An automatic desire to puncture that smugness made Honor begin to scrabble at the nearest door-handle just as Adam hit the central-locking button.
‘Don’t bother, the rear doors are fitted with baby-locks,’ he said, turning on the lights and engine. ‘You don’t have to panic. Marshall’s a professional—and a damned good cop. He’s not going to risk a high-flying career by laying himself open to a charge of misuse of police powers. He wouldn’t lie to you, not even for me. But he’s perfectly happy to endorse an idea that makes his job easier...the fewer people running around loose on this case, the less chance there is of an information leak that might jeopardise a quick arrest.’
Honor scowled, instinctively prepared to believe him, even when he added coldly, ‘As far as I’m concerned you can think of it as a form of protective custody. I still want some answers out of you and when I’ve got this other business out of the way I’m going to get them! Now stop bleating and do up your seatbelt.’
Honor obeyed, almost relieved to succumb to another wave of tiredness as Adam set the car in motion. Maybe he was right. Maybe tomorrow the personal antagonism that the upheavals of the day had caused to flare between them would have died down enough to clear up the misunderstanding with a simple explanation.
And if not, at least after a good sleep she would feel refreshed enough to renew the fight on a more even footing. She would just slug doggedly away until she rammed it through that thick skull that she was exactly who and what she said she was. It might take a while, as he threatened, but at least she would have the pleasure of a grovelling apology to look forward to when he finally— An awful thought suddenly occurred to her.
‘Wait a moment! Oh, no! Stop the car!’ The seatbelt nearly cut her in half as her shriek of panic led Adam to jam the brake to the floor. As she choked and gasped and rubbed her scratched and sore chest it occurred to Honor that his instant reaction to her frantic command had been a bizarre act of trust in someone he mightily distrusted.
He swivelled in his seat to look at her. ‘What’s the matter? Are you all right?’ he asked sharply, and she wished that she could afford to bask in that concern. But she knew it wouldn’t last.
‘Monty. He hates being alone and he’s quite capable of running away if he thinks I’ve gone off and left him.’ She watched fatalistically as the concern metamorphosed into fury. ‘He might get killed on the road or poisoned by possum-bait or something. If you don’t bring him with us I’m going to scream blue murder and fight like fury all the way. I’m not leaving here without my cat!’
CHAPTER FOUR
FOR the second time in twenty-four hours Honor found herself faced with the elegant grandeur of the Blake house. Discreet floodlighting of the two-storeyed, white-painted wooden façade made it even more intimidating by night than it had been earlier.
Reluctantly she opened the car door and stepped out on to the gravel, clutching the cardboard pet-carrier which bulged and rocked to its occupant’s futile assault.
You and me both, Monty, she thought wryly as a savage yowl of frustration reverberated inside the carton and the driver of the car slammed his door with an expressive force before striding around to the boot to remove her suitcase.
‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ Adam growled, moving up beside her. He had subjected her to a blistering silence during the ride over, and the one time that she had tried to break the tension she had blundered disastrously.
She had tentatively asked how Zachary Blake and his family were going to react to the added burden of an unexpected guest at this awkward time.
‘Is that supposed to be some kind of tasteless joke?’ he’d lashed back coldly.
‘I—no—’ she’d stammered, thinking that nothing about the man seemed simple or straightforward.
‘You expect me to believe that you don’t know that Zach is dead?’
‘Dead?’ Honor was shocked. Her voice had dropped to a sepulchral whisper as she’d pondered the horrendous possibilities in the light of the current situation.
‘My God, you mean—murdered?’
‘No, I don’t mean murdered,’ Adam had said through clenched teeth. ‘My brother died of an embolism three months ago.’
‘Oh...I’m very sorry...I didn’t know.’ Honor had looked away from his angry face, memories of the grief sh
e had suffered after her father’s death three years ago flooding through her and bringing with it understanding.
She had done quite a few irrational things herself in the weeks after her bluff and cheerful father’s fatal stroke, before time had begun its healing work and restored her emotional equilibrium. Might not the same kind of thing have happened to Adam? The timing of those love-letters was about right. Had grief over his brother’s death caused him to behave with an uncharacteristic recklessness that he was now bitterly regretting?
‘Since the newspaper you help produce ran a rather large obituary at the time I find that very difficult to believe.’ His cutting answer had interrupted her sympathetic musing and she’d compressed her lips to control the impulse to slice back. He had every right to be angry if he genuinely thought that she had been pretending ignorance for some obscure motive of her own.
‘It was probably while I was away on holiday. I spent a couple of weeks skiing in Queenstown about then.’
His grunt could have been one of acceptance or disbelief so she’d added pointedly, ‘In fact, I remember writing to you on the monogrammed notepaper of the hotel I was staying at, so it would be easy enough to check the dates—’ She’d stopped as she realised that she was assuming that her letters to him had been as cherished as his to her. For all she knew he might have thrown them away as soon as he had read them. The thought had made her dwindle in her seat.
He hadn’t even grunted that time. He’d merely glared out into the headlit ribbon of road unwinding out of the darkness. The subject was closed and she’d sensed that any attempt to continue it would be just as rigidly ignored. The barrier of his anger was impenetrable. He fiercely resented the fact that she knew things about him that he didn’t want her—hadn’t intended her—to know, intimate thoughts that were more easily written than spoken. The connection established through their letters wasn’t a bond as far as he was concerned, it was a choke-chain, a humiliating shackle that would inhibit him every time he looked at her.
Her eyes had fallen to his big hands effortlessly controlling the steering-wheel and she’d winced at the scratches that now adorned the hard knuckles. Monty had not taken kindly to being placed in confinement. He had stiffened his splayed legs and fought every inch of the way. Even while Adam had cursed and sworn to wring the animal’s ungrateful neck she noticed that he had handled him as gently as the slashing claws would allow. She wondered sourly if he would have been as restrained in his handling if she had bitten and scratched and physically fought the imposition of his will. She had a feeling not!
For the rest of the journey she had brooded on that galling inequity.
She looked at Adam now as he stood before her on the gravelled driveway—big, impatient, arrogantly domineering. Actually he and Monty had an awful lot in common, she thought acidly. They were both extremely stubborn, they objected violently to opposition and on encountering it displayed a sad tendency to lash out at the nearest handy target.