by Liz Fielding
‘I’m sure he’d much rather have the grand tour of one of Broomhill’s most interesting inhabitants,’ Fizz replied with an infuriatingly smug little smile.
The trouble was, Claudia realised as she stood beneath the shower a few moments later, she really wasn’t at all sure what Mac wanted. Which on its own made him more interesting than most men she met. Most men only had one thing on their mind and boringly let it show.
She raised her face to the warm water, letting it stream through her hair and down her body, wondering just what it would be like to have him there, kissing her, not with half the country watching them, but alone and with no holds barred.
Not boring.
Then, furious with herself she reached out and snapped off the water. What the hell was she thinking about? The man thought she was easy. A loose living actress without a moral to her name. The way he had kissed her proved it.
Well, let him think it. He wouldn’t be the only one.
If she lay down a penny for every man her name had been linked with they would stretch the length of Broomhill Pier. But linked with and lain with were very different.
Gabriel MacIntyre was very different.
She examined her reflection in the glass. For all her sister’s concern, she didn’t look so bad, the fading bruise and faint shadows beneath her eyes were quickly dealt with. Mascara to lengthen her lashes and a hot lipstick did the rest. But she ignored the baggy shorts and t-shirt she had brought with her, originally planning to spend the day quietly on the beach with an undemanding book.
If she was going down into Broomhill with Mac she wanted heads to turn. She wanted him to see heads turn.
The wardrobe contained an assortment of clothes that she and Melanie had left behind on earlier visits and she picked out a little dress, a swirl of bright colours with a skimpy halter neck and a skirt short enough to display her long legs to advantage.
It was Melanie’s, but she wouldn’t mind Claudia borrowing it. And it was a head turner if ever she’d seen one.
She found Mac leaning against the balustrade that overlooked a tiny private beach tucked below the house in a crack in the cliff. He was no longer wearing the macho combat gear he had been pressed into wearing for the television programme.
This morning he was altogether less aggressive in a pair of light coloured chinos topped with an expensive jersey polo shirt the colour of bluebells, a shade that perfectly matched his eyes. Only a man who was vain about his appearance would have been so careful with the colour. She had met enough of them in her business to recognise the type and Gabriel MacIntyre was definitely not the type.
So it had to be a present from a woman, a woman who wanted to display her man, show him off. His dead wife, then, or was there someone else in his life?
If there was, she had to be a pretty relaxed sort of girl, Claudia decided. A great deal more relaxed than she would be in similar circumstances.
Whoever had chosen the shirt knew her business. In the olive drab sweater Mac had just looked big. But the silky material of the shirt accentuated his shoulders, putting her in mind of the iron girders that framed multi-storey office blocks, draping a torso equally lean and hard. And the forearms on which he was resting as he stared out to sea had the kind of mass that only hard manual work could develop. Broomhill had better brace itself.
Heads would turn for sure, but not just to look at her.
‘Do you always carry an overnight bag with you?’ she asked, turning her back on the sun-spangled sea, propping herself on her elbows as she leaned back against the parapet, her arm not quite touching his.
He glanced down at her, he eyes lingering momentarily on hint of breast where the bodice divided to fasten about her neck. ‘Doesn’t everyone?’
‘Not without the expectation of a night in a strange bed.’ She lifted her face to the sun so that her hair hung down behind her and she closed her eyes. ‘Whose bed were you planning on sleeping in, Mac?’
‘I carry a sleeping bag, too. One can never be sure of a bed.’
‘Single or a double,’ she continued, deliberately provoking him.
‘This is a very pretty spot,’ he said, refusing to be provoked. ‘Devlin was lucky to find a place like this on the market.’
‘Luke’s the kind of man who makes his own luck. He worked for everything he owns. And so did my sister.’ She realised that she sounded defensive. There was something about him that put her on the defensive and she wasn’t used to it. She was used to being in control. All the time.
‘Fizz was telling me about the radio station. She suggested you show me around.’
‘Did she? There’s not much to see. A radio station is a rather boring place unless you’re actually broadcasting. But it’s usually fun walking along the pier on Sunday. There’s a lot of live entertainment.’
‘Unfortunately fun isn’t on the agenda.’ He produced an envelope from his pocket. ‘This was on the mat when I got up this morning.’ She took the envelope, opened the letter it contained. YOU CAN RUN, the evil letters screamed at her, BUT YOU CAN’T HIDE FROM ME. I KNOW EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, quickly as she dropped the letter, her hands covering her mouth. He pulled her into the safety of his arms and for a moment held her there while the tremor swept through her body. For a moment she allowed him to. ‘It’s all right, Claudia.’
‘All right,’ she moaned. ‘How can it be all right?’ She took a grip of herself and pushed away from him. ‘It’s not all right. I shouldn’t have come here. If Fizz had found that filthy thing...’
He retrieved the letter from the gravel, put it in his pocket. ‘She didn’t. I’m an early riser.’
‘But whoever sent that is earlier.’
‘Not sent, Claudia. It’s Sunday. It was pushed through the letterbox. But your sister doesn’t know about it. We thought it best.’
‘You were right. She mustn’t ever know about this. I’m afraid you’ll have to forgo your tour of the local beauty spots, Mac. The sooner we leave here the better.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d see it that way.’ She sensed his relief and it infuriated her.
‘What kind of a person do you think I am, Mac? Do you think I’d risk my sister’s peace of mind, her safety, for one second longer than necessary?’
He looked awkward. ‘Luke didn’t think you should be left to deal with this by yourself. He wanted you to stay.’
‘Then you should have told him that you’d appointed yourself my personal bodyguard.’
‘I did.’ He saw her face and made a move to calm her down. ‘He took a lot of persuading but I told him that I’d take care of things. Until we know what kind of person we’re dealing with-’
‘You don’t have to spell it out, Mac. Why the devil didn’t you call me earlier?’ She glared at him, furious that he could have delayed, even for a minute.
‘Luke thought it best to act as if nothing had happened and he took the view that calling you before twelve unless there was a national emergency might just alert Fizz to the fact that there was something wrong. We had a good look around but whoever left the note didn’t hang about.’ They exchanged a glance. ‘What excuse shall we give Fizz for leaving so soon?’ he asked.
‘You have to ask? Like all new converts my sister believes she has a mission to urge others to take the path to wedded bliss. She’ll do everything she can to foster romance.’
‘Maybe.’ He didn’t quite grit his teeth, but it was a near thing. ‘But I did get the impression that she’s expecting you to stay until tomorrow. Something about you making a recording for one of her programmes?’
‘Oh, God, “Holiday Bay”,’ Claudia said, with a groan. ‘It’s a soap she broadcasts from the radio station. A sort of “Archers” by the seaside. The whole family has been co-opted into taking part, whether they want to or not. But it’s not a problem. I’ll take the scripts with me and record my bits in London. The rest of the cast can record around me. Mel and I do it all the time when we can’t
get home. And you can leave Fizz to me. If I tell her that we’re moving down to my flat for a little more privacy she won’t be surprised.’
‘Your flat? You have a flat, here in Broomhill?’
‘Just a small self-contained apartment at home. In my father’s house,’ she explained, when he looked blank. ‘I’m not here often enough to make anything bigger worthwhile.’
He looked doubtful. ‘Why on earth would Fizz think we’ve gone there? If your father-’
‘He isn’t. Dad’s away drumming up finance for a television series he’s going to make later in the year. We’d have the whole house to ourselves.’
He mouth tightened. ‘I see.’
‘Do you, Mac?’ Of course he did. ‘Well, call me clairvoyant,’ she said, ‘but somehow I never doubted that for a moment.’ She hadn’t expected anything else, but it still hurt that he would jump to the boringly obvious conclusion that it was a common occurrence. ‘I’ll go and tell Fizz we’re leaving. It’ll only take me a minute to pack.’
‘There’s just one thing before you do.’ She waited. ‘I told you that Devlin took a lot of persuading.’
‘Yes?’
‘I had to promise him that I’d take care of you.’
He didn’t have to make it sound quite such a chore. She hadn’t asked him to involve himself in her troubles. ‘It’s all right, Mac. Once we leave here I won’t hold you to it.’
‘I’m afraid you don’t have a choice in the matter. I gave the man my word that I’d look after you and I intend to keep it. If you don’t agree to do exactly as I say, Claudia, you’ll have to stay here.’
Claudia’s hard front came close to crumbling. In her experience men only wanted one thing from her. Borrowed glamour and bed. She lent her glamour when it suited her, her bed had been given to few. Her heart she had managed to keep entirely to herself.
But no one had ever insisted on taking care of her with quite that ring of sincerity. She was almost fooled by it.
CHAPTER SIX
‘TAKE care of yourself, Claud,’ Fizz instructed, earnestly, hugging her sister as Mac started the Landcruiser. ‘No more late nights.’
‘I’ll do my best to see she’s tucked up in bed before midnight,’ Mac said, softly as Claudia climbed in beside him. And he made a great performance of fastening her seat belt.
If they had been lovers it wouldn’t have bothered her in the least, she would have been too busy enjoying the attention. But they weren’t and it embarrassed her and she discovered to her chagrin that she was blushing. She could have sworn she had forgotten how.
‘And I’d leave the driving to Mac for the time being,’ Luke advised. ‘He knows what he’s doing.’ His words were invested with extra meaning for those who knew what he meant.
‘You’re a chauvinist, Luke Devlin,’ she called back to him as Mac let out the clutch and rolled away down the drive. She stuck her head out of the window. ‘I don’t know why Fizz puts up with you.’
But as they stood in the driveway, Luke’s arm protectively about Fizz, she knew. She sat back in her seat. She knew and she thought her sister was probably the luckiest woman in the world.
At the gate Mac eased out into the lane and then turned to Claudia. ‘It might be a good idea to check out your place down here before I take you back to London.’
It was almost a relief to be confronted with reality. No matter how brutal. ‘You think my correspondent will have visited there, too?’
‘It’s possible. He might have hedged his bets.’ But the house was quiet, peaceful, undisturbed. There were no unpleasant surprises. ‘Whoever is giving you a hard time seems to know you pretty well,’ Mac said, as they locked up and returned to the car. ‘Did you tell anyone at the theatre you would be staying with your sister rather than coming here?’
She shook her head. ‘Only Melanie.’ He looked thoughtful. ‘For goodness sake, it’s not Melanie,’ she declared, hotly.
His expression didn’t change, but he didn’t press it.
‘It’s possible you were overheard talking to her. Or maybe someone was listening in when you telephoned Fizz to tell her you were coming. Or maybe someone checked your phone to see who you had called. It wouldn’t take much working out-’
‘For goodness sake, Mac, leave it! Just take me home. I need to think about this, decide what to do.’
‘I’ll take you home, but only to pack. You can do your thinking somewhere safer. Somewhere no one will find you.’
He wasn’t listening, so she said, very carefully and quite slowly as if talking to someone whose wits had gone walkabout, ‘No. Thank you. I’ve done with sticking my head in the sand and last night I did my one and only impression of a headless chicken. I can’t ignore this, but I’m damned if I’ll run and I’m damned if I’ll hide.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with your spirit. Unhappily your reasoning isn’t in such good shape.’
She was determined not to lose her temper. He’d coming running to her rescue when she’d screamed for help. But now it was time for the professionals.
‘My reasoning is just fine and dandy. I’m not ignoring the problem, I’m going to call the police the minute I get home and put the whole thing in their hands. And you assured me that with your new locks I’ll be perfectly safe.’ She wanted him to be perfectly clear that he was off the hook. That she didn’t take his promise to Luke seriously. ‘You won’t forget to send me your bill?’
He sent her a scathing look. ‘Perfect safety is unobtainable, you should know that. Even with security cameras and round the clock monitoring, the determined intruder will always find a way inside. And you’ve still got to get to the theatre and back again late at night.’
He didn’t mention the possibility of attack coming out of the dark shadows of the theatre itself. Perhaps he was being kind. But she didn’t think so. He was leaving it to her imagination to do the job for him. And her imagination duly obliged.
‘I refuse to live in a cage,’ she said, a touch desperately. ‘I won’t be driven behind locked doors by some nasty little cockroach who gets his rocks off-’
‘All right,’ he said, quickly. ‘I understand how you feel. But you’ll still have to take precautions. I can organise proper protection for you.’
‘Can you?’ It didn’t take too much imagination to guess the role he had picked for himself. The night watch. ‘What would that involve?’
‘A driver trained to deal with any emergency, someone who can stay with you at all times, monitor your mail, filter incoming calls and watch your back at the theatre.’
‘A bodyguard,’ she said, dully.
‘Not a bodyguard. This is real life, not the movies. Just someone who will allow you carry on with your life, as near normally as possible, until whoever is threatening you is found and dealt with.’
‘No.’ It sounded appalling. ‘Thanks, but no thanks. I know you’re only trying to help, but your idea of normal doesn’t coincide with mine.’
‘Normal just isn’t going to be possible for a while, Claudia. You must see that.’
‘No.’
‘Think about it.’
‘No.’
‘For goodness sake be reasonable,’ he said, impatiently.
‘The police will deal with it,’ she said, cutting him off.
‘The police will do what they can. But they can’t be there every minute of the day.’
‘Good. I don’t want some stranger at my back every minute of the day.’ Her huge eyes challenged him to defy her. As they pulled up at a long line of traffic held up by road works, he turned and challenged her right back.
‘Whoever is writing you unpleasant little notes is at your back every minute of the day,’ he reminded her. ‘Whoever is chopping up photographs of you is at your back every minute of the day. Whoever is-’
She wanted to put her hands over her ears to shut out the words. She wanted him to take her in his arms and promise that no one would ever hurt her. She suddenly wanted all kinds of impossi
ble things. Her hands tightened in her lap, but her voice betrayed nothing.
‘I couldn’t possibly afford that kind of protection,’ she said.
‘How much is your life worth? Less than one of your couture frocks? Far less than one of those fabulous jewels you inherited from your mother.’ He turned briefly to look at her. ‘I hope you weren’t relying on those pathetic locks to keep them safe?’
That made her laugh but when he turned to look at her, she didn’t bother to explain why.
‘This is not a matter of life and death, Mac,’ she declared. ‘It’s nasty. And I’m not denying that last night came as a bit of a shock. But anyone who knows me could have guessed I’d go down to Broomhill and with Dad away, that I’d go to Fizz and Luke. No one would want to be in that great big empty house by themselves. Not after a fright. And that is the purpose behind all this nonsense. To shake me, make me run.’ Her hands were tight little fists. ‘But I can ignore it if I try hard enough.’
‘Can you?’ He gave his full attention to the road as the traffic began to move. ‘Should you?’ His eyes met hers briefly. ‘You may be right, but if you insist upon carrying on as if nothing has happened it’s possible that he’ll try harder to get a reaction.’
‘He?’
‘He,’ Mac affirmed. ‘Or are you still trying to convince me that Adele had something to do with this?’
‘You know her better than I do, Mac. But do you really think that a man would have slashed my costume? That was such a bitchy thing to do.’ Her eyes dared him to deny it.
He didn’t, instead he rubbed absently at a small scar just above his right eyebrow. ‘Maybe that was the intention. To make you think it was a woman.’
‘That’s a bit convoluted, isn’t it?’
‘Maybe. The trouble is, I can’t see a woman meddling with your brakes.’