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‘Relax, Miss Mallory. I’m not a thief or a rapist,’ the man assured her, in a crisp masculine drawl that had a decidedly un-English accent. ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you, but I thought you’d heard my footsteps. This corridor isn’t exactly soundproof, is it?’
‘Well, I didn’t.’ Rhia was trying desperately to regain her composure. ‘And—and one doesn’t expect visitors at—at eleven o’clock at night.’
‘I know. I’m sorry about that, too. But my time scale isn’t the same as yours, and right now, I’m not too concerned about your reactions to my visit. I need to talk with you, Miss Mallory. Now. So do you invite me in, or do I state what I have to say out here?’
‘Wait a minute …’ Rhia clutched her bag like a lifeline. He was going too fast, much too fast. Who was he? What was he doing here? And what right did he think he had to demand speech with her?
‘My name is Frazer,’ he said now, anticipating her next question. ‘Jared Frazer.’ His lean mouth twisted in an expression of harsh satisfaction at her involuntary withdrawal. ‘I see the name means something to you. It should.’ He paused. ‘I’m Glyn’s uncle. And I’d be interested to hear your explanation as to how come you’re so unconcerned that my nephew may be dying because of you!’
CHAPTER TWO (#u58bed758-bfe5-5b86-80eb-eecb02d47974)
‘THAT’s not true!’
Rhia’s denial was automatic, her pale cheeks flaming with hot colour as she faced his cold implacability.
‘Then why aren’t you at the hospital?’ he demanded, raking her with a scathing glance. ‘The least you could do is pretend you cared a damn for his life!’
‘I—I do. At least, I care as—as much as anyone would care——’
‘Anyone?’
‘Yes, anyone.’ Rhia glanced helplessly behind her. ‘Oh, I—I think you’d better come in. You—you’ve made a mistake, Mr Frazer. I’m not who you think I am. Valentina is my sister. I’m Rhia.’
‘Rhia?’
As she struggled to get her key into the lock, she heard him repeat her name with harsh incredulity. Then, as the key turned and the door swung open, she gasped in dismay as his hand at her back impelled her into the small hallway beyond. Panic flared once again, but it was short-lived as he groped for the light switch and slammed the door behind them.
‘You lying little bitch!’ he swore violently, iron-hard fingers around her upper arm pressing her against the wall. ‘You’d better think of something else and quick, Valentina. I met your sister Rhia when I came here earlier this afternoon!’
Any thought of defending her sister died in Rhia at that moment. ‘Then—then you were misled,’ she choked, almost spitting the words at him. ‘I—I am Rhia Mallory, Mr Frazer. And I can prove it. Now will you please let go of my arm? You’re hurting me!’
She was aware that in the struggle, the neat coil of her hair had become loosened and untidy strands of honey-coloured silk were tumbling down about her ears, framing the pale indignation of her face. Violet eyes, wide with resentment, glared into the enigmatic darkness of his, and she shook her head in fury as he continued to hold her prisoner.
‘Say that again,’ he commanded, and she was so close to him she could feel the warm draught of his breath as he spoke. It was fresh and just faintly scented with alcohol, as if he, as well as her sister, had taken time out from visiting the hospital.
‘I—I said, I’m Rhia Mallory,’ she repeated unsteadily. ‘I don’t know who you saw this afternoon, but it certainly wasn’t me.’
‘She said she was Rhia Mallory,’ he insisted, and Rhia could feel his frustration through the taut fingers gripping her arm. ‘She said you weren’t home, and that I’d better come back later. She didn’t say when, so I came back—at six, and again at eight o’clock this evening. This is my fourth visit, Miss Mallory, and this time I don’t intend to leave until I know the truth!’
Rhia was trembling very badly, but somehow she managed to sustain his angry glare. ‘I don’t care what she told you, Mr Frazer,’ she retorted tremulously. ‘I imagine she had her own reasons for telling you what she did. The fact remains, I am Rhia, not Valentina, and I wish you would stop behaving as if I’d committed some kind of crime!’
‘And haven’t you?’
‘No, damn you!’ Rhia caught her breath on a sob, the pain he was inflicting to her arm causing the blood to drain from it. ‘For God’s sake, let me go, can’t you? You’re taller, broader, and infinitely stronger than I am. Surely you’re not afraid I might overpower you!’
The man regarded her malevolently for a long moment, and then, with a faint trace of admiration twisting his dark features, he opened his fingers and stepped back, allowing her to massage her injured arm with jerky movements. ‘You’re very cool, Miss Mallory,’ he commented harshly. ‘I should have expected it. But after meeting your sister, I’m afraid I was disarmed.’
Disarmed! Rhia couldn’t imagine anyone who displayed a greater lack of such a weakness. But evidently Valentina had spoken to him, and succeeded in deceiving him. But why? What did she hope to gain by it? Surely she realised that by antagonising this man, she could only be making things more difficult for herself.
‘You’d better come in.’
Pushing past him, Rhia led the way into the living room. For a moment, he resisted her attempt to pass him, but then, with a wry inclination of his head he allowed her to continue, and Rhia turned on the lamps with a feeling of mild incredulity. This couldn’t be happening to her, she thought disbelievingly. But it was, and her unwelcome visitor’s bulk uncomfortably reduced the generous proportions of the familiar room.
Glancing behind her to ensure herself of his whereabouts, Rhia emptied the contents of her handbag on to the dropleaf table in the window. Then, after finding what she was looking for, she held out several articles for his inspection: her banker’s card, her cheque book, and not least, her driving licence.
‘I think these will clarify the situation,’ she declared, her voice breaking in spite of the iron determination she was putting on herself. ‘And if any further evidence is required, I’m sure Simon—that is, the young man I was out with this evening—I’m sure he would willingly——’
She couldn’t go on. It had all been too much for her. With a feeling of ignominy, she felt the hot tears over-spilling her eyes, sliding down her cheeks in weak betrayal, and she quickly turned her back on him as she scrubbed her knuckles over her eyes.
If she had expected her tears to persuade him, she was wrong. As she stood there, struggling to control herself, she heard him flicking over the documents she had given him, in no apparent hurry to offer his apologies.
‘Yes,’ he said at last, ‘I’m sure these are genuine. But why shouldn’t I suspect their deliverer? If I was going to pretend to be someone else, I’d make pretty damn sure I had documentation, too.’
‘Oh, you’re impossible!’ Rhia spun round helplessly, her breakdown made all the more humiliating by reddened eyes and a drip at the end of her nose. ‘Why won’t you believe me? Why would I lie?’
‘Why would your sister lie?’
Rhia bent her head, rubbing her nose disconsolately. ‘You tell me.’
There was silence for a few pregnant seconds, and then Jared Frazer moved, walking past her to the table and depositing the articles she had given him with the rest of her belongings. Rhia flinched away from him as he passed her, but he didn’t touch her. After he had accomplished his mission, he returned to his position by the door, and when she looked up he was regarding her with something less than hostility in his brooding gaze.
In spite of their differences, Rhia could not deny that he was a disturbing man, disturbing both in his manner and his appearance. The hooded eyes with their heavy lids, that had raked her trembling defiance previously, were only part of his dark attraction. Set above a narrow intelligent face, with high cheekbones and a prominent nose, they only hinted at the sensuality that was evident in every line of his thin-lipped mouth. She had never seen Glyn, but if he was anything like his uncle she could quite see why Valentina had found him so attractive. Even the dark lounge suit he was wearing fitted his lean muscular body with unerring elegance, accentuating the narrowness of his hips and the powerful strength of his legs.
Yet, meeting his eyes, Rhia knew an uneasy sense of foreboding. It was strange, but now that the hardness of aggression was being erased from his features, she felt more—not less—anxiety. Why had he come here? What did he want? And why hadn’t Glyn’s parents made the trip?
‘Okay,’ he said, straightening from the indolent stance he had adopted, pushing back the lick of straight black hair that had tumbled across his forehead. ‘Suppose I accept what you say: I guess that means it was Valentina I spoke to earlier.’
Rhia moved her head in a positive gesture.
‘So—where is she?’
Rhia caught her lower lip between her teeth. ‘At—at work, I suppose.’
‘I assume you mean the hospital where she’s a student nurse?’
‘Naturally.’
‘No.’ He shook his head, folding his arms across the broad expanse of his chest, and Rhia’s anxiety kindled into a hard core of apprehension.
‘What do you mean, no?’
‘Where do you think I’ve been this evening? Apart from a bar.’
Rhia frowned. ‘But she must be there. She told me she was on duty at eight o’clock.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve seen her?’
‘Well—yes.’ Rhia coloured. ‘But it was at lunchtime. That—that was when I learned about what had happened——’ She broke off uncertainly. ‘How—how is Glyn?’
‘Still in a coma,’ said Jared Frazer flatly. ‘The doctors say it may be hours or days before he comes out of it. There’s nothing anybody can do until they know whether he’s suffered any brain damage.’
‘Oh, no!’ Rhia felt sick.
‘Oh, yes.’ Jared Frazer was relentless. ‘And I mean to find out how my nephew, who was a tolerably good driver, should have had the misfortune to wrap his automobile round a concrete post for no reason.’
Rhia moved her head. ‘What—what did they tell you?’
‘Who? The doctors, or the police?’
‘The—police.’
‘They’re not happy with their investigations either,’ he replied, his eyes intimidatingly intent. ‘They think someone else may have been with him. Your sister, perhaps. They know she was with him earlier in the evening.’
Rhia could not meet his eyes. ‘I—I wish I could help you.’
‘So do I,’ he averred grimly. ‘It would help to find your sister. Are you sure you have no idea where she might be?’
‘No.’ Rhia could be positive about that at least. ‘I—at lunchtime when I left her I understood she was going back to the hospital to see Glyn. I can’t imagine where else she would go.’
Jared Frazer pulled a wry face. ‘You forget—she was here, wasn’t she? I spoke to her at—oh, I guess it must have been about two-thirty.’
‘Yes.’ Rhia tried to think. ‘But you’ve been to St Mary’s since then and she’s not there.’
‘That’s right.’
Rhia linked her unsteady fingers together. ‘Then I don’t know where she is, Mr Frazer. I—I wish I did.’
‘Which leaves us with the original question, why should Valentina pretend to be you?’
Rhia nodded. ‘I—I suppose—when she realised who you were——’
‘——she panicked!’
‘Panicked?’ Rhia endeavoured not to betray her alarm. ‘No, I—perhaps she was scared.’
‘Scared!’ He was scathing. ‘And why should she be scared, if she had nothing to hide?’
‘Oh, I don’t know. Why are you catechising me?’ Rhia’s nerves were rapidly getting the better of her. First Valentina’s confession, then the shock of meeting him at her door, and now this! She wasn’t a criminal, but she was being made to feel like one, and the knowledge of what her sister had told her made everything that was happening like some awful nightmare.
Scraping her hand across her damp cheeks, she moved her shoulders in a dismissing gesture. ‘I think you’d better go, Mr Frazer,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I can’t help you, but I’m sure Valentina will explain everything when she turns up.’
‘When she turns up?’ He glared at her. ‘And when might that be? Is she in the habit of disappearing for nights on end? Aren’t you worried about her?’
‘Worried!’ Rhia gasped. ‘Of course I’m worried. And—and in answer to your question, no—no, Val is not in the habit of sleeping rough, if that’s what you’re implying! But she’s obviously not here, and I don’t see what more I can tell you.’
Jared Frazer regarded her broodingly. ‘Very well,’ he said at last, after subjecting her to another penetrating appraisal, ‘I’ll go. I intend to spend the night at the hospital, just in case there’s any change in Glyn’s condition. If you do locate your sister, I’d be grateful if you’d contact me there. Otherwise, I’ve booked a room at the Westbury.’
‘At—at the Westbury,’ Rhia nodded. ‘I’ll remember.’
Jared Frazer hesitated only a moment longer, and then turned abruptly towards the door, preceding her along the narrow entrance hall with long powerful strides.
He pulled the door open into the corridor, then halted, glancing down at Rhia closely behind him. ‘You’ll be all right?’ he asked, unexpectedly gentle after his earlier animosity, and Rhia caught her breath.
‘I—yes,’ she stammered awkwardly, and his lean mouth twisted into a wry smile.
‘I’m sorry if I was brutal,’ he offered, and she shrank back in alarm when he lifted his hand. But all he did was brush one errant tear from her cheek, his brown fingers light and cool against her overheated skin.
‘I—will—will Glyn’s parents be coming to England?’ Rhia asked hastily, overwhelmingly conscious of the unwelcome intimacy promoted by that disturbing gesture, and to her relief he moved out into the corridor.
‘Glyn’s father was my elder brother,’ he remarked, with resumed curtness, as if he was loath to explain himself to her. ‘He’s dead. I came on behalf of Glyn’s mother, my sister-in-law. Since my brother died, I’ve accepted the role of Glyn’s guardian.’
‘Oh! Oh, I see.’ Rhia cleared her throat. ‘Well, goodnight, Mr Frazer.’
‘Goodnight, Miss Mallory,’ he returned politely, and she closed the door heavily as he walked away towards the lift.
With the safety chain in place, Rhia moved reluctantly down the hall again and into the living room. She was still trembling and for the moment she seemed incapable of coherent thought. Hardly thinking what she was doing, she gathered the contents of her handbag together and stuffed them all back inside, fastening the press-stud securely before looking round the living room.
It was not an unattractive apartment, with its patterned broadloom and neat three-piece suite, but she couldn’t help speculating what Jared Frazer had thought of it, and wondered rather irrelevantly what his home was like. Probably ultra-smart and ultra-modern, she decided, wishing she knew more about Glyn’s background. But Valentina’s overtures on the subject had been short and apathetic, and Rhia had not been sufficiently interested to question her further. Besides, she had never expected the information to have any relevancy, and only now did she realise that apart from his name, and the college he attended here in London, she knew next to nothing about him.
With a sigh, she put up a hand to her hair, discovering to her dismay that it was almost completely loosened from its pins. What must Jared Frazer have thought of her? she reflected irritably. Remembering the elegance of American and Canadian women she had seen on television and in magazines, she decided that he had probably mistaken her for a slob. What with red eyes and a runny nose, and her hair looking as if it hadn’t seen a brush in days, he had every reason to despise her; and even the brace skirt, which had looked so attractive this morning, was now creased beyond reason after the soaking it had taken at lunchtime.
Shaking her head, she turned out the living room lamps and went into her bedroom. In the light from an apricot-shaded bulb, she surveyed the damage. As she had expected, she did look a mess, her mascara smudged and uneven, and little, if any, make-up left on her face. Oh well, she thought bitterly, she had more important things to think about than her appearance. Where on earth was Valentina, and how could she hope to gain anything by hiding away?
Stripping off her clothes, Rhia went into the bathroom and erased the offending mascara, cleansing her face thoroughly and cleaning her teeth. Then, with her skin soft and glowing, she put on her cotton nightgown and sat down to brush her hair at the mirror before tumbling into bed. Her hair fell in a silken curtain almost to her waist, thick and smooth and lustrous, and completely straight. Only when she bound it in braids did it assume a kinky texture, but generally she preferred it as it was now, a skein of beaten gold. It was her best feature, she decided, ignoring the violet beauty of her eyes, and the generous width of her mouth. And Valentina had always made her feel overweight, comparing Rhia’s more voluptuous curves to her own sylph-like figure. Where was Valentina? she asked herself again as she climbed into bed, but her emotional exhaustion soon eliminated even this thought from her mind.
It was light when she awakened, and a reluctant glance at the alarm clock informed her it was after nine o’clock. Not late, by Saturday standards, but anxiety, and her conscience, made her reach for her dressing gown.
It was chilly in the apartment, and she turned on the central heating before drawing back the curtains and going to plug in the kettle. Then, gathering the daily newspaper from the letter box, she made her way back down the hall.
On impulse, she opened her father’s bedroom door, the room Valentina used while he was away. It was the smaller of the two bedrooms, their father insisting that as they were to share and have single beds, the two girls should have the larger room. While her sister was in residence, the room generally looked a mess, with discarded clothes left on the bed and Valentina’s make-up adorning the dressing table, and after her visit yesterday, Rhia was quite prepared to find the place in disorder. But it wasn’t. It was reasonably tidy, and what was more, the dressing table tray was empty of any cosmetics.
With a feeling of apprehension Rhia entered the room, running her fingers over the surface of the chest of drawers where Valentina kept the nightwear and lingerie she used when she was at the apartment. Hardly aware that she was holding her breath, Rhia pulled open the drawers, one by one, her fingers quickening when she discovered they were empty. Only a discarded pair of tights still resided in the bottom of one of the drawers. Otherwise, all her sister’s belongings had gone.
Expelling her breath on a gasp, Rhia hurried to the wardrobe, wrenching open the doors and standing back aghast when she found that here, too, her sister’s clothes had gone, leaving only her father’s spare suits and jackets hanging there.
Turning, Rhia surveyed the room blankly. So that was why Valentina had come to the apartment; that was what she had been doing when Jared Frazer interrupted her. No wonder she had panicked and lied. She must have been planning to leave all along.
But leave for where? Rhia’s brain simply couldn’t come up with a single idea. Surely she must have left a note, something, anything, to reassure her sister that she would be coming back. But although she searched the flat from hallway to bathroom, there was nothing to indicate where Valentina had gone.
The kettle had boiled and gone cold again while Rhia was conducting her search, and she switched it on again weakly, realising how suspicious her sister’s disappearance would appear. The police were bound to want to see her, to ask questions, and if Valentina wasn’t around, they might question her.
Might! Rhia’s lips twisted bitterly. If Jared Frazer had anything to do with it, there’d be no possibility of improbability. He was not going to take this lying down, and who knew? Perhaps they would put out a bulletin for Valentina’s arrest.
Rhia shook her head. Yesterday afternoon she had thought the situation couldn’t get any worse, but it had. This man Frazer had arrived, practically breathing fire, and Valentina had disappeared. Dear God, what was she going to do?
It was while she was drinking her tea that she decided she would have to talk to Simon. She had to talk to someone and there was no one else she could confide in. Simon would listen, she thought, with some relief, Simon would understand. But she couldn’t wait until their date that afternoon. She had to talk to him now.
Tucking her legs under her, Rhia curled up on the couch and picked up the telephone, dialling Simon’s number with fingers that persistently hit the wrong digits. She had to dial the number three times before she made the connection, and then, when the receiver was lifted, it was Mrs Travis, not Simon, who came on the line.
