later so I can tell him how you are. Officially you aren't supposed to have visitors yet, but they said they'd let me in for a minute because I was bringing your toothbrush and things.'

  'Well, don't try to make anything of it,' Fran told her wearily. 'He's married and devoted to his wife.'

  'Oh,' Sacha said mournfully. 'Though he was bound to be, of course.' She caught sight of the Sister's purposeful figure approaching, and went on hurriedly, 'It looks as though I'm about to be tossed out. Don't worry about anything stupid like the rent while you're in here, will you sweetie? Just eat up your lovely hospital dinners and get better. I'll see you tomorrow.'

  Fran gave her a feeble smile of thanks and Sacha sauntered away, leaving behind a waft of exotic, expensive perfume.

  Closing her eyes, Fran thought it clashed abominably with the all-pervading hospital smell. She drifted off into a morphine-induced sleep and was woken by the rattle of the supper drinks trolley. Afterwards she lay awake half the night, though whether from her memories or the discomfort of her operation she didn't know.

  Grant. She couldn't remember a time when she hadn't known him. From the earliest years of her childhood he had always been there, linked in her mind with the big, sandstone house where he lived, up on the hill on the opposite side of the valley.

  Fran lived with her aunt and uncle in the small house next to the forge. Probably that was where she had first seen him. She had spent hours as a small child watching her uncle shape the red-hot shoes over the anvil, backing away nervously from the heat and evil-smelling clouds of smoke as he pressed them on to the horses' hoofs to chec
k the fit.

  Even from that age she could picture Grant, hands thrust into the pockets of his breeches as he leaned against the wall and discussed horses with her uncle. He would have been twenty when she was six and he seemed like a god to her then. She remembered how he used to smile at her when she was led out by her uncle on her first small pony; his friendly amusement at her excitement when she started to go to shows. He bred show hunters, big, beautiful, impressive animals, and she was ready to burst with pride when he noticed her and gave her advice and help with her pony at the ringside. She was completely unselfconscious with him in those days, and it was only when she grew to her teens that she altered, blushing and stammering and becoming unbearably confused if he spoke to her.

  She didn't know why he confused her so much, but she found herself beginning to watch out for him. If she saw his Range Rover in the village she would station herself where she could watch without being seen, and the times when she knew he was away from home seemed curiously flat and empty.

  He was often missing for weeks at a time, but when she was almost fifteen he stayed home the whole summer. Her tongue-tied self-consciousness had given way now to a breathless excitement when she saw him, and in those initial, sometimes violent awakenings of sexuality, when the other girls tested their fledgeling powers on the boys from the grammar school, she tried out hers on Grant.

  She was very tall even then, and almost fully developed, so that she appeared much older than her years. Only the narrow hips and leggy, awkward grace of youth betrayed that her body's maturity was racing ahead of her mind's, and when she looked in the mirror she saw only what she wished Grant to see, her imagination fleshing out curves and imparting fullness to a mouth that later would be sensual.

  Popular and sought after by the boys at school, she refused all their invitations, and while her classmates daydreamed of pop stars and film idols, her dreams were all of Grant. At first they were childish and glorious—scenes in which she was thrown from her horse and lay stunned, and Grant carried her back to his house where she came round to find him holding her hand and imploring her in anguished tones not to die.