Blaze sprang up, scattering flowers, and spun round.
‘You p-pig!’ Chrissy shouted.
Blaze clawed wet hair off his brow with one hand, his glittering ice-blue eyes smouldering threat at Chrissy.
‘You are a p-pig!’ Without warning her bravado was punctured.
‘Are you crazy?’ the brunette screamed at her shrilly.
‘Angry,’ Blaze murmured drily.
‘I’m going to have you fired for this!’ Leila promised, grabbing up the phone and punching out a number.
Glynis came running with a towel and fervent apologies.
Chrissy stood there blinking in bewilderment. But inside her head she was still hearing Blaze slice her parents to ribbons, serving up her poor mother’s heartbreak as a grotesque source of entertainment. He was a filthy, rotten snob! Born with the proverbial silver spoon in his mouth, grandson of an earl, Blaze had grown up against a background of rich, inherited privilege. His arrogance was that of an aristocrat, who had never known what it was to try and measure up to the expectations of a higher social class.
‘Your boss wants to speak to you!’ The smiling brunette extended the receiver like a hangman extending the noose.
On wooden legs, Chrissy stepped forward. Martin Cranmore was practically sobbing with rage at the other end of the line. What he said was short and sweet. White-faced and trembling, Chrissy looked at no one as she turned and walked out of the room. She gathered up her coat and bag.
Glynis caught her arm, oozing morbid fascination. ‘What the hell did you do it for? Do you know who that gorgeous hunk is?’
Pulling on her coat, Chrissy said nothing.
‘He’s that racehorse trainer! He’s the one with all the women, practically a harem from what you read in the papers!’ Glynis gushed excitedly.
The sheer incredulity on Blaze’s sun-bronzed features swam before her afresh. In retrospect, she could barely believe what she had done. He had probably never been assaulted by flowers before. Nervous husbands and protective fathers avoided his company. Around thirty most men settled down. Blaze hadn’t. Scandal still shadowed his every step and no doubt he reacted with sublime insouciance to all rumour and report. His hide was tough. She would not have embarrassed him. And an hour from now he would be cracking a joke about it in that mocking, sardonic way of his.
But Chrissy would not be laughing. She had just sacrificed her job, and her job had been the one little bit of security she had left. The last piece of her mother’s jewellery had been sold three months ago. The proceeds were long gone. She was stony broke and behind with her rent. She had practically pleaded with Martin Cranmore to give her the job. Desperation had overcome pride. That job had given her hope. She had seen it as a first basic foothold on survival.
And now it was gone, and with it the wages due to her for the past three weeks. Loyalty was all very well when you could afford it, Chrissy conceded painfully, but she hadn’t been able to afford the cost of emptying that vase over Blaze Kenyon’s arrogant head. A sense of utter desolation crept over her. Dear God, what was she going to do now? How were they to survive?
It was raining heavily. With a bent head she crossed the street and began walking. Digging her hands into her pockets, she didn’t even try to avoid the puddles. When a car door shot open in front of her, she recoiled in alarm.
‘Get in!’ Blaze instructed abrasively. ‘And take off that filthy coat first!’
Chrissy gaped in at him across a divide of palest cream leather upholstery. ‘W-what do you want?’
A groan of impatience greeted the tremulous demand.
Tears mingled with the rain on her cheeks. She was glad he couldn’t see them. ‘G-go away. I’m not going to apologise.’
‘I’m offering you a lift home.’
‘That’s crazy,’ she muttered. ‘Why w-would you want to do that?’
‘Do you think it could possibly be a belated attempt to make amends?’
‘No.’
‘Oh, Chrissy, how I have missed the delights of dialogue with you. If you don’t get in, I’ll get out and throw you in. The upholstery’s getting wet.’
‘I don’t w-want a lift!’ she gasped. ‘You th-think this is funny, don’t you?’
‘Actually, it’s incredibly depressing.’ Blaze sighed from the interior. ‘If a branch came out to you when you were drowning, you’d push it away and sink like a stone.’
Chrissy was perilously close to another breakdown. ‘I h-hate you.’
‘And I love you for it, sweetheart. You’re unique,’ he mocked. ‘You see that policeman heading towards us?’
Her head lifted. A uniformed figure was approaching them.
‘Stay where you are,’ Blaze encouraged. ‘This should be fun. He doesn’t like the look of us at all. Either you’re soliciting or I’m kerb-crawling. The next time we do this, at least run a comb through your hair. At this moment, you’re not doing a lot for my image.’
Absorbing the frowning attention they were receiving, Chrissy shot into the car and slammed the door.
‘Try not to drip on my CDs.’
She hunched over inelegantly, wet hair screening her pinched profile.
‘How is Belle these days?’ he enquired, sending the powerful car shooting away from the kerb.
At the reference to her mother, her slight shoulders reared back up, her hair whipping back from her damp cheeks, over-bright eyes raw with pain and condemnation.
‘I liked your mother,’ Blaze said evenly.
‘In so far as you ever noticed her!’ Her clogged lashes dropped on her aching eyes. The silence went on and on and on and then she cleared her throat gruffly. ‘She’s dead.’ It was bald, bitter.
‘When?’
‘Last year.’
‘How did it happen?’
She tautened. ‘Pneumonia,’ she conceded.
‘I’m sorry. That must have hurt. You were very close,’ he responded with an amount of apparent sincerity that astonished her.
But Chrissy almost laughed out loud. How close had she really been to her mother? Belle Hamilton had fled her husband and family without a word of advance warning. Chrissy had once found her chatting cosily in the kitchen over a cup of coffee with Dennis Carruthers but she hadn’t thought anything of it. Belle had always happily offered hospitality to workmen, tradesmen—indeed virtually anyone ordinary who entered the house. She had been far happier entertaining them than she had ever been trying to entertain their grandiose neighbours. Nobody had known about Dennis until it was too late. Her mother had burnt her boats with a vengeance.
‘Why didn’t you go home again?’
Chrissy turned even paler. ‘I couldn’t.’ And then she regretted even saying that much. But there was something so dangerously unreal about being in Blaze Kenyon’s company, something so disturbingly hypnotic about receiving his full attention.
‘Where do you live?’
Still in a daze, she told him and then suggested he drop her at a bus-stop. His mouth hardening, he ignored the invitation. From below feathery lashes, she stole a glance at him. He really was quite spectacular. Even immune as she was to his physical allure, she could not resist the urge to look again. Every chiselled line of that strong bone-structure spoke of bred-in-the-bone self-assurance. What could he possibly know about the traumas that had finally torn