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Jan nodded. Her eyes felt huge in her face and she was dry-mouthed, unable to think let alone speak.
‘Get her something to drink,’ he ordered Gerry, without any softening in his manner. ‘Tea, not alcohol, and put plenty of sugar in it.’
Astonishingly Gerry—capable, sensible Gerry—said meekly, ‘Yes, all right,’ and turned away.
‘I’ll go with you,’ Jan croaked.
But her knees shook. When she tried to walk they gave way and she stumbled. To her utter mortification her rescuer picked her up with casual, insulting ease and carried her into the tent, away from the horses and the sun and the whispering crowd.
Her nostrils quivered, sensitised to a particular scent, faint, masculine, so potent that she could feel its effects in every cell in her body. Abnormally conscious of the smooth, coiled power in her rescuer’s strong arms and shoulders, Jan raised her lashes and saw in his bronzed throat the steady pulsing of his heartbeat.
For some reason her eyes filled with tears. Blinking fiercely, she dragged her gaze away and stared straight ahead, more shocked by the exaggerated response of her body than by the danger she had just escaped. Being aware of a man was one thing; this, she thought feverishly, was another and entirely more hazardous reaction. He overloaded her senses.
Inside the tent, he set her on her feet, and the heat of his body was replaced by a chill that struck through to her bones. Shivering, she collapsed into a folding chair that someone pushed towards her, kicking her shoes off. The man who had saved her life looked at her feet, brows climbing.
‘They scarcely look big enough to support an adult,’ he said.
It was not a compliment, but Jan’s bones liquefied.
‘We’re so very grateful for your quick thinking,’ Gerry said, turning her famous, slow smile onto the man.
He responded with a remark and an ironic, knowledgeable smile of his own. A visibly affected Gerry accompanied him from the tent.
‘God,’ the hairdresser said beneath his breath as he handed Jan a mug of tea, ‘I wish I had half his pulling power!’
Jan cupped her hands around the mug, waiting for them to stop trembling. Hearing without understanding the chatter of the crew about her, she sipped the hot liquid, taking exaggerated care not to spill it. She felt bruised and battered, her bones aching. Tomorrow, she thought grimly, she’d have fingermarks imprinted on her skin. Still, if he hadn’t acted with the speed and brute force of a hunting animal she could well have ended up under the horse, and then bruises would have been the least of her worries.
‘How do you feel?’ Gerry asked, approaching her with a frown that didn’t hide the anxiety in her expression.
Jan put the half-empty mug down and got to her feet, wavering slightly but determined. ‘I feel a bit shaky,’ she said, ‘but I’ll be fine. Hadn’t we better get the rest of the shots done?’
‘Are you sure you can manage it?’
‘Positive,’ Jan said. ‘Help me off with this wretched suit, will you?’
It took all of her self-assurance to walk again through the entrance of the tent and into the sun. Even though she’d expected the sudden shift of attention, she was embarrassed by it.
At least the ‘after’ gear suited the occasion perfectly—a honey-coloured shirt and matching skirt in fine cotton. Beneath the shirt was a silk singlet a shade lighter, and instead of the Italian shoes she wore low heels, perfect for picking her way across the grass. The diamond horror was replaced by a thin gold chain wound several times around her small wrist, and she carried a sleek, unadorned parasol.
This time Sid was his normal silent self, and the shoot finished quickly. Posing, looking wistful, smiling, Jan wanted nothing more than to be out of this and safely at home—away from all the eyes, away from the man who had looked at her with such charged antipathy.
Thank heavens he was nowhere in sight.
And she was there as a model, not to search the polo field for a stranger. So she kept her eyes resolutely away from the game and her mind on what she was doing.
However, just before she slipped back into the tent she saw him on a black horse. A primitive, unexpected alertness stirred her senses as she watched the rider reach over and hit the ball, then, with a skilled hand on the reins, gather his steed for a rapid change of direction.
‘Who are you looking at?’ Gerry asked. ‘Oh, him—he’s gorgeous, isn’t he?’ She grinned. ‘Definitely hero material, even though he made me feel like a worm. Too big for you, though—we all know you like smaller men.’
‘I don’t mind big men provided they don’t tread on me,’ Jan said, switching her gaze to a friend who was waving from further along the field. Waving back, she said, ‘I grew up with a big man—and a big sister.’
‘How is Anet? And that utterly glamorous hunk of a husband of hers?’
‘Still besotted with each other. They’re checking out some lost plateau in Venezuela at the moment.’
‘They can have that. Too hot by far for me.’ Gerry blew a curl back from her face. ‘In fact, this is too hot for me. Do you want to stay and watch?’
‘No, thanks. I don’t know the rules.’
‘What you really mean is that country pursuits bore you,’ Gerry accused.
‘Well, I’m a city woman at heart.’ Jan smiled at a woman she’d served on a committee with. ‘Hello, Sue.’
Sue gushed, ‘I nearly died when I saw that horse slide onto you! Trust you to be rescued by some god-like being! You didn’t get hurt at all? And who was he?’
Once Jan had assured her that yes, she’d been scooped clean out of the horse’s way, and no, she didn’t know her rescuer’s name, Sue urged, ‘Join us, both of you.’
‘I’d love to,’ Jan said, ‘but I can’t, I’m sorry.’
It wasn’t the only invitation they turned down. All of Auckland, it seemed, was at the polo tournament, and determined to enjoy it.
As they threaded their way through the crowd Gerry looked around. ‘Between us,’ she said, ‘we probably know everyone here.’
‘If you go back far enough in the family tree we’re probably related to most of them,’ Jan said. ‘New Zealand’s pretty small.’
‘Do you ever want to go and find a bigger pool to swim in?’
Jan shook her head. ‘I thoroughly enjoyed the three years I spent overseas, but this is home.’
‘I know how you feel,’ Gerry said peacefully. ‘Little it might be, but there’s something about the place.’
The sun was only half way to the horizon when Jan drove her small, elderly, much cosseted MG into the garage of her townhouse in Mount Eden, one of three in a new block hidden from the street by a high, lime-washed wall. Once inside, she stripped off her shoes and, wiggling her toes on the cool, smooth tiles, rang her mother.
‘Hello, darling,’ Cynthia said enthusiastically. ‘How did the photo shoot go?’
‘Well...’ Because she’d soon hear it from someone, Jan told her about the incident, soothing her natural maternal alarm by assuring her that she was completely unhurt.
‘At the polo,’ Cynthia lamented, as though somehow it was especially outrageous that such a thing should have happened there.
‘Ah, well, I was rescued by a superb man,’ Jan said.
‘I wish I could thank him!’
Jan recalled the splintering anger in those frigid eyes and shivered. ‘I’m not likely to see him again,’ she said, and changed the subject. ‘I thought I’d have a shower and then come on over.’
‘Oh, no, you don’t,’ her mother said sternly. ‘You’ll arrive at exactly eight o’clock. Everything is under control. The caterers are doing all the hard work. The flowers are done. The house is spotless. I don’t need you dashing around getting in the way, so have a rest. Make a cup of tea. Wallow in the bath. Read a book. Don’t come near this place until we’re all ready for you!’
Laughing, Jan gave in. Her mother much preferred to prepare for her parties in her own way.
She put the receiver down and wandered out onto the terrace. Ahead, in blissful solitude, stretched the afternoon and early evening. The polo stunt had been the last of the photographic shoots, for which Jan was extremely thankful. In a couple of months Gerry’s article and the photos would appear in the magazine.
Her cousin had even promised to slip in a mention of the centre, and that group of dedicated, mostly unpaid women who worked with and worried about the girls and young women brought to them—many in severe trouble, most just trembling on the brink of it.
Money, Jan thought; it all came down to money. Or the lack of it.
A van, which would be enormously useful, was just a pipedream.
Still, she thought drily as she moved a lounger into the shade of the sky-flower vine that rambled over her pergola, Gerry’s project would put some extra money in the coffers.
She must have gone to sleep, because although the telephone bell invaded her dreams like a berserk bee she was unable to wake herself up in time to answer it. Whoever it was hadn’t left a message, so it wasn’t a summons from the centre. However, the imperative call had destroyed her serenity, leaving her to wander restlessly around the house looking for something to do.
Yawning, she wondered how the trip was going. Ten of the girls who’d been recommended to the centre by a social agency were with selected adults at a camp on one of the islands in the Hauraki Gulf. A weekend wasn’t long enough, of course, but it would help.
Unfortunately, they needed more than an occasional weekend if the lessons they learned there about their capabilities, and the self-esteem they gained, were to stick with them. On the centre’s wish-list was a camp of their own, where the girls could stay for several weeks if needed, away from the many temptations of the city and from bad companions.
Another pipedream.
A few weeks ago Jan and her committee had worked out how much they needed. ‘We’re not asking for a lot—just the world,’ one of the women had said, staring glumly at the figures.
Now, as she recalled the enormous set-up costs, Jan’s heart quailed. Over the last few years she’d organised exhaustive and very vigorous fundraising to build up their financial base. They no longer had to worry about the rent, and they could afford the social worker’s salary, but, as costs climbed and more girls turned up on their doorstep, they needed another paid social worker.
Every year they still had to go cap-in-hand to various organisations just to get money to struggle along.
So many organisations, all worthwhile, all seeking a share from the public’s generosity.
‘I must be running out of steam,’ she told the potted bay tree out on the terrace as she watered it.
Thirty-one was not old, but it did seem to mark some sort of milestone. Perhaps it was the siren call of her hormones, warning her that time was frittering away.
For the first time Jan didn’t want the party her mother planned with such care to mark each birthday. It was a family tradition, the end-of-summer, welcome-to-autumn party, and friends and relatives from all over the city and its environs came to wish her luck and enjoy themselves enormously.
Possibly this feeling of slow melancholy was what another of her cousins had warned her about.
‘It’s a crunch year—everyone has one,’ she’d said, smiling wryly. ‘Mine was my thirtieth. I woke up in tears, and wept all day. Everyone thought I was mad, but it’s surprising how many women have one awful birthday—usually in their early thirties.’
Jan had enjoyed her thirtieth, which made it ridiculous to feel so ambivalent about her thirty-first. ‘Stop right there,’ she told herself aloud, wandering into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of feijoa and grapefruit juice.
Her gaze fell on the gaily wrapped present her half-sister had given her the day she and her husband left for their South American trip, with instructions to open it just before the party.
Where were they now, Anet and her husband of almost a year? Slashing their way through some tropical jungle, probably. For the first time, Jan allowed herself to admit that she envied Anet and Lucas the unmeasured, consuming love they shared.
Because she’d never fallen in love.
Not once.
Oh, there’d been a lover when she was twenty—she shivered, recalling the painful, humiliating end to that affair, if affair it could be called—and since then several men had asked her to marry them. A couple of them she’d liked and been attracted to, but she hadn’t ever felt that complete confidence, the essential trust that allowed normally sensible and wary people to confide their life and their happiness to another person.
She just wanted everything, she thought sardonically: the electric, passionate involvement, the eager companionship and the complete faith in each other. And if she couldn’t have it all, she wouldn’t settle for less.
Relishing the tangy flavour of her drink, she sipped slowly while into her mind came an image of the man who had wrenched her out of the way of the horse.
A disturbing heat expanded through her. He had presence. However, that wasn’t why she remembered him. She was accustomed to men with presence; her stepfather had it, so did Lucas. And so did Drake Arundell, the husband of a great friend of hers.
The stranger had more than presence; he possessed a disciplined, formidable authority that sent out warning signals. And he moved with the dangerous, predatory swiftness of a hunter.
Finishing the juice, she eyed the dishwasher, then with a half-laugh washed the glass and put it away.
‘He’s probably just your ordinary, average polo player,’ she said firmly as she walked across the passage to her office. ‘Overpaid, oversexed and over here.’
Weaving fantasies about a man she didn’t know and wasn’t likely to see again was stupid and futile. Life was not slipping by; she helped people as best she could, she was good at what she did and she earned good money doing it—and she had a warm, appreciative family. If she never married she’d be a superb aunt to Anet and Lucas’s children when they had some.
Perhaps she should see about getting a cat.
Dressed in a smooth-fitting ivory dress, its neat lines conforming discreetly to her body, Jan walked with her mother across the big sitting room and out onto the wide terrace. A group of her friends were already there, and as she came through the French windows-they began clapping, and called out birthday wishes.
‘You look great,’ Gerry said exuberantly when they had a moment to talk. She, as befitted an entirely more dramatic personality, wore a floating outfit of purples and blues and plum.
‘Thanks,’ Jan said lightly.
Gerry eyed the demure dress. ‘You’re well covered up. Bruises?’
‘A few,’ Jan admitted. ‘Nothing to worry about.’
‘I should have anchored that damned hat,’ Gerry sighed.
‘Yes, well, I’m just glad that no one got hurt. And that the horse and the rider were OK.’
‘The hero was gorgeous,’ her cousin said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder who he was.’
‘One of the polo players.’
‘Perhaps we should have suggested your mother invite a few.’ She leered unconvincingly. ‘They’d give your party a certain je ne sais quoi. All those splendid muscles rippling beneath their shirts. Not to forget the equally splendid ones beneath—’ Stopped by Jan’s raised brows, she broke into a gurgle of laughter and finished, ‘In their legs.’
‘Most of them probably can’t string more than ten words together,’ Jan said, knowing she was being unfair.
‘Who cares? They look like gods.’
‘Centaurs.’
Gerry laughed. ‘OK, although they’re not exactly joined at the waist to their horses. And even if they can’t speak in words of more than two syllables, we could just sip a little champagne and admire their form. Speaking of which—Oh, good Lord—’
Jan turned to follow her entranced gaze. There, standing beside Sally Porter, a friend from schooldays, and directing that killer smile at her mother, stood the man who had saved Jan from being squashed a few hours ago—all six feet two or three of him.
‘Sally’s latest?’ Gerry muttered. ‘I didn’t see her at the polo, but of course she could have been there.’
Jan barely heard her. A hateful, febrile anticipation prickled through her.
‘I’d better go and greet them,’ she said with enormous reluctance when she saw her mother look across to her.
