Wild Lady Part 8

But she also felt bone-achingly weary, certainly too weary to go back down the stairs and argue her corner so she left them to it. Tomorrow would be soon enough. They could demand all they liked, but it wouldn't make any difference. She wasn't about to walk away from the theater, even for a day. Not because she was enjoying the part particularly. But the run had been extended because of the demand for tickets and an awful lot of people were depending on her for a job.

"Whisky?" Luke Devlin asked.

"Thanks."

Luke was puzzled. He hadn't known Claudia for much more than six months and he hadn't seen a great deal of her in that time. But he thought he knew the kind of men she liked to be seen with. The kind of men who paid a fortune to have their hair cut twice a week, wore Italian suits and handmade shoes and who had soft, well-manicured hands. "Water?" he asked.

"Just as it comes, thanks." Luke handed him a heavy crystal tumbler and poured one for himself. "I'm sorry to impose on your hospitality so late at night."

"It's no problem. Claudia's always welcome. And her friends." Luke motioned to one of a pair of leather chairs set in front of wide open French windows. He had Fizz had been sitting there earlier, enjoying the night scents from the garden, the sound of the sea washing against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff. "Have you known her long?"

"No, only a couple of days. And we're not exactly friends."

"Well, I have to admit that I did notice the slightest suggestion of a clash of temperament, but you can never tell with Claudia. She is very good at hiding her feelings beneath that provoking manner of hers."

"I hadn't noticed her making much effort to hide her feelings," Mac said. "On the contrary, I find her bracingly direct."

"I'd say that's a good sign. If it matters."

"Is it?" When Mac looked up from his gla.s.s his face was creased in a rueful smile. "You clearly haven't been on the receiving end."

He wasn't saying whether it mattered, Luke noticed. Which probably meant that it did, so he changed the subject. "You'd better tell me what happened at the theater tonight."

Mac told him about the dress, then about the letter, the photograph and finally about his suspicions that the car had been tampered with.

"Can I ask why Claudia turned to you for help?"

"She didn't. I rather imposed myself on her. She didn't seem to be taking the danger at all seriously. She's convinced the letter and photograph were just a rather tasteless joke."

"And the car?" Luke probed.

"The car is more difficult. She doesn't want to believe that, because it clearly takes the whole thing way beyond even the nastiest kind of joke. She's insisting that I've got a James Bond complex."

"But you haven't?" He didn't want to the offend the man, but it did all seem rather far fetched. If it wasn't for the costume he'd be inclined to agree with Claudia.

"If someone can convince me that I'm wrong I'll be happy to admit my mistake. I've arranged for an independent a.s.sessor to look at the car. Ostensibly for insurance purposes."

"In the meantime you think she'd be safer here?"

"I didn't say that. I brought her here tonight because it was what she wanted and I didn't think she could face any more. But your wife is pregnant, I believe?"

"Well, yes. But it won't be any trouble having Claudia here. We've got a housekeeper -"

"That wasn't what I was getting at. If someone really wants to hurt Claudia he may come after her. I don't think she should stay beyond the weekend."

"She'll be perfectly safe here."

"Will she?" Mac gestured towards the open window. "Did you leave this open when you came to the front door?"

Luke regarded him thoughtfully. "You mean anyone could have walked in? It would have taken a lot of nerve."

"He walked into the theater this evening and slashed her costume to ribbons. He managed to get that photograph into a parachute inside my own security cordon. Don't doubt his nerve." He took a swallow of whisky. "Keeping a house of this size secure in high summer would be a real strain. Locked windows, closed doors. Your wife couldn't fail to notice something was amiss."

"Are you offering to help?"

"Security is my business, Devlin."

"I see. Then you'd better tell me what you have in mind."

"Claudia? Are you awake?"

She opened her eyes, blinking sleepily. "I am now," she grumbled, then smiled as she saw who it was. "h.e.l.lo, Fizz. How are you?" Her sister put the cup she was carrying on the night table and perched on the side of the bed, her hand curled protectively about the noticeable b.u.mp where her baby was growing. Claudia didn't need to ask how her sister was. She was glowing. Marriage, the approach of motherhood had put a bloom on her that made Claudia suddenly feel very empty and alone.

"I'm feeling wonderful," she confirmed. "How about you?"

"Me? Same as ever. I'm just dandy."

"Are you?" Fizz asked, her smooth forehead creasing with concern. "You look a bit..." Claudia watched her sister struggle for some tactful way to say that she looked washed out.

"Tired?" she offered.

"Mmmm. A bit. Have you been overdoing it?"

"Burning my candle at both ends? At every conceivable opportunity, darling. It's what life is for. My life, anyway."

"I don't know, even Luke mentioned that you look a bit..." Again the hesitation.

"Tired?" Claudia offered again.

Fizz grinned. "Exhausted, actually. And Mac seems to be very concerned about you."

"He's very caring," Claudia a.s.sured her.

"Then perhaps you should take a week off and let him care for you?"

Claudia laughed out loud. "Trust a pair of men to get a woman to do their dirty work for them."

"I don't know what you mean," Fizz declared.

"Your nose will grow, miss," Claudia warned and her sister gave a little shrug. "You have you been elected to persuade me to take a week off, admit it."

"Now I've seen you, I really think you should."

"Don't be silly, Fizz. You know I can't do that."

"Why not?"

"A fully booked theater?" Claudia offered.

"I suppose a few people will be disappointed."

"Well, thank you, darling," Claudia replied, with the gentlest touch of reproach.

"Maybe a dozen then."

"Oh, wow. A whole dozen."

"All right, all right," she laughed. "They'll be riots in Shaftsbury Avenue. But you've been working so hard these last few months and you saw what happened to Dad when he drove himself to the limit. If you carry on and collapse from exhaustion you'll be forced to take a break whether you want to or not."

"Dad was suffering from stress. I'm just suffering from a surfeit of early mornings and late nights. Parachuting isn't all it's cracked up to be. It isn't all fun, you know."

"Really? It looked a heck of a lot of fun to me. Tell me about it."

"You're too young. But I promise you I'm not about to collapse. Besides, that would be different. People would be sympathetic. And they would feel uncomfortable about asking for their money back. If I just swanned off for a holiday with some hunk of a man the public would, quite rightly, lose confidence in me and they wouldn't book in advance."

"For this particular hunk of a man it might be worth it."

Mac must have made quite an impression on her sister, Claudia thought. And she wasn't easily impressed. "He's not my type, Fizz."

"The way that Julian and David Hart and goodness knows how many other smooth and beautiful young men were your type? For all of ten minutes."

"There weren't that many," she protested. "And David is just a friend. He was never interested in my body."

Fizz's eyebrows shot up. "I didn't know that. I thought he worshipped you blindly. I thought you rushed into his bed whenever life was letting you down -"

"His spare bed. Not that it's any of your business. And Julian was in love with you, not me. I refuse to be a consolation prize, no matter how pretty the man."

"Then if he isn't "your type", why is Mac here with you?"

"Here? With me?" Claudia made a comically elegant performance of looking about her. She peeked under the covers of the bed, leaned over the edge and looked beneath it, lifted a pillow with exaggerated care. "No. I don't see him. In fact I didn't see him all night. He doesn't know me well enough for anything like that. He said so. Ask Luke."

"Claudia!"

"We are not an item, Fizz. He gave me a lift last night because I had a little shunt in my new car."

"How little?"

"A few dents and scratches. Nothing to worry about."

Fizz stood up and crossed to the window, drawing back the curtains. "Mac has a few dents and scratches in the side of his car too," she said, looking down onto the drive. "Coincidence?" she asked. "Or do they match? Your car is red, isn't it?" She looked back at Claudia. "Did you hit him, or did he hit you?"

Claudia laughed. "You mean he didn't tell you? He's not usually so reticent on the subject." She flung back the bedclothes and made a show of bouncing out of bed. "Enough of such nonsense," she declared, brightly. "I'm going to have a shower, then I'm going to give Mac the grand tour of Broomhill."

"I'm sure he'd much rather have the grand tour of one of Broomhill's most interesting inhabitants," Fizz replied with an infuriatingly smug little smile.

The trouble was, Claudia realized as she stood beneath the shower a few moments later, she really wasn't at all sure what Mac wanted. Which on its own made him more interesting than most men she met. Most men only had one thing on their mind and boringly let it show. She raised her face to the warm water, letting it stream through her hair and down her body, wondering just what it would be like to have him there, kissing her, not with half the country watching them, but alone and with no holds barred.

Not boring.

Then, furious with herself she reached out and snapped off the water. What the h.e.l.l was she thinking about? The man thought she was easy. A loose living actress without a moral to her name. The way he had kissed her proved it. Well, let him think it. He wouldn't be the only one. If she laid down a penny for every man her name had been linked with they would stretch the length of Broomhill Pier. But linked with and lain with were very different.

Gabriel MacIntyre was very different.

She examined her reflection in the gla.s.s. For all her sister's concern, she didn't look so bad, the fading bruise and faint shadows beneath her eyes were quickly dealt with. Mascara to lengthen her lashes and a hot lipstick did the rest. But she ignored the baggy shorts and T-shirt she had brought with her, originally planning to spend the day quietly on the beach with an undemanding book. If she was going down into Broomhill with Mac she wanted heads to turn. She wanted him to see heads turn.

The wardrobe contained an a.s.sortment of clothes that she and Melanie had left behind on earlier visits and she picked out a little dress, a swirl of bright colors with a skimpy halter neck and a skirt short enough to display her long legs to advantage. It was Melanie's, but she wouldn't mind Claudia borrowing it. And it was a head turner if ever she'd seen one.

She found Mac leaning against the bal.u.s.trade that overlooked a tiny private beach tucked below the house in a crack in the cliff. He was no longer wearing the macho combat gear he had been pressed into wearing for the television program. This morning he was altogether less aggressive in a pair of light colored chinos topped with an expensive jersey polo shirt the color of bluebells, a shade that perfectly matched his eyes. Only a man who was vain about his appearance would have been so careful with the color. She had met enough of them in her business to recognize the type and Gabriel MacIntyre was definitely not the type.

So it had to be a present from a woman, a woman who wanted to display her man, show him off. His dead wife, then, or was there someone else in his life? If there was, she had to be a pretty relaxed sort of girl, Claudia decided. A great deal more relaxed than she would be in similar circ.u.mstances.

Whoever had chosen the shirt knew her business. In the olive drab sweater Mac had just looked big. But the silky material of the shirt accentuated his shoulders, putting her in mind of the iron girders that framed multistory office blocks, draping a torso equally lean and hard. And the forearms on which he was resting as he stared out to sea had the kind of ma.s.s that only hard manual work could develop. Broomhill had better brace itself.

Heads would turn for sure, but not just to look at her.

"Do you always carry an overnight bag with you?" she asked, turning her back on the sun-spangled sea, propping herself on her elbows as she leaned back against the parapet, her arm not quite touching his.

He glanced down at her, his eyes lingering momentarily on hint of breast where the bodice divided to fasten about her neck. "Doesn't everyone?"

"Not without the expectation of a night in a strange bed." She lifted her face to the sun so that her hair hung down behind her and she closed her eyes. "Whose bed were you planning on sleeping in, Mac?"

"I carry a sleeping bag, too. One can never be sure of a bed."

"Single or a double," she continued, deliberately provoking him.

"This is a very pretty spot," he said, refusing to be provoked. "Devlin was lucky to find a place like this on the market."

"Luke's the kind of man who makes his own luck. He worked for everything he owns. And so did my sister." She realized that she sounded defensive. There was something about him that put her on the defensive and she wasn't used to it. She was used to being in control. All the time.

"Fizz was telling me about the radio station. She suggested you show me around."

"Did she? There's not much to see. A radio station is a rather boring place unless you're actually broadcasting. But it's usually fun walking along the pier on Sunday. There's a lot of live entertainment."

"Unfortunately fun isn't on the agenda." He produced an envelope from his pocket. "This was on the mat when I got up this morning." She took the envelope, opened the letter it contained. YOU CAN RUN, the evil letters screamed at her, BUT YOU CAN'T HIDE FROM ME. I KNOW EVERY MOVE YOU MAKE. "It's all right," he said, quickly as she dropped the letter, her hands covering her mouth. He pulled her into the safety of his arms and for a moment held her there while the tremor swept through her body. For a moment she allowed him to. "It's all right, Claudia."

"All right," she moaned. "How can it be all right?" She took a grip of herself and pushed away from him. "It's not all right. I shouldn't have come here. If Fizz had found that filthy thing..."

He retrieved the letter from the gravel, put it in his pocket. "She didn't. I'm an early riser."

"But whoever sent that is earlier."

"Not sent, Claudia. It's Sunday. It was pushed through the letterbox. But your sister doesn't know about it. We thought it best."