sound.
Then, with appalling briskness, he set her upright again, his amused glance taking in her flushed face and watery eyes.
When she could speak, she said chokingly, ‘You swine—you bloody sadist …’
He tutted reprovingly. ‘Your language, mademoiselle, is as ill-advised as your sense of humour. I have taught you one lesson,’ he added coldly. ‘Please do not make it necessary for me to administer another.’
‘I’ll find out who owns this boat,’ she promised huskily. ‘And when I do—I’ll have you fired. I’m sure your boss would be delighted to know you take advantage of his absence by—by abusing girls in his saloon.’
He stared at her for a moment, then began to laugh. ‘Considering the provocation, I think he would say you had got off lightly.’ He paused. ‘Had you been adult, then retribution might have taken a very different form. Perhaps you should think yourself fortunate.’ He gave her a swiftly measuring look. ‘And perhaps, too, you should leave—before I change my mind.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Samma said thickly. ‘I’m going.’
Uncaring of the few remaining rags of dignity left to her, she half ran, half stumbled to the door, only to hear as she scrambled up the companionway to freedom, fighting angry tears, his laughter following her.
IF SAMMA thought her day could not possibly get any worse, she was wrong.
She’d grabbed her drawing materials and fled back to the hotel, evading the good-humouredly ribald teasing from Mindy and the others. And she was halfway home when she realised she’d still left that damned drawing pinned to the board. But wild horses wouldn’t have dragged her back there to retrieve it. Mindy would throw it away with the rest of her unsold sketches at the end of the day.
And she would have to keep away from the waterfront until she could be sure that Allegra had sailed, even though it would mean a reduction in her small income.
Clyde was waiting for her. ‘So there you are,’ he said in the grumbling tone which had become the norm in the past year. ‘That blasted Nina won’t be in tonight, so you’ll have to take her place.’
Samma was still quivering with reaction. Flatly, she said, ‘No.’
His sunburned face went a deeper shade of brick-red. ‘What do you mean—no?’
‘Exactly what I say.’ She glared back at him. ‘I hate being in the club, and I won’t sit with the customers and encourage them to buy expensive drinks they can’t afford. It’s degrading.’
‘When I want your moral judgements, I’ll ask for them,’ Clyde snapped. ‘You don’t pick and choose what you do round here, and tonight you’re standing in for Nina in the Grotto. It’s no big deal,’ he added disgustedly. ‘Just sit with the punters, and be nice to them. No one’s suggesting you sleep with them.’
Samma’s delicate mouth curled. ‘Meaning Nina doesn’t?’
‘That’s no concern of yours,’ Clyde blustered. ‘Now, be a good girl,’ he went on, a wheedling note entering his voice. ‘And do something about your hair,’ he added, giving its shining length a disparaging glance. ‘Nina’s left one of her cocktail dresses in the dressing-room, so you can wear that. You’re near enough the same size.’
‘It’s not a question of size,’ Samma said with irony. ‘It’s taste—something Nina’s not conspicuous for.’
Clyde shrugged. ‘Well, at least she doesn’t look as if she’s just stepped out of a kindergarten,’ he countered brutally. ‘Maybe you should ask her for a few lessons. Anyway, I haven’t time to argue the toss with you. I have a busy evening ahead of me.’
She said evenly, ‘Playing poker, I suppose. Clyde—couldn’t you give the game a miss for once?’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ he said sullenly. ‘Baxter’s here again, and he’s loaded. All I need is one good win. His luck can’t last for ever.’
‘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
