by Liz Fielding
Somewhere in the back of her mind she could hear the audience clapping, counting out the seconds as the kiss went on and on. But this final humiliation didn’t seem to matter. Nothing seemed to matter, except the heat of Gabriel MacIntyre’s mouth and slow, deliberate way in which he was taking possession of her.
Then, suddenly it was over and as she leaned back against his arm, her hair falling back from her face, his eyes were shuttered, giving her no clue to the way he was feeling.
Furious with him, furious with herself, she barely managed to keep her own emotions from spilling over. But despite the provocation, the temptation to do exactly what she had done the first time he had kissed her, she knew better than to lose her temper in front of an audience of millions. Instead she briefly lowered her lashes.
‘Tell the people, Mac,’ she murmured huskily, ‘was that kiss worth fourteen thousand pounds?’
‘It’s your good cause, Claudia, you tell me,’ he replied, his voice soft as tearing velvet.
‘Don’t even talk to me,’ she said, as Barty followed her to the door. ‘I never want to be involved in a show with you again.’
‘It was just a bit of fun, Claudia. And you did very well out of it.’
‘No thanks to you. And it’s still chickenfeed. This is the cheapest kind of television going. You get celebrities to appear for nothing but their expenses because the proceeds are all for charity and you get the public to put their hands in their pockets to support them. And tomorrow I’ll be all over the tabloids locked in his arms.’ She glared at Mac. ‘I suppose you knew all about this? So much for your objection to making a fool of yourself.’
‘I didn’t as a matter-of-fact.’ He shrugged. ‘But as you said, it was for a good cause.’
‘No, Mac. It was for cheap publicity for his show.’
‘Not that cheap,’ Barty complained.
‘No,’ she agreed. At least she had the satisfaction of knowing that she had squeezed him until he squeaked. She glanced at her watch and headed for the door. ‘Just consider yourself lucky that I have to be somewhere else, Barty. You’ve got off lightly.’ Mac beat her to the door, opening it for her, but as he took her arm she shook him off. ‘Will you stop manhandling me?’ she demanded, eyes flashing as her temper turned on him. He lifted his hands, holding them palm up to show that he’d got the message. ‘Right. Let’s go.’
He held the car door for her, but did not offer her a hand as she climbed into the car. And he didn’t try to make conversation as they sped back to the theatre. But he did follow her inside when they arrived.
‘Get lost, Mac. I’ve had all I can take of you for one day.’
‘Not quite, I’m afraid. You won’t be able to get into your flat. I’ve changed the locks and the combination on your alarm. I’ll take you home after the performance and run through it with you.’
‘No, Mac, you won’t, because I’m not going back to my flat. I won’t be back until Monday afternoon,’ she informed him. ‘Which will give you plenty of time to put everything back exactly the way it was. And, since you’re such good pals, you can leave my spare set of keys with Mrs Abercrombie.’
With that she turned on her heel and went backstage to her dressing room. She was still shaking with rage as she applied her makeup.
‘Five minutes, Claudia.’
‘Right.’ She put the finishing touches to her hair and stood up, taking half a dozen slow breaths. Then she opened her wardrobe door to take out the long white lace peignoir that she wore in her first scene.
It was in shreds.
*****
‘Darling, you looked absolutely fine,’ Melanie reassured her. ‘Your wrap is lovely, no one could possibly have known you weren’t wearing your costume.’
‘Unless they’d seen the show before,’ Phillip said. ‘Or they had looked at the production stills outside the theatre. Or they checked their programmes.’ He was white with rage. ‘Have you any idea how this reflects on me? On my staff? I don’t know what Mr Edward will say.’
Melanie turned on him. ‘Is that all you can think of? Your own selfish concerns? Have you any idea what it must have been like for Claudia to walk on stage, carry on as if nothing had happened minutes after finding something like that? I don’t know how she did it.’
Claudia raised a hand. She was not about to referee an argument between the two of them.
‘Phillip, will you please see that the garment is replaced by Monday evening and ask wardrobe to ensure that there are spare costumes available in future.’
‘For Miss Melanie as well?’
Claudia considered telling him that it wasn’t necessary. But that would draw unnecessary attention to her own predicament and the fewer people who knew about that the better. ‘Of course. And when I come to the theatre on Monday I will want a full list of everyone who has been through the stage door since the first performance today. Staff and visitors, anybody working here.’
‘You’ll have it.’
Mel touched her arm. ‘Can I give you a lift home, Claudia?’
‘No, I’m going to Broomhill for the weekend.’ She had a sudden urge to tell Melanie where she would be. ‘I’m staying with Fizz and Luke.’
‘What about transport?’
‘The garage loaned me a car. And before you ask, I’m quite capable of driving myself.’
‘Are you sure?’ Claudia gave her the kind of look that brooked no argument. ‘Right. See you on Monday then,’ she said, melting through the dressing room door.
‘Claudia,’ Phillip began, but she cut him off.
‘Monday, Phillip. And will you close the door on your way out please.’
Alone in her dressing room, Claudia sat very still and considered what had happened. Thought about someone walking into her dressing room, slashing her costume to ribbons and then walking out again. And she thought about the car the garage had loaned her sitting outside the theatre since she had arrived just after two. Out in the open. Unprotected. She thought about it for a long time.
Then she opened her bag, took out a card and dialled the number on it.
A man answered with the number, nothing else, and waited.
‘My name is Claudia Beaumont,’ she said, and realised that there was a noticeable shake to her voice. ‘Gabriel MacIntyre told me to call you if I needed transport.’
CHAPTER FIVE
GABRIEL MacIntyre arrived at the theatre twenty minutes after her call and the doorman directed him backstage.
When he had left her three hours earlier, she had been angry with him. Now he was angry with himself. He had attempted to scare her into listening to him. He had wanted to scare her. Whether to punish her for what she had put Adele through, or to punish her for what she was putting him through he refused to contemplate.
But as she opened her dressing room door to his knock, he knew his own feelings were of no importance. She was pale, her skin drawn tight across her face, her eyes full of apprehension.
‘Mac!’ For a moment he could have been convinced that she was glad to see him. She quickly disabused him of that. ‘You didn’t have to come yourself.’
‘I was there when you rang in. I thought...’ Had he thought? Or just reacted? ‘Well, I just thought if something else had happened you might be happier with someone you recognised.’ He glanced around. The room was a muddle of telegrams, letters, makeup. The room was almost like a stage set of what an actress’s dressing room should be. Even down to the vase of red roses that adorned her dressing table. But there was nothing to account for her pallor. ‘Has something happened?’ he asked.
Claudia didn’t answer him, instead she crossed to the wardrobe, slid back the door, made a helpless little gesture at the white lace peignoir hanging inside.
She had worn it on stage the night before. It was cut low enough to display the promise of firm and generous breasts, the bodice fitted tight to her neat waist before flaring out into a full length skirt. There had been an almost audible sigh from the audience as she ha
d swept across the stage and his body had tightened in desire at her seductive beauty. His, and every other red-blooded man in the audience. But he had known what it was like to hold her, breath her scent, kiss her. And to suffer her indignation for his presumption.
Turning abruptly away he lifted the beautiful lace frippery out of the wardrobe and his stomach turned over as he saw what had happened. No wonder she was white to her gills. He carried it to the dressing table and examined the slashes in the brightness of the mirror lights. It had been done with a razor. An old-fashioned cut-throat razor. And his blood ran cold at the thought of what else such a weapon might do.
‘It happened while I was at the studios,’ she said, her voice not quite steady.
‘Have the police been called?’ he interrupted briskly, keeping his voice matter-of-fact with considerable difficulty.
She shook her head. ‘The curtain was about to go up when I found it, and after the show everyone was exhausted, I couldn’t put them through a interrogation. On Monday the stage manager will compile a list of everyone who had a legitimate reason to be backstage this evening, and he’ll question them to see if anyone else was seen.’
‘Seen but not remarked on at the time?’ He wondered if she realised just what she was saying.
She nodded. ‘Visitors have to sign in, but people are in and out all the time, particularly between matinees.’ She shrugged, as if she knew it was hopeless anyway. ‘The backstage crew tend to send out for pizzas.’
‘And they just get waved through.’
‘It happens. Jim knows them you see and if he was busy...’ - she turned her huge silver eyes on him - ‘...well, someone who was known, recognised, wouldn’t have been challenged once they were inside the theatre.’
Known. Recognised.
She knew. She had realised that the person who had done this must be someone who could walk through her tight little world without question.
Someone she knew. Maybe even someone she called a friend. It was no wonder she looked like a ghost. It had gone beyond the point at which it could be brushed off as a sick joke. At best someone wanted to frighten her. He didn’t want to think about what the worst might be, but he would have to.
And so would she.
‘You’re very vulnerable here, Claudia. There are dozens of places someone could hide.’ She didn’t flinch from the thought and he realised that she had already worked that out for herself. It was why she had telephoned the number he had given her. She could no longer trust anyone. She was being forced into the arms of a stranger, an outsider with no axe to grind. Someone outside the world of the theatre who bore no grudge, real or imagined, to fuel this nightmare. ‘Perhaps you should consider taking a break, disappearing for a week or two, until whoever’s doing this has been found.’
‘I can’t do that.’
‘Not even a week? Even stars get sick sometimes.’
‘No, Mac.’ He hadn’t noticed the stubbornness of her chin before. Not especially. He’d been too intent on her mouth. But it suddenly demanded attention. ‘I won’t be driven out of the theatre. And I have interviews arranged all next week. There’s a new television serial starting at the weekend.’ She managed a wry smile. ‘It’s about a girl driven to the edge of suicide by a stalker.’
‘Are there any parallels with this?’
‘I hope not. The girl I play is finally driven to kill the man involved. She can’t see any other way to reclaim her life.’ She regarded him without resentment. ‘If you’re thinking that this is another candidate for a publicity campaign-’
‘No.’ He said it too quickly. She was right, the thought had bubbled up like poison.
He turned away to hang the remains of the dressing gown back in the wardrobe. If it came to the police, they would want to see it, keep it for evidence, although heaven alone knew how many people had touched it since it had been slashed. But he sensed a reluctance to involve the police.
Her reasons for not calling them this evening had been flimsy to say the least. It was possible that despite her denials that she knew who was doing this. Or at least had her suspicions.
‘I wouldn’t blame you, Mac,’ she said, with the tiniest of sighs, an unconscious gesture that betrayed her own uncertainties. ‘To tell you the truth, I rather wish it was something that simple.’
Despite the colourful top she was wearing, a top that shouted “here I am, come and get me”, to her tormentor, she looked fragile, haunted and he wanted to go to her, hold her, reassure her that everything would be all right. That no one would hurt her.
Instead he picked up her overnight bag and opened the door. ‘Come on. I think you should get out of here. Right now.’ She might be at home in the theatre, but to him it was alien, full of shadows, a place where danger had too many hiding places.
As he urged her towards the stage door his skin crawled with tension as he thought of some crazy with a razor on the loose, capable of anything.
The tall, slight figure of man, was waiting by the stage door and Mac, hand on Claudia’s arm, kept himself between her and the unknown.
But Claudia obviously knew him. ‘Phillip, I thought you’d gone home.’
‘Not while you were here,’ he said, with just a touch of reproach in his voice. ‘I thought you might need a lift. I didn’t want you to think of going home alone. Not after...’ Redmond paused, apparently unwilling to mention the attack on her gown in the presence of a stranger. ‘You know I’m happy to take you anywhere you want to go.’
Mac, on the receiving end of a long hard look that came close to a challenge, kept his face expressionless even though every nerve ending was on alert and urging him to get her out of there as fast as possible.
Claudia, despite her shock, continued to be gracious. ‘How thoughtful of you, Phillip, but as you see I have a lift tonight.’ She turned to him. ‘Mac, this is Phillip Redmond. The mainstay of our whole operation. Without him everything would grind to a stop. Phillip-’
‘I recognise Mr MacIntyre from the television,’ he said, stiffly, barely acknowledging his presence.
‘You watched the programme?’ Mac looked around. ‘I would have thought television was banned from such an august establishment.’
‘Hardly. Mr Beaumont has television interests and the VTR is a very useful aid. Everyone was in the Green Room to watch Claudia.’ Everyone? Not the dress slasher. Had he known that everyone’s attention would be distracted?
Mac kept his thoughts to himself, but he felt Claudia’s arm twitch nervously beneath his fingers.
‘Well, if you’re quite happy with your transport arrangements?’ Redmond murmured, doubtfully, as he turned back to Claudia. If the man had been ten years younger, Mac thought irritably, he would have been inviting a black eye.
Claudia, however was gentle. ‘Quite sure.’ She touched his hand, lightly. ‘Thank you, Phillip.’
Outside, the not-quite-dark of the August night was cool enough to raise a shiver. He felt it as she hesitated in the doorway, no doubt remembering the way he had jumped her earlier. Then he had wanted to frighten her. Now she flinched as he put his arm reassuringly about her shoulder to ease her towards his ill-used Landcruiser.
‘It’s all right, Claudia.’
But she didn’t move. ‘The car. It shouldn’t be left here.’
‘What car?’
She pointed to the small saloon parked twenty yards behind his. ‘The garage loaned it to me.’
He didn’t have to ask why she’d changed her mind about driving it. Someone had breached the security of her dressing room. Her car, standing out in the open since early afternoon, was a much easier target for a man who had shown himself mechanically skilled, and equally adept at creating diversions.
‘I’ll get it picked up and checked over.’
‘Straight away? If some youngsters decided to take it... I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt because of me.’
If they got hurt, he thought, it would be because they couldn’t keep their hands
off someone else’s property, but he didn’t argue.
‘Straight away,’ he said. Then, ‘It’ll take a good hour to get to Broomhill, even at this time of night. Do you want to get in the back, try and sleep?’
‘I won’t sleep, not straight after a performance,’ she said, with an effort at a smile. ‘The adrenalin keeps on pumping.’
‘I suppose so.’ But he didn’t think there was too much adrenalin pumping around her system right now.
She looked bloodless, a pale shadow of herself; he couldn’t begin to estimate the strength of will it must have taken to step out on the stage and carry on as if nothing had happened. And it had taken everything out of her.
She’d lost that feisty, do-it-or-die look that had struck him so forcibly when, despite her fear she had stepped out of the plane and into thin air. Then she had come up fighting. Right now she looked fit to drop.
But perhaps she didn’t want to risk sleep, was afraid of the demons that might come if she allowed those heavy, silk-lashed lids to close. A queasy wave of anxiety for her swept over him as he stood over her. Then, impatient with himself, he switched off the alarm and opened the passenger door.
She had made it more than plain that she didn’t want him worrying about her.
In truth she wasn’t the kind of woman he would normally worry about. Glamorous she might be, but her entire life was a performance. Even when she was thanking Phillip Redmond for his concern, he had sensed that was all it had been. A beautifully judged performance. Not genuine at all. And now she was making a drama about climbing up into the Landcruiser.
Then he remembered her ankle and cursing to himself, lowered his shoulder so that she could put her hand on it before lifting her up into the high seat.
‘All right?’ he asked.
‘Fine,’ she said, fastening her seat belt.
He watched her for a moment before closing the door on her and settling himself in the driving seat. She glanced behind her, still on edge about the sedate little saloon car the garage had loaned her. He was pretty certain that no self-respecting joy-rider would be want to be seen behind the wheel of such a vehicle, but he made a phone call.