by Liz Fielding
A threat? It sounded horribly like one. 'You?' she demanded. 'or are you simply content with providing the saw?'
'You climbed out along the branch all by yourself, Miss Beaumont. Does it really matter who lops it off?'
'It's really not as bad as that,' she said, with every appearance of calm conviction.
His smile deepened and she remembered, far too late, her earlier feeling that trying to deceive this man would be futile. It was that bad and somehow he knew it as well as she did. He knew too damned much. But for the moment he was generously prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
'I'll believe you, Miss Beaumont, if you'll just tear that cheque up,' he said. And he waited.
Fizz realised with a jolt that she had been wrong when she decided Luke Devlin had no feelings. Quite wrong. He was actually enjoying this, she realised, her hackles rising dangerously at the thought of him playing with her, with the fate of her station.
As if he sensed her intention to tear the wretched cheque into a million pieces and consign it and him to the devil, he stretched out his hand and fastened long, cool fingers warningly about her wrist. 'I won't write another one, Felicity Beaumont, so I suggest you think twice before you do anything ... melodramatic.'
It was almost as if he was determined to goad her, sting her into an unwise retort. Why? She wanted to ask him, demand that he tell her, but she had been imprudent enough for one afternoon.
To have lost her temper in the face of his disquieting authority, for the amusement of this infuriating man, would have been too shaming to bear. Instead she managed a laugh, small, a little breathy it was true, but still a laugh. She was driving herself beyond the limits today.
Her own career as an actress might have been short-lived, but the techniques she had learned at RADA came in useful from time to time. When she wanted to hide emotion, for instance, or to cling onto her self control and at this moment they were both being tested to the limit of endurance.
'You're right of course, Mr Devlin,' she said. 'But I'm afraid I couldn't impose this on my father without his agreement. He might not be prepared to accept it and then we would be in real trouble.' And she fervently hoped he hadn't noticed the tiny wobble in her voice. Sometimes technique alone was not enough.
'I'm glad you realise that.' And he opened his fingers to release her hand. She wanted to snatch it away. Instead she quietly laid it back in her lap, where it trembled very slightly from the sheer effort of holding onto the small slip of paper that represented the future of the station and all its employees. Tear it up? She might as well attempt to tear up a telephone directory. 'But if, as you boasted, it were your decision?' he persisted.
It was her decision and hers alone, but she needed time to think. To work out what his motives were. Holiday Bay was a popular programme that had more than justified the hard work that had gone into it, but with Melanie Brett in the cast they would draw a vast teenage audience away from the national commercial stations. That would be a tremendous boost for advertising.
The obvious choice would be to grab his money and run. But that was what bothered her most. He wasn't the kind of man who would pay for something that he have had for nothing. There was something more to this than a simple trade off.
He saw the conflicting emotions in her face.
'In the end, the toughest decisions have to be made alone, Felicity Beaumont,' he warned her. 'They divide the men from the boys. The winners from the losers. So? What do you say?'
CHAPTER THREE
LUKE Devlin did not wait for her answer but stood up and apparently satisfied that he had made his point, magnanimously offered her his hand to help her to her feet.
He didn't move back as she rose, so that she found the tip of her nose uncomfortably close to the smooth tweed lapel of his suit, her senses stirred by a combination of elusive masculine scents; good soap, the faintest woody top note of expensive cologne, the rich leather interior of an expensive motor car.
He was playing power games with her, demonstrating that he was stronger than her in every sense. With the sofa tight behind her calves, she was unable to retreat, put some distance between them and she felt trapped.
She was normally so careful to avoid any physical contact other than a handshake with men she did not know well, who did not understand the inviolate circle of space she kept around her. It made it easier to keep relationships distant, to avoid misunderstandings. But she had been angry when Luke Devlin had made his entrance and anger had shattered the protective bubble, made her vulnerable.
Now the cool touch of his hand as his fingers locked with hers were a jolting reminder of how different it had once been. A painful reminder that her skin had once tingled with excitement, of the clamour of her pulse pounding in her ears, a longing that had ached between her thighs.
An almost audible sigh of relief escaped her lips as he released her hand and stepped back to pick up her portfolio. It was short lived as hand lightly at her back he escorted her to the door.
'You have until Friday, Miss Beaumont.'
Friday. Friday was the day the salary cheques would have to be signed and the payment was due on the loan.
There was still that long, slow post Christmas period to get through before the holiday season began, a time when local businesses traditionally cut advertising to the bone. And now the town was holding its collective breath waiting to see what would happen at Harries. This couldn't have happened at a worse time. Did he know that? She risked a glance at his hard profile.
Yes, she decided. Luke Devlin knew altogether too much.
She would like to know how he had got his information, but there was little point in asking him. He would simply smile, threatening the permafrost once more and then he'd change the subject. Well, she would have to do her own homework. Find out everything she could about him. Maybe he had some weakness that she could use to her own advantage.
She caught herself. She had come out of the meeting with her sponsorship intact. It was far more than she had hoped for and his one condition could be easily coped with.
She should be happy. Over the moon. But there was this deep gut instinct that Luke Devlin was trouble. Not just because of her own almost overwhelming response to him. That was personal and she would have to deal with it, but something else. A feeling so nebulous that she could not have put it into words. She was probably being foolish, but happy was the last thing she felt.
She pulled herself together. 'Friday?'
'At twelve o'clock. You can give me your decision then.'
'I will. You'd better look after this in the meantime,' she said, offering him his cheque.
He smiled. Was it deliberate, she wondered? Did he know that when he made the effort he radiated enough power to light up the national grid?
'I'd like you to keep it, Miss Beaumont. It will help you make up your mind.'
'No…'
He took it from her, folded it neatly in half and tucked it into the breast pocket of her suit.
She swallowed, her entire body trembling as the pressure of his knuckles through the broadcloth brought her breast to singing life, bringing painful memories surging back from the place they had been buried so deep that she had almost managed to forget. '
You shouldn't do that,' she said, hoarsely, her eyes firmly fixed on the pattern of his tie. Burgundy. With the insignia of some professional organisation. Silk. Well it would be, wouldn't it?
One dark brow rose just a fraction. 'Do what?' he asked, as if he had no idea what his touch was doing to her, when she was sure he must be only too aware of the painful blush, the stammering incoherence to which he was reducing her.
'Banks,' she began, but the word was more throat than voice.
'Banks?' he prompted, gently.
Drat the man, he had apparently left her incapable of stringing a simple sentence together. She dug her nails hard into the palm of her hand. 'Banks,' she said, with almost grim determination, 'hate you to fold cheques. It messes up the
ir electronic systems.'
'Really?' His fingers seemed to burn through the treacherous suit, heavy enough to keep out the cold and the wind, but no protection against his casual touch and he knew it. His smile verged on an insult. 'I've never had any complaints.'
She didn't think he was referring to banks. Was certain of it. God, the arrogance of the man. The sheer bloody nerve. She took a swift step back, retrieving herself from his drugging touch.
'Are you that sure of yourself?' she enquired, her emotions veering wildly between a furious urge to slap his face and an equally urgent desire to rip her clothes off and pull him down with her onto the thick carpet. That would certainly wipe the smile off his face.
The thought provoked an almost overwhelming desire to giggle. In fact she realised she was in grave danger of hysteria.
Taking a firm grip of herself, she asked, 'Aren't you afraid that I might pay it into the bank? Once the salaries are drawn and this month's loan repayment made, I won't be able to give it back to you if I change my mind.'
His mouth tightened into a thin dangerous line and he dropped his hand to his side. 'I wouldn't advise anything so rash, Miss Beaumont.'
Tension finally overwhelmed her and she giggled. 'I was joking, Mr Devlin.'
'Were you, Miss Beaumont?' He handed her the portfolio, his eyes expressionless. 'I'll see you here on Friday at twelve. We'll see who's laughing then.'
*****
Luke Devlin did not turn as the door opened behind him and his cousin joined him by the window. Fizz Beaumont was crossing the car park and the two men watched her. She had a natural unstudied grace that even the stark lines of the pin-striped suit could not disguise.
'I'd say she's a bit of a handful on the quiet,' Phillip said, breaking the silence.
'Quiet?' A wry smile twisted Luke Devlin's mouth. 'That's generous considering the way she went after you.'
Phillip shrugged, that wasn't what he had meant, and he was pretty sure that Luke knew it.
'She's a good looking girl. Vivid.'
'She certainly wasn't what I expected,' Luke agreed, turning to watch as the old, but still dangerous looking sports car that she drove roared throatily into life.
The report he had commissioned on the Beaumont family and now safely locked in his desk, had described Felicity as being quite different from the rest of her family. She was apparently reserved, leading a quiet life mainly involving the radio station owned by her father and with no theatrical ambitions.
Having met the girl, he could certainly see that she wasn't like the rest of her family. But quiet and reserved seemed way off line.
Both her parents were well known actors, famous for playing opposite one another in long running West End hits, much loved by the public at large until her mother, Elaine French, had retired. Edward Beaumont's career had taken a downturn until Elaine's death had generated waves of public sympathy and the kind of publicity that made him bankable once more.
Luke's mouth tightened as he recalled the newspaper clippings showing the apparently grief stricken Edward at her graveside with his two daughters. Claudia, already making a name for herself in television, was over-the-top tragic in black. Felicity, about fourteen years old, gawky and awkward, had been unreadable, private. And her life had stayed private. His file was full of photographs of the rest of the family, but she appeared in very few and even then only, it seemed to him, as an afterthought.
She lived alone in an apartment in Broomhill, with no obvious romantic attachments. She had the title of Station Manager of the local radio station franchised to her father, but the general opinion seemed to be that the job had been manufactured for her by her father because she had not succeeded in a theatrical career despite a brief spell at RADA.
Compared to her Technicolor family, Felicity had come across on paper as oddly monotone and anonymous. He had almost dreaded what he planned to do to her.
But she wasn't monotone. She had a golden, butterscotch voice, an excitingly generous mouth, eyes like hot sapphires. And a disconcerting habit of trembling when he touched her. Vivid. Yes, it was a good word to describe Felicity Beaumont.
His researcher had got her quite wrong.
But then he hadn't uncovered other things about Edward. The Beaumonts were good at covering their tracks. He'd just have to dig deeper. There had to be something to account for the difference between appearance and reality.
'It's not too late to drop this, Luke.' Luke Devlin turned and looked down at his cousin. The older man's face showed real concern. 'Why don't you just let it go? Forget it. Juliet would have never wanted this.'
Luke peeled away from the window and crossed to the desk. 'Come on, Phillip,' he said, impatiently, when he saw his cousin still staring down into the car park. 'I need your figures. Just how much is it going to cost me?'
Phillip Devlin turned away from the window. 'Too much.' Then he shrugged. All the Devlins had a stubborn streak, but Luke made the rest of them look like putty. 'The whole place needs refitting with modern machinery,' he said. 'It'll cost a fortune. I don't know why you bought the place.'
'Yes, you do.' For a moment the two men's eyes clashed. 'But we have to pay for our fun.'
'Revenge is a wild justice, Luke. Unpredictable. Take care the price you pay isn't more than you can stand.'
*****
Fizz did not return to the pier. She didn't want to see to her father. She was in no fit state to see anyone. The confrontation with Luke Devlin had left her wrung out, emotionally drained. After seven years without so much as a flicker she had thought, in her innocence, that she was quite safe from that overwhelming charge of passion. She had been so certain that no one would ever have that effect on her again.
She gripped the leather wrapped steering wheel until her knuckles showed white and clamped down on her teeth to stop them chattering. But the trembling was unstoppable and as she edged the car forward into the traffic her foot slipped on the clutch and she stalled. There was an immediate chorus of impatient drivers behind her. For a moment she didn't even hear them. She just wanted to get home. Lie in a warm bath until the shivering stopped.
She reached forward, restarted the engine, but the traffic was backed up from the ring road and once caught in the one way system there was no escape. She switched on the radio. Andy Gilbert's familiar voice immediately filled the car, warning drivers to stay off the ring road if at all possible. ' ... police are in attendance and traffic should be moving shortly. In the meantime for those of you stuck out there here's something soothing ...' He moved smoothly into his patter and a few moments later the car was filled with music.
Fizz dug about in the glove compartment for a scarf. Her car, so old that it was a classic, had once been a glamorous head-turner, but now its shabby soft-top let in a draught that today seemed to come direct from Siberia and the heater only worked when it felt like it.
She knew she should give serious thought to buying something small and sensible that cost less to run. She would, she promised herself. Once she had sorted out her sponsorship problems.
There was no scarf, so she turned her collar up and chilled through by emotional stress as much as the cold, she continued to shiver as the traffic edged slowly forward a few feet at a time until she reached the cause of the problem, a commotion in front of the town's leading hotel.
A white limousine was drawn up before the entrance and a crowd of photographers and reporters were clustered about it, as well as hundreds of excited girls.
A gasp went up from the crowd as the occupant of the limousine emerged and with the most brilliant smile framed by golden hair that spilled around her fur-clad shoulders, she turned and waved enthusiastically to her fans.
For a moment Fizz stared at the young actress. So that was Melanie Brett. Genuinely youthful, fresh and heartbreakingly pretty. It was, she discovered, painfully easy to understand why Luke Devlin would want to give her everything her heart desired.
Once clear of the traffic she headed up the
hill to her apartment in an old house that overlooked the bay and the town that rimmed its shore.
Everything looked so uncomplicated from up here, so simple. Neat rows of beautifully preserved Georgian houses lining the pebble dash of the south beach, the clean black lines of skeletal winter trees that made the town's famous parks seem almost dead from this distance.
Close up she knew that under the bare branches would be deep drifts of snowdrops and the promise that the banks would soon be spread with a purple, white and yellow carpet of crocuses.
Beyond the parks spread the tangle of the town with the new shopping mall at its centre and further east, the Wynds, narrow alleyways full of exciting little shops that sold exotic and precious things from all over the world. A popular hunting ground for collectors even in the winter.
She remembered Devlin's disparaging comparison of her new restaurant with the cosy bistros in the heart of the Wynds. Had she really been that wrong?
As she walked down the road to the shop on the corner to pick up the evening paper, her eyes came to rest on the long arm of the pier stretching out above the golden sands of north beach, its elegant ironwork tracery gleaming under a new coat of paint. At its furthest point the domed shape of the pavilion, now the home of Pavilion Radio, stood out bright against the grey of the sky.
Of course she had not been wrong. People loved the pier and no trip to the sea could ever be complete, even in winter, without a bracing walk along its sixteen hundred feet.
'Hello, Fizz, you're early today. Just the Post is it?'