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Vampire Lover
CHARLOTTE LAMB
The Kiss of Death? Clare had thought that Denzil Black was intent on seducing her sister - after her best friend had already fallen prey to his charms. It was almost as if the film director were a vampire lover, moving from one woman to another, and leaving them drained and helpless.Then Clare began to suspect that she was next on Denzil's list of conquests - but not if she could help it… . This time, Denzil Black would know what it was like to be the victim of love!
Vampire Lover
Charlotte Lamb
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#ud42c9ba2-06ab-50f1-8cc2-fa3eeef62ceb)
CHAPTER TWO (#uc7306b8a-0bbe-5fbb-919e-417f1c322fcc)
CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
CLARE met Denzil Black the day he first arrived in town. It was autumn, the leaves turning brown, crimson and russet on the trees, the skies a deep purply blue as a storm blew up out of the west.
The wind rattled the agency window, and the lights flickered. Clare frowned, her blue eyes anxious, hoping they were not going to have a power cut; they often did during stormy weather, when power lines blew down. Well, it was closing time, anyway; she might as well go home. She got up from her desk and began putting on her coat, brushing her blonde hair out of the way.
The door from the street opened and the wind blew into the office. Clare looked round, beginning to apologise politely.
‘I’m sorry, we’re just closing. Could you come back tomorrow?’
She had already turned off the main lights; the room was rather dim. She couldn’t see much of the man standing just inside the door, except that he was very tall, with black hair, and wore a long, dark coat which was flapping around him in the wind.
‘I saw your board outside a house at the top of Hunter’s Hill,’ a deep voice said. ‘A large Victorian house, set back from the road—is it still for sale?’
‘Dark Tarn,’ Clare said slowly, trying to make out his features in the shadows. All she could see was the glitter of his eyes staring back at her. ‘Yes, it’s still for sale,’ she said, suppressing an odd shudder that ran down her back. It must be the wind that made her suddenly so cold.
Nobody wanted to buy the old house on the edge of the town. It was far too big for the average family. It could be turned into a small hotel or a nursing home but was in bad repair and would need a great deal of renovation before anyone could move into it. It had been on the house agency’s books for two years now; her father would be thrilled if she could sell or even rent it.
‘Well, can you show me round the place?’ the stranger asked.
‘Yes, certainly, would tomorrow morning suit you? At, say...eleven?’ Clare casually picked up her desk diary and a pen, hiding her eagerness to make this sale. That was easy for her; she was an ice blonde, pale-skinned, even her eyes a light blue, very cool.
‘I’m going to be busy all day tomorrow,’ the dark man said. ‘How about now?’
A warning bell rang in Clare’s brain. Coldly polite, she said, ‘I’m sorry, that isn’t possible.’
Her father had impressed it on her years ago that it was not safe for her to accompany a strange man to view an empty house. They always made careful arrangements so that she had someone else with her on these occasions; usually her brother, Robin, these days, now that her father was semi-retired. Robin was just nineteen, a student at the local technical college, taking a course in business management, but he was large and muscular, he played rugby for the college and was a keen gymnast. Clare always felt very safe with Robin around.
‘What do you mean, isn’t possible?’
The curt question made her stiffen. ‘We operate from nine until five-thirty, Mr...?’
‘Black,’ he said in that deep yet smoky voice. ‘Denzil Black. Is the manager here?’
‘I am the manager!’ She felt his disbelief and added coldly, ‘This is my agency.’
‘The sign over the door says the agency is run by a George Summer!’
‘That’s my father, but he has retired, and I run the agency now!’
‘I see.’ She felt him staring at her, his eyes glittering in the semi-darkness. ‘Well, Miss Summer...or are you married?’
She hesitated, feeling an odd, inexplicable, almost atavistic reluctance to tell him her name. Something about him had begun to bother her; she suddenly wanted to get rid of him as soon as possible. ‘I’m Clare Summer,’ she said shortly.
‘Not married, then?’
‘No,’ she almost snapped. ‘Look, I’m sorry, Mr Black, but I really can’t spare the time to show you the house tonight.’
His tone was incisive. ‘Miss Summer, either you want to sell Dark Tarn or you don’t. I am going abroad for several months, tomorrow. Tonight is the only time I could view the house. Either show it to me now or we’ll forget it.’
She hesitated, biting at her lower lip. Neither her father nor her brother would be at home yet. They had both gone to watch a rugby game in the next town and wouldn’t be back for a couple of hours. She could ask her sister, Lucy, to drive to Dark Tarn to meet them, of course. Lucy would be home from work by now; she taught at the local primary school and was always home by five o’clock.
‘Make up your mind,’ Denzil Black said impatiently. ‘I have my lawyer in the car; Helen Sherrard, I expect you know her—I wanted her to see the house too, but I don’t want to keep her waiting out there much longer.’
Clare gave a faint sigh of relief. ‘Oh, Helen! Yes, of course I know her. Very well, Mr Black, I’ll take you over to Dark Tarn now, but I have another appointment at seven, and I can’t be late for that. We’ll have to make this a rapid viewing.’ She turned to the filing cabinet, quickly flicked through the files until she found the one on Dark Tarn, took a set of keys from a locked box on the wall and locked up both the cabinet and the key safe again. Before she left she glanced at herself in a mirror hanging on the wall while she buttoned her dark red winter coat, which had a shawl collar and fell to mid-calf.
‘Your coat is almost Victorian,’ drawled Denzil Black, watching her. ‘It suits you.’
It was a backhanded compliment; she gave him a dry look. ‘Thank you.’ So, he thought she was old-fashioned, did he? No doubt he thought he was insulting her, but he was wrong. Clare didn’t object to the description at all, especially from a man like him.
Oh, he was attractive: her body had felt the magnetic pull of his attraction as soon as he’d walked in here. But Clare had learnt long ago not to trust men, especially attractive men. Life had always spoilt them; you were a fool if you got involved, you were asking to get hurt. You had to keep them at a distance, freeze them off. Clare was an expert at that by now.
She checked that her desk drawers were all locked, collected her bag and an umbrella, and walked towards Denzil Black. His face still in shadow, he opened the door into the street for her.
‘I have to set the burglar alarm and lock up,’ Clare said.
‘I’ll wait by my car.’
Clare took in the sleek grace and power of the black machine. She wasn’t a car fanatic, so she couldn’t guess the make of it but she didn’t have to know much about cars to realise that this was an expensive luxury item. If Denzil Black could afford this car, he could afford to buy Dark Tarn, which answered one of her secret doubts about him.
When she had finished setting the alarm and locking the shop, she walked over to join him. He watched her, his stare flicking from her short, smooth blonde hair to her long, slender legs and elegant feet. Clare dressed timelessly, in simple, classy clothes which wouldn’t go out of fashion in a few months. She didn’t dress for men, she dressed to look cool, calm and capable, but that was not how she felt under his amused, mocking stare.
Having Denzil Black watch her like that, especially as she slid her long legs into his car, made the back of her neck prickle. She had the feeling that this man was real trouble.
Helen turned from the front passenger seat and gave her a polite smile. ‘Hello, Clare.’
Clare would have liked to ask her some questions about her client, but Denzil Black walked round the car too fast. Before Clare got a word out he was getting into the driver’s seat, so she smiled in a friendly way and said, ‘Hello, Helen. How are you?’
‘Fine,’ Helen said, but Clare thought she looked rather pale. She was a woman in her early thirties with a warm, full figure, rich auburn hair and vivid green eyes. Her skin was usually creamy and flushed, but tonight she had very little colour and her eyes had a languid, almost drowsy look, as if...well, as if she had been making love, Clare thought, startled by her own guesswork.
She quickly looked away, wondering: Was Helen having an affair with her client?
Helen had acquired a reputation for being a flirt lately, ever since her divorce from Paul Sherrard, a well-known local hotelier. As soon as she had been on her own, men queued up to get her attention. You only had to date more than one man a year in this little backwater of a town to get yourself talked about, and ever since she and Paul had split up Helen had been seen around with a succession of other men. None of her relationships had lasted or seemed serious. Maybe she believed that there was safety in numbers. Or maybe she was simply in a wild, reckless mood after her divorce. She and her husband had been mad about each other once, but gossip had it that Paul had had some sort of passing fling with a guest in their hotel, and Helen could never forgive him.
The car started smoothly and shot away from the kerb. Denzil Black clearly knew the way, so Clare didn’t have to give him directions. She sat back, watching his hands on the wheel. There was a faint scattering of black hairs across the back of them; they were long-fingered, deft and powerful. On one wrist she saw a gold watch glint, and he wore a heavy gold signet ring, stamped with what looked like a coat of arms.
She still hadn’t seen his face, but she saw his thick, glossy black hair shine in the light every time they passed a street-lamp. His black coat had an expensive look; cashmere, she suspected, very smoothly tailored. Yes, he definitely had money.
Helen was murmuring to him in a low voice; Clare couldn’t hear most of what she said, but then Helen asked in a husky, almost angry tone, ‘How long are you going to be in the States?’
Denzil Black shrugged. ‘A month, maybe two.’
‘That long?’ Helen sounded desolate. Clare frowned, sorry for her. Clare remembered a time when one man could make her feel like that; it wasn’t an experience she ever intended to repeat. She had not found pain habit-forming.
Denzil Black pulled up at traffic-lights a second later, shot a backwards glance at Clare. ‘If I do buy this property, Helen will act for me while I’m away.’
‘I see,’ Clare said. ‘Do you live in Greenhowe at the moment, Mr Black?’
‘No, but I’ve been staying just outside town, with Helen’s brother and his wife, at their lovely home.’
‘That’s how we met,’ explained Helen huskily.
Clare didn’t know her all that well—they often met on business, to discuss the affairs of clients, but they didn’t meet socially. Clare wasn’t part of the social set, the way Helen undoubtedly was! Her family had always had money and, even more importantly, land. Jimmy Storr had inherited an old Queen Anne farmhouse with several hundred acres of good arable land a mile outside Greenhowe; he farmed while his wife ran a country-house hotel whose small restaurant had a county-wide reputation for excellent cuisine. Laura Storr was a wonderful cook, using fresh ingredients mostly produced on their own farm. They both worked hard, but they played hard, too, led a busy social life, and were very popular.
Clare’s family were not in the same social sphere, which didn’t bother her at all. She didn’t enjoy noisy parties, or belonging to the country club; she didn’t play team sports or give dinner parties. She walked and swam, read a good deal, went to the theatre, or the cinema, saw a lot of her family, and a few close friends. She and Helen Sherrard were miles apart in every way, but Clare had always liked the other woman, just as she liked Helen’s brother and sister-in-law.
She had been sorry for Helen lately, too. After her divorce Helen had been so unhappy, and unable to hide it. I hope she hasn’t been stupid enough to fall in love with someone she hardly knows! thought Clare, and then, in the mirror above his head, suddenly caught the glitter of Denzil Black’s grey eyes. They had very large jet-black pupils which made his eyes seem dark, and heavy lids which were thick-lashed.
Even as Clare looked into the strange eyes, the lids drooped, hiding their expression from her, and he turned his head away, his reflection vanishing abruptly from the mirror.
Clare gave a start, wishing she had had more of a chance to examine his features. She couldn’t help being curious about him. How did he really feel about Helen? Was he taking her to see Dark Tarn as his lawyer, or because of a more personal relationship? Was he hoping that the house might one day be their future home? Clare couldn’t begin to guess at any answers to all those questions.
By now, they were out of town, in the green countryside, rapidly going up Hunter’s Hill, the ancient boundary of Greenhowe. On one side of them lay the grey, wintry sea, far down below steep cliffs, and barely visible in a twilight which was fast becoming night. On the other ran pastures, grazed by sheep, the low-lying land dissected by dry-stone walls, in the distance the dark swell of the moors and hills like a crouching animal stretched out on the horizon.
Dark Tarn could be seen from a distance in almost any direction—a Victorian Gothic building with a medieval flavour, its turrets and battlements dominated the skyline for miles around.
‘My God, it’s creepy!’ Helen muttered.
Denzil Black laughed. ‘Don’t you like it?’ He didn’t sound as if it mattered to him whether she did or not. Clare frowned. Not that it was any of her business, but she was curious about their relationship.
A moment later they came to a halt in front of elaborate ironwork gates. Clare got out and went to unlock them with a key from the set she had in her pocket. The lock was a little rusty; she struggled with the key. Denzil Black got out of the car and came to help.
‘I’ll do it.’ His hand reached for the key, touching hers. A jab of electricity went through her; Clare jumped back.
He shot her a veiled sideways look. She felt herself go red and was furious. Why on earth had she reacted like that? He’d think she was some schoolgirl, blushing because a man came too close to her!
A second later, the lock turned with a grating sound, and he pushed the gates open.
‘This lock needs oiling.’
‘Yes, I’ll see that’s done tomorrow.’ Flustered and irritated, Clare retrieved the key and went back to the car with Denzil Black walking just behind her. The wind was howling through the trees ahead of them, in the wild gardens of Dark Tarn; out of the corner of her eye she saw the man’s long black coat blowing around his legs, as if he had wings and might take off at any minute and flap away into the night.
They drove slowly up the winding gravel drive, which was rutted and overgrown with moss and grass. Wild rabbits ran for cover, their white scuts showing as they shot away.
It was hard to see much of the garden, but Clare knew it was wildly overgrown with enormous rhododendrons and laurels in towering banks on either side of the drive.
The empty house loomed above them suddenly, the windows shuttered, no sign of life. Around the high turret a dark shape fluttered; a bat, registered Clare. There was a colony of pipistrelle bats living in the roof; she wondered if Denzil Black had noticed and whether or not the presence of bats might put him off. Some people hated bats, were terrified of them. She couldn’t think why, as pipistrelle were quite tiny creatures only interested in devouring insects and no threat whatever to people. Clare would have loved to have some in her own cottage. She decided not to mention them to Denzil Black.
‘There’s no caretaker?’ he asked at that moment, and Clare shook her head.
‘The owner didn’t want to pay for one. He’s living in Australia, and has no intention of ever coming back here; he just wants to sell the house. It is still furnished, but, if you’re seriously interested, we can deal with that. The furniture will all go up for auction, and you’ll have vacant possession.’
‘We’ll see,’ he said vaguely, staring up at the sky.
Helen looked up too, gave a high-pitched scream. ‘Ughh...what’s that?’
‘A pipistrelle,’ Denzil Black said softly. ‘They’re delightful little brown bats...hardly bigger than a large moth. I wonder if there’s a colony in the roof? There must be a lot of space under the rafters. It’s exactly the habitat they love.’
He knew a lot about bats; well, it was a point in his favour. Clare smiled and in the mirror saw a brief reflection of his dark, glowing eyes.
‘Do you like bats, Miss Summer?’
‘Love them—I’d like some in my own place.’
‘You have your own house?’
‘I’m renovating an old farm labourer’s cottage not far from here; I work on it every weekend,’ she admitted. ‘But for the moment I live with my family, during the week, in town.’
‘I’m interested in interior decoration,’ Helen said with her first sign of enthusiasm. ‘Are you doing all the décor yourself, Clare?’
‘Well, at the moment I’m mending the roof,’ Clare said drily. ‘And then I have to replaster the ceilings and walls. It’ll be a long time before I get around to any décor.’
Helen looked horrified. ‘It sounds as if the place is a total wreck!’
Clare laughed. ‘It is.’
‘What on earth made you buy it?’
‘It was very cheap, and it was a challenge,’ Clare told her as they pulled up outside the house.
‘You’re braver than I am, then!’ Helen said, making a face.
