by Sara Craven
Maggie hesitated, then lifted her chin. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I suppose I would.’
Jay laughed. ‘You know what?’ he said. ‘For you, my darling, I just might do that.’
He pulled her into his arms, close against his body, looked down into her eyes for a long intense moment, then found her mouth with his.
Maggie stood, still and submissive, within the circle of his arms. She thought, ‘I mustn’t think about this. I’ve got to pretend that it isn’t happening—remember he’s only acting.’
But it wasn’t easy. Not when even the gentlest pressure from his cool lips on hers could send a long, sweet shiver rippling through her innermost being.
But this undemanding contact was only the mimicry of passion. And suddenly, fiercely, illogically, she wanted more.
I want to be desired, she realised with amazement. I want his need for me to blot out Leslie Forester and everything that happened when I was seventeen. I don’t want to be afraid any more.
Deliberately she moved closer to him, parting her lips beneath his with a little indrawn breath of acquiescence, letting her lids sweep down to veil her eyes.
She felt the sudden answering tension in his lean body, the swift response as his mouth moved on hers, savouring her, tasting her, kissing her more deeply. She sensed the hunger in him building as his tongue flickered along the softness of her lower lip, then began to explore the inner recesses of her mouth.
Acting on blind instinct, Maggie locked her hands at the back of his neck, and kissed him back, letting the tip of her tongue play with his at first, then become bolder, more demanding in turn.
Jay twisted his fingers into the shining mass of her hair, then let his other hand slide down her body to her hip, moulding its contour with blatant possessiveness as their bodies ground together. His tongue thrust against hers with a new and disturbing urgency. She felt her body, the ungiven core of her womanhood, melting, dissolving, turning to flame, and a small greedy moan rose in her throat.
Someone in the Press corps gave a faint ironic cheer, and the spell was broken in an instant. Jay tore his mouth away from hers almost angrily. His breathing was uneven, and there was a dull flush along his cheekbones.
He said quietly, ‘I hope you’ve got all you want, gentlemen, because we’re leaving now. And in future we’d appreciate a little privacy.’
‘Some hopes,’ Seb muttered.
Maggie could feel his gaze on her, bewildered and a little anxious. She didn’t blame him. She felt totally confused herself. She had obeyed an impulse too strong to be denied, which she would probably regret for a very long time—maybe even the rest of her life.
Jay’s own expression was shuttered, enigmatic. She did not, she decided, want to know what he was thinking.
They sat in the back of Seb’s Jaguar, and Maggie tensed as Jay slid an arm round her shoulders, her heart fluttering wildly against her ribcage.
‘Smile,’ Jay directed her tersely. ‘And see if you can manage a wave to the bastards.’
The car gathered speed, rounded the bend in the track, and Jay’s encircling arm was withdrawn with insulting promptness.
He said grimly, ‘And that’s the end of that.’
He threw himself back into his corner of the seat, and stared out of the window, his face set and forbidding.
Maggie huddled in her own corner, a prey to her thoughts. She had been so afraid that she had revealed too much of herself, too much of her emotional turmoil in that long, devastating kiss, but, it seemed, it hadn’t had the slightest effect on Jay. He was probably quite used to that kind of reaction from the women in his arms. Quite apart from his personal love life, which she didn’t want to think about, even in passing, there were the glamorous actresses he made love to each week in his TV series. He had learned to be totally casual, completely uninvolved, but she couldn’t be, she realised, thrusting her hands into her jeans pockets to hide the fact that they were trembling.
She had been shattered by that kiss, stirred to the depths of her being by the surge of sheer physical hunger it had evoked. But it meant nothing to him. He had only been acting. That was what she had to remember if she was to retain any semblance of sanity.
At last, she broke the silence between them. ‘How—how long do you think we need to go on—pretending.’
‘Ask Sebastian.’ Jay’s lip curled slightly. ‘It was his idea, after all.’
‘I suppose so,’ she said in a subdued voice.
‘I think we need to be talking months rather than weeks.’ Maggie could see Seb frowning in the driving-mirror as he spoke. ‘And certainly we have to see this Debbie Burrows fiasco over with and buried before there’s any mention of a break-up.’ He paused. ‘It was good of you to—speak up for Jay, as you did. Very convincing.’
‘I’m surprised she didn’t choke on the words,’ Jay drawled. ‘She had enough to say about my general lack of morals when we first met.’
Maggie bit her lip. ‘Perhaps I’ve—changed my mind.’
His glance was coolly indifferent. ‘Please don’t damage your conscience on my behalf, Ms Carlyle. It really doesn’t matter.’ He hesitated. ‘I suppose this charade of an engagement will necessitate us appearing together in public from time to time, but I promise I’ll keep such occasions to a minimum.’
‘Thank you.’ Her tone sounded stifled.
‘Oh, but the gratitude’s all on my side,’ he said too courteously. ‘As Seb remarked, that was an excellent performance you gave back there.’
She swallowed. ‘I—hope I shan’t be called on to go to such lengths again.’
‘My sentiments entirely.’ He gave her a brief smile which did not reach his eyes, then transferred his attention pointedly to the scenery.
Conversation thereafter was desultory, much of it initiated by Sebastian, and dealing mainly with the trail of devastation the hurricane had left. The roads they were travelling on were littered with fallen branches and other debris, and in a field they saw a number of caravans lying forlornly on their sides. Maggie was appalled to see the number of trees which had been completely uprooted. It was possible to trace the path of the storm as if some giant had walked through the countryside, sickle in hand, laying waste on either side of him.
She swallowed. She felt part of that devastation, swept up in the storm and then discarded. But what else, in all honesty, could she have expected?
She and Jay had been thrown together by sheer mischance. She had discovered that many of her preconceptions about him were wrong. She had found, for instance, that he could be kind.
For a heart-lurching moment, she remembered the sanctuary she had found in his arms the previous night, the tenderness in the lips which had briefly caressed her face.
Now he was an icy stranger, the distance between them as wide and impenetrable as a desert. Clearly their time together at World’s End was something he wanted to put from his mind and his life as quickly as possible, and it had angered him that they were still bound together, even by this token lie of an engagement.
Her hands clenched together in her lap. Try as she might, she couldn’t suppress the thought that if they hadn’t been interrupted—if the world hadn’t come knocking on the door, destroying their seclusion—things might have been very different.
Last night, she had said, ‘Don’t go.’
What if he had used the same words to her this morning? What if he had said, ‘Don’t leave me’? Would she have had the strength to resist?
Instead, she thought wretchedly, I asked for a miracle. Only it hasn’t turned out quite how I expected.
But she had done the right thing—the sensible thing, she told herself. She was too raw, too inexperienced in passion and its demands to become the plaything of a man like Jay Delaney. She hadn’t the sophistication which would have allowed her to amuse herself and then walk away. And that was all he would have wanted—someone to relieve the tedium of his enforced exile. It would have entertained him, no doubt, after all her protest
ations, to have seduced her—watched her surrender. But she might have ended up weeping inside for all eternity.
She was only thankful that she hadn’t gone away with Robin, because she knew now it would have been a total disaster. He had been what she thought she wanted—what she believed she could cope with in a relationship. But she was wrong. Robin had represented safety and a kind of security, but he would never have turned her to flames in his arms.
I could have ended up hurting him very badly, she realised, and shivered a little.
‘Are you cold?’
She flushed at the abrupt question. ‘No, thanks. I shall just be glad when all this is over.’
‘That goes for both of us.’ He paused. ‘You’re still going to find the stories in tomorrow’s papers hard to take, but there’s nothing we can do about that.’
‘I suppose not.’ She didn’t look at him.
‘You’re going to have to keep up the pretence,’ he went on. ‘Don’t be tempted to tell anyone the real truth—not your best friend—not your boss.’ Another silence. ‘Not even Robin.’
‘But I’ve got to give him some explanation,’ she said, dismayed. ‘I’ve been seeing him all this time and …’
Jay shrugged cynically. ‘Tell him it was love at first sight,’ he said. ‘That I swept you off your feet into a whirlwind romance. That will make it more believable when we tell the world in a few weeks that we made a terrible mistake. Presumably, Mother permitting, he’ll still be around to pick up the pieces.’
‘I can always hope,’ she said lightly. ‘Seb, could you drop me first, please.’
‘You don’t want me to come in with you?’ her brother-in-law asked. ‘You might get some reporters ringing up.’
‘I’ll switch on the answering machine. I’ll be fine, honestly.’
‘And besides,’ Jay said softly, jeeringly. ‘You prefer being on your own, don’t you, Ms Carlyle?’
I want to be on my own tonight, she thought achingly. I need to get you out of my head, and my heart. To belong to myself again, somehow.
Aloud, she said, ‘I’m glad I’ve got through to you at last, Mr Delaney.’
And after that there was silence between them.
Outside her flat, she waited in the chilly wind while Seb retrieved her case from the boot. Jay came to stand beside her.
‘Goodbye, Maggie.’ His smile was as perfunctory as his brief handshake. ‘I’ll get Seb to call you next week—arrange the obligatory date. We could have dinner, perhaps, or see a show.’
Her voice was strained. ‘If we must.’
‘We have no choice,’ he said harshly. ‘We’ve told the story. Now we stick to it.’
He went round and got into the front passenger seat beside Sebastian. As they drove off, he did not look back.
She picked up her case, and stood for a moment, looking at the threatening sky.
She had talked so much, she thought ironically, about her precious solitude. Now, for the first time in her life, she knew what it was to feel completely alone. And the pain of it was almost more than she could bear.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WELL, I DON’ T understand any of this.’ Philip shook his head. ‘Only last week you stood in this office and told me you were off to the Indian Ocean with Whatsisname. In fact, you were adamant about it,’ he added severely. ‘Then, yesterday at breakfast, all hell breaks loose. People start ringing up, asking me if I’ve seen newspapers I wouldn’t normally have in the house.’
He spread his hands. ‘And what do I find on the front page but you in a clinch with some TV star. No, not just “some”,’ he hastily amended. ‘According to Janie and Claire, who’ve been weeping in their rooms ever since, “the” TV star. And you’re engaged to him.’
Maggie groaned inwardly. ‘I don’t know how to explain,’ she said lamely. ‘These things—happen.’
‘Do they indeed.’ Philip pointed dourly at the cutting on the desk in front of him. ‘“Petite red-headed Maggie spends her days in a dusty publishing office, polishing the manuscripts of such best-selling authors as bodice-ripper Kylie St John.”‘ He cast his eyes to heaven. ‘Why on earth did you tell them that? She’s bound to have seen it.’
‘I didn’t,’ she protested wretchedly. ‘It must have been Mrs Grice at the farm who told them I was in publishing. She’s a devoted St John fan, so I got Kylie to sign a copy of her last novel for her.’
‘Well, you can have the pleasure of explaining that to the lady when she arrives in an hour’s time.’ He paused. ‘I presume you are here to work? You haven’t come in to clear your desk, because your latest lover is flying you off to Florida Keys or somewhere?’
Maggie sighed soundlessly. ‘No. I’m here to stay.’
It had probably been the worst Sunday of her life, she reflected as she went to her office. The papers had gone to town on the story, digging up details about her that she would have thought impossible in so short a space of time. And if the stories were bad, the pictures of that kiss were even worse. It was a study in passionate eroticism, and Maggie burned with shame every time she thought about it. No one who saw it would be in the least doubt that she and Jay Delaney were lovers in every sense of the word.
She had sat in the flat, slumped in despair, until the constant warbling of the telephone, before it was interrupted by the answering machine, had driven her out. Feeling paranoid in headscarf and dark glasses, she had tramped for miles, returning cold, exhausted and hungry. She’d heated some soup and made herself a cheese roll, and then sat staring at them. Eventually she’d thrown them away untouched and gone to bed. But there was no peace for her there either.
She had awoken several times in the night, the memory of Jay’s warm body lying beside hers so vivid in her mind that she reached out for him.
But he wasn’t there, and he never will be again, and the sooner you pull yourself together and forget everything that happened at World’s End, the better, she adjured herself sternly as she sat down at her desk and pulled the folder with the day’s correspondence towards her.
From their first encounter, she had been a thorn in Jay’s flesh. Now she was an acute embarrassment, and nothing more, she thought painfully. His attitude had made that clear. All she had to do was remain equally aloof. It was the only course that would leave her with even the rags of her dignity and self-respect.
One of the editorial secretaries came in a while later. ‘I’ve brought you some coffee, Miss Carlyle, and I’m to tell you Miss St John has arrived and is in Mr Munroe’s office. He’s asked me to remind you that you’ll be joining them later, and he’ll buzz you when he’s ready.’
When he’s poured oil on troubled waters, thought Maggie.
‘Thank you, Penny.’ She gave the girl a brief smile. ‘I’ve drafted some answers to these letters if you’d like to take them.’
The girl took the file, but lingered, her eyes resting with obvious disappointment on Maggie’s bare left hand. Clearly she had expected to see her wearing another version of the Koh-i-noor.
‘I just wanted to say—congratulations, Miss Carlyle. We’re all thrilled for you. None of us had the least idea …’
‘It was all—rather sudden for me too.’ Maggie forced another smile.
‘My young sister’s mad about him,’ Penny went on. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t ask him for a photograph—and get him to sign it for her?’
‘I’ll try,’ Maggie agreed without enthusiasm. ‘But I don’t really know when I’ll be seeing him again.’
She saw by the astonishment in the other girl’s face that she had said the wrong thing, and hastily made amends. ‘I mean—things are rather fraught at the moment. He’s still being interviewed by the police and …’
‘I know,’ Penny said. ‘It must be awful for him. But nobody I’ve talked to believes a word of it. You tell him, Miss Carlyle, that all his fans are on his side.’ She gave Maggie a misty look. ‘I thought it was wonderful the way you stood up for him like that. That’s real l
ove.’
Maggie swallowed. ‘Thank you,’ she said, looking down at the litter of papers on her desk, while her throat tightened almost unbearably.
It was nearly half an hour later that Philip buzzed for her. Maggie stood up, bracing herself, then walked along the narrow corridor towards the door at its end.
As she passed the secretaries’ office, Penny stuck her head out. ‘There’s a call just come through for you, Miss Carlyle. Do you want to take it in your own room?’
‘No, I’m in a hurry. I’ll deal with it here.’ As Maggie took the receiver from the girl’s hand, she was suddenly aware of her rapt expression and the air of barely concealed excitement from the others in the room, and realised who must be calling her.
She wished with all her heart she had opted to take the call in her own office, but it was too late now.
She said an uncompromising. ‘Yes?’
‘Good morning,’ Jay said sardonically. ‘So you survived bloody Sunday, and you still have a job. I’m glad.’ He paused. ‘I left a message on your machine yesterday, but you didn’t return my call.’
‘I—I didn’t listen to any of them. I was out most of the day.’ She hesitated. ‘Was it important?’
‘I think we need to talk,’ he said. ‘I’ll be round at one o’clock to take you to lunch.’
‘I—think I already have an appointment.’
‘Then break it. Until one.’ He rang off.
Maggie replaced the receiver, tight-lipped. Her only hope of retaining her sanity was to see as little as possible of Jay. She had come to that painful conclusion during her long and sleepless night. And meeting him for lunch á deux was just the kind of risk to her peace of mind she most needed to avoid.
‘I’ll tell him I couldn’t break my appointment, or better still I’ll nip out early, and just leave him a message,’ she thought, as she made her way to Philip’s office.
Kylie St John was the image of one of her own heroines, as interviewers had often remarked. A mane of dark blonde hair, tipped with gold, tumbled casually about her elegant shoulders, and her violet eyes looked at the world from under a sweep of curling lashes.