Midnight Wedding

Jack stood up.

Her heart levelled out and started to tap-dance.

‘It’s you,’ said Holly not much above a whisper.

It was unbelievable. As if by thinking about him, she had conjured him up like a genie. Perhaps he wasn’t really there, except in her imagination? She shook her head trying to clear it. But even after that he was still there.

Oh, yes, there all right. Tall and dark and just as gorgeous as she remembered.

The waiter knew the story she had told Gilbert. He tensed, suspicious. Holly knew, even though she did not take her eyes off Jack.

‘It’s all right, Marc,’ she said hurriedly. ‘Mr Armour and I met earlier today.’

Marc shrugged and went.

Holly did not move. She felt turned to stone and tongue-tied into the bargain. She looked down at her order pad as if she did not know what it was for.

Jack said, ‘Won’t you join us?’

She swallowed. ‘I can’t. I’m working.’

But she did not go.

‘Holly,’ Jack said. It sounded as if he was tasting it.

Holly felt a convulsive shiver run through her—deep and dark and utterly unfamiliar. It bewildered her. She raised her eyes to his face. With a little shock she realised that he recognised what she was feeling.

She blinked, struck to silence. No one had ever looked at her like that before—as if he knew her every last secret sensation.

He said her name again, so softly that only she could hear it.

‘Holly who?’

His eyes bored into her. The noisy little club seemed to recede, leaving just the two of them alone. Holly opened her mouth but no sound came out of it.

‘You know my name, after all,’ he prompted.

His determination beat at her like a high wind. He did not smile. Holly had never felt such force of will.

Get a grip, she told herself feverishly. Get a grip.

She moistened her lips. ‘I don’t tell my name to strangers.’

He did smile then. It was the same smile as this afternoon—cool and superior, as if he was so certain he was right he did not have to bother to prove it. Quite suddenly Holly’s sense of unreality evaporated like a burst bubble.

‘Hardly a stranger. I took on a guy for you today and stopped him cold.’

‘I didn’t ask you to,’ she flashed.

‘Are you saying you wish I hadn’t?’

She sidestepped that. ‘I don’t approve of violence.’

‘And you wish I hadn’t?’ he persisted.

She tilted her chin. ‘I run my own life, right? If you hadn’t come along, I would have dealt with Brendan.’

‘It looked like it,’ he said drily.

‘I’ve done it before.’

He looked sceptical. ‘Successfully?’

Holly shifted. She was too innately honest to claim success in her dealings with Brendan Sugrue. She was all too aware that her strategy consisted mainly of running away whenever Brendan appeared over the horizon. But she was not willing to admit it to this masterful stranger.

Jack saw her hesitation and pressed home his advantage. ‘So if he turns up here tonight, you don’t need my help?’

‘Tonight?’

In spite of her brave words, Holly flinched at the thought. She could not help it. She looked nervously at the staircase from the entrance.

‘That was a nasty incident this afternoon,’ Jack said more gently. ‘Don’t beat up on yourself. Most people can’t handle physical threats.’

Holly gave him a long look. ‘But you can?’

‘I’ve had a lot of practice.’

‘And that’s supposed to reassure me?’

He was taken aback for a moment. She saw it in his eyes and felt a small glow of achievement.

Then he said, ‘Are you telling me you don’t need me on your side?’

All the lovely triumph drained away, exposing her weakness with horrible clarity. Remembering Brendan’s ugly expression, Holly had a moment of pure fear.

At Jack’s elbow, Ramon murmured a protest. Neither of them paid any attention to him.

Jack’s face was hard. ‘Tell me you don’t need me and I’ll go.’

There was a sudden, odd silence. Their eyes locked. Holly felt stunned but had no idea why. She was as out of breath as if she had been running.

Jack’s eyes flared, then narrowed to slits. She had the oddest feeling that he was even more startled than she was. Startled and not at all pleased.

She did not understand any of it. But she was certainly not going to say that she needed Gorgeous Jack Armour. Not for anything. Not ever.

Sidestepping the issue neatly, she said, ‘You really think he’ll come here tonight?’

Jack shrugged. ‘If I found you, he can.’

She looked round the room. It was filling up but there was no one who looked like Brendan. Though she saw now that Gilbert was waving imperatively from the kitchen doorway.

‘I’ve got to get on with my work,’ said Holly, distracted.

‘I don’t hound women. Tell me to go and I will.’

Their eyes clashed. Locked.

Holly tore her gaze away and sought desperately for something to get her off the hook. She spied the bottle on their table.

‘You don’t have to go. You’re a paying customer.’ She began to back away. ‘Finish your wine.’

‘Oh, no,’ said Jack. He had not moved a step but she felt as if he was pursuing her like her own personal Fate. ‘I’m not here for the wine and you know it.’

Holly met his eyes straight on. ‘So what are you here for?’ She flung it at him like a challenge. ‘Me?’

His eyes flickered.

‘And you say you don’t hound women?’

The sexy mouth thinned to a fierce line. He said harshly, ‘I stopped a nasty piece of bullying this afternoon.’

‘That doesn’t give you any rights—’

‘Maybe not. But it gives me some unfinished business.’

Holly was taken aback. She lost hold of her protective fury in sheer bewilderment. ‘What are you talking about?’

‘Mr Sugrue told me not to get in his way again,’ Jack said thoughtfully.

For a moment Holly did not understand. Then, ‘And that means you have to do whatever he told you not to? Was it some sort of challenge? You can’t leave it alone?’

There was a tiny pause. ‘Something like that.’

She shivered. ‘I shall never understand men.’

He shrugged. ‘Let’s just say, I decided to stay on the case. But it’s your case.’ His eyes were intent. ‘If you don’t want me to, I’m gone.’

The silence demanded an answer.

Cornered, resentful, Holly was forced into honesty. ‘No. Don’t go.’ It sounded as if it was dragged out of her.

‘Holly,’ bawled Gilbert.

‘I’ve got to go…’

Jack said pleasantly, ‘No problem,’ and sat down quite as if she had begged him to stay and he had graciously acceded.

Holly could have screamed.

But Gilbert was becoming too urgent to ignore. With a last look of frustration at Jack, she threaded a quick path through the tables.

‘Take your apron off,’ said Gilbert, too preoccupied to be angry. ‘Tobacco are going to be late and Jerry is finishing now. Get your flute.’

Left at the table, Ramon let out a long breath. ‘Whew. For a moment, I thought she had you on the run there.’

Jack sat back with a faint smile. ‘I knew she was a fighter,’ he said. He sounded pleased about it.

‘Well, you certainly got her mad.’

‘Yes,’ said Jack, his eyes glinting. ‘I did, didn’t I?’

Ramon gave up. ‘Let’s eat.’

They had finished their rough pâté and were waiting for a Moroccan stew when a new musician walked onto the small dais. She had a long golden-brown plait over one shoulder and a gleaming silver flute in her hands.

Ramon, who was drinking his wine, spluttered. Jack remained unmoved. Though when she put the instrument to her lips and went into a long bluesy riff that made the instrument sound like a saxophone, his eyes narrowed.

‘What’s she doing that for?’ muttered Ramon when he got his breath back.

Jack did not answer him. ‘Versatile,’ he mused.

He did not say anything else, though he listened with attention. Holly finished her solo. A keyboard player joined her and they went off on a wild ride that had enough salsa rhythms to persuade some of the crowd to push back their chairs and dance.

‘Very versatile,’ Ramon said drily. ‘Sounds like a girl who’s been taking care of herself for years, doesn’t she?’

Jack did not answer. His face was unreadable. He turned his chair slightly so that, without actually diverting his attention from the musicians, he could keep an eye on the door at the top of the stairs.

Ramon sighed.

The cellar filled up. The staff slid between tables and dancers, carrying impossible burdens of plates of food and bottles and thick short glasses for the wine. The whole place began to hum. The music got louder.

‘This is good,’ shouted Ramon, enthusiastically mopping up the last of his stew with a piece of crusty baguette.

And so it was. The party atmosphere seemed to infect everyone except Jack. Holly, half dancing in her concentration, was oblivious of everything but her music. So no one noticed when the thick-set man came in and stood on the stairs for a minute, scanning the heaving cellar.

No one but Jack, that was. He was out of his seat before Ramon knew what was happening.

‘Get a cab,’ Jack flung over his shoulder, as he made for the musicians. ‘Meet us out the back. Quickly.’

There were times when you did not argue with Jack. Ramon knew this was one of them. He went.

Holly was hot and her hair had started to stick to her neck. When Harry gave her the high sign that he was going into a solo, she lowered the flute with a grin of relief. There was a surge of uninhibited applause. She bowed, laughing.

But then a powerful hand took hold of her.

‘Time to go.’

Alarmed, she swung round. But it was not Brendan. It was Jack. And he was holding her as if he owned her.

‘Excuse me,’ said Holly, brave on salsa and success.

He was impervious.

‘The brother-in-law from hell just walked in,’ he told her with a bland smile. ‘Do you want to stand and fight? Or run?’

Now that Harry was playing, she might just as well not have been there as far as the audience was concerned. No one questioned Jack’s possessive grip on her arm, Holly saw. Just as no one would question Brendan if he chose to…

She stood very still, suddenly no longer hot. Deep inside, she began to shiver in the convulsive, mind-blinding way she thought she had forgotten. And now remembered all too well.

Trying to think, she pushed a hand through the loosening hair at her temple.

‘I don’t know.’ She sounded stupefied.

Jack was brisk. ‘Well, make your mind up fast. He looks as if he knows he’s come to the right place.’

She stared across the cavernous room. Brendan was still scanning the waiters. He had not focused on the musicians yet. He had never taken her music seriously. None of them had. She winced, stabbed by another painful shaft of memory.

And at that moment Brendan caught sight of her. He ran down the stairs and began to push his way between the tables, brushing waiters out of the way. He never took his eyes off her.

Panic gripped Holly. She could not think straight. She could not move.

She heard Jack give an exasperated exclamation. He half-pulled, half-carried her off the dais and through the swing doors into the kitchen.

‘It’s all right, kid,’ he said under his breath. ‘Hang on to me. I’ll get you out.’

Gilbert was at the kitchen hatch. He made to bar their way.

‘You’ve got a difficult customer out there,’ Jack told him briefly. ‘Stall him.’

One concerned look at Holly’s dazed expression, and Gilbert fell back, nodding. The doors banged behind him as he bustled into the club.

Jack took the flute out of Holly’s limp grasp and swept her up the stairs and into the alley. It was full of empty boxes and vegetable matter. The smell shocked her out of her frozen daze.

‘My bag…’

‘Pick it up tomorrow.’

She thought: He sounds as if he has done this before.

It was a startling thought; alarming, in one way. But Holly was beyond alarm and, anyway, there was a steady, unshockable capability about Gorgeous Jack that made you rely on him. Normally it would have set her teeth on edge. Now she was just thankful. She leaned into him, trying to pull herself together.

There was a car at the end of the alley. Holly saw a light on its roof and stiffened.

‘Police…’ she said under her breath.

Jack looked down at her, his eyes suddenly sharp.

‘Taxi cab. I told Ramon to get one.’

He took her hand and ran her to the waiting car.

The Armour Disaster Recovery delegation was staying at a small hotel, immensely comfortable and almost impossible to find. Jack took her there without even asking her. Without asking, either, he booked a room for her and then took her into the small bar.

Holly huddled by the spring fire, her hands tight round the small strong coffee which was all she could be pushed into accepting.

Jack said, ‘For the last time—Holly who?’

She gave in. ‘Dent. Holly Dent.’

He nodded. To her surprise, there was no sign of triumph there. ‘I think you have to tell me about it.’

She swallowed. ‘My bag—’ she said again. She felt as if she had lost her identity along with her canvas shoulder bag and an old tee shirt.

Jack looked at Ramon. The Spaniard sighed.

‘I’ll go back to the club and get it. Anything else?’

‘My flute.’

‘I brought that with me. It’s behind the bar,’ said Jack.

‘Oh?’ She gave a wavering smile. ‘That’s a relief. I wouldn’t want Brendan to get his hands on it. He can be stupid sometimes.’ She rubbed her shoulder unconsciously, as if she felt the shadow grip of a heavy hand.

Jack and Ramon exchanged glances. A muscle worked in Jack’s jaw.

But all he said was, ‘OK. Your bag. That’s it?’

Holly shook her head helplessly. ‘The flute case. The clothes I wore to work. Um—I can’t think. Gilbert will know.’

Ramon nodded to Jack and went. Holly hardly seemed to notice.

Jack sat back in the tapestry chair and watched her carefully.

‘Why does this man frighten you so much?’ he said at last.

Holly jumped and came out of her unhappy reverie. She did not look at him. ‘It’s a long story.’

She was rubbing her shoulder again as if it hurt her. Jack watched. He had seen an unconscious movement like that before. He suspected he knew what it meant. Out of sight, his hands clenched.

But his voice was neutral, utterly uninvolved. ‘Has he some hold over you? Legally?’

What a minefield that question was, thought Holly wearily. She sipped her coffee and said at last, ‘Maybe.’

Jack was silent for an unnerving minute.

She lifted her chin. ‘What?’

‘I don’t think it is very clever of you to play games with me,’ he said softly. ‘I’m not likely to help you if you don’t tell me the truth. And at the moment I’d say I’m your best bet.’

Probably my only bet, thought Holly. If Brendan could track her down to the Club Thaïs so quickly, he could probably track her down anywhere she went. He must be making Donna throw money into the search.

Poor Donna! Not knowing her own father, she had clung to her stepfather. And then to find that he’d left his company to the blood daughter he had only just discovered! Donna had felt rejected, but Brendan was, quite simply, furious. And Donna, hurt, loving and blind, did what Brendan told her.

Holly shivered. Oh, yes, so much better to pack your heart in ice. And not let any man take you over.

‘So?’ prompted Jack.

Holly brought herself back to the present with an effort.

She selected quickly from the miserable complications of her personal history.

‘I don’t know whether he has any legal claim to be my guardian and that’s the honest truth.’

Jack preserved an unimpressed silence.

‘Look,’ she said, half-exasperated, half-desperate, ‘he is married to my stepsister. My parents died within a couple of years of each other—’ and what a continent of complications she skipped over there ‘—and I ended up living with them.’

It telescoped a bit but it was basically true.

‘That doesn’t explain why you’re afraid of him.’

Holly flinched.

‘Well?’

Her eyes fell. ‘We—er—didn’t agree on my future. So I left.’

‘What did you disagree about?’

That was the crux. Holly resolutely refused to admit the image of her father. She had an odd feeling that if she thought about him, Jack would know it. It was as if Jack were a mind-reader. Or could read her mind, at least.

She said woodenly, ‘I wanted to continue my education.’

Jack’s deep-set dark eyes bored into hers as if he were the judge and she were a criminal. Holly narrowed her own eyes and stared straight back at him defiantly.

‘All right,’ he said at last. He didn’t sound as if he believed her; just as if he was letting it go for the moment. ‘So how can he stop you? Money?’

She shook her head violently. ‘No. I’ve never taken any money from them. I don’t want any.’

She sounded as if the very idea filled her with horror, thought Jack. He stored the information away for future consideration.

‘So—how can he have any hold over you? If you really are twenty-two.’

Quite suddenly, Holly laughed. Sweet and true and startlingly youthful, her laugh rang round the little bar, waking up the drowsy barman with its genuine amusement. Jack was surprised and, for once, it showed.

‘You’re probably right,’ she said ruefully. ‘Only they live in Smallville, USA, and my father left a crazy will. I know I ought to have challenged it. But, frankly, I wasn’t ever going to convince a local court to see it my way.’

Jack raised his eyebrows. ‘Why not? I should point out that I’m from Smallville, USA myself,’ he said drily.

‘Then I shouldn’t need to explain,’ retorted Holly. ‘There isn’t a lawyer in the county who would take me as a client in a case against the family. They’re respected citizens.’ Full of irony, her eyes met his. ‘Which means big local employers. Pretty well the only employers.’

‘Ah,’ said Jack in immediate comprehension.

She sighed. ‘It’s understandable, I suppose. I was only seventeen and I’d lived in Lansing Mills for less than two years. Everyone had known Donna since before she was born. And Brendan since he married her. I suppose people thought they were just trying to take care of me. Stopping me doing silly things. All for my own good.’ For a moment she looked unbearably sad.

Jack knew that look. He had seen it too many times. It was the look of a prisoner resigned to the trap she was in. It always turned something over in his stomach, making him rage, making him want to make the prisoner rage.

Instead he said woodenly, ‘So you took the law into your own hands. You ran.’

The sad look dispelled. For a moment she looked naughty—and very young.

‘Yup.’

‘Why, exactly? Why then?’

She evaded that. ‘My daddy left a will saying that Donna was to look after me until I’m twenty-five unless I get married.’

All the bright naughtiness vanished. She looked as if she were tasting poison.

Jack said slowly, ‘And no one gets married at seventeen, right?’

She evaded that too. ‘They thought that meant I should stay at home, not go to college or travel or anything. Donna,’ she added, ‘never travelled.’

‘They were unkind to you?’

Holly stared into the fire.

‘They wouldn’t have thought so,’ she said at last, carefully.

Jack pondered in silence. ‘You were afraid of that man this afternoon,’ he said at last. ‘I saw it.’

Holly’s head reared up. Startled hazel eyes met his. They were unguarded for a moment and very, very wary.

And blazing.

‘You don’t trust me an inch,’ Jack said on a note of discovery. ‘Do you?’

Her lids fell, veiling the betraying expression. She gave a shrug.

‘Why should I?’

He made an exasperated noise. ‘I got you away from Brendan Sugrue. Twice.’

‘Yes, you did,’ she said coolly. ‘I ask myself why.’

There was a blank silence. ‘Not an inch,’ Jack repeated.

She shrugged again. ‘Why should I trust you?’

‘Because you don’t have many choices. And you need help.’

Her spine snapped vertical. ‘No, I don’t.’

He ignored that. ‘What made you run away from home?’

Their eyes met: hers alarmed, furious; his impassive. Hers were the first to fall.

She said flippantly, ‘I didn’t like having to be in by ten.’

A longer silence this time. She turned her head away but his eyes never left her profile.

Then Jack said very softly, ‘Why don’t I believe you?’

The barman interrupted. ‘Mr Armour. There is a phone call for you.’

Jack hesitated, not taking his eyes off her. Holly sat still under the raking inspection. But when he shrugged and went to the bar she sagged in the chair as if an interrogation light had been turned off.

Oh, boy, had she misjudged Jack Armour, she thought. Her mouth twisted in a wry smile. She did not often do that. She had learned to sum people up quickly. On the road, these last five years, her survival had depended on her getting it right.

Yet she had looked at Jack Armour and got him one hundred and eighty degrees wrong. She had seen all that overwhelming male confidence and dubbed him Gorgeous Jack. Oh, she was right about the confidence—those slanted, unreadable eyes; the arrogant handsome features; the air of contained power…

Sexy as hell, thought Holly dispassionately. She could manage dispassion now that he was at the bar with his back to her, talking hard into a telephone. Sexy as hell, but much, much more than that. He had known she was not telling him the whole truth. Most people did not. And no one, in her experience, had tried to make her spread out her secrets on a platter for inspection.

She had only just held out, too. In his own way Jack Armour was as determined as Brendan. In fact, he was almost as bad as Homer.

Holly caught herself. She gave a little superstitious shiver. No one was as bad as Homer, she reminded herself soberly. No one. That was why she had run in the first place. And why she was going to keep on running until she was twenty-five and none of Brendan’s clever lawyers could find a way to pull her back.

Hang on to that, she told herself. Two and a half more years to freedom. You’ve come this far. You can do the rest.

CHAPTER THREE

JACK finished his phone call and came back to her.

‘I’ve got to work,’ he told her briefly.

Holly thought, Work! That’s all he’s interested in. I’m getting in the way of it.

She nodded, not looking at him. ‘I’ll wait for your friend to bring my things and then I’ll go.’

Inexplicably, that did not please Jack. ‘It will be late. And what if that guy has found out where you live?’

Holly could not help herself. She shuddered at the thought. But giving way to panic was no solution. She had learned that well over the last five years.

So she tilted her chin and said flippantly, ‘I won’t open the door.’

In spite of the fact that he should be working, Jack did not go. He tapped his foot impatiently. But he did not move from the spot.

‘You could stay here.’

‘No, I couldn’t.’

‘Why not? I’ve reserved a room for you.’

‘Because I can’t afford it,’ Holly said patiently.

That tapping foot was mesmerising. He seemed full of pent-up energy. What would it be like if he caught her up in it? What would it be like if he was not involved with work and on the point of leaving? What if he touched—?

Holly caught her thoughts just as they were about to run away with her.

‘I can’t afford it,’ she said again, not entirely referring to the room rate.

‘I can.’

Holly stiffened. Her years on the road had taught her that offers of free bed and board seldom came without strings.