by KS Augustin
There was nothing for her here. Not in the long term, in any case. He had not chosen her to be his companion, met her at a cocktail party, or traded words at a meeting together. They had been flung together through circumstance, with no rich families, or influential acquaintances in common. Much more than the mere geographic distance of half a world separated them. In fact, if it wasn’t for Pete’s tragic accident, she might not even be here at all, so fickle a player was fate.
“I have to get ready,” she said, looking at the wall just to one side of him. “I…I’ll see you for breakfast.”
To his credit, he didn’t try to stop her as she picked up her clothes and walked past him. But a part of her wished desperately that he would.
Chapter Eight
Helen didn’t have much time to think on anything else for the rest of the day. She was on high alert from the moment they stepped out of the comfort of Heritage House. This time she didn’t make the same mistake, she confidently installed herself in the front seat next to the driver of their limousine taxi, leaving Yves and Guy safely cushioned in the back. Her eyes scanned the surrounding roads as they drove, and she was glad she knew Brisbane so well. There wasn’t a single deviation that the driver, a pleasant older man called Mick, could take without tipping her off that something was amiss. But the car made it to New Farm smoothly, and slipped noiselessly into the underground car-park of Tech-88. Unless they were perched behind the gauzy white curtains of surrounding houses, Helen didn’t think anybody had watched for them.
She was dressed in dark pants and a lightweight matching jacket with a rust-coloured shirt underneath. Nothing about her outfit was too flashy or bright. Helen always thought of it as her ‘waiter outfit’, but it was comfortable, unobtrusive and allowed free movement. She didn’t have the dark glasses or the Secret Service earphone, but her gaze was cool and competent as she swept the car-park, before beckoning the two men out of the back seat with a quick, economical wave of her hand.
Yves was no longer the man she wanted to rip the clothes off and ravage—Helen had locked up that part of herself tight while she had gotten ready that morning—but a very vulnerable, walking, talking target with bull’s-eyes painted strategically on various parts of his body. And it was her job to make sure that he got on that plane back to France in the same condition as he had gotten here. For the first time, handling an easy security job that had suddenly turned deadly serious, she appreciated what Ryan went through every time one of his clients personally requested his services. She didn’t envy him his job.
They were met upstairs by the smiling receptionist and shown into a large conference room that overlooked the bucolic backyard of the abutting house. Clothes fluttered on the drying lines, and clumps of flowers towered in cheerful bunches of yellow, pink and red. Helen looked beyond all of that, trying to spot someone who shouldn’t be where they were, but the house and yard looked empty. She knew the office windows she gazed out of were tinted, but drew the vertical blinds across the expanse, angling them so they obscured vision but still let in some light, and ignored Yves’ look of impressed amusement.
“I can wait outside, if you’d prefer,” she remarked to both men.
“Non.” That was Yves. “Stay here. I feel safer when you’re around.”
Although her face didn’t show it, something deep inside warmed to those words, and she took a chair in the corner of the room, behind the row of chairs that surrounded the conference table.
Two other men entered the room, one of them with a slim laptop and the other with folders of papers. Helen remained unobtrusive, happy to be introduced then forgotten as the meeting began.
The man with the papers was in his mid-fifties. He was of medium height and a portly build, but sprightly with a direct voice that reminded her a lot of Ryan. He was the owner and founder of the company, and his name was Scott Nelson. The thick sheaves of paper he held, he explained, were the company’s last three annual reports, as well as various white papers, case studies and several marketing plans that the company had commissioned. His blue eyes took in her presence with a flicker of surprise, but he quickly moved on and started talking business with Yves and Guy.
The second man was tall and thin, with short brown hair, and long skinny fingers. From his pallor, rare in the Brisbane sub-tropical climate, Helen knew he didn’t get out very much. She would have been surprised if he even noticed there were other people in the same room as him. He was Ian McFarlane, Scott explained, and was one of the company’s senior technical architects.
Ian set up the laptop in the centre of the table, set a presentation slideshow to run, and took a seat next to Scott.
If Helen had experience in running a small business, the following two hours showed her what it was like to run something substantially bigger. Both sets of men bandied around multi-million dollar figures with a casualness that was mind-boggling. They spoke of business opportunities in Italy, China, Canada and Thailand as if deals could be signed just by scurrying down the road, instead of after exhausting, transoceanic flights.
Yves showed a part of himself that Helen always knew lurked under the surface, but hadn’t yet seen out in the open. He was polite but direct and ruthless in his curiosity. Naturally, with the deal between them not being completely sewn up, both Scott and Ian tried to keep some details of their company confidential, but Helen saw the way Yves would break the deflected query into several, smaller ones, arriving at the answer he wanted, but via a slightly more circuitous route. Did the Australian businessmen even realise they were being subtly and successfully interrogated, she wondered. She herself was more than a little intimidated by the easy confidence of his questioning.
By the end of the meeting, she was as wrung out as any of the other four. But while they could now relax, she still had her job to do. Over handshakes, they agreed to go ahead with the partnership. Yves promised to obtain some information for them from his head office in Paris, and they set a date for the following week to sign the initial paperwork.
“I think this calls for a celebration,” Scott said, clapping everyone except Helen on the back. He smiled warmly at her, though, and she smiled back. “How about dinner, my treat?”
“Surely that duty falls to me?” Yves interceded smoothly.
“You’re in my country, Yves, accepting my hospitality.” Scott was blunt and firm. “I won’t take no for an answer. Ian will join us as well, won’t you?”
Ian McFarlane looked up, blinking, from his screen and gave a rather absent-minded assent.
“Then it’s settled. I know a terrific seafood place in the city.” He named a small, but exclusive restaurant perched above the crowds along the pedestrian mall of Queen Street
. “I’ll make reservations for seven, if that suits you folk.”
Yves smiled and nodded his head. “Merci. We would enjoy that very much.”
“A reservation for five,” Scott confirmed. “I’ll see you tonight.”
* * * *
This was usually the part of a deal that Yves enjoyed as much as the negotiations themselves. He’d had Guy transfer all information on Tech-88 to their laptops before they left France, and had pored over the information on the long flight to Australia. This gave Yves more than double the time he usually had when preparing for meeting with a new company, and he’d been confident when he’d walked into the conference room that morning.
But all he had seen were dry figures and words glowing on the screen, and he needed to talk to the company’s owner to really be sure that this was something he wanted to invest in. Thankfully, neither Scott Nelson nor Ian McFarlane had disappointed. Yves had noticed the balance and brevity of the two-person team, and knew that Scott had done his homework on Yves as well. He knew enough, for example, to know that Yves detested talking through a phalanx of lawyers in order to get answers to questions. And he knew enough to have a technical representative from his company there, the highly intelligent but nerdish Ian, to explain—in perhaps slightly more
tortuously technical detail than necessary—the framework of the contracted works they were designing and implementing in countries throughout the region.
With the initial meeting of just two on two, both parties were able to speak relatively freely, and Yves liked what he heard and saw. Tech-88 would be a valuable addition to the Nerin group, and serve as a solid stepping-stone to future business in this lucrative part of the world.
Whichever way he looked at it, the meeting had been a success. Now, all that was required was to pass along some financial data and assurances from his side, prior to the signing of an initial understanding the following week. After that, the lawyers on both sides would take over, and the deal would be done—perhaps not as swiftly as Yves would have liked, but done nonetheless. He had achieved everything he wanted to, and Scott was inviting them to dinner to celebrate, as per the usual process in negotiations such as these. So why wasn’t he happy about it? He normally enjoyed the socialising that accompanied the business—it was a way of cementing a young relationship. But he felt bored and a little irritated and even considered somehow bowing out of the dinner and letting Guy handle it on his behalf. Not that that was a contemplation for more than a second. For one, it would be unforgivably rude, and Yves prided himself on being a courteous professional. Secondly, the socialising was as important as the business.
He watched absently as Helen led the way from the conference room and down to where their limo was waiting, trying to figure out why he was so reluctant to attend dinner. His gaze sharpened as he realised exactly what the reason was. It was her. He gazed upon her straight back and the determination on her face as she looked from side to side, watching each person who even approached the invisible boundary that he knew she had drawn around them. She was so unlike the usual women of his acquaintance that he could hardly fathom it. For one, she had a level of self-control that he had never experienced before. Yves didn’t consider himself arrogant…well, maybe slightly arrogant, he thought with a quick twitch of his lips. He knew women considered him attractive, with his combination of looks, wit and wealth. It was the task of seconds to attract a beautiful woman and charm her over dinner before slaking their mutual thirst in bed that night. He had done so, time and time again, whether he was at the gaming tables in Monaco or skiing the Alps in Switzerland. Yet, with this lithe, blonde Australian, it seemed not to be working at all. Oh, not the bed part. Although more difficult than his usual companions, she could no more resist the sizzling chemistry between them than he could. No, it was more than that. It was, despite the fact that they had tumbled in bed together—twice—that he wanted her more. Again. Still. Next to his usual conquests, this was tantamount to heresy.
Why? How? What was inside her that did not seem to be inside every other woman he had bedded then put to one side? Why, at this moment, was he thinking of her instead of his business?
He was quiet on the drive back to Heritage House, knowing that Guy would conclude that he was just tidying up details of the Tech-88 deal in his mind. But nothing was farther from his thoughts. In fact, his thoughts had moved on to another woman. Delphine de Rosanbo. His friend.
In a way, Helen reminded him of Delphine. They were both of a similar build and height, but that was the end of their physical likeness. Delphine had straight, silky dark hair and a complexion that didn’t dare allow the presence of even a single sun-kissed freckle. She was charming in her own way, slightly aloof, independently wealthy and of unimpeachable character. She was also the woman Yves had, until that very moment, considered marrying.
The de Rosanbo and de Saint Nerin families had a long history of friendship together, although Delphine’s bloodline was a lot bluer and more Gallic than Yves’. Still, Delphine had never evinced any kind of discrimination on that part. She was intelligent, socially adroit and beautiful. They had dinners together as often as they could, when their busy schedules placed both of them in the same city at the same time, and had laughed over the trials of finding partners, who loved them for themselves rather than the size of their bank accounts. It was that frivolous subject that had started them both thinking. There was no great passion between them, but both had agreed that passion was vastly overrated. They liked, and respected, each other, and Yves couldn’t think of any other woman he’d consider as the mother of his children. Because there would be children, of course. He was quite sure on that count. If a woman’s biological clock was loud and unrelenting, he felt that a man’s was more subtle, perhaps more easily overlooked, but still there.
The discussion of a marriage between them was conducted in much the same way as their friendship—in slices of time when they could both meet, with humour, logic and grace. The time frame was set sooner rather than later, perhaps even within the next twelve months.
And it all went flying out of Yves’ head the moment Helen had confronted their two young, male attackers and sent them tumbling into the bitumen. He hadn’t said much at the time—had been too worried about any injuries to Helen and too surprised by the swiftness with which Alexandrov had found him—but he kept replaying the scene over and over in his mind.
It was like watching a deadly ballet. He had been there, himself, at the receiving end of one of her painful and intimate touches, her face, her lips, so close to his, as they followed his falling body to the ground. But that had been a caress compared to what she’d done to those two men. She’d moved in so close, that he’d thought she was attempting an embrace, the prelude to a kiss, then those hands of hers had moved in a blur. His ears had registered the soft sound of flesh colliding with hard surfaces, then they were both down, sprawled unconscious in the dirt. He’d never thought he would ever think it, but it had been wondrous, très magnifique! And suddenly, every woman he had known paled into insignificance, even beautiful, accomplished and supremely self-contained Delphine.
There was nothing self-contained about Helen. She tried to appear that way with those wary blue eyes the colour of crashing surf and her straight, sometimes abrupt, posture. But, like those errant blonde curls that constantly escaped their confines, she could not hide the passion that beat beneath a carefully cultivated exterior. Yves only had to watch her fight to see it emerge from her, like a terrible avenging angel. A passion she had matched in bed.
They got back to Heritage House, and Yves excused himself with a couple of quick remarks, heading back to his own suite and booting the laptop that sat on the desk. There was the information he had promised Scott, but he also had a strong urge to email Delphine. She would think it strange, uncharacteristic, to hear from him, but he couldn’t help himself. He needed to hear from her, for what reason exactly, he couldn’t fathom. Without thinking any more on it, he penned her a quick, impersonal email, ostensibly asking if she knew how Adrienne and the family were, and whether Theron was taking good care of them. The question was spurious—Yves knew his brother-in-law might not like him very much, but Adrienne and their children were like the sun and moon to him, and he would defend them to his dying breath. Still, he felt strange contacting Delphine without some kind of excuse, but what was the alternative? To put his thoughts down as baldly, and as badly, as they echoed in his head?
Dear Delphine,
I find myself in a quandry, my dearest friend. I am confused about so many things. But, first, I have a most urgent question. Can you tell me? What is love?
She’d have him committed to an asylum the moment he touched foot on French soil again if he wrote down such words. And not without justification.
Grimacing, he sent off the unsatisfactory email with a click of his mouse and put his troubled thoughts to one side, requesting that his Paris staff get together what was necessary and have it couriered to Scott in Australia straight away. He skimmed the rest of the emails that awaited his attention, noting that Guy took care of most of the more mundane matters, leaving the important decisions to him. His broker had written, informing him of the latest state of one of his portfolios and making a particular recommendation. The h
ead of his electronics division informed him of the costs and benefits of relocating a factory to a different site. There was more, lots more, on matters he would have been happy to wrestle with in previous times. But not now. He didn’t want to have dinner with Scott Nelson or Ian McFarlane, and neither did he want to spend time on the phone talking about any particular stock or acquisition recommendation.
He thrust back his chair and paced the suite’s living room. He needed to get out, to work off some of his excess energy. But, of course, Helen would veto that idea in a moment. She was being paid to look after his physical well-being not help dissipate his restless roil of emotions, and that meant keeping him in a secured environment as much as possible. Even now, she was probably camped outside his suite, or positioned close to the sliding doors, behind the curtains that he kept drawn in deference to her wishes.
He walked over to the curtains and drew them back savagely. He understood Helen’s concerns, but he wasn’t a child. And maybe he didn’t have her level of expertise, but he was sure that, in a normal kind of brawl, he could easily take care of himself.
Outside, the day was mellowing into afternoon. Scott Nelson had laid on an impressive mini-banquet during their morning meeting, and Yves knew his stomach could wait until dinner. Idly, he wondered what Helen was up to, because she wasn’t visible on the terrace outside his suite. He flicked the catch on the door and stepped outside…and immediately felt the weight of someone’s gaze upon him.
Slowly, Yves turned to his right. Helen, seated in a chair halfway along the verandah, nodded urbanely to him. He let out a breath of exasperation and walked over to her.
