Midnight Wedding Read online

  Holly realised she had angered him. ‘I’m sorry. It’s just that—How did he find the hotel? How did he know I’d been there?’

  ‘The taxi cab from last night,’ said Jack briefly. ‘Brendan managed to track it down. I gather the driver told him where he had taken us and then the hotel confirmed that you’d been there. It never occurred to me to warn them not to.’ He added thoughtfully, ‘Say what you will, the man is resourceful.’

  Holly’s laugh grated. ‘Oh, he’s resourceful, all right.’

  Jack watched her in silence for a moment. ‘And is he your guardian? Or your husband?’ His voice was so neutral now it could have come from a robot. ‘Or something else entirely?’

  Holly stared. ‘What?’

  ‘Your husband. Or maybe a discarded lover.’

  Holly was so taken aback she laughed aloud. It brought some of the natural colour back into her cheeks, he saw. The skin was so soft. How would it feel to touch?

  ‘You’re joking, right?’

  He wrenched his thoughts away from the image of a soft cheek caressing his palm and turned sternly to the matter in hand.

  ‘He is very persistent. He seems to take your disappearance very personally.’

  Her eyes flickered. ‘He doesn’t like to be crossed.’

  Jack thought: She’s lying. The beguiling image disappeared abruptly.

  He said softly, ‘Or he’s in love with you.’

  Holly shook her head fiercely. ‘Brendan doesn’t love anything but work.’ She sounded desolate.

  Jack held himself very still, scanning her expression. What made her look like that? Because she wanted the man to love her? It hadn’t seemed like that yesterday, but…

  She turned away. Jack watched her, his brows knitted.

  ‘Were you in love with him? Did he let you down? Is that what this is all about?’

  She swung back, her head high. ‘I don’t know what it’s got to do with you—’

  Jack interrupted. He said quietly, ‘I got you out of there last night. That makes me involved.’

  There was an odd silence. Jack’s face was almost without expression. But there was something in his voice that brought Holly up short. She found that she was feeling breathless suddenly. She did not like it.

  After a moment she said, ‘Yeah, I suppose. But I’d have got myself out of it in the end.’

  ‘Would you?’

  ‘I have before.’

  Jack nodded gravely. ‘Like you were doing at the International Committee Building yesterday before I took a hand?’

  She said heatedly, ‘Are you trying to be unpleasant?’

  A brief smile touched his mouth.

  ‘Realistic,’ he corrected.

  Oh, that sexy mouth! She whipped her irritation back into life but it was an effort.

  ‘Listen, I’ve been on my own since I was seventeen. I’ve done all right up to now.’

  ‘It looks like it,’ he agreed suavely.

  She looked round at her few belongings. Half of them were tumbled on the bed. She saw it as he must see it and flushed.

  ‘I know it’s not the grandest room in the world,’ she said defiantly. ‘All right, compared with your hotel it’s a bit of a slum. But this is a very historic area. I can have my Sunday morning brunch at a table where Apollinaire wrote and Utrillo painted.’

  Jack blinked. ‘Very cultural.’ His voice quivered on a note of unexpected amusement. ‘But you’ve got me wrong. I wasn’t criticising your living arrangements.’

  Holly glowered. ‘What, then?’

  He said gently, ‘Forgive me, but I don’t think you are dealing very successfully with Brendan Sugrue.’

  ‘You know nothing about it.’

  He strode forward, startling her, and picked up her half-packed roll bag.

  ‘I know that running away doesn’t solve anything.’

  Holly stared at him incredulously. ‘Put that down.’

  ‘So you can finish packing and then run?’ He shook his head. ‘And then what? Another city? Another slum room? Another set of dead-end jobs?’

  Holly glared. The man was not a mind-reader, she told herself. He was not.

  ‘They pay the rent.’

  ‘And keep you running.’ He put the bag down and looked at her gravely. ‘Can’t you see that you have to face him and sort out whatever it is, once and for all?’

  ‘I will. Just as soon as I’m twenty-five and they—I mean, he hasn’t got a case any more.’

  Jack shook his head. ‘That’s three years away.’

  He remembered! Even in the middle of her anger and worry, Holly could not suppress a little thrill of triumph. She had told him almost nothing about herself, deliberately. Her age had slipped out when she was too panic-stricken to watch herself. And he had stored it away as if it were important information.

  ‘You can’t keep on the run for the next three years.’

  ‘Watch me.’

  He was odiously reasonable. ‘Why put your life on hold for all that time? Look at this logically. You need to challenge that will. Or make a marriage of convenience.’

  Holly could have danced with frustration. ‘Yes, that would have got me off the hook all right. But back in Lansing Mills there was no one I could ask. And now…’

  ‘Now you could ask me.’

  There was a stunned silence. Holly pushed her fraying hair off her neck.

  ‘Oh, sure,’ she said with a brave attempt at flippancy. ‘Just what I need. Marriage with the first man I can find, whether I trust him or not.’

  Jack was dry. ‘You mean there’s a man in the world you might actually trust?’

  Holly lost her flippancy.

  ‘Marriage might work for the family,’ she said shortly. ‘Not for me. What’s that thing about the cure being worse than the disease?’

  She retrieved her bag. Plonking it on the bed, she began to stuff the contents of her bedside drawer into it. Her hands were not quite steady.

  Jack watched that tell-tale shudder and set his teeth.

  ‘So why would facing him be so bad?’

  She stopped in her task for a moment. She did not look up but he saw her throat move as she swallowed convulsively.

  ‘You’re as tense as a spring,’ he said involuntarily.

  She paused, not looking at him, like a bird about to take wing. Jack tried another tack.

  ‘Look,’ he said, ‘if you don’t face him now, you will run away; he will follow; the whole cycle starts again. Where’s the sense in that? Why don’t you just sit round a table with him and work out a compromise?’

  Still she did not look at him. Her face was bleak.

  ‘Brendan doesn’t compromise.’

  He drew an impatient breath. ‘I’d do it myself if I didn’t have to get back to Ignaz.’

  She looked up then. ‘I told you, he doesn’t listen. It wouldn’t do any good. You or anyone else; it wouldn’t change a thing. Brendan doesn’t compromise.’

  Jack ran his hands through his hair. ‘This timing is the pits,’ he muttered.

  ‘What?’

  ‘I just don’t have time for this.’

  It was almost as if he was talking to himself. But Holly had had enough. She rounded on him.

  ‘Well, who asked you to vote, anyway? You haven’t got time? Fine. Great. Why don’t you just get lost?’

  ‘And leave you alone to deal with the brother-in-law from hell?’

  She paled, but she answered firmly enough. ‘As you pointed out, I can run.’

  ‘Oh, maybe you’ll get away from him this time. Can’t you see that’s no answer?’

  There was a commotion in the street. Jack looked out of the window.

  ‘Correction. You’re not getting away from him this time. Not unless this place has a fire escape.’

  ‘What?’ She rushed to the window. Climbing the hill below was a familiar thick-set figure. All the fight drained out of Holly. She went white to the lips and clung to the edge of the shutter.

&
nbsp; ‘What is it about this guy?’ said Jack exasperated.

  Holly’s lips felt numb. She shook her head, not answering.

  Jack thought swiftly. ‘OK. I’ll get rid of him. Will you meet me at the hotel?’

  She stared at him, blank. Then nodded jerkily, like a puppet.

  He shook her gently. ‘Not good enough. Will you go back to the hotel?’ He fished in his inside pocket and brought out a wad of bills. ‘Take a cab. OK?’

  Holly swallowed. ‘OK.’

  ‘No running out on me?’

  ‘All right.’

  Still he hesitated. He put a hand gently under her chin and tipped her pale face up to meet his eyes.

  ‘Still don’t trust me?’

  Her eyes fell.

  ‘We’ll just have to deal with that later. Meanwhile, no more taking off on your own. Promise?’

  Holly blinked. ‘I promise,’ she said, surprised.

  ‘Good. See you soon.’

  He feathered a touch to her cheek before she could recoil. Then he turned and left. She heard him running lightly down the stairs and the front door opened and banged decisively shut.

  From behind the shutter she peered down into the street and saw him and Brendan meet, argue and then Jack laugh mockingly. He turned and made off down the hill.

  Brendan hesitated for a moment, clearly torn. Holly held her breath. But then Brendan turned on his heel and ran off down the hill after the man he must think would lead him to his quarry.

  She flung the rest of things into the roll bag, picked up her flute case and ran. She forgot to look back.

  So he’d got her into the room he had booked for her in the end, Holly thought. Late, maybe. But he’d got his own way. She resented that, when she recovered from her near-brush with Brendan and her brain was in working order again.

  When he knocked on her door she was all set for battle.

  But Jack was in severely practical mode. ‘Not an attractive character, your brother-in-law,’ he said, brushing past her. ‘But I think I’ve held him off for the next few hours, at least.’

  He sat down at the desk in the corner of the room and put his briefcase on the top. Holly was outraged at being ignored. Was he not even going to tell her what he had said to Brendan?

  ‘What are you doing?’ she demanded

  Jack was surprised. ‘Plugging in and logging on.’

  He proceeded to do so. Holly saw that the case contained a small laptop computer.

  ‘This is not your office,’ she raged, obscurely offended.

  ‘Outdated,’ Jack said, mildly amused. ‘No one has offices any more. Now—’ He removed his attention for the screen and swung round on her while the little machine beeped and clicked industriously. ‘Let’s talk about the solutions to this problem of ours.’

  ‘Mine,’ said Holly with emphasis.

  He waved that aside. ‘Running doesn’t work. You won’t confront. It has to be marriage.’

  ‘Thank you for that illuminating analysis, but—’

  ‘Sarcasm,’ said Jack calmly, ‘does not become you. Now, marriage is not easy to achieve at the drop of a hat…’ He looked back at the little screen.

  Holly had a strong urge to throw things. At least that would get his attention off the laptop and back where it belonged.

  ‘Marry you? I would rather—’

  He swung round neatly and looked her straight in the eyes.

  ‘Face Brendan Sugrue?’

  She was silenced.

  ‘No, I thought not.’ He went back to his computer. ‘Now, I admit that marriage without trust is a real bummer. Under ordinary circumstances I wouldn’t consider it. So—’

  Like a magician he whisked a couple of sheets of paper from a pocket in the back of the briefcase. He handed them out towards her, not taking his eyes off the screen.

  To her fury, Holly found herself taking them.

  ‘What’s this?’

  ‘My CV.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘The story of my life,’ said Jack ironically.

  ‘What am I supposed to do with it?’

  ‘Try reading.’

  The machine beeped an imperious note. He leaned forward and typed a spray of instructions.

  Over his shoulder he said, ‘You don’t trust me partly because you don’t know me. Well, there I am. But first, give me your passport.’

  ‘What?’

  He snapped his fingers. ‘Passport. I’m checking some options.’

  For a moment Holly was mutinous. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘Because they are your options, not mine,’ said Jack with the sort of careful patience that made her want to hit him. He scooted the chair back from the desk and looked up at her mockingly. ‘But if you’d rather surf the net yourself, be my guest.’ And he gestured at the laptop.

  Holly gave him the passport in furious silence.

  He flicked through it, filled in a couple of boxes on the computer screen and said casually, ‘An English passport? I thought you were from Smallville, USA?’

  ‘My mother was English,’ said Holly curtly. ‘I was brought up there until I was fifteen.’

  ‘Ah.’ He answered a question from the computer. ‘And I suppose that’s why the passport says you’re Holly Anne Dent but the plate in your flute case says you’re Holly Lansing?’

  Yes, that had been a mistake. She was still cursing her carelessness when Jack swung round on her. He was so fast that Holly had no time for disguise. So there was no way she could hide her consternation, she thought. Still, she always thought best on her feet.

  ‘Lansing is my stage name,’ she said defiantly. ‘Musicians all have a stage name here in Paris.’

  His eyes narrowed to slits. There was a silence that twanged like a bowstring. Then he gave a short laugh and turned back to his screen.

  ‘Good recovery,’ he told her. But he did not say that he believed her.

  Of course, international know-it-all that he was, he probably realised she was talking nonsense. Just as long as he didn’t make the connection to Lansing Industries, she did not care what he thought of her.

  This man was all that stood between her and Brendan’s plans for her unless she was very careful. She could not afford for him to deduce that she was heir to half the Lansing millions. Not when she had overheard Jack telling Ramon that what their company needed was a friendly millionaire. Brendan would be very friendly to someone who told him where the missing heiress was.

  So she shrugged and made a great business about transferring her attention to the closely typed sheets he had given her.

  “‘US national. Born Manila. Unmarried, no children. Princeton, Cambridge, Osaka”,’ she read aloud. “‘Blah, blah, Smart Buildings Inc. World Bank project, blah, blah. Principal shareholder and CEO Armour Disaster Recovery, based in Delaware, subsidiary companies Miami, Florida, Nagoya, Japan, Shropshire, England. Publications, blah, blah. e-mail address, blah. Permanent residence…”’ She looked up. ‘That’s blank. You don’t live anywhere?’

  A faint look of annoyance creased the handsome face.

  ‘Trust you to pick out the one hole in my seamless history.’ He was not as amused as he was trying to sound, Holly thought. ‘I pretty much live on the road. My office in Miami can always find me.’

  ‘But no home at all?’

  He thumped the keyboard twice with quite unnecessary vigour.

  ‘I bought a house in England years ago. I’ve still got it. I don’t often go there.’

  ‘Why?’

  He glared at the screen. ‘I should never have bought it. Sheer romanticism. It was crazy. Investment in real estate is not my forte.’

  Holly did not understand and it was clear that Jack was not going to enlighten her.

  She said, ‘So your family don’t live in England?’

  ‘My family live all over the world,’ he said uncommunicatively.

  ‘I mean your parents. Brothers and sisters.’

  He did not look away from the screen.
Without apparent interest, he said, ‘Parents dead. No siblings.’

  The lack of feeling would have been chilling if she had not had a sudden, inexplicable sense again of that inflammable mixture seething away below the surface.

  ‘So where was your home when you were a child?’ she probed cautiously.

  He nodded at the paper in her hand before going back to the computer. ‘My dad was in the military. My parents divorced when I was eight. After that I shuttled between them until she died. He was posted. I went back to the States to school, then on to college. I never lived with him after I was sixteen. I never lived with anybody.’

  So that explained his air of containment. Holly felt a sneaking sympathy. She suppressed it. Jack Armour didn’t need her sympathy or anyone else’s and she had to keep her wits about her. He might make her feel safe but that could so easily turn into an emotional trap. She could not afford that.

  So she said in a hard voice, ‘So you’re the man from nowhere? And I’m supposed to trust you?’

  He turned away from the computer.

  ‘Forget the blanks. Concentrate on what I’ve done. That ought to tell you something about me.’

  She shook the papers. ‘This is supposed to mean something to me? I’ve heard of the World Bank but that’s about it. Is there really a company called Smart Buildings?’

  Jack smiled. ‘Smart buildings learn and adapt. Cutting edge of technology. I did a lot of research in that area until I realised that we could use the technology we had a hell of a lot better than we do. That’s when I set up Armour Disaster Recovery.’

  ‘You’re a scientist,’ she said on a note of discovery.

  He frowned. ‘I’m a problem-solver.’

  Holly raised her brows. ‘And I’m a problem to be solved?’

  ‘You have a problem that needs solving,’ he corrected. ‘And soon.’

  She ground her teeth. ‘And you think you’re the man to do it?’

  ‘I know I am,’ said Jack superbly. ‘I have the experience. I have the vision. And I’m not emotionally involved.’

  ‘Great,’ said Holly under her breath. ‘Just what I need. A professional busybody.’

  Jack glared. The computer beeped again. For the first time he ignored it.