Unwelcome Invader (Harlequin Treasury 1990's)

by Angela Devine

  ‘I checked the legal details very carefully before I entered into this contract. I always do. There is no doubt that your father is the legal owner of this property, nor that it is unencumbered by any mortgages. These payments you say you made on the vineyards, the wine plant…have you any proof of this?’

  Jane was furious at his sceptical tone.

  ‘I don’t just say I made the payments!’ she shouted. ‘I did make them!’

  Marc’s voice continued relentlessly, as if he had scarcely heard her impassioned interruption.

  ‘No doubt you have documents to prove this?’

  Jane’s head swam with exhaustion and disbelief.

  ‘Yes. No. Not exactly. After I inherited the money from my grandmother my father persuaded me to form a company. It was all terribly complicated.’

  ‘Not Saddler’s Vineyards Limited, by any chance?’ asked Marc in a hushed voice.

  ‘Yes,’ said Jane uneasily.

  ‘Parbleu!’ exclaimed Marc, leaving his place by the mantelpiece and crossing the room to her. ‘I’m extremely sorry for you, Jane. It seems to me that your father has…what’s the expression you Australians use?…sold you down the river. I’ve seen the documents governing the formation of that company. Your father is chief managing director and has a controlling interest in it. You were a very foolish girl to hand over control of your assets to another person in such a manner. What possessed you to do such a thing?’

  Jane’s head came up and her eyes blazed. Her blonde hair seemed to crackle around her shoulders with a life of its own.

  ‘Because I trusted him!’ she cried. ‘OK? I trusted him! He’s my father, for heaven’s sake. He wouldn’t do a thing like this to me.’

  ‘Wouldn’t he?’ asked Marc quietly.

  With a low groan Jane crossed to the fireplace and stood staring unseeingly into the leaping flames. Certain bitter memories of her mother came back to her.

  ‘Maybe he would,’ she admitted at last in a defeated voice. ‘Oh, not deliberately, I suppose. He’d feel certain that he was doing the right thing and he’d excuse it to himself somehow. Tell himself that he was going to make huge profits for me by putting it into some harebrained scheme of his own. My mother always complained that he ran through all her money before they split up. I used to think it was just bitterness, but now I’m not sure…Are you telling me that I’m financially ruined?’

  ‘Only if I go ahead with the purchase of this property,’ said Marc. ‘If I don’t, there’s a chance you might regain control of your assets.’

  Jane swung round.

  ‘Then don’t do it!’ she cried passionately. ‘Please, please don’t do it! You said yourself it’s an impressive little vineyard and I’ve worked hard on it. Don’t make me give it up.’

  Marc shook his head fastidiously.

  ‘Why should it matter to me?’ he asked.

  CHAPTER TWO

  ‘BECAUSE it’s a question of simple decency!’ cried Jane.

  Marc gave her a baffled look, as if he had never heard the word in his life.

  ‘I still don’t see what it has to do with me,’ he said dismissively. ‘Obviously, the first thing we need to do is phone your father tomorrow morning in New Zealand and find out exactly what the legal position is.’

  ‘Legal position!’ protested Jane. ‘That’s all that matters to you, isn’t it? The legal position! Don’t you have any feelings at all?’

  Marc’s face remained completely impassive. Only the eyes seemed alive—dark, brooding, thoughtful. But his face might have been carved out of granite for all the encouragement it gave her.

  ‘This is nothing but a business transaction to me,’ he said. ‘I’ve made an extremely generous payment to your father for the option to purchase this property. I’ve also had to make extensive arrangements in France to cover my absence in Australia for three months. Why should I throw away all that when there’s no certainty that I could even help you by doing so?’

  Jane gave a defeated sigh. He was quite right. Why should he? After all, it was her own stupid fault she was in this position, although that didn’t make it any easier to bear. Quite the reverse, in fact. She felt shaken, humiliated, betrayed. And instead of making some attempt to comfort her this unfeeling stranger simply stood there, staring at her as impassively as a judge.

  ‘What are you going to do with the place if you do buy it?’ she demanded accusingly. ‘Winemaking here is a lot different from in France.’

  He smiled with unexpected charm.

  ‘That’s half the attraction for me,’ he said. ‘I want to be one of the flying winemakers. It’s tremendous good luck that the seasons are reversed in the two hemispheres. By spending half the year in Europe and half the year in Australia I can have two vintages. Twice the chance to make superb wine, plus the best of French tradition and Australian innovation. It seems ideal to me.’

  ‘And you’re prepared to ruin me to do it?’ demanded Jane bitterly.

  ‘You’re being melodramatic, chérie. You’re not ruined yet. And even if you were, it would be entirely your own doing. You’ve been a naïve, impetuous little fool, you know.’

  Jane caught her breath sharply and clenched her fists.

  ‘You patronising——! I hate you. I wish you’d never come here!’

  ‘I begin to wish it myself,’ murmured Marc as he met her scowling gaze. ‘You have no manners at all, mademoiselle. You attack me with bottles and torches—what next will it be? A pitchfork? Or just your own teeth and claws? Now that might be interesting.’

  Something in that husky drawl sent a throb of unwilling excitement through Jane’s body, which only annoyed her still further. She made an impatient movement towards the door but found that Marc was blocking her way. He made no attempt to move, but simply stood there—large, threatening and intensely masculine. She paused, irresolute, not wanting to make an undignified and very obvious detour around him, but the pause was a mistake. Looking up into those mocking brown eyes, she was suddenly conscious of another reluctant thrill of attraction to him, of an electric tingling in her limbs that filled her with an insane urge to move into his arms. The scent of his cologne, spicy and erotic, drifted into her nostrils and her senses swam. Horrified, she broke away and retreated to the door.

  ‘Don’t worry!’ she snapped. ‘I’m not going to do anything else to hurt you.’

  Marc turned and looked at her with amusement.

  ‘I don’t believe you could hurt me,’ he said. ‘And where are you off to now? If you’re planning to run off somewhere and sob your heart out, I forbid it.’

  Jane gave a choking laugh.

  ‘What would you care?’ she exclaimed unsteadily. ‘Anyway, as it happens, I’m just going to bed.’

  ‘I’ll come and prepare a guest-room for you,’ offered Marc.

  ‘No, you won’t!’ she shouted. ‘I’m not a guest. I live here! I’ve got a perfectly good room of my own upstairs.’

  ‘Ah, of course,’ murmured Marc with dawning comprehension. ‘The locked room that Monsieur West told me he had left his possessions in. The one opposite the head of the stairs?’

  ‘Yes, and I might as well warn you right now that I’m not just staying there tonight. I’m staying as long as I like. I won’t move out just to please you and I don’t care what kind of legal contract you’ve got. If you want me to go then you’ll have to drag me out of here.’

  Marc’s smile broadened.

  ‘That too might be interesting,’ he said softly.

  Jane made a strangled sound deep in the back of her throat.

  ‘You’re impossible!’

  Her rage boiled over. She stepped out into the hall and slammed the door, then she remembered his earlier taunt that she had no manners. With a contemptuous snort she swung round and reopened it. She poked her head back into the sitting-room.

  ‘Thanks for the meal!’ she hissed. Then she withdrew and slammed the door so hard that the grandfather clock struck twice in protest.
>
  Upstairs, Jane was in no way soothed by the familiar green-sprigged wallpaper, lace curtains and soft lighting of her bedroom. On the contrary, she was doubly annoyed to find that her father really had left a lot of his belongings in her room. Sweeping a pile of cardboard cartons off her bed so that they landed on the floor with ominous crashes, she crawled under the feather duvet, snapped off the bedside lamp and closed her eyes. Her heart was still thudding angrily from her encounter with Marc and she felt like a racing car running on high octane fuel. She intended to stay awake trying to think out some plan of action to protect her vineyard and her home, but soon exhaustion took over and she fell asleep.

  Not that this was in any way a refreshing experience. Her dreams were troubled by the roaring of plane engines, the shattering of bottles and confused visions of Marc Le Rossignol prowling in the firelight like a demon king. Towards dawn these restless nightmares gave way to a deep, annihilating slumber in which she was conscious of cool, fresh country air rippling the curtains and of branches tapping softly against her window. It was almost noon when at last she woke up properly. For a moment she had a tranquil sense of wellbeing, which was even accompanied by an odd sense of exhilaration. Then the memories of the previous night came hurtling back to her and she gave a sudden groan.

  ‘Oh, no! He can’t take this place away from me. He can’t! He can’t!’

  Jumping out of bed, she ran to the window and flung open the curtains. The Japanese maple which had been tapping out its Morse code all through her dreams waved a vivid canopy of scarlet leaves against a bright blue sky. Raising the sash window even higher, she leaned on the windowsill and looked out. In spite of her worries, the scene still made her heart lift. Down below was the vivid green of the garden contained within a darker green yew hedge. Beyond that were the rows and rows of lime-green grapevines, rustling peacefully in the autumn sunshine. In the distance the hills looked dark blue against the paler blue of the sky. It seemed a double irony that disaster should threaten her on such a beautiful day. Well, she wasn’t going to give up without a fight!

  Luckily her room had a tiny en suite bathroom with a shower, so she didn’t have to face Marc while she was still tousled and yawning. After a long reviving shower she dressed in clean jeans, a shirt and espadrilles, tied her unruly hair back in a riotous ponytail and went downstairs. She was in the kitchen burning her second lot of toast when Marc suddenly appeared. He snatched the smoking toast, swore softly in French as it burned his fingers, and dropped it into the bin. A moment later he unplugged the toaster and dropped that in on top of the burnt bread.

  ‘What are you doing?’ cried Jane indignantly. ‘We’ve had that toaster for fifteen years.’

  ‘That is obvious,’ retorted Marc. ‘It’s bad enough when somebody efficient like me makes the toast. But you, you don’t even watch it and your sense of smell evidently doesn’t work. Do you want to burn the whole house down? And don’t worry about the toaster. I’ll buy you another one tomorrow.’

  ‘I don’t want another toaster!’ cried Jane. ‘I want that one.’

  Even to her own ears she sounded remarkably like a petulant six-year-old. It was even worse when she ran to the bin and tried to snatch the toaster back out. Marc barred her way.

  ‘You wish to fight me for it?’ he invited.

  Jane ground her teeth.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Ah, bon. You have some sense after all. I had begun to wonder. And, since that is the last slice of bread you have just burnt, perhaps you will join me in a decent breakfast.’

  ‘What do you mean “a decent breakfast”?’ asked Jane suspiciously.

  ‘Coffee—real coffee—almond croissants, a baguette. There are some surprisingly good bakeries in Tasmania.’

  Jane scowled silently. She wanted to refuse, but the pastries which Marc was laying out in a basket on the kitchen table looked far too delectable to resist. Those yummy little crescents filled with almond paste, dusted with flaked almonds and icing sugar—surely it wouldn’t hurt if she had just one of them? After all, there was no point in starving even if her whole life was in ruins.

  ‘All right,’ she agreed ungraciously.

  Fortified by two cups of fragrant black coffee, an almond croissant, a pain au chocolat and a large piece of crusty French bread, Jane was beginning to feel that Marc might not be quite such a monster as she had thought the previous evening. The way his gaze rested on her in that quiet, mocking scrutiny still unnerved her, but perhaps underneath he was really quite nice. She didn’t know that her opinion would change before the morning was over.

  ‘Well,’ said Marc, when they had finally rinsed the dirty plates and cups and put them in the dishwasher. ‘I think it’s time we phoned your father.’

  ‘All right,’ agreed Jane with lead in her heart.

  It was every bit as bad as she had feared. The telephone number which Marc gave her proved to be in Queenstown in New Zealand. When she first came on the line her father proclaimed himself delighted to hear her, but as soon as he realised she was back in Australia and had learnt about Marc’s contract on the vineyard his manner changed. He became defensive and began to bluster. First he told Jane that he had signed the contract for her own good because Marc’s offer had been too handsome to refuse and assured her that they would both make a mint of money out of a set of time-share apartments he was planning to build.

  Jane tried to reason with him, then pleaded, and finally lost her temper and began to shout. At that point Marc seized the telephone and took over. Where Jane had been impassioned and incoherent, he was cool and rational, but Jane had the impression that his cool questioning was beginning to wear her father down. It was tantalising to listen to a one-sided conversation, but a wild hope rose in her as she realised that Marc was getting the better of her father on every point. It was all the more of a disappointment when Marc uttered a pleasant farewell without obtaining any clear resolution of the problem.

  ‘What happened?’ cried Jane hotly. ‘You had him on the run! You could have made him back out of the whole deal, couldn’t you?’

  Marc shrugged.

  ‘Probably.’

  ‘Then why didn’t you?’ she demanded. ‘The whole situation is completely unfair to me—you told him that yourself! So why didn’t you make him give up?’

  ‘Because I chose not to,’ he replied.

  Jane’s disappointment was so acute that she felt like shouting or hitting something. Preferably Marc. Somehow over breakfast she had begun to think of him not so much as an unwanted invader but as her protector and ally. Now she realised bitterly that he was only interested in protecting his own interests.

  ‘I suppose that’s fair enough,’ she sneered. ‘Naturally you’re only interested in your own interests. Why should I expect anything else?’

  Marc’s pupils narrowed to tiny, opaque points of light that seemed for an instant to glitter dangerously. Then he gave her a long, appraising look.

  ‘Never mind my reasons. The important thing is that I’m staying here for the full three months. The question now is, What’s going to happen to you?’

  ‘I’m staying here too,’ insisted Jane. ‘I’m not moving.’

  Marc’s lips twisted into an odd smile.

  ‘And when the irresistible meets the immovable, what happens?’

  ‘I wouldn’t call you irresistible,’ said Jane scathingly.

  ‘And I wouldn’t call you immovable,’ he murmured. His voice was husky and his eyes held a suave, mocking glint that seemed to conceal something brooding and wild beneath it. He reminded Jane of a tiger on a leash. ‘I feel sure I could move you if I tried.’

  ‘Stop playing games!’ she cried. ‘I’m staying here and that’s that.’

  ‘Really? And what will you do for money? I suppose your father has left you adequately provided for?’

  Jane stared at him, aghast. Supposing he hadn’t? She and her father had a joint account which had served both for housekeeping and the expenses o
f the property. Either of them could withdraw money at any time and she had never fussed about it too much, even though her mother had warned her that it was unwise. Now a tremor of misgiving went through her. What if her father had cleaned the account out?

  ‘I’m sure he’s left me enough money!’ she cried, leaping instantly to her father’s defence.

  With a sceptical expression Marc picked up the phone again and held it out to her.

  ‘Why don’t you phone your bank manager and check?’

  Jane’s fingers were shaking as she punched in the numbers. She wished Marc wouldn’t keep looking at her with that half pitying, half contemptuous stare. Her heart beat more and more frantically and, when at last she got her bank manager on the line, her questions came out in a breathless staccato rush. Even before he answered her something in the quality of his long, initial silence told her that she was in for a bitter disappointment. Waves of humiliation and anger washed over her as she set down the phone again.

  ‘Well? Has he left you enough money?’

  ‘No,’ she flared. ‘You knew he wouldn’t, didn’t you? He’s transferred everything to New Zealand except for a few dollars. What am I going to do? There are Charlie’s wages to be paid and soon there’ll be grape-pickers for the harvest.’

  ‘Don’t work yourself into a state,’ advised Marc coolly. ‘Those things are my concern now. Under the terms of the contract I signed, I’m responsible for all the expenses to do with the vineyard for the next three months. The real difficulty is you. It seems you’re thrown on my charity, Jane. If I choose to show any.’

  She stared at him in horror as the implication of his words sank in. If she stayed here then every mouthful she ate, every bar of soap she washed her hands with would be paid for by Marc Le Rossignol! And the taunting smile that touched the corners of his mouth showed that he was thinking exactly the same thought.

  ‘Yes, chérie, I’m afraid so. If you stay here you will have to come down every morning and beg me sweetly to share my croissants with you. You’ll have to ask me for money to go shopping or to buy petrol for the car. Is that what you want?’