‘I know, damn it.’ He ran a hand absently through his hair. ‘I want to talk to you.’
Morgan bit her lip. ‘I’d love to,’ she said insincerely. ‘But it’s way past Ben’s bedtime. Perhaps some other time.’ She stood up abruptly, dislodging Ben briefly before gathering him up onto her hip.
At once her adversary rose to his feet as well, blocking off her path to the door. Looking up reluctantly, Morgan saw that one rebellious lock of hair had fallen forward onto his face, giving him an almost boyish look—but there was nothing boyish about the intent determination of the face bent towards her.
He had only just turned thirty, she remembered; if he had accomplished so much so young, it was because he was completely ruthless. Ruthless and not to be trusted. But even as she thought it his eyes lit with amusement, and his mouth curled in a smile that tempted her to respond.
‘Are you avoiding me because of this afternoon?’ he murmured, in an intimate voice pitched so low that she had to force herself not to move closer to hear him. ‘I wanted to make amends—honest.’ The grey eyes flashed her another gleaming glance. ‘But I thought I’d be discreet.’
Looking up into the cynical, charming face, so confident of an easy victory, Morgan realised bitterly that there was no justice in the world. If it hadn’t been for Elaine, how much she would have enjoyed this conversation!
She could just imagine what Richard Kavanagh would have done to a celebrity who had nearly knocked someone down, assumed she was after him, and abandoned the innocent victim at the scene of the accident— he wouldn’t have let someone off the hook just because he said he was sorry. How she would love to give him a taste of his own medicine! What exquisite revenge she could take for the mortification of their first meeting! And instead...
‘I’m not avoiding you,’ she said stolidly. ‘It’s just time to take Ben up to bed.’
His eyes began to dance. ‘Well, perhaps I could give you a hand?’
As Morgan searched desperately for an excuse she saw, furiously, that he was actually enjoying her predicament. Well, he wasn’t going to corner her so easily again. ‘Oh, no, Richard, I couldn’t let you do that,’ she said sweetly. ‘You’ve done far too much tonight already.’ She gazed up at him with an expression of wide-eyed, glowing gratitude. ‘I really don’t know how to thank you.’
For a moment she wondered whether she’d gone too far. There was a startled silence as he registered the fact that she was actually baiting him in return. And then, maddeningly, his eyes blazed up, not with anger, but with the delight of someone who had discovered that a game had surpassed all expectations. His eyelids drooped over the glinting eyes; one eyebrow shot up. ‘I can think of a few ways,’ he said. ‘You must let me tell you about them some time.’
Morgan blushed furiously. Where was Elaine? Why wasn’t she here showing off her knowledge of the exchange rate mechanism or some similarly incomprehensible subject, instead of throwing her sister to the wolf? In exasperation she pushed past him, trying not to flinch as she brushed against him.
He laughed softly. ‘You can’t run away from me for ever, Morgan,’ he told her. ‘I always get what I want, sooner or later.’
Morgan stalked out of the room.
By the time she had tucked Ben in it was still only nine-thirty. Morgan wasn’t about to go downstairs with the wolf still on the prowl; she would read in bed. She returned to Elaine’s room to take off her bright clothes, then slipped into the extra-large Child’s Place T-shirt which was her current nightgear.
She paused for a moment by the mirror, a frown creasing her brow. Her attention was caught, not by the wide-eyed houri who gazed at the glass, nor by the long, almost coltish legs which remained largely uncovered by the T-shirt, but by the new logo, the new name, and the new slogan—There’s no place like it’—each of which was rumoured to have cost several thousand pounds from a top agency.
Madness, she thought irritably, exasperated for the thousandth time by the charity’s prodigal expenditure on its image—and the marketing strategy was no better. You had only to look at the hundreds of designer T-shirts stacked in the storeroom to see why cash flow was a problem, why the director so often rejected even modest applications for classroom supplies. Or, for that matter, she thought cynically, to see why Ruth refused point-blank to let her look at the accounts!
Morgan had spent two years after she’d left university founding and making a success of a specialist cake firm. She’d decided that she would rather work with children than turn a small business into a large one, and had never regretted the change—but what she’d heard about the management of the charity made her itch to get her hands on it. The problem was that no one paid any attention to a teacher.
Morgan tugged absent-mindedly on the end of her plait. Even the underfunded classroom she ran was better than anything else available to the children. But it would be easy enough to hold the place up to ridicule; she could just imagine Richard Kavanagh standing in the overstocked storeroom making sarcastic comments while supporters deserted in droves.
He wouldn’t care what happened to the children—all he cared about was good TV. And if he remembered a certain embarrassing incident at a Christmas party...
Morgan shuddered. The worst of it was, she thought uneasily, that he might well feel that the last few hours had given him a few more debts to pay off. Well, she would just have to dodge him for another two days, before he remembered he had a score to settle.
She was on the point of going to the bathroom to clean her teeth when a sudden, horrible thought occurred to her. So far he hadn’t connected the unfamiliar name with the organisation he’d heard of at that fateful party. But just avoiding him wouldn’t keep him in the dark for long when her old room was crammed with the old material. The unmemorable LECDC—London Educational Centre for Displaced Children—might not ring a bell with him, but she wouldn’t bet on it. There was no help for it; she would have to get them out at once.
With a little shrug she walked rapidly down the corridor to her own room.
There was no light beneath the door; it was only quarter to ten, after all, and there was no reason to expect anyone upstairs for at least another hour. Morgan slipped into the room. Most of the materials should be on the desk; feeling somehow safer with the light out, she felt her way cautiously across the floor.
Just as she reached the desk she heard footsteps in the corridor. There was no way that she could escape with the damning literature; hastily she pulled open the bottom drawer, thrust the stack of papers firmly down in it and slammed it shut. The door opened and a sliver of light cut the darkness.
‘I’m sorry about the washing-up, Richard—we don’t usually work our guests quite so hard.’ Morgan couldn’t see Elaine, but the tone of slightly forced amusement gave her some idea of the reckoning in store for her—and that was if Elaine didn’t discover her lurking half-dressed in Kavanagh’s room. Morgan held her breath; the voice in her head seemed to be too disgusted even to say, You idiot.
‘That’s all right; I was glad to have a chance to hear some of your ideas.’ At least the door hadn’t opened wider—he didn’t seem to be bringing Elaine in. ‘Goodnight, Elaine.’
There was quite a long pause before Elaine replied, ‘Goodnight, Richard.’ It didn’t take much imagination to guess what had filled it.
Then Elaine’s footsteps retreated. The door opened wider, and the light came on. Morgan stood blinking in the glare. There was a short silence.
‘Well, well,’ said Richard Kavanagh. ‘Alone at last.’
He closed the door quietly behind him.
There was a watchful look in his eyes. Morgan remembered suddenly the story that Elaine had told her about the girl at the