Beaumont Brides Collection (99 page)

What was it Claudia was fond of quoting?

Three’s a charm. Like all smart sayings it was double-edged, but suddenly she had an inkling of what her sister meant.

‘Yes, Mr Wolfe,’ she repeated, more firmly. ‘We have a deal.’

‘Then you’d better let me have your address. I’ll send a car for you first thing -’

‘It’s absolutely forbidden for staff to give their addresses to Busy Bee clients, Mr Wolfe. They might get ideas about employing them first hand and saving the agency fee.’

‘You gave me Paddy’s.’

‘That was different. And I really don’t need someone to hold my hand when I visit the hairdresser. Just give me the flight number and time and I’ll meet you at the airport.’

For a moment there was silence. ‘It’s all in the envelope I sent to the office. Don’t let me down, Melanie. I’m sure Mrs Graham would be quite happy to break her rules if I were to explain what you’ve just asked me to do.’

He didn’t hear the word she called him, because he had already hung up.

‘Is everything settled?’ Mrs Graham asked her when she returned to the office.

‘Yes.’

‘Excellent. I’ll see you when you get back and you can tell me all about it.’ Then as if regretting this unaccustomed warmth, ‘Just make sure that neither Mr Wolfe, nor his mother, have reason to complain about your work.’

His mother! She seriously doubted whether the man had ever had a mother. No, that wasn’t kind. Even rats had mothers.

‘No, Mrs Graham,’ she said, as she shut the door behind her. ‘Thank you, Mrs Graham.’

Then she said something else, but under her breath.

*****

Richard Latham picked up an early edition of the Courier on his way home from a late night shift and he turned automatically to the gossip page as he waited in an all-night cafe for a bacon roll.

A photograph of Jack Wolfe and Caroline Hickey immediately caught his eye. The caption riveted him to his seat.

“Jack Wolfe, financial wizard and eminently eligible man about town, has apparently swapped partners for his trip to the Caribbean. Until as late as yesterday he was planning to take the lovely Caro Hickey to The Ark, a romantic paradise island in the British Virgin Islands. But last night Caro jetted off to New York for a photo-shoot and Jack’s surprise choice of holiday companion is a young actress by the name of Melanie Devlin. No, folks, I haven’t heard of her either. But watch this space.”

His tea grew cold beside him. Jack Wolfe might have an ice-chip where his heart should be, but it seemed that under the right kind of heat even permafrost would melt.

He’d always recognised Melanie was a blow-torch just waiting to be lit, but there was a quick-silver quality about her. He’d put down lures in the past, but she had always eluded him, always kept him just at finger-tip length.

He laughed out loud.

‘What’s so funny?’

Richard turned to the man behind the counter. ‘Life.’ It all had such a wonderful symmetry about it. Everything was just falling into his lap.

First that idiot Tamblin had fallen for his plan. Well, he was greedy and greedy men were easy to fool. When he sold his Carstairs shares at a big fat profit after the takeover went ahead he was going to find out just how big a fool he had been.

Richard knew that Trust and Securities Commission would fall over themselves to offer him immunity from prosecution when he went to them with a well-rehearsed attack of conscience and told them how Wolfe and Tamblin had been insider trading. That Tamblin had recruited him as a go-between to carry information from Wolfe. It all sounded so believable. And it would be so hard to disprove.

And Melanie, working in his flat, would be involved. He’d already taken steps to see that she would.

Sooner or later Wolfe might be able to convince the TSC that the evidence was false, but he’d be long gone by then and Jack Wolfe’s business would be in ruins. He smiled at the thought and then looked down at the paper and the smile faded. This was not just the icing on the cake, but an entire tub of cherries.

Wolfe couldn’t possible know who Melanie really was, or that piece in the paper, so obviously planted to boost the illusion of a man with his mind on anything but business, would have been a whole lot bigger. And there would have been pictures, not just of Melanie, but the whole Beaumont clan. Well, it would be a pity to keep the man in the dark about who he was bedding.

He used the payphone on the countertop to call directory enquiries.

‘Broomhill, Sussex,’ he said, when the girl answered. ‘I need the telephone number of Devlin Enterprises.’

If you wanted to hurt someone really badly, he reasoned, you wouldn’t use a peashooter like Greg Tamblin. Not when someone kindly handed you a cannon.

*****

Janet Graham discovered her secretary giggling over the piece when she arrived for work. Telling the girl to get on with her work and not waste time on such trash, she bore away the post, relishing the thought of sacking the Devlin girl the moment she returned. And let Jack Wolfe complain after the lies he’d told her.

Helping his mother, indeed!

And then she realized that the letter she was holding was Melanie’s resignation.

*****

In New York, Caroline Hickey received a fax marked urgent from her publicist and held up the cover shoot long enough to dash off a furious reply.

*****

Trudy Morgan didn’t see the paper until she arrived at her office, but when she did her first thought was to call Claudia and warn her just what kind of Grade A heartbreaker her baby sister was involved with.

Her second thought was that it might be better to do nothing.

Getting involved in her client’s love life was not her idea of a good time. And Jack Wolfe was her landlord.

*****

Luke Devlin didn’t read gossip columns. Fizz did when she had time, but she was busy and Claudia never read the papers until lunchtime. She called her sister as soon as she saw the piece in the Courier, but when Fizz tried to get through to Luke his line was engaged.

*****

‘Mr Devlin? Richard Latham. You won’t remember me although we did meet at Melanie’s eighteenth birthday party.’

Luke’s recollection was that there had been several hundred young men at Mel’s eighteenth. ‘I’m sorry, Richard, if you’re looking for Melanie-’

‘No, Mr Devlin. That’s the whole point of my call. I know where Melanie is.’ He paused. ‘Or maybe I should have said I know where she’ll be in a few hours from now.’ He hadn’t called too early. The last thing he wanted was to have the love-birds stopped at the airport, the affair hushed up. ‘I just wondered if you do? Or the kind of man she’s going with?’

*****

Luke tried to get hold of Melanie. All he got was her answering machine but the hall-porter was happy to tell him that his niece had just left for a short holiday and that she expected to be away for a week. He had a contact address…

Five minutes later Luke was calling his father-in-law on the other side of the Atlantic. ‘Edward, have you heard of a place called The Ark?’

*****

Heathrow was heaving with travellers but Melanie saw Jack Wolfe at once. Hard to miss, standing a head and shoulders above the crowd, he was looking about him, impatiently seeking her out amongst the milling mass of people eager to be away on holiday. Casually dressed in a light weight jacket, he was attracting more than his fair share of attention.

Once his eyes swept over her but although they paused momentarily on the girl crossing the concourse as if she owned it, they did not linger. Instead he glanced at his watch with growing irritation, evidently a man not used to being kept waiting and she paused, wickedly, to keep him on tenterhooks just a little longer.

This was why she hadn’t given him her Chelsea address. Or one of the reasons.

Overlooking Chelsea Harbour, her apartment was way out of the reach of a struggling actress, let alone one reduced to cleaning to make ends meet. Besides, having decided to dispense with her disguise and make a grand entrance, she didn’t want to give him any clues to her true status before she hand-bagged him with her appearance.

He’d played a low-down trick on her. It wouldn’t do him any harm to let him sweat a little on whether she was going to turn up.

She had spent a long time considering the impression she wanted to make. She could have gone for old-fashioned heading-turning film star glamour, rented some furs, borrowed a Peke to tuck under her arm, and with a chauffeur in tow with her luggage she could have made an entrance that would have stopped the traffic.

She was sorely tempted, but she had foresworn furs years before and besides there might just be a photographer hanging around in the hopes of spotting someone worth snapping.

Even if he didn’t recognise her, he would certainly take photographs on the off-chance that she was someone with a price on her head and she didn’t want Luke reading about this little escapade over his morning toast. It would certainly give him indigestion.

Besides, glamorous clothes would be uncomfortable on a long journey and she had, too, the suspicion that Jack might be expecting something tackily over-the-top from his “out-of-work-actress”.

No, she would simply be herself.

No wig. No unflattering pancake make-up. No ghastly Busy Bee work clothes. The transformation was simple enough, but the effect was stunning.

The light make-up she was wearing made a serious difference to the way she looked, giving her face definition, lighting her grey eyes. And the understated elegance of classic simplicity was her preferred alternative to the yellow and black outfit.

Here goes, she thought, as she gathered herself, took a deep breath and swept forward. It was time to find out if Jack Wolfe was impressed with her efforts on his behalf.

Her luggage, a well worn but good matching set was placed directly on the scales, the pale gold curve of her hair swinging over her cheek to obscure her face as she tipped the porter and thanked him quietly before approaching the desk.

‘Good morning, miss. Can I have your ticket and passport, please,’ the clerk requested, with an appreciative smile.

That was when Mel turned to Jack Wolfe, once again consulting his watch. ‘The young man is asking for my ticket, darling,’ she murmured, softly. Then she smiled.

There was moment, a still, very quiet moment in the bustle of the airport, while Jack Wolfe took in the stunning transformation of his cleaner.

She didn’t flinch but waited while his narrowed eyes absorbed the delicately applied makeup, the glossy sleekness of hair that, released from the confines of the badly cut brown wig fell to her shoulder in a shining golden curve. Waited while his gaze travelled over the casual elegance of a loose biscuit linen jacket, softly gathered trousers a shade or two lighter that emphasized the length of her legs and a cream silk shirt that she had bought in a sale, but even so would have cost the worker bee a week’s wages.

Had he recognised the girl who had so nearly bowled him over at the travel agents? For a moment Melanie held her breath. Apparently not, because without a word, he turned to the clerk and handed over her ticket.

‘I was beginning to think you were going to miss the flight,’ he said, finally, returning his attention to Melanie once he had been handed their boarding passes.

‘The traffic was terrible.’

‘I came by helicopter. You could have saved yourself an uncomfortable journey,’ he said, placing his hand at her elbow before heading purposefully towards the escalator.

She turned and looked at him as they rose smoothly to the department lounge. ‘I didn’t want to put you to any bother.’

‘Is that right?’ He gave her a slightly quizzical look. ‘And here was I thinking you just wanted to keep me guessing whether you’d turn up or not.’

She hoped that was the effect she had achieved, but since he had made no noticeable alternative arrangements, it seemed unlikely. She lifted her shoulders very slightly in the merest suggestion of a shrug.

‘Why should I let you down? We’ve both got everything to gain from co-operation.’

‘Everything,’ he agreed, smoothly.

‘And Mrs Graham is really strict about the address rule,’ she added, as if that settled the matter.

‘Your address is hardly a secret,’ he replied. Mel frowned. Mrs Graham would never disclose an employee’s private address and was about to tell him so when she caught the sardonic glint in his eye. ‘You obviously live in the wardrobe department of the BBC. I saw that very outfit in a television drama last week.’ Undoubtedly he was teasing but it took all her self-control to ignore the irrational desire to slap him that swept over her. This is me, she wanted to shout. Can’t you see that?

Idiot. The man couldn’t see beyond the role she played three times a week at his apartment. She was an actress down on her luck and doing a cleaning job to keep body and soul together. And she had played her part so well that he hadn’t even considered the possibility that she might be anything else.

She had a momentarily glimpse of Paddy and Sharon’s lives. Bright, lively young woman judged forever by what they did for a living. No one would ever give them a chance to be anything else. Unless she, or someone like her, made that chance happen for them.