A Wild Affair

by Charlotte Lamb

  He frowned, his brows a savage slash across his forehead, the charm absent suddenly, only the dark power visible.

  'Don't be ridiculous, we've done nothing of the kind! All the coverage has been favourable, you come over as a charming girl…'

  'It's all phoney,' Quincy flung at him, and his frown deepened. 'Like you,' she added, so angry she no longer knew exactly what she was saying, her own sense of hurt and confusion bewildering her, making her hit out wildly.

  'Thank you,' he said in a deep, cold voice. 'That's what you think of me, is it?'

  'Isn't that what you are? You're not real at all, you're a beautiful plastic image dreamed up by your publicity department. I bet they switch you off at night, like a Christmas tree in a shop window.'

  Joe's black eyes had frozen over as he listened, the taut lines of his face locked together as though he struggled to keep his temper in the face of her angry, excited accusations.

  'I'm not switched off now,' he said tersely as she stammered to a halt, hearing her own voice echoing inside her head with a sense of disbelief—had she really said such things to him? It was so out of character that she couldn't believe it had been herself talking. Even as she was biting her lower lip, Joe took a stride across the space between them and his hands closed over her shoulders, lifting her bodily from the couch.

  'Let go!' Quincy yelled, and he shook her violently, looming over her and sending her heart into her mouth at the expression on his strong, dark face.

  'No, Quincy, you've had your say—now you'll do some listening for a change. Do you think I enjoy all the publicity, the lack of privacy, the invasions of the fans? I put up with it because it's part of the deal. What I like to do is sing and I work hard at it—the rest of the job is a drag I could very happily do without. I have to keep reminding myself that my fans are the ones the music is for—and I try to understand why they behave the way they do, I try to give them what they're screaming for, and it isn't as simple as you may think. Life can be pretty grim for some of them these days. How many millions are unemployed here and in the States? If life's grey twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, fifty-two weeks of the year, anyone could be excused for needing a little happiness pretty desperately. I'm very proud to think my music brings some colour into their lives, and I never forget that but for the grace of God I might be out there looking for a job and not finding one. I owe the world all the colour I can give it.'

  Quincy was held immobile, like a rag doll, between his powerful fingers, but it was not force which held her captive, listening with widening eyes. It was the depth in his gaze, the low hard note of his voice. Joe wasn't acting now, his eyes sombre, his face harsh.

  'I told you my mother came from Spain,' he said. 'Do you know what year she arrived in the States? 1939.'

  '1939?' Quincy began, and he nodded.

  'The year war broke out in Europe. My mother's family had been through a nightmare in Spain—two of her brothers had been killed and their little farm had been destroyed. Madre had an aunt in California who sent her a ticket to come over to the States. She worked on her aunt's fruit farm for long, hard months until her uncle died and the farm was sold off, then Madre was out of a job and couldn't get one for a long time. She starved, Quincy. God knows what would have happened to her if she hadn't met my father. They fell in love and got married, but my mother never forgot her first two years in America—she'd been so lonely and afraid she'd almost turned tail and gone home. If she had had the fare, she would have done just that, I guess.'

  'It must have been terrifying,' Quincy said slowly. 'How old was she?'

  'Seventeen when she first arrived, nearly twenty when she married my father. My mother brought us up to remember that it's what you put into life that counts, not what you get out. If you're lucky, you should share your luck. She always said to us: if an apple drops off the tree into your hands, cut it in half and give one half to someone else. Never be greedy with life, be grateful. I think Madre half expected the bad times to come back one day and she was afraid we wouldn't be prepared to face them if she didn't warn us.'

  'Who was us? Have you got brothers?'

  'Two sisters, a brother,' Joe said.

  'Are they older or younger?'

  'I'm the eldest—next comes my sister Juana who's married and has a baby girl, then there's Maria who's a commercial artist working in San Francisco, and the baby of the family, Tony, who helps Dad with the oranges. I've put a lot of my, money into the estate, we have quite a big spread now. When I'm through singing, I plan to retire and grow oranges myself.'

  She was so interested in his family, so intrigued by imagining him at home with them all, that she forgot everything else, and the sudden peal of the doorbell made her jump. Joe's face changed, too, the warmer, smiling expression going and a frown replacing it.

  'Who can that be?' he asked with a steely intonation which surprised her until he added: 'If your boy-friend has come back he can just vamoose again—I'm serious about that, Quincy. We can't have him hanging around.' He turned on his heel and strode out of the room with Quincy scurrying after him, her face uncertain.

  'Don't you hit Brendan again!' she threw after him, but when he opened the door it was to find Carmen Lister on the doorstep. She gave him a surprised stare. Quincy distinctly saw a cynical gleam in her eyes and stiffened angrily.

  'Well, well, fancy seeing you here,' Carmen said sweetly, walking past him and giving Quincy a considering glance which ran down over her as though Carmen was wondering what any man would see in her. Quincy flushed under that look, grinding her teeth impotently. She knew she was far from being beautiful and she didn't pretend to be sophisticated, but she did not enjoy having Carmen Lister's knowing gaze informing her of the fact. 'So,' Carmen went on, 'Joe found you at last. We'd begun to wonder if you'd bolted for home.' She wandered into the sitting-room and gave it a brief, dismissive stare before looking back at Quincy. 'Don't do a disappearing act again, sweetie. You gave us a headache and caused a lot of bother.'

  Quincy resented the patronising tone, and would have said so very succinctly, had Joe not spoken first.

  'Have you rearranged your plans again, Carmen?'

  She looked at him and nodded. 'The photographer will be along later.'

  'What for?' asked Quincy, and Carmen looked back at her.

  'I want some shots of you and Joe together, before Joe has to rush off to rehearse. Try to get it into your head, darling—Joe's a very busy guy with a hectic schedule and if you throw a spanner into the works you can ruin everything. Just stay put from now on, and be available if we need you.'

  'She understands,' Joe said before Quincy could flare up again at the curt, peremptory tone. 'Quincy,' he went on, 'I'm dying for a cup of coffee, could you make one?'

  'Of course,' she said in surprise, and turned to leave the room. As she put the percolator on the stove she heard Joe close the door and frowned. What was he saying to Carmen that he did not want her to hear? She was tempted to go over and listen at the keyhole, but her sense of her own dignity wouldn't allow her to stoop that low. She glared at the closed door, though, feeling like kicking it down, and Carmen's voice rose, wicked with cynical amusement.

  'Have you been making little Miss Jones feel more at home, darling? Aren't you clever? Keep her eating out of your hand until we're through with her, will you?'

  Quincy turned and walked stiffly into the bedroom and stood there, biting her lower lip to stop herself from bursting into tears, her hands clenched at her sides. That was what he had been doing, was it? She wasn't surprised, she had suspected as much, of course, but he kept surprising her, puzzling her. She could not make him out. At times those dark eyes glowed with a real emotion, it seemed, and his deep husky voice held genuine feeling. When he talked about his home, his family, how he felt about his singing—she could not help believing him. There was such conviction in his face—but then hadn't she been totally convinced by his apparent exhaustion last night, only to find herself be
ing skilfully and expertly seduced? How did she make him add up? He was so unlike any man she had ever met. She could not stop thinking about him, drifting off into daydreams about him whenever she was alone, yet she knew no more about him today than she had the day she first set eyes on his face in that magazine. He had told her so much, apparently laid his life open to her, yet everything he said seemed followed by a question mark. Did he mean what he said? Was he straightforward? Or was he acting all the time, telling her what he thought would convince her and seduce her into trusting and liking him?

  She heard the coffee bubbling in the percolator and hurried out of the bedroom to switch it off and find cups. When she carried the tray through she found Carmen sitting down with a sheaf of paper on her knee and Joe leaning against the window, watching the traffic passing the building. He turned and came to take the tray from her. Quincy looked into his face, searching it for some clue to his real nature, but the strong structure defied the probe of her stare. Joe's features kept their secret, the contradictions of his facial strength and that potent male beauty unyielding.

  She poured his coffee and he stood talking to Carmen while he sipped it, then he put down the cup, sighed and squared his broad shoulders in a tired way. 'I'll have to be on my way, I guess.'

  'Wait just five minutes for the photographer, Joe,' Carmen pleaded, and he glanced at his watch.

  'If he doesn't get here within three minutes, I'm going,' he told her.

  'He'll be here,' Carmen assured him, and only a moment later the doorbell went and she jumped up. 'I'll get it—it will be Phil.'

  She came back with the photographer and Joe told the man: 'I've only got five minutes to spare, so make it snappy.'

  The man looked around the room and grimaced. 'This the only background you've got?'

  'Yes,' Joe said shortly. 'Get on with it.'

  The man gestured to the couch. 'Could we have you both on that?'

  They obeyed, Quincy feeling so nervous she had to force a smile, Joe far more casual but obviously with half his mind elsewhere. The photographer posed them, moved around them snapping away, then got them to stand near the window, then near the fireplace, calling out pleas for them to smile or hold hands or look at each other.

  'That's it,' Joe said abruptly. 'I must go.' He turned and strode to the door with Carmen hurrying after him. Quincy lapsed into dull silence and the photographer strolled around her, desultorily taking pictures as though he automatically used his camera when he had nothing else to do.

  Carmen came back alone and nodded to the photographer. 'Okay, Phil, that's fine.' She picked up her shoulder bag and pushed the sheaf of papers into it before looking at Quincy. 'Just remember, we want to be able to get in touch with you at a moment's notice while you're here, so no more unscheduled jaunts around town, okay?'

  When she had gone Quincy sat down heavily and sighed. Her mind was in a confused jumble, but one thing she was certain about—when she got back home she was going to take her brother by the ear and tell him clearly what she thought of him and his great ideas. If he had never filled in that form and put her name on it she wouldn't be in this mess now. Bobby was a pest and she meant to tell him so.

  Brendan rang an hour later and as soon as she heard his voice she began to stammer apologetically. 'Brendan, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to hurt your feelings, I shouldn't have said that, it wasn't true…'

  'It was,' he said wryly. 'I was as mad as fire at the time, but when I'd had time to cool down I realised you were only telling the truth. Aldonez is bigger than me, I can't pretend he isn't. How could I fight a man built like a concrete mixer?'

  Quincy laughed, relaxing. 'I'm so relieved you aren't still mad at me—I thought you would be hurt, and I couldn't blame you if you were.'

  'Not so much hurt as rueful,' Brendan confessed. 'It served me right for tangling with him—I'll know better next time. I'll sneak up behind him and club him down.'

  She giggled, hearing the dry self-mockery in his voice and liking him the more for his ability to laugh at himself.

  Sobering, Brendan said: 'Don't get involved with him, will you Quincy?'

  Her hand curled tightly around the receiver. 'What sort of idiot do you think I am?'

  'He's a very attractive guy and you're not exactly worldly wise,' Brendan told her. 'You could get hurt and I'd hate that, you're much too nice to get tangled up with someone from that sort of world.'

  'Do me a favour!' Quincy said lightly. 'Credit me with having some common sense, Brendan. You know I was reluctant to come up to London and go through with this, but what could I do when Bobby had got me into it? I felt partly responsible. After all, it was my brother who filled in that form and by the time they had realised it was all a mistake they'd gone ahead and told the press I'd won. I could see why they wanted me to go through with it. It would have been very embarrassing for them. But I'm taking it all with a pinch of salt, I'm not letting any of the glamour get to me.'

  'I hope you're not,' said Brendan, and she heard in his voice the echo of her own doubts, the doubts she had suppressed just now. The glamour might not be getting to her, but how could she hide from herself that Joe Aldonez was?

  'They don't want you to stay in London,' Quincy said reluctantly.

  Brendan was furious at once. 'I don't care what they want! And by they you mean him, don't you? Aldonez? I saw the way he was reacting. He was dying to punch me on the jaw from the minute he saw me. You could see it in his eyes. He's a nasty piece of work, and I don't like the way he looks at you.'

  Quincy's lips parted, the question: how does he look at me? hovering on her tongue, but she carefully didn't ask it, although her heart had given a strange, excited little flip at what Brendan had said.

  'Remember,' Brendan charged on angrily, 'he's used to having women swoon at his feet. I'd say he's pretty ruthless about getting what he wants, he wouldn't be where he is if he didn't have a ruthless streak. You have to be tough to make it to the top in any business, but particularly in show business, because the obstacles are higher. A man like that goes like a bulldozer for what he wants.'

  Huskily, Quincy said: 'He doesn't want me! Don't be idiotic!' She waited on tenterhooks for Brendan's reply—it was absurd to think Brendan had seen anything in Joe's face that she hadn't seen herself and he was probably putting a false construction on Joe's temper when he saw her and Brendan together, but she couldn't help her inner excitement at what he was saying.

  'Don't be naive,' Brendan said shortly. 'Don't you know some men notch up their score as if they were going for the world record?'

  She changed colour, flinching.

  'Quincy,' Brendan said more gently, 'men are different from women. They can separate sex and love—I don't think women can, they get emotionally involved every time. Men just enjoy making it with any pretty girl they meet—some men, that is, men like Joe Aldonez. It's an ego trip for a man like that, part of their image. Don't let him fool you, that's all.'

  'I won't!' she said fiercely.

  Brendan was silent, as though the feeling in her voice had reached him, then he said: 'Do you want me to stay away? Shall I go back home?'

  'After coming all this way to London that would be silly,' Quincy told him. 'Why don't you enjoy a few days here?'

  'But I won't see you?' Brendan said flatly.

  'I'll be very busy,' she explained in anxious apology. 'And I'll be coming home myself in a couple of days, remember.'

  'Yes,' he said. 'I see—okay, Quincy, see you back home.'

  She only realised he had hung up when the phone began to whirr softly. With a sigh she replaced the receiver. Talking to Brendan made her realise that this brief trip to London had altered something in her drastically—she wasn't the same girl who had opened the front door to Joe Aldonez so short a time ago. Too much had happened too fast. Her mind was in a state of restless motion all the time. She couldn't sort out how she really felt or what was happening to her. She only knew she had changed, but she had not changed so m
uch that she could bear to contemplate the idea of letting Joe Aldonez use her for an ego trip, as Brendan called it. What Brendan had just said was bitterly close to what she suspected herself—Joe's interest in her was that of the acquisitive collector. He wanted to notch her up on his belt, add her name to his score. Quincy had no desire to be one of a long list of women who had passed through his bed. For the rest of her stay in London she would have to make that very plain to him.

  CHAPTER SIX

  It had not occurred to Quincy that she might be present at Joe's big London concert. She knew the tickets had been sold out within a day of the concert box office opening; fantastic, inflated prices were being paid for them on the black market and it was the major event of the pop world in London that year. When Carmen told her she was going she had been so excited she couldn't speak for a few minutes, and an amused look flashed across the other woman's face.

  'Lucky girl, aren't you?' Carmen would be there, of course, but she did not appear to feel any particular excitement, perhaps because she was used to big concerts. 'All your friends are going to be green with envy!'

  Quincy took it for granted that she would be sitting in the audience, but when she arrived at the hall several hours before the concert began she found she was to be backstage, to her surprise.