Rescue Operation

Wondering if she was being over-sensitive in thinking how silent the room had suddenly become, Chelsea reflected that if she was successful in detaching Slade Ashford from Kirsty he would have scant chance of restoring himself to her good books. Desertion in the face of so much interested observation would be a bitter pill for any seventeen-year-old to swallow, and she was relieved to see that the son of Ann and Ralph’s closest neighbours was obviously home from university. Was it really only last Christmas that Kirsty had been swooning over him? She had grown up a good deal in ten short months.

Discreetly keeping out of sight, Chelsea studied her quarry meticulously. Expensive dinner suit, obviously neither hired nor bought off the peg; thick silk shirt; even thicker dark hair brushing the collar of his jacket. He turned, and Chelsea automatically stiffened slightly, hoping that Kirsty hadn’t seen her. It was not part of her plan to be introduced to Slade Ashford as Kirsty’s aunt.

Kirsty had spotted her parents. Slade Ashford cupped her elbow. Poor Kirsty, she didn’t stand a chance. It was almost literally possible to see the awed reverence in the eyes of the women they walked past, as they rested appreciatively on Slade’s lean form.

For almost an hour Chelsea circulated among the other guests, deliberately creating a subtle presence, a distinct awareness of her as a woman. Several men of Ralph’s generation paid her heavily gallant compliments, while many of the younger ones were a little more obvious in their attentions, responding to her sensuously appealing aura.

To anyone watching her Chelsea’s progress across the room had neither purpose nor pattern, but it did bring her into a circle of people barely two feet away from Kirsty and Slade Ashford. Across the room she caught Ann’s eye. It had been arranged between them that when eventually Chelsea managed to get Slade’s attention, Ann would distract Kirsty.

Perceiving her signal, Ann moved discreetly towards her. Summoning every ounce of control, Chelsea stepped backwards, deliberately allowing herself to collide with Slade. Her drink spilled as he turned to apologise and steady her, a cynical awareness in his eyes which at any other time would have made her writhe with shame. Out of the corner of her eye Chelsea saw that Kirsty was about to make some comment.

Clinging gracefully to Slade’s arm, Chelsea bent to fuss over her shoe, which had been splashed with the contents of her now empty glass.

‘Oh, what a nuisance!’ she pouted.

‘I think they’ll dry.’

Chelsea was quite sure they would. Lifting her head slowly, she raised her lowered eyelashes and let her lips curve into a seductively promising smile. Beneath her tensed fingers Slade Ashford’s arm felt like solid rock.

His eyes which she had imagined to be brown shocked her by being a deep intense jade, and as coolly mocking as her own were sensually promising.

‘Oh, I’m not worried about my shoes.’ The husky softness of her voice surprised even Chelsea herself. Perhaps age had turned her into a better actress than she had ever imagined—age, or perhaps necessity.

‘It’s my drink,’ she murmured. ‘I had to wait simply ages to get it—waiters never pay the slightest attention to a woman on her own, and now I’ve lost it.’

‘Then please allow me to get you another …’

So far so good; she had managed to both capture his attention and very unsubtly let him know that she was alone. As she drew a rather shaky breath of relief she heard Ann saying urgently to Kirsty, ‘Darling, can you spare us a moment?’

For a second Chelsea held her breath. If Slade elected to go with Kirsty there was nothing she could do about it. Her own fingertips still rested on his arm, and she could almost feel her niece’s puzzled and hurt look, but she refused to yield to it.

‘Quite a sweet little thing,’ she said patronisingly as Ann led a reluctant Kirsty away. ‘A relation of yours?’

Only she knew exactly how much satisfaction it gave her to see the slightly grim expression in those dark green eyes as Slade said curtly, ‘No; the daughter of a business acquaintance—Now, your drink …’

Now came the most difficult part of the evening, Chelsea warned herself. She had managed to detach him from Kirsty, but now she had to keep him not only away from Kirsty for the rest of the evening, but also firmly and publicly attached to her.

She had to wait several nerve-wracking seconds before he returned to her side with a fresh Martini, and managed to draw out their mutual self-introduction for ten minutes, one half of her mind bemused and appalled by the fulsome inanities she was uttering.

‘I hate coming anywhere like this alone,’ she confessed when she saw his attention was beginning to waver. ‘My date couldn’t make it at the last moment. Oh, wouldn’t you know it!’ she pouted, suddenly having a brainwave as the band suddenly started playing a dreamily romantic tune. ‘They would play my favourite when I don’t have a partner to dance with!’

At any other time the cool irony in those green eyes would have shattered her, but tonight she was playing a part and there was no room for her normal icy reserve.

‘Far be it from me to disappoint a lady,’ Slade Ashford drawled, and just for a moment as he negotiated a path to the dance floor it struck Chelsea that his ironic comment could have more than one meaning, but she swiftly dismissed the thought as over-imaginative.

In keeping with the romantic mood of the evening the dance floor was dimly lit, and in the darkness Chelsea almost stumbled, shocked by the sudden warmth of Slade’s fingers on her arm as he reached for her.

In his arms on the dance floor it came as a shock to realise how long it had been since a man had held her like this. She had danced, of course, but never with this intimacy, since Darren, and the hard brush of muscled male thighs against the softness of her own body as they moved in time to the music became increasingly disturbing as frissons of awareness spread upwards from her thighs. Revulsion coursed through her in waves and the need to tense her body against the alien intrusion of arrogant male flesh became overpowering, but she refused to give in to it.

Slade’s hand caressed her spine, sliding upwards to stroke the vulnerable nape of her neck. Her breath caught in her throat. Dear God, what chance would Kirsty have against a man like this if he chose to submit her to the full force of his sexual expertise?

She missed a step and was drawn still closer to the lean male body of her partner, her breasts crushed against the hard wall of his chest, his breath fanning her temple. The revolving spotlight suddenly caught them in its beam and Slade raised his hand to the dusting of glitter along her cheekbones, tracing it lightly. The music stopped and she withdrew from him, smothering a gasp as his fingers left her face to trace instead the glitter-dusted curve of her breasts above the bodice of her dress.

‘Very enticing.’ He smiled at her and in the darkness there was no irony in his smile, and Chelsea felt her breath catching in her throat at the unbelievable appeal of that smile.

For the rest of the evening she clung to him like ivy, firmly closing her mind against what she was doing. He left her once to collect some food for them both from the buffet tables, and Ann hurried across to whisper,

‘Keep it up—you’re doing marvels’ You should have seen poor Kirsty’s face when she saw you dancing with him! She hasn’t said anything, but I suspect she’s discovered that her idol most definitely has feet of clay. Just to make sure I thought it might be as well if she were to see you leaving with him, if you can engineer that. He’s attractive enough for the fact that other women are attracted to him to add a dangerous piquancy.’

Unable to do anything other than agree with her sister’s observation and worried about her niece’s reaction to her behaviour, at first Chelsea almost missed Slade’s cool, ‘Do you have your own means of transport for getting home?’

For a moment she was tempted to tell him that she intended getting a taxi, and then she remembered Ann’s whispered suggestion, and summoned the last of her flagging courage to say with a slow smile,

‘I’m afraid not. I was hoping someone would be kind enough to offer me a lift.’

She couldn’t have made her meaning any plainer, and she almost shuddered to see the cynicism carved deep in the grooves running alongside his mouth, as he drawled, ‘Allow me.’

As luck would have it Kirsty was standing with a group of teenagers by the foyer, and as they walked past the group Chelsea couldn’t bear to look at her niece.

At last they were out in the cool night air, crisply autumnal with the intensely evocative and faintly mournful scent of woodsmoke and frost hanging in the stillness.

‘Here we are.’

Slade stopped alongside a svelte, powerful-looking car, its dark paintwork gleaming, and paused to unlock the doors before helping Chelsea inside. Expensive hide moulded itself to her body, its rich smell filling the dark interior, mingling with the tangy aftershave Slade was wearing.

‘You haven’t asked me for directions,’ Chelsea pointed out to him as the long bonnet nosed its way out into the traffic.

In the darkness she could feel him glance at her, and a nervous fluttery feeling began in the pit of her stomach and spread outwards as he said smoothly,

‘First I thought we’d go to my place, have a cup of coffee.’

For a moment Chelsea’s brain refused to work. When she had been planning the evening she had never thought as far as this. Somehow she had imagined that it would end with her leaving the hotel with Slade and then getting a taxi home. She turned towards him to protest, checking as she saw the cold cynicism of his smile, and anger suddenly welled up inside her. It didn’t take much imagination to guess that ‘coffee’ wasn’t all he had in mind. The arrogance of the man! she seethed. Did he expect her to jump into bed with him simply because she had accepted a lift from him?

It wasn’t purely because she had angled for a lift, honesty made her admit; she hadn’t exactly kept him at a distance during the evening. Forcefully she pushed aside the thought. So Slade Ashford thought she was going to allow him to make love to her. Perhaps it was time that someone showed him that when it came to women he wasn’t as overpoweringly irresistible as he seemed to think.

This thought was enough to boost her spirits and keep her doubts at bay for the fifteen minutes it took them to reach Slade’s flat; one of half a dozen in a prestigious luxury two-storey block on the outskirts of the town set in the grounds of what had once been the old manor house.

With a cool economy of movement that made it impossible for her to object Slade drove the car into a garage at the back of the apartments, locked it, and escorted her into an attractive communal hallway.

‘My apartment’s on the second floor,’ he told her, indicating the lift.

It whisked them upwards so swiftly that Chelsea felt that she had left her stomach behind. She was twenty-six, she reminded herself dryly as they emerged from its claustrophobic confines, and this wouldn’t be the first time she had had to fend off unwanted advances; and it probably wouldn’t be the last. Shrugging aside the tiny inner voice that warned her that Slade Ashford was different, she allowed him to usher her into a small inner hall. As he snapped on the light she had a brief impression of stunningly effective faux-marble walls in rich brown and cream, one of them mirrored to add to the illusion.

‘Not my choice,’ he told her, noticing her expression. ‘I needed a place in a hurry and this one was vacant. I believe the previous owner was a businessman who let it to a … friend.’ His voice was expressionless, but the meaning was plain nonetheless, and Chelsea suppressed a sudden shudder as she contemplated how narrowly she had escaped being Darren’s little ‘friend’, his kept mistress.

‘Living room’s through there,’ Slade told her, opening another door.

It was decorated in varying shades of pale blue and grey; with expensive silk-covered settees, and a thick pile carpet, and Chelsea wondered if it was merely her imagination which made her think that despite its luxury this wasn’t a happy place.