‘Still, time marches on,’ he murmured, and she held her breath this time, quite sure he was going to make some remark about them getting married.
He didn’t. He drew her close to him and kissed the top of her head, and started to make love to her again. She responded to the warmth and security of his arms and his body, to the pleasure he brought her, with a warmth and a bestowing of pleasure of her own. And she wondered, at the same time, why she didn’t just marry him as soon as he wanted?
It is the one thing I can hold out about, she answered herself. It is the one thing—even although I’ve agreed to it—I can choose to do when I feel ready. And I know I don’t want to keel over like a pack of cards over everything.
The next few days seemed to fly by.
They ate out a lot—once even going up to Mount Tamborine for lunch, in a fabulous garden restaurant. He also took her, wearing a hard hat and a fluorescent green overshirt, up one of his buildings in progress, via the outside construction lift. She gasped at the view from the top, and stopped to think about how highly successful he was.
She hadn’t reversed her decision to not move into his hotel—another small holding-out against Adam Beaumont—so he’d moved some of his clothes and gear to her flat, although he still occasionally spent the night at his hotel.
When he did stay with her she discovered that he never went to bed before midnight, yet was always up by six. And he always went for a body surf or, if there was no surf, swam or jogged. And if she thought he was beautiful dressed in a tailored suit, he was even more so when he came back from those early-morning excursions, with his hair all ruffled, his jaw blue with stubble and his body cold and fresh.
‘That’s my axeman,’ she said to him one morning, when he sat down on the side of the bed and pulled her into his arms hungrily.
‘That’s my essential Mrs Smith,’ he replied. ‘Not soaked to the skin, but with no make up, et cetera, and quite au naturel.’
One morning he came home with a dog.
‘What’s this?’ she enquired, as the woolly, curly, cream and quite large dog followed him into the flat and sat down composedly.
‘This is Rupert, according to his collar, although there’s no other information. I found him on the beach, alone and possibly lost. I have not been able to detach him from my side since then.’
‘But—well—’ Bridget started to laugh. ‘What are you going to do with him?’
‘I was hoping you would offer to ring up the RSPCA and ask them to come and deal with him. He could be micro-chipped. Unfortunately—’ he consulted his watch ‘—I’m running really late for a meeting now, so I won’t be able to be of much assistance.’
Rupert had other ideas, however. He positioned himself outside the bathroom door while Adam showered, and Bridget tried to get hold of the RSPCA. But it was too early for them except in cases of dire emergency, as she told Adam.
He knotted his tie and scooped his keys into his pocket. ‘This could be an emergency,’ he said. ‘Would you be a darling and look after him until they can take over?’
Bridget eyed the dog, now sitting at Adam’s feet. ‘Yes, if he agrees.’
‘He’s only a dog.’
‘I know, but I just have a feeling he’s attached himself to you.’
In the event, Rupert had. Because when Adam left he sat beside the front door and emitted ear-piercing yowls of complete devastation.
Adam came back in.
‘What are we going to do?’ Bridget asked helplessly. ‘The neighbours…Anyway, I don’t think you’re allowed to have dogs in this building.’
Adam shrugged. ‘I’ll take him with me. Trent can look after him and sort things out.’
They left together, Adam and the dog, and Bridget was struck by a fit of giggles as she watched from the window as Adam loaded the dog into the passenger seat of his shiny BMW. Rupert accepted his status as number one passenger with aplomb and sat upright, staring ahead.
She was subject to similar fits of laughter on and off for the rest of the day. And never more so than when they returned, together, at about five o’clock.
‘What’s this?’ she asked, as another gust of laughter shook her.
Adam glanced at the dog. ‘Well may you ask—and it’s no laughing matter. He tried to bite Trent, and he refused to have anything to do with the RSPCA. I drew the line at a containment net and a tranquilising dart.’
‘So?’
Adam threw his car keys onto the dining table and shrugged out of his jacket. ‘So I took him to my meeting. I took him to three meetings. He was perfectly well-behaved so long as he could sit at my feet and get taken for a walk now and then—I need a drink.’
‘I’m not surprised,’ she managed to say, having extreme difficulty in keeping a straight face.
‘I know you’re still laughing,’ he accused, ‘but have you any idea how traumatised my whole office is? I had the girls crying because they didn’t want to see him hurt. I thought Trent was going to give notice on the spot. And I now own gifts pressed on me by those same girls: a dog basket, a set of bowls, a huge bag of dog biscuits.’
Bridget handed him a Scotch. ‘There, there,’ she said soothingly, and the front doorbell rang.
It was an RSPCA officer, together with a couple and a boy of about ten.
Rupert barked joyously and jumped up to lick the boy’s face. The boy buried his face in the curly cream fur.
‘So that’s all sorted,’ the officer said. ‘They don’t know how he came to get lost, but they’re new to the area so that probably explains it.’
Before he left, Rupert came back to Adam and sat down in front of him.
Adam scratched the fur beneath his chin. ‘I have to say it hasn’t all been a breeze, mate, but you’re a very fine dog.’
And, almost as if he understood every word, Rupert licked his hand then bounded over to his young master’s side.
Bridget closed the door on them all, and Adam, with a sigh, sank down onto her settee. ‘I must be a laughingstock,’ he said ruefully.
Bridget sat down beside him and snuggled up to him. ‘On the contrary. There’s obviously something very, very loveable about you.’
He put his arm round her shoulders and glanced at her with a wicked little glint. ‘So you’ve noticed?’
‘In the face of such canine devotion I could hardly fail to.’
‘When are you going to marry me, then?’
Bridget sobered. ‘I still haven’t heard from my mother.’
‘If we were to set the date for a fortnight from today, surely she’d be able to make it?’
‘I—I guess so.’
‘Well, why don’t you start thinking about dresses and honeymoons and the like?’
Was that when it all started to tumble down like the house of cards it really was? Bridget was to wonder later.
She’d agreed to the fortnight time limit, and she’d asked what kind of wedding it would be. He’d told her with a lurking grin that it was up to her, but how did quiet, simple and very private sound?
‘There you go again,’ she’d accused. ‘Giving me no choices!’ But she’d almost immediately confessed that quiet, simple and private sounded fine to her.
She had, she saw later, still been caught up in the warmth and amusement of that day. She’d been convinced she loved Adam Beaumont—especially the very human side of him she’d witnessed that day.
She’d smothered the deep-seated reservations she had about marrying him, about rushing into things—or being rushed into things as if she were on a runaway train. She’d buried the instinct that had told her to hold back. It wasn’t something she fully understood, anyway.
But the very next day it had become clearer.
Marie-Claire Beaumont announced her separation from her husband, Henry, citing irreconcilable differences. The couple’s two children, four and two, had moved out of the family home with their mother, so it was reported in the paper.
It was noted in the same article
that some Beaumont shareholders were calling for an immediate meeting of the company’s troubled board. And, although no parallel was drawn to deserting a sinking ship, if you read between the lines you could make the inference that the timing of this separation might have wider implications than two people who’d fallen out of love.
Since Adam had gone to Adelaide on a business trip, Bridget was unable to judge what kind of turmoil this announcement might have brought him. But she was in no doubt about the kind of turmoil it brought to her.
That hidden, mysterious little instinct buried in her psyche stood up well and truly now to be counted. What did this woman really mean to Adam? You couldn’t love a man and not wonder about it, she saw. She might have been able to mostly ignore the question while Marie-Claire was safely married to his brother—or so she’d thought—but if she divorced Henry and was free…?
Had this been on the cards anyway? Did they have irreconcilable differences, Henry and Marie-Claire? Or was she deserting a sinking ship? Had Julia contributed, with all her bitterness?
And when Adam did come home, two days later, it was impossible to gauge his real state of mind on the issue. She might not have been able to anyway, she acknowledged. She was quite sure he was a master at hiding his feelings.
But what brought him home was traumatic anyway: the death of his great-uncle Julius, who had passed away peacefully in his sleep.
‘I’m so sorry,’ Bridget said down the line to Adam when he rang her with the news. ‘I’m so sorry. I know he meant a lot to you.’
‘Thank you,’ he replied briefly. ‘The funeral is the day after tomorrow. Will you come?’
‘Yes, of course. If you want me to.’
‘Why wouldn’t I?’ he countered, rather harshly.
Bridget took a breath. ‘I wasn’t sure whether anyone knew about us—apart from your uncle, of course. And some Korean businessmen. And Trent.’
‘My uncle was the only one of the rest who mattered, but it’s time everyone knew,’ he said. ‘Bridget, I’ll be back tomorrow morning.’ His voice softened. ‘Take care of yourself in the meantime.’
‘I will,’ she promised, but she was disturbed when she put down the phone.
Did she want to go on show to the whole world at such a sad event? Who would be there? Surely there would be no wedding preparations now? No wedding, come to that, so soon after his uncle’s passing? Not that she had done anything yet…
Marie-Claire Beaumont was at the funeral, surprisingly at her husband’s side, and she was impossible to ignore—she was that kind of woman.
She was tall, with long fair hair and exquisite grey eyes. Black became her beautifully, and her designer suit with its short skirt set off her sleek figure and long legs.
No surprises there, Bridget thought. She’d already known this woman was something special, but had she anticipated that her looks, her elegance, her composure—not to mention, of course, her history—would force her gaze to return to her again and again?
When she realised this was happening, Bridget took herself to task and thought instead of Melbourne Cup winners. She herself had chosen to wear the same outfit she’d worn to dinner with Julius Beaumont, and that helped to bring back the only time she’d met the old man.
But she couldn’t help also studying Henry Beaumont. Julia had been right. He was as tall and good-looking as Adam, but there was a difference. It took some time for Bridget to put her finger on it, and then it came to her that, while Adam Beaumont had an inner stillness that translated to a harnessed kind of power, Henry looked discontented. He had a curious unfulfilled quality about him, and he looked older than the four years older than Adam she knew him to be.
The wake was held in Julius’s apartment, with Mervyn in command of a discreet army of caterers. Champagne flowed, and the red velvet curtains were swept aside on the stunning view of the ocean from Narrowneck at its best, calm and blue and stretching for ever.
The wake started out quietly, but soon the hubbub of conversation rose and the temperature grew too, as many, many people came to celebrate Julius’s life now they’d mourned his death. And there were plenty of raised eyebrows as Adam introduced Bridget as his fiancée.
But perhaps the sheer press of people would shield her from too much attention—and anyway, there was Marie-Claire.
Had she always been such a scene-stealer? Bridget wondered. Or did it just come naturally? It might even be a form of bravado—it was to be noted that she and Henry were always on opposite sides of the room…
But when she was presented to Bridget there was more than bravado to Marie-Claire. She raised her eyebrows and smiled quite gently. Apart from a murmured ‘How do you do?’ she said nothing to Bridget at all, but the look she bestowed on Adam was a clear challenge, and what she said next was a clear invitation.
She said, in a fascinating, lilting voice, ‘Despite today’s solidarity for Julius’s sake, you probably didn’t think I’d do it, did you, Adam? But I have, darling—oh, I have—and now I’m on my own.’
And she moved away, but Bridget could literally feel the tension in the man standing at her side…
Those words might have meant anything, but to Bridget they contained a clear message. She must believe I don’t know anything about her, she thought in a stunned kind of way as new arrivals presented themselves and she shook several hands and said she knew not what.
Not only that, her incredulous thoughts ran on, but she mustn’t think I’m any threat, anything to take seriously, even although Adam and I are engaged…
Her thoughts ran along these lines for another twenty minutes or so, until she knew she couldn’t go on any longer. She asked Adam if he’d mind if she went home.
He immediately looked concerned. ‘What’s wrong? Feeling sick?’
‘No—not yet, anyway. But I’m hot, and I know—I know you can’t leave, but I could get a taxi. Please?’ she added.
He frowned. ‘You could rest here in one of the bedrooms. There’s the will to be read after—’
‘No,’ Bridget broke in urgently. ‘I really want to go home, so I can get changed and comfortable,’ she insisted, and tried to smile. ‘I’ll be fine.’
She must have convinced him, but even so he came downstairs and put her into a taxi himself, and promised to be with her as soon as he could, once the will had been read. Neither of them was to know that that would take longer than anticipated…
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘HOW the hell did this happen?’ Adam asked Julius Beaumont’s solicitor, Mark Levy. ‘I told him I didn’t want it.’
They were alone in the library—apart from Mervyn, they were alone in the apartment.
All the guests had gone, as well as the caterers. Henry had departed mouthing threats and obscenities. Marie-Claire had just departed; Adam had been unable to decipher her expression.
As for Mervyn, he was sitting at the kitchen table in his shirtsleeves, not quite in command of himself as he drank champagne and contemplated, with amazement, the size of the bequest he’d received.
‘Julius called me out in the middle of the night a week or so ago,’ Mark Levy began. ‘Well, not quite the middle of the night, but late. He wanted to change his will. I tried to talk him out of doing it there and then, but he was adamant.’
‘So you gave in and let him do it?’ Adam suggested, with some scorn in his voice.
‘Adam.’ Mark rubbed his brow. ‘He was entitled to leave his estate as he saw fit. And, although I let him do it, I returned several days later and assured myself he was of sound mind. He was calm and alert. He was not on any mind-altering medication. Not only did I judge him of sound mind, he was of sound mind. He insisted he wanted the new will to stand.’
‘So it’s watertight?’
Mark Levy rubbed his hands. ‘I deem it to be so.’
Bridget was wearing a navy tracksuit and socks when Adam came back to her flat.
It was getting dark, and she’d turned the lamps on. To take her mind off al
l her demons, she’d also concocted a snow pea, prawn and chilli fettuccine. She couldn’t imagine that he would be starving, and had thought that a light meal would serve best. But even as she’d cooked she’d been mentally devastated, she realised. She couldn’t get out of her mind that little scene played out at the wake between Adam and Marie-Claire.
She couldn’t get over the conviction that had come to her that they were made for each other. In all their turmoil, in all their conflict, there was still a matching between them that seemed unmistakable. And she couldn’t doubt the tension she’d sensed in Adam.
Some of her mental uncertainties showed in her face. She was a little pale, and her eyes looked huge. But that was nothing to the leaden feeling in her heart…
‘Hi,’ she said when he came in. ‘All settled?’
He took his time about replying. He shrugged out of the jacket of his dark suit, undid his black tie and opened the top couple of buttons on his white shirt. He crossed over to the stove and lifted the lid on the casserole dish containing the fettuccine. He sniffed the aroma of garlic, cloves and chilli, then looked at her rather penetratingly.
‘More or less,’ he said at last, as he walked back into the lounge and threw himself down in an armchair.
Bridget hesitated, suddenly aware of how different he looked. He was also pale, and there were new lines scored beside his mouth—at least, lines she’d seen only once before. In a storm-battered shed in the Numinbah, when he’d told her some of his history…
She swallowed and poured herself a glass of water, then waved her fingers towards the fridge in unspoken query as to whether he’d like something to drink. She noticed at the same time that her engagement ring wasn’t on her finger, and remembered that she’d taken it off and left it on the kitchen windowsill when she’d started to cook.
He shook his head at the drink offer, so she put her ring back on and took her water to the settee, where she sat down opposite him, with her feet tucked under her, and waited for him to go on.
‘He left you,’ he said, and dragged his fingers through his hair, ‘his collection of Melbourne Cup photos.’
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