the information that he had once been married and that his wife was now dead.
Silver had sensed that Annie was torn between protecting Jake’s privacy and telling her more. She had been curious to know how his wife had died, but not curious enough to push Annie too hard.
She had other ways of finding out all there could possibly be to find out about him if she so chose… there were those admirable men of business in Switzerland who had looked after her father’s affairs so discreetly and who now looked after hers. But Jake Fitton’s past held no interest for her, and neither did his future. She had a use for him, that was all—a use that, once finished, would cease to be of any importance.
He let her walk past him without moving, looking stoically towards the window as though unaware of the tormenting, warm human presence of her.
Her clothes were in his bathroom. She opened the door, wondering what she would have done if he had given way and reached for her.
She didn’t like admitting that she could make mistakes, and had he reached for her she would have had to acknowledge that she had made one.
She didn’t want a man who wanted her, who felt desire for her… just as she didn’t want to know anything about Jake other than the fact that he suited her requirements admirably and that he disliked her enough to ensure that their relationship did not cross any of the barriers she intended to set around it.
Yes, he was ideal for her purpose, this cold, angry, embittered human being who looked at her with those hawk’s eyes that couldn’t see her, but that still held bitterness and dislike. She approved of that. She understood it and could relate to it. She needed him, and she meant to coerce him into submitting to that need.
SILVER waited out the twenty-four hours in her chalet. The oil sheikh had installed a Jacuzzi in a specially built extension that was raised on pillars some thirty feet above the ground.
The room was circular, one third of its wall-space taken up by specially treated glass that allowed those inside to look out, but no one to look in. From the Jacuzzi the view of the mountains was spectacular.
Low divans followed the curve of the glass wall, heaped with priceless rugs and silk cushions. The jacuzzi was large enough to hold an entire rugby team, and sometimes, when she relaxed in it, Silver wondered about the women who had shared it with the sheikh.
Had they enjoyed the experience? He was fifty-odd years old and fat, with heavy jowls and small, greedy eyes. His hands flashed with jewels and his beard smelled of perfume.
Silver had rented the chalet through an intermediary who had been instructed to describe her as a very wealthy middle-aged widow. She had not wanted any unheralded visits from the chalet’s owner while she was in residence, something which she had heard on the grapevine had happened to a beautiful, amoral socialite she knew, who had described the event with a shudder of distaste.
The socialite’s companion, a sleek, too pretty nineteen-year-old boy with homosexual tendencies, had laughed maliciously and taunted, ‘Oh, come on, you must have been tempted. They say he’s a very generous lover, and gives uncut stones as a mark of his appreciation. The more appreciative he is, the higher the carat of the diamond.’ And he had looked pointedly at the brilliantly cut stone she had been wearing on her finger.
Everyone had laughed until she had told him tartly, ‘This, my dear one, is a fake. He also punishes those who don’t please him by knocking them around or passing them on to his bodyguards.’
Silver had no real fears that he would arrive unexpectedly. She moved languidly in the warm water and then got out. The twenty-four hours were almost up, and she had heard nothing from Jake.
She dried herself, standing carelessly in front of the huge window, enjoying the room’s heat. A jungle of plants covered the back wall, turning the room into a luxurious green cavern of tropical indolence, an erotic contrast to the crisp sharpness of the snow outside.
Before she dressed she smoothed body lotion into her skin; it had the same expensive perfume as her scent. It left her skin velvet-soft and with the same lustrous gleam as expensive heavy satin.
Jake had another two hours. After that she would start packing for her return trip.
The phone rang, and she dropped the silk underwear she had just picked up, reaching for the receiver, subduing the wild dance of elation that sang through her blood.
‘Silver?’
It wasn’t Jake. She forced down her disappointment.
‘Annie. How are you?’
‘Fine. Can you make it for dinner on Friday? It will only be a fairly informal affair. Some old friends are passing through. Jake will be there…’
‘Does he know you’ve invited me?’ Silver questioned her, wondering if this was a skilful ploy of Jake’s to evade her time-limit and yet accept her terms at the same time.
‘He doesn’t even know yet that I’m going to invite him,’ Annie told her.
‘Mm… Friday… I’m afraid I won’t be able to make it. I won’t be here.’
There was a short silence, and then Annie queried almost sharply, ‘So you’re going through with it, then? I understand why you feel the way you do, but is it really wise? Wouldn’t it be better to simply leave things as they are? To put the past behind you?’
‘No,’ Silver told her with emotionless economy. They had been through this so many times before, ever since in that moment of weakness she had confessed to Annie how important it was to her that she reach the goal she had set herself—an impossible goal, some might claim; an unhealthy, even dangerous goal, others might say… especially Annie… especially if she knew the full truth. There were certain things that Silver had kept back from her, certain truths which she had suppressed because even now she could hardly accept them herself.
To have learned that the man she loved had not only betrayed her but was also involved in her father’s death, and in supplying drugs to other members of the wealthy and élite circles he moved in, had devastated her.
No, these were not things that could be told to anyone. Charles had boasted to her that he was beyond the reach of the law, that he had powerful friends who would protect him… well, she was going to show him that, though he might think himself invincible, he was vulnerable just as she had been vulnerable… just as her father had been vulnerable. She was going to bring him down… to destroy him… to…
‘Silver, think!’ Annie cautioned her. ‘If you do succeed, what then—what afterwards?’
‘I don’t care about afterwards,’ Silver told her truthfully.
In her cluttered, untidy office, Annie stared at the calendar on the wall. It depicted a paradisiacal Indian Ocean island, all pale yellow sands, emerald seas and waving palm trees. If she was truthful, she had never felt happy about doing Silver’s operation; that was why she had abandoned the lucrative field of cosmetic surgery in the first place. The puritan in her had balked at what she was doing… And yet there had been something about Silver that had called out to her for help… something in her very desolation and determination that she hadn’t
