SUSANNE MCCARTHY - No Place For Love

‘Khan, don’t be stupid—come here,’ Lacey called, her voice shaking slightly.

The dog padded back to her, as miserable as if the bottom had fallen out of his whole world, and pressed his drooping head against her knee. ‘You daft mutt,’ she comforted him softly. ‘You really took to him, didn’t you? But he’s not a very nice person, I’m afraid. I thought dogs were supposed to have some kind of instinct about these things?’

The intelligent hound lifted his head, eyeing her rather doubtfully, and then slurped her cheek with his pink tongue.

‘Ugh! Get off!’ she protested, laughing as she pushed him away. ‘How many times do I have to tell you not to lick my face?’

But though she wouldn’t care to admit it, even to her four-legged confidant, she felt a strange sense of dejection herself. What was wrong with her? She had never met such an insufferably rude and arrogant man in her entire life. The very last thing she wanted was to be forced to have to see him again.

Vanessa was back in the role of French au pair by Saturday—however ill she might be feeling, she would never dream of allowing a mere understudy to take her place for the main performance of the week. So Lacy was relegated once again to helping out with the props and making coffee for the stage manager and the director. Which was probably just as well, she acknowledged wryly to herself—it would be difficult to cope with even such an unexacting role when she was fretting herself ragged with worry about what the Sunday papers were going to contain.

If only she could disappear! But where could she go? Apart from an elderly aunt who lived in Tooting, she and Hugo had no other relatives that they knew of. And she couldn’t impose on the hospitality of her friends—she had no idea how long this was going to last, and if the Press found out where she’d gone it could cause all sorts of problems.

Maybe it wouldn’t be as bad as she reared, she tried to reassure herself over and over. After all, they didn’t exactly have much of a story, based on the facts, and there were laws of libel to prevent them publishing outright lies—weren’t there?

The rest of the cast were going off to a party after the show, but she couldn’t bring herself to join them, pleading a headache. Ted, the producer, was there, waiting to convey them off in his Rolls-Royce, and he drew her to one side.

‘You do look a little pale,’ he agreed, a note of agitation in his voice. ‘Are you worrying about this thing with Clive getting into the papers?’

She nodded. ‘It’s probably stupid—there’s nothing they can make anything of.’

‘You didn’t tell them anything about me, did you?’ he asked anxiously.

She shook her head angrily, exasperated by his self-centredness. ‘No, I didn’t. I didn’t tell them anything.’

He beamed in relief. ‘Are you sure you don’t want me to take you home and tuck you up in bed?’

‘No, thank you,’ she asserted quickly—she could all too readily guess that his idea of tucking her up was likely to include tucking himself up with her!

‘Well, see you next week then,’ he conceded, drifting off reluctantly with the others.

She smiled wanly to herself. She was quite sure that if things turned out as badly as she had feared he wouldn’t hesitate to dump her from the production. Well, it wouldn’t be much of a loss, she assured herself wryly—there had to be something better than playing understudy to French au pair!

The flat was in darkness when she got home—Hugo was performing with Les Sauvages at some nightclub in Croydon. She undressed, and went straight to bed, but she couldn’t sleep—there were too many unwelcome thoughts buzzing in her brain. After tossing and turning restlessly for several hours, she finally threw back the bedclothes and, reaching for her dressing-gown, padded out into the kitchen to make herself a mug of hot cocoa.

It was there that Hugo found her when he came in half an hour later—sitting at the kitchen table, her head in her hands. ‘Hi, sis,’ he greeted her with a wry grin. He tossed a copy of the Sunday Beacon on to the table in front of her. ‘I picked it up on the way home,’ he explained. ‘You ain’t gonna like it.’

The banner headline screamed out at her: ‘Minister in Blackmail Plot.’ Beneath it was a picture of Clive in Downing Street, looking as kindly and respectable as a bishop, and one of herself taken the other morning, carefully cropped to make it look as if she had been a willing subject, posing provocatively in her underwear, displaying a more than generous amount of cleavage, pouting for the camera. A cold chill wrapped around her heart as she picked it up and read the story.

‘I don’t believe it!’ she gasped, stunned. ‘How can he have said this? It’s the most awful pack of lies I’ve ever heard! He’s told them that I approached him, that I kept pestering him, that he was only friendly with me because he felt sorry for me—and that I started demanding money from him, and threatened to claim we’d been having an affair if he didn’t pay up!’

‘It looks as if he’s decided to try and make a last-ditch attempt to save his own skin by throwing you to the wolves,’ Hugo remarked caustically. ‘I did warn you.’

‘Yes, but... this! How can a person be so... dishonest? And he seemed such a nice old man.’

Hugo laughed drily. ‘You’re such an innocent!’ he teased with gentle affection. ‘I don’t know how you manage it in this dirty old world, but you never seem to be able to think badly of anyone.’

Lacey’s soft mouth twisted into a wry smile. There was one person she thought badly of—but she had been doing her best to forget about Jon Parrish for the past few days. Not that it was easy; the unwelcome memory of their two brief encounters tended to flit back into her mind far too frequently for comfort.

Khan, sensing something was wrong, had heaved himself up from his beanbag in the corner and came over, laying his long nose in her lap and gazing up at her from beneath his yellow fringe with liquid brown eyes that held nothing but simple adoration. She stroked his tousled head absently.

‘Why can’t people be more like dogs?’ she questioned wistfully. ‘They’re so... uncomplicated. I’m sure the world would be a better place.’

Hugo snorted. ‘Not if they were all like that stupid mutt—he hasn’t an ounce of brain in his whole body. Do you know he got hold of a packet of cotton-wool while you were out yesterday afternoon, and ripped it up all over the sitting-room floor? It took me ages to pick it all up.’

‘Oh, is that where it went? You naughty dog!’ Khan accepted the compliment with delight, jumping up to lick her face and trying to climb on to her lap. ‘No—hey, you can’t do that! You’re much too big,’ she protested, laughing in spite of her distress. ‘Ow! Your claws are digging in me! Get down!’

‘Is that cocoa you’re drinking?’ Hugo enquired with a wide yawn. ‘I think I’ll have some too.’

She slanted him a teasing look, struggling to be brave. ‘Going to bed with a mug of hot cocoa? Whatever would all those girls who’ve been screaming all evening for your hunky body say if they knew?’

He chuckled with laughter. ‘It would ruin my image! I’ll have to make sure it doesn’t get out.’

Lacey cast a wry glance at the newspaper on the table. ‘A couple of days ago, I would have laughed at that,’ she mused with dejection. ‘But now...’ She picked up the paper again. ‘They’ve called you my “mystery lover” in this, and they’ve got a picture of you chasing those reporters down the steps. It’s a bit fuzzy, though—I don’t think anyone would recognise you. I don’t suppose it would do any good to tell them you’re my brother?’