Elizabeth Oldfield - Love's Prisoner

‘Come in,’ the voice commanded again, a touch impatiently this time.

Suzy straightened her shoulders, summoned up a smile, and strode into a functional but comfortable magnolia-painted room made airy by a large picture window. A man with thick dark hair was sitting on the edge of a quilt-covered bed, idly leafing through a newspaper. In an open-throated midnight-blue shirt, black Levis and suede desert boots, no concession had been made to the fact that he was a patient. Her nerve-ends corkscrewed. Piers Armstrong had always dressed casually, and yet there was something in the way he held his body, in his personal dynamic, which imparted an aura of masculine elegance to the simplest of shirts and jeans. In the past, she had found this most appealing, and it registered that she still did. Her smile became a little strained.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said.

Piers rose to his feet. ‘Long time no see,’ he remarked drily.

Although she had watched his return on the television news, confronting him in the flesh was entirely different. His face looked thinner, the skin was stretched taut over his high cheekbones, and the crinkle lines at the corners of his eyes were deeper. When she had known him before, his hair had been cut short, but now the silky brown-black waves brushed against his shirt collar. Add a tan which he had picked up from somewhere, and Piers Armstrong looked darkly feral and romantic, like a modern-day pirate.

To her dismay, Suzy felt a catch form in her throat. When she had seen him on television she had wept, for his father’s sake and out of normal sensitivity to his plight, but—oh, heavens!—she must not weep now. Piers might misinterpret her tears and think she was crying over him as him , rather than over him as a returned hostage. She swallowed hard, twice. An innate sentimental streak meant that she would have been tempted to cry when faced with any person in his position, Suzy assured herself.

‘Yes, it must be—’ she paused, pretending to pinpoint a date which had been engraved in capitals on her heart ‘—three years since we last met.’ For a moment she wondered whether she ought to indicate the formality of her visit by shaking his hand, but decided against it. Infantile though it seemed, the prospect of even such run-of-the-mill physical contact was disturbing. ‘How are you?’ she asked.

‘Fine.’ His pale grey eyes travelled from the top of her blonde head, down the curves of her body, to her high-heeled sandals in a leisurely but all-encompassing appraisal. ‘You’re looking well. Very much the classy lady in the power suit.’

Suzy shot him a glance from beneath her lashes. Was that a compliment, or a dig at the change he must see in her? It was not only her character which had matured, but also her looks and her dress sense.

‘I’ve been out to lunch,’ she said, by way of explanation.

Piers gestured towards a chintz-covered armchair which, together with a small sofa and occasional table, formed a sitting area for visitors.

‘Have a seat.’

‘Thanks. So—you’re coming through your medical tests with flying colours?’ Suzy enquired, in a bright, conversational voice.

Although her stay would be as short as possible, she needed to comment on his situation. Indeed, after listening to the other hostages’ tales, she was well aware of how at a loss and disorientated Piers must be feeling and, as a caring human being, she sympathised.

He nodded. ‘The doctor’s verdict is that I’m in good working order,’ he said, and, as if to demonstrate, he flexed his shoulders.

‘You appear to be more muscular than I remember,’ Suzy remarked, her eyes drawn to the contours beneath the deep blue shirt.

‘Every time my captors untied me I made a point of doing press-ups and sit-ups,’ Piers explained, ‘so although I’ve never been puny I’m in better shape now than I’ve ever been.’ A dark brow arched. ‘You’d really see a difference if you saw me stripped.’

Her cheeks pinkened. Why had she commented on his physique? she wondered. It had been a mistake. The last thing she wanted was to revive memories—of how she had seen Piers stripped; of how, also naked, she had been held against his chest; of how they had once been lovers.

‘I don’t want to take up too much of your time,’ she began, primly switching into the work mode.

He strolled over to lounge a broad shoulder beside the window. ‘You may take all the time you wish,’ he said, gazing outside at the big city panorama of roofs and towering office blocks. ‘Anything to relieve the monotony and make the afternoon pass quicker.’

Suzy’s lips compressed. A man whose career had had him constantly moving from one trouble spot of the world to another, Piers Armstrong possessed a low boredom threshold—as she knew to her cost, she thought astringently. It was obvious that he would be chafing against being confined to the clinic; as he would have chafed against being held hostage. But while she had not been exactly falling over herself to see him, she objected to being informed that all she represented was a better-than-nothing diversion who had been granted admittance into his presence simply because he was fed-up!

‘Pity I didn’t bring some tiddlywinks, then we could have had a game,’ she said, a touch tartly.

His mouth tweaked. ‘It would have put a hell of a kick into my afternoon.’

‘When are you due to be discharged?’ she asked.

‘At the weekend, and it can’t come soon enough,’ Piers said, with feeling. ‘But to what do I owe the pleasure of this visit?’

Suzy looked at him in surprise. ‘You don’t know?’

‘I was in the middle of some tests when the receptionist rang to say you wished for a pow-wow, so I couldn’t ask.’ He thrust her a sardonic look. ‘However, I doubt if you’re here merely to enquire about the state of my health.’

‘I’ve come to ask if you’d agree to—to my interviewing you,’ Suzy said, the need to ask him for a favour, albeit one she did not want, making it difficult to prise the words from her throat. ‘Though if you’re sick and tired of speaking to people, I shall understand,’ she added, at speed.

Piers’ brow furrowed. ‘You want to interview me for the Pennant ?’ he enquired, referring to the newspaper which she had worked for after she had left The View —and broken with him. ‘But I’ve already spoken to a man from there.’

‘No, I left them over twelve months ago, and now I’m writing a book for Kingdom Publishing on the worldwide hostage scene,’ she told him. ‘It includes a number of case histories which detail how people have reacted to being kidnapped and the effect it’s had on their feelings, their beliefs and their lives, with an accent on the human/family side. What I require are some sessions which would enable me to compile a similar case history on you. However, I—

Piers snapped upright. ‘You’re jumping on the bandwagon of my being held hostage too?’ he demanded, his voice as rat-a-tat as a terrorist’s machine-gun.

Suzy recoiled, taken aback both by the unexpected accusation and by the force of his hostility.

‘I’d simply be doing a job,’ she protested.

‘You’re another rip-off merchant, another opportunist,’ he grated, and gave a bleak scornful laugh. ‘I should have known!’

She recognised this as an allusion to the past, and her chin lifted.

‘It’s Kingdom’s idea that you should be featured in the book, not mine,’ she told him. ‘And it was Randolph Gardener, their editorial director, who rang to fix an appointment for this afternoon—rang to fix it without my knowledge.’

Piers studied her through narrowed eyes. ‘After having already been asked to endorse such things as a security system and a hamburger—’