An Exception to His Rule

by Lindsay Armstrong

  It was and it not only found favour with Isabel but also her nephew.

  ‘Amazing.’ he said, ‘For someone who hasn’t got a sweet tooth to produce such amazing desserts is quite—amazing.’

  They all laughed.

  ‘So you’ll be in South Africa? For how long?’ Isabel queried of Damien. ‘Incidentally—’ she frowned ‘—why did you come back today?’

  ‘Something came up,’ Damien replied. ‘And I don’t know how long I’ll be in South Africa—a few weeks at least. As to why I’m going, there’s a lot of mining in Africa.’

  Isabel stood up and insisted on clearing the table and loading the dishwasher but she declined coffee and, with a yawn and her thanks for a perfect meal, she left them alone.

  ‘You know—’ Damien swirled the last of his Merlot in his glass ‘—I’ve been thinking. Why don’t you stay on when all my mother’s stuff is sorted? That’s going to happen much sooner than your brother walking again by the sound of it. How is he doing?’

  Harriet told him. ‘He’s got a new physio, a woman. I think he’s fallen in love with her. Not too seriously, I hope.’

  Damien grimaced. ‘She’s probably used to it and knows how to handle it. But if it’s contributing towards his progress, it might be worth a few heartaches for him. Or...’ he stretched his legs out ‘...who knows, it might become mutual. Anyway, to get back to this place, why don’t you stay on? Isabel really enjoys your company. And I’m sure Charlie does too, when he’s home.’

  ‘I won’t have anything to do, though,’ Harriet objected.

  Damien sat up. ‘I’ve been thinking about that. Periodically, Arthur sends our paintings away to be cleaned. It’s about that time now, so why don’t you do it? Here.’

  Harriet’s eyes widened and her mouth fell open.

  ‘Isn’t that what your father did?’

  Her jaw clicked as she closed her mouth. ‘Yes. Well, he restored paintings too.’ She stopped abruptly and bit her lip.

  ‘Then?’

  ‘I couldn’t.’ She clasped her hands on the table. ‘I’d feel like a charitable institution.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ His tone was biting. ‘It’s a good business proposition. Arthur agrees.’

  Harriet frowned. ‘When have you had time to consult Arthur?’

  ‘In this day and age of mobile phones it only took a few minutes. Did you think I had to rely on carrier pigeons or the bush telegraph?’

  Harriet compressed her lips and looked at him mutinously.

  ‘For crying out loud, just say yes, Harriet Livingstone.’ He shoved his hand through his hair wearily. ‘Thanks to you, I’ve been up since the crack of dawn, I’ve had to fly to Sydney and back again, not to mention loitering around Sydney Airport waiting for bloody flights.’

  ‘I didn’t ask you to do any of that!’ she protested.

  ‘Nevertheless, it was all due to you. Look, I won’t be here, if that’s what’s worrying you. No coming home early this time.’ He gazed at her ironically.

  ‘But it could take me...a month!’ She tried to visualise every painting in the house. ‘It’s very painstaking, careful work done properly.’

  He pushed his wine glass away. ‘I’ll go on a safari,’ he said flippantly. ‘There’s a lot of wildlife in Africa as well as mining.’

  Harriet got up and put her hands on her hips. ‘You’re impossible.’

  ‘That’s what my wife used to tell me,’ he drawled.

  Harriet flinched then shrugged. ‘She may have been right.’

  ‘No doubt.’ He watched her as she paced around the table. She’d changed into white pedal pushers and a loose apricot blouse with a distinctive pattern and a round neck. Her hair was tied back simply. ‘Are you going to do it?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t think straight!’

  ‘Why don’t you sit down and let me make you a cup of coffee? You could be more rational about things then.’

  ‘I’m not being irrational,’ Harriet said with extreme frustration. But she sat down and she didn’t raise any obstacles when he got up to make the coffee.

  And the wheels of her mind started to turn slowly rather than racing around uselessly.

  It would be a solution.

  It would provide not only the financial support she needed but, come to think of it, the moral support. She and Isabel had grown close. She also loved Heathcote. She was comfortable and secure here—and there were some marvellous paintings to work on when she finished her present job. Could she ask for more?

  Despite her financial affairs being in much better repair thanks to Damien Wyatt’s mother’s treasures, once she wasn’t earning, once she wasn’t living rent free, living off her capital so to speak, she had a fair idea of how fast it would shrink.

  But...

  She looked across at his tall figure as he rounded up the coffee accoutrements, and had to marvel suddenly at how things had changed. How she’d hated him for his arrogance; how she’d hated the way he could kiss her without so much as a by-your-leave and leave her deeply moved. How she’d been so determined not to allow his effect on her to take root—only to discover that it had anyway.

  But to discover at the same time why Damien Wyatt was so opposed to the concept of love ever after and the institution of marriage... A story that was painful even to think about.

  She shivered suddenly and forced her mind away. And she asked herself if the wisest course of action for her peace of mind, if nothing else, was to go away from Heathcote as soon as she’d finished the first job.

  But Brett! Brett—his name hammered in her mind. The more she could do for him, the more she could do to get him mobile again, the better and the sooner this nightmare would be over, for him as well as for her.

  She held her peace for another couple of minutes until she had a steaming cup of Hawaiian coffee in front of her.

  ‘I could do them,’ she said slowly. ‘The paintings. It would be one way to make sure Brett can stay on until his treatment is finished.’

  ‘Good.’ He said it briskly and in a way that gave her to understand it was a business deal between them and nothing more. And, before he could say any more, his phone rang.

  ‘Excuse me, I’ll take this downstairs; it’s South Africa. Thank you for dinner, by the way.’

  Harriet nodded and, moments later, she and Tottie were left alone.

  ‘All sorted, Tottie.’ Harriet dried sudden, ridiculous tears with her fingers. ‘Dealt with, packed, labelled and filed away, that’s me.’

  She hugged Tottie then sat with her head in her hands for a while before she got up and resolutely put her kitchen to bed.

  She was not to know that whilst Damien Wyatt might have sorted her out and locked her out of his life for the most part, his business life was about to become another matter. His PA, a man who’d worked closely with him for ten years, resigned out of the blue in order to train for his lifelong ambition—to climb Mount Everest.

  If this wasn’t trying enough, his South African trip was cancelled and the ramifications to his business empire as the lucrative business deal involved hung in the breeze were enough to make him extremely tense.

  CHAPTER SIX

  ‘TENSE, BLOODY-MINDED and all-round impossible,’ Charlie said to Harriet one evening. ‘That’s Damien at the moment. It’s like living under a thundercloud. I tell you what, I really feel for the poor sods he’s interviewing for his PA position. I wonder if they have any idea what he might drive them to? I mean to say, it’s got to be a pretty bizarre ambition, climbing Mount Everest.’

  They were sharing what would have otherwise been a lonesome meal—Isabel was out and so was Damien.

  Harriet had made hamburgers and chips, much to Charlie’s approval.

  Harriet had to laugh. ‘I feel really guilty,
though,’ she said as she passed the ketchup to Charlie.

  ‘You!’ He looked surprised.

  ‘I...’ She hesitated. ‘It was because of me that he didn’t go to Perth and on to South Africa. I can’t help wondering if that...if that—’ she gestured widely and shrugged ‘—caused all this.’

  Charlie frowned. ‘Why “because of you” didn’t he go?’

  ‘Well, he missed his flight to Perth because he came back to explain something.’ Harriet bit her lip and berated herself for ever mentioning the matter but Charlie took issue with this.

  ‘You can’t open up a can of worms like that then play dumb,’ he objected, ‘but let me guess. You two had some sort of issue between you after my birthday party?’

  Harriet sighed suddenly. ‘Charlie, we’ve had issues between us since the day I smashed his car and his collarbone. Not to mention the day I slapped his face and he kissed me back. But his issues are...very complicated. And he wasn’t supposed to be here while I finished the job,’ she added, somewhat annoyed.

  ‘Ah, well, so that explains—well, some of it! I didn’t think some business deal hanging in the balance—I mean he’s weathered a few of those before—was sufficient to cause this level of turmoil in my beloved brother.’

  Harriet put her hands on her waist. ‘That doesn’t help me a lot, Charlie.’

  ‘Or any of us! I think we’ll just have to batten down the hatches and prepare for the worst. At least you can stay out of his way.’

  * * *

  This proved to be incorrect.

  She was riding Sprite along Seven-mile Beach the next morning with Tottie at her stirrup. It was cool and crisp and the clarity of the air was amazing, dead flat calm water with hardly any surf, some pink clouds in a pale blue sky—and another horse riding towards her: Damien.

  Her first thought was to gallop away in the opposite direction, and she started to do so but Sprite was no match for his horse and he caught her up.

  By this time, some common sense had returned to Harriet and she slowed Sprite to a walk.

  ‘Morning, Harriet.’

  She glanced across at him as Sprite jostled his big brown horse and Tottie looked relieved. ‘Hi, Damien.’ Their breath steamed in the early morning cool.

  ‘Running away again?’

  ‘I guess that was my first intention,’ she confessed and found herself curiously unsettled. He looked so big in a khaki rain jacket and jeans with his dark head bare. Not at all cuddly, she reflected, not at all affected by the post dawn chill, whereas she was bundled up in a scarlet anorak, navy track pants and a scarlet beanie.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I think,’ she said carefully and straightened the reins through her fingers, ‘we’re all a little nervous around you at the moment.’

  He grimaced. ‘That bad?’

  She nodded.

  ‘Of course things haven’t exactly gone my way lately, business-wise,’ he observed as they turned their horses onto the path from the beach.

  ‘I’m sorry if I was—unwittingly—in any way the cause of that.’

  He looked across at her. ‘You weren’t. Although, of course, you are part of the overall problem. After you.’ He indicated that she should precede him through the archway that led to Heathcote and the stables.

  But she simply stared at him with her lips parted, her eyes incredulous, so Tottie took the initiative and Sprite followed.

  And it wasn’t until they got to the stables that they took up the thread of the conversation.

  They tied their steaming horses beside each other in the wash bay.

  ‘What overall problem?’ she asked at last as she hosed Sprite down.

  ‘The one I have with going into the lounge, for example.’

  Harriet turned her hose off and took a metal scraper off its hook. ‘Why should that be a problem?’ She scraped energetically down Sprite’s flank then ducked under her neck to do her other side.

  ‘Well, if I’d flown halfway around the world and was in another country I might have found it easier to think of other things than you at Charlie’s party. At the moment, every time I walk into the damn lounge it strikes me again.’

  Harriet dropped the scraper and it clattered onto the concrete at the same as Sprite moved uneasily and her metal shoes also clattered on the concrete.

  Damien stopped hosing his horse and came round to see if Harriet was all right.

  ‘Fine. Fine!’ She retrieved the scraper and handed it to him. ‘I think I’ve finished.’

  ‘Thanks.’ He hung up his hose and started to use the scraper on his horse.

  They worked in silence for a few minutes. Harriet rubbed Sprite down with a coarse towel then she inspected her feet and finally threw a rug over her. But all the time her mind was buzzing. How to deal with this? How to deal with the fact that she still felt incredibly guilty about how she’d fled at the end of Charlie’s party after...after...

  Even days later, her cheeks reddened at the thought of how abandoned—that was about the only way she could describe it—she’d felt and how she’d run like a scared rabbit.

  She clicked her tongue and backed Sprite out of the wash bay to lead her to her box, where there was a feed already made up for her thanks to Stan.

  Perhaps it was that feed waiting for her that made Sprite a bundle of impatience to get to her stall, but she suddenly put on a rare exhibition that would have done a buck jumper proud, an exhibition that scattered Tottie and even caused Damien’s horse, still tied in the wash bay, to try to rear and plunge.

  ‘Sprite!’ Harriet clung onto the lead with all her strength. ‘Settle down, girl! What’s got into you?’

  ‘Tucker,’ Damien said in her ear. ‘I’ll take her.’

  And in a masterful display of horsemanship as well as strength, he calmed the mare down and got her into her box.

  ‘Thank you! I was afraid I was going to lose her—another accident waiting to happen, to go down on my already tarnished record!’ Harriet said breathlessly but whimsically.

  Damien laughed as he came towards her out of the stable block and for an instant the world stood still for Harriet. He looked so alive and wickedly amused, so tall and dark, so sexy...

  And what he did didn’t help.

  He came right up to her, slid his hands around her waist under her anorak and hugged her. ‘I wouldn’t have held that against you,’ he said, holding her a little away.

  Without thinking much about it, she put her hands on his shoulders. ‘No?’ She looked at him with mock scepticism.

  ‘No. I would have laid the blame squarely at the horse’s feet. She’s always been a bit of a handful. Hence her name. Typical female,’ he added.

  ‘Damn!’ Harriet assumed a self-righteous expression.

  He raised an eyebrow.

  ‘I was full of approval for you but you went and spoilt it with your anti-feminist remark!’

  ‘My apologies, Miss Livingstone. Uh—how can I make amends? Let’s see, you did pretty damn good for a girl before I took over and—can I cook you breakfast?’

  Harriet blinked. ‘You cook?’

  He shrugged. ‘Some things. Bacon and eggs.’

  ‘Only bacon and eggs?’

  ‘More or less. Steak, I do steak as well.’

  ‘I have both,’ Harriet said slowly.

  He laughed again, kissed her fleetingly on the lips, and removed his hands from her waist just as Stan came round the corner of the stables.

  Fortunately Charlie turned up at the same time, wanting to know what all the hullabaloo was about and they repaired to the flat after Stan had offered to finish Damien’s horse and put it in its box. And they had a jolly breakfast of steak, bacon and eggs.

  Charlie even said, ‘Notice how the sun’s come out!’
<
br />   Damien frowned. ‘It’s been up and out for a couple of hours.’

  ‘I was speaking relatively,’ Charlie said with dignity.

  Damien narrowed his eyes as he studied his brother. ‘I...think I get your drift,’ he said slowly. ‘My apologies.’

  ‘That’s all right. We’ll forgive you, won’t we, Harriet?’

  She was clearing the table and about to pour the coffee but she couldn’t help herself. She looked up and straight at Damien.

  ‘Yes...’ she said, but it sounded uncertain even to her own ears, nor could she mistake the ironic glint that came to his dark eyes as their gazes clashed.

  So, she thought uneasily, he might laugh with me as he did this morning but I’m a long way from forgiven.

  * * *

  And although this lifting of the thundercloud, so to speak, over Heathcote, was much appreciated by Charlie and no doubt everyone else on the property, it brought Harriet mental anguish and confusion.

  No longer was she able to keep Damien Wyatt on the back roads of her mind. Not that she’d been able to do that for a while but it seemed to have grown ten times worse day by day.

  She was incredibly aware of him whenever he came within her orbit. He literally made her tremble inwardly and all her fine hairs rise. He made her tongue-tied now, never capable of thinking of anything to say.

  He made the completion of the work on his mother’s treasures and the paintings drag because she spent a lot of time day-dreaming.

  Would she ever finish this job? she asked herself desperately once.

  * * *

  Then the kitchen was finished and Isabel organised a party to celebrate the fact.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen a renovation, especially not after a fire, be so swiftly and painlessly achieved,’ Harriet murmured to Isabel as she was being given a tour of all the spectacular slimline stainless steel equipment and granite counters that now graced Heathcote’s new bottle-green, white and black kitchen.

  ‘Ever seen a renovation after a fire?’ Isabel asked perkily.

  ‘Well, no, but you know what I mean. By the way, you sounded just like your nephew—your older nephew,’ she added.