perception brought a reluctant smile to her lips. ‘One of a kind,’ she acknowledged wryly, and he laughed, so that it seemed for a moment they were in accord. Mickey found it strangely unsettling.
‘One is quite sufficient. Hell, they could be anywhere, and the only one who knows is pretending she lives in Cloud-cuckoo-land!’ he growled, thumping his fist on the steering-wheel. ‘Not that you seem to be surprised, Hanlon. Were you banking on her running interference for you? Are you still going to insist you knew nothing about it?’
That brief moment of empathy vanished. ‘If I had, we wouldn’t be sitting here now! I don’t know how your sainted nephew managed to seduce my sister, but I’m going to put a stop to it. Damn him; Leah had everything going for her until he came along!’ Mickey cried wrathfully.
Beside her, Ryan laughed grimly. ‘Well, they say it’s an ill wind that doesn’t blow somebody something good. Look on the bright side, Hanlon. I’m going after them, and you’re going to take me. So it looks as if you’re going to get paid after all.’
CHAPTER THREE
‘MORNING, Sid,’ Mickey mumbled as she walked into the hangar next morning, smothering a yawn behind her hand.
The grizzled mechanic sent her a grin. ‘Hiya, Mickey. Up early, ain’t ye?’
A lack of sleep had done nothing to sweeten her mood, nor the dreadful meal she had had with Ryan Douglas after they had returned to his hotel last night. Not that the meal had been bad, just the company. It was as well she had scarcely eaten anything or she would have suffered from indigestion as well as a sleepless night.
‘Mr “God Almighty” Douglas insists on catching the light!’ she grunted irritably, keeping up a fiction which Ryan had insisted on. To all intents and purposes, they would be out taking photographs. For once she had not argued. She didn’t want anyone to know what they would really be doing either. Publicity of the kind this search would produce, if the story ever got out, was the very last thing either of them needed.
Shaggy eyebrows rose at hearing the unaccustomed grumble. ‘Sounds a reasonable request to me, Mickey,’ Sid remonstrated, with the ease of long acquaintance, and she sighed heavily.
‘It is, but he isn’t,’ she snapped, unwilling to concede more than she had to. Over a dinner which she had barely touched, Ryan had reiterated his intentions in no uncertain terms, and, considering they had the same aim, although admittedly differing viewpoints, there hadn’t been anything she could reasonably take exception to. Except his persistence in still seeing Leah as a girl with her eye on the main chance, a charge she had countered by declaring his odious nephew had taken advantage of Leah’s sweet nature.
Her fleeting sympathy towards Peter Douglas had vanished with the knowledge that he had induced her sister to run off with him, abandoning a bright future. She couldn’t believe that Leah really loved him. What did she know about love? She had lived a rather sheltered existence. As far as Mickey knew, she hadn’t even had a real boyfriend. No, she had been seduced into thinking she was in love by a handsome face and a blinding charm! She couldn’t know that love to such men was just an illusion, just a word glossing over needs of a far earthier nature.
What Mickey was so dreadfully afraid of was that Leah would find out too late. She didn’t want her to be hurt and disillusioned the way she herself had been. God, she would do anything to protect Leah from that. She’d get her away from the clutches of that playboy if it was the last thing she did!
Which perversely gave her something in common with Ryan after all. Neither wanted this match, and they were determined to put a stop to it. But first of all they had to find the elusive runaways.
Sid, meanwhile, waved a piece of oily rag in her direction. ‘Ain’t you never heard you catch more flies with molasses, Mickey?’ he observed, and she came out of her reverie with a start.
‘If you think I’m going to stroke his male ego just to keep him sweet, you’re on the wrong track. I’m sorry, Sid, but I just can’t stand the man.’
‘Ain’t that the truth,’ he drawled, and cocked his thumb over his shoulder. ‘You gonna take her for a test run?’
Mickey looked from the float plane to her watch. Time was getting on, and already the sun was rising higher. ‘There won’t be time; I’ll have to check her as we go. Give Amelia her maximum fuel load, please, Sid. I’ll do my checks as soon as I’ve found my charts.’
Sid tipped a finger in acknowledgement, and Mickey hurried into the office, but not before his half-muttered comment reached her ears. ‘Artistic temperament they call it, girl. You gotta learn how to handle it.’
Mickey grimaced as she closed the door and leant back against it. She knew all about artistic temperament, and had spent the greater portion of her life pacifying it.
As a tiny child, Mickey’s earliest memories of her mother were of being kissed goodnight by a glittering princess, or of playing with her dolls on the bathroom floor while this beautiful angel bathed in water that emitted intoxicating scents. Of course, she hadn’t realised then that her mother was Tanita Amory, the Hollywood actress. She had been some god-like creature who had welcomed a little girl into her glowing world.
She had no memories of her real father, knowing only that he had been Michael Hanlon, a Canadian pilot. She had known little more about the succession of men who became her stepfathers for one or two years as she grew up. What she had learned was that her mother was so wrapped up in these men that she had very little time for her daughter. Tanita had lavished love on her by giving her all the things money could buy, but not by giving of herself.
By the time Mickey entered her teenage years, the marriages had given way to a procession of lovers. There were always new men around. Wherever they went, Tanita had flirted outrageously. Although Mickey loved her mother, she had hated her free and easy lifestyle. Tanita positively basked in the Press stories about her latest lover or husband, even as her daughter grew to hate it.
Mickey’s emerging sexuality had taken place under a barrage of flashlights. Privacy was something only other people had. When she’d proved to be every bit as much of a beauty as her parent, speculation had grown. She’d become as much a target for gossip as her mother. No aspect of her life had been sacred, and when the opposite sex began to take an interest in her the papers had a field-day. Was she, they wondered, the same as her mother?
Mickey herself would have issued a firm no, until she’d met Jean-Luc Renauld. He had come into her life at an unhappy time. She had been nineteen, and just out of finishing school. She had wanted to go to university, but Tanita had flown into a rage, accusing her of being disloyal, of not loving her. Why else would she want to go away when she knew her mother needed her? Blackmail it might have been, but Mickey’s sense of loyalty had made it impossible for her to argue. So she had given up all thought of studying her beloved history, of perhaps making a career for herself in the field of archaeology. Instead she had stayed in the South of France, and had met the man who was to alter her life completely.
He’d been bronzed and golden, a power-boat racer, and for the first time in her life Mickey had felt herself attracted to a man. When he had shown an interest in her, she had fallen head over heels in love with him. He had aroused a passion in her which had bedazzled her. When he had said they must be discreet, that they must meet in secret, she had ignored the knocking of her conscience which tried to tell her this was not quite right. She was in love, totally besotted, and their affair was passionate and flamboyant. Making love with Jean-Luc had been an exhilarating experience. Her senses, let loose, were in total control.
Then one day she had found her picture splashed across the front of the newspapers, the whole affair made public as she was cited in a divorce petition. Shock had broken the spell she had been under, and she knew she should have guessed Jean-Luc was married, for all the signs had been there. She had ignored them because she hadn’t wanted to give him up, and she still didn’t. She had gone to him, telling him she loved him and would face any scandal if it meant they could be together.