Читать книгу Love's Golden Spell - William Maltese - Страница 5

CHAPTER ONE

JANET HAD BEEN PREPARED to hate this handsome man whose touch sent uncontrollable sensations racing along her spine, whose low and melodious voice brought back memories of her childhood before it went sour.

“Welcome to Lionspride,” Christopher Van Hoon said, and smiled. He didn’t recognize her. She didn’t expect he would. They weren’t children now, and her name was Westover, not KeIley.

His teeth were brilliantly white in contrast to a tan burnished deep bronze by the South African sun. His golden eyes were black flecked. He didn’t look like his father, Vincent. He never had. He took after his mother’s side of the family. Janet didn’t remember Gretchen Van Hoon, but she remembered Vincent. There was no forgetting or forgiving him.

“May I offer you and your crew something cool to drink before we get started?” Christopher asked, holding her hand, still smiling. Janet recalled a biblical quote about how the sins of the fathers were visited upon their children. “I’ve taken the liberty of having wine punch brought out on the terrace,” he added, releasing her fingers. “Emphasize the punch. De-emphasize the wine—realizing, of course, that this is a working visit, isn’t it? I mean, neither of us would want to end up tipsy in front of the cameras, would we?”

She should refuse. She had a job to do, and she wanted it over. She wasn’t taking this as easily as she had planned. Seeing this place and Christopher brought back too many memories—painful and otherwise. However, there was the crew to consider. The air-conditioning in the van wasn’t working, and Tim and Roger could use a cool drink before setting up the equipment. So could Jill, the makeup artist.

“A drink of punch would be lovely,” Janet said. She felt guilty. There was no reason to feel that way. Even though Vincent Van Hoon was dead, he had left an unpaid debt.

“This way, please,” Christopher said. He motioned them along a walkway that circled toward the back of the main house.

Janet tried not to concentrate on Christopher. She wasn’t successful, even with the wealth of distraction offered by the mansion, its gardens and the view from the terrace. All around were sights and smells that helped her to renew her acquaintance with exotic Africa: flaming aloes, unbelievably large proteas, flowering mimosa. In the distance, the well-remembered swimming pool and bathhouse were separated from the South African veldt by a line of dense acacia and blue-gum trees.

Lions had growled among those trees. Elephants had filled the air with their trumpeting. Quaggas had made shrill and barking neighs. A girl had felt the thrill of first love.

There were no longer lions and elephants this close to the Van Hoon estate. They were locked in parks farther inland. As for the quaggas and the girl—

“Miss Westover?” Christopher queried, interrupting her reverie, offering her a crystal glass filled with ice and an attractive amber liquid. She took the glass with thanks, careful not to touch his fingers with her own. She tasted the punch. It was tart but thirst quenching. She turned to the scenery, resentful that his presence wouldn’t let her concentrate. She was resentful, too, that he didn’t recognize her, although his recognizing her could ruin everything. She would know him anywhere.

“Is this your first trip to Africa, Miss Westover?” Christopher asked.

She would spoil everything if she made him suspicious, but she couldn’t lie. “No,” she said. “I was here as a little girl with my father.” She didn’t mention her father’s name, and Christopher didn’t press for it.

“Do you find the country much changed?” he asked. She was nervous. The seasoned hostess of Animal Kingdoms in the Wild was used to asking the questions, not answering them.

“All things change, don’t they?” she replied. Often, as in the case of Africa, they change for the worse. There were those, Christopher included, who would consider her notions at odds with their definition of progress, but she couldn’t help that.

“How so?” Christopher asked curiously.

Her velvety black eyes weren’t looking at him but into her glass.

“We should start taping,” she said, determined not to be sidetracked into giving herself away. “We’re imposing on your hospitality as it is.”

“Believe me, it’s my pleasure,” he said with a charm and grace his father had never possessed. She would have taken pleasure in fooling Vincent Van Hoon, but Christopher belonged to the good times.

“We’ll be out of your hair as quickly as possible,” she promised.

His blond hair was like sunlight. Touching it would submerge caressing fingers in molten gold.

“I’ve had far less charming things in my hair, I assure you,” he replied gallantly.

He smelled of lime-scented after-shave. His dimples were deeper than she remembered.

On some mysterious cue, a black man appeared to collect the empty glasses, carrying them away on a silver tray. “What you’ve come for is this way,” Christopher said, guiding her toward the open French doors, disappointing her when he didn’t take her arm. The others followed in their wake.

The trophy room was immense. It was larger than Janet’s childhood memories of it and filled with wall-to-wall animal heads and skins. The latter were also scattered on the hardwood floor and used as upholstery for the overstuffed furniture. The room smelled sensuously decadent, of time-worn leather. Over the mantel of a large walk-in fireplace was a sunburst of guns. Those weapons had killed the animals on display.

Janet shuddered. She always had when entering this room. Christopher, standing close by, sensed her reaction. His questioning gold eyes turned on her. She enjoyed a second shiver that had nothing to do with the first.

“Someone must be walking on my grave,” she said, wishing for a better cliché.

She was rescued by Jill Marlow, who was anxious to start whatever makeup Christopher needed for the cameras.

Janet’s husband had told her there were so few blond heroes in the early days of the movies because they didn’t film well. Heavy makeup had solved the bleached-out problem for women but had never worked as well for light-complexioned men.

Christopher, though, didn’t have to worry. Modern technology had improved camera, tape, and processing. The Robert Redfords of the world no longer took back seats to their dark-complexioned competition. In. fact, Christopher would come off too well on camera.

He was so tanned anyway, and too handsome, too clean-cut, too… well… appealing. He was the stereotypical Dutchman, and his robust attractiveness would work against what Janet had in mind. She needed an unattractive slob of a man with a two-day growth of beard, sweaty clothes, dirty fingernails and no finesse. She needed someone as thoroughly obnoxious as Vincent Van Hoon had been.

Not only was Christopher all wrong, but so was the setting. It was too genteel. The animal trophies were too sterile. A television audience, jaded by blood-and-guts violence, needed to see a downed beast in the wild bellowing out its death throes before the viewer would get her point.

“I think Mr. Van Hoon looks fine,” Janet said to Jill, who was running a makeup brush over Christopher’s tanned cheeks and strong neck, paying too much attention to the smooth run of muscled chest revealed by his open shirt collar.

“Yes, he does look fine, doesn’t he?” Jill answered with schoolgirl gushiness that Janet found irritating.

The cameras were ready, and Janet turned toward an antler-bracketed mirror that commandeered a place on one trophy-littered wall. Reflected were her wide-set black eyes, pert nose and Cupid’s-bow mouth, all framed by a mane of thick black hair. If there were traces of a thirteen-year-old girl in her face, there were none in her full-blown breasts, narrow waist and long legs. It was best leaving the memory of her childhood in the same grave as her father. Nothing good would come of resurrecting it. Oh, but if only she could turn back the clock.

The taping didn’t begin well. She couldn’t relax, and it showed. There was no hiding from the camera. She got curious looks from Tim, Roger, and Jill. Christopher looked at her in a funny way, too.

She shouldn’t have come. Why had she? Her reasons for being in Africa needn’t have brought her to Johannesburg, to this house, to this man, to these memories.

“And this?” she asked Christopher, commanding her mind not to wander. She pointed to a skin stretched on the wall. It was a reddish brown pelt with irregular, dark-brown striping.

“A quagga,” Christopher informed her.

“And that one?” she asked. She pointed toward the mounted head of an antelope with long stout horns that swept back from its forehead in a saber-like curve.

“Blaubok—a bluebuck,” Christopher said, providing the translation. At the same time, a glimmer of suspicion registered in his gold eyes.

She was going about it all wrong. She was obvious in her singling out the extinct animals. She should ask about the wildebeest or the North American elk, those takes edited out later.

“You know, Janet,” he said on cue, “they’re extinct now—the quagga and the bluebuck, but it wasn’t all that long ago that they roamed this very spot on which we’re standing. There were thousands of quagga as late as the late the nineteenth century. My great-grandfather hunted them, but I can’t. No one can. We can’t even see them, except as bits and pieces scattered around museums and trophy rooms.”

Yes, the quaggas were gone, and so were the bluebucks—as were the young girl and the young man who had stood on this very spot so many years ago.

“My response to the loss of those animals is a feeling of deep regret,” Christopher continued. Janet listened for sincerity. She wanted to believe him, but he was saying it because she had tipped her hand. “Not only do I regret their demise,” Christopher said, “but I regret that more effort by my family wasn’t channeled into saving them.”

He was saying the right words. There had been a time when she had known whether he was telling the truth or lying. Now she didn’t know—not for sure.

“However, I’ve been doing my own small part by restricting my hunting to camera safaris,” he said. “Possibly that’s too little too late, but it’s taken this long for the Van Hoons to shake off outdated family tradition.”

The camera safari was a good touch. She would check on it. If it were true, she would give him good marks for trying. She couldn’t go easy, though, on a family whose quest for corporate profits had wrecked the chances of more than one poor beast for survival—as well as killing her father.

“Thank you, Christopher Van Hoon,” she said.

Within seconds, Tim and Roger were packing up the lights and equipment. Janet turned to Christopher and smiled nervously.

“Would it be possible to speak with you privately for a few minutes, Janet?” Christopher asked. During the taping he had called her by her first name, too. She liked the sound of it on his lips. It had been a long time.

“Privately?” she asked. He would confront her with his suspicions, no doubt.

“It’ll only take a moment,” he assured her persuasively.

“I really…,” she began, wanting but not wanting to be alone with him.

“Please,” he said. He put his hand on her elbow and delivered the shock of his touch. The sensation was more disturbing than his previous handshake.

The ever-present servant opened the door to the next room for them. Janet took a deep breath. She couldn’t lie to Christopher if he pressed her for the truth, not even if it came out who she was and why she was there.

“I thought you might have supper with me,” he said. It was the last thing she had expected. It was out of context. “I thought I’d be more persuasive in here, out of the hubbub,” he explained as they entered the room.

“Supper?” Janet echoed, confused.

“I thought we should have more time together—to talk,” he said. He leaned against the back of a wing chair and folded his arms. His muscled chest thrust forward, molded by the cloth of his shirt. “We do have things to discuss, don’t we, Janet?” he said.

There was a way he might have spoken her name to tell her their talk would be of old times, of shared and happy memories, but he didn’t speak it that way.

He was a man who had discovered a plot and was out to deal with the enemy. So, all his fine talk about camera safaris was pure garbage. He was his father’s son after all.

“Thank you for asking, but I have a lot to do at the hotel this evening,” Janet apologized. Her desire to accept was a painful violation of her promise to her father. It was a violation of her husband’s memory. “We’re flying to Salisbury the day after tomorrow and then on to Great Zimbabwe. There don’t seem to be enough hours in the day,” she explained.

“I think you’ll find the time in this instance, though, won’t you, Janet?” he said, sounding very confident—too confident.

“I don’t mean to be rude, but it’s quite impossible,” she said. His father had killed hers. She wasn’t here to dance to his tune.

“Very well,” he said. His expression had changed little from when they had first entered the room. “More’s the pity that your trip is wasted.”

“I’d hardly call it wasted,” she said with a nervous laugh. She caught a glimpse of the boy in the man. It wasn’t difficult. He was eighteen when she last saw him. His body had worn the stamp of what it would become, unlike Janet who, at thirteen, was due for major physical changes. “I think a replay of the tapes will show we’ve accomplished a lot in a short time,” she reminded him.

“I’m afraid I can’t let the tapes leave the house,” he said. His smile widened. “Not without your promise to stay for supper,” he qualified.

“I’m afraid I don’t understand,” she said. It wasn’t his threat to hold the tapes that she didn’t understand. It was what her staying for supper had to do with it.

“It’s simple,” he said. “I’ve always been extremely attracted to clever women. What you almost accomplished this afternoon was a very good show. Admittedly, it was flawed, but that you got this far reveals an admirable piece of planning.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Janet said, her resolve weakening. She could have turned and walked out of the room, but she remained rooted to the spot.

“Although I came out fairly well in the interview,” Christopher explained, “I’m aware how clever editing of those tapes can make my father the greatest detriment to wildlife since the invention of the firearm.”

“But why would I?”

“Come now, Janet,” he interrupted her, a steely edge to his voice. “If I momentarily failed to recognize your true intent, please don’t make the mistake of continuing to underestimate my intelligence. Considering everything, I’m asking a fair price for letting your friends walk out of here with their tapes intact. Don’t you agree?”

She couldn’t have heard correctly. “If you think I have ulterior motives, why let the tapes leave here at all?” she asked suspiciously.

“I thought I made that perfectly clear,” he said, so close she was heady from the lime-based fragrance of his after-shave. “You interest me more than the tapes—certainly more then whatever damage you hope to accomplish by having them.”

His interest suggested more than supper. “I have no intention of going to bed with you to buy what is rightfully mine,” she said, surprising herself with the vehemence of her outburst. Christopher laughed. She would have preferred disappointment to amusement.

“Please, Janet, do wait until I ask,” he chided and laughed again. There was less humor in the sound than Janet expected. “I mentioned supper, didn’t I?” he reminded her. “Although I might be persuaded to throw in a visit to the Ivory Room. Wouldn’t that make a marvelous supplement to your interview: a firsthand account of the fabled Van Hoon ivory?”

She hadn’t seen the Ivory Room. Her father had, and it should have served as a warning. Vincent Van Hoon, a man with that much evidence of mass slaughter in his basement, plus ties to the mining community, wouldn’t have been interested in feasibility studies for a wildlife preserve—no matter how much he had pretended to be so.

There was a sharp knock. The door opened slightly, and Roger stuck his head in. “Sorry to interrupt, but we’ve packed everything,” he said. “We’re ready whenever Janet is.”

“Janet has accepted my invitation to stay a little longer,” Christopher said. “I’ll have my chauffeur drive her back to the hotel later this evening.”

“Right!” Roger said, not waiting for Janet to verify Christopher’s statement.

“You had no right!” she said, anger coloring her cheeks. She wasn’t pleased with Roger’s hasty retreat, either.

“You are going to stay, aren’t you?” Christopher asked, although it wasn’t really a question.

She wanted those tapes. They were part of her only feasible plan for getting back at the Van Hoons. If Christopher was unimpressed by the damage the tapes could do, that didn’t squelch Janet’s overpowering need to use them. Her condemnation of the hunter-clan, money-mad Van Hoons might yet have repercussions Christopher couldn’t imagine. She hoped so.

“Yes, I’ll stay,” she said.

“Good,” he replied and kissed her.

She didn’t believe it. Not with Jill, Tim, and Roger in the next room. It wasn’t a peck on the lips, either. Nor was it a kiss she could enjoy, despite her curiosity about how kissing the man would differ from kissing the boy. It was aggressive, crushing her lips between her teeth and his. And his arms wrapped around her with a strength that made it impossible for her to move.

“There!” he said; his smile was the epitome of satisfaction. “Tell the world the Van Hoons attack women as well as wild animals.”

She couldn’t find her voice to scream. So when he released her, she slapped his face. The sound of flesh colliding against flesh was like a rifle shot. How apropos.

“How dare you!” she said, her breathing erratic. His continuing smile infuriated her.

“I’ll be sportsman enough to accept a one-on-one exchange, but don’t try to take advantage,” he warned her.

“You bastard!” she accused, her voice dripping venom. She went quickly to the door, willing her weak legs to support her. She expected to find Tim, Roger, and Jill in the next room, but they weren’t there. Nor was the camera equipment. She hurried through the French doors and around the house, praying she would be in time. She prayed in vain. The van was gone. She was alone with Christopher Van Hoon, except for the people who worked for him.

She could count on no one but herself. There was something disturbing about her predicament.

Christopher stepped out on the front porch like an Olympian god about to bestow his favors on an unwilling maiden.

“I insist you have someone drive me back to my hotel immediately!” she said.

“You’ll be driven to your hotel—later,” Christopher said, his smile mocking her demands.” Right now, Ashanti will show you where you can freshen up. We do, by the way, dress for dinner.” The servant who had collected the punch glasses appeared on cue.

“Dress for dinner?” Janet echoed incredulously. She expected him to tell her he had raided her hotel room for the only dress she’d brought for formal occasions. She wasn’t expecting opportunities for dressing up in the bush, where she was heading the day after tomorrow.

“I’m sure you’ll find something in the room to fit you,” Christopher said instead. “I’m partial to the black silk myself.”

“Then you wear it!” She refused to humor him. “I’m returning to my hotel!”

“Suit yourself,” Christopher said with a shrug. “I just hope you’re up to the walk.” He turned and disappeared into the house.

Janet looked at the driveway, knowing how far it was to the main highway, let alone to Johannesburg.

“Miss Westover?” It was Ashanti, waiting patiently for her to obey Christopher’s wishes.

She didn’t answer. She started walking away from Lionspride and the madman who owned it.