A Lesson In Seduction Page 3

  ‘Yes; how did you know?’

  Rosalind’s mouth twisted. ‘I’ve been a bit nauseous myself every morning for the past couple of weeks. I thought it was just nervous tension, or something I picked up doing that wretched film. The food was quite dreadful...’

  Pregnancy was the one thing that she had firmly been able to rule out from her self-diagnosis. Oh, God! Her skin prickled with fresh horror. What if she had to suffer these shadow symptoms all through Olivia’s pregnancy? What an unspeakable irony that would be...

  ‘Well, Olivia’s been as sick as a dog and the doctor’s advised as little stress as possible in the next few weeks,’ said Jordan bluntly. ‘That’s why I was hoping that you’d graciously accept Connie’s offer. It would mean one less source of emotional turmoil for Olivia. If she thinks you’re frolicking happily in some nice, safe tropical haven she might stop beating herself up that she’s abandoning you in your time of need...’

  ‘So much for your wonderful idea of whisking me away to make up my own mind in my own time,’ said Rosalind, her sarcasm hiding a leap of relief that here was a cast-iron, honourable excuse for running away from her problems. If Livvy had a miscarriage, Rosalind would never forgive herself if there was even the slightest possibility that she was a contributing factor.

  Jordan gave a rueful shrug. ‘I didn’t want to push it too strongly in front of Olivia. She wouldn’t thank me for trying to protect her, especially if it compromises her loyalty to you. If you don’t go to Tioman, Olivia intends to ask you to come and hole up with us at Taupo, even if it means dragging along your press contingent, not to mention your other little problem...’

  Rosalind stiffened, her fingers clutching the seat as he suddenly swung sharply into a parking spot beneath the warehouse that housed her inner-city loft. ‘What other problem?’

  Jordan switched off the engine. ‘You have so many you don’t know which one I’m referring to?’ he murmured, shaving much too close to the truth for her liking. ‘I’m talking about the fan who’s been making such a nuisance of himself.’

  ‘Oh.’ Aware of his shrewd eyes on her face, Rosalind tried not to reveal any of her turmoil as she probed warily, ‘Olivia told you about that?’

  She couldn’t help a trace of outrage creeping into her voice, although, come to think of it, she had only asked that her twin not tell their parents, or their over-protective brothers.

  ‘We are married, Roz,’ said Jordan drily, effortlessly picking up the nuances. ‘That’s what marriage is all about—sharing a life, listening to each other’s secrets and worries. Olivia said you tried to treat it as a joke but the mere fact that you brought the subject up made her think you were a lot more concerned than you let on, and the tenor of some of the guy’s letters disturbed her. She thought they could be interpreted as stalking letters, said that he wrote as if he believed he had a personal relationship with you, one that gave him some sort of a claim on you...’

  ‘I told her I get lots of fans writing to me off and on—’

  ‘But this Peter is very persistent, Olivia said. You told her it had been going on for several years, and that lately he’d escalated from an occasional letter to one or two a week, never with a full name or a return address. He boasts of going to extraordinary lengths to see your performances and even claims to have met you several times at public appearances, though he apparently never identified himself.

  ‘Olivia said she didn’t like the obsessive nature of his interest, especially as he knows where you live. She said you had extra locks fitted at your apartment because you were uneasy when he started sending gifts as well as letters. She also thought that one of the reasons you took that film job in such a hurry was because you hoped he might lose interest if you weren’t performing live any more...’

  ‘Well, it was better than her idea of involving the police,’ Rosalind muttered, shuddering at the thought. ‘They probably would have laughed in my face...there was nothing in the letters that was overtly threatening. Anyway, I’ve thrown most of them away,’ she said truthfully, hoping that would put paid to the subject. ‘As I told Olivia, the best way to handle these things is to ignore them.’

  ‘Mmm.’ Jordan’s face was sceptical. Rosalind had the sinking feeling that she had just acquired another over-protective relative.

  ‘Nothing arrived while I was away,’ she pointed out. ‘Maybe he’s finally given up.’

  ‘And another sudden sojourn out of the country might be the perfect way to discourage him even further,’ Jordan said smoothly. ‘It’s either that or the police, Roz—or I could get someone from the Pendragon Corporation’s security section to provide you with personal protection while a private investigator tracks this guy down and turns him inside out.’

  Rosalind blanched at the implications. ‘Me, with a bodyguard? God, can you imagine what the Press would make of that?’ She threw up her hands, hastily conceding defeat. ‘You’re something of a pirate, aren’t you, Jordan? I suppose if I don’t allow myself to be blackmailed into going I’ll find myself shanghaied...’

  ‘There’s little I wouldn’t do to ensure Olivia’s wellbeing,’ he agreed blandly, but with irrefutable honesty.

  ‘Oh, all right!’ At least he was allowing her to save face by pretending that she was doing this for her sister’s sake, rather than her own. ‘If I’m going to be shanghaied, I suppose I may as well make the most of it.’ She grinned, her eternal optimism fizzing back to the surface. ‘I might even find my own form of protection. Who knows? I might run into my beau idéal in paradise, a man “gentle, strong and valiant” who’ll romance me under the tropical stars and pledge his heart to me for ever! Or, failing that, I’ll settle for a gorgeously tanned beach boy who can make me laugh!’

  CHAPTER TWO

  ROSALIND stood impatiently tapping her scuffed cowboy boot as she watched the man dithering at the check-in counter.

  He was tall and thin, his thick, straight, mid-brown hair flopping over his forehead as he bent over to attach the tags to his two suitcases with fumbling fingers. He had a distracted, disorganised air that had Rosalind immediately pegging him as some sort of head-in-the-clouds academic, one of those people who were sheltered by their narrowly focused intellects from the real world—or perhaps he was a computer nerd, she thought as she noted the laptop he was carefully guarding between his feet. The jacket of his dark pin-striped suit fell open as he leaned forward and she saw the pens and folded spectacles tucked into the breast pocket of his white shirt. Ah, definitely a nerd!

  Whoever he was, he was holding her up. Didn’t he realise that first-class passengers didn’t expect to have to queue? They were supposed to breeze in and out while staring down their noses at the lesser mortals lining up at the parallel desks.

  She glanced around the terminal. She was anxious to be out of the public arena and into the relative privacy of the first-class lounge as soon as possible. She had got this far without being spotted, by dressing in androgynous jeans, baggy shirt and denim jacket and shaggy blonde wing à la Rod Stewart under a dark fedora.

  She had swopped places with Olivia the previous night and knew her regular pursuers were being well and truly led off on the wrong trail, but news organisations often employed stringers or informants at airports. In her boyish guise she hoped that no one would give her a second look, but the longer she stood around, the greater the risk of being accidentally rumbled before she boarded her seventeen-hour flight to Singapore.

  The check-in clerk pointed at the weighing machine beside her desk but instead of obeying her polite instruction the man leaned forward to mumble something, patting absently at his pockets.

  Rosalind’s impatience burst its bounds. Stepping around a polite Japanese couple, she tapped the laggard briskly on the shoulder, lowering her naturally throaty voice an extra notch.

  ‘Hey, mate, she’s asking you to put your luggage onto the weighing machine.’

  ‘What?’ The man turned his head and his body followed, straightening
with an uncoordinated jerk that caused him to almost fall over his laptop. Colour streaked across his high cheekbones as Rosalind snickered.

  He was younger than his fussy mannerisms had led her to expect—about her own age, Rosalind guessed. His dark olive skin was unlined, and as he raked back his fine, straight hair with well-kept fingers he revealed an exaggerated widow’s peak bisecting a smooth, deep brow. His face was narrow, his steeply slanting dark eyebrows peaking to sharp commas just beyond the outer corners of his eyes, giving his expression a strikingly devilish cast. However, the look in his dark brown eyes was anything but satanic. They were wildly dilated, watching with blank consternation as Rosalind snatched up one of his bags and plonked it onto the platform.

  ‘She can’t process you until you weigh your luggage,’ Roz told him, her own eyes shooting impatient green sparks at him from under the brim of her hat as he made no attempt to follow her example. He was certainly slow on the uptake. If it hadn’t been for that computer she would have thought he was two bricks short of a load. Or maybe he was simply foreign, and didn’t understand what was being asked of him.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Uh...I didn’t think weight mattered for first-class passengers...’ he murmured vaguely, his mild New Zealand accent immediately shattering her theory.

  Rosalind’s impatience drained away to be replaced by amused condescension. He was obviously a complete greenhorn.

  ‘The airline still has to know what total weight the plane is carrying,’ she pointed out. ‘If you’re packing elephants with your underwear they might have to shed a few economy passengers to accommodate your eccentricity.’

  ‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he muttered, not a glimmer of a smile touching his narrow mouth. She might have known he’d have no sense of humour. He continued to stare at her with the glazed abstraction of a man whose brain was temporarily otherwise engaged. To Rosalind, used to provoking sharp male awareness of her femininity, his lack of reaction was further proof of the effectiveness of her simple disguise. There were quite a few Shakespearian heroines who disguised themselves as boys, and Rosalind had played most of them with great gusto. She knew that gender confusion was largely a matter of body language.

  She hooked her thumbs through the belt-loops of her jeans and widened her stance. ‘Well?’

  He blinked warily at her challenge. His lashes were surprisingly thick, veiling a subtle shift in his expression. ‘Well what?’ he asked guardedly, his fingers clenching convulsively around the blue travel folder he carried in his left hand.

  His white-knuckled tension indicated that he was braced for some sort of scene. Did he think she was angling for a tip? Rosalind rolled her eyes and picked up his other suitcase. It was hefty enough to make her grunt, but her lithe body had the strength demanded by her profession and after staggering slightly she heaved it onto the platform next to the lighter bag.

  ‘It was supposed to be a joke about the elephants,’ she commented, panting slightly as she stepped back, tilting her chin to look up at him. ‘What have you got in there, anyway?’

  ‘Uh...books,’ he said, still in that same thready voice adrift with uncertainty.

  It figured. Her gaze swept the empty floor around his immaculately shod feet and a mischievous impulse prompted her to stoop for the case between his polished shoes.

  At last she got an unequivocal reaction. ‘No! Not my computer!’ he exploded, grabbing it up and cradling it protectively against his chest like a baby. ‘I’m carrying it on with me.’

  So he could move faster than snail’s pace when he wanted to! Rosalind grinned and tipped him a mocking salute on the brim of her hat.

  ‘So it’s just the two cases going through, then, is it, Mr James?’ asked the airline employee with marked patience.

  He didn’t turn his head, seemingly hypnotised by Rosalind’s cocky grin. ‘Uh, well, I think...’

  ‘He means yes,’ Roz supplied firmly. She began to suspect that his air of muddled confusion presaged a man on the verge of panic. Perhaps the poor lamb was afraid of flying and was trying to put off the evil moment.

  ‘Mr James? May I see your passport now, sir?’

  ‘Passport?’

  Rosalind decided it would be quicker for everyone if she took charge of the bewildered Mr James.

  ‘You have remembered to bring it with you, haven’t you?’ she demanded, stepping up beside him at the desk. ‘Is it in here?’

  She plucked the blue folder out of the hand clamping the laptop to his chest and flicked it open to see an impressive wad of US traveller’s cheques tucked behind the clear plastic pocket. He made a choked sound of protest and she gave him a chiding look to reassure him that she wasn’t a thief. In the other side of the pocket was a slim dark blue cover stamped with the New Zealand coat of arms. She extracted it and, adroitly avoiding his belated attempt to snatch it back, presented it across the desk.

  ‘Do you have any preference for seating?’ she asked him, pushing the travel folder back into his hand as the woman leafed through his passport.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ he said, his dark eyes flicking over her face in that irritatingly unfocused way, as if he still couldn’t quite believe that she was helping him.

  ‘You know—front seat, back seat, nearest the emergency door...that kind of thing?’ she clarified.

  ‘Emergency door?’ he echoed, with a swift frown.

  The frown had the decidedly odd effect of slanting his wicked eyebrows even more satanically without raising a ruffle on the angelically pure forehead. She wondered idly whether his personality contained as many contradictions as his face. He was actually rather good-looking in a limp-around-the-edges kind of way. At least a woman wouldn’t need to fear being dominated by the force of his personality!

  ‘Look, don’t you worry about it, chum. Just leave everything to me.’ She gave up trying to involve him in the decision-making process and negotiated his boarding pass without further consultation, thrusting his departure card and returned passport at him as the formalities were completed and nudging him away from the desk so that the Japanese couple could take his place.

  ‘Well, go on, then,’ she said to him, when he seemed inclined to hover inconveniently. ‘You can toddle off to the departure lounge now.’

  He didn’t appear to recognise a brush-off when he heard one. ‘Um, I thought I might wait for you... we could have a drink together—or something...’ He trailed off vaguely, flapping his free hand in the air.

  Or something? Rosalind studied him with sudden suspicion. Had he guessed that she was a woman, or did he think he was issuing an invitation to a pretty youth? Maybe that little-boy-lost helplessness was a sexual rather than psychological signal. Either way it was up to her to disabuse him.

  ‘I wasn’t trying to pick you up,’ she said flatly. ‘I helped you out because I felt sorry for you, not because I fancied you.’

  He sucked in a sharp breath, a rush of blood darkening his skin. ‘I wasn’t—I didn’t mean—’

  His outraged stammer almost made her relent. Her initial impression had been right: harmless, prissy, easily embarrassed. But she still needed to get rid of him before she presented her own documentation. Under the country’s privacy laws, airline personnel were forbidden to give out information about passengers, but if the woman mentioned her name out loud she didn’t want anyone close enough to overhear.

  ‘Good.’ She cut him off, pointedly turning her slender back on him. ‘Because I’m not interested.’

  ‘I only wanted to thank you for coming to my assistance,’ he said rigidly, and she grinned to herself at the hint of grit in his milk-shake voice. Maybe he wasn’t such a hopeless wimp after all.

  She didn’t answer, and after a moment was relieved to hear him moving away. The trouble with helping lame dogs was that they had a lamentable tendency to want to cling to their rescuers.

  After she had checked in she headed for the duty-free shop where she spied Jordan browsing amongst the perfumes. He was flying ou
t to Melbourne on a short business trip related to an arts foundation created by Pendragon Corporation and had conveniently saved Rosalind the taxi fare to the airport.

  Their discussion of a couple of days ago having eased her awkwardness in his company, Rosalind gave in to impulse and crept up behind him and whispered menacingly in his ear. ‘Poison!’

  ‘Do you think so?’ he murmured, withering her with his lack of surprise at her sudden ambush. ‘I rather think that Livvy would suit something lighter, fresher...maybe Yves St. Lament’s Paris?’

  As usual he was right. Rosalind waited while he bought the perfume and they chatted briefly before Jordan’s attention was suddenly riveted elsewhere, his eyes slitting as he gazed intently over her head.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Rosalind, her overstretched nerves jumping. ‘Who is it? A reporter?’

  Jordan put a heavily reassuring hand on her shoulder as he shook his head. ‘No, no—just someone I know from the old days at the Pendragon Corporation. I’d better go and have a word with him before he comes over and expects to be introduced.’ He kissed her absently on the cheek, eyes still focusing beyond her. ‘Have a good trip, won’t you? And for God’s sake try not to attract your usual quota of trouble!’

  Rosalind bristled at that, and spun around as he left, intending to send him on his way with a few blistering words of self-defence, but at that moment she caught sight of the James man amongst the swirl of people in the public departure area. He was easily picked out—he looked isolated and alone in the midst of groups hugging and kissing their farewells. She hurriedly turned her back and skulked off to bury herself in a magazine in the relative privacy of the first-class lounge.

  Rosalind didn’t fully relax until she was on board the plane with the engines powering up. The first-class section was only half-full, which meant that those travelling alone had the added privacy of an empty seat beside them. Rosalind’s assigned seat was an aisle one and she had decided to wait until they were airborne before she shifted to the window.