CHARLOTTE LAMB - Dying For You

His dark eyes hypnotically stared down into hers. ‘You’ll remember Annie,’ he said softly. ‘I can wait; I’ve waited a long time already.’

A shiver ran down her back. If she wasn’t careful, he would start convincing her! He didn’t look it, but he must be crazy.

‘Stop arguing, Annie,’ he said. ‘Come upstairs and I’ll show you your room.’

She dug her heels in, resisting the hand that seized her elbow and tried to move her towards the stairs.

‘You can’t keep me here against my will and get away with it! I don’t know what the penalty is for kidnapping in France, but you don’t want to go to prison for years, do you? Look, if you just want to get to know me, I’ll have lunch with you now, and then you can drive me back to Paris, and I’ll see you again there. I’ll get you a ticket for my concert and—’

He laughed harshly. ‘You know you don’t mean it; if you made a date with me it would be the police who kept it, I imagine. I’m not stupid, Annie. You’re ready to promise me anything to get away. Do you think I don’t know that?’

‘What are you going to do to me?’ She tried to hide her fear, but he would have had to be blind to miss that look in her eyes.

His brows met. ‘I’m not going to hurt you, Annie; don’t look like that!’

He sounded so convincing. She let out a long sigh, put her hand out to him. ‘Then please let me go, Marc—please...’

Taking her hand, he looked down at the slight, pale fingers he held, slowly entwined his own tanned fingers with them. Annie felt her heart skip sideways in a little kick of awareness.

‘Not yet,’ he said. ‘Just for the moment, you’re my guest. You’ll find the house very comfortable, and it’s tranquil here, much more peaceful than you would have been in Paris. No media clamouring for interviews, no telephones, no fans waiting outside to hassle you. Why don’t you stop worrying and enjoy it?’

Annie considered him soberly. If she kept her temper and was not unfriendly maybe she would be able to talk him round, get him to see sense and take her back to Paris.

She pulled her hand away; he let it go without comment. Annie began to walk upstairs, aware of him following close behind her.

‘In here,’ he said, throwing open a door on the landing above.

Halting on the threshold, she watched him walk across the darkened room to the windows. He opened them, flung back the shutters, and light flooded in, making her blink, dazzled, staring at him.

She felt a strange flash of surprise, a jerk of dislocation, like mental whiplash, and for that instant had the oddest feeling, and then it was gone, and she was watching him with wide, half-blind green eyes.

He stared back at her with a curious eagerness, as if he knew that something had happened to her just then, as if he could read her thoughts, or her feelings; and that bothered her. That could be very dangerous. From now on she must try to hide from him what she was thinking, or she would have no defences against him.

‘Annie?’ he whispered.

‘Where’s the bathroom?’ she asked, trying to keep all intonation out of her voice.

She thought she heard him sigh. Then he gestured. ‘Through that door. I’ll go downstairs and start preparing lunch, so don’t be long. I’ll bring your cases in from the car later and you can unpack after lunch.’

She waited until she heard him reach the bottom of the stairs, then she went over to the window. How far was it to the ground from up here? If there was a handy drainpipe it might be worth risking the climb down. She peered down at the garden below and grimaced. No, that was out.

There was no drainpipe close enough—the nearest was outside the bathroom, and the bathroom window looked far too small for her to climb through it. From here, too, the ground seemed a very long way off. She wouldn’t like to risk breaking a leg, or worse, by jumping out of the window. In films people knotted sheets together and climbed down them; maybe she could try that.

But not now. She could hear noises from the room below, a tap running, the sound of china clattering. That must be the kitchen. If she tried to climb out of here now he’d be sure to spot her.

She went into the bathroom and found it very pretty: the fittings a primrose-yellow, a pine shelf along the wall filled with French toiletries—bath oil, soaps, gels, shampoo, talc.

Annie washed, then deliberately left her face bare of make-up, brushed her long black hair up into a neat bun at the back of her neck, made herself look as unattractive as possible.

Looking at her reflection in the bathroom mirror, she saw the nervous awareness in her green eyes and turned away quickly. In this situation it was very dangerous to admit, even to herself, in the privacy of her own head, that she found him attractive. No, more than that, if she was honest. Ever since she first saw him she had been mesmerised; and that was scary.

He might keep telling her not to be scared, that he wouldn’t hurt her, but the fact remained—he had kidnapped her, brought her here by force. Why had he done that, if not for ransom? What on earth was going on here? She was afraid to think about it.

Was he out of his head? Look at his obsession that they had met before! Yes, one of them had to be crazy, and it wasn’t her. She was one hundred per cent certain she had never seen him in her life until today.

Then she remembered that fleeting dizziness when he opened the shutters, the feeling of déjà vu , and she frowned, bit her lip. What on earth had that been about? For a second she almost had thought she remembered...something...

Angrily she pushed the thought away. She was letting him get to her, that was all. She must not let him hypnotise her into joining him in his fantasy. That way lay madness.

Feeling calmer, she went downstairs, started looking into rooms, until she opened a door into a large, bright kitchen with golden pine fittings, white walls and red and white gingham curtains. There were bowls of hyacinths in bloom on the windowsill, and the whole room was full of their scent and the fragrance of fresh coffee.

While she hesitated at the door, Marc turned to look at her, his narrowed eyes skating over her face and hair, his brows rising sardonically.

‘You look about fifteen! Is that meant to make me keep my distance?’

‘I hope you will anyway,’ she said primly, not meeting his eyes.

There was a long silence, and at last she had to look up. He was watching her seriously, his dark eyes level and frowning.

‘I told you, you don’t need to be afraid. I’m not holding you for ransom, I won’t hurt you, and, I assure you, I won’t leap on you suddenly. I won’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do.’

Red burned in her cheeks. ‘You forced me to come here, and you’re forcing me to stay here against my will.’

‘It was the only way I could get you to myself for long enough,’ he coolly told her.

‘Long enough for what?’

‘To get to know me,’ he said. ‘Now come and sit down at the table and we’ll have lunch.’

Still absorbed in thinking over what he had just said, she didn’t argue. She sat down automatically and looked at the food he had put out on the square pine kitchen table—a large bowl of crisp green salad tossed in dressing, black olives in a dish, some hard-boiled eggs, tomatoes, a gingham-covered wicker basket of sliced French bread, a platter of various French cheeses and a bowl of fruit.

Annie hadn’t felt hungry until then, but the food looked so good that she felt a surprising pang of hunger.

‘Help yourself,’ he said as he sat down opposite her.

She took salad—a mixture of avocado, lettuces, cucumber, green peppers—a hard-boiled egg, a tomato, some black olives, a slice of Brie, some of the golden bread.