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She looked at Rick’s bent brown head and said angrily, ‘Surely he doesn’t expect you to be a clone of him, and if he is so insensitive, you’re better off without him!’
‘He’s not like that,’ he said simply. ‘Just don’t tell him where I am, OK? I hate asking you, because Leo’s a master of applying pressure and you’ve been so good to me.’
Tansy laughed. ‘If he finds me, which I doubt, he can’t do anything more than ask. He’s got no leverage.’
Rick eyed her with a grimness she now understood. ‘You don’t know Leo. He’ll find something to threaten you with. But please, promise me.’
She’d promised. So, she thought, shaking her head at the offer of coffee, she would make sure that, whatever tactics Leo Dacre tried, she wouldn’t give Rick away. He’d convinced himself that this was his last chance, and he deserved his opportunity.
A strange, fierce exhilaration flooded her. She would show Leo Dacre that she wasn’t easily intimidated.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, getting to his feet.
Apparently one of the tricks in his armoury was to take it for granted that she was going to fall in with whatever he suggested. Tonight she’d do that, for her own good reasons. Outside the bitter wind was now driving rain before it, and if she walked she’d be drenched by the time she got halfway home.
He didn’t ask where she lived. She didn’t tell him, but he drove straight there.
At the door of her flat he said, ‘Are you going to ask me in?’
‘No,’ she said abruptly, bracing herself for an argument. Huddling a little further into her coat, she said coolly, ‘It’s no use, you know.’
Of course she’d known she wouldn’t put him off so easily, but she was unprepared for his low laughter.
‘I enjoy a good fight,’ he said, a note of mockery giving emphasis to the words. ‘Open your door.’
‘I don’t want—’
Ignoring her struggles, he picked up the hand that held her key and, with his warm one around it, forced the key into the lock and turned it. His other hand came up and switched the light on.
‘All right?’ He looked around her cramped domain with eyes that took in everything.
‘Of course it’s all right,’ she said, her voice rising jaggedly. That swift, comprehensive glance was like a violation. Defensively trying to block his view, she stepped inside and swung around to face him.
‘Right. See you tomorrow.’
He closed the door behind him with a loud click of the lock. Automatically, Tansy put the chain across, her eyes narrowed beneath her fine, straight brows as she tried to work out what that had been.
Macho display? No, he had to know that men were stronger than women. Was he proving that he could make her do whatever he wanted to? Hardly. He was subtle, not brutal and as lacking in finesse as a battle-axe.
He knew Rick wasn’t there so it hadn’t been that, either, unless he thought his brother might have come back that very day.
Was he concerned about her safety, for heaven’s sake?
It gave her an odd little warmth, a warmth she instantly doused. She had lived on her own since a year after she had run away, but even before that she had to some extent always been on her own. Her foster-parents’ decision that she leave school and work in the local supermarket had merely made obvious what she had always sensed. So she had run away as far as she could, determined to follow her dream and compose beautiful, exciting music, music that would touch the hearts of generations unborn.
And she had managed, with help, to survive. Chin tilted, she looked around the small room, trying to see it with Leo Dacre’s eyes. OK, so she didn’t live in particularly salubrious surroundings, but they were hers. If she never produced anything more than the pretty little songs she sang on the streets, she had made a life on her own terms.
But she would make music. It was a kind of rage in her, a need that was more important than anything else, more necessary than food, more vital than affection, more intensely satisfying than the most ardent love-affair.
It was her future and her present. She didn’t regret jettisoning her relationship with her foster-family, and she’d not regret it if she never found anyone to love, because love could only ever take second place. There might come a time when she’d want marriage, and children, but at the moment she couldn’t imagine it.
CHAPTER TWO
COLLAPSING bonelessly into the chair, Tansy sighed and pulled off her beret, tossing it on to the bed. Her hair sprang out around her narrow face like wildfire. It was, she thought gloomily, about the only thing about her that actually had any life to it. Too much life: completely uncontrollable and far too obvious, she kept it covered as much as possible. It contrasted brashly with the pale, scrawny, unobtrusive rest of her.
Suddenly weary, she got ready for bed, where she lay awake for too long, wondering how Rick was getting on in his self-imposed exile. And exactly what effect his mother’s illness was going to have on his life.
* * *
On her way to Lambton Quay the next morning she tried to ring the camp, but was rebuffed by the very unforthcoming man who answered. He informed her he was the cook and that everyone else was out for the day, and as she opened her mouth, hung up.
‘Damn,’ she muttered, seething with frustration. That was several dollars down the drain. Hastily she rang the university, hoping to be able to talk to Professor Paxton about grants, but he wasn’t there, and wasn’t expected in that day.
Altogether an exercise in futility.
* * *
Just before lunch she watched a limousine pull up outside a very upmarket hotel and disgorge three men. One she recognised as an important industralist, one was a quintessential yes-man, dark-suited and eager, and the third was Leo Dacre. He saw her, but apart from a quizzical lift of his brows gave no sign of recognition.
Ignoring him, she hurried on her way, but the incident dramatised the difference between them. King Cophetua and the beggar maid, she thought ironically. Except that the beggar maid had been beautiful, and the king had fallen in love with her. Young as Tansy had been when she’d read the story, she’d always wondered whether the beggar maid had really enjoyed being queen.
It wasn’t a good day; the weather was still unseasonable so there were few shoppers about, and those who had to brave the wind weren’t wanting to stop and listen. At three-thirty she let herself think wistfully of Auckland summers that started in November and went on sometimes until June.
Remember the sticky, airless humidity, too, she told herself, slipping into a rollicking Caribbean folksong with forced enthusiasm. A few people tossed coins into her guitar case. They were going to be the last; as she finished the song with a flourish she realised that the street was almost empty of people.
Lord, she hoped things picked up. Perhaps she should go north to Auckland. There were more people there. Or Queenstown...there were always tourists visiting the South Island’s lovely lakes and mountains. And where there were holidaymakers, there was a delightfully casual attitude about money.
Unfortunately it cost money to get there. Of course, she could hitch hike.
No, it wasn’t worth the risk.
She packed up and set off, telling herself that the odd sensation under her breastbone was just hunger, not disappointment nor foreboding. The guitar dragged heavily on her arm.
A moment later she decided that she might be psychic after all. A car drew up beside her and Leo Dacre said, ‘Hop in and I’ll take you for a drink somewhere.’
‘I’m on my way home.’ She was astounded at the treacherous warmth spreading through her.
‘Get in,’ he said calmly.
She shook her head.
‘I want to talk about Rick.’ He got out and opened the rear door, holding out his hand for the guitar. ‘Come on, we’ll have afternoon tea and then I’ll take you straight home.’
And even as she wondered why he had such an effect on her, she found herself handing over the instrument and getting in.
‘How long have you been busking?’ he asked as he set the car in motion.
‘Why ask me questions you already know the answers to?’ she retorted.
He sent her a slanted look from unreadable eyes. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’
Exasperated, she glowered at him. ‘Well, you obviously put a private detective on to Rick. How else would you have found me? And I’ll bet you didn’t just stop at a name; I’m sure there’s a dossier about me somewhere.’
His hard-edged smile applauded her shrewdness. ‘You’re right, of course. Yes, I know you ran away from home and dropped completely out of sight for a year. Why did you run away?’
‘Doesn’t the dossier have it all set out for you?’
He ignored the sharp sarcasm in her question. ‘Your family say you were always difficult to control, which doesn’t match your reputation at school.’
She shrugged. ‘My foster-parents and I didn’t see eye to eye. I don’t blame them; I must have been impossible to live with.’
‘What happened to your own family?’
Tansy was beginning to realise that she was too vulnerable to this man; she needed barriers. And because she didn’t seem to be able to keep behind the ones of her own making, she decided to hand him some. However, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Didn’t your detective find that out either?’
‘He wasn’t asked to,’ he said. ‘I know you were four when you went to live with the O’Briens, and that you lived in a social welfare institution before that.’
‘My mother was a prostitute, I believe,’ she said deliberately. ‘She didn’t look after me properly, so the welfare took me away and put me into a foster-home.’
She cast a challenging look at him, but to her surprise there was no sign of disgust or surprise in his face.
‘How old were you then?’
‘Eighteen months.’ He might as well, she thought savagely, know the whole story. It had been a shock to Tansy when Pam O’Brien hurled the truth at her during one of their battles just before she’d run away; it would be an even greater jolt to Leo Dacre, brought up with all the advantages of wealth and security. ‘She went off for the weekend with some man. Apparently a friend was supposed to come and pick me up, but she had a better offer so I stayed in the flat until the neighbours got sick of my screaming.’
He swore under his breath. ‘Humanity can be incredibly cruel,’ he said. ‘Did you ever see your mother again?’
‘No.’ Tansy didn’t want him to pity her. ‘She died a couple of years later. I don’t remember her.’
‘If you lived happily with your foster-family until you were fifteen, what happened to change things?’
Beneath her jersey Tansy’s shoulders moved uneasily. ‘We disagreed on the course my future should take,’ she said, not attempting to hide the ironic note in her voice.
‘Some disagreement.’ He waited several seconds, and, when she remained silent, said, ‘So you ran away. How did you survive that first year on the streets?’
Tansy wasn’t surprised his detective hadn’t been able to discover anything about that year. She’d dropped out, living with a woman who’d made it her life’s work to take in runaways and street kids. With a better knowledge of what could have been her future, Tansy never stopped thanking the fates that the tough, big-hearted widow had noticed the skinny, frightened girl at the railway station and taken her home.
Not only that; it was Mrs Tarawera who had lent her a guitar and suggested she busk for a living, organising an assortment of temporary sons and cousins as bodyguards for a couple of weeks to make sure no one stole her money. At Mrs Tarawera’s house Tansy had learned to be streetwise; those same ‘sons’—street kids and runaways—had taught her what to watch for and how to defend herself.
Mrs Tarawera was dead now, but she had left many living memorials in the people she had befriended and fed. Her kindness, and how much it had meant then, was one of the reasons why Tansy had taken in Rick.
And look where that generous impulse had got her, she reminded herself acidly, keeping her eyes on the road ahead as they drove up towards the Lady Norwood Rose Gardens.
‘Surprisingly easily,’ she returned lightly.
‘I admire determination.’ Skilfully, he passed a cyclist clad in yellow and black Lycra shorts who seemed hell-bent on committing suicide beneath their wheels. ‘Almost as much as I admire loyalty.’
She threw him a tolerant glance. So he thought he was going to be able to smooth-talk Rick’s whereabouts out of her. ‘Both are admirable qualities.’
‘When not taken to excess.’
She picked up the gauntlet. ‘Can one take—say, loyalty to excess?’
‘Oh, I think so.’ The car drew to a stop in the car park. As he got out, Tansy opened her door too. He asked, ‘Are you radical in your feminist beliefs?’ closing the door behind her.
She shrugged. ‘Not particularly. If it upsets you to see me get out by myself I’m quite happy to humour you.’
He laughed, the brilliant, enigmatic eyes never leaving her face. ‘I like the sharp teeth and claws,’ he said amiably.
Something tense and forbidden stirred deep inside Tansy. A dart of sensation quivered through her, altering her, changing her in subtle, unnerving ways. Gazing around, she strove to overcome the unbidden weakness.
Rosebushes, although slightly battered by wind and rain, lifted valiant, colourful heads to the sun. Because the gardens were in a basin surrounded by tree-covered hills the scent of the flowers seemed to be concentrated into a ubiquitous, overpowering fragrance. The seductive perfume wound its way into her being, at once soothing and arousing her, so that she felt like a cat with its fur stroked the wrong way, wary and alert and reckless.
‘Do you like roses?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘Scented ones, yes. And the ones that are unusual colours.’
His gaze searched her face. She avoided it by stooping to bury her nose in one particularly rich, deep gold bloom, inhaling the sultry sweetness with pleasure.
‘The bride of a friend of mine had all the roses at her new home dug out and replaced,’ he said inconsequentially.
‘Why?’
He was stroking a crimson bloom with slow, almost erotic gentleness. That strange feeling in Tansy’s inner regions melted some part of her she had never felt before. Straightening up, she looked away, trying hard to ignore the image of the same leisurely caress on her skin.
‘They were unfashionable,’ he said, a sardonic note in his voice making his opinion clear.
Tansy said curiously, ‘I didn’t know there were fashions in flowers.’
‘There are fashions in everything, if you have the time and the money to indulge them,’ he said abruptly. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’m hungry.’
So was Tansy. By the time they sat down inside the kiosk she was remembering far too clearly that she hadn’t taken time off for lunch.
To keep her mind off the man who sat opposite she let her glance wander around. Hothouse scents from the begonia house next door provided a striking contrast with the weather outside. Snatches of conversation, made piquant by their impenetrability, floated by. Tansy’s eyes lingered appreciatively on the gilded, feathery fronds of a palm, the crinkly leaves of the low plants about its base.
Everything seemed brighter, with more impact than usual. Perhaps the scent of the roses had made her slightly drunk?
Leo said idly, ‘Apropos of loyalty; surely it can be qualified by the needs of the person one is being loyal to?’
Tansy ate slowly, pretending to consider his remark. ‘If I was sure I knew what they were, perhaps,’ she finally admitted. ‘I’ve always believed that most people understand their own needs better than anyone else, however affectionate or well-meaning the other person might be.’
Leo’s mouth stretched in what was certainly not meant to be a smile. ‘So you give yourself a good reason for opting out,’ he said smoothly. ‘I suppose it satisfies your conscience, but isn’t it rather cowardly? Suppose you knew that someone was in trouble—would you just leave them to flounder along on their own?’
How much did he know? Tansy’s gaze flicked up to Leo’s face, but it gave nothing away, the regular features set into an inscrutable mask, his eyes like green glass.
Choosing her words carefully, she answered, ‘Rick knows what he’s doing, and that’s good enough for me. Why don’t you leave him to make his own way home? He will, eventually. He loves both you and his mother. Give him a chance.’
‘To find himself?’ His quick scorn and the contempt that followed made her shake inside. ‘As you did? How did you earn your living that first year, Tansy? Prostituting yourself? Stealing? No, I don’t really want to know, but do you want Rick to go through that sort of degradation?’
