Edge of Paradise

by Dorothy Vernon

  EDGE OF PARADISE

  EDGE OF PARADISE

  Dorothy Vernon

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data available

  This eBook published by AudioGO Ltd, Bath, 2012.

  Published by arrangement with the Author.

  Epub ISBN 97781445829432

  Copyright © 1983 by Dorothy Vernon

  Map by Ray Limdgren

  All of the characters in this book are fictitious. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental

  All rights reserved

  Jacket illustration © iStockphoto.com

  CHAPTER ONE

  The moment he entered the room her eyes fixed on him. Was it his commanding height that drew her gaze? Certainly he stood head and shoulders above the crowd, but that was secondary to some inner magnetism, a hint of wildness about him that was immediately apparent to her and that held her attention.

  His hair was golden, burnished by a much hotter sun than ever warmed British shores, a conclusion that was heavily backed by his superb teak suntan. His perfect physique suggested that he was a doer rather than an observer. Not a backseat man, but a hands-on-the-controls man. The type who went looking for a challenge as opposed to one who merely accepted a challenge when it presented itself. An eye-on-the-highest-summit man who would scorn the easy path in favor of the difficult rock climb. The more forbidding the mountain, the greater the urge to conquer it; the more alien the river, the keener the desire to swim it.

  Warming to her theorizing, she decided that his attitude toward women would follow the same pattern. An easy conquest would not fire his enthusiasm. The woman with the emotional strength to resist him would be the one he wanted to make love to. The thought merely served to increase her amusement at the situation.

  In her role as onlooker she could tell that the two beauties competing for his attention bored him with their eagerness. The redhead with her fingers curling hopefully in the crook of his arm and the well-formed blonde in the protective circle of his other arm were both exceptional lookers, but their enraptured delight at being with him, which almost amounted to gratitude, turned him off. Unless her judgment was very wrong, neither of these silly drooling females stood a chance with him. Couldn’t they see what she could? Didn’t they know that if they’d turned away, feigned disinterest, he would have been quick to follow?

  Her own indifference wasn’t feigned. He wasn’t her type. If she was watching the tableau so avidly it was because she found it amusing, a bonus, because she hadn’t expected to be so pleasantly entertained. She wasn’t much of a party goer and had come to this one under duress. She disliked brittle social gossip almost as much as she disliked men who were too aware of themselves.

  Just by looking at him, his stance, the arrogant tilt of his head, she could tell that he thought himself no end of an attraction. She must ask her hostess his name, out of curiosity, nothing more. It would be something to relate to Alison, Ally for short, who didn’t have much of a social life these days. Ally’s husband, Ray, had died over a year ago, leaving her with a tiny daughter, a large mortgage, an inflexible bank manager and, ultimately, a pressing need to find a job that would give her elastic hours and out-of-the-ordinary working conditions. Ally had come up with the perfect answer to her problem. As no boss would tolerate a toddler in his office, she had decided to be her own boss and open up a secretarial agency so that she could have Samantha with her all the time.

  ‘Great!’ Catherine had said, applauding her friend’s initiative.

  Ally had given her what could only be described as an old-fashioned look. ‘Ah, but wait until you’ve heard the snag. I want you to come in with me. I know it’s a lot to ask. It will mean your giving up an absolutely fabulous, not to mention well-paid, job for the uncertainty of never knowing if there will be anything in the kitty at the end of the week to draw on, but I haven’t the confidence, or the ability for that matter, to go it alone.’

  Catherine had replied cautiously. ‘Admittedly I’m good at my job, but I’m not exceptional.’

  She had loved her position as secretary to Charles Pemberton. She had believed him to be the best, the kindest, most considerate man she was ever likely to meet, and she had considered herself privileged to work for him and was naturally reluctant to give up this peach of a job to fall in with Ally’s plan.

  Weighed against this was the undeniable truth which Ally had next put forward. ‘If you won’t, Cat, and I won’t blame you if you say no, I’ll just forget the whole thing.’ She had shrugged her shoulders and added philosophically, ‘I’ll have to, for the simple reason that I don’t know anyone else who would be stupid enough to join forces with me. Let’s face it, I shall always put Samantha first, so my partner will have to tackle the brunt of the work, and should Samantha fall sick . . .’ Her eyebrows lifted in explicit meaning.

  ‘Your partner will have to shoulder the full burden,’ Catherine had said, finishing the sentence for her. She had to smile. Did she, after all, have a choice? She had then committed herself by adding, ‘How can I possibly say no to such an irresistible prospect?’ As soon as Ally had finished gushing and thanking her she had continued, ‘We’ll have to start looking ’round for premises in town.’

  ‘I already have,’ Ally had admitted impishly. ‘Well, I knew you wouldn’t let a little thing like a fabulous salary and a cushy job stand in the way of helping out an old friend, so I took an option on a place. Except that I should warn you, the word “premises” is too grand to describe what I actually found.’

  The next day Catherine had dragged her feet and her sinking heart down a long, narrow passage between tall, overshadowing buildings, almost to the very end. She felt that it was the end when, finally, the key clutched in Ally’s hand was fitted into a rusty lock. A door creaked open and, if it was possible, her heart sank even deeper into despair as she saw the condition of the room her friend was proposing to turn into their office.

  ‘I know it’s not much,’ Ally had apologized, ‘but places within our means aren’t easy to find. A good scrub and a lick of paint should do wonders.’

  A lot of hard work was called for, but it wasn’t really that which dulled her enthusiasm. ‘I’m not saying we couldn’t bring this place up to scratch. We’re neither of us afraid of bending our backs. It’s the approach. It isn’t what you’d call inviting. Will anyone trail all this way down to find us?’

  ‘We’ll have to see that they do. We’ll think up some gimmick to make the public want to seek us out. It’s because of where it is, down this long alley way, that it’s cheap enough for us to afford it.’

  Even in her dismay, Catherine’s sense of humor came to the rescue and found something to joke about in the situation. Latching on to the word ‘alley’ she had said, ‘What will that make us? The alley cats!’

  Ally was quick to pounce on the subtle combination of the nicknames they used for each other. The diminutives, Ally for Alison Black, changed to Butler on her marriage to Ray, and Cat for Catherine Mason, had been derived during their schooldays and had stuck.

  ‘Cat, you’re a genius!’ Ally had exclaimed in delight. ‘That’s it, the gimmick. That’s what we’ll call ourselves, the Allycats.’

  ‘I hope you’re joking!’ Catherine had gasped in response. ‘It’s not dignified enough. It sounds positively—well—saucy. And that’s a kind description.’

  ‘I know what it sounds like and I’m not joking. Dignity won’t pay the bills. When we’re established, when people find out just how efficient we are, we’ll go respectable and change it to something sedate and businesslike, maybe “Butler and Mason Typing Agency” if you’re still feeling stuffy-minded. To begin with we are Allycats. We need something catchy to catch on
. A name like that is sure to attract business and once people have tried us they’ll see how reliable we are and they’ll come back. It can’t fail.’

  Well, that had been three months ago. It hadn’t failed, but neither had the orders come rushing in with the speed which Ally had optimistically prophesied, and if the truth were to be admitted they were floundering badly.

  The only reason Catherine had allowed herself to be roped into coming to this party was because the friend who was giving it had said that a writer would be among the guests, and he might want some typing done while he was over in England. As well as promising to be a well-paid commission, it could just be the springboard for future work. It was kind of Lois—her hostess—to think of her and make the meeting possible, Cat reflected.

  Now, which man among this crowd was the writer? Was it the sweet-looking, nearly bald gentleman over there? He didn’t look capable of writing racy detective novels which, according to her informative hostess, were the type of thing this fellow wrote. But then, you could never tell. Was it the tall, pale-faced, bespectacled, rather nice-looking man over there? He looked as if he might, but she still didn’t think he was the one. While he was over in England, Lois had said. Catherine didn’t discount him just because of his pale complexion. No matter how hot the sun got, some people never tanned. But the traveling gave them a certain kind of look, a polish, an assurance that came with the cosmopolitan lifestyle they led, which he seemed to lack.

  She had partly done her homework. That is, once she discovered that there was a possibility of doing some work for him, she had trotted along to her favorite bookshop and bought his latest novel, but she hadn’t had time to read more than a few pages. Although she wasn’t as prepared as she would have liked to be, it wouldn’t be an outright lie to say she had ‘read’ him. It seemed cheeky to hope to take on a famous author’s typing and not have read anything he’d written. He wrote under the name of Lucky Chance and Lois said his books hit the best-seller lists almost immediately and all but two of them had been made into movies.

  She’d read enough to know that for his latest bestseller he’d chosen a warm climate, in keeping with the warmth of his dialogue, and a lush, exotic setting. There was an underlying something in his style that suggested that he would scorn library research and choose to live for a time in the place he intended to write about to soak up the local color. Again this was conjecture, but to her mind such a man wouldn’t write anything he didn’t have firsthand experience of. No matter how daring the episode he was plotting, before he put one word on paper he would go through the action himself.

  After that, establishing his identity was as easy as counting up to three. All she had to find, and her eyes were already swinging ’round to locate him, was a challenge seeker with a superb suntan.

  He just happened to be looking around at the same time. Oh, no! Of all the people in the room, the one person she would have to play up to was the one she’d taken an instant dislike to. For a moment their eyes locked. Hers, indicative of her thoughts, were furious and defiant. His reflected what was going on in his own mind, expressed speculation.

  His eyes left hers to make a prolonged tour of her body; this, coupled with the feeling that had flashed across the room between them, left her in no doubt whatsoever as to the nature of his speculation.

  She had received that sort of look from men before, and had perfected her own way of dealing with it. With ice, or ridicule, depending on which treatment she judged would be most effective. This time her brain seemed incapable of doing its normal thing. Instead of thinking, You should be so lucky! she sank low enough to wonder how she was shaping up.

  Nature had blessed her with slim legs and a narrow waist, with nicely proportioned curves above and below, really quite modest in comparison with the voluptuous contours of his two companions, the blonde and the redhead, who were still fighting tenaciously for his escaping attention.

  Natural poise came with the knowledge of having a good figure, but now, when she needed it more urgently than ever, Catherine’s seemed to have deserted her. She wished she’d chosen a dress that didn’t fit quite so neatly.

  Having finished their inspection, his eyes lifted once more. They were a remarkable jade green in color, fringed with lashes that would have added an extra dimension of beauty to a woman’s face, long, back-curling with golden tips, which still went perfectly with his indisputably male features. And they were signaling to her that he wanted to make love to her.

  Inexperienced she might be, but she wasn’t so juvenile that she couldn’t recognize so clear a message. She had never felt so out of her depth, so divided in thought or so jangled in her entire life. The fact that she had always steered clear of the sort of danger he represented meant that she had nothing to draw guidance from to help her now.

  Tapping some latent inner strength, she managed to compose herself sufficiently to give him the sort of quelling look that would have devastated most men. This one, after a moment of grave consideration, answered it with a smile, a smile that did precisely what it was intended to do: mock her feeble attempt to put him in his place and, as if that weren’t bad enough, stir her interest.

  In consequence her chin was the one to duck—in sick acknowledgment of the fact that she was not as immune to him as she would have wished. Had his smile flashed out on friendly impulse it would have been a different matter altogether. However, it was much too calculated to be sincere and the feeling she got was that if he hadn’t been bored with his present company he wouldn’t have exerted himself to look in her direction, and she wouldn’t have been thrown into this state of contradiction.

  Her dislike of his type had not wavered by the slightest degree, and yet over and over again she felt her eyes being compulsively drawn to his. She had never seen such compelling eyes in anyone, man or woman, ever before. They held her glance until the hot color flooded her cheeks, the cue for the sparkle of droll laughter to appear in their jade depths at this telltale sign of her inner confusion.

  She was beginning to wish she had never come to the party, never subjected herself to this torment. He was playing with her emotions and even if he did condescend to give her some typing to do, he would be impossible to work for. Perhaps she should forget it and get out while she could.

  But even as this thought crossed her mind he was firmly and not very gently disentangling himself from his female companions. Why? Did he mean to join her? She didn’t wait to find out. She knew she had to escape and did so with all haste, to the bathroom, which was the one place he couldn’t follow her. She asked herself if she weren’t being just a little bit ridiculous, panicking at nothing.

  She combed her hair, to little effect, as it did its own thing anyway. Dark copper in color, it was shiny and bouncy, held in some kind of check by its own weight, and reached below her shoulder blades. She retouched her makeup, scolded herself for not being better equipped to deal with the situation and felt, if not better, then certainly a little calmer.

  She emerged from her hideout and returned to the overcrowded, overheated, intolerably noisy room. The party had livened up considerably during her absence. Someone had put on a record and couples were dancing. An arm snaked ’round her waist and she became engaged in a strenuous dance-cum-wrestling match with a man not much taller than herself. His one advantage was that he didn’t block her view; as they circled the room her eyes could do likewise without being obvious. Where was he? She couldn’t see him anywhere. Had he left?

  Her partner swung her ’round and she came to a dizzy halt and fell, literally, into other arms. Finding the owner’s face was merely a matter of raising the angle of her chin—and meeting the onslaught of mocking jade green eyes.

  ‘Oh, you!’ she said foolishly.

  His hand on her back touched her nerves with sensuous sweetness and she broke free of his dangerous hold. His jade eyes flicked over her, one brow lifting in amused awareness of the effect he had on her.

  He said, ‘Do I take you ho
me now? Or are you going to make me endure more of this exceedingly tedious party while we go through the formalities of getting to know one another first?’

  ‘You’re very sure of yourself,’ she began indignantly. Then, before she could put him in his place, an alabaster-white hand ending in long scarlet talons fixed predatorily on his shoulder.

  A petulant voice said, ‘Darling, you’ve been an age. I thought you were getting me a drink.’

  ‘Of course, Ivy, my sweet. Come along and I’ll drown you in it.’

  ‘My name is Poppy, not Ivy,’ the redhead cooed chastisingly, her red lips forming a beautiful pout.

  His eyes rested on her clinging fingers. ‘I know. Ivy seemed more appropriate.’ Redirecting his gaze he said autocratically to Catherine, ‘This won’t take long to deal with. Wait here.’

  As poor Poppy was dragged unceremoniously away to be dealt with, Catherine could find nothing to smile about in the ludicrous contrast between his indifference to Poppy and the taunting sweetness he was turning on her.

  If he hadn’t commanded her to wait in a tone that was heavy with meaning, it wouldn’t have occurred to her to do otherwise. As it was, perversity made her move away. She circulated, and eventually came face to face with her hostess.

  ‘Wonderful party, Lois.’

  ‘Glad you think so, darling. How lovely you look.’

  ‘So do you.’ Catherine came back on cue—and meant it. ‘In fact, you look ravishing.’

  The praise brought a gratified smile to her hostess’s lips as she asked with genuine interest, ‘How is the venture going? What is that absurd name you and Alison call yourselves? Ah, now I remember! Allycats!’

  Catherine admitted, ‘We’re not exactly living on cream. That’s why . . .’

  ‘I know, dear. I’ve had a word about you with my author friend,’ Lois said, inclining her head in his direction.

  He had obviously dealt with Poppy and was now in conversation with the pale-faced man wearing spectacles. His features were strained with boredom. This was egomania in its most rampant form and her hackles rose in defense of that poor man.