Читать книгу Indecent Deception - Линн Грэхем, LYNNE GRAHAM - Страница 5

Chrissy leapt off the bus and splashed straight into a puddle. Dirty water spattered the pristine overall she wore beneath her unbuttoned coat. With a groan of exasperation she fled on down the road, frantically checking her watch. She was late for work.

As she dived across a narrow side-street, the screech of brakes almost deafened her. Jerking round, she had a brief blurred image of the car bearing down on her before she lost her balance and landed with her behind and her two hands braced on the wet tarmac. Winded and shocked, she just sat there dazedly appreciating that she was still in one piece. The glossy black bonnet of the luxury sports car was less than a foot from her face.

A car door slammed. A pair of male feet shod in hand-stitched Italian leather entered her vision. ‘You stupid, crazy little idiot!’

There was something disorientatingly familiar about that clipped well-bred drawl that voiced abuse with lacerating cool. Her wide green eyes climbed up the long straight length of masculine legs sheathed in the mohair blend of bespoke tailoring.

‘Well,’ the same objectionable voice continued, ‘what have you got to say for yourself?’

Chrissy’s dilated gaze swept over a flat, taut stomach and mounted a scarlet silk tie that lent flamboyance to a superbly cut navy suit, and there her head tipped back on her shoulders, impatience spurring her on to confirm her suspicions.

‘Maybe I ran over your tongue...’

Her tongue did have a problem. Disbelief had glued it to the roof of her mouth. Blaze Kenyon. Breathtaking, unforgettable and utterly unmistakable for anyone else. He was incredibly good-looking and soul-destroyingly unattainable unless, Chrissy had once noted, your beauty was on a par with his. Once long ago, in a purely philosophical mood, Chrissy had wondered why beautiful men were invariably attracted only to equally beautiful women.

Indeed, until Blaze parted his lips and actually spoke, he was so dazzlingly perfect that you were tempted to pinch him to see if he was real. As his luxuriant black hair ruffled in the breeze, Chrissy was briefly inspected by brilliant sapphire-blue eyes.

Hitching his knife-creased trousers, he crouched down to run a pair of excruciatingly thorough hands over her extended limbs in search of injury.

‘I suppose you do realise that you’re sitting in a puddle.’ Suddenly he smiled, brilliantly, blindingly. He had the sort of charisma that switched on like a high-voltage searchlight, targeting a victim. When he switched it off again, it was a little like being plunged into outer darkness.

Careless long brown fingers were still anchored to her slim thigh. Chrissy unfroze and thrust the over-familiar hand violently away. It was not a reaction Blaze was accustomed to receiving. A slight frownline was etched between his winged dark brows as he sprang up again.

She stumbled clumsily upright on knees that didn’t feel strong enough to support her entire weight.

Blaze didn’t even recognise her. Sudden bitter resentment thrust Chrissy’s chin up. ‘You could’ve k-killed me!’ she condemned. ‘You were driving f-far too fast.’

‘Good God,’ Blaze breathed softly, studying her truculent, defensive face. ‘It’s Chrissy.’

‘C-Christabel,’ she corrected coldly, cursing the stammer that often dogged her in moments of stress.

Blaze ran a measuring scrutiny over her, taking in dirty hands, laddered tights and curling mahogany streamers of flyaway hair descending forlornly from an inexpert topknot. ‘You haven’t changed,’ he said.

Scarlet to her hairline, Chrissy squashed an embarrassing urge to point out what she felt should have been obvious even to the most disinterested observer. Over the past three years, she had shed almost three stone. ‘N-neither have you,’ she countered with fierce sincerity.

His forefinger flicked the Peter Pan collar of her overall. ‘Are you a nurse now?’ His tone was dubious.

‘Why should you be interested?’ she slung between clenched teeth, fighting her stammer with all her might, and that generally made it worse.

‘Mere curiosity? I wasn’t expecting to meet a Hamilton today,’ Blaze supplied very, very coolly. ‘Are you sure you’re not hurt?’

‘I doubt if you’d care whether I was or not.’ Chrissy clung to her hostility as though it were a suit of armour.

‘You’ve only bruised your pride and your backside.’ A teasing edge had softened his clipped vowels.

A second earlier she had been wondering at the icy edge to his tone when he voiced her surname, but now that was forgotten as her teeth ground together. It might have been three years since she last saw him, but Blaze Kenyon still affected her much as a whip would laid across her sensitive flesh. ‘I have to get to work,’ she enunciated with stiff dignity. ‘N-nice meeting you again.’

Blaze roared with laughter. ‘Nice meeting me? I damned near ran over you! You should think twice before you throw yourself beneath my wheels.’

‘I did not throw myself—’ Chrissy began furiously.

‘Fortunately I have fast reflexes,’ Blaze murmured reflectively, choosing to concentrate on that aspect of the episode rather than the shock she had sustained.

‘I have to get to work,’ Chrissy repeated with wooden emphasis, and without another word she walked away with a ramrod-straight back, seethingly conscious of the amused sapphire eyes following in her wake. She ached to massage a certain throbbing portion of her anatomy, but she fought the need until she had entered the exclusive apartment block several yards away and knew herself safely out of sight. Her coat was sodden. She was soaked to the skin.

‘What happened to you?’ A slender blonde, clad in a matching overall, answered her urgent knock on the door of one of the ground-floor apartments and gaped at her bedraggled appearance.

‘I fell,’ Chrissy gasped, open prayer on her feverishly flushed features. ‘Have you got anything I could borrow?’

‘Sorry...you’re supposed to carry a spare overall of your own,’ Glynis reminded her, looking superior.

‘I just can’t afford to buy another one this month. I wash this one out every night.’

‘Working a lying month is the pits,’ Glynis remarked without great interest as she cast herself down on a richly upholstered sofa and switched on the television with a flick of the remote-control.

‘Did Mr Cranmore phone?’ Chrissy was dabbing ineffectually at the stains on her overall with a handful of tissues. It would be just her luck if this was one of the days their mutual employer decided to do a spot check on one of his newest workers.

‘Relax,’ Glynis groaned. ‘You worry too much.’

‘Shouldn’t we be getting started?’

‘Run a vacuum over the place. That’s all it needs,’ Glynis advised, lighting up a cigarette and showing no sign of movement. ‘I don’t know why a couple as clean as this bother to use a cleaning agency...’

‘Do you think you should be smoking here?’ Chrissy prompted uncomfortably on her passage to the cupboard where the vacuum was kept.

‘I deserve a break like anybody else.’

If Martin Cranmore found anyone else slacking on the job, it would mean instant dismissal. But he had a soft spot for Glynis. Glynis had baby-blue eyes and fluffy blonde hair and they licensed her to get away with murder. The other cleaners hated her. None of the other women wanted to partner Glynis. The blonde never did her share of the work and, if there was a complaint, Chrissy had already been warned that it would not be Glynis who took the blame for it.

Chrissy had been employed by the Silent Sweep agency for just three weeks and she was desperate to hang on to her job. The cleaning agency had a rulebook a full half-inch thick, and within the space of one working day Chrissy had watched the blonde break every rule in it. The ultimate sin was to make oneself at home in a client’s apartment. There was a strictly regimented list of tasks to be carried out on every visit...and those tasks were to be done even if they did not appear to be necessary. That was what the client was paying for. Silent, unseen service.

Blaze Kenyon. As Chrissy whizzed about with the vacuum, he leapt into her mind the instant she was free to think about him. He exploded out of her carefully blocked subconscious with the shock value of an evil genie. In his wake came a tidal wave of homesickness and a surge of very painful memories.

She was able to suppress the homesickness. After all, she no longer had a home worthy of sentimental recall, she reminded herself. Not only was her mother dead and her siblings married, but Chrissy herself was all too wretchedly aware that, no matter how bad things got, she could never expect her father to house her again.

The painful memories were far more resilient. Out there on the street, Blaze had committed the ultimate sin of seeing her as she used to be. The Hamilton family misfit. Elaine’s overweight, socially inadequate kid sister. Did he even remember his last encounter with Chrissy Hamilton? She shuddered at the very idea of him remembering. No, he wouldn’t remember. A bottle of whisky on top of a recent family bereavement had made him more than usually callous and indifferent to the feelings of others. Humiliating Elaine’s kid sister had cost him not a pang of conscience. He had been incredibly cruel, so cruel that Chrissy still carried the scars.

Glynis screened a yawn as they entered the third-floor apartment next on their schedule. Chrissy headed straight for the kitchen and stopped dead on the threshold. ‘Oh, hell!’ she muttered in dismay, absorbing the devastation before her.

Glynis swore at the sight of the abandoned dishes piled high on every surface and the smell of stale food. ‘She’s had a party and left us to clear it up. Well, she can forget that!’ she said aggressively.

‘We’re down for two hours extra here. Now we know why.’ Chrissy opened a window to air the room. ‘I’ll start in here, shall I? You can take the lounge,’ she suggested.

Glynis said something rude and stalked off. Chrissy worked quietly and efficiently, hoping that just for once Glynis was in the mood for work. Their schedule had to be strictly followed. Clients always specified hours when their homes were empty.

‘What do you think?’

Chrissy spun and her eyes widened incredulously. Glynis was doing a twirl in a fancy cocktail dress.

‘Couldn’t resist it...gorgeous, isn’t it? And she’ll never notice. The bedroom’s a tip. This was lying on the floor—’

‘For heaven’s sake, take it off and put it back!’ Chrissy gasped in horror.

‘Don’t be such a pain!’ Glynis groaned. ‘I’ve done the lounge. I’ll finish up in here if you like. I hate doing corner baths...’

‘Take it off!’ Chrissy repeated.

Glynis gave her a filthy look. ‘OK...OK. I can’t say you’re a barrel of fun to work with, can I?’ she snapped.

Chrissy had just entered the bathroom when she heard the front door open and the sound of voices, male and female mingling. She sprang upright, wondering frantically if Glynis had had time to change back into her overall. A brunette appeared in the doorway and frowned. ‘Aren’t you finished yet?’

‘I’m sorry, no.’ Chrissy made no attempt to point out that they had been booked for a specified time and were indeed still half an hour within that period. ‘Do you want us to leave?’

The elegant brunette pouted. ‘How long will it take you to finish up?’

‘About twenty minutes...’

‘I suppose I’ll have to put up with you, then, or I won’t be getting what I paid for,’ the brunette said witheringly.

‘Who are you talking to?’ a dismayingly familiar drawl interposed.

Blaze Kenyon strolled into view.

‘What are you doing h-here?’ Chrissy demanded in stark disbelief, her faith in the impossibility of two such glaring coincidences in one day severely shaken.

His brilliant blue eyes narrowed. ‘I was about to pick Leila up when we ran into each other earlier. What are you doing in her bathroom—?’

‘She’s supposed to be cleaning it!’ his female companion cut in thinly. ‘Are you telling me that you know this girl?’

‘You’re a cleaner?’ Blaze did not conceal his astonishment.

Leila curved a hand round his arm. ‘Come on, darling...the sooner she finishes, the quicker she’ll be out of here,’ she purred suggestively, but she eyed Chrissy with grim annoyance.

Chrissy felt utterly humiliated. She was not ashamed of what she did for a living. The hours suited her and the agency paid a reasonable rate. Three years ago she would never have dreamt that she would be cleaning other people’s homes to survive, but a lot of things had changed in those same three years. She had no false pride about her work, had indeed been grateful to have paid employment...until Blaze Kenyon surveyed her with well-bred amazement and suddenly made her feel like the lowest of the low.

‘Hell, that was close!’ Glynis whispered from the doorway. ‘I’ll finish the kitchen. You dump those flowers in the hall and we’ll get out!’

Chrissy was gathering the fallen petals off the carpet when she heard Blaze speaking. The lounge door wasn’t closed and he had a deep, carrying voice. Every word was crystal-clear.

‘When I say nouveau riche I mean nouveau riche. The Hamiltons were into spotlit bonsai trees and floodlit oils. Jim Hamilton is one of the most vulgar loudmouths one could meet...’

Chrissy straightened and froze, her facial muscles clenching painfully tight as she moved closer to the ajar door, the sound of her own ruptured breathing loud in her eardrums.

‘The mother was the worm that turned,’ Blaze drawled smoothly. ‘Belle was quite incapable of furthering Hamilton’s social aspirations. She drank too much and dropped the most frightful clangers with the happiest smiles. When the good life got too much, she ran off with a freezer salesman, who turned out to be a bigamist. Hamilton thought it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. Night after night he dined out on the story with glee—’

‘What are you doing?’ Glynis demanded from behind her as Chrissy thrust the door wide.

Chrissy had the vase of wilted flowers in her hand. Blaze was indolently sprawled on the sofa several steps inside the door. Raising the vase, Chrissy up-ended the contents over Blaze Kenyon’s gleaming dark head.

Leila shrieked as though she had plunged a knife into his back. The vase contained a surprising amount of water. A deluge descended on Chrissy’s victim.

Blaze sprang up, scattering flowers, and spun round.

‘You p-pig!’ Chrissy shouted.

Blaze clawed wet hair off his brow with one hand, his glittering ice-blue eyes smouldering threat at Chrissy.

‘You are a p-pig!’ Without warning her bravado was punctured.

‘Are you crazy?’ the brunette screamed at her shrilly.

‘Angry,’ Blaze murmured drily.

‘I’m going to have you fired for this!’ Leila promised, grabbing up the phone and punching out a number.

Glynis came running with a towel and fervent apologies.

Chrissy stood there blinking in bewilderment. But inside her head she was still hearing Blaze slice her parents to ribbons, serving up her poor mother’s heartbreak as a grotesque source of entertainment. He was a filthy, rotten snob! Born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, grandson of an earl, Blaze had grown up against a background of rich, inherited privilege. His arrogance was that of an aristocrat, who had never known what it was to try and measure up to the expectations of a higher social class.

‘Your boss wants to speak to you!’ The smiling brunette extended the receiver like a hangman extending the noose.

On wooden legs, Chrissy stepped forward. Martin Cranmore was practically sobbing with rage at the other end of the line. What he said was short and sweet. White-faced and trembling, Chrissy looked at no one as she turned and walked out of the room. She gathered up her coat and bag.

Glynis caught her arm, oozing morbid fascination. ‘What the hell did you do it for? Do you know who that gorgeous hunk is?’

Pulling on her coat, Chrissy said nothing.

‘He’s that racehorse trainer! He’s the one with all the women, practically a harem from what you read in the papers!’ Glynis gushed excitedly.

The sheer incredulity on Blaze’s sun-bronzed features swam before her afresh. In retrospect, she could barely believe what she had done. He had probably never been assaulted by flowers before. Nervous husbands and protective fathers avoided his company. Around thirty most men settled down. Blaze hadn’t. Scandal still shadowed his every step and no doubt he reacted with sublime insouciance to all rumour and report. His hide was tough. She would not have embarrassed him. And an hour from now he would be cracking a joke about it in that mocking, sardonic way of his.

But Chrissy would not be laughing. She had just sacrificed her job, and her job had been the one little bit of security she had left. The last piece of her mother’s jewellery had been sold three months ago. The proceeds were long gone. She was stony broke and behind with her rent. She had practically pleaded with Martin Cranmore to give her the job. Desperation had overcome pride. That job had given her hope. She had seen it as a first basic foothold on survival.

And now it was gone, and with it the wages due to her for the past three weeks. Loyalty was all very well when you could afford it, Chrissy conceded painfully, but she hadn’t been able to afford the cost of emptying that vase over Blaze Kenyon’s arrogant head. A sense of utter desolation crept over her. Dear God, what was she going to do now? How were they to survive?

It was raining heavily. With a bent head she crossed the street and began walking. Digging her hands into her pockets, she didn’t even try to avoid the puddles. When a car door shot open in front of her, she recoiled in alarm.

‘Get in!’ Blaze instructed abrasively. ‘And take off that filthy coat first!’

Chrissy gaped in at him across a divide of palest cream leather upholstery. ‘W-what do you want?’

A groan of impatience greeted the tremulous demand.

Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks. She was glad he couldn’t see them. ‘G-go away. I’m not going to apologise.’

‘I’m offering you a lift home.’

‘That’s crazy,’ she muttered. ‘Why w-would you want to do that?’

‘Do you think it could possibly be a belated attempt to make amends?’

‘No.’

‘Oh, Chrissy, how I have missed the delights of dialogue with you. If you don’t get in, I’ll get out and throw you in. The upholstery’s getting wet.’

‘I don’t w-want a lift!’ she gasped. ‘You th-think this is funny, don’t you?’

‘Actually, it’s incredibly depressing.’ Blaze sighed from the interior. ‘If a branch came out to you when you were drowning, you’d push it away and sink like a stone.’

Chrissy was perilously close to another breakdown. ‘I h-hate you.’

‘And I love you for it, sweetheart. You’re unique,’ he mocked. ‘You see that policeman heading towards us?’

Her head lifted. A uniformed figure was approaching them.

‘Stay where you are,’ Blaze encouraged. ‘This should be fun. He doesn’t like the look of us at all. Either you’re soliciting or I’m kerb-crawling. The next time we do this, at least run a comb through your hair. At this moment, you’re not doing a lot for my image.’

Absorbing the frowning attention they were receiving, Chrissy shot into the car and slammed the door.

‘Try not to drip on my CDs.’

She hunched over inelegantly, wet hair screening her pinched profile.

‘How is Belle these days?’ he enquired, sending the powerful car shooting away from the kerb.

At the reference to her mother, her slight shoulders reared back up, her hair whipping back from her damp cheeks, over-bright eyes raw with pain and condemnation.

‘I liked your mother,’ Blaze said evenly.

‘In so far as you ever noticed her!’ Her clogged lashes dropped on her aching eyes. The silence went on and on and on and then she cleared her throat gruffly. ‘She’s dead.’ It was bald, bitter.

‘When?’

‘Last year.’

‘How did it happen?’

She tautened. ‘Pneumonia,’ she conceded.

‘I’m sorry. That must have hurt. You were very close,’ he responded with an amount of apparent sincerity that astonished her.

But Chrissy almost laughed out loud. How close had she really been to her mother? Belle Hamilton had fled her husband and family without a word of advance warning. Chrissy had once found her chatting cosily in the kitchen over a cup of coffee with Dennis Carruthers but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Belle had always happily offered hospitality to workmen, tradesmen—indeed virtually anyone ordinary who entered the house. She had been far happier entertaining them than she had ever been trying to entertain their grandiose neighbours. Nobody had known about Dennis until it was too late. Her mother had burnt her boats with a vengeance.

‘Why didn’t you go home again?’

Chrissy turned even paler. ‘I couldn’t.’ And then she regretted even saying that much. But there was something so dangerously unreal about being in Blaze Kenyon’s company, something so disturbingly hypnotic about receiving his full attention.

‘Where do you live?’

Still in a daze, she told him and then suggested he drop her at a bus-stop. His mouth hardening, he ignored the invitation. From below feathery lashes, she stole a glance at him. He really was quite spectacular. Even immune as she was to his physical allure, she could not resist the urge to look again. Every chiselled line of that strong bone-structure spoke of bred-in-the-bone self-assurance. What could he possibly know about the traumas that had finally torn her family apart when she was sixteen?

Chrissy had stood on the sidelines of her parents’ crumbling marriage, helpless to do anything more than offer her unhappy mother sympathy. Her father had been the reasonably contented owner of a hamburger takeaway when he won the pools. Overnight their lives had changed out of all recognition. And not for the better. Initially her father’s ambitions had been sensible, even modest. He had expanded in the catering trade. But, in the grip of entrepreneurial fever, his ambitions had grown as fast as his bank balance.

When the thrill of flaunting his riches before relatives and friends had worn off, he had bought a fancy house in Berkshire without even consulting her mother. Divided from lifelong friends, her mother had been lost. Worse, Jim Hamilton, always a domineering, short-tempered man, had become more and more aggressive as his wealth and importance grew. When their new and more far-flung neighbours had demonstrated a dismaying reluctance to welcome the Hamiltons into their select social circles, Belle had received the blame.

Even when the locals had finally drifted in to gape, if not to admire, the gulf between her parents had been insurmountable. The damage had been done. Treated with complete contempt by her husband and two eldest children, Belle had been an easy mark for a smooth-tongued younger man. In striking out to find happiness with Dennis, her mother had made an appalling error of judgement. But Chrissy believed that Belle had been driven, not least by her husband’s blatant infidelity, into making that final choice.

‘I thought most of this area was up for redevelopment,’ Blaze mused. ‘The demolition squad is practically parked on your doorstep.’

It was a dirty little street of narrow terraces, set on the edge of a gigantic building site. Some of the houses were already boarded up.

‘Not quite Buck House, is it?’ Chrissy snapped in an artificially correct voice, calculated to annoy.

Blaze filtered the car to a smooth halt, carefully avoiding the spill of rubbish from a tumbled dustbin. ‘What a little snob you are,’ he murmured drily. ‘I was only initiating conversation.’

Opening the door with desperate fingers, Chrissy flung him a look of incredulity. ‘N-no, you weren’t. You can’t open your mouth without being superior!’

Without a further word, she skidded out on to the pavement. Rifling in her bag for her key, she hurried down the street to an end terrace and unlocked the door.

‘Is that you, Miss Hamilton?’

Swallowing convulsively, Chrissy stilled in the act of closing the door. Her landlady was barring her passage to the stairs. ‘You’re back early.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, Mrs Davis—’

‘What about the rent? You got it yet?’ the older woman interrupted bluntly. ‘Because if you haven’t you can get out of here today. Give me that key!’

‘Mrs Davis, you will get—’

‘Nothing ever seems to come of your promises, luv. I must’ve been mad to take you in. Girls with kiddies in tow aren’t reliable. I should have known better,’ Mrs Davis fumed. ‘But I felt sorry for you, didn’t I? Well, I’ve got my own bills to think about and—’

A crisp, cool voice intervened. ‘How much does Miss Hamilton owe you?’

Her landlady spun in amazement. Chalk-pale with mortification and shock, Chrissy’s head twisted on her shoulders. Blaze stood in the doorway, not one whit perturbed by the scene he had interrupted. He was pulling a wallet from his jacket.

‘Three weeks, she owes,’ Mrs Davis retorted truculently, and added the amount.

A handful of notes changed hands faster than Chrissy could part her lips. ‘You can’t take his m-money!’ she protested.

‘Oh, can’t I? I don’t care who pays as long as it’s paid.’ Mrs Davis directed a grim smile of approval at Blaze. ‘And don’t you forget that you’re to be out of here by Saturday. I’ve got a removal van booked for the morning.’

Chrissy was so profoundly embarrassed as her landlady disappeared back into her ground-floor flat that she couldn’t bring herself even to look at Blaze. ‘I’ll post it to you,’ she promised shakily. ‘W-when I can,’ honesty bade her admit.

‘No hurry.’

She was quite nauseated by the knowledge that she was now in his debt. But she could do nothing but accept his charity. Mrs Davis wouldn’t give up the money and Chrissy was in no position to offer repayment. On the other hand, it was thanks to Blaze that she was not now being thrown out on the street. It took immense courage to rise above her sense of humiliation. Raising her bowed head, Chrissy collided with impenetrable sapphire eyes in one brief, stricken connection. ‘Thanks,’ she forced out with difficulty. ‘Maybe I’ll see you around some time,’ she concluded with awkward finality.

Without awaiting any further response, she started up the stairs, fast. On the first landing, she pressed open the door of her bed-sit with raw relief. She simply couldn’t have borne another second of his company.

‘What on earth are you doing back?’ her babysitter, Karen, demanded, rising from the single armchair with a frown.

‘It’s a long story.’

Rosie threw herself at Chrissy’s knees with a whoop of delight.

‘Bloody hell!’ a very male voice ejaculated.

Chrissy spun as though she had been jabbed in the back by a hot poker. She hadn’t heard Blaze follow her upstairs. He had to move like a leopard on the prowl. With Rosie planting an enthusiastic kiss on her cheek, she was paralysed to the spot, devastatingly conscious of Blaze’s stunned and silent scrutiny.