by Susan Napier
A trace of discomfort shifted in the dark eyes. ‘Kate—’
She didn’t want his pity, or his remorse. ‘Oh, don’t ruin the callous, two-timing image she sketched out so vividly. Just be grateful that I know you don’t really believe I’m a bunny-boiling psychotic, or you wouldn’t have let your trash-talking girlfriend come within a mile of me. My own father is mooching his life away on a dot in the Pacific because he couldn’t handle the responsibility of a relationship with me. You needn’t worry that I’m the type to slit my wrists just because a man I respected turns out to be a self-absorbed idiot and coward to boot—’
His face paled, eyes burning in their sockets. ‘Don’t even say it!’ he said harshly, grabbing her arm and jerking her into silence. ‘Look, if Melissa went too far, I’m sorry—she thought she was helping…’
‘Helping herself to you,’ she joked warily, easing her arm out of his painful grip as he seemed to go into physical lockdown.
He looked sick as he watched her massage the blood back into the pale streaks his strong fingers had left on her forearm. She had hormones to blame for her disruptive urges; what made his behaviour so strangely contradictory? For a moment she had had a brief awareness of his potential emotional depths, and realised for the first time that perhaps this journey was going to be more painful for him than it was for her.
In the midst of her own turmoil she felt an irresistible urge to make him smile, to banish that disquieting bleakness from his eyes.
‘Gee, and to think Oyster Beach came across as such a pleasant little backwater when I was planning this holiday,’ she mused. ‘Who knew it would be such a hotbed of passion and intrigue? Inspiration must bite you at every turn—lucky you have your best writing-boots on.’
His mouth twitched, his eyes falling automatically to his feet, which unfortunately brought the book she had been reading into his purview. Face up on the grass, the cover blared its author’s first mega-seller in its third reprint. With seven books published in the last six years, in a multitude of languages, each successive blockbuster had guaranteed a surge in new sales for his backlist.
His mouth relaxed into a knowing grin. ‘Been reduced to finding your thrills vicariously these days, have you, Kate?’ He bent to pick it up, and frowned when he turned it to read the classification code on the spine. ‘You got this from a library?’
‘Don’t say it as if it’s a dirty word, libraries are wonderful. They’re one of the foundations of civilisation—’
‘I thought you said you had all my books,’ he interrupted her, staring broodingly at his younger image on the back cover. ‘You work for the publisher, for God’s sake. Bloody hell, you could have asked me if you wanted a copy! What happened to the one you had?’
He looked so annoyed that she wasn’t going to tell him that her own Drake Danielses were far too precious to her to risk taking to the beach. Better to lose or damage a library book than one of her own first editions, all of which had his slashing signature on the title page, thanks to Marcus’ practice of asking every one of his authors for a dozen signed copies to distribute around the office.
‘First novels often aren’t worth keeping. They’re too disappointing when comparing them with an author’s later, more refined techniques at work,’ she murmured glibly.
For a glorious moment she thought he was going to fall for it. At least the healthy colour had returned to his face, she thought as he teetered on the edge of an explosion. Then he caught himself.
‘Why, Kate, you never complained about my lack of refinement before,’ he said, arranging the placement of the book back in her hands so that she had two pairs of identical brown eyes drilling her with their sexy mockery. ‘In fact, I thought you liked it. I certainly don’t ever recall you saying you found my technical skills disappointing.’
‘I know how sensitive you artists are to criticism,’ she said acidly, and this time he did laugh out loud.
They both knew his professional ego was bulletproof. He made no secret of the fact his formal schooling had been spotty and at eighteen he had been working as a labourer to save enough money to begin years of travelling. He had worked his passage from port to port around the world on short-haul cargo ships, stopping off to do unskilled labour wherever he could pick up a job, living and working in dangerous environments because they always paid the best money. Curious and observant, he had kept journals throughout his travels, using them as the basis of his first novel. After it had been snapped up for publication he had continued to write because he had stumbled on the purpose of his life. He’d discovered that he had a natural talent for tapping into the popular imagination of millions of people from all cultures and all walks of life, an instinctive gift for words that could make grown men weep and ladies brawl.
‘If this is a library book, you must be expecting to be back in Auckland fairly soon?’ His eyes ran up and over her, but to her chagrin he didn’t seem to notice the knockout bikini, partly because she was hugging his book against her chest, but mostly because he was too busy running through his mental checklist.
‘Knowing how much your mother’s daughter you are when it comes to the letter of the law, I can’t see you deliberately flouting the rules and running up a fine, even if it’s only a library fine, so maybe you never planned on staying the whole month here after all,’ he worked out, with the convoluted logic of a highly creative mind. ‘Maybe you expected to be able to do whatever you came here to do fairly quickly, and be back in town in time to return the book.’
Kate could have told him she had far more pressing concerns weighing on her conscience than late library books. ‘That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it, even for you? The loan is for three weeks and you can renew at least twice by phone or online—’
He brushed aside her argument, too intrigued by his paranoid fantasy. ‘You don’t even have a phone connection in the house, let alone wireless coverage, and the cellular signal is erratic at best. Your mind is far too tidy to leave things like that to chance…no, there’s got to be something—’
‘For goodness’ sake, this isn’t the middle of the Gobi Desert, Drake,’ she cut in with exasperation, not sure whether he was serious, or simply winding her up. With Drake’s sardonic sense of humour it was sometimes difficult to tell. ‘I could just stroll next door and ask to use your internet connection. And don’t tell me you don’t have one, because you email your manuscripts and revisions.’
He folded his arms over his chest, his smooth jaw set at a stubborn angle as he moodily toyed with the suggestion. ‘So you could. Maybe that’s the whole idea—access to my computer. I told Marcus there was a good reason the first few chapters are late. He knows I’ll deliver the goods. Is he throwing the panic switch already just because I’m not answering his emails? Did he put the squeeze on you to do him a personal favour?’ He snorted. ‘Threaten your job if you didn’t use your leverage with me to find out what’s going on with the new synopsis, and why I haven’t sent the partial? Because if he did any of that, you can tell him that he’s violated our confidentiality agreement and he can kiss goodbye to any more books from me.’
‘What a shame, and you two have been such loyal friends through all these years, and had such a wonderfully successful run together—you’ve stuck with Enright Media, even though you must have been wooed by every big publisher in the business,’ said Kate, her voice dripping with false compassion at his outrageous threat. ‘It seems you just can’t trust anyone these days, can you?’ Then she clapped her hand to her cheek. ‘Oh, that’s right, I forgot—you never do trust anyone, anyway. How nice it must be to have proof that your lack of faith in your friends has been justified.’
He cooled off instantly. ‘I haven’t proved anything,’ he growled defensively.
She gave him an oozing smile, destined to trigger every warning instinct in his wary nature. ‘Just out of interest, why haven’t you sent him the partial?’
He momentarily froze, and then let out a shuddering breath, ru
nning his hand over his head, raking his hair into disturbed peaks. ‘Hell, Katherine, rub it in, why don’t you?’
‘Thank you, I will.’ She relished the chance to take her revenge. ‘If you really believed that farrago of nonsense it’s a short step to thinking that Marcus might have introduced me to you at that party two years ago as part of his long-term strategy of betrayal. I could be a mole.’
‘I don’t think moles go in for sunbathing, and certainly not in purple bikinis,’ he murmured, showing that he was not as impervious as she had supposed. ‘They’re very solitary, dark-loving creatures, with powerful appetites…’
‘That sounds familiar. Maybe you’re the mole,’ she suggested.
‘With what mission—to betray myself?’
‘Well, it would cut out the middle man.’
A flicker of amusement in his eyes indicated a mocking self-awareness—but as usual when their conversation threatened to breach his invisible walls he deflected her attention away from himself. ‘At least we’ve narrowed down the list of possible motives for you being here. The process of elimination will eventually bring us down to the truth.’
‘“You can’t handle the truth!” The angry quote from A Few Good Men floated into her mind and tripped off her tongue before she could stop it.
‘Not been around long enough to qualify as a classic yet, Kate, but it was Jack Nicholson playing Colonel Jessep. And he was wrong, wasn’t he? Because people are constantly having to adjust to newly revealed truths…it’s called living…’
‘Some people are too busy crying wolf on their friends or looking for reds-under-the-bed to fully engage in living,’ she said, suddenly feeling on the brink of tears. She wasn’t going to be stampeded into telling him about their baby in a burst of anger at his wilful lack of understanding. ‘Or, in your case, perhaps I should say reds-in-the-bed!’
In a flutter of iridescent green she turned to flounce back into the house, but was halted as he grabbed a piece of handkerchief hem.
‘Melissa’s a freelance editor.’
Kate stilled at the revelation, but didn’t turn around. After a moment, he spoke again, his voice rusty with reluctance. ‘She’s worked on nearly all of my books. I pay her to read the manuscripts for me, give me an overview and correct punctuation and grammar before I send them in. Why do you think my manuscripts are so polished when they land up at Enright’s?’
Kate turned slowly, tethered by his fistful of green gauze. She had heard that he only ever required the occasional line-edit. ‘But doesn’t the editorial department usually do all that stuff?’
He hunched his shoulders. ‘I don’t get a say at who Marcus employs—I don’t like people I don’t know taking over and changing things. But I had to do something after the nightmare I went through over the editing on the first book. I have a mild form of dyslexia and never paid much attention to formal English at school so I have two strikes against me. But it is my story to tell—and I want to give the nit-pickers as little excuse as possible to tinker with my intentions.’
The light bulb went on inside her head. Of course. This was a Drake Daniels she knew very well. He would do everything he could to minimise the exposure of his weaknesses to others. It was all about control.
‘But you let Melissa tinker,’ she said, eaten up with a jealousy that was far more than sexual.
‘We go over it together. She’s good at what she does. I know she’ll fix the technicalities and throw in a few criticisms and leave the final interpretation to me.’
‘Does Marcus know?’
‘He doesn’t need to know.’ He shrugged. ‘He doesn’t care about the process; all he cares about is that I deliver him a saleable book at the end of it.’
Kate stared at him. She shouldn’t be so surprised. Need to know. He operated his whole life on that basis.
His fist tightened, putting tension on her wrap as he misinterpreted her long look. ‘I suppose now you’re wondering if she’s more a ghost-writer than an editor.’
It had never even occurred to her. Knowing Drake, she would bet that Melissa had a major battle on her hands with every altered comma.
‘Actually, I was wondering how long you two have been together.’
‘We’re not together,’ he rejected instantly. ‘I send her chunks of the book to read and she comes here to work with me on the edit, that’s all. It never takes more than a few days.’
‘She calls you “Darling”.’
‘She calls everybody “Darling”.’ He clenched his teeth. ‘Melissa and I have never slept together.’
His statement fell starkly between them. ‘But she obviously would like to,’ said Kate.
‘A lot of women want to sleep with me; that doesn’t mean I do,’ he snapped impatiently, hitting on a source of increasing agony for Kate.
‘Why not? What’s to hold you back?’ she gouged viciously at the open wound.
‘For God’s sake, Kate, I’m not interested and Melissa knows it. Nor is she. That was all an act! She makes a mint off her contract with me, she wouldn’t ever want to jeopardise it. Apart from anything else she’s married.’
‘That’s no barrier these days.’
His head reared up at the splash of acid in her voice. ‘It is for me.’
She would concede that. Too many messy complications.
‘What if she got a divorce?’ prodded Kate.
‘I’m not going to sleep with her, Kate, not even to justify your jealousy.’
He was so smug! ‘I’m not jealous!’
He flipped his wrist, winnowing the thin fabric, wafting warm air around her bare thighs and midriff. ‘You look pretty green to me!’
His sly humour struck her on the raw. ‘Green also happens to be associated with harmony, growth and fertility—’ She stopped, stricken. He continued to hold on, his eyes alert with sharpening curiosity, and with a little gasp she rotated quickly away in a balletic twirl that shed her gauzy cocoon, leaving him holding an empty snatch of nothing as her bikini-clad figure disappeared into the house, a sharp click of the latch signalling that her tantalising flight was not an invitation to pursue!
CHAPTER FIVE
KATE was still alive in a state of angry embarrassment a few mornings later when she backed her car out of the garage to head down to the wharf and see if any of the fishing boats she had seen coming in were willing to sell some of their catch from the boat.
The anger was mostly with herself for being a wimp. After coming all this way to challenge Drake, she was now ducking and diving to avoid being seen until her chaotic hormones stopped her leaking tears at inappropriate moments, skulking around inside the house with the doors locked, taking long walks up the beach to find a hidden spot in the sand-dunes where she could do her sunbathing, and driving up into the hills to explore the nature trails.
The embarrassment followed a very uncomfortable second encounter with Melissa Jayson at a local roadside vegetable stall, where Kate had paused on one of her carefully timed walks to buy a bunch of leafy green silver beet, a brown bag of crunchy sugar-snap peas and a large head of broccoli. The stall was a little wooden shed at the entrance to a long driveway heading down into the bush along the estuary shore, the method of payment an honesty box with a large, rusting padlock attached. Kate had been fishing in the lightweight fanny-pack clipped around her waist for the coins to post in the slot when the crunch of tyres and whirr of an electric window had made her turn her head.
‘Hello,’ Melissa Jayson called from the driver’s seat on the far side of the late-model station-wagon. She was in a figure-hugging dress with full make-up emphasising her striking features, but this time all Kate could see was the wedding ring prominently displayed on the finger tapping the steering wheel in time to the beat on the stereo. ‘Would you like a lift back to the house?’
‘No, thanks, I’m going in the other direction. I’m walking for fitness,’ Kate said quickly as her coins clinked into the box.
‘Are you sure?’ Kate could he
ar her scepticism. It did seem rather unlikely that she would carry a large bouquet of vegetables around to wilt in the hot sun, when the logical thing would have been to buy them on her way back.
‘I’m sure.’ Was this an olive branch or a prelude to more backbiting? Should she apologise for calling her a Grade-A bitch? According to Drake the poor woman had only been trying to guard her client’s back, or protect her investment, even if with questionable vigour.
‘Would you like me to at least take the vegies for you? I could put them in our fridge until you’ve finished your walk.’
Our fridge? It was ridiculous how much that casually possessive little word grated.
‘No, thanks. Really, I’ll be fine. I haven’t got that much further to go.’ For all Drake’s protestations that there was nothing between them, Kate was still picking up a vibe that suggested a more than simply professional interest on the redhead’s part.
‘Well, OK, then, if I can’t persuade you…’
‘No, but thanks for stopping,’ she made herself say.
The Other Woman laughed wryly. ‘Really? I bet you wished I’d kept on driving—straight on down into the estuary.’
‘The thought did cross my mind,’ Kate admitted.
‘Well, if it’s any consolation, darling, Drake was in a furniture-chewing mood when he came back to the house the other day. He practically got out the thumbscrews to find out what we’d said to each other.’
‘Did you tell him?’
This time Melissa’s laugh was genuine. ‘Are you kidding? After he prowled about like a cat on hot bricks when you arrived, moaning that he wasn’t going to be able to write a word while you were breathing down his neck, and then acted as if I’d violated one of the ten commandments by telling you? Let him stew! I gather you didn’t tell him much, either—just enough to set him marinating in his own juices. Once he’s done he might go well with that broccoli.’
Damn! thought Kate as the car roared off. I wanted to keep hating her and now she won’t let me. Sharp, pushy, but up front and funny…Kate could see why Drake might find her good to work with.
