by Robyn Donald
No, Jacinta thought when the housekeeper had gone, I’m not in the least disappointed.
And she went on being not disappointed for the next two days, until she found herself gazing at the page number on the computer screen with something like awe. That was a lot of pages, especially since she was only a two-finger typist.
It was late in the afternoon, the drowsy, slightly ragged end of the day when the sky looked washed out and the earth longed for the refreshing arrival of dusk.
This November was shaping up to be the hottest she’d ever experienced—too hot and dry for farmers. Only the previous evening Dean had told her he was worried about the prospect of a drought. They’d met when she’d gone for a walk before dinner, after being chased from the kitchen by the competent Fran. Dean had stopped his four-wheeled farm bike, and they’d chatted.
He’d noticed her interested look at the quad and offered, ‘I’ll give you a go on it if you like.’
‘With dogs or without?’ she asked, eyeing the two black and white collies that perched on the back. ‘I might tip it over and they’d get hurt.’
For answer he got off, whistled the dogs onto the grass, and Jacinta spent an enjoyable half hour while he showed her how to drive the bike.
‘A natural,’ he said eventually. ‘I’ll hop on the back and you can give me a ride to the homestead.’
Elated at her new accomplishment, Jacinta had done just that, finishing with a flourish in the courtyard outside the back door, laughing as Fran came out to see.
‘Thank you,’ she said, smiling up at Dean when he got down to help her off. ‘I haven’t had so much fun for ages!’
He turned to Fran. ‘She’s a born farm bike nder.’
‘Rather her than me,’ Fran said, smiling as her glance switched from his face to Jacinta’s and back again. ‘And you’d better start looking for a born rainmaker, if the long-range weather forecast is right.’
‘Are we in for a drought?’ Jacinta asked.
‘If we don’t get rain soon,’ he said, squinting at the cloudless sky, ‘we’ll be in deep and serious trouble.’
But although Jacinta had sympathised, she was enjoying the heat.
Putting down the pages of her manuscript, she wandered out onto the verandah and picked up the mug of peppermint tea, pretending that she wasn’t waiting for the sound of a car.
A glance at her watch revealed that it was only five o’clock. Even if Paul did decide to come home tonight he wouldn’t be there until after six, unless he got off early.
With determination, she drank the peppermint tea and read the newspaper, then took the cup back to the kitchen.
‘You look beat,’ Fran said, coming in through the door with a great handful of salad greens from the herb garden. ‘As hot as me.’
‘I am.’ Jacinta washed and dried the mug, edgy and restless and unable to think of anything she wanted to do to fill in the time.
‘Why don’t you go for a swim?’ Fran asked.
Jacinta asked suspiciously, ‘How warm is the water?’
‘By November it’s as warm as it’s ever going to be.’
‘I suppose so.’ She put the cup and saucer away and said, ‘Actually, I’m a wimp about swimming. I have this fantasy that one day I’ll be rich enough to afford a heated pool.’
‘Join the club,’ Fran said cheerfully. ‘Paul swims most of the year.’
‘Masochist.’ But she wasn’t surprised.
Back in her room, she unearthed the bathing suit she’d thrust into a bottom drawer. Although an old bikini, it hadn’t been used much; while she’d looked after her mother she’d rarely had a chance to swim. Except for Fiji, of course, and then she’d stuck to early in the morning and late at night so that the sun wouldn’t burn her skin. Paul hadn’t seen her in it.
She got into it, pulled a tee-shirt over the top, and fossicked out a large towel adorned with a pattern of brightly coloured birds.
Fran was right. The water was seductively warm, so she swam for twenty minutes until, limbs languid and weighted with effort, she walked out of the sea, pulling her hair free from the old rubber cap that had kept it dry. It rioted around her head, the thick ginger curls lifting in the slight evening breeze.
At the sound of an engine she looked frantically around for her tee-shirt. But even as she set off towards the towel she heard Dean’s voice and relaxed.
‘Good swim?’ he asked, eyeing her with frank, not unpleasant admiration.
She smiled. ‘Wonderful. It’s so warm—too warm. I feel as though I’ve swum a hundred miles.’
He pushed his hat onto the back of his head and grinned at her. ‘It does that to you. The blue water’s early,’ he said. ‘The big game sportsmen’ll be catching marlin before long.’
‘What’s the blue water?’
‘Oh, tropical currents. Usually it doesn’t come inshore until after Christmas, but this year Davy Jones must have known you’d be here and sent it down early.’
Jacinta grinned up into his nice, unhandsome face. She liked Dean, and clearly he liked her; he’d told her all about Brenda, his fiancée, and that they planned to get married in a year’s time, and although he looked at Jacinta with candid appreciation there was nothing more subtle in his eyes than a healthy male enjoyment.
When the fairy godmothers had handed out her basic qualities at birth, they’d forgotten to include sex appeal. Boys had liked her, but very few had asked her out. Her mother used to say it was because she was taller than most of them; Jacinta knew she simply didn’t have that special quality that made men desperate.
Even Mark hadn’t wanted her body; he’d wanted somebody to control, to dominate, someone who’d boost his fragile ego.
‘I’d better go on up,’ she said. ‘It gets a bit chilly out of the water.’
She took a step, tripped, and saved herself with both her hands.
‘Here,’ Dean said, and hauled her upright. When she winced his grip tightened and he demanded, ‘What happened? You all right?’
‘I’m clumsy,’ she said lightly, ‘but I think I must have stood on a broken shell.’ She bent her leg at the knee, twisting to peer down at the uplifted sole of her foot.
‘It could have been glass. Let’s see,’ he said, dropping to a crouch beside her and taking her foot in his. ‘No, it’s not bleeding,’ he informed her after a thorough inspection, ‘but the skin’s marked.’
His thumb rubbed across the sensitive sole, and she gurgled and said, ‘You’re tickling!’
‘Sorry,’ he said, laughing and looking up at her with teasing eyes.
The sound of a quiet, ‘Good evening,’ cut into their shared amusement with the biting, brutal accuracy of a scalpel. Jacinta flinched as though she’d been struck, jerking her foot free from Dean’s grip.
He stood up, still smiling, and said, ‘G’day, Paul.’
Paul was still in his suit; he should have looked incongruously formal there on the beach, his shiny black city shoes half sunk in the sand, his head smoothly brushed and gold in the sinking sun.
Instead he looked terrifying. And yet there was nothing about the handsome face, nothing about the regular features or the cool blue eyes to set Jacinta’s heart thudding sickly, the adrenalin surging through every vein in a swift, warning flood.
Unless it was the splintering moment when his gaze raked the length of her scantily clad body before fixing on Dean’s face.
She drew in a ragged breath.
Apparently unaware of anything out of the ordinary, Dean went on cheerfully, ‘I need a word whenever you’ve got time.’
‘How about now?’ Paul didn’t look at Jacinta.
‘Yeah, fine.’ Dean directed his uncomplicated grin at her. ‘Catch you later.’
Jacinta watched them go up under the trees and walk across the lawn towards the back of the house. Slowly, carefully, she expelled the breath that had been imprisoned in her lungs, and bent to pick up the tee-shirt at her feet.
After pulling it on she
went back to the house and washed the sand from her legs under the tap beside the back door. She sat down on the steps and dried her feet, then hung her towel over the clothesline and went back inside, intent on seeking sanctuary in her bedroom.
She had to make herself walk normally past the closed door of the office because her whole instinct was to tiptoe.
As she showered the salt from her body she tried very hard to convince herself that she hadn’t sensed an overwhelming blast of antagonism from Paul. There was no reason for it, unless he thought that as an engaged man Dean should be a little more circumspect with women.
However, he hadn’t seemed angry with Dean.
How long had he been there? He must have seen her trip.
Perhaps he thought she tripped whenever a man came near her. Humiliation oozed through her, but she banished its slimy residue. All right, so she did care what he thought of her.
She was too conscious of Paul, too nervous and tense when he was around, and she was sick of it. She should leave, but—oh, why not admit it?—she wanted to stay.
Her childish infatuation wasn’t doing anyone any harm; it wasn’t as though she was making a nuisance of herself. And if she got hurt—well, she’d be the only one to know.
She chose her most concealing dress—a short-sleeved thing in soft, tawny cotton that flowed easily—hoping it would wipe from his mind the memory of her body in the scanty bikini.
And she stayed in her room, reading through the day’s work, until emerging as close to seven-thirty as she could without seeming to avoid Paul. Relieved to find the conservatory empty, she walked out onto the terrace and crouched beside the pond with its resident flotilla of goldfish—large, streamlined creatures of gold and bronze and an orange so intense it was like the heart of the sun.
They were interested in human company, these fish. ‘Hello,’ she said quietly, and they came swimming up, nosing the fingers she put in the water.
She laughed softly. ‘No, I haven’t got any food. Furthermore, Fran tells me you don’t need to be fed.’
‘Fran’s right,’ Paul said from behind, his deep voice toneless.
Jacinta leapt to her feet, turning a flushed, startled face to him. He’d come around the corner of the house, walking through the light of the westering sun.
‘Hello,’ she said, working hard at a casual smile.
‘Fran tells me you’ve been working all hours,’ he said, leaning against one of the pergola uprights. Wisteria blossom, white and purple and lilac, cast shadows on his angular features.
She nodded. ‘It’s coming along rather well,’ she said cautiously.
‘Are you actually making notes for a thesis?’
After a moment’s hesitation she admitted, ‘No. I’m fulfilling a promise I made to my mother before she died.’
He nodded, and because he didn’t ask she explained, ‘I didn’t want to tell Gerard because I could well be just wasting my time.’
It sounded both lame and defensive, and she wished she’d kept quiet.
‘I see,’ Paul said, his voice cool and non-committal. ‘Are you planning to go ahead with the Master’s degree?’
She should certainly have kept quiet. ‘I don’t know,’ she finally confessed, astounding herself. Taking her MA was the other promise she’d made to her mother, but for the first time she wondered whether she really wanted to do it. It made her feel disloyal and mean.
‘What will you do if you decide to give it a miss?’
‘I’ll find something,’ she said, irritated with him for probing.
What she’d like to do was continue writing, but she was a realist—she knew she was unlikely to get her manuscript published. Writing was a highly competitive field and she was a total novice. And even if she was good enough and lucky enough to be published, it could be years before she earned sufficient to be able to do it full-time.
His shaded face gave nothing away, whereas she was in the full glare of the sun; when she realised that she was staring at him she dropped her lashes and pretended to be very interested in the slowly cruising goldfish, feeling hot and foolish and gauche, and resenting both herself for responding so foolishly to him and him for conjuring up that response.
‘It’s not an enviable position to be in,’ he said after a moment, his voice judicial.
She shrugged. ‘I’ll manage. Did you always know you were going to be a lawyer?’
His mouth twisted. ‘I wanted to be an adventurer. At school—a very traditional boarding school—my best friend and I planned a life swashbuckling around the world, but my father was a solicitor who wanted me to follow in his footsteps. And as he was ill that’s what I did.’
A promise to a dying parent was hard to break. Smiling, Jacinta asked, ‘What happened to your friend? I suppose he turned into an accountant.’
Then she remembered what Gerard had told her about that best friend.
‘Oh,’ he answered with a chilling lack of emotion, ‘he fulfilled his dream. He developed from a tough kid to a dangerous man, who eventually gave everything up to grow grapes and make wine.’
With Aura, the woman Paul had wanted—probably still wanted.
Jacinta said, ‘And have you ever regretted making the decision to obey your father?’
His quiet laughter had a cynical note to it. ‘No, my father knew me better than I did. I enjoy what I do, and in its less overtly dramatic way it has enough adventure in it for me.’
He moved out from beneath the wisteria, and she was jolted once more by his sheer male beauty—the elemental golden glory of his colouring, the formation of the bones beneath his tanned skin that would ensure he made an extraordinarily handsome old man, the powerful male symmetry of wide shoulders and lean hips, long legs and muscled forearms—and by his personality that so totally overshadowed his looks.
Six inches shorter, she thought, with washed-out eyes and features like Quasimodo, and he’d still stand out in any crowd. That unforced authority—the indomitable mixture of intelligence and mastery and focus, of courage and endurance and resolution—rendered him unforgettable.
‘You’re fortunate in your profession,’ she said unevenly, an unbidden excitement fanning a flame inside her.
‘Very.’
When he came towards her she had to stop herself from stepping backwards, but her fleeing feet carried her sideways, and although she concentrated with ferocious intensity on not stumbling, her wretched sense of balance—or lack of it—let her down again. It wasn’t a dramatic lurch, but he caught her arm.
‘Careful, even if you do like the fish we don’t want you joining them.’
‘No,’ she said, rendered witless by the touch of his hand. ‘I’ve already had my swim for the day.’
‘And enjoyed it, I gather.’
‘Yes, it was super.’
Inside the room she moved away from him. When Dean had touched her she’d felt nothing, yet she’d shivered to the core of her being at the light pressure of Paul’s hand on her arm.
‘How’s your foot?’ he asked now, glancing down.
Trying to stop her toes from curling, she said, ‘What?’
‘Your foot.’ The words were patient, as though he were speaking to a child. Or a halfwit. ‘You cut it on the beach.’
‘No,’ she said, ‘I just stood on a sharp shell, I think. When we had a look there was nothing there.’
‘Good. Dean was worried in case there was glass on the beach, but it would have broken the skin. You’re sure a thin sliver didn’t work its way in?’
‘Quite sure,’ she said fervently.
‘In that case, sit down and I’ll get you something to drink.’
He chose chilled white wine, but didn’t try to persuade her to have any with him, instead giving her the lime and soda she asked for.
There was, she thought as she accepted the cold glass, nothing even vaguely threatening in his attitude. She’d just imagined things down on the beach.
Aloud, she said, ‘Did you have a good
time in Auckland?’
‘I actually flew to America,’ he said, smiling at her astonishment. ‘To Los Angeles.’
‘I didn’t know barristers went all around the world.’
‘We go wherever we’re needed. In this case, I had to organise a meeting with American lawyers to set up a deal for a film production company.’ He told her a little about it—no mention of names, nothing she could use to identify any of the people—and made her laugh several times with his ruthless puncturing of a couple of enormous egos.
‘Do you have much dealing with film producers?’ she asked.
‘Quite a lot. New Zealand’s becoming very popular for both film and television companies from overseas now, and where there’s money there are people determined to protect their investment.’
‘It sounds very glamorous,’ she said, looking out through the open French windows to the lawn. The late light was sifting down through the clouds of sunset, falling in thick rays across the lawn. Anticipation began to build in her, a slow, heady buzz that was so close to being physical she could almost feel it licking sensuously as fur across her skin.
‘It can be.’ His lashes fell, half concealing his eyes. ‘Would you like to come to a party with me in a couple of days’ time? It’s a wrap-up for a television series that’s just been made here.’
‘Oh—no, thank you,’ she said after a scant moment of frozen, yearning hesitation. ‘It sounds very interesting, but—’
One dark eyebrow lifted and he asked disconcertingly, ‘But what?’
Jacinta decided that the truth was the only way to go. ‘I don’t have the right clothes for it,’ she said bluntly, considering the sari for a micro-second before discarding the idea. ‘And I don’t have the money to buy any new ones.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He transferred his glance to the glass m his hand, surveying the cool gold liquid with its hints of green.
If he offers to buy me something, she thought furiously, I‘ll—I’ll—
But he went on tightly, ‘That was crass of me.’
She didn’t refute that. It had been crass—surprisingly so for a man whose courtesy seemed inbred. Pride kept her head high. Poverty was nothing to be ashamed of.