‘I’m not,’ she lied, then found herself stuck for words as she contemplated what he’d really said. It was too easy to remember when she’d thought he was the one able to read minds — or her own, at least, which was the problem.
But now she was faced with a quite different problem as Phelan turned to stand close to her, taking full advantage of the bridge rail at her back.
‘You reckon you can read my mind now?’ he asked, and his voice, though soft, echoed like surf in her head. His pale eyes seemed to expand until they were all she could see, as he lowered his mouth to capture her lips.
Vashti’s first reaction had been to twist away, to somehow escape this intimacy she both wanted and feared. But his hands were on the rail, holding her body immobile without ever quite touching her. Only their lips touched, and his kiss was gentle, undemanding.
Vashti’s lips parted, accepting his kiss without really replying to it. Her instinctive need to lift her arms, to touch him, was forestalled by an equally instinctive caution that thrust through her mind with his own words tumbling over and over and over. ‘The enemy ... enemy ... enemy ...’
But in her mouth was the taste of him, sharp and clean, in her nostrils the faint scent of his aftershave. No enemy taste, no enemy scent.
And then his hands were on her waist, pulling her closer to him, and her own hands were lifting, pressed between them in a barrier that did nothing against the warmth and firmness of his body.
She could feel his arousal as his hand slid down to hold her hips tight against him, and now his kiss was firmer, demanding a response she couldn’t hide or deny.
‘Vashti…’ His voice was soft, a whisper lifting from his tongue as her mouth parted to accept his deeper kiss. Under her fingers she could feel the muscles flex as he breathed, could feel his nipples firm to her involuntary exploration.
Madness, this! As his lips left her mouth to trace a path of shuddering torment along her cheek, then down along the arched hollow of her throat, she couldn’t stop herself twisting to ease his way. Her hands, thrusting against the muscles of his chest, were no barrier to the lips that wandered unerringly down the front of her blouse, much less to the fingers that now had slid beneath it and were lightly rippling upwards along the nubbles of her spine.
The gasping of her own breath thundered inside her head, the sound mingling with the warmth of his breath as it sighed and sang beside her ear. And with all, another sound — that of children’s voices raised in play.
Vashti was struggling to free herself even as that noise became evident, struggling so fiercely that she almost tipped over the bridge railing as Phelan also heard, and stopped his plunder of her senses.
Her eyes blazing with embarrassment and anger, she had her blouse tucked in again and was running desperate fingers through her hair, not daring to look at Phelan, hardly daring to open her eyes, when the children gambolled into view from behind the French Memorial Fountain.
And when she did look up, it was to meet laughing, ice-green eyes that danced with what she could only construe as satisfaction.
It took her several deep breaths to recover any semblance of composure, to calm the waves of sensuous passion and fiery rage that surged side by side through her body. Her legs felt like limp ropes; without the railing to hang on to, she would surely have collapsed at the feet of this horrid, laughing man.
‘I’m sure you think it’s hilarious,’ she finally managed to snarl. ‘Saved by the laughter of the little children? How frightfully convenient! What chapter is that supposed to be, I wonder?’
Phelan met her glare squarely, his eyes darker now, somehow, totally unreadable except for the vestiges of passion that flared like sunspots against his irises.
‘What are—?’ He got no further before Vashti flung herself past his relaxed arm and stalked away, unwilling to hear his answer, wanting only to get away from the turbulence of his presence.
Her heels clattered on the bridge deck, then thudded along the pathway as she surged forward, head down, intent only on escape. But he was beside her in mere strides, and there he stayed as she plunged along the track, oblivious to her direction.
And he stayed beside her, not touching her, not speaking, but moving with cat-like grace, easily keeping up, and hovering like an extra shadow. Vashti tried to ignore his presence, couldn’t, tried to freeze him by sheer force of will, failed.
And in the end she halted, breathing as quickly and frantically as she had in his arms. But not now with the unchecked warmth of his body against her; now she was icy-cold and shivering, despite the relative warmth of the day.
‘You ... you ...’ She couldn’t even find the words, though they scurried inside her head like so many bumper-cars, bouncing off each other without pattern.
‘I’m a rotter, I know,’ he said with a half-grin. ‘Or should we try something really literary, like “depraved lecher” or “scoundrel”? I’ve always quite liked “scoundrel”, although I can’t remember ever using it. Good lord, woman, what’s so horribly awful about a stolen kiss in a park?’
The question stunned her into silence, thwarting the savage reply that had been forming on her lips.
Stolen kiss? Compared to her own feelings of having been literally controlled, it sounded so ... so little. But in reality, she thought, what else had it been? She had indeed been kissed, but he hadn’t actually touched her in any way that could be described as intimate. Except that he had! He’d touched her with great intimacy, but the touch had been in her mind, in her very being.
And she couldn’t possibly describe, or indeed admit, just how intimate that touch had been, couldn’t let him realise how easily he’d breached her defences, how he’d stirred feelings she hadn’t wanted stirred.
‘Stolen kiss? Is that what it was?’ she demanded scathingly. ‘That’s a pretty simple description for some quite juvenile groping, I’d have thought. And I am not particularly impressed by such antics, Mr Keene, unlike your fictional heroines.’
‘Ah.’ He breathed the word softly, almost thoughtfully, as he stood at a respectful distance, meeting her fiery gaze with eyes as calm and still as glacial tarns.
His stare seemed to go on forever, as if he felt the calmness in his own eyes could somehow bridge the almost tangible link with her own.
‘Especially,’ he said then, still speaking so softly that she could barely hear, ‘in public.’
‘At all!’ Vashti replied, trying to force into her voice a firmness she didn’t quite feel. Damn the man anyway! All he had to do was look at her, and she could feel her resolve weakening.
‘OK.’ The reply was too quick, too simple. ‘No more juvenile groping. And I apologise; I should have known better.’
The admission and the totally unexpected apology left her weapon-less, not to mention speechless. She could only stand there and force herself to meet his eyes — eyes that now glimmered with hidden laughter, eyes that denied both admission and apology while forcing her to accept both.
‘Let’s continue on our way, then, shall we?’ he finally said, and turned along the path towards the tropical glasshouse and the cactus house. Vashti, her anger with Phelan defused and her anger with herself boiling furiously but undisclosable, paused only a moment before joining his casual stroll.
They walked for half an hour in a sort of rigid silence, a situation that grew increasingly uncomfortable for Vashti. She kept seeing things she wanted to share, but stubbornly held to the seemingly agreed silence. Her anger had faded against the spectacular beauty in the tropical displays and the manifold shapes and colours of the cacti.
Only when Phelan paused on the bridge at the tranquil lily pond did a flicker of her former anger emerge, but it couldn’t be sustained, not even when she stumbled in the cool depths of the fern house and his fingers leapt to steady her, only to release her with an unexpected suddenness before she could even think to object.
And even as she murmured her thanks, it was to his moving flank, drawing only a sort of
grunted acceptance.
‘This is stupid.’ Vashti stepped up her pace, thrusting herself around to halt him, making him face her.
‘What is?’ The question belied the glimmer of amusement in pale eyes, an amusement made all the more obvious by one dark eyebrow cocked to reveal it.
‘This ... this attitude! That’s what.’
‘Attitude? My attitude-or yours?’ Now his eyes actually laughed; even his voice chuckled behind a wry half-grin.
‘Ours, if that makes it any easier,’ Vashti replied sternly. She was giving in, and knew it, but the alternative was a day totally ruined, and she didn’t fancy that.
‘If we keep going on like this it’s going to ruin the whole day for both of us,’ she insisted. ‘And I ... I don’t want that. I really enjoyed lunch and, well, I don’t want the day to end on a sour note, that’s all.’
‘Ah,’ Phelan said, again drawing out the sound as he held her eyes with his own. ‘But the day isn’t over yet, is it? Who knows what’s yet to come?’
‘Well, I just wanted to say that I’m sorry I overreacted back there; that’s all.’ Vashti had to drop her eyes to make the admission, but make it she must. She was not and never had been a vengeful person, and found it impossible to remain angry for any length of time.
‘OK. And I’m sorry I gave you cause,’ he replied soberly. ‘Although I’m not one damned bit sorry I kissed you, even if I did apologise. You’re far too pretty not to be kissed. I may even,’ he added with a roguish grin, ‘do it again some time, and you can decide for yourself whether that’s a threat or a promise.’
‘Definitely a threat,’ Vashti replied lightly, trying to maintain the conversation in a light-hearted vein.
And she felt a curious little lurch in her tummy when he grinned and replied, ‘Only in public. And if we walk much further without a break, even that threat would be hollow, because I’d be too tired to be threatening. Come sit down in this wondrously named Wombat One picnic shelter and tell me the story of your life,’
‘I’d much rather listen to the story of yours,’ Vashti replied, thankfully moving into the shade. ‘My life story’s far too boring to bother with.’
Which, in her own mind, it was. Only somehow it didn’t seem so under Phelan Keene’s gentle but skilled probing. She found herself revealing more than she realised, especially when he adroitly turned the subject to her work.
They had left the botanical gardens and climbed up the steep slope to the children’s playground and then down the slope again towards Cleary’s Gates before Vashti realised just how much Phelan had been pumping her about her job and the way things really worked in the taxation office, and the realisation made her stop dead in her tracks.
‘I suppose you’ve been told before that you’re cunning and devious and very, very clever at questioning people,’ she charged. ‘But I can tell you now that there’s nothing to be gained by it.’
Which was as far as she dared go without coming out with a direct accusation that he was quizzing her merely to gather material for the book, that he really didn’t care that much about Vashti herself, about how she felt, about how she feared his interest, feared for her privacy.
‘That’s what you think,’ replied Phelan as they reached the edge of the busy Brooker Highway. Then he reached out to take her hand as he briskly gauged the traffic in both directions. ‘But now isn’t the time to yammer on about it; come on, before one of us gets run over.’
They dashed to the centre barricade, then on to the top of Stoke Street. By the time they’d wended their way through north Hobart to where Phelan had parked his utility, Vashti had mostly forgotten her concerns, deciding she’d told him nothing compromising anyway.
But a different caution took hold with his offer then to drive her home. If he did that, she’d have to invite him in for coffee — but she had no milk in the flat — or a drink — she didn’t have a drop except for some aged cooking sherry — or...
‘I’ll only have time to just drop you off and maybe share a very quick coffee if you’d be so kind. I’ve got somewhere I have to stop before I head back to the farm,’ he said, as if reading her mind. And if so, could he read the turmoil there? The incident in the park notwithstanding, she felt at least reasonably comfortable with Phelan here on the street.
But to be quite honest with herself, the thought of having him in her tiny flat, where his dominant personality would be overwhelming...
‘All right, then, but I’ll have to impose on you to stop so I can get some milk,’ she replied, safe now in the implications of his remark.
She was leaving the milk bar, having decided on the spur of the moment to pig out on some rich chocolate biscuits as well, and was crossing the street to where Phelan was parked when the blast of sports-car exhaust warned her to leap back on the footpath.
‘Fool!’ she muttered, only half conscious that the passenger in the low-slung machine appeared strikingly familiar.
Phelan, having noticed the incident, was scowling into his rear-view mirror when Vashti slid into the passenger seat, but if he too had recognised Janice Gentry it went unmentioned.
It wasn’t until they’d arrived in front of Vashti’s flat that his scowl totally disappeared, but he was positively beaming when he walked round to open the utility’s door for her.
‘Now that you’ve got milk and bikkies, I reckon that cup of coffee would go down extremely well,’ he said, his pale eyes a vision of innocence, backed up by the broad grin.
‘I thought you had somewhere you had to be?’ she replied hastily, forcing a smile of her own to cover the sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Of course he’d had somewhere else to go — until he’d seen that Janice Gentry wasn’t about to be there!
‘I did, but I’ve decided it wasn’t that important after all,’ he replied. And his bland expression covered what she assumed must be bitter disappointment.
She tried not to show her own disappointment as she met his smile and said brightly, ‘All right, then, but you’ll have to promise to behave.’
And could have kicked herself! What stupidity, to be instigating word games with this man after the day’s earlier incident. But Phelan, as if perceiving her uncertainty, only nodded. Then he held up one hand, fingers crossed, and shot her one of those devastating little-boy grins.
It wasn’t until they were inside the flat that he reached out, impishly, to push her glasses up into place, saying, ‘You worry far too much, Vashti,’ then turned away before she could reply and began to prowl the small lounge room while Vashti put the kettle on and began to spoon out the instant coffee.
She watched silently as he moved blatantly through the room, peering at her small collection of paintings, her records, and her eclectic range of books. These filled almost every available space in the small flat, and Phelan was still inspecting them when the water had boiled.
He glanced up to meet her enquiring eyes, then grinned hugely and remarked, ‘I suppose it’s rude of me, but nosing through other people’s bookshelves is one habit I’ve never been able to break.’
‘I don’t mind,’ she replied. ‘It would hardly be fair, considering that’s one bad habit we share.’
‘Aha! Something in common. Now, at least, we’ve got a place to start.’
‘What are you talking about?’ She set the tray down on the coffee-table, then moved to sit in a single chair, leaving the couch to Phelan.
‘Our relationship, of course. Or didn’t you think we were going to have one?’ There was mischief in his pale eyes now, and the start of a grin, as he sprawled on to the couch and reached for his coffee, waving a rejection of the milk and sugar.
‘I’ll have a bikkie, though. If you have to get through them all by yourself you’re liable to get fat, and we wouldn’t want that. Would we?’
‘What relationship?’ Vashti ladled more sugar than usual into her own coffee, suspiciously holding Phelan’s mocking gaze as she did so.
‘Ah,’ he replied. ‘Well,
now, we’ll just have to wait and see about that, I reckon.’ But the look in his eyes said something quite different. There was again that slightly predatory gleam as his eyes moved to touch her lips, to prowl the long expanse of her throat.
‘I do wish you’d stop that,’ she protested, hoping the protest would distract him from noticing the effect he was having on her. Even before his eyes had reached her breasts, Vashti was aware of how her nipples were firming, were tingling, almost as if he were touching them with his lips, his fingers.
‘Stop looking at you? Whatever for?’ And his grin was almost smug now. ‘I enjoy looking at you, dear Vashti, and I intend to do it every chance I get.’
Then the smugness was replaced by an obviously overdone expression of pensiveness as he complained, ‘Although I would prefer it if you’d give up wearing trousers; that’s almost a crime with legs like yours.’
‘You are incorrigible,’ Vashti retorted, unable to repress a chuckle at his deliberate put-on. ‘How would you feel if I started laying down the law to you about what you wear?’
‘Is that in the nature of a complaint?’ And his grin became decidedly devilish as she shook her head without thinking. She had never seen him, either casually, as now, or when dressed up, as he’d been for the funeral and for business meetings, when his clothes hadn’t fitted to perfection and suited him equally well. And he knew it, the rotter!
‘And you’ve never even seen my legs,’ he chuckled. ‘Yet.’ Those self-same legs, snugly encased in his trousers, seemed to stretch halfway across her lounge, and Vashti didn’t need to see them to know their strength, to recall the feel of them against her as he’d held her close to him.
‘I do wish you’d stop trying to work up these fictional scenarios,’ she said, the crossness in her voice more put on than real. ‘You insist on mistaking facts for fiction, which is a truly ridiculous way to go about things.’
‘Oh, I know the difference. Don’t let my baby sister steer you wrong on that score,’ he replied. Then, before Vashti could think to reply, ‘And we’re not going to talk business now and ruin a perfectly enjoyable afternoon, not when we’re already scheduled to meet on Monday and finish off this damned family tax audit thing. For now, there are far more pleasant subjects, had we only the time to explore them.’
A Taxing Affair Page 6