by Susan Napier
‘Yeah, but it’s cool to do it for another person,’ the girl pointed out with unarguable truth.
When her father came back with the promised book she was quick to beat a retreat.
‘She probably won’t even open it,’ he grunted, sitting down and reaching for his tea.
‘Uh, Petra’s already done that for you,’ said Anya when he ladled in a another teaspoonful of sugar.
He paused in his stirring. ‘Then why didn’t you stop me?’ he said, irritated.
‘I’m sorry my reactions weren’t fast enough for you,’ she replied astringently. ‘I didn’t know I was supposed to police the sugar bowl. For all I know you could need all that extra sweetening,’ she added in a dulcet tone, taking a sip of her own, unadulterated tea.
He shoved the over-sweetened drink back onto the tray and poured himself another in the spare cup, adding a sparse teaspoon of sugar, then sat back in his chair and regarded her with a threatening attentiveness.
‘So, to what do I owe the honour of this visit? Or were you simply strolling by and decided to “trip” in for a neighbourly chat?’ His ironic inflexion stressed the fact that she had never made any such neighbourly gesture before.
‘I walked across the fields because my car battery is flat,’ she told him, to disabuse him of any notion that she was in the habit of skulking around his property. ‘And you must know why I’ve come!’
‘Must I?’ His eyes were steady over the rim of his cup.
‘Don’t play word games with me!’ Her fingers tightened on the edges of the delicate bone-china saucer as she forced herself to calm down. ‘I’m talking about your phone call last night to Mark Ransom. You made absolutely no effort to contact me to get my side of the story about Saturday night, so I quite naturally assumed that you had got the full truth out of Sean. Now I find out that without even bothering to give me the chance to explain you’ve complained to the college—’
‘Actually, I did try to contact you last night to warn you what I was doing, but I was unable to get through,’ he interrupted, taking a fraction of the wind out of her sails. ‘And this morning I’ve been tied up in conference calls…’
Anya had been careless hanging up after Kate’s phone call the previous night and hadn’t discovered the receiver was still dislodged from the cradle until early this morning. That still didn’t excuse what he’d done. She set her tea down on the coffee table with an angry rattle.
‘You wanted to warn me that you were going to stab me in the back with unsubstantiated lies? Mark is coming to see me and I don’t even know what kind of slanderous allegations he’s going to throw at me!’ She had the satisfaction of seeing him frown. ‘What exactly did you say to him? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’
‘Calm down…’
‘Calm down?’ She was outraged. ‘This is my career we’re talking about!’
He waved a dismissive hand. ‘I know exactly what I’ve done. And I haven’t made any allegations or complaints about you or your conduct. I merely informed Ransom—as a friendly courtesy—that there was an unauthorised party here on Saturday night and a lot of kids from the school were here with illicit alcohol and that you also were here at one point, collecting some partygoers—’
‘—and prancing around in my underwear,’ she finished his sentence bitterly.
He kept his gravelly voice even. ‘I didn’t mention your state of dress—or lack of it. I was purposefully vague. Ransom knows you, you’re friends—he’s not going to automatically assume the worst.’ As he had! ‘I told him that Sean was being appropriately punished—fortunately his memory of the evening is pretty much a total blur—’
‘Fortunately for Sean, you mean!’
His mouth thinned but he held onto his patience. ‘For both of you. The only things Sean recalls of the latter part of the night is you chewing him out for what was going on, and him throwing up. After that everything’s a blank. He doesn’t even remember me arriving on the scene, let alone what he said to me, or what you were or weren’t wearing at the time…’
Anya felt a brief pang of dizzy relief. ‘Then why on earth did you have to go telling tales to Mark?’
‘Because word has a way of getting round, and it’s easier to attack with the facts than defend against rumours,’ he told her, his blue eyes persuasively intent on her stormy face. ‘Sean says that the party was supposed to be just for his rugby mates and their girlfriends, but it became an open secret around school and more and more people kept turning up on the night.’
He picked up her cup and handed it back to her, still holding her captive with his compelling gaze, and she automatically began drinking, the hot liquid easing the angry tightness in her throat. ‘I had a few calls from concerned parents yesterday about the state their children had arrived home in after what they had been told was an evening of watching videos. The phones have been running hot amongst the kids and before I warned him to keep his mouth shut Sean had already told a few of his mates that you had caught him with “some rich chick”, and no doubt they told a few of their mates, probably embellishing as people tend to do when they’re telling a good story. There are probably others, too, who’ll remember seeing you when you arrived at the party and start wondering why…’
‘Oh, no…’ Anya sighed, beginning to perceive the enormity of the problem in which she was entangled.
‘Oh, yes. Trust me on this, Anya, it’s my own field of expertise: it’s always safer to be the source rather than the victim of information. If rumours are flying around, we definitely don’t want it to look as if we’ve tried to cover anything up, because that implies that there’s something worth covering up in all this. As it is, only you and I know what happened in that bedroom, and as long as we corroborate each other’s story there won’t be problems about it. I’m sorry I couldn’t wait for your prior approval, but it was imperative to make a pre-emptive statement before any whispering campaign got started that could affect you in the classroom, or some parent formally approached the school.’
Trust him? Anya swallowed another mouthful of tea. She supposed she didn’t have much choice, and everything he had said did seem to make solid sense.
‘Well…’ Suddenly she realised the most important point she had almost overlooked. She straightened. ‘So you now admit I was telling the truth about what happened? That you were wrong about me.’
‘You can’t blame me for—’ He halted as she gave him the haughty-eyebrow routine. He inclined his head. ‘On this occasion, yes…I was wrong,’ he conceded, with an obvious difficulty that made the admission all the sweeter as far as Anya was concerned. He picked up the decorative plate of home baking which had remained ignored on the tray, and offered it as a blatant distraction.
‘Biscuit? Mrs Lee has a very light hand with brownies.’
‘Thank you.’ She took her time selecting one and then continued to press her advantage in the same, insistent tone. ‘And, of course, you take back all those terribly insulting things you said to me…’
His eyes narrowed and he put down the plate with a thump, giving her a sharkish smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m not prepared to give you a wholesale retraction. Why don’t you be a little more specific? You tell me what each insult was, and I’ll either agree or disagree to withdraw it.’
And in the process make her repeat every embarrassing one. Anya bit down on her biscuit with unnecessary force and nearly choked on the crumbs that exploded onto her tongue.
He watched her splutter for a moment, her eyes watering as she washed down the crumbs with the dregs of her tea, and leaned forward, his smile shifting into shocking suavity and his voice deepening to a sexy throb. ‘I am, of course, deeply sorry to have caused you any degree of discomfort whatsoever and hope that you’ll accept my most humble apologies for having the temerity to doubt a lady’s word…’
‘Oh, very prettily done,’ she said, outwardly unimpressed while inside her bones were resonating to the rich vibrancy of his tone. ‘A for effort
and acting, but you get a definite F in sincerity.’
His suavity was discarded as he burst out laughing. ‘You’re a hard woman.’
‘I’m glad you finally realise it.’
‘Then I needn’t worry about putting you through this next ordeal, though I think we both understand that it has to be done…’
The ‘ordeal’ turned out to be an apology from a very subdued Sean Monroe who, with his uncle standing with folded arms behind him, trotted out a few stilted words that didn’t quite conceal a lingering hint of truculence.
‘I don’t remember whatever it was I’m supposed to have done, but Uncle Scott said I acted like an obnoxious little kid so I guess I’m sorry for that, and whatever…and thanks for helping me when I was sick…’
Anya didn’t prolong his agony, accepting the olive branch with a casualness that she hoped wouldn’t leave any lasting feelings of resentment. She could see no hint of a smirk in his brown eyes which would indicate that the blank spots in his memory were anything but genuine.
‘Very clever to make him feel he made a fool of himself behaving like a silly little boy instead of a bad, macho stud,’ she commented to Scott when his nephew had slouched out. ‘Maybe he won’t be so keen to let himself get out of control in future.’
‘Maybe. He wants to be a professional rugby player and he has talent, but whether he has the long-term application and the temperament, I don’t know. His problem is that he enjoys being the sports superstar too much and expects it to earn him special treatment off the rugby field as well.’
He had accompanied her to the door, where she slipped on her boots. ‘At the moment he’s bitter because I’ve grounded him for the next three weeks, which means he’ll miss the first two weeks of rugby training when he gets back to school. I suppose you think I’m being too lenient.’
‘Actually I think you’re wise not to go overboard,’ she said mildly, perceiving in his acid comment an underlying doubt that appealed for her professional reassurance. ‘Except possibly—’ she hesitated, then forced herself to confront the worrying issue ‘—except where drugs are concerned…’
His face took on an expressive grimness. ‘Don’t worry, he and I have dealt with that as an entirely separate issue. I’m inclined to accept his claim that it was a one-off, because he’s obsessive about smoking or anything that might affect his fitness, but it’s still something that his parents are going to have to look into when they get back.’
Their new and tentative peace accord was almost breached when Scott refused to let Anya walk back home alone in spite of her insistence that she was perfectly recovered from her small accident. Under the threat that otherwise he would walk her home himself, step-by-step, she found herself bullied into his prowling silver Jaguar, which ate up the distance in no time flat.
Being enclosed in a small space with him heightened her unwilling physical awareness until she was responding to every drawn breath and slight shift of his body, and she began to quietly fret at the thought that he might choose to linger when they arrived at their destination. She couldn’t very well refuse to invite him in if he asked, but she knew that once he had been in her home his pervasive image would be even more deeply imprinted on her consciousness.
To her mingled relief and disappointment he merely dropped her at her front gate as she requested, with a glance at his watch and a brief instruction to answer Mark’s questions without going into unnecessary detail, and to try to sound casual and amused rather than angry or shocked.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOU’RE going to what?’ Anya cried, leaping to her feet in angry disbelief, jarring the two cups of coffee on her small kitchen table.
Mark Ransom held up his hands, surrendering to her vivid shock.
‘Look, it’s nothing formal, it won’t go on your official record or anything—’
‘You’re suspending me!’
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he hastened to reassure her, his brown eyes regretful. A thin, wiry man of average height, he didn’t make Anya feel small and vulnerable when she stood beside him, like someone else she could name! At thirty-seven he was young to have the headmastership of such a large school and had cultivated a gravity beyond his years. Anya liked him for his seriousness of character and dedication to his students, and when his small kindnesses had begun showing signs of becoming more personal in nature she had been cautiously optimistic about a future relationship.
Until now!
After Scott had dropped her off she had checked her letter box, and although it was too early for the mail she had found a handwritten note from Mark.
Anya, I called while you were out. Couldn’t wait. Phone me ASAP on my mobile.
ASAP had been underlined twice, and after she had changed out of her grubby clothing and slipped into a skirt and blouse that covered most of her bumps and scrapes, her response had brought Mark back to her doorstep as soon as he could conclude his lunchtime appointment.
‘It’s damage control, that’s all. I just want you to be prepared if I do have to ask you to take a bit of time out over the first few days of term,’ he clarified, standing up and smoothing down his tie under his suit jacket in a characteristic gesture of nervous impatience. Since he and Anya had never had a disagreement he was unused to her arguing with his authority. ‘But it probably won’t come to that, because by the time school goes back this will all have sorted itself out—’
‘Probably?’ Anya said in a frustrated voice, pacing around her small kitchen. ‘You said that Sc—Mr Tyler told you it was a private party and I’ve explained why I went there. I don’t see why it has to be made into such a big deal.’ She hadn’t mentioned Liz’s call, or her hasty visit to The Pines that morning, and of course it hadn’t occurred to Mark that she might have tried to take the initiative.
Mark ran a hand through his close-cropped sandy hair, looking as harassed as he sounded. ‘It won’t be if I can help it, Anya, but unfortunately Adrienne Brinkman has already been on the phone to me this morning to quietly warn me that she’s had to discipline two Eastbrook girls who said they were taken to a wild party by boys from Hunua’s first-fifteen team—’
Anya spun around. ‘Those girls were on a school camp at the time, but the Hunua kids were on holiday—there’s no way the college can be held responsible—’
‘Not quite true,’ Mark interrupted gloomily. ‘I did have one other parent phone me this morning—a regular busybody, as it happens, but this time I’m afraid she has a point. Apparently her son, who came home drunk, found out about the party from the college’s Internet bulletin board, so the school is involved. We have to find out who hacked in and posted that message, for one thing. And she also wanted to know why, if there was a teacher from the college chaperoning the party, the alcohol wasn’t confiscated?’
‘But I wasn’t there to chaperone the party—’
‘I know, but this is obviously the kind of thing that’s going to bubble up unless we satisfy everyone that the situation is being properly looked into,’ said Mark, unknowingly echoing Scott Tyler. ‘You know how careful teachers have to be about hints they’re leading students astray. It’s a question of retaining moral authority…’
Much as she hated to do it, Anya felt driven to play the personal card. ‘Surely the fact that you can vouch for my integrity must count for a lot? For goodness’ sake, Mark, we’re going out together—’
‘Yes, well—that’s actually part of the problem, don’t you see?’ he said awkwardly. ‘If I casually sweep this under the carpet people might think that it’s because of our personal relationship. In the circumstances it’s very important that I’m seen to be acting impartially.’ He looked at her from under furrowed brows. ‘You do understand?’
She was afraid she did. ‘Does that mean you won’t be picking me up for dinner tonight after all?’ she asked drily. All their other dates had been casual, but this time Mark had booked them to dine at the gourmet restaurant of the country hotel on the other side
of the Ranges.
He thrust his bunched hands into his hip pockets, looking uncomfortable. ‘If you don’t mind…I think it’s best not to, just at this point in time—don’t you think?’
She kept her thoughts to herself, her polite smile pinned firmly into place as she nodded. ‘It might look as though we were colluding.’
He looked relieved at her easy agreement. Perhaps after her outburst he had expected her to throw a tantrum.
‘Ridiculous, of course, but you know how paranoiac some people are.’ He looked down at the half-finished coffee on the table and Anya could see him already mentally edging towards the door. ‘I’ll keep you posted but, as I said, I think this will all fizzle out, especially if we divert attention to finding and making an example of this hacker, whoever he or she is…’
At her front step he turned to deliver a last piece of gratuitous advice. ‘By the way, it might help if you tried to get on with Scott Tyler instead of being at loggerheads with him all the time. If people know you’re feuding with him they might be tempted to wonder if you went to that party intending to stir up some trouble for him. I know he gave you a rough ride at your interview but don’t be too sensitive about it, that’s just his way—I’m sure it was nothing personal. In our own best interests, we need to present a united front on this one.’
Of course, it had to be her injured sensitivity and not Scott Tyler’s prejudice that was at fault, simmered Anya as she let the door swing closed behind him, tempted to give it a swift kick.
She swept the neglected coffees off the table, dumping the cold liquid down the sink before walking into her cosy living room, her arms wrapped around her waist. So her wonderful new life in the country had hit another hiccup, more serious than some of the others—so what? She would survive, as she had always survived the rough spots in her life.
She looked around at the sunlit room she had sweated to scrape down, paint and paper before she moved in, the second-hand furniture she had stripped, polished and otherwise refurbished to create the warm, natural, lived-in look that she associated with a real home. Nothing to remind her of the soulless modernity of a hotel, or the makeshift clutter of a student flat, or the regimentation of a school boarding house. Everything here was hers and no one else’s…except the big chunk of house that was mortgaged to the bank, she amended, and time would correct that unavoidable hitch.
