A Sudden Engagement

As luck would have it, the stairs leading to the floor above where Drew Chalmers’ room was situated was deserted. It was too early for anyone to be retiring and too late for people to be coming down for dinner. Kirsty found the room without too much difficulty, biting her lip in sudden vexation as she realised she had no means of getting into it.

Furious with herself and on the verge of abandoning her plan, she was shocked into stiff immobility when she felt someone touch her arm.

Dreading coming face to face with Drew Chalmers, she glanced round, then sagged with relief when she realised it was only the chambermaid.

‘You ‘ave forgotten the key?’ The girl was foreign—Spanish, Kirsty guessed, and obviously sympathetic, from her smile. ‘See, I have one. I will let you in.’

Truly the gods were favouring her tonight, Kirsty marvelled as she thanked the girl and stepped into the darkened room.

Only it wasn’t a room. It was a suite, and she was just gazing open-mouthed round the luxury of a sitting room furnished in chintz and excellent reproduction furniture, when she heard sounds outside. There was barely time for her to slide into the first door—the bedroom, she deduced from the shadowy shape of the bed—before she heard a key in the lock and the sound of the light switch being flicked.

Someone was moving around outside. Kirsty strained her ears, catching the tinkle of ice and other small sounds, before the light was extinguished and the door firmly closed. Then she remembered hearing Drew Chalmers ordering champagne. Tentatively opening the door, she saw that she had guessed correctly. The dim outline of an ice bucket on the low table glinted faintly in the moonlight seeping through the uncurtained window. She let out her breath in relief. Next time she would be prepared. She would have to be! She only hoped that Beverley Travers didn’t take it into her head to wait for Drew Chalmers in his bedroom rather than the sitting room. She wanted Drew Chalmers himself to be there when she announced her presence. She wanted him to witness exactly how convincing she could be as an actress!

She passed the time waiting for Beverley Travers’ arrival in silent study of her shadow-shrouded surroundings. The bedroom and its fittings were typically impersonal; hardly seductive, she would have thought, her body tensing as she heard the sound of a key in the lock, and the light being switched on. She held her breath, praying that Beverley Travers—it could only be her this time, surely?—wouldn’t come into the bedroom, and it seemed that luck was with her.

How long would Drew Chalmers be? Not long, she imagined. He had told the receptionist that he wouldn’t be. Kirsty could hear Beverley Travers moving around outside, the chink of a bottle against glasses, and then she froze with tension as she heard the outer door open, and Drew Chalmers’ cool, faintly cynical voice drawling softly, ‘Sorry about that, I wanted to get an evening paper.’

‘You’re a workaholic!’ Beverley Travers’ voice was warmly seductive. Keyed up and sensitive to everything happening in the other room, Kirsty could imagine the seductive quality of the smile she could sense in the other woman’s voice, the way her eyes would linger on Drew Chalmers’ arrogant male face.

‘Not while you’re around.’

She heard Beverley Travers laugh, and then say, ‘And champagne—you’re spoiling me!’

‘Only because you’re worth it.’

The words held an undertone of insincerity, as though they had been said before, and Beverley Travers obviously caught it too, because she demanded sharply, ‘Am I? Are you sure I’m not just another pleasant little diversion, Drew? Because that isn’t what I want from you.’

That must surely be her cue, Kirsty thought, smoothing damp palms against her dress. Her appearance now would make a definite impact.

And yet, strangely, she felt curiously reluctant to move; in fact she almost wished she had never decided to come up here in the first place. Scared? an inner voice mocked her. She admitted that she was, and then quickly smothered her fear. No actress worthy of the name never felt any tremor of nervousness waiting in the wings, but the time for waiting was over, now she had to go on stage and prove to Mr High and Mighty Chalmers exactly what calibre of actress she was, before her courage deserted her completely.

Taking a deep breath, she moved towards the door, and then thinking quickly, rumpled the severe neatness of the bedclothes, closing her mind against the intimacies her action suggested. What she was doing was in no way underhand, she told herself stubbornly. After all, Beverley Travers must surely know that she wasn’t the only woman in Drew Chalmers’ life. He featured regularly enough in the gossip columns for even the blindest fool to be aware that he liked variety. Dismissing from her mind the thought of her mother’s disapproval, Kirsty reminded herself that she was simply playing a part; showing Drew Chalmers that when it came to acting she could be convincing. Concentrating completely on her role, she pushed open the door and stood there framed in the light, her lips parting on an astonished ‘Oh!’ as her eyes rounded in a mixture of dismay and surprise.

CHAPTER TWO

‘DREW!’ Now Beverley Travers’ voice was neither soft nor warm. It held bitter incredulity, icy disdain in the pale blue eyes sweeping over Kirsty’s disordered hair and rumpled clothes. ‘Drew, who is this?’

‘Oh, Drew, I’m so sorry,’ Kirsty murmured huskily, cutting across the other woman’s acid question, one hand stretched pleadingly towards Drew Chalmers as he stared at her with thunderous disbelief in eyes that were the colour of grey flint.

‘What the.…’

‘Oh, Drew, please don’t be angry!’ Kirsty had the stage now, and allowed her mouth to droop pathetically, tears filling her eyes, as she glanced pleadingly up at the grim mouth, now pulled into a tight hard line. A shiver of premonition iced its way down her spine as she realised that instead of looking disconcerted and embarrassed he was regarding her with a clinical intensity that warned her that she hadn’t caught him as much off his guard as she had expected.

Beverley Travers, however, was reacting exactly as Kirsty had anticipated, her face flushed with anger as she looked from Drew Chalmers’ impassive face to Kirsty’s tear-stained and pleading one.

‘I don’t pretend to know exactly what’s going on here, Drew,’ she said tightly, picking up her handbag and glaring at Kirsty, ‘but next time you invite someone to share a rendezvous with you can I suggest that you check with your diary to make sure you haven’t double booked. Oh, and by the way.…’ she paused in the doorway, her eyes slating Kirsty, before they turned, bitter and icy, to Drew Chalmers, relaxed and apparently totally unmoved by what was happening. ‘As they say in the movies, don’t call me. As for you…’ her mouth tightened as she glanced contemptuously at Kirsty, ‘I presume you’re some casual pick-up Drew made on the way down here. You look the type. Really, Drew,’ she added coldly as she prepared to sweep out of the suite, ‘you ought to be more careful, especially in these permissive times—these little tarts pick up the most obnoxious social diseases, you know.’

Kirsty winced beneath the venom of her words, unaware of the shocked disbelief in her own eyes as they widened slightly in acknowledgement of the thrust. Events had taken a turn she hadn’t expected.

The silence following Beverley Travers’ furious exit, and her bitter slamming of the door, was a tangible, nerve-aching void, and it took every ounce of courage Kirsty possessed for her to shake her hair nonchalantly over her shoulder and force a blithe smile as she headed for the door.

‘Just a moment.’

She hadn’t expected him to simply let her go, of course. Nor had she wanted him to do so. The whole purpose of the exercise was to prove to him that his judgment of her had been wrong, but even so Kirsty had a craven desire to turn tail and flee.

‘Who the hell are you, and what do you think you’re playing at? Blackmail? If so.…’

He was advancing on her with purposeful menace, and for one appalling moment Kirsty’s mind went completely blank. The clever little speech she had practised until she was word-perfect eluded her completely and she was left scrabbling humiliatingly for words.

‘No… no, it was nothing like that,’ she managed jerkily, and something in her voice must have convinced him, because he stopped advancing on her and instead lounged back against one of the chairs, his expression intent and searching as he demanded tersely,

‘Then what was it like? Some kind of sick joke? Some.…’

To her relief she managed to pull herself together for long enough to get her handbag open and remove the small newspaper clipping she always carried around with her.

‘Remember this?’ she demanded, gathering enough composure to sound almost as terse as he had done himself.

He read the article in silence, handing it back to her.

‘That actress,’ she said unsteadily ‘the one you said would make an excellent typist—that was her first role, my first role,’ she threw at him with bitter passion. ‘And I lost it, because of that review, because of you.…’

He listened to her in complete and unmoving silence, unnerving her with his cool scrutiny, his apparent ability to remain unaffected by what had happened.

‘And so?’

‘And so I decided to prove to you just how convincing an actress I could be,’ she told him triumphantly. ‘Certainly convincing enough for your mistress!’

‘By relying on circumstances rather than ability,’ he told her cruelly. ‘Effective, but by no means convincing.’ His eyes narrowed as he studied her, slowly assessing the tumbled curls and gamine features. ‘I still stand by what I said—you weren’t right for that part, and you didn’t have the ability to make yourself right for it.’

His calm words astounded Kirsty. She had expected him to be furious with her, to rant and rave while she remained cool and aloof, and yet somehow he seemed to have turned the tables on her, by reminding her that she had used circumstances rather than ability to convince Beverley Travers that they were lovers. Impotent anger prompted her to demand rashly, ‘Do you get some sort of kick out of destroying people, out of ruining their lives…?’

‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ The emotionless words silenced her. ‘I’m a critic, doing my job, not some sort of a crank on an ego trip. I leave that to the acting profession,’ he jibed mockingly. ‘Thank God they don’t all have your vengeful tendencies! You’ve been reading too much Shakespeare.’ His expression changed suddenly, thick dark lashes veiling his eyes from Kirsty, as he frowned, apparently deep in thought. Now was her chance to leave, Kirsty decided, inching towards the door. She had almost reached it when he moved, reaching it before her to lean against it, his expression cruelly mocking and infinitely dangerous as he asked softly, ‘Going somewhere?’

‘To my room.’ She had intended to sound calmly serene, but even to her own ears her voice had a distinct wobble.

‘After depriving me of the company of my—er—mistress, was the rather antiquated term you used, I believe? Oh no, my dear,’ he drawled with a soft menace that drove the colour from Kirsty’s face. ‘In view of what you’ve just done, I think it’s only fair that you make some sort of reparation, don’t you?’

He looked so calm and controlled, standing there, flint-grey eyes surveying her mockingly, hands in the pockets of the immaculately cut dark trousers, a leashed power about him that warned her that this was no idle threat, despite the enormity of his words. She licked her lips nervously, trying to meet his ironic gaze with a look equally cool and failing miserably, her protesting, ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ sounding more fearful than firm.

‘No? You’re lying—but,’ he told her in an exceedingly dry tone, ‘I’m beginning to think you’re right—you are a better actress than I supposed. Come on,’ he told her in a hard voice. ‘You know exactly what I mean. You’ve deprived me of a bed partner for the night, to put the matter in its crudest terms, and that being the case I think it only fair that you take her place.’

He was mad! Kirsty thought, searching desperately for some means of escaping the suite that didn’t necessitate getting any closer than she already was to that lean, coiled, masculine body, taut with a suppressed violence she was only now beginning to become aware of, so easily had he masked it with his laconic stance and coolly controlled face.

‘You can’t mean that!’ she protested piteously, knowing even as she spoke that it was useless. He had meant it. The sharp flintiness of his glance told her that, the hard implacability of his mouth, and the way it lifted mockingly as he stared down into her flushed and frightened features.

‘Amazing!’ he taunted at last. ‘What a pity I’m your sole audience. That was almost worthy of an Oscar; pity there aren’t any parts for distracted innocents any more, you’d fill the bill to a T.’

‘Please…’ Kirsty had gone beyond reasoning, the dark urgency in her eyes unknowingly piteous as she stared up at him.

‘Please what?’ Drew mocked. ‘Throw a crust to the starving orphan? No way,’ he added in a much harder voice. ‘No one asked you to force your way in here, or act that cute little number you just played. How old are you?’ he demanded curtly. ‘Eighteen—nineteen? As spoiled as they come; used to widening those big brown eyes and having men drown in them, I don’t doubt. Well, it takes more than limpid eyes and a few tears to fool me! If you learn nothing else from this episode, at least you’ll learn not to start what you can’t finish.’

‘You can’t mean this!’ Kirsty protested, her throat closing in horrified realisation that he did, and that all the pleas in the world weren’t going to move him. He was made of solid granite, completely unfeeling, as cold as Arctic ice, impregnable. He must be to even contemplate taking her in place of Beverley Travers. She shuddered, shock taking the last remnants of colour from her face, her mouth drooping, as she sought desperately for some way of convincing him to change his mind. ‘You don’t even know me.…’ she managed at last, hating herself for the childish protest, when he laughed—an unexpectedly warm sound, his mouth curling upwards, tiny creases fanning out from his eyes.

‘Since when has that been a bar to physical satisfaction?’ he asked her coolly. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve never heard of instant attraction—love at first sight?’

He was taunting her now, and she hated him for it, her hands curling impotently into her palms as she searched for some stinging retort, something cutting enough to get him away from that door long enough for her to get through it. Too late now to regret her impulsive action, and wish she had never set eyes on him. Too late by far, she acknowledged as the look in his eyes told her he had read her mind and had no intention of letting her get within a yard of the suite door.

‘You can’t want me,’ she burst out childishly at last. ‘You love Beverley Travers!’

‘But because of you she walked out of here,’ he reminded her cruelly, ‘and as for not wanting you.…’

Kirsty’s skin burned as his glance slid slowly over her body, narrowing with devastating explicitness on the softly rounded swell of her breasts, before pinning her to the spot where she stood. ‘I’m a man,’ he told her softly, ‘and you’ve got an extremely sexy body. Just thank your lucky stars that I don’t go in for physical violence—because after what you’ve done tonight, there isn’t a court in the land that wouldn’t acquit me of whatever charge you choose to bring against me.’ His eyes rested contemptuously on the tangled silky curls she had so deliberately disordered. His mute assessment disturbed her.

‘Very effective,’ he drawled at last, ‘but I’ll reserve judgment until I’ve seen you after I’ve made love to you.’

‘Made love!’ Kirsty injected as much scorn as she could into the two words. ‘Don’t you mean raped me, because I certainly won’t.…’

‘Won’t what?’ Drew Chalmers asked silkily, levering himself off the door, and walking towards her with a steely determination mat made her turn and flee blindly in the opposite direction, not caring that it led only to the bedroom of the suite. ‘Respond to me?’

His long legs outpaced her easily, and the breath left her body on a pained gasp as he reached for her, lifting her off her feet, the impotent thud of her small fists against the powerful muscles of his chest hurting her more than it did him.

He carried her as though she weighed no more than a small child, kicking the bedroom door closed behind him, the expression in his eyes as he surveyed the rumpled disorder of his bed making her blood run cold.

‘I think,’ he told her with icy cold clarity, ‘that on this occasion we’ll dispense with the champagne and get on with the matter in hand, don’t you?’

It came to Kirsty then that behind the cool façade, molten anger boiled and that he meant to degrade and punish her, and that what was going to happen to her had nothing to do with a man satisfying his physical desire for another woman and everything to do with a particularly cruel and degrading form of revenge, and all the fighting spirit drained out of her, a suffocating sense of helpless inevitability overwhelming her.

She was dimly aware of Drew Chalmers dropping her ungently on the bed, and then locking the door, before he came towards her.

‘How did you know I would be here tonight?’ he asked casually, as the bed depressed under his lean length, the fine fabric of his pants brushing against the silky slenderness of her legs.

‘I didn’t.’ Kirsty recoiled instinctively from the intimate contact with his body, tensing as his gaze narrowed on the pale triangle of her face.

‘You’re overdoing things,’ he warned her softly. ‘And it won’t work. That frightened virgin act went out years ago—if it was ever in,’ he added cynically. ‘You’re a fraud and a cheat,’ he added softly. ‘You made damned sure you could use circumstances to suit your own ends and did so without a qualm, but when the tables are turned you don’t want to take the nasty medicine, do you? Well, little girl, it’s high time someone showed you that sometimes you have to be forced to take it for your own good!’

It was useless trying to tell him that she had had second thoughts the moment she entered the bedroom of his suite, or that she had, in Shakespearean terms, decided upon her plan of action in a mood best described as ‘pot-valiant’. Now, when the effects of the wine and cocktail had completely worn off she lay rigid with terror on the bed, unable to decide what was worse—her present situation or the humiliation of the one she would find herself in when Drew Chalmers inevitably discovered the truth.

What would he say if she told him that she was a virgin? Call her a liar, she decided bitterly, willing the weak tears she could feel blocking her throat not to fall, but once again the hatefully drawling mockery of his voice told her that he had guessed when she turned her head slightly and it was ruthlessly turned back with fingers that gripped her chin unkindly and held it while the moon silvered her face, revealing her expression to him while his was concealed from her.

‘Crying? Crocodile tears and very pretty, but alas, completely unconvincing. Do you know what the young innocent you’re trying to portray would actually do in your circumstances? Well, she certainly wouldn’t simply lie here, all passive resistance and melting tears,’ he told her brutally, ‘she’d be terrified.’

His brutality broke through the strange calm that had descended on her and she struggled to evade the crushing grip of his fingers on her chin, her eyes darting defiance at him as she stormed bitterly, ‘How do you know? Do you make a practice out of brutalising inexperienced virgins? Is that how you get your kicks? Is that.…’

Her breath was cut off by the sudden fierce pressure of his mouth, as it moved impatiently over hers, stifling her ability to think, swamping her with a terrifying sensation of panic, of swirling blackness and a bottomless pit into which she was being relentlessly drawn.

The tension held her body stiff with rejection; she gulped in air as his head lifted, arms braced against his chest to push him off.

He was breathing heavily, a dark glitter in his eyes, as he said unevenly, ‘The way I get my kicks is by having a warm, responsive woman in my arms, and by God, that’s what you’re going to be, if I have to spend all night making you respond to me!’

He wanted her to respond to him. Kirsty couldn’t understand it, unless it was part of his plan to humiliate her by first arousing her and then rejecting her. She had read about such things, and wondered at them, because so far none of her boy-friends had aroused any feelings in her even approaching such an intensity of feeling, and she was beginning to wonder if they existed only in works of fiction.

‘I never will,’ she told him stubbornly. ‘I hate you!’

‘Hatred is akin to love, or had you forgotten?’ he mocked her, turning her on to her side, one arm curved round her so that her breasts were pressed against the fine silk of his shirt, the hard contact oddly disturbing.

Suddenly it became difficult to breathe normally. Strange sensations vibrated through her, her senses relaying to her an awareness of him that frightened and alarmed her. She could smell the warm maleness of his skin; feel the hardness of sinew and bone beneath the palms she had pressed against his shoulders to fend him off.

‘Why don’t you simply relax and enjoy yourself?’ The self-assured drawl sent shivers of reaction across skin already far too sensitised to his proximity. The arm constraining her moved, and Kirsty breathed a sigh of relief, suddenly suspended as she felt his fingers tugging at her nightdress.

Her instinctive protest froze on her lips as the dark head bent towards her, cool male lips teasing the soft tendrils of hair curling round her forehead, brushing lightly against her skin and evoking a reaction that made her quiver softly. By the time she realised that Drew had eased her nightdress from her shoulders and it was too late for her to do a thing to prevent him, because whichever way she moved, trying to stop him, he outmanoeuvred her, his sudden harsh, ‘Look, if you want me to rip the damn thing off you, just say so,’ freezing her into a tense stillness, her protests dying in her throat as the nightdress was tugged downwards over her hips and discarded to lie in a pool of silk on the floor.

No man had ever seen her in only her underwear before, and she was all too conscious of the rounded smoothness of her breasts against the sculptured lace of her satin bra and matching cami-knickers suddenly glaringly provocative, and colour swept her body as she saw that Drew was looking at her, studying the slender lines of her body with an expression in his eyes that made her heart stand still before racing erratically, its jerky, uneven pace catching at her breath.

‘Beautiful!’ The husky timbre of his voice shivered across her nerve endings, the smoky sensuality darkening his eyes from grey almost to black and making her tremble beneath the explicit appraisal of his glance.

When he bent his head, sweeping aside her hair to touch his lips to her throat, exploring the delicate shape of her ear, Kirsty experienced a small explosion of panic, followed by the undeniable knowledge of her body’s physical response to a touch so sure and knowing that she marvelled that she could ever have imagined she could withstand it. The touch of his hands on her bare arms and midriff triggered off tiny pinpricks of pleasure, each one shivering through her, shocking her afresh. He seemed to know exactly where to kiss and touch. Violence she could have withstood, but not this subtle, sensual attack on her senses, this slowly seductive destruction of all her barriers until her breasts ached to know the possession of those skilled male hands, her lips parting involuntarily, as his tongue teased their trembling shape, the skilled stroking of his hands along her body, making her forget what had originally brought her to his suite, her body in the grip of a feverishly mounting desire that both shocked and fascinated the tiny corner of her