The Darling Jade Read online

  'I'm a writer, Jade.' His long lips twitched as her eyes flashed open to gape at him. 'And now I can't write.' His left hand stole across to feel the trapped fingers. He smiled ruefully. 'I need a secretary, someone to type for me.'

  Jade fought a sudden urge to laugh. Or maybe it was hysteria. All this melodrama had been leading up to this! 'But, Zan, why didn't you just say so? Look, I'll rent you a dictaphone—I can raise the money somehow. And I'll find someone who can type it out for you . . .'

  But he was shaking his head angrily. 'I can't work that way, Jade—dictating. I have to see the words before me as I write. I stop and re-read it a dozen times as I go along, change a word here, a phrase there. I have to refer back to the plot to keep in mind where I'm going— it can't be locked away in a black box where I can't see it, till a typist gets around to it three days later.' He clenched his teeth and glared at her. 'I can't even drive my damned car to get the work to a blasted typist!' He jerked to his feet and paced to the window. 'I need someone who will sit and type, while I read it over her shoulder—someone to delete, and correct, and cut and tape as I direct. I need a pair of hands. I need you.' The laser eyes shot out to warm her face.

  Jade shook her head slowly. 'But I'm not going to be here, Zan. I'm off to marry Fred in Greece next week.'

  Zan's golden head lifted dangerously. The laser beam was narrowing, focussing to burn a path through her eyes and into her mind. 'Well, isn't that just too bad?' he drawled softly. 'Because I do believe you'll have to change your plans, Jade. Just as you've changed mine.'

  Jade shook her head desperately. 'Zan, look, I'll get a loan, then. . . somehow, hire you a secretary . . .'

  He laughed, paced towards her restlessly, didn't seem to notice as she edged away from him along the wall. He leaned in the kitchen doorway and inspected the doorframe. 'Just how much do you think a live-in secretary costs nowadays, girl?' he asked idly. 'Whatever it is, you obviously haven't got it.'

  'Live-in? What do you mean?'

  The cool eyes studied her. 'I write in the mornings, Jade. If it goes well, I write all day. If it doesn't, I go play, and it usually comes to me that night. You expect me to call up some secretary at three a.m. and tell her to trot right over? Secretaries are a flighty bunch, girl. They're off at the disco, or out on a date, or otherwise unavailable. I want someone I can depend on and use, day or night. I want you.'

  'No!' Jade gritted her teeth and shook her head again. 'No, Zan, you can't make me do this!'

  But turning to face her, Zan seemed to expand to fill the doorway as he slowly straightened and lifted his head. And now she realised why he was there. It was the only way out. 'Oh, yes I can make you, Jade,' he said softly. His low voice was falling, dropping to that husky tone she dreaded, and suddenly she could feel her heart thumping in her breast.

  Zan smiled gently. 'I can do it civilised, by hiring a lawyer and stripping you of every penny you've ever made or hope to make, Jade. And if you marry lover boy, I'll see if I can tap his bank account, too.' The cold eyes roved her white face. 'Anyone who marries you should expect to pay, after all. Through the wallet, if not otherwise.' His voice was a caressing burr now, almost a whisper. 'That's the civilised method to make you do what I want, Jade. The other way is with my bare hands. That's the method I favour.'

  Jade put a hand on the wall to steady herself, and shut her eyes to shut him out. Her brain was whirling. 'He's got you,' a small voice inside her chanted. 'He's got you.' And it was not a lawsuit that she feared now.

  Her eyes flashed open as she heard him move, but Zan was just making himself comfortable. He slouched back against the doorframe, obviously prepared to wait all day. His brows bunched. 'Well, Jade?'

  She took a deep breath. She'd felt like this as a child on the high diving-board, staring down at the distant blue water. Once you were up there, there was no backing down. You had to jump. She took another breath. Well, so be it. . . 'Zan.'

  'Mm?'

  'If—and I mean if—I do this, there are two things you'll have to promise . . .'

  The ice eyes widened in question. 'Yes?'

  'First, that you don't expect me to—to live there with you. We're only about a mile and a half apart, and I could come when you call, day or night.' Crossing her arms, she hugged herself, trying not to shiver. 'Second, is that you don't ever touch me again. I don't care to be manhandled.'

  Zan was silent as she waited tensely. Finally he spoke. 'I don't believe you're in a position to extract promises, Jade.'

  'I won't live there. I won't!'

  His lips twitched as he studied her flushed face. 'But you'll drop whatever you're doing, and come when I call, day or night?'

  She swallowed. 'Yes.'

  His look was doubtful, but slowly he nodded. 'We'll try it that way, then.'

  'And you won't—'

  'Jade.' His cold eyes mocked her. 'There's only one thing I really want—and that's to finish my book by the end of August.'

  She looked down at her feet, her face hot.

  His low voice was amused. 'You help me to finish it, and we'll call the debt square. That I will promise.'

  Looking up, she found he was smiling. 'You'd give me my statement back?'

  Something flickered in his eyes, but he nodded.

  It was time to take the plunge. Jade took a deep breath. 'All right, then, Zan. When do we start?'

  But he was moving already, looming above her. 'When do we start, she says!' A big hand reached out to sweep her into the kitchen before him. 'Right now. Yesterday! Let's go, Jade.'

  'Wait a minute!' She dug in her heels and wheeled to face him, putting up a hand to block the charge. 'May I put on some shoes?' she asked breathlessly.

  Zan scowled, grey eyes electric. 'Only if you hurry.' He paced the kitchen while she ran to find them, and then herded her out of the door and down the stairs.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  'So you write murder mysteries!' Jade looked up from the sheet of paper in Zan's typewriter. His typing stopped in mid-sentence with a long line of exclamation marks and a few vicious-looking nonsense words, but the story above Zan's explosion seemed to concern an unidentified victim despatched by an inexplicable method.

  Across the patio, Zan turned his back on the view to face her; 'The preferred label is thriller.'

  Jade studied his face. He looked restless, almost irritated. 'What's the difference?'

  'Less mystery, more mayhem, no clever old ladies allowed. Now why don't you just get yourself comfortable there and we'll get started . . .' He turned back to the harbour.

  Jade sat down reluctantly. It was too lovely out here on the condominium's patio, just a few feet above the water, to think of working. Zan had placed the typewriter on a round picnic table facing the harbour. Even as she looked up, a red catamaran dodged through the boats moored in the cove and wheeled out into the open blue beyond. She sighed. This was going to be a hard way to pass a summer, chained to a typewriter in sight of so much freedom.

  'Ready?' Zan's shadow fell across the table as he loomed behind her.

  Suppressing a shiver, Jade nodded. She would have to relax. She couldn't flinch every time Zan walked up behind her like that. But she'd half expected warm fingers to close on the nape of her neck for a second there.

  Black and motionless, his shadow lay across her. 'He's still warm.'

  'What?'

  'Dammit it, Jade, start typing!'

  'Oh!' She blushed, and reaching for the keys, pecked out the sentence carefully.

  Zan's shadow shook its head glumly and then stilled. 'Next paragraph: "That's hardly surprising; look at . . ."' Still dictating, Zan turned away from her and began to pace the patio, his low voice carrying clearly above the lap of the wavelets on the rocks below. Jade's fingers pattered behind him like a short-legged puppy chasing a long-legged master across the pages and the hours.

  'What's this town—no, don't type this, Jade, I'm talking to you!' Zan scowled as she looked up at him.

 
'Well, how should I know the difference!' she flared, crossing out the first words of his question.

  'Use your ears. What's this town like in December?'

  'Why?'

  'Because at this rate we'll still be here, tap-tapping our way into the fifth chapter by Christmas!' Shaking dark gold hair off his forehead, Zan leaned back against the low wall that enclosed the patio and scowled down at his large brown feet. He looked up at her stricken face, and laughed suddenly. 'Don't look like that! I'll let you off the patio by October, Jade. We'll order a cord of wood and work by the fireplace. Might be rather cosy.' His grey eyes danced.

  Jade found her breath in a rush. 'If I thought I was going to be here with you in December, Zan, I'd hang this typewriter around my neck and jump off the dock right now! Cosy be damned!' She watched his grin widen with blazing eyes. He was just baiting her, of course. She pushed back her chair and stood up. 'Break time,' she announced.

  'All right,' he agreed amiably. Pushing off the wall, he ambled over to the pile of manuscript on the table and began to re-read it, his good hand massaging the back of his neck.

  Jade studied his wide shoulders for a moment and then stepped through the open glass doors and into the room beyond. She paused, blinking in the cool and welcome dimness. It was the first chance she had really had to Study the room. Zan had rushed her straight through and out to the patio this morning, and the other time ...

  The ground floor of the condo was a clean, open L-shape. She stood in the corner of the L—the dining area—by the table where Zan and she had played out their battle of wills the other day. To her right, an airy, modern kitchen formed the rest of the short leg of the L, the leg that faced the water. One could stand at the counter and chop onions while staring out the large windows which gave on the patio and the cove beyond. A good way to lose a fingertip, come to think of it.

  The long leg of the L stretched away from the water towards the entrance on the inland side of the condo. From the dining room, an open, varnished wood stairway climbed the wall, leading up to a second floor. And beyond the stairway, as it approached the front door, dining room merged with and became living room.

  This distinction was created by a change in level—the living room was three steps lower than the rest of this floor. Cream-coloured modular sofas outlined this rectangular pit, and above it, the ceiling was cut away. One looked up two storeys to a cedar-beamed roof with a large, gleaming skylight. The inland wall of the pit was stone—a chimney, in fact, rising grey and rugged above the massive fireplace at its base. The stone bank in front of the chimney formed a wall-length bench as well as the hearth.

  Jade stepped down into the pit, her feet sinking into the soft wool of a red and gold Oriental rug. It would be cosy indeed here in winter, with a fire going.

  'Go around the fireplace to your right, and you'll find a bathroom, if you want to powder your toes, Jade.' Zan wandered into the kitchen. 'Are you hungry yet?' he called.

  'No.'

  'That's good, 'cause I've eaten everything in the house. We'll have to go shopping later.'

  We? Jade looked up, eyes narrowed, but Zan was out of sight around the corner.

  'What about a soda?' he called.

  'Please.' She prowled nervously into the entrance way past the chimney, and studied the front door with wistful eyes. What had she got herself into? Her green eyes fell on the bookcase where Zan had left her keys the other day, and a photograph on the top shelf caught her attention. Zan stood on a beach, laughing up at the girl who sat on his shoulders. Hands twined in his hair, she mugged at the camera, her elfin face sparkling with mischief. Jade felt an odd twinge. Had she and Fred ever looked that happy together? .

  She studied Zan. How old was he there? The girl's heels kicked against a chest as muscular and hairy as the one she had seen two days ago. His face was perhaps a little younger, but maybe it was just his happiness that made it seem so. No more than five years ago, Jade decided, if that. The girl's age was harder to guess— middle twenties, maybe even a little older. She was a delicate blonde who would look fine at fifty. Jade sighed.

  'That's Mona, the temptress who got me into this mess.' Zan spoke behind her.

  Damn, but he was quiet! Jade took a steadying breath before she turned to face him. Zan was half smiling, half glaring at the photo above Jade's head. He absently handed her a Coke.

  'Mess?' she asked.

  'We're buying this condo together. I'm beginning to wonder if it's such a bright idea.' He made a wry face at the photo.

  'It's a stunning place.'

  'Yes,' he agreed dryly. 'With payments to match. Somehow I'm feeling less secure about making my ends meet than I was three days ago.' Putting a big hand on her arm, he eased her past him towards the patio. 'Speaking of which, it's back to the grind, girl.'

  Jade bit her bottom lip. 'What happens if you don't finish this book by the end of August, Zan?'

  'What do you care?' The ice-grey eyes studied her face with lazy interest.

  'I do care,' her eyes dropped to his cast. 'If anyone got you into this mess, it was me.'

  'So you'll just have to get me out again.' He shooed her ahead of him. 'Let's get writing.'

  She had got him into this mess, so now she would help him out of it. There was a rough justice there that Jade couldn't deny, even if she had been blackmailed into paying her debt. But as the hours passed and her hesitant fingers chased after Zan's story, a suspicion took root and began to grow: could she have been conned?

  It was no wonder that Zan could sometimes act like a Mafia hit-man with a toothache. Violence was his subject matter. The question was, did the menacing, velvet-voiced stranger who had wrung the confession out of her, who had come this morning to claim her help and her summer—did he actually exist? Was he the dark side that balanced the glancing, offbeat sense of humour, the kindness she sensed in this man who paced before her now, or just a convincing fiction? Was Zan potentially dangerous if provoked, or merely a clever joker? Jade would have given a lot to know which.

  'Cripes, but you're slow! Is that the fastest you can type?' Zan stopped by the table to glare down at her. 'I'm falling all over myself, thinking at normal speed and talking in slow motion!'

  Jade flexed aching fingers and scowled back at him. She had never typed so fast nor so long in her whole life, and still the brute wasn't satisfied! 'That's as fast as I go,' she pronounced defiantly. 'What you see is what you get.'

  She scraped back her chair and bounced to her feet. Zan held his ground as she stood, and she found herself suddenly toe to toe with him, her head thrown back so she could see his mocking face. 'I suggest that the next time you throw yourself in front of a car, Zan, you check the driver's typing skills beforehand if—'

  Zan's brows bristled and shot skyward.' Throw myself in front of a car . . . ?' he repeated incredulously, his eyes widening and gleaming now with a murderous light as he leaned towards her. 'For a homicidal driver, you've got some gall, Jade!' He leaned even closer; their noses were nearly touching now. His golden brows twitched gently. '—And you've no sense of self preservation whatsoever, to go insulting your victim in his own den,' he drawled softly. Cocking his head, he studied her flushed face with cool eyes. 'Apart from your driving, I can certainly tell you're a woman, too.'

  'What?' Jade blinked at the subject change.

  'Mm-hm.' His hand touched her face. Hooking a gentle finger under her jaw, he traced the bone out towards her pointed chin. 'I mean there are other . . . indications, but right now you're exhibiting one of the most endearing traits of the sex.'

  His finger stroked a small circle, teasing the soft skin just under her chin. 'Get a woman angry and she sticks her trusting little chin out. Men learn not to do that by fifth grade.' He grinned maddeningly.

  His taunt called forth an ugly memory—an image of a livid, foxy face and the pain that followed. 'Huh!' Jade tossed her head aside, but Zan's fingers closed on her chin, swinging her back to face him. His eyes sharpened as she cl
enched her jaws to fight the trembling that was vibrating up from her stomach. And why did he frighten her so? He was just a big clown, after all. . . Wasn't he? She jerked her chin again, but oblivious to her attempts to escape, he simply swung her face the other way, his grey eyes intent on her cheeks.

  'Now is that anger, or have we succeeded in frying you?' Zan murmured to himself. 'Your skin's almost transparent, Jade. It's lovely to watch the colour ebb and flow. It's surely high tide right now.' He freed her chin. 'Turn around.'

  Sighing in exasperation, Jade obeyed. It was simpler than arguing with him, she began to suspect. She flinched as his hand closed on her braid, and flipped it over her shoulder. Light and cool, Zan's fingers brushed the back of her neck, and she shuddered in spite of herself.

  'Fried!' he gloated. 'Or nearly so. Will you let me call you Red now?'

  'No, you jerk!' She ducked out from under his hand. 'Am I really?'

  'Go see for yourself. There's a hand mirror in the bathroom upstairs.' He turned back to the manuscript, and grateful for the excuse to flee, Jade hurried away.

  The varnished stairway led up from the dining room to an open hallway above. One side of this passage was a waist-high wall. Leaning over it, she looked down on the living room pit below.

  Off the hall on the water side of the floor were two bedrooms, and Jade peeped in through their open doors. The smaller one had the unused look of a guest room—bed tightly made and bureau clear. Blue curtains lined the glass seaward wall, shutting out a balcony and the view beyond.

  The white-walled, book-strewn corner bedroom was obviously Zan's. Entranced, Jade paused in the doorway. Sliding glass doors formed the waterside wall.

  Beyond the open curtains she could see a narrow balcony that overlooked the patio below and the harbour. What a view! The big modern bed faced that view, with a mountain of pillows piled along the headboard. She pictured Zan propped up in bed at night, staring out at the lighted fairy crown of the Newport Bridge, sea breeze whispering in through the open doors. At least that was how she would lie, if she owned such a room.