Read Lovers in Their Fashion for Free Online Page A

doorbell rang again, longer and more insistent this time.
    ‘I’m sorry, mother. I have to go. I’ll call you again.’
    Alice pressed the red button on her handset and placed it on the rest. She hurried to the door and flung it open. ‘Thank heavens you’re here. Come in. I need a stiff…’
    The word “drink” remained unsaid as she stared in horror at the tall, well built man smiling horridly in the doorway. Martin Planer stepped past her and pushed the door closed behind him.
    ‘You need something stiff, do you?’ he leered. ‘Well, I’m sure I’m the man to oblige.’
    ‘Get out!’ shrieked Alice. ‘How dare you burst in here?’
    ‘Burst in?’ His cold blue eyes mocked her. ‘You threw the door open. You invited me in. You made a most indecent declaration of need.’
    He stepped closer, the scent of his cologne filling the air between them. Alice moved towards the door but his hand snaked out, trapping her wrist. She took a step backwards but Planer simply followed her. Now her back was against the wall and there was nowhere for her to go.
    He stepped right up against her, holding her wrist by her side. Alice shook as his chest brushed against hers. The smile had not left his face. He came even closer, and she felt his hips, his legs, as they pinned her to the wall.
    ‘My, my,’ he said. ‘Little Alice Springer. Who’d have thought you’d turn out like this?’
    His head moved forward and Alice realized with horror that he was going to kiss her. She raised her free hand and swung at his face with all her might. In vain; he simply caught it and transferred it to the iron grip that already held its twin. Now both of her wrists were helplessly trapped in a single huge hand. He brought the other up and cupped her chin, turning her face up towards his own.
    ‘Behave,’ he murmured. ‘You’re mine. There’s nothing you can do, so accept it.’ His lips nuzzled her brow, nibbled at her ear, grazed across her cheek. Then with a murmur of enjoyment he brought them to rest on her helplessly upturned mouth.
    Alice gasped in horror as his hand left her chin and began to move across her trembling body. So firmly was he pressed against her that she felt with the most profound shock the hard physical evidence of his aroused lust.
    ‘Please, Martin,’ she begged. ‘Please don’t do this.’
    His only response was to laugh. ‘I came here to discuss your mother,’ he murmured. ‘And what you can do to make good her latest depredations. But before business – pleasure.’
    The doorbell pierced the fog of Alice’s despair. She screamed for help – but the cry was penned in her throat almost immediately by the huge hand that closed firmly on her mouth. Planer held her so tightly she felt she would suffocate. It had to be Merrill at the door, and she had to have heard, surely? Alice waited desperately for the sound of the key turning in the lock.
    It did not come.
    After a few moments, she heard Merrill’s footsteps retreating on the marble floor beyond her door. She had gone.
    The hope raised by Merrill’s arrival, followed so swiftly by her departure, had knocked the fight out of Alice. When Planer stepped suddenly back she fell helplessly into his arms. Laughing cruelly, he lifted her into the air. Limp and unresisting, she found herself carried across the floor and tossed onto a sofa.
    A lice was the only woman John Pagan had ever loved and he loved her still. If he had known what she was going through, he would have moved heaven and earth to rescue her.
    But he did not know. At the very moment that Martin Planer was emerging from his taxi outside Alice’s apartment building, John was meeting up again with Cathy after his afternoon meeting. Did John feel guilt at being with a woman he didn’t love when the one he did love was in London? Of course not. Alice had ended their relationship. Alice had told him their love could never be. Alice was happily settled in a relationship with David