Reckless Conduct, page 12
Harriet bounced off the bed. She might as well go and get the last of her bits and pieces from the car, and then she would make her ceremonial first meal in the lavishly equipped kitchen.
Her Porsche was parked in her very own parking space in the basement, and Harriet gave it a loving pat as she lifted out the cardboard carton of old books, photographs and nick-nacks that had survived her ruthless house-clearing.
She was humming as she got back into the lift and bent to press the button for the right floor with her nose. She shifted her grip on the heavy carton as the lift paused at the ground floor, preparing a bright smile of greeting for one of her new neighbours, but when the doors opened her mouth rounded in a silent O as she saw the tall, familiar figure in a black suit instead of an intriguing stranger.
‘Hello, Marcus!’ she said breathlessly, recovering from her split second of disorientation.
‘Good evening, Harriet,’ he said gravely. She was suddenly glad that she had the box to hide behind, for Marcus’s elegance reminded her that she had dressed comfortably for the move, in a thin white T-shirt, jeans and sandals and a headband made out of a scarf to keep her hair out of her eyes. Marcus had his briefcase with him, she noticed, so he was obviously on his way home from work.
Her heart began to pump madly again. ‘Have you come to see me? I didn’t think you knew—’ She had presumed from his conspicuous lack of interference over the past couple of days that his daughter hadn’t reported Harriet’s latest extravagant impulse. She hadn’t expected her to last out for so long.
‘I suppose Nicola told you I was moving in this evening? Is she with you?’ She peered around him, but there was no sign of anyone else in the tiled foyer except the young security guard, who was watching them curiously. ‘I’m not really settled yet although I’ve moved almost everything in—I was just getting the last of my stuff from the car. You’ll be my first visitor—’
‘You shouldn’t be carrying heavy weights like that.’ Marcus cut through her nervous chatter and stepped into the lift, removing the carton from her slender arms.
‘Really—it isn’t very heavy,’ Harriet protested, but she didn’t bother to try to retrieve the box. By now she was used to the futility of arguing with Marcus’s chivalrous instincts.
He had certainly got his way over the Porsche, turning up on her doorstep on Monday morning just as she was preparing to leave for work and politely commanding her to drive him to the office while his chauffeur, who had dropped him off, took the Volvo in for its service check.
Harriet had been tempted to give him the hair-raising ride of his life, but his tense air of resignation had led her to believe that that was just what he expected her to do, so she had perversely decided to give his conservative soul nothing to complain about. His detached comments had actually been quite helpful, although her thanks had been grudging because his smile and bland thanks for a smooth ride had made her realise that she had been neatly manipulated into behaving with depressing meekness.
‘Heavy enough,’ he said, tucking the carton easily under one arm. ‘You should have asked someone to help instead of trying to carry it yourself.’
‘I don’t know anyone yet,’ she said as the doors closed again.
‘You know me,’ he pointed out.
‘I mean here, at the Harbourside,’ she said, untying the bandanna and running a hand self-consciously through her untidy hair. ‘I haven’t seen any of my neighbours so far, but the saleswoman told me that most of the apartments are occupied.
‘They’re very sought-after, you know,’ she boasted, her excitement about her new home brimming over now that she had someone to share it with. ‘Mine is a corner one so I get two different views of the city; it’s northfacing too, so I get the sun as well. As soon as I walked in I knew it was right for me so I bought it on the spot. And it’s really a fabulous bargain. Even you couldn’t have got a better deal!’
‘I’m sure I couldn’t,’ he murmured equably, watching her deep-set eyes sparkle and her mouth curve widely with satisfaction.
When the lift halted at the fifth floor she led the way down the short hall, and he waited patiently while she dealt with the unfamiliar lock and threw open the door with a flourish.
‘Well, what do you think?’ she said eagerly, when he was hardly inside the door. ‘Isn’t it terrific?’ She basked in self-satisfaction, not giving him a chance to reply. ‘There’s only one bedroom but the living areas are big and there’s plenty of room for parties, and for guests to stay over—’
‘Life is going to be one mad, social whirl for you, isn’t it?’ said Marcus, setting the carton carefully down on the honey-coloured dining table that had come with the apartment and placing his briefcase on the floor. As she moved restlessly under his steady blue gaze he asked smoothly, ‘May I look around?’
The thought of showing him her bedroom gave her a strange curling sensation in her stomach. ‘Yes, of course. Go ahead,’ she said, waving vaguely in the direction of the rest of the apartment.
His dark head tilted to one side. ‘Aren’t you going to show me?’
It was as if he knew what she was feeling. ‘I don’t think you’ll get lost,’ she said tartly, taking refuge in a hostessy smile. ‘I’ll get us a drink while you’re looking. What would you like?’
‘A fruit juice, if you have it.’
‘I have everything,’ she said emphatically, thinking of the lavish array of bottles now residing in her drinks cabinet, awaiting the flood of new friends that she intended to make.
He looked around at the pale room, tinted a rich gold by the evening sun. ‘It’s a beautifully warm room…may I take off my jacket?’
For no reason at all his polite request made her blush. ‘Of course…here, let me hang it up for you.’ She took it from him and he turned away, loosening his collar and tie with a grunt of relief.
The ultra-fine wool fabric was still warm from his body and Harriet thrust it hurriedly into the closet by the door, deciding that she had better stick to orange juice too. Celebrating her unexpected first visitor with anything more potent would be asking for trouble. Marcus’s mere presence made her feel light-headed enough—she didn’t need the added stimulation of alcohol.
‘How did your date go last night?’
The jacket almost slid off the hanger onto the floor. ‘You mean with Greg Pollard? Fine. It went fine.’
‘What was he like?’ he said.
She continued to arrange the jacket to her satisfaction, keeping her back to him as she grimaced and made an effort to sound enthusiastic. ‘Nice. He was very nice.’
‘That sounds rather bland.’
Harriet shut the closet door rather more firmly than was necessary and turned around, hands on hips. ‘Well, it wasn’t. Greg and I had a very nice evening!’
She winced as she saw the corner of his mouth flicker. She had used that wretched word again. Nice. The trouble was that it described Greg perfectly. He had brimmed over with such niceness that she couldn’t view him in a sexual context. As a candidate for a wild sexual fling, when it came to the crunch he had turned out to be even less appealing than Michael Fleet!
‘Where did you go?’
‘Just to dinner and a movie.’
‘How nice.’
Harriet scowled at his innocent expression. ‘It was even nicer when we went back to his flat and made mad, passionate love for the rest of the night!’ she declared rashly.
He pursed his lips. ‘No wonder you’re looking a little washed out today.’ It was evident that he didn’t believe her, damn him! ‘Perhaps you should save your stormy nights of unbridled lust for the weekends…if you can find time between hikes, that is. I understand that you corrupted several Scouts with an orgy of marshmalloweating on your weekend away.’
She wished that she hadn’t tried to give Nicola fits of appreciative giggles with stories of her trip—particularly the distressing fact that most of the hikers had been women.
‘The Scout-leader was there too,’ Harriet informed him sweetly, crossing her fingers in the folds of her T-shirt in the hope that Nicola hadn’t gone into specifics. ‘Hunky, hairy outdoor types really turn me on.’
He stretched his arms behind his head and rolled his shoulders slowly, easing out the tensions of the long day.
‘If your taste runs to butch females no wonder poor Pollard bored you to tears last night.’
Harriet flushed at the lazy amusement in his voice. So Nicola had even mentioned that the scouts had been led by a woman. ‘Don’t you and your daughter have anything more interesting to do than discuss every minute detail of my activities?’ she gritted.
He dropped his arms, smiling at her chagrin. ‘Not at the moment, no. Nicola talks about you a lot. I think she’s rather fascinated by your colourful activities and awed by your appetite for life…not to mention your glorious disrespect for my dignity,’ he added wryly.
‘My activities would be a lot more colourful if she wasn’t shadowing me like a conscience every day,’ Harriet said darkly. Actually it was fun to have someone to show off to—someone who hadn’t known the old Harriet, who didn’t poke and probe and ask awkward questions but accepted her as the person she was now.
‘Your restraint is duly noted,’ he said gravely. ‘Nicola doesn’t make friends easily but she seems to respond naturally to you, perhaps because you haven’t tried to pressure her into liking you. She says you treat her as an equal and she likes that. Her grandmother has a tendency to be domineering, and her schoolteachers are the only other adult women with whom she’s had close contact. As an only child she’s been a bit lonely, I’m afraid.’
There was an odd note in his voice that made her ask, ‘Haven’t you ever been tempted to marry again?’
‘For Nicola’s sake? No,’ he said discouragingly.
But he didn’t tell her that it was none of her business so she murmured recklessly, ‘Is that because you’re still in love with your wife or because you enjoy your personal freedom too much?’
Instead of being embarrassed, as she had intended, he looked amused at the thrust. ‘What ever makes you think I’m pining for Serena?’
She stepped behind one of the dining chairs, subconsciously putting a barrier between them.
‘I don’t know…perhaps the way that Nicola talks so freely about her. About how beautiful she was and how happy you were together…’
‘Nicola doesn’t even remember her mother. Most of her memories have been implanted by Susan, so naturally they’re flattering ones, although I will admit that Serena was extremely beautiful.’
‘She was blonde, wasn’t she?’
‘Courtesy of her hairdresser, yes. A genuine, platinum-plated bitch.’ He smiled cynically at Harriet’s heightened colour. ‘That was what you wanted to know, wasn’t it? And yes, I thought both of us were in love when I married her. I was too naïve at the time to realise that what Serena loved wasn’t me specifically but male admiration in general, and that one man would never be able to provide enough to satisfy her craving. Her favourite game was to play her courtiers off against each other. Nothing pleased Serena more than being able to provoke an admirer into a fit of jealousy.’
Harriet tried, and failed, to imagine Marcus Fox in the grip of a jealous rage.
Her expression must have given her away because he said wryly, ‘I was only twenty, and far too arrogant to accept my mistake gracefully. I persisted in believing we could make the marriage work. We had some monstrous rows before I realised that Serena was using my pride and my temper to keep me out of her bed so that she had some self-justification for her behaviour.
‘She was never technically unfaithful but she had no intention of giving up her numerous men-friends, not even after Nicola was born—or should I say especially after Nicola was born? It’s ironic that I should have married a woman so much like my mother…’
Harriet blinked at this insult. ‘I thought your mother was a saint?’ she blurted out, remembering what he had told her the other night.
‘I’m talking about my natural mother. My father got a young woman pregnant just before he married Mum. By all accounts she was as irresponsible as they come— beautiful but dumb, except where men were concerned. When she fronted up to Mum after the wedding, asking for money, Mum persuaded her not to have an abortion. When I was born it was Mum who took me home from the hospital…my birth-mother just wanted to forget I existed.
‘I can forgive her lack of intelligence and even her lack of maternal feelings, but I can’t forgive her for flitting in and out of my childhood whenever she was bored or broke, fawning over me and claiming she’d never wanted to give me up, refusing to allow Mum the status of being my legal mother. I was only about six when they told me she’d been killed in an accident but I remember feeling glad that she was never coming back.’
‘I don’t suppose she was a bleached blonde too, by any chance?’ said Harriet flippantly, to hide how appalled she was by his matter-of-fact account of what must have been an emotional turmoil. Having grown up in a deeply loving, traditional family, she couldn’t comprehend the idea of not wanting your own child.
She felt mortified when he confirmed cynically, ‘How perceptive of you to guess, Dr Smith. I have photographs from her abortive modelling career that show her as the archetypal bimbo—all pouting lips and breasts and a mass of teased hair. And that was in the days when bleaching your hair instantly identified a woman as either a cheap floozy or an expensive tart.’
Harriet’s hand rose automatically to her hair. ‘So that’s why you have a thing about blondes,’ she murmured, tucking a curl nervously behind her ear, her heart aching for the boy who had despised the woman who had borne him. ‘Because of your unresolved feelings about your mother—’
‘Don’t tell me you’re taking night classes in psychoanalysis too,’ he said with a distinct edge. ‘I suppose you’re going to try and hang an Oedipus complex on me next, or tell me I was trying to return to the security of the womb when I married Serena.’
Since that was precisely the kind of psychobabble that had been passing through her mind, Harriet flushed. ‘If you’re still that touchy about it, maybe you should consider therapy,’ she said, reminding herself that he was now a fully grown man in total control of his life, and in no need of her misplaced sympathy.
‘Why? A human being’s most valuable asset is the ability to learn from experience and thus not be condemned to endlessly repeating his mistakes.’
‘Two blondes amongst millions of women who artificially lighten their hair don’t actually amount to much experience,’ she pointed out scathingly.
‘Oh, there were a few others along the way who contributed to my disillusionment…women who thought my fatal weakness for their synthetic golden looks would forgive them anything. I’ve since realised that a truly sensual woman doesn’t have to flaunt her sexuality; her appeal is much more subtle…and enduring. Unfortunately such women appear to be a rarity in these strident times…’
Was that a dig at her? How many treacherous blondes had it taken to disillusion him, for goodness’ sake? For an intelligent man he must be a slow learner. Harriet felt an ugly emotion boiling up inside her that she knew, with a touch of panic, was jealousy. Fortunately, before it could spill over and scald them both, Marcus said smoothly, ‘So…have you made arrangements to see the boring Mr Pollard again?’
The sudden switch back to his original subject caught Harriet completely off guard and she hesitated a moment too long.
Marcus’s face was harsh with satisfaction as he nodded. ‘I guess not. What’s wrong, Harriet? Didn’t he conform to your computerised specifications? What exactly did you ask for on that ridiculous form you filled in?’
‘A stud!’ she told him, still angry with him for making her feel things that he had no right to make her feel.
‘You want to get pregnant?’ he murmured, eyes dropping to her flat belly.
She gasped, taking a step backwards. ‘No, of course not! I mean a stud in the slang sense!’
‘Slang sense?’
Her chest heaved with outrage under the white T-shirt but she answered him anyway, since it was just possible that a stuffy conservative really wouldn’t know the modern slang. ‘As in a man who’s young, handsome and virile and exciting!’ Seeing his jaw jut dangerously, she warmed to her theme. ‘Someone who doesn’t have any emotional attachments and won’t make a nuisance of himself afterwards.’
‘Afterwards?’
She managed not to blush. ‘The next morning!’ she flung at him defiantly.
His gaze wandered slowly up from her waist, his thick, dark lashes screening his expression. ‘So what’s next on the agenda? Or should I say who? Has the computer lined you up with another white-hot prospect for tonight?’
She was frustrated by his lack of reaction. ‘Tomorrow night, actually. Tonight I have a class.’
‘I thought that was Monday.’
‘Monday is French. Wednesday is car maintenance.’
He looked alarmed. ‘You’re not going to try to service the Porsche yourself?’
She almost laughed at his expression. ‘Your chauvinism is showing; but no, this is just a hobby…a way to meet people.’
‘You mean men,’ he said bluntly, his eyes narrowing. ‘All these classes you’re taking aren’t just about expanding your interests, are they, Harriet? They’re a way for you to meet a few more wham-bam-thank-you-Sams!’
‘I see your grasp of slang has improved radically in the last few minutes,’ she snapped. ‘So what if they are? What makes you the guardian of my morality?’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ he growled bafflingly.
‘I wouldn’t bother to try. You’re not my type!’
