‘The keys, please.’
‘I’ll be watching you,’ the girl said meaningfully. ‘I may be too young to drive, but I’m not too young to know about people.’ She tossed the keys on to Leila’s lap. Leila fitted them into the ignition, but didn’t start the car.
‘You said there was too much at stake,’ she said heavily, watching the girl’s sullen face. ‘Would you mind telling me what all this is about?’
‘It’s about me and Terry standing up for ourselves for once in our lives,’ the girl shot back. ‘Since the divorce, we haven’t had a mother. We haven’t had a family at all, since I was a kid!’
‘I’m sorry to hear that,’ Leila replied quietly.
‘Oh, Dad’s very good at picking up women,’ the girl said with a painful sneer, ‘but not the kind who stick around. Know what I mean? Until Katherine.’
‘Who is Katherine?’ Leila asked.
‘She’s the woman my father’s going to marry,’ came the confident reply. ‘And if you get in the way, Miss Thomas, or do anything to come between them, I’ll—’ she clenched her plump hands, her breathing unsteady ‘―I’ll kill myself !’
In the silence, the roar of traffic on the autopista was a distant drone through the closed windows. Just what the hell was she doing here, staring at this emotional, mixed-up kid, who was so sure Leila had designs on her father?
‘I take it,’ she said slowly, ‘that Terry is your brother.’
‘He’s nine.’ Suddenly, the green eyes were swimming with tears between the fringe of mascara-coated lashes.
‘He’s n-nine, and he’s never had any other m-mother than me. He deserves something better…’
Leila didn’t offer her hanky or make any other gesture of comfort as the sentence dissolved. Oddly, Miss Oliver was far more womanly in her tears than she ever had been in her brazenness. It was starting to dawn on Leila that all this―the make-up, the aggression, perhaps even taking the car―had been designed especially for her benefit this morning.
She looked out of the window, listening to the choked sounds of Miss Oliver wrestling for self-control beside her.
So Mr. Blaize Oliver had enjoyed affairs with the last two temps who’d come out to work for him. Who had only been three out of a long line of women he’d seduced and discarded. And, all the time, his two children had been tormented, to the extent that his fifteen-yearold daughter had been driven to pitting her own immature wits against the latest intruder …
Mr. Oliver sounded a beaut.
Leila turned to look at the girl at last, who was sniffing miserably. Her mascara had smudged tragically down one cheek, and she looked less than twelve. All traces of adulthood were melting fast.
‘What’s your first name?’ Leila asked gently.
‘Tr-Tracey.’
‘OK, Tracey. There’s a wash-room over there. I want you to go and rinse all that stuff off your face. When you’re ready, come and join me in the restaurant, and we’ll have a cup of coffee. Yes?’
‘Yes.’ Tracey nodded. With a shaky sigh that went straight to Leila’s heart, she reached over and took an overnight bag off the back seat. ‘My proper clothes,’
she said dully, in answer to Leila’s glance. ‘Dad would kill me if he saw me wearing this outfit.’
‘Ah.’
She watched the girl walk to the wash-room. She had poise, at any rate. She walked in the high heels with not a hint of clumsiness, and her tumbled head was held high.
Shaking away the pity, Leila made her own way to the restaurant. The very last thing she needed right now was to get involved in some awful intra-family row. When this girl got back, she would impress upon her that she had no designs on her father, and that she was just here to do her job.
And then she would leave it at that.
There was no room in this job, or in Leila Thomas’s life, for the luxury of compassion. Or even, she reminded herself sharply, the luxury of feeling anger against an employer. Whatever kind of a bastard Blaize Oliver was, he meant nothing to her. If he made a pass at her, which he surely would, she knew how to deflect it.
She’d learned all about that long ago. It sometimes took men a little time to appreciate Leila’s quiet, understated beauty, but it was there, none the less. And when you’d grown up alone, poor, and largely defenceless, you soon realised what pigs some men could be.
Maybe that, was why she’d been able to cut through Tracey Oliver s act, where another woman might have been daunted. At Tracey’s age she’d also had to defend herself, and pretend she was far more adult than she was. And she had also ached for a mother with that hollow, constant pain.
She knew what that felt like, all right. Although those days were a long way back in her past, and her present was now coloured by a touch of luxury―even of glamour―she would never forget the lessons she’d learned then.
So, if Blaize Oliver, international businessman and rake, were to try any of his well-practised charm on her she knew exactly how to react.
She sat down, waiting for the girl. Her appearance in the busy restaurant, all alone, had already attracted male eyes. Perhaps that was just because her clothes were subtly wrong for this climate. The cotton blouse had seemed cool in London. Here, especially after the last five minutes with Tracey, it was sticking to her back.
And the skirt was too heavy. Tracey had been right; the Costa Brava in July was not a place for anything but the lightest of wear.
Thank goodness she’d had her hair cut short before leaving London. Assuming she’d be washing it frequently for the next six weeks, she’d sacrificed a mass of silvery gold that most women would have considered a priceless treasure. But the short page-boy cut was a lot more practical than, if not as pretty as, the platinum tresses she’d left behind. It also kept her profile lower, which was something she’d learned to cultivate as a topflight secretary. For the same reason, her full, leaf-shaped mouth wore a shade of lipstick that was deliberately dull, just as the tan eye-shadow helped tone down the vivid blue of her eyes. Discretion was something to be prized; she wasn’t in the business of pleasing male eyes.
At first, she hardly recognised the girl who had come to stand at her table, clutching an overnight bag. Then her blue eyes widened. As a tarted-up nymphet, Tracey Oliver had been pretty. Scrubbed down to a fifteen-year-old child, she was ravishing.
She’d brushed the chestnut mane of hair out of its sculpted waves, and it now cloudily framed the wistful face of a Renaissance angel in a Siennese masterpiece.
She was wearing faded jeans and a yellow tank top, with pink trainers. Universal teenager-wear. It showed her pretty figure off, but not in the way the leather skirt and high heels had done.
Only the eyes were the same-deep green and deeply confused.
‘Sit down.’ Leila invited. ‘I’ll get us two coffees. Want a piece of cake or a sandwich?’
‘You won’t have any Spanish money.’ Tracey said practically. ‘I’ll get them. Want an ensaimadal’
‘I’ll risk it.’ Leila said with a faint smile. The girl dumped her bag, and went off to the counter. Leila watched her, marvelling at the change. What kind of man could let an exquisite child like this suffer and go to seed? Was Blaize Oliver so selfish, or so indifferent, that he couldn’t see what his life-style was doing to his children?
One of these days the wind would change, and then the garish tart in the red leather skirt would really be Tracey Oliver. And not all of her father’s money would be able to scrub the paint away again.
Tracey had played the part superbly. From how many cheap women had she learned that style, that cutting and dismissive manner?
Leila felt bitter anger uncoil inside her, but only for a moment. She was a professional secretary, not a social worker. She was here to get through the next month and a half, not to make moral judgements on the lives of others.
Tracey had returned with a tray. The ensaimada turned out to be a curly bun with a filling of delicious confectioner’s cream. Tracey had bought he
rself one, too, and she ate with a teenager’s purposeful hunger, gulping her coffee down. The marks of her recent tears were still there, but fading, to leave only faint bruises under those vivid green eyes.
‘Tracey is a very pretty name,’ Leila began when the girl had finished. ‘When I was your age, it was one of the names I wanted to be called.’
‘Really?’ Tracey meditated. ‘But Leila is a lovely name.’
‘I didn’t like it, not then. Anyway, it’s a Persian name, meaning dark, so it couldn’t have been more inaccurate.’
Tracey cupped her chin in her hands, and considered Leila’s hair. ‘It’s real?’
‘As real as the rest of me. And I was even blonder then. Anyway, maybe I’ll grow into my name one of these days. Does your father really let you drive the car on the motorway?’
‘He’d kill me if he found out.’ It was the second time she’d used that phrase, and it didn’t escape Leila.
‘He thinks the chauffeur dropped me off at the beach this morning. But I gave him twenty thousand pesetas to let me take the car to the airport, instead.’
‘That sounds an awful lot of pesetas.’
‘No, it’s only a hundred quid.’ Tracey shrugged the sum off with a rich girl’s indifference to money. ‘He’s not a regular chauffeur. He’s really just the gardener, and he needs the money.’
‘I see.’ Rich kids were very good at spotting that quality in underlings. Leila leaned forward. ‘Listen, Tracey. I think I understand why you did what you did this morning. But you didn’t need to do any of it. I’ve got no intentions of getting involved with your father. Absolutely none, I swear it. I’ve never even met him, and, whatever those other agency women were like, most temps are just like me―hard-working and only interested in doing their job. I want you to believe that.’
The girl was picking at a loose thread on her jeans as she listened. ‘You haven’t met Dad,’ she said without looking up.
‘I’m sure your dad is an attractive man,’ Leila said gently. ‘But I’m not looking for a man, especially not —’ She was about to say the kind of man your father is, but the girl had looked up quickly, and she amended her sentence. ‘Especially not at this stage of my life. I just want to get ahead in my job. Believe me, I really hope your father and this lady you like, Katherine, get together.’ She hesitated. ‘Don’t be too disappointed if it doesn’t work out. People have to run their own lives― ‘
‘It will work out,’ the girl said fiercely, with a touch of her old autocratic manner.
‘OK,’ Leila nodded, noting the intent in the blazing green eyes. ‘It will work out. Just believe me when I say that I’m not here to come between your father and Katherine. I’m an employee, a very temporary one. And I’d like us to be friends for the next six weeks, if that’s possible. If not, then I hope at least we won’t be enemies.’
She’d, said enough. She finished her coffee, and checked her watch. She’d never driven on the Continent before, let alone in a left-hand-drive car, and they couldn’t be more than a third of the way to Cap Sa Sal.
There was a lot of motorway ahead of them.
Today hadn’t exactly been a shiningly auspicious beginning to this assignment. She was hoping devoutly that things would start going a bit better from now on.
When she looked up, Tracey was watching her with those cloudy green eyes.
‘Shall we go?’ Leila invited mildly.
Tracey’s knuckles were pale around the handle of the bag. ‘I guess you think I’m a terrible brat.’
‘No,’ Leila said calmly, rising. ‘You’re just a woman defending her family. I understand that perfectly.’
For a moment, the girl looked surprised. Then her mouth flickered momentarily into a rather bruised and tentative smile. It was not a smile that said she believed any of Leila’s promises, or even that she felt friendly towards her. It was the instinctive smile of a child who had been understood, and who wasn’t understood very often.
‘OK,’ she said. ‘Let’s go. I’ll show you the way.’
The drive up to the house was impressive―not just because it was over half a mile of tarmac, bordered with needle cypresses, but because, in its winding convolutions, it gave some spectacular views of the sea to one side, and the hilltop castle of a small town on the other.
The house itself came into view during the last few hundred yards. It was an enchantingly beautiful property, an old Catalan farmhouse whose ancient stones had been cloaked in ivy. The garden around it was a fabulous tangle of flowering shrubs and trees, bordering an expanse of emerald lawn, over which sprinklers played a rain of diamonds.
She’d expected money, but not taste. In fact, this place was a world away from the new white villa with ostentatious tennis-court and swimming-pool which she’d been expecting. This was a place of singular beauty, a place that made you ache for its loveliness.
‘Let me out here,’ Tracey commanded as they breasted the rise. ‘Go round the back of the house, and park under the trellis thing. Then go round to the front door. I’ll meet you there.’ Pleading green eyes turned to her. ‘Don’t let Dad know I drove to meet you, please.’
‘I won’t.’
‘Don’t tell the governess, either. She’s a snitch.’
‘OK.’ Leila let the teenager out, watched her disappear into the garden, then drove on as she’d been directed.
What a place! The views from up here, just to round everything off, were incomparable-a vista of curving bays that stretched towards the flawless horizon.
The ‘trellis thing’ turned out to be a huge pergola over which a wistaria was in breathtaking purple blossom, trailing its heavy flower-heads almost to the roofs of the cars. She parked next to a black Porsche 911 and a well-used Jeep, and got out, stretching herself. The drive had been tense, but this was worth a dozen such drives.
Carrying only her shoulder-bag, she walked round the house, as Tracey had commanded. The impression of weathered age was deceptive; her quick eye noticed well-made new windows, new guttering, and smart new lights set into the venerable walls. Somewhere not far off, a big dog was barking, but she made it to the front door unmolested, and rang the bell.
Tracey Oliver was only slightly out of breath as she opened the door.
‘Dad’s in the pool,’ she announced. ‘I’ll take you through to see him. Pedro’s getting your bags out of the car.’
‘Pedro’s the needy chauffeur, I suppose?’
Tracey nodded. ‘He’s more greedy than needy. Greedy people give me the creeps. Don’t bump into any of this junk, it’s worth a fortune.’
The junk in question was a large collection of oil-paintings, marble busts, statuettes and Chinese porcelain which stood haphazardly in the hallway, like the preparations for a very, very expensive jumble sale. ‘Stuff from England,’ Tracey explained dismissively. ‘Dad went on a shopping spree to furnish this place.’
‘Some shopping spree!’
‘Sotheby’s and Christie’s.’ She pulled a face. ‘I hate all this old musty stuff. I wanted to do the house all white inside. White floors, white walls, white furniture. But no one ever listens to me.’
As she followed Tracey through the house, Leila decided that Blaize Oliver had, at least, better taste than his daughter. The house was obviously still in the process of being furnished, but what had been put in so far was very beautiful, and revealed a rich, wide-ranging taste―the kind of taste that needed a very long purse to finance it. By the looks of it, Mr Oliver hadn’t put a foot wrong so far. The place was going to be stunning, from the Murano crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceilings to the Aubusson carpets on the tiled floors.
‘You haven’t been here very long, then?’ Leila questioned.
‘Dad bought the place a month ago,’ Tracey volunteered. ‘It’s just a holiday place, of course, but Dad tends to go over the top.’
Just a holiday place? That really made Leila rock for a moment. What in heaven’s name was this family’s permanent dwelling like
? Tracey led the way through a vast, superbly equipped kitchen out into a side garden, where yet another emerald sweep of lawn glittered under a rain of automatic sprinklers.
The pool was a sheet of turquoise beyond the lawn, bordered by unreal rows of white columns, supporting another pergola, this time of scarlet trumpet vine. They skirted the sprinklers, and walked to the edge of the pool.
A white towelling robe was slung over one of a pair of white garden chairs. On the table next to it were half a dozen newspapers, two telephones plugged into an extension socket, and a large jug of orange juice with two glasses.
A darkly tanned man was swimming lazily up and down in the blue water, with the easy power of a battle-cruiser.
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