A Summer Storm

by Robyn Donald

  He was a consummate flirt, the raw edges of power muted just enough to smooth down the danger, his over-whelming sexuality not tamed at all by the superb silk shirt and narrow trousers. It made Oriel sick and furious to see the way women preened when he gave them that devastating smile; she felt like clawing it from his face.

  The violence and wildness of her emotions frightened her. After a short while she refused to look at him. Even that didn’t work. Somehow, she knew all the time exactly where he was. And whenever, heartsick and frustrated, her eyes glittering with suppressed feelings, she managed to make her way into another room he seemed to find his way there too, although she knew he couldn’t be following her.

  She should have been enjoying herself. Almost without exception everyone was welcoming and pleasant, eager to make the most of the occasion, and the evening had that fizzing, sparkling atmosphere that assured its success. Thanks to Kathy’s discerning eye, Oriel was dressed with exactly the right casual chic, and she had no difficulty in talking to whoever she met while she kept an eye on Sarah, who had quite a few friends among the partygoers. Orie1’s height helped there, apart from a few of the men she was the tallest person in the room.

  Although as the evening wore on her eyes fell on another very tall woman-blonde and built on magnificent lines, she had unusually pale eyes that gave her a striking, compelling air, set as they were in dark lashes and brows. Probably dyed, Oriel thought snidely, envying the woman her deep bosom and splendid curves.

  By dint of the utmost concentration she managed to give a fair imitation of someone who was enjoying herself. It was not the sort of evening for deep conversation, and at this superficial level she could hold her own. She followed Sarah slowly through the house, arriving eventually at the sitting-room, and there she drank sparingly of an excellent New Zealand champagne while a tall dark young man with the face of a handsome bandit and laughing, speculative green eyes flirted casually with her.

  Until she saw Sarah cover a gap-toothed yawn. Then she said politely, ‘I’m sorry, Mr. ‘André,’ he said sadly. ‘André Hunter. Have I made such a little impression on you, beautiful Miss Radford, that you can’t even remember my name? I’m shattered.’

  Horrified, she looked up, but surprised a lurking gleam in his smile that made her laugh. ‘I’m lousy with names.’ she said, ‘but I should have remembered yours, shouldn’t I? Mr Hunter-’

  ‘André, please.’

  ‘André, then, I have to take young Sarah to bed before she falls asleep on the floor.’

  ‘I’ll wait for you,’ he said cheerfully.

  She hesitated, then gave an infinitesimal shrug. A month ago she would have been shy, almost afraid of him; it was amazing what falling in love could do. She didn’t care what anyone else but Blaize thought of her, and in a strange way it set her free.

  So she gave the man beside her a sweet, empty smile, set down her glass and made her way across the room, to find that her charge was talking to the Valkyrie with the ease of old friends.

  ‘Here's Oriel now,’ she said, her small face splitting into a grin.

  The blonde woman was warm and welcoming. ‘We haven’t been introduced,’ she said, ‘although I feel I know a lot about you! I’m Lora Duncan, and you are Oriel Radford, who’s going to be Sarah’s friend.’

  Her sensitivity in not referring to her as Sarah’s new mother, as several other women had, made Oriel forget her inadequacy in the matter of curves. She returned the smile and the greeting, and asked politely, ‘Are you a local, or have you come up from Auckland?’

  ‘Oh, we’re locals. My husband and I live on the other side of Paihia.’

  ‘They’ve got a nenormous station with cows with big, floppy ears, and two sorts of goats and deers,’ Sarah informed her in tones throbbing with envy. ‘And some sheep. They make yoghurt and cheese to sell in Australia and they live in a lovely old house with red tiles on the roof. And they’ve got a little baby boy. He’s called Matthew Alexander Duncan, but they call him Matthew. He smiled at me last Christmas.’

  ‘He’s not a baby any more, sweetheart,’ Lora Duncan said a little ruefully. ‘He runs around and talks all the time and is certain he can ride. Matt put him up on a pony before he could even walk, and now he wants to go out with him on the station all the time.’

  Oriel suppressed a pang of envy, as Sarah said importantly, ‘That’s Uncle Matt over there talking to Uncle Blaize, see? No, not there, Oriel, over by the windows.’

  Reluctantly Oriel followed the chubby pointing finger. Matt Duncan was as tall as Blaize but leaner in build, with hair the most intriguing mixture of golds and ambers and rusts blended to form a fascinating marmalade effect. Together, he and Blaize took the breath away. They looked like great tawny cats, superbly at ease, magnificently confident in their untrammeled masculinity.

  Oriel took a deep breath and said steadily, ‘I see him.’

  ‘Wonderful, aren’t they?’ Lora Duncan’s voice was soft and wry. ‘Apart each is fantastic, but together- they make your mouth water!’

  Oriel watched as Matt Duncan’s eyes caught his wife's, and they exchanged smiles, slow and significant. Clearly the Duncans had a very satisfying marriage. Then her gaze was captured too, pinned by the silver rapier of Blaize’s. She tried to drag her eyes away, but he held them effortlessly, his own cold and merciless. Matt Duncan said something to him, and they began to move through the crowd towards them.

  ‘Of course,’ Lora said in her warm voice, ‘we must look pretty stunning too. A Valkyrie and a-well, you’re something else again. Melusine, perhaps, with those fascinating eyes? Where did they come from?’

  ‘My father,’ Oriel said, glad of the opportunity to look back at the other woman. ‘Thank you.’

  Lora grinned. ‘And I’d kill for a figure like that, so slender and sinuous and graceful. Mine, alas, is altogether too lush-all bosom and hips.’

  Oriel’s mouth fell open. ‘I was envying you,’ she said. ‘I’m as straight as a lath.’

  They both burst into laughter, and Lora said wryly, shaking her magnificent blonde head, ‘What do they do to us women, that we spend all our time wanting what we haven’t got? I’m going to stop it here and now.’

  The men arrived and Oriel was introduced to Matt Duncan. She liked him, although she found his golden regard uncomfortably penetrating, and she didn’t altogether relish the way he watched her. He was lovely to Sarah, though, swinging her up in his arms to give her a big kiss. She kissed him back enthusiastically, ‘but spoiled the effect with another yawn.

  ‘Bedtime,’ Blaize said. ‘Have you had dinner?’

  ‘Yes, Oriel and Sim and me had it on a tray in Oriel’s bedroom. I had a chicken leg and avocado and prawns and then I had a meringue and a drink of lemonade.’ Sarah yawned again and held out her arms to Blaize.‘Will you come and kiss me goodnight?’

  ‘Yes, in a few minutes.’

  He put her down and sent an unsmiling glance to Oriel. ‘Thank you,’ he said formally.

  Relegated to her place, she waited while Sarah kissed Lora, then set off with her through the crowds of people who were all clearly having a fascinating and highly enjoyable time, and up the stairs to Sarah’s room with its bed like a racing car and the beloved books lying about.

  Ten minutes later, clad in cotton shortie pyjamas, Sarah hurtled into her bed. She chose Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are, so Oriel read the story of the boy who sailed his boat over the sea to become king of the wild things, then returned to the security of his own home and his parents.

  ‘I like that,’ Sarah said sleepily. ‘I like you, Oriel. Goodnight.’

  She held up her arms. Oriel kissed her and held her for a moment, her aching heart enjoying the comfort of the warm, sturdy little body.

  ‘Goodnight, sweetheart,’ she said softly. ‘Sleep tight. You can come into my room in the morning if you like when you wake up, because everyone else will probably be tired and a bit grumpy if you wake them too early.’
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  ‘Not Uncle Blaize,’ Sarah said with such total conviction that Oriel was convinced.

  A final kiss and Oriel settled her back on the pillow. She stood for a moment smiling down at the almost sleeping child, then leaned down to switch on the small night-light. As she turned to go out she saw Blaize standing in the doorway. Something in the curious stillness of his stance warned her that he had been there for a while. Her heart leapt, but she managed to hide the welter of emotions by assuming a calm, mildly interested expression as she came towards him.

  ‘Wait for me,’ he ordered.

  She obeyed, watching him as he went across and kissed his niece’s forehead. The long lashes fluttered, Sarah said his name in a drowsy little voice, and then she turned over on to her side, clearly lost in the fathomless sleep of childhood.

  He straightened, his tall frame intimidating in the darkened room. Oriel stood motionless as he closed the door. At the bottom of the stairs he said coldly, ‘Can you check on Simon, make sure he gets off at eleven? He’s too old to be kissed goodnight, but he likes someone to come in and see he’s all right. His mother always used to.’

  His manner, his voice, chilled her to the bone. Quietly she nodded. ‘I want to talk to you about what you’ve told Sarah about her parents’ death, but I can do that later.’

  ‘Tell me now.’

  Oriel revealed the unhappy little scene on the stairs, ending, ‘I don’t want to contradict anything you’ve said about what has happened to them, but she obviously finds the thought of them being alone or in the dark distressing.’

  ‘I went past while you were comforting her. You seemed to have it well in hand, so I left you to it. She’s afraid of the dark, of course.’

  His voice was tired. She remembered Sarah’s artless confidence about the tears in his eyes after the funeral.

  ‘Just ease her fears as much as possible,’ he said, and in the same voice continued, ‘Oh, and be careful with Andre Hunter. He’s generally considered to be rather dangerous when it comes to women.’

  ‘André Hunter?’ The sudden change of subject threw her entirely. Her sluggish brain was disorientated by his nearness, her heart was clamouring for her to give in, to tell him that there was nothing she wanted more than to be welcomed back into the warmth of his favour.

  ‘Come now, Oriel, don’t pretend.’ His eyes were crystalline, as cold as the icebergs in the southern seas. ‘You were enjoying his company very much. He’s attractive, and he’s rich and he’s going to be much richer, but he has a bad reputation with women. However, just in case you think you might get more from him, the contract you signed doesn’t make any exceptions, not even for marriage.’

  His scathing voice drove the colour painfully from her skin. After a moment she gathered enough poise to say, ‘For heaven’s sake, I was just talking to the man! Who the hell do you think you are-?’

  ‘I’m your employer,’ he said brutally, ‘with a vested interest in your efficiency. I don’t want a nanny who’s useless because she's pregnant, or broken-hearted over a rake like Andre Hunter.’

  The casual, pointedly cruel insults heated her blood to boiling-point. Through teeth clenched so tightly she thought they might snap she hissed, ‘You have a bloody nerve. You may have bought my services, but you haven’t bought me! I’ll talk to whoever I want to, and there’s nothing you can do about it.’

  ‘Oh, you can talk to him,’ he said with indifference. ‘Tease him as much as you like-you’re a consummate tease, aren’t you, with those wicked eyes and that wide, innocent mouth? Just don’t sleep with him, or break your heart over him. As for buying you-that, my clear, is exactly what I’ve done. Your services, your time, your efforts. You are mine. And if you don’t want to cause André Hunter a considerable amount of trouble, leave him alone.’

  Sickened by his stony viciousness, she turned away.

  ‘Where are you going?’ His voice cracked like a whip.

  ‘Up to my room.’

  She didn’t hear him move, but she hadn’t taken two steps when her arm was taken in a grip just short of painful. ‘I said I owned you,’ he said in her ear, his voice lethal. ‘And I want you where I can see you, Oriel. So you’re not going up to your room to sulk, you’re coming with me.’

  Fuming, she sent him a look of pure hatred, her eyes narrowed into slits of molten blue, her lips pressed so tightly together that they were white.

  ‘If you come back like that, people will think I’ve kissed all your lipstick off,’ he said, coldly amused. ‘You’d better go up and replace it.’

  Ignoring her furious protests, he escorted her up to her door, waiting outside while she carefully filled in the colour with a trembling hand. She took as long as she dared, pressing her hands to the bench in front of the bathroom mirror, wondering with alarm who the woman in the mirror was with her raging blue eyes and the sullen, full month glossed with scarlet. She looked totally different, bold, angry and more alive than she had ever seen herself.

  Only Blaize had the power to do this to her, strike sparks off her so that she was incandescent with emotion, flaming with an energy she had never tapped before.

  From outside the room he called her name, impatience clipping the syllables, and she gave a last fulminating stare at her reflection and went out to meet him, her head held so high that she felt an ache in her neck and shoulders.

  Something leapt into full-blown life in the shadowed eyes that watched her come through the doorway, something that raged unchecked for a second until his massive will-power called it under control and vanquished it. She walked past him without touching him, looking at him, yet she could feel his attention like a gas flare about her, searing her nerves, setting every cell in her body aflame with triumph.

  Hating him for his arrogance, his cruelty, she was savagely glad that he wanted her, glad that her presence affected him in ways she was only now beginning to understand.

  People watched them as they came back into the room, some openly, some with interested sideways glances. Oriel met glittering, wicked green eyes, and smiled, but she quashed her first savagely defiant instinct to go across to where André Hunter lounged against a wall and lifted his champagne glass to her, watching her with that sly amusement.

  Besides, her saner, more sensible self was struggling to be heard through the pain and the anger. It would be utterly stupid to antagonise Blaize any more than she had done. She had signed that contract, and for better or worse he was going to hold her to it, so it was much more sensible to make it for better, not worse.

  Even more important than the contract was the promise she had made to Sarah.

  Normally she hated confrontations and fights; the fact that this one stimulated her, made her feel infinitely more alive than she had ever been before, was probably the result of her inexperience. But it wouldn’t be good for Sarah to live in a situation where there were constant battles.

  Unfortunately, while her common sense made soothing noises and came up with platitudes and calm reason, her anger, bone-deep, unresolved, bubbled away, feeding her adrenalin rush, giving her eyes a sultry, smoky intensity, touching her skin with fugitive colour, lifting her chin.

  She felt it in him too. For the rest of that nightmarish party, even as he refused to let her leave his side, she sensed his feral desire to be free of them all so that he could give rein to his emotions. She should have been terrified, but it was not terror that stiffened her spine and touched her cheeks with colour.

  Although he smiled frequently, his anger gave him an air of brooding intensity that was blazingly magnetic to the many women who sent Oriel sharp, envious little glances. Kept at his side like a potentate’s favourite handmaiden, she was bound together with him in an orb of sizzling energy, separated from everyone else by a force-field.

  Ten minutes after Simon went up to bed she slid away, and this time Blaize let her go. By now her foot was aching slightly, so she limped up the stairs and knocked on Simon’s door; a sleepy voice bade her come in, but s
he was met with a broad if exhausted smile when she asked, ‘Everything all right?’

  ‘Fine. Great party, isn’t it?’

  ‘Fantastic,’ she retorted drily. ‘Goodnight.’

  Night,’ he said, only barely covering a yawn. ‘See you in the morning.’

  ‘Not too early, I hope.’

  He laughed. ‘Not a chance. I’m not getting up until midday.’

  ‘Good thinking, Ninety-nine.’

  He laughed, and she shut the door and went down the stairs. A couple were just settling themselves in a secluded nook in the passage; she went past awkwardly, thinking with some distaste that at least her mother had made sure that she would never think of making love on the stairs during a party. With the woman’s giggle in her ears she paced on down, girding her loins for another period of purgatory.

  She fully expected to find Blaize lying in wait, but he was nowhere in sight. Quickly, before he had a chance to catch up with her, she walked down the hall to the back door, slipping past the lasiandra hedge, the purple, silken flowers glowing more vividly than any royal robes, and on down the darkened pathway to the pool.

  White tobacco flowers scented the air, mingling with the evocative fragrance of the port-wine magnolia and the heavy, musky scent of the Queen of the Night blooms, tiny and inconspicuous yet almost overpowering, floating over the gardens in sensuous evocation of the tropics.

  There had been swimming earlier on, but now the pool was empty of people. Water was lapping gently against the dark sides, water that Kathy had sprinkled with gardenia blossoms, hundreds of them, lying in swathes of white on the surface, their heavy scent erotic and clinging in the warm, salty air.

  Oriel stood for a long time, breathing deeply, her eyes fixed unseeingly on the water, but at last she shivered, turning to go back. A dark shadow detached itself from the wall beneath the climbing rose. Her hand clenched at her breast, then relaxed. This man was just as tall but not as massively built as Blaize.

  ‘A little over the top, but highly effective, isn’t it? Who’d have thought of Blaize revelling in romantic conceits?’ It was Andre Hunter, his voice amused and more than a little curious.