Beaumont Brides Collection (53 page)

Claudia didn’t answer him, instead she crossed to the wardrobe, slid back the door, made a helpless little gesture at the white lace peignoir hanging inside.

She had worn it on stage the night before. It was cut low enough to display the promise of firm and generous breasts, the bodice fitted tight to her neat waist before flaring out into a full length skirt. There had been an almost audible sigh from the audience as she had swept across the stage and his body had tightened in desire at her seductive beauty. His, and every other red-blooded man in the audience. But he had known what it was like to hold her, breath her scent, kiss her. And to suffer her indignation for his presumption.

Turning abruptly away he lifted the beautiful lace frippery out of the wardrobe and his stomach turned over as he saw what had happened. No wonder she was white to her gills. He carried it to the dressing table and examined the slashes in the brightness of the mirror lights. It had been done with a razor. An old-fashioned cut-throat razor. And his blood ran cold at the thought of what else such a weapon might do.

‘It happened while I was at the studios,’ she said, her voice not quite steady.

‘Have the police been called?’ he interrupted briskly, keeping his voice matter-of-fact with considerable difficulty.

She shook her head. ‘The curtain was about to go up when I found it, and after the show everyone was exhausted, I couldn’t put them through a interrogation. On Monday the stage manager will compile a list of everyone who had a legitimate reason to be backstage this evening, and he’ll question them to see if anyone else was seen.’

‘Seen but not remarked on at the time?’ He wondered if she realised just what she was saying.

She nodded. ‘Visitors have to sign in, but people are in and out all the time, particularly between matinees.’ She shrugged, as if she knew it was hopeless anyway. ‘The backstage crew tend to send out for pizzas.’

‘And they just get waved through.’

‘It happens. Jim knows them you see and if he was busy...’ - she turned her huge silver eyes on him - ‘...well, someone who was known, recognised, wouldn’t have been challenged once they were inside the theatre.’

Known. Recognised.

She knew. She had realised that the person who had done this must be someone who could walk through her tight little world without question.

Someone she knew. Maybe even someone she called a friend. It was no wonder she looked like a ghost. It had gone beyond the point at which it could be brushed off as a sick joke. At best someone wanted to frighten her. He didn’t want to think about what the worst might be, but he would have to.

And so would she.

‘You’re very vulnerable here, Claudia. There are dozens of places someone could hide.’ She didn’t flinch from the thought and he realised that she had already worked that out for herself. It was why she had telephoned the number he had given her. She could no longer trust anyone. She was being forced into the arms of a stranger, an outsider with no axe to grind. Someone outside the world of the theatre who bore no grudge, real or imagined, to fuel this nightmare. ‘Perhaps you should consider taking a break, disappearing for a week or two, until whoever’s doing this has been found.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Not even a week? Even stars get sick sometimes.’

‘No, Mac.’ He hadn’t noticed the stubbornness of her chin before. Not especially. He’d been too intent on her mouth. But it suddenly demanded attention. ‘I won’t be driven out of the theatre. And I have interviews arranged all next week. There’s a new television serial starting at the weekend.’ She managed a wry smile. ‘It’s about a girl driven to the edge of suicide by a stalker.’

‘Are there any parallels with this?’

‘I hope not. The girl I play is finally driven to kill the man involved. She can’t see any other way to reclaim her life.’ She regarded him without resentment. ‘If you’re thinking that this is another candidate for a publicity campaign-’

‘No.’ He said it too quickly. She was right, the thought had bubbled up like poison.

He turned away to hang the remains of the dressing gown back in the wardrobe. If it came to the police, they would want to see it, keep it for evidence, although heaven alone knew how many people had touched it since it had been slashed. But he sensed a reluctance to involve the police.

Her reasons for not calling them this evening had been flimsy to say the least. It was possible that despite her denials that she knew who was doing this. Or at least had her suspicions.

‘I wouldn’t blame you, Mac,’ she said, with the tiniest of sighs, an unconscious gesture that betrayed her own uncertainties. ‘To tell you the truth, I rather wish it was something that simple.’

Despite the colourful top she was wearing, a top that shouted “here I am, come and get me”, to her tormentor, she looked fragile, haunted and he wanted to go to her, hold her, reassure her that everything would be all right. That no one would hurt her.

Instead he picked up her overnight bag and opened the door. ‘Come on. I think you should get out of here. Right now.’ She might be at home in the theatre, but to him it was alien, full of shadows, a place where danger had too many hiding places.

As he urged her towards the stage door his skin crawled with tension as he thought of some crazy with a razor on the loose, capable of anything.

The tall, slight figure of man, was waiting by the stage door and Mac, hand on Claudia’s arm, kept himself between her and the unknown.

But Claudia obviously knew him. ‘Phillip, I thought you’d gone home.’

‘Not while you were here,’ he said, with just a touch of reproach in his voice. ‘I thought you might need a lift. I didn’t want you to think of going home alone. Not after...’ Redmond paused, apparently unwilling to mention the attack on her gown in the presence of a stranger. ‘You know I’m happy to take you anywhere you want to go.’

Mac, on the receiving end of a long hard look that came close to a challenge, kept his face expressionless even though every nerve ending was on alert and urging him to get her out of there as fast as possible.

Claudia, despite her shock, continued to be gracious. ‘How thoughtful of you, Phillip, but as you see I have a lift tonight.’ She turned to him. ‘Mac, this is Phillip Redmond. The mainstay of our whole operation. Without him everything would grind to a stop. Phillip-’

‘I recognise Mr MacIntyre from the television,’ he said, stiffly, barely acknowledging his presence.

‘You watched the programme?’ Mac looked around. ‘I would have thought television was banned from such an august establishment.’

‘Hardly. Mr Beaumont has television interests and the VTR is a very useful aid. Everyone was in the Green Room to watch Claudia.’ Everyone? Not the dress slasher. Had he known that everyone’s attention would be distracted?

Mac kept his thoughts to himself, but he felt Claudia’s arm twitch nervously beneath his fingers.

‘Well, if you’re quite happy with your transport arrangements?’ Redmond murmured, doubtfully, as he turned back to Claudia. If the man had been ten years younger, Mac thought irritably, he would have been inviting a black eye.

Claudia, however was gentle. ‘Quite sure.’ She touched his hand, lightly. ‘Thank you, Phillip.’

Outside, the not-quite-dark of the August night was cool enough to raise a shiver. He felt it as she hesitated in the doorway, no doubt remembering the way he had jumped her earlier. Then he had wanted to frighten her. Now she flinched as he put his arm reassuringly about her shoulder to ease her towards his ill-used Landcruiser.

‘It’s all right, Claudia.’

But she didn’t move. ‘The car. It shouldn’t be left here.’

‘What car?’

She pointed to the small saloon parked twenty yards behind his. ‘The garage loaned it to me.’

He didn’t have to ask why she’d changed her mind about driving it. Someone had breached the security of her dressing room. Her car, standing out in the open since early afternoon, was a much easier target for a man who had shown himself mechanically skilled, and equally adept at creating diversions.

‘I’ll get it picked up and checked over.’

‘Straight away? If some youngsters decided to take it... I wouldn’t want anyone to get hurt because of me.’

If they got hurt, he thought, it would be because they couldn’t keep their hands off someone else’s property, but he didn’t argue.

‘Straight away,’ he said. Then, ‘It’ll take a good hour to get to Broomhill, even at this time of night. Do you want to get in the back, try and sleep?’

‘I won’t sleep, not straight after a performance,’ she said, with an effort at a smile. ‘The adrenalin keeps on pumping.’

‘I suppose so.’ But he didn’t think there was too much adrenalin pumping around her system right now.

She looked bloodless, a pale shadow of herself; he couldn’t begin to estimate the strength of will it must have taken to step out on the stage and carry on as if nothing had happened. And it had taken everything out of her.

She’d lost that feisty, do-it-or-die look that had struck him so forcibly when, despite her fear she had stepped out of the plane and into thin air. Then she had come up fighting. Right now she looked fit to drop.

But perhaps she didn’t want to risk sleep, was afraid of the demons that might come if she allowed those heavy, silk-lashed lids to close. A queasy wave of anxiety for her swept over him as he stood over her. Then, impatient with himself, he switched off the alarm and opened the passenger door.

She had made it more than plain that she didn’t want him worrying about her.

In truth she wasn’t the kind of woman he would normally worry about. Glamorous she might be, but her entire life was a performance. Even when she was thanking Phillip Redmond for his concern, he had sensed that was all it had been. A beautifully judged performance. Not genuine at all. And now she was making a drama about climbing up into the Landcruiser.

Then he remembered her ankle and cursing to himself, lowered his shoulder so that she could put her hand on it before lifting her up into the high seat.

‘All right?’ he asked.

‘Fine,’ she said, fastening her seat belt.

He watched her for a moment before closing the door on her and settling himself in the driving seat. She glanced behind her, still on edge about the sedate little saloon car the garage had loaned her. He was pretty certain that no self-respecting joy-rider would be want to be seen behind the wheel of such a vehicle, but he made a phone call.

‘Someone will be here in five minutes,’ he promised, replacing the receiver. Then he put the keys in the ignition and started the engine.

She’d asked him why he had gone to so much bother to protect her when she had made it clear she didn’t want his protection. He glanced across at the slender figure pressed back in the seat, cheeks and eye sockets nothing but dark shadows in her face. He’d been asking himself that all day.

But her full lips shone in the street light. Her mouth had been warm and alive beneath his. She might be self-absorbed but she had her own kind of courage; she had certainly made Barty James smart for taking advantage of her. And she was, without doubt, the most vivid woman he had ever met. Pure drama.

She rolled her head towards him, looking at him from beneath lowered lashes and his body responded with an urgency that bucked through him like an electric shock.

Christ, but he was in trouble. He’d never wanted a woman like he wanted Claudia Beaumont, wanted to feel her body soft and yielding beneath him. He didn’t doubt he could take it. Or that he would be one in a very long line. He wasn’t that kind of fool.

‘Is something wrong?’ she asked, her voice husky with tiredness, twisting his guts.

‘I just wondered if you’d like some music, or the radio?’ he said, turning away abruptly.

She shook her head. ‘Absolute silence will do very nicely.’ And she closed her eyes again. Then, ‘But you could lower the back of the seat just a little.’

‘The lever’s on the other side of the seat.’ She made no move to adjust it herself and after a moment’s hesitation he reached across her. If he tried very hard, he could shut out the image of her as he stretched across her body, taking care not to touch her.

He could somehow ignore the way her hair spilled across the black upholstery like spun gold, but her scent cried out to him, elusive, haunting, subtle. Like an elusive memory that shifted out of the corner of your mind, even as you thought you had it pinned down, inviting you to follow.

He lowered the back of the seat so that she was stretched out, more lying than sitting, beneath him. ‘Is that more comfortable?’

‘Thank you.’ She caught his arm as he straightened. ‘And thank you for coming tonight, Mac. I didn’t deserve it, not after the things I said. You tried to tell me-’

‘Forget it,’ he said, his voice shockingly harsh in his own ears as he cut off the words, but she didn’t seem to notice, reaching up to him, holding his face between her hands. Then, for just a moment, she pressed her cool, smooth cheek against his. It was wet and as she fell back against the seat he could see the shining marks that tears had left on her face. A lump formed in his throat as he wiped them away with his thumbs.

‘Don’t cry, Claudia,’ he said, thickly. ‘Go to sleep. Nothing’s going to hurt you. You have my word.’