Behind the Facade (5 page)

 
Her gaze returned to Kate, a slight frown on her face. Kate
stared back at her, not daring to speak but pleading with her eyes, hoping this
woman would realise that there was something more to the situation.

“Is that
my t-shirt she’s wearing?” Angela asked, noticing this fact before anything
else.

“Yes,”
answered Sean. “Sorry Angela. I didn’t think you’d mind. We didn’t exactly have
time to pack.”

Sean was
acutely aware of how subdued Katie looked and he quickly made a show of
unlocking the handcuffs, saying “I am going to release you now, a
mhuirnín
, but please understand that I cannot let you leave
until I know you are not going to endanger yourself or anyone else.”

He
stroked her face lovingly for Angela’s benefit. Katie visibly flinched at his
touch but her hate-filled eyes were blocked from view. He grasped her elbow and
helped her to sit up. He then gave her the cup of tea, saying, “Please drink
this,
ghrá
.” His voice was soft and beseeching but
his fierce eyes defied her to do otherwise.

Katie took
the cup from him, tempted to fling the tea in his conniving face, sickened by
the foreign sounding endearments and false words he had used to add credence to
his charade. She knew that any rebuttal from her would just incur his wrath and
serve to further corroborate his story.

She
glanced across at Angela but her hope of playing on this woman’s sympathy
faded, as she read only impatience in her gaze. She first sipped at the warm
beverage but then gulped it down, her body desperate for fluid once the liquid
hit her parched throat. He quickly took the cup from her once she had drained
it.

“I’m
going to go and change into something more relaxing,
Seanie
,”
Angela declared, running a manicured hand down her body in an alluring way.
“I’m just off a long flight and I need to wind down. Please feel very free to
come and find me when you’ve finished here.”

Despite
her kidnapper’s threats and the apparent indifference of Angela, Katie’s last
remaining will screamed at her to do something to try and alert the woman to
her plight before the opportunity was lost. In fact, her instincts told her,
surely he would not have warned her against it so strongly if nothing could
possibly be gained from speaking out?

“I am not
this man’s sister!” she cried out hoarsely to Angela’s retreating back. Angela
turned round, aghast at this outburst and looked at Sean her eyebrows raised in
query, “What is she saying..?” she started.

Sean
simply smiled and held his hand up to block her questioning. “She is just
trying shock tactics. I told you she’s not herself. She’d deny her own mother
if it meant she could get away.”

He then
turned to Kate and said, “Please come to your senses, sis. I know you’ve been
hurt and you just want to hurt back... but I’m your brother and I love you.”
Kate’s eyes pricked with outraged tears at the mockery of this phony
declaration. “I just want to keep you safe,” he said.

Angela
watched them for another moment but then shrugged and left the room. Once
Angela had gone, the smile he had planted on his face quickly disappeared,
replaced by a cold, determined scowl. He reached for her but she somehow
managed to escape his grasp and scramble off the bed.

She
shrank back as he came around the bed, dreading some retaliation from him as a
result of her outburst. In a belated attempt to avoid him she urgently scanned
the room but there was nowhere to go. However, her eye did catch sight of a
pair of small metal nail scissors resting on the dressing table. As he
advanced, she deliberately backed away towards the table and, reaching out
frantically behind her, managed to grab them.

Raising
them in front of her, she cried out, “Get away from me! Get away from me!”

He did
stop advancing but just laughed at her. “And what do you think you are going to
do to me with those?”

She
brandished the tiny pair of scissors in front of him, her face distorted in a
grimace of desperate intent. He moved towards her again, still laughing. He
made to grab her arm but she took him by surprise, ducking unexpectedly and
then lunging at him with the scissors. She managed to slash his arm, deeply
enough to draw blood, and he was no longer amused. He caught her then, whipping
her body in towards his and exerting vicious pressure on her wrist until she
dropped the implement.

He held
on to her and snarled, “You just don’t know when to give up, do you? Well,
carry on provoking me and it won’t be long before I lose what little patience I
have left. Do you really want to piss me off? Is that it?” He received no
response to this.

The
sudden exertion, together with the lack of food and the pressure of his grip on
her wrist, had an inevitable effect. He felt her body suddenly crumple against
him and, before he could do anything to counter this, he found her collapsed in
a faint at his feet.

Sean
stared at her insentient form, shaking his head. She just kept surprising him.
One minute she seemed completely defeated and the next she was fighting like a
tiger. He bent down and slowly lifted her from the floor into his arms. He
looked down at her soft, pale face. Christ, he thought to himself, she was
really just a baby and weighed little more than one.

The
action of lifting her caused his injured arm to complain, which caught him by
surprise. He had not thought the injury was that noteworthy. He glanced at the
wound and noticed it was bleeding quite profusely and had probably run deeper
than he had realised. He kept underestimating her to his cost.

Lifting
her back on to the bed he then grabbed a towel from the bathroom. He sat on the
bed next to her while he tied the towel around his bleeding arm. Katie coughed
and suddenly started to come round. Feeling woozy and light headed she leaned
into him, grabbing at him as though he was a life raft. When she finally
focused on his face she couldn’t quite remember who he was and looked at him as
if for the first time.

She
frowned, wondering why this striking stranger with his luminous grey eyes was
holding her so firmly and staring at her so intently. His scrutiny inspired a
strange feeling she found it difficult to identify and she felt conversely hot
and cold at the same time. When she recognised him as her tormentor she took a
sharp intake of breath and recoiled violently.

She was
severely disturbed that, before she knew him for who he was, she had felt a
stirring of what she could only describe as attraction towards him. At the same
time as admitting this she dismissed it as being a temporary aberration,
brought on by the illusion that he was being kind to her.

 
Sean accepted the inevitable change in her when she recollected
who he was but was unsettled by how incredible it had felt when she had looked
at him differently. A wry grimace briefly touched his face.

 
He passed the plate of sandwiches emphatically to her. “You need
to eat. Unless you want me to force feed you, which will be an unpleasant
experience for both of us, I suggest you get these down you.”

 
Kate meekly took the plate from him and began to eat listlessly.
The food tasted as edible as cotton wool but she somehow managed to force it
down her dry throat.

 
He watched her, his eyes unreadable.

Once
she’d finished he moved away from her, retrieving the handcuffs. “Give me your
hand,” he instructed gruffly.

 
She shied away. “Please don’t use those on me again….please,”
she begged plaintively. He didn’t answer but just grabbed her hand.

“You were
going to let me go, weren’t you? Before your girlfriend arrived?” she continued
to plead, hoping he would reconsider, desperately hoping he had doubts about
detaining her.

“But what
if I do let you go? You’ve shown me you can’t be trusted. You’ll lead the
authorities straight to me.”

 
“I won’t,” Kate answered, gazing directly into his feral eyes.
“I won’t breathe a word about this, I swear. Please believe me. Please just let
me go.”

Sean
pondered on this. Could he trust her? And could he let her go now that Angela
had seen her? Angela seemed to have swallowed his story and Katherine Pearson
was hardly well-known. Her father protected her from any publicity as he’d
found very little reference to her when he’d been doing his research. The irony
was that this was probably Harry’s attempt to keep her safe, especially from
those who would exploit her or use her to extort money from him.

 
“I don’t know why I took you,” he admitted suddenly. “I had this
crazy idea you could help me.” Kate frowned at him. “I want to let you go. But
you need to prove I can trust you.”
He roughly manacled her to the bed again. “Now keep quiet and
try and get some more sleep. I need to go and smooth things over with Angela.”

 
He found Angela in her room checking messages on her phone. She
put it down as he entered and stood up to greet him. She had showered and wore
a silky jade robe that brought out the emerald colour of her cat-like eyes. It
was loosely tied, revealing seductive underwear.

 
She frowned when she saw the bloody towel he had wrapped around
his injured arm. “What the hell happened?” she asked.

“It’s
nothin
’. Really,” he said, clumsily motioning her away,
when she seemed intent on examining it.

Angela
was undeterred and started fidgeting with the improvised bandage. “Let me have
a look at this,” she said. He submitted to her attention, letting her unwind
the towel.

She
tutted
when she saw the deep gash
and looked at him with concern.
“Did
your sister do this?”

 
“Aye,” he said, sitting down wearily on the bed. “I think she
may be even more mentally unbalanced than I originally thought.” He closed his
eyes and rubbed a despairing hand over his face. “I just don’t know what to do
with her,” he admitted.

Angela sat
down next to him, after fetching a swab and a dressing from her
ensuite
bathroom. She gently cleaned the wound and bandaged
it up saying, “Look why don’t you take it easy and let me look after you? When
you’ve calmed down you’ll be able to think more clearly.” 

 
She then moved round to face his back and started kneading his
shoulders. He stiffened at first. “Angela..,” he started but she shushed him,
telling him to just relax. He leaned back, letting her rub the tension out of
his neck and shoulders. He’d forgotten just how good she was at this. “That’s
great, angel,” he murmured. He closed his eyes and gradually allowed himself to
relax.

 
He felt a shift in pressure and his eyes shot open to find that
she had manoeuvred herself on to his lap. Her robe was unfastened to reveal her
generous breasts, straining at the lace of her lingerie. Unabashedly lowering
the straps of her bra, she fully exposed them and bent her mouth to his,
kissing him urgently, her hands continuing to massage his shoulders. She wriggled
against him and he felt himself responding, unable to quell the lust she was
awakening in him.

 
She pushed him back onto the bed, slid sensuously down his body
and began to unfasten his trousers. She pulled his pants down past his hips and
her hands deftly stroked his burgeoning erection. However, as Angela bent her
head towards him, an image of Katherine’s haunted face flashed into his mind
and his desire inexplicably started to dwindle. He silently swore to himself;
even when she wasn’t here she was managing to unbalance him.

 
Angela attacked his manhood with her lips and tongue but though
his body reacted predictably, his mind was now irretrievably disconnected. She
sensed something was wrong when she was unable to bring him to climax and she
lifted her head, asking, “Have you been drinking baby? Your snaky doesn’t seem
to want to play.”

 
He sat up and placed his hands on her shoulders. “I’m sorry
Angela. It’s been a rough night. I appreciate it, I really do. You’ve been
great, but I just can’t switch off.”

 
He stood and pulled his trousers up, saying “I need to check on
Katie. I can’t risk leaving her alone.”

 
Angela had folded her arms over her chest and was now looking
rather like a sulky child. “Well,” she said, her lips set in a full blown pout,
“no man has ever walked out of my bed before. I hope she’s really worth it
Seanie
. From what I can see, you’re better off without her.
You need to stop feeling responsible for her. She’s a full grown woman, for
God’s sake.
If she wants to mess up her life then that’s down
to her!”

 
He walked over to her and dropped a kiss on her now unresponsive
lips. “I know, Angela. And you know how much I’m grateful to you for putting up
with our uninvited presence.”

Angela
still looked
very
put out. She flicked her hair over
her shoulder petulantly and walked back towards her bed, replacing her shoulder
straps. “I suppose I’ll just have to play with my toys by myself,” she said.