Pale Orchid

‘How—how dare you?’ she got out, when her breathing had steadied, and she saw the wary gleam that entered his eyes at her words.

‘How dare I?’ he asked, echoing her question. ‘What did you expect? An apology?’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t feel I have anything to apologise for.’

Laura blinked. ‘What are you talking about?’

Jason expelled his breath heavily. ‘Laura, let’s stop playing these games, shall we? You know why you’re here, and I know why you’re here. Okay—maybe I did precipitate matters a little, but you can’t deny you wanted it, just as much as I did.’

Laura gulped. ‘There’s some mistake …’

‘Is there?’

‘Yes.’ Her tongue circled her lips with increasing rapidity. ‘I … I don’t know what—kind of an advantage you think Pamela’s situation gives you, but—but so far as I am concerned …’

‘Wait a minute!’ Jason’s harsh voice broke into her stammered outburst, and she broke off at once, staring at him with troubled eyes. ‘Run that by me again,’ he said grimly. ‘Who is Pamela?’

‘You know who Pamela is,’ she exclaimed. ‘Pamela Huyton. My sister Pamela. Don’t pretend you don’t know about her and Mike!’

Jason fell back a step, still regarding her with distinct incredulity. ‘Your sister Pamela?’ he repeated blankly. ‘What the hell would I know about your sister, for Christ’s sake? And Mike? Mike who?’

‘Mike Kazantis!’ declared Laura quickly, trembling a little as she struggled to take the initiative. ‘You know who Mike Kazantis is, don’t you? Or are you going to deny all knowledge of his identity, too?’

Jason’s mouth thinned. ‘Are you trying to tell me that your sister is in some way involved with Mike Kazantis?’ he inquired tautly, and Laura nodded.

‘But you know,’ she said bitterly. ‘You know you do. Else why did you agree to see me? Unless you thought you could gloat over our misfortunes!’

Jason’s dark features lost all expression, and the lines that bracketed his nose and mouth looked that much more pronounced. ‘Is that the opinion you have of me?’ he said sombrely. ‘Well, well! You really thought I would do a thing like that?’

Laura was not a little confused by now, and in spite of her determination not to let him get the better of her, his quiet words had more than an element of truth in them. But why—if he hadn’t known about his brother-in-law—why had he said he knew why she was here?

‘Wheth—whether you knew or not, you do now,’ she said, forcing herself to go on. ‘Pamela is in the hospital in San Francisco. She took an overdose of sleeping tablets. She’ll live, but I don’t know for how long.’

Jason’s nostrils flared, and with a curious inclination of his head, he moved away towards the bar. Then, swinging round, he poured himself a second glass of scotch, tipping his head back to drink it before turning again to face her.

‘It … it’s barely eleven o’clock,’ Laura exclaimed abruptly, unable to prevent the words from spilling from her lips. ‘Is it wise to—to drink so much?’

Jason’s lips twisted. ‘Not wise at all,’ he conceded sardonically. ‘But that’s my problem, not yours. So. Go on about your sister. Why don’t you think she’ll survive?’

‘Because she’s pregnant!’ Laura pressed the palms of her hands together. ‘And Kazantis has deserted her.’

‘Deserted her?’ Jason considered the phrase. ‘What an old-fashioned expression! You mean, I suppose, that as soon as he discovered your sister had a problem, he took off.’

Laura blinked. ‘He doesn’t know about the baby.’ She frowned. ‘At least, I think he doesn’t.’ It was something she had not thought to ask her sister.

‘I’d guess he does,’ retorted Jason drily. ‘If indeed it is Mike’s.’

‘What do you mean?’ Laura was indignant. ‘Pamela wouldn’t lie about something like that!’

‘And she says it’s his?’

‘Yes.’ Laura drew a trembling breath. ‘Do you know where he is?’

‘Kazantis? Right now?’ Jason shrugged. ‘I’d say—Europe.’

‘Europe!’ Laura blanched. ‘Where in Europe?’

‘Italy.’ Jason dropped his empty glass back on to the bar. ‘At least that’s where Irene is, so …’

‘Italy!’ Laura’s shoulders sagged. ‘Oh, God! Why did he have to be there?’

‘I’m not saying I know it for a fact,’ said Jason evenly. ‘But, like I said, Irene is there right now, visiting my grandparents. And, knowing my father’s ideas about his women, I’d say he’d insist she didn’t go unescorted.’

Laura sank down weakly on to the banquette behind her. ‘For how long?’ she asked helplessly. ‘When will they be coming back?’

‘One month, maybe two. Who knows?’ Jason lifted his shoulders in a dismissing gesture. ‘I’m not my sister’s keeper.’

Laura shook her head, resting her elbows on her knees and cupping her cheeks in her hot palms. ‘Oh, God!’ she said again, feeling the emptiness of despair gripping her insides. ‘What am I going to do?’

It was only partly a rhetorical question, but the sudden breeze through the open door alerted her to the fact that Jason had left her. She was alone in the green and gold beauty of the saloon, alone with her unwilling memories, and with the terrifying realisation that there was nothing she could do.

She supposed she should leave. After all, Jason had done what he could. He had told her where Kazantis was, and he had not disbelieved her story. The anger he might have displayed at the news that Pamela had evidently been having an affair with his sister’s husband had not materialised, and she was simply wasting her time, and his, by pursuing the matter further. Somehow, she was going to have to find a way to tell Pamela that Mike Kazantis was married; that there was no point in her threatening to kill herself again, because he could not marry her. Not unless he got a divorce from Irene, of course, and if Jason was right and he was with his wife, in Italy, that did not seem at all likely. Besides which, Laura had met Irene, and she knew her to be a very beautiful young woman. It had been an outside chance at best that her marriage to Kazantis had floundered. Remembering what she knew of him, Laura doubted anything would prise him away from the wealth and influence that came from being Marco Montefiore’s son-in-law, and contacting Jason had been her last resort.

Which brought her back to that other puzzling development: why had Jason assumed he knew why she was in Hawaii? Was there something she had overlooked? Did he know something she didn’t know? And why had he kissed her? She had been prepared to face his anger, not his passion.

With trembling fingers, she traced the bare contours of her lips. She wore little in the way of cosmetics, just eyeliner and mascara, and occasionally a shiny lip-gloss to frame her mouth. But what little make-up she had been wearing had been erased by his caress, and she couldn’t deny the unwilling awareness that his touch still had the power to melt her bones. If only …

His reappearance with an enamelled beaker which he held out to her arrested her guilty thoughts. ‘Here,’ he said, pushing it into her hand. ‘You look as though you could use it.’

‘What is it?’ she asked foolishly, while the aromatic odour of ground beans floated to her nostrils, and Jason’s mouth pulled down.

‘Just coffee,’ he replied drily, taking off his jacket and pulling off his tie. ‘Laced with heroin, of course!’ He grimaced. ‘Drink it, for God’s sake! I’m not reduced to drugging my women yet!’

Laura obediently sipped the fragrant beverage, recovering a little of her composure in the time it took her to drink it. Jason, she noticed, tossed his jacket and tie aside and flung himself on to the wide velvet cushions at the broad forward end of the cabin, crossing his legs as he had done before and staring broodingly out on to the sunlit dock.

‘So, tell me what happened,’ he said at length, when he had given her time to compose herself. ‘How did your sister meet Kazantis?’

‘I don’t know.’ Laura caught her lower lip between her teeth before continuing: ‘She works—worked—in Sausalito, but she has an apartment in San Francisco.’

‘Since when?’

‘Oh eighteen months, I suppose. She qualified as a physiotherapist in London, but she wanted to travel. I tried to dissuade her from coming to the United States, but …’

‘… she wouldn’t listen?’

‘Right.’ Laura looked down into her cup. ‘She always seemed so much younger than me. It’s only two years, I know, but—well, I’ve always felt much older.’

‘And you didn’t want her to venture out into the bold bad world!’ remarked Jason wryly, running his hand inside the opened neckline of his shirt and in so doing loosening several more buttons. ‘So—she met Kazantis. Why didn’t you warn her?’

‘Warn her?’ Laura looked across the cabin at him, uncomfortably aware of the sensuality of his exploring hand. The skin of his chest exposed by his careless movements was as brown and smooth as she remembered, his nipples taut, an arrowing of fine hair only lightly roughening his flesh. ‘I didn’t know.’

‘She didn’t write to you?’

‘Well, yes. Yes, of course, she wrote.’ Laura dragged her eyes away, and tried to keep her mind on what she was saying. ‘She just didn’t mention her relationship with Mike Kazantis, that’s all. And … and after all, she wouldn’t know who he was.’

‘Who he was?’

‘Yes.’ Laura shifted a little restlessly. ‘Your brother-in-law; Irene’s husband! I … she … we never discussed your relations.’

Jason regarded her intently. ‘But she knew of me? She knew we were living together, didn’t she?’

Laura moistened her lips. ‘She knew we were … close, yes.’

‘But did she know we were living together?’ persisted Jason insistently, and Laura wondered if he already knew the answer.

‘It’s not important,’ she said, shaking her head, but he did not agree.

‘Perhaps, if you’d been more honest with her, she would have felt more able to confide in you,’ he commented brusquely, and Laura met his relentless gaze with hastily-summoned indignation.

‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’ she exclaimed, using anger as a means to avoid his questioning, and he shrugged.

‘I’m saying you were afraid to tell your sister the truth. Why should you be surprised if she feels likewise?’

Laura sniffed, and buried her nose in the beaker. ‘That’s a simplistic way of looking at things,’ she said, in a muffled voice.

‘I’m a simplistic person,’ he responded carelessly, and she thought how ironic it was that he should say a thing like that.

‘You’re the least simplistic person I know,’ she retorted childishly. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, does it matter what I did or didn’t tell her? Pamela’s pregnant, right? And if I hadn’t arrived when I did, she would have been dead!’

Jason considered her for a few nerve-racking moments, then he said quietly: ‘Exactly why did you arrive in California?’

‘Pamela ‘phoned me.’ Laura cradled the beaker between her palms and gazed into space. ‘I’d just got back from Aix …’

‘The South of France, I know.’

‘… and when she rang …’ Laura paused briefly, as the import of what he had said reminded her of something he had said earlier— ‘when she rang, I sensed something was wrong.’

‘Just sensed?’

‘No. No.’ Laura spread a helpless hand. ‘Pamela sounded strange—desperate! I don’t know why, but I knew she had to have rung for a purpose.’

‘A cry for help?’ suggested Jason drily, and Laura looked at him sharply.

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He tilted his head back against the dark green velvet and studied her through narrowed eyes. ‘But, objectively, I’d say that perhaps your sister wasn’t as desperate to kill herself as you might think. I mean, she did rig herself a lifeline before jumping over the side, metaphorically speaking, of course.’

Laura sat up straighter. ‘That’s a rotten thing to suggest!’

‘It’s something for you to think about,’ retorted Jason flatly. ‘Laura, I hear of people over-dosing every day. Most of them do a better job of it than your sister appears to have done.’

‘You … you swine!’

Laura set down the cup and got unsteadily to her feet, but before she could make it to the door, Jason was there before her. ‘The simplistic view, remember?’ he said, his back against the panels successfully blocking her exit. ‘Laura, I’m not saying Pamela did this to gain attention, but it has been known. Remember that.’

‘Will you get out of my way?’

Laura’s hands clenched at her sides as she waited for him to move, but he didn’t. ‘Eventually,’ he averred, his tawny eyes resolute between the dark fringe of his lashes. ‘Go sit down. We haven’t finished our conversation.’

‘I have.’

‘Do you want me to use force?’ he inquired lazily, his eyes moving down over her high small breasts thrusting against the thin material of her shirt, to the slender curve of her hips outlined by the tie-waisted cotton pants, and she immediately abandoned her mission.

‘I don’t know what else we can possibly have to say to one another,’ she exclaimed, moving back into the middle of the floor and wrapping her arms about herself, as if for protection. ‘You’ve made your position very clear. Why won’t you let me go?’

Jason straightened away from the door, but he didn’t shift his stance. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘Now that your attempt to find your sister’s lover and speak with him has failed, what are you going to tell Pamela?’

‘I don’t know.’ Laura shook her head a trifle wearily. ‘I’ll think of something. If I can persuade her to come back to London with me …’

‘And if you can’t?’

‘Oh, please!’ Laura turned away from him, gazing out through the window, across the blue waters of the yacht basin. ‘Why should you care? Our lives mean nothing to you!’

‘Yours does,’ he retorted crisply, and she turned her head and gazed at him over her shoulder as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me,’ he responded tersely, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Why else do you suppose I’ve had your movements monitored, ever since you ran out on me? I know all about your life in London, and that creep, Pierce Carver, you’ve been living with for the past two and a half years.’

Laura half turned, her lips parting incredulously. ‘I—I am not living with Pierce,’ she protested, indignation vying with disbelief. ‘I work with him, yes, but that’s all. Your investigator was wrong if he told you there was anything between us.’

‘You live at his house!’

‘I have a room there. I also have a flat of my own,’ retorted Laura hotly, and then anger quickly enveloped her. ‘But that’s my business. I don’t have to explain myself to you! It’s nothing to do with you! I said it before and I’ll say it again: how dare you?’

Jason regarded her beneath lowered brows. ‘Why didn’t he come with you to San Francisco?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Doesn’t he care about your sister?’

‘Why should he?’ Laura was trembling with resentment. ‘Oh! I can’t believe this, I really can’t! You’ve actually been having me followed ever since I left Hawaii?’

Jason shrugged, making no immediate response. Then he said flatly, ‘I want you back, Laura. But you should know that. I didn’t want you to leave. That was why I thought you’d come back to Hawaii. I—foolishly, I now realise—imagined you had had second thoughts; that the feelings you used to say you had for me had overwhelmed your much vaunted scruples. I was wrong. I admit it. But that doesn’t alter the situation. I still want you—for the present, at least. Seeing you again has only confirmed that belief. And I’m prepared to go to practically any lengths to get you—even if it means involving your sister!’

CHAPTER THREE

LAURA FELT as if someone had just delivered a gasping blow to her midriff. Her throat felt tight, and her breathing was suspended, the stunning reality of what Jason had said resounding in her head like the clanging of a bell.

‘You’re—not—serious!’

‘But, I am.’ Jason’s expression was faintly self-derisive now. ‘How could you doubt it? No one—but no one—walks out on Jason Montifore!’

‘So that’s it!’ Laura caught her breath. ‘Your pride was hurt!’ she accused him bitterly, the shuddering intensity of his announcement tempered now by his mocking confession.

Jason inclined his head. ‘If it pleases you to think so,’ he remarked carelessly. ‘I won’t insult your intelligence by protesting I’m in love with you.’

‘No. Don’t.’ Laura hunched her shoulders with sudden loathing. For a moment, for a brief space of time, she had half believed there must be some feeling behind his impassive pronouncement. But his taunting expression dispelled that assumption, and made a mockery of her sympathetic response.

‘Nevertheless, I am prepared to do what I can to help you, providing you are equally prepared to do the same.’

Laura swallowed disbelievingly. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Threatening you? No. How could you think it?’ he responded, in that same half mocking tone. ‘I’m offering you a way out, an alternative your sister may find more appealing than a depressing plane ride back to London.’

Laura shifted uneasily. ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘You will.’ Jason shrugged. ‘Stay and have lunch with me, and I’ll explain.’

Laura moved her head from side to side, but it was a futile gesture. ‘I don’t see what you can say to appease Pamela’s state of mind,’ she insisted. ‘She feels desperate and afraid …’

‘Because she’s alone and pregnant, and she has no future means of support,’ said Jason levelly. ‘Wouldn’t you say that covered her immediate situation? That and her professed desire to see Kazantis again?’

‘Well, yes …’

‘Good.’ Jason’s arms fell to his sides and he gestured politely towards the cushioned seat behind her. ‘So. Sit down. I’ll go tell Alec we’ll eat in fifteen minutes. You do like lobster, don’t you?’ His dark brows arched, and a faintly humorous gleam entered his eyes. ‘Oh, yes, of course you do. How could I forget?’

As he pulled open the door behind him and went to inform the yacht’s captain of his intentions, Laura curled one leg beneath her and sank down unhappily on to the soft banquette. It seemed he had all the answers, she thought bitterly, her fingers tugging convulsively at the fringe of braided silk that edged the cushions. And if he wasn’t threatening her exactly, he was certainly using Pamela’s condition to get what he wanted.

But why her? she brooded helplessly. Why was he prepared to go to such lengths to get her back? Was it only because she had walked out on him? Was he really so vain, that he couldn’t bear the implications of her action? It was not an adjective she would have associated with him once, but how well had she really known him, after all? Once, she would have said she knew everything about him—his likes, his dislikes; his fairness, and his humour; the things that made him laugh, and the things that aroused his anger; his integrity in business, and his probity in justice. The men who worked for him and with him, respected him as well as liked him, and until experience had taught her differently, she had never had cause to doubt him.

Of course, she had been in love with him then, madly and irresistibly in love with a man she had never dreamed might be attracted to her. When she first went to work for him, as a temporary replacement for his own secretary, the other girls at the agency had teased her about his lean good looks, and the fact that he was one of the wealthiest men on the island. Naturally they, like her, had never imagined he would take any interest in a long-legged English girl, whose only claim to beauty was the silvery fair hair that fell almost to her waist. The rest of her features were totally ordinary, she knew: blue eyes, that watered when the sun was too strong, a straight nose that was not the least bit retroussé, and a wide mouth, whose lower lip was just the tiniest bit fuller. She discounted the length of her lashes, whose tips required mascara to be seen, and the slender curves of her figure. In her experience, men preferred smaller women, with fuller breasts, women who nestled into the curve of their arm instead of meeting them on eye-level terms.

Not that she had ever been able to say that of Jason. His height, and the lithe muscularity of his body, had always made her aware of her own femininity, and he had always maintained he preferred taller women. There had been plenty of them, goodness knows. Before she had figured in his scheme of things, he had had other mistresses, and there were several would-be supplicants all willing to inform Laura of how precarious her position was. Not to mention his ex-wife, Regina, and their daughter, Lucia …

She shook her head, banishing the unwilling memories of the emotions he had aroused. It was ridiculous, she told herself desperately. How could she even consider his demands? She couldn’t stay in Hawaii. She couldn’t abandon Pierce in the middle of the new book. Her life was in England now. Her job was in England. She had to make him understand she could not abdicate her responsibilities.

Three years ago, things had been different. Pamela had been training at a good teaching hospital in London, and sharing a flat with several other nurses. When Laura had been given the opportunity to spend six months in the Honolulu branch of the international secretarial agency in Bond Street, where she had worked at that time, it had seemed a marvellous break. It had been no wrench to give up her bedsitter, put the few belongings she was not taking with her into storage, and fly off to Hawaii. But not now. Now, she had her own flat, in Highgate. She had put down roots, and she was no longer the carefree twenty-two-year-old she had been when Jason first met her. Besides which, she didn’t want to lose her job with Pierce. She liked working for him. The job was interesting, and it had given her a chance to travel, as well as providing a very generous salary. She couldn’t give that up, not at the whim of a man who she despised. She should not have come here, she acknowledged belatedly. She should not have allowed Pamela’s desperate plight to drive her into a situation she obviously could not handle. But then, she realised bleakly, she had had no way of knowing how Jason would react to her plea for help. She had never suspected he might have plans of his own.

‘I’ve told Alec to have the awning erected.’ Jason’s lazy tones interrupted her reverie, and she turned her head to look at him. ‘I thought we might eat on deck,’ he continued. ‘It’s cool enough in the shade.’

Laura wanted to say she didn’t want to eat lunch with him, but she bit back the words. There was no point in antagonising him, she decided weakly, ignoring the fact that the longer she allowed this charade to continue, the harder it would be to convince him she could not be blackmailed.

‘All right,’ she said now, indifferently, sliding her curled leg off the cushions and giving a little shrug. ‘But I’m not very hungry.’

‘Nor am I. My appetites run in an entirely different direction,’ responded Jason unemotionally. ‘But unless I miss my guess, you’re not exactly in a mood to take advantage of them, are you?’

A wave of warm indignation swept over her skin at his careless words, and as if that was answer enough, Jason’s lips twisted. ‘I thought not,’ he essayed, turning back to the bar. ‘I suggest a cocktail instead. Something crisp, but not too sharp. I wouldn’t want to sour what promises to be an … interesting association.’

Laura looked up at him tensely, and then, giving into a wholly ungovernable sense of panic, she sprang to her feet. ‘I … I can’t go through with this!’ she exclaimed unsteadily. ‘I don’t care what you say, I won’t let you blackmail me! If you can’t help me find Mike Kazantis, I shall fly back to San Francisco tonight.’

Jason turned from pouring white rum into a metal mixer. ‘Strong words,’ he remarked, his expression wiped of all humour. ‘However, much as I hate to say this, you came to me, Laura. I didn’t invite you here. And as you have given me the means to keep you here, why should I let you go?’