Price of Passion

‘Melissa Jayson,’ came the clipped reply and some minuscule part of Kate relaxed. Not Melissa Daniels, then. She crossed one nightmare scenario off her list.

The jade-green eyes that went with the brilliant hair glittered like glass as the politely proffered hand was rudely ignored.

‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but why don’t you just get out and leave him alone?’

‘I beg your pardon?’ Kate said, sitting bolt upright, Lady Bracknell in a bathing suit.

‘He doesn’t want you following him. He comes to Oyster Beach to get away from the smothering attention of people like you. You can’t possibly understand his needs. Give him some space, why don’t you?’

‘Let me guess, you and Drake are graduates from the same school of etiquette?’ said Kate drily, when she had got over the sting of the lightning attack.

Under the silk top the over-inflated bosom heaved, revealing a gap between the scalloped hem and the low-rise white jeans, and a strip of winter-pale skin sporting the sparkle of an impressive navel ring. Diamonds, no less…probably from Sierra Leone, thought Kate darkly.

Thinking of navels made her think of her baby and she pleated the folds of her wrap over her tummy. By her calculations she was barely two months along, and the books said it would be another two before her baby bulge began to show, but even now she felt a responsibility to shield her son or daughter from negative experiences in the womb.

‘Drake and I have known each other since before you were around,’ the other woman flung at her. She smiled, but only the muscles around her mouth moved. ‘He’s told me all about you, but you have no idea what he and I are to each other, do you?’

Kate’s hormones staged a dangerous mood swing. On the other hand, perhaps it would be good to communicate some fighting spirit from Mama!

‘What are you, his mistress or his muse?’ she dared to ask bluntly. ‘Because I know you can’t be both—Drake doesn’t trust women enough to allow any of them dominance in more than one compartment of his life.’

‘You don’t know him as well as you think you do,’ came the contemptuous reply. ‘You may think you’re special but you’re really no different from any of his other groupies. You like sharing the limelight with a famous author and helping him spend his money, but you have no idea what it takes for him to create his works. Why don’t you stop distracting him and let him get on with his writing—?’

‘While you ply him with cups of coffee and mop the creative sweat from his brow?’ said Kate, watching the green eyes flicker and the collagen lips flatten. ‘Am I distracting him?’ she added innocently. ‘I’ve only been here one day. If I’m a distraction, why aren’t you?’

She regretted the rhetorical tag when it was rewarded by a nasty little smile. Melissa looked down, manicured red fingernails flicking an invisible speck off the pristine white jeans. ‘Let’s just say that Drake has a particular need that only I can fulfil for him. And we keep each other extremely well satisfied between the sheets…’

Kate’s hand, tucked in her lap, balled into a fist. This one’s for you, kid!

‘Let’s not say that. Let’s try and be discreet and respectful of each other’s feelings, and not start an undignified cat-fight in public.’ Her quiet voice stepped up a decibel. She was used to being a mediator in arguments, not an instigator. Confrontation was not her style, but she had witnessed from the cradle how it worked. ‘Otherwise I might be tempted to say you’re a grade-A, gold-plated bitch who thinks she has the right to run roughshod over other people to get what she wants. But this isn’t about you or what you want. Your shame-and-blame tactics aren’t going to make me run away with my tail between my legs. I wonder if Drake knows you’ve snuck over to try and bully me out of his life?’

The redhead stiffened, her elbows tucking into her sides, her jaw clenching as she half turned away, her white sandals acquiring a freckle of dust from the dry grass. ‘I suppose you’re going to run crying to him telling tales!’

Kate blinked, suspicion curdling in her sour stomach at the subtle body language.

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‘Does he know?’ she asked sharply.

‘He has been a victim of a stalker before, you know. She wrote him hundreds of letters—a pathetic woman who thought five minutes of conversation and his personal autograph to her in the flyleaf of a book meant they were soul mates.’

She hadn’t known, but the evasive reply had the red flags snapping briskly. ‘How tragic. I’ve never even sent Drake a postcard, but if I get an overwhelming urge to buy stamps in bulk I’ll be sure and check myself into a facility. Now, if you wouldn’t mind moving out of my light, I’m trying to get a suntan.’

‘You—’

‘Melissa?’

The older woman spun around and saw Drake stepping around the end of the hedge. She immediately walked jerkily back the way she’d come, the two of them exchanging a terse word as they passed each other on the grass without stopping.

Kate took a long pull from her drink bottle and stood up as he came to a halt at the end of the sun lounger. He wore the same disreputable blue jeans that he had worn the day before, with battered workman’s boots and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The decadent, city-dwelling Drake Daniels who wore expensive designer-casual with careless flair was nowhere in sight. Until you looked into his cynical eyes—then the rumpled, down-home, easygoing country-boy was revealed to be the sham. Or perhaps the double life he lived had actually split him off into two distinct personalities. In which case, both of them were in the doghouse with Kate!

She took off her sunglasses to blister him with her naked scorn. ‘Next time do your own dirty work.’

‘I beg your pardon?’ His Lady Bracknell wasn’t a patch on hers, she thought.

‘Either you sent her over, or you primed her to go off in my direction,’ she accused.

He tipped his head down, scowling. ‘What did she tell you?’