Waiting Game

And full of beautiful people. And the table they were deferentially conducted to was within spitting distance of Saul Ackerman’s party. If she looked to the left of Alex’s shoulder she would be staring straight into the chairman’s face.

A quick, encompassing glance told her he had even more presence than she had realised when Alex had pointed him out to her during the interval back at the theatre. Somewhere in his mid-thirties, he had the type of hard, slashing features that could never be over-looked. But it was more than merely the striking combination of a strongly modelled bone-structure, thick black hair and piercing silver-grey eyes. It was the sheer unadulterated power of the man.

She didn’t look his way again. She concentrated on Alex. A tiny muscle was twitching at the corner of his mouth and that only happened when he was nervous. Gently, she laid her hand over his.

‘Don’t worry, everything will be fine. I promise.’

‘Of course it will.’ There’d been only a momentary hesitation preceding his answer and then he was smiling into her eyes and he was back to being the urbane, self-confident man she loved. ‘Now order something fabulous, Fen, my darling, and we’ll have the best champagne on offer.’

‘Well…’ She could hear the note of doubt in her voice and deplored it. But the menu she’d been handed was almost too heavy to hold, and nothing was priced. ‘Can you afford it?’ Which was even more deplorable, but she couldn’t help it.

‘Look on it as payment for services rendered and those yet to come.’ Alex leaned back expansively in his chair, the look in his eyes, the play of that smile across his mouth making her understand why women had literally thrown themselves at him during his live stage performances a decade or two ago, why his records had once regularly featured high in the charts. ‘And if I can’t afford it, Jean can.’

‘Say no more!’ Fenella buried her head in the menu. She was famished. And it was common knowledge that Jean was fabulously rich. She’d inherited a fortune from her father and was due to inherit another when her mother died. Not an event Jean was anticipating, Fenella knew, but the old lady was over ninety. So the price of a meal in a place such as this wouldn’t cause Alex’s wife any hardship!

‘Has Ackerman noticed us yet?’ Alex asked quietly as soon as he’d given their order. ‘Too obvious if I turned round. I don’t want him to think our being here was anything other than coincidence.’ He leaned forward, trailing a finger down the side of her face. ‘Look over to their table in a moment or two; make it natural. I don’t think there’s a man in the room who could have failed to notice you, sweetheart.’

Fenella wasn’t so sure about that, but she knew the trouble Alex had gone to to discover which restaurant Ackerman intended to bring his party to tonight in time to reserve a table himself.

Strangely unwilling to meet those silver-grey eyes, she waited until the champagne was brought to their table, breaking up their intimately whispered conversation. Then slowly, as if wanting something to do while Alex’s attention was no longer given exclusively to her, she allowed her eyes to wander idly over the animated group at Saul Ackerman’s table.

Vesta Faine was as lovely close to as she had been on stage, her dark beauty enhanced by the dramatic lines of the white satin of her gown, her vivacious chatter obviously holding Jethro Tamblyn in thrall. The playwright was leaning forward, his arms folded on the table, his ruggedly striking features animated as he listened to every word. He looked as if he had been running both hands through his dishevelled, wiry chestnut hair for at least a couple of hours. In contrast, his wife looked out of her depth in her unimaginative chain-store dress, her pale blue eyes fixed anxiously on her famous husband. Had she married the boy from her own Cornish village when he’d been nothing more than a struggling, impecunious writer only to find him leaving her behind? Would she be able to withstand the pressures of his newly found fame?

Aware that these idle musings were merely delaying tactics, she reluctantly glanced at the head of the table. Saul Ackerman was probably just as riveted by the actress as Jethro was. But she met the silver-eyes head on and the mocking awareness in them made her face go hot.

She looked away quickly, expelling the breath she hadn’t realised she’d been holding, dipping her head on the slender stalk of her neck, feeling the long ornate drop-earrings brush against her skin, restraining the desire to remove the irritants. She had only worn the outlandish things to soften the effect of her starkly modern hairstyle. Cut very short into the shape of her head at the back, it was long on top, falling forwards into a honey-gold fringe that brushed her eyebrows in a heavy, well-defined curve.

‘Well?’ Alex arched a brow. ‘Have we been noticed?’

Hastily banishing any trace of discomfort or wariness from her eyes, she gave him her most brilliant smile, the discreet, muted lighting making her shoulders gleam like oiled satin above the rich black silk of her low-cut dress as she leaned forward, her voice low and intimate as she told him, ‘Yes. I don’t think anyone, even someone as tunnel-visioned as Saul Ackerman, could fail to recognise your impressive profile!’

‘Never mind that.’ The blatant flattery left him visibly unimpressed. ‘The bastard knows every line on my face! It’s you I want him to see, Fen. I want him to recognise you when he sees you again.’ He took her hand, rubbing his thumb across her knuckles. ‘I want him so he can’t take his eyes off you.’

Involuntarily, her gaze slid to the other table and her breath caught in her lungs. Even through the thick veiling of her long dark lashes there was no mistaking the speculation in those flat silver eyes. Saul Ackerman was leaning back in his chair, making no attempt now to join in the conversation that was flying around his table, the fingers of one hand idly playing with the stem of his wine glass as he watched her, his eyes unnerving.

Two thunderous heartbeats later Fenella dragged her attention back to Alex. It would appear that his wish had been granted. Ackerman would know her if he saw her again. Something fluttered inside her breasts, something uncomfortable and alien. Vowing not to look Saul Ackerman’s way again, she made a determined and happily successful effort to flirt with Alex across the table but could make little impression on the superb meal she had been hungry for only a short while ago.

What a waste of Jean’s money, of good food, she sniped at herself. She didn’t know what was the matter with her. She would have thought it would have taken very much more than the impudent stares of a strange man to deaden her always hearty appetite.

‘Won’t you introduce me to your companion, Alex?’

Fenella didn’t have to look up to know whom that voice belonged to. It was cool, authoritative steel, very slightly burred with dry, amused confidence. The fingers that held the fork she’d been using to push her food around her plate started to shake. Very carefully, she put the implement down as Alex hurriedly pushed back his chair and stumbled to his feet.

‘Saul. How’s this for a coincidence! I saw you at the theatre—only had to look for VisionWest’s camera team—’ His expansive smile was shaky round the edges, the sudden pinkness of his face emphasising the beginnings of a sagging jawline, the pull of gravity that was wrecking the face that had had women of all ages drooling in the aisles. He was making a too conscious effort to straighten his shoulders and pull in his stomach muscles, Fenella noted, her heart twisting with anguished love.

Ackerman, though, had no need to try to project an image. There wasn’t a superfluous ounce of flesh on that tall, aggressively masculine frame. Not even the suavely styled immaculate dinner-jacket could disguise the potent rawness of this prime male animal, she thought with disgust, hating him.

He had a cruel mouth, she decided, refusing to flinch away from the eyes that were consciously and compellingly holding her own. He was totally devoid of compassion, sympathy or understanding. The uncrowned head of the consortium which had recently made a successful bid for the Vision West franchise, he had more clout than was good for him. Already his business empire encompassed publishing, an airline, communication systems; he had forgotten the meaning of compassion—if he had ever known it in the first instance—and would break poor darling Alex without a second thought.

‘How did you rate tonight’s performance, Miss ?’ Very briefly, his cold gaze spiked towards Alex, reminding the older man of the neglected introduction. No one, especially someone he had already put down as a has-been, neglected his commands.

‘Fenella Flemming—my—my niece.’ Alex went crimson, shifting from one foot to the other. He couldn’t have looked more ill at ease if he’d tried. ‘Fen, sweetheart, this is—’

‘I know who it is, darling,’ she cut in, sounding bored, the downward twist of her mouth, the golden glitter of her eyes letting him know she wasn’t impressed, catching her breath a split-second later as she saw the gleam of pure cynicism in the blackly fringed silver eyes, the scornful knowing curve of his mouth as he repeated softly,

‘Your niece? But of course—who else could she possibly be?’

Which meant, of course, that he didn’t believe it for one instant.

She held his eyes with cool defiance. ‘We enjoyed the performance immensely, didn’t we, Alex?’ She wished he would sit down, stop fidgeting from foot to foot. But maybe no one, but no one, sat when in ‘the Presence’! She made a mental note to ask him some time and then went icy cold as that cool voice commanded,

‘Then why don’t we discuss it? Join me for coffee and brandy and I’ll introduce you to the author and Vesta.’

No mention, Fenella noted sourly, of the author’s wife. People wouldn’t count with him unless they were famous, at the top of their own particular ladder.

‘Some other time, maybe.’ Fenella rose languidly to her feet, her eyes on Alex. He was probably itching to take up the invitation but not even for his sake could she endure to spend a moment longer in Ackerman’s company. One delicate brow rose and disappeared beneath her glossy, honey-gold fringe. ‘It’s time we were tucked up in bed, isn’t it, darling?’ Her mouth curved in a slow smile that couldn’t be misinterpreted. ‘Excuse me just for a moment while I freshen up before we leave.’ And then, not giving her courage chance to desert her, she made herself encounter Saul Ackerman’s icy stare. ‘So nice to have met you, Mr Ackerman.’

And she walked away, heading for the rest-rooms at the rear of the restaurant, threading her way through the tables, aware as never before of the way her body swayed within the clinging confines of the black silk sheath, uncomfortably sure that the monster’s eyes were following her every inch of the way.

The door closed behind her with a soft, expensive thud and she leaned gratefully against the cool, aqua wallpaper, her fingertips to her throbbing temples.

What had started out as a fun, if mentally challenging evening had ended on a quite different note, a note she couldn’t really define—even if she’d wanted to. From the moment she’d learned what the chairman of Vision West was planning to do to Alex she had disliked the man. But seeing him, meeting him, had affected her more strongly than she had bargained for.

Shuddering, she pushed herself away from the wall and effected a few minor repairs to her make-up in front of one of the softly lit mirrors. Saul Ackerman was nothing to her, simply a man she despised. He was planning to axe Alex’s programme, strip him of his self-respect, toss him into an empty, financially barren future.

So it was perfectly natural that she should dislike the man so intensely. Sheer, gut-wrenching hatred was something she had never experienced before. No wonder it had a strange effect on her!

Relieved that that was sorted out, she dropped her lipstick into her slender evening purse and snapped the clasp with a defiant click. The sooner she and Alex were out of this place, back in the flat, alone together with all the time they needed to chew over the evening’s happenings, the better.

She marched out into the silent, thickly carpeted corridor and almost scurried straight back in again when she saw Ackerman waiting for her, his face blank.

Sinkingly prepared to brazen it out, she gave him the ghost of an acknowledgement and stalked past him. But, levering himself away from the wall he’d been so casually leaning against, his hand shot out, clamping around her upper arm, dragging her to a teetering halt. Her breath froze in her lungs as she swayed on her impossible heels. At a distance he was lethal enough; at such close quarters he was pure poison.

‘Do you make a habit of grabbing every passing female?’ She managed to sound frosty but she was boiling inside, her temperature rising through the roof. How dared he waylay her? Touch her?

‘Do you make a habit of being rude to strangers?’ he countered, his mouth indenting sardonically. ‘Or is it only me?’

‘I don’t know what you mean.’ She glanced pointedly at the hand that manacled her arm. His fingers looked strong and lean and dark against the whiteness of her skin. ‘Please let me go; you’re hurting.’

‘I don’t think so.’ There was a trace of wicked humour in his voice, making it richer, deeper, too intimate. ‘I might touch the goods before I buy, but I never damage them.’

And what the hell did he mean by that? She had a sneaking suspicion but she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking. And there was far too much exposed flesh above the low-cut bodice of her dress to give her any hope that he had failed to register the increase of her breath-rate. And he was certainly looking, those silver eyes making a thorough scrutiny of everything exposed or otherwise.

Quickly putting a lid on her temper, she made a futile effort to pull away, hating the way the pressure of his hand increased immediately, loathing the way his touch made her feel. As if she was burning up inside. With outrage. What else?

Those wandering eyes fastened on her lips and she turned her head quickly, scanning the emptiness of the lush corridor, wishing a whole horde of other diners would come through to use the facilities.

‘What do you want?’ She made herself sound cool, as if nothing he had to say could possibly interest her, and heard him laugh, a warm sound low in his throat. She hadn’t expected that and, just for a moment, it threw her, so when he said,