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Only to lean weakly back against it, breathing heavily, the pounding of her heart sounding loudly in the hallway.
She had thought—hoped!—that things couldn’t get any worse after this morning, but this was worse, so much worse, than anything she could have imagined!
Her home, the privacy she so valued, was now completely violated.
They would have to move again, she realized, get completely away from here. There was no way—
A loud pounding sounded on the door behind her. ‘Open the damned door, Jinx! Now!’ Nik ordered.
As if he had any right to tell her to do anything! As if—
‘For God’s sake, Jinx!’ He rapped loudly on the door again.
She didn’t want to let him in. Didn’t want his presence in her home. Didn’t want to remember his ever having been here. Didn’t—
‘I know you’re there, Jinx—’ his voice was menacingly soft now ‘—so just let me in and we can talk about this.’
Talk? What was there to talk about? Not only had he followed her here, but he had brought a reporter with him.
‘Unless you would rather just leave me alone out here with this reporter?’
Her fingers fumbled with the lock as she turned the knob, suddenly finding herself pushed to one side as the door immediately sprang open and Nik forced his way inside, slamming the door behind him.
Jinx just stared at him, her eyes accusing, her face pale.
‘Don’t look at me like that!’ he growled, closing his eyes briefly before raising his lids to look at her with glittering grey eyes. ‘No matter what you may think, I am not responsible for—for that!’ he told her grimly, moving restlessly away from the door.
Jinx took a step backwards, effectively blocking the hallway, as if to stop him going any further inside. She couldn’t help herself, the move purely instinctive.
‘Jinx…!’ Nik groaned almost pleadingly.
‘You—’ She broke off as a knock sounded on the door behind him, her expression scathing now. ‘Shouldn’t you answer that?’
His eyes glittered angrily. ‘Don’t make this any worse than it already is, Jinx—’
‘Is that possible?’ she snapped, wondering how this nightmare was going to end.
Not only did Nik Prince know where she lived, but a reporter did too!
‘Probably not,’ he conceded. ‘But, I repeat, I am not responsible for bringing that reporter here.’
Of course he was responsible; she certainly hadn’t invited a reporter to her home. If Nik hadn’t followed her—
‘Why did you follow me?’ she accused.
He looked uncomfortable now. ‘You know why,’ he muttered.
Oh, yes, she knew why; Nik had been all too aware that once she left James Stephens’s office none of them—but Nik especially!—would ever see her again.
She shook her head. ‘You’ve only made this so much worse, Nik. Are they ever going to go away?’ She groaned as the knock sounded on the door once again.
‘Not for a while, at least.’ He grimaced, taking a firm hold of her arm. ‘Let’s go somewhere where we can’t hear them—’
‘Let’s not,’ Jinx contradicted, pointedly removing her arm from the hold he had of her. ‘Do you think they managed to get a photograph?’ She frowned at the thought.
He winced. ‘Maybe not…’
‘In other words—yes,’ Jinx sighed. ‘This is such a mess. I don’t know what to do next. I—’ She broke off as the door opened at the end of the hallway.
‘Juliet, is that you, dear?’
She pushed past Nik, smiling brightly as she walked down the hallway to meet her father. He was a tall, spare man, iron-grey hair brushed neatly back, dressed in his familiar tweed suit and checked shirt, but the whole effect was slightly marred by the carpet slippers he was wearing with them. ‘Yes, it’s me, Daddy,’ she confirmed gently. ‘Where is Mrs Holt?’
Her father looked slightly vague. ‘In the kitchen preparing lunch, I think. I—there appears to be someone at the door.’ A frown furrowed his brow as another knock sounded on the door. ‘I—that was quick.’ He smiled enquiringly as he spotted Nik standing just in front of the closed door. ‘How do you do, young man?’ He moved forward to hold out his hand to Nik. ‘I’m Jack Nixon.’
Jinx was dismayed. Nik was an intelligent as well as astute man, and it wouldn’t take him too long to realize in exactly what way her father ‘wasn’t well’…
‘Nik Prince, sir,’ Nik returned respectfully as he shook the other man’s hand, a good thirty years younger than Jinx’s father. ‘I hope we’re not disturbing you?’
‘Not at all,’ the older man assured him. ‘We get so few visitors nowadays,’ he added wistfully. ‘Perhaps you would like to stay to lunch? I believe Mrs Holt said it’s chicken salad. I like chicken salad. Do you like chicken salad, young man?’
Jinx felt her heart contract at her father’s childish pleasure in such a small thing as having chicken salad for lunch, her gaze instantly becoming guarded as Nik turned to her with a frown.
‘Mr Prince isn’t staying to lunch, Daddy,’ she was the one to answer quickly. ‘In fact, I believe he was just on his way…?’ She gave him a pointed glare.
Nik’s expression was deliberately bland. ‘I’m not in any particular hurry,’ he said slowly.
‘Good. Good.’ Jinx’s father beamed, his blue eyes pale and watery now, lacking the sharp intelligence they had once had. ‘I’ll just go and tell Mrs Holt that there’s one extra for lunch.’ He shuffled off in the slightly overlarge carpet slippers.
Silence followed his departure. Jinx was loath to look up at Nik and see the questioning look she was sure would be on his face, and Nik remained quietly patient as he waited for her to say something.
But what could she say? Excuse my father, but he isn’t quite himself nowadays?
Not quite himself! Her father had once been one of the foremost experts on Jacobite history in this country, had taught the subject for over forty years, was consulted by other learned minds as to his opinion on certain events.
But that had been once…
Nowadays her father seemed to have trouble remembering what day it was, let alone what year, and if he still had his knowledge of history then it was buried somewhere behind the vagueness of his expression.
But how could she say any of that without having Nik feel sorry for her father?
Because she didn’t want Nik to pity her father. Didn’t want anyone to pity him, when he had once been a man so respected and revered by his peers.
‘Jinx…?’
Her head rose defensively as she finally looked up at Nik, her gaze challenging him to say anything that could be interpreted as pitying or—worse!—condescending.
Whatever he said next had to be the right thing, Nik knew, or Jinx would cast him from her life and never see him again. And that, he realized, was totally unacceptable to him.
Because of the movie he wanted to make of No Ordinary Boy?
The movie didn’t even come into it! In fact, if he was honest, it hadn’t been a factor for some time now. Jinx was what mattered. And at this moment, the reporter outside apart, he was walking on very shaky ground where she was concerned…
‘What happened?’ he asked gently.
‘What makes you think something happened?’ If anything her chin rose even higher.
But unless Nik was mistaken, the new brightness to her eyes was due to unshed tears and not the anger of a few minutes ago. ‘I—your father—’ He drew in a deep breath, very aware of that knife edge he was balanced upon. ‘Did he have a breakdown of some kind?’ He decided briskness was probably the way to go; pity he knew Jinx would totally reject, gentleness probably the same.
‘Of some kind,’ she admitted, every inch of her seeming to be covered in defensive prickles. ‘What are we going to do about the reporter and photographer outside?’ she abruptly changed the subject.
Nik shrugged. ‘Have lunch with your father, and then see if they’re still there?’ He was pushing it, he knew, but he really did want to find out more about this situation than he knew now.
Although just seeing Jinx’s father answered a lot of questions for him. There was no way that Jack Nixon could withstand the sort of publicity that would prevail if it were known that his daughter was the author of No Ordinary Boy. The press could be dogged, intrusive, stripping one’s life down to the bare bones, and still carry on looking for more. Nik had no doubts that Jack Nixon’s delicate mental health wouldn’t be able to cope with something like that.
Something he was sure Jinx was all too aware of, too…
‘I have a better suggestion,’ she came back tartly now. ‘You leave, taking the reporter and photographer with you, and I’ll go and have lunch with my father!’
Nik grimaced, having expected her to say something like that. And on the face of it, it must seem like the practical thing to do. Except that it had been Jinx the reporter and photographer had been following.
Which meant they must have some idea that she was the author J. I. Watson.
As far as he was aware only three people, possibly four, knew that Jinx was the author J. I. Watson: himself, Jane Morrow, James Stephens, and possibly James Stephens’s secretary, none of whom benefited in any way by revealing that information to the press.
But, nevertheless, Nik was sure that the information had leaked out somehow.
He just wasn’t sure it was a good idea to tell Jinx that just yet. She was already as jumpy as a cat, and furiously angry with him. If she thought that he was somehow responsible—!
He smiled. ‘I think I like my plan better.’
Her cheeks flushed angrily. ‘Well, that’s too bad, because—’
‘Lunch is ready!’ Jinx’s father came back into the hallway to announce brightly.
Nik’s gaze narrowed thoughtfully as it rested on the other man. Jinx hadn’t answered his question earlier concerning what had happened to make her father like this. Because he was pretty sure that something had. Something of a highly emotional nature.
Something that had affected Jinx, too…?
He wasn’t sure yet. But he definitely wanted to find out.
Which was extraordinary in itself, he admitted wryly. Most people would call his single-mindedness where his work was concerned arrogant, but he preferred to think of it as being focused. Maybe that was an arrogance in itself? Probably, but it was the way he worked. One thing at a time, everything compartmentalized.
But Jinx, with her fiery hair, violet-blue eyes, and a body that answered his, made a nonsense of that compartmentalization, causing everything that was important to him at this moment to overlap itself; the movie of No Ordinary Boy, the puzzle of Jackson Nixon, but, most of all, Jinx herself.
She interested him more than any of those other things!
‘Lunch is ready,’ he told her.
She shot him an impatient glance, but was obviously very aware of her father waiting for them at the end of the hallway.
‘Jinx…?’ Nik prompted.
‘Fine,’ she snapped. ‘But you and I will definitely talk later,’ she muttered so that only he could hear.
There were much pleasanter things he could think of to do with Jinx than talking, but if that was all that was on offer at the moment—and he was pretty sure that it was!—then he would take what he could get.
‘I’ll look forward to it,’ he assured her huskily, raising innocent brows as she looked up at him with brief suspicion before following her father through to the back of the house.
The three of them had lunch outside sitting at a table under a sun umbrella in the well-maintained back garden—a garden that was, thankfully, completely closed in by a six-foot-high fence. Nik knew better than most exactly how tenacious reporters could be once on the scent of a story—they were quite capable of looking through windows and over fences in order to get what they wanted. And they obviously hadn’t given up on Jinx yet…
Despite the fact that Jinx obviously wished him well away from here, that her father’s conversation lacked the intelligence he was so well known for, Nik enjoyed the next hour spent in their company.
He saw a gentler side of Jinx as she conversed with her father, that gentleness obviously a calming influence on the older man as he took childish pleasure in her company. Not that Nik had ever found Jinx to be an aggressive person; it was just that she was usually so on the defensive when he was around that this softer side was a revelation to him.
Everything about Juliet India Nixon was a revelation to him, the attraction he felt towards her like nothing he had ever felt before. And it seemed to be getting more intense the longer he was around her, rather than diminishing as it usually did when he spent too much time in one woman’s company.
He loved to watch the elegance of her slender hands as she ate, or pushed the coppery swathe of her hair back from her cheeks. The gentle curves of her body, curves he longed to touch. The way a little dimple appeared in one cheek when she smiled at her father—not at Nik, because she hadn’t smiled at him once all the way through the meal!
Not that her father seemed to have noticed any strain between Jinx and Nik, just enjoying their company completely oblivious of the tension between them.
‘Time for your nap, Daddy,’ Jinx told her father as Mrs Holt came to clear away the remains of the meal.
Jack Nixon rose slowly to his feet. ‘Never get old, Nik,’ he warned ruefully even as he followed the housekeeper back into the house. ‘The man becomes the child again!’
Nik’s gaze was speculative as he watched the other man enter the house. That last comment had been quite an intelligent observation for a man who seemed totally unaware of his surroundings most of the time, let alone anything else.
‘There are the occasional flashes of—of his old self, shall we say?’ Jinx said, obviously having watched Nik watching her father. ‘But unfortunately they don’t usually last for long,’ she added sadly.
Nik frowned; Jinx was too beautiful, too lovely a person, to be sad. Surely something could be done…? ‘Has he seen anyone? A specialist, something like that?’ he asked—and as quickly wished that he hadn’t as Jinx stiffened resentfully.
‘He had several months in a nursing home, after the initial shock,’ she finally answered distantly. ‘But, quite honestly, it did no good. He’s better off at home, anyway.’
Nik nodded. ‘Mrs Holt watches out for him when you have to go out?’
‘Yes. Nik, I really think that you should go now. The reporter and her friend have probably given up by now and gone home—’
‘Doubtful,’ he dismissed from experience. ‘What was the “initial shock”, Jinx?’ he queried astutely, knowing by the way she became even more coldly aloof that he had touched on a subject she would rather not talk about.
But if he were to help either of these people—and he really thought that he must—he had to know what trauma Jackson Nixon had suffered.
The same trauma that had also helped to create the fiercely private woman Jinx was now…?
CHAPTER NINE
JINX stared at him, unsure of what to say in answer to that particular question. On the one hand, the less Nik Prince knew about her or her family, the better she was sure it would be. But if she stood any chance of making him go away—and staying away!—then she knew she had to at least tell him some of what had happened eighteen months ago.
She drew in a ragged breath. ‘Come through to my father’s study with me—oh, yes, he has a study,’ she confirmed heavily as Nik raised surprised brows. ‘Not that he’s ever used this one.’ She sighed. ‘But I still brought everything with me when we moved six months ago.’
