by Ann Charlton
‘I know a great little place for coffee,’ Joel told her as they left the theatre.
‘Wonderful !’
His car leapt from the kerb like a cougar about to bring down a kill and Teressa didn’t ask where the great little place was. He took her hand, interlacing their fingers.
‘Did you bring a toothbrush?’ he asked softly, his smile complacent. It startled her, even though she had been expecting something of the kind.
‘This great little place, Joel-it wouldn’t be your apartment?'
He seemed surprised. ‘Of course.’
‘I’ll have coffee, but I won’t sleep with you.’
Stopping the car, he peered at her in astonishment.
‘You mean it!’ His incredulity made her smile. Joel didn’t get too many refusals for coffee or anything else.
‘I don’t believe in casual relationships. I’m sorry if you got any impression that I did.’
He gave in with good grace—such good grace that Teressa accepted another invitation to go out with him.
But she couldn’t help feeling that Joel might see her as something of a challenge.
‘Mr. Warwick asked me last night if your godmother was a responsible woman,’ Thelma said a couple of days later. ‘You didn’t mention anything about a godmother, dear.’ Mrs Richards looked both guilty and reproachful.
‘What did you tell him?’
‘Well—as I said, I wouldn’t tell any outright lies so I just—talked a bit about it in a general way, if you know what I mean—’
The scene was almost irresistible. Teressa’s lips quivered as she imagined Ashe on the receiving end of some of Thelma’s ‘general conversation’. If that didn’t cure him of asking questions, nothing would.
‘He thought it odd that you weren’t staying with us for Christmas, so I hinted that this godmother in Perth might have a bad leg and need help.’
‘What did he think of that?’
‘Oh, he believed it, dear. If there’s one thing I can elaborate on, it’s bad legs.’ She raised her foot on to a stool and confided that she’d almost slipped on the floor at Warlord last night. ‘Too much polish,’ she admitted, and went on to relay the latest gossip about Mr. Warwick and Lara Moore.
‘I hope she’s a nice girl—he deserves a nice girl.’
‘You can take it from me, Thelma, Lara Moore is exactly the kind of girl Mr. Warwick deserves.’
With the knowledge that Ashe had asked again about her came vague stirrings of uneasiness that he might find out she’d provoked him. But of course he wouldn’t, she thought on Thursday night as she watered the row of pot plants she kept on the stair landing. He thought she was leaving this weekend for Western
Australia and that would be the end of his questions about naive little Teressa Richards. The end.
'And a darned good thing too … ' she muttered, glancing down as the railings vibrated and her Hawaiian holly shook droplets on to her foot.
Someone was coming up the stairs. Teressa stood up, holding a tiny potted palm that was browning at the edges. ‘Oh, you’re not going to die, are you?’ she said encouragingly to it as a head came into view on the stairs. The wan landing light shone on silver-beige hair … Teressa dropped the pot. It hit the top of the railing and hurtled down, just missing the man who looked up at her.
‘Now I know I’m at the right place,’ said Ashe with a smile.
CHAPTER FIVE
TERESSA swallowed. He didn’t sound like a man who knew he’d been hoodwinked. He didn’t look like one.
He looked appealing and sexy and maybe even a tiny bit nervous, but not angry. Coming up the last treads, he peered over the rail at the hapless palm.
‘Shall we blame it on the cat?’ he teased.
‘Ashe! What are you doing here?’
His lips twisted a little. ‘I—was passing, Teressa, and decided to drop in and say goodbye. Will you invite me in for a few minutes?’
‘Oh. Yes. Of course.’ She rubbed her hands down her jeans and opened her door. Ashe frowner! at the number.
‘You’re in flat number one-five according to our records—not one-four.’
‘Records?’
‘At Warlord.’
Of course he would get Thelma’s address from the ‘accounts payable’ records-naturally assuming that her daughter would be at the same place. Teressa mumbled something about typing errors and hoped he wouldn’t change the files. Talk about a tangled web … she saw him looking about the flat. Was there anything around bearing her real name? Her eyes darted around checking for giveaway signs. But he accorded the interior only that first inspection and turned his attention to her. Why was he here? The question hammered away at her. There seemed only one answer.
‘You look very pretty, Teressa,’ he said, looking over her close-fitting jeans and hot pink midriff-tied shirt. ‘What happened to the tents?’
She gave an awkward little smile and a, shrug that might have meant anything. ‘Would you like some coffee?’
He accepted, came to watch her make it, leaning in the doorway of the tiny kitchen. Any minute now he would notice that her kitchen was equipped for just one person and not a family. Any minute … her hands shook a bit. Clumsy Teressa Richards just reappeared like magic when he showed up.
‘Your phantom cat turned up again,’ Ashe told her.
‘I told you there was a cat.’
‘I believed you.’
‘You didn’t! You thought I was romancing. An imaginary friend perhaps?’
‘Well, it was odd that no one else ever saw it,’ he smiled. She went to the refrigerator for milk and he said in the same teasing tone, ‘No cream for me, Teressa. Not even in the coffee.’
She gave a nervous laugh at that and set the cups and some biscuits on a tray. Ashe carried it into the tiny lounge room and set it down.
‘Intruder is being fed by the couple who look after the house. I thought you might like to know.’
‘Yes, I wondered—thank you, Ashe.’
The small silence that followed was punctuated by the clink of china as they drank their coffee. The swish of traffic outside made this room seem isolated.
Teressa remembered a feeling similar but more intense with a storm raging outside.
‘When do you leave for Perth?’ he asked.
Licking her lips she forced the lie. ‘Sunday.’
‘Do you have to go, Teressa’? Your parents must want you to stay.’
‘Oh—no. It’s better for them—there isn’t much space here. And it might be easier to get a job in Perth.’ Ashe put his cup down on the table. Carefully.
Casually. And she knew what he would say.
‘I could give you a job here, Teressa.’ He rather unnecessarily straightened up the teaspoon on the saucer, then looked up at her. ‘I’m starting work on my book again soon and need a typist.’
Her dark hair swirled as she shook her head. Her play-acting had been successful. She had interested him enough to pursue her, and Teressa wasn’t prepared for that. Panicking, she almost told him then to stop him sinking any further into the silly little trap she had laid for him. The awful thing was that one part of her wished she could go to work for him … get to know him.
‘No, Ashe, it wouldn’t work.’ What a complete fool she was! She already knew him. And he didn’t deserve her consideration. Why did she keep forgetting that?
The divan creaked gently as he stood. Teressa rose too, and the traffic hummed outside as they faced each other.
‘So I’ve taught you when to back off, have I?’ He gave a rueful laugh and walked over to her. Tilting her head to him he said: ‘You’re a lovely girl, Teressa. Don’t throw yourself away on the first boy you fancy yourself in love with.’
For long moments he looked into her eyes, and Teressa’s knowledge of him shattered into fragments again. The kiss he dropped on her forehead was hardly more than a warm breath on her skin. Teressa caught his hand as he let it fall from her chin.
‘Kiss
me goodbye properly, Ashe?’ The words emerged involuntarily.
‘Something to remember me by?’ He gave a wry laugh, then kissed her on the mouth. His lips were firm and warm. And gone. And so was he.
So that was it, she thought. The end. She’d got it out of her system now-all that old vengefulness, the hate, the frustration. Why, then, did she feel so terrible?
A few days later a letter came from Tony-a languishing lovelorn Tony who bewailed the pressures of the family business that kept him from hotfooting it to Sydney to visit her. At least while the football season was on, Tony had shared his passion between her and the game. Now, worse luck, she was the sole recipient. ‘I’ll come as soon as I can,’ he promised, to her dismay.
As Christmas came nearer, Tony’s letters became more frequent. Teressa sighed over them. Maybe a nice girl who loved football would appear grape picking in the Manetti vineyards and sweep Tony of his feet.
There was another postcard and a scrawled note from Cecily. ‘-I hope you haven’t been getting involved with Ashe,’ she wrote peevishly. ‘And for goodness sake don’t mention his name in letters to us. Mike is sometimes jealous, and I find that awful busines too humiliating … '
Humiliating—even now? Teressa read on about their stay with relatives outside Venice. Cecily seemed so happy, and yet Ashe’s name could still upset her.
Disturbed, she folded the letter. Maybe at twenty-six her sister would at last find stability and security with Mike. Heaven knew, since they had moved to Perth she had embarked upon and walked out on a series of affairs. None of them lasted long and most finished with the bewildered man dismissed by a blithe Cecily.
At times Teressa had felt like the older, not the younger, sister. It had all been a reaction to Ashe’s rejection. It was a kind of fate that had found her Mike—good-looking and strong enough to hold her.
And comfortably off. Her sister had a practical streak beneath all her scatty, fickle ways. She knew better than to imagine she’d be happy with a poor man.
Her receptionist job fell through temporarily. The hotel offered February as a new starting date if she could wait that long. She said yes and remained dependent on her temporary work until then.
Christmas came and went. Thelma Richards went to stay with her son Mark, and Teressa spent the day alone, resisting Joel’s invitation to spend it either by the pool with Jane and his parents or in bed with him.
But she agreed to go to a New Year’s Eve party with him. Teressa wore Cecily and Mike’s Christmas gift for the occasiona dress—a dream from a Rome designer collection, chosen with Cecily’s eye for fashion and made possible by Mike’s buying power.
Green it was-pale and shimmering, with a daring neckline edged in silver as bright as the streak in her hair. Teressa had lashed out and bought new shoes worthy of the dress, and she clipped about her neck a piece of her mother’s jewellery that she seldom wore, a thin choker set with diamonds. Teressa twirled before the mirror. She looked good. It wouldn’t be vain to admit that she looked great.
‘You finally got it together, girl,’ she told herself.‘The dress and the figure for it, diamonds, a party and a playboy as a partner … '
But her hand went to the streak in her hair and her elation died, leaving her feeling curiously flat.
Joel’s friends, the Westcotts, were hosting the party at their Point Piper home. The senior Westcotts, were known for their financial wizardry. These, the junior Westcotts, were better known for disposing of rather than making money. According to Joel they stinted nothing on New Year’s Eve—everything from Maine lobster to Scottish pipers was provided to save their guests from hunger and ennui. Teressa’s only reservations regarded Joel himself. While he continued to accept her refusal to sleep with him, it was with less and less grace, for he had expected the citadel to have fallen to him long before now. Joel was becoming impatient, and Teressa was aware that she should finish the relationship. Only her depressed state and his insistence had stopped her from doing so.
The night was hot, but a cool harbour breeze stirred the curtains at the row of floor-length windows that opened on to the Westcotts’ terrace. Waiters circulated with trays of champagne cocktails and spirits.
‘Some of these people have been here all day,’ Joel remarked as they were served with drinks. Teressa could believe it. A few men were happily red-faced and back-slapping new arrivals, and in another room partially screened from the huge living area a group, looking as if they’d been there since Christmas, gravely played snooker.
Teressa looked quickly away from the snooker players, restless suddenly. Her eyes darted over the guests. Strangers, all of them.
A banquet table occupied one end of the music-filled room. An ice sculpture was slowly shedding its Renaissance splendour on to a welter of fresh seafood, piled in Bacchanalian abandon around it. Tropical fruits and giant strawberries toppled from silver cornucopias and goblets with stems a foot high trailed purple and white grapes with dewy skins. There was enough drink to float the Opera House, and Joel was consuming more than his share of it.
‘Let’s dance,’ he said, and swung her into his arms even before they reached the dance floor near the band. ‘Mmmm, you smell like a million dollars,’ he murmured, and dropped his head to kiss her neck.
Teressa drew back a little, embarrassed by the public demonstration, ‘Relax, darling,’ he said, ‘I can’t threaten your high principles here, now can I?’ He put his lips to the hollow of her neck.
‘Attaboy, Joel!’ someone called, and Teressa was too late to turn her head from another kiss, this time on the mouth. Joel stopped dancing and made an event of it, bending her back across his arm to l.ean over her theatrically. When he swept her upright again Teressa was furious. The other dancers stopped to applaud them, and Joel took a bow. Teressa tacked a stiff smile on her mouth and looked for the nearest exit. And the floor began to move beneath her feet.
It was just someone like him, she thought, as light played over a man’s silver-beige hair. The room was full of strangers. She closed her eyes, opened them again, but the floor kept right on falling. Topaz eyes blazed at her. It was Ashe Warwick, and there was no one like him.
He came over to them. Lara Moore was with him, and she looked over blankly at first and then with incredulity as she noticed the silver streak in Teressa’s upswept hair. It was worse. Wendy and John followed them, their expression as they saw Teressa almost comical.
‘Good lord.’ John grinned weakly. ‘It’s Teressa.’
Wendy stared at her, then at Ashe.
‘Teressa' he said through tight-ground teeth.
‘Ashe,’ nodded Teressa. So it had happened after all. Now he would know. Her pulse boomed in her ears.
Lara tightened her hold on his arm and cast a knowledgeable eye over Teressa’s Italian dress. She looked suspicious. The harmless rapport between Ashe and his home help had taken on a new aspect.
‘So it is Teressa … what was your other name?’
‘Richards,’ Ashe supplied, his eyes burning from Teressa’s sophisticated hairdo to the diamonds and the plunge of her neckline. Joel held out his hand to Ashe.
‘Joel Merrow,’ he introduced himself. ‘And it’s Teressa Radcliffe, not Richards.’
‘Radcliffe?’ Ashe frowned.
Lara’s eyes narrowed. ‘You didn’t look like this at Deception. ‘
‘Deception?’ Joel put in pleasantly, oblivious to the undercurrents. ‘On the south coast?’
‘I have a place there. Didn’t Teressa tell you she spent a weekend with us a while back?’ Ashe’s voice was dry ice.
‘Hardly a weekend, darling, thanks to the weather.
It was all over by Sunday lunch—’ Lara paused, took another look at Teressa’s transformed image.
‘You did get home all right on Sunday, Teressa?’
There was no answer, which was answer enough for Lara. She was already withdrawing her hand from Ashe’s arm when he snapped, ‘No. She was stranded at the house.�
��
'Oh, really?’
Wendy’s eyes widened and she and John sidled away into the press of dancers. Joel charmingly introduced himself to Lara when no one else showed any inclination to observe the formalities, and Ashe steered Teressa to the far side of the dance floor, then pulled her abruptly into his arms.
‘There must be a reason,’ he said between clenched teeth, ‘—for your little charade.’
‘You know the reason now,’ she blurted, remembering it herself with a rush of resentment.
‘No, I don’t. Tell me why a girl who runs with a playboy like Merrow should turn up as a cleaner in my office and then in my house, pretending to be an innocent—’ His words stopped on a sudden rough intake of breath. ‘My God, I can hardly believe it—why?