Deception and Desire (16 page)

‘I don't need thanks,' Maggie said, fastening her seat belt. ‘Ros is my sister after all. I'm worried about her too.'

‘What did your husband have to say about you jetting off at the drop of a hat?'

‘He wasn't very pleased,' Maggie admitted, deliberately understating Ari's reaction. ‘ But it won't make a great deal of difference to him, except that it might make life marginally easier. He'll stay in town, I expect, while I'm away, instead of having to drive from Kassiopi to Kerkira and back twice a day as he normally does in the summer. We have an apartment in Kerkira, for business purposes.'

‘What exactly is it he does?'

‘He's an architect. And Corfu is a growth island. Everyone who has a bit of suitable land wants to put up a hotel or apartment block on it. They have suddenly woken up to the fact that tourism means prosperity – and a much easier way of earning a living than harvesting olives. Most of the interesting little tavernas and cafés came about because the people who live on the main road or the seashore realised that all they needed to do was open their front doors and put up a sign announcing refreshments for sale and the visitors would flock in. Not so long ago many of them were incredibly poor; now, suddenly, they've found themselves with a licence to print money, so much they scarcely know what to do with it. They are simple people at heart, you see, very family and religion orientated. I only hope the influx of the Western world doesn't change them too much.'

‘It sounds as though you like them.'

‘I do. Basically they are good people. Take the family structure, for instance – it's terribly strong. As it was in this country maybe fifty years or more ago. Because of the extended family there is always someone with time for the children and they grow up with a strong respect for authority. They don't do anything dreadful, in the main, because it would bring shame on the family.'

‘Sounds like a system that would be good for some of my pupils,' Mike said drily.

‘It certainly helps to keep the wayward on the straight and narrow. I assure you, a Corfiote mama is a force to be reckoned with.'

‘From your rueful tone I suspect you have some experience of Corfiote mamas.'

‘You could say that. Oh, it's fine if you're born to it, I guess. I wasn't.'

‘So how did you come to marry a Corfiote?' he asked, slowing for a crossroads and accelerating away again.

‘I met him when he was in this country studying to qualify.'

‘You were at college too?'

‘Oh no, not me.' She laughed. ‘Ros was always the clever one in our family. I was a secretary – well, typist, really. Ari came to the firm I was with for work experience.'

She broke off, remembering the way it had been. He had seemed so impossibly romantic to her, totally different from any of the other young men she knew. When he had asked her out she had been thrilled, the whole of their whirlwind romance had been conducted in a hot, heady haze, and when he had asked her to marry him she had hardly hesitated at all – she had been so afraid she would lose him when he returned to Corfu that she hadn't really stopped to examine any of the realities of what it would mean.

‘I guess I was swept off my feet,' she said drily.

‘Any regrets?' He glanced sideways at her, then added swiftly: ‘I'm sorry, I shouldn't be asking that. I didn't mean to be personal.'

‘It's all right.' She bit her lip. ‘Well, yes, if I'm honest – a few, I suppose. But that's life, isn't it? Nothing ever turns out as you expect.'

They were back at the cottage. Mike pulled on to the hard standing but left the engine running.

‘Aren't you coming in for that coffee?' she asked.

‘I thought maybe you could use an early night.'

She could – but suddenly she didn't want him to go, didn't want to be alone with the emptiness and her anxiety. She realised with a shock that subconsciously she had been half expecting to see lights on in the cottage and Ros's car miraculously there in the drive. There was something so strangely unreal about this whole thing. Ros couldn't simply have disappeared. Yet she had …

‘Do please come in for a coffee,' she said.

‘All right, if you insist.' He switched off the engine, turned and smiled at her, and quite unexpectedly her tummy tipped, a strange little spiral not unlike G-force deep inside her. It shocked her, that sharp indication of physical attraction, and she felt suddenly flustered and gauche.

‘There might be some message or other on the answering machine,' she said foolishly.

There was – but only from her mother.

‘Margaret, are you there? Oh dear, I do so hate these things! Darling, you didn't ring me. I've been expecting you to all evening. Could you come over tomorrow? For lunch, maybe? Harry will be playing golf and we could have a nice chat. Oh, love to Ros if you see her. Perhaps she could come too. It would be wonderful to be all together again – quite like old times. 'Bye for now, darling.'

‘Honestly!' Maggie exploded. ‘She just cannot, or will not, accept the fact that Ros is missing.'

‘Probably just as well. There's no point in worrying her until we're sure there's something to worry about.'

Maggie laughed shortly. ‘I can see you don't know my mother very well. She doesn't worry – unless you count fussing over Harry as worrying. She finds the real thing far too exhausting.'

She followed Mike through into the kitchen. The momentary vortex of emotions she had experienced in the car had passed now.

‘So, you aren't going to ring her back?' he asked.

‘Not tonight. She's probably making Harry's cocoa by now. I'll do it in the morning.' She reached across him for the kettle and suddenly there it was again – an awareness sensitising her body as acutely as a touch, though there had been no physical contact between them.

‘Cocoa sounds rather nice,' he said, seemingly unaware. ‘ I haven't had cocoa for years. It reminds me of winter evenings in front of a blazing fire, fresh from the bath and ready for bed.'

‘I take it you are talking about when you were a little boy.'

‘Unfortunately, yes. My flat is all night-storage heaters. The blazing fires seem to have gone the way of the cocoa. Ros hasn't got any, I suppose?' He began opening cupboards, moving things around, and after a moment he whooped in triumph. ‘ Yes! What's that if it's not cocoa? I've never seen her drink the stuff though.'

‘She probably uses it for cooking. You want some?'

‘Why not – if there's enough milk.'

‘Go and sit down then, and I'll bring it in to you.'

Ros's little sitting room was incredibly cosy – soft, squashy chintz-covered chairs, a cane table covered by a cloth, and softly draped curtains. Mike was sprawled out in one of the chairs, his feet propped up on a pouffe. He looked very much at home – and why shouldn't he? Maggie asked herself. He probably spent a good deal of time here with Ros. She set the mugs down on the table and went across to draw the curtains.

‘So,' she said, deliberately drawing the conversation back to Ros's disappearance. ‘ What do you think our next move should be?'

‘I honestly don't know.' He sipped the cocoa foaming in the earthenware mug. ‘ This is good!'

‘Well, as I said, I'll have a good look round for spare car keys and I'll see if I can think of anyone else she might have been in contact with – check out her private papers and things. I don't like doing it but …' She perched on the chair furthest from Mike, putting as much distance between them as possible.

‘You seem to have covered practically everything in one day and not come up with anything.'

‘Well, that's not quite true. At least I've found out what she meant by ‘‘something odd” going on at Vandina.' She hesitated, almost afraid to put into words the thought that had been worrying at the back of her mind. ‘You don't think, do you, Mike, that she suspected someone of being a mole and something has happened to her because of it?'

‘What do you mean?'

‘Well, it's big business. There could be big money at stake. If she found out someone was involved in industrial espionage they wouldn't … harm her, would they, to prevent her exposing them?'

He frowned. ‘ Sounds pretty far-fetched to me. If anyone is holding Ros I should have thought it was more likely to be a nutter.'

‘Like Brendan, you mean.' She saw his disbelieving expression and hurried on: ‘ I'm still not happy about him, Mike. He was lying to me. He had to be. Her scarf in his flat proves that. And I've got this sick feeling in my stomach that something is very wrong. You don't think, do you, that he could have …'

‘I am beginning to think that perhaps the police are right and we are wrong.' The cocoa was mellowing Mike; he sounded almost lazy. ‘I am beginning to think Ros
has
gone off somewhere on her own account. Take this Vandina business, for instance. If she was suspicious of someone, this ‘‘mole” as you call them, she could very well have gone haring off to check out some lead. If it's all so confidential then she wouldn't want anyone to know where she had gone or why.'

‘But she's been gone more than a week!'

‘Not so long really.'

‘And why hasn't she phoned to let you know where she is? She must know you're back by now and you will be anxious about her.'

‘Perhaps I don't rate any more.'

Maggie glanced at him sharply. Had she imagined that note in his voice – a note of … what? Resignation? A slight edge of bitterness? She couldn't be sure, but quite suddenly she found herself remembering that Brendan had said he had seen Ros in Clifton with a man – a man who was not Mike. At the time she had thought he was simply trying to divert attention from himself – now suddenly she wondered if he had been telling the truth. Was there another man in Ros's life? Someone she knew nothing of? Had she gone off with him, perhaps? But it didn't really add up.

Mike's voice interrupted her thoughts.

‘I have a feeling,' he said, ‘that Ros could turn up at any time. And she will not be at all amused to find that we have reported her missing.'

Maggie sighed and shook her head. She wished she could be so sure.

When he had gone she prepared for bed, using Ros's room once again. But though her limbs ached and her eyes burned, sleep refused to come.

In spite of what Mike had said, she was still dreadfully worried about Ros. All very well for him to make light of her fears about Brendan – he didn't know the man as she did, did not know just what his insane jealousy could render him capable of. And Ros had been there, at his flat – the presence of her scarf proved it.

As for the Vandina mole business, that was yet another unsolved mystery.

But tonight it was not only her fears for Ros's safety that were preventing Maggie from relaxing. However she tried to keep from remembering it, that quirk of attraction she had felt for Mike was there too, teasing at her insistently.

It had happened, she supposed, because she had had two glasses of wine and very little to eat. But it had been so strong, so unexpected, so
exciting
! I'd almost forgotten it was possible to feel like that, Maggie thought – and thanked her lucky stars that she had managed to conceal it.

But the warmth of the memory was seductive; though she knew she was foolish to do so, she hugged it to her as she drifted towards sleep, and there was a tiny smile somewhere at the back of her mind.

She woke next morning with a blinding migraine.

They descended on her from time to time, headaches that felt as if a hot steel screw was being driven into her temple, and spreading out into a pounding skullcap of pain, flashing lights before the eyes and a nausea rising from the pit of her stomach. Sometimes they lasted for days, sometimes, if she was lucky, the worst of it was over in a matter of hours.

Maggie groaned. Oh God, she hated days like this – and especially when she had so much planned. It would have to be put off, all of it; she wouldn't be safe to drive – she could barely
think
– and even if she did manage to keep going she would probably be sick. Really, the only possible course of action was to take some of her tablets, bury her head beneath the covers and hope it would go away or at least improve enough for her to be able to keep her dinner-party date with Dinah tonight.

With a supreme effort Maggie swung her legs to the floor. As she stood up, the steel screw twisted in her temple and the pounding at the base of her skull worsened. She groped her way to the bathroom and found her pills – thank heavens she had remembered to pack them. Then she remembered that her mother was expecting her to call. Well, it couldn't be helped. She couldn't, simply couldn't, face talking to Dulcie now.

Maggie let her tablets dissolve in a tumbler of water, swallowed them with distaste, and crawled back to bed.

‘Darling,' said the statuesque redhead, curling her body languorously around the man's. ‘ There is nothing in the whole world like making love in the afternoon. Don't you agree?'

Steve Lomax ran his hand over her breast, full and thrusting even in a reclining position, and down over her stomach, still slightly sticky from the closeness and the exertions of a few minutes ago.

‘I've always liked first thing in the morning best myself.'

She laughed softly. ‘I'm afraid that mornings are absolutely out as far as I am concerned. Mornings I have to wake up in bed beside my husband. If I wasn't there he would be most upset.'

‘I'll bet he would, lucky bastard!' Steve said, but he knew the score. The fact that they woke up in bed together did not mean they would go on to make love together – and even if it did, he had no intention of allowing himself to be jealous. Mornings might be his preferred time but he was perfectly happy to settle for a hotel room after a delicious lunch and a couple of glasses of Courvoisier. Good food, good drink and a good woman – it was an unbeatable combination. After the hardship of years on a North Sea oil rig it seemed like heaven. Besides, waking up too often beside the same woman would smack of permanence and that was not something he wanted, certainly not now, possibly not ever. Being free and single was much more his style. Especially when there were women like Jayne Peters-Browne for the taking.