by Susan Napier;Kathryn Ross;Kelly Hunter;Sandra Marton;Katherine Garbera;Margaret Mayo
‘I don’t believe that, and I’m sure neither do you,’ she said firmly. ‘You only have to look at Joshua with his son to know that he doesn’t think of fatherhood as a chore. He strikes me as a man who deeply values his family. How do you get on with Ryan?’
‘He’s OK.’ Carolyn’s shrug was as off-hand as her tone. ‘A bit of a know-it-all sometimes, but most of the time he’s pretty mature for his age. He has a genius IQ, you know—three years ahead of himself at his school, and Jay says he’ll probably be going to university next year…’
‘It sounds as if he’d make a pretty good big brother.’
‘I guess.’ Carolyn didn’t sound very enthusiastic.
Regan took a deep breath. ‘As long as you and Joshua love each other,’ she said steadily, ‘surely that’s all that really matters…?’
Her little fishing expedition failed. Carolyn looked broodingly out of the window. ‘Jay has been great,’ she sighed. Her lips compressed. ‘Do you know that he married his first wife because she was pregnant?’
Regan’s hands clenched in the folds of her red skirt. ‘No, I didn’t know.’
‘She did it deliberately. Chris was only ten and the twins were eleven, and she knew that Jay didn’t want to get involved in any heavy relationships until they were older, so she got pregnant, knowing that his over-developed sense of responsibility wouldn’t allow his baby to be born illegitimately. According to Chris she was a stupid bitch who began pushing for the kids to be sent to boarding school as soon as she got the wedding ring on her finger, and when Jay argued with her about all the money she was spending she let it slip that if he hadn’t been rich she wouldn’t have wanted his brat. Jay didn’t say anything, but the day after Ryan was born he had Clare served with divorce papers right there in the hospital.’
‘My God!’ For sheer ruthlessness that took some beating. ’She must have been shattered.’
‘I don’t think so. Chris says she split for the States a few weeks later and never raised a squawk about custody, so I guess Jay must have bought himself out of a fight.’
It was precisely what he had done, on his own admission, but Regan wondered if there had not also been an element of threat involved. Even at twenty Joshua Wade would have been a formidable force, with the tragedy and hardship that had shaped and toughened his character already behind him.
‘But that’s nothing like your situation, is it?’ she said delicately. ‘I mean, it’s not as if you deliberately fell pregnant…’
‘No, it’s not!’ Carolyn looked fierce. ‘It’s not my fault, and I don’t see why I should be expected to act as if it is!’
Regan frowned. ‘You’re not being coerced into anything, are you? Joshua might have had strong views on illegitimacy back when Ryan was born, but social attitudes have changed quite a bit since then. You don’t have to get married if you don’t want to. I’m sure your grandmother would understand—’
Carolyn’s golden eyes flared with alarm. ‘You’re not going to tell her!’
‘No, of course not. But I think you should…before the wedding.’
‘I was just hoping things might all sort themselves out,’ Carolyn said moodily. ‘She’ll be hurt when she finds out what I’ve done—that I might besmirch the Harriman name…’
‘Rubbish!’ said Regan, who already knew that Hazel wasn’t a snob. ‘I think in the long run she’s more likely to be hurt if she thinks that you were afraid to tell her the truth. It’s not your marriage, it’s your happiness that’s important to her…’
Carolyn heaved another great sigh. ‘I thought you were here to help with the wedding, not to try and sabotage it!’ she joked morosely.
Regan recoiled. ‘I would never do that!’ But she uneasily acknowledged that she wasn’t exactly an objective bystander.
‘No—I suppose you’d have no reason to, would you?’ said Carolyn, in all innocence.
God, what if she casually mentioned this little discussion to Joshua? He was sure to believe the worst!
‘I’m just pointing out that you do have options,’ she said hastily, getting up from the bed. ‘Whatever you decide, you’re the one who has to live with the consequences, so make sure you know exactly what they are and what it is you really want.’
A surprisingly militant expression crossed Carolyn’s face, replacing the wistful indecision. ‘Oh, I know exactly what I want.’ She sat up. ‘You know, I think I feel a bit better.’
‘Then maybe you’d like to come downstairs. Joshua’s here with Ryan—that’s why Hazel sent me to see if you were awake.’
Carolyn threw the bedclothes down the bed and got up, stretching lethargically. ‘I suppose I could. Did Chris come with them?’
Regan told her about the canal and she laughed maliciously and seemed to perk up, throwing open her huge double closet to view the crowded contents.
‘Serve him right!’ she said, unconsciously echoing her great-uncle’s sentiments.
She hummed as she selected white cotton shorts and a loose, flowing candy-striped cotton top and threw them onto the bed.
‘I’ll just have a quick shower—tell Jay I’ll be down in about thirty minutes.’
Regan wondered how Joshua would feel about kicking his heels for that long. Perhaps he was used to her blowing hot and cold.
‘I think he said something about having to do some work today,’ she felt obliged to warn her. ‘I don’t think he’s going to be able to go sailing…’
‘Oh, well, I’ll just have to find something else to do to amuse myself, won’t I?’ Carolyn showed no sign of the predicted disappointment. ‘Maybe you could come over to the marina with me later, and we could stroll around the shops and look at the boats, maybe have a cappuccino at one of the cafés. Joshua’s got his corporate launch moored down there, ready to take clients on junkets to next week’s regatta out in the gulf, so maybe we could stop by for a drink on the deck…’
‘Maybe…’ said Regan, suddenly foreseeing the pitfalls that could result from becoming too friendly with Carolyn.
Joshua was on his cellphone when she went back down, and Regan was able to avoid any further barbed encounters by allowing Hazel to bear her off to ‘what I call my GHQ’ to show her the volume of work that awaited her on Monday—‘Because you’ve worked hard all week and we can’t expect you to labour on weekends as well’.
‘GHQ’ turned out to be a large sewing room on the sunny side of the house, containing an impressive array of electronic machinery on a sewing table that Hazel sheepishly admitted she hardly ever used, a large overstuffed floral sofa and comfy chair and a vast roll-topped desk, its numerous cubbyholes crammed higgledy-piggledy with piles of letters, bills, papers, jotted lists, magazine cuttings and cards.
‘It looks a lot worse than it actually is,’ said Hazel, sitting down gratefully in the padded swivel chair that Regan hurriedly trundled forward and pointing to a second chair with her crutch. Regan obediently sat down and dubiously eyed what she thought looked like a bomb site as Hazel went on, ‘Frank laughs at me, but I do have a system and it works very well when I have two hands to do my filing.’
She proceeded to prove it as she showed Regan how each cubbyhole pertained to one aspect of the wedding—the invitations, the gift list, the marriage celebrant and order of service, the marquee hire and catering, the wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses, the flowers, the wine and the musicians, the photographer and accommodation for out-oftown guests.
Since the mid-afternoon wedding ceremony and evening reception were being held on the grounds there would be a lot of hustle and bustle around the house on the days leading up to the wedding.
Hazel showed Regan a sketch which positioned an enormous marquee by the lake. The aisle the bride would walk down was the narrow path of crushed shells leading down to the dock, flanked by hundreds of pots of standard roses, with rows of seating for the guests extending on either side. Should the May weather prove inclement, the whole area could be covered by another huge, open-sided ma
rquee. Hazel explained that a string quartet would play the weddingmusic from a covered barge moored a few metres out on the lake, followed later by a disco.
‘We’re only inviting a couple of hundred because Carolyn wants to keep it small and reasonably intimate and informal. We did think of having the actual ceremony in the gazebo itself, but we decided that would be too much of a hassle, having to ferry so many people back and forth, especially if it rains. Whereas like this, if the weather forecast isn’t good, we can make other arrangements.’
‘It sounds marvellous. Especially since you’ve done it all in only a couple of months.’ Regan picked up a piece of green parchment. ‘This is your invitation list? Have you got a folder of the acceptances?’
A tiny twitch crimped Hazel’s small mouth. ‘Well…we haven’t actually received any yet—formal ones, that is. There was a horrendous problem at the printers where we had the invitations done, I’m afraid.’
‘They were late going out?’
‘Actually, we haven’t sent them yet,’ said Hazel weakly. ‘Joshua has taken the whole wretched mess in hand and we hope to have them next week.’
Regan’s eyes rounded. That was a huge clunker! ‘I thought invitations had to go out a couple of months before the wedding to give everyone time to reply?’
‘Yes, but it can’t be helped, and since the guest list is limited to mostly family and very close friends I’ve been able to warn most of the people we’re inviting, particularly those from overseas—Chris’s sisters are coming out from England with their husbands and families, you know…’
‘Chris’s sisters?’
‘Did I say Chris?’ Hazel patted her ash-blonde hair, looking discomfited. ‘I meant to say Joshua’s…although they are Chris’s too, of course, all of them being from the same family. Did I mention that Ryan is going to be best man?’
‘No, you didn’t. I would have thought Joshua might have asked his brother to stand up with him,’ Regan couldn’t resist murmuring and she watched Hazel’s smooth, barely lined cheeks flush a betraying pink. ‘I take it he has got some kind of official duty—as an usher, perhaps?’ she prodded.
‘I’m not sure…the groom handles all that side of things.’ Hazel waved a vague hand, her eyes brightening with relief as her granddaughter flitted across the doorway and enquired if Regan was interested in going shopping now, because Joshua was offering them a lift, and to buy them lunch later in the afternoon.
‘Of course she is! Off you go, Regan, now, and enjoy yourself.’ Hazel’s enthusiasm made it little short of an order.
‘I don’t like to intrude,’ said Regan, frantically trying to think of a polite excuse. ‘Perhaps I could just look around the shops and walk back while you go on to lunch with Joshua—’
‘We wouldn’t dream of abandoning you to your own devices,’ purred Joshua, appearing like a dark shadow behind his golden fiancée. ‘If you’re going to be as intimately involved in our affairs as you obviously plan to be, the least we can do is to ensure you’re kept well entertained while you’re here.’
For ‘well entertained’ Regan mentally substituted ‘well under surveillance’. Joshua Wade was letting it be known that he had no intention of letting her enjoy the freedom of Palm Cove.
From now on she would have to step extremely carefully if she wanted to escape with her honour intact!
Chapter Eight
‘WHAT are you doing?’
Regan jumped, her sweaty fingers skittering over the computer keyboard.
‘God, Ryan, you shouldn’t sneak up on me like that. You nearly gave me a heart attack,’ she said as he rolled up beside her in one of the secretarial chairs. She quickly closed the file she was working on and opened another.
Ryan raked his long hair out of his eyes. ‘Sorry, did you think I was Dad?’
‘Why should I?’ But Regan couldn’t help a quick glance around the plush, open-plan office, decorated with photographs, sketches and models of the Palm Cove development.
The sales team operated out of the ground floor of the main condominium block, and with the influx of oceangoing yachts and tourists at the marina from the previous weekend’s regatta, and the continuing sweltering weather, they were working at full stretch showing potential buyers and interested parties around the development. So much so they had welcomed an extra pair of hands to help with the filing and paperwork in the afternoons.
‘Because whenever you turn up here, so does he,’ said Ryan. As soon as he had finished his exams, he had wasted no time inventing a job for himself—creating a Palm Cove Internet website, spending hours at the office hunched over a spare terminal, becoming something of a mascot to staff eager to curry favour with the new boss. For Regan that had meant two Wades she had to try to avoid, for Ryan’s insatiable curiosity posed as much of a threat as that of his father.
The first week of her stay had been every bit as bad as she’d feared, with Joshua so attentive to his fiancée and her family that Carolyn had begun to look more highly-strung than ever. Even Hazel had got a little exasperated when he’d chosen to invade her precious GHQ. While she had welcomed his problem-solving acumen, and the news that he would arrange for the belated invitations to be urgently hand-delivered, Hazel had protested that he was showing more interest than the bride and eventually succeeded in shooing him away.
But to Regan’s horror she had taken him up on his offer to chauffeur the women around to check the progress of the various local craftspeople who were providing the handmade decorations for marquee and house. Carolyn’s febrile restlessness meant that she had little patience with such petty errands, and usually found something more pressing to attend to in her social calendar, and Regan found that Hazel—insulated by her delight in the million and one details that divided her attention—was little protection against Joshua’s overwhelming presence. Regan had to fight not only a war of words, but also against the insidious attraction that seemed to thrive and grow at every meeting, in spite of their mutual distrust.
‘In fact, he seems to know where you are even when nobody else does. Freaky, huh? It’s almost like he has you bugged.’ Ryan jolted her out of her fretting with a grin that reminded her of the way they had first met. ‘Maybe you should check out that watch he gave you.’
Regan flushed. She had been mortified at dinner the second night, when Joshua had casually produced a beautiful platinum man’s Swiss watch and fastened it on her wrist over her strenuous protests.
‘Don’t make such a fuss—it’s not as if I’m trying to seduce you with jewellery,’ he had said, amusing everyone but Regan with his apparent joke. ‘This is a loan, not a gift. It’s an old one of mine—I just had the jeweller at Palm Cove whip out a few links so that the band would fit a smaller wrist. Hazel is a stickler for being on time for appointments, and you won’t come up to scratch if you don’t carry a reliable timepiece.’
Regan had been forced to act pleased and thank him nicely.
‘It’s fully waterproof and shockproof, so you can safely forget you’ve got it on,’ he’d told her. ‘You can even wear it washing your hair in the shower, if you like, though perhaps you’re the kind of woman who prefers to do it in the bath.’
He had stood smiling at her blandly while Regan’s eyes had spat violet fire, her composure almost destroyed by the vivid mental video of Joshua as he had been That Night, his tapered torso slick with soapy water as he’d braced his shoulders against the curving back of the marble bath and lifted her astride him with dripping arms, bringing her hard down on his up-thrust hips, churning up the waves until a tsunami of sensation had almost drowned them both!
His eyes had flickered to the band on her wrist and she’d felt it like a mark of his possession as he goaded softly, ‘How fortunate that you don’t appear to be as allergic to platinum as you are to gold…’
‘You’ve left footprints all over the place, you know.’
‘What?’ Regan wrenched herself from her memories to find Ryan edging closer to her termina
l. ‘Where?’ She automatically looked down at the carpet.
‘On those files you’ve just been altering…you’re leaving a trail that any competent hacker could follow.’
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she said hollowly.
‘It’s just a clumsy way of doing it, that’s all. I mean, I think the actual idea is clever,’ Ryan said kindly. ‘You have a printing company that in the process of long, legal winding-up has discovered a breach of its former contract with Palm Cove Developments that invokes a lump-sum penalty repayment clause. It’s just that if the data and dates don’t match up in all those files by the time the bank cheque arrives, your tampering is going to look pretty obvious to an expert…’
Regan was speechless.
‘I could do it, you know!’ Ryan’s eyes shone with enthusiasm. ‘I could hack in and manipulate the software to completely obliterate any sign you’d been in there. Or, I could use a very specific virus that would corrupt the data if anyone tried to call up the original file on that contract—’
‘No! Ryan—you don’t know what you’re saying!’
‘Yes, I do. I’ve been hacking around in the system and tracking what everyone’s doing for days,’ he confided. ‘The security here really sucks and the passwords are a joke.’ He grinned at her. ‘You’re trying to put money back into the system, aren’t you? Sort of like Robin Hood in reverse—’
‘Nothing like Robin Hood!’ Regan was horrified by his admiration. ‘For goodness’ sake, Ryan, what I’m doing is dishonest!’ She bit her lip; she hadn’t meant to admit anything.
‘Yeah, but for a good cause—you didn’t steal it, right?’ he stated, with an absolute confidence that she found unbearably touching. ‘You’re obviously just covering for someone else. Those files you were extracting were originally created with a password held by Michael Frances—I checked. Hey, I hope you haven’t forgotten there’ll be back-up files somewhere, too…’
Regan propped her head on her hand and closed her eyes, appalled that her sins had found her out before she had barely even begun. ‘No, I haven’t forgotten—that was the first thing I did, because the back-ups are kept at the legal office, where I work. Michael was my husband,’ she sighed. ‘Before he died he skimmed off the money by awarding contracts for printing posters and sales brochures to a fictitious firm, while he actually had the job done at a cheaper price.’