Dangerous Nights

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS early when Ana finally woke up. Unforgivably early for a Sunday morning. Her duvet and pillow had somehow parted company with the bed during her stormy, restless night. They lay haphazardly on the floor beside her. Feeling shivery and unrefreshed, she carefully remade the bed as a determined start to her Sunday domesticity. Then she pushed her feet into padded crimson towelling slippers, hugged her matching dressing-gown round herself, and went blearily downstairs to make a cup of tea.

The house was silent, as she’d expected it to be. If Camilla, Pru or David, her fellow residents, heard her moving around at half-past eight they’d doubtless think they were dreaming, pull their covers over their heads and burrow back to sleep again.

In the small, pine-panelled kitchen, she sat as close to the radiator as she could, sipped the steaming mug of strong tea, and gazed out of the window at the misty autumn sunshine breathing life into the patio-style back garden. Last night she’d dreamed almost non-stop, about Jed. Squeezing her eyes shut, she saw pictures from those dreams, vivid and fragmented, but indelible. However hard she tried, she couldn’t shut them out. She didn’t want to think about him, about the pain he’d caused her, about the fool she’d made of herself. But the details were crowding back into her mind, sharp and tormenting as invisible needles…

That hot July day, four years ago. She’d just finished her first year at LAMDA. A virus had laid her low in the final few weeks of term, and she’d battled on, determined not to miss a single day of her course. When the holidays had finally arrived, she’d abandoned plans to stay with friends, and instead caught the train home to Dorset, to surprise her father.

After the frenetic pace of drama school, she’d been anticipating blissful peace at Farthingley, the sixteenth-century mansion where she’d spent an idyllic childhood. Instead, she’d arrived to find the house and its ancient wooded grounds seething with her father’s company employees, manically preparing for a top-level conference.

Her father’s secretary-PA had met her in the hall, her cool reception implying that Ana was intruding where she wasn’t wanted.

Security was high on the agenda, she’d stated cautiously, eyeing Ana’s wind-swept blonde hair, ripped denim jeans and outsized denim shirt with misgivings. While there was no specific cause for alarm, she’d informed Ana, Hart Pharmaceuticals had to take routine precautions against cranks. That was why there was so much coming and going in the house and grounds. Frankly, she was surprised Ana’s father had invited her home.

Ana had retreated to the kitchen, coaxed some freshly baked flapjacks and a carton of orange juice from Ellen, snatched the old picnic rug and a straw sunhat from the cupboard, and retired to the tranquillity of the walled herb garden with her well-thumbed copy of Romeo and Juliet.

Rounding the clipped, nine-foot yew hedge, preoccupied by childhood memories induced by the heady scent of lavender and rosemary, she’d literally bumped, headlong, into Jed Steele.

A pair of hard brown hands had stabilised her. She’d looked up into that cold grey-green gaze, locked eyes with him for the very first time, and felt…How had she felt? Different. Altered, in some fundamental way. Like emotionally crashlanding in a jungle, without a clue how to hack her way out again…

‘Who are you?’ he mused, a gleam in his eyes. ‘A spy from a rival drugs company, maybe?’

‘I could be.’ She heard her unsteady voice, her husky laugh, and felt mystified.

He hadn’t released her. He was still holding her upper arms in a firm grip. She was registering the most extraordinary sensations from the warm touch of his fingers. Even through the blue denim of her shirt, tiny impulses were snaking their way along her nerve-endings, arousing the sensitive army of hormones just beneath the surface of her skin…

She drew a shaky breath, pulling herself together determinedly. She couldn’t be feeling this riot of reaction to a chance encounter with a total stranger. Maybe it was the aftermath of her virus.

‘I’m not, though,’ she added on a calmer note. ‘I’m more in favour of alternative medicine. I prefer natural remedies to manufactured ones, don’t you?’

It was a provocative question, she knew. This man could only be here as one of her father’s employees. He’d hardly admit to siding with the enemy.

‘I’ll plead the Fifth Amendment on that,’ he murmured. There was no visible reaction on the harsh, dark face. This was a characteristic she was to become familiar with. Jed Steele appeared to have trained himself to control his reaction to provocation.

‘You’d better identify yourself,’ he added coolly.

‘Lord above—’ she flicked her eyes comically skywards, twisting her arms free of his restraint ‘—I come home for a spot of peace and quiet, and get interrogated in my own herb garden!’

‘You’re William French’s daughter?’ His eyes raked her up and down without the faintest flicker of personal interest. ‘Come to think of it, you look like him.’

‘Since my father’s fifty-something and decidedly rotund, I’m not sure how to take that. And who are you?’ She widened her brown eyes enquiringly beneath the brim of the ancient straw hat. He looked sober and efficient and businesslike, she noted, in a darkly expensive grey suit, white lawn shirt, muted fawn silk tie. In the warmth of the summer afternoon, and in contrast to her own casual attire, he looked overdressed. There was a portable telephone, or two-way radio receiver, or something, in his pocket.

‘Don’t tell me…you’re Dad’s latest right-hand man? The new “company son", eager to impress?’

The level gaze narrowed. Ana felt a jolt of confusion. Why had she said that? The sarcasm, the world-weary air she’d projected hadn’t even begun to reflect what she was feeling inside. Resorting to this self-protective act was fine when she wanted to fend someone off. But did she want to fend off this man?

‘And you’re his spoilt, bolshie teenage daughter, eager to stir up trouble?’ It was more a cool observation than a malicious insult.

She reddened, and bit her lip. With a slight, embarrassed laugh, she said quickly, ‘I’m not spoilt! Why does everyone always assume that because I’m the only daughter of a very rich man I must be spoilt?’

‘Maybe you’re not in a position to judge?’

Was there the faintest glimmer of amusement in the cool gaze?

‘Maybe not. But then neither are you! You don’t know me well enough to judge me,’ she reasoned, with a dimpled grin. Gesturing to the picnic basket hooked on her arm, she added impulsively, ‘Why don’t you join me for a flapjack? We can exchange life stories.’

There was a fractional pause.

‘Some other time, maybe.’

He turned go to, and impulsively she said, ‘I’m Anastasia—Ana—French. Don’t you have a name?’

‘Jed Steele.’ After a second’s deliberation, he turned back and gravely shook her outstretched hand. The wry smile she’d prompted made her heart squeeze and then leap crazily in her chest. With most people, a smile was just a smile. With Jed, it was such a brilliant contrast to the wary hardness of his features that it took her breath away.

She met him again at dinner. He was sitting beside her father, in a darker, more formal evening suit. They appeared to be in deep, soft-voiced conversation. The brilliant smile she gave him was ignored. The cool snub seemed deliberate. She was staggered by the sharp contraction of pain in her stomach…

Without admitting it to herself, she’d taken abnormal care with her appearance—hair piled up in an elegant chignon, subtle make-up to enhance her tilted brown eyes and high cheekbones, short brown silk skirt and a cropped cream lace blouse.

‘You look gorgeous tonight,’ her father had announced proudly when Ana had dropped an affectionate kiss on his thick, greying blond hair and joined them at the table. ‘Don’t you agree, Jed?’

Her father had turned to Jed, with a proud grin. ‘Have you met my daughter? Just back from her first year at drama school. She’s going to be a famous actress one day!’

‘We met earlier, in the garden,’ Jed had murmured non-committally, his light grey-green eyes dissecting her appearance with just the faintest hint of sexual interest. Ana had felt goose-bumps shivering the surface of her skin. Suddenly the cream lace top had felt transparent. Her lack of bra had felt like a major indiscretion. Fighting the warm blush creeping into her face, she’d averted her eyes quickly.

There were several of the company directors at dinner that night. The hum of conversation had gradually risen as wine and excellent food were consumed. The old oak-panelled dining-room, the candlelight and the flowers on the long, highly polished refectory table felt familiar yet strangely alien with Jed Steele’s cool gaze moving with what struck her as ruthless detachment over the entire gathering…

She pointedly concentrated on relating all her news to her father. She always enjoyed the warmth of his lively interest in her life. In turn, she heard about the conference, about the top-ranking scientists and drug-company chiefs expected to arrive the next morning.

When the meal was over, Jed Steele left the room before everyone else. But, gaining confidence from his absence, her subtle enquiries about the nature of his role in the company drew very little information from her father. Jed was here for the duration of the conference, just a ‘temporary assignment’, he explained vaguely. That was all she could glean. Her father could be infuriatingly obtuse when he chose to be.

After coffee, leaving them all discussing the final requirements in the big, book-lined library where the conference was to be staged, she strolled out through the French doors, across the wide, sloping lawn towards the rustic summer-house in the far corner.

Dreamily, she breathed in the summer-night smells, the heavy sweetness of roses and honey-suckle. Smelling the flowers made her think of her mother. She’d died when Ana was nine, but she’d been mad on gardening. Ana could remember walking with her in the garden, on a summer’s evening. If she could be granted three wishes by some obliging fairy, she’d use all three to wish her mother alive again, to have her here when she came home…

It was dusk. Rapidly getting dark. There was no one around. Impulsively, maybe as an extension of her sad train of thought, she launched softly and passionately into Juliet’s speech to Romeo, begging him to stay longer in their secret garden tryst. She was huskily declaiming into the darkness, ‘"…it is not yet near day: It was the nightingale, and not the lark…Believe me, love, it was the nightingale…"’ when a dark figure separated itself from the shadow of the summer-house. She choked to a halt, with a gasp of fright.

‘It’s OK, it’s only me.’ Considering she hardly knew him, Jed’s deep, amused voice was oddly reassuring.

Trembling with reaction, she found herself clutching her arms around herself, half laughing, half furious.

‘Do you suppose we’re doomed to bump into each other in gardens?’ Embarrassment made her speak more sharply than she’d intended. ‘What are you doing, creeping round out here in the bushes?’

‘Same as you?’ he suggested neutrally. ‘Except I wasn’t spouting Shakespeare to myself.’

‘You recognised it?’ she murmured, with reprehensible sarcasm. ‘You don’t look the type to know any Shakespeare.’

Why, why, why was she driven to be so unbearably bitchy towards him? Because his sardonic gaze was making her feel extremely silly? Inwardly wincing, outwardly braced for retaliation, she stared up at him. Tall and motionless, his face in shadow, he was eyeing her up and down slowly. They were standing very close together. An electricity seemed to have invaded the air between them.

A few minutes ago she’d been conscious of the garden, the sounds and scents of the summer evening. A distant hoot of an owl in the woods. Small rustles in the undergrowth. Now she was aware only of him.

‘I’d imagine most people would recognise that particular speech from Romeo and Juliet. And what “type” looks as if he knows Shakespeare?’ he queried, with bleak humour. There was an ominous glitter in his gaze, visible even in the shadowed darkness. ‘Should I be wearing an arty beard and a floppy bow-tie?’

Nervously, she took in his appearance. The suit he’d evidently felt to be de rigueur at dinner had been swapped for black chinos and a charcoalgrey polo shirt, open at the neck.

‘No,’ she assured him, unsteadily, ‘you look fine as you are…’

The casual outfit made him look slightly less intimidating. The portable phone was still in evidence, hooked on to a dark leather belt at his waist. Whatever this conference-duration role entailed, he obviously took it very seriously, she deduced. Perhaps he had to be alert and ready twenty-four hours a day, to field urgent calls from delegates arriving from Switzerland or Hong Kong or Timbuktu…?

‘Sorry…was I interrupting an important rehearsal?’ he queried, deadpan.

‘I was just strolling in the garden,’ she pointed out rather stiffly, ‘enjoying the night air. Smelling the roses and…’

‘Is that what that perfume is?’ There was that teasing, taunting tone in his voice again. For some reason, she sensed that he wasn’t talking about the flowers. He’d made no move to touch her, but his eyes seemed to be touching her. The shortness of the brown silk skirt hadn’t bothered her before. Now she felt vulnerable, acutely aware of the bare length of her legs. The night air felt cool on her slender thighs. Her underwear—small lacy cream briefs—seemed too skimpy beneath the thin summer clothes. Without quite understanding why, she was beginning to wish she’d donned an all-encasing bodysuit, armoured herself against whatever this man was doing to her emotions…

‘It could be mine,’ she admitted. Her voice was unrecognisable—husky, strained with suppressed emotion. ‘I got rather carried away when I was spraying it on after my shower earlier…’ And hadn’t she sprayed on a little more, before she came out here after dinner? Just in case she bumped into him again? The small prod of honesty made her blush in the deepening dusk.

The hard mouth twitched as he stared solemnly down at her. Could he read her mind? Had he somehow detected that her effort with her appearance tonight had been inspired by meeting him? It was a humiliating thought, and yet the notion that he was silently mocking her made her feel angry, indignant and rebellious at the same time…

Some demon inside her prompted her to step closer, go on tiptoe in her flat brown leather sandals, steady herself with one tentative hand on his shoulder, and lift her chin so that the slender curve of her neck was exposed.

‘It’s Fleurs du Jardin—do you like it?’ She spoke in a light, matter-of-fact tone, but her eyes held his, with a steady challenge. She was inwardly overcome with horror at her audacity, but for the life of her she couldn’t stop herself.

Her heart hammering, heat flickering over her skin, she waited as he thoughtfully considered her. Taking her chin in his thumb and forefinger, he twisted her head to the side. Bending slowly, he lowered his head to within a hair’s breadth of making contact, and inhaled the sweet warm scent at the hollow of her clavicle.

‘Not quite to my taste. A little too…girlish, maybe…’

But his voice had altered. There was a slight thickening in his tone. She stiffened at the subtle put-down. Too girlish? How old was he? she wondered indignantly. Around thirty? Mortified, she took a shaky step away from him. She felt a very ‘spoilt’ urge to slap his face, and suppressed it hastily.

‘I’m not a girl, I’m a woman,’ she said idiotically.

The green gaze narrowed. A twitch of laughter at the corner of his mouth should have completed her mortification, should have sent her running for the safety of her bedroom, but she felt transfixed, frozen to the spot. Her brain seemed to have frozen too. The only part of her working overtime was her heart, hammering away like an express train. She’d never felt so vulnerable, so emotionally confused, in her life.

There was a hoarse hint of humour and masculine impatience as he spoke again. ‘Shouldn’t you be going inside to bed, Miss French? Instead of roaming round the gardens trying to seduce strange men with your perfume?’

‘Trying to seduce…?’ She glared at him in stunned humiliation. ‘You think I’m trying to seduce you? Your conceit is unbelievable! And if I want to roam round the gardens, well, I can do what I like—I live here!’ she finished hotly, in spite of the anxious thud of her heart.

Quite at variance with her words, her pulses were racing frantically. Heat was glowing all over her body. Inwardly, she was appalled at herself. The accuracy of his taunt was unbearable. Just then, stepping closer, inviting him to smell her perfume…what else had she been doing but playing around on the fringes of seduction? But surely more flirtatious than seductive? Did he think she was cheap? That she made a habit of this, God forbid? What was the matter with her? She’d had casual boyfriends since she was about fifteen. She mixed with male students every single day at college. But never before had she felt this frightening pull of attraction. Towards a virtual stranger…

‘And you claim you’re not spoilt?’ The softly laconic goad cut like a whip. ‘How old are you, Ana?’

‘Nineteen! I’ve just finished a year at drama school! And I’m not spoilt,’ she told him, with husky emphasis. ‘Spoilt people are damaged individuals, products of parents with no time for them. My parents always had time for me. My father still has. I can’t help it if he’s rich! That doesn’t mean he’s spoiled me!’

Jed Steele’s gaze was wry.

‘Maybe not,’ he drawled, his eyes teasing, ‘but would he be proud of you if he could see you now?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Throwing yourself at a man you hardly know, in the garden at midnight.’

‘I’m doing no such thing—’ She opened her

mouth to protest, on fire with humiliation, then found herself hauled hard against the full length of his body, and crushed there mercilessly.

‘Maybe you need teaching a lesson, little Lolita,’ he murmured laconically against the loose, silky chignon of her hair. His breath was warm against her ear. ‘The lesson is don’t play games.’

‘Oh!’ The choked gasp was forced out of her as she registered the hardness of his body, lifted her arms to push him away without success. ‘Please, let go of me…’

‘Let go of you? When you’ve been busy giving me the come-on since we met this afternoon? Play fair, sweetheart. I’m only human…God, what the hell are you wearing under here?’ The taunting, amused growl of sensual discovery made her feel quite faint. Her raised arms had lifted the cropped hem of the lace top, baring a wedge of soft, warm midriff.

‘No, please…!’ At the touch of his fingers on her naked skin, her strangled shudder was utterly ambiguous. Eyes squeezed tight shut, she was drifting in a torment of self-doubt, outrage, and newly awakened need. She wanted this to stop, right now. And she wanted it to go on and on forever…

She was rigid with shame, but awash with sensation as his hard hands moved irresistibly upwards to caress the narrow expanse of her ribcage, not quite reaching the small, high jut of her breasts, then sweeping down again to mould her close against him.

Her choked moan was neither rejection nor invitation, nor was her convulsive writhe against the heat of his body. But with an abrupt oath he dropped his mouth to plunge his tongue arrogantly between her parted lips. He kissed her with a hungry power that made her head spin, and she found herself kissing him back, shudders of response rippling through her. More incriminating still, as she lifted her arms to cling to his shoulders, the short skirt rode higher. Jed’s abrupt sweep of her body terminated in long bare thigh, and the temptation to slide higher to the curves beneath the silk was clearly one he didn’t intend to resist…