Heading For Trouble!
Linda Miles
Man trouble!The second time Morgan met Richard Kavanagh she was supposed to be helping charm the television heartthrob into giving her sister a job. Unfortunately, Morgan suspected that careering into Richard's car wasn't exactly the "good impression" that Elaine had had in mind! Worse, Richard thought it was an elaborate plan to get an autograph. She didn't even like the man! He was rude, opinionated and far too sexy for his own good–and hers! And if he ever remembered the first time they had met, Morgan would really be heading for trouble!
“A kiss is just a kiss? Well, there’s one way to find out.” (#uf1705ef4-b311-51cb-9767-e5903d96e244)About the Author (#ub1b12cb2-f242-5fff-949b-6404fe928f23)Title Page (#u80bee82f-a138-50de-92e0-69584daa47f1)CHAPTER ONE (#u101bad03-6fe6-50a5-979a-01ba2d125a1a)CHAPTER TWO (#u32018bf9-0c32-5cec-9427-5c59c7da7e18)CHAPTER THREE (#uea7511dd-a19b-5df3-b195-e020eb04a2e4)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 ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“A kiss is just a kiss? Well, there’s one way to find out.”
And before Morgan could back away, Richard Kavanagh’s arms closed around her, and he kissed her full on the mouth.
Morgan found her knees actually going weak at this new assault on her senses. Instinctively she clutched at him for support. And at this point, to her dismay, Morgan lost her head. She took a sideways turn, drew her arm back, and landed a powerful right jab on his eye.
Even now, nearly a year and a half later, she cringed at the memory. It had been so uncool. So unfeminine. Just about anything would have been better than punching him.
He had laughed softly and seized hold of her wrist. “If I were you, I’d think about whether I was so angry because I got something I didn’t want...” an index finger traced, with casual contempt, her tingling mouth “...or because got more than I bargained for.”
Linda Miles was born in Kenya, spent her childhood in Argentina, Brazil and Peru, and completed her education in England. She is a keen rider, and wrote her first story at the age of ten when laid up with a broken leg after a fall. She considers three months a year the minimum acceptable holiday allowance, but has never got an employer to see reason, and took up writing romance novels as a way to have adventures and see the world.
Heading For Trouble!
Linda Miles
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
AT FOUR-THIRTY on Good Friday afternoon Morgan Roberts stood halfway up a hill above Clive’s Scrap and Lumber and wondered where she’d gone wrong.
She’d come down from London to spend Easter weekend with her father and young stepmother on the family farm near the Welsh border—surely a simple enough plan. But nothing in Morgan’s life was ever simple.
Her decrepit alarm hadn’t gone off, she’d thrown on the first clothes that had come to hand, raced across east London to Liverpool Street, chewed her nails—the Circle Line had been ‘experiencing signalling problems’—and had almost missed her train out of Paddington. Not the best of starts. But she’d stepped demurely off the train three hours later filled with the very best intentions. Where had she gone wrong?
She’d meant to change the instant she got to the house, and here she was, three hours later, in a grey leotard which had once, long ago, been black, grey plimsolls which had once, long ago, been white, and a disreputable sarong which might, to an unsympathetic eye, have looked quite a lot like a recycled teatowel. She’d meant to behave with rigid conventionality from the word go, and instead...
‘Go on, Morgan, you can do it!’
‘It’s easy!’
Sarah and Jenny, the nine-year-old Twins from Hell by her father’s second marriage, took up a chorus they’d been repeating all afternoon.
‘It’s not scary!’ Six-year-old Ben, the long-awaited son, added this with just a hint of a swagger.
Morgan tugged absently on the glossy black plait which had wormed its way over her shoulder like a confiding snake. A tender spring breeze rippled through young grass; the spring sunlight seemed to bathe the scene in champagne; it was a perfect afternoon for rolling down a hill inside a tyre. But she’d promised Elaine...
‘This could be my chance of a breakthrough,’ her sister had sighed over the phone earlier that week. ‘No more breakfast TV for people who hate to get up in the morning. All right for some—they should try getting up in the middle of the night.’
Now Elaine had her eye on higher things—specifically on a place as co-host with Richard Kavanagh, the go-for-the-jugular presenter of Firing Line. There had been a short digression, which Morgan had heard dozens of times before, on his precocity, ratings, unheard-of salary and crazy fans—‘Did you hear about the girl who smuggled herself into his hotel room in Carlisle?’—and then the axe had fallen.
‘Someone from the studio’s coming down from London this weekend,’ Elaine had said mysteriously, refusing to name names, and had laid down the law in no uncertain terms. If Morgan didn’t give the wrong impression by dressing in teatowels, jousting on broomsticks and otherwise disgracing herself, the job could be Elaine’s for the asking.
‘Aren’t you going to try it even once?’ asked Ben.
Morgan shook her head.
‘It’s got to go back to the scrapyard anyway,’ Sarah said cunningly. ‘What difference does it make if you’re inside it?’
Morgan knew that she was being manipulated—it was well-known in the family that she never turned down a dare—but that didn’t make it any easier to resist temptation. Elaine and the mystery guest weren’t expected for hours—well, at least another hour. She looked longingly down at the inviting sand-hill at the foot of the slope, and sighed irritably.
She didn’t care what Elaine said; she didn’t really believe there could be a vacant seat on Firing Line. Morgan had met Richard Kavanagh only once, briefly, in circumstances that she would rather forget—but she considered herself something of an expert on his programme. Its coverage of controversial issues was undeniably addictive, and for the past three years she’d been getting weekly doses of the black-browed Boy Wonder of the box flaying alive the corrupt, the exploitative and the inefficient—but that didn’t blind her to the ruthless showmanship of its sardonic presenter.
She couldn’t see Richard Kavanagh taking on a co-host without a fight, and she couldn’t see him taking on a fight without winning it, which meant that all her good behaviour was for nothing.
‘Don’t you like doing this kind of thing when you’re grown-up?’ Jenny asked guilelessly.
Morgan gritted her teeth. And then she remembered, suddenly, that Elaine hadn’t said anything about tyres.
It was only five o’clock, anyway. Elaine would never know.
‘Well, as a matter of fact I don’t think Elaine would mind about tyres,’ she said innocently, in a low, husky voice which gave grace to even her most casual remarks. The spark of mischief in her smoky grey eyes made her look more like a ten-year-old urchin than a five-foot-eight-inch twenty-six-year-old teacher. ‘She didn’t mention them.’
The children giggled delightedly.
Morgan settled herself inside the enormous, exarticulated-lorry tyre, which she’d taken from the scrapyard just in case as being a better size for an adult. Pressing her elbows close to her sides, she gripped the inner rims of the tyre with her hands and took careful aim for the sand-hill. She gave a shove with her feet, tucking them quickly together as the tyre rolled forward. And she was off.
The tyre raced down the slope, turning over and over and over. Morgan’s head swam as the world inside swept by in a revolving blur. There was a dull thud as the tyre struck the foot of the sand-hill; any second now it would keel over as it ran out of steam. But it didn’t seem to be losing much speed.
The tyre rolled forward another foot or so, hesitated, and then began to roll down the other shoulder of the mound.
And now everything seemed to happen very fast. The tyre trundled briskly down the lane used by trucks for dumping sand, miraculously avoiding the ruts and potholes which might have stopped it. The gate at the end of the lane was open; the tyre cleared the crossroads at a single bound. It plunged, with stomach-churning abruptness, down the next slope, descended a pitted, rocky stream bed in a series of sharp, jarring bounces, soared over a drainage ditch at the foot of the hill and swept across the main road.
There was a scream of brakes.
The tyre took one final bound and came to rest in the marshy, rain-sodden ground below the road.
There was a blessed absence of motion. There was silence. And then there was the sound of a car door opening, and footsteps. Morgan extracted herself slowly, unsteadily from the tyre.
‘Just what the hell did you think you were doing?’ It was a man’s voice, oddly familiar.
Morgan was now standing up to her calves in oozy mud—the same mud that was, she discovered, liberally plastered over the sarong, leotard and what she could see of her plait. She squelched forward, while the ground swayed and dipped and threw her to her knees in the mire.
‘Are you all right?’ he asked belatedly.
Morgan staggered to her feet again. She fixed her eyes on the stranger. Was it a stranger? The face was familiar. Sardonic, black-browed...
Morgan’s head began to swim again. A voice inside it was saying, You idiot, you idiot, you idiot. Who else but fan-plagued Richard Kavanagh himself would want to keep his presence a secret? She should have known who Elaine’s mystery guest would be—and, if she had, wild horses could not have dragged her where he might remember the last time they’d met.
Morgan didn’t dare look at the car, where Elaine was no doubt waiting in icy rage. She looked down at the sarong; to say it looked like an old teatowel would have been to pay it a brass-faced compliment. She brushed ineffectually at a large clod of mud and grass, smearing it down the long line of her hip. What on earth was she going to do?
‘Are you all right?’ he repeated, adding, ‘You bloody fool,’ not so sotto voce for good measure. No, there was no mistaking him. Prudence might have suggested keeping her eyes down, giving him no chance to look her full in the face. Morgan raised her swimming head.
‘Richard Kavanagh, I presume?’ she said sarcastically, looking him straight in the eye. And she wondered dazedly what had hit her.
For the past three years she’d been shouting objections at the handsome, arrogant face whenever it had appeared on the screen; familiarity should long ago have robbed it of the power to surprise her. The black slash of brow, the eyes like burnished steel, the imperious, high-bridged nose and cynical mouth—features as much his trademark as the savage irony of his questions—were an undeniably potent combination, but she should have been used to them by now, for heaven’s sake. She’d seen them probably hundreds of times—not exactly blind to their appeal, of course, but amused because they were so obvious.
Well, she wasn’t laughing now. In the split second when their eyes met, the air between them seemed to crackle with electricity; she should have dragged her eyes away, but they seemed to have a will of their own. It was suddenly hard to breathe. And for what seemed an eternity but could only have been the space of a heartbeat she stared, enthralled, at the dark, piratical face gazing down at her.
In that instant of breathless concentration she was attuned to even his slightest change of expression—to the faint frown which greeted her cheeky remark, the sudden glitter when the brilliant eyes registered unerringly that swift spark of attraction.
Morgan could have sworn that she cared nothing for what Richard Kavanagh might think of her, but at his look of cold contempt she flinched violently—and struggled again for balance. And now the ill-used sarong seemed to feel that it had had enough; its knot parted, and it slid from her hips, down her long legs and into the mud, leaving a trail of slime in its wake.
The leotard covered rather more of her anatomy than the average swimsuit, but the look in Kavanagh’s eyes made her feel as if she had stripped to the skin. She bent instinctively to retrieve the cloth from the mud.
The sudden movement was too much for her reeling head. Morgan swayed wildly from side to side, and at last fell headlong into his arms.
For an instant the world stopped pitching and heaving as she came to rest against a body which seemed to be all muscle. She was aware again, fleetingly, of that strange, uncomfortable breathlessness. And then her head began to swim again as Richard Kavanagh deliberately disengaged the hands which clutched at him. Hands like iron bands clasped her wrists and held her at arm’s length. And as he steadied her the world came into focus again and Morgan stared at him in blank dismay.
On setting out for a weekend in the country, Richard Kavanagh had, she realised, done what most civilised adults would have done. He had changed before he’d left London so as to be presentable when he arrived. Specifically he had changed into a charcoal-grey linen jacket, grey trousers, a dark blue shirt and painted red silk tie—all of which were now streaked with mud and a green slime which clashed horribly with the colour scheme.
If she was honest she didn’t give a brass farthing for the inconvenience to Mr Richard Kavanagh, but what on earth would Elaine say when she saw him?
‘Oh, Mr Kavanagh, I’m terribly sorry!’ she gasped. ‘But I’m sure it will come out. If you’ll let me have them I’ll be happy to have them cleaned.’
‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ In his exasperation he swung his arms wide, then in even greater exasperation caught hold of her again as she tilted sideways. ‘It’s very kind of you,’ he said with withering sarcasm, ‘but I’m actually rather attached to them. I didn’t bargain on handing out souvenirs to the natives, so I’m afraid I only packed for one.’
Morgan stared at him uncomprehendingly. While she tried to gather her wits he proceeded to favour her with a trenchant condemnation of her manners, morals and intelligence with impressive fluency, not to mention a colourful vocabulary unrestrained by the decencies of the screen. After what seemed an hour, but could only have been a few minutes, he brought himself under control.
‘I’m delighted that you like the programme,’ he said very softly. He had stopped shouting, and there was somehow something even more unnerving in the sheer effort that went into confining himself to this silky, ironic tone. ‘But I’m afraid that doesn’t make me your personal property; and it certainly doesn’t give you the right to endanger the lives of anyone who has the bad luck to be on the roads.
‘Just out of curiosity I’d be interested to know exactly what you expected to get out of this ridiculous exhibition. Was I supposed to oblige you behind the nearest bush?’ The grey eyes flickered over her in bored dismissal. ‘Or were you just hoping I’d autograph the tyre?’
Morgan stared at him, open-mouthed. Of all the arrogant, conceited, self-satisfied... ‘You think I’m one of your fans?’ she said incredulously.
The cynical gaze showed not a flicker of self-doubt. ‘Oh, were you hoping to break into television? I think you’ve picked the wrong industry, you know; perhaps you should think of Hollywood.’ He paused, with the impeccable timing which made his style of interview so deadly. ‘I’ve begged and pleaded for a casting couch, but the studio simply won’t listen to reason.’
Morgan knew with maddening certainty that in half an hour she would have thought of twenty or thirty devastatingly witty replies with which to pulverise him. Now she could think of nothing but ‘What?’ and ‘How dare you?’
‘What?’ she said, trying to make her venomous tone compensate for a certain deficiency in verbal brilliance. ‘How dare you?’
He dropped her hands abruptly, and this time Morgan was steady on her feet. She felt as if she’d been nailed to the spot.
‘Just one word of advice,’ he said levelly. ‘If you choose to act like a silly teenager, that’s your own affair. But if you ever again pull a dangerous, irresponsible stunt like this to get my attention I’ll give you something to remember me by all right, and I can guarantee you won’t like it.’ He gave her a singularly chilling smile and added pleasantly, ‘If I were you I’d stick to coming up through cakes.’
He turned on his heel and walked back to the car. For all he knew, Morgan thought bitterly, she might have a concussion or worse, but he got into the car and slammed the door without a backward glance.
As she adjusted the muddy sarong about her hips again she did a sudden double take and looked again at the passenger seat—the empty passenger seat—of the car. Where was Elaine? And, come to think of it, why was he down here on the old canal road? The road to the house went out the other side of the village—this led only to the chemical processing plant and then back to the motorway.
A wild flash of hope seized her. Perhaps the appearance of Richard Kavanagh was sheer, devilish coincidence. Elaine had mentioned, she now remembered, that Firing Line was being pre-recorded for the bank holiday—but that would free other people from the studio besides its arrogant star. It defied belief that a consummate performer like Richard Kavanagh would willingly share the limelight; probably he had a team working on a programme in the area, and Elaine’s mystery guest was part of the entourage...
Or someone higher up? Perhaps Elaine, at this very moment, was being driven along the motorway by a fat, bald TV executive—someone on whom Morgan still had a chance to make a good impression. A glance at her watch showed her just how slight a chance, and she scrambled back up the bank into the road.
The motor roared into life, and the car, which was now tilted down a slippery slope above the bog, began to reverse smartly and then slid another foot or so forward. There was an ominous gulping, sucking sound as the front tyres sank to the hub-caps in mud.
Morgan knew that she should feel sorry—after all, it was her fault, even if she hadn’t meant to do it—but she couldn’t help a mean satisfaction at this anticlimactic end to his grand exit. He might have had the last word, but he wasn’t going to have the last laugh, she thought sourly.
The car’s motor was cut off. Richard Kavanagh got out and began looking, not very hopefully, into the boot.
After a short struggle with herself Morgan squelched down the road to see if she could help.
‘Go away,’ he said, not looking up. ‘If my car disappears under this swamp I plan to mark the spot with a human sacrifice, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather sacrifice than you. Why don’t you get going now and put a safe distance between us while you’ve got the chance?’
Morgan searched for a snappy reply, failed to find one, and realised in exasperation that at least half her mind was taken up with the useless but distracting discovery that his rather raffish good looks were just as eye-catching seen in profile. ‘Are you staying in the area?’ she probed delicately. It seemed less of a dead give-away than, Where’s Elaine?
‘If there are many more like you around, not if I can help it. Now go away.’
‘I am going,’ said Morgan. ‘I’m horribly late. I just wanted to say—’
‘Unless you wanted to say you have a supply of two-by-fours up your sleeve I don’t want to hear it. Scram.’
‘What I wanted to say,’ said Morgan, ‘was that you need to get something under the tyres. There’s a scrap and lumber-yard just up the hill.’
He turned his head now, flicking her an impatient glance—and as the diamond-hard eyes met hers unexpectedly Morgan’s heart gave a queer little lurch. Infuriating. It wasn’t as if she even liked the man—and he was obviously getting completely the wrong idea.
‘And also,’ Morgan added coldly, ‘I am not one of your fans. I think your interviewing methods are sadistic and self-serving and your looks make me think of a thirties matinée idol. I think you have about as much sex appeal as those Spanish bullfighters who think it proves their virility to kill an animal to entertain a crowd. I wouldn’t give a bent paper-clip for one of your kisses, or for your signature, unless it was at the bottom of a cheque.’
‘So this was more of an assassination attempt, is that it?’
‘This was an accident,’ she informed him haughtily. ‘I was simply playing with the children and the tyre got away. It could have happened to anyone.’
‘So that explains it,’ said Richard Kavanagh, looking thoughtfully at the beached car. ‘I was wondering why there were so many children around.’
‘All right,’ said Morgan. ‘I made it up. Fine. I think I’ll take my tyre back to the imaginary scrapyard and leave you to dream up something to brace your car with.’ As she turned on her heel shrill cries drifted from above as the children peered down the slope to the main road. ‘I’ve always had a very vivid imagination,’ she remarked over her shoulder.
‘All right, damn you,’ said her sister’s unsuspecting colleague-to-be. ‘Remind me of where you imagined this bloody lumber-yard was.’
Which was probably, Morgan thought, Richard Kavanagh’s idea of an apology. Not that she cared. If only he knew it, she was about to engineer his downfall. She would go back to the house and be amazingly charming and delightful to a fat, bald TV executive, and he would decide instantly that the sister of this wonderful person must appear on Firing Line. Little though Richard Kavanagh might suspect it, he was practically part of a double act already.
‘Over there,’ said Morgan, gesturing vaguely upwards. ‘You can’t miss it. I’d give you a hand but I’m horribly late. Good luck.’ She looked up the hill, wishing that she could ditch the sarong for the climb—but she certainly wasn’t going to with Richard Kavanagh watching. She strode resolutely to the foot of the slope.
‘Wait a minute.’
Morgan turned back. ‘Yes?’ she asked coldly.
He glanced at his watch, then at the car, then with barely suppressed exasperation at Morgan. ‘Are you sure you’re in one piece? I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car if you need patching up,’ he offered reluctantly.
‘Oh, this is nothing,’ Morgan said airily, unwisely shaking her head to emphasise the point. She staggered a step or two before catching her balance again.
‘Do you need a lift somewhere?’ he offered, even more reluctantly. ‘If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes...’
Morgan looked at the car, its nose tilted into the swamp. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think you’re going my way.’
CHAPTER TWO
THE long, uncomfortable trek back to the house gave Morgan plenty of time to cast a cold, self-critical eye over her behaviour that afternoon. Her meeting with Richard Kavanagh was, it seemed, only an accident; she didn’t think she’d hurt Elaine’s chances yet. But if she’d really taken Elaine’s interests seriously she would have been dressed and ready for company over an hour ago. Well, she would make up for it all now, she vowed. One bald, fat, cigar-smoking TV executive wouldn’t know what had hit him.
She left the children in the kitchen, vying to tell her father and stepmother the story of her latest scrape, and hurried upstairs to the room that she was sharing with Elaine, her own having been made over to the mystery guest.
Elaine’s meticulously packed suitcase lay open on one twin bed, but at least Elaine wasn’t there. The signs of her single-minded pursuit of success through the years—the trophies and certificates and Elaine-edited school newspapers, the photos of Elaine with all the girls from the ‘in’ group at school—seemed to glare at her in mute reproach as she tore off her wet, muddy clothes, but at least it was better than hearing Elaine’s views of her carelessness at first hand.
She showered at breakneck speed, dried her hair, managed to French-braid it on only the fifth attempt, and at last slipped into the cherry-coloured silk tunic that she had bought a few days earlier. ‘Make an effort,’ Elaine had said, so she’d allowed herself to be seduced by the blaze of embroidery, by the way the superficial demureness of the princess collar, long, close-fitting sleeves and knee-length hem was undercut by long slits up the sides of the skirt. Next she put on tights, new high-heeled shoes—must remember not to fall over, she thought—and then was ready for the coup de grâce.
Morgan examined rather nervously the collection of cosmetics that she’d bought, egged on by the mother of one of her pupils.
‘Make the most of yourself,’ Razna had urged, and had shown her how to apply lipstick and kohl, mascara and eyeshadow in a glamorous style which matched the dress.
Hastily Morgan did her best to follow the precepts she’d been given, lining her eyes with black, colouring her lips a brilliant crimson. At last she stood back and gazed doubtfully at her reflection. Striking, yes. Perhaps even beautiful. But the natural look it was not. Was this really what Elaine meant by making an effort?
Morgan hesitated, wondering whether she should just scrub it all off—she could imagine how her family would tease her. But in the mirror her eyes were great misty pools within their black rims, her mouth had a lovely bitter-sweet curve—how could you be too beautiful? She’d been enchanted by this unfamiliar image when Razna had first conjured it up, and surely a susceptible TV executive couldn’t fail to be impressed?
Don’t be such a coward, she told herself sternly. With an involuntary squaring of the shoulders she left the room and made her way precariously down the stairs and into the sitting room.
As the door opened a confusion of phrases burst upon her—‘massive great tyre’, ‘dead easy’, ‘all afternoon’, ‘thought it was safe!’ Her father and stepmother were nowhere to be seen. The room held the three children and Elaine, who sat on the sofa, one gleaming, silk-encased leg crossed over the other. Her suit of brilliant aquamarine raw silk, with its microscopic skirt, made her look at once sexy and formidably self-assured.
As Morgan came in Elaine pushed back the glossy blonde hair which fell to her jaw in a sophisticated cut. She shot Morgan a look which managed to convey both exasperation over the afternoon’s peccadillo and unenthusiastic assessment of her sister’s clothes and make-up.
Morgan suppressed a sigh. She should have known that she couldn’t carry it off. Well, at least the children didn’t know about Richard Kavanagh.
‘You get more like Mother every day,’ Elaine remarked irritably. ‘You know, the other day I saw a piece in the paper—BRITISH TOURIST SETS OFF AVALANCHE, ALPINE VILLAGE DESTROYED—and the first thing I thought was, I didn’t know Mother could ski.’
‘I think she’s in the Himalayas,’ Morgan said non-committally, fighting down an impulse to spring to her mother’s defence. Since their parents’ divorce their mother had been happily wandering remote corners of the globe with little more than a pair of jeans and a rucksack; twelve years later Morgan still sometimes felt as if she’d lost her only ally.
‘Well, God help Nepal,’ Elaine said offhandedly.
Morgan changed the subject abruptly. ‘Where’s your guest?’ she asked, for there was no sign of the TV executive who was to fall victim to her charms.
‘I can’t imagine,’ said Elaine. ‘He started well ahead of me; I don’t know what can be keeping him—Oh, wait, that must be him now!’
From outside came the crunch of tyres on gravel. A vague uneasiness plucked at Morgan; surely it was impossible...?
They heard a door slam, footsteps. The doorbell rang. Elaine fractionally adjusted her sleek, gleaming legs and waited.
They heard their father hurrying up from the kitchen, a door opening, muffled exclamations. Morgan could feel her heart pounding, as if it had slowed down while she’d held her breath.
A disjointed murmur grew gradually louder as Mr Roberts and his companion approached the door of the sitting room.
‘The girls will look after you. You will forgive me, won’t you? The Béarnaise sauce is at a frightfully delicate stage—’
Hasty footsteps retreated down the corridor, and the door opened on a tall, black-browed, sardonic man who bore not the faintest resemblance to the fat, cigar-smoking executive of Morgan’s fond imagination.
For the second time that day Morgan’s heart plummeted, and a voice in her head said, You idiot, you idiot, you idiot, you idiot.
‘Richard, what on earth happened to you?’ exclaimed Elaine. The newcomer also didn’t look much like the cool, laid-back presenter of Firing Line. His hair was streaked with sweat, one black lock falling forward in his face, and, while he had taken off his jacket, his shirt and trousers were plastered with mud, as was the lower half of what had once probably been a nice tie.
‘Had a spot of bother with a tyre,’ he said offhandedly, with a crooked grin. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, but I’d better dash upstairs and change.’
‘Of course,’ said Elaine. ‘I’ll just introduce you quickly and then show you where we’ve put you. Let’s see...this is Ben, Sarah, Jenny... Where’s Morgan? Oh, there you are; and this is my sister Morgan. And, of course, this is Richard Kavanagh.’
He stared, eyes narrowed, at the brilliant creature who lurked in the corner.
‘Well, look who’s here!’ he said. ‘What a delightful surprise.’
Morgan looked at him dubiously, her black-rimmed grey eyes wary. There was an odd little flutter in her stomach which made it hard to think straight—and she needed all her wits about her. She glanced nervously at Elaine.
‘Do you two know each other, then?’ asked Elaine. ‘Oh, I suppose you must have met at one of my parties. What a memory you’ve got, Richard.’
Morgan remembered the brief, chilling glimpse she’d had of Richard Kavanagh at one of Elaine’s parties and shuddered. All she needed was for him to remember it too...
‘Is that where we ran into each other?’ he asked her mockingly. Just for a moment Morgan felt a shameful, overwhelming relief—at least Elaine didn’t know how badly she’d behaved. But then on the heels of relief came suspicion. He didn’t miss much—he’d worked out that she didn’t want Elaine to know about this afternoon. But he didn’t owe her any favours. What kind of game was he playing?
‘Oh, there are always so many people at Elaine’s parties,’ Morgan said vaguely. ‘Lovely to see you again, anyway.’ She gave him a bright, meaningless smile. ‘Come on, kids; let’s go and have dinner.’
Elaine looked surprised but not displeased. She’d bargained with Leah to have the children eat separately; the subtraction of Morgan from the grown-up table could only increase her chances of impressing her guest.
‘Aren’t you eating with us?’ Morgan wasn’t a bit surprised by his look of incredulity—he probably didn’t think any female under the age of eighty would willingly forgo his company. She was surprised to see that he looked distinctly put out. He hadn’t seemed all that anxious for her conversation an hour or so ago!
‘Oh, it can be rather chaotic with this lot around; Leah thought you might prefer rational conversation,’ Morgan said airily. ‘And I hardly ever get to see the children.’
‘Why on earth should they be segregated just because of me?’ he said, with an apparent modesty which made Morgan want to throw something—preferably at him. ‘I know they must be starving, but I’ll be back in half a tick—and then maybe we can work out where we met.’
Morgan caved in in the face of this veiled threat. For all the surface charm of his manner, there was a determination in the hard grey eyes which convinced her that further attempts to escape would be worse than useless. While Kavanagh disappeared upstairs she tried to think of a way of delicately warning Elaine—‘You remember your party the Christmas before last, the one where Richard Kavanagh walked into a door? I was the door’—and gave it up in despair.
He was back in twenty minutes, having changed into a white jacket and trousers and a pale green shirt, open at the neck. Morgan had grown up with boys who took it for granted that the tougher you were, the more torn and battered your clothes were; she found this combination of casual elegance and confident masculinity rather unnerving. While she was thinking about this Elaine walked up to Kavanagh and kissed him lightly on the mouth.
Morgan tried not to goggle. Was Elaine actually romantically involved with him, then? Or was this just one of those kisses that people in show business threw around as a casual social gesture?
Even as she puzzled it over, Kavanagh made it just slightly more than a gesture, if that was how it had been intended, by just barely bending his head, responding and at the same time fractionally lengthening the kiss. And somehow the very casualness of the embrace showed just how unquestionably these two handsome, stylish people belonged together—it was like watching Cary Grant kiss Grace Kelly.
‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ Kavanagh murmured, while Morgan fought down a ridiculous sense of chagrin. As a child she had admired but not envied Elaine’s golden-haired prettiness, priding herself instead on protecting the sister two years behind her, and on rivalling the boys for daring and toughness and complete indifference to clothes. But somehow daring and toughness didn’t stand her in very good stead these days; somehow her sister’s unabashed femininity gave Elaine an armour that Morgan couldn’t hope to match.
Elaine made some offhand remark and they headed for the dining room. Morgan caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sideboard; her eyes were still misty pools, her mouth still had that wistful smile, but the lovely mask gave her none of the confidence she’d hoped for. She didn’t feel feminine or glamorous; she felt a fraud who was about to be unmasked at any moment.
This uneasy feeling was soon compounded, for the minute they sat down the children returned to that delightful subject—Morgan’s escapades.
Leah ladled out soup, Morgan’s father filled glasses, and the Terrible Twins launched yet again into the story of the tyre.
‘Morgan’s always doing that kind of thing,’ boasted Jenny, with pride. ‘She abseiled off the church tower for a bet—’
‘And when Mick tried it he broke his arm!’ burst in Sarah with the punchline.
‘She went over the falls in a punt—’
‘And Steve almost drowned!’
‘She was in a motorcycle rally when she was fifteen!’ said Ben, determined to get in this marvellous fact before one of the others did. ‘And she jumped out of a parachute.’
‘And lived to tell the tale,’ said the visitor. ‘Naturally. I trust she visits the graves of Mick and Steve from time to time?’
Morgan glowered at him, A little smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth; he obviously thought that she was completely ridiculous. And then, just when she thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, her irritation gave way to horror as the children all but blew her cover.
‘She jumped out of an aeroplane, with a parachute,’ said Sarah. ‘Ben gets everything wrong. And she raised seven hundred pounds for A Child’s Place—isn’t that wonderful?’
Morgan held her breath. The brilliant, penetrating grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully. ‘Well, there’s obviously a lot more to your sister than meets the eye,’ he remarked in an ironical tone that made her want to hit him.
And then, to her dismay, he went on, ‘Is A Child’s Place some sort of charity, then? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.’
‘Morgan teaches there,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s for poor little homeless children who don’t have a school of their own.’ She paused to admire the pathetic image conjured up by her words, and Richard Kavanagh pounced like a wolf—but not, of course, on the innocent little child who had spilled the beans.
‘Surely there can’t be much call for that?’ he said. ‘Anyone with a child has top priority for housing—’
‘Yes,’ said Morgan, who had been through this argument hundreds of times. ‘But sometimes people get put in places that don’t mesh very well with ordinary schools... We try to help children make the most of whatever time they have before they’re moved somewhere else, instead of just expecting them to fit into a timetable set up to cover a whole school year, where if they fall behind it’s just too bad—’ She broke off, dismayed at where her enthusiasm was leading her. How much had he been told at that ghastly party?
‘Yes, I see,’ said Kavanagh. ‘That makes much more sense—it’s a good idea. I’m surprised no one has thought of it before; isn’t anybody else doing anything?’
‘No,’ said Morgan.
‘Are you sure? I seem to remember hearing of something very similar some time ago—I can’t remember the name, but—’
‘Why don’t you put your research department onto it?’ said Morgan. ‘I’m sure if they dig around enough they can find someone to say it’s completely superfluous. After all, there are two sides to every question, and if not you can always invent one just to be sure of being impartial.’
If she hadn’t been so nervous she would have been amused by the look of blank astonishment which greeted this outburst. But before he could reply Elaine threw herself into the conversation with the aplomb of the experienced chat-show host, and for the next hour the talk remained firmly fixed on current events. Elaine’s versatility on her breakfast show was nothing to the brilliance she showed now—she seemed to know about everything.
Morgan fought down another pang of regret at the contrast between her own gaucheness and Elaine’s maturity. The whole point of having the man here was to give Elaine a chance to show her paces. She glanced down the table to see what sort of impression Elaine was making, and dropped her eyes hastily. He might be arguing with Elaine, but the cool grey gaze was still fixed unwaveringly on Morgan’s face.
Just for an instant she felt a shameful, delicious frisson at his unexpected interest. But then cold sense pointed out the frightening, unflattering truth. He suspected something.
Presently she sensed that he had looked away, and in spite of herself she found her eyes drawn slowly back down the table. Sure enough, the hawk-like face was now turned to Elaine. And now that she was no longer the centre of attention she had the opportunity to observe him at leisure.
Even after more than a year she remembered well enough the contrast between the television image and the real thing. The physical toughness of the man, which you wouldn’t have guessed from the talking head, made it easier to understand how he had talked his way into and out of a series of guerrilla hide-outs for an early, notorious season of Firing Line. So, oddly enough, did a charisma so strong that it was almost palpable. She could imagine him impressing men who lived by a code of unrelenting machismo—and then charming the socks off them.
What she hadn’t remembered, because she hadn’t previously had a chance to see it, was his rather terrifying talent for being at ease with just about every subject under the sun. Here he was, talking, unbriefed, on subjects that Elaine had presumably worked up—and still he had her on the hop.
But even as Morgan admitted, grudgingly, that he probably had the most powerful mind of anyone she’d ever met, even as she laughed, reluctantly, at his irreverent wit at the expense of the world’s movers and shakers she found herself gritting her teeth.
Again and again he deployed the same tactic, putting forward a controversial, even shocking suggestion ‘for the sake of argument’, and then leaving Elaine to struggle to show why it was wrong. When watching this move on television Morgan usually shouted at the screen. Now, while her sister fought off humiliation at the hands of a man she seemed to care about personally as well as professionally, Morgan was forced to keep a low profile, to open her mouth only to put peas into it.
While she managed to keep quiet, however, it didn’t occur to her to school her face to an air of pleasant interest, and it gradually settled into a stormy expression strangely at odds with the harem-like make-up. Kavanagh glanced her way from time to time with a rather odd smile, and once or twice tried to draw her into the discussion; each time she made a noncommittal remark, her eyes still hurling defiance, and refused to be drawn.
But at last it was too much to bear. He had been talking with chilling satisfaction about a prominent local politician whose corruption had been exposed by Firing Line, and who was now serving time in a low-security prison. Morgan glared at him.
His eye caught hers for a long moment. ‘But you seem to disapprove?’ An eyebrow flickered upwards; a lazy smile mocked her for daring to disagree.
‘I thought it was absolutely appalling, the way you took Corvin to pieces,’ she said, goaded. ‘Why did you have to keep needling him about his sixties idealism? He looked absolutely heartbroken by the end of the programme. What possible good did it do?’
He gave a faint, indifferent shrug. ‘He got the post in the first place because he persuaded people that he’d be an improvement on the back-scratching lot who’d been running it for twenty years. It seemed fair enough to bring that up if he’d turned into something as bad as what he was meant to replace.’
This was as good as a red flag to a bull. Morgan forgot her promise to be tactful and discreet and behave like a civilised adult; how dared he pretend that he only brought up legitimate points, when he really just played to the crowd? Infuriated, she sailed in with a comprehensive list of every disgraceful bit of showmanship she could remember.
‘And what about Cy Burgess?’ she concluded. ‘Or Everard Macready? What about the time you read out letters that union leader—what was his name? Mick Bryson?—had written to the wife of the owner of FairWay? Was that necessary? I suppose you thought it was absolutely marvellous when he actually passed out on stage.’
The electric grey eyes widened as she went on, and by the time she had finished his clever, mobile face showed an odd mixture of emotions—surprise, amusement, perhaps a touch of respect, but above all a maddening self-satisfaction. Remorse, it seemed, was conspicuous by its absence.
‘Morgan,’ he said at last, ‘as far as I can see you’ve caught just about every broadcast of the programme for the last three years—and that despite loathing everything about the way I go about things.’
He cocked an eyebrow. ‘I hate to say this, but as far as I’m concerned that means I must be doing something right. For better or worse, that’s what television’s about—not just covering worthy issues, but getting people to watch you week after week after week.’ His mouth curled into a rather cynical smile. ‘Whatever you say about my methods, if you keep watching I must be doing a pretty good job.’
‘But don’t you personally have any opinion of whether it’s right to treat people that way?’ Morgan demanded. ‘What do you do—give them all an apology and a pat on the back afterwards—no hard feelings, it was just business? That may be good enough for the Godfather, but don’t you think you should come up with something better if you’re going to take the moral high ground?’
He began to look slightly annoyed. ‘I try to make sure of my facts; assuming I’ve got those right, I don’t think what I say calls for apology. That doesn’t mean I have a licence to insult people at will; if I get hold of the wrong end of the stick, of course I offer a retraction.’
Morgan scowled.
‘For God’s sake, you can’t seriously think I do it for the sheer fun of being rude to people?’ His voice roughened with impatience.
‘Of course you enjoy it!’ Morgan retorted. ‘You love twisting the knife—and some people love to watch you do it, though why I can’t imagine. It may be good TV, but don’t you ever wonder whether the kind of spectacle you provide limits the stories you can cover? No—because you revel in hacking people apart.’
There was a stunned silence around the table. Mr and Mrs Roberts looked shocked, the children thrilled, Elaine gallantly cheerful, as if one of her morning TV guests had passed out in a drunken stupor. Only Richard Kavanagh seemed unfazed. If anything, he looked more animated than he had all evening. The queer light eyes positively blazed under the black brows, and a smile tugged at his mouth.
‘I like to think my weapon is the rapier,’ he murmured. And then, with an apparent shift of ground, he added, ‘But I’m quite capable of taking an interest in subjects and people where there’s not a hint of wrongdoing.’
He smiled. ‘Look, sterling probity may not make for very interesting TV, but that’s not to say it doesn’t exist, or that I’m incapable of appreciating it when I find it—you may not have noticed, but just at the moment I’m not actually on the air.’ And then, while Morgan tried to think of a polite way of saying, Tell that to the Marines, he slid his blade home.
‘So why don’t you tell me a bit more about your work with the poor little homeless children with no school of their own?’ The amusement in his voice invited her to share the joke, but this home thrust stopped Morgan in her tracks.
‘I’d be happy to,’ she lied. ‘When we’ve more time.’
‘It’s so nice to have the chance to meet fans face to face,’ he said lazily, ‘and find out what they really think.’ The fist inside the velvet glove, thought Morgan; he was threatening to let Elaine know what she’d been up to. But her scrape of this afternoon paled to insignificance beside the mess she’d be in if he remembered where he’d seen her before, or, for that matter, decided to take a real interest in the charity.
‘I didn’t think you had much time for your fans,’ she replied coolly. ‘After all, I don’t suppose you care for being treated as somebody’s personal property.’ She met his eyes squarely, daring him to take up the gauntlet.
‘That,’ he said mildly, ‘depends very much on the person.’ And he gave her an outrageously charming smile.
Morgan made the interesting discovery that a smile could have all the impact of a punch in the solar plexus—even when you were actually furious with the owner. The man was a public menace; she could feel her resistance crumbling, could actually feel the corners of her own mouth turning up in involuntary response to that look of extravagant admiration. It didn’t even seem to matter that she knew it was an act—she knew how ridiculous she must look beside Elaine, and still she felt herself warming to him.
She bit her lip fiercely and glared at him. He was here to be impressed by Elaine, not to flirt with Elaine’s sister.
‘Are you finished with your plate?’ she asked abruptly. While they had been scrapping everyone had finished eating. Escape was at hand.
Morgan turned to her stepmother. ‘You’ve been slaving for hours, Leah, and tomorrow will be just as bad. Go and lie on a sofa somewhere,’ she said firmly.
She stood up and began collecting the rest of the dishes and carrying them out to the kitchen.
Chairs scraped in the dining room; she could hear people moving towards the front room. Alone at last!
‘Here, let me give you a hand,’ said a voice behind her.
Morgan realised too late that she had walked into a pit of her own digging. But how could she have guessed that the monster killer ego would condescend to help with the washing-up? And now, just when she needed to think on her feet, that strange, stupid breathlessness had come back and she was distracted by an uncomfortable consciousness of his closeness.
The deep, drawling voice had spoken almost in her ear, and as she whipped around automatically to face him she found that they were only inches apart. Unbidden, the thought flashed through her mind that Elaine, raising her mouth to kiss him, had stood no closer than she was now. And she was taller than Elaine.
What on earth was the matter with her?
‘Don’t be silly; you’re a guest,’ she protested, backing away hastily.
‘I try to be a good one,’ he replied virtuously, and laughed at her sceptical look.
‘But you should be—that is, wouldn’t you rather talk to Elaine?’ Morgan began nervously stacking dishes in the sink and allowing hot, soapy water to rise around them.
‘Ah, Elaine. I take it that dazzling performance was for my benefit? Don’t look so horrified, Morgan; I said it was dazzling, didn’t I? More credit to her for making an opportunity for herself. But I can’t, offhand, think of a tactful way of telling her to consider herself auditioned, so I thought I’d come out here and make myself useful.’
‘Naturally you wouldn’t dream of saying anything that might cause offence,’ said Morgan.
‘Well, not without a studio audience,’ he said shamelessly. ‘Why don’t you let me wash while you dry, since you know where everything goes?’ His voice was not precisely gloating, but there was no doubt about it—he certainly thought that he’d won this round hands down. And now he had her where he wanted her—over the washing-up he would give her the kind of grilling which had tripped up people who were cleverer, wilier and more experienced at downright lying than she would ever be. Unless...
Morgan’s eyes swept rapidly round the kitchen. ‘Wash as you go’ was not a precept that Leah had ever taken to heart; every surface was piled high with pots, pans, mixing bowls and every conceivable implement which could be used in the preparation of a dinner for eight. The sink was now filled with the dinner dishes, as was the counter beside it. And this scene of chaos had given her an idea of breathtaking simplicity—and, it had to be said, outrageous bad manners. But at least it would save her from a tête-à-tête with Richard Kavanagh.
Morgan took a deep breath. She looked resolutely into the soapsuds; she didn’t dare look up at him. ‘It’s awfully nice of you,’ she said. ‘Are you sure?’ It was still not too late to back out.
‘Quite sure.’ He had tossed his jacket over the back of a chair and was already rolling up his sleeves. There was probably a warning somewhere in the contrast between his casual, trendy clothes and the lean muscle of the arms being laid bare; Morgan ignored it. So he thought he’d outflanked her, did he?
‘Well, if you insist,’ said Morgan, stepping away from the sink. She raised limpid eyes to his face. ‘We always leave things to drain,’ she explained in a matter-of-fact, helpful tone of voice. ‘It’s more hygienic than drying with a dish towel. You can just leave everything in the rack. Thanks very much for offering; I have had rather a long day. It’s terribly nice of you.’ She managed to meet his eyes with a straight face.
Once out of the kitchen, she stumbled down the hall, doubled over with laughter, hands clapped to her mouth, until she staggered at last to the coat-rack, buried her face in a coat, and howled.
When she had herself under control—more or less under control—Morgan returned to the sitting room to join the rest of the family.
‘Where’s Richard?’ asked Elaine in a discontented tone.
‘Oh, he insisted on doing the washing-up,’ Morgan said cheerfully.
‘What?’
‘He wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ Morgan added smugly.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Elaine in horror. ‘Well, I’d better go and give him a hand.’ She hastened out of the room.
And now, for the first time that evening, Morgan was able to relax. But as she picked up a magazine and leafed idly through it she was suddenly, wryly, aware of a faint sense of anticlimax.
She had actually got the better of Richard Kavanagh! But the problem was she couldn’t be there to savour her victory—to see his face as he tackled the washing-up, or was joined by Elaine, keen to score a few more points over the soapsuds. And, even worse, she found herself actually looking forward to his return from the kitchen. He wasn’t the kind to take defeat lying down; what would he do next?
Morgan reminded herself sternly that she wasn’t supposed to be crossing swords with him at all. In fact, looking back over the evening, she couldn’t understand what had got into her—she had meant to be so quiet and unobtrusive! She had promised Elaine to act conventionally. Where had it all gone wrong?
An image came to her of cool grey eyes, amusement lurking in their depths. He made me do it, she protested to herself. He deliberately set out to thwart me at every turn; was I supposed to take that lying down? And as for keeping him company in the kitchen... An older, more sinister image came to her—of those same grey eyes glittering in winter moonlight...
Everything he’d said at dinner showed that he hadn’t changed; the merciless predator who took pleasure in the hunt wasn’t far beneath the surface. She had to keep him from remembering her, and keep him from going anywhere near A Child’s Place. But that was no reason, she reminded herself, to jeopardise Elaine’s chances. As long as he stayed she must simply keep out of his way. From now on she would have to do better.
CHAPTER THREE
‘TELL me the story of Gareth again, Morgan.’
Morgan looked up from her unread magazine an hour later to find Ben standing beside her. ‘I can’t watch TV ’cos Sarah and Jenny are watching The Little Mermaid,’ he explained.
Morgan grinned at this flattering invitation. The little boy climbed onto the sofa beside her, and the two were soon lost in the story of the humble kitchen boy who came to the aid of a haughty lady. Each time the boy defeated a knight in battle the lady exclaimed that it was luck, and a shameful thing that a brave knight should be brought low by a dirty kitchen boy. And about a third of the way into the story the hairs rose on the back of Morgan’s neck, and she knew that Richard Kavanagh had come into the room.
She forced herself not to look up. Gareth defeated a red knight, a green knight, a blue knight, a black knight and a giant, and still the lady despised him. From the corner of her eye Morgan saw a pair of white-trousered legs prop themselves against a table, the scrubbed cotton taut over the long, lean muscle of his thighs.
‘And then he returned to the court of King Arthur and jousted in disguise, and defeated every knight who came at him, even Sir Gawain,’ she said, her voice even huskier than usual from nervousness. She could just imagine what Kavanagh would make of this. ‘And then he went to the king and said, “I am the brother of Gawain, but I wished to be made a knight for my own efforts, and not because of my brother.” And he was knighted that very day, and Sir Gareth married the lady and lived happily ever after,’ she concluded hastily.
The silence at the end of this seemed to stretch out interminably. At last, in spite of herself, Morgan’s eyes were drawn slowly up to the face of the man watching her.
She had expected to see the spark of devilry which had been lurking in his eyes all evening, perhaps anger, certainly the promise of vengeance to come. But the hawkish face had an expression of almost brooding intensity; it was impossible to believe that its bitter cynicism had been prompted by anything so trivial as being unexpectedly landed with the washing-up.
His eyes held hers for an endless moment in which she was conscious only of the pounding of her heart, of the electric charge which seemed to strike her from those quicksilver, black-rimmed irises. And when he spoke his words took her completely by surprise.
‘That’s Malory, isn’t it?’ he asked, in a casual tone which made her wonder if she’d imagined that sombre look. ‘Tennyson misses the point—can’t see why anyone would want to get by on his own merits, so he makes the disguise a whim of the boy’s mother, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes,’ said Morgan. Her eyes fell to the pale green shirt, which had got splashed just above the belt and had grease-spots up the front, and some devil prompted her to add, ‘Do you have a fellow-feeling for Gareth, then, Mr Kavanagh?’
‘Oh, he had the right idea; I’m dead against people rising through their connections,’ he replied, and then added more cynically, ‘Though it was lucky for him that Arthur wasn’t one of the bad guys, wasn’t it? But perhaps I’m biased, speaking as one who got his start doing an exposé of the Round Table.’ With an abrupt change of gear, he went on, ‘Do call me Richard, though. Or is that your way of saying you’d rather I didn’t call you Morgan?’ And suddenly the gleaming spark of devilry was back.
‘You’ve called me worse things,’ said Morgan drily, with heroic self-restraint.
‘I know, damn it.’ He ran a hand absently through his hair. ‘I want to talk to you.’
Morgan bit her lip. ‘I’d love to,’ she said insincerely. ‘But it’s way past Ben’s bedtime. Perhaps some other time.’ She stood up abruptly, dislodging Ben briefly before gathering him up onto her hip.
At once her adversary rose to his feet as well, blocking off her path to the door. Looking up reluctantly, Morgan saw that one rebellious lock of hair had fallen forward onto his face, giving him an almost boyish look—but there was nothing boyish about the intent determination of the face bent towards her.
He had only just turned thirty, she remembered; if he had accomplished so much so young, it was because he was completely ruthless. Ruthless and not to be trusted. But even as she thought it his eyes lit with amusement, and his mouth curled in a smile that tempted her to respond.
‘Are you avoiding me because of this afternoon?’ he murmured, in an intimate voice pitched so low that she had to force herself not to move closer to hear him. ‘I wanted to make amends—honest.’ The grey eyes flashed her another gleaming glance. ‘But I thought I’d be discreet.’
Looking up into the cynical, charming face, so confident of an easy victory, Morgan realised bitterly that there was no justice in the world. If it hadn’t been for Elaine, how much she would have enjoyed this conversation!
She could just imagine what Richard Kavanagh would have done to a celebrity who had nearly knocked someone down, assumed she was after him, and abandoned the innocent victim at the scene of the accident— he wouldn’t have let someone off the hook just because he said he was sorry. How she would love to give him a taste of his own medicine! What exquisite revenge she could take for the mortification of their first meeting! And instead...
‘I’m not avoiding you,’ she said stolidly. ‘It’s just time to take Ben up to bed.’
His eyes began to dance. ‘Well, perhaps I could give you a hand?’
As Morgan searched desperately for an excuse she saw, furiously, that he was actually enjoying her predicament. Well, he wasn’t going to corner her so easily again. ‘Oh, no, Richard, I couldn’t let you do that,’ she said sweetly. ‘You’ve done far too much tonight already.’ She gazed up at him with an expression of wide-eyed, glowing gratitude. ‘I really don’t know how to thank you.’
For a moment she wondered whether she’d gone too far. There was a startled silence as he registered the fact that she was actually baiting him in return. And then, maddeningly, his eyes blazed up, not with anger, but with the delight of someone who had discovered that a game had surpassed all expectations. His eyelids drooped over the glinting eyes; one eyebrow shot up. ‘I can think of a few ways,’ he said. ‘You must let me tell you about them some time.’
Morgan blushed furiously. Where was Elaine? Why wasn’t she here showing off her knowledge of the exchange rate mechanism or some similarly incomprehensible subject, instead of throwing her sister to the wolf? In exasperation she pushed past him, trying not to flinch as she brushed against him.
He laughed softly. ‘You can’t run away from me for ever, Morgan,’ he told her. ‘I always get what I want, sooner or later.’
Morgan stalked out of the room.
By the time she had tucked Ben in it was still only nine-thirty. Morgan wasn’t about to go downstairs with the wolf still on the prowl; she would read in bed. She returned to Elaine’s room to take off her bright clothes, then slipped into the extra-large Child’s Place T-shirt which was her current nightgear.
She paused for a moment by the mirror, a frown creasing her brow. Her attention was caught, not by the wide-eyed houri who gazed at the glass, nor by the long, almost coltish legs which remained largely uncovered by the T-shirt, but by the new logo, the new name, and the new slogan—There’s no place like it’—each of which was rumoured to have cost several thousand pounds from a top agency.
Madness, she thought irritably, exasperated for the thousandth time by the charity’s prodigal expenditure on its image—and the marketing strategy was no better. You had only to look at the hundreds of designer T-shirts stacked in the storeroom to see why cash flow was a problem, why the director so often rejected even modest applications for classroom supplies. Or, for that matter, she thought cynically, to see why Ruth refused point-blank to let her look at the accounts!
Morgan had spent two years after she’d left university founding and making a success of a specialist cake firm. She’d decided that she would rather work with children than turn a small business into a large one, and had never regretted the change—but what she’d heard about the management of the charity made her itch to get her hands on it. The problem was that no one paid any attention to a teacher.
Morgan tugged absent-mindedly on the end of her plait. Even the underfunded classroom she ran was better than anything else available to the children. But it would be easy enough to hold the place up to ridicule; she could just imagine Richard Kavanagh standing in the overstocked storeroom making sarcastic comments while supporters deserted in droves.
He wouldn’t care what happened to the children—all he cared about was good TV. And if he remembered a certain embarrassing incident at a Christmas party...
Morgan shuddered. The worst of it was, she thought uneasily, that he might well feel that the last few hours had given him a few more debts to pay off. Well, she would just have to dodge him for another two days, before he remembered he had a score to settle.
She was on the point of going to the bathroom to clean her teeth when a sudden, horrible thought occurred to her. So far he hadn’t connected the unfamiliar name with the organisation he’d heard of at that fateful party. But just avoiding him wouldn’t keep him in the dark for long when her old room was crammed with the old material. The unmemorable LECDC—London Educational Centre for Displaced Children—might not ring a bell with him, but she wouldn’t bet on it. There was no help for it; she would have to get them out at once.
With a little shrug she walked rapidly down the corridor to her own room.
There was no light beneath the door; it was only quarter to ten, after all, and there was no reason to expect anyone upstairs for at least another hour. Morgan slipped into the room. Most of the materials should be on the desk; feeling somehow safer with the light out, she felt her way cautiously across the floor.
Just as she reached the desk she heard footsteps in the corridor. There was no way that she could escape with the damning literature; hastily she pulled open the bottom drawer, thrust the stack of papers firmly down in it and slammed it shut. The door opened and a sliver of light cut the darkness.
‘I’m sorry about the washing-up, Richard—we don’t usually work our guests quite so hard.’ Morgan couldn’t see Elaine, but the tone of slightly forced amusement gave her some idea of the reckoning in store for her—and that was if Elaine didn’t discover her lurking half-dressed in Kavanagh’s room. Morgan held her breath; the voice in her head seemed to be too disgusted even to say, You idiot.
‘That’s all right; I was glad to have a chance to hear some of your ideas.’ At least the door hadn’t opened wider—he didn’t seem to be bringing Elaine in. ‘Goodnight, Elaine.’
There was quite a long pause before Elaine replied, ‘Goodnight, Richard.’ It didn’t take much imagination to guess what had filled it.
Then Elaine’s footsteps retreated. The door opened wider, and the light came on. Morgan stood blinking in the glare. There was a short silence.
‘Well, well,’ said Richard Kavanagh. ‘Alone at last.’
He closed the door quietly behind him.
There was a watchful look in his eyes. Morgan remembered suddenly the story that Elaine had told her about the girl at the hotel and found herself blushing furiously. What on earth could he think? She scowled at him defiantly, daring him to think the obvious.
‘This is actually my room,’ she said awkwardly, uncomfortably aware that the T-shirt seemed to be a lot shorter than it had been when she’d put it on. ‘I’m sharing with Elaine. I just wanted to get a few things before you came up.’
‘I see.’ His face was unreadable. ‘Sorry. I hadn’t realised you’d been put in with Elaine to give me a room for myself.’
Morgan detected a criticism of the sleeping arrangements in this remark, and sprang automatically to Elaine’s defence.
‘I hope you don’t mind being put in my room,’ she said apologetically. ‘Leah is rather conservative, and she doesn’t—er—’
‘Like people doing the dirty deed under her roof?’ he completed helpfully.
‘No! That is-’
‘Never mind, I get the picture. Raving sex maniac that I am, I’ll naturally have to endure agonies of frustration—’
Morgan was surprised to detect a note of annoyance in his voice. ‘I never said that,’ she protested. Why on earth was he being so prudish all of a sudden? He was supposed to be the sophisticated one. He was the one who’d just been kissing Elaine outside the door.
‘You implied something very like it.’ He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘To tell the truth, it never occurred to me that we might share a room,’ he added offhandedly. ‘Do you think Elaine expected it?’
‘No, but-’
‘You thought it up all by yourself. How kind.’
Morgan reminded herself that she had promised Elaine to behave like a civilised adult. Civilised! She’d like to black his eye. Her right hand automatically curled into a serviceable fist; she forced it open again. No.
‘I’m sorry to have barged in,’ she said in a carefully controlled voice. ‘I’ll clear out now.’
There was a short pause, and when he spoke again she had the impression that he too had been reminding himself of the demands of civilised behaviour.
‘No, don’t go,’ he said, and he began to move towards her, the spark of devilry very bright in his eyes. ‘We’ve some unfinished business.’
He’d remembered. Morgan stared at him in horror. ‘H-have we?’ she stammered.
‘Of course.’ He paused automatically, with his familiar and maddening instinct for timing, then added, ‘I wanted to apologise for this afternoon, remember?’
With the rush of relief came anger. How dared he torment her and then turn around and pretend to be polite? ‘But you already have,’ said Morgan guilelessly.
‘What? When?’ he asked, startled.
‘This afternoon,’ she replied instantly. ‘You said, “All right, damn you,” when you saw the children. I distinctly heard you.’
His eyes met hers for an electric moment, and then, to her astonishment, he laughed out loud—not the short, cynical laugh which was his stock-in-trade, but an unpremeditated shout of laughter which seemed to involve the whole of that long, lean body. The grey eyes, meeting hers, seemed to sparkle with delight.
‘Where have you been all my life?’ he asked, grinning. ‘I did very handsomely admit to being in the wrong, now you come to mention it—but let’s say I feel I owe you a more conventional apology. Do you forgive me?’
‘Yes,’ said Morgan.
He did not seem entirely satisfied by this. ‘I know I overreacted—there’s something about persecution by fans that brings out the worst in one. I don’t know how the real superstars stand it year in year out; as far as I’m concerned, the past couple of years have been absolute hell, never knowing when some fool of a woman is going to do something perfectly idiotic—’
He broke off, and gave her a rerun of the charming smile. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean that the way it sounds. The worst of it is it makes every other woman think you must have a swollen head—that you must go round expecting every woman you meet to fall flat on her back the moment you say hello.’
Morgan found that she was literally grinding her teeth at this self-congratulating excuse for an apology. What a charlatan the man was! Was she really supposed to fall for this? Answer—yes, like a ton of bricks.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’d buy a girl a drink,’ she said, suppressing several pithy replies.
‘Or even two,’ he agreed imperturbably. ‘I must say you’re taking it very well.’
‘Well, I didn’t take it very seriously,’ she said. ‘After all, it’s just what you do on your programme all the time. If I’d been a fan I’m sure it would have given me a terrific thrill to see the real thing.’ Her amused, husky voice endorsed his dismissal of the idiocy of fans. ‘Let’s forget all about it,’ she added magnanimously.
‘It’s not quite what I do on my programme...’ he began, with a slight edge to his voice.
‘I know,’ Morgan said sympathetically. ‘Censorship is such a nuisance.’ She closed her lips tightly on the little bubble of laughter that came on the heels of the words.
Again he surprised her by laughing. ‘You don’t know how much,’ he agreed. ‘You little devil, you’re enjoying this, aren’t you? And, come to think of it, you’ve already had your pound of flesh. If you could have seen your face in the kitchen! Mouth as prim as pie, and those great, wicked eyes laughing at me. “It’s terribly nice of you,” ’ he mimicked in a saccharine falsetto.
‘But Richard,’ protested Morgan, smiling in spite of herself, ‘you insisted.’ And at his roar of laughter she found herself helplessly joining in.
‘More fool me,’ he said at last, when he had stopped laughing. ‘Morgan, why don’t you come out with me tomorrow? I’ve got some digging around to do—come along and hold a spade and I’ll buy you lunch.’
She sobered abruptly as she realised how completely she had lowered her guard. How did he do it? In the space of something like five minutes he’d turned the situation on its head. The fact was that he’d neatly cut the ground from under her feet, making it almost impossible for her to keep him at a distance—but she hadn’t even noticed. The laughter in those brilliant eyes had gone to her head like champagne—and for one insane moment, she realised in disgust, she’d actually been tempted to accept.
Well, she’d always wondered how he kept up the supply of victims on Firing Line, and now she knew: however often people had seen the kind of treatment they could expect, they probably thought it would be different for them. But the fact was that this was just part of the game. The jokes were neither here nor there; if he thought you had something to hide you could expect no mercy.
‘I’m afraid I’ve already made plans for tomorrow,’ she said. For a moment she thought that he was about to ask what plans but, if he was, he managed to keep his interviewing instincts under control.
‘Well, how about a goodnight kiss to show there are no hard feelings?’ Two strides brought him to her; one hand rested on her shoulder, the other cupped her chin.
Morgan glared up at him. ‘I’m not quite ready to fall on my back yet,’ she said sarcastically. ‘And I don’t come when you snap your fingers, either. In words of one syllable, I am not one of your fans.’
He looked taken aback, one bold black eyebrow shooting up in surprise. She would have liked to think it was just another example of his arrogance—assuming that she would want to be kissed by him—but it was probably sheer astonishment at her unsophisticated reaction to something he took so casually.
‘Congratulations,’ he said. ‘People hardly ever do use words of one syllable when they say “in words of one syllable”. Have you noticed?’ He bent his head; his lips brushed her cheek. A faint scent—an oddly potent mixture of freshly washed cotton, male skin and the citrus of washing-up liquid—tantalised her nostrils, and then it was over.
‘Just to show there are no hard feelings,’ he repeated, straightening up and dropping his hands in his pockets. ‘For sinking my car in a swamp, leaving me to wash every piece of crockery in five counties, and making me out to be the worst thing since the Spanish Inquisition. Want to slap my face for taking liberties?’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Morgan.
‘Disappointed?’
‘Of course not.’ Her face tingled as if an electric current had been sent through it.
‘Liar.’ He grinned. ‘I won’t suggest you reciprocate, anyway—I could have sworn you didn’t give a damn about this afternoon, but there’s no reason why you should make empty gestures if it sticks in your craw. I know I’ve a filthy tongue sometimes, and I don’t mean just four-letter words.’
Morgan detected genuine self-reproach in his voice this time and was instantly stung by pangs of guilt. She hadn’t really cared about all the insults he’d heaped on her—and, as for the bad language, she knew seven-year-olds who could have taught him a thing or two. She couldn’t even fuel her indignation at his sexual presumption, since it seemed that he hadn’t meant to make a pass at all.
‘Of course I don’t care about this afternoon,’ she said, and impulsively, without giving herself time to think about it, she put one hand behind his neck to pull his head forward and kissed him lightly on the cheek.
This time the shock ran through her mouth and the tips of her fingers. She stepped back in confusion, as if he could actually tell what she felt—but surely she wasn’t that transparent?—and said hastily, trying to cover up with a joke, ‘Anyway I suppose it’s a compliment in a way. I mean, you did say I should sell my body in Hollywood. But perhaps you say that to all the girls.’
‘Only if they’ve got the figure for it,’ he said instantly. She’d already worked out that flirting came as naturally to him as breathing, but in spite of his smile there was a look in his eyes which she didn’t like—the keen, probing look of someone confronting a problem that did not make sense. ‘It’s sweet of you to put my mind at rest, Morgan,’ he said in the slow, drawling voice which was used to such devastating effect on Firing Line. ‘And I’m naturally glad to hear I haven’t mortally wounded you. But if you didn’t mind about this afternoon, why the hell have you been avoiding me?’
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