Trust Too Much

Simon laughed and said something in a low voice to Loren as she left them, trying to make her movements slow and even as it was haste and hesitation which had caused the physical disasters of her teens. The trouble was that somehow Simon had made her feel like a teenager again, all hot and bothered, and yet angry too, especially now that she kept catching him watching her with idly speculative interest as she moved around the room, renewing her acquaintance with old friends and being introduced to strangers.

But at least he hadn’t been kind!

As she had feared, everyone else was very kind, the more tactful pretending that there was nothing out of the ordinary about her homecoming, a few embarrassing her by referring openly to what had happened, and all firmly convinced of her innocence.

It made Simon Rhodes unique. Everyone else still saw her as the child she had been when she had left Hong Kong, Fee realised ruefully, although she wasn’t sure she found Simon’s view of her any more flattering.

At least Warren Bates ought to see her as an adult, having once been romantically interested in her, she reflected wryly, finally placing the young man who was approaching her now, and perhaps as the sort of adult she really was, without making any of Simon’s cynical and gratuitous assumptions.

Once Warren had seemed the most beautiful male creature in the world, and the green eyes with their thick fringe of black lashes still stirred her, but his personality seemed mediocre and somewhat repressed now. He spoke in polite platitudes, only becoming human when he mentioned Simon.

‘I saw you speaking to him when you came in. The man is a swine. I didn’t know he’d be here.’ His tone implied that he wouldn’t have come had he done so.

‘Oh, he and Charles are old friends. Their circle doesn’t seem to have changed much over the years, even if marriage has given most of the women new surnames,’ Fee laughed. ‘That redhead over there used to be Ismay Compton, for instance. She must have got over Simon if she can bear to be here. You have to give him credit for managing to stay friends with most of his ex-girlfriends.’

‘You seem very interested in him.’ Warren sounded resentfully suspicious and, remembering how Simon had once treated him, Fee was contrite.

‘Never mind Simon, tell me what you’ve been doing all these years…Only give me a minute first, please? I think Charles and Babs have forgotten to put any soft drinks out and I’m still too dehydrated from the flight yesterday to risk alcohol. Don’t go away.’

To Fee’s surprise, Loren Kincaid followed her into the kitchen.

‘You mustn’t mind Simon being so nasty to you,’ she told her kindly, examining the drinks Fee was extracting from the fridge and finding nothing of interest. ‘It’s just his way.’

‘Oh, I’m used to him,’ Fee assured her, touched.

‘I’m sure he knows you’re an innocent victim, really. Everyone who knows you says so, and it’s obvious from the newspaper stories—even to me, and Simon says I’m an airhead. But I’d better get back to him.’ She laughed bravely. ‘There are too many attractive women around for my liking. He really is awful!’

And in the end Loren would get hurt, just like all the others, Fee reflected drily. Simon was impossible.

Carefully, she carried a tray laden with a variety of non-alcoholic drinks into the large, elegantly furnished lounge and put it down, helping herself to a glass of mineral water as Warren Bates rejoined her. Suddenly she felt tired, and a little depressed, and she glanced longingly out towards the patio beyond the sliding glass doors which stood open.

‘I don’t think I’m really a party animal,’ she confided. ‘Let’s go outside for a minute, and you can tell me all your news. Or are you with someone?’

He wasn’t, so they sat on the stairs leading down to the swimming-pool, talking about simple things that didn’t hurt, and Fee found herself telling him how the house still belonged to her father.

‘It seemed practical for Charles to move in when he and Babs married because they’ll be going to England once his stint in charge of his father’s factories here is up. He used to tell people he was the modern equivalent of a remittance man—’

She broke off, hearing someone else behind them.

‘This isn’t very sociable of you, Fee,’ Simon Rhodes said mockingly. ‘Especially when you’re the guest of honour. Or do you intend to renew your acquaintance with each of us separately? You never much liked crowds, I remember. In that case, your time is up, Bates, and it’s my turn.’

His tone held an undercurrent that was obscurely significant, and Warren glared at him as he stood up, but he wasn’t old enough or sufficiently sure of himself to accept it as a challenge. Fee felt vaguely disappointed in him. She had learnt to fight back, however unsure of herself she might feel inwardly, so why hadn’t Warren?

But simple kindness and the sensitive awareness that any reference to his previous encounter with Simon Rhodes would discomfit him dictated that she wait until he had departed, muttering, before saying tartly, ‘Talk about déjà vu! What have you got against him?’

One of the strangest things about Simon was the way his presence made people feel more alive, she reflected, her tiredness vanishing as he took Warren’s place beside her. He seemed to radiate a kind of energy that affected everyone around him. It was a visible thing, a vibrant blaze that came from within, probably merely a manifestation of his sheer vitality, and highly unfair, because it should have been a sign of great goodness or spirituality, and there was nothing remotely saintly or inspiring about him.

‘Renewing an old acquaintance, or resuming a relationship, Fee?’ Simon settled himself comfortably.

‘There wasn’t any relationship to renew,’ she retorted resentfully. ‘Thanks to you.’

‘And you’re wondering what you missed out on?’ he guessed wickedly. ‘I suppose his youth is what appeals to you after that old man you were involved with in Australia.’

Fee gave him a furious look as the soft light streaming from the house above them showed her that he was only half joking.

‘I suppose it’s inevitable that you should think like that, given your own history, but I think I’m a little more discriminating than you are, Simon,’ she snapped.

‘Where Bates is concerned? Or Sheldon?’ Simon returned mockingly, his lips quirking as he cast her a quick, curious glance. ‘I’m intrigued. Do you really prefer old men, sweetheart, or is it some power game you’re playing, with the final denunciation written into the play before it even gets underway?’

Fee knew he was a cynic, but it was still disconcerting to realise he could believe such things of her.

‘There was nothing between me and Mr Sheldon,’ she insisted tightly.

‘Oh, come on, darling. You were in that hotel room together, weren’t you?’ Simon laughed. ‘All right, it was probably going too far to suspect someone like you of deliberately setting the guy up—not that it doesn’t sound as if he richly deserved it—but why are you so defensive about it all?’

‘You actually think it’s funny, don’t you?’ Fee realised furiously. ‘Why aren’t you disgusted?’

‘Why the hell should I be?’ Simon laughed. ‘You’ve obviously benefited from the experience, and we all have to sow a few wild oats, if I may be utterly trite.’

‘They’re hardly still wild oats at your age,’ she retaliated, grasping eagerly at the chance to change the subject.

‘I’m not quite ready for a retirement resort yet. Thirty-three,’ he drawled lazily.

‘As I said, at your age,’ Fee emphasised sweetly, and added, ‘Loren is nice.’

‘Beautiful,’ Simon agreed, infuriatingly relaxed. ‘But none too bright.’

‘Bright enough to have noticed your roving eye,’ she asserted waspishly.

‘I’m not in any need of advice about my love life, thanks, Fee.’ Abruptly there was a slight but audible edge to his voice, cool and sharp.

‘What has love got to do with it?’ she wondered innocently.

‘Everything. I love women.’

The statement, so outrageous and so simple, silenced Fee for several seconds. It was the absolute, unadorned truth, she realised, and any further explanation of his playboy habits would be superfluous. Simon loved women, so much that he was incapable of loving just one for any length of time, if in fact he ever actually loved them as individuals.

‘You never used to state the obvious,’ she taunted softly.

‘You seemed in some doubt,’ Simon countered derisively. ‘But as I’ve said, it’s your love life that intrigues me right now. Tell me about Sheldon. Were you his personal assistant?’

‘I hadn’t risen quite that high yet. I was assistant to his real assistant, but the position was supposed to lead to promotion eventually.’

Her bright, tender mouth drooped as she recalled the trouble Miss Betancourt had taken, grooming her to be her replacement when she retired in a few years’ time. All for nothing—

‘You must have counted it worth sacrificing since you were prepared to incur Sheldon’s anger by making the thing public knowledge,’ Simon cut into her reflections unsympathetically.

She hadn’t had any choice, unless she had been prepared to let Vance Sheldon rape her, since the Press, so much more cynically suspicious than she, had been on the spot, ready and waiting, eager for drama.

She flung Simon an angrily resentful look as she picked up her glass from beside her on the step and took a sip of mineral water.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she stated tautly. ‘As everyone knows, he fired me or I resigned, depending on which version of the story you believe, so I’ve got more important things to think about, like finding myself another job, and somewhere to live, and a car.’

‘Here in Hong Kong?’ he probed.

‘I think so, yes.’ She couldn’t face going back, although she wasn’t about to reveal her vulnerability by admitting it. ‘Hong Kong is my home. I belong here.’

Simon sent her a glance sparkling with mockery. ‘And you’ll be able to behave as badly as you like within a circle where no one will judge you and make a scandal of it as they seem to have done in Australia, since we all behaved equally badly most of the time. It’s just strange, or perhaps ironic, that you had to go away to become one of us. I like the change, but what happened to the old Fee? Is there any of her left there inside the sophisticated packaging?’

‘There’s hardly likely to be, is there? I’m twenty-two, but on her behalf, since she could never stand up for herself or answer back…Yes, you do all behave badly, especially at these parties, I remember, so why shouldn’t I?’ As she spoke, Fee stood up, still holding her glass, looking down into it for a moment before pouring the remainder of its contents into his lap. ‘Last time was an accident, Simon. This was deliberate, in case you’re in any doubt. Sorry it had to be in the region of both your intellect and your emotions.’

Simon swore, following it with such absolute silence that she couldn’t resist the temptation to look back as she gained the patio. His shoulders shook, and then she heard his laughter.

‘Oh, you were right, you truly do belong here.’ His amused voice drifted up to her. ‘You’re one of our own. Welcome home, Fee.’

Fleetingly, it gave rise to apprehension which subsided when he made no move to detain her.

She hadn’t felt this good in weeks, Fee realised. The only disconcerting thing about it was that it should be Simon Rhodes, of all people, who had revived her fighting spirit.

CHAPTER TWO

SIGHING, Fee let the newspaper fall to the ground beside the sun-lounger on which she was reclining. None of the positions advertised was exactly inspiring, and likely to add to her difficulties was her intention to be scrupulously discriminating in her choice of boss this time around. She wasn’t risking another Vance Sheldon—never again! On the whole, she was inclined to think that putting her name down with an employment agency might be her best bet. For safety’s sake, she might even opt for temping, she decided, unless she found the perfect boss.

The sun had set but darkness had yet to fall, and it was one of those sultry, gently steaming July evenings she remembered so well from years gone by, the stillness of the air giving all Hong Kong’s island side a dreaming aspect, and yet down in town among the gracefully rearing spires the movement and noise would be as vibrant as ever, equally so over on Kowloonside. But not up here, high above Repulse Bay, blue-white jewel set amid gentle emerald slopes. It was silent here, and soothing.

Her mood of exhilaration hadn’t lasted long after she had tipped her drink into Simon’s lap two evenings ago. She had locked herself into her bedroom, ignoring the people who came and knocked at intervals and eventually falling into the first truly dreamless sleep she had been granted in weeks, despite the sounds of carousing downstairs—because Loren Kincaid had been right. She felt safe here.

She had no idea how or if Simon had explained the state of his elegant trousers to anyone, and she hadn’t enquired, beginning to be embarrassed by her behaviour since such a confrontational attitude was alien to her nature.

A sound from the high patio above her made her withdraw her gaze from the sparkling clarity of the swimming-pool, and there was the subject of her thoughts, Simon Rhodes, carrying his jacket and coming down the stairs towards her. A pang of purely aesthetic appreciation assailed her as she watched him. He moved with such grace and leashed power, and was so beautifully formed, so truly physically perfect in every way that she could only be profoundly grateful that she would never be one of the legion of women who loved him, because how did anyone ever get over such a man?

‘Charles isn’t home yet,’ she informed him casually, resolutely deciding to ignore the fact that the mere sight of him made her feel challenged in some obscure way. ‘But Babs is somewhere inside.’

‘Thank you, she sent me out to join you.’ Simon stood beside her sun-lounger, looking down at her and then at the pool on her other side, a wicked gleam appearing in his eyes. ‘I am so tempted, Fee, after the drenching I received at your hands the other night.’

‘Don’t you dare! And you’re exaggerating…I’m sorry I threw my drink over you, Simon.’ But although she had begun to be ashamed of herself, Fee’s eyes still sparkled at the memory, and her voice refused to emerge as demurely as she wanted it to, a quiver betraying her as she added, ‘I don’t usually behave like that. I don’t know what got into me.’

‘A devil, of course, and it’s looking out of your eyes right now, so I suppose I ought to keep my distance. But all right, I’ll forgive you since it was probably due,’ he conceded magnanimously, ignoring the advice he had just given himself and pulling a matching chair closer to her lounger before seating himself. ‘I shouldn’t have bawled you out in front of everyone the way I did that other time.’

‘No, you shouldn’t,’ she agreed tartly, still capable of flushing at the memory, and deciding against asking what had got into him on that occasion.

‘So how is our innocent victim, as Loren keeps insisting you are? I believe she thinks she invented the phrase all by herself.’

‘If you’re so scathing about people’s intellectual limitations behind their backs—and to their faces, now I think of it, because she said you’d called her an airhead—why do you go out with such bimbos?’ Fee flared, incensed on Loren’s behalf.

Simon wore his most arrogant expression. ‘Because they don’t try so hard to be clever, whereas half-bright women keep trying to be cleverer than they are and it bores me because I see through them.’

‘God, have you any idea how inhibited your intolerance must make people when you can’t even be bothered to hide it? I’ll be frightened to open my mouth now,’ Fee claimed tempestuously.

‘You don’t count,’ Simon said rudely, with an indifferent glance at her mouth before noticing the newspaper she had discarded and observing at which page it was open. ‘Looking for…what did you tell me? A home, a car and a job? In fact, we may be able to help you with the first. Rhodes Properties are mainly commercial and industrial, but we have recently added a division dealing with residential, and it’s turning out to be a paying concern with land here so scarce, and rents for ground-floor apartments as high as you choose to make them when everyone is so nervous of a cut in electricity putting lifts out of order…But haven’t you considered staying here? The house still belongs to your father, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Fee glanced up at the green-tiled roof, a sort fairly common in Hong Kong. ‘But it’s everyone’s home really, for all of us to come back to. If you must know, I want to get away from Babs and Charles because if I’m not independent they’re likely to go on treating me like a baby forever.’

And because she wasn’t a natural fighter, she was afraid she might be tempted to settle for the easy option and let them, Fee supplemented silently, but she wasn’t about to confide that much to Simon. For some reason it was important that he shouldn’t guess how much of the old, uncertain Fee still existed.

He was sending a lazily amused smile across the space between them.

‘They must be blind. It’s definitely a very adult Fee who has come home to us.’ Pausing, he observed her complicated reaction to the meaningful tone before digressing, ‘Your father is still mountaineering, isn’t he?’

‘In a sense. I think he’s part of a movement to clear old base-camp sites of litter all over Pakistan and Nepal, now that the problem has been realised, so he’s giving something back, which is nice. Mountains are all he has ever cared about; all the pleasure he has had has come from them,’ Fee acknowledged the kind of single-minded selfishness that had long since ceased to perturb her.

‘Lucky he had the means to indulge himself.’ Simon referred to the private fortune Jim Garland had spent in pursuit of his obsession.

‘He usually remembered to keep us supplied with money to live on, and he did buy this house,’ Fee reminded him loyally.

‘And dumped you in it when you were a baby. Wasn’t there some near-scandal about that?’ Simon frowned.

She laughed. ‘After my mother died when I was two. She’d never properly recovered from some complication at my birth because it happened somewhere remote in the Himalayas, with no doctors for hundreds of miles. The nannies he left me with here kept walking out, and someone found out and threatened to take him to court if I wasn’t looked after better, so he married Angela. She had Babs, and nowhere to live and no money—poor Babs doesn’t even know who her father was—so it worked out quite well when he was home, only Angela likes lots of attention and a man to be around all the time, and he kept telling her horror stories about my mother’s trials to discourage her because he didn’t want her with him in the mountains.’

Simon shook his head. ‘You girls must have had an even more chaotic childhood than I did. My various step-parents and unofficial aunts and uncles kept changing, but they were there. Angela wasn’t often, was she?’

Fee shook her head.

‘She’s an incurable romantic, always out looking. But Babs looked after me, and when we were older we looked after each other. I shiver when I think about it sometimes, though,’ she added in a hushed voice. ‘Once I got pneumonia and Babs couldn’t make the doctor’s receptionist understand her, and another time it was cold and she decided we should have a hot meal. She was only ten and she burnt her hand badly, and I was frantic; I didn’t know what to do…’

‘God, it’s a horror story.’ Simon sounded unusually thoughtful and he studied her expression for a moment. ‘People shouldn’t get married. Jim and Angela have never bothered with a divorce, have they? Angela was home last year, but then she met someone on his way to take up a contract job somewhere—Jakarta, I think—and she took off with him. But you’re a big girl now and don’t need anyone to take care of you, as you’ve just demonstrated by walking out on your lover in Australia and not even bothering to be discreet about it, all in the fine tradition of your odd family.’

Fee didn’t think she had taken care of herself at all successfully, considering the humiliation she had suffered as a consequence of her own stupid naïveté, and, while she loved her family, she had no intention of following in any of their footsteps. Her dreams were conventional, of a husband who came home to her and children she would care for herself.

‘You would believe that was the way it was,’ she taunted sharply. ‘It may interest you to know that absolutely no one else does.’

‘As we’ve agreed, that’s because the fools all still see you as the child they remember. But you and I both know you’re not. You grew up in a sexually sophisticated milieu and it was only a matter of time before you adopted our mores. Welcome to the real, adult world, darling. It’s a pleasure to know you—or it will be.’

Fee just managed not to look startled. For a moment it had almost sounded as if he was flirting with her, the way he did with other women, but surely that was impossible? Not Simon. Not with her!

‘You’re wrong! About the Australian business, I mean.’ Her dark blue eyes flashed as she dismissed the ridiculous idea. ‘But I don’t care what you think.’

‘That’s the spirit,’ he commended her insouciantly. ‘Never explain yourself, never make excuses, never mind what people say and think. Incidentally, Charles was telling me on the phone earlier that you weren’t finding the job market too promising. That’s why I’m here. I might just have something for you if the position of assistant to Sheldon’s assistant entailed what I imagine it did. There’s a woman who’s leaving Rhodes whose position you might be able to fill, although why she has to take off so inconveniently is beyond me. Her excuse is so stupidly irrational that I refuse to dignify it by calling it a reason.’

Fee’s anger subsided and she looked at him hopefully, aware that Rhodes Properties’ reputation was excellent, but then rare pride stirred.

‘I don’t need you and Charles to arrange my life for me, thank you very much, Simon,’ she asserted caustically. ‘I’m quite capable of finding a job for myself, and, considering how scathing you’ve been about other people’s failure to realise that I’m not a helpless baby any more, I’d have expected you to tell him to go to hell when he asked you.’

The smile Simon gave her was biting. ‘Oh, definitely not a helpless baby. A spitting cat is more like it, and I do mean the wild kind. Charles didn’t exactly ask me—’

‘No, but I bet he hinted like mad and you felt obliged to come up with something because he’s a friend and you men have this stupid buddy-code about helping each other out,’ she accused tempestuously. ‘I don’t mind Charles interfering so much, because he’s family, but I don’t really even know you except as his friend, so don’t try to make a charity of me. I won’t accept it.’

Simon was still smiling at her, derisively now, but something flickering at the back of his eyes seemed to suggest that she had either angered or offended him.

‘No, you don’t really know me at all, Fee, if you can imagine I’d make you my good deed for the day,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘I’ve no objection to doing Charles a favour, but not if it’s at the expense of anything to do with Rhodes Properties. Assuming you’re interested in the position, I’ll only appoint you if you’re qualified for it. Right now, I have to say I have my doubts, if you’re stupid enough to believe anything else.’

Fee had always been flexible, seeing no point in clinging obstinately to an idea once it was proved to have no foundation, but something in Simon’s attitude was angering her, and her apology carried a distinct trace of acid.

‘Sorry! I was forgetting that first and foremost you’re a hard-headed businessman. Blame it on the way people talk about you. Everyone is so riveted by the social side of your life. But I should have remembered that Rhodes Properties is the one thing you truly take seriously—far more seriously than you do your famous love life.’