The Morning After

Crazy. You really are going crazy, Annie!

‘A male model,’ she said, forcing her mind back to Todd’s question. ‘I met him on that promo I did for Cable last year. Who told you I was kissing him?’ she demanded with commendable affront, to throw him off the track.

There was a short pause before his deriding, ‘Guess,’ came down the line at her.

‘Susie,’ she sighed. She should have known.

‘She took great delight in telling me how she’d seen you lost in a heated clinch with another man before you walked off and left me,’ he related grimly. ‘Then had the bloody gall to suggest I see her home instead!’

‘To which you replied?’ she prompted.

‘Guess again, darling,’ he drawled. ‘I’m still here at this wretched melee if that gives you a clue.’

Yes, it gave her a big clue, and Annie’s heart ached for him.

‘If she thought she could walk up to me and start slandering you in one breath then expect me to fall back into her arms in the next then she soon learned otherwise,’ he went on tightly. ‘She eventually left with that guy from the Rouez Sands Group.’

‘And made sure you saw her leave with him, of course.’

‘Oh, yes,’ he sighed.

‘You OK?’ she asked him gently.

‘No,’ he said. ‘But I’ll live.’

Annie smothered a sigh, wishing that she could ease the pain she knew he was suffering right now. But only Susie could do that, and the foolish woman was too jealous of Annie to see that by blackening Annie to Todd she was only making things worse for herself.

In all fairness Annie didn’t completely blame Susie for being suspicious about their relationship. It did look suspicious to anyone looking in on it. But even though she’d urged Todd often enough to tell Susie the truth he’d refused, going all stiff and adamant in a way that told her that Susie’s suspicions offended his pride. ‘It cuts both ways,’ was all he ever said. ‘If she can’t trust my word that there is nothing intimate between you and me, then why should I trust her with the full truth about us?’

Stalemate, and likely to stay that way while both of them remained so pig-headed about it all.

‘Give me a call soon,’ he murmured as a conclusion to the conversation, then added as an afterthought, ‘But not during the rest of this week, because I’ll be in Madrid trying to whip up that extra injection of cash I need to secure Cliché Europe’s safe launch.’

Annie frowned, having forgotten all about that. Todd had told her about it only this evening—the surprising and worrying fact that he was taking a big risk publishing a new glossy in the present economic climate. ‘The trouble is,’ he’d explained ruefully, ‘I stagnate if I don’t and stand to lose everything if I do.’

‘What I need,’ he murmured thoughtfully now, ‘is something really exclusive to front the first issue—something that will guarantee sales and therefore appeal to my backers. I just haven’t come up with what that exclusive something is yet.’

‘You will,’ she stated, with soft confidence in his ability. ‘And if all else fails I could always pose nude,’ she suggested. ‘That’ll be a world first and guarantee you a complete sell-out.’

‘You’d do it too, wouldn’t you?’ he murmured curiously, hearing the note of seriousness threading through her lighter tone.

‘For you?’ she said. ‘I would sell my very soul for you, my darling, and that’s the truth. But I would much rather not,’ she then added. ‘So try to come up with something less—sensational for me, will you?’ she pleaded.

‘I promise,’ he laughed. ‘Not that the idea of you posing nude does not appeal,’ he teased. ‘But I think I should be able to come up with something more—subtle. So take care, and be good while I’m away.’

When am I ever anything else? Annie thought as she replaced the receiver and grimaced at the dark sense of dissatisfaction that began niggling at her nerves.

And all because a stranger managed to get beneath that protective skin you wear? she mocked herself.

‘Goodness me, Annie,’ she muttered aloud, and then thought, You must be feeling starved of affection to have one small incident affect you as much as you’re allowing this to do.

Bed, she decided. Bed before you become even more maudlin than you already are!

But she didn’t sleep well, her dreams seeming haunted by a tall dark figure who kept insisting on kissing her, his warm mouth constantly closing over her own every time she tried to speak! But, worse than that, she didn’t try to fight him but always, always welcomed him—helplessly, eagerly! Then she ended up waking in a breathless state of shock at her own wanton imagination.

It was terrible. She was ashamed of herself! ‘Sex-starved, that’s what you are,’ she muttered, and gave her pillow an angry thump before settling down to experience the self-same dream all over again!

Consequently she was not in a very good frame of mind when her phone began ringing at what felt like the break of dawn that morning.

Grumbling incoherently to herself, she tried to ignore it at first, stuffing her head beneath her pillow and pretending the noise was not there. But it didn’t stop, and after a while she sighed, sat up, rubbed at her gritty eyes then reached out with a lazy hand to lift the receiver.

‘Annie!’ Lissa’s excited voice hit her eardrums like the clash from a hundred cymbals. ‘Get our neat botty out of that bed! Cliché’s got its launch. And we have one hell of a panic on!’

A panic. She would call it more than a panic, Annie decided grumpily as she dragged herself to the transit lounge at Barbados’s Grantley Adams airport over twelve hours later.

‘But I’m due in Paris on Tuesday!’ she’d exclaimed in protest when Lissa had finished giving her the hurried details of Todd’s great coup.

‘All changed, darling,’ her agent had said. ‘Everything cancelled for the next two weeks in favour of this.’

‘This’ being Todd’s brainwave—which had apparently hit him after he had been talking to her on the phone last night.

Or—to be more precise—someone else had hit him with it.

The great and glorious Adamas, no less.

And, even despite not wanting to be, Annie was impressed.

Adamas jewellery was the most expensive anyone could buy. The man who worked under that trade name was a legend because he designed and produced every single breathtakingly exquisite piece himself, using only the finest stones and setting them in precious metal. All the world’s richest women clamoured to possess them.

He was a genius in his field. His last collection had taken five years to put together, and had sold out in five minutes. That must have been—Annie frowned, trying to remember—four years ago at least.

And late last night, it seemed, Todd had found himself talking to none other than Adamas himself! He hadn’t known, of course, whom he was sharing a nightcap with. Hardly anyone alive on this earth knew who the real Adamas actually was, because the man was some kind of eccentric recluse!

But, according to Lissa, during this chat over a drink Todd’s journalistic mind must have been alerted by something Adamas had said, and he’d begun to suspect just whom he was drinking with. So he had gone for it—asked the man outright—and, lo and behold, found out that he was right!

One thing had led to another, and a few drinks later Todd had discovered that the guy had just completed his latest collection. And that had been when his brain-storm had hit. A blind shot, he’d called it. He’d suggested what a coup it would be if Cliché launched with Annie Lacey wearing the latest Adamas collection. And to his surprise the great man had agreed!

And that, neatly put, was why Annie had just spent the last twelve hours travelling.

Adamas had agreed, but only on his own strict terms—one being that the whole thing had to take place immediately or not at all, another that he chose the location and—something insisted on because of the priceless value of the subject matter in hand—that the whole thing must be carried out in the utmost secrecy!

Which was also why she was now stuck in transit, waiting to find out what the rest of her travel arrangements were. Lissa had only been privy to Annie’s travel plan this far. The rest was to be revealed.

But that would not be before she’d had a chance to change out of the faded jeans and baggy old sweatshirt that had been part of her disguise along with a sixties floppy velvet hat into which she’d had her hair stuffed for the last twelve hours to comply with his demand for secrecy, she decided grimly.

She was hot, she was tired, and she felt grubby. And, grabbing her flight bag, she made her way to the ladies’ room, deciding that any further travelling could wait until she felt more comfortable.

Half an hour later, and dressed more appropriately for the Caribbean in a soft white Indian cotton skirt and matching blouse, with her hair scooped into a high topknot, she was being ushered out into the burning sun and across the tarmac towards a twin engined, eight-seater aeroplane which was to take her to Union Island, the gateway to the Grenadines, or so she’d been informed by the attendant who’d come to collect her.