Beaumont Brides Collection (81 page)

‘If you’re quite sure.’ Melanie still sounded uncertain so Claudia kissed her cheek and gave her a hug.

‘Don’t worry, darling. I’ll see you later.’

Twenty minutes later, stuck in a traffic jam, she paid off the taxi and began to walk.

*****

Mac put his finger to Claudia’s bell and held on. There was no answer. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t up there. Hurt. Or worse.

He rang Kay’s bell, but before she had a chance to answer he caught sight of Claudia. She was strolling down the street, her long legs swinging in that easy, seductive gait that sent the blood rushing to his head. Just seeing her, so unexpectedly, took his breath away.

And then she saw him too and stopped. Just stopped, the look on her face unmistakable. It was joy. Pure unadulterated joy and his heart felt as big as a haystack.

‘Gabriel?’ She took a step towards him before hesitating, as if she wasn’t sure she could believe her own eyes. Then her face changed, the teasing smile was levered back into place and her thick lashes were doing their flirtatious tango as she hid her deepest feelings behind a mask of careless nonchalance. ‘What on earth are you doing here?’ she asked, casually as you like. But it was too late. She would never fool him again.

He’d thought she was like Jenny. Hard, selfish, uncaring. He’d been so wrong. And he was there because there was nowhere else in the entire world he would want to be.

He covered the ground between them without any particular awareness of putting one foot in front of the other, taking her hands in his as she looked up at him with those extraordinary eyes, the little black flecks darkening the silver irises.

‘I’m here because...’ Because he couldn’t live without her, because he had to tell her how much he loved her. ‘Because I wanted to ask you a question.’

‘A question?’ Claudia lifted one shoulder just a touch awkwardly. For a moment she had thought that he had come back because... Well, just because. ‘You’re always asking questions,’ she said, and he saw the disappointment in her face. Twenty-four hours ago he would have missed that. Now he knew what to look for.

‘Two questions, actually.’

‘Two questions,’ she repeated, disgustedly. Claudia didn’t care for the way he was looking at her. As if he knew something that she didn’t. ‘What do you think I am? An encyclopaedia? Why don’t you go for broke, darling? Three’s a charm, or didn’t you know?’

Oh, yes, he knew and there was a third question. A very important question, but that would have to wait. ‘I want you to tell me who threw the paint at you last night.’

He kept fooling her. When would she ever learn? Over and over she fell into the trap of thinking he might be able to care for her because even when she had gone to such heartbreaking pains to let him see that he was free to walk away without giving her another thought, he didn’t seem to be able to do it. And every time he came back her heart would keep hoping.

‘You know who,’ she said, crossly. ‘Joanna.’

‘It wasn’t Joanna. She sent the letters, she slashed your dress, but she didn’t know anything about the paint.’

She pulled her hands away from his. She hadn’t a clue what he was talking about, but she wasn’t prepared to play any more. ‘Gabriel, it’s all over. I don’t want to talk about it.’

‘Claudia, please, if you’re protecting someone, it’s time to stop.’

‘I’m not protecting anyone. Let it go.’ She waited for him to step aside, let her pass. He didn’t. ‘Gabriel, I need to pick up a few things before I go to the theatre.’ She tried to get passed him but he blocked her way, grasping her shoulders.

‘Claudia! Just listen to me!’

‘It’s over,’ she insisted, pulling free. ‘You’ve been great, Mac,’ she said, reverting to the name that everyone used, distancing herself from him. ‘I’ll write you a reference any time you want, but it is over. You have to know when to let it go.’ She couldn’t say it any more clearly, she thought, stepping around him, desperate now to get away.

‘There are two questions. You haven’t heard the other one.’ Claudia stopped, her back to him and waited. ‘Who is David Hart?’

She spun round, absolutely furious. ‘David is a friend. That’s all. A sweet, kind man who never judges me, never criticises me and never, ever plagues me with stupid questions-’

The squeal of tyres cut off her words and she stood, open-mouthed as a small delivery van swung across the road heading straight for her. She remained transfixed, glued to the pavement as everything happened in slow motion around her. The van mounting the pavement. A glimpse of the driver’s face contorted in pain, or rage. Someone shouting from a long way off for her to move.

Then Gabriel caught her, lifted her and flung her out of the way. She threw up her arms to protect herself as she hit the pavement and rolled, automatically using the method Tony had taught her so painstakingly before her parachute jump and which she had so notable failed to employ at the time. And she lay there for a moment, winded, trying desperately to suck air into her lungs so that she could scream.

It was so quiet.

Then the sounds began to fill in the eerie silence around her. The crash as the car piled into something. The pounding of feet running towards them. Someone shouting instructions to call an ambulance and the fire brigade. A low moaning. Then she realised the sound was coming from her and she opened her eyes.

Her eyes were a few inches above the grey pavement and for a moment she couldn’t think why. Then she remembered Gabriel and she turned her head. He was lying a few feet from her. He was horribly still and blood was beginning to pool at the side of his head. And then she did scream.

*****

‘Gabriel?’ She’d been sitting beside him for hours, waiting for him to come round fully from the anaesthetic. He’d drifted in and out several times. Once he’d spoken to her but she could see that he wasn’t absolutely conscious.

Now when he turned his head his blue eyes were clear and bright against the pallid colour of his skin and he smiled as she stood up and took his hand.

‘I like your hair. I didn’t have a chance to tell you before.’

‘No.’ Damn. She hadn’t cried so far but now, when he was conscious, her eyes were filling with tears.

‘And you’re not hurt.’

She gave a little sniff. ‘Thanks to you. You saved my life.’

‘Not really. If I hadn’t kept you talking on the pavement you’d have been inside your flat well out of harm’s way.’

‘Not quite.’ She hesitated. ‘It wasn’t an accident, Gabriel. He was trying to kill me. That’s what you were trying to tell me, wasn’t it? That there was someone else? If I’d listened this would never...’ What began as a gesture towards the bed ended with her hand stuffed into her mouth to stop herself from screaming.

Gabriel reached up, rescued her fingers and carried them to his cheek. ‘Who was he, Claudia? Who was the man in the van?’ She told him the man’s name, who he was and watched the slow realisation cross his face. ‘The man who crippled your mother?’ She nodded. ‘But why?’

Claudia shrugged. ‘Who knows? Dad believes it was the photograph that set him off. I look sufficiently like her in all honesty, but the photograph was touched up and I had my hair done in exactly the same way. I was even wearing one of her dresses. He probably recognised it. He might even have bought it for her.’ She closed her eyes, trying to blot out the horror of it all. ‘I suppose he thought she’d come back to haunt him, to expose him. By attacking me he must have hoped to get rid of her, put the genie back into the bottle. The trouble was I kept bouncing back. I was on the television, three times in four days as well as in the Stalker promos. The guilt had probably been eating away at him all these years. It just needed something like that photograph to make him snap.’

‘I suppose his death will be put down to a heart attack? Another cover up?’

‘I hope so. Let the dead keep their secrets.’

‘Yes, well, I’m glad it’s over.’ He turned away, staring straight ahead at the clock. Then he said,

‘Shouldn’t you be at the theatre?’

‘Should I?’

‘Well, someone should be. Losing one leading lady might be construed as bad luck. Two looks a touch careless from where I’m lying.’

‘There’s always another actress waiting in the wings, Gabriel. Tonight it’s the turn of the girl who has been playing the maid to get her chance as Amanda, and the ASM gets to play the maid’s role. Dreams, you see, really can come true.’ She paused to gather her breath. ‘As for me, well I have to tell you, Gabriel MacIntyre, that there isn’t a play, or a film, or a television series, or a part in any one of them that would have kept me away from you.’ He didn’t answer and she stared down at her hands awkwardly twisting the corner of the sheet. ‘You might so easily have been killed. All the time in the ambulance I kept thinking that you might die and I wouldn’t ever have the chance to tell you how much I love you. You don’t have to do anything about it. But I wanted you to know.’ Still he said nothing. ‘That’s all.’

‘Can I ask you a question?’

Claudia sighed. ‘Weren’t you listening? Or did that car knock what sense you had clean out of your head? I told you, David is just friend. He’s never-’

‘Forget David. Three’s a charm you said.’

‘Did I? Oh. Well, yes, I suppose I did.’

‘Then let’s hope it works.’ He turned to her, then, regarding her gravely, before motioning her closer. She leaned over him. ‘Closer,’ he murmured. Then as she put her ear down to his mouth, he caught her and pulled her down beside him, ignoring the cry of alarm as she toppled over, ignoring the pain that shot through his leg. That was a familiar pain and he knew that it would go away in its own good time.

‘Gabriel, for goodness sake, your leg!’

‘Stay exactly where you are and my leg won’t be a problem.’

‘I can’t stay here!’

‘You’ll have to.’ His mouth widened in a broad grin as she glanced nervously towards the door. ‘I want to ask you a question and I want your undivided attention.’

She was inches above him, her body pressed along the length of his and suddenly she didn’t care who might be outside in the corridor. She only cared about him. ‘You’ve got it, my love. I’m all yours.’

‘Then there’s only one more thing to settle. Are you going to marry me without a fuss, Claudia Beaumont? Or will I have to take a leaf from Luke Devlin’s book and lay siege until you surrender. I warn you that unlike him I have the training for it so you might as well give up without a fuss.’

‘Is that right?’ She looked into his eyes, saw that he meant every word he said and a warm glow began to spread through her entire body. ‘Will we live in the cottage?’

‘Would you like to?’

‘I think I’d like to bathe by candlelight and swim as the sun rises.’

‘But only in the summer,’ he advised. ‘We’ll extend the place, I’ve got the plans drawn up already.’ He paused. ‘And we’ll put in electricity.’

‘Who needs electricity, when I’ve got you to keep me warm?’

‘Can I take that as a yes?’ he enquired, huskily.

‘Mmmm.’ She eased herself down onto him, avoiding the cage that protected his injured leg. ‘How’s your head?’ She lightly touched the dressing pad that covered the small scalp wound that had produced such a frightening amount of blood.

‘A bit sore.’

‘Would you like me to kiss it better?’

‘I thought you’d never offer.’

And her kiss was everything he knew it would be. All the promises, all the answers to any question he had ever asked. After a while, he eased her down beside him. ‘Well?’

Claudia put her head on his shoulder and snuggled against him. ‘Ask me again when you’re not concussed and I’ll take you seriously.’

‘I’ve never been more serious in my entire life,’ he assured her. Then he yawned. ‘Or had so little sleep outside a war zone.’

‘Sssh,’ Claudia murmured.

And when the nurse looked in a few minutes later, they were curled up in each other’s arms in the narrow bed, fast asleep.

*****

‘How’s our hero doing?’ the ward sister asked, as the nurse returned to the desk to write up her notes.

‘Oh, he’s doing pretty well,’ she said. And she smiled to herself. ‘In fact he’s making a quite remarkable recovery.’