‘YOU’RE going to what?’ Anya cried, leaping to her feet in angry disbelief, jarring the two cups of coffee on her small kitchen table.
Mark Ransom held up his hands, surrendering to her vivid shock.
‘Look, it’s nothing formal, it won’t go on your official record or anything—’
‘You’re suspending me!’
‘No, no, nothing like that,’ he hastened to reassure her, his brown eyes regretful. A thin, wiry man of average height, he didn’t make Anya feel small and vulnerable when she stood beside him, like someone else she could name! At thirty-seven he was young to have the headmastership of such a large school and had cultivated a gravity beyond his years. Anya liked him for his seriousness of character and dedication to his students, and when his small kindnesses had begun showing signs of becoming more personal in nature she had been cautiously optimistic about a future relationship.
Until now!
After Scott had dropped her off she had checked her letter box, and although it was too early for the mail she had found a handwritten note from Mark.
Anya, I called while you were out. Couldn’t wait. Phone me ASAP on my mobile.
ASAP had been underlined twice, and after she had changed out of her grubby clothing and slipped into a skirt and blouse that covered most of her bumps and scrapes, her response had brought Mark back to her doorstep as soon as he could conclude his lunchtime appointment.
‘It’s damage control, that’s all. I just want you to be prepared if I do have to ask you to take a bit of time out over the first few days of term,’ he clarified, standing up and smoothing down his tie under his suit jacket in a characteristic gesture of nervous impatience. Since he and Anya had never had a disagreement he was unused to her arguing with his authority. ‘But it probably won’t come to that, because by the time school goes back this will all have sorted itself out—’
‘Probably?’ Anya said in a frustrated voice, pacing around her small kitchen. ‘You said that Sc—Mr Tyler told you it was a private party and I’ve explained why I went there. I don’t see why it has to be made into such a big deal.’ She hadn’t mentioned Liz’s call, or her hasty visit to The Pines that morning, and of course it hadn’t occurred to Mark that she might have tried to take the initiative.
Mark ran a hand through his close-cropped sandy hair, looking as harassed as he sounded. ‘It won’t be if I can help it, Anya, but unfortunately Adrienne Brinkman has already been on the phone to me this morning to quietly warn me that she’s had to discipline two Eastbrook girls who said they were taken to a wild party by boys from Hunua’s first-fifteen team—’
Anya spun around. ‘Those girls were on a school camp at the time, but the Hunua kids were on holiday—there’s no way the college can be held responsible—’
‘Not quite true,’ Mark interrupted gloomily. ‘I did have one other parent phone me this morning—a regular busybody, as it happens, but this time I’m afraid she has a point. Apparently her son, who came home drunk, found out about the party from the college’s Internet bulletin board, so the school is involved. We have to find out who hacked in and posted that message, for one thing. And she also wanted to know why, if there was a teacher from the college chaperoning the party, the alcohol wasn’t confiscated?’
‘But I wasn’t there to chaperone the party—’
‘I know, but this is obviously the kind of thing that’s going to bubble up unless we satisfy everyone that the situation is being properly looked into,’ said Mark, unknowingly echoing Scott Tyler. ‘You know how careful teachers have to be about hints they’re leading students astray. It’s a question of retaining moral authority…’
Much as she hated to do it, Anya felt driven to play the personal card. ‘Surely the fact that you can vouch for my integrity must count for a lot? For goodness’ sake, Mark, we’re going out together—’
‘Yes, well—that’s actually part of the problem, don’t you see?’ he said awkwardly. ‘If I casually sweep this under the carpet people might think that it’s because of our personal relationship. In the circumstances it’s very important that I’m seen to be acting impartially.’ He looked at her from under furrowed brows. ‘You do understand?’
She was afraid she did. ‘Does that mean you won’t be picking me up for dinner tonight after all?’ she asked drily. All their other dates had been casual, but this time Mark had booked them to dine at the gourmet restaurant of the country hotel on the other side of the Ranges.
He thrust his bunched hands into his hip pockets, looking uncomfortable. ‘If you don’t mind…I think it’s best not to, just at this point in time—don’t you think?’
She kept her thoughts to herself, her polite smile pinned firmly into place as she nodded. ‘It might look as though we were colluding.’
He looked relieved at her easy agreement. Perhaps after her outburst he had expected her to throw a tantrum.
‘Ridiculous, of course, but you know how paranoiac some people are.’ He looked down at the half-finished coffee on the table and Anya could see him already mentally edging towards the door. ‘I’ll keep you posted but, as I said, I think this will all fizzle out, especially if we divert attention to finding and making an example of this hacker, whoever he or she is…’
At her front step he turned to deliver a last piece of gratuitous advice. ‘By the way, it might help if you tried to get on with Scott Tyler instead of being at loggerheads with him all the time. If people know you’re feuding with him they might be tempted to wonder if you went to that party intending to stir up some trouble for him. I know he gave you a rough ride at your interview but don’t be too sensitive about it, that’s just his way—I’m sure it was nothing personal. In our own best interests, we need to present a united front on this one.’
Of course, it had to be her injured sensitivity and not Scott Tyler’s prejudice that was at fault, simmered Anya as she let the door swing closed behind him, tempted to give it a swift kick.
She swept the neglected coffees off the table, dumping the cold liquid down the sink before walking into her cosy living room, her arms wrapped around her waist. So her wonderful new life in the country had hit another hiccup, more serious than some of the others—so what? She would survive, as she had always survived the rough spots in her life.
She looked around at the sunlit room she had sweated to scrape down, paint and paper before she moved in, the second-hand furniture she had stripped, polished and otherwise refurbished to create the warm, natural, lived-in look that she associated with a real home. Nothing to remind her of the soulless modernity of a hotel, or the makeshift clutter of a student flat, or the regimentation of a school boarding house. Everything here was hers and no one else’s…except the big chunk of house that was mortgaged to the bank, she amended, and time would correct that unavoidable hitch.
Provided, of course, she could keep up the payments, which were geared high in order to see off the mortgage more quickly. A teacher’s salary was nothing spectacular but it was a regular income from doing a job she loved. If her reputation was so damaged that she could no longer find work in her chosen profession she might find herself in much lower-paid work and struggling to make the mortgage payments.
She wasn’t going to let that happen!
Spinning around with her fists clenched in determination, Anya looked out through the French doors and saw that Mark hadn’t yet left. He was leaning out of the window of his car talking to two people who had walked up the drive as he backed out…Scott Tyler and his daughter, the distinctive silver Jag parked in the street behind them.
She hurried outside, trying not to look self-conscious as both men turned their heads to watch her approach. Had Scott let the cat out of the bag about her visit?
‘I was just telling Mark that I thought it was a good idea for you and I to bury the hatchet,’ he said before she could open her mouth. ‘I wanted to apologise in person for getting you innocently embroiled in my nephew’s problems, and my daughter was fascinated to know you were the cousin of a world-renowned classical pianist. Petra takes piano lessons.’ He nudged his daughter forward with a large hand.
‘I’ll leave you to it, then,’ said Mark, giving Anya a smug look, as if he had personally conjured up this fortuitous happenstance, along with a subtle jerk of his eyes towards Scott that she supposed was both a warning and encouragement to mend her fences.
Anya was still off balance at the unexpected reference to Kate, and barely noticed Mark drive off.
‘What are you really doing here?’ she asked suspiciously, shading the sun from her eyes with her hand as she looked up at Scott, the neat circular coil of hair on the top of her head glowing like a halo in the bright light.
He seemed to have no problem with the glare, his perceptive eyes studying her tense expression. ‘How are you? Have you found any more injuries?’
‘No. Is that why you came back—to check I hadn’t developed whiplash and decided to sue?’
He sighed. ‘It seems to be in danger of developing into a boring habit of mine, producing relatives to deliver their apologies. Go ahead, Petra.’ He turned and walked back to his car, where he opened the boot and began to fish inside.
Anya transferred her gaze to his daughter, who shrugged, and gave her a cocky grin. ‘Sorry. He found out. I guess I knew he would, but it was worth a try.’
‘You confessed or he found out?’ She could see Scott coming back up the drive towards them out of the corner of her eye.
‘A bit of both, really…’
‘I went back to look at the path in case there was a real safety hazard that needed to be tidied up, and noticed all the fallen leaves, and damage to the creeper all the way up to her window,’ supplied her father as he rejoined them. ‘Since you’re an unlikely candidate for a cat-burglar, it didn’t take a genius to work out that Petra had decided that a simple closed door was the modern equivalent of Colditz—’
‘What’s Colditz?’
‘A World War II POW prison for chronic escapees, you appallingly ignorant child,’ was the drawling reply. ‘Haven’t you ever studied the World Wars at school?’
‘Yeah, but I usually listen to my Discman in the boring classes…you know, run the earphone wire from my bag up under my sleeve and sit with my head propped on my hand—’ she flattened her hand over the side of her face and ear.
Anya recognised the characteristic pose and hid a grin while Scott growled, ‘Have you made your apology yet?’
‘Actually she already did that, back at your house,’ Anya said. ‘Spontaneously. Before your other relative trotted out his rather more forced effort.’
He glowered at her. ‘You told me you’d fallen.’
‘I did. I just didn’t happen to mention it was because Petra landed on top of me.’ She could see he was busting to take her to task, but she wasn’t going to provide him with any more ammunition. Her eyes fell to the object he was carrying. ‘What’s that?’
As a distraction for both of them, it did nicely. ‘A new battery for your car.’ He hefted the weighty cube as if it was a feather. ‘I picked it up from the garage for you on the way over.’
She noticed the tools in his other hand. ‘Thank you, but I’ve already arranged for the mechanic to come and put one in,’ she said sharply.
‘Not any more. I told Harry to cancel the call-out. Why pay for something that you can get done for free?’
She looked dubiously at him, knowing she should be annoyed at his high-handedness, but overcome by curiosity. ‘You know how to change a battery?’ He wore the same dark trousers, but had exchanged his shirt for a tight-fitting, v-necked, navy top which was casual yet obviously expensive. He didn’t look like someone who spent much time under the hood of a car.
‘All men are born knowing basic car maintenance. It’s in the genes.’ Her contemptuous snort produced a crooked smile. ‘In my case, literally. My father was a mechanic until my mother died and he took up boozing as a career; then he relied on me to keep the family crate running.’ He began heading for the open doors of her garage. ‘Why don’t you take Petra inside to entertain you with more of her grovelling while I do the swap…?’
Petra was already heading up the path before he finished speaking and Anya hesitated before darting after him. ‘What do I owe you for the battery?’ she demanded to know.
‘Nothing.’
‘Nothing is for nothing,’ she pointed out
He stopped and turned in the shadow of the garage. ‘My daughter’s life—is that nothing to you?’
She took a step back at his fierceness. It occurred to her that he’d only known Petra for a week and, although he might have accepted in abstract that he had been a father for the last fourteen years, he had been utterly unprepared for the huge emotional impact she had on him. He was discovering within himself depths of emotion that he hadn’t realised existed, or which had been long suppressed in order for him to survive. Even though he had been cynically off-hand in his telling of the circumstances surrounding Petra’s birth, Anya had sensed a powerful retroactive resentment of the way he had been totally shut out of his daughter’s life. At the time he had been made to feel that he had nothing of value to offer his own child and somewhere deep inside him a little of that fear probably still lurked.
‘I only meant that I don’t want to be beholden to you—’ she said, uneasy with the unwelcome insight.
‘Do you think I like feeling indebted to you?’ he asked tightly, his eyes cut-glass brilliant as they scored her face.
‘I don’t know,’ she said, fighting a sudden lightheadedness. ‘I don’t think you do, either. Since Petra arrived I think you’re not quite sure what you’re feeling about anything any more.’
‘Stop trying to get inside my head,’ he growled. ‘I’m not one of your students—’
‘Thank God!’
‘I’m a full-grown man and right now I’m going get my hands filthy doing a man’s job, so why don’t you run along and flitter about the kitchen or whatever it is prissy ladies do while someone else does their dirty work for them?’
Anya’s eyes flashed. ‘Why, you sexist pig! I didn’t ask you to dirty your hands for me.’
‘No, you’re certainly like your cousin in that respect. Kate never asked but she always managed to make it clear what she expected, and those expensive hands of hers never had to get soiled because someone else ended up paying for the privilege of meeting those haughty expectations. If she hadn’t had the papers to prove it, I never would have believed she’d grown up on a farm.’
She flinched at the accuracy of his vivid word picture. ‘My life and expectations are totally different from Kate’s, so don’t you dare start comparing us!’ she said in a voice shaking with repressed anger. ‘I may not be able to change a battery, but I can change a tyre and check the oil and water, which is as much as most car owners can do. And I am not prissy!’ she was unable to resist adding in a fierce hiss.
She knew she had made a mistake when a slow, taunting smile curved his mouth and twin blue devils danced in his eyes as he leaned closer and murmured: ‘You always look prissy to me. Even in sexy green underwear with your pretty little breasts begging to be kissed you looked more naughty-but-nice-Miss-Adams than sultry and wicked Miss January. Not that prissy can’t be just as much of a turn-on to some men…’
Anya’s face was still bright red as she slammed into the house and found Petra flicking through her CD collection in the living room.
‘Is something wrong?’ Petra looked up at her, the small gold ring in her left nostril glinting as she turned her head.
‘Yes! That…that man!’ Anya’s hands clenched and unclenched by her sides.
Petra looked around, alarmed. ‘What man?’
‘Your father!’ It was rendered as the grossest of insults.
‘Oh.’ Petra’s blue eyes brightened with curiosity. ‘What’s the matter? I thought he was doing you a favour.’
Anya breathed carefully through her nose. ‘He is. He just doesn’t have to be so—’ she searched for some relatively innocuous phrase to express her seething annoyance ‘—so odiously superior about it!’
‘Well, I guess it’s hard for him not to be…him being such a superior kind of guy and all…’
Anya stared at her for a blank moment before she realised she was having her leg gently pulled. ‘You know, when you use that sarcastic drawl you sound just like him. You want to be careful; it’s not good for someone your age to be too cynical.’
‘You really think I sound like him?’ Petra asked with a touch too much nonchalance.
‘Sometimes. You have his eyes, too. What’s your natural hair colour?’
Petra pulled a face. ‘Brown. Too ordinary. Mum went spare when I did this—’ she tugged at her locks ‘—but I want to be different.’
‘I think we can safely agree you’ve achieved your goal,’ Anya told her with a small smile of understanding. ‘On the outside, at least.’
‘Oh, I feel different on the inside, too.’ It was said with a quiet determination that was at odds with her impulsive brashness.
‘Different enough to make you want to run away from home?’
She shrugged. ‘Mum would never talk to me about Dad. Even my birth certificate didn’t have his name on it. I wanted to see him but I knew she wouldn’t help, so I looked through her old stuff and found a letter from before I was born. It asked for photos of me as I grew up but she never did send him any—I asked him. When Mum makes up her mind about something that’s it—you can’t get her to change it. Once I had his name it was easy to track him down on the Net and find out that he wasn’t some sleazebag of a loser that I was worried he might be—did you know that his law practice even has its own website? I didn’t let him know I was coming because he might have got Mum to stop me. I figured once I was here he’d have to see me, even if just to get rid of me, but it turned out that he’d wanted to meet me, too…’
‘You still took some pretty horrifying chances. Lawyers can be sleazebags too, you know. You could have just written him a letter—’
‘And risk it being binned or waiting ages for a reply, or Mum finding out? I had to see him now.’ Petra modified her urgent tone with a quick grin, ‘Before I started having a serious identity crisis that could screw up my entire adulthood. I’m glad he didn’t freak out on me or anything—he’s a bit heavy-handed with the new Dad thing but otherwise he’s real cool, don’t you think?—and pretty hunky for an old guy.’
‘He’s not old,’ responded Anya automatically.
Petra gave her a knowing look. ‘So you think he’s young and hunky?’
Anya wasn’t falling into that sly trap. ‘I try not to think about him at all,’ she said. ‘Do you want to put one of those on?’ She pointed to the CDs.
Petra accepted the change of subject with a shrug. ‘I was wondering whether I could borrow these four of Kate Carlyle’s. Dad said she’s your cousin—does that mean you get freebies?’
Anya laughed. ‘I did when Kate first started recording but now she’s become so blasé she doesn’t usually bother to send them to me any more.’
‘Bummer. So most of these—’ she ran her fingers over the rack ‘—you had to go out and buy them full-price like everyone else?’
‘Well, yes. But I do get lots of free opera recordings from my parents—see.’ She showed her the tapes and CDs. Actually it was Alistair Grant who despatched them to her, usually without an enclosure. ‘My mother is a guest soprano at leading opera houses all over the States and my father travels too, as a conductor.’
‘Wow, so music was real important in your family. I bet you got all the music lessons you wanted from the time you were little.’
‘The trouble was I didn’t want them,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘I showed no musical aptitude whatsoever, thereby convincing my parents they had a changeling in the nest. I would have sacrificed all my lessons for a bit more of their personal attention. Fortunately for their hopes of a musical dynasty, Kate came to live with us and showed herself to be such a piano prodigy it took all the heat off me.’ Petra was looking at her as if she couldn’t believe her pierced ears. ‘I take it you’re enjoying your piano lessons?’
Petra’s face closed up. ‘Yeah, but Dad only pays for one hour a week so I babysit to earn the money to pay for an extra lesson.’
‘Your father pays?’ Anya was taken aback. ‘But—I thought that there wasn’t any contact between Scott and your mother?’
‘Not Scott. My other Dad—Ken—who’s married to Mum.’
‘I didn’t realise your mother was married,’ she murmured, wondering uneasily if that had been the case at the time of her affair with Scott.
‘Yeah, they just had their tenth anniversary last week,’ said Petra, banishing the disturbing spectre of adultery. ‘I’ve got two little brothers.’
Anya thought she saw the light. ‘Is that a problem for you? Ken being their real father but not yours?’
‘Nah…Lots of my friends have more than one set of parents. The boys are pests, but they’re OK. And Ken’s an OK guy—he owns a sports store.’ She shrugged. ‘I’m the problem, not them.’
Anya was about to ask what she meant when a prickling of the hairs on the back of her neck made her turn around. Scott was standing inside the door with a stillness that suggested he had been there for some time, listening to their conversation.
‘You were quick,’ she said, thankful that his eyes were resting on his daughter as she remembered the words he had used to chase her inside.
‘I told you I knew what I was doing. Can you show me somewhere I can wash up?’ He spread out his oily and grease-grimed hands. He’d pushed his sleeves up past his elbows and she could see a few nicks on his wrists. It hadn’t been such a straightforward job after all.
‘Of course.’ She could have told him where the bathroom was but she was so flustered she led him along the hall and into the green and white bathroom. She indicated the pedestal basin but he was looking around at the deep, claw-footed bath—big enough for two—the extensive collection of ornamental glass containers of bath salts and oils decorating the window sill and the fat, scented wax candles dotted on saucers around the room.
His speculative eyes moved to her warm face, intense masculine curiosity forming in the depths.
‘Don’t you dare say a word,’ she warned him.
‘Not even to ask you if you have any chemical cleansing cream?’ he asked, with an injured innocence that didn’t fool her for a moment. He nodded at the sea-shell of miniature soaps on the pedestal. ‘I don’t want to besmirch your pretty little soaps, sitting on their dish,’ he purred.
...your pretty little breasts, begging to be kissed…
He was deliberately trying to embarrass her all over again.
‘I think there’s some in here.’ Anya reached past him to open the mirrored bathroom cabinet mounted above the basin. He didn’t move out of her way, allowing her arm to brush across his chest, nosing with interest into the contents of her cabinet as she looked for the elusive tube of cream.
‘Do you mind?’ she said, as he tilted his head to read the prescription off a box of pills.
‘You can tell a lot about people from their bathrooms,’ he mused. ‘For instance, you’re obviously healthy, except for a little hay fever now and then. You don’t like taking pills any longer than is strictly necessary, you prefer the silky-smoothness of a wet shave to the mechanical kind, you’re currently celibate, very protective of your delicate skin, and—’ this with a provocative glance towards the bath ‘—you like to keep yourself very, very clean.’
Currently celibate? That slyly buried piece of effrontery was obviously based on the absence of any form of contraception in her bathroom cabinet, but it could only be a wild guess because lots of women kept their contraceptives in a bedside drawer, thought Anya. She had, during the holiday in New York after her graduation when she had naively believed that Alistair was going to be the love of her life, before Kate had blazed across his firmament and Anya’s flattering attentions had suddenly become an embarrassment.
Anya grabbed the cream and slammed the door shut, almost clipping Scott’s nose.
‘Be careful, I’ve had that broken once already,’ he said, throwing up a protective hand.
‘Disgruntled client?’ she enquired tartly, unscrewing the lid and handing him the tube.
‘Angry father.’
She had been about to leave, but he must have known that she wouldn’t be able to resist the tantalising lure of that brief statement.
‘You and your father had a physical fight?’ Was that how he had got the scar on his mouth?
He dropped the plug into the basin and nudged the hot water tap on with his forearm, vigorously working the non-foaming cream into his oil-streaked palms. ‘He fought—I dodged…most of the time, until I got big enough not to have to run.’
Her heart dropped into her boots and she felt a familiar, helpless anger. ‘You were abused as a child?’
He picked up the nail brush in the shape of an iridescent green fish and began to scrub the tips of his fingers. ‘Not until my mother died of cancer when I was ten. Dad had a lot of anger inside him after that, and when he got drunk, which was pretty often, he let fly with his fists. He never touched my sister, though—Joanna’s always been the spitting image of Mum—and when I got as big as he was he stopped. Never stopped being angry at the world, though.’
‘Didn’t anyone ever realise that you were being hurt?’ asked Anya.
His shoulders moved dismissively. ‘I wasn’t hurting half as much as he was. At least I had an escape—a future to run towards. He couldn’t break free of the past. He was locked into his pain until the day he died.’ He pulled the plug and let the dirty water drain away, rinsing the basin and his raw hands under the cold tap.
‘I’m sorry…’
‘Pity him, not me.’ He turned, holding up his dripping hands like a surgeon waiting for a scrub nurse.
Anya hurriedly passed him the sinfully fluffy green bath sheet from the towel rail.
He dried his hands and then lifted the plush pile to his cheek, turning his face inwards to inhale the faint body scent which lingered in the fibres from her bath the night before. ‘Mmm…sumptuous. You’re really a closet sensualist, aren’t you, Miss Adams? Or, should I say, a bathroom sensualist?’
‘I thought you were going to call me Anya,’ she said, choosing to confront the lesser of two evils.
‘I’ve decided I like Miss Adams. It sounds so…’
She knew what he was going to say and her hand flew up to cover his mouth, trying to smother this latest outrage. ‘Don’t say it!’
His eyes slitted wickedly above the blade of her hand, accepting her foolish dare.
‘Prissy…’ The word was muffled, his lips pursing briefly against the centre of her cupped palm in a sibilant kiss.
She removed her hand and scrubbed it down the side of her skirt, but that didn’t rid her of the intimate heat of his mouth.
She glowered at him as he threaded the towel neatly back onto the towel rail. ‘You needn’t do that. It’s going straight into the wash, anyhow.’
‘Afraid I’ve contaminated it?’ he murmured, pulling his tight sleeves back down to cover his wrists. He noticed a dollop of grease perched near the hem of his shirt where it hugged his broad hips, and pulled out his handkerchief to dab it off, cursing as it smeared deeper into the thin, breathable material.
‘That’ll probably never come out now,’ Anya told him.
He threw his ruined handkerchief into her bathroom bin and took hold of the bottom of the shirt. ‘You’re an expert on emergency spills. Shall I take it off? Maybe if you run it through the wash for me straight away…’ He curled it away from his skin, giving her a teasing flash of a tanned, washboard stomach and a deliciously furry navel.
‘I’m not doing your laundry!’ she said, backing to the door. ‘I presume that’s one of the reasons you employ Mrs Lee.’
‘It’s just an excuse, really. I thought you might welcome the chance to see me half-naked…sort of even the score between us,’ he murmured, prowling after her.
Oh, wouldn’t he just love to know she had already seen him stark naked in her fantasies in this very room?
‘If I want to even the score I’ll just sue you for all the pain and suffering you and your family have caused me,’ she hit back, aiming deliberately below the belt. ‘If I’ve already lost my job and my reputation I’ve got nothing to lose by taking you to court, have I? I bet I could gouge enough out of you to keep me in clover for the rest of my life!’
The threat of legal action had a very satisfying effect. The arrogant smile was wiped off his face, his shoulders straightening, eyes narrowing and jaw jutting. As she moved back down the hall he slipped in front of her, his arm shooting out to slam against the opposite wall, barring her way. ‘What do you mean, lost your job? What in the hell did Ransom say to you?’
‘That I might be suspended from teaching as part of the school’s “damage control” if things get messy,’ she said.
He swore. ‘You’re not serious!’
His anger spurred her own. ‘Do I look as though I’m joking?’ She succinctly laid out all Mark’s arguments. The sound of Kate playing a Chopin ‘Impromptu’ had started up in the living room but she still kept her voice low, not wanting Petra to overhear. ‘If things do go much further I can probably wave goodbye to my career. An official investigation goes into my teaching record and, even if I’m completely cleared of any wrong-doing, that kind of mud sticks. Even if it doesn’t get that far I still might find myself struggling to re-establish my credibility—’
His hand fisted against the wall. ‘Dammit, why the hell isn’t Ransom taking my lead and playing it low-key? I thought you two were supposed to have become close—’
‘That’s why I can’t expect any special favours,’ she defended Mark, choosing not to make an issue of the insinuating emphasis. ‘He has to be above suspicion.’
He made a disparaging sound in his throat. ‘Doesn’t he realise that it’s his actions that’ll give the thing legs? It’ll run all the way to the newspapers if he’s not careful.’
‘Well, that’ll just up the amount of compensatory damages you’ll have to pay, won’t it? Maybe my neck is stiffing up a bit after all. A neck brace has got to be worth a few extra thou.’ Anya cupped hand to her nape and flexed her neck with a theatrical little groan.
He dropped his arm. ‘Don’t issue threats you’re not prepared to back up,’ he said, his tone containing a little sting of contempt.
‘I can back them up and you know it,’ she flared. ‘You’ve admitted liability with your apologies. I don’t even need a good lawyer to bring a civil suit; I could practically take the case to court myself and win!’
His professional pride recoiled. ‘The hell you could!’ he exploded quietly. ‘I’d eat you for breakfast in any courtroom in the country. You could have the judge in your hip pocket and you still wouldn’t be able to screw a red cent out of me.’
‘Who’s issuing threats now? Did you really think that you could buy me off with a few paltry apologies?’
At first she had merely been taunting, to teach him a lesson, but now Anya wondered whether there wasn’t a grain of truth in what she was saying.
His eyes searched hers, an experienced predator looking for the slightest hint of weakness in his prey. ‘I thought you didn’t want me comparing you to your cousin. You’re making it pretty difficult. This is just the kind of stunt I’d expect from her—’
Her steady grey gaze didn’t falter. ‘Is asking for justice a “stunt” unless you happen to be the one doing it?’
‘You can dress it up how you like, but this is extortion, pure and simple!’
‘I prefer to call it compensation for pain and suffering, both mental and physical—and so will a judge.’
‘This is just a bluff,’ he guessed shrewdly. ‘If it came to the crunch you’d fold. Turn tail and run, like Kate did when things threatened to get sticky. You won’t dare take me on. You’re bluffing!’
She was amazed and alarmed at her own temerity, but his assumption that she would never have the guts to stand up for her principles made her dig her heels in. She knew that if she blinked first she could count herself the loser.
‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not.’ She folded her arms and raised her eyebrows, the only movement in an otherwise poker face. ‘Are you prepared to risk it? The money, the publicity…the implication that your guardianship has been negligent? Or are you willing to settle quietly out of court for an undisclosed sum? Tell me, what’s your best offer, Counsellor?’
For a moment she feared he was going to explode, but then the background music paused before the start of Kate’s second ‘Impromptu’ and Scott seemed to use the brief silence to rein himself in and let his astute brain make a lightning reappraisal.
His capitulation, when it came, was calculated and unequivocal.
He folded his arms and raised her another pair of brows.
‘OK. Here’s the deal—a one-time, non-negotiable, yes-or-no offer: forget suing and I’ll use all my personal influence and financial and legal muscle on your behalf to make sure that you emerge from all this with exactly the same reputation, status, job and prospects that you had going in—’
‘You think you can do that?’
‘Let me finish. If I succeed, you get no cash—apart from the extremely generous rate I’m prepared to pay you for privately tutoring Petra while she’s under my roof. This will not only give out the signal that you have my full support and confidence as a teacher, but also help Petra do something about the appalling grades her mother tells me she’s been getting. Lorna thinks she needs more individual attention—of the kind that I doubt she’ll get in her regular classes at the college—and, Lorna having once been an excellent teacher herself, I’m prepared to take her word for it.’
Anya’s head was whirling. ‘Your—Petra’s mother was a teacher?’
‘Oh, haven’t I mentioned it?’ he said smoothly. ‘Her career came to a rather abrupt end when she admitted she’d been having an affair with a senior student who was doing a scholarship year at the private boys’ school where she taught. She was allowed to resign rather than being fired, in order to hush it up…’
Anya felt as if she had swallowed a golf ball. ‘Are you saying—when you and she…that she was your teacher?’
‘Maths with Statistics. The lovemaking was strictly extracurricular. I got ninety-seven per cent in my final exam—to the relief of the school—and she got to have the baby she’d been wanting—which the school never found out about—so I guess you could say it was a mutually beneficial relationship.
‘With a precedent like that you can see why I might have overreacted to the circumstances in which I found you and Sean at the party. Women teachers do sometimes overstep the moral boundaries, Anya.’
‘I—yes, I suppose so…’ she faltered, knowing full well that he had blindsided her with his startling revelation in order to soften her up for the kill, and sure enough he moved ruthlessly in.
‘So, what’s your answer? Do we have a deal?’
‘You only mention what happens if you succeed.’ She-struggled to rise above the turmoil of her emotions. ‘What if you fail?’
‘If you don’t come out of this smelling like a rose, then you can name your own figure.’ Her eyes widened at the rashness of his words but he arrogantly disabused her. ‘But it’s not going to happen. I never fail. Remember that, Anya. When I set out to achieve something, I never give up and I never give in. One way or another I get what I want. So make your choice. Yes or no?’