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Sonya acknowledged them with a calm nod, although her stomach muscles were tensing. She finished off wrapping a large bunch of stunning yellow heliconias. She had added some ginger foliage that had very interesting yellow strips for effect. She passed them across to her valued customer with a smile. “There you are, Mrs Thomas. You might use a few dark philodendron leaves if you have them at home,” she suggested. “See how it goes.”
Maureen Thomas nodded, very happy with the unusual selection. “These are splendid, thank you so much.”
“My pleasure.”
Mrs Thomas glanced in pleasant fashion at the two very uppity looking women as she walked to the door. She might have been invisible. It amused her.
Marilyn Rowlands swooped to the counter, a mother protecting her young. “Look here, young lady,” she said without preamble, “it’s wrong what you’re doing. You’re only creating serious problems for yourself.”
“Do I know you?” Sonya’s brows arched.
Breathe deeply. Keep calm.
Marilyn’s face clouded. “You know me. I’m Paula’s mother.” She might have been as easily recognisable as the Queen of England.
“Paula can’t speak for herself, then?” Sonya asked politely.
“No cheek, young lady,” Marilyn Rowlands said, thinking this girl was a whole lot more than she had been led to expect. She was amazingly beautiful, with an ultra-refined look. “I take insolence from no one,” she warned, placing a heavily be-ringed hand on the counter.
A blue cloisonne bowl full of exquisite gardenias jumped. Sonya settled it.
What was it the Buddhists intoned to calm them?
Om … om … om.
“Do I have a need for concern here, Mrs Rowlands?” she asked. “There is a security guard who patrols these shops.”
Marilyn’s coiffed head shot back in outrage. “Are you threatening me?”
“I have a perfect right to refuse service to difficult people who come into my shop, Mrs Rowlands.”
Paula belatedly entered the fray. “No one speaks to my mother like that. My father could have you out of here in no time.”
“I doubt that,” Sonya said. “You leave my husband out of this,” Marilyn Rowlands ordered, not averse to a slanging match.
Sonya was. “Mrs Rowlands, I’m asking you quietly to leave.”
Marilyn Rowlands stood her ground. “First I need you to promise me you’ll stop your little games.”
“What games exactly?’
“You know very well. You’re an opportunist.”
“So what’s in it for me?” Sonya asked.
Paula threw up her hands in triumph. “I knew it! Didn’t I tell you, Mummy?” she cried as though her low opinion of Sonya had been vindicated.
Marilyn opened her Chanel handbag, and then pulled out a cheque book. “Don’t attempt to double cross me, young lady. How much?”
“What’s the best you can offer?” Sonya asked.
“Why, you’re no better than a con woman,” Marilyn Rowlands said with an overlay of contempt.
“Five hundred thousand dollars!” Sonya named a ridiculous figure. Who cared?
Marilyn frowned ferociously. “That’s a bit steep.”
“David, or Marcus?” Sonya asked, covering up her sick feeling.
“Both. Holt adores Paula.”
“So I can’t have Marcus?”
Marilyn Rowlands frowned as if a massive migraine was coming on. “How long have you been on the make? I repeat, you can have neither. They’re way out of your league.”
“And I know for certain Holt is going to marry me,” Paula threw in for good measure.
Her mother focused on Sonya with eyes as cold and round as marbles. “Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, my last offer. It would be a fortune to someone like you. Quit the flower shop. Get yourself an education. Move on. Take the money. Shut up shop. Head for sunny Queensland. Lots of lotus eaters up there. We want you gone.” She looked in her bag, found her Mont Blanc pen. “A lot of people want you gone. Especially the Wainwright clan.”
“Listen to me a moment, Mrs Rowlands.” Sonya spoke very quietly, but with a note in her voice that stopped Marilyn Rowlands in her tracks. “I’ve been leading you on. I’m not interested in you or your money. I find this whole episode extremely distasteful. What I want you to do now is walk quietly out of my shop. And never return.”
“Excuse me!” Marilyn Rowlands gave vent to a growl she could well have learned from her Chihuahua.
“You have my word I won’t mention this visit or the offensive things you’ve said.”
Paula broke in again. Seething with jealousy. “Why don’t you go back to where you came from? Some dingy European dump, I expect.”
“Perhaps I should call the security man.”
Marilyn Rowlands put up her hand. “That’s enough, Paula,” she said sternly. “Wherever this young woman came from, it was no dump.” She looked back to Sonya. “Turn my proposal over in your head, Ms Erickson. You’re no fool. You could see the sense of it some time soon. Holt’s parents are due home soon. I’m a pussy cat compared to Holt’s mother. As for his father! You poor girl, it would be a horrendous thing to cross him. I highly recommend you don’t do it. Holt is everything in the world to them. You have no chance in the world of gaining admittance to that family, believe me.”
Sonya gave Marilyn Rowlands a straight look. “The question is do I want to gain admittance, Mrs Rowlands.
I haven’t as yet decided the answer.”
At the weekend Marcus suggested she come out on his boat. Local weather was holding gloriously calm and fine. “It hasn’t been out for ages,” he told her. “You must come.”
The “boat” turned out to be a svelte and racy 128 yacht designed years before by a famous ex-patriot who went on to become a world legend. Marcus, looking a good ten years younger in his tailored jeans and blue sports shirt beneath a gold buttoned navy blazer, showed her around the Lucille Anne with careless pride. “I used to be a good sailor in my day. Let it go. I’m sorry about that now. David is a brilliant sailor. He should take you out some time. You don’t get seasick?’
“I’m sure one couldn’t get seasick on this magnificent yacht.” She smiled.
The Lucille Anne had three decks of cabins and saloons. The main saloon, marvellously comfortable, was panelled in walnut with touches of macassar ebony. Apart from the plush master suite there were four guest staterooms. On the teak laid aft deck reached by a gleaming stainless steel stairway with a balustrade, there was casual furniture and a swimming platform Sonya wasn’t about to use any time soon.
“Lucy and I used to take it to the Mediterranean when young David was on holidays,” Marcus told her with a smile of remembrance. “We looked on him as our own child. He was a remarkable boy. A remarkable young man.”
“You love him?”
“Oh, yes!” Marcus confirmed quietly. “David is every inch the man we all wanted him to be.”
It turned out to be a relaxing day spent in total luxury. A superb seafood lunch was served on the glass-topped oak table accented in ebony in the dining saloon. Afterwards they adjoined to the aft deck with its comfortable arrangements of chairs and wide teak table that held a low black bowl filled with pink and yellow hibiscus.
“You look happy.” Marcus spoke in such a deep tender voice it was a clear giveaway. Sonya was wearing navy jeans with a navy and white T-shirt, white sneakers on her feet. A casual outfit on a beautiful young woman with a willowy body. She could have earned a fortune modelling clothes. Apparently that held little allure for her. She was seemingly content in her world of flowers.
Sonya turned her head lazily. “I am. You’re lovely company, Marcus. Thank you so much for asking me.”
“I want to do everything you want, Sonya,” he announced, in a fervent voice. “And I want to do it now. I know you don’t love me. I couldn’t ask for that, but you are fond of me?”
Sonya sat straight, her heart thudding. This was an opportunity most women would give their eye teeth for. Only she wasn’t at all sure she was one of them. It wasn’t an everyday event to be proposed to by a millionaire. Some would be ecstatic. Only she had developed a taste of passion, shameful though the memory was. Affection was at the heart of her very real feelings for Marcus. Never passion.
Shove all thoughts of David Wainwright from your mind. Do it now,her inner voice instructed.
Marilyn Rowlands had made a point of telling her she would never fit into David Wainwright’s world. In all probability she had spoken the truth. His parents would have their own ideas about their adored son’s future.
“No, let me finish,” Marcus said, sensing her perturbation. “I’m a rich man. But with no woman in my life to love, I might as well be dirt poor. I fell in love with you the instant I walked into your shop.”
“Marcus! “ She held out her hands like a supplicant, palms up. How could she hurt this gentle man? He wanted her. More importantly he could protect her if ever the time came. She knew Laszlo wouldn’t rest until he had tracked her down; made certain she wasn’t in possession of the Andrassy Madonna. She had lived with the fear he would eventually find her. He could already be closing in.
“Please listen,” Marcus begged. “You don’t talk about yourself. In my experience people who have suffered deep traumas never talk. Maybe they can’t. I know you have a story, but I’m content to wait until you’re ready to tell me about it. I don’t care what it is. I don’t care what you’ve done—if indeed you’ve done anything. I want to marry you, Sonya. I want to look after you. There is still time for me to father a child. You will want for nothing.”
Except passionate love.
Is that so bad? Don’t you read the headlines, girl? Celebrities passionately in love one moment suddenly spitting venom and selling their stories to the magazines. They move on to someone else to fuel their tank. I ask you, what is love? Where does the love go?
“You don’t have to answer me now. I can see I’ve stunned you. You can have all the time you want.”
She had to control a desire to weep. “Marcus, you’ve honoured me.” At the same time she couldn’t help thinking maybe what he really wanted was a daughter. This man was terribly lonely.
Marcus must have guessed her thoughts. “Sonya, I love you as a woman,” he said. “A beautiful, gifted woman, and most hopefully the mother of our child. You needn’t fear I couldn’t give you a child. My poor little Lucy couldn’t get pregnant. She was never strong. Lucy would want me to be happy. She was the sweetest human being.”
All sorts of emotions tugged at her. She had to remember what her life had been. Marcus could change all that. She spoke earnestly. “Marcus, your family might very well see me as an opportunist. You’re a rich man. You’re years older than I am. They would question that.”
“Let them!” he said scornfully. “As long as you don’t question it. I don’t give a damn what anyone thinks. I’m in love with you. I don’t even care David has his concerns. That’s how much I want you.”
So David, traitor, has spoken of his concerns!
“No Wainwright has power over me, Sonya,” Marcus said firmly. “You, however, do.”
Say something. Say something. Silence will give him hope.
He reached for her hand. “If you marry me I’ll do everything in my power to keep you safe and happy. That, I swear.”
It was an enormously touching moment. Would it be so terrible to marry Marcus?
Give yourself time to think. Marcus Wainwright is a good man. How many of them are about?
Days passed. She was kept very busy in the shop. She had an assistant, a single mother with two children, aged seven and nine, who did part-time work that fitted in with her mothering schedule. Penny had received some training in a suburban flower shop. She was very good with the customers, efficient at what she did and if she lacked a certain imagination it didn’t matter all that much to Sonya, who could always do a bit of tweaking. As a single mother Penny needed the work. Sonya had been happy to give it to her.
Midweek Marcus took her out to dinner in one of those restaurants where the price list would give the average person a heart attack. And that didn’t include the hefty tip. Marcus looked very handsome in his professorial fashion, his face radiating his pleasure and pride in her company.
His high spirits would have been apparent to all who gave him a little friendly wave as they passed, or those who bent closer over the table to make a comment, most probably acid.
The longer this goes on, the harder it gets. For you and him. You owe him an answer. You have to make up your mind what it’s going to be.
The whole situation, so jubilant to Marcus, was weighing heavily on her mind.
The entrée, a selection of teeny morsels, delicious enough, but served in what was nearly a platter. It seemed to her ridiculously pretentious. She reached for her wine glass, noticing at that moment the maître d’ showing a tall, stunningly handsome man and his extremely pretty companion to a table. Her decision was made for her.
It has to be a no. Of course it has to be a no. Married to a man you do not love with the prospect of seeing the man you’re so powerfully drawn to on every family occasion. Sheer madness!
“Good Lord, it’s David!” Marcus was saying delightedly as he stood up to attract his nephew’s attention. “David!” he called. “He has Emma Courtney with him, Sonya. Lovely girl, Emma. She’s nuts about him, as the saying goes. I should know. I’m nuts about you.” He laughed, colour in his lean cheeks. “I’ll introduce you.”
It was the very last thing Sonya wanted. She sat back, desperate to achieve some semblance of calm.
David Wainwright will marry a young woman much like the one he’s out with tonight.
Get that through your head.
His hand at Emma’s elbow, Holt led the way to his uncle’s table. The shock of seeing her again was as painful, as piercing as an arrow shot straight to the heart.
You fool!
His warning voice kicked in, determined on giving him hell. She was wearing the standard little black dress but her radiant beauty and her colouring made the dress look as if it were worth every last cent of a million dollars. Marcus was beaming with pride. It was obvious he would do anything for her. Lay down his life if need be. Not only was she far and away the most beautiful woman in the room, she was highly intelligent. If she was after position and security, a half-share of Marcus’s money, it was as good as in her hand. From a florist shop to chatelaine of one of the most beautiful houses in a city full of beautiful houses. Money beyond her wildest dreams would be at her disposal. For all he knew the wedding date had already been set.
He had to bring all his concentration to bear just on saying hello.
Marcus gripped his shoulder. “What a surprise to see you, David. How are you, Emma? You look lovely as usual.” Marcus moved a pace to kiss Emma’s cheek. She was a true redhead with lovely bright blue eyes.
“Sonya.” Holt acknowledged her with a slight bow. She gave him a cool smile.
Still playing the aristocrat for all she was worth. It was a sterling performance. He had to give her that. “I’d like you to meet a friend of mine, Emma Courtney. Emma, Sonya Erickson.” He made the introduction.
Emma rated a real smile. It lit up Sonya’s beautiful face like the sun sparkling off ice. “Nice to meet you, Emma.”
“You too, Sonya. I’ve heard a lot about you.” Emma was looking at Sonya with open admiration.
“I take it David is the one giving the information?” Sonya kept the smile on her face.
“All good things.” Emma gave a tiny triangular smile. It could have meant she’d had a few words with others, like Paula Rowlands, whom she no doubt knew.
A pleasantry or two more and they moved off. Emma glanced back and gave a little friendly wave.
“Lovely girl!” Marcus enthused, sitting down again. “I’m so glad David isn’t serious about Paula. You have to be careful with those Rowlands women. Though I have to say Paula can be extremely nice when the mood takes her. Emma had better look out. Paula has always been wildly jealous of anyone who even looked sideways at David.”
Tell me about it.
“Then she has a battle on her hands. Every woman in the room looked up the moment he walked in.”
“You too?” Marcus shot her a quick intent look.
