Читать книгу Back in the Headlines - Sharon Kendrick - Страница 9

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS the seediest nightclub he’d ever seen and Titus Alexander couldn’t quite hide his instinctive shudder of distaste. Heedless of the curious glances his aristocratic good looks were attracting, he adjusted his powerful frame in the flimsy chair and looked around.

The place was half full of people you wouldn’t want to bump into on a dark night and the waitresses wore costumes which might have been considered sexy if they hadn’t all been carrying an extra thirty pounds. He froze to find an enormous pair of breasts wobbling perilously close to his face, as he was served a cocktail he was never going to touch. And not for the first time, he wondered who in their right mind would ever choose to work in a dive like this.

Leaning back in his seat, he stared at the stage and reminded himself that he wasn’t here to critique his surroundings or to reflect that he’d never been in such a low-rent place before. He was here to see a woman. A woman who...

His thoughts were halted by the tinny fanfare of a piano and the slightly slurred voice of the compère who had been introducing a succession of failing acts all evening.

‘Ladies and Gentlemen! Tonight, I am proud to present a singing legend. A woman who has had number one hits in thirteen different countries. Who, with her girl-band The Lollipops, has known the kind of fame that most of us only ever dream of. She’s consorted with royalty and politicians—but tonight she’s exclusively ours. So I ask you to give it up for the beautiful and talented Miss...Roxanne...Carmichael!’

The applause in the half-empty club was sporadic and Titus mimed a brief clapping as he watched the woman appear from the wings, his body automatically tensing as she took centre stage.

Roxanne Carmichael.

His eyes narrowed. Was that really her?

He’d heard a lot about her. Read a lot about her. He’d seen her staring back at him from old magazine covers, with her cat-like eyes and a sleek body which had advertised everything from diamonds to raincoats. She stood for everything he despised, with her loud, flashy beauty and a long list of lovers which appalled him—because he had the sexual double standards of many of his class. He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting when he encountered her in the flesh for the first time—but it certainly wasn’t this deep, tightening clench inside him, which felt uncomfortably like the beginning of lust. And he couldn’t for the life of him work out why.

Maybe it was because she looked nothing like the provocative creature whose girl-band had stormed the international charts all those years ago. Back then, she’d sported deliberately ripped stockings worn with a too-short school uniform and was always seen sucking provocatively on a lollipop, which had helped give the band their name. As their success had grown the sticky lollipops had been jettisoned along with the jail-bait clothes—but the image projected to the public had still been that of sexy bad girls. The kind of woman you wouldn’t want to take home to meet your mother. And Roxanne Carmichael had certainly lived up to her reputation as a wild child.

He let his gaze flicker over her body. The passing of the years hadn’t added any extra weight to her frame. In fact, apart from the luscious curve of her breasts—were they real? he wondered—she looked almost painfully slender. Her cheekbones were emphasised by deep shadows beneath them and her jaw was sharply defined. Without the glossy exterior provided by extreme wealth, her mane of hair was no longer teased into a myriad shades from honey through to bronze, but now hung in a natural dark-blonde curtain over her shoulders.

But her eyes were still that incredible shade of blue and her lips still looked as if they were capable of inciting a man to commit sin. Despite the faded jeans and the sequined shirt, she carried herself with a natural grace, Titus conceded—but she looked tired. And jaded. Like a woman who had seen too much, too often. I’ll bet she has, he thought grimly as she picked up the microphone and held it close to her scarlet lips.

‘Hi, everyone.’ Her lashes fluttered as her gaze darted around the room. ‘My name is Roxy Carmichael and tonight I’m here to entertain you.’

‘You can entertain me any time you like, Roxy!’ yelled an unsteady male voice from the back of the dark club and somebody laughed.

There was a pause—Titus thought she looked as if she was about to change her mind. For one brief moment, she looked almost vulnerable. As if someone had got her up on stage by mistake and she was unsure what to do next. And then she opened her mouth and began to sing and, in spite of everything, he felt a thrill of excitement as that first note broke free. He sat back in his seat, listening as the soaring sound poured from her slender throat, and he felt another unwanted stir of his senses. So her reputation was founded on real talent and not just hype, he recognised—his eyes fixed with reluctant admiration to the sway of her hips, which moved in perfect time to the music.

The set passed in a blur. She sang of love and loss. She slung her head back as if in silent ecstasy and once again Titus felt that familiar tightening at his groin. Her low voice faltered as the last song ended on a breathless little sigh, and he had to snap out of the spell she seemed to have cast on him. To stop imagining those amazing lips making sweet music all over his body and to remember who she really was. A marriage-busting, money-grabbing little bitch. What must it be like to be as ruthless as Roxy Carmichael? he wondered. To be so desperate to cling onto the wealth she’d lost that she would steal another woman’s husband in order to do so?

She ended the set abruptly—her half-closed eyes fluttering open after the last song as if she had just awoken from a dream and was surprised to find herself in the small and stuffy club. Still blinking, she obeyed the half-hearted applause by launching into one soulful encore—but the memorable tune sounded bizarre in the small and tacky setting of the Kit-Kat Club. And just as quickly she was gone, with a swish of the sparkly shirt and a glimpse of faded denim clinging to her bottom.

The pianist staggered off in the direction of the bar, the dusty velvet curtain came down and Titus rose to his feet and slipped on his coat, feeling oddly dirty. He could feel the sleazy fug of the place on his skin as he left the building, relieved to be able to suck in a breath of cold, crisp air as he walked round to the door at the back of the club.

His knock brought a heavy, middle-aged woman to the door, her hooded eyes flicking over him. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I hope so,’ said Titus softly. ‘I’m here to see Roxy Carmichael.’

‘Is she expecting you?’

He shook his head. ‘Not exactly.’

The woman’s jowly face frowned with sharp scrutiny. ‘Are you from the press?’

Titus curved his lips into a sardonic smile. Had centuries of privileged lineage resulted in him looking like a journalist? he wondered acidly. He shook his head. ‘Most emphatically, no. I am not from the press.’

‘Well, she says she’s not taking any callers,’ said the woman flatly.

‘Are you sure?’ Titus withdrew a slim leather wallet from his pocket and slickly peeled off a note, before sliding it into her unresisting hand. ‘Why don’t you ask her again...nicely?’

The woman seemed to hesitate for a moment before snatching the note and stuffing it in the pocket of her dress. ‘I can’t promise you anything,’ she said ungraciously, jerking her head to indicate that he should follow her.

Stepping inside and shutting the stage door behind him, Titus was quickly enveloped in the gloom of the backstage area. He knew that he could have waited. Gone to see Roxanne Carmichael in the morning and delivered his crushing blow to her in the cold light of day and on his own territory. But his blood was fired up and he wanted to finish this off tonight. Besides, he was a man who never liked waiting—and now that he had control of the family estate it meant he never had to.

The woman in the floral dress had come to a halt and was now rapping on a dressing-room door.

‘Who is it?’ called a breathy voice he instantly recognised as that of Roxy Carmichael and something about its sensual undertones made his skin prickle with undeniable desire. But he stood hidden in the shadows as the door was pushed open and light streamed out from a shabby dressing room.

‘It’s Margaret,’ said the woman, her hand moving around in her pocket as if she was checking the note he’d just given her was still there.

From her position at the mirror where she had been wiping the last of the gunky stage make-up from her face, Roxanne swivelled round in the chair, trying not to look dispirited. But it wasn’t easy. It hadn’t been the greatest evening in the world. There was nothing worse than playing in a half-empty club to an audience which was full of drink. The Kit-Kat Club seemed to be on the decline and she knew that her singing spot had failed to revitalise audience figures. Hadn’t the management told her so just that very morning—in a grim message underpinned with the unspoken warning that lack of success would not be tolerated?

She told herself that it wasn’t personal—that the music industry had always been this way. She just happened to have been very fortunate at the start of her career and she shouldn’t forget that. But she was tired. Bone-tired. With an aching kind of emptiness which wouldn’t shift and a horrible tickle at the back of her throat which wouldn’t seem to go away.

Stifling a yawn, she looked at the woman in the floral dress who was standing in the doorway with an expectant look on her face and she forced a smile. ‘Yes, what is it, Margaret?’

‘There’s a gentleman here who says he wants to see you.’

A gentleman? Roxanne deposited the damp piece of cotton wool on the battered dressing table and gave a wry smile. Once, there had been thousands of people who had clamoured at stage doors to see her. Men who wanted to go to bed with her, and young girls who had looked up to her for no reason she’d ever been able to work out. Squads of security people had been employed to keep those crowds at bay—but not any more. These days, visitors were few and far between and those that did make it past the stage door were greeted with suspicion. She found herself wondering if her father had turned up out of the blue—with yet another ridiculous scheme for making her ‘comeback’. Her mouth tightened. As if she would ever consider letting him be a part of it—no matter how much her career could do with a lift. She thought about the dwindling audiences and the ever-more seedy venues and her heart twisted painfully in her chest. Because sooner or later she was going to have to take a tough, hard look at her future and ask herself how much longer she was going to tolerate being kicked back.

‘Did he give his name?’ she asked. ‘Is he from the press?’

Margaret shrugged. ‘He says he’s not. And he doesn’t look like a journalist. He looks...well...’ she lowered her voice ‘...handsome.’

Roxanne suppressed a shudder. There was possibly only one thing worse than some journalist wanting to do a ‘Where Are They Now?’ feature—and that was a man who might have decided that she was still attractive enough to pursue. She gave a cynical shake of her head. ‘I’m not interested in pretty boys, Margaret.’

‘And rich,’ murmured the older woman, like a bounty hunter.

At this, Roxy stilled—because some fantasies were too deeply ingrained to get rid of, no matter how crazy they might seem. Was it possible that her dream could still come true? That some wealthy impresario had been sitting in the audience listening to her singing and decided that he wanted to take a chance on her? Someone who had recognised that she still had a talent which burned brightly and which it was a crying shame to waste. And if that were the case, then surely it wouldn’t hurt her to turn on the charm, would it?

Smoothing down her hair, she injected a note of warmth into her voice. ‘Then why don’t you send him in?’ she said.

Titus had heard every word of the brief interchange and, although it shouldn’t have surprised him, still it made his mouth harden. What had he expected—that she’d be proud enough to turn away some unknown caller who had turned up at the end of her set? Of course not. Just the mention of money had made her voice quiver with eagerness. Some women would sell themselves for money, he reminded himself, and this was one of them. Swallowing down the sour taste of disgust, he stepped forward.

‘You can go in—’ Margaret began, but Titus had already brushed past her and walked into the tiny dressing room.

Still seated, Roxy widened her eyes as a tall figure entered the cramped confines of the room. A hundred conflicting messages buzzed around in her head as he quietly shut the door behind him and for a moment she felt positively weak. She was aware of an immense power, which seemed to spark off him like electricity—and of something else, too. Something she’d almost forgotten about until she met his icy stare for the first time.

Desire.

She swallowed. A desire which was the last thing she wanted, or needed. It began to scorch like wildfire around her veins and suddenly the cramped room felt claustrophobic. She wanted to get out—far away from the way he was making her feel. She wanted to run a million miles from that bright grey gaze which was boring through her and making her heart perform an erratic dance. ‘I don’t remember telling you to close the door,’ she said sharply.

Titus looked down at her—a hard smile on his lips as he registered the automatic darkening of her eyes in a response to him which was entirely predictable. He knew what he had—and what he had was something which made women fall at his feet like ninepins. He didn’t exploit it, but sometimes he used it. ‘Maybe you don’t want the whole club hearing what I have to say,’ he countered softly.

Roxy was about to tell him that she didn’t tolerate silken threats coming from complete strangers, but suddenly she was finding it difficult to speak. She didn’t know if it was his looks or his manner, or that cool, privileged accent which marked him out as aristocratic. But whatever it was, it was potent enough to make the words freeze in her throat. She let her gaze linger on him and somehow she couldn’t seem to drag it away again.

He must have been about six feet two—although his posture made him seem taller. Clad in a dark cashmere coat designed to keep out the worst of the bitter winter night, she’d never seen anyone with quite so much presence. And that was a pretty big admission considering she’d spent her life working in an industry where charisma was the common currency...

His body would have made most women take a second look, and so would the expensive clothes which sat so comfortably on it. But women were usually more interested in faces—and his was the most arresting face she had ever seen. High cheekbones looked as if they had been chiselled by a master sculptor—their hard lines contrasting with the sensual contours of his unsmiling lips. His dark hair was the rich, tawny colour of burnt copper. Like a lion’s mane, she found herself thinking. But his King-of-the-jungle likeness didn’t stop at his hair. He carried himself with the effortless grace of a powerful predator—as if everything he surveyed through those cold eyes were his.

Roxy didn’t react to his unsmiling scrutiny—at least, not outwardly. Her heart might have started fluttering with instinctive response to his outrageously alpha qualities, but he would never know that. She was good at keeping her feelings hidden. No, scrub that—she was an expert. She’d dealt with enough men in the past to know that they were all the same. That inevitably they had only one thing on their mind—and once they’d got it, you were history. So she certainly wasn’t about to start panicking because some expensive-looking posh boy had walked in here, threatening to throw his weight around.

Deliberately, she turned her back on him and stared into the mirror as she wiped the scarlet lipstick from her lips with a blob of cotton wool. Because in that moment she knew that this man was no impresario. ‘Isn’t it polite to introduce yourself before you march into a woman’s dressing room?’

Titus wasn’t used to people turning away from him, especially not when their eyes had just been devouring him. He frowned. ‘My name is Titus Alexander,’ he said, watching her reflection closely to see if there were any signs of recognition, but no. She just carried on calmly wiping that garish lipstick from her mouth. And suddenly he found himself wondering what those lips might taste like beneath his. Whether they’d be able to inflict as much magic on his body as they’d done with the microphone, when she’d started to sing.

‘What can I do for you, Mr Alexander?’ she asked, in a bored tone.

Titus didn’t bother correcting the fundamental mistake she was making about his title. Past experience had taught him that it was best to keep that particular fact hidden for as long as possible. Especially from women. ‘I want to talk to you.’

‘So talk.’

‘And I’d prefer it if we were face to face.’

Her eyes met his in the mirror. ‘Why?’

Because your eyes are so incredibly blue that I want to see them up close, he found himself thinking—before ruthlessly quashing the random thought. She was a fallen star, a cuckold and a money-grabber—and he was about to call time on her latest little scam. ‘Call me old-fashioned, but I’d prefer not to have to address your back,’ he drawled.

Her lips now bare of the startling colour she always wore to perform, Roxy slowly turned back to face him. ‘How’s that?’ she questioned sarcastically.

Titus felt that same hard aching at his groin and for a moment he wished he’d kept his mouth shut. Because now his attention was once again distracted by her breasts. They were pushing blatantly against the sequin-sprinkled top in a way which seemed to be silently begging him to touch them. With an effort, he tore his gaze away and stared instead into the sapphire brilliance of her eyes. ‘I believe you know Martin Murray?’

Roxy shrugged. ‘I know a lot of people.’

‘You know him rather well, I believe,’ suggested Titus.

She registered his soft insinuation but she didn’t respond to it. She didn’t have to justify herself to privileged men who gatecrashed her dressing room. ‘That’s none of your business.’

‘Actually, it is my business.’

Roxy threw the last wodge of cotton wool into the bin and rose to her feet, realising that she was still wearing her too-high stage shoes. ‘Look, it’s late, I’m tired and I want to go home. So why don’t you cut to the chase and tell me what you’re doing, marching in here and asking me all sorts of questions with that...that judgemental air you seem to have?’

‘Maybe because I have the right to be judgmental,’ he retorted. ‘Since you happen to be illegally subletting one of my apartments.’

Roxy screwed her nose up, but something in his expression had made her pulse start to quicken. ‘Don’t talk rubbish,’ she snapped. ‘I’ve never seen you before in my life. You’re not my landlord.’

‘You don’t think so?’

‘I know so. Or rather, I know my landlord.’

‘You live in the top-floor apartment of a large house in Notting Hill Gate, right?’

How the hell did he know that? Another wave of apprehension prickled over her skin, but Roxy hid it with a defiant look. ‘Have you been stalking me?’

At this, Titus gave a low laugh. ‘In your dreams, sweetheart. You think I’m the kind of man who needs to stalk any woman—let alone some second-rate singer who’s fallen on times so hard that she’s reduced to working in a dump like this?’

Something inside her retracted painfully but still Roxy didn’t react. She was damned if she would let him see how much his words hurt. Or how much they had hit home. Instead, she managed another defiant stare. ‘Then how come you know where I live?’

‘I just told you. Because I happen to own the apartment you live in. In fact, I own the entire house,’ he added.

Roxy felt the weight of her long hair brushing against a neck still sheened with sweat after her performance. ‘No, you don’t,’ she croaked. ‘You can’t possibly. Martin owns it.’

‘Is that what he told you?’ enquired Titus idly. ‘Was he pretending to be wealthy when he was trying to get you into bed?’ His voice lowered with exasperation. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that he might be lying? Because that’s what married men do. They lie to their wives and they lie to their mistresses. The wives usually mind because they have their family to think of—but the mistresses know it’s all part of the whole sordid game. And so they overlook it—as they overlook so much else.’ His grey eyes bored into her with undisguised contempt. ‘Because in my experience, women who try to steal another woman’s husband have no morals, nor any scruples either.’

Stuffing her hands deep into the pockets of her jeans so he wouldn’t see they were trembling, Roxy shook her head. ‘I’ve never tried to steal another woman’s husband!’

‘No?’ His dark eyebrows shot up towards the tawny thickness of his hair. ‘You just let him set you up in some kind of tawdry love nest?’

‘It isn’t like that!’

‘I’m not interested in what it’s “like”,’ he snapped. ‘The only thing I’m interested in is that one of my employees has been illegally renting you one of my apartments and I want you out!’

‘Your...employee?’ Roxy echoed, racking her brains for some kind of recognition, but there was none. Titus was a pretty unforgettable name and she’d never heard Martin Murray mention it before. ‘I’ve never heard of you, Mr Alexander. For all I know, you could be a complete fantasist.’

‘You think so? Then maybe this might help convince you that what I’m saying is genuine.’ Titus extracted a business card from the pocket of his cashmere overcoat and held it out towards her.

Removing her hand from the pocket of her jeans, Roxy took it, instantly aware of the expensive quality of the card—as expensive as everything else about him. Embossed black letters stood proud on the costly cream surface and as her eyes focused on it properly she experienced a strange, lurching feeling as the letters formed themselves into words.

Titus Alexander, Duke of Torchester.

The letters blurred again and suddenly her knees felt wobbly. It had been a long time since she’d eaten—she never liked to take food close to a performance—and in any other circumstances she might have slumped down in the chair, in shock. But some instinct told her that would be dangerous. That he would be dangerous if she showed any sign of weakness. She looked up into his cold eyes, her heart still racing. ‘You’re...you’re the Duke of Torchester?’

‘Yes, I’m the Duke of Torchester,’ he drawled. ‘And my late father employed your lover, Martin Murray, as his accountant. Starting to get your memory back are you, Miss Carmichael? Does my name ring a bell?’

Of course it rang a bell! Roxy nodded, willing her face to remain calm. It was imperative that she held onto her poise. To act as if she didn’t care—because she remembered everything she’d ever heard about the aristocratic young Duke.

He’s a ruthless bastard.

He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth.

Women love him.

Roxy’s eyes were drawn to the unsmiling perfection of his mouth and the grey ice of his eyes and thought that, yes, women probably did love him. She could imagine it would be easy to fall for someone who had the looks and lineage of Titus Alexander. And equally easy to imagine him inflicting pain and heartbreak on any female who was stupid enough to do so.

‘I don’t understand,’ she said flatly.

‘No?’ His tawny-dark eyebrows rose again in arrogant question. ‘What precisely is perplexing you?’

‘It’s Martin’s flat.’

‘Is that what he told you?’

Roxy nodded, but even as he asked the question she began to understand all the things which had never really added up before. Why Martin had always insisted she pay her rent in cash. And why he had instructed her to tell anyone who asked that she was simply ‘house-sitting’. She stared into Titus’s grim face and it came as a shock to realise that she believed the word of this arrogant aristocrat above a man she’d known for years. ‘That’s what he told me.’

‘Well, he was lying,’ he iced out. ‘A lying cheat of an accountant who my father made the mistake of trusting. Only my father is no longer around—and Martin Murray no longer works for my family. I’m in charge now and I intend clearing up the mess which your lover has made of the estate.’ His grey eyes glittered dangerously. ‘An estate which will no longer provide a refuge for wasters and chancers. So I want you out by the end of the week.’

Roxy felt a paralysing fear begin to well up inside her and she fought successfully to dampen it down. Because fear was an emotion she was familiar with and she’d learnt that the only way to conquer it was to face it head-on. She knew that the moment you gave into it, you would be lost and that was not going to happen. Not with this arrogant posh-boy who had just marched into her dressing room with his inbuilt sense of entitlement. Clearing her throat, she tried to make her voice sound as cool as his. ‘I don’t think it works quite like that. I think the law states that you’ll need to give me more notice than one week.’

Titus flattened his lips into an angry line as a slow rage began to flare up inside him. How dared she try to defy him? He thought about how his father had betrayed his mother, with a mistress as ruthless as this foxy-looking singer. He thought about the woeful state of the estate’s finances and the way her crooked accountant of a boyfriend had been creaming off huge amounts for himself. Her married boyfriend, he thought in disgust.

He knew that his rage was disproportionate to her crime of having questionable morals, but Titus didn’t care. Sometimes a person just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time—and Roxanne Carmichael was that person.

‘The law isn’t on your side,’ he said silkily. ‘Because you’ve been breaking it.’

She lifted her eyes up to his in genuine appeal. ‘But I didn’t know that.’

‘I don’t give a damn what you knew or what you didn’t know,’ he snapped, steeling himself against the brilliance of her gaze. ‘And I’m not sure I’d believe you no matter how much you protest. The word of a woman who can cold-bloodedly sleep with a married man doesn’t count for very much. So I want you—and every one of your tawdry possessions—out of my property by the end of the week. Do you understand that, Miss Carmichael?’