Megan could not analyse her feelings at that moment, but from within the turmoil inside her there emerged a feeling of relief. Alexa had not told her very much more than she already knew, and it set her mind, if not her heart, at rest.
'Megan…' there was a hint of anxiety in the way Alexa's fingers gripped Megan's arm, 'what I've told you stems mostly from local gossip, and gossip is very often made up of ten per cent fact and ninety per cent fiction, but I do happen to be concerned for you. Chad's a handsome devil, and I can see why women might fall for him, but please… be careful.'
Be careful! A ghost of a smile touched Megan's mouth, and her clenched jaw relaxed a fraction. What Alexa was actually saying was, 'Keep an open mind, but don't fall in love with him!' It made painful sense, and quite suddenly Megan had to fight a desire to weep.
CHAPTER FIVE
Megan's parents had been in no hurry to return to Louisville, and they had stayed on after the fashion show to have dinner with Megan that evening. A dark cloud bank had gathered over the Soutpansberg mountains in the distance, and it had seemed to hover there for most of that day. By nightfall it had shifted considerably closer, and the air was heavy with the promise of rain when Megan carried a tray of coffee into her lounge.
'You did well today, Megan,' Dr Peter O'Brien remarked when Megan passed him his cup of coffee. 'Your mother and I are proud of you.'
'Thanks, Dad.' Megan smiled at the lean, fair-haired man who was seated with his long legs stretched out in front of him for comfort. 'I may have neglected to say this in the past, but I have you and Mother to thank for what I've achieved, and I know I couldn't have done it without your constant support and encouragement.'
'Nonsense!' her mother contradicted her firmly. 'Your father and I have merely encouraged you to have confidence in yourself, but you've always had enough talent, ingenuity and determination to achieve your ambitions.'
Megan studied her parents thoughtfully, and smiled. 'I guess I've come a long way since those early days when I was so unsure of myself and my work as an artist.'
A knock on the bungalow door interrupted their conversation some minutes later, and Megan put down her cup to get up and answer it. She was not sure whom she had expected, but it had most certainly not been Chad, and she stood frozen, her heart hammering uncomfortably against her ribs as she stared up into those steel-grey eyes which were beginning to observe her quizzically as the seconds ticked by.
'I'm sorry I missed the fashion show this afternoon,' he said, his sensuous mouth curving in a faintly apologetic smile, 'but I believe I have to congratulate you on your success.'
'Thank you.' She emerged with difficulty from her state of frozen immobility and decided nervously that Chad looked as ominous as the weather in his black trousers and sweater. 'Won't you come in?' she invited, opening the door wider.
'I was beginning to think you wouldn't ask.' His mocking glance shifted beyond her to the two people seated in the lounge and, not in the least disturbed by their presence, he crossed the room to bow gallantly over Vivien's hand. 'It's good to see you again, Mrs O'Brien.'
Megan closed the door and moved to her father's side as he rose from his chair. 'Dad, have you met Dr McAdam?'
'Yes, we've met.' Peter O'Brien smiled pleasantly as he shook hands with Chad. 'I was hoping we would meet each other again in pleasanter circumstances.'
Megan's surprised expression did not go unnoticed, and it was Chad who explained. 'Your father and I met each other a couple of days ago when an Afrikaner bull ran amok on the common at the showgrounds, injuring itself and its handlers.'
The two men lapsed into a friendly discussion, but it unnerved Megan to witness this easy relationship which seemed to exist between them. She felt threatened for some obscure reason, but she did not have time to wonder about it. Her mother was observing her with a peculiar look in her dark eyes and, realising that she was forgetting her manners, Megan gestured Chad into a chair.
'Would you like a cup of coffee?' she offered politely, and he cast a brief, smiling glance in her direction.
'A cup of coffee would be most welcome, thank you.'
Megan escaped into the kitchen to pour an extra cup of filter coffee, but there was no escape from the sound of Chad's deep, well-modulated voice while he chatted to her parents. Everything seemed so perfectly normal, and yet it was not. If it had been Jack Harriman sitting there in her lounge with her father and her mother she would not have found it so unsettling, but it was Chad, and Megan prayed silently that her parents would not jump to the wrong conclusion about the relationship between Chad McAdam and herself.
'What made you choose to come to a place like Izilwane?' Vivien O'Brien was questioning Chad when Megan returned to the lounge, and Megan was equally curious to know the answer to that query as she handed him his cup of coffee and returned to the chair she had vacated on his arrival.
'It's always been my greatest ambition to work in a game park,' Chad explained smoothly. 'Unfortunately the opportunity never arose until a few months ago when I noticed Byron's advertisement in a veterinary journal.'
Was his ambition to work in a game park the only reason why he had applied for this post? Megan wondered with unaccustomed cynicism, observing him unobtrusively while he drank his coffee. Did the rapidly growing list of broken hearts in the city not perhaps have a far greater influence on his decision?
'Aren't you going to find it extremely difficult having to divide your time between your various business interests in Johannesburg and your work here in the game park?' Vivien persisted with her queries, but Chad appeared not to mind.
'I enjoy the challenge of both my worlds, but I'm fortunate to have extremely capable men at the helm of the various companies, and they always keep me fully informed.' He gestured expressively with one strong, sun-browned hand, and smiled faintly. 'My presence is required at board meetings and for periodic consultations, but other than that, the telephone is an efficient form of communication.'
'I happen to know that you lead a very active working life. Does that leave you with much time to socialise?'
'I'm not a social recluse, Mrs O'Brien,' Chad assured her with an amused look on his handsome, often cynical features. 'I work hard and play hard.'
'Yes, I believe you do,' Vivien murmured with a wry but equally amused smile.
Megan could hear her father talking to Chad, but she was not listening to what was actually being said between them. She had noticed that her mother was studying Chad with a strange look in her dark eyes, and she was wondering nervously at the thoughts which might be drifting through that alert and intelligent mind when an ominous rumble of thunder brought her mother's glance on a collision course with her own.
'I'll help you wash up, Megan,' she said, rising gracefully to her feet to collect the empty cups. 'It's been a most enjoyable day, but we'd better leave for home before that storm hits us.'
Megan did not argue and, taking the tray from her mother, she led the way into the kitchen, leaving Chad in the lounge with her father to continue their conversation. She worked quickly, washing the cups and saucers, and stacking them on the rack for her mother to dry with the kitchen towel she had taken off the hook against the white-tiled wall beside the sink.
'How often do you see Chad?' her mother shot the question at her, but Megan had been prepared for it.
'I see him quite often,' she confessed with a forced calmness, 'but he isn't a regular visitor, and I know he would have left long ago if you and Dad hadn't been here.'
'I'm relieved to hear that,' her mother sighed, and Megan's nervousness diminished as swiftly as the water which she was draining out of the sink.
'Don't you trust me?' she laughed softly, drying her hands on a spare kitchen towel, and turning to face her mother.
'Of course I trust you!' Vivien brushed aside Megan's query with an agitated wave of her hand. 'I'm afraid I can't say the same about Chad McAdam.'
I happen to be concerned for you. Please be careful.
Alexa's warning leapt unbidden into Megan's mind, and there was an odd tightness in her throat as she asked cautiously, 'What makes you think he can't be trusted?'
'He's too smooth, too good-looking, and…' Vivien frowned, oddly at a loss for words, then she shrugged helplessly. 'Oh, I don't know!'
'Mother…' Megan gestured reassuringly with her hands, 'I can take care of myself.'
'I know you can, my darling, but that doesn't stop me worrying about you, and I think I'd want to commit murder if anyone dared to hurt you,' Vivien declared with a vehemence which Megan had never heard before.
'Oh, Mom!' Megan's voice was choked, and she was hovering somewhere between laughter and tears when she flung her arms about her mother and hugged her tightly. 'I think you're the best mother in the world, and I love you!'
'I love you too, my pet.' Vivien smiled at her with a tender warmth in her dark eyes when they drew apart. 'That's why I shall always be concerned for you.'
A crack of thunder overhead sent them hurrying back to the lounge, and a few minutes later Megan was standing on her stoep with Chad, watching her parents walk at a brisk pace through the darkness to where they had parked their car beneath a mopani tree. She waved as they drove past her bungalow on their way out of the camp, but her heart was thudding nervously against her ribs as she watched the tail lights of her father's powerful Mercedes disappear around the bend in the road.
It was a dark night, and there was a tangy moisture in the hot air that whipped up against her with a force savage enough to make her rock on her feet. It moulded her white, silky dress to her slender body, accentuating her small, firm breasts, narrow waist and shapely thighs, but she had been unaware of this until she turned to find Chad observing her with more than just a casual interest in his pale eyes. She went indoors, her pulses leaping nervously as Chad followed her, and she could not quell a stab of anxiety when he closed the door to shut out the wind and the lightning which sliced across the inky sky.
'I must admit,' he began when the loud rumble of thunder had shifted off into the distance, 'I've met quite a few interesting and intelligent women since my arrival here at Izilwane, and your mother is one of them. It's incredible.'
'What's so incredible about it?' asked Megan as she moved about the lounge and made a pretence of rearranging her ornaments in a physical attempt to ease that terrible tension inside her.
'I have a strange feeling that I'm meeting an entirely new breed of women up here in the northern Transvaal. Do you think that's possible?' he asked in a voice edged with mockery.
Megan stared down at the ornament in her hands, which had been a gift from her cousin on her thirteenth birthday. It was a porcelain panther, sleek and black and dangerous as it stalked its prey, and she knew somehow that, after tonight, it would always remind her of Chad.
'It's possible that you've simply overlooked the interesting and intelligent women in favour of the kind of women who arouse your contempt,' she said, returning the ornament to its place on top of the bookshelf when the first heavy drops of wind-driven rain battered the windows.
'You make me sound like a masochist!'
'Perhaps you are… in a way.' She turned to look at him then, her glance lingering on the straight, high-bridged nose with the pinched nostrils, and the strong, jutting jaw beneath that firmly chiselled, sensuous mouth. His compelling glance drew hers, and the icy cynicism in the steel-grey depths of his eyes made her turn from him abruptly. 'I'll make us another cup of coffee.'
Chad made no attempt to prevent her leaving, and she escaped into the kitchen with a measure of relief to switch on the kettle. Her heart was beating much too hard and fast for comfort, and she was glad she could have these few moments alone to regain the composure which she had lost earlier that evening when she had found Chad standing on her doorstep.
Lightning forked across the night sky, illuminating the earth in an eerie, electrifying way, and Megan drew the curtains across the kitchen window, but nothing could shut out the terrible crack of thunder that made the floor shudder beneath her feet. The driving rain against the window was almost deafening, but she was only vaguely aware of it while she spooned instant coffee into the cups.
She was thinking about Chad, and she had to credit him with honesty. He was a man of many confusing complexities who had made no secret of his hedonistic attitude towards women, and Megan knew she had to curb her wayward feelings if she did not want to add her name to his long list of conquests.
'Your mother left her scarf behind.' Chad pulled a green silk scarf through his fingers and draped it across the arm of his chair as they sat drinking their coffee. 'Vivien O'Brien is a very clever woman, and it wouldn't surprise me if she left the scarf behind to have a valid excuse for returning later this evening.' His mouth quirked with amusement. 'I don't think she trusts me alone with her daughter.'
Megan smiled, recalling the conversation she had had with her mother. 'You're quite right, she doesn't trust you.'
'And you, Megan?' he asked, observing her with a strange intensity in his eyes which threatened to unnerve her. 'Do you trust me?'
'Give me one good reason why I should,' she responded with her own gentle brand of mockery and, to her dismay, his face tautened in anger.
'I'm not a sex maniac who goes around raping defenceless women, and I've never touched a woman who hasn't made it perfectly obvious that she desired it.'
His statement was a stinging rebuke, and humiliation surged through her, setting fire to her cheeks. That was true! Chad had kissed her and touched her because, deep down, she had actually wanted him to, and he had known it. He was an extremely attractive man and, she had no doubt, an experienced lover. The women he was accustomed to associating with would presumably need very little persuasion to satisfy his, and their own, sexual needs, but Megan wanted more from a relationship with a man than a brief physical affair.
'I was taught to believe that a man would never force his attentions on me unless I offered sufficient encouragement, but that doesn't seem to apply to you, does it?' she remarked, smiling stiffly.
'I'm a very persistent man,' he explained, his narrowed gaze flicking over her. 'When I see what I want, I make sure that I get it, and I happen to want you, Megan.'
Megan felt that familiar wave of panic rising inside her, but she suppressed it forcibly. She had to make him understand, once and for all, that she was not interested in having a meaningless, purely sexual relationship with him, and she had to stay calm if she wanted to place the necessary stress on the delivery of that message.
'I can't give you what you want, Chad,' she said flatly, her candid glance not wavering from his when he leaned forward in his chair with his elbows resting on his knees.
'Can't, or won't, Megan?' he demanded with a derisive smile.
'I can't and I won't,' she clarified her statement quietly. 'I don't want the kind of relationship you en-visage, and I could never do something which would be so totally against everything I've always believed in.'
Chad's harsh laugh set her nerves quivering. 'You sound like a virgin who wants to save herself for her wedding night.'
'That's precisely what I am.' The air was suddenly static as if the electrifying storm had penetrated the solid walls of her bungalow to rage between them.
'Do you expect me to believe that you're a virgin?' Her colour came and went, giving him his answer in no uncertain terms as their glances locked in a silent battle which seemed to last an eternity before Chad rose to his feet with a look of scorn on his face. 'Well, if it's marriage you're holding out for, then you're looking at the wrong man.'
'I know.' Her voice was deadly calm, almost resigned, but those two words seemed to wail repeatedly through her mind and her body until it tore savagely at her soul.
I know, I know, I know! If it's marriage I'm holding out for, then I'm looking at the wrong man! I know!
Chad left moments later, slamming the door shut behind him. Megan had watched him leave through a re
d mist of pain which she still could not fully understand, but she was jolted agonisingly to her senses when the handle snapped off the cup she had been holding so tightly between her hands. She stared down at it rather stupidly, then had to fight against an inexplicable desire to burst into tears.
Alexa and Revil Bradstone flew back to Johannesburg on the Monday morning with the models from Alexa's agency. It had rained all night before their departure, and for more than a week afterwards the weather at Izilwane settled into an uncomfortable pattern of hot, humid days and rainy nights.
It was during this time that Glenys Gibson arrived at Izilwane to be interviewed for the position as Chad's secretary, and two days later she moved her belongings into one of the staff bungalows. Glenys Gibson was a tall, attractive brunette who had only recently travelled north with her parents to settle in Louisville, and Megan wondered with unaccustomed cynicism whether it had been her physical appearance rather than her professional credentials which had got her the job with Chad.
It was mid-April when Megan came face to face with Chad for the first time since that night he had stormed out of her bungalow. She met him one afternoon as he was leaving Byron's office, and her heart did an odd flip-flop in her breast when those steel-grey eyes skimmed her briefly. He acknowledged her with a curt nod and walked on, and Megan stared after him, more concerned about his appearance than the fact that he had not spoken to her. He did not look well. His face had looked flushed, and he had been perspiring much too freely to blame it on the hot, humid weather.
'I have good news for you,' Byron informed Megan when she entered his office. 'The Post Office has finally laid the necessary cables to install a private line to Chad's office, and the link-up to your shop will be disconnected by tomorrow afternoon.'
Megan could not decide whether she ought to be pleased or not. It had been awkward at times, and annoying, but she could not deny that she would miss Chad's curt, often rude intrusions on her telephone conversations when he needed to make an urgent call.
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