Sara Craven - Devil And The Deep Sea

‘Can’t it? Does it ever occur to you that he wins too often and too much for it to be purely luck?’

‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he dismissed crossly. ‘Now, get on with some work, please. And chivvy up those girls who work on the bedrooms. Number Thirty-three claims his bed was made up with a torn sheet.’

Samma sighed. ‘A lot of the linen’s threadbare. We need to replace it,’ she began, but Clyde was already disappearing, as he invariably did when she tried to discuss anything about expenditure with him.

She sighed again, as she went into the hotel office at the back of the reception desk. In spite of her intentions, it seemed she had to put in an appearance at the club that night. And it occurred to her too that Clyde, who knew how much she hated being there, had never pressured her quite so much before. In the past, he’d been prepared, albeit sulkily, to accept her excuses. Now, it seemed, they had entered on a new phase in their uneasy working relationship, and Samma wasn’t sure how to deal with it. But it was beginning to seem even more imperative that she should get away from Cristoforo, and fast.

But without money, how can I? she thought despairingly. And I can’t even do my portraits for the next few days because of that damned Frenchman.

She bit her lip. Meeting an—animal like him was another incentive for her to get back to civilisation without delay.

She might have behaved badly—she was prepared to admit that, but his reaction had been unforgivable. Clearly he was the kind of man who was unable to overlook any slight to his self-esteem, which made him both macho and humourless, she thought—faults which far outweighed the overwhelming physical attraction which she’d been unable to deny, or even resist.

In the same way, she was unable to escape a lingering curiosity about him. He looked tough, and eminently capable, the typical roughneck who made a precarious living, crewing on charter hire boats for fair-weather sailors. But his voice had been educated, she thought frowning, so that didn’t add up.

Perhaps, like herself, he was trying to scrape together the fare back to Europe, she decided with a mental shrug. In the event, speculation was useless. She would never see him again. Fortunately, the Black Grotto kept away his sort of man, with its hefty cover charge and loaded drinks prices.

She could only wish it kept away Hugo Baxter’s kind of man, too.

But that, of course, was too much to hope for, she realised some hours later, watching his plump figure make its way across the crowded club to her side, a self-satisfied smile on his full lips.

‘Well, sweet Samantha.’ His eyes were all over her, missing nothing, from the casual blonde top-knot into which she’d twisted her hair, to the slender, strappy sandals on her bare feet. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’ He leered at Nina’s horror of a dress—black, and almost transparent, with a sprinkling of sequins to veil the wearer’s breasts and form a coy band round the hips. It would take all her reserves of coolness to enable her to carry the tacky thing off with any degree of sang-froid she had thought wretchedly, viewing herself in the dressing-room mirror.

She said, ‘Good evening, Mr Baxter.’

‘Oh, come on, sweetheart. Why so formal? Surely you know me well enough by now to be—a little more friendly.’ He paused. ‘I looked for you on the quay this afternoon. Had a fancy to have my portrait drawn,’ he added, as if conferring an immense honour.

‘I have all the commissions I can handle,’ Samma told him untruthfully. The thought of committing his unprepossessing features to paper was totally unappealing, although she knew how she would do it, she thought, a little curl of malicious glee unwinding inside her.

His face fell. ‘That’s too bad. So—how about a little dance with me, then?’

The prospect of being held in his arms, his paunch pressing against her slenderness, made Samma feel as if a sudden outbreak of maggots was crawling over her skin. She stepped back instinctively, aware that he’d registered her hurried recoil.

‘I’m sorry—’ she began, but he interrupted.

‘You will be, sweetheart, if you start giving me the runaround. I’m a good customer of this club, and you’re a hostess—right? And if I want to buy some of your time tonight, there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it—right, too?’

‘Quite right, monsieur, except that the lady’s time this evening has already been bought—by me.’

The voice came from behind, but even without that betraying ‘monsieur’ she would have recognised it anywhere.

As she swung round, she stiffened, her eyes blanking out with shock as she saw him. He must be well paid on Allegra —either that or he’d raided his employer’s wardrobe. His lightweight suit was expensive, his open-necked shirt pure silk, and his shoes handmade. He looked like someone to be reckoned with in his own right, she thought, rather than simply another man’s deckhand.

Hugo Baxter was gaping indignantly at him. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ he demanded aggressively.

‘Perhaps.’ The Frenchman shrugged faintly, indicating how little it mattered. He turned to Samma, the dark eyes sweeping over her in amused and ironic comprehension. ‘I am sorry I am late, chérie.’ He ran a finger lazily and intimately down the curve of her cheek. ‘It was good of you to wait for me.’

She was stranded, Samma thought hysterically, between the devil and the deep sea. She said, ‘What did you expect?’

‘Now that is something we could more profitably discuss over a drink.’ His hand grasped her elbow, urging her away from the bar and towards a vacant table at the edge of the small dance-floor. ‘But my expectations did not include this—metamorphosis,’ he added, a note of unholy amusement in his voice. ‘Are you sure, mademoiselle, you have no younger sister?’

She was sorely tempted to tell him she had, but her previous experience at his hands warned her it might be unwise to play any more games.

She said coolly, ‘I don’t know why or how you found your way here, but if you’ve come to score points, maybe I should warn you it’ll cost you a week’s wages, plus an arm and a leg. I should get back to the waterfront. You’ll find the bars cheaper there.’

‘Yes, I heard this was a clip-joint,’ he said, unruffled. ‘But it makes no difference. I came because poker is a favourite relaxation of mine, and I am told there is a game here tonight.’

There is.’ Samma raised her eyebrows. ‘But I think you’ll find the other players take it rather more seriously than that.’

‘They may need to.’ A faint smile twisted round the corners of the firm mouth. ‘So—how do you fit into this set-up?’

‘My stepfather owns the hotel, and the club,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I help out when necessary.’

‘I see.’ His glance rested briefly and intimately on the flimsy sequin flowers which cupped her breasts, and Samma choked back a little gasp, thankful the club’s dim lighting masked the colour rising hotly in her face.

She said tautly, ‘I doubt it. Anyway, I don’t have to explain myself to you, so perhaps you’ll go now and leave me in peace.’

His sardonic gaze took in the crowded, smoke-filled room, where a buzz of laughing, chattering voices vied for supremacy with the band.

‘This is your idea of peace, chérie ?’ he drawled. ‘I had a different impression of you this morning.’

‘I remember it well,’ Samma flashed. ‘I still have the bruises.’

‘I think you exaggerate. Besides,’ he glanced towards the bar, where Hugo Baxter still glowered in their direction, ‘you surely do not wish to be left to the mercies of that wolf?’