Before she arrived home, Kayla had imagined she would sleep forever. The past several months had been so stressful, and the heat so awful, she had scarcely managed more than a few hours’ rest each night. Yet here she was, back in her big bed, in her room of stone and light and timbers, awake to early bird-song and the day’s first church bells.
Kayla had forgotten how loud the bells could be. After a few days the bells would fade into the background. In Africa, when she remembered home the bells never sounded a single note. Yet now they rang so loudly they might as well have been in the bed with her.
When the ringing ended, Kayla heard the soft scrunch of footsteps, the quiet murmur of morning voices. She rose from her bed and went to her window. The family bedrooms occupied the upstairs of the stone wing. Downstairs was her father’s home office and a room set aside for business meetings. Wisteria flamed in autumn colors about Kayla’s bedroom window. She could feel the day’s chill radiating through the glass. Kayla saw her father and Honor standing in the forecourt, talking with a cluster of other villagers who attended morning prayers. Honor held her husband’s hand with both of hers. She watched Peter with an expression of deep concern.
Kayla dressed and went downstairs to find coffee waiting. She tried to begin a list of tasks she needed to complete before returning to Africa. But the board’s denial left her feeling drained. She took her coffee over to the rear doors and stared out over the mist-clad valley until the phone rang.
A familiar voice said, “Good morning, Kayla. Welcome back.”
“Hello, Joshua.” Kayla did not share her father’s affection for the company’s number two. Joshua Dobbins was perhaps the coldest man she had ever met. But Joshua’s central goal in life was to protect her father, which made them natural allies.
Joshua asked, “How are you?”
Kayla replied, “Oh, I think you know.”
“Yes. I’m sorry. Will you be returning to your Africa project?”
She forced herself to smile as Peter and Honor came through the front door. Her father looked as though he had not slept. Kayla replied, “To the last wretched day.”
“You are indeed your father’s daughter. Is Peter back from church?”
“He’s just coming in now.”
Peter tromped slowly down the front hall, kissed his daughter’s cheek, accepted the phone, and said, “Yes, Joshua. What is it?”
Honor motioned her into the kitchen. “I need to ask your advice. Your father’s birthday is in seven days. He says the photographs in his office are the only present he needs. But I want to give him something to . . .”
“Make him happy.” The proper answer was instantly clear. “Make him do something to get his mind off the company. A weekend at Claridge’s and a night at the opera. He went with Momma when I was five or six. They talked about it for years.”
Up close, Honor’s eyes were made to melt a man’s heart. “Will you still be here for that?”
“I’ll leave the day after his birthday. I have to.”
Here they were, the two of them standing by the coffee-maker, talking like normal people. Instead of a daughter who celebrated her father’s third marriage by remaining in a dusty compound three thousand miles to the south. Kayla expected Honor to protest over her missing another Christmas. Instead, Honor said, “I’m so worried about him.”
“Daddy looks very tired.”
“He’s exhausted. But more than that. He’s lost a good deal of his old fire. And confidence.” Abruptly Honor reached for-ward and enfolded Kayla in an embrace so tight Kayla felt the woman’s belly press hard against her own. Kayla clung to her, not from affection, but rather because she needed a moment to crush yet another wave of regret. When they released each other and Honor pressed her palms to the corners of her eyes, Kayla wondered which woman was the stronger, the one who controlled her tears or the one who let herself cry.
The handset chirped when Peter set it back in the charger. The two women stepped into the hallway together and found Peter standing by the narrow entry table, frowning at the sidewall.
“Is everything all right?”
“If only.” Peter reached into his jacket pocket and extracted a slip of paper. He held it out to his daughter. “It’s not what you need, darling. But it’s all we can manage just now.”
Kayla accepted it with numb fingers. She felt Honor’s hand rise up to touch her back. The check was for fifty thousand pounds. It was drawn upon her father’s personal account.
“I wish it were more,” her father said.
Once again Kayla fought against tears. “Thank you, Daddy. So much.”
Four months. That was what the check meant. Four more months to find a long-term solution. From where she stood, four months was an eternity. Deliberately she refolded the check and put it into her pocket. Kayla looked up. “Is there any way I could help out around the company?”
“There won’t be any more money. You’ll be wasting your time.”
“It isn’t that, Daddy. When I was thirteen you found me a job. You helped me then. I’d like to help you now.”
“You were a godsend.” Peter studied his daughter thought-fully. “As a matter of fact, there is something perhaps only you can do.”
In preparing for his new job, Adam had checked the rental agency websites and been staggered by the cost of housing. Furnished apartments in Oxford cost more than in Manhattan. He then looked through the university’s website and found a page titled “Accommodations.” On it was an ad that read, “Central leafy north Oxford, single rooms for quiet academics, excellent rates for the right people.” When Adam called, a woman with a harried tone turned him down flat. Only academics might apply, she announced. Graduate students or postdocs or lecturers only.
Adam asked, “Do you know any place I might be able to find a room?”
“Where is your job?”
“I’m not sure.” He started leafing through the papers piled on his desk, searching for Peter Austin’s card.
“Young man, I can hardly assist you without that information. After all, Oxford is not some picturesque little village.”
“Here it is. Oxford Ventures is located in Summertown.”
The woman went silent, then, “You’re coming over to work for Oxford Ventures?”
“Is there a problem?”
“Kindly wait one moment, please.”
Adam sat and listened to the call's cost tick skyward with the seconds. Then a reedy voice said, “I would have thought Oxford Ventures would be paying its American employees sufficiently well that they would be seeking riverside flats, not furnished rooms.”
The voice reminded him of his mother’s, aged beyond years by an ailment that robbed the voice of tone as well as strength. “All this has happened so fast, I’m not sure how much I’m actually going to be paid.”
“Always know the figures, young man. That is the second rule of life. Would you care to tell me what is the first?”
He started to say no. Then hesitated.
“I’m waiting.”
“Have a moral compass that sets your course.”
“How very remarkable.”
“That’s what my mother would say,” Adam confessed.
“Well, well. Honesty in this day and age. And from a young man who listens to his elders. Might I inquire, who is your contact at Oxford Ventures?”
“Peter Austin.”
“Yes, I can see how one might be tempted to move on trust and seek answers later. Very well, young man. Being an American gentleman, I assume you are rather overlarge.”
At six four and a hundred and ninety pounds, Adam assumed he should reply, “Definitely.”
She had a chuckle like dry stalks rubbing together. “Then a chamber under the eaves would hardly suffice. Tell Mrs. Brandt I said to give you one of the garden rooms.”
The morning after his dinner at the Austin residence, Adam lingered over his coffee, pretending to read a paper discarded by one of the academics. The house was a massive redbrick pile, with the upper floors given over to paying guests. Of the family who had once lived here, only the widow was left, though apparently her children and grandchildren came through every weekend. All the other residents did biomedical research in the labs that were a short walk away. The residents referred to the widow as Professor Beachley and spoke of her in awe. Over their communal breakfasts, Adam learned the widow and her late husband had formerly been leaders of the Oxford scientific establishment. Adam had spoken to her only once since his arrival, a brief hello. The old woman had been pleasant enough, crouched over her walker as she had maneuvered from her front sitting room to her back bedroom. Adam had been given a middle-floor room with tall ceilings and a view over the unkempt rear gardens.
They breakfasted around the oval dining room table, fed by Mrs. Brandt, the same housekeeper who set out clean sheets twice weekly and collected rent. Breakfast was at seven thirty. Anyone who was not seated on time could still have coffee and make their own toast, but there would be no cooked breakfast and nothing whatsoever if they arrived more than twenty minutes late. Mrs. Brandt had quite a number of such rules and used them as a means of keeping her charges in their place.
Adam turned with the others at the sounds emanating from the front hallway. A young woman emerged from the professor’s study, sniffling into a handkerchief and struggling for control. “Thank you for seeing me, Professor.”
“My dear, let Mrs. Brandt fix you a cup of tea.”
“I have to get to the labs.” She glanced at her reflection in the hall mirror. “I look an utter wreck.”
The professor accompanied the young woman to the front door, leaning heavily upon a cane. “Remember what I have told you. You face not one problem, but two. The first is scientific in nature, the second intensely personal. And no one, my dear, can aid you with the external issue unless you first learn the essential lesson of trust.”
The woman remained blind to the circle of young scientists who watched her from the dining room. “No one can help us. It’s too late.”
“Only if you insist upon making it so.”
She reached for the door. “I should never have come.”
The professor sighed her farewell, shook her head, and thumped back into the front room. Only when the parlor door shut behind her did the breakfast murmurs begin once more.
“Excuse me, Mr. Wright.” Even the housekeeper was subdued by what they had all witnessed. “You are wanted on the telephone.”
He followed Mrs. Brandt back to the kitchen. “This is Adam.”
“Hi, it’s Kayla. Daddy has asked me to take you into Oxford this morning.” She spoke with careful formality, as though reading unfamiliar words. “I hope that’s all right.”
“What about my work?”
“I’ll explain that when we meet. Where are you?”
“Number eighteen, Norham Gardens Road.”
“I have to stop by the office first, so I’ll see you in about an hour.”
When Adam hung up the phone, Mrs. Brandt noted, “Whoever that was, she certainly managed to wind your smile muscles up a notch.”
He found no reason to store his grin away. “That,” he announced, “was the boss’s daughter.”
“Can’t be bad.” Mrs. Brandt dried the morning dishes and stowed them away. “Is she attractive?”
“Very.”
“Rich, pretty, and phoning you your second morning in the country. My dear departed mother would say the pair of you were risking a hefty fine for speeding.”
“Sounds like a smart lady.”
“Oh, there were no flies on my mam.”
Adam thought of his own mother and recalled her words from the previous afternoon. Find an old woman in need, she had said. Give her a heart’s desire, or something like that. Adam asked, “Could I speak with the professor?”
“After that last little incident, I should think she’d like nothing better. Wait one tick, and you can take her in a fresh cup of tea.”
Twice on their way into town, Kayla almost told her father that she’d rather not do the task he had set for her. Both times that Kayla started to speak, her father received phone calls. He wore a headset that she had never seen before. All she could hear was his responses, which were both terse and harsh. Kayla’s protest died unspoken.
She had never seen her father like this before. Nor had she heard this voice, as though he spoke around wet gravel. The second time he punched the button to end the call, he breathed hard, as though he had run a race. “What’s the matter, Daddy?”
“Joshua.”
“Your number two. The man who has been with you since the beginning.”
“Joshua is not often wrong. But he is now. Spectacularly, indisputably, wretchedly wrong.” They passed through the big front gates and drove down the graveled drive.
Kayla followed him toward the office. The morning light was strong, the sky clear, the cold so strong it slipped through her three layers and gripped her bones.
Peter stopped on the top step and declared, “You are an elixir to an impossible time, Kayla. I know you had your own desolate reasons for coming home. But right now, in this minute, I consider your presence a genuine blessing.”
When they entered the foyer, they found Peter’s secretary standing behind the reception desk with Joshua’s secretary and another lady. “Oh, good morning, sir. Mr. Dobbins asked to be informed immediately upon your arrival.”
Peter handed Kayla the car keys and said, “Perhaps you should wait here. Mrs. Drummond, come with me, please.”
Joshua’s secretary, Robin Oakes, possessed a ravenous craw for gossip. As soon as the chairman disappeared, her attention returned to whatever was masked by the reception desk’s over-hang. “Soon as I spotted his photo in the file, I knew I’d seen him before. My daughter downloaded this photo off an old fan website.”
Kayla stepped forward, away from the cold radiating off the glass doors as the receptionist replied, “He looks even better in the flesh.”
“I never did care much for the show itself,” Robin Oakes went on. “All backstabbing and nastiness and folks messing about where they shouldn’t.”
The receptionist said, “I remember the critics dubbed it ‘Dallas by the Potomac.’ ”
Robin Oakes smiled at the unseen page. “Our bloke played some staffer with the unlikely name of Blade.”
Kayla stepped around the desk. “Can I see?”
Robin Oakes stepped to one side. “It’s amazing what you can find on the Internet these days.”
Adam Wright looked ready to step laughing and mocking from the page. The force of the photograph was riveting. Above him blared the headline “Coming to the BBC, the show the critics love to hate, Washington Affairs.” Adam stood in a standard male model pose, hands on hips, twisted at the waist so that his entire upper body formed an arrogant angle. He wore a flashy suit and an expression that hit Kayla very hard indeed.
The similarity to her African thief, the man who had stolen her money and dreams and heart, was staggering.
The resemblance was not so much physical as in attitude. Oh, they both had dark copper-blond hair and a handsome strength to their features. Both were tall and wide shouldered and narrow waisted. But Adam’s eyes were a rich brown, while Geoffrey’s eyes were green. And Adam’s chin was not as deeply cleft, nor his nose as sharp. And his lips . . .
The receptionist asked, “You’ve met him, have you?”
Kayla blinked. “Adam came for dinner last night.”
“What was he like?” the receptionist probed.
“Fine. I mean, he was over for dinner with Daddy.”
Her gaze was drawn back to the photograph. Adam mocked them. His arrogance was total. He did not sneer so much as simply not care. And this was what reminded Kayla so much of her former fiancé. Not who Adam was. What he had the potential of being.
Her thief of a lover had never exposed his true nature. Geoffrey’s quick charm, his flashing wit, his ability to smile through the worst they had faced in Tanzania, all this had blinded her to the truth. Until the morning Kayla had arrived in the office and discovered everything she had known about him was a myth. Over the months that had followed, a different image had taken form. One where his smile mocked and his words lied. Just like the man in this photograph.
Kayla’s mental vision shifted from the memory to the man. Not the photograph. Who Adam was now. Because one thing she was totally certain of was, this picture was not the Adam Wright she had met the day before. Something had drastically changed this man.
“And you just happened to be there to dine with them, did you,” Robin Oakes said.
“He’s gotten under your skin already,” the receptionist said.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“Then why are you scarlet as a Christmas ribbon?”
She was saved from needing to respond by Mrs. Drummond’s returning. She handed Kayla a slim envelope and said, “Your father asked me to give you this, Ms. Austin. Along with his thanks for helping out today.”
Kayla left the company, slipped behind the Mercedes’ wheel, and carried the mental image of Adam’s photo with her into town. That and the mystery of what had stripped Adam of the arrogance and the strength and the carefree haughtiness of a pirate.