newspaper man she’d ever met. He looked like a man made for a much bigger stage. Casual he might be, but he made the elegant main hall of the Assembly Rooms look small.
She was smaller than he had imagined from her photographs, and reed-slim, but the neat burnished cap of bright hair, the pale delicate skin, the elegant black dress were pure drama, and every eye in the room was fixed on her, waiting for her to speak.
Matt was not easily impressed, nor, he suspected, were the journalists who had gathered there, and yet he felt a quickening in the air, a stir of anticipation as she looked around the room, acknowledging acquaintances with the briefest of smiles.
Then her gaze came to rest on him, lingering in a look that seemed to single him out, to hold his attention, and just for a second he had the disconcerting sensation that she could see right through him, recognise him for what he was.
He had wondered, looking at her photograph in Parker’s office, if her eyes could really be that impossible shade of blue, or whether, like her hair, the colour had been enhanced for effect.
But there was no need to enhance anything. The effect came from something that lit her from within and he knew what it was. Passion.
And her look, he discovered, as for just a moment their gazes locked and held, had a kick like a mule.
Matt hadn’t been affected in that way by a woman since Lucy Braithwaite had kissed him in the vestry after choir practice, cutting short a promising career as a solo treble.
He was still struggling to recover his breath when Nyssa Blake took a sip of water before finally beginning to speak.
‘Ladies and gentlemen, thank you all for coming to Delvering today,’ she began.
Her voice, unexpectedly low and slightly husky, rippled through him, stirring the small hairs at the nape of his neck. Was that how she did it? How she drew supporters to her, twisted cynical newspaper hacks around her dainty fingers, walked past security guards without let or hindrance? Did she just turn on the lamps behind her eyes, murmur in that low voice and turn them into her willing slaves?
He rubbed his hand over his face in an attempt to pull himself together. He hadn’t come to the press conference to join the Nyssa Blake fan club. He simply wanted to get the measure of the girl…woman…
Well, he was doing that all right. But it sure as hell wasn’t what he had expected.
‘I do hope you have all taken advantage of this opportunity to look around Delvering, to talk to local people, to discover for yourselves what exactly is at stake here,’ she continued. Then quite unexpectedly she grinned, and for a moment he saw the girl, still there behind the sophisticated veneer. ‘But don’t worry if you haven’t,’ she said, indicating the projector with a wave of her hand. It was a gesture that would have done justice to a geisha, controlled, exquisitely graceful, and for just a moment his body seemed to do a loop-the-loop as he imagined what that hand could do to him. ‘I’m about to enlighten you, so save your questions until after the show.’
There was a murmur of laughter as the light dimmed until there was just a small shaded lamp over the notes on the lectern, the powerful beam from the projector directing all eyes to the screen with its aerial view of the small market town of Delvering.
As if this was a prearranged signal, several people leapt to their feet in the darkness. There was an angry yell that turned into a cry of pain from the man standing by the projector as it was overturned, hitting the floor was a crash that blew the lamp, plunging the room into darkness.
The heavies. He didn’t have to see them to know. He’d recognised them for what they were, despite their suits and their careful interest in Nyssa Blake’s work, and he’d assumed they were minders. He’d been wrong.
And there was one right in front of the lectern.
Without pausing to consider the wisdom of his actions, Matt Crosby hurled himself towards the shaded light that illuminated nothing but Nyssa Blake’s small hands, frozen in the act of turning over the first page of her notes.
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