Numbly she shook her head again. “Tony, please—”
His mouth tightened, but he knew he couldn’t push her. “Never mind.” He held her gaze a moment longer, then turned, keeping the umbrella over her head. “Later. We’ll talk later.”
They resumed walking. They hadn’t gotten far when the sound of an engine sent them both spinning around, half expecting a new enemy to materialize out of the mist and rain. The small pickup truck seemed innocuous enough, despite the crate of pigs in the back. Pulling past them, the farmer braked, waiting until they ran up.
“You all right there? Need some help? Saw your car back there. Roads can be treacherous in the rain.”
“What we need is a tow,” Tony said, pulling out a handkerchief and blowing his nose.
They climbed into the truck, crowding close together. Sam winced as the gears ground raucously. Tony’s thigh lay along hers, his knee pressing against her. She could feel the heat of his skin through their wet jeans, and half expected to see steam rising.
Declining the man’s offer of a hot cup of tea, they huddled under the umbrella shivering as he drove a tractor out of the storage shed. “Hop on.”
They stood on the bar behind the seat, exposed to the full force of the rain, since it was impossible to hold the umbrella and hang onto the tractor fenders at the same time. Samantha ducked as the rubber wheels spun up mud around them.
Depression settled over her, as weighty as the heavy charcoal clouds above them. Nothing could make this day worse.
The tractor pulled the car free in short order, and they were on their way with a wave and a smile. All thoughts of scenic drives consigned to oblivion, Tony headed for the motorway.
He dropped Samantha off in front of her building, briefly touching her cold cheek with his hand before leaning over to open her door. “Samantha, we have to talk. I’ll be back in half an hour, after I go home and change.”
“Tony—” She faltered, knowing there was no escape. While she might have fought him had he demanded answers, she had no resistance to his honest concern.
Gently he ran his thumb over her bottom lip, his smile an odd mixture of solicitude and determination. “Don’t look so worried, Sam. I only want to help.”
She pushed herself out of the car, away from the seductive scent of his shaving lotion and the warmth in his eyes. “Tony, it’s better—”
“Later,” he said, pulling the car door shut. Her protest was lost in the roar of the engine as he drove off into the wet twilight.
Samantha entered the building, praying she wouldn’t meet anyone. Her shoes squelched around her icy feet as she trudged up the stairs. Mud dripped from her jacket and from her hair. She could only imagine what she looked like.
Bagheera was meowing at the back door when she let herself into the flat. She opened the door to let him out.
A hot shower restored her to bodily comfort. Dressed in a woolen sweater and soft fleece pants, she plugged in the kettle. If she kept her hands busy, she didn’t have to think. In the corner of the kitchen the washing machine sloshed rhythmically as it washed the mud out of her clothes.
The telephone rang, and she ran to it, thinking Tony had changed his mind, that she’d been granted a reprieve.
Lifting the receiver to her ear, she never got a chance to speak before the voice paralyzed her vocal cords.
“Next time I won’t fail.”
Chapter Five
Next time I won’t fail.
The strange, sexless voice rang in Sam’s head as she crouched, shivering, in her chair. Bagheera was still out prowling and she was denied even the comfort of his presence.
When the door buzzer sounded, she leaped up as if she’d touched a live wire. Teeth chattering, she hugged her arms around her chest, and pressed the intercom button. “Yes?”
“Sam? It’s Tony.”
Tony? She shook her head, her brain woolly. Yes, Tony, of the gentle hands and warm smile.
To refuse him entry was a bigger decision than her mind could handle at the moment. She pushed the button, releasing the door.
She counted the minutes it would take him to climb the stairs. Even so, when he knocked, she began shaking again. She opened the door for him, glancing furtively up and down the hall before slamming it closed.
“Samantha.” Tony grasped her by the shoulders and looked into her face, his own skin paling. “Samantha, what’s wrong? Are you ill?”
All kinds of disasters tumbled through his mind. She’d caught flu or pneumonia from their walk in the rain. She’d been mugged in the hallway. Her apartment had been burglarized—that one was easy to discard as he saw the impersonal neatness.
He shook her a little as she stood in front of him, her body lax with a frightening passivity. “Samantha, say something. What is it?”
Her mouth contorted as she fought the need to cry, to fling herself on his chest and hold him—hold him. Tears spilled over her cheeks, and she gulped, still fighting, but finally giving in.
She buried her face against his coat, her tears soaking the fabric already wet from rain. “Oh, Tony, I’m so scared. First the note, then the thing at the supermarket, now this.”
He led her to the sofa, sat down with her, rocking her until the sobs eased. Awkwardly, he patted her back. “It’s all right, Samantha. I’m here. It’s all right.”
She burrowed closer and he wrapped his arms tightly around her, inhaling the delicate fragrance of her hair. It lay loose on her back, still damp from her bath.
Gently he kneaded the stiff muscles at the base of her skull. He tilted her face up to his. “Samantha, I’m sorry I was short with you this afternoon. But I was so upset. We’d almost been killed and I didn’t even know why.”
He stopped short. “What thing at the supermarket? Has there been something else?”
She realized all at once that, of course, he didn’t know. “Someone took a handbag from a woman who looked a lot like me, at a supermarket where I shop. The police questioned me about it.”
“Not as a suspect.”
“No, of course not. As the possible victim. My boss’s housekeeper saw the incident and mentioned my name. She’d thought it was me.”
“Someone’s trying to confirm your address,” Tony said. “Why?”
She ignored the question. “That’s what I thought.”
“Who, Sam?” His hands tightened as tension filled him. “Why didn’t you tell me this before? I might have been prepared for what happened this afternoon.”
She opened her eyes. They were as cloudy as the mists that shrouded the dreary day. “It wasn’t an accident.”
“No, it wasn’t.” He felt only faint triumph that she agreed with him.
The intersection where the truck had hit them had not been a dangerous one. Both he and the truck driver would have had clear visibility, despite the weather. Unless the driver was drunk or crazy, Tony had to conclude that he’d been waiting for them. As to how he could have known which road they’d take, anyone returning to London would have had to use that route. A driver familiar with the area could easily precede them to a particular rendezvous by following farm roads.
“No, it wasn’t an accident,” he repeated. Sam’s face was pale, tear streaked, and his heart ached with a depth of emotion that startled him.
He hardly knew her, didn’t know if he could trust her, and yet he wanted to help her, no matter what the consequences. “But you insisted it was. You wouldn’t admit that you might be in danger. Samantha, what happened just now? Something else scared you.”
Her lips trembled. “The—the—phone—” She shook her head, unable to go on.
“The phone? Did someone threaten you on the phone?”
She gathered the tattered ends of her control, pulling away from him. She jerked a tissue from the box on the lamp table and mopped her face. Crying wouldn’t help, she told herself sternly. She should be calling the police.
Memories flooded back of Dubray lying in her father’s hall, the cold
ruthlessness she’d seen in Bennett Price’s face as he’d wiped the floor. No, she couldn’t involve the police and give herself away. Not when she didn’t know for sure whether they’d found her.
But she had to tell somebody. The pressure was building inside her, hammering for release.
“All right, I’ll tell you.” Except for the slight catch in her voice, she sounded like her normal self.
“Yes, it’s time.” Tony leaned back, folding his arms across his chest.
“You were right, you know. I’m not British. I’m from Montréal. And my name is Smith, not Clark.”
Only the merest trace of a British accent remained in her voice. For an instant Tony had an eerie feeling that she was not one person but two, her demeanor had changed so much. But at once she regained the almost imperious dignity she’d displayed in the hotel lobby the afternoon they’d met. “I broke off my engagement.”
Tony’s brows rose. “That doesn’t seem a very compelling reason to run away from home. Who was the lucky man?”
“Bennett Price.”
“Of Price Enterprises?”
The fear she’d had about Tony communicating with Bennett resurfaced. “Do you know him?”
She was immediately reassured by his off-hand reply. “Not personally. His business is well known. We’ve never met. Different lines of work.”
Bennett Price. Hiding the jolt the mention of Price’s name had given him, Tony sent his mind back over the list of people involved with the trade delegation from Canada. He couldn’t be sure, but it seemed to him that Price’s name was on one of the documents.
Was it possible that Samantha— No, if she had broken her engagement and fled Montréal to avoid Price, he could pretty well write her off as a security risk.
He leaned forward, intensely curious about her reasons for leaving. “What happened, Samantha? Did Price take it badly?”
“No. I don’t know.” The words rushed over themselves. “I didn’t see him again, so I don’t know how he took it.” She licked her dry lips. “It was something else.”
In a flat, emotionless voice she told him about her father’s death and the incident at the house the day after the funeral.
Tony didn’t say anything for several moments after she finished. When he spoke, his voice was quiet, almost contemplative. “He’s the one you saw in the elevator, isn’t he? He wasn’t dead, then. He must have recovered.”
Didn’t he believe her? “When I saw him last, he looked dead. And Bennett wiped the floor, although from the landing I couldn’t see much.” She shuddered, a violent convulsion that racked her body. “Bennett and the others were so cold-blooded about it, as if nothing unusual had happened.”
Her voice shook and she couldn’t go on as she remembered the horror that had gripped her. She’d shrunk back from the stair rail and crouched next to the window on the landing, moving only when she’d seen the car drive away.
“Samantha.” As if from a long way she heard Tony’s voice, and realized he’d called her several times. “Samantha.”
He shifted nearer and pulled her against him, wrapping his arms tightly around her to stop her trembling. “Please, Samantha, it’s all right now.”
She shuddered again and sat up, her eyes dry, her mouth firming to a resolute line. “It’s not all right, Tony. Someone’s after me.”
“You’ve got me now,” he said. “I’ll help you. Can you tell me the rest? Were the men arguing?”
Her brow wrinkled as she tried to remember. The visual part of the incident was etched in her memory, but anything the men had said remained unclear, even though she’d replayed it through a hundred sleepless nights.
“Not at first. I was upstairs when I heard the door open and close, and then several voices. I recognized Bennett’s and wondered what he was doing there when he was supposedly out of town. I was about to go down when another man shouted something I didn’t understand. I couldn’t see clearly because of the angle of the stairs, but I heard an odd sharp sound, then a thud, as if someone had dropped a heavy box or something.”
She dragged in a long breath. “I suppose that was the man falling.”
“Samantha.” Tony’s warm voice and firm hands compelled her to look at him. “Samantha, you’re safe for now.”
She gave a ragged laugh. “For now. But what about when they find me?”
“I’m here. Sam, would they even have known you were there?”
“They could have found out. My aunt Olivia knew I was there. Bennett might have asked her.”
Tony frowned. “So he could have known what you’d seen, and might have wanted to shut you up.”
“I’m sure of it.”
Tony propped his elbow on the arm of the sofa and pressed his fingers into his forehead. “So you just took off. Didn’t it occur to you that there might have been an innocent explanation for what you saw?”
There might have been, except for the incriminating presence of Claude Germain. From him came the real danger. To a man like Claude Germain, anyone who got in his way, however innocent, was expendable. “If the man was hurt,” she said carefully, “why didn’t they call an ambulance? Wouldn’t that be the normal thing to do?”
“Maybe they didn’t want to waste any time. Maybe they took him straight to a hospital.”
“I suppose it’s possible. But you have to understand it was a shock to see Bennett there. He had told me at the funeral that he would be out of town until the end of the week, that I might not see him until the day of the wedding. And the way he looked when he glanced up the stairs—it frightened me. I thought I knew Bennett. But in that moment I suddenly realized he was a stranger.”
“Did you talk to him before you left?”
“No, but I tried to. I thought if I saw him, I’d find it was all a horrible nightmare. But when I went to his office, his secretary seemed surprised to see me, said Bennett was still out of town. So I went back to my own apartment to pack. I wrote him a letter and left it at his office. I also left a letter for my Aunt Olivia, telling her I needed a holiday. The same message went to James Michaels, Smith Industries’ CEO. James has always been like an uncle to me, and oddly enough, he never liked Bennett. He must have been glad to hear I broke off the engagement. Don’t worry, I didn’t take any chances.”
Briefly she sketched her convoluted journey, and the arrangements she’d made with Amelia and Mr. Collins. “I changed my hair color in Toronto.”
“What about from Nice to London? It’s obvious that they traced you there, although it took long enough.”
“Amelia sometimes travels to Paris or London by returning rental cars to the point of origin. She made an arrangement for me to take one, in her name. The trail would have ended in Nice. As far as anyone is concerned, I could be anywhere.”
“But you got that note on the brochure.”
“That might have been luck. They might have tried sending mail through our other European offices as well, on the off chance.”
Tony frowned thoughtfully. “These threats, and the accident. Is Bennett the vindictive type?”
Bennett? Bennett hardly mattered against the danger posed by Germain. “What do you mean?” Samantha asked, careful to keep her tone level.
“Would he have been angry enough at you for jilting him that he’d try to kill you?”
She twisted her fingers together in her lap. “I don’t know. Once, I would have said no. When he wanted to be, he was charming. He had great success in business because he knew how to get along with people, how to get them to agree with him. But with me or with his closest friends, he was often moody and intense. He got angry very quickly. Once he rammed a car door just because someone opened it on the street when he was passing. But more often it was in his attitude. He had very little tolerance, especially for those he called bums—the unemployed, the homeless. He’d make donations to animal activists instead. He said that animals couldn’t help their situation but humans could.”
Tony’s brows shot up. “
And you were marrying this guy?”
“He was a respected businessman. Our marriage was considered a good match.”
Tony snorted. “Was it going to be a marriage, or a business merger?”
From her present perspective she could understand how it would look to an outsider. At first Bennett had seemed an ideal partner. After a disastrous experience with an impoverished Italian prince during her last year at a Swiss finishing school, she’d been wary of fortune hunters. Bennett was rich, successful, and charismatic. But as the wedding date drew nearer, she’d felt as if a noose were tightening around her neck.
“A marriage, of course,” she said with a heat that sounded defensive even to her own ears. “At least we both had our eyes open.”
“And your family approved, no doubt.” Tony’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I know what those Westmount families are like. The right schools, the right colleges, the right careers, and finally the right marriages.”
“We didn’t live in Westmount during my teens,” Samantha said. “We’d moved to the suburbs. Besides, I haven’t lived at home for years.”
“But you kept up the communication.”
“They were my family. It meant a lot to my aunt who was like a mother to me since my own died when I was a child. She and my grandmother. Aunt Olivia approved of Bennett.”
She lifted her eyes, noting the frown that creased his brow. “Tony, it’s silly to argue about this. I wasn’t going to marry Bennett. I was planning to break off the engagement when my father died. With the funeral and everything I hardly saw Bennett. Then he left on his alleged business trip.”
She spread her hands. “Please understand, it wasn’t a simple matter. This was the third engagement I broke off. It’s not easy to admit failure yet again.”
Under other circumstances, his look of surprise would have been comical. “You were engaged three times? Samantha, you hardly seem the type.”
“I know. I’ve changed. I’ll never be that person again.” Her breath hitched in her throat and she bit down on her bottom lip. “I could have been a princess. I was engaged to an Italian prince, but I broke it off when I found out about his penchant for skiing in Saint Moritz, sailing in Antibes, and his aversion to work. He’d gone through the family fortune, and he’d spent the money left him by an elderly widow he’d married before he met me. She’d conveniently died soon after—worn out, no doubt. Of course he didn’t tell me any of this, but I found out later that he’d also been cheating on me, so I was well rid of him.” She broke off, hugging her arms around her chest.
Past Tense Page 6
