Wild and Wanton

by Dorothy Vernon

  Nick suddenly poked his head through the window and ground out bitingly, ‘Lindsay Cooper, you’re a menace to my peace of mind.’ To Lindsay this playful aggression was like being doused with a bucket of cold water.

  The doctor who arrived on the scene took a look at her and agreed with Nick that she should be taken to a hospital. She insisted that she was all right, that she didn’t want to go to a hospital, but Nick refused to listen to her protests. He was back to the bullying Nick. And yet, in a strange kind of way, even though the restrained violence about him frightened her, it was better than the formal politeness of the stranger.

  At the hospital there were more arguments. She didn’t want to stay overnight for observation, but Nick was insistent that she should. ‘I’m not going to have more on my conscience than I already do.’

  She wanted to ask him if that was all she was to him, a burden on his conscience, but she didn’t have the nerve. She didn’t feel strong enough to cope with an unfavorable answer.

  Nick was shooed out—at least someone could boss him, she exclaimed to herself—while she was cleaned up and antiseptic dabbed on the various cuts and scratches she had acquired. Then she was put into a regulation hospital nightgown and popped into bed—in a private room no doubt arranged for by Nick.

  Then Nick was allowed back in. ‘There’s a policeman waiting outside. Do you feel up to talking to him? Let’s put it another way. I promise not to let him tire you too much, but I think you should make the effort.’

  She nodded. ‘All right, I’ll go along with that. Nick?’

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Those two men . . . they didn’t get away, did they?’ She didn’t see how they could have, but after the events of that day nothing would have surprised her.

  ‘No. They’re in custody. You’ll be called upon to identify them later. For now, tell the policeman all you know. It’s possible that they’re hired thugs, and that someone else is behind the kidnap plot.’

  ‘I know from what they said that someone else is involved.’

  ‘I’d better get the policeman in; otherwise you’ll have to go through the ordeal of repeating everything, and I’ve an idea that once will take enough out of you.’

  ‘You could be right.’

  Nick went to tell the policeman that Lindsay would see him, returning with him a short time later. During the session that followed, Nick sat back, arms folded, his face grave as she told everything she knew.

  Nick’s presence was oddly comforting. But the details of the conversation she’d had with the two men were difficult to repeat in front of him. When the policeman read her statement back to her, she wished her memory hadn’t been quite so accurate, especially regarding the bit about Nick’s interest in her being the kind between the sheets. When Nick heard this, his lips twitched in a slight smile, though the policeman’s expression remained commendably impassive. She did notice that both men seemed to pay more attention to the part about the thug going for the well-stacked chick every time.

  ‘Have you any idea who he was referring to?’ the policeman asked.

  ‘I haven’t a clue,’ Lindsay said truthfully.

  ‘I think I may have,’ Nick announced somberly.

  ‘Oh?’ said the other man.

  ‘Later. Miss Cooper looks tired.’

  That was an understatement.

  ‘I’ve almost finished, sir. Just a couple more things. Miss Cooper, can you—’

  Again Nick intervened. ‘She’s exhausted. Put your notebook away. If you’ll wait outside, I’ll be with you shortly.’

  The policeman accepted his dismissal. It occurred to Lindsay that he didn’t have much choice in the matter. If he hadn’t gone of his own choice, she wouldn’t have been surprised to see Nick take him by the collar and throw him out.

  The moment the door clicked shut, Lindsay’s eyes lifted to Nick in gratitude. ‘Thanks for cutting it short. I don’t think I could have taken much more. What’s it all about? Who do you think hired those men to kidnap me?’

  ‘Someone who knew you were special to me and was angry about it. Two people who are close to me were in the know. One is Luisa.’

  ‘But Luisa wouldn’t have—’

  ‘Of course not! I’m not suggesting any such thing. Luisa fed Maisie Pellman the tidbit in that column for a reason other than her desire to see you off the Allure promotion. She’s fond of you, and I wouldn’t like you to get the wrong impression of what motivated her. To get her own way, she doesn’t always fight fair.’ A crooked smile lifted his mouth. ‘After all, she’s a woman. But this time she had a magnanimous reason for what she did. She thought it wasn’t going to occur to me in time that I was launching you on a career which would put you beyond my reach. The other person who is aware of my feelings for you is also a woman . . .’

  The well-stacked female who was more to the kidnapper’s taste? Lindsay wondered.

  ‘One I may have underestimated. Time will tell. Don’t puzzle your head about it,’ Nick instructed. ‘I promise you that this will all be sorted out. For now, I’ve asked the nurse to give you something to make you sleep.’

  ‘I don’t want anything. I never take pills.’

  ‘Will you ever stop arguing with me? Do as you’re told. I’ll come back tomorrow to take you home.’

  In spite of his bossiness, his words had a nice ring to them.

  Nick kissed her goodnight, his lips lightly brushing her bruised mouth. Seconds after he’d left the nurse came in with a tiny pill and a glass of water. She too looked to be the sort who wouldn’t take no for an answer. Just wait, just wait until I feel better, Lindsay thought mutinously. She put the pill in her mouth, but was careful not to swallow it, and removed it the moment the nurse’s back was turned. She didn’t want to sleep, not yet. Nick had said she was special to him, and she wanted to gloat about that for a while. Their relationship wasn’t over . . . he’d said he was coming to take her home . . . she was special to him.

  The nurse slipped back into the room to have a look at Lindsay.

  ‘You’re not asleep yet, Miss Cooper,’ she chided. ‘Perhaps I should give you another sleeping pill to knock you out. Your fiancé isn’t going to be pleased with me if I don’t see that you get a good night’s rest.’

  ‘Nick Farraday isn’t my fiancé.’

  ‘He told me he was.’

  ‘You must have been mistaken.’

  ‘No mistake. Your face took quite a beating. You’re going to have a real shiner in the morning. Mr. Farraday said it isn’t going to look too well in your wedding photographs.’

  Chapter Nine

  Lindsay opened her eyes to bright sunlight and the realization that not only her face ached, but her entire body. She was hazy about a lot that had happened the previous day, but the bruises she’d sustained on her face and body were vivid reminders that the violence had been very real.

  She knew that she was trying to protect herself by wondering if she’d only dreamed the special moments of the previous night. Nick had said she was special. Yet surely the nurse had mistaken Nick’s statements about marriage and wedding photographs. Or maybe she herself had just mistaken what the nurse said.

  Nick was anti-marriage. He hadn’t been able to leave fast enough the night she’d assumed wedding bells were inevitably in the offing. And if that weren’t enough, her beliefs concerning his blame in Phil’s downfall had so sickened him that he hadn’t been able to make love to her.

  Lindsay wanted to leave the hospital straight after breakfast, but the nurses wouldn’t allow her, insisting that she didn’t realize the ordeal she’d been through, that she had to rest quietly now. She didn’t ask whose orders these were, fearing that she was a prisoner of Nick’s whim.

  It was late afternoon before Nick came for her. His clothes matched his eyes—blue slacks and a deeper blue shirt. The shirt’s open neck showed off the strong column of his throat. The designer slacks hugged his lean hips and long legs, emphasizing their muscled strength. The nur
ses couldn’t keep their eyes off him, and neither could she. He looked gorgeous.

  They’d allowed her to wash her hair. She’d arranged it so that its pale gold silkiness floated against her cheeks, not to achieve the wild and wanton look, but as a partial covering for the worst of her bruises. The nurse who’d been looking after her had had her dress laundered, but it hadn’t ironed very well. All in all, she felt a mess.

  Yet as Nick’s eyes swept over her, even taking note of the heavy bruising, that wasn’t the aspect they were registering. She knew that even now she still attracted him physically, and that if they’d been in a love-making situation, he wouldn’t have held back this time.

  ‘Ready?’ he inquired.

  She said sedately, ‘I’ve been ready to go home since first thing this morning. What kept you?’

  ‘Sorry about that. I seem to have been tied up with officialdom for most of the day.’

  ‘You’re here now, so I’ll let you off. Any developments?’

  ‘A few. Let’s get you home first; then we can talk.’

  ‘If I’ve got a home to go to. Those two thugs didn’t allow me time for anything, so the apartment’s been unlocked all night.’

  ‘No, it hasn’t. I realized as much, and went straight to your place after leaving you to make certain that everything was secure.’

  ‘Thanks. You think of everything.’

  ‘Not always. Sometimes I slip up quite badly. There was something else I thought of, though. I didn’t imagine you’d want to go out for a meal, and I didn’t particularly relish the idea either. I don’t fancy having it reported in the Hot Sauce column that I beat my woman up, and that really is some shiner you’ve got. So I brought all the necessary ingredients for a meal. I trust you approve?’

  He had said ‘my woman.’ She hadn’t dreamed that.

  She nodded. ‘Yes, I approve.’

  ‘Good,’ he said simply, taking her arm.

  As he put her into his car she felt cherished. She supposed that that wasn’t the place for a serious talk, so she repressed her natural curiosity about recent events until they got home. They didn’t talk much at all until they entered her apartment building.

  ‘Were you scared?’ he asked as they walked up the stairs, the same ones she’d been cruelly hustled down the day before.

  ‘You want the truth? I was petrified!’

  After locking up the previous night, he’d pocketed her key. He shifted the bag that contained their meal to his left hand so he could take the key from his pocket and open the door. She walked in, thinking how strange it was that everything looked so normal. It seemed cruelly impersonal that the apartment bore no imprint of the previous day’s violence.

  Nick went through to the kitchen to dump the bag on the counter. She sank into a chair, leaving ‘his’ chair for him.

  On coming back, he didn’t immediately sit down; instead, he simply stood and looked solemnly at her.

  ‘Oh . . . Lindsay.’

  Cringing uncomfortably under his solicitous concentration, she said, ‘I’ll remember yesterday fifty years after I’m dead. It couldn’t have happened in Haworth. People there have a healthy regard for what’s happening around them. Was anyone hurt?’

  Apparently she hadn’t deflected him, because he said, ‘You mean, apart from you? When I saw what those monsters were doing to you, I wanted to tear them apart with my bare hands. Perhaps it was lucky I was pulled off or I’d have murdered them.’

  ‘Cliff, the passerby who was in the car with me when I came round, said that you were having a good try.’

  He nodded in grim satisfaction. ‘You’re not the only one who’ll be nursing a sore jaw for a day or two. I just wish that I’d been given longer with them.’

  ‘I asked for a lot of what I got. I lashed out instead of going quietly as they advised me to.’

  ‘You didn’t lash out hard enough.’

  She grinned. ‘You weren’t in my shoes.’

  Either he didn’t hear her, or didn’t believe her, because he said, ‘I see I’ll have to teach you the art of self-defense.’ He paused. ‘Although I’m about to contradict myself, it might have been better for you if you hadn’t resisted. You wouldn’t have had to take the beating you did.’

  ‘But if I hadn’t stalled them, you wouldn’t have reached me in time.’

  ‘True enough.’ His mouth was grim and bitter again. ‘It took guts to do what you did.’

  With a deep sigh, Lindsay said, ‘I couldn’t make up my mind whether I was being foolhardy or brave. One of them said he had a little friend in his pocket who’d help. Please tell me he was bluffing.’

  ‘I’d love to oblige, but it would be a lie.’

  ‘Did he . . . use it? I didn’t hear any shots, but I suppose it could have been fitted with a silencer.’

  ‘By the time either of them could have pulled a gun, it was all up with them. They’ve already got criminal records, so they had no wish to add murder to their crimes. Thank God they realized that, because quite a crowd had gathered. It could have ended in tragedy.’

  ‘Yes.’ Lindsay swallowed, and it was some seconds before she could ask, ‘What was the extent of the damage?’

  ‘I was blocking the driver’s view. He stewed into a couple of cars and they in turn hit others. But no one was injured—not seriously anyway, just minor scratches and one sprained wrist. Nothing happened that the signing of a check won’t fix.’

  ‘Did you find out what it was all about? Why they picked me?’

  Only then did Nick slump down in the chair, sinking his face in his hands. ‘Barbara Bates wasn’t at her desk this morning, and she’s cleared out of her apartment. That’s no coincidence. Her accomplices have sung their heads off and confirmed that she was behind it. A full alert’s out for her. She’ll be picked up.’

  ‘I knew your secretary didn’t like me, but surely trying to have me kidnapped was a bit extreme,’ Lindsay said, deciding to be flip again.

  ‘It’s no joke, Lindsay.’

  ‘I know, Nick. I’m sorry.’

  ‘You don’t have a thing to be sorry about.’

  ‘And neither have you, Nick Farraday.’

  ‘That’s a matter of opinion. I’ve already told you about the showdown we had when it dawned on me that Barbara had the wrong idea about my feelings for her, and I honestly thought that I’d straightened her out. I swear that what I told you was the truth. She was useful when it came to dining and entertaining clients and business associates. Luisa wasn’t up to mixing with a lot of people, and there have been occasions when I’ve asked Barbara into my home to act as my hostess. But I never, ever, considered her as a permanent candidate for the job. By having you kidnapped, she was killing two birds with one stone. She wanted to make me suffer and at the same time get her hands on a sizeable amount of money. She was there when I phoned to arrange to pick you up at seven-thirty. I’d already told her to check with me before making any new appointments, and I’d warned her that I might be cancelling the existing ones. She was astute enough to know why—it was something unprecedented—and she knew she hadn’t a moment to lose.’

  ‘Barbara was another Phil,’ Lindsay put in sadly. ‘Someone else who coveted what wasn’t theirs.’

  ‘Poor Phil. I seem to be bad news for you and yours.’

  ‘Phil was wrong, even though it must have seemed to him that circumstances drove him to do what he did. Those other women . . . I know why he turned to them. It seems that Cathy . . . well, after Stephanie was born, things weren’t right between her and Phil.’

  ‘I’d no idea at the time, but I’ve wondered since if he had domestic problems.’

  ‘I’m not blaming Cathy. It’s not something a woman wants to happen. But perhaps if they’d sat down and talked things out . . .’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, you can’t blame yourself for anything. Nothing’s been your fault.’ Her voice didn’t sound right, due partly to her hurt mouth, but also to the emotion overcoming her.

  ‘Thanks,’
Nick said in a tone that was the twin of hers.

  Meeting his eyes, Lindsay said, ‘The biggest shock of all was seeing you do that fool leap onto the car. You might have been killed, or maimed for life.’

  ‘Not a chance,’ he said lightly. ‘It wasn’t even a calculated risk. I knew what I was doing.’

  ‘Did you?’ Even though a note of admiration had crept into her voice, there was still a hint of something challenging as she went on to say, ‘Luisa told me that among other mad things in your daredevil past, you’d been a professional stunt man.’

  ‘So what are you going on about? Jumping onto a moving car is as easy as falling off a house top. It’s all a question of knowing how.’

  The careless way he tried to shrug off his heroics intensified the feeling of admiration building up inside her. ‘No, it isn’t. It’s a lot more than that. It’s precision and timing and practice. You’re not going to tell me that you’re in practice at jumping on cars. And you had no tricks of the trade to fall back on, like a cozy mattress to break your fall and stop you from breaking your neck if you fell off. You could have been reduced to pulp in that traffic.’

  ‘Have you finished?’

  ‘Not by a long chalk. How old were you when you were a stunt man?’

  ‘Nineteen, twenty. I don’t remember exactly,’ he replied evasively.

  ‘And how old are you now?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘How old?’ she persisted, then added teasingly, ‘What’s the matter? Coy about your age?’

  He scowled. ‘Of course not. I’m thirty-five. That is, I was when I got up yesterday morning. I feel as if I’ve aged twenty years since then. I don’t see what that’s got to do with it.’

  She held her breath in exasperation. ‘Then you’re even dumber than I thought. It’s got everything to do with it. It’s time you slowed down and only tackled things within your capabilities.’

  A definite twinkle entered his eyes. ‘You wouldn’t care to draw a list up of what you consider those capabilities to be?’

  Despite herself, her mouth twitched up at the corners. ‘No!’