Trust Too Much
Jayne Bauling
Arrogant, cynical and devastatingly attractive…Long ago Fee had decided Simon Rhodes was trouble, but now, forced to move back to Hong Kong after four years in Australia, Fee finds avoiding Simon impossible when he becomes her new boss! Fee is appalled to discover that his forceful magnetism affects her more than ever.But since Simon has made it clear that a casual relationship is all he will ever be able to offer, Fee knows she would only be risking her heart if she ever put her trust in him completely… .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u925feac7-0b2d-56ab-9afe-dadd947114f5)
Excerpt (#ubde8e829-23f5-5c0b-9f09-e2d190ea869f)
About the Author (#u83875eb5-c559-5f83-8c6b-763583532390)
Title Page (#u424582f4-114a-5b45-9a70-907f7d7765e9)
CHAPTER ONE (#u7b2a250b-4b65-5bd5-b8c2-c882d9ab9a70)
CHAPTER TWO (#ucd34b8b7-e970-5353-b46d-9face7da66b1)
CHAPTER THREE (#uc28c36ce-1977-55fe-9c4a-e77593fb23fd)
CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Then you won’t be…pursuing me?” Fee prompted caustically.
“Meaning you’ll be resisting me? We’ll see—it’s quite possible that, once you accept we have a new relationship these days, you may find that you don’t want to resist me after all.”
Simon’s arrogance was outrageous, and Fee gave him a scalding smile, her eyes dark with denial. “I could never be interested in someone like you. I don’t even like you…”
JAYNE BAULING was born in England and grew up in South Africa. She always wrote but was too shy to show anyone her work until the publication of some poems in her teens gave her the confidence to attempt the romances she wanted to concentrate on, the first published being written when she was attending business college. Her home is just outside Johannesburg, a town house ruled by a seal point called Ranee. Travel is a major passion; at home it’s family, friends, music, swimming, reading and patio gardening.
Trust Too Much
Jayne Bauling
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8dab931b-f39c-5610-b716-8302e6b1650f)
‘REMEMBER the lovely parties you used to organise for me when I was little?’ Fee Garland smiled affectionately at her stepsister. ‘But it’s not my birthday now, and I don’t know what else you think there is to celebrate. I haven’t exactly come home in a blaze of glory. Deepest disgrace is more like it.’
‘Don’t be so silly,’ Babs dismissed the rueful suggestion bracingly, but her sherry-coloured eyes were kind as she glanced up at Fee’s pale, sensitive face. ‘But if you’re worried about what people might say, let them think you’ve been retrenched. That always gets sympathy.’
But Fee shook her head, unwilling to let herself be misled on that score.
‘Don’t try to pretend the news hasn’t reached Hong Kong, Babs,’ she protested shakily, the array of flowers Babs had called her into the lounge to see blurring momentarily before she managed to blink back a rush of tears.
‘All right, I have to say that it has, but no one cares, Fee. Everyone here is on your side,’ Babs insisted loyally.
‘You are, anyway. You always have been,’ Fee acknowledged gratefully.
‘And you’re home, back where you belong. That’s reason enough to celebrate,’ Babs added determinedly, and Fee had to laugh at the resolution firming the piquant little face beneath a fringe of shiny, streaky hair.
‘Who have you invited?’ She gave in.
‘Oh, the usual crowd. I couldn’t remember who all your special friends had been—it’s nearly four years, after all—but I did seem to remember that you were once quite friendly with Warren Bates, so I’ve asked him and he has accepted. As for the rest—oh, masses of people from the old days as well as some new friends you won’t know yet.’
Sociable people, Babs and the man she had married had always had scores of friends, Fee recalled as she tried to visualise Warren Bates, the difficulty she experienced in doing so somewhat disconcerting since he had been her very first love.
But the attraction had foundered before anything remotely resembling a relationship could develop, so perhaps her inability to recall his features clearly wasn’t so surprising after all, her recollection of the man who had sunk that fragile first romance far more vivid.
‘Are your parties still so wild?’ she questioned Babs teasingly, her mind returning to present concerns. ‘Or has marriage turned you all sedate and sober? The people I knew in Australia were much more conventional than you and your crowd used to be. That’s why…’
As she hesitated self-consciously, Babs spoke emphatically. ‘Well, we’re all still as broad-minded as ever, so you can stop worrying about how people will react to your little adventure if that’s what’s troubling you.’
‘I’m not really worrying, I’m just not exactly looking forward to having a lot of people all looking at me and wondering what really happened. But they’ll just have to go on wondering because I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t have to, except that I’d like to tell you that nothing happened and I never did or said anything to make Mr Sheldon think the way he did, or nothing that I’m aware of, anyway.’
‘Of course you didn’t, darling Fee.’ The unquestioning acceptance was warming.
‘And if anyone as much as hints otherwise, just you refer him to me.’ Charles Sandilands had joined them in time to overhear and he stood in the doorway looking down at his hands and flexing his fingers thoughtfully.
‘And if it’s a woman, refer her to me,’ Babs adjured cheerfully. ‘But go and get changed, precious. People will start arriving any minute now, and there’s really nothing for you to do down here.’
‘Poor little thing,’ Fee heard Charles saying as she left the lounge. ‘The person I’d really like to get my hands on is Sheldon.’
‘The monster,’ Babs was agreeing. ‘An innocent like Fee!’
‘She has changed, though,’ Charles sounded a cautionary note. ‘I hardly recognised her when we met her at Kai Tak yesterday.’
‘Outwardly, but she’s still our little Fee,’ Babs insisted obstinately.
Combined irritation and amusement banished the threat of tears which had prompted Fee’s speedy departure. Everyone, including old friends who had rung up since her return to the hillside house overlooking Repulse Bay, kept calling her ‘little’, but Babs was the funniest, being six inches shorter than Fee’s five-feetten.
But Babs was five years older, and she had mothered Fee from the moment Jim Garland had brought her and her mother home to his three-year-old daughter, and through all the years afterwards when all they had had to depend on was each other, Jim usually away among his beloved mountains, Angela invariably out pursuing some new man.
Showering hastily, Fee let her mind drift back to Warren Bates, wondering how the teenage attraction between them might have developed if that vile man Simon Rhodes hadn’t interfered so unforgivably.
Then, inevitably, her thoughts returned to the situation she had left behind in Australia, with her name and photo all over the sleazier examples of the popular Press, Mrs Sheldon disillusioned, Miss Betancourt disappointed, and the famous Vance Sheldon himself in a towering rage, blaming her and some of his rivals equally for the way he was suddenly an object of derision all over the country, and ringing her up at intervals, alternately to vent his anger and to attempt to bully her into co-operating with his efforts to restore his previously respectable public image by returning to work just as if nothing had happened.
She hadn’t done anything wrong. Fee knew that most of the time, but the knowledge couldn’t alter the fact that people had been hurt just because she had been so gullible—so stupidly trusting. She too had been hurt, mostly in her self-confidence, because she had misread a situation, and she grieved over the loss of a job she had liked, but it was the way she shrank from public attention that had sent her fleeing for home, that shrinking a legacy from her teens when shyness and her height combined had made her physically awkward in company. She had learnt to move gracefully since, but she still hated attention, and the way the Press had pursued her had terrified her. Sometimes they had actually seemed to be baying, like some pack of wild animals, after her blood.
It took a physical effort to wrench her mind free of the echoes and concentrate on her reflection in the bedroom mirror. During the years away from Hong Kong, she had cultivated a softly sophisticated image, but as she knew only too well, and as Babs had obviously realised, it was only that, an image.
Always slim, the weight she had lost in recent weeks had left her willowy and over-slender now, with the shadowy hollows at her temples and beneath her cheekbones giving her a frighteningly fragile look. She just didn’t look tough enough, she reflected unhappily, and, with the way her fair skin inevitably betrayed her with blushes, how was she going to withstand everyone’s curiosity? But she looked composed enough now, her pallor pronounced, emphasising the natural flush of her sensitive lips while her eyes were always shadowy, their blue colour too dark to be identified from a distance, and her graceful black and white skirt worn with a simple sleeveless black top for this warm July night added to the subdued but subtly sophisticated effect. Only her long dark hair, with its tendency to unruly curls unless she wasted time trying to discipline it, provided a contrast.
Having been hearing sounds of people arriving for some time now, she went downstairs reluctantly, apprehension mounting as she reached the hallway and heard the rising swell of sound from the lounge, the noise reminding her a little of those reporters in Australia even though she knew that this wasn’t hostile.
And what was she going to do if everyone was as kind as Babs and Charles and the people who had phoned? Everyone had been so nice to her, and it just wasn’t doing her any good. She had come home quite instinctively when the pressure had become unbearable, thinking she would be tougher here, among people who had known her since childhood, but it wasn’t working. The support and sympathy she was receiving weakened instead of strengthened, and she was furious at finding herself frequently on the verge of tears in response.
‘Little Fee should be down in a minute,’ Babs was telling someone just inside the lounge.
‘Little Fee?’ At least there was one person who didn’t subscribe to general opinion, and Fee stiffened in shock, instantly recognising the sardonic drawl despite the years gone by since she had last heard it, and in no doubt that nothing complimentary was meant by the contradiction. ‘As I recall, she was always a great gangling girl, lurching around all over the place, tipping drinks over people and depositing herself in their laps. I wonder if that’s how she caught the great Vance Sheldon? It would need to have been something either original or extreme, with a high-flyer like that.’
‘Stop being so vile, Simon,’ Babs protested. ‘Obviously the man took advantage of the child.’
‘Child? She must be—how old?’
‘Twenty-two, but…’
Fee had turned and begun to creep back up the stairs, so she didn’t hear any more, but halfway up she halted and sat down although she was still in full view of anyone who might come out into the hallway. Resolve lifted her chin. She couldn’t allow what had happened in Australia to drive her back into the shell from which she had spent painful years struggling to emerge.
But Simon Rhodes! Somehow she had believed that he would have moved on, now that Babs and Charles and, presumably, most of the people who had made up their hedonistic social circle were all respectably married.
Because Simon wouldn’t be.
Of course, he and Charles had been friends, she recalled, her shock beginning to recede, and Charles had once been almost as enthusiastic a bachelor as Simon, but how could they have anything in common now? As it was, Simon had tended to become bored with people in general almost as quickly as he tired of the women with whom he involved himself, simply because he was so over-endowed with intelligence.
As for his girlfriends, Hong Kong must be teeming with his rejects by now unless he had changed quite dramatically, Fee reflected with an amusement she had never been able to feel back in the days when Simon Rhodes had always managed to embarrass her in one way or another.
She had detested him then, always uncomfortable in his presence and resenting him for it, although she knew her own inadequacies had been partly responsible for that, having been in her teens and recently grown too tall, too fast to have acquired any sort of grace. But Simon had played his part too, a man whose devastating charm and sophistication had made her feel charmless and gauche by contrast, and whose self-confidence and public success had awed her.
Even then, five or six years ago, Rhodes Properties had reputedly made him a millionaire, and a highly visible one, thanks to his energetic social habits. Rumoured to be a genius, and definitely clever, his womanising contradicted both rumour and fact since most of his short-lived romantic or sexual liaisons featured women of distinctly limited intellect, although some great female minds were also said to have succumbed to his undeniable charm.
He was also known to be temperamental, and Fee, who substituted selfish and superficial for all the more popular descriptions, had twice found herself on the receiving end of his temper, the first occasion being when he had rejected one woman in favour of another at one of Babs’ parties, the memory still capable of making her cringe. Fee needed to think a minute before recalling that the woman had been one Ismay Compton. Oh, she had been so naive, raging at him like that after overhearing his coolly ruthless rejection and witnessing Ismay’s tearful departure.
‘How can you be so brutal?’ she had stormed at him on emerging from the downstairs room in which they had installed the computer which, infuriatingly, Simon had helped her and Babs to choose after the latter had decided that Fee needed one at home in order to assist the commercial course she was taking at school and had somehow got the money out of Jim Garland. ‘Can’t you see she loves you, you horrible man?’
‘Quite possibly she does, but love doesn’t last, as you’ll find out for yourself, darling.’ Clearly hovering between amusement and the irritation that was making his eyes glitter, Simon had paused, examining her critically. ‘Although not from me, I’m afraid, if that’s what you’re hanging around in the hope of, as I find teeny-boppers a singularly unprepossessing species. But see me when you’ve grown up and acquired some looks and experience, and I might be prepared to reconsider.’
In those days, she had lacked the composure to correct his arrogant assumption, rage and embarrassment rendering her inarticulate, and she had followed Ismay’s example and fled.
Now a nervous little laugh escaped her as she recalled the other incident—that to which Simon Rhodes had been referring—but anger followed. She thought it had happened four years ago, about a year after she had attacked him over his rejection of Ismay Compton. There had been a barbecue but it had rained and everyone had gone inside—except for her and Warren Bates. The two of them had been looking shyly at each other at school for ages, and she had finally found the courage to invite him to the barbecue. They had been so tentative, nervous of each other but reluctant to become part of the crowd indoors, both jumping with embarrassment when their hands touched before deciding that they liked the feeling, linking their fingers, smiling self-consciously at each other.
It was at that precise moment that Simon had stepped out into the softly falling rain, probably bored by the company inside. He had looked at them, standing there holding hands, and then Fee had seen the icy anger gathering in his eyes.
‘You’re not part of the regular circuit, are you?’ he had addressed Warren contemptuously. ‘These parties are closed affairs.’
‘I invited him,’ Fee flared heatedly as Warren snatched his hand away, sulky and scarlet-faced.
‘And who invited you, darling?’ Simon retorted coolly. ‘This is an adult party.’
‘I happen to live here!’ She had been so angry that for once she’d been able to address him without any self-conscious stammering.
‘Which entitles you to what precisely?’ He had remained coldly angry.
‘Babs—’
‘Babs is broke as usual, so this isn’t her party. Charles Sandilands and I happen to be financing it, and we put a ban on gatecrashers and juveniles, so get rid of him and make yourself scarce.’
Then he had turned abruptly and gone inside again. Nothing Fee could say or do had succeeded in soothing Warren’s wounded pride, and he had departed without re-entering the house, leaving her to rejoin the adults defiantly, seething with fury as she met Simon’s eyes.
‘I thought I told you to make yourself scarce? Evidently love’s young dream is more amenable to taking a hint than you are,’ he suddenly commented with a slight edge to his voice, addressing her from a chair close to the table from which she had just helped herself to a glass of wine.
‘Hint? I hate you,’ she had muttered furiously. ‘Just because you’re in a bad mood about something—’
Fee had never been sure what had happened then. Rage was choking her and all her co-ordination seemed to desert her and as she tried to prevent the accident, too late because it had already happened and a startled Simon was drenched in wine, either she or the floor had tilted and she had ended up sprawling over him.
The subsequent explosion of temper had shocked everyone present, their laughter dying as Simon’s considerable sense of humour had deserted him for once, while Fee could only stand there stammering, dying of humiliation as he had expressed himself uninhibitedly on the subject of her clumsiness specifically and the presence of adolescents at adult parties in general.
Babs had eventually dragged her out of the room and comforted her, and after that day Fee had taken pains to remain hidden in her bedroom whenever he was around. That period hadn’t lasted long, though, as she had just passed her final exams, and the increasingly restless urge to discover the world beyond Hong Kong that had kept her and two schoolfriends diligently saving every dollar they earned over several years at their part-time jobs on supermarket tills had at least seen them heading for Australia.
Now she was home, and Simon Rhodes was still around, as insensitive as ever.
Fee stood up again and began to descend the stairs, suddenly eager to confront Simon and show him that she was no longer the gauche teenager of four years ago, bereft of any defiance against his contempt. What she had overheard had first embarrassed and then angered her, but now her anticipation was unexpectedly mixed with an odd pleasure. It was just ironic that his unsympathetic attitude should be giving her this sort of strength, when everyone else’s kindness had merely succeeded in weakening her.
To her satisfaction, Simon was standing just inside the lounge, close to the door, apparently listening to the breathless chatter of one of the loveliest women Fee had ever seen—only apparently, because his eyes, of a blue that was utterly different from the blue of hers, were roaming the room and lingering typically every time they came to rest on an attractive woman.
Fee felt a surge of sheer excitement as she observed him, like the exhilaration of an adrenalin-rush, but she knew it wasn’t really personal. Simon just had that effect on people generally. In his presence, women sparkled and men were on their mettle, upping the level of their conversation, becoming wittier and cleverer.
He was tall, probably over six feet, and preposterously handsome, exactly as she remembered him although he was in his thirties now and his lifestyle ought to be telling; but there were no signs of dissipation that she could see so far, only the same arrogant enjoyment just touched with a contradictory trace of boredom. Leanly built, he looked elegant but subtly powerful in his immaculate smart-casual clothes, and superbly healthy, skin as tanned and light hair as naturally sun-bleached as ever because, as Fee recalled, he played as enthusiastically as he worked, regularly disappearing to exotic and glamorous pleasure-spots all over the world, usually taking a woman along with him.
The beautifully shaped head turned as if he had sensed her approach and for a second his glance was alert yet simultaneously indifferent, and she remembered how ruthless he could be in his dismissal of people, both men and women, who failed to interest him.
‘May I lurch past you, please?’ she requested limpidly, with a smile for his companion.
‘Fee.’ As recognition lit those bright, warm blue eyes, it was as if all his natural vitality blazed up into full life, touching all those around him, and yet seconds later his expression was hardening, eyes narrowing in cynical appraisal. ‘And look at you, all grown up and home from the wars.’
‘The lynch mob is more like it. How are you, Simon? Don’t worry, I’m quite safe without a drink.’ She showed him her empty hands and gave the woman beside him another smile. ‘Hello, I don’t think I know you, do I?’
‘You heard,’ Simon realised softly, the cynical look vanishing and his slow smile of wicked enjoyment revealing perfectly white and even teeth. ‘And you’re cross with me, but I refuse to apologise as eavesdroppers only ever hear the truth and you were a physical threat to everyone in your vicinity—although, looking at you now and guessing where the glamour comes from, I think that these days I might find one of the collisions in which you specialised somewhat more exciting than I did back then.’
Then, without giving her time to react, he introduced her and Loren Kincaid to each other. A few years older than Fee, Loren was small but exquisitely endowed with perfectly proportioned curves, as well as a shining cap of jet-black hair and huge violet eyes. She had been looking insecure, Fee had noticed, a familiar state among Simon’s women when his gaze started travelling, but now her rosebud mouth relaxed into a genuinely friendly smile, presumably because she had decided that Fee wasn’t to be regarded as a rival for this glamorous, gorgeous but incorrigibly restless man.
‘This party is to welcome you home, isn’t it? I think you did the right thing, Fee, coming back,’ Loren assured her with earnest goodwill. ‘You’ll feel safe here.’
‘Why in the world should she want to feel safe?’ Simon expressed exaggerated astonishment, his gaze probing as it swivelled to Fee. ‘It did occur to me that your stepsister might have a point when she was loyally insisting that you’d been taken advantage of, but that was while I was still visualising the old Fee. Now that I see you, I refuse to believe it. Quite clearly you’ve learnt to take care of yourself and are safe anywhere. Congratulations. You had your fun, pulling one of Australia’s top financiers and then leaving him looking a total prat into the bargain. I imagine you’ve come home to celebrate.’
‘I didn’t pull—’ Fee stopped herself, realising that she was about to sound like the gauche eighteen-year-old she had been when last she had seen him, because that was how he had momentarily made her feel again. ‘I know you’ve never minded it, Simon, but not everyone enjoys seeing their name all over the newspapers, and having lies written about them, and reporters in the garden shouting questions at them every time they open the door to try and go out and buy milk.’
He shrugged indolently. ‘No, I’ve never minded, since just about everything written about me is true. I’ve never had anything to hide.’
‘Or be ashamed of?’ Fee prompted drily.
‘You’re not ashamed of what you did, are you?’ Simon laughed. ‘Don’t be—’
‘I didn’t do anything,’ she interrupted, eyes blazing as she realised that, probably alone among the people here tonight, he believed that she had been as actively responsible as Vance Sheldon for the scandal that had entertained all Australia in recent weeks. ‘Thanks, Loren, I know I’ll be safe here. Excuse me, please, I’d better go and say hello to everyone, especially since this party is supposed to be for me.’
Simon laughed and said something in a low voice to Loren as she left them, trying to make her movements slow and even as it was haste and hesitation which had caused the physical disasters of her teens. The trouble was that somehow Simon had made her feel like a teenager again, all hot and bothered, and yet angry too, especially now that she kept catching him watching her with idly speculative interest as she moved around the room, renewing her acquaintance with old friends and being introduced to strangers.
But at least he hadn’t been kind!
As she had feared, everyone else was very kind, the more tactful pretending that there was nothing out of the ordinary about her homecoming, a few embarrassing her by referring openly to what had happened, and all firmly convinced of her innocence.
It made Simon Rhodes unique. Everyone else still saw her as the child she had been when she had left Hong Kong, Fee realised ruefully, although she wasn’t sure she found Simon’s view of her any more flattering.
At least Warren Bates ought to see her as an adult, having once been romantically interested in her, she reflected wryly, finally placing the young man who was approaching her now, and perhaps as the sort of adult she really was, without making any of Simon’s cynical and gratuitous assumptions.
Once Warren had seemed the most beautiful male creature in the world, and the green eyes with their thick fringe of black lashes still stirred her, but his personality seemed mediocre and somewhat repressed now. He spoke in polite platitudes, only becoming human when he mentioned Simon.
‘I saw you speaking to him when you came in. The man is a swine. I didn’t know he’d be here.’ His tone implied that he wouldn’t have come had he done so.
‘Oh, he and Charles are old friends. Their circle doesn’t seem to have changed much over the years, even if marriage has given most of the women new surnames,’ Fee laughed. ‘That redhead over there used to be Ismay Compton, for instance. She must have got over Simon if she can bear to be here. You have to give him credit for managing to stay friends with most of his ex-girlfriends.’
‘You seem very interested in him.’ Warren sounded resentfully suspicious and, remembering how Simon had once treated him, Fee was contrite.
‘Never mind Simon, tell me what you’ve been doing all these years…Only give me a minute first, please? I think Charles and Babs have forgotten to put any soft drinks out and I’m still too dehydrated from the flight yesterday to risk alcohol. Don’t go away.’
To Fee’s surprise, Loren Kincaid followed her into the kitchen.
‘You mustn’t mind Simon being so nasty to you,’ she told her kindly, examining the drinks Fee was extracting from the fridge and finding nothing of interest. ‘It’s just his way.’
‘Oh, I’m used to him,’ Fee assured her, touched.
‘I’m sure he knows you’re an innocent victim, really. Everyone who knows you says so, and it’s obvious from the newspaper stories—even to me, and Simon says I’m an airhead. But I’d better get back to him.’ She laughed bravely. ‘There are too many attractive women around for my liking. He really is awful!’
And in the end Loren would get hurt, just like all the others, Fee reflected drily. Simon was impossible.
Carefully, she carried a tray laden with a variety of non-alcoholic drinks into the large, elegantly furnished lounge and put it down, helping herself to a glass of mineral water as Warren Bates rejoined her. Suddenly she felt tired, and a little depressed, and she glanced longingly out towards the patio beyond the sliding glass doors which stood open.
‘I don’t think I’m really a party animal,’ she confided. ‘Let’s go outside for a minute, and you can tell me all your news. Or are you with someone?’
He wasn’t, so they sat on the stairs leading down to the swimming-pool, talking about simple things that didn’t hurt, and Fee found herself telling him how the house still belonged to her father.
‘It seemed practical for Charles to move in when he and Babs married because they’ll be going to England once his stint in charge of his father’s factories here is up. He used to tell people he was the modern equivalent of a remittance man—’
She broke off, hearing someone else behind them.
‘This isn’t very sociable of you, Fee,’ Simon Rhodes said mockingly. ‘Especially when you’re the guest of honour. Or do you intend to renew your acquaintance with each of us separately? You never much liked crowds, I remember. In that case, your time is up, Bates, and it’s my turn.’
His tone held an undercurrent that was obscurely significant, and Warren glared at him as he stood up, but he wasn’t old enough or sufficiently sure of himself to accept it as a challenge. Fee felt vaguely disappointed in him. She had learnt to fight back, however unsure of herself she might feel inwardly, so why hadn’t Warren?
But simple kindness and the sensitive awareness that any reference to his previous encounter with Simon Rhodes would discomfit him dictated that she wait until he had departed, muttering, before saying tartly, ‘Talk about déjà vu! What have you got against him?’
One of the strangest things about Simon was the way his presence made people feel more alive, she reflected, her tiredness vanishing as he took Warren’s place beside her. He seemed to radiate a kind of energy that affected everyone around him. It was a visible thing, a vibrant blaze that came from within, probably merely a manifestation of his sheer vitality, and highly unfair, because it should have been a sign of great goodness or spirituality, and there was nothing remotely saintly or inspiring about him.
‘Renewing an old acquaintance, or resuming a relationship, Fee?’ Simon settled himself comfortably.
‘There wasn’t any relationship to renew,’ she retorted resentfully. ‘Thanks to you.’
‘And you’re wondering what you missed out on?’ he guessed wickedly. ‘I suppose his youth is what appeals to you after that old man you were involved with in Australia.’
Fee gave him a furious look as the soft light streaming from the house above them showed her that he was only half joking.
‘I suppose it’s inevitable that you should think like that, given your own history, but I think I’m a little more discriminating than you are, Simon,’ she snapped.
‘Where Bates is concerned? Or Sheldon?’ Simon returned mockingly, his lips quirking as he cast her a quick, curious glance. ‘I’m intrigued. Do you really prefer old men, sweetheart, or is it some power game you’re playing, with the final denunciation written into the play before it even gets underway?’
Fee knew he was a cynic, but it was still disconcerting to realise he could believe such things of her.
‘There was nothing between me and Mr Sheldon,’ she insisted tightly.
‘Oh, come on, darling. You were in that hotel room together, weren’t you?’ Simon laughed. ‘All right, it was probably going too far to suspect someone like you of deliberately setting the guy up—not that it doesn’t sound as if he richly deserved it—but why are you so defensive about it all?’
‘You actually think it’s funny, don’t you?’ Fee realised furiously. ‘Why aren’t you disgusted?’
‘Why the hell should I be?’ Simon laughed. ‘You’ve obviously benefited from the experience, and we all have to sow a few wild oats, if I may be utterly trite.’
‘They’re hardly still wild oats at your age,’ she retaliated, grasping eagerly at the chance to change the subject.
‘I’m not quite ready for a retirement resort yet. Thirty-three,’ he drawled lazily.
‘As I said, at your age,’ Fee emphasised sweetly, and added, ‘Loren is nice.’
‘Beautiful,’ Simon agreed, infuriatingly relaxed. ‘But none too bright.’
‘Bright enough to have noticed your roving eye,’ she asserted waspishly.
‘I’m not in any need of advice about my love life, thanks, Fee.’ Abruptly there was a slight but audible edge to his voice, cool and sharp.
‘What has love got to do with it?’ she wondered innocently.
‘Everything. I love women.’
The statement, so outrageous and so simple, silenced Fee for several seconds. It was the absolute, unadorned truth, she realised, and any further explanation of his playboy habits would be superfluous. Simon loved women, so much that he was incapable of loving just one for any length of time, if in fact he ever actually loved them as individuals.
‘You never used to state the obvious,’ she taunted softly.
‘You seemed in some doubt,’ Simon countered derisively. ‘But as I’ve said, it’s your love life that intrigues me right now. Tell me about Sheldon. Were you his personal assistant?’
‘I hadn’t risen quite that high yet. I was assistant to his real assistant, but the position was supposed to lead to promotion eventually.’
Her bright, tender mouth drooped as she recalled the trouble Miss Betancourt had taken, grooming her to be her replacement when she retired in a few years’ time. All for nothing—
‘You must have counted it worth sacrificing since you were prepared to incur Sheldon’s anger by making the thing public knowledge,’ Simon cut into her reflections unsympathetically.
She hadn’t had any choice, unless she had been prepared to let Vance Sheldon rape her, since the Press, so much more cynically suspicious than she, had been on the spot, ready and waiting, eager for drama.
She flung Simon an angrily resentful look as she picked up her glass from beside her on the step and took a sip of mineral water.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she stated tautly. ‘As everyone knows, he fired me or I resigned, depending on which version of the story you believe, so I’ve got more important things to think about, like finding myself another job, and somewhere to live, and a car.’
‘Here in Hong Kong?’ he probed.
‘I think so, yes.’ She couldn’t face going back, although she wasn’t about to reveal her vulnerability by admitting it. ‘Hong Kong is my home. I belong here.’
Simon sent her a glance sparkling with mockery. ‘And you’ll be able to behave as badly as you like within a circle where no one will judge you and make a scandal of it as they seem to have done in Australia, since we all behaved equally badly most of the time. It’s just strange, or perhaps ironic, that you had to go away to become one of us. I like the change, but what happened to the old Fee? Is there any of her left there inside the sophisticated packaging?’
‘There’s hardly likely to be, is there? I’m twenty-two, but on her behalf, since she could never stand up for herself or answer back…Yes, you do all behave badly, especially at these parties, I remember, so why shouldn’t I?’ As she spoke, Fee stood up, still holding her glass, looking down into it for a moment before pouring the remainder of its contents into his lap. ‘Last time was an accident, Simon. This was deliberate, in case you’re in any doubt. Sorry it had to be in the region of both your intellect and your emotions.’
Simon swore, following it with such absolute silence that she couldn’t resist the temptation to look back as she gained the patio. His shoulders shook, and then she heard his laughter.
‘Oh, you were right, you truly do belong here.’ His amused voice drifted up to her. ‘You’re one of our own. Welcome home, Fee.’
Fleetingly, it gave rise to apprehension which subsided when he made no move to detain her.
She hadn’t felt this good in weeks, Fee realised. The only disconcerting thing about it was that it should be Simon Rhodes, of all people, who had revived her fighting spirit.
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ae0e85a9-38d7-588e-a16d-d355755b62bf)
SIGHING, Fee let the newspaper fall to the ground beside the sun-lounger on which she was reclining. None of the positions advertised was exactly inspiring, and likely to add to her difficulties was her intention to be scrupulously discriminating in her choice of boss this time around. She wasn’t risking another Vance Sheldon—never again! On the whole, she was inclined to think that putting her name down with an employment agency might be her best bet. For safety’s sake, she might even opt for temping, she decided, unless she found the perfect boss.
The sun had set but darkness had yet to fall, and it was one of those sultry, gently steaming July evenings she remembered so well from years gone by, the stillness of the air giving all Hong Kong’s island side a dreaming aspect, and yet down in town among the gracefully rearing spires the movement and noise would be as vibrant as ever, equally so over on Kowloonside. But not up here, high above Repulse Bay, blue-white jewel set amid gentle emerald slopes. It was silent here, and soothing.
Her mood of exhilaration hadn’t lasted long after she had tipped her drink into Simon’s lap two evenings ago. She had locked herself into her bedroom, ignoring the people who came and knocked at intervals and eventually falling into the first truly dreamless sleep she had been granted in weeks, despite the sounds of carousing downstairs—because Loren Kincaid had been right. She felt safe here.
She had no idea how or if Simon had explained the state of his elegant trousers to anyone, and she hadn’t enquired, beginning to be embarrassed by her behaviour since such a confrontational attitude was alien to her nature.
A sound from the high patio above her made her withdraw her gaze from the sparkling clarity of the swimming-pool, and there was the subject of her thoughts, Simon Rhodes, carrying his jacket and coming down the stairs towards her. A pang of purely aesthetic appreciation assailed her as she watched him. He moved with such grace and leashed power, and was so beautifully formed, so truly physically perfect in every way that she could only be profoundly grateful that she would never be one of the legion of women who loved him, because how did anyone ever get over such a man?
‘Charles isn’t home yet,’ she informed him casually, resolutely deciding to ignore the fact that the mere sight of him made her feel challenged in some obscure way. ‘But Babs is somewhere inside.’
‘Thank you, she sent me out to join you.’ Simon stood beside her sun-lounger, looking down at her and then at the pool on her other side, a wicked gleam appearing in his eyes. ‘I am so tempted, Fee, after the drenching I received at your hands the other night.’
‘Don’t you dare! And you’re exaggerating…I’m sorry I threw my drink over you, Simon.’ But although she had begun to be ashamed of herself, Fee’s eyes still sparkled at the memory, and her voice refused to emerge as demurely as she wanted it to, a quiver betraying her as she added, ‘I don’t usually behave like that. I don’t know what got into me.’
‘A devil, of course, and it’s looking out of your eyes right now, so I suppose I ought to keep my distance. But all right, I’ll forgive you since it was probably due,’ he conceded magnanimously, ignoring the advice he had just given himself and pulling a matching chair closer to her lounger before seating himself. ‘I shouldn’t have bawled you out in front of everyone the way I did that other time.’
‘No, you shouldn’t,’ she agreed tartly, still capable of flushing at the memory, and deciding against asking what had got into him on that occasion.
‘So how is our innocent victim, as Loren keeps insisting you are? I believe she thinks she invented the phrase all by herself.’
‘If you’re so scathing about people’s intellectual limitations behind their backs—and to their faces, now I think of it, because she said you’d called her an airhead—why do you go out with such bimbos?’ Fee flared, incensed on Loren’s behalf.
Simon wore his most arrogant expression. ‘Because they don’t try so hard to be clever, whereas half-bright women keep trying to be cleverer than they are and it bores me because I see through them.’
‘God, have you any idea how inhibited your intolerance must make people when you can’t even be bothered to hide it? I’ll be frightened to open my mouth now,’ Fee claimed tempestuously.
‘You don’t count,’ Simon said rudely, with an indifferent glance at her mouth before noticing the newspaper she had discarded and observing at which page it was open. ‘Looking for…what did you tell me? A home, a car and a job? In fact, we may be able to help you with the first. Rhodes Properties are mainly commercial and industrial, but we have recently added a division dealing with residential, and it’s turning out to be a paying concern with land here so scarce, and rents for ground-floor apartments as high as you choose to make them when everyone is so nervous of a cut in electricity putting lifts out of order…But haven’t you considered staying here? The house still belongs to your father, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes.’ Fee glanced up at the green-tiled roof, a sort fairly common in Hong Kong. ‘But it’s everyone’s home really, for all of us to come back to. If you must know, I want to get away from Babs and Charles because if I’m not independent they’re likely to go on treating me like a baby forever.’
And because she wasn’t a natural fighter, she was afraid she might be tempted to settle for the easy option and let them, Fee supplemented silently, but she wasn’t about to confide that much to Simon. For some reason it was important that he shouldn’t guess how much of the old, uncertain Fee still existed.
He was sending a lazily amused smile across the space between them.
‘They must be blind. It’s definitely a very adult Fee who has come home to us.’ Pausing, he observed her complicated reaction to the meaningful tone before digressing, ‘Your father is still mountaineering, isn’t he?’
‘In a sense. I think he’s part of a movement to clear old base-camp sites of litter all over Pakistan and Nepal, now that the problem has been realised, so he’s giving something back, which is nice. Mountains are all he has ever cared about; all the pleasure he has had has come from them,’ Fee acknowledged the kind of single-minded selfishness that had long since ceased to perturb her.
‘Lucky he had the means to indulge himself.’ Simon referred to the private fortune Jim Garland had spent in pursuit of his obsession.
‘He usually remembered to keep us supplied with money to live on, and he did buy this house,’ Fee reminded him loyally.
‘And dumped you in it when you were a baby. Wasn’t there some near-scandal about that?’ Simon frowned.
She laughed. ‘After my mother died when I was two. She’d never properly recovered from some complication at my birth because it happened somewhere remote in the Himalayas, with no doctors for hundreds of miles. The nannies he left me with here kept walking out, and someone found out and threatened to take him to court if I wasn’t looked after better, so he married Angela. She had Babs, and nowhere to live and no money—poor Babs doesn’t even know who her father was—so it worked out quite well when he was home, only Angela likes lots of attention and a man to be around all the time, and he kept telling her horror stories about my mother’s trials to discourage her because he didn’t want her with him in the mountains.’
Simon shook his head. ‘You girls must have had an even more chaotic childhood than I did. My various step-parents and unofficial aunts and uncles kept changing, but they were there. Angela wasn’t often, was she?’
Fee shook her head.
‘She’s an incurable romantic, always out looking. But Babs looked after me, and when we were older we looked after each other. I shiver when I think about it sometimes, though,’ she added in a hushed voice. ‘Once I got pneumonia and Babs couldn’t make the doctor’s receptionist understand her, and another time it was cold and she decided we should have a hot meal. She was only ten and she burnt her hand badly, and I was frantic; I didn’t know what to do…’
‘God, it’s a horror story.’ Simon sounded unusually thoughtful and he studied her expression for a moment. ‘People shouldn’t get married. Jim and Angela have never bothered with a divorce, have they? Angela was home last year, but then she met someone on his way to take up a contract job somewhere—Jakarta, I think—and she took off with him. But you’re a big girl now and don’t need anyone to take care of you, as you’ve just demonstrated by walking out on your lover in Australia and not even bothering to be discreet about it, all in the fine tradition of your odd family.’
Fee didn’t think she had taken care of herself at all successfully, considering the humiliation she had suffered as a consequence of her own stupid naïveté, and, while she loved her family, she had no intention of following in any of their footsteps. Her dreams were conventional, of a husband who came home to her and children she would care for herself.
‘You would believe that was the way it was,’ she taunted sharply. ‘It may interest you to know that absolutely no one else does.’
‘As we’ve agreed, that’s because the fools all still see you as the child they remember. But you and I both know you’re not. You grew up in a sexually sophisticated milieu and it was only a matter of time before you adopted our mores. Welcome to the real, adult world, darling. It’s a pleasure to know you—or it will be.’
Fee just managed not to look startled. For a moment it had almost sounded as if he was flirting with her, the way he did with other women, but surely that was impossible? Not Simon. Not with her!
‘You’re wrong! About the Australian business, I mean.’ Her dark blue eyes flashed as she dismissed the ridiculous idea. ‘But I don’t care what you think.’
‘That’s the spirit,’ he commended her insouciantly. ‘Never explain yourself, never make excuses, never mind what people say and think. Incidentally, Charles was telling me on the phone earlier that you weren’t finding the job market too promising. That’s why I’m here. I might just have something for you if the position of assistant to Sheldon’s assistant entailed what I imagine it did. There’s a woman who’s leaving Rhodes whose position you might be able to fill, although why she has to take off so inconveniently is beyond me. Her excuse is so stupidly irrational that I refuse to dignify it by calling it a reason.’
Fee’s anger subsided and she looked at him hopefully, aware that Rhodes Properties’ reputation was excellent, but then rare pride stirred.
‘I don’t need you and Charles to arrange my life for me, thank you very much, Simon,’ she asserted caustically. ‘I’m quite capable of finding a job for myself, and, considering how scathing you’ve been about other people’s failure to realise that I’m not a helpless baby any more, I’d have expected you to tell him to go to hell when he asked you.’
The smile Simon gave her was biting. ‘Oh, definitely not a helpless baby. A spitting cat is more like it, and I do mean the wild kind. Charles didn’t exactly ask me—’
‘No, but I bet he hinted like mad and you felt obliged to come up with something because he’s a friend and you men have this stupid buddy-code about helping each other out,’ she accused tempestuously. ‘I don’t mind Charles interfering so much, because he’s family, but I don’t really even know you except as his friend, so don’t try to make a charity of me. I won’t accept it.’
Simon was still smiling at her, derisively now, but something flickering at the back of his eyes seemed to suggest that she had either angered or offended him.
‘No, you don’t really know me at all, Fee, if you can imagine I’d make you my good deed for the day,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘I’ve no objection to doing Charles a favour, but not if it’s at the expense of anything to do with Rhodes Properties. Assuming you’re interested in the position, I’ll only appoint you if you’re qualified for it. Right now, I have to say I have my doubts, if you’re stupid enough to believe anything else.’
Fee had always been flexible, seeing no point in clinging obstinately to an idea once it was proved to have no foundation, but something in Simon’s attitude was angering her, and her apology carried a distinct trace of acid.
‘Sorry! I was forgetting that first and foremost you’re a hard-headed businessman. Blame it on the way people talk about you. Everyone is so riveted by the social side of your life. But I should have remembered that Rhodes Properties is the one thing you truly take seriously—far more seriously than you do your famous love life.’
Simon shrugged dismissively. ‘Since, properly administered and maintained, property not only increases in value but is the one thing that actually lasts. Love doesn’t.’
Irrationally, since she had already known he believed something of the sort, it intensified her anger.
‘It might, properly cared for…It does, if people work at it, I’m sure.’
‘Who has got that much emotional energy?’ Simon retorted cynically. ‘I haven’t. You haven’t either, obviously, or you’d still be in Australia with Sheldon. I’m assuming you were the lazy one, given the particular nature of your very public break-up.’
‘Love didn’t come into that,’ Fee snapped, for once mercifully undistressed by the reference, too fascinated by his attitude and driven by some compulsion to try and understand it. ‘I suppose you’re so cynical because you’ve never seen anyone working at a relationship. You called my family life a horror story and my family odd, but you had all those step-parents and so-called aunts and uncles coming and going—’
Simon’s laughter stopped her. It was genuinely amused, but there was something hard in his eyes, denial or rejection, lending them the brilliance of diamonds.
‘Forget it, Fee, I dealt with all that years ago—not that it required much in the way of effort. There were no villains or victims, just a lot of nice, normal people, all coming and going, as you’ve mentioned. I never expected anything else.’
‘So you were never disappointed,’ Fee taunted softly, furious at the way he made her feel so naively idealistic.
‘Don’t try to analyse me, darling,’ he advised her with idle indifference. ‘You’re sure to get it all wrong.’
‘Yes, I suppose you flatter yourself you’re a madly complex, superior being, whereas men are actually the simpler sex, as every woman knows,’ she claimed with a swift, blistering smile.
But she didn’t really believe there was anything simple about him, while Vance Sheldon had taught her that some men were devious and not to be trusted.
‘Oh, I’ve always thought of myself as fairly uncomplicated,’ Simon offered easily.
‘All right!’ Irritated by his lack of co-operation with her attempts to comprehend him, Fee gave it up since he so clearly didn’t want to be understood. ‘I accept it. You’re just a simple, single-minded businessman and Rhodes Properties is the only thing in the world that really means anything to you, the only lasting relationship you’ll ever have.’
‘Well, don’t sound so disapproving about it,’ he adjured her amusedly, but then he frowned. ‘At least I’m never bored by work.’
After a moment she decided he wasn’t implying anything personal, and she considered his words, which had allowed her a glimpse of the isolation that his intellect must impose. Rhodes Properties probably provided him with his only real intellectual stimulation, and somehow that struck her as sad, making her wonder if he was ever consciously lonely.
But the amused way in which he had brushed off all her attempts to understand him better deterred her from probing further. Maybe he enjoyed being misunderstood, or perhaps there was nothing there to understand. Hadn’t she always thought of him as superficial? So why this instinctive urge to look for hidden depths? He had given her no cause to believe any existed.
Suppressing the strange fancies that had prompted her, she ventured cautiously, ‘If you’re serious about having a job for me, I do have a testimonial.’
Miss Betancourt had insisted.
‘For what it’s worth, and my word is worth a lot, I’m going to give you a reference since Mr Sheldon is still refusing, and exercising your legal rights there is going to take time. I’ll make it clear that both he and I have found your work entirely satisfactory, and there’s no need to mention anything else, although I’m afraid anyone who has heard the story is bound to wonder; but it’s time you stopped blaming yourself so much. Your only fault was that you were too trusting. Finding yourself his only guest at the races should have made you suspicious; it’s what alerted the Press…But there’s no point in worrying about it now, and you can also stop worrying about the other people concerned. Mrs Sheldon isn’t nearly as shocked as you imagine, since she has never had many illusions about her husband.’
The pen Simon removed from the pocket of the lightweight jacket he had dropped on to another chair was a ball-point, but the most expensive in a range that had left left Fee wondering, when she had once seen an advertisement, what sort of person would spend such a fortune on something so utilitarian.
‘A Miss Sung-Li is head of Personnel. Ring her on Monday, but not first thing, because I’ll need to have a word with her, and if she thinks you’re qualified for the job she’ll make appointments for both of us to interview you.’
Fee regarded him levelly.
‘If you’re really not just being kind, because I’m Charles’s sister-in-law—’
‘I’m never kind,’ Simon interrupted distastefully, following it with a complicated smile.
‘No, you’re not,’ she conceded tartly, accepting that her assumption had been a stupid one, and jumping slightly as he handed her the card on which he had just scribbled the name and number she would need and their fingers brushed, Simon’s warm and hard. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever done a single altruistic action in your life.’
An amusedly reflective gleam appeared in his eyes.
‘Strangely enough, I used to flatter myself that I might have, once, and I’m not at all sure I won’t yet live to regret it, or else find it rebounding on me in some way.’ Then the thoughtful expression vanished as he paused, warm blue eyes glinting as they lingered on her face a moment before skimming her slender body and the length of her legs, pale because her fair skin couldn’t take much sun, but smooth and slim. ‘Why did you take up office work? You could have been a model. You’re not strictly beautiful, but then many models aren’t when you see what lies under the tricks they perform with make-up.’
‘And you’ve seen hundreds?’ Fee taunted.
‘Not so many really. I generally prefer small, curvy women myself.’
‘But not because they make you feel protective,’ she guessed acidly.
‘Hell, no,’ he confirmed, drawling slightly. ‘I like a woman who can take care of herself, stand up for herself, and the sassy little ones usually can.’
He would. Fee supposed that was partly why he had never appealed to her personally. She knew it wasn’t fashionable, but she dreamed of the sort of man who would take care of her while refraining from the sort of babying that people like Babs and Charles offered her—not that she couldn’t look after herself generally, of course, despite the self-doubt she had suffered since misreading Vance Sheldon’s intentions.
‘So you’re able to feel superior without having to be protective at the same time,’ she mocked.
‘Everyone is the same height in bed.’ Simon was dismissive. ‘Out of it, your height would have made you ideal for ramp work, especially now that that incredible grace has replaced your clumsiness, so how come you never considered modelling?’
‘Mainly because I don’t like a lot of people looking at me,’ she vouchsafed shortly.
‘Why not?’ His eyes were bright with interest.
‘I once had an unpleasant experience,’ she began pointedly, and saw his face harden.
‘You’ve had all the apology you’re getting, Fee, so don’t go on about it,’ he advised her ruthlessly, before smiling. ‘All the same it’s a pity…Nice legs too. You can wear shorts and miniskirts. Usually the women who do definitely shouldn’t…Here’s Babs.’
He stood up to go and help Babs who had appeared on the patio with a tray of drinks, leaving Fee blushing and confused. His manner had begun to perplex her, nowhere near as boredly indifferent, occasionally teasing and sometimes rude as it had been in her teens, for which she was grateful; but his odd, brief forays into the realm of what might loosely be termed flirtation were disconcerting, mainly because they were so inconsistent. She had to suppose that they arose out of mere habit, simply because he was such a chronic flirt, programmed to a certain automatic pattern of behaviour in female company, whether the women concerned interested him or not. He probably didn’t even realise he was doing it, and would be startled if she ever flirted back, she reflected wryly.
She glanced down at her denim shorts and pretty white cotton top and found confirmation of her suspicion; despite the air of sophistication she had managed to acquire over the years, but which she frequently tended to forget she possessed simply because she still felt so unsophisticated, she was sure she was devoid of the sort of glamour common to the women who attracted Simon.
Mercifully, her face had cooled by the time he and Babs arrived on the pool-deck, although Simon threw her an amused look as if he had discerned the trend of her recent thoughts. Fee prevented herself fidgeting self-consciously and managed to keep her expression composed, relieved when he seemed disinclined to make any further personal comments.
Charles arrived home from work a few minutes later and came out to join them, but Simon stood up to leave as soon as he had finished his drink.
‘A date?’ Charles enquired interestedly.
‘Work.’
Charles shook his head incredulously. ‘When are you ever going to ease up, man?’
Simon shrugged. ‘It’s my choice, Charles.’
‘On a Friday night? And with the lovely Loren no doubt waiting for you!’
Lovely, but limited intellectually, Fee reflected sardonically. She must frequently bore him, but, as he had acknowledged, Rhodes Properties never did.
He was so full of contradictions, absorbed in his work and highly regarded as an employer, she knew, and yet simultaneously a social animal with an overt appreciation of the opposite sex, and superficial and inconsistent in his romantic attachments. But the fact that he and Charles were still friendly argued that he was at least capable of a degree of consistency in his friendships, even if he would never accept the responsibilities and curbs of marriage.
She was doing it again, Fee realised, disconcerted—looking for depths when she knew perfectly well that, as charming and physically perfect as he was, Simon was essentially a shallow man.
‘Don’t forget to phone on Monday,’ Simon addressed Fee, ignoring Charles’s challenge, and she nodded, conscious of depression settling on her, which it had tended to do ever since the Australian fiasco, as she watched him stroll away, a beautiful, truly golden man.
‘Hell, it’s hot. Where are my swimming-trunks, darling?’ Charles gave Fee a teasing grin. ‘Since Babs tells me skinny-dipping is out now that we’ve got you with us.’
‘Find them yourself. Don’t let him embarrass you, Fee, darling,’ Babs adjured as he went bounding up the stairs. ‘What did Simon want? He said something about a job when he arrived.’
‘Yes, he said he might have a position for me at Rhodes Properties.’
‘Take it,’ Babs advised her promptly. ‘Mercifully I don’t have to work any more, but if I did Rhodes Properties would be high on my list, although I don’t suppose I’d even feature on theirs. What job exactly?’
‘I’m not sure. I have to ring the head of Personnel on Monday and presumably she’ll decide if I qualify for whatever it is.’ Fee looked at her stepsister a little uncertainly. ‘It should be all right, shouldn’t it, Babs? To accept if I’m offered a position, I mean? Simon did make it clear that he wasn’t just being kind because I’m Charles’s sister-in-law, although I gather Charles did speak to him about it. Anyway, I know he simply isn’t a kind man.’
‘No, so what are you worrying about?’ Babs urged. ‘I remember he used to tease you occasionally when you were a kid, but he doesn’t mess around where Rhodes Properties is concerned.’
‘I know. It’s strange that he should have such a reputation for integrity where that side of his life is concerned, when you consider how he behaves in other areas,’ Fee commented, regarding Babs with sudden curiosity. ‘All those women—’
‘Don’t look at me like that; I wasn’t one,’ Babs laughed, able to read her thoughts now that she had discarded the more worldly persona she adopted for strangers. ‘It was one of those lucky things. I was already falling in love with old Charlie when he introduced us, and, to my immense relief, nothing changed. To give him his due, I think Simon was equally relieved as Charles is one of the few people he genuinely likes. I know you’ve always loathed him—I remember you used to call him “that horrible man”—because of the teasing, not forgetting that time he lost his temper with you so abominably, but he’s not as unscrupulous as he’s made out to be, you know. Oh, he’s a playboy of the first order but, for instance, he never gets involved with a married woman.’
‘He hardly needs to when he must have a queue of single ones all lined up waiting their turn to be flavour of the month,’ Fee suggested sardonically before shrugging dismissively. ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. I do accept that where Rhodes Properties is concerned he’s a different man, and if I am offered whatever job it is and whoever my immediate boss is going to be seems all right I’ll probably take it.’
Babs and Charles went out a little later, urging Fee to join them, but she declined, spending a quiet evening on her own, and she was in bed by the time she heard them return soon after midnight. She had slept extra soundly for two nights running now, compensating for the weeks of fitful, shallow slumber in Australia when she had kept waking, hot with shame or often disorientated by fatigue and nightmare, thinking she was back in that hotel room in Perth, or facing a baying pack of reporters again, or listening to Vance Sheldon’s demands on the phone.
But tonight, for some reason, she was restless, unable to settle, as if Simon’s visit had disturbed her in some mysterious way, and she was conscious of a return of the hot resentment that had been her most consistent reaction to Simon in past years.
Nevertheless, it would be childish to let a personal feeling prevent her accepting a position at Rhodes Properties, assuming that she was offered one, and she phoned Miss Sung-Li on the Monday morning as directed.
Fee was conscious of a slight constraint about the woman’s manner which suggested wariness, but her questions were strictly professional and the answers she received must have reassured her as to Fee’s legitimacy as a candidate for the job because she asked her to come in with Miss Betancourt’s reference for a personal interview the following morning, warning her to be prepared for a possible second interview in the afternoon.
‘The position hasn’t been advertised yet, but I should warn you that I have already been giving consideration to some of our established personnel since Miss Norman advised us that she was leaving us,’ she cautioned Fee.
The following day, Fee dressed for the interview in accordance with both the July heat and her perception of Miss Sung-Li, in a slim linen skirt of dark cream and a cool, loose matching jacket with sleeves that stopped at the elbows, the prettily coloured bands decorating the pockets which lay flat against her hips saving the outfit from severity.
The morning was so intensely humid that she gave up the idea of catching a bus and, since she didn’t want to have to deal with traffic and parking, turned down the offer of Babs’s car and took a taxi, glad that the Rhodes Properties offices were on the island and not over in Kowloon. The building was one of the most impressive this side, an elegant, graceful white spire of imposing height.
Aged about forty, Miss Sung-Li was a reserved woman and once again Fee was aware of something resembling caution in her manner, but to her relief she confined her questions to Fee’s abilities and experience. Quiet and still socially shy despite her acquired poise, Fee was nevertheless confident of her professional worth and she was gratified to observe Miss Sung-Li relaxing slightly as the interview progressed.
Finally, Miss Sung-Li seemed moved to reveal something of her thoughts.
‘Of course, in your previous position, you had a superior between you and the man at the top. That wouldn’t be the case here, but the work is well within your capability. Nevertheless, you are very young and rather quiet. Normally I think I might have reservations on those grounds, but, as Mr Rhodes informs me that you are old acquaintances, I have to assume that you have a fair idea of what you can expect and are confident that you can cope, and know him well enough to respect that, while he demands a great deal of his employees, he demands even more of himself.’
‘I didn’t realise!’ Fee’s professional guard fell abruptly. ‘Do you mean I’d be working for—for Mr Rhodes himself?’
‘Didn’t he explain?’ Miss Sung-Li’s mouth tightened as she stared at Fee, and suspicion revealed itself in her dark eyes.
‘All he said was that there might be a position for me and that I should contact you.’ Fee dropped her eyes, her thoughts in turmoil.
There was a silence, but finally Miss Sung-Li seemed to reach a decision.
‘Yes, you would be working for Mr Rhodes himself. Are you still interested in the position, Miss Garland?’
This time Fee was responsible for the silence. Miss Sung-Li believed she could do the work and, as everyone knew, Simon simply was not a kind man, so there was no question of his charitably creating a job for her. Nor could this be some elaborate tease; not in business hours when time, including Miss Sung-Li’s time, was money; besides which, this slightly formidable lady would never lend herself to any sort of hoax.
Oh, Simon probably hadn’t told her what the job entailed simply because, like so many quick, clever people whose thoughts outran speech, he had made the assumption that everyone else knew what he knew.
All she had to consider was whether she wanted the job, and such a prestigious position, in a firm like Rhodes Properties, wasn’t one to be turned down lightly. She might find Simon disturbing to tranquillity, but then again, during working hours he was probably a different man, because the shallow, social Simon Rhodes she knew could never have prospered to the extent that he had.
‘Yes.’ Fee looked up. ‘Yes, I am interested, Miss Sung-Li.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_6b423353-9978-5dee-8677-28dc31ceb985)
SILENTLY, Fee counted the seconds Miss Sung-Li spent regarding her. Five. Then a receiver was lifted from one of the phones on her desk and she seemed to speak to several people, both in English and Cantonese, before saying crisply, ‘Sir? Sung-Li. I’ve just concluded the interview with Miss Garland. I propose to take my lunch-break late so my report will be on your desk when you return if you’ll be going out? Yes…yes, sir.’ She listened briefly and made a polite response before replacing the receiver and looking at Fee a little cynically. ‘Mr Rhodes is on his way down. He wants you to wait for him.’
Having little choice, Fee obediently did so, answering some casual questions about Australia until Simon arrived. Even though she had been expecting him, her pulses leapt nervously when he almost erupted into the peaceful office, and she could see his instant effect on Miss Sung-Li too. Strange man, bringing people to life like this with his blazing vitality.
‘Fee!’ He was hyper, his mood brilliant. ‘Come on, let’s go and have some lunch and I can tell you about the job. I’ll read your report when we get back, Miss Sung-Li, and conduct a proper interview if I think it’s encouraging, and I’ll get Maynah Norman to tell Fee everything she needs to know about her duties.’
By the time they were descending in a lift, Fee had managed to catch her breath.
‘I didn’t realise you meant I’d be working for you,’ she confided gravely.
‘Didn’t I say?’ Simon seemed surprised and then arrogantly dismissive. ‘Yes, we got side-tracked, I remember, when you accused me of wanting to do Charles a favour. You should enjoy it, though. You don’t mind walking, do you? There’s a great place just a few blocks away.’
Hong Kong could change so quickly, and from glittering modern buildings and complicated traffic circles they passed quickly into narrow, shadowy streets, eventually coming to an entrance decorated in the traditional bright colours, beyond which five shallow stairs led down to the restaurant, obviously a favourite with the business community as the men and women lunching there were all immaculately attired for the office. Simon was known, greeted by name and deferentially led to one of the best tables, and Fee couldn’t help a feeling of general pleasure which she expressed with a contented sigh.
‘It’s just nice to be back and get the feel of Hong Kong again,’ she explained in response to Simon’s amusedly questioning glance.
‘You were in Sydney, weren’t you? I should have looked you up the couple of times I’ve been there. Where were you living?’ Simon asked.
‘We had a flat in Manly for the first two years, and after that I shared a house with some Aussie girls at Dee Why, just above the beach,’ Fee vouchsafed, thinking how she would miss it and the local restaurants they had patronised at weekends.
‘What happened to the two girls who went with you?’
‘One is backpacking in Europe with a boyfriend, the other is married. She has just had her second baby,’ Fee added tenderly and felt an irrational sense of outrage mixed with disappointment when Simon grimaced. ‘Don’t you like children?’
‘Don’t know much about them.’ The subject plainly bored him and he turned his attention to the wine list that had just been handed to him, courteously seeking her approval of his choice. ‘I just hope you won’t toss it over me this time.’
Fee’s eyes darkened. ‘These days the responsibility lies with you.’
‘In other words, I mustn’t provoke you?’ His glance sparkled with enjoyment, holding hers for a moment, then straying to an extremely pretty Chinese girl at a nearby table and finally returning to Fee.
She laughed, unable to help herself. ‘She’s beautiful, isn’t she?’
‘Lovely. You’re an unusual one, Fee.’ Simon sounded mildly intrigued. ‘Generous. Most women I know get furiously uptight if the man they’re with so much as glances at another woman, even if he means nothing to them personally. They start tearing the other woman to shreds and, in my experience, the more beautiful a woman is, the bitchier she’ll be about other beauties.’
‘I suppose it’s understandable,’ Fee suggested compassionately. ‘So much is made of beauty that they start believing it’s all they’ve got without being able to forget that it doesn’t last, so they become desperately insecure. It doesn’t apply in my case, though, because I’m not beautiful.’
‘No.’ He brought the word out slowly, studying her face thoughtfully, bright, clever eyes lingering on the curve of her nose, the soft flush of her mouth and the way her cheekbones swept downwards from just beneath the delicate hollows at her temples. ‘No, you aren’t exactly.’
That could just be why he had decided it might suit him to have her working for him, Fee reflected wryly. He was intelligent enough to recognise his own weaknesses and, since he did take Rhodes Properties seriously, he probably didn’t like being distracted during working hours.
On leaving Australia, she had promised herself that she would be scrupulously careful in her choice of boss in future, and she had anticipated a long search, but it seemed as if she might have been lucky, because if she got the Rhodes Properties job she wouldn’t need to be afraid of Simon’s turning out to be like Vance Sheldon, however badly he might behave with the legions of beautiful women who did attract him.
She felt confident that she could do the job Simon outlined over lunch and she was even optimistic that he might prove to be less disconcerting as a boss than he was as an acquaintance.
However, as they walked back to Rhodes Properties, he seemed inclined to revert to personal topics.
‘How are things at home? What have you been doing with yourself?’
‘Oh, nothing much.’
‘Not trying to take up where you and Bates left off?’ Simon prompted smoothly. ‘I can imagine that the contrast of his youth might appeal to you after that old man you were involved with in Australia.’
‘As you say, that old man,’ Fee emphasised, incensed by his lack of intuition. ‘Doesn’t that even suggest that you might be wrong about the nature of my “involvement” with him?’
‘What’s wrong? Did he fail to satisfy you?’ he derided lightly and laughed at her furious expression. ‘But then again, Bates is too young for you, not much more than a boy. What you really need in a relationship is a man—’
‘If ever I find myself in need of advice about relationships, I’ll apply to someone with a more successful record than yours, thanks, Simon,’ she cut in caustically, inwardly disconcerted by the personal turn the conversation had taken.
‘I don’t consider any of my relationships to have been failures,’ Simon returned easily, observing her with amused eyes.
Fee laughed incredulously. ‘They haven’t exactly lasted, have they? You’ve never married, for instance.’
‘Marriage is scarcely a proof of success,’ he drawled mockingly. ‘In fact, most marriages look like failures to me, even when the people concerned make an effort to keep up appearances. Have you ever seen one that works?’
‘What about Babs and Charles?‘ Fee demanded rebelliously.
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