Wild Lady Part 12

She straightened. "Luke had already put up the money for the show because he wanted something light to launch Melanie in the West End. Did I tell you that she's his niece?" Mac nodded. "She'd done plenty of television, soaps and such like, in Australia, but she wanted to get into real theater. He insisted I play the lead opposite her." His brows rose insistently and Claudia pulled a face. "You suggested a while back that my tongue might get me into trouble. I'd been a bit rude about Mel's acting ability in the past. Luke thought sharing a stage with her would teach me to be a little more polite."

"In other words you did it under duress?"

"No. I thought it was the most likely way of getting Luke and Fizz back together. I knew that nothing would stop him from coming home for Melanie's first night and I hoped, I believed, that once Fizz had had time to calm down, getting them together would be enough."

"It obviously worked."

"Oh, I'm sure it would have done. But Fizz didn't wait. She realized all by herself that she couldn't live without the man and flew out to the back of beyond only to find him packing up to come home. He'd decided that no matter what she had said, he was going to lay siege until she agreed to marry him."

"Make him a willow cabin at her gate?"

Shakespeare? A poet soldier? Perhaps he wasn't so rough-hewn after all. "Fortunately it wasn't necessary. He'd have almost certainly developed pneumonia."

"It was a very damp spring," Mac agreed, solemnly.

"And in the meantime I was stuck with Private Lives. Not that I'm complaining and Mel is a dream to share a stage with. But Dad, bless him, realized the publicity potential of me stepping into my mother's shoes. Literally. The dress I was wearing in the photograph was one of hers."

"Really?"

"They're all still wrapped in tissue in Dad's attic. All her costumes, all her gowns, lingerie, shoes in their original boxes, furs. They'd make a wonderful bonfire."

In the silence that followed, the waitress brought them the next course. Claudia picked up her fork, speared a mangetout and ate it slowly. Then she said, "Now it's your turn."

"You want to know about my mother?" he inquired.

She had known that he would put up a brick wall. He expected her to ask him about his wife. About his leg. About the army. "Only if you want to. I'd rather you told me about your business. Security? What is it that you do exactly?"

"If I told you exactly, I wouldn't be in the security business," he pointed out.

"If you want me to employ your company, I think I'm ent.i.tled to some details."

"I've changed my mind. This is personal. I'm still not happy about the way that photograph got into your parachute pack."

"Can you afford to get personal?"

"Even the boss is ent.i.tled to a few days off. I'll take a busman's holiday."

She was beginning to lose patience. Wasn't he listening to anything she said. "This is my life, Mac. I thought I'd made my feelings plain."

"Ad nauseum."

"But I might as well have saved my breath?" She tilted her head slightly, inviting contradiction.

"I'm not holding mine. But I'm not wasting any more arguing with you, either. And since I still have your keys and you can't get into your flat without me, you might as well stop being difficult and enjoy your lunch. I intend to."

"I enjoy being difficult," she informed him. "Being difficult is what I do best. It's part of my charm."

"I agree about your talent, I don't quite see the charm in it."

"You, I take it, majored in rudeness?"

His smile was slow and deliberate. "If it seems that way I can only put it down to your influence, Claudia. You just seem to bring out the worst in me."

"I had noticed." Then she gave a little shrug. "Since you won't talk about your business can I ask one simple question?"

He looked at her warily. "You can ask. I'm not promising an answer."

"Trust is a two-way thing, Mac. You're going to have to trust me a little, too."

After the longest pause he finally nodded. "Go ahead. I'll one question."

"Will you tell me your wife's name?"

For a moment he stared at the plate in front of him and she thought he wasn't going to answer. "Jenny," he said, finally, his voice catching on the word. Then he looked up, looked her straight in the face. "Her name was Jenny Callendar," he added, as if that should mean something to her.

For a moment her brain wouldn't cooperate. Then she remembered. "The climber?" she asked.

"You said one question. That's it."

It wasn't it. Not by a long chalk. The questions were tumbling around in her brain like the weekly wash in the dryer. Jenny Callendar had been killed a couple of years ago ... How? Where? She realized that Mac was watching her. Knew she was trying to remember, but he didn't help her out. Claudia let it go. It would come to her in time.

Instead she gave her full attention to the careful dissection of her lunch which provided the perfect cover to consider the enigma of the man sitting opposite her.

He had kissed her more than once and once was usually enough to make a man her willing slave. By now he should be eating out of her hand, promising her the earth. The fact that she didn't want it was unimportant. She had learned to control men at her mother's knee but she wasn't controlling Gabriel MacIntyre. He was far too complex a character for that. He was keeping a careful distance, refusing to be twisted around her little finger. That he desired her, she knew by instinct, but for some reason he was determined to resist her. Then she remembered his kiss and a small dimple appeared beside her mouth as she recalled just how difficult he was finding it.

She looked up to find him watching her and her heart gave an odd little flip. She wondered what it would take to seduce him. She was sorely tempted by the challenge; the trouble was he wouldn't like her, or himself much afterwards. He was a man who needed to care for a woman he made love to.

Which brought her back to his wife. Jenny Callendar. But she kept her curiosity to herself. She had made a start and if he was planning to stick around there would be time enough to discover all Mr. MacIntyre's darkest secrets.

There was another letter waiting at her flat.

Mac produced a serious-looking set of keys for the new locks and when he opened the door, it was there on the mat. A cheap white envelope with her name printed on it in large, plain letters using a black ballpoint pen.

For a moment Claudia simply stared at it, numbed, paralyzed by the awfulness of the realization that someone actually wanted to make her feel just this way. Sick, frightened and very, very alone. Her hand flew to her lips as the bile began to rise, then she choked out a little sound, something approaching an hysterical laugh as she realized her mistake.

It wasn't the same at all. The others envelopes had been addressed in letters cut from newsprint. This time her name had been neatly printed in ballpoint. Relieved she bent to pick it up.

"Don't touch it," Mac warned, sharply, as he turned from the burglar alarm. "The police might be able to lift fingerprints." And he pushed her back out into the hall.

"No, Mac. It's all right. It isn't the same," she protested, but he still held her back. "It isn't," she said stubbornly, meeting his eyes. She didn't want it to be the same.

"The envelope's exactly the same," he pointed out, gently. "I warned the rest of the tenants about letting in unidentified strangers. It may be that your correspondent was forced to leave this in the letterbox downstairs. Would someone have brought it up and pushed it through your door?"

"Kay Abercrombie usually takes the newspapers and post around to everybody." She looked away, hope dying as she realized what must have happened. "She wouldn't have touched something addressed with letters cut out from a newspaper," she said, slowly. "He would have realized that, wouldn't he?"

"This guy might be crazy, but he's certainly not stupid. He wants you to think he's been up here. Right up to your door. Touching it." He was being deliberately unkind. He wanted her to understand the kind of person they were dealing with.

"But if he couldn't get into the building -"

"We mustn't a.s.sume anything, Claudia. He may just have wanted you to believe that."

"Oh, G.o.d. I think I'm going to be sick."

"Don't you dare," he said, sharply. "You're going to stay right here while I look around." Too weak to argue, she leaned back and slid down the wall, wrapping her arms around her head.

Mac came back. "No one's been inside," he said. He meant to be rea.s.suring, but Claudia still felt as if her living s.p.a.ce had been in some way defiled. He touched her shoulder and she looked up. "Come on," he said, more gently and she allowed him to help her to her feet before she shook him off and stepping over the letter she closed the door on the outside world and rammed home the bolt with shaking fingers.

All that casual bravado undone by the sight of something as innocent as an envelope lying on the mat. And suddenly she had to know what it said. Before Mac could stop her she had bent and picked it up, ripping it open savagely. For a moment she stared at it, uncomprehending, her hands shaking. Then she laughed. She put the back of her to her mouth to stifle the sound, but it gurgled from her, unstoppable as the tears that began to stream down her cheeks.

He took the paper from her unresisting hand. There wasn't much. But then none of them had said much. It was what they said. And this one was no different in its sly nastiness.

h.e.l.lO CLAUDIA, HOW DOES IT FEEL TO BE HOME? SAFE?.

He released a small, explosive sound and folding his arms about her, pulled her hard into the protection of his body, holding her tight, crooning softly to her until the hiccuping sobs began to subside and she laid her head into the curve of his neck, quietly resting against him until her own racketing pulse matched the slow, steady thump of his.

And even then she didn't want to move. But she had to. "I'm sorry, Mac," she said, pulling away a little. "I know I've been nothing but a nuisance since the first moment you set eyes on me. I'd quite understand if you don't want anything to do with me. You can go anytime. Really. I'll be fine."

He looked down at her, but her eyes were closed and she was unaware of the softening of his mouth, his eyes. She looked bruised. Nothing to do with slightly darker patch under one eye, or the slight swelling of her lip, but emotionally beaten. He could think of any number of ways to soothe her, bring the color back to her cheeks. It took every ounce of willpower to reject every one of them.

Instead he said, "Do you remember what you said to me at the airfield on Friday morning? When you thought I was stringing you a line about changing the parachute?" He saw from her blush that she did. "Then consider it returned with interest. Now why don't you go and make yourself useful while I make some calls?"

She withdrew reluctantly from the comfort of his arms. "What do you want me to do?"

"What every red-blooded English woman does in a crisis. Make a pot of tea."

"You're joking." The moment of tenderness was over and he didn't even bother to answer her. But even as she opened her mouth to tell him in no uncertain terms that he could make his owned d.a.m.ned tea Claudia realized that he was just giving her something to do, keeping her busy. She gave a little shiver, rubbed her arms, decided to find a sweater. She stopped in the doorway. "If you're staying what will you do for clothes?"

"You can leave me to worry about that." It hadn't taken him long to return to his usual stonewalling. Why wouldn't he talk to her?

"I suppose at the snap of your fingers one of your personal army will jump to attention and pack a bag for you." He took no notice of her, but lifting the telephone receiver he began to punch in a number. Claudia wasn't used to being ignored. "I suppose they're all ex-soldiers?" she persisted.

He cut the connection and turned to her. She expected him to be angry, but he wasn't. "They're not my army, Claudia. They're not my anything. We're just a group of friends who do what we're good at and help one another out from time to time. That's all," he said, clearly trying to be patient, as if he was talking to a slightly tiresome child.

She didn't think it was quite that simple but on the whole thought she preferred him mad. "Like your discreet chauffeur service for instance?" she asked, provoking him further. She could be wrong but that had seemed just a bit too well rehea.r.s.ed to be some casual arrangement.

"It's a perfectly normal car hire business, Claudia. In fact they specialize in weddings using vintage cars. But when I need a car and driver for something special I know I can count on them."

"I'm not sure that I believe you."

The patience was wearing thin. "I'm not sure I care very much what you believe. It's really none of your business."

"It is if you're planning to take over my life."

He was taking over her life? Did she think he had nothing better to do than play nursemaid to a frightened actress? He felt the quick surge of anger drain away from him. Frightened. That was the key word. She was frightened out of her wits and trying very hard not to let it show. Perhaps he was being a little hard on her.

"We're not some gung-ho outfit, Claudia," he said, more gently. "The whole thing is very low key. A group of communications specialists, transport experts, couriers -"

"And security. They all fit together very nicely."

"When necessary. Mostly we do our own thing, but we complement one another and we work well together. Occasionally I put a team together for a special job but that's the exception."

She still looked doubtful. "I hope I don't come under that category."

"That rather depends how sensible you're going to be. If you insist on carrying on with nightly appearances in Private Lives I'm afraid you probably will."

"I don't have a choice, Mac. People are relying on me. You should understand that."

"But you don't have to stay here."

Her mouth took on a stubborn line. "I won't be driven out of my own home." Even when it felt comfortless and chilling. She shivered again. "But I'd be a lot happier if you'd stay with me."

Mac noticed the shiver. Every instinct screamed at him to go to her; he ignored them all. It was tough, but he didn't want to make it easy for her to stay put.

"I suppose we could install CCTV on all the entrances," he offered, unenthusiastically. "And we'll need a porter downstairs to monitor the post, check visitors in and out. You know your neighbors. How do you think they'll react?"

"By asking their insurance companies for a reduction on their premiums if they've any sense."

He'd hoped this vision of disruption to other people's lives would have given her pause. But she was probably right; the rest of the tenants would no doubt welcome the extra security, especially if they didn't have to pay for it. "What about the landlord?"

"You'll have no trouble from the landlord," she a.s.sured him.

"I see."

"No, you don't, Mac. I'm the landlord but I'd rather you kept that little gem to yourself since none of the other tenants know." She gave a little shrug at his raised eyebrows. "Mother left Fizz and me some money. Fizz sank all hers into her radio station, I bought this. But I prefer the managing agents to deal with complaints about dripping taps."

"You don't have to excuse yourself to me."

"Don't I? Then why do I feel you're constantly judging me?"

He didn't know. He had no idea why he felt the constant need to test her. Or maybe he knew only too well - he just wasn't ready to admit it to himself. "You're determined to stay put?" he countered.

"I need to be in London, Mac. And I refuse to hide."

She looked the way she had before she'd jumped out of the aircraft. Scared but determined. She was going to stay in her own apartment and nothing he did was going to persuade her otherwise. "In that case I'd better get on with organizing it."

"You do that. I'll go and make your tea." She turned towards the kitchen, but instead of getting back to the telephone, Mac followed her. "You know this isn't over, don't you? This guy isn't going to give up and go away."

"Maybe if I don't react he'll get bored."

"He might. Or he might just be driven to do something more dramatic, simply to get your attention."

"More dramatic?" The wobble in her voice gave him hope and he went to her, took her shoulders, forced her to look up at him.

"For the last forty-eight hours you've been on the run from this, Claudia. He's been in control, jerking your strings, watching you jump. For heaven's sake walk away. Give yourself a bit a s.p.a.ce."

"And where will I go?"