Price of Passion

by Susan Napier

  ‘Which goes to show that even great authors don’t always get it right,’ she shot back, feeling exhilarated and alive again for the first time in a month, but unwilling to let him entirely off the hook. She cupped a hand over her phone as the last of her co-workers in the open-plan office switched off his computer and began loading his briefcase. ‘Why are you calling, Drake?’

  There was a brief pause during which she visualised him smiling with that irresistible twist of self-derisive arrogance.

  ‘I’ve forgotten how to whistle,’ he drawled. ‘I thought you might bring your lips over to remind me.’

  Hope burned incandescent, even as she cautioned herself to wariness. Drake was never going to fit into the mould of a conventional lover.

  ‘To New York?’ Enright Media subscribed to a multimedia clippings service for all its clients. In spite of her pretence of indifference in front of her colleagues, it had been impossible to resist snooping through the press reports of his trip. He had been last spotted at a famous nightclub in the Big Apple, with the usual phalanx of eager acolytes.

  ‘I’m back in Auckland…at the penthouse.’

  She closed her eyes at the powerful memories invoked by his words. ‘And obviously at a loose end,’ she said wryly.

  ‘I have plenty to do. I’d just rather do it with you,’ he said with seductive simplicity. ‘There’s a party I’ve been invited to tonight—I thought you might like to go.’

  Yes! He wasn’t just calling her for a quick sexual fix!

  ‘And afterwards we could come back here…’

  Her nipples hardened against her blouse. ‘Let me guess—you have a DVD of To Have And Have Not for us to watch,’ she murmured, giving a weak waggle of her fingers to her colleague as he headed out with a casual reminder of the usual after-work session at a trendy local watering hole.

  ‘Well…that, too, of course…’ he said, and she could hear the sexy amusement in his voice. ‘Although, tradionalist that I am, I was going to suggest Casablanca.’

  He would. Romantic but ending in a bittersweet parting—yes, that would appeal more to Drake’s cynical nature than the hopefully upbeat ending for the wise-cracking hero and heroine of To Have And Have Not.

  ‘As long as you understand I can’t stay the night—I have to start work early tomorrow,’ she warned him, drawing her definitive line in the sand. She was never going to risk reliving the painful awkwardness of that first morning-after. She inhaled a deep breath and took the plunge. ‘After all, we don’t want to make this into something it’s not…’

  There was an edgy silence. ‘You’re a devil for matching the quotation to the moment, aren’t you?’ he said. ‘Agreed.’ His voice deepened to that spine-tingling drawl that made her feel weak as water. ‘I’ll just have to make sure that we cram everything in before the witching hour…’

  And cram they did. For two years their affair had been a case of feast and famine, with neither side willing to admit to any vulnerability. Had they both been so busy protecting themselves that they had wrecked any chance of building a real relationship?

  Kate shaded her forehead with the flat of her hand as she stared up at the lone figure on the balcony. That wary stillness was so characteristic of Drake, the watchful vigilance of a man who had to constantly guard himself against the world. He never spoke about his childhood except in the vaguest of terms, but there had to be something there that had warped his ability to trust…particularly women. He sloughed off praise and criticism with equal ease, using his cynical brand of humour to appear open and gregarious, while in fact revealing little about himself that wasn’t already in the public arena.

  How long had they been standing there staring at each other, separated by more than just the physical space between them—Drake perched on his high, lonely pedestal, Kate grounded in the ordinary, everyday world he had left behind?

  On impulse Kate lifted her hand and waved. For a moment she thought she saw his hand twitch on the shiny aluminium rail as if he was going to wave back, but then she saw Melissa move out from the shade of the house onto the sunlit balcony, and put her hand on his bare arm. He turned to accept the cup she handed him, sliding a brown arm across the back of her dazzling white top as they both retreated inside the house.

  At least they weren’t having breakfast in bed! thought Kate savagely, letting her hand drop to her somersaulting belly.

  ‘It’s OK, little one, I won’t let that wicked witch keep your stupid daddy walled up in his ivory tower,’ she soothed.

  Her green tea had gone cold, and she was tipping it onto the sand when she noticed what was happening to her abandoned breakfast dish.

  ‘Hey!’

  She chased up the bank and snatched at the bowl just as it tipped off the side of the step and shattered on a stone that edged the straggly garden.

  ‘Now look what you’ve done!’ she told the big, lolloping dog that peered at her with mournful eyes through its long, matted fringe of mottled grey. It was quite the ugliest animal she had ever seen, looking like a lanky cross between a foolish Afghan and giant poodle on a bad-hair day, with a ridiculous tail that curved lopsidedly over its back in a soggy flag of defiance. It smelled strongly of seaweed and wet wool. ‘Give me that!’ she said, tugging the spoon out of its gummy mouth, pulling a face at the skein of drool that came along with it.

  ‘Yuk!’

  She could have sworn the dog grinned at her before starting to slaver at the pieces of china, rattling them against the stone.

  ‘Don’t do that, you’ll cut your tongue,’ she scolded, pushing at the sandy grey coat. The dog staggered aside and she was horrified to see that it only had three legs, the right rear one ending in a woolly stump at its bony hip.

  ‘Oh, you poor thing,’ she said, scooping up the broken bowl and scratching the dog between its floppy ears. It responded with an ecstatic squirming and cheerful caper that showed her it had well adapted to its handicap.

  For all its size it was pathetically scrawny under the shaggy fur and she wondered if it was a stray, until she saw a glimpse of black collar buried in the shaggy ruff around its neck.

  ‘Come here and let’s see who you are,’ she said, but when she tried to slide her fingers under the black webbing the dog pranced away, returning to duck and snuffle at her sandy toes, skittering away again as she squealed with ticklish laughter at the rough swipe of its tongue.

  She put her hands on her hips and tried a stern, ‘Heel,’ but the hairy head merely cocked in momentary puzzlement before it loped over to give a doggy salute to a stunted shrub at the corner of the house, a performance greatly facilitated by not having to cock a leg. Then, with a loud ‘wuff’ that made her jump, it lunged at the ventilating grate in the base of the house, its claws rattling against the concrete blocks, and Kate remembered the rats.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re available for a job as a hired assassin?’ she murmured above the excited whines, knowing that her tender heart would never want even a rat to die anything but a humane death.

  But her three-legged visitor had already revealed a sad lack of interest in gainful employment, giving one final bark as it dashed off to investigate a screech of scavenging seagulls fighting over stolen booty further along the beach.

  After wrapping up the fragments of china in newspaper and making a note of the breakage for the rental agent, Kate did the rest of her unpacking before deciding the sun was high enough in the sky to be suitable for basking.

  She changed into her new bikini, quite modest in terms of coverage but in a vibrant, eye-catching purple piped with lime-green that the shop-assistant had assured her would make heads turn. One in particular, she hoped. Since there was a slight breeze she draped herself in the matching see-through, lime-green sun wrap that had cost even more than the exorbitant bikini.

  Dragging the light, powdered-aluminium sun-lounger from the ‘games cupboard’ in the garage out onto the back lawn, Kate unfolded it and positioned it carefully to take advantage of the su
n’s rays, while making sure it was angled in full view of next door’s wrap-around windows. She had originally intended to go down onto the beach, but decided that she would be more visible on the elevated flat of the section.

  Stashing a drink bottle where it would be in the shade of her body, along with her sunscreen and a few emergency crackers wrapped in a paper towel, Kate spread a thick beach towel over the woven plastic bed of the lounger and adjusted the back to a comfortable angle. Then she settled down, sliding her sunglasses onto her nose and plopping her purple straw hat on her head. Hefting the glossy library book she had brought with her, she propped it open across her hips.

  She would have liked to have read one of the instructional baby books or pregnancy manuals she had hidden away in the bottom of her suitcase, but that would have been a rather obvious give-away, even to an insensitive jackass who was too busy breaking hearts to recognise a good woman when he had her cradled in the palm of his hand…

  Kate leafed to page one.

  ‘Simon Macmillan traded in blood and diamonds.’

  She had read Drake Daniels’ first novel more than once before, but then she had been reading for pleasure—and pride. Now she was reading for research. All authors put something of their real selves into their books. Somewhere in these pages were traces of the man she was trying to understand. Perhaps the skilled researcher in her would be able to sort out some sober facts from the thrilling fiction.

  If not, well…she knew it would be a cracking good read, and Mac would turn out to be an undercover good guy who destroyed a dirty deal in conflict diamonds while losing his double-crossing rebel girlfriend to treachery and torture.

  Psychological subtext: women are not safe to trust.

  At first Kate twitched and shifted and was uncomfortably conscious of her exposed position, but gradually she became engrossed in the familiar story and forgot about ulterior motives, or that she was not supposed to be reading for sheer kicks.

  Roused from her trance when her legs began to tingle with warmth, she got up and lowered the back of the lounger so that she could lie down on her stomach, placing the book flat in front on the grass and propping her chin in her hands, wriggling her hips to flatten out the slight sag in the plastic that had been hollowed out by her bottom. Occasionally a midge would perform a crazy loop-the-loop across her field of vision or an annoying fly trickle across the back of her leg, but eventually the drugging combination of sun and sea and weeks of nervous tension took their toll, and before Mac had even kissed his deadly African princess for the first time Kate had drifted off to a light doze, her nose buried in the crook of her elbow.

  She was disturbed by a chill shadow across her upper body and surreptiously wiped the drool that had gathered at the corner of her sleep-slackened mouth on her arm before she lifted her head to smile at her visitor. Shades of that ramshackle dog!

  All her cleverly rehearsed phrases zipped out of her head, her smile lingering as a polite rictus when she saw that the figure looming over her was not the tarnished hero of her life but his deadly Titian princess, dressed neck-to-toe in white. Although the hair was more carroty than artistic auburn, decided Kate in an inward yowl, and the lady was definitely pushing thirty, at the very least. That alabaster brow was positively botoxical, and those luscious lips—that had to be collagen!

  ‘Hi,’ Kate said wittily, pushing the comforting shield of her sunglasses up her nose, while simultaneously trying to untwist the wrap that had got trapped under her side as she tried to gracefully roll over on the uncooperative sun-lounger. The aluminium frame made an ominous creaking sound as her elbow slipped through a gap in the webbing, but she finally managed to wrestle herself free and sit up in reasonable dignity.

  ‘We haven’t met, have we? I’m Katherine Crawford.’

  She held out her hand. Politeness, she had learned from her lethally charming mother, could be very empowering.

  ‘Melissa Jayson,’ came the clipped reply and some minuscule part of Kate relaxed. Not Melissa Daniels, then. She crossed one nightmare scenario off her list.

  The jade-green eyes that went with the brilliant hair glittered like glass as the politely proffered hand was rudely ignored.

  ‘I don’t know what you think you’re doing here, but why don’t you just get out and leave him alone?’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ Kate said, sitting bolt upright, Lady Bracknell in a bathing suit.

  ‘He doesn’t want you following him. He comes to Oyster Beach to get away from the smothering attention of people like you. You can’t possibly understand his needs. Give him some space, why don’t you?’

  ‘Let me guess, you and Drake are graduates from the same school of etiquette?’ said Kate drily, when she had got over the sting of the lightning attack.

  Under the silk top the over-inflated bosom heaved, revealing a gap between the scalloped hem and the low-rise white jeans, and a strip of winter-pale skin sporting the sparkle of an impressive navel ring. Diamonds, no less…probably from Sierra Leone, thought Kate darkly.

  Thinking of navels made her think of her baby and she pleated the folds of her wrap over her tummy. By her calculations she was barely two months along, and the books said it would be another two before her baby bulge began to show, but even now she felt a responsibility to shield her son or daughter from negative experiences in the womb.

  ‘Drake and I have known each other since before you were around,’ the other woman flung at her. She smiled, but only the muscles around her mouth moved. ‘He’s told me all about you, but you have no idea what he and I are to each other, do you?’

  Kate’s hormones staged a dangerous mood swing. On the other hand, perhaps it would be good to communicate some fighting spirit from Mama!

  ‘What are you, his mistress or his muse?’ she dared to ask bluntly. ‘Because I know you can’t be both—Drake doesn’t trust women enough to allow any of them dominance in more than one compartment of his life.’

  ‘You don’t know him as well as you think you do,’ came the contemptuous reply. ‘You may think you’re special but you’re really no different from any of his other groupies. You like sharing the limelight with a famous author and helping him spend his money, but you have no idea what it takes for him to create his works. Why don’t you stop distracting him and let him get on with his writing—?’

  ‘While you ply him with cups of coffee and mop the creative sweat from his brow?’ said Kate, watching the green eyes flicker and the collagen lips flatten. ‘Am I distracting him?’ she added innocently. ‘I’ve only been here one day. If I’m a distraction, why aren’t you?’

  She regretted the rhetorical tag when it was rewarded by a nasty little smile. Melissa looked down, manicured red fingernails flicking an invisible speck off the pristine white jeans. ‘Let’s just say that Drake has a particular need that only I can fulfil for him. And we keep each other extremely well satisfied between the sheets…’

  Kate’s hand, tucked in her lap, balled into a fist. This one’s for you, kid!

  ‘Let’s not say that. Let’s try and be discreet and respectful of each other’s feelings, and not start an undignified cat-fight in public.’ Her quiet voice stepped up a decibel. She was used to being a mediator in arguments, not an instigator. Confrontation was not her style, but she had witnessed from the cradle how it worked. ‘Otherwise I might be tempted to say you’re a grade-A, gold-plated bitch who thinks she has the right to run roughshod over other people to get what she wants. But this isn’t about you or what you want. Your shame-and-blame tactics aren’t going to make me run away with my tail between my legs. I wonder if Drake knows you’ve snuck over to try and bully me out of his life?’

  The redhead stiffened, her elbows tucking into her sides, her jaw clenching as she half turned away, her white sandals acquiring a freckle of dust from the dry grass. ‘I suppose you’re going to run crying to him telling tales!’

  Kate blinked, suspicion curdling in her sour stomach at the subtle body language.r />
  ‘Does he know?’ she asked sharply.

  ‘He has been a victim of a stalker before, you know. She wrote him hundreds of letters—a pathetic woman who thought five minutes of conversation and his personal autograph to her in the flyleaf of a book meant they were soul mates.’

  She hadn’t known, but the evasive reply had the red flags snapping briskly. ‘How tragic. I’ve never even sent Drake a postcard, but if I get an overwhelming urge to buy stamps in bulk I’ll be sure and check myself into a facility. Now, if you wouldn’t mind moving out of my light, I’m trying to get a suntan.’

  ‘You—’

  ‘Melissa?’

  The older woman spun around and saw Drake stepping around the end of the hedge. She immediately walked jerkily back the way she’d come, the two of them exchanging a terse word as they passed each other on the grass without stopping.

  Kate took a long pull from her drink bottle and stood up as he came to a halt at the end of the sun lounger. He wore the same disreputable blue jeans that he had worn the day before, with battered workman’s boots and a checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. The decadent, city-dwelling Drake Daniels who wore expensive designer-casual with careless flair was nowhere in sight. Until you looked into his cynical eyes—then the rumpled, down-home, easygoing country-boy was revealed to be the sham. Or perhaps the double life he lived had actually split him off into two distinct personalities. In which case, both of them were in the doghouse with Kate!

  She took off her sunglasses to blister him with her naked scorn. ‘Next time do your own dirty work.’

  ‘I beg your pardon?’ His Lady Bracknell wasn’t a patch on hers, she thought.

  ‘Either you sent her over, or you primed her to go off in my direction,’ she accused.

  He tipped his head down, scowling. ‘What did she tell you?’

  She gave him a brittle smile. ‘That you were fantastic in bed, but since I knew that already the conversation sort of stalled out.’