he said in a deceptively mild voice. ‘Don’t go fainting on me, now. I have too many questions to ask.’ He smiled with dangerous menace. ‘And far too many answers you’re just bursting to give.’
‘I’ll get in touch with Andy,’ she said, reaching across to the telephone at the side of her bed, but before she could pick up the receiver his hand was over hers like a vice, stopping her.
‘Not so fast, Miss Summers. You’re in my house and you’re going to listen to what I have to say. Do you read me loud and clear? And we’ll just wait for my brother to return. I’m sure he’d far rather appreciate the surprise.’
‘Your hand? Please remove it. I don’t appreciate the caveman approach.’
Another of those deep, velvety, unsettling laughs, but he removed his hand and stood back.
‘A girl with spirit. Unusual for my brother.’
‘And what is that supposed to mean?’ Jade asked quickly, shooting back to the furthest edge of the bed just in case he got it into his head to try another lunge at her. The man seemed to have a bad effect on her nervous system, and she was rapidly discovering that the closer he got, the worse the effect was.
‘It means that the few trollops he’s ever had, to my knowledge, have all been watery, insignificant bores with the personalities of wet rags.’
Jade sighed. She had never thought that she would meet Curtis Greene. When she and Andy had moved into his house he had assured her that his brother was a workaholic, firmly ensconced in the fast-living bowels of Manhattan, and rarely came to London. When he did there would be advance notice, and they would simply move out until he had cleared off.
He clearly disliked his older brother, even though she had detected a certain awe and admiration in his voice whenever his name was mentioned, and conversations about him had been limited.
‘So I think it’s question-and-answer time, Miss Summers, don’t you?’ No wonder he had failed to be intimidated by her withering looks, she thought miserably. Lord of the house and master of the withering look, himself. The sort of man who would fail to be intimidated by a charging rhino, never mind a diminutive blonde with more lip than common sense.
‘And, charming though the bedroom is, I don’t think it’s quite the place for a conversation.’ He began walking towards the door, looking around only when he was standing in the doorway. ‘Why don’t we adjourn to the sitting room? We’ll be far more comfortable there. Unless, of course, you’re the sort who finds bedrooms the best place to be…?’
Jade sprang out of the bed, barely sparing him a glance, her arms protectively folded across her chest, and brushed past him, irritated to find that, despite his high-handed, despicable, loathsome arrogance, she still found that fleeting physical contact with his shirt slightly unnerving.
‘I don’t care who you are,’ was her opening shot, as soon as they were in the sitting room, ‘I don’t like your attitude. You may think it’s a whizz threatening people but it won’t work on me. And rubbing my nose in the fact that this is your house and I’m a trespasser isn’t going to work either. I have no problem with packing up my things and moving out.’
Her bank manager might find it a little worrying, she thought, but she had enough money saved from her last job to see her through finding a place to rent. And working while she studied was hardly inconceivable. The offer from Andy to share this house, with space for her to paint and only their bills and food to cover, had been manna from heaven, but if it involved bowing and scraping to the brute in front of her, then forget it.
‘Spirited, and full of indignant, outraged pride,’ was his only comment, as he moved to one of the chairs and sat down. Like his brother, Curtis Greene paid scant attention to his surroundings, and, like his brother, he fitted in, from the casual elegance of his clothes to the unspoken assumption of authority he exuded. But unlike his brother, who was a charming and loveable player, Curtis Greene was neither charming nor loveable. He was a shaker and mover whom, she imagined, moved through life playing by his rules and expecting the rest of the world to fall obediently in line.
‘Why don’t you drop the act, Miss Summers? It’s just the two of us now, and we both know what you are.’
Jade tentatively perched on the chair furthest from his and stared at him in bewilderment.
‘An art student,’ she said after a while.
‘So-called.’
‘You can telephone the college in London and confirm it,’ she told him coldly. ‘What do you think I am, if not an art student? Do you think that I sit at the kitchen table every morning with a load of phoney drawings scattered around me, idly waiting for someone to drop by so that I can launch into a string of pathological lies?’ She gave a short, derisive laugh and his mouth tightened.
‘You have a brain and a vocabulary,’ he mused aloud. ‘Curiouser and curiouser.’ He frowned thoughtfully, as though genuinely baffled by the phenomenon, but she wasn’t fooled for a minute. This series of observations was all linked to his own agenda, and she was pretty sure that when she discovered what the agenda was she wasn’t going to like it.
‘Now what would my brother see in you?’
Poor Andy, she thought. If he had spent a lifetime coping with this sort of condescending attitude. No wonder the shutters came down every time he mentioned the name Curtis.
‘Just get to the point, Mr Greene, so that I can pack my bags and leave.’
‘Now, you don’t really want to do that, do you?’
‘Well, no,’ Jade agreed, flummoxed. ‘But it is your house, as you pointed out…’
With a sudden movement he stripped off the thick cream sweater to reveal a checked shirt in muted greens and creams and browns. Very slowly he began to roll back the sleeves, exposing strong forearms, liberally sprinkled with fine, dark hair. Jade watched, mesmerised. For a big man, his movements were as graceful as a cat’s.
‘How did you meet my brother?’ he asked conversationally, pausing briefly to glance in her direction, then sitting back in the chair, his head tilted backwards so that his eyes became narrowed, watchful slits.
Had Andy mentioned anything to him about the counselling? she wondered. Doubtful. Aside from Christmas cards and the occasional letter, he’d said that their communications had always been restricted to faxes and E-mails about the company.
‘Oh, we met through mutual friends,’ she said vaguely.
‘What mutual friends might those be?’
‘None that you would know,’ she answered shortly.
‘So you met and…what? Instantly hit it off? Started dating?’
‘We did instantly hit it off, yes,’ she replied uneasily. She was being led somewhere and she didn’t like the feeling. She got the impression that every word she spoke was ensnaring her yet further in whatever ambush he had surreptitiously laid down.
‘And then you moved in? I thought Andy refused to have anything to do with this house? Hasn’t he got his own flat in the Barbican? And what about you? Where were you living?’
‘I don’t know whether he refused to
