by Liz Fielding
‘I thought you were planning to stick to me like a tube of instant glue,’ she protested, mildly.
‘You’ll be safe enough here for a while. But don’t go wandering off without me,’ he said, his voice teasingly light for the benefit of the ladies. His eyes issued a much sterner warning for her alone. ‘Not for any reason,’ he warned, as she accompanied him to the door.
‘What shall I do if I need the loo?’ she enquired, making her eyes large and innocent.
‘Cross your legs.’ Then, because the office closely resembled the tropical house at Kew Gardens he added, ‘Of course, if you get really desperate you could use the nearest plant pot.’ He didn’t wait for her answer, which he was fairly certain would be unprintable.
Jim, Mac discovered when he called at the stage door office, was not averse to a little gossip.
‘Phillip said you might have seen the woman who slashed Claudia’s dress,’ he prompted, as he made an apparently ham-fisted business of fastening the badge to his shirt. He’d noticed that few people were surprised that a big man should be clumsy.
‘I saw someone.’ Jim’s shrug suggested there was more if he was interested enough to ask. But Mac didn’t probe. Gossips just had to talk. Silence offended them. ‘Of course it could have been one of the cleaners,’ he added, after the pause went on too long. ‘They come and go at such a rate you can’t keep up with them.’
‘You don’t issue their ID’s then?’
‘I’ve got quite enough to do without that.’ Jim didn’t appear busy, but Mac was too polite to say so. ‘The cleaning contractors issue IDs to their own staff.’
‘Oh, right.’ Mac glanced up as a light began to flash over the stage door and Jim lifted himself heavily out of his chair. ‘What’s that?’
‘Someone’s at the door. It wouldn’t do to have people ringing a great loud bell whenever they felt like it, would it?’
He sniffed at the ignorance of outsiders and left the office.
Mac, who had been expecting the interruption knew that the courier at the door would keep Jim thoroughly occupied for at least two minutes. Nevertheless he wasted no time in attaching a listening device to the telephone on the man’s desk and when the doorkeeper returned bearing a package he was innocently contemplating an old framed poster of Elaine French and Edward Beaumont who had apparently appeared together at the theatre twenty years earlier.
‘It’s a package for you, Mr MacIntyre. You know most of those couriers can barely wait long enough for you to sign once,’ Jim grumbled, ‘but this one wanted me to sign more forms than the tax man.’ He waited, clearly expecting to be given chapter and verse of the contents, but Mac accepted the large padded envelope without comment. ‘You’d think he was handing over the blooming crown jewels,’ he prompted.
‘Not quite the crown jewels, I’m afraid. Just something for Claudia.’
‘Ah, well.’ Jim’s face softened. ‘She deserves a treat after what happened on Saturday night.’
‘I quite agree. But don’t say anything, it’s to be a surprise.’
Surprise was right. The package contained the small recorders he needed to pick up transmitter signals from his bugs.
He very much doubted that she would approve of what he was doing which was why he wasn’t telling her. He certainly didn’t want her warning anyone, her half-sister for instance, not to make calls they wouldn’t want overheard.
‘Say anything?’ Jim responded with scorn. ‘With women? When do you get the chance?’
Right now.
‘That was a nasty business with the dress,’ Mac dropped in casually, giving him a chance to vent his feelings. ‘I don’t understand why Redmond didn’t call in the police.’
‘The police?’ Jim laughed, although not with much humour. ‘What would we want to bother them for? I’m sure Miss Claudia knows perfectly well who did it.’
‘You think so?’ Mac didn’t need to act surprised. He might have his own suspicions that Claudia knew more than she was saying but Jim’s casual comment, added to Redmond’s earlier suggestion that she suspected who the culprit might be was unexpected, to say the least.
‘With these actresses it’s all up one minute and down the next. The jealousy. You’d have to see it to believe it.’ He shook his head. ‘I’ve seen girls trying to scratch one another’s eyes out over a walk-on part. And the men are worse if anything. No,’ he said, with the wisdom of someone who has seen pretty well everything in a long lifetime behind the scenes in the theatre. ‘It’s best to keep these things quiet. There’s nothing to be gained from a lot of tacky publicity and it’ll all blow over.’
‘Will it?’
‘Sure to.’
Mac hoped the man was right, but he had a feeling that with the kind of media interest Claudia was generating at the moment, keeping it quiet would be easier said than done. He weighed the package in his hand, thoughtfully. If anyone in the Private Lives company decided to enrich themselves and enliven the nation’s breakfast table with the story, they’d better not use any of the telephones in the theatre or they’d have to answer to him.
‘Are you going out, Mr MacIntyre?’ Jim asked as he made a move towards the door.
‘Just to the car.’
‘Then you’ll need the code for the keypad to open the door.’
Mac gave an inward sigh. He considered asking how often the number was changed, but he didn’t. It wouldn’t make any difference.
A day after it had been changed it would be in the possession of an unquantifiable numbers of spouses, partners, friends and quite possibly chalked up somewhere in half the local fast food delivery services in the area.
He hated door codes.
He collected a briefcase from the Landcruiser and then back inside asked Jim for directions to Phillip Redmond’s office.
‘Just down the corridor on the right,’ he said. Then as an after thought called after him, ‘But Phillip’s up in the lighting gallery at the moment.’
Five minutes later he was back in Claudia’s dressing room, having placed his tiny transmitters on all the backstage telephones. He wasn’t sure what he would pick up; probably nothing more exciting than orders called into the nearest pizza parlour on the coin operated telephone in the Green Room. Angela and Pam’s calls would prove to be a mixture of business and homely personal calls. Melanie was an unknown quantity, he hadn’t met the girl and as for Redmond, personal dislike was probably accounting for his hopes in that direction.
But in truth he was unlikely to discover anything of world shattering excitement. Claudia’s cockroach hadn’t yet stooped to using the telephone. He, or she, was probably only too aware of how vulnerable the system was to eavesdroppers, but it was wise to cover all options. And covering all options was what he planned to do, although he still felt decidedly seedy as he attached one to Claudia’s dressing room telephone. Telling himself that it was for her own safety didn’t make him feel any better about it.
The package that had been delivered contained a number of small voice-activated recorders each no bigger than a personal stereo and having tuned them in he placed them back in the envelope and out of sight on top of the wardrobe. Judging by the amount of dust up there, it seemed there was little likelihood of them being disturbed.
Then he opened the briefcase he had brought in from the Landcruiser. It was packed with state of the art listening equipment to pick up the mobile phones. The recordings might overlap, but they could be unravelled by an expert. And he was an expert.
‘What are you doing?’
He had heard the door open and closing the brief case without obvious haste he turned to face her, holding out a small device for her inspection. Claudia was in the doorway holding her costume over her arm and staring at him, her face rather pale.
‘I fetched this from the car for you. It’s a panic alarm.’
She came closer to look at the small tube. ‘Like a mace spray?’
‘Carrying mace is illegal, Claudia.’ And so is bugging
telephones his conscience reminded him. He ignored it. ‘This just makes a dreadful noise when you push it. Don’t!’ he said, quickly, as she took it from him. ‘Don’t press it unless you mean it. But keep it handy.’ Then, ‘I thought I told you to stay put.’
‘For how long? And anyway there was a message from Dad on the fax asking me to ring him. I didn’t want to use the office telephone.’
He crossed to her, took her by the shoulders and gave her a very small shake. ‘You know, Claudia, it might not have been me in here.’
‘I know.’ She looked down suddenly. ‘Actually, you did give me a bit of a start.’
‘Good,’ he said. ‘You deserved it. Now I’ll leave you to talk to your father in private if you promise to stay here until I get back.’
‘Where are you going?’
‘Not far. Promise me, Claudia.’
She looked up at him with those huge eyes. ‘Or you’ll make me take my clothes off again?’
‘You’ve got to take this seriously.’
‘I do. I am.’ She shook her head. ‘Then it all just seems so silly that I can’t believe there’s any real danger.’
‘I know it’s hard. You don’t want to believe it and I can understand that.’ He released her, took the costume from her and held it up. ‘But when you feel tempted to think all the precautions are rather silly, consider what happened to your costume, Claudia. Consider the possibility of that happening to you.’
‘You can’t really believe that.’ But her dismissive laugh was uncertain. ‘It’s so melodramatic; like something out of Maria Marten and Red Barn Mystery.’
‘Maria Marten was a real girl, Claudia. And she was murdered.’ He waited for a moment until he was certain that the unspoken threat at sunk in. ‘Now promise me you’ll do as I say or I’ll make sure this theatre doesn’t open tonight, or for the foreseeable future.’
‘You wouldn’t,’ she declared. Then, less certainly, ‘You couldn’t.’
‘You could put me to the test,’ he invited. ‘I almost wish you would, then I could take you to a quiet place in the country where keeping you safe would be a whole lot easier.’
‘You mean that don’t you?’
‘Yes.’ In fact, the more he thought about it, the more certain he was that she was in very real danger. The trouble was, he thought, personal feelings were beginning to intrude, confusing concern with anxiety. But he wasn’t prepared to take the chance. ‘I’ve never been more serious in my life.’
Her shoulders slumped. ‘I’m sorry, Mac. I’ll do everything you say, I promise.’ She looked so down that he put his arms around her and pulled her against his chest.
‘Gabriel,’ he murmured.
‘What?’
‘It’s my name.’
She looked up at him, her fears momentarily forgotten. ‘I know, but, everyone calls you Mac. You said so.’
‘Maybe they do. But you are not everyone.’ He paused long enough for her to digest this information. ‘And you promised you’d do everything I say?’ He touched her lips, very lightly, with the tip of his finger. ‘Gabriel,’ he insisted.
‘Gabriel,’ she repeated, her voice barely above a whisper.
‘Good, I’m glad we’ve settled that. Now I’ll leave you to call your father,’ he said, straightening. For a moment she looked confused. She had thought he was going to kiss her again. She was waiting for him to kiss her and something dead inside him re-ignited with the power charge from that knowledge.
He would kiss her. He would most certainly kiss her. But not yet. Certainly not here. Not, if he had any sense, until this nightmare was over.
He opened the door and looked back. She was standing where he had left her in the centre of the room, looking a little bemused, as if not quite certain where she was and what had happened to her, a million miles from the assured and confident star who’d invited him to play musical cars just a couple of days ago. Or perhaps not.
‘Tell me, Claudia,’ he enquired, from the doorway. ‘Are you familiar with The Taming of the Shrew?’
He didn’t wait for her answer, but as he closed the door behind him, something hit it with great force before clattering to the floor. His laughter was drowned out by a sound so terrible that the entire backstage crew came at the run.
He beat them to it. Twisting the tube sharply to switch off the sound.
Claudia removed her hands from her ears and shrugged. ‘I was just testing it,’ she said.
CHAPTER TEN
SOMETHING woke Gabriel MacIntyre and for the smallest fraction of time he froze sorting out the messages bombarding his brain. Strange bed. Strange room. Claudia! Then he was out of bed, on his feet, his body on automatic as he tackled the intruder, his mind racing away to the other room where Claudia was sleeping.
But it was Claudia he cannoned into. Soft, warm, smelling like a dream in something silky that slipped beneath his fingers. Enticing, flimsy.
‘Mac!’ His name was expelled from her on a sharp breath as he pushed her back against the wall with the rush of his attack. ‘Mac, let me go!’
She was backed against the wall, her arms pinned at her sides, her body yielding against his. The last thing on earth he wanted to do was let her go. He wanted to pull her back down with him into the warm cocoon of bedclothes, unwrap the silk and make love to her. The idea took a lot of resisting.
He managed it, just about, but he didn’t immediately let her go. ‘Gabriel,’ he insisted.
‘Come on, Mac,’ she said, struggling ineffectually, against his him, ‘this is ridiculous.’ Ridiculous he might argue with, but it certainly wasn’t wise. She was not doing her cause any good at all. ‘For heaven’s sake’ she exclaimed, then realising she had no choice but to obey him, she conceded. ‘Gabriel,’ she snapped, crossly.
‘Try harder, Claudia.’ The scent of her skin was undermining his good intentions and the bed was still very tempting.
She glared up at him. He smiled lazily back and he saw, in the semi-darkness, the very moment when she realized exactly what was going on, felt the stirring of his arousal against the smooth curve of her hip.
Her eyes widened slightly, the tips of her breasts tightened to hard peaks and her lips parted slightly as she cooled them with the tip of her tongue.
For a long moment the room was filled with a quiet so intense that the sound of his own heartbeat began to sound like a drum in his ears.
‘Please, Gabriel,’ she said, her voice mostly breath.
Very slowly he took his arms from about her and straightening, let her go. Equally slowly, it seemed to him, she eased away from him, backing along the wall so that they were no long touching. Then, she took a long, slightly unsteady breath and looked up at him with eyes that should carry a health hazard warning.
‘Tell me, Gabriel, did you forget to pack your pyjamas?’ she asked, her voice shaking noticeably. ‘Or do you always sleep in your skin.’
‘Did you want something, Claudia?’ he demanded, brusquely, his voice thick with gravel. ‘Or are you just sightseeing?’
‘Sightseeing?’ She blinked, swallowed, fixed her gaze firmly on his face. ‘I thought I’d better give you a call,’ she said, quickly. ‘I’m due at the television studios at six-thirty. For an interview.’
‘What!’ he demanded, grabbing a sheet from the bed and wrapping it about him.
‘I forgot to tell you last night.’
He couldn’t believe it. ‘And when did you remember?’
‘When I was in bed.’ She had been going to tell him. She’d made it as far as his bedroom door, but had lost her nerve. She hadn’t wanted him to think ... well, what he would have had every right to think. ‘There didn’t seem any point in disturbing you.’
‘Lady, you could disturb a three-toed sloth with a look.’
‘Could I?’ He was no slouch in that department himself and, making a slightly nervous gesture in the direction of the night table, Claudia began to back out of the room. ‘I ... um ... brought you a cup of tea.
’
‘Well, thank you, Miss Beaumont,’ he said, following her, the sheet looped negligently around his waist. ‘I surely do appreciate that.’
‘We haven’t got a lot of time...’ She gestured vaguely behind her. ‘I won’t be long in the shower.’ He put his hand on the wall, blocking her exit. ‘We could save time by sharing it.’
‘Could we?’ Her voice was so low that it was almost non-existent and there was dewy ache between her thighs. Then she caught the glint of something close to amusement in those dangerous blue eyes and she stiffened. ‘Somehow I doubt that. ‘ And she ducked beneath his arm and beat a hasty retreat.
That would teach her that coming uninvited to a man’s bedroom smelling like heaven and looking like sin when his defences were down, was not the brightest move, Mac thought, a touch wryly. He’d learned quite a bit himself.
She kept coming so close, he thought dwelling on the lingering image of enticing lips parted over small white teeth, her eyes uncertain as they had searched his face. So meltingly close that all it would take would be one touch to set her off. Dynamite.
Then she backed off like a nervous kitten. In fact, for a lady with something of a reputation for wildness, Claudia Beaumont seemed oddly reticent about embarking on a bed and breakfast flirtation. Or maybe it was just him she objected to. Which was probably as well, he thought, pushing himself away from the wall and closing the door with rather more regret than he would have anticipated. Because she was right about the shower.
It wouldn’t save time. But it would have been a damn sight more fun than an early morning call to a television studios.
The thought brought him to a halt. Fun. He couldn’t remember the last time he had even thought the word, let alone seriously considered indulging in the experience.
*****
He’d have to go, Claudia decided, as she caught sight of Gabriel MacIntyre’s razor laid on the bathroom worktop. She towelled herself dry with a quite unnecessary briskness. There was just too much of the man. He overflowed all over the place, all over her apartment, all over the theatre, all over her life. She could hear him now, moving about in the kitchen as if he was at home.