Fantasy Woman

by Annabel Murray

  'A very suitable frame of mind for what I intend for you; no distracting relationships. But then, I wasn't necessarily implying marriage when I asked if there was anyone else.'

  Her green eyes snapped at him, matching her tone of voice.

  'I don't know what standards you hold, Mr Fallon, but I don't go in for "casual" relationships.'

  Considering what he'd been told of her, Tod was surprised at her total honesty. He'd expected her to refute any faults on her own part, any responsibility for the failure of her marriage. But then he was almost constantly revising his preconceived ideas about Fantasy Woman. As to a career versus marriage, he had no doubt she meant what she said right at this moment. But there was always the chance that some man would persuade her otherwise.

  He wondered, as he had done before, whether it would be safer for his purposes to ensure her cooperation by making her fall in love with him. He had no doubt of his ability to do so, and it would serve to bind her to him for the necessary length of time.

  Yet, despite this deliberately cold calculation, he knew that the physical attraction he felt towards her was genuine. She was extraordinarily lovely; tall, statuesque, no, almost Junoesque in her build. Both body and face held a passionate promise of generosity for any man who could penetrate the icy shell she had constructed around her heart.

  That her mouth could be ardent, he already knew. It was a large mouth, and it should have been ugly. Yet, because of its flawless shape, it wasn't. Unbidden there came to him an acute physical remembrance of that mouth's unwilling response. He'd seen the alarm in her eyes, too, wide set, a shade of green he didn't recall encountering before, when she'd thought he was about to touch her. So she hadn't forgotten, either, the chemistry that momentarily had flowed between them.

  But might it not be dangerous for him to attempt to tamper with her affections? Could he risk personal involvement this time, now that he and Marcha . .. Perhaps he would do better to stick to a straightforward business proposition, and in surroundings where the attraction he felt had to be disguised. Wiser, yes. But he still felt a sense of disappointment.

  'I don't intend to renew your contract for Fantasy Woman just for the present,' he said, deliberately brisk.

  She stared at him. His decision must already have been made, so why the pretence at discussion? Why wait until now, when her fears of just such an eventuality had begun to abate somewhat?

  'Why?' It was ridiculous the way her voice quivered. 'Have you found someone to replace me?' Her thought processes were swift and her eyes narrowed. 'That's why you've bought your way into TLM Enterprises, so you can keep some girlfriend of yours sweet.'

  It was uncomfortably close to the truth, but, 'Not at all!' His manner was annoyingly laconic. She had hoped to see her shot go home, see anger stir his imperturbable surface. 'Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe you did express a wish to test out the stunts performed on the show? Gina, it was Jimmy who held you back, not the sponsors. They're quite willing for you to take a more active part in the show, provided ...' He paused quite deliberately, as he studied her lovely face for its reaction; and it was there, the eager flicker of anticipation he'd hoped to see. 'Provided you put yourself entirely in my hands for the next six months.'

  She quailed at the thought, but this time she was able to hide her feelings. 'And what happens to the show meanwhile?' she demanded.

  'It goes on, of course, with a substitute.'

  'I knew it!' She began to rise from the table. 'You are putting in some girlfriend ...'

  'Shut up! Sit down and listen. I've no idea who they'll use and frankly I don't give a damn. That's your Jimmy's problem.'

  She regarded him steadily for a few moments. Maybe he was speaking the truth, maybe not.

  'And what will we be doing during that six months?'

  'You,' he emphasised, 'if you agree, will be putting in some pretty strict training to become a stunt girl. In fact, if you're the right material, by the time I've finished with you, you may not want to return to something as tame as Fantasy Woman.'

  He watched as realisation flooded her lovely face, as incredulity, dawning hope, radiant excitement followed each other in quick succession.

  'You really mean it?'

  'Yes.'

  'When do I start?'

  'You're not afraid?'

  'No way.'

  'Right,' he said, unable to conceal his satisfaction. 'Can you be ready by Saturday?'

  'Of course! But ready for what, and where?'

  'In the first instance you'll come down to Mallions, my home. A great deal of your training can take place there and in the immediate neighbourhood. Most of the necessary facilities are available.'

  'No!' Gina protested at once. 'I can't come and stay with you, just like that. What about my flat? I'd rather do my training nearer home.' Tod Fallon would have to accept that she had a mind and will of her own. Somehow the thought of several months on his territory, the advantage inevitably his, worried her.

  'You can't.' He was inexorable. 'There are no comparable facilities. Besides, I intend to keep a personal eye on your training; and there are other reasons why I have to work from home.' He gave her no further chance to argue, but rose from his seat. 'Right! That's settled, I'll drive you home.'

  'No!' she said again; then, catching his lowering expression, 'thank you, but I prefer to take a taxi.'

  He said nothing for a moment as she met his eyes defiantly. She thought he was going to insist, but, instead, he shrugged and felt in his inside pocket for a pen.

  'Then you'd better give me your address, so I know where to pick you up on Saturday.'

  'I'm sorry. I don't give my address to anyone. If you'll set a time, I'll meet you here, or anywhere else convenient to you. Now, if you'll excuse me, I believe I saw a taxi rank outside?'

  Tod fought his exasperation. He couldn't remember when he'd ever met a woman so stubbornly determined to go her own way, except Marcha, of course, but hers was a special case. Still, he had gained the initial advantage. Gina had accepted his challenge and once she was actually on his territory, he would reveal the further extent of his plans. There were other ways of discovering what he wanted to know right now.

  'I'll see you to your taxi then. Can you be here by ten o'clock Saturday morning?'

  'Of course.' She was so relieved by his easy acquiescence that she would have promised to be there at six, if he'd suggested it.

  The taxi rank was only a hundred yards from the hotel, but Tod was punctilious in seeing Gina into the first vehicle. She had been careful, he noted with dry amusement, to refrain from giving the driver her direction before he pulled away from the kerb. Casually, Tod strolled back towards the next cab in line and, before Gina's taxi was out of sight, he was offering the driver double fare if he could succeed in following her, unobserved.

  Gina sank back into a chair. Thank heaven Todd had not insisted on accompanying her home. What did she really think of him? What really disconcerted her was his habit of staring at her. One moment it was as if he 'fancied' her, the next as though his plans for her boded no good. Which was the real Tod Fallon?

  As the flat's soothing ambience closed around her, Gina wondered whether she could bear to leave its familiar security for a whole six months. Though she'd agreed to the training Todd had suggested she had no idea what particular skills he would ask of her, nor if she would prove capable of mastering them. He hadn't even enquired about her athletic prowess. She might have been able to surprise him by her list of accomplishments.

  Nevertheless, she was grateful for Tod Fallon's intervention at this stage in her career. With more skills to offer, other areas of the media might open up to her, fields requiring more than a pretty face and a desirable body, which could not last forever. Right now, though, that body was badly in need of the. soothing relaxation of warm water.

  Later, wandering through to the bedroom, wrapped toga-wise in a large bath sheet, she sat on the edge of the bed and, from the bedside cabinet,
took out a photograph album. Flicking over the earlier years, she paused to study herself as she had been at nineteen, when she'd first met Keith. She was better looking now, and her brain was more informed. But at twenty-five she might be said to have reached her peak of attraction. How much longer would she go on looking like this? How much longer before she had to really work at being attractive?

  It was a relief to have these depressing thoughts interrupted, until she realised just what the source of the interruption was: the doorbell.

  Damn! She'd hoped that none of her neighbours had witnessed her return. Without being uncivil, Gina had firmly discouraged casual droppings in; but there was one elderly woman who could not be dissuaded from borrowing the occasional half-pint of milk and as meticulously returning it.

  Sighing resignedly, she discarded the bath sheet in favour of a silk wrap and headed for the source of the irritation. Obviously it was no use pretending she wasn't in.

  Tod paid off his taxi, but with the success of his tailing operation, he lost his impetus. For a while he walked up and down outside the apartment block, imagining Gina's reaction when she opened the door and saw him. He had no doubts of his ability to gain entry. He would have the advantage of being prepared for the confrontation and he was physically stronger. It would be a confrontation. She would be furious, of course.

  Hell! Was he afraid of her? With an impatient shrug, he swung in through the double front doors, pausing momentarily to study the names against the apartment numbers. His eyebrows rose as he saw she was on the top floor, in the penthouse, no less.

  Why go any further, he wondered. He had her address; that was all he needed. He knew why. He was curious about Gina, the private woman, her background. He wanted to see her with her defences down. As the lift carried him upward, he felt the sudden unexpected warmth of sensuality engulf him at the thought of being alone with Gina in her apartment. Good God! What was he thinking of? What would Marcha think if she could read his mind at this moment?

  Outside Gina's door, he took himself to task. It was weakness to let such emotions ride him. His use of his masculinity must be calculated, with no danger of serious involvement on his part.

  She opened the door, recoiled, the polite smile freezing into a grimace of angry horror.

  'What the hell are you doing here? How did you find out where I live?'

  'Easy!' Tod crossed the threshold, brushing past her with as much nonchalance as if he had been invited to do so. 'I followed you.'

  'Damn you! How dare you!' Gina's words drifted after Tod's back view, and she felt a sense of ridiculous anti-climax as he preceded her into her living-room, threw himself down on to her favourite seat.

  'I thought,' he said, as he looked around him with a calm appraisal that infuriated her, 'in view of our new policy, your secretiveness about your address was a little outmoded.'

  'Oh?' she snapped. 'And do you intend to publicise that? So that the world and his wife can swarm all over my doorstep, invade my privacy?'

  'No,' he drawled. "This is' a privilege I intend to reserve for myself, assuming I am the first man to cross your hallowed threshold?'

  She refused to give him the satisfaction of acknowledging or denying his words.

  'Right! So you've got what you wanted. You know where I live. Now you can get out!' Dramatically, she pointed towards the door, the dignity of the gesture impaired as she realised that the silky, material belt had come unfastened, so that she was forced to grab the edges of her robe and clasp it more firmly about her slim waist.

  Apart from a lop-sided smile that recognised her predicament, Tod made no indication of having heard her words. Instead he rose and strolled casually through the apartment, looking speculatively about him. He even had the colossal nerve, Gina seethed, to inspect her bedroom. What did he expect to learn from that? Was he looking for traces of male occupation? And what did that matter to him?

  'Hmm! You have good taste, expensive taste.'

  'I've worked damned hard for what I have,' she said defensively, and, seeing that he had no immediate intention of leaving, she shot into the hallway and slammed the apartment door.

  'Not furnished on hefty alimony payments then?' His gesture encompassed the decor, the antiques, the Impressionist paintings.

  'No!' she snapped. 'It isn't.'

  When her marriage had finally broken up, she'd refused alimony; she wanted nothing from Keith. She didn't need his money. Her agency was prospering and there was no reason why it shouldn't go on doing so. But even if she'd been on the breadline, it would have sickened her to be dependent on Keith.

  'You were the guilty party, perhaps?' Tod suggested.

  'I most certainly was not!' Her green eyes blazed fire at him at the injustice of the remark.

  'He was unfaithful to you?' Tod's incredulity stemmed from the thought that, if such were the case, her husband must have been all kinds of a damned fool not to know the treasure he'd had in his possession.

  'Yes,' Gina confirmed dully. She sat down in the cushioned recess. Since Tod seemed unlikely to depart until he had finally satisfied his curiosity, she might as well be comfortable.

  'Tell me,' Tod suggested, joining her uninvited, his proximity disturbingly unwelcome. Imperceptibly she tried to edge away.

  She shook her auburn head. She had never related the exact details of that traumatic time to anyone.

  'Perhaps your marriage was never consummated,' he insinuated. 'If you behaved like this, like a frightened virgin, every time your husband came near you, I'm not surprised he looked elsewhere.'

  'Never consummated!' She knew her voice sounded shrill, orchestrated by indignation, a sudden stab of pure physical frustration. How dared Tod Fallon, a total stranger until a few hours ago, make such an outrageous insinuation! Keith, far from being deprived, had had his cake and eaten it.

  'Before I met you,' Todd informed her, 'someone told me your marriage failed, not only because you were highly ambitious, but also because you were frigid.'

  'Then that "someone" is a liar!' She faced him squarely, her green eyes angry but steady. Who could have told him such a thing? She shook her head vehemently, the movement making the gleaming red hair swirl about her silk-clad shoulders, its perfume drifting to Tod's nostrils a heady enticement, and a wave of pure eroticism shafted through him as he felt himself wishing that he might be the one to put her to the test.

  'Care to prove that to me?' he heard himself saying softly. His eyes held hers and hers were the first to drop.

  'Get out!' she muttered. She was trembling with a sudden anguished desire that his words had aroused. It had been so long since she'd known a man's touch, the exploration of his hands upon her body, a man's lovemaking. She'd managed to quell the need for so long, but now it rose in a flood tide that threatened to engulf her, because she knew Tod Fallon was capable of assuaging that need. He was the only man who had managed to penetrate her reserve, to give new life to senses she'd believed permanently frozen, the only man to move her physically in a long, long time.

  'I don't think you mean that.' He was too perceptive. He leant towards her, slowly,, tantalisingly, and she seemed incapable of movement, of retreat.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  There was a brief second when his mouth was only a butterfly touch on hers, when there was still time for her to retreat. But she hesitated an instant too long. Then Tod's weight carried her back full-length upon the settee, his kiss deepening as the hardness of his chest crushed her soft breasts.

  All along Gina had known instinctively that this man represented danger and she had realised the form that danger took. She should be fighting him off, she thought bemusedly, but her body, so long controlled, had betrayed her. Scarcely knowing what she did, she moved beneath him, a deep, primitive sound vibrating in her throat.

  Without removing his lips from hers, he levered himself a little away, so that his hand might invade the scanty protection of her silken robe, might have access between their bodies to the fullness of h
er breasts. She couldn't move. She knew what he wanted to do, knew she wanted it, too. His hand found the smooth flesh he sought. He raised his head, so that his eyes could devour what he had discovered, the darkening aureole, the hardening tips of her breasts. He lowered his head again, not to her lips this time, but to those rosy tips, the movement of his tongue, his teeth, imparting an ecstasy part pleasure, part pain.

  'Oh please, please, don't!' she heard herself saying, knew that while her mind was still coherent, her body was not.

  'You don't mean that,' he murmured.

  'I do ... I don't want...'

  'Nonsense! You told the truth, Gina. You're not frigid. You're no unawakened virgin; you've been married. You're a mature, sexually attractive woman, and you've been starving yourself of love. You want me.'

  Yes, she thought miserably, the first time in years I've allowed myself to want a man and it had to be you, a man I hardly know and dare not trust.

  But even these thoughts could not stem the primitive flood of awareness surging through her as, against her will, her body responded to the proximity of his, its muscular hardness, its musky scent. She was coming dangerously close to forgetting her self-imposed tenets of behaviour where men were concerned.

  He had succeeded now in sliding the robe from her shoulders and as it fell in a silken pool around her hips, she heard him exclaim beneath his breath, knew his wondering gaze was roaming lingeringly over her naked curves. An exploratory hand began to stroke her skin, the intimate lingering of his fingers triggering off sharp sensations deep within her.

  'You're very lovely, Gina.' His voice was husky, shaken. He took her mouth again and this time she found her lips parting, responding willingly to his probing, moist invasion. His fingers tightened their grasp of her; his mouth trailed its burning route down the side of her neck, pausing tantalisingly at her nipples, to encompass, to stimulate, then on down the flat curve of her stomach to the indentation of her navel. The warmth of pleasure heated her loins and yet.. .