As Fiona gradually restored a semblance of order to the class, she found herself growing increasingly furious with Fraser. How dared he come in and disrupt her class like this? She totally ignored the logical, reasonable part of her mind, the part that said, What’s he doing? He’s just sitting there, just like four other people. He isn’t even paying that much attention to the secretaries and their Afghans, because he’s mostly watching you!
And if he weren’t watching me, I wouldn’t be being so damned clumsy, I wouldn’t be giving such contradictory commands, and I wouldn’t be having all these totally distracting thoughts, she told herself. And admitted in spite of herself that she couldn’t really blame the secretary-types for their attitude.
Hate them, maybe even find a way to punish them for it during the final class, she thought spitefully, but hardly blame them.
She was, in actual fact, more inclined to thank them for their frivolous hanging around after class. Their motives were shockingly transparent, but at least they kept Fiona from being alone with Dare until the next class began to arrive, this time with older, more experienced dogs, but also with one older, more experienced connoisseur of devilishly attractive, available men.
And this woman, too, seemed to go all weak at the knees just at the sight of Fiona’s unwelcome visitor. It was more amusing than annoying, until the end.
Then, Fiona was hard put to it to avoid being shoved into a role of having to introduce the two. The woman’s toy poodle didn’t think that much of Dare, or any other person, for that matter, but his mistress was clearly smitten.
Maybe I should introduce them, she found herself thinking. If the poodle would let her, the old witch would fasten on him like a leech and drag him off out of here.
A fine fantasy, but there was no reality in it; if Dare had bothered to notice the woman, who did her best during the hour to ensure that he did, Fiona saw no sign of it.
Indeed, when the moment did arrive when an introduction might be seen as fitting. Dare had slipped out to his vehicle for a cigarette, and Fiona couldn’t help but feel the move had been deliberate.
But he was back as soon as the woman and her poodle had gone, and it was immediately clear that something had drastically changed his mood.
‘This isn’t working at all,’ he said without preamble. ‘You need me hanging about here like a fourth hole in the head, so I’m going. But I definitely do want to talk this thing out, so if you’ll pardon the cliché — your place or mine?’
‘Mine,’ Fiona replied quickly, almost shaking with relief at his decision. ‘About nine-thirty or just a bit later, if that’s OK?’
‘Done,’ he said. ‘Have you had tea yet?’
She started to argue, but was immediately thwarted.
‘I thought so. OK, it’ll be pizza and beer, so try not to be too late or you’ll miss out.’ And he was gone before she could say another word.
Fiona stood, mouth open in surprise at his abrupt change of mood, but had to regain her composure quickly when the first student in her final class arrived almost immediately.
That final class, by comparison to the earlier ones, went amazingly well. Without Dare’s hovering presence, Fiona was in full control of both herself and the class, and she finished bang on time without any problems at all.
Her mood didn’t quite last the drive home, but neither did she arrive with the same surge of anger his arrival at the warehouse had precipitated. Indeed, when she arrived to find him roistering comfortably with her other two dogs, there was a brief and distinctly disturbing sense of pleasure in the sight.
She banished that as quickly as she could, reverting to a cold politeness as she invited him inside. ‘I’ll just feed the dogs first, if you don’t mind,’ she said, and was already started before he could have replied. He didn’t; merely opened two bottles of beer and confidently turned on her oven to heat up the take-away pizza in its tinfoil shroud.
He followed Fiona outside, waited until she’d put down the dogs’ bowls and run the dogs through their pre-dinner exercises, then handed her a cold beer and returned to watch the preparation of the meal.
When she went back into the house, he silently put half an enormous pizza down in front of her, cracked open another cold beer, and seated himself across the kitchen table from her.
‘Eat first, while it’s hot,’ he interrupted when she tried to instigate the conversation. ‘There’s no great hurry about this.’
There was! She wanted to have her say and get this infuriating man to hell off her property, but Fraser didn’t give her the chance. His own quiet, competent attitude towards the meal made it impossible for Fiona to refuel the fires of her earlier anger, at least until she’d finished eating.
Dare, ate tidily, clearly enjoying himself. Fiona, suddenly famished, matched him bite for bite and enjoyed every morsel despite her mood.
‘Right,’ he said when the entire pizza had disappeared and he’d brought fresh beers from the refrigerator. ‘Now let’s have it, from the beginning if you don’t mind, and please try to keep it down to a dull roar.’
I’ll give you a dull roar, Fiona thought, suddenly at a loss for words. Beginning? What really was the beginning? She finally had to simply plunge in at the deep end.
‘You bought my warehouse,’ she began lamely. ‘And ... and forced me out without any explanation or ... or anything.’
‘I did?’ He asked the question in a calm, gentle voice, and for once there was no gleam of arrogant, chauvinistic delight in those dark, dark eyes.
‘Well, of course you did!’ She snapped the reply, but got no further.
‘I did not! I am involved in a syndicate which bought that warehouse, although certainly not from you. Nor did I force you out,’ he said, voice soft, still infuriatingly calm. ‘To the best of my knowledge, not that I expect you to believe it, the building was bought on a vacant possession basis.’
‘Because they wouldn’t renew my lease,’ Fiona replied solemnly.
‘And this is somehow my fault? My only involvement in the whole shooting match is that I’m the architect who’s going to have to plan the renovations. I wouldn’t even be in the syndicate, except that it was cheaper, moneywise, to give me a piece of the action for my services than hire them.’
‘And the head of this so-called syndicate is your Latin American girlfriend ... but I suppose you can explain that away as well,’ Fiona retorted, her voice rising in anger and frustration. Damn him! Everything he said just made so much sense.
‘Ah,’ he said, and then leaned back into his chair with a smug expression. Not a grin, exactly, but a damned well smug expression. Fiona cringed at seeing it.
But he didn’t say anything else, just sat there looking at her, letting his eyes roam across her with a faintly but none the less distinctly possessive look.
‘I see, I think,’ he said then, very softly. Too softly.
Fiona couldn’t reply. He’d given her no real opening, and besides, the conversation was no longer on the same plane as before. Now there was a personal tinge to every word, every gesture. No longer was this an argument about a warehouse and a lease; it was a primal argument like that between a rabbit and a fox, and she was the rabbit.
Fraser kept her captive with his dark, so expressive eyes, but he said nothing more for what seemed like hours as he patently assessed and reassessed the situation.
And then, ‘Are you narked because you’ve lost your training facility, or just because you’re convinced that I — or Consuela — had something to do with it?’
‘1 couldn’t care less about ... about who had what to do with it,’ Fiona replied finally, unwilling, unable to get her mouth around that woman’s name. ‘It’s thrown my entire … future into chaos and I just think it’s unfair, that’s all.’
Liar, said her mind. Dare was only slightly more charitable.
‘From your point of view, I suppose it is,’ he replied. ‘But that’s no reason to bucket me for it, and I have to say I’m not much
impressed. I can make quite enough enemies without this kind of thing.’ Then, after a pause that lasted a century, ‘There’s more to all this than you’re telling me, little Miss Fiona Boyd, but somehow I don’t think this is the right time to expect you to bare your soul. So I guess I’ll just have to settle for asking what — exactly — you want from me in all this.’
‘I don’t want anything,’ she replied slowly, leaning hard back in her own chair as Fraser loomed across the table towards her, his huge hands reaching out to grip softly but firmly at her wrists.
‘Oh, yes, you do,’ he replied, on his feet now and drawing her upward and against him, oblivious to her wide-eyed terror, to the way she strained away from him. ‘The problem is, 1 don’t think even you know what it is.’
She would have replied, tried to reply, but she couldn’t force the words past the union of their lips as his mouth covered hers, capturing her lips in a kiss that was at once tender and harsh, demanding and yet somehow caring.
Fiona struggled, or tried to. It was well-nigh impossible the way he was holding her, unless she reverted to tactics much harsher than she believed might be required.
Fraser didn’t seem to notice her struggles. His hands still held her own like warm, unyielding iron bracelets, and his mouth, his kiss, continued to explore her mouth, then her cheeks and the hollows of her neck before returning to her lips.
She didn’t respond; she mustn’t respond, and she told herself so even as her lips parted and her body began to mould itself against him, even as he lifted her arms around his neck and freed her wrists so that his arms could come down and around her body, so that his fingers could play a vibrant tune down the length of her spine before touching lightly at her buttocks to hold her closer to him.
Mustn’t ... mustn’t ... mustn’t. Her mind echoed the refrain over and over, but it was a losing battle. Far inside her, so far inside and behind so many self-constructed walls of protection, some inner Fiona struggled out of self-imposed sleep and stretched to the heat of Dare Fraser’s ardour like a flower towards the sun.
His hands were everywhere now, touching her body with a slow, soft, gentle movement that brought her closer, that seemed both willing and capable of making her melt into him, of making her will disappear, her inhibitions forgotten.
She sagged in his arms, half her mind screaming at her to run, to flee, to heed the warnings so long posted. He was a man; he couldn’t be trusted. He would only hurt her, only betray her. He was a man...
And then his hands were on her upper arms again, this time in a grip that forced her away from him, that tore apart the covenant of their lips, destroying the tenderness of his kisses.
‘This is no way to get answers to anything,’ he said, voice strangely ragged.
‘ What ... what’s wrong?’ said a voice that sounded like her own, but which she suddenly, frighteningly, knew was the voice of the Fiona inside her, the Fiona from behind the barricades. And she stiffened, her body suddenly rigid with terror at the realisation of how close she’d let him come.
‘Everything,’ was the gruff, unexpected reply. ‘Just about every damned thing.’
And even as she watched, his eyes changed, switching colour like smoke from a soft darkness to a coal-hard black that reflected only her own gaze, revealing nothing of the thoughts behind those eyes, nothing of the man.
‘What have I done to make you so damned distrustful, I wonder?’ he whispered then, speaking as much to himself as to her. Fiona didn’t reply; it wasn’t that kind of question.
Fraser’s fingers stretched away from her arms, his body reared to stand tall before her, eliminating any sense of the closeness they’d just shared. Part of her was glad, felt safer; part cried out against this divisiveness.
‘Or maybe it isn’t me; maybe it’s somebody else who’s turned you so far off men, made you so damned suspicious.’ Again, he wasn’t really asking, but musing almost to himself as if Fiona was merely incidental to the thought.
Fraser shook his head, the gesture abrupt, almost angry. Then he stepped back, away from Fiona and her confusion.
‘I don’t suppose you’re going to tell me,’ he said harshly. ‘Not now, at any rate.’ He gave her no chance to answer, didn’t seem to expect her to contribute to this part of the conversation at all. ‘No, not now, but I suggest you think on it just a bit,’ he continued. ‘Think very hard on it, because for the life of me I can’t think why you’d automatically blame me for this warehouse business. Or anything much else, come to think about it. Can you?’
Fiona opened her mouth, closed it again.
How could she answer such a question? This was no time to get into a lengthy discourse about how Fraser’s lady-friend had deliberately released that lovesick sheepdog to harass her. She couldn’t prove the allegation anyway, not that it needed proving, to Fiona’s mind.
And now, his own explanation about the warehouse, the lease, his specific involvement. Fiona still had some feeling that Consuela Diaz might — must! — have known the problems being caused for her, but could Dare Fraser fairly be charged with the same knowledge? Hardly, and, if he could, what possible motive would he have?
‘Well, damn it, woman. There’s obviously something that’s got you all stirred up. Is it such a secret that I’m never to know? That’s hardly fair, after all.’
‘I...’ She got no further. The only statement she might fairly make would involve her plans to run the training school at home, and until she’d done the complete paperwork Fiona had no intention of revealing the significance of that particular problem.
‘I think you ought to go now,’ she finally managed to say, the words emerging in a gasp of breathless haste that marked her continued confusion. Part of her did indeed want him to go, wanted him gone and wanted him to stay gone. But another part, long buried but now revelling in the freshness of a new existence, wanted him to stay, wanted to bury itself in his arms again, wanted to feel his kisses, to relish his touch.
‘I think you’re right, maybe,’ he said, but his eyes gave the lie to his words. Once again he was looking at her with an expression all too easy to fathom. It was the age-old look of a man for a woman, and the stir of desire that swirled through his dark eyes like a mist was reflected, Fiona feared, in her own.
She shivered inwardly, admitting and yet denying her own need, her own desire for his touch, for his kisses. And mostly, she knew, for his understanding, his strength.
Again she shivered. After Richard, traitorous, lying, cheating Richard, she had sworn herself never to be under any man’s control, never to give anyone the power to use her, to determine her path in life.
A woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle. The catchy proverb of the women’s lib movement floated through her mind unbidden, causing Fiona to blurt out a tiny and embarrassing giggle.
The giggle turned to laughter, laughter which bordered on hysteria until she looked up to see the astonished look on Dare’s face. He was staring down at her as if she’d lost her mind, and his expression of concern was immediately sobering, although there was no logical reason why it should have been.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It’s just that …’ And she told him of her irrelevant thought, although she didn’t try to explain it. Dare endured the explanation, one dark eyebrow raised either in disagreement or disbelief.
‘It’s your theory and you’re welcome to it,’ he finally said. ‘Although how it affects our current problem, I’m damned if I know. So let’s get back to the issues at hand. You’re out of a place to train, and I gather from what you’ve said that you’ve nowhere else to go. So what’s the plan, and, since I’m supposedly responsible, how can I help?’
‘I only have the last class of this semester to worry about, and I’ve already arranged to hold it here on Saturday, presuming the weather’s OK,’ Fiona replied in a voice so calm she hardly recognised it. How could he switch off so quickly? Her own body still tingled from his brief lovemaking, her lips still burned f
rom his kisses and her whole being was totally aware of his presence, yet he was calmly talking business as if it were nine o’clock on a Monday morning.
Then she realised that her own calm approach wasn’t so terribly dissimilar, and she had to try and restrain yet another chuckle at her blatant double standard.
The move brought her a quick look of alertness from Fraser, but he didn’t comment on it.
‘And what about next semester? I can’t imagine you giving up just because you’ve lost this particular building,’ he probed. ‘Have you got something else lined up, or what?’
‘I ... I’m working on that,’ she hedged, still unwilling to get into all the details of her idea about running the school from home.
Dare Fraser wasn’t so easily put off. Nor, she quickly discovered, was he as ignorant of her situation as she might have thought.
‘Working on it — how? You’ve probably got damn-all chance of finding another vacant warehouse; if it hadn’t been for a long-running zoning dispute you wouldn’t have had the one you did. So are you going to put up a training shed here and work from home? It would be logical, provided you can get the people to drive this far.’
Fiona stood silent, riveted to the spot by the accuracy of his guessing, but more so by his pin-pointing of the one factor she hadn’t even considered.
‘It’s ... a possibility,’ she admitted finally. ‘And surely the distance wouldn’t be a problem; we’re not that far from the city.’ She thought immediately of two similar dog-training schools she knew of, in the north of the state, which drew a clientele from far greater distances.
‘You’re forgetting the Hobart mentality,’ Dare replied with a rueful smile. ‘Or else you just haven’t thought it out carefully enough. Don’t you know there are people who haven’t crossed the bridge since it got knocked down?’
‘You’re joking,’ she replied, then saw by his expression that he wasn’t, not at all. Hobart’s Tasman Bridge had been partly destroyed when it was struck by a wayward ship in 1975. The resultant disruptions had been largely responsible for the steady growth of the eastern shore as a self-contained and independent community.
Love Thy Neighbour Page 11