Indecent Deception

by Lynne Graham

  It was raining heavily. With a bent head she crossed the street and began walking. Digging her hands into her pockets, she didn’t even try to avoid the puddles. When a car door shot open in front of her, she recoiled in alarm.

  ‘Get in!’ Blaze instructed abrasively. ‘And take off that filthy coat first!’

  Chrissy gaped in at him across a divide of palest cream leather upholstery. ‘W-what do you want?’

  A groan of impatience greeted the tremulous demand.

  Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks. She was glad he couldn’t see them. ‘G-go away. I’m not going to apologise.’

  ‘I’m offering you a lift home.’

  ‘That’s crazy,’ she muttered. ‘Why w-would you want to do that?’

  ‘Do you think it could possibly be a belated attempt to make amends?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Oh, Chrissy, how I have missed the delights of dialogue with you. If you don’t get in, I’ll get out and throw you in. The upholstery’s getting wet.’

  ‘I don’t w-want a lift!’ she gasped. ‘You th-think this is funny, don’t you?’

  ‘Actually, it’s incredibly depressing.’ Blaze sighed from the interior. ‘If a branch came out to you when you were drowning, you’d push it away and sink like a stone.’

  Chrissy was perilously close to another breakdown. ‘I h-hate you.’

  ‘And I love you for it, sweetheart. You’re unique,’ he mocked. ‘You see that policeman heading towards us?’

  Her head lifted. A uniformed figure was approaching them.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ Blaze encouraged. ‘This should be fun. He doesn’t like the look of us at all. Either you’re soliciting or I’m kerb-crawling. The next time we do this, at least run a comb through your hair. At this moment, you’re not doing a lot for my image.’

  Absorbing the frowning attention they were receiving, Chrissy shot into the car and slammed the door.

  ‘Try not to drip on my CDs.’

  She hunched over inelegantly, wet hair screening her pinched profile.

  ‘How is Belle these days?’ he enquired, sending the powerful car shooting away from the kerb.

  At the reference to her mother, her slight shoulders reared back up, her hair whipping back from her damp cheeks, over-bright eyes raw with pain and condemnation.

  ‘I liked your mother,’ Blaze said evenly.

  ‘In so far as you ever noticed her!’ Her clogged lashes dropped on her aching eyes. The silence went on and on and on and then she cleared her throat gruffly. ‘She’s dead.’ It was bald, bitter.

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last year.’

  ‘How did it happen?’

  She tautened. ‘Pneumonia,’ she conceded.

  ‘I’m sorry. That must have hurt. You were very close,’ he responded with an amount of apparent sincerity that astonished her.

  But Chrissy almost laughed out loud. How close had she really been to her mother? Belle Hamilton had fled her husband and family without a word of advance warning. Chrissy had once found her chatting cosily in the kitchen over a cup of coffee with Dennis Carruthers but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Belle had always happily offered hospitality to workmen, tradesmen—indeed virtually anyone ordinary who entered the house. She had been far happier entertaining them than she had ever been trying to entertain their grandiose neighbours. Nobody had known about Dennis until it was too late. Her mother had burnt her boats with a vengeance.

  ‘Why didn’t you go home again?’

  Chrissy turned even paler. ‘I couldn’t.’ And then she regretted even saying that much. But there was something so dangerously unreal about being in Blaze Kenyon’s company, something so disturbingly hypnotic about receiving his full attention.

  ‘Where do you live?’

  Still in a daze, she told him and then suggested he drop her at a bus-stop. His mouth hardening, he ignored the invitation. From below feathery lashes, she stole a glance at him. He really was quite spectacular. Even immune as she was to his physical allure, she could not resist the urge to look again. Every chiselled line of that strong bone-structure spoke of bred-in-the-bone self-assurance. What could he possibly know about the traumas that had finally torn her family apart when she was sixteen?

  Chrissy had stood on the sidelines of her parents’ crumbling marriage, helpless to do anything more than offer her unhappy mother sympathy. Her father had been the reasonably contented owner of a hamburger takeaway when he won the pools. Overnight their lives had changed out of all recognition. And not for the better. Initially her father’s ambitions had been sensible, even modest. He had expanded in the catering trade. But, in the grip of entrepreneurial fever, his ambitions had grown as fast as his bank balance.

  When the thrill of flaunting his riches before relatives and friends had worn off, he had bought a fancy house in Berkshire without even consulting her mother. Divided from lifelong friends, her mother had been lost. Worse, Jim Hamilton, always a domineering, short-tempered man, had become more and more aggressive as his wealth and importance grew. When their new and more far-flung neighbours had demonstrated a dismaying reluctance to welcome the Hamiltons into their select social circles, Belle had received the blame.

  Even when the locals had finally drifted in to gape, if not to admire, the gulf between her parents had been insurmountable. The damage had been done. Treated with complete contempt by her husband and two eldest children, Belle had been an easy mark for a smooth-tongued younger man. In striking out to find happiness with Dennis, her mother had made an appalling error of judgement. But Chrissy believed that Belle had been driven, not least by her husband’s blatant infidelity, into making that final choice.

  ‘I thought most of this area was up for redevelopment,’ Blaze mused. ‘The demolition squad is practically parked on your doorstep.’

  It was a dirty little street of narrow terraces, set on the edge of a gigantic building site. Some of the houses were already boarded up.

  ‘Not quite Buck House, is it?’ Chrissy snapped in an artificially correct voice, calculated to annoy.

  Blaze filtered the car to a smooth halt, carefully avoiding the spill of rubbish from a tumbled dustbin. ‘What a little snob you are,’ he murmured drily. ‘I was only initiating conversation.’

  Opening the door with desperate fingers, Chrissy flung him a look of incredulity. ‘N-no, you weren’t. You can’t open your mouth without being superior!’

  Without a further word, she skidded out on to the pavement. Rifling in her bag for her key, she hurried down the street to an end terrace and unlocked the door.

  ‘Is that you, Miss Hamilton?’

  Swallowing convulsively, Chrissy stilled in the act of closing the door. Her landlady was barring her passage to the stairs. ‘You’re back early.’

  ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Davis—’

  ‘What about the rent? You got it yet?’ the older woman interrupted bluntly. ‘Because if you haven’t you can get out of here today. Give me that key!’

  ‘Mrs Davis, you will get—’

  ‘Nothing ever seems to come of your promises, luv. I must’ve been mad to take you in. Girls with kiddies in tow aren’t reliable. I should have known better,’ Mrs Davis fumed. ‘But I felt sorry for you, didn’t I? Well, I’ve got my own bills to think about and—’

  A crisp, cool voice intervened. ‘How much does Miss Hamilton owe you?’

  Her landlady spun in amazement. Chalk-pale with mortification and shock, Chrissy’s head twisted on her shoulders. Blaze stood in the doorway, not one whit perturbed by the scene he had interrupted. He was pulling a wallet from his jacket.

  ‘Three weeks, she owes,’ Mrs Davis retorted truculently, and added the amount.

  A handful of notes changed hands faster than Chrissy could part her lips. ‘You can’t take his m-money!’ she protested.

  ‘Oh, can’t I? I don’t care who pays as long as it’s paid.’ Mrs Davis directed a grim smile of approval at Blaze. ‘And don�
�t you forget that you’re to be out of here by Saturday. I’ve got a removal van booked for the morning.’

  Chrissy was so profoundly embarrassed as her landlady disappeared back into her ground-floor flat that she couldn’t bring herself even to look at Blaze. ‘I’ll post it to you,’ she promised shakily. ‘W-when I can,’ honesty bade her admit.

  ‘No hurry.’

  She was quite nauseated by the knowledge that she was now in his debt. But she could do nothing but accept his charity. Mrs Davis wouldn’t give up the money and Chrissy was in no position to offer repayment. On the other hand, it was thanks to Blaze that she was not now being thrown out on the street. It took immense courage to rise above her sense of humiliation. Raising her bowed head, Chrissy collided with impenetrable sapphire eyes in one brief, stricken connection. ‘Thanks,’ she forced out with difficulty. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around some time,’ she concluded with awkward finality.

  Without awaiting any further response, she started up the stairs, fast. On the first landing, she pressed open the door of her bed-sit with raw relief. She simply couldn’t have borne another second of his company.

  ‘What on earth are you doing back?’ her babysitter, Karen, demanded, rising from the single armchair with a frown.

  ‘It’s a long story.’

  Rosie threw herself at Chrissy’s knees with a whoop of delight.

  ‘Bloody hell!’ a very male voice ejaculated.

  Chrissy spun as though she had been jabbed in the back by a hot poker. She hadn’t heard Blaze follow her upstairs. He had to move like a leopard on the prowl. With Rosie planting an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek, she was paralysed to the spot, devastatingly conscious of Blaze’s stunned and silent scrutiny.

  Chapter 2

  There was a horrible hiatus. Karen hovered the way impressionable females usually did in Blaze’s vicinity. Possibly she recognised him. Rarely out of the society pages and the gossip columns, Blaze was very well-known. His life in the fast lane was notorious.

  ‘I’ll see you later, Karen,’ Chrissy said hurriedly.

  As the other girl left with visible reluctance, Blaze strolled deeper into the room, scanning the sparse, worn furniture and the few shabby toys littering the cramped floor space. With a grace of movement that was inbred, he swung back to look at Chrissy, a wry twist to his expressive mouth. ‘I suppose I should have been prepared for this scenario,’ he drawled. ‘But I wasn’t. I was still thinking of you as a kid.’

  ‘I’m almost twenty-one.’ As she spoke, Rosie was struggling to get down, and reluctantly she bent to lower the wriggling toddler to the floor. She was praying that Blaze would leave, couldn’t imagine what strange quirk had made him follow her upstairs.

  ‘Still practically jailbait,’ he mused half under his breath.

  Her cheeks fired scarlet, her mouth tightening. Did he automatically divide all women into two camps? Those he could sleep with and those he thought he shouldn’t sleep with? The idea revolted her, but it also resurrected cringing recollections of their last encounter. Hurriedly, she buried her mind’s urge to relive the past. In preference she reflected grimly on Blaze’s ‘love them and leave them’ reputation.

  He was an unashamed user and abuser of the female sex, she thought in disgust. Once she had believed that her sister, Elaine, was too calculating to be hurt by any man. But Elaine had fallen hard for Blaze. After a brief whirl, he had ditched her again with savage unconcern, devastating her pride and driving her into a face-saving marriage with a man she didn’t love. Her over-confident sister had become just another line in a gossip column, another notch on his bedpost, and for the first time in her life Chrissy had felt sympathy for Elaine.

  ‘So this is the reason you can’t go home.’ Astonishingly, Blaze crouched down on Rosie’s level and solemnly accepted the scruffy pink rabbit he was being invited to admire.

  ‘Wosee’s wabbit,’ Rosie told him importantly.

  ‘I love wabbits,’ Blaze teased, the most natural, utterly breathtaking smile warming his darkly tanned features. The usual chill and cynicism etched there was briefly put to flight. As he ruffled Rosie’s black curls, he straightened again.

  Bemused by this totally unexpected display of humanity, Chrissy dragged disobedient eyes from the wide, blatantly sensual arc of his mouth. Her chest felt oddly tight as she sucked in oxygen, suddenly short of breath.

  Blaze sighed. ‘It’s probably a very stupid question, but how the hell did you land yourself in a mess like this?’

  He had simply assumed that Rosie was her child. But then, everybody did. In the circumstances it was a natural assumption, and she could not possibly trust him with the truth. Rosie was her half-sister, the last pathetic footnote to her late mother’s ‘marriage’ to Dennis Carruthers.

  ‘I think you should leave,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘You’re right. I should walk back out of here and forget I ever left the car,’ Blaze murmured grimly. ‘But I have the hideous suspicion that all this would travel with me. Clearly you’re broke, and now you’re also unemployed’

  ‘And whose f-fault is that?’ she cut in shrilly.

  ‘I’m not in the habit of censoring speech in private conversation,’ he countered without an ounce of embarrassment. ‘But if I said one thing that was unfounded on fact, you’re welcome to call me to account over it.’

  The invitation merely made her turn away in sharp distress. Dear God, how she loathed him! But he had uttered not a single untruth. The bald facts were exactly as he had stated them. Nouveau riche and painfully rough round the edges, the Hamiltons had certainly failed to merge tastefully with the surrounding countryside. Her father had loved putting on vulgar displays of his new-found wealth. He had thought that he needed to impress people to win respect. But all that he had won was derision.

  ‘I gather that you have to get out of here,’ Blaze prompted shortly. ‘Have you found somewhere else to go?’

  ‘No.’ The admission was dredged from her. Not that he needed it. He would know as well as she did that she had no hope of finding somewhere else without cold, hard cash to put down in advance.

  London was a terrifyingly anonymous place to live in without friends. Those Chrissy had made at college had swiftly drifted away when she was forced to drop out of her teacher-training course and shoulder full-time care and responsibility for her little sister. In one gigantic bound, Chrissy had gone from teenage freedom to adult reality. She had grown up ten years in the first six months.

  A succinct and unsuppressed swear word fell from his lips. ‘What are you planning to do this weekend?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Set up home on the street?’

  ‘We’ll manage,’ she muttered tightly.

  ‘Like you’re managing now?’ he derided cruelly. ‘Have you asked your father for help?’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him in three years,’ she confided unsteadily. ‘He was f-furious when I moved in with Mum down here. He doesn’t know about Rosie and it wouldn’t make any difference if he did. As far as he’s concerned, I betrayed him when I went to Mum—’

  ‘Your brother? Your sister?’ Blaze cut in. ‘Surely one of them—?’

  Chrissy vented a humourless laugh at the ridiculous idea of either Rory or Elaine taking up the cudgels on their behalf or even putting their hands into their pockets. Rory lived in California now with his wife and family and, just like Elaine, he had been appalled by what their mother had done. Neither had been willing to forgive Belle. Even when she was lying in Intensive Care, her life expectancy measured in hours, Elaine had refused Chrissy’s pleas for her to come down to London.

  Chrissy had never got the chance to tell them about Rosie and, in any case, the revelation would only provoke horror and disgust. Rosie was Belle’s daughter by another man, the result of an illegal union that had made headlines for days in the tabloids when Dennis was arrested. After all, Belle hadn’t been the only woman he had deceived into a quick trip to the altar. There had been two others, neither of whom he
had bothered to divorce.

  ‘I never got on that well with Dad anyway,’ Chrissy pointed out, eager to close the subject because she didn’t want to tell lies.

  ‘Who would?’ Blaze breathed with chilling hauteur. ‘He’d sell his granny to cannibals to make a fast buck.’

  As he made the grim assurance, cold, clear anger lightened his eyes and tautened his sculpted cheekbones. Chrissy stared, puzzled by his vehemence. What had her father done to rouse his ire? But before she could voice her curiosity Blaze shrugged back a silk shirt-cuff and glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got a business meeting in an hour.’

  ‘I’ll post that money to you,’ she said again.

  ‘Forget it,’ he advised carelessly. ‘Consider it small compensation for the loss of your job.’

  A painful flush stained her pallor. ‘I don’t want your ch-charity!’

  ‘Think of it as conscience money.’ Narrowed very blue eyes lingered on the betraying shimmer of tears below her lashes, the defeat slumping her shoulders. ‘I owe you and right now you need a helping hand,’ he intoned with a faintly scornful twist of his mouth as if he couldn’t quite credit how anyone of intelligence could end up in such a situation.

  ‘I don’t w-want your helping hand! I don’t want your lousy money!’ Chrissy spat.

  ‘I’m afraid you’re stuck with it,’ Blaze informed her flatly. ‘If it’s not too rude a question…where’s Rosie’s father?’

  ‘Behind bars!’ Chrissy told him fiercely.

  ‘In prison?’ She really had his attention now. For a split-second, he actually looked shocked. Blaze, the unshockable, shocked. Lush black lashes, inherited along with his golden skin tone from his Spanish father, briefly veiled his astonishingly noticeable eyes from her view. ‘When you screw up, you go the full yard, don’t you?’ he murmured.

  She couldn’t quite believe her ears, and then she remembered that this was Blaze, who followed few of the rules that governed other people’s behaviour. He was prone to saying exactly what he thought with a brand of devastating honesty that frequently unnerved those around him. He had no time for civilised dissimulation. His raw energy always had an edge of impatience, as if restlessness ran in his bloodstream.