Читать книгу Phantom Lover - Susan Napier, Susan Napier - Страница 5

DARLING,

Is it thy will thy image should keep open

My heavy eyelids to the weary night?

Dost thou desire my slumbers should be broken,

While shadows, like to thee, do mock my sight?

The idea that her ordinary self could engender such wild longings in a man that he couldn’t sleep at night was so bizarre that Honor’s green eyes glowed with amused delight.

She picked up the cup of tea that she had just brewed for herself when she had heard the postman’s whistle, and carried her precious letter over to the comfortable chair behind the untidy desk that served to designate part of the lounge of her small cottage as an office. She settled down in her familiar sprawl, a jean-clad leg slung over one padded chair arm, and scanned the rest of the Shakespearean sonnet, down to the last, jealous couplet:

For thee watch I, whilst thou dost wake elsewhere,

From me far off, with others all-too-near.

She couldn’t help smiling. Others? There were certainly no ‘others’ in the sense that the sonnet suggested. The small community of Kowhai Hill, tucked in below the Waitakare Ranges just north-west of Auckland, wasn’t exactly bulging with eligible males, and those she did come into contact with generally knew her too well to suffer any sleeplessness on her account. For one thing she was distressingly plain. For another, her reputation was as spotless as her name.

‘Good old Honor’ was a mate, someone with whom a local lad could be seen having a drink at the pub without being accused of unfaithfulness by his girlfriend or wife, a woman whose social life consisted largely of group outings or happily ‘making up the numbers’ at dinner parties where she could be relied upon to fit in, regardless of the age or diversity of the company.

Except to Adam. To Adam she was someone quite different: a woman enticing in her mystery, challenging in her intellect, desirable in her elusiveness.

Honor’s smile had disappeared by the time she reached the bottom of the page, its place taken by a vivid blush. Adam’s prose might not have the unique beauty of Shakespeare’s poetry, but it was none the less powerful stuff, a passionate outburst of feeling that was lyrical in its erotic intensity.

Although she had never met him in person, in eight months of correspondence Honor had formed a mental picture of a warm, witty and literate man whose love of writing cloaked a personal shyness that made him quite content to pursue their acquaintance entirely through correspondence.

Their letters had been a lively exchange of ideas about books, places, philosophies and world events rather than mundane personal details. Although she had learned that he was thirty-five, owned his own development company and lived on Auckland’s North Shore, that was about the extent of her knowledge of his physical existence outside his letters.

But with the last six letters, her cosy conclusions about him had been exploded. Not only had they arrived weekly instead of at the usual monthly intervals, they were so joltingly different in emotional tenor that Honor would have thought they were penned by someone else if she hadn’t recognised Adam’s distinctive handwriting.

At first Honor had not known how to reply. What did you say to a man who suddenly told you that you were the only thing that gave his life hope and meaning and that your letters were his lifeline? When he begged you to believe that he had fallen wildly in love for the first time in his life? That although he had never had you, except in his illicit imagination, he missed you savagely in his heart, his arms, his bed...?

She had been amused. And enchanted. Apprehensive and intrigued. And...yes, in spite of herself, seduced...

So, after the second letter, she had gathered her own courage and replied according to the dictates of her wayward heart rather than her sceptical head. Amazingly the words had flowed out of her pen as if they had been in there all along, awaiting the perfect moment to escape the repression of her earnest common sense. No one ever fell in love through the post, for goodness’ sake! She didn’t even know what he looked like!

‘All my love, Adam’.

She sighed as she reached the end of the second, sizzling page. Unlike his other letters, which often ran to nine or ten pages, these passionate outpourings were invariably as short as they were hot and sweet.

She began to fold the delicate, onion-skin sheets along the sharp crease-lines only to discover that there was a third sheet, stuck to the second by some of the ink which had run along the edges.

Carefully she peeled it free and froze as a name leapt out at her from the few hastily scrawled lines.

I know we’re not supposed to meet but if I don’t get to see your beautiful face soon, my darling, courageous Helen...touch the soft spun gold of your hair...make love to your lush mouth and delicate body the way I’ve dreamed of these last months I’ll go mad! Please come to me... Don’t put me through the agony of having to wait any longer. I need you...

Helen?

Helen!

Honor bolted upright in her chair.

Beautiful face?

Spun gold hair!

She swivelled her head to stare at her reflection in the blank grey computer screen which sat on her desk. By no stretch of the imagination could the unruly brown curls that tumbled around her shoulders be described as spun gold. Or the oval face sprinkled with freckles and rendered stern by the thick straight brows be considered beautiful. Her nose, rather pink from the spring cold that she was just shaking off, was the only thing about her that was glowing. And no one in his or her right mind would call her sturdy figure ‘delicate’...

Her confusion turned to dawning horror.

Frantically she tugged open the stubborn bottom drawer of her desk and sorted through the sheaf of letters, carefully filed by date. Most of the envelopes were typed, addressed to Miss H. Sheldon at Rural Delivery, Kowhai Hill.

Her hands shaking, Honor opened some at random, scanning the opening lines.

The later, passionate letters were headed ‘Darling’, the rest were teasing salutes to ‘M’Lady’, a reference to the whimsical valentine card addressed to ‘My Lady of the Moonlight’ that had arrived by special delivery the day after the St Valentine’s Ball in nearby Evansdale, which Honor had helped organise for a children’s charity. She had been one of the hostesses and had introduced and been introduced to so many new people that night that all their names and faces had intermingled in her hazy recollection. She couldn’t remember an Adam at all but there was no doubt from the handwritten rhyme inside his card, referring to roses and moonlight and ladies in distress, that he had known exactly who she was.

After all she had been pretty distressed that night, desperately fighting off the summer flu that she had later succumbed to, wandering the small memorial gardens in the moonlight while the dancing went on inside the adjacent community hall, trying to rid herself of a murderous headache that had refused to respond to the pills she had swallowed.

She had finally dozed off on a cramped park bench, waking an hour or so later to find herself tucked under a light rug in the back seat of her car, a sheaf of deep red roses lying on the seat beside her—obviously illegally picked in the gardens. Since there had been any number of hefty farming friends at the ball who could have performed the kindly deed she hadn’t thought twice about it until she had received the stranger’s valentine the next day. Then she had been curious, and yielded to the temptation of the implicit and very untraditional invitation of a post-office box number on the flap of the envelope.

She pulled out more letters until she had gone through them all and then began stuffing them haphazardly back into their envelopes, trying to control her rising panic at the awful realisation:

Not once in all their correspondence had he actually addressed her as ‘Honor’! And her own trademark signature—a large, dramatic H with the other letters of her name an illiterate scrawl that she had fondly imagined was dashingly sophisticated—that too could have easily been misread.

‘Honor?’

Her head snapped up. A yawning figure appeared in the doorway, her delicate, willowy figure clothed in the merest excuse for a nightgown, her long blonde hair spilling in disarray across her slender shoulders.

Honor’s heart sank into her practical shoes at the sight of her guest. She could hear fate laughing like a drain in her ear.

‘You’re up early, Helen. It’s only eleven o’clock.’

Her sarcasm went completely over her beautiful sister’s head. ‘Is it? I’d better get a move on, then. My flight leaves at three and Trina is taking me to lunch at the Regent before she zips me out to the airport.’

Her sister got lunches with her New Zealand agent at the best hotel in town and a lift to the airport in a limo, Honor ate cheese sandwiches in her kitchen and drove an ageing Volkswagen. And God forbid that she offer to farewell her sister at the airport. Helen hated to feel ‘emotionally pressured’, dismissing Honor’s ready sensitivity as ‘mawkishness’. That about summed up the differences in their lifestyles—and their personalities, Honor thought ruefully.

Honor had spent her teenage years watching with a mixture of awe and pity as her older sister clawed her way up through the fiercely competitive ranks of struggling models to achieve world-class status. She sincerely admired Helen for enduring the stresses and brutal rigours of maintaining herself at a constant peak of physical perfection from the age of sixteen, when she had won her first beauty competition, to her current graceful approach to thirty. But envy had no part in that admiration. Having seen the knife-edge of uncertainty on which Helen’s ego was constantly balanced, Honor had pitied her with the complacency of someone who knew how much of an illusion effortless beauty was, how false the glamour of her world really was.

She looked down at the letter clenched in her hand. No, she hadn’t envied her sister at all.

Until now.

‘Helen...’ Her voice trailed off. Did she really want to know? She gritted her teeth. She had no choice. He was talking about meeting her, for goodness’ sake!

‘What?’ Helen yawned again, stretching the tall, lithe body, sculpted taut by diligent daily aerobics and rigid dieting. Helen might eat at the best hotels, but she only ever tasted their salads!

‘Remember last time you stayed with me—you know when we had the Valentine’s Day Ball?’ Honor had been so busy helping to organise what was touted as being the rural social event of the year that she had forgotten to arrange a partner for herself and by then all her male ‘mates’ were spoken for. When Helen had arrived for an unexpected few days’ visit it had seemed a great idea for her sister to use the extra ticket. Who better to help create the necessary glitter for the event than a top international model?

‘Mmm.’ Helen sounded faintly wary, probably worried that Honor was going to request another charity appearance.

‘Do you remember meeting anyone called Adam?’ Honor held her breath, although she knew it was a forlorn hope. As soon as she had seen that wretched ‘Helen’ she had known...

‘Adam?’ Her sister’s vivid green eyes narrowed in thought, accentuating their perfect almond shape.

‘Adam Blake.’

‘Adam...Adam. No, I don’t think so.’ Helen shrugged cheerfully. ‘You know what I’m like with names, darling.’

Honor did know. Unless people had the potential to be useful to her career Helen tended to operate on the principle out of sight, out of mind.

‘Are you sure? Do moonlight and roses and ladies in distress ring any bells?’ she persisted doggedly.

To her shock her sophisticated sister pinkened. Honor had never seen her blush before and now she knew why. That creamy pale, unmade-up skin flushed unevenly, in blotchy patches.

‘Helen?’ Her voice was sharper than she had intended. ‘You do know who I’m talking about, don’t you?’

‘Not really. God, I’m dying for a coffee.’

‘What does “not really” mean?’ Honor scrambled up to follow her sister out into the tiny kitchen, watching with a jaundiced eye as Helen began puttering about on the bench-top. The only time her sister came even close to looking ungraceful was when she pretended to be domestic.

‘It means that maybe I do and maybe I don’t. I never asked who he was, although come to think of it he might have said that his name was Adam...’

‘Who said?’

‘Just someone who helped me out that night. I got into an awkward situation and he happened along at the right time, that’s all.’

That’s all? Honor wasn’t fooled by her sister’s casualness.

It took another half-hour and two cups of bitter black coffee to extract the story from her sister, and it was every bit as painful as Honor had known it would be.

Some time just after midnight, Helen had got into an undignified tussle with an overheated and over-inebriated admirer whom her customary haughtiness had failed to freeze off. When she had ducked out of the hall to escape his attentions he had followed, leaping amorously upon her in the rose-garden, tearing the bodice of her dress just in time for some amateur celebrity-hunter with a camera to get a couple of supremely compromising shots.

Helen’s unnamed gallant had not only appeared out of the darkness to haul the man off and send him smartly on his drunken way, but had driven her back to the cottage in her ruined dress and left her with the promise that he would make sure the photographs never saw the public light of day.

‘I never said anything because I just wanted to forget the whole embarrassing incident,’ said Helen sharply, forestalling Honor’s obvious question. ‘My dress was an Ungaro, you know. The shoulder-strap was practically torn away and though I got a dressmaker to repair it it was never quite the same. I was nearly in tears, I was so furious. I hardly spoke to your Adam, if that’s who it was, except to give him directions to this place. I only went to that damned ball because of you, you know, and what did you do but go off and leave me to the mercy of some drunken moron!’

‘I didn’t abandon you—it was more like the other way around. I couldn’t get close with all your admirers clustering around,’ said Honor, stung by the unfairness of the accusation. ‘Besides, you told me to keep my distance from you, remember, because I wasn’t feeling very well and you had that Australian swimsuit shoot in a few days and didn’t want to get my germs. In fact my infectiousness was the supposed reason for your suddenly rushing off to Sydney the next morning.’

‘Yes, well, I wasn’t going to hang around and wait for some sleazy tabloid to pick up on the story and ring me for a comment. Can you imagine the headline—TOP MODEL IN TOPLESS ROMP?’ She shuddered. ‘My publicist would have fits. Not to mention Mother.’ Honor was unsurprised to note that her concern for their ambitious mother, who had been the driving force behind Helen’s career and was still her manager, took second place to her fear of adverse publicity. Helen was always acutely conscious of her image, to the point of paranoia.

‘He got a shot of you topless?’ Her throaty voice squeaked with horror. She knew that her sister always turned down nude work—‘preserving her mystique’, she called it. Even swimsuit offers were accepted only when their prestige was exceptional.

‘Well, it wasn’t quite that bad,’ Helen conceded grudgingly. ‘But I was being considered for that new aerobics clothing line at the time and they wanted someone with a squeaky-clean image. I couldn’t afford to risk even a mild scandal. Why all the interest now? Don’t tell me this Adam is looking for me after all this time?’

No, but only because he already thought he had found her!

And because Honor always tried to live up to her name she had shown Helen her precious letters...all except the last few passionate epistles which she couldn’t quite bring herself to share. It would be too much like a betrayal.

Her sister’s reaction was quite predictable. She had given one or two a cursory read-through and collapsed in hilarity.

‘He thinks you’re me? What a hoot! He’s in for a shock, isn’t he?’ she giggled with an adolescent glee that Honor darkly thought ill befitted a woman who was almost thirty. ‘Especially since his last sight of you was when you were snoring like a jet-engine!’

‘Snoring?’ Honor’s puzzlement was shadowed by the gloomy presentiment of further humiliation.

‘Drooling, too, as I recall,’ Helen added with sisterly cruelty. ‘I couldn’t go back into the hall with my dress practically in shreds so we cut through the gardens to get to his car and there were you, parked on a bench like a homeless tramp. Since you’d said you were going to stay until the last gasp no matter how rotten you were feeling, I told what’s-his-name to carry you to your car so that you wouldn’t get double pneumonia or something if you didn’t wake up for a while. I thought if I told him you were my sister he’d make a fuss and insist on you coming with me so I did us both a favour and told him you were a distant relative with an extremely jealous husband. I even left you the stolen roses that drunk tried to foist on me in order to keep my hands busy while he tried to have his sweaty way...’

‘Thanks a million,’ grumbled Honor, cringing at the unflattering picture she must have presented. She should never have taken those pain-killers on top of several glasses of champagne.

‘What—what was he like? What did he say?’

In her mind she had pictured the man who wrote to her as being quiet and reassuringly ordinary-looking, with kind eyes and a ready smile. Socially unsophisticated. The kind of man who would be more interested in a woman’s mind than her appearance. The kind who preferred warmth and humour to the cold perfection of glamour.

Helen was maddeningly vague. ‘I can’t remember. He was thin and dark...I think. He made the usual protective male noises but I didn’t really listen. He must have been pretty strong, the way he carried you, but he drove some awful station wagon or something. Not my type at all!’ It was typical of Helen to judge the man by his car. At Honor’s sound of annoyance she said impatiently, ‘Well, what do you expect me to say? He wasn’t Superman. There was nothing memorable about him—not that I wanted to remember anything about the whole wretched business anyway. I’m swamped in gorgeous men every day of my working life, darling, why should I remember some unimportant stranger I met ages ago?’

Honor looked at the valentine—slightly dog-eared from months of affectionate handling—that had started it all, and sternly made herself face facts.

‘He couldn’t possibly have meant to write to me—not after having met you,’ she sighed, far too aware of her sister’s devastating tunnel-vision effect on men to have any illusions about how she rated in comparison.

‘What does it matter who he meant to write to? It was you he ended up corresponding with,’ Helen pointed out kindly, spoiling it by adding, ‘If you ask me, he’s got to be pretty arrogant in the first place if he thinks a woman like me would be interested in some country hick...’

‘He doesn’t live in the country, he lives in Auckland,’ Honor automatically defended.

‘Small-town hick, then,’ said Helen, ignoring the fact that Auckland was New Zealand’s largest city. She was very proud of the fact that she had outgrown her home country, whereas Honor had very proudly grown back into it after several years’ enforced stay in the canyons of New York city.

‘Anyway, it was a gross piece of assumption on his part that I’d be interested. I don’t know what you’re worrying about. If he dumps you what have you lost? Only another penfriend, for goodness’ sake. You used to have stacks of them when you were twelve—I should have thought you’d have grown out of that sort of teenage stuff by now. Doesn’t say much for your social life, does it? I told you burying yourself in this place would stunt your growth. I suppose, as usual, you let your imagination run away with you and built it into some grand romance in your mind.’

By now Helen was into full, condescending stride. She had never understood Honor’s fascination with the written word, had pitied her for wasting her time reading about life instead of following her big sister’s example and going out and actually living it.

‘They’re just letters, Honor, it’s not as if he ever actually bothered to make the effort of meeting me—you—face to face,’ she continued bracingly. ‘And stop looking so guilty. The whole thing was his mistake in the first place for assuming that there was only one Miss Sheldon. Imagine thinking I’d enjoy writing letters to someone I don’t even know!’ She shuddered delicately. ‘If I tried to answer every fan letter I get I’d never have time to do anything else. You know what I’m like—I don’t even answer yours...’

Honor gave up trying to explain. Helen would never understand in a million years what those letters had meant to her. How much joy they had brought her, how deeply committed she had felt as she had progressively revealed more and more of her thoughts and feelings to a man she’d never met.

And what about those most recent letters she had sent? Honor went cold with horror at the thought of what she had ardently revealed. Talk about drooling! Oh, God, what a mess...!

She knew she couldn’t just hang around waiting for the axe to fall. She couldn’t stand the agony. And the thought of putting it all into writing was abhorrent. She couldn’t present him such a shock in a letter, in cold black and white, with no opportunity for her to test his mood first for the best way to explain. Whatever the embarrassment to herself, she owed it to them both to talk to him in person. But how? If she wrote asking for a meeting without telling him why, he would still get an awful shock on seeing her. It would be far better if she could talk to him first on the phone—soften him up for the disappointment...

There lay the rub. Adam didn’t usually bother to head his letters with any address and the recent letters hadn’t even been dated. All she had to go on was the North Shore box number he had originally given her.

While Helen was upstairs packing the vast number of clothes she had brought for her few days’ visit, Honor leafed through the telephone book with sweaty palms although she already knew what she would find: curiosity had tempted her to peep once before. There was no A. Blake in either the personal or business listings with an address on the North Shore.

This time, desperation led her to run through all the very numerous Auckland Blakes and at the very bottom of the alphabetical listings something jumped out at her.

Z. Blake, Arrow House, Blake Rd, Evansdale.

Honor blinked. Coincidence? A vague memory stirred and her thick brows drew together in an effort to bring it into focus. Hadn’t she read in the local paper a few years ago about a local hero, Zachary Blake, who had made a fortune diversifying his family’s citrus fruit orchard into production of avocados, kiwi fruit, nashi and other exotic and expensive fruits aimed at the overseas restaurant market? He had been one of the first ‘Kiwi fruit millionaires’ in the boom days before farmers all over the country started jumping on the exotic fruit bandwagon and he had used his wealth to diversify even further, into food processing and other related industries.

Might Adam be a relation of the Zachary Blakes? He had never mentioned having relatives who lived in her vicinity, but then she had never mentioned having a sister. Their letters had been for and about each other, a deliciously selfish and possessive indulgence that no one else was permitted to share.

But if Adam was a relative, even only a distant once, that might explain his presence at the Valentine Ball, since people in the area had been encouraged to sell tickets among their wider circle of families and friends. Perhaps the Evansdale Blakes could tell her how to get in touch with Adam. It was worth a try.

Never one to procrastinate, Honor made a furtive phone call to the number in the book, nervously aware that if Helen walked in and realised what she was doing she would probably earn herself another patronising sisterly lecture.

The discovery that Adam was not only known to the Evansdale Blakes but was actually in current residence with them shocked her into stammering confusion, especially when it became evident that unless she stated a very explicit purpose for her call she was not going to be put through to him. The sheer unexpectedness of it all caused her to hang up in a panic and only afterwards did she think it strange that the man had never bothered to ask her for her name and yet had seemed fixated on demanding to know what she wanted from Adam. The thought of having to ring back and humiliate herself by relating the ghastly mix-up to an unknown and obviously unsympathetic third party made up her mind. The direct approach was the only option left.

As soon as Helen wafted out the door in a cloud of L’Air du Temps, trilling farewells, Honor grimly wheeled her bicycle out of the shed. There was no point in trying to get any work done until she had done everything she could to talk to Adam.

In ordinary circumstances she would have enjoyed the bike ride, being quite used to the eccentricities of the dilapidated machine that she had bought from the previous owner of the house, along with all the other junk in the rusting corrugated-iron shed at the bottom of her garden. The Waitakere Ranges were a popular training ground for triathletes looking to build up their cycling stamina on the hilly terrain and although Honor was nowhere near their league, either in fitness or in the snazziness of their gear and complex machines, she shared their appreciation of a brisk workout along the quiet, winding, bush-lined country roads. This morning, however, an unexpected spring shower and the hollow nervousness in her empty stomach served to make her wish she had at least waited until after lunch to do her duty.

Consequently, by the time she arrived at the Blake house she had a very severe case of cold feet even before she saw its palatial splendour. Looking down at her mud-spotted shoes and stockings, she cursed herself for changing out of her jeans into a skirt and blouse but she had wanted to make a reasonable impression. Now her rain-damp skirt clung clammily to her legs, although thankfully her light jacket had protected her white blouse, which would probably have turned transparent. At least she had been bright enough to wear a scarf and she took it off now, running cold fingers through the tangled waves of her hair.

After wheeling her embarrassingly shabby bike a little way back down the road and parking it safely out of sight in the undergrowth, she advanced cautiously down the driveway, keeping close to the trees that lined one side, where the footing on the larger stones was easier for her smooth-soled flat shoes than the fine gravel at the centre. As she approached the wide front door Honor caught a glimpse of her reflection in one of the curtained windows and halted. Goodness, she looked like a tart with her skirt rucked up between her legs. Perhaps modesty would be better served by taking her stockings off. Her skirt would be less likely to stick to smooth, bare legs.

She made a smart about-turn on to a narrow paved pathway along the side of the house, looking around for some cover. There was a little thicket of low-growing shrubs next to a fishpond and she ducked in among them and crouched to peel off the damp stockings quickly. Unfortunately her bare feet sank into the loamy ground and she had to wipe them with her scarf before she could slide back into her shoes.

By the time she rose from the bushes Honor was flushed and thoroughly annoyed with herself for her uncharacteristic obsession with her appearance. What did it matter what she looked like? She wasn’t Helen and that was all that would matter to Adam.

Unfortunately, just as she popped up a man suddenly appeared from the rear corner of the house, running directly towards her with such an implicit threat in the lean of his powerful body that Honor reacted to sheer instinct and began to run back towards the drive, unzipping her jacket to push the grubby stockings deep into the inside pocket as she did so. A garbled shout sent her deeper into panicked embarrassment and there were suddenly people running all over the place as she slammed into a brick wall with such force that she went sprawling backwards, her fingers trapped inside her pocket by the stretchy octopus her stockings had suddenly become.

‘Look out, she’s got a weapon!’ she heard, before the brick wall reached down and hauled her up by the scruff of her jacket, one beefy hand punching down into her pocket, almost tearing it off as he wrestled her for her stockings and dragged them free.

Ears ringing, Honor was conscious of all the chaos around her coming to a dead stop as the limp trophy was dangled from her captor’s hand.

‘What the hell—?’

Honor looked up into the furious brown eyes of the menacingly big blond man who held her. He had shoulders like a rugby player and a broken nose to match and his grip on her jacket was so tight he was practically strangling her with the collar. Perversely, his rough treatment vanquished her embarrassed fright and ignited her temper.

‘Let me go, you big, stupid oaf!’ she hissed, writhing in his grasp and jarring her fists as she pounded them against his iron chest.

‘No way,’ he snarled, shaking her until her teeth rattled. ‘What the hell were you going to do with these?’ He dangled the stockings tauntingly in front of her pink nose and from the flash of yellow heat in the brown eyes she wondered whether he intended to strangle her with them. He certainly looked as if he’d like to, witnesses or no.

‘Wear them on my head!’ she snarled back with furious sarcasm. ‘Or, better still, use them as a slingshot to crack that Neanderthal skull of yours!’

Dimly she heard the commotion re-start around her as several other men tried unsuccessfully to drag her out of the masher’s bone-cracking grasp.

Amid the turmoil she heard the startling words which had the effect of freezing her share of the struggle.

‘Police? You’re police?’ She cranked her head around, noticing that what had seemed like a crowd was only five men, all as big and brawny as the man who held her, and one woman who looked as if she could match them muscle for muscle.

She glared up at the man who still held her. ‘What is this, a training exercise in police brutality? You know I could make a complaint about this!’

‘You’re the one who ran,’ the blond giant ground out, unimpressed by her outrage.

‘I didn’t realise running was a criminal offence, Mr Plod,’ she snapped back. ‘If you’ve made a run in my stockings maybe I can have you arrested.’

A tiny snicker of inappropriate laughter from one of the men was quelled with a single look from the senior-ranking officer who now stepped forward to take charge.

‘I’d like you to accompany me to the station, miss, to answer some questions—’

‘I’ve got a few the little bitch can answer right now,’ the man holding her cut in crudely. ‘Who’s in it with you?’ he demanded savagely. ‘Where’s your accomplice? You must have one—you’re too dumb to have hatched this on your own. Is he your lover?’ He gave her body a contemptuous survey that took her in from head to battered toe. ‘If he is, don’t expect him to give a damn what happens to you now; I doubt if he thinks that a brown dumpling is worth doing hard time for—you’ll be the one to take the fall—’

‘Mr Blake—!’ The senior officer again attempted to intervene. This time it was Honor who stopped him.

‘Blake?’ Shock was piling on shock from all directions. Her heart sank as she looked into the blazing brown eyes. ‘Mr—? You—you’re not a policeman? You’re Zachary Blake?’

Colour raked along his tanned cheeks as if she had struck him a stinging blow. ‘You know damned well who I am, you lying bitch—’

‘That’s enough, Mr Blake! You can let her go now. We have the situation under control.’ The order came sharply, and this time the blond avenger reluctantly released her, stepping back and slowly flexing his big fists at his side as if imagining them squeezing around her neck.

Honor swallowed painfully. So much for the subtle approach!

‘I—don’t know what this is about. I’m just here to see your...to see Adam Blake...’ she offered tentatively, realising that she didn’t know what relationship he had to this man.

Instead of soothing him, her timid foray into explanation prompted a searing explosion of curses that followed her all the way to one of the unmarked police cars at the back of the house into which she was rapidly hustled.

‘You don’t understand,’ she cried, as they pressed her into the back seat. ‘Please, let me speak to Adam, he’ll know who I am!’

‘And how well do you know him?’ queried the senior officer in a strange voice as the policewoman slid alongside Honor from the opposite door.

Honor felt a tiny glimmer of hope that she could salvage herself from this comedy of errors. ‘Very well,’ she said firmly. ‘Just ask him about our letters. Tell him that my name is Sheldon!’

‘Our letters?’ He pounced on what he evidently saw as a discrepancy. ‘Is Sheldon your surname? And what is your first name, Ms Sheldon?’

She hesitated, disturbed by the sudden silky smoothness with which he spoke. ‘Helen.’

Guilty colour flooded her face, but she reasoned that, once Adam had vouched for the name, then she could set about putting her identity right.

But her brief flirtation with dishonesty cost her dearly, because the policeman turned away from the open car door and addressed someone behind him with sardonic humour. ‘Hear that, Adam? She says you know each other well. Says that her name is Helen Sheldon. Care to give us a formal ID for the report?’

‘Sure.’ A backlit figure moved around and ducked down to look into the car, and Honor gasped as she saw his face.

‘No. That’s definitely not Helen Sheldon. I’ve never seen this woman before in my life.’

The man that she had thought was Zachary Blake followed up his icy denial with a venomous smile that twisted his mouth from snarl to sneer.

‘Calling you dumb was an understatement. Didn’t it enter your tiny mind that it might seem a trifle suspicious to claim to know me at the same time that you were busy trying to pretend that you thought I was my own brother? Or maybe you’re being very, very clever. Maybe you’re looking ahead to a defence of mental incompetence. Don’t bank on it. Even if this turns out to be the bumbling amateur farce it looks to be I’m going to make sure that the case against you is nailed down tight. As far as I’m concerned people like you are the lowest scum on earth!’

And with that Adam Blake slammed the door and stalked off, leaving Honor in the ruins of her shattered dreams.

That Neanderthal thug, that—that rough, crude, bullying pig was her delightful, passionate, poetic, ideal man? Impossible!

If anyone was laying claim to a false identity, it was Adam Blake!