by Joan Kilby
MAEVE EMERGED from her bedroom early one Saturday morning in mid-February to find her father sitting on the hall chair, pulling on his boots. “Why are you dressed for work, Dad? It’s the weekend.”
Art finished tying his laces and stood. “We’re pushed for time getting the orders out before the factory closes. Will asked everyone to come in today.”
“I can’t believe you’re doing this.” Maeve drew her dressing gown around her. “He’s putting you all out of work, and you’re jumping through hoops for the guy!”
“I’ve got to admit, my respect for him has dropped,” Art said, frowning. “I don’t think much of your behavior, either—”
“Nothing happened!”
“Well, he’s still my employer, and I’ve never had cause to fault him on that score. As long as I work for Aussie Electronics I’ll stick to the terms of my contract.” Art picked up his workbag. “That includes reasonable overtime.”
“You are so blind, you know that?” she called after him as he went out.
“See you tonight, Maevie.” And he shut the door.
Maeve had planned to take the morning off, thinking Will would be at home on a Saturday. Now that she learned he was at work, she briefly contemplated driving down to Sorrento. But only briefly. One fool in their family was enough.
She made herself coffee and booted up the computer to catch up on some accounting. The phone rang. Absently, she reached for it. “Hello?”
“Maeve.”
Her heart sank. Graham. “Hi. Where are you?”
“I just sailed into town. I’m moored in Mornington Marina. Can you meet me for lunch?”
“Not today,” she lied, to put him off.
“Okay. You say when.”
“Uh…” If he’d sailed all the way from Sydney just to see her, she would have to have lunch, at least. “Tuesday?”
“Fine. Noon at the Grand Hyatt. See you then.”
Grand Hyatt. He was obviously trying to impress her.
She gave up attempting to work. After her shower, she clipped her hair back in a silver barrette and put on a flowery sleeveless dress that hung loosely to mid-calf. Taking her coffee to the back garden, she sank into the wooden swing. But the gentle rocking motion conjured memories of Will’s touch. She rose to wander restlessly, pinching off dead heads here, pulling weeds there.
She really ought to get some sort of security alarm. Briefly she contemplated buying the cheaper Japanese version of Will’s alarm, then guiltily dismissed the notion. That sort of thinking on a large scale had brought down Aussie Electronics and cost her father and all the other workers their jobs.
Inside the house, the phone rang again. With a groan, Maeve returned to the kitchen.
“Hello? Sorry, he’s at work. May I take a message?” She listened at first with disbelief, then growing excitement. Another electronics firm wanted Art to come in for a job interview. “I’ll let him know right away,” she said, scribbling down the details.
Maeve slipped on a pair of sandals and headed out to the ute. She’d never interrupted Art at work before, but the personnel officer had suggested Art get back to him right away, as they’d already completed interviews with the other candidates.
Ten minutes later she pulled off the highway into the industrial park in Mornington. So this was the famous, and soon-to-be-defunct, Aussie Electronics, she thought as she turned into a visitors’ parking spot in front of the building.
“Hi. Renée, isn’t it?” she said, approaching the immaculate blond woman behind the reception desk. “I’m Maeve, Art Hodgins’s daughter. We’ve talked on the phone once or twice.”
Renée set aside the bills she was stuffing into envelopes. “Nice to meet you, Maeve. How can I help?”
“I’d like to speak with my father, if that’s possible. It’s rather urgent.”
“Not a problem.” Renée rose and led the way toward a door in the far wall. “No one’s sick or injured, I hope?”
“Nothing like that. My coming here won’t get Art into trouble, will it?”
“Goodness, no,” Renée replied with a laugh. “Mr. Beaumont is very easygoing. Anyway, it’s nearly morning tea break.”
Renée led her down a long corridor, past a glass-windowed meeting room and a series of offices. Maeve had a bad moment when she saw Will’s name on one of the open doors. She strode past, but was unable to stop herself from casting a sideways glance into the room. Empty. She breathed a sigh of relief.
“I guess the workers aren’t too happy about the factory closing down,” she ventured.
“Mr. Beaumont is doing his best to find us other employment,” Renée said loyally. “There are one or two agitators in the group, but most understand the situation.” She opened a door and stood back to let Maeve go first. “Right through here.”
Maeve entered a vast high-ceilinged room filled with rows of wide workbenches. Skylights flooded the room with natural illumination, supplementing banks of incandescent lights and high-intensity lamps at individual work stations. She followed Renée down the long side of the room, gazing around curiously as she went. The technicians in their coveralls and white paper hairnets were perched on stools, assembling various electronic devices. A conveyor belt ran along the outside of the bench, carrying the partially assembled components to the next station. Between the rows of benches, a woman pushing a trolley delivered parts to the appropriate workstations. Maeve slowed as she went past a young technician soldering capacitors onto a circuit board under a magnifying lamp. He winked at her behind his safety glasses.
She smiled and moved on. Seeing Will’s factory and all he’d created with his vision, energy and sheer hard work, she realized he, too, must feel the loss on a personal level.
“Good—Art is at his desk,” Renée informed her, as they approached a cubicle in the middle of the room.
A small crowd of technicians stood around the desk. Maeve could just see the top of Art’s head. Then a gap appeared in the group and her pace slowed abruptly. Will was there, too.
“It’s okay,” Renée assured her. “He won’t mind.”
Maybe not, but she did. She forced herself to continue.
Will was handing out cardboard boxes from a stack beside the desk, while Art ticked off names on a list. From the smiles on most of the workers’ faces, whatever was in the boxes was good.
“What’s going on?” Maeve asked Renée.
“Mr. Beaumont is giving one of his security alarms to everyone at the factory as a parting bonus,” Renée said almost reverently. “Even the janitorial staff will get one.”
Two of the technicians, however, exchanged their smiles for scowls as soon as they turned away from Will and Art. They brushed past Maeve, and one of them knocked her arm without noticing or apologizing.
“Thinks he can palm us off with a bloody alarm,” the taller one with a bushy mustache grumbled.
“We’re working overtime so he can give away the product and look like a good guy,” the short round one growled.
Maeve glanced at Renée who confided in a low voice, “McLeod and Kitrick. They’ve only been here three months, but they’ve been rabble-rousers from the start. I think Will would have let them go when their probationary period was up, but now he needs all the help he can get. Trouble is, they know it.”
“What can he do about them?”
“Nothing. But don’t worry. They’re in the minority.”
Maeve had the evidence before her eyes. When the whistle blew for tea break, the workers surrounding Will seemed content to stay and finish their chat rather than rush off. He may or may not have planned all along to give his employees an alarm each, but at least he’d kept his promise.
Which meant he would also keep his promise to personally install Art’s alarm. She was trying to be good—why did temptation have to leap into her path?
“Go ahead if you want, Renée,” she said, after thanking the other woman for bringing her this far. “I’ll be all right now.”
Renée departed, and Maeve hung back, waiting until the group around Art’s desk drifted away, leaving only Art and Will.
“Hello,” she said to Will, attempting a polite smile.
He nodded coolly. “What brings you to the factory?”
“I’ve an important message for Art. About a job interview.”
Oh, did she enjoy seeing Will’s eyebrows rise! Then she frowned; after the initial surprise, she could swear his expression had changed to one of satisfaction. Okay, so he was a nice guy. Big deal. Art didn’t need him. She didn’t need him. So long, buster.
“Are you sure?” Art said, puzzled. “I never applied for any jobs.”
“What?” Maeve said, equally bewildered. “Then how did they get your name?”
Art turned to Will, a questioning look on his face.
Will shrugged. “I called in a favor.” He clapped a hand on Art’s shoulder. “Best of luck, mate.” With a conspiratorial wink for Maeve, he walked away.
Maeve stared after him. She could cheerfully have put a bullet through his twenty-four-karat heart.
CHAPTER EIGHT
ON MONDAY NIGHT Ida sipped a glass of club soda at her desk. She glanced at the stack of files she still had to get through, and sighed. Maybe she should just work at home. Sally had left an hour ago, and outside on Mornington High Street, the street lamps were winking on.
As she was shoving files into her briefcase, the phone rang. Who would be calling here at this time of night? She shrugged and let the answering machine pick up. While the message played, she crammed her swollen feet into her high heels, wincing at the pain in her small toes. She paused at the door. She might as well listen while the caller identified himself or herself, so she would know what she’d be dealing with in the morning.
“Ida?” a familiar voice said. “It’s me, Rick.”
Ida froze. Her heart did a somersault, and her briefcase fell from her hand and thudded on the floor.
“Ida, are you there? I tried your house, but no one answered.”
A long crackling pause followed. Ida lunged for the phone, terrified he was going to hang up. She stopped abruptly when he spoke again.
“I’ll be leaving L.A. in a few minutes on a flight for Melbourne,” Rick went on.
Oh my God! Her heart leaped. He was coming back!
“I get into town on Tuesday. Will you have lunch with me? If you can swing it, meet me on the Swanston Street Bridge at noon.”
Ida bit her lip. The bridge was their spot, where he’d first kissed her. Her hand hovered indecisively over the receiver.
She heard Rick sigh. “I guess I’ll see you when I do,” he said.
The phone went dead.
Ida collapsed into the chair behind her desk, tears of joy and terror spilling down her cheeks.
Her engagement party was coming up, then the wedding. How was she going to explain to Rick that she was getting married? How was she going to explain the baby?
“I’VE PUT THE CONTROL PANEL for the security alarm here in the hall closet,” Will said, brusque and matter-of-fact. “Should anyone attempt to break in, the infrared motion sensors attached to the windows and points of ingress-egress will relay a signal back to the control panel and set off the alarm.”
Maeve tried to focus not on Will but on his instructions, as he pointed out the various control buttons. Perversely, his aloof, businesslike manner only increased her awareness. That his short-sleeved shirt and surfer-style shorts exposed enough of his tanned muscular body to be thoroughly distracting didn’t help. She’d retreated to the backyard to repot some plants while he installed the alarm, but now she was forced into proximity while he taught her how to operate the device. She only hoped she would remember enough to be able to pass on the information to Art when he came home.
“Sorry, what was that again? That button there?” she said.
His gaze swiveled to hers, and the bottom seemed to drop out of her stomach. She realized this was the first time he’d looked directly at her since he’d arrived. If he was the honorable man she believed him to be, being around a woman he felt attracted to couldn’t be easy for him, either. Which made it all the more generous of him to personally install the alarm. Which made her like him all the more. Which made the fact that he wasn’t available even worse….
“Did you get it that time?” he asked. His gaze was a disconcerting combination of regret and camaraderie, rendered more confusing by his small smile.
Feeling her cheeks burn, she turned away. “Sorry, I’m not really with it today.”
“I don’t want to leave you unprotected. I mean, I want to know the alarm’s working before I leave,” he quickly amended. “You need to program it to accept your password.”
“I’ll read the instruction manual.”
“Maeve.” His low voice melted her bones. “We can do this.”
Slowly, she turned back to him, unable to resist.
“Your password should be something Art will recall easily, too,” he said in a more normal voice, not quite reverting to his former businesslike tone. “Can you think of a four-letter word common to you and your father?” He paused, then added with a grin, “And it better not be a word for what you’d both like me to do.”
“That would be easy to remember, you must admit,” she said with a laugh. “Let me see… Oh, I know.” She pressed out the letters K-A-T-H. “It’s short for Kathleen, my mother’s name.”
Will flipped down the cover on the control panel. “You can always call me if you can’t figure something out.”
He would have moved away, except that she touched his arm. “I…I wasn’t very gracious when you offered me the alarm, but I want you to know I appreciate it.”
“No worries.” He gathered his tools and moved toward the door.
“Would you like a cup of coffee, or a beer?” she asked.
“I’d better not.” On the doorstep, he leaned against the jamb and studied his sandals. “I saw the cubby you made,” he said at last, his voice husky. For one moment their eyes met. He laid a fist on his chest above his heart. “It touched me—here.”
Her heart filled with joy. A joy she was careful not to reveal. “Just doing my job.”
She stood on her veranda twined with climbing roses, and waved him goodbye. They’d been good. With neither touch nor word had they betrayed Ida. And while the glances they had exchanged might be construed as revealing desire, they had not acted.
Maeve went about her day feeling a special glow within. It was only later, as she lay in bed and recalled the time they had spent together, minute by minute, that she realized the glow stemmed not from any virtue of hers, but from the deepening bond she felt with Will.
MAEVE HAD ANOTHER rush job on her books, so she didn’t get back to Will’s until the following week. She arrived about noon, bearing armloads of cut flowers from her garden. A simple “Thank you” for the security alarm hadn’t seemed sufficient, and, anyway, his house could use brightening up.
She punched in the code he’d given her to deactivate the alarm, and put the key in the slot. She would only be in the house a few minutes, just long enough to fill vases with water and arrange the flowers.
Once inside the light and colorful kitchen, she felt immediately at home. The walls were a warm yellow. The terra-cotta pots lining the window and the Mediterranean-blue tiles behind the sink and stove provided soothing accents.
Laying her flowers on the bench top, she stood in front of the cupboards. Now, if she were Will, where would she store the vases? Then she realized that if she were Will she wouldn’t own vases. But she would save empty glass jars, and the most likely spot for those would be…
She opened the cupboard under the sink. Bingo. There was even an old glass jug big enough to hold the spray of purple irises and yellow dahlias. These she placed on the round glass table in the breakfast nook, then stood back to admire the effect. Subconsciously, she’d chosen the perfect colors to complement his kitchen.
She
moved through the ground floor, depositing white and apricot roses on the polished mahogany dining room table, a multicolored bouquet of anemones and oriental poppies in the living room and a cluster of sweetly scented white and yellow freesias in the bathroom.
Perfect. She smiled as she strolled back to the kitchen, imagining Will’s face when he saw her gift—
Silhouetted against the brightly lit glass doors stood a slender figure in a skirt.
Ida.
Ida stepped into the room, staring first at the flowers, then at Maeve.
“Hi,” Maeve said. “I was just…” She pulled at her braid. “Will gave me a key…so I could use the bathroom. I had all these extra flowers…” Her voice trailed off. No matter what she said, this could not look good from Ida’s viewpoint.
To Maeve’s surprise, a glowing smile spread across Ida’s face. “They’re beautiful! How thoughtful of you.” She peeked into the dining room. “Roses, too! Fresh flowers are exactly what this place needs. Will is going to love them. Thank you so much.”
Maeve’s breath went out with a whoosh of relief. Of course, Ida wouldn’t be suspicious or feel insecure. She was sure of Will’s love; she was having his baby. The knowledge burned inside Maeve like a drop of acid. The pain was all the greater because she really liked Ida.
“Will’s not here,” she said.
“That’s okay. I was going to call you later, but since you’re here, I’ll ask you now.”Ida hesitated, then said, all in a burst, as though forcing difficult words. “Would you do the flowers for the wedding?”
She sounded unsure about what she was asking. Because it was Maeve she was asking? “Uh, well, I’m not too good at bouquets.”
“Sorry. I didn’t explain myself. Since we’re having the wedding in the garden, I thought an aisle lined with big pots of flowers would be nice.” She took the kettle from the bench top and filled it at the sink. “Coffee?”
“Uh, sure,” Maeve said bleakly, thinking, In another month I could sail away from here.
Ida moved around Will’s kitchen easily and naturally, retrieving cups from one cupboard and coffee from another. Maeve forced herself to picture Ida performing the same task in a year’s time, but with a baby on her hip. The exercise backfired, catapulting Maeve into painful memories. Memories of Kristy, her chubby legs straddling Maeve’s waist while her tiny hand clutched a sleeve, bright eyes taking in every detail of her surroundings. Oh, my sweet baby.