He nodded, as cool and calm as he had always been. “That’s so, bearing in mind that shopping is not one of my hobbies. Are you leaving now, or do you have time for a coffee with me?” His eyes met hers and her body jolted into shocking sexual awareness.
Until last night she hadn’t had a real conversation with him for six years. “Since we’ve never managed that at work, why not? We ought to talk about this dinner of yours.”
“Yes, we ought to.”
She could tell herself as often as she liked that he was not for her, but she’d been helplessly attracted to him from the first time she had slipped into a seat at his parents’ table for a meal. Perhaps part of his attraction stemmed from the fact that he was her weak, indecisive father’s polar opposite. Hagen had always known where he was going, and nothing could have been clearer than that he would take a glamorous woman like Mercia with him.
“Which coffee place do you prefer?” he asked, his gaze piercing through her.
Once upon a time, she had thought she could read the expression in his eyes, but that turned out to be a self-delusion. “Since you’re not a regular here, you might not know the best place to buy a lemon curd tart, so follow me.”
He didn’t quite follow her, instead choosing to walk beside her, and she paced along in princess mode. Being with a good-looking man did that to a woman, and she noted how many other women glanced at him as he passed by. At the nicest, quietest coffee shop, he pulled out a chair for her and he ordered her coffee at the counter without asking what she wanted. Apparently he had noted previously, which was the sort of impressive thing Hagen did. He also bought two lemon curd tarts, and she blessed her hinting skills.
“Do you have a large kitchen to prepare food?” she asked as he placed the treats on the table.
“Yes.”
“Will I need to hire plates?”
“No.”
“Why isn’t your mother doing this meal? She’s the wife of the managing director of the company, and she’s a wonderful caterer. She’s done huge parties with only the help of her aunties. You know I know that.”
He shrugged. “Her aunties are in their eighties, and Ma says she is tired. She thinks it’s time for the younger generation to take over. Or, was that a trick question?”
“Hagen, your mother knows Mercia is no longer around,” she said using a patient tone. Sympathy wouldn’t help him in the least. She didn’t know what would, but her being in Mercia’s house would be awkward. “I’m sure she would help if she were asked.”
He shook his head. “I wouldn’t ask. Mercia took over the moment she married me, and Ma stepped out then. Fair enough.”
“So, Tiggy and you often do these things?”
“We use my house only when the list is under twelve people and comprises people we would like to be…” Clearly measuring his words, he pulled his ear lobe, and drew his eyebrows together. “In our more intimate group. People who wouldn’t necessarily be impressed by an expensive venue, but might be with a more intimate style.”
“You mean by the family silverware?”
“So to speak.”
“Do you have the silverware?”
“Mercia made sure of that.” His mouth lifted at one corner.
She leaned her chin into her palm, her gaze catching his. “So, you want something classy for the decorations.”
He blinked and nodded. “I looked at the details of the dinner last night after I arrived home. I’m expecting two politicians with wives, a couple of people from the university, my parents, you, and me. And someone from the government, with partner.”
“That’s going to be cozy,” she said, trying to suppress a laugh. “Not. Do you have a log fire?”
He gave her a quelling glance, shook his head, and picked up his tart. “My house isn’t cozy. This is tasty,” he said, after his first bite. “I can see why you wanted to come here. Are you busy today?”
“As busy as every Saturday,” she said with an amount of defensiveness. She would have liked to sound as if she had a full social calendar but she only had chores, chores, and chores.
“What about if we have lunch at my house? You could look over the place instead of asking questions that I might not be satisfactorily answering.”
“I have to unpack my shopping and do all sorts other things.” She frowned at him.
“What other things? Anything you can’t put off?”
She tried to consider while she ate a couple of bites of her tart, but because of his wife’s untimely death, she had to harden herself to the fact she would have to see him in the intimate surrounding of the house he had lived in with wonderful, efficient, perfect Mercia. “Okay. We may as well get it over with.”
“Lunch might be good.” He leaned back, his eyebrows raised, assessing the cost of her outfit, for all she knew.
“What are you offering?”
He did one of those Hagen smiles that made his eyes gleam and his hard mouth soften. “I’ll buy something here. What do you recommend?”
“You can’t ask someone for lunch, tell them it might be good, and then get them to decide on the menu,” she said, unwillingly charmed by his attempt to bribe her with food.
His head inclined slightly to the side. “I’m perfectly happy to accommodate your tastes.”
“You’re perfectly happy to get your own way.” She remembered this about him all too well, but she also remembered the ease with which they used to converse. Easy companionship with a man was rare for her. The male members of her family treated her like a poor relation. Hagen had always treated her like an intelligent person. She breathed out. “And I’m perfectly happy with a sandwich for lunch. Write out your address, and I’ll be there at one.” After he had gone, and while she was brushing crumbs off her mouth, she stared at the card he had left with her.
He lived within walking distance of her house.
* * * *
Hagen had bought a selection of mixed sandwiches and a box of sweet pastries and dumped the lot on the marble counter top in the kitchen, along with a loaf of rye bread and a dozen eggs. He should have bought flowers. Mercia disliked anything other than formal arrangements in the house, but his mother used anything she had in the garden and that gave the sort of cheer he needed in his empty rooms.
Mercia always had guests, too, especially on weekends. Since she had died, he had used weekends for catching up on work or for driving down to the coast and staring at the sea. He didn’t do either while Mercia was alive. She had a full social calendar that included him. On Saturday mornings, she would dash off to the supermarket to pick up last minute items she had decided she needed. Perpetually disorganized, she would unpack her endless groceries while mumbling about tradesmen she wanted him to deal with. “They don’t listen to a woman.”
Then later, he would find people had been invited around for a game of tennis, code for sitting around the pool and drinking. When the crowds inevitably dispersed, he would be let off the hook long enough to change for a social event, where he would donate money or patronage to a worthy cause, and he would be moving from foot to foot while Mercia gossiped about who was sleeping with whom—in the midst of her shiny friends, most of whom had hinted they could make themselves available to him, had he crooked a finger.
Mercia had been his perfect partner, like him the third generation of her family to live in Australia. Her grandparents, like his, had arrived after the war and had started a market garden, a business that grew. Her parents had been the first generation to be university educated, like his, and had expanded the original thriving business into a multi-million-dollar empire, the same as his parents had done. She, like him, had benefitted.
Even after her marriage, her parents continued to lavish money on her. She continued to expect luxuries, and her parents had bought all the furnishings in his house with the exception of his study furniture and the gran
dfather clock in the hall that he had bought as a student. They had also given her the gold Mercedes she died in. Mercia hadn’t needed his money. She had married him for love. She enjoyed the social aspects of being his partner, and he needed her for those since he disliked them himself.
Knowing she was the right wife for a man in his position, he had married her. Money was the key to happiness. Society respected a wife who knew how much to spend without causing needless envy among her peers. Mercia had the knack. In his circle, many men were in the same position, fortunate enough to have wives willing to turn a blind eye to their partner’s occasional indiscretions. After a year of marriage, Hagen knew the rules.
If anyone could have been Mercia’s contrast, good-as-gold Marigold was. Although he ragged her about old money, from the moment he had met her he had recognized her innate class. Her family had dropped off the wealthy list a few generations back, but still remained socially significant, mainly on her mother’s side. Her father ran a law firm, like his illustrious ancestor, but there the comparison ended. He, like his father before him, thought the world owed him a living. The world didn’t agree, and Julian Reynolds had invested his ego in his sons, while ignoring his brave and studious daughter.
Marigold managed because of her strength of character. He had never had more than a few blindsiding kisses from her although he had always wanted more. Unfortunately, that same strength of character kept her out of Hagen’s reach. And now he had her back there. What he planned to do about that, he didn’t know.
But what he did know was that he no longer needed a memorial to Mercia. The time had come to make his house his own.
* * * *
Wishing she had changed out of her jeans and sweater into something a little smarter, though that would have been too obvious, Marigold tramped up the street toward Hagen’s house. The moment she had read his address, she knew exactly where he lived. About four years ago, she had watched with special interest while the workers renovated the old mansion. The fact that he owned the house built by her ancestors on her father’s side filled her with a kind of twisted pleasure because at last she would have a chance to take a glimpse of the inside.
She walked the length of the brushwood fence that hid the tennis court and swimming pool from the view of the street. The two-story sandstone mansion had been authentically restored outside to a high standard. Past generations had removed the cast iron moldings but now they sat back in their rightful place, under the eaves and around the veranda. The old black cast iron fence had been repaired and refinished. The place practically glowed.
She swung open the tall front gate and strode down a slate path lined by clipped box hedges that suited the 1870 style of the house, though she doubted the original settlers would have had anything quite so formal outside. A white marble-tiled veranda ran along the front of the house and around the left side. She stepped up, impressed by the restoration. About to lift the knocker on the heavy front door, she heard footsteps, and waited. Sure enough, the door swung open. Hagen still wore his jeans, and he was still heart-stoppingly handsome.
“Exactly on time,” he said in a satisfied voice, and he stood aside to let her in the house ahead of him.
“Do you know that my family built this house?” She stared at the whitest hall she had ever seen in her life, the walls, the ceiling, the hall table, and a crazy big chandelier that used roses as candleholders.
“Yes. Come through to the kitchen.”
He preceded her past a closed door on either side of the wide hallway, which she knew used to double as the ballroom, heading for the beautiful staircase that had also been painted white, even the thick curved mahogany rail. Her eyes prickled with horror. After a right turn past an old grandfather clock, he headed down another white passageway decorated with a couple of modern paintings. She reached the kitchen, a space blindingly white, very beautiful, but strangely impersonal.
“I watched a lot of the renovation from the outside while passing, but I had no idea you owned the house,” she said, standing by the island countertop. “Though now I look at the front garden, I can see Calli designed it. I think my ancestors would have been thrilled to bits to have one so gracious. Those old palms that used to be here were ghastly.” She shifted her bag to her other shoulder.
“I had some qualms about removing them, but Calli assured me that they would keep growing and dropping fronds for another few hundred years if I didn’t. Since they were badly out of place from the start, I decided I could dispense with them. We’re eating in the breakfast room.”
“Breakfast room?” She stared at the doorway she assumed led to the garage. “I haven’t heard anyone say ‘breakfast room’ since Grandfather Grace.”
“According to the old records of the house, the room was called the breakfast room and the breakfast room it shall remain.” He indicated the way.
She stepped though the doorway that led to two more doorways, one of which was open and let in a blare of sunlight. The other would be the inside entry to the garage. In the center of the small table, she spotted enough sandwiches to keep a group of gossiping biddies silent for an hour or two. She decided to ignore the fact that this room was white as well because of the late spring sunshine peeping though the bank of windows and the view of the sparkling new green growth in the garden. “I’ll have to be careful not to drop a slice of tomato in here.”
He sighed. “I know the room is white. I heard you not mention the fact.”
“There’s no doubt that I’m mistress of the obvious. The room is beautiful, nonetheless.” She offered a placating smile.
He indicated the small plate in front of her and the platter of sandwiches. “Help yourself.”
She took the nearest grouping, a variety of various meats and salads and placed them on her sandwich plate. “I presume we make small talk until we’ve eaten and then we’ll get down to business.”
“I can’t see the harm in us being civil to each other for a while. It’s been a long time coming.”
She lifted her head and stared at him. “I’m not assuming you bought my family’s house to show me up, you know.”
“I bought it because it’s beautiful and I like this area.”
“You’re not too far from where your parents live. Well, approximately. Kensington and St. Peters are on the same side of the city.”
He shrugged. “And if I’d had children, I could send them to our old school.”
“That’s why my mother wanted me there, that and because it’s her old school, too. Having a school within walking distance is a treat.”
“Though a slight disadvantage. I know your mother had to put up with my sisters after school, or at any odd time.”
“She loved them. She would have had more children if she could, but it’s not done when you don’t have a husband.”
“You mean ‘not done,’” he said, making air quotes.
“Yes. I know it’s done, but it was not done in my mother’s circles.”
“Or yours.”
“Having been brought up by a single parent, I wouldn’t do the same to my child. I would want my children to have a loving father.”
He looked away, taking up a sandwich and biting into the bread as if he needed to dispose of the distraction and get on with showing her his house.
She took the hint and ate as fast as she could, while deciding not to offer small talk in case she sprayed crumbs. Instead she gazed at the garden, realizing that the silence was companionable rather than fraught. Before he offered her one of the many sweet treats sitting in the kitchen, she said, “What is the budget for the dinner?”
He shrugged. “Whatever I would pay to take this lot out to an expensive restaurant.”
“Although I don’t want the fact widely known, I’ve rarely been to the sort of expensive restaurant you mean. Give me a figure to work with.”
“Let’s say two hu
ndred a head.”
“Including wine?”
He shook his head. “Far has a good cellar. As soon as the menu is set, send it to him, and he’ll make a match for the courses. He sees selecting the perfect wines for food as a hobby.”
“Does your father need a hobby when he works a hundred hours a week?”
“Everyone needs a hobby no matter how many hours he or she works. Surely you have one?”
“Some might say my work is my hobby,” she answered with an amount of self-derision. “I certainly earn money at hobby rates. Now, let me see your sitting and dining rooms.”
He arose slowly, as if he would rather stay and eat but she couldn’t sit with him for hours. She had lost her head over him a long time ago, and she wanted to take it back. Being cozy with him didn’t help in the least.
“This way.” He led her through the kitchen and along the marble-tiled passage, opening the first door into a white dining room. Her initial thought was to say, What a surprise, but sarcasm didn’t suit the moment. Instead she said, “White is an easy color to work with. That table extends to fit ten?”
“It has various sized leaves. I believe I can seat twenty, but I never have.”
“So, onward to the sitting room.”
The extra door in the dining room opened in front of the stairway into the vast empty space of the main hall. Directly across, the main sitting room still featured the original white marble fireplace. Atop sat an empty white vase. The only color relief other than the pale gray fitted carpet was the view of the side garden through the glass of the French windows. White leather modern seating had been artfully arranged around the room. Glass side tables stood cold and empty.
“Do you mind if I change each of the rooms a little, to make them a little more cozy for your guests? In here perhaps a colorful rug on the floor and a few cushions. They would be borrowed from the warehouse.”
“I don’t mind what you do. You are the set designer of this show.”
“And I need to inspect your plates and your silverware, too.” She almost winced at the intrusion into his solitary life.
Golden Opportunity Page 5
