Pale Orchid. Anne Mather
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his hand inside the opened neckline of his shirt and in so doing loosening several more buttons. ‘So—she met Kazantis. Why didn’t you warn her?’
‘Warn her?’ Laura looked across the cabin at him, uncomfortably aware of the sensuality of his exploring hand. The skin of his chest exposed by his careless movements was as brown and smooth as she remembered, his nipples taut, an arrowing of fine hair only lightly roughening his flesh. ‘I didn’t know.’
‘She didn’t write to you?’
‘Well, yes. Yes, of course, she wrote.’ Laura dragged her eyes away, and tried to keep her mind on what she was saying. ‘She just didn’t mention her relationship with Mike Kazantis, that’s all. And … and after all, she wouldn’t know who he was.’
‘Who he was?’
‘Yes.’ Laura shifted a little restlessly. ‘Your brother-in-law; Irene’s husband! I … she … we never discussed your relations.’
Jason regarded her intently. ‘But she knew of me? She knew we were living together, didn’t she?’
Laura moistened her lips. ‘She knew we were … close, yes.’
‘But did she know we were living together?’ persisted Jason insistently, and Laura wondered if he already knew the answer.
‘It’s not important,’ she said, shaking her head, but he did not agree.
‘Perhaps, if you’d been more honest with her, she would have felt more able to confide in you,’ he commented brusquely, and Laura met his relentless gaze with hastily-summoned indignation.
‘Are you saying it’s my fault?’ she exclaimed, using anger as a means to avoid his questioning, and he shrugged.
‘I’m saying you were afraid to tell your sister the truth. Why should you be surprised if she feels likewise?’
Laura sniffed, and buried her nose in the beaker. ‘That’s a simplistic way of looking at things,’ she said, in a muffled voice.
‘I’m a simplistic person,’ he responded carelessly, and she thought how ironic it was that he should say a thing like that.
‘You’re the least simplistic person I know,’ she retorted childishly. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, does it matter what I did or didn’t tell her? Pamela’s pregnant, right? And if I hadn’t arrived when I did, she would have been dead!’
Jason considered her for a few nerve-racking moments, then he said quietly: ‘Exactly why did you arrive in California?’
‘Pamela ‘phoned me.’ Laura cradled the beaker between her palms and gazed into space. ‘I’d just got back from Aix …’
‘The South of France, I know.’
‘… and when she rang …’ Laura paused briefly, as the import of what he had said reminded her of something he had said earlier— ‘when she rang, I sensed something was wrong.’
‘Just sensed?’
‘No. No.’ Laura spread a helpless hand. ‘Pamela sounded strange—desperate! I don’t know why, but I knew she had to have rung for a purpose.’
‘A cry for help?’ suggested Jason drily, and Laura looked at him sharply.
‘Don’t you believe me?’
‘Oh, yes.’ He tilted his head back against the dark green velvet and studied her through narrowed eyes. ‘But, objectively, I’d say that perhaps your sister wasn’t as desperate to kill herself as you might think. I mean, she did rig herself a lifeline before jumping over the side, metaphorically speaking, of course.’
Laura sat up straighter. ‘That’s a rotten thing to suggest!’
‘It’s something for you to think about,’ retorted Jason flatly. ‘Laura, I hear of people over-dosing every day. Most of them do a better job of it than your sister appears to have done.’
‘You … you swine!’
Laura set down the cup and got unsteadily to her feet, but before she could make it to the door, Jason was there before her. ‘The simplistic view, remember?’ he said, his back against the panels successfully blocking her exit. ‘Laura, I’m not saying Pamela did this to gain attention, but it has been known. Remember that.’
‘Will you get out of my way?’
Laura’s hands clenched at her sides as she waited for him to move, but he didn’t. ‘Eventually,’ he averred, his tawny eyes resolute between the dark fringe of his lashes. ‘Go sit down. We haven’t finished our conversation.’
‘I have.’
‘Do you want me to use force?’ he inquired lazily, his eyes moving down over her high small breasts thrusting against the thin material of her shirt, to the slender curve of her hips outlined by the tie-waisted cotton pants, and she immediately abandoned her mission.
‘I don’t know what else we can possibly have to say to one another,’ she exclaimed, moving back into the middle of the floor and wrapping her arms about herself, as if for protection. ‘You’ve made your position very clear. Why won’t you let me go?’
Jason straightened away from the door, but he didn’t shift his stance. ‘What are you going to do?’ he asked. ‘Now that your attempt to find your sister’s lover and speak with him has failed, what are you going to tell Pamela?’
‘I don’t know.’ Laura shook her head a trifle wearily. ‘I’ll think of something. If I can persuade her to come back to London with me …’
‘And if you can’t?’
‘Oh, please!’ Laura turned away from him, gazing out through the window, across the blue waters of the yacht basin. ‘Why should you care? Our lives mean nothing to you!’
‘Yours does,’ he retorted crisply, and she turned her head and gazed at him over her shoulder as if she couldn’t believe her ears.
‘What did you say?’
‘You heard me,’ he responded tersely, folding his arms across his chest. ‘Why else do you suppose I’ve had your movements monitored, ever since you ran out on me? I know all about your life in London, and that creep, Pierce Carver, you’ve been living with for the past two and a half years.’
Laura half turned, her lips parting incredulously. ‘I—I am not living with Pierce,’ she protested, indignation vying with disbelief. ‘I work with him, yes, but that’s all. Your investigator was wrong if he told you there was anything between us.’
‘You live at his house!’
‘I have a room there. I also have a flat of my own,’ retorted Laura hotly, and then anger quickly enveloped her. ‘But that’s my business. I don’t have to explain myself to you! It’s nothing to do with you! I said it before and I’ll say it again: how dare you?’
Jason regarded her beneath lowered brows. ‘Why didn’t he come with you to San Francisco?’ he demanded harshly. ‘Doesn’t he care about your sister?’
‘Why should he?’ Laura was trembling with resentment. ‘Oh! I can’t believe this, I really can’t! You’ve actually been having me followed ever since I left Hawaii?’
Jason shrugged, making no immediate response. Then he said flatly, ‘I want you back, Laura. But you should know that. I didn’t want you to leave. That was why I thought you’d come back to Hawaii. I—foolishly, I now realise—imagined you had had second thoughts; that the feelings you used to say you had for me had overwhelmed your much vaunted scruples. I was wrong. I admit it. But that doesn’t alter the situation. I still want you—for the present, at least. Seeing you again has only confirmed that belief. And I’m prepared to go to practically any lengths to get you—even if it means involving your sister!’