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It had happened so abruptly; they’d spent the summer playing a game of flirtation and retreat, and she’d loved it—enjoying the power of her burgeoning femininity enormously, discovering that life could be a fascinating, exhilarating feast of the senses.
Not once had he touched her, but she’d known that he watched her, that there was a different gleam in his eyes when he looked at her, an exciting intensity that wasn’t there when he spoke to the other girls who had spent the summer trying to attract his attention.
And then one night after a barbecue at her parents’ place he’d kissed her. Lost in the wonder of his kiss, she’d pressed against him. In three days’ time he was going back to the Formula One circuits of the world, so this would be her only chance to see what it was like in his arms.
The gentle kiss had suddenly turned feral; she had gasped at the quick violence of his mouth, the way he’d held her against his hard, taut body, but she hadn’t struggled. Although it frightened her she’d wanted that fierce, heated tension—had wanted it all summer.
But the kiss had ended abruptly. Strong hands pushed her away by the shoulders, leaving her aching with frustration.
‘Don’t offer more than you want to give,’ he’d said in a thick, harsh voice. ‘You’ve had your fun teasing me, but that’s because I’ve let you. Don’t make the mistake of thinking that another man would be so easily kept at bay.’
And he had looked at her as though he’d despised her.
It had happened a long time ago, but a long-forgotten fear sent a chill slithering the length of her backbone. Drake Arundell was not a man to be threatened or intimidated.
Unconsciously she angled her chin at the photograph. Why should he have his photograph in the newspapers as an example to other New Zealanders when she and Simon struggled for every cent they had?
Swallowing the last remnant of his sandwich, Simon washed his knife and plate and dried them carefully. ‘I’ve got a new book,’ he prompted as he put the dishes away.
Olivia screwed up the sheet of newspaper and fired it into the rubbish bin. ‘We’d better fold these papers first,’ she said. ‘Then you can read to me.’ Reading time was the one part of the evening that was sacrosanct.
He glanced out of the window and pulled a face. ‘We’ll get wet.’
The rain had settled in now, and was beating with miserable determination against the panes.
‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I don’t have to do any more sewing, remember, so I can deliver them tomorrow morning.’
A fortnight later she’d almost accepted that Drake was going to ignore her letter, but after tidying the flat and exorcising some of her anger and frustration by viciously scrubbing the floor, she groaned when she looked at the battered alarm clock on the windowsill above the sink. Still another hour until the mail arrived.
‘I’ll go to the supermarket now, before it rains. And if a letter isn’t waiting for me when I get back,’ she said, baring her teeth at her reflection in the crazed mirror in the bathroom, ‘somehow I’ll come up with a way of making Drake Arundell’s life an absolute hell!’
An hour later she arrived back home feeling completely wretched. Instead of hanging off until the afternoon as it was supposed to do, the rain had dumped icy gallons on her. By the time she made it back to the flat she was coughing, and although she’d fought her head cold with most of the lemons from the spindly tree in the communal back yard she had a horrible suspicion that the infection was sinking to her chest.
Money for cough syrup would be at the expense of food, but, she decided as she hung her drenched umbrella and skirt above the bath, she would deal with that worry when it arrived—if it did. After rubbing her hair reasonably dry with a threadbare towel, she changed into a pair of old pink sweatsuit trousers and sat down with a mug of hot lemon juice and water, listening to her breath rattle in her chest.
If something happened to her, Simon would be completely alone.
‘The mail!’ she said, suddenly leaping to her feet. A hectic dash down to the letterbox through the rain revealed two circulars and the power bill.
‘Right,’ she said through gritted teeth as she pounded back up the unprotected steps, the first cold southerly of the year tearing at her clothes and hair. ‘Tonight I’m going to write you another letter, Drake Arundell, and it’s going to be a lot harder to ignore. And if that doesn’t work, I’ll—I’ll camp in your office until you agree to see me.’
Sudden, shameful tears clogged her throat; she swallowed and stubbornly set her mind to working out ways to apply pressure to a man who was determined to ignore her.
On her way to collect Simon from school she went into the corner dairy and again looked up under the As in the telephone directory. There was only one Arundell there—a D. Unless he was unlisted, it had to be Drake. When she had first seen his address she had been filled with a bitter, unpleasant resentment, because Judge’s Bay was a very up-market suburb on the other side of Auckland.
Surreptitiously she compared the address with the copy she had made before. No, she hadn’t made a mistake. Her mouth compressed into a straight line as she flipped through the pages to the Fs.
Drake Arundell wasn’t going to get away with it. This time she’d write to him at both his address and the FunNZ one.
On her way out she stopped at the rack of brightly coloured magazines by the counter. TV STAR’S LOVE CHILD REVEALED, the headlines on one screamed. ‘I AM DEVASTATED BY HIS INFIDELITY,’ WEEPS MODEL bellowed another, beneath a picture of a woman who looked as though she wouldn’t be able to pronounce any word of more than two syllables.
‘Do you want one, miss?’ the sari-clad owner said, stopping in her task of ripping the covers off several magazines.
Olivia smiled and shook her head, her eyes lingering on the gaudy covers. ‘Are they very popular?’
‘Oh, yes. These two—’ she indicated the biggest headlines ‘—are running neck and neck.’
‘You’d wonder at people who’d discuss their most intimate concerns with a journalist.’
The owner shrugged. ‘I believe they pay well.’
And if you were desperate—as desperate, say, as she was, Olivia thought—then that money might be a good reason for baring your soul to the public of New Zealand.
Impulsively she asked, ‘Could I have a cover?’
The woman looked surprised. ‘Well, I tear them off any that haven’t sold and send them back to the publisher so I don’t have to pay for them.’
‘Oh. I see.’ Olivia looked at the magazines again. ‘I didn’t realise.’ She smiled at the woman, said, ‘Goodbye,’ and left the shop.
The next morning she swept out the flat before embarking on the chore of washing their clothes; with any luck they’d dry enough to air in the hot water cupboard. A month previously the ancient agitator washing machine that lurked in the bathroom had clattered itself to a standstill, and although the landlord’s agent had promised to replace it, a new one hadn’t eventuated yet.
Determined to look on the bright side, Olivia admired the muscles she was developing in her arms as she hung the clothes out beneath a sky that promised at least a morning’s fine weather. After that she boiled up the bones the butcher always gave her on the pretext that they were for the dog—both of them well aware that there was no dog—and added vegetables she had bought yesterday from the bruised bin. Tonight they’d have the meat from the bones for their dinner, and tomorrow they’d drink the soup.
This afternoon, she decided, I’ll go and see the supermarket about a job again. With any luck they’ll respond to a bit of tactful nagging.
She had asked a fortnight ago, and been told that there was no opening. They’d taken her name and address and said they’d contact her, but it wouldn’t hurt to show her enthusiasm. Even though she knew there was no position for her. Possibly never would be.
Soon she’d be twenty-five, and it seemed as though her life had been an endless grind of work and worry and fear. Such dreams she’d had once, such hopes—all shattered.
‘That,’ she said aloud, ‘is enough of that! Self-pity is not going to get you anywhere.’ And then she began to cough, deep, barking paroxysms that shook her frame and hurt her throat and chest.
Unfortunately, telling herself that depression was the usual accompaniment to illness didn’t seem to help much; she still felt oddly lackadaisical.
‘I’ll make Simon a new pair of trousers,’ she said, using a false cheerfulness to force herself to do it. A month ago she’d bought a skirt at the op-shop which would cut up well.
Setting her lips into a firm line, she took out her old sewing machine—one which she’d earned in her wandering days. Another house-truck family owned it then, but the woman hated sewing. In return for making clothes for all the family, Olivia had been given the machine.
Normally she enjoyed the challenge of creating something new from something old, but after laying the material out on the table she put the scissors down and stared at it.
The last thing she wanted to do was sew.
Perhaps, she thought with a quick glance at the clock, she was hungry. However, the sandwich she made was so unappetising that she put it down after a couple of mouthfuls and sat at the table with her head on her arms, trying to block out the grey mist of hopelessness.
Someone knocked on the door.
A religious caller, she thought with foggy lethargy. Go away.
The knock was repeated—this time a peremptory tattoo that brought her to her feet.
Listlessly she opened the door, and to her utter astonishment there stood Drake Arundell—tall, broad-shouldered, his lean, heavily muscled body elegantly clad in a superbly tailored suit—almost blocking the narrow balcony that served as the access along the back of the flats.
On a sharp, indrawn breath she snatched the door back to shield her body, her eyes dilating endlessly as she looked up into a harshly contoured, expressionless face. Colour leached from her skin and a faint cold sweat slicked over her temples.
Quick as she was, he was quicker, and of course he was infinitely stronger. Without visibly exerting pressure he pushed the door open and walked into the room. Olivia fell back before him.
Foreboding washed through her, a hallow nausea caused by shock and dread. When her heart started up again she found it difficult to breathe.
Moving with the feline grace she remembered so well, he followed her across the room, his eyes revealing nothing but sardonic amusement. Even if she hadn’t seen the forceful features she would have recognised Drake Arundell by his gait alone. After all, she had known him all her life—although it wasn’t until she was fourteen and he was twenty-two that she’d noticed him with the inner eyes of her burgeoning womanhood.
He’d walked down the main street of a little town a lifetime away, and everyone in Springs Flat had watched him—some appreciatively, and some, the parents of young, impressionable daughters, with acute foreboding.
It was the sort of walk that had persuaded the elders of uncounted tribes the world over and down the centuries to look around for a war, or for big game to be hunted, or for an exploratory trip—anything to get that lean-hipped, lithely graceful saunterer out of the district and away from their wives and daughters.
Already famous, earning big money on the Formula One circuit, he was a certainty, her stepfather had said admiringly, to win the World Drivers’ Championship soon.
Brian Harley used to enjoy teasing Drake’s father, who worked in his accountancy firm, because Stan Arundell had resisted his son’s ambitions. A conventional, hardworking man, he’d wanted Drake to take law at university, and he had used Mrs Arundell’s long battle with illness to restrain his son. It had been Brian who had persuaded him to give Drake his blessing. Immediately Drake had left school, and within a remarkably few months had been racing his snarling monsters.
The situation was laden with ironic overtones; however, there was no irony in the expression of the man who was stalking her across her own room. All she could read in his face was a predatory, cold threat.
Compelled by some absurd conviction that the only way she’d retain control of the situation would be to stop retreating, Olivia came to a sudden, stubborn halt in the middle of the room, hands clenched stiffly at her sides.
He stopped too, just within her area of personal space.
Olivia’s eyes travelled reluctantly to his face. At twenty-two he had been amazingly magnetic in a potent, bad-boy way that had set the fourteen-year-old Olivia’s heart thumping erratically whenever her eyes had met those wicked grey-green ones. By the time she was seventeen the raffish appeal had altered to a tougher, more formidable fascination. Now time and experience had curbed and transmuted his raw intensity into a self-sufficient, hard-edged maturity.
He had always been disturbing; now he was dangerous.
Endeavouring to swallow her nervousness, she said crisply, ‘Hello, Drake.’
His unwavering eyes were instantly hooded by thick black lashes. The meagre light from the central bulb splintered into red-black sparks on his hair, refracting through the light mist of rain there; devil’s colouring, her mother used to say.
No, she wouldn’t think of her mother now.
‘Hello, Olivia.’ His deep voice was abraded by an attractively rough, sensual undemote that brought a world of memories flooding back—most of them tarnished by subsequent events.
Expediency dictated a polite response. ‘How are you?’
Distrusting his smile, resenting the leisurely survey that ranged the five feet six inches from her old slippers to the top of her honey-blonde head, Olivia had to suppress a swift angry reaction as he said suavely, ‘Curious, as you intended me to be. Your letter was practically guaranteed to bring me at a gallop.’
‘But it didn’t. I wrote over a fortnight ago.’
He smiled—not a nice smile. ‘I’ve been overseas. I came as soon as I could.’
She held out her hand, willing it not to tremble. After a taut moment his engulfed it. The brief, warm grip sent electricity up her arm and through every nerve cell in her body.
‘Thank you,’ she said simply, discovering that it was impossible to retrieve any composure while pinned by the steady, inimical gaze of those perceptive eyes, emotionless as quartz.
He looked around, his brows climbing as he took in the room. Stolidly Olivia suffered that unsettling scrutiny. She knew exactly what he was thinking: What on earth was Olivia Nicholls doing in a place like this?
Well, she’d done her best and she wasn’t ashamed of the flat. Nevertheless she braced herself for the comment she could see coming.
‘Sewing, Olivia?’
‘I’m very good at it,’ she said. ‘Until a couple of weeks ago I was a professional seamstress.’
‘What happened?’
‘The factory is moving to Fiji. It’s a lot cheaper to hire labour there.’ Losing her job had been the final straw; that was when she’d admitted she had no hope of saving the money she needed so desperately. Until then she’d thought she might make it. She tried not to let her bitterness and fear show in her voice, but his perceptive glance revealed that she hadn’t succeeded.
He continued his leisurely perusal of the room, and when she was so angry that she knew her cheeks were fiery, said evenly, ‘You still look just like a cheerleader.’
‘A—what?’
His mouth pulled up at the corners, but there was no amusement in his eyes. With a speculative irony that further ruffled her already shaky composure, he said, ‘A cheerleader. You must have seen them on television. In America they cheer the local teams on. Long-stemmed and open and vivacious, they look healthy and nice and sexy and athletic all at once. When you were seventeen I used to think you were cheerleader material.’
No cheerleader had a pale, thin face and hair that hung lankly around her neck because she couldn’t afford to get it cut.
‘It must be my Anglo-Saxon genes,’ she said, not hiding her resentment well enough. She hesitated, then went on without quite meeting his eyes, ‘Are you married?’
‘No,’ he said without expression, adding with suspicious gentleness, ‘But married or not, Olivia, I won’t easily be blackmailed.’
She shook her head indignantly. ‘That’s not what I—’
Something quick and ugly behind the screen of his lashes made her inhale sharply and lose the track of her reply. Although it took all of her courage she stood her ground, holding his gaze with a lifted chin and straight back, calling on a recklessness she hadn’t even known she possessed.
‘I’m not actually looking for a wife at the moment, if that’s what you had in mind.’ His tone was insulting, as was the look that accompanied it.
Of course she didn’t want to answer a slur like that, and of course the tide of colour that gave fleeting life to her pallor probably convinced him that that was exactly why she had written to him.
Since his sixteenth year Drake Arundell had been chased unmercifully—and not just by women his own age or impressionable adolescents. Now, with his potent, hard-edged appeal only slightly smoothed by superb clothes and an aura of power and sophistication, he probably had to shake women out of his sheets every night.
She was casting about for some suitable answer when he continued blandly, ‘What happened, Olivia?’
A meaningless smile pulled her lips tight. ‘My mother died.’
He displayed no emotion. All that could be said for him was that he was no hypocrite.
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ he said distantly, the words a mere conventional expression of regret. ‘Why is Elizabeth Harley’s daughter, and Simon Brentshaw’s granddaughter, reduced to living like this?’
‘One of my grandfather’s pet hobbyhorses was his belief that it was extremely bad for young people to grow up knowing they had a cushion of money behind them. He thought it corrupted them. He told me right from the start that there wouldn’t be anything for me. I don’t know whether he left anything to my mother, but if he did none of it was handed on to me when she died,’ she said unemotionally.
He frowned. ‘I see. Well, it’s none of my business. Why did you write me that rather enigmatic letter?’
‘Simon was just over a year old when my mother died,’ she returned, leashing her anger and disillusion because she had to keep a cool head.
‘And who,’ he asked softly, ‘is Simon?’
She tamped down incipient hysteria. ‘Simon is your son.’
