Beaumont Brides Collection (Wild Justice, Wild Lady, Wild Fire)

by Liz Fielding

  He opened the door of the car. Typical of a woman, he thought, as he reached for the keys she’d left so carelessly in the ignition. Not that her car looked as if it was going anywhere ever again. But looks could be deceptive.

  He slipped behind the wheel, pushed back the seat and started her up, smiling despite himself at the rich throaty purr from the engine. It was a lovely machine, utterly wasted on the likes of a woman like Claudia Beaumont who only wanted it in order to draw attention to herself.

  He reversed slowly away from the hangar so that he could get a better idea of the damage she had caused. And when he touched the brakes nothing happened. He wasn’t impressed. Undoubtedly the line carrying the brake fluid had fractured on impact. He pumped the handbrake and the car, moving slowly, stopped without a problem. He turned off the engine and got out, inspecting the grass in front of him. Apart from the marks left by the wheels, the grass was clean.

  *****

  It was with some relief that Claudia was decanted at her own doorstep rather less than an hour later despite the heavy traffic on the Chiswick flyover. When she had said fast, Barty had taken her at her word.

  ‘I’ll see you tomorrow, Claudia,’ he said. ‘And wear those overalls, they’ll look very dashing on the show.’

  ‘Dashing isn’t my style, Barty.’

  ‘Dashing and sexy,’ he amended. ‘The overalls, complete with grass stains. And if that bruise develops nicely I’ll want to see that as well.’

  ‘Barty!’

  ‘You want the viewers to know how hard you worked to part them from their money, don’t you?’

  For a moment she considered arguing, but then she shrugged. ‘Whatever you say.’

  ‘I’ll send a car to pick you up at the theatre after the matinee.’ He waited for her to get out. She didn’t and after a moment he came around and opened the door for her, impatiently offering her a hand as she levered herself awkwardly onto the pavement on an ankle which would have already swollen but for the tightly laced boot.

  It was difficult not to contrast his grudging manner with Gabriel MacIntyre’s instinctive offer of assistance. Barty wouldn’t win any awards for his manners. But then Barty wouldn’t kiss her, either.

  She winced as the thought provoked a smile. She’d better get some ice on her lip. And some professional strapping on her ankle, or she’d limp through her performance tonight.

  ‘Are you crazy, Mac? I know better than to play about with parachutes once they’re packed.’

  ‘I had to be sure. You were madder than a wet hen yesterday.’

  ‘It was what I needed, a chance to blow off steam. I’ve been cooped up at home for weeks, just waiting. God, you men have no idea how boring it is just sitting about knitting booties.’

  ‘You can’t knit.’

  ‘Exactly! Is it any wonder I’ve been a pain in backside to live with. If I’d been Tony and some glamorous female had looked at me twice I’d have been panting like an eager puppy, too.’

  Mac had been uneasy about confronting Adele. She was less than a month from delivery and had a temper like a volcano, a combination that was distinctly unsettling. But although Tony was undoubtedly in the doghouse, it was clearly more to impress on him the error of his ways than because she was still seriously angry. Although whether Tony was privilege to that information was open to question.

  And he was somewhat disconcerted to discover that she found the whole incident at the airfield highly amusing. ‘Claudia Beaumont actually admitted choosing to hit your car rather than upset the television producer?’

  ‘That’s what she said.’

  She laughed. ‘I wish I’d been there to see your face.’

  Mac was not proud of the way he had reacted and he was heartily thankful that his performance had not been witnessed by anyone whose opinion he cared about.

  ‘You are on maternity leave,’ he said, roughly. ‘I don’t want you coming down to the airfield until you’re ready to start work again.’

  ‘Which, according to you, is when my offspring has finally left school?’

  ‘That’s about right.’

  ‘God, but you’re old-fashioned, Mac,’ Adele said, totally exasperated with his pig-headedness. ‘I’m entitled to keep my job, you know. You can’t get rid of me just because I’ve had a baby. There are laws.’

  ‘So, sue me.’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘I look forward to it.’

  ‘Then you’re a bigger idiot than I took you for.’ Then, ‘Oh, look, I’m sorry. I understand the way you feel, Mac, but I’m not Jenny. You have to trust me.’

  ‘I know you wouldn’t do anything to hurt your baby, Adele. But I can’t have you or,’ he waved vaguely in the direction of her bump, ‘it, on my conscience.’

  ‘I know. I do understand.’ She held out her arms to him. ‘Come and give me a hug.’

  Claudia was dabbing at the bruise developing below her eye with concealer when Melanie put her head round the dressing room door.

  ‘Still in one piece, then?’

  Claudia glanced at her half-sister through the mirror. ‘Just. But coupled with the fact that I managed to all but write-off my new car, I have to say that I’d give a big thumbs-down to leaping out of an aeroplane as a way to spend the morning. There,’ she said, leaning forward to examine the result of her camouflage job more closely. ‘Will I get away with that do you think?’

  ‘You’ve had an accident? Should you be here? What happened?’ Anxious questions bubbled out in a rush.

  ‘Nothing much. I put my foot on the brake pedal and, well...’ - she shrugged - ‘...as I said, nothing much happened.’

  Shaken, Melanie, younger than her twenty years, five of them spent working in Australian television, might suggest and still endearingly impressionable, sank into an old-fashioned basket chair set at an angle beside the dressing table. ‘You mean the brakes failed?’ she whispered in a shocked voice.

  ‘You could say that.’ Claudia mentally reviewed her conversation with the manager of the garage which had supplied the car. ‘I believe I said something along those lines when I called the garage and asked them to pick up the wreck.’

  ‘But how did you stop? I mean-’

  ‘Stopping was no problem. An aircraft hangar obligingly got in the way.’

  ‘A what!’

  ‘An aircraft hangar.’ Claudia tossed a grin in her sister’s direction. ‘Eventually. First I bounced along the side of a very large Landcruiser that belonged to an equally large man.’ She gave another little dab at the bruise. ‘He wasn’t very pleased. In fact a short while later he pushed me out of an aeroplane.’ She indicated the bruise beneath her eye. ‘It’s been a fun day all round.’

  ‘It doesn’t sound like my idea of fun. Should you be here?’ she repeated.

  ‘The bruise is that bad?’

  ‘The bruise doesn’t show. Well, not that much. But you must be pretty shaken up.’

  ‘Shaken, my dear, but not stirred. The show must go on.’ There was a tap at the door. ‘Come in.’

  Jim Gardner, the stage door keeper brought in a hand tied bouquet of roses. ‘A gentleman just brought these to the stage door for you, Miss Claudia. There’s a note. He’s waiting for an answer.’

  ‘Is he, indeed?’ Claudia took the pale yellow roses and picked out an envelope tucked between the stems. If it was Tony he’d get all the answer he could handle.

  ‘How lovely. Who are they from?’ Melanie asked.

  ‘I’ve no idea.’ Her name, written in bold, black ink, gave her no clues. She flipped it open and slipped out the card. “It’s important that I speak to you. I’ll come backstage after the performance. Gabriel MacIntyre.” Claudia laughed. ‘Well, well. It appears my very large, very angry man wants to see me.’

  ‘Maybe he wants to apologise for pushing you out of that aeroplane,’ Melanie suggested, taking the card and regarding it with interest. ‘He’s a touch dictatorial, but he has lovely handwriting.’

  Apologise?
For being rude, or for kissing her, Claudia wondered briefly before turning to the waiting doorman. ‘Jim, please tell Mr MacIntyre that I’m sorry, but I’m busy after the performance.’ She glanced defensively at Mel. ‘Good handwriting doesn’t make up for rude.’

  ‘I didn’t say a word.’ Then, ‘You’re keeping the flowers?’

  Claudia lifted the blooms to her face, but florists’ roses rarely had much scent and these were no exception. ‘It would be too cruel to return them. What would a man do with a bunch of flowers? And all that ribbon, too. They’d be nothing but an embarrassment to him.’ She grinned at Mel. ‘Perhaps I should send them back. I’d enjoy embarrassing him.’

  ‘Would you? Why?’ Claudia didn’t enlighten her and she shrugged. ‘Sending the roses back won’t embarrass him unless he’s truly stupid. He’ll just dump them in the nearest bin,’ Mel informed her. She shrugged. ‘I tried it once.’

  ‘You have hidden depths, little sister.’ But Claudia knew instinctively that Mac wasn’t the kind of man to allow a woman to embarrass him quite so easily. ‘In that case I’ll keep them. Thank you, Jim, just pass on my message.’

  Jim, who had heard just about everything in a long life spent behind the scenes in the theatre and was surprised by nothing, nodded. ‘Yes, Miss Claudia.’

  ‘No, wait. I want to be sure he gets the message. Forget the “sorry”. Just tell him that I’m busy. And don’t on any account let him in,’ she warned, as an afterthought. ‘No matter what he says.’

  ‘Right, Miss.’

  ‘You’re absolutely heartless, Claudia,’ Melanie chided. ‘If the poor man just wanted to say he was sorry for losing his temper the least you can do is listen. You did run into his car.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But I wasn’t showing off.’

  ‘Oh,’ Melanie murmured, ‘is that what he said?’

  ‘He did. So, if he wants to tell me how sorry he is, he’ll have to try a lot harder. Yellow roses, indeed.’

  Melanie took them from Claudia. ‘What’s wrong with them? You didn’t expect red, did you?’ Then she gave Claudia a thoughtful look. ‘Or did you? In addition to being very large and very irritable, is he also very good looking?’

  Claudia laughed. ‘I’m sure some women would find him absolutely devastating,’ she said, remembering those blue eyes, ‘but he’s a bit rough hewn for my taste.’

  ‘Then why won’t you see him?’

  ‘Because in the language of flowers my sweet innocent, yellow roses indicate insincerity.’

  ‘You can’t expect a man to know that!’ her sister protested. ‘Especially not the rough hewn variety.’

  ‘Maybe not, but I sense that he chose yellow instinctively.’

  ‘But you’ve already said that red wasn’t an option, so what does that leave? ‘Pink?’You’re not the kind of woman a man would send pink flowers to.’

  ‘No?’ Claudia considered the matter. ‘No, I think you’re right. Pink would be altogether too wishy-washy a colour for Gabriel MacIntyre.’

  ‘Gabriel MacIntyre. It’s a wonderful name. I’m tempted to go and have a look at him. Perhaps I could stand in for you, receive his apology by proxy? After all I am your sister.’

  Claudia laughed. ‘Oh, no. You’re too young and tender a plant for the likes of Mr MacIntyre, my sweet. He needs a woman capable of biting back.’

  ‘It sounds to me as if he’s made quite an impression on you, whether you’re admitting it or not. What a pity he didn’t understand about flowers. Although there doesn’t seem to be much choice left. White?’ she offered, doubtfully.

  ‘White?’ Claudia laid her fingers dramatically across her breast. ‘For a scarlet woman who flirted with someone’s husband?’

  Mel laughed uncertainly. ‘Don’t be silly.’

  ‘I’m not being silly,’ Claudia informed her. ‘It appears that Tony was married, a small detail that he somehow forgot to mention.’

  ‘Married? What a rat.’

  Claudia waved an admonishing finger. ‘Unkind to rats, Mel.’

  ‘But if you didn’t know, why is Gabriel MacIntyre blaming you? And why does he care?’

  Why indeed?

  ‘They work together. Maybe it’s some male bonding thing. In any case Mr MacIntyre assumes that I didn’t care whether Tony was married or not, so you can see that white roses would have been out of the question.’

  And there was only ever one actress who had commanded white roses by right.

  ‘Obviously,’ Mel continued. ‘In fact I’m beginning to wonder why he’s bothering.’

  Claudia shrugged. ‘Oh, come on, Mel, use your imagination,’ she encouraged, cynically. ‘Gabriel MacIntyre may be disapproving, but he isn’t entirely immune.’

  Mel blushed. ‘You’re joking?’

  ‘Maybe.’ She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror, the curve of her lower lip accentuated by the slight swelling that an ice pack had reduced, but not entirely eliminated. It had a bee-stung look. The look of a woman recently kissed. She lifted her fingers to her mouth as if to still the slight throbbing, before snatching them away. ‘Of course I’m joking,’ she said, with a rather forced brightness. ‘He probably just wants to know the name of my insurance company. Can you give me a lift home this evening, by the way?’

  ‘Of course.’ Mel handed Claudia the roses and got up. ‘I’d better go and get ready.’ At the door she paused. ‘Claud? I’m really sorry about Tony. I know you liked him.’

  ‘I should have realised a man that pretty was too good to be true.’

  ‘Maybe you should try the rough hewn type for a change,’ Mel advised with a grin as she departed.

  As the door closed behind her Claudia lifted the roses to her face, ruffling the soft petals against her lips for a moment before she tossed them onto the chair Mel had vacated and turned to the mirror to complete her make-up.

  ‘Have you hurt your ankle, Claudia?’ She was laughing at something her leading man had said as the enthusiastic audience finally allowed them to leave the stage, but she turned at the stage manager’s obvious concern.

  ‘Just twisted it a little, Phillip, but it’s nothing serious,’ she said, falling in beside him, slipping her arm through his as they made their way back to the dressing rooms. She extended her ankle a little to show the strapping. ‘I hope it wasn’t too obvious on stage?’

  ‘Not a soul in the audience will have noticed,’ he reassured her. ‘I saw you limping when you arrived, that’s all. Have you had an accident? I thought I noticed a bruise, too. Not that it shows now,’ he added, quickly.

  ‘Thanks to the miracle of make-up.’ Phillip Redmond had been part of the back-stage scene ever since she had been old enough to visit her parents in their dressing rooms under the watchful eye of nanny, and he was one of the first people her father turned to when he was mounting a production. More like one of the family than an employee. ‘I made a parachute jump this morning for a television programme,’ she told him with a grin. ‘I wouldn’t recommend it as a pastime; I’m bumps and bruises from head to toe.’

  He was horrified. ‘You shouldn’t be taking risks like that, Claudia. If you’d broken your ankle what would we have done tonight?’

  ‘Put on my understudy and no one would even have noticed,’ she said, as they reached her dressing room.

  ‘Claud!’ Mel came flying out her dressing room in her wrapper. ‘A old friend of mine from Oz just called and we’re going to a party. Do you want to come?’

  ‘I think a party on top of the day I’ve day would just about finish me, sweetheart. You go and have fun. I’ll get a taxi home.’

  ‘A taxi?’ Phillip asked. ‘What’s happened to that fancy new car of yours?’

  ‘She wrote it off this morning,’ Mel told him. ‘What with that and a parachute jump, you’d have thought she’d have taken the night off.’

  ‘The public paid to see Miss Beaumont perform,’ Phillip said, reprovingly, ‘not some girl they’ve never heard of. But you don’t have a theatrica
l background so I wouldn’t expect you to understand that.’ As far as Phillip was concerned television didn’t count and having dismissed Melanie he turned back to Claudia. ‘Don’t call a taxi, I’ll be happy to take you home.’

  Claudia bit back a reminder that Melanie Brett Beaumont was her sister, even if a very recent and unexpected addition to the family. Phillip had made no secret of the fact that he thought she was an interloper with no business adding Beaumont to her name.

  Given time he would probably get used to the idea, but he couldn’t be forced into accepting the girl. And although she would rather have called a taxi, she decided that it might be a good idea to accept his offer and attempt a little quiet diplomacy on Mel’s behalf. ‘That’s kind of you, Phillip. I appreciate it.’

  ‘Not at all. I’m happy to take you home anytime. I often performed the same service for your mother.’ The slightest emphasis on the last word seemed to have been especially for Mel’s benefit, Claudia thought, her spirits sinking. It would take rather more than diplomacy to reconcile him to Melanie. ‘Can you wait about twenty minutes or so?’ Phillip asked.

  ‘It’ll take me that long to clean off the war paint,’ Claudia told him. ‘Come along to the dressing room when you’re ready to go.’

  Mel glared after him. ‘Who does that man think he is?’ she demanded.

  ‘I’m sorry, but he goes years back with us, Mel. My mother took him on as assistant stage manager when he was a stage struck youth. I remember him keeping Fizz and me quiet backstage during a matinee once, during a gap in nannies. He fed us toffee non-stop.’ She glanced around. ‘It was here, I think, in this theatre. It must have been Anthony and Cleopatra.’

  ‘If it was Anthony and Cleopatra,’ Mel said, with a sharp edge of bitterness, ‘my mother was playing the second handmaiden on the left. I’ve still got the programme.’

  Claudia cursing herself for her lack of tact, put her arm around Mel’s shoulders. ‘Come on, darling, we know which of them Dad loved best, that’s what matters. And we all love you. Do you really care if the stage manager’s a bit prudish about it?’