Wild Lady Part 1

Wild Lady.

By Liz Fielding.

CHAPTER ONE.

WHEN Claudia Beaumont, late and pushing her new sports car hard in the narrow Berkshire lanes, finally spotted the entrance to the airfield, she experienced two distinct and warring emotions. Relief and dread. And dread was winning by a country mile.

But she knew that the letter was simply the product of a sick mind. Someone was trying to frighten her, make her look feeble and if she backed out now her anonymous correspondent would have succeeded. For heaven's sake, she expected to be frightened. Who wouldn't be? And who was she to deprive millions of television viewers of a vicarious thrill? She slowed and turned into the gate. There had d.a.m.ned well better be millions or she would want to know the reason why.

The security guard checked her car registration against a list he had on a clipboard, then directed her to the far side of the field where the OB unit was set up beside a large aircraft hangar. Even at a distance the scene gave the appearance of organized chaos. Excitable men, earnest young women milling about in an attempt to give an impression of their own enormous importance, heavy cables snaking through the gra.s.s, vehicles everywhere, the essential catering truck doing a roaring trade in coffee and bacon sandwiches.

And a small aircraft, a very small aircraft, was parked on the ap.r.o.n in front of the hangar waiting to take her several thousand feet into the air so that she could jump out of it for the amus.e.m.e.nt of the vast audience of Sat.u.r.day night viewers.

"Do the show, darling," her agent had coaxed. "It's popular family entertainment, not in the least bit tacky, all the money the viewers pledge goes to a charity of your choice. And we'll get a big plug for the new television series."

He'd forgotten to mention the fact that one of the guests would be landed with an amusing little forfeit. And with three envelopes to choose from she'd managed to find the parachute jump. It was quite possible, she realized with a belated flash of insight, that they all contained the same forfeit. It was highly probable that she'd kill her agent.

"You'd better put your foot down, miss," the security guard advised. "The weather looks as if it might be closing in and if you don't get off the ground soon, you'll have to come back another day. And that won't please Mr. MacIntyre."

It wasn't her eagerness to please Mr. MacIntyre, whoever he was, or to get on with the jump that sent the little car leaping forward. If the film crew had a wasted day because she was late, Claudia knew she would be about as popular as an outbreak of rabies in a boarding kennels.

There were a number of cars parked in a neat line facing the hangar. Her car was lipstick bright against the grayness of the morning and aware that every head had turned at her approach she did a slick change down as she drove onto the gra.s.s, planning to slide neatly into the s.p.a.ce between a gleaming black Landcruiser and the silver Porsche that she recognized as the pride and joy of the show's director.

There was only one problem. When she put her foot on the brake it went straight to the floor without resistance. For a split second she froze. It couldn't be happening. Her car was brand new. Two days old. But it was happening. And she was heading straight for Barty's Porsche.

She wrenched hard on the steering wheel, somehow expecting that it, too, would fail to respond. It didn't fail. It responded with fingertip precision. And after that everything seemed to happen at once. The jolting tango along the black bulk of the Landcruiser, the bruising jerk as her seat belt locked and bit into her shoulder, the airbag exploding into life. The final nightmarish sound of rending metal as she collided with the hangar.

Then everything went very quiet for a moment before the door beside her was wrenched open. If she had had the time to antic.i.p.ate any reaction from the horrified onlookers, she would have expected sympathy, concern, even worry that she wouldn't be able to go ahead with the planned jump.

What she got, apparently, was a bear with a sore head. And he was growling at her. "What the h.e.l.l do you think you're playing at?" Definitely a growl. The kind produced by low, controlled anger. It seemed par for the day, Claudia thought, that the gap between expectation and reality should be so vast.

She turned, unhurt, but somewhat dazed by the rapidity with which events had overtaken her and was confronted by a pair of large boots, combat trousers that seemed to ascend into the stratosphere and the kind of taut, aggressive hips that would normally give her a pleasurable tingle of expectation. The voice however, did not encourage her to expect anything except ... well, aggravation.

At a disadvantage in the near ground level car, she unfastened the seatbelt, leaned out and looked up. She was right about the stratosphere. Wrong about the bear. But not that wrong. The man went up a very long way before widening out into a pair of shoulders that would have done justice to a barn door. He also had a thick pelt of black hair that would have curled had it not been ruthlessly trimmed into submission and the kind of blue eyes that any girl would gladly die for. From the expression in them, she thought, this girl just might be required to. But she didn't like his immediate a.s.sumption that she was to blame for the accident. She would go down fighting.

"Playing at?" she inquired, determined to show him that she was not in the least bit intimidated by his size, or his damped down anger. Or by his eyes. "Why, musical cars of course," she said, with a careless wave of her hand. Her shoulder complained but she ignored it. "Care to join me?" she invited.

It was perhaps fortunate that at that moment they were inundated by near hysterical television personnel. "Claudia! Darling! My precious girl, are you all right?" Barty James, the program's director waggled his hands dramatically. "Shall we call an ambulance?" He turned to his hara.s.sed a.s.sistant. "Shouldn't there be an ambulance standing by? Isn't there supposed to be a doctor -" He began issuing a tirade of instructions, sending minions flying in all directions, but mostly for cover.

Claudia, used to theatrical hysteria, took no notice. Instead she swung long, silk clad legs out of the car and waited for someone to help her to her feet. Barty was still busy berating his hapless a.s.sistant for the lack of an ambulance. Blue eyes had swiftly removed himself from the scene and was more concerned with the damage to the Landcruiser. Abandoning all hope of immediate aid and succor, she climbed from her car unaided and joined him. His concern was well placed. The damage, although superficial, was widespread. She had sc.r.a.ped and dented every panel, leaving streaks of scarlet paint like careless kisses, along the entire right hand side.

The hangar didn't look much better. She hadn't hit it hard, but had still managed a pretty spectacular job of buckling and splitting the elderly corrugated metal.

But her lovely new car had far the worst of it. The left hand side had suffered horribly in the encounter with the Landcruiser and the bonnet now looked as if a very heavy footed figure skater had been practicing triple toe loops on its glossy paintwork. It was not a pretty sight, but as she turned to blue eyes she managed a smile, quite prepared to be brave about it although under the circ.u.mstances hysterics would have been quite permissible. Blue eyes was unimpressed.

"I do hope you're properly insured, Miss Beaumont," he said, curtly, in case she had missed just how unimpressed he was.

Claudia, who could usually reduce a man to stuttering incoherence in less time than it took to say it, was seriously shaken to discover that this man was quite immune to her particular brand of magic. Insurance? That was all that bothered him? He wasn't in the least concerned about her health, the fact that she might have broken her neck? Apparently not. As their eyes met across the wreck of her car she received the very strong impression that he was quite prepared to break it himself. Well, the day was still young and if her anonymous correspondent was right, he might yet get his wish. The thought was enough to drive the smile right off her face.

"Why wouldn't I be properly insured?" Her premium was, in her opinion, large enough to insure any ten cars. "But if you think I'm paying for this, you can forget it," she said, nettled by his manner into displaying a little irritation on her own account. "For your information my brakes failed and since this car is only two days old it's going right back to the manufacturer. I suggest you call them and tell them your troubles."

"The brakes..." There was a twittering of excitement from the television men.

Blue eyes didn't twitter. "You really expect me to believe that?" It was quite obviously not a question to which he expected an answer. He had made up his own mind and disbelief was written in every tightly controlled line of his face. "You were showing off and driving too fast for the surface. Damp gra.s.s is like ice if you hit the brakes too hard."

"Is it? And if you hit the brakes and nothing happens?"

"You lost control. If your brakes had simply failed you wouldn't have hit the Landcruiser, you'd have hit the Porsche."

"I know that. It's why I swerved. I didn't want to hit Barty's Porsche..." Something in his expression warned her that she wasn't helping matters and her voice died away.

"Are you saying that you hit my car on purpose?" He spat out the words, one by one.

"It seemed like a good idea at the time." She glared at him. "It still does." Then she threw up her hands in despair. It had been a bad day from the moment she got out of bed and found that horrible anonymous letter on her doormat. "Is there any chance of a cup of coffee around here?" she demanded.

"Claudia, darling, why don't we forget this for today?" Barty intervened, quickly. "You're overwrought. It's quite natural," he added, quickly, as she glared at him, too. "I'll run you down to the local hospital for a check up. Since you've had an accident we'll be covered by insurance and we don't want to take any risks do we?"

"Don't we?" Claudia asked. Blue eyes was giving her the kind of look that suggested she might have manufactured the accident simply to get out of the jump and she didn't like it. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Barty, I'm not made of gla.s.s. Let's get all my bruises over with in one day." She looked around. "Where's Tony?" Tony Singleton was the one bright spark in this entire fiasco. Her role in Private Lives kept her on stage until eleven every night, but it had still been worth dragging herself out of bed first thing for Tony's training sessions, even under the watchful eye of the television crew. They had filmed her swinging gracefully from a tower in a harness under his careful instruction, learning how to fall, even packing the parachute she was to use.

Today they were going to celebrate her maiden jump. Without the cameras.

"Tony's wife telephoned this morning to cancel." Blue eyes regarded her steadily. "Apparently he's feeling a bit under the weather. She didn't think it was a good idea to take any risks with him."

Wife? He was married? The low down sneaking rat. Some days it was just not a good idea to get out of bed.

"His wife?" she inquired, coolly. Being an actress had its advantages. The ability to hide feelings was one of them.

"She's expecting a baby next month." He punctuated the remark with a speaking, one-shouldered shrug. "Didn't he mention her?"

No. He seems to have overlooked that minor point. After all, actresses were notorious for sleeping around so it didn't really matter did it? Like h.e.l.l, it didn't.

"Not that I recall," she replied.

"Perhaps he didn't think it was important. But don't worry, Miss Beaumont. I'm here to look after you in his place."

Now why wasn't that a comfort?

"Really?" she said. "And who the devil are you?"

His face finally cracked into something that might have been a smile, although she could see that his heart wasn't really in it. "Gabriel MacIntyre. But Mac will do." He didn't offer his hand, instead his eyes made a rapid transit of the s.p.a.ce between her feet and her carefully tousled blonde hair, making an instant judgment on her short, flirty little skirt and loose silk jersey top. She had dressed to spend the day with Tony, not for a parachute jump and he knew it. "And you are the glamorous Miss Claudia Beaumont," he said, pointedly. He seemed singularly underwhelmed by the fact.

"I know that," she informed him, crisply. It was odd how very crisp she was feeling considering the fact that she'd just run into the side of an aircraft hangar. The man had much the same bracing effect as the blast from a bottle of smelling salts. "But please don't stand on ceremony," she added. "Miss Beaumont will do just fine."

"Darling, don't be naughty!" Barty, his thin body encased in a close fitting silk shirt, a toning scarf knotted with studied carelessness around his throat, intervened nervously, throwing a jittery look in the direction of Mac. "Mr. MacIntyre will think you don't like him."

"Then he'd be right. I don't."

"Claudia!"

"Well, what do you expect? I told him that my brakes failed and without the slightest evidence to back him up he chose to believe I was lying."

It was clear he believed a lot of other things about her. None of them were true either.

Mac, blue eyes, was unrepentant. "I saw the way you were driving."

Barty was beginning to unravel. "Are you quite sure you want to go ahead with this, Claudia, darling?" He pulled her aside, lowering his voice to a whisper. "We'd all quite understand ... shock, what have you..."

Claudia realized the crew were looking at her expectantly. Things had changed. With the insurance company paying, they'd all have an extra day's work if she decided to throw a wobbly and put the stunt off until a later date. But they didn't have to jump out of an airplane for the t.i.tillation of all those millions of television viewers, every one of whom was no doubt hoping to see her fall flat on her face. Especially the one who sent her that nasty little note.

"We do it now, Barty, or not at all," she announced. This was not a day she wished to repeat. She turned to Gabriel MacIntyre. "Come on, Mac. I can see you can't wait to push me out of an airplane. Lead me to my overalls and let's get on with it." It gave her considerable pleasure to see that she had taken him by surprise. Although he didn't flicker so much as a muscle, Claudia knew that he'd been convinced she was going to bottle out. She would rather die than give him that satisfaction.

Slowly and with obvious reluctance, he jacked up the smile. If he ever made an effort, she thought, he might be dangerous. There didn't seem much likelihood of her finding out.

The equipment was laid out on a trestle in the hangar. A pair of bright red overalls with her name printed across the back because it had looked good on the ground shots. And it would make identification easy, she thought with a wry little smile, if she simply plowed straight down into the nearest field. Then the boots. Her helmet was next, a mini camera and microphone already attached and ready to be hooked up to the power pack she would wear at her waist. Goggles. Finally, the parachute that she had packed herself under Tony's supervision.

The crew were already suited up, running last minute checks on their cameras and microphones with the OB unit.

"Is there somewhere I can change?" she asked.

Mac's eyes flickered over her unsuitable clothes. "I hope you're wearing warm underwear," he said. "It'll be cold up there."

"I've a nice line in silk thermals. Would you care to check them out?" He handed her the overalls and pointed her in the direction of the office without another word.

Claudia strode off jauntily enough, but once the door was shut behind her she let out a deep breath and sank into a chair. She was beginning to shake and wasn't sure whether it was a reaction to the shunt with the car, or whether she was just plain scared.

She shed her skirt, her top, her tights, then retrieved from her bag the thermal vest and long drawers that Tony had advised, pulling them on as quickly as her shaking fingers would allow. d.a.m.n Tony and his boyish charm. He could have got her through the next half an hour without a qualm, unlike Mr. MacIntyre. At least she had nothing but a few stolen kisses to reproach herself for. Although why she should reproach herself for anything when he was the cheating b.a.s.t.a.r.d, she wasn't quite sure. But she did. And so did Mac.

By the time she came to fasten the front of the jump suit her fingers were shaking so much with a mixture of nerves and anger that she couldn't keep hold of the zip pull. A sharp rap on the door, making her jump, was the last straw and she gave up trying.

"We haven't got all day, Miss Beaumont." Miss Beaumont. He made it sound like an insult.

Clutching the overalls together at the front she emerged from the office. "I'm having zip trouble," she said, loftily. "It seems to be stuck."

Mac didn't say a word. He simply took hold of the pull and the wretched thing slid smoothly up to her neck. Then he pushed down the Velcro flaps. "You should have asked for help sooner," he said, when he was satisfied. "I told you I'd take care of you."

She cleared her throat, nervously. The crew had moved outside leaving just the two of them in the hangar. "So you did," she said.

"Is there anything else?"

"No." She reached for her helmet and tugged it on. "I can manage now."

"I hope so. We've all been waiting quite long enough. You were very late."

She tucked in her long blonde hair. It seemed to take forever and he finally lost patience, finishing the job for her without much care for her scalp. Then he fastened the chinstraps. "I couldn't find the airfield," she said. "It's not exactly well sign-posted."

He ignored the implied criticism and picked up her "chute. She flexed her shoulders and held back her arms for him to lift it on. He didn't.

Now who was wasting time? "What's the matter?" she asked, looking behind her.

"Nothing. I'm just going to change this "chute."

"What's wrong with it? I packed it myself and Tony said I'd made a perfect job of it."

"Then Tony must have had his mind on other things. I'll get you another one from the store. Why don't you wait outside?"

She glared after him. It wasn't such a hardship. He was six foot two inches of unadulterated masculinity. He might raise her hackles, but after the narcissism and hot house atmosphere of the theater she had to admit that there was a rough hewn, unfinished freshness about the man. Not that he was her type. She liked sophisticated, well-groomed men who knew how to treat a lady. Gabriel MacIntyre appeared to be the kind of old-fashioned chauvinist who preferred his women barefoot and pregnant. He probably had half a dozen baby MacIntyres to prove it.

And she made it a rule never to play house with other girl's husbands.

But men didn't make it easy to be n.o.ble. Tony, lying and potentially cheating Tony, for instance, had looked as if b.u.t.ter wouldn't melt in his mouth. At least Mac wore a wedding ring.

Ten minutes later, buckled, fastened, wired for sound so that every gasp of fright could be experienced vicariously by the television audience, she was hurtling down the runway in a noisy, comfortless aircraft. She forced herself to smile. The fuselage had been fitted with tiny cameras to catch every fleeting expression and she was supposed to be enjoying herself. This was all good, clean fun.

Ideally they should all be chatting and laughing but thankfully it was too noisy. No doubt someone would add on the kind of joking commentary that would make the studio audience roar with laughter. She smiled harder, hoping that she hadn't chewed all her lipstick off. It was the performance of a lifetime.

Nothing could go wrong.

The cameramen, all experienced freefallers, were relaxed as they circled the airfield gaining height, double checking camera equipment with the OB crew on the ground.

Mac was standing behind the pilot, waiting until they reached the right height. He turned for a moment and stared at her, his eyes thoughtful, his forehead creased in a deep frown. It was unsettling, but she met his gaze, challenged it. Then the pilot shouted something to him and he looked away.

Claudia tried to remember everything that Tony had told her. But her mind was a blank. And then, in the noisy cramped s.p.a.ce of the aircraft, with the jump only minutes away, the letter that had been pushed through her door in the early hours of the morning floated back to the surface of her mind and began to fill the vacuum with its insidious poison.

What kind of sick mind did it take to do something like that? To take so much trouble to find all the right letters in a newspaper, cut them neatly out then arrange them precisely, sticking them down one by one? She tried to blot it out. It was rubbish, nonsense, some sick person's idea of a joke. Any successful actress was bound to provoke jealousy. It was inevitable. Especially when her path was perceived to have been eased by famous parents, a mother who had been a legend, a father who had directed the play she was appearing in right now. The letter was nothing. She had torn it up and thrown it in the bin with the rest of the rubbish.

Everything had been checked a dozen times. She was jumping from a static line. The "chute would open automatically. All she had to do was go through the drill Tony had taught her. It was no big deal. She looked up as Mac tapped her on the shoulder. It was time to go.

Nothing could go wrong.

But her skin was slicked with sweat as she watched the camera crew jump out of the open doorway, moving away from the aircraft, getting into position to film her own exit from the plane. They made it look so easy. It was easy. She adjusted her goggles.

Nothing could go wrong.

Mac hooked her to the static line then guided her into place in the doorway. Below her the ground was like a picture from a storybook. Small, clean, beautiful. The rushing wind tugged at her, eager to suck her into the void, but she held on, waiting for Mac's signal. It seemed forever coming and she glanced at him. He smiled rea.s.suringly. He'd picked a h.e.l.l of a time to decide to be friendly, she thought, as at last he slapped her on the shoulder with sufficient impact to ensure she didn't change her mind and mess up everyone's day.

Then, as she plunged downward, dropping towards the Berkshire countryside at thirty-three feet per second per second, she quite suddenly recalled that Gabriel MacIntyre had changed her carefully packed parachute at the last minute. And no one else had seen him do it.

The fields, the hedges, the silver ribbon of river all seemed to merge and resolve into a sheet of cheap lined paper covered with a jumble of newsprint.

I'VE FIXED YOU, DARLING CLAUDIA. OR RATHER I'VE FIXED YOUR PARACHUTE. ENJOY YOUR JUMP. YOU WON'T BE MAKING ANY MORE.