Potrait of Jamie Read online

  'Well, is that bad?'

  'Being a Sterling is a lot better,' he smiled.

  'I guess I'll know when I meet them.'

  'Both Simon and Brett will try to rush you into an early marriage,' he warned her.

  'They're my cousins!'

  'Cousins marry. Different mothers helps, if you want to look at it that way.'

  Jaime shook her head. 'I'm like you—what I've seen of marriage, or rather broken marriages, worries me. I like men, I can't pretend not to, but I think they're very selfish, the best of them.'

  'Keep going. You won't embarrass me.'

  'All right! If you won't take any notice of my conversation, let's dance!' She stopped and looked at him, then retracted. 'No, on second thoughts we won't.'

  'What angle are you working on now?'

  'I've never met a man with such a suspicious mind. I've just reconsidered, that's all.'

  'And what influenced you?'

  'Your enormous charisma. This way I'll keep my feet on the ground.'

  'Jaime?' He stood up and came round to her, slipping her chair back.

  'It sounds as if you've made up your mind.'

  'You're a grown woman, or almost, you don't have to dither. I don't like indecision.'

  'That lets me off the hook, Mr Sterling. I'm very decisive, just wary about you.'

  He smiled at her and led her out on to the dance floor where several other couples were involved with doing their own thing and came together only briefly; the rest in conventional positions enjoyed themselves just as much, but occupied the perimeter of the floor.

  From the minute Quinn's arms closed around her Jaime knew she had shown wisdom in not underestimating him or his effect on her, but it was a matter of principle to look up at him and smile. She would make sure she never found herself in this position again.

  'Stop frowning!' he said, and she was half mesmerised by the sound of his voice.

  'Am I?'

  'Yes. And thinking out loud. I'm the big bad wolf, that's plain, and it's quite undeserved. I've told you before, little girls don't awaken my interest.'

  'I sincerely hope not.'

  'Relax, Jaime!'

  'I'd have to force myself to. The whole thing's crazy!

  'Surely it's better than staying home?'

  'In a word, yes. Tavia doesn't value my company, or any woman's for that matter. She was even beginning to look at you.'

  'Really? Then why aren't you smiling?'

  'Not that it would have thrown Derry,' she pursued, 'he always bounces right back. It's Derry who's the bad bet, not Tavia. She would marry him tomorrow, impoverished artist and all.'

  'Don't take it so seriously, Jaime. Your father can handle his own life.'

  'What you mean is, I should start leading a life of my own.'

  'It's quite possible you'll make quite a success of it.'

  'Don't patronise me, Quinn Sterling!'

  He nodded. 'All right. Anything else?'

  'Tell me about my cousins.'

  'I might as well. You might have reason to be grateful to me.'

  Her glance lifted and she studied his dark face. 'If they're as bad as that, I'd better stay away.'

  'You wanted my honest opinion,' he said lightly.

  'Unbiased, I hope?'

  'I can only try, Jaime. Your cousins, like your uncles and their wives, are controlled by your grandfather.'

  'That's all?'

  'Isn't that enough?'

  'Who controls you?' she came back.

  'Some say the devil!'

  Smiling like that he was an extremely handsome man, the sombreness gone from his brilliant black eyes and mouth. Jaime sighed a little, then started to laugh, a soft little laugh gurgled in her throat. He looked down at her blue-sheened head and his arm tightened, gathering her in closer to his lean frame. 'Isn't it obvious?' he asked abruptly, catching her eyes. She continued to look up at him but remained silent, her body drawn and curving towards him. Some invisible current was linking them whether they wanted it or not. Her breath almost caught at the way his eyes were travelling over her face.

  'Keep talking,' she said in an agitated little voice.

  'Perhaps you're right. Where was I?'

  'The cousins.'

  'Ah well, your cousins Sue-Ellen and Leigh are both very fetching, smart as paint, and they'd both do anything for the family's sake, even marry me. Neither of them work at anything but that.'

  'How boring!'

  'You might think so, Jaime, they don't. In any case, they fill up their time pretty completely. Simon and Brett are with the firm—company law. They have a lot of assets, so I'm told. Good looks, a big name, no known enemies beyond this room. They would never think of leading a revolt against your grandfather.'

  She trembled a little, hopelessly out of her depth, and he glanced at her half amused, half impatient. 'It's best to know this sort of thing, Jamie. You said so yourself.'

  'And I'm grateful. You dance beautifully, Quinn. No doubt it's the practice with Sue-Ellen and Leigh.'

  'Yes, they'd have me giddy if they could. I thought you were starting to relax. In fact, I thought you were going off to sleep.'

  'I'm moving, aren't I?' she protested.

  'Not close enough,' he said deliberately, his black eyes gleaming with mockery.

  'My aunts?' she prompted.

  'Rapacious.'

  'Fascinating! It gets worse and worse.'

  'I'm only speaking for myself, of course. Many another would tell you they're very stylish ladies, which they are, and they do a lot of good works about which they're fairly voluble. That's how it is, violet eyes. I can feel your heart pounding.'

  'I've come to the conclusion I've been living in a little haven of peace,' she remarked.

  His jeering taunt touched her cheek. 'Jaime, Jaime, our families have made the economy expand enormously. Think on that and be proud.'

  'It's not something to be ashamed of, is it?' she looked up at him directly, her melodious young voice quite crisp with a shadow of his own mockery. He returned her gaze, his own narrowed.

  'Not entirely, thank God! You're too bright, Jaime. It might go against you.'

  'You don't scorn brightness, do you?'

  'Only in females.'

  'What man doesn't!' she said sourly.

  'Don't be a little shrew!'

  'Am I really, how interesting!'

  'And a miracle of beauty, femininity, all that sort of thing that bogs a man down.'

  'As in quicksand?'

  'That's it!' He broke into a laugh that had the true ring of amusement. 'In the entrance hall of Falconer is a pair of seventeenth-century Chinese porcelains, vases about twenty or so inches high. The blue violet of the decoration is the exact colour of your eyes.'

  'I simply can't wait to see them!' she said, seeing her reflection in the depths of his eyes.

  'Aren't I allowed to express my reverence for beauty?'

  'Not at close range!'

  'I'm surprised it's affecting you, Jaime.'

  'Don't you mean you're delighted? I think you like to make women react.'

  'A harmless pursuit, surely?'

  'Only if one knows the score.'

  'Point taken. Naturally I wouldn't think of adding you to my list of—what shall we call them?—victims!'

  'It wouldn't work in any case!' she said with great conviction, staring up at him intently.

  'Gently, Jaime, gently. There's no need for such a strenuous protest.'

  'There's nothing I would dislike more than losing my head,' she whispered with soft violence.

  'I'd say you'd better get used to heads toppling all round. A pattern for the future with that face!'

  'I'm more than a face, I'm a mind!'

  'That's even more dangerous! I can see you're terribly clever,' he teased her.

  'And I've noticed you're a hard, mocking devil!'

  He nodded his dark head agreeably. 'I'm immune to insults, Jaime. I wasn't the first time, and for
years after, but I am now.'

  'I don't like it when your eyes flash. I didn't know black eyes could have so much life in them.'

  'I could easily reassure you,' he said in his vibrant dark voice.

  'That would be equally bad,' she retorted.

  'Then you'd better stop flinging down challenges. It's been part of my training to pick them up.'

  'But it's all in your mind!' she said sweetly. 'I don't mean anything at all. You're too quick off the mark.'

  'I am. It doesn't pay to fumble along.'

  The music had stopped and she was standing in the circle of his arms looking up at him. 'Why do you look at me so intently?'

  'How do you want me to look?'

  'Not so that you make my head swim.'

  'That's the wine.'

  'I've only had a glass and I'm quite used to it. Derry and I always have a bottle of wine with dinner.'

  'Well then, you're only an infant and infants do have these little problems in adjustment.'

  'You mean they've no head for adult games. Shouldn't we be getting back to the table? I'd like some strong black coffee.'

  'And you needn't drink alone. As it happens I'm ready for it myself, then I suppose I should be getting you home.'

  'Yes, it's dark outside.'

  He steered her gently but effectively back to the table, his hands on her shoulders. 'What makes you say the things you do?'

  'Cause and effect,' she said lightly. 'Some people make one vivacious.'

  'Particularly at nineteen.'

  'You obviously didn't take it seriously, what I said about patronising me.'

  'I'm sorry, Jaime.' He held the chair for her. 'I just can't help it.'

  'You took the words right out of my mouth. Meeting you has been a very meaningful experience, as Peter Ustinov would say.'

  'There's an hour of the evening left,' he observed.

  'No climaxes, please!' she begged him across the table, her eyes just faintly alarmed.

  'I can't promise anything, Jaime, particularly when you look at me like that.'

  'If that's true, I could take a cab home.'

  'Don't think of it! I don't tip little day-old chicks out of the nest.'

  'I'm glad. For a moment you filled me with dread.'

  'Then don't present two faces—woman and child.'

  A curious excitement began to gnaw at her. There was danger in this man: danger in the way he looked, danger in the way he talked, his black eyes highly charged with vivid life. Waiters were gliding around their table and dissolving again into the swirling room with its soft lights and its flowers and women in their prettiest after-dark dresses.

  'I have the strangest feeling I've been here before,' she said.

  'With me?'

  'Yes. Isn't it weird?'

  'Do you often feel like that?'

  'Don't joke!'

  He held up a hand. 'All right then. It's just as unsettling to find I know your face exactly.'

  'Ghosts!' she said. 'Only we're here in the present.'

  'Little changes, Jaime. I know damned well you could hold a man in thrall just as easily as Rowena did.'

  'Ah, you've got your knife out again.'

  'I'm not aware of it.'

  'Oh yes, you are! You wanted to hurt me. Not a knife, a sword that lies between us.' She could feel the tension in him, his winged black brows coming together.

  'For every step forward, we go back two.'

  'Actually I think you're trying to push me into my grandfather's arms.'

  'Drink your coffee, Jaime. I ordered a liqueur.'

  'Did you, what is it?'

  'See if you like it,' he told her.

  'What I like might be sharply irrelevant with you.' She drank the liqueur quickly.

  'That was stupid. Too fast.'

  'You'll just have to wait and see whether I pass out or not.'

  'You haven't had nearly enough.'

  'Exactly. I'm just that little bit afraid of you.'

  'You don't look like a coward to me, Jaime. You're positive and aware and I can scarcely take my eyes off you, which won't do at all. Drink the rest of that coffee and we'll go.'

  'Aye, aye, sir!'

  He paused. 'Is that how you see me?'

  'Forget it, I was only being flippant.' She glanced at him briefly and felt a swift onrush of excitement. The thought of her own appalling inexperience suddenly struck her and she bent her small exquisite face over the coffee cup and drank religiously as though it was a potion protecting her against any transgression on his part.

  For an instant her expression was transparent and Quinn found himself speaking with a tenderness that was unusual in him except in the presence of his grandmother. 'Jaime, the brave and the beautiful and the anxious little girl darting violet glances at me. You're safe, for God's sake, though I shall probably regret it in the morning.'

  'Would you mind explaining what you mean?'

  'I'd say you've more than enough imagination. Come along, you've dithered long enough.'

  'Anyone would dither with you!' she defended herself.

  'You've got that off pat.'

  'What is it, your sense of power? Do you like moulding people into shape ?'

  'I feel you could do with a little control,' he returned.

  'Well!' she said, but he didn't answer her, only escorted her very firmly out of the restaurant into the beautiful star-spangled night. 'I want to walk along the beach,' she announced.

  'You should be tired.'

  'Does that mean the beach is out of limits?'

  'Nothing is and never has been. All right, Jaime, you suggested it, the beach.'

  'We'll take the car down to the esplanade.'

  'Just as you say.'

  'You sound as though I'm being unreasonable.'

  'No, you're getting better by the minute!'

  'That's cheering! You try to like me, I know, but forgetfulness is impossible.'

  Quinn unlocked the car door and Jaime slid into the seat and waited for him to come round to the other side. It wasn't pleasant what she was feeling, it was almost painful, and she didn't know whether she would be able to carry it off. No easy friendship was possible between them. Neither of them could be cut off from the past. In the car beside her she recognised it in the set of his head, the little air of relentlessness about him. His profile was as good as perfect, but once again it was darkly remote. He turned to her, his eyes gleaming in the light from the dashboard.

  'And what momentous thoughts are occupying you now?'

  'Just old pictures flitting through my mind. You have an excellent profile, Quinn. Ascetic, until you turn your head full on.'

  'And then?'

  'It's a very contradictory face.'

  'Yours isn't!' he said a little tersely.

  'Try to remember I'm not up to your weight.'

  'I've been remembering it all evening.'

  'Well then, take the first on your right,' she said helpfully.

  'Bossy little thing!'

  'This mightn't work out as well as I thought.'

  'I feel somewhat like that myself, Jaime,' he confessed.

  'All right, take me home. We can go this way just as easily.'

  His glance pierced the gloom, raying over, her face. 'If you're going to force a beach walk on me, the least you can do is go along with it.'

  'Yes, Quinn.'

  'It seems to me that was too meek!' Suddenly he smiled at her, his maddening first hostility gone. For how long Jaime didn't know, being on a see-saw herself.

  Out in the night the stars were blazing, thickly clustered over the ocean, a steady stream of fresh air like balm falling all over them and lingering on their skin and their clothes. Pools of light from the street lights spilled on to the white sand, making little radiant oases at the base of the promenade. Jaime slipped out of her sandals and carried them, feeling the cool firm sand underfoot, dry and crunchy. At this hour of the night the beach was deserted, but it .was just as beautiful as under th
e sun. Maybe more beautiful, more mysterious and elusive.

  'I've been happier here than any place else!' she said almost to herself.

  Quinn picked up a shell, gave it all his attention, then slipped it in his pocket. 'Yes, it's beautiful any hour of the day, perhaps more urgent at night. I'm glad to escape the deadly rat race if only for a while.'

  'Is it so bad?' she asked, stopping to look at him.

  'Murderous! Harassing, frenetic, the build-up in tension sometimes is enormous. I wouldn't invite you to join my world, only the toughest survive.'

  'Yet you're an ambitious man,' she said.

  'Yes, but I can't say it hasn't been a fight to the top. A dirty fight a lot of the rime.'

  'Does that give you that cold-blooded look?'

  'You'll pay for that, Jaime,' he said softly, but she somehow knew he meant it exactly.

  'I didn't mean cold-blooded,' she said truthfully, 'more a terrible aloofness.'

  'And that's better? If I were you I'd leave it alone.'

  She stretched out her arms without looking at him, embracing the night. 'Take a deep breath. Isn't that heavenly?'

  The clean beauty of the ocean was rushing for them, the waves breaking and tumbling on to the sand but never quite making Jaime's bare feet. She felt exalted and indescribably sad, with the soft pounding of the sea filling her ears with its own kind of music. Her eyes had become accustomed to the night and she could see the sandcastles the children had made that afternoon. They wouldn't be there in the morning, like dreams, for the tide would come right up to the rock wall.

  'Isn't that better,' she cried rapturously, 'the world of surf and stars and salt on the wind?'

  'It's real now,' he said with a mixture of worldliness and amusement. 'Tomorrow it will be insubstantial. I have too much work to do.'

  'You're a madman in a madman's world!' The sea breeze was catching at her hair and she swept it out of its heavy coil.

  'There's truth in that!' he said, tempted to catch her up and make love to her but keeping a brake on the sensations her vibrant young beauty was arousing. Her dress in the starlight was a silver blur, her face as pale as a flower, fringed by the inky blackness of her hair. An improbably beautiful girl-into-witch and vaguely exasperating with her young taunts. She was still speaking, fighting a losing but enjoyable battle with the wind in her hair.

  'What you're telling me hasn't made things any easier. I've been living all these years in a separate world from yours.'