Beaumont Brides Collection (87 page)

‘Upstairs?’

‘The workmen left a bit of a mess.’

‘Workmen?’ Then she shook her head. ‘No, don’t tell me. I’ll go and have a look.’ She climbed the spiral staircase to the upper floor, a simple cantilevered space over the living room, all clean lines in navy, white and chrome.

‘They replaced the windows.’

And hadn’t bothered to clean up after themselves. They probably decided that with all the mess downstairs no one would notice. ‘Go and make some coffee, Tom, I’ll deal with this.’

A damp cloth dealt with the dust, but the bed needed changing and after a couple of attempts to get a sheet on the huge king sized bed she gave up and called for help.

Tom, with the recovery power of youth to aid him, sprinted up the spiral stair. ‘I’m not much of a hand at hospital corners,’ he said, eyeing the bed doubtfully.

‘Neither am I,’ Melanie admitted, bending to lift the corner of the mattress. ‘But I’ll give it a try if you’ll help.’

‘You’re not a real cleaner are you, Mel?’ He stood watching her. ‘Are you an out-of-work actress or something?’

Oops. ‘Or something,’ she agreed, without looking up as she struggled with the corners. She struggled alone and straightened to discover that Tom was still beside her. He was looking much better and was wearing the stupid grin she recognized as the prelude to a lunge. ‘You’re supposed to be helping,’ she reminded him, sharply. ‘On the other side of the bed.’

He shrugged philosophically and two minutes later the job was done. Tom flopped back onto the freshly made bed.

‘Hey, don’t go undoing all my hard work,’ Melanie complained, bending over to smooth the crumpled cover. Tom simply grinned, grabbed her around the waist and toppled her down on top of him.

‘I’m shattered. Why don’t we lie here and have a little cuddle -’

He had a point, but she’d rather wait until she got home to lie down. By herself. ‘Tom, don’t be silly your brother will be back soon,’ she warned him, pushing him away and sitting up.

‘I’ve never kissed a Mrs Mop.’ It was just a silly game, Melanie knew that and laughed as he tightened his grip and put on a ridiculous leer. He was simply feeling better, relieved to be out of a scrape, but she wasn’t about to humour him.

‘And you aren’t about to,’ she said, with mock severity. ‘You’re in enough trouble already -’

‘More than enough.’

Melanie was looking down at Tom but his lips hadn’t moved. ‘How did you do that?’ she demanded.

‘Do what?’ he asked.

‘Speak without moving your lips.’

‘He didn’t. We’re a double act.’

Melanie suddenly realized that Tom had stopped leering at her and was staring instead at something over her shoulder. She turned to see what it could be. And for the second time in a week a shiver of apprehension raised the gooseflesh on her arms.

CHAPTER THREE

‘JACK,’ Tom said, flatly. ‘You’re back.’

‘And with my usual immaculate timing not a moment too soon.’

Jack, Mel thought blankly. Jack Wolfe. The cold-eyed man from the travel agency. She swallowed, hard. It was a bit late to remember where she had heard the name.

Actually now they were together the family resemblance was unmistakable, but unlike the boisterous Tom, his brother was the kind of man who would live in the restrained and understated luxury of this kind of apartment. Everything about him murmured money, but in a very discrete whisper.

And it didn’t take a genius to tell what Jack Wolfe was thinking as his eyes swept her in a comprehensive glance that apparently told him everything he wanted to know.

‘Do introduce me to your friend, Tom.’

Except her name. Relief flooded through her. At least he hadn’t recognized her. Then she realized it didn’t matter. He hadn’t recognized her at the travel agent’s either. Not a soap fan, then? Not a chance.

‘Oh, Mel’s not a friend,’ Tom said, sliding quickly from the bed. ‘She’s just cleaning up after the party...’ He stopped, swallowed hard. Despite his rapid recovery, his brain was still working considerably slower than his mouth.

‘Indeed?’ Jack Wolfe’s steel grey eyes flickered about the apartment and came back to rest upon Melanie as she wriggled out of Tom’s grasp and got to her feet. She fielded the look, held it, refusing to be intimidated, but the man was not a bit like his brother.

Tom was young, still soft, with an eager puppy-like charm that ensured quick forgiveness of his doubtless many sins. She knew the type and kept firmly on a training lead he would be amusing company.

Jack Wolfe was darker, leaner, harder. A Doberman to Tom’s Labrador.

Not amusing at all.

Melanie, used to controlling over-eager young men, discovered that before the insolent assurance of Jack Wolfe her confidence ebbed rapidly and she suddenly found it easier to look anywhere but at him. Apparently satisfied that he had made his point, Jack Wolfe returned his attention to his young brother.

‘Cleaning up after the party? Is that why your friend has discarded her own clothes and helped herself to mine?’

‘Yours?’ The word was jerked from her by the sheer unlikelihood of such a man being seen dead in a pair of threadbare jeans, or a t-shirt from which the sleeves had been hacked to allow ease of movement.

Indeed from Jack Wolfe’s appearance - the severest navy pin-stripped suit, the snowy perfection of his shirt, thick dark hair trimmed to a millimetre - she found it difficult to believe that he had ever worn jeans in his life.

‘Mine,’ he confirmed abruptly, as if reading her thoughts even as she formed them.

And quite unexpectedly Melanie, who hadn’t blushed unless she had wanted to since she was thirteen years old, blushed beneath the pale pancake make-up. They were his clothes and she was suddenly intensely aware of the way the cloth felt against her skin. Soft, caressing, as if he was in some way touching her.

She remembered the electric touch of his fingers as he had steadied her, held her in the travel office. Couldn’t he feel it? How could he possibly miss the charged atmosphere?

‘I ... I didn’t know,’ she found herself stammering idiotically, quite suddenly desperate to get out of them, get out of his flat before he did realize who she was. Heaven alone knew what he would make of the transformation. ‘Tom lent them to me to work in-’ she began, but he cut her off.

‘And since you had finished working, you invited him to help you out of them again?’

‘I say, Jack,’ Tom interjected. ‘Mel isn’t-’

‘Leave it, Tom,’ Mel said, quickly. ‘It doesn’t matter. I’m just leaving.’

She didn’t have to justify what had, after all, just been a bit of youthful horseplay; Tom letting of steam because he’d been saved from his brother’s retribution. She hadn’t encouraged him and she certainly wasn’t about to apologise to his big brother, no matter how intriguing his eyes, or electric his touch. Neither had she any desire to stay around and listen to Tom grovel to the man.

But as she moved to the head of the spiral staircase Jack Wolfe’s tall, broad figure blocked the way.

‘If you’ll excuse me,’ she asked, with studious politeness, ‘I have to collect my clothes from the washing machine.’ On reflection, not the most sensible thing to have said. But he made no comment, nor did he move. He simply continued to regard her with steely, penetrating eyes that did something not entirely pleasant to her insides, as if she had just stepped off a precipice into empty space and was waiting for the crash.

‘Mel?’ he enquired, his forehead puckered in the slightest frown, as if he was trying to remember something. She was very much afraid it was where they had met before.

‘Melanie,’ she elaborated, and immediately regretted it. Her name was none of his business.

‘Like the actress?’ he asked and for one dreadful moment she thought he had finally recognised her.

‘Like no one,’ she replied, forcefully, meeting him head on and daring another head on clash with those unsparing eyes. ‘Melanie is the name my mother gave me, Mr Wolfe. It’s Greek. It means “clad in darkness” ...’

For heaven’s sake, what on earth was she doing? She had to get out of there before she told him her entire life story. Well that would take all of ten minutes; two minutes if she left out her working life. But he hadn’t finished with her.

‘“Clad in darkness,”?’ This seemed to amuse him for some reason. ‘And what, exactly are you hiding from Melanie…?’ His inflection invited her to fill in the blank.

Tom leapt in before she could make him ask. Politely. ‘Devlin. Melanie Devlin, Jack.’

‘Well, Melanie Devlin?’

‘Very well, thank you, Mr Wolfe. Now, if that’s all?’ she replied with all the poise of a princess, intending to put him in his place, but Jack Wolfe was not the kind of man to recognise someone else’s idea of his place.

‘Not quite all, Miss Devlin. But it will do for now.’

Idiot. Putting on the airs of a princess when you were playing the maid was asking for trouble and now the wretched man was laughing at her, not on the surface, but deep down somewhere private.

Not that you would have known. Not unless you were standing up close.

Close enough to see a little flare of something dangerous gleam in the depths of his eyes, as if he could tell precisely what she was thinking beneath the veneer of politeness and was inviting her to lose her head and let it rip.

No way. As if he saw that too, in her face, he unbent a little and glanced around.

‘It was good of you to stay and help clear up. I know Tom’s parties of old, you must have worked very hard to restore this class of order. I hope he thanks you with a suitably large box of chocolates.’

Chocolates? And she thought Luke had been patronising! ‘Oh, he’ll have to do better than that, I’m afraid.’

‘Oh?’ His look was suddenly speculative.

‘Busy Bees will invoice your brother for...’ - she glanced at her watch - ‘...four hours of my time. Plus the extra charge for an emergency call-out.’

‘A what!’

‘I was desperate,’ Tom interjected. ‘And you have to admit it was money well spent.’

Jack Wolfe admitted nothing. ‘You’re from a domestic agency?’ he demanded, making no effort to hide his astonishment. ‘From the fun and games I assumed you were left over from the party.’

Melanie wasn’t sure whether to be affronted or pleased. ‘I’ve never been left over from anything, Mr Wolfe,’ Melanie said, roundly as hot colour once more seared her cheekbones.

Affronted. Definitely affronted.

‘Now, pleasant as it is to stand here chatting with you, I do have more important things to do. If you would be kind enough to let me by?’

‘What about my jeans?’

He was concerned about a pair of jeans that should have been put in the dustbin aeons ago? ‘Would you like me to take them off now and go home in my underwear, Mr Wolfe?’ He looked as if he might be about to say yes. Before he could, she hurriedly intervened. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, with a firmness that belied the growing sensation of butterflies panicking in her stomach, ‘but since my own clothes are wet I’m afraid you’ll have to trust me to return them. I will of course wash them first.’

‘And my t-shirt. Your agency can send my brother the invoice for that as well.’

She hadn’t intended to charge for the service, simply considering it good manners to wash his clothes before returning them. But she was becoming thoroughly sick of her good manners and looking down at the disreputable t-shirt she wrinkled up her nose.

‘Is it actually worth the cost of the soap powder do you think? It’s barely fit for making dusters.’

‘It’s old,’ he agreed, ‘but I’m particularly attached to it. I’m afraid you’ll have to buy your own dusters.’ And still he didn’t move, but instead regarded her thoughtfully. ‘What are you Melanie Devlin? An actress down on her luck?’

The brothers’ minds seemed to run along similar lines, Melanie thought, irritated by their apparent lack of imagination. Although she seriously doubted that Jack Wolfe indulged in the kind of harmless horseplay that Tom enjoyed. And innocent she might be, but she was uncomfortably aware that no woman he tumbled into his bed would be in any great hurry to get up.

She caught herself. She had offered to wash Jack Wolfe’s clothes merely to annoy him, but the man was winning hands down in that department. He seemed to have the unhappy knack of wrong-footing her, a situation she was not accustomed to.

Her suspicions were confirmed when she snatched a quick glance at him and saw the gleam of amusement in his eyes.

It was disconcerting. She was a member of the one of the great theatrical families, a West End success, a television star. The men she knew flirted with her, sent her extravagant baskets of flowers, indulged her shamelessly and treated her, without exception, like a lady. Not one of them had ever laughed at her.

Jack Wolfe, however, thought she was just doing a little cleaning to keep the wolf from the door. And not above encouraging the wolf inside when she chose.

For a moment she considered telling him just who he was insulting, but some inner sense of self-preservation saved her from doing anything so ridiculous. She had the uncomfortable feeling that even if he knew the truth Jack Wolfe would not be in the least bit impressed.