Читать книгу: «Dangerous Nights»

CHAPTER ONE

‘ANA?’ The deep, male greeting came from the shadows by the stage door. Halting abruptly in her stride, long blonde hair flying behind her in her haste, she swivelled to scan the darkness.

‘Anastasia French?’ The owner of the voice stepped towards her. He was silhouetted now against the light from the doorway. She could make out only a tall, tough-looking man in denims and brown leather flying jacket. A black baseball cap was pulled well forward over his eyes. He was holding a theatre programme in his hands. An autograph hunter. She hugged her coat around her, glanced warily at his shadowed face. In her old velvet jacket, her floppy black velvet hat covering most of her hair, she was rarely spotted by one of the audience. She wasn’t one of the well-known members of this season’s Royal Shakespeare Company. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

But there was something familiar about him. His build, height and, above all, his voice. Her heart flipped annoyingly in her chest.

‘Hi, did you enjoy the play?’ She smiled politely, waiting for the request to sign the programme. A group of fellow actors brushed past her. She exchanged goodnights with them as they went.

‘I didn’t watch the play,’ the man murmured coolly. ‘I was intrigued to see if the Anastasia French in the programme was the Ana French I knew, a few years back.’

This time the jolt in her heart felt more like a miniature earthquake. Whatever the last few years had taught her about disguising her emotions, she had difficulty clamping down the surge of reaction. Mixed up with anger, pride, apprehension were a host of other emotions, less easily identified…

‘Jed?’ Her voice was usually husky, rich and quite deep. She hardly recognised the breathless squeak which came out now.

He pushed the baseball cap back, then flipped it off. He had brown hair, worn longish, tousled back into crisp, thick layers which brushed the collar of his jacket. A hard, unconventionally attractive face. Long, narrowed, grey-green eyes. An unreadable gaze, which was achingly familiar…

‘Hello, Ana.’

‘What are you doing here?’ she managed. Her pulse-rate was still galloping at a hundred miles an hour. It didn’t make sense still, to feel such an intense reaction, after all this time. She’d got over Jed Steele ages ago. Hadn’t she? He’d been her baptism of fire. The big mistake all teenagers had to make before they grew up, grew their protective layer, grew accustomed to the cruel old world around them.

‘Hoping to get this programme signed?’ He shot her a cool, brief grin, holding open the page where the cast list was printed. ‘It says in here you’re understudying a major role. Congratulations. That’s a big career move, isn’t it?’

‘If I get to do it, which is by no means guaranteed.’ She spoke as evenly as she could, scrawling her name with an unsteady hand. ‘There. Happy? I wish I could say it was nice to see you again, Jed…’

Now why had she said that? Showing bitterness, giving herself away, after all this time?

He caught her arm as she began to swing away. She turned her head, stiffening at his touch. His eyes were intent, searching her face. That look made her heart sink.

‘I don’t see you for four years,’ he queried lazily, ‘and all I get is a twenty-second conversation?’

‘What did you have in mind?’ Her defensiveness was amusing him, she realised bitterly. His hold on her arm, even through the thickness of her coat, was making the surface of her skin contract into tiny shivers of awareness.

But how could she fail to be aware of him? Jed wasn’t the kind of man you could ignore. Tall, arrogant, faintly menacing, he radiated strength, cynicism and forceful virility in almost equal measures. How he managed to restrain them into his cool, watchful manner, a hallmark of his character, she’d never worked out. But then, when it came to what made Jed Steele the way he was, she’d never succeeded in working anything out…

‘How about a drink?’ Jed was suggesting, in that deep voice which had always made her stomach melt. ‘In the pub up the road?’ The invitation was casual, but already he was falling into stride beside her, one hand still on her upper arm. The proprietorial air was unnerving.

‘I’m much too tired for that…’

‘Just one drink. Then I’ll walk you home.’

Walk her home? Who did he think he was? Turning up after a four-year silence, after the cruel fiasco of their last meeting, and calmly taking over. Anger surged, but she controlled it. The more she protested, a small voice reminded her, the more she gave herself away. Fake indifference. Feign uninterest. With a massive effort, she shrugged lightly.

‘OK. I suppose one drink won’t hurt.’ A yawn behind her hand gave credence to the performance. If he felt affronted, he gave no sign. But he’d always been infuriatingly…deadpan. She might have chosen acting as her profession, but Jed’s talent for masking his thoughts would win him an Oscar.

With a glass of white wine in front of her, she met that hard, narrowed gaze over the corner table in the smoky bar, and remembered precisely, in painful detail, why she’d once felt that instant, devastating attraction…

‘You look well, Ana.’

The simple words were no more than a polite formality. She was imagining any husky quality in his voice, wasn’t she? Fooling herself that those cold eyes held a hidden gleam in their depths?

Taking a shaky breath, she silently lectured herself to be very, very careful. It would be fatal to read anything into this surprise meeting.

‘Thank you. So do you. So…what are you doing in Stratford?’ she managed stiffly. ‘Apart from hanging around the stage door holding programmes for plays you haven’t seen.’

Under the lazy, non-committal regard she had to summon all her poise to flip off the velvet hat idly, rake long fingers casually through her thick blonde hair. But she met his light green eyes with a calm brown gaze.

Some of the cast from tonight’s play in the main theatre were gathered around the bar. Curious glances were being angled in their direction. Out of the corner of her eye, she could. see Camilla and Pru respecting her privacy, but covertly noting Jed’s lean brand of sex appeal. Theatre gossip being what it was, her unknown companion would be the subject of delighted conjecture and discussion for at least three days.

‘Just passing through.’ The detached scrutiny was calmly raking her from head to toe. Where his eyes moved, she felt a shiver of physical response. Could he see the effect he had on her? She gripped her hands together in her lap, agonisingly conscious of his power over her. Beneath her loose, scoop-necked white sweatshirt, she was braless. Her small, high breasts had tightened involuntarily under that calculating appraisal…

‘So what’s new?’ She fortified her nerves with a sip of wine, appalled at the way her hand shook. ‘You spend your life “just passing through", don’t you?’

‘No worse surely than spending your life pretending to be someone else?’ There was a dangerous gleam in Jed’s eyes.

Despite her determination to fight her feelings, she found herself staring at his face, wide-eyed, almost mesmerised. She was trapped then, in that poker-player’s gaze. Jed had always possessed the knack of concentrating visually, unblinking, apparently indefinitely, without moving a muscle.

‘If that’s your definition of the acting profession, it just shows your miserable lack of culture,’ she managed at last, dropping her eyes. ‘So how long does “just passing through” mean this time? One night? One week?’

‘I’m not sure yet.’

He took a mouthful of his drink. He hadn’t switched his tastes in that area, she noticed, with a stab of resentment. Still iced mineral water with a wedge of lemon. Maybe he felt the need to be on red alert every waking moment of the day? Alcohol might blur that robot-style control of his…

He flexed broad shoulders, rested one booted foot on the rung of the stool beside him. Under the soft leather jacket, he wore a black polonecked jumper. It looked like cashmere. The fine wool faithfully emphasised the rock-hard contour of his chest, the ridged flatness of diaphragm and solar plexus. His body resembled his personality, she reflected uneasily. Hard and controlled. Constantly on guard. It was disturbing, she reflected, how much she remembered about him. More than disturbing. Terrifying…

‘So how are things?’ He followed up his non-committal reply with a soft query. ‘Are you enjoying being in Stratford?’

‘What do you think?’ Her caution slipped a little. ‘It’s brilliant. I wake up every day and think, I’m so incredibly lucky! Being with the Royal Shakespeare Company is something I always dreamed of doing. Never quite believed possible.’

‘You’re good. I’ve seen you do Shakespeare, remember?’ He dismissed her modesty with deadpan insensitivity. ‘I could have told you four years ago that you’d make it, Ana.’

Surely he couldn’t be referring to that humiliating episode in the garden, at Farthingley? The memory brought heat to her face. She couldn’t think of the last time she’d blushed…at least, yes, she could. It had been that weekend, at Farthingley. That forty-eight hours in her life when all her novice feelings and emotions had seemed to spring to the surface of her skin and glow like phosphorus…

But now here she was, confident Anastasia French, twenty-three years old, rising young star, currently appearing on one of the most famous stages in the world, blushing again, like a schoolgirl on her first date—she could hate him for that alone…

Catching Camilla’s eye, she dragged herself together. Was she as lobster-red as she felt?

‘What are you doing these days?’ she countered quickly. ‘Or is that still classified information?’

The grey-green eyes cooled.

‘I scrape along.’

Anastasia stared at him for a long moment. Then she slowly shook her head. ‘You “scrape along"?’ she echoed. She was quite unable to hide her angry frustration. ‘I’ve never met anyone like you, Jed Steele! You’re so…barricaded! You—you lead your life in total secrecy! That day I first met you, you were “scraping along” at my father’s house, doing some unspecified, totally mysterious job for him during that conference weekend. Most men I’ve met, normal men, admit to being…actors, or theatre directors, or…or musicians, or even businessmen, accountants, firemen, plumbers…’

‘Spare me your sordid memoirs, Ana.’ His eyes gleamed with rare humour.

Her jaw dropped. After a moment’s strangled silence, she said frostily, ‘I was giving hypothetical examples, not listing my sexual encounters!’

‘I believe you.’

She took a long breath. ‘Where have you been working recently?’

‘Abroad.’

‘Where abroad?’

‘Washington. Paris. Brussels. Geneva.’ A heavy gold watch glinted at his wrist as he reached for his glass. She stared at the lean shape of his hand, the long, well-shaped fingers, the flexible ripple of tendons under the duskily tanned skin. A sprinkle of dark hair roughened the back of his hand, disappeared up the strong wrist under the black cashmere. Wrenching her eyes away with an effort, dismayed at his power to mesmerise her like this, she cast around for a flippant retort.

‘I’ve got it. You’re an international jewel thief,’ she said decisively. ‘That’s how you get to drive black Porsches and own huge town houses in half a dozen different cities all over the world…’

‘How do you know what kind of houses I own?’

‘Something my father said, I expect. But don’t worry,’ she added with an edge of sarcasm, ‘he didn’t divulge anything else about you! Your guilty secrets are safe!’

Jed’s gaze was wryly non-committal. He watched as she impatiently drained her glass. ‘Would you like another wine?’

‘No. I’m going to head for bed…’

‘I’ll walk you home.’

‘There’s no need to bother. My digs are only just round the corner…’

‘It’s no bother.’ He stood up, reached for her jacket and held it out for her.

‘How gentlemanly.’ She couldn’t resist the acerbic tease, although she was trembling inside as she slid her arms in. ‘I’d have thought you were better at helping girls off with their clothes.’

‘That’s pretty childish, Anastasia. Don’t forget your hat.’

Flustered, she turned and snatched up the velvet hat, pulled it on hard, waved quickly to her friends, and escaped into the night air. Thank goodness it was so cold. Her cheeks felt as if they were on fire…

September was nearly over. An early frost had sharpened the air. The heady scent of petunias and nicotiana had been almost obliterated.

‘Why did you come to see me at the stage door tonight?’ she demanded as he began to walk with her. He had an easy, prowling way of walking. It reminded her of a very large panther, shadowing silently beside her.

‘Just…to say hello,’ he countered calmly. ‘Renew acquaintance.’

‘Why would you want to do that?’ She shivered as she glared up at his dark profile.

‘Does there have to be a particular reason?’ He sounded coolly preoccupied, almost cagey. ‘Is this the way you normally walk home? Alone?’

‘You are such a—a cold-blooded bastard!‘ she burst out involuntarily. She stopped to cross the road quickly, conscious only of the urge to get away from him.

‘Anastasia—’

Whatever he’d been about to say was abruptly cut short. A car had turned the corner and was roaring along the road towards them. With a speed which took her breath away and left her mentally reeling, she found herself half lifted, half pushed to the far pavement, and then pinned against the low stone wall enclosing the river gardens.

The car shot blindly past. The engine noise faded. It disappeared. Shaking all over, she struggled to free herself from Jed’s vice-like hold.

‘Are you all right?’

‘Yes,’ she said crossly. ‘Of course I’m all right. For goodness’ sake, I’m not stupid—I saw the car…’

‘He didn’t seem to have seen you,’ Jed said drily, releasing her, and dusting her down with an unreadable gleam in his eyes. ‘You’re trembling. Are you prone to near accidents like that, Anastasia?’

‘No! And I’m quite capable of looking after myself! But…thanks anyway.’ It took an effort to say it. He was right, the near miss seemed to have shaken her up more than she’d realised.

‘No problem. Do you usually cut through these gardens late at night?’

‘Yes. Normally I…I walk with a friend from the theatre. And Stratford is really quite a nice little town, you know. It has very few muggers and perverts lurking in the bushes…’

‘No town is free of those.’

‘Well, maybe I’m not familiar with whatever sordid world you inhabit.’

‘No,’ he agreed, ‘maybe you’re not.’

They’d reached the terraced house she shared with three other members of the company. Searching for her key in her shoulder-bag, she paused uncertainly. Jed showed no signs of bidding her a polite goodnight and vanishing. His deadpan presence at her side implied a definite expectation of being invited in.

‘I suppose I should be polite and ask you in for—for coffee,’ she said shortly, ‘but it’s late and I’m tired, so…’

As she pushed the key into the lock, the door swung open, unlocked. One of the others must have left in on the latch, for some reason, earlier on. The telephone was ringing.

‘Excuse me…’ Darting inside, she picked up the receiver. The caller rang off. Replacing the phone on its hook, she was just glaring at it in frustration, when she realised that Jed had followed her inside. Her heart began to thud painfully in her chest. He looked unnervingly large and intimidating in the narrow hall.

‘Jed, I’m sorry…I really have to get to bed.’

‘Yeah, I know. I’m just curious about where you live.’ He spoke with easy confidence, ‘Who was that on the phone?’

‘No one. They rang off as I answered…’

‘Do you share this house with someone else?’

‘Three others. They’re either all out, or all asleep.’

‘Who left the door unlocked?’

Didn’t the wretched man miss anything?

‘I haven’t a clue. And right now I couldn’t care less!’

‘I’ll see you up to your room.’ There was an air of bleak authority about him suddenly.

She stared at him in mounting bewilderment. What kind of insidious game was he playing, knowing how she must feel about the past? Turning up tonight out of the blue. Following her home. Barging in, uninvited…

‘Look, I don’t know what you want,’ she began hotly, ‘but frankly I’d like you to go away and leave me alone, Jed—’

‘Ana—’

‘Just get out…!’

She trailed off abruptly as he took a step closer. He grabbed her shoulders, then hesitated, uncharacteristically. His fingers dug into her, hard and powerful, through the velvet jacket. He had an air of silently calculating the situation. Then, with a soft, four-letter expletive, he slowly closed the gap between then and lowered his head, as if to kiss her.

Ana caught her breath. She couldn’t breathe at all. But he didn’t kiss her. Maybe her fierce intake of breath had made him think twice? He stopped, within an inch of her mouth, then lifted his head again, his eyes dark with an emotion she didn’t recognise.

The shock of his nearness stunned her into terrified confusion—the clean, male smell of him, the remembered shape and feel of his body, a scant half inch from hers, so overpoweringly large, and male, and close. She could remember how it had felt to be moulded with brazen intimacy all the way down, every inch of their contrasting sexuality fused into one…It triggered a wild response. The response was unexpected in its intensity, and yet only too familiar. Humiliatingly familiar. The way he held her, that crucial few millimetres apart from him, had a fierce constraint which transmitted itself to her. There was a subtle hint of violence. As if he was suppressing a potentially dangerous depth of feeling.

He released her. The green eyes were a shade darker. Her heart seemed to expand and swell in her ribcage, her stomach was contorted with anger and fear and, to her eternal humiliation, a contrary and unwelcome shiver of pleasure. ‘This is not playing fair…!’

‘Back to games again, Ana? But I’m not playing at all,’ he assured her. The thick rasp made every tiny hair prickle on her body. ‘Let’s go upstairs.’ He sounded grimly angry. With her? Or with himself? But why should he be angry?

‘Go upstairs? Look, are you crazy? You expect to be asked to…to sleep the night here or something? With me? Just…just to finish off whatever was left in the air four years ago?’

‘You’re over-reacting. As usual. I said I’d see you up to your room.’ The put-down was coldly ruthless.

Hot and furious, shuddering with emotion, she glared up at him. The notion of physically attacking him was tempting, but swiftly dismissed. No amount of kicks and punches would dent that six-foot wall of masculine arrogance…

Turning stiffly on her heel, she marched up the staircase towards her bedroom. Her legs felt like rubber. Flinging open her door, she snapped on the light and made a dramatic gesture with her arms.

‘Voilà!’ she announced icily. ‘My bedroom. Satisfied?’

Jed strolled in, and looked bleakly around. The terraced house was early Edwardian, and the high-ceilinged, deep-corniced room was spacious, with cream walls and a green patterned carpet. His cool gaze took in the brass and wrought-iron bed, the rumpled crimson duvet, the battered old one-legged teddy-bear sprawled on the pillow, the posters of Hollywood greats plastered on the walls, the shelves of books, the pile of clothes on the armchair by the window.

‘Tidiness was never your strong point, I recall,’ he murmured, unforgivably.

‘If the only reason you’ve barged your way up here is to criticise my tidiness…!’ With a degree of defiance she dragged off her jacket and hat and threw them to land on top of the clothes pile. She stood, breathing rather raggedly, a petite, willowy figure in the floppy white sweatshirt and black leggings.

Jed ignored her. He’d crossed to the window, twitched back the heavy red velvet curtains. Impatiently, she marched over to stand beside him.

‘It overlooks the church,’ she pointed out unnecessarily, suppressing her temper with difficulty. ‘Jed, will you please go?’

There was a long silence. She couldn’t read his eyes. She couldn’t tune in to his thoughts. She’d never felt more at sea, more bewildered, in her life.

‘Do you want me to go?’ The question was softly abrupt. The steady gaze had locked with hers. When he let his eyes slide smoothly to the rapid rise and fall of her breasts, the nipples visible as tight little points through the soft fabric of her top, a deep, disturbing confusion began rippling, like invisible waves, right through her.

‘What sort of question is that supposed to be?’ she shot at him angrily. ‘I don’t believe this! I should admire your nerve, I suppose. Do you honestly think that because I was…panting for you to take my virginity four years ago you can just stroll back into my life and haul me into bed with you? After one glass of white wine and half an hour of your famous non-conversation?’

‘Maybe we don’t always know what we want,’ he hazarded quietly.

The blatant arrogance took her breath away. ‘Oh, no!’ she breathed furiously. ‘You’re the one who didn’t know what he wanted, as I recall—!’

A door slammed. Voices on the stairs heralded the return of the others. The tension between Jed and herself was so taut, she felt herself sag with relief.

‘Ana? Ana? Are you back?’ her friend’s voice called along the landing, footsteps coming closer. ‘Who was that dishy male you were with in the pub…?’ Camilla froze on the threshold of the bedroom, and had the grace to look slightly embarrassed.

Exchanging an agitated glance with Jed, Ana gestured weakly at her uninvited guest.

‘This is Jed Steele. An old…acquaintance. Jed, this is Camilla Browning, one of my house-mates.’

Camilla’s blue eyes shone like sapphires in the pale beauty of her face. She tossed back her black curly hair and treated Jed to one of her most the-atrical smiles.

‘Enchantée, darling!’

‘Hi.’ Jed’s handshake was coolly polite. He turned back to Ana, with a half-smile which contained a decidedly mocking gleam. ‘Goodnight, Ana. I’ll buy you two glasses of wine tomorrow. We’ll take it from there.’

Colour surged into her face.

‘Like hell we will,’ she spat, through clenched teeth. ‘Goodnight, Jed.’

‘Don’t forget to keep your door locked,’ he advised smoothly. Without a wave, he loped athletically downstairs. There was a decisive click of the latch as he let himself out.

‘Come on, Ana, darling, tell!’ Camilla was settling down on Ana’s bed for a delicious gossip session. ‘Who is he, what’s the story?’

Ana found she was weak at the knees. Shakily she sat down on the pile of clothes, and glared bleakly at her friend.

‘He’s—he’s—well, I suppose he’s an old…friend,’ she managed finally. ‘A—a friend of my father’s, you could say…’

‘You don’t sound very sure,’ Camilla remarked, tucking her legs up beneath her and winding a black curl thoughtfully round her index finger. ‘Either he is or he isn’t!’

Ana gazed at her blankly. The confusion she’d felt with Jed’s powerful presence dominating her emotions had been bad enough. But this acute agitation now he’d gone was guaranteed to keep her awake half the night…

Tomorrow was Sunday. She had no performances at the theatre as an excuse to hide away from him. Maybe she could get up at the crack of dawn and catch a bus somewhere, anywhere?

‘He’s an ex-friend,’ she heard herself saying dismissively. ‘It didn’t work out, and it never will. He’s not my type at all…’

To underline the statement, she stood up and stretched, loosening the strained muscles of her neck and shoulders. To hide her eyes from her friend’s eagle gaze, she dropped her chin to her chest, rolled her head from one shoulder to the other, then lowered her upper half towards the floor, hanging there in the classic relaxation position. Her hair fell in a thick blonde curtain around her head.

‘You mean, if I took a liking to him, you wouldn’t mind?’ Camilla purred.

‘Go ahead,’ Ana said in a muffled voice. Slowly straightening up, she attempted a smile which felt more like a grimace. ‘Be my guest. Lord, I’m tired, Camilla. Do you mind if I throw you out and get to bed?’

‘No. I’m going.’ Camilla paused at the door, and flashed a teasing grin before she disappeared. ‘But that wasn’t one of your most convincing performances. From where I was standing, Jed Steele looked very much your type, darling! ‘Night!’

Alone, Ana gazed distantly around the room, then automatically began to shrug off her clothes and get ready for bed. Camilla was too perceptive. And she was right. Jed Steele had been, all too briefly, the one man Ana had ever met who filled every one of her dreams, made her feel excited and special, and floating, and deliciously feminine, and…

And he’d hurt her more than any other man. Led her on, urged her up to a dizzy, ecstatic height of wanting, and then ruthlessly dropped her, walked away. She paused in the act of scrubbing her teeth, catching sight of herself in the bathroom mirror. Wide brown eyes gazed back, startlingly dark against the natural blonde of her hair. She took after her father. He was grey now, but he had the same dark eyes, and his hair had been the same shade of blond…

After a quick shower, and with the battered teddy propped on the chair with the discarded clothes, she climbed into bed in her white, pintucked cotton chambray nightshirt, and made a mental note to tidy her room tomorrow. It was her Sunday job. Sunday was the only day she had any free time to do anything in. The sooner she got to sleep, the sooner she could wipe Jed Steele from her mind…

But as she lay there in the darkness Jed Steele filled her mind. His reappearance had robbed her of any peace. She could do nothing to stop the memories from rolling back and crushing her…