A Durable Fire

by Robyn Donald

  ‘I think that most of us want love,’ she said softly. ‘That’s the greatest security.’

  Rhys hugged her suddenly. ‘You’re nice,’ he said thickly. ‘Nice, like an apple, sweet and clean and crisp. Arminel, I’ve fallen headlong in love with you. When you come to Te Nawe come as my love, wearing my ring?’

  Her heart blocked her throat. She lifted her eyes, met his pleading gaze with a luminous, trembling smile, and knew that she could not accept his proposal. ‘It wouldn’t be fair,’ she said. ‘Your mother has the right to be told about me before you decide anything. And you could change your mind before I get there.’ It was an effort to keep her voice light, almost playful. ‘It does happen, you know.’

  ‘It won’t to me,’ he promised definitely, bending his head to her mouth, his kisses filled with the same pleading she had seen in his eyes.

  It was hard to stand firm, especially when he showed her the ring he had chosen for her, a sapphire as dark as her eyes enfolded in diamonds, but she knew that she could not suddenly turn up at his home as his fiancée. They had only known each other for three weeks; it just wasn’t long enough.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart, I love you so,’ he whispered, pressing a kiss into the palm of each of her hands. ‘Make your arrangements as soon as you can, please. I’ll be waiting for you.’

  But he wasn’t. A month later when she arrived at the airport in Auckland it was to find herself without anyone to meet her. After a few bewildered moments she carried her suitcase to a seat and sat down. The flight had been bumpy and she was tired, still worried about her reception at Te Nawe, which she now knew from Rhys’s letters to be several hours’ journey north of Auckland. Possibly Rhys had been delayed. Perhaps he was unable to get to a phone to let her know.

  The passengers on her plane dissipated, were replaced by those from a Singapore jet, and then she heard her name over the loudspeaker, asking her to report to the Air New Zealand counter.

  And sure enough, there he was, dazzling the receptionist if the bemused look on the girl’s face was anything to go by. He had his back to Arminel, but she would have recognised him anywhere.

  ‘Rhys?’ she said, half a pace away. And he turned, and it wasn’t Rhys.

  Her half-excited, half-worried smile fled. Her outstretched hand was ignored as Kyle Beringer looked her over, very thoroughly, with eyes of the clearest, coldest grey she had ever seen, cloud-grey, ice-grey, eyes that surveyed her with a total lack of emotion. Chilled into a quick withdrawal, her expression tightened against the implacable frost of his gaze.

  ‘Miss Lovett?’

  His voice was deeper than Rhys’s, deeper and crisper and far harder.

  Her tongue came out to dampen her lip before she could speak. Not only her lips were dry; somehow his presence made both her mouth and her throat feel parched.

  She felt as though she was choking over stale bread as she replied. ‘Yes, I’m Arminel Lovett. You must be Rhys’s brother.’

  ‘Kyle Beringer.’ An imperative hand was stretched forward. Numbly she gave him her suitcase, watched as he turned to say something charming to the extremely interested receptionist, and allowed herself to be shepherded out through the sliding glass doors.

  The wind cut through her jeans and light woollen top with the savagery of a buzz-saw. Shivering, scurrying along to keep up with him, she pulled on the jacket she had taken care to carry, well aware that Auckland was considerably farther away from the Equator than Queensland.

  His long legs didn’t check stride to accommodate her. When they arrived at the car, a big, opulent thing in dark green, mud-splattered yet obviously well cared for, he unlocked the boot to put her case in, then came around and unlocked the door on the passenger’s side in the front, giving her no chance as to where she sat.

  Inside the luxurious vehicle it was warm. Arminel’s teeth clamped a moment on to her bottom lip as he walked around the bonnet. Lord, but he was big! Broad shoulders which not even the subdued business suit could disguise, long legs which must put him a couple of inches higher than Rhys who was just six feet, and an aura of total, well-founded self-assurance. Power personified, he moved with lithe grace, not the lumbering gait of so many big men.

  Against the turbulent grey sky his profile was incisive, beautiful with the cold strength of perfect bone structure. Manlike, Rhys hadn’t thought to mention that his brother had the countenance of a dark angel. For a moment fear paled Arminel’s skin, made her shiver with a clammy foresight. Then it was replaced by determination. She was not Kyle Beringer’s affair. She and Rhys were the ones who had to decide.

  But at least she was forewarned. If Mrs Beringer was as formidable as the man who met her she was going to have to tread warily.

  When he swung himself into the driver’s seat she was pulling off her coat.

  ‘Here,’ he said impatiently, holding out a hand.

  ‘It’s all right, I’ll keep it on my knee.’

  ‘And simmer quietly? It can go in the back.’

  Because it was a small, stupid thing to fuss over she handed it to him; their fingers touched and she could not stop her swift jerk back as though the small contact stung.

  For a split second those strange, pale eyes pierced hers before he turned and deposited the coat on to the back seat.

  Then he stripped off his jacket, revealing the lean breadth of his shoulders. As his jacket joined hers on the back seat Arminel swallowed, averting her eyes. Beneath the white shirt muscles moved; she felt an odd drowning sensation and fixed her eyes on to her hands, forcing herself to acknowledge the pale pink nail polish, the small silver ring which was her only legacy from her mother.

  He said nothing, but she was shaken and twitchy, only too acutely aware of the silent blast of antagonism emanating from him. The air in the car seemed to be full of wires, bristling with tension that bewildered and angered her. What on earth had caused it?

  For it was not just coming from him. Beneath the thin wool of her jersey her heart beat loudly, faster than normal, and the palms of her hands were damp. Odd sensations were racing through her taut body, sensitising every inch of her skin so that she felt that she was on fire. Love at first sight was a well-known institution, although not one in which she believed, but this must be its direct opposite, instantaneous dislike. She had been prepared to like him, but that first hard survey had banished that; she felt it would take very little for her to learn to hate him.

  As he did her. But surely hate was the wrong word? His expression had given little away, but she was certain that there had been a moment of shock before the icy surge of contempt which had so quickly erected her defences.

  They had been driving for ten minutes or so before she tired of the silence. Swallowing, for her throat seemed blocked, she asked, ‘Where is Rhys? When he wrote he said he’d be meeting the plane.’

  To her surprise—and pleasure—her voice sounded quite calm and composed.

  Kyle Beringer said coldly, ‘He’s at Te Nawe, working. In spite of—everything—we do work, Miss Lovett.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ A hint of fire warmed the intense blue of her gaze. In a clipped voice she continued, ‘I hope my arrival hasn’t put you out, Mr Beringer.’

  ‘Not at all. I was already in Auckland.’

  And that apparently was that. He could not have made his disapproval of her any more obvious if he’d hired a plane to emblazon it across the sky. Arminel turned her head to stare unseeingly out of the window. Such open antagonism upset her, but it also brought into being an unshakeable determination which was so much at variance with her fragile, seductive beauty that its presence usually astonished those who came into contact with it. Delicately her chin lifted; the fine profile hardened. If Kyle Beringer wanted a fight, she was perfectly prepared to give him one for his money. Or rather for his brother. She might look a frail thing, but hidden beneath that slender exterior there was resolution and will-power and courage.

  Rhys had said that Kyle was attractive to women. Her
e was one who found him thoroughly repelling, she thought grimly.

  There was a lot of Auckland. Some of it was pretty; it was certainly green in spite of the houses, green with a vividness which the intermittent rain only intensified. The motorway swept through the suburbs, revealing flowering trees and neat, green lawns. A wilderness of concrete intimidated as they drove through interchanges in the backyard of the city before swooping over a bridge that crossed an arm of the harbour.

  In spite of the prickly atmosphere inside the car Arminel was interested in the landscape, finding the tiny humps of the volcanoes especially intriguing. There seemed so many of them! Grass covered their steep terraced sides except for the much bigger one out in the harbour, which was dark purple with trees.

  Unable to contain her curiosity, she asked, ‘What are the lines around the volcanoes? Sheep tracks?’

  ‘They were used as forts by the Maori people,’ he told her. ‘The terraces are the remnants of the fortifications they needed to keep each other at bay. They were brilliant tacticians who dug trenches and used rows of sharpened stakes as protection.’

  She nodded. ‘If this is volcanic then the soil must be rich.’

  ‘Very. This area was known as Tamaki-makau-rau, Tamaki of a thousand lovers, because it was a contested land. Tamaki means battle. The old Maoris were a proud, vigorous, warlike race.’

  ‘How old are the volcanoes?’ At the swift sardonic glance she shrugged. ‘Well, give or take a million years. They look so little and new, like a child’s efforts at landscaping. Like sand castles.’

  ‘In geographical terms they’re young, less than a hundred thousand years old. Rangitoto,’ with a nod at the island she had noticed from the bridge, ‘is only a few hundred years old. If you look out to the left you’ll see an almost circular bay behind the road. There’s another farther on. They’re the remnants of other eruptions—as are the hills on the horizon behind us, the Waitakeres.’

  ‘Life must have been pretty lively around here for a while.’

  ‘Fortunately there were no people here,’ he said on a note of condescension which immediately set her hackles up.

  Without pondering the wisdom of such a course she replied tartly, ‘I know. The Maori people came here about a thousand years ago, didn’t they?’

  ‘Yes. They sailed from Tahiti, probably by way of the Cook Islands. Carbon dating at archaeological sites shows that they were here by 900 A.D.’ There was a pause, then he added, ‘Been checking up, Miss Lovett?’

  As a child it had been her dream to become an archaeologist. Circumstances had prevented that, but she had always retained an interest in the subject. And if one lived on the fringes of the vast Pacific Ocean as she had all her life then an interest in archaeology meant an interest in the Polynesians, of whom the Maori people were a branch. Setting out in their double-hulled canoes, they had criss-crossed the wide waters from Hawaii to Easter Island to New Zealand, colonising as they went; South Seas Vikings, as one of their famous descendants had called them. She had read Sir Peter Buck’s book, Vikings of the Sunrise, and thrilled to the tale of these noble, barbaric people.

  But she did not like the insinuation in Kyle’s deep voice or the undertone of contempt that accompanied it. With a brusqueness which was a startling contrast to her appearance she retorted, ‘Of course. I always feel that to get the best out of a holiday one should learn as much as possible about the place one wants to go to.’

  ‘And this is—a holiday?’ The cold grey eyes lanced her way again, leaving her with every muscle tensed for flight.

  ‘Somehow,’ he continued, ‘I think Rhys is sure that he’ll be able to persuade you to stay.’

  And you, she thought warily, are just as determined to see that I go. But why? What was it that had set him so against her?

  This superb, expensive car provided one reason. She had known that Rhys’s family were wealthy, but this was the sort of vehicle owned only by those who had no need at all to watch their expenditure. So the Beringers were not just wealthy; they were, to coin a phrase, stinking rich. Did he think she was some cheap little fortune-hunter on the make for a rich husband?

  Her hands clenched on to themselves. Unwilling she glanced across at the cutting line of his profile. Yes, he would think that. There was no softness in his features beyond a hint of sensuality in the beautifully moulded mouth. Kyle Beringer was not the sort of man who fell in love, or even believed in it. No doubt his marriage would be contracted for practical reasons, the desire for children, his need for a hostess and a permanent lover to keep him satisfied when he was tired of playing the field.

  Anger flicked a small muscle beside her mouth, tightened the soft line of her lips. She had never disliked a man as much as she did this one, and she had a horrible foreboding that he roused the sort of emotions that did not dissipate with better knowledge. It had been the same for him, too; she had felt the whip of his glance in that first moment of seeing her, and although he had obviously been prepared to dislike her there could be no doubt that his reaction was stronger, more basic than his objection to a possibly money-hungry girl-friend of his brother allowed.

  Her first instinct was to tell him bluntly that as far as she was concerned this was a holiday, a time when she and Rhys would discover what their true feelings for each other were. But a kind of loyalty kept her silent. Rhys, obviously angered by his brother’s attitude, must have said more than he should, and she could not now make him look a fool by refuting it.

  Mixed with that loyalty was anger at the cold arrogance of the man beside her. He would be the one who looked a fool when the decisions were made, whatever they were. If that lovely warmth she had felt with Rhys was love then Kyle would look stupid for assuming her to be on the catch, but if their attraction faded and died in the cold light of reality, then she would demand an apology before she left. She probably wouldn’t get one. Kyle Beringer was the kind of autocrat who walked the earth totally confident of his own authority.

  Perhaps she should have asked herself why she felt so strongly about the man; even how she knew so much about him. She might have convinced herself that it was no more than the intuition all women felt when threatened, long generations of servitude and submission sharpening every sense so that the war of the sexes was fought on a little more equal basis.

  But she didn’t wonder then at the strength of her reaction to him. Not then.

  CHAPTER TWO

  The road wound its way around hills and along narrow river valleys, for the first hour or so not too far from the sea. Then there was a landscape of quite steep hills, almost all grassed except for a few which were covered in sombre pines, and others with the olive-green native bush hiding their contours. The road was excellent, skilful engineering minimising the sharp rises and abrupt falls, until they left the main route and headed roughly east along a narrow gravel road. After a few miles this deteriorated into a stretch of potholes and corrugations. The big car made light of them, but Arminel shuddered at the thought of travelling along it in a smaller car with less luxurious springing.

  Here the hills pressed against the road, their high grassy contours tufted with clumps of trees and scrub. A small stream ran down beside them, its banks ridged with strange spiky bushes which she recognised as New Zealand flax, and some kind of tree which resembled a smaller flax-bush on a palm trunk.

  Again curiosity unlocked her lips.

  ‘Cabbage trees,’ Kyle Beringer told her. ‘I believe they’re most closely related to a lily. The Maoris and the early settlers used to eat the heart leaves as a vegetable, hence the name. They grow near water and in swampy ground.’

  She nodded, unable to overcome her anger at the curt lack of interest in his tones. ‘How much farther is Te Nawe?’

  ‘Only a few kilometres. We’re half an hour from the nearest town. A far cry from Surfers, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Yes.’ She would not be provoked into an unwise reply. ‘What does Te Nawe mean?’

  ‘The Scar.’ A
brief pause before he went on, ‘I’m surprised that Rhys didn’t tell you. He seems to have been remarkably free with other information.’

  ‘Perhaps he didn’t think I’d be interested,’ she countered with sweet malice. ‘Mind you, we were rather too absorbed in each other to be paying much attention to anything else. Why is it called The Scar? It’s an unusual name.’

  If her reply angered him he gave no sign of it, the cold imperturbable voice smooth and bland as he said, ‘Te Nawe hill is marred by an enormous landslip which must have happened some hundreds of years ago. It’s almost re-covered by vegetation now, but at the time it was named it stood out like a scar. It was used as a beacon by ships. Most of the trade and travelling was by sea in those days.’

  ‘Can you see the sea from the farm?’

  ‘Yes, from almost all of it. We’re only half a mile from the coast.’

  Well, Rhys had said it was close enough to the sea. Certainly close enough to the mountains, she thought, looking straight over the edge of the road which here wound its way around an almost sheer drop to a valley some hundreds of feet below.

  ‘Do you drive, Miss Lovett?’ he asked.

  ‘No.’

  ‘A pity,’ he observed. ‘You’ll be shut away here. Perhaps you should get Rhys to teach you—if you’re here long enough.’

  What she would have replied was lost as an enormous silver tanker truck met them on the corner. There wasn’t room—she drew in a sharp, terrified breath, her hands clenching on her knees as the two vehicles passed each other with surely only inches to spare.

  Not that either driver seemed at all concerned. Indeed, as soon as he saw them the tanker driver had given a short toot on his horn, a toot answered by Kyle’s wave. Putting them at risk by taking his hand from the wheel!

  ‘I don’t think so,’ she said weakly on an expelled breath. ‘Not if it means that I could be meeting juggernauts like that around any corner. What on earth was it?’