Not Even for Love (11 page)

“Moffett,” the woman supplied, and dug into Reeves’s ribs with her elbow as though to say, You naughty boy. Jordan clenched her fists. Couldn’t the woman stand upright? Must she
recline
against Reeves that way?

“Yes, Diane Moffett,” Reeves said, and now he looked at Jordan with a triumphant gleam in his eyes. “Diane, this is Mrs. Jordan Hadlock and Mr. Helmut Eckherdt. Diane’s practically a neighbor of mine. She’s from Los Angeles. Isn’t it lucky we ran into each other this afternoon?”

Jordan couldn’t bear to look at his gloating expression any longer and shifted her eyes to the woman, who she thought seemed incredibly stupid. “Hello, Miss Moffett,” she said with cold politeness.

“Hi. I like your dress,” the woman replied cheekily.

“Thank you.” Jordan was glad she had worn this particular dress because she knew it was flattering. It was black sleeveless satin with a ruffled collar that plunged deeply between her breasts. Her waist was cinched with a shocking pink cummerbund. She had pulled her hair into a sleek knot at the back of her neck. Diamond studs in her ears were her only jewelry. Except for Helmut’s ring.

“We were on our way to the bar for a nightcap. We’d love for you to join us,” Reeves said.

Jordan almost gasped at his audacity. Rage boiled up in her chest until the pressure was painful. The man was totally without morals. How
could
he? How could he pick up another woman so soon after leaving her? Or was that his custom? Out of sight, out of mind? And he had had the gall to play the injured party just a few hours ago!

Helmut turned to her and asked, “Jordan?”

“I really don’t think so, Helmut. We’ve had such a full day, with this morning on the mountain …” Her voice trailed off, seemingly with a regretful declination. Actually, the memory of the intimacy she and Reeves had shared in the cable car and at the summit of the mountain had clogged her throat with remorse, and speech was rendered impossible.

“Please excuse us, Reeves, Miss Moffett.” Helmut bowed to them. “It seems that my lady is tired. I’d better take her home.” He smiled graciously and shook hands with Reeves. He raised the back of Diane Moffett’s hand to his lips and kissed it lightly. She giggled.

“Good night then, Helmut, Jordan,” Reeves said.

“Good night,” Jordan mumbled, and risked looking at him. That was a mistake. His lips were curled derisively and his eyes mocked her. Clearly he was saying,
Coward.

She raised her chin haughtily as she walked away under the protective guidance of Helmut’s arm. But on the inside her heart was breaking. She had been right all along. He was out for thrills. Their night together during the storm had meant no more to him than this redhaired pickup did tonight.

Jordan all but crumpled into the back seat of the limousine and was silent during the ride home. She was amazed at her own absolute despondency. Had this man come to mean so much to her that the idea of him with another woman could reduce her to this stratum of misery?

Even when Helmut escorted her the few remaining blocks through the alleys of the old town, she didn’t feel inclined to speak. He attributed her silence to fatigue.

While her lips remained sealed, her mind was working furiously. She argued with herself. She really should tell Helmut now that she didn’t intend to marry him. He had asked her earlier in the evening if she had notified her parents yet of their engagement. Evasively, she had reminded him of how busy they had been the past couple of days. He was anxious to make their engagement public.

Somehow, though, she didn’t have the energy for such an encounter tonight. He wouldn’t take her refusal lying down. There would be arguments to meet, and she didn’t think she could manage them. When she felt stronger, when Reeves was banished from her mind, then she would talk to Helmut. Until then…

At her door she listlessly endured his good-night embraces. He was a handsome, virile man. His love affairs were legion. Why didn’t his mouth excite her? His hands didn’t touch her with the same gentle strength that bespoke passion and tenderness at the same time. When he held her, her body didn’t seem to fit against his like the second half of a whole.

After he had left her and was dispiritedly climbing the dark stairs, she chided herself for not feeling more affection for Helmut. He had never shown her anything but kindness. Now he had rescued her from further involvement with an unscrupulous man like Reeves Grant. She should be grateful to Helmut for that. Shouldn’t she?

As she got into bed, she tried forcibly to concentrate on Helmut and his generosity. Her brain refused. All she could think of was Reeves with that Diane person and how the silly creature had clung to him. Was he touching her, kissing her? Were his lips whispering those same words he had breathed into her ear as they made love? No! She couldn’t bear it. She’d go crazy if she thought of him loving that woman. She’d think of something else.

Her parents. The bookshop. Hot chocolate. Anything.

Reeves. Reeves. Reeves.

Just as she was falling asleep, she was marveling at how warm she had felt in the security of his arms despite the misty-gray cold on the top of the mountain.

“Hello,” she muttered groggily into the receiver of the telephone. It had rung several times before she realized it wasn’t part of her dream. She fumbled for it in the darkness, knocking a book and her alarm clock to the floor before locating it.

“Jordan? Were you asleep?”

“Bill?” She yawned around the name of her supervisor in London. “I…yes… what time is it?”

“I’m sorry, babe, but I wanted to call and extend my congratulations. Say, baby, this is great news. Someday I want you to tell Uncle Bill how you swung it.”

She was wrong. This
was
a dream. She had no idea why her boss would be calling this early in the morning and talking to her so nonsensically. “What are you talking about?” she asked, half into the phone and half into her pillow.

“Come on, Jordan, doll, this is your Bill. I read about your engagement in the
Times.
What a coup. Helmut Eckherdt! When’s the big day? Am I invited to the nuptials? I promise to be on my best behavior. I won’t get drunk. I won’t belch out loud. I won’t use crude to abusive language. I won’t scratch anything below my waist. I won’t—”

“Bill,” she interrupted, instantly alert. “Did you say you read about my engagement to Helmut in the
Times
? When?”

“Last night.”

Jordan was stunned speechless. “Are you sure? I mean, how can that be?”

“I don’t know, baby, but here it is on the third page in black and white. I’m looking at it now and I’m stone sober. There’s a two-column article about your romance, complete with a thorough biography of both of you. The writer played up the Cinderella aspect of the story—you know, the beautiful shop girl and the handsome prince angle.”

Her mouth was dry and her hands were shaking. “Wh… whose by-line is on the piece?”

“James Parker. He’s a UPI reporter.”

“UPI!” she cried incredulously. The story could feasibly go all over the world, and with Helmut’s notoriety, it probably would. “You say the article thoroughly discusses me?”

“In detail, baby. Your childhood, family—you know, the whole schmear.”

When Bill had first told her of the article, an inkling of suspicion had flickered in her mind. Now it became full-blown conviction. Who else knew about her background? To whom had she recently revealed the details of her life? Who had prodded her with personal questions, which she had answered unreservedly. Who did she know who was even remotely involved in journalism?

Reeves Grant.

“I have to go, Bill,” she said quickly, and bounded out of bed.

“Just a minute, baby. I wanted to tell you not to worry about the newsstand. Your replacement will be arriving in the next few weeks.”

“My replacement!” she shrieked, and sank back onto the bed. “My replacement?”

“Well, sure, doll. Somehow I can’t see the wife of a billionaire working in a bookstore, can you? You’ll be jetting all over the world and—”

“Bill, you don’t understand,” she said, trying to get a grip on the sanity she felt seeping from her mind. “I’m not marrying Helmut Eckherdt. I’m not marrying anybody.”

“But it says right here—”

“I don’t give a damn what it says!” she exclaimed angrily. “I’m not marrying him. The story is a mistake. I have been seeing him, but that’s all.”

“What about a gargantuan diamond engagement ring you’re reported to be wearing?”

She sighed and rubbed her forehead with her palm. “I am wearing one, but—”

“Well, then?”

“I…It… Oh, hell, Bill, it’s too hard to explain. Just believe me. I’m not getting married, so you can keep my ‘replacement’ in London. Now I’ve got to go—”

“Wait a minute, Jordan.” He halted her again. She heard him sigh deeply, ominously, before he said quietly, “Baby, it’s not going to be that simple. You see, old man Bauerman has been after me for months to find a job on the Continent for his daughter. She’s bored with tea parties and fox hunting and suddenly wants to go to work. Nothing too taxing, you understand—just something to keep her occupied for a while. When I read this article about you last night, I thought your job would be perfect for her. So I called the old man—”

“And gave his daughter my job,” she finished for him.

“Well, sort of, yeah.”

“Sort of?”

“Well, yeah. She’s been promised your job.”

A heavy silence hung between them. Jordan was stupefied. What Bill had just told her couldn’t be true, yet it was. She had lost her job to Mr. Bauerman’s daughter. Mr. Bauer-man owned a publishing house as well as the chain of English newsstands she worked for. Things like this happened all the time in the business world. But not to Jordan Had-lock. And it hurt. And it was all Reeves Grant’s fault.

“Say, doll, I’m sorry, but—”

“Never mind, Bill. I’ve got to go now. Call me back later.”

Without waiting for his response, she hung up. For long moments she sat on the edge of her bed, her hand still on the receiver of the telephone, willing that everything she had heard over it wasn’t true. But it was. An announcement of a wedding that would never take place was going to be plastered on newspapers all over the world. She had been fired from her job.

As she mentally tallied the consequences of Reeves’s deceit, a belated fury replaced her bemusement. She balled her fists tightly until her nails made deep half moons in the palms of her hands. “Bastard,” she hissed.

She flew off the bed, flinging off her nightgown and rifling through a drawer for a pair of panties. She stepped into them hurriedly and slid on a pair of jeans. She jerked a ski sweater off a hanger in the closet and pulled it on over her head. Her feet were crammed, without the benefit of socks or stockings, into a pair of loafers.

In the bathroom she performed a cursory ablution of face and hands, brushed her teeth, applied a minimum amount of makeup, and haphazardly raked a brush through her thick hair.

Running through her bedroom, she grabbed a jacket and her purse and then dashed down the stairs. She locked the door of the bookstore behind her before quickly turning down the alley into the early-dawn gloom.

Taxis weren’t out this early in the morning so she was forced to reach her destination on foot. She didn’t mind. Angry determination was a fuel that propelled her more strongly with each footstep. Her breath frosted on the air, but she was untouched by the cold as she marched through the streets of Lucerne.

The row of hotels across the street from the lake was quiet and still. The wide verandas that fronted most of them were empty of loungers who could be found there later in the day, sipping drinks and taking in the scenery.

The lobby of the Europa was vacant except for two maids who were polishing mirrors and dusting furniture. The concierge was sorting through registry cards when she strode toward the desk and planted her hands flat on the smooth marble surface of the countertop.

“What room is Mr. Reeves Grant in?” she demanded.

The concierge raised his eyebrows in query and studied her disheveled appearance. “I beg your pardon?” he asked in accented English.

His wariness cautioned Jordan and she made herself smile beguilingly. “I know I must look a fright, but I’ve been driving all night to surprise him. He’s my… friend,” she added with deliberate insinuation. “You understand, don’t you?” Her eyelashes batted down over the fiery gray eyes and the man was helpless.

“Y …Yes, of course. He…uh…let’s see now. Room four twenty-nine. Shall I ring him?”

“No!” she said quickly. Then she ducked her head shyly and swallowed her disgust. “I want to surprise him.”

The concierge grinned lustily. He was a true romantic. “The elevators are to your right,” he whispered, as though they were conspirators.

“Thank you,” she said over her shoulder, for she was already crossing the lobby with hurried footsteps. After what must be the slowest elevator in the world finally ground to a halt, she stepped into it and pressed the button for the fourth floor. As it ascended, she rehearsed the aspersions she was going to heap on him.

When the doors slid open, she barged out and stormed down the hallway, realized she was going the wrong way, spun around, and struck off in the opposite direction until she stood outside his room.

Her knock was none too gentle. It echoed down the long narrow corridor. She’d be lucky if no one else peeked out their door to see who was behaving with such noisy rudeness so early in the morning.

The occupant of Room 429 hadn’t stirred, so she knocked again with more emphasis. There was a rustling of covers and suddenly Jordan realized that he might not be alone. Her heart lurched sickly at that thought, but she stubbornly raised her chin. She had come to tell him just what she thought of him, and she didn’t care if she had an audience.

Resolution made her next knock on the heavy wooden door thunderous. This time she heard a mumbled curse and the squeaking of a mattress. Soft footsteps brought him to the other side of the door.

“Yes?” It was more a belligerent growl than a word.