Beaumont Brides Collection (75 page)

Claudia wondered what it would be like to ruffle the man, muss hair kept trimmed to a millimetre, clothes that seemed to leap to attention the moment he put them on. Gabriel was so controlled, so untouchable, so competent in everything he did. He could kiss a woman or cook a sausage with one hand tied behind his back. And they would both sizzle.

She was seized by an almost overwhelming urge to reach up and tousle his hair as he leaned over to pass her a plate. She restrained herself, Gabriel MacIntrye was no teddy bear. The only bear he resembled was a grizzly. And a girl ruffled a grizzly at her peril.

‘Would you like some butter for your potato?’ he asked, with blade-edged politeness.

‘Thank you.’ He passed it to her, waited for her to split her potato and place a small knob of butter inside it. ‘Salt? Pepper.’

‘You don’t have to wait on me.’

‘You’re my guest.’

‘An unwanted one. An inconvenient nuisance.’

‘That’s not true.’

But she shook her head, unconvinced. ‘I’ll try to be good. I know you’re doing this to help me. That you’d rather not be here.’

‘I thought that I would rather not be here, but don’t feel guilty. It’s not as bad as I had expected.’

Claudia felt a queer little flutter in the region of her waist. What on earth was he going to say? He said nothing, turning instead to help himself to butter and pepper. She longed to prompt him, urge him to begin, but for once an unusually acute sense of what was prudent kept her silent as he returned to his seat.

She dipped her fork into her potato, swallowed a little. Mac seemed to have forgotten the food on his lap.

‘You must have realised,’ he said, breaking the silence, ‘it must be glaringly obvious, that I haven’t been here since Jenny died.’

She didn’t fall into the seductive trap he offered, managed to withstand the temptation to ask him one of the questions crowding her brain, fighting to get out, questions that would offer him a welcome diversion from his painful thoughts. She held her tongue, waited and she was finally rewarded for her patience.

‘I kept putting it off. I told myself that I’d come next weekend, then the next.’ He paused, waiting, perhaps hoping that she would speak. But Claudia uncharacteristically held her tongue. ‘When I could no longer fool myself that way, I told myself that it was only sensible to wait until the weather was warmer, the evenings longer and I’d have more time. There was so much to do.’ He raised one hand in resignation. ‘Then it was winter again.’

And now it was summer. Two years. After a long time Claudia slowly cleared her throat.

‘You didn’t have to come back at all. You could have sold up. People do. And weekend cottages with the potential of this one, with a lake...’ But even as she was saying it she knew that he would have found that impossible. And admission of defeat. ‘You must have loved her very much.’

‘Must I?’ There was the briefest pause, before he said, ‘Your supper’s getting cold, Claudia.’ And in case she hadn’t got the point, he devoted his entire attention to his own food.

Afterwards he politely refused her offer to help with the washing up. She had the feeling that he would prefer to be on his own and she didn’t push it. But he paused in the kitchen doorway.

‘You’re going to have to start thinking about who is responsible for this, Claudia. Now might be a good time.’

His face was in the shadows and she couldn’t tell his mood from his voice. He was back in control and she doubted that he would let the mask slip again.

‘And while you’re assessing the possibilities I’d like you to consider this. Around eighty per cent of women who find themselves the victim of continual harassment and violence have been in some kind of a relationship with the person who is giving them a hard time.’

So she took his advice and thought very hard about what had been happening. Someone wanted to frighten her. No. The stakes had been upped when that paint was thrown into her face. Someone wanted to terrify her. Worse. And Gabriel was right, it had to be someone she knew, no stranger would take so much trouble, or so many risks.

She found her handbag and in the back of her diary she began to make a list.

Family first, then close friends, then acquaintances. It was a long list and it was nowhere near complete. She looked up when he returned a while later with a couple of mugs of what looked suspiciously like cocoa.

He had to be kidding.

He wasn’t. He saw her face and smiled slightly. ‘I thought since we were into comfort, we might as well go the whole hog, although whether nanny would approve of the Scotch I’ve laced it with is a moot point. But since there was half a bottle with the groceries...’

Only half? Because Adele had thought he might need a drink to get him through his first visit to the cottage since his wife had been killed, but wasn’t prepared to take the risk of leaving a whole bottle?

‘I think I’ve let myself go quite sufficiently for one day,’ she said, standing the mug on the hearth. ‘But don’t let me stop you.’

But he didn’t seem in any hurry to indulge himself. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I’m making a list of everyone I know.’ She handed it over.

‘You know a lot of people.’

‘Oh, there are more. A lot more.’ She watched as he looked over the names. ‘Do you suppose,’ she asked, after a while, ‘that the most likely culprit is a close friend, or a mere acquaintance? Or just somebody I was a bit offhand with one day in a television studio, or backstage, somebody whose name I’ll probably never know?’ She paused as another thought seized her. ‘Or even an outraged theatre-goer who didn’t like my performance? Some man who didn’t think I was as good as my mother?’

‘On that basis it could be half the country.’

‘Thank you.’

‘I didn’t mean-’

‘Didn’t you?’ Their eyes met briefly then he indicated the list.

‘Who are all these people? Matthew for instance?’

‘He’s my hairdresser.’ The poor man was going to have his work cut out to make something out of the remains of her hair. ‘You can cross him off, by the way, he’d never have done this.’ She indicated her turbaned head.

‘Peter Jameson?’

‘Cross him off too. He’s my agent and when I don’t work he doesn’t get paid.’

‘Joanna Gray. Who is she?’

‘A friend. We were at RADA together. She’s a very good actress, in fact she should have been in the Stalker but she broke her arm. She’s taking my place tonight.’

‘I hadn’t thought about that. When was that organised?’

‘I telephoned her yesterday evening.’ She shrugged. ‘My performance was beginning to suffer.’

‘Tell me about Phillip Redmond.’

‘Phillip?’

‘He seemed somewhat obsessed by your mother.’

‘I don’t know about obsessed. She gave him his first job in the theatre and you’ve seen for yourself that he believed she could do no wrong. But he isn’t alone in that.’

She gave a little shiver.

‘You’re cold?’ He didn’t sound particularly surprised, despite the warmth of the August evening and the fire.

‘Just a little.’ She rubbed at the gooseflesh raised on her arms.

‘It’s probably reaction. You can’t simply block out what’s happening.’

‘I can try.’ Her eyes were dry and painful and she closed them, fighting back the threatening tears. She wouldn’t cry. She wouldn’t.

‘Hey. Hey, come on.’ She felt his breath on her cheek as he leaned over her, lifting her from the chair, pulling her into his arms to hold her, warm her. His lips brushed against her temple, but there was no threat only comfort in the gesture. ‘You’ve had a tough few days. No one’s going to ridicule you for letting it show.’

‘Oh, no? Let me tell you there’s a whole raft of people out there who would love to see the golden girl crumple up, fall apart.’

‘Golden girl?’

She buried her face in his shoulder. ‘It’s what some newspaperman called me once. He said I had it all.’

‘No one has it all.’ He touched her undamaged cheek, turned her face so that she was looking up at him. ‘Sometimes it looks that way to outsiders, but you can’t enlighten them because they’d rather believe the illusion.’

Claudia looked up at him. All her life she’d been living with an illusion. ‘I’m tired of playing make-believe, Gabriel, but there are some things we can’t escape.’

‘We can try.’ His voice was hoarse and as he held her she sensed that for all the comfort he was offering her as he enfolded her against his strength, he was receiving an equal measure in return. ‘We should try.’

And without thinking she reached up, touched his cheek as he was touching hers and then followed the gesture with a kiss, the merest touch of her lips on his. It wasn’t seductive, or bold, or like any kiss she could remember giving before. It was simply the only way she could think of to thank him.

To thank him for being there, for giving her shelter in the cottage he had shared with his wife, even when it was painful for him. To thank him for just holding her, keeping her safe.

The feeling disturbed and confused her. She had never looked to anyone else for strength before and she was beginning to rely on Gabriel MacIntyre far too much, beginning to want Gabriel MacIntyre far too much.

And because she didn’t want to embarrass him, or herself, she drew back, putting a little distance between them, sinking first back onto the chair and then slipping down onto the rug, curling her legs beneath her and reaching out her fingers to the last of the warmth, as if it could replace the warmth that he generated.

But it wasn’t the same as being held in those strong arms.

Gabriel hunkered down beside her, saying nothing as he stirred the embers of the fire with a long poker before carefully placing a couple of logs in the warmest part of the fire. Then he picked up her discarded mug and placed it into her hands, wrapping her fingers about it and holding them there briefly before disappearing into the darkness to close the window.

Without him at her side the room was suddenly far less friendly and her eyes sought him in the darkness. Her teeth were beginning to chatter and she sipped at the cocoa, the whisky immediately warming the back of her throat and spreading its heat to warm her stomach.

But it wasn’t the same.

‘Do you think all this could be to do with Stalker, Gabriel?’ she asked, when he lingered by the window. ‘The networks started running publicity footage a week ago and it might just have given someone the idea.’

‘It could be I suppose,’ he said, returning to the fireside but keeping his distance from her. He sounded doubtful. ‘But the thing about stalkers is that they are driven to punish their love-object for not returning their love. They want their victim to know why they are suffering.’

‘And I don’t.’ For a moment their eyes locked and held then he reached out, touching the unmarked side of her face with just the tips of his fingers.

‘Maybe you do, Claudia. Maybe you just don’t want to admit it.’ She flinched away from him. For a moment his hand remained poised in the air, then he let it fall. ‘The subconscious is very good at burying the unpleasant things we’d rather not face.’

‘I am not burying anything,’ she protested.

He turned and stared into the fire. ‘Not deliberately, perhaps. But none of us is immune. Before you go to sleep you should run through any disagreements you’ve had lately.’ He paused. ‘Professional or personal. The mind is very good at finding answers-’

‘What answers?’ She gathered herself and stood up, looking down into his upturned face. He had this view of her as a thoroughly spoilt woman who had got herself into something she couldn’t handle but wasn’t prepared to own up.

Because of Tony he had got it into his mind that this nonsense was the result of a sexual entanglement that had gone awry, some scorned lover getting his revenge.

Well he was wrong, but he was so fixated on her public image that he wasn’t prepared to look beyond it and she certainly wasn’t about to explain herself, leaving herself open to an additional charge of lying. Because he wouldn’t believe her.

The only reason he was taking such a very personal interest in her problems was because, in trying to get to her, to frighten her, someone had had the temerity to contaminate one of his precious parachutes. He accused her of hiding from the truth, but he was hiding too.

‘Maybe you should be asking yourself a few questions, Gabriel.’

‘What questions?’ His eyes were very still, very intent as he looked up at her. She had his divided attention and she wasn’t about to waste it.

‘You’re the only person I’ve fallen out with recently, Gabriel MacIntyre. You knew where I was when I ran to Fizz-’

‘Claudia…’ he warned, rising to his feet.

She wasn’t listening, she was too busy putting two and two together. ‘And you could easily have pushed that nasty little welcome home note through my door when we got home. It might even have been there from the night before. What did it say exactly?’ She frowned. ‘How does it feel to be home? Something like that. It would have done the job anytime, wouldn’t it?’ She stared at him. Trust me. Put yourself in my hands. She had trusted him, accepted his protection and now she was in this isolated cottage, no telephone, no way of escape.