Heading for Trouble! Read online

  The car’s motor was cut off. Richard Kavanagh got out and began looking, not very hopefully, into the boot.

  After a short struggle with herself Morgan squelched down the road to see if she could help.

  ‘Go away,’ he said, not looking up. ‘If my car disappears under this swamp I plan to mark the spot with a human sacrifice, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather sacrifice than you. Why don’t you get going now and put a safe distance between us while you’ve got the chance?’

  Morgan searched for a snappy reply, failed to find one, and realised in exasperation that at least half her mind was taken up with the useless but distracting discovery that his rather raffish good looks were just as eye-catching seen in profile. ‘Are you staying in the area?’ she probed delicately. It seemed less of a dead give-away than, Where’s Elaine?

  ‘If there are many more like you around, not if I can help it. Now go away.’

  ‘I am going,’ said Morgan. ‘I’m horribly late. I just wanted to say—’

  ‘Unless you wanted to say you have a supply of two-by-fours up your sleeve I don’t want to hear it. Scram.’

  ‘What I wanted to say,’ said Morgan, ‘was that you need to get something under the tyres. There’s a scrap and lumber-yard just up the hill.’

  He turned his head now, flicking her an impatient glance—and as the diamond-hard eyes met hers unexpectedly Morgan’s heart gave a queer little lurch. Infuriating. It wasn’t as if she even liked the man—and he was obviously getting completely the wrong idea.

  ‘And also,’ Morgan added coldly, ‘I am not one of your fans. I think your interviewing methods are sadistic and self-serving and your looks make me think of a thirties matinée idol. I think you have about as much sex appeal as those Spanish bullfighters who think it proves their virility to kill an animal to entertain a crowd. I wouldn’t give a bent paper-clip for one of your kisses, or for your signature, unless it was at the bottom of a cheque.’

  ‘So this was more of an assassination attempt, is that it?’

  ‘This was an accident,’ she informed him haughtily. ‘I was simply playing with the children and the tyre got away. It could have happened to anyone.’

  ‘So that explains it,’ said Richard Kavanagh, looking thoughtfully at the beached car. ‘I was wondering why there were so many children around.’

  ‘All right,’ said Morgan. ‘I made it up. Fine. I think I’ll take my tyre back to the imaginary scrapyard and leave you to dream up something to brace your car with.’ As she turned on her heel shrill cries drifted from above as the children peered down the slope to the main road. ‘I’ve always had a very vivid imagination,’ she remarked over her shoulder.

  ‘All right, damn you,’ said her sister’s unsuspecting colleague-to-be. ‘Remind me of where you imagined this bloody lumber-yard was.’

  Which was probably, Morgan thought, Richard Kavanagh’s idea of an apology. Not that she cared. If only he knew it, she was about to engineer his downfall. She would go back to the house and be amazingly charming and delightful to a fat, bald TV executive, and he would decide instantly that the sister of this wonderful person must appear on Firing Line. Little though Richard Kavanagh might suspect it, he was practically part of a double act already.

  ‘Over there,’ said Morgan, gesturing vaguely upwards. ‘You can’t miss it. I’d give you a hand but I’m horribly late. Good luck.’ She looked up the hill, wishing that she could ditch the sarong for the climb—but she certainly wasn’t going to with Richard Kavanagh watching. She strode resolutely to the foot of the slope.

  ‘Wait a minute.’

  Morgan turned back. ‘Yes?’ she asked coldly.

  He glanced at his watch, then at the car, then with barely suppressed exasperation at Morgan. ‘Are you sure you’re in one piece? I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car if you need patching up,’ he offered reluctantly.

  ‘Oh, this is nothing,’ Morgan said airily, unwisely shaking her head to emphasise the point. She staggered a step or two before catching her balance again.

  ‘Do you need a lift somewhere?’ he offered, even more reluctantly. ‘If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes…’

  Morgan looked at the car, its nose tilted into the swamp. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think you’re going my way.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  THE long, uncomfortable trek back to the house gave Morgan plenty of time to cast a cold, self-critical eye over her behaviour that afternoon. Her meeting with Richard Kavanagh was, it seemed, only an accident; she didn’t think she’d hurt Elaine’s chances yet. But if she’d really taken Elaine’s interests seriously she would have been dressed and ready for company over an hour ago. Well, she would make up for it all now, she vowed. One bald, fat, cigar-smoking TV executive wouldn’t know what had hit him.

  She left the children in the kitchen, vying to tell her father and stepmother the story of her latest scrape, and hurried upstairs to the room that she was sharing with Elaine, her own having been made over to the mystery guest.

  Elaine’s meticulously packed suitcase lay open on one twin bed, but at least Elaine wasn’t there. The signs of her single-minded pursuit of success through the years—the trophies and certificates and Elaine-edited school newspapers, the photos of Elaine with all the girls from the ‘in’ group at school—seemed to glare at her in mute reproach as she tore off her wet, muddy clothes, but at least it was better than hearing Elaine’s views of her carelessness at first hand.

  She showered at breakneck speed, dried her hair, managed to French-braid it on only the fifth attempt, and at last slipped into the cherry-coloured silk tunic that she had bought a few days earlier. ‘Make an effort,’ Elaine had said, so she’d allowed herself to be seduced by the blaze of embroidery, by the way the superficial demureness of the princess collar, long, close-fitting sleeves and knee-length hem was undercut by long slits up the sides of the skirt. Next she put on tights, new high-heeled shoes—must remember not to fall over, she thought—and then was ready for the coup de grâce.

  Morgan examined rather nervously the collection of cosmetics that she’d bought, egged on by the mother of one of her pupils.

  ‘Make the most of yourself,’ Razna had urged, and had shown her how to apply lipstick and kohl, mascara and eyeshadow in a glamorous style which matched the dress.

  Hastily Morgan did her best to follow the precepts she’d been given, lining her eyes with black, colouring her lips a brilliant crimson. At last she stood back and gazed doubtfully at her reflection. Striking, yes. Perhaps even beautiful. But the natural look it was not. Was this really what Elaine meant by making an effort?

  Morgan hesitated, wondering whether she should just scrub it all off—she could imagine how her family would tease her. But in the mirror her eyes were great misty pools within their black rims, her mouth had a lovely bitter-sweet curve—how could you be too beautiful? She’d been enchanted by this unfamiliar image when Razna had first conjured it up, and surely a susceptible TV executive couldn’t fail to be impressed?

  Don’t be such a coward, she told herself sternly. With an involuntary squaring of the shoulders she left the room and made her way precariously down the stairs and into the sitting room.

  As the door opened a confusion of phrases burst upon her—‘massive great tyre’, ‘dead easy’, ‘all afternoon’, ‘thought it was safe!’ Her father and stepmother were nowhere to be seen. The room held the three children and Elaine, who sat on the sofa, one gleaming, silk-encased leg crossed over the other. Her suit of brilliant aquamarine raw silk, with its microscopic skirt, made her look at once sexy and formidably self-assured.

  As Morgan came in Elaine pushed back the glossy blonde hair which fell to her jaw in a sophisticated cut. She shot Morgan a look which managed to convey both exasperation over the afternoon’s peccadillo and unenthusiastic assessment of her sister’s clothes and make-up.

  Morgan suppressed a sigh. She should have known that she couldn’t carry it off. Well,
at least the children didn’t know about Richard Kavanagh.

  ‘You get more like Mother every day,’ Elaine remarked irritably. ‘You know, the other day I saw a piece in the paper—BRITISH TOURIST SETS OFF AVALANCHE, ALPINE VILLAGE DESTROYED—and the first thing I thought was, I didn’t know Mother could ski.’

  ‘I think she’s in the Himalayas,’ Morgan said noncommittally, fighting down an impulse to spring to her mother’s defence. Since their parents’ divorce their mother had been happily wandering remote corners of the globe with little more than a pair of jeans and a rucksack; twelve years later Morgan still sometimes felt as if she’d lost her only ally.

  ‘Well, God help Nepal,’ Elaine said offhandedly.

  Morgan changed the subject abruptly. ‘Where’s your guest?’ she asked, for there was no sign of the TV executive who was to fall victim to her charms.

  ‘I can’t imagine,’ said Elaine. ‘He started well ahead of me; I don’t know what can be keeping him—Oh, wait, that must be him now!’

  From outside came the crunch of tyres on gravel. A vague uneasiness plucked at Morgan; surely it was impossible…?

  They heard a door slam, footsteps. The doorbell rang. Elaine fractionally adjusted her sleek, gleaming legs and waited.

  They heard their father hurrying up from the kitchen, a door opening, muffled exclamations. Morgan could feel her heart pounding, as if it had slowed down while she’d held her breath.

  A disjointed murmur grew gradually louder as Mr Roberts and his companion approached the door of the sitting room.

  ‘The girls will look after you. You will forgive me, won’t you? The Béarnaise sauce is at a frightfully delicate stage—’

  Hasty footsteps retreated down the corridor, and the door opened on a tall, black-browed, sardonic man who bore not the faintest resemblance to the fat, cigar-smoking executive of Morgan’s fond imagination.

  For the second time that day Morgan’s heart plummeted, and a voice in her head said, You idiot, you idiot, you idiot, you idiot.

  ‘Richard, what on earth happened to you?’ exclaimed Elaine. The newcomer also didn’t look much like the cool, laid-back presenter of Firing Line. His hair was streaked with sweat, one black lock falling forward in his face, and, while he had taken off his jacket, his shirt and trousers were plastered with mud, as was the lower half of what had once probably been a nice tie.

  ‘Had a spot of bother with a tyre,’ he said offhandedly, with a crooked grin. ‘Sorry to keep you waiting, but I’d better dash upstairs and change.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Elaine. ‘I’ll just introduce you quickly and then show you where we’ve put you. Let’s see…this is Ben, Sarah, Jenny… Where’s Morgan? Oh, there you are; and this is my sister Morgan. And, of course, this is Richard Kavanagh.’

  He stared, eyes narrowed, at the brilliant creature who lurked in the corner.

  ‘Well, look who’s here!’ he said. ‘What a delightful surprise.’

  Morgan looked at him dubiously, her black-rimmed grey eyes wary. There was an odd little flutter in her stomach which made it hard to think straight—and she needed all her wits about her. She glanced nervously at Elaine.

  ‘Do you two know each other, then?’ asked Elaine. ‘Oh, I suppose you must have met at one of my parties. What a memory you’ve got, Richard.’

  Morgan remembered the brief, chilling glimpse she’d had of Richard Kavanagh at one of Elaine’s parties and shuddered. All she needed was for him to remember it too…

  ‘Is that where we ran into each other?’ he asked her mockingly. Just for a moment Morgan felt a shameful, overwhelming relief—at least Elaine didn’t know how badly she’d behaved. But then on the heels of relief came suspicion. He didn’t miss much—he’d worked out that she didn’t want Elaine to know about this afternoon. But he didn’t owe her any favours. What kind of game was he playing?

  ‘Oh, there are always so many people at Elaine’s parties,’ Morgan said vaguely. ‘Lovely to see you again, anyway.’ She gave him a bright, meaningless smile. ‘Come on, kids; let’s go and have dinner.’

  Elaine looked surprised but not displeased. She’d bargained with Leah to have the children eat separately; the subtraction of Morgan from the grown-up table could only increase her chances of impressing her guest.

  ‘Aren’t you eating with us?’ Morgan wasn’t a bit surprised by his look of incredulity—he probably didn’t think any female under the age of eighty would willingly forgo his company. She was surprised to see that he looked distinctly put out. He hadn’t seemed all that anxious for her conversation an hour or so ago!

  ‘Oh, it can be rather chaotic with this lot around; Leah thought you might prefer rational conversation,’ Morgan said airily. ‘And I hardly ever get to see the children.’

  ‘Why on earth should they be segregated just because of me?’ he said, with an apparent modesty which made Morgan want to throw something—preferably at him. ‘I know they must be starving, but I’ll be back in half a tick—and then maybe we can work out where we met.’

  Morgan caved in in the face of this veiled threat. For all the surface charm of his manner, there was a determination in the hard grey eyes which convinced her that further attempts to escape would be worse than useless. While Kavanagh disappeared upstairs she tried to think of a way of delicately warning Elaine—‘You remember your party the Christmas before last, the one where Richard Kavanagh walked into a door? I was the door’—and gave it up in despair.

  He was back in twenty minutes, having changed into a white jacket and trousers and a pale green shirt, open at the neck. Morgan had grown up with boys who took it for granted that the tougher you were, the more torn and battered your clothes were; she found this combination of casual elegance and confident masculinity rather unnerving. While she was thinking about this Elaine walked up to Kavanagh and kissed him lightly on the mouth.

  Morgan tried not to goggle. Was Elaine actually romantically involved with him, then? Or was this just one of those kisses that people in show business threw around as a casual social gesture?

  Even as she puzzled it over, Kavanagh made it just slightly more than a gesture, if that was how it had been intended, by just barely bending his head, responding and at the same time fractionally lengthening the kiss. And somehow the very casualness of the embrace showed just how unquestionably these two handsome, stylish people belonged together—it was like watching Cary Grant kiss Grace Kelly.

  ‘Sorry to keep you waiting,’ Kavanagh murmured, while Morgan fought down a ridiculous sense of chagrin. As a child she had admired but not envied Elaine’s golden-haired prettiness, priding herself instead on protecting the sister two years behind her, and on rivalling the boys for daring and toughness and complete indifference to clothes. But somehow daring and toughness didn’t stand her in very good stead these days; somehow her sister’s unabashed femininity gave Elaine an armour that Morgan couldn’t hope to match.

  Elaine made some offhand remark and they headed for the dining room. Morgan caught sight of herself in the mirror above the sideboard; her eyes were still misty pools, her mouth still had that wistful smile, but the lovely mask gave her none of the confidence she’d hoped for. She didn’t feel feminine or glamorous; she felt a fraud who was about to be unmasked at any moment.

  This uneasy feeling was soon compounded, for the minute they sat down the children returned to that delightful subject—Morgan’s escapades.

  Leah ladled out soup, Morgan’s father filled glasses, and the Terrible Twins launched yet again into the story of the tyre.

  ‘Morgan’s always doing that kind of thing,’ boasted Jenny, with pride. ‘She abseiled off the church tower for a bet—’

  ‘And when Mick tried it he broke his arm!’ burst in Sarah with the punchline.

  ‘She went over the falls in a punt—’

  ‘And Steve almost drowned!’

  ‘She was in a motorcycle rally when she was fifteen!’ said Ben, determined to get in this marvellous fact b
efore one of the others did. ‘And she jumped out of a parachute.’

  ‘And lived to tell the tale,’ said the visitor. ‘Naturally. I trust she visits the graves of Mick and Steve from time to time?’

  Morgan glowered at him, A little smile was tugging at the corner of his mouth; he obviously thought that she was completely ridiculous. And then, just when she thought things couldn’t possibly get any worse, her irritation gave way to horror as the children all but blew her cover.

  ‘She jumped out of an aeroplane, with a parachute,’ said Sarah. ‘Ben gets everything wrong. And she raised seven hundred pounds for A Child’s Place—isn’t that wonderful?’

  Morgan held her breath. The brilliant, penetrating grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully. ‘Well, there’s obviously a lot more to your sister than meets the eye,’ he remarked in an ironical tone that made her want to hit him.

  And then, to her dismay, he went on, ‘Is A Child’s Place some sort of charity, then? I don’t think I’ve heard of it.’

  ‘Morgan teaches there,’ said Jenny. ‘It’s for poor little homeless children who don’t have a school of their own.’ She paused to admire the pathetic image conjured up by her words, and Richard Kavanagh pounced like a wolf—but not, of course, on the innocent little child who had spilled the beans.

  ‘Surely there can’t be much call for that?’ he said. ‘Anyone with a child has top priority for housing—’

  ‘Yes,’ said Morgan, who had been through this argument hundreds of times. ‘But sometimes people get put in places that don’t mesh very well with ordinary schools… We try to help children make the most of whatever time they have before they’re moved somewhere else, instead of just expecting them to fit into a timetable set up to cover a whole school year, where if they fall behind it’s just too bad—’ She broke off, dismayed at where her enthusiasm was leading her. How much had he been told at that ghastly party?

  ‘Yes, I see,’ said Kavanagh. ‘That makes much more sense—it’s a good idea. I’m surprised no one has thought of it before; isn’t anybody else doing anything?’