Fever

by Charlotte Lamb

  'My hotel's just round the corner over the bridge,' he said in brusque tones.

  Sara had not meant to lunch with him, but she found herself walking meekly with him through the busy streets, because she was still suffering from the shock of realising that he had almost kissed her. He just didn't look like the sort of man who kissed in public places. As he led her into the smoothly carpeted foyer of his modern hotel she eyed him curiously, wondering suddenly if it was wise to go up to his suite with him. Did that hard kiss in her garden count as a pass? He hardly looked the type to try for a rapid conquest over lunch, but you could never tell. She didn't fancy trying to fight him off over smoked salmon and steak. He was a tough-looking customer under that smooth suit. Alone in his suite she might find she had bitten off more than she could chew, particularly as he seemed con­vinced she was on the promiscuous side.

  All the way up to his top floor suite she was de­bating how to deal with whatever situation she might face. He ushered her into the spacious sitting-room and picked up the telephone beside the enor­mous television.

  'What would you like? I was going to have a steak.'

  'How surprising,' she said drily.

  He gave her an unsmiling look, noting the sar­casm. 'In hotels I find it's one item on the menu which I can be sure is freshly cooked.'

  She shrugged. 'Steak will be fine.'

  'How gracious,' he said, and she flushed.

  'I'm sorry, I wasn't intending to be ill-mannered.'

  'That's all right, Miss Nichols. I'm getting accus­tomed to your sharp little tongue.'

  He picked up the little booklet and looked up the number for room service, dialling, his black head bent.

  There were french windows open at one end of the long room. Sara wandered through them to find herself on a balcony over the river. She leaned on the iron balustrade and stared down. Green banks were feathered with flowering elder, white petals of it blown across the sleepy water. A man with a sun-flushed head slept in a deck chair on the grass, the sun drawing beads of perspiration from his bald head. Some ducks paddled silently past like Indians in a surprise war party, their little black eyes sliding to inspect him for signs of food.

  She heard a footstep behind her but did not turn. Nick Rawdon stood at her shoulder and she heard him breathing. He didn't speak and after a few moments she turned her head to give him an inter­rogative glance. He was staring at her profile, she found, and as she looked at him their eyes met. A curious shiver ran down her spine.

  'You're very beautiful,' he murmured huskily.

  The remark bothered her, so she gave him a brief smile and turned away again, glancing along the old wharves bordering the far side of the river.

  'What sort of relationship do you have with Halliday?' he asked quietly. 'Does he turn a blind eye if you have other men?'

  She turned angrily. 'Look, you're under a mis­apprehension, Mr. Rawdon. Greg is my stepbrother, not my lover.'

  His eyes narrowed, blindingly blue, penetrating. 'You don't live alone with him, then? Your parents live there too?'

  'They died some years ago,' she explained politely but coldly.

  His dark brows lifted cynically. 'So you do live alone together?'

  'Not in the sense you mean. In everything but the blood tic, we're brother and sister.'

  He smiled sardonically. 'If you say so.'

  He didn't believe her, the cynical blue eyes told her that, and Sara was furious for a moment. Then she shrugged. Did she care if he believed her or not? She didn't much like him. Oh, he was unquestion­ably sexy in a hard, aggressive fashion, but he didn't turn her on. Let him think what he chose! He prob­ably preferred to believe that she led a wild, im­moral life just because she painted.

  Her small face held contempt as she smiled at him. 'You have a narrow, conventional mind, Mr. Rawdon.'

  'Do I?' His mouth tightened.

  'That's your hangup, not mine. Think what you like.'

  'Thanks for the permission. I intended to do so anyway.*

  'I'm sure you did. It would take a tin-opener to find a crack in that closed little mind of yours.'

  'Thanks,' he said with a bite of his white teeth. 'You don't like me, do you?'

  'Not much,' she said frankly, her eyes on his face. 'You're hardly my man of the year, but then I scarcely know you. Maybe you have hidden charms. To some women your money might make you ac­ceptable.'

  She heard him draw a harsh breath. 'One day I might just slap you senseless,' he said in a voice which meant every word.

  She was so surprised by the threat that she laughed. 'Oh, I'm sure you wouldn't lay hands on a woman.'

  'On you I would,' he said almost as though he en­joyed the prospect. 'With pleasure.'

  She fluttered her lashes at him, grinning. 'I'm shocked. And I thought you were a gentleman. An upstanding banker shouldn't say such things.'

  He stared into her vivid, laughing face and moved a step nearer with an expression on his face that startled her. At that moment the waiter arrived with their lunch and Nick Rawdon turned away abruptly. What had he been about to do? she won­dered. Kiss her or hit her? She wasn't sure which, but there had been something in his face, that much she knew.

  The thin little waiter laid their meal out on the table on the balcony, giving Sara a quick smooth look before he left. Although his face betrayed nothing, she could imagine what he was thinking. Men like Nick Rawdon did not bring women to their suite without a certain motive and the quarrel she had just had with him seemed to her something of a relief. He wasn't likely to try to inveigle her into bed after that exchange.

  She sat down and watched Nick pour the wine. The wind from the river lifted her short hair and flung it into a glittering tangle. The ducks idled past on the river, so she leaned over and crumbled her roll into the air, laughing as they snapped in astonishment at the crumbs drifting down to them.

  'Lucky ducks,' she said, dusting her hands. 'Manna from heaven.'

  'Yes,' he murmured, his eyes on her. 'Eat your steak before it gets cold.'

  While they ate they talked, a little stiffly at first, making polite conversation. Nick did not seem hungry, pushing away his meal half-eaten. 'Tell me about yourself,' he commanded.

  She gave him a wry, mocking smile. 'Yes, sir.'

  'Please,' he added with a twist of his lips that admitted that he had been dictatorial.

  'What do you want to know?'

  'Everything,' he said, and Sara stared at him, finding herself blushing again, for no reason.

  She looked away and talked lightly about her parents, her childhood, Greg, her years at art school and her career since. Whenever she paused he asked her a question, showing that he had not only fol­lowed everything she said but was interested. She was barely conscious of the passage of time, enjoying the golden afternoon light, the distant ripple of the water, the moving shadows of the trees below. Suddenly he glanced at his watch, his face reluctant.

  'I'm afraid I have to get back to the conference. Will you stay in York and have dinner with me?'

  She felt a pang of alarm because she was tempted to do as he asked and she knew it was madness. Smiling politely she said, 'How kind, but I'm afraid , I have to get. back.'

  'Must you?' His eyes were level, holding hers. 'I can offer you a very good dinner.'

  'I'm sorry,' she said. It wasn't the dinner, it was afterwards that bothered her. She had the strong suspicion that he didn't intend the evening's enter­tainment to stop at food.

  She smiled though, because he had given her a pleasant lunch. It had been very enjoyable eating on this balcony overlooking the river. If he hadn't been who he was, she might even have wanted to see him again, because she was finding him increasingly attractive, but it wouldn't do.

  'I want to see you again,' he said in a voice which held a reluctance akin to her own, as though he too knew that it was absurd to pursue the acquain­tance.

  She looked at him frankly. 'That wouldn't be a good idea. We have nothing in c
ommon.'

  She had stood up and he had risen too, but now he moved close to her and put his hand around her neck, his fingers threading their way into her hair, the tips of them slowly caressing her hidden nape.

  'I could prove you wrong,' he said in a thick, slurred voice, and she felt her breath catch as she became aware of the meaning of that look in his eyes. He was staring at her mouth with his lids half-veiling the glitter of his blue gaze.

  Her first instinct was to get angry. Her long training from Greg altered that impulse to a flip­pant mockery,

  'I'm not a toy for bored bankers,' she grinned at him.

  Greg liked her to talk like that. It hid thoughts and feelings Greg thought best hidden. Sara had grown up teasing, mocking, playing it cool, but she was beginning to know that this man found her flippancy maddening. He did not appreciate mock-cry and he was angry now. His eyes shot temper at her.

  'Take me seriously, Sara,' he said in a warning tone.

  'I don't want to take you any way at all,' she threw back in a voice as angry as his because he refused to play the game by her rules.

  'I want to take you,' he came back at once, his voice thickening. 'In every way possible.'

  Her face burned. She could not laugh back at words, a tone, like that. It left her breathless, off-balance.

  'Thanks for the warning, Mr. Rawdon,' she said quickly, angrily. 'If I needed an excuse for not see­ing you again, you just gave it to me. Get this, and get it for good, Mr. Rawdon, I'm not available. Not now, not ever!' She gave him a last icy, pointed look and turned to walk out of the suite. He stood there without moving, watching her walk away.

  She took the lift down to the foyer and almost ran out of the hotel. She had never in her life been so shaken. Men had sometimes propositioned her in the past, but always obliquely, leaving her room to refuse without causing offence, and she had never once had to walk out on anybody because if she didn't she might hit them over the head with a chair.

  Nick Rawdon had taken her breath AT, not merely by what he said, but by how he said it, his tone stupefying her. He hadn't been being funny. He had meant every word and the hard blue eyes had been acquisitive as they looked at her body.

  Driving out of York she got lost, which wasn't sur­prising in her shattered frame of mind, especially as the one-way system and the road signs were, she decided, deliberately misleading as though put. there by malignant spirits. It took her some time to find her way out of the city, and as she drove she could not get Nick Rawdon out of her mind.

  She tried, angrily. Their meeting had been an unlucky trick of fate and she had never hesitated as she refused to see him again, but she had to admit she found him attractive. She would have liked to deny it, even to herself. She would have liked him to be a dwarf of fifty with a bald head, a paunch and nasty little eyes. That was how she had always imagined merchant bankers. She saw them like characters from an old fairy story about a dwarf who hoarded money and jewels, and always got his long grey beard trapped in logs and rocks. A banker had no business to look like Nick Raw­don, with a face that seemed to have been chiselled

  out of concrete and eyes that pierced and glittered like blue stones. She wished she could have been blind to the attractions of that, lithe, powerful body, seeing nothing but his formal city suit and striped shirt.

  Their worlds orbited in opposite directions. They had nothing in common, despite his attempt to make her believe they had.

  'And I can guess why,' she muttered aloud, amus­ing another driver as he shot past her out of the traffic jam she had found herself trapped in outside York.

  Mr. Nick Rawdon had been hoping to give her bed as well as board that evening. He imagined that because she shared Greg's house, she was ready to share other things with other men. He could think again!

  When she got back to the hotel she rang Greg to make sure he was eating. He sounded very far away, his voice remote, but then he was probably working and Greg did not like being interrupted when he was at work. His mind could be absorbed so entirely that he often did not even hear the telephone. She was lucky he had answered it this time.

  She hesitated before mentioning that she had seen Nick Rawdon, but when she did tell him Greg sounded interested.

  'What a coincidence! Did he make another pass?'

  She hesitated again and Greg laughed softly.

  'I gather he did. Persistent fellow, isn't he?'

  'It wasn't funny,' she said almost feverishly, and her tone sobered Greg.

  'Did he really bother you, sweetheart?' Greg knew how inexperienced Sara was under her modern, flip manner. He sounded concerned, a faint anxiety creeping into his voice.

  'I was furious,' she said, unable to pretend amuse­ment, because she could still hear the tone in which Nick Rawdon had spoken to her, and it was sending shivers down her spine just remembering.

  'Do you want me to come up there?' Greg asked, which meant that he was now taking this seriously too.

  'Don't be silly,' she said, forcing a bright laugh. 'I won't set eyes on him again.'

  'I gather you gave him short shrift, then? Greg guessed, his voice thoughtful.

  'Well, what do you think?'

  'He may bounce,' Greg warned. 'He looked pretty tough to me. Under that silk shirt there were muscles of steel.'

  Greg was joking, but she didn't think it was humorous any more. 'You're scaring me to death,' she said. 'I wouldn't want to find out.'

  'You don't fancy him?' Greg spoke lightly but with an undertone of serious question.

  'Like rat-poison,' she said tersely.

  Greg laughed. 'You're over-stating the case, darl­ing. I'd have said women would find him very col­lectable.'

  'I don't somehow see him on my mantelshelf,' she flipped, but her face wasn't smiling.

  Greg paused, 'How hard did he press, Sara?'

  He meant the question seriously and she answered it lightly. 'I think you can take it that his intentions were strictly dishonourable.'

  'I don't like the idea of you being up there on you own with a wolf prowling round the door.'

  'Don't worry, Greg,' she reassured. 'I'm a big girl. I can look after myself, and anyway, I'm un­likely to run into him again. I shall be hard at work from tomorrow and I won't be going into York any more.'

  Greg took the hint and dropped the subject. When she had rung off later she sat by the window looking out over the green hills, their smooth sur­face darkened by the slow passage of the clouds whose shadow moved in the wind's path.

  Nick Rawdon had become a shadow on her mind, a darkness troubling her. No man had ever looked at her like that before. It kept coming back, a sudden heat in her veins, a fierce sensation she had never known before. There was no future in a rela­tionship with him, and she had no intention of being lured into one. He would have plenty of other prospects. He probably had a little black book crammed with names and telephone numbers. Even without the glittering allure of his money, he would be irresistible to many women.

  She hated admitting it, but she had been slightly tempted herself for a moment. He was a very sexy man and she could imagine that he would be a very exciting lover, but a cold little voice warned her not. to start anything with him. They were a million light miles apart. Their life styles clashed, their opinions were irreconcilable. He thought she was a very different proposition than the truth made her. Because of her relationship with Greg, she had become what Greg called 'an easy target' to him, and that really bugged her. She wasn't what he thought and he wasn't getting a thing from her.

  Not a thing, she repeated to herself, and was annoyed because she had felt it necessary to repeat it, as though she could ever be tempted into a brief affair with a man she didn't approve of, didn't like. She looked into her mirror later as she got ready for bed and was angry all over again to see the hectic flush on her cheeks, the brightness of her eyes. Damn Nick Rawdon, she thought.

  CHAPTER THREE

  The following afternoon she was sitting in front of her e
asel in a meadow starred with daisies and buttercups, staring up at the hillside, contemplating the deep blue shadow of the stone wall as a wind moved in the boughs of the elm tree beside it. The problem of shadow was worrying her. Her client wanted the hill represented in the early morning, but then the sun hadn't risen and there were no shadows. Her mind moved from the technical prob­lem to another thought. The incredible snaking lengths of stone walls which crawled across hillsides and valleys amazed her. Who had once spent hour upon hour constructing them? They must have been a lifetime's work, and for what? As territorial barriers? Or to keep sheep safely on an owner's land? Even on the open moors where one would least have expected it, one found them. When one considered the time spent on them, Sara thought, they must be at least the Yorkshire equivalent of the Great Pyramid.

  It was very hot for the time of year. She was wearing her usual jeans from habit, but she had put on a sun-top, a skimpy little object, without sleeves and with a low scooped neckline, which ended just around her midriff. It gave her more freedom of movement and she enjoyed the circulation of the air on her bare skin. She wished she had put on shorts, too, but she couldn't be bothered to walk back to the Fox and Grapes to change now.

  A shadow fell over her shoulder on to the easel and she turned, eyes wide, to look up into Nick Rawdon's face.

  Oddly she wasn't even surprised to see him. She looked at him levelly, her face calm.

  'What do I have to do to get the message home?" Flatten you?'