LITMIR.BIZ

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if she hadn’t been so unbalanced by recognising the voice that had made all those phone calls.

      ‘No, it isn’t a joke, Annie,’ he said, and the way he said it made the panic start up again.

      She couldn’t breathe; she lay back against the upholstery, fighting to keep calm, fighting to breathe naturally. She closed her eyes and tried to shut out everything else, to stabilise herself.

      There was no point in losing control. There was nothing she could do at that moment; she was locked inside this car behind smoky glass windows which would hide her from anyone looking in from outside, so that she couldn’t even attract attention by waving or screaming. She would just have to sit here and wait until they arrived at wherever he was taking her.

      Her heart missed a beat. What would happen then? If only she knew what he meant to do to her. He didn’t look like a dangerous lunatic, or a criminal; in fact she had to admit he was strikingly attractive, if you liked Mediterranean colouring: the olive skin and black hair and dark, gleaming eyes. She always had, but then she had French blood, through her father, who had been born in France, of French descent, although he had spent most of his life in England.

      Annie had only visited France a couple of times herself. It had been the one country she wanted to visit as soon as she started travelling with the band. She had never been there while her father was alive, and she had promised herself she would one day go in search of the place where he had been born, in the Jura mountains, but there had never been time so far for such a long trip. When you were giving concerts you did the gig and moved on, unfortunately.

      Her father had been dark and olive-skinned with dark eyes, like this man. He hadn’t been tall, though; and he had been slightly built, not powerful. Annie’s long black hair had been inherited from him, but she had been born with her mother’s skin colour and green eyes. As a child she had often wished she had inherited her mother’s blonde hair, too, but now she was glad she was a mix of both parents. She wished now that she were even more like her father.

      She had adored her father, and his death when she was eleven had darkened her childhood, especially when her mother married again within a year. Annie had never liked her stepfather, and made no effort to hide her hostility; and Bernard Tyler had soon come to dislike her too. So had her mother.

      Joyce Tyler knew her daughter condemned her for marrying again so soon after her first husband’s death, and resented Annie’s open contempt. She had twin sons a couple of years later, and became totally engrossed in them. She had always been a man’s woman, never unkind, but largely indifferent to her daughter; now she was only interested in her sons.

      When Bernard Tyler began slapping Annie around, Joyce Tyler did nothing to stop him. In fact she bluntly told Annie it served her right. ‘If you were nice to him, he’d be nice to you. You only have yourself to blame.’

      By then fourteen, Annie began staying out of the house as much as possible, because she was afraid of Bernard Tyler as well as disliking him. She started living for the day when she would be old enough to leave home for good. When she met Philip and he offered her a career in music she packed a case with everything she valued and left, knowing that her mother wouldn’t even think about her again, and that Bernard and his two sons would be glad to see her go.

      When she began to be well-known they had got in touch with her to ask her to lend them some money, offering a long, rambling story about financial hardship as an excuse, but Philip had dealt with that, as he did with all her financial affairs. They had been given tickets for a concert soon afterwards, and Annie had seen them briefly that night, but then they had vanished again, no doubt because Philip made it clear that he wasn’t paying them any more large sums of money; and she had been relieved, yet that reminder of past misery had made her unhappy for days.

      Her life would have been so different if her father hadn’t died so young, her mother hadn’t then married Bernard Tyler. Annie’s happy childhood had ended at the age of eleven; until she was seventeen she had been lonely and un-happy. Even to remember those years now was to feel greyness steal over her. She frowned, pushing the memories away.

      ‘You’re very quiet,’ the driver said, and she started, looking at him again, but all she could see was his profile and the dark sweep of his lashes.

      ‘I was thinking. My friends are going to be very upset and worried when I don’t arrive. They’ll wonder what on earth has happened to me.’

      ‘They’ll soon find out.’ His voice was cool, dismissive, and she flinched.

      ‘What does that mean? Will you ring them?’ Saying what, though? Telling them that she had been kidnapped and they would have to pay a large ransom to get her back?

      She wished she could see his face properly instead of merely getting glimpses now and then. People’s eyes usually told you a lot about them, but that wasn’t true about this man. His eyes were like bottomless wells: deep, lustrous, impossible to plumb. And yet she was beginning to feel an odd teasing familiarity...

      Had they ever met before? she wondered. Or had he cleverly managed to plant the idea that she knew him in her head subliminally, with his phone calls, and ever since he picked her up at the airport?

      The limousine slowed, turned at right angles, and left the road on which they had been travelling. Annie looked out and upwards, seeing that they were driving between deep, sunk green banks from which trees and bushes sprang, over a winding, unmade road.

      No! she realised; this wasn’t a road—it was a driveway leading up to a house. A moment later the house itself came into view: not a large house, but detached, with trees and a garden around it, two-storeyed, with mossy pink tiles on the roof, the walls painted white and the closed shutters over every window painted black.

      As the car halted outside the front door Annie tried to make out whether there were any other houses in view, and felt her heart sink as she saw that the white house stood on the edge of some sort of wood, which lay behind it, and that there were only fields in front of it. It could hardly have been more isolated. She couldn’t see another house anywhere.

      Nerves jumped under her skin. She bit her lip, feeling real fear growing inside her.

      The driver got out and came round to open her door. Annie stayed obstinately on the seat, her chin up, defying him.

      ‘I’m not getting out; I’m staying here until you drive me back to Paris. Take me back to Paris and I’ll forget this ever happened, but if you don’t...’

      He reached one long arm into the car, took her by the hand, and jerked her forwards. He took her by surprise, and he was even more powerful than he looked. She couldn’t resist the tug he gave her. She almost fell off the seat, and the next minute had been scooped up by his other arm going round her waist, lifting her off her feet and out of the car, kicking and struggling helplessly.

      He carried her up the steps to the front door, holding her under his arm as if she were a child, ignoring her increasingly wild attempts to escape. While he was unlocking the door Annie wrenched her head round and bit his hand; he gave a stifled grunt of pain, but didn’t let go of her until they were inside the house and he had kicked the front door shut behind them.

      Slowly he lowered her feet to the floor, his arm still round her waist, holding her tightly against him so that she helplessly slithered down his body, aware of every slow, deliberate contact, her breasts brushing his chest, their thighs touching, the warmth of his skin reaching her through their clothes. The effect was electrifying. She didn’t want to feel it, but she did: a deep physical wrench that made her almost giddy. Breathless and shuddering, she tried to push away once she was standing up, on her feet, but his arm was immovable; she couldn’t break the lock he had on her. Her long black hair dishevelled, a mass of it falling over her face, she watched him through it, her almond-green eyes like the eyes of a scared child in the dark.

      He lifted the hand she had bitten, looked at it. So did Annie. ‘I’m bleeding,’ he said, sounding surprised. ‘You have sharp little teeth.’

      And then he absently put out his pink tongue-tip and licked the blood away.

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