by Robyn Donald
But what had seemed satisfying and complete when she told it was now a chain of words with no interest, no resonance, words that sat flatly on the page and produced no vivid images.
Jacinta was frowning at the screen when Paul McAlpine’s voice jerked her head upright. He was outside, speaking to someone in the garden, and although she couldn’t discern his words she could hear that he was amused.
And she realised what was wrong with her manuscript. When she’d told the stones to her mother the tone of her voice had provided colour and shading, drama and humour, despair and desperation. She’d have to use words to do the job.
‘Thank you, Paul,’ she said softly.
So absorbed did she become that when she next looked at her watch it was ten minutes to seven. Hastily she saved, backed up and shut the machine down, then gathered her sponge bag, towel and orange cotton wrap and went down the hall to the bathroom.
After another quick shower she dried herself, pulled her wrap on and hurried back to her room. She was almost at her door when hairs prickled along the back of her neck. Instinctively she flashed a swift glance over her shoulder.
Paul was standing in the door of his bedroom. Jacinta’s pulse suddenly hammered in her throat as she registered the impact of his scrutiny right through to the marrow of her bones. He didn’t say anything, but she could see dark colour along his cheekbones that both excited and astonished her.
‘I won’t be long,’ she croaked, opening the door and sliding through it as fast as she could
All right, she commanded her thudding, skipping heart, stop that right this minute! You’re just going through delayed adolescence, that’s all You’ll get over it.
And probably any man would be interested in a woman—however thin—who was walking about with nothing on underneath her worn cotton dressing gown. That was the way this sex thing worked; it certainly didn’t mean that he wanted Jacinta Lyttelton, just that his hormones had been activated.
The wrap unpeeled from her damp body, she got into her bra and pants, then looked through her clothes.
Of course she didn’t have anything to wear for a pre-dinner drink with a high-powered international lawyer who lived on a dream farm beside the sea. Something floaty and silken would have done, or casually chic resort wear, but she owned nothing like that.
Her hand hovered over a neat, fitting blouse of vivid orange silk and her teeth sank into her bottom lip. It was her only impulse buy of the past ten years, and she’d not even have considered it if her mother hadn’t been with her in that small, spice-scented shop in Fiji, urging her to forget for once their cramped budget.
She’d never worn it, although the hot, bright colour magically transformed her hair and skin and the tight, short-sleeved underblouse and flowing skirt lent her body a grace she didn’t really possess, especially when she draped the floating silk veil over the ensemble. The sari was fancy dress, calling far too much attention to its wearer.
Still, she thought, her eyes feasting hungrily on the intense hues, when she could afford clothes again, she’d choose those colours and to hell with basic black!
In the end it came down to a couple of skirts, both of which she’d made several years ago. Shrugging, she got into one, a plain rusty cotton that came to just below her knees. Over the top she wore a tee-shirt the exact green of her eyes, a lucky second-hand bargain from an op shop.
As though it mattered! Paul certainly wouldn’t care what she wore.
Dragging her hair from its clip, she brushed it back from her face and folded it into a low knot at the nape of her neck. It was too thick and curly to stay there, but it would look neat enough for an hour or so.
At ten past seven she finally made her way down to the conservatory, despising herself for having to stiffen her knees before she went in.
When he saw her Paul stood up with an automatic courtesy. Although he was only a couple of inches above six feet, no more than four inches taller than she was, he seemed to tower over her as he said pleasantly, ‘Good evening. What would you like to drink?’
No sign at all of any extra colour in his face, she told herself. See, it meant nothing.
‘Soda water, thanks,’ she said, sheer force of character preventing her from running the tip of her tongue over her lips. Parched as though she’d been lost in sand dunes for a week, she swallowed to ease her arid throat.
He wore a short-sleeved shirt which had almost certainly been made for him, and casual trousers that hugged his hips and revealed the musculature of his thighs. He looked like something from a smart men’s magazine, except that he was far more—more solid, she thought, groping for the right word. Formidable, that was it. When you looked at Paul McAlpine you knew he was a man to be reckoned with.
He didn’t press her to try something alcoholic, for which she was devoutly thankful because she felt drunk enough already. How unfair that she’d plunged into a full-scale crush! At sixteen such situations were accepted, treated with amused sympathy, even taken for granted; blushes and fluttering hearts and starry eyes were almost de rigueur while you were growing up.
At twenty-nine you ran the risk of making a total and complete fool of yourself.
She accepted the long, cold glass of soda water with its neat little circle of lime on top, green-skinned and comforting. Bubbles of moisture pearled down the sides as she lifted it gratefully to her lips and drank.
And hiccupped.
Paul gave a sudden grin. ‘I always do that,’ he said ‘It makes me feel about eight again.’
That smile should be banned.
Returning it as best she could, Jacinta said, ‘I should stick to unfizzy drinks.’
‘It would be a pity to miss out on champagne,’ he said, pouring himself a weak whisky and soda.
‘I’ve never tasted it,’ she confessed. The minute the words left her mouth she wanted to recall them. They made her sound so unsophisticated, so deprived, and she was neither.
He didn’t look surprised. That irritated her too. Perhaps he thought she lurked in the background of life like a Victorian poor relation, too spineless to do anything but be grateful for crumbs.
Meeting the enigmatic eyes with a slightly lifted chin, she squelched the urge to explain.
‘Don’t look so defensive,’ he advised odiously. ‘Plenty of people don’t drink.’
Oh, he knew how to get under her skin. She showed her teeth and said, ‘I’m not a teetotaller—I like cider and white wine. It just so happens that I’ve never tried champagne.’
‘Not even on your twenty-first birthday?’
‘Not even then,’ she said She’d done her shift in a takeaway shop that night, and her mother had cooked a special supper when at last she’d come home.
‘In that case,’ Paul said calmly, ‘we should have some tonight. Sit down while I get a bottle.’
‘No—I don’t want—’ Jacinta stared angrily after him as he strode out of the room; her irritation was very real, but even so her eyes lingered on his wide shoulders.
How smoothly he walked, silently, with a free, lithe grace that melted her bones.
God, she was beginning to be obsessed by him.
After draining half the glass of soda water without a pause or a hiccup, she went to stand at the window.
Almost immediately the colours and contrasts, the quiet hush of the sea and the darkening blue of the sky combined to drag her mind away from the crossfire of recriminations, so that by the time Paul came back she’d regained enough control to turn and say with a composed smile, ‘This is very kind of you.’
‘It runs in the family,’ he said, a thread of irony lacing the comment as he put the bottle down on the drinks tray.
He eased the cork off, startling her into exclaiming, ‘I thought it was supposed to pop!’
‘Not if it’s done correctly and hasn’t been shaken,’ he said, pouring the honey-gold liquid into two long flutes. Tiny bubbles ran up the glass to burst with subdued enthusiasm on the surface
After a pause so slight she almost didn’t recognise it, he picked up the glass and proffered it. She took it carefully, concentrating on the glass so that she wasn’t looking into his face when their fingers touched and a tingle of electricity sizzled from that brief meeting of skin to some guarded, hitherto inviolate part of her.
Sizzles and tingles are all signs of a crush, she told herself cynically. Perhaps you should enjoy it.
‘Congratulations on turning twenty-one,’ Paul said, his voice revealing nothing.
‘Thank you.’ Lifting her gaze, she gave him a set, swift smile before lowering her lashes and cautiously tasting the delicious, frivolous contents of her glass.
It made her hiccup too.
‘Oh, dear,’ she said, the cool, wonderful taste prickling through her mouth. ‘I suppose that’s an insult to it’
‘Not if we both do it,’ he said, sounding a thousand miles away.
She risked another rapid glance. He was a thousand miles away; the moment of communion had passed, and although he was smiling, and his voice was still level and amused, the blue eyes were guarded and remote.
Hurt—so stupid!—she took another sip of champagne and said, ‘It’s definitely worth waiting for. Thank you.’
With experienced skill he changed the subject, beginning with polite pleasantries that led within a few minutes to a vigorous discussion—so vigorous it almost became an argument—about a political issue. Jacinta enjoyed herself enormously, feeling her mind stretch under his probing, appreciating the keen satisfaction of measuring herself against such intelligence.
Formidable described him exactly.
And very composed; he argued with a singular lack of emotion that had her at a disadvantage several times. Some time later, setting out to refute a statement he’d made, she realised that her cheeks were hot and her voice was rising
‘Hey,’ she said, breaking off her impassioned discourse to stare at her now empty glass, ‘I’m talking too much. I think I’m drunk!’
‘Hardly,’ he drawled.
Jacinta put the glass down and pressed the backs of her fingers against her cheeks, hiding the flush. ‘If I’m not, I’m getting there,’ she said.
He laughed quietly. ‘Dinner will fix that. Come on, Fran’s just nodded through the door.’
Desperate not to stumble, she got gingerly to her feet, relieved to find that although her head swam a little she didn’t sprawl across the floor or lurch into the furniture. Perhaps all it took to control her habitual clumsiness was champagne? She couldn’t control a giggle at such an exquisitely amusing idea.
‘That’s a pretty laugh,’ Paul said, holding the door open for her.
Still smiling, she explained, regretting it the instant the words left her mouth, especially when he looked her over thoughtfully. Alcohol and awareness were a powerful combination, releasing too many inhibitions.
‘You’re not clumsy,’ he said as they went through another door. ‘You move freely and easily.’
Well, what else could he say?
‘You wait until I trip,’ she said, hiding her stunned pleasure at the compliment with a tone of dark promise. ‘I do it at the worst times.’
‘In that case it sounds like self-consciousness, not clumsiness. And the only cure for that is developing some inner esteem.’
‘A comment like that,’ she parried, startled by his perceptiveness, ‘sounds very New-Agey and unlawyerish to me.’
He laughed, but responded with energy, setting the subject for their conversation over dinner. They ate in a room set up as a living and dining area; it opened out onto a wide terrace overlooking the sea and the garden, so that the sound of the waves formed a gentle background.
And Paul was right; after the first course her head cleared completely, but she refused a second glass of champagne, asking anxiously, ‘It won’t go to waste, will it?’
And could have kicked herself. After all, half a bottle of champagne probably didn’t represent any great loss to him.
‘No,’ he said. ‘I have a special stopper that saves the wine from the air and keeps the bubbles in.’
She nodded, and perhaps some of the bubbles were still bursting softly in her bloodstream because she said, ‘My mother was very keen on the “waste not, want not” bit.’
‘So was mine,’ he said. ‘I think their generation was encouraged to be thrifty.’
‘Unlike ours?’
His brow lifted. ‘I don’t make generalisations,’ he said, teasing her about her inclination to do just that.
Jacinta grinned back. ‘I don’t make many.’
‘Even one is too many.’
He was sitting back in his chair, looking down at the flowers in the middle of the table—satiny golden roses in a translucent white bowl. A long, tanned hand lay loosely on the table in front of him.
He looked, Jacinta thought, profoundly distant, as though the shutters had come down. There was no longer any warmth in his smile; it was merely a movement of his hard mouth, and his eyes were opaque, unreadable. He’d gone away and left her, and she felt cold and isolated and bereft.
‘But that,’ he said levelly, ‘is what the lawyer in me says.’
And again, without seeming to, he changed the subject, leaving Jacinta feeling empty and unsatisfied, as though she’d been promised something and then arbitrarily denied it.
Later that night, wondering whether a walk along the beach would cure her restlessness, she stood in the dense shade of the pohutukawa trees and listened to the silence. It should have soothed her, sent her serenely to bed, but the steady drumbeat of her heart, the measured, inexorable pulse of excitement through her body, was too insistent to be denied. She stood on the edge of something perilous, something that might colour her life in the hues of summer—or fling her into wintry despair.
The moon, a slender curl in the western sky, silvered the crests of the small waves crisping onto the shore. Its magical light illuminated something else too: Paul McAlpine’s head as he walked along the sand.
Jacinta’ foolish heart jumped. He was moving slowly, hands in pockets, head slightly bent, and for the few seconds she watched him she thought she saw a vulnerability that wasn’t there any other time.
Then he looked up and said in that textured, beautiful voice, ‘I didn’t realise you were there. Come down and join me.’
Embarrassed, as though she’d been deliberately spying on him, she jumped clumsily onto the sand, landing in its soft depths with an awkwardness that dumped her onto her backside.
Paul held out his hand, asking curtly, ‘Are you all right?’
Oh, why had she told him that she tripped at the most inappropriate times? Would that astute mind pick up on her helpless attraction?
Oddly angry, she ignored his offer of support and scrambled to her feet. ‘Yes, fine, thanks,’ she said, dusting her hands free of sand. ‘I forgot that the sand is always deep and dry at the top of the beach. At least it’s easy to land on. And I did warn you that I tend to trip over my feet a lot. You might think it’s lack of self-esteem but I’ve always done it, so it’s more likely to be a combination of long legs and a bad sense of balance.’
‘You could be right,’ he said negligently. ‘Can’t you sleep?’
After two hours of work on the manuscript she was wired, too strung up to even think of going to bed. At least, that was her excuse—she refused to even consider that talking to Paul over the dinner table had affected her so powerfully.
Hoping she didn’t sound evasive, she murmured, ‘It’s such a gorgeous night.’
His smile was a swift, white flash in the darkness. ‘Yes. This place seems to specialise in glamorous nights. You’ll have to enjoy it without me tomorrow as I’m staying in town.’
‘Auckland must be a jolt to the system after Waitapu,’ she said prosaically, suppressing a glimmer of nameless emotion.
His shoulders moved in a slight shrug. ‘Oh, it has its pleasures.’
The woman in Ponsonby, she tho
ught swiftly, painfully.
He continued, ‘I used to live there until I bought Waitapu. While I’m away I’d like you to check with Fran if you decide to further your acquaintance with the property, and of course always tell her where you’re going and when you expect to be back.’
Although everything inside her rebelled at the calm suggestion, she nodded. He was right; the last thing his nice farm manager would want was some idiot wandering around getting herself into trouble.
‘I’ll do that,’ she said. ‘I don’t plan to stray too far from the homestead, but I’m used to living on a farm so I know the protocol.’
‘Were you brought up on one?’
‘No, we lived in a little one-horse town,’ she said. ‘We moved to Auckland when I was eighteen so I could go to university. Then my mother was confined to her wheelchair and she longed for the country, so we moved back to a farm cottage on the outskirts of another small town.’
‘In Northland?’
‘No. A village on the Hauraki Plains.’
It had been a tiny cottage, with two small bedrooms and a big room that was living room, dining room and kitchen. The fence huddled near the house, enclosing a rank, overgrown lawn that the farmer’s wife had mown the day they moved in. But it was all on one level, so that as her mother’s disease progressed she could get out in her wheelchair, and while she was able she and Jacinta had turned the lawn into a cottage garden, growing their own vegetables and producing flowers from seeds and cuttings and divisions given to them.
Jacinta’s eyes blurred as she wondered what had happened to that garden, her mother’s last and most loved interest.
‘And are you like your mother? Do you prefer living in the country?’ Paul asked with idle interest.
Unconsciously she shook her head. ‘I don’t know—yes, I suppose I do. But I enjoy Auckland.’
‘What, particularly?’
‘I’ve loved university, and I like the cultural things—the art galleries especially. And although it’s not politically correct, I like Auckland’s brashness, that feeling that anything’s possible, that the world is a playground and we should all be enjoying it.’
