An Indecent Proposal

by Margot Early

  There she found Louisa giving her a penetrating glance. “You’re a clever girl, aren’t you?” her employer said, and turned away without a word on what improvements the stairs did or did not need. But she added, without looking back, “I’ll send Patrick down, shall I?”

  It sounded to Bronwyn a bit like revenge.

  Chapter Seven

  Patrick found Bronwyn in the basement, writing on a steno pad he recognized as one of those used throughout Fairchild Acres by staff. She’d twisted her long hair up in a loose knot, and she seemed to be checking the weight-training equipment. She glanced up as he entered the room. Her cheeks flushed.

  Patrick saw.

  Did it mean anything, that sudden infusion of color?

  But her tone, when she spoke, was businesslike. “Good. I guess I do need some guidance in terms of what Louisa is likely to think reasonable in the way of—”

  “‘Whatever she wants,’ were her words.”

  Bronwyn frowned, eyebrows drawing together as she peered up at his face. “Why?”

  “What do you mean, why?”

  “Why does she want to spend so much on something that she seems to have tried before and which didn’t work out?”

  “Well, I guess because she feels she didn’t put the energy into it that she should have last time. She really wants someone on the premises who can help the jockeys and grooms and the rest of the staff keep in shape to prevent workplace injuries, that kind of thing.”

  Bronwyn wasn’t sure she believed this explanation but chose not to voice her doubts. Instead she said, “Well, I guess the next thing to do is make a list of the staff who will be needing to use the facility and an assessment of their needs.”

  “What do you need, Bronwyn?”

  The question startled her. She shot a look at him. “What do you mean?”

  “Just what I said. I think Louisa wants to meet your needs, as well.”

  “I always make sure my needs get met,” Bronwyn said stiffly. Then, afraid of how Patrick might react to these words, she said, “A home for me and Wesley. That’s what I need, and it’s what I have.” For now, anyway. It was still hard for her to trust Louisa Fairchild’s largesse.

  “Did Ari meet your needs?”

  She would have thought he was taunting her, except that his voice was serious. Also, she sensed he wasn’t talking about money—or about physical needs. She asked, “Emotionally?”

  “Yes.”

  She swallowed, not wanting to answer. “I was in love with him. There were times that were all joy, when we really seemed to be one. But you and I were such friends, Patrick,” she finally said.

  “And you and Ari weren’t?”

  “That’s not what I meant. But we weren’t contemporaries. That’s what I chose, intentionally chose, but sometimes…” Sometimes Bronwyn had longed to be with someone her own age, to share in the same generational experience. Someone who’d seen the same movies and television shows, who’d grown up playing with similar toys. Which wasn’t to say her and Patrick’s childhoods had ever been socially similar.

  “You chose him because he was older?” Patrick said, sounding as though he doubted this.

  “Yes,” she answered. Because he was mature. Which Patrick hadn’t been—not then. Half-desperately, she said, “Patrick, you and I are Wesley’s parents. I know you feel bitterness toward me, but please don’t let that—” She didn’t know how to continue.

  Patrick gazed at her until she lifted her eyes to him. “Don’t let it what?” he asked.

  “When you can’t forgive someone it poisons you.” She gave a rueful laugh. “I should know. I’m spending a lot of time these days trying not to poison myself that way.”

  “Because of Ari?”

  Bronwyn didn’t answer directly, but said, “And he had as much or more to forgive, though he never knew it.”

  Wesley, Patrick thought. “He never guessed?”

  “If he did, he never said.” Then she remembered Ari, remembered how he’d really been. “And he wouldn’t have let that go,” she admitted at last with a sigh.

  “But you want Wesley to keep thinking that Ari is his father.”

  “Not forever!” Bronwyn objected. All her fears rushed back to her—above all, the fear that Patrick might try to take Wesley from her.

  Patrick tried to guess the source of her anxiety. Only the previous afternoon, he and Wesley had gone riding yet again. Patrick had taken even more satisfaction in the experience than before, knowing that this fine boy was really his own son. But he had kept his word to Bronwyn and let no hint of the truth reach Wesley.

  Bronwyn said, almost to herself, “I’m afraid. Afraid of how it will affect him. Afraid he’ll be angry with me for lying to him all this time, even though it was for his own protection.”

  “Protection?” said Patrick incredulously.

  Bronwyn seemed belatedly to register her own words. She appeared dumbstruck.

  “Why should it have been for his—”

  “Ari wouldn’t—” She clamped shut her mouth.

  “So he wasn’t so nice.”

  “He always was,” she insisted. “I just knew that—” But what had she known? She’d known nothing. She’d never suspected Ari was a criminal. And yet she must have sensed some ruthlessness within him, something that had made her fear grave repercussions if he’d learned that Wesley wasn’t his natural son. Well, any man would have been angry about that.

  She closed her eyes. “I didn’t know of anything specific he’d done. I didn’t know he was a criminal. But part of me must have suspected what I didn’t know. Does that make sense?”

  “Actually, it does,” Patrick answered.

  He sounded understanding. She gazed up at him, wishing that what she heard could be true—that he actually did understand.

  “I think when we love someone, we resist seeing specifics,” he said. “Maybe we resist seeing the truth. That can happen unconsciously. I had a partner once….”

  “What?”

  “A business partner. I haven’t thought about him for a while. He did some things which, while not illegal, were unethical. I managed for some months to not know. I say managed, but I’d swear it was all unconscious. And yet, when the truth suddenly stared me in the face, I realized that in fact I’d always known.”

  He did understand. She’d been able to confide her confused feelings about Ari to Patrick and he had so completely understood. Her heart filled with warmth. The moment reminded her of something past, something gone like childhood but sweet to recall. And yet it had just happened. Was there some ghost of friendship left between her and Patrick?

  “Thank you,” she whispered, as much to herself as to him.

  “For what?”

  For being my friend. In the past and in these last few minutes. But Bronwyn couldn’t utter the words. She was too afraid to hear him refute them. “I’m really excited about this job,” she said instead.

  But Patrick, watching her look down at the notes she’d been making, suspected that she wasn’t thanking him for anything to do with the job.

  Ordinarily, Dylan Hastings would not have been the first person Patrick would choose to confide in. But he couldn’t very well ask Louisa if she knew of any good divorce attorneys. Louisa would ferret out the truth about Wesley in a heartbeat.

  Besides, Dylan had been through a divorce of his own.

  So Patrick was pleased when Dylan, Megan and Heidi stopped by the following day before Heidi headed back to school. While Megan and Heidi went out to the stables, so that Megan could say goodbye to her horse, Patrick and Dylan sat on the porch, each with a beer, and Patrick tried to work out how to get the information he wanted from Dylan without breaking his promise to Bronwyn.

  He settled on the old “a friend of mine has a problem” approach.

  He wasn’t sure Dylan bought the story of Patrick’s old friend from university who’d learned unexpectedly that he was a father and was looking for a good attorney to help hi
m secure his parental rights. At one point, Dylan said, “And how old is this child?”

  “Ten,” Patrick admitted with some reluctance. He thought he saw something like amusement cross Dylan’s features, but whatever Megan’s fiancé suspected, he didn’t put it into words.

  Finally, Dylan said, “What does your friend want out of the situation?”

  “Parental rights,” Patrick answered as though this were obvious.

  “What rights, though? Visitation?”

  “Half time. I know he doesn’t want a court battle or anything like that.”

  Dylan’s look was strangely grim. “Well, it’s all fine to talk about fifty-fifty time, and some people are in favor of parents just working things out for themselves. But as someone in law enforcement, I recommend getting everything in writing.”

  “That’s what I thought,” Patrick agreed. He would have to tell an attorney everything, but the attorney would be bound by client confidentiality.

  “Sure, I have a guy I’d recommend,” Dylan said at last. “But I have to say, your friend’s lucky that the kid’s mum wants to be with her child.”

  “Of course she does,” Patrick said, then remembered that this wasn’t the case with Dylan’s daughter, Heidi, whose mother didn’t seem to know or care what happened to her daughter. He opened his mouth to apologize, but Dylan seemed to intuit Patrick’s realization of his mistake.

  “No worries,” Dylan muttered. “She’s got Megan.”

  Patrick heard the love bordering on reverence with which Dylan spoke of Patrick’s sister. It made him like the other man, went some distance toward forgiving him for ever having suspected Louisa of murdering Sam Whittleson.

  The attorney Dylan recommended was named Everett Wyatt, and Patrick liked him at once. The lawyer had a mild manner and revealed at the first meeting that if Patrick was looking for a ruthless attorney who didn’t care who he damaged in order to secure his client’s rights, then Patrick was talking to the wrong man.

  “My first case,” Everett revealed, “was a wrongful death suit, and it taught me a lot about the law, people and time. You spend eight years in court, there goes your son’s childhood. In my first suit, these people wanted, to sue for what had happened to their child, but by the time it got to the courts four years had passed. In the normal course of events, they would have begun to heal—not to get over it, because you don’t, but to heal. Well, going to court stirred everything up again, really prevented their moving forward.”

  Patrick realized he’d had the good fortune to discover an attorney who was not only fair, but wise.

  When he had told Everett everything—even down to his making a pass at Bronwyn and then firing her— Everett twisted his mouth a bit. “Is the mother going to fight you on this?”

  “I believe she thinks she’s prepared to be fair, but when push comes to shove, she’ll probably hang on tight. She’s resisting telling the boy the truth.”

  “And you’re going along with that.”

  “You don’t think it’s the right thing to do?”

  “I think it’s absolutely the right thing to do. Let her know that the boy is going to have to know the truth, but don’t blurt it out to him yourself. Sounds like he doesn’t need that kind of trauma. He thinks his father was a criminal, and the man’s just been murdered— frankly, you might want to look into getting the kid some counseling when he is told.

  “And you did the right thing to give Mum back her job and see her promoted, because what you did doesn’t look too good. I’d be very careful not to trouble her with any more unwelcome advances.”

  Patrick knew he was hearing good advice and felt doubly foolish for having made that pass at Bronwyn.

  Everett pulled a legal pad toward him and began scrawling. “All right, let’s get everything down, so we can serve Mum with some notice of your intentions.”

  Patrick spoke slowly, hesitantly. “You don’t think maybe I should just…try to talk her into things.”

  “Under the circumstances,” Everett answered, not bothering to look up, “absolutely not.”

  “Which circumstances?”

  “The circumstances that your recent behavior could easily be construed as sexual harassment.”

  “I am going to have to work with her.”

  “Then keep it professional.”

  Patrick arrived back at Fairchild Acres to find Louisa in high gear about a barbecue she wished to host the afternoon before an upcoming race at Warrego Downs. Patrick could scarcely follow her conversation, her waspish remarks about both candidates for president of the International Thoroughbred Racing Federation, her requests for his opinion on where marquees should be erected to minimize guests being troubled by the burned-out smell from the recent fires.

  He wanted to say that those smells would be in his own nose the rest of his life. He had a sudden fearful vision of Wesley riding alone and confronted by wild-fire. Snakes, spiders, sharks, skin cancer, every peril of, the world suddenly loomed large as he gazed upon his environment as a parent.

  My son… That Wesley was his son with Bronwyn made the child all the more precious to Patrick. Wesley was what endured of his long-ago love affair with Bronwyn. Bronwyn, who was still more surpassingly beautiful than any woman Patrick had ever met or known.

  His mind on Bronwyn, he hurried down to the basement. He knew she had already started teaching three classes in the new recreational facility. One was an aerobic conditioning class, another was yoga and the third was Pilates. She had already asked Patrick if he thought Louisa would allow her some time away from Fairchild Acres to obtain more training. She wanted to be certified as an instructor of Iyengar yoga and a Pilates teacher.

  Patrick was beginning to get the feeling there was nothing Louisa wouldn’t do for Bronwyn. He’d actually heard Louisa say the fatal words to Bronwyn: “It’s a pity you don’t have a more extensive riding background.” From Louisa, that was as good as saying, If you’d been my child…

  It was a compliment, a sign of Louisa’s caring and concern. The same kind of concern Louisa had shown toward Wesley.

  Patrick found Bronwyn working out in the basement, lifting weights, using the bench and weight machines that had arrived that morning. In the corner of the room were six spinning bicycles for indoor cycling classes. But Bronwyn wasn’t alone. Two of the other workers were with her—her housemates Marie and Helena. Patrick had learned Helena’s name when he had referred to her as “the heavy one” to Bronwyn. Bronwyn had snapped, “Her name is Helena, and she’s lost ten pounds in the last two weeks, and she’s extremely strong.”

  That had put him in his place—and increased his affection for Bronwyn. That made him uneasy. He found her attractive, and he admired her compassionate and professional desire to help Helena and the other employees. Plus, she was already working with Louisa on some easy exercises that would increase the older woman’s mobility. He’d looked for signs that Bronwyn was sucking up to her boss and had found none.

  Marie eyed Patrick as he came in. A strange one, that woman. Quite good-looking, but he always had the feeling that she had amassed a wall of secrets behind that elfin facade.

  Not his problem, in any case. She said to Helena, “Ready, Helena?” and he saw that the two women had just finished their workout.

  Helena was on the scale. “One second.”

  “Not right after exercise,” Bronwyn told her. “And stop being obsessed with that damned thing.”

  “Yes, Mum,” Helena laughed. The two women waved to Bronwyn and departed.

  Bronwyn eyed Patrick warily.

  Well, he had his orders from his attorney. Keep it businesslike.

  “Just wanted to check on the things you ordered, see if they came in and if everything is satisfactory.”

  “Quite,” Bronwyn told him. She picked up two towels from the floor and took them to the hamper, then tilted one of the spinning bicycles on its casters to move it out from the wall.

  “Where is our son?” Patrick ask
ed.

  “A riding lesson. From your sister, actually.”

  “Ah.” He wondered how the meeting between Bronwyn and Megan had gone. They’d always liked each other. When Bronwyn had turned down his proposal and he’d told Megan why, his sister hadn’t condemned her. It was only Bronwyn’s acceptance of Ari that had raised Megan’s eyebrows.

  Bronwyn looked him up and down. She nodded to the bikes. “Care to join me? You’ll want to change.”

  She was reaching out to him, offering friendliness. Could accepting that offer be considered something other than professional? Of course not.

  “I’ll change and be right back,” he said, hurrying out of the room.

  What had made her invite him to do this with her? Bronwyn asked herself as she moved a second bicycle out into the room. She knew the answer. It was those moments of friendship the other day, when he’d shown he really did understand what she’d known and not known about Ari.

  How had she come to value friendship so much? And it wasn’t just friendship; Patrick was an old friend, the person who knew her better than anyone else at Fairchild Acres, except, possibly, Wesley.

  And he’s attractive, Bronwyn.

  That was exactly what she couldn’t afford to notice or care about.

  In minutes, Patrick returned downstairs wearing a pair of cycling shorts and a T-shirt. “I prefer to ride outside ordinarily,” he said. “There’s a nice road past the Kay vineyard. Do you have a bicycle?”

  “No. I mean, I did in Sydney. But we had a bit of a sale before I left. I needed to put some money together—” She stopped abruptly.

  Patrick wondered if she was hypersensitive to his opinion of her financial situation. Maybe she was afraid he would lash out, accuse her again of trying to worm money from him.

  Truth be told, he no longer suspected her of such behavior. Since Louisa had confronted him and given him that piece of her mind about his treatment of Bronwyn, he’d been forced to look harder at himself and to realize how childish his behavior had been. And now he knew the real reason Bronwyn had come to Fairchild Acres. He believed what she’d said, that she wanted him to know Wesley and for Wesley to know, him. So he said lightly, “Louisa has a couple of bicycles in one of the outbuildings. Sometimes the employees use them.”