Ruthless in All

by Jessica Steele

  She broke off, for the first time without him interrupting her, her face going pink to think that she had caused him to turn while answering, his eyes going down to her lacy white bra where her breasts swelled from her cleavage before reaching their flimsy cover. Instinctively she pulled her sweater to her front, the action causing him to halt in the middle of the, 'I trust you about as much as…' he had started to reply in turning.

  That her agitated move to hide her breasts angered him as she kept her sweater jammed up against her was apparent.

  'Oh, for God's sake!' he erupted. 'I've enough on my plate without having some panting virgin throwing a fit—you've got nothing I haven't seen before,' he added stingingly.

  How he knew she was a virgin was a mystery to her. But that barely registered, as something she just hadn't thought about chose that precise moment to pop into her head.

  'If—if I come with you,' spurted from her, knowledge that she had already committed herself to going with him not stopping her from being ready to back out if he had any funny business in mind, 'you won't try…' She came to an abrupt stop. Blane Hunter was surveying her with an expression that said the idea was laughable.

  Though he was nowhere near to laughing as, cuttingly, he flattened her with, 'I'm in no mood for jokes.' Which left her knowing with certainty that funny business, with her, had never entered his head.

  Irked at his snub, although he had told her what she wanted to know, Arden glared at the back he presented to her. She shrugged into her sweater, building up her dented ego with thoughts of the many invitations she'd turned down from members of the opposite sex who were interested in her.

  Not that she wanted that swine to be interested in her, she was sure. But he could have let her know in a nicer way that a man of his undoubted sophistication thought it hysterically funny, although he didn't seem to be splitting his sides, that she should imagine for a second that he would be interested in a girl from the sticks like her.

  'I'll do my own packing,' she said snappily when, without so much as a by-your-leave, Blane Hunter went over and opened up her wardrobe. She wished he would go to his own room, go and do his own packing.

  But on going downstairs, and on seeing a suitcase standing in the hall, she realised he had done his planning well and had packed his case before coming to wake her.

  'What the hell are you doing now?' he growled, when she went behind the reception desk and took out pen and paper.

  'Leaving a note for my aunt.' she snapped, provoked. But she had to explain, since he plainly suspected she might be writing who Mr J. Stephens really was, and all the rest of it. 'Since you're paying me to put up with you for a month, that means Aunt Louise may be back before I am.' Deep in her mind was the thought that Louise would not be able to stick it out for a full month at the Brownings', and could well return early.

  It annoyed her intensely that when her message was written, coolly, and with colossal cheek, Blane Hunter took the paper from her to check for himself that she wasn't double-crossing him.

  'Bank of England?' he queried of the tight-lipped Arden, referring to the 'If any red bills are waiting on your return, there's money in the Bank of England to settle them,' which she had penned.

  'A family secret,' Arden told him, her aggression rising that he didn't look to feel favoured when she let him into the secret of the loose brick in the pantry wall and the hollow behind it. 'It's where we keep our spare cash.'

  That there was very little there need not concern him, she thought when, already resenting him and his look that conveyed he thought she and her aunt were two of the pottiest women he had ever come across, she gave him a snooty look and pushed past him into the kitchen.

  Taking the loose brick from the pantry wall, Arden pushed most of the thousand pounds behind it. She was mollified a little that, as expected, Blane followed her into the walk-in pantry, and was able to see for himself that the wall looked perfectly normal, and that no one not in the know would think of looking there for their loot.

  'Food,' he said, able to switch swiftly to the next item on the agenda, while her mind was still on that of her aunt returning home first.

  'Food!' she repeated, trying to get on his wavelength in a hurry, And, just about making it, 'You're interested in food all of a sudden?'

  'If this cottage is as isolated as you say it is,' he grunted, 'if, as you say the Colonel seldom visits the place, I doubt that there'll be anything in the larder when we get there.' And curtly he told her, 'I'm not into reviving fainting women when they pass out for lack of nourishment.'

  Guessing he'd just as soon step over her if she did drop at his feet, Arden found a cardboard box and emptied the freezer of a few perishables that would keep fresh for a few days, while methodically Blane Hunter stacked in a few tins and some bread and milk.

  It was he who checked that all the services, bar the one that kept the deep-freeze running, had been turned off. And he who checked that Hills View was secure before he turned out the lights and plunged the guest house into darkness.

  Accustomed by now from his walks before first light to the layout of the grounds, impatient to be gone, Blane Hunter led the way to where Arden kept her car.

  Having opened up the rear door of the Morris Traveller, clad in a thick jacket and jeans, a raincoat over her arm, Arden stood by while he stowed their cases and the cardboard boxes inside. She then took her keys and went round to the driver's door.

  But it was when without ceremony Blane Hunter took the car keys from her, and not very politely put her to one side, that she was quickly made to realise that all the sympathy that had come to weaken her when she had thought his nerves must have been so shattered by that car crash, and his responsibility for the death of another human being, had been very badly misplaced.

  'I'll drive,' his voice came in the darkness.

  'You'll drive?' she exclaimed incredulously. She had her answer in the fact that he was opening the door and getting in behind the wheel.

  It took them two hours or more to reach Brynmoel. Blane Hunter was a morose, silent companion. Not that Arden wanted him to speak to her. He had given her more than enough food for thought, and only now, now they were actually on their way, did she have time and space to think without him barking some enquiry or instruction at her to interrupt her thinking.

  At the start of that drive, she was back to disliking him intensely that by arousing her sympathy, even if he didn't want sympathy from her, he had so weakened her that she had come on this expedition. He was an excellent driver, she observed, giving her no fears that she might end up the same way Delcine had. Which made it, she thought, since he drove without fuss, without bother, but with attention to road conditions, very odd that, when no other car was involved in that crash, he had driven his car at a brick wall!

  Her mind went on to wonder if perhaps there had been some mechanical fault with his car. But somehow she just could not see him owning any vehicle that was not in first-class order. I'm tired, she thought, not wondering at that fact; it was quite understandable, she considered, since she hadn't prepared herself for a three o'clock in the morning drive to Wales.

  She turned her head to look at his profile, stern and chiselled in what light there was. But as if aware of her watching him, he turned his head her way—abruptly Arden looked out of the window..

  He didn't look any better than when he had first arrived at Hills View, she thought, not wanting to feel sorry for him—her sympathy had been misdirected before. But as she remembered that dreadful nightmare, his soul in torment as he'd shouted in his sleep 'The door—it won't open!' it was obvious now that he had been in terror that he couldn't get Delcine out before the car burst into flames, Arden's heartstrings were pulled.

  It had been against medical advice that he had left hospital, she recalled, and she went on to pondering as she let her thoughts go where they would, that since the reporter had told her that Blane Hunter 'Did a bunk' from the hospital, that he must have had an accomplice;
or how come he had not only a suitcase with him, but all that money too!

  A thousand pounds, she decided, was no one's idea of pocket money. So that just had to mean, didn't it, that even being ill and in hospital had not stopped him from plotting his escape when the press had started hounding him.

  He must have planned, she was suddenly convinced, to get himself lost where no one could find him. Which had to mean, she thought, that he had instructed someone, probably some trusted executive, to bring him not only a packed suitcase, but enough money to last so that he would not have to blow his cover by giving any hotelier a cheque with his real name on.

  Not knowing where he would end up, he would want enough money to cover him if whatever establishment he chose charged exorbitant rates, she mused further. He wouldn't know at the outset that he would be staying at their modestly priced guest house. Arden grew more convinced that her theory was right, as she recalled her aunt saying that he had paid her in cash.

  Yes, that had to explain why he had so much ready cash with him. Not wanting to blow his cover, he would not even want to risk going into a bank to change a cheque for some ready money, she saw.

  Tiredly then Arden yawned, her thoughts going ahead to the Colonel's cottage. She wished now that she had paid more attention when she had overheard Colonel Meredith telling her aunt about his property in Brynmoel.

  For all she knew, it might be a timber constructed, one-up-and-one-down shack. It would look well if there was only one bedroom! Sudden alarm had her tiredness vanishing. But that was before she remembered the way the uncommunicative man by her side had flattened her with his 'I'm in no mood for jokes' when she'd tried to find out if she could trust him. She knew then, without alarm, that whether Colonel Meredith's cottage had only one bedroom, or no bedroom at all, she had nothing to fear from Blane Hunter. For, apart from that one night when he had been in trauma from that ghastly nightmare and had asked her to stay—human enough then to want company, as anyone, however mentally strong, who had suffered a horrific dream they were unable to wake up from would have been—Blane Hunter was totally self-sufficient. And if the day ever came when he felt the need of a female companion for more than unsexual comfort after trauma, then she could bank on it, never in a million years would he turn to anyone as unsophisticated as her. Arden Kirkham, she just knew, would never ever suit sophisticated Blane Hunter's taste.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Arden had thought she might nod off at any moment. But the vibrations of the old Morris Traveller told her that the road they were now on was no man-made road, and there was no chance of her falling asleep.

  The mountain roads had so far been good. But as the Morris bumped and dipped, Blane Hunter slowed down to lessen the impact, probably remembering that the same vehicle would need to get them back to civilisation rather than out of any consideration for her comfort, she thought. Arden did not need any other indication that they were out in the wilds.

  It seemed to her, as she wondered if her bones would ever be the same again, that they rattled along a rutted track for hours. But when not more than five minutes of bone-shaking torture had been endured, suddenly there appeared in the headlights a very substantial-looking brick-built house.

  'Is this it?' she asked, not letting herself be thankful in case it wasn't and she had to endure more bone-shaking.

  'This is Brynmoel,' was her terse answer. 'And this is the only property hereabouts.'

  Arden was tired, and felt as grumpy as he sounded. Yet a picture in front of her that a month spent in his pleasant company was going to leave her with nightmares if she let it had her pushing all pictures away and saying lightly:

  'Then this must be the Colonel's place.'

  To find that the key Blane Hunter fitted into the door lock actually did turn that lock made her sigh with relief. Though having groped along the wall and flicked on the light switch, all to no avail, she was left to stand in total darkness while he went to investigate an electricity supply.

  She was still standing where he had left her, when brilliant light flooded the hall and had her blinking.

  'I'll get the gear in,' he muttered, a civility she hadn't expected as they bumped into each other when she went en route to make a cursory inspection of the kitchen.

  The kitchen was well fitted out, she saw, with modern appliances installed, which all augured well for what she might find upstairs.

  She was upstairs having discovered that the 'cottage' had four bedrooms, having selected the bedroom nearest the stairs for herself, knowing without a doubt that B. Hunter Esquire would take the bedroom farthest away from hers, when the subject of her thoughts brought her suitcase to her.

  'I could have done that,' she said automatically, and knew tiredness was the cause of her wanting to thump him when all she received was a grunt for her trouble, as he turned and went out.

  Finding bedlinen was easy enough; Colonel Meredith had a plentiful supply. No doubt his daughter occasionally visited the cottage during the summer, she mused. With three children, all four beds would be in use then.

  Wanting nothing more than to flop into the bed she had just made up, Arden was just that much out of sorts to think of letting Blane Hunter make up his own bed. But, recalling how tired he had looked just now, against her better judgment she went along the landing and made up the bed in the room she had decided he would have.

  But having remembered how exhausted he looked, she was then to discover, when she went back to her own room, that she was worried about him. From what she could gather, it did not look as though he had any thoughts of climbing the stairs again that night.

  Damn him, she thought, going to the top of the stairs and listening for sounds below. He had looked ready to sleep on a clothesline, why the dickens didn't he go to bed!

  Crossly she saw that she wasn't going to get any rest until she went down and found out what was keeping him. A glance at her watch showed that it would be daylight in a few hours.

  She found him in the sitting room. That he did not acknowledge her presence, but sat in one of the well padded chairs looking set to sit there for what was left of the night, made Arden hesitate to interrupt him. That he was dog-tired was no figment of her imagination, she saw, and she hesitated no longer.

  'I've made up a bed for you in the room at the far end of the landing,' she interrupted his private reverie.

  'Thanks,' he tossed at her briefly. But he made no move to get up.

  Sorely needing to finish off her eight hours, his answer, his still sitting there, that it should worry her one iota that he was dead beat, further niggled her.

  But she swallowed her annoyance, reminding herself again that there was a whole month to be got through yet, and that it might be a shade more bearable if they didn't at the outset go for each others throats.

  'Why don't you come up to bed?' she asked, her eyes so innocent of suggestion of anything other than that he should go to the bed she had prepared for him that he looked at her—hard and long. The stinging reply she expected when she did see how her question could be misconstrued as an invitation to her bed was not forthcoming, and Blane Hunter surprised her by checking what she was certain had been on its way, and saying nothing more than a terse:

  'I see little point in going to bed.'

  From that she could only assume that in his view it was pointless to change his comfortable chair for a bed, when he knew before he got that far that he was not going to sleep.

  Unwisely, lulled that he hadn't answered her question with some cutting remark, Arden was tripped up by a natural feeling for anyone suffering as he undoubtedly was suffering. She forgot to think before she spoke.

  'Perhaps sleeping pills might help,' she suggested tentatively. 'Do you have any with you?' To her mind he was sorely in need of a night's sleep free from tormented thoughts.

  For her trouble, his hostility came exploding to the surface. His dark eyes were hating her as he reminded her that the only reason they were in the isolated Brynmoel to
gether was so that he could be sure she would not be blabbing his whereabouts to the press.

  'When I want you to play nursemaid, Miss Kirkham,' came thundering from him, 'I'll ask you!' And just in case she hadn't got the message, 'The only role I want you to play,' he blasted her, 'is that of mute!'

  Instantly furious that any man should dare to speak to her in such a tone, having said goodbye to any hope of enjoying her holiday, there was no thought in her, as she let her fury have its head, of the thoughts she'd had of not tangling with him the better to pass the next four weeks.

  'It's no wonder to me that you can't sleep!' she yelled straight back, her eyes spitting fire, so angry was she to have what she saw as a perfectly normal gesture of humanitarianism thrown back unwanted. 'With the great load you have on your conscience, it wouldn't surprise me if you never slept again!'

  So angry was she, Arden did not move from where she was standing when, threateningly, he left his chair. Nor was she scared either when he came to glower down at her, his jaw working as, his voice now ominously quiet, he suggested balefully:

  'One more murder on my conscience wouldn't make much difference.'

  'Huh!' she scoffed. But she did not stay to see what he made of that.

  Wintry sunshine was at the window when Arden awoke. She must have been tired, she thought, seeing from her watch that it was almost midday. Not that she was in any hurry to get up—the less she saw of Blane Hunter the better, was her opinion. Had she not been too angry to be afraid last night at his none too gentle hint that to do away with her wouldn't trouble him too much, she thought it most likely, as she sat up and took in her new abode, that she might have gone running from him straight out through the front door and into the night.

  Which would have been ridiculous, she mused, for with daylight, she felt certain that Blane Hunter was no more of a murderer than she was.