Kayla was awakened far too early by the ringing of the phone. Her flight from Tanzania had been delayed six hours, and it was after midnight when she finally arrived home. She had then taken her first true bath in months, reveling in such marvels as clean water and a spotlessly tiled bath and lights that worked. When she had emerged, her father had gone to bed. She had made a midnight snack of toast and marmalade and drank in the home’s silence.
Thankfully, her father’s new wife of nine months was not around. Kayla had only met the woman once. That time, their argument had brought the restaurant to a standstill. The next day, Kayla had left to resume her work in Africa. If the excuse of urgent work had not existed, Kayla would have invented one.
As she rose from bed, the phone rang again and finally cut off. Her parents had started attending morning chapel the win-ter her mother had become ill. Her father still attended almost every morning. Peter Austin never took calls before church. It was one of their home’s ironclad rules. Kayla made herself a cup of coffee, then returned upstairs to dress. When she came back downstairs, Peter Austin had returned from church and stood reading the Financial Times at the kitchen counter. He set down his coffee, kissed her forehead, and examined Kayla’s dark suit. “I told you on the way back from the airport. The board will not be able to speak with you today.”
“If I could just have five minutes—”
“Kayla.” He addressed the paper instead of his only daughter. “There is no money for you.”
“We don’t need much.” Kayla had spent much of the night rehearsing the words she intended to use before the board. She had never thought it would be necessary to use them with her own father. “Without the extra funds, we face bankruptcy before Christmas.”
Peter Austin sighed and turned the page. Sipped his coffee. Shook his head. Sighed again.
“The robbery shouldn’t mean the ruin of a very good project. The welfare of over a thousand families in Kenya and Tanzania hangs in the balance.”
“No one denies the value of your work. But none of this matters in the face of our current—”
“You know it matters, Daddy. Three minutes. Please.”
Nineteen months earlier, Kayla Austin had returned from working with England’s largest private aid organization with a plan. One that had sparked a passion and a drive in her that had astonished everyone, most especially her father. Together they had presented her plan to the company’s board: set up a trust to run this project, and use the resulting publicity to pro-mote the company’s good name. The board had agreed, with one proviso. Kayla was sent back to Africa with instructions to hire a number two with solid business experience.
Everything had proceeded swimmingly, until the business manager had vanished. With all their capital. He had stripped the project’s bank accounts and even robbed the office cash box. But the money was not all he had stolen. By then, Kayla had become engaged to the man she was certain was her life’s mate.
All of it gone in an instant. Grinding her heart into dust.
Kayla swallowed against the rising gorge. She hated speaking the man’s name. “Geoffrey robbed us blind.”
“That was ten months ago. Now is not the time—”
“Now is precisely the time. We’ve almost managed to make a go of it. That’s why I came back now. To show just how close we are. We’ve scaled back and revamped and we’re so close. All we need is the money to see us through this crisis.”
Her father turned to look out the rear windows. Something in his demeanor left Kayla certain he was no longer listening.
Peter Austin had a caesar’s profile. At nearly sixty he still possessed a full head of silver-white hair. His eyes were deep-set beneath a strong ledge of a forehead. A melodious voice balanced the strength, revealing the man’s calmer side. The openness. The ability to care very deeply. Kayla noticed the subtle changes she had missed the previous evening. His eyes were ringed by sleepless worry. The skin over his cheeks looked like aged parchment. “Are you all right, Daddy?”
“Kayla, this is highly confidential.” He closed and folded his paper, then slowly stroked his tie. Deliberate actions, intended to add emphasis to his words. “Our company is in serious trouble.”
“I don’t understand.”
“No. Of course you don’t. What is far more disturbing, neither do I.”
She followed him out of the kitchen and into the front foyer. “I need to do this, Daddy.”
“You are far too dark from your time spent in the sun and much too thin. And this morning you resemble your mother to an impossible degree.” Peter Austin buttoned his jacket and pulled the lapels down tight, the financial warrior preparing his armor. “Let me phone Joshua and I’ll meet you in the car.”
Oxford Ventures, Peter Austin’s company, was located in a sprawling Summertown manor that Kayla’s mother had rescued from ruin. Amanda Austin had found the manor while pushing her baby daughter around Oxford in a pram. Summertown was the city’s Victorian quarter, started in 1850 when university dons were finally permitted to marry and move out of their college quarters. Until then, professors had followed the medieval practice of remaining single until their teaching days were over. Following the change and continuing until the First World War, the dons filled what had previously been farmland with stately redbrick homes.
As Peter Austin turned onto Oxford’s Ring Road, he said, “I’m having lunch with a new man. An odd sort. You might like him.”
“Am I only attracted to odd men, Daddy?”
Her father did not rise to the bait. “My phone call just caught Joshua in the process of firing him. I suspect that battle is not yet over. Perhaps you’d care to join us for lunch?”
It was hardly a ringing endorsement, as far as Kayla was concerned. “It’s hard to think beyond the board meeting just now.”
“All right, daughter.”
“Besides which, I have an endless list of things I can’t find in Dar es Salaam, all of which we desperately need.”
“Must you be leaving again soon?”
“I have to, Daddy. You know that.” But she did not want to add to her father’s woes, particularly not before the board meeting. “So tell me about this new man. What is his name?”
“Adam Wright.” Peter Austin turned through the arched stone entrance. Sunlight lanced through the parade of winter-bare elms and speckled the drive. “I met him at a conference in Washington. I was so taken with him that I skipped most of why I made the trip and then offered him a job. Joshua was livid.”
This was unlike her father. While her mother had filled Kayla’s young years with her various passions, Peter Austin was a rock. He took a measured approach to all of life, while her mother became swept up in one enthusiasm after another.
The wind shoved at Kayla as she climbed from the car. The cold slipped through her coat and struck at her very bones. As they walked the gravel drive, she saw that her father’s face once again bore a grave expression. The two of them were lost in very different mental universes. Kayla asked quietly, “Do you miss Mother?”
Peter Austin blinked slowly. “What a question.”
“Do you?”
“Every day.” He climbed the front stairs behind her. As the front door opened on its electronic hinge, he added, “Which makes your being away so very difficult.”
Kayla entered the reception hall and froze.
The walls displayed a collection of Eve Arnold prints.
Peter Austin stood and watched his daughter take a slow circuit of the room. She stopped by the placard explaining that the photographs were part of a display of Magnum Photos, on loan from the Tate Gallery. Kayla stopped before one of Marilyn Monroe and said, “I remember this one.”
“Of course you do. It was your mother’s favorite.”
A signed reproduction had hung in her mother’s dressing room. Eve Arnold’s photographs had been another of her mother’s many passions.
Peter Austin said quietly, “You are more like her than you will ever know.”
Kayla understood him completely. “I couldn’t possibly stay here in England, Daddy.”
“We could be very happy, you know.”
“My work is there.”
Kayla found herself recalling something from the year her mother died. One of those small items easily forgotten, and so piercing to remember. Kayla had been standing outside her mother’s hospital room and overheard Amanda Austin tell her husband how he never looked more handsome than when he smiled through his sorrow.”
Peter Austin smiled at her in just that way. “I am very proud of all you have accomplished, Daughter.”
Kayla took a nervous breath. “Let’s hope the board feels the same way.”