Phantom Lover
Susan Napier
Love and Honor Honor Sheldon had been amused, enchanted, intrigued… and yes, seduced by the letters from her mysterious paramour. She had responded in kind, crafting messages of consummate passion and… well, naturally, of desire.Then she discovered that the letters had been meant for her gorgeous sister, Helen. And when she met Adam Blake, her image of a passionate, poetic man completely disappeared. Before her stood an aggravating, mistrustful cad who threatened to have her arrested.Now Honor is Adam's very reluctant houseguest - forced to cope with Adam's rebellious daughter, his jealous sister-in-law, an eccentric mother and a very disturbing current of intense desire… .
Phantom Lover
Susan Napier
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#ucf9a73a7-b000-5471-9848-494c00f1b440)
CHAPTER TWO (#u1a2adcbb-27ca-509c-85fd-e0121d5625b3)
CHAPTER THREE (#uafadcea4-c134-56d2-bde1-a1f209afe202)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘WELL, am I under arrest?’
Honor stared across the battered wooden table at the irritatingly fresh-faced female police constable. Old age must really be creeping up on her if policemen and women had started to look like schoolchildren. Suddenly she felt every one of her creaking twenty-five years!
‘Not yet. Right now you’re simply helping us with our enquiries,’ the constable said, with a complacency Honor found equally irritating.
‘So this is entirely voluntary, right? If I want to I can walk out of here without answering any of your questions,’ she said, to emphasise that she wasn’t prepared to be pushed around any longer.
Her wits were starting to return at last and she bitterly regretted having allowed herself to be bundled into the police car in the first place. But she had been so confused, so utterly mortified that she hadn’t cared how she retreated from the scene of her embarrassment, as long as it was at high speed! The police had been extremely efficient in that respect at least, but now they were being stupidly stubborn about letting her go.
‘You could do that,’ said the older, non-uniformed man leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the tiny interview-room. ‘But that would mean that we would have to make a decision as to whether to let you go or charge you. And I can tell you that on the evidence so far I would have to come down on the side of an immediate arrest. In that case you’d be held in custody until tomorrow’s court sitting. Your lawyer could then apply for bail but we would naturally oppose and you could well find yourself a guest of the government until your trial. Given the backlog in the Auckland Courts, that could be months...’
Honor blanched. With the currently uneven state of her finances the idea of involving lawyers was far more of a disincentive than summary incarceration. At least one didn’t have to pay to be in prison!
She had forgotten the plain-clothes man’s name but he had introduced himself as a detective inspector from Auckland Central and she supposed that she should be grateful that he had hauled her off to a nearby police station rather than taken her straight back to the city. If only Harry, the local constable, had been involved she might have been able to laugh it all off, but this was evidently a city-based operation that had spilled out into the rural fringes of Auckland, and explaining herself to strangers was a great deal more difficult.
She sighed, and glumly eyed the senior officer. At least he looked on the wrong side of thirty, with enough experience of human life to have a bit of sympathy for people caught up in awkward situations of none of their own making...well, almost none.
He was watching her now, with shrewd eyes that were neither overtly accusing nor condemning, merely shrewdly assessive. Not at all like the glassy-eyed suspicion that was being directed at her by the ambitious WPC.
‘Now, Miss Sheldon, why don’t you tell us why you were skulking about Mr Blake’s house?’
Trust that young whippersnapper to choose the most offensive way to put her question. Or should that be whippersnapperette? Good grief, now she was even thinking like an old woman!
‘I wasn’t skulking,’ Honor told her firmly. ‘I have never skulked in my entire life.’
‘Then what were you doing lurking on his property?’
‘I was not lurking—’
‘I think we’ve established that Miss Sheldon was on the property, Gibbons,’ the DI interrupted, and for a moment Honor could have sworn she saw a glimmer of humour in the cold grey eyes.
Gibbons. What a good name for her, Honor thought with malicious satisfaction, squinting to deliberately obscure the other woman’s attractive features. Yes, with her shaggy, reddish-brown hair and long arms she might just pass for a female gibbon in the murk of the jungle. Or was that orangutan? Or baboon? All three summoned suitably derogatory images that boosted Honor’s bruised confidence. Being somewhat short and generously rounded, stricken with freckles and thick wavy hair of nondescript brown that refused to obey any cut or style, no matter how professional, Honor had long ago given up worrying needlessly about her appearance, but under that supercilious uniformed stare she was beginning to feel like a total degenerate. In fact, she could feel definite latent criminal tendencies beginning to surface. A desire to indulge in a little police baiting...
‘Miss Sheldon?’
‘What?’ As usual in moments of crisis, Honor’s thoughts had wandered disastrously from the point.
‘Now we need to establish exactly why you were visiting the Blake residence in such a...shall we say, unconventional fashion?’ This time the grey eyes were definitely affable—suspiciously so.
‘I don’t see what’s unconventional about a bicycle,’ Honor countered defensively, suddenly wondering if she was victim of a good-cop, bad-cop interrogation technique that was supposed to lull her into a false sense of security.
‘You hid it in some bushes,’ the young baboon pointed out as if it countenanced a crime in itself.
Honor frowned. She wasn’t going to tell this snotty kid that she had been ashamed of her battered bike of dubious vintage and even more dubious brake-power.
When she had set out from home she had been expecting her destination to be the usual friendly homestead common to most New Zealand rural properties, albeit an up-market one commensurate with the size and diversity of Blake Investments. Instead she had been presented with a view of an intimidatingly pretentious mansion at the bottom of a steeply sloping, thickly gravelled driveway that sent cold chills up her spine. She had had nightmare visions of herself not being able to stop, ploughing straight on through the majestic front door, muddy tyres mowing down the butler and scattering screaming maids in all directions. Oh, yes, that would make a grand first—and last—impression on the man she had come to see!
‘I didn’t want it to get stolen,’ she temporised on a half-truth, unable to resist adding, ‘Of course, I didn’t know at the time that there were hordes of police already lurking and skulking around the property.’
The constable reddened, while the DI coughed, his hand briefly covering his mouth. Having abandoned his laid-back lean on the wall, he sat down on the other spare chair and put his big hands flat on the table.
‘Let’s cut all the clever word-play and get down to brass tacks, shall we? All we want to know, Miss Sheldon, is why you were visiting Mr Blake on this particular day, claiming an acquaintance that he himself emphatically denies. And why you previously tried to threaten him over the telephone. It was you, wasn’t it, trying to contact him on the telephone at eight thirty-five a.m. this morning? You have a clear and beautifully distinctive voice that is very easily identifiable.’
Honor bristled, ignoring the compliment. Was that what this fuss was all about—her abortive phone call? ‘I didn’t try to threaten him. Is that what they said? I wasn’t even allowed to speak to him!’
‘I know. You spoke to me.’ His cool admission scotched that particular theory. If he had been already there to pick up the phone then it wasn’t her call that had prompted police action.
‘Has somebody been kidnapped?’ she asked, all sorts of awful possibilities suddenly occurring to her.
Her question was quietly ignored. ‘You refused to tell me what your call was about, except that you had written Adam Blake some letters and that you wanted to talk to him about them.’
‘It was personal,’ she said stubbornly, feeling herself begin to blush as she remembered the rather garbled conversation she had engaged in before quickly hanging up, obviously thwarting the trace on the call that the stonewalling she had received had been designed to permit.
She had hoped to be able to avoid the risk of humiliation in person but, her phone call having failed so miserably, she had been left with no honourable choice but to cycle the fifteen kilometres from her home at Kowhai Hill to the address of the Blake homestead. If her car hadn’t been held hostage for the past week by the local mechanic who was waiting for a vital spare part she might have driven and thereby perhaps avoiding any necessity to skulk.
‘So you’ve already said. But I think that your very presence here establishes the fact that whatever it is is no longer a purely personal matter,’ it was pointed out with inescapable logic.
‘I don’t see why I should be treated like a criminal just because I went visiting uninvited,’ Honor said sullenly. They would probably laugh themselves sick when she told them. Either that or charge her with wasting valuable police time.
‘Extortion is a crime,’ the constable intoned sternly.
‘Extortion!’ Honor’s beautifully distinctive voice creaked like an old rusty gate, her green eyes widening in horror.
‘Extortion,’ confirmed the DI heavily. ‘Or blackmail, if you want to put it in its more common emotive term.’
Blackmail?
Oh, hell!
Suddenly what had been merely an embarrassing misunderstanding took on hideously serious complications.
Honor’s truculent resistance crumbled. She squeezed her eyes tight shut to combat the sinking realisation that she really wasn’t going to escape without giving a very thorough account of her actions to the police.
And all because of that damned Shakespearean sonnet she had mooned over this morning!
CHAPTER TWO
DARLING,
Is it thy will thy image should keep open
My heavy eyelids to the weary night?
Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,
While shadows, like to thee, do mock my sight?
The idea that her ordinary self could engender such wild longings in a man that he couldn’t sleep at night was so bizarre that Honor’s green eyes glowed with amused delight.
She picked up the cup of tea that she had just brewed for herself when she had heard the postman’s whistle, and carried her precious letter over to the comfortable chair behind the untidy desk that served to designate part of the lounge of her small cottage as an office. She settled down in her familiar sprawl, a jean-clad leg slung over one padded chair arm, and scanned the rest of the Shakespearean sonnet, down to the last, jealous couplet:
For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,
From me far off, with others all-too-near.
She couldn’t help smiling. Others? There were certainly no ‘others’ in the sense that the sonnet suggested. The small community of Kowhai Hill, tucked in below the Waitakare Ranges just north-west of Auckland, wasn’t exactly bulging with eligible males, and those she did come into contact with generally knew her too well to suffer any sleeplessness on her account. For one thing she was distressingly plain. For another, her reputation was as spotless as her name.
‘Good old Honor’ was a mate, someone with whom a local lad could be seen having a drink at the pub without being accused of unfaithfulness by his girlfriend or wife, a woman whose social life consisted largely of group outings or happily ‘making up the numbers’ at dinner parties where she could be relied upon to fit in, regardless of the age or diversity of the company.
Except to Adam. To Adam she was someone quite different: a woman enticing in her mystery, challenging in her intellect, desirable in her elusiveness.
Honor’s smile had disappeared by the time she reached the bottom of the page, its place taken by a vivid blush. Adam’s prose might not have the unique beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry, but it was none the less powerful stuff, a passionate outburst of feeling that was lyrical in its erotic intensity.
Although she had never met him in person, in eight months of correspondence Honor had formed a mental picture of a warm, witty and literate man whose love of writing cloaked a personal shyness that made him quite content to pursue their acquaintance entirely through correspondence.
Their letters had been a lively exchange of ideas about books, places, philosophies and world events rather than mundane personal details. Although she had learned that he was thirty-five, owned his own development company and lived on Auckland’s North Shore, that was about the extent of her knowledge of his physical existence outside his letters.
But with the last six letters, her cosy conclusions about him had been exploded. Not only had they arrived weekly instead of at the usual monthly intervals, they were so joltingly different in emotional tenor that Honor would have thought they were penned by someone else if she hadn’t recognised Adam’s distinctive handwriting.
At first Honor had not known how to reply. What did you say to a man who suddenly told you that you were the only thing that gave his life hope and meaning and that your letters were his lifeline? When he begged you to believe that he had fallen wildly in love for the first time in his life? That although he had never had you, except in his illicit imagination, he missed you savagely in his heart, his arms, his bed...?
She had been amused. And enchanted. Apprehensive and intrigued. And...yes, in spite of herself, seduced...
So, after the second letter, she had gathered her own courage and replied according to the dictates of her wayward heart rather than her sceptical head. Amazingly the words had flowed out of her pen as if they had been in there all along, awaiting the perfect moment to escape the repression of her earnest common sense. No one ever fell in love through the post, for goodness’ sake! She didn’t even know what he looked like!
‘All my love, Adam’.
She sighed as she reached the end of the second, sizzling page. Unlike his other letters, which often ran to nine or ten pages, these passionate outpourings were invariably as short as they were hot and sweet.
She began to fold the delicate, onion-skin sheets along the sharp crease-lines only to discover that there was a third sheet, stuck to the second by some of the ink which had run along the edges.
Carefully she peeled it free and froze as a name leapt out at her from the few hastily scrawled lines.
I know we’re not supposed to meet but if I don’t get to see your beautiful face soon, my darling, courageous Helen...touch the soft spun gold of your hair...make love to your lush mouth and delicate body the way I’ve dreamed of these last months I’ll go mad! Please come to me... Don’t put me through the agony of having to wait any longer. I need you...
Helen?
Helen!
Honor bolted upright in her chair.
Beautiful face?
Spun gold hair!
She swivelled her head to stare at her reflection in the blank grey computer screen which sat on her desk. By no stretch of the imagination could the unruly brown curls that tumbled around her shoulders be described as spun gold. Or the oval face sprinkled with freckles and rendered stern by the thick straight brows be considered beautiful. Her nose, rather pink from the spring cold that she was just shaking off, was the only thing about her that was glowing. And no one in his or her right mind would call her sturdy figure ‘delicate’...
Her confusion turned to dawning horror.
Frantically she tugged open the stubborn bottom drawer of her desk and sorted through the sheaf of letters, carefully filed by date. Most of the envelopes were typed, addressed to Miss H. Sheldon at Rural Delivery, Kowhai Hill.
Her hands shaking, Honor opened some at random, scanning the opening lines.
The later, passionate letters were headed ‘Darling’, the rest were teasing salutes to ‘M’Lady’, a reference to the whimsical valentine card addressed to ‘My Lady of the Moonlight’ that had arrived by special delivery the day after the St Valentine’s Ball in nearby Evansdale, which Honor had helped organise for a children’s charity. She had been one of the hostesses and had introduced and been introduced to so many new people that night that all their names and faces had intermingled in her hazy recollection. She couldn’t remember an Adam at all but there was no doubt from the handwritten rhyme inside his card, referring to roses and moonlight and ladies in distress, that he had known exactly who she was.
After all she had been pretty distressed that night, desperately fighting off the summer flu that she had later succumbed to, wandering the small memorial gardens in the moonlight while the dancing went on inside the adjacent community hall, trying to rid herself of a murderous headache that had refused to respond to the pills she had swallowed.
She had finally dozed off on a cramped park bench, waking an hour or so later to find herself tucked under a light rug in the back seat of her car, a sheaf of deep red roses lying on the seat beside her—obviously illegally picked in the gardens. Since there had been any number of hefty farming friends at the ball who could have performed the kindly deed she hadn’t thought twice about it until she had received the stranger’s valentine the next day. Then she had been curious, and yielded to the temptation of the implicit and very untraditional invitation of a post-office box number on the flap of the envelope.
She pulled out more letters until she had gone through them all and then began stuffing them haphazardly back into their envelopes, trying to control her rising panic at the awful realisation:
Not once in all their correspondence had he actually addressed her as ‘Honor’! And her own trademark signature—a large, dramatic H with the other letters of her name an illiterate scrawl that she had fondly imagined was dashingly sophisticated—that too could have easily been misread.
‘Honor?’
Her head snapped up. A yawning figure appeared in the doorway, her delicate, willowy figure clothed in the merest excuse for a nightgown, her long blonde hair spilling in disarray across her slender shoulders.
Honor’s heart sank into her practical shoes at the sight of her guest. She could hear fate laughing like a drain in her ear.
‘You’re up early, Helen. It’s only eleven o’clock.’
Her sarcasm went completely over her beautiful sister’s head. ‘Is it? I’d better get a move on, then. My flight leaves at three and Trina is taking me to lunch at the Regent before she zips me out to the airport.’
Her sister got lunches with her New Zealand agent at the best hotel in town and a lift to the airport in a limo, Honor ate cheese sandwiches in her kitchen and drove an ageing Volkswagen. And God forbid that she offer to farewell her sister at the airport. Helen hated to feel ‘emotionally pressured’, dismissing Honor’s ready sensitivity as ‘mawkishness’. That about summed up the differences in their lifestyles—and their personalities, Honor thought ruefully.
Honor had spent her teenage years watching with a mixture of awe and pity as her older sister clawed her way up through the fiercely competitive ranks of struggling models to achieve world-class status. She sincerely admired Helen for enduring the stresses and brutal rigours of maintaining herself at a constant peak of physical perfection from the age of sixteen, when she had won her first beauty competition, to her current graceful approach to thirty. But envy had no part in that admiration. Having seen the knife-edge of uncertainty on which Helen’s ego was constantly balanced, Honor had pitied her with the complacency of someone who knew how much of an illusion effortless beauty was, how false the glamour of her world really was.
She looked down at the letter clenched in her hand. No, she hadn’t envied her sister at all.
Until now.
‘Helen...’ Her voice trailed off. Did she really want to know? She gritted her teeth. She had no choice. He was talking about meeting her, for goodness’ sake!
‘What?’ Helen yawned again, stretching the tall, lithe body, sculpted taut by diligent daily aerobics and rigid dieting. Helen might eat at the best hotels, but she only ever tasted their salads!
‘Remember last time you stayed with me—you know when we had the Valentine’s Day Ball?’ Honor had been so busy helping to organise what was touted as being the rural social event of the year that she had forgotten to arrange a partner for herself and by then all her male ‘mates’ were spoken for. When Helen had arrived for an unexpected few days’ visit it had seemed a great idea for her sister to use the extra ticket. Who better to help create the necessary glitter for the event than a top international model?
‘Mmm.’ Helen sounded faintly wary, probably worried that Honor was going to request another charity appearance.
‘Do you remember meeting anyone called Adam?’ Honor held her breath, although she knew it was a forlorn hope. As soon as she had seen that wretched ‘Helen’ she had known...
‘Adam?’ Her sister’s vivid green eyes narrowed in thought, accentuating their perfect almond shape.
‘Adam Blake.’
‘Adam...Adam. No, I don’t think so.’ Helen shrugged cheerfully. ‘You know what I’m like with names, darling.’
Honor did know. Unless people had the potential to be useful to her career Helen tended to operate on the principle out of sight, out of mind.
‘Are you sure? Do moonlight and roses and ladies in distress ring any bells?’ she persisted doggedly.
To her shock her sophisticated sister pinkened. Honor had never seen her blush before and now she knew why. That creamy pale, unmade-up skin flushed unevenly, in blotchy patches.
‘Helen?’ Her voice was sharper than she had intended. ‘You do know who I’m talking about, don’t you?’
‘Not really. God, I’m dying for a coffee.’
‘What does “not really” mean?’ Honor scrambled up to follow her sister out into the tiny kitchen, watching with a jaundiced eye as Helen began puttering about on the bench-top. The only time her sister came even close to looking ungraceful was when she pretended to be domestic.
‘It means that maybe I do and maybe I don’t. I never asked who he was, although come to think of it he might have said that his name was Adam...’
‘Who said?’
‘Just someone who helped me out that night. I got into an awkward situation and he happened along at the right time, that’s all.’
That’s all? Honor wasn’t fooled by her sister’s casualness.
It took another half-hour and two cups of bitter black coffee to extract the story from her sister, and it was every bit as painful as Honor had known it would be.
Some time just after midnight, Helen had got into an undignified tussle with an overheated and over-inebriated admirer whom her customary haughtiness had failed to freeze off. When she had ducked out of the hall to escape his attentions he had followed, leaping amorously upon her in the rose-garden, tearing the bodice of her dress just in time for some amateur celebrity-hunter with a camera to get a couple of supremely compromising shots.
Helen’s unnamed gallant had not only appeared out of the darkness to haul the man off and send him smartly on his drunken way, but had driven her back to the cottage in her ruined dress and left her with the promise that he would make sure the photographs never saw the public light of day.
‘I never said anything because I just wanted to forget the whole embarrassing incident,’ said Helen sharply, forestalling Honor’s obvious question. ‘My dress was an Ungaro, you know. The shoulder-strap was practically torn away and though I got a dressmaker to repair it it was never quite the same. I was nearly in tears, I was so furious. I hardly spoke to your Adam, if that’s who it was, except to give him directions to this place. I only went to that damned ball because of you, you know, and what did you do but go off and leave me to the mercy of some drunken moron!’
‘I didn’t abandon you—it was more like the other way around. I couldn’t get close with all your admirers clustering around,’ said Honor, stung by the unfairness of the accusation. ‘Besides, you told me to keep my distance from you, remember, because I wasn’t feeling very well and you had that Australian swimsuit shoot in a few days and didn’t want to get my germs. In fact my infectiousness was the supposed reason for your suddenly rushing off to Sydney the next morning.’
‘Yes, well, I wasn’t going to hang around and wait for some sleazy tabloid to pick up on the story and ring me for a comment. Can you imagine the headline—TOP MODEL IN TOPLESS ROMP?’ She shuddered. ‘My publicist would have fits. Not to mention Mother.’ Honor was unsurprised to note that her concern for their ambitious mother, who had been the driving force behind Helen’s career and was still her manager, took second place to her fear of adverse publicity. Helen was always acutely conscious of her image, to the point of paranoia.
‘He got a shot of you topless?’ Her throaty voice squeaked with horror. She knew that her sister always turned down nude work—‘preserving her mystique’, she called it. Even swimsuit offers were accepted only when their prestige was exceptional.
‘Well, it wasn’t quite that bad,’ Helen conceded grudgingly. ‘But I was being considered for that new aerobics clothing line at the time and they wanted someone with a squeaky-clean image. I couldn’t afford to risk even a mild scandal. Why all the interest now? Don’t tell me this Adam is looking for me after all this time?’
No, but only because he already thought he had found her!
And because Honor always tried to live up to her name she had shown Helen her precious letters...all except the last few passionate epistles which she couldn’t quite bring herself to share. It would be too much like a betrayal.
Her sister’s reaction was quite predictable. She had given one or two a cursory read-through and collapsed in hilarity.
‘He thinks you’re me? What a hoot! He’s in for a shock, isn’t he?’ she giggled with an adolescent glee that Honor darkly thought ill befitted a woman who was almost thirty. ‘Especially since his last sight of you was when you were snoring like a jet-engine!’
‘Snoring?’ Honor’s puzzlement was shadowed by the gloomy presentiment of further humiliation.
‘Drooling, too, as I recall,’ Helen added with sisterly cruelty. ‘I couldn’t go back into the hall with my dress practically in shreds so we cut through the gardens to get to his car and there were you, parked on a bench like a homeless tramp. Since you’d said you were going to stay until the last gasp no matter how rotten you were feeling, I told what’s-his-name to carry you to your car so that you wouldn’t get double pneumonia or something if you didn’t wake up for a while. I thought if I told him you were my sister he’d make a fuss and insist on you coming with me so I did us both a favour and told him you were a distant relative with an extremely jealous husband. I even left you the stolen roses that drunk tried to foist on me in order to keep my hands busy while he tried to have his sweaty way...’
‘Thanks a million,’ grumbled Honor, cringing at the unflattering picture she must have presented. She should never have taken those pain-killers on top of several glasses of champagne.
‘What—what was he like? What did he say?’
In her mind she had pictured the man who wrote to her as being quiet and reassuringly ordinary-looking, with kind eyes and a ready smile. Socially unsophisticated. The kind of man who would be more interested in a woman’s mind than her appearance. The kind who preferred warmth and humour to the cold perfection of glamour.
Helen was maddeningly vague. ‘I can’t remember. He was thin and dark...I think. He made the usual protective male noises but I didn’t really listen. He must have been pretty strong, the way he carried you, but he drove some awful station wagon or something. Not my type at all!’ It was typical of Helen to judge the man by his car. At Honor’s sound of annoyance she said impatiently, ‘Well, what do you expect me to say? He wasn’t Superman. There was nothing memorable about him—not that I wanted to remember anything about the whole wretched business anyway. I’m swamped in gorgeous men every day of my working life, darling, why should I remember some unimportant stranger I met ages ago?’
Honor looked at the valentine—slightly dog-eared from months of affectionate handling—that had started it all, and sternly made herself face facts.
‘He couldn’t possibly have meant to write to me—not after having met you,’ she sighed, far too aware of her sister’s devastating tunnel-vision effect on men to have any illusions about how she rated in comparison.
‘What does it matter who he meant to write to? It was you he ended up corresponding with,’ Helen pointed out kindly, spoiling it by adding, ‘If you ask me, he’s got to be pretty arrogant in the first place if he thinks a woman like me would be interested in some country hick...’
‘He doesn’t live in the country, he lives in Auckland,’ Honor automatically defended.
‘Small-town hick, then,’ said Helen, ignoring the fact that Auckland was New Zealand’s largest city. She was very proud of the fact that she had outgrown her home country, whereas Honor had very proudly grown back into it after several years’ enforced stay in the canyons of New York city.
‘Anyway, it was a gross piece of assumption on his part that I’d be interested. I don’t know what you’re worrying about. If he dumps you what have you lost? Only another penfriend, for goodness’ sake. You used to have stacks of them when you were twelve—I should have thought you’d have grown out of that sort of teenage stuff by now. Doesn’t say much for your social life, does it? I told you burying yourself in this place would stunt your growth. I suppose, as usual, you let your imagination run away with you and built it into some grand romance in your mind.’
By now Helen was into full, condescending stride. She had never understood Honor’s fascination with the written word, had pitied her for wasting her time reading about life instead of following her big sister’s example and going out and actually living it.
‘They’re just letters, Honor, it’s not as if he ever actually bothered to make the effort of meeting me—you—face to face,’ she continued bracingly. ‘And stop looking so guilty. The whole thing was his mistake in the first place for assuming that there was only one Miss Sheldon. Imagine thinking I’d enjoy writing letters to someone I don’t even know!’ She shuddered delicately. ‘If I tried to answer every fan letter I get I’d never have time to do anything else. You know what I’m like—I don’t even answer yours...’
Honor gave up trying to explain. Helen would never understand in a million years what those letters had meant to her. How much joy they had brought her, how deeply committed she had felt as she had progressively revealed more and more of her thoughts and feelings to a man she’d never met.
And what about those most recent letters she had sent? Honor went cold with horror at the thought of what she had ardently revealed. Talk about drooling! Oh, God, what a mess...!
She knew she couldn’t just hang around waiting for the axe to fall. She couldn’t stand the agony. And the thought of putting it all into writing was abhorrent. She couldn’t present him such a shock in a letter, in cold black and white, with no opportunity for her to test his mood first for the best way to explain. Whatever the embarrassment to herself, she owed it to them both to talk to him in person. But how? If she wrote asking for a meeting without telling him why, he would still get an awful shock on seeing her. It would be far better if she could talk to him first on the phone—soften him up for the disappointment...
There lay the rub. Adam didn’t usually bother to head his letters with any address and the recent letters hadn’t even been dated. All she had to go on was the North Shore box number he had originally given her.
While Helen was upstairs packing the vast number of clothes she had brought for her few days’ visit, Honor leafed through the telephone book with sweaty palms although she already knew what she would find: curiosity had tempted her to peep once before. There was no A. Blake in either the personal or business listings with an address on the North Shore.
This time, desperation led her to run through all the very numerous Auckland Blakes and at the very bottom of the alphabetical listings something jumped out at her.
Z. Blake, Arrow House, Blake Rd, Evansdale.
Honor blinked. Coincidence? A vague memory stirred and her thick brows drew together in an effort to bring it into focus. Hadn’t she read in the local paper a few years ago about a local hero, Zachary Blake, who had made a fortune diversifying his family’s citrus fruit orchard into production of avocados, kiwi fruit, nashi and other exotic and expensive fruits aimed at the overseas restaurant market? He had been one of the first ‘Kiwi fruit millionaires’ in the boom days before farmers all over the country started jumping on the exotic fruit bandwagon and he had used his wealth to diversify even further, into food processing and other related industries.
Might Adam be a relation of the Zachary Blakes? He had never mentioned having relatives who lived in her vicinity, but then she had never mentioned having a sister. Their letters had been for and about each other, a deliciously selfish and possessive indulgence that no one else was permitted to share.
But if Adam was a relative, even only a distant once, that might explain his presence at the Valentine Ball, since people in the area had been encouraged to sell tickets among their wider circle of families and friends. Perhaps the Evansdale Blakes could tell her how to get in touch with Adam. It was worth a try.
Never one to procrastinate, Honor made a furtive phone call to the number in the book, nervously aware that if Helen walked in and realised what she was doing she would probably earn herself another patronising sisterly lecture.
The discovery that Adam was not only known to the Evansdale Blakes but was actually in current residence with them shocked her into stammering confusion, especially when it became evident that unless she stated a very explicit purpose for her call she was not going to be put through to him. The sheer unexpectedness of it all caused her to hang up in a panic and only afterwards did she think it strange that the man had never bothered to ask her for her name and yet had seemed fixated on demanding to know what she wanted from Adam. The thought of having to ring back and humiliate herself by relating the ghastly mix-up to an unknown and obviously unsympathetic third party made up her mind. The direct approach was the only option left.
As soon as Helen wafted out the door in a cloud of L’Air du Temps, trilling farewells, Honor grimly wheeled her bicycle out of the shed. There was no point in trying to get any work done until she had done everything she could to talk to Adam.
In ordinary circumstances she would have enjoyed the bike ride, being quite used to the eccentricities of the dilapidated machine that she had bought from the previous owner of the house, along with all the other junk in the rusting corrugated-iron shed at the bottom of her garden. The Waitakere Ranges were a popular training ground for triathletes looking to build up their cycling stamina on the hilly terrain and although Honor was nowhere near their league, either in fitness or in the snazziness of their gear and complex machines, she shared their appreciation of a brisk workout along the quiet, winding, bush-lined country roads. This morning, however, an unexpected spring shower and the hollow nervousness in her empty stomach served to make her wish she had at least waited until after lunch to do her duty.
Consequently, by the time she arrived at the Blake house she had a very severe case of cold feet even before she saw its palatial splendour. Looking down at her mud-spotted shoes and stockings, she cursed herself for changing out of her jeans into a skirt and blouse but she had wanted to make a reasonable impression. Now her rain-damp skirt clung clammily to her legs, although thankfully her light jacket had protected her white blouse, which would probably have turned transparent. At least she had been bright enough to wear a scarf and she took it off now, running cold fingers through the tangled waves of her hair.
After wheeling her embarrassingly shabby bike a little way back down the road and parking it safely out of sight in the undergrowth, she advanced cautiously down the driveway, keeping close to the trees that lined one side, where the footing on the larger stones was easier for her smooth-soled flat shoes than the fine gravel at the centre. As she approached the wide front door Honor caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the curtained windows and halted. Goodness, she looked like a tart with her skirt rucked up between her legs. Perhaps modesty would be better served by taking her stockings off. Her skirt would be less likely to stick to smooth, bare legs.
She made a smart about-turn on to a narrow paved pathway along the side of the house, looking around for some cover. There was a little thicket of low-growing shrubs next to a fishpond and she ducked in among them and crouched to peel off the damp stockings quickly. Unfortunately her bare feet sank into the loamy ground and she had to wipe them with her scarf before she could slide back into her shoes.
By the time she rose from the bushes Honor was flushed and thoroughly annoyed with herself for her uncharacteristic obsession with her appearance. What did it matter what she looked like? She wasn’t Helen and that was all that would matter to Adam.
Unfortunately, just as she popped up a man suddenly appeared from the rear corner of the house, running directly towards her with such an implicit threat in the lean of his powerful body that Honor reacted to sheer instinct and began to run back towards the drive, unzipping her jacket to push the grubby stockings deep into the inside pocket as she did so. A garbled shout sent her deeper into panicked embarrassment and there were suddenly people running all over the place as she slammed into a brick wall with such force that she went sprawling backwards, her fingers trapped inside her pocket by the stretchy octopus her stockings had suddenly become.
‘Look out, she’s got a weapon!’ she heard, before the brick wall reached down and hauled her up by the scruff of her jacket, one beefy hand punching down into her pocket, almost tearing it off as he wrestled her for her stockings and dragged them free.
Ears ringing, Honor was conscious of all the chaos around her coming to a dead stop as the limp trophy was dangled from her captor’s hand.
‘What the hell—?’
Honor looked up into the furious brown eyes of the menacingly big blond man who held her. He had shoulders like a rugby player and a broken nose to match and his grip on her jacket was so tight he was practically strangling her with the collar. Perversely, his rough treatment vanquished her embarrassed fright and ignited her temper.
‘Let me go, you big, stupid oaf!’ she hissed, writhing in his grasp and jarring her fists as she pounded them against his iron chest.
‘No way,’ he snarled, shaking her until her teeth rattled. ‘What the hell were you going to do with these?’ He dangled the stockings tauntingly in front of her pink nose and from the flash of yellow heat in the brown eyes she wondered whether he intended to strangle her with them. He certainly looked as if he’d like to, witnesses or no.
‘Wear them on my head!’ she snarled back with furious sarcasm. ‘Or, better still, use them as a slingshot to crack that Neanderthal skull of yours!’
Dimly she heard the commotion re-start around her as several other men tried unsuccessfully to drag her out of the masher’s bone-cracking grasp.
Amid the turmoil she heard the startling words which had the effect of freezing her share of the struggle.
‘Police? You’re police?’ She cranked her head around, noticing that what had seemed like a crowd was only five men, all as big and brawny as the man who held her, and one woman who looked as if she could match them muscle for muscle.
She glared up at the man who still held her. ‘What is this, a training exercise in police brutality? You know I could make a complaint about this!’
‘You’re the one who ran,’ the blond giant ground out, unimpressed by her outrage.
‘I didn’t realise running was a criminal offence, Mr Plod,’ she snapped back. ‘If you’ve made a run in my stockings maybe I can have you arrested.’
A tiny snicker of inappropriate laughter from one of the men was quelled with a single look from the senior-ranking officer who now stepped forward to take charge.
‘I’d like you to accompany me to the station, miss, to answer some questions—’
‘I’ve got a few the little bitch can answer right now,’ the man holding her cut in crudely. ‘Who’s in it with you?’ he demanded savagely. ‘Where’s your accomplice? You must have one—you’re too dumb to have hatched this on your own. Is he your lover?’ He gave her body a contemptuous survey that took her in from head to battered toe. ‘If he is, don’t expect him to give a damn what happens to you now; I doubt if he thinks that a brown dumpling is worth doing hard time for—you’ll be the one to take the fall—’
‘Mr Blake—!’ The senior officer again attempted to intervene. This time it was Honor who stopped him.
‘Blake?’ Shock was piling on shock from all directions. Her heart sank as she looked into the blazing brown eyes. ‘Mr—? You—you’re not a policeman? You’re Zachary Blake?’
Colour raked along his tanned cheeks as if she had struck him a stinging blow. ‘You know damned well who I am, you lying bitch—’
‘That’s enough, Mr Blake! You can let her go now. We have the situation under control.’ The order came sharply, and this time the blond avenger reluctantly released her, stepping back and slowly flexing his big fists at his side as if imagining them squeezing around her neck.
Honor swallowed painfully. So much for the subtle approach!
‘I—don’t know what this is about. I’m just here to see your...to see Adam Blake...’ she offered tentatively, realising that she didn’t know what relationship he had to this man.
Instead of soothing him, her timid foray into explanation prompted a searing explosion of curses that followed her all the way to one of the unmarked police cars at the back of the house into which she was rapidly hustled.
‘You don’t understand,’ she cried, as they pressed her into the back seat. ‘Please, let me speak to Adam, he’ll know who I am!’
‘And how well do you know him?’ queried the senior officer in a strange voice as the policewoman slid alongside Honor from the opposite door.
Honor felt a tiny glimmer of hope that she could salvage herself from this comedy of errors. ‘Very well,’ she said firmly. ‘Just ask him about our letters. Tell him that my name is Sheldon!’
‘Our letters?’ He pounced on what he evidently saw as a discrepancy. ‘Is Sheldon your surname? And what is your first name, Ms Sheldon?’
She hesitated, disturbed by the sudden silky smoothness with which he spoke. ‘Helen.’
Guilty colour flooded her face, but she reasoned that, once Adam had vouched for the name, then she could set about putting her identity right.
But her brief flirtation with dishonesty cost her dearly, because the policeman turned away from the open car door and addressed someone behind him with sardonic humour. ‘Hear that, Adam? She says you know each other well. Says that her name is Helen Sheldon. Care to give us a formal ID for the report?’
‘Sure.’ A backlit figure moved around and ducked down to look into the car, and Honor gasped as she saw his face.
‘No. That’s definitely not Helen Sheldon. I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.’
The man that she had thought was Zachary Blake followed up his icy denial with a venomous smile that twisted his mouth from snarl to sneer.
‘Calling you dumb was an understatement. Didn’t it enter your tiny mind that it might seem a trifle suspicious to claim to know me at the same time that you were busy trying to pretend that you thought I was my own brother? Or maybe you’re being very, very clever. Maybe you’re looking ahead to a defence of mental incompetence. Don’t bank on it. Even if this turns out to be the bumbling amateur farce it looks to be I’m going to make sure that the case against you is nailed down tight. As far as I’m concerned people like you are the lowest scum on earth!’
And with that Adam Blake slammed the door and stalked off, leaving Honor in the ruins of her shattered dreams.
That Neanderthal thug, that—that rough, crude, bullying pig was her delightful, passionate, poetic, ideal man? Impossible!
If anyone was laying claim to a false identity, it was Adam Blake!
CHAPTER THREE
ASSISTING the police with their enquiries while trying to retain at least a modicum of personal privacy was hard work, Honor decided wearily that evening as she made herself a solitary dinner.
Three hours! It had taken three hours in that police station to satisfy grim officialdom that she wasn’t a homicidal maniac with a lethal grudge against the Blake family!
Of course, it hadn’t helped that she had not been carrying a skerrick of personal identification, but, as she had pointed out to the slit-eyed Gibbon, handbags were notoriously difficult to juggle on the handlebars of a bicycle! And then there had been the complication of trying to explain her actions without compromising Helen. The police were quite capable of arranging for her sister to be detained at the airport if they thought Honor’s story required her corroboration. Helen would be livid if that happened.
Unfortunately, after she had down-played the whole thing by treating it as a joke, claiming that she had known all along that Adam had been writing to the wrong sister but had decided it was time to ’fess up, the DI had insisted on driving her home and viewing the physical evidence for himself.
Then, instead of just glancing at one of the letters, he had read the entire batch, an invasion of privacy that Honor had endured only because she suspected that he would be happy to produce a search warrant and go through the whole house if she said no.
‘You don’t mind if I borrow this one for a little while, do you?’ he had murmured at last, not bothering to wait for her answer as he had tucked the piece of evidence complacently into his jacket pocket. Naturally it was one of Adam’s steamier efforts and Honor had cringed on his behalf. If he became a police-station joke he would never forgive her. Not that he was likely to now, anyway.
Honor sighed as she ate the desiccated omelette she had overcooked in her distraction. At least there was one consolation. She had achieved what she had set out to do that morning. By now Adam Blake must be fully aware of who she was...and who she wasn’t.
Instead of softening the blow, she had managed to deliver him a real pile-driver!
Another consolation was awaiting her in the refrigerator: a beautifully rich chocolate cake made for her by one of the group of little old ladies among whom she circulated copies of the talking books that she recorded for the Blind Institute.
She cut herself a bigger than usual slice and retreated to her lounge to enjoy the last rays of the sun stretching into the small, north-facing room, sprawling on the carpet by the French doors and turning the stereo up as loud as was comfortable, the poignant, meditative mood of Elgar’s cello concerto perfectly suiting her frame of mind.
Halfway through the concerto her chronically bad-tempered cat, Monty, stalked into the room and availed himself of the last crumbs of cake on the plate before mercilessly clawing a comfortable position in the centre of her supine body, his wheezing, rumbling purr providing a monotonous counterpoint to Sir Edward’s masterly composition.
So loud, in fact, was the music and Monty’s vibrating bass that Honor didn’t hear the bell or the knocking on her distant front door and it was only when the French doors behind her head rattled violently that she realised she had a visitor.
She jerked upright, shrieking as Monty dug his claws through her faded shirt into her skin and hung on grimly as she scrambled to her feet. She staggered to undo the tricky door-catch, at the same time trying to brush off the hugely outraged fluffy burr adhering to her sagging clothes.
The tussle ended when the door flew open under intense pressure from without and Monty, scrabbling for purchase against Honor’s chest, sprang at the interloper’s head and rebounded off it into the relative safety of the darkness beyond.
‘What the hell—?’
Honor didn’t need to open her pained eyes to recognise her cursing visitor. He had greeted her before with that same expression, uttered in that very same, furious tone of voice.
Adam Blake. In black trousers and a black fisherman’s sweater and with a dark scowl on his tanned face he looked larger than ever, and menacingly attractive. The high, hard cheekbones and strong jaw gave him a sculpted male beauty that she had barely registered during their last hasty confrontation. He and Helen would make a striking pair, Honor realised drearily. They were two of a kind, blessed with golden good looks and a physical magnetism that was impossible to ignore.
‘I—I’m sorry.’ To her horror she realised there was a small trickle of blood oozing down his temple and she instantly forgot the stinging on her own chest. ‘It—it was only my cat...’
‘If that’s your cat I’d hate to see your dog!’ Adam swiped at the trickle with the back of a big hand and Honor winced in sympathy.
‘I don’t have a dog—’
‘With a pit-bull like that for a cat I don’t suppose you need one.’
Honor’s heart began to settle back into a more normal rhythm. ‘You startled him, that’s all. He was scared and you were standing between him and freedom.’ She automatically searched in her jeans pocket for a crumpled handkerchief which she apologetically held out to him. ‘Here, you’re still bleeding—’
He ignored the pacifying gesture, producing a handkerchief of his own, a crisp white square, beautifully ironed, with which he dabbed his temple. ‘If you’d turn that bloody noise down you might hear your doorbell!’
Honor bristled as she did so. ‘That noise happens to be Elgar,’ she said tartly, when she had quietened the stereo. ‘I thought you liked classical music.’
His eyes narrowed at the familiarity implicit in the comment. They weren’t so much brown as blond, Honor thought inconsequently, a shade or so deeper than the dark honey hair.
‘Where are they?’
‘They? There’s no one here but me,’ Honor blurted, and then wondered whether she had made a mistake in admitting she was alone to a furiously angry man. ‘Mr Blake—’
‘Mr Blake?’ His blond eyebrows raked sardonically upwards. ‘Why so formal all of a sudden? What happened to “you big oaf” and “Neanderthal”...darling?’
The snarled endearment was definitely a threat. Freshly conscious of his solidity and size, Honor swallowed, bravely standing her ground as she nervously tucked a strand of hair behind her left ear. ‘I—I suppose you’ve spoken to that detective—’
‘We had a fascinating conversation. Now where are they?’
‘W-who?’
‘Not who, what! And don’t bother running that doe-eyed-innocence routine past me; I don’t buy it. If you don’t start co-operating I’ll have you slapped behind bars so fast your head will spin!’
No need—it was spinning wildly already. Doe-eyed? No one had ever called her that before. If it hadn’t been yelled with such insulting emphasis she might have mistaken it for a compliment.
‘The police are perfectly satisfied that I had nothing to do with...to do with whatever trouble you’re in!’ Honor said stiffly, resisting the urge to shout back. She wished she knew what she was defending herself against. Exactly what she had been suspected of had never been precisely defined. All she knew was that it involved a serious threat, and that there would be dire consequences for herself if she so much as breathed a word of the case to anyone until cleared to do so by the police.
‘It’s not I that’s in the most trouble right now,’ he grated. ‘If you don’t produce those letters in the next five minutes I’ll tear this place apart myself.’
‘The letters?’ Honor almost wilted in relief. ‘What do you want them for?’
‘What do you think?’
He took a step towards her and Honor put a defensive hand against the front of her shirt and was disconcerted to feel bare skin. She looked down. To her horror Monty’s hind legs had done a very good job of dragging most of her buttons out of their worn buttonholes. Her faded shirt had parted over her breasts, revealing a similarly shabby bra, one she had hung on to long past its prime because it was so comfortable.
She gasped, and hastily began rebuttoning, freezing as Adam suddenly reached forward and pulled one side of her shirt out of her hand. While she stood, stiff with shock, he lifted his other hand and ran blunt square fingers over the tender flesh swelling above the frayed lace. A sharp sting made her wince as his thumb dragged in the wake of his fingers.
‘It seems your pet is fairly indiscriminate in his victims—you’re bleeding as much as I am. You ought to get something on those scratches straight away; the skin on your breasts is a lot more delicate and susceptible to damage than the skin on exposed parts of the body.’
His lack of embarrassment only made Honor’s more acute as his hand slowly withdrew, leaving behind a tingling awareness of his touch.
Bewildered by such consideration in the midst of his raging fury, and guilty that she had suspected him, even for a moment, of carnal motives, Honor’s eyes flicked to the vivid, red-beaded line down the side of his face.
‘I-I have some antiseptic ointment in the bathroom if you want some...’ she offered, clutching the front of her shirt and nervously backing away.
Something feral gleamed deep in the golden eyes. ‘Good idea. Why don’t you go and get it and we can tend to each other’s wounds?’
Have him touch her breasts again with that strange, gentle insistence? Honor could feel her face heat up as she turned and fled for the bathroom. After all the trouble she had gone to to dress up nicely for him earlier, he had to walk in on her when she was clad in scruffy jeans and a shirt she had picked up in a jumble sale!
Only two of the four scratches she had sustained were seeping blood but Honor cleaned and applied the cream to all of them. She didn’t want to give Adam the excuse of demanding an inspection, and the ruthless satisfaction on his face when she had begun to blush had told her that he had instantly perceived her physical awareness of his masculinity as a weakness that could be exploited to his advantage.
Remember the letters, she told herself severely as she tucked her shirt firmly back into her jeans. Adam Blake is not really the snarling, aggressive, insulting bully he appears to be. He is a warm, charming, sensitive man who just happens to be justifiably confused at the moment. Grabbing the tube of ointment, she kept repeating the incantation as she went back to face him.
The warm, charming and sensitive man was sitting behind her desk rifling through the drawers. His concern had been merely a ploy to get her out of the room, she realised with an acute sense of betrayal.
‘Hey, what do you think you’re doing?’
He ignored her, bending in the chair to pull out another drawer, and tip out its contents on the floor. Realising that she had no hope of physically stopping him, Honor tried to use sweet reason.
‘Mr—Adam, if you want those letters back I’ll be happy to give them to you. I know you’re angry but truly, I had no idea that you thought you were writing to my sister—how could I? You wrote to this address and I’m the only H. Sheldon who lives here. I didn’t even know that you and Helen had met—I thought you just must have seen me at the ball and...and...’
His head lifted, his eyes chilly with contemptuous disbelief. ‘Found you so instantly and devastatingly attractive that I couldn’t forget you?’ Honor blushed painfully as her foolish fantasies were stripped to their unlikely origins. ‘Yes, I can see how often that must happen to you.’ His sarcasm was as glacial as his stare.
‘Perhaps that’s how you get your kicks—by enticing strange men to write to you under false pretences. Do you advertise in the personal columns, too, and send your gullible prospects a photograph of your beautiful sister to stimulate their interest? Are you so jealous of her that in some sick and twisted way you try to be her—?’
‘I’m perfectly happy being myself! You seem to be forgetting that you’re the one who made the approach to me,’ Honor flung at him, mortified by his interpretation of her character. ‘All I did was innocently answer a card that I received—’
‘You have an interesting interpretation of innocence,’ Adam rapped out. ‘The police tell a different version...the one about how you thought it was great fun to lead me on until you decided I was becoming too persistent, an embarrassing annoyance, and thought it was time to front up and deliver the punch line in person.’
Oh, damn! She knew that somehow her lies would return to haunt her.
‘I only said that because I was trying to keep Helen out of it. I didn’t want the police involving her in any awkward publicity—’ she protested.
‘But she is involved, isn’t she, right up to her beautiful neck?’ he cut in savagely. Honor could practically see his wounded male pride throbbing. ‘I suppose she was in on the joke, too?’
‘There wasn’t any joke.’ Honor stared him straight in the eye, willing him to believe her. ‘I didn’t realise what had been going on myself until I was reading one of your letters this morning and...well, of course I showed them to Helen straight away and she told me about what you did for her at the ball, and then I knew...’
‘You showed her?’ Adam’s voice rose sharply in conjunction with his powerful body as he came sweeping to his feet. ‘Helen’s here?’
The flare of anticipation that glowed momentarily in his eyes said it all. The beauteous Helen would be forgiven her transgressions whereas her plain, unprepossessing sister would not. Honor felt a little kick of malicious temper. If he could be insensitive so could she.
‘Not now, no. She was staying with me for a few days, but she flew to Sydney this afternoon. When I told her about the mix-up she wasn’t really interested. She doesn’t answer fan letters, you see, so she probably would never have written to you even if you had sent your letters to the right address in New York.’
Instead of flinching Adam fixed her with a drilling look. ‘Something else you lied to the detective inspector about? You told him your sister was in New York—’
‘I didn’t lie, I said she lives in New York, not that she was there right at this moment—’
‘A lie by implication is no less a lie,’ said Adam grimly. ‘You seem to make a habit of taking advantage of other people’s mistakes, don’t you, Honor? Quite the little opportunist, in fact. I wonder what else you’re hiding...?’
With that he sat back down and continued his search, his careless violation of her tidy drawers a deliberate goad to which Honor instinctively responded. She marched around the desk and pulled open the bottom drawer. She took out the stack of letters that the detective had put back in meticulous order and dumped them in front of him.
‘There! Satisfied?’
He was shuffling impatiently through them. ‘Not nearly. I don’t care about these. Where are the others?’
‘What others?’
‘You know very well. The ones I didn’t send.’
Honor stared at his gritty profile, wondering whether the blow from Monty’s claws could have caused a mild concussion in so hard a head. Now she looked more closely she could see the fine tension lines radiating out around his mouth and eyes, signs of powerful emotions kept in rigid check. He looked like a man at the very edge of his control. What anger he had released so far was merely the tip of the iceberg.
‘They’re all there,’ she said warily, feeling like a passenger on the Titanic. ‘Except for the one that the detective took with him, of course...’
‘And you can thank God that he handed it back to me instead of filing it as evidence,’ he growled, and suddenly she thought she understood. He wanted reassurance that she hadn’t showed the most revealing letters to anyone else.
‘Look—’ She reached for the envelopes and yelped as her hand was slapped down on to the desk under a savage paw. ‘I was only going to show you,’ she said reproachfully. ‘If you’re talking about the last few letters they’re right here, at the back. See?’ She showed him with her free hand.
‘Matching envelopes,’ he said cryptically as he checked the contents. ‘Hide them in plain sight. Clever.’
The press of his encompassing palm loosened over hers but just as she slid her flattened fingers gratefully free he curled his hand around her wrist and jerked her closer. Sitting down he was still almost as tall as she was standing. His voice was silky with cold menace. ‘Now, be a good girl and show where you’ve hidden the others. If you give them to me we’ll call it quits—after you’ve answered one or two pressing questions...’
She didn’t like the sound of that. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about; there are no others.’ She strained away from him while trying not to let the extent of her panic show. Maybe Adam Blake had a split personality; maybe his letters had been dictated by a separate persona that he wasn’t consciously aware existed.
‘If that’s the way you want to play it.’ The smile he gave her sent a chill up her spine. It was almost as if he relished her resistance.
‘I’m not playing.’ But he was...playing her straining body like a fish on a line, reeling her slowly in between his splayed knees with a gradually increasing pressure of her captured wrist.
‘However many letters you might have posted, those are all that arrived here,’ she told him, her normally rich, warm voice reedy with rising hysteria. How did you reason with a madman? ‘Why don’t you let me go and we can have a drink and talk about this sensibly?’ Maybe alcohol was a bad idea. It might feed his paranoia. ‘Or a cup of tea. That scratch is probably throbbing by now. Why don’t you let me clean it for you and—? Oh!’ With a slight flick of his wrist he brought her down on her knees, his thighs levering shut on either side of her torso. She gasped at the ruthless compression of her ribs, her hands pushing helplessly against the thick muscles bunching under the dark trousers.
He watched her twist and struggle in silence for a moment or two and then he leaned forward and cupped her pale face in his big hands with a tenderness that terrified her far more than his anger.
‘Forget the tea and sympathy—I want something much more valuable. Would you like me to hurt you, Honor?’ His thumbs stroked behind her ears, his fingers threading up under her hair, cradling her skull, making her aware of its mortal fragility.
‘Is that the only way I can make you tell the truth? The things about yourself you told me in your letters—I don’t suppose all of them were lies. I remember you telling me once that you have a low pain threshold...’ The slightly calloused edge of the outside of his palm lifted her jaw, stretching her soft throat uncomfortably taut. ‘Shall we test the veracity of that statement first...?’
‘Adam, please—’
His thumbs shifted to press across her trembling mouth. ‘Don’t beg yet, I haven’t started.’ His fingers massaged her scalp gently and suddenly black dots were dancing in front of Honor’s eyes that had nothing to do with pain. After a shattering day this emotional overload was just too much.
‘You’re being totally unreasonable,’ she whispered.
‘And you don’t think I have a right to be? I don’t give in to blackmail. Not ever. I don’t know how you got hold of those damned letters but if you thought you could use them against me you made a bad mistake—’
‘But you know how I got them...you sent them to me!’ The black dots had become red and Honor could hear the blood pounding in her ears. If he leaned any closer he would be kissing her. Or, more likely, biting...
‘Did you think you’d get money for them? From me? Or are you more ambitious? Did you think you could use them to advance your journalistic career by flogging them off to the highest bidder? Maybe it was just malice. You wanted to make me pay for the sin of having wanted your sister instead of you. There are plenty of motives to choose from, aren’t there?’
His breath was hot against her face. ‘I—I’m not that kind of reporter,’ she said weakly.
‘You admitted you work for a newspaper.’
God, he was persistent. He somehow must have gained access to the record of her interview. How wonderful to have influence!
‘Only part-time. I help produce the small local bi-weekly give-away. All very innocuous—flower shows, pony club meets, advertising supplements, that sort of thing. I do the layout on my computer. I have a desk-top publishing programme...’
Except for the shrunken omelette, she hadn’t eaten anything but a breakfast slice of toast and now her blood sugar plummeted to her toes. What little colour there was left in her face drained away. Her eyes drifted defensively closed and she sagged as a wave of faintness passed over her.
She was barely aware of his hands sliding down to replace the pressure of his thighs against her waist, holding her limp body upright as he demanded insistently, ‘And that’s how you support yourself? Pay for this house, your car, your living expenses, clothes? By working part-time?’
He made it sound as if she lived high on the hog, instead of quietly and, for the most part, frugally. ‘I—I do other things sometimes—voice commercials, for radio and television, leaflet layouts for people...’ If she stopped fighting and answered his ridiculous questions maybe he would go back where he came from. Right now, that was all she wanted: to be left alone to crawl into bed and escape the bitter disillusionments of the day. ‘The house was a gift from Helen. The car is six years old. I buy my clothes at sales. OK?’
‘And you’re an ardent conservationist?’
This new tangent bewildered her more than ever. Reluctantly Honor opened her heavy eyelids. Funny how secure she felt in his hold when only a few moments before it had been a merciless threat. ‘I think whales are worth saving. Why? Don’t you?’
‘Not at the expense of human life,’ he said, watching some of the colour slowly returning to her face as she frowned, the stern tilt of her thick straight eyebrows cancelling out the slightly dazed softness of her grey-green eyes.
Sullen-faced she had the look of a boy, all freckles and bony angles, but they were fine bones and the voice that came out of that neat, narrow mouth was anything but boyish. It was smooth and soft as velvet, as unexpectedly sensuous as the extravagant curves of her breasts and hips. He tightened his grip on her waist, unable to encircle the soft indentation even with his long fingers fully extended to the limit of their generous reach. It was a timely reminder that he liked his women tall and athletic like himself, narrow-hipped, supple and slender. And, more importantly, trustworthy.
‘I don’t think I’ve ever heard of whales harpooning fishermen,’ Honor said, disliking the brooding shift of his expression.
‘No, but there are radicals who would like to make their point just as graphically: vandalism, car bombs, threats to spike the products of companies they say exploit animals for profits with poison...’
Something in the way he said it made Honor stiffen. ‘Is that what the police are investigating?’ Her heart went out to him, until she realised what he was thinking. It was like a reviving dash of cold water in her face. ‘My God, you can’t think that I would have anything to do with it? For goodness’ sake, you know me better than that!’
‘On the contrary, I don’t know you at all,’ he corrected her coldly.
‘Yes, you do. You have all my letters,’ Honor insisted.
‘And you have mine.’
She sighed. ‘We’re just going around in circles here. Look, I’m a pacifist, I have nothing but contempt for people who use violence to promote their point of view. I’m sorry you’re having problems but they’re nothing to do with me. I don’t know what more I can say to convince you. Can’t we talk about this tomorrow? I’m very tired. I’ve been man-handled, interrogated, frightened and insulted. Don’t you think that’s enough for one day?’ Self-pity overwhelmed her as she catalogued her woes. And she hadn’t even mentioned the worst shock of all: the defection of the romantic hero of her imagination!
‘So am I. Tired of deception and evasion.’ Adam stood, towering over her kneeling figure for a moment before making a rough sound of impatience and reaching down to lift her into the chair he had just vacated. ‘But by all means let’s talk about it tomorrow. In fact, now I think of it, that’s an excellent idea. Why don’t you just sit here and rest while I get your things?’
‘My things?’ She was talking to his back as he strode out of the room. ‘What do you mean, get my things? Hey, where do you think you’re going?’
Everywhere, it seemed. ‘Getting her things’ translated as conducting a rapid search of the rest of her house, ignoring Honor as she trailed furiously in his wake, protesting every step of the way.
‘If this is the way you carry on, no wonder someone’s threatening you!’ she threw at him as he inspected the contents of the chest of drawers in her bedroom. ‘It’s a wonder no one brained you before now. And put that down! How dare you put your grubby paws on my underwear? If you don’t get out of here right this minute I’m calling the police!’
It was an empty threat. The last thing she wanted after today was another run-in with authority, and Adam seemed to know it. He merely turned, a pair of plain white cotton panties strung from his tanned fingers.
‘If you wear underwear like this I doubt you have to worry about it being pawed. Queen Victoria would definitely approve.’
Sarcastic beast! She whipped out some sarcasm of her own.
‘What are you, an expert? I suppose you’ll be raiding women’s clothes-lines next. Why should we dress like tarts just to pander to your sleazy male fantasies? And what I wear under my clothes is none of your business, thank you very much!’
Thank God he had skipped the top right-hand drawer.
Unfortunately, even as she sent up the grateful prayer, he remedied the omission. He stilled, staring down at the contents, then lifted his head to cast a taunting glance at her fiery face as he deliberately, slowly, stirred the frothy, multi-coloured confection of lace until a violet satin suspender spilled over the edge and dangled provocatively into space, swinging like a brazen pendulum measuring out each long second of her embarrassment. She lifted her chin and set her mouth, her hands clenching at her sides.
He didn’t say anything as he tucked it back. He didn’t have to. His smirking expression said it all. First he made slighting remarks about her everyday underwear just because it was practical, and now he made her feel as if possession of a few feminine fripperies were a criminal offence! Oh, why had she made that smart remark about sleazy fantasies? She might have known the wretched man wouldn’t overlook anything. Didn’t the fact that he dotted every ‘i’ and crossed every ‘t’ in his letters tell her anything?
‘At the moment everything about you is my business,’ he continued as if the silent interchange hadn’t occurred. He opened her wardrobe and hauled out a soft suitcase he found on the top shelf, and began tossing in random pieces of clothing from hangers and drawers. ‘By the time I’ve finished with you I’m going to know you better than you know yourself.’
‘What are you doing? Stop that!’ For a big man he was very quick on his feet, keeping his broad back to her and side-stepping each time she tried to move around him. He even raked a collection of cosmetics off her dressing-table into the gaping bag. ‘Adam, I’m warning you—’ She squeaked as he grabbed a blind handful from the top right-hand drawer and stuffed it into the bag. ‘If you don’t stop right now I’ll—I’ll—’
He zipped up the suitcase and turned so swiftly that she staggered back. ‘You’ll what?’
She frowned as she tried to think of a threat big enough to scare him. ‘I’ll call my lawyer.’
Some threat. Perhaps he guessed that she didn’t have a lawyer.
‘Fine. Call him from my phone,’ he said coolly, taking her elbow in a light but numbing grip that had all her nerve-ends screaming to obey him. ‘It’s tapped but then no doubt, in view of your claim of complete innocence, you won’t mind the police listening in.’
His phone? At last Honor forced herself to concede that he was not just trying to frighten her. He was succeeding!
‘I’m not going anywhere with you.’ Her feet contradicted her feeble protest as she trotted helplessly alongside him, steered by that implacably gentle, fingertip control.
She remembered now that he had mentioned in one of his letters that he had studied some obscure oriental form of self-defence in his teens and twenties. He probably knew pressure holds that would turn a six-foot body-builder into an obedient wimp, let alone a five-foot-three female of doubtful fitness. And she had fondly imagined he had engaged in the sport to compensate for an inferior physique, to bolster his self-confidence as a man. This man had self-confidence oozing out of every pore!
Back in the living-room he put down the suitcase, but not her arm, as he slotted the bolt on the French doors into place and turned to check the windows. ‘Where are your keys?’
‘On the hall table,’ Honor blurted out automatically before finding the energy to struggle briefly as he swept her towards the door. ‘You can’t be serious about this—’
‘I’m always serious.’ That was a lie; many of his letters had been deliciously light-hearted.
‘But—this is ridiculous.’
‘I’m not leaving you here. Not until I’m sure where you fit in—’
‘I don’t fit in anywhere!’ Honor wailed, as he scooped up her house-keys and hustled her out of her front door on to the uneven paved pathway.
‘Until I know that for certain I’m not taking any chances. I can’t afford to. There’s too much at stake. Not just my personal safety or that of my family, but of other people, too. Maybe you really do have no connection with the extortion; maybe you are just a rotten coincidence,’ he said, pocketing the keys after locking the door. ‘But whether it was planned or not you’re another source of pressure when I least need it, another distraction when I need to focus all my concentration and devote all my resources to my primary problem. At least if I know where you are I won’t have to worry about what you’re up to.
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