by Penny Jordan
What would Helen say if she were to tell her that everything her precious Drew had said was a pack of lies, and that he had a remarkably inventive imagination? Kirsty wondered bitterly. She was in a cleft stick and he knew it, damn him. As he had already reminded her, she was bound by a legal contract to the company now, and yet if she stayed she would be forced to play along with this ridiculous fictitious ‘engagement’ until he chose to end it. What did he intend to do? Make her humiliation complete by breaking off their engagement at the same time as he announced that she wasn’t capable of playing Hero? It all fitted together so logically, so demoniacally; and she had actually believed someone had recommended her for the part because they believed in her. Oh, if she’d been that sort of female she could have wept!
CHAPTER FOUR
THE evening seemed interminable. Kirsty was all too aware of the sidelong glances she was getting from other members of the cast, burningly conscious of the comments they must be making to one another, and this was borne out when Clive approached her towards the end of the evening, to add his best wishes to everyone else’s.
‘Quite the dark horse, aren’t you,’ he said lightly, ‘but don’t worry about it. At least no one could accuse you of getting the part by virtue of being an old man’s darling—the time-honoured way to stage fame—or at least it was, about fifty years ago. For one thing, Drew is far too much of a catch. There’ll be more than one pair of jealous green eyes turned in your direction when this becomes public.’
Public! That was something Kirsty hadn’t thought of. She must get in touch with her parents, she thought feverishly, and explain.… But explain what? She gnawed worriedly at her lip. Oh, why had Drew announced their ‘engagement’? He must have known there would be all manner of repercussions and problems. Why couldn’t he simply have announced that they were lovers if he had to say anything—it would have had an equally explosive effect and would have been far less messy. How could she explain to her parents? She tried to visualise telling them what had happened at Winton, and the consequent results. They would never understand, she acknowledged unhappily. Chelsea would, but this was one scrape her aunt couldn’t get her out of. This was something she had to face alone.
Strangely enough, with that thought formulated and accepted, Kirsty felt as though she had suddenly taken a giant-sized step forward into adulthood.
‘You’re looking pensive. Ready to leave?’
She hadn’t heard Drew come up behind her. When he wanted to, he could move with the stealth of a jungle cat, she decided resentfully.
Even though she was tired and longing for the evening to draw to a close, some spark of contrariness made her say stubbornly, ‘No way. Besides, hardly anyone has left yet.’
‘Hardly anyone else had just announced their engagement,’ Drew reminded her, irony underlining the words. ‘They expect us to leave,’ he added pointedly. ‘They expect that as a newly engaged couple we want to be alone.’
‘And whose fault is it that they’re going to be disappointed?’ Kirsty demanded bitterly. ‘Who lied to them, who told them we were engaged when.…’
Her angry protests were stifled beneath the hard pressure of his lips. The hands which had been hanging easily at his sides were now gripping her shoulders, the pressure of his mouth forcing her head backwards, and her lips to part so that she could draw in a gasping breath.
‘How dare you…!’ she started to say when she could speak again, but she wasn’t allowed to do more than frame the first two words before Drew’s lips were brushing softly against her own again, masking the whispered threat he murmured against her skin, as he warned her not to make a scene in front of the others.
‘Then let’s go somewhere where I can make one,’ Kirsty suggested icily, unaware until he agreed that she had played completely into his hands, and that not only were they leaving the party, they were also leaving it together—something she had already made a promise to herself she wasn’t going to allow to happen under any circumstances.
They had to run the gamut of a good deal of ribald comment before they were allowed to escape, and Kirsty’s cheeks were flushed a warm pink by the time they emerged into the cool September night.
The nostalgic scent of woodsmoke and autumn hung on the air, a feeling of indefinable sadness that autumn always brought.
Simon and Helen accompanied them outside.
‘Oh, you came in your car,’ Helen said, frowning, as Kirsty pulled away from Drew and headed for her Mini.
‘Like you, she wasn’t sure if I could make it,’ Drew interrupted smoothly. ‘I don’t suppose you’d give it a good home overnight?’ he added humorously.
‘Of course we would,’ Helen assured him before Kirsty could so much as open her mouth, ‘after all, you’ve barely had an opportunity yet to celebrate your engagement,’ she added with a teasing grin.
‘We’re not.…’ We’re not engaged, was what Kirsty had been about to say, but once again Drew forestalled her. ‘We’re very grateful to you both,’ he interposed easily. ‘Look, darling, my car’s right at the bottom of the drive—one of the misfortunes of arriving late—so why don’t you stay here with Helen and Simon while I go and collect it. I won’t be long.’
Very clever, Kirsty seethed as he walked away. Now she wouldn’t be able to tell him—as she had fully intended—that she was going home alone, even if that meant walking back to her lodgings.
‘Drew’s so very protective, isn’t he?’ Helen mused when he had disappeared. ‘I suppose it stems from his childhood—I’d begun to despair of him ever getting married. He’d seen enough of the trauma inflicted on children by the desertion of their parents ever to risk the same thing happening to his own, he once told me. Again I expect that’s a legacy of the past. He doesn’t talk about it much, of course, but you know how these things become public knowledge in our world, and a man in his position is so open to gossip and adverse comment. It’s hard to imagine him as a vulnerable, lonely child, isn’t it?’
Vulnerable? Lonely? Drew Chalmers? It certainly was! And Kirsty was curious to know what Helen meant about his childhood, but she was hardly in a position to ask. Helen plainly thought she knew all there was to know about Drew, and as his fiancée Kirsty could see that she might.
Only she wasn’t Drew’s fiancée, and she had no idea why he had described her as such, apart from the unpalatable suspicions she had already had.
‘Here he is,’ Helen exclaimed, forcing Kirsty to glance unwillingly at the familiar Porsche.
‘I envy you two in a way,’ were Helen’s last words, as she slipped her arm through her husband’s and Drew opened the passenger door of the car for Kirsty, ‘being at the beginning of it all. Engagements are such a very special time, although some people seem to think they’re outdated nowadays. A pity, I think.’
Thanking her for the party, Kirsty forced herself to smile an agreement she was far from feeling, as Drew put the car in gear and they moved swiftly down the drive.
‘Where are we going?’ she demanded angrily when he turned right instead of left at the end of the drive. ‘I don’t live this way.’
‘I know,’ came the calm retort, ‘but I do, and we have things to talk about, you and I, wouldn’t you say?’
‘If we have whose fault is that?’ Kirsty complained. ‘I’m not the one who announced our engagement!’
‘Calm down. I’ve said we’ll talk about it and so we will. Right now I need all my attention on my driving. There’s nothing to be afraid of, Kirsty,’ he told her softly. ‘I don’t go in for rape, if that’s what’s in your mind. Unless of course it’s not me you’re frightened of but yourself,’ he added shrewdly.
Oh, how dared he! Kirsty fumed inwardly. What did he think she was going to do? Fling herself bodily into his arms, begging for his kisses? Never, never in a million years!
Unwittingly her fingers touched her lips, shocked by the realisation that she could still feel the firm impression of Drew’s mouth against them. She had been k
issed before, for goodness’ sake! But never with such devastating effect, she acknowledged inwardly.
Drew negotiated the Porsche through the main street in silence, Kirsty’s glance drawn, against her will, to the lean sureness of his hands as they guided the powerful car. She risked an upwards look at his face, unreadable in the half light, his mouth compressed in what could have been either obstinacy or determination. The thought struck her as it had done before that he was a man to be treated with extreme caution. He should wear a label, she decided resentfully: ‘This man is dangerous.’ But then he did, she acknowledged; it was there in his eyes, in the way he moved and spoke. Lost in her thoughts, she didn’t realise they had taken the main road out of town, until the darkness of the landscape suddenly struck her and she turned to him.
‘Don’t worry,’ he mocked, obviously reading her mind. ‘I’m not abducting you.’ He negotiated a sharp bend and turned off down a narrow lane running between high grassy banks, the drystone walling on top of them picked out by the Porsche’s powerful headlight as it dipped and twisted, following the tortuous route of the road.
Eventually Drew slowed down and turned into a rutted farm track, so bumpy that even the Porsche’s expensive suspension couldn’t prevent Kirsty from bumping into him as the car bounced down the track. She recoiled from the intimate contact with his body immediately. His flesh was as hard and unyielding as his mind, she decided, but hard upon the heels of that thought came the vivid memory of how it had felt against her, and how her own softer body had instinctively accommodated all that male hardness, abandoning itself to it with a sensuality that still had the power to shock her.
‘Are you planning to sit here all night?’
The taunting words sliced through her disturbing thoughts. She hadn’t even realised they had stopped. She reached hesitantly for the door handle, stiffening as Drew reached across her, pushing aside her fumbling fingers, the musky male scent of his skin, mingled with the sharp cleanness of his cologne, reminding her intensely of that other time she had been this close to him. The intensity and complexity of the emotions such memories aroused disturbed her. She was trembling when eventually she managed to stumble from the car. They were parked in a cobbled yard, enclosed on two sides by the dark outline of a building. Behind her Kirsty heard Drew move and then light flooded the yard, and she could see that what had once been a traditional farmyard had been transformed into an attractive cobbled courtyard. Stone urns, now empty, hinted at massed flowers trailing from them during the summer, a richly russet Virginia creeper covered the walls of the farmhouse, illuminated by the lights Drew had switched on.
‘Come on.’
He gripped her elbow, the rough brush of his jacket against the bare flesh of her arms acutely sensitising nerves already jangling with tension, and she jerked away, receiving a long, enigmatic look.
‘I don’t bite,’ Drew goaded softly, ‘so you can stop looking at me with those big, scared eyes.’ He turned as he extracted a key and started to unlock the old-fashioned white-painted door so that she could precede him into the hall.
Kirsty guessed that a good deal of money had been spent on the farmhouse to achieve the mellowed elegance it now possessed. The hall was small and square, with an attractively beamed ceiling and plain matt walls. Several doors and a narrow set of stairs led off it, but Drew ignored these, instead opening an oak door and beckoning to her to follow him.
She did so hesitantly, watching the room come to life as Drew switched on two table lamps. The room was larger than she expected, with windows at either end, furnished traditionally with what she suspected were several very good antiques. Two large settees covered in a bold-patterned fabric dominated the room, and although it lacked the Georgian elegance of the Baileys’ home, Kirsty had an immediate sense of homecoming and relaxation. Children could play happily in this room, adults could unwind in it once they had gone to bed, sharing one of those settees, perhaps, while they talked; the table lamps casting an intimate glow over them, their children sleeping upstairs. Two boys, perhaps, with dark ruffled hair and serious grey eyes.
‘Something wrong?’ Drew asked softly.
He was watching her closely, and her face flamed. She had always been a bit of a daydreamer, but never before had her daydreams taken on such an intimacy. How strange that when she had imagined a couple in this room, they had been Drew and herself; their children sleeping upstairs.… What on earth was happening to her? she asked herself crossly. The last thing she wanted was to get involved with Drew Chalmers. She disliked the man intensely. She only had to get within ten feet of him and her whole body started to react in the most unpredictable way.
‘Would you like a drink? Oh, don’t worry,’ Drew was quick to assure her. ‘I’m not proposing to get you drunk. You’d been drinking that night in Winton, hadn’t you?’ he asked quietly.
The suddenness of the question caught Kirsty off guard. Drinking! He made it sound so horrible and deliberate somehow, and she felt impelled to defend herself.
‘One cocktail and half a bottle of wine,’ she admitted, with more pain in her voice than she realised. ‘I don’t normally drink much at all, but I was on my own, and feeling miserable.…’ She broke off, her face flaming, wondering what on earth had made her tell him that, but her chagrin was forgotten when he came towards her, a furious dark anger in his eyes as they moved relentlessly over her body, probing its soft contours with a knowledge that seared.
‘Dear God!’ It was almost a prayer, but there was no repentance in the angry line of his mouth, or the eyes that stripped her savagely of all her defences. ‘What are your family thinking of? Have they never warned you of the folly of drinking too much when you can’t take it? God, I thought that was the first rule parents impressed on their teenage daughters! How the hell have you managed to live so long and stay so naïve?’ He shook his head, exasperation darkening his eyes as he saw her paling with the shock of his words.
‘You must have been to teenage parties, surely; seen what happens when a girl has too much to drink?’
‘Of course I have,’ Kirsty agreed painfully. She had always avoided drinking at parties, mindful of her mother’s warning that it was easy to lose control of one’s ability to reason after a few drinks, and besides, having seen what happened to the girls who didn’t heed their parents’ advice she had made a vow that when she did make love with someone, it would be because she wanted to, and had made the decision stone cold sober.
‘And yet still you went to my suite after God knows how potent a cocktail and several glasses of wine? What was it,’ he jeered, ‘Dutch courage? Well, we both know the result, don’t we?’
‘I never thought.…’
‘That I’d be so turned on by the sight of you that I’d want you?’ Drew finished brutally for her.
‘You were angry with me,’ Kirsty reminded him. ‘You wanted to punish me.’
‘And ended up punishing myself,’ Drew agreed sardonically. ‘But it doesn’t end there, does it? Didn’t you stop even once to consider some of the consequences of what you were doing?’ His jacket was discarded with swift irritation, the light from the lamp behind him outlining the shape of his torso in the thin white shirt. Kirsty’s mouth went dry, and a curious tension enveloped her. She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the sight of that powerful male body, the dark shadowing of body hair erotically obvious beneath the silk shirt. When had she become aware of such things? she wondered, licking dry lips; when had she first discovered that a man’s body could be a beautiful thing, exciting to look at and touch? She knew the answer, but she didn’t want to admit it.
‘I just wanted to show you that I could act convincingly,’ she got out huskily. ‘I never thought I would see you again.’
‘No,’ Drew agreed harshly, ‘you behaved like a spoiled child, and thought you could simply walk away from what you’d done and put it all behind you. Well I’m afraid life in the adult world doesn’t work out quite like that, as you’ve discovered tonig
ht.’
‘I didn’t ask you to get me a job,’ Kirsty protested, stung by the validity of his criticism. ‘I didn’t ask you to say you were engaged to me.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ Drew agreed heavily, ‘and I’ve already explained my reasons for both those actions. God, you’re such a child, you aren’t fit to be allowed out on your own!’ he announced with a savagery that sent her stomach muscles into a protesting spasm. ‘That night at the hotel I could have raped you, and there wasn’t a thing you could have done about it. Didn’t you stop once to think about that? Is your innocence of so little value to you, that you’d carelessly throw it away, simply out of childish spite? Or are you so anxious to join the grown-up world that you’re getting desperate for someone to open the door for you?’ he taunted softly.
‘That’s a vile thing to suggest!’
‘Isn’t it just?’ he agreed suavely. ‘But one that could explain one hell of a lot.’ There was an air of tension about him that puzzled Kirsty—a sort of suppressed violence that electrified the air between them and made her pulses race in reaction.
‘I know you didn’t announce our engagement just to save my good name!’ Kirsty hurled at him childishly, driven by some deep-seated instinct to destroy the sensations threatening to engulf her. ‘You can’t deny that there was another reason?’