Heading For Trouble!. Linda Miles

of twenty or thirty devastatingly witty replies with which to pulverise him. Now she could think of nothing but ‘What?’ and ‘How dare you?’

      ‘What?’ she said, trying to make her venomous tone compensate for a certain deficiency in verbal brilliance. ‘How dare you?’

      He dropped her hands abruptly, and this time Morgan was steady on her feet. She felt as if she’d been nailed to the spot.

      ‘Just one word of advice,’ he said levelly. ‘If you choose to act like a silly teenager, that’s your own affair. But if you ever again pull a dangerous, irresponsible stunt like this to get my attention I’ll give you something to remember me by all right, and I can guarantee you won’t like it.’ He gave her a singularly chilling smile and added pleasantly, ‘If I were you I’d stick to coming up through cakes.’

      He turned on his heel and walked back to the car. For all he knew, Morgan thought bitterly, she might have a concussion or worse, but he got into the car and slammed the door without a backward glance.

      As she adjusted the muddy sarong about her hips again she did a sudden double take and looked again at the passenger seat—the empty passenger seat—of the car. Where was Elaine? And, come to think of it, why was he down here on the old canal road? The road to the house went out the other side of the village—this led only to the chemical processing plant and then back to the motorway.

      A wild flash of hope seized her. Perhaps the appearance of Richard Kavanagh was sheer, devilish coincidence. Elaine had mentioned, she now remembered, that Firing Line was being pre-recorded for the bank holiday—but that would free other people from the studio besides its arrogant star. It defied belief that a consummate performer like Richard Kavanagh would willingly share the limelight; probably he had a team working on a programme in the area, and Elaine’s mystery guest was part of the entourage...

      Or someone higher up? Perhaps Elaine, at this very moment, was being driven along the motorway by a fat, bald TV executive—someone on whom Morgan still had a chance to make a good impression. A glance at her watch showed her just how slight a chance, and she scrambled back up the bank into the road.

      The motor roared into life, and the car, which was now tilted down a slippery slope above the bog, began to reverse smartly and then slid another foot or so forward. There was an ominous gulping, sucking sound as the front tyres sank to the hub-caps in mud.

      Morgan knew that she should feel sorry—after all, it was her fault, even if she hadn’t meant to do it—but she couldn’t help a mean satisfaction at this anticlimactic end to his grand exit. He might have had the last word, but he wasn’t going to have the last laugh, she thought sourly.

      The car’s motor was cut off. Richard Kavanagh got out and began looking, not very hopefully, into the boot.

      After a short struggle with herself Morgan squelched down the road to see if she could help.

      ‘Go away,’ he said, not looking up. ‘If my car disappears under this swamp I plan to mark the spot with a human sacrifice, and I can’t think of anyone I’d rather sacrifice than you. Why don’t you get going now and put a safe distance between us while you’ve got the chance?’

      Morgan searched for a snappy reply, failed to find one, and realised in exasperation that at least half her mind was taken up with the useless but distracting discovery that his rather raffish good looks were just as eye-catching seen in profile. ‘Are you staying in the area?’ she probed delicately. It seemed less of a dead give-away than, Where’s Elaine?

      ‘If there are many more like you around, not if I can help it. Now go away.’

      ‘I am going,’ said Morgan. ‘I’m horribly late. I just wanted to say—’

      ‘Unless you wanted to say you have a supply of two-by-fours up your sleeve I don’t want to hear it. Scram.’

      ‘What I wanted to say,’ said Morgan, ‘was that you need to get something under the tyres. There’s a scrap and lumber-yard just up the hill.’

      He turned his head now, flicking her an impatient glance—and as the diamond-hard eyes met hers unexpectedly Morgan’s heart gave a queer little lurch. Infuriating. It wasn’t as if she even liked the man—and he was obviously getting completely the wrong idea.

      ‘And also,’ Morgan added coldly, ‘I am not one of your fans. I think your interviewing methods are sadistic and self-serving and your looks make me think of a thirties matinée idol. I think you have about as much sex appeal as those Spanish bullfighters who think it proves their virility to kill an animal to entertain a crowd. I wouldn’t give a bent paper-clip for one of your kisses, or for your signature, unless it was at the bottom of a cheque.’

      ‘So this was more of an assassination attempt, is that it?’

      ‘This was an accident,’ she informed him haughtily. ‘I was simply playing with the children and the tyre got away. It could have happened to anyone.’

      ‘So that explains it,’ said Richard Kavanagh, looking thoughtfully at the beached car. ‘I was wondering why there were so many children around.’

      ‘All right,’ said Morgan. ‘I made it up. Fine. I think I’ll take my tyre back to the imaginary scrapyard and leave you to dream up something to brace your car with.’ As she turned on her heel shrill cries drifted from above as the children peered down the slope to the main road. ‘I’ve always had a very vivid imagination,’ she remarked over her shoulder.

      ‘All right, damn you,’ said her sister’s unsuspecting colleague-to-be. ‘Remind me of where you imagined this bloody lumber-yard was.’

      Which was probably, Morgan thought, Richard Kavanagh’s idea of an apology. Not that she cared. If only he knew it, she was about to engineer his downfall. She would go back to the house and be amazingly charming and delightful to a fat, bald TV executive, and he would decide instantly that the sister of this wonderful person must appear on Firing Line. Little though Richard Kavanagh might suspect it, he was practically part of a double act already.

      ‘Over there,’ said Morgan, gesturing vaguely upwards. ‘You can’t miss it. I’d give you a hand but I’m horribly late. Good luck.’ She looked up the hill, wishing that she could ditch the sarong for the climb—but she certainly wasn’t going to with Richard Kavanagh watching. She strode resolutely to the foot of the slope.

      ‘Wait a minute.’

      Morgan turned back. ‘Yes?’ she asked coldly.

      He glanced at his watch, then at the car, then with barely suppressed exasperation at Morgan. ‘Are you sure you’re in one piece? I’ve got a first-aid kit in the car if you need patching up,’ he offered reluctantly.

      ‘Oh, this is nothing,’ Morgan said airily, unwisely shaking her head to emphasise the point. She staggered a step or two before catching her balance again.

      ‘Do you need a lift somewhere?’ he offered, even more reluctantly. ‘If you don’t mind waiting a few minutes...’

      Morgan looked at the car, its nose tilted into the swamp. ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘But I don’t think you’re going my way.’

      CHAPTER TWO

      THE long, uncomfortable trek back to the house gave Morgan plenty of time to cast a cold, self-critical eye over her behaviour that afternoon. Her meeting with Richard Kavanagh was, it seemed, only an accident; she didn’t think she’d hurt Elaine’s chances yet. But if she’d really taken Elaine’s interests seriously she would have been dressed and ready for company over an hour ago. Well, she would make up for it all now, she vowed. One bald, fat, cigar-smoking TV executive wouldn’t know what had hit him.

      She left the children in the kitchen, vying to tell her father and stepmother the story of her latest scrape, and hurried upstairs to the room that she was sharing with Elaine, her own having been made over to the mystery guest.

      Elaine’s meticulously