Mistress Of The Groom

Four days later her uninvited house guest was still firmly ensconced, and Jane’s peace and quiet had been irrevocably shattered. The phone was constantly ringing and Ryan was a perpetual whirlwind of activity. If he wasn’t firing off memos and faxes or conducting conference calls, he was despatching his domestic duties with infuriating efficiency or tackling some of the most urgently needed repair work on the house with tools and materials he had salvaged from the garage.

He seemed impervious to the discomforts of the cramped cottage—indeed, seemed to treat the daily drudgery as a challenge! If she escaped down to the beach he imposed his presence on her there, too—jogging, body-surfing, leafing through reports or pestering her with conversation that was impossible to ignore. He was every bit as relentless on his mission of mercy as he had been at pursuing his vengeance.

‘Don’t you ever relax?’ she had grumbled at him on the second evening, when he was once again nagging at her to play a game of chess rather than curling up next to the oil lamp with her book. For all he wouldn’t let her lift a finger he seemed determined to involve her in everything he did.

He looked genuinely surprised. ‘I am relaxed.’

‘If this is you relaxed I’d hate to see you excited,’ she said drily, and instantly regretted her words when his eyes gleamed with amusement.

‘You already have,’ he reminded her. ‘And you didn’t hate it at all.’

She scrunched deeper in the comfy old easy chair, wishing he didn’t look so impossibly sexy in black. His trousers and short-sleeved shirt were plain, and unadorned by designer labels, yet somehow were rendered elegant by the wearer. He could ring the changes in a wardrobe that seemed to mysteriously grow larger by the day while Jane was forced by convenience to wear whatever was easiest to put on—usually the ubiquitous shorts and T-shirt.

She tossed her head. She didn’t care how she looked, she was no longer one of the dress-to-impress brigade.

‘I meant you seem to think you have to fill every waking moment with activity,’ she said, watching him set out the chess pieces he had found in some dusty corner. ‘The only time you rest is when you’re sleeping.’

She’d used to be like that, too, she realised—constantly wound up, always restlessly looking for the next challenge, alert for the next stab in the back from friend or foe. Until it had all been snatched away from her she hadn’t realised how subtly it had ground down her enjoyment of life.

He shrugged. ‘It comes naturally to me. I’ve worked hard all my life. In fact, this is the closest thing I’ve had to a holiday for years.’ His eyelids drooped as he remembered that the last holiday he had planned was going to be his honeymoon.

Jane shifted uncomfortably under his stare. ‘Ava always said you found business more interesting than you did her,’ she blurted, unknowingly echoing his thoughts.

He abandoned the chess pieces to come prowling across the room. ‘Did she come running to you with all her petty complaints about my shortcomings?’

‘They weren’t petty, not to Ava.’

‘Obviously not. But if she had come to me with them, instead of you, we might have worked them out.’

‘I doubt it,’ said Jane involuntarily, remembering Ava’s soft brown eyes brimming with anguished tears over her love for Conrad. Whatever Ryan had suffered, at least he hadn’t had to cope with the added humiliation of knowing he was being dumped for a man who didn’t have a tenth of his personal charisma.

His eyes narrowed as they always did when he aimed one of his stinging verbal darts. ‘Didn’t I satisfy her in bed? Was that why she was so quick to believe I’d been having an affair with someone else?’

‘You weren’t even sleeping together—’ Jane protested, and bit her lip as she realised the trap he had set.

He looked grimly satisfied by her admission that she had been privy to the most intimate details of his relationship with Ava. ‘Did she also tell you why?’

‘It was none of my business,’ she said, looking away. Maybe if she hadn’t actively discouraged Ava’s early confidences about her relationship with Ryan events might not have been forced to such a drastic turn. But she had dealt with the fierce envy that she had felt whenever Ava had talked about Ryan by appearing to be supremely uninterested.

‘I guess you knew she was still a virgin. She said she wanted to wait until we were married,’ he said softly, his shrewd gaze on Jane’s guiltily averted face. ‘Did you encourage her in that view, during your girlish chats, by any chance...?’

Jane’s blue eyes flashed as her chin tilted proudly up. ‘Oh, no, you don’t—you can’t blame me for that! I never did understand how she could—’ She clamped her jaw shut before she said too much.

‘What? Deny me? Resist me?’ he probed, with a trace of his former silky malice. ‘I know you find me sexually irresistible, Jane,’ he said, making her blush. ‘But we’re talking about someone with a strong sense of morality and an innate shyness.’

Jane couldn’t help snorting. It hadn’t been morality that had stopped Ava from sleeping with her fiancé—it had been her love for another man. She certainly hadn’t been shy with Conrad!

‘Whereas you...’ he murmured speculatively. ‘I think that if you were in love with a man, he wouldn’t be able to keep you out of his bed.’

Her flush deepened as she thought of the wanton way she had behaved in that hotel room. ‘If you’re implying that I have no sense of morality...’

‘Not at all. I’m just saying that once you commit yourself to a course of action you commit yourself utterly—no half measures, no holding back...full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes! A lot of people find that kind of overwhelming strength of purpose intimidating, especially in a woman.’

‘That’s their problem!’ declared Jane, not sure whether to be flattered or insulted by his character sketch.

‘I agree. Fortunately it’s not mine. I’m not easily intimidated.’ He rubbed his jaw reminiscently.

‘Nor am I,’ she said, staring resentfully up at his towering figure. ‘So you can forget about hassling me into a chess game. I’m relaxing with a book, and when I’ve finished this chapter I’m going to go to bed—to sleep,’ she added hurriedly.

He didn’t move away. ‘I’m not used to having such early nights. I’m having trouble sleeping. I toss and turn for hours in my lonely bed—’

‘Probably the lumps in the mattress,’ said Jane repressively, warned by the wicked quirk at the corner of his mouth.

‘One lump in particular,’ he agreed. ‘Care to come to my room and help me smooth it out?’

With difficulty she kept her eyes on his, acutely aware that his hips were level with her face. ‘Sorry—no hands,’ she said sweetly, holding up her bandaged mitts.

‘You won’t need them; you can use your mouth—I happen to know you have a very versatile tongue,’ he shot back silkily, and laughed at her glowering expression, sending a kick of exhilaration along her nerves. ‘Walked right into that one, didn’t you, sweetheart? You know, I think you’re right—an idle chat is far more relaxing than a tense battle of chess that takes all one’s concentration.’

He stretched his impressive musculature, abandoning the chessboard to stroll over to the couch where she was sitting with her book in her lap. ‘Let’s just sit here cosily together and talk some more about ourselves...’

That was the last thing she wanted, since he had an infuriating knack of provoking her into saying things that were better left unsaid.

So, of course, they had ended up playing chess, with Jane being roundly beaten even though all Ryan’s concentration had definitely not been on the game.

The trouble was that no matter how absorbed he appeared to be in his own activities he always seemed to know where Jane was and what she was doing.

She couldn’t even potter about in the garden without his interference. Only this morning she had waited until he was safely engaged in his morning conference call to his office before sneaking out to the garden to do some surreptitious weeding. She had only just worked out a painless technique, using a short length of bamboo stake to burrow under the weed roots and flick them out of the soil, when a shadow loomed and the stick was whipped from her hand.

‘Do you have to do this right now?’

His irritation was music to her ears. ‘Yes.’

He sighed heavily. ‘Tell me what to do.’

‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said sarcastically, eyeing the stick in his hand.

He looked down at her, kneeling at the edge of the garden. ‘I know you’re frustrated by the enforced inactivity, but I don’t want you getting that dressing dirty now that those blisters are oozing.’

‘You don’t want me doing anything!’ she burst out irritably. That soothing, reasonable voice of his got on her nerves. She didn’t want him to be kind, she wanted him to be angry and hostile and easy to hate.

‘Just following doctor’s orders,’ he said. ‘Most women would be pleased at having a man run around at their beck and call.’

‘Running around maybe, riding roughshod over no!’

‘I’m just trying to help—’

‘Are you? Or are you just here to enjoy watching me suffer?’

Her bitter utterance was followed by a pregnant silence. He crouched down beside her. ‘I’m sorry if you believe that,’ he said gravely. ‘Maybe it was true—once. But that was before I got to know you—’

She bristled. ‘You don’t know me—’

‘As well as anyone, I suspect. The fact that your best friend lives in Wellington says it all, really, doesn’t it, Jane? You don’t like people getting too close. You’d rather keep them at arm’s length, in case they find out you aren’t as tough as you pretend to be.’

She stiffened. Was that pity she heard in his voice? ‘Spare me your cheap psychoanalysis.’

‘Don’t be so defensive. I’m trying hard to build up some trust here, Jane—how about meeting me halfway? We’ve both been guilty of malice and misjudgement in the past. You said you were searching for new beginnings at Piha. So why won’t you begin by accepting my offer of friendship?’

‘Because you don’t want to be friends,’ she said harshly.

‘Lovers are friends, Jane.’

She flinched.

‘Not always,’ she denied. There had been nothing friendly about their sexual encounter in the hotel. And James—he had never mixed sex with friendship, either. As far as he had been concerned making love to Jane had been just a shrewd business move, an attempt to cement her loyalty.

‘Have you had many?’

Her eyebrows shot up haughtily. ‘Friends?’

‘Lovers.’

‘One or two.’ She tried to sound blasé and to her chagrin he took her literally, thereby guessing the truth.

‘Well, I didn’t take your virginity so I guess that makes me number two,’ he said teasingly. ‘Was I better than the other guy?’

She jumped to her feet, gesturing towards the carrots with a shaking hand. ‘Those need to be weeded and thinned out or their growth will be restricted,’ she said, quoting the gardening guide she had consulted that morning.

‘I take it that’s a “yes”!’ he called after her as she retreated hastily back into the house.

God, he was infuriating, she thought now, as she found a box of old clothes to sort through, most of all when he was right!

If only she could figure out his true motive for inflicting his presence on her. If it wasn’t revenge, if he felt genuine remorse for reducing her to her present circumstances, surely he would have granted her her plea to be left alone?

And if he had come here to seduce her, why didn’t he just get on with it with his usual relentless efficiency, dammit, instead of playing this drawn-out game of cat and mouse?

That first, bewildering night had set the scene. Ryan had the unique ability to tease her, annoy her, irritate her with his ‘take charge’ bossiness, only, in the next breath, to confuse her with such tender caring that she was in danger of believing in miracles... Then, just when he had her on the verge of surrender, aching for him to ruthlessly take advantage of her heightened vulnerability, he would withdraw, leaving her hollow with loneliness and seething with physical frustration.

Also, he had a way of looking at her—just looking—through half-closed eyes that reminded her of those heated hours they had spent together in that hotel room and the way he had looked at her then—all fury and wild desire. And once the memory was roused it was infuriatingly difficult to dislodge from her consciousness.

In this she was her own worst enemy. She should never have allowed him to continue to perform those intimate personal services—helping her dress and undress, brushing her hair each morning and night, dressing her wound—but she had been unable to deny herself the exquisite torture of his touch. She was an intelligent woman; she could have found a way around her temporary disabilities if she had really tried. Instead, while she had whined loudly at him for curtailing her freedom, a wicked part of her, a primitive throwback to preliberated times, had secretly wallowed in her helplessness.

It had to stop!

The situation was more innocent yet potentially far more dangerous than the one from which she had escaped. She could imagine the screaming headlines if the Press found out that Jane Sherwood had the millionaire tycoon who had caused her financial ruin acting as her unpaid domestic slave. They would come up with all sorts of kinky scenarios to explain the bizarre set-up—and they wouldn’t be far wrong—she thought with a frisson of excitement at the memory of some of the deviant desires that Ryan aroused in her breast.

Oh, God, what if Ryan had planned for the story to leak to the Press? He was quite capable of such Machiavellian cunning. But no. She hastily dismissed the idea. For it would be Ryan’s reputation that would suffer most if they were embroiled in a sex scandal that implied he was some kind of S&M freak who enjoyed playing a submissive role.

She was still brooding on the alarming possibilities when there was a sharp knocking on the front door. Assuming the worst, she opened the door warily, but it was no sleazy journalist lurking on the sagging porch.

‘Is Ryan in?’

Jane stared at the tall, skinny, sulky-looking redhead in the skin-tight acid-green dress who stood tapping a sandalled foot on the cracked boards, oozing hostile impatience. Parked haphazardly next to the four-wheel drive was a sporty convertible, its engine still ticking.

‘Uh, yes.’

‘Good.’ Without waiting to be invited, the young woman brushed past Jane into the house, her green eyes darting curiously about, widening at the sight of peeling paintwork and faded furniture.

‘Where is he—in here?’ She headed towards the hum of the fax machine in the living room.

Jane felt her blood begin to simmer. How dared Ryan invite a strange woman to her home? Especially a beautiful, long-legged waif who made Jane feel like a clumping Amazon.

‘No, he’s out the back, digging in the garden,’ she said sourly.

‘The garden! But Ryan hates gardening!’ The statement came out shrill and accusing.

Jane smiled into her incredulous face, enjoying a petty sense of revenge on both of them.

‘I know. Isn’t he a darling? He just can’t seem to do enough for me!’ she trilled, earning herself a vitriolic glare from kohl-lined eyes as her visitor rushed to find the back door. Her coltish grace made Jane realise that under the sophisticated make-up the waif was younger than she had first appeared—much too young for a hardened cynic like Ryan Blair.

Cradie-snatcher! she thought balefully as the girl ran towards Ryan, the long red locks—which could only have come from a bottle—flouncing down her back as she called out his name.

She was only slightly mollified by the dismay on Ryan’s face as he rose to his feet, a clutch of wispy carrot plants dripping from his large hand. So...he hadn’t been expecting a visit from his little totty!

A moment later he dropped the carrots as the girl launched herself into his arms for a hug that made Jane’s bones ache. They fitted together with the ease of long-standing intimacy. Jane folded her arms across the tightness in her chest as the pair began an animated conversation, the girl’s thin arms gesticulating wildly and Ryan’s body language surprisingly defensive. Good! She hoped he was having a great deal of trouble explaining himself!

He saw Jane still standing on the verandah and slung his arm across the girl’s narrow shoulders, tugging her back towards the house in spite of her obvious reluctance.

‘I hope Melissa wasn’t rude. Sometimes she tends to act first and think later when family matters are at stake,’ he said, coming up the steps.

‘Melissa?’ Jane echoed faintly as the truth hit her. She tried not to gape as she compared the sulky, slinky creature in front of her to the vague memory of a plump brown-haired sixteen-year-old trailing Ava down the aisle. No wonder the hostile green eyes had seemed so familiar. Although she had never met Ryan’s sister she recalled Ava describing how excited Melissa had been about being a bridesmaid for the first time and how much she had loved her frothy dress.

Ryan was digesting her ill-concealed shock. ‘Of course...who did you think she was?’ he asked curiously.

Jane stiffened. ‘I had no idea, since she didn’t stop to introduce herself,’ she said coldly, to hide her chagrin.

She was so busy grappling with the implications of Melissa’s arrival that she allowed herself to be hustled into the kitchen where Ryan calmly set about the ritual of morning tea.

‘Jealous, Jane?’ he murmured in her ear as he moved past her to place the kettle on the stove.

‘In your dreams!’ she muttered, haughtily ignoring his knowing smile, aware of Melissa’s resentful regard.

‘Oh, yes—frequently...’ His soft words were accompanied by a brief resting of his hand on her hip, ostensibly to move her out of the way so he could reach the mugs on the shelf behind her.

‘You still haven’t been formally introduced, have you?’ he said as they all sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Jane Sherwood, my sister Melissa, who’s an aspiring model—’

Melissa’s head jerked back. ‘I’m not aspiring. I already am a model!’

‘Part-time—’

‘Only until my career takes off. As soon as I get more jobs than I can fit in with my lectures I’m dropping out. I can always go back to university later—’

It was obviously an old argument. ‘But you won’t. It’s much harder to get back into studying after years away from it. I don’t know why you can’t continue to fit your modelling around your lectures.’

‘Because a modelling career doesn’t last very long—’

‘So much more reason to have other qualifications to fall back on.’

‘So you have to strike while the iron’s hot, make the most of your opportunities when they occur. If I want to succeed I have to make myself available when photographers want me to be available, not the other way around.’

‘What do you think?’ Ryan asked Jane unexpectedly.

‘What’s it got to do with her?’ snarled Melissa, tossing her head in a swirl of fire.

‘Absolutely nothing,’ said Jane flatly. ‘It’s your life. What you do with it is entirely up to you.’ She looked across at Ryan. ‘Don’t let anybody tell you any different.’

She could see that Melissa was torn between the desire to use the comment to support her own views and the equally strong desire not to agree with anything Jane said.

‘Troublemaker!’ said Ryan. ‘Here—’ he dunked a straw into Jane’s mug. ‘Drink your tea. Jane wanted to be a dress designer but she let her father bully her into business,’ he told his sister.

Again that flicker of confusion as Melissa frowned at the dressing and tape on Jane’s hands. ‘I don’t see why I should be expected to feel sorry for her,’ she burst out, gnawing on her pouting red lips. ‘Or why you had to move in with her. I couldn’t believe it when I found out where you were—’

‘I’ve already explained all that.’

So that’s what they had been discussing so heatedly in the garden. Jane would have traded her last cent to have heard his explanation!

‘But—’

‘Melissa!’

The quiet thunder only slightly subdued the girl’s rebelliousness. ‘I only wanted to ask why it had to be here!’ She cast a disparaging look around the kitchen, much as her brother had done several days before. ‘At least up the hill you’d have tons more room and all the mod cons!’

‘Up the hill?’ Jane frowned in puzzlement.

The breath hissed through Ryan’s teeth as Melissa said sullenly, ‘At our place. Why couldn’t you have stayed there instead of making my brother live in this dump?’

‘I didn’t make him do anything,’ gritted Jane, before the true import of Melissa’s words sank in. No wonder Ryan had wanted to shut his sister up! ‘Wait a minute... your place? Are you saying that you have a bach here at Piha?’

Melissa laughed scornfully. ‘I’d hardly call a five-bedroomed house on three acres of headland bush a “bach”!’ It was her turn to frown as she looked from Jane’s blank shock to her brother’s annoyed expression. ‘You didn’t know? You didn’t tell her we had a house here?’ she asked Ryan in a deeply disconcerted tone of voice.

‘No, he didn’t tell me!’ said Jane, feeling just as unhappy as she glared at the culprit.

He had the gall to shrug coolly. ‘Since you were adamant you wouldn’t leave here, it didn’t seem relevant. Besides, technically the house isn’t mine—I bought it for our family trust a couple of years ago.’

‘Not relevant!’ she repeated with outraged shrillness.

‘Well, was it? Would you have accepted an invitation to be my guest while your hand healed?’

‘No! But I didn’t invite you to stay here, either, and that didn’t stop you going ahead and doing it anyway!’ she pointed out.

‘Because you’re too stubborn to admit you need help with everything but the lightest of tasks. I’m not leaving you alone until you can prove otherwise—’

‘Why don’t you just hire a nurse for her?’ Melissa interrupted truculently.

‘Because Jane is my personal responsibility,’ said Ryan, with a faint emphasis that made Jane flush. ‘And as you know, Mel, I always take my responsibilities seriously.’

The quiet implacability of his statement sounded like a warning, although Jane wasn’t sure whether it was intended for herself or his sister. But Melissa obviously possessed a full measure of the dogged Blair tenacity, for while she appeared to let the subject drop she returned to it from different angles again and again, with terrier-like persistence.

‘But it’s mid-term break—you know I only have a week off. If you’re going to be down here you should at least be staying with us.’

Jane could have retreated to her room, but she was not going to be driven even further into exile by this family. If they wanted to discuss their private business then they would be the ones to withdraw. So she sat in silence, her face a mask of haughty indifference as she sipped her tea, secretly fascinated by the interaction between brother and sister.

Ryan was revealing another facet of himself, mild and restrained, as he dealt with Melissa’s youthful dramatics. The deep bond of their affection for each other was revealed in the freedom with which they argued, unconstrained by fear of being rejected or belittled for their beliefs. Even though they sparred vigorously there was none of the bitterness that had characterised Jane’s father’s attacks on her actions and opinions.

It was something Jane had never had, and envied horribly—that easy affection, that wonderful security of knowing that you’re loved whatever you say or do. So she was almost sympathetic when Ryan briefly left the room to check an incoming fax and Melissa rounded on her like a virago.

‘As far as I’m concerned you deserve everything that’s happened to you! If you think you can sink your claws into my brother you’ve got another think coming!’

‘I don’t think there’s much danger of my doing that at the moment,’ said Jane wryly, indicating her damaged hands.

‘I don’t believe that pathetic helpless act for one minute.’ The green eyes blazed fiercely. ‘And I bet Ryan doesn’t, either! He said you were a lying, scheming bitch!’

‘Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?’

Ryan came back before Melissa could think of a comeback but, a few minutes later, she jumped up from the table.

‘Well, if you’re not going to stay up at the house, then neither am I,’ she announced dramatically to her brother. ‘I’m going to stay here with you!’

While Jane gaped at her presumption, Ryan merely leaned against the sink, looking indulgently amused. ‘You—in this dump? Where there’s no running hot water, no television and you have to do your laundry by hand?’

Melissa looked briefly aghast before tossing her head in annoyance. ‘If you can hack it, so can I. I’m driving up to get my things. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’

And with a triumphant look at Jane’s stunned face she flounced out of the house.

Jane recovered her voice. ‘She’s not serious, is she?’ she cried, crossing to the window to watch the girl fling herself behind the wheel of her jazzy yellow car and rev it unnecessarily as she backed into a turn. ‘Does she think I’m running a free boarding house for stray Blairs? It’s ridiculous! One uninvited guest is bad enough. If she comes back you tell her she can’t possibly stay here!’

Ryan shrugged as he put their cups in the sink. ‘Once Mel gets an idea into her head it’s difficult to dislodge it. She’s very big on family togetherness. For a long time I was the father figure in her life, and even after Mum married Steve I was the one to whom Mel looked for primary advice and guidance—consequently she’s rather possessive of me.’

He gave Jane a sly, sidelong look. ‘As soon as she found out I was here with you she came hotfoot to check the situation for herself. For some reason she seems to think I need protecting from your wicked wiles.’

‘Maybe the reason being that you told her I was a lying, scheming bitch,’ said Jane acidly.

‘Ah, well...’ He spread his hands ruefully. ‘Perhaps she did overhear me say a few uncomplimentary things about you in the past.’

‘How did she find out where I was? How many other people know you’re here?’ she asked jerkily, feeling the world she had escaped threatening to close in on her again.

‘Just Carl, Irene—my secretary—Graham Frey...and my mother, of course. As far as everyone else is concerned I’m having a break from deadly office routine at the family holiday home—’

But Jane’s brain had frozen. ‘Your mother?’

He looked at her gravely. ‘There are no secrets in my family, Jane. We’ve always been frank with each other. Mothers tend to worry if they don’t know where their children are, even when they’re adults.’

Oh, God... ‘What did you tell them? How much does Melissa know about me?’

‘Everything.’

‘Everything?’ Jane was appalled; her hands rose to her hot cheeks.

Gently Ryan shackled her wrists and pulled her arms down, preventing her from hiding her devastated expression. ‘I don’t mean the intimate details—that I tried to treat you like a prostitute and you tried to treat me like a one-night stand. I don’t involve my sister in my sex life,’ he said, ruthlessly excising her shame. ‘But she certainly knows the rest—what your father did to ours was always openly discussed in our house, and she knew I was obsessed with getting revenge on him, and then on you...’

She couldn’t look at him. ‘So she knows that it was me—at the wedding—’

‘Of course. My family believed in me, even if others were quick to condemn—they deserved to know their faith was justified. They didn’t agree with my decision to protect Ava by refusing to make a scandal out of your lies, but because they loved me they accepted it and supported me with their silence—even though it strained some of their own friendships.’

‘Oh, God...’ She shivered. No wonder Melissa had looked at her with hatred and contempt.

Ryan’s hands ran up and down the back of her goose-pimpled arms, warming the chill from her skin, pulling her against the solid column of his body. Their height difference was accentuated by her lack of shoes, and Jane’s nipples tightened treacherously against the lace of her bra as her belly nudged his denim-clad hips.

‘You were cold then, too... Your voice had that emotional frigidity you assume whenever you’re most frightened,’ he murmured against her forehead. ‘You were so damnably convincing in your humiliated dignity that for one nightmarish moment I nearly believed it myself. Why won’t you talk about it with me? Is it anything to do with Ava—why she was so quick to forgive you? Help me to understand.’

She had stiffened within the circle of his arms at his shattering admission, now she pushed at his chest with panicky elbows.

Ava! His voice always softened on her name. Perhaps speaking to her on the telephone had reawakened some of his old feelings, and if he was still carrying a torch for her then to discover how thoroughly she had betrayed his love and trust would be even more deeply humiliating now than a quick, cruel dose of the bitter truth would have been three years ago. Who wanted to be told they had spent years cherishing a shining memory that was in reality a pitiful lie? He might feel justified in lashing out with another destructive orgy of vengeance.

Either way, Jane would once again be caught in the middle. She had already revealed too much about herself to him over the last few days—being misunderstood was the last line of defence for her wary heart! ‘I thought you’d already decided that it was the jealous spite of an old maid.’

There was wry humour in his voice as he let her go and tilted her chin with his fist. ‘You may be old now but you were only twenty-three at the time. Oh, I can still accept the jealousy part, but not the spite. You’re a fighter, but unlike your father—and me—you haven’t proved to be very good at nursing a grudge. By all rights you should hate me with a passion, but instead, well...’ He trailed off, his eyes moving down over the full breasts pushing against the soft T-shirt...down to delicately tanned legs revealed by her linen shorts.

‘I do hate you,’ she said quickly. Too quickly. His eyes gleamed and he dropped a kiss on her mouth, the kind of casual salute he had perfected purely to drive her mad.

‘One day you’re going to trust me enough to tell me what I want to know...’

And then he would walk away. ‘Is that what all this pretence of caring is about? Persuading me to talk about the good old days?’ she managed sarcastically.

He didn’t even bother to argue that it wasn’t a pretence. He merely gave her the bold, confident smile of a seasoned hunter. ‘That...and seducing you back into my bed!’

Maybe there might be an advantage to having a hostile nineteen-year-old chaperon hanging around after all! Jane thought feverishly.

She was wrong.

Melissa arrived back as threatened, her small boot stuffed with a clutch of bags that necessitated Ryan shifting boxes from the third bedroom into the garage. She lavished her brother with laughing attention and hissed baleful insults at Jane whenever the two women were alone. She complained about anything and everything, especially the fact that Jane was being waited on hand and foot while she, Melissa, had to take on her share of the chores. At lunch she changed into another outfit designed to make Jane feel like a slattern for arriving at the table in the same T-shirt and shorts, and entertained Ryan with non-stop stories about people that Jane didn’t know and cared less about.

In the afternoon she got a measure of her own back by going for a brisk walk along one of the bush tracks that linked up with other walking trails through the western Waitakeres. But her usual enjoyment of the hushed beauty of the native forest was compromised by the sound of Melissa panting and whining in her wake, constantly begging Ryan to slow down, or rest, or help her get the stones out of her sneakers, or identify some piece of flora or fauna—anything to prise him away from Jane’s side.

Later, while Ryan was working at his computer and Jane was lying on an old rug in the garden sketching on some scrap paper, with a small pencil-stub lightly suspended between her left forefinger and thumb, she was joined by Melissa, who wore a minuscule string bikini that would have created a riot on the beach. Braced for another round of hostilities, Jane instead found herself listening to chapter and verse about the many, many beautiful, witty and wonderful women who charmed Ryan’s existence, how marvellous a son and brother he was and how he would never do anything that would hurt his mother, especially after the hardships and disappointments she had suffered in the past...

A sledgehammer would have been more subtle.

Jane gritted her teeth through a chatter-filled dinner that Melissa had merrily helped her brother prepare and could barely raise a smile when Ryan firmly stated that she was making him nervous by hovering over his shoulder as he changed the dressing on Jane’s burnt palm. He suggested she pour the pan of hot water on the stove into the sink to start the washing-up, and she immediately began complaining about the unnecessary strictures on the use of electricity.

‘The little sister from hell,’ Ryan murmured ruefully, gently peeling off the old dressing while Melissa clattered the plates indignantly into the sink behind them.

‘You should know—you both come from the same origins,’ Jane whispered tartly as they studied the shiny pink patches of new skin emerging from beneath the weeping blisters, but the hint of conspiracy in his amusement was irresistible. ‘One minute she’s the wicked witch of the Waitakeres, the next it’s Pollyanna on speed,’ she muttered. ‘Is she ever going to run down?’

He chuckled. ‘She’s jealous.’

His soft reply feathered along her exposed nerves. ‘I don’t know why—I’m not making any claim on you...’

His eyes were very blue. ‘A claim doesn’t have to be verbal to exist. If she hasn’t already guessed we’re lovers she soon will...’

His whisper seemed as loud as a shout in her ears, and Jane flushed as she glanced guiltily at Melissa’s expressively outraged back.

‘Ex-lovers,’ she said through her teeth. Her eyes fluttered down and she experimentally flexed her fingers and winced.

‘Still painful?’

Jane nodded, grateful for the prosaic turn of the conversation. ‘But only when I clench or stretch it...the rest of the time it’s just uncomfortably tight.’

‘Graham says to give it another few days under a light dressing, then you can leave it open to the air...’ Much to Jane’s embarrassment he was reporting her progress to his friend over the telephone each day, as if her moderate burn were of life-threatening importance.

After he had redressed the wound Jane left brother and sister finishing the dishes and sat in the lumpy old easy chair under the window in the lounge with her pencil and the sheaf of sketches that were beginning to germinate an idea in the back of her mind. When the others joined her she was sufficiently immersed to have the excuse of turning down Ryan’s suggestion of a card game, so a two-handed game was played until Melissa tired of losing and perversely chose to take a dig at Jane’s self-absorption by plucking up one of the sketches as it slipped off the faded arm of the chair.

The disdain slid off her mobile face, her eyes brightening with interest as she snatched up another drawing. ‘Hey, fashion designs! Far out! I thought you were sketching boring scenery or something. I like this layered look—’

She suddenly remembered she was enthusing to the enemy and tried to affect uninterest as Jane explained that she had often sketched an outfit that she wanted her dressmaker to sew rather than choosing an existing design from a book of patterns or a fashion magazine.

It was left to Ryan to pick up the conversation and ask to see more of the painstakingly executed drawings, and his sister scowled when he expressed a surprised admiration that warmed Jane with pride. Melissa immediately trashed the moment by gushing about the designer who had made such a wonderful job of Ava’s wedding and bridesmaids’ dresses.

‘I don’t suppose Ava could bear to keep it after what happened...’

Ryan didn’t turn a hair at this gross insensitivity. ‘Perhaps she wore it for her second wedding and imbued it with happier memories,’ he said sardonically.

Jane knew the pain he must be shielding with his cynicism. ‘No, she and Conrad were married quietly in a register office—’ She broke off, biting her lip as Ryan’s gaze snapped to attention.

‘Oh? Were you there?’ Jane looked away. ‘Were you one of their witnesses, Jane?’

‘Yes,’ she admitted uncomfortably.

‘And a godmother to their first child, so I understand. Curiouser and curiouser...’ he said softly. He might have pursued his line of thought, but Melissa distracted him by deciding it was dark enough to turn on the lights and starting an argument when she discovered she was supposed to use lamps and candles that were probably a fire hazard or would give off toxic fumes, or burn up all the oxygen in the room.

By the following afternoon Jane was on the point of throttling her additional unwanted guest. There was no eluding Melissa’s constant, carping, competitive chaperonage, and with Ryan refusing to budge or temper his possessive attitude towards Jane—indeed it had become subtly more intense since his sister’s arrival—she was driven to deliver a gunfighter’s ultimatum: the cramped cottage wasn’t big enough for the three of them. The portable stereo with its head-banging music and floor-pounding bass had been the last straw.

As she’d expected, Ryan declined to tremble at the empty threat, but he did suggest a compromise—the only one he was prepared to consider.

If Jane agreed to spend the next few days in the five-bedroomed house up the hill then, as soon as her burnt hand was fully functional again, she could return to her cottage with a guarantee that she would be left in peace. In the meantime she would have all the privacy she desired, a superb cook/housekeeper to wait on her instead of Ryan’s unsettling personal attentions, and Melissa kept firmly off her back.

‘Is that possible?’ said Jane wryly.

‘In my house, she obeys my rules. If she doesn’t like them, she can go back to Auckland.’

‘And afterwards, when I come back here...you’ll go away and leave me alone?’ she said cautiously. ‘That’s a promise?’

His thick black eyelashes screened his eyes, his blunt, handsome features tight and inscrutable; his was a gambler’s face, intent on winning the pot by out-reading the opposition.

‘Yes, if that’s what you want...’