Wolf at the Door
Page 13
‘Grey, darling!’ came a voice from the passenger seat. ‘Oh, how lucky I caught you! Now I can catch a lift south with you and not have to endure the utter boredom of the commercial flights.’
Even as Grey and Kelly turned, the door flung open to allow Freda Jorgensen to alight, and she strode towards them as the taxi driver began unloading her luggage.
Freda was dressed in what some people would have considered casual gear, but the expense of it took the clothing well out of Kelly’s conception of casual. The black, velvet-textured slacks, fitting almost like a second skin, revealed a figure of startling attractiveness, and the creamy blouse that so perfectly matched the woman’s white- blonde hair was open low enough to reveal the swellings of a high, firm bosom. Freda’s handbag had to have cost more than Kelly’s entire set of luggage, and her shoes were a light, decorative wonder compared with Kelly’s stout walking shoes.
Freda didn’t bother with any more than perfunctory greetings, but immediately positioned herself so as to join Grey in the cockpit. Kelly, hoping for just an instant that he would recall his promise of only moments before, waited only a moment before admitting defeat and scrambling in to join her father in the rear compartment.
From that moment, what should have been an exciting and wonderful journey turned into a private hell. From their position in the rear, Kelly couldn’t avoid seeing Freda’s carefully manicured fingers playing along Grey’s thigh muscles as he manipulated the aircraft, and the woman’s tinkling laugh and intense, obviously private comments chilled Kelly’s own feelings into a solid lump of ice.
It was left to her father to direct Kelly’s attention to the various sights as they flew south-east on a long diagonal that paralleled the magnificence of the Rocky Mountains, They crossed the headwaters of the Athabasca, the Saskatchewan, the Brazeau and the Clearwater rivers, flying the boundaries of Jasper and Banff’ National Parks on their way south.
From Kelly’s position on the right-hand side of the aircraft, she was exposed to some of the most beautiful mountain scenery in the world. Tall peaks, some of them still covered in caps of glistening snow, loomed like a fortress against the sky, with here and there the flashing gleam of a high waterfall, and the sheen of a glass-clear mountain stream. The lower foothills beneath them were cloaked in the dark, black-green hues of pine and spruce forests, giving way to the lighter green of the alpine meadows at the higher elevations.
‘Coming back, I’ll try and have Grey fly over Kakwa camp so you can see it all from the air,’ Barnes told his daughter, but while Kelly smiled her approval it was a false, hollow smile. The arrival of Freda Jorgensen had cast a pall over her entire existence, and all Kelly really wanted was for the trip to end, so that she could free herself from the presence of both the blonde beauty and Grey Scofield himself
The spires of Calgary’s city centre were tall on their left when Grey finally began to bring the aircraft lower, and Kelly realised he wasn’t aiming for the city or its airport, but for a private landing strip on a site several miles south and west of Calgary.
A large, gleaming station wagon was waiting as they taxied to a halt, and Kelly wasn’t surprised when Freda was carefully handed into the front passenger seat beside Grey. The man who had brought the vehicle waved cheerfully to them before walking off to attend to the aircraft, and Kelly presumed someone would be sent later to pick him up.
Freda Jorgensen chatted gaily as they drove towards the distant ranch headquarters, pointedly ignoring Kelly and her father as if she were alone in the car with Grey. To Kelly, it seemed the other woman was over-particular in establishing Grey’s plans for the visit, and was obviously planning to pre-empt as much of his time as possible.
The ranch-house was a huge, sprawling, single-storey structure that formed a broad U around a courtyard housing a glassed-in swimming pool, with ranks of stables and outbuildings partway down the rise behind the main house. As Grey steered the station wagon in under a carport at the end of the building, a tall, slender woman strode around the corner to meet them as they alighted.
‘Geoff! You hardly look like the invalid I expected,’ she cried in a rich, musical voice as she hugged Kelly’s father to her and kissed him gently on the cheek.
‘I started getting better the minute they said you were going to be my nurse, Meg,’ Geoff Barnes responded with a broad grin. ‘Having time to spend with both you and Kelly would make any man feel healthy.’
‘And so it should,’ she replied, speaking over her shoulder as she turned to greet Kelly with an outstretched hand and welcoming smile. ‘You’re much prettier than any of your pictures, my dear,’ Margaret Scofield said. ‘I can see why Grey has spent so much time in camp recently.’
Kelly, unsure how to reply to so provocative a statement, only smiled her own greetings. She was too aware of Grey — and Freda
There was no attempt made to introduce Freda to Grey’s mother, and Kelly assumed they must know each other, especially when Grey began to speak.
‘I’ll just unload this luggage and then let you get these people settled, Mom,’ he said after kissing his mother fleetingly on one cheek. ‘I’ll run Freda into town and be back in time for lunch.’
‘Oh, but there is no need,’ the blonde interrupted. ‘I can just telephone my papa and he will come for me, or send a car at least.’ It was clear that she was angling for a luncheon invitation, but to Kelly’s surprise Grey didn’t take it up.
‘Waste of time,’ he replied briskly. ‘I have things to do anyway in town, and your father has better things to do than play chauffeur to you, young miss.’
And with no room for argument, he hefted out Kelly and Geoff Barnes’ suitcases and handed Freda back into the station wagon before she could possibly object.
‘You’ll want a drink first up, I suppose,’ Meg Scofield said to Kelly’s father, waving aside his attempt to carry in the bags. ‘Leave those; I’ll have them brought in. You’re supposed to be sick, remember? Tell me, Kelly, is he allowed a drink, or should we stick him right back into bed with a good book?’
Both women had to laugh at Geoff’s expression of outrage at the suggestion, and a moment later they were comfortably seated in the huge living room, glasses in hand.
Despite Geoff Barnes’ protestations, he was obviously tired by the journey, and after one drink he grudgingly admitted that a nap before lunch might be welcome. Kelly’s restlessness of the night before had caught up with her, and she too agreed to the suggestion.
The room to which she was shown had its own en suite, and a set of sliding glass doors provided access to the covered, heated pool outside. Kelly lay down on the broad double bed, visibly weary but unsure if she would be able to rest. She closed her eyes just for a moment and opened them in startled surprise when a thunderous knocking at her door and an all-too-familiar gravel voice announced that she would be late for lunch if she didn’t hurry.
‘I’ll only be a minute,’ she replied hastily, springing up from the bed and rushing towards the bathroom. Her first thought was the tumbled mane of her hair, but Kelly knew also that her eyes would reveal the tensions within her if she didn’t use careful judgment with her make-up.
‘Don’t panic,’ growled the voice. ‘Actually, I lied just a touch. You’ve got at least half an hour yet. What I really wondered was if you’d like a swim first.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ she replied, already reaching for her hairbrush. ‘I didn’t bring a swimsuit with me.’
‘Use this,’ Grey replied, and the door opened just enough for him to throw in a few wisps of cloth before closing it again.
Kelly picked up the tiny bikini, eyes widening at the skimpiness of it. Surely he didn’t expect her to swim in this!
‘It doesn’t, you know,’ he said through the door, his voice now soft enough that only Kelly could hear.
‘Doesn’t what?’ she replied without thinking, her mind racing at the daring she would need to wear such a flimsy swimsuit even in a private pool.
‘I am not!’ Kelly snapped out the answer without really considering it, and instantly regretted her quick tongue.
‘Good. I’ll meet you in the pool, then,’ he said With a tangible hint of satisfaction evident in his voice.
Kelly shrugged off her jump-suit and slipped into the wispy, pale green fabric of the minuscule bikini. The full- length mirror in the en suite was tempting, but she forced herself not to take advantage of it, afraid that if she were faced with the visible evidence of the bikini’s skimpiness, she would never dare to wear it.
Instead, she slid open the glass doors and walked slowly towards the edge of the pool, feeling horribly fragile and exposed. Her father’s appreciative whistle from a poolside lounge chair did little for her confidence, though she threw him a slightly abashed grin in return.
‘Well, well, well! Fits better than I thought,’ came Grey’s voice from behind her, but before Kelly could turn she was hoisted skyward like a child in his strong hands.
‘Let’s see how it washes,’ he laughed, and ignoring her shriek of anticipation he threw her bodily into the sparkling water and dived in right behind her. As Kelly surfaced, spluttering with indignation, a cap of silver reared from the water right before her and she was faced with Grey’s cheerful, mocking grin.
‘You ... you ... she spluttered, then clenched her teeth and thrust both hands forward to smother his face in a wave of spray. Since he was opening his mouth to speak just as she splashed him, Grey received a proper mouthful of water and did some spluttering of his own before he reared out of the water like some great silver-haired seal and reached out to grasp at Kelly’s arms.
She was too quick, however, and had already turned to begin swimming frantically for the side. She felt his fingers graze across her ankle as she kicked away, and the touch was like a brand despite the cool comfort of the water.
Grey was a smooth and powerful swimmer, and as Kelly touched the edge of the pool he surfaced beside her and slid up on to the tiled rim, reaching down to offer his hand.
‘You swim well,’ he grinned, and his enthusiasm was so obviously genuine that she felt her initial anger dissipate. She allowed Grey to hand her out of the pool, then turned and dived back in beside him, churning the water frantically as she raced him towards the far end and back again. She lost by a wide margin.
‘Have to do better than that, Kelly,’ her father called from his lounge chair, but Kelly barely heard. She was all too conscious of her bosom heaving beneath the flimsy swimsuit as Grey once again leaned down to help her from the water.
The upper half of Grey’s muscular body was deeply tanned, with only a slightly visible line showing the still darker hue of his forearms and throat. He must work without a shirt for most of the summer, she thought, an impression confirmed when she glanced down at sturdy legs that were almost as pale as her own.
Grey handed her a towel, then turned to her father. ‘She’ll never be a swimming racer, Geoff,’ he laughed. ‘Not with those little feet.’ He held one of his own feet out for inspection and continued, ‘By comparison I might as well be wearing swim fins; it’s just no contest,’
Til bet you snowshoe race without snowshoes, too,’ Kelly responded tartly, although she matched his grin with one of her own. She found Grey’s good humour, at least in the absence of Freda Jorgensen, exceptionally infectious.
‘I take any advantage I can,’ he replied with a grim stare that was obvious only to Kelly, and his look was a warning she was clearly meant to see. Any responsibility for a reply was lost when Grey’s mother arrived to announce that lunch was ready, and Kelly thankfully fled to her room to slip into a robe and pull her soaked hair into a straggly ponytail.
When she entered the patio, Grey rose gracefully to his feet to seat her, and to her astonishment complimented her on the hair-do. ‘It was like that—sort of—the first time I saw you,’ he grinned. ‘Looked a little better dry, of course, but the effect is the same. You look about fifteen.’
‘Which is nothing to complain about,’ his mother interjected. ‘We women grow old soon enough as it is.’
To Kelly’s surprise, Grey responded with a harsh laugh. ‘You’ll never look old,’ he told his mother with a chuckle of inner satisfaction. ‘And telling everybody it was me that turned you grey at twenty-three isn’t going to make a single bit of difference, because I can always say — quite honestly — that you made me grey twice.’
He turned to look at Kelly’s wondering expression. ‘Once at only two days old, if you please,’ he explained, ‘and if that wasn’t bad enough she did it again when I was only eighteen. It’s enough to put me off women for life!’
Geoff Barnes and Kelly laughed at the deliberate play on words, but Margaret Scofield merely shook her head sadly. ‘You’re right about the first time,’ she replied, ‘but you should be thankful for inheriting my premature grey hair. You might have taken after your father, don’t forget; he was bald at thirty.’
‘Some women think baldness is a sign of virility,’ he replied saucily, then rubbed his palm across the silver waves of his hair. ‘All this does is make them all think I’m too old for them. Kelly’s been avoiding me for that reason ever since she arrived, haven’t you, my child?’
The question caught Kelly slightly off guard, and she struggled momentarily for an answer before Grey interrupted.
‘Or was it that you preferred old men?’ he asked with a deliberate and mischievous grin.
This time she was ready for him. ‘Oh, I was interested for a moment,’ she replied, ‘until I found out that Freda wasn’t your daughter, as I’d suspected.’
The acid reply brought whoops of laughter from the two parents, but although Grey seemed to join in it, his eyes burned at Kelly with a strange intensity and foreboding.
‘That was a low blow, Miss Barnes,’ he replied, and then countered by relating his first meeting with Kelly and his belief at the time that she was a misguided student radical. ‘... The proof that first impressions can be misleading, but she still refuses me the same courtesy,’ he concluded meaningfully.
His expression warned Kelly that she’d not heard the last of his anger, and when he suddenly rose and excused himself on the promise of urgent business in the city, she knew he wasn’t being entirely truthful.
He strode off to change, leaving Kelly to sit in mild exasperation as her father and Grey’s mother exchanged meaningful glances.
‘It’s rude of me to ask, I suppose,’ Meg Scofield said after Grey had repeated his farewell and left the house, ‘but have you two been sniping at each other like this from the very beginning?’
‘More or less,’ Kelly admitted with a shy glance at her father. She was afraid of upsetting him, but the burst of laughter he emitted at her hedging comment showed she was fooling nobody.
‘They think they’re so smart,’ Geoff Barnes chuckled. ‘Reckon an old man in a hospital is stupid as well as sick, but they forgot I have eyes as good as the next man’s. You’ve got something going for Grey, haven’t you, Kelly?’
‘Indeed I have,’ she replied flippantly despite the surge of emotion the comment generated. ‘I think it’s called a personality clash in some circles. No offence, Mrs Scofield, but I find your son to be the most stubborn, opinionated and domineering man I’ve ever met.’
‘Well, I should certainly hope so,’ came the unexpected reply. ‘Although I must admit he has a way to go before he’s as good as his father. Oh, I wish you could have met him, Kelly. He and I fought from the very beginning. It didn’t matter who was present and it seldom mattered who was right, all it needed was for Greyson and me to be in the same room and the fireworks started. My own father said the only reason he allowed the marriage was because it was a shame to spoil two houses with us.’
‘Ignoring, of course, the f
act that he couldn’t have stopped you,’ Kelly’s father interrupted with a chuckle. ‘All the fuss and fury wasn’t on your husband’s side, Meg, and you know it. I think your poor old dad was happy just to get rid of you.’
Margaret Scofield returned the comment with an accusation of her own, and minutes later the two of them were embroiled in a half friendly, half angry row that left Kelly totally in the background and increasingly concerned for her father’s well-being. She sat in stunned amazement as they fought, watching the insults and accusations fly back and forth across the room with increasingly velocity until suddenly Geoff Barnes threw up his hands in a gesture of defeat.
‘Enough, woman!’ he roared in obvious exasperation. ‘You’re too much for me in my weakened condition, but give me a few days’ rest and I’ll paddle your bottom for you if that’s what it takes to win.’
‘You and whose army?’ Meg snapped back with a jeering laugh. ‘You’re a guest in my home and don’t you forget it, Geoffrey Barnes. Which means you’ll do as I say—and I say it’s time for you to take that poor, weary, tired old body off to bed before you collapse from old age and senility. Now!’
To Kelly’s surprise, he accepted without any objection, pausing only to kiss Kelly lightly on the cheek as he passed and then to throw a kiss and a saucy wink at his hostess.
‘Don’t try and read too much into that little performance,’ Meg warned Kelly quite seriously after Kelly’s father was safely out of earshot. ‘Your father and I are the best of friends and that’s all there is to it. He fights with me because he knows I need it and because Grey, bless his soul, won’t do it. And I fight with him because I need it and because we both enjoy it, but neither of us is fooling anybody; there isn’t a bit of romance in it ... just friendship.’
‘Oh, but I wasn’t...’
‘Of course you weren’t. And don’t. With all due respect to your father, there isn’t any man for me now that Greyson is gone and there won’t be. And I’m sure you’re aware that your dad’s in much the same boat.’