A Passionate Proposition

by Susan Napier

  ‘They’re on a date; they’d probably much rather be left alone,’ said Anya desperately, but she was talking to thin air as Mark strolled across the busy restaurant to the table where the other couple were being fussed over by the head waiter.

  Coincidence? Anya would rather call it horrific bad luck. The old-fashioned pub restaurant was popular with people from Riverview because it was halfway between the town and the motorway which was the main commuter corridor between the city of Auckland and all points south, but she wouldn’t have thought it stylish enough for Heather Morgan’s tastes. She was certainly among the most smartly dressed, in a glittery red cocktail dress, while her companion—leaning back in his chair to speak to Mark—was more subdued but no less elegant in a dark suit, where most of the other men in the restaurant were in sports jackets or shirtsleeves. His eyes flicked past Mark to capture Anya’s unsmiling gaze, and she felt a rush of panic, jerking her eyes back to her menu, her heart thumping uncomfortably in her chest.

  She bent her head, staring unseeingly at the ornately printed words, silently cursing herself for her foolish reaction. She should have smiled and coolly inclined her head instead of acting like a frightened ostrich. What she had done had amounted to an outright snub. She didn’t dare look up again and almost melted in relief when Mark reappeared, alone.

  Relief turned to dismay as he moved around to grasp the back of her chair. ‘Come on—Scott’s invited us to be his guests for the evening. I tried to protest but he insisted—he said their corner table is much better suited to conversation.’

  That was what Anya was afraid of! ‘But we’ve already ordered our drinks—’ she protested feebly.

  ‘The waiter’s sorting that out. He’s happy because we’re freeing up a table for more customers.’

  Anya tried not to resent Mark’s guiding hand on her back as she walked towards the flames of hell. He wasn’t to know that she was still shell-shocked by Joanna Monroe’s devastating revelation. For some reason Joanna had seemed to think that Anya was now part of Scott’s intimate inner circle, and naturally assumed that she had known about the turbulent affair.

  She stretched a smile across her face as they reached the table, conscious that her unadorned black slip dress with its filmy, beaded overtop was no match for the other woman’s dramatic flair, and wished she had worn her hair in a more sophisticated style than the simple French braid that hung down her back. She had always believed that the inner person mattered more than the outer one but it would be nice, just once, to be able to out-dazzle the opposition.

  Scott had risen to his feet and she was forced to briefly look him in the eye during the exchange of greetings, pretending not to notice the threatening determination she glimpsed in his studied politeness. His tigerish smile told her he was highly satisfied with the turn of events, while Heather’s tight, brief effort suggested that she held the opposite view of the disruption to her evening.

  Etiquette demanded that Mark sit next to Heather while Anya sat beside Scott, which at least saved her the nerve-racking prospect of having to converse with him face-to-face, but the table’s banquette seats made the brushing of arms and legs inevitable when sharing with a man as tall and broad as Scott, and Anya’s nerves soon began to hum at the suspicious frequency with which he was casually rearranging his limbs.

  ‘Having trouble with your contact lenses, or do you need those to read the menu?’ drawled Heather, and Kate put a hand up to her face and realised that she was still wearing her driving glasses.

  ‘I use them for long-distance—like when I’m driving.’ Annoyed with Mark for not mentioning them before, she quickly whisked them off with fumbling fingers that bounced them onto Scott’s bread and butter plate.

  ‘And in the classroom—to keep your eye on the delinquents and troublemakers who always try to hide themselves in the back row,’ Mark jokingly reminded her.

  ‘I used to sit in the back row,’ Scott murmured, picking up the spectacles and folding them up.

  ‘Why am I not surprised?’ It came out a little tarter than was strictly polite and was rewarded with instant punishment.

  ‘They must make you look even more like the quintessential schoolmarm,’ he said, handing them back for her to stuff in her purse, his eyes wickedly bland as they reminded her of his supposed predilection.

  Heather Morgan chuckled sympathetically at what she assumed was a disparaging remark. ‘Did you use them to drive here tonight?’ Her speculative brown eyes shifted from Anya to Mark. ‘I thought you two were here together…?’

  ‘I got called out to a fire alarm at the college, so I wasn’t able to pick Anya up as we’d planned,’ Mark told her. ‘It turned out to be a false alarm, but with vandalism as rife as it is we don’t like to take chances, so I got the fire department to do a full check of the premises.’

  ‘We had other plans, too.’ The diamonds in her ears glinted as Heather tossed a mildly reproachful look across the table. ‘We were supposed to be going to a Law Society dinner in the city but Scott got caught up in some fresh drama with his little daughter that he’s not talking about, didn’t you, darling?’ The clipped consonants indicated a hint of overstrained patience. Anya had already gathered from Petra that the girl’s arrival was viewed as a tiresome but temporary blip on Heather Morgan’s personal radar. Her condescending interest had not endeared her to Petra.

  ‘I did suggest that you could go without me,’ drawled Scott, as the waiter served their drinks.

  ‘But of course I wouldn’t hear of it, even though the dinner was honouring the achievements of one of my colleagues in the firm,’ Heather continued with an attractive little moue of her glossy carmine mouth which emphasised the extent of her self-sacrifice. ‘Since I’d skipped lunch in anticipation of a big dinner, Scott decided he’d better feed me at the nearest decent local eatery.’ She opened the folder in her hands and studied it with critically raised eyebrows. ‘It’s quite an extensive menu, but a little on the unimaginative side.’

  ‘It’s excellent food, though,’ said Mark. ‘They have a live band on Friday and Saturday nights, too. Not the head-bashing stuff they have in the public bar, but a good blend of dance music…’

  They ordered their meal and Anya, who had not felt much like eating anyway, now found her stomach churning at the thought of anything on the menu. She finally opted for the blandest thing she could find—consommé followed by grilled fish and a green salad.

  The talk was blessedly impersonal for a while, with Anya valiantly keeping up her end of the general conversation in spite of some distracting asides from Scott which were designed to force her to turn her head, or risk seeming spectacularly rude to the man who was paying for her meal. When the wine list arrived and Mark deferred to him as host, Scott consulted Anya’s opinion on his choices and she had to confess her ignorance.

  ‘If I like the taste, I’ll drink it, but the only thing I really know anything about is champagne—’

  ‘You mean the local bubbly?’ Heather interrupted, her voice nasal with disdain. ‘They’re not allowed to call it champagne any more, it has to be méthode champenoise.’

  ‘Oh, I meant Krug and Dom Perignon,’ Anya was startled into saying. ‘Champagne is the only alcohol my mother ever touches. She says it’s good for the throat. Even as a child I was given a small glass and expected to toast her success.’

  Scott unwisely chuckled at Heather’s ill-concealed chagrin and earned himself a chilly look. He explained about Anya’s background, adding several details that he could have gleaned only from Petra. The thought that she was an object of conversation between Scott and his daughter gave her an odd frisson.

  ‘Why didn’t you go to an American private school if your parents were living in the States?’ Heather wanted to know.

  Anya could imagine the supercilious reaction if she said that to her parents she had been a woeful distraction from their joint careers. They’d despaired of what to do with the quiet little cuckoo in their moveable nest, and
had been relieved at her naively expressed desire to live in Auckland, ‘near where Aunty Mary and Uncle Fred used to live’.

  ‘Because she considers New Zealand her spiritual as well as her birth home.’ Scott spoke for her with a lazy blend of amusement and approval which suggested a degree of familiarity that made Heather’s face turn even more frosty, and retaliate by shifting the main focus of her attention onto Mark.

  Her cold-shouldering had no effect, and instead of competing to recapture her interest, as he was supposed to, Scott was left free to torment Anya with his full awareness. Heather’s displeasure became even more pronounced when, over their main course, Mark made a passing remark about the college’s reputation for equality and fairness and Scott swiftly took him to task for his lack of recent fairness to Anya, countering every excuse he presented.

  ‘Well, Anya has sure got you on her side,’ said Mark ruefully, when Scott had manoeuvred him into admitting and apologising for his over-zealousness.

  ‘Doesn’t that present you with rather a conflict of interest—seeing as you’re the college’s legal representative?’ Heather pointed out acidly.

  ‘Naturally I couldn’t have advised her myself—but Anya would have had excellent grounds for suing if Mark had suspended her on the speculative fear of a future rumour rather than any eye-witness testimony of wrong-doing…’

  The others had finished their mains and Scott watched as Anya pushed the salad around on her plate to disguise the fact she’d hardly touched her food.

  He leaned over so that his shoulder touched hers. ‘Not hungry?’ he asked softly, under cover of the talk on the other side of the table.

  ‘I was,’ she lied pointedly, in a correspondingly low tone. ‘But something in the vicinity seems be turning my stomach.’

  Instead of being chastened, he chuckled. ‘Let’s see if we can’t do something to exercise your appetites.’ He began to shift across the banquette, nudging her off the bench seat with the hard pressure of his hip and thigh.

  ‘You two carry on with your conversation—Anya and I are just going to try out the band,’ he said, and had her in the centre of the small group of slow-dancing couples on the dance floor before she or anyone else had a chance to express an opinion of his manners.

  ‘Your girlfriend is not amused at your behaviour,’ said Anya, helpless to prevent her body shivering against his when his arm contracted across her back, enfolding her in the wings of his open jacket, his other hand cupping hers against the smooth weave of his shirt instead of in the correctly polite position. Her head was turned to one side, to prevent her nose being buried in his snowy breast, the top of her head barely reaching his collarbone.

  ‘Then it’s as well I’m not her court jester. I’m not any more amused at her mood. And she’s hardly a girl,’ he said, turning her so that she could no longer see their table, his foot pivoting between hers, his knee briefly kissing the inside of her thigh.

  ‘That’s right…your taste runs to older women, doesn’t it?’ she jabbed breathlessly. ‘You’re such a champion of the underdog, I suppose you’re used to handling bitches.’

  To her fury he laughed. ‘I think I’ve got my hands on one right now. And to think I thought you were too soft and tender-hearted. What’s got you clawing and biting? Or need I ask? Your cousin is younger than I am but she certainly ranks as a bitch.’

  She stiffened in the circle of his arms and the hand on her spine moved, capturing the end of her plait and wrapping it around his wrist so that he could tug her head back and look down into her stormy face. ‘I know that my sister, in her inimitable motor-mouthed wisdom, welcomed you into her acquaintance by spilling the beans about Kate and me, so let’s stop the sniping and get it out in the open—’

  ‘Oh, so now you want to talk about it? Well, maybe I don’t!’ She jerked her head to try and free her hair, the sharp tugging on her scalp bringing tears to her eyes…or so she wanted to believe as he instantly unwrapped his hand and smoothed the plait down her spine, allowing her the freedom to avert her gaze. She tried to increase the distance between them, but he had reached the limits of his tolerance and bracing herself against his controlling arm merely arched her body into greater intimacy.

  ‘You’re angry with me for not telling you?’ he said, his eyes on her pale profile. ‘I might point out that Kate obviously didn’t tell you either.’

  He wasn’t going to get away with making her sound unreasonable and illogical. She had every right to feel searingly betrayed. She knew exactly why Kate hadn’t told her—because it might have made Anya even more reluctant to take any risks on her behalf to know that she was dealing with one of her cousin’s ruthlessly discarded lovers.

  ‘Yes, and I’m furious with her, too.’

  He had reduced their steps to a bare shuffle, the better to protect the intimacy of their exchange, his head bowed over hers. ‘And since she’s not here you’re going to take it all out on me?’

  ‘Yes!’

  ‘That isn’t very fair,’ he murmured. ‘What happened between Kate and me isn’t relevant to this relationship—’

  ‘Isn’t relevant? You had a love affair with my cousin and didn’t think it worth mentioning?’

  ‘There’s a certain etiquette involved in discussing one’s past liaisons—particularly when they’re with well-known people. When I realised that Kate hadn’t told you, I was presented with a dilemma. How could I betray something she clearly wanted held in confidence? Would you respect me if you knew I was the kind of man to kiss and tell?’

  ‘From what your sister told me, it was a hell of a lot more than kisses!’ hissed Anya, conscious of the relaxed looseness of his body as it teased at her stubborn rigidity.

  ‘It was also five years ago. Well in the past. And I’d prefer it to remain there. I don’t make a habit of discussing my past lovers with future partners. That’s not my style.’

  Future partners? Anya went weak at the knees, telling herself he was just toying with her. She knew she was totally different from the other women he had had in his life. ‘And we all know what your style is,’ she said, catching a glimpse of Heather’s haughtily aloof face.

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’ he asked, again turning her back into the thick of the dancers.

  ‘Sophisticated, successful, beautiful…’

  ‘—and don’t forget bitchy,’ he had the nerve to tack on with a hint of laughter in his voice, his hand pressing hers into the warmth of his chest, making her aware of the springy cushion of hair under his shirt.

  ‘Elegant women who wouldn’t dream of…of—’

  ‘Rolling around on the grass with me under the trees?’

  He was definitely laughing at her. Her hand clenched into a fist underneath his palm. ‘I bet you didn’t roll Kate around on the grass!’ she accused raggedly.

  ‘God, no…she hated being ruffled. Your cousin was moonlight, champagne and caviar and silk sheets…everything had to be first class all the way.’

  While she was strictly economy, Anya thought bitterly, refusing to acknowledge the sardonic self-contempt that was invested in his words. ‘And I bet you loved every minute of it,’ she said.

  His jaw brushed her brow, his voice unrelenting as he uttered the confidences that she had demanded from him but hadn’t really wanted to hear.

  ‘As you say, she’s a very beautiful woman, but suffice it to say that I didn’t do the chasing. I was single and unencumbered, and I wouldn’t have been a man if I hadn’t been seduced by her passionate declarations. I admit, I temporarily lost my head. For all of eight weeks she had me convinced I was central to her happiness and I was arrogant enough to actually start believing that she meant it when she said she loved me, that we might be building something special. It was quite a kick in the ego when the attraction didn’t last—on either side. It was an affair, certainly, but in retrospect I don’t think I’d classify it as a love affair…

  ‘Five years ago I might have mistaken glister for gold but my tastes have
matured since then. Maybe I’m discovering that I prefer to lose my head over the simple pleasures of life—sunlight and laughter, apples and grass, and a pair of eyes as clear and refreshing as a cool drink of water…’

  His hand had somehow insinuated itself under the filmy fabric of her little cropped top, his fingertips resting on her silky bare skin above the low-cut back of her dress. Not caressing, or doing anything indecent, just there…as seductively enticing as his words.

  ‘You must have been pretty serious about Kate at the time,’ she tortured herself. ‘Your sister said you didn’t date for a year afterwards—’

  He snorted. ‘Jo is a dyed-in-the-wool romantic. It was actually longer than a year. I was building up my practice as fast as I could and at the same time supervising all the renovations being done on The Pines both before and after I moved in. For a long time I simply didn’t have the spare energy to devote to a new relationship. My sex drive was sublimated in work. I didn’t have time for another woman in my life—’

  ‘But now you do,’ Anya said tartly, her feminine hackles rising. She stopped moving, glaring up at him. ‘Do you know how arrogant that sounds?’

  He kept his arm firmly around her, their bodies touching from chest to knee. ‘What about you? You obviously haven’t had much time for men if you think Mark Ransom is going to make you any kind of decent lover.’

  She clenched her teeth. ‘There’s nothing the matter with Mark!’

  ‘I didn’t say there was…only that he’s not right for you. He’s too conventional. One look at your kinky underwear and he’d be blushing like a vicar instead of ripping it off you.’ He grinned at her expression and began dancing again. ‘You’re a buttoned-up little thing who needs a man who won’t be put off by those snooty boarding school manners—’

  ‘And you’re a white-collar professional with a big chip on your shoulder!’ she snapped, her body unconsciously obeying his lead, moving in perfect unison with his changing step.