The Secret Father

‘Named for a woman, it’s almost the same thing,’ she responded, realising how astute he was at interpreting the slightest nuance in body language.

‘Not one of mine. I never bothered changing the name when I got her ten years back. The longest relationship I’ve ever had with a female,’ he acknowledged with a lecherous grin.

Hope gave a laugh, accepting the gauntlet. ‘Hark at the sex symbol of our times,’ she teased. ‘‘‘Not one of mine.’’’

Rather to Lindy’s surprise, Sam seemed to appreciate Hope’s mockery. ‘Keeping the name means I don’t have to worry about changing the paintwork every time I part company with a lady.’

‘This boy isn’t as stupid as he looks,’ Hope said, impressed. ‘I’ll get it,’ she added as the phone shrilled.

‘How’s the nose?’ Lindy asked, quelling the panic that threatened as Hope disappeared.

‘Lloyd thinks it’ll be fine if we stick to my left profile.’

‘Seriously?’ she said, examining his perfect right profile.

‘Candlelight conceals all sorts of nasty things,’ he said, running his palm lightly over the candle in the middle of the table.

‘You shouldn’t play with fire,’ she warned sharply. She wanted to snatch his hand away from the flame, but she knew that touching Sam Rourke wasn’t a good idea. He’d awoken feelings inside her she’d thought had died for ever.

‘Life would be boring.’ His deep tone had never been more honeyed.

Lindy found she couldn’t pull her eyes away from his deceptively sleepy gaze. Heavy, sexy eyelids drooped over the steady glitter of his azure stare.

‘I like boring,’ she said firmly. Boring, safe and familiar—and Sam was none of those things.

‘Shame.’

‘I’ll have to love you and leave you.’

Lindy tore her stare from Sam to look with incomprehension at her sister, who had entered the room carrying an overnight bag over her shoulder. ‘Leave…where?’

‘I’ll explain later. Sam will show you where to go tomorrow.’

‘You’re not coming back tonight?’ I must have misunderstood, she thought in bewilderment.

‘Can’t stop, I’m in a hurry.’ Hope avoided her sister’s eyes.

Lindy sat in shock, listening a few moments later to the sound of a car engine being started. The sound disappeared and she expelled the breath she’d been holding.

‘This is bizarre,’ she said, half to herself. It was so unlike Hope to do something so inconsiderate. Leave her alone with— Her heart gave a triple beat as she shrank from this new situation. Slowly she turned to look at Sam.

‘I’ve been here the best part of a week and Hope’s only spent two nights at home.’ He gave the information slowly, his eyes gauging her reaction.

‘Meaning?’ Lindy said, with a dangerous inflection in her voice.

‘She’s your sister.’

‘She’s not having an affair.’ She was stubbornly defiant and confident that, whatever her sister was up to, it wasn’t that.

‘You asked her?’

‘I did.’

‘Fair enough, but I have to say she seems to be doing her best to disprove that statement.’

‘Hope wouldn’t run just because some man picks up the phone. That would be pathetic,’ she observed with distaste. ‘There has to be some other explanation,’ she reasoned.

‘That could be love,’ Sam suggested lightly. ‘Wouldn’t you do the same for the man you loved?’

‘In a pig’s eye!’

‘I believe you,’ he said thoughtfully, examining her flushed cheeks and indignant expression. ‘I take it you did a lot of running for someone unworthy of the exercise?’

‘When I was young and extremely foolish,’ she admitted stiffly. Inwardly, she was appalled that this man could see so much behind her unguarded words. What was she doing being unguarded? Hadn’t her defences been built to survive any assault? ‘I’d bore you with the salacious details but I’ve forgotten them.’

‘I doubt that— Don’t,’ he said, catching her wrist as she pushed back her chair to get up.

Lindy looked at the brown hand covering her narrow wrist and his fingers slowly unfurled. She could still feel the impression of his hand, like a brand on her skin. Shakily, her anger suddenly dispersing like hot air from a pricked balloon, she sat down.

‘I know my sister.’ Her eyes met his surprisingly compassionate ones.

‘There’s no point us arguing about it, is there?’ he said persuasively. ‘I like Hope, I like Lloyd. I’ve no axe to grind. Just remember family loyalties can take a back seat when passion gets involved.’

The warning was well meant, she could see that. She thought of Anna, married now to Adam, and knew he was right. Priorities did change. A year ago she would have told Anna about her problems at work, but now she hadn’t. ‘I wouldn’t like to see Hope get hurt.’

‘She’s a big girl and well able to take care of herself. All you can do is be there if she falls flat on her face.’

‘You could be right,’ she mused with a sigh.

‘Nine times out of ten.’

‘Don’t you take anything seriously?’ Part of her wanted to respond to the beguiling smile in his eyes. This weakness made her angry.

‘I think that’s a virtue,’ he declared. ‘You think it’s a fault,’ he added sadly. ‘Actually, I take my work seriously, although I try hard not to let it take over my life. That’s why you can relax about me…us. I’ve worked hard to get myself prepared for this role. I can’t even blame the director if I blow it—as he’s me! A bit like a fighter before a big fight, I’m saving myself.’

She could see the glimmer of sincerity behind his laid-back humour. This opportunity was obviously as important to him as Hope’s was to her.

‘You really are an egomaniac.’ He must consider me a total pushover—with good cause, she thought grimly.

‘Turn off the act, Rosalind. I think I’ll call you Rosalind—it’s a lovely name and it suits you.’

‘You’re the actor.’

‘I recognise talent when I see it, Rosalind. You’re so damned good, I believed in the cool, emotionless, tepid image that you’ve got off pat. You blew it pretty thoroughly, though. But don’t panic, I won’t tell the world that you’re passionate and—’

‘Sheer male fantasy!’ she interrupted, her voice a high-pitched squeak rather than the sneer it was meant to be.

‘Don’t remind me of fantasies, Rosalind, or I might just let you distract me, despite my schedule.’

‘Where in the schedule does sex come?’ she asked, irrationally piqued that he could apparently cope a lot better than she could with the spectre of lust. ‘Between therapy and your personal trainer?’

‘I find talking to friends just as effective and much cheaper than a therapist, and I know my body better than a stranger—we’ve been together thirty-one years. Success hasn’t meant I have to conform to a set standard of behaviour for Hollywood actors. It’s meant I have the freedom to do things my way.’

‘Then why, Mr Golden Box Office, have you got your knickers in a twist over this film? Or do you always take a vow of celibacy when you’re working?’

‘Firstly, I didn’t mean to imply I’d taken a vow of celibacy. I think a relationship with you might prove pretty distracting. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I’d assumed you didn’t go in for one-night stands, or even steamy weekends?’ One dark brow quirked upwards towards his hairline and she flushed rosily.

‘I don’t!’

‘Neither, despite what you might read in the more lurid periodicals, do I. Although for you I might have been willing to compromise.

‘This film matters to me, Rosalind,’ he said more earnestly. ‘I’m typecast. I’m not griping about that; the business has been good to me. But I want a broader canvas. I’d every intention of financing this myself until Lloyd stepped in. He’s willing to take a risk on me—and it is a risk; make no mistake about that. As far as Joe Public’s concerned, I’m Sam Rourke playing Sam Rourke and everyone loves me. If I play not just a very unlovable character but one without a single redeeming feature, there’s a strong possibility they might not like it, even if I don’t fall flat on my face. When you’re at the top people are always waiting for you to fall. I’ve no intention of doing that.’

‘I can understand ambition and dedication,’ she said faintly. His open way of speaking was pretty shattering. Of course, this painful honesty could be part of a more devious ploy, but she didn’t think so.

He nodded. ‘This is the right time.’ Whatever doubts or fears he might have, he sounded superbly confident that he was up to the challenge. ‘But not for us…’

‘I wish you wouldn’t say things like that,’ she pleaded. The idea that Sam Rourke found her attractive was too much to cope with.

‘I think anything between us would be complicated, fraught with big emotional drama and angst.’

She had the best skin he’d ever seen, creamy pale with a sort of translucent quality, and eyes that could be stormily passionate one moment and cool and serene the next.

Sam’s observation had the effect of robbing Lindy momentarily of breath. ‘How fortunate you’ve decided to save us both from all that. I mean, I would naturally have been too weak to resist your fatal charm.’ He was the oddest mixture of self-deprecation and confidence she’d ever come across.

‘Ego the size of the prairie, that’s me,’ he agreed with a grin. ‘It must have been something pretty heavy to make a serious-minded lady like yourself step off the promotion treadmill,’ he said curiously. The action didn’t seem in keeping with the woman he’d met.

The sly turn of subject had her reeling off balance. ‘It’s only temporary. My boss made it clear that if I wasn’t prepared to sleep with him I could forget about extending my contract… I don’t know why I told you that,’ she said, expressing her amazement out loud. ‘I’ve only told Hope about the sordid details. I didn’t even tell Anna.’

‘Your other sister? Why not?’ He hadn’t visibly reacted to her admission at all and she felt extremely embarrassed about voicing it.

‘She’s married now, to Adam, who used to be my boss. If she’d told Adam he’d have been as mad as hell, and most likely he’d have done something about it.’ She gave a frown of irritation as Sam’s somewhat grim expression showed approval. ‘It was my problem and I didn’t want to be bailed out.’ She gave a dry laugh. ‘I could have asked Anna not to tell Adam, but no matter what she decides to keep secret from him the second he walks into a room she blurts everything out. It’s a sort of Pavlovian response.’ Lindy gave a smile of rueful affection.

‘Anna wouldn’t have approved of me resigning any more than Hope did. She’d have made an official complaint, no matter what the consequences to herself. As for Hope—’ she gave a small wry laugh ‘—she’d have delivered one of her famous left hooks. Me, what do I do? I run away, that’s what I do.’ She felt a surge of self-disgust.

Lindy raised her paper napkin to her face to blot the rush of weak tears that suddenly spilled down her cheeks. ‘God, I’m so pathetic!’ she wailed. With a fierce sniff and a gulp she stemmed the flow before it became an avalanche. ‘Don’t say anything sympathetic!’ she ordered gruffly. ‘Or I’ll start all over again.’ She hardly dared look at him to see what he made of her gratuitous confession. She certainly didn’t want him to think that she was angling for sympathy.

‘I wasn’t going to.’

‘You weren’t?’ Indignation shone through the tears in her eyes and she rubbed her nose furiously with bits of a tissue she’d shredded. It fell like confetti onto the table.

‘Wouldn’t that be pointless? You’d reject any advice or sympathy I gave you out of hand. You’re not even prepared to admit you’re emotionally vulnerable, so you can’t accept sympathy. You run away from situations that are out of your control, but then I’m sure you’re aware of that.’

‘What would you know?’ she snarled.

‘A mere man,’ he murmured, with a maliciously innocent smile. ‘The enemy? I’d say your self-esteem, or rather lack of it, is the enemy here.’

‘I suppose you’d think I was healthier if I had a love affair with myself, like you!’

‘I’m aware of my faults, but I don’t crucify myself over them. Be a little gentler with yourself, Rosalind.’

‘I thought you weren’t going to offer me any advice.’

‘And here I was thinking I was being subtle.’ He gave a sigh. ‘You’re too sharp for me, Rosalind.’

‘Will you stop calling me that?’ she said from between gritted teeth.

‘No,’ he replied, with a sunny good humour which she found quite impossible to combat or dent. ‘We might have decided to put lust off the agenda,’ he said with another sigh, ‘but I’m damned if I’m going to shorten such a lovely name.’

‘We?’ she said witheringly. ‘We! I seem to recall that being a unilateral decision.’ She went bright pink under the gleam kindled in the depths of his eyes. ‘Not that I have any problem with that,’ she added hastily. ‘But you were debating a purely fictitious scenario.’

‘Don’t underestimate how frustrating I’m finding this situation, Rosalind,’ Sam warned. ‘Or I might be tempted to make you eat those words.’

‘Oh, pooh! What role did you take that line from?’ she asked contemptuously. Let him shove that in his brash, egotistical pipe and choke on it!

‘You little…’ The handsome, smiling face dropped its guard for a moment, revealing an inner strength of feeling—of passionate intensity—that took her breath away. He turned in his seat at the head of the table until their knees clashed. Smoothing his thumbs along the curve of her angular jawbone, he took her face in his hands.

‘I don’t need cue-cards to cope with real life,’ he grated, looking not at all like the easygoing, humorous man he’d been moments before. ‘Are you afraid of me, Rosalind?’ His smile left his eyes cold and she shivered.

‘No,’ she breathed defiantly.

‘Maybe I’ve been lulling you into a false sense of security before I move in for the kill?’ His eyes were hypnotic and his sonorous tone intimidating.

She shook her head, the movement restricted by the grip of his long fingers.

‘Let’s hope I scare the cinema audiences more than I do you,’ he said, releasing her abruptly. A mocking smile spread over his face as he took in her expression of shock.

‘You…you were trying to…’ She wanted to take a swing at him and wipe away that smug, supercilious smirk. He’d been trying to scare her and he’d actually slipped into character. Of all the shallow, superficial monsters, he had to take the cake!

‘It was all wasted on you. You were totally unimpressed by my psychopathic aura of sinister threat, weren’t you?’

‘I was scared to death, you calculating beast, and you know it!’ she responded furiously. It was the fact that she hadn’t just been scared by his transformation, she’d been fascinated by it that worried her most.

‘Calculating?’ he said with an odd, strained expression. ‘I was just using what comes naturally to get me—us—out of a potentially explosive situation. I found myself with your face here.’ He carefully repositioned his fingers around her jaw, identifying the exact position from memory. ‘I knew exactly what I was going to do next, and at the last second I stopped myself by going into a diversionary routine. It’s amazing how women go for those mean, moody types who use them,’ he observed with a sour smile.

‘What’s that supposed to mean?’ she asked warily.

‘I could see it in your face,’ he replied. ‘You were totally enthralled by Jack.’

‘Jack?’

‘Your friendly neighbourhood psychopath, Jack Callender, the character I’m playing.’

The name clicked with Lindy as she recalled the plot of one of her favourite thrillers. When Hope had told her she was starring in the film version of The Legacy, Lindy had originally assumed that Sam Rourke would be playing the nice hero, the only one capable of seeing that Dr Jack Callender was a nasty piece of work who killed off folk who got in the way of his plans.

Hope was playing the part of Jack Callender’s long-lost stepsister, who appeared to claim her share of their mother’s estate. After her private preview Lindy could more readily accept Sam’s casting against type.

If Sam could re-create the claustrophobic atmosphere of menace the author had created in the book, they’d be onto a winner. Having spent nearly three hundred pages praying for the heroine to escape from his homicidal clutches, Lindy, like all other readers, had been stunned when the heroine had turned out not to be the innocent victim, but a fake who wasn’t squeamish when it came to murder. The twist in the tale had been cunningly clever. It was certainly a meaty role for Hope.

‘If you’re implying I’m some sort of masochist who’s attracted by manipulative brutes, you couldn’t be more wrong,’ Lindy protested hotly.

‘Not consciously,’ he conceded, stroking a thumb down her cheek. ‘But women have this thing about danger.’

‘I think it’s you who has the problem,’ she returned tartly. ‘At least I don’t go around pretending to be someone I’m not.’

‘I have no personality crisis, Rosalind, but I think there’s a little bit of Jack’s dark side in us all,’ Sam said slowly. ‘I think you were a lot safer with him than me right now.’

‘Why?’ She hardly recognised her own voice. The expression on his face, a raw frustration, filled her with more fascination than his earlier performance had. Yet there was danger here too—danger in asking the question, danger in prolonging this situation. ‘What were you going to do that was so bad? Or don’t you have a personality of your own?’

He sucked in his breath and his chest rose. ‘You want to know what I was going to do?’ One hand slid to her shoulderblade and the other moved to the back of her head. ‘This.’

Whatever devil had possessed her to push him to this point she couldn’t imagine. She hadn’t known such a creature dwelt within her, but then she hadn’t known a kiss like this existed either. It set out to dominate and subdue and it did both, but more—much more.

There was no preliminary, just fierce, hard possession. His tongue sank into the warm, moist recess of her mouth hungrily. The whimper in her throat, the fine tremor that rippled through his powerful body were all elements of the total mind-numbing confusion.

‘Satisfied?’ he grated, his hand automatically going to loosen a non-existent tie at his throat. Discovering the open neck of his shirt, he scowled and muttered under his breath. He was genuinely shocked at his brief loss of control, and alarmed that this woman whom he scarcely knew had been the catalyst.

‘I asked for that,’ she said in a stunned voice.

‘Not a very politically correct statement, but you’ll get no arguments from me on that score,’ he said in a tone that showed clearly that the brief embrace, if such a wild, elemental thing could be so classified, had not improved his humour.

Like molten lava solidifying, her body was regaining its normal control. Her skin was tacky with sweat from the enormous burst of temperature, but her face had gone deathly pale.

‘Dear God,’ he said, looking at her stricken face. ‘That was unforgivable.’ He raked his fingers through his thatch of thick, jet-dark hair and looked abstracted.

‘It was only a kiss,’ she said absently.

He touched the corner of her mouth where the delicate membrane had broken and a faint smear of blood tinged her pale lips.

‘You chose the wrong time to start playing with fire,’ he said gently. ‘Go away, Rosalind, before I try to kiss you better.’

The ambiguity of her response shone briefly in her eyes, before she did exactly what he suggested and fled to her room.

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