Beaumont Brides Collection (91 page)

Ditching her role as the detached professional, she rewrote her part as saucy, disrespectful, a “treasure” who should be humoured. Or, more likely, sacked. Please.

‘When?’ she asked.

‘I’m renovating a cottage near Henley.’

‘Personally?’ But she didn’t have to ask. The mingled scent of sweat and pine, the straining muscles, hair feathered by the wind…

‘Who is it, Jack?’

A woman’s voice drifted from the interior of the apartment and Mel, instead of relief at this distraction, felt something else, some feeling that until then had been entirely alien to her. She could scarcely believe it. It was jealousy, bile green and just as nasty.

Oh, good grief.

Until that moment she had simply flirted with a minor need to dress up in her best frock when she returned his laundry so that he would acknowledge his mistake, realize that he had been wrong about her, had been too damned condescending with his ten pound note.

She hadn’t thought beyond that.

Richard had seen it, but she had dismissed his concern. Used to flirting with amusing young men who treated her with a great deal of respect, she hadn’t seriously considered what a risk this man might pose.

As she felt the heat crawl along her cheekbones, she finally understood what had kept her mind fixated on the man, drawn her thoughts back to him as she had drifted into sleep. His contained masculinity and dangerous edge to his intellectual muscle was an invitation to the unwary.

She had wanted him at her feet she realized.

She had wanted him at her feet so that she could walk away the winner.

Winner? Was she mad? This man had never been at any woman’s feet. Yet the challenge was almost irresistible.

Resist, her subconscious intervened with a hurried warning. Don’t get involved. You’ll regret it.

But he had already turned away from her.

‘It’s just the new cleaner,’ he said and Mel’s sharp intake of breath went unnoticed as he headed towards the spiral staircase.

Just the new cleaner?

Well, Melanie Beaumont, she thought. That puts you very firmly in your place. And another black mark firmly against Mr Wolfe’s name.

Resist? What was there to resist? He had to be the most resistible man she had ever met. Probably.

‘The cleaner?’ A woman appeared in her line of vision. She, too, was a head-turner. Built like a crane, tall and angular with too much bone for real beauty, Mel knew instinctively that the camera would love her. But she wasn’t an actress or she would have recognised her, so she had to be a model.

She glanced at Mel, not seeing beyond the hideous black and yellow uniform and not bothering to hide her disdain for anyone who earned her living in such a fashion. Mel, not in the least bothered on her own part, nevertheless fumed on behalf of her new colleagues who didn’t have any choice in the matter.

Jack, his back to the girl, didn’t notice.

‘Make some coffee will you Caro, and look after Mel while I get some clothes on?’

He didn’t wait for Caro’s reply, but disappeared up the circular staircase, giving them both a clear view of a pair of large feet, strong calves, a flash of well-muscled thighs.

Mel looked hurriedly away. ‘I’ll make the coffee,’ she offered.

Caro, aware of Mel’s reaction, smiled with the supreme confidence of a woman who is in possession of what every other woman wants.

‘The kitchen is through there,’ she said, with a gesture so practised that Mel knew she had been right. The woman was a catwalk model, “super” class. And as if to confirm the fact, she folded herself in a soft leather armchair with the sinuous grace of a cat. ‘I’m sure you’re far more at home there than I am.’

‘Undoubtedly,’ Mel said, but under her breath. Cooking was, for her, a pleasure. Caro, all skin and bone, probably lived on lemon juice and raw vegetables. Ready washed and shredded from some exclusive Food Hall, she thought, irritably.

Jack Wolfe wasted no time dressing, and was still fastening the links into his cuffs as he came back down the stairs. Caro, curled up in an armchair didn’t bother to look up from the magazine she was reading. Melanie was in the kitchen making coffee.

Caro, he decided, was getting just a bit above herself, a little too confident. A bad sign.

‘I see you’ve already made a start,’ he said, automatically smiling at Mel as he walked into the kitchen. ‘I had intended to sit down with you and discuss what needs to be done, but you obviously don’t need telling.’

‘No, I don’t. The coffee is made. And since you’re paying for my time, I thought I might as well make myself useful.’ She was making a performance of wiping down the already immaculate work surfaces so she didn’t have to look at him. He noticed that in the same way detached way that he noticed everything. Body language told the truth even when people were lying. ‘Unless there’s anything special you want me to do?’ she added, when he didn’t speak.

‘Special?’ he prompted, willing her to turn around. He wanted to see her face. No, not her face, her eyes.

They were grey, but there was nothing ordinary about them. They shimmered like watered silk and he had the oddest feeling that he’d seen them somewhere before. On television perhaps? He didn’t have a set at the flat, but there was one at the cottage he’d bought for Lisette.

Perhaps Tom would like it, he thought. Or then again, perhaps Tom had enough distractions already.

‘Shopping, that sort of thing,’ she said, still keeping her back turned towards him.

‘Oh. I see. Well, yes. I suppose you could keep the fridge stocked for me, pick up my dry cleaning, that sort of thing. I’ll organise a float for you. Other than that just keep the place looking like you left it the other day. It looked like...’ Like home. That’s what he had been going to say. ‘Can you cook?’ he said, abruptly changing the subject.

‘Of course I can cook.’ She spun round but on the point of declaring precisely how talented she was in the kitchen, Melanie realized what was behind the question and assailed by an unpleasant vision of herself rustling up romantic little dinners for him to share with the pared to the bone, uncluttered beauty of Caro she rapidly changed her mind.

‘Beef burgers. Fish fingers. Pizza.’ She ticked them off on her fingers. ‘Anything you like,’ she declared.

‘I assume that is frozen pizza?’

‘Well, yes.’ She looked surprised, as if unaware that there was any other kind. He wasn’t convinced. ‘But I always put on a few extra olives. It makes such a difference, don’t you think?’

‘How very adventurous of you. I would never have thought of that.’

‘Will you be here on Wednesday? I mean, how will I get in?’

‘I will give you a key, Melanie.’ And fitting the word to the deed he took a key from his pocket. About to put it on the countertop beside him he changed his mind.

Without quite knowing why, he reached out and took her hand in his. It was small and unexpectedly white. She couldn’t have been doing this job for long. Was that why she was nervous? Because now he was touching her he could tell that she was quite noticeably shaking.

All that cheek was an act, he realized with something of a shock. She wasn’t nearly as tough as she would have him believe. And placing the key in her palm he wrapped her fingers about it, holding it there with both of his hands.

Melanie swallowed. She had not imagined the electricity. His touch was like summer lightning, wild fire that ran between them and as he continued to hold onto her hand, his eyes too seem to heat from within.

They were not, as she had first thought, a steely grey, but flecked with warm gold lights that seemed to bore into her very soul and for a moment she was certain that he felt the same charge of excitement. Then steeply hooded lids came down, cloaking his feelings.

‘Guard it with your life, Melanie.’

The key was warm from his body, but his hands were cool. Long, slender fingers wrapped around her warm hand and the warmer key. Hidden layers of heat, like the hidden layers of meaning she sensed behind everything he said. Or was that everything she said? Whichever it was it was horribly disturbing and she wanted it to stop.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll be careful with it.’ And she pulled her hand away but it was shaking so much that she had to stuff it into her overall pocket so that he shouldn’t see.

Careful.

The word mocked her. No girl would abandon the pampered life she was used to on some ridiculous whim to clean up after a man like Jack Wolfe. Not if she was careful.

‘Good.’ And he turned to the alarm control. ‘I’ll just show you how the alarm system works.’

‘That would be a good idea.’ Alarm. Warning. Red light.

Layers and layers of meaning she thought as she watched while he demonstrated the alarm system.

‘Well, you picked that up quickly enough,’ he said, after she had demonstrated her mastery of the system a few minutes later.

Considering her inability to concentrate it was perhaps as well that it was the same model as the one installed in her own apartment so that all she had had to memorise was the number. But she didn’t say so. It seemed unlikely that the average cleaner, or out-of-work actress, would have a state of the art security system fitted to her home.

Nevertheless, she resented the suggestion that her quickness was surprising.

‘Just because I’m cleaning for a living, it doesn’t follow that I have sawdust for brains.’

He glanced back over his shoulder at her, a frown creasing his forehead. ‘I don’t recall suggesting that you had. Some people just seem to find these things tricky. Caro has had the police out three or four times setting this off by mistake.’ And for just a moment their gaze intersected the same space, colliding in a conspiracy of thought that excluded Caro. It was as if their minds had touched, like a spark leaping a gap to complete an electrical circuit.

And it wasn’t just their minds. Mel was standing close enough to identify the brand of soap he had used in the shower, close enough to touch the skin drawn tight across the hard knuckles of his hand still raised to the alarm.

For a moment she couldn’t breathe as her chest tightened and something altogether strange happened around her midriff, an odd kind of melting that seemed to go right on down, weakening her thighs, sapping their will to hold her. This time she was the one to drop her lashes, desperate to block out the intensity of that look.

Without warning he peeled away from her, putting the width of the room between them.

‘Caroline,’ he snapped, as he gathered his briefcase from the table, ‘if you want a lift into town you’ll have to come now.’

*****

Caroline’s mindless chatter normally washed over him. Today it seemed as irritating as a buzz saw and it was with relief that he dropped her at her gym. But his temper improved dramatically once he reached his office.

‘Are you sure about this, Mike? It couldn’t just be coincidence?’

Mike Palmer had been Jack’s CEO for a long time and he understood his caution. ‘You’re always telling me that there’s no such thing as coincidence in business. I didn’t believe he’d do it, but he’s taken the bait, Jack. Now all you’ve got to do is play the line a little and then you can reel him in.’

‘You make it sound easy. He’s hooked, maybe, but Tamblin’s been playing this game for a long time. He’ll be away at the first suggestion of a trap. But it’s a pity about young Latham.’ He crossed to the window, watched the clown working the afternoon crowd. ‘I feel responsible.’

Mike joined him. ‘You’re not, Jack. If he’d behaved reasonably when his father’s company was taken over instead of trying to cause trouble…’ He shrugged. ‘But then, he always was a drama queen. He should have stuck to what he knew.’

‘I know, but he’s young and he’s hurting. And he’s in bad company.’

‘He went looking for it, Jack. He deserves everything that’s coming to him.’

Jack looked at him, sideways. ‘Have a care, Mike, you’re beginning to sound as callous as me.’

‘I’ve been listening to you long enough. Some of it was bound to rub off eventually.’ He nodded down at the square. ‘The only reason he’s down there now is so that he can keep a watch on who comes and goes from your office. If you hadn’t, by chance, seen him getting into Greg Tamblin’s car...’

‘I know, I know. Two people with an agenda in the same place the same time - a chance in a million.’

The same kind of chance that dictates a man should have a heart attack and fall against the wheel of his car sending it straight for a bus queue when, for a hundred yards in either direction the pavement is empty.

He watched the clown for a few more seconds before turning away and crossing to his desk.

‘You’re right. Why would they bother with caution. Latham must have watched me being driven away from the office before he called Tamblin to hand over the latest information he’d found in my waste bin. He couldn’t have anticipated a bomb alert with the streets closed off, or that I would decide to walk back to the office. Chance,’ he said, bleakly, ‘unlike coincidence, is a force I believe in.’

‘You’ve never left anything to chance in your life.’

‘No?’ Not in business, perhaps. Business was too important to be left in the lap of the gods. ‘Well, let’s not this time. I think it’s time to throw our shark a red herring, we wouldn’t want him to think it was too easy, would we? He might get suspicious.’ He touched the intercom. ‘Mary? Get hold of Gus Jameson for me, will you. I feel an urgent need for an island holiday.’ He grinned at Mike. ‘Or was that a holiday island?’