Читать книгу: «One-Man Woman»

CHAPTER ONE

WHAT was she doing?

It was like something out of one of those farces that used to be on television years ago. Her sister Beth loved that sort of humour, but the only thing about them that appealed to Ellie was the precision timing as the actors and actresses disappeared out of the main room into cupboards and adjoining rooms immediately before another performer made an entrance. That Ellie was able to appreciate—but because it was clever, not because it was funny.

And this wasn’t funny.

Not when she was the one who had just disappeared inside the wardrobe!

And only just in time too. Because she could hear the sound of footsteps as the occupant of the hotel suite approached the bedroom.

She could have brazened it out, of course. In fact, she wished now, secreted in the wardrobe as she was, that she had done so. But when she had heard the key turning in the lock of the adjoining lounge she had panicked, hadn’t been able to think of a plausible reason for the owner of the hotel to be in one of the guest’s suites at eight o’clock at night. But by the same token, she thought now, crowded between two rather expensive-looking suits, what excuse could she give for being found in his wardrobe? The woodworm excuse had already been used in a more recent comedy programme that Beth liked to watch, and Ellie didn’t think dry rot would sound any more convincing.

If only she hadn’t panicked in the way she had when she’d heard that key turning in the lock! What if Daniel Thackery, the guest in this suite, had left something inside the pocket of one of these suits? He had told her earlier, when she’d booked him in, that he would be dining at the hotel this evening, so he had probably changed before going downstairs. In fact, it had been because Ellie knew he was dining at eight o’clock that she’d thought this would be a good time to come in here. Her timing stank. As did her hiding place. Her first choice had been the bathroom, of course, but there was absolutely nowhere to hide in there—and if Daniel Thackery had decided to go in there...!

He was coming into the bedroom now. Ellie could see his feet through the slats of the wardrobe door—expensively shod feet, the black leather shoes looking handmade. Which they probably were, Ellie realised disgustedly. As was the black evening suit she could see as far as waist-high, the angle of the slats making it impossible for her to see any higher.

Not that she particularly wanted to see his face. She had seen that earlier, when she’d booked him into the hotel. Too stunning-looking for his own good—and that of every woman between the ages of sixteen and sixty, Ellie had decided. Piercing blue eyes had looked at her steadily but without any real interest, his nose was aquiline, he had a firmly sensuous mouth above an arrogantly jutting jaw, and slightly overlong dark hair, brushed back in a carelessly fashionable style.

But Ellie doubted that the expression on that face would be as smilingly uninterested as it had been earlier if he were to open the wardrobe door and find her hiding there!

She wouldn’t be too happy herself either if—

‘Make yourself comfortable,’ he called out in a husky voice. ‘I just have to make a quick telephone call.’

‘Angela?’ drawled a throatily female voice.

‘Of course,’ Daniel Thackery drawled drily.

Oh, God, he wasn’t alone, was all that Ellie could think at that moment!

‘Oh, dear,’ the woman continued lightly. ‘She would be very upset if she realised the two of us were here together.’

‘Do you really care?’ Daniel Thackery derided.

‘Not particularly,’ the woman confirmed in a bored voice.

He chuckled softly. ‘I thought not. I shouldn’t be long. Help yourself to a drink from the mini-bar while you’re waiting.’

‘OK, darling,’ the woman accepted lightly. ‘But don’t be too long; I’m longing for my dinner,’ she added with husky persuasion.

Well, at least they were still going to dinner! For a few moments there Ellie had had a terrible feeling that she might have landed herself in a worse position than she had originally thought she had. What if Daniel Thackery had brought that woman back here to— to—? There was no way Ellie could have stayed hidden in the wardrobe with that going on in the bedroom!

He was fully inside the bedroom now, closing the door behind him to walk over and sit on the side of the bed, his back towards Ellie, his shoulders broad in the black evening jacket, that overlong dark hair brushed over his collar.

If Ellie could have stopped shaking long enough she might have been able to appreciate—in an abstract way, of course—that Daniel Thackery was a very attractive-looking individual. But as it was taking all her energy to stop her teeth from chattering too loudly with fear of discovery all she knew at the moment was that he was in the room—and she wished he weren’t!

Especially as she could now see what she had come looking for. His briefcase. Standing neatly beside the bedside table. All she wanted was one brief little glimpse inside there, to see if what she suspected was true.

Beth had an altogether different reason for wanting to know what Daniel Thackery was doing here—an emotional reason—and it had been because of that very emotion that Ellie hadn’t thought Beth the right person to come up here. Now that this had happened she was more than a little relieved that Beth hadn’t been the one; much as she loved her younger sister, she knew Beth would have given herself away. And then God knew what would have happened! It would—

‘Hello, Angela,’ Daniel Thackery drawled as his call was answered, turning to lean back against the headboard, swinging his legs up onto the bed.

With his shoes still on, Ellie noted. Really, some people had no respect for other people’s property. This might be a hotel, but even so...

‘Yes, of course I’m back in England,’ he answered drily now. ‘I’m well aware the wedding is next week. No, you don’t need to send me an invitation.’ His expression hardened along with his voice. ‘As one of the key participants, I think I’m well aware of the time of the wedding and exactly where it is! Just organise everything with your usual efficiency, Angela, and trust that I will be there, at your side, at the right time.’

The man was getting married next week! Ellie gave an alarmed glance towards the closed bedroom door. ‘Darling’ was in the other room, waiting for this man to take her out to dinner—and God knew what afterwards—and he was in here on the telephone talking to his fiancée about their wedding next week! And he didn’t exactly sound thrilled at the prospect either. Not that Ellie was so surprised by his attitude; it fitted in with what she already thought of him. She detested men like this—men who thought—

‘OK, fine.’ He sighed heavily now. ‘I’m sorry too. I agree, this attitude is nonproductive for everyone involved. Yes, Angela, I love you too. Take care. And I’ll see you next week.’ He put down the receiver on conclusion of the call, then put his folded arms behind his head, his eyes narrowed, his expression enigmatic, obviously deep in thought—until a sudden sneeze, quickly followed by another one, had him sitting up on the side of the bed again, his expression now one of deep irritation.

Ellie was glad of the diversion—couldn’t quite believe the telephone conversation she had just overheard. Daniel Thackery wasn’t even going to bother seeing his fiancée until the wedding next week. What sort of—?

Her attention shifted back to him as he slowly stood up, her restricted view still only allowing her to see up as high as his waist. He just stood there, making no effort to leave the room. Why didn’t he move? Leave the bedroom. The hotel suite. The hotel!

She breathed a sigh of relief as she saw that he was finally moving—that relief quickly followed by dismay as she saw him bend down to pick up the briefcase before crossing the room. That must be the reason she hadn’t seen the briefcase earlier; he must have taken it out with him, and now he was taking it out with him again. Damn! He—

Her breath caught in her throat once again as he came to an abrupt halt in the middle of the room, turning slightly before taking a step towards the wardrobe. Oh, God, no. He had left something in his suit earlier when he’d changed. And now he was going to open the wardrobe door, find her here—and all hell was going to break loose!

‘Darling?’ A knock on the bedroom door accompanied the woman’s call. ‘We’re going to be terribly late if we don’t go down now.’

‘I’ll be right with you,’ Daniel Thackery called back.

Ellie could almost feel the warmth of his breath through the slats of the door as he stood so close to her now. Her own breathing seemed to have stopped seconds ago and not resumed. She could see his hand now, a long, slender hand, the nails clipped short, reaching out towards the wardrobe door. Oh, God, he was going to open it!

What was she going to do? What was she going to say to him? Would she need to do or say anything? The chances were he would take one look at her and call the management. And she was the management! When he finally called the police the only explanation she would be able to come up with would be that she had wanted to look inside this man’s briefcase—through his private and confidential papers. They would lock her up and throw away the key!

This man was Daniel Thackery—an entrepreneur of world renown. She very much doubted that the police—or even Daniel Thackery himself—would believe that the only papers in his briefcase that she had any interest in were ones that might concern her family. If there were any such papers. Which she wasn’t convinced of at all.

Beth had been the one to go into a panic when a secretary had telephoned the hotel a couple of days ago and booked a suite for Daniel Thackery for an unspecified length of time, claiming that it would all depend on ‘how long it takes him to conclude the business he has in the area’. Because Beth was convinced that part of that ’business’ was the acquisition of this hotel!

Beth had met Daniel Thackery at her wedding to James just over a year ago—the other man was an old friend of James’s from their schooldays. And she remembered a conversation she had had with Daniel Thackery at the reception given downstairs in one of the function rooms about the hotel business, and how impressed he had been with the efficient running of their hotel, and how he’d said it was a business he was interested in getting into himself. And now, knowing that they’d overstretched themselves financially because of an extension to the hotel, and that they were actually in danger of losing the hotel altogether if they didn’t very quickly do something about it, Beth was convinced that Daniel Thackery, being the opportunist that he undoubtedly was, had come here to snap up their hotel.

In itself Beth’s theory wasn’t too convincing as far as Ellie was concerned—their small, seventy-bedroom hotel was surely not in the league Daniel Thackery liked to play in. But aside from Beth’s argument that it wasn’t a business he knew, only one in which he wanted to get in on the ground floor, was the fact that James and Beth had separated a month ago and James was privy to the seriousness of their financial dilemma—information he could have passed on to his friend Daniel Thackery. Beth also had a second worry, Ellie knew, and that was that Daniel Thackery perhaps had some information concerning James’s possible divorce proceedings.

Anyway, in the end Ellie had felt she had no choice but to come up to Daniel Thackery’s suite and at least make a token show to Beth of having a look around. Because if she hadn’t she knew Beth would have done it herself. And, considering Beth’s emotional state since her separation from James, that definitely was not a good idea in Ellie’s opinion. To Ellie’s mind, there was still hope for Beth and James to sort out their differences, and she certainly didn’t want her sister to add fuel to the fire by being caught spying on one of James’s friends.

Although it was strange the way Daniel Thackery was carrying the briefcase around with him every-where... Maybe Beth’s idea concerning the hotel wasn’t so far-fetched after all. Well, if Daniel Thackery thought that just because they were financially stretched at the moment he could make a move on their hotel he was going to have a fight on his hands; this hotel was Ellie’s life.

But talking of hands—that slender hand was on the wardrobe door now. He was going to open it. And he was going to find her crouched here like an—

And then he sneezed again. And again. And again.

Ellie had noticed him sneezing earlier in Reception, when she’d handled his booking. Perhaps he was coming down with a cold. Ellie didn’t particularly care what had caused the sneezing fit; all that concerned her was that it had distracted his attention from the wardrobe. She watched through the slatted door as he moved to the dressing table to take a tissue from the box there.

He continued to sneeze as he walked over to open the bedroom door, and a pair of long, silky-covered legs joined his in the doorway.

‘Are you starting a cold?’ the woman asked concernedly.

‘I don’t think so,’ he dismissed slowly.

‘It’s a bit late in the year for hay fever,’ the woman teased throatily. ‘I hope you aren’t allergic to me, darling.’ A teasing pout could be heard in the voice.

‘I’m sure I’m not,’ Daniel Thackery answered with certainty. ‘Come on, let’s go and have some dinner; we’ve wasted enough of our evening together already.’

The woman’s throaty laughter floated along the corridor as the two of them walked to the lift. Ellie stayed in her hiding place, giving them plenty of time to go downstairs before attempting to leave the safety of the wardrobe.

The wardrobe! She disgustedly admonished herself as she finally all but fell out of the confined space, impatiently pushing back the heavy swathe of fiery red hair that grew straight to her shoulders, with a full fringe stopping abruptly above sparkling emerald-green eyes. She was not short by any stretch of the imagination—five feet nine inches tall in her bare feet—and it felt good to be able to straighten up to her full height after the cramped conditions in the wardrobe. But then, one hardly expected to have to spend any length of time inside one.

Unless ‘one’ had been caught where ‘one’ wasn’t supposed to be!

It all seemed so ridiculous now. She had only come up here at all in an effort to stop Beth making a fool of herself. And had almost made a complete one of herself!

But, whatever Daniel Thackery’s reason for being in their hotel, he was hardly likely to leave incriminating evidence lying around in his suite. And to have looked inside his briefcase—even if he had left it behind, which he hadn’t—would have been a criminal offence. It was bad enough that she was in the suite at all without any real reason for being there, but there was no way, she freely acknowledged now, that she could have snooped around in his personal belongings...!

Although she might as well turn the bed down now that she was here. She could tell Doris, the maid, not to bother with the suite, that she had done it herself while up there for another reason. She didn’t have to say what that reason was!

It was a large double bed, and as Ellie turned back the quilt and top sheet she couldn’t help wondering whether she ought to turn the other side down too; she doubted Daniel Thackery would be spending the night alone. Her anger towards him returned as she thought of the way he had gone off for the evening with ‘Darling’ after talking to his fiancée on the telephone. The man was unprincipled!

Which made her wonder if perhaps Beth wasn’t right; if he was completely without morals in his private life, then surely he must be doubly so in his business life...?

She was willing to accept the possibility that maybe he was here for a reason—and she intended finding out what it was!

‘You didn’t see anything that—well, that might have given the impression James had sent him? About the divorce,’ Beth added with a grimace.

The younger of the two sisters, Beth was nothing like Ellie to look at. She took after their mother, with her short stature and fragility of looks, her hair short and blonde. Ellie had always looked more like their father, who was a tall red-haired man.

‘I told you,’ Ellie replied irritably, the two of them now seated in their private sitting room at the back of the hotel. ‘I didn’t see anything.’ It had been difficult to do so inside the wardrobe! ‘Although I very much doubt Daniel Thackery is the sort of man to be “sent” anywhere.’ She could visualise his arrogant face all too easily, and knew instinctively that Daniel Thackery did no one else’s bidding but his own. ‘By anyone!’ she added with feeling.

‘Besides, it’s only a matter of weeks since James left; he can’t be thinking of divorce already.’ She frowned as Beth didn’t look convinced. ‘Is that really what you think Daniel Thackery is here for? I thought you said he might be after our hotel—’

‘Oh, he is interested in buying into hotels,’ Beth dismissed with an uninterested wave of her hand—a hand still adorned with her engagement and wedding ring. ‘I just thought that if there was any information in his room concerning this hotel it would also mean he must have spoken to James recently, and—’

‘I think I’m beginning to get the picture,’ Ellie interrupted wearily.

The two of them were able to take this short time off because this was the quiet part of the evening for them; dinner was being served and the bar was open at the front of the hotel, and most of the guests were in either of those two places or had actually gone out for the evening. Daniel Thackery and his guest were now in the dining room, Ellie had been pleased to note when she’d got downstairs a few minutes ago.

‘Beth, James isn’t going to divorce you; he loves you,’ she said with certainty, convinced that whatever difficulties her sister and her husband were going through they were only temporary; the couple had been in love since the moment they’d met, and had been married—happily, most of the time—for the last year.

‘But if you really think Daniel Thackery may have seen James during the last four weeks, why don’t you just ask the man? You know him, don’t you?’ she prompted reasonably, still shaken from her narrow escape in his suite earlier.

‘Not exactly.’ Her sister shook her head slowly. ‘I’ve only met him once, and that was at the wedding just over a year ago. He’s always so busy that James sees him rarely himself, although he did enjoy the couple of years he worked for him. So we haven’t met up with him again since the wedding. Why don’t you ask him?’ Beth suggested frowningly, chewing on her bottom lip. ‘You’ve always been so much more forward than me, and—’

‘Because I don’t know the man at all!’ Ellie pointed out impatiently. ‘If you remember, I missed the wedding completely because I was rushed into hospital at the last minute for an emergency appendectomy—’

‘I offered to cancel the wedding—’

‘Don’t be silly, Beth; I wasn’t complaining, just explaining,’ Ellie dismissed irritably. “The wedding had been planned for weeks; you don’t cancel something as important as that just because one of the guests can’t make it.’

‘That guest was my sister!’ Beth protested.

‘And I talked to James and persuaded him that going ahead with the wedding was the right thing to do,’ Ellie sighed.

‘He shouldn’t have listened to you.’ Her sister shook her head. ‘He—’

‘Beth, I don’t really think it matters who was or wasn’t at your wedding, when the two of you now seem to be talking of divorce—Oh, God, I’m sorry.’ She was instantly contrite as she saw the way her sister paled; she had always had an uncanny ability to say the wrong thing at the wrong time! It was the reason why she was still unmarried at twenty-seven, according to her equally straight-talking mother; no man was strong enough to brave her vitriolic tongue long enough to fall in love with her.

‘But, Beth, the wedding is unimportant now, can’t you see?’ she continued more gently. ‘It’s a fact that I didn’t meet Daniel Thackery there, and it now appears he has returned to our hotel and we have to be wary of him on two fronts. But I certainly can’t just march up to him and ask him outright what he’s doing here!’ She frowned deeply.

Beth’s expression lightened. ‘I don’t see why not; it’s what you would usually do!’

But Ellie acknowledged that Daniel Thackery wasn’t the type of man she usually met; she was sure he would just turn round and tell her to mind her own business. And she would have no choice but to do exactly that. She would also have alerted him to the fact that they were curious as to his reason for being here and thereafter he would be on his guard, which wasn’t going to help anyone.

‘Do you know what I think we should do—you should do?’ she corrected pointedly. ‘Invite the man to dinner with the two of us,’ she announced triumphantly. ‘It has to be you, Beth, because you know the man and I don’t,’ she said persuasively as she saw that her sister was about to protest at the idea. ’He was a guest at your wedding, is a friend of James’s, and as far as I’m aware you haven’t even said hello to him yet.

‘I accept you’re a bit wary of him,’ she added hastily at Beth’s increasingly dismayed expression. ‘But it would be perfectly natural for you to invite him to dinner in the circumstances, whereas it would look damn funny if I did the inviting—a woman who doesn’t know him from Adam!’ Besides which, she still felt very uncomfortable about her presence in his suite earlier this evening. He couldn’t possibly know about that, of course, but she did, and she was going to find it difficult facing him again.

Beth still didn’t look convinced. ‘I doubt that he will stay here very long—’

‘Then make the invitation for tomorrow evening,’ Ellie interrupted impatiently, standing up to smooth down her straight black skirt to its just above the knee length. ‘I have to go and take over in Reception for the rest of the evening now, so I’ll leave you to think about it. But if you really want to know if he’s at least seen James I think dinner would be the best way of finding out.’

This last remark was perhaps a little below the belt on her part, but if they were to find out Daniel Thackery’s motive for being in the area someone had to make a move, and as she’d pointed out, it would look odd if she approached him with a dinner invitation.

It was quiet on Reception at this time of night, and Ellie took advantage of the lull to catch up on some of the paperwork that seemed never-ending where running a hotel was concerned.

Her parents had run the hotel until two years ago, when her father had suffered a mild heart attack and been ordered to take it easy for a while—an opportunity her mother had taken to whisk him away to Spain to live in early retirement. Their parents had given the hotel equally to Beth and Ellie, but since taking over Ellie had realised exactly why the hotel had been such a strain on her parents; it was a twenty-four-hour-a-day job, and left little time for anything else. She—

‘Good evening, Ellie,’ greeted a huskily male voice. ‘Do you ever get away from this place?’

The question so echoed the sentiments of her own thoughts that she wasn’t able to maintain her usually bright smile as she looked up at Peter, their master chef, as he stood at the other side of the reception desk.

The restaurant was open to the public as well as to guests, and it was one part of the hotel that did make a profit. And justifiably so; Peter was a chef of a calibre Ellie had never met before, and had brought people into the restaurant from far and wide since he had taken over in the kitchen six months ago. She knew they were lucky to have found him and didn’t question their good fortune too deeply—she just gave thanks for it every day. Without Peter’s expertise as a chef she knew they would be in even more dire financial straits than they already were.

‘Not as often as I would like, Peter,’ she answered somewhat wistfully, her chin resting on her palm as she leant on the desk-top looking up at him; he was one of the few men she could look up to when she was wearing high-heeled shoes, as she was now—Peter was a little over six feet tall, a good-looking man in his late thirties.

He shook his head. ‘I wish you would accept my invitation for the two of us to go out. I see by the rota that you’re off tomorrow evening too...’

This was, as Peter had so rightly pointed out, far from the first time he had invited her out. It wasn’t that she didn’t find Peter’s blond good looks attractive, because she did, very much so; she just didn’t think it was a particularly good idea to go out with someone she was working with almost every day. It could be very uncomfortable for everyone if it didn’t work out. And Peter really was an excellent chef...

Besides, she was hoping that tomorrow evening she and Beth would be dining with Daniel Thackery!

She gave Peter an apologetic smile. ‘I already have an appointment tomorrow evening. I’m sorry.’

He grimaced, obviously in no hurry to leave. His shift was over for the evening and the restaurant would be closing shortly—only the lingering coffee-drinkers were left. ‘Out of luck again,’ he said teasingly. ‘Who’s the lucky man?’

He didn’t know who he was himself yet, and she somehow doubted he would think of himself as ‘lucky’ when he did—although hopefully a sense of politeness towards James’s wife would make him accept the invitation. ‘No one you know.’ She shrugged dismissively.

‘Aha!’ Peter looked interested now, leaning conspiratorially across the desk. ‘A secret lover, hmm?’ His brown eyes twinkled with mischief.

‘Hardly!’ Ellie chuckled softly. ‘I don’t have time for lovers—secret or otherwise—’

‘Are there any messages for me?’ interrupted a harshly cold voice.

Neither she nor Peter, she was sure, had been aware of anyone approaching the desk. But Ellie recognised that voice only too well; hadn’t she listened to him earlier when he’d been talking to ‘Darling’ before making that telephone call to his fiancée? And she was sure, from the faintly disdainful expression on his face as he looked at the two of them, that he had overheard her ill-timed remark about lovers!

She turned to check the box for his suite, studiously hiding any awkwardness she might feel at his having heard her conversation with Peter. ‘No messages, Mr Thackery,’ she told him with a brightly professional smile, noticing the woman standing a short distance away watching the exchange uninterestedly—probably ‘Darling’, of the long, silky legs!

He nodded abruptly, his expression still grimly disapproving as he glanced briefly at Peter. ‘I’ll be in the bar if there are any—’ He broke off abruptly as he was racked by a sudden sneeze. ‘Damn it!’ he muttered furiously, his gaze a fierce blue glare now.

Ellie maintained her smile of cool politeness. ‘You seem to be starting a cold, Mr Thackery. I’m sure we have something you could take for that, if you—’

‘I don’t have a cold,’ he cut in harshly. ‘I’ll be in the bar if there are any calls for me.’ He gave an abrupt nod of dismissal before turning on his heel and striding off across the reception area to join the woman waiting near the entrance to the bar—a tall, blonde woman, her beautiful face animated as she put her hand through the crook of Daniel Thackery’s arm.

If his fiancée called again he would be in the bar, Ellie guessed crossly. Well, she hoped none of them were expected to lie for this man; if Angela telephoned again Ellie had every intention of telling the other woman exactly where he was. Not who he was with, of course, but it would be up to Daniel Thackery to explain away his presence in the bar. She—