by Margaret Way
“And that was the only time?” Miranda wasn’t shocked. She had seen her mother the sexual predator, seen the overweening confidence in the way she stood. Head up, back arched, hand on hip. She’d probably seduced the man who had fathered her. Not the other way around. Her grandmother had admitted Leila had been very mature for her years.
Mature? One could define maturity in a number of ways.
“Need I say more?” Corin spoke coldly, as though deeply disappointed in her and her reactions.
“But she hasn’t let you alone, has she?” Miranda persisted.
“Okay, let’s have this out,” Corin retorted in an abrasive voice. “Leila is an extraordinary woman. A man-eater. A home-wrecker. She’s very motivated.”
“Like me?”
“Let me finish.” He cut her off. “Leila thinks sooner or later it’s going to happen. She and I will eventually have sex.”
“Instead it happened with us.” Solid ground had turned to shifting sand. “Some of that loathing has to wash up on me? If not now at some future time?”
“Now you really are being ridiculous. And unforgivably insulting,” he said. “Both to me and to yourself.”
“So I should be disgusted with myself?” Miranda asked, low-voiced. “Well, I feel like I’m being pulled apart, Corin. Try to understand that. I am my mother’s daughter. There’s a lot of twisted emotion going on here. In you. In me. Even in Zara.”
He rounded on her. “Don’t get into the psychobabble, Miranda. Where has our sense of belonging, our depth and balance gone?”
“No psychobabble,” Miranda said sadly. “A conclusion based on hard evidence. I take the scientific approach. Leila has badly affected your family. Affected me, the abandoned child. We all bear testament to that. She’s that kind of woman.”
“Ah, to hell with her!” Corin threw up his hands. “We lose the good people in life. The devil looks after his own.” What he desperately needed was to hold her, but at that moment it seemed impossible. It was obvious she needed time. As for him—he accepted the fact he had fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with a young woman whose life story was drastically entwined with his own.
But love was a form of armour. Wasn’t it? He had to believe that.
“If Leila thinks there’s anything between us she’ll become even more of an enemy,” Miranda said. “I think I should go home. Get a job for the rest of the year. I’ve had almost seven months of luxurious living. I’ve learned a great deal. I’ll never forget it. But it’s imperative I keep my feet on the ground. I’ll miss Zara, but she has her job and good friends here. You’ll be joining your father in Beijing. He’ll have Leila with him. So far as she’s concerned I’m Zara’s friend. Which I desperately hope I still am.” She paused, watching Corin slump dejectedly into an armchair. “I should take some of my clothes upstairs. Leave most of them here, if I may. Leila obviously doesn’t have a key to your apartment.”
“I hope that’s not a question?” he shot back, his expression dark and forebiding.
“Don’t be angry with me, Corin.” She was careful to keep her tone level. “I know she doesn’t. If she had, she’d already have checked.” She gave a humourless laugh. “I called myself Miranda Graham.”
“She wasn’t fooled.”
“Of course not. At least she knew I wasn’t about to bring her immediately unstuck. Your father didn’t know her as Leila Thornton?”
“Got it in one. Leila Richardson. That’s if he even bothered to look at any documents.”
“I would never have taken him for a fool.”
“He’s obsessed with her,” Corin said. “Makes fools of us all. I want you to stay with me tonight, Miranda. We’ll take some of your clothes up tomorrow. I suggest you go out for the day. I have a meeting I can’t put off in the morning. Otherwise I would. Should go on for hours, then I’ll be taken out for the obligatory lunch. But I’ll be back no later than 3:00 p.m. Leila will make a rush to get at you. She’s probably raised all sorts of possibilities in her mind.”
“Blackmail, most probably,” Miranda said soberly. “She’ll be sure I want to blackmail her. Take her for all she can manage to get from your father. I blackmailed you in a way, didn’t I?”
Corin came to his full height—a very formidable young man. He went to her, pulling her tightly into his arms. Hunger, anger, a counter-balancing protectiveness blazed out his eyes. “Let’s go to bed,” he said roughly, putting his mouth to hers.
Immediately, touch leapt across the barriers between them as if they were of no consequence. The kiss lengthened, deepened. Physically, they were in perfect accord. “We must stick together,” he muttered passionately when he lifted his head. “Trust together. If we do, all the Leilas in the world can’t hurt us.”
At that moment Miranda, fathoms deep in love, believed him.
She wasn’t sure exactly why she did it, but Miranda elected to remain in the house the following morning.
Zara looked worried. “I can ring and say I won’t be in to work,” she offered, thus validating their closeness. “I’ll make some excuse. No one will mind. I pull my weight.”
“I’m sure you do, but I don’t want you to do that, Zara,” Miranda said, showing her gratitude for the offer. “Even if Leila does turn up I’ll be okay. It’s not as though she would physically attack me. She might come off second best if she did. A few of my girlfriends and I undertook a course in self-defence a year or so back. I was the shortest, the slightest and the best of the lot.” She laughed at the memory. “For months on campus I was called Mighty Mouse. Besides, this is something deeply personal between us. Leila is the mother who abandoned me. Not only me, but her own mother and father, who never got over her defection. My grandmother spoke about it on her deathbed. This won’t be a one-way thing. It works two ways. I’ll let Leila tell me her side of the whole sorry story.”
“Leila never tells the truth,” Zara warned. “If you need me I’m only a phone call away. And Corin will get away from his meeting as soon as he can. You love him, don’t you?”
Miranda’s beautiful eyes were on fire. “At first sight,” she admitted. “It was the most powerful connection of my life. Neither of us ever talked about it. That side of our friendship went unmentioned. I had my degree to get through. Corin was always under pressure. Venice was the happiest time of my life.” She paused before adding quietly, “But things change, don’t they, Zara? You know that. Therefore I must be prepared.”
“Don’t you let them change!” Zara advised. “I did—to my cost. One day I’ll tell you all about it. How I lost the love of my life.”
Miranda was sitting in an armchair in the sumptuous drawing room, with its antiques, fine art, glorious chandeliers, gilded mirrors, Aubusson carpet, golden yellow silk drapes falling from the ceiling to floor French windows, when a cab drew to a halt outside.
You knew she’d come.
She had to be channelling her grandmother. That was her voice. She could handle the paranormal now.
She stood up, facing the quiet, leafy crescent, as Leila, dressed in a black-and-white two-piece suit—unmistakably Chanel—emerged from the back seat, turning to pay the driver. She looked up at the grand white stucco building, then walked purposefully towards the short flight of front steps.
Don’t forget there’s a caged tigress inside.
Miranda believed she was locked into celestial wisdom. She went to the front door, opening it just as Leila was about to press the buzzer.
“Ah, Mrs Rylance. How lovely to see you. This is a surprise.” Miranda stood back as the much taller Leila swept by her, leaving a delightful trail of Chanel No. 5.
“Where have you come from and why are you here?” Leila bypassed all the niceties. She had control of her voice, but her right hand was clenching and unclenching.
Does she mean to sock you?
“Why don’t we go and sit down?” Miranda gestured towards the drawing room.
“Don’t tell me what to do in my own home!”
Leila shot back in the most hostile voice possible. “Who sent you?”
“I think I should be the one asking questions here.” Miranda surprised herself with her own calm in the face of a storm.
Courage under fire.
Her grandmother again. She was having a lot to say today. Miranda waited for Leila to be seated before she resumed her armchair by the tall French windows. Who knew? She might have to jump out.
“I repeat—who sent you?” Leila was really angry, her golden-brown eyes lit like a bonfire. “What are you up to?”
“Why don’t we cut to the chase?” Miranda suggested. “I know you. You know me. Like any mother and daughter. I assume you’re not here to ask my forgiveness?”
Leila looked stunned by Miranda’s response and her composure. “What is it you want?”
“Good question.” Miranda sat back, finding the whole situation the stuff of fiction. Here was her mother. A total stranger.
“Money?” Leila sneered. “It’s always money. So just how much is it going to take for you to go away? Not just go away. Stay away.”
Miranda studied her mother’s impeccably made-up face. It had an underlying scream behind it. Leila was like a wild animal caught in a trap. But even in the golden light pouring into the room she still looked a good ten years younger than her age. Her long, lustrous hair was arranged in a smooth pleat. Her accessories were perfection. She had lovely legs, an ultra-slim, ultra-toned body.
“Gran loved you to the end,” Miranda told her in a saddened voice. “You can’t even ask about her. Or your father. Gran died a very painful death. Cancer. My grandfather preceded her by a few months. Lovely man—so gentle and kind. Both of them scrimping and saving to provide the best for me. You really deserve to be exposed, Leila. Afterwards there was just Gran and me, although I called her Mum all my life. I thought I was a change-of-life baby, you see. You might redeem yourself in a very small way if you told me the name of my father. Clearly you’ve never forgotten him. I must be his spitting image.”
Leila’s face froze. And it wasn’t due to Botox. She didn’t answer for a minute. “You have no father. He abandoned me.”
Miranda followed her instincts. She didn’t wait for the celestial voice to break in. “I don’t believe that for a minute. Maybe you never told him you were pregnant. Maybe you told him you were on the pill. Maybe you went very privately to his parents—mother most likely. Some mothers will do anything for their sons. His mother—my grandmother, God help me—paid you to get out of town. She wasn’t going to have her son’s life destroyed. How am I doing so far?”
“You could hardly do better.” Leila gave her a mirthless smile. “I wasn’t good enough to become part of that family, my dear. We’re lower class, you see. Farming stock as opposed to big sheep station owners. Therefore I didn’t belong in one of the richest families in New Zealand. A family that had produced the country’s best doctors and academics as well. I was nothing and nobody. She made that very clear. I waited too long to abort you. I was forced to go through with it. If you must know, your father is dead.”
That touched a deep, sensitive nerve. The pain was intense. “May I ask how?” Miranda asked quietly.
Leila shrugged an elegant shoulder. “The last time I saw him he was the picture of health. Killed in a skiing accident years later. A mountain of snow got dumped on him, poor man. Can’t say I was sorry to read it.”
True or false? You have to find out.
“Did you feel anything at all for him, or was it just another sexual thrill?” Miranda asked on impulse.
Leila made a small grimace. “Come on—it was a lifetime ago.”
“And haven’t you moved on! Could I have a name, please?”
Leila gave her a look sharp enough to cut to the bone. “Don’t even think of looking the family up. They won’t want to know you any more than they wanted to know me. Your grandfather is a big-time professor. Revered.”
“Well, then, it will be easy enough to track him down from what you’ve already told me.”
“More fool you!” Leila said scornfully, her face if not her voice tightly controlled. This was a woman never stricken by remorse. A woman who would never admit to the gravest mistakes. “Take my advice,” she said. “Let sleeping dogs lie.”
“I’m sure they’ll recognise me,” Miranda continued, as if Leila hadn’t spoken. “The sight of me stupefied you.”
For a second Leila looked as though she had been hit between the eyes all over again. “Oh, they’ll recognise you, all right,” she said, sounding more and more furious. “You look just like his sister. And him too, of course. That silver hair and the turquoise eyes. Very few people have eyes like that. I’m pleased in a way that you’ve turned out so well. That’s something that has come on me unawares. Good looks in a woman are a tremendous advantage. But what I have to know before we can talk any deal is this—who put you up to it? It was Zara, wasn’t it? You contrived a meeting with her back home. I would have done it. It was no accident of fate. A woman has to take fate into her own hands. It was your heaven-sent opportunity to spill the beans. Get revenge. I’d have played it that way. Zara’s your friend, isn’t she? Though she’s years older. Zara hates me. She’ll do anything to damage me with Dalton and…and Corin. She’s tried to poison her brother against me. It hasn’t worked. Of course she blames me for her saintly mother’s death.”
Some aspect of Leila was corrupt. “Well, it did happen after you became her father’s mistress,” Miranda came back.
Leila blinked, clearly shocked. “The woman’s death had nothing to do with me,” she cried angrily. “It was an accident. Pure and simple. Dalton was going to divorce her anyway. He fell madly in love with me, you see.”
Miranda stared back at her glamorous, youthful-looking mother.
Nothing good can come of this.
Miranda had come to the same conclusion. “Looks like he still is,” she said. “But I’m thinking you’re not and never have been in love with him?”
Leila’s answer was a languid, super-confident drawl. “My dear, you could never convince him of that. Outside of Corin, I’m the only person Dalton does care about.”
“Then it sounds like you’re a good pair. No heart, either of you. Just a high sex-drive.” Miranda’s tone was strongly condemnatory.
Leila wasn’t in the least perturbed. “Don’t, my dear, be fool enough to knock sex. It’s all most men think about. I should know. Dalton and I will remain a good pair for as long as it takes.” Her smile was very cold. “What I don’t understand is what you are doing in London. Got Zara to invite you, I suppose? Money is enormously seductive. Even being around it.”
There was a lot of truth in that. “Zara and Corin were born to wealth,” she said. “You and I weren’t. I have none of your illusions or ambitions, Leila. Zara and I are friends. I’ll be going home soon in any case.”
Leila made a derisive sound in her throat. “A whole lot richer, you’re hoping. What do you do, exactly? You’re very pretty, in a highly individual way, but you’re way too short to model.”
“Perish the thought! You’re not going to believe this, but I’m on my way to becoming a doctor,” Miranda said. “I already have my BS. That’s Bachelor of Science. Now I need my BM.”
Flickers of admiration appeared in Leila’s eyes. “Well, good for you!” she said, with as much warmth as she could ever muster.
“Thanks, Mum!”
“Spare me.” Leila waved a dismissive hand. “I was never cut out to be a mum. But you’ve turned out better than I thought. Seems it’s true, then. Blood will out.” She paused, her gaze sharpening. “But where’s the money coming from? My poor old mum and dad had nothing.”
Miranda’s eyes shone with an inner light. “They had nothing when they had you. But they worked their fingers to the bone so I could have a first-class education. You’d know nothing about that.” Somehow she managed to inject a cool touch of irony. “Actually, I won a scholarship with the Rylance Foun
dation.”
“What?” A dark cloud passed slowly across Leila’s face. “Zara has nothing to do with the Foundation. You surely didn’t approach Corin?” Her lush lips were pressed into a tight line.
“What would be wrong if I did?” Miranda assumed an artless voice and lied. “Zara put forward my name. The rest was easy. I had all the qualifications that were needed.”
Leila was putting two and two together, making the inevitable five. “How well do you know Corin?” Her voice was a lot harder now. There was a near demonic look in her golden-brown eyes.
“I’m sure I don’t need to answer that.”
“Don’t play games with me, girlie,” Leila warned, her voice hinting at impending physical action.
“Who’s threatening who here?” Miranda asked, getting ready to defend herself and unafraid. She was still Mighty Mouse and she had her celestial gran on side. “You’re the one in the hot seat, Leila. Not me. I should tell you Zara knows you’re my mother.”
Leila looked as though she was about to faint.
“She had to be told,” Miranda said. “She’s my friend. We’re related in a way, thanks to you. Put your head down and take a few fortifying breaths,” she said, feeling pity despite herself. “In, out. In, out. Calm yourself.”
For a wonder, Leila obeyed. It took a few moments, then she lifted her head, looking as though all her defences had abruptly been swept away.
“That’s better. I don’t want to harm you, Leila,” Miranda said, knowing it to be true. “I’m not like you, you see. You need have no fear. Zara won’t say one word to her father. It’s agreed what action is to be taken—if any—will be taken by me. I am the victim here. The abandoned child.”