The Bride of Santa Barbara Read online

  ‘Well, it’s not your fault that you’re engaged to an idiot,’ he growled. ‘And I can’t help taking pity on a bride. So cheer up, Miss Saxon. I’m sure we can get you both to the church on time.’

  Beth stared at him with a baffled expression.

  ‘What are you talking about?’ she demanded. ‘What church?’

  Daniel frowned, radiating a dose of antagonism that was as ominous and unmistakable as the massing of thunderclouds before a storm.

  ‘To the church where you’re getting married, of course,’ he replied curtly. ‘Which reminds me, you’d better give me some details. Where was the wedding supposed to be held and what time? Is there someone I should call to tell them you’ll be late?’

  Light suddenly dawned inside Beth’s confused brain. She gave a half-hysterical gulp of laughter.

  ‘There isn’t any wedding,’ she explained. ‘We were just doing fashion photos and I was modelling the bridal dress. I’m not getting married today.’

  The expression on his face baffled her. The thunderous scowl relaxed fractionally and was replaced by a look of fierce amusement.

  ‘No wedding?’ he drawled lazily. ‘Well, that is interesting. In that case, I guess there’s no real harm done, is there?’

  A shadow crossed Beth’s face and she took in breath in a long, shaky sigh. Dismissing her tumultuous reactions to Daniel as too dangerous to contemplate, she tried to focus on the consequences of the morning’s events. Now that she knew Warren was safe, the other glaring result of the accident occurred to her.

  ‘Oh, yes, there is,’ she said miserably. ‘If that motor launch has really sunk to the bottom of the harbour, then my entire collection of autumn clothes has gone with it. All except for the bridal gown, and that’s probably ruined by the salt water.’

  Daniel shrugged indifferently.

  ‘Well, I wouldn’t worry too much about that,’ he said. ‘Your insurance will cover the clothes. And you can easily buy some more right here in Santa Barbara.’

  ‘But you don’t understand,’ protested Beth passionately, her voice rising and growing faster. ‘I can’t just go out to a shop and replace those! They were originals. Clothes that I designed and made myself. Each of those is one of a kind and I’m supposed to be displaying them at a fashion show in Los Angeles in three days’ time. So now what am I going to do?’ She broke off suddenly and her eyes filled with tears. ‘It’s the end of everything I’ve worked for!’

  Daniel’s harsh, brooding features took on an expression of total absorption, as if he were a chess master faced by a teasing problem or a champion skier embarking on a taxing downhill slalom.

  ‘Where are you staying in Santa Barbara?’ he rapped out.

  Beth stared at him in bewilderment.

  ‘Nowhere,’ she said. ‘Warren and I drove a hire car up here from Los Angeles during the night. And we were going to drive back this afternoon.’

  ‘Right. That simplifies things. Where was your luggage? In the car?’

  ‘No. All aboard the motor launch,’ said Beth despairingly.

  ‘Never mind. We’ll replace it. Now we’d better get moving if we’re going to sort this out. Come on.’

  He dragged her to her feet, opened the door and thrust her out into the clubroom’s main lounge.

  ‘But where are you taking me?’ demanded Beth.

  ‘Back to my place to get things organised,’ replied Daniel. He snapped his fingers at a figure who was hovering discreetly on the far side of the room. ‘Benson, come here. I want you to go down town and buy Miss Saxon some clothes. A size eight, I’d say at a guess. And how about shoes? What size do you take?’

  ‘Six,’ stammered Beth, wondering whether her companion had gone right off his head.

  ‘And size six shoes,’ finished Daniel briskly. ‘Enough for three days. Bring them back to the house as soon as possible.’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Benson, turning on his heel and departing.

  Daniel intercepted Beth’s look of horrified disbelief and a mocking smile flickered suddenly around the edges of his mouth.

  ‘Don’t worry, Benson is a genuine English butler,’ he assured her. ‘And he has excellent taste. I’m sure you’ll like the clothes he chooses.’

  ‘It’s not that!’ wailed Beth. ‘But you must see, I can’t possibly go with you. I don’t know anything about you.’

  Daniel brushed aside this objection with a careless wave of his hand. ‘I’m not really in the habit of kidnapping young women,’ he assured her wearily. ‘But I’m sure the Yacht Club manager will give me a character reference if you need it. Now, are you coming with me or not?’

  Beth stared at him, feeling completely taken aback. She couldn’t help feeling an ominous sense of misgiving about the prospect of going off with Daniel. Not that she expected him to do her any harm, but she sensed a subtler kind of danger in his company. The danger of an intoxicating, sensual attraction whose potency she could not ignore. Yet what else could she do? Alone in a strange city with no possessions, who else could she turn to? Besides, she need not stay long. If he would just let her use his phone to contact Warren, she could be on her way again as soon as Benson brought her some clothes.

  ‘I suppose I’ll have to,’ she said slowly. ‘I don’t know where else I could go in your dressing-gown anyway.’

  Daniel gave a low growl of laughter.

  ‘Well, you could try getting a job as a mannequin in a store window,’ he suggested. ‘But failing that I think you’d better come home with me and have some breakfast.’

  With a feeling of unreality Beth allowed herself to be led out into the car park and handed into a gleaming silver Jaguar. As they drove through the streets of Santa Barbara, she pinched herself quietly on the arm, wondering whether all of this was real. But the white Spanishstyle buildings with their orange-tiled roofs, the tall palm trees with their waving fronds like giant pineapples, the dark blue soaring backdrop of the hills and the glimmering expanse of the harbour all looked much the same as they had an hour earlier.

  ‘Where are you from?’ asked Daniel abruptly. ‘You don’t sound like an American.’

  ‘I’m not,’ agreed Beth. ‘I’m from Australia.’

  ‘And what are you doing in California?’ he asked. ‘Are you on vacation?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head and felt drips of water cascade down her neck. ‘I’m here on business, or I was.’

  ‘What kind of business? Fashion design?’

  ‘Yes. I’ve been invited to show my autumn collection of clothes at a big fashion parade in Los Angeles on Tuesday.’

  ‘Los Angeles, huh?’ echoed Daniel. ‘So what made you come to Santa Barbara? Are you just having a weekend off before the big event?’

  Beth shook her head again, trying to fight off the despair that was beginning to well up inside her.

  ‘No. We just drove up from Los Angeles to do some publicity photos of the collection. I couldn’t afford a professional model, so I modelled the clothes myself.’

  ‘What were the photos for?’ asked Daniel. ‘Advertising?’

  ‘Yes, sort of. You see, after the fashion show on Tuesday there’ll be trade shows in other places: New York, Miami, that sort of thing. What they do is hire a large hall and everyone sets up a booth with photos of their collection so buyers can come and see them and order whatever they want. I showed my clothes to an agent in LA and she encouraged me to get the photos done and send them on to New York. If the show went well on Tuesday, I was hoping I could break into the rest of the US market. But now—’

  Her voice wobbled suddenly. She pressed the back of her hand to her mouth.

  ‘I see,’ said Daniel softly. ‘But now your entire autumn collection is at the bottom of the Santa Barbara harbour and you think your life is ruined. Is that right?’

  Beth’s eyes blurred suddenly. Two large tears rolled down her cheek.

  ‘That’s about it,’ she breathed huskily.

  Daniel’s powerful right han
d shot out and squeezed her fingers so hard that she felt the bones grate. She glanced at him in surprise and his dark eyes met hers briefly in a look that seared her. Then he turned back to face the road, gritting his teeth as if he had just taken some momentous decision.

  ‘Trust me,’ he urged. ‘I’ll find a way to solve your problem.’

  Beth gave a croaking laugh which was close to a sob.

  ‘If you do, you’re a magician!’ she said bitterly. ‘Anyway, why should you bother?’

  ‘I have my reasons,’ he said cryptically.

  CHAPTER TWO

  BETH was still puzzling over what he meant when the road suddenly took a turn up into the hills and the car began to climb along a series of winding lanes. At last Daniel turned off the road at the imposing entrance to a villa. Black wrought-iron gates rose eight feet high in an intricate filigree pattern between two massive pillars of honey-coloured stucco. On either side of the gateway hung Spanish wrought-iron carriage-lamps. Beyond the gates, Beth caught a glimpse of a garden which looked cool and green and inviting. Amid its tangled foliage the driveway curved out of sight in a dappled pattern of light and shade.

  Daniel touched a button on the sun visor above the windscreen and with barely a squeak the gates swung wide open. They drove through a twisting avenue of cypresses for nearly two hundred yards before at last the house itself came into view. It was an imposing villa built in a Spanish style with cream stuccoed walls, black shutters, orange roof-tiles and a clock tower. Daniel parked the Jaguar on a brick terrace and led Beth up to the front entrance of the house. This too was in the Spanish style with pillars of sandstone, an arched entranceway and double doors surmounted by a graceful fanlight. In the centre of the porch hung another wrought-iron lamp and on either side of the door there were tubs of light blue lobelias and yellow violas to soften the harshness of the sandstone.

  Daniel inserted a key into the brass lock and flung open the doors, revealing a cool marble-floored hallway. On the right this gave way to an open-plan living and dining area with a parquetry floor, Mexican rugs, a lot of black leather and chrome furniture and a huge central fireplace stacked with freshly sawn logs. Most of the far wall was occupied by floor-to-ceiling glass French doors which led on to a shady terrace. Striding across the room, Daniel unlocked one of these doors and ushered Beth outside.

  ‘Go and sit by the pool,’ he urged, ‘while I rustle up some breakfast.’

  ‘Can I do anything to help?’ asked Beth in a subdued voice.

  ‘Yes. You can stop looking as if you’re about to face an executioner at any moment,’ replied Daniel.

  But Beth found the advice hard to follow. Slumping into a garden chair, she cupped her chin in her hands and gazed moodily over the vista that lay before her. It was an attractive sight. Beyond the kidney-shaped pool was a brick terrace flanked by tubs of geraniums and bordered by a low wall. Below this the ground dropped away sharply to reveal a breathtaking view of the Pacific Ocean. By now the sun was high in the sky and the sea had turned a deep cobalt-blue. Huge, fluffy white clouds floated against a paler blue sky and the bright sunlight gleamed back from the creamy white stucco walls of the Spanish-style houses far below. Bees buzzed in the flowering plants that climbed a trellis on one wall and the air was sweet and heavy with the scent of jasmine.

  It should have been a wonderful experience sitting here on this five-hundred-foot-high hilltop overlooking the ocean and surrounded by every imaginable luxury, but nothing could raise Beth’s spirits at the moment. In the space of the last hour her world seemed to have fallen to pieces. Her fiancé Warren was off in some unnamed hospital, possibly injured. All her possessions were at the bottom of the Santa Barbara harbour and her bright hopes of breaking into American fashion design were in ruins. All she had were the clothes she stood up in and even those didn’t belong to her. They belonged to that extraordinary American who had whisked her away to his hilltop hideaway and who seemed to be quite out of touch with reality. And why had Daniel invited her here? A tremor of anxiety skittered through her as she tried to fathom his motives. Was he planning to try and seduce her? Beth was no fool and she couldn’t help suspecting that the current of tingling physical awareness which had sparked between them at the Yacht Club had stung Daniel as fiercely as her. Yet she couldn’t keep running away from physically alluring men for the rest of her life just because of one bad experience. Besides, sparks of sexual attraction must ignite beween people all the time and it didn’t necessarily stop them from having any social contacts. She would simply have to remain cool and aloof and hope that Daniel did likewise. All the same, she couldn’t help feeling profoundly disturbed by being here.

  Turning in her chair, she looked back towards the house and saw that the kitchen also faced on to the terrace. Through the window she could see Daniel grinding coffee and simultaneously holding an animated conversation on a mobile telephone which was tucked into the crook of his shoulder. Catching her eye, he winked at her. A heady feeling of excitement rushed through her veins, then she sighed and sank further down into her chair with her shoulders hunched. This is crazy, she thought to herself. What on earth am I doing here?

  Ten minutes later Daniel appeared on the terrace carrying a tray loaded with hot blueberry muffins, coffee, orange juice and butter. To Beth’s astonishment the mobile phone was also sitting on the tray.

  ‘Right, let’s eat and then we’ll solve your problem.’

  Beth gave him a glum look but accepted a hot muffin and a cup of coffee. Despite her depression the strong, sweet coffee and the tart, crumbly muffins began to revive her. For the first time she felt capable of looking ahead more than the next five minutes. And something occurred to her which had not yet crossed her mind. Wincing, she decided to get the uncomfortable moment over with.

  ‘I’m awfully sorry about the accident,’ she blurted out. ‘I hope your yacht didn’t suffer too much damage, but, if it did, I want you to know that we’ll pay. Somehow.’

  ‘Forget my yacht!’ he said roughly. ‘If your insurance doesn’t cover it, mine certainly will. And we’ve more important matters to discuss. Now are you ready to make plans?’

  She bit her lip and nodded.

  ‘I guess so. And the first thing I’d better do is find out which hospital Warren’s at and let him know that I’m OK.’

  ‘That’s already taken care of,’ Daniel assured her swiftly. ‘I phoned and checked. Warren’s at the Mater Hospital. He’s perfectly fine and he knows that you’re here.’

  ‘Thank you,’ sighed Beth. ‘In that case I suppose he’ll be arriving any time now to collect me.’

  ‘Maybe,’ retorted Daniel. ‘But I can’t help finding it pretty damned strange that he ever left you in the first place. If you’d been my fiancée, I’d have wanted to know that you were OK immediately. What I’d like to know is why the hell he didn’t come to the Yacht Club to look for you.’

  Beth fought down a disloyal temptation to wonder the same thing. Adroitly she changed the subject.

  ‘You know, I think I’ll have to accept your offer of those clothes you sent Benson to buy,’ she said hastily. ‘After all, I can’t go back to Los Angeles in your bathrobe or in a wet wedding-gown. But if you write down your address for me I’ll make sure that you’re repaid. And if you could just phone the hospital and remind Warren to pick me up I’d be very grateful.’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ said Daniel sternly. ‘You’re not going anywhere. We’ve got to find a way of getting your fashion collection ready for the show on Tuesday.’

  Beth gave a gasp of astonished laughter.

  ‘That’s impossible!’ she cried. ‘Look, I’m sure you mean well, but I don’t believe there’s any way we can get those clothes back off the bottom of the harbour.’

  Daniel nodded tranquilly and buttered a muffin.

  ‘No, you’re right there,’ he agreed. ‘I already phoned a diving and salvage firm while I was in the kitchen and they said the same thing, so I guess you’ll j
ust have to make a new lot of clothes.’

  Beth groaned.

  ‘A new lot of clothes?’ she echoed incredulously. ‘You must be joking! It would take half a dozen dressmakers working round the clock for the next six days to reproduce those clothes. There’s no way I could get a new collection together by Tuesday.’

  ‘Is that right?’ asked Daniel, setting down his muffin and reaching for the mobile phone. He punched in some numbers. ‘Let me see, six dressmakers working round the clock for six days? Well, that shouldn’t be too difficult. Hello? Wendy? Listen, I need two dozen dressmakers to come over to my place right away and work round the clock until Monday night. Can you do that?’

  Beth watched aghast as Daniel nodded, smiled and wrote down a couple of figures on a small notepad. Then he switched off the phone.

  ‘It’s all settled,’ he said tranquilly. ‘They’ll be round in an hour.’

  Beth stared at him in horror.

  ‘Do you seriously mean to tell me you just hired two dozen dressmakers to make up my clothes for the show on Tuesday?’ she demanded.

  Daniel nodded.

  ‘You’ve got it,’ he agreed.

  ‘But I can’t possibly afford that!’ cried Beth. ‘All I have in the world is two hundred dollars in a bank account in Sydney and the clothes I stand up in. And even those belong to you.’

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll foot the bill,’ Daniel assured her.

  ‘But why should you put money into solving my problems?’

  ‘I’m an entrepreneur,’ he replied with a shrug. ‘I often put up capital for deserving business ventures. And what could be more deserving than a bride in distress? Anyway, you can pay me back once you’re rich and famous.’

  Beth felt an uncomfortable sensation in her stomach, as if she had just plunged three floors in a lift.

  ‘What if I never am rich and famous?’ she demanded.

  Daniel’s white teeth flashed in a taunting smile.