Firth

by Vaso

  She was silent. He was right, of course. But he didn't know that he was the only man who had ever caused her to cast all inhibitions aside and respond in such an abandoned way. And she had no intention of boosting his ego by telling him.

  'Tell me one thing, Vanessa. How do I compare with Daniel? Are you as passionate with him? Would any man have done or did your baser feelings get the better of you?' he taunted her.

  'You'll never know, will you?'

  'Don't worry. I'm not likely to lie awake at night trying to find out an answer.'

  'I'm relieved to hear it,' she blazed. 'Now, get out, will you?'

  'It'll be a pleasure.' He released her abruptly and strode to the door.

  She followed him into the hall. 'Am I to take it that

  you'll be finding a new secretary as from Monday morning?'

  'No, you're not,' he said curtly. 'You'll be there at nine o'clock or I'll know the reason why. And, Vanessa——' He paused with one hand on the handle of the front door.

  'Yes?' she seethed.

  'Don't put me to the trouble of coming over to get you. I might lose my temper in the process.'

  'Is that a threat?'

  'More like a promise. I've had about as much as I can take from you in the last week.'

  'The feeling's mutual, believe me.'

  He gave a thin smile. "Then we both know where we stand from now on.''

  'Precisely,' she snapped. 'I hate you, Max Anderson!'

  "That's a good, honest emotion. It might be the making of you one day. Goodnight, Vanessa.' He opened the door and went through it, not waiting for a response from her.

  Vanessa slammed the door shut and locked and bolted it, ramming the bars home with force, as if hurling them at Max's offending head. For the first time she realised that she was naked apart from a pair of brief bikini pants. She had been too angry to be conscious of the fact before. She gave a fairit laugh of reaction at the picture she must have made as she bandied words with Max. Not that he had seemed to see anything too incongruous in it. He had been too furious himself to bother about her state of dress—or rather undress.

  She wandered back to the living room and picked up her blouse and skirt from the floor where they were lying in an untidy heap. Mechanically she took up the tray with its empty dishes and carried it to the kitchen, dumping it on the draining board. She would deal withit in the morning. Tonight she was too tired. She went to the bathroom and washed, noting as she did so that the angry pressure of his hands had left red marks on her forearms. She would soon be bruised all over, if matters continued the way they had been doing, she thought as she dropped her nightdress over her head and groped her way to her room, stumbling with reaction and weariness.

  She put the lights out and lay back, determined to go straight to sleep. She was tired enough by all accounts. She would not think about Max Anderson tonight, not wonder how near he had come to sharing this bed with her until the morning. She would put him entirely from her mind. But the minute she shut her eyes the events of the evening replayed themselves as clearly as if she had deliberately tried to recall them.

  She groaned as she attempted and failed to blot out the memory of Max's dark features poised above her, that cynical mouth curved for once in a smile that held no condemnation, but instead something akin to interest in her as a woman. Whatever he had said to her afterwards about despising her, she was sure that, for a brief moment at least, he had cared something for her.

  Perhaps she was deluding herself. No doubt hundreds of women had convinced themselves of something similar in the past, only to be cruelly disillusioned. And it was too late now. Daniel's phone call had shattered into a thousand pieces whatever precarious relationship might have been developing. Would Max still have despised her if there had been no interruption and she had let him take her? He would have realised that it was the first time for her. Surely that would have made him rethink his opinion of her? She didn't know what to think any more as she tossed and turned uneasily into the small hours. As the first pale streaks of dawn fil-

  tered through the window, she told herself that she didn't care what Max Anderson did or what opinion he held of her. There were other men in the world.

  But the tears that she cried into her pillow every night for the following week told a different story. She dragged herself in to work on Monday morning, believing Max quite capable of carrying out his threat of coming to fetch her. She preferred not to put the matter to the test, although the glint in his eye when he opened the door to her suggested that he was almost disappointed that he hadn't been given the chance to show that he meant what he said.

  His manner towards her was cool and businesslike. The perfect employer, in fact. But something else smouldered beneath the surface, of that she was sure, and the feeling made her tense and nervous. Each new day was an effort for her, a strain that ended only when the door of her bedroom closed behind her at night. She couldn't bring herself to discuss what had happened with Jill, and when her sister noted her pale face and commented on it, she passed it off as overwork.

  'I've nearly finished the wretched script and I'm pushing myself to get it done.' It wasn't a lie. The sooner that she typed the last line of the play the sooner she could get away from Max.

  'Is he bothering you about it, getting impatient?'

  'No.' Strangely enough, he' wasn't. It was almost as if Max was enjoying the game he was playing with her, constantly nerving her for some kind of confrontation that never came. She would have thought he would have been as glad to see the back of her as she would be to go. 'I just want to move on, that's all.'

  'You're a restless creature, Van. I take it there's still no love lost between you?'

  'None at all,' she agreed a shade too quickly, and Jill gave her a sudden suspicious look.

  'You haven't fallen for him, have you, Van?'

  'Of course not,' she snapped back. 'Don't be ridiculous!' But she had a feeling that Jill wasn't entirely convinced, for all that she said nothing further on the subject.

  When Daniel saw her he was less easily diverted. 'What's happened to you? Have you been ill?' was his first reaction when he arrived at the flat to pick her up for their date and saw her white face and the shadows under her eyes that she had tried and failed to conceal with make-up,

  'I'm fine,' she lied defensively.

  'Well, you sure don't look like it to me.'

  'That's a great thing to say to a girl when she's spent a.n age getting herself ready for you!' She pretended indignation at his words, hoping to distract him. 'And I bought a brand new dress just for you.'

  He laughed. 'I came to see you, not your dress.'

  'Do you like it?' she persisted, twirling round to show off the fullness of its flared red skirt which contrasted well with the tightly fitting bodice. She had bought it in a Hampstead boutique in a mad attempt to cheer herself up, telling herself that, if Max was always going to see her as a scarlet woman, she might as well start dressing the part. Not that Max would ever see her in it. The thought depressed her, she didn't know why.

  Daniel smiled and said all the right things. But he was not an easy man to fob off, she discovered, when he wanted information about something. He drove her out to the restaurant of his choice, a small place just outside Richmond with a garden that went down to the Thames, and waited until they were comfortably seated and had chosen their meal before returning to the topic.

  'Vanessa?'

  'What?' She looked up at him and smiled.

  'You look like an ad for a nerve tonic. Before, not after,' he told her bluntly. 'What's wrong?'

  'You're like a dog with a bone, Daniel. I've already said that there's nothing at.all wrong with me.' She refused to meet his eyes, studying the tablecloth as if it fascinated her.

  'You're not the same girl I took out last time I was over.'

  'Sorry.' She tried to sound flippant and failed dismally.

  'So it's Max. I thought it might be.'

  'I don't
want to talk about him. I hate the man!'

  Daniel gave a lopsided grin. 'I wish I'd a dollar for every time I've heard a woman say that about Max. They never mean it, of couse.'

  'I do,' she claimed stubbornly.

  'Max isn't the most trusting of men,' Daniel said carefully. 'When he decides that he likes you, there's nothing he won't do for you. I know that from past experience. But it takes a while.'

  'I could try until doomsday and he won't change his mind about me, I'm sure.'

  'Do you want him to? Is it that important to you?' he asked.

  'Yes, it is.' The answer came automatically and surprised her with its force of fefeling. For days now she had been telling herself that Max Anderson was insufferable, arrogant, conceited and heartless and that she didn't care a rap about him.

  'You're in love with him.' Daniel stated it even as she realised the truth herself.

  'I'm sorry,' said Vanessa.

  'Sorry it's not me you fell for? So am I.' He gave her a rueful look. 'Because I like you, Vanessa. I like youa lot. We've not spent a lot of time together, but what we have had has been fun. You're the first girl in a long time that I've really enjoyed myself with.'

  'I like you too, Daniel.' She was touched by his obvious sincerity. 'But——'

  'But it's Max.'

  'Yes.' She pulled herself together and gave him a shaky smile. 'Don't worry, I'll get over it. All the others do, don't they?'

  'Perhaps.' He sounded non-committal.

  Max was a friend of his. She had no right to be discussing it with him. 'I'm sorry, I shouldn't have said anything. It's not fair on you.'

  'I dragged it out of you. You didn't want to tell me. I wish there was something I could do to help.'

  'Nice of you to volunteer, Daniel, but I doubt if anyone could disentangle the'mess,' she said wearily. 'I don't understand him at all, and he claims to understand me all too well.'

  Daniel drummed his fingers against the table top and appeared to come to a decision. 'Look, I don't know what's gone wrong between you and I don't want to know the ins and outs of it. I only know that every time he's caught me with you Max has looked as if he'd like to wring my neck.'

  'Or mine,' Vanessa told him dismally.

  'He doesn't usually give a damn about that sort of thing. In fact, in the past, I've taken quite a few girls off his hands when he got tired of——'

  'Being adored by them?'

  'Something like that,' Daniel admitted. 'But he doesn't show any signs of doing it with you. I only wish he would.'

  'I'm not a parcel to be passed on, you know. I have got a mind of my own.'

  'Not a very good one, if you prefer Max to me,' he

  teased her, then sobered again. 'We've been friends a long time, the two of us. It must be ten years now since I first met him.'

  'Over here?'

  'No. He was in New York on an assignment for his paper. I was just making a name for myself in the world of finance. He thought I might make a good article on up and coming talent.' He smiled at the memory. 'Max didn't suffer fools gladly even then. And neither did I. We had a good deal in common.'

  'What was he like then?' Vanessa asked.

  'Not much different than he is today, except that he hadn't got to the top yet. He was heading there, though. It took him another five years before he really made it, but the talent was always there. Everyone recognised it.'

  'Especially women, I suppose.'

  'Then as now,' Daniel agreed. 'But Max wasn't interested. He had a girl back home that he was crazy about. She was an actress, and was going to marry her. He carried her picture in his wallet, talked about her all the time. She was waiting for him, he said.'

  'What happened?' Vanessa tried and failed to imagine a younger, softer Max, madly in love with someone. It wasn't a picture that fitted the hard, cynical man she knew who used women like playthings.

  'She threw him over,' Daniel said briefly. 'He went back to London when he was through in New York. He had the ring in his pocket to put on her finger. He'd even conned me into flying over to be his best man at the ceremony. And when he got back he found that she'd dropped him to go and live with a guy who could offer her more—money and jobwise.'

  A lot of things about Max's attitude to women were suddenly becoming explicable. 'He must have hated her,' Vanessa said slowly.

  'I don't know about that. But she made a fool of himand that he couldn't take. He's a proud man. He's taken good care never to let a woman get to him like that again.'

  She stretched a hand across the table towards him. 'Thank you for telling me, Daniel. I appreciate it.'

  He laughed. 'I don't know why I'm sitting here helping you mope over another man. I should be doing my best to further my own interests. Where's that waiter gone? I think they've forgotten us.'

  It was a signal to her that he had said all he intended to "say about his friend, and Vanessa respected it. He had given her a valuable insight into the" character of the man she loved and he was leaving matters there. It was for her to take them further, if she wanted.

  But would it make a scrap of difference to Max what she did? Somehow Vanessa doubted it.

  CHAPTER NINE

  SHE had many more outings with Daniel in the course of the next few days. He had decided, he told her, to base himself in England for a week or two. Vanessa was not foolish enough to assume that it was on her account, obviously business dictated the move, but he made it all too clear that he enjoyed her company and wanted to spend his free time with her.

  And she was happy to oblige him. They had a lot in common, she discovered. Their tastes in music and films coincided. They both liked walking in the rain and spending hours in second-hand bookshops. They could spend an afternoon in an art gallery and then go on dancing half the night. Both preferred the country to the town, although in each case work forced them away from their chosen environment except at the weekends. They liked travelling, although Daniel had seen far more of the world than Vanessa had been able to do. And she was the first girl he had taken out, he declared, who understood his zany sense of humour.

  'In fact, you're a girl in a milli&n,' he told her at the end of one particularly enjoyable evening, catching her to him and kissing her lightly. She did not repulse him. He had not made any sexual play for her, deliberately holding off, as if sensing that she would not welcome a move in that direction, and she was grateful to him for his understanding. She liked Daniel as a friend and good-natured companion, but anything more was definitely out until she came to her senses over Max. And there were times when she thought that would never happen.

  Common sense told her that she would get over him. Love didn't last for ever except in story books. In time the raw hurt that her emotions were causing her would fade and she would be happy with someone else. This was just a passing phase, she assured herself doggedly. But every time she looked up from her work at Max's tall, powerful figure across the room, her heart turned over and she forced her eyes back to the typewriter, terrified that he might read the naked feeling for him that her expression contained. She was sure that it would only amuse him.

  Not that much seemed to be diverting him these days. He was brisk and businesslike with her, his face a cool, impassive mask that never revealed his thoughts to her. By tacit consent what communication there was between them was brief and to. the point. Max wasted no time on being pleasant to her and personal matters were never discussed. She could have been a piece of the furniture, she thought resentfully, for all the interest he took in her as a woman. Sometimes she wondered if she had dreamed the passionately demanding lover that he had been that night in Jill's flat. It was as if what had been between them was past and forgotten, an interlude thrust aside by him as if it was of no consequence.

  Presumably to him it was exactly that, a trifling interlude to be dismissed from his mind. He wasn't a man to waste time wondering about what might have been. Unlike Vanessa, who spent hours in fruitless asking herself what she could have do
ne differently in order to keep him with her that fateful night when Daniel's phone call had ruined everything between them. They had been on the edge of an understanding, that time, she was sure. That had been her chance to convince him of what the real Vanessa Herbert was like. And she had thrown it away the second she had picked up the phone.

  It was useless to try to explain that there was nothing between herself and Daniel. Max could hardly fail to be aware that she was seeing his friend. Daniel was a well known figure and his romantic life was always good for a few paragraphs in the press. The gossip columnists had seized upon his new girl-friend with interest and photographs of the two of them dining out together had already appeared, accompanied by sly suggestions as to where Daniel's interest in her might be leading.

  She didn't like it and told Daniel so. 'My private life is private and I'd rather it stayed that way.'

  He shrugged, pushing back the untidy mop of blond hair that would persist in falling in his eyes despite all his efforts. 'Sorry, Van, there's not that much I can do about it. If I have a word and tell them to lay off, they'll only get more interested. Likewise if we try to shake them off. It's best just to ignore them and hope they'll get tired of us. There'll be some new story tomorrow, you'll see.'

  'Meanwhile, I'd better learn how to eat spaghetti elegantly for the camera in future,' she said ruefully, looking at a particularly candid shot of her that had appeared.

  The penalties of fame,' Daniel warned her. 'Wait until you're a successful actress. I warn you, Vanessa, you'll be ringing up to complain when you don't feature in the gossip columns.'

  'Never,' she assured him vehemently. 'I shall be like Garbo and guard my privacy jealously.'

  They laughed over it and Vanessa stopped worrying. But the rumours persisted. 'When are the wedding invitations going out?' Max asked her abruptly one morning as he leafed through one of the papers.

  It was the first purely personal remark that he had made to her for ages and she looked at him in surprise. 'What do you mean?' she asked warily.

  'Isn't it immediately obvious to you?' He took up the paper again and read, 'Wedding bells for Daniel Jensen? It seems the footloose financier has been grounded at last. Lucky recipient of his million-dollar favours is actress Vanessa Herbert. Yesterday the couple had no comment to make about their future plans, but Daniel agreed that they were very happy together. Watch this space for future developments.' He made a sound of disgust and tossed the offending piece aside as if it sickened him. 'Well?'