A Passionate Proposition

‘How should I know why she invited herself?’ he mumbled quickly, his sluggish tongue tangling in the consonants. ‘It was a party, man…chicks have been coming and going all night.’

A cold trickle of dismay ran down Anya’s spine when she saw him leaning back out of his uncle’s peripheral sight, smirking maliciously at her.

‘All I know is, she followed me into my room and wouldn’t leave me alone. Who’da known she was so hot? Ever made it with a history teacher, Unc’l Scott?’

The grubby insinuation with its macho, man-to-man overtones had Anya’s eyes snapping back to Scott Tyler’s face, which was suddenly rigidly impassive, wiped clean of all emotion. She guessed it was the expressionless mask he wore into the courtroom, when he didn’t want anyone to know what he was thinking.

‘Whatever he’s implying didn’t happen,’ she said tartly. ‘You know very well he’s just telling you what he thinks you want to hear…’

One thick, dark eyebrow shot up. ‘Is he?’

He was just playing devil’s advocate, she told herself.

‘You know he is. Look out the window if you don’t believe me. The girls I came here to find are down there waiting for me in my car—’

He sent a fleeting, almost uninterested, glance down towards the turning circle. ‘There’s no smoke without fire,’ he murmured with infuriating blandness.

‘What are you—a fireman now?’ she flung at him witheringly, her slender body vibrating with fury. ‘I thought you were supposed to be a hot-shot lawyer. Why don’t you act like one and make Sean tell you the real truth!’

‘His version, or yours? When there’s two witnesses, the truth is often a matter of perspective.’

It was on the tip of Anya’s tongue to tell him that she had another witness, but she didn’t want to involve Cheryl, and thus Eastbrook, unless she could help it.

‘Are you saying that you actually believe him!’

‘You must admit I’ve ample reason to be suspicious. Don’t tell me you aren’t aware that there’s something inherently erotic about a woman wearing a man’s shirt,’ he said, his eyes sliding down over her silk-wrapped body in a speculative way that made her blood boil, and not entirely with fury. ‘And the little white socks add just the right provocative touch of pseudo-innocence.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, don’t be ridiculous!’ A piercing thrill of guilty pleasure made Anya lash out, trying to douse the treacherous feelings aroused by his words with a drenching of pure scorn. ‘I suppose you’re going to accuse me of trying to seduce you next!’

There was a short, electric silence as they stared at each other, and Anya noticed all the things about him she had always tried very hard not to notice: the smooth grain of his olive skin as it stretched over the strong bones of his face; the almost feminine lushness of the thick dark lashes which framed his compelling blue eyes, and the strikingly masculine contrast of that thin, yet sensual mouth, and harshly chiselled jaw.

The stubbly regrowth of his beard and faint purplish tinge under his sunken eyes—signs of his ‘hellish’ day—made him look rakish rather than merely weary.

When he spoke again his voice was deeper, softer, and more dangerous than she had ever heard it. Too soft for the boy behind him to hear. And he allowed a flare of male hunger to show in the deep blue gaze.

‘You’re welcome to try, but I should point out that I’m a great deal more discerning—and considerably more demanding—than your average randy teenager…’

The sheer wickedness of the barbed challenge sucked the breath out of her lungs, and Anya opened and closed her mouth several times before she summoned the words to prove that she was wasn’t totally vanquished.

‘Oh, you’re impossible! It’s easy to see you’re related—you’re both as bad as each other. Believe what you damned well like; I don’t care!’

And on that resounding lie Anya swung on her heel and stormed into the bathroom, slamming the door violently enough to cause the mirror to shiver on the wall above the basin and several toiletries to fall over on the vanity top.

Muttering to herself to bolster her sense of outrage, she ripped off the silk shirt and pulled on her wrinkled clothes, the damp patches practically sizzling as they hit her burning skin. She finished zipping up her ankle boots with a vicious tug that jammed a piece of her sock in the meshing teeth and swore through tight lips as she tried to work it free.

She had always thought of cotton ankle socks as utilitarian rather than sexy, but now that serene unawareness was gone for ever. She would never be able to put on a pair of white socks again without thinking of him.

He had viewed them as provocative, for God’s sake! A pair of simple, inexpensive white socks! The man was plainly in need of therapy, she thought as she checked herself out in the mirror, looking in vain for the cool, capable, down-to-earth Miss Adams she was used to recognising in her reflection.

With her glittering, storm-darkened eyes, flushed cheeks, and the baby-fine wisps of hair escaping from the pins at her nape and drifting forward to curve around her smooth oval jaw, she looked disturbingly young and flustered. Not in control.

And she had no make-up to repair the damage to her self-image. She did what she could, smoothing back the strands of hair from her glowing forehead and tucking them firmly into place with tremulous fingers. Had her small mouth always looked that rosy and full? She pressed her lips together in a stern line and willed her colour to fade back to normal. She could do nothing about the way her clothes clung where they were wet, but at least they were clingy in fairly non-strategic areas.

She could hear a low murmur coming from the bedroom and she hesitated for a moment before she squared her shoulders, gathered up her ragged dignity, and reached for the door.

She was going to walk back out there with her head held high, and if fault should be admitted she was prepared to be graciously forgiving, as befitted her normally kind and compassionate nature.

But the sight that met her eyes wasn’t promising. Scott Tyler stood beside his seated nephew, his hand resting on Sean’s brawny bare shoulder, whether for reassurance or restraint, she wasn’t sure.

‘Well, has he told you what happened?’ she challenged.

Scott Tyler’s unreadable mask was firmly back in place

‘That could take some time in his present condition,’ he said uninformatively, acknowledging the condition of her clothes with barely a flicker of his eyes. His voice flattened into resolute finality. ‘As I said before, it’s late, and if there are issues to be settled they can wait until a more civilised hour…’

He dropped his hand and moved towards her, obscuring her vision of the boy, imposing himself squarely in the centre of her attention. He was definitely in full protective mode, she decided, and in the split second before his broad chest blocked out her view her heart sank to see that the smirk had returned to the teenager’s face. The obnoxious weasel wasn’t going to accept responsibility for his actions until he was sober enough to appreciate the true consequences of his lies.

‘Well, here’s one issue that can be settled right now,’ she announced, pulling at a clammy spot on her cotton shirt where it had moulded transparently to her skin. ‘As you can see for yourself, I’m going to have to get my clothes cleaned. I’ll be sure and send you the bill.’

His thick lashes veiled his expression as he studied the effect of her makeshift laundering.

‘By all means. But don’t expect me to pay it if there’s contributory negligence involved,’ he told her in that same flat, non-negotiable tone. ‘For all I know you could have dunked them just now in the bathroom, to give credence to your story.’

Anya forgot about being kind and compassionate.

‘I suppose being exposed to the seamy underbelly of society all the time has given you a very nasty and obsessively suspicious mind, and distorted your view of the way normal, innocent, people behave,’ she said, with a cutting disdain that was designed to make him cringe.

He didn’t cringe, but he did back off slightly, leaning a broad shoulder against the painted frame of the casement window in concession to his weariness. ‘I prefer to think of it as trusting to the wisdom of experience. As a history teacher you must believe in using the lessons of the past to avoid repeating future mistakes.’

Her mouth primmed in frustration, for she hated to admit he was right, and for the first time he showed a glimmer of untainted amusement, a faint kick of his mouth which delivered a corresponding kick to Anya’s pulse. His next words were also guaranteed to raise her blood pressure.

‘So be careful you’re not making a mistake, Miss Adams, by riling me when I’ve already told you I’m in a very bad mood. Your position at the moment is rather untenable. It could be construed as contributing to the delinquency of a minor, for example…’

She was quick to scorn his bluff. ‘Apart from the fact that the whole accusation is nonsense—he isn’t a minor.’

He was about to offer a caustic reply when something outside the window snagged his attention. ‘Are you sure you want to argue the point now? Because the natives down there seem to be getting restless…’

She frowned at him, suspecting a trick. ‘What?’

‘There are two girls getting out of a yellow hatchback I presume is yours,’ he said, looking out the window. ‘They seem to be debating whether to approach the house—’

Anya yelped and flew over to see that he was right. Oh, God, she had been so distracted by his presence that she had completely forgotten about the girls! Supposedly her prime consideration on this mission.

She clutched the windowsill, gazing down in dismay as Jessica and Kristin milled uncertainly around the side of the car. Hadn’t she told them not to get out?—but of course by now they must be starting to panic at her extended absence.

‘Perhaps you’d like me to invite them up to join us while we finish the discussion you seem so keen on prolonging…’ came a silky purr.

‘No!’ Anya was too busy castigating herself to notice his openly baiting tone. She could just imagine what four gossipy girls would make of the pernicious scene. She looked at her watch, her thoughts fixated on damage control. If she didn’t get back to camp before Cathy read her note, all hell was likely to break loose. Or, should she say, further hell?

She glared at the cause of her appalling lapse in judgement. ‘I have to go—’

‘Oh, what a pity,’ he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Just when I was about to offer you a cup of tea.’

She scowled. Naturally he would see her strategic retreat as his victory. ‘When you get him sober enough to tell you that my presence here was entirely innocent—’ she said, nodding in Sean’s direction as she hurried towards the door ‘—I’ll expect to receive a sincere apology. From both of you! And we’ll consider that an end to the matter.’

She thought that she had succeeded in having the last word, but a surly remark referring to frigid temperatures and the devil’s abode floated downstairs in her wake, making her itch to turn around and hit back with an equally vulgar blow. She managed to cling to her decorum but only by locking up her jaw. For a non-violent person she was beginning to have some very disturbing thoughts. All to do with That Man.

‘Where were you, Miss Adams? We were getting worried,’ said Jessica, as Anya herded the girls back into the car and burnt rubber down the drive in her anxiety to escape the invisible laser-beam eyes she was sure she could feel drilling into her back.

‘We saw that big guy go in and break up the party but you didn’t come out with the others. He looked pretty mad when he drove up and saw all the cars. I bet he went totally psycho at his kid for having a party,’ said Kristin in suppressed excitement. ‘I bet there was a big fight. Is that what took you so long, Miss Adams?’

‘You don’t—want—to—know,’ Anya ground out through her still-clenched teeth, her usually gentle voice so awe-inspiringly crabby that there was dead silence all the rest of the way back to the camp, apart from the occasional frightened sniffle from Emma and Cheryl in the back seat as they contemplated their uneasy future.

CHAPTER THREE

ANYA had a mildly thumping head when she arrived back at the regional reserve, and by the time she drove home the next afternoon it had developed into a full-blown tension headache.

She was just grateful that the decision of what to do with the chastened pair of miscreants had not fallen on her own shoulders. The two girls had produced copious amounts of penitent tears for a livid Cathy Marshall, who had raked them severely over the coals and segregated them out to do all the most boring, arduous and least-liked of the clean-up jobs rostered for the last day.

Seeing Cheryl scraping out the burnt-on muck of ten days of inexpert cooking from the camp oven and Emma mopping floors and grimacing over the application of a toilet brush had given Anya hope that their too-ready expressions of remorse might actually turn into a genuinely felt regret for their misdeeds.

But executing summary punishment hadn’t solved Cathy’s basic dilemma of whether to consider the offence a trivial one satisfactorily dealt with on-the-spot, as was her first impulse, or to put the girls on report to the headmistress when they returned to school, in recognition of the potential danger they had posed to themselves and to the Academy’s reputation.

Anya couldn’t blame her friend for wanting to avoid any official black mark against the camp, but did point out that once their initial fright wore off the girls were unlikely to refrain from boasting about their adventure. If it became common knowledge at the school, it would inevitably reach Miss Brinkman’s ears and she would want to know why she hadn’t been kept fully informed.

When she got on the bus back to Eastbrook, Cathy was still worrying about what to gloss over and what to emphasise in her written report, having reluctantly come to the conclusion that she couldn’t entirely leave it out.

‘I could probably get away with just using my discretionary judgement if it wasn’t for the fact that you found Cheryl with the boy, and you think there might have been some marijuana around,’ she sighed. ‘But don’t worry, nothing I say is going to reflect badly on you, Anya,’ she hastened to add. ‘You did the school a huge favour by helping out these last few days. It was just bad luck that those wretched girls took off when you were there by yourself. I’m going to tell Miss Brinkman you did exactly what I would have done in the same circumstances…’

Not quite. For Anya hadn’t gone into the full, gory details of her humiliating encounter with Scott Tyler. She had merely said that he had arrived after she had sent the girls out to the car, and that he had been angry and rude. She hadn’t wanted to add to Cathy’s anxieties by telling her of the personal hostility that had flared out of control during the confrontation, especially when her friend had instantly recognised the name of her protagonist.

‘Scott Tyler—the lawyer? The one who got that body-in-the-bag murderer—sorry, alleged murderer—off?’ Cathy was impressed enough to be momentarily diverted from her troubles. ‘Wow, I’ve seen him on the TV news—he’s one tough-looking dude. According to the papers he made absolute mincemeat of a watertight case to get that verdict. You definitely wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of an argument with him!’

Tell me about it! Anya had thought. When they had finally got to bed she had tossed and turned sleeplessly for what had remained of the night, running and rerunning her mental videotape of the experience, thinking of how differently the scenario would have played if she hadn’t let herself be sidetracked by his angry assumptions, and inventing pithy replies to his insults that she wished she had been able to think of at the time.

In the cold light of day she could almost convince herself that it had been a simple case of overreaction on both sides. Once Scott Tyler’s temper had cooled and he was no longer hampered by fatigue he was bound to take a more reasonable view. Surely the cynical lawyer in him would soon conclude that Sean’s spiteful words had simply been a drunken attempt to save his own skin?

He might even be content to act as if the whole unfortunate incident had never occurred. Anya certainly would. In spite of her defiant departing words she would prefer not to have to raise the subject with him ever again.

It would be hard enough having to face him next time they met. Scott Tyler had seen her underwear, for God’s sake! The last time that had happened was on her twenty-first birthday, and the man involved had gone on to break her heart. Not a very happy precedent!

Her nervous brooding made the last few hours of the camp stretch and sag like tired elastic and she was glad to finally be able to wave the air-conditioned bus onto the road back to Auckland and hop into her little car.

The hot bands of iron tension compressing her temples began to ease as she pulled into her crushed gravel driveway and parked in the small garage attached to the side of the weatherboard cottage.

She had bought the two-bedroomed house a few weeks after she’d signed her employment contract with Hunua College, rationalising that even if the job didn’t work out as she expected there were plenty of other secondary schools scattered around South Auckland that were within reasonable commuting distance of Riverview. As it was, the college was only half an hour’s drive along the winding rural roads to the sprawling outskirts of suburban south Auckland.

The house had been an early Christmas present for herself, and although it had put her deeply in debt to the bank she relished the long-term commitment the monthly payments represented. People—her cosmopolitan parents included—had told her that buying property in a small rural town was a poor investment, but they didn’t seem to appreciate that to her this wasn’t an investment, it was her home, a place for her to put down roots and flourish, emotionally as well as physically. Even several months after she had moved in she still felt a sharp thrill of joy each time she came home, to know that she was the proud owner of her own little quarter-acre of paradise.

‘Hello, George. Have you come to welcome me home?’ She bent to stroke the lean ginger cat which appeared from nowhere to wind around her ankles as she unloaded her bags from the boot. The ginger tom was actually a stray who considered the whole neighbourhood his personal territory, granting his fickle attentions to whomever was likely to provide him with the choicest titbits at any given time.

Anya scratched his bent ear and smiled at his motoring purr, her face lighting up from within, the spontaneous warmth lending her quiet features a glowing enchantment.

Now that she was feeling thoroughly settled in she had been thinking she might get herself a cat of her own. Or even a dog. Thanks to her childhood asthma and her opera singer mother’s horror of anything that might compromise her respiratory tract and thus her peerless voice, she had never been allowed to have a pet. The frequent international travelling associated with her mother’s career had precluded even a goldfish, and only during her precious holiday visits to her aunt and uncle’s dairy farm at Riverview had Anya been able to indulge her interest in animals—with nary a sneeze or wheeze in sight!

‘Let’s see if I can’t find a nice can of tuna for us to share,’ said Anya, following George up the narrow brick path that she had laid herself, bordered by the flower beds already dug over in preparation for planting out. Although it was still unseasonably warm for mid-April, the clouds were gathering over the Hunua Ranges and she could scent a hint of rain in the sultry air.

Once inside she kicked off her shoes with a sigh of relief and went around opening the windows to air out the stuffy rooms. It was too early for her evening meal but she carefully divided up a tin of tuna and set down a saucerful on the kitchen floor for George while she tossed the rest with the salad ingredients she had picked up from a roadside stall on the way home and put it in the fridge for when she got out of the bath.

She intended to have a glorious, long, hot, mindless soak in lavender-scented water to steam out all the weary kinks in her body and the nagging worries in her brain. Then she would have her solitary salad with a glass of crisp white wine and relax amongst her books, with perhaps a delicate piece of Bach on the stereo. Oh, the bliss of being free of rules and regulations, and the obligation to be considerate of the rights of others. She didn’t even have to worry about how deep to fill the old-fashioned bath, for there was no one to moan if she selfishly used up all the hot water.

Leaving George licking his chops over the empty saucer and eyeing the rush mat by the back door where he invariably liked to curl up and digest her largesse, Anya ran her bath and sank into it with a groan of sybaritic pleasure.

But the bath wasn’t the total escape from reality she had expected it to be, for as the enervating heat sank into her tired bones and the fragrant steam wreathed her face in dew, Anya’s drifting thoughts circled relentlessly back to the annoying subject of Scott Tyler.

How was it he always managed to get her in tongue-tied knots?

When they had first been introduced she had had fond hopes of their establishing a friendly connection.

She had been welcomed to her afternoon interview in the college boardroom by the chairman of the board, a grizzled man in his sixties, and they had still been shaking hands when he’d suddenly beamed over her shoulder.

‘Oh, good, there you are, Scott! I wondered if you were going to make it back in time to sit in on this last one. Come and meet our final candidate—the lass from Eastbrook. We’ve already talked over her credentials…’ He performed a rather perfunctory introduction, distracted from his task by the throaty laugh from the tall, svelte brunette attached to Scott Tyler’s arm.

‘Sorry, Daddy,’ said the woman, giving him an unrepentant buss on the cheek. ‘I’d just finished a case in the district court so I buzzed Scott on his cell-phone and took him out to lunch. He and I got to talking shop and the time just slipped away from us.’

‘Heather works for a big law firm in the city,’ Hugh Morgan explained to Anya with fatherly pride, giving her the excuse to turn away from the jolting connection with a pair of unusual, electric-blue eyes. ‘Does heaps of Crown prosecutions. Very clever girl. Came top of her year at law school.’

‘Oh, Daddy, that was a little while ago now,’ Heather Morgan fluttered with a coy modesty that didn’t quite gel with her seriously elegant suit and ambitious air of self-importance. Anya estimated the ‘girl’ to be somewhere in her early thirties. That coy ‘little while’ was likely to be more than a decade ago, she thought with uncharacteristic bitchiness.

‘You know I don’t like to rest on my laurels,’ she continued, casting a teasing sideways glance out of her dark almond eyes at the imposing man at her side. ‘Especially with Scott around to keep me on my toes.’

She finally directed a condescending smile at Anya in belated acknowledgement of her reason for being there. ‘So you’re a schoolteacher?’ Her bored inflection made it sound like the most dreary and uninspiring job on earth.

Anya inclined her head politely, keeping her tongue behind her teeth as she was wished an insipid good luck. She was amused rather than offended by the woman’s arrogant assumption of superiority. The fact that she had graduated her history degree with first-class honours and won a scholarship to Cambridge which she had waived in order to train as a teacher, would doubtless cut no ice with Miss Morgan. Like Anya’s parents she would probably just consider it a pathetic waste of potential; because there was no serious money to be made in teaching, no important status to claim, no high-profile perks and rewards for a job well done. Just a quiet satisfaction at having helped guide and expand the minds of future generations of lawyers and teachers.