The Sweetest Revenge Part 3

Feeling very, very ambivalent about revenge after the cataclysmic meeting with Nick Armstrong, she reluctantly lifted the receiver and pulled an order pad and pen within easy reach.

'Drop Dead Deliveries,' she stated flatly, unable to project Sue's enthusiasm. 'How may I help you?'

'I want you to deliver a dozen dead roses to a guy named Nick Armstrong at Multi-Media Promotions.'

Barbie's heart flipped.

Was this the black-haired witch who had attacked them with the wand and smashed her wings?

'Your name please?' she asked.

'Tanya Wells.'

Tanya! No mistake about that. Even the voice was putting her teeth on edge-like chalk screeching on a blackboard.

'And I want you to write just one word on the card-Loser!'

'You don't want to add your name?'

'He'll know who it's from,' came the venomous retort. 'And before we go any further I want to know when you can deliver. It has to be today and the sooner the better.'

The demanding tone raised Barbie's hackles. This was definitely a woman who wanted-and expected-to get everything her own way. Nevertheless, a paying customer was ent.i.tled to the service they paid for.

'Just a moment while I check,' she said with surface calm, hiding the maelstrom of thoughts the other woman stirred.

Loser! Well, she had tickets on herself that Barbie would never have given her, but maybe Tanya Wells had reason to believe Nick valued his relationship with her. If he did, he'd certainly been a fool to act as he had at his birthday party. On the other hand, maybe all women had only one value for him, and he thought he'd found another candidate to fulfil that requirement better than Tanya. Was that why he was so hot for Barbie's name and address?

'Well? When can you get the dead roses to him?' Angry impatience.

'Possibly three o'clock,' Barbie temporised, feeling distinctly negative about obliging Tanya Wells with anything.

'Can't you do it earlier?'

Not if Sue did the job. But what if she went herself? Dressed in a black suit with her hair tucked up under a hat, dark gla.s.ses on...the image she'd present would be a far cry from the fairy princess that had taken Nick's fancy on Sat.u.r.day night. And if he did somehow recognise her, she could deliver a double whammy of rejection. Serve him right for playing fast and loose!

At least he hadn't identified her as Barbie Lamb, so she felt safe about that. No humiliating trip down memory lane would eventuate from this. And it would be...interesting...just to see him again, in his workplace.

Temptation was a terrible, terrible thing.

'We could manage two o'clock if that suits.' It was almost twelve now. She needed time to get dressed...

'Perfect! That should screw up his precious work this afternoon.'

Again Barbie frowned. Tanya Wells was a malicious piece of goods and it didn't sit well, being a partner to her wishes. Yet how could she judge what had actually gone on between her and Nick? Maybe she had just cause...if he was a shallow rat!

'May I have your credit card details, Miss Wells?'

Barbie completed the transaction, her mind moving into a ferment over the wisdom of taking this job. Nick's calls to Party Poppers proved he wanted to see her again, but he didn't know who she was and Barbie found herself totally churned up over what his response would be if he found out. A s.e.xy fantasy was one thing, reality quite another.

She'd certainly found out what it was like to be kissed by him-with l.u.s.tful desire. And she couldn't deny she'd felt swamped by l.u.s.tful desire herself. But undoubtedly it had been no more than a highly heated moment, generated by volatile emotions on both sides. His angry outburst about not caring if Tanya took a flying leap off the Harbour Bridge surely pointed to their having been at odds before Barbie had appeared on the scene as a fairy princess.

Revenge...

For all she knew, Nick himself might have been taking vengeance on Tanya for something the black-haired witch had done!

Barbie stared at the order sheet she had just written out.

Maybe she shouldn't go.

Sue could do it when she came back from her lunch with Leon Webster. So what if the delivery was a bit late...

No!

She wanted to see Nick for herself, in the cold light of day! Sue was right about finishing this...this hangover from the past. Sat.u.r.day night was supposed to have achieved that purpose, yet when he'd kissed her...somehow it had just made everything worse, stirring up what she had wanted to put behind her. It would be different today.

Best to go and make absolutely certain there was nothing about Nick Armstrong that was worth harbouring in her memory.

CHAPTER FOUR.

NICK propped the broken wings as best he could against the file cabinet, then moved a chair up beside them. The small swatch of damaged fabric he'd cut out of one of them made them look even more forlorn, but the salesman at the Strand Arcade where Sharon had advised him to go, swore the organza he'd subsequently bought was a perfect match. Not feeling quite so certain, Nick wanted to check it truly was right.

He undid the parcel, shook out the full length of the folded organza and draped it over the chair next to the wings. Moving back a few paces, he looked from one to the other and felt both relief and satisfaction. The salesman did know his fabrics. It was exactly the same.

A rather tentative knock on his office door brought a smile to his face. It was sure to be Sharon coming to see if he'd been successful in his lunch-hour quest. 'Come in,' he called, not even glancing at the door, his smiling gaze revelling in the evidence of his achievement.

Barbie took a deep breath. It had been bad enough running the gauntlet of curious stares on her way to this door. The receptionist had looked very doubtful about giving directions to Nick Armstrong's office, and Barbie had been fearful of being called back and more rigorously questioned. But she'd made it to here without being accosted-the all-black funereal garb probably an intimidating factor that had worked for her-and now she was being invited to enter by his voice.

She had to go through with it.

Stupid not to, at this point.

Nevertheless, her heart was thumping erratically as she turned the k.n.o.b and pushed the door open. Her mind was so highly energised, she had the weird sensation of floating as her quivering legs took the few necessary steps to move into the room to face the man and the feelings she'd come to confront.

Except he wasn't facing her at all.

Nor even looking at her.

His attention was trained entirely on...her fairy princess wings!

'See?' he said, gesturing to a length of fabric draped over a nearby chair. 'A perfect match!'

Shock held Barbie speechless. Her gaze moved slowly from the silvery organza to the man who had gone to the trouble of acquiring it. Would a shallow rat want to fix her wings? Wasn't Leon Webster in the process of paying the cost of replacing them? What was going on here?

She wished she could read Nick's mind. His expression in profile seemed relaxed into a smile, but what did the smile mean? Was he remembering her as the fairy princess, antic.i.p.ating more from her? Or calculating how to get more?

A convulsive little shiver ran down her spine as she stared at him. He was so very handsome, even in profile, so strongly male. His thick black hair brushed the collar of his white shirt. He had the broad shoulders of a star swimmer and a taut s.e.xy b.u.t.t, outlined by the grey trousers he wore. She remembered her thighs being pressed to the hard ungiving muscularity of his, her b.r.e.a.s.t.s squashing against the hot wall of his chest...

Her nerves leapt in shock as he suddenly turned, looking directly at her, his vivid blue eyes sharp and probing. The lingering smile was instantly wiped from his face and a frown creased his brow as his gaze raked her from head to foot and back again.

Panic plunged Barbie's mind into a fog of fear and set her heart fluttering in wild agitation. Would he-could he-recognise her, despite the large dark sungla.s.ses and the black hat that covered her hair and dipped over her forehead? Her fingers closed more tightly around the base of the cone of black tissue paper which held the dead roses. She could use it as a self-protective weapon if she had to.

'Who are you?' he rapped out.

Relief! He didn't know. Barbie struggled to re-gather her wits. She was here to do a job, not get shattered again by this man. Every self-protective instinct screamed-get it right and go.

'Mr. Nick Armstrong?'

Her voice came out too soft and husky. She should have swallowed first. He was frowning more quizzically at her now. Had her tone struck a familiar chord with him? Was he matching it to the way she'd sung at his birthday party?

'Yes,' he answered belatedly, his gaze zeroing in on her mouth, studying it with highly discomforting intensity.

Barbie was drawn into staring back at his, remembering how it had felt, how it had aroused such a stampede of wild sensations and needs...

Rattled at finding herself so treacherously distracted from her purpose, she rushed into the set speech for this job. 'I hereby present you with a Drop Dead Delivery.'

'What?' he demanded incredulously.

Her nerves jangled at the sharpness of his tone. Somehow she found the strength of will to step forward, holding out the bundle of black tissue for him to take. 'This was ordered for you,' she explained.

'By whom?'

He didn't take delivery. His arms remained at his sides, his refusal to accept her offering an innate challenge to her presence, and by stepping closer to him, Barbie had the overwhelming sense of having put herself in a danger zone. It was as though he emitted an electric charge. Her whole body was tingling with an extreme awareness of his powerful masculinity. She wished she could turn tail and run but knew instinctively he wouldn't let her.

The black tissue paper rustled slightly. She was shaking. Desperate to get past this contretemps with him, she quickly spelled out, 'I understand from our client that you will know who the sender is.'

'Someone who wants me to drop dead?' he quizzed sardonically, still not taking delivery. His eyes were like blue lasers, boring through the dark cover of her sungla.s.ses. 'Now who would that be?'

The lenses were impenetrable, weren't they? He couldn't possibly see through them. Barbie took a deep breath to quell the frantic fears and his gaze instantly dropped to the heave of her chest, obviously noting the strain of her full b.r.e.a.s.t.s against her figure-hugging suitcoat.

'I am merely the messenger, sir,' she gabbled, appalled by the responsive hardening of her nipples.

His gaze slowly trailed up her long throat, paused at her mouth again, then lifted to her sungla.s.ses. 'I see,' he drawled.

What did he see?

If he did recognise her, what did she want to do about it? What did she really want? How could Nick Armstrong spark so much...response in her? This wasn't a hangover from the past. This was here and now!

'A messenger, dressed in mourning,' he continued. 'No doubt emphasising that the gift is a very black mark against me. And you are paid to perform this act. To the hilt, one might say.'

Feeling like a pinned b.u.t.terfly, Barbie squirmed inwardly at his summing up. 'Yes, I'm paid to do it,' she acknowledged.

His face hardened and there was a mocking glint in his eyes as he said, 'You obviously take pride in superb attention to detail. Do you carry through all your paid performances...to the hilt?'

He knew.

Barbie could feel it in her bones.

And he didn't like it. He didn't like it one bit.

While she felt trapped in a cage of her own making, he reached out and s.n.a.t.c.hed the cone of black tissue from her, leaving her unshielded from his gaze which once again raked her from head to toe, not so much inspecting the black funereal attire this time but very definitely taking in the shapeliness of her figure, making her burn with the sense he was matching it up in his mind to the memory of another act.

Why did she feel so guilty? She hadn't done anything wrong, had she? This whole thing had started as a need to put a painful memory to rest, simply a means to a justifiable end.

Inexorably, her gaze was drawn to the broken fairy wings, propped against a file cabinet, and the length of organza obviously bought to mend them.

Why?

What was their significance to him?

'A bunch of dead roses,' he drawled. 'Symbolic of the end of love?'

She jerked her gaze back to his and uttered the one word that had driven her here. 'Closure.' Except there could be no closure while such tantalising questions remained unanswered.

'I beg your pardon?'

'Drop Dead Deliveries are about closure,' she elaborated, knowing she should go. He'd taken delivery so her job was done. Yet she felt paralysed by her inner confusion.

'Ah!'

He flicked open the card and read what was written inside. 'Loser!' His mouth curled in irony. 'Typical of Tanya, wanting to get in the last word, wanting to crawl into my mind again.' Again his expressive blue eyes mocked her purpose here. 'As it happens, she's wasted her money on this last little malicious act. It doesn't touch me. At all.'

But the fairy wings did.

They had to or they wouldn't be here.

'Do you get many clients who want this kind of closure?' he asked curiously.

'Quite a few,' she replied, deeply disquieted by his description of 'a last malicious act.' Revenge was supposed to be about balancing justice. An eye for an eye, a hurt for a hurt...

'Can the clients specify who does the delivery?'

It leapt into her mind that he thought Tanya had specifically asked for her to bring the dead roses to him and that she was a co-conspirator in malice. Which she was in a way, but she hadn't meant him to recognise her, to put it together...if he had.

Though she had thought of delivering a double whammy. But that was to be a payback for his playing fast and loose, and how could she link playing fast and loose to the time and trouble of buying the organza to fix her wings? Everything about this scene was wrong and Barbie had the sinking feeling there was no way to put it right.

Best to get out of here.

Fast.

'No, the messenger is simply the messenger to both parties. Anonymous,' she replied emphatically, and took a step backwards, testing her legs were steady enough for a quick escape.

'Anonymous,' he repeated, his eyes glittering in a way that shot danger signals through Barbie's entire nervous system.