Fleur had found out that they’d lived on Hedge Island for some time and that the restaurant was only open during the cooler winter months. Although other people lived on the island, the population was small and, although people came to the island all year round, it was the winter influx of southern visitors, visitors escaping the rigours of colder winters down south for the still balmy warmth of the north, that made it viable.
All in all, she thought, Bryn Wallis came across as a man who had decided to opt out of the rat race, but the reason for it was another matter. There was no sign at Clam Cove, which was the name of his restaurant as well as his little slice of paradise, that he’d ever been anything else but a beachcomber who loved to dive, swim, fish, cook when the mood was on him, and turn his hand to building bungalows and making some exquisite pieces of wooden furniture.
Although she did wonder sometimes if he was a writer because of something Tom had said, and because, some nights when she couldn’t sleep, often the early hours of the morning she’d noticed a lamp on in the main bungalow.
He was also a man of decided opinions and causes. In two and a half weeks she’d heard him declaim scathingly on the iniquities of longline fishing and the declining albatross and dolphin population and conversely on the protection of crocodiles to the extent that the creatures could now be found in Cairns, their nearest coastal city, itself. She’d been subjected to his vehemence on genetic food engineering and discovered that he had a thing about women who wore artificial nails.
It had amused her to think that was probably the only thing he approved of about her.
As for the restaurant itself, it had soaring palm-thatch ceilings, was open-sided with roll-down clear plastic blinds in case of inclement weather, and was built over the beach. It featured his pieces of furniture, some wonderful pottery urns planted with flowering plants and creepers, as well as nautical and beachcomber memorabilia hung from the rafters.
There was no separate cooking area. The chef operated from a raised, counter-enclosed area where Bryn did a lot of his cooking on rotisserie spits and grids over charcoal fires. On starry, moonlit nights with the water lapping close by it was especially exotic and romantic.
One mystery she had solved, though, was why he might not be on the marriage market.
The deputy manager of the resort on the other side of the island was a woman, Stella Sinclair, a very attractive brunette in her early thirties. Although she blended in with the tropical ambience of the island well, Fleur had detected a sharp brain and consummate businesswoman in Stella Sinclair. And Julene, who was something of a character, had let slip to Fleur that, although on account of Tom it was never alluded to at Clam Cove, the rest of the island well knew that Stella was Bryn Wallis’s lover.
But the most puzzling aspect of all about the man, Fleur reflected, was his deep and instant antipathy to her. Yes, no one around him got a smooth ride when the restaurant was busy and things went wrong even if they were not the culprit. But they put up with it because at other times he could be charming, funny, kind even and irresistible. His son adored him and he seemed to have a natural way with the boy.
They were often to be seen working together, which meant that Tom fetched and carried tools for Bryn as he did some woodwork. They were often to be heard having long, serious conversations about anything and everything then breaking up into laughter or song. And Tom cherished the growing menagerie of little animals Bryn carved for him.
Not so with her, however. He had a subtle way of needling her, he was a genius at innuendo and the kind of double entendre that might float over other heads but found their mark with her unerringly like well-placed arrows intended to wound. There was an undoubted and barely veiled hostility in all his dealings with her even though, so far, she’d not retaliated in kind. Why? she wondered, staring out to sea unseeingly.
In the two and a half weeks since she’d started working for him she’d gone out of her way not to put a foot wrong. She’d ‘turned her hand’ to everything that was requested of her, including all the things he himself had mentioned bar cricket. But she’d more than compensated for that by spending as much time with Tom as she could when Bryn wasn’t able to. This had been no hardship. Tom was a real character and exceptionally articulate for his age.
And she’d gone out of her way, when helping out in the restaurant, to attract as little attention as possible. She’d scraped her hair back, worn no make-up and a dowdy, voluminous dress she’d had the forethought to purchase before arriving on the island. Not only that, but to date she hadn’t set foot beyond Clam Cove.
Also, while she’d been meticulous as a waitress or the receptionist, she’d also been at pains not to allow her natural sense of fun or anything that could be termed joie de vivre, come-hitherness or whatever it was Helen of Troy might have possessed, to show through.
True, there had still been some speculative glances but to say that she was providing the kind of distraction he needed like a hole in the head was simply not true. Unless…
No, she thought. No. She couldn’t be distracting him. There was absolutely no sign of it, he had Stella… No.
In fact, he had Stella at that moment, although quite properly, she realized as her gaze focused over the veranda. The deputy manager of the resort had come for lunch and was now strolling along the beach with Tom and Bryn. They all wore their swimming costumes, and as Fleur watched they plunged into the sea and started to splash each other.
She watched for a while, unable to control a desolate little sense of envy. They looked like a family engaged in such simple fun and togetherness. Stella wore a red bikini and Bryn a faded pair of green board shorts. In fact, board shorts, an old frayed straw hat and a shark’s tooth on a leather thong around his neck was his preferred mode of dress on the island. Nor did his preferred mode of dress on the island do much to conceal a rather breathtaking physique.
Not that she hadn’t suspected it at the interview in Brisbane but it had come as a bit of a shock to see him like this after his sartorial elegance that day. Nor had the way he’d been dressed at the interview given her to suspect that when in Clam Cove restaurant mode, as opposed to beachcomber mode, he would wear a red bandanna around his longish tawny hair, black trousers and a white pirate shirt with an emerald cummerbund.
The first time she’d seen him thus arrayed she’d been tempted to laugh, but had desisted on receiving a laser-like glance from those hazel eyes that seemed to promise she could be made to walk the plank should she exhibit any amusement.
Strangely enough she soon realized that, although the surprise of it had been amusing, she was not alone in finding him oddly magnificent in this get-up. Many a woman guest followed him around with their eyes. Especially on those starry, romantic nights. Were they visualising being tossed over his shoulder and carried off to be made love to in a way that his physique and sheer, magnetic arrogance made promise of an experience never to be forgotten?
She stirred in the hammock as she watched Bryn Wallis stand in the shallows with his hands planted on his hips, with his back to the beach, as he watched Stella and Tom race towards him, and felt an odd little contraction at the pit of her stomach that reinforced the fear she had that she might be no different from some of his restaurant guests…
So, she thought, he wasn’t being impossibly egotistical when he said he had a problem with women. Damn. And she turned to her other side restlessly and closed her eyes determinedly. Remember, Fleur, she told herself, no more men…
A week later, the day started out like any other.
She went for an early morning swim, alone. She had a simple breakfast of fruit and muesli with Tom and Julene. Eric was out fishing, it appeared, but of Bryn there was no sign until Tom explained why.
‘Bryn didn’t get back from the resort last night—I wonder why?’ Tom had the habit of calling his father by his first name, which always made Fleur want to smile. But there was no doubting whose child he was—he had fair hair but his father’s hazel eye
s, and not only that; although only six, he also had his father’s, when Bryn chose to be that way, charm and wit.
Julene removed Tom’s empty plate and said soothingly, ‘That’s why you spent the night with us, honey, remember? In case it got too late for your dad to come home. I expect he’ll be here any time soon!’
‘I hope it’s before I go to school!’ Tom said enthusiastically.
‘I guarantee he’ll be here when you get home after school!’ Julene promised. ‘And, talking of school, you’ve got five minutes before the bus arrives! Off you go—and don’t forget your lunch,’ she added, pointing to a plastic box on the counter.
Tom went, scooping up his lunch on his way past.
Julene subsided and poured herself another cup of coffee to which she appeared to be addicted. She was an easy-going, friendly, bottle-blonde in her late thirties who loved nothing better than a good chat and displaying her voluptuous figure in a series of vibrantly coloured sarongs that made Fleur feel dull by comparison in her sensible shorts and T-shirts.
Now she grimaced as she sipped her coffee. ‘I’d say la Stella is putting on an act. Although we often baby-sit Tom for him, he doesn’t usually stay overnight.’
Fleur gazed at her. ‘What kind of an act? They always seem so…relaxed and well-suited when she’s here.’
‘I’m sure that’s what she thinks,’ Julene commented, ‘which is why it’s probably a puzzle to her that she’s not getting any further forward with our Bryn.’
‘As in…?’
‘As in nailing him, honey, trotting him down the aisle, getting a ring on her finger,’ Julene explained laconically. ‘The man is dynamite, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ This time she frowned at Fleur.
Fleur shrugged, decided that denying it would give cause for curiosity if not be a waste of time, and said laconically back, ‘Yep. But I got the impression she was a career woman and, well…’ She paused.
‘That’s the effect Bryn has! Lord knows even I wasn’t immune at first.’
Fleur blinked. ‘But you and Eric are such an ideal couple.’
‘We still are. It doesn’t stop you from looking over the fence occasionally and,’ she spread her hands and laughed infectiously, ‘wondering, now, does it, doll?’ she added.
‘I’ve never been married,’ Fleur replied with a glint of laughter in her eyes. ‘But I don’t think it would do me the slightest good to wonder too much about Bryn. In case you hadn’t noticed, he treats me as if I’ve crawled out from under a stone.’
Julene sobered. ‘I must say, you could have knocked us over with a feather when he produced you, Fleur. Still, I guess he had his reasons!’ She got up and began to collect the dishes.
‘He did. He was desperate.’ Fleur rose and helped her clear the table. ‘Mind you, I can see why. His bookwork is chaotic. It’s going to take me all of the three months to sort it out and his last tax return has been queried. Strange,’ she said more to herself than Julene, ‘you wouldn’t think he’d be that, I guess, uninterested in his own affairs.’
Julene was silent and when Fleur looked at her it appeared as if the other woman was debating with herself. She even opened her mouth, closed it, then said simply, ‘Takes all kinds, doll! Don’t you worry about the dishes!’ and departed for the washing-up area round the back of the restaurant.
Fleur hesitated with the feeling she’d had a door closed in her face, then neatly stacked the salt and pepper shakers on the rack, shook out the tablecloth—and went to her office.
“Office” was a misnomer.
She had a small room also off the back of the restaurant with one table, one chair, a computer, yes, but no drawers, no filing cabinets—none of the normal office furniture in fact. Bryn’s preferred system of filing had been nails in the wall onto which he affixed his paperwork, but by no means all of it. The rest of it had overflowed across every available inch of table surface. And the computer had obviously just come out of the box but not even been connected yet.
She’d drawn a deep breath on being introduced to her office, had turned to Bryn Wallis to protest that no one could be expected to work like this—but had changed her mind suddenly. Because he’d been watching her with the obvious and cynical expectation of her making a fuss and more than that, a certain relish at being able to point out to her she was unequal to this particular job.
An extremely unladylike piece of advice for him had crossed her mind but she’d managed not to say it. She’d merely shrugged and turned back to the computer.
‘Good enough for you, Ms Millar?’ he’d enquired.
‘More than good enough.’ She’d paged through the literature. ‘You have enough memory here to store the workings of a worldwide chain of restaurants but I always say better to have too much than too little—memory, that is. I’ll need a screwdriver, Mr Wallis. Do you intend to get an e-mail address for the restaurant, incidentally?’
‘That was the idea. Can you handle the setting up of it, Miss Millar?’ he’d replied, stressing the AR at the end of her surname.
‘I can; I see you have an internal modem but I need a phone line in here.’ She’d looked around.
‘Voilà—I’m not quite as useless about all this as you imagine,’ he’d drawled and picked up a stack of papers to reveal a phone. ‘Not only did I get this phone installed but it is also on a separate line.’
‘Good thinking,’ she’d murmured coolly. ‘Uh—would there be anything resembling stationery?’
He’d subjected her to a lengthy aren’t-you-a-clever-little-miss? gaze then strolled across the room and hefted a cardboard box onto the tables. ‘Pads, pens, paper for the printer, envelopes—I even got stamps.’
‘How thoughtful,’ she’d commented.
Their gazes had clashed then he’d smiled sweetly. ‘Thank you—well, I’ll leave you to it, Fleur.’ And he’d walked out.
She’d gritted her teeth and restrained herself from throwing something at him. But she’d reminded herself that she’d almost always known this would be a challenge and now was not the time to get faint-hearted. By that evening, with Eric’s help—he’d provided her with some boxes she could use as file boxes and rustled up another table—she’d been more or less up and running, even able to play computer games with Tom.
It was Tom who’d, at the same time, told her that Bryn had a laptop computer in their bungalow but never seemed to have the time to play computer games with him.
‘So—what does he do on it?’ she’d asked, taken by surprise because she’d formed the impression her boss was computer illiterate.
‘He just writes things, that’s all. Oh, wow! We’ve got that new computer game, Fleur. Let’s play that!’
But, she reflected, coming back to the present as she looked around her ‘office’, three and a half weeks of utter professionalism and making the best of things without one murmur of discontent had obviously not changed Bryn Wallis’s view, whatever it was, of her.
She pulled her chair out and sat down but, for perhaps a good five minutes, stared unseeingly at the wall with a frown in her eyes. Then she shrugged and switched on the computer.
At five o’clock that same evening the day was starting to assume catastrophic proportions. Julene took to her bed with a migraine. Lobster, a great favourite on the Clam Cove menu, had to be struck off because the outboard motor on the dinghy, the only dinghy used to catch the lobster fresh every day from the waters around the island, seized up and required a part to be sent from the mainland, something that could take a day. Tom came home from school feeling feverish and uncomfortable, and with the news that his best friend had chickenpox.
Fortunately the reservation list for dinner was small; on the other hand only one waitress from Bryn’s list of casual local staff had been rostered on and she called in late afternoon to report that she’d just sprained her ankle. Frantic telephoning around had not produced a replacement for her although Bryn had enlisted the aid of the community nurse to sit with Tom.
I
t was when he’d exhausted all possibilities of getting anyone to replace Julene or the waitress that Bryn slammed the phone down and said savagely to Fleur, ‘Let’s see how you cope with this, Miss Competence Personified!’
‘Just you and me?’ she hazarded.
‘Eric can help wait tables,’ he said shortly and eyed her sardonically. ‘Are you on?’
‘Of course,’ she replied calmly.
Five hours later, the last guests had departed, the candles were guttering in their glasses and the cooking area was a scene of colourful chaos.
Fleur looked around at the tables that needed to be cleared, at the huge, decorative bowl of fruit on the counter. Her gaze drifted on over the dirty sauce pots in which fragrant, pastel and delicious sauces had been prepared, the lined-up empty bottles of wine, and paused as she spotted one that was not empty—a half-full bottle of Chianti in fact.
Whereupon she ceremoniously removed her apron, reached for a glass and poured some of the wine, then turned to her boss, who was looking at her quizzically, and threw the Chianti into his face.
‘Take that,’ she spat at him. ‘I have never in my life witnessed such an exhibition of boorish behaviour or been treated so shockingly when all I was trying to do was help! Not only trying, incidentally, but it’s only thanks to me that they didn’t all get up and walk out!’
Bryn blinked several times and wiped his eyes. ‘I was under a bit of pressure,’ he started to say, ‘which I’m the first to admit can affect me adversely—’
‘Rubbish!’ she yelled at him. ‘You deliberately set out to make this evening as difficult as possible for me with your cutting little remarks, your dreadful impatience, your insolent looks and all the rest. You deliberately set out to get me as flustered as possible—just as you have been ever since we set eyes on one another. Well, here’s what I think of you, Bryn Wallis!’ This time it was a bowl of unwhipped cream she poured over him.
Wife in the Making Page 2