Beaumont Brides Collection (103 page)

Jack stood in the doorway for a moment, quietly watching her. Watching the way she pushed her hair back from her face, the way the breeze moulded the cloth of her gown to her body. Hired finery? He considered the way the low, scooped out back hugged her skin as if it had been made for her. No, not hired. Second hand clothes never fitted like that.

It was extraordinary how beautiful she was, much more than the simple transformation wrought by the change of hairstyle and designer clothes. How could he have been so easily deceived? He was usually so quick to spot any kind of pretence. Yet how closely had he looked? If he was honest with himself he knew he had avoided her, made sure he wasn’t at home on the days she came in to clean, because right from the beginning there had been something about her that he had recognised as dangerous.

Her spirit, her sense of mischief and an air of mystery that had made his pulse beat just a little faster. It was beating faster now.

Melanie didn’t hear him until it was too late to turn and put some distance between them and she twitched nervously as, slipping his hand about her waist as if it were the most natural thing in the world, he leaned beside her against the rail.

‘Enjoying the view?’ Jack asked.

‘I was.’ She tried to move away, but as he turned towards her, his arm still about her, they were closer than ever.

‘Jack...’ Her voice begged him to release her, but her eyes were saying something quite different and he could see a tiny pulse hammering in her throat as she looked up at him.

‘What is it?’ Then before she could answer him, he shook his head. ‘Not now. There’s someone on the beach looking this way.’ She glanced out into the darkness but he hooked her chin back so that she was facing him. ‘You’re not interested in them, only in me.’

‘Am I?’

‘Who else? Why don’t you put your arms around my neck and show them just how much?’

She tipped her head back to look him full in the eyes. ‘Do you mean kiss you?’

Did he? Mike had suggested that it would be an interesting week. It would certainly be interesting to see what she made of this opportunity to disarm him, seduce him. How long would she play the reluctant ingénue? Maybe all she needed was a little encouragement, permission to be bad.

‘Is it so difficult, Mel? It’s the sort of thing actresses do every day, surely? Pretend? Don’t you have classes in that sort of thing?’

‘Classes?’ The only lessons she would need to deal with Jack Wolfe were in self-defence. No, that was unfair. But a few lessons in basic common sense might not be a bad idea.

‘At RADA, or somewhere?’

‘I don’t believe I’ve ever had classes that would cover this situation,’ she replied, her voice dangerously soft. ‘Anywhere.’

‘In that case, I suggest you call on memory. It really can’t be that long since you kissed a man?’

That depended on what you meant by kissing. ‘I don’t make a life’s work out of it.’

‘You’re stalling.’

His eyes gleamed provokingly and challenged she lifted her arms, pale in the starlight, to link her hands behind his head. His hair was still slightly damp from the shower, she could smell the shampoo he had used and the faint woody top note of his cologne mingled with the scent of tropical flowers.

It was, after all, not in the least bit disagreeable being kissed by Jack Wolfe. She had tried it and honesty compelled her to admit that she had liked it.

It was the pretence she objected to. Or maybe it was his lack of pretence. If he had made an effort to meet her half way it wouldn’t have seemed quite so cold-blooded.

Horrified by the turn her mind was taking she closed her eyes. Cold-blooded was exactly right and stretching up on her toes she pressed her lips against his. They were cool and dry and unresponsive.

Confused, humiliated, she attempted to pull away from him, but he held her close, refusing to let her escape. ‘It couldn’t have been that long surely?’ he said, regarding her from beneath heavy lidded eyes.

‘I believe I did more than enough to fool anyone walking along the beach,’ she replied, stiffly.

‘Maybe.’ He looked down at her for what seemed like an age, his eyes unreadable in the starlight. ‘But you know what I had in mind was something more like this.’

His lips on hers were light, hardly more than a teasing breath, reassuring her that this was nothing but a game to fool the curious eyes of any passing onlooker. Nothing to cause more than a minor flutter in her midriff, a stir of uncertainty as his hands spread over her waist and back, drawing her closer so that she could feel hard muscle beneath the smooth cloth of his shirt where her neckline swooped to hint at the soft swell of her breasts, his body enticingly warm against her skin.

She gave a little gasp of pleasure and the stir of uncertainty quite suddenly deepened to a realisation of the danger she was in as a rare heat flared deep within her, jolting her senses into pounding life. But it was too late.

Her negligent lips had been suborned into parting to the teasing touch of his tongue and now she was drowning in pure sensation, sinking deeper and deeper with no thought of ever coming up for air, no thought of anything but the seductive delight of being kissed by a man who knew how to give pleasure just as surely as he knew how to take it.

‘You can open your eyes now, Mel. The lesson is over.’ Her lids snapped open and she found herself looking up into an expression that was a whisper away from an insult. For a moment she could not believe it, then she wrenched herself free and turned away, blushing furiously. ‘But you will let me know if you need me to show you again, won’t you?’ he added, insolently as he moved away to collect his drink from the table, turning to hold out hers.

‘I don’t need anything from you, Jack,’ she declared, taking the glass. The man was arrogant, rude and she had had about enough of his games for one day. ‘I’d like to remind you that bringing me along was your idea and that I’m here for your benefit.’

‘Not just my benefit,’ he reminded her.

‘If you’re talking about the co-operative, we’re leagues apart. You’re playing for higher stakes that I could ever dream of, Jack Wolfe, so if you want me to keep your secrets it might be wise to try a little politeness.’

‘You don’t know my secrets.’

‘I can make a pretty good guess.’

‘Can you?’ He took a drink from his glass. ‘That sounded very like a threat.’

She hadn’t intended it to be, but it was too late now to withdraw. ‘You can take it any way you damned well please,’ she said and turned away, determined to put as much distance between them as the verandah allowed.

But he grasped her wrist before she had gone half a metre. ‘Well I can threaten too, so listen to this, lady. If you want my help with your precious co-operative...’ - Co-operative! Dear God, he’d actually fallen for all that rubbish. He’d bent over backwards to do everything Melanie had asked, inventing a job for her friend, instructing Mike to pull all the strings he could find at the local authority - ‘...I suggest you keep your mouth shut about why I’m here and behave yourself.’

Well, he had to make it look good didn’t he?

‘I don’t give a damn about your secrets and I can assure you that behaving myself is what I do best.’ For a moment they glared at one another, then quite suddenly his mouth twisted in an ironic smile.

‘Is that so? Well, shall we keep that fact just between ourselves? I imagine it’s so rare around here that it might give rise to gossip.’

‘And that would never do.’ She gave a stiff little shrug, refusing to answer his smile. ‘I’ll play your game, Jack. Just as long as you remember that’s all it is. Even if we were married I wouldn’t want you to kiss me in public.’

‘Is that right? Well, call me a cad, sweetheart, but I wasn’t planning on giving the impression we were married.’ And he lifted her wrist touching it lightly to his lips before tucking her hand in his arm. ‘Now, shall we go and see what the dining room has to offer? Or, in the interests of keeping up appearances, do you think we should have an intimate dinner, alone, here?’

‘After you’ve gone to so much trouble in order to look this place over? That is what you’re doing isn’t it? Looking it over, seeing what it’s worth before you make a move? You can’t do that if you never leave the cottage.’

‘That, of course, is true,’ he said, his voice edged with irony, because if Mel were a plant there was a certain irony to the situation. In fact it was possible that his smokescreen was about to burst into flames. ‘Shall we go?’ She turned and pulling away from him swept across the terrace, but he caught her before she reached the door. ‘Together, Mel. It’s really too soon to be acting out the lover’s tiff, don’t you think?’ He reclaimed her arm and linked it through his. ‘Relax, darling. Smile. You’re in paradise, remember?’

She grimaced. ‘It would help if you would stop calling me “darling”.’

‘You don’t like it?’

‘I loathe it. I’m not over struck on sweetheart, either. And when it’s so patently false it does nothing to help the romantic image you seem so keen to foster.’

‘I’ll do my best to remember. Honey?’ He was teasing her again, Mel realized and she gave him a look that assured him she didn’t find it in the least bit funny. ‘Oh, come on, Mel. Relax, enjoy yourself. Just think, you could be back in England, battling with the underground after a hard day with a mop and bucket.’ His smile deepened. ‘You’re not honestly going to tell me you’d prefer that?’ His gesture took in the thickly clustered stars and as Mel raised her eyes to heaven and breathed in the warm scent of the tropical night folding itself about her, alive with a million unseen tiny insects singing in the darkness, she did at last manage a smile.

‘Honestly?’ Well, no. But she had the feeling that she’d be a lot safer on the underground. ‘You don’t want to know what I’m thinking. Not honestly. You just want me to look good and behave myself so that no one suspects you’re not all you seem to be.’

‘Look good, yes. But if you plan on behaving yourself...’

‘I know. Keep it to myself.’

His grin was as disconcerting as it was sudden. ‘You’re getting the hang of it. Come on. Let’s have something to eat before you faint from hunger.’

With that he swept her along the path, so that by the time they arrived at the dining room she was slightly breathless and more than a little flushed as she anxiously scanned the other diners.

She had expected the other guests to be around their own age, but some of them were considerably older. Romance, it seemed, was not just for the young, at least not at these prices. And just for a moment the memory of her father and Diana at their wedding slipped into her mind. They were probably dining somewhere just like this, right now.

But there was no doubting the romantic ambience of the place. The dining room was intimate, softly lit with candles flickering in the gentle breeze that came off the sea and their arrival attracted indulgent glances from nearby tables.

And Mel discovered, at that moment, that while it was one thing to play a part, it was quite another to have everyone believe that part to be the truth. Not that she would have cared if she and Jack really were lovers. If that had been the case, she doubted if she would have even noticed the other diners.

‘I feel as if I’m the centre of attention,’ she said, uncomfortably, as they were settled at their table.

‘Looking like that you’d be the centre of attention wherever you went,’ Jack said, as they were settled at their table. The maitre immediately summoned a waiter to open the bottle of chilled champagne that was waiting for them and left them to peruse the menus.

‘Under the circumstance I’d rather not be.’

Jack shrugged. ‘Does it matter?’

It would matter if Luke heard about this jaunt. She wondered if her uncle knew Jack Wolfe? He must know of him. He certainly wouldn’t take it kindly if he discovered The Wolf had stolen away his little lamb. But that was her problem, not Jack’s.

He leaned forward. ‘I don’t think you need worry too much. Somehow I don’t see this as Janet Graham’s kind of place,’ he assured her, confidentially.

His undisguised amusement annoyed her, but then he wasn’t to know that she had friends who were as familiar with the Caribbean as their own backyards. ‘I didn’t imagine for a moment I would meet Mrs Graham, but you’re not the only person I clean for. I mean, would you want to meet your domestic in an exclusive holiday resort?’

‘It wouldn’t bother me in the slightest.’

‘That’s very noble, but I can assure you, Jack, that some of the ladies I work for don’t have your egalitarian principles.’

He finally got the message. ‘Relax, Mel. Out of that ghastly uniform no one will recognise you, I promise. I didn’t recognise you myself at the airport. In fact if it hadn’t been for your voice I don’t think I’d have believed my own eyes.’

‘My voice?’

‘Those perfectly rounded vowels,’ he explained. Her voice. Of course, that was why they had all leapt to the conclusion that she was an actress. ‘Very Joanna Lumley,’ he said, in confirmation of her sudden enlightenment. ‘You look like a lady and you talk like one.’ He gave his attention to the menu and missed the dark and angry flush that flooded her cheeks.

‘And do I act like one?’ she enquired, coolly.

‘You’re doing fine. Don’t worry,’ he muttered.