by Liz Fielding
‘You’ll have no trouble from the landlord,’ she assured him.
‘I see.’
‘No, you don’t, Mac. I’m the landlord but I’d rather you kept that little gem to yourself since none of the other tenants know.’ She gave a little shrug at his raised eyebrows. ‘Mother left Fizz and me some money. Fizz sank all hers into her radio station, I bought this. But I prefer the managing agents to deal with complaints about dripping taps.’
‘You don’t have to excuse yourself to me.’
‘Don’t I? Then why do I feel you’re constantly judging me?’
He didn’t know. He had no idea why he felt the constant need to test her. Or maybe he knew only too well; he just wasn’t ready to admit it to himself.
‘You’re determined to stay put?’ he countered.
‘I need to be in London, Mac. And I refuse to hide.’
She looked the way she had before she’d jumped out of the aircraft. Scared but determined. She was going to stay in her own apartment and nothing he did was going to persuade her otherwise.
‘In that case I’d better get on with organising it.’
‘You do that. I’ll go and make your tea.’ She turned towards the kitchen, but instead of getting back to the telephone, Mac followed her. ‘You know this isn’t over, don’t you? This guy isn’t going to give up and go away.’
‘Maybe if I don’t react he’ll get bored.’
‘He might. Or he might just be driven to do something more dramatic, simply to get your attention.’
‘More dramatic?’ The wobble in her voice gave him hope and he went to her, took her shoulders, forced her to look up at him.
‘For the last forty-eight hours you’ve been on the run from this, Claudia. He’s been in control, jerking your strings, watching you jump. For heaven’s sake walk away. Give yourself a bit a space.’
‘And where will I go?’
‘There must be somewhere, someone who could offer you a-’
‘A bed?’ Some man, he meant. ‘Melanie?’ she offered. ‘Would that be wise? He anticipated I’d go to Fizz.’
‘He knows you. He knew you’d go there first. And I didn’t mean family.’
‘I know what you meant, Mac. But for your information I don’t keep a handy cache of lovers just on the off chance that I might need a bed for the night, although even if I had it would be none of your damn business. And perhaps now is as good a time as any to tell you that if you stay here, you’ll be sleeping in the spare room.’
He stared at her for a moment. ‘Then I guess we understand one another,’ he said, at last.
‘I understand you, Mac. Whether you understand me is a moot point. Meanwhile, whoever this person is, he’ll almost certainly catch up with me sooner or later no matter where I go. At least here you can install your toys, watch my back. If you still want to, that is.’ She rubbed at the gooseflesh that stippled her arms.
‘We’ll stay here if you insist. But on my terms. I’ll be laying down a whole heap of rules and you’ll have to do exactly as I say.’
We. He was staying. She hadn’t realised how much she was relying on that. ‘You expect me to do exactly what you say?’ she repeated.
‘Without question.’
‘I’ve never done exactly what I’ve been told in my entire life,’ she warned him.
‘Then the next few days should prove interesting. Shall we have a trial run?’
She held up her hands. ‘I know, I know, you’re still waiting for your tea. I’m afraid I’m not very good at the domestic stuff.’
‘I’m sure we’ll manage. But forget the tea for the moment, right now I want you to go and find something warmer to wear. You look like a plucked chicken.’
‘Well, thanks. Compliments are always welcome. But it’s nerves, not cold,’ she told him, changing her mind about the sweater. ‘I’m just the same before I go on stage.’
‘How interesting. Shall we try that one again?’ he suggested, very softly, the words dropping against her breastbone with an almost tangible insistence. ‘Go and change into something warmer.’
He was ordering her to change her clothes. Without question? ‘You don’t like my dress, is that it?’
‘Your dress?’ Mac tried not to think about the way the scrap of bodice clung to her breasts, the way the shortest of skirts swirled around her long slender legs. He had been trying very hard not to think about it all day, without notable success. ‘Your dress is fine,’ he said, woodenly, ‘as far as it goes. But it doesn’t go very far does it?’
‘It suits me.’
She was challenging him. Now that she had got her way about staying in the flat, she was making a push to establish herself as the one in control. He knew that if he shrugged and told her to do what she wanted, she would immediately do what he had told her do and find something warmer to wear.
Adele had been just the same as a kid. Maybe it was a female thing, but Claudia wasn’t kidding when she said she didn’t like taking orders.
‘It suits you just fine, Claudia. In fact you look quite stunning in it.’ The gooseflesh, he noticed, disappeared as she relaxed a little, warming to his compliment. He took two sets of door keys from his pocket and placed them on the kitchen counter. ‘Here are your keys. Two sets. I’d advise you not to let them out of your sight.’
‘I won’t, I promise.’ She’d promise him anything, but she was only delivering when it suited her.
‘I don’t think it would be a good idea to give a set to one of your neighbours, or your cleaning lady, or even your managing agents for the time being.’ He turned back into the hall and tapping the alarm box as he went, but not stopping, he said, ‘I’ve changed the code on your alarm system to nine two five seven. Can you remember that?’
‘Nine two five seven. Consider it done,’ she said as he unbolted the front door and finally turned to face her. ‘Where are you going?’
‘And I would advise you to be extremely wary of unexpected packages. Even packages that you are expecting.’
She looked confused, and he noted with interest that the gooseflesh was back. ‘Mac?’
She looked like a child, he thought. Lost and alone. He wanted to race back to her, sweep her up into his arms and hold her. Keeping his expression detached, his voice brisk, was as hard a thing as he had ever done.
‘Goodbye, Claudia,’ he said, and without waiting for her reaction, he closed the door behind him. He was half way down the stairs when she wrenched it open again.
‘I’m sorry,’ she called after him. He didn’t stop, didn’t look back and after a second he heard her footsteps behind him. ‘Mac, please. I understand what you’re doing and I’m sorry.’
He stopped then and turned. ‘Sorry? Why are you sorry?’
She gave a helpless little shrug, looked up at him with those big silver eyes. ‘I warned you that I wasn’t very good at taking orders.’
She was acting. It was a pretty performance, but that’s all it was. ‘Don’t worry about it. It doesn’t matter. I’ll look out for your television programme.’ He turned and headed for the front door.
‘Mac!’ She was angry now. With him, but with herself too. ‘Come back here!’ He opened the front door. ‘Please!’ He hesitated as the fear crept back into her voice, overlaying the disbelief that he could do this to her. ‘Please don’t leave me on my own. I’ll be good. I promise.’
It was the hardest thing Mac had ever done, but he kept his ground. He couldn’t let her off the hook that easily.
‘You don’t know how to be good, Claudia. You’ve been spoilt all your life. You want me to look after you but you’ll argue with everything I say. When I say “duck” you’ll still be arguing when the bullet hits you.’
‘No, really I won’t. Please, Mac. Come back to the flat and I’ll go and change. Straight away.’ And she would. This time. But the next time he asked her to do something it might mean the difference between life and death and Claudia Beaumont still had the look of a woman who thought
she could twist him around her little finger. All big moist eyes and soft tempting mouth and he knew from personal experience just how hard that mouth was to resist. ‘If you’ll stay, I’ll do everything you say.’
‘Will you?’
Drawing a cross over her heart, Claudia offered him an uncertain, wavery little smile. ‘I promise I’ll duck the minute you say the word.’
She did it so beautifully, he thought, that it would be a pleasure to surrender. But this wasn’t a game, it was for real. ‘Without question?’ he asked.
‘Without question.’
‘Prove it to me.’
‘Prove it?’
‘Give me your dress.’
‘My dress?’ She looked slightly startled, but agreed readily enough. ‘Oh, my dress. Of course,’ she said, retreating back up the stairs.
‘No, Claudia,’ he said, standing his ground in the doorway. ‘Right here and now.’
He saw the beginning of laughter form on her lips, then falter as she began to realise that he meant it. ‘Here? But the door’s open,’ she protested. ‘Anyone might see.’ He took a step towards the open door and he saw from her face that she was finally getting the picture. ‘But I’m not wearing anything...’ She waved her hand vaguely in the direction of her bosom. ‘Mac!’
He wasn’t going to back down, Claudia realised with horror. She had pushed him and this was his way of letting her know that he wouldn’t be pushed.
How dared he!
She felt a cold shiver feather her spine as the answer filled her head.
Easily. No problem.
He’d told her his terms for staying at the flat and she had immediately put them to the test. She’d always been the same, at home, at school, even on stage she’d always pushed against authority, testing the opposition to see just how far she could go, taking the boundaries to the limit. But what kind of idiot would try to push a man like Gabriel MacIntyre?
She didn’t have to look far for the answer.
‘You want my dress? Here and now?’ He didn’t answer, but then she hadn’t expected him to. She did as he said or she was on her own. Yesterday she would have told him to go to the devil. Yesterday she had been convinced this was all some sick joke.
Now, slowly, never taking her eyes off his face, she unfastened the buttons at the neck of the sundress and let the straps fall, still holding the tiny bodice against her breasts.
She paused there, certain that obedience demonstrated he would call a halt. He didn’t. Nor did he look away. Not quite Galahad, then. She found that oddly reassuring. A man without any kind of weakness would be unbearable.
She lowered the halter neck to the waist. There was no visible reaction, except for the tiny betraying beads of sweat that appeared above his lip. But it was enough and satisfied, she unfastened the buttons at the waist and let the dress puddle at her feet. When she stepped out of it she was wearing nothing but the briefest white pants and a pair of strappy high-heeled sandals.
‘There,’ she enquired, softly, when he didn’t speak. ‘Are you quite satisfied?’
Satisfied? By a pair of the shapeliest legs he had ever encountered at close quarters, legs that reached to the stratosphere? Satisfied by full generous hips that tilted provocatively towards him and breasts that were the stuff of dreams? Gooseflesh, Mac decided, was catching.
But although his mouth had gone suddenly very dry and his treacherous body had tightened with barely containable desire, Mac knew that if he allowed her to see the effect she was having on him he would have lost. And for her sake it was important that he didn’t lose.
So, offering up a silent prayer that it wouldn’t shake, he raised his hand, holding it out in a wordless demand that she bring her dress to him. Surrender completely.
For one long moment she made him wait, made him endure the torture that he had inflicted upon himself, before bending gracefully to pick up her discarded dress, carrying it towards him in two outstretched hands like a precious votive offering from some heathen priestess. But if her stance was that of a supplicant, her eyes were not downcast, they were bright and knowing and her lips were set in a provocative curve. For a moment his resolve wavered as he realised that she had not surrendered. She would never surrender. The game had simply moved onto another level.
Then he grasped the dress, tightening his fist about it and holding it out in front of him for just long enough to prove that he had complete mastery of his reactions before letting it fall to his side. It was, he thought, a pretty damn close thing.
‘Now,’ he invited, through a throat that felt as if it had been stuffed with hot gravel. ‘Why don’t you go and put on something warmer.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
CLAUDIA was very conscious of eyes following them as she led the way backstage the following afternoon. She had warned Mac that rumours of a romance would be flying about, but even she had been surprised by the number of photographers camped out on the theatre doorstep to await her arrival.
‘I’m sorry, Mac,’ she murmured as he brought the four-wheel drive to a halt. ‘They’re not normally this eager.’
‘Maybe they’d heard you wouldn’t be alone,’ he replied, coolly. Maybe they had. He caught her expression and shrugged. ‘If he knows you’re not alone your nasty little letter writer might think twice about trying anything.’
‘So you rang around and invited the press to see just how cosy we’ve become?’
He couldn’t miss the chipped ice in her voice. She didn’t mean him to. But he ignored it. ‘That’s right. And this way no one is going to be surprised if I tag along everywhere you go.’
‘Everywhere?’ she enquired, tartly.
‘Like superglue,’ he promised.
‘Can we have a photograph, Claudia?’ one of the men called, as they paused at the stage door.
‘Haven’t you got enough, Jimmy?’
The motor winds of the cameras had been working since Mac had driven up the theatre, but if she were going to be plastered over the dailies she’d prefer it not to be an inelegant picture of her climbing down from the four-wheel drive. ‘Are you sure about this, Mac?’ she asked, as he took her arm. ‘It won’t be much fun.’
‘It’s no fun at all,’ he assured her. ‘I’m glad you realise the sacrifice I’m making.’
‘You ain’t seen nothin’ yet,’ she warned, as she slipped her arm through his and leaning against him, looked up at him with an idiotically besotted smile.
He returned her smile for the benefit of the cameras, but only she could see the look in his eyes. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’ he demanded.
‘Only because I know you’re not,’ she replied, sweetly. ‘And this was your idea, remember?’
‘Then we’d better be convincing.’ She anticipated his next move but, trapped between the stage door and his equally hard body she could do nothing to avoid it. Instead she was forced to wait while he slowly lowered his head to hers and brushed her lips with tormenting sweetness for the benefit of the photographers.
‘Are you sure you haven’t done this before?’ she asked, a little breathlessly. ‘You really are very good at it.’
‘High praise indeed from an acknowledged expert.’
Claudia resisted the temptation to say something extremely rude; instead she turned a blazing smile on the photographers and blew them a kiss before punching the code into the stage door security pad.
It was the most they had said to one another since the incident with the dress. She had been genuinely cold by the time she had walked up the two flights of stairs to her flat.
She had wanted to run, certain that any second a door would open and one of the other tenants would see her. But she didn’t run. She had walked as sedate and straight-backed up the stairs as if she had been dressed for a debutante’ ball, refusing to let Mac see how upset she was.
Once inside her apartment he had rapidly lost interest in what she was wearing, shutting himself away in the living room with the telephone. That suited
her fine and she had locked herself in the bathroom for a long hot soak and then, wrapped in silk pyjamas and a warm dressing gown had finally made a pot of tea.
Mac had barely looked up when she placed a cup beside him.
She hadn’t encouraged conversation, taking her own cup to her bedroom and she had locked that door too, although more as a gesture than in any hope of keeping him out should he decide to needed to open it.
He hadn’t. Apparently he was too busy to give her a wake up call and when she finally emerged, tousle headed and heavy eyed, it was to discover that her apartment was overrun with total strangers doing complicated things to her telephone, her windows and her doors. The smell of cooking drew her to the kitchen. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked a man busy at the grill pan.
‘Nothing to worry about, miss. Just fixing up a few odds and ends. Fancy a bacon sandwich?’
Claudia knew, in theory, that breakfast was a good thing. In practice she rarely indulged in anything more challenging than a slice of toast before lunch. About to refuse politely and withdraw, Claudia caught Mac’s expression as he worked at the laptop computer propped on the kitchen counter. It was quite evident that the idea of her eating one of the doorsteps being dished up was causing him some amusement and she just had to wipe that look off his face.
‘Thank you,’ she said, pushing back her hair and tightening the belt of her robe. ‘I’d love one.’ With the sandwich came with a mug of thick, dark coffee. She eyed her breakfast with misgiving before picking up the plate and mug and backing towards the door, planning to retreat to the privacy of her bedroom where she could decide what to do with the contents.
‘Don’t let us drive you out, Claudia,’ Mac said, without looking up.
‘I don’t want to get in the way.’
‘You won’t. There’s plenty of room.’ He patted the empty stool beside him. ‘And I want to check your plans for the rest of the week.’ He looked up and smiled then. ‘You can tell me about them while you have your breakfast.’ And under his watchful eyes she had been forced to eat every mouthful of that damn sandwich, drink every drop of coffee so strong that it would keep her awake for a week.