by Robyn Donald
‘You’ll have company shortly,’ he said-calmly. ‘My nephew and niece are arriving within a few days. They've been spending Christmas with their father’s parents in Wellington. Simon is fourteen-a nice kid. Sarah is almost seven. They’ll be spending the rest of the holidays here.’
‘How nice,’ she said inadequately.
He gave a wry smile. ‘Yes. Unfortunately Sarah was badly affected by her parents’ death a few months ago.’
Oriel’s tender heart was wrung. She could remember what it was like to lose a beloved parent, and how long it had taken her to stop listening for the footsteps of her father. ‘It’s one of the most traumatic things that can happen to a child,’ she said softly. ‘Unfortunately, only time has the cure.’
He looked across at her. ‘Your father?’
‘Yes.’
‘What happened?’
It still hurt, but she said in an even voice, ‘He loved skin-diving, and one day he didn’t come back.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Eight.’
‘And how long was it before time worked its magic for you?’
‘Sometimes,’ she said quietly, ‘I think it never did. But it was a year before I could say his name without crying, and two or three before I could think of him with a smile.’ Her smile was bitter-sweet. ‘My mother said-’ The words died. She saw him watching her and shrugged. ‘My mother felt that I grieved excessively,’ she finished wryly. ‘She was probably right.’
‘Either that, or you have a great capacity for emotion.’
Her shoulders moved again, but it was more of a wriggle than a shrug. She was not in the habit of baring her soul to anyone, let alone a man she had just met and with whom she shared nothing beyond their common humanity.
‘No?’ he said, his eyes narrowed. ‘Well, we’ll see how you get on with Sarah. I’d be interested in your professional opinion of her. You did say you were a teacher, didn’t you?’
‘I’m a teacher, yes,’ she returned, ‘not a psychologist.’
‘Oh, I’m sure you underestimate yourself.’ His voice was smooth, and she felt a sudden urge to shout at him, to stamp and swear and shock him out of that smooth mask of sophistication that he wore like an armour.
Horrified by such uncharacteristic fervour, she tamped her runaway emotions down, but he was watching her with a gleam of something like amusement, and that hard, sensual mouth was curled very slightly at the comers. She withdrew, retiring behind the barricades she had constructed so long ago that she was scarcely aware of their existence any more.
CHAPTER TWO
BLAIZE was kind for the rest of the day, talking to Oriel as though she were a valued guest, leaving her when she got tired, and generally being a courteous if somewhat remote host, and when he carried her up to bed again after dinner it was with the impersonal strength of a favourite uncle.
Surprisingly, she was exhausted, although it was barely after nine and the sun had only just gone down behind a pall of scarlet and gold that augured well for the following day. She went to sleep almost immediately, her head sliding sideways on the pillow, the book she was reading slipping from her slender hands on to the coverlet.
It was an old nightmare that disturbed her, but familiarity had never dulled the edge of terror. She was being chased by something, an unknowable, horrible thing that was catching her. She was running through water, cold, thick black water that dragged at her ankles, impeding her with slimy ropes and strings. Petrified, her heart beating like a painful drum in her ears, her chest straining as she tried to drag in agonising breaths of air, she couldn’t move, but a little way off was the land, sunlit and smooth, and if she could get there she would be safe from the horror. She could hear it breathe behind her, smell its foul stench. Closer-closer…
‘Wake up, Oriel! It’s only a dream! Come on, wake up.’
Abrupt, imperative, the curt command penetrated the chaos of terror. Gasping, her hands stretched out imploringly, she fought her way through to wakefulness. Someone was shaking her shoulder, the fingers strong and firm.
The sobs died in her throat as she opened her eyes to meet the silver flames of Blaize’s eyes. Staring mutely, she became shamingly conscious of the way she was clutching his robe as though he were her only hope of salvation. She jerked away to huddle back ‘against the headboard, desperately striving to control the shudders that racked her body. Slowly the panic faded and the colour washed back into her eyes, making them darker, smokily dazed.
Ignoring her silent resistance, he sat on the bed and with a careless strength propped her against his shoulder, her cheek pillowed in the dark blue material of his robe. The sleek muscles of his torso were hard and warm; she found herself relaxing, comforted by a sense of security she had never experienced before.
‘Better?’ he asked after a moment, his hand stroking rhythmically up and down her back.
She stiffened, but he continued stroking, the smooth movement of his palm soothing, completely without threat. Hiccupping, she nodded.
His chest lifted as he laughed. ‘Your hair tickles. No, don’t wriggle away, think of me as your favourite uncle. Do you often have nightmares?’
‘I haven’t had one for ages. Was I screaming?’
After a moment’s pause he said quietly, ‘You were calling for your father.’
She bit her lip and drew a deep breath, but before she could say anything he went on, ‘I’m sorry if anything I said today caused this. I had no idea I’d be turning loose such-such raw memories.’
‘You didn't,’ she whispered. ‘I don’t know why I had it tonight. I’m not neurotically fixated on my father's death, or anything. I came to terms with it years ago.’
‘Perhaps telling you about Sarah and Simon brought it all back.’
It seemed likely, so she nodded, her weighted lashes falling as the overdose of emotion and the gentle movements of his hand on her back worked their inevitable magic.
Still holding her against him, he leaned back against the pillows. With the sound of his heart thumping quietly in her ears, the scent of his male presence in her nostrils, she allowed this comfort, freely and generously given, to- lull her into a peaceful, dreamy calmness.
‘All right?’
At her murmured assent he eased her down on to the pillows and got up. Bereft, she still managed a drowsy smile. He chuckled, and said, ‘You look like a small squirrel.’
His voice came closer; she opened her eyes just as mouth touched hers, warm and firm. Her heart almost stopped. An explosion of the senses shattered her peace, a shock of awareness so powerful it branded every cell in her body.
When he jerked upright her dilated eyes saw his lips move in what must have been some sort of oath, and watched astonishment and shock empty his face of all expression but sheer, uncompromising control. There was no recognition in his regard-it was almost as though she were not there and he was seeing someone else in her place. His mouth clenched into a straight, hard line, his narrowed gaze was bleak and cold as he stared right through her, every angle of his face emphasised into a harsh menace in the warm glow of the light.
At last he said on a curiously level note, ‘Do you think you might be able to sleep now?’
‘Yes. Thank you.’ She felt slightly sick, her body aching with a febrile, unknown excitement. ‘You’ve been very kind. I’m sorry I disturbed you.’
His eyes narrowed as he searched her face. ‘So am I,’ he said through lips that barely moved. ‘Goodnight.’
For a long time after he turned the light out she lay huddled in the bed. The air was damp and hot, sticky with the scents of the night, and she was unable to sleep until the first pale seepage of dawn came into her room.
In the morning the incident seemed as much a dream as the nightmare, and every bit as upsetting.
While she ate her breakfast in the security of her bedroom she decided that the sooner she was gone from this place and Blaize Stephenson the better. Last night she had come close to making a
great fool of herself, and she wasn’t going to suffer the humiliation of developing a king-size crush on the man if she could possibly avoid it.
The promise of the sunset had been fulfilled. As she limped gingerly across the room she admired the fresh, bright greens of the countryside spread out above the garden, the bold contours of the hills heightened by the golden wash of summer. In the garden flowers held up their colourful faces, uncaring that a few days before the same sky had hurled tempest and min at them.
Cattle moved across a hillside, big beasts, pale gold against the startling freshness of the grass, harassed by a black and white dog, followed by a man on a horse. Blaize? No, this was a smaller man, and when he told the dog explicitly where it had gone wrong, Oriel recognised a broad New Zealand accent. Unlike Blaize, who sounded English but spoke with New Zealand speech patterns, which meant, she decided, either English parents and a New Zealand upbringing, or very upper-class New Zealand parents.
Her reluctant mind returned to those sweet yet frightening moments the night before when he had held her gently, and the strange pagan aftermath. If she closed her eyes...
With a very great effort she forced her eyes open. Blaize was the sort of man adolescent fantasies were made of, tall and broad and strong, handsome with that hint of untamed depths that had such an irresistible appeal to most women. But not to Oriel Radford. At twenty-three, she told herself briskly, she was well past daydreaming. It led to pain and humiliation, all the things she could most emphatically do without!
When Kathy came up to collect her tray Oriel was seated in the chair by the window, trying to untangle the knots in her hair.
‘How’s the foot today?’ asked Kathy.
She smiled. ‘Much better. If I limp carefully and hang on to the furniture I can get around quite easily. It doesn’t even hurt much.’
‘Just as well I got your clothes washed and dry, then,’ the older woman said. ‘I’ll bring them up.’
Half an hour later, with Kathy in close attendance, Oriel made her way down the stairs, frowning a little in concentration as she negotiated them. She had already miscalculated once, and the ensuing pain convinced her that she needed to go slowly and very carefully.
Blaize’s voice, with a reverberation like the crack of a whip, made her flinch and lose her balance, clutch vainly atthe banister and sit down abruptly.
‘What the hell are you doing?’
She said spiritedly, ‘I was coming down the stairs until you scared me!’
There was an odd silence, during which she heard the older woman draw in a sharp breath, before he said crisply, ‘I’m sorry. Should you be putting any weight on that foot?’
She explained again that it didn’t hurt provided she was careful. He wasn’t entirely satisfied and demanded a demonstration, watching her keenly as she carefully limped towards him. Self-consciousness made her falter and pain shot through her foot. She thought she hid the wince well, but his frown deepened and she braced herself for instructions to stay put all day.
However, almost as though he begrudged the words, he agreed finally, ‘Very well, then, although if you walk much on it the extra strain will make your other hip painful. Come into the sun-room and sit down. A liner’s going past on the way out from Opua, if you’re interested.’
He was very elegant in a pair of dark blue trousers with a pale blue shirt on top, his glowing head catching the sunlight in a bedazzlement of light and colour.
‘Here.’ He handed her a pair of binoculars. ‘Take a closer look.’
‘Oh, she’s lovely,’ she breathed, unaware of the naked longing in her voice, or the speculative glance he cast her.
‘Isn't she? She came in yesterday morning and is heading for Suva now.’
‘Fiji,’ she sighed, her eyes steady on the white hull and graceful lines.
‘Yes. Whereabouts did you live when you were there?’
She smiled sadly. ‘I was born in Suva, but home was one of the Yasawa Islands. My father owned a tourist complex there. When he died we came back to be closer to my mother’s family in New Zealand. Her parents are still alive, and she’s close to a sister in Auckland. Daddy was English, but he would never have gone back. He adored Fiji and the tropics.’
‘Do you remember much about it?’ Carefully she removed the binoculars and put them on the table. A subtle note of wistfulness deepened her voice as she replied, ‘I remember the sun, and the sea, and trying to climb coconut palms with other children. And church-the Fijians sang so beautifully. My mother says I ran wild.’ Her smile was spiced by a momentary gleam of mischief. ‘I remember a full set of Fijian swear words that come in useful now and then.’
Laughing, he held out his hand for the binoculars. As she passed them over she thought bemusedly that he had beautiful hands, lean and tanned, with long fingers and short, blunt nails. A scandalous piece of imagery made her blush scarlet and turn her head swiftly away. She was not going to allow her stupid imagination to embarrass her by visualising just how those hands would look against her skin.
A surreptitious glance revealed that he had not noticed-he was still watching the liner as she moved out towards the open sea. Against the light from the window his profile was a bold slash, all straight lines and angles apart from the curves of his mouth. It was aggressive yet profoundly attractive: wide forehead and sweeping cheekbones, a thin-bridged nose with its intriguing disjunction, an autocratic line of jaw and chin; the surprisingly sensual shaping of his mouth should have contrasted, perhaps even watered down the effect of inborn strength and authority, but it didn’t.
She thought, with a tiny frisson of shock at her own daring", that although Blaize was definitely a sensuous man his passions would always be controlled by his will. The strong sweep of jaw and the hint of disciplined toughness in his mouth revealed more than the deliberate self-sufficiency of his usual expression.
He turned, and she hastily lowered her eyes, aware that in her cheeks there was enough wildfire colour to give him some indication of the way her thoughts had been heading.
‘Did you get back to sleep after your dream last night?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said brightly and not quite untruthfully. It wasn’t the dream that had kept her awake.
‘Good.’ He changed the subject, saying, ‘I have to go into Russell this afternoon, and so does Kathy. Will you be all right?’
‘Yes, of course I will.’
He gave her a somewhat cynical smile. ‘Just be careful. If you wrench that foot again you may well be wearing sandals for several months.’
‘If it will make you happier, l’ll stay on my bed all afternoon,’ she said shortly. She was not accustomed to such solicitude; her mother had never ‘fussed’, as she called it, and Oriel had been on her own too long to enjoy it now.
His eyebrow lifted. She saw his recollection of the night before in his expression, and embarrassment at her gaucheness heated her cheeks. But all he said, and that very urbanely, was, ‘A good idea.’
It was with the sound of that enigmatic remark in her ears that she stripped off her shorts and T-shirt and lay on the bed in her underwear, first making sure the big launch had disappeared behind the headland. To her surprise she slept for several hours, waking stiff and lethargic and depressed. She lay listening, but apart from the sound of the waves there was nothing. They must still be in Russell.
The house seemed very empty while he-while they, she corrected with a frown, were away. With a sigh she made her way across to the desk and sat down to write to her mother.
It was difficult; the time was long gone when they had much to say to each other. Jo Radford was a small, dainty blonde who frequently bewailed the fact that her only child was tall and thin and dark, with none of her delicate beauty. The dissimilarities extended even further than that. Newly widowed and left with barely enough money to keep them, Jo had found a job in a model agency, a situation where her looks and her interests worked for her.
She enjoyed the life immensely, relis
hing her contacts with the creative and the rich; an occasion in Auckland wasn’t really an occasion unless J o Radford was there, her delicate features exquisitely made’ up, her dress sense impeccable. Wittily malicious, amusing, always to be relied on, Jo was part of the Auckland ‘scene’.
Which was fine. Except that J 0 had never been able to resist mourning a daughter who was clumsy and ungainly, totally lacking in wit, and obstinately uninterested in the world her mother had made her own.
But she did, as she was fond of saying, do her best for the child. Oriel had been sent to an exclusive boarding-school where she’d rubbed shoulders with the children of the rich and the famous, she had had all the right lessons-ballet, music, drama, tennis-in the process imperceptibly losing much of the clumsiness that so irritated her mother.
Then there had been a further disappointment when she had opted for that most unfashionable of careers, primary school teaching.
Oriel grimaced. She could still hear her mother’s voice as she wailed, ‘Why don’t you take a commerce degree at university? Really, Oriel, the one thing you do have is brains! Teaching! For heaven’s sake, no one who is anyone goes teaching now, it’s so-so sexist! Only old-fashioned women who want to get married and have stacks of babies teach!’
But as well as being a disappointment, Oriel was stubborn. She liked children, and she felt that teaching them was a very worthwhile profession, one that would give her satisfaction, one where she was needed. With the quiet determination that her mother stigmatised as obstinacy, she persisted in her ambition. So far, in her second year out from training college, she had not felt a moment’s disenchantment with the career she had chosen.
Her gaze fell on the writing paper. Wide mouth pulling in at the comers, she began the letter. Soon she was so deeply immersed in tactfully telling her mother what had happened that she didn’t hear the deep throb of the launch as it came into the bay.
It was a knock on the door that interrupted her. ‘Come in,’ she called, pushing the paper away with a certain amount of shamed relief.
