by Liz Fielding
‘I’m not that hungry.’ Who was she kidding?
‘No?’ Not Jack Wolfe, evidently.
But he clearly wasn’t convinced by her hunger and he was right to be sceptical. Her only reason for speed dressing had been a very real desire not to be caught her at the dressing table in her underwear when he vacated the bathroom. An absolute determination not to share the bedroom whilst he dressed. If that made her look like a virgin schoolgirl, well, it couldn’t be helped.
‘I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.’ She apologised with saccharine-sweet insincerity.
‘Could you say that with a little more conviction?’
‘Since I’m not part of the cabaret, Mr Wolfe, but here for the sole purpose of lending you probity, that’s about as sorry as I get.’
‘Probity?’ Jack repeated the word thoughtfully. ‘Now that’s a word to conjure with.’
‘And from my experience of you to date, conjuring with it is what you do best,’ she replied, with every outward appearance of calm, although her insides were having a full scale fit of the jitters. She felt a whole lot safer around Jack Wolfe when he had his clothes on. She wished he would cut the verbal fencing and just go and get dressed.
‘Best?’ His mouth straightened in a smile. ‘Stick around, Cinderella. You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ He indicated the fridge. ‘Now since we’re supposed to be on holiday and having a good time, why don’t you pour us both a drink while I’m dressing? I’ll have a gin and tonic. You could take them out on to the terrace...’ - his smile suggested he understood all about her need to put some distance between them, but he didn’t let her off the leash for long - ‘...and I’ll join you in a minute.’ Then he demonstrated that he was no slouch in the shrug stakes himself. ‘Ten at the most.’
Feeling safer as he retreated into the bedroom, she called after him, ‘Wouldn’t real lovers be inside, behind closed doors.’
He turned back, giving her a slow, thoughtful look that travelled the length of her body making her skin tingle every inch of the way until it reached her cheeks. Silly question. Stupid question. And she wasn’t silly, or stupid. Usually.
‘I... um... I just want to do justice to my role.’ She cleared her throat. ‘That’s all.’
He held the bedroom door open and stood aside, inviting her in. ‘If you’re that enthusiastic, Melanie, come on through and I’ll be happy to co-operate,’ he said, very softly, his voice rasping over her skin like a cat being rubbed the wrong way.
‘I’m good here.’ She pressed back into the sofa in an effort to increase the distance between them. ‘I’ll pass on the practical. Thanks all the same.’
‘In that case I’d advise a little caution, darling. Put the serious flirting on hold until there’s someone around to appreciate your performance.’
‘Flirting! That wasn’t flirting. I was just - entering into the spirit of the role.’
‘Is that so? Well, try it again, lady, and I promise you, you’ll get a spirited response.’ Then he carefully shut the bedroom door.
Melanie stood up, her legs shaking a little from the intensity of an emotional crossing of swords that she shouldn’t have allowed to happen.
She’d been alone with the man for less than an hour and was already sending out all the wrong signals.
She had thought she was the one in control here, but she had been fooling herself. When he had kissed her, her insides had done an impression of an ice cream in a heat wave. Giving him the wrong impression, she decided, would be very easy.
It was just as well that Jack Wolfe was not interested in her. Not really interested.
Oh, sure, he was human enough to welcome her into his bed if she decided to play her part for real, despite all that high-minded stuff about keeping his hands off the staff.
His invitation might have been a tease, but there had been nothing playful about the threat that followed it. Nothing. And she shivered, despite the soft warm breeze lifting the curtains.
Jack Wolfe might turn up the heat whenever he looked at her, touched her, but she would do well to remember why she was here. The man was as calculating as they come. He and Caro Hickey deserved each other.
She sighed a little, any inclination to giggle evaporating and she acknowledged that they had got each other. Then she crossed to the mini bar. A drink, he had said, well why not? A drink suddenly seemed like a very good idea.
*****
Jack Wolfe closed the door behind him and waited. Heard her move around as she mixed a couple of drinks, then go out onto the verandah. Only then did he take his cell phone from his travel bag and call Mike.
‘What is it, Jack?’
‘We’ve got a problem.’
‘And it couldn’t wait until morning?’
‘Morning?’
‘Never mind,’ he said, smothering a yawn. ‘Go on.’
‘It’s Melanie Devlin.’
‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you -’
‘She knows Richard Latham. I saw her talking to him about three or four weeks ago, before she started working for me. She’d changed her appearance and I didn’t realize she was the same girl until she turned up at the airport.’
‘Changed her appearance? You mean she’s been working for you under false pretences and you still took her with you?’
‘I didn’t have any choice. If she is working with him I don’t want them to know they’ve been rumbled.’
‘If?’
‘It could just be a coincidence.’
‘There’s no such thing as coincidence in business, Jack. Remember?’ Never? ‘How the hell did she explain the change in her appearance.’
‘Adequately.’
‘Christ! Let’s hope you don’t talk in your sleep.’
‘No one’s complained yet.’
‘Who the hell would dare?’
Jack stared at the phone. It was true, he thought, Mike Palmer was getting a harder edge to his character, pushing more. Another year and he’d be thinking of stepping into his shoes.
‘I thought you liked working for me, Mike.’
Mike laughed. ‘Oh, I do, Jack. Where else would I get this quality of entertainment and be paid for it? Is she chasing you around the bedroom yet?’
‘Not so that you’d notice,’ he replied, somewhat wryly. ‘The arrangement is still that one of us sleeps on the sofa.’
‘You haven’t decided who, yet? That sounds promising.’
‘Not from here.’
‘She’s playing it coy? Well I’d advise you to do the same. If she is planning to extract all your secrets using the art of seduction it’ll drive her to extreme inventiveness. If you’re going to sacrifice your body for the greater good of the financial markets, you might as well enjoy yourself.’
‘Thank you, Michael, I think I had handle things at this end without any advice from you.’
‘I don’t doubt it. It should make for an interesting week.’ Jack thought that interesting understated the situation somewhat, but Mike was already far too amused by the whole situation for him to say so. ‘And we can use this to our advantage.’
‘Thanks, but I had planned a quiet week in the sun, leaving you to do all the work for a change.’
‘I’ve a pretty good idea what you have planned, Jack. And a cottage at The Ark will be a whole lot more conducive to your purpose than a damp afternoon in a boathouse.’
‘If you believe that, Mike, then it’s clear that you’ve never spent a rainy afternoon in a boathouse. Now, I’ve briefed Gus and he’s keen to do his bit, but what I need from you is everything you can discover about Melanie. And her connection with Latham.’
*****
It was odd, she should be tired but she was too restless to sit down. Instead she walked across to the low wooden rail that surrounded the verandah. Below her the gardens dropped away to the beach where the palms were rattling in the warm, moist breeze coming in off the sea like a caress, moulding the silk chiffon of her dress to her legs.
Th
e soft drag of the surf against the sand had a soothing quality. The mingled scents of frangipani and the sea had a heady, exotic beauty and on the breeze she caught the plaintive melody of a steel band being played a long way off. Mel leaned against the rail and despite everything, smiled a little.
What on earth was she complaining about? This morning she had been in London. A cold, wet London that refused to buckle down to a serious attempt at summer. Now she had the warm tropical night, a beach of pure white sand just yards from her door and the sea to rock her to sleep.
Okay, so she had Jack Wolfe, too. But all she had to do was play her part. Smile, flirt a little when there was anyone around to see. What did it matter if the wretched man thought she was deluded into believing she could act? She grinned.
He should talk to Trudy Morgan, she would tell him that the part might have been written for her.
Jack stood in the doorway for a moment, quietly watching her. Watching the way she pushed her hair back from her face, the way the breeze moulded the cloth of her gown to her body. Hired finery? He considered the way the low, scooped out back hugged her skin as if it had been made for her. No, not hired. Second hand clothes never fitted like that.
It was extraordinary how beautiful she was, much more than the simple transformation wrought by the change of hairstyle and designer clothes. How could he have been so easily deceived? He was usually so quick to spot any kind of pretence. Yet how closely had he looked? If he was honest with himself he knew he had avoided her, made sure he wasn’t at home on the days she came in to clean, because right from the beginning there had been something about her that he had recognised as dangerous.
Her spirit, her sense of mischief and an air of mystery that had made his pulse beat just a little faster. It was beating faster now.
Melanie didn’t hear him until it was too late to turn and put some distance between them and she twitched nervously as, slipping his hand about her waist as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he leaned beside her against the rail.
‘Enjoying the view?’ Jack asked.
‘I was.’ She tried to move away, but as he turned towards her, his arm still about her, they were closer than ever.
‘Jack...’ Her voice begged him to release her, but her eyes were saying something quite different and he could see a tiny pulse hammering in her throat as she looked up at him.
‘What is it?’ Then before she could answer him, he shook his head. ‘Not now. There’s someone on the beach looking this way.’ She glanced out into the darkness but he hooked her chin back so that she was facing him. ‘You’re not interested in them, only in me.’
‘Am I?’
‘Who else? Why don’t you put your arms around my neck and show them just how much?’
She tipped her head back to look him full in the eyes. ‘Do you mean kiss you?’
Did he? Mike had suggested that it would be an interesting week. It would certainly be interesting to see what she made of this opportunity to disarm him, seduce him. How long would she play the reluctant ingénue? Maybe all she needed was a little encouragement, permission to be bad.
‘Is it so difficult, Mel? It’s the sort of thing actresses do every day, surely? Pretend? Don’t you have classes in that sort of thing?’
‘Classes?’ The only lessons she would need to deal with Jack Wolfe were in self-defence. No, that was unfair. But a few lessons in basic common sense might not be a bad idea.
‘At RADA, or somewhere?’
‘I don’t believe I’ve ever had classes that would cover this situation,’ she replied, her voice dangerously soft. ‘Anywhere.’
‘In that case, I suggest you call on memory. It really can’t be that long since you kissed a man?’
That depended on what you meant by kissing. ‘I don’t make a life’s work out of it.’
‘You’re stalling.’
His eyes gleamed provokingly and challenged she lifted her arms, pale in the starlight, to link her hands behind his head. His hair was still slightly damp from the shower, she could smell the shampoo he had used and the faint woody top note of his cologne mingled with the scent of tropical flowers.
It was, after all, not in the least bit disagreeable being kissed by Jack Wolfe. She had tried it and honesty compelled her to admit that she had liked it.
It was the pretence she objected to. Or maybe it was his lack of pretence. If he had made an effort to meet her half way it wouldn’t have seemed quite so cold-blooded.
Horrified by the turn her mind was taking she closed her eyes. Cold-blooded was exactly right and stretching up on her toes she pressed her lips against his. They were cool and dry and unresponsive.
Confused, humiliated, she attempted to pull away from him, but he held her close, refusing to let her escape. ‘It couldn’t have been that long surely?’ he said, regarding her from beneath heavy lidded eyes.
‘I believe I did more than enough to fool anyone walking along the beach,’ she replied, stiffly.
‘Maybe.’ He looked down at her for what seemed like an age, his eyes unreadable in the starlight. ‘But you know what I had in mind was something more like this.’
His lips on hers were light, hardly more than a teasing breath, reassuring her that this was nothing but a game to fool the curious eyes of any passing onlooker. Nothing to cause more than a minor flutter in her midriff, a stir of uncertainty as his hands spread over her waist and back, drawing her closer so that she could feel hard muscle beneath the smooth cloth of his shirt where her neckline swooped to hint at the soft swell of her breasts, his body enticingly warm against her skin.
She gave a little gasp of pleasure and the stir of uncertainty quite suddenly deepened to a realisation of the danger she was in as a rare heat flared deep within her, jolting her senses into pounding life. But it was too late.
Her negligent lips had been suborned into parting to the teasing touch of his tongue and now she was drowning in pure sensation, sinking deeper and deeper with no thought of ever coming up for air, no thought of anything but the seductive delight of being kissed by a man who knew how to give pleasure just as surely as he knew how to take it.
‘You can open your eyes now, Mel. The lesson is over.’ Her lids snapped open and she found herself looking up into an expression that was a whisper away from an insult. For a moment she could not believe it, then she wrenched herself free and turned away, blushing furiously. ‘But you will let me know if you need me to show you again, won’t you?’ he added, insolently as he moved away to collect his drink from the table, turning to hold out hers.
‘I don’t need anything from you, Jack,’ she declared, taking the glass. The man was arrogant, rude and she had had about enough of his games for one day. ‘I’d like to remind you that bringing me along was your idea and that I’m here for your benefit.’
‘Not just my benefit,’ he reminded her.
‘If you’re talking about the co-operative, we’re leagues apart. You’re playing for higher stakes that I could ever dream of, Jack Wolfe, so if you want me to keep your secrets it might be wise to try a little politeness.’
‘You don’t know my secrets.’
‘I can make a pretty good guess.’
‘Can you?’ He took a drink from his glass. ‘That sounded very like a threat.’
She hadn’t intended it to be, but it was too late now to withdraw. ‘You can take it any way you damned well please,’ she said and turned away, determined to put as much distance between them as the verandah allowed.
But he grasped her wrist before she had gone half a metre. ‘Well I can threaten too, so listen to this, lady. If you want my help with your precious co-operative...’ - Co-operative! Dear God, he’d actually fallen for all that rubbish. He’d bent over backwards to do everything Melanie had asked, inventing a job for her friend, instructing Mike to pull all the strings he could find at the local authority - ‘...I suggest you keep your mouth shut about why I’m here and behave yourself.’
Well, he had to make it look good didn’t he?
‘I don’t give a damn about your secrets and I can assure you that behaving myself is what I do best.’ For a moment they glared at one another, then quite suddenly his mouth twisted in an ironic smile.
‘Is that so? Well, shall we keep that fact just between ourselves? I imagine it’s so rare around here that it might give rise to gossip.’
‘And that would never do.’ She gave a stiff little shrug, refusing to answer his smile. ‘I’ll play your game, Jack. Just as long as you remember that’s all it is. Even if we were married I wouldn’t want you to kiss me in public.’
‘Is that right? Well, call me a cad, sweetheart, but I wasn’t planning on giving the impression we were married.’ And he lifted her wrist touching it lightly to his lips before tucking her hand in his arm. ‘Now, shall we go and see what the dining room has to offer? Or, in the interests of keeping up appearances, do you think we should have an intimate dinner, alone, here?’
‘After you’ve gone to so much trouble in order to look this place over? That is what you’re doing isn’t it? Looking it over, seeing what it’s worth before you make a move? You can’t do that if you never leave the cottage.’
‘That, of course, is true,’ he said, his voice edged with irony, because if Mel were a plant there was a certain irony to the situation. In fact it was possible that his smokescreen was about to burst into flames. ‘Shall we go?’ She turned and pulling away from him swept across the terrace, but he caught her before she reached the door. ‘Together, Mel. It’s really too soon to be acting out the lover’s tiff, don’t you think?’ He reclaimed her arm and linked it through his. ‘Relax, darling. Smile. You’re in paradise, remember?’
She grimaced. ‘It would help if you would stop calling me “darling”.’
‘You don’t like it?’
‘I loathe it. I’m not over struck on sweetheart, either. And when it’s so patently false it does nothing to help the romantic image you seem so keen to foster.’
‘I’ll do my best to remember. Honey?’ He was teasing her again, Mel realized and she gave him a look that assured him she didn’t find it in the least bit funny. ‘Oh, come on, Mel. Relax, enjoy yourself. Just think, you could be back in England, battling with the underground after a hard day with a mop and bucket.’ His smile deepened. ‘You’re not honestly going to tell me you’d prefer that?’ His gesture took in the thickly clustered stars and as Mel raised her eyes to heaven and breathed in the warm scent of the tropical night folding itself about her, alive with a million unseen tiny insects singing in the darkness, she did at last manage a smile.