Passionate Fantasy

CHAPTER TWO

‘CAN you take me to Dalkeith, please?’ Kitty mentioned the name of the well-known Perth suburb to the taxi-driver.

He grinned. ‘No worries. Whereabouts?’

‘Jackland Parade.’ She gave the name of the street, and the driver gave a long, low whistle.

‘Millionaires’ row?’ he queried, and looked more closely at her as he handed in her two suitcases. ‘Hit the big time, have you, love?’

Kitty flicked a thick ginger plait back over her shoulder. ‘I’ve got a job there,’ she told him.

‘Lucky you,’ he commented as he turned the key in the ignition.

Lucky? Her hands were cold and clammy. The way she felt at the moment, she was lucky she hadn’t been committed to the nearest asylum to have her brain examined.

In the week since her successful interview with Darius Speed, Kitty had had time to reflect on the wisdom of attempting her madcap scheme. The man with the quicksilver grey eyes had disturbed her in more ways than one, but mostly it had been her recognition of his keen intelligence which had filled her with dread.

In the end it had been Caro who had talked away her fears, telling her that it would be simple. She could be in and out of there in a month, maybe a week if she was lucky, with the film-script in her hand, and the eternal gratitude of her friend.

‘But what if he suspects? Or, even worse, guesses why I’m there?’

Caro had shrugged in her happy-go-lucky way. ‘How can he?’ she had quizzed. ‘You’ll be in the kitchen most of the time—you’ll hardly see him. He travels a lot, and while he’s away you find out the combination of his safe.’

‘How?’ Kitty had demanded, ever practical.

Caro had smiled. ‘You’ll think of something.’

‘Will I?’

‘Of course you will! Honestly, Kitty, you’ll be fine!’

But as the taxi waited outside electronic wrought-iron gates while a uniformed guard telephoned her name through to the house, Kitty felt like one of the Christians about to be fed to the lions. Even when they were given the all-clear, her nervousness showed no sign of abating.

They drove up to the impressive-looking two-storey white building. The gardens were extensive and beautiful, displaying much of the lush tropical flora which Kitty knew abounded in the state of Western Australia. She could see trees with bright exotic blossoms of red and mauve, standing out brilliantly against the clear blue of the sky.

She looked up at the house, her eyes registering its unpretentiousness—but, for all that, she knew that the property must be worth a cool half-million, at least.

But, to her surprise, the front door opened immediately, and it was not some uniformed minion who came out but Darius Speed himself, running lightly down the steps with all the grace and stamina of the natural athlete.

He was dressed in tennis whites: a short-sleeved T-shirt, slightly damp with sweat, and a pair of immaculate white shorts which came to mid-thigh, showing a long expanse of tanned and muscular leg. His hair was damp too, little tendrils dancing around the strong neck.

She stared up at him, momentarily transfixed. The sun was behind him—and his eyes were full of a clear, bright light which rivalled its brilliance. He looked, she thought, like the very antithesis of a blond Greek god—with his dark hair and his shadowed, mysterious face in repose.

But as he spoke her illusions fled. ‘Hello, Kitty,’ he said coolly. Then, as he saw her pull Out her purse and begin to open it, he shook his head. ‘I’ll get this,’ he said.

She watched, while pretending not to, as he walked towards the car. He had bent down, and was grinning at something the taxi-driver had said. Kitty gulped in unwilling admiration. At that moment he looked so carefree and so relaxed—the very picture of health and strength—a man at the very peak of his vitality. She began to wonder how a woman might feel to have those strong brown arms around her waist, to feel that lean, hard body pressed against——

‘Such a pensive cook,’ came a soft voice beside her, and she snapped out of her reverie in horror to find Darius at her side, a heavy suitcase carried in either hand with ease. ‘And from the look on your face you were worrying about more than what equipment you’re going to find in my kitchen?’

Hardly! And she certainly wasn’t going to tell him what she had been thinking! She fixed him with her sweetest smile. ‘I was imagining how you would react if my soufflé failed to rise,’ she lied quickly.

His eyes glittered. ‘I allow everyone one mistake, Kitty—but only one. Come, I’ll show you inside.’

She followed him up the marble steps. She must pull herself together—stop crediting him with powers of perception he couldn’t possibly have. He didn’t have the power to read her mind; he was just an ordinary man.

No, she corrected herself silently, her eyes swinging automatically to watch the well-shaped line of his buttocks, revealed in all their muscular beauty in the white shorts. Not an ordinary man at all. He had something which would always mark him out in a crowd, and it wasn’t just the outstandingly good looks, or the superb physique, or even that cool, calculating mind. He seemed to radiate some inner strength, some steely quality at the very heart of him. He looked, she thought, more than a little apprehensively, as though he did not have one vulnerable bone in his entire body ...

He led her into a large entrance hall. ‘Right,’ he said briskly. ‘That door over there is my study. I don’t care to be disturbed when I’m in there working. Not for any reason. Understand?’

She nodded, her eyes still taking in the vastness of the hall.

‘The main sitting-room is next door to the diningroom and over there——’ he pointed ‘—is the kitchen. I’ll get Simon to show you over properly later, once you’ve had a chance to settle in. I’d show you myself, but right now I’m a little tied up.’

At that moment, the door of another room opened and an incredibly pretty woman in her late twenties came out.

This was obviously what was tying him up, thought Kitty. His tennis partner. And what a stunner!

The woman was also wearing tennis whites—a short, pleated white skirt which showed off her long, evenly tanned legs. And, even though they had obviously just finished playing, she was clearly one of those women who didn’t sweat. She looked as cool as a cucumber, with not a hair of the shiny brown ponytail out of place, not the merest hint of a shiny nose, nor the tell-tale sign of smudged mascara. Even her lipstick had remained unspoiled. Kitty loved sport herself, but her pale complexion inevitably flushed pink within the first ten minutes of playing.

Darius’s partner turned her big brown eyes towards him, her hundred-megawatt smile for him alone.

He smiled back, his eyes crinkling at the corners. ‘I won’t be long,’ he said. ‘My new chef has just arrived. Kitty, this is Julia Davies. Julia—Kitty Goodman.’

‘Hi,’ grinned Julia. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

She gave Kitty the once-over, but the friendliness in her face didn’t waver.

She doesn’t see me as a threat, thought Kitty suddenly. ‘Hello,’ she said, forcing herself to smile back and quell the sudden rush of regret that she hadn’t been born tall and lovely. That her gingery hair and accompanying freckles meant that breezily beautiful women like Julia considered her no threat, considered her safe to work around a man like Darius.

‘Don’t give him too many carbohydrates, will you?’ laughed Julia. ‘We don’t want him piling on the pounds.’ And she gave Darius a playful punch against a rock-hard torso which contained not a hint of spare flesh.

‘I’m just showing Kitty to her room,’ said Darius. ‘I’ll only be a few minutes.’

‘Fine. Mind if I take a shower?’

‘Go ahead.’

And that, thought Kitty, spoke volumes about the intimacy of their relationship.

‘Bye, Kitty,’ said Julia. ‘I’ll look forward to sampling your cooking!’ She gave another megawatt smile and walked off with a wiggle, disappearing into a room at the end of the long passage. To his bedroom? wondered Kitty.

There was a short pause as they watched her—Kitty was dying to ask who the confident woman who had eyed her so dismissively was, but Darius was already speaking to her.

‘Come with me and I’ll show you where you’ll be staying.’

To her surprise, he walked straight through the house and out at the other side, into a beautifully informal garden whose vast size made her blink. He weaved his way down a winding path onto which a profusion of different-coloured flowers spilled, their hues like the contents of an artist’s palette. He stopped at last in front of a building painted in an ice-cream-pink colour. It was a single storey only, and looked so cosy that it reminded Kitty immediately of an olde-worlde English cottage—she half expected to see hollyhocks and delphiniums growing around the door!

‘I’ve put you in this annexe,’ he said. ‘I thought you might prefer it. It’s completely self-contained.’

‘The servant’s quarters?’ she murmured without thinking, then immediately wished she hadn’t, for he fixed her with a sharp look.

‘I thought that you might prefer the privacy. I have house guests staying sometimes—and as you’ll be serving them with food and drink for a lot of the time I thought you’d like your own particular escape-valve.’

Her heart sank. The whole point of taking this job had been to give her access to his house. How on earth was she supposed to get to know the combination of his safe if she was situated miles away from the wretched thing? ‘But what happens if they want drinks or snacks, say, in the middle of the afternoon?’ she suggested brightly. ‘Surely it would be much easier to have me—on tap, so to speak?’

His eyes narrowed at her unfortunate phrase, and she flushed scarlet to the roots of her hair.

‘If they want anything between meals I can fix it. Or they can. I don’t want you to be at my beck and call all day—that isn’t the way I operate. You’re employed to provide breakfast, lunch and dinner. And sometimes tea mid-afternoon. And if that sounds like slave-labour, then remember—the nature of my job means I may have to go off for two or three days at a time, and you’ll be completely free when I do.’

What alternative did she have other than to smile politely? ‘That sounds very reasonable,’ she said. Too reasonable. She’d have preferred a touch of the tyrant—tyrants were easier to dislike than reasonable men.

‘It’s now almost one,’ he continued in that deep, drawling voice. ‘Don’t bother with lunch today. If you’d like to get yourself unpacked, I’ll send Simon over in about an hour—he’ll show you over the main house. You remember Simon?’ he prompted, with an indefinable gleam lighting his grey eyes.

Yes, she remembered the tall, brown-haired secretary with whom she’d shared a short and somewhat awkward meal after her bizarre ‘interview’—when he had steadfastly and neatly fielded any questions which might have given her a little more insight into the character of Darius Speed. Had he told his boss that she had seemed unusually interested in him? she wondered briefly, before discounting the thought. He probably hadn’t thought to mention it—for wouldn’t any prospective employee show a healthy interest in the man she would be working for, especially a man with the formidable reputation of Darius?

‘Thanks,’ she said, giving him what she hoped was another polite smile.

He nodded his dark head. ‘I’ll leave you to settle in. You have your own kitchen, which is fully stocked with everything I thought you’d need. Anything else, order it up through Simon. There’s a swimming-pool in the grounds—please feel free to use it.’ He began to turn away.

‘And—when would you like me to start work?’ she ventured.

He frowned distractedly, as if she had intruded on his thoughts. Glancing at the watch on his wrist, he paused. ‘Let me see— I’m working on a script all day and I’m out to the theatre tonight. I’d like some sandwiches and tea at five-thirty, and supper for four after the show—just something cold which you can leave out. Nothing too fancy. Use what’s available for tonight—you can shop tomorrow. And now,’ he added, ‘I’d better shower— I’m expecting a transatlantic call very shortly.’

She had a sudden, brief image of him showering. With Julia? Would the pretty brunette soon be slowly and sensuously rubbing lather all over that magnificent body of his ... ?

Kitty came back to the present to realise that she was studying the bronzed shafts of his muscular legs rather too closely, and she couldn’t miss the tiny flash of discernment which briefly flared in the silver eyes as he acknowledged her scrutiny. A small smile played at the corners of his lips.

‘Well, I think that’s all. I’ll see you at dinner— Kitty.’ And he walked off back down the path the way they’d come, his tennis clothes dazzlingly and starkly white against the deep, rich colours of the flowers.

Oh, lord, thought Kitty, her eyes following him with reluctant fascination. How on earth can I work for him and how can I steal from him if I’m going to start conjuring up disturbingly erotic fantasies about him on day one?

CHAPTER THREE

KITTY’S hands were trembling as she pushed open the door and walked into the annexe, but her surroundings quickly lulled her into a calmer state, for it was impossible not to appreciate the comfort of the accommodation Darius had provided.

The sitting-room was deceptively large—but then she decided that perhaps the simplicity of the furnishings added to the illusion of space. The floors were of some pale wood which shone with the gleam of regular polishing. Several rugs were scattered here and there, woven with images which resembled some of the aboriginal paintings she had spotted in various Perth shops.

On the white walls were several large paintings depicting the Australian outback, whose vibrant colours dominated the room. They were all so exquisitely executed that she stood for a moment before one, completely lost in it. She saw the vivid cobalt-blue of a cloudless sky, contrasting with the deep dry red of the terrain, out of whose dust spiky, unfamiliar plants grew. She could imagine the harshness of that bleak and beautiful landscape. A different Australia, she thought as she gazed at it with rapt attention—and a world away from the sophisticated city she had seen so far.

Shaking herself out of her reverie, she explored the rest of the cottage. There was a bathroom with both bath and shower, a state-of-the-art kitchen, and a bedroom with a double bed in it ... For one wild, unstoppable moment she imagined Darius Speed lying darkly naked against the stark white sheets. She wondered fleetingly if he made love as beautifully as he made films ...

Oh, for goodness’ sake! She was becoming obsessed with thinking about sex—she, with the sexual experience of a gnat!

What was important was that she was here, ready to put her plan into action and to do a big favour for Caro.

Kitty owed a lot to Caro. The rather eccentric sixty-five-year-old had rescued her from the deadly-dull highway snack-bar where Kitty had been working ever since she’d arrived in Western Australia on a working holiday, feeling utterly miserable and determined to forget all about Hugo. Caro had employed her as a temp in her own employment agency, Caro’s Kitchen Cookies. Caro was friendly and clucky and Kitty adored her—and if the jobs she’d been sent on weren’t up to much, well, at least they’d been thankfully brief and a whole lot better than the highway snack-bar. Kitty had shied away from permanent work, thinking that it might be too restrictive, but soon she’d begun to hanker after something which would allow her to use her culinary skills, instead of zooming round carrying a tray all day.

Then one day Caro had announced that she had the perfect permanent job—‘but I can’t possibly send you on it.’

‘Why not?’ Kitty had wanted to know.

‘Because it’s working for Darius Speed—the cheating swine!’

That’s when the whole story had come out about Darius Speed stealing Caro’s film-script.

‘I sent it to him in good faith!’ she’d quavered. ‘It was brilliant—and now I hear he’s making it into a film, with not a cent to me, or even a mention!’

Kitty had begged to go on the interview. ‘I’m going to get your script back for you, Caro,’ she’d said coolly.

‘Could you really?’ Caro’s hands had fluttered as she’d waved her cheroot in the air. ‘But you will be careful, won’t you?’ she’d twittered. ‘He can be very devious, you know.’

‘Well, I can be devious too,’ muttered Kitty aloud as she began to undo the zip of her suitcase. ‘Taking advantage of an old lady, indeed!’

She quickly hung her clothes up and filled the drawers with underwear, swimsuits and T-shirts, and checked her reflection in the mirror. She was wearing cobalt-blue leggings and a short-sleeved silk shirt of exactly the same colour. A casual outfit, and one which was entirely suitable for cooking, particularly when protected by one of the deep blue cotton smocks she usually wore for working.

She unpacked her various lotions and potions in the bathroom, before glancing at her watch. It would, in normal circumstances, she thought rather wistfully, be absolutely wonderful to have a swim in the pool he’d mentioned. But these were not normal circumstances, and it was important that she didn’t lose sight of that for a moment. Important that she stayed on her guard where Darius Speed was concerned ...

She glanced at her watch again. It had only taken her twenty short minutes to unpack, and Darius had said that Simon would be around in an hour.

Her sneaker-clad foot tapped lightly on the wooden floor and, as the minutes ticked by, she became sorely tempted to go and explore the house for herself.

Why bother waiting for Simon to come and show her around? Why not show a little initiative? She would go and explore the kitchen in the main house, decide what to cook for the evening meal, and maybe—just maybe—catch a glimpse of where he kept his safe ...

She walked back along the perfumed path and into the main house, revelling in its cool, dim interior. The floors here were marble—she’d never seen marble floors in a private house before—and there was something so ancient and classical about them that she found herself having to resist an urge to slip her canvas shoes off, to feel the polished stone cool and smooth beneath her bare feet.

The house was also quiet.

Very quiet.

She stood still for a moment, listening, her head cocked to the side like a bird which suspected that a cat lurked near by. There was not a single sound to be heard.

Kitty made up her mind instantly, reminding herself of all the maxims learnt in childhood—about no time like the present, he who hesitates is lost ... so why waste an opportunity which might not arise again for some days? Darius was in the shower, which meant that the study was free. And the study was probably where he kept his safe ...

A number of doors led off the large main hallway and she moved lightly towards the door she thought he had said was his study, pausing as she gave the gentlest of taps, which went unanswered, so, pushing it quietly open, she stepped inside, her heart sinking with disappointment as she noted that it was a light, airy sitting-room whose doors opened on to the veranda. Not a sight of a safe to be seen ...

She retraced her steps back into the hall, her eyes scanning the doors anxiously, as if she hoped that their closed exteriors might provide her with some clue. Like a small painted notice saying ‘safe’— perhaps with a convenient arrow? she thought with a trace of humour as she knocked at a second door, her heart lifting as she walked inside and saw walls lined from ceiling to floor with books. Eureka! She saw a huge high-backed chair with its back to her which presided over a vast antique desk. His study, she thought with relief.

And then, to her absolute horror, the chair slowly swung round and, facing her, the quicksilver eyes as cold as mercury itself, the mouth unsmiling, sat Darius, his dark hair in damp tendrils, a telephone receiver cradled between neck and shoulder and— oh, horror of horrors—he was wearing nothing but a short, dark towelling robe which gave her a provocative glimpse of taut, hair-roughened thigh and an equally disturbing view of a dark, muscular torso.

‘Hello, Kitty.’ The deep voice was very quiet, a strange undertone to it which filled her with instinctive foreboding. ‘Looking for something?’

She thought, desperately, that her guilt must be written all over her frozen stance. If her intentions had been innocent, she would have been able to shrug and laugh it off, but, as it was, she didn’t like the way he was looking at her one bit.

She decided quickly to brazen it out. ‘Sorry,’ she said guilelessly. ‘I was looking for the kitchen.’