Flirting With Danger

‘Good advice,’ Evan put in quietly. ‘Did that help?’

‘I wish I could say it had; if anything, it made matters worse. It was as if he knew what I’d done and he changed his routine as a result. That was when the phone calls started.’

Evan muttered something violent and obscene in a savage undertone, drawing her pansy-dark eyes to his face. Seeing the cold fury etched around his nose and mouth, she hesitated, almost fearful of continuing. Immediately he made himself relax, wiping the harsh lines from his face with a speed that made her blink.

‘Go on,’ he encouraged with an unexpected softness, warm fingers tightening slightly on hers.

‘He started ringing me at my flat—sometimes in the evening, just after I’d got home from work, sometimes in the middle of the night.’

‘Did you recognise the voice?’ The question came sharply.

‘No—but I think he’d done something to disguise itput a handkerchief over the mouthpiece or something— and he always whispered, so that distorted it too. He seemed to be getting more obsessed—more angry. There was one time when he’d seen me on the show with another presenter. He thought I’d been flirting—“unfaithful” he called it! He said I was a two-timing bitch and if I didn’t change my ways he would punish me—’

Her breath caught in her throat, threatening to choke her, and she had to pause, struggling to control the panic that rose up in her. Evan waited silently, seeming to sense intuitively that to speak would be to destroy her composure completely, but those strong, warm fingers still intertwined with hers tightened in an eloquent communication of sympathy.

‘I’d had an answering machine installed, but I found that I was just standing by it, waiting to hear his voice, and he always seemed to know when I was there. He said that he’d make sure I never had a relationship with anyone else—he’d kill anyone I dated—and—and if necessary he’d kill me.’

Her voice broke again, her eyes flooding with tears, but it was as if Evan was passing his strength on to her through his touch on her hands, and in a moment she was able to continue.

‘The police did what they could. They tried to trace the calls, but they were all from payphones scattered all over London. They even offered to escort me to and from work, but I couldn’t take that—it was like being a prisoner—and I couldn’t rest in my flat, never knowing when the phone might ring again, whether it would be him…It all came to a head last week when I was out shopping. I’d just gone to the supermarket to get some groceries, but suddenly I heard someone running behind me.’

Once more she shuddered, reliving the fear she had felt in that moment.

‘It was only a man running for a bus, but it panicked me. I realised that he could be watching me all the timefollowing me. I just snapped. I came straight here, didn’t even go home to get any clothes. I was afraid he might be there waiting for me.’

Abruptly Catherine became aware of the fact that she was still holding onto Evan’s hands, her fingers clenched on his, tightening in response to her inner distress, and with a muffled exclamation she released them sharply, her confusion growing as she saw the red marks on his skin, the indentations where her nails had dug into his palms.

‘Oh, I’m sorry!’ She couldn’t believe her own thoughtlessness.

Evan barely spared his hands the briefest of glances, his shrug dismissing both the damage she had done and her apology.

‘And what’s happened since you came here? Have things been easier?’

‘Oh, yes. Only one person knows where I am and that’s my agent. I had to tell her, because she’s a special friend as well as working with me. And I rang work and told them I was ill—exhaustion due to stress. Well, it’s near enough to the truth. Luckily, we’ve just finished filming the last of the current series, so I’m not leaving anyone in the lurch—and I was due two months’ leave anyway. They probably realise something’s up; my mind hasn’t exactly been on my job lately.’

‘But what will happen when your leave is up? You can’t hide away here for ever.’

‘I know. I have to admit that I haven’t really thought beyond that. I suppose I’m just praying that something will be resolved before I have to go back—that the police track him down, or he loses interest in tormenting me and gives up. I just know I can’t bear the thought of him being out there—watching.’

‘Are you sure you’re not letting him win by giving in to him in this way—letting him ruin your life?’

‘Oh, you would say that! You’re a man!’ Catherine couldn’t believe she had actually trusted this man, poured her heart out to him, only to get this typical masculine response. ‘You don’t know what it’s like to live in fear-not to feel secure in your own home—’

‘It was a question that had to be asked.’

‘Of course you’d see it that way.’ Unable to bear that intent sea-coloured gaze any longer, she got to her feet in a restless, disturbed movement. ‘I don’t know why I ever told you.’

If she had expected that confiding in him would bring a sense of relief, then she had been desperately wrong. Instead, she felt even more vulnerable than before, frightened by the way she had let a complete stranger into the carefully restricted, protective world that had enclosed her safely until now.

‘You obviously can’t or won’t help me.’

‘Did I say that?’

It was his very stillness that shook her, making her stop dead in the middle of the room. Evan hadn’t moved an inch; he still sat in his chair, his hands lying loosely on its arms, his hard-boned face turned towards her. He was so big that even sitting down he didn’t have to tilt his head much to look up at her.

‘Don’t put words into my mouth, Catherine.’ The ominous quietness of his tone was somehow more disturbing than if he had shouted, and it dried Catherine’s mouth so that she had to swallow hard.

‘I—’ she began, not really knowing what she was going to say, but at that moment the shrill of the telephone slashed through her words. Immediately she froze, her eyes, dark with fear, going to her father.

‘Dad—’

But Evan had already reacted. Getting up and out of his chair in one swift, lithe movement, he was in the hall and had snatched up the receiver before Catherine had even registered the action.

‘Yes?’ he snapped. ‘Who do you want to speak to? Who shall I say? If you’d just hold the line a minute, please.’

‘Please’, Catherine noted, relief breaking over her like a fierce wave, so that she had to cling to a nearby chair for support. Obviously not anyone she should fear, then. The release from the tension that held her prisoner every day was so intense that she felt tears prick at her eyes.

‘Catherine?’ Evan had his finger on the secrecy button of the phone. ‘Do you want to speak to someone called Ellie?’

‘Oh, yes.’ The strength returned to her legs at the sound of the familiar name. ‘It’s my agent,’ she explained, taking the telephone from his hand, expecting that he would move away, at least to a discreet distance. But instead he lingered, leaning back against the wall, his arms folded. ‘Ellie—is that you?’ She forced herself to ignore him.

‘None other,’ her friend’s voice said clearly on the other end of the line, and Catherine smiled to herself, picturing the older woman’s smiling face, her once bright red hair, now fading to a sort of pepper-and-salt effect. ‘Though I’m not sure I dare speak to you after that cross-examination. Just who is the pit bull, and is he as terrifying as he sounds?’

‘The—? Oh—yes.’

As light dawned as to just what Ellie was talking about, Catherine couldn’t resist a swift, laughing glance across at where Evan stood, still very much on the alert.

‘Yes, he is,’ she managed, wondering if he had heard himself described as a guard dog.

‘All ripping teeth and vicious snarl?’

‘Hardly!’ This time her amused eyes met those watchful turquoise ones. ‘This is a private phone call, Evan,’ she added with a pointed glance at the door into the lounge.

She might have spared herself the effort. Evan simply ignored her reaction, returning her look with disturbing lack of reaction, all emotion blanked out as if he hadn’t heard a word, and settled himself more firmly against the wall.

‘Evan, eh?’ Ellie had heard her aside. ‘So who might he be? Anyone interesting?’

‘Not at all.’ Furious at Evan’s deliberate rudeness, Catherine no longer cared what he heard, and she deliberately turned her back on him. ‘He’s just some security man who works for my father.’

‘And now for you, is that it? Are you finally seeing sense and hiring yourself a bodyguard? About time, too. So tell me—’ a hint of wicked humour lit Ellie’s voice ‘—what’s he like? I mean, we’ve all seen the film…’

‘Forget it, Ellie!’ The knowledge that Evan was still there, a silent observer of her every move, provoked some imp of mischief in her to add, ‘This guy’s no Kevin Costner—you were closer with the pit bull terrier.’

‘All brawn and no brain, huh?’ Ellie didn’t sound too disappointed. ‘Oh, well, that type’s good for other things, I suppose. I mean, if you can’t enjoy his conversation, at least you can enjoy something else…’

‘Ellie!’ As her friend’s salacious laugh made it plain exactly what she meant, Catherine struggled to resist the urge to look over her shoulder and see how Evan had taken that comment. ‘No one would believe you were a respectable, mature married lady. Anyway, it’s not like that.’

‘Not your type?’

‘Definitely not.’ The sudden prick of her conscience, reminding her of the sensual awareness she had felt while alone with Evan in the kitchen and at other points of the evening, gave Catherine’s tone an unwarranted decisiveness. ‘Besides, I’m definitely off men at the moment, after all that’s happened.’

‘Of course you are, love.’ Ellie’s tone had sobered. ‘It must be hell to feel so hunted. That’s why I rang, to find out how things are on that front. Any news?’

‘If you mean do the police have any leads, then the answer’s no. And I daren’t go back to my flat—I reckon I’ll- Hey!’

She broke off on a cry that was a mixture of nervous reaction and outraged fury as there was a sudden movement from behind her and Evan’s strong finger came down hard on the disconnect button, cutting her off abruptly.

‘What the hell did you do that for?’ Blue eyes blazing, she swung round to face him. ‘Just what do you think you were doing?’

‘Stopping you from giving too much away,’ was the imperturbable reply.

‘But Ellie’s my friend, for God’s sake! She wouldn’t—’

‘No? Can you be sure of that?’

‘Of course I can. I’ve known her almost all my life; she was like a mother to me when mine walked out. She wouldn’t—you can’t think that!’

‘All I know is that you were about to tell her exactly what your plans are, and as far as I’m concerned the fewer people who know, the better. You did ask me to help,’ he pointed out, with an infuriatingly exaggerated reasonableness that set Catherine’s teeth on edge.

‘But not in this arrogant manner!’ Ruthlessly Catherine ignored the memory of her own voice pleading, ‘Help me,’ a short time before. ‘Ellie is my friend!’

‘In that case she’ll understand. And if nothing else, your friend has a very loud mouth. If you want my opinion.’

‘I don’t think I do!’

Catherine slammed the phone back down onto its rest and, turning on her heel, stalked back into the lounge, her head high. Right now, she felt that having to put up with Evan Lindsay’s high-handed behaviour was too high a price to pay even for protection from the menace of the stalker. In a moment of weakness she had turned to him, but that didn’t mean she wanted him to move in and take over her life!

‘I don’t want your opinion, or your help—or anything!’

‘But, Cathy—’ Her father’s concerned face showed his worried response to her outburst. ‘What will you do next week?’

‘Precisely what happens then?’ Evan asked from the doorway.

‘I have to go to Japan.’ Lloyd ignored his daughter’s furious glare, the message not to answer that she was trying to telegraph with her eyes. ‘I’ll be away for nearly a month. I don’t want to leave Cathy on her own.’

‘I can cope—’

‘Oh, sure.’ Evan’s tone was rich with sardonic disbelief. ‘You can cope the way you were doing before tonight—jumping at your own shadow, frightened by the least sound, imprisoned in—’

‘I’ll be fine!’

She would be, just to spite him. Give this man an inch and he took five hundred miles. She didn’t want him trampling all over her life with his great size elevens, putting his nose in where it wasn’t wanted, cutting her off from her friends.

‘I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want anything—’

Once more she was silenced by the sound of the telephone. Ellie, she thought, ringing back to find out just what had happened before. She actually had her hand on the receiver when it was wrenched away from her.

‘Yes?’ Even curter than before, if that was possible.

‘How dare you? It’s only Ellie—’

She was reaching out to snatch the phone back when she saw his expression change, the hardening of those strongly carved features, the cold light that came into his eyes, and a sensation like the shiver of icy water slid slowly down her spine.

‘There’s no one called Honey here.’

Honey. It was all she could do to suppress a moan of terror. The sound of the name had the force of a blow to her head, filling her mouth with a taste that was bitter as acid.

Honey. That was his name for her—the name he had written at the beginning of each letter, and, more recently, the way he always started each hateful, horrible phone call. She could hear it now inside her head, that terrible, terrifying whisper—’Hello, Honey.’

Every trace of colour drained form her cheeks, leaving them white and ashen, and she took a shaky step backwards.

At once Evan’s gaze went to her face, aquamarine eyes narrowing swiftly as he took in her reaction. His response was immediate, no questions needing to be asked.

‘There’s no Honey here, and there never will be again—not for you. Do you understand that? No, you can listen! You’re not dealing with Honey now; you’re dealing with me. No, it doesn’t matter who the hell I am. All you need to know is that I’m here, and I’m in charge, and I don’t take too kindly to—’

He broke off sharply, listening intently to whatever the person on the other end of the line was saying. To Catherine’s shock and consternation his response was laughter, but laughter that was so terrifyingly hard and humourless that it worried her almost as much as the knowledge that her tormentor had tracked her down once more.

‘Do that.’ The brutal satisfaction in Evan’s tone made Catherine’s stomach clench painfully. ‘And I’ll derive a great deal of pleasure from taking you apart, limb by limb. What? Oh, no, pal, I won’t be going anywhere. I’m staying right here, and I don’t intend to leave until you’re safely locked away. So if you want to get to your Honey, you’ll have to come through me first!’

Then, as Catherine watched with the sort of transfixed fascination that a rabbit displayed when confronted by a predatory snake, he grinned suddenly, with grim triumph, and let the phone drop onto the table with a clatter that to her overwrought nerves seemed as loud as thunder overhead.

‘He’s gone,’ he said, that dark satisfaction still lingering in his words. ‘He’s a man of limited vocabulary, isn’t he, your Joe?’

And if she had any doubts as to who the caller had been then that drove them away. Honey was what he called her; Joe was his name for himself. Joe as in Joe Public—ordinary Joe. She had no doubt that it was not his real name.

‘Oh, God!’ Her hand went to her mouth, her eyes deep pools of fear above her concealing fingers. ‘What am I going to do?’

‘Do?’ To her consternation, Evan smiled with sudden, disturbing gentleness. ‘You don’t have to do anything.’

‘But—’

‘But nothing. Didn’t you hear what I said? I’ll handle things from here on in. I’m in charge now.’

If it was meant to reassure, then his harsh declaration didn’t have the desired effect. In Catherine’s mind there was not all that much to choose between Evan Lindsay and the stalker who was hounding her. And she couldn’t help wondering just what sort of a force she had unleashed by getting this man involved in her situation— in her life.

CHAPTER THREE

CATHERINE woke the next morning to a terrible sense of foreboding, and a feeling of having burned her boats, aggravating rather than improving her situation—which was all the more illogical when she considered that all she had actually done was enlist someone to help her. She should have felt more relaxed, a burden shared was a burden halved, they said, but that was very far from the case.

‘What have we done, Dad?’ she asked when, with her face pale after a disturbed night, she joined her father at the breakfast table. ‘Is Evan really the man we want?’

‘Of course he is, darling.’ Lloyd lifted puzzled eyes from his newspaper. ‘He’s a security expert—one of the top men in his field.’

‘Yes, but he’s so—tough.’

Recalling Evan’s behaviour on the previous night, Catherine couldn’t suppress a faint shudder at the thought of the hard-faced determination with which he had ignored her request for privacy, the controlled force behind his action as he’d cut off the phone call from Ellie, the ruthless, cold ferocity that had been in his face and his voice when he had spoken to Joe.

‘Don’t you think we need someone tough? Look, Cathy, this stalker is ruining your life, making each day a misery. You have to be protected from that, and to my mind it’s time he got some of his own medicine—time we started fighting fire with fire.’

‘But that’s just what I’m afraid of. Isn’t fighting fire with fire more likely to end up causing a raging inferno rather than actually extinguishing anything? After all, what do we know about this Evan Lindsay, other than that he’s some sort of security man?’

‘Personally, nothing at all. But he’s more than just a security man. As I said, he’s an expert, and the company he set up has won a worldwide reputation and respect. He doesn’t do this for the money, Cathy—he doesn’t need to.’

‘But I thought—’ And she had referred to him as just a security man!

‘That he was one of the workmen? Not Evan; he’s the big boss. He could leave everything to the men he employs, but that’s not his way. After all, he didn’t have to check those things through with me last night—though I must say that that turned out for the best.’

So, did this new knowledge change her perception of Evan? Catherine wondered. It certainly went a long way towards explaining the aura of arrogant power and command that seemed to permeate every bone in his body. But money wasn’t everything. He was still Evan Lindsay, who, apart from that arrogance and a total ruthlessness that had shown through the polite social veneer, was very much an unknown quantity.

‘After all, if he hadn’t suggested that he came back here with me then he wouldn’t have been around when that phone call—’

‘Evan suggested—but I thought he said that you invited him here.’

‘You must have heard him wrong, darling. It was all his idea.’

The sound of a car door slamming in the drive outside brought Lloyd to his feet in a rush, twitching aside a bit of the curtain to peer through the crack. Catherine watched tensely, her fingers tightening on the handle of her cup.

‘It’s all right—it’s Evan. Oh, come on, poppet—get rid of that glum face. He’s on our side, remember.’

Which was supposed to make her feel a lot better, Catherine reflected worriedly as her father left the room in order to let Evan in at the front door, but somehow it had exactly the opposite effect. She couldn’t quite put her finger on what was wrong. She knew she needed help—she had even, in a moment of weakness, turned to Evan and begged him to look after her—but that didn’t mean that she was happy about him taking over her life in the way he had done last night.

‘I’m in charge now,’ he had said, and had proceeded to demonstrate precisely how strongly he meant that, moving into action with a speed and force that had made her feel as if she had been hit by a whirlwind. He had checked every aspect of the house and gardens with a thoroughness that even she had privately thought excessive, and issued a stream of instructions to herself and her father before he had finally departed, promising to be round as soon as possible the next day.

‘But not this early!’ Catherine said aloud, belatedly becoming aware of the fact that, with no appointments planned for the day ahead, she had come straight down to breakfast in her nightclothes, pausing only to pull on a white, short-sleeved broderie anglaise robe over the matching baby-doll-length nightdress. As a result, she was hardly suitably dressed to receive an unknown man as a visitor, and she certainly didn’t want him getting the wrong impression.

Because that was where the problem lay. After all, Evan Lindsay was a stranger. He was every bit as unknown to her as the hateful tormentor who called himself Joe, and under normal circumstances there was no way she would have considered giving him a free rein in running her life.

‘Come along in, Evan. I’m sure you could do with a cup of coffee.’

Her father clearly shared none of her doubts—but then why should he? she asked herself with a touch of asperity. As she had told Evan last night, no man—not even her beloved father—could understand fully how it felt to be persecuted in this way, to look at every man who passed and wonder, Is that him?

‘It’s Evan, darling,’ Lloyd announced—quite unnecessarily as the younger man had preceded him into the room, seeming to fill it with his size and strength.

‘Obviously,’ Catherine muttered, embarrassment at her state of undress making her voice waspish. She hadn’t even combed her hair, she now realised as that cool sea-green gaze swept over her in a swift, assessing survey, and its usual sleek elegance was roughly tousled, falling in pale, disordered waves around a face that was shadowed from lack of sleep.

‘You’re not dressed!’ he said, not even bothering with a greeting, and she bridled at the sharpness of his tone.

‘And good morning to you too!’ she retorted, her earlier embarrassment evaporating in the heat of her flaring irritation.

Had she really been worried that Evan might read something she didn’t mean into her state of undress? She couldn’t have been more wrong. The cold fire of the look that had seared over her had held nothing sexual, or even anything that could be termed a response to her appearance. Instead, his eyes had blazed with an icy contempt that made her grit her teeth in fury.

‘No, I’m not dressed—but then we didn’t expect you to appear on our doorstep at the crack of dawn!’

She knew she sounded shrewish, but it was impossible to impose any degree of control on her voice because the anger that she felt had now combined with a sudden, unexpected sensual reaction that exploded in her mind, making her thoughts reel as she took in Evan’s appearance properly for the first time. Gone was the tailored suit of the day before, and in its place was a black T-shirt and black jeans that clung to the powerful lines of his body in a way that made her mouth dry simply to see it.

This was not the businessman of the day before—the man whose restrained, formal clothing seemed to belie the force of the body beneath it, whose sleekly conservative outfit was very much at odds with the powerful, primitively potent masculinity he possessed. This man had a lethally attractive, devastatingly sexual impact that was like a blow straight to her stomach.

‘I did say first thing.’ Evan turned a pointed glance on the clock on the mantelpiece—a clock which showed the time as being only just past eight. ‘I’ve been up for almost two hours.’