Such Sweet Poison/Blind Passion

by Anne Mather

  Helen sighed, and shrugged his fingers away. This was a side of Jon she hadn’t seen before, and she didn’t much like it. Teasing was one thing; being insolent was another. And taking a deep breath she made another attempt to cool the situation.

  ‘I can’t get over the colour of the water,’ she said, leaning forward to peer through the car window. And it was true. The clear, translucent shading of blue through to palest turquoise was quite indescribable, with dark rocks and pink-tinged beaches forming a picture of unspoilt beauty.

  ‘Yes. It is quite lovely, isn’t it?’ Victoria agreed after a moment, hopefully deciding that her nephew’s views weren’t shared by his companion. ‘We like it, naturally. I can’t imagine living anywhere else now.’

  ‘And—have you always lived here?’ Helen asked, praying it wasn’t a loaded question, and Victoria nodded.

  ‘Except for a few years, when Jonathan was little,’ she replied, ignoring his expression. ‘When—when my brother’s marriage broke up ten years ago, I came home to—well, to pick up the pieces, I suppose. My brother needed somebody to look after things, and—I was happy to do it.’

  Ten years ago! Helen hid a rueful grimace. That had been a traumatic time for her, too, she thought wryly. Ten years ago, she had met Alexa’s father. Perhaps she and Jon’s father would have something in common, after all. Ten years ago they had both been victims of one kind or another.

  They were nearing Hamilton now. Road signs indicated that the island’s capital was only a few kilometres away, but before they reached the city they turned on to the Harbour Road. Now Helen could see the buildings of Front Street just across a narrow expanse of water, and a huge cruising liner tied up at the quay.

  ‘Oh, isn’t it pretty?’ she exclaimed, admiring the pink and white roofs of the city, and the sun-splashed marina that lay between. She had expected it to be different, and exotic, but not as beautiful as it was. No wonder Victoria had wanted to come back here, she thought. It was the kind of place that could get into your blood.

  ‘Like it?’ Jon asked, speaking to her for the first time since she had pulled away from his playful fingers, and Helen nodded vigorously.

  ‘Who wouldn’t?’ she exclaimed, assuring herself that Jon’s arm was where it belonged before relaxing back against the leather upholstery. ‘Alexa would love it here,’ she added dreamily, and then kicked herself anew when Victoria picked up on the name.

  ‘Alexa?’ she enquired politely, adjusting the brim of her hat. ‘Who is Alexa? Your sister?’

  ‘Alexa is Helen’s daughter,’ Jon informed his aunt coolly, and Helen saw the calculating gleam that came into Victoria’s eye. Perhaps she was wondering if Alexa was Jon’s daughter, too, Helen reflected ruefully, wishing she had not been so careless. Alexa’s existence was something she had hoped to keep to herself. At least initially. Now she was going to have to explain, and she didn’t think Victoria Wyatt would approve.

  ‘You have a daughter, Miss—er—Caldwell?’ she asked now, her tongue circling her lips with obvious anticipation, and Jon sighed.

  ‘Call her Helen, for God’s sake,’ he exclaimed, giving his aunt a scathing look. ‘And, yes, she has daughter. A nine-year-old daughter, as it happens. So I couldn’t possibly be the father, no matter how disappointing that might be!’

  Victoria’s plump cheeks flamed. ‘Really, Jonathan, I don’t think that was called for—’

  ‘Don’t you?’ Jon was unrepentant. ‘Well, at least it’s cleared the air, don’t you think? Now you won’t have to worry about how you’re going to tell Dad. Alexa’s Helen’s responsibility, not ours. Although I have to admit, I wouldn’t mind if she were mine.’

  Helen supposed she should be grateful to Jon for making this observation, but she couldn’t help wishing he had not chosen such a provocative way of saying it. It was obvious that Victoria was now employed in doing her sums, and it wouldn’t take a great mathematician to calculate that, unless Helen had had Alexa when she was barely thirteen years old, she had to be older than Jonathan.

  But, as luck would have it, it seemed their journey was at last drawing to a close, and Helen couldn’t deny a sigh of anticipation at the prospect of escaping from Victoria’s speculative gaze. As the car turned off the main highway on to a much narrower side road, she was able to catch glimpses of the water ahead of them, which surely meant they were nearing their destination. She told herself she was looking forward to seeing where Jon had been born, to staying on this beautiful island. But something, some instinct, was warning her that it wasn’t going to be as straightforward as she had thought, and it was difficult to sustain her enthusiasm.

  In spite of the way Jon treated his aunt, Helen guessed that Victoria Wyatt’s personality did not match her appearance. She might look frivolous, and a little silly, but Helen thought she was also fairly shrewd. After all, for the past ten years she had succeeded in running her brother’s household, without any apparent interference, and that in itself was an achievement. Considering that when Jon’s parents’ marriage broke up his father must have been a comparatively young man, and with a child of Jon’s age, he might conceivably have married again. But he hadn’t. Of course, Helen didn’t know the circumstances of the break-up of the marriage. All Jon had told her was that he had continued to live with his father, which Helen had taken to mean that his mother had been the guilty party. Maybe the circumstances of that break-up had been so painful that Jon’s father had never wanted to marry again. But Helen suspected that Victoria Wyatt would not make it easy to bring another woman into the house.

  The car was turning between stone gateposts now, and Helen determinedly put such thoughts aside. She had no real reason for making these assumptions about Jon’s family, and she was impatient with herself for allowing such ideas to take root. Just because Jon’s aunt had asked some perfectly reasonable questions on the journey from the airport, she was allowing her imagination to create situations that had no basis in fact. All right, so Jon’s aunt was inquisitive, and a little arrogant at times. So what? Jon had done his utmost to rub her up the wrong way, after all. And she, Helen, wasn’t here to make speculative judgements about either Jon’s aunt or his father. Her most immediate problem was to decide whether the feelings she had for Jon were strong enough to sustain a closer relationship. Whether the relief she felt at his acceptance of Alexa, and her fondness for him, were clouding her emotions. She didn’t think so. She really cared for Jon. And as the concept of some blind passion coming along at this late stage in her life was one she no longer subscribed to, surely genuine friendship and affection were more than she could have hoped?

  The drive curved, and the thickly flowering bushes which had hidden the house from view gave way to sloping lawns and a flagged terrace. A cluster of exotic poinsettia partly concealed the stone walls of the veranda, but white-painted roofs rose above the scarlet blossoms, arching away in all directions, and revealing the generous dimensions of the house.

  Helen was at once impressed, and daunted. Although Victoria Wyatt’s manner had warned her that Jon must have been a little economical with the truth when he had described his home, she hadn’t honestly expected a millionaire’s mansion. Even the many beautiful homes she had seen dotting the hillside as they drove from the airport hadn’t disturbed her. Jon had always seemed so—ordinary. He had always fitted into her life without any obvious adaptation on his part at all. But now she suspected he had been playing a role, and the idea of herself fitting into these surroundings was infinitely less believable.

  ‘Welcome to Palmer’s Sound,’ he was saying now, but he seemed to sense her instinctive withdrawal. ‘Hey—don’t you like it?’

  ‘Did you expect I would?’ she countered tautly, her voice low and cool, and Jon heaved a heavy sigh.

  ‘I guess that means you don’t,’ he observed, looking not a little discomfited. ‘Well, don’t blame me. This is where I was born. And, you know, I like your flat much better than here. At least it’s a home, not a showca
se.’

  ‘Don’t patronise me, Jon.’ Helen turned away from his troubled expression and stared tensely towards a pink-painted cupola, arching above a cluster of date palms. No wonder Victoria Wyatt guarded her position here, she thought wryly. She must resent any intrusion that might threaten her domain.

  ‘You don’t like the house, Miss Caldwell?’ she was asking now, with what Helen recognised as a mixture of gratification and disbelief, and Helen knew she had to be honest.

  ‘On the contrary,’ she said, understanding a little of the impatience Jon felt when dealing with his aunt. ‘From what I can see, I’m sure it’s quite beautiful. Is that the Atlantic? It’s so blue! I simply can’t understand how Jon can bear to live anywhere else.’

  Victoria’s lips tightened, but the car had drawn to a halt beneath an arched colonnade, and already Jon was opening his door and uncoiling his long length from the back.

  ‘It’s the Sound,’ Victoria replied offhandedly, indicating the sweep of blue-green water that lapped a stone jetty below the house. ‘You do know what the Sound is, I suppose?’

  ‘I think so.’ But Helen forbore to offer an explanation. To detail her understanding that the sound in question was the channel of water between Hamilton harbour and the outlying islands would have sounded very much like a catechism, and she was too tense as it was. Jon should have warned her, she thought frustratedly. It wasn’t going to be much of a holiday if she couldn’t even relax.

  All the same, she couldn’t help a ripple of excitement as Jon helped her from the car. Through open double doors, she could see the cool, shadowed hall of the house, and an enormous cream Chinese carpet laid upon the wood-blocked floor. Tall glazed vases contained sprays of the flowering shrubs that she had seen growing wild about the island, and a huge-leaved fan turned constantly, creating a pleasing draught of air.

  ‘OK?’ Jon asked now, the question only audible to her and, after a moment’s hesitation, she nodded.

  ‘I suppose so,’ she agreed, allowing him to pull her close to his lean frame, and it was as they were in this briefly intimate position that a man appeared within the shadows of the hall and came towards them.

  Helen thought at first he must be a servant. She had become so sensitive to the fact that she was going to have to get used to these luxurious surroundings that she had already steeled herself for whatever form that affluence might take. After all, she had told herself, she was here as Jon’s guest, not as an interloper. And, whatever attitude his aunt might adopt, this was Jon’s home as well as hers.

  But the man was not a servant. Helen sensed that, even before he stepped out on to the porch. Even though he was wearing knee-length shorts, and a white shirt and formal tie, he had an air of authority, and although his skin appeared to be darkly tanned his ancestry was not in question.

  Even so, it was not until he emerged into the sunlight, slanting down through the leaves of the bougainvillaea, that Helen was able to see his face. Until then, her impression was of a tall man, who moved with a lithe athleticism; a powerful man, whose balance was perfectly co-ordinated.

  Jon, who had sensed that her attention had been diverted, supplied an identification. ‘Dad!’ he exclaimed in an unmistakably delighted tone, and, after squeezing Helen’s arm, he left her to greet the other man. ‘Hey, it’s good to see you,’ he added, as his father stepped across the threshold to grasp his hand. ‘Vee said you were in a meeting.’

  ‘I was,’ said his father, but Helen barely heard his explanation. She was too busy holding on to the roof of the car, telling herself desperately that she had to be mistaken. But it wasn’t Jon’s father’s unexpected appearance that had shocked her so badly she was in danger of losing control. Nor was it her embarrassment that he should have interrupted their embrace. In spite of Victoria Wyatt’s hostility, and Jon’s reticence about his background, she could have coped. After all, she had coped with being pregnant when she was only sixteen. She had coped with being an unmarried mother. She had even coped with attending evening classes, when Alexa was just a baby, so that she could hold down a job during the day. She had needed those classes, to finish the secretarial course she had had to give up when she’d become pregnant. Otherwise, she would never have had the qualifications necessary to become Alan Wright’s assistant.

  No. In spite of any anxiety she might have felt at meeting Jon’s father for the first time, she was sure she could have handled it. He was just a man, like any other, and she was used to dealing with men. But what she was not used to—and what was in danger of sweeping the legs from under her—was coming face to face with a man she had not seen for over ten years. Reed Wyatt, she thought disbelievingly, striving to recover her equilibrium. She had been right to feel apprehensive when she heard that surname. Dear God, what would happen when he recognised her? How on earth was she going to get out of this?

  CHAPTER THREE

  A COUPLE OF hours later, Helen stepped out on to the balcony of her room and took a deep breath. The balcony itself was made private on two sides by the walls of the rooms adjoining, and a white-painted iron handrail fenced the fourth. Above her head, the slatted roof would give protection from the heat, but right now it wasn’t needed. With the sun sinking into the waters of the bay, a golden glow engulfed the islands of the Sound, its warmth all-embracing, but in no way threatening.

  Resting her hands on the rail, Helen looked down at the garden of the house two floors below. Her room was on the first floor, and immediately below her windows a flowering casuarina spread its branches. Beyond, the lawns sloped away to the jetty, where the shifting waters of the bay lapped against its stone walls. Out in the bay, yachts and smaller craft lay at anchor, their lights becoming visible as the sky darkened. And, in the distance, she could see the rapidly increasing cluster of lights that must be Hamilton, and the looped decoration of a cruise liner as it slowly made its way into port.

  It was all very beautiful, incredibly so, but Helen was not in the mood to appreciate it. On the contrary, she still felt numb, and although her eyes registered the beauty of her surroundings the message was incapable of reaching her brain.

  Not that she truly wished for anything else, she thought, with a fleeting trace of humour. So long as she remained numb, maybe she could still handle the situation. It was only when the sharp edge of reality pierced her paralysis that she felt her balance slipping. But so long as she could sustain her insentience, she had a chance. So long as she could control her hysteria, surely she had nothing to fear.

  Because Reed Wyatt hadn’t recognised her!

  Incredible as it seemed, he hadn’t batted an eyelid when Jon had introduced her to him. Instead, he had been disarmingly kind and friendly, his concern for her apparent unsteadiness in sharp contrast to his sister’s impatience.

  Helen tipped her head back on her shoulders, and felt the muscles bunch with tension. How had she managed it? she wondered now. How had she succeeded in shaking Reed Wyatt’s hand, without screaming her accusations from the rooftops? When Jon had turned and drawn her forward, what she had really wanted to do was run, but instead she had swallowed her panic and waited for the fire to engulf her.

  But it hadn’t happened. Nothing untoward had happened—except that she had been shaking like a jellyfish, and her skin had been damp with sweat. When Reed had taken her hand, she had half expected him to cringe at its clammy feel, but he hadn’t. He had simply asked her if she wasn’t feeling well, and she had found herself stammering out some tale about having a migraine, which had caused both Jon and his father to show concern.

  Which really was the last thing she should have said, she acknowledged now. Instead of keeping cool, and pretending she was as ignorant of Reed’s identity as he was of hers, she had drawn everyone’s attention to herself, and only Victoria’s barbed comments had diverted them.

  ‘She’s not pregnant, is she?’ Helen had heard her hiss in her nephew’s ear, as Reed was suggesting they went into the house, but she hadn’t heard Jon’s reply.
Only the coldness of his father’s tone, as he silenced his sister, rang in her ears, harsh with warning. And in that instant Helen had realised that, no matter how secure Victoria might consider her position, it was only as secure as her brother chose to make it.

  Which was all par for the course, she thought bitterly. Reed Wyatt was a man who liked his own way, and usually got it. She knew that, to her cost. Was that why his wife had left him? Not through any fault of her own, but because there had been one too many other beds?

  Helen groaned. What did that matter now? Reed Wyatt’s past relationship with his wife was not her concern. What did concern her was that she had been put in an impossible position. And no matter which way she turned she couldn’t see any way out.

  And yet, ironically, it had been Reed who had made it easier for her to escape the immediate consequences of her situation. After escorting her into the blessedly cool environs of the entrance hall, he had summoned a servant to take her up to her room, and ordered tea and aspirin to ease her headache.

  ‘I suggest you try and sleep for a while,’ he said, while Jon stood helplessly beside him. ‘We eat fairly late here, so you’ve plenty of time to rest. And if you don’t feel well enough to join us for supper, don’t worry about it. We’ll quite understand.’

  Of course, Jon had gone up with her, to show her to her room, and he had been embarrassingly sympathetic. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you had a migraine coming on?’ he asked, as she stood guiltily in the middle of the floor of her bedroom. ‘I’d have stopped Vee from asking you all those questions. Nosy old bat! Just because Dad lets her have her own way most of the time, she thinks she can say what she likes.’

  ‘It’s all right.’

  Helen had been embarrassed enough as it was, and she was glad when a young black man had arrived with her luggage, followed almost immediately by an olive-skinned Asian girl with a tray of tea. It meant Jon’s presence was becoming an intrusion, and, endorsing his father’s suggestion that she should try and sleep, he had followed the servants out.