Elizabeth Oldfield - Fast And Loose

Cover Page

Excerpt “We’re supposed to be easy with each other,” Keir said. “We’re supposed to have been lovers,” he continued. Darcy gulped. “Urn—yes.” “So some practicing wouldn’t go amiss.” “Um—no,” she acknowledged. Changing back into her character, she pushed at him, they struggled, and he gave her a punishing kiss. Darcy parted her lips. Then it became a real kiss. A deep kiss. When it ended, Keir drew back to frown. Was he going to ask what she had been doing and accuse her of breaking the rules? “Enough passion?” she inquired.

About the Author ELIZABETH OLDFIELD ’s writing career started as a teenage hobby, when she had articles published. However, on her marriage the creative instinct was diverted into the production of a daughter and son. A decade later, when her husband’s job took them to Singapore, she resumed writing and had her first romance novel accepted in 1982. Now hooked on the genre, she produces an average of three books a year. They live in London, England, and Elizabeth travels widely to authenticate the background of her books.

Title Page Fast And Loose Elizabeth Oldfield www.millsandboon.co.uk

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Copyright

“We’re supposed to have been lovers,” he continued.

Darcy gulped. “Urn—yes.”

“So some practicing wouldn’t go amiss.”

“Um—no,” she acknowledged.

Changing back into her character, she pushed at him, they struggled, and he gave her a punishing kiss.

Darcy parted her lips. Then it became a real kiss. A deep kiss.

When it ended, Keir drew back to frown. Was he going to ask what she had been doing and accuse her of breaking the rules?

“Enough passion?” she inquired.

ELIZABETH OLDFIELD’s writing career started as a teenage hobby, when she had articles published. However, on her marriage the creative instinct was diverted into the production of a daughter and son. A decade later, when her husband’s job took them to Singapore, she resumed writing and had her first romance novel accepted in 1982. Now hooked on the genre, she produces an average of three books a year. They live in London, England, and Elizabeth travels widely to authenticate the background of her books.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

DARCY frowned at the young man who sat on the other side of the low mahogany table. ‘I was stood in the lobby waiting for you for almost half an hour,’ she told him.

‘Sorry. Had trouble finding a taxi,’ Maurice Cantwell declared, fingering the apricot and white spotted bowtie which he wore with a pale apricot sharkskin suit. ‘Though you could’ve waited in here.’

‘But if I’d sat immobile where people can take their time and look someone might’ve recognised me,’ she protested.

‘So? Other actresses like to be recognised. Other actresses …’ His words dried as he looked beyond her to the entrance of the oak-panelled bar. ‘Hi, there!’ he called, waving an eager hand. ‘We’re over here.’

As her agent put down his cocktail and leapt to his feet in readiness to greet someone whom he had clearly expected Darcy’s lips compressed. She had thought his invitation to dinner at the Brierly Hotel was odd, but— dumbo!—she ought to have guessed that it might not necessarily be just the two of them.

Maurice had his fingers thrust into endless pies, and now it seemed that he might be attempting to swing one of the deals which he habitually indulged in and that she had been asked along as feminine decoration and some form of inducement. While the refined and dignified Brierly had been chosen as the venue in order to impress.

Darcy gritted her teeth. Sitting with her back to the door, she was unable to see who was approaching, but she refused to spend the evening making small talk with some impresario for Maurice’s benefit. She refused to be exploited.

Her agent took a step past her to welcome the new arrival. ‘Great to have a chance to meet you at last,’ he said in what, for him, were surprisingly sincere, reverential tones. ‘I’m a big admirer of both your acting and directing skills, though it’s a long time now since you’ve acted.’

‘As I get older I find I prefer to tell others what to do, rather than be told myself,’ replied a man in a smoky American drawl laced with an ironic inflexion.

Darcy froze. She was sure—almost—that she recognised the voice. Whipping her head round, she looked up. Her green eyes flew wide open. Her jaw dropped. Her mind seemed to implode. Towering above her was a tall figure—a broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and utterly virile figure. The expected dinner guest was a man whom she had last seen seven years ago and whom she had never wanted to see again—Keir Robards!

She gawked at him. Like her agent’s dress style, his was also different from that of the hotel’s other, conservatively suited male customers, but whereas Maurice had gone for overkill he had opted for understatement. He wore cowboy boots, faded denims and an ancient black blazer thrown over a dark blue poplin shirt. His appearance was casual yet somehow he contrived to look smarter than every other man in the bar.

‘You two know each other,’ Maurice announced, with the gleeful air of a television host who—surprise, surprise—was bringing together a pair of old, dear, but long-lost friends.

Realising that she was still gawking, Darcy closed her mouth. She wanted to murder Maurice.

‘We did,’ she said, tautly placing their relationship in the past—where she intended it to remain.

‘Good evening, Darcy,’ Keir Robards said, and held down a large, tanned hand.

His handclasp came accompanied by a smile—a slow, crooked smile which, once upon a time, would have had her crumbling into a pathetically adoring heap. But no longer. Darcy nodded, withdrew her hand, sat back and crossed long, black-stockinged legs. Seven years on she was made of sterner stuff.

Nevertheless, the pressure of his fingers and the feel of his skin against hers had had an annoyingly sensitising effect. It made her aware of the way some physical contact, however mundane, could start the adrenalin spurting. It had also created a tension.

‘What are you doing here?’ she enquired, attempting to appear nonchalant and unconcerned but hearing herself sound dyspeptic.

Although Keir Robards had been consigned to history and she had not thought about him for…oh, ages, as she had waited in the lobby memories had relentlessly surfaced—of the last time she had visited the hotel, which had been the time of their final encounter, when she had made a monumental fool of herself.

Then, with her cheeks a feverish raspberry and her nerves twanging like crazed harp strings, she had dashed from his bedroom, hurled herself between the closing doors of a most obligingly placed lift and, on reaching ground level, had galloped across the lobby and out into the night.

Darcy sipped from her glass of sparkling water. The memory still made her squirm. And now, after intruding so discomfitingly into her consciousness earlier, for Keir Robards to appear in person was a bizarre coincidence—one which tempted her to make another hasty exit. But was he involved in a deal with Maurice? His elegant calm made a stark contrast to her agent’s ponytailed flamboyance, yet she supposed it was possible.