Such Sweet Poison/Blind Passion

by Anne Mather

  She ran out of vases long before she had accommodated all the flowers. Instead, she was forced to use jugs, and a wine cooler, even putting a tender bunch of freesias into an ornamental teapot that was never used. When she had finished there were flowers everywhere, and Hector looked askance at the bowl she put in the downstairs cloakroom.

  ‘Well,’ she said defensively, ‘you can’t deny they brighten up the place. And I can hardly send them back when I don’t know who’s sent them, can I?’ She frowned. ‘Why do you think he did it? What is he trying to prove?’

  Hector didn’t have an answer. He only wound himself about her legs, in his usual illustration of affection. Well, camaraderie anyway, amended Catherine wryly, remembering how perfidious Hector could be.

  She made herself an omelette and a salad for her supper, and spent the rest of the evening waiting for the telephone to ring. Either that, or the doorbell, she anticipated, determining not to give in to the urge to go and change her clothes. She didn’t care what he thought of her, she told herself grimly. She had no intention of dressing up and putting on makeup, just on the off-chance that he might call. She wished he hadn’t started it all up again by sending the flowers. She had been depressed, it was true, but she would have got over it. She had done so before. Besides which, her depression had been mostly caused by guilt. Guilt she could cope with. Emotional involvements, on the other hand, were poison.

  The phone rang as Catherine was taking a shower the next morning. She had put off taking her bath the night before, unwilling to take the chance that Morgan might ring. Oh, she had told herself it was because if he had sent the flowers she could tell him she was sending them right back to him. But whether she would actually do so was something she had refused to consider.

  Nevertheless, when she frustratedly turned off the tap, snatched a towel from the rack, and tramped, dripping, across the bedroom carpet to answer it, the possibility that it might be Morgan didn’t even occur to her. At this hour of the morning, she thought it was most likely her mother, ringing to inform her that in her haste to leave on Sunday she had forgotten the print that Fliss, the owner of the gallery where Mrs Lambert worked, had got for her. Catherine had remembered that the night before, too, but the idea of ringing her mother then had not borne thinking about.

  Now, however, she was resigned to hearing another monologue about her shortcomings, and how ungrateful she was to someone who only had her best interests at heart, and when a male voice answered her rather weary, ‘Hello?’ she was too shocked for a moment to make any response.

  ‘Miss Lambert? Catherine? I do have the right number, don’t I?’

  ‘Yes.’ When Catherine did find her voice again, it was decidedly breathy. ‘Er—Mr Lynch!’

  ‘You got it. Mr Lynch,’ he agreed drily. ‘I hope I’m not interrupting anything.’

  ‘Like what?’ Catherine was instantly defensive, and she heard his rueful laugh.

  ‘Hey, I don’t know, do I?’ he exclaimed. ‘You could be having an orgy there. I’m not suggesting anything.’

  Catherine felt a smile touch her lips in spite of herself. ‘I—was having a shower, if you must know,’ she told him, keeping her tone entirely neutral. ‘What—what can I do for you?’

  ‘Now, there’s a question,’ he countered, and, even without seeing him, she could imagine his dark sardonic face. ‘You know, I may just need a little time to come up with an answer to that.’

  Catherine drew in her breath. ‘What do you want, Mr Lynch? I don’t have a lot of time. I do have a job to go to, in case you’ve forgotten.’

  ‘Oh, Miss Lambert, I’ve forgotten nothing about you, believe me.’ Morgan’s voice was low and to Catherine’s ears, faintly mocking. ‘You start at nine o’clock, right? That gives you—’ there was a pause while she assumed he consulted his watch ‘—about another thirty-five minutes before you need to leave.’

  Catherine’s lips tightened. ‘I thought you weren’t familiar with London.’

  ‘I’m not.’ Morgan paused. ‘I asked someone who is.’

  ‘Not—Denzil?’

  ‘Right.’

  ‘Oh, lord!’ Catherine made a sound of impatience. ‘What did you have to ask him for?’ she demanded, well aware that Kay was unlikely to let that juicy piece of gossip slip through her net. God! As if her mother’s prurient curiosity had not been enough.

  ‘I didn’t,’ remarked Morgan evenly. ‘You said not Denzil, and I said right.’

  Catherine snorted. ‘You deliberately misled me,’ she exclaimed, her annoyance at his confusing her momentarily outweighing her relief at knowing that Denzil had not been involved, and Morgan sucked in his breath.

  ‘Hey, I’m not the one who’s making the mistakes here,’ he protested mildly. ‘Just because you don’t understand plain English—’

  ‘Is that what you call it?’ Catherine was scathing. ‘I’d say that, like my coffee, your English defies description!’

  ‘Is that so?’ Morgan sounded thoughtful. ‘Seems like you’ve not forgotten anything I’ve said either.’

  ‘Don’t flatter yourself!’ Catherine was getting cold, but she was aware that the goose-bumps on her skin were not wholly caused by the temperature of her body. ‘And—if the only reason you’ve called is to tell me you know how long it takes me to get to the office, do you mind if we continue this at some other time?’

  ‘Does that mean you want to see me again?’ Morgan enquired, the husky timbre of his voice sending little darts of fire along her veins, and Catherine struggled to remain calm.

  ‘It means that if I don’t hurry I’m going to be late,’ she retorted, clutching the folds of the towel closer about her. ‘Really, I don’t think there’s any point in—’

  ‘Did you get my flowers?’ he interrupted abruptly, and her knees sagged.

  ‘I—got some flowers,’ she admitted, allowing the backs of her legs to rest against the side of the bed. ‘As they didn’t have a card, I didn’t know who they were from.’

  ‘Ah.’

  Morgan was silent for a moment, and reluctantly feeling obliged to make some concession, Catherine added stiffly, ‘They were—they are—beautiful. But you shouldn’t have done it.’

  ‘Why not? Didn’t you like them?’

  ‘That’s not the point…’ Catherine’s tongue circled her lips with some uncertainty. ‘I mean—you shouldn’t spend your money on me.’

  ‘Is that how you see them?’ Morgan’s voice sounded cynical suddenly, and Catherine was reminded of other, not always comprehensible things he had said.

  ‘No,’ she said now. ‘But—well—they must have been expensive.’

  ‘Cost is relative,’ replied Morgan flatly. ‘As an investment analyst, you should know that.’

  Catherine sighed. ‘That doesn’t alter the fact that—’

  ‘You didn’t want them, right?’

  Catherine shook her head, and sank down on to the side of the bed. Her spectacles were lying on the table beside her bed, and, sliding them on to her nose, she took a steadying breath. Now was her chance to tell him exactly that: that she didn’t want them, and, with his permission, she’d send them to the nearest hospital. But she didn’t. When it came right down to it, she couldn’t do it. She didn’t want to do it, moreover. But—that didn’t mean she had to get any more involved than she already was.

  ‘Look,’ she said, choosing her words carefully, ‘no woman in her right mind would say she didn’t want them. As I said before, they’re…gorgeous! All I am saying—’

  ‘Have lunch with me,’ Morgan broke in bluntly, with another of his capricious changes of mood, and Catherine stared at the phone with dismay. Once again, he had totally swept the ground from under her, and, although she knew what her answer should be, it wasn’t that easy to articulate it.

  ‘I—I only get an hour for lunch,’ she temporised, wondering why she was searching for an excuse. All she had to say was no. It was as simple as that.

  ‘That’s OK.’ Bef
ore she could say any more, Morgan had accepted her statement as valid. ‘I guess an hour is long enough. Is one o’clock all right?’

  Catherine was tempted to say, ‘Long enough for what?’ but as her eyes focused on her bedside clock, she was shocked into action. ‘I—I’ve got to go,’ she said, and, putting down the receiver, she ended the conversation.

  Of course, all the way to work, strap-hanging on the Underground, she worried over what she had done. She should have just said, no, one o’clock wasn’t all right, and left it at that. She could even have hung up on him then, without fear of recrimination. But, instead, she hadn’t given him an answer. She’d just put down the phone, like a scared rabbit, and hurried out of the house, in case he rang again.

  Not that he hadn’t had time to ring again, before she’d left Orchard Road, if he’d wanted to, she admitted reluctantly. After all, although she had forgone her own breakfast, she had had to provide Hector with his, and there had been her hair to dry, and her clothes to put on…

  Oh, what the hell! she thought irritably, as she walked from the Tube station to the skyscraper block of offices in which Bracknell Associates occupied the top two floors. It didn’t matter, either way. Morgan Lynch just found her amusing, that was all. It amused his distorted sense of humour to play with her, knowing that, in spite of her divorced status, she was unused to his kind of sophisticated baiting. No wonder Hector hadn’t objected too strongly to his presence. He had probably recognised a kindred spirit, she thought sourly. Two predators, who enjoyed teasing their prey before destroying it.

  Destroying it?

  Catherine winced at her own exaggeration. For heaven’s sake, Morgan had done nothing to warrant such a derogation of his character. As usual, she was over-dramatising the situation. She was allowing the fact of her own unwanted infatuation with the man to colour his whole personality, and just because she didn’t know how to handle her emotions was no excuse for allowing irrationality to overtake reason.

  With this analysis of the situation firmly decided, Catherine settled down to work with renewed enthusiasm. She doubted she would hear from Morgan again. Apart from anything else, he didn’t know where she worked. That was something she hadn’t told him. Just that she was an investment analyst and nothing else. Analyst, analyse thyself, she misquoted drily, and fed another segment of projected interest rates into the computer.

  She saw Kay briefly during the morning. Catherine came out of a cubicle in the ladies’ washroom to find the other girl washing her hands at the sink. She thought Kay looked momentarily discomfited to see her, but she quickly recovered her composure, to say lightly, ‘Did you miss me yesterday?’

  ‘Miss you?’ Catherine frowned, as she turned on the taps and Kay made a sound of indignation.

  ‘Obviously, you didn’t,’ she declared, turning on the hand-dryer. ‘Well, for your information, we had a marvellous weekend!’

  ‘Oh—yes. You went to Paris.’ There had been so many other things to think about that Catherine had completely forgotten what Kay had told her.

  ‘That’s right.’ Kay hesitated now, but as if the lure of telling Catherine about her trip overcame any reticence she still felt about their fateful dinner party, she propped her hip against the wall. ‘Oh, Cat, I can’t tell you how exciting it was! You should have come with us.’

  Catherine managed an envious grimace, as she dried her own hands, but she could imagine few things less attractive than a trip to Paris with Denzil Sawyer. Still, Kay had always had a blind spot where Denzil was concerned, and, after what had happened last week, Catherine had no intention of trying to expunge it. Instead, she listened politely to Kay’s extravagant account of the restaurants they had visited, and the clothes she had bought, and eased her way carefully towards the door.

  ‘Did you have a nice weekend?’ Kay enquired at last, just as Catherine was about to make her excuses and leave, and she heaved a sigh.

  ‘Oh—the usual,’ she murmured, not wanting to get involved in a discussion about her activities. ‘I—er—I went to Oakley on Sunday. That’s about it.’

  Kay nodded, rather smugly, Catherine thought, and then chided herself for being so sensitive. After all, it wasn’t as if she envied Kay her Continental weekend. Just her naïveté about her marriage, perhaps, she admitted ruefully.

  The morning passed surprisingly quickly. Somehow, after her chat with Kay, Catherine found it easier to concentrate, and it wasn’t until the office started to empty at lunchtime that she realised she had used her dislike of Denzil to keep other thoughts at bay.

  ‘Coming for a drink, Cath?’ Melvin Scott, one of her colleagues, asked, stopping by her desk, and she looked up at him doubtfully.

  ‘Oh—I don’t know,’ she murmured, her nerves prickling very slightly at the thought that Morgan might be outside, waiting for her. It wasn’t likely, of course. In fact, it was highly unlikely. But leaving the building would make her vulnerable, and her nerves rebelled against it.

  ‘Why not?’ Melvin was a married man, not much older than herself, and in the ordinary way they had often enjoyed a drink and a sandwich together in the local pub. ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Look, the sun’s even shining. I know John wants those figures, but you’re entitled to a break.’

  Catherine hesitated. She was being silly, really. And she couldn’t truly justify her reasons for refusing. As a matter of fact, the figures her superior wanted were almost ready for the print-out. He could have them after lunch, no problem.

  ‘All right,’ she said, giving in, and switching off the monitor, she got up from her chair. ‘I’ll just get my coat.’

  It was a little after a quarter to one when they emerged from the building. The block of offices stood in a square, just off Cannon Street, and the pub they usually visited occupied the corner site. It wasn’t far to walk, but Catherine was intensely conscious of every stationary vehicle as they crossed the square. But there was no grey Mercedes, and she breathed a little more easily as they reached the corner.

  ‘Am I late?’

  The words, spoken in that low, distinctive, drawl, brought Catherine up with a start, and Melvin’s fair, good-looking face drew into a puzzled frown. They had actually reached the entrance to the pub, when the casually spoken enquiry arrested them, and they both turned to confront the man behind them.

  Morgan looked infuriatingly relaxed as he faced them, his weight concentrated on his left leg, his hands thrust carelessly into the pockets of another immaculately styled jacket. Unlike Melvin, he was not wearing an overcoat over his navy-blue suit, and, feeling the wind whipping about her own shoulders, Catherine wondered at his apparent indifference to the elements.

  Melvin was the first to speak. One glance at Catherine’s shocked face had assured him that she was as surprised at this interception as he was, and, although it must have taken a considerable amount of courage to face down a man who was so much bigger than he was, he rallied to the occasion.

  ‘Are you talking to us?’ he asked, with some condescension in his tone, and Morgan’s attractive mouth twisted.

  ‘Not to you, friend,’ replied Morgan, pleasantly enough. ‘I was speaking to the lady. She and I have a date for lunch, don’t we, Cat?’

  Melvin blinked, and looked at Catherine, but, seeing no recognition in her face, he ploughed on. ‘I don’t think so,’ he began, taking her arm and urging her into the smoke-filled atmosphere of the bar. But, before they had moved half a step, Morgan’s hand fastened on his shoulder, and Melvin winced in obvious agony.

  ‘I said, I was speaking to the lady,’ Morgan repeated, his tone decidedly less than pleasant now, and, realising she couldn’t allow this to go any further, Catherine released herself from Melvin’s weakening grasp.

  ‘It’s all right, Mel, honestly,’ she said, giving Morgan a brief, but killing glance. ‘I—er—I’d forgotten about this.’ She gave Melvin a gentle push towards the bar, so that Morgan was forced to let him go. ‘Go ahead. Get your lunch. I—er—I may join you la
ter.’

  Melvin hesitated, rubbing his shoulder. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘You heard the lady,’ said Morgan, without emotion, and, much to Catherine’s dismay, he slung his arm across her shoulders. ‘Go on, Mel. Get your lunch. But don’t hold your breath where Cat’s concerned, will you?’

  Catherine was furious, but she knew that if she showed her real feelings Melvin would feel obliged to defend her. And she didn’t want that. Goodness, she could just imagine how embarrassing it would be, if Morgan chose to handle the situation his way. She didn’t think Melvin’s wife would appreciate having her husband come home with a black eye, or worse.

  Forcing a rueful smile, she nodded, but as soon as Melvin had reluctantly entered the pub she dragged herself away from Morgan’s possessive hold. ‘How dare you?’ she exclaimed, her anger sustaining her against the unwelcome wave of heat his touch had engendered. Just for a moment, she had been close against his hard body, and she was painfully aware that she hadn’t really wanted to break free.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Morgan was maddeningly unruffled, though she glimpsed a trace of other emotions, swiftly controlled, in his cool amber gaze. He was not quite as unconcerned as he would have her believe, she thought, and it was to release this inner conflict that she allowed her temper free rein.

  ‘You ask me that?’ she blazed. ‘What do you think you’re doing, hanging about outside the office like some second-rate private eye? Threatening my friends! This is England, Mr Lynch. We don’t behave like savages here!’

  Morgan’s features had hardened as she was speaking, but Catherine refused to be intimidated by his expression. Heavens, who did he think he was? Her keeper?

  ‘Is that what you think I am?’ he said at last, when she paused for breath, and, in spite of her outburst, Catherine was briefly speechless.