by Anne Weale
‘Very probably,’ he answered drily. ‘But you’ve managed to pick your way past all the disasters you could have fallen into since you left school. Dead-end jobs, rotten relationships and so forth. You have to have a good head on your shoulders to have done that. Also women have an instinct about houses. They see the potential more clearly than men do. On the whole, it’s still women who turn a house into a home. They’re visualising the furnishings while a man is still wondering if he can handle the mortgage.’
‘Presumably a mortgage isn’t something you have to worry about.’
‘If I needed one, I’d be unlikely to raise it on a property as derelict as this one. My surveyor will probably discover that every known form of rot is rampant and it’s thoroughly unsound structurally. But who cares? You’ve fallen for it. So have I. Between us, we’ll restore it to the way it should be, with some discreet modernisations to make it more comfortable than was possible when it was built.’
Holly wasn’t sure what he meant by ‘between us’.
‘Are you putting me in sole charge of the restoration of the garden?’ she asked.
‘That’s the idea...if you’re willing to take it on.’
‘I’d adore to...but I do wonder if you wouldn’t be better advised to get one of the big names in my field to do it. If you were a stranger, of course I’d grab it with both hands and fight off the competition for all I was worth. But you’re not...you’re a friend, so it’s different. Am I the best possible garden designer for this project? I have to ask myself.’
‘You’re the one I happen to want...and you won’t be as expensive as the big shots,’ he added, with a teasing gleam. ‘You can make your name on this, Holly. You can make Talavera as famous as the gardens at Sissinghurst and Hidcote and Great Dixter. Since I met you I’ve been doing some homework. I now know a lot more about garden design than I did a few weeks ago. I believe, under your tuition, I could become seriously interested. And perhaps there are things I can teach you.’
There was something in his eyes as he said this that made her breath catch in her throat.
She watched him take a step forward, narrowing the space between them, and she felt like a rabbit hypnotised by the headlamps of a car, unable to move.
Pierce put his hands on her shoulders as he had when he’d kissed her goodbye in his house in London. But this time she knew instinctively that it wasn’t going to be an innocuous kiss on the cheek such as people exchanged all the time without altering the nature of their relationship.
Unable to meet the gleaming grey gaze focused on her, she closed her eyes.
When she felt his lips touching hers, her whole body seemed to melt. The pleasure was so intense that it seemed to consume her. She felt like a candle melting into a pool of wax.
By the time he’d stopped kissing her, Pierce had both arms round her. Without their support, she felt she might have fallen over.
Making a big effort to pull herself together, she said, ‘I don’t think we should be doing this. Business and pleasure don’t mix.’
‘Not as a general rule—no. But there are exceptions.’
She couldn’t believe he could be so in control after reducing her to a quivering bundle of delicious sensations.
‘I don’t think this is one of them, Pierce. I really don’t,’ she said, trying to sound firmer than she felt.
She drew away and he let her.
‘You’re still nervous of me, aren’t you?’ he said, watching. ‘What do you think I’m going to do to you? Make love to you and then walk away, as I did with Chiara?’
Holly felt herself flushing. She said, ‘Soon after you’d gone to Africa, Chiara rang up in a rage because I’d told you about the aquamarine. What made you burst in on her like that?’
‘It’s no use treating Chiara with kid gloves,’ he said calmly. ‘She’s like her mother: self-centred, acquisitive and flighty. She doesn’t respond to kindness, which she interprets as weakness. She needs very firm handling. It wouldn’t surprise me if your father was too nice a man to keep your stepmother in her place. Women like that can make life hell for their husbands and lovers. I don’t think much of Chiara’s current meal-ticket. He’s a windbag: full of hot air but with no real guts.’
‘You’re right about that,’ said Holly. ‘The day after storming at her, he sent her a huge bouquet and offered to take her shopping. But I can’t see that your tirade did any good. It hasn’t put her off the other man.’
‘I went off at half-cock,’ he admitted. ‘There were reasons for that but I won’t go into them now. Let’s go back to the car and have lunch. I asked them to put up a picnic. The driver can walk to the pub. It’s only half a mile away.’
‘I wish I’d brought my camera with me,’ said Holly as they left the kitchen garden. ‘It’s a perfect day for taking snaps. I could have shot several rolls. It’s hard to remember everything after only one visit.’
‘Once the place is mine, you can come as often as you wish. The pub does B and B and is said to be comfortable. We can make it our field headquarters. If the house were yours, who would you choose to decorate it?’
‘If it were mine, I’d do it myself, bit by bit.’
‘That would take for ever. Not all professional decorators leave their signature loud and clear on every house they come near. I’ve heard of a man in Wiltshire who’s said to be very good. He advised the Prince of Wales about Highgrove. It’s not my ambition to make Talavera a show-place. Let the garden be famous, by all means,’ he said, smiling at her, ‘but I want to keep the house private. A place for me and my family to escape from the turmoil of the world.’
When he spoke of his family, it gave her a curious pain in the region of her heart.
They had lunch in the sunny hall, beside the open French windows. The driver set up a folding table and two green canvas director’s chairs. He spread the table with a green and white gingham cloth.
‘We’ll do the rest,’ said Pierce as the man began to unstrap a large picnic basket. ‘You get along to the pub.’
‘Very good, sir. What time do you want me back here?’
‘Half past two.’
When he had gone Pierce took over the unpacking of the lunch.
‘When are you hoping to be able to live here?’ Holly asked, standing by.
‘Why don’t you sit down and relax?’ he suggested. ‘I should think it will take two years to make the place habitable. Years of neglect can’t be repaired in a hurry.’
She watched the deft movements of his fingers as he uncorked a bottle of white wine taken from a cool-bag.
‘Was the last owner a direct descendant of the man who built the house?’ she asked.
Pierce nodded. ‘It’s been passed down from father to son for getting on for two centuries. I’d like to think history will repeat itself and my descendants will be living here in the twenty-second century. Continuity is important. I believe in people breaking out of the environment they were born in and having a look at what else the world has to offer. But I also believe in the importance of roots. I had a stable background when I was growing up. I want my sons and daughters to have the same advantage.’
‘What if you fall in love with someone who doesn’t want to have children?’ Holly asked. ‘A lot of people are opting out of automatic parenthood these days.’
He gave her a keen look. ‘Are you one of them?’
The truthful answer would have been, No, I’m not. I can’t think of anything I’d like better than having your babies.
Instead, she said, ‘I’m open-minded. I don’t think it’s a decision one can make in advance. You may be able to plan your future but mine will depend on the man I marry. He might be committed to spending his life in a way which would rule out having children.’
‘If he were, would you give up your career for him, just like that?’
‘I would rather not, but I might have no option,’ she said lightly. ‘I think wherever I found myself I could always find something to o
ccupy me, but love isn’t something most people get a second shot at. Not what I mean by love anyway.’
‘Ah, yes...the man who will make the desert bloom for you.’ As he handed her a glass of wine and reminded her of her definition of love, his eyes held a glint of mockery.
‘Aren’t you having some wine?’ she asked.
‘I never drink when I’m flying.’
He went on unpacking the lunch, setting out china plates and stainless steel cutlery before starting to open the boxes containing the food.
Holly sipped her wine and wondered if he had any inkling that he was the man who could make the desert bloom for her. Somehow she didn’t think so. He had said there were things he could teach her and she didn’t doubt it. But what she wanted from him was more than a short course in the delights of physical love.
Remembering his kiss in the garden, she took advantage of his concentration on the lunch to look at the well-cut mouth which had stirred those wild feelings in her. She knew that if it was his intention to seduce her she had little hope of resisting.
She said, ‘How did you come to speak Japanese fluently?’
‘I enjoy learning languages. Japanese is particularly interesting. You have to adjust your style of speech to suit the person you’re addressing and there are words which women use and others which men use. If a foreign man uses a lot of the words associated with women, there’ll be jokes about him learning Japanese on the pillow. Which, in case you’re wondering, I didn’t,’ he added drily. ‘Fujiko has helped me to master the finer points, but mainly I learnt Japanese on long-haul flights and when there was nothing worth watching on TV.’
After a pause, he added, ‘Chiara was a TV addict. Am I right in assuming you’re not?’
Holly nodded. ‘It was always a bone of contention between my father and stepmother. They didn’t have rows about it. He would quietly withdraw to his study. Apart from a few programmes about archaeology and science, he found TV boring.’
‘And you?’
‘I feel the same way. As a child I watched the box sometimes, but mostly I was busy doing homework. I had to work terribly hard to get the results Dad expected. My stepmother thought him too exacting. But if he hadn’t been I wouldn’t have done half as well. Not that I was ever at the top of my class. But I did do my best. Children need to be put on their mettle...don’t you think?’
‘I couldn’t agree more,’ said Pierce. ‘I don’t have a lot of patience with any spectator activities. I don’t want to watch someone else climbing a mountain. I want to do it myself.’
‘Ben says this expedition you and he are doing in February isn’t very dangerous. Is that true?’
‘Would you mind if it weren’t true?’
‘Mrs Shintaro would worry if she knew Ben was at risk.’
‘Naturally, but would you worry if I were risking my neck?’
She sidestepped the question by saying, ‘From what Ben tells me, it sounds as if you often risk your neck...or have in the past.’
Pierce shrugged. ‘Perhaps...in the early stages. Not any more. Now my theories have been proved, I have a lot of powerful backing. There would be nothing to gain by having me blown away.’
‘When that risk existed, didn’t it frighten you?’
‘Not as much as getting my project off the ground excited me. Have you been involved in something which involved a degree of risk but an equal or greater degree of excitement and challenge?’
‘I don’t think so.’
‘How about our relationship?’
‘I don’t see the connection.’
‘I think you do,’ he said drily. ‘But you’d rather not discuss it. When I kissed you just now in the garden, what you felt was a mixture of pleasure and terror. When I asked you if you were afraid of being dumped like Chiara, you dodged the issue. Is that what worries you?’
‘No, because I’m not going to put myself in a position where you could dump me,’ she said levelly. ‘Yes, I enjoyed it when you kissed me. But that’s as far as it goes, Pierce. I’m not in the market for a casual affair based on sexual attraction. I’ve been there and done that and it was disappointing. Even you won’t tempt me to repeat that mistake. You’re very attractive... very charming...but you aren’t offering what I want.’
‘Which is?’
‘An old-fashioned “closed” relationship between two people who don’t want anyone but each other...ever.’
Pierce handed her a pair of salad servers. As she helped herself to a mixture of greenery which he had already dressed with vinaigrette, Holly wondered what he was thinking.
But he kept his thoughts to himself, steering the conversation into impersonal channels while they ate the marinated herring which went with the salad.
This was followed by a quiche with a red salad and for pudding there was an almond and honey ice cream from a cooler. Even the coffee, though vacuum-flasked, was unusually good.
‘Wonderful food to find in the wilds of Devon,’ said Holly.
‘Devon isn’t as wild as you might think. It’s where a lot of downshifters come...people who’ve had enough of the rat race and want a more civilised life. The woman who put up this picnic is a downshifter. She used to organise lavish buffets and hampers for Glyndebourne and Ascot and the top end of the corporate hospitality market. Then her husband was summarily sacked by a company he’d served well for twenty years and they both decided to downshift. Luckily their children had just finished school. They’re twins, a boy and a girl, and bright enough to have gone to university. But they’ve both decided there are too many graduates competing for too few jobs so they’re taking another route.’
Holly was favourably impressed by his intimate knowledge of a family whose fortunes would have had little impact on most of the chief executives whose companies had used the wife’s service while she was working in London.
She said, ‘It’s not only the competition for jobs that’s a problem, it’s the shortfall between grants and expenses so that by the time students graduate they’re in massive debt to their banks. If my father hadn’t left me some money, I could never have gone to secretarial college and then on the garden-design course without a bank loan. Being in debt’s not a good way to start out.’
‘What would you have done without his money?’
‘I’d have worked my way through college and done garden design on a part-time, long-term basis. There are courses designed for people who have to do it that way. Which reminds me—the normal procedure at this stage is for us to discuss exactly what you want done here so that I can give you an estimate of how long it’s likely to take and what it will cost. And I think, in fairness to both of us, you ought to consult at least two other designers. It’s such a prize commission that I’d rather win it on merit than have it handed to me on a plate.’
Pierce drank some coffee, watching her over the rim of the elegant bone china demitasse.
‘Is that because you suspect there are strings attached to it?’
‘Certainly not! If I thought that, I wouldn’t be here.’
He gave her a lazy smile. ‘What a puritan front you present, Holly. Repelled by the thought of an overdraft. Repelled by Chiara’s use of her only assets, her face and her body. But when I kissed you, you didn’t react like a puritan, except for that prim little speech about not mixing business and pleasure. The way your lips felt under mine, and the way you relaxed in my arms while we were kissing wasn’t strait-laced. You enjoyed it as much as I did.’
There was nothing she could say which wouldn’t be an outright lie.
He read her mind. ‘And lies stick in your throat too, don’t they? You want to deny it, but you can’t. You feel the attraction between us as strongly as I do. But your price is higher than Chiara’s. You’ve just spelt it out for me. Not only marriage but also lifelong fidelity. That’s quite a tall order these days.’
Holly tilted her chin, aware that her cheeks were burning, but meeting his gaze head-on.
‘It alway
s was a tall order,’ she retorted hotly. ‘But then so is climbing mountains. If you don’t like spectator sports and you’re bent on reaching a summit not many people aspire to, why is your love life so second-rate? If your affair with Chiara was anything to go by, your relationships with women are the emotional equivalent of those beds in public gardens where they change the display every season. Personally, I would rather have a single Worsleya procera than an acre of showy bedding plants.’
The scorn in her voice made him grin. Angry as she was, it didn’t diminish her awareness of the buzz she felt when his lean cheeks formed two deep creases and his lips curled back from those sexy white teeth.
‘What’s so special about Worsleya procera?’
‘It’s a beautiful blue amaryllis...a type of lily. One bulb costs a hundred pounds and often it takes years to flower. It’s a connoisseur’s plant...but I don’t think where women are concerned you are a connoisseur.’ As soon as she’d said it, she realised this wasn’t the way to talk to a man who was offering her a commission every garden designer on both sides of the Atlantic would regard as a giant plum.
CHAPTER SIX
‘DO YOU consider yourself the female equivalent of a blue amaryllis?’ Pierce asked, his tone sardonic.
Holly’s colour deepened. ‘Far from it. Chiara might have been that, given different nurturing, but I’m nothing out of the ordinary. What I meant is that—’
Hearing footsteps crunching on gravel, she broke off. The driver had come back early, but he didn’t enter the house. She saw him pass the front door, going in the direction of the car.
‘I know what you meant,’ said Pierce. ‘I may not be a connoisseur but I’m quick on the uptake. You’re wrong about Chiara, you know. In botanical terms, she’s a rose, a climber, the kind with a short flowering season. As for you, except that you’re self-supporting, I’m not sure yet what you are.’
Surprisingly, his eyes, which she’d thought would be cold with displeasure at her far too outspoken criticism, were undeservedly friendly:
