by Susan Napier
Ten years her junior, Rachel towered over her sister, and most other women of her acquaintance. Her wide shoulders and full bust would have made her top-heavy if it hadn’t been for the broadly rounded hips flaring below her neat waist, and her long, firmly muscled legs. Her triangular face, framed by a spiky, razor-cut cap of hair the colour of burnt toffee, thickly lashed hazel eyes and thin, determined mouth possessed strength of character rather than beauty…but unfortunately people often tended to judge her from the neck down!
She knew that her curvy, hour-glass shape rendered her almost a cartoon-figure of female pulchritude, the living embodiment of countless male fantasies.
It had been rough coping with the unwonted sexual attention when she was young, but she had determined very early on not to let her overtly sexy body image dictate the path of her life. She had fought hard to be her own person, and with maturity had perfected subtle strategies to control the perceptions and prejudices of those around her—dressing casually, in loose, multi-layered clothing, and cultivating a robust good humour which was the opposite of seductive. Fortunately her height and superior strength gave her a physical edge whenever her defensive strategies proved too subtle for over-active male libidos.
‘I doubt it—though you’d probably have hordes of guys clamouring to be personally infected,’ chuckled Robyn. Thanks to the considerable age gap between them, and the fact that she had been happily married to Simon Fox for over twenty years, she had never been jealous of her sister’s effect on men.
A rattling mechanical hiccup sounded behind her and she darted through to give the washing machine a well-practised kick of encouragement.
Rachel rolled her eyes and returned her brooding attention to her unwelcome letter.
She was getting fed up with this petty campaign of harassment. At first she had dismissed the escalating stream of annoyances as an unfortunate run of back luck, but too many coincidences had piled up, and now her suspicions condensed into certainty.
It was typical of her unknown harasser to hide behind a faceless bureaucracy. Whoever had it in for her was a coward—but very a clever one, initiating trouble but never following it through to a point where Rachel might have a chance to identify the source.
A low growl of frustration purred in the back of her throat.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Robyn, drifting back to the accompaniment of noisily hissing water pipes.
‘The council has received a tip that I’m running a business from this address,’ Rachel paraphrased in disgust. ‘They’re warning me that they’re going to investigate and I could be prosecuted for carrying on a non-complying activity.’
‘It must be some mistake,’ said Robyn, tucking a shoulder-length strand of hair back into the smooth French twist she wore at work.
‘You think so? And was it also a mistake when the phone company was told the same thing and tried to charge me a higher line rental? And when the tax department decided to audit me because someone phoned their hotline and told them I had an undeclared second income? Or when I didn’t get any mail for two weeks and suddenly discovered that the post office had been advised to redirect my mail to a house which just happened to be the residence of a motorcycle gang?’
Robyn put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! That reminds me—Bethany said something arrived for you yesterday afternoon by courier. You were having a bath and she was just leaving for basketball practice so she just signed for it and took off with it in her bag. She forgot all about it until this morning.’
She crossed the small, sunny kitchen and fetched the bubble-wrapped plastic courier bag which had been tucked with some other papers behind the telephone on the bench, handing it to her sister.
She glanced at the watch pinned to her breast and let out a little huff. ‘I hope Bethany’s out of that bathroom—I’m sure when you offered to put us up for a few weeks you didn’t expect to have to put up with a teenager who showers twice a day for twenty minutes at a time! I do wish you’d let us pay something towards the water and power, as well as the groceries.’
Rachel paused in the act of ripping into the zip-locked seam of the bag. ‘Don’t be silly. Just be thankful that Bethany’s into cleanliness, not some ghastly grunge kick. It’s not as if I have to pay rent, or a mortgage. I’ve loved having you to stay.’ There was a hint of wistfulness in her hazel eyes. Since David had died two years ago there had been no one special in her life, no one who was critical to her happiness—or she to theirs. Usually she kept herself looking resolutely to the future, but these last few days of enforced rest had given her time to dwell on all the ‘might have beens.’
She shook off the cruelly unproductive thoughts. ‘I just wish that Simon wasn’t coming back so soon and whisking you both so far away,’ she said lightly.
‘We’re only moving to Bangkok—not the moon,’ Robyn chided her bracingly. Simon, who worked for a multinational chemical company, was being transferred to Thailand to help build a new manufacturing plant. While he had flown out there to meet his new boss, choose their company-paid accommodation and register Bethany to attend the local International School, his wife and daughter had been packing up and selling their Auckland home and arranging to ship their belongings.
‘We get an annual home-leave, and, anyway, I hope you’ll come up and have a holiday with us. You did say that Westons had some huge contract in the offing that might let you give up your day job!’
Rachel gave a rueful laugh. Her work as a massage therapist and fitness trainer was actually carried out in the early morning or late afternoon and evening, so that she could devote the business hours to the security company which she had inherited from David. No one had been more astonished than herself when she had discovered that her fiancé of six months had altered his will to leave her not only his townhouse but also his fifty-one percent share of the security company which he and his brother Frank, a fellow ex-policeman, had bought.
Although Weston Security Services had possessed a loyal core of clients at the time of David’s death, it had also been carrying a heavy debt-load, and at first, woefully aware of her ignorance, Rachel had been content to remain a silent partner. But as the business had continued to struggle she had realised that it would be a betrayal of David’s trust to watch his cherished dream die without lifting a finger to help.
It hadn’t been an investment that he had given her in his will so much as a part of himself. She might doubt herself, but David had always had faith in her ability to tackle new challenges. To that end she had used her stake in the company to persuade Frank to give her an active role in managing the business. She had waived a salary, preferring to see the money invested in new staff and equipment, and lived off her freelance earnings from two city gyms and a physiotherapy practice.
It had been a steep learning curve, and although Rachel had made plenty of mistakes, her hands-on method of training wasn’t proving the disaster that Frank had feared it would be. In the last few months the company turn-over had shown a promising improvement, but a balloon repayment was looming on the loan, and meeting the debt was largely reliant on a major corporate contract which Frank seemed to be confident was already in the bag. Rachel was not so sanguine.
‘I think it’ll be a while before I can afford to do that,’ she sighed. ‘Frank says that trust and respect build slowly in the security business, and being a woman in a male-dominated industry makes it that much more difficult to get accepted—’
She was interrupted as her sister took another surreptitious look at her watch and dashed for the door with a squawk of dismay.
Rachel returned to ripping open the zip-lock bag. Her birthday wasn’t far away, and she wondered with a lift of her spirits whether someone had sent her an early present.
Her eager anticipation drained abruptly away as she withdrew some photographs paper-clipped to the back of a scrawled note in green ink which slanted across the page, arrogantly ignoring the ruled lines. She washed down her disappointment with her rapidly cool
ing coffee as she scanned the jolting words.
Did you really think I would let you use me as your free ride to riches?
Of the two of us you’re obviously the more photogenic—a fact which I’m sure the tabloid press will be quick to exploit if these, or any even more explicit, are put into circulation. I always knew you were centrefold material, but while the resultant notoriety might well annoy me, it won’t destroy me. Unlike you. What will happen to Westons’ reputation for probity and discretion when your corporate clients find out that their security rests in the whip-hand of a blowsy, over-blown dominatrix who looks as if she’d be more at home in a brothel than a boardroom?
Sorry, doll.
You lose.
A mouthful of lukewarm coffee was stranded in her mouth as her throat clogged with shock. Her cup crashed down into its saucer as she unclipped the photographs and fanned them out in her hands like oversized cards.
‘Oh, God!’ She choked, spewing coffee droplets across the table in her spluttering horror, dropping the photographs as if they were hot coals.
‘Oh, God!’ Rachel’s horror deepened to bone-bruising humiliation, the outrageous insults in the note suddenly making sickening sense. There was no signature, but she didn’t need one. She knew instantly who to blame for the outrage.
She shuddered, pressing her shaking hands to hot cheeks as she looked down at the shameful photographs. Yes, she had knelt between his legs to unfasten his trousers…but this picture gave the impression that she had been—that she had done it in order to pleasure him. The heavy-lidded smile on his face certainly seemed to suggest that she’d been succeeding, whereas in reality she had been cursing a blue streak that his formal trousers had buttons rather than a zip—which she would have cheerfully used to castrate him! If he had gained any pleasure from what she had been doing, then it was purely his own warped mind that had created it.
And the other one—God!…that didn’t look anything like the way it had actually happened, either. Why—these pictures made her look as if she had been a willing participant in some kind of disgusting sexual perversion, rather than the good Samaritan which she had been dragooned into playing.
But good Samaritans didn’t roll around naked on a bed with those they rescued, the devil whispered in her ear.
Rachel shook her head, still dazed by the shock of seeing herself portrayed in the role of sexual predator. It was so fundamentally at odds with her character that it would almost be funny if it wasn’t so humiliating. The photographs were slanderously misleading. The circumstantial evidence might trumpet otherwise, but the situation had actually been completely innocent.
Well, perhaps not completely, she forced herself to admit as her mind replayed the images of that night. It had definitely not been her finest hour, but Matthew Riordan was to blame for everything that had happened. The whole un-savoury incident had been entirely his own fault!
So how dared he? How dared he now turn around and threaten to slander her with the evidence of his indiscretion! She had never said a word to anyone—not even Frank or Merrilyn—about what had happened that night after they had left the party. In spite of the pressure to gossip she had uttered not a single, solitary syllable. For his sake!
And this was how he repaid her for her kindness! One feeble bunch of flowers and this…this outrage!
The blood boiled in her veins as she looked at the note and one word suddenly jumped out at her. Blowsy. Blowsy?
Her hazel eyes turned a ferocious green. She could shrug off his groundless accusation that she belonged in a brothel as sheer malice, but how dared he call her blowsy? He hadn’t had any objections to her over-blown ‘centrefold’ of a body when he’d been begging her to make love to him, had he?
She was infuriated to feel her breasts tighten at the memory of his words, of the uninhibited way that he had expressed his desire as they had wrestled on the bed. As drunk as he’d been she had thought that he would be incapable of physical arousal, and hadn’t he taken great delight in proving her wrong! But then, maybe he hadn’t been quite so drunk as he had made out. Maybe it had all been a big act in order to lure her into just such a compromising position while some sleazy photographer snapped away from the closet.
Her eyes went unwillingly back to the most explicit photograph and hot chills fizzled in her belly. It was her body which was flaunted centre-stage, but no one could deny that Matthew Riordan made a pretty impressive supporting act. He wasn’t quite as tall as Rachel, but with his clothes off he had been larger than she had expected, in all ways…His lean body had a ripped quality, all muscle with little softening body fat, and the raw strength in the muscle-dense arms and thighs had taken her by surprise. At Westons she was used to seeing security guards shaped like weightlifters, but Matthew Riordan’s smooth, sleek body had an understated elegance that merely hinted at the power that lay sheathed beneath his skin.
The dirty rat! What a hypocrite he was—the cool, cultivated, highly respectable Matthew Riordan, scion of his wealthy family and controller of a substantial chunk of the New Zealand economy…
Well, the arrogant pig needn’t think he could control her. She mentally tossed her head. Let everyone find out that the real Matthew Riordan was a sleazy manipulator, without a scrap of moral conscience or a shred of human decency.
She looked at the photo of them lying on the bed and groaned, covering her hot face with her hands. In the end, would it matter which one of them was exposed as the liar? Any mud she threw was going to stick to both of them, and, while he had unlimited resources with which to whitewash himself clean, she had virtually none.
He had already proved as cunning as a snake and as lucky as the devil, she thought, peeking through her fingers again. He couldn’t have arranged that pose better if he had employed a Hollywood director to choreograph the sexy scene. The way they were posed made the most of her abundant breasts, her jutting nipples almost brushing his parted lips as she stretched above him to tighten his bindings. He needed only to lift his head slightly and…
Oh, no! She clamped down on the unruly urge to wander down that tortuous memory lane. She wasn’t going to be made to feel more of a sexual deviant than she did already. She struggled to fix her mind on more important matters. The most threatening implication in the note as far as she was concerned was that there were even more explicit photographs in existence.
Her eyes fell on the whip and she gave a little hiccup of hysteria. Admittedly she hadn’t been exactly alert to her wider surroundings while their tussle had been going on, but how could she have missed noticing that? The whole tenor of the scene implied that she was about to use it once she had rendered her victim helpless. As if she would ever use a whip against another human being! she thought hotly.
Although, come to think of it, at the moment the idea did have a certain sadistic appeal. Her pale pink lips pulled unconsciously back from her white teeth as she savoured the vengeful notion. Oh, yes, she mused—if Matthew Riordan and a handy whip should present themselves to her right now she might well take a great deal of pleasure in lashing the gloating smirk off his face.
So he thought he had won this dirty little game of one-upmanship, did he…?
‘Hi, Rachel, whatcha looking at?’
Rachel gave a frightened little yelp as Bethany bounced into the kitchen, her freckled face scrubbed squeaky clean, her budding breasts thrusting against her dark green school tunic as she leaned over the table.
‘Mum said you were opening the courier’s package. What was in it? Photos? Can I see?’
As Rachel frantically tried to push the prints back into the bag Bethany hooked one away. Fortunately for Rachel’s madly thundering heart it was the innocuous shot from the party.
‘Hey. Wow!’ Bethany’s green-gold eyes rounded in admiration. ‘What a babe! Who is he?’
‘No one.’ Rachel tried to grab the photograph back, but Bethany danced out of reach with a chuckle.
‘You look pretty hot, too. Nothing like your usua
l maiden-aunt get-ups. You look as if you’re about to explode out of that dress! Were you trying to vamp him? He looks pretty vamped to me.’
‘Bethany—’ Rachel’s protest held a breathless note of desperation that only egged her tormentor on.
‘So, who is he?’ Bethany teased, her face splitting on a grin, her long blonde ponytail dancing across her slender shoulders as she tilted her head. ‘A new boyfriend?’
Rachel fired up. ‘Definitely not!’
Bethany evidently thought her violent rejection a bit overdone. ‘He looks a bit younger than you,’ she said slyly. ‘Is he your secret toyboy…?’
Rachel bristled with all the dignity of her thirty years. ‘Hardly. I believe he’s about twenty-six!’ she snapped. Certainly old enough to have learned more respect for women. Perhaps she would be the one to teach him some manners!
‘Mmm. A pity he wears glasses, but I guess you can’t have everything, huh? At least his bod is nice, and he has that eat-you-up smile. And I don’t suppose he wears his glasses in bed…or haven’t you got him that far yet?’
Rachel went hot all over.
‘Beth-a-ny!’
Thank God those other photos were safely out of sight!
‘Oops, I forgot—personality is more important than looks, right?’ The girl giggled. ‘At least, that’s what you and Mum are always telling me. So—how sexy is his personality?’
‘Somewhat less than a slug’s,’ Rachel blurted out through her gritted teeth.
Bethany laughed in disbelief. ‘Oh, yeah? Then why are you looking at him as if you’d like to take a bite out of him?’
‘Appearances can be deceptive,’ she warned. ‘For instance, you look like an innocent fifteen-year-old schoolgirl, when we both know you’re actually the devil incarnate.’
Bethany raised and lowered her eyebrows. ‘Sounds kinky. Does that have anything to do with being carnal?’
Rachel bit back a reluctant smile. ‘You know it doesn’t, you evil child.’
