Kitabı oku: «Lost In Love»

CHAPTER ONE

‘NO.’ MARNIE threw down her paintbrush and turned to find a rag to wipe the paint from her fingers. ‘I won’t do it,’ she refused. ‘And I don’t know how you have the gall to ask me!’

Her brother’s face was surly to say the least. ‘I’ve got to have it by tomorrow or I’ve had it!’ he cried. ‘There isn’t anyone else I know I can turn to. And if you asked him, he’d...’

‘I said no.’

They glared at each other across the width of her studio, Marnie with her arms folded across her chest in that stubborn, immovable way her brother knew only too well, her cool gaze refusing to so much as glance at the arm he had wrapped in a white linen sling or the vivid bruise he was wearing down one side of his face.

She made an impatient flick with her hand. ‘The last time you talked me into going begging to Guy, I had to stand there and endure a thirty-minute lecture on your weak character—and my own stupidity for pandering to it!’ she reminded Jamie. ‘I will not give him another chance to repeat that little scene—even if it does mean you having to face the music for a change!’

‘I can’t believe you’re going to let me down like this!’ Jamie cried. ‘We both know Guy is still crazy about you! He can’t refuse you a damned—’

‘Jamie—!’ she warned. Her relationship, hostile or otherwise, with Guy Frabosa was always a risky subject to get on to at the best of times, and her warning had her brother shifting uncomfortably where he stood.

‘Well, it’s true,’ he mumbled, unable to hold her gaze. ‘The last time it happened,’ he persisted none the less, ‘I admit it was my own stupid fault, and Guy was probably right to send me packing—but...’

‘It wasn’t you he sent packing,’ his sister angrily pointed out. ‘It was me! It wasn’t you who had to listen to him verbally annihilate your family, it was me! And it certainly was not you who had to stand there taking it all firmly in the face without a word to say in your defence,’ she concluded tightly. ‘It was most definitely me!’

‘Then let me try asking him—’

‘You?’ she scoffed, sending him a look fit to wither. Jamie was not one of Guy’s most favourite people. In fact, it could be said that Jamie was Guy’s least favourite person in the whole wide world! ‘You must be feeling desperate if you’re thinking of tackling the great man yourself,’ she derided. ‘He’s liable to make mincement out of you in thirty seconds flat—and you know it.’

‘But if you—’

‘No—!’

‘God, Marnie.’ Jamie sank heavily into a chair, defeat sending his thin frame hunching over in distress.

Marnie hardened her heart against the pathetic picture he presented, determined not to weaken this time. It was no use, she told herself firmly. Guy was right. It was time Jamie learned to sort out his own messes. In the four years since she and Guy had parted, Jamie had sent her to him on no less than three occasions to beg on his behalf. That last time had brought Guy’s well deserved wrath down on her head, and he had warned her then that the next time she came to him with her brother’s problems he would expect something back in return. She had understood instantly what he meant. And there was just no way—no way she was going to put herself in that position. Not even for her brother.

‘I’ll lose everything,’ Jamie murmured thickly.

‘Good,’ she said, not believing him for a moment. ‘Perhaps once you have lost it you’ll learn the importance of protecting what you had!’

‘How can you be so mean?’ he choked, lifting his wounded face from his uninjured hand to stare wretchedly at her. He just could not believe she was letting him down this time. ‘You’ve become hard, Marnie,’ he accused her, sending her the first look of dislike she had ever received from this only blood relative she had in the world. ‘This business with Guy has made you hard.’

‘Look...’ She sighed, softening slightly because Jamie was right, she had become hard—a necessary shell grown around herself for self-protection. But she didn’t want to hurt Jamie. She hated seeing anyone hurt. ‘I can probably lay my hands on—ten thousand pounds by tomorrow if that’s any good to you.’

‘A drop in the ocean,’ he mumbled ungratefully, and his sister flared all over again.

‘Then what do you expect me to do?’ she yelled. ‘Sell my damned soul for you?’ And that was what it would amount to if she went to Guy for money again. He would demand her soul as payment.

Her brother shook his head. ‘God, you make me feel like a heel.’

‘Well, that’s something, I suppose.’ She sighed. ‘Why can’t you think before you jump, Jamie?’ On a gesture of exasperation, she dropped down on the sofa beside him. ‘I mean,’ she went on, her violet gaze impatient as she studied him, ‘to drive a valuable car like that out on the road without insurance!’

The disgust in her voice made him flinch. ‘I was delivering it,’ he muttered defensively. ‘I didn’t expect a dirty great lorry to drive smack into the side of me!’

‘But isn’t that what insurance is for?’ his sister mocked scathingly. ‘To protect you against the unexpected?’

Her brother was a master at rebuilding very rare and very expensive old-model high-performance cars. It was probably his only saving grace—that and managing to catch and marry about the most sweetest creature on this earth. But this affinity he had with anything mechanical was something special. Marnie had seen him painstakingly take apart and put back together again everything from an old baby carriage to a vintage Rolls in his time.

‘Guy has a 1955 Jaguar XK140 Drophead similar to the one I smashed up.’ Never one to give up easily, Jamie was reminding her of a fact she had already remembered. ‘He might, if you asked him, consider selling it to me on a long-term loan.’

Guy had a whole fleet of fast cars. It was one of his grandes passions, possessing cars with an awesome power under their bonnets. As an ex-Formula One racing car driver and world champion himself, his love of speed had once excited Marnie beyond bearing. There had been something incredibly stimulating in dicing with death at one-hundred-plus miles per hour. Guy had taken her out several times to share that kind of exciting feeling with him, his dark face vibrant with life, eyes flashing, mouth stretched into a devilish smile as he glanced—too often for her peace of mind—at her wide-eyed and anxious expression as their speed increased on surge after surge of fierce growling power. The next best thing to sex, he called it. And it certainly left them both on a high which could only be assuaged in one all-consuming way.

‘Please, Marnie...’ Her brother’s voice shook with desperation. ‘You’ve got to help me out on this one!’

‘I can’t believe you drove a car of that value out on the roads without bothering to insure it!’ she snapped out angrily.

Jamie lifted his hands in an empty gesture. ‘It wasn’t that I didn’t bother, I just—forgot,’ he admitted. ‘You know what I’m like, sis, when I get engrossed in something.’ His blue eyes pleaded for understanding. ‘I tend to forget everything else!’

‘Including your responsibility to the poor fool who trusted you with his precious car!’

Jamie winced and she let out an impatient sigh. ‘The last time you got yourself in a mess, it was because you went over budget and omitted to warn your client that it was going to cost him several thousand more than you quoted!’

‘I don’t do half a job!’ he haughtily defended that particular criticism. ‘He wanted his car looking like new, so I rebuilt it to look like new.’

‘Then he refused to take delivery of it until you cut down the bill—which you refused to do. Which meant Guy had to step in and sort the mess out—yet again!’

‘You know as well as I do that Guy made on the deal in the end,’ Jamie derided that accusation. ‘The crafty devil bought the damned car from the man at less than it was worth, and put it into his own collection! It cost me fifteen thousand pounds to put that car back together, of which I saw only ten!’

‘And two thousand of that I lent to you and never saw again!’

‘OK—OK...’ Jamie sighed, making a weary retreat by getting up from the sofa to lope over to the window where a bright June sun was beginning to ruin what light she had left of the morning to paint by. ‘So, I’m a lousy businessman. You don’t have to rub it in.’

Marnie looked at him in impatient sympathy. He was quite right. He was a lousy businessman. He was like the proverbial absent-minded professor when he got his head beneath the bonnet of a new challenge. But she’d thought he’d got himself together in the business department over the last year since Clare had taken over that side of things for him.

She frowned at that last thought, wondering why Clare hadn’t made sure his insurance was up to date. It wasn’t like her sister-in-law to forget something as basic as that.

‘If you won’t help me, Marnie,’ Jamie murmured into the dull silence that was throbbing all around them, ‘I don’t know what I’m going to do. The guy is threatening nasty reprisals if I don’t come up with his money.’

‘Oh, Jamie!’ she sighed, leaning forward to rub her forehead with a hand.

‘But that’s not all...’

No? she wondered cynically. Could there be more?

‘It’s Clare,’ he said.

‘Clare?’ Her head shot away from her hand.

‘She’s—she’s pregnant again.’

‘What—already?’ Instant concern darkened his sister’s eyes, her face going pale as she stared at him. ‘Isn’t it a bit too soon?’ she whispered.

‘Yes,’ he sighed, turning to look at her, then, sighing again, he came back to throw himself down next to her. ‘Too damn soon for anyone’s peace of mind...’

Marnie swallowed, her anger with her brother evaporating with this new and far more worrying concern. Clare had gone through what could only be described as a woman’s worst nightmare, having lost her first baby right on the three-month borderline the experts liked to call safe. Safe. She scorned it bitterly. There was no such thing as safe during a nine-month-long confinement. Fate and Mother Nature saw to that.

The doctors had warned them not to rush straight into trying for another. ‘Give your body time to heal,’ they’d advised. ‘And your hearts time to grieve.’

‘How—how far is she?’ She could hardly speak for the hard lump which had formed in her throat.

‘Two months.’ Jamie glanced at her, his thin face strained. ‘Marnie... You have to understand now that this has all come at a bad time for me. I can’t afford to let Clare know about this.’ He dropped his head, giving his sandy hair a frustrated tug. ‘She’s worried half out of her mind as it is, wondering, frightened...’

She swallowed, nodding, unable to say a single word.

‘If you could just find it in yourself to help me out of this one—I swear to you, Marnie,’ he promised huskily, ‘I swear on the—’

‘Don’t say it!’ she rasped, her hand shaking as it snapped out to grip tightly at his wrist. ‘Don’t even think it!’

‘God, no!’ he groaned, shuddering when he realised just what he had been going to say. ‘Hell—I don’t know what’s happening to me,’ he choked. ‘I can’t think straight for worrying about Clare, never mind this mess with the Jag. I—’

‘Is this why you weren’t insured?’ she asked with sudden insight. ‘Has Clare stopped doing all the clerical work since she suspected she was pregnant?’

Jamie nodded. ‘God,’ he went on distractedly, ‘it was bad enough me having to walk into the flat with this arm in a sling, and my face in this kind of mess—she almost fainted in fright!’ A ragged sigh shot from him. ‘I didn’t dare tell her she’d forgotten to renew my insurance! She’d have...’ His voice trailed off, and they both sat, their hearts thumping heavily in their breasts.

‘All right,’ Marnie murmured huskily. ‘I’ll go and see Guy today.’

Jamie’s relief was so palpable that it was almost worth it—almost. Jamie had no idea—couldn’t know what this was going to cost her.

‘Listen, tell Guy I’ve found a brilliant MG K3 Magnette!’ he said urgently, trying his best to make up for putting her in this position. ‘Tell—tell him he can have it for his collection when it’s finished,’ he offered. ‘It isn’t as good as the one he’s already got, and it won’t cover the debt I’ll owe him, but...’ he swallowed, emotion thickening his voice ‘...I’ll pay him back every penny this time, Marnie. That’s a promise. And thank you—thank you for doing this for me this one last time.’

‘I’m doing it for Clare, not for you.’ Why she’d said that Marnie wasn’t about to analyse, but the way her brother’s face paled she knew the remark had cut—as, perhaps, it had meant to. But at this moment Marnie found she hated every single one of the male race.

‘I know that,’ he said, getting up. ‘I know both you and Guy don’t think my neck worth saving.’

‘That’s not true, and you know it,’ Marnie sighed, softening her manner slightly. ‘But I do think it’s about time you took care of your own affairs properly, Jamie—and by that I mean yourself, and not leaving it all to Clare.’

‘I mean to from now on.’ He sounded so determined that Marnie was surprised into believing him. ‘After all, she’s going to have enough on her plate with—everything else.’

He was by the door, eager to leave now he’d got that promise from Marnie. ‘Will—will you give me a call as soon as you’ve spoken to Guy?’ It was tentatively said, but insistent all the same, and Marine glanced sharply at him.

‘That urgent, huh?’ she drawled.

He nodded and flushed. ‘The man is riding on my back,’ he admitted.

Just as you are riding on mine, Marnie thought as she watched him go. Then took back that thought with a bitter twist to her tensely held mouth. It was unworthy. She loved her brother, and for once the mess he was in was not of his own making but poor Clare’s.

Clare...her eyes clouded over as she thought of her pretty little sister-in-law and the minefield of anxieties she must be negotiating right now. And Jamie was right; Clare was not in any fit condition to take any more stress.

Even if it meant Marnie placing herself in the hands of the enemy!

A shiver rippled through her, leaving her cold even though the sun was warm in the room, the unwanted memories managing to crawl through the thick protective casing she wore around herself, sending her blue eyes bleak as the artist in her began to construct his image in front of her.

Guy, she thought achingly, unable to stop the picture from building. A big man, but lean and muscular, with the kind of naturally tanned skin that enhanced his dark good looks. His chocolate-brown eyes always made exciting promises, and that lazy, sexy smile he used to save for her alone could... She gave an inner sigh that stayed just this side of pain. Her dark Italian love, she remembered wistfully. The only man who had ever managed to get her soul to leave her body and soar on an eddying wave of pure exquisite feeling.

Guy was a man of the earth and air, with banked-down fires inside him that would flare and turn the blood to sizzling, spitting flames.

He was the kind of man whose charismatic power over the opposite sex had given him an arrogance few would deny him. His huge ego was well deserved—along with his colourful reputation. Guy was a man’s idea of a man—the kind of man who walked right out of a woman’s foolish dreams. And a selfish, cruel and faithless swine! she reminded herself bitterly. He saw what he wanted, and took it with all the fire and passion in his hot Latin nature—just as he had seen and taken her! In his arrogance, he’d made her fall in love with him, then ruthlessly and callously thrown that love right back in her face! She would never forgive him for that. Never.

Four years ago, Guy had hurt her so deeply that she had prayed never to set eyes on him again. But with his usual arrogance he had refused to allow her that one small relief. And, four years on, they now shared a different kind of relationship, one which had them tiptoeing around each other like wary adversaries, using their tongues instead of their bodies to strike sparks off each other. Hostile yet close—oddly close. In the four long years since she and Guy had split up in a blaze of pain and anger, he had not allowed her to cut him out of her life. Guy possessed a tenacity which surprised her somewhat. For a man who was able to get whatever he wished at the simple click of his fingers, it seemed odd to her that he should still want her. She was, after all, one of his few failures in life, and his ego did not usually like being reminded of those.

Now, and for the first time in a long time, she sensed her own vulnerability, and another smile touched her mouth—one full of rueful whimsy this time. Guy had always predicted that Jamie would be the source of her inevitable downfall.

It seemed that his years of patience were about to bear fruit.

She glanced across the mad clutter of her busy studio room to where the telephone sat innocent and inert on the small table by the door, and slowly, carefully she steadied her emotions, settled her features into their normal cool, calm mask, and readied herself for what was to come. For Jamie might be placing her on a plate for Guy, but it did not mean she was going to sit still on it!

With these defiant thoughts to accompany her across the room, Marnie lifted the receiver off its rest and began to dial the never-to-be-forgotten number of il signor Guy Frabosa’s London home.