Wild Lady Part 7

"You'll have it."

Mel touched her arm. "Can I give you a lift home, Claudia?"

"No, I'm going to Broomhill for the weekend." She had a sudden urge to tell Melanie where she would be. "I'm staying with Fizz and Luke."

"What about transport?"

"The garage loaned me a car. And before you ask, I'm quite capable of driving myself."

"Are you sure?" Claudia gave her the kind of look that brooked no argument. "Right. See you on Monday then," she said, melting through the dressing room door.

"Claudia," Phillip began, but she cut him off.

"Monday, Phillip. And will you close the door on your way out please."

Alone in her dressing room, Claudia sat very still and considered what had happened. Thought about someone walking into her dressing room, slashing her costume to ribbons and then walking out again. And she thought about the car the garage had loaned her sitting outside the theater since she had arrived just after two. Out in the open. Unprotected. She thought about it for a long time.

Then she opened her bag, took out a card and dialed the number on it.

A man answered with the number, nothing else, and waited.

"My name is Claudia Beaumont," she said, and realized that there was a noticeable shake to her voice. "Gabriel MacIntyre told me to call you if I needed transport."

CHAPTER FIVE.

GABRIEL MacIntyre arrived at the theater twenty minutes after her call and the doorman directed him backstage.

When he had left her three hours earlier, she had been angry with him. Now he was angry with himself. He had attempted to scare her into listening to him. He had wanted to scare her. Whether to punish her for what she had put Adele through, or to punish her for what she was putting him through he refused to contemplate.

But as she opened her dressing room door to his knock, he knew his own feelings were of no importance. She was pale, her skin drawn tight across her face, her eyes full of apprehension.

"Mac!" For a moment he could have been convinced that she was glad to see him. She quickly disabused him of that. "You didn't have to come yourself."

"I was there when you rang in. I thought..." Had he thought? Or just reacted? "Well, I just thought if something else had happened you might be happier with someone you recognized." He glanced around. The room was a muddle of telegrams, letters, makeup. The room was almost like a stage set of what an actress's dressing room should be. Even down to the vase of red roses that adorned her dressing table. But there was nothing to account for her pallor. "Has something happened?" he asked.

Claudia didn't answer him, instead she crossed to the wardrobe and slid back the door. Then she made a helpless little gesture at the white lace peignoir hanging inside. She had worn it on stage the night before. It was cut low enough to display the promise of firm and generous b.r.e.a.s.t.s, the bodice fitted tight to her neat waist before flaring out into a full length skirt. There had been an almost audible sigh from the audience as she had swept across the stage and his body had tightened in desire at her seductive beauty. His and every other red-blooded man in the audience. But he had known what it was like to hold her, breath her scent, kiss her. And to suffer her indignation for his presumption.

Turning abruptly away he lifted the beautiful lace frippery out of the wardrobe and his stomach turned over as he saw what had happened. No wonder she was white to her gills. He carried it to the dressing table and examined the slashes in the brightness of the mirror lights. It had been done with a razor. An old-fashioned cut-throat razor. And his blood ran cold at the thought of what else such a weapon might do.

"It happened while I was at the studios," she said, her voice not quite steady. "I found it..."

"Have the police been called?" he interrupted briskly, keeping his voice matter-of-fact with considerable difficulty.

She shook her head. "The curtain was about to go up when I found it, and after the show ... everyone was exhausted, I couldn't put them through a interrogation. On Monday the stage manager will compile a list of everyone who had a legitimate reason to be backstage this evening, and he'll question them to see if anyone else was seen."

"Seen but not remarked on at the time?" He wondered if she realized just what she was saying.

She nodded. "Visitors have to sign in, but people are in an out all the time, particularly between matinees." She shrugged, as if she knew it was hopeless anyway. "The backstage crew tend to send out for pizzas."

"And they just get waved through."

"It happens. Jim knows them you see and if he was busy..." - she turned her huge silver eyes on him - "... well, someone who was known, recognized, wouldn't have been challenged once they were inside the theater."

Known. Recognized. She knew. She had realized that the person who had done this must be someone who could walk through her tight little world without question. Someone she knew. Maybe even someone she called a friend. It was no wonder she looked like a ghost. It had gone beyond the point at which it could be brushed off as a sick joke. At best someone wanted to frighten her. He didn't want to think about what the worst might be, but he would have to. And so would she.

"You're very vulnerable here, Claudia. There are dozens of places someone could hide." She didn't flinch from the thought and he realized that she had already worked that out for herself. It was why she had telephoned the number he had given her. She could no longer trust anyone. She was being forced into the arms of a stranger, an outsider with no ax to grind, someone outside the world of the theater with no grudge, real or imagined to fuel this nightmare. "Perhaps you should consider taking a break, disappearing for a week or two, until whoever's doing this has been found."

"I can't do that."

"Not even a week? Even stars get sick sometimes."

"No, Mac." He hadn't noticed the stubbornness of her chin before. Not especially. He'd been too intent on her mouth. But it suddenly demanded attention. "I won't be driven out of the theater. And I have interviews arranged all next week. There's a new television serial starting at the weekend." She managed a wry smile. "It's about a girl driven to the edge of suicide by a stalker."

"Are there any parallels with this?"

"I hope not. The girl I play is finally driven to kill the man involved. She can't see any other way to reclaim her life." She regarded him without resentment. "If you're thinking that this is another candidate for a publicity campaign -"

"No." He said it too quickly, but she was right. The thought had bubbled up like poison. He turned away to hang the remains of the dressing gown back in the wardrobe. If it came to the police, they would want to see it, keep it for evidence, although heaven alone knew how many people had touched it since it had been slashed. But he sensed a reluctance to involve the police. Her reasons for not calling them this evening had been flimsy to say the least. It possible that despite her denials that she knew who was doing this, she had her suspicions.

"I wouldn't blame you, Mac," she said, with the tiniest of sighs, an unconscious gesture that betrayed her own uncertainties. "To tell you the truth, I rather wish it was something that simple."

Despite the colorful top she was wearing, a top that shouted "here I am, come and get me", to her tormentor, she looked fragile, haunted and he wanted to go to her, hold her, rea.s.sure her that everything would be all right. That no one would hurt her.

Instead he picked up her overnight bag and opened the door. "Come on. I think you should get out of here. Right now." She might be at home in the theater, but to him it was alien, full of shadows, a place where danger had too many hiding places. As he urged her towards the stage door his skin crawled with tension as he thought of some crazy with a razor on the loose, capable of anything.

The tall, slight figure of man was waiting by the stage door and Mac, hand on Claudia's arm, kept himself between her and the unknown.

But Claudia obviously knew him. "Phillip, I thought you'd gone home."

"Not while you were here," he said, with just a touch of reproach in his voice. "I thought you might need a lift. I didn't want you to think of going home alone. Not after..." Redmond paused, apparently unwilling to mention the attack on her gown in the presence of a stranger. "You know I'm happy to take you anywhere you want to go."

Mac, on the receiving end of a long hard look that came close to a challenge, kept his face expressionless even though every nerve ending was on alert and urging him to get her out of there as fast as possible.

Claudia, despite her shock, continued to be gracious. "How thoughtful of you, Phillip, but as you see I have a lift tonight." She turned to him. "Mac, this is Phillip Redmond. The mainstay of our whole operation. Without him everything would grind to a stop. Phillip -"

"I recognize Mr. MacIntyre from the television," he said, stiffly, barely acknowledging his presence.

"You watched the program?" Mac looked around. "I would have thought television was banned from such an august establishment."

"Hardly. Mr. Beaumont has television interests and the VTR is a very useful aid. Everyone was in the Green Room to watch Claudia." Everyone? Not the dress slasher. Had he known that everyone's attention would be distracted? Mac kept his thoughts to himself, but he felt Claudia's arm twitch nervously beneath his fingers. "Well, if you're quite happy with your transport arrangements?" Redmond murmured, doubtfully, as he turned back to Claudia. If the man had been ten years younger, Mac thought irritably, he would have been inviting a black eye.

Claudia, however was gentle. "Quite sure." She touched his hand, lightly. "Thank you, Phillip."

Outside, the not-quite-dark of the August night was cool enough to raise a shiver. He felt it as she hesitated in the doorway, no doubt remembering the way he had jumped her earlier. Then he had wanted to frighten her. Now she flinched as he put his arm rea.s.suringly about her shoulder to ease her towards his ill-used Landcruiser. "It's all right, Claudia."

But she didn't move. "The car. It shouldn't be left here."

"What car?"

She pointed to the small saloon parked twenty yards behind his. "The garage loaned it to me."

He didn't have to ask why she'd changed her mind about driving it. Someone had breached the security of her dressing room. Her car, standing out in the open since early afternoon, was a much easier target for a man who had shown himself mechanically skilled, and equally adept at creating diversions. "I'll get it picked up and checked over."

"Straight away? If some youngsters decided to take it ... I wouldn't want anyone to get hurt because of me."

If they got hurt, he thought, it would be because they couldn't keep their hands off someone else's property, but he didn't argue.

"Straight away," he said. Then, "It'll take a good hour to get to Broomhill, even at this time of night. Do you want to get in the back, try and sleep?"

"I won't sleep, not straight after a performance," she said, with an effort at a smile. "The adrenaline keeps on pumping."

"I suppose so." But he didn't think there was too much adrenaline pumping around her system right now. She looked bloodless, a pale shadow of herself; he couldn't begin to estimate the strength of will it must have taken to step out on the stage and carry on as if nothing had happened. And it had taken everything out of her. She'd lost that feisty, do-it-or-die look that had struck him so forcibly when, despite her fear she had stepped out of the plane and into thin air. Then she had come up fighting. Right now she looked fit to drop.

But perhaps she didn't want to risk sleep, was afraid of the demons that might come if she allowed those heavy, silk-lashed lids to close. A queasy wave of anxiety for her swept over him as he stood over her. Then, impatient with himself, he switched off the alarm and opened the pa.s.senger door. She had made it more than plain that she didn't want him worrying about her. In truth she wasn't the kind of woman he would normally worry about. Glamorous she might be, but her entire life was a performance. Even thanking Phillip Redmond for his concern, he had sensed that was all it had been. A beautifully judged performance. Not genuine at all. And now she was making a drama about climbing up into the Landcruiser.

Then he remembered her ankle and cursing to himself, lowered his shoulder so that she could put her hand on it before lifting her up into the high seat. "All right?" he asked.

"Fine," she said, fastening her seat belt.

He watched her for a moment before closing the door on her and settling himself in the driving seat. She, glanced behind her, still on edge about the sedate little saloon car the garage had loaned her. He was pretty certain that no self-respecting joy-rider would be want to be seen behind the wheel of such a vehicle, but he made a phone call.

"Someone will be here in five minutes," he promised, replacing the receiver. Then he put the keys in the ignition and started the engine. She'd asked him why he had gone to so much bother to protect her when she had made it clear she didn't want his protection. He glanced across at the slender figure pressed back in the seat, cheeks and eye sockets nothing but dark shadows in her face. He'd been asking himself that all day.

But her full lips shone in the street light. Her mouth had been warm and alive beneath his. She might be self-absorbed but she had her own kind of courage; she had certainly made Barty James smart for taking advantage of her. And she was, without doubt, the most vivid woman he had ever met. Pure drama. She rolled her head towards him, looking at him from beneath lowered lashes and his body responded with an urgency that bucked through him like an electric shock.

Christ, but he was in trouble. He'd never wanted a woman like he wanted Claudia Beaumont, wanted to feel her body soft and yielding beneath him. He didn't doubt he could take it. Or that he would be one in a very long line. He wasn't that kind of fool.

"Is something wrong?" she asked, her voice husky with tiredness, twisting his guts.

"I just wondered if you'd like some music, or the radio?" he said, turning away abruptly.

She shook her head. "Absolute silence will do very nicely." And she closed her eyes again. Then, "But you could lower the back of the seat just a little."

"The lever's on the other side of the seat." She made no move to adjust it herself and after a moment's hesitation he reached across her. If he tried very hard, he could shut out the image of her as he stretched across her body, taking care not to touch her. He could somehow ignore the way her hair spilled across the black upholstery like spun gold. But her scent cried out to him, elusive, haunting, subtle, like an elusive memory that shifted out of the corner of your mind even as you thought you had it pinned down, inviting you to follow. He lowered the back of the seat so that she was stretched out, more lying than sitting, beneath him. "Is that more comfortable?"

"Thank you." She caught his arm as he straightened. "And thank you for coming tonight, Mac. I didn't deserve it, not after the things I said. You tried to tell me -"

"Forget it," he said, his voice shockingly harsh in his own ears as he cut off the words, but she didn't seem to notice, reaching up to him, holding his face between her hands. Then, for just a moment, she pressed her cool, smooth cheek against his. It was wet and as she fell back against the seat he could see the shining marks that tears had left on her face. A lump formed in his throat as he wiped them away with his thumbs. "Don't cry, Claudia," he said, thickly. "Go to sleep. I promise, nothing's going to hurt you."

"I know." She closed her lids and even before he had pulled out into the main road she had obeyed him, her lashes dark fringes against the translucence of her skin.

He glanced at her from time to time. She trusted him. No one else. It should have made him feel like a giant, instead he felt terribly afraid. He had promised her she was safe with him and no one could ever guarantee that.

"Claudia?" She stirred, sighed, opened her eyes and looked at him. "We're in Broomhill. Can you give me directions to your sister's house?"

She yawned, stretched, looked at the clock on the dashboard. "It's very late, perhaps we shouldn't disturb them. We could always go -"

"Are they expecting you?" he interrupted.

"Well, yes, I telephoned to say that I was coming, but -"

"Then you must go straight there. From now on you must always do what you say you're going to do, or make sure everyone knows you've changed your plans."

"Must I?" Sleep had restored her and now her eyes glinted with amus.e.m.e.nt as she turned to him. "That could prove to be a real nuisance."

"Nuisance or not," he said, tightly, "they're the rules and you're going to have to live with them for the time being, no matter how much it affects your love life. Now, can I have those directions before we end up in the sea?"

Claudia, slightly ashamed of baiting him no matter how much he deserved it, told him the way to her sister's home and fifteen minutes later they pulled up in front of the low stone manor house nestling in a fold of land above a small bay. Luke opened the door as they came to a halt and she didn't wait for anyone to open the car door, jumping down onto her sound foot and flinging herself into her brother-in-laws arms. He hugged her, held her briefly.

Then he looked over her shoulder at Mac standing beside the Landcruiser. Claudia watched in sly amus.e.m.e.nt as they sized one another up and then Luke, apparently satisfied with what he saw, moved towards him, hand outstretched. "Luke Devlin," he said.

"Gabriel MacIntyre."

"But you can call him Mac," Claudia said.

Luke grinned down at her, arm still around her shoulders. "Can I?" He offered Mac an apologetic smile, the kind of smile that men use when a woman has done something charmingly silly. Mac, she noted, did not respond. But then he had made no secret that of the fact that he didn't think she was in the least bit charming and a lot worse than silly. He had made up his mind exactly what she was before he had set eyes on her. Which made his concern for her all the more puzzling. "Well, come on in, Mac," Luke said. "Make yourself at home." He turned back to Claudia. "But do it quietly, Fizz is asleep."

Mac retrieved Claudia's bag, shut the car door quietly and using a remote, set the alarm before looking up at the red box attached to the side of the house, just beneath the eaves. Apparently satisfied, he followed them over the threshold.

Claudia crossed the black and white checkered floor of the hall. "If n.o.body minds," she said, "I'm going straight to bed, I'm suffering a serious shortfall of sleep." But at the foot of the broad oak staircase she turned back. "Well? Are you coming, Mac?" she asked, despite her tiredness she was unable to resist the opportunity to torment him again, just a little. He might think she was a wanton, but he wasn't entirely unaffected by her. Or why would he have raced to the theater when she had momentarily lost her head and called for help?

"Coming?" She was interested to note the slight flush that darkened his cheekbones.

"I thought you'd want to look under my bed, check out the wardrobe." She paused. "In fact I was sure you'd insist on sleeping at the foot of my bed like a faithful watchdog. You're not going to disappoint me, are you?"

"I think I'm going to have to." She saw him relax as he realized that she wasn't serious. It was an interesting reaction; most men she knew would have leapt at the chance, which was why she didn't issue the invitation to every Tom, d.i.c.k or Harry. But it was hardly surprising that a man called Gabriel would defy that kind of simple categorization. "I don't believe I know you that well, Claudia."

"No? Try convincing the eleven million people watching your performance on television tonight and see how far you get," she reminded him.

"Neither of us had much choice about that."

"Not the most gallant response, Mr. MacIntyre. You could at least pretend you enjoyed yourself. You certainly convinced me." She turned away to hide the little flush of annoyance that heated her cheeks. "Did you see how much we raised for the hospice, Luke?"

"We were glued to the screen and Fizz was deeply touched at the personal sacrifice involved," Luke replied, with the straightest of faces. "However, there's no need for either of you to suffer further since we've plenty of room. But Claudia..." She waited. "Fizz doesn't know about what happened at the theater tonight. I'd rather you didn't tell her. I don't want her upset."

Claudia forgot about teasing Mac in her concern for her sister, coming back down the stairs a little way. "There's nothing wrong, is there?"

"Nothing at all and I intend it should stay that way so, as I said, I'd be grateful if you didn't wake her." He turned to Gabriel MacIntyre, directing him towards the study. "Mac, can I interest you in a drink?"

Claudia, lingering on the stairs, watched them disappear into the dark paneled interior of Luke's study. Mac was going to tell him what had happened. Everything. They were going to talk about her. Decide what was best for her and then tomorrow they would certainly insist that she take a break from Private Lives until the nightmare was over. She felt like going back downstairs and telling them that they might as well save their breath.