One Night In…

There was a knock at the door.

Guiltily she snatched her hand away. Leaping up, she ran across the room, re-wrapping the towel tightly around herself and dragging a shaking hand through her damp hair. Breathlessly, aware of the blush creeping up her throat, she pulled the door open.

‘Yes? Oh! Oh. You.’

He was leaning against the door-frame, casually, menacingly. Smiling, but there was a dark glitter in his eyes that made her take a step backwards.

Dimly she heard Fliss’s voice drifting out from behind the closed door of the bathroom. ‘Who is it?’

‘It’s OK,’ she called back shakily, ‘I’ve got it.’

He made no move, but raised an eyebrow. ‘Am I disturbing anything?’

Yes! How about my sanity and my sense of self-respect for a start?

‘No. What do you want?’

Oh, God. Did that sound how she thought it sounded? As if she might as well have said, Would you like to have sex with me? He shifted position slightly, straightening up, dipping his head, looking at her from under his long eyelashes in a way that made her feel the towel had just dissolved.

‘Well. There are a number of answers to that question. The politest would be “dinner”.’

‘I can’t. I told you. I’m going out. How did you find me?’

‘I asked for your room number at Reception.’

Anna felt her heart plummet. Oh, help. She had a lot of explaining to do to Fliss. Or to him. Should she just come clean now?

But he had already turned and, slinging his jacket over one shoulder, started walking away along the corridor. Spinning back to face her, he shrugged and gave her a half-smile.

‘Oh, well. It was worth one more try.’

Don’t go! she wanted to shout, as the blood sang in her veins and her hormones cried out for her to follow him. He didn’t turn back. She watched him disappear around the corner and then, shutting the door, slumped against it.

He was the man who was supposed to get everything he wanted, she thought despairingly—so why hadn’t he persisted?

She let out a small cry of frustration. Because he hadn’t wanted her enough.

Rounding the corner Angelo felt his hands harden into fists at his sides.

It seemed she had been telling the truth after all, and his instincts had been wrong. She was Felicity Hanson-Brooks, and she was staying in one of the most over-priced hotels on the Riviera, which was hardly the kind of accommodation one would associate with a committed eco-warrior.

He gave a small shrug. At least he’d found out now rather than taking any further trouble over her. Now he could forget all about her and get on with the deal.

‘It’s just as well we’ve been best friends since the dawn of time.’ Fliss sighed enviously. ‘If not I’d hate you. I knew it would look great on you—I just didn’t realize how great.’

Distractedly Anna fingered the gossamer-fine oyster-coloured silk. She had submitted to Fliss’s ministrations without a murmur, but all the time her head had been elsewhere. With Angelo. Wondering what would have happened if she’d said yes …

Forcing herself reluctantly back to reality, she managed a dazed smile. ‘It’s a fabulous dress. Thanks, Fliss. I’ll just have to try very hard not to think about the millions of silkworms that died to make it.’

Fliss gave her a warning look. ‘Good, because I’m sure that each and every one of them is up in heaven now agreeing that it was worth the sacrifice. Just look at yourself.’

Slowly Anna met her reflection in the full-length mirror. Gone was the smoky-eyed wild child. In her place stood a sophisticated society girl. The dress was short, a sort of baby doll style that managed to look demure while also being almost indecently sexy. The pearly silk fell in softly gathered folds from a yoke that reached just to the top of her breasts, and everything about her gleamed, from the tiny clusters of beads and crystals on the short bodice at the top of the dress to the little sequinned slip of a scarf Fliss had wound around her throat.

How could she look so smooth, so polished while underneath she was on fire?

She breathed out slowly, wondering how long the dizzying cocktail of hormones was going to keep pumping through her body.

Her hair, newly washed and straightened, hung in a dark silken curtain over her shoulders with no sign of the pink streaks beneath. She gave her head a little shake to reassure herself that they were still there, and flicked up the dress to see her denim hotpants underneath.

‘You can’t wear those, Anna! They’ll spoil the line of the dress!’

‘They’re fine. I might go to the beach party later on, and I can hardly wear this there. The GreenPlanet guys wouldn’t recognize me. I don’t recognize me.’

‘Excellent. That was the general idea.’ Going over to the wardrobe, Fliss selected a shoe box from the stack on the floor. ‘Try these.’

Inside was a pair of high-heeled sandals consisting simply of two slim diamanté bands. The room seemed to go very still for a moment as Anna looked down at them. When she lifted her head again her face was bleak.

‘I can’t wear them, Fliss. They’re too high.’

‘Ah. Then we have a problem. You know me and shoes—I don’t do flat. You couldn’t manage just for one evening?’

Anna shook her head. ‘My ankle won’t hold up in that position. The surgeon who operated was pretty clear about that. But thanks anyway.’

For a moment the two of them looked at each other in mute sadness, then Anna managed a watery smile.

‘Oh, well, I’ll just have to go barefoot. It’s exactly the kind of stupid thing people expect me to do. You know how I hate to disappoint.’

They could hear the thud of the music long before they reached the party. As the lift plummeted downwards towards the basement nightclub the hot evening air vibrated with rhythm and with sensual promise, until the lift doors opened and the full impact of the party atmosphere was unleashed.

‘Come on!’ yelled Fliss, dragging her into the mass of sweating bodies. ‘Let’s dance!’

A problem with the bones in her ankle may have put paid to Anna’s ballet career but it hadn’t stopped her from dancing. The music was loud and pulsating, a wailing cacophony of guitar and drum that seeped into her spine and turned her bones to jelly. Smiling into Fliss’s eyes, she tried to lose herself in the noise and movement.

But it was as if he were there with her. Every time she raked her hands into her hair and lifted it from her hot neck, in her head she was inviting the touch of his lips; every thrust of her hips in time to the throb of the music was wishful fantasy …

‘Anna! Anna!’

She opened her eyes, dazed by yearning. Fliss stood in front of her, grinning. ‘I need a drink!’

Anna stumbled after her through the crush, out into the relative quiet of the bar. Fliss came to an abrupt halt and cursed quietly. ‘Uh-oh,’ she said in a low voice. ‘Quick. Turn round.’

Too late.

Coming towards them was a blonde in a tiny silver dress with waist-length platinum hair.

‘Hi, Saskia!’ said Fliss. ‘You look great!’

Saskia inclined her head in silent agreement, but said, ‘Oh, I feel dreadful. I haven’t had a full night’s sleep since we’ve been down here—too many parties. But you look marvellous, darling.’ Kissing the air beside Fliss’s left cheek, Saskia’s eyes slid round to Anna and swept over her coldly. ‘And what’s this? Roberto Cavalli?’

‘You were never the sharpest tool in the box, Saskia, but I’d have thought that even you could remember my name after five years in the same class at school,’ Anna muttered.

‘The dress. It’s Roberto Cavalli.’ Anna remembered that sly, insinuating tone so well. ‘How kind of Fliss to lend it to you.’

Anna’s chin shot up. ‘How do you know it isn’t mine?’

Saskia laughed. ‘A Cavalli? Out of your league, Delafield. I hear that Ifford Park is having to throw itself open to parties of schoolchildren again this year. Sad, really.’

Noticing the storm clouds gathering in Anna’s eyes, Fliss stepped in quickly.

‘Love the hair, Saskia! It looks astonishingly real.’

Saskia looked smug. ‘It is real. Swedish, apparently. Feel. The Sunday Tribune paid for it. I heard that they asked you to do that article too, Anna. Pity they didn’t devote a bit more of the budget to you. But then—’ she paused, flicking one long, sugary-pink acrylic nail ‘—I suppose you should think yourself pretty lucky you were asked to do it at all as it’s an article about the daughters of the aristocracy. Trade Descriptions Act, and all that.’

The colour drained from Anna’s face and beside her Fliss gave a shocked gasp.

‘Anyway, must go. So many eligible bachelors to dance with, so little time. Enjoy the party, darlings.’ She gave a little smirk as she teetered off and then turned back, her long hair swishing out like a pale vampire’s cloak.

‘Isn’t it your birthday any day soon, Anna? I think I remember that it was pretty close to mine.’

‘Yes.’

‘Are you having a party this year? Do let me know if you are—I’d love to come.’

‘Oh, she is such a cow. Anna! Wait!’

Fliss’s voice reached Anna over the heads of the crowd as she pushed her way through but she didn’t slow down. She knew it was stupid to let Saskia’s barbed comments upset her, but as usual they had flown with unerring accuracy right to her rawest nerve.

She had been stupid to come.

Flinging herself through an unmarked door, she found herself in the merciful quiet of a dimly lit corridor. Heart hammering, she leaned back against the scarlet damask-covered wall and closed her eyes, waiting for the demons that snapped at her heels to retreat.

A moment later Fliss appeared, her face creased with concern.

‘I’m sorry, Anna. I’d forgotten how poisonous she is. Or how jealous of you.’

‘Jealous?’ Anna gave a harsh laugh. ‘I doubt it. She’s mummy and daddy’s little princess, rich and spoiled and pampered. What on earth has she got to be jealous of me for? I’m nothing. Nobody. As she likes to remind me whenever we meet.’

Gently Fliss took her arm. ‘Don’t. Come on. Let’s go and get that drink. We may as well get tipsy at her expense.’

‘No.’ Anna pulled away. ‘I’d rather drink cyanide. And I’m not going back in there either. Sorry, Fliss. I’m going to head back to the château—but I really should go and change out of this dress first.’

Fliss shook her head. ‘It’s fine. Keep it—it was pretty much made for you. Are you sure you’ll be all right?’

‘Absolutely.’ Anna looked around for a way out. Several doors led off the dingy corridor and she made for the nearest one. ‘Get back to the party and I’ll call you soon.’

Without looking back, Anna pushed open the door and slipped through.

The room she found herself standing in was dark and smelled of cigar smoke and maleness spiked with excitement. And danger.

She’d found the casino.

Recklessly she strode forward, any hesitancy driven away by the adrenalin rush of fury and the persistent, painful drumbeat of desire in the cradle of her pelvis.

The beat of the music from the party was just discernible, but in here all was hushed. At the tables men in dinner jackets eyed each other through clouds of cigar smoke and spoke only when necessary. Standing behind them, women in evening dresses looked on, mentally spending the money their partners were winning or watching their plans evaporate in a disappointing hand, a luckless spin of the wheel. Their mask-like painted faces gave nothing away.

The tension in the air matched Anna’s own pent-up feelings. Taking a glass of champagne from the tray held out by a waiter, she walked slowly past the roulette tables, trailing a hand along the backs of the velvet-upholstered chairs. She paused. A croupier was swiftly and impassively raking piles of chips off the emerald baize and Anna watched, fascinated, as the men seated around the table replaced them with more. The numbing warmth of the champagne started to steal down inside her, obliterating the pain of Saskia’s venom.

‘Any more bets?’

There was a further flurry of activity. In the halo of light cast by the Tiffany lamp hanging low over the table Anna could see beads of sweat breaking out on foreheads as men moved innocuous-looking piles of chips around.

How much money was represented on that table? she wondered idly. Enough to secure the future of the château?

She felt horribly restless.

The glass of champagne in her hand was deliciously cool against her feverish skin and she pressed it to her cheek, but it couldn’t damp the fire that seemed to smoulder somewhere deep inside her. The back of her neck fizzed and tingled, each hair seeming to respond to some invisible stimulus, and she turned round.

He was standing a few feet away from her, the bright pool of light from one of the low-hanging lamps over the roulette table falling on his mane of dark blond hair and turning it into a halo of gold. One hand was thrust into his pocket, the other was loosely around the slender waist of an obscenely elegant blonde in a scarlet dress. Completely at ease, squinting through the smoke with narrowed eyes, he looked like a particularly wicked fallen angel—beautiful, but menacing. And utterly compelling. The expensively groomed, formally dressed men around him seemed like shadows, or bit players in the presence of his raw, charismatic sexuality.

She heard her own unsteady breath, felt the panicky race of her heart and the searing wild-fire heat of desire scorching through her veins.

And then he looked up.

Angelo drained his glass of champagne and forced himself to focus on the game.

It was one of those nights when he could do no wrong, and the chips on his side of the table were amassing at a rate that had the other men around the table sweating with fear. But he was bored.

When winning came too easily it was time to look elsewhere for excitement.

The man at the head of the table held up his hands in defeat and moved away as the croupier moved his depleted pile of chips away from him. His departure caused a little ripple of unease to go around the table, and the space he had left was not filled.

Angelo looked down at the table. Everyone else was playing cautiously now, and he idly considered walking away and leaving them while they still had something. But the black dog of his old despair was shadowing him and he knew he would keep going. Keep playing. Keep pushing himself to feel something.

Anything.

‘Place your bets now, gentlemen, please.’

There was a rush of last-minute activity around the table as everyone placed their chips.

The blonde pouted and placed a perfectly manicured hand on one silk lapel. ‘Chéri? Rouge, I think this time, don’t you?’

A smile lifted one corner of Angelo’s mouth, but his narrowed eyes were as blank and expressionless as ever. He looked down, moving a towering pile of chips across the baize, pausing as he reached the solitary green marker. Considering.

Green.

The stack of coloured counters represented several hundreds of thousands of pounds, but around them his hands were perfectly steady. Green. It would be like making a bet with himself that he hadn’t been wrong about her or who she really was. The odds might be outrageously, overwhelmingly against him, but there was a spark in the dark, dark, self-destructive heart of him that urged him onwards. The money was easily dispensable, easily replaceable …

It wasn’t about the money.

It was about the danger. It was about that girl.

For a brief second Angelo closed his eyes and allowed himself to imagine the adrenalin rush of taking such a wild gamble— like a shot of alcohol on an empty stomach—astringent, invigorating, intoxicating. Even to lose would be something. Would make him feel something.

A sting.

Pleasure-pain.

Anything.

Opening his eyes again, he caught a flash of movement at the corner of his eye.

In the space left by the departed player, a shadow had fallen across the table. Cast by the light from the low lamps, it showed a woman’s silhouette—the sweep of her shoulder, the curve and swell of a breast that, even though it was only two-dimensional shades of grey made him want to brush it with his fingers.

Her perfume was infinitely subtle, but he picked it up instinctively, like an animal on the scent of its prey. Or its mate. That scent of darkness vibrated like a low note inside his head, drowning out the shriller, sweeter, more sickly perfume of the blonde girl beside him.

Slowly he lifted his head.

Like heat-seeking missiles his eyes found hers, his gaze searing through the space that separated them. His expression remained absolutely still as his eyes travelled over her, taking in her perfect poise, the elegance of the pearlescent dress, the dark silken fall of her hair, stripping them away to try to find traces of the trembling, rebellious girl he knew lay beneath.

And then he noticed her bare brown feet.

Sensation struck him like a punch in the solar plexus. Sharp, breathtaking. Surprising.

A ripple of impatience went around the table and vaguely he was aware of the other players waiting. The croupier hesitated. ‘Monsieur?’

‘No. I’m out. Settle my account, please.’ The croupier nodded respectfully and Angelo felt the blonde at his elbow wilt with disappointment. He didn’t care.

He was fed up with playing, fed up with winning. He wanted the next challenge.

But when he looked up she was gone.

CHAPTER FOUR

ANNA didn’t stop running until she had reached the bottom of the hotel steps and there was a taxi right in front of her. Heart hammering, she wrenched the door open and flung herself inside.

‘Château Belle-Eden, s’il vous plaît. The beach. La plage.’

She saw the taxi driver glance at her curiously in his rear-view mirror, no doubt wondering why a girl in an expensive designer dress wanted to go to the beach at this time of night, but Anna didn’t care. Anything to put some distance between her and Angelo Emiliani.

Green. He had been going to bet on green. To taunt her with the fact that he recognized her and knew exactly what she was up to. And to show her exactly how wealthy he was, and how little a loss like that would affect him.

She could still picture his hands as they moved the chips across the table. God, they were beautiful: slim, long-fingered, artistic, the skin smooth and golden in the light from the lamp above. Hands that could handle huge sums of money without a tremble—what else could they do?

A small sound escaped her—something between a whimper and a groan—as she stared wildly and unseeingly out of the window into the street-lit dark. It was completely new to her, this maelstrom of yearning that turned every nerve in her body into a taut string, vibrating with sexual awareness. She realized that she was shivering, sitting bolt upright on the back seat of the car, and with a conscious effort leaned back, looking up at the stars through the back window. But it was impossible to relax while every cell in her body was screaming in protest at being torn away from Angelo Emiliani.

‘Stop the car! Arret!

‘Mademoiselle? Are you OK? We are almost there—at the beach. You want me to stop now?’

Up ahead Anna could see the turning off the main road on to the private track that led down to Belle-Eden’s beach. In desperation and despair she rubbed her fingers over her stinging eyes.

‘No. Sorry. Carry on. The beach will be fine, thank you.’

Pulling up at the top of the track, the driver looked worried. ‘Ici, mademoiselle?You will be all right on your own out here?’

‘Fine, thank you. I’m home now.’

Stepping out into the warm night air, she breathed in the salt wind and heard the bass beat of music from the beach below. Hurriedly she paid the driver, suddenly desperate to get back to the uncomplicated company of her GreenPlanet friends and drink beer and dance.

Her bare feet sank into the sand as she ran to the edge of the dune, from where she could see the camp fire on the beach and the writhing bodies of people dancing to the music that came from some unseen source. Stumbling down towards them, she hitched the silk dress into the denim hotpants and put both hands up to her head, burying them in her hair, messing it out of the silken sleekness achieved by Fliss. The warm salt breeze caressed her bare skin. Every nerve-ending seemed to have heightened sensitivity and to be crying out for more.

‘Anna! You’re back! Cool dress …’

She moved through the crowd, closer to the camp fire. Normally there were only about twenty GreenPlanet campers, but tonight there were maybe double that number as friends had joined them. Gavin, one of the group’s founders, broke away from the people he’d been talking to and came over, holding out a beer.

‘OK?’

She nodded. ‘I met him.’

Behind his small wire-framed glasses Gavin looked momentarily bewildered. ‘Who?’

Anna almost wanted to laugh. How bizarre that Gavin shouldn’t know who she was talking about when Angelo’s face, his voice, his scent was filling her head and blurring the rest of the world behind a haze of longing.

‘Angelo Emiliani.’

Even saying his name set fireworks off in her pelvis. She took a mouthful of warm beer and continued slightly breathlessly, ‘I think you might be right about the pharmaceutical connection. I overheard him on the phone mentioning Grafton-Tarrant.’

Gavin nodded slowly, thoughtfully. ‘Wow. Righteous. I’ll get a couple of animal rights mates on to that in the morning. They might have heard something.’ He had started to drift away towards some more people who had just arrived, but turned back and called over his shoulder, ‘Nice one, Anna.’

She closed her eyes, inhaling deeply, feeling the rhythm begin to steal down inside her. It was more mellow than the vibrating wall of sound in the nightclub, but no less insistent for that. All around her people were swaying, together or alone, their eyes closed, their voices muted, totally relaxed.

With a thud of misery Anna knew she didn’t fit in here either. She had told Fliss this was where she belonged, but looking around at the peaceful, carefree faces in the firelight she knew that wasn’t true. Maybe it was all that talk of karma and chi, but these people had an inner peace, a deep-down conviction that Anna completely lacked. They had a passion for their cause.

She had passion. Passion that before now she had never imagined. The difference was that hers wasn’t going to be satisfied by saving the nesting sites of a few woodpeckers.

Her throaty moan was lost beneath the music. Snaking her arms above her, she let her head fall backwards and circled her hips as all the pent-up tension of the last few hours seeped out of her and the music took over.

Anna knew plenty of people who had sought the solution to their problems in drink and drugs, and had seen the fallout that followed. The cure for the frantic beating of her heart and the tingling adrenalin that was surging through her veins was not to be found in the bottom of a bottle or the contents of a syringe, but in music.

When she was dancing she forgot everything. The past blurred into insignificance beside the rhythmic immediacy of now. It was the closest she ever came to being simply herself.

Above her the sky was vast and dark indigo, studded with stars. Underfoot the sand was soft and caressing, and around her the low murmur of conversation gradually faded as everyone lost themselves in the dancing.

No one noticed that they were being watched.

Angelo got out of his chauffeur-driven car and leaned against it, looking down over the beach.

A slight breath of wind caught his hair, lifting it off his forehead, and carrying to him the salt tang of the sea and, beneath it, the more earthy scent of woodsmoke from the fire.