Beaumont Brides Collection (102 page)

Her body seemed to take on a life of its own too. That kiss for instance. Nobody ever kissed her unless she wanted them to. She paused in her application of mascara to stare at her reflection. Had she wanted him to?

Her cheeks were slightly pinker than usual, her eyes had an extra sparkle. Was that what he had seen and responded to? If so, she was in serious trouble.

And if she was in that kind of trouble, why was she smiling from ear to ear?

But she already knew the answer to that, recognised the perilous excitement of not being totally in control. It was as if Jack exerted some power over her. Maybe he was an alien.

Her reflection grinned idiotically back at her from the mirror and she finally gave in to the impulse to giggle. He was working for an intergalactic holiday company who were planning to take over The Ark and use it for package holidays for wealthy interstellar travellers.

Still laughing she turned to her suitcases and began to unpack, wondering what to wear for her first dinner in paradise. With the serpent. She’d just have to make sure she avoided apples. And used a long spoon.

It was all very well coming over all giggly, but it was quite obvious that clothes were the least of her problems.

Then she held up the oversized purple t-shirt that was her favourite sleep wear. She didn’t go in for glamorous nightwear and she hadn’t given it a thought when packing, but this garment was certainly not the stuff of honeymoon suites. More the kind of thing worn by the average virginal schoolgirl.

Then she stopped worrying about her nightwear as a sudden silence warned her that the shower had stopped. She stuffed the t-shirt under a pillow and began to scramble into her clothes.

*****

Melanie was sitting on the sofa, idly turning the pages of one of the magazines Jack had provided for her entertainment at the airport and making a brave effort to appear totally at ease with the world when a shadow across the doorway indicated that she was no longer alone.

Assuming what she hoped was a bored expression she glanced up. Jack Wolfe, wearing nothing but a towel slung about his hips and rubbing vigorously at his hair with another was standing in the doorway, watching her.

The corded column of his neck, the naked expanse of tanned shoulders bedewed with water from the shower, the dark cruciform of hair that grizzled his chest and dived disconcertingly in an arrowhead beneath the whiteness of the towel were disturbing enough. But as he roughly towelled his hair, the towel knotted carelessly at his hips worked looser and looser and she stared at it with fascination, the tip of her tongue against her upper lip, quite unable to avert her eyes in spite of the inevitability of what was about to happen.

She blinked as Jack retrieved the towel the moment before it finally unravelled, tucking it more tightly about him and she looked up to discover that he was regarding her with the kind of smile designed to make maidens blush.

Her cheeks flamed obligingly.

‘Are you going to stand there all night parading yourself,’ she demanded, irritably. Irritation was as good a disguise as any to keep her true feelings to herself, to deny that for a moment she had wanted the towel to fall, to see this man who had haunted her thoughts ever since she had first set eyes upon him in all his naked glory. ‘I’m hungry,’ she continued, in an effort to blot out the disturbing emotions that trickled through her veins, making her go first hot, then cold. It didn’t work.

‘Is that why you were in such a hurry to dress?’ he asked, sliding his fingers through his hair in an effort to tame it. Her fingers itched to do it for him. ‘In my experience it usually takes women hours.’

‘Does it?’ She didn’t want to hear about his experience with women. ‘I’m sure your experience is extensive, Mr Wolfe, but frankly, the length of time some women take to get dressed baffles me.’ Her shrug was so casual, so dismissive that it deserved a curtain call of its very own. ‘I mean, what is so difficult about putting on a dress?’ She glanced down at the exquisitely simple scarlet gown she was wearing. ‘You just step into the thing and zip it up.’ Her gesture, like her dress was an essay in elegance. ‘Ten minutes. Tops.’ She smiled up at him. ‘Why don’t you see if you can beat it?’

‘If you insist, but to be honest I don’t think red is my colour.’ His smile was slow and oddly seductive. She should have quit while she was ahead.

‘Very funny.’ She waited but he seemed to be in no hurry. ‘Do you think you could put a move on?’ she encouraged.

‘Perhaps you should show me how it’s done.’

‘I’m not that hungry.’ Who was she kidding?

‘No?’ Not Jack Wolfe, evidently.

But he clearly wasn’t convinced by her hunger and he was right to be sceptical. Her only reason for speed dressing had been a very real desire not to be caught her at the dressing table in her underwear when he vacated the bathroom. An absolute determination not to share the bedroom whilst he dressed. If that made her look like a virgin schoolgirl, well, it couldn’t be helped.

‘I’m sorry if I’ve disappointed you.’ She apologised with saccharine-sweet insincerity.

‘Could you say that with a little more conviction?’

‘Since I’m not part of the cabaret, Mr Wolfe, but here for the sole purpose of lending you probity, that’s about as sorry as I get.’

‘Probity?’ Jack repeated the word thoughtfully. ‘Now that’s a word to conjure with.’

‘And from my experience of you to date, conjuring with it is what you do best,’ she replied, with every outward appearance of calm, although her insides were having a full scale fit of the jitters. She felt a whole lot safer around Jack Wolfe when he had his clothes on. She wished he would cut the verbal fencing and just go and get dressed.

‘Best?’ His mouth straightened in a smile. ‘Stick around, Cinderella. You ain’t seen nothing yet.’ He indicated the fridge. ‘Now since we’re supposed to be on holiday and having a good time, why don’t you pour us both a drink while I’m dressing? I’ll have a gin and tonic. You could take them out on to the terrace...’ - his smile suggested he understood all about her need to put some distance between them, but he didn’t let her off the leash for long - ‘...and I’ll join you in a minute.’ Then he demonstrated that he was no slouch in the shrug stakes himself. ‘Ten at the most.’

Feeling safer as he retreated into the bedroom, she called after him, ‘Wouldn’t real lovers be inside, behind closed doors.’

He turned back, giving her a slow, thoughtful look that travelled the length of her body making her skin tingle every inch of the way until it reached her cheeks. Silly question. Stupid question. And she wasn’t silly, or stupid. Usually.

‘I... um... I just want to do justice to my role.’ She cleared her throat. ‘That’s all.’

He held the bedroom door open and stood aside, inviting her in. ‘If you’re that enthusiastic, Melanie, come on through and I’ll be happy to co-operate,’ he said, very softly, his voice rasping over her skin like a cat being rubbed the wrong way.

‘I’m good here.’ She pressed back into the sofa in an effort to increase the distance between them. ‘I’ll pass on the practical. Thanks all the same.’

‘In that case I’d advise a little caution, darling. Put the serious flirting on hold until there’s someone around to appreciate your performance.’

‘Flirting! That wasn’t flirting. I was just - entering into the spirit of the role.’

‘Is that so? Well, try it again, lady, and I promise you, you’ll get a spirited response.’ Then he carefully shut the bedroom door.

Melanie stood up, her legs shaking a little from the intensity of an emotional crossing of swords that she shouldn’t have allowed to happen.

She’d been alone with the man for less than an hour and was already sending out all the wrong signals.

She had thought she was the one in control here, but she had been fooling herself. When he had kissed her, her insides had done an impression of an ice cream in a heat wave. Giving him the wrong impression, she decided, would be very easy.

It was just as well that Jack Wolfe was not interested in her. Not really interested.

Oh, sure, he was human enough to welcome her into his bed if she decided to play her part for real, despite all that high-minded stuff about keeping his hands off the staff.

His invitation might have been a tease, but there had been nothing playful about the threat that followed it. Nothing. And she shivered, despite the soft warm breeze lifting the curtains.

Jack Wolfe might turn up the heat whenever he looked at her, touched her, but she would do well to remember why she was here. The man was as calculating as they come. He and Caro Hickey deserved each other.

She sighed a little, any inclination to giggle evaporating and she acknowledged that they had got each other. Then she crossed to the mini bar. A drink, he had said, well why not? A drink suddenly seemed like a very good idea.

*****

Jack Wolfe closed the door behind him and waited. Heard her move around as she mixed a couple of drinks, then go out onto the verandah. Only then did he take his cell phone from his travel bag and call Mike.

‘What is it, Jack?’

‘We’ve got a problem.’

‘And it couldn’t wait until morning?’

‘Morning?’

‘Never mind,’ he said, smothering a yawn. ‘Go on.’

‘It’s Melanie Devlin.’

‘Well, don’t say I didn’t warn you -’

‘She knows Richard Latham. I saw her talking to him about three or four weeks ago, before she started working for me. She’d changed her appearance and I didn’t realize she was the same girl until she turned up at the airport.’

‘Changed her appearance? You mean she’s been working for you under false pretences and you still took her with you?’

‘I didn’t have any choice. If she is working with him I don’t want them to know they’ve been rumbled.’

‘If?’

‘It could just be a coincidence.’

‘There’s no such thing as coincidence in business, Jack. Remember?’ Never? ‘How the hell did she explain the change in her appearance.’

‘Adequately.’

‘Christ! Let’s hope you don’t talk in your sleep.’

‘No one’s complained yet.’

‘Who the hell would dare?’

Jack stared at the phone. It was true, he thought, Mike Palmer was getting a harder edge to his character, pushing more. Another year and he’d be thinking of stepping into his shoes.

‘I thought you liked working for me, Mike.’

Mike laughed. ‘Oh, I do, Jack. Where else would I get this quality of entertainment and be paid for it? Is she chasing you around the bedroom yet?’

‘Not so that you’d notice,’ he replied, somewhat wryly. ‘The arrangement is still that one of us sleeps on the sofa.’

‘You haven’t decided who, yet? That sounds promising.’

‘Not from here.’

‘She’s playing it coy? Well I’d advise you to do the same. If she is planning to extract all your secrets using the art of seduction it’ll drive her to extreme inventiveness. If you’re going to sacrifice your body for the greater good of the financial markets, you might as well enjoy yourself.’

‘Thank you, Michael, I think I had handle things at this end without any advice from you.’

‘I don’t doubt it. It should make for an interesting week.’ Jack thought that interesting understated the situation somewhat, but Mike was already far too amused by the whole situation for him to say so. ‘And we can use this to our advantage.’

‘Thanks, but I had planned a quiet week in the sun, leaving you to do all the work for a change.’

‘I’ve a pretty good idea what you have planned, Jack. And a cottage at The Ark will be a whole lot more conducive to your purpose than a damp afternoon in a boathouse.’

‘If you believe that, Mike, then it’s clear that you’ve never spent a rainy afternoon in a boathouse. Now, I’ve briefed Gus and he’s keen to do his bit, but what I need from you is everything you can discover about Melanie. And her connection with Latham.’

*****

It was odd, she should be tired but she was too restless to sit down. Instead she walked across to the low wooden rail that surrounded the verandah. Below her the gardens dropped away to the beach where the palms were rattling in the warm, moist breeze coming in off the sea like a caress, moulding the silk chiffon of her dress to her legs.

The soft drag of the surf against the sand had a soothing quality. The mingled scents of frangipani and the sea had a heady, exotic beauty and on the breeze she caught the plaintive melody of a steel band being played a long way off. Mel leaned against the rail and despite everything, smiled a little.

What on earth was she complaining about? This morning she had been in London. A cold, wet London that refused to buckle down to a serious attempt at summer. Now she had the warm tropical night, a beach of pure white sand just yards from her door and the sea to rock her to sleep.

Okay, so she had Jack Wolfe, too. But all she had to do was play her part. Smile, flirt a little when there was anyone around to see. What did it matter if the wretched man thought she was deluded into believing she could act? She grinned.

He should talk to Trudy Morgan, she would tell him that the part might have been written for her.