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“So you’re worried where this is going?”
“The short answer, Rowena, darling, is yes. I’d be a fool not to be wary of Ms Erickson.”
“For what it’s worth, I like her. I really like her.”
“Your opinion is worth a lot. But what’s her story?” he asked tersely. “She has one, of course.”
Rowena nodded sagely. “One wouldn’t have to be a mastermind to sense that. She has a very graceful flow of conversation. Pick a subject. Any subject. She speaks fluent French. I once put a question to her in French about the extraordinary arrangement she was working on at the time, a blend of burgundy and pale pink calla lilies. She answered, switching automatically from English to French. Polished accent. Better than mine. The one thing she doesn’t talk about is herself. She appears so self-contained yet I feel she’s terribly alone. There’s a sadness there, don’t you think?”
“Maybe that’s part of her role of woman of mystery?” His tone was highly sceptical. “She could be a consummate actress.”
Rowena negated that with a shake of her silver-streaked head. “She’s genuine.”
“But genuine what, Rowena dear? I’ve made a few enquiries on the side. Couldn’t come up with anything much. I might try Interpol.” It was only half a joke.
“She’s only been in the country for around five years,” Rowena supplied.
“Yes, I found out that much. There’s a trace of an accent that isn’t French.”
“Hungarian,” Rowena said with some certainty.
“Hungarian?” He set down his wine glass to give her a long look. Rowena and her husband had lived for many years in Europe. “The land of Liszt, Bela Bartok, Kodaly, Franz Lehar? I’ve even heard of the gorgeous Gabor sisters and their equally gorgeous mother. You know I haven’t visited Budapest, which you assure me is one of the most beautiful cities in Europe, but you and Sir Roland knew it well. Or did you ask her straight out?”
“No, love.” Rowena sat back. “But I have an excellent ear for accents. Besides, Sonya is a very private young lady. Her inbuilt cautions, insecurities if you like, have something to do with her former life. Somehow she has developed—”
“A mask?” he supplied. “So what is the mask hiding?”
Rowena sighed. “I’m having one of my buffet luncheons next Sunday. I’m asking Sonya. Would you care to come?’
He decided on the spot to seize on the invitation. Worry about the collateral damage later. “Is Marcus coming?”
“I wanted to speak to you first, before giving him a call. I always ask Marcus. He comes if he likes the people.”
“Oh, God, Rowena,” he groaned. “I advise extreme caution. I have the feeling the beautiful Sonya is going to wheel out a trolley full of tricks.”
“Possibly,” Rowena considered. “But I like her and I do love a mystery. So do you.”
“If only she were older!” he lamented. “More suitable.”
“No, no, no to Tara Bradford.” Rowena threw up her hands in horror.
“Tara wouldn’t break his heart,” he pointed out rather grimly.
“What a blessing.” Rowena allowed herself a touch of malice. “Only Marcus has no romantic interest in poor old Tara. Wishful thinking on her part. She’s a splendid woman in many ways, but she does have thunderous legs.”
“All the better to hold her up,” he offered vaguely. “I haven’t seen Sonya’s legs yet. I bet they’re perfect.”
Rowena nodded. “I have and they are.”
The following afternoon he stopped by Marcus’s house with its millions-plus view of Sydney Harbour. He’d been extremely busy all week with meetings plus endless piles of paperwork his father usually handled. His father, a notoriously secretive man, and CEO of Wainwright Enterprises, trusted few people outside his immediate family. These days he was leaving more and more to his only son and heir, adding to his already heavy workload. As a consequence he hadn’t had a chance to catch up with his uncle, who headed up the property department. Considering the properties owned by Wainwright Enterprises, it was a huge job in itself. As well, he and Marcus, both of them holding Law and Economics degrees with first-class honours, sat in on major meetings with the legal department. They did work in the same building, Wainwright Towers, but not on the same floor. Made a surprising difference as it happened.
The house Marcus and Lucy had lived in for so many years had been left to Lucy by her maternal grandmother, Lady Marina Harnett, a great philanthropist and art collector. To Holt’s eye it was one of the prettiest houses in the city. Not grand like the Wainwright ancestral home he had been raised in, but smaller and more welcoming to his eye, especially in the days when Aunt Lucy had been alive. She was the sweetest, kindest woman imaginable and she had to die. That was the trouble with life; there was always death at the end. The enemy that couldn’t be overcome. Death did despicable things. He remembered his mother had been grief stricken when at long last Lucy had passed away. She and Lucy had been great friends. The family had taken Lucy to their hearts. No one could take her place.
So what now, with a very possible candidate for the second Mrs Marcus Wainwright on the scene? Would it be seen by the family as a betrayal of Lucy? Everyone wanted Marcus’s happiness, but a beautiful young woman like Sonya Erickson could only inspire suspicion. God help him, he was already dealing with his mistrust of her.
He stepped out of the car, glancing briefly at a small blue hatchback nosed into a corner. Looked as if the estate had bought the housekeeper a new little runabout. The gardens were looking superb, ablaze with flowers. He started across the paved circular drive to the sandstone house. It had been built in the mid-1850s to a very high standard. Regency in design, it was perfectly symmetrical. The only concession to the Australian climate was the broad verandah with its series of white elegant pillars and fretwork. A lot of the original land had been sold off over the years—too valuable for one family to keep to themselves—but the original servants’ quarters, beautifully maintained and updated, were still at the rear of the house along with storerooms that looked more like bungalows. He had spent such a lot of time here, for a moment he was overwhelmed by nostalgia.
“David, darling.”
Pulled tight by little Aunt Lucy—a bare inch or so over five feet—feeling the great affection she had for him break over him in waves. No wonder Marcus had turned into himself after he lost her. Life could be very cruel. Sometimes it appeared as though the best went early. It would take for ever for the Wainwright clan to accept someone like Sonya if the worst came to the worst. A beautiful young woman’s motives for marrying a man old enough to be her father could not be pure. He had felt her affection for Marcus. That was genuine enough. The huge worry was it would take a miracle for that affection to turn to love. At least romantic love. Didn’t every young woman want that? Didn’t every young man? He was moving fast towards thirty. Many attractive young women had come his way but no one who engaged him in every possible way. He really wanted that. He wanted passion. He wanted magic. He wanted a woman to capture his imagination. Sadly no one ever had. He was beginning to wonder if anyone ever would.
That was what he wanted. He wanted the right woman to bring fulfilment to his existence. Not that he didn’t have a good life. A very busy life, a privileged life, but he knew what he was missing. His mother and father had been greatly blessed with a love match. He had grown up in a happy, stable household fully aware of how much his parents loved one another and him. It greatly disturbed him now to realize he was only a nudge away from maybe wanting to be where Sonya Erickson was. No use telling himself it was because he needed to check her out for Marcus’s sake. So where did that leave him?
In an impossible position, pal.
There lay the answer. His love for his uncle was deep. He could never be the one to hurt him. As for Sonya? Wouldn’t it be natural for any young woman to be flattered by the attentions of an older, rich and distinguished man? Even have her head temporarily turned? The worrying thing was Ms Erickson revealed no such excitements. She was entirely in possession of herself when excitement, even joy, fitted much better. He was well advised to mistrust her. His allegiance was to Marcus.
The front door was open. He was about to call a hello when a young woman came into sight carrying a large crystal bowl filled with a profusion of beautiful flowers. He didn’t register the full array of blossoms, gerberas, lush roses, peonies, he was too busy concentrating on the young woman. She wore fitted jeans that showed off her lovely lissom figure and the length of her legs. A simple vest-type top did the same for her breasts. Her shimmering long hair, centre parted, fell down her back in thick sinuous coils.
Rapunzel.
She came to a halt, so clearly startled he might have been wearing a balaclava over his head.
“Don’t drop it,” he warned, swiftly moving towards her. The Ice Princess for some reason had totally lost her cool. “Hold on. I’ll take it. Just don’t drop it,” he repeated the warning.
A visible shiver passed through her.
At least his tone was effective. “Let me have it.”
He seemed to tower over her. “David,” she said, dismayed by the fact her normally composed voice was wavering.
His alternative name had never sounded so good, so intimate to his ears. He took the bowl from her, turning to place it on the rosewood library table that graced the entrance hall. “I startled you. I’m sorry.” They were so close, barely a foot apart. He could see every little ripple along her throat as she swallowed. “Are you okay?’ he asked. She appeared disorientated. This was a completely different Sonya from the one he had previously seen. Impossible as it seemed, she also looked frightened. Perhaps endangered was a better word?
Feeling very exposed, she tried to force herself back to attention. Her reaction had been a big mistake.
David, too, was feeling a degree of perturbation. His hand went to her sloping white shoulder. He meant only to steady her, but his fingers were bent on caressing her white skin, warm to his touch. This was no beautiful statue. This was a living breathing woman. His eyes fell to the long heavy silk lock of her hair as it slid across his hand. He wanted to grasp a handful of it, pull her to him. He wanted to lower his head to capture her beautiful mouth that was surprisingly aquiver. He wanted to pick her up in his arms and carry her off like some caveman. Within seconds temptation after temptation was playing itself out. All common sense was getting away from him. This was mania. Magic, definitely black. She obviously had sirenlike powers. Fascinating men was a form of control. She could deliberately be luring him into her territory.
He stood back from her, the barriers springing back into place. “I’m sorry if I startled you. What are you doing here?” Given how he had felt, his voice sounded unnecessarily harsh. Was it guilt for slipping momentarily from his standards of behaviour?
For a moment she said nothing, giving her own protective shields a chance to get back into place. “Marcus has given me the job of doing the flowers for the house.” She felt enormous relief some of her habitual cool composure had come back into her voice.
“I see. Where is Marcus?” he asked, looking down the spacious hallway with its beautiful parquetry floor towards the library. Marcus’s favourite room.
“He’s not here. But he should be home soon.”
The way she spoke drove home the hurt. Did she think she could take Lucy’s place? “I’ll wait.” The rush of sexual desire was replaced by hard distrust.
“Would you like a drink?” she asked, turning to lead him into the drawing room. “Coffee, something stronger?”
“I’m fine.” He sounded just short of curt. “You’re the one who looks like you could do with a stiff drink.”
“You startled me, that’s all.”
“I might have been an intruder,” he said, with more than a hint of sarcasm.
“Perhaps it was the quality of your own surprise,” she returned. “You don’t like or trust me.” There was straightforward challenge in her voice.
“It’s not a question of liking, Ms Erickson. It’s more to do with your role.”
“Back to Ms Erickson, no Sonya?” She arched her fine brows.
“Sonya is a lovely name.” He shrugged. “Tell me, is it your real name?”
“What an extraordinary question.”
She had come to stand beneath a nineteenth century Russian chandelier, one of a matched pair in the yellow, gold and Wedgwood blue drawing room. In front of the white Carrara marble fireplace he noted she had placed a huge Chinese fish bowl filled with a wealth of sweet-smelling flowers. To add to the impact the beautiful pastel colours mimicked the colours in the magnificent nineteenth century Meissen porcelain clock that took centre place on the mantelpiece beneath a very valuable landscape. Other small arrangements were placed around the large room, rivalling the treasures on display.
“And?”
“Of course it’s my real name,” she said, one hand pushing a thick lock of hair back off her shoulder.
The drawing room was all too feminine for his taste, too opulent, silks and brocades, but Sonya Erickson could have been made for it. Even in tight sexy jeans and designer vest-top she fitted in. It occurred to him with her hair worn long and loose and very little make-up she looked hardly more than a girl of nineteen or twenty.
He released a tense breath. “But what about the Erickson? Would you believe I actually knew a woman who changed her name four times? She’s in jail now for fraud. She managed to extract the life savings from God knows how many fools of men.”
“Please, don’t make me weep!” she exclaimed. “Men are fools. But it’s hardly fraudulent to change one’s name by deed poll.”
“Are you saying you have?’
She ignored his question. “Why don’t you sit down?” she invited, with an elegant gesture of her hand.
“You might be in your own house,” he answered, tightly. Lucy’s house.
“Marcus has made me very welcome here.” Her answer was equally pointed. “So you can’t find out much about me. How disappointing for you. Is this what it’s all about?”
“I came to see Marcus,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting you. Why don’t you take the sofa?” he suggested. “I’ll take the armchair. I know you’re highly intelligent so we can cut to the chase. It’s obvious my uncle has come to care deeply for you. And in a very short space of time. That presents problems, don’t you agree?”
“Problems for you? I don’t see the problem for me. Marcus is a lovely man. Was I supposed to submit my credentials to you? I might tell you Marcus has never asked anything of me. He trusts me.”
His brilliant dark eyes flashed. “That’s what I’m worried about. Who and what are you really, Sonya? What is it you want?”
“Who said I wanted anything?” she responded with an imperious lift of her brows. She took not the gold sofa, but a gilded armchair opposite him.
Sunlight was falling through the tall windows, filtered by the sheer central curtain. It illuminated her figure, making her hair and her beautiful skin radiant. “You were wearing Aunt Lucy’s diamond and emerald jewellery at the gala function,” he said, the words freighted with meaning.
A flush like pink roses on snow warmed her cheeks. “Is there anything shameful about that? You’re far too quick to place blame. Marcus wanted me to wear them. I could say insisted. He’d asked me the colour of my dress. When I said emerald green, he suggested a set of jewellery that needed an airing. I assure you the set is safely back in his safe.”
It was too hard to resist. “Do you happen to know the combination?”
“Do you?” she shot back.
“I could open it blindfolded. I really don’t want to offend you, Sonya.”
“Then you couldn’t be doing a better job,” she said coldly, sitting very straight, long legs crossed neatly at the ankles.
Excellent deportment lessons there. “Your dress was exquisite, by the way. Did Marcus buy it for you?”
“Ah, the direct approach!” she said, looking down her finely cut nose at him. “I wore it because I had nothing better. Nor could I buy better. The dress is many years old.”
He sat studying her. She appeared to be telling the truth.
“Vintage haute couture.” She waved a hand.
“It looked it,” he said, wanting to pierce her defences.
She shrugged a shoulder. “But you are not here to discuss my evening dress, which I might tell you belongs to me.” She remembered her beautiful mother wearing it. But that was another time, another place, another world. A time when she had been happy.
“Actually I’m here to catch up with my uncle,” he said, breaking into her sad thoughts. “My love and loyalty is with him. You must understand that?”
She gave a light sceptical laugh. “Come now, you have no real right to interfere in his life, David. Marcus is a man in his fifties, a highly intelligent man.”
“Who in all his adult years has never looked at another woman outside Lucy. Until now,” he retorted sharply. “My big concern, Sonya, is that he doesn’t get hurt. Extraordinarily enough Marcus is an innocent in his way. His health isn’t all that good either. For years the whole family has been concerned he might simply die of a broken heart. That’s how devoted he was to Lucy, his wife.”
She flicked a platinum tendril off her heated cheek. “I understand the great pain of his loss. Marcus has told me many things about his beloved Lucy.” She could tell him something of her own losses but her rigid sense of caution stopped her.
“Has he?” Another highly significant thing, he thought.
“Haven’t you met anyone in your life you immediately identified with?” she asked, hostility in her beautiful green eyes.
He stared back at her, knowing he could never say he had identified with her. On sight.
“You won’t be able to take Lucy’s place, Sonya,” he assured her. “No one will let you. You simply don’t know what you’re getting into. The Wainwright family is very powerful. You can’t imagine how powerful. You wouldn’t want to get them offside. You wouldn’t want to embarrass them. Family is very important. So too is the Wainwright fortune. None of us would like to see a huge chunk of it going out of the family. We’re all interconnected in business. You’re far too young for Marcus. You know it. I know it. That said, many people would only see you in one way—as a woman on the make—and hate you for it.”
“So what you’re saying is, I couldn’t possibly come up to your exalted standards?” she asked with surprisingly cool contempt. “Or is the fact Marcus is thirty years older the main objection?’
He showed his own anger. “If you were even twenty years older I doubt if I’d be saying any of this. You don’t love Marcus, Sonya. Don’t tell me you do.”
“I wasn’t about to tell you anything,” she said icily. “The Wainwrights, who are they when it’s all said and done? Billionaires? So what? That’s not class, breeding, tradition. This nation is barely over two hundred years old. You’re parvenus. Your English ancestor, Wainwright, only arrived in this country in the early eighteen hundreds, the flicker of an eyelid. Your family does not impress me.”
“Evidently.” He was somewhat taken aback by her remarks, yet amused. “So tell me about your illustrious family?” he challenged. “European aristocracy, were they? Counts and countesses a dime a dozen? Or haven’t I given you sufficient time to get a really good story together? Maybe you’re a fantasist? Where do you come from exactly? Is Erickson even your real name?”
“Maybe I change it,” she said, sounding all of a sudden very foreign.
“Quite possible. My great-aunt Rowena thinks you have a slight Hungarian accent. She was married to a top British diplomat for many years. She knows Europe. She knows accents.”
Her eyes blazed emerald. “Well, well, well! I can’t find any other words.”
“Surely it’s not difficult for you to tell us something of your background? I’m ready to listen.”
