The main house itself was rather like Daniel’s villa in Santa Barbara, although smaller. It was faced with a cream-coloured stucco and roofed with orange pantiles and there was a loggia running along the front of the house to offer protection from the sun. Yellow gazanias and white African daisies grew in profusion in the flowerbeds and the air was filled with the scent of cut grass, horses and eucalyptus trees. To the left of the house Beth could see the outline of several large barns and as she watched a van drove out of one of these and came past them. A man in a cowboy hat raised his hand to them from the driver’s seat.
‘That’s the farrier,’ explained Daniel.
Beth saw that there was a small portable furnace and anvil in the back of the van. Stepping inside the loggia, Daniel rang the large iron bell that was set in a niche. A moment later a tall man of about forty appeared. He was blond, with very light blue eyes, and wore jeans and a checked shirt.
‘Beth, this is my farm manager, Eric Kronborg,’ Daniel announced. ‘Eric, I’d like you to meet Beth Saxon. She may be opening a business in our disused barn here.’
‘Hi, Beth,’ said Eric, wiping his large hand on his jeans before he extended it to her.
‘Hello, Eric.’
‘Is Jenny anywhere about?’ asked Daniel.
‘Sure. She’s in the breeding barn,’ agreed Eric. ‘Would you like me to take you over?’
‘No, we’ll find our own way, thanks,’ said Daniel.
He led Beth on a short-cut over the green, closely trimmed lawn between red Chinese fire bushes and clumps of Texas privet. After the brilliant sunlight outside, the gloom of the barn was dazzling and for a moment Beth blinked, unable to see. She heard the soft whinny of the mare, the shuffle of hoofs in the dust and smelt a strong aroma of hay and horse dung. Then suddenly her eyes grew accustomed to the shadows and she saw a slightly built dark-haired woman hurrying towards them down the aisle between the pens.
‘Daniel!’ cried the woman eagerly. ‘What a lovely surprise! And who’s this?’
‘Jenny, this is Beth Saxon. Beth, Jenny Kronborg, Eric’s wife.’
Briefly Daniel explained what he and Beth were doing there and Jenny nodded enthusiastically.
‘Well, bring Beth back to the house for coffee when you’re finished showing her around, won’t you?’ she urged. ‘But before you leave, you must come and have a look at how your baby is getting on, Daniel.’
Beth cast Jenny a startled glance. Daniel’s baby? But a moment later she understood as Jenny made her way to one of the wide pens, crouched down beside it and crooned softly to a small bright-eyed animal inside.
‘Oh!’ cried Beth in delight. ‘It’s not even a foal. It’s a baby deer.’
Daniel came and joined her, leaning against the pen so that his body loomed over her. He was so close that his knee was almost touching her back.
‘Yes, I found him a couple of months ago,’ he said. ‘His mother had been killed by a car and the poor little guy was wandering around terrified on the highway, dazzled by the headlights. It was only a matter of time before he got run over too or died of starvation, so I brought him here to Jenny.’
Jenny glanced up at him with exasperated affection and rose slowly to her feet.
‘Daniel can never resist a lame dog, Beth,’ she warned. ‘I thought the poor little thing had had it, but Daniel insisted that we try, so we did. We couldn’t get him to feed from a bottle, but in the end one of our nanny-goats adopted him. Now he’s bigger than she is, but he still doesn’t want to be parted from her.’
Beth peered in more closely through the wire mesh and followed Jenny’s pointing finger. She saw that a dainty white goat was huddled near the back of the pen. As she watched, the animal came forward and gave the fawn an affectionate nudge.
‘Well, time we got moving,’ urged Daniel.
As she followed Daniel around one of the gravel paths Beth pondered on what she had just seen. She couldn’t help being touched by the odd story of the deer and its unusual foster mother, but at the same time it surprised her. She wouldn’t have thought of Daniel as the kind of man to care about an orphaned and abandoned animal. He was too ruthless, too forceful, too closely focused on success and achievement. So had he been acting out of character the night he rescued the fawn or was there a side to his character that she knew nothing about?
Daniel led her through an archway in a hedge of Japanese privet and they came out in front of another Spanish villa with a panoramic view of the golden valley and the blue hills beyond.
‘That’s the house I live in when I’m here,’ he said, waving a careless hand at it. ‘And your cottage is along the road there beyond those cypresses.’
‘My cottage?’ echoed Beth in bewilderment.
‘The original farmhouse,’ explained Daniel. ‘But don’t worry, it’s been fixed up and made habitable. I thought it would be easiest and pleasantest for you to live here on the site. And it’s not far to Santa Barbara or Los Angeles. You’d be able to get down to your shops easily enough, once I buy you a car.’
‘Sh-shops?’ stammered Beth uncertainly.
‘Yes, didn’t I tell you? I’m planning one in Los Angeles and one in Santa Barbara. You’ll need some upmarket retail outlets for clothes like yours.’
The feeling that she was drowning came over Beth almost as forcefully as it had at their first meeting. It seemed that nothing would suffice for Daniel except a total reorganisation of her life. A snap of his fingers, a few words of command and she would have a new home, a new car, a new business and a lifestyle to match. Could he possibly do all that for her and want nothing in return except some dubious profits from her designs? It seemed wildly unlikely, and Beth found all her old suspicions resurrected. She was so busy panicking about whether Daniel was going to sweep her into a torrid embrace in a back bedroom that she noticed very little in their tour of the cottage. Vaguely she had the impression of a rustic charm which would respond well to decorating. But by now she had completely made up her mind. Any benefits that might flow from accepting Daniel’s offer simply weren’t worth the emotional risk of making a fool of herself or losing her self-respect. All she wanted to do now was find a suitable chance to tell him and get the ordeal over.
‘The cottage is very nice,’ she said abruptly. ‘But can’t we look at the barn? That’s what I really need to see.’
With long, energetic strides he led the way through an overgrown garden to a tumbledown fence. Then he paused and held down a wire for Beth to clamber over.
‘This is it,’ he said, gesturing at a building that was half smothered in a tangled growth of fragrant honeysuckle. ‘Try to picture it not as it is but the way it could be. I can have the floor fixed and put in the right equipment and lighting for you.’
She should have been delighted, for here at last was her cast-iron alibi, her excuse for throwing up her hands in despair over the whole project. And yet perversely Beth’s heart sank as she entered the building. It was made of wood with two huge doors at one end and it must have been over ninety years old. When Daniel flung open one of the doors with a protesting squeak, and bright sunlight flooded the interior, she saw that the cobwebs were hanging thickly from blackened rafters and that the floor was only of dirt. Along one side was a row of loose boxes and old feeding troughs and at the far end was another door.
‘That’s the old tack-room through there,’ said Daniel. ‘You could use that as an office. The building is on the level which will be good for deliveries and there’s plenty of space for storage and equipment. Come through and see the rest of it.’
The tack-room windows had tiny panes of glass which were cracked and filthy with dust. There was a wooden floor but one of the planks had rotted through, leaving a hole the size of a man’s foot. And the fireplace in one wall was filled with dead leaves. Even the air in the room smelt musty and old.
‘Well, what do you think?’ asked Daniel. ‘The place has possibilities, doesn’t it?’
Beth stifled a
groan. As far as she could see the only possibility the place had was that of falling down or being bulldozed.
‘Yes, I suppose so,’ she said doubtfully.
Daniel let out a low growl of laughter. Then he stepped forward and took her face in his hands.
‘The trouble with you, young woman,’ he said huskily, ‘is that you don’t let your imagination run away with you enough.’
Beth felt an ache of shocked excitement quiver through her entire body at the touch of his hands. In that instant her senses grew unbearably sharpened, so that she felt acutely conscious of the ticking of the watch on Daniel’s wrist, the heat radiating out of his body, the dark mat of hair visible through the open neck of his shirt. And she found she had no difficulty whatsoever in letting her imagination run away with her, except that she was appalled by the images that it produced. A wanton, sensual kaleidoscope of pictures danced before her eyes. She imagined Daniel letting his hands trail down from her cheeks on to her shoulders and down over the swelling mounds of her breasts and then she thought of how she would unbutton his shirt and slide her hands inside, feel the warm, muscular hardness of his chest and then... She shuddered, firmly reining in her imagination. Daniel looked at her with a strange, sardonic tilt of his black eyebrows as if he were reading her mind.
‘Don’t give it up as impossible,’ he urged in a low voice.
Shock and embarrassment flooded through her and then she realised belatedly that he was only talking about the transformation of the barn. Hastily she backed out of his hold.
‘Well, I can’t help thinking—’ she began uneasily.
But he was already talking again. ‘The barn’s no problem, I can have that fixed in two weeks, but the rest of it needs your touch, Beth, your designs. There aren’t a whole lot of people I would trust with a project like this...’
She took in a long, unsteady breath, feeling as if an abyss were opening under her feet.
‘But if you’re too scared to take the risk...’ Daniel continued.
Beth hesitated, bit her lip, stared at him suspiciously. He might be telling the truth, in which case she felt strangely reluctant to lose his good opinion of her. Or he might not. But she suddenly realised that she didn’t care, because she wanted to do this, risky or not. A soft gasp of laughter overtook her.
‘No, I’m not scared, Daniel!’ she retorted. ‘And I am going to take the risk. But on one condition.’
‘What’s that?’
She flushed and then looked at him directly.
‘That the relationship between us is strictly business. Nothing more.’
His gaze slid down over her body with a touch of mockery.
‘Whatever you say, ma’am,’ he replied provocatively. ‘But if you ever change your mind, just let me know.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
BETH was furiously certain that she wouldn’t change her mind, but it wasn’t as easy as she had expected to stick to that decision. The more she got to know Daniel Pryor, the more he disconcerted her. And the worst part about it was that he never seemed to play by any recognisable rules. At first she thought she had him safely catalogued and filed. ‘Class “A” Wolf—Not to Be Trusted.’ As he stormed around California like a whirlwind setting up her business, she had ample opportunity to see his careless charm in action. Every time Daniel had dealings with a female between the ages of eight and eighty, the husky voice, the smouldering brown eyes, the resolute refusal to take ‘no’ for an answer always came into play. And it made Beth grind her teeth in annoyance to see how effective it was. Women fell all over themselves to do what he wanted. How can they be so gullible? she asked herself a dozen times a day. If it comes to that, how can I be? She began to regret her weakness in giving in to Daniel’s bullying. Or sweet talk. Or manipulation. Or whatever it was that had made her temporarily lose her mind and agree to work for him.
Yet at the same time an innate sense of justice forced her to admit that Daniel really was working incredibly hard on her behalf. Within days he seemed to have moved heaven and earth to get her business up and running. His first action was to take her to Santa Barbara to do a new set of photographs to replace those lost in the launch accident. He offered his yacht as the venue for the photographs and to Beth’s surprise suggested that he should take them himself, telling her, ‘Back when I decided to become a movie director, I studied courses in photography and cinematography. I thought I could get the best work out of my cameramen if I knew what they should be doing.’
‘All right,’ agreed Beth. ‘Thank you.’
Just before sunrise the next morning with Benson at the helm of the big yacht they sailed out into the harbour and Daniel set to work. For nearly two hours he put Beth through her paces, taking roll after roll of film. And apart from directing her on how to pose he scarcely spoke the entire time. Yet towards the end of the session he suddenly began to talk.
As he turned her profile carefully towards the hills so that the rising sun was coming out in a great nimbus of light around her shoulders, he said in a casual tone, ‘You’re a remarkably good-looking young woman, you know. When did you reach your full height?’
Beth sighed.
‘At thirteen.’
‘I bet you had the boys clustering around you like flies.’
‘You must be joking,’ replied Beth with a snort of laughter. ‘Five feet eight and thirteen years old! I felt like a freak on stilts. The one big prayer of my teenage years was that somebody would ask me to dance with him, but nobody ever did.’
‘Until Prince Charming in the form of Warren came along,’ grated Daniel. ‘Well, I can almost understand why you felt insecure as a teenager. But don’t you think it’s time you got over it now?’
‘I’m not insecure!’ retorted Beth defensively.
‘Of course you are,’ insisted Daniel. ‘Hell, you acted like a whipped puppy when Warren came to see you the day after I met you.’
Beth drew in an outraged breath, but said nothing.
‘Don’t bare your teeth like that, sweetheart, you’re wrecking my photo.’
Good! thought Beth, and then remembered belatedly that it was also her photo, intended to advertise her fashion collection. Besides, there was such a thing as dignity and she saw no point in being drawn into an undignified squabble. With a heroic effort she fought down her rage and smiled sweetly at the camera. Daniel looked disappointed.
‘Say something,’ he urged. ‘Tell me what you think about my brilliant, insightful analysis of your character.’
Beth was goaded into a scathing retort.
‘I think your brilliant, insightful analysis is full of...’ Hastily she stopped short and clamped her lips shut. But her blue eyes continued to shoot fire.
‘Tsk, tsk,’ muttered Daniel. ‘Do proper young ladies like you really use language like that?’
‘I didn’t!’ flared Beth.
‘No, but I wish you had,’ said Daniel regretfully. ‘You’re too uptight, Beth. Always worrying about what you should say and what you should feel. Too scared to take risks. But you ought to take risks, you ought to say what you think.’
‘One of these days I’ll say what I think about you,’ threatened Beth in a dangerous voice.
A smile curved Daniel’s lips.
‘Do that!’ he urged. ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
‘Even if I lose my temper?’ scoffed Beth.
‘Especially if you lose your temper. If you ever begin to assert yourself, you’ll be dynamite. I only hope I’m there to see it.’
‘Well, you won’t be!’ vowed Beth.
With the energy and thoroughness that characterised everything he did, Daniel had the photos developed and printed the same afternoon so that they were able to examine them over dinner. Rather to Beth’s surprise, they turned out to be excellent. Luminous, vivid and completely unforgettable, they brought out the drama of the clothes, but also lent Beth an ethereal grace which she hadn’t known she possessed. She spent a long time gazing at them and felt
oddly perturbed by them. Why? she wondered. Was it because the word which best described them didn’t seem to have any associations with Daniel? ‘Sensitive’.
‘What is it?’ he asked, watching her intently. ‘Don’t you like them?’
Beth shook her head with a puzzled frown.
‘It’s not that at all,’ she said sincerely. ‘They’re wonderful, Daniel. I had no idea you were so talented.’
‘But—?’ he prompted.
‘But they seem to have been taken by somebody who’s not at all like you. Or not like the way I perceive you.’
‘And how exactly do you perceive me?’
There was a hostile edge to his voice, as if he was ready to cross swords with her. But, remembering the way he had taunted her about being a wimp, Beth did not retreat from the challenge.
‘Ruthless, forceful, determined to have your own way,’ she replied. ‘And using every trick in the book to get it.’
‘I’m flattered,’ retorted Daniel sarcastically. ‘And what exactly do these tricks consist of?’
‘Charm,’ said Beth. ‘Physical attraction, a way with words. An ability to manipulate people, I suppose.’
Daniel glared at her with narrowed dark eyes. The air between them seemed to crackle with sudden antagonism.
‘And supposing I tell you that I only ever use those tricks so people will do what’s good for them?’ he challenged.
The Bride of Santa Barbara Page 10
