Pale Orchid

‘Don’t you believe me?’

‘Oh, yes.’ He tilted his head back against the dark green velvet and studied her through narrowed eyes. ‘But, objectively, I’d say that perhaps your sister wasn’t as desperate to kill herself as you might think. I mean, she did rig herself a lifeline before jumping over the side, metaphorically speaking, of course.’

Laura sat up straighter. ‘That’s a rotten thing to suggest!’

‘It’s something for you to think about,’ retorted Jason flatly. ‘Laura, I hear of people over-dosing every day. Most of them do a better job of it than your sister appears to have done.’

‘You … you swine!’

Laura set down the cup and got unsteadily to her feet, but before she could make it to the door, Jason was there before her. ‘The simplistic view, remember?’ he said, his back against the panels successfully blocking her exit. ‘Laura, I’m not saying Pamela did this to gain attention, but it has been known. Remember that.’

‘Will you get out of my way?’

Laura’s hands clenched at her sides as she waited for him to move, but he didn’t. ‘Eventually,’ he averred, his tawny eyes resolute between the dark fringe of his lashes. ‘Go sit down. We haven’t finished our conversation.’

‘I have.’

‘Do you want me to use force?’ he inquired lazily, his eyes moving down over her high small breasts thrusting against the thin material of her shirt, to the slender curve of her hips outlined by the tie-waisted cotton pants, and she immediately abandoned her mission.

‘I don’t know what else we can possibly have to say to one another,’ she exclaimed, moving back into the middle of the floor and wrapping her arms about herself, as if for protection. ‘You’ve made your position very clear. Why won’t you let me go?’

Jason straightened away from the door, but he didn’t shift his stance. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘Now that your attempt to find your sister’s lover and speak with him has failed, what are you going to tell Pamela?’

‘I don’t know.’ Laura shook her head a trifle wearily. ‘I’ll think of something. If I can persuade her to come back to London with me …’

‘And if you can’t?’

‘Oh, please!’ Laura turned away from him, gazing out through the window, across the blue waters of the yacht basin. ‘Why should you care? Our lives mean nothing to you!’

‘Yours does,’ he retorted crisply, and she turned her head and gazed at him over her shoulder as if she couldn’t believe her ears.

‘What did you say?’

‘You heard me,’ he responded tersely, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Why else do you suppose I’ve had your movements monitored, ever since you ran out on me? I know all about your life in London, and that creep, Pierce Carver, you’ve been living with for the past two and a half years.’

Laura half turned, her lips parting incredulously. ‘I—I am not living with Pierce,’ she protested, indignation vying with disbelief. ‘I work with him, yes, but that’s all. Your investigator was wrong if he told you there was anything between us.’

‘You live at his house!’

‘I have a room there. I also have a flat of my own,’ retorted Laura hotly, and then anger quickly enveloped her. ‘But that’s my business. I don’t have to explain myself to you! It’s nothing to do with you! I said it before and I’ll say it again: how dare you?’

Jason regarded her beneath lowered brows. ‘Why didn’t he come with you to San Francisco?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Doesn’t he care about your sister?’

‘Why should he?’ Laura was trembling with resentment. ‘Oh! I can’t believe this, I really can’t! You’ve actually been having me followed ever since I left Hawaii?’

Jason shrugged, making no immediate response. Then he said flatly, ‘I want you back, Laura. But you should know that. I didn’t want you to leave. That was why I thought you’d come back to Hawaii. I—foolishly, I now realise—imagined you had had second thoughts; that the feelings you used to say you had for me had overwhelmed your much vaunted scruples. I was wrong. I admit it. But that doesn’t alter the situation. I still want you—for the present, at least. Seeing you again has only confirmed that belief. And I’m prepared to go to practically any lengths to get you—even if it means involving your sister!’

CHAPTER THREE (#u530b9ef8-ae1a-5a35-b68c-61e6a0ef02ea)

LAURA FELT as if someone had just delivered a gasping blow to her midriff. Her throat felt tight, and her breathing was suspended, the stunning reality of what Jason had said resounding in her head like the clanging of a bell.

‘You’re—not—serious!’

‘But, I am.’ Jason’s expression was faintly self-derisive now. ‘How could you doubt it? No one—but no one—walks out on Jason Montifore!’

‘So that’s it!’ Laura caught her breath. ‘Your pride was hurt!’ she accused him bitterly, the shuddering intensity of his announcement tempered now by his mocking confession.

Jason inclined his head. ‘If it pleases you to think so,’ he remarked carelessly. ‘I won’t insult your intelligence by protesting I’m in love with you.’

‘No. Don’t.’ Laura hunched her shoulders with sudden loathing. For a moment, for a brief space of time, she had half believed there must be some feeling behind his impassive pronouncement. But his taunting expression dispelled that assumption, and made a mockery of her sympathetic response.

‘Nevertheless, I am prepared to do what I can to help you, providing you are equally prepared to do the same.’

Laura swallowed disbelievingly. ‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Threatening you? No. How could you think it?’ he responded, in that same half mocking tone. ‘I’m offering you a way out, an alternative your sister may find more appealing than a depressing plane ride back to London.’

Laura shifted uneasily. ‘I don’t understand you.’

‘You will.’ Jason shrugged. ‘Stay and have lunch with me, and I’ll explain.’

Laura moved her head from side to side, but it was a futile gesture. ‘I don’t see what you can say to appease Pamela’s state of mind,’ she insisted. ‘She feels desperate and afraid …’

‘Because she’s alone and pregnant, and she has no future means of support,’ said Jason levelly. ‘Wouldn’t you say that covered her immediate situation? That and her professed desire to see Kazantis again?’

‘Well, yes …’

‘Good.’ Jason’s arms fell to his sides and he gestured politely towards the cushioned seat behind her. ‘So. Sit down. I’ll go tell Alec we’ll eat in fifteen minutes. You do like lobster, don’t you?’ His dark brows arched, and a faintly humorous gleam entered his eyes. ‘Oh, yes, of course you do. How could I forget?’

As he pulled open the door behind him and went to inform the yacht’s captain of his intentions, Laura curled one leg beneath her and sank down unhappily on to the soft banquette. It seemed he had all the answers, she thought bitterly, her fingers tugging convulsively at the fringe of braided silk that edged the cushions. And if he wasn’t threatening her exactly, he was certainly using Pamela’s condition to get what he wanted.

But why her? she brooded helplessly. Why was he prepared to go to such lengths to get her back? Was it only because she had walked out on him? Was he really so vain, that he couldn’t bear the implications of her action? It was not an adjective she would have associated with him once, but how well had she really known him, after all? Once, she would have said she knew everything about him—his likes, his dislikes; his fairness, and his humour; the things that made him laugh, and the things that aroused his anger; his integrity in business, and his probity in justice. The men who worked for him and with him, respected him as well as liked him, and until experience had taught her differently, she had never had cause to doubt him.

Of course, she had been in love with him then, madly and irresistibly in love with a man she had never dreamed might be attracted to her. When she first went to work for him, as a temporary replacement for his own secretary, the other girls at the agency had teased her about his lean good looks, and the fact that he was one of the wealthiest men on the island. Naturally they, like her, had never imagined he would take any interest in a long-legged English girl, whose only claim to beauty was the silvery fair hair that fell almost to her waist. The rest of her features were totally ordinary, she knew: blue eyes, that watered when the sun was too strong, a straight nose that was not the least bit retroussé, and a wide mouth, whose lower lip was just the tiniest bit fuller. She discounted the length of her lashes, whose tips required mascara to be seen, and the slender curves of her figure. In her experience, men preferred smaller women, with fuller breasts, women who nestled into the curve of their arm instead of meeting them on eye-level terms.

Not that she had ever been able to say that of Jason. His height, and the lithe muscularity of his body, had always made her aware of her own femininity, and he had always maintained he preferred taller women. There had been plenty of them, goodness knows. Before she had figured in his scheme of things, he had had other mistresses, and there were several would-be supplicants all willing to inform Laura of how precarious her position was. Not to mention his ex-wife, Regina, and their daughter, Lucia …

She shook her head, banishing the unwilling memories of the emotions he had aroused. It was ridiculous, she told herself desperately. How could she even consider his demands? She couldn’t stay in Hawaii. She couldn’t abandon Pierce in the middle of the new book. Her life was in England now. Her job was in England. She had to make him understand she could not abdicate her responsibilities.

Three years ago, things had been different. Pamela had been training at a good teaching hospital in London, and sharing a flat with several other nurses. When Laura had been given the opportunity to spend six months in the Honolulu branch of the international secretarial agency in Bond Street, where she had worked at that time, it had seemed a marvellous break. It had been no wrench to give up her bedsitter, put the few belongings she was not taking with her into storage, and fly off to Hawaii. But not now. Now, she had her own flat, in Highgate. She had put down roots, and she was no longer the carefree twenty-two-year-old she had been when Jason first met her. Besides which, she didn’t want to lose her job with Pierce. She liked working for him. The job was interesting, and it had given her a chance to travel, as well as providing a very generous salary. She couldn’t give that up, not at the whim of a man who she despised. She should not have come here, she acknowledged belatedly. She should not have allowed Pamela’s desperate plight to drive her into a situation she obviously could not handle. But then, she realised bleakly, she had had no way of knowing how Jason would react to her plea for help. She had never suspected he might have plans of his own.

‘I’ve told Alec to have the awning erected.’ Jason’s lazy tones interrupted her reverie, and she turned her head to look at him. ‘I thought we might eat on deck,’ he continued. ‘It’s cool enough in the shade.’

Laura wanted to say she didn’t want to eat lunch with him, but she bit back the words. There was no point in antagonising him, she decided weakly, ignoring the fact that the longer she allowed this charade to continue, the harder it would be to convince him she could not be blackmailed.

‘All right,’ she said now, indifferently, sliding her curled leg off the cushions and giving a little shrug. ‘But I’m not very hungry.’

‘Nor am I. My appetites run in an entirely different direction,’ responded Jason unemotionally. ‘But unless I miss my guess, you’re not exactly in a mood to take advantage of them, are you?’