Jared turned to Perdita and said, with a show of concern that wrenched at her heart, ‘You look absolutely shattered.’
‘I didn’t get a great deal of sleep last night,’ she told him stiffly.
‘I would judge that to be an understatement. But, if you’d like to stretch out, there’s a perfectly good bedroom along there.’
‘A bedroom?’ she echoed.
‘Come and take a look.’
He led her to the far end of the lounge area, where another door opened into a small but nicely fitted bedroom with an en suite shower-room.
Indicating a comfortable-looking bed with built-in cabinets either side, he said, ‘As we’ve still got a long journey ahead of us, I suggest that you get a couple of hours’ sleep before lunch.’
The sight of the bed brought back memories of another bed in Las Vegas. A bed where Jared’s tanned and muscular body had looked so devastatingly male against the pink silk sheets and frilled pillowcases.
She took an involuntary step backwards and heard his soft chuckle.
Proving how well he could read her mind, he said, ‘Don’t worry, I wasn’t thinking of joining you.’
Though he spoke with light mockery, she saw his silvery eyes darken almost to charcoal and a little lick of flame flicker in their depths.
She remembered that look well, and though in the past she had welcomed it, seeing it now made her blood run cold with apprehension.
‘Unless you want me to, that is?’
‘No, I don’t want you to!’ she choked.
He sighed. ‘Pity…Ah, well, I’ll go and get some work done and leave you to it.’
Sketching an ironic salute, he closed the door.
When she had hung her suit over a chair and taken off her shoes, Perdita pushed the lightweight duvet aside and stretched out on the bed. She felt weary, body and soul, but so uptight that she had no hope of actually sleeping.
She had gone along with Jared’s suggestion merely to buy herself some time alone. Some time to think. To try and decide just what he had in mind. What he hoped to gain.
The sudden hunger she had glimpsed in his eyes had frightened her half to death. At that moment she had realized that, though he might hate her, he still wanted her.
But everything else had changed. She no longer loved him, and she was about to marry someone else.
But would that be enough to keep her safe?
Yes, surely it would.
Jared wasn’t a man who would dream of using force…As the thought went through her mind, her heavy eyelids closed…
She was awakened by a discreet knock at the door.
Sitting bolt upright in alarm, momentarily confused and unsure of just where she was, she asked hoarsely, ‘Who is it?’
‘It’s Henry, miss. Mr Dangerfield thought you might like a cup of coffee…’
Feeling more than a little dazed, she answered, ‘Oh, yes…Yes, thank you,’ and pulled the duvet up around her.
The steward came in with a tray of coffee and put it down carefully on the bedside cabinet before continuing, ‘He asked me to say that we’ll be landing at Logan Airport in about twenty minutes to refuel.’
She thanked him and, with a slight inclination of his gleaming head, the steward departed, closing the door quietly behind him.
Her hair was coming down and, after a fruitless attempt to repair the damage, Perdita reached to pour the coffee.
With so much on her mind, so many worries about Jared’s motives and intentions she hadn’t expected to sleep. But, if they were almost at Boston, she must have slept for several hours.
Refreshed by the drink, she washed her face and hands in the shower-room and took the pins from what remained of her chignon, only to realize that her comb and make-up were still in her bag, which she had left in the lounge.
At the same instant there was a knock at the bedroom door and Jared’s voice called, ‘Sorry to rush you, but in a minute or so we’ll need to take our positions for landing.’
‘Coming,’ she answered in a muffled voice and, twisting her long corn-coloured hair into a knot, secured it as best she could.
Then, quickly, she pulled on her skirt and jacket and, feeling as if she’d been dragged through a hedge backwards, made her way to the lounge, where Jared was waiting for her.
She was vexed to find he looked fresh and virile and supremely confident, with not a hair out of place. Once again, just the sight of him made every nerve in her body tighten and her heart start to beat faster.
His eyes on her face, he enquired with smooth urbanity, ‘Feel any better?’
Knowing her hair was a mess and her nose was shiny, and conscious of being even more at a disadvantage, she answered stiltedly, ‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Then let’s get ready for landing.’
When they touched down at Boston, knowing her father would be waiting for her call, Perdita reached for her phone.
She had been debating what to tell him. Should she admit that this was just a refuelling stop and that they would be flying on to San Francisco? Or let him go on believing they were going to Salingers’ headquarters in New York?
She was still struggling to decide when Jared slanted her a sideways glance and enquired, ‘Have you made up your mind whether to let him think we’re at JFK, or admit we’re at Boston?’
‘I don’t know what to tell him,’ she admitted helplessly. ‘What do you think—?’ She broke off, vexed that she had actually asked his advice.
Seeing her bite her lip, and realizing the cause, Jared smiled a little before suggesting, ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler, and cause him less worry, to let him go on believing that you’re in New York?’
‘But suppose he tries to contact me there?’
‘I’ll talk to the office and put them in the picture, make sure they channel any calls that go there straight through to California.’
Somewhat cheered by that assurance, and knowing she’d need to tread carefully, she went ahead and called her father.
‘Hi, Dad, we’ve just landed.’
‘Good journey?’
‘Very good. You know where to find me if necessary, but I’ll keep in touch.’
‘Have you spoken to Martin yet?’
‘Not directly,’ she hedged. ‘But Helen was going to let him know what was happening.’
‘Well, I’d better let you go. I know the next few days are going to be tough, certainly no holiday, but if you get the chance try to have a little fun.’
‘I will,’ she promised. ‘And I’ll ring you as soon as I’ve anything to report. In the meantime, take care of yourself.’
Their goodbyes said, she ended the call and, still afraid to talk to Martin, dropped the phone back into her bag.
‘Everything OK?’ Jared queried.
‘It seems to be. Though I really hate having to lie to him.’
‘Surely it’s better to…shall we say mislead him, rather than worry him with the truth?’
‘I suppose so,’ she agreed with a sigh.
The refuelling was completed quickly and efficiently and in a relatively short space of time they were airborne again.
When they’d reached the required height and levelled out, Jared unfastened their seat belts and they returned to the lounge.
After his comment about it being better to mislead her father than worry him with the truth, he had relapsed into a thoughtful silence.
Now, sitting opposite Perdita, he studied her face before remarking, ‘What with your father’s heart problems, the company’s financial difficulties and the added workload, the last few months must have proved quite a strain.’
Wondering what he was leading up to, she agreed warily, ‘Yes. Why do you ask?’
Looking at the fleshless angles of her face and the hollows beneath her cheekbones, he observed, ‘Because you’re thin almost to the point of gauntness, and extremely pale.’
‘I’m not wearing any make-up,’ she pointed out, her voice defensive.
&nbs
p; ‘You hardly wore any make-up in the past, but I’ve never seen you look so wan.’
His reference to the past putting a silken noose around her neck, she observed huskily, ‘In that case it must have been the Californian sunshine that made all the difference.’
Then, as the steward wheeled in the lunch trolley and began to lay the table, she reached for her bag and said, ‘If you don’t mind, I’d like to tidy my hair before lunch.’
Jared, who had risen to his feet with his customary good manners, agreed, ‘By all means.’ As she walked away he added, ‘Don’t put it up.’
‘Martin prefers it up.’
‘Martin doesn’t happen to be here—’ his voice was like steel ‘—and I prefer it down.’
Once in front of the shower-room mirror, she applied make-up with an unusually lavish hand before tugging a comb through her hair and pinning it into an extra-neat coil.
A little scared of Jared’s reaction to her defiance, she had hoped that when she returned the steward would still be there. But he had completed his task and gone.
Rising to his feet once more, Jared looked at the prim coil through narrowed eyes. As he moved towards her, she unconsciously took a step backwards but he seated her at the table and pushed in her chair without a word being spoken.
She was just breathing a sigh of relief when he slid a hand beneath her chin and tilted her head back so that she got a glimpse of his dark face, intriguingly inverted.
Then it blurred out of focus as he bent and kissed her mouth, a hard, ruthless kiss that forced her head back and her lips apart.
Though she knew that kiss was meant to be punitive, a punishment for defying him, it made every nerve in her body come alive.
She made a little sound in her throat and the pressure eased and gentled.
When he finally freed her lips, his hand remained on her throat for a moment or two, stroking up and down, making her swallow convulsively.
As she sat quite still, trembling in every limb, he removed the pins and dropped them into his jacket pocket. Then, as the gleaming mass tumbled around her shoulders, he ran his fingers through the soft tangle of perfumed curls before stooping to bury his face in them.
Holding her breath, she recalled with a stab of pain that he had always been fascinated by her hair, referring to the pale brightness of the silken strands as trapped sunshine.
Not until he straightened and moved to take his own seat opposite did she drag air into her lungs like someone who had stayed under water for too long.
Lifting the lid from a steaming dish, he filled two plates with a generous helping of prawn pilaf before pouring them each a glass of Chablis.
Lunch proved to be a silent meal. Jared appeared to be deep in thought and Perdita was battling against a host of worries and fears, her mind full of unanswered questions.
When the steward had cleared away, they took their coffee and went to sit in the armchairs.
The silence grew oppressive and Perdita was trying to find something to say when, out of the blue, Jared asked, ‘Why are you thinking of marrying Judson? Is it just to please your father?’
‘No, it isn’t. And I’m not just thinking of marrying him. I am marrying him. All the arrangements have been made.’
‘Arrangements can be cancelled.’
‘I’ve no intention of cancelling them. I want to marry Martin.’
‘If it’s not to please your father, why do you want to marry him? Don’t tell me you love him.’
‘I do love him,’ she insisted.
Clearly unmoved, Jared said, ‘I don’t believe a word of it.’
‘How can you possibly know whether or not I love him?’ she demanded angrily.
‘I’d lay a pound to a penny that your feelings for him are no more than lukewarm, so you might as well admit it.’
‘If you really want to know, I’m mad about him!’
Jared threw back his head and laughed.
‘How dare you laugh at me!’ she cried, made almost incoherent by anger.
‘That kind of out-and-out lie is enough to make a cat laugh,’ he told her.
‘It happens to be the truth,’ she insisted, with what dignity she could muster.
After a moment he pursued, ‘If you’re so mad about him, why has it taken you all this time to say yes?’
As she struggled to find an answer, Jared changed tack to ask, ‘Tell me, is he a good lover?’
Thrown by the question, she flared, ‘That’s none of your business.’
‘But perhaps you don’t sleep together?’ he suggested smoothly.
After a momentary hesitation, she informed him coldly, ‘Certainly we do.’
‘Where?’
‘What do you mean, where?’
‘As you both live in the same house as your father,’ Jared explained patiently, ‘it must be a little awkward.’
‘Not at all.’
‘So you share a room?’
‘Of course.’ Only when the words were out did she see the trap he’d lured her into.
‘That’s funny,’ he said meditatively. ‘Sally seemed to think you have separate rooms.’
As Perdita floundered, at a loss for words, Jared asked sardonically, ‘No comment?’
Rallying, she said, ‘Even if we do have separate rooms, it doesn’t mean we don’t love one another.’
‘I quite believe he loves you,’ Jared said. ‘Or at least what passes for love,’ he added, contempt in his voice. ‘But if you love him as much as you say you do, it strikes me as peculiar that, in this day and age, you don’t share a room.’
As she opened her mouth to protest, he went on, ‘And it strikes me as even more peculiar that you felt it necessary to lie about it.’
‘I might have lied about us actually sharing a room, but we certainly sleep together.’
‘Sally seems to think you don’t.’
‘Really?’ Perdita said bitterly, ‘What else does Sally “seem to think”?’
‘Since you ask, she seems to think that, though Judson might be mad about you, your feelings towards him are more platonic than passionate.’
‘And I suppose she knows all about feelings?’
‘Why shouldn’t she? I understand that she and her husband loved each other very much, and she was shattered when he died.
‘She told me that it’s only since becoming your housekeeper, and getting to know you and your father, that she’s come back to life and started to look forward rather than backwards.’
‘Are you telling me she’s fallen in love with Dad?’
‘Have you never noticed?’
‘Now you come to mention it,’ Perdita said slowly, ‘there’s something about her, an added glow, when they’re together…’
Then, thoughtfully, ‘And though to the best of my knowledge, Dad’s never looked at another woman since my mother died, it’s possible that he feels the same way about her.’
‘What makes you think that?’
‘I’ve noticed he seems to smile more when he’s with her, and when she’s not there and he talks about her, his face softens and lights up.’
‘If they do care for each other, would you mind?’
After some thought, Perdita answered honestly, ‘If you’d asked me that yesterday I’d have said no, I’d be only too pleased for them both. But as it is…’
Jared sighed. ‘I had hoped you wouldn’t hold what she did against her.’
‘Whether I do or not is beside the point. When Dad knows the truth, surely it’ll depend on how he feels about it?’
‘Does he have to know?’
As she hesitated, his tone eminently reasonable, Jared went on, ‘Won’t what you tell him depend on how the negotiations go?
‘I mean if everything turns out well, in view of his heart problems, wouldn’t it be safer to keep any unpleasant or worrying details from him?’
‘As in, “Least said, soonest mended”?’
‘Exactly. Though trite, there’s a great deal of sense
in some of those old sayings.’
While she recognized that he was trying to protect the woman who’d helped him, there was a lot of truth in what he said.
Another thought struck her. If she agreed to keep any mention of Sally out of it, it might help to bring about the kind of settlement she’d originally been hoping for.
‘If I agree, as far as it goes, are you willing to start discussions straight away?’
His voice quietly adamant, he said, ‘There’s no need to hurry. I plan to stay in the States for at least ten days, so there’ll be time enough for business when we reach California.’
It wasn’t the answer she wanted but, recognizing the futility of arguing, she let it go.
CHAPTER FOUR
HOPING to get a clearer idea of what she would be facing when they reached the West Coast, Perdita braced herself and began, ‘I take it you still live in San Jose?’
‘As a matter of fact, I don’t.’
‘Oh…’
‘San Jose had too many unhappy memories.’
Watching his face darken, and feeling the silken noose that was the past tightening around her neck, she asked huskily, ‘So where are you living now?’
‘Though my main American business interests are still in Silicon Valley, about eighteen months ago I bought a vineyard in the Napa Valley.’
Surprised, she asked, ‘How do you find the time to run a vineyard?’
‘I don’t. I’ve an excellent manager who takes care of the day-to-day running of the place. You see I’ve worldwide business interests which necessitate a fair bit of to-ing and fro-ing.
‘I’ve a good right-hand man who would happily do the travelling for me but, until a month or so ago, I’ve felt the need to keep on the move. However, between each bout of travelling, I’ve gone back home to relax and unwind.’
Perdita found herself wondering how a man who just three short years ago had been virtually bankrupt could have made such a staggering recovery.
As though reading her thoughts, he went on, ‘Three years ago, when I was on the point of losing everything, my godfather bailed me out.
‘He’d been having a tough time himself, then a load of shares he’d considered virtually worthless suddenly came good and, overnight almost, he became a very rich man.
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