Whirlwind (19 page)

They both heard the whine of the lift descending. Laird raised himself, his hands flat on the carpet,staring down at her with a look in his eyes that made Anna's throat close up in dangerous excitement and alarm.

'Get up,' she said hoarsely, knowing she was trembling and he must feel it as his body held her down in that forced intimacy.

Laird's eyes were glittering, half veiled by those heavy lids, a dark flush on his face. He looked into her own eyes, a half-smile on his mouth, then slowly his stare drifted down over her face to the quivering curve of her parted lips.

'No,' Anna whispered, wanting him to kiss her so badly that she could have killed him.

'You're so beautiful,' he said huskily.

She shut her eyes, ice-cold. 'I won't be your mistress, Laird.'

'And I can't let you go,' he said, grimacing at her. 'I've missed you like hell, Anna. And worried about you, all alone in the flat while Patti's with my parents—why wouldn't you go to Sussex, too? I could have slept better if I'd known you were safe down there, but I stayed awake until the early hours every night wondering if anything was happening to you, imagining the flat being burgled, some vicious swine attacking you. You read about this sort of thing without registering what it means. It started to haunt me when I thought of it happening to you.'

'I've managed to look after myself since I was sixteen and first came to London,' she retorted.

'My God! The risks you've taken!'

'There's risk in most things, you can't lock yourself upland throw away the key just to avoid taking risks!'

'I can't bear to think of it,' Laird groaned, his hand stroking the tumbled red-gold hair which had spilled across the carpet. 'Patti told me you hadn't managed to fix up any work and that worried me even more. I had to do something, surely you can see that? It was a simple matter—I wasn't giving you anything, just arranging for you to get a job! Why are you so angry?'

She looked at him, despairing of getting it home to him. 'You think money fixes anything, buys anything!'

'That isn't fair, Anna. I wasn't trying to buy you, not this time, not ever. I asked you to live with me; I never mentioned money.'

'You didn't have to, did you? You dangled a luxury apartment in front of me and a luxury life to go with it—nothing so sordid as hard cash, of course, but it was a form of barter. You gave me all that and in return I slept with you.' Her voice was harsh and bitter, her face white now. 'What would you call that, Laird? I call it trying to buy me.'

His eyes were confused and restless, his colour high. 'Only if you didn't . . . ' He broke off, and she watched him intently.

'If I didn't what?'

He swallowed, hesitating. 'Want me,' he said at last, but she knew with a leap of intuition that that was not what he had been going to say.

'Wanting is easy,' Anna said softly. 'Loving is hard.'

Laird met her eyes, looked away, a muscle jerking beside his jaw. She waited breathlessly for him to say something, and at that moment the door of the penthouse suite opened and they heard a voice which made Laird close his eyes and groan.

'A nice way to carry on, I must say!'

Laird got to his feet, brushing a hand over his elegant suit, and turned to eye Parsons crushingly.

'We tripped.'

'Go on!' Parsons retorted with a sneer. 'I wasn't born yesterday.'

'Or even in this century,' Laird jeered back, helping Anna to her feet. Very pink, she kept her eyes down.

'Oh, charming. If you was wanting me to cook anything, that's tough. I'm just on me way out to see the doctor. I've got my bad back again.'

'Don't bother to hurry back,' Laird told him, taking Anna by the elbow and steering her into the penthouse.

Parsons cackled and Anna flushed, feeling Laird watching her. He slammed the front door on the old man. 'Damn him!'

'You can't blame him for what he's thinking,' Anna muttered, walking into the sitting-room and over to the window. 'He's not so far wrong, is he? You've been trying to seduce me ever since I met you.'

'I wasn't trying this time—the TV commercial is a genuine no-strings offer! We'd been planning it for some time. The director the agency picked out wanted a new face, an actress, not a model; someone with what he calls instant impact. They were running through a list of possibilities and I thought—why not you? I suggested they test you, and that's all I did!'

She laughed bitterly, turning to face him. 'They weren't likely to refuse, though, were they now?'

He scowled at her. 'You were ready to let Joey Ross pull strings for you, why not me?'

'Was Joey in on this too?' Anna was shaken as she realised he must have been. It was Joey who had told her to visit the advertising agency!

Laird's narrowed eyes noted the change in her expression and his frown deepened. 'What exactly is going on between you and Ross?' he demanded.

Anna did not bother to answer that, she asked in her turn: 'Did Joey know you'd set it up? He co-operated with you?' That shocked her, she wouldn't have believed it of Joey. He was a maddening man, but she had always thought he was as straight as a die.

Laird swung away, prowling restlessly back and forth, his hands in his jacket pockets. 'No, he had no idea I was involved. He'd been ringing around trying to find work for you and the agency who handles our account was one of those he contacted. They got back to him and told him to send you along to see them. I told them not to mention my name.'

Anna's mouth twisted. 'You're so damn devious!' Yet she was relieved to hear that Joey hadn't been part of the plot.

Laird halted in front of her, his eyes hard and fixed. 'Is Ross in love with you?'

Anna considered, briefly, the idea of lying to him—it might end this whole tangle if she did. On the other hand it would complicate an already complex situation and it would be embarrassing if Joey ever found out. What on earth would she say to him?

'Well? Is he?' Laird insisted harshly, and she shook her head. At once Laird's face relaxed and a little smile of satisfaction curved his mouth. She could have screamed as she saw it—Laird didn't love her himself, yet at the bare idea that someone else might care for her he was ready to snarl and show his teeth in a display of jealousy to which he had no right whatever.

'Sit down, Anna,' he said softly, still smiling.

She shook her head fiercely. 'I'm going in a minute—I only came to make it clear that I wasn't accepting your help, whether there are strings attached to it or not! In future, please stay out of my life and let me solve my own problems!'

'If you were prepared to accept Ross's help, why can't you accept mine?' he asked, moving towards her.

She whirled towards the door, afraid of the look in his eyes. 'Because I can't!'

Laird got to the door before her and barred her way, leaning negligently against the doorframe, that long-limbed body deceptively casual. His eyes were far from casual; Anna watched them tensely like someone faced with a wild creature, a sleek black panther, purring in its throat and crouched in apparent drowsiness while it waited to spring and kill.

'Why can't you?' he probed in that husky voice. 'You need that job.'

'Not that much!'

His brows lifted. 'No? What will you do instead? Live on social security?'

'Get a job as a waitress. I've done it before, I can do it again. I can move out of Patti's flat, too, and find somewhere I can afford. I won't take any more charity from you. You keep telling me there are no strings attached, but for some reason I don't believe you.'

He frowned impatiently, his mouth a straight line, holding her eyes as if he was trying to penetrate through" them to the inmost recesses of her mind. Anna defended her privacy, dropping her lids, hiding her thoughts and emotions from him as much as she could. Laird used any weapon he could get hold of; he was unscrupulous and far too clever, as well as having more charm than was good for one man to possess. This time she was not succumbing to his charm; he wouldn't get anywhere with her if he gave her one of those sidelong, coaxing smiles.

'I'm not offering you charity! You're doing my family a favour by living with Patti, and as for taking a job as a waitress—I won't hear of that, it would be far too tiring for you. You've been working hard in the theatre for months, you need a few weeks' rest, not an even tougher job for even lower pay.'

Anna lifted her eyes and gave him a straight, tired stare. 'Laird, what I do is no business of yours. Can't you get that through your head? My life is my own affair.'

He seemed to have no answer to that, although his bones had locked into a tense mask.

'So will you please get out of my way and let me leave?' she asked into that grim silence.

He was the one who was looking down now; his body had a weary pose, his head hanging, his hands at his side, his limbs slack.

Anna waited a moment, and when he still said nothing she repeated her request. 'Laird, I want to leave!'

'Don't go, Anna,' he whispered, and her body froze in shock at the note in his voice.

She looked incredulously at him; he had sounded so different, his voice unsteady, pleading.

'It scares the life out of me,' he muttered, still not looking at her and his face so pale it made every line stand out; the fine laughter lines around eye and mouth, the slash between his brows, the blackness of his lashes and brows. That face had become familiar territory to her long ago; her eyes hunted over it in search of the meaning of this change in him, but she was bewildered into asking:

'What scares you? The idea of me being a waitress? That's silly.'

His mouth twisted, he gave a soft groan. 'Not that. Feeling the way I do about you—that's what scares me. I can't cope with it, Anna. If I let myself care, and it all comes to pieces in my hands, I'll go crazy.'

Her breathing had gone haywire, she couldn't get a word out, listening with an intensity that matched the strained harshness in his voice.

'You were right a few moment ago when you said that loving is harder,' Laird said huskily, it's the hardest thing in the world. It means giving too much of yourself; it leaves you wide open to getting hurt.'

'But it's the same for all of us, Laird,' she said gently, aching for the sadness in his voice. 'What do you want—to be different from every other human being who ever lived? Take love out of the human being, and what's left? Just an animal with a brain.'

He eyed her through his lashes, his face darkly flushed. 'You're not afraid to risk it?'

'Yes, terrified,' she said frankly. 'Just as I'm sick every night before I go on stage—the panic gets worse while I'm waiting in the wings for my first cue. I always think I won't be able to go on—but every night, I do.'

'If you'll take the chance, I will,' he said offhandedly, not looking at her, and Anna stared at his rigid profile, her heartbeat so fast it scared her.

'Are you trying to say . . . '

'Yes,' he muttered, a muscle jerking beside his jaw. 'I'm still scared stiff, but I'd rather be scared with you than without you. I've missed you badly. I must see you, Anna. I've got to. You're always in my head, and if it's going to hurt one day . . . well, to hell with it.' He wasn't looking at her and he was still afraid to say, 'I love you', but she knew what she was hearing and her blood sang in her ears.

Anna watched him passionately as his head came up and he stared into her eyes, reading the emotions in them easily now that she had stopped trying to hide them. She put her arms around his neck and lifted her lips, saying what he wanted to hear even though he could see it in her face. 'I love you, too.' The words only just got out as his mouth crushed down on hers and he held her so tightly she could barely breathe, their bodies merging in one warm, flowing, pulsating line, breast to breast, hip to hip, thigh to thigh, their mouths mingling in hungry exploration.

Laird swept her off her feet a few moments later and carried her through to the bedroom in which she had already spent one night—that night which had begun it all just a few months earlier. Anna was quite conscious now of what he was doing, even though her eyes were half closed and drowsy with excited anticipation and the heated arousal of the last few minutes.

Laird laid her down gently and knelt beside her, stroking her ruffled hair, i've wanted you for so long I'm scared of my own feelings!' he muttered, his eyes busy as they ran over the clinging cotton T-shirt and the tight blue jeans. 'You're so beautiful, Anna; I can't believe I'm the first man in your life. What did you do to keep them all at bay, the wolves who must have prowled around you?''I told them to get lost,' she said lightly. 'I have a way with wolves.'

'I know, I noticed. I could tell I wasn't the first to chase you, just as I could tell you'd never been caught.' He eyed her mockingly. 'Until now.'

Anna laughed, then her eyes became anxious as she watched his hard-boned face. Was she crazy to think of loving him when he was still a dyed-in-the-wool cynic, a man who found it impossible to trust a woman? Did he really love her, or was he trying another trick? Was this just a new trap to get her into bed with him? He hadn't actually said he loved her, had he? She had been touched by the way he muttered incoherently, never quite saying the words she ached to hear. She had jumped to the conclusion that that was what he meant, but had she been wrong?

Laird was kissing her neck, his eyes closed, his hands moving, searching, caressing. Anna lay still and cold with apprehension, and after a moment he lifted his head again to look into her face, frowning.

'What is it? What's wrong?'

'Tell me you love me,' she said huskily. 'Before . . . I need to know if you do. Laird.'

The grey eyes glowed with a feeling she had never seen in them before, a passionate tenderness. 'I just told you I did.'

'You didn't say it.'

'Didn't I? A last superstition, I suppose. They're difficult words to say.' He groaned, closing his eyes, very flushed. 'I love you,' he said very fast, and Anna's breath caught. Laird opened his eyes again and looked at her fiercely, and she would never need to hear him say those words again because the feeling was there in his eyes. Laird had dammed up all that love for years; it had been there hidden, locked away, out of sight, behind the cynicism and the bitter wariness. Now it was visible, the dam broken, the emotion pouring out towards her in a tidal wave.