Beaumont Brides Collection (68 page)

It had to be a publicity stunt, didn’t it? She was an actress for goodness sake and it had been his first thought when he had found the photograph in the parachute.

He hadn’t seriously believed she was in any danger. He hadn’t considered advising her that this might not be the best day to leap out of an aeroplane. He hadn’t even contemplated the possibility that it might just be a joke, even if it was one in very poor taste.

Well, his first thought would have to be his last thought too, because she’d had enough of his tyrannical behaviour. She didn’t need him to manage her life. She’d been doing pretty well since she was eighteen years old. She certainly didn’t need a man to hold her hand.

Publicity of all things! She still could hardly believe it.

Good grief, hadn’t he seen for himself that she didn’t need any tricks? Publicity followed her like the hem of her skirt because of who she was, who her mother had been. She’d been surrounded by it since she was a babe in arms. She lived with it because it went with the territory but she hated it.

Hated the fact that no matter what she said or did, the newspapers printed the interpretation that suited them best. Hated that they never gave her any credit for what she had achieved, only harked back to her mother, compared her to her mother, continually suggested that she owed everything to her mother...

She hadn’t realised just how much she hated it until now.

But Gabriel MacIntyre hadn’t seen. Like everyone else he was fooled by the myth, assuming she must revel in it, that publicity was her life blood.

Yet even while he was insulting her, accusing her of using him, he was still demanded to know who David was. As if, because he had kissed her, he had some right to know.

She had thought he was stronger than that, that he had seen beneath the scaffolding she had erected to keep the world at bay.

How could she have been so stupid? Why should he be different?

He was still glowering at her from the pavement, waiting for his answer. Well he could wait. Because as far as Gabriel MacIntyre was concerned, she’d was clean out of answers.

‘Drive on,’ she rapped out, and the cabbie didn’t need telling twice, whipping the taxi out into the traffic.

Claudia sat back and sighed as she wondered what had happened in the restaurant after they left. She would have to telephone and apologise. And she would have to ring David too. Poor David. What terrible luck to walk into Gabriel MacIntyre when his macho aggression was firing on all cylinders. She’d heard the way he had hit the wall, the rattle of expensive dentistry. It would serve Mac right if David sued.

That would give him all the answers he wanted.

She closed her eyes, hoping to blot out the entire incident. It had been so idiotic. David was a dear, kind man, but he had a silly habit of creeping up behind his friends, putting his hands over their eyes and saying, “Guess who?”

The moment she had heard Mac’s warning shout and swung round to see David behind her she had realised what was happening, but it had all taken place at such speed that she had been quite powerless to stop it.

Gabriel, fired up on anonymous letters, slashed dresses, car tampering and already unhappy about her insistence on going shopping, had thought her life was in danger. She caught her lower lip as she recalled the effect on the other diners as, Rambo-like, he had hurtled across the restaurant to save her. Because he’d thought her life was in danger.

She gave a little sniff. ‘Damn!’ she said, searching in her bag for a handkerchief as a tear trickled down the side of her nose. One minute he was prepared to risk life and limb to save her life, the next he had been accusing her...

Well? What had she expected? She knew better than to believe in happy endings. ‘How stupid!’ she declared.

‘Did you say something, miss?’ the cabbie, asked, half turning.

‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Nothing at all.’

Good grief, she was talking to herself, completely losing her grip on reality. Was that what falling love did to you?

Love? The word seemed to leap out of thin air and hit her, taking her breath away. Love?

Claudia shook her head as if the physical denial would make it go away. It didn’t and she balled the handkerchief in her fist, holding it to her mouth as if that would help stop the word.

Love.

How could she ever doubt it? Gabriel MacIntyre had filled her every waking moment since she had set eyes on him. Why else, for heaven’s sake, would she have slapped him if she hadn’t been so disturbed by his kiss?

But there had been so many other things to disturb her that it had been easy to explain away all the oddities in her behaviour during the last few days, her agitation, her jumpiness, a heightened sense of her surroundings and emotions. The fact that when he had taken her into his arms and kissed her like a lover, she still hadn’t seen the danger.

The trouble was, she had made such life career of avoiding love that she hadn’t recognised it when it had slipped beneath her guard and tapped her on the shoulder.

Twenty-seven years old and never fallen in love. She sniffed again. No, that wasn’t quite right. She had seen what love could become and so she had never allowed herself to fall in love. She had hung on to her heart, resisting every temptation to take her foot off the bottom and swim out of her depth.

Relationships she could handle. She was an absolute whiz at them. Light, fun with no strings attached, certainly without a razor permanently parked in her bathroom. The trouble was, men just didn’t see it that way. They all wanted to settle down and play happy families.

Not her.

“Miss Beaumont, the actress’s daughter”, had seen enough of that game to last her for a lifetime. Not that there had been any shortage of eager young actors knocking at her dressing room door over the years. But they didn’t want her, only the publicity that she could give them. Perhaps that had been Tony’s appeal; she knew he didn’t just see her as an easy way to get his photograph in the newspapers. Rather the opposite as it turned out.

She must be getting careless.

Terribly careless, because when Gabriel MacIntyre had kissed her she hadn’t seen the danger. And now, at last, she understood why she had found it so easy to resist the siren lure of love and marriage when all around her had succumbed. She had just never met the right man before. The trouble was, Mr Right was now convinced that she was completely and hopelessly wrong.

Damn. Damn. Damn.

‘We’re here, miss.’ How long had they been standing at the kerb? She blinked back the tears welling in her eyes, put on the blazing smile that came so automatically and the driver leaned back and opened the door for her. Claudia, though, was reluctant to abandon the safety of the cab for the unknown and she stared up at the facade of the building with a sudden clutch of nervousness.

But there was no help for it. There she was. On her own. It was what she had kept saying she wanted and since she liked nothing better than getting her own way, Claudia knew that she should be feeling pleased with herself. But she wasn’t. She was assailed by a crushing, bone-deep misery.

And she was scared. Maybe that’s all it was, this hollow feeling. Just fear. She clutched at this straw for hope. For the last few days she had been put through the emotional wringer, it was hardly surprising that she didn’t know whether she was coming or going, was it? Love? What on earth was she thinking about?

She had simply overdosed on Gabriel MacIntyre. It was hardly surprising. He had insisted on sticking to her like glue, even when she told him to get lost. Now, suddenly, she was alone, having to face her apartment alone and she was scared.

Even when he was driving her crazy with his over-protective attitudes, he had been there and she had felt safe, his presence a bulwark against the threatening world.

‘The gentleman paid, miss,’ the driver said, encouragingly. ‘More than enough.’

‘Oh, yes. Good. Thank you.’ The meaningless words tumbled out as she stepped down and then turned to watch the big black cab drive away. She watched it until it disappeared around a bend in road and her very last link with Gabriel MacIntyre had gone. No. It wasn’t just fear. She couldn’t fool herself that easily.

‘Claudia?’ Kay Abercrombie was standing on the front steps. ‘Are you all right, dear? Only you’ve been standing there for rather a long time.’

‘Have I?’ She knew she was smiling because the corners of her mouth were beginning to hurt with the effort. But at least she was smiling. So long as she kept doing that no one would know she was suffering from a strange new malady that she didn’t know how to deal with. ‘Just daydreaming, I’m afraid. It’s a terrible habit.’

‘Do you think so? Oh dear, I’m afraid I do it all the time. Now, before I forget, I was looking out for you because I’ve got a package for you.’

Something wobbled inside Claudia. A package. A letter. It wouldn’t matter. She would never be able to open one again without a sick feeling, a feeling that someone who meant her harm could reach out and touch her with his grubby little mind simply by putting an envelope through her door.

‘It came by courier,’ she said, stepping back to let Claudia into her flat. ‘It’s marked urgent.’ Claudia saw the label and realised that it was a television script her agent had promised to send her. Relief made her feel temporarily weak, a little giddy but Kay didn’t appear to notice. ‘Mr MacIntyre didn’t come back with you?’ she enquired, apparently disappointed not to see him. ‘He’s such a gentleman. He helped me with my suitcase you know.’

Claudia thought it was a pity that Kay hadn’t been home when the first anonymous letter had been delivered. Nothing got past her. ‘He was rather concerned that you had let him into the building without knowing who he was,’ she said.

‘He did warn me to be more careful, but he was so charming.’ Oh, really? Then Kay Abercrombie gave a little sigh. ‘Still, I suppose even burglars are kind to their mothers.’

Claudia, her nerves in shreds, her emotions strung out like a line of wet washing, was suddenly overcome with such a frightful urge to giggle that she had to turn it into a cough.

‘My goodness, Claudia, that’s sounds terrible. You should look after yourself better. I’ve got a very good linctus if you’d like some? Or I find lemon and honey very soothing? I brought some wonderful honey back from Wales last week, let me fetch you a jar-’

‘No, no. Thank you, Kay, but I have everything I need. Really.’ Well, not quite everything. But you couldn’t have everything. Life wasn’t like that. It was a balance of small compromises. To have one thing you sometimes had to give up something else. Gabriel had told her that. She hadn’t believed him at the time, but she suddenly saw what he meant. Independence meant making sacrifices. Love meant sacrifice too. If you were lucky you were given the choice. She lifted the package. ‘Thanks for taking this in. Now, if you’ll excuse me?’

‘Oh, yes dear. Don’t let me keep you. But if you want that honey you will say?’

‘I promise.’

Claudia ran up the stairs to her flat and without waiting to worry about what might be on the other side unlocked the door and stepped inside. It was quiet. Absolutely quiet. She keyed in the new code on the burglar alarm and then, with grim determination, shut the front door. She was alone. And that was how she wanted it. It was how she had always wanted it.

Except of course that everywhere she went there was some evidence of Gabriel’s presence.

A pile of cold toast in the kitchen. His razor mocking her from the bathroom shelf. The spare bedroom showed no trace of his presence, however. The was bed neatly made, his clothes put away.

She opened a cupboard, touched the neatly folded shirts, wondered briefly who had ironed them so thoroughly. Claudia realised just how little she knew about Gabriel MacIntyre. And it was all she would ever know.

A small anguished cry escaped her lips and she turned and fled from the room, throwing herself down on her bed, dragging the quilt up and over her head.

*****

Something brought her crashing from a dream in which unseen monsters snapped at her heels. It was the telephone. A new monster, unexpectedly threatening. For a moment she listened, petrified, then furious with herself, she flung herself at it on shaking legs. Before she reached it the intercept clicked in and the tape machine began to record. It was nothing more threatening than the television company wanting to know if she needed a car to pick her up from the theatre and to take her home after Late Date.

What had she expected? Whispered threats? Heavy breathing? The whole thing had got out of proportion. Whoever had been tormenting her had obviously been scared off by Gabriel MacIntyre. She didn’t need his protection any more she told herself, she didn’t want it. He would have to come back to collect his clothes; well he could collect everything else as well.

But not while she was there. She wouldn’t be able to look him in the face and pretend.

She had the number of his mobile phone, but she didn’t want to speak to him, either. She could ring Tony.

No. He was in enough trouble already and she didn’t want Adele upset again on her account, even if Gabriel was wrong and she had been the one to cut up her photograph and stuff it into the parachute pack.

Then she spotted the card that Mac had given her by the telephone, the one bearing the number of his “secure” taxi service. They seemed to pass messages along fast enough, Claudia remembered. She could call them. Now. Without stopping to consider the wisdom of her actions, she grabbed the telephone, dialled the number and began to speak the moment the call was answered.