by Shirley Wine
‘We met several years ago. I’m flattered Victoria even remembers me.’
Not remember him?
His wry humour grated on her emotions, disillusionment rubbed raw, and realising she was still clinging to Keir’s hands Victoria jerked them free. As the numbing shock receded, her mind spun in frantic circles as she groped for a plausible excuse to escape.
This room.
This house.
This man!
‘Where did you meet Victoria, Keir?’ Muriel Donovan’s carefully modulated voice broke the escalating tension.
‘We met one summer a few years back,’ Keir said with imperturbable calm, his velvet eyes brimming with cynical amusement. ‘Victoria was staying with her uncle and aunt at their motor camp at Orere Point while her mother was in hospital.’ He turned to Victoria, his expression softening. ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t able to comfort you after your mother’s death.’
He’s freaking unbelievable.
‘It was a long time ago. My father remarried last year.’ Victoria shrugged and turned to Logan, the need to escape taking precedence over good manners. ‘Can I go to my room, please?’
Logan glanced from her to his mother. ‘Victoria’s come straight from work and needs to freshen up.’
‘Show her upstairs then come back down,’ Muriel said, but her smile didn’t reach her cold, blue eyes.
Victoria’s relief was tempered by the understanding that as Logan’s guest, she wasn’t welcome in his mother’s home. It took every shred of dignity she possessed to walk sedately beside Logan and not throw up her hands and run screaming from the room, from the house. Struggling for an acceptable reason to leave, Victoria took little notice of the luxurious surroundings.
‘Mother wants me to explain why I invited you,’ Logan said with a wry grimace.
‘You invited me? What about the flowers—’ She broke off, shaking her head. ‘There was never a chance of me presenting my credentials and portfolio, was there?’
Why didn’t I see this coming?
Bile stung her throat as anger and betrayal fought for supremacy. Logan ignored her question as he opened a door and ushered her into a spacious bedroom. ‘The Emerald Suite.’
Victoria gained a blurred impression of oppressive green before she turned on him. ‘What the hell’s going on, Logan?’
‘You tell me. Meeting Keir really threw you, Victoria. Why?’
As if I can explain?
‘Tell me why that’s any of your business?’
Something dangerous glittered in his eyes. ‘You’re here as my guest, so why wouldn’t I be concerned?’
A convulsive shiver shook Victoria.
It was too late to regret accepting this invitation; that horse had well and truly bolted.
Frightened, she rubbed her hands up and down her chilled arms as she fought back panic. Unable to hold Logan’s keen gaze, she looked everywhere but at him, desperate for inspiration.
Keir Donovan is my baby’s father. That forbidding stranger downstairs doesn’t bear any resemblance to the man I knew. And I came here hoping to secure the commission on the flowers for his wedding.
Hysterical laughter bubbled in her throat. Like that was ever going to happen.
‘I want to go home. Now.’ Victoria nibbled on her lower lip. ‘It’s obvious your mother doesn’t want me here.’
‘She’ll survive.’
Victoria stared at him, surprised and shocked by his cynicism and obvious curiosity.
‘Understand this, Victoria: my mother does not dictate my choice of friends. Besides, if you leave now, don’t you think my family will be mighty curious?’
She swallowed hard but the obstruction in her throat didn’t move. Logan’s words made a sick kind of sense he could never understand. ‘Your brother was rotten to me that summer and I’ve never forgotten.’
As the lie rolled off her tongue, Victoria crossed her fingers, but the superstitious gesture gave her no more comfort than Logan’s quick frown.
‘That’s not like Keir. Once you get past his crusty exterior, you’ll find him kind and honourable.’
Yeah, right! She fought back a burst of panic. Keir Donovan held the power to bring her to her knees.
‘Please stay.’ Logan caught her hands and held them tightly, his expression contrite. ‘I’m sorry I misled you, but you should relax and look at this weekend as a well-deserved break.’
Relax?
With Connor’s father in the next room?
Hysterical laughter threatened Victoria’s self-control.
She wanted nothing more than to shake the dust of Darkhaven from her shoes, but she suspected if she did leave that she’d very soon find her ex-lover on her doorstep. And this was something she needed to prevent, at least until she’d figured out her next move.
‘Okay, I’ll stay.’ She offered up a silent prayer that this was the right decision.
‘Thank you.’ Logan gave her a quick hug. ‘Dinner’s at seven-thirty. I’ll collect you for drinks at six-thirty, okay?’
As the door closed behind him, she stood staring at its panels for long fraught moments before she slumped onto the bed and buried her face in her hands.
What am I going to do?
Anxiety brought Victoria to her feet, and she paced, prey to so many conflicting emotions.
My Seth Donahue is Keir Donovan. He lied to me. Why?
The man she’d known had, to her, epitomised honesty and integrity. Now she was confronted with the irrefutable evidence of his bald-faced lie. What else about those halcyon days was a lie?
Bleak memories surfaced.
Grief-stricken over her mother’s death and bitterly resentful of her father’s deception, it had been months before Victoria realised she was pregnant. Then she began the fruitless search for her lover, but no matter how hard she looked she came up empty-handed. It seemed to her that Seth Donahue had either vanished, or that he didn’t exist.
She gave a cracked laugh. Seth Donahue doesn’t exist, but Keir Donovan sure as hell does.
I was nearer to the truth than I ever suspected.
What was it with the men in her life?
Her father had lied to her about the severity of her mother’s illness and denied her the chance to say goodbye, something Victoria had never forgiven. Now, she faced the repercussions of her lover’s lie.
She huffed a shaken breath. Looking back was an exercise in futility; she had to deal with the present and protect her son, her little boy with his daddy’s sable hair and velvet brown eyes.
Restless, unsettled and worried sick, Victoria let her gaze settle on yet another of Muriel’s ubiquitous silk arrangements.
It offended her sense of creativity.
Without hesitation, she strode over to the antique table and tore the flower arrangement apart. Hands flying, she set about recreating something interesting—well, as interesting as it was possible to be with such blah wherewithal.
Orange-red Oriental poppies formed a central cluster under her dexterous hands, their black eyes a sinister heart—to her fevered imagination they represented Muriel, the disturbing heart of this family. Victoria’s hands stilled. Where the hell did that thought come from?
She didn’t question her instinct. Muriel Donovan with her limpid handshake, cold, ice-blue eyes and steely voice was more than intimidating—she was fearsome and not someone Victoria wanted to cross. Despite Logan’s brave words, she sensed his mother would fight tooth and claw to prevent him marrying someone who didn’t suit her purpose.
This insight unnerved her and she quickly plucked up three dusky salmon poppies and added them to one side of the arrangement. They softened the effect—Caine’s influence?
She shook her head at her fanciful imagination.
To one side, she grouped a handful of pale callistemon. Their stems needed shortening, so she pulled the pair of heavy-duty florist’s shears from her business satchel and ruthlessly trimmed them, humming under her breath. Ready to discard the shorn
stems, she stripped the leaves and poked the resultant spikes among the lush petals—and they made a startling contrast.
Several silver foliage spears lay on the table and, with deft fingers, she slotted them in the back to tower over and above everything else—a looming Seth, a powder keg of testosterone.
Nailed it in one, but I’m running scared.
She shook her head, disconcerted. This relaxing weekend had now assumed the mantle of a waking nightmare.
With brutal efficiency, she shortened the stems of the remaining flowers and dropped them on the table, an artless sprawl fading to insignificance—as Logan and his incessant proposals faded to insignificance.
How would Muriel view her creation? Victoria huffed a cracked laugh; Logan’s mother was the least of her worries.
But the burst of creativity had eased her blind panic and allowed logic to kick in. Logan had no valid reason to mention Connor so unless she let it slip, how could Keir Donovan know she’d given birth to his son?
The mellow chime of the wall clock jolted her into the awareness of the time. She needed to hurry if she was to be ready, instinctively knowing it would never do to be late.
As she showered and dressed she worried.
Seth’s unexpected reappearance had yanked open the closet door on memories she’d buried deeply, memories that now resisted every effort to shove them back.
After a gruelling year, at eighteen Victoria had emerged for the summer break as a newly fledged adult with the heady excitement of being crowned college dux, and the proud possessor of a lucrative scholarship to attend Otago University. But the day after Christmas her mother had taken ill, and despite Victoria’s protests, her father had packed her off to spend the summer break with her uncle and aunt so she was fresh for the year ahead.
Victoria winced and her hand stilled the hairbrush halfway down a hank of her thigh-length hair. Even now, I feel sick whenever I think of the lies Dad told me about Mum’s illness.
‘That was yesterday,’ she muttered under her breath as she bent and twisted her hair into the coil needed to contain its bulk in a French pleat. ‘I need to deal with the present.’
This was easier said than done because now, the past had collided with the present.
If I’d never had that holiday, I would never have met Seth … and I wouldn’t have Connor.
‘And I sure as hell wouldn’t be facing this dilemma now,’ she scolded her reflection severely as, with a deft twist of her wrist, she secured the coil of hair in a pleat with a beaten copper pin.
How had Seth managed to get past her uncle’s strict rule about family not fraternising with holiday-makers? Given Seth’s wealth, had he greased her uncle’s palm? Victoria’s instinct was to deny this possibility, and yet what other explanation was there? Uncle Tom had actively encouraged her to spend time with Seth.
No longer naive or eighteen, Victoria knew that men hid base motives behind wealth. Look at how often she delivered flowers to a wife and a mistress in the same delivery run, where she resisted the overwhelming temptation to switch the cards.
She hated to think of her Seth as being numbered among the devious, but the fact remained that she’d spent nearly every waking hour with him. He’d comforted her anxiety over her mother, and he’d soothed her bitter complaints over her father’s rigid rules. And he’d become her first lover.
Victoria closed her eyes—God, she remembered every detail—the pungent odour of sand and salty sea air, the musky scent of Seth’s sun-warmed skin with its hint of mint, the sharp fragrance of crimson pohutukawa petals crushed under their naked bodies—the clarity of her recall sent shivers cascading across her skin.
He ruined me for any other man.
On that last day she’d been too content to worry over his uncharacteristic silence. She paused. She wondered if, back then, he had already been regretting his deception, or was that wishful thinking on her part?
After all this time, would he even believe Connor was his son? Victoria shook her head; her son’s resemblance to Seth was uncanny.
Will he try to claim custody of my son? This was the more pressing fear. He’d have one hell of a fight on his hands if he did, but a shiver of foreboding shook her just the same. Her floristry business earned her a good living, but this was insignificant when measured against Donovan wealth. Besides, it had been Seth’s own deception that kept him ignorant of her pregnancy—there was no fault on her part. But now that fate and Logan had thrown them together, Victoria no longer had that defence. As much as she disliked it, she knew that Seth had rights, parental rights.
‘Keir. Keir! Keir!’ She smacked her forehead with an open palm. ‘The man’s name is Keir. But that makes no odds, he needs to know that Connor is his son.’
The thought of confronting that forbidding stranger made her heart race at a suffocating pace. She scrubbed at her cheeks with shaky hands.
It’s Keir’s right.
That may be so, but the very thought of making such a disclosure while she was a guest in his father’s home—Victoria shuddered.
That Connor’s existence would have far-reaching consequences was not in doubt, but such a stunning disclosure demanded privacy. And such privacy would be impossible here at Darkhaven.
I’d do better to wait until I’m on my own turf, and then I can choose the time and place to tell Keir Donovan he’s a dad, that I gave birth to his child.
A sense of relief slipped over Victoria like a comforting shroud, and with the decision made, she felt better equipped to face the weekend ahead.
She took a long, slow breath and smoothed her palms down the sleek lines of her gown as she checked her reflection in the mirror. She was comforted to know she was appropriately dressed for the company at Darkhaven, and this gave a much-needed boost to her flagging morale. Her gown, a birthday gift from her father and her stepmother, Daphne, was designed by An’Ville, a young up-and-coming Hamilton designer.
Victoria was very fond of her stepmother.
Strong and forceful, Daphne stood up to Andrew, Victoria’s father, and made him respect his daughter and her decisions over Connor.
Victoria couldn’t quite dismiss the niggling worry that Daphne, in the third trimester of her first pregnancy, may find Connor too much of a handful. The little boy was a real live wire and fearless.
‘It’s way overdue that you take some time for yourself,’ Daphne had scolded as she dismissed Victoria’s concern. ‘You’re a great mother, but you need time away from Connor. Go enjoy yourself with congenial adult company. Besides, Andrew needs practice for when the baby comes and Connor will be a great trial run.’
Victoria muffled a choked laugh with her fist.
Congenial?
What was congenial about coming face-to-face with her ex-lover and his fiancée?
The thought filled Victoria with dread. It wouldn’t be pleasant, nor were the primitive emotions that waged war in her breast. The discovery that the rich and powerful Keir Donovan was her Seth Donahue—and engaged to the Strathmore heiress, of all women—was one hell of a curve ball.
Jeez Louise, talk about a bad joke.
A tap on the door brought her spinning around, heart jerking in panic against her ribs.
‘Come in.’
The door opened and Keir entered. He closed the door, leaned against it and raked her from head to toe with those disturbing eyes.
‘Why are you here?’ How could her voice sound so normal when her heart jumped in her chest like a terrified jack rabbit?
‘I need to talk to you. Alone.’ He levered himself away from the door and walked across the carpet, as predatory as a jungle cat.
God, he was magnificent.
His dinner suit, white shirt and black bow tie gave him a sartorial elegance, and he was about as far removed as it was possible to get from the tanned beach boy in the frayed jean shorts that she remembered so well.
Pride kept her chin high and gaze steady.
***
Victoria,
here at Darkhaven? How could fate be so unkind? Keir’s heart thudded against his breastbone as he moved further into the room with slow steps, not at all sure he should even be here, or if it was wise to test his control in this way.
Her hair, a beautiful, soft sugar brown, was pulled back in an intricate knot, the style showing off the perfect oval of her face and the long slender column of her neck.
She was a siren in red.
Her gown clung to her like a second skin, flaring to show off very shapely calves and ankles. Pearl studs gleamed in her ears and a matching string reached past her navel. They were understated, but their lustre was enough for him to know they were as real as the woman wearing them.
Oh, she was nervous of him and his intentions. The pulse at the base of her throat was a frantic throb against her delicate skin. Her eyes, that amazing colour somewhere between hazel and gold, were open impossibly wide, wary and distrustful. Her lips, so soft and full, were slightly parted, but it was the tiny mole at the corner of her mouth that had him sucking in a shallow breath. He’d kissed that mole. He’d kissed that mouth and that mouth had caressed him in so many intimate …
God! No! He couldn’t think it, much less say it.
It should be easy to see her. It had been more than six years, but it seemed like only minutes had elapsed since he’d watched her aunt bundle her into a car and drive her away and out of his life.
She was older now, a woman. Not a girl.
The difference was in the tiny lines around her eyes and beside her mouth. Laughter lines—the girl he remembered was always smiling. She’d filled out in all the right places, too.
But she was here, a guest in his father’s house, and his stepbrother’s serious girlfriend if Logan was to be believed. To add to Keir’s discomfort, she was totally at ease at Darkhaven, something he’d never managed, although technically it was his home. He sure as hell wasn’t ready to see her again, and he could see that she didn’t look too thrilled to see him, either.
‘Where has the innocent little virgin gone?’
‘She grew up. Where did the beach boy go?’ No one else had a voice quite like hers, husky and honey smooth.
‘Into a beautiful woman, my brother’s woman.’ This was something that chafed beyond bearing.
