If she asked him to stay all night he would – that was what he was offering – but what if he expected to sleep with her? Her body quivered and grew hot.
She had found him attractive from the beginning, but she had thought he probably belonged to Harriet, and she wasn’t into stealing men from other women. She still didn’t know whether or not he was Harriet’s lover – Harriet had never actually admitted it, she never talked about her private life, and Annie respected her for it. Everyone was entitled to some privacy. Sean had never given any clues, either. He was another one who kept his private life to himself. Interviews with him usually went into his police career, but she never remembered reading anything about his love life. Looking the way he did he probably scared most reporters rigid and stopped them asking the usual intrusive questions.
She never talked about her love life, either – but then she hadn’t had a lover since Johnny vanished.
Sean said, ‘You shouldn’t really be alone, you know. I think I’d better stay, don’t you?’
Contrarily, she at once shook her head, her eyes opening, her body cold again now that she had conjured Johnny up, as if the mere memory of him was enough to kill every other emotion. My once and future lover, she thought, wrenched by pain and loss. Will I ever get over him? Maybe I’ve never tried hard enough? Maybe if I went to bed with Sean I might finally break the spell?
But she couldn’t, she straightened up, politely pushed Sean away. ‘Thanks, but I’ll be OK. I’ll put the alarms on and lock the house up tighter than a drum. I’ll be fine.’
His face changed, cooled. ‘Well, up to you, of course,’ he said offhandedly. ‘But it might be wiser if you weren’t alone tonight.’
She didn’t meet his eyes. ‘I’ll be OK. I’ll ring the police if I hear so much as a mouse. Goodnight, Sean, and thanks.’
His Porsche took off a moment later and she shut the front door, shivering in the cold February wind.
A small Ford was parked just down the road outside Annie’s house. The driver leaned back in the shadows, watching the lights of the black Porsche disappear.
Sean Halifax had only stayed half an hour. He had begun to think Halifax might stay all night. He was the scriptwriter on the series – but maybe he was more than that. Maybe he was … a friend … of hers? Or something closer? Had she ever confided in him, talked about the past?
The gloved hands tightened on the wheel. Halifax had been a copper, hadn’t he? Nosy bastard. If he was too nosy, he might have to die too.
He had seen her talking to Halifax in Petticoat Lane that morning, for a long time. They’d been standing very close, talking softly to each other. Intimately. He had watched them, his eyes hard.
And he very nearly got me this morning, the bastard. I only just escaped.
Sliding a hand into his pocket, the driver pulled out a Yale door key and stared at it, smiling. It had been an easy job, after all, getting her bag, getting the key out and making a quick impression of it in a tin of wax.
And he had seen her again. In the flesh, not just on TV or in a magazine photo.
He kept seeing her face as it had looked this morning. He was angry because she had cut her lovely long blonde hair, and she wore make-up now, she never had before, she had been almost a child, in that marvellous halfway house, half-woman, half-child, seductive and innocent at the same time.
His mouth was dry, his body throbbed with heat. She wasn’t like that any more, the bud had become a rose, the chrysalis had burst and the butterfly emerged, but she was still lovely and he still wanted her.
He breathed thickly. It excited him to know that she hadn’t any idea how close he was, how easily he could get to her.
He saw a light go on upstairs in the big front bedroom. She was going to bed.
Taking off her clothes, shedding that horrible male disguise, the grey suit, the shirt she wore for the TV series. He hated her in it.
He stared at the yellow square of window. The curtains were open, he could see some of the room – pale wallpaper, a gold-framed mirror in which shadows moved.
Annie, undressing, he suddenly realised, catching a glimpse of the bend of her slender body as she took off tights, the uplift of her arms as she slid a nightdress over her head.
She came to close the curtains and his breath caught. The silky white nightdress flowed down over her body but with the light behind her he could see right through it.
He moistened his lips, staring fiercely. The curtains closed, but he could still see her in his mind: slender, delicate, that smooth, creamy, soft, soft skin.
His mouth hungered to bury itself between her breasts, between her thighs, taste her, hear her whimpering. She would be terrified at first. When she saw him she would scream.
He would walk in there softly in a minute, go up the stairs and into her bedroom, and …
He closed his eyes, imagining it, as he had imagined it for eight years, with a deep, fierce pleasure.
He had grabbed her bag earlier on the off-chance that he would find her keys inside, but first he had done a quick check of the area and found a yard at the end of a narrow alley. After the snatch he’d ridden back there, taken off one of his heavy biker’s gloves and got out the wax from his pocket; made a careful impression of her keys, his motorbike idling between his legs. It was hard to move fast in biker’s gear, but he had needed to be as quick as possible because he knew the bloody Keystone Cops were after him, he could hear their heavy boots thudding through the brick arch which led from the market into the alley.
He had barely escaped capture. It had been a risk, but it would be worth it once he got inside her house. He pulled the key out of his pocket and held it in his palm. So long as he was right in guessing which number she would use for her burglar alarm, he could go in there any time he liked, and he would. Tonight.