by Susan Napier
‘Congratulations on your wonderful daughter…and on the courage and strength it must have taken you to bring her into the world…’
Her eyes stung as he replaced his finger with a gossamer-light touch of his lips and an admiring whisper.
‘Until tomorrow, my brave lioness…’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘WHAT in the hell is going on?’
‘Frank!’ Rachel was startled to see her partner on her front doorstep, a folded newspaper clutched in his fist. After David died their social contact had dwindled sharply, and since she had been working full-time at WSS they rarely met outside the office. She knew Frank usually spent his Saturdays catching up with paperwork, on call for any problems with the weekend roster.
‘Uh, come in,’ she invited belatedly as he brushed past her. ‘Robyn and Bethany have just gone out to say goodbye to Simon’s mother—’ she began, wondering if he had come to make his farewells.
Frank swung around just inside the door, his fair skin flushed with anger. ‘Since when have you been seeing Matthew Riordan?’ he interrupted harshly. ‘I thought we were supposed to be on the same side? You let me run off my mouth about him—you even agreed that he was a stiff-necked bastard who had it in for us—and now I find out that you two are secretly an item! Do you know what a bloody fool this makes me look?’
He didn’t wait for an answer, bulldozing on in a fury. ‘I can’t believe you let things go this far without telling me. Instead I had to read it in the morning paper along with everybody else!’ he spat, thrusting the newspaper under her nose.
Rachel’s heart plunged as she took it with shaking fingers. ‘What’re you talking about? I don’t get the weekend papers—’
‘I’m talking about that!’ Frank’s thick finger stabbed forcefully at the article folded uppermost—a few paragraphs under a small photograph of Matt wearing a faint social smile that made him look flatteringly enigmatic. ‘It says a lot of crap about your engagement being the result of a “whirlwind romance”—it must have been one hell of a whirlwind since you only met couple of months ago and you always acted like you couldn’t stand him. I thought Riordan was supposed to be getting married to some snotty society woman!’
Jolted by his angry crudity, Rachel blinked with eyes that refused to focus, her brain scrambling to sort out the black and white print.
‘I—I don’t know where they got this—’ she faltered.
‘I do. I rang the paper as soon as I saw it,’ Frank rapped. ‘That was a press release from Riordan’s publicist. The whole world knows you’re engaged to the man—didn’t you think you owed me even a hint?’
His words hit Rachel between the eyes.
The whole world knows you’re engaged…What scandal was there in a man playing sex games with his fiancé in the privacy of their own bedroom?
This was how Matt planned to ‘neutralise’ any blackmail threat? Without even warning her?
‘But I—this isn’t right…’
His blue eyes were pebble-hard. ‘You’re telling me it’s not true?’ he snapped. ‘That you didn’t leap at the chance to investigate him so you could spend more time with your lover?
‘I—’
‘Where were you yesterday afternoon, anyway? I couldn’t get you on your cellphone.’
She remembered the posters in the coronary ward, warning that portable phones could interfere with monitoring equipment. ‘I’m sorry. I turned it off and forgot to switch it back on.’
He was quick to pounce on the hint of guilt. ‘You were with him, weren’t you?’ And as her flush deepened he swore. ‘So it is true!’
‘I’m sorry, Frank.’ She indicated the paper. ‘But I didn’t know he was going to do this—’
‘So that makes it all right? Is there anything else you should have told me?’
She had said she wasn’t frightened of him, but she hesitated to add further fuel to his blazing fury. She shook her head helplessly and that seemed to uncork the full force of his rage.
‘You really think you can have it all, don’t you, Rachel? You’re living here in Dave’s house, on the back of his business, and you’re sneaking around with a guy who’s threatening everything that Dave and I built up! You didn’t utter a peep when I told you about Riordan taking over at KR. Maybe you already knew! I guess sleeping with the enemy means that your loyalty counts for nothing any more.’
Rachel was winded by his punches. ‘This has nothing to do with David. And I haven’t slept with Matthew—’
‘Oh, been holding out for marriage, have you?’ he sneered. ‘And now you’ve had a taste of the high life with Mr Moneybags, I suppose you’d like to conveniently forget Dave ever existed. He always said you were hard-headed and practical—I call it having an eye out for the main chance. But just remember there’s no profit in being dead! Ask yourself why, if he was such a crash-hot husband, the first Mrs Riordan topped herself!’
There was more, bitter, personal invective that left Rachel pale and shaken.
‘I think you’ll find that getting engaged to Riordan and getting him to marry you are two entirely different things. He’s just amusing himself with you. You haven’t got the right connections. He may be loaded, but he comes from trash and he knows it. Men like him always marry up, not down!’
Robyn and Bethany arrived back just as he was delivering his parting shot, almost bumped off the garden path by his headlong rush.
‘What’s his problem?’ Robyn watched him roar off in his car and frowned at Rachel’s pale cheeks. ‘What’s he been saying?’
Rachel managed to summon a thin smile. ‘Nothing he hasn’t been thinking for a long time, I suppose. Maybe it was just temper talking,’ she said generously, trying to put the ugly accusations into perspective. ‘I always knew he didn’t think I was good enough for David; I just didn’t expect him to throw it up at me again after all this time. I thought we’d at least learned to respect each other.’
‘I never did like Frank very much,’ said Robyn flatly. ‘I don’t think he’s capable of trusting anyone—he never even trusted David to decide what was best for himself, did he? It never occurred to him that his precious brother was lucky to find a woman who loved him as much as you did! What put him in such a temper, anyway?’
‘Uh…’ Rachel hid the crumpled newspaper behind her back, surreptitiously trying to stuff it down the back of the telephone table.
Fortunately Bethany came up beside her mother and distracted her beautifully by asking Rachel when she was planning to get ready for their promised lunch.
‘But I am ready,’ protested Rachel, looking down at her white overshirt, blue boat-necked top and cropped narrow trousers.
Robyn and Bethany looked at each other and rolled their eyes. ‘Oh, no, you’re not!’ they chorused.
Rachel’s strenuous protests fell on deaf ears as they bore her off to plunder the contents of her wardrobe.
‘Hey, I remember this!’ said Robyn, discovering the purple linen halterneck dress with its gauzy see-through jacket pushed to the back of the closet. ‘David bought this for you, didn’t he?’
‘No one wears halternecks any more,’ objected Rachel, eyeing the deep neckline.
‘Are you kidding? The retro look is hot. I saw a designer dress like this in last month’s Vogue,’ said Bethany, sealing her fate.
‘I probably won’t get into it—it always was rather snug…’
If anything she seemed to have lost weight since she had last worn it.
‘This is ridiculous. I’m way overdressed,’ she grumbled, turning away from the sight of the three of them in the mirror, realising with a pang that it might be a very long time before she had her sister and daughter to chivvy her over feminine fripperies.
‘Then we’ll all look ridiculous together—we’re dressed up too,’ pointed out Robyn. ‘But I bet Matthew won’t think so…’ she added smugly.
By the time he arrived Bethany was in a fever of expectation, dashing out to the gate to greet h
im, coltishly graceful in her multi-coloured slip-dress and white lace cardigan.
‘I thought you said there’d be two of them!’ she pouted as the chauffeur began to marshal their bags.
‘Kale assures me that this thing has a boot like the hold of a 747,’ grinned Matt, following her up the path to help with the luggage.
‘Ladies…’ His eyes politely admired Robyn’s classic mint-green ensemble, but lingered on the purple dress with a smouldering pleasure that he made no effort to disguise. This morning his spectacles were narrow rectangles rimmed in silver. He saw her looking at them and adjusted them unnecessarily on his aquiline nose.
‘They’re not new—I have a whole wardrobe of them,’ he said, with a tinge of defensiveness that caused Rachel to hide a smile.
‘Vanity, thy name is man,’ she said, amused by the chink in his armour. ‘Can’t you wear contacts?’
He looked even more self-conscious. ‘Lenses aren’t as convenient when you’re not a full-time wearer, and my short-sightedness is only marginal. I simply prefer glasses.’
‘Because they make you appear like a mild-mannered intellectual rather than the ruthless competitor you really are?’ Something in his expression prompted a leap of intuition. ‘Are they part of that cool image you like to project? Do you use them to help fend off some of those society she-wolves, on the principal that girls don’t make passes at guys who wear glasses…?’
‘Well, the superficial types do tend not to look beyond the face furniture.’ His bland reply neither confirmed nor denied the allegation.
‘Then they must be dim-witted as well as superficial, because—’ She hurriedly cut herself off, but too late for the spark of laughter that lit his eyes.
‘What? You find them sexy?’ He lowered them on his nose to peer at her over the top of them. ‘Do we share a secret fantasy about you seducing a certain seemingly mild-mannered intellectual? Stripping off his spectacles along with his—oof!’ He doubled over the suitcase that Rachel thrust into his stomach.
‘Here, how about flexing a muscle other than your tongue!’
‘Oh, believe me, I am,’ he murmured wickedly, laughing as she flounced away in a flutter of purple.
He managed the heavy suitcase with surprising ease, and Rachel found herself surreptitiously watching the flex of his body as he hefted it over the raised lip of the boot. In cream trousers and a pale jacket over a white shirt with a yellow tie he managed to look both elegant and summery, and she was suddenly glad she had let herself be bullied into wearing something bold. She would need all the help she could get to hold her own against him for the next few hours.
In the bustle of loading there was no chance of taxing him about his press release, but, after making a final check of the empty spare bedrooms and locking up, she managed a brief exchange as they walked back to the limo.
‘I need to talk to you,’ she threatened under her breath.
He had the audacity to look innocent. ‘About?’
‘About a certain engagement,’ she ground out.
‘Can you think of any better way to take the heat off us?’ he asked in an equally low tone.
The problem was that she couldn’t. ‘Promise you won’t say anything to Robyn?’ she hissed, balking as he tried to hand her in to the back of the car.
‘Trust me,’ he said, with a sweet smile that made her insides do a strange flip. ‘I won’t say anything to worry your sister.’ He slid along the bench seat with her, settling to face Robyn and Bethany and draping his arm along the back of the seat behind her silky head.
Bethany made the most of their luxurious ride, and when they arrived at the restaurant Robyn smirked across at her sister.
‘Aren’t you glad you dressed up? I told you he’d be taking us somewhere posh!’
The restaurant was an elegant old house set in park-like grounds, and in between the prearranged courses they strolled the gardens, feeding the goldfish in the numerous ponds and admiring the peacocks parading their pride on the jewel-green lawns. Once again, Matthew proved himself capable of disconcerting charm, gently teasing Bethany into feeling comfortable with the formal service and ensnaring Robyn’s professional interest and personal sympathy with talk of his father’s imminent by-pass surgery, managing to casually drop into the conversation the fact that Rachel had met both his parents. Robyn’s attention was also kept busy monitoring the small courtesies Matthew constantly paid to Rachel.
‘You know, you should wear clothes like that more often,’ he told her, his warm brown eyes enjoying the visual feast she presented. ‘You have such a superbly majestic figure it’s a shame to swamp it in layers of fabric. And that particular shade is perfect for your colouring; it gives your skin a kind of lustrous glow…’
‘David chose this dress for me,’ she informed him with a hint of belligerence.
‘Then he obviously had excellent taste—in both clothes and women,’ he said quietly, with an exquisite diplomacy that made Robyn sigh gustily.
As they progressed through the leisurely meal Rachel was forced to admire his ability to appear to be frank and open while cleverly avoiding contentious issues and retaining firm control of the conversation. She remembered that he had cut his financial teeth in the maverick world of foreign exchange dealing, and now she saw the qualities that had enabled him to excel in those pressure-cooker conditions, to make lightning decisions involving millions of dollars based on calculated risks that sane men would reject as reckless. Since he had assumed the mantle at Ayr Holdings he had relinquished his maverick status to become the epitome of solid conservatism, but now she realised that under that respectable façade the volatile taker of extreme risks still existed, albeit constrained by maturity and experience.
Rachel ate the delicious food and drank the champagne, refusing to dwell on the implications of her sudden insight.
Later, en route to the airport, as she was beginning to tense at the thought of the coming ordeal, Matthew took her hand in his and pressed it against his taut thigh.
‘I know Rachel hasn’t told you much about us, but perhaps I’d better warn you…’
Rachel’s arm jerked, but the strong masculine fingers were too determined to allow her to pull free.
‘About what?’ asked Robyn, her eyes darting expectantly between them.
‘Just that you might be hearing some news from us soon.’
‘What news?’
Matthew gave her a limpid smile. ‘It would be premature to say. Your sister is a very independent and stubborn female.’
Robyn chuckled back, relaxing again in her seat. ‘She is that. She’s always been a fighter.’
Matthew’s hand tested his jaw. ‘I can certainly attest to that,’ he said drily. ‘I just thought you’d like to know she has someone else on her side.’
‘Good—she needs someone. Since Mum and Dad retired to the Gold Coast there’s no help from that quarter…not that they were ever much of a support—too busy living their own lives and protecting their precious respectability. And Frank is a dead loss. You should have seen the way he stormed out of our place this morning.’
‘Frank Weston came to see you?’ Matthew looked sharply at Rachel, taking a shrewd guess as to the reason for his visit, but it was Robyn who answered, telling him about the angry visit that had left Rachel so upset.
‘I don’t know what he was so furious about, but he had no right to pitch into Rachel about David. He always was a hard-nosed cynic, but you’d think he’d have got over his jealousy by now.’
‘Of David?’
Rachel simmered at Matthew’s swift curiosity. Did he think she was the type of woman to play one brother off against another?
Robyn burbled on. ‘No—of Rachel and David—because they were so great together. It’s all water under the bridge now, anyway. I told her that he might ease up if she appealed to his sense of justice—told him about all this other stuff she’s spooked about at the moment—but of course she won’t.’
‘All w
hat other stuff?’
‘Robyn, no—’
But her sister was in full throttle now as she enlarged on the harassments that Rachel had endured over the past few months and her recently expressed theory that they were part of a deliberate campaign.
Sensing the pressure of his interest, Rachel uttered an inner sigh of relief as the international terminal came into view and Bethany bobbed up out of the sunroof and began shrieking and waving to her friends as they pulled up in the drop-off zone.
The tedium of the check-in was considerably relieved when Robyn and Bethany were drawn aside from the queue by a uniformed representative from the airline to be told that they had been upgraded to First Class, and given access cards to the hospitality lounge where they could relax in luxury before their flight.
Robyn was the first to twig. ‘Matt, did you have anything to do with this?’
‘We do a considerable amount of corporate business with this airline,’ he admitted with a self-deprecating smile. ‘What’s the use of having influence if you can’t use it on behalf of your friends?’
‘First Class!’ Robyn hugged her ticket blissfully. ‘Now I’m really glad we didn’t wear jeans and T-shirts!’
Robyn and Bethany were so elated that they were eager to go through to the departure lounge, and after they had browsed through the duty-free shops Matthew sensitively excused himself to give the three females sufficient time for their private farewells.
Rachel bore up well until they reached the departure gate and exchanged final hugs.
Robyn held her snugly close and whispered teasingly in her ear, ‘He’s a gentleman, Rach, definitely a keeper—don’t let him slip through your fingers!’
Bethany exchanged last, tearful words with her excited school friends, and managed a wobbly smile with her hug.
‘Be happy,’ said Rachel simply, smoothing the blonde hair back from her daughter’s clear forehead. ‘And don’t let your mother drink too much free champagne on the flight.’
‘I won’t.’ Bethany sniffed and looked shyly at Matthew. ‘Thanks for the limo and—and…everything!’ She went on tiptoe and gave him a quick kiss on the jaw, which he returned with a continental salute on both her tear-stained cheeks that made her blush.
