Living Together

by Carole Mortimer

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Your cousin didn’t tell me you were married.’

  ‘Just what did she tell you about me?’ she flashed, her mouth tightening.

  ‘Not a lot, I must admit. I didn’t see any husband with you when you arrived.’

  ‘I wasn’t aware you’d seen us arrive.’

  ‘I never miss out on a beautiful woman.’

  ’I hope you aren’t referring to me,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘Your cousin is lovely, but she doesn’t have your fragility, your wraithlike beauty. I noticed you as soon as you came in.’

  She wondered how many other women he had told the same thing this evening. ‘Am I supposed to be flattered?’

  ‘Not particularly. You really meant it when you said you don’t like men.’ He sounded surprised.

  ‘Did you think I didn’t?’

  ‘Some women like to pretend they feel that way. For some reason they imagine it makes them more interesting to men.’

  Her top lip curled back. ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, but I’m the real thing.’

  ‘Except for your husband, of course.’

  ‘Sorry?’ she frowned.

  ‘You must like your husband.’

  ‘If you say so,’ she agreed tautly.

  ‘Is he here with you?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘In that case, would you like to leave?’

  Helen was taken aback. ‘Are only single people and married couples allowed at your parties, Mr Masters?’

  ‘Hardly,’ he gave a husky laugh, his teeth firm and white against his tanned skin. ‘I wasn’t suggesting you leave alone, I was asking you to leave with me.’

  Helen looked puzzled. ‘But this is your party.’

  Leon shrugged nonchalantly. ‘I want to leave. I thought you wanted to come with me.’

  ‘You thought I—! Why on earth should you think that?’ she demanded angrily, curious in spite of herself.

  ‘Didn’t you?’ he quirked one blond eyebrow, his superior height making her feel small and strangely fragile.

  ‘Certainly not!’ she told him crossly. ‘Whatever gave you that impression?’

  ‘You did.’

  ’I did?’ she exclaimed. ‘I’m sure you’re mistaken, Mr Masters. I have no wish to leave here or anywhere else with you.’

  ‘That isn’t what your eyes were saying a few minutes ago.’

  Helen had to tilt her head right back to look at him. ‘Does every woman who so much as looks at you have to be attracted to you?’

  He grinned down at her. ‘No. But I’m attracted to you, cool Helen.’

  ‘Don’t you mean “cold” Helen?’

  ‘Oh no,’ he said huskily, intimately. ‘Cool is a temperature only just off normal, I’d like to think you could become the latter.’

  ‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Mr Masters, but I think cold is a more suitable description.’

  Leon frowned. ‘Has some man hurt you, is that it?’

  Helen stiffened. ‘Men don’t get close enough to me to be allowed to cause pain. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’ she brushed past him.

  His hand snaked out and caught her upper arm, his lazy indolence belied by the unexpected strength of his grip. He was in the peak of physical condition, another thing that surprised her about him. His tawny eyes were narrowed and assessing now. ‘How old are you?’ he queried softly.

  Her violet eyes flashed her dislike. ‘My age is irrelevant to the way I feel.’

  ‘Twenty? Twenty-one?’ He ignored her outburst.

  ‘Twenty-two, actually,’ she snapped.

  ‘Such a great age,’ he mocked. ‘What happened, did he walk out on you?’

  ‘He?’ she said sharply, a nervous pulse in her throat.

  His hand slid caressingly down her arm to catch her hand, turning it over to look at the narrow gold band on the third finger. ‘Your husband.’ He lifted her head, the startling tawny eyes all-seeing. ‘Did he leave you?’

  Her breath caught in her throat at the directness of the question. ‘You could say that, Mr Masters,’ her mouth turned back. ‘He died.’

  Leon frowned. ‘Your husband is dead?’ He didn’t sound as if he believed her.

  ‘I would hardly lie about something like that,’ she answered waspishly, shaking off his hold on her. She brushed past him and this time he made no effort to stop her.

  She had to get out of here, had to leave. Talking about Michael had brought back memories she would rather forget, memories that could prove too painful for her peace of mind. She left the apartment and the building in a daze, just wanting to get away from taunting tawny eyes and a cruel mocking mouth.

  Leon Masters had no right to intrude on her private hurt, no right to pierce the armour she had wrapped about herself. It was months since anyone had questioned her about Michael, mainly because of Jenny interceding on her behalf. She obviously hadn’t thought it necessary where Leon Masters was concerned, which wasn’t surprising. Who would have thought he would even speak to her, let alone get so personal?

  Unless of course Jenny had just decided it was time she stopped protecting her as far as Michael was concerned. After all, it was two years since it had happened, two years in which the pain should have lessened. And yet it hadn’t! If only she had been able to cry about it she might have been able to snap out of this numbness, but tears had eluded her, leaving her with her bitterness.

  She shivered as she felt a velvet jacket slipped about her shoulders, a familiar smell of tangy aftershave drifting up from the soft grey material. Gentle hands moved her hair from its confinement in the jacket collar, and she looked up to meet searching tawny eyes.

  ‘I didn’t think you were lying, Helen,’ Leon told her softly, pulling the lapels of the jacket more firmly about her. ‘You’re just very young to have been married and widowed.’

  ‘I was twenty when he died,’ she said in a stilted voice.

  Leon walked along beside her, pacing himself to her smaller steps. ‘Had you been married long?’

  She came to an abrupt halt. ‘I wish you hadn’t followed me,’ she said curtly, handing him back his jacket. ‘I left my coat behind, perhaps you could ask Jenny to bring it home with her.’ She turned on her heel and walked off.

  She sensed rather than saw him still at her side, and a burning anger began to well up inside her. Why didn’t he just go away and leave her alone!

  Leon put the jacket back around her shoulders. ‘You’ll catch cold in what little you’re wearing.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s it,’ she sighed. ‘Borrowed plumage, I’m afraid, Mr Masters. This dress isn’t me at all, not my style. I’m sorry if you got the wrong impression from it, but I’m really not out for a cheap affair, not with you or anyone else.’

  Steely fingers clamped on her arm and spun her round, the other hand moving to wrench up her chin, forcing her to meet the anger in his narrowed eyes. ‘Don’t flatter yourself that I want an affair with you either!’ he snapped. ‘Frigid women aren’t my type.’

  The colour drained from Helen’s face, leaving her chalk-white. ‘I’ll never forgive you for saying that!’ she told him vehemently. ‘Never, as long as I live. Get your hands off me!’ she ordered in a controlled voice.

  ‘Like hell I will!’ He pulled her so hard against him she lost her balance and would have fallen if he hadn’t been holding her. ‘At least, not before I’ve thawed some of that ice!’ His lips ground down savagely on hers.

  Helen felt the taste of blood as he split her bottom lip against her teeth. And all she could feel was nausea—nausea for his mouth on hers, nausea for his hands pressing her body against his. She twisted her head from side to side in an effort to escape that punishing mouth, but he kept right on kissing her.

  She could feel hysteria rising within her when he at last released her, her eyes deep purple smudges of pain in her pale, tense face. She rubbed her hand across her mouth to erase his touch, uncaring of the blood she was smearing across her cheeks.
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  ‘My God!’ Leon was almost as pale as she was. ‘You’re not frigid at all, you’re just plain scared.’

  ‘I hate you!’ she spat the words at him. ‘I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!’ Tears were streaming down her face by this time. ‘How dare you touch me! How dare you!’

  Then she was running, running, desperate to get away from him. His jacket fell unheeded to the ground and still she kept on running. She didn’t stop until she was sure he hadn’t followed her. That was when she flagged down a taxi, uncaring of the sight she must look with her dishevelled appearance and the blood on her face.

  She was a hunched-up ball of misery when Jenny burst into the flat an hour later. She had felt numb by the time she got home, completely unable to do anything other than collapse on the sofa.

  Jenny put the light on with a flick of the switch. ‘My God!’ she breathed softly. ‘Oh, my God!’ She ran over to cradle Helen in her arms. ‘Oh, Helen,’ she choked. ‘What did he do to you?’

  ‘Who?’ Helen asked dazedly.

  Jenny smoothed her hair back from her face. ‘Leon Masters!’ she said angrily.

  Reaction was setting in in earnest now, a terrible shaking invading her limbs, her teeth chattering. ‘H-how do you know about that?’

  ‘Because he told me. That’s why I’m here. After disappearing for nearly an hour from his own party he came back and told me you needed me. He didn’t exactly say why, but I could guess. What did he do, Helen?’ she probed gently.

  ‘He—’ Helen swallowed hard. ‘He kissed me!’ She shuddered at the memory of it, once again feeling those firm passionate lips on hers. No one had kissed her since—since Michael, and she could only feel angered and sick at Leon Masters daring to do so.

  Jenny searched her features. ‘Is that all?’

  Helen jerked away from her. ‘Isn’t it enough!’

  ‘But I—well, it was only a kiss, Helen,’ Jenny chided lightly. ‘You’ve been kissed before.’

  ‘No! No, I haven’t. Not since—not since—Michael,’ Helen had difficulty in even saying his name. She held herself stiffly. ‘I hate him!’

  ‘Michael?’

  ‘Leon Masters!’ Helen said sharply. ‘He kissed me and it—it was horrible. Horrible!’

  ‘He’s certainly made a mess of your mouth.’ Jenny touched her torn lip. ‘That’s going to be swollen and sore tomorrow.’

  ‘It’s sore now.’

  ‘I don’t suppose he appreciated you fighting him.’

  ‘That isn’t why he did it.’ Helen took a deep ragged breath. ‘He kissed me because he said—he said I was—frigid.’

  Jenny frowned. ‘Does he know you’ve been married?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Helen acknowledged bitterly, ‘he knew. He seemed to think it was his duty to snap me out of my frigidity.’

  ‘The insensitivity of the man!’ Jenny muttered. ‘Did you tell him about the accident, about—’

  ‘No!’ Helen cut in shrilly. ‘No, I didn’t tell him anything. Why should I? He means nothing to me.’

  ‘But he’d like to. He more or less demanded that I introduce the two of you.’

  ’Well, I wish you’d said no.’

  ‘Stay there,’ Jenny ordered as she began to move. ‘I’ll get a cloth and clean your face up.’

  Helen grimaced. ‘I wasn’t going anywhere, just getting comfortable.’

  Jenny was back within seconds, gently sponging the blood off Helen’s face. ‘He was a bit rough with you,’ she murmured thoughtfully.

  Helen winced as she touched a tender spot. ‘Rough!’ she repeated disgustedly. ‘He was like an animal!’

  ‘Oh, surely not. He—’

  ‘He was like an animal,’ she insisted. ‘I suppose he thinks that because he’s who he is I should have felt honoured by his attention to me. He had the nerve to think I was attracted to him.’

  ‘And you weren’t?’

  Helen touched the soreness of her mouth. ‘Doesn’t this tell you the answer to that?’ she grimaced.

  Jenny shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’ She walked over to pick up the telephone and began dialling.

  ‘Who are you ringing?’ Helen asked curiously.

  ‘The man.’ She was obviously listening to the dialling sound.

  ‘The man?’

  Jenny grinned. ‘Leon Masters.’

  ‘Whatever for?’ Helen demanded.

  ‘He wanted me to let him know you’d got home safely and that you were okay.’

  Helen stood up to leave the room. ‘If he felt that strongly about it he should have come and found out for himself. But of course that would have been too much trouble, and—’

  ‘He wanted to come,’ Jenny cut in softly. ‘He drove me home and asked to come in, but in the circumstances I thought it might be better if he didn’t.’

  ‘Thank goodness for that! I never want to see him again. And I should stop ringing if I were you, he’ll never hear the telephone above the din that was going on there.’

  ‘But he—Ah, Leon,’ Jenny pursed her mouth pointedly at Helen. ‘Yes, yes, I know you’ve been waiting for my call. Yes. No. Yes. I—’

  ‘I’m going to bed,’ Helen told her crossly. ‘Don’t wake me up when you come in.’

  Jenny held the receiver away from her ear, her hand over the mouthpiece. ‘He wants to talk to you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Tell him we have nothing to talk about,’ and Helen walked out of the room.

  Seconds later Jenny followed her into the bedroom. ‘He says it’s important.’

  ‘We have nothing to say to each other,’ Helen said firmly. ‘Tell him I’m not interested.’

  ‘I can’t tell him that!’ Jenny exclaimed, scandalised.

  Helen shrugged. ‘Okay, tell him what you please, but I want nothing more to do with him. And, Jenny,’ she stopped her cousin in the process of leaving, ‘please don’t tell him anything about my private life.’

  Jenny sighed. ‘I can hardly do that—even I don’t know all of it.’

  ‘Well, don’t tell him what you do know.’

  ‘As if I would!’

  ‘You may not mean to. I was with him long enough to know he could charm anything out of you if he really set his mind to it.’

  ‘Anything?’ Jenny teased.

  ‘Anything,’ Helen returned lightly. As usual Jenny’s bubbly good humour was having a calming effect on her.

  But she lay awake a long time that night after she knew Jenny to be asleep. She might resent and despise Leon Masters’ unwelcome intrusion into her life, might hate him for kissing her, but there was one thing she had to acknowledge. In the two years since the accident, since Michael’s death, she hadn’t cried once, not over anything, and yet half an hour after meeting Leon Masters she had been crying almost hysterically. And she didn’t like the fact that he had been the one to take the first brick off the wall she had built around her emotions; she didn’t like it one bit.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘ARE you sure you won’t come?’ Jenny cajoled. ‘It’s sure to be fun.’

  ‘I’m not in the mood for a boating trip,’ Helen refused, her nose buried in a particularly good murder story.

  Jenny laughed. ‘It isn’t a “boating trip”! Cruising over to France for the day can hardly be called that,’ she said disgustedly.

  Helen rested her chin on her drawn-up knees, the denims she wore old and worn, her blouse casually unbuttoned at her throat for coolness. ‘It is to me. And I don’t want to go to France, I’m perfectly comfortable where I am.’

  ‘But you can read that book any old time.’

  ‘And I can go to France any old time too. I do work in a travel agency, you know. I get discount.’

  ‘But this trip would be for free.’

  ‘I don’t want to go,’ Helen told her firmly. ‘I haven’t forgotten the last time you persuaded me to go out when I didn’t want to.’ She touched her bottom lip, which after a week still showed some signs of bruising. ‘Everyone at work thought someo
ne had slugged me one.’

  ‘It wasn’t my fault Leon Masters took a fancy to you.’

  Helen grimaced. ‘Thank goodness he’s stopped telephoning now.’ He had telephoned every day for five days, but for the last two she had heard nothing from him.

  ‘Why?’ Jenny teased. ‘Were you beginning to weaken?’

  ’Certainly not!’ But Helen was aware her denial didn’t carry conviction. ‘I’m glad he’s stopped trying.’

  ‘Maybe he hasn’t,’ Jenny remarked casually. ‘Maybe he’s just trying a different approach.’

  ‘Absence making the heart grow fonder?’ Helen queried wryly.

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘It hasn’t,’ she told her firmly.

  ‘Sure?’

  ‘Very sure.’

  ‘And you won’t come today?’ Jenny persisted. ‘You just have time to get ready if you’ve changed your mind, Matt won’t be here for another ten minutes.’

  ‘I haven’t changed my mind.’ Helen stretched, yawning tiredly. ‘I’ve had a hard week, I’m going to lie back and relax.’

  ‘You could relax on the boat.’

  ‘No, thanks. 1 know that crowd, you have to fight off lecherous men all the time. And talking of lecherous men,’ Helen smiled mischievously, ‘you’ve seen rather a lot of Matt this week.’

  Jenny blushed prettily. ‘He isn’t lecherous.’

  Helen quirked an eyebrow. ‘You mean he’s changed?’

  Her cousin laughed. ‘No, silly! He’s just never been that way with me. He even told me off for wearing that dress last Saturday.’

  ‘Mm—well, I wish you hadn’t persuaded me to wear one of yours. It gave Leon Masters the wrong impression. It may look good on you, but with my—well, my fuller figure up top it was too revealing to be thought anything other than a come-on.’

  Jenny grinned. ‘And he came on strong!’

  ‘Too strong,’ Helen agreed ruefully. ‘He frightens me. He’s so—so assured, so arrogant.’

  ‘As long as he makes you feel something. That has to be an improvement.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Helen asked sharply.

  ’You’ve been a bit—well, a bit emotionless since Michael,’ Jenny explained gently.

  Helen bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve been hard to live with. It’s just that after Michael I find it hard to live with anyone.’