Secret Seduction
Page 16
‘You were so distracted you were packing all sorts of silly stuff and then, when you got a bundle of junk out of the safe with your passport, you just left it wide open. I saw the money there and thought serves the bastard right! So I shovelled the lot into one of your bags before I left. You were supposed to meet me later at the airport, but you never showed up and I just thought you’d calmed down and changed your mind…until Ryan rang my motel in Sydney wanting to know if I’d heard from you.’
Ryan was right. With no emotional awareness of what Karl was telling her, Nina felt she was hearing the plot of a soap opera—a particularly bad soap opera. She did, however, have a vivid memory of getting out of a taxi stopped at a red traffic light on downtown Auckland’s waterfront road and being pursued by the angry driver for the fare as she walked towards the big sign for harbour ferries to Waiheke and Shearwater Islands.
As soon as she’d seen it, she’d known the sign was an omen. Sydney had suddenly seemed too far away. Everything had seemed remote except the certain knowledge that, if she could only get to Shearwater, see Puriri Bay again, then whatever was wrong with her life would be put right again.
‘But the money…Why didn’t you at least make sure it got back to him instead of letting him believe—’
‘How could I, without implicating myself? And anyway, I couldn’t because it wasn’t all there,’ he admitted sullenly, his words slightly muffled by the rag. ‘Didn’t you ever wonder where I got the backing to buy into this surf-wear thing?’ He read the expression on her face and shrugged.
‘Yeah, well, I suppose you would have thought that, but I’m out of the weed business for good. No, I nosed that money out the first time I came over here. I used to pick it up in instalments, like from my own private bank, whenever I came over to see you. I’m sorry, Nina. God! I know it seems I was just using this whole situation for my own ends, but there was a lot more to it than that. I really figured I owed it to you not to let you be found until you showed signs you wanted to be found.
‘And I’ve totally cleaned up my act now. I’m not even drinking booze and I haven’t touched any of that money for months. I’ve got a chance to make something of my life and I don’t want to stuff it up by having this hanging over me. At least Flint knows now that it was me. And I’ve told him I can pay it back to him in instalments—I’m really working hard and sales are booming. Don’t look like that. I’ll pay him back—all of it—I promise.’
Nina had heard Karl’s promises before. Maybe this time he was sincere, she thought wearily.
‘You keep on saying you wanted to see me happy again. But I don’t understand. I know I loved him, Karl—I still do. So why was I so unhappy? Why couldn’t I cope with our life together? What was it that I was running away from?’
Karl tried to check if he was still bleeding and winced as the rag stuck to his lip. ‘I can’t tell you that,’ he grunted.
‘Can’t—or won’t?’ she asked grimly.
He was stiff with his unaccustomed restraint. ‘I’m trying to do the right thing here, okay?’ He had never been physically demonstrative, but now he gave her a quick hug, as if he was afraid a longer one would be rejected. ‘He said he didn’t want me to tell you…but I’m not going to tell you anyway.’ His attempted humour at his own expense fell totally flat.
‘Blame me all you like, but don’t take it out on him. He’s never let you down the way I have,’ Karl said soberly. ‘He told me I’d done enough damage and he’s right, so I’m taking myself out of the frame—going right back on the next ferry.’ He gave her a little push in the direction of the house. ‘You wanted to go after him, so go. He’s a proud man. He won’t wait forever….’
CHAPTER NINE
‘YOU can’t mean to leave now!’
Nina watched in dismay as Ryan meticulously folded his few items of clothing and put them into his leather bag on top of the bundles of money that she had given him the previous day.
‘I have a business to run,’ he said, collecting his toiletries from the dresser. ‘I’ve been away too long.’
She was bewildered by the excuse. Even though she had heard him discussing business on his cell phone several times over the past few days, he had never given any sign that he was impatient to return. One of the reasons that his string of individualistic galleries had been so highly successful was his ability to delegate: he hired the brightest talents in the business and trusted them to do their jobs.
‘But you’re supposed to still be on holiday—’
‘Some holiday,’ he said wryly, touching the contusion just above his eye that Nina spent ten minutes icing after she had rushed back to the house. Truth to tell, she had done it more for the chance to touch him and force him to listen to her than for reasons of first aid.
At least tending his facial bruises had given her a chance to explain face to face why she had appeared to be defending Karl. Ryan had seemed to believe her, his black mood slowly dissipating under her wifely fussing. But although she had told him what Karl had prompted her to remember about the day she had left him, he had resisted any in-depth conversation about the state of their marriage, and Nina had been too aware of the frightening fragility of their relationship to force the issue with an argument.
She had naively consoled herself with thought that they would have all the time in the world to discuss their future and their past…especially when he had later taken her to bed and made love to her with a tender savagery that made her heart soar with love.
‘This island is proving rather hazardous to my health,’ he continued ruefully. ‘Perhaps it’s your magical place trying to protect you from unwelcome intruders.’
‘I’m sorry—’ she began.
‘I’m not,’ he cut her off bluntly. ‘This time it was purely my own fault. I hit him first. And I enjoyed it…especially since your interference meant I didn’t get to land many more righteous punches.’
‘It’s kind of you to allow him time to pay the money.’
‘Kindness has nothing to do with it. I’m giving him a loan on his investment—the longer he takes to pay, the more interest he owes me, so I can’t lose.’ He zipped up the bag and looked around the empty room. ‘I have one or two more things to do for Ray and then I’ll take the afternoon ferry.’
The same one on which he had arrived. In a week, life had gone full circle. But he was a man of his word, she told herself…whether it was a promise to an old man or a vow to his wife.
‘Ray’ll be sorry that you’re going,’ she said desperately. ‘You know how much he enjoys your company.’ Please don’t go.
‘Ray understands how it is,’ he returned, shrugging, then carried the bag through to the living room and placed it by the couch.
But I don’t! Nina wailed in her heart. How could he make love to her the way he had last night and then calmly walk out today as if it had just been a casual one-night stand?
‘But we’ve barely had a chance to talk,’ she said as he laid his heavy coat over the back of a chair. ‘When are you coming back?’
‘I’m not.’ The blow was all the more vicious for being totally unexpected. ‘I’ve said all I have to say over the past week. It’s your move now. As Karl so succinctly put it before I hit him, I can’t force you to be someone you don’t want to be. I can’t make the decisions for both of us. You’re the one to decide what your next step will be. I’m going to give you the space to do that. And meantime, I have a home, a life, waiting for me.’
‘But…I’m your wife,’ she reminded him in despair, spreading her hands in helpless appeal for his understanding.
He captured her left hand and turned it over, studying the simple gold band that was back on her finger, rubbing it slowly with his thumb. ‘This isn’t magical, you know. A ring doesn’t make you a wife, Nina.’
‘I know that.’ Vows and a loving heart did. She pressed her other hand to her chest. ‘But I remember…I feel that I’m your wife. That was what you wanted, wasn’t it? What you came h
ere for?’
His fingers tightened on hers, colour streaking along his lean cheekbones, his blue eyes flaring with hope. ‘Are you saying you’re ready to leave Puriri Bay with me…to come back home?’
Leave? Now? She hesitated. Too much had happened in too short a time. Unreasoning fear reared its ugly head. ‘I—I still have a few paintings to do for George, but if you stayed, we could talk…’ She saw the wall instantly go up behind his eyes and said wretchedly, ‘You can’t just leave like this, with nothing resolved—’
She broke off as his mouth twisted sardonically.
‘Why not? You did. At least you’re getting the courtesy of a goodbye.’
She gasped in pain at the slashing thrust.
‘I’m sorry!’ He was as swift to apologise as he had been to attack. It was his generosity of spirit that had helped turn the violent physical attraction that she had initially fought against feeling for him into something much richer, sweeter and far more enduring.
‘I’m sorry,’ Ryan said again, lifting her slender hand to his mouth, his lips warm as they pressed over her ring. ‘That was below the belt. Forgive me. It was frustration talking. I know that it was your amnesia that stopped your getting in touch with me. I accept that all the doubts and suspicions I had about you over the past nine months were wrong, that you wouldn’t knowingly have wanted to hurt me as you did.’
She cupped his cheek with her other hand. ‘And you were hurt, weren’t you?’ she ventured, probing the wound that still festered between them.
The desolation in his eyes tore at her bruised heart, but there was strength and determination in his tone. ‘I didn’t marry you because I had to, Nina, but because I wanted to. We were lovers in every sense of the word, both before and after the wedding. You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted as my wife.’
Was he using the past tense? Nina looked desperately into his eyes. ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ she whispered. ‘You crash back into my life and then just when I’m coming to terms with it, you go away again. Is it to pay me back for what I did?’
‘No…God, no.’ He led her to the couch and sat her down, playing gravely with her fingers as he said, ‘But, Nina, at the time I married you, you were very vulnerable. It wasn’t that long since your grandmother had died. You thought you’d been fully prepared for her death because you had anticipated it for so long, but afterwards it hit you a lot harder than you expected. I’m seven years older than you and decades more experienced. I decided I wanted you and deliberately plotted to sweep you off your feet.’
She nodded, her eyes misty, remembering being whisked into a world of wonder, showered by his passionate attentions. A world where she was wined, dined, flattered and seduced by his dynamic personality and fiery devotion to her sexual pleasure. Her initial insecurity—her doubts that she was just a sexual challenge to him or that she was allowing herself to be overwhelmed by his wealth—was swiftly overridden by the strength of her feelings.
‘I arrogantly assumed that I alone had the power to make you completely happy. And then, when I came here, I continued to arrogantly assume that I knew you better than you knew yourself.’ His glance encompassed the cosy room. ‘But having seen your work…the way you’re painting…I can see that you’ve fulfilled yourself here in a way that you never managed to do during our time together, even with all the material advantages I could provide. I have to admire and respect what you’ve done. Maybe you’re right after all, about this being where you really belong. Maybe this is the price I have to pay for my foolish arrogance—freeing you to decide my happiness.’
She felt his hope like a brand on her heart. ‘You don’t have to do it this way.’
His eyes were implacably steady as he stood up, drawing her to her feet. ‘I do, and one day I hope you’ll understand why.’ He felt in his pocket. ‘Here, I want you to have this.’ Something smooth and heavy slipped into her palm. His silver cigarette lighter.
‘A souvenir of your flying visit?’ She splashed him with the acid of her disappointment.
His bruised face welcomed the evidence of her fighting spirit. ‘No, hopefully something to remind you of what you’re missing.’
As if she would need any reminding! She looked down. Each moment she spent with him, some blurred detail from those two years slipped into sharper focus.
‘I gave this to you,’ she said, recalling, her voice softening as she re-read the engraving. No wonder the weight of it had felt familiar the night he had washed up in the storm. ‘You admired it at a jewellery exhibition, but you said it was ridiculous to own a cigarette lighter when you’d given up smoking in your teens. But I could see that you loved it, so I bought it for your birthday.’ The money hadn’t been what attracted her to him, but there were certain undeniable advantages to being the wife of a rich man!
‘Along with an exquisite candelabra so I’d have plenty of cause to use it with a socially acceptable flourish,’ he finished with a deep chuckle.
Her fingers uncurled reluctantly. ‘I can’t take this.’
‘The giver was always more important to me than the gift. They’re a matched set as far as I’m concerned,’ he said softly, ‘that I hope will soon be restored to me intact. You never did explain to me what the words you had engraved meant,’ he added. ‘I guessed they were a quote of some kind, but I could never track down the reference—it’s certainly not from Shakespeare.’
She had teased and tantalised him with her secret knowledge, knowing that he delighted in the challenge, knowing that one day, when the time was ripe, she would tell him what she had then been too insecure to put into words, half-appalled by the intensity of her own feelings.
Now was her chance. Nina threw back her head proudly and looked at him with clear green eyes. ‘It’s Ralph Waldo Emerson. “Love is the bright foreigner, the foreign self.” It means that you’re my love—the foreign part of myself. An indivisible part.’
Her bold gamble paid off, but only briefly. His face tautened with a triumphant, predatory hunger. His hands reached for her, then just before contact, clenched into furious fists of self-denial that he forced back down to his sides.
‘Ah, the same man who said that “Art is a jealous mistress”,’ he quoted shakily, his voice growing progressively steadier with each word as he mastered his emotions. ‘No wonder you thought he was an appropriate source of wisdom.’
That’s all he had to say! She makes a passionate declaration of love and he flips a breezy quote back at her?
‘Ryan—’
‘Don’t, Nina,’ he cautioned her roughly. ‘This isn’t only a matter of whether we love each other. Sometimes love just isn’t enough.’ He turned aside from her frown. ‘Talking of art—I do want something from you in exchange for borrowing my lighter.’
Borrowing? She liked the confident use of that word. ‘Oh?’ Her spirits lifted.
‘Some of your paintings,’ he said, smoothly assuming the protective cloak of his professional demeanour. ‘I meant what I said about admiring them. I’d like to take a few back for the gallery and see how they go. We’ll sell them on commission, of course. I’ll get my secretary to send you our standard contract, and if you have anything you want to renegotiate, you can call me. Oh, and tell George to get in touch with me if he’s serious about doing that launch.’
For ‘contract’ she heard ‘contact’, and everything else faded out as her panicked sense of urgency relaxed. Ryan wasn’t cutting himself out from her life; he wasn’t going back to the mainland in order to forget everything that had happened in the past week. He was making sure she knew that their lives would remain entwined even if only professionally….
They sorted out four paintings, which Nina carefully wrapped with paper and string, then he took his bag over with him to Ray’s. ‘He said Chas Peterson will run me over to the ferry in his car. No sense in us enduring a long public goodbye.’
Nina could see wonderful sense! ‘I thought I’d come down to the wharf with you.’
She granted him his fears, but on the eve of his departure he couldn’t stop her flinging herself into his arms for a desperate, yearning kiss as Ray and Chas discreetly turned their attention to loading the boot of the car.
‘Ryan…?’ She slid an uneasy mental tendril out to the wall, testing it for flaws. ‘If I do come back…it’s something truly awful, isn’t it?’ she whispered, touching his face. ‘Something happened that’s too horrible for you to talk about.’
His eyes had that bleak, haunted look that made her unravel inside, and he stole the remains of her breath in a fierce hug that squeezed tears from her eyes.
She opened her mouth to tell him that she had changed her mind, that she would come, but she couldn’t force the words out past the paralysing fear, and the helpless tears seeped into the corners of her mouth.
‘For better or for worse, Nina. Sometimes they’re impossibly mixed up, for you don’t know which is which. But whenever you’re ready for the worst, you know where to find me,’ he said raggedly. He bent to pick up Zorro and rub his jaw against the animal’s furry ears. ‘And take care of this little guy for me.’
He handed the dog to Nina as if he knew she needed something warm and alive to fill her empty arms. Her eyes widened as she accepted the gentle transfer of weight, felt the sensation of a small heart beating rapidly against hers.
When Ryan turned his back to shake hands with Ray, Zorro seemed to sense that something was dreadfully wrong and began to whine and squirm in her arms, and once the car had disappeared from sight, he proved inconsolable, not even showing any interest in a thrown stick.