Marriage by Deception (7 page)

‘Oh, and the office suit is a write-off,’ he added. ‘So unless you want to ask the charity shop for another, I’ll be wearing my own clothes from now on.’

‘What is this strange power you have over women?’ She was smiling again, and Sam’s warning antennae were going into overdrive. ‘Even when you look like a geek, they’re queuing to get laid.’

‘I wouldn’t use Mandy as a criterion,’ Sam said drily. ‘I got the impression anyone would have done.’

‘You’re far too modest.’ She took a seat on the sofa, crossing her legs. She was wearing a brief black skirt, topped by a matching camisole, and a white jacket like a man’s tuxedo. She had swept her hair up into a loose knot, and her nails and mouth were painted a dark, challenging red.

War paint, thought Sam.

He kept his voice even. ‘But then, according to you, I have so much to be modest about.’ He retrieved his glass from the table and went to stand by the fireplace.
Not two swords’ lengths apart, but the best he could manage.

She laughed. ‘Poor Sam—does that still rankle? But I’m having to eat my words. I was notified today that you’ve been voted Journalist of the Year by
Life Today
magazine for your Mzruba work.’ She paused. ‘I told the proprietor, and he was well pleased. Asked what you were doing at the moment.’ She shrugged. ‘I said—a special assignment.’

‘The perfect description.’ Sam drank some whiskey.

‘I thought so.’ Cilla leaned back against the cushions, the drag of her camisole revealing that she was bra-less.

She was showing a fair amount of thigh as well, Sam realised bleakly. Surely lightning wasn’t going to strike him twice.

‘But if you’re going to win awards, maybe I should be making better use of you.’ Her tone was meditative, her smile cat-like. ‘Sam—we don’t have to be on bad terms—do we?’

He was instantly wary. ‘Of course not.’ He added a polite smile. ‘It was good of you to come and tell me about the award, Cilla, but I mustn’t keep you. It’s Saturday night, after all, and I’m sure you have places to go and people to see.’

Like your husband, he added silently. He knew she had one—somewhere—but the basis for their relationship was anyone’s guess.

‘Mark’s out of his depth on the foreign news desk,’ she went on, as if he hadn’t spoken. ‘I’m going to move him, so there’ll be a vacancy again. And this time I need to be sure that the right man gets the job.’ Her voice deepened, became husky. ‘Do you think you’re that man, Sam? As we’ve had our differences
in the past, I’d need to assure myself that you’d be—loyal.’

She invested that final word with a whole host of meanings.

Sam leaned a shoulder against the mantelshelf and stared at his whiskey. All he had to do was walk across and sit down beside her and that long-promised promotion would be his—but at a price. It would be a totally cynical encounter—an exercise in sexuality—and not the first to come his way, admittedly. Yet all he could feel was a profound distaste as cold and bitter as gall.

‘I promise you the best foreign news coverage anywhere,’ he said quietly. ‘I hope that’s enough, because it’s all there is.’

There was a long silence. Her smile, when it came, would have eaten through metal. ‘I think, Sam darling, that you’ve just made a terrible mistake.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve just avoided a worse one.’

‘Is this your night for turning women down? First the divorcee and now me.’ Her hands moved in a brief angry gesture she could not control. The dark enamel on her fingertips looked, he thought, like dried blood.

‘But perhaps you have a different agenda altogether,’ she went on. ‘Maybe you simply prefer other men.’

She was trying to make him angry, he thought. To provoke him into something hasty.

He shrugged. ‘Or maybe I’m old-fashioned enough to want to do my own hunting. Have you ever thought of that, Ms Godwin?’

She got quickly and almost clumsily to her feet. ‘I shall expect your resignation on my desk on Monday.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’m not ready to do that. You’ll have to fire me, and at the moment you have no grounds.’

At the door, she gave him a last venomous look. ‘Enjoy your little bit of glory over the award,’ she said. ‘By the time I’ve finished with you, you’ll be a standing joke.’

He said wearily, ‘I’m sure you’ll try. Goodnight, Cilla.’

It hurt to breathe, he discovered when he was alone, and he felt slightly nauseous.

I never saw that coming, he told himself grimly.

In fact, he could hardly believe it had happened. That it hadn’t all been a ghastly hallucination.

Except for the evidence. Picking up the lipstick-stained glass she’d been using between his thumb and forefinger, he took it into the kitchen and dropped it into the wastebin.

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned—as he’d already found out to his cost that evening. And in Cilla Godwin’s case it had happened twice.

He wondered wryly what kind of hell he could expect. Certainly his days on the
Echo
were numbered, but he’d known that already. He’d start looking round for another job on Monday.

The heavy, musky scent she’d been wearing still seemed to hang in the sitting room, he realised, wrinkling his nose. He unlocked the window and opened it wide. The air that flooded it was cold but stale.

I haven’t breathed properly since I came back from Rowcliffe, he thought restlessly, as he went back to his laptop.

He read what he’d written, then with an impatient exclamation deleted it all. He’d turned Mandy into a caricature, he thought. The man-hungry blonde. What
he’d seen, but hadn’t shown, was the pain of her divorce, and her fear of a lonely future.

He’d had compassion enough for the innocents caught up in the Mzruban civil war. Surely he could spare some for Mandy, suffering the after effects of a more personal conflict.

He stared at the empty screen, trying to recreate her image, but the girl’s face that swam in his vision was a very different one—pale-skinned and hazel-eyed, with a smile that tugged at some inner heart-cord he hadn’t known he possessed.

He swore under his breath. This was a complication he didn’t need—particularly when his whole life was at a crossroads.

Janie Craig had started off as a puzzle he’d been determined to solve. But finding the real girl behind the façade had turned into a much more personal quest. Which had somehow been crystallised when he saw she’d kept the rose he’d given her.

But that didn’t mean he’d had to surrender to his impulse to deluge her with flowers, he derided himself. She wasn’t his type and that wasn’t his style.

And it has to stop right here and now, he told himself grimly. Before it really starts running out of control.

Tomorrow would be the last time they saw each other, and he had decided exactly how he would handle it. Locked into her usual environment, she had no reason to lower her guard, he thought, as he switched off the computer. So he would try a different ploy to break down her defences.

A change of surroundings, he mused with satisfaction. A change of approach. Before they walked away from each other.

He hadn’t forgotten that she’d told him she’d only kept their first appointment from a sense of obligation. It would be tempting to see if he could induce her to feel just an atom of regret when they parted from each other for ever.

But her smile continued to haunt him, even in sleep, and he woke with a start, realising that he had turned to her, reaching for her in yearning and need, only to encounter the chill emptiness in the bed beside him.

R
OS
glanced at the pile of discarded clothing on her bed and groaned.

Look in the mirror, she adjured herself sternly, and say after me—this is only a brunch. It is no big deal.

She’d tried on nearly everything she owned, and rejected it. Now she was back to her original choice, a pair of slim-fitting cream pants and a matching V-neck sweater. Cool and casual, she thought, hooking her favourite amber earrings into her lobes, to complement a day when the sky was almost cloudless and there was real warmth in the spring sun.

It was a long time since she’d been out to a brunch. Not, in fact, since her trip to New York to meet her American publishers, when she’d spent a gloriously relaxed Sunday morning in Greenwich Village.

She wondered if Sam’s travels had ever taken him to the States.

There was so much about him she didn’t know—and probably never would, she realised with a sudden pang. So she would simply have to invent it. And she had a head start on that already.

She had written until late the previous night, watching the story catch fire, feeling her excitement—her empathy with it—build swiftly and surely.

All it needed was a new hero, she thought, applying a thin layer of pale coral to her mouth. And I found one.

She was humming under her breath as she ran down
the stairs. She’d just reached the hallway when the doorbell sounded. She took a deep, calming breath and opened the door.

‘Good morning,’ she said. Her voice and expression were sedate, but her eyes were abrim with laughter and delight as she looked up at him.

Sam found he was catching his breath. He said a little hoarsely, ‘How do you do that?’

‘Do what?’ Ros stood back to allow him into the hall, closing the door behind him.

‘Make your mouth say one thing and your eyes something completely different.’

She flushed slightly. ‘I—I didn’t know I could.’ He was wearing, she saw, close-fitting denim pants which accentuated his long legs, and a plaid shirt, both garments undoubtedly carrying designer labels. She said, ‘You look—good.’

‘You’ve stolen my line,’ he said. ‘Except that I was going to say—beautiful.’

She managed a small, rather choked laugh. ‘I’ve never been that.’

‘Yes, you have,’ he said. ‘You’ve never let yourself believe it, that’s all. And perhaps you needed the right moment to blossom.’

She said hurriedly, ‘Talking of blossoms—thank you for the roses. They’re lovely.’

He looked at the vase on the mantelpiece, with its solitary bloom, and smiled. ‘I saw that one had survived, and thought it looked lonely.’ He added softly. ‘I’m glad you kept it.’

Her blush deepened. ‘I didn’t—I mean—it was my cleaning lady. She’s Spanish,’ she added with a kind of desperation.

‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Perhaps I should have asked her for a date instead.’

Ros laughed. ‘She’d have turned you down. She’s a happily married woman.’

‘That’s not always a guarantee of good behaviour.’ He thought of Cilla Godwin’s moistly parted lips, and his face hardened slightly.

She saw his expression change. She said quickly, before she could change her mind, ‘Are you married, Sam? Or have you ever been?’

‘God, no.’ His reaction was too spontaneous to be anything but the truth. ‘What gave you that idea?’

‘I don’t know.’ She hesitated. ‘I just get this—feeling that you’re holding out on me in some way. That there are things about you that you don’t want me to know.’

‘You’ve forgotten our agreement,’ he said, after a pause. ‘A whole fresh start. Sam and Janie getting to know each other all over again.’

‘It doesn’t matter how much we pretend.’ Her face was suddenly grave. She was speaking, she realised, to herself. ‘We can never escape the people we really are.’

‘But we can hide from them occasionally,’ he said. ‘And I know the perfect hiding place, especially on a day like this.’

‘Let me guess.’ It had been the right thing to say. Her smile reached out and touched him again. ‘Somewhere by the river. Am I warm?’

He shook his head. ‘You’re not even tepid. And it’s a surprise.’

The first part of the surprise was the car, an elegant Audi, parked a few yards down the road.

‘I didn’t know you drove,’ Ros said, tucking herself into the passenger seat. ‘I thought we’d be walking.’

‘You see—the voyage of discovery has already begun. And I don’t use the car a lot.’ He paused. ‘But at a time like this—a special time—it’s convenient.’

She was scared of blushing again, so she frowned instead. ‘But don’t you need your glasses when you’re driving?’

‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’ve decided I don’t need them at all. Wearing them had simply become a habit. A failed attempt to make me look intellectual. Or something to hide behind,’ he added.

She laughed. ‘What have you got to hide from?’

‘You’d be surprised.’ He paused again. ‘I thought you’d be glad to see the last of them.’

She gave him a thoughtful glance. ‘Well—they never seemed quite right, somehow.’

Ros sat back as he negotiated the traffic on the Kings Road. He drove well, she thought. Positive without being aggressive.

Eventually she broke the silence. ‘We seem to be heading out of London.’

‘Well spotted.’ He slanted a grin at her. ‘I should have made you wear a blindfold.’

Her brows lifted. ‘You know a brunch place out of town?’

‘Not exactly. But I know a good picnic spot. Will you settle for that?’

She’d expected the safety of a busy restaurant. A secluded corner of the English countryside was a very different proposition. And he knew it as well as she did, she thought uneasily.

She swallowed. ‘I’m not a great fan of alfresco dining.’

‘There’s an indoor option as well,’ he said, worrying her even more. ‘We can decide when we get there.’

‘I suppose so.’ Her hands, which had been lightly clasped in her lap, now seemed welded together.

‘I made an early raid on the local deli,’ he went on. ‘We’ve got pâté, French sticks, olives, cold meat and Californian strawberries among other goodies.’

‘It sounds—marvellous.’ Ros forced a bright smile, then gasped as Sam suddenly pulled the wheel over and brought the car to a standstill at the side of the road.

He said, ‘So what’s the problem?’

‘I don’t know what you mean,’ Ros defended.

‘That’s not true.’ He shook his head, half reproving, half exasperated. ‘In the space of a couple of minutes you’ve gone from relaxed and smiling to a fair imitation of a coiled spring. God, I can actually feel the tension in you from here. Why?’

There was a fleck on one of her nails. She examined it closely. ‘Your change of plan has thrown me a little.’ She attempted a laugh that broke in the middle. ‘I don’t think I’m very good at surprises.’

‘Especially when they entail being alone with me? But you took that risk the first time we met.’

‘That was a calculated risk,’ she said. ‘And I didn’t intend to repeat it.’

‘Yet you did,’ he said. ‘When I asked you. And here you are again now.’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But for the last time—as we both know.’

‘Of course.’ He was silent for a moment. Then, ‘Would it make any difference if I told you there was nothing to fear? That I swear I won’t do anything that
you don’t want. That I won’t make a move—lay a finger on you—without your permission—your invitation. Does that reassure you?’

He waited for a moment, then his voice hardened.

‘Tell me, Janie, are you most scared of me—or yourself? Be honest.’

She stared ahead of her through the windscreen, seeing nothing. She heard her voice shake a little. ‘I don’t know. Is that honest enough?’

His tone was quiet. ‘I guess it is.’ There was another brief silence, then he said with a touch of harshness, ‘Look at me. Do it now.’

Ros turned her head reluctantly and met the piercing turquoise gaze. Saw the cold set of the firm mouth.

He said, ‘Shall I eliminate the risk factor? Turn the car round and take you back to Chelsea and your safe, comfortable life? Is that what you want?’

She only had to nod in acquiescence and it would be done. She was sure of that.

And equally certain that, for better or worse, it was the last thing she wanted to happen.

She found herself lifting her hand, brushing a finger across that unsmiling mouth, hearing his sharply in-drawn breath.

She said huskily, ‘I’d like to go on.’ Adding, ‘Please.’

He captured her hand, held it while his teeth grazed the soft pad of the marauding finger.

‘Be careful,’ he warned softly, as he released her. ‘Because that might be construed in some circles as a definite step on to the wild side.’

Ros let her eyes widen, the lashes veiling them provocatively. ‘I was simply thinking of all that food. It would be a crime to waste it.’

‘By the time we get there,’ Sam said, restarting the car. ‘You should have quite an appetite.’

I think, Ros told herself, as she sank back into her seat, that I have one already.

‘You might as well have blindfolded me,’ she said half an hour later. ‘I’ve no idea where we are.’

‘You don’t know this part of the world?’

‘I don’t know many places at all outside London,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Except those I visit in connection with my work, of course.’

‘Good,’ he said. ‘I’m glad I’m the first to bring you here.’

‘So—where is “here”?’ Not even the signposts meant much.

‘It’s not far now.’

It was turning into a heavenly day. The trees were vivid with new growth, and the lanes they were driving through were lush with cow parsley.

To Ros’s pleasure, Sam put Delius’s
Brigg Fair
on the car’s CD player.

‘I love this music,’ she sighed. ‘It’s so incredibly English and romantic. I use it a lot when I’m working.’

‘You use Delius to sell cosmetics?’

The astonishment in his voice alerted her to what she’d said, and Ros sat up, guilty blood invading her cheeks at her gaffe.

‘Not exactly,’ she said swiftly. ‘I like to play it when I’m giving beauty treatments. It helps—relax the client.’

‘It sounds wonderful.’ He slanted a grin at her. ‘Makes me wish I was beautiful.’

He would never be that, Ros thought. Not even if he grew his hair to a reasonable length. But those
amazing eyes and the crooked smile which lit them to such devastating effect gave him the kind of attraction that transcended classic good looks.

This was a seriously sexy man, she told herself with bewilderment, and the last person in the world who needed to advertise for female companions. It was far more likely he had to beat them off with a stick.

Yet here we are, she thought. And I’m still wondering why. Although there’s nowhere I’d rather be…

They drove across a narrow watersplash and into a picture-book village, with an ancient church and charming cottages, their walls washed in light pink, clustering round a central green.

This must be the picnic spot, Ros decided, surprised that he’d chosen somewhere public after all. The occupants of those houses wouldn’t miss much.

But Sam was merely slowing for the turn, guiding the car up a narrow lane beside the church. Beside them, she saw a high brick wall, its lines softened by the clematis which was just coming into flower.

Sam turned in between two stone pillars and up a short, curving drive. The house at the end of it was also redbrick, simply and solidly built, and rather square, like a doll’s house Ros had once possessed as a child. Above the porch, a wisteria was showing the first heart-stopping traces of blue, and there were climbing roses and honeysuckle trained round the windows.

‘It’s lovely,’ Ros said, puzzled, as Sam parked outside the front door and retrieved a bunch of keys from the glove compartment. ‘Is it yours?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I just know the owners.’

‘Oh.’ Relief fought with a kind of disappointment. He’d said nothing before about meeting his friends,
although it was flattering—in a way—that he should want her to. And rather a nonsense, too, considering this was to be their final encounter.

It also occurred to her that she hadn’t expected to share him.

She said breathlessly, ‘They’re very lucky to live here.’

‘They don’t,’ he said. ‘Or not much any more. They spend most of their time in the Dordogne. They bought an old farmhouse there a few years ago, and converted the barns into
gîtes
.’ He swung his long legs out of the car and came round to open the passenger door. ‘They’re down there now, doing pre-season decorating and maintenance,’ he said casually. ‘So I thought I’d grab the chance to check the place over and sort out the mail.’

Ros managed another feeble ‘Oh’, swallowing past a sudden constriction in her throat. She paused. ‘You’re sure they won’t mind—that you brought me with you?’

‘I promise you,’ he said, ‘they’d be delighted. Now, wait a second while I deal with the security alarm, then I’ll give you the guided tour.’

Ros stayed by the car, looking at the garden. It was worth savouring with its smooth lawns surrounded by wide borders just coming into flower. In the middle of the grass a stone bird bath was supported by a smiling cherub, and the entire expanse was surrounded and sheltered by the high wall.

‘It’s beautifully kept,’ she said when Sam returned. ‘Considering it’s unoccupied.’

‘A couple from the village look after it all,’ he told her. ‘Mrs Griggs cleans and her husband gardens. It’s a perfect arrangement.’

The house itself was cosy and comfortable, with big squashy sofas and well-polished furniture which was a tribute to the efforts of the unseen Mrs Griggs.

The kitchen was mellow with antique pine, and a gleaming range, and there was an open fireplace in the sitting room with kindling and logs laid ready. There was also a baby grand piano, with a selection of music stacked neatly on its lid.

And, Ros saw, in pride of place, a photograph in a silver frame. The face was younger, and the hair longer, but the slanting smile was instantly familiar.

‘This is you,’ she accused, picking it up. She wheeled round on him. ‘And you don’t just “know” the owners. They’re your parents—aren’t they?’