Читать книгу Titanic: A Date With Destiny - Marguerite Kaye - Страница 7

Shaken, Max Blakely broke away from the bewitching girl abruptly. What he had meant to be the lightest of brush-off kisses had transformed into something else entirely. Far from turning the tables on her, he had been well and truly turned on by that kiss. He stared down at the woman in his arms, frowning in puzzlement. ‘What the hell is going on?’

She glared up at him. ‘Let me go!’

She had a very English face. Creamy skin, dark brown hair. Dark eyes, too—wide-spaced, with an extremely forthright gaze. Not a trace of coquetry today. And unlike last night, the colour of her lips and cheeks owed nothing to lipstick or rouge. He’d thought her merely pretty then. In daylight, stripped of artifice, there was experience in her eyes, in the tiny lines at the corners of her mouth. She looked like a woman who took life far too seriously. She looked interesting.

Max released her, taking care to keep himself between her and the door, his mind working furiously. ‘Last night in the pub, why didn’t you mention you’d be on board?’

‘In the pub?’

She was a good actress, but though Max wore the trappings of his success lightly, he was no fool. Too many caps had been set at him, too many traps laid, for him to be anything but suspicious. He ran his fingers through his hair. ‘Don’t play dumb. I told you I was sailing to New York on the Titanic. We had a laugh last night, a few drinks, but it was never going to be anything more. You knew that, so why did you follow me?’

‘Follow you?’

She really did look as confused as he felt, but her presence was too much of a coincidence to be believable. Besides, if it was just a coincidence, why hadn’t she said anything about being a passenger herself? And what the hell was she doing here in his stateroom? Max swore under his breath. ‘After I left, someone filled you in on the fact that you’d been keeping company with a tycoon, that’s it, isn’t it?’ She said nothing, but he nodded to himself. It was obvious now. ‘You thought maybe if you tracked me down, maybe if you gave me a bit more than you gave me last night, then perhaps I’d give you something by way of compensation. Well, you got it all wrong.’

‘You—you think I’m some sort of gold digger?’

She had gone quite pale. If he didn’t know better … But he did. Max ignored the tiny flicker of unease. ‘Look, I’m not going to make any trouble so long as you don’t …’

‘No, you look, Mr Whatever-your-name-is. It seems to have escaped your notice, but this is a uniform. I am a stewardess. I signed up to be a stewardess some weeks ago. Until you walked through that door I had never laid eyes on you! What’s more, I’ll be happy if I die never seeing you again. Now please get out of my way, I have work to do.’

Jennifer fled out onto the deck before he could stop her. The crowd helped conceal her as she darted past and headed for the service stairs, ignoring his cry to wait. Throwing open the door of her own cabin, her eyes smarting with tears, her one thought was to find a place where she could be alone.

‘Hello, Jenny. Surprise!’

Sitting on the bed, a rueful smile on her pretty face, was her twin sister. Slowly, like the grinding wheels and cogs of a windmill as the breeze caught its sails, Jennifer realised what had happened.

‘Oh, Maud, what have you done this time?’