by Penny Jordan
'Saffron, you can't go on like this,' her boss told her one morning when he arrived to find her already seated at her desk, huge circles beneath her eyes. 'Take a few days off—and that's an order! You're no use to me working like a zombie the way you are at the moment.'
Acknowledging the truth of his comment, Saffron gave in. The penthouse seemed stark and sterile without her father, and on impulse she decided to go down to Surrey.
Snow started to fall as she left London, tiny fluttering flakes, so vulnerable and yet so tenacious, like her love for Nico. It had grown without her being aware of it, until it was too late. Too late—the saddest words in any language, she thought drearily as she manoeuvred the heavy car through the traffic.
It was late when she reached the house, and as she unlocked the door, she made a mental note to ring her father. He would be worried if he phoned the penthouse and she wasn't there. The drive had made her tired; tired enough to be able to sleep almost immediately she slipped into bed, into the dreams where Nico was always with her.
CHAPTER TEN
Saffron woke up to discover that a thick cover of snow masked the gardens and surrounding countryside. Because the house wasn't used regularly her father normally only employed help on a temporary basis, but someone came in every week to check that everything was in order and it was no problem for Saffron to switch on the central heating.
While the house was heating up she decided to telephone her father, but to her dismay when she lifted the receiver it was to discover that the line was dead. The nearest phone box was three miles away at a crossroads. She had always wondered who had sited it there, miles away from anywhere. She shrugged, deciding that She would ring the exchange from the callbox on her way back from the village where she would have to go to buy food.
The snow was deeper than she had first thought; the Rolls was heavy despite the power-assisted steering, and her arms were aching by the time she reached the village.
There was only one general food store plus a butcher's, but Saffron managed to buy everything she wanted. It started snowing again as she drove back to the house. Just as she came up to the crossroads, a car turned the corner too fast, accelerating wildly towards her down the steep hill. There was barely time for her to brake and manoeuvre the large car to the side of the road, and she sat in stunned disbelief as the driver of the other car flashed past her, either not realising or not caring how nearly he had caused an accident. Once she had recovered a little Saffron tried to turn the Rolls back on to the road, but the back wheels slid helplessly on the snow. With a sinking feeling she realised that she wasn't going to be able to move it, and worse, the car was slowly slipping backwards down the hill. Pulling on the brake, she climbed out to survey her situation, her heart plummeting downwards as she realised that she was going to have to leave the Rolls and walk back to the house on foot.
At least she could make her phone call to the London office asking them to let her father know where she was. She could also ring the local garage to get them to come out and tow the Rolls away.
Still shaken from the close brush with the other car, she walked to the phone box, searching in her purse for change.
She picked up the receiver, frowning when there was no reassuring purr, but it was only after she had jiggled the buttons up and down several times that she realised that this phone, like the one up at the house, was out of order. Thoroughly cross, cold and tired, she collected her shopping from the car and started to walk, not along the road, but cutting across the fields, knowing it would save her time.
She had dressed casually for her drive to the village—cord jeans, fashion boots, a fur jacket her father had bought her the previous Christmas; attractive and warm clothes for shopping in Knightsbridge, but hardly protection enough for a cross-country hike in below-zero temperatures, and before she had covered even half the distance her feet were numb, her legs aching from the unaccustomed exercise. The icy wind that had sprung up chilled her face, and her expensive leather mittens did nothing to protect her fingers, and yet despite her discomfort she plodded determinedly on, until at last the stone wall surrounding the gardens of the house came into sight. She let herself in via a small door in the wall and trudged tiredly round to the back door.
The house felt blissfully warm after the cold outside, and she went upstairs to run herself a bath, trying the telephone once more before she took her purchases into the kitchen. The phone was still dead, and Saffron bit her lip. At least the Rolls wasn't likely to be a hazard to any other traffic using the road, and Bart, her boss, knew she was down here. Poor Daddy, the Rolls was his pride and joy, she only hoped the phone would be fixed in time for her to rescue it before he returned from New York. The walk had given her an appetite; and for the first time since the trial she found she was actually enjoying the thought of food—but first a warming bath!
There was a forgotten bottle of bath oil in the cupboard and she poured it generously into the water, watching it turn pale green and foam. The water enveloped her in a warm, perfumed cloud, and she relaxed into it, shivering as her body remembered against her will how she had felt when Nico touched her, how her body had yielded and responded. No matter how much she tried to force herself to forget, the memories refused to die. She towelled her skin roughly, hoping to dispel the sensuality rising up inside her, then wandered into her bedroom to collect clean clothes. She pulled open a drawer which revealed neatly folded summer tops put there after her holiday in the Caribbean, her attention suddenly caught and held by the masculine shape of a cotton shirt. Slowly she unfolded it, staring at it, as memories flooded back. It was Nico's shirt. She had found it in her room after they had made love, and put it on. She lifted it to her face, holding it as though it still retained the scent and feel of his body, hers an aching mass of pain. Before she could deny herself the pleasure she pulled it on. It drowned her, but she didn't care. It had belonged to Nico; he had worn it. She was just brushing her hair when she heard someone banging on the front door.
For a moment surprise held her frozen, then she put down the brush and hurried. to the stairs, forgetting that she was still wearing the shirt, her legs long and slender beneath the tails. Someone had probably driven past, seen lights on and knowing the house should be empty was calling to check that everything was all right. Country people were like that. She opened the door, the reassuring words dying on her lips as her father shouldered his way past her, brushing snowflakes from his coat, his face tired and drawn, as he paused and then turned, speaking to the man still emerging from the car parked in front of the house.
'It's okay, Dom,' she heard him call. 'She's here, and safe ... God, Saffron, when we saw the Rolls I nearly had a heart attack!'
'But, Daddy, what are you doing here? How did you know…'
'Dom rang me from London to say that he'd called at the penthouse and you weren't there. He rang Bart, who told him that you were coming down here. I was already on my way back, so we drove down together. I tried to ring you and couldn't get through.' His eyes rested soberly on her face and Saffron had no need to ask why he had driven all the way down to Surrey simply because he couldn't raise her on the phone. His anxiety and grief was etched all over his face.
'Oh, Daddy!' Her voice suddenly became tart as ,she glanced towards the still open front door. 'Your friend Dom seems to have been very busy— couldn't he simply accept Bart's word for it that I was down here?'
'Oh, don't blame Dom,' her father told her. 'I asked him to keep an eye on you. I must say when I saw the Rolls ...'
'Mmm, I was hoping to recover it before you got back.' Briefly Saffron explained what had happened. There were sounds of activity from outside and she realised that all she had on was a man's shirt, decent enough perhaps, but overtly sexy for all that, and she hurried towards the stairs, not wanting to be caught in such garb by her father's friend.
She didn't make it. She had just reached the first step when she heard the door slam, and her father saying in a curiously strai
ned voice,
'It's okay, Dom, she's fine.'
'I'm relieved to hear it.'
So cool and formal—and yet she knew that voice as well as she knew her own. She turned on the stairs, her face as white as her borrowed shirt, her lips trying to form a name and yet trembling so much that all she could manage was a stifled protest before a roaring black void swallowed her up as she heard her father exclaiming anxiously, 'God, I should have warned her ... prepared her, but I was so terrified that she'd done something silly...' and then there was nothing, nothing but darkness, and a fear that she must be going mad, because the man her father had called 'Dom' was surely Nico. Nico who was dead; Nico who had kidnapped and humiliated her; Nico whom she loved; Nico, who simply could not be a man called Dom who watched her with cold dark eyes and wore a formal business suit much like her father's,, his dark hair smoothed into order, his mouth impatient and angry.
'Daddy?'
'He's gone—back to London.'
Nico! So it hadn't been a dream! Saffron opened her eyes slowly. She was lying on her own bed in her father's house, everything familiar and safe; everything but the man leaning against the window, his face in shadow, his stance poised and alert.
'I think it's time you and I had a talk.'
Hysteria welled up inside her. He had let her think he was dead; he had masqueraded as her father's friend; he had made love to her and broken her heart, and now he thought they should talk!
She turned away from him, hunching her shoulders childishly.
'Don't speak to me!'
She felt rather than heard him move, surefooted and electrically male as he came to stand beside the bed. She wished he had not come to stand beside her, it made her feel vulnerable; it made her remember ... She watched the hand he stretched out towards her in horrified revulsion, her bitter 'Don't touch me!' jerked past trembling lips. 'Don't touch me,' she breathed huskily. 'Don't come near me. I hate you!'
'Do you?' He dropped down on his haunches so that their eyes were on a level. Saffron tried to sit upright, but his arm across her shoulders kept her pinned to the bed.
'Is that why you're wearing my shirt; why you wanted to save my life, why you told your father you wished you had conceived my child?' he demanded emotively.
She tried to swallow and found she couldn't. 'Daddy can't have told you that,' she moaned. 'He would never…'
'He told me.' The flat words possessed an undeniable ring of truth. 'Are you going to tell me you lied to him?'
Saffron ignored the question. 'Who are you?'
'You know who I am,' he said tersely, 'Dominic Hunter, godson of your father's best friend. And you still haven't answered my question.'
'You haven't answered mine.'
'In this game as in all others, might gives right, so tell me, did you mean what you said to your father?'
'Yes.' The word was dragged painfully out of her. 'But I didn't mean it about you,' she threw at him, 'I meant it about a man who doesn't exist.'
'He exists all right.' Would you like me to prove it to you?'
'No!' She recoiled, and he laughed bitterly.
'Some love if it makes you react like that. Perhaps I ought to remind you of just how easily that hatred you're pushing at me right now can be turned into something very different.
'What are you doing here?' Saffron demanded. 'I don't understand ...'
'What's the matter?' he jeered unkindly. 'Has all the romance gone out of it now that you know the truth, now that you've discovered that I'm just a man like any other, and not some fictional hero? You don't know the first thing about love, little girl; you're still living in a fantasy world.'
He turned suddenly, getting to his feet and walking across to the window, his back to her, his hands thrust into the pockets of the expensive suit he was wearing.
'I came here today because your father asked me to. He's been worried about you; worried that you…'
'Were pining away for love of a man he knew didn't exist?' Saffron said bitterly, swinging her feet to the floor.
'It was something neither of us had bargained for. Look,' Dominic said quietly, 'either we sit down and I tell you the way it was, or I walk out of here and leave you nurturing all that hatred and bitterness you're so intent on clinging on to— which is it to be?'
'You're going to tell me the truth?'
He turned round to face her, and she saw what she had not seen before—that he looked older, tireder, that something had been stamped on to his features that had not been there before.
'Are you woman enough to hear it?'
Saffron only hesitated for a moment. No matter what pain it might bring her she owed it to herself to face facts.
'Yes,' she said firmly.
'It all started eighteen months ago. My parents died when I was in my teens and my godfather more or less brought me up. We were very close; he was exceptionally good to me, a deeply caring and understanding man. The intention was that I would take over his legal practice from him and that he would semi-retire—he was a keen fisherman and he was looking forward to having more time to spend on his favourite hobby. That was why he went to Italy in the first place. I was to have gone with him, but at the last minute there was a problem at work. I'd run a bit wild in my teens after I lost my parents—in fact I ran away from school and joined the Army—crazy thing to do, but it taught me things about life I would never have learned otherwise. My godfather stood by me and I wanted to repay him, to make him feel that he could trust the practice to me, so he went to Italy alone—and never came back.' His eyes were bitter and Saffron felt his pain, against her will.
'While he was over there he was kidnapped; I got the ransom demand, but the amount they wanted was more than I could raise quickly. I did my best—played it their way; eventually managed to raise the money with some help from your father, but it was all too late.'
'They killed him,' Saffron guessed.
'Yes. I tried to get the Italian authorities to do something, but they were worse than useless, so I decided to take matters into my own hands. When I was in the Army, I was with the ...'
'The S.A.S.?' Saffron supplied.
'Yes. So I decided to see if I could infiltrate the gang—the Italian authorities knew who they were, they just couldn't touch them—too clever for them—so I followed them and watched them, got to know as much about the organisation as I could. I was aided by the fact that each unit worked virtually independently of the main organisation. I knew it wouldn't be impossible to infiltrate—to pretend as I eventually did that I'd been sent by the organisation to work with them. All I needed was a tempting enough piece of bait.'
'Me?'
'I discussed it with your father and assured him that you would be quite safe.' He grimaced slightly. 'What I hadn't bargained for was that...'
'I would be stupid enough to fall in love with you?' Saffron supplied bitterly.
He turned to face her, his expression unreadable. 'Did you? I thought the name of the game was a little sexual experimentation; a little living before the cup of life was snatched away. No, what I hadn't bargained for was that you weren't the sophisticated woman I'd been led to expect from the press, but a half-baked innocent who didn't know the first thing about protecting herself.'
'So you did it for me?' Bitterness and disillusionment mingled in the words. 'By deceiving me, terrifying me and seducing me?'
'Acquit me of the last one,' he told her cruelly. 'You were with me all the way, however you try to disguise your motives now. Anyway,' he went on, 'I protected you as best I could without alerting the others.'
'All those trips into the town?' Saffron queried. 'They were to ...'
'Report back to your father, and pass information on to my back-up team.'
'Fellow members of the S.A.S.?' Saffron suggested, the whole thing becoming clearer by the minute.
'Yes, acting in an unofficial capacity and with the agreement of the Italian authorities.
'How did you manage to infiltrate
the gang in the first place?' Saffron asked. 'By becoming Olivia's lover?'
'No?' A muscle jerked in his jaw. 'But if I had done, would I have been any worse than you?' he asked roughly. 'And don't tell me you weren't hoping to persuade me to set you free, or that it didn't ever cross your mind.'
Suddenly they were two strangers facing one another across a deep chasm of mutual bitterness. Saffron knew why she was bitter and resentful, but why was he? Because her father had insisted on him coming to see her; because he simply didn't want any further involvement with her and feared it might be forced on him?
'What I can't understand is my father,' she began unsteadily, but Dominic cut across her words.
'I asked him to say nothing; and besides, like me, he believed you were "in love" with the idea of being in love; I told you, the enforced intimacy of such a situation causes strange things. What neither he or I bargained for was . ..'
'That Guido would try to rape me and I would fling myself at you because of it?' Saffron said quietly. 'Well, neither your nor Daddy need feel embarrassed about the possibility of a repeat performance.'
It hurt her more than she wanted to admit to know that everything that had happened had been calculated and planned for; that all he had wanted was to be avenged on his godfather's murderers, that she had simply been a helpless pawn.
'You do realise that your father thought you'd killed yourself when he saw the car, don't you?' he said flatly. 'To say nothing of what I felt.'
'Delight, I expect,' Saffron said bitterly. 'How embarrassing for you to be landed with my unwanted feelings! What's the matter, is Daddy putting pressure on you to make an honest woman out of me? Well, don't worry about it—I wouldn't want you now if you were the last man on earth!'
She turned her back on him, flinching in shock as he crossed the floor silently, grasping her arms and forcing her round to face him.
'Want to bet on that one?' he asked her cynically. The colour rose and fell in her face, her breathing suddenly constricted as he lowered his head and touched her lips with his. It took every ounce of willpower she possessed to resist the mad impulse to fling her arms round his neck, to hold him and beg him to make love to her, to love her as she loved him. Still loved him, she acknowledged—nothing had changed that, not knowing how he had deceived, not learning that he didn't give a damn for her, not anything, but at least she had enough pride left to keep her lips hard and unresponsive beneath the angry scorch of his, although God alone knew why he was doing this to her, unless it was some crazy form of punishment.