Freedom To Love

‘You can keep your work!’ She took out the card and ripped it into tiny pieces in front of him before putting it in the ashtray. ‘And anything else you have to offer.’

‘Okay,’ he shrugged. ‘If that’s the way you want it.’

‘It is,’ she told him firmly.

She didn’t know whether she was relieved or not when he finally seemed to fall asleep again. Her thoughts were much too chaotic for her to even attempt to sleep herself. No man had ever touched her so intimately, and especially so publicly. Colour flooded her cheeks as she remembered his suggestion that he photograph her nude.

‘Well?’ Gemma turned to her expectantly.

Katy didn’t even pretend not to know what her sister meant. ‘You were right, it is him.’

‘I thought so!’ Gemma’s eyes sparkled excitedly. ‘What did he give you just now?’

It had been too much to hope that Gemma hadn’t seen that interchange! ‘Just his card,’ Katy revealed reluctantly.

’Just his card?’ her sister repeated dazedly. ‘And did I see you rip it up?’

‘You did. I have no desire to be photographed in the nude.’

Gemma spluttered with laughter. ‘He wanted to photograph you?’

‘My body,’ Katy corrected disgustedly, his remark that she would never make it on her face alone still rankling.

‘And you turned him down?’

‘Of course I did,’ she said crossly. ‘I told you, I don’t want him photographing me.’ She didn’t like his totally analytical gaze, didn’t like the way he had dismissed her face and instead assessed her body as photographable. She pitied his wife if he had one—how awful to be stripped down to the bare bone, so to speak. After all, no one was perfect, and this man was more than qualified to pick out any blemish or imperfection. ‘Besides,’ she added, ‘you know it isn’t possible. And Mum and Dad would never allow it.’

‘If Adam Wild wanted to photograph me I wouldn’t let Mum and Dad stop me,’ Gemma said scornfully.

‘And Gerald?’ Katy asked dryly.

‘It wouldn’t bother me.’ He sat forward to answer for himself. ‘I might get quite a kick out of seeing my girl-friend’s picture in a centrefold.’

It was the sort of stupid remark Katy would have expected from him. Despite his fair good looks, Katy had always considered Gerald one of the silliest men she knew. Part of her dislike could be due to the fact that he had first started dating Gemma when Katy was going through the worst of her puppy fat and spots stage, and he had never forgotten it. He had teased her unmercifully then, his barbs often cruel and hurtful, and he still did so, every chance he could. Katy stayed away from him whenever she could.

‘Gemma didn’t get the offer,’ she reacted strongly to him. ‘And I have no intention of taking it up.’

Gerald’s brown eyes passed over her scornfully. ‘I can’t see what the man saw in you,’ and he turned away.

‘Idiot!’ Gemma snapped at her resentfully, before she too turned away.

‘Tell him I have a thing about firm uptilted breasts,’ remarked a soft taunting voice from next to Katy.

She spun round, her eyes wide with indignation. ‘What did you say?’ she gasped.

Adam Wild gave her a lazy smile, a completely relaxed look about him as he slouched down in his seat. ‘I like nicely rounded bottoms too,’ he added outrageously. ‘So you pass on both counts.’

Katy glared at him. ‘How do you know that?’

‘I watched you as you walked to the loo,’ he informed her calmly. ‘I’ve always thought tight denims a good figure revealer. Of course, I couldn’t see your legs, but——’

‘Leave my legs out of it!’ she said fiercely.

‘But I’m sure they’re equally curvaceous,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken.

‘How awful to look at every woman through the eyes of a camera,’ Katy snapped, ‘to always see the faults. I pity your wife,’ she voiced her thoughts of a few minutes ago.

Adam Wild gave a throaty chuckle, suddenly appearing younger than his thirty-six years. ‘I’m not married, Katy,’ he said with humour. ‘And never likely to be.’

‘Too choosy, I suppose,’ she said insultingly, surprised at her own vehemence towards this man. She didn’t normally take violent dislikes to people.

‘Too much choice,’ he told her insinuatingly. ‘There are too many girls only too eager to give their all if I’ll photograph them. Sometimes I take them up on that offer. So you see, I don’t always see the faults.’

Katy hated the way those deep blue eyes were laughing at her. ‘Tell me, Mr Wild, why are you sitting back here with us lesser mortals? Wouldn’t you have been more comfortable up the front with your own sort?’ Her sarcasm was unmistakable.

‘Miss Harris,’ his voice was deceptively mild, his eyes no longer laughing, ‘until the general public decided to take me to their bosoms about fifteen years ago, I belonged with the “lesser mortals”. And that was your description, not mine,’ he added hardly. ‘Besides, what does it matter where I sit when all I want to do is rest?’

‘I suppose that’s because you took one of those girls up on their offer last night!’

His eyes suddenly appeared flinty grey, and Katy wondered how she had ever thought them a deep blue. ‘I’m not so old that a night of love physically exhausts me,’ he told her harshly. ‘I just don’t happen to have slept for seventy-two hours.’

‘Three nights of love!’ she taunted.

‘Miss Harris, go to hell,’ he said calmly.

Katy was prevented from answering by the sudden request to fasten seat belts, and the dropping of the aeroplane as they approached Calgary. She had that terrible feeling in her stomach again, only this time it was worse. Her nails dug into the arm-rest, luckily not Adam Wild’s arm this time, but her panic just seemed to be getting worse.

She heard an impatient sigh beside her and a male hand, palm upwards, came into her vision. She didn’t stop to think that this was Adam Wild offering her comfort, that he was the man she had taken an instant dislike to; all that mattered right now was that he understood how she felt and was trying to help her.

Her hand crept into his much larger one, his long tapered fingers closing about hers. His thumb rubbed rhythmically over the back of her’ hand, soothing away some of her panic and making her feel secure when moments ago she had felt near to hysteria.

‘Thank you,’ she said huskily once they had come to a standstill outside the airport building. ‘I—Thank you,’ she repeated weakly.

‘Don’t mention it.’ Already he was standing up to depart. ‘I won’t ask any payment for it, so you can stop looking worried.’

Colour flooded her cheeks. ‘I didn’t think you would! And I wasn’t looking worried.’

‘Then perhaps you ought to,’ he remarked with humour. ‘Your sister and her boy-friend have just departed down the other aisle.’

Katy turned startled grey eyes to see he was in fact correct. Gemma and Gerald hadn’t even told her they were going, and now they were almost out of the plane. She scrambled to her feet, almost falling over in her panic.

A hand came out to grasp her elbow. ‘Calm down,’ Adam Wild advised her. ‘They won’t have got far. It usually takes some time to get through Customs. Come on,’ he pulled her out into the aisle beside him, ‘I’ll take you through.’

‘There’s no need——’

‘There’s every need,’ he insisted. ‘During our brief acquaintance I’ve come to realise that you’re incapable of doing anything without something going wrong.’

‘That isn’t true——’