Reckless Conduct, page 7
‘You were rude to your mother-in-law?’ Harriet blurted out.
‘I agree—hardly the actions of a gentleman,’ he said with a wry humour that further blunted the jagged edge of her pain. ‘Perhaps I’ll be blackballed from my club.’
Harriet’s taut mouth almost trembled into a reluctant smile, and he relaxed some of his watchfulness to continue lightly, ‘I’m afraid Susan is too used to getting her own way where I’m concerned. It’s my fault—I’ve found life is much easier if I let her think she can organise me to her own satisfaction. This morning, for example, she wanted me to agree to Nicola working for Lynne at her law office during the holidays.’
Harriet caught her breath. ‘But hadn’t you told her that you were arranging for Nicola to have a job at Trident?’
He raised rueful eyebrows. ‘When dealing with Susan it usually saves a lot of time and argument if I present her with a fait accompli. I had intended to do that tonight when I’d confirmed the arrangements, but unfortunately she saw fit to launch a pre-emptive strike—’
It seemed a very good description of Susan Jerome’s approach. ‘But—it’s a terrific idea, isn’t it?’ Harriet interrupted feverishly. ‘And it means that you won’t need me after all…’
‘It means I need you all the more. I’m afraid Susan’s plan has the potential to create a bigger problem than it solves,’ he said, firmly squashing any hopes she might have had of evading her responsibilities.
‘What problem?’ she asked, for the second time that night failing to realise that she was being danced into a corner, this time figuratively.
His jaw tightened. ‘It’s rather embarrassing…’
‘Is it?’ She wouldn’t have thought, from the way he had handled himself this morning, that Marcus was capable of being embarrassed about anything. She wondered whether it was something a reckless woman might be able to use to her advantage. ‘In what way?’ she asked eagerly, then flushed when he gave her an ironic look, as if he knew exactly what she was thinking.
‘Susan and her infernal matchmaking. She thinks that it’s time I was respectably remarried and she’s decided that Lynne fits the bill. I suspect that she cooked up this law-office deal on the spur of the moment as a way of throwing us together as a cosy family unit, to impress me with Lynne’s supportiveness—making time in her busy, successful career for Nicola’s and my sake et cetera, et cetera. Susan obviously expects propinquity to succeed where natural inclination has failed.’
His eyes narrowed as he looked over her shoulder and Harriet was glad that his glacial look wasn’t directed at her. ‘Lynne is far too intelligent a woman not to have realised by now what Susan is up to, so I have to assume that she’s operating on her own agenda. If I hadn’t nipped the idea in the bud I feel I would have been tacitly acknowledging a level of commitment between us that doesn’t exist. Fortunately, since I had a logical and far more convenient alternative already arranged, every-one’s pride has remained more or less intact…’
‘What about Nicola? She’s the most important one in all this. What did she have to say?’ Harriet asked tartly, to conceal the kick of petty satisfaction she felt at his cool dismissal of the lovely Lynne.
There was something deliciously amusing, too, in the idea of the powerful Marcus Fox being harassed by a matchmaking mama-in-law and trying to evade the acquisitive instincts of pursuing females. It made him seem less…threatening. Maybe she would be able to squeeze some fun out of the situation after all!
‘Nothing, to Susan’s annoyance,’ he remarked drily. ‘Nicola didn’t seem to have an opinion either way, so naturally she accepted what I had arranged.’
Harriet didn’t think that that sounded very rebellious. ‘And did you tell Mrs Jerome that I was the one who was going to be in charge of Nicola?’
He looked her straight in the eye, blue on blue. ‘I told her that it would be someone I trusted implicitly. She was content to accept my assurance.’
‘You didn’t tell her!’ she breathed, realising suddenly that she could read that poker-face.
He quickened his steps to the beat of the music as it built smoothly in a crescendo. ‘I said that she could go away happy in the knowledge that Nicola was going to be close under my direction.’
‘You didn’t tell her,’ she reiterated gleefully as she was whisked into a series of dazzling turns that blurred everything but her partner’s boldly delineated face into oblivion. ‘You were too afraid to!’
‘I obeyed the doctor’s orders and removed a source of tension and worry that would have impeded her recovery,’ he corrected her.
‘Coward!’ she laughed as she followed him through another whirlwind of steps, exhilarated by her ability to sense his every move. Her dance skills were very rusty and with Michael she’d had to concentrate on which foot went where. Marcus kept her too preoccupied to worry about such mundane issues and in his arms she rediscovered a soaring sense of freedom. Her erratic spirits shot skywards again, showering her with sparks of ridiculous joy.
‘I freely admit to being henpecked,’ he said, bringing her to a flourishing stop beside a rounded pillar as the band finished their set.
‘And here was I thinking you were cock of the walk,’ she said impulsively, and blushed when his answering smile imbued her words with a slightly indecent connotation she hadn’t intended. Now he had made her aware of his body again…his whole body this time, not just its polite outer sheath of expensive black and white silk.
Like a flash photograph it etched itself momentarily on her retina, searing her with its vividly imagined detail—the column of his throat flowing down to a chest of tanned satin, smooth and hairless, a ripple of muscle beneath the arch of his ribcage dropping away to the breathtaking splendour of his masculine pride, and the flat hips and long, hard thighs, the slender, elegant feet…
‘Pompous and strutting?’ His thick black brows rose imperiously above the mocking smile. ‘Is that what you think of me, Harriet?’
‘If the cap fits,’ she replied weakly, not moving as his hands dropped away, shocked by her own prurience. She had never stripped a man with her eyes before and it had happened almost without her volition. With such an unlikely subject, too…or should she say object? The colour burned in her cheeks. Maybe she was a little drunk. Or maybe it was just that her secret, sensual self was finally breaking through the taboos created by her gentle upbringing. She laughed breathlessly. It really was happening! The rebirth of Harriet Smith. All she had to do was look and act differently and soon she would be different.
‘Harriet? I asked if you were ready to go home now.’
‘What?’ What was he talking about? Home was a dark, lonely house, aching with memories. Why would she want to go back there? Harriet turned fever-bright eyes up to his, her smile one of desperate gaiety. ‘No! No, of course not. What makes you say that? I’m having too much fun to leave!’
‘The band is packing up soon, anyway,’ he said, stilling the restless flutter of her hand by catching it in his own. ‘This place only has a licence until one-thirty a.m. on week nights. And your sparkle is starting to tarnish. Come on; I’ll give you a lift home.’
His gentle tone made her dig her heels in. He was being condescending and she didn’t like it. ‘No, Michael’s doing that,’ she insisted.
‘I don’t think your escort is in any condition to drive right now, do you?’ He nodded to where Michael was leaning aggressively over the bar, arguing with the barman about the way he had made his drink.
‘Then I’ll drive—’
‘If you could get his keys off him, and if he would let a mere woman drive that precious macho machine he calls a car, and if you hadn’t had a few drinks yourself…’
Battered by his impeccable logic, she said the first stupid thing that came into her head. ‘I came with him, I have to go home with him.’
‘Don’t be foolish—’
‘It’s not foolish; it’s a simple matter of politeness.’
He gave a crack of grim laughter. ‘And how polite do you think he’s going to be when he gets you alone in his car? Or when you hit your doorstep? Polite enough to take no for an answer? A happy drunk is one thing, an angry drunk another. He certainly didn’t seem very happy about the way you were holding him off. Michael is not a gracious loser.’
It was exactly what she had been worried about earlier, why she had several times refused Michael’s suggestion that they leave. ‘I can—’
‘Handle it,’ he finished tightly. ‘So you keep saying. Tell me, do you want to go to bed with him tonight, Harriet?’
She flushed at his bluntness. He stood over her, tall, dark and grim. If she said yes he would go away and stop trying to ruin her enjoyment of life.
‘I was going to say I can get a taxi,’ she said haughtily. ‘I can look after myself, you know; you don’t have to feel responsible.’ Her haughtiness deserted her as she looked over at her sullen escort and nibbled her lower lip. ‘But I’ll have to go over and say goodnight; I can’t just desert him without a word…and he really should get a taxi himself…’
Marcus gave her an exasperated look. ‘Old habits die hard, don’t they, Harriet? The idea is not to give him the chance to object. Allow me to offer polite apologies on your behalf…’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘I CAN’T believe you did that,’ Harriet was muttering ten minutes later as they purred along the quiet motorway towards the suburbs.
‘What? Got rid of Fleet for you?’
He had done more than that. He had confiscated Michael’s car keys and arranged for the barman to call a taxi when he was ready to leave. All achieved with a minimum of discussion, from what Harriet could see from her cowardly vantage point beside the pillar.
‘No, I mean…left your friends like that. What did you tell them?’
‘That I’d found a hot blonde I was taking home for the night.’
She was too on edge to appreciate the subtle irony in his tone.
‘You didn’t!’ She looked in horror at the bold profile, illuminated in jagged bursts by the streetlights whipping past the windows of the Volvo.
‘Of course I didn’t,’ he murmured, casting her a chiding glance. ‘What do you take me for?’
A consummate gentleman, of course. He would never be so crude as to embarrass a lady deliberately. Harriet was annoyed with herself for being so gullible.
‘Then what did you say?’
‘That I had extricated an employee from a difficult situation, that she was distressed and I was taking her home.’
‘Miss Foster didn’t look too pleased.’ She tried hard to keep the satisfaction out of her voice. Since she scarcely knew the other woman it wasn’t fair to dislike her so heartily.
He gave her a wry look that told her she hadn’t quite succeeded. ‘She wanted to come, but I suggested that, since you live on the opposite side of the city and it might take some time, it would be more sensible if she went home in the limo with the others.’
‘But I hadn’t told you where I lived—’
‘I had your personnel file on my desk this morning, remember?’
‘I’d rather not,’ she blurted out involuntarily, but the reminder made her add cattily, ‘I’m surprised she didn’t insist on riding along as chaperon.’
‘She tried to, but I said that I wanted to spare you any further embarrassment, that you preferred not to draw attention to your distress.’
‘There was no need to make me sound like such a wimp,’ she grumbled.
‘There was every need. Why do you think I didn’t invite you over there with me to say goodbye?’ he said drily. ‘At close range your status as a victim might be questionable, especially if you chose to make one of your unpredictable remarks. Damsels in distress don’t normally wear skintight dresses or boast about their provocative behaviour.’
‘So it was to save yourself embarrassment rather than me,’ she said tartly. ‘I suppose I’m not good enough to be introduced to your friends—’
‘It depends in which context you use the word “good”,’ he said coolly. ‘You certainly don’t look good in that dress.’
Was he criticizing her for wearing something bodyhugging when she didn’t have much of a body to hug? She placed a defensive hand across her small breasts. She knew that she had grown far too thin over the past year. She had tried hard to eat wisely but it was almost impossible when your appetite was as depressed as your spirits.
But that, too, had changed over the weekend. Suddenly her taste buds were back in full cry, and tonight she had eaten three full courses while Michael had looked on in bemused wonder. At this rate she would soon have her former healthy shape back.
In the meantime she refused to allow Marcus to undermine her shaky confidence. ‘Well, I happen to like the way I look!’
‘You see what I meant about context? I simply meant that you’re obviously flaunting the sultry, bad-girl look tonight. You don’t look like the kind of woman who would be unduly distressed by the advances of an overeager lover.’
‘Michael Fleet is not my lover,’ she denied, her hand clenching between her breasts, feeling her heart beat nervously against her knuckles. So he didn’t think that she looked like a child masquerading as a woman. He didn’t just see her as a silly little prude who had got out of her depth. He thought she looked sultry…sexy…
‘Potential lover, then.’
‘Not that either,’ she said abruptly. ‘I’ve decided that Michael’s not really my type—’
‘If you’ll recall, I tried to point out to you this morning—’
‘Don’t you dare say I told you so!’ she hissed.
He spun the wheel lightly between his hands as the powerful car took a long, fast curve, driving with the same calm confidence that he seemed to bring to every aspect of his life.
‘I told you so.’
His soft words fell into the silence. She made an inarticulate sound under her breath.
‘Well?’ he enquired gently. ‘Now that I’ve dared, Harriet, what do you intend to do about it?’
She ignored the taunt. ‘Take this next exit,’ she said, indicating the illuminated sign, ‘or you’ll have to go the long way round.’
He obeyed, swooping up the ramp and pulling up at the stop sign at the top, where he turned to look at her, resting an arm across the back of the seat behind her head.
‘Be as provocative as you like, my dear, but don’t dare a man to action unless you’re prepared to deal with the consequences of his accepting the challenge. And remember, a dare doesn’t necessarily have to be put into words to exist. The way you dress can be a very potent public challenge to a man to prove his masculinity. He might have a right to feel taken in by false advertising if a woman who chooses to wear something overtly sexual in his company proves indifferent to his sexual approaches. I can almost find it in me to feel sorry for Fleet…’
‘Are you suggesting that I’m to blame for Michael’s unseemly behaviour?’ Harriet demanded raggedly, infuriated by that tacked-on remark.
‘“Unseemly”?’ His eyes glimmered at the primness of the word. ‘“Blame” is too strong a word, I think. But, whether you set out with that intention or not, you created a false expectation in him from the moment he first saw you in that dress.’
‘Well, how was I to know that…that…?’
‘That he would be so susceptible to your charms?’ He sounded distinctly amused now. ‘Why shouldn’t he have been? He’s a man who judges people by their appearance, and your charms do appear very…’ his eyes wandered over the subdued glitter of her gown ‘…available.’
‘He never acted like that before!’
‘You never appealed to his susceptibilities before. So…was there a little revenge wrapped up in the mixed signals you were giving him tonight, Harriet? Beckoning him yet pushing him away? Were you punishing him for ignoring you in the past, for treating you as if you didn’t exist as a woman? Or perhaps it was all men you were trying to punish…?’
She was ashamed to admit that there might be a grain of truth in what he said. ‘I dressed the way I did tonight purely for my own enjoyment!’
‘For fun?’
‘Yes! Can we go now, or are we going to sit at this stop sign all night while you lecture me about things that are none of your business?’
‘Where?’
What was he suggesting? That she might want to go somewhere else with him? Harriet’s heart beat a little faster. ‘Home, of course!’
‘I mean which way do I turn?’ he asked, returning both hands to the wheel.
‘Oh.’ Her heartbeat slowed and she hid her chagrin in her terse directions. ‘Left, and then the second on the right.’
The rest of the short drive was accomplished in silence, and when he pulled up outside the gate and turned off the engine Harriet groped at her side for her mesh bag and muttered a hurried thank-you.
‘My pleasure,’ he replied courteously, making her feel like an ungrateful beast.
‘And I’m sorry for ruining your evening,’ she said contritely.
‘Is that what you did?’
She was disconcerted by his murmured comment. ‘Well, yes…of course. I mean…taking you away from your friends like that. But you could still go back to the nightclub—’
‘Generous of you to suggest it, but they’ll have left by now.’
‘Oh, well…’ Her fingers awkwardly pulled at the latch to release her seat belt. ‘Were they going on somewhere? Perhaps you could catch them up.’
‘I think that would be most unwise.’
‘In what way?’
‘I might have to answer all sorts of awkward questions about you. And I don’t want to be seen to be rushing back to Lynne’s side at the first opportunity. If I had been less…distracted…by other matters over these past couple of months I might have realised that between them she and Susan seem to have created the impression amongst my circle of acquaintances that we’re an established couple. Tonight was supposed to be a casual intermingling of mutual friends of both sexes but Lynne managed to build something personal out of it by asking for a lift and thus pairing herself off with me. Perhaps this will help jolt people out of their misconceptions…’
