Freedom to Love Read online

  ‘I couldn’t help thinking the same as that woman. I’d much rather be kissed by you than her husband, too,’ she admitted.

  The tension seemed to leave his body. ‘I shouldn’t let you anger me. Come on,’ he put his arm about her shoulders, ‘it should only take us a couple of hours to get to the bottom.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Katy protested. ‘Gemma and Gerald will be waiting for me.’

  ‘Then they’ll just have to wait.’

  ‘Yes, but—’

  ‘Walk, Katy.’

  They talked little on the way down, as the narrowness of the trail did not allow them to walk side by side in comfort. Katy was beginning to feel haunted by this man. Wherever she went he seemed to be there, not that he seemed any happier to see her than she was him.

  Why had he asked her to go with him? Maybe he was bored with his own company already; he probably had a woman in his bed every night when he was at home. Much as she wanted to get away from Gemma and Gerald’s loving company she couldn’t go with Adam Wild. She wasn’t going to become his plaything.

  They reached the car park exactly one hour and forty-five minutes later, Katy completely out of breath, with flushed cheeks and fever-bright eyes, and Adam Wild looking as if he had been for an afternoon stroll. So much for him being out of condition.

  As he had been walking in front of her most of the time she had had ample opportunity to look at him without fear of his mocking her. He was lean and fit, firmly muscled, which didn’t point to him leading the disreputable life she had accused him of. He might be cynical about women but that didn’t mean he was dissipated. In fact, she was now sure he wasn’t. He was just a very attractive man who got sick and tired of women throwing themselves at him, especially when he suspected their motives. If only he would realise he was attractive enough to have those women chase him even without the added bonus of him possibly being able to make them famous through his expert camerawork.

  Katy brought herself up with a start. This wouldn’t do, she couldn’t become attracted to him. He was too old for her, for one thing, even older than his thirty-six years in experience, and besides, he had no real use for women, no respect for them. They were just toys to him, and when he became bored with a certain toy he just replaced it.

  ‘Where on earth have you been?’ Gemma appeared at her side, a furiously angry Gemma, her eyes sparkling with temper. ‘We’ve been waiting ages for you. You’re over an hour late,’ she accused.

  Katy looked guiltily down at her mud-spattered shoes. ‘Yes, well—You see—’

  ‘It was my fault, I’m afraid,’ Adam intervened smoothly. ‘I delayed her.’.

  Gemma’s eyes widened with recognition and she looked suspiciously at Katy. ‘You didn’t tell us you were meeting Mr Wild,’ she said tightly.

  ‘Oh, but I—’

  ‘Don’t bother to explain,’ her sister sighed, obviously misunderstanding the reason for Katy’s flushed and dishevelled appearance. ‘We’ll be waiting for you over there.’ She marched off to join Gerald, who was already seated in the camper.

  ‘Whoops!’ Adam smiled, looking down at Katy’s woebegone face. ‘Hey, cheer up, it was only an hour.’

  ‘You don’t understand,’ she mumbled.

  ‘Sure I do. They’ll make your life a misery from now on.’ He gently lifted her head by placing a finger under her chin. ‘Come with me, Katy,’ he repeated his offer of earlier. ‘I’m sure you would—enjoy yourself more with me.’

  She flushed. ‘I’m sure I would,’ she swung away from him. ‘I have to go now. I—Thank you for today.’

  He shrugged and stepped back. ‘My pleasure,’ he drawled dryly. ‘It would be too much of a coincidence for us to meet again, so don’t forget to call me when you get back to London. Jud agreed with me about your body.’

  Katy gasped. ‘You told him? Oh God,’ she groaned, ‘how embarrassing!’

  ‘It would only be that if you saw him again, and I doubt there’s any likelihood of that.’

  ‘Thank God!’ Her eyes glittered palely grey. ‘You really are outrageous. Don’t you ever see women as anything other than bodies?’

  His look was cold. ‘They have little else to recommend them.’

  ‘Thanks very much!’ She spun on her heel and walked away. Hateful, hateful man! She had thought their truce too good to last.

  Gemma and Gerald’s displeasure could be felt when she got into the camper, although they maintained a stony silence until they got back to the campsite, when Gemma turned on her angrily. ‘The next time you arrange to meet that man you might have the decency to tell us. We checked with the people at the chair-lift that you’d gone up the mountain, but they didn’t remember you coming down again. We were just about to come up there ourselves.’

  ‘We walked down,’ Katy mumbled, knowing that she deserved their anger. She would have been furious if they had kept her waiting. ‘But I didn’t arrange to meet him,’ she defended. ‘It was purely accidental.’

  Gemma scoffed her disbelief of that and Katy didn’t argue with her. After that evening in her hotel room the evidence was too damning. Instead she changed the subject. ‘Are you staying here again tonight?’

  ‘We might as well,’ came Gerald’s grumbling reply. ‘It’s too late to get down to Radium Hot Springs today.’

  Her fault. ‘Did you enjoy your swim?’ she tried again.

  ‘It was lovely.’ Gemma thawed a little. ‘You’ll have to try it tomorrow.’

  ‘Maybe.’ Katy heaved an inward sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted to do in the confined space of the camper was to fall out with her sister and Gerald. Besides, she had been in the wrong.

  She played it safe that night, opting to go for a walk when Gemma and Gerald decided to go to bed. Perhaps they would be asleep by the time she got back. She walked down the road and into the wood, finding the silence eerie this time of night. But the smell of the pines was intoxieating, and she watched in fascination as a couple of deer fed in a clearing. She forgot the time, forgot everything but the complete naturalness of the animals as they played, unaware of her presence there.

  It was very late when she went back, and she had trouble finding the camper at first. It was in darkness and she let herself in quietly, congratulating herself on her evasive tactics. She didn’t feel in quite such a good humour when she saw her sleeping bag neatly tied up and stacked in the corner of her bunk, her nightgown missing completely. Gerald’s idea of a joke, no doubt. Well, she didn’t think it at all funny as she stumbled about in the darkness. It would serve them right if she went out there and gave them a piece of her mind!

  She was so angry that she had trouble falling asleep, her resentment towards them immense, so that it was almost light before she finally fell asleep. She was woken up by the sound of the engine starting up, and she snuggled down into her sleeping bag before falling asleep again. If they couldn’t be bothered to give her breakfast then she couldn’t be bothered to get out of bed.

  It was almost lunchtime when she woke up again, Gerald having apparently found somewhere for them to eat. She sat up, yawning, the rumblings of her stomach telling her she was ready for a meal. At least Gerald seemed to be in a good humour this morning, whistling to himself, and was that coffee she smelt? She hoped so.

  She brightened as a knock came on the door. ‘Come in!’ She hastily straightened the sleeping bag to cover her nakedness.

  ‘Here,’ a coffee cup appeared in front of her. ‘And make the most of it—after today I’ll expect you to get me coffee in bed.’

  All colour had drained from Katy’s face, and she looked up into the mockingly sensual face of Adam Wild.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  IT couldn’t be, not Adam Wild! But it was, and looking just as handsome as usual, a dark blue shirt tucked into the low waistband of his tight-fitting denims.

  The cup in Katy’s hand shook so much that the coffee spilt over into the saucer. ‘What are you doing here?’ she collected her scattered wits enough to
ask.

  He shrugged, making no effort to hide his interest in her nakedness inside the sleeping bag. ‘I’m living here—for the moment.’

  ‘Here?’ she repeated dazedly. ‘But Gemma and Gerald—’

  ‘Are probably still in Banff,’ he finished in a bored voice. ‘Come on, lazybones, it’s time for lunch. Or do you want me to eat you instead?’ His deep blue eyes caressed her.

  ‘Certainly not!’ Katy clutched the cover to her. ‘How can Gemma and Gerald still be in Banff? If they were I would still be with them. Why can’t you leave me alone, stop following me!’

  ’I’m following you? My dear Katy, you’ve done nothing but make a nuisance of yourself since we first met. And it would seem,’ anger entered his voice, ‘that once again you’ve mucked things up—for want of a better word,’ he added dryly. ‘Just where the hell do you think you are?’

  ‘Radium Hot Springs?’ she suggested hopefully.

  Adam sighed impatiently, running a hand absently through the thick darkness of his over-long hair. ‘That wasn’t what I meant. Where do you think you are at this precise moment?’

  ‘In bed, in the camper we hired,’ she frowned her puzzlement.

  ‘Half right. Oh God, what a bloody stupid female you are!’ he raised his eyes heavenwards. ‘You are in bed, that part is right, but this happens to be my camper—or at least Jud’s, which he’s lent me for the duration of my stay here.’

  Grey eyes opened wide with fear. ‘You—your camper? But I—it can’t be,’ she protested weakly.

  ‘But it is,’ he mocked tersely. ‘Get out of bed and see for yourself. You’ll find a lot of personal changes in the main part of the vehicle, enough to convince you I haven’t stolen your sister’s camper and dumped them in some deserted wood.’

  Colour flooded her pale cheeks. ‘I—I can’t get out of bed, not until you leave. I—I don’t have any clothes on.’

  ‘That doesn’t bother me, sweetie,’ he smiled, eyeing her expectantly.

  ‘Well, it bothers me! I’d like some privacy while I dress, if you don’t mind—even if you do mind,’ she added before he could taunt her again.

  ‘Okay,’ he gave a careless shrug, as if one more female body was no novelty to him. ‘But don’t be long.’

  Katy must have set the record for getting dressed, terrified he would open the door before she had her clothes on. This couldn’t be Jud Turner’s camper, it just couldn’t be! And yet she had a dreadful feeling that it was, and that the rolled-up sleeping bag and absent nightgown were not due to a practical joke at all.

  When she stepped out into the main living area it was to find it as Adam Wild had said she would, the kitchen area completely different, and the dinette a permanent fixture instead of the conversion to a double bed that they had. Also there were posters stuck on every available piece of wall, some of them showing nude women.

  Katy sank down on to the luxury leather sofa, another extra, feeling as if her legs would no longer support her. ‘Oh God,’ she groaned. ‘This really is Jud Turner’s camper.’

  ‘Right down to the nudes,’ Adam mocked, handing her the coffee she hadn’t drunk earlier. ‘I’ve heated it up for you.’

  She took a sip, a fiery liquid passing down her throat and burning her as it went. ‘My God,’ she choked, ‘what did you put in it?’ She screwed up her face.

  ‘Whisky,’ he grinned. ‘I told you I’d heated it up. I thought you might need the whisky to help you over your shock.’

  Katy gave him a look of intense dislike, and put the coffee cup down on the side. ‘I’m not in shock. Now it seems there’s been some sort of mistake—’

  ‘And you made it!’

  She glared at him. ‘So it would appear. Just where are we?’

  ‘At a restaurant just after the turn-off for Red Deer. I stopped for petrol and thought we could eat at the same time.’

  ‘Red Deer?’ she echoed dully. ‘But that’s—’

  ‘In the opposite direction to Radium Hot Springs,’ he finished for her.

  ‘Oh no!’ again she groaned. Suddenly she frowned. ‘You said you thought we could eat—did you know I was here all the time?’

  ‘Sure,’ he nodded.

  ‘How did you know?’

  ‘I heard you crashing about last night as you made yourself comfortable in the bedroom. I sleep in the double bed over the driving area, I’m used to more room than there is in a bunk bed.’

  ‘You heard me? And yet you said nothing?’ she said shrilly.

  ‘It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind.’

  ‘About what did I change my mind?’

  He sighed. ‘About making the rest of the trip with me.’

  Katy blushed, her eyes flaring with anger. ‘I took a walk,’ she told him resentfully. ‘I got slightly lost and must have got into the wrong camper, I did not change my mind about coming with you.’

  ‘You took a walk?’ he exploded, every muscle tensed with anger. ‘Where?’ he demanded to know.

  Her eyes were wide. ‘Just in the woods a little way. I saw some deer and—’

  ‘You wandered off into the forest?’ There could be no doubt about his anger now, his face harsh. ‘You just walked in there like you were taking a Sunday afternoon stroll in a park in England?’

  ‘I was perfectly safe.’

  ‘Safe?’ he derided tautly. ‘Safe!’ His fingers dug into her arms as he pulled her roughly to her feet. ‘You thought yourself safe out there with wild bears roaming about! Maybe you were right, you would certainly be safer with one of them at this moment than you are with me. Of all the stupid, idiotic—My God, Katy!’ he groaned before his mouth ground down on hers in a kiss that was meant to cause pain—and did.

  Katy had gone numb at his mention of the bears, offering no resistance as his mouth plundered hers, his arms crushing her to the hardness of his body. One hand moved up to grasp a handful of her hair, holding her head immobile as he continued to punish her with the cruelty of his mouth, the fingers of his other hand still pressed painfully into her arm.

  His eyes were glittering, his breathing laboured when he at least released her. He put her away from him with a disgusted look. ‘Did you think yourself safe, or did you just think all those warnings about bears were a joke?’ he snapped.

  She felt dazed, and not just by the mention of the bears. ‘I—We heard about the attack, of course, but—’

  ‘You just dismissed it,’ Adam flared. ‘You don’t just dismiss the bears in these parks, they’re the real thing. And you keep the hell out of their way!’

  ‘But the attack wasn’t in Banff, it was at Lake Louise, and—’

  ‘And you think that’s the only bear in the park?’ He shook his head disgustedly. ‘There are hundreds of them here, and a tasty little morsel like you might make a nice variation on their diet. The last person who went for a little stroll at night had his leg ripped off for his trouble.’ His gaze passed down the length of her slender legs clearly outlined in her denims. ‘You wouldn’t look so good with only one leg,’ he said cruelly.

  Katy was white with reaction now. She had been out for over an hour last night, an hour when a bear could have—Oh God, she felt sick!

  ‘Not in here,’ Adam said unsympathetically. ‘Use the bathroom if you have to.’

  She swallowed hard, fighting down the nausea. ‘I’m all right now,’ she said weakly.

  ‘Then you damn well didn’t ought to be! Haven’t you read the leaflets? No one, but no one, tempts fate in that way.’

  ‘All right!’ She pushed her tangled hair out of her face, wanting to brush it, but was almost frightened to move with Adam in this mood. ‘So I shouldn’t have gone for that walk, I think you’ve made your point.’

  ‘I’d better have,’ he threatened darkly. ‘What on earth were you doing walking that time of night? Why—Ah, I see it all now,’ he said knowingly. ‘You wanted to get away from the nocturnal murmurings of your sister and her boy-friend.’

 
Colour flooded her cheeks. ‘I just wanted some air,’ she defended. ‘I can’t understand how I got back in the wrong camper.’

  ‘Quite easily, I should imagine. A lot of them look alike. This is pretty standard—from the outside. I don’t suppose you noticed the different interior in the dark.’

  She shivered. ‘I could have got in with anyone!’

  ‘I doubt it,’ Adam said dryly. ‘Not the amount of noise you made. I only let you stay because I thought you wanted to be here.’

  ‘And now you know I don’t?’ At last she-dared to get her brush out of her handbag and put some order to her tangled tresses. At least she had her handbag with her, had her money and some basic cosmetics—not that she had thought to use any of the latter, she had been in too much of a hurry. She doubted Adam Wild was accustomed to seeing women who weren’t perfectly made up and groomed. His women were always models, very occasionally actresses, and she couldn’t see any of them being caught without their full make up.

  Adam shrugged. ‘We’ll have to let the authorities know you’re all right. You do realise,’ his voice was harsh, ‘that once you were known to be missing there would be a search set up for you?’

  ‘Oh no!’

  ‘Oh yes. You were one thoughtless female, Katy Harris. I’ve known some pretty stupid females in my time, but I think you take first prize.’ He pulled on a worn black leather jacket.

  ‘Where are you going?’ She ignored his insults, knowing she deserved them. It had been a stupid thing to do.

  ‘To use the telephone. I haven’t heard anything on the radio about a missing girl, but then I may have missed it. We’ll call them and let them know you aren’t missing at all.’

  Once outside they found all of the four public telephones in use. ‘Go and wait for me inside,’ Adam ordered as a cold wind blew down on them. ‘I shouldn’t be long,’ he added as one of the telephones became vacant.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Go inside, Katy.’ His expression told her that he had come to the end of his patience with her stupidity.