A Taxing Affair

by Victoria Gordon

  ‘I’ll give you proper stockings,’ she raged, and somehow this time did manage to writhe free of his grip, sliding between his legs to land with a thump on the floor, leaving her poised with her cheek against the firm heat of his groin, her arms clasped instinctively around his thighs as she fought for balance.

  One of Phelan’s hands reached down to grasp her elbow, lifting her towards her feet, but Vashti’s own flailing arm struck it away as she lurched back from him, somehow caught herself upright, and stood glaring down.

  How could he be so damned calm? How could he sit there, eyes placid, lips quirked into what she could only see — her missing glasses making a difference even at that short distance — as a self-satisfied smirk?

  ‘Get out!’

  Even as she snapped the command her fingers were busy tucking herself back into her clothes, all too aware of the sensitivity of her nipples as she bent to thrust her heaving breasts back into the spurious safety of her bra, even more aware of how clumsy her fingers were in trying to button up her blouse, twist her skirt into place, while fumbling to tuck in the sheer fabric of the blouse at the same time.

  Phelan met her accusing, furious eyes with such calm self-assurance that it made Vashti more infuriated than ever.

  ‘All that and we’re right back where we started?’ he asked, voice soft, unchallenging, yet somehow so arrogant, so damned smug, that she could have screamed.

  ‘We’re nowhere!’ she shouted. ‘Nowhere; do you hear me? We never were anywhere and we are never going to be anywhere. Now get out!’

  ‘We came very close indeed to being everywhere,’ he replied with a pointed hitch of one eyebrow. ‘You might just think about that before you go all thing and start screaming and shouting and carrying on like a pork chop.’

  ‘I’ve every right to carry on however I like,’ she cried. ‘It’s my home, after all. You’ve got damned cheek, talking about having a discussion. You’re an animal!’

  ‘We all are, at least by some theories,’ he replied calmly. ‘Some of us are just better-looking than others. You, for instance. I’m not surprised we never seem able to have a rational discussion, when it drives me half crazy just looking at you.’

  ‘You’re more than half crazy,’ Vashti replied without thinking. ‘And my looks have nothing to do with it.’

  ‘And if they have, they shouldn’t,’ he agreed amicably. ‘Except to a male chauvinist piglet like me, of course. Not that I’ve ever denied being one; you’d only have to read one of my books to know better.’

  Vashti could only stand there, staring down at him and trying to maintain her rage against this curious turn of the conversation. What on earth was he on about now? she wondered.

  ‘Please go and sit down — over there where you’re well and truly out of reach,’ he said then, almost wearily, she thought. ‘I shall promise to at least try and keep my hands off you if you promise in turn to stop fighting me, stop trying to put your own interpretations on every single word I say, and just listen! OK?’

  Vashti continued to stand over him, her mind racing in ridiculous circles, starting and going nowhere, until she finally managed to force a stop to the process.

  ‘I want coffee,’ she then said decisively, and turned away, without waiting for any reply, to pad silently across the carpet and on to the chill tiles of the kitchen floor.

  Phelan sat silent, elbows resting on his knees and his chin resting in his cradled palms as he watched her boil the jug, measure the instant coffee, get the sugar, the milk. He was still in that identical position when she finally set a cup before him and moved over to sit opposite with her own coffee, silent herself and, now, expectant.

  Their mutual silence wafted through the room with the aroma of the coffee, but although Vashti watched the tall, pale-eyed intruder he seemed lost in introspection. He looked across the room without really looking; his eyes weren’t focused on her, on the wall behind her, on anything at all that she could determine.

  He sipped at his coffee without a word, without looking down at the cup, without looking across at Vashti. Lost in his own mind, she thought, and wondered without being all that surprised.

  ‘I had a book half done when I flew down here for the funeral and all,’ he suddenly said, still not looking at her. ‘It’s still half done. Not a single, solitary page further along than on the day I arrived. Haven’t been able to think straight, haven’t been able to concentrate. Just sit and stare at the computer as if it was some strange machine I’ve never seen before.’

  Now he looked at her, or appeared to. And the expression in his eyes was one Vashti had never seen before: totally unreadable, totally obscure, and yet somehow pleading.

  ‘Part of it’s this damned tax business, for sure,’ he continued. "The old man’s been driving me mad; he’s driven us all mad now that he’s gone and can’t explain what he was doing or how or why or ... or whatever. I don’t understand it, and neither does Bevan or Alana, and they were here while it was going on. I could only work from telephone conversations I had with him there towards the end, and some of that doesn’t make a lot of sense even now.’

  Vashti sat silent, her coffee forgotten as she listened, unable to make much sense out of what Phelan said, but certain it was important she at least listen.

  ‘What Janice said in your office the other day...’ he was very definitely focused now; his eyes held her, forced her to listen ‘was totally uncalled-for. And if I’d had any idea she was going to take that track in all of this, I would have ... it would have ... it damned well wouldn’t have been said!’

  A fierce light blazed in his eyes as he made the statement, then faded as Vashti sat silent, unsure what, if anything, she ought to reply.

  It shouldn’t have been said? Of course it shouldn’t have been said. It shouldn’t even have been thought, much less said. But that wasn’t the issue, and Phelan Keene seemed incapable or unwilling to see what was the issue—from her point of view.

  Still silent, she rose and picked up both their coffee- cups, then walked back to the kitchen to refill them. There was, she decided, something to be said, something she must say, but she didn’t have the faintest idea what it was. Certainly it was not to comment on how she could feel Phelan’s eyes following her as she moved, how she could tangibly feel their exploration of her ankles, her calves, her hips. She had the strangest urge to spin round, to confront him with her knowledge, but she knew somehow that she would never catch him out. If she turned, he would be looking somewhere else, ostensibly innocent. Or, worse, he would be deliberately chauvinistic, not only letting her catch him, but planning for it, expecting it. She kept her attention on balancing the coffee-cups as she returned, not even trying to meet his eyes until she was seated again.

  ‘I would be quite happy to turn this whole thing over to some other field auditor.’

  The words were uttered even as she thought them, and only when it was too late did she realise her statement was less than totally honest. The examination of the old man’s affairs was over and done with now, to all intents and purposes. But if she withdrew, even at this late stage, somebody might have to go right back to the beginning, creating more cost and more emotional turmoil for all concerned. She knew instinctively that the old man had been honest as the day was long, had made no deliberate attempt to evade tax. Just as she knew she hadn’t harassed him into the grave because of it!

  ‘What — so we can start all over again?’ Phelan asked as if reading her thoughts. ‘Waste of everybody’s time.’ And he picked up his second cup of coffee, lapsing into a silence that seemed to expand like smoke, filling the small flat, almost suffocating in its intensity.

  ‘My car ought to be here on Friday,’ he said then, not looking at Vashti, indeed looking at nothing in particular and making the statement as if to totally change the subject.

  She nodded, but said nothing. Surely no comment was called for, she thought.

  ‘And not before time, either. I’m getting awfully sick o
f driving that cranky old paddock ute the old man thought was so wonderful.’

  Again, what to reply? She merely had another sip of her coffee and waited, until she was finally forced into some response simply by his silence.

  ‘That’s nice,’ she replied. And wondered why she felt like a stray cat confronted by another stray cat, circling, cautious, ever ready to advance or retreat, ever ready to avoid any form of commitment until there was no choice left at all.

  Now, she thought, might be the perfect time to be bold, to ask Phelan Keene straight out about this book he was writing, about this expose of the tax office, about her role in all of this. Was he really, as he seemed to be implying, so taken with her that his writing was affected? The thought of his mooning about like a lovesick teenager was ludicrous, at best. Why couldn’t she laugh? More likely, she thought, something she had said or done had put him off his original line of thinking. Was that it? Was she so different from his preconceptions that his entire script had come adrift?

  Whatever, now was the time to ask. So why couldn’t she utter the words that rolled around in her mouth like all black jelly beans, which she hated?

  Because I ... can’t, she silently admitted. And hated herself for the cowardice.

  ‘You’re happy, then? It’s finished now?’

  His questions seemed innocuous enough; his voice showed no sign of aggression, no sign of anything, really. Vashti held off answering until she’d taken the time to listen — really listen, this time — to what he said and how he said it.

  ‘I would certainly hope so,’ she finally said, meeting his eyes, then looking away as she reached up to adjust glasses that weren’t there and then cursed herself for the mistake.

  Phelan’s generous mouth quirked just a bit as he reached to the side-table, picked up her glasses, and reared up out of the sofa to hand them across to her. The very movement was so swift, so wolfishly agile and quick, that Vashti found herself flinching away.

  ‘Stop being so touchy; I’ve already proved that I can control myself,’ he muttered, sitting back down as abruptly as he’d arisen. ‘Not that I expect you to believe that.’

  ‘I should certainly hope not,’ she snapped, refusing to admit to either of them that it had, indeed, been he who had halted their encounter, not daring to admit to herself that she had been within seconds of total and absolute surrender.

  ‘Do you really need those glasses?’ he asked then, and, without waiting for a reply, ‘Or do you just wear them as the business girl’s first defence against roving male chauvinist pigs?’

  ‘That’s hardly worth bothering to answer.’

  ‘Just as well; I think they’re sexy as hell. They make your eyes look even bigger than they are,’ he replied, leaning slightly towards her, his gaze snapping across the room like a lasso to capture her attention and hold it.

  ‘Well, then, maybe you need glasses yourself,’ Vashti replied, unaccountably flustered by the directness of the compliment, presuming it was intended to be a compliment at all!

  ‘You wouldn’t understand, but I’m inclined to agree with you,’ was the curious reply. ‘At any rate, I’ve said what I came to say, and … with a mischievous grin ‘perhaps just a bit more. What I’d like to know just now is whether you’re going to accept it or not.’

  ‘Accept what?’ Vashti retorted. ‘Being manhandled in my own home, being insulted, being —?’

  ‘Accept that Janice’s accusations weren’t my idea and weren’t made with my approval,’ Phelan interrupted coldly. ‘I don’t mind if you can’t or won’t accept my apology; I just want the point made ... that’s all!’

  ‘Consider it made.’

  One dark eyebrow lifted in obvious scepticism, then lowered again, as did the temperature in the room, Vashti rather thought.

  ‘Right,’ he said, rising abruptly. ‘I’ll be off, then.’ He had the door open and was halfway through it when he suddenly turned and said, ‘And thanks for the coffee, by the way.’ He was gone before she could reply.

  Vashti sat there, staring at the now vacant doorway, only half aware of the sounds of the farm utility chugging to life, then rattling away down the street. Her mind whirled in a disjointed attempt to make sense of it all, to try and understand how Phelan Keene could be so damnably changeable, and, worse, so damnably capable of manipulating both her mind and her emotions until she hardly knew which end was up.

  Eventually, none the wiser, she absently went through the routine of changing, cooking herself dinner and — far earlier than usual — showering and getting ready for bed.

  As she stood under the soothing warmth of the shower, the encounter with Phelan replayed itself over and over in her mind.

  As she soaped her breasts, it was to feel his touch, his lips so much warmer than the shower, so much more intimate than her own. It was as if her body had some unique memory bank of its own, one capable of endless memories of his kisses, of the ability his fingers had to rouse her, to lift her through layers of ecstasy, along paths of intimacy she could neither forget nor ignore.

  If only, she thought as she drifted into sleep, she could somehow have met Phelan Keene without either of them being involved at a business level.

  The thought remained with her through the night; it must have, she thought upon waking, to find it still on her mind. But with a new day came a more realistic outlook. Phelan Keene’s involvement was, at best, purely physical, a simple matter of lust. At worst, he was deliberately manipulating her for his own advantage, or at least to her disadvantage.

  A girl with any sense at all, she reasoned as she entered the office that morning, would march straight into the boss’s office and have the entire Keene file transferred to somebody else. Of course she would — but she didn’t, for some reason or another.

  A girl with any sense at all, she reasoned almost eight hours later, would not be idly browsing through the city’s most exclusive hosiery salon, much less sending her bank card into orbit over shockingly expensive stockings and something astonishingly wispy and fragile to suspend them from.

  CHAPTER SIX

  The exercise in extravagance seemed little short of ridiculous by Monday morning, and the morning’s usual first exercise — reading the paper over coffee and a flaky croissant — did nothing to improve Vashti’s sense of folly.

  Once again the social pages affronted her with a photo of Phelan Keene being swarmed over by the sultry figure of Janice Gentry, this time wearing — what there was of it — something clinging, light- coloured and unquestionably expensive.

  And slit so high along one, the photographic, side that the accountant’s taste in frilly garter-belts left nothing to the imagination.

  Phelan Keene, handsome in his own particularly understated fashion, seemed oblivious, or so Vashti thought from his expression, to the vivid display of feminine flesh that threatened to engulf him. Or was it, she wondered, her imagination? Certainly it wasn’t important anyway.

  Vashti used that section to wrap up the soggy, tasteless croissant. She was too busy to take time over the crossword puzzle on the next page anyway.

  She took herself to dinner that evening at a new little restaurant about which she’d heard nothing but rave reviews, but didn’t even bother to stay for dessert and coffee. This, she had decided by then, must be where her morning croissant had been made, probably by the head waiter doubling as an amateur pastry cook. How everybody else in the place could so obviously be enjoying their meal was beyond all logic.

  Every morning that week, her impromptu extravagance of the previous Thursday looked accusingly at her from her lingerie drawer; on Friday morning she tucked the minute parcel under an old jumper in the bottom drawer of her bureau and kicked the drawer shut.

  ‘Are you as cranky as you sound?’

  The voice of Alana Keene, irrepressibly and annoyingly cheerful, fairly bubbled through the telephone a few hours later.

  ‘Worse. Why?’

  ‘Because I was going to buy you lunch, but i
f you’re like that I might change my mind.’

  ‘You probably should; I’m not fit company even for myself,’ Vashti replied honestly.

  ‘Gone off your tucker?’ Nothing if not direct, Vashti thought. Living with those two brothers had probably given Alana an unbreakable vivacity.

  ‘A bit,’ she admitted, glancing down at the remains of an apple Danish, half eaten and discarded, like every other that week.

  ‘Hah! I never would have guessed. And I don’t suppose my dear brother has anything to do with this?’

  ‘Certainly not!’

  ‘Shall I bring him, too, then?’

  Alana waited through the silence, then giggled at the success of her gambit. ‘I couldn’t anyway,’ she finally said. ‘He’s out at Dad’s ... gone all broody, or hermity or something. Even crankier than you sound. Probably off his tucker, too.’

  Vashti kept silence, refusing to rise twice to the same bait. Not that it did her much good.

  ‘I reckon it’s PMT, myself. Him, that is; not you. Anyway, I’ll come get you at noon and we’ll walk down to the Mona Lisa. Unless you want to go really up-market, in which case you can phone for a booking and we’ll go to Dear Friends,’ Alana suggested.

  ‘How about the take-away on the corner?’ Vashti countered. ‘Even that’s beyond my budget this week, but I’d stretch it that final inch, seeing it’s you.’

  ‘That bad, eh? Maybe I ought to send Phelan instead, and the two of you could sit opposite and just depress the hell out of each other.’

  Alana again waited through the silence that followed, then conceded, ‘OK, it was a silly thing to say, and I’m sorry. Meet me outside at noon; we’ll go to the Mona Lisa and I promise I won’t so much as mention the mongrel.’

  Whereupon she hung up before Vashti could say no, only to ring back thirty seconds later to announce, ‘I forgot to tell you that the reason I’m doing this is because I sort of need a favour. See you at noon.’