‘Maybe we can manage not to disagree so often if we have a neutral buffer, provided, of course, we can keep her quiet — which is seldom easy,’ Phelan said then, taking each girl by the hand and turning to start off down the footpath. ‘But we are going to eat, because arguing on an empty stomach is bad for the complexion. You lot mightn’t have to worry, but I’m too old to take risks.’
He smiled at each girl in turn, then cast a sideways glance at Vashti, mischief lurking in his eyes. ‘And I think we will stop and let you change, Ms Sinclair. I don’t want you to feel at a disadvantage if the arguments get really interesting.’
Vashti allowed herself to be led along like, she thought, a lamb to the slaughter. And although she was on one side of the trio, she quickly felt as if she were square in the middle.
Phelan and his sister seemed to have agreed to disagree about anything and everything. Even as they walked to where Alana’s car was parked — ‘No room for all three of us in that paddock ute I’m reduced to driving,’ Phelan said, adding, ‘My temperament will improve out of sight when my own car arrives from the mainland next week’ — the siblings argued and scrapped like a couple of ten-year-olds.
Vashti, an only child, found it a quite astonishing performance, not least so because, despite the fervent passions displayed, there was a clear thread of familial love and affection that never wavered.
She already knew that Alana shared a similar rapport with the elder brother, Bevan, but, he being a less volatile personality than Phelan, the relationship was less flamboyant.
How wonderful, though, she thought. Three children so vividly different in temperament and yet so united as a family despite their differences. Old Bede Keene must have been proud; each of his children in their own way had obviously lived up to his influence.
Memory of the old man sobered Vashti, and by the time they reached her flat she was half tempted to try once again to beg out of the luncheon.
But no chance.
‘You’ve got five minutes to make yourself presentable,’ Phelan remarked with a stern glance at his wristwatch. ‘We won’t come in; doesn’t look like there’d be room for all three of us.’ This with a grin that supposedly showed he was only joking, but if you dilly-dally, I warn you, I’ll come in and get you, ready or not!’
Vashti got out of the back seat and ran for the door of her flat. There was nothing else for it! Politeness should have required her to invite them in for a drink, or at least coffee, but Phelan hadn’t been far off in saying there wasn’t room. And she didn’t have a drop of milk in the place, much less any sort of drink to offer.
She was back in seven minutes, the last two of which had been spent applying minimal make-up while keeping one eye on the door, as if Phelan Keene might be expected to kick it in like some marauding vandal.
Her grotty jeans were replaced by tidy trousers, the sweatshirt by a jersey blouse in shades of greys and pinks. Her hair, normally gathered in a tidy knot or braid for work, cried out for similar treatment today, but instead was quickly brushed and allowed to hang free.
There was hardly time to intellectualise the reasons; Vashti just knew she felt better and looked better with her hair free, though it was an extravagance she seldom allowed herself. It certainly wasn’t, she determined, anything to do with Phelan Keene.
He was the most contrary individual, one day treating her as if she were, indeed, the enemy, only to switch attitudes without logic or warning and treat her as ... well ... not as the enemy, despite his remark. Not today — or at least not yet.
‘Yet’, she discovered upon her return to the car, was a relative term.
‘If you were going to take that long, you could at least have worn legs,’ Phelan muttered over his shoulder as she got into the rear of the car. He cast a disparaging look at her trousers, then glanced pointedly out of the front window as if to forestall any reply.
‘You look lovely,’ said his sister with a smile in the rear-view mirror. ‘And you, brother, dear, should be grateful for such attractive company and keep your chauvinistic remarks to yourself.
‘He doesn’t mean them anyway,’ she cried over her shoulder to Vashti. ‘It’s just part of his “Aren’t I wonderful? — I’m a famous writer” role. He doesn’t think it’s proper to be a real, human man and write all that sex-and-chauvinism macho rubbish at the same time.’
‘Girls with good legs shouldn’t be allowed to wear trousers,’ Phelan retorted firmly. ‘It’s all right for you; you’ve got fat ankles, and you’re my sister anyway. I have to put up with you.’
‘You have to put up with both of us,’ Alana replied without taking her eyes off the road as she squealed into a minuscule hole in the traffic. ‘So put a lid on it, or I’ll throw my ladylike manners to the wind and we’ll treat Vashti to a real Keene domestic over lunch.’
Phelan shrugged, obviously bored, and having made his point anyway. ‘Just don’t throw away your rudimentary driving skills,’ he muttered. ‘I’d like to get there in one piece, if it’s all the same to you.’
‘He taught me to drive,’ Alana replied, turning to grin over the seat-back at Vashti.
‘Only enough for you to sneak a pass out of an examiner who was blind-drunk at the time,’ Phelan said, bracing himself as she flew into the railway roundabout like a rally driver.
‘The examiner,’ Alana confided over her shoulder with seemingly total inattention to the road ahead, ‘quite liked my fat ankles.’
They swept round the back of the Domain and into the botanical gardens car park, where Phelan emerged from the vehicle, giving thanks to St Christopher, and only, or so it seemed, helping Vashti out of the car as a sort of second thought.
But there was nothing secondary about the way he swept his gaze over her figure as she emerged, nor about the look in his eye as he held her fingers in a firm, over-long grasp.
And when he gallantly took a girl on each arm and declared, ‘I’ll be the envy of every bloke in the place,’ as he marched them towards the restaurant, Vashti didn’t know what to make of him. Especially as she thought she heard a muttered ‘Even in trousers’ under his breath.
She was treated to what, for her, was a rare example of sibling bantering, throughout a splendid lunch, and Vashti kept finding herself thinking how lucky both Phelan and Alana were.
An only child herself, she found their constant point-scoring confusing at first, then realised it was simply their way of expressing very deep emotions while sharpening their wits at the same time.
She’d have been content just to sit back and enjoy the performance, except that both kept trying to draw her into their games, which would have been fine if she’d known how, known the rules. But the whole thing was quite beyond her experience, and Vashti finally had to say so.
‘An only child? Your poor thing,’ was Alana’s immediate response. ‘Not that there haven’t been moments in my young life when I’d have envied you.’ Then, with sudden seriousness, ‘But not very many.’
‘You’re talking rubbish,’ Phelan declared, throwing a very strange look across the table at Vashti. ‘At least she’ll be able to grow up and marry without making some poor fool’s life a living hell.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk," retorted his sister. ‘You’re never going to grow up, and any woman who’d have you wants her head read! Thirty-six years old and he still spends half his life in fantasy-land,’ she continued with a quirky grin to Vashti. ‘He writes about all these macho heroes and busty, steamy heroines and then gets round with a ... an accountant!’
‘Now hang about!’ Phelan snapped. ‘There’s no call to get personal.’ Then his scowl vanished, replaced by a broad knowing grin. ‘And don’t forget that our Ms Sinclair is an accountant, so watch your mouth, little sister.’
‘Vashti is a person, not a walking calculator,’ Alana replied, totally undismayed by her faux pas.
Vashti squirmed in her chair, wishing frantically for the waitress to return on any excuse, just to stop this lin
e of discussion before it went any further.
Phelan, on the other hand, was clearly enjoying seeing her squirm.
‘All women have calculating minds, so you’ll have to be more specific than that. What have you got against accountants, anyway?’ he demanded of his sister.
‘You’re a filthy chauvinist pig,’ was the fiery response, drawing only a laugh, which even Vashti had to share.
‘That round clearly goes to ... Mr Keene,’ she said haltingly, flustered at having nearly used his first name while so aware that he was insisting on not using hers.
‘See what I mean?’ he immediately asked, adding to her confusion. And his eyes twinkled with satisfaction as he declared, ‘Vashti — obviously a woman of splendid breeding and exemplary manners — couldn’t bring herself to call me Phelan on such short acquaintance, and is far too refined to call me a chauvinist pig, so her calculating mind took over and came up with a proper compromise.’
‘She was just being polite.’
‘Was she?’
‘No!’ declared Vashti, suddenly embarrassed and just a bit exasperated by being talked about as if she weren’t even there. ‘She is going to the loo. And when she gets back, she will expect to have coffee and a change of subject, or she is going home.’
Whereupon she left the table and practically ran from the room, not sure whether to be truly hurt or insulted by it all, but dead sure she needed a break from Phelan Keene’s persistent scrutiny.
Even when he’d been in full-bore verbal war with his sister, the man had used his eyes more as weapons against Vashti.
Without lifting a finger, he’d stroked her hair, caressed the long line of her throat, undone each and every button on her blouse and skilfully touched her nipples to an exquisite tenderness.
And by lifting only one finger, he’d quietly hitched up her glasses to ensure that she was unable to miss seeing exactly what he was up to.
Removing the hateful glasses, she splashed cold water into her eyes and stared at her reflection in the mirror. Her nipples still tingled from Phelan’s gaze, and despite the excellent meal she felt empty, hollow, hungry. Stupid, she thought. Stupid to feel this way; stupid to be here in the first place.
‘And stupid to let him get to you like that!’ she snarled with a scowl at the myopic image before her.
She returned to the table determined to drink her coffee, pay her share of the bill, and then leave. It wasn’t a long walk home across the Domain, and walking would do her good.
But when Phelan stood up at her approach and walked round to hold her chair for her, she found herself too readily noticing the easy, cat-like grace of the man, and when he smiled and said quietly after returning to sit down, ‘My sister apologises,’ — making not the slightest gesture of apology himself — she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Alana ignored him. ‘I have to behave,’ she said with a ten-year-old’s scowl. ‘Or he says he’ll put me in a book. That’s his direst threat, you know? And what’s worse—he means it. You’ll see, when you get round to reading that heap of sadistic garbage you bought this morning.’
She leaned across the table, ignoring Phelan as if he didn’t exist, weren’t there, weren’t listening. ‘I’m in all his books, but I never get anything exciting to do, never get any of the really dishy men, or the hotshot lovers. I did get killed once, but that’s about it. Such a boring existence.’
Vashti couldn’t help it. She erupted with laughter so intense that it brought tears to her eyes and an ache to her over-stuffed empty-feeling stomach.
Because of course it was true! She hadn’t picked it up, but probably would have; there had been something vaguely familiar about Alana ever since Vashti had read the first of Phelan’s epics. Now she realised what it was.
She laughed, then laughed some more, deliberately not looking at Phelan, not daring to include him in what had suddenly become a girls-only joke.
‘But surely you enjoy it?’ she asked in a serious deadpan, leaning across to meet Alana’s secretive gaze. ‘I realise being killed isn’t much fun, but surely the fame, the recognition ...’
‘It’s all right, I suppose. But you know what really gets on my wick?’ Alana hissed in a conspiratorial whisper. Vashti, wide-eyed now and quite revelling in her part, sat with lips parted in anticipation.
Alana’s voice dropped even further. ‘The man’s colour-blind! Or else he’s just got no taste; I’m not sure which. So I ended up being dead in clothes you or I wouldn’t be caught dead in!’
‘Next time, you’ll go in fat ankles and all; I’ve spared you that so far at least,’ Phelan threatened now, too obviously trying to control his own chuckles.
His sister was totally nonplussed. Vashti could only sit with bated breath for the explosion she thought must come if this continued much further.
‘Well, what about Vashti, then?’ Alana demanded. ‘You can’t give her fat ankles; she’d have you jailed for tax evasion.’
Vashti felt her heart leap, her every cautionary instinct alert, poising her to flee, given half a chance.
But she couldn’t, could only sit like a mesmerised prey animal, awaiting her fate. Every fear, every trepidation about Phelan’s plans for the book with her involvement soared into flight inside her skull, making a roaring sound so loud that she could barely hear him reply.
‘She might anyway,’ Phelan mused, now turning his gaze once again to caress Vashti’s throat. ‘No, for Vashti I’d have to leave everything just exactly as it is. Even,’ with one finger at the bridge of his nose, ‘the glasses.’
His eyes, oblivious to his sister’s interest, moved lower, caressing Vashti’s breasts with obvious pleasure. ‘Except I don’t think I could kill her off as easily as I did you. It would have to be seduction, with perhaps a touch of revenge involved, I think. Heavy on the seduction.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ Vashti heard herself saying, wondering that she could speak at all for the turmoil inside her. And, astonished, continued. ‘I mean, with the price of nail polish today, torture would be just so expensive.’
No mention of the torture already endured, the promise she read in his eyes of more — far more — to come. There was no longer any question in her mind; Phelan’s alleged book was no more than an excuse. He was out to get her, and didn’t mind what methods he used in the process.
‘I’ll remember that,’ Phelan said, signalling for the account. And his eyes told her he definitely would.
So she was instantly on guard when they got outside and Phelan suggested Alana leave he and Vashti to walk off their lunch.
‘We can have a good look at the gardens and then it’s not that far through the Domain to where the ute’s parked,’ he suggested. ‘Or I might even walk you home, if you’re game.’
The offer was too sudden, too unexpected. Her instincts told her to refuse, but weren’t quick enough to stop her tongue.
‘I think that might be very nice,’ Vashti found herself saying, feeling yet again that impossible feeling of emptiness in her tummy.
‘You watch him,’ was Alana’s parting remark, made without, Vashti couldn’t help noticing, the slightest hint of any argument. ‘He’ll be all shirty because we ganged up on him, and he’s likely as not to get frisky on a full stomach. Just remember you won’t be able to run very fast with tidy little ankles like that.’
‘Racehorses do,’ Vashti replied with a grin, and added, with a bravery she certainly didn’t feel, ‘Besides, could it possibly be worse than being put in a book?’
Which got her a speculative glance from Alana and a waved farewell; she didn’t dare look to see Phelan’s reaction.
Her own reactions concerned Vashti quite enough by themselves, starting the instant he took her hand in his and said, one eyebrow cocked in sardonic amusement, ‘I’ve always wanted to be a jockey.’
CHAPTER FOUR
Phelan continued to hold her hand, rather to Vashti’s surprise, as he led her off into the Royal Botanical Gardens.<
br />
And he kept holding her hand, not that she was terribly disposed to have it back, as they wandered amid the vast array of trees and shrubs.
‘I haven’t seen these new Japanese gardens,’ he said, thus breaking a rather long silence as they walked. Vashti hadn’t either, but didn’t say so. For some reason, the need to talk had been lessened with Alana’s departure; she was content just to stroll and enjoy the experience in silence.
It wasn’t until they paused on the bright scarlet bridge in the Japanese gardens, both of them staring down into the tranquil runs of water between the rock waterfalls, that words seemed necessary.
‘I really envy you your family,’ Vashti said without looking up at Phelan. ‘It comes of my being an only child, 1 suppose, but you’re all so ... so vibrant, and so strongly supportive, even if you do pretend to bicker all the time.’
‘What do you mean — pretend?’ he scoffed. ‘We do bicker all the time. Or at least Alana and I do. And she’s even worse with Bevan, because he’s more the strong, silent type, and my dear child sister simply can’t abide silence, I sometimes think.’
‘I quite like her,’ Vashti replied.
‘Which means what? That you don’t like me? Or that you’re not saying?’
She looked up to see one dark eyebrow cocked in amusement, and was suddenly only too aware of the hand that was captive in his lean, strong fingers.
‘You really like a good stir,’ she replied evasively, making the reply more question than comment.
‘Of course.’
‘It’s not something I’m very good at.’
‘Except over the phone, I’ve noticed.’ And once again that eyebrow went up.
‘It must help to have a good memory,’ she quickly blurted.
‘And you don’t?’
‘Only for figures,’ Vashti replied, and then flinched at the innuendo as Phelan ensured she couldn’t free her hand.
‘Now you’re even stealing my lines,’ he chuckled. ‘You don’t need a great memory if you can read minds. And you don’t have to be embarrassed about it, either.’
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