by Susan Napier
‘Do you blame me? My one year at private school was an education in the corruption of privilege,’ he said, undermining her anger with his sudden gravity. ‘Because I was a scholarship boy I was automatically an outsider to the boys who had been there since kindergarten. My language, my mannerisms, my lack of money, my aggressive desire to succeed, they all marked me out as different and threatening to the status quo. And when I found warmth and acceptance in the one place that it seemed to be freely offered, I found that trust was also a flexible commodity. I trusted Lorna when she said she loved me, but she traded on that trust to deny me the true realisation of what it means to be a man.
‘I trusted your cousin, too, to be honest about her emotions and open about her intentions, but Kate wasn’t capable of that much unselfishness. Her claims of love were just flashy pyrotechnics, full of noise and dazzle but utterly ephemeral. So don’t ever think that there’s any way that I’d want your cousin back, or confuse you with her…or her with you…’
His words lingered in her head for the entire weekend, during which she cravenly stayed home and gardened. Heather had been sitting in glacial silence by the time they had got back to the table and Anya had quickly invented a headache which Mark had accepted with relief as a reason to excuse themselves from dessert and coffee. Anya had had the feeling that if she hadn’t been driving herself she would have had to listen to a lecture all the way home in the car. As it was she had escaped with only an irritated comment that in being submissive to Scott’s domination she had only succeeded in being rude to Heather.
Submissive? If only he knew!
She was not feeling at all submissive on Monday afternoon, when the final bell dismissed her last class and Petra bounced into her classroom towing her father.
‘Hi, Miss Adams. I hope your headache’s better because Dad and I’ve got a fantastic surprise for you!’
‘Oh, really?’ said Anya, moving behind her desk, taking off her spectacles and making a business of putting them in their soft leather case in order to avoid Scott’s hooded gaze. He doubtless knew very well the reason that she had not tutored Petra over the weekend was because she had not wanted to face him. Her headache had not been organic.
‘Yes—look! Dad’s got us tickets to go to a concert at the Auckland Town Hall tonight.’ Petra released her father’s hand to excitedly pull the tickets out of their printed sleeve. ‘They’ve apparently been sold out for weeks but Dad managed to get three review seats from a friend at one of the newspapers.’ She pushed the tickets across the desk to Anya, pointing out the name of a famous Russian pianist appearing ‘For One Night Only’. ‘He’s playing Beethoven’s “Fifth Concerto”—the “Emperor”,’ she exalted. ‘This is just going to be so fantastic!’
‘Tonight…?’ said Anya faintly, folding into the chair behind her desk, frantically trying to think up an excuse.
‘You already have a date?’ asked Scott, his eyes no longer hooded but blazing with challenge. He was going to pin her to the blackboard behind her if she tried to refuse, she realised.
‘Well, no, but…it’s a school night,’ she faltered, rolling nervously at the fine gold chain exposed by the open collar of her yellow blouse.
‘Oh, that’s OK, we’re not going to be out too late—Dad’s booking a hotel suite so we don’t have to drive all the way back home tonight.’ Petra was almost dancing with glee at the idea. ‘We can take everything we’ll need for tomorrow and Dad’ll drive us home in the morning and drop us right here at school.’
‘The perfect plan,’ purred Scott, and something in his voice alerted Petra because her face fell with ludicrous speed.
‘You’re not going to say no, are you, Miss Adams? I’ve never been to a concert where someone famous is playing—just free ones and symphony matinées…’
Anya had picked up a pen from her desk, instinctively trying to retreat behind her professional facade.
‘No, Miss Adams is definitely not going to say no,’ her father said in that same, silken voice, leaning both hands flat on the edge of her desk. ‘She wouldn’t dream of disappointing you. She’s delighted that I’m thoughtful enough to want to ensure that she’s bright-eyed and bushy-tailed for school tomorrow. She’s going to thank me nicely and say that she feels privileged to be able to attend a concert by a former Tchaikovsky prize-winner in the presence of a future Tchaikovsky prize-winner.’
‘Oh, Dad!’
‘Well, if you’re sure there’s no-one else you’d rather invite,’ Anya murmured. ‘Someone in the family. Or perhaps Miss Morgan would like to hear the “Emperor”…’ she felt driven to suggest.
‘Miss Adams!’ Petra stared at her, eyes rounded in horror at this unthinkable betrayal.
‘Miss Morgan thinks the “Emperor” is a giant penguin,’ drawled Scott, sending Petra into a fit of hysterically relieved giggles. He leaned further across the desk, his tie brushing Anya’s open text-book as his deep voice provided a counterpoint to the high-pitched giggles. ‘She also thinks that I no longer fit her profile of a desirable escort. I’ve apparently changed for the worse since I became an active father—I’ve become selfish, rude and indifferent to a woman’s needs!’
He certainly gave the lie to the first two criticisms that evening as he escorted a lady on each arm into the concert chamber, Petra minus her nosering and wearing a new dress—black of course—bought from a screamingly trendy boutique near the hotel and Anya in a silver lurex top and long black skirt. They had dined at the hotel, Petra in transports of delight at the sight of the luxurious, three-bedroom penthouse suite, confiding that she’d never stayed in a hotel before.
Petra sat between them at the concert, leaning forward in her seat in the centre-front of the circle, her hands gripping the ledge, while Scott lounged back in his seat, his arm extended along the back of her seat towards Anya, occasionally exchanging smiling glances with her behind his daughter’s entranced back.
Petra remained utterly still through the entire performance and during the slow movement in B Major Anya even suspected her of holding her breath so as not to make even the slightest sound that would interfere with her blissful appreciation of the adagio. Her expression was filled with such soul-wrenching purity and sublime yearning that Anya felt doubly moved by the music and blinked furiously to dispel the tears in her eyes.
A touch on her shoulder had her turning her head and seeing the corresponding glitter of Scott’s eyes as they shared a moment of perfect emotional communion. With his daughter’s coming the cynical, hard-bitten lawyer was rediscovering the joys and sorrows of vulnerability, was able to reveal the tenderness and sensitivity which didn’t detract from his toughness but merely added depth and breadth to his character. Her heart fisted in her chest. Perhaps what it really meant was that he was opening himself up to love…
The rousing final rondo brought the audience to their feet and Petra clapped and stamped and cried for encores with a glorious abandon that had the people around her laughing indulgently and leaning over to compliment Anya and Scott on their enthusiastic daughter. When Anya blushingly attempted to correct them, Scott swapped seats with Petra and told her not to be silly, and stayed there his arm draped around her for the brilliant short encore that again had Petra shouting herself hoarse.
Outside the Town Hall they strolled across Aotea Square, to a theatre restaurant where they ate a late supper and let Petra begin to wind down from her excitement, her feverish chatter eventually fading into a dream-like contentment.
Back in the hotel suite, Petra yawned her way into her bedroom and re-emerged in the heavy-metal T-shirt that passed for night attire to give Anya an unexpected hug, followed by an exuberant leap into her father’s arms. He whirled them both around, turning her babble of thanks into a shower of choked giggles. When he set her down she didn’t let him go for a moment, and when she did it was with a fierce kiss and a passionate little speech.
‘I know you pretended that you’d wanted to go all along, but you did this for
me. I’ll never forget that. I’ll make you proud of me, Dad, I promise!’
‘I already am.’ he said gently. ‘Let’s make a date for the first time you play Carnegie Hall—I’ll bring the flowers you bring the piano!’
She laughed, her incipient tears vanishing.
‘Go on, sleepy head,’ he said. ‘To bed—and if I don’t hear another peep out of you until morning, I’ll let you order breakfast on Room Service!’
After her door had closed behind her he stood still for a moment in the centre of the room, his head bowed, his face pale above his black dinner suit and white silk shirt, his hands flexing at his sides. ‘I don’t see the point of dwelling on what can’t be changed, regrets are so futile—but I hate how much I’ve missed of her life,’ he said hoarsely. ‘I hate that I was so ignorant and uncaring that I never got to hold her as a baby or see her first step, or her face the first time she ever touched a piano…And now there’s another man whom she obviously loves and is happy to call Dad—her everyday Dad, who’s a bigger part of her life than I’ll ever be…’
‘You may have been ignorant; you weren’t uncaring,’ said Anya compassionately. ‘Just human. We’re all entitled to make mistakes, especially when we’re young.’
‘Are we?’ His shoulders relaxed under the smooth jacket, the jut of his jaw easing as he lifted his head. ‘And what heinous mistakes did you make when you were young?’ It was said in a wry tone that doubted she would have any to confess.
‘I fell madly in love with a man whom I thought truly appreciated and accepted the real me. Unfortunately the real me was too boring, both in bed and out, to sustain his interest and he graduated to a very exciting, very public fling with my cousin.’
‘Ah.’ That rocked him back on his heels, as she had meant it to, but he recovered quickly. ‘So you and Kate have issues about men…?’ he murmured, walking over to the bar and uncapping a bottle of whisky.
‘An issue. And we resolved it. I decided Alistair wasn’t worth loving after all, and she dumped him.’
He winced. ‘Drink?’ He tilted the whisky bottle to show her the label and she shook her head.
‘I’m still feeling the effects of the Irish coffee I had at supper,’ she said, watching him pour two fingers for himself. ‘I don’t think I can take any more artificial intoxication.’
Scott raised the crystal glass to his mouth, then stopped, looking at her over the rim.
He set the glass back down on the bar behind him. ‘You’re right—natural intoxication is infinitely more preferable,’ he said huskily. ‘It gives you a much more sustained high.’ He shrugged out of his unbuttoned jacket and stripped off his black tie, tossing them onto the white leather couch. He stretched—a long, slow flex of his big body—and then strolled towards her wide-eyed figure, pulling his shirt-tails loose and lifting his chin. ‘Would you mind?’ he murmured as he came to a halt well within the limits of her personal space. ‘The collar is so tight and the buttons so small, my big clumsy fingers always have difficulty manoeuvring. Would you undo them for me?’
He waited passively, his big, clumsy fingers innocently hanging at his sides, and after a brief hesitation Anya reached up, going on tip-toes to see what she was doing so that she could comply with his request as quickly and efficiently as possible. He turned out to be right about the buttons. They were devilishly playful little things and she was aware of his warm breath stirring the hair at her temples as she slid her fingers inside his snug collar to help work the fastening loose, her knuckles massaging the hard column of his throat, the unique, spicy scent of him rising from his warm shirt as he lifted his arms, infusing her with familiar longing.
Suddenly she became aware of the reason that he had moved. The strategic pins anchoring her elegant French twist were plucked out and her hair tumbling in a silky, sun-streaked spray down her back.
‘What did you do that for?’ she demanded, struggling with the second and last tiny button as his arms fell back to his sides.
‘You were frowning and I thought that maybe your hair twisted up like that was giving you a headache,’ he said innocently. ‘You don’t wear it up at night, anyway, do you?’
He meant in bed. ‘Sometimes,’ she lied.
‘But not tonight,’ he said with a bone-melting satisfaction.
‘There!’ She tried to step back but he caught her hands.
‘You haven’t finished…’ Holding her eyes, he moved her fingers down to the first button below his collar. ‘Please…’ he said softly, and, mesmerised by the smouldering desire in the blue gaze, she undid it for him, only to have him slowly guide her hands down to the next button, and the next, and the next…each act of compliance acknowledging his bold intention to seduce.
‘Do you recognise it?’ he murmured, as they reached the last button and her fingers brushed against the betraying bulge that pushed at the front of his trousers under cover of the loose shirt.
‘Recognise what?’ she said, blushing furiously, recklessly tempted to trace the outline of that intriguing hardness.
‘My shirt…it’s the one you borrowed that night to cover your peek-a-boo charms,’ he murmured, sending a fresh flush of awareness through her body. ‘I’ve discovered I like having something that you wore next to my skin. It’s as if you’re wrapped around me, caressing me with your featherlight touch every time I move…’
His shirt was fully unbuttoned now, exposing his powerful chest with its masculine pelt of crisp, dark hair arrowing down over the hard ridges of his abdomen to a thin tracing below his navel. He placed her hands over his hard, flat nipples.
‘Would you like to do that to me, Anya?’ he invited in a whispering groan. ‘Would you like to touch me, stroke me, wrap yourself around me and move with me, on me….’ His hips shifted as he spoke, pushing at her skirt, teasing her with their mutual awareness of what she was doing to him.
His skin was hot to the touch, taut and seductively smooth under the roughening of hair, she discovered as he released her hands to roam in helpless fascination over his upper body. It was as if she had never touched a man before, and she hadn’t…not with this combination of excitement and fear, hunger and yearning, not with a mingling of love and bittersweet resignation, knowing that there was not even the pretence of love in return and not caring…For the moment it was enough that he wanted her, that right here, right now, she was the most desirable woman in the world to him.
When her fingernails scraped over his nipples he shuddered and let out a thick groan. The harsh sound in the quiet luxury of the lounge startled her and her confidence faltered. Was she mad? What had made her think she could handle an affair with such a formidable man?
‘I—what if Petra gets up?’ she said, backing away. He shadowed her with a smile that had her skittering nervously towards the two adjoining doors on the opposite side of the suite to Petra’s room. ‘I think it’s time I was in bed—’
‘You’re right, of course,’ he agreed smoothly, looming up behind her and putting out a hand to cover hers as she grasped the first door handle. ‘Wrong room,’ he purred in her ear, his other hand sliding around her waist, drawing her back against his naked chest.
‘I—it’s very late,’ she tried.
‘Yes, it is…far too late for either of us to back out.’ He nuzzled the side of her neck through the fine veil of her hair, nibbling at her tender skin and licking at the tender lobe of her ear. ‘I’ve been thinking about this all night…and so have you,’ he said, compressing his swollen shaft against the soft curve of her bottom. ‘About what we were going to do when we were finally alone together. You’ve been readying yourself for me, honey…I can feel it, taste it, smell it on you…’
Her head fell back against his shoulder. ‘I don’t think I’m cut out for this kind of affair—’ she gasped as his hand slid up under her lurex top, to dip into her lacy bra and toy with her stiff little nipples.
‘How do you know what kind of affair it’s going to be until you give it a chance…
?’ he said, pulling her hand away from the door and drawing it back against the rigid muscles of his hard flank. ‘Give me a chance to make love to you and you might find that our affair is exactly what you need.’ He spun her around in his arms and picked her up, carrying her into his room and dropping her down in the middle of the huge bed. He locked the door and swiftly stripped off the rest of his clothes.
Big, hard and naked, he approached the bed where she was still kneeling in a state of delicious confusion. ‘Take a good look, honey, it’s all yours,’ he drawled at her furiously blushing face, and she seemed bewitched by the bold arousal that jutted from the dark thatch of curling hair between his strong thighs.
She moistened her dry lips. ‘You’re—you’re very—’
‘Well-endowed?’ He grinned wickedly.
That, too! ‘I was going to say arrogant,’ she said shakily, unable to tear her eyes away from his glorious nudity, beguiled by the supreme naturalness of his attitude to his flagrant sexuality. ‘Whatever happened to the slow dance of seduction?’
His smile was a slow sizzle. ‘Afraid I’m going to rush you? Not a chance! I still have you to unwrap and I know that’s going to be the most fun of all…’ He crawled onto the bed, prowling towards her like a sleek, glossy-skinned predator, enjoying the game as she retreated up against the stacked pillows, snatching up the handmade chocolate which had been placed on the turned-down covers and holding it out to him in laughing protest.
‘You think that’s enough to satisfy my sweet tooth?’ He licked his lips and took a bite of the chocolate, following it up with a swift lunge and a bite at her mouth. His hands cupped her face, the velvety-smooth chocolate melting on their mingled tongues as he spilled her backwards across the width of the bed, his leg pushing heavily between hers as he plundered her willing mouth.
All Anya’s former doubts and fears vanished like mist under the blazing sun of his hungry passion. The willingness to love was a strength, not a weakness, and it was worth all of the pain she was probably storing up for herself to have this chance to express her love in its most intimate physical form, to be at one with the man to whom she had secretly lost her heart. No, not lost…given. Even if Scott didn’t know it, tonight he was going to be truly well loved in the fullest sense of the words.