Bittersweet Deception

by Liz Fielding

  ‘Annabel wanted to meet my new cook, Kate.’ There was a brazen possessiveness about the “my” that set her teeth on edge. ‘She was hoping you might be prepared to share your recipe.’ The beautiful blonde sitting close to Jay, her fingers curved in his, would have turned any head: as the uncrowned queen of breakfast television it was like meeting someone you had known for years. But Kate was only conscious of Jay’s eyes fixed upon hers as he lifted the woman’s fingers to his lips. ‘Or is it some closely guarded secret?’

  Kate’s hands tightened into small fists until the skin on her knuckles was bone-white. It was too blatant to miss. He intended her to see this. He was demonstrating his power in some way that she couldn’t begin to understand. But if he had wanted to make her jealous he hadn’t needed to go to so much trouble. While she had been alone in the kitchen, preparing each delicate little course, her imagination had been working overZ-time, doing his work for him.

  She turned away from him, to face the woman who was eyeing her with undisguised interest. ‘It’s not a secret, Miss Courtney. You can have the recipe with pleasure. I’ll demonstrate it on your breakfast programme whenever you like.’

  Annabel’s eyes widened and she glanced at Jay. ‘Darling, what a brilliant idea. Your own cook! Think of the publicity—’

  ‘And…’ They both turned to look at Kate as she interrupted. ‘And it has one other advantage. I’m certain that Miss Courtney will not expect the usual…privileges.’ Annabel gasped and stifled something uncommonly like a giggle in her napkin.

  Jay, however, was not in the least amused. ‘That will be all, Kate,’ he said abruptly, his voice frozen, his eyes like stone. She was dismissed like the servant she was.

  Impetuously she bobbed a brief curtsy and, dropping her voice into the slow Norfolk dialect, she said, ‘Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.’

  ‘Kate!’ She was halfway across the hall when his voice halted her. She turned slowly to face his wrath.

  ‘What, sir?’ she asked.

  His breath came in a sharp hiss against his teeth. ‘I won’t be used,’ he said, with razor-edged precision, glaring down his long nose at her.

  She didn’t have the advantage of his height, had to tilt her head to return his look, but he was left in no doubt as to her feelings. ‘Neither will I, Mr Warwick. Not as an exhibit like a prize heifer at a show. And I think you owe Miss Courtney an apology too. Or maybe she’s not as fussy.’ She saw the spark of anger flash across his face and turned to go, satisfied to have touched him on the raw for once.

  ‘Kate!’ His command demanded instant respect and she paused, glad that her cheeks were still pink from the heat of the kitchen. ‘One other thing.’

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Don’t ever curtsy to me again. Is that clear?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ She dropped a quick bob, quite beyond seeing the danger. ‘Is there anything else, sir?’

  His arm shot out and he grabbed her, his face like thunder. ‘I ought to put you over my knee and beat your backside. How dare you—’

  ‘Jay, darling.’ Annabel Courtney had followed him to the door of the dining-room. ‘I think perhaps I’d like to go home now.’ She made the smallest gesture in their direction. ‘Whenever you’re ready, of course.’

  For a moment Jay continued to stare at Kate, then he released her. ‘Of course, Annie. We’ll go now.’

  Kate fled to the comparative safety of the kitchen. She was breathing a little more heavily than normal as she leaned against the door. But she knew he wouldn’t follow her. He had Annabel Courtney to take his mind off his tiresome cook.

  * * *

  When the house closed at six on Sunday evening, Kate felt as if she had worked a shift as a stoker on a ship. By the time everything was cleared away she ached everywhere and all she wanted was a long soak in her bath and bed. Jay, however, would have none of it.

  ‘You need some fresh air. Come on.’

  She drew back as he threw his arm around her shoulders and ushered her towards the door. ‘No, thank you.’

  ‘You’ve hardly been out all week. You’re so pale that I’ll have the Royal Association for the Protection of Cooks after my blood. We’ll take Daisy for a walk.’

  She opened her mouth to repeat her refusal, then acquiesced without further protest. There was a determination about him that brooked no denial. And she knew he was right. If she fell into bed without winding down she would feel dreadful in the morning.

  ‘I’ll have to change.’

  ‘Get a move on, then.’

  She caught herself running up the stairs two at a time, and forced herself to a more sedate pace. It was ridiculous that her heart should be beating just that bit faster, she told her reflection, simply because he cared enough to see that she had “some fresh air”. Last night all his care had been for Annabel Courtney.

  She topped a pair of soft grey trousers, warm enough for a spring evening, with a toning silk shirt and pulled on her favourite deep rose sweater, but regarded her reflection with little satisfaction. She fluffed on a little blusher and touched her lips with colour. It had been a hard week but she knew her pallor had little to do with that.

  Jay was waiting outside and he turned at the sound of her feet on the gravel. For a moment he was perfectly still. Then he moved to open the passenger door of the Range Rover for her.

  ‘I thought we were going for a walk,’ she said.

  ‘We are.’ He didn’t elaborate and she scrambled up before he took it into his head to help her. It was an unnecessary precaution. He had already gone to the back of the Rover to lift Daisy in, then he climbed in beside her and headed north.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she asked, after a while.

  ‘To the beach.’

  ‘The beach?’

  Her surprise made him laugh. ‘I hope you’ve no objection to getting sand in your shoes?’

  ‘I can always take them off.’

  ‘Why on earth did I stick at shoes?’ he chided himself.

  She ignored this remark. ‘I hadn’t realised we were so close to the sea.’

  ‘Where did you think all those crabs come from?’

  ‘The local fishmonger?’ she asked, her expression one of total innocence.

  He gave her a sidelong glance as they slowed for a flock of sheep to cross the road. ‘Where else?’

  Half an hour later they were following an ecstatic Daisy over the dunes. Kate laughed as the dog hurled herself after the seabirds with an enthusiasm undiminished by failure, as they rose effortlessly to avoid her and settled a few feet away.

  ‘That’s better. You should laugh more often.’ Kate gasped as Jay caught her hand and set off running down the beach with her.

  ‘Stop! Stop, Jay, please,’ she begged finally, sinking to the sand.

  He threw himself down beside her, closer than was entirely comfortable, putting up a hand to stroke her cheek gently. ‘Well, at least you’ve got some colour now.’

  ‘Don’t!’ Kate exclaimed painfully, longing for him to touch her, yet dreading it, and she could see in his eyes that he knew. There was a dangerous moment. A moment of utter stillness when even the gulls seemed to hold their breath, and if he had reached for her she would have been lost. Then, quite deliberately, he rolled over on to his back and stared up at the darkening sky.

  Kate sank back on to the sand and gradually her breathing returned to near normal. Something had happened and she didn’t quite understand what it was. But the Jay Warwick she had met in Tisha’s kitchen would not have turned away. He would have exploited the weakness he had seen in her eyes without a second thought for his victim.

  Then Annabel Courtney’s laughing face filled her mind. Their names were often linked romantically. She had been Jay’s companion for a long time. No matter how many other women he was seen with, she was always in the background. After last night it looked as if the romance was on again. And it hurt. She knew it shouldn’t. Her desire was just the fevered response of urges woken from over lo
ng hibernation. She didn’t even like the man, she reminded herself. But somehow that didn’t quite ring true.

  ‘I had another look at that video of the house today. You were really very good.’ He turned his head towards her. ‘I’m going to London tomorrow. I’ll have one of the technicians make a copy for you. You should use it as an audition tape.’

  She turned her head to look at him. ‘What’s an audition tape?’

  ‘It’s something to show television producers. Cuts out the need to work your way up through the beds of the lower orders.’

  ‘Then thank you.’ She scrambled to her feet and walked quickly away towards the sea, telling herself that it was the wind stinging tears to her eyes. She heard him coming up behind her and turned on him before he could say anything else to hurt her. ‘Perhaps I’ll try.’ She sniffed. ‘I would have liked a chance to do the breakfast show with Annabel, though.’

  He caught her arms and held her. ‘Get rid of Sam and I’ll reconsider.’

  ‘I had a letter from Sam today.’

  ‘I noticed.’

  ‘A thank-you note.’ Ecstatic, full of dreams and joy to be doing what she wanted most in the whole world.

  His mouth had become a thin hard line. ‘And how much did he want this time?’

  She allowed her eyes to drop. ‘Not so much.’ Just some money for new dancing shoes and tights and a leotard.

  ‘Why on earth do you do it?’ He shook her, but gently, as if he couldn’t trust himself to show the true depth of his feelings. ‘You’re an idiot.’

  ‘Am I?’ Maybe she was an idiot. But not the kind he thought her. ‘Maybe that is the difference between sex and love, Jay. Love makes us foolish, but you are far too clever to become ensnared. I feel almost sorry for you.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  HIS hands tightened on her shoulders and Kate felt a qualm of unease. ‘Jay… I’m…’

  ‘Sorry?’ he asked, very softly.

  She’d done it this time. How dared she presume to pity a man who had everything he could ever want? Power, wealth, and the most beautiful women in the world at the crook of his finger. Yet she didn’t believe that Jay Warwick was a happy man, and for the first time she wondered what had happened that had made him so cynical about women.

  ‘I shouldn’t have said that, Jay. I’m sorry.’

  The ominous glitter in his eyes disappeared as he considered this. ‘An apology.’ Suddenly the tension was gone as he laughed out loud. ‘Now I’m really beginning to worry.’ And taking her arm he led her back up the beach without another word.

  In the distance the stark outline of a windmill was black against the pale evening sky and the seabirds were wheeling noisily as Daisy set them up. The sea was a long way off, but there was a sharp salty tang to the air that she could taste on her lips.

  ‘We’ll call at the pub on the way home. All that exercise has made me thirsty,’ he said, as they shook the sand out of their shoes.

  She didn’t believe an answer was required. Instead she leaned against the Rover waiting for him to remove a large portion of the beach from Daisy, and stared up at the sky. ‘It’ll be dark soon.’

  ‘Yes.’ He frowned. ‘You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?’ he asked, unlocking the door and helping her up.

  ‘The dark? No, I love it here. It gets so much darker than in London. Really black. I never realised how many stars there were.’

  ‘Millions. One for every grain of sand upon this beach,’ he said.

  ‘A philosopher,’ she murmured as she fastened her seat-belt.

  ‘No, a physicist. Or at least I should have been. Would have been if I hadn’t filled in a couple of months helping out at a fringe festival in Edinburgh. I could have saved the taxpayer the cost of my education if I’d discovered my true vocation a little earlier.’

  ‘Education is never wasted,’ Kate said. ‘Doubtless it comes in very handy for counting the money.’

  He turned to her. ‘That’s better, Kate. I feel so much safer when you’re being positively rude.’

  She made her lips curve into a parody of a smile. But the sentiment was too similar to the way she felt about him. And that didn’t make her feel safe at all.

  A few minutes later he pulled up outside a tiny inn looking out over the marshes, and they went inside. He fetched two cold beers from the bar and for a while they sat together in the window-seat, watching the last colour fade from the sky and far out at sea the lights of passing ships.

  ‘It was a good day, I think,’ he said, at last. ‘I wanted to say thank you for all your hard work.’

  ‘I’m paid to do it. And I enjoyed the challenge.’

  She was conscious of his arm along the back of the seat, brushing against her shoulders. She knew she should move. Not because she didn’t want him to touch her, but because she wanted it too much and that was really idiotic. There was no future in touching Jay Warwick.

  Jay’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘You should wear your hair loose more often, Kate. It suits you.’ He teased a long dark strand around his fingers.

  ‘So I’ve been told.’ She tried, too late, to move away, but he had her captive and was not about to let her go.

  The small creases at the corners of his mouth deepened into a smile. ‘Of that I have no doubt. Many times. So why do you hide it away? Don’t you like to be told that you are beautiful?’ She didn’t answer. ‘Or perhaps you only wear it loose for Sam? Does he take out the pins, one by one, until it tumbles about your shoulders? Does he brush it for you before he takes you to bed?’

  The image he conjured up was too bewitching, too immediately seductive. She jerked away from him and gave a little yelp as she was brought up short by his firm grasp. ‘Please, Jay!’

  ‘You must be very beautiful lying against the pillows with it spread about you.’

  ‘I’m not beautiful,’ she protested. ‘I’m just an ordinary girl, Jay. I live in the ordinary world. Why won’t you leave me alone?’

  ‘Confess, Kate.’ She stared at him. He knew. He had been playing a game with her. Tisha must have told him, after all. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he insisted.

  ‘I’m sorry.’ She stared at her fingernails. ‘I didn’t mean…’ He waited. ‘You’ve every right to be angry.’

  ‘I’m not angry, Kate. Just say the words. Confess that you’d forget all about Sam and how much you love him if I were to take you in my arms and make it my business to drive him out of your head?’

  ‘What?’ She had been going to aplogise for her deception, tell him the truth. But he was so determined on proving his own cynical point of view that he hadn’t taken in what she had said.

  ‘You’re trembling, Kate. Are you afraid of me? Tell me,’ he persisted softly. ‘I’ll do my best to help.’

  ‘I don’t need your kind of help,’ she snapped, biting back tears too near the surface. ‘And I’m not afraid of anything—’

  ‘Nothing?’ He raised his eyebrows dramatically. ‘Everyone is afraid of something, even if it’s only spiders in the bath.’

  ‘Give me a call if you ever want one fished out,’ she offered.

  He regarded her steadily. ‘Thank you. But with you in my bathroom I wouldn’t notice a dozen spiders.’ He smiled as a blush seared the fine bones of her cheeks. ‘And it’s your fears that we’re discussing.’

  ‘Short conversation, Jay.’ Her irrational terror of thunder was a secret between her and Sam and she wasn’t about to make a present of it to Jay Warwick. ‘And I’m certainly not afraid of you. It’s simply that I can see right through you and, frankly, I don’t much like the view.’

  ‘You are fooling yourself, lady, and I intend to prove it to you.’ He spoke with utter conviction.

  ‘Sam needs me, Jay,’ she protested, desperately. ‘You’ll just have to take my word for it.’

  ‘Of that I have no doubt. The point I’m trying to demonstrate is that you don’t need him.’

  ‘Surely that’s for me to say?’ She swallowed a y
awn.

  He hesitated for just a moment, then said, ‘Come on. It’s been a long day. I’ll take you home.’

  They travelled for twenty minutes or so in silence. There seemed nothing more to say, Kate thought, and as he drew up in the courtyard she gave him a brisk goodnight and before he could do or say anything to stop her she escaped and was safe inside the house.

  She was sitting on the bed in her sensible striped pyjamas vigorously brushing her hair when she heard Jay’s steps in the hall. She froze as they stopped outside her door.

  ‘Goodnight, Kate,’ he called, and laughed softly, as if he knew exactly the tremors he was causing in her breast. A moment later she heard his door close along the corridor and she flew to turn the key in the lock, hardly sure whether it was to keep Jay Warwick out, or herself in.

  * * *

  Wednesday was her day off and she spent the morning working on her column for the Evening Mail. She had hit on the idea while writing to Sam, dropping quite naturally into the chatty ‘write-as-you-speak’ style that she used for letters.

  She had used a different ‘voice’, though. The well-remembered voice of an old lady who had told her endless stories of her life in service as a girl. The occupant of her “country kitchen” was Cathy, a country girl who swopped recipes with her more sophisticated cousin Kate, who lived in London. In her first letter Cathy had described the house and Jack Wessex, a television personality who, she confided, had welcomed her very warmly when he had met her in the garden, asking Kate with disarming na$iUvet$eA if it was the usual practice for employers to kiss the cook.

  This week she was going to use a recipe for a vegetable terraine, enlivening it with a description of an heroic battle with an irascible gardener about which vegetables were ready to pull. But it needed a little more. A little bit of spice. Kate carried on typing.

  I thought your comments about Mr Wessex were rather unkind, Kate. He says it’s a well known fact that kissing the cook improves the sauce. I’m surprised that you didn’t know that. And heaven knows, my sauces can do with all the help they can get…