Inconvenient Lover

by Cooper-Posey, Tracy

  “One of the penalties of being a success, huh?” David shrugged. “Another weekend, then. I’m going to be staying in Seattle for a while. It’s been over two years. I’ve got to make sure everything at my head office here hasn’t gone to ruin while I’ve been away.”

  They slid easily into another subject, laughter interspersing their talk. She stood between the two tall men and watched them both. It was easy to see they were very good friends. Their body language was relaxed and open and their conversation full of unexplained references—the evidence of shared experiences and close contact.

  The friendship had developed many years ago, during their childhood. David was also an old client of their architecture firm, although he hadn’t commissioned any work from them for a while. He had been concentrating on developing a branch of his highly successful boat building business in Shanghai. The long distance business relationship did not seem to be straining their friendship in any way.

  But Anastasia suspected she might be the cause of strain. She thought…she wished…she could see the slightest touch of uneasiness in David’s manner as the two men conversed. She hoped it was not her imagination inserting discomfort in David’s behaviour simply to match her own troubled conscience.

  She had never lied to Hugh before, even indirectly or by omission. Guilt was leaving a sour taste in her mouth and making her heart beat hard with a pain that felt neither good nor healthy. She didn’t like the feeling and promised herself she would sort out this mess very soon. And she would avoid all future situations that might provoke this awful feeling again. That included, of course, having anything to do with David Morgan.

  Chapter Four

  David swapped his champagne for a heavy jolt of Glenfiddich and found himself a lonely dim corner of the room, sheltered behind a majestic potted palm.

  It had taken him endless minutes to engineer this quiet moment. It was the first chance he’d had to be alone with his thoughts since he’d come face to face with Anastasia. Beneath the pleasant facade he had been maintaining was wholesale chaos.

  He had to put his mind back together again before he made a fatal mistake. He couldn’t risk smearing Anastasia’s reputation any further.

  He took a long swallow of the scotch, felt it burn a mellow path down his throat. Resting his forehead against one of the panes of the French door, he closed his eyes for one brief moment, opening himself up to the torrent of thoughts that had been hammering at him since he’d seen her.

  The woman on the bridge. The woman he had wanted so much, yet had allowed to step out of his life.

  Anastasia.

  Hugh’s fiancé. Back in his life…And engaged to his best friend.

  The cool glass pane was soothing to his hot forehead. He sighed heavily, straightened up and turned to face the room again. He searched her out from among the guests, unable to stop himself, even as he acknowledged how foolish he was being. He glimpsed emerald green, focused on her and enjoyed the way she moved gracefully around the room, chatting and laughing. If he hadn’t spoken to her and felt her wild pulse, he might have thought his appearance here tonight had left her completely unmoved.

  Although she was the woman he had met under the bridge, this Anastasia was different. She had changed. This Anastasia was cool and controlled. He’d caught a glimpse of this woman last night, when she’d first raked him with her gaze and in the detached, vaguely amused expression she had used when she’d asked him what was wrong with using his jacket. It had been there but had been swallowed up by the urgency of the moment and by her drive to free the bird. She had been too intent to keep the facade in place.

  As further proof, he caught a quick darting glance she sent his way from across the room. She knew exactly where he was and he could see he was unnerving her. So this cool, charming Anastasia was the fake.

  It didn’t matter. He still wanted her. He could feel the instincts he used in his business kick into place. His mind was already grappling with the problem of how to achieve the goal he’d set himself. It was how he’d worked all these years—set the goal, identify the obstructions, deal with them and claim the reward.

  And even as he identified what his subconscious was doing, he clamped down on the myriad trails of thought and chopped the process off in its infancy, hating himself for one bleak moment for even trying to deal with this the way he had successfully dealt with business.

  As he stood there berating himself, he watched her move to Hugh’s side. Hugh was talking to three people grouped loosely near the bar, his round, pleasant face alight with good cheer, the keen, intelligent eyes behind the glasses twinkling. Anastasia put a hand on Hugh’s sleeve, an intimate form of interruption and he stopped speaking to look at her. His grin softened to a smile.

  David almost groaned and spun around, back to face the door. He swallowed what remained of his drink and leaned up against the doorjamb. He deliberately stared at the cold landscape beyond the glass, filling his mind with it, trying to blot out the little tender scene he had just witnessed and the self-loathing that accompanied it.

  He knew he couldn’t dodge the facts forever, though.

  Anastasia was deliberately stunting herself, perverting her nature, in some insane bid to avoid future pain. It was the pale shadow of herself that remained that Hugh loved.

  If David dared to try to win her, he would hurt his best friend. If he left her alone, he would be condemning her to a half-life of superficial emotions and feelings.

  He sighed again and this time his heavy exhalation misted over the glass in front of him, blocking his view. He didn’t wipe the condensation away. At that moment he’d like to have been struck fully blind and deaf—anything to avoid having to make a decision.

  After Hugh had interrupted their talk and whisked her away to greet another guest, Anastasia managed to keep her distance from David for most of the rest of the party. She was spurred on by the roil of guilt that attacked her every time she looked at him.

  But she would catch his gaze on her from across the room, or hear his deep voice issuing from somewhere out of sight, behind other guests, or she would find herself closer still, close enough to touch him. Whatever the nature of the contact, it would zap her nerve endings and bring her up short, halting her conversation, or making her lose her rhythm, if she was on the dance floor.

  Thankfully, Hugh and her father, the two people who might have noticed her lapses of attention, were too occupied with entertaining the one hundred guests spread throughout the public rooms of Numeralla.

  But David noticed. She found that out when she managed to spill a cup of coffee all over one of the buffet tables, because she was preoccupied in watching him talking to one of the women from her office. The fuss the catering staff made over her was sufficient for his attention to be drawn to her, for he was almost instantly by her side.

  He extracted her from the tight circle of men in chef’s hats trying to brush beads of coffee from the silk of her dress and moved her away from the scene of the disaster, deftly snagging a fresh cup of coffee with his spare hand as he did so. He led her out of the room and into the virtually deserted entrance hall, to a shallow alcove tucked beneath the curl of the stairs.

  He handed her the coffee and pushed his hands into his pockets. “You have my undivided attention, so don’t spill that one.”

  “It wasn’t deliberate.”

  “I know. I’ve been watching you watching me all night. My presence here is irritating you like a sore tooth, isn’t it? Do you want me to leave?”

  “What makes you think—” she began, intending to deny his statement but he held up a hand to forestall her. She fell silent.

  “You don’t have to admit or deny anything. Let me make it easier for you. You need time to deal with all this. So do I. Let us both assume that if you ask me to leave it does not mean you admit or deny any possible implications that arise from such a request. So. Shall I leave? Yes or no?”

  She wanted to say ‘Yes!’ forcefully and eject him fr
om the house. Then she wouldn’t have to keep tracing his movements through the room so her gaze would not come upon him suddenly and she wouldn’t be surprised into revealing anything by voice or expression or preoccupation. But if he left she would lose the one person here tonight who knew what was churning away inside her. She needed that moral support—no matter how silent and unspoken it may be and regardless of the fact that he was the cause of it all. She hovered, undecided, trying to read his mind through his eloquent eyes.

  “If you left, what would Hugh think?”

  David shrugged. “I’ll make up an excuse.”

  She bit her lip.

  “Don’t worry—it will be quite convincing. He’ll believe me.”

  “You’ve had practice lying, then?”

  “The trick to lying is to tell as much of the truth as possible and avoid details from that point on.” He shook his head. “Don’t worry about it, Anastasia. If you would prefer I not be here, I’ll go. I’m asking you because you’re the one who doesn’t seem to be handling this too well.”

  “You’re damned right I’m not.” Her conscience was pricked. “This is my engagement party and every time I look at you I remember what it was I was doing last night…in your arms.”

  David motioned for her to keep her voice down and she swallowed back some of her ire, trying to control her volume.

  “And you’re right, I haven’t had a chance to deal with it properly,” she continued, her voice low. “But I don’t want you to leave. I want you to stay. Right to the bitter end. Then you can watch Hugh put his engagement ring on my finger and maybe it will sink through to your subconscious that I am engaged.”

  His eyes grew a deep dark gray as she watched and they narrowed thoughtfully. Her heart sank when he said, “And what I said last night still stands. Engagements are made to—”

  “There she is!”

  The voice was female and young and seemed to be coming from above their heads. They looked up and she saw her cousin Jenny leaning way out over the edge of the stair balustrade, half-way up the flight. Jenny motioned to them, a signal to come to her. “Come up here for a moment, Anna. Mom wants you for a moment.”

  She looked at David. “Aunt Benitta probably needs something from the bedrooms or the linen closet. If you will excuse me?”

  “No, it’s okay,” Jenny called. “He can come too. We’re just up here a while.” The slight tinge of an Australian accent she had picked up during her stay in Sydney was amplified by the marbled surrounds of the entrance hall. “We’re all admiring that picture.”

  Anastasia stepped back a little. “Oh.”

  She felt the coffee cup being plucked out of her hands. “Come on,” David urged. “You can’t let your guests down.”

  “I would rather let them down this time,” she told him frankly.

  He studied her curiously. “Over a picture?”

  “Anastasia? Could you come here a minute?” It was her aunt’s voice.

  She sighed. “Just a minute,” she called and made her way up the stairs, around the curve to where a small group of people clustered on three or four steps near the top of the flight. All were turned to look at the picture. Her minuscule aunt was standing on the highest step and waved a hand at her appearance.

  “There she is. Now look and see what I mean.”

  The group turned in unison to look at her as she climbed up to their level and the various expressions all belonged to the same class of thought. They were comparing her resemblance to her mother. Jenny confirmed her guess by saying, “It’s a pity your hair is up in that hair-do, Anna. You should see her with her hair down. It’s really weird how much they look like each other.”

  There was another lengthy silence while everyone compared her to Katherine and she stood uncomfortably, one hand on the balustrade, hoping she could extract herself from the group before Aunt Benitta, as self-appointed bard, began retelling one of the scandalous stories about her parents’ relationship.

  “‘Picture’ doesn’t really do it justice, does it?” It was David’s voice, low and meant just for her. She turned to look at him, surprised he had followed her up the stairs. He stood on the steps below her and his face was level with hers as he leaned against the balustrade.

  “It’s not me,” she explained.

  “No. I can see that. There’s something about it… Either the artist’s attitude or the subject’s personality. But it’s not you.”

  She stared at him, astonished.

  “On the face of it, I’d say it would have to be your mother. The dress is too modern to be your grandmother. And it can’t be anyone else—not with such a close resemblance to you.”

  “That dress is a story in its own right,” Benitta said, picking up on David’s words. “It was the cause of one of the biggest arguments between Kate and Christopher—he didn’t want her wearing it out in public. It got him into a rage of jealousy the way the men would flock around her when she wore it. It was very daring for its time, you know.”

  “But she wore it anyway, to a charity ball for the theatre company,” said Jenny, who was familiar with the litany too.

  “And Christopher refused to take her. So she went by herself and was the belle of the ball. And Christopher followed her and stood outside the ballroom, in the pouring rain.”

  “And did what?”

  “He just stood and looked up at the ballroom windows and waited. He knew, you see.”

  “Knew what?” another person prompted Benitta.

  “Knew she would come to him.”

  Beside her, Anastasia heard David’s quick in-drawn breath.

  “Did she go?” another asked.

  “Yes. She went to him. In that dress and in the pouring rain. They stood on the grass in the rain and he took her in his arms while all the people at the ball watched them.” Benitta sighed.

  “Excuse me,” Anastasia said, her voice an empty husk. She stepped around David’s bulk and hurried down the stairs. Inevitably he followed her but she remained focused on the stair treads, trying to marshal her thoughts again.

  “I’m surprised,” he said. “Hugh talks about you and your father all the time but he’s never hinted you have such a romantic family history.”

  “He probably isn’t even aware of it. You know Hugh—if it isn’t tied up with his beloved architecture…” Anastasia strove to keep her tone light and flippant.

  “Still—it’s hard to ignore something as big as that painting. Or stories as big as that one.”

  “Aunt Benitta has dozens like that, honed to perfection for when she has a captive, gullible audience. Like you, for instance.” She paused in the middle of the entrance foyer to turn to look at him. “They’re just stories, David. Don’t read anything into them.”

  “They mean more to you than that, or you wouldn’t be rushing away like you are.”

  She sighed. “I don’t like the reminder.”

  “Of the relationship between your mother and father? Their happiness?”

  “No. My father’s bitterness.”

  “Bitterness?” David frowned. “But…your mother died, didn’t she? When you were about six? Hugh told me.”

  “Yes, she died. But first she and Dad argued for what seems like years and then she left us…six months before she died.”

  “How did she die?” he asked gently.

  She took a deep breath and tried to still her heart. It had happened such a long time ago. There was no reason not to tell him. And she knew with sure instinct he would understand—as Hugh had not.

  “I don’t know,” she admitted.

  David examined her face, his own reflecting…not quite pity. His hand came up to touch her cheek and she felt her muscles twitch under the feather-light touch of his fingertips. “And you’ve blamed yourself for her death ever since, haven’t you?”

  Tears stung her eyes and she blinked to clear them away, hoping they would not spill and betray her response to his compassion. No one else had ever guessed she had ca
rried that guilt most of her life. She had been an adult for a number of years before she had learned how to deal with it. And the thought still carried a sting.

  The urge to reach out to him and be swept up into his arms suddenly swamped her. She wanted to be held, even for a moment, while she cried out her tears. And after he would murmur reassurances, which he would follow up with a kiss, his lips firm upon hers…

  She closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed back her tears. “I’ve changed my mind,” she said, focusing once more on his face. “I would like you to leave.”

  She may need moral support but too much compassion and understanding was as dangerous as too little.

  * * * * *

  It wasn’t until late Friday night—a week later—that Anastasia got the chance to fulfill her self-promise to deal with the situation once and for all. And it was David’s doing that made the chance possible.

  She was working late. Hugh had been quite serious about the overload of work they were struggling with. Hugh had left much earlier for a meeting over dinner with prospective clients. Normally she would have accompanied him as both business partner and future wife but the workload demanded that at least one of them stay back to deal with the endless formalities and paperwork that seemed to build whenever the schedule got tight.

  Just after ten o’clock the phone rang, surprising her. It was the security guard who patrolled the entrance to the office block after hours.

  “There’s a man outside asking for you, Ms. Kirk,” he told her. “He said he was David. No last name. Wouldn’t give it.”

  He was here. Now.

  She bit her lip. She wasn’t ready for this. Not now. She wanted to set the time and date and tackle the subject when she was fresh—not after a long day at the desk. Yet, at the thought of him, her heart began to pick up speed again and her breath shortened. And the coppery taste of guilt and delayed confrontation trickled into her mouth.