Dangerous Nights

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…

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_200385fc-34f4-5177-a19f-723dc91188b9)

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?’