Dark Mirror
Daphne Clair
Reflections of Desire… Fler was stunned at her eighteen-year-old daughter's attempt to take her own life… and guilt-ridden at not having foreseen the possibility of such a drastic response to a broken love affair. But mostly Fler felt enraged at the man who had so carelessly taken Tansy to the brink of self-destruction.Not that Kyle Ranburn was about to let Fler walk off believing the worst - there were two sides to every story and she was going to hear his. But at what point had Fler begun to think less of Kyle's relationship with Tansy… and more about his feelings for her?
Dark Mirror
Daphne Clair
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#u45523197-e67d-5db1-8f9f-fdcbd397bc56)
CHAPTER TWO (#u937ef79f-6104-5a4d-8079-cf711910ebd9)
CHAPTER THREE (#u7d2559b6-4066-598b-99e0-6170909d51e6)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u4f60bc27-3104-540d-a13f-9b67afd23295)
CHAPTER FIVE (#ue218f3d6-12e7-5d29-9e88-b7b235ef5cd1)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
THE man was standing in the hospital corridor when Fler came out of the room where they’d put her daughter. They’d told her he was there, that he’d brought Tansy in. She couldn’t recall whether he’d been there when she arrived. She’d been too intent then on getting to Tansy’s side, finding out her chances, being there for her, to notice anyone—anything—that wasn’t directly related to her daughter’s survival.
Now she smelled the antiseptic and polish, saw the cheap prints on the walls and the shine of the green vinyl on the wide floor of the corridor, heard the murmur of voices from the ward office. And saw the tall, grey-suited man straighten from where he’d been leaning against the wall with his arms folded, and come towards her.
With a curious detachment she noted the thick brown hair, brushed neatly back, the slight furrow between his dark brows, the hazel eyes and pronounced cheekbones, the cheeks appearing rather hollowed by contrast. His nose was classically straight but a shade long, and his mouth wasn’t thin but looked firm and decisive. There was something surprising about that mouth.
He looked older than she’d expected, and briefly she wondered if she was mistaken, but he said, ‘Mrs Hewson? My name’s Kyle Ranburn...’ And she knew there was no mistake.
He seemed surprised too, she noticed. From being oblivious to her surroundings, she’d suddenly become hypersensitive to every irrelevant detail. A nurse walked by them, and she heard the hushed squeak of rubber on the well-shined floor. She noticed that Kyle Ranburn wore no tie, that his rumpled shirt had three buttons undone, and a pulse was beating under the lightly tanned skin of his throat, revealed by the open collar. His eyes were flecked with brown around the irises, more green towards the edge. And he hadn’t shaved. A musky male scent underlaid the faint sharpness of sweat. He probably hadn’t had a chance to wash, either. She supposed she ought to be grateful that he had obviously lost no time answering Tansy’s call in the night.
He held out a hand to her and she looked down at it, saw his fingers were long but blunt-ended, the nails cut short.
When she didn’t take his hand, he withdrew it, saying evenly, ‘How is she now?’
‘They think they’ve got rid of the pills. She’ll probably be all right, if there’s no liver damage. They’re going to keep her in for a couple of days to be sure. But they seem fairly sure they got the drugs out of her system in time. She isn’t going to die.’
‘That’s good.’
‘You must be relieved?’ Fler asked in brittle tones.
‘Yes, of course. Very.’ Unforgivably, he glanced at the leather-strapped stainless steel watch on his wrist. ‘Look, I really have to go, I’m afraid—’
The gesture broke her determined calm. All the varied emotions she’d been tightly reining in for hours, while she hastily dressed in anything that came to hand, made hurried phone calls of her own, ran to her car in the cold dawn and then drove for almost three long, terrified hours, shattered in a flare of shaking, white-hot rage. ‘You callous bastard!’ She wanted to hit him, preferably with a blunt instrument.
He blinked. ‘I’m sorry—’
‘I’m sure you are!’
He looked away for a moment, as if thinking, and then said, ‘I don’t know what Tansy told you, Mrs Hewson, but—’
‘She’s told me about you!’
‘—I didn’t do anything to her. She did it to herself.’
‘You know damned well you were responsible!’ Tansy’s broken, tearful, half-conscious mutterings had made that unmistakably clear. ‘How old are you?’
He looked taken aback. ‘What?’
‘I said, how old are you? You must have known that Tansy is only eighteen.’
‘If that has anything to do with—’
‘You must be at least ten years older.’
‘I’m thirty,’ he said. ‘Look, Mrs Hewson, Tansy has a problem—’
‘Yes, she does. You!’
He ran a hand over his hair, and looked about them. An orderly was wheeling a frail, grey-haired man down the corridor towards them, and two nurses came through the swing doors and walked past, chattering. ‘This isn’t really the place to discuss it. And I do have to go.’
‘I don’t think I have anything to discuss with you,’ Fler said. ‘Thank you for bringing Tansy in,’ she added stiffly. He’d probably saved her life. But it wouldn’t have needed saving if this man had any sense of decency, if Tansy had never had the misfortune to meet him.
He looked as though he wanted to say something more, but then he made an exasperated gesture with his hands, nodded to her curtly, and left.
‘Would you like a cup of coffee?’ the nurse coming out of Tansy’s room offered.
She shook her head. ‘May I go back and sit with my daughter?’
‘Yes, of course. She’s sleeping it off now. Not likely to wake again for some time. Maybe you should get yourself something to eat at the cafeteria.’
‘I will later,’ she promised. Just now she had to be with Tansy, hold her hand and feel its inert warmth in hers, assure herself that her daughter was really breathing, really alive after that brush with deliberately induced death.
She could scarcely believe that lovely, bright, talented Tansy, with all her future before her, had really tried to kill herself.
They said she’d emptied the medicine cupboard in the bathroom of the flat she shared with three other students, all of them away for the weekend. She’d taken everything she found. The medical team had managed to get that much information from her, and from the man she’d finally called before the cocktail of drugs she’d swallowed took deadly effect. He’d had the sense to collect up the bottles and bring them into the hospital with her.
‘She’s lucky,’ they said. ‘He did all the right things.’
It didn’t make her feel any more kindly towards Kyle Ranburn. What must the man have done to poor Tansy, to make her so desperate?
And why, darling, Fler thought, staring at the pathetically tangled fair hair on the pillow and the waxy pallor of her daughter’s face, why didn’t you call me, tell me what was troubling you? Whatever it was, we’d have worked it out. We will, when you’re better, she promised silently. And found tears running hotly down her cheeks.
There was a basin in the small room, and she got up to rinse away the tears. It wouldn’t help Tansy for her to crack up now.
She splashed cold water over her face and dried it with a paper towel. In the mirror over the basin she looked almost as white as the girl in the bed, her clear green eyes dulled and bloodshot with worry and the aftermath of tears. Her hair, several shades darker than Tansy’s, was a mess. Automatically she took a comb from her bag and smoothed it back over her ears in the sleek style she’d adopted when she got it cut a few years ago.
Tansy had objected. ‘I liked it long.’
‘It’s a nuisance,’ Fler had told her. ‘I have to pin it up every day, and I haven’t got the time.’
‘Leave it loose,’ Tansy had suggested. ‘It’s pretty.’
‘I’m too old for that.’
‘Thirty-four isn’t all that old,’ fifteen-year-old Tansy had assured her endearingly. ‘And anyway, you don’t look it.’
She was thirty-seven now, and this morning she looked every day of it, she was sure. The fine lines at the corners of her eyes and on her forehead were more pronounced than usual, and there were blue shadows beneath her eyes. Even her mouth was pale. She fumbled a lipstick from the bag and used it. If Tansy woke soon, she wouldn’t want to find her mother looking as though she was in need of a hospital bed herself.
She closed the bag and went back to the bed, gazing at the oblivious girl for a few minutes, then going to the window to stare out at the view, what there was of it.
A hum of morning traffic rose from the invisible streets of Auckland. Several floors down she could see people hurrying from a car park to the hospital buildings, some of the women wearing white or green uniforms, most clutching jackets or coats against a wintry breeze, although the sun glinted off the windows of the parked cars. Between a jumble of anonymous tower blocks she glimpsed a few round-headed trees, and in the distance a wedge of blue sea.
She’d take Tansy home, she thought. Home to Northland, away from Auckland and its impersonal big-city atmosphere. Away from men like Kyle Ranburn.
Kyle Ranburn. A name that months before had begun to crop up with disturbing regularity in Tansy’s infrequent letters, her rather more frequent collect calls home. At first Fler had thought he was a fellow student. It was some time before she’d discovered he was on the staff of the university, before she had begun to be uneasy about his influence on her daughter, and Tansy’s obvious dependence on him.
Before she’d realised that her daughter was engaged in a full-blown love-affair with a man who, she became increasingly certain, was probably enjoying having an ardent, inexperienced young girl on a string but who was bound eventually to break her heart.
When Tansy was home for the May holidays, Fler had tried tactfully to voice her concern.
‘I know you think a great deal of this man,’ she said. ‘But he must be a few years older than you. What sort of person is he?’
Apparently he was some kind of demigod, from Tansy’s rapturous description. But it didn’t really tell her much.
When the eulogy appeared to be over she said, keeping her voice light, ‘I expect half of your friends have a crush on him, too, if he’s as wonderful as you say.’
‘You don’t understand,’ Tansy declared impatiently, the age-old pronouncement of youth to a parent. ‘It’s not like that at all. Kyle and I have a...a relationship.’
A relationship? Did she mean—? ‘What kind of relationship?’ she asked.
Mistake. She’d meant it to sound like a matter-of-fact woman-to-woman question. It had come out sharply, almost an accusation, definitely mother-to-possibly-wayward-daughter. ‘Are you going out together?’ she asked more casually.
‘Sometimes. Well, we don’t exactly go out much, you know. I see him in class, of course, and he takes some of the tutorials himself. But Kyle has to be careful. Discreet, you know? He couldn’t let anyone think he’s favouring me. He’s got to think of his position.’
Does he, now? Fler thought grimly. It sounded as though Tansy was quoting him. He didn’t want to be seen with her in public. That was obvious. ‘You know, it’s not exactly ethical for a lecturer to seduce one of his students,’ she said.
‘Kyle hasn’t seduced me!’
Maybe not yet, but Fler would have laid odds it was on his agenda. With the emphasis Tansy had given it, the remark was ambiguous. She asked a blunt question. ‘Are you sleeping with him?’
‘What if I am?’ Tansy flushed, looking boldly at her mother. ‘I’m over the age of consent, so there isn’t a thing you can do about it.’
That gave Fler a nasty little jolt. She said, ‘How serious is this, Tansy?’
‘I love him,’ Tansy said, her eyes wide and defiant.
As gently as she could, Fler said, ‘Darling, are you sure you’re not fooling yourself?’
Tansy had been immediately defensive and angry, and they’d had their first major quarrel in years. It had ended with Tansy in tears, accusing Fler of not wanting to let go of the apron strings, of being jealous of her daughter having a man when she didn’t, of wanting to ruin Tansy’s life as she’d wrecked her own.
Of course Fler had taken it all with a healthy pinch of salt. Tansy was still young and didn’t mean half of what she said in temper. But the accusations were a disturbing echo of her own insecurities. Maybe there was a grain of truth in them. So she’d trodden carefully from then on, wary of alienating Tansy, terribly afraid for her, and holding herself ready to be available for comfort and support when the inevitable break finally came.
Now it had, with stunning force. Never in a million years would she have expected Tansy to attempt suicide. She felt sick with shock. And guilty, too. Because she hadn’t foreseen anything like this, although she’d thought she and Tansy were close.
But mostly, she felt a hot, vengeful rage against the man who had carelessly, cruelly, for some whim or because it fed his masculine ego, brought her lovely, loving daughter to the brink of self-destruction. Quite simply, she wanted to kill him.
CHAPTER TWO
‘KYLE?’
Tansy’s voice was scarcely more than a whisper.
Fler instantly crossed to the bed, her anxious eyes on the gold-tipped lashes struggling to open. ‘Tansy...’ She took the slack hand again in hers, smoothed the fine hair away from the clammy forehead. ‘It’s all right, I’m here.’
Tansy’s brow briefly wrinkled. She managed to open her eyes for a moment before they closed heavily. ‘Mummy!’ The old childhood name. ‘Wha’ are you...?’
‘The hospital called me.’ The early morning call, the calm, impersonal voice on the line... ‘Your daughter has been brought into hospital...an overdose...’
‘Where’ Kyle?’ Tansy whispered.
Fler tamped down a fresh spasm of rage. Calmly she said, ‘He had to go. Don’t worry about it now.’
A tear appeared under the closed lashes and ran on to the pillow. Fler said almost fiercely, ‘Don’t cry, darling! Everything’s going to be all right. You’ll see.’
I will kill him, she thought dispassionately. One of these days I damned well will.
* * *
As a serious proposition, the resolution faded overnight. Regretfully, Fler acknowledged that she wasn’t the stuff of which murderers were made. It didn’t stop her from fantasising about doing serious harm to Kyle Ranburn. More realistically, she contemplated laying a complaint with the university authorities, but knew that her own relationship with Tansy might suffer badly from that. And what Tansy needed now was support and rest, not to be unwillingly involved in a vendetta which might well turn public.
It made her heart ache that every time she went into the room she saw the tense expectancy in Tansy’s face turn momentarily to disappointment before she put on a smile for her mother. Neither of them mentioned Kyle Ranburn again, but he was always, Fler was grimly aware, there in spirit, like a spectre at the feast.
The staff told her he hadn’t visited, and although she was sure that it was better for Tansy not to see him again she was furious all over again at his heartlessness. She covertly inspected the card on a basket of flowers that appeared on the bedside locker late on Sunday, but it was from Tansy’s flatmates.
That evening, when they had told her that Tansy would be discharged in the morning, she found him at the ward door when she was on her way out.
She halted abruptly at the sight of him, and said, ‘Have you come to see her at last?’
He shook his head. He looked grim and slightly uncomfortable. As well he might, she thought.
‘No,’ he said. ‘Actually I hoped to see you.’
Her head went up sharply. ‘Why?’
‘I thought...we should talk about your daughter.’
A group of visitors brushed past them, carrying flowers and magazines, and he lightly took her arm, moving her to one side.
Fler pulled away from him, her mouth tight.
He said, ‘Can I buy you a cup of coffee? Somewhere that we can talk with a bit of privacy.’
She said, ‘I’ll buy my own coffee, thanks.’ She didn’t want to take anything from this man. ‘But I’d like to talk to you, too.’ She had a few home truths to tell him.
* * *
They walked to a coffee bar. He seemed to know the area, and while the place he chose wasn’t upmarket it was clean and cosy and the coffee was good. He led her to a booth and saw her seated before he slid in opposite her. He asked her what the doctors had said, and she told him that they didn’t expect any permanent after-effects.
He nodded and said formally, ‘I’m glad. That must be a burden lifted for you.’
Fler didn’t answer. The booth was small, and she was conscious of his masculine aura, a sense of controlled power, of assurance about the straight dark brows, the clear-cut mouth, the broad shoulders under a faultlessly cut charcoal suit. Today he wore a grey tie patterned with tiny red diamonds, and his paler grey shirt was pristine. When he spooned half a teaspoon of sugar into his coffee she saw a gleaming cufflink in his sleeve, a tiny dark red stone set into one corner of an initialled gold square. Not many men of his age used cufflinks these days. His hands looked smooth but strong and masculine, and he wore no rings.
Although not spectacularly handsome, he had an indefinable low-key attraction. She wasn’t surprised that Tansy had fallen for him. It had probably been all too easy for him to dazzle her, not least because a lecturer was someone she would naturally look up to.
He sat thoughtfully stirring the drink in front of him. When he leaned back and put down the spoon he asked abruptly, ‘Just what did Tansy tell you about me?’
Was he anxious about his job? she wondered. It wouldn’t look good for him to be known to have caused one of his students to attempt suicide. There’d been a time when Tansy had told her everything, but lately they had tacitly refrained from discussing him.
‘Does it matter?’ she asked. ‘You needn’t worry that I’m going to make trouble. For myself, I’d love to see you come thoroughly unstuck. But Tansy’s welfare is my main concern, and I don’t think she needs any more stress right now.’
‘Is it any use telling you that I’m not responsible for what she did?’
‘Legally, I’m sure you’re in the clear. Morally—’
‘Is she getting help?’
‘Help?’
‘Psychiatric help,’ he said bluntly.
‘It’s good of you to be so concerned—at last,’ Fler said. ‘The hospital crisis team talked to her.’
‘Crisis team?’
‘Nurses who liaise with a psychiatrist, but they didn’t feel it was necessary for her to see him.’
‘No?’ He was looking at her in a slightly bothered, undecided fashion. ‘She’s not normal, you know.’
Fler gave him a hostile stare. She’d seldom heard anything so ridiculous. Tansy wasn’t the only girl in the world to over-react when her first love-affair went wrong. No one had suggested she was mentally ill. ‘If you mean that she’s mad to think that you are worth trying to kill herself over, I’d have to agree.’
She saw him quell a spurt of temper. He said levelly, ‘It’s not just that. She’s been—’ he spread his hands ‘—fantasising about things.’
‘About you.’
‘Well...yes.’ He bent his head, almost as if embarrassed, and rubbed a hand briefly at the back of his neck. ‘It’s...a difficult situation,’ he said.
‘You mean, since you lost interest in her.’
‘It wasn’t quite like that,’ he said less patiently. ‘Whatever Tansy likes to think, there was never any great love-affair.’
‘I see. Just a sordid little encounter or two, a bit of harmless fun?’ Her voice was raw with resentment. It hurt to think he had taken so lightly what Tansy had so generously offered him.
‘There was nothing sordid about it,’ he said shortly.
Tansy certainly hadn’t thought so. She’d thought it was the love-story of the century. ‘And it wasn’t harmless either,’ Fler said swiftly, ‘for Tansy.’
‘Look,’ he said, his eyes holding hers. ‘For what it’s worth, I suppose I handled it badly. I tried at first to let her down lightly. It didn’t work. In the end maybe I was too—brutal. What you don’t seem to understand is how unreasonable she was. I couldn’t let it go on. And there was nothing in it. It was all totally one-sided.’
‘Are you saying she imagined all of it?’ This was unbelievable. ‘That you never took her out, never touched her?’
He was silent for a moment. ‘I went out with her,’ he admitted. ‘A couple of times. I didn’t know then that she was a student,’ he told her.
Fler allowed her brows to rise fractionally in disbelief, but said nothing.
He said, ‘She looked all of twenty-five when we met. It was a party. We talked. I took her home. The point is—’
‘The point is, you don’t want anything more to do with her.’ He was obviously bent on denying any real involvement, any culpability.
He hesitated only briefly. ‘In a nutshell, yes. But I’d like you to understand—’
‘I understand perfectly. You’ve been playing my daughter for months like a fish on a line. Now the game’s suddenly turned serious and you want out! Your career might suffer if this story gets about. You even feel a little—just a little—guilty. Are you married?’ It was a suspicion she’d entertained for some time, been afraid to voice to Tansy.
He looked startled at that, and angry. ‘No, I’m not married! If I had been I’d never have gone near the girl in the first place.’
Fler let her scepticism show. His type didn’t change their spots with marriage. He’d probably still be running after nubile students when he was in his dotage, and not able so easily to persuade them into falling in love with him.
‘She’s a nice young woman,’ he said quietly. ‘I liked her. But the whole thing got out of hand.’ He shook his head. ‘I think you ought to persuade her to have some kind of counselling.’
The nurses had suggested it, but when Tansy rejected the idea they hadn’t really argued. The consensus seemed to be that she’d over-reacted and given everyone, including herself, a nasty fright, but that it was unlikely to be repeated.
‘Would that salve your conscience, Mr Ranburn?’ Fler asked him. ‘It’s easy for you, isn’t it? Turn her over to other people to pick up the pieces, and find yourself some other poor little innocent whose life you can wreck.’
He leaned across the small table, the hazel eyes greening with temper. ‘I have not wrecked anyone’s life!’
Ignoring the denial, Fler went on, her own temper rising, her skin heating and the nerve-ends prickling. ‘Is Tansy the first one to go this far? Maybe I should talk to the university board about your activities with female students. People like you ought to be stopped before they do any permanent damage.’
‘I’ve tried to explain,’ he said tightly. ‘But you don’t want to listen—’
‘Has it occurred to you,’ she asked him, going much further than she had ever intended, ‘that Tansy might be pregnant?’
She stopped abruptly there. Until she said it, she hadn’t realised herself that it was a fear that had been lurking at the back of her mind.
She appeared to have stunned him, too. He stared at her for a second, then gave a harsh bark of laughter. ‘If she is, she’d better not try to lay that at my door!’
Fler felt a hot thundering of pure fury in her head. But before it could explode into action, he’d pushed himself out of the booth and stood up. Looking down at her, he said, ‘I don’t think I’ve got through to you any more than I could to your daughter. But if you want a bit of advice, here it is. Because I’m just about at the end of my patience with her. Get her off my back!’
Watching his rapid progress to the door, Fler barely restrained herself from hurling her untouched cup of coffee after him.
CHAPTER THREE
TANSY hadn’t objected to Fler’s plan to take her home. She didn’t want to face her flatmates yet, she said shamefacedly. Would her mother go over there and pack up some of her clothes?
It was only two weeks to the August holidays. Maybe missing that fortnight wouldn’t be too disastrous. If she didn’t go back to university after the holidays, though, she’d have no chance of passing her first-year exams.
They’d have over a month to decide, Fler thought, looking through drawers in the flat and folding undies, shirts, jeans into a bag. She hesitated over the photograph of Tansy with her father and Fler, and decided to leave it.
‘Need any help?’ One of the flatmates peeked round the door. They’d been helpful, embarrassed, subdued when Fler arrived. And anxious about Tansy. That had warmed her, their genuine concern and shock at what had nearly happened. So different, she thought, from Kyle Ranburn’s patent self-interest. ‘We had no idea!’ they’d told her, stricken at their own lack of awareness. ‘Why did she want to do that?’
Fler hadn’t told them why, respecting Tansy’s agonised plea, ‘Don’t tell them! I feel such a fool.’
Fler smiled at the girl. ‘I think I’ve found everything she’s likely to need.’
‘Don’t forget her diary.’
Diary? Tansy had never kept a diary before. Fler looked about, and the girl came into the room and plucked a thick, hard-covered volume with a small gilt lock on it from among the books on a shelf over the bed. ‘I think she’d want it. She nearly went spare once when she thought she’d lost it. We finally found it down the back of the sofa. She’d been writing it up in front of the TV. Forgot to take it back to her room. She must have been tired.’
‘Thank you.’ Fler tucked the book down into the front of the bag. ‘Do you know where she keeps the key?’
The girl shook her head. ‘Secret. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s got it on a chain around her neck.’
There had been no chain around Tansy’s neck. When she got to the hospital she’d been wearing her watch, a pair of panties and a night-shirt under the blanket that Kyle Ranburn had wrapped about her before bundling her into his car. ‘I’ll find it,’ Fler said.
‘Good luck, then.’
It wasn’t in the musical box on the dressing-table, nor on any of the cluttered shelves. Knowing her daughter’s habits, she eventually found the tiny brass key hanging on a nail inside the wardrobe. About to place it safely in her handbag, she paused, looking at the diary that it fitted. No, she said to herself firmly. Being Tansy’s mother didn’t give her the right to violate her privacy.
* * *
By the time the Toyota breasted the Brynderwyn hills and began the long descent towards the township of Waipu and the long stretch of road running by the sea at Ruakaka, Tansy was beginning to lose some of her extreme pallor.
They’d been travelling for over an hour and a half and she’d scarcely spoken two words, but now she stirred in her seat and said, ‘It seems ages since I was home.’
It had been a weekend two months ago. Fler said, ‘It seems a long time to me, too.’
In the blue distance the jagged uneven peaks of Manaia rose from the glitter of the sea. According to Maori legend the tall, commanding rocks standing stark against the sky at the summit were the petrified figures of the chief Manaia and his family. Lower and closer, the striped towers of the oil refinery at Marsden Point stood near the shore, an equally impressive modern echo.
Fler didn’t stop at Whangarei, the small northern city cradled between bush-covered hills and a tranquil harbour, but continued north along the Tutukaka Coast road that wound through softly folded farmlands latticed with stone walls, and sometimes narrowed between stands of trees or to accommodate a short bridge over a shallow stream.
Then they were down near the sea again, driving alongside a sandy stretch of coastline, climbing once more before turning down the twisting road that led to Manaaki, the big old house overlooking the sea at Hurumoana. Glancing at Tansy, Fler was sure that the girl looked more relaxed already, her eyes brighter and her shoulders less hunched.
‘Nearly home,’ Fler said.
Oh, God, she prayed, let her be all right. Please let everything be all right.
* * *
Fortunately the guest house had few visitors at this time of the year. Most of the rooms were empty, and in the neighbouring bay the motor camp with its rows of cabins was almost deserted. The sea thundered into the gap between the rocks below the house, pulling at long strings of brown seaweed that looked like dark hair streaming in the water, and turning over the fine pebbly shingle below the crescent of white sand on the tiny enclosed beach. A salty winter wind flattened the manuka growing at the edge of the cliffs and set the brittle sword-leaved flax rattling and bending before it.
Tansy settled into her old room and spent the first few days listlessly sitting on the window seat facing the garden, gazing out through the glass, an unread book or her open diary in her lap. Sometimes she pulled on a jacket and went down the cliff path to the beach, scuffing among the small grey pebbles and broken shells along the strip of sand and then sitting on the rocks to watch the foam-flecked water hurtle by.
Fler would stand at the lounge window, her heart thudding, until Tansy got up and slowly made her way over the rocks to the sand again, to climb the path to the house.
‘Don’t you worry, she’s not going to throw herself in the sea.’ Rae Topia put a comforting brown hand on Fler’s shoulder. She was the only full-time staff member that Fler kept on through the winter months, and over five years she’d become a friend as well as an employee.
Fler turned from her contemplation of the rocks and the raging water. Tansy was on her way up now, hidden by the steep drop of the cliff. ‘I can’t help worrying.’
Rae’s brown eyes were sympathetic, her comfortable figure somehow reassuring in its motherly bulk. ‘She’ll come right. You wait.’
Within a few weeks it seemed that Rae’s prediction was coming true. Tansy’s appetite improved, her cheeks began to fill out a little and take on their normal soft-rose colour, and she even laughed sometimes. One night she came into Fler’s room before her mother turned out the light, sat on the bed and said, ‘Mum, I’m sorry I worried you like that. It was a dumb thing to do.’
‘Yes, it was,’ Fler told her frankly. ‘Honestly, sweetheart, no man is worth it, believe me!’
Tansy shook her head. ‘I s’pose not,’ she said, looking down. ‘I promise I’ll never, ever do that again. But...I don’t know how I can live without him!’
Fler’s heart sank. She opened her arms, and Tansy threw herself into them and sobbed her heart out.
* * *
When Tansy said she was going to return to Auckland and her studies after the holiday, Fler was torn between fear and relief. The thought of Tansy dropping out of university was dismaying, but going back meant she’d be within Kyle Ranburn’s orbit again. Was Tansy ready for that? His name hadn’t been mentioned between them since that night she’d cried in her mother’s arms.
But even if Tansy was still carrying a torch, he’d made it brutally clear that he was no longer interested. If he ever had been.
He’d said it was all one-sided on Tansy’s part. Yet he’d admitted to taking her out ‘a couple of times’. That was probably downplaying it. So it hadn’t all been on Tansy’s side at the beginning. Not for the first time, Fler felt a swift rush of impotent anger with the man who’d carelessly, selfishly almost ruined her daughter’s life. Tansy, brought up in the north where life was slower and kinder and less sophisticated than in Auckland, must have been a pushover for an unscrupulous older man.
The night before Tansy was to leave again, Fler resisted the temptation to persuade her to stay or to extract impossible promises to phone every day, to let her mother know immediately of the slightest problem, to look after herself and please not pine after a worthless man who didn’t want her anyway.
Instead, as they leaned side by side on the wide rail of the veranda, both dressed in jeans and woollens after a walk on the windblown beach, she looked out at the sunlight dying on the sea and said, ‘Let me know if you need me, darling. You know I’ll always come.’
Tansy turned and gave her a hug. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Thank you.’
Fler thought that was all she was going to say, but she leaned back against the rail and, with her head bent, said almost inaudibly, ‘You think I’m an idiot, don’t you?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Well, I s’pose I am,’ Tansy muttered. ‘But...you don’t understand what it’s like!’
Fler debated inwardly for a second. ‘I have been in love, you know,’ she said mildly.
‘Not like this!’
The intensity of the statement startled Fler. But she supposed at eighteen she’d been equally intense, and just as convinced that no one else had ever felt as deeply as she did. Banishing a natural impatience at the arrogance of youth, she said, ‘I suppose everyone’s experience of love is unique. Especially first love.’
‘Was Daddy your first love?’
‘Well...yes.’ The couple of crushes she’d had in early puberty didn’t count.
‘And you’ve never looked at anyone else since you broke up with him, have you?’
There hadn’t been that many for her to look at, Fler thought, apart from the fact that she’d been rather soured on men and relationships after the divorce. She certainly hadn’t been looking for a new mate. ‘Not really,’ she agreed cautiously.
Tansy moved again, turning with a hand on the post at the top of the steps, gazing at the first bright cold stars appearing between streaky winter clouds. ‘Do you remember the first time you and Daddy kissed?’ she asked dreamily.
‘Yes, I do.’ Her own voice softened. It was one of her better memories. Rick had been her only lover. She hadn’t been aware then that not only was she not the first for him, but she wasn’t to be the last, either. That kiss had melted her bones, brought her budding womanhood into full flower, made her aware of the power and pleasure of sex. Rick had been no novice, and he’d enjoyed teaching her.
Tansy said, ‘I thought I’d die, the first time Kyle kissed me. I really thought...I’d die, it was so...wonderful.’ She shivered—Fler saw it even under the bulky woollen sweater—and then wrapped her arms about herself. ‘He was so gentle with me, always,’ she murmured. ‘Then and...and later. Of course, he knew I was a virgin, that’s why.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Men can tell, can’t they? If they’re...you know, experienced. I think it sort of frightened him, almost. Wasn’t that sweet? I told him he didn’t have to worry about it. It’s not really a problem, these days.’
Fler firmly clamped her teeth together until her jaw ached. Her mouth felt dry. Her mind was filled with murder. ‘Did he—’ her voice sounded hoarse ‘—hurt you?’
‘No.’ Tansy turned round to face her, but in the dusky gloom cast by the shadow of the veranda her face was just a pale blur. ‘Have I shocked you?’
‘I’m not shocked.’ A lie. She felt as though someone had punched her in the stomach. ‘I’ve always said, there’s nothing you can’t tell me, Tansy. If you want to.’ She took a deep, quick breath and asked, ‘Darling, you’re not pregnant, are you?’
For a moment she almost thought she’d shocked Tansy. There was a silence, finally broken by a blessed, normal, youthful, astonished laugh, like the old Tansy who’d had not a care in the world. ‘Oh, Mum!’ she said, giving Fler another quick hug. ‘Is that what you’ve been worrying about? No, I’m not. Definitely. And there’s no danger, I promise. I do know how to take care of myself.’
Fler bit back a retort. She didn’t want to start sounding old and fussy and change Tansy’s confiding mood.
But apparently the confidences were over, anyway. Tansy shivered again, with cold this time, and said, ‘Let’s go in. I need an early night.’
* * *
‘I’ll have to get down to Auckland more often,’ Fler said, sharing a cup of tea in the big kitchen with Rae after putting Tansy on the bus in Whangarei. ‘I’m so afraid for her. It’s going to take her some time to get over that wretched man. Maybe I should have moved when she started at university. Bought a place in Auckland so she could live at home. She’s so young to be on her own.’
‘You went over all that last year,’ Rae reminded her. ‘What happened to letting her find her feet, spreading her wings, leaving the nest, et cetera?’
Fler laughed. ‘Did I really inflict all those clichés on you?’
Rae patted her hand. ‘You were right when you said those things. Sure she’ll make mistakes, and get her heart broken once or twice. And of course you’ll cry for her. But we can’t keep our kids from being hurt forever. Like when they were little and learning to walk, we didn’t hold their hands every minute, just picked them up when they fell over and gave them a kiss.’
‘Yes.’ Fler smiled. Rae was right. She’d made the decision not to move for just those reasons. Being a solo mother with an only child, she’d been aware of the danger of stifling Tansy’s independence. She had to learn to let go, yet be there when she was needed. It was a difficult balancing act.
‘By the way,’ Rae told her, changing the subject, ‘the University Extension people phoned while you were out, to confirm their dates for the summer school next year. I’ve put them in the book.’
‘Oh, good.’ With a deliberate effort, Fler wrenched her mind around to business. For the past few years the university in conjunction with local groups had run a three-week summer school from the end of January into February, based at Hurumoana.
Some tutors were local, but others from the university staff stayed at the guest house, and the motor camp just five minutes’ walk away accommodated many of the students. It meant the guest house was fully booked when the peak holiday season was just declining.
* * *
It wasn’t always easy to get to Auckland but Fler made sure she visited Tansy several times in the following months. To her relief, the girl seemed to be working hard—too hard? Fler wondered anxiously, noting her thinness and hollow eyes.
When Fler tentatively asked if she had seen Kyle Ranburn, Tansy gave her a rather peculiar look and said, ‘I’m in his class on social factors in nineteenth-century New Zealand. Of course I see him. But I don’t embarrass him. I know he’d hate that.’
‘Well, good,’ Fler murmured rather uncertainly. It galled her that Tansy was still more concerned about that unscrupulous exploitative male than about her own feelings. But clearly she would brook no criticism of her idol.
Tansy said, ‘I had a talk with Kyle. He was very understanding. Those pills, you know...it was just a way of getting attention. Nothing like that will happen again. From now on I’m going to be an adult.’
Fler didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. But she supposed that was good news. She hoped Tansy was able to live up to her resolution.
* * *
Exam time came and then Tansy was home for the long Christmas holidays. She looked tired and pale and slept a lot the first few days, but said it was just the stress of examinations. She helped out around the guest house when the usual holiday influx arrived and, as she had for the last few years, Fler put her on the payroll.
‘But I can’t stay through until February,’ Tansy told her. ‘I’ve put my name down for an archaeology dig in the South Island. Someone found a pioneer village buried in the bush down there, from the days of the Otago gold rush. They need students to help, and it’d be good for my course credits.’
Swallowing disappointment, Fler said, ‘It sounds fun. Will they pay you?’
‘Uh-uh. But it’s experience. And...well, I want to go. You don’t mind, do you?’
Of course she didn’t mind, Fler assured her. ‘If you need some money for expenses, I could help out with a small loan.’
‘Thanks.’ Tansy gave her a quick kiss on the cheek. ‘My courses are costing you enough as it is. I’ll try to do without a subsidy for this.’
She didn’t mention Kyle Ranburn all the time she was home, and Fler thought, That must be all over, thank goodness. When Fler saw her off in time for the South Island trip, Tansy looked almost glowing with anticipation.
‘Will you miss me?’ she teased as Fler kissed her goodbye.
‘Of course I will.’ Fler smiled back at her and touched a fingertip to her nose as she used to when Tansy was a little girl. ‘You behave, now.’
Tansy laughed as she clambered aboard the bus lugging a bulging red pack. It was good to see her so happy, Fler thought. Quite her old self again.
* * *
The next week was a busy period for the guest house. As visitors moved out the rooms had to be prepared for those shortly moving in. The local organiser of the summer school who liaised with the university course co-ordinator was continually checking on this detail or that.
Rae and Fler allotted rooms for the tutors and the course co-ordinator. There was to be a creative writing course and one on European influences in the Pacific, as well as a geology group, print-making, a marine biology class and a course in video filming, all taught by visiting tutors from the university. Advanced pottery and two art classes were being conducted by local and visiting artists, and a saturation course in spoken Maori was to be centred on the nearby marae.
The course co-ordinator, a smartly dressed young woman with an air of brisk efficiency, arrived driving a van full of assorted teaching materials. She was followed within minutes by four of the tutors sharing a car. Fler was ushering the co-ordinator into her room while Rae did the same for the others, when they heard another car draw up in the courtyard outside.
The young woman peered out the window and said, ‘That’ll be the other tutor arriving now. Oh, by the way, you’ll have Mr Hathaway down for a room, but unfortunately he couldn’t make it after all. He made sure we got a very good replacement for European influences in the Pacific, though. It won’t make any difference to you, anyway, will it?’
‘None at all,’ Fler assured her, as the bell at the reception desk rang. ‘If you have everything you need...?’
‘I’m fine.’ The young woman put a bag on the bed and looked about. ‘I’m dying to use the loo, though. Will you tell him, please, that we’re all going to meet in the lounge in half an hour?’
‘Yes, I will. There’s a coffee machine there. I’ll make sure it’s refilled before then.’
‘That would be lovely. Thanks.’
The bell pealed again. Along the hall, Rae was still talking to one of the tutors who was asking where the nearest pub was.
Fler made for the stairs, and turned at the bottom to cross to the desk at one side of the entrance hall.
The man who had been lounging against the counter, idly studying one of the guest house’s address cards that he’d picked up from there, turned to face her as she approached. For a moment his expression was blank, then his hazel eyes suddenly darkened with shock and he straightened abruptly. ‘I don’t believe it!’ he said in stunned tones. ‘What in hell are you doing here?’
CHAPTER FOUR
FLER blinked. She felt pretty much the same way, herself. ‘I’m the proprietor,’ she said. ‘If you’re looking for Tansy, Mr Ranburn, she isn’t here.’ It gave her some satisfaction to be able to tell him that. Tansy might have been pleased to think of him coming after her, but Fler was convinced this man was nothing but bad news for her daughter.
‘Tansy?’ he said blankly, as though he’d forgotten who that was, and Fler immediately wanted to hit him. She’d like nothing more than for him to stay well away from Tansy, but he didn’t have to make it so obvious that he didn’t really give a damn.
Before she could say anything he glanced again at the card in his hand. ‘”F.H. Daniels, proprietor”,’ he read aloud. ‘I thought you were Mrs Hewson.’
‘I answer to my ex-husband’s name sometimes,’ she told him. ‘Especially in matters concerning Tansy. It saves explanations.’
He was still looking at her as though hoping she was going to disappear in a puff of smoke. The feeling was mutual, she wanted to assure him. Instead she said crisply, with only the forlornest hope that it wasn’t true, ‘If you’re not here to see Tansy, I presume you’re one of the tutors for the summer school. The others arrived ten minutes ago.’
‘Well, good,’ he said absently, looking as though he was trying to think of an excuse to leave. She wished he would.
‘Do you need any help with bags?’ she asked him.
‘Ah...no. No, I’ll manage. Thank you,’ he added, belatedly. ‘Tansy—’
‘She’s in the South Island,’ she told him. ‘Until the end of February. If you’re ready, I’ll take you to your room. You can sign the book later.’
She didn’t want to discuss Tansy with him. Didn’t want to discuss anything with him. Didn’t know how she was going to bear being in the same house with the man for the next three weeks. But she could hardly throw him out without explanation, and explanations would be humiliating for Tansy. The story would be bound to get back to the university.
‘This way,’ she said coldly, and led him up the stairs.
* * *
The only bright spot, Fler told herself later, filling the coffee machine, checking the sugar bowls and placing milk and cream on the lace-covered table, was that Tansy wasn’t here. At least she’d have had a three-month respite from his pernicious influence before she saw Kyle Ranburn again.
She opened up the wide doors that let in the sea breeze, and plumped some of the pastel-patterned cushions on the cane sofas and chairs around the room. It was quite hot. Iced water might be preferred by some of the guests to coffee.
She went to the kitchen to fill a jug, and also fetched a packet of biscuits and a plate. Perhaps it was the crackle of the packet as she opened it, pouring the biscuits expertly in overlapping circles on to the plate, that prevented her from hearing Kyle Ranburn come into the room.
When she turned and found him beside her, she jumped.
‘Sorry,’ he said. He’d been reaching for a cup, but now he stepped back. ‘I didn’t mean to startle you.’ He was staring a little, but she supposed she was too. He looked different, from when they’d first met at the hospital. It was probably the casual clothes he wore, jeans and a denim bomber-style jacket over a dark T-shirt.
What the well-dressed lecturer wears when catering to the country masses, she thought nastily. This man would look good in anything. He actually looked sexier now than in the suit she’d seen him in before.
Dismissing the thought, she turned away from him, but looked back when he said abruptly, ‘You’re alike, aren’t you—you and your daughter?’
‘What?’ Could he have picked up that wayward thought? Her eyes sparked with chagrin.
‘Hasn’t anyone commented on it before? For a second, as I came in, I thought you were her.’
‘Oh.’ Fool, of course he hadn’t meant that! Fler swallowed. ‘Yes, actually they have.’ Her voice sounded stiff, reluctant. She made to walk round him, get out of the room. No one else had come down yet.
Surprisingly, he caught at her arm as she went to pass him, not hard but firmly. ‘Just a minute!’
Fler pulled away from him almost violently. ‘Don’t you touch me!’ All her nerve-ends were tingling, the fine hairs on her skin prickling up with antagonism.
‘I’m not going to assault you,’ he said shortly, looking thoroughly fed up. Also rather disconcerted, as though he’d just suffered a small shock. ‘I only wanted to say...’ He stopped to frame the words.
‘Say what?’
‘It looks as though we’re stuck with each other for several weeks. If I’d known—but I didn’t, and it’s too late now for me to back out. I wouldn’t want the others to—’
Contempt for him almost choked her. But she said, ‘Don’t worry, Mr Ranburn. I’m not likely to start telling all and sundry my daughter’s private business. You’re quite safe.’
He closed his eyes momentarily, saying something under his breath, then opened them again. They were like a wintry sea, a deep anger in them. ‘Look, I—’
He was interrupted by the course co-ordinator coming into the room. ‘Mr Ranburn?’ she said, advancing with her hand held out as he turned to her. ‘I’m Devina Roache. I don’t believe we’ve met.’
Her eyes discreetly signalled that she was awfully glad to remedy that. She was tall, and her sleek dark hair framed a smooth-skinned, perfectly oval face that had everything in the right places, as did her figure, shown off by a brief skirt and even briefer top that she’d changed into.
Fler didn’t fail to notice the flicker of appreciation in Kyle Ranburn’s eyes as he clasped the proffered hand in his. Obviously not one to miss any opportunity, she thought. She thanked God again that Tansy wasn’t here to be hurt all over again. And was suddenly conscious of being on the wrong side of thirty-five, and that the comfortable cotton trousers and big shirt which she’d considered perfectly suitable this morning for the casual, relaxed atmosphere that the guests enjoyed were neither smart nor particularly feminine.
They hardly noticed, she was persuaded, when she muttered an excuse and left them to it. The other tutors were coming down the stairs now, talking companionably. One of the men smiled at her absently as they swept into the lounge.
He was tall with curly dark hair and blue eyes, and objectively was better looking than Kyle Ranburn. But he didn’t have that indefinable aura the other man had, the pull of attraction that had brought that inviting light to Devina Roache’s eyes, that had seduced poor Tansy. And—
Fler crossed the empty dining-room and viciously pushed open the saloon-type doors to the kitchen. Cut that out! she told herself. The man’s an unscrupulous opportunist. A sexual gourmet in the same mould as Rick Hewson. Worse. He preyed on girls who held him in awe because he was their teacher.
* * *
In the dining-room that evening the long table was the centre of happy chatter and a good deal of laughter. Manaaki wasn’t licensed, but some of the guests brought their own wine to the table, and the atmosphere was relaxed.
As usual they were a friendly lot. A couple of them had been involved in the summer schools before. They joked with the young Maori waitresses and chatted to Fler who supervised and unobtrusively helped to serve when it was needed. She noticed that Devina Roache was seated next to Kyle Ranburn, but although the young woman was sparkling he appeared slightly preoccupied, smiling absentmindedly rather than joining in the laughter about him.
After dinner they spent an hour or so in the lounge discussing their programme, and some lingered on, helping themselves to coffee. It was quite late when Fler, finding the room empty at last, stacked the dirty cups on to a tray and crossed the room to close the glass doors before carrying the dishes to the kitchen.
A man standing on the veranda outside turned from his contemplation of the night and the intermittent moonlit ripples on the sea. It was dark and she couldn’t see his face.
Pausing with her hand on the door she’d been about to close, she said, ‘I’m just about to lock up, but if you don’t want to come in yet, would you put the latch up when you do?’
‘I’m coming in now.’
She recognised the voice and, when he came into the light, his face.
He walked past her and waited while she shot the bolts home. ‘Devina says this room is to be my classroom,’ he said.
‘Oh?’ She hadn’t taken much notice of the programme; the co-ordinators arranged all that. Messy activities were usually planned for the community hall, while those comprising mainly lectures were reserved for the guest house.
‘I’m told,’ he went on, ‘that you’re very co-operative, very helpful.’
‘I try to be.’
‘I wondered if I might have a table in my room. It doesn’t need to be very big.’
There was a long built-in desk-cum-dressing-table, but it wasn’t the first time a tutor had requested something wider. ‘Would a card table do?’
‘Yes. Fine. Provided it’s reasonably stable.’
Crisply she said, ‘I’ll see to it. Anything else?’
He seemed to be hesitating. ‘No,’ he said finally. ‘Except—’
She didn’t help him out. She had a fair idea that he was going to try yet again to justify himself.
He spoke slowly. ‘These summer schools are special. Everyone says there’s an atmosphere about them that they don’t experience anywhere else. Your—hospitality and friendliness, and your staff’s, apparently have quite a lot to do with that.’
‘Thank you.’ From anyone else she’d have accepted the accolade with pleasure. Now she just wondered what he was leading up to.
He gave a sharp sigh. ‘What I’m trying to say is, it would be a pity to spoil that. Do you think that for the next three weeks you could try to forget how much you hate me? For everyone’s sake.’
She didn’t think that anyone else had noticed. She’d not spoken to him at dinner, but then he’d scarcely looked directly at her either. And they wouldn’t have thought anything of it. He wasn’t one of those who’d been here before.
She said, ‘I’ve been running this place for five years, Mr Ranburn. My staff and I are used to being polite to obnoxious guests—not, fortunately, that we’ve had very many. We never allow a personal dislike of anyone to affect the level of service they’re given.’
He stirred irritably. ‘That wasn’t quite what I meant, and I’m sure you know it. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with your ability to somehow tackle an issue side-on.’
‘I really don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘You know damn well, you infuriating woman!’
Fler said coolly, ‘We’re also accustomed to dealing with rudeness. But that doesn’t mean we just lie down and take it.’
‘Is this a royal we?’ he enquired.
Sarcastic brute. ‘I thought you were asking me to be nice to you,’ she suggested. ‘If you expect that while you feel free to insult me—’
‘It wasn’t meant to be insulting.’ As she pointedly refrained from comment, he added, ‘But all right, I apologise for losing my temper. Believe it or not, it doesn’t happen often.’
No, he was a cold-blooded animal. She angered him because she had seen through him from the start, Fler decided. ‘Apology accepted,’ she said. ‘And you needn’t worry that my real opinion of you will be in any way apparent to your colleagues, Mr Ranburn.’ She would be the epitome of politeness and co-operation; he’d have absolutely nothing to fault her for. But he needn’t expect friendliness. That would be asking the impossible.
He said very formally, with just a hint of irony, ‘Thank you. Perhaps you could start by calling me Kyle. I noticed that you’re on first-name terms with everyone else, even those who are here for the first time like me.’
Of course she was. There was never any formality at Manaaki, particularly during the summer school. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘All right.’
‘Good.’ He stood for a while facing her as though undecided about something. Then he said deliberately, ‘Goodnight, Fler.’
No one had said her name quite as this man did, lingering over the single syllable as if he could taste it on his tongue, his voice deep and slow. An odd sensation passed over her skin, warm and feathery, as if he had physically touched her.
She shook herself mentally, and clenched her fists against an involuntary shiver.
He was waiting, looking at her. She hoped her eyes weren’t giving away the sudden agitated thumping of her heart. She moistened her lower lip and kept her voice flat, indifferent. ‘Goodnight—Kyle.’
She picked up the tray and took it out, her hands perfectly steady, her mind filled with dismay.
Packing the cups and saucers into the dishwasher in the kitchen, she tried to rationalise.
He had something, undoubtedly, some kind of sex appeal that wasn’t immediately apparent, not all on the surface, and the more potent for that. The man was an expert manipulator, she reminded herself, obviously with a lot of practice. He knew perfectly well what effect he had on women, and OK, she wasn’t immune.
But she was no adolescent innocent, ready to fall at his feet because he said her name in a way that made it sound special. She was a grown woman—older than him, for heaven’s sake! Even if she hadn’t been wise to his games, she had no reason to suppose he’d have been interested in her! His taste ran to younger women. Much younger. Although Devina Roache, for all the unlined perfection of her features, must be over twenty-five.
Not as much over as you are, a mean-spirited inner voice jeered. You’re the mother of one his conquests! He wouldn’t look twice in your direction.
Stop there! Fler ordered herself, appalled at the trend of her thoughts.
Of course she didn’t want to catch Kyle Ranburn’s eye. The less she had to do with him the better. The summer school this year couldn’t be over and done with soon enough for her.
But it hadn’t even started, yet.
* * *
Next morning eager students of all ages from teenagers to white-haired eighty-year-olds descended on the tiny beach community and were speedily dispatched to makeshift classrooms, all within convenient walking distance of the community hall. By ten o’clock, cars had stopped arriving and relative quiet reigned as everyone settled in for the first sessions.
Fler ushered an apologetic late-comer into the front lounge, and returned to the desk to do some bookwork. The door to the lounge was open to allow a cooling breeze to circulate, and she could clearly hear Kyle launching into his session. He would be accustomed to addressing a lecture hall full of students, of course. Although, didn’t they use microphones these days? Anyway, he had a good, deep, clear voice, easy to listen to...
Finding that was what she was doing, she bent her head to the books.
A burst of laughter came from the lounge. Tansy had said he often made his students laugh, it was one of the things she liked about his classes. ‘With him it all comes alive,’ she had said eagerly. ‘He makes the people seem real, not just words in history books.’
Fler picked up a ruler and drew a precise red line under a set of figures. Tansy had said he was brilliant at his subject. But then, she might have been biased.
* * *
At lunchtime Fler helped the kitchen staff serve salad, fruit and cheese for the lecturers. The students either brought their own lunch or made other arrangements.
Kyle said to her, ‘Do you mind if I take mine outside?’ Some of the students were picnicking on the lawn or the veranda steps.
‘Whatever you like,’ Fler told him. ‘Just return the plate later.’
He brought it back as Fler was clearing away the cheese. ‘Sorry, I got talking.’
Fler reluctantly asked, ‘Would you like some cheese?’
‘Thanks.’ Casually he picked a chunk off the plate she was holding.
‘What about coffee?’
He smiled at her. ‘You do live up to your reputation, don’t you?’
‘I’m doing my best.’
The smile turned wry. ‘You know, I’m not the big bad wolf, and I didn’t gobble up your Little Red Riding Hood.’
‘”But Grandma, what big teeth you have”!’ Fler said.
He laughed, then. He didn’t have particularly big teeth, but they were white and even. He looked down at her, the laughter still in his eyes, making him look—damn him!—more dangerously attractive than ever.
Fler swallowed, clamping her own teeth together to stop an involuntary smile.
Kyle shook his head, put the chunk of cheese in his mouth and sauntered out.
CHAPTER FIVE
FLER picked her way across the drift of pebbles and shells and walked into the gentle breakers, wading up to her thighs before plunging under the cool water.
Visitors were told they should take the short walk across the headland to the longer, sandier and gentler beach next door. But on hot summer evenings like this the sea washing into the little cove was tranquil, almost smooth, and a swim was a welcome refresher after a day’s work in the heat.
It felt cold at first but soon warmed, and she stayed in until the last of the daylight was almost gone from the sky.
When she came out, she was surprised to see Kyle Ranburn sitting on the dry sand where she’d left her towel. He had changed into shorts and his feet were bare.
As she approached he got up and picked up her towel, shaking out the sand before handing it to her.
‘Thanks,’ she said rather curtly. He hadn’t been waiting for her, had he? She’d probably been unrecognisable while in the water. Perhaps he’d hoped that it was one of the younger and more attractive female students.
‘I thought this beach was unsafe for swimming?’ he said.
‘It’s all right when it’s calm, and provided you know where the rocks are. But the other beach is patrolled and better for visitors. We wouldn’t like to be responsible for anyone getting into trouble in the water.’
‘Mmm.’ He was regarding her idly as she dried her hair and face, then blotted the towel over her shoulders and arms. ‘How old were you when you had Tansy?’
Her head went up. ‘What?’
He spread his hands. ‘You look too young to be her mother. You must have been a child bride.’
‘It’s dark,’ she reminded him. Twilight, anyway. Flippantly she sang a snatch of Gilbert and Sullivan. ‘”She may very well pass for forty-three in the dusk with a light behind her”.’
He threw back his head and laughed. ‘Are you forty-three?’ he enquired.
‘No, I’m not!’ she said, ridiculously outraged. ‘I was nineteen when Tansy was born.’ She wound the towel about her waist and tucked the end in. That kind of flattery, she told herself firmly, was so obvious it was laughable. So what if he sounded perfectly sincere? No doubt it came easily with practice.
She thrust back her damp hair with one hand, and started towards the cliff path.
Kyle kept pace with her. ‘How old were you when you got married, then?’
She cast him a frosty glance. ‘Eighteen, and for the record it was eleven months before Tansy appeared on the scene.’
‘I wasn’t counting.’
She didn’t answer that, and as they reached the path he said, ‘You’re only seven years older than me.’
‘Congratulations,’ she said. ‘I thought your subject was history.’
He laughed again, briefly. ‘Were you always this sassy?’
Sassy. It sounded American. Had he spent time in the States? ‘It comes with age,’ she said, going ahead of him up the steep path. ‘I suppose your adoring young students wouldn’t dare try to cut you down to size.’
‘Most of them don’t adore me,’ he said.
‘Just Tansy? Surely she’s not the only one.’
He was silent until she had breasted the top of the cliff. She stamped out a small surge of disappointment. There was something about sparring with him that had sent a surge of adrenalin through her. She’d almost begun to enjoy herself.
She’d climbed too fast, and as she stopped at the top of the path to get her breath, he joined her on the coarse, springy buffalo grass. He said, ‘Do you think we could make a pact?’
Wary again, she said, ‘What kind of pact?’
‘You’ve made up your mind about me, as far as your daughter is concerned. Whatever I say you’re going to hold it against me. We’ve agreed not to spoil the summer school for everyone else by airing our—differences in public. But it’s going to be difficult if every time we happen to bump into each other we come back to the subject.’
‘Believe me, I’m doing my best not to bump into you, Mr Ranburn.’
‘Kyle!’
Fler shrugged. ‘Kyle.’
‘We can’t avoid each other forever,’ he said. ‘And I’m not sure I want to.’
Stupid, stupid to feel that involuntary lifting of the heart, the swift kick of pleasure. ‘Very prettily put,’ she said sarcastically. ‘I’m sorry I can’t say it’s mutual. What exactly are you suggesting?’
‘Nothing that would give you an excuse to slap my face,’ he assured her drily. ‘Not that I think you’d need an excuse, if you got half the chance. I just thought we might agree that while I’m here you and I don’t discuss Tansy at all. In fact, I suggest it’s the only way we’re going to manage to be reasonably civilised with each other for three weeks. Not to mention that I—well, anyway...how about it?’
He was making a lot of sense. It was true that it wasn’t going to be possible to avoid each other completely. And if the bone of contention was made a taboo subject, it ought to help defuse the situation.
‘All right,’ Fler said. ‘I agree.’
‘Thank goodness for that.’ He held out his hand, and after a moment’s hesitation she put hers into it.
His fingers were strong and warm, his clasp firm but not too tight. And when she hastily withdrew her hand, startled at the pleasurable feel of his, he immediately let her go.
‘You’re cold,’ he said. ‘You’d better go in.’
She didn’t feel cold. Her hand must have felt chilly to him after her swim. Obviously he hadn’t experienced any pleasure from her touch. But she said, ‘Yes, I will.’ And left him standing on the edge of the cliff, looking after her.
* * *
Their bargain did make things less strained. True to her promise, Fler was careful not to treat him in any markedly different way from the others. He seemed to find it easy to adopt a casually friendly attitude towards her. And there were times when she realised to her astonishment that she had actually forgotten what he was, what he had done to her only child.
She would pull herself up with a jerk, then. And quietly, imperceptibly withdraw a little.
Except perhaps it wasn’t quite imperceptible. Because Kyle gave her a quizzical look or two, and once a silent, chiding shake of the head, his lips pursed in mock censure.
* * *
Each session of the summer school ran for two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon. That left ample time for socialising and for those staying at the bay to enjoy the beaches and go boating, windsurfing or surfboarding.
On Saturday some decided to visit the nearest licensed premises for a meal and to spend the evening, and another group opted for a barbecue on the beach.
Fler and her staff were invited to join them. After serving dinner at the guest house Fler sent the others off early and stayed behind to finish up. Rae had volunteered to return to Manaaki after going home for her own dinner, and Fler had a short, cooling swim, then walked over the headland in the slowly falling dusk to the bigger bay.
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