Читать книгу The Millionaire's Marriage Claim - Lindsay Armstrong, Lindsay Armstrong - Страница 7

JO WAS struck speechless for several minutes, but her mind was jumping as she recalled her several conversations with Mrs Adele Hastings, his—if he was who he said he was—mother!

She could only describe Adele Hastings as talkative. A child called Rosie had featured frequently in her conversations, but Jo had never been able to work out whose child she was.

Her son Gavin had also featured prominently, so that Jo was in the possession, quite ancillary to the business of doing the lady’s portrait, of a store of knowledge about Gavin Hastings.

He was an excellent son, a bit high-handed at times, mind you, a bit prone to getting his own way, but extremely capable, he could turn his hand to just about anything, which he needed to be able to do to run the vast Hastings empire inherited from his father…and so Mrs Hastings had gone on, although admittedly in very well-bred tones.

Jo had done a bit of research on the family and discovered that it was quite a dynasty. The first Gavin Hastings had been a pioneer. His grandson, Gavin’s father, had not only extended the family holdings, he’d diversified into cattle. He’d also married Adele Delaney, daughter of a press baron. Jo hadn’t researched any further since it was Adele’s portrait she was doing.

How come, though, she wondered, Adele hadn’t told her excellent, high-handed—that bit was quite believable!—son about the portrait? And how come Mrs Hastings wasn’t on Kin Can? On the other hand, if he was who he said he was, it explained the fine clothes, the watch, the cultured accent, although it still seemed incomprehensible he didn’t know about the portrait.

She looked down at her captor to pose this question to him, but Gavin Hastings the Fourth was fast asleep.

Jo sank back to her pillow thoughtfully. The light from the stove was stronger now and she didn’t have to peer through the gloom to make out his features. In repose, he looked younger, but she guessed he was around thirty-four.

Sleep, however, didn’t diminish his good looks, although it did present him as much less arrogant. Above the bristles his skin was lightly tanned, his dark eyebrows less satanic, and his mouth that could be so hard or smile so sardonically, insolently, ironically—she had a whole range of less-than-pleasant expressions to recall even after such a short acquaintance—was relaxed and well cut.

One couldn’t doubt, she decided, that, all spruced up, Gavin Hastings would be dynamically attractive.

He could also be extremely unpleasant, she reminded herself. He could be cutting and unforgivably personal even if he was being pursued by a gang of kidnappers—and she still had to prove to him she was no ‘gangster’s moll’.

Perhaps if she drew his portrait he’d believe her? Not now, of course, but at the first opportunity. As for being in a kidnap situation with him…

Her tired brain gave up at that point, and she fell asleep.

She had no idea how much later it was when she was wrenched awake by a drumming sound. She sat up with her hand to her throat and a dry mouth, only to feel someone’s arm slide around her and hear a voice say, ‘It’s rain. Good news, really.’

‘Who…what…?’ It all came tumbling back to her. ‘Rain! It sounds like a machine gun!’

‘Old tin roof, no insulation, that’s all.’

Jo shivered. There was no sign of light coming from the stove and it was very cold. ‘Why good news?’ she asked.

‘Should make it harder for them to find us, assuming they’re still looking—I don’t know about you, but I’m freezing.’

‘You could always build up the fire,’ she suggested.

She heard a low chuckle. ‘Got a better idea. Lie back, Miss Lucas—I presume it is Miss?’

Jo ignored the question and asked one of her own. ‘Why?’

‘So we can cuddle up and put both blankets over us.’

‘That is not on my agenda!’

‘Well, it is on mine.’ And Jo found herself being propelled backwards into his arms.

‘I always suspected it would come to this,’ she said bitterly.

‘What?’

She swallowed.

‘You have a bad mind, Josie,’ he said into her hair. ‘Are you off men for some reason? Is that why there’s this intense suspicion?’

‘Sharing a bed with a stranger—being forced to,’ she amended, ‘is enough to make any woman suspicious, surely? Not to mention all the rest of it. After all, you were the one who brought up seduction in the first place.’

‘For my sins again,’ he murmured. ‘But you have to admit it’s warmer like this.’

It was. It also felt—she couldn’t quite work out why—safer. Because she knew who he was now? And knew she was on the side of the ‘goodies’? Still very much suspect, of course, she reminded herself, but talk about a series of incredible coincidences!

One thing she was certain of, though, she had not missed Kin Can’s main gate, so what had happened to it?

She opened her mouth, not only to bring that up, but so much more. Did he have any idea who his potential kidnappers were? How had he escaped them? But his deep, slow breathing and the relaxation of his arm about her waist told her he was asleep again.

She smiled unexpectedly. So much for seduction. But if you could believe what he himself had alluded to, a body of evidence—a whole lot of women who found him attractive, in other words—suggested he was a much safer bet asleep.

What kind of women appealed to him? she wondered suddenly. Gorgeous? Definitely. Sexy? Had to be. Joanne Lucas?

She moved abruptly and removed herself from beneath his arm and slid cautiously onto the other bed, still trying to share both blankets. He didn’t move at all.

It was barely dawn when Gavin Hastings stirred and lay still again. Then he sniffed and frowned. His cheek was resting against someone’s hair, hair that felt silky soft and gave up the faint fragrance of—what?

For some reason, a bottle of shampoo swam into his mental vision, a clear plastic bottle decorated with apples and pears and filled with green liquid—of course! Amongst Joanne Lucas’s toiletries had been just such a bottle of shampoo; it was her hair and it smelled very faintly of pears.

Something else from her toiletries swam into his mind; a pink lady’s razor with which, no doubt, she shaved those long, lovely legs. He rubbed his jaw wistfully. Even a pink razor would be extremely welcome to someone who hadn’t shaved for two days.

Then his mind wandered onto another pleasure—the woman sleeping peacefully in his arms. Her body was soft and warm against his, in fact her curves felt sensational nestled into him and, he reflected ruefully, he had better get himself out of this situation before a certain claim he’d made earlier proved to be incorrect.

But, as he moved Jo Lucas gently away from him, she murmured softly, a small sound of protest, and she buried her head against his shoulder.

A spark of humour lit his eyes. You’re going to hate me when I make mention of this, Josie, and if you get on your high horse again, as you most likely will, I shall no doubt bring it up…won’t be able to resist it!

The humour died as he stared down at the sleeping girl in his arms. Not only the perfume of her hair, but her smooth, soft skin and her warm, lovely body teased his senses.

His memory took flight again, not to a bottle of shampoo this time, but the vision of her without her cargo pants and the high, rounded swell of her hips beneath a pair of no-nonsense Bonds Cottontails. If she was a pleasure to study from the front, he thought, it would surely be a sheer pleasure to watch her walking away from you with those hips swinging beneath a flimsy skirt…

He dragged his mind back with an effort. Who the hell was she? Not only that, how often had he used women to make him forget, only to find they were an anodyne but not the real thing?

He got out of the bed less than gently and stretched vigorously. When he turned back, Jo’s eyes were open, and completely bewildered.

‘Morning, Miss Lucas,’ he said briskly. ‘Time to get back to the fray.’

Jo stayed exactly as she was for a long moment, then she sat up abruptly and combed her hair back with her fingers. ‘Good morning.’

‘Sleep well?’ he enquired with a mocking tinge of irony.

‘I…er…must have. I don’t seem to remember much about it.’

‘Just as well.’ He waited, bastard that he was, as her eyes looked confused again, then he changed the subject completely. ‘You may not have noticed but it’s still raining. Here’s what I suggest—we make use of your fold-up umbrella to visit the outhouse, then you can do what you like while I do a recce.’

‘Do what I like?’ Jo repeated uncertainly.

‘Get dressed in peace, perhaps heat some water on the stove for a wash—I’ll build up the fire—or, contemplate your navel if that’s what you prefer to do at this hour of the morning.’

Her eyes darkened and he knew it would have given her great pleasure to tell him to get lost, but in much more colourful language. She kept her mouth shut, however, and climbed out of bed.

‘Here.’ Something made him take pity on her, and he reached for her anorak. ‘Wear this.’

She accepted it but refused to look at him, even when he pulled her bags and boots down as well.

Fifteen minutes later Jo was on her own in the hut, bolted in from the outside to her intense annoyance, but he had got the fire going and there were both the coffee-pot and a pot of water for washing simmering on the stove.

After a brief wash and dressing in a fleecy-lined grey tracksuit, she felt a lot better. She brushed her hair and tied it back and made herself a pot of coffee. And she pictured Gavin Hastings reconnoitring with, not only her fold-up umbrella, but the plastic poncho she always carried—neither of which would afford him great protection, but they had to be better than nothing in the downpour outside.

Gavin Hastings, she reflected, who had made a nasty little remark about something it was just as well she couldn’t remember—what?

She surely couldn’t have slept through his taking advantage of her in any way. She surely wouldn’t have taken advantage of him in any way so…?

She glanced over at the two beds. Only one of them, narrow as it was, still bore the sagging imprint of being slept on. She clicked her teeth together in sheer annoyance.

She must have spent the night in his arms, right up close and personal. Only two bodies in one dilapidated old bed made for one body would cause it to stay sagged like that. To make it worse, the sagging bed was his, the bed on the outside, so she must have been the one to move over.

Clearly a tactical error, she thought, even if I was half asleep. I must have been cold and scared—I must have been mad!

The coffee-pot bubbled at that point, so she poured herself a mug and tried to turn her mind away from things she couldn’t change. Then she remembered her idea of doing his portrait in a bid to prove she was who she’d said she was.

It turned out to be an exercise with curious side effects as she opened her pencil box and tore a piece of cartridge paper in half…

She’d always been a sketcher. For as long as she could remember, she’d doodled and etched and found it a great comfort, but paints had never particularly appealed to her. She’d tried watercolours, oils and acrylics but found that none of them was her medium.

At eighteen, however, her life had changed dramatically and she’d gone to art school for a year. That was where she’d discovered oil crayons—and it had all fallen into place. It had not been a lack of colour appreciation, her failure with paint, it had been her difficulty in merging the two techniques, drawing and painting.

Oil crayons allowed her to draw in colour, and she virtually hadn’t stopped since the discovery. So that now, at twenty-four, she had a small but growing reputation in portraiture.

Of course, doing portraits had its downside. You were often at the mercy of less-than-likeable characters and your fingers itched to portray them that way. It had, however, gained her recognition, and once that reputation was well established she would be able to draw what she pleased and sell it—landscapes and particularly children, whom she loved to draw, although not necessarily as their parents wanted them portrayed.

As she organized herself as best she could, she practised a familiar technique. She breathed deeply and cleared her mind—and she called up her captor.

As always, some emotions came with the image she was seeing in her mind’s eye, her reaction to her subject, but what caused her to blink in surprise was the veritable kaleidoscope of emotions that came along with Gavin Hastings’s dark, good-looking face.

She discovered that her fingers longed to score and slash lines and angles onto the paper with her crayons in a caricature of the devil with very blue eyes.

Jo, Jo, she chided herself, if he’s to be believed, he’s been subject to a kidnap attempt so he’s bound to be antsy!

Doesn’t matter, she retorted. I don’t like him, but I especially don’t like the way I do like some things about this man I don’t like. And I resent wondering, actually wondering, what he thinks of me!

She stared down at the still-pristine piece of paper beneath her fingers and was horrified to find herself breathing raggedly. This isn’t going to work, she thought. There’s only one way I can draw Gavin Hastings with any peace of mind and that’s asleep.

She had no idea how much later it was when she heard the bolt being withdrawn on the other side of the door, but some instinct made her throw her anorak over all the evidence of her endeavours.

He came in looking as mean and nasty as any demented bushranger, daubed with mud and soaking wet.

Her eyes widened, then she looked at her watch and realized he’d been away for over an hour. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked.

‘Concerned for me, maybe even missed me?’ he queried sardonically. ‘No, I’m not all right. Put some water on to boil.’

Jo opened her mouth to take issue with his manner, then changed her mind, and he started to peel off his clothes.

‘Uh—what happened to the umbrella and the poncho?’ she ventured.

‘They were about as useless as a pocket handkerchief so I threw them away.’

Joanne listened to the rain pounding on the roof for a moment. ‘Yes, well, they weren’t designed for this kind of downpour.’ She refilled the coffee-pot and set it on the stove. ‘Did you—achieve anything?’ She turned to look at him, but turned away abruptly—he was down to his underpants and socks. Then she took hold and told herself not to be spinsterish. ‘Here.’

She took a blanket off the bed and handed it over.

He didn’t thank her as he draped it around him. Instead, as their gazes met his was full of such chilling scorn that she flinched.

She had to say, ‘Look, none of this is my fault. It’s no good being angry with me. If anything, it’s counterproductive.’

‘Really.’ He sat down at the table. ‘Have you been able to come up with anything productive while you’ve been twiddling your thumbs?’ he asked unpleasantly.

She set her teeth.

‘Well, I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing,’ he said. ‘Skulking around my own property, stealing my own fuel, which I then had to carry like a packhorse, while you’ve been—’ his gaze strayed to a corner of the pencil box protruding from beneath her anorak and he swept the jacket aside ‘—I don’t believe this—painting!’

‘It’s not painting. I don’t use paints. I use oil crayons.’

‘Nevertheless—’ He stopped and studied his portrait, but what he thought of it she was destined not to know because, although he blinked once, he then looked up at her with palpable menace. ‘Do you honestly think this proves anything?’

‘I…’ She bit her lip. ‘I was hoping it would.’

‘Then you thought wrong, lady. So—’ he relaxed somewhat, but the attack didn’t relax at all as he studied the portrait again ‘—you looked your fill while I was asleep, Jo?’

Some colour came to her cheeks. ‘It’s a habit I have. Bones, lines, angles, muscles are my stock-in-trade.’

‘What about cuddling up to strange men?’

The hiss of droplets turning to steam on the stove top told her the water had boiled, but she ignored it. ‘I must have been asleep. I certainly don’t remember doing it. I must have been cold—that’s all there is to it.’

He watched her set mouth and returned her level grey gaze for a moment, then shrugged. ‘It was very pleasant, as it happens. Would you be so kind as to clear the table, Miss Lucas, and would you lend me your pink razor?’

Jo parted her lips, but then closed them.

‘You’re right,’ he said as if she’d spoken, ‘I need a shave. It might even put me in a better frame of mind. You wouldn’t happen to have a mirror?’

She had more. She had a small cake of soap, a clean, slightly damp towel, a toothbrush and toothpaste, but the mirror was tiny.

He used it all the same, squinting at it humorously for any patches of bristle he’d missed. Then he cleaned his teeth with heartfelt relief.

‘I like a lady with a good, sharp razor,’ he commented at one stage. ‘New?’ He held it up to the light.

‘It was new,’ Jo agreed dryly.

He laughed. ‘Might not be good for much after ploughing through that beard, but if we ever get out of here, Jo, I’ll buy you another one. Ouch.’ He fingered his jaw. ‘You wouldn’t have any aftershave lotion, by any chance?’

‘If that’s designed to make me feel less than feminine,’ she said pointedly, ‘it’s like water off a duck’s back. No, I don’t, but you could try this.’ She handed him a bottle out of her toilet bag.

He turned it over in his hands and read the label. ‘Witch hazel? What’s that?’

‘A very good, natural astringent that should make your skin feel all tingly and fresh.’

‘Ah.’ He poured some into his palms and slapped it on his face. ‘You’re right! A woman of great resource. Incidentally—’ he screwed the cap on the bottle ‘—I thought I’d dispelled that less-than-feminine tag?’

During his ministrations, he’d shoved the blanket down to his waist and she had picked up his wet clothes and hung them on the other chair in front of the fire.

‘I don’t give a damn about what you think of me in that regard,’ she replied, but the truth was the sleek muscles of his shoulders, the springy dark hair on his chest, his tapering, rock-hard torso were all hard to ignore for two reasons. The funny little sensation they brought to the pit of her stomach and a very real desire to capture such male perfection on paper.

There was a little silence. Then he said ironically, ‘You’re a hard nut to crack, Josie.’

She shrugged and busied herself with making breakfast—this time tinned stew and biscuits. But her fingers stilled as she remembered what he’d said earlier, and she turned to him suddenly. ‘Fuel?’

His eyes narrowed. ‘I wondered when that would sink in,’ he murmured.

‘So you got some? How? Did you get up to the house?’

He shook his head. ‘There’s a machinery shed not that far away.’

She turned back to the stew. ‘So we’re…we can…go?’

‘No. There’s a creek up and running between us and the gate we wouldn’t get through even in a four-wheel drive at the moment.’

Jo served up breakfast. She handed him a knife and fork, then sat in the armchair with her plate balanced on her knees and chose her next words with care.

‘There are some things I don’t understand. Were you completely alone on the station when they kidnapped you?’

‘No, I wasn’t. The head stockman was—immobilized before they came after me.’

‘Not killed?’ Her eyes were dark with shock.

‘No. But captured and tied up and removed heaven alone knows where.’ He started to eat with evident hunger.

‘And there was no family, no one else?’ she asked with a frown.

‘Jo—’ he paused with his fork poised and glinted her an assessing look ‘—whoever they are, they’d done their homework. It’s a long weekend, it happens to be the district’s annual rodeo with all its attendant parties, B and S balls and the like. A lot of people are away from home, in other words. It so happens I was supposed to be away from home but I changed my mind at the last minute.’

‘Is that why your mother isn’t home?’ she asked perplexedly.

This time he waved his fork. ‘My mother took off for Brisbane two days ago. Some show she’d forgotten she had tickets for. I can only be grateful she wasn’t there and neither, particularly, was Rosie.’ Suddenly, his blue gaze seemed to drill right through her.

Jo blinked. ‘She mentioned a Rosie several times when we spoke on the phone—a child, I gathered, but I couldn’t work out whose.’

He stared at her for another long moment, then finished his breakfast and put his knife and fork together. ‘Mine.’

Jo digested this with several blinks. ‘Well, what about your wife?’ she ventured.

‘She died in childbirth.’ He pushed his plate away and there was something completely dark and shuttered in his expression. ‘Any chance of a cup of coffee?’

‘Of course,’ Jo murmured and got up to attend to it. ‘Would…’ she hesitated ‘…would I be right in assuming your mother is a tad absent-minded?’

He looked heavenwards. ‘My mother, God bless her, has developed a memory like a sieve lately.’

‘Well—’ Jo put a mug of coffee in front of him ‘—that explains it!’

‘You mean it explains why she forgot you were due to descend on Kin Can?’

‘Yes!’ Jo put her hands on her hips.

‘Doesn’t explain why she never once mentioned anything about getting her portrait painted—drawn, whatever—to me.’

Jo subsided. ‘Perhaps she meant to surprise you?’

‘So how do you think she was going to explain you, in the flesh, away?’

‘I don’t know—she’s your mother!’

‘For my sins—yet again,’ he said dryly, and got up. ‘I don’t suppose you have any men’s clothing in your bag of tricks?’ he added moodily and hitched the blanket around him again.

Jo merely stared at him steadily.

‘Once again, if looks could kill I’d be six feet under. OK, Miss Lucas, assuming you are lily-white, above board and all the rest, do you have any suggestions?’

Jo resisted the urge to give vent to her feelings—she posed a question instead. ‘How many are there?’

‘Two. They wore balaclavas so I have no idea who they are.’

‘How did you escape?’

He sat down on the corner of the table. ‘Checking up on me, Jo?’

‘I do only have your word for it.’

He mulled over this for a moment, then grimaced. ‘They trussed me up like a chicken and locked me overnight in a windowless storeroom. What they didn’t know was that under the lino there was a trapdoor—the house is on stilts about two feet above the ground, handy in times of flood. I got away through it.’

‘How? If you were trussed up like a chicken?’

He rubbed his wrists and Jo noticed, for the first time, almost red-raw, chafing marks on the inside of each wrist. ‘I found a pair of old scissors and managed to saw through the rope with them. Not that easy since my hands were tied against my back.’

‘No,’ she agreed with a tinge of awe, which she immediately tried to mask by adding, ‘Why didn’t they take you away instead of storing you in the house for a whole night?’

He glanced at her. ‘Well, you see, Josie, I wasn’t their target.’

She stared at him blankly.

‘No,’ he said meditatively and rubbed his chin. ‘It was Rosie they’d planned to snatch, my six-year-old daughter—a much softer target.’

Jo’s mouth fell open.

‘As you say.’

‘But…are you sure?’

‘I’m quite sure. I heard all the discussion, all the recriminations going on throughout the night, all the new plans being made. They decided since they’d got me they’d take me in her place, but that’s why they called for some back-up.’

‘Thank heavens for your mother’s bad memory,’ Jo said a little shakenly.

‘All the same, not only do I have to get myself off Kin Can, I have to prevent my mother and Rosie waltzing back into their arms. They cut all the phone lines, you see.’

‘Won’t that make people—your mother—suspicious?’

‘Not necessarily. The system can have its problems out here and it is rodeo weekend.’

‘I do have a suggestion,’ she said slowly. ‘Not to do with how to escape, but I feel pretty sure they must have also removed…any indication it was Kin Can station from the main gate. Perhaps to confuse anyone looking for the place?’

He gave it some thought as well as tossing her a considering look.

‘Believe me,’ she said quietly, ‘that is why you found me on the back track.’

‘Hmm… You could be right.’ He shrugged. ‘The main problem now is—have they given up and gone away? Or, are they waiting to trap me somehow, even out searching for me?’

‘They don’t sound terribly well organized.’

He stood up, cast the blanket off and reached for his clothes. ‘Fate may have conspired against them, the weather certainly has, but they’re a dangerous duo—trio if Joe got through. One of them, at least, is using a mixture of drugs and alcohol to keep himself hepped up.’

Jo shivered and watched as he struggled into his damp jeans, T-shirt and jumper. ‘Did they offer you any violence? Other than tying you up?’

His lips twisted. ‘A kick in the kidneys, a wallop over the head—’ he searched his scalp through his dark hair and winced as he obviously found a bump ‘—and several others, but perhaps I gave them some provocation.’

‘You didn’t go quietly?’ she hazarded.

‘No, my dear, I didn’t.’

Something in the way he said it chilled Jo to the core. She had no doubt Gavin Hastings would be a bad man to cross.

‘As for the rest of it, they had the foresight to immobilize every other vehicle up at the house and they locked the dogs in the shed and threw away the key. The gun was a lucky break for me. Case, the foreman, must have forgotten to put it away in the gun cupboard in the shed. I nearly tripped over it.’

Jo collected the tin plates and empty mugs and stacked them on the floor next to the stove. ‘So your plan was to intercept the other Joe and…?’ She looked a question at him.

‘Force him to drive me to the nearest phone.’ He watched her as she swept some biscuit crumbs off the table with her hand, and she became aware that the lurking suspicion was back in his eyes.

‘Silver-grey Range Rovers are pretty common, you know.’

‘Perhaps. How about a Joe and a Jo?’

She hesitated. ‘I—’

But a crack of sound split the air and a bullet tore through one wall and buried itself in the opposite wall.

For a second they both froze, then Gavin Hastings leapt off the table and in a flying rugby tackle crashed her to the floor only just before another shot splintered the door around the bolt. Two minutes later the door had been kicked open and a man with a gun and wearing a balaclava was standing over them.