Secret Intentions

by Caitlyn Nicholas

  “Jeremy! How’s Tina? Is the baby here yet?” she asked, and hoped she was smiling. Her cheeks were so numb, she couldn’t tell the difference.

  “Last night, around seven, want to see a photo?” He pulled a digital camera from his pocket, and Zani enthusiastically admired photographs of a squashed looking, bald, little girl. Jeremy raved about how wonderful his wife had been, and what a miracle his new daughter was, his words tumbling out one after the other.

  “Shouldn’t you be at home or at the hospital or something?” Zani asked. He looked desperately tired, as if he hadn’t slept at all.

  “Yeah, I’m on my way there now. I only stopped in to check that everything was okay. Something triggered the security alarm last night, the local bobbies had a look and said it must’ve been false, but I just wanted to see for myself. They were right, nothing missing.”

  “Okay.” She glanced up toward her office. They’d never had a false alarm before. “Give my love to Tina.” She started up the stairs, but hesitated again. “What’s her name?”

  “Olivia.”

  “Olivia. Beautiful. Bye, Jeremy.”

  Smiling at Jeremy’s transparent joy, Zani pushed through the glass door of Ocean’s Design.

  “Nothing seemed odd when you arrived did it?” she asked Karen, who, despite it only being eight a.m., already sat at her workstation, diving into the business of the day.

  “No, all the same as usual. Jeremy told me about the alarm,” replied Karen.

  “And the baby?”

  “Of course the baby.”

  “I have the world’s worst indigestion,” Zani announced, peeling off her outer layer of clothing.

  “Thanks for sharing. I’m going to Mrs. Bentwhistle’s to get a coffee,” said Karen.

  “Yeah, and to find out the latest on Tiffany Hardcastle.”

  Tiffany Hardcastle was presently the subject of much village gossip.

  “Anything you want?” Karen grinned.

  “See if she’s got some indigestion tablets, and a choc-chip muffin.” Mrs. Bentwhistle’s shop was the hub of Apuldram. It sold everything and was the origin of much rumor and conjecture.

  “Nothing to eat at home?”

  Zani shrugged. “You know how I feel about supermarkets.”

  Karen rolled her eyes. “Yes, but they’re not all bottomless pits of despair and fluorescent lighting, conspiring to trap you within their impenetrable walls for eternity.”

  “Hey, I went last week, er…and I’ve still got plenty of dog food.”

  “Of course.” Karen bent to make a fuss of Fang, who leant against her leg, gazing up with limpid eyes. “If only you looked after yourself as well as you look after Fang.”

  Anticipating a lecture on being too thin and eating junk food, Zani scurried into her office. Slumping into the tan leather chair that sat behind her desk, she ignored the piles of paperwork, rolled-up plans and blueprints and swung around to stare across the marina at Chichester Harbour.

  She loved the familiar ever changing view. Even today, when Old Farm on the opposite shore had disappeared into a miserable grey haze.

  A ferry chugged past, along the deep channel at the centre of the harbour, its motor working hard against the incoming tide. She idly tracked its progress. Stoic, warmly wrapped tourists huddled on its deck, each clutching binoculars. They’d most likely be birdwatchers in search of the rare snow buntings that wintered in the harbour. A figure on the boat caught her attention. Taller than the rest, he had binoculars to his eyes and seemed to be pointing them directly at her. She shivered, the hair on her arms prickling, and abruptly swung the chair around.

  Grabbing a handful of paperclips from the old ashtray that sat on her desk, Zani threaded them one into another. When she finished she’d swap them for Karen’s stash. It invariably drove her nuts. Despite the nagging call of her work, she wondered how Corbin’s morning was going. She pictured him, dark head bent over some deeply boring contract, then added an incessantly ringing phone.

  Not that she missed him. She just wished she could be keeping an eye on him. Yes. That was it. Loathsome man. She grabbed another handful of paperclips.

  There was a scratch at the door and Fang, who’d finished being petted by Karen, nosed her way in, bustled over to a cushion in the corner and plopped herself down with a sigh. As the little dog drifted off to sleep, Zani began to formulate a plan.

  It seemed like minutes later when the door swung open and Karen bustled in with a steaming cup of tea and a muffin.

  “Here are the tablets.” She fished them out of her pocket and put them on the desk. “Its freezing out there, the wind cuts like a knife, more snow I expect. Mrs. Bentwhistle tells me there was a brouhaha outside your house last night and that Tiffany Hardcastle is pregnant.”

  “Yeah, it was, Dad. Things are a bit…tense at the moment.” Zani unthreaded a paperclip from her chain and began to unravel it, bending it back on itself until it snapped. Sometimes village life could be so claustrophobic. “I’m not surprised about Tiffany, though. She’s been shagging Dave from the Search and Rescue Helicopter for months. Thanks for the muffin, you really are the best,” she said, picking up the cup of tea.

  “Stop it, you’re frightening me. I’ll go and set up that conference call to Vlad the Impaler.”

  “Oh, Karen. Vlad the Impaler was Romanian, not Russian,” Zani said, shaking her head slowly.

  “Romanian! Of course. Excuse me for not being up on my horror novels,” said Karen, a grin softening her sarcasm.

  Zani spent a frustrating twenty minutes on the phone to Russia. Just when she’d thought the contract negotiations were over and the deal signed and sealed, Klebnikoff’s people had come up with a whole list of pointless and annoying requirements. A specification that at least half of the materials used in the boat originate in Russia, a penalty clause if the yacht was late. Months of careful work quickly came undone. The contract would be going back to the drawing board.

  Hanging up the phone, she massaged the back of her neck and looked around for something to kick. Slippery, they were just slippery. And weasely, she added for good measure. Slimy.

  She still felt queasy and deeply regretted the horrible coffee she’d forced down that morning. Wondering if you could get food poisoning from geriatric jam, she crunched an antacid tablet and washed it down with lukewarm tea. The tension headache that’d been threatening all morning started to make its presence felt, and she grumpily rearranged the papers on her desk, finding it difficult to settle to anything.

  Damn Russian billionaires.

  She had a million things to do and knew she should be getting on with them, but the Russian phone call had shaken her equilibrium. Worry about losing the contract combined with concern over her father and resentment about Sunberri.

  What if the plan doesn’t work? Dad really needs me. I can’t let him down.

  She had a yen to go sailing, to be out on the open water, alone, with no distractions, no worries.

  “Karen,” she shouted through the office door, rather than use the intercom.

  Karen appeared almost instantly.

  “Can you look after Fang on the weekend? I thought I’d take the Laser out and have a sail. Head over to the Lee-on-the-Solent Sailing Club and do some racing. Clear the cobwebs.”

  “Sure thing.” Karen, who had one husband, one cat, three dogs and five teenage children, was always happy to dog-sit Fang. One small spaniel hardly made a ripple in the chaos that constituted her home.

  “Karen—”

  “I know, I know, I’m the best!” She laughed and went back to her desk.

  Zani wandered around the empty gallery, trying to look interested in the paintings and keeping an eye out for Corbin. Her heels echoed on the wooden floor and she fretted that she’d misremembered his diary. Glaring at a still life of a purple pineapple, she reassured herself that he was attending the exhibition opening. She’d noticed because it took place in the Apuldram village hall, not far from her hous
e.

  She consulted her watch again. It was still early. Hardly anyone had turned up. Not even the artist.

  Her stomach growled, and she wondered if they served nibbles at art gallery exhibitions. Getting over her earlier ennui, she’d spent a hectic afternoon putting the finishing touches to the design for the Baltic 147 before she signed off on the hull. Aside from her muffin in the morning, she’d had no time to eat.

  She mooched about from one painting to another, and slowly the hall began to fill. As the momentum gathered, chatter bounced off the walls and floor. The smell of washed hair and expensive perfume permeated the air. People drifted past, some making serious intellectual comments about the art, but most gossiping about a local celebrity who’d been arrested for drunk driving the night before.

  “Seven times the legal limit,” gasped one matron.

  “I’m not at all surprised,” said her companion.

  Zani had come to a halt in front of a suspiciously phallic painting of a courgette and two tomatoes. When the chatter seemed to hesitate for a split second and without so much as turning, she knew that Corbin had entered the room.

  Peering out of the corner of her eye she saw he’d arrived accompanied by a tall grey-haired lady, nothing like the blonde nymphette she’d imagined he usually hung around with. He looked delicious. Perfectly fitting suit and a tie that no Englishman would ever have the imagination to wear.

  Corbin and his companion slowly made their way around the room, moving from one picture to another. Everyone seemed to know them and wanted to talk. He made no indication that he’d seen her, or even glanced in her direction.

  Zani stayed where she was, in front of the courgette and two tomatoes, waiting as he approached one painting at a time. Her usual style would’ve been to barrel up to him and get their conversation over with as soon as she could, but, suffering from a bout of teenage style angst, she stayed put. The closer he came the more nervous she got, and she shifted uneasily from one foot to the other.

  In a moment of clarity she saw the ridiculousness of her plan. Corbin would never re-employ her. She’d have to tell her father she couldn’t help him. Deciding she’d already suffered enough embarrassment at his hands, she was about to beat a path through the crowd to the door when he spotted her.

  “Zani, what a surprise to see you here.” He seemed genuinely pleased. Zani abandoned her plan to leave and smiled indulgently at him, attempting to convey that she often frequented art exhibitions in village halls. “You must really like the painting. You haven’t moved from it since I arrived.”

  Damn him, damn him to hell.

  “Oh, I was considering buying it. It has a sort of sensual allure, don’t you think?”

  “Really!” Corbin looked a little startled and peered more closely at the painting. “It just looks like tomatoes to me. But perhaps you see something that I do not.” He raised an eyebrow, and Zani gritted her teeth. “I didn’t know unemployed PAs could afford to buy fine art,” he continued.

  “Now Corbin, it’s not that expensive,” piped up his grey-haired companion. “I told you someone would like my vegetables. Hi, I’m Gloria, the artist.” The woman grabbed Zani’s hand and shook it firmly.

  “Zaniah,” replied Zani.

  “What an unusual name—” Gloria paused to surreptitiously wipe her hand after Zani’s clammy grasp. “—are you a Virgo, by any chance?”

  “Yes. Not many people guess I was named after a star in the Virgo constellation. Usually they think it’s a shortening of Alexandra.”

  “Ah well, I’m a Virgo myself.”

  Another art lover interrupted them, gushing compliments about the paintings. Firmly taking Zani’s elbow, Corbin eased her away.

  “She’s a friend of my mother. I promised to attend this little soiree and buy something not too horrible,” Corbin said as they moved out of earshot. “So, are you here for the art, the food, or did you come to find me?”

  Zani was intimately aware of his closeness. His touch seemed to sear through the fabric of her top and radiate warmth up her arm. Goosebumps tingled and blood began to pulse as she caught the crisp scent of his aftershave. This man is trying to ruin my father.

  “Food? There’s food then?”

  “Usually a thing or two,” said Corbin, looking amused. “You really are here for the food? Is life that bad?” He frowned sympathetically.

  For a moment Zani thought about lying, about coming up with some complicated reason for being there, a great aunt perhaps, who dressed only in purple and had a passion for aubergines. Pretending that meeting Corbin was simply a coincidence.

  “I came to find you. I saw in your diary yesterday that you’d be here and I need to talk to you about my job,” Zani confessed.

  “Oh, about your job. So you aren’t here for the pleasure of my company. I thought you were glad to leave the job?”

  “Um, not exactly.” Zani ignored his sarcastic tone with difficulty. She was there to inveigle herself back into Sunberri, not to pick a fight with Corbin.

  A waiter swept past bearing a large tray of canapés, and Zani gazed wistfully after him.

  “Are you really that hungry?” asked Corbin.

  “I haven’t eaten. I’d a hell of a day at w—” she stopped abruptly, about to say work. “—j-job hunting.” She slid him a look, but he merely listened with polite interest and hadn’t appeared to notice her slip.

  “Wait here.” He disappeared into the busy crowd, and Zani stood alone, suddenly feeling self-conscious in the seething crowd. A waiter with precariously balanced glasses of champagne offered her one. She took two, draining one as he watched in amusement. She put the empty glass back on his tray and gave him a look that dared him to comment.

  “Thirsty girl,” he said with a thick Russian accent.

  “Quite,” snapped Zani.

  Corbin reappeared, and the waiter melted away.

  “Here. I can’t have you fainting on me.” Zani took the plate of canapés he offered. Balancing it precariously, she looked around for somewhere to put down the second glass. Seeing nowhere, she sighed faintly.

  “Let me take that.” Corbin rescued her. “Have you seen her series of pineapple paintings? They’re unforgettable.” Together they wandered around the gallery, Corbin being amusing about the paintings, and Zani eating slowly, putting off the moment she’d have to ask for the detested job back.

  Tongue-in-cheek, Corbin effused over an abstract piece entitled Mouldy Bread. Half listening, Zani took the time to consider what she could possibly say to him. She’d been unable to think of a thing all day.

  Finishing the last of the canapés, she balanced the empty plate on the edge of a sad looking potted plant and turned to Corbin. Time to make her pitch. They’d come to a halt in a quiet corner of the hall. There were no paintings on the wall and the crowd moved past them, the raucous babble surrounding them.

  “I really need this job back, Corbin.”

  “Yes, I am aware of this.”

  Zani studied him for a moment. Was he dropping some hint that he really knew why she needed to get back into Sunberri? Though she could find no hidden message in his expression.

  “But Zani, surely you see I need a competent, trained professional to run my life. Not someone with the best intentions.” He broke the news gently, and her heart plummeted to her feet. It was almost impossible to argue with an emphatic no.

  “But I’m a fast learner, I’d have it all under control within a week…” She hated, hated to beg. The familiar sensation of rejection crept over her. It was like being fifteen again and asking her father for something.

  Corbin’s lips thinned and she could see the no coming. Then suddenly his expression cleared and he smiled. Her heart, which had made its way back up from her feet, did a little loop-de-loop.

  “Okay. It’s going to take the agency a week or so to find a suitable replacement, so until then, why don’t you come and answer the phone? You could do odd jobs, make me coffee, sort out my dry clean
ing, that sort of thing. Take some time to find another job.”

  “Oh thank you, thank you.” Overwhelmed with relief, Zani resisted flinging her arms around his neck and hugging him. “You’ve no idea how much this means to me.”

  “Yes, well, don’t prove me wrong.” Apparently embarrassed by his own generosity, Corbin didn’t meet her eye.

  The conversation was over. Zani had achieved what she wanted and it was time for her to leave. Further discussion might lead to questions which would inevitably lead to her blurting out something and having to cover her tracks. “I should go,” she said purposefully.

  “Do you live nearby? How are you getting home?” he asked with gratifying speed.

  She shrugged. “I live close by, I’ll walk.”

  “Let me escort you.”

  “I’ll be fine. You don’t need to bother.”

  “No I insist. It’s dark and cold. I wouldn’t feel comfortable watching you walk away on such an evening.”

  Zani had a small moment of irritation over the suggestion that she wasn’t capable of getting herself home, particularly in a village like Apuldram, where the much discussed crime spree of March 2003, involving two pairs of shoes and all of Mr. Abraham’s petunias, had turned out to be the elderly Miss Collisson, suffering from a touch of dementia.

  “I’ll be all right,” she said stubbornly, not really expecting him to argue.

  “And I would like to walk you home,” he replied, equally intransient.

  “Fine,” snapped Zani and wondered how long it would take Mrs. Bentwhistle and the gossip-mongers to find out she’d been seen out and about with a dark and handsome stranger.

  As he walked with Zani through the dark streets of Apuldram, Corbin de Villiers knew for a fact that he was the world’s biggest fool. Without doubt Zani would reduce his office to chaos in a matter of minutes. But she’d been on his mind since she’d left and, unable to concentrate in his silent office, its plush, renovated opulence claustrophobic and its overheated atmosphere stifling, his mind kept returning to the moment she fell off the phone books and fitted so perfectly into his arms.