Stacy sat behind them glowering angrily as they talked first on one subject and then another. She felt excluded and jealous, and longed for their arrival back at the hotel.
Jake held the door open for them both to get out. ‘Would you like to join us for lunch?’ he asked Juliet.
‘I would love to, but I have to look for someone.’
He nodded. ‘Then perhaps we’ll see you later.’
Stacy was really annoyed by the time he deigned to notice her presence, snatching her arm out of his grasp as he led the way over to the hotel entrance. ‘I don’t remember saying I would have lunch with you,’ she said once Juliet had left them.
‘You didn’t,’ he acknowledged.
‘Then why—’
‘But you will,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘And while we’re eating you can tell me what it was you were talking to Forbes about for so long.’
She looked at him uncertainly. ‘You saw me talking to him?’ She hadn’t been aware of him looking at her.
‘I see everything you do,’ he said grimly. He looked down at her with cold eyes. ‘You didn’t look as if you exactly hated talking to him.’
‘Looks can be deceptive,’ she muttered, remembering her loathing and fear of the other man as he had issued his threat to her.
‘What did he want?’ Jake demanded.
‘He—’
‘And I want the truth, Stacy,’ he added harshly.
Somehow the truth was too humiliating, having to reveal Paul Forbes’ threat to tell Jake she had enjoyed his rough treatment of her. ‘He was just being his nasty self,’ she evaded.
‘That doesn’t answer my question.’ His mouth was tight.
She shrugged. ‘He was just throwing out vindictive threats.’
Jake’s eyes narrowed. ‘What sort of threats?’
‘They were just stupid—’
‘Tell me, Stacy!’ he ordered angrily.
‘He said he would get you back for hitting him, that you wouldn’t get away with it.’
‘I see. And did he happen to mention what form this revenge would take?’
‘No,’ she lied. She just couldn’t bring herself to tell Jake of the things that awful man had said to her, of his threat to tell Jake that she had already slept with him.
‘Are you sure?’ Jake’s piercing blue eyes probed her pale face.
She attempted a light laugh that didn’t quite come off. ‘He was just venting his anger at being thwarted. He’ll get over it,’ sure that he would do no such thing.
‘Men like Forbes don’t get over anything. Didn’t his effort to get you sacked prove that, even without his behaviour of last night?’
‘I suppose so,’ she admitted. ‘But I don’t have much more to do in the film, a lot of my scenes have already been shot. Another week should do it and then I can get back to London.’
‘Do you have any other work lined up?’
She shook her head. ‘Not for a few weeks anyway.’
‘Then there’s no reason why you can’t stay on here once your work is finished.’