Whirlwind (13 page)

Anna laughed angrily, then opened her eyes and gave him a glare. 'You knew later on, though! I as good as told you what I thought, and you didn't disillusion me.'

'I plead guilty,' he said, shrugging. 'You were giving me a bad time and I wasn't feeling very friendly towards you. I don't enjoy being shouted at by a woman. In fact, it makes my blood curdle, especially when I haven't done a thing to justify it, except try to make it plain that I find her attractive, and want to get to know her better.'

Anna bit her lip, looking down, and after a pause Laird went on drily, 'I came along to your flat to pick you up and take you to have lunch with my family, and walked into a barrage that nearly knocked me flat! By the time I'd caught on to what I was being accused of and realised what interesting assumptions you'd made, I was angry too, and childish enough to let you go on thinking whatever you liked!' He gave her a rueful, half-defiant grimace. 'Sorry!'

'You aren't sorry at all!' she accused, and he laughed impatiently.

'OK, I'm not. I think you asked for it—I behaved the way you apparently expected me to! People do, you know. Like dogs—if you scream every time you see a dog and run away, it will chase you and bite your leg. That's its nature.'

'Bite my leg and you'll be sorry!' muttered Anna, her green eyes feverish. 'I suppose it didn't occur to you that I might have had a bad time, too, thinking I'd slept with a total stranger?'

His face altered, a frown coming into it. 'Well, no,' he began slowly, and her temper leapt up.

'No, that was obvious! While you were busy resenting being shouted at, how do you think I felt? When I left here that morning I almost chucked myself in the river.'

'Oh, hell!' He moved closer and put out a hand to touch hers; Anna pushed it away furiously.

'Keep your damned hands to yourself! When I think ... the hours of misery I went through . . . and all the time . . . My God, I could kill you!'

'How was I to know you were a virgin?' he asked, as if she wasn't being reasonable, and Anna's face was scarlet at once.

'Shut up!'

'It didn't occur to me until now, but if you knew anything about it you couldn't have suspected I'd made love to you—you weren't that drunk. I rather think you'd have woken up at some point in the proceedings.'

Anna felt like a boiled lobster. 'Will you stop talking about it?' she snarled at him, and Laird laughed softly.

'When I make love to you, Anna, you'll be fully conscious, I promise you,' he said, voice bland, 'and you'll know all about it.'Confusion and rage combined to make Anna barely able to speak. She forced herself, nevertheless. She wasn't letting that past. 'If you think ... I'd rather die . . . and stop grinning like a chimpanzee, I'll never let you . . . '

'Don't go incoherent on me again,' Laird urged. 'I have trouble enough interpreting what you're saying even when you're relatively coherent. When you start talking in bits and pieces you lose me entirely.'

Anna screwed up her hands and tried not to scream, but it wasn't easy. She couldn't stop thinking of all she had gone through and how easily he could have made the position clear. Instead, he had tormented and teased as if he was getting his own back about something. She looked at him scathingly.

'I'll tell you what I think . . . '

'Do,' he encouraged. 'I'd love to hear what you think. Frankly, at times I've begun to wonder if you can.'

'Oh . . . ' Anna seethed, shut her eyes, counted to ten, then went on doggedly, 'I think you have a grudge against women in general. You may have good reasons for being disenchanted with my sex, but that's no excuse for the way you've deliberately tormented me!'

'I've what? Aren't you overstating the case a little?' he interrupted impatiently.

'I don't think so. Asking me to move into your penthouse, offering me a luxury apartment with a jacuzzi—and it was all a tease!'

'You sound as if you're rather regretful about that!' he said; smiling.

'Oh, take me seriously!' Anna snapped.

His arched brows answered that and she took a long, rough breath before she went on, 'I'm sorry your marriage broke up, I'm sorry your wife was a bitch, and that your mother went away when you were small—I know it must have been very tough on you, all of that, but it had nothing to do with me, and I resent being made the scapegoat for what other women did to you before I even met you!'

Laird seemed to turn into a pillar of salt. He sat and stared at her fixedly, his face rigid and angular, his skin pale and his grey eyes glittering points of light between those heavy lids.

Anna swallowed, suddenly nervous. Maybe she shouldn't have said all that? Laird looked really alarming—he was furious, she could see that, and she looked away, disturbed by the fixity of his stare.

When he did speak, his voice had enough ice in it to sink the
Titanic.

'You
have
had some fascinating chats, haven't you? With Patti, I suppose? Or my stepmother? Well, it doesn't matter which, but get one thing straight, Anna, I'm in no need of a psychiatrist, especially an amateur. My brains aren't scrambled and I wasn't working out my revenge on the whole female sex through you. I'm sorry I didn't immediately put you straight about what happened that night, but I was frankly insulted. What sort of guy do you think I am? Do I look as if I need to get a woman drunk before I can get her into bed? Or as if I'd enjoy making love to a woman who didn't even know what was going on?' He took a deep breath and swung away, opened the door and got out of the Rolls.

Anna almost fell out of the car when he loomed up at her side of it. He took the daffodils she was still clutching and tossed them in a cavalier fashion into the back seat. 'You can pick them up when I drive you to the theatre,' he said brusquely as he marched her to the lift.

Both of them were silent as they soared up to the top floor of the building. Anna didn't know whether she was more relieved or furious; her mind was in utter chaos.

Parsons opened the door, scowling. 'You, is it?' He stood back to let them enter, peered at Anna and gave an eldritch cackle. 'Hallo, miss, 'ow are you? Come for dinner? I've got a nice bit of steak 'andy, in case you come again.'

'No, we haven't come for dinner,' Laird told him. 'Get back to your lair, I'll look after the lady.'

'I'll bet,' said Parsons, slouching off, muttering to himself as he shut the door.

Laird moved to the cocktail cabinet and asked, 'Can I get you a drink?'

'No, you certainly cannot!' Anna said vehemently, and he laughed.

'No, maybe not. How about a glass of pineapple juice or tomato juice?'

'Tomato juice would be nice, thanks. What was it you wanted to talk about? Patti, you said?'

He brought her the glass of tomato juice and waved her to. a chair while he flung himself down on the couch, holding a glass of whisky.

'There's a problem about Patti going to drama school,' he began. 'Her parents have just decided to sell the house in Wolfstone Square and live permanently in the country. They've had a cottage in Sussex for years, they'll live there full time now, but Patti couldn't commute from there, so she needs somewhere to live in London. She could move in here with me, in fact, I first of all suggested that, but I'm sometimes away for a week or two at a time and she'd be alone here, so her mother wasn't very happy with that idea.' He drank some of his whisky, watching Anna. 'And that's where you come in. How would you feel about sharing a flat with Patti?'

A
NNA
was taken aback by the suggestion; she stared at him incredulously, her green eyes enormous and her lips parting in an audible intake of air.

Laird smiled wryly. 'And before you jump to any more of your wild conclusions, I am not suggesting that I should pay your rent, nor would I be moving in with you.'

She ignored that, concentrating on the practical side of the idea. 'I can only just afford the rent I'm paying now,' she pointed out. 'I'm sure Patti would want somewhere a lot better than the place I've got.'

'You can bet on it,' he agreed.

'And I couldn't put up half the rent for the sort of flat she would want!'

'There wouldn't be any rent,' Laird said smoothly, and her face tightened suspiciously. 'No need to glare like that,' he went on. 'This isn't my idea, it came from Patti's mother in the beginning. We've just finished a new block of flats down near the river, close to the Tower of London. We haven't sold them all yet; a number are still vacant and it occurred to my stepmother that Patti might like one of them. They're quite central, only fifteen minutes from the West End and the theatres, but Patti's still very young and she's never lived alone, so it seemed much better for her to share the flat. Of course, we could advertise for someone who would pay rent, but that would be risky. You never know who you're getting, and if Patti took a dislike to them after they'd moved in, it might be hard to get them out again.'

Anna nodded soberly. 'I thought of sharing a flat myself, at one time, but apart from not being able to afford much rent I didn't like any of the people I'd have had to live with.'

'Exactly. That's why we thought of you. Patti knows you, you've obviously become friends and my parents liked you when they met you. You'd be doing them a big favour if you accepted their offer. Patti wouldn't be paying any rent, of course—the flat will be in her name, legally she will be the owner as my father is giving it to her, and we wouldn't want any rent from you, either.'

Anna hesitated, frowning. 'Your mother never mentioned it to me when I had lunch at the house.'

'She wanted to talk it over with my father and Patti first. The offer for the house had only just been made; they hadn't quite decided what to do that weekend, but my father finds living in central London very tiring; he's an old man and he wants to end his days in the peace and quiet of the countryside. He's been spending half the year in Sussex anyway, with his roses and his bee-keeping, but they were reluctant to sell the old house. Dad has lived there since he was first married, forty years ago. That's a long time. But the house is far too big for a small family and Dad doesn't entertain as much as he used to.

'It's enormous,' Anna agreed. 'I did wonder about that when I was there. With just the three of them, and all those rooms.'

it's ridiculous,' said Laird, grimacing. 'Anyway, they've definitely decided to sell and they plan to leave for Sussex in six weeks. It will take that long to arrange for their furniture to be sold and the rest of the things they'll be keeping taken down to the cottage. That's why they want your answer so quickly. They want to get Patti settled as soon as possible.'

Anna put down her half-finished tomato juice and frowned around the room while she thought about it.

'Well?' Laird prompted as she glanced back at him.

'Before I decide, I'd like to talk to Patti about it. After all, it's Patti who'll have to live with me—I want to be quite sure she likes the idea.'

'That's reasonable, I suppose,' he said reluctantly.

'If I do move into this flat, how soon would . . . '

'Next month some time? Before the move to Sussex, obviously.'

'I'd have to give notice to Mrs Gawton.' Anna's eyes began to gleam and her mouth curved upward in a gleeful smile, and Laird laughed softly, watching her.

'I see you can't wait.'

'No, it will be a pleasure,' Anna admitted, laughing, then said rather defiantly, 'But about rent ... I would feel awkward not paying any, it would put me in an invidious position, you must see that. When we start our West End run I would be able to pay a fair rent, and that's what I'd like to do.'

Laird gave a little shrug. 'If you insist.'

'I do.'

'Then I won't waste my time trying to talk you out of it,' he said, getting to his feet. 'Now, I'd better drive you to the theatre, or are you going to finish that tomato juice?'

She looked at the glass, her eyes rueful. 'I'm sorry, would you mind if I don't?'

'Why should I?' he asked calmly, moving to the door. 'Let's go, then. I still have a lot of work to do today.'

Parsons peered out from another door as they left. 'You off, then?'

'What does it look like?' Laird asked him over his shoulder.

'Can't even ask a civil question without getting my head bit off,' the old man snarled, as they walked into the corridor.

'I'll be in late, leave me some sandwiches,' Laird directed, shutting the front door, but Parsons had the last word, he yelled through it loudly enough for them to hear him from the other end of the building.

'Nothing to put in 'em!'

Laird pressed the lift button unconcernedly. As they descended a moment later, Anna asked him, 'This lift doesn't stop at any other floors, does it?'

'It can do, if you want it to—I do work here, you know. I have a large office on the floor below the penthouse and I'm usually at my desk by half past eight each morning. I use the stairs more than I use the lift, coming and going to my office, I mean. If I'm going to another floor in the building, I use the lift.'

'But there's never anybody else in this lift. The place is like a ghost town.'

Laird surveyed her with wry amusement. 'My dear girl, this is
my
lift. There are a whole battery of lifts for the staff, but they're in the front of the building.'

'You have a lift all to yourself?' Anna's eyes opened wide.'You sound quite shocked.'

'It seems very extravagant. How do the staff get | from the car park to their offices?' she asked as they walked from the lift to the Rolls. Her eyes skimmed the rows of other cars parked in the dimly lit vault whose concrete ceiling made her voice and footsteps echo back to her.

'They use the lifts at the other end.' Laird unlocked the Rolls and opened the door for her.

'While you sail upstairs in lonely splendour?' she jeered.

'Get in the car, you little wasp,' Laird told her impatiently.

As they were driving to the theatre, Anna asked, 'Why was it you who put this idea up to me? Why not Patti?'

'She was afraid you'd turn the idea down, she preferred me to suggest it to you—a disinterested third party!'