Man-Hater. PENNY JORDAN
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‘I don’t know…’
‘I heard everything,’ Kelly cut in coolly, marvelling at her own control. ‘Everything, and if you think I’d allow you so much as touch me now I…’
‘Why, you sanctimonious little prude!’ Colin snarled, slamming the door and walked towards her. ‘Do you honestly believe I wanted to touch you? No way,’ he told her cruelly. ‘You’ve got nothing that appeals to me, Kelly. You can’t hold a candle to Pat, you’re frigid, or damn near, and…’
‘I do have one thing you want—apparently…’ Kelly interrupted acidly, hoping he wouldn’t guess at the pain that tore at her insides. ‘My money—well, you won’t get a penny of it, Colin. First thing tomorrow I’m having the marriage annulled!’
‘Annulled?’ He advanced to the bed, the cruelty in his eyes frightening her into rigid tension. ‘No way,’ he told her softly. ‘I might not want you, Kelly, but I sure as hell want that money, and there’s no way you’re going to cheat me of it now. So you think you’ll get an annulment, do you?’ He laughed softly in his throat and terror stalked her as he stared down at her, slowly removing his sweater and then his jeans.
She wanted to run, but fear held her rooted to the spot, cowering on the bed, wishing she had the courage to get up and flee. The silk wrap she had put on after her bath was ripped from neck to hem in the degrading scene that followed, pain and fear locking Kelly’s throat against the screams of terror building up there. Colin’s hands bruised her body, just as his callous words had bruised her heart.
‘Frigid bitch!’ he swore at her, when her body clenched protestingly against him, hurt and frightened beyond any possible arousal, and he flung himself off the bed to stare furiously down at her.
‘You’re not a woman, you’re an iceberg,’ he taunted her as he pulled on his jeans. ‘No one could make love to you—they’d freeze first!’
He was gone before she could speak, leaving her dry-eyed, her heart pounding with fear, her body aching with tension and the bruises and scratches Colin had inflicted upon it.
Frigid, frigid, frigid—the word danced jerkily through her mind as she lay there, unable to move, unable to cry, unable to properly comprehend. She heard the door slam as Colin left the house—going where—to Pat, who wasn’t an iceberg, who wouldn’t make him freeze? And then what? Would he come back and carry out his threat? Could she endure it if he did? Rape was an ugly word for an ugly deed, but that was what it would be if Colin consummated their marriage.
She was still lying there in the darkness when she heard the doorbell. She let it peal, until she realised that it wasn’t going to stop. It had to be Colin, and she dressed slowly, hoping he would go away, but he didn’t.
She unlocked the door, noticing that a false dawn was pearling the sky. She must have been lying there half-conscious for several hours, but it had seemed like only minutes since he left.
‘Mrs Langdon?’ She peered up at the policeman standing on the doorstep. ‘May I come in for a second?’
Somehow he had done and he was inside and asking where the kitchen was, saying something about a nice cup of tea. Kelly’s numbed mind couldn’t follow what he was saying, only that he was using a soothing tone, the sort one used on frightened animals—or children. Slowly, what he was saying sank in.
‘Now, come and sit down,’ he said gently, his own manner awkward and compassionate.
‘He wouldn’t have felt a thing,’ he told her. ‘Killed straight off…’ He didn’t add that his sergeant had said—and so he deserved to be, driving like a maniac on the wrong side of the road, with too much drink inside him.
Colin was dead! Why didn’t she feel something? Anything? She couldn’t. All she felt was numb. She watched the young policeman with a curious sense of detachment. He seemed more concerned than her. He drank the tea he had made quickly and asked her if she had any family.
She shook her head and heard herself saying clearly, ‘It’s all right, I shall be perfectly all right. Please don’t worry…’
‘Rum do,’ the constable told the sergeant at the station later. ‘Didn’t so much as turn a hair.’
‘Takes all sorts,’ the sergeant commented, ‘and news like that takes ’em all in different ways. Don’t worry about it too much, lad,’ he comforted the younger man—it was only his second ‘fatal’ and it was always hard to have to be the one to break the news.
ALONE IN THE HUGE Victorian house, Kelly’s own emotion was one of thankfulness. Of relief. Her love for Colin had gone, destroyed by the discovery that he had simply been using her. Her body ached from his cruelty, and her mind felt blunted and bruised. All she wanted to do was sleep. But there was one thing she must never do, and that was that she must never again be foolish enough to allow any man to deceive her as Colin had done. She must remember always that she was rich, that she was undesirable apart from her money and that she must always, always be on her guard. Always…
‘ALWAYS…’ With a start, Kelly realised that she had said the word aloud. Grimacing, she shrugged. She had come a long way from the girl she had been at eighteen. She was, after all, eight years older, eight years wiser. She glanced down at her hand where Colin’s rings still glittered.
She wore them as a reminder; just as she used her married name. Since Colin’s death she had learned that she was attractive to men, but she had never stopped wondering cynically why, and she thought she knew the answer. Those who were married simply wanted a few brief hours of escapism and thought they could use her body to achieve it, and those who weren’t wanted to secure their future through her wealth and weren’t averse to making love to her if by doing so they could achieve that object. She despised them all with equal fervour.
‘A man-hater,’ one of them had once called her, but didn’t she have good reason to be? And hadn’t Jeremy just confirmed that she was right?
CHAPTER TWO
SHE worried about the weekend when she should have been thinking about her work. There had been something in Jeremy’s manner which suggested that he might be contemplating forcing the issue. A visit to her bedroom uninvited, perhaps? It had happened before—albeit not with Jeremy. And if she refused the invitation, how would Sue feel? Sue who had lost her longed-for baby before it was even born.
Kelly fretted over the problem for most of the day and left the office feeling jaded and tense.
She was half-way down a tube escalator when the advertisement caught her eye: ‘Need a companion? An escort?’ it asked. ‘Phone us—we can provide either, male or female—to accompany you to that special function which you simply can’t attend alone.’
Was it genuine, or was she being naïve? What was the matter with her? she asked herself as she hurried on to the tube. Surely she wasn’t considering hiring an escort? But why not? It would be one way of keeping Jeremy at bay; and without the complications taking any other escort with her might involve. She had many male acquaintances, but there wasn’t one of them who wouldn’t leap immediately to the wrong conclusion if she suggested they spend the weekend with her.
She toyed with the idea all evening, alternately dismissing and re-assessing it. It was ridiculous, farcical, but wasn’t it also the ideal solution? There was nothing to be lost in simply making enquiries.
She dug out a telephone directory and searched through it. The agency had a surprisingly good address, a fairly new office block that Kelly knew quite well. She had contemplated taking a suite in it herself until she had received the offer from the insurance company for her present offices. Chewing her lip, she contemplated her alternatives. She could either go alone to Sue’s and risk being proved right about Jeremy’s attentions, or she could try and avert any unpleasantness by making enquiries at the agency and, if everything went well, employing one of their staff to accompany her.
Simple! So why should she be so wary and full of doubt?