Dangerous Ground (Harlequin Presents, December 118)

by Alison Kelly

She climbed from her car and activated the alarm. The metallic blue Honda Prelude was her pride and joy, and even in the low-crime area of suburban Sydney’s upper-middleclass Strathfield she wasn’t prepared to risk it getting stolen.

  Tomorrow she had to go and have the number plates changed. Since she wasn’t renewing her contract the company was no longer willing to let her keep the Risque vanity plates, which she’d been using since some advertising minnow had come up with the idea years ago. Not that she cared. Personally she thought them pretentious, but business was business, and for all intents and purposes the company had owned her—at least on the surface.

  Actually, doing a centrefold was the ideal way of thumbing her nose at the image which had been manufactured for her. As the Risque Girl she’d been marketed as the immaculately groomed, fashionably clothed, non-political social butterfly. Away from the public eye Jacqui hated wearing make-up, lived in jeans, and liked nothing better than a quiet weekend alone curled up with a thriller.

  As for her public persona of being a heartbreaker of legendary proportions—ha! The hundreds of well-known eligible men who’d graced her arm at opening nights and charity balls over the years were, at best, friends; more often than not they had been guys who’d seen her as either a meal ticket or a potential lay. The equally numerous ‘mystery hunks’ who’d been photographed with her had been either other models or boyfriends of her former agent Garth, who’d been called on to make up the numbers at the last minute.

  As she reached the front door she wished she could see into the future and know for certain that she was doing the right thing; she couldn’t, but she rang the doorbell anyway…

  Patric Flanagan glanced at the clock on the wall—six forty-five; she was fifteen minutes early. She’d been late the other night by design; today she was early because she was desperate for work. He smiled. Jaclyn Raynor wasn’t going to say no.

  He deliberately took his time walking down the long hallway, and as his fingers closed over the security lock the shrill sound of the bell broke the silence yet again. Consequently he opened the door wearing an uncontrollable grin.

  ‘You’re—’ The words lodged in his throat, and he checked the cosmetic-free face just to make sure that it wasn’t a schoolkid selling raffle tickets door-to-door. Nope, this was Jaclyn Raynor all right—a Jaclyn Raynor he barely recognised.

  Her trademark blonde hair was hanging loose, way past the end of her frayed, faded cut-off jeans, and her bare legs were clad in tennis shoes. Forget the shoes! Hell, flesh and blood women just didn’t have legs that good! At least, he hadn’t thought so until now. He lifted his eyes and they locked on the loose, none-too-concealing black vest-top she wore, and suddenly swallowing saliva seemed to require a doctorate he didn’t have.

  ‘I know I’m early,’ she said. ‘But you are going to let me in anyway, aren’t you?’

  The sound of her voice jolted him. OK, man, pull yourself together! he told himself. You knew she had a hot bod, otherwise you wouldn’t have suggested this idea in the first place.

  ‘Yeah, sure.’ He opened the door wider and stood back to let her pass. ‘C’mon in. The studio is—’

  ‘I know where it is,’ she said, giving him a tight smile and walking down the black-and white-tiled hall with the familiarity of a frequent visitor.

  Patric stood motionless for a few seconds before following her, determined to ignore the way her hips and hair swung with each step. What he had to remember was that this woman was all packaging. She made her money trading off her looks and being willing to turn herself into whatever an advertiser wanted her to be.

  The other night she’d been the fashionably elegant sophisticate; today, knowing he’d wanted a different image, she’d gone for the unaffected, casually sexy look. Visually the change was effective—OK, breathtaking, he conceded—but experience kept his brain from responding to the woman’s looks as lustfully as his body seemed to be.

  One of his first freelance assignments had been for the cover of a woman’s magazine and he’d spent days wrapping and adorning empty boxes so that they looked like beautiful Christmas gifts. Over the years he’d worked with similar fake props—some had pulses and called themselves models but basically they were the same as those boxes; beneath the pretty packaging there was nothing of substance.

  * * *

  Jacqui had whimsically imagined that she’d feel Wade’s presence the moment she entered the house, but it wasn’t so. In fact the only unusual sensation she was experiencing was an alarming awareness of an all too alive male! Patric Flanagan had the most unnerving effect on her. The other night, dressed in a dinner suit, he’d seemed to have cornered the market in suave sophistication. Yet now, in his current blue-collar guise of jeans and a white T-shirt, charm was superseded by challenge.

  Challenges could often be fun; they could also be dangerous. Watching his sexy stride as he moved towards the breakfast bar dividing the kitchen from the rest of the studio, she knew he would fall into the latter category.

  ‘I’m having a cup of tea,’ he said. ‘You want one?’

  The curt way in which he tossed the question without looking at her wouldn’t have passed as politeness in anyone’s book.

  ‘No, thank you,’ she responded.

  ‘Best I can do.’ He shrugged carelessly. ‘I don’t keep a stock of champagne.’

  She made no comment, because it was hard to talk and bite your tongue at the same time. Honestly, the guy hadn’t inherited even a scrap of his father’s Irish good humour and friendliness.

  The thought of Wade brought a smile to her mouth and a flood of warm memories, compelling her to study her surroundings. She glanced at the collage of photographs mounted on either side of the doorway they’d just come through, at the black vertical blinds screening the opposite wall, which she knew to be totally glass, and the dozens of overhead lights pointed at various angles from criss-crossing exposed beams…

  How many hours had she spent in this room in the last ten years? The place was as familiar to her as her own home, and yet for the first time she felt totally ill at ease. She looked towards the kitchen area, met the penetrating gaze of Patric Flanagan, and immediately recognised the reason.

  She averted her eyes, determined to ignore the warm heat in her stomach, and moved to the floor-to-ceiling shelves at the end of the room. They were stacked with the hundreds of photo albums that Wade had accumulated over the years. In all the times she’d been coming here she’d only been lucky enough to go through less than a fifth of them.

  ‘What are you going to do with all these?’ she asked, gently fingering the spines of several.

  ‘Dad’s trophies?’ Her head spun around at his disparaging tone and he motioned to the packing crates littering the floor. ‘Put them in storage for now. I don’t have time to sort through them and there’s no way I’m going to have room for them when I move.’

  ‘Why do you call them “trophies” like that?’ she demanded.

  “Cause that’s what they are. Some men might keep track of their sexual conquests by putting notches on the bedposts.’ He sneered. ‘My old man compiled albums.’

  ‘Wade wasn’t like that!’

  He sent her a smug grin. ‘Wasn’t he?’

  ‘No!’ she insisted. ‘He was kind, funny and…and caring. I should know, I saw him practically every day for the last ten years!’

  ‘Perhaps, but I grew up with him.’

  ‘Too bad you didn’t grow up like him!’

  ‘I worked hard to make sure I didn’t.’

  ‘I can’t believe you hate him,’ she said. ‘Wade was like a father to me; he—’

  ‘Yeah?’ Patric cut in, moving to stand less than a foot away from her. ‘Well, he sure as hell wasn’t my idea of what a father should be! And he didn’t come within a bee’s backside of being a half-decent husband to my mother.’

  Jacqui opened her mouth to defend again the man who had been not just her mentor but her friend, but the words died when Patr
ic reduced the space between them to practically nothing and caught her chin. She knew that she should shrug free of his hold but something in the liquid brown depths of his eyes overpowered her ability to do so.

  He watched her swallow nervously as his free hand slipped beneath her hair and caressed the back of her neck of its own accord. The softness he found there made him want to taste it almost as much as he wanted to test the texture of her halfparted lips. The intensity of the need surging through him was stronger than he’d ever experienced before, and as her tongue slipped out to moisten those lips he almost groaned aloud.

  The knowledge that she knew exactly what she was doing to him was the only thing that gave him the strength to release her and step back.

  ‘Listen, you might have held the record for being his longest-standing lover, sweetheart—’ he tilted her chin ‘—but don’t delude yourself that you were his only one. Like I said, I’m not Wade. I don’t bed my models, regardless of how tempting they are.’ He turned away in response to the whistle of the kettle.

  He moved away so quickly that she momentarily thought that her legs wouldn’t support her, but in the face of his ironic sneer they served her well. Then again, she was frozen in shock—partly because Patric believed that she and his father had been lovers but mostly because of the turmoil of sensual emotion that his touch and nearness had created within her.

  She started shaking from head to foot. It was anger, she told herself, although why she felt like crying was beyond her. Of course, tears were probably a side effect of humiliation. She’d never experienced humiliation before, but, since she’d just stood there willing herself to be kissed by a man whose opinion of her was lower than a snake’s belly, she’d certainly felt it now!

  She watched him carry a mug of tea over to the glasstopped coffee-table then drop himself into the massive leather armchair his father had always favoured. The action was very like Wade’s, but his cold appraisal was light-years from the friendly smiles his father had bestowed on her.

  ‘Let’s cut the crap and get down to business,’ he said roughly, ‘since you’ve obviously agreed to my proposal.’

  His smug certainty rankled. She wished that she was in a position to tell him she wouldn’t work with him for three times what he’d offered! But she wasn’t, and, distasteful as it might be working with a guy who obviously considered her a tramp, Patric Flanagan—unlike Dickson Wagner at Risque—had made it clear that sleeping with him wasn’t a condition of employment. And the sooner she got this job out of the way, the sooner she could pay off her father’s debts and go back to being plain old Jacqui Raynomovski. Then the only photographs she’d have to pose for would be the ones her sister took at family gatherings.

  ‘C’mon, Jaclyn,’ he said. ‘Sit down and stop pretending you’re having second thoughts about taking the job. We both know that’s why you’re here.’

  ‘What makes you so sure I’m not here to turn you down?’ she asked, miraculously overcoming the urge to slap his smug face. ‘How do you know I’m not here to refuse your offer?’

  ‘A no could have been delivered via the phone. Besides which, if you were going to refuse you wouldn’t have tried that little seduction act a few minutes ago or—’ he paused, again running his eyes over her body ‘—put the goods so blatantly on display.’

  ‘You swine!’ Jacqui grabbed the mug and hurled it and its contents into his lap.

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘OH, SH…OOOT!’

  The ceramic mug flew out of Patric’s lap, shattering into pieces against the glass top of the coffee-table as he leapt from the chair, steam rising from the damp section of denim clinging to his thighs. Gritting his teeth, he hastily began to remove his jeans.

  ‘You deserved that!’ Jacqui shouted, in a desperate attempt to justify her actions. ‘You’ve got no—Oh, God!’ She gasped as a cruel red stain on his thighs was revealed. Reaction to what she’d done manifested itself in tears and trembling. ‘I…I…’

  She was pushed aside as Patric, clad only in T-shirt and black underpants, raced to the kitchen sink, and she watched mutely as he saturated a teatowel with cold water then held it to the scald. His face showed almost immediate relief and Jacqui’s heaved sigh matched it. Good Lord, what had possessed her to do such a thing? Hot tea!

  ‘You,’ he said, glaring with outrage, ‘are a bitch!’

  She winced. ‘I…I’m sorry. I truly am. But what you said—’

  ‘Lady, if you think the truth hurts you ought to be in my shoes right now! You strut your stuff and you’ve got to expect…’

  Strut her stuff! She clenched her fists, fury flaring again under the second barrage of insults.

  ‘You don’t go round trying to permanently scar people!’ he roared, then cursed and re-wet the towel. ‘What’s wrong with the usual slap in the face if you want to pretend outrage, huh?’ he asked snidely.

  Jacqui snapped! ‘A slap in the face?’ She snatched her bag and car keys from the table. ‘I wouldn’t dirty my hands touching you!’

  Patric smeared a liberal layer of salve on to his thighs. It could have been a lot worse, and he gave thanks that he liked a lot of milk in his tea and had been wearing jeans. Mind you, he thought, it’ll be a few days before you’re wearing them again.

  He swung his bare legs on to the bed and lay back against the pillows. Talk about a fiasco! He’d really screwed up big time!

  Someone should have warned him that a model’s temperament was in direct proportion to her success. Then again, he of all people should have known; he’d grown up with a classic example of the phenomenon—his mother.

  Madelene Cheval Flanagan had been an emotional minefield, and Patric had learned at an early age to detect the first signs of her infamous temper. While her tantrums and hysterics had been legendary, in the international modelling world they had been graciously excused as artistic temperament. Yet as her career had declined jealousy and alcoholism had dragged her behaviour beyond the tolerance of even those closest to her—Wade included.

  He sighed, wondering if at this very moment, somewhere in the afterlife, his deceased parents were hurling insults and accusations at one another.

  ‘Dammit, man! This is hardly the time for inane speculation—you’ve got a major problem on your hands!’

  Pushing his fingers through his hair, he contemplated the ceiling. Without a high-profile subject his whole idea fell flat.

  Where the hell was he going to find another model with the marketability of Jaclyn Raynor? Answer—nowhere! He’d known that all along, and catching the Risque Girl in the middle of a contractual dispute couldn’t have been described as anything but an act of God. Then, just when he’d imagined that the deal was all set to come together, she’d suddenly gone ballistic with a mug of tea and stuffed everything!

  Under normal circumstances her outburst would have been enough for him to want to avoid being in the same city as her, much less within striking distance of her throwing arm, but right now he was prepared to work with Satan himself— or, in this case, Satan’s sister. Despite the woman’s obviously precarious grasp on rational behaviour, no other model was going to give him the negotiating leverage he needed to get his project off the ground.

  The smart thing to do would be to give her a few days to calm down and approach her again. Patric smiled. A few more days of unemployment and she would be ready to renegotiate. He recognised dollar signs in a woman’s eyes when he saw them, and they’d flashed neon in Ms Risque’s baby-blues the minute he’d mentioned what he was prepared to pay.

  An alarm bell went off in his head and he bolted into a sitting position, wincing as his thighs protested. If she’d agreed to shed her clothes for his lens who was to say she wouldn’t do it for somebody else?

  It was entirely possible that right this minute she was contemplating approaching one or other of the big boys in pinup publishing herself. And there was no way that either magazine would knock back the chance of scooping the print world with shots o
f the luscious Ms Raynor in the raw! Hell, they’d say, ‘Exclusive?’ in one breath and, ‘Name your price!’ before drawing the next.

  The notion sent him rushing to his chest of drawers in search of clothes. He’d really have to do some heavy grovelling in the next few hours—and grovelling—even the pretend variety—was something he’d never done before…

  Patric tried unsuccessfully for several moments to open the wrought-iron gate set in the fortress-like white fence of Jaclyn’s Sylvania Waters home before noticing an intercom button. He groaned aloud. Once she knew who it was she’d be more likely to let loose a pack of snarling Dobermanns than let him in, but short of scaling the wall he didn’t have much choice. He pushed the button and waited.

  On the drive over he’d done a bit of thinking. In all honesty, he’d been out of line with the crack about her flaunting her body—not that that excused her for throwing a cup of scalding tea over him! But he was willing to concede that the action hadn’t been entirely unprovoked—

  “Who is it?’ A male voice crackled from the intercom.

  Patric decided to err on the side of caution. ‘Er…I’m here to see Jaclyn. I was speaking with her earlier…’

  The gate swung open and the voice said, ‘No problem; come on up to the house.’

  So far so good, he thought, following the gravelled path leading to a huge contemporary house of glass and sharp angles. Now all I have to do is get in the front door. The thought had no sooner popped into his head than a guy with a short-cropped haircut and a body like Swarzenegger’s appeared at the doorway.

  ‘Can I help you?’ he asked, folding muscular forearms with a dagger tattooed on one and a butterfly on the other across his chest.

  Patric always made it a habit to work out regularly, and only last night a friend had said that he looked ‘fighting fit’. Right about now he wasn’t sure that that was going to be good enough.

  ‘I hope so,’ he said, flashing a smile. ‘I’m here to see Jaclyn.’