by Susan Napier
‘You and your father had a physical fight?’ Was that how he had got the scar on his mouth?
He dropped the plug into the basin and nudged the hot water tap on with his forearm, vigorously working the non-foaming cream into his oil-streaked palms. ‘He fought—I dodged…most of the time, until I got big enough not to have to run.’
Her heart dropped into her boots and she felt a familiar, helpless anger. ‘You were abused as a child?’
He picked up the nail brush in the shape of an iridescent green fish and began to scrub the tips of his fingers. ‘Not until my mother died of cancer when I was ten. Dad had a lot of anger inside him after that, and when he got drunk, which was pretty often, he let fly with his fists. He never touched my sister, though—Joanna’s always been the spitting image of Mum—and when I got as big as he was he stopped. Never stopped being angry at the world, though.’
‘Didn’t anyone ever realise that you were being hurt?’ asked Anya.
His shoulders moved dismissively. ‘I wasn’t hurting half as much as he was. At least I had an escape—a future to run towards. He couldn’t break free of the past. He was locked into his pain until the day he died.’ He pulled the plug and let the dirty water drain away, rinsing the basin and his raw hands under the cold tap.
‘I’m sorry…’
‘Pity him, not me.’ He turned, holding up his dripping hands like a surgeon waiting for a scrub nurse.
Anya hurriedly passed him the sinfully fluffy green bath sheet from the towel rail.
He dried his hands and then lifted the plush pile to his cheek, turning his face inwards to inhale the faint body scent which lingered in the fibres from her bath the night before. ‘Mmm…sumptuous. You’re really a closet sensualist, aren’t you, Miss Adams? Or, should I say, a bathroom sensualist?’
‘I thought you were going to call me Anya,’ she said, choosing to confront the lesser of two evils.
‘I’ve decided I like Miss Adams. It sounds so…’
She knew what he was going to say and her hand flew up to cover his mouth, trying to smother this latest outrage. ‘Don’t say it!’
His eyes slitted wickedly above the blade of her hand, accepting her foolish dare.
‘Prissy…’ The word was muffled, his lips pursing briefly against the centre of her cupped palm in a sibilant kiss.
She removed her hand and scrubbed it down the side of her skirt, but that didn’t rid her of the intimate heat of his mouth.
She glowered at him as he threaded the towel neatly back onto the towel rail. ‘You needn’t do that. It’s going straight into the wash, anyhow.’
‘Afraid I’ve contaminated it?’ he murmured, pulling his tight sleeves back down to cover his wrists. He noticed a dollop of grease perched near the hem of his shirt where it hugged his broad hips, and pulled out his handkerchief to dab it off, cursing as it smeared deeper into the thin, breathable material.
‘That’ll probably never come out now,’ Anya told him.
He threw his ruined handkerchief into her bathroom bin and took hold of the bottom of the shirt. ‘You’re an expert on emergency spills. Shall I take it off? Maybe if you run it through the wash for me straight away…’ He curled it away from his skin, giving her a teasing flash of a tanned, washboard stomach and a deliciously furry navel.
‘I’m not doing your laundry!’ she said, backing to the door. ‘I presume that’s one of the reasons you employ Mrs Lee.’
‘It’s just an excuse, really. I thought you might welcome the chance to see me half-naked…sort of even the score between us,’ he murmured, prowling after her.
Oh, wouldn’t he just love to know she had already seen him stark naked in her fantasies in this very room?
‘If I want to even the score I’ll just sue you for all the pain and suffering you and your family have caused me,’ she hit back, aiming deliberately below the belt. ‘If I’ve already lost my job and my reputation I’ve got nothing to lose by taking you to court, have I? I bet I could gouge enough out of you to keep me in clover for the rest of my life!’
The threat of legal action had a very satisfying effect. The arrogant smile was wiped off his face, his shoulders straightening, eyes narrowing and jaw jutting. As she moved back down the hall he slipped in front of her, his arm shooting out to slam against the opposite wall, barring her way. ‘What do you mean, lost your job? What in the hell did Ransom say to you?’
‘That I might be suspended from teaching as part of the school’s “damage control” if things get messy,’ she said.
He swore. ‘You’re not serious!’
His anger spurred her own. ‘Do I look as though I’m joking?’ She succinctly laid out all Mark’s arguments. The sound of Kate playing a Chopin ‘Impromptu’ had started up in the living room but she still kept her voice low, not wanting Petra to overhear. ‘If things do go much further I can probably wave goodbye to my career. An official investigation goes into my teaching record and, even if I’m completely cleared of any wrong-doing, that kind of mud sticks. Even if it doesn’t get that far I still might find myself struggling to re-establish my credibility—’
His hand fisted against the wall. ‘Dammit, why the hell isn’t Ransom taking my lead and playing it low-key? I thought you two were supposed to have become close—’
‘That’s why I can’t expect any special favours,’ she defended Mark, choosing not to make an issue of the insinuating emphasis. ‘He has to be above suspicion.’
He made a disparaging sound in his throat. ‘Doesn’t he realise that it’s his actions that’ll give the thing legs? It’ll run all the way to the newspapers if he’s not careful.’
‘Well, that’ll just up the amount of compensatory damages you’ll have to pay, won’t it? Maybe my neck is stiffing up a bit after all. A neck brace has got to be worth a few extra thou.’ Anya cupped hand to her nape and flexed her neck with a theatrical little groan.
He dropped his arm. ‘Don’t issue threats you’re not prepared to back up,’ he said, his tone containing a little sting of contempt.
‘I can back them up and you know it,’ she flared. ‘You’ve admitted liability with your apologies. I don’t even need a good lawyer to bring a civil suit; I could practically take the case to court myself and win!’
His professional pride recoiled. ‘The hell you could!’ he exploded quietly. ‘I’d eat you for breakfast in any courtroom in the country. You could have the judge in your hip pocket and you still wouldn’t be able to screw a red cent out of me.’
‘Who’s issuing threats now? Did you really think that you could buy me off with a few paltry apologies?’
At first she had merely been taunting, to teach him a lesson, but now Anya wondered whether there wasn’t a grain of truth in what she was saying.
His eyes searched hers, an experienced predator looking for the slightest hint of weakness in his prey. ‘I thought you didn’t want me comparing you to your cousin. You’re making it pretty difficult. This is just the kind of stunt I’d expect from her—’
Her steady grey gaze didn’t falter. ‘Is asking for justice a “stunt” unless you happen to be the one doing it?’
‘You can dress it up how you like, but this is extortion, pure and simple!’
‘I prefer to call it compensation for pain and suffering, both mental and physical—and so will a judge.’
‘This is just a bluff,’ he guessed shrewdly. ‘If it came to the crunch you’d fold. Turn tail and run, like Kate did when things threatened to get sticky. You won’t dare take me on. You’re bluffing!’
She was amazed and alarmed at her own temerity, but his assumption that she would never have the guts to stand up for her principles made her dig her heels in. She knew that if she blinked first she could count herself the loser.
‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.’ She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows, the only movement in an otherwise poker face. ‘Are you prepared to risk it? The money, the publicity…the implication that your guar
dianship has been negligent? Or are you willing to settle quietly out of court for an undisclosed sum? Tell me, what’s your best offer, Counsellor?’
For a moment she feared he was going to explode, but then the background music paused before the start of Kate’s second ‘Impromptu’ and Scott seemed to use the brief silence to rein himself in and let his astute brain make a lightning reappraisal.
His capitulation, when it came, was calculated and unequivocal.
He folded his arms and raised her another pair of brows.
‘OK. Here’s the deal—a one-time, non-negotiable, yes-or-no offer: forget suing and I’ll use all my personal influence and financial and legal muscle on your behalf to make sure that you emerge from all this with exactly the same reputation, status, job and prospects that you had going in—’
‘You think you can do that?’
‘Let me finish. If I succeed, you get no cash—apart from the extremely generous rate I’m prepared to pay you for privately tutoring Petra while she’s under my roof. This will not only give out the signal that you have my full support and confidence as a teacher, but also help Petra do something about the appalling grades her mother tells me she’s been getting. Lorna thinks she needs more individual attention—of the kind that I doubt she’ll get in her regular classes at the college—and, Lorna having once been an excellent teacher herself, I’m prepared to take her word for it.’
Anya’s head was whirling. ‘Your—Petra’s mother was a teacher?’
‘Oh, haven’t I mentioned it?’ he said smoothly. ‘Her career came to a rather abrupt end when she admitted she’d been having an affair with a senior student who was doing a scholarship year at the private boys’ school where she taught. She was allowed to resign rather than being fired, in order to hush it up…’
Anya felt as if she had swallowed a golf ball. ‘Are you saying—when you and she…that she was your teacher?’
‘Maths with Statistics. The lovemaking was strictly extracurricular. I got ninety-seven per cent in my final exam—to the relief of the school—and she got to have the baby she’d been wanting—which the school never found out about—so I guess you could say it was a mutually beneficial relationship.
‘With a precedent like that you can see why I might have overreacted to the circumstances in which I found you and Sean at the party. Women teachers do sometimes overstep the moral boundaries, Anya.’
‘I—yes, I suppose so…’ she faltered, knowing full well that he had blindsided her with his startling revelation in order to soften her up for the kill, and sure enough he moved ruthlessly in.
‘So, what’s your answer? Do we have a deal?’
‘You only mention what happens if you succeed.’ She-struggled to rise above the turmoil of her emotions. ‘What if you fail?’
‘If you don’t come out of this smelling like a rose, then you can name your own figure.’ Her eyes widened at the rashness of his words but he arrogantly disabused her. ‘But it’s not going to happen. I never fail. Remember that, Anya. When I set out to achieve something, I never give up and I never give in. One way or another I get what I want. So make your choice. Yes or no?’
CHAPTER SIX
‘YOU know, if you can express yourself like this, I don’t understand why you’re getting such low marks in subjects that require essay-writing,’ said Anya, laying the handwritten page she had just read beside her on the dappled grass. She leaned back on her hands and studied the girl sprawled on her stomach in front of her. ‘Your grammar and punctuation are a bit sloppy but you seem to have bags of creativity.’
‘Too much, my teachers say. My ideas are too radical for them, though I don’t see why I shouldn’t liven up the facts when they get too boring,’ Petra replied cheerfully, in between bites at the apple which she had plucked off the tree above them and polished against her ubiquitous black top.
Scott had insisted that the tutoring take place under his own roof, but over the past three days Anya had discovered that the conventional use of table and chairs and structured lessons were not always conducive to Petra’s concentration. Sean had been conspicuous by his avoidance, but Samantha had gaggles of friends coming and going and Scott, too, was a powerfully distracting presence. Anya had found it more productive to find a peaceful spot amongst the orchard trees where the casual surroundings caused Petra to relax and open up rather than regard their discussions as a dismal chore.
Every now and then they would see Scott disappear off in his Jag, presumably for court appearances or meetings with clients, but for the most part he seemed to be working out of his study—or trying to.
‘It’s because of me,’ Petra had brashly confided on the second day. ‘Sam says she hardly used to see him before I came, because he was always at work, but he’s sorta trying to hang out around here for my sake. You know—be there for me. He bought this parenting book, for God’s sake—I saw it in his study: Bringing up a Teenager in the New Millennium or something equally dorky.’ The rolling of her eyes hadn’t quite concealed her sneaking satisfaction.
‘I don’t think I “thrive in a formal classroom setting”,’ said Petra now, rearing up to hurl her core accurately over the fence into the depths of a bank of low-growing shrubs.
Anya smiled wryly at the direct quotation from one of Petra’s report cards. She had said much the same thing to Liz Crawford when she had dropped by the school office to pick up a copy of Petra’s timetable and some texts and syllabus information.
‘She obviously has intelligence, she just doesn’t choose to focus it. Music is the only subject where she appears to score consistently high marks.’
Liz shook her dark curls as she handed over the requested photocopies. ‘You’re a glutton for punishment. First that camp and now this. I thought you were going to be selfish with the rest of your holiday…work on that essay of yours.’
‘I can do that in the mornings—I don’t go over to The Pines until after lunch. Anyway, I am being selfish. I’m doing this to allay people’s fears that I’m persona non grata with the board’s legal eagle and a bad influence on their kids. It’s starting to work, too. You’d be amazed at the number of parents I’ve run into, or acquaintances who ring me up, and happen to mention that they’ve heard I’m teaching Scott’s daughter—’
‘Hah! That’s only because they’re trying to pump you for information,’ was the cynical reply. ‘Scott Tyler turning out to have a fourteen-year-old daughter nobody’s ever heard of is big news around here. I hope she handles attention well, because she’s going to get quite a bit of it on her first few days of school…’
‘Oh, I think she’ll handle it,’ Anya had murmured and, looking at Petra now, she wondered whether ‘craves it’ might have been a more accurate description. The girl was certainly no shrinking violet.
She waved away a lazy fruit fly that was trying to land on her bare knee. The Indian summer was still rolling on and she had worn a sleeveless sundress to cope with the heat. ‘Maybe if you tried looking on essay-writing in the same way that you look on music—as containing a set of classical conventions that need to be followed in order for you to fully express your ideas in the medium, in a way that your audience can understand and appreciate—’
‘OK, OK, I get it,’ said Petra, selecting and buffing up another late-season windfall. ‘You think I’m paying too much attention to one subject. So does Mum. She knows what I want to be, but she keeps saying I can’t put all my eggs in one basket, that I’ll need qualifications to fall back on if I can’t make it as a musician.’ She shrugged her thin shoulders, tipping the apple from hand to hand—drawing attention to the wide span of her palms and long, flexible fingers. ‘She and Dad—my other Dad—think that if I cut down on my piano lessons I could put more energy into my other work, but it doesn’t work like that.’
She tossed the apple into Anya’s lap, amidst the pattern of dark red flowers which decorated her simple shift.
Bingo! thought Anya. Was this part of what had brought
her winging across the Tasman Sea? ‘It is a very tough profession,’ she cautioned. ‘You need a lot of luck as well as loads of talent and a ton of ruthless ambition.’
‘I have talent. I’m ambitious.’
‘No kidding?’ Anya held up the shiny but misshapen and skin-blemished fruit. ‘You’re not trying to bribe the teacher into taking sides, are you?’
Petra grinned. ‘Would it work?’
Anya crunched into the sweet overripe flesh. ‘Not a chance.’
Petra’s eyes suddenly brightened and she sat up, then tried to look nonchalant as she waved a casual hand. ‘Hi, Dad.’
‘Mind if I join you, or am I interrupting the lesson at a critical juncture?’ Since Scott was already plunking himself down between them on the grass he considered the question already answered.
‘Nope. Miss Adams was just complimenting me on my terrific essay,’ said Petra, confident that Anya’s mouthful of apple would give her a few moments’ grace before the inevitable qualification.
Anya cupped her hand over the spurt of juice which chose just that moment to run down her chin. Unfortunately she had left her handbag in the house and she surreptitiously felt for a spare piece of paper to serve as a napkin.
‘Here, allow me.’ Scott produced a handkerchief, but instead of passing it to her to use he tilted up her chin with his knuckles, nudged her hand aside and mopped up the glistening moisture himself, paying particular attention to the primly tucked corners of her sticky pink mouth, his eyes sparkling with amusement at her chagrin.
Some of the juice ended up on his fingers and he licked at them unselfconsciously with a limber tongue.
‘Mmm, sweet yet tart…just the way I like it,’ he approved, his lazy-eyed look making Anya think of everything but apples. She mistrusted him in this kind of whimsical mood. She had earlier seen him in a grey suit, dictating to someone over the speaker phone in his study, but now he was in jeans and a blue Hawaiian shirt—purpose-dressed for lounging out in the open. He hadn’t just wandered out here for a passing hello.
