Dangerous Nights. Rosalie Ash

       CHAPTER ONE

      ‘ANA?’ The deep, male greeting came from the shadows by the stage door. Halting abruptly in her stride, long blonde hair flying behind her in her haste, she swivelled to scan the darkness.

      ‘Anastasia French?’ The owner of the voice stepped towards her. He was silhouetted now against the light from the doorway. She could make out only a tall, tough-looking man in denims and brown leather flying jacket. A black baseball cap was pulled well forward over his eyes. He was holding a theatre programme in his hands. An autograph hunter. She hugged her coat around her, glanced warily at his shadowed face. In her old velvet jacket, her floppy black velvet hat covering most of her hair, she was rarely spotted by one of the audience. She wasn’t one of the well-known members of this season’s Royal Shakespeare Company. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

      But there was something familiar about him. His build, height and, above all, his voice. Her heart flipped annoyingly in her chest.

      ‘Hi, did you enjoy the play?’ She smiled politely, waiting for the request to sign the programme. A group of fellow actors brushed past her. She exchanged goodnights with them as they went.

      ‘I didn’t watch the play,’ the man murmured coolly. ‘I was intrigued to see if the Anastasia French in the programme was the Ana French I knew, a few years back.’

      This time the jolt in her heart felt more like a miniature earthquake. Whatever the last few years had taught her about disguising her emotions, she had difficulty clamping down the surge of reaction. Mixed up with anger, pride, apprehension were a host of other emotions, less easily identified…

      ‘Jed?’ Her voice was usually husky, rich and quite deep. She hardly recognised the breathless squeak which came out now.

      He pushed the baseball cap back, then flipped it off. He had brown hair, worn longish, tousled back into crisp, thick layers which brushed the collar of his jacket. A hard, unconventionally attractive face. Long, narrowed, grey-green eyes. An unreadable gaze, which was achingly familiar…

      ‘Hello, Ana.’

      ‘What are you doing here?’ she managed. Her pulse-rate was still galloping at a hundred miles an hour. It didn’t make sense still, to feel such an intense reaction, after all this time. She’d got over Jed Steele ages ago. Hadn’t she? He’d been her baptism of fire. The big mistake all teenagers had to make before they grew up, grew their protective layer, grew accustomed to the cruel old world around them.

      ‘Hoping to get this programme signed?’ He shot her a cool, brief grin, holding open the page where the cast list was printed. ‘It says in here you’re understudying a major role. Congratulations. That’s a big career move, isn’t it?’

      ‘If I get to do it, which is by no means guaranteed.’ She spoke as evenly as she could, scrawling her name with an unsteady hand. ‘There. Happy? I wish I could say it was nice to see you again, Jed…’

      Now why had she said that? Showing bitterness, giving herself away, after all this time?

      He caught her arm as she began to swing away. She turned her head, stiffening at his touch. His eyes were intent, searching her face. That look made her heart sink.

      ‘I don’t see you for four years,’ he queried lazily, ‘and all I get is a twenty-second conversation?’

      ‘What did you have in mind?’ Her defensiveness was amusing him, she realised bitterly. His hold on her arm, even through the thickness of her coat, was making the surface of her skin contract into tiny shivers of awareness.

      But how could she fail to be aware of him? Jed wasn’t the kind of man you could ignore. Tall, arrogant, faintly menacing, he radiated strength, cynicism and forceful virility in almost equal measures. How he managed to restrain them into his cool, watchful manner, a hallmark of his character, she’d never worked out. But then, when it came to what made Jed Steele the way he was, she’d never succeeded in working anything out…

      ‘How about a drink?’ Jed was suggesting, in that deep voice which had always made her stomach melt. ‘In the pub up the road?’ The invitation was casual, but already he was falling into stride beside her, one hand still