Dark brows rose anyway at her method of introduction. They both of them knew Jake was many things—and Fin didn’t really want to think of what he was, or what he was becoming to her!—but the one thing he surely wasn’t was her client!
‘Derek.’ Jake thrust his hand out in what appeared to be a friendly gesture. Appeared … because, by the devilish glint in his eyes and the way Derek winced as he returned the handshake, Fin didn’t think it had been friendly at all! ‘Great girl—Fin,’ he added lightly, his arm moving about her shoulders now as he gave her a brotherly hug. ‘I don’t know what I would do without her to come into my little cottage and—’
‘I’m sure you would manage,’ she told him through gritted teeth as she glared up at him, pointedly moving away from that warm encircling arm.
He looked unperturbed by the movement, hooking his thumbs into the belt loops on the faded denims he still wore from this morning. ‘I doubt it,’ he dismissed with certainty. ‘And, contrary to what Fin said a few minutes ago, I really know very little about you, Derek,’ he added blandly. ‘Are you a client of Fin’s too?’ He quirked dark brows.
‘Hardly,’ Derek denied with scorn, and Fin could cheerfully have screamed at the way he played straight into the other man’s hands by revealing in that one expressive word the contempt he felt for what she called work! ‘I’m her accountant,’ he told Jake dismissively.
‘Ah,’ Jake nodded, somehow managing to convey a wealth of meaning into that short acknowledgement. ‘So you work for Fin,’ he added with what Fin, at least, was sure was deliberate provocation.
As could be predicted, Derek flushed with resentment at such a description. ‘I’m her accountant,’ he repeated with stiff arrogance.
‘That’s what I just said; you work for Fin,’ Jake accepted with feigned innocence—because he knew exactly how insulting he was being! ‘Great name for a business, isn’t it?’ he added with an appreciative chuckle. ‘Do you know, the first day I met Fin I actually thought she was a—?’
‘Derek, it’s almost two o’clock,’ Fin hastily reminded Derek that he had told her earlier in the restaurant that he had to be back at the office by two o’clock because he had a meeting with a client at two-fifteen. She certainly didn’t want Jake going into detail about their first meeting!
Derek frowned now, glancing at his plain gold wrist-watch. ‘So it is,’ he acknowledged distractedly. ‘I had better get back,’ he nodded, kissing her lightly on the lips. ‘I’ll see you tonight at seven o’clock,’ he reminded softly. ‘Danvers.’ He straightened, nodding curtly to the other man, obviously not at all sure of him, even if he had seemed friendly enough.
The problem was, if Derek only knew it, that the very fact of Jake’s being so friendly was telling enough!
But Derek didn’t know it, although as he turned and disappeared into the crowd of people on the pavement Fin had the feeling by the stiff set of his shoulders that he was a man who knew he had somehow been insulted—he just wasn’t absolutely sure how!
Fin turned on Jake with fiery green eyes the moment they were alone. ‘I hope you enjoyed yourself!’ she accused, glaring up at him disgustedly.
He looked completely unperturbed by the attack. ‘As a matter of fact, I did!’
She had already known that! She had also known that, even if Derek hadn’t been at the disadvantage of having absolutely no prior knowledge of the other man, that he would still have lost any verbal encounter he might have got into with Jake. The force of Jake’s personality certainly didn’t lessen with acquaintance!
And, seeing the two men together like that—Derek, tall, blond, smoothly handsome, formally clothed in one of the dark suits he favoured for work, and Jake, even taller, dark, ruggedly attractive, and casually dressed in denims and short-sleeved shirt—Fin had to admit—even though she hated doing it!—that Derek was also the one who came out wanting in any physical comparison between the two men!
Jake continued to meet her gaze, his mouth quirked with mocking humour, as if he was well aware of that fact too—at least, as far as Fin was concerned! ‘So that was the quotable Derek,’ he drawled derisively.
Fin’s cheeks became flushed at the taunt. ‘I didn’t say that—’
‘You didn’t have to,’ Jake mocked. ‘Why didn’t you tell him I’m the new director of Private Lives?’ His eyes were narrowed now.
She drew in a sharp breath. ‘Why didn’t you?’ she challenged defensively, knowing from experience of this man that he wouldn’t have made the omission for her sake; he didn’t seem to care how he embarrassed her. And the whole of the time the three of them had been in conversation she had been dreading the possibility of Jake’s mentioning the fact that he was involved in the play too, had known instinctively that Derek wouldn’t like her working night after night she was away from him with this man.
Jake shrugged. ‘I couldn’t run the risk, three weeks away from opening night, of the boyfriend of one of my leading actresses demanding she leave the play. And I only needed one look at the quotable Derek to—’
‘Don’t call him that!’ she snapped.
His mouth twisted. ‘OK. I only needed one look at your boyfriend to know that it was a possibility if anything else about the play should upset him, and finding out I was involved with it might have done that.’
She was sure it would, but the fact that Jake was right about that only made her feel more resentful. And he had very firmly put her in her place in his life too; now that he was involved with Private Lives he was only interested in the fact that she remain in the part of Sibyl!
Jake’s eyes narrowed on her now. ‘What did Derek mean about seeing you at seven o’clock tonight? There’s a rehearsal scheduled—’
‘For seven-thirty,’ she finished tartly. ‘At which time I will duly be present. But until then my time is my own,’ she told him firmly.
For several long, tension-filled moments he continued to look down at her with narrowed eyes, and then he nodded slowly. ‘As long as you understand I won’t tolerate lateness from my cast,’ he bit out icily. ‘And now, if you’ll excuse me; I have a lot to do before tonight’s rehearsal.’
Fin watched in open-mouthed incredulity as he walked away with those same purposeful strides he had been taking when she had first spotted him a few minutes ago, those strides taking him into a stationery shop several yards down the street. She hadn’t asked him to stop and talk to them, for goodness’ sake, but that was what his manner had seemed to imply just now. In actual fact, the last thing, the very last thing, she had wanted was for Jake and Derek to meet. She hadn’t thought the two men would like each other, and she certainly hadn’t been disappointed!
And there was also that awful feeling in the pit of her stomach that, of the two of them, Derek had been made to look insignificant against Jake’s stronger personality …
* * *
Her nervousness about tonight didn’t lessen during the day, or during the brief time she met Derek, but when she arrived at the village hall at seven twenty-five for a seven-thirty start it was to find that Jake hadn’t yet arrived.
Maybe he had changed his mind? Decided he didn’t want to do it after all. Although that wasn’t the impression she had got from him earlier today!
No, he would be here, she was sure of it. Maybe keeping people guessing was part of the way he worked.
All the rest of the cast were present, talking in groups of two or three over by the kitchen, probably discussing the expected arrival of their new director into their midst; she didn’t doubt that Delia would have told them about him.
Even as she thought of the other woman, Delia spotted her across the room, made her excuses, and hastily came over to Fin.
‘I hope you’re going to be more agreeable about the appointment of our new director than the rest of the cast is being,’ Delia muttered, shooting them a disgusted glance for their ingratitude. ‘Once I had spoken to Mr Danvers this morning I managed to contact three of the other committee members—
unfortunately you weren’t one of them, Fin,’ she put in with dismissive apology. ‘And they were all agreed that anyone—that any genuine offer to help out should be given a trial run,’ she hastily amended the fact that the other committee members, like her, had just been grateful for anyone to come forward and be brave enough to try to take this on! ‘I was sure you would approve anyway, Fin,’ she smiled confidently, ‘as Mr Danvers first got to hear about our difficulties through you.’
And Jake had asked David for Delia’s telephone number so that he might contact her, Fin had found out during the evening meal earlier!
And she couldn’t fault Delia’s actions, knew that the other woman had got a majority vote of the seven committee members, that she had done the best she could in the circumstances. And Fin had no doubt that Jake would pull them through this if anyone could. If he ever turned up, of course!
She was still reassuring Delia that her actions had been the right ones, when Jake walked into the hall at exactly seven-thirty.
The chatter in the room stopped instantly as the four other members of the cast became aware of his presence too, and turned to look at him, the two men with curiosity, the two women with open appraisal!
Lorna, the young girl of seventeen playing the part of the French maid, was positively open-mouthed, and Annie, blonde and beautiful Annie, in her late twenties, involved in a relationship with someone but not always entirely faithful to him, visibly preened in the presence of this gorgeous man.
And Fin had to admit that Jake did look … stunning, was probably the word, or the one David had used last night—impressive. Jake was dressed all in black, the loose black shirt un-buttoned at his throat and the cuffs turned back to just below his elbows, and black cords that fitted the muscular strength of his long legs, black shoes, highly polished, his dark hair brushed back from the angles of his face, that almost luminous quality to his aqua-coloured eyes even more startling against such austerity.
Delia left Fin’s side to hurry over to him, her usual bossiness noticeably absent as even she fluffed and fussed over him.
Which was something he brushed off with a dismissive wave of his hand, stepping past her to stand at the very top of the room, not on the stage itself but just in front of it.
A pin could have been heard dropping in the silence of the room as he had crossed that distance with his cat-like tread. If anyone had dared to drop a pin. Which no one did.
‘I’m Jake Danvers,’ he announced evenly, looking around the room at them all, meeting each gaze in turn. ‘I’m sure Delia has informed you by now that I’m here to direct the play. If any of you have a problem with that then speak now.’
Or forever hold your peace, was what instantly flashed through Fin’s mind!
As Jake’s steady gaze passed over each one of them again, challenging, lingering slightly longer on Fin than on the others, she felt—or was it just her imagination?—that he didn’t expect there to be a ‘problem’.
And there wasn’t!
At least … not yet. Maybe later on there would be, but for the moment they all seemed happy to be under the firm control of Jake Danvers.
And as the evening progressed, that control didn’t waver. Jake was hard, critical, a perfectionist when it came to having his instructions obeyed, and he altered several of the moves they had been rehearsing with Gerald for the last four weeks, proclaiming them too wooden, and expecting them to instantly remember those new moves.
Fin was the most guilty of forgetting, she knew, and Jake jumped on her—figuratively!—every time she did so.
But it was very unnerving for her, having to work with him at all, and she grew even more unnerved and agitated as Annie flirted with him outrageously throughout the evening.
She was jealous!
Unthinkable. Ridiculous. But while Fin felt herself grinding her teeth as Annie flirted with Jake every time he had occasion to speak to her Fin knew that that was exactly what she was.
‘Can we expect you to make your entrance some time this evening, Sibyl?’ drawled a hard voice edged with anger. ‘Or would that be too much to ask?’
Colour flared in Fin’s cheeks as she saw that she had been so distracted by the realisation of her jealousy of Annie that she had completely missed her cue for her entrance at the end of the first act. How could she be expected to think straight when even being in the same room as this man unnerved her?
But as she saw that everyone, not just Jake, was looking at her curiously she knew she couldn’t offer that as an explanation for her lack of attention!
‘Sorry,’ she muttered awkwardly, taking her place behind the chair that was, for the moment, supposed to be a pair of french doors that she opened and went through on to the balcony—a balcony she should have gone out on to minutes ago and hadn’t.
Jake looked at her coldly with rebuke for long timeless minutes before turning away. ‘Amanda and Elyot, could you go back to: “Elyot—now with you here”?’ Jake instructed harshly. ‘And hopefully this time Fin will stop thinking of her boyfriend long enough to join the rest of us!’
There were several spontaneous titters of laughter from the others in the room, Annie looking almost triumphant at Jake’s marked ridicule of her. And it was so obvious that he had been singling her out for his cutting remarks, right from the beginning of the evening when he had seemed to directly challenge her to protest at his right to step in as director of the play.
But she bit her tongue even now, even after that direct gibe about Derek, not quite sure what she might say to him if she once allowed herself to lose her temper. She doubted her hot-headedness then would allow his anonymity as Jake Danvers to remain intact, and that would be disastrous for everyone!
And so she calmly took her place, waited for her cue—and played the end of Act One better than she ever had before!
She knew she had, knew that the rest of the group thought so too, but the man sitting to the left below the stage remained noticeably silent—he wasn’t even going to give her well-deserved encouragement for something she had done right, she realised.
The evening’s rehearsal couldn’t be over soon enough for her—she just wanted to get away from here and lick her wounds in private!
But it was almost eleven o’clock when it finally dragged to an end, was one of the longest rehearsals they had ever had, and nerves, and tempers—not Fin’s, thankfully!—had been pushed to breaking-point several times by then, all of them escaping off to their respective homes as quickly as possible once it was over.
Except for Fin. It was her turn to lock up for the night and return the key to the caretaker’s house. And Annie. Who had remained behind to talk to Jake, supposedly to question him on a particular point in Act Two. Fin left them to it, going through to the kitchen to tidy away the coffee-mugs from the evening, deliberately blocking out the murmur of their voices from the other room, although she heard the door close about five minutes later when they finally left, breathing a sigh of relief now that she could finally leave too—she had finished cleaning up the kitchen several minutes ago but hadn’t wanted to go out into the main hall while Jake and Annie were still there.
She was exhausted, emotionally and physically, completely— She came to an abrupt halt as she entered the main room and saw Jake there, slumped down in one of the hard chairs, Annie obviously being the one who had left a few minutes ago. Alone. And not with Jake, as Fin had assumed.
Jake looked up and saw her watching him. ‘Well,’ he sighed heavily, ‘that was worse than I had thought it was going to be!’
Well, really!
CHAPTER SEVEN
THEY weren’t the best actors in the world, Fin knew that, but then, they had never professed to be; they wouldn’t be amateurs if they thought they were that good. But three weeks before the play was due to go on and they all knew their lines—only occasionally forgot to make an entrance!—so they weren’t doing too badly. At least, Fin hadn’t thought they were. Obviously Jake believed differently.
Fin frowned, looking at him more closely, realising that his face was very pale, lines of strain beside his eyes and mouth. And his hand shook slightly as he raised it to run it through the untidy length of his hair.
He stood up abruptly, thrusting those shaking hands into the pockets of the black cords as he sensed her scrutiny. ‘The cast is good,’ he bit out dismissively. ‘You should have a more than passable production on your hands in three weeks’ time. It’s a bit patchy at the moment, but it will smooth out.’
High praise indeed from someone who had been such a hard taskmaster all evening. So what was worse than he had thought it was going to be?
Fin continued to look at him wordlessly, sure that when—and if!—he wanted to talk to her he would do so.
He shook his head, drawing in a shaky breath. ‘I hope it didn’t show tonight—God, I’ll be mortified if it did!’ he groaned his anguish. ‘But, despite what I told the efficient Delia earlier today about my ability to direct the play, it’s more than ten years since I did any directing!’ The admission came out in an almost defensive rush.
Just over ten years, Fin realised dazedly. It was just over ten years since her father had died. And Angela. And since this man had directed anything. There had been no obscure repertory companies with him going under the name of Jake Danvers. He hadn’t been near the profession he knew so well. That seemed incredible. What had he been doing with himself for the last ten years? How had he kept himself busy? Because he certainly didn’t have the look of a man who had remained idle or aimless.
Private Lives Page 10