Numeralla was the Kirk family home—her home. It sat atop a low, flat crest nestled within the higher sides of the valley and from the top floor of the three-level Georgian-style building was a spectacular view across the neighbouring properties.
Her father lived at Numeralla all year round, in virtual retirement. He ran his business empire by remote control, thanks to a large room full of communications equipment and thanks to Hugh. Hugh was the managing partner of her father’s architectural business. He, along with a handful of other equally talented businessmen, ran all her father’s business interests.
She didn’t bother garaging the car at this late hour. Instead she parked on the grandly curved circular drive, opposite the front door. She eased from the car, her body now quiescent, her nerves flat and desensitized, in retreat from the raw sensations they had dealt with earlier.
There were still lights on in the house but only a few of them and she guessed the household had gone to bed. The lights would have been left on for her sake. She crossed the echoing front hall, with its sweeping marble staircase, over to the doorway that led to the back rooms and the kitchen, dropping her cloak onto one of the hall chairs as she passed. She needed a drink—something to quench her thirst.
Her father was sitting at the end of the kitchen table, a newspaper spread out in front of him. A coffee cup and saucer were lined up exactly inside the edges of the top corner of the page he was reading—neither obstructing his vision, nor marking the wooden surface of the table. It was just such precise habits as this that aggravated Anastasia, yet at the same time endeared her father to her.
She paused for a moment in the doorway, staring at his broad, upright back, debating whether to enter or not.
“You can come in,” Christopher Kirk told her in his cultured, rich baritone. “I won’t bite.” He didn’t turn around to look at her. “It is too late at night to begin another round of hostilities.”
Anastasia skirted the table to the Aga range, where she gingerly felt the kettle. It was only lukewarm.
“I have made coffee,” her father said from behind her, his voice muffled. She knew that tone. His head would be lowered, his eyes on the paper. He was reading as he spoke to her. “It is sitting on the other side. Where have you been tonight?” The last question was rapped out sharply, making her start. She whirled to face him.
He was staring at her, his coffee cup raised halfway to his mouth, frozen. His expression was at once both angry and alarmed. There was another emotion lurking there she could not quite decipher. He was staring as if…as if he were in pain. “Where have you been, dressed like that, Anna?” He lowered his cup.
She smoothed the silky material over her hip, an unconscious gesture that betrayed her tenseness. Slowly, she admitted the truth. “Those charity tickets on your desk—I knew you wouldn’t go. So I did.”
“Go? Go where?”
He didn’t remember. Or didn’t want to. “The charity benefit. The theatre, Dad. I went to the premiere.”
And he flinched and looked away, to hide the flood of bitterness and hurt in his face, just as she’d known he would. Her mother had been a patron of the arts, particularly the theatre. It was what had made Anastasia sure her father would not go to the charity performance. He avoided anything that would remind him of his dead wife, that would remind him of the misery that accompanied the last year of her life.
She turned back to the Aga and poured herself a coffee from the percolator sitting on the back of the range, her movements automatic and unthinking. Tears were pricking her eyes, threatening to blur her sight. Reminders of her mother always stopped short any conversations between them. And every time it happened, she always berated herself and swore she would never do it again. Yet so many things reminded him of Katherine—including Anastasia herself.
She didn’t need the evidence offered by the large portrait of Katherine hanging in the gallery to know she had inherited her mother’s features. People who had known Katherine always remarked on their similarities. She resembled Katherine with such uncanny precision that strangers to Numeralla, who did not know the colourful history of the portrait, assumed it was of Anastasia.
So her mere presence was enough to grate on her father’s nerves.
She was busy blinking back tears and trying to get her features under control again, when she felt a warm hand on her shoulder.
“I’m sorry to upset you, Anna.”
His hand turned her to face him and she took a deep breath, the tears receding. “It’s all right, Dad,” she told him, looking up at his face. He would still be a handsome man, despite the gray borders in his hair and the wrinkles in his skin, if it weren’t for the expression of grief he habitually wore. She couldn’t remember him ever looking happy. Only sad and often, when looking at her, angry.
He smiled but the smile didn’t reach his eyes. They were green, murky and concealing, unlike the stranger’s eyes, where she had been able to read every thought and feeling.
“I’m sorry about all of tonight—not just then,” he said. “It was probably my fault we argued. I know you can cope with the business alone—but I can’t stop being a father and trying to help…so I get in your way.”
“It’s okay. Really, Dad,” she insisted. “I lost it as well. It’s my awful temper. And I’ve had a busy week too.”
“So…you went to the theatre to get away from us all,” her father said. “You enjoyed it, I can tell. There is a look in your eyes…” He frowned and lifted her chin with his fingers, to examine her more closely. “You look as if you have been kissed tonight. Have you and Hugh already made up?”
She turned back to the percolator and her coffee cup and tried to maintain an even voice, despite the sudden thump of her heart. Could he really perceive that much in her face? “I haven’t seen him since I left you two in your study this evening. I assumed he’d stay here tonight.”
She felt her father move back to his seat at the table. “I don’t know,” he said candidly. “He might have. I offered him the guest room as usual but we ended up working in different rooms and I didn’t see him after that.”
“Neither have I.”
“You look quite different in that dress, Anna. With your hair down and in this light. I thought you were Kate for a moment and it startled me.”
Anastasia felt herself go cold. “Really?” she said, over her shoulder, forcing her voice to sound casual. This dress was like what her mother would have worn?
Her thirst evaporated. She pushed the half-made coffee to one side. “I’m going to bed.”
“That’s sensible,” he replied. “We’ve got a busy day tomorrow. I have to pick Benitta up from the international terminal at six tomorrow morning, for the party…I mean this morning, for the party tonight.”
She nodded. Without looking at her father again, she slipped out of the kitchen, throwing a quick “goodnight” over her shoulder and hurried through the house and up the stairs, heading for her bedroom.
The notorious portrait of her mother hung at the end of the long second floor gallery, in a position that overlooked the sweeping stairs, visible to people climbing either up or down. Her mother wore an enigmatic Mona Lisa smile and lay half reclined on a chaise longue, wearing one of the exotic evening gowns that had been her personal trademark among her very large circle of friends.
Most of the evening gowns had been carefully stored away in the large walk-in wardrobe in her father’s suite. All except the one her mother wore in the portrait. It had been her favourite and Anastasia suspected Katherine had been buried in it, although she had never had the courage to ask her father if that were true. To ask would invoke in him the hurtful memories that gave him his air of infinite bitterness.
The picture seemed to be mocking her and Anastasia begun to struggle with the antique fastenings of her dress right there on the landing, turning her back on her mother’s secret smile.
No wonder he had looked at her. No wonder a complete stranger had wanted to get clo
se to her. She had unwittingly taken on her mother’s guise—the celebrated woman who had been swept up into the romance that had rocked Seattle society with its ardour and tempestuousness, before throwing everything away, just walking out, leaving…never to return.
Anastasia had to get the dress off. Now.
She rushed into her room, stripping off the dress, careless of the beading and fragile silk. She threw it into a corner and sank down onto her bed, trembling, to stare at the black and silver creation where it lay puddled on the thick carpet.
No one must ever learn of what happened tonight. And she must forget about it herself. The man on the boat had stirred up thoughts and feelings in her she had long ago labelled as proscribed and tucked away. Now was not the time to open that Pandora’s box for re-examination.
For better or worse, she had already made the decision to marry Hugh, with both eyes open to the consequences. If she faltered at the first challenge to that decision, she would be doing a disservice both to herself and to Hugh. She was renowned for her stubbornness—although in her professional circles it was labelled as discipline and tenacity. She needed to apply it to her private life too and forget all about him.
Perversely, an echo of his words whispered to her. “He won’t make you happy, Carmencita.”
My father was happy, once. I’m settling for peace and contentment, instead, she told herself firmly.
* * * * *
Anastasia sat on the stone bench next to the mosaic surrounds of the swimming pool, enjoying the touch of the cool air on the areas of warm skin that were exposed by her emerald green raw silk dress. The night was perfectly still, crisply cold and clear—a repeat of last night. It was past nine o’clock and she had already been danced off her feet. She had escaped from the heated atmosphere inside to recover her breath and for a brief moment of privacy.
Nearly everyone at the engagement party knew her well and she had spent every moment since the first guest arrived either dancing or locked into conversation.
Guests were still arriving at the party despite the hour. Between her family and Hugh’s friends and associates, they had connections spanning the globe and quite a few of the guests had flown into Seattle especially for the occasion. Her aunt Benitta, who had married an Englishman, had arrived early that morning and had been picked up by her father. Anastasia’s father’s oldest and first, business partner had stepped off the plane from Japan barely three hours before. Hugh’s best friend, who was best man for the wedding, was flying in from China. And Anastasia’s only living cousin was still due to arrive on the late plane from Sydney. Every now and then, Hugh or her father would bring someone else to her to greet her, or she would have to perform the same service for them.
Hugh was bringing another new arrival over to her, now, she saw. She had told him where she was going and now he was searching her out. It was probably time to go inside, she thought. She looked at the new guest to see if it was anyone she knew. The guest was male and taller than Hugh, which was unusual…
She shot to her feet, her breath expelled in a rasping gasp that hurt her throat.
It was him.
He was smiling and talking to Hugh. She could hear Hugh joking about guests of honour and shifting dates and his response. But the full conversation flew past her, its meaning lost. She saw for one brief second his clear gray eyes flick over to glance at her. He had recognized her, then.
Anastasia looked around, seeking a bolt-hole. She wanted a door into another dimension, a rabbit hole to drop into. She wanted to become Eurydice and escape into Hell, which would be an infinitely better place to be than right here in the next few minutes. But none of those things would happen. She was cornered by the simple fact that he was with Hugh. Anything she did now would be seen by Hugh, who was not stupid. He would become suspicious.
She lifted her chin and waited. So be it.
Hugh took her arm, sliding his fingers down her forearm in the comforting private greeting he gave her whenever they were in public. “Anastasia. This is my very best friend David. David Morgan. This is the man we’ve had to shift the date of the party forward for. And he nearly didn’t make it, anyway.” He smiled at his friend. “David. This is Anastasia Kirk, my fiancée.”
“It can’t be,” David replied. “I can’t see the halo.”
Hugh laughed. “I haven’t been that boring, have I?”
David held his hand out to her. “Hello, Anastasia. I’m sorry we didn’t get around to meeting much sooner.”
He was protecting her. He was playing along with Hugh’s assumption that they were total strangers. She felt a small inner sigh of relief. Her first overwhelming fear of a showdown melted away. She let him take her hand and shake it gently. His warm fingertips rested against the pulse of her wrist, which was erratic. His touch seemed to force her gaze upward into his eyes. And there she found herself drowning in a wash of remembered sensuality—his lips on her wrist, the taste of his mouth on hers, the look in his eyes as he measured her responses. It all came flooding back.
The same look was in his eyes now, only shuttered, contained. She could recognize it because she had been exposed to the full power of his magnetism less than a day ago. He was containing it only until they were alone, when Hugh—his best friend and her fiancé—was not there. She knew without a doubt that he would make sure that confrontation happened.
“Perhaps I should make up for my lack of consideration by dancing with you, Anastasia,” he suggested, his voice mellow and controlled.
Hugh shook his head. “Anastasia’s been dancing all night. That’s why she’s hiding out here.”
“That would be nice,” she said firmly, overriding Hugh’s response.
He looked at her, puzzled.
She gave him a smile. “You’ve spent as much time telling me about David as it appears you’ve spent telling David about me. We’re going to get even and talk about you.”
It worked. He smiled and waved them away. “I guess that’s fair enough. I have to speak to the caterers, anyway.”
David’s hand captured her arm, as it had last night and he drew her gently away from Hugh and across the paving to the bank of French doors that led into the “ballroom,” the grandly formal drawing room where all the Numeralla entertaining took place.
She caught her breath, knowing she was about to be held in his arms and fought off the rush of hot, heavy yearning the thought provoked. There were far too many people here to allow herself the luxury of unchecked responses. The risks in her situation were crowding her mind, making her head throb. But she had assisted David’s ploy to place them where they were alone, even in a relative sense, because above all they needed to talk.
Inside, on the dance floor, he turned and drew her against him. Her breath caught as their bodies made contact. She could feel the heat of his skin through the layers of clothing between them.
It was a moment before either of them spoke. His voice was low, just loud enough to reach her ears but no further. “If I were a fatalist, I would rage against the sour fortune lady luck has handed me tonight. She gives and takes with the other hand.”
“What are you, if you’re not a fatalist?”
“Ironically, I’ve always considered myself a loyal friend. That loyalty is being sorely tested right now.” It was a bitter admission.
Anastasia shied away from further probing. “What were you doing on the river last night?” she asked. “Hugh thought you were flying in today.”
“I’ve been working non-stop for months, in Shanghai. One of the few things that kept my sanity in place was the thought of cruising along Seattle waterways one night, with time to pick out old familiar landmarks and just…relax. I knew I wouldn’t have a hope of doing that once Hugh got me involved in all this wedding business, so I made arrangements to fly back a day early. I didn’t bother telling Hugh because he would have wanted to see me last night and besides, he—”
“Hates boats,” she finished for him. She drew her head back to l
ook up at him. “Thank you for not making a scene.”
He let her go and drew her off the dance floor, one strong hand about her arm and out through the doors again, heading for the same quiet stone bench she had been sitting on before. “I can’t think straight when I’m holding you,” he murmured. “And I must think.” His face was grim.
She sank onto the cool stonework alongside him, the tight dress riding up over her knee. “We’ll be interrupted,” she warned.
“We have to talk. You know that, don’t you? If not here, then somewhere else,” he said quietly.
“Yes but if what you’re going to say is that we must pretend last night never happened, then you can say it right here without complications.”
David looked at her and something deep within his eyes flared up. It ignited her soul and made her heart jumped in a delicious back flip that left her breathless.
“Is that what you want me to say?” he asked. “I know that’s what you insisted on last night but things have suddenly become infinitely more complicated, haven’t they?”
“So you’ve finished dancing already,” Hugh’s voice interrupted them. “I knew even David wouldn’t be light enough on his feet to suit you, Anastasia.”
David looked up at Hugh as he approached across the paving. “Dancing’s no good for talking and we’ve got a lot of catching up to do. I’ve been in China too long. You got yourself engaged while my back was turned and I want to find out why all the fuss over Anastasia.” He stood to face him. “I was just about to suggest that you two should come to my place tomorrow for lunch. We can talk without interruptions there.”
“I can’t, I’m afraid,” Anastasia said truthfully, standing too. “We’ll have a house full of guests for the next week or so and I have to work too.” She touched Hugh’s arm. “My boss insists on it.”
Hugh grinned. He looked at David. “And I’ve got work up to my eyebrows, as you very well know. It’s all your fault of course. If you’d been able to free yourself from China a week ago, we’d be able to spend time together.”
Inconvenient Lover Page 3