Waiting Game

‘We could leave now,’ she whispered to Alex out of the side of her mouth. ‘You must have spoken to everyone here.’

Except Saul, and she wasn’t about to remind him of that. She was sick of being on show, being talked about. Most of the people here would have read at least one scandal-mongering piece of so-called journalism. Most of the men, with varying degrees of interested speculation, had ogled her, while she was sure all the women were bitching about her inside their heads. She was getting paranoid, she recognised, but that didn’t stop her wanting to hit Alex when he scoffed, ‘What, and miss out on all that gorgeous food? Besides, I haven’t paid my respects to Saul yet. Got to keep a high profile. If Jean were here she’d say the same.’

‘Go ahead,’ Fen told him, feeling tight-lipped. ‘You’ll deserve a medal if you can drag him out from under all those female admirers.’ She had just recognised the lushly sensual, scarlet garbed figure of Vesta Faine hanging adoringly on to his arm. No doubt she was his current lady. Seen twice already in his company, she must be all set to break the record—if what Alex had said about the staying power of his ladies was true. ‘And I need to go to the loo,’ she grumbled untruthfully. ‘Where is it?’

‘Go to the house. You’ll find doors if you look for them. Saul won’t have Portakabins labelled “His” and “Hers” on his sacrosant property.’ He gave her arm a little squeeze. ‘Don’t be long. I’ll get us some food and try to grab Saul’s attention. After all, he did expressly invite you to come.’

Which wasn’t what she wanted to hear, Fen thought as she swayed her way along the terrace, skirting the lily pots and knots of festively dressed personalities with an empty smile fixed on her face.

She had no need to find a bathroom—just a bit of empty space. And she had no intention of returning before she had got herself nice and calm again. Alex could manage on his own; she’d done quite enough.

To the side of the house she found a swimmingpool complete with loungers and white-painted wrought-iron tables. And people. Quickly, she withdrew her inquisitive nose from the trellis of billowing roses that formed part of the pool surround and explored further.

And eventually found just what she’d been hoping for: utter seclusion. A small secret garden, enclosed on three sides by tall yew hedges, the fourth side open to a vista of sweeping fields and the thickly wooded river valley below. No one in sight. Just the sun, the warm soft air, the patchwork of greens, the song of the birds. Heaven.

Ignoring the stone bench seat, strategically placed for peaceful contemplation of the breathtaking view, she kicked off her shoes and sank down on the soft, sun-warmed grass, pulling her hat down over her face to shade her creamy pale skin from the damaging rays.

If she weren’t so tense she would be asleep within seconds; she hadn’t realised just how exhausted she was. The past four years she’d been travelling round Europe, flitting from one job to the next like a demented gnat, enjoying every hectic moment. Eighteen months ago, after her father’s sudden and unexpected death from a heart condition, she had taken two months off to get her distraught mother settled with an old schoolfriend—recently widowed herself—in Australia. And that had been no easy ride.

She had grieved for her father, of course she had, her sorrow taking the form of deep regrets. Regret that he had barely ever acknowledged her existence and, when he had, only because of her nuisance value. A selfish man, there had been no room in his life for anything outside his work as a highly respected travel writer. He’d travelled the world, dragging his wife along behind him and, much later, the child he had never expected or wanted. Not that he’d had to drag his wife, exactly. She’d been too dependent on him, too besotted, to let him out of her sight! And now that he had gone, her mother didn’t know what to do with her life. So no, that two months spent trying to help her mother come to terms with the loss she vowed she would never be able to accept had not been a picnic.

And a few weeks ago, during one of the frequent calls to Australia she made from wherever she happened to be, her mother had instructed mournfully, ‘When you’re next in the UK I want you to arrange for the cottage to be sold. I couldn’t bear to go there again, not without your father. It would kill me. You can crate up any of his books and papers that are still there and send them out to me. I’d ask Alex and Jean, but you know how busy they are. Alex has better things to do with his time than bother himself with my affairs.’

And so, after a job that had taken her to the English Midlands, Fen had dropped in on Jean and Alex in Hampstead, intending to spend a few days with them before hiring a car and driving down to Cornwall, promising herself that before she did anything about disposing of the cottage and its furnishings she would give herself a full week simply to laze around and recoup her energies. Instead, she had found herself drawn into playing the part of Alex’s mistress, all thoughts of a much needed breathing space pushed into the background.

Sighing gustily, she wriggled herself into a more comfortable position, feeling her skirt ruck up around her thighs and not caring. There was no one to see her, after all. If she was going to have to spend the next couple of weeks racketing around notorious night-spots with her uncle, pretending they were having an adulterous fling, she would need to unwind.

She made a conscious effort to relax, to push everything out of her mind, and succeeded, feeling her body go boneless, sleep pulling at her eyes, pulling her deeper and deeper…

‘Can anybody join in, or is Alex the only man who’s allowed to sleep with you?’

The steel-sharp voice cut through the layers of sleep as a hand flicked the silk and straw confection away from her face. Fen went rigid with shock, then wriggled frantically, trying to get upright without sacrificing too much of her dignity. But a warm hand—a burningly warm hand—on her thigh sent all thoughts of dignity scattering in the ether, her temper and temperature going through the roof.

Not only had her skirt rucked up to an indecent level, it had also gaped embarrassingly. And that lean, olive-toned hand was curved around her thigh, on the soft white flesh above her stocking-top.

‘How dare you?’ She slapped fiercely at his hand, but it didn’t budge an inch. The pressure of his fingers increased by a fraction and Fen pulled in a scorching breath, appalled by the electrifying sensations that spread all over her body. Then she twisted away, ending up on her hands and knees, hardly knowing how to contain her fury when he simply reached for her, dragging her down on to the grass, his arms pinioning her beneath him.

Down, but not out, she glared into his unsmiling eyes and tried to control her hectic breathing as she rasped out, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing, Mr Ackerman? If this is a sample of the way you treat your female guests I’m surprised you weren’t locked safely away years ago!’

And then he did smile, a sweet, slow smile that took her breath away all over again, a smile that touched his eyes like the rays of the moon on a silver sea and made the harshly modelled planes of his face seem far less uncompromising.

‘I treat my female guests in exactly the way their body language leads me to believe they expect,’ he murmured, his voice as soft as velvet now. ‘The invitation you posed was impossible to resist. And as for what I was doing—’ He moved off her and her eyes went wide and wild. Why, her body seemed scorched by the imprint of his, as if she would never be able to rid herself of the way all that power-packed virility had felt as it had crushed her into the grass! ‘I was looking for you. Alex has been going frantic. And having found you, pinned you down so to speak, I wasn’t willing to risk losing you again.’

He got to his feet, as if nothing had happened, as if he tumbled women he barely knew in the grass every day of the week, insulted them and put his hands…Oh, it was unendurable! And if he touched her again she would kill him!

But she didn’t. Because when he hauled her to her feet, and smoothed down her wrinkled skirt, pulled together the gaping bodice of her dress and settled her silly hat on her head, his touch was completely impersonal, as if he were dressing a tailor’s dummy, making it fit for the public gaze. And that, strangely, was miff-making enough without his almost curt command, ‘Come. Alex has something he wants to tell you. Besides, if you’re missing for much longer he’ll get withdrawal symptoms.’

CHAPTER THREE

SAUL didn’t touch her as he walked her back to the party, not even a hand beneath her elbow as they mounted the flight of stone steps that led up from the lower walkway to the pool and terrace level.

Which didn’t mean a thing. Because Fen couldn’t have been more aware of him if his hands had been all over her. Her body was burning, her mouth suddenly dry, her breath thick in her lungs. Yet she was shivering, quivering all over like a startled mare. But that was just a symptom of the tension she’d been under ever since she and Alex had started out on this mad charade, she informed herself tartly, trying to wipe away the memory of being pinned beneath Saul Ackerman’s hard male body, the way his hand had felt on the soft warm flesh of her thigh.

But the memory wouldn’t go away and she had never been as pleased to see anyone in her life as she was to see Alex when he met them at the end of the now almost deserted terrace.

‘So there you are!’ His face lit up with relief. ‘I thought you’d run out on me, sweetheart.’

‘Never!’ In her eagerness to reach him and the safe normality he represented, one of her spindly heels twisted beneath her and only Saul’s lightning-fast reactions, the hand that snaked out to steady her, prevented her from falling in a heap and saying goodbye to what little was left of her dwindling composure. ‘If you’re this eager in bed I can understand why he hates you to be out of his sight,’ Saul murmured close to her ear, his breath fanning her thick honey-gold fringe beneath the dipping, rose-laden brim of her hat.

Fen shuddered with scalding outrage. She wanted to tell him to shut his insulting mouth but the words wouldn’t come. Her tongue was stuck to the roof of her mouth. And the hand that had steadied her relaxed, just a little, his thumb making lazy circles on the inside of her arm, scorching her through the thin silk sleeve. And the most bewildering, the most horrible thing of all was the way she was just standing there as if turned to stone, letting him do it. Enjoying—

No! Never!

She slapped that thought away smartly then went hot all over as he released her arm, his hand brushing her silk-clad bottom as it fell back to his side, brushing against her so lightly that she could almost have imagined it.

‘Excuse me for a moment; there’s someone I must have a brief word with,’ Saul said, turning away, his movements very fluid for a man whose body packed so much power. And Fen gave him a sourly reluctant ten out of ten for urbanity, for behaving as if nothing had happened, as if he hadn’t foully insulted her with both word and touch!

‘Can we go now?’ Fen glared at her uncle, unfazed by the way his eyebrows shot up to his hairline at her tone. He hadn’t been close enough to catch Saul’s lowvoiced insult, and the touching had gone on out of sight!

‘Not yet.’ Alex pulled her out of the way of the waiters who were already dismantling the buffet tables. The party was long over. She must have slept for longer than she’d thought. ‘Listen,’ he began in a rush, his flushed face close to hers, ‘while you were missing I had a word with Laurence Meek—he’s the director of programmes, the man who can put ‘em on and take ‘em off. And the only living soul who can sway the decisions he makes is—’

‘Saul Ackerman,’ Fen put in drily, hatred bubbling up inside her all over again at the mere thought of him.

‘Dead right. Anyway, Laurence gave me a very strong hint that, after all, my show mightn’t get the shove. His actual words were, “Don’t go anywhere else with your c.v., old man. There’s a big decision in the offing and I think it will go your way.”’

‘That’s great news!’ Fen’s golden eyes shone, her bad mood disappearing like mist in the summer sunshine. She was really pleased for him. His own show meant a lot to him—his pride, his self-respect, his sense of worth. Slowly, she walked over to the stone balustrading that edged the terrace and gazed out over the now deserted gardens, Alex at her side. His good news meant that soon they would be able to stop the pretence of a torrid, adulterous relationship. She had never been wildly ecstatic about the idea but she hadn’t foreseen how tawdry and besmirched it would make her feel. The relief was heady.

The Ackerman monster certainly had a beautiful home, she decided, the tranquillity of the scene soothing her. She could almost imagine herself putting down roots if she owned something like this. Almost. She sighed. No, she couldn’t see herself putting roots down anywhere, any time. She couldn’t really see the point. There was always something new over the horizon, something to draw her wandering feet onwards…

‘And when’s this big decision to be taken?’ she asked.

‘I’m not sure. But soon. And when it’s made, either way, we can drop this act.’

‘But it can’t have had anything to do with their change of mind, surely?’ Fen looked at him worriedly. ‘One scandalous story in print…’ Her voice trailed away. From what she’d gathered, the viewing figures for Alex’s show had been falling steadily for some time, and dropping like a stone just recently. Could their altered decision be based on what was, after all, simply a piece of sleazy journalism and salacious speculation? It didn’t make a whole lot of sense.

But Alex didn’t care why he had been offered a reprieve, only that it seemed that he had. He was smiling expansively, his face too flushed. Fen suspected he’d been celebrating ever since he’d had that talk with the director of programmes. The champagne had been flowing like water, after all!

‘Shall I drive us home?’ She didn’t want to offend his male pride by suggesting he might be over the legal limit—well over!—but it was time they made a move. She didn’t want to face Saul again, not after what he had said and done. Especially not after what he had said and done!

‘We’ll see. Later. Saul’s asked us to stay to dinner—I’ve been trying to tell you.’

‘What?’ Fen shook her head decisively. ‘No. Oh, no!’ She had had more than enough of his company. Several others would have been invited, too, she was sure of that. A select few. Definitely including the lovely Vesta Faine! But she had no wish whatsoever to be part of the élite around Saul Ackerman’s dinnertable tonight.

‘Fen!’ Alex looked pole-axed. ‘Don’t be like that! I know it’s been difficult—being taken for my mistress, and everything. But it won’t be for much longer, I promise, and then we can come clean. And it’s important to me; you must see that. We got away with refusing his invitation once; do it twice and I can kiss all hopes of a change of mind goodbye!’ He put his hand over hers as it clenched and curled around the sun-warmed stone. ‘I can’t afford to ruffle his feathers, at least not until that decision’s been made. And he might want to discuss it over dinner. Please, sweetheart, try to endure it. For me?’

It was emotional blackmail and she knew she had no choice. But, just to get her own back, she snapped out, ‘Couldn’t we just tell him we can’t wait to get back to your place and dive into bed?’ Saul would understand something like that—the arrogant, insulting, over-sexed monster…!

She saw Alex’s face go purple, and knew why when, from just behind her, that hated voice said, in a tone like steel cutting through stone, ‘Shall we go in? We’ve time for a drink before dinner. And perhaps your niece…’ his voice hovered damningly over that word ‘…would like to freshen up before we eat?’

He had heard what she had said; no doubt about it. Trying to hide her flaming face beneath the brim of her hat, she had no other option but to keep pace with the two men as they walked towards the house. But once inside she could have wept with relief as he introduced his housekeeper, Mrs Pringle.

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