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Chairs scraped in the dining room; she could hear people moving towards the front room. Alone at last!
‘Here, let me give you a hand,’ said a voice behind her.
Morgan realised too late that she had walked into a pit of her own digging. But how could she have guessed that the monster killer ego would condescend to help with the washing-up? And now, just when she needed to think on her feet, that strange, stupid breathlessness had come back and she was distracted by an uncomfortable consciousness of his closeness.
The deep, drawling voice had spoken almost in her ear, and as she whipped around automatically to face him she found that they were only inches apart. Unbidden, the thought flashed through her mind that Elaine, raising her mouth to kiss him, had stood no closer than she was now. And she was taller than Elaine.
What on earth was the matter with her?
‘Don’t be silly; you’re a guest,’ she protested, backing away hastily.
‘I try to be a good one,’ he replied virtuously, and laughed at her sceptical look.
‘But you should be—that is, wouldn’t you rather talk to Elaine?’ Morgan began nervously stacking dishes in the sink and allowing hot, soapy water to rise around them.
‘Ah, Elaine. I take it that dazzling performance was for my benefit? Don’t look so horrified, Morgan; I said it was dazzling, didn’t I? More credit to her for making an opportunity for herself. But I can’t, offhand, think of a tactful way of telling her to consider herself auditioned, so I thought I’d come out here and make myself useful.’
‘Naturally you wouldn’t dream of saying anything that might cause offence,’ said Morgan.
‘Well, not without a studio audience,’ he said shamelessly. ‘Why don’t you let me wash while you dry, since you know where everything goes?’ His voice was not precisely gloating, but there was no doubt about it—he certainly thought that he’d won this round hands down. And now he had her where he wanted her—over the washing-up he would give her the kind of grilling which had tripped up people who were cleverer, wilier and more experienced at downright lying than she would ever be. Unless...
Morgan’s eyes swept rapidly round the kitchen. ‘Wash as you go’ was not a precept that Leah had ever taken to heart; every surface was piled high with pots, pans, mixing bowls and every conceivable implement which could be used in the preparation of a dinner for eight. The sink was now filled with the dinner dishes, as was the counter beside it. And this scene of chaos had given her an idea of breathtaking simplicity—and, it had to be said, outrageous bad manners. But at least it would save her from a tête-à-tête with Richard Kavanagh.
Morgan took a deep breath. She looked resolutely into the soapsuds; she didn’t dare look up at him. ‘It’s awfully nice of you,’ she said. ‘Are you sure?’ It was still not too late to back out.
‘Quite sure.’ He had tossed his jacket over the back of a chair and was already rolling up his sleeves. There was probably a warning somewhere in the contrast between his casual, trendy clothes and the lean muscle of the arms being laid bare; Morgan ignored it. So he thought he’d outflanked her, did he?
‘Well, if you insist,’ said Morgan, stepping away from the sink. She raised limpid eyes to his face. ‘We always leave things to drain,’ she explained in a matter-of-fact, helpful tone of voice. ‘It’s more hygienic than drying with a dish towel. You can just leave everything in the rack. Thanks very much for offering; I have had rather a long day. It’s terribly nice of you.’ She managed to meet his eyes with a straight face.
Once out of the kitchen, she stumbled down the hall, doubled over with laughter, hands clapped to her mouth, until she staggered at last to the coat-rack, buried her face in a coat, and howled.
When she had herself under control—more or less under control—Morgan returned to the sitting room to join the rest of the family.
‘Where’s Richard?’ asked Elaine in a discontented tone.
‘Oh, he insisted on doing the washing-up,’ Morgan said cheerfully.
‘What?’
‘He wouldn’t take no for an answer,’ Morgan added smugly.
‘Oh, my God,’ said Elaine in horror. ‘Well, I’d better go and give him a hand.’ She hastened out of the room.
And now, for the first time that evening, Morgan was able to relax. But as she picked up a magazine and leafed idly through it she was suddenly, wryly, aware of a faint sense of anticlimax.
She had actually got the better of Richard Kavanagh! But the problem was she couldn’t be there to savour her victory—to see his face as he tackled the washing-up, or was joined by Elaine, keen to score a few more points over the soapsuds. And, even worse, she found herself actually looking forward to his return from the kitchen. He wasn’t the kind to take defeat lying down; what would he do next?
Morgan reminded herself sternly that she wasn’t supposed to be crossing swords with him at all. In fact, looking back over the evening, she couldn’t understand what had got into her—she had meant to be so quiet and unobtrusive! She had promised Elaine to act conventionally. Where had it all gone wrong?
An image came to her of cool grey eyes, amusement lurking in their depths. He made me do it, she protested to herself. He deliberately set out to thwart me at every turn; was I supposed to take that lying down? And as for keeping him company in the kitchen... An older, more sinister image came to her—of those same grey eyes glittering in winter moonlight...
Everything he’d said at dinner showed that he hadn’t changed; the merciless predator who took pleasure in the hunt wasn’t far beneath the surface. She had to keep him from remembering her, and keep him from going anywhere near A Child’s Place. But that was no reason, she reminded herself, to jeopardise Elaine’s chances. As long as he stayed she must simply keep out of his way. From now on she would have to do better.
CHAPTER THREE
‘TELL me the story of Gareth again, Morgan.’
Morgan looked up from her unread magazine an hour later to find Ben standing beside her. ‘I can’t watch TV ’cos Sarah and Jenny are watching The Little Mermaid,’ he explained.
Morgan grinned at this flattering invitation. The little boy climbed onto the sofa beside her, and the two were soon lost in the story of the humble kitchen boy who came to the aid of a haughty lady. Each time the boy defeated a knight in battle the lady exclaimed that it was luck, and a shameful thing that a brave knight should be brought low by a dirty kitchen boy. And about a third of the way into the story the hairs rose on the back of Morgan’s neck, and she knew that Richard Kavanagh had come into the room.
She forced herself not to look up. Gareth defeated a red knight, a green knight, a blue knight, a black knight and a giant, and still the lady despised him. From the corner of her eye Morgan saw a pair of white-trousered legs prop themselves against a table, the scrubbed cotton taut over the long, lean muscle of his thighs.
‘And then he returned to the court of King Arthur and jousted in disguise, and defeated every knight who came at him, even Sir Gawain,’ she said, her voice even huskier than usual from nervousness. She could just imagine what Kavanagh would make of this. ‘And then he went to the king and said, “I am the brother of Gawain, but I wished to be made a knight for my own efforts, and not because of my brother.” And he was knighted that very day, and Sir Gareth married the lady and lived happily ever after,’ she concluded hastily.
The silence at the end of this seemed to stretch out interminably. At last, in spite of herself, Morgan’s eyes were drawn slowly up to the face of the man watching her.
She had expected to see the spark of devilry which had been lurking in his eyes all evening, perhaps anger, certainly the promise of vengeance to come. But the hawkish face had an expression of almost brooding intensity; it was impossible to believe that its bitter cynicism had been prompted by anything so trivial as being unexpectedly landed with the washing-up.
His eyes held hers for an endless moment in which she was conscious only of the pounding of her heart, of the electric charge which seemed to strike her from those quicksilver, black-rimmed irises. And when he spoke his words took her completely by surprise.
‘That’s Malory, isn’t it?’ he asked, in a casual tone which made her wonder if she’d imagined that sombre look. ‘Tennyson misses the point—can’t see why anyone would want to get by on his own merits, so he makes the disguise a whim of the boy’s mother, isn’t that right?’
‘Yes,’ said Morgan. Her eyes fell to the pale green shirt, which had got splashed just above the belt and had grease-spots up the front, and some devil prompted her to add, ‘Do you have a fellow-feeling for Gareth, then, Mr Kavanagh?’
‘Oh, he had the right idea; I’m dead against people rising through their connections,’ he replied, and then added more cynically, ‘Though it was lucky for him that Arthur wasn’t one of the bad guys, wasn’t it? But perhaps I’m biased, speaking as one who got his start doing an exposé of the Round Table.’ With an abrupt change of gear, he went on, ‘Do call me Richard, though. Or is that your way of saying you’d rather I didn’t call you Morgan?’ And suddenly the gleaming spark of devilry was back.
‘You’ve called me worse things,’ said Morgan drily, with heroic self-restraint.
‘I know, damn it.’ He ran a hand absently through his hair. ‘I want to talk to you.’
Morgan bit her lip. ‘I’d love to,’ she said insincerely. ‘But it’s way past Ben’s bedtime. Perhaps some other time.’ She stood up abruptly, dislodging Ben briefly before gathering him up onto her hip.
At once her adversary rose to his feet as well, blocking off her path to the door. Looking up reluctantly, Morgan saw that one rebellious lock of hair had fallen forward onto his face, giving him an almost boyish look—but there was nothing boyish about the intent determination of the face bent towards her.
He had only just turned thirty, she remembered; if he had accomplished so much so young, it was because he was completely ruthless. Ruthless and not to be trusted. But even as she thought it his eyes lit with amusement, and his mouth curled in a smile that tempted her to respond.
‘Are you avoiding me because of this afternoon?’ he murmured, in an intimate voice pitched so low that she had to force herself not to move closer to hear him. ‘I wanted to make amends—honest.’ The grey eyes flashed her another gleaming glance. ‘But I thought I’d be discreet.’
Looking up into the cynical, charming face, so confident of an easy victory, Morgan realised bitterly that there was no justice in the world. If it hadn’t been for Elaine, how much she would have enjoyed this conversation!
She could just imagine what Richard Kavanagh would have done to a celebrity who had nearly knocked someone down, assumed she was after him, and abandoned the innocent victim at the scene of the accident— he wouldn’t have let someone off the hook just because he said he was sorry. How she would love to give him a taste of his own medicine! What exquisite revenge she could take for the mortification of their first meeting! And instead...
‘I’m not avoiding you,’ she said stolidly. ‘It’s just time to take Ben up to bed.’
His eyes began to dance. ‘Well, perhaps I could give you a hand?’
As Morgan searched desperately for an excuse she saw, furiously, that he was actually enjoying her predicament. Well, he wasn’t going to corner her so easily again. ‘Oh, no, Richard, I couldn’t let you do that,’ she said sweetly. ‘You’ve done far too much tonight already.’ She gazed up at him with an expression of wide-eyed, glowing gratitude. ‘I really don’t know how to thank you.’
For a moment she wondered whether she’d gone too far. There was a startled silence as he registered the fact that she was actually baiting him in return. And then, maddeningly, his eyes blazed up, not with anger, but with the delight of someone who had discovered that a game had surpassed all expectations. His eyelids drooped over the glinting eyes; one eyebrow shot up. ‘I can think of a few ways,’ he said. ‘You must let me tell you about them some time.’
Morgan blushed furiously. Where was Elaine? Why wasn’t she here showing off her knowledge of the exchange rate mechanism or some similarly incomprehensible subject, instead of throwing her sister to the wolf? In exasperation she pushed past him, trying not to flinch as she brushed against him.
He laughed softly. ‘You can’t run away from me for ever, Morgan,’ he told her. ‘I always get what I want, sooner or later.’
Morgan stalked out of the room.
By the time she had tucked Ben in it was still only nine-thirty. Morgan wasn’t about to go downstairs with the wolf still on the prowl; she would read in bed. She returned to Elaine’s room to take off her bright clothes, then slipped into the extra-large Child’s Place T-shirt which was her current nightgear.
She paused for a moment by the mirror, a frown creasing her brow. Her attention was caught, not by the wide-eyed houri who gazed at the glass, nor by the long, almost coltish legs which remained largely uncovered by the T-shirt, but by the new logo, the new name, and the new slogan—There’s no place like it’—each of which was rumoured to have cost several thousand pounds from a top agency.
Madness, she thought irritably, exasperated for the thousandth time by the charity’s prodigal expenditure on its image—and the marketing strategy was no better. You had only to look at the hundreds of designer T-shirts stacked in the storeroom to see why cash flow was a problem, why the director so often rejected even modest applications for classroom supplies. Or, for that matter, she thought cynically, to see why Ruth refused point-blank to let her look at the accounts!
Morgan had spent two years after she’d left university founding and making a success of a specialist cake firm. She’d decided that she would rather work with children than turn a small business into a large one, and had never regretted the change—but what she’d heard about the management of the charity made her itch to get her hands on it. The problem was that no one paid any attention to a teacher.
Morgan tugged absent-mindedly on the end of her plait. Even the underfunded classroom she ran was better than anything else available to the children. But it would be easy enough to hold the place up to ridicule; she could just imagine Richard Kavanagh standing in the overstocked storeroom making sarcastic comments while supporters deserted in droves.
He wouldn’t care what happened to the children—all he cared about was good TV. And if he remembered a certain embarrassing incident at a Christmas party...
Morgan shuddered. The worst of it was, she thought uneasily, that he might well feel that the last few hours had given him a few more debts to pay off. Well, she would just have to dodge him for another two days, before he remembered he had a score to settle.
She was on the point of going to the bathroom to clean her teeth when a sudden, horrible thought occurred to her. So far he hadn’t connected the unfamiliar name with the organisation he’d heard of at that fateful party. But just avoiding him wouldn’t keep him in the dark for long when her old room was crammed with the old material. The unmemorable LECDC—London Educational Centre for Displaced Children—might not ring a bell with him, but she wouldn’t bet on it. There was no help for it; she would have to get them out at once.
With a little shrug she walked rapidly down the corridor to her own room.
There was no light beneath the door; it was only quarter to ten, after all, and there was no reason to expect anyone upstairs for at least another hour. Morgan slipped into the room. Most of the materials should be on the desk; feeling somehow safer with the light out, she felt her way cautiously across the floor.
Just as she reached the desk she heard footsteps in the corridor. There was no way that she could escape with the damning literature; hastily she pulled open the bottom drawer, thrust the stack of papers firmly down in it and slammed it shut. The door opened and a sliver of light cut the darkness.
‘I’m sorry about the washing-up, Richard—we don’t usually work our guests quite so hard.’ Morgan couldn’t see Elaine, but the tone of slightly forced amusement gave her some idea of the reckoning in store for her—and that was if Elaine didn’t discover her lurking half-dressed in Kavanagh’s room. Morgan held her breath; the voice in her head seemed to be too disgusted even to say, You idiot.
‘That’s all right; I was glad to have a chance to hear some of your ideas.’ At least the door hadn’t opened wider—he didn’t seem to be bringing Elaine in. ‘Goodnight, Elaine.’
There was quite a long pause before Elaine replied, ‘Goodnight, Richard.’ It didn’t take much imagination to guess what had filled it.
Then Elaine’s footsteps retreated. The door opened wider, and the light came on. Morgan stood blinking in the glare. There was a short silence.
‘Well, well,’ said Richard Kavanagh. ‘Alone at last.’
He closed the door quietly behind him.
There was a watchful look in his eyes. Morgan remembered suddenly the story that Elaine had told her about the girl at the hotel and found herself blushing furiously. What on earth could he think? She scowled at him defiantly, daring him to think the obvious.
‘This is actually my room,’ she said awkwardly, uncomfortably aware that the T-shirt seemed to be a lot shorter than it had been when she’d put it on. ‘I’m sharing with Elaine. I just wanted to get a few things before you came up.’
‘I see.’ His face was unreadable. ‘Sorry. I hadn’t realised you’d been put in with Elaine to give me a room for myself.’
Morgan detected a criticism of the sleeping arrangements in this remark, and sprang automatically to Elaine’s defence.
‘I hope you don’t mind being put in my room,’ she said apologetically. ‘Leah is rather conservative, and she doesn’t—er—’
‘Like people doing the dirty deed under her roof?’ he completed helpfully.
‘No! That is-’
‘Never mind, I get the picture. Raving sex maniac that I am, I’ll naturally have to endure agonies of frustration—’
Morgan was surprised to detect a note of annoyance in his voice. ‘I never said that,’ she protested. Why on earth was he being so prudish all of a sudden? He was supposed to be the sophisticated one. He was the one who’d just been kissing Elaine outside the door.
‘You implied something very like it.’ He thrust his hands into his pockets. ‘To tell the truth, it never occurred to me that we might share a room,’ he added offhandedly. ‘Do you think Elaine expected it?’
‘No, but-’
‘You thought it up all by yourself. How kind.’
Morgan reminded herself that she had promised Elaine to behave like a civilised adult. Civilised! She’d like to black his eye. Her right hand automatically curled into a serviceable fist; she forced it open again. No.
‘I’m sorry to have barged in,’ she said in a carefully controlled voice. ‘I’ll clear out now.’
There was a short pause, and when he spoke again she had the impression that he too had been reminding himself of the demands of civilised behaviour.
‘No, don’t go,’ he said, and he began to move towards her, the spark of devilry very bright in his eyes. ‘We’ve some unfinished business.’
He’d remembered. Morgan stared at him in horror. ‘H-have we?’ she stammered.
‘Of course.’ He paused automatically, with his familiar and maddening instinct for timing, then added, ‘I wanted to apologise for this afternoon, remember?’
With the rush of relief came anger. How dared he torment her and then turn around and pretend to be polite? ‘But you already have,’ said Morgan guilelessly.
‘What? When?’ he asked, startled.
‘This afternoon,’ she replied instantly. ‘You said, “All right, damn you,” when you saw the children. I distinctly heard you.’
His eyes met hers for an electric moment, and then, to her astonishment, he laughed out loud—not the short, cynical laugh which was his stock-in-trade, but an unpremeditated shout of laughter which seemed to involve the whole of that long, lean body. The grey eyes, meeting hers, seemed to sparkle with delight.
‘Where have you been all my life?’ he asked, grinning. ‘I did very handsomely admit to being in the wrong, now you come to mention it—but let’s say I feel I owe you a more conventional apology. Do you forgive me?’
‘Yes,’ said Morgan.
He did not seem entirely satisfied by this. ‘I know I overreacted—there’s something about persecution by fans that brings out the worst in one. I don’t know how the real superstars stand it year in year out; as far as I’m concerned, the past couple of years have been absolute hell, never knowing when some fool of a woman is going to do something perfectly idiotic—’
He broke off, and gave her a rerun of the charming smile. ‘Sorry, I don’t mean that the way it sounds. The worst of it is it makes every other woman think you must have a swollen head—that you must go round expecting every woman you meet to fall flat on her back the moment you say hello.’
Morgan found that she was literally grinding her teeth at this self-congratulating excuse for an apology. What a charlatan the man was! Was she really supposed to fall for this? Answer—yes, like a ton of bricks.
‘Oh, I’m sure you’d buy a girl a drink,’ she said, suppressing several pithy replies.
‘Or even two,’ he agreed imperturbably. ‘I must say you’re taking it very well.’
