Guilty Passion

by Bright, Laurey;

  “I believe you, Ethan,” she said huskily. “But there’s no hurry.”

  “There is for me. We have a lot of sorting out to do. Sit tight and wait for me, darling.”

  He had never called her that before, and she closed her eyes, feeling the word enter her like a pain in her heart.

  He said, “I have to go. They’re waiting for me. I’m sorry.”

  “Yes,” she said. “Goodbye, Ethan.” And she put down the phone on his voice, saying something she couldn’t decipher. She supposed it was goodbye.

  She made herself breakfast, phoned the airport and returned upstairs to pack her clothes and tidy her room. Then she went to see the Palmers.

  “I’ve left a note in the house for Mrs. Jackson and one for Ethan,” she told them. “But if he telephones, he may worry when there’s no reply. I guess his next step will be to contact you or Jeff. Tell him not to be concerned, won’t you?”

  “Of course,” Janice said. “But is it necessary to leave before he gets back?”

  Celeste said gently, “Yes.”

  Henry regarded her rather shrewdly and said, “How are you getting to the airport?”

  “I’ll hire a taxi.”

  “It’ll cost a small fortune. Let me drive you.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t ask you to.”

  “You didn’t. I just volunteered. We need some supplies, anyway.”

  Janice gave her a long, searching scrutiny. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

  “Don’t I look it?” Celeste smiled.

  “You look. . . like someone who’s taken charge of her life, but you don’t look happy,” the other woman told her bluntly. “Want to tell me what’s happened?”

  Celeste shook her head. “It’s much too complicated to explain. But I have taken charge, and. . . I know that what I’m doing is right.”

  Janice nodded. “I won’t probe, then. Keep in touch, won’t you?”

  Without promising anything, Celeste said, “You’ve been very good to me, you and Henry. Thank you for everything.”

  Jeff was out, and she left a scribbled note under his door, relieved that she didn’t have to dodge questions from him as well. When Henry called for her, she had her cases downstairs already, and he swung them into his car and opened the door for her. She left the house without a backward glance.

  At the airport, when she had checked in her luggage, Henry kissed her cheek and said, “We’ll miss you. Ethan will, too, I expect.”

  She saw the enquiring look in his eyes but ignored it. “Thank you for the lift,” she said. “And everything.”

  He shrugged and smiled. “Take care.”

  She didn’t stay long in Sydney. The first night she found a cheap hotel, and the next morning made a phone call to Grant Morrison’s associates in the city. “Grant said to call you if I needed anything before my husband’s will is probated,” she explained. “I’m afraid I’m going to need some money. . . .”

  They couldn’t have been more helpful, she reflected the following day, when she was winging her way over the Tasman to New Zealand. It had been remarkably easy to arrange the Sydney to Auckland flight, and Sandra, her bridesmaid, had been warmly welcoming when Celeste phoned and asked if she could spare a bed or even a sofa for the night. It was an invitation that had been made often enough, but until now Celeste had never taken her up on it.

  “It’ll be lovely to see you!” Sandra had assured her. “Tell me what time your flight arrives, and I’ll be there to pick you up.”

  She was as good as her word, and Celeste was surprised at the rush of affection that she felt when she saw her friend standing at the barrier waiting for her. She had three of the children with her. “Ron stayed home to look after the baby,” she said. “But these three couldn’t be deprived of a trip to the airport. Hope you don’t mind.”

  Celeste was quite glad. Having the children precluded too much questioning and stopped her from allowing foolish tears to overtake her.

  Ron made her equally welcome, and she shared a room with one of the children, a solemn little girl who asked if Celeste would like to read her a bedtime story, with an air of bestowing an honour granted only to a privileged few. Celeste accepted the offer gravely.

  Later Sandra came to tuck in her daughter and turn out the light. She and Celeste both returned to the cozy, cluttered sitting room, and Sandra said softly, “It’s a shame you and Alec had no children.”

  “It might be just as well. Children would make it more difficult to find a way to earn a living.”

  “Do you have to?” Sandra asked. “I mean, surely Alec was fairly well-off.”

  There was no point in going into all that. “I want to do something with my life, anyway,” Celeste said vaguely. “I’ll go and see my lawyer tomorrow. I thought I might sell the house in Wellington and put some of the money into a business. The lease could be transferred, I suppose. And probate on Alec’s will should come through any day. Then I’ll be able to make plans.”

  “What kind of business?” Sandra asked.

  “Well, I thought of working from home—when I have one—or perhaps opening a boutique if I can raise the money. I’ve become interested in fabric painting and dyeing. For clothes, you know. I’m only a beginner, but I want to learn more. Maybe I’m being too ambitious. And I’d need a partner, someone who could sew. And maybe someone who knows something about running a business.”

  “I can sew,” Sandra said. “I’ve been doing piecework for a clothing factory for a couple of years. Fifty of the same thing, week after week.” She grimaced. “I’ve been thinking of giving it up, but we need the money. Four kids, you know. I’d love to get into some boutique work. I could put you in touch with a couple of other women who’d probably jump at the chance, too. As for running a business, Ron can help you there. What do you think I married an accountant for?”

  “Looks like I’ve chosen the right place to come,” Celeste said. “But let’s not get carried away. It’s just a thought, and I have to sort out my financial situation with the lawyer, first.”

  She found Grant Morrison was a tower of strength. Although he never said so, she gathered that he thought Alec’s will puzzlingly unfair, and he did his level best to wring every last benefit from the little that had been left to her. When she told him what she wanted to do, he expressed cautious approval and promised to use his own contacts to get her the best deal possible. “Buy yourself into an established concern,” he advised her. “I’ll look about for you, put out some feelers.”

  He did, and she found herself in partnership with a couple who had been running a craft shop and art gallery tucked into a corner of a mall in the inner city suburb of Ponsonby. Young and enthusiastic, they explained that they wanted to expand into “wearable art.” They were also expecting a baby and, while reluctant to employ staff, had decided to take on an extra partner to share the financial commitment of the business as well as helping in the shop, allowing them some time to spend with their child. By the time the baby was born, they and Celeste were friends as well as partners.

  She established a small circle of good friends, some of them renewed from her university days, some people she had recently met. She began to accept invitations. If she needed a partner, Grant Morrison, who had been divorced for a number of years and had two children whom he visited every second weekend, was always willing to oblige. They liked each other and were content to be friends. Grant admired her for her courage and her determination, and she was grateful for his help. Neither of them wanted an intimate relationship.

  It was, she told herself, not a bad way to live. If it lacked something in emotional colour and excitement, she had other things to make up for that. If sometimes she felt like a walking shell of a human being, it was only to be expected when she had been widowed less than a year.

  Seven months after she had left Sheerwind, Ethan walked ba
ck into her life.

  He stopped in the doorway of the shop, watching as Celeste took a delicate blown-glass vase from a case to show to a customer, handling it with reverent care. She still wore Alec’s wedding ring, he saw, and the diamond cluster that was her engagement ring. That was the only thing, he thought, that looked the same. She had cut her hair, and it swung in a shining fall just below her ears as she leaned forward. Her arms had lost their thin fragility, and her complexion had a bloom on it. When she straightened he could see that the dispirited droop of her shoulders had entirely disappeared. She was wearing a striking patterned dress—black with splashes of red, white and yellow, rather like an abstract painting. When she pushed back her hair a pair of jet earrings swung against her jawline.

  Then she glanced up and saw him in the doorway. She almost dropped the vase, her eyes widening; her lips, painted a vivid red to go with the red in her dress, parted. A flush came into her cheeks before she blinked and looked away from him.

  When the customer had gone without a purchase, Ethan was leaning on the counter. He put out his hand and picked up the vase. “Expensive,” he said, examining the price tag.

  “It’s worth it,” Celeste assured him in her coolest tones. “One of a kind. What are you doing here?”

  “Would you believe shopping?”

  “No. How did you know I was here?”

  “Aunt Ellie,” he told her.

  She had been to see Alec’s aunt more than once. Duty visits, but she had enjoyed them. She had always rather liked the old lady, in spite of her blunt tongue and sometimes embarrassing mannerisms. “How is she?”

  “The same as always. You seem put out to see me. Were you hoping to hide from me forever?”

  “I’m not hiding. I don’t have any secrets, Ethan.”

  “No?” he queried.

  Celeste shook her head.

  “Have you heard from Steven lately?” he asked.

  She stiffened. “Not for some time.”

  He was regarding her thoughtfully. “I want to talk to you.”

  “Is that necessary? I don’t think that we have anything more to say to each other.”

  “Don’t you?”

  She thought his low tone held menace, but he no longer had the power to frighten her. She looked him full in the eyes. “Don’t threaten me, Ethan.”

  “Threaten?” His surprise appeared to be genuine. “All I’m suggesting is that we talk. What could possibly be threatening about that? Unless you do have something to hide.”

  Two people came in and began browsing along the shelves. Ethan said, “When do you finish up here for the day?”

  “In about half an hour,” she told him unwillingly. “But I don’t think—”

  “I’ll wait,” he said.

  She locked up five minutes early because his prowling about the place, picking up a piece of pottery here and a hand-painted scarf there, standing in front of a painting and staring at it for long minutes, unsettled her.

  He said, “Is there somewhere we can go for a meal? I’m paying.”

  “Around the corner,” she told him, “there’s a good little restaurant. Or if you want something fancier, there’s one a bit farther down the road that’s licensed to serve alcohol.”

  “We’ll take the licensed one,” he said. “I could do with a drink. And I’m in no hurry to eat, are you?”

  She had lost her appetite instantly on seeing him, but she wasn’t going to admit to that. “No hurry,” she agreed evenly. “But did it occur to you I might have other plans?”

  “Sorry,” he said. “Do you?”

  She debated claiming that she did, but that would only delay the inevitable. If he had come all this way to see her—and even if, as was most likely, he had other business to attend to, he had made the effort to find her and seemed to have something of importance to say—then he wasn’t going to tamely turn tail and head back to Sheerwind.

  So she said, “No, I don’t tonight, as a matter of fact. It just would have been courteous to ask.”

  “I stand corrected,” he said gravely. She looked at him with suspicion but could see no sarcasm in his expression.

  In the restaurant he ordered a whisky for himself and a rum cocktail for her, which they drank in a small lounge before going to their table. Ethan eyed her over his glass and said, “You’re different. Again.”

  “Again?” Trying for a measure of sophistication, she raised her brows to him.

  He leaned forward a little, appraising her. “Whenever I’ve seen you after a long time, you’ve changed.”

  The first time she had been a bride, young and glowing with happiness. The second time he had needed to remind himself that she was his brother’s wife, stunningly attractive, obviously intelligent, almost transparent in the way her green eyes and her lusciously tender mouth reflected her emotions, and apparently capable of enjoying to the full everything she undertook—from cooking a delicious meal to walking for hours up and down hills in a near gale—and yet with an underlying uncertainty, an occasional bewildered poignancy in her expression that he had caught once or twice when she thought she was alone, and that seemed to indicate a secret vulnerability.

  And the third time, she had been a widow, apparently crushed by grief and depression—but mostly, Ethan had been convinced, by guilt.

  Now another woman had replaced all of them. A poised, utterly beautiful young woman with an air of mature, hard-won serenity, whom he found both irresistibly fascinating and totally enigmatic. He wondered if she was deliberately withholding from him any hint of what she was feeling. That would not be surprising. He suppressed a strong desire to take her in his arms and kiss her senseless. It might break through the barrier, but he doubted it would get him what he really wanted. Softly, softly, he told himself sternly. You blew it before, you fool—don’t force her into retreat again.

  She said, “I’ve always been the same woman, Ethan. I’m me.”

  He nodded, and toasted her with his eyes.

  “Another?” he asked, when she had finished her drink.

  Celeste refused. She needed to keep a clear head.

  “Then shall we go through to the dining room?”

  She stood with alacrity, going ahead of him as he lightly laid his hand on her arm.

  “Why are you in Auckland?” she asked him when they had ordered.

  “To see you.”

  She had been toying with a spoon, but now she looked up at him. “That’s not why you came!”

  “Why not?”

  “It’s seven months since—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Since you left Sheerwind,” he finished for her. “Leaving me a polite thank-you-and-farewell letter.” Suddenly intense, he said, “Couldn’t you have waited until I got back?”

  “No,” she said. “No, I couldn’t.” Because when he was with her, the frightening but necessary clarity of thought that she had mercifully been capable of that morning, might have evaporated again in a seething mass of emotion. While he was away, she could see what had happened to her, and analyse it and try to salvage something from it—her self-esteem, if nothing else. Perhaps even her very life. Once he came back, she knew that a touch, a kiss, even a look, would be enough to chain her to him forever. And that, she had told herself then, and again many times in the months that followed, was something she must not allow to happen.

  “So you ran away, after all,” Ethan was saying.

  Celeste said, “I left. There’s a difference.”

  “Is there? Forgive me if I don’t see it.”

  The wine that he had ordered arrived, and then their meal. Ethan said, “And you haven’t heard from Steven.”

  Carefully, Celeste put down her fork and took a sip of crisp white wine. She had seen Steven before she left Sydney, a fact she had no intention of relaying to Ethan now. “I didn’t say
that. I had a letter from him a while ago.”

  “Saying what?”

  She could have told him to mind his own business. She looked at him, thinking about it, and he said, “A nosy question. I apologise. Can I guess?” “I don’t think that would serve any—”

  “He’s not publishing Alec’s study,” Ethan interrupted. “Is that what he said? Not taking the project any further.”

  She admitted, “Yes. That’s more or less what he said.”

  “Did he tell you why?”

  “Not exactly. I. . . gathered that he had an offer to take part in something else, and that as there was so much work to be done still on Alec’s project, he thought it was best to leave it, at least for a while.” Rather defensively, she added, “I didn’t see that there was anything I could do about it. If he isn’t willing to continue, I don’t think there’s anyone who could have completed the work for Alec.”

  “He sent me a similar letter. But I didn’t let it rest there.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I went to see him. Asked him point-blank exactly why he was giving up on the project. In the end I made him tell me.”

  “You bullied him.”

  “Maybe. Oh, don’t worry, I never laid a finger on him. Not my style, Celeste.”

  No, it wasn’t. She dropped her accusing stare, and pushed away her plate. She waited in silence while he took a sip of wine. He put down the glass and looked over at her and said, “Do you know what he said?”

  Celeste silently shook her head.

  “He said,” Ethan told her with deliberation, “that when he had transcribed what was on those disks, including the secret parts that had been protected by Alec’s password, he found nothing. Nothing, that is, that would lead the scientific world to any new conclusions about the Asian-Pacific ethnic connections through the New Guinea islands, which was what Alec’s project was supposed to be about. He said that whatever Alec had been doing for the past several years, and particularly that last year of his life, the results were not worth publishing.”