long as you get it right.’
‘Don’t worry. I’ll get it right.’
‘Okay! Now the woman…’
Oh, yes, having unwrapped the decorative cake, what precisely was to emerge on cue?
‘She has to be a blonde.’
Of course. Jake had obviously inherited his taste in blondes from his grandfather.
He grinned at her. ‘And curvy like you, Mel. A Marilyn Monroe type.’
A treacherous thrill ran through her entire body. Jake was comparing her to the number one sex goddess of the movie world.
‘Pop doesn’t like his women skinny,’ he went on, bursting her bubble.
Jake did like his women skinny. No doubt about that. Every one he took up with was pencil-thin. She had no chance at all of ever being taken up by him. Only her family thought she was skinny. Besides, she obviously had Mel Gibson’s dangerous edge—Lethal Weapon—which wasn’t sexy to a man who liked his women easy come, easy go, no complications.
‘You should be able to hire one from the models who do photo shoots for Playboy-type magazines,’ Jake suggested.
Merlina was goaded into speaking out. ‘You realise this cake act is very old-hat stuff. And male chauvinism at its worst.’
‘Absolutely,’ he agreed, then waved his hand in an appeal for understanding. ‘My grandfather still believes in marriage. Can you believe it?’ He shook his head. ‘Very old-hat. He’ll love this. It’s a scene from his favourite movie, made in 1966.’
She arched her eyebrows, aiming to get a hit at him. ‘You seem to have movies on the brain this morning.’
‘They mirror life,’ he flipped back at her.
‘Right!’ Her teeth snapped. She ground them open enough to ask, ‘What is the title of this movie? If I can find it in a video shop, I’ll watch it in order to know exactly what you’re describing.’
‘It’s called How to Murder Your Wife, starring Jack Lemmon and Virna Lisi.’
‘I can understand why it’s your grandfather’s favourite movie,’ she remarked with silky savagery. ‘He’s had seven wives so far, hasn’t he?’
‘Divorce from his seventh is about to come through,’ Jake confirmed.
And how many playmates are you up to? Seventy-seven?
The problem was, she’d probably become the seventy-eighth if he focused that kind of interest on her. But he wouldn’t. She knew he wasn’t going to. Ever. Yet sometimes when he looked her over…
‘There’s no real murder in it,’ Jake informed her. ‘It’s a comedy. Jake Lemmon is at a bachelor party and the cake is wheeled in. Virna Lisa pops out of it, their eyes meet, and choong!’ He raised his arms in mock despair. ‘It’s the end of his swinging bachelor life.’
What she needed was some choong-power over Jake Devila. Before she rode off into the sunset of employment elsewhere, she would really like to sock it to him. Just once. Ending his swinging bachelor life was probably in the realm of pure fantasy. Maybe choong-power was, too, but…a wild idea was dawning in her mind, spreading light in the dark places she had nursed for the past eighteen months.
‘Just for the record, in case I can’t get a copy of the movie, what was Virna Lisi wearing when she emerged from the cake?’ It couldn’t have been too risqué, she thought. Not in an American film made back in the sixties.
‘A bikini.’ His brow wrinkled as he worked on the recollection.
A bikini…
To Merlina’s whirling mind, it represented the final liberation, absolutely appropriate as the cut-off line to the Jake Devila experience which had served to break many conservative shackles from her upbringing. Wearing one in such a public spotlight would definitely be a mark of the confidence she would take with her when she left him. And her family would never know. It would just be for herself.
‘I think it was made out of flowers. Very feminine,’ he said.
She smiled, liking the description.
Quite acceptable.
And achievable.
Jake’s frown deepened, his eyes sharply scanning hers, suspicious of her sudden good humour.
Her smile broadened as she uncrossed her legs and rose to her feet. ‘Now that I’ve got the full picture, I’ll go to work on it.’
He looked surprised at her willingness to proceed.
‘What date is your grandfather’s birthday?’ she asked, since he hadn’t yet given it.
‘Next month. Fourteenth of February. St Valentine’s Day.’
‘Then maybe we should have the tiers of the cake shaped like hearts instead of circles,’ she blithely suggested.
He jolted forward, leaning his forearms and his elbows on the desk again, his gaze trying to penetrate the workings of her mind. Apparently she’d given him a reaction he had not anticipated and Merlina felt giddily triumphant.
‘St Valentine’s Day is for lovers,’ she trilled at him. ‘Hearts and flowers. Agreed?’
He sighed and slumped back in his chair, sardonically muttering, ‘Agreed. I take it you’ll do this for me.’
‘Oh, yes. I’ll do it, Jake. Trust me. I’ll do it.’
She was grinning as she sailed towards the door, gleefully knowing she’d beaten him at his own game this time. It didn’t occur to her that she might have just been sucked more deeply into the whirlpool. Her exhilaration said she was on top of it, making her way out. With a bang!
‘Don’t forget the memo,’ he threw at her grumpily.
She opened the door before looking back to resoundingly declare, ‘I never forget.’
Jake broodingly watched her step out of his office and close the door behind her, punctuating her exit-line.
Somehow she’d turned the tables on him.
Mel Rossi was, without a doubt, the most provoking woman he’d ever met!
He’d had her simmering, even boiling, on the edge of blowing her top, then Kaput!—all sweetness and light, ready to play ‘Happy Days Are Here Again.’
He’d have to come up with another idea because he refused to be defeated by her. He was going to break into the woman she was inside. It was just a matter of time.
CHAPTER THREE
JAKE had to hand it to his grandfather. He certainly knew how to throw a party. The old Vaucluse mansion and its magnificently landscaped grounds had been designed for hospitality on a grand scale and
