by Margaret Way
Rosa, for her part, wasn’t worried about the McKendricks. She could take them in her stride. What she was worried about, was how they would respond to her goddaughter. Looking after Gina was the reason Rosa was here.
Cal took the direct approach, making introductions. His mother remained seated. They were all obliged to go to her. Gina could feel the little waves of resistance that emanated from the seated figure though Jocelyn spoke the right words as though she had learned them from a script. Obviously she believes I’ve brought disruption and disgrace to the family, Gina thought, shaking Jocelyn’s unenthusiastic hand. There was no question of a hug much less a kiss. The handshake was as much as Gina could expect to get.
Cal’s father, Ewan, after an initial moment of what appeared to be shock was quite genial by comparison. Gina caught him giving his wife a sharp, rebuking glance. She must have got the message because the charged atmosphere lightened somewhat. Friendly and outgoing as Robbie was, he had been half hiding behind his mother. Now Cal picked him up in his arms.
“This is your grandmother and grandfather, Robert. And that gentleman over there is my uncle Ed, your great-uncle. Say hello.”
“Hello, everybody,” Robbie piped up sweetly, looking around them all. Even at three he could recognise family going on appearance alone.
There were two spots of colour high up on Jocelyn’s cheeks. Her green eyes that had appeared unfocused suddenly rested with great clarity on the little boy. “What a beautiful child you are!” she now exclaimed. “Come give Grandma a kiss.” She held out her hand.
“Why he’s the living image of you, Cal!” Ewan McKendrick burst out in triumph, his eyes settling with approval on the beautiful, self-composed young woman his son had brought home with him. This Gina, who he and Jocelyn had worried had no background at all, looked magnificent! He was quite taken aback. But what a blessing! “I want you to know, Gina, you’re most welcome to the family. Most welcome.”
Gina made no answer, but graciously inclined her head, unaware how very regal it appeared.
“And how good of you to accompany her, sigñora.” Ewan’s blue glance swept on to Gina’s decidedly attractive companion. She was a damned sexy-looking woman. “May I call you Rosa?”
“But of course!” Rosa replied graciously.
“What, not going to shake hands with your grandfather, young man?” Ewan asked the little boy jovially, absolutely thrilled the boy was so clearly a McKendrick. What a plus!
Robbie went to him immediately. “I’m happy to meet you, Granddad.”
Jocelyn chose that precise moment to burst into tears motivating Ed to jump into the void. “You must all want to rest after such a long flight?” he suggested, his eyes alighting more or less compulsively now on Rosa. She positively radiated life and vitality! Things couldn’t get any better.
“Long but very smooth,” Rosa assured him, meeting his gaze straight-on. There was a natural voluptuousness running like a ribbon through the accent Rosa had never lost. Now she took to studying with equal interest this tall, gentlemanly man with the blue, blue eyes and chivalrous expression. A widower she had been told. There was a strong attraction already between them. Could there be a little love for her around the corner? It was astonishing when and where love turned up.
Meredith who had been busy watching proceedings, spoke up. “One of the men will have taken your luggage to your rooms. I’ll come up with you…help you settle in.” It would give her mother time to compose herself, she thought.
“That will be lovely.” Gina bestowed on her a grateful smile.
“You’re coming, too, Daddy?” Robbie asked, looking back to his father with a melting smile.
“You bet I am,” Cal assured him, though he remained where he was, a bracing hand on his mother’s shoulder. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”
“Didn’t you promise me you were going to teach me to ride a horse?” Robbie asked as though they might start the lessons now.
“A pony, Robert. I’ll get one in especially for you.”
“Oh, bravo!” Ewan McKendrick cried heartily. “It’s only natural you have the love of horses in your blood, Robbie.” My word, this was turning out well, Ewan thought. Jocelyn would just have to pull herself into line.
“Make this work, Mum.” Cal bent to murmur in his mother’s ear.
“Who said I haven’t?” she replied haughtily, when the party were out of earshot. “At least she’s beautiful.” Even as she acknowledged the fact, Jocelyn felt a fierce stab of jealousy. She had always been Number One in her son’s life. She had expected to remain Number One even if he had married the amenable Kym. This Gina was something else again. It wasn’t easy to be supplanted. “As for the other one!” She threw up her hands.
Now it was Ed’s turn to stun them. “Spellbinding, wasn’t she? I just might ask her to marry me.”
His handsome face wore a wide grin.
“You’re joking of course!” Jocelyn looked at her brother-in-law with extreme disfavour.
Wasn’t he?
Jocelyn, who had hardly eaten anything at dinner said good-night early and withdrew. Ewan, who couldn’t completely disguise his anger with his wife, made his departure some time after.
Count on it. There would be words upstairs, Cal thought, angry and disappointed with his mother. He had never seen her so stiff and ungracious, even if he recognised her nose was out of joint. Both Gina and Rosa had that ineffable thing—glamour.
“You can stand in for me, Cal, at the party,” Ewan said over his shoulder. “All they want is to see more of you, and Gina, not me!”
An overtired, overexcited Robbie had long since been tucked up in bed.
Rosa and Ed who had hit it off extremely well over dinner, the attraction continuing apace, had talked art among other things, Ed all the while staring at her in admiration. Now they expressed the desire to go along with the young ones to join the bar-b-que, which was in full swing judging by the sound of country-and-western music filling the air. Rosa who had wisely taken a short nap to look her best, showed no sign whatever of fatigue. Meredith, looking really beautiful, was also eager to join the party.
Cal detained Gina as the others moved off, chatting happily like old friends. “Let’s go out on the terrace,” he suggested. He needed privacy as two members of staff continued to hover in the dining room, checking that everything would be left just so.
“As you wish.” Gina let him take her arm, unable to control her body’s response to his touch. It made her feel extraordinarily vulnerable.
“Well, we lived through that,” he offered dryly when they were out in the gardenia-scented night air. Inwardly, he was wondering if his father was going to throttle his mother.
“Your father is trying,” Gina answered. “And Meredith and your uncle Ed are so kind, but it’s just as I expected. Your mother doesn’t and never will, like me.”
My mother is jealous, Cal thought but couldn’t bring himself to say it. “My mother is used to being in total control of the situation,” he said by way of explanation. “This time she isn’t. Don’t let her bother you too much, Gina. She’ll come around.”
“If only for Robbie’s sake.” Gina took a calming breath. Inside love and hate were battling for her soul. “It’s as well he looks like you. He’d have had no chance had he looked like me.”
Cal glanced down at her, trying unsuccessfully to numb his own strong feelings. He had been watching her all night. She wore her hair the way he liked it. Loose, centre parted, flowing over her shoulders. Her dress was short and lacy, gold in colour. The low neckline showed her beautiful bosom to advantage, the skirt-length revealed her long sexy legs. “It so happens I’m praying for a daughter who looks just like you.”
“You may have a long wait,” she said coolly.
“Then I’ll just have to seduce you all over again. That’s what you think I did, isn’t it? Seduce you? Because, you know, I thought the attraction was mutual?”
“I don’t remember.
” She turned her face away.
“Liar.” He led her down the short flight of stone steps. “Ed seems to have taken quite a shine to Rosa?” There was amusement and surprise in his voice.
“Sometimes you just never know what people are capable of,” Gina said. “Your uncle has been alone a long time?”
“Ten years. His wife, Aunt Jenny, was a lovely person. I remember Meredith crying her heart out at the funeral. I wanted to, but couldn’t. Men don’t cry and all that. I had to bite my lip until I drew blood.”
“So you do have a heart after all?”
It wasn’t a tease. She sounded serious. “Oh, well, while we’re at it, where have you stowed yours?”
She tossed back a long sable lock. “I have Robbie. My son is everything in life to me. That’s the only way you got me here, Cal. You gave me no option but—”
“To stage a battle you’d very likely lose,” he finished for her. “Now, what about if we call a truce while we’re on show. Remember, we’re supposed to be lovers, cruelly separated for so long now to be gloriously reunited in marriage.”
She laughed though her heart was beating like a drum. “Don’t think I’m taking off on any honeymoon,” she warned. “And don’t think we’re going to finish up in the same bed.”
“Gianina, mia, it’s not as though I’ve actually asked you to have sex,” he mocked. “But never fear. I will get around to it.” His voice grew more serious. “I thought we might defer the honeymoon until Robert is more used to the family. Or we could take him with us?”
She stopped moving, visibly agitated. “Where on earth are you thinking?”
“Need you ask, the island?” Now, what was the matter with him, baiting her like that, because she reacted like that was the cruellest thing he could have said.
“You must be mad.”
He shrugged. “That’s the sad thing. You made me mad. Good and mad. Tell me what happened on the island, Gina. You can make it brief if it pains you to speak.”
She glanced up at the twinkling fairy lights strung through the trees. Their glow swept the grass and illuminated the garden beds that were filled with rich tropical flowers, the fragrance intoxicating in the warm air. “What are you trying to trap me into saying? I told you I don’t want to discuss the past. Suffice to say I fell in love unwisely but too well.”
“You jumped right in.”
“So did you.”
“I shared your reckless streak,” he freely admitted. “You were my Juliet. The girl I thought I could die for.”
“No tragedy, a farce.”
“We have Robert, don’t we?” he said in a low voice.
“Yes,” she answered quietly.
“I should tell you I intend to have a long talk with my aunt when she gets back home. I have an idea she had more to do with events than I’d realised.”
“The past is ancient history. I’m determined to move forwards. So where is your aunt? Does she take off on her broom stick now and again?”
It was said with such scorn, he stopped in his tracks. “Where did that come from all of a sudden?”
Immediately she made a rueful face. “That was a slip. I withdraw it.” She had to close a door on the past now that this new door had opened. His aunt would always remain family. She would always be around. “I would never go back to the island,” she said, changing the subject. “It was another time.”
“I wouldn’t go back, either,” he said crisply.
“You were just being cruel then?”
“I feel cruel towards you once in a while.”
She felt her heart contract. “Small wonder I’m scared of you.”
“I should think you would be,” he replied, glancing down at her.
They walked on through the tropical night, the path overshadowed by magnificent broad-domed shade trees. “I don’t want any big wedding, Cal,” she said nervously.
“So why don’t you make a list of a few close friends?” he suggested in a suave tone. “I don’t want any big wedding, either.”
“I have no intention of dressing like a bride, either.”
“What?” He brought them to a halt. “When you’ll make a glorious bride?”
She bit her lip, her body aching at his closeness, her mind bent on running away. “I’m the mother of a three-year-old boy.”
“High time you got married then,” he commented. “I have to insist you dress the part. I’m not going to be denied my trophy wife. That’s part of the deal.”
They moved on. “Would you like me to ask your Kym to be a bridesmaid?” she asked silkily.
“You’d have to be really crazy to do that.”
“Stranger things have happened. I know someone who invited all his old girlfriends to his wedding.”
“You were one of them?”
“Never! I’m a one-man woman at heart.” Damn why had she said that?
“I’ll disregard that. The only man you’ll ever be allowed to get romantic over is me.”
“That’s not going to be a lot of fun.”
“Why are you working so hard to hate me?”
She gave a brittle laugh. “That’s a lot of question, Cal. Loving you turned out to be very, very painful.”
“Surely you made me pay keeping Robert from me.” His hurt, his sorrow, his impotent rage burst through his lips.
Gina reacted fiercely. So fiercely Cal was forced to pull her to him, silencing any tempestuous outburst of hers by covering her mouth with his own. “People can see us,” he muttered, against her gritted teeth.
How very stupid of her! An anguished moan escaped her throat. People, of course. She had to keep her wits about her, yet every time she was alone with him she thought them sealed off from the rest of the world. Ever so slowly she managed to pull herself together. Even that wildly discordant kiss had made her knees buckle.
“You shouldn’t say things like that to me,” she censured him, shaking back the silky hair that was spilling around her hot face.
“I’ll let you go when you say sorry.”
She could hear the taunt in his voice. “You’ll let me go now. I’m just mad enough to scream. Besides, I can’t run away.”
“That’s right,” he agreed. “You can’t. You look beautiful. Did I tell you? I love that dress.”
“I thought you might like it,” she said, tartly.
“Oh, I do. It shows off your beautiful figure. Your mouth tastes of peaches and champagne.”
“I’ve had both,” she pointed out. “Shall we walk on?”
“Why not?” he agreed suavely. “Arm in arm like a happily married couple.”
“And just how long do you think this marriage will last?”
“Well, let’s see now. It’s the start of the twenty-first century,” he said musingly. “Hopefully we’ll have a good fifty years, probably more. The thing is, when you said yes to marrying me, Gina, in my book that means for ever.”
The expression on his handsome face looked a lot more like ruthless than loving.
Steven had reached the stage where he thought she wasn’t going to make an appearance that night. The evening was a great success. No effort had been spared to ensure Coronation’s staff would find it memorable. The food was great—as always—Coronation’s premier beef, numerous side dishes, hot and cold, salads galore. Icy-cold beer was on tap to stimulate the appetite, soft drinks and fruit juices for the children—they were still running around—wine for the ladies. The dessert table—a mecca for anyone with a sweet tooth—was a long trestle covered with a white linen cloth. It was laden with dishes that looked like they had been prepared by a master chef dedicated to that sort of thing. He circulated constantly—it was part of his job—still, she didn’t come.
Then he saw her.
His mood lifted to the skies. She was walking with Gina’s aunt Rosa and Edward McKendrick. He really liked Ed, who was vastly more approachable than his elder brother. Gina’s aunt, he realised, was an unconventional dresser but he thought she looked gr
eat in her vividly coloured outfit. It was sort of gypsy-ish, embroidered with something glinting. From the body language Ed seemed to think she looked fantastic. Good for you, Ed, Steven thought. It was a tragedy what had happened to Ed’s wife—a lovely woman from all accounts—but eventually one had to get on with life.
Meredith stopped his breath. She wore a dress, a beautiful deep blue dress. He had seldom seen her in a dress, not even at the polo matches or informal functions Coronation hosted from time to time. She mostly wore jeans or tailored pants. Why not? Hers was the ideal figure to show them off. But tonight she wore something filmy and to him desperately romantic. Romance his soul craved. Did women realise men were every bit as romantic as they were? The fabric of her floaty skirt wrapped itself around her lithe body as she moved. Her wonderful hair was loose, falling in a shiny waterfall down her back.
Ed came towards him, extending his hand. “Everything going well, Steve?”
“Everyone’s having a great time, Mr McKendrick.” Steve returned the smile and the handshake, shifting his gaze to Meredith and Aunt Rosa. “Good evening, ladies. May I say how beautiful you both look?”
“Certainly you may!” Rosa nodded her dark head, her thick hair short and expertly cut. “I think there is something a little bit dangerous about you, Steven.” She waved a finger.
“No worries.” Steve smiled back at her. “It’s just that I like women. Are Cal and Gina coming?” He glanced towards the main path.
“Right behind us,” Meredith said, surprising herself greatly by going to him and taking his arm. Never once had she done that. “I think I’d like a cold drink. What about you?” Her gaze moved from Rosa to her uncle, who overnight looked ten years younger with a renewed zest for life.