A Lesson In Seduction
Susan Napier
Was he a shy guy… or playboy?They met at the airport. He wore a suit and carried a briefcase. He seemed quiet, a little shy. Definitely not the type to flirt with a fellow passenger - even if she was famous actress Rosalind Marlow! His name, Roz discovered, was Luke James. She was determined to discover more about him… such as why he appeared to be following her. And was he as innocent as he seemed?What he really needed was a lesson in flirtation - and, on impulse, Roz decided to be his teacher! Luke was a fast learner. In fact, Roz soon discovered that he didn't need lessons at all. He could teach her plenty about the art of seduction!"Susan Napier is a whizz at stirring up both breathtaking sensuality and emotional tension." - Romantic Times
“Don’t tell me I have to teach you how to kiss, as well as how to flirt?” she murmured invitingly (#u748dc5b7-6083-56db-be1a-365de23bf370)About the Author (#u6928f60e-8d32-5bcf-b664-0557a3c7447a)Books by Susan Napier (#ua36d982c-55cc-51f4-8274-411a17ab5706)Title Page (#ub01e2b0d-d45d-5917-b8c1-026b4463ebc1)CHAPTER ONE (#u53485621-8aaf-5839-859f-f5f5eb2c2273)CHAPTER TWO (#u0d7daa82-2ccf-5104-8ed3-df39021704f9)CHAPTER THREE (#u86ed7677-47ce-5d58-a4fc-d27689454641)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)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Don’t tell me I have to teach you how to kiss, as well as how to flirt?” she murmured invitingly
Luke was breathing harshly. “What’s to teach? A kiss is just a kiss....”
She laughed. “Oh, Luke, do you have a lot to learn....”
Her condescending mockery was smothered by his urgent mouth. His lips slanted across hers, his tongue smoothing inside the velvety interior of her mouth, sucking at the sweetness he found there. Rosalind’s eyes fluttered shut, unable to cope with the sensual overload.
Finally he broke away. “Well, teacher, I guess you made your point.”
“Did I?” It was Rosalind who had learned a lesson....s
Susan Napier brings us yet another fast-paced, witty, breathtakingly sensuous romance that will captivate you till the very last page!
SUSAN NAPIER
was born on St. Valentine’s Day, so it’s not surprising she has developed an enduring love of romantic stories. She started her writing career as a journalist in Auckland, New Zealand, trying her hand at romance fiction only after she had married her handsome boss! Numerous books later she still lives with her most enduring hero, two future heroes—her sons!—two cats and a computer. When she’s not writing she likes to read and cook, often simultaneously!
Books by Susan Napier
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A Lesson in Seduction
Susan Napier
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘LEAVE the country?’
Rosalind Marlow stopped pacing up and down the hearth-rug in her parents’ elegant lounge and stared at her mother in consternation.
‘Just for a little while, darling,’ Constance Marlow murmured placidly, finishing her cup of tea and settling back on the couch, looking quite unruffled by her daughter’s outraged expression. ‘Until some of this dreadful fuss dies down.’
‘Are you suggesting I run away?’ Rosalind demanded incredulously, her slender body stiffening in rejection of the idea of such rank cowardice. She and her five siblings had been brought up on the credo that one must always face up to one’s responsibilities, no matter how painful or embarrassing. Surely her mother wasn’t now suggesting that she compromise her honour for the sake of simple expediency?
Rosalind looked to her father to share her outrage, but he merely gave an expressive shrug, as if to say he was but putty in her mother’s hands. Which, of course, he was...but only when it suited him. As a distinguished director with over thirty years’ stage experience Michael Marlow was gifted with an unerring ability to control the volatile personalities of the egocentric actors and actresses who cluttered his professional and personal life—his famous wife included.
‘Think of it as taking a timely holiday, darling,’ her mother murmured in her beautifully articulated drawl. ‘You must admit it’s absolutely ages since you had a proper one. And after what you went through on that last job you certainly deserve a relaxing break.’
Rosalind shuddered at the memory of her recent, depressing foray into film. The disaster-plagued production had merely served to confirm her inner conviction that, like her mother, she was born for the stage rather than the screen. She liked to think of herself as versatile enough to tackle anything but she had never really enjoyed the disjointed, repetitive nature of acting for the camera, where everything was done in short snatches and some nameless editor in a booth somewhere controlled your ultimate interpretation of a role.
She should never have allowed herself to be flattered into accepting the female lead in the art-house production but the director, an old drama-school friend, had caught her at a weak moment and persuaded her that it would be ‘fun’ to work together again.
Some fun. Rosalind had cracked a wrist doing her own stunts and had almost been eaten by sharks!
‘That’s not the point,’ she argued, raking her fingers through her short-cropped red hair, making it stand fierily on end, a vibrant contrast to her pale skin and black roll-necked sweater. ‘It’s the principle of the thing. Why should I let myself be driven into exile, for goodness’ sake? I haven’t done anything wrong!’
‘Of course you haven’t, darling,’ her mother soothed, looking hurt at the implication that she didn’t trust her own daughter.
Rosalind simmered with frustration. She knew that her mother was playing shamelessly on her sense of guilt but she had made a promise and not even for her family’s peace of mind was she prepared to break it. However, she couldn’t blame those she loved for trying to winkle out the truth.
‘Even if you had, you know you’d have our unqualified support,’ commented her father quietly, making her feel even worse.
‘I’d tell you if I could,’ she burst out. ‘You’ll just have to accept my word that I haven’t done anything to be ashamed of!’
Her eyes avoided the coffee-table, which was strewn with tabloids bearing lurid headlines that variously branded her as a promiscuous sex-kitten, a butch, feminist home-wrecker, a pathetic, mixed-up waif with an insatiable craving for the love denied her by her disapproving family, and a helpless tool of an alien conspiracy to topple the governments of earth!
‘I thought we’d already agreed on that,’ murmured her eldest brother from the window-seat, turning his broad back on the entertaining sight of his wife trying to keep up with their three aggressively active toddlers in the rambling back garden of the large town house. Hugh pinned Rosalind with his thoughtful gaze. ‘But unfortunately the Press aren’t quite so trusting. By refusing to answer questions, you’ve left them free to speculate without the hindrance of having to conform to the known facts.’
Rosalind scowled, her thick, dark-dyed eyebrows drawing sharply together. ‘I gave them a statement; that should have been enough. You’re a lawyer; can’t I take out an injunction or something, to stop them harassing me?’
She slouched with unconscious grace over to the front window and peeked through the curtains. Sure enough, the gaggle of reporters who had been tailing her relentlessly for the last week was still clustered around the gate. Her wide mouth firmed. She was damned if she was going to allow them to hound her into giving them what they wanted.
At least they were no longer knocking on the door and shouting questions through the keyhole, thanks to Hugh’s threats to have them arrested for trespass. His hefty size and cold grey stare had added to the deterrent and not for the first time Roz had blessed her parents for having the lucky foresight to adopt a child who had developed into such an impressive specimen of adult masculinity. The natural Marlow offspring were all tall and slender, more accustomed to using charm than muscle to extricate themselves from trouble.
Hugh shrugged his massive shoulders. ‘Possibly, although even if successful all a court order would do would keep reporters at a certain physical distance; it wouldn’t stop them digging around for information or photographing you in public. In fact it would probably be counter-productive—make the Press even more tenacious. They could counter-claim that the public interest in this case transcends your need for personal privacy because of the political implications—’
‘But what happened had nothing to do with politics!’ Roz wailed, infuriated by the unfairness of it all.
‘A politician’s wife is involved; that makes it political,’ Hugh corrected her with his precise, pedantic logic. ‘With an important by-election coming up, all sides are going to be quick to try and use the publicity to their advantage, and while I don’t doubt that the Government is as keen as you are to see the story die a discreet death it certainly can’t be seen to be interfering with the freedom of the Press.’
‘Well, I don’t see how my running away is going to help,’ said Roz, her green eyes sparkling with ire. ‘People are sure to think it’s because I’m guilty of something.’
‘So what? They think that anyway,’ came another unwelcome brotherly opinion. Sprawled full-length on the floor beside the couch, Richard was genially fending off an assault by two miniature versions of himself.
‘Look, Roz, take it from one who knows—all this hide-and-seek is merely whetting the Press’s appetite and if you won’t oblige them with a scandal they’ll create their own. You’re God’s gift to the tabloid industry, you know: a well-known actress with a reputation for wild behaviour and a sexy body that photographs like a dream. All they have to do if the story threatens to lose impetus is to snap another shot of you in a skimpy dress getting in or out of a cab or threatening to deck another reporter and—presto—instant page three! They love chasing you around... you give such good press.’
‘Mind your tongue in front of the children, Richard,’ his mother chided, rapping him sharply on one up-raised knee.
He grinned irrepressibly, looking much younger than his thirty-one years. He dragged himself up to a sitting position, gently wrestling his sons off his chest. ‘Face it, Roz, they’re not going to just give up and go away, not while you’re dangling yourself tantalisingly under their noses. It’s going to get a lot worse before it gets better and the rest of us are bound to suffer along with you’
His sweeping gesture took in the various members of the Marlow clan who had arrived for what Rosalind had been led to believe was a quiet afternoon tea with her parents. Instead she had found the house bulging with her siblings and their partners and offspring. In fact, the only ones missing from the council of war were her rock-composer brother, Steve, who was currently in Hollywood working on a film score, and her youngest brother, Charlie, who was a mechanic with a race-team on the overseas rally circuit.
For the most part Rosalind was grateful that she came from a close-knit family with a strong interest in each other’s well-being, but sometimes their loving interference only complicated matters. Right now she didn’t need the extra pressure that they were bringing to bear on her battered self-confidence.
The trouble was that her family still saw her as the over-impulsive, fun-loving and, OK, outright reckless creature that she had been in her teens. Why couldn’t they accept her as the mature, capable, staunchly independent twenty-seven-year-old woman she had become? Granted, her basic personality hadn’t changed; she was still outgoing and gregarious, throwing herself wholeheartedly into everything she did, and some people might mistake her passionate enjoyment of life for recklessness, but her family should know better.
In the last five years the disciplines and rewards of her profession had become the major focus of her prodigious energies. Because her loyalty, once given, was rarely withdrawn she still had some wild and loose-living friends, but it had been years since she herself had had to be rescued from the consequences of her own folly.
She glanced over to the corner where Olivia sat with her husband, Jordan Pendragon.
Normally she could rely on having her twin firmly on her side, but today Olivia seemed oddly reserved. Like Richard and Steve, Rosalind and Olivia were only fraternal twins, but they had always been closely attuned to each other’s emotional wavelength. Olivia’s marriage the previous year hadn’t seemed to jeopardise their closeness and thus it was disconcerting for Rosalind suddenly to discover herself deprived of the psychic support she had always taken for granted.
Olivia’s dreamy, abstracted air was nothing new—as an artist she frequently went around with her head in the clouds—but Rosalind had the feeling that this time the mental aloofness was deliberate, and it hurt. Everything around her seemed to be shifting, changing, veering dangerously out of her control. It was no wonder her nerves were a riot.
‘I’m sorry, I had no idea that this was going to turn out to be such a mess,’ she sighed, thrusting her hands into the pockets of her skin-tight jeans, her slender shoulders hunching under the thin black sweater. ‘The whole thing’s been blown up way out of proportion... all because some greedy hotel employee took it into his head to sell his distorted version of events to the highest bidder!’ she said bitterly. ‘Why can’t people mind their own business?’
‘People figure that since you make your living in public you are their business,’ said Richard unsympathetically. ‘You’re not the only one under siege. My office phone line is tied up handling the constant press calls and I’m fed up with granting interviews that turn out to be a total waste of time... not to mention having to hire security guards to keep reporters away from my cast and crew.’
‘I thought you believed that all publicity is good publicity,’ said Roz, with a pointed look from Richard to his wife which reminded him of the way he had flagrantly used the gossip columns to manipulate Joanna into accepting his proposal.
‘When it’s about me, yes,’ Richard said deadpan, and with outrageous immodesty, making Joanna put a hand across her mouth to stifle her laughter. ‘But they’re only gatecrashing my set to ask about you...why haven’t I cast you in one of my films? Is it because I think you’re unstable? Do you have drug/alcohol/attitude problems...what kind of breakfast cereal did you eat as a kid? I tell you, it’s driving me nuts! I’m running behind on my shooting schedule as it is; the last thing I need is any more disruptions on the set.
‘Do you know we actually filmed five takes of a scene yesterday before I discovered that one of the dead bodies was a reporter from the Clarion who had bribed one of the extras to let him take his place? The idiot kept breathing and blinking. Apart from not being able to act, he wasn’t even a member of Equity. He could have got me in trouble with the union, for God’s sake!’
Of course, she might have known that Richard was more concerned about his precious movie being completed on time than her problems! Rosalind glared at him as he unsuccessfully tried to detach the two red-headed babies from his now woefully stretched woollen jumper.
‘Now, Sean, stop sucking Daddy’s sweater; you’ll get fur balls,’ he scolded. ‘You too, David; you don’t have to do everything your brother does...’
As usual his twin sons ignored his stern command and continued to gum the soggy wool, until their mother gently uttered a word and they began to crawl obediently in her direction. Richard watched them go with a rueful smile that acknowledged a higher domestic authority. He scrambled to his feet, wincing slightly at the pressure on his lame knee, and turned his attention back to Rosalind.
‘If you genuinely want to deflect press interest the simple solution is to remove yourself as a potential source of information. Disappear completely for a while...at least until the initial feeding frenzy is over. It’s not as if you have to worry about walking out on your job,’ he added with cheerful malice, ‘since you don’t happen to have one at the moment...’
‘I’m currently resting between engagements,’ Rosalind informed him loftily. It was a point of pride that she had hardly been out of steady work since she had left drama school. ‘I’m considering several offers—it’s just a matter of deciding which one to accept.’
‘But you said yourself that none of them start for a few weeks, darling.’ Her mother pounced. ‘So why not make the most of your free time until then? Your father and I know the perfect place for you to go—peaceful, warm, exotic and—best of all as far as you’re concerned—wonderfully remote.’
‘It’s not an island, is it?’ said Rosalind with deep suspicion. ‘I think I’ve had enough of remote islands for one lifetime.’
The film she had just completed was supposedly set in just such an idyllic-sounding location. However, the cast and crew had found themselves virtually camping out on an extremely rugged dot in the South Pacific, in wretchedly primitive conditions and beset by all manner of hardships, including erratic delivery of supplies, a subtropical cyclone and Rosalind’s terrifyingly close encounter with a shark while filming the underwater scenes.
Needless to say, the budget had been horrendously overrun, and Rosalind had been relieved to get back to New Zealand with body and soul intact, only to walk slap-bang into a situation of almost equal peril.
‘Oh, you’ll love this one,’ her mother assured her. ‘Your father and I had one of our honeymoons there a few years ago. We simply adored it. A jewel of a place. Gorgeous scenery, gorgeous weather. A perfect refuge from reality.’
‘And exactly where is this perfect jewel?’ asked Rosalind morosely, unwillingly tempted.
‘Tioman Island!’ announced her mother with a vocal flourish that invited applause.
She must have forgotten that geography had always been Rosalind’s worst subject at school.
‘Is it somewhere around the Great Barrier Reef?’ she guessed, thinking that if she had wanted to wimp out and hide from her avalanching problems Australia would hardly be far enough!
Joanna, the teacher, looked pained. ‘It’s in the South China Sea,’ she said helpfully.
‘Oh, right...’ Rosalind closed her eyes as she tried to visualise Asia in her head, but her overtaxed brain refused to co-operate. All she could see against the blackness were wretched images from Room 405 at the Harbour Point Hotel in Wellington... Peggy Staines’s anguished, pleading face, her body writhing in pain on the crumpled double bed, the frantic actions of the ambulance crew and the avid curiosity of the hotel staff and guests who had seen Rosalind in her bathrobe dazedly gathering up the scattered banknotes from the floor.
‘Off the east coast of Malaysia, north-east of Singapore.’ Her father gently reorientated her.
‘You must have heard of it, darling!’ her mother urged. ‘It’s quite famous. They shot parts of South Pacific there. Remember Bali Ha’i... remember the waterfall? That was filmed on Tioman. Just imagine being able to visit it for yourself...’
Rosalind’s eyes flew open. She loved vintage musical movies. She had a good singing voice and had appeared on stage in a number of musical productions, South Pacific included. She vividly remembered the waterfall scene from the movie and her interest quickened, much against her will.
‘If it’s famous then it’s probably packed to the gills with tourists,’ she said stubbornly. ‘I hate tourist traps.’
‘Funny how I couldn’t drag you away from Disneyland when you came and stayed with me in LA,’ murmured Richard, who had lived and worked in the film capital for several years before he’d turned from acting to directing.
Rosalind poked her tongue out at him. ‘Disneyland’s different.’
‘So is Tioman,’ her mother said hurriedly, before sibling raillery could subvert the conversation. ‘There are a few resorts but the island’s still pretty much uncommercialised, and the pace of life is very slow. There’s no stress, there’s no crime...it’s somewhere you can feel wonderfully safe and anonymous. Even a free spirit like you, Roz, wouldn’t feel hemmed in. You really need to see it to appreciate it. I think I just happen to have some brochures around here somewhere... Now where did I put them...? Michael, do you see them?’
She looked around vaguely, absently retucking a loose strand of red hair into her elegant French twist. Rosalind watched suspiciously as her father obediently took his cue and ‘discovered’ the large stack of travel folders conveniently on hand under one of the newspapers on the coffee-table.
Her suspicions were strengthened by the flagrant enthusiasm with which everyone fell on the glossy brochures. Alluring descriptions of virgin rainforest and white coral beaches were read aloud with typical Marlow panache, the delights of scuba-diving in limpid tropical waters and the merits of Malaysian cuisine discussed. Even the babies drooled in ecstasy over the bright, colourful pamphlets that Richard thrust into their pudgy fingers, although that was probably more to do with the fact that they were teething!
‘It says here that there are references to Tioman in Arabic literature that date back two thousand years...’ murmured Hugh, perusing a hard-back book that had a stamp on the cover indicating that it had come from the library. Something else her mother had just happened to have on hand? Rosalind didn’t think so!
‘You know, you don’t even need a visa to visit Malaysia,’ said Olivia, reading the fine print on the back of a brochure. ‘Your passport’s current, isn’t it, Roz?’
‘Of course it is. Roz is used to travelling light. She can take off at the drop of a hat, can’t you, darling?’ her mother encouraged.
Rosalind thought it was time to put her foot down and inject some reality into the situation.
‘Even if I was thinking about taking a trip, if this place is so wonderful there’s no way there’d be vacancies for spur-of-the-moment travellers,’ she said firmly. ‘And flights up to the East have wait-lists for their wait-lists. Anyway, I haven’t budgeted for any extravagances this month...’
Although Rosalind had inherited a considerable trust fund several years ago, she preferred to live mostly off her own earnings. Large amounts of money made her uneasy. She had no head for figures and small amounts slipped far too easily through her fingers for her to trust herself with serious sums.
Besides, the theatre had a strong historical tradition of poverty amongst its acolytes and it went against the grain to flaunt her unearned prosperity when most of her fellow actors were eking out their meagre pay cheques in a noble state of self-sacrifice for their art. So apart from the occasional rush of blood to the head Rosalind lived a life of cheerful self-sufficiency, content in the knowledge that when she was too old and decrepit to tread the boards she would be able to retire in dignity and comfort.
‘Credit me with a little forethought, darling,’ said her notoriously disorganised mother. ‘As soon as I realised you might need a quiet little bolt-hole I got Jordan to use some of his family’s muscle. He still has pull in the Pendragon Corporation and he’s made all the arrangements for you through their travel section. Of course the economy flights were overbooked but you’re going first class all the way, and don’t look like that—you don’t have to worry about the cost—I booked everything on your father’s credit card...even on Tioman you only have to sign for your accommodation and meals.
‘Look, here are all your tickets and documentation. All you have to do is turn up at the airport the day after tomorrow and you’ll be on your way to three weeks of carefree bliss.’
Rosalind accepted the proffered blue travel folder numbly, opening it as gingerly as if it were a potential bomb. ‘You’ve already booked for me to go?’ she said shakily, leafing through the evidence, her eyes widening at the sums involved. She didn’t know whether to feel pleased or insulted by her parents’ generosity. ‘What do you expect me to say?’
Her mother smiled warmly and jumped up to give her a hug. ‘No need for thanks, darling. We know how determined you are to stand on your own two feet, but at times like this the family should pull together...’
Rosalind struggled free of the fond maternal embrace. ‘Pull together?’ she snorted, waving the tickets under her mother’s elegant nose. ‘You’re bribing me to go thousands of miles away!’
‘We thought it would be a nice early birthday present,’ her father ventured.
‘My birthday isn’t for seven months!’ Rosalind pointed out sardonically.
‘A very early birthday present,’ Constance Marlow said, giving her husband a repressive look that told him not to deviate from the script.
She shrewdly studied her daughter’s sullen expression and abruptly changed her tactics. She threw up her hands in disgust and said crisply, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Roz. Talk about people blowing things out of proportion! Stop behaving as if you think we’re trying to sweep a blot on the family escutcheon under the carpet.’
She ignored the disrespectful snickers of her offspring at the atrociously mixed metaphor and continued with steely emphasis, ‘We’re very proud to have you as our daughter; we just don’t want to see you hurt unnecessarily. And it is so unnecessary, darling, what you’re putting yourself through. Unless you like playing the helpless martyr, of course—then I suppose there’s nothing more to be said. I might say that most children would be delighted if their parents offered to send them on an all-expenses-paid holiday...’
‘I know I would,’ said Richard with a languishing sigh.
‘I see the Met Office predicts a cold front this weekend,’ said Michael Marlow, apropos of nothing. ‘They say winter is going to arrive with a vengeance.’
‘Tioman does look wonderfully lush and Gauguin-ish,’ said Olivia traitorously, her soft, rain-washed green eyes wistful, her smile tinged with strain.
It struck Rosalind that it was her twin who looked as if she needed a holiday, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say so. She glanced at Jordan and found him watching his wife with a narrow-eyed concern that stilled the words in her throat. She felt a flutter of inexplicable panic and her fingers tightened on the tickets in her hand.
‘You know, you should make the most of your freedom while you can, Roz,’ advised Joanna, rescuing a soggy rusk from the carpet. ‘Once you have children, taking a holiday is like going on military manoeuvres.’
As if on command, Hugh’s three pre-schoolers came thundering into the room, their diminutive blonde mother breathless in their wake.
‘Oh, you are going to Tioman, then? Good on you!’ Julia panted, seeing the folder in Rosalind’s hand. ‘I told Hugh you’d do it, even if only to cock a snook at those sneaky reporters. You know, one of those gossip columnists followed us to the supermarket yesterday and tried to chat up Suzie when I left the trolley for a moment in the confectionery aisle. The idiot even offered her a lollipop.’ She ruffled the curly brown head leaning against her knee. ‘Luckily Suzie blitzed him with her favourite word.’
Suzie blinked up at Rosalind, her blue eyes huge in her doll-like face. ‘No!’ she bellowed proudly. ‘No! No! No! No!’
Julia chuckled. ‘She made such a racket that the guy had a hard time convincing everyone he wasn’t a child-molester. I bet that put a crimp in his column!’
‘He’s lucky I wasn’t there; I would have put a crimp in his face,’ growled Hugh, whose gentleness was known to be in direct proportion to his size.
Rosalind smiled weakly, stricken by the thought that her uncompromising stance might have put the trusting innocence of her nephews and nieces in jeopardy. Typically, she had been so swept up in her own problems that she had taken her family’s support for granted, without thinking how much it might cost them in terms of their own privacy.
Her certainty that she was doing the right thing by standing her ground dwindled further. Perhaps she should just abandon her principles and run for the hills...or rather the South China Sea.
It seemed such a callous thing to do while Peggy Staines still hovered between life and death in the intensive care unit at Wellington Hospital. But it wasn’t as if Rosalind could provide any positive help for her recovery. Quite the reverse—knowing that she was around might cause Peggy to have another heart attack.
A brief word of sympathy with a distracted Donald Staines in the hospital waiting room was all that Rosalind had permitted herself. He had asked what had happened but not why, and Rosalind had caught a plane back to Auckland before he or any of the other members of the Staines family had rallied sufficiently from their shock to ask for the details. Until Peggy had recovered enough to carry on a lucid conversation—if she recovered—Rosalind was bound by her conscience to remain silent.
Thank goodness the police hadn’t become involved, although Rosalind had the sinking feeling that if the publicity continued to escalate either they or someone involved in national security might feel obliged to come sniffing around with some serious questions, and then she might have no choice but to betray her conscience.
‘Well, what do you say, darling?’ her mother asked eagerly, visibly frustrated by Rosalind’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘I can’t believe you’re even hesitating...’
A disturbingly familiar tension began to crawl around the back of her skull as Rosalind looked into the expectant faces around her. A paralysing sense of her own vulnerability swept over her, but she knew she mustn’t allow it to dictate her actions. She couldn’t let the fear win.
Surprisingly it was Jordan who came to her rescue. Her brother-in-law rose to his feet, dominating the room with his muscled bulk, almost dwarfing Hugh.
‘I think we should back off and let Roz make up her own mind in her own time,’ he said with the ease of a man confident of his authority. ‘She’d probably like to go home and think things over without the rest of us breathing down her neck.’
Rosalind cast him a grateful look and he continued smoothly, strolling over to take her by the elbow, ‘Why don’t I run you back to your apartment now, Roz, so you can do just that? Here, take these with you.’ He scooped up a handful of brochures and thrust them into her free hand, and picked up her embroidered tote bag from a chair, looping it over her shoulder.
‘You can leave your own car here as a decoy,’ he said. ‘The reporters won’t bother to follow me if they see me leave alone. You can nip out over the back fence and through the neighbours’ gardens and I’ll drive around the block and pick you up in the next street.’
‘Uh, but I’m going to need my car later,’ said Rosalind, disconcerted by the unexpectedness of the offer and the firmness of the grip steering her towards the door. Although Rosalind and Jordan were cordial to each other, she had always been very careful to maintain a cool distance between them that had precluded friendship. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Olivia observing her husband’s urgency with a worried crease of suspicion on her smooth brow.
‘Richard or one of the others can drop it over to you later.’ Jordan brushed aside the feeble protest. ‘At least it’ll give you a temporary respite from all the unwelcome attention you’ve been getting.’
The idea of a few hours’ respite from the bloodhounds outside was undeniably appealing. ‘well... I suppose...OK, thanks.’ She dug her heels in and skewed round to look over her shoulder. ‘Uh, are you coming, Olivia?’
‘Olivia wants to stay and chat with Connie, don’t you, kitten?’ Jordan cut in as his wife opened her mouth. ‘We’re going back to Taupo tonight and with her exhibition coming up she might not get the chance to visit again for a while...’
There was a hasty flurry of startled goodbyes as Rosalind found herself hustled out into the hall.
‘For heaven’s sake, what’s the big rush?’ she hissed as Jordan practically pushed her out the back door. ‘Did you see Olivia’s face? She looked awfully suspicious...’
‘Maybe she thinks you’re going to try and seduce me again,’ said Jordan sardonically, blocking the doorway as she made a tentative effort to go back inside.
Rosalind, who never blushed, went hot at the reminder of one of the most mortifying encounters of her life. ‘That was all a horrible mistake and you know it,’ she gritted fiercely. ‘I didn’t know you two had even met when I pretended to be Livvy... and anyway, nothing happened—’
‘Quite. There’s zero physical attraction between us. I know it, you know it, and Olivia certainly knows it. After all, even when I thought you were her and wanted you to turn me on, you failed miserably.’
‘OK, OK, I get the picture,’ Rosalind grumbled, jerking her elbow out of his grip. ‘But I might point out the failure was completely mutual.’
He grinned, his odd-coloured eyes warming with laughter. ‘True. So now we’ve finally got that out in the open maybe we can relax around each other. Olivia is beginning to worry that we intend to keep up the pussyfooting for ever.’
Rosalind grinned back, relinquishing the last vestige of embarrassment which had constrained her natural, exuberant friendliness. ‘Well, I guess if you can accept your total lack of sex appeal, so can I,’ she teased with deliberate ambiguity.
‘Big of you,’ said Jordan, ignoring the overt provocation. ‘Do you need a boost over that wall, or can you make it yourself?’
At five feet nine Rosalind wasn’t used to men treating her as a wisp of delicate femininity and she reacted with her usual bravado to the implied challenge. Waiting in the quiet cul-de-sac on the other side of the neighbours’ property a few minutes later, she brushed off her painfully grazed palms with a rueful acknowledgement that at her age maybe she should start thinking about putting dignity before daring.
Jordan’s car turned out to be a macho four-wheel drive, scarcely less attention-grabbing than Rosalind’s beloved fluorescent green VW, but, as he had predicted, the journalists outside the Marlows’ gate had let him go unhindered when he had forced his way through the gauntlet of their questions.
‘So...what’s the real reason why you offered me a lift?’ asked Rosalind quietly as they cruised towards the city. ‘Don’t tell me it was just to clear the air between us. You could have done that any time. It’s something to do with Livvy, isn’t it? Why she was looking so...pulled back there at the house...’
She watched Jordan’s big hands tighten betrayingly on the wheel, highlighting the nicks and scars that were the legacy of his work as a sculptor.
‘She’s pregnant,’ he said baldly.
The words hit her like a sharp blow. Rosalind’s ears rang and she felt a chill across the base of her skull and tasted metal on her tongue.
‘Pregnant?’ she whispered. She felt a floating sense of utter separation. Olivia. Her sister. Her twin.. the other half of herself...was going to have a baby...contribute to the growing brood of Marlow grandchildren?
Rosalind was shocked...and more; emotions boiled through her that she didn’t dare examine too closely.
‘I thought she didn’t want a family yet,’ she said, when she could get her stiff mouth to work. ‘She said she wanted to concentrate on her painting—’
‘I know,’ Jordan’s voice was clipped and slightly grim. ‘We agreed we were going to wait a few years...but fate evidently had other plans for us. Olivia found out last week—she’s still trying to come to terms with it herself; that’s why she doesn’t want to tell anyone just yet... No one else in the family knows and she wants to keep it that way for another few weeks. Apart from her own ambivalent feelings, there are one or two early warning signs, like elevated blood pressure, that the doctor is nervous about...’
Rosalind sensed rather than saw the sidelong look that Jordan gave her as he continued carefully, ‘It’s a little too soon to confirm it, but the doctor suspects from his physical examination that it could be twins...’
Twins. Of course, given their family history, it was only to be expected, but Rosalind’s sense of shock deepened. Livvy, the mother of not one child but two. The buzzing in her ears increased and she put her hand over her clenching stomach in sudden awareness. ‘Livvy’s been having dreadful morning sickness, hasn’t she?’
‘Yes; how did you know?’
Rosalind’s mouth twisted. ‘I’ve been a bit nauseous myself every morning for the past couple of weeks. I thought it was just nervous tension, or something I picked up doing that wretched film. The food was quite dreadful...’
Pregnancy was the one thing that she had firmly been able to rule out from her self-diagnosis. Oh, God! Her skin prickled with fresh horror. What if she had to suffer these shadow symptoms all through Olivia’s pregnancy? What an unspeakable irony that would be...
‘Well, Olivia’s been as sick as a dog and the doctor’s advised as little stress as possible in the next few weeks,’ said Jordan bluntly. ‘That’s why I was hoping that you’d graciously accept Connie’s offer. It would mean one less source of emotional turmoil for Olivia. If she thinks you’re frolicking happily in some nice, safe tropical haven she might stop beating herself up that she’s abandoning you in your time of need...’
‘So much for your wonderful idea of whisking me away to make up my own mind in my own time,’ said Rosalind, her sarcasm hiding a leap of relief that here was a cast-iron, honourable excuse for running away from her problems. If Livvy had a miscarriage, Rosalind would never forgive herself if there was even the slightest possibility that she was a contributing factor.
Jordan gave a rueful shrug. ‘I didn’t want to push it too strongly in front of Olivia. She wouldn’t thank me for trying to protect her, especially if it compromises her loyalty to you. If you don’t go to Tioman, Olivia intends to ask you to come and hole up with us at Taupo, even if it means dragging along your press contingent, not to mention your other little problem...’
Rosalind stiffened, her fingers clutching the seat as he suddenly swung sharply into a parking spot beneath the warehouse that housed her inner-city loft. ‘What other problem?’
Jordan switched off the engine. ‘You have so many you don’t know which one I’m referring to?’ he murmured, shaving much too close to the truth for her liking. ‘I’m talking about the fan who’s been making such a nuisance of himself.’
‘Oh.’ Aware of his shrewd eyes on her face, Rosalind tried not to reveal any of her turmoil as she probed warily, ‘Olivia told you about that?’
She couldn’t help a trace of outrage creeping into her voice, although, come to think of it, she had only asked that her twin not tell their parents, or their over-protective brothers.
‘We are married, Roz,’ said Jordan drily, effortlessly picking up the nuances. ‘That’s what marriage is all about—sharing a life, listening to each other’s secrets and worries. Olivia said you tried to treat it as a joke but the mere fact that you brought the subject up made her think you were a lot more concerned than you let on, and the tenor of some of the guy’s letters disturbed her. She thought they could be interpreted as stalking letters, said that he wrote as if he believed he had a personal relationship with you, one that gave him some sort of a claim on you...’
‘I told her I get lots of fans writing to me off and on—’
‘But this Peter is very persistent, Olivia said. You told her it had been going on for several years, and that lately he’d escalated from an occasional letter to one or two a week, never with a full name or a return address. He boasts of going to extraordinary lengths to see your performances and even claims to have met you several times at public appearances, though he apparently never identified himself.
‘Olivia said she didn’t like the obsessive nature of his interest, especially as he knows where you live. She said you had extra locks fitted at your apartment because you were uneasy when he started sending gifts as well as letters. She also thought that one of the reasons you took that film job in such a hurry was because you hoped he might lose interest if you weren’t performing live any more...’
‘Well, it was better than her idea of involving the police,’ Rosalind muttered, shuddering at the thought. ‘They probably would have laughed in my face...there was nothing in the letters that was overtly threatening. Anyway, I’ve thrown most of them away,’ she said truthfully, hoping that would put paid to the subject. ‘As I told Olivia, the best way to handle these things is to ignore them.’
‘Mmm.’ Jordan’s face was sceptical. Rosalind had the sinking feeling that she had just acquired another over-protective relative.
‘Nothing arrived while I was away,’ she pointed out. ‘Maybe he’s finally given up.’
‘And another sudden sojourn out of the country might be the perfect way to discourage him even further,’ Jordan said smoothly. ‘It’s either that or the police, Roz—or I could get someone from the Pendragon Corporation’s security section to provide you with personal protection while a private investigator tracks this guy down and turns him inside out.’
Rosalind blanched at the implications. ‘Me, with a bodyguard? God, can you imagine what the Press would make of that?’ She threw up her hands, hastily conceding defeat. ‘You’re something of a pirate, aren’t you, Jordan? I suppose if I don’t allow myself to be blackmailed into going I’ll find myself shanghaied...’
‘There’s little I wouldn’t do to ensure Olivia’s wellbeing,’ he agreed blandly, but with irrefutable honesty.
‘Oh, all right!’ At least he was allowing her to save face by pretending that she was doing this for her sister’s sake, rather than her own. ‘If I’m going to be shanghaied, I suppose I may as well make the most of it.’ She grinned, her eternal optimism fizzing back to the surface. ‘I might even find my own form of protection. Who knows? I might run into my beau idéal in paradise, a man “gentle, strong and valiant” who’ll romance me under the tropical stars and pledge his heart to me for ever! Or, failing that, I’ll settle for a gorgeously tanned beach boy who can make me laugh!’
CHAPTER TWO
ROSALIND stood impatiently tapping her scuffed cowboy boot as she watched the man dithering at the check-in counter.
He was tall and thin, his thick, straight, mid-brown hair flopping over his forehead as he bent over to attach the tags to his two suitcases with fumbling fingers. He had a distracted, disorganised air that had Rosalind immediately pegging him as some sort of head-in-the-clouds academic, one of those people who were sheltered by their narrowly focused intellects from the real world—or perhaps he was a computer nerd, she thought as she noted the laptop he was carefully guarding between his feet. The jacket of his dark pin-striped suit fell open as he leaned forward and she saw the pens and folded spectacles tucked into the breast pocket of his white shirt. Ah, definitely a nerd!
Whoever he was, he was holding her up. Didn’t he realise that first-class passengers didn’t expect to have to queue? They were supposed to breeze in and out while staring down their noses at the lesser mortals lining up at the parallel desks.
She glanced around the terminal. She was anxious to be out of the public arena and into the relative privacy of the first-class lounge as soon as possible. She had got this far without being spotted, by dressing in androgynous jeans, baggy shirt and denim jacket and shaggy blonde wing à la Rod Stewart under a dark fedora.
She had swopped places with Olivia the previous night and knew her regular pursuers were being well and truly led off on the wrong trail, but news organisations often employed stringers or informants at airports. In her boyish guise she hoped that no one would give her a second look, but the longer she stood around, the greater the risk of being accidentally rumbled before she boarded her seventeen-hour flight to Singapore.
The check-in clerk pointed at the weighing machine beside her desk but instead of obeying her polite instruction the man leaned forward to mumble something, patting absently at his pockets.
Rosalind’s impatience burst its bounds. Stepping around a polite Japanese couple, she tapped the laggard briskly on the shoulder, lowering her naturally throaty voice an extra notch.
‘Hey, mate, she’s asking you to put your luggage onto the weighing machine.’
‘What?’ The man turned his head and his body followed, straightening with an uncoordinated jerk that caused him to almost fall over his laptop. Colour streaked across his high cheekbones as Rosalind snickered.
He was younger than his fussy mannerisms had led her to expect—about her own age, Rosalind guessed. His dark olive skin was unlined, and as he raked back his fine, straight hair with well-kept fingers he revealed an exaggerated widow’s peak bisecting a smooth, deep brow. His face was narrow, his steeply slanting dark eyebrows peaking to sharp commas just beyond the outer corners of his eyes, giving his expression a strikingly devilish cast. However, the look in his dark brown eyes was anything but satanic. They were wildly dilated, watching with blank consternation as Rosalind snatched up one of his bags and plonked it onto the platform.
‘She can’t process you until you weigh your luggage,’ Roz told him, her own eyes shooting impatient green sparks at him from under the brim of her hat as he made no attempt to follow her example. He was certainly slow on the uptake. If it hadn’t been for that computer she would have thought he was two bricks short of a load. Or maybe he was simply foreign, and didn’t understand what was being asked of him.
He cleared his throat. ‘Uh...I didn’t think weight mattered for first-class passengers...’ he murmured vaguely, his mild New Zealand accent immediately shattering her theory.
Rosalind’s impatience drained away to be replaced by amused condescension. He was obviously a complete greenhorn.
‘The airline still has to know what total weight the plane is carrying,’ she pointed out. ‘If you’re packing elephants with your underwear they might have to shed a few economy passengers to accommodate your eccentricity.’
‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he muttered, not a glimmer of a smile touching his narrow mouth. She might have known he’d have no sense of humour. He continued to stare at her with the glazed abstraction of a man whose brain was temporarily otherwise engaged. To Rosalind, used to provoking sharp male awareness of her femininity, his lack of reaction was further proof of the effectiveness of her simple disguise. There were quite a few Shakespearian heroines who disguised themselves as boys, and Rosalind had played most of them with great gusto. She knew that gender confusion was largely a matter of body language.
She hooked her thumbs through the belt-loops of her jeans and widened her stance. ‘Well?’
He blinked warily at her challenge. His lashes were surprisingly thick, veiling a subtle shift in his expression. ‘Well what?’ he asked guardedly, his fingers clenching convulsively around the blue travel folder he carried in his left hand.
His white-knuckled tension indicated that he was braced for some sort of scene. Did he think she was angling for a tip? Rosalind rolled her eyes and picked up his other suitcase. It was hefty enough to make her grunt, but her lithe body had the strength demanded by her profession and after staggering slightly she heaved it onto the platform next to the lighter bag.
‘It was supposed to be a joke about the elephants,’ she commented, panting slightly as she stepped back, tilting her chin to look up at him. ‘What have you got in there, anyway?’
‘Uh...books,’ he said, still in that same thready voice adrift with uncertainty.
It figured. Her gaze swept the empty floor around his immaculately shod feet and a mischievous impulse prompted her to stoop for the case between his polished shoes.
At last she got an unequivocal reaction. ‘No! Not my computer!’ he exploded, grabbing it up and cradling it protectively against his chest like a baby. ‘I’m carrying it on with me.’
So he could move faster than snail’s pace when he wanted to! Rosalind grinned and tipped him a mocking salute on the brim of her hat.
‘So it’s just the two cases going through, then, is it, Mr James?’ asked the airline employee with marked patience.
He didn’t turn his head, seemingly hypnotised by Rosalind’s cocky grin. ‘Uh, well, I think...’
‘He means yes,’ Roz supplied firmly. She began to suspect that his air of muddled confusion presaged a man on the verge of panic. Perhaps the poor lamb was afraid of flying and was trying to put off the evil moment.
‘Mr James? May I see your passport now, sir?’
‘Passport?’
Rosalind decided it would be quicker for everyone if she took charge of the bewildered Mr James.
‘You have remembered to bring it with you, haven’t you?’ she demanded, stepping up beside him at the desk. ‘Is it in here?’
She plucked the blue folder out of the hand clamping the laptop to his chest and flicked it open to see an impressive wad of US traveller’s cheques tucked behind the clear plastic pocket. He made a choked sound of protest and she gave him a chiding look to reassure him that she wasn’t a thief. In the other side of the pocket was a slim dark blue cover stamped with the New Zealand coat of arms. She extracted it and, adroitly avoiding his belated attempt to snatch it back, presented it across the desk.
‘Do you have any preference for seating?’ she asked him, pushing the travel folder back into his hand as the woman leafed through his passport.
‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, his dark eyes flicking over her face in that irritatingly unfocused way, as if he still couldn’t quite believe that she was helping him.
‘You know—front seat, back seat, nearest the emergency door...that kind of thing?’ she clarified.
‘Emergency door?’ he echoed, with a swift frown.
The frown had the decidedly odd effect of slanting his wicked eyebrows even more satanically without raising a ruffle on the angelically pure forehead. She wondered idly whether his personality contained as many contradictions as his face. He was actually rather good-looking in a limp-around-the-edges kind of way. At least a woman wouldn’t need to fear being dominated by the force of his personality!
‘Look, don’t you worry about it, chum. Just leave everything to me.’ She gave up trying to involve him in the decision-making process and negotiated his boarding pass without further consultation, thrusting his departure card and returned passport at him as the formalities were completed and nudging him away from the desk so that the Japanese couple could take his place.
‘Well, go on, then,’ she said to him, when he seemed inclined to hover inconveniently. ‘You can toddle off to the departure lounge now.’
He didn’t appear to recognise a brush-off when he heard one. ‘Um, I thought I might wait for you... we could have a drink together—or something...’ He trailed off vaguely, flapping his free hand in the air.
Or something? Rosalind studied him with sudden suspicion. Had he guessed that she was a woman, or did he think he was issuing an invitation to a pretty youth? Maybe that little-boy-lost helplessness was a sexual rather than psychological signal. Either way it was up to her to disabuse him.
‘I wasn’t trying to pick you up,’ she said flatly. ‘I helped you out because I felt sorry for you, not because I fancied you.’
He sucked in a sharp breath, a rush of blood darkening his skin. ‘I wasn’t—I didn’t mean—’
His outraged stammer almost made her relent. Her initial impression had been right: harmless, prissy, easily embarrassed. But she still needed to get rid of him before she presented her own documentation. Under the country’s privacy laws, airline personnel were forbidden to give out information about passengers, but if the woman mentioned her name out loud she didn’t want anyone close enough to overhear.
‘Good.’ She cut him off, pointedly turning her slender back on him. ‘Because I’m not interested.’
‘I only wanted to thank you for coming to my assistance,’ he said rigidly, and she grinned to herself at the hint of grit in his milk-shake voice. Maybe he wasn’t such a hopeless wimp after all.
She didn’t answer, and after a moment was relieved to hear him moving away. The trouble with helping lame dogs was that they had a lamentable tendency to want to cling to their rescuers.
After she had checked in she headed for the duty-free shop where she spied Jordan browsing amongst the perfumes. He was flying out to Melbourne on a short business trip related to an arts foundation created by Pendragon Corporation and had conveniently saved Rosalind the taxi fare to the airport.
Their discussion of a couple of days ago having eased her awkwardness in his company, Rosalind gave in to impulse and crept up behind him and whispered menacingly in his ear. ‘Poison!’
‘Do you think so?’ he murmured, withering her with his lack of surprise at her sudden ambush. ‘I rather think that Livvy would suit something lighter, fresher...maybe Yves St. Lament’s Paris?’
As usual he was right. Rosalind waited while he bought the perfume and they chatted briefly before Jordan’s attention was suddenly riveted elsewhere, his eyes slitting as he gazed intently over her head.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Rosalind, her overstretched nerves jumping. ‘Who is it? A reporter?’
Jordan put a heavily reassuring hand on her shoulder as he shook his head. ‘No, no—just someone I know from the old days at the Pendragon Corporation. I’d better go and have a word with him before he comes over and expects to be introduced.’ He kissed her absently on the cheek, eyes still focusing beyond her. ‘Have a good trip, won’t you? And for God’s sake try not to attract your usual quota of trouble!’
Rosalind bristled at that, and spun around as he left, intending to send him on his way with a few blistering words of self-defence, but at that moment she caught sight of the James man amongst the swirl of people in the public departure area. He was easily picked out—he looked isolated and alone in the midst of groups hugging and kissing their farewells. She hurriedly turned her back and skulked off to bury herself in a magazine in the relative privacy of the first-class lounge.
Rosalind didn’t fully relax until she was on board the plane with the engines powering up. The first-class section was only half-full, which meant that those travelling alone had the added privacy of an empty seat beside them. Rosalind’s assigned seat was an aisle one and she had decided to wait until they were airborne before she shifted to the window.
‘Excuse me, Miss Marlow, would you like me to store your hat in the overhead compartment?’
‘Thanks.’ With a straight face Rosalind doffed her wig along with the hat, enjoying the flight attendant’s classic double take. They both broke into chuckles and the hostess’s mask of impersonal politeness was banished by the relaxed warmth of their shared moment of humour.
Rosalind’s natural optimism raised its battered head. She suddenly felt freer than she had in a long, long time. No stresses, no awkward questions, no responsibilities. Maybe this holiday was just what she needed to get her life back on its former smooth-running track.
She sighed with satisfaction as she ruffled her flattened hair into its normal spiky style and accepted the suggestion that she might like a glass of champagne as soon as the flight took off. She stripped off her jacket and rolled up the sleeves of her green shirt, revealing a slender gold bangle on her left wrist.
Glancing at the seats diagonally behind her, she saw the ineffectual Mr James wrenching his seat belt unnecessarily tight, his mouth flat and grim, his precious computer sitting on the empty aisle-seat beside him. He was wearing dark-rimmed spectacles that gave his face a top-heavy look. Maybe it had been myopia rather than mental confusion that had led him to look at her so blankly in the terminal.
He was looking at Rosalind rather than concentrating on his task, and she judged from his frozen expression that he had seen her little performance with the wig and heard her womanly giggle. Evidently he wasn’t a theatregoer, because there was no sign of slack-jawed recognition or avid curiosity in his regard, only cold disapproval, and Rosalind’s sense of liberation increased. She gave him a provocative, feminine smile and a flutter of her dark lashes and he scowled, a muscle flickering in his cheek, his skin taking on a betraying colour. She had never known a man whose complexion was such a telltale barometer of his emotions.
As the stewardess swished past on the way to strap herself in for take-off, Rosalind attracted her attention and murmured, ‘He’s probably too embarrassed to mention it but I think Mr James back there might be a first-time flyer with a touch of phobia.’
The stewardess looked discreetly over her shoulder and made a swift professional assessment. ‘Hmm, he does look a bit white around the mouth, and that case of his should be stowed away...’ Her voice took on an unprofessional lilt of mischief. ‘Cute, though. Maybe I’d better sit by him and hold his hand for take-off...’
She suited her action to her words and Rosalind couldn’t resist watching the man’s disconcerted expression as the attractive young woman stowed his computer and bent over to adjust his lap-belt before slipping into the vacant seat beside him and enveloping his hand in a manicured grasp. She said something to him that made his head jerk up. He pushed his spectacles up his nose and shot an accusing look in Rosalind’s direction that was a surprisingly fierce mixture of frustration and annoyance. Rosalind beamed him a plastic smile. Ungrateful nerd!
Dismissing him from her mind, Rosalind settled in to enjoy the flight. She had never flown first class before and intended to take full advantage of the shameless pampering. Some of the pampering involved the liberal distribution of newspapers and magazines and Rosalind almost choked on her champagne when she spied a photograph of herself cavorting on the front cover of a local popular women’s magazine. She quickly took it for herself and confiscated several other magazines that she suspected might carry news of her current notoriety in their pictorial gossip columns.
Unfortunately her clumsy attempt at censorship was thwarted by the fact that the other stewardesses were offering an identical selection to other passengers. Taking a furtive peep around the cabin, Rosalind was relieved. to note that most of the others were selecting more edifying reading... business reviews and glossy fashion magazines...except for the wretched James man, who received a copy of every single publication and then proceeded to open the very one Rosalind was hoping would be beneath his intellect to notice.
Rosalind muttered to herself as she slid over into the window-seat, out of his sight-line. Maybe he wouldn’t make the connection—the cover photo was years out of date, taken when she’d still had long hair. What kind of man picked a women’s magazine as his first choice, anyway? And did he have to hold it up in such a way that his fingertips appeared to be tucked. into an intimate portion of her bikini-dad anatomy?
Thinking she might as well know the worst, Rosalind thumbed open her own copy and read the three-page story, torn between anger and amusement to discover that it comprised euphemistically couched rumours of her bisexuality, supposedly dating from the time that she had ‘eagerly’ accepted a lesbian role on stage. There was an illustrated list of all the men with whom she had been ‘romantically linked’, which seemed to consist of every male celebrity with whom she had ever been photographed, and to that list was now added a gaggle of ‘galpals’.
Turning the page in fascinated awe at the artistry of the inventions, Rosalind learned that she was now on the ‘hot list’ of a radical gay organisation that focused on outing famous people and that she was on the verge of accepting an offer to appear as the nude centrefold in a famous men’s magazine.
Unfortunately this time it wasn’t only her own somewhat tarnished reputation at stake. Thanks to the country’s strict libel laws, there wasn’t one mention of Peggy Staines, but she would obviously be in the mind of any reasonably informed person who read the story.
If only Rosalind hadn’t agreed to meet Peggy at that hotel! If only Peggy hadn’t insisted on such extremes of secrecy, even down to registering the room in the damning name of Smith. If only Rosalind hadn’t been so stunned by the older woman’s private revelations that she had ignored the first signs of her distress and then wasted precious time searching Peggy’s bag for her medication instead of calling the emergency number straight away.
Rosalind struggled against a renewed flood of guilt. None of it had really been her fault, she reminded herself. She had made a few mistakes in judgement, that was all. She might have been a principal player in the drama, but she hadn’t been its author. It was Peggy who had written the original script, and in spite of her sympathy for the woman Rosalind couldn’t help resenting the fact that she had somehow ended up as the scapegoat in the tangled affair.
She stuffed the offending magazine into the pocket on the seat in front, determined not to brood. Rosalind’s philosophy of life was simple: be positive. There was no point in agonising over actions and events that couldn’t be changed. Self-pity got you nowhere but in the dumps. You had to keep moving forward, substitute ‘if onlys’ with ’what ifs’ and regard each negative experience as character-building for the future rather than as a destructive barrier to present happiness.
With that firmly in mind Rosalind shucked her boots off in favour of the free airline bootees and prepared to eat and drink and make merry across several thousand kilometres of airspace. If she was going to zonk out on a beach for three weeks she had no need to worry about jet lag!
Her body, however, had other ideas. The stresses of the last couple of weeks and the strain of the past few months caught up with her, and after a superb dinner accompanied by a few more glasses of champagne Rosalind found her eyelids drooping and her mind pleasantly unravelling.
She snuggled under a down-soft blanket and fell asleep watching a movie she had particularly wanted to see, and when she awoke was disorientated to find herself muffled in total darkness. She fought her way free of the blanket covering her face and found that the cabin lights had been dimmed and almost everyone else was asleep. The attendants were murmuring in hushed voices in the curtained galley.
Feeling a pressing need, Rosalind stumbled blearily into the aisle, staggering slightly as the plane hit mild turbulence. Not quite everyone was asleep, she found as she groped her way sleepily towards the toilet. The James man’s bent head was burnished by a pool of light, revealing glints of red-gold amongst the nondescript brown strands which had slipped forward to mask his tilted profile. As she passed his seat she saw that his laptop was open on his unfolded table and that in his hand he was holding...
‘Are you crary?’ Rosalind lurched forward and snatched the object from him. ‘Have you been using this?’ she whispered, shaking the cellphone accusingly in his startled face.
‘I—’
‘Didn’t you read the safety information? Don’t you know it’s prohibited to use portable phones on board planes?’ she hissed.
‘Well, I—’
Rosalind glanced around to see if anyone had noticed and crammed herself down into the seat next to him. ‘They can play havoc with the plane’s electronic systems,’ she told him, speaking quietly so as not to disturb the sleeping passengers around them. But even in a whisper her classically trained voice retained its full range of articulation and expression. ‘If anyone had reported you, you could be arrested as soon as we land... that’s if you don’t cause us all to crash first!’
His eyebrows rose above the straight line of his spectacle frames at her fiercely delivered lecture. ‘Are you going to report me?’ he asked curiously.
She was offended by the suggestion. ‘Of course not!’ She was still slightly muzzy with sleep but he looked disgustingly bright and alert as he studied her expressive face. For a fleeting moment she thought she glimpsed a smouldering rage in the dark eyes, but when he blinked it was gone and she decided that it must have been a trick of the light.
‘There’s no “of course” about it,’ he said evenly. ‘You might have found it amusing to get me into trouble with the authorities—’
Her snort of indignation was genuine. ‘You must have a very odd idea of my sense of humour. I don’t happen to think it’s funny to mock the innocent.’
‘Is that what you think I am? An innocent?’ His mild voice sounded hollow, incredulous even. No doubt in his own mind he was a witty, sophisticated man of the world... The imagination had wonderful ways of compensating for one’s personal inadequacies!
‘Well, an innocent abroad, anyway,’ she said, humouring him. ‘It does rather stick out: you didn’t know about not using portable phones...or about the check-in procedures, and you were practically falling to pieces with nerves at the airport—’
‘Perhaps I was merely stunned speechless by your beauty.’
His sarcastic retort left her unruffled. She knew she wasn’t beautiful in the classical, restrained sense but she had flamboyant good looks that most men found attractive and an innate sense of style. ‘You thought I was a boy,’ she reminded him smugly.
‘Did I?’ he murmured quizzically, leaning back in his seat so that his face moved out of the spotlight. Thrown into shadowed relief, his features were stripped of gentleness, imbued now with a brooding strength that seemed vaguely sinister. A man of dark secrets and intriguing mystery...
‘You know you did,’ she said, admiring the effectiveness of the illusion: comic relief as villain. She had always believed that lighting was more effective than make-up in creating a character and here was the proof.
He said nothing and she frowned, suddenly remembering the magazine he had been leafing through at the beginning of the flight. Her pride bristled. Damn it, if he was toying with her over the matter of her identity...!
‘But you obviously know who I am now, right?’ she challenged.
His eyes dipped to her breasts, which were barely visible under the loose drape of her shirt, and to the slender curve of her hips, spanned by a wide leather belt which emphasised the narrowness of her waist. His gaze travelled down further, to the cellphone resting on her upper thigh, next to where the snug V of her jeans was pulled flat across her pubic bone.
‘Yes...you’re obviously a woman.’
The stifled statement was somehow more flattering than a gush of admiring words. To her surprise Rosalind felt her body tingle as if he had physically touched her where his eyes had wandered. Usually perfectly comfortable under the most leering male appraisal, she hurriedly crossed her legs in an unconscious gesture of self-protection.
A woman. If all she was to him was an anonymous female then he hadn’t paid much attention to that magazine, she thought with relief. He’d probably just skimmed over the glossy pages of celebrity clones before tossing it aside.
She looked at him through her lashes and received another small shock. Instead of politely averting his gaze, he had allowed it to linger on the deepened V created in her lap by her crossed legs, almost as if he could see the transparent emerald lace bikini briefs she wore beneath the sturdy denim. The muscles along her inner thighs tightened with a feathery ripple and she instinctively sought to shatter her unexpected self-consciousness with flippancy.
‘Those aren’t X-ray glasses by any chance, are they?’ she joked, and his eyes jerked back to hers. ‘Or are you going to confess they’re just plain glass and you’re simply a mild-mannered reporter?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ His eyes looked like polished jet—or perhaps it was just a coating on his spectacle lenses that made them look so hard.
‘You know—like Superman?’ He looked at her steadily and she let out a huff of disbelief. ‘For goodness’ sake, you don’t have much of a grasp on popular culture, do you? What do you do for a crust?’
‘Crust?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘A living? What sort of job do you do?’ She leaned sideways to peer at his laptop, to see if it would give her a clue. She glimpsed a busy clutter of characters before, with the swift tap of a single finger, he closed the file he had been working on, leaving the cursor blinking on a blank screen.
. ‘Top secret, huh?’ she teased, tilting her head back, the light flaring to fierce brilliance in her short cap of red hair.
‘Something like that.’
She shrugged good-naturedly at the rebuff. ‘Oh, well, we all have our secrets.’
‘Some more dangerous than others.’
The idea that his vague and distracted manner was a cover for a life riddled with dangerous secrets tickled her funny bone. ‘Ah, don’t tell me...’ Her voice dropped to a bare whisper as she rasped behind the back of her hand, ‘You’re really a spy travelling to the mysterious East on a secret mission of national importance!’
She ruined the blood-curdling effect with a husky chuckle. ‘A spy’s who’s afraid to fly!’
His colour rose. ‘I’m not afraid of flying.’
‘Of course you aren’t,’ she said, deadpan. ‘The stewardess only held your hand for take-off because she thought you looked cute.’
‘You told her to do that,‘ he accused through his teeth. ’Oh, for goodness’ sake, that was only because I knew you were probably too shy to ask for help. She came up with the “cute” all by herself—’
‘Too shy?’ He looked as if she had hit him over the head. Did he think it didn’t show?
‘Well, you must admit you don’t have a very...um...assertive personality, do you?’ she said tactfully, patting his arm. It felt surprisingly solid under the dark fabric. Unlike the other men in the cabin he had not removed his suit jacket but merely loosened his tie and a couple of shirt buttons. Through the sagging gap in the crisp white shirt she could see the smooth, surprisingly tanned skin of his chest. No hairy he-man he, she thought with an inner giggle.
‘Not that there’s anything wrong with being shy,’ she continued as he glowered at her. ‘A lot of women find that endearing in a man...you know, a nice change from the swaggering macho come-ons. You shouldn’t feel embarrassed about asking for help when you need it, though. People respect you more for admitting your weaknesses than for trying to hide them behind a mask of false bravado. It takes courage to let people know that you’re vulnerable—’
‘I don’t need anyone’s help.’ He interrupted her homily with an exasperated snap. ‘I don’t know where you get your ideas but I can assure you Miss—’ He stopped abruptly and sucked in a sharp breath. ‘Miss...?’
‘Marlow,’ Rosalind offered quickly, anxious that his sudden burst of self-assurance should not be undermined by a minor point of etiquette.
‘Miss Marlow,’ he accepted grittily, without a flicker of reaction to the name. ‘I can assure you that if I am ever in need of assistance I am perfectly capable of arranging for it by myself!’
‘Excuse me!’ It was one of the stewardesses, speaking to Rosalind in a sternly admonitory tone. ‘That’s not a portable telephone you’ve got, is it?’
Rosalind sensed the man beside her stiffen, as if he expected her to leap at the chance to rat on him. He was probably honest to a fault. Left to himself he would doubtless pour out a full, frank and totally unnecessary confession.
‘Yes, but don’t worry, I’m not using it,’ she said swiftly, with a winsome smile. ‘Mr James here has been showing me his state-of-the-art travelling office. I was just holding this while he demonstrated some dazzling technical wizardry on his computer.’ She cast him a look of patent awe before switching her attention back to the object of her persuasion. ‘Naturally the phone is switched off,’ she said, hoping it was. ‘We’re both well aware of the airline regulations.’
‘Hmm, well, just to be on the safe side, perhaps we should remove the batteries to prevent it becoming arccidentally operational.’ The stewardess smiled, whisking it from her and deftly opening the panel. ‘Oh, someone’s done it already...’
A masculine arm brushed against Rosalind’s breasts as the telephone was firmly retrieved by its owner. ‘Yes, I did—prior to take-off. As Miss Marlow pointed out, I’m fully aware of the current regulations.’
‘You might have told me,’ Rosalind protested in chagrin as the stewardess glided away. She scrambled to her feet, acutely conscious that her breasts were humming from his unexpected touch.
‘You didn’t give me a chance to get a word in edgewise. You were having too much fun jumping to conclusions and patronising my ignorance,’ he said sardonically.
Rosalind. was tempted to flounce off, except that what he said was perfectly true. Her green eyes sparkled as her mouth curved self-mockingly. ‘I was, wasn’t I?’
A twitch of his extraordinary brows showed that her ready confession was unexpected, and evidently unwelcome. ‘You also lie extremely well,’ he accused unsmilingly.
His chilly disapproval earned him a taunting little bow. “‘If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me; I had it from my father,”’ she said sweetly. The obscure Shakespearian quotation was certainly apt—she had learned much of what she knew about acting at Michael Marlow’s knee...including how to make blank verse sound like modern, everyday speech!
He gave her a darkling look, as if he suspected that the lyrical apology was not her own and was frustrated by his inability to challenge her sincerity by quoting its source. She had already guessed that Mr James liked to be safely armoured head to toe in facts before he proceeded into verbal engagements.
Unable to resist rubbing his nose in it, she placed a hand over her heart and flaunted a more recognisable quotation. ‘Ah, “parting is such sweet sorrow”, isn’t it, Mr James?’ She batted her eyelashes shamelessly at him. ‘But now I know that you’re such a boringly well-organised individual I suppose I’ll have to find someone else to patronise. Enjoy the rest of your trip. Ciao, baby.’
She turned and sauntered on her way, making sure she gave her hips an extra swivel just in case he was still watching.
He was, and it was fortunate for Rosalind’s peace of mind that she couldn’t see the expression on his face. It was a mask of cold-blooded calculation, the mouth a cruel, hard line of satisfaction, the eyes hot and hungry, seething with an unstable combination of unwilling admiration and reluctant contempt.
The bitter face of a man on a particularly unpleasant mission.
And who was determined to succeed.
CHAPTER THREE
ROSALIND clamped her shoulder bag to her side as she jogged across the shimmering tarmac towards the small, colourful, twin-propellered aircraft. A steamy, swirling Singapore wind whipped her hair into a red halo as she cast an angelic smile of apology at the uniformed airline officer standing beside the lowered steps at the rear of the fuselage. She had been deep in conversation with a young German tourist when she had realised she was going to be late for her connecting flight. She had made it with barely thirty seconds to spare!
The door Was pulled smartly shut behind her, shutting out the baking afternoon sun, and Rosalind’s smile swept around the narrow, nineteen-seat cabin before zeroing in on the gap halfway up the left-hand side of the aisle. She eased herself between the rows of single seats, scattering apologies as her bag banged protruding elbows, and crammed herself gratefully into her seat. She could see the pilot looking back through the open door of the cockpit and she gave him a cheeky thumbs up.
‘You nearly missed the flight.’
Rosalind looked across the aisle into a pair of familiar, dark, disapproving, bespectacled eyes.
Oh, no! The insipid Mr James was a reminder of the country and complications she was trying to escape.
‘Don’t tell me you’re going to Tioman too,’ she blurted out as the plane began to vibrate with engine noise.
‘No, I’ll be parachuting out halfway there,’ he said drily.
Considering that they were on a non-stop, terminating flight, his sarcasm was justified, but just as Rosalind was appreciating his glimmer of wit he spoiled it by adding ponderously, ‘That was rather reckless of you, cutting it so fine. You could have wasted your ticket.’
‘Nonsense; I had it timed perfectly to the last second,’ she lied airily. ‘When you’ve flown as often as I have you’ll realise that there’s an art to minimising boring waiting times.’
‘Right,’ he murmured, eyeing her flushed complexion, slicked with perspiration from her dash to the plane, and the green shirt which clung in interesting patches to her dampened skin.
Rosalind rummaged in her bag and produced a moistened towelette which she used to blot her face, uttering a sensuous sigh of pleasure as the cooling alcohol evaporated on her hot skin. He was still in his suit, she noticed, although he had removed his jacket and tie as a concession to the heat; his ubiquitous laptop was jammed under his feet. Was he going to work all the way across the South China Sea, the way he had across the Pacific?
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