Книга - Tiger Eyes

Tiger Eyes
Robyn Donald


Love Trap…"He's tough and he's brilliant and he's got no weaknesses." That was how Leo Dacre's brother had described him. And Tansy Ormerod was about to find out just how accurate those words were! Leo intended to find out exactly what had happened to his drop-out half-brother Ricky.Tansy knew, but had no intention of telling him. But Leo wasn't used to being denied… especially by someone like Tansy! So when bribes and threats failed, he kidnapped her. Tansy was confident she would survive the ordeal intact. But that was before she realised the passions that Leo could release in her…









Tiger Eyes

Robyn Donald











www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE (#uec41c5c9-362f-59b9-b03a-028fc05b30c2)

CHAPTER TWO (#u68fbe072-c639-5f2c-ab0b-c20a354ca8b9)

CHAPTER THREE (#litres_trial_promo)

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 ONE


TANSY ORMEROD shivered in the frigid air blasting straight up from the South Pole. Although she’d had four years to get accustomed to the winds that buffeted Wellington she still found them hard to bear. And three weeks before Christmas it should be summer, warm and languorous, calling people to the beaches and the mountains.

Except that in New Zealand’s capital nothing to do with the weather was ever so easy. The city’s position on the southern coast of the North Island, open to the funnel of Cook Strait and the wild southern gales, meant that its reputation as Windy Wellington was well-earned.

‘You’re too thin. And born and bred in Auckland—that makes you a total wimp,’ Rick used to tease.

‘So were you.’

‘Yes, but I spent my first five years in Christchurch. Now that’s a climate you can get your teeth into!’

A reminiscent smile curved Tansy’s controlled mouth. She hadn’t expected to miss Rick. He’d been good company and she’d grown fond of him, although he’d only stayed a couple of months. Four months ago he’d gone to find his own destiny, leaving her surprised at the gap in her life.

That secretive little smile widening, she invited the passers-by to enjoy the mock-tragic ballad she was soulfully singing. Several coins landed in the guitar case at her feet, but not enough. Her gaze roamed further, beyond the lines of cars inching their way forwards.

He was back.

Few passers-by noticed the falter in her poignant small voice; the momentary lapse in concentration wasn’t obvious except to her. That same large, discreetly opulent car, with the same man driving it, had sat opposite her for almost an hour on each of the last three days.

Of course, it meant nothing. Danger here came from people as poor as she, people who preyed on the buskers, not dark men with hard-edged, haughty profiles who could afford cars like that. It was just a coincidence. Perhaps he thought she was haunting him!

The last chords on her battered guitar summoned a smattering of applause, augmented by the cheerful clunk of coins landing in the case.

‘That was a pretty tune. What’s it called?’ a middle-aged woman asked encouragingly.

Tansy’s expression relaxed, although she kept a close watch on the money. Years spent earning her living as a busker meant she trusted very few, and certainly no one on the street. Yesterday her whole day’s takings had been stolen when she went to the aid of an old man who’d had some sort of seizure close by. She’d only been gone five minutes, giving him first aid until others took over, but the money had disappeared when she got back.

She should, she supposed with a flash of acid humour, be grateful they’d left the guitar case behind!

‘”Lament for a Lover”,’ she said, smiling.

The woman nodded and moved on. The person who took her place was big enough to block the keen force of the wind. Tansy looked up, one hand pushing back a straggle of carroty hair that refused to stay confined beneath her black beret. Her carefully impersonal smile froze into a travesty.

It was the man from the car.

That first shocked glance told her his presence wasn’t one of the meaningless coincidences cities specialised in. Pale green, purposeful eyes scanned her with the cool mastery of a man who knew exactly what he was doing, and why.

Tall, quite a lot over six feet, which meant he towered above her five feet three, he was the sort of man she instinctively despised, all lean, languid sophistication in a pin-striped suit. Too young and too handsome to be a member of parliament, she thought snidely, using another professional smile to banish a clammy clutch of foreboding in the pit of her stomach. A lawyer, perhaps, or one of the businessmen who flocked to the seat of power to lobby discreetly for their particular field. Although something more fundamental and disturbing than the external indicators of expensive clothes and good looks, something that probably sprang from the unfaltering self-possession she sensed in him, sparked her initial suspicion into positive dislike.

Whatever, he certainly wasn’t a civil servant.

‘A very pretty tune,’ he drawled, looking her over in a speculative fashion that made her bristle with resentment. Slashing brows the same charcoal as his smoothly waving hair gave him an autocratic appearance not mitigated by those chilly, perceptive eyes. He had a good nose for looking down, too.

A five-dollar bill was half concealed suggestively in his hand. Tansy’s eyes flicked from the note back up to a mouth which, for all its beautiful shape, was set in lines that indicated an unyielding lack of compromise.

‘Thank you,’ she said stiffly.

‘Have I heard it before?’

Her normally quick wits deserted her. In a flat voice she said, ‘Often.’

‘Ah, yes, in a couple of hundred folk songs about doomed love. I especially liked the tremor in the second verse. It made every woman go all misty-eyed. Who wrote it?’

‘I did,’ she snapped, brown eyes suddenly transformed by glittering sparks.

Anybody with more than a smattering of musical knowledge would have recognised the song for the pastiche it was, which made her grudging respect unnecessary. Anyway, she didn’t have time to bandy words with him now. Unless fifty dollars ended up in the guitar case before the end of the day she’d be late with the rent again.

If this was an attempt to pick her up, she simply wasn’t interested. As a prelude to dismissal she let her glance drift past the rangy, athletic body, and positioned herself to begin another song.

‘Clever girl,’ he said enigmatically. Then, so swiftly that she didn’t for a moment realise what he’d said, he asked, ‘Did you write it for Ricky Dacre?’

Normally sallow, Tansy felt the last tiny hint of colour vanish from her skin.

Although she had learned how to deal with anything the streets were likely to throw at her, there was a latent threat in the stranger’s brilliant eyes and chiselled, angular features that tightened the muscles in Tansy’s throat. He might look like some city sophisticate, but a hard determination transmuted the good-looking face.

‘Who are you?’ she asked quietly, because it would be useless to deny any knowledge of Rick. This man was here for a purpose.

‘I’m his brother.’

Tansy had to clench her jaw to stop her mouth falling open. So this was Leo Dacre! Hastily regrouping her forces, she tried to impose a blank inscrutability on her sharp features, and knew she succeeded in looking merely mulish.

‘Ah, I see you know who I am.’

‘Yes,’ she admitted. Rick had spoken obsessively about the man he loved and hated, the man he had, in a way, run away from. ‘I know Rick has a brother called Leo.’

The black brows lifted. Not giving an inch, Tansy stared back.

Silently, he took out an ID card of some sort; below a photograph—a good one—of him, was his name. Leo James Dacre, aged twenty-eight. Going on a hundred, she thought sourly, nodding. There was no resemblance to his brother. In spite of everything, Rick had had a fresh, newly hatched quality, an essential boyishness. This man had been born worldly.

He replaced the card. ‘I want to talk to you about him.’

Something about Leo Dacre sent icy little intimations of fear jagging through her. He was not, however, a man it would be politic to antagonise. Shrugging, Tansy said, ‘All right, but not now.’

He looked down at the coins in the guitar case. ‘How much will it cost me to buy you for as long as it takes?’

His words, delivered with crisp confidence, were inherently insulting, but only the studied watchfulness in his eyes revealed that he had used them deliberately.

Stupidly, because crossing swords with this man was dangerous, Tansy set her jaw and said with cold precision, ‘You can’t buy me.’

‘Then I’d like to rent you for a little while.’

That was just as offensive. Obscurely convinced that revealing how angry she was would hand him an advantage she’d later regret, she subdued her resentment. ‘How long will it take?’

‘That,’ he replied with an intonation that imbued the words with a threatening undertone, ‘depends entirely on you.’

Tansy made up her mind. Although she didn’t want anything to do with this man, experience had taught her that there were people you didn’t mess with. Rick’s half-brother was definitely one of these. It went against the grain, but she said brusquely, ‘I need fifty dollars.’

If he’d shown any triumph or even satisfaction she’d have changed her mind immediately. However, his face was impassive as he drew out a wallet and handed her some folded notes. Deliberately, Tansy counted the money before bending over to scoop up the coins in the guitar case. When she’d packed away the guitar she said with what she hoped was distant self-possession, ‘There’s a pub just down the street.’

‘How old are you?’ He held out an imperative hand for the guitar.

Astonished, Tansy handed it over before she had time to think. ‘Nineteen.’

Her twentieth birthday, which would have made her presence in the bar legal, was in a couple of days’ time, but she wasn’t going to tell him that, although she did say, ‘I don’t drink alcohol, and if anyone asks you can say you’re my guardian.’

He swung into place beside her, cutting her off from the people who swirled past. ‘I feel a little too young to be a guardian,’ he said. ‘How about a husband?’

Tansy’s mouth, firmly disciplined to hide the vulnerability that was a dead giveaway, quirked into an unwilling, mocking smile. ‘Not my type,’ she said.

If she hadn’t already realised that instinctively, the glances they got as they walked down the street would have told her. Most women did a double take when they saw the man beside her, eyeing him with interest and an unmistakable, primal response. Then their eyes switched to her, and that feminine alertness was replaced by surprise and amusement, even a slight smugness. A woman dressed in charity-shop clothes just didn’t go with a man who looked as though he had spent more on his tailor than she saw in a year!

He looked over her head into a shop window, checking out her reflection. ‘True.’

The speculative note beneath the word chafed her nerves. Pride lifted her chin, straightened her shoulders. She wasn’t going to let this man make her feel inferior.

‘No one will ask,’ she said laconically.

No one did. Sipping the milk she ordered while he paid for it and the beer he chose for himself, Tansy waited for him to ask questions, wondering at a fatalism that sat oddly with her perception of herself. Surrender was not her style, but something beyond logic warned her there was no escaping this man.

‘How long were you and Ricky living together?’ Leo Dacre asked in his beautiful, cool voice.

Tansy bristled. ‘We shared a room for a couple of months,’ she retorted, clipping the words.

‘And where is he now?’

Without hesitation she lied, ‘I don’t know.’

He let the silence drag out into tension before saying pleasantly, ‘It would be well worth your while to tell me.’

Tansy hoped no sign of her inner turmoil showed. Although Rick hadn’t boasted, from his conversation and reactions it had been obvious that the Dacres had had money for generations. With no income beyond what she earned busking, Tansy considered other things besides money to be important; loyalty, for one.

‘I don’t know,’ she repeated stonily.

‘That’s a pity.’

Matching him stare for stare, she noticed an irregular, gold star around the pupil of each eye. It gave her a faint, uncanny chill, as though she were confronted by an alien.

In many ways, she thought, a glimmer of black humour lightening her mood, she might just as well be. Beyond common humanity, she had absolutely nothing in common with the Leo Dacres of this world. An unwilling smile quirked her mouth.

‘Don’t you laugh at me,’ he said evenly.

Captured by his eyes, crystalline and imperious, their piercing clarity darkened by anger and will-power, Tansy fought against an almost hypnotic compulsion to tell him what he wanted.

‘I can’t help you,’ she said brusquely, dragging her gaze free.

Two very attractive women came laughing into the room, their voices and posture completely self-assured. Leo Dacre watched them go across to a table, his arrogant profile harshly forceful against the over-opulent walls of the bar.

When he transferred his scrutiny back to Tansy it was iced with offhand disdain, as though she wasn’t important enough to get really angry with. The hair on the back of Tansy’s neck lifted in involuntary response; the temper she kept so tightly curbed stirred and flexed. She drew in a deep breath, applying the restraints and checks she had learned, sending it back to its den.

‘Did he tell you much about his home?’ he asked, apparently idly.

Tansy shrugged. ‘A little.’

‘Then perhaps he mentioned his mother.’

She drank some of the milk. ‘Yes,’ she said ungraciously, ‘once or twice.’

‘They are—very close.’

Veiling her eyes with her thick lashes so he couldn’t see the indecision in their tawny depths, she hardened her heart. Rick had worried about his mother, although to Tansy Grace Dacre had sounded rather neurotically possessive. ‘So I gathered,’ she said remotely.

‘He can’t know that she’s desperately afraid and worried, unable to sleep in case something awful is happening to him.’

Oh, he was clever. No hint of contempt in the dark, bland voice now, merely concern. If Rick hadn’t talked incessantly about his half-brother, she’d have surrendered then. But Tansy knew more about this man than Rick, still starry-eyed with hero-worship, realised he’d told her. Leo Dacre was high-handed and unmerciful; he saw people as pawns to be manipulated.

‘He was fine when I saw him last,’ she said casually.

The magnificent eyes were hooded, like those of a bird of prey as it strikes. ‘She has also just come out of hospital after a severe operation,’ he said. ‘Cancer.’

That was a bodyblow. But Tansy had made a promise to Rick.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly.

‘Unfortunately she has to have further treatment, and she wants him with her.’

‘Naturally.’ It took a real effort to keep her face set in an expression of mild sympathy. This changed everything. Although Rick might chafe under his mother’s possessiveness, he loved her and he would certainly want to be with her when she needed him.

Tansy looked down at the hands clenched around her glass. Surreptitiously she relaxed the long, strong fingers while her brain raced, trying to find an answer to an insoluble question. What on earth should she do?

There was a balked silence, tingling with Leo Dacre’s frustration. ‘So you’re not going to help,’ he said.

He spoke quietly, but an inflexion in the smooth voice dragged Tansy’s gaze to his face. A muscle flicked several times just above the tough line of his jaw. It fascinated her; her eyes lingered compulsively on the tiny betrayal, made all the more obvious because his face revealed no other emotion. Yet anger emanated from him in dark waves and she knew with a sudden terrible intuition that he was holding on to his control with a fierce effort of will.

‘I can’t help you,’ she muttered, cross with herself because she was afraid. Striving to appear detached, she suspected she achieved a sullen boredom instead.

‘How much would it cost?’

His callous emphasis on payment brought topaz sparks to her eyes. In her most offhand tone she said, ‘I’m not interested in any money, thanks.’

‘Don’t make up your mind right away. Think about it overnight, and tell me tomorrow what your decision is,’ he said, his voice warm and persuasive.

Tansy remembered that he was a barrister, a courtroom expert, with all the acting skill that that implied. She could see now why Rick said he was heading straight for the heights of his profession. He used his voice and his expression, his powerful presence, like weapons. In a courtroom he must be lethal; pity any poor witnesses who allowed themselves to be seduced by that voice and the implicit sympathy in his tone.

She looked directly at him, her shuttered eyes concealing the turbulent emotions that rioted through her. ‘Sorry,’ she repeated, drained the milk and got to her feet, picking up her guitar case on the way. ‘Don’t waste your time, Mr Dacre. I can’t help you at all.’

As she made for the door she felt the intense impact of his stare right through to her bones. In its time Wellington had endured some awe-inspiring earthquakes, but the effect of that look, Tansy thought, trying to salvage some mordant humour from the situation, could well ricochet her off the top of her personal Richter scale. She tried hard not to be impressed.

Nevertheless, she noticed her boots took her across the floor faster than she wanted to go; she’d have felt better if she’d been able to saunter away, swinging her hips in a maddening parody of a sexy, come-hither walk.

Except that she didn’t think she could. Tansy had learnt to blend in, and she’d tailored her walk accordingly, moving with enough confidence to be rejected as a victim, but without provocation.

Once outside she exhaled in a rush, looking around with bright, dazed eyes that only slowly took in the familiar buildings of Quay Street and the usual scurrying people. Presumably he expected her to go home now that she had her fifty dollars. So, adjusting her pointed chin to a jaunty angle, she went back to her patch.

All the rest of the afternoon as her fingers moved across the guitar strings and her voice flowed from song to song, she kept her eyes open for Leo Dacre, and couldn’t have said whether she was relieved or disappointed when she didn’t see him again.

Not that she liked the man. He was an overbearing, high-handed bully, with a fine talent for intimidation! However, it wasn’t easy to banish an image of Rick’s mother, ill and wanting him home. Although Rick found her unbearably clinging, he understood his mother’s dependence on him. An inherited condition had almost killed him several times before he was five, a condition she had handed on to him. It had taken a miracle of science to snatch life from his living death, and years for him to recover and gain some strength. Horrified, his mother had refused to have more children.

He would, Tansy knew, want to be with her now.

What on earth should she do?

Still unsure when it was time to pack up, she struggled home in the teeth of the gale to her bed-sitting-room. Built under one of Wellington’s old wooden houses in the inner city, it was within walking distance of the streets she worked and the university, which offset the higher rent she paid for its situation. On the floors above were a couple of flats with constantly changing occupants.

Tansy’s room was small and dim, cold and more than a little musty. Sparsely furnished with a three-quarter bed and a chair that unwrapped into a single mattress, it had its own bathroom, if you could call the cupboard beneath the stairs that, and a tiny kitchen alcove. Not that she needed anything larger; her cooking tended to be just as spartan as her room.

All in all, the place was about as basic as it could be, yet Rick had fitted in quite unconcernedly.

Pulling off her coat and beret, she put them away in the cupboard that served as her wardrobe, and wondered caustically whether Leo Dacre had ever seen a place as down market as this. Probably not. Shrugging, she tidied the wild ginger tangle of her hair, eyeing her reflection in the mirror above the old chest of drawers beside the bed.

Her clothes were warm and clean, but showed their age and origins, and the maroon jersey clashed cruelly with her colouring. Like her wardrobe, the room was dominated by charity-shop finds, but the cushions and the pleasantly faded bedspread in subdued crimson and gold were chosen, as were the posters of South America on the wall, because their rich hues satisfied a hunger for colour and movement and drama that her clothes couldn’t.

While the kettle boiled she checked out her bank balance. It made less than encouraging reading. In the past she’d always made enough over the summer break to pay her fees at university, but that wasn’t going to happen this year. The recession was biting hard and people just didn’t have the money to spend on itinerant buskers. Even if the rest of the run-up to Christmas was as good as it had been so far, she still wouldn’t have enough.

And after Christmas, Wellington, like every other New Zealand city except the tourist towns, died over the summer.

Flicking the bankbook shut, she frowned. Now that her bachelor’s degree was safely under her belt she was determined to carry on, although a master’s meant an even greater commitment of time and effort for two years, and if the recession continued she wasn’t going to be able to afford to eat, much less pay her fees.

When she left home her ultimate goal had been university. It had been a hard slog, and she had sometimes regretted her obsession, but a fierce, unyielding obstinacy kept her going. That same stubbornness compressed her mouth now; she had gone too far to give up.

After putting her bankbook away, she made herself a cup of herbal tea. She had survived before; she’d do it again. Some months ago, when Tansy was still sure she’d be able to manage, Professor Paxton had talked to a friend about a possible scholarship. Tomorrow morning she’d contact him and find out what was offering.

Slowly she reached across the table and began to go through the sheets of music she had left stacked there that morning. It was awful. Totally banal. Derivative. An ironic smile tucked in the corners of her mouth. Of course, she always thought that.

Did other composers look at their work and wonder whether they would ever produce anything worthwhile? Had Beethoven? Or Mozart? It didn’t seem likely. As she drank her tea she scanned the sheets, hearing the music in her head. Then she made some corrections, and finally sat with her chin in her hand, wondering why she should be so convinced that her future lay in writing music. Not just songs, either. She enjoyed them, but they were ephemeral. She wanted to write music that would be listened to for the next hundred years.

Her eyes narrowed. It wasn’t a matter of wanting to write; she didn’t have any choice. Even if no one ever heard the sounds that filled her head, she would still be buying paper she couldn’t afford and setting them down. It was a compulsion she no longer tried to resist.

But her heart wasn’t in it tonight, and she knew why: Leo Dacre’s arrival had thrown her completely.

What a mess! Rick had been utterly convinced that this was his one chance to wrest control of his life away from the demons that were driving him to destruction, and she had agreed. Still did.

Which was why she had lied to Leo; she couldn’t let Rick down.

Nevertheless she felt like a worm. Even though Rick had warned her his brother would find her, she hadn’t expected Leo Dacre to erupt into her life like the Demon King in a pantomime. And she certainly hadn’t expected to feel that shiver of fear. She’d discounted most of Rick’s endless discussions of his brother as adolescent hero-worship.

She’d been wrong; Leo Dacre was disturbingly forceful.

That was a mild way of putting it. He was an arrogant bastard with a cynical belief that money could buy everything. But did he know why Rick had run away from school halfway through the year?

She frowned, trying to remember if there had been any indication in his tone or expression. No; although that aloof, self-possessed face revealed very little, he hadn’t appeared to know. Rick had said no one did.

And now Grace Dacre was ill. Tansy hated the thought of Rick’s mother grieving and suspecting the worst, yet she still couldn’t convince herself that she should go against Rick’s wishes and tell his brother where he was. So much depended on it. Rick’s whole future, in fact.

She chewed a moment on her lip. Damn Leo Dacre; why had he come and upset her comparatively serene life?

And how had he found her? Sudden tension prickled up her backbone as she wondered whether he had set a spy to watch her.

Not that anyone could force her back home now. That caution was merely a leftover from the time when she’d lived looking over her shoulder in case someone arrived to drag her back home.

Tonight at the café, she decided as she got up to shower, she’d ask if she could ring the camp where Rick was trying to put his life back together again. He wouldn’t be able to speak to her, but she’d tell the man who ran the camp about this development. He’d be impartial, and she, cowardly though it probably was, would offload the responsibility on to him.

Three hours later she was sitting on a stool in the café when she realised Leo Dacre had followed her. The quaver in her smoky voice wasn’t obvious, but she saw his quick smile and cursed herself for the small betrayal. Nobody else noticed. But then, her rendition of French songs à la Edith Piaf two nights a week was merely a background to flirting and eating and drinking and, during the university year, deep philosophical discussions on the meaning of life and the possible existence of a theory of everything.

Leo Dacre looked as though he was well aware of the meaning of life and had his own, perfectly satisfactory, universal theory. For a fleeting moment Tansy wondered whether anything ever shook that powerful self-confidence. Only for a moment. She remembered the tiny, ominous flick of muscle against his angular jaw, and felt another twist of inchoate alarm at the barely caged emotions she had sensed behind his sophisticated front.

But the fact that he was here meant that unless she could get rid of him first she dare not ring the camp tonight.

Avoiding his eyes, she smiled at the applause and went with smooth precision into the rest of the set. By showing up he was sending a message. She was, she realised grimly, in for a hard time until she managed to convince him that she wasn’t going to tell him where Rick was.

Her life had suddenly become far too complicated. Perhaps she deserved it; anyone with any sense of self-preservation at all would have left thin, twitchy, obviously nervous Rick at the railway station that night six months ago, instead of taking him in like a starving stray and feeding him and keeping him warm and letting him talk to her as though his life and sanity depended on it.

Her voice lingered softly over the final silken syllables before trailing away into a plaintive silence. She smiled at the applause and slid down from the stool. Without looking at the table where Leo Dacre sat, she headed for the kitchen door. When it closed behind her with a soft thunk, her breath puffed through her lips in a sharp, relieved sigh.

‘Brilliant as ever,’ Arabella, who owned the café, said with her customary generosity. Large, flamboyant and in her late fifties, she was just outrageous enough to make it seem possible that it was her real name.

Tansy grinned. Arabella always tossed her the same compliment, and it didn’t mean a thing. The main reason she was employed here two nights a week was that she looked the part; skinny and intense and soulful. Arabella thought she gave the crowded café a bit of Continental flair.

‘Want something to eat, love?’ The older woman inspected Tansy with a perceptive eye. ‘You look a bit pale. Got some nice linguine tonight.’

‘Your pasta is delicious, but I think I’ll—’

Another thunk of the door silenced her. Prickles of recognition pulled the fine hair on the back of her neck upright. Arabella’s dyed red head swivelled. After a comprehensive, almost awed survey, she beamed at the man who had followed Tansy in.

‘Don’t run away, Tansy, I’ll buy you a drink,’ Leo Dacre said.

‘She doesn’t drink,’ the older woman told him throatily.

Normally her protective attitude amused Tansy, even warmed her a little, but for once she’d have liked Arabella to treat her as an adult capable of making her own decisions.

‘Indeed?’ He looked at Arabella, and smiled.

Tansy caught it from the corner of her eye. It was the kind of smile that could melt icebergs at forty miles: although deliberate, even calculated, its lazy, appreciatively male sexuality would take a far tougher woman than the café owner to withstand.

Arabella swallowed. She might have been planning to say something more but Leo Dacre side-tracked her neatly by murmuring, ‘Not one of your vices, Tansy? But then, you haven’t many, have you? You’ve led a very sober and industrious life.’

‘Oh, you know each other, do you?’ Arabella was openly curious.

Tansy opened her mouth to refute this, only to be forestalled by Leo. ‘Yes, of course. Tansy, why don’t you introduce us?’

Wondering whether that billion-kilowatt smile had scrambled her brains beyond redemption, Tansy did.

Within two minutes he had Arabella, no fool in spite of her soft heart, eating out of his hand. Had Tansy been less apprehensive, less tense, she might have admired a master at work. As it was, she could only fume at the unfaltering, devilish skill with which he soothed Arabella while implying without a word that he and Tansy were close friends and that, although he found Arabella interesting and sexy, it wouldn’t be good manners for him to let Tansy see this.

He was clever. He was devious. He was beginning to scare the hell out of her. A man who could do that could turn her inside out and extract Rick’s whereabouts before she had time to realise what she was saying.

Tomorrow, she decided abruptly, on the way to see Professor Paxton, she’d buy a Telecom card and ring the camp from a public phone box. In the meantime it would be necessary to keep a clear head, and not let Leo Dacre’s smile short-circuit any more of the synapses in her brain.

‘Well, Tansy’s finished work for tonight,’ Arabella said, obviously convinced she was helping an incipient romance.

With a last benign, approving smile at them both, she bustled across the noisy, sizzling kitchen to where her youngest son seemed about to toss a large wok full of stir-fried vegetables on to the floor. Arabella’s cuisine was eclectic.

Tansy tried to pull away from Leo’s hand at her elbow. He merely tightened his grip and guided her through the door back into the café.

‘I’m going home now,’ she stated evenly.

‘Wait until I’ve finished my drink and I’ll take you there.’

Her small, sharp chin angled up. ‘I don’t know you well enough to go anywhere with you,’ she said, not attempting to hide the caustic undertone in her voice.

His smile was hard and enigmatic, green eyes the colour and clarity of peridots scanning her mutinous face. ‘Of course you do,’ he said. ‘I imagine Rick’s told you all about his horrible, unsympathetic, bad-tempered, far too demanding half-brother.’

Reluctantly, and only because she didn’t trust him not to plonk her into the chair if she objected, she sat down. Her frown turned to surprise as one of the waiters, yet another of the owner’s sons, arrived with a plate of linguine.

‘No—Arabella’s made a mistake,’ she said, smiling. ‘I told her I didn’t want it.’

Leo Dacre pushed the plate towards her. ‘Eat it up,’ he ordered. ‘No doubt the half-starved look is a professional asset when you’re singing Piaf, but it doesn’t do anything for your face.’

She didn’t like him, she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, yet the casual cruelty of his words hurt. ‘I’ve always been thin,’ she said stiffly.

‘So you starve yourself to make sure you stay that way? Eat up, there’s a good girl.’

Tansy hesitated. Leo nodded at the waiter, and said with enough command in his voice, ‘Thanks.’

Waiting until Peter had scurried off, Tansy said, ‘I don’t like being told what to eat.’

‘There’s no sense in being stubborn merely for the sake of it.’

He was, of course, maddeningly right. Until that moment Tansy hadn’t felt in the least hungry, but the steaming pasta smelt wonderful. Picking up her fork, she began to eat.

Tansy had a thing about hands. She believed they could tell her far more than expressions; people trained their faces to reveal only the thoughts and emotions that were politic, but hands and their movements were difficult to disguise.

Leo Dacre’s were competent as well as graceful. They were also under control. He didn’t wave them around, or drum them on the table, or scratch himself with them. Tansy found them distinctly unsettling.

Almost as unsettling as Leo Dacre himself.

A group of young men came in, shouting, laughing boisterously. Leo’s dark head swung around, presenting a profile as autocratic as a king on a coin; he checked them out before dismissing them as harmless.

He was a barrister, Tansy knew, well on the way to taking silk and becoming a Queen’s Counsel. Rick had been very proud of his brother’s speedy rise through the ranks.

Leo worked in offices and courtrooms. Why then did he look as though he’d be more than competent to deal with any number of rowdy youths? Unwillingly, Tansy was intrigued. A good gym and a certain amount of dedication and sweat would give him the muscles that covered his long bones, but beneath the sophisticated, disciplined veneer she sensed something untamed and lethal.

He had a predator’s focused awareness of his surroundings, a predator’s skill in finding the weak spots in armour—look at the way he had charmed Arabella into submission, the way he had homed in on her own reluctance to make things worse for Rick’s mother. As well, he displayed a predator’s frighteningly fast reactions, and that invisible, potent aura of danger.

Altogether an alarming man. And she was his prey, the person that sharp, clear brain wanted to break.

For as long as she could remember, Tansy had singlemindedly aimed for one goal. She had sacrificed almost everything—a family, an easy life, even friends—for it. She had put herself in jeopardy, had learned to be streetwise, had gone hungry and cold for her ambition, and she had come to believe that nothing scared her any more.

But Leo Dacre did. Of course, she could save herself all this worry, and tell him where his brother was; she had done more for Rick than most would expect from a chance-met stranger. Unfortunately it wasn’t in her to tamely knuckle under. And if she had been tempted, she’d only to recall Rick’s desperate face and urgent plea to change her mind.

‘This is my last chance,’ he’d said just before he left, his determination as obvious as his fear. ‘I have to do this, Tansy, and if Leo finds out where I am he’ll have me out of there without a second thought.’

‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Surely he’d be pleased that you’re getting help.’

‘You don’t know Leo. He’d never find himself in a situation like this, he’s too strong, but if somehow he did he’d deal with it himself. In our family Leo’s the one everyone goes to when they need help, the only one who doesn’t need help himself. He’s tough, and he’s brilliant, and he’s got no weaknesses. People admire him, they look up to him. More than anything in the world I want to be like him. If he finds out where I am he’ll take me home and make me see a psychiatrist, and it won’t work, because he’ll be there, he’ll be watching all the time, and if I let him down again I—’ He looked at her with such painful intensity that her heart twisted.

Then he said heavily, ‘It would kill me, Tansy. If I can only have the time and the privacy, I know this will work. I can’t cope with things like he does—I’m not as tough as he is—but I have to prove to myself and to him that I can do something right.’

All of his longing, the echo of years growing up in another man’s shadow, sounded in his voice.

Tansy grimaced. She knew what was driving him, his need to prove himself. Her relationship with her foster-family had foundered on the rock of her inability to be the daughter and sister they wanted.

She looked at Rick’s bent brown head and said angrily, ‘Surely he doesn’t expect you to be a clone of him, and if he is so insensitive, you’re better off without him!’

‘He’s not like that,’ he said simply. ‘Just don’t tell him where I am, OK? I hate asking you, because Leo’s a master of applying pressure and you’ve been so good to me.’

Tansy laughed. ‘If he finds me, which I doubt, he can’t do anything more than ask. He’s got no leverage.’

Rick eyed her with a grimness she now understood. ‘You don’t know Leo. He’ll find something to threaten you with. But please, promise me.’

She’d promised. So, she thought, shaking her head at the offer of coffee, she would make sure that, whatever tactics Leo Dacre tried, she wouldn’t give Rick away. He’d convinced himself that this was his last chance, and he deserved his opportunity.

A strange, fierce exhilaration flooded her. She would show Leo Dacre that she wasn’t easily intimidated.

‘Let’s go,’ he said, getting to his feet.

Apparently one of the tricks in his armoury was to take it for granted that she was going to fall in with whatever he suggested. Tonight she’d do that, for her own good reasons. Outside the bitter wind was now driving rain before it, and if she walked she’d be drenched by the time she got halfway home.

He didn’t ask where she lived. She didn’t tell him, but he drove straight there.

At the door of her flat he said, ‘Are you going to ask me in?’

‘No,’ she said abruptly, bracing herself for an argument. Huddling a little further into her coat, she said coolly, ‘It’s no use, you know.’

Of course she’d known she wouldn’t put him off so easily, but she was unprepared for his low laughter.

‘I enjoy a good fight,’ he said, a note of mockery giving emphasis to the words. ‘Open your door.’

‘I don’t want—’

Ignoring her struggles, he picked up the hand that held her key and, with his warm one around it, forced the key into the lock and turned it. His other hand came up and switched the light on.

‘All right?’ He looked around her cramped domain with eyes that took in everything.

‘Of course it’s all right,’ she said, her voice rising jaggedly. That swift, comprehensive glance was like a violation. Defensively trying to block his view, she stepped inside and swung around to face him.

‘Right. See you tomorrow.’

He closed the door behind him with a loud click of the lock. Automatically, Tansy put the chain across, her eyes narrowed beneath her fine, straight brows as she tried to work out what that had been.

Macho display? No, he had to know that men were stronger than women. Was he proving that he could make her do whatever he wanted to? Hardly. He was subtle, not brutal and as lacking in finesse as a battle-axe.

He knew Rick wasn’t there so it hadn’t been that, either, unless he thought his brother might have come back that very day.

Was he concerned about her safety, for heaven’s sake?

It gave her an odd little warmth, a warmth she instantly doused. She had lived on her own since a year after she had run away, but even before that she had to some extent always been on her own. Her foster-parents’ decision that she leave school and work in the local supermarket had merely made obvious what she had always sensed. So she had run away as far as she could, determined to follow her dream and compose beautiful, exciting music, music that would touch the hearts of generations unborn.

And she had managed, with help, to survive. Chin tilted, she looked around the small room, trying to see it with Leo Dacre’s eyes. OK, so she didn’t live in particularly salubrious surroundings, but they were hers. If she never produced anything more than the pretty little songs she sang on the streets, she had made a life on her own terms.

But she would make music. It was a kind of rage in her, a need that was more important than anything else, more necessary than food, more vital than affection, more intensely satisfying than the most ardent love-affair.

It was her future and her present. She didn’t regret jettisoning her relationship with her foster-family, and she’d not regret it if she never found anyone to love, because love could only ever take second place. There might come a time when she’d want marriage, and children, but at the moment she couldn’t imagine it.




CHAPTER TWO


COLLAPSING bonelessly into the chair, Tansy sighed and pulled off her beret, tossing it on to the bed. Her hair sprang out around her narrow face like wildfire. It was, she thought gloomily, about the only thing about her that actually had any life to it. Too much life: completely uncontrollable and far too obvious, she kept it covered as much as possible. It contrasted brashly with the pale, scrawny, unobtrusive rest of her.

Suddenly weary, she got ready for bed, where she lay awake for too long, wondering how Rick was getting on in his self-imposed exile. And exactly what effect his mother’s illness was going to have on his life.

* * *

On her way to Lambton Quay the next morning she tried to ring the camp, but was rebuffed by the very unforthcoming man who answered. He informed her he was the cook and that everyone else was out for the day, and as she opened her mouth, hung up.

‘Damn,’ she muttered, seething with frustration. That was several dollars down the drain. Hastily she rang the university, hoping to be able to talk to Professor Paxton about grants, but he wasn’t there, and wasn’t expected in that day.

Altogether an exercise in futility.

* * *

Just before lunch she watched a limousine pull up outside a very upmarket hotel and disgorge three men. One she recognised as an important industralist, one was a quintessential yes-man, dark-suited and eager, and the third was Leo Dacre. He saw her, but apart from a quizzical lift of his brows gave no sign of recognition.

Ignoring him, she hurried on her way, but the incident dramatised the difference between them. King Cophetua and the beggar maid, she thought ironically. Except that the beggar maid had been beautiful, and the king had fallen in love with her. Young as Tansy had been when she’d read the story, she’d always wondered whether the beggar maid had really enjoyed being queen.

It wasn’t a good day; the weather was still unseasonable so there were few shoppers about, and those who had to brave the wind weren’t wanting to stop and listen. At three-thirty she let herself think wistfully of Auckland summers that started in November and went on sometimes until June.

Remember the sticky, airless humidity, too, she told herself, slipping into a rollicking Caribbean folksong with forced enthusiasm. A few people tossed coins into her guitar case. They were going to be the last; as she finished the song with a flourish she realised that the street was almost empty of people.

Lord, she hoped things picked up. Perhaps she should go north to Auckland. There were more people there. Or Queenstown...there were always tourists visiting the South Island’s lovely lakes and mountains. And where there were holidaymakers, there was a delightfully casual attitude about money.

Unfortunately it cost money to get there. Of course, she could hitch hike.

No, it wasn’t worth the risk.

She packed up and set off, telling herself that the odd sensation under her breastbone was just hunger, not disappointment nor foreboding. The guitar dragged heavily on her arm.

A moment later she decided that she might be psychic after all. A car drew up beside her and Leo Dacre said, ‘Hop in and I’ll take you for a drink somewhere.’

‘I’m on my way home.’ She was astounded at the treacherous warmth spreading through her.

‘Get in,’ he said calmly.

She shook her head.

‘I want to talk about Rick.’ He got out and opened the rear door, holding out his hand for the guitar. ‘Come on, we’ll have afternoon tea and then I’ll take you straight home.’

And even as she wondered why he had such an effect on her, she found herself handing over the instrument and getting in.

‘How long have you been busking?’ he asked as he set the car in motion.

‘Why ask me questions you already know the answers to?’ she retorted.

He sent her a slanted look from unreadable eyes. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

Exasperated, she glowered at him. ‘Well, you obviously put a private detective on to Rick. How else would you have found me? And I’ll bet you didn’t just stop at a name; I’m sure there’s a dossier about me somewhere.’

His hard-edged smile applauded her shrewdness. ‘You’re right, of course. Yes, I know you ran away from home and dropped completely out of sight for a year. Why did you run away?’

‘Doesn’t the dossier have it all set out for you?’

He ignored the sharp sarcasm in her question. ‘Your family say you were always difficult to control, which doesn’t match your reputation at school.’

She shrugged. ‘My foster-parents and I didn’t see eye to eye. I don’t blame them; I must have been impossible to live with.’

‘What happened to your own family?’

Tansy was beginning to realise that she was too vulnerable to this man; she needed barriers. And because she didn’t seem to be able to keep behind the ones of her own making, she decided to hand him some. However, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Didn’t your detective find that out either?’

‘He wasn’t asked to,’ he said. ‘I know you were four when you went to live with the O’Briens, and that you lived in a social welfare institution before that.’

‘My mother was a prostitute, I believe,’ she said deliberately. ‘She didn’t look after me properly, so the welfare took me away and put me into a foster-home.’

She cast a challenging look at him, but to her surprise there was no sign of disgust or surprise in his face.

‘How old were you then?’

‘Eighteen months.’ He might as well, she thought savagely, know the whole story. It had been a shock to Tansy when Pam O’Brien hurled the truth at her during one of their battles just before she’d run away; it would be an even greater jolt to Leo Dacre, brought up with all the advantages of wealth and security. ‘She went off for the weekend with some man. Apparently a friend was supposed to come and pick me up, but she had a better offer so I stayed in the flat until the neighbours got sick of my screaming.’

He swore under his breath. ‘Humanity can be incredibly cruel,’ he said. ‘Did you ever see your mother again?’

‘No.’ Tansy didn’t want him to pity her. ‘She died a couple of years later. I don’t remember her.’

‘If you lived happily with your foster-family until you were fifteen, what happened to change things?’

Beneath her jersey Tansy’s shoulders moved uneasily. ‘We disagreed on the course my future should take,’ she said, not attempting to hide the ironic note in her voice.

‘Some disagreement.’ He waited several seconds, and, when she remained silent, said, ‘So you ran away. How did you survive that first year on the streets?’

Tansy wasn’t surprised his detective hadn’t been able to discover anything about that year. She’d dropped out, living with a woman who’d made it her life’s work to take in runaways and street kids. With a better knowledge of what could have been her future, Tansy never stopped thanking the fates that the tough, big-hearted widow had noticed the skinny, frightened girl at the railway station and taken her home.

Not only that; it was Mrs Tarawera who had lent her a guitar and suggested she busk for a living, organising an assortment of temporary sons and cousins as bodyguards for a couple of weeks to make sure no one stole her money. At Mrs Tarawera’s house Tansy had learned to be streetwise; those same ‘sons’—street kids and runaways—had taught her what to watch for and how to defend herself.

Mrs Tarawera was dead now, but she had left many living memorials in the people she had befriended and fed. Her kindness, and how much it had meant then, was one of the reasons why Tansy had taken in Rick.

And look where that generous impulse had got her, she reminded herself acidly, keeping her eyes on the road ahead as they drove up towards the Lady Norwood Rose Gardens.

‘Surprisingly easily,’ she returned lightly.

‘I admire determination.’ Skilfully, he passed a cyclist clad in yellow and black Lycra shorts who seemed hell-bent on committing suicide beneath their wheels. ‘Almost as much as I admire loyalty.’

She threw him a tolerant glance. So he thought he was going to be able to smooth-talk Rick’s whereabouts out of her. ‘Both are admirable qualities.’

‘When not taken to excess.’

She picked up the gauntlet. ‘Can one take—say, loyalty to excess?’

‘Oh, I think so.’ The car drew to a stop in the car park. As he got out, Tansy opened her door too. He asked, ‘Are you radical in your feminist beliefs?’ closing the door behind her.

She shrugged. ‘Not particularly. If it upsets you to see me get out by myself I’m quite happy to humour you.’

He laughed, the brilliant, enigmatic eyes never leaving her face. ‘I like the sharp teeth and claws,’ he said amiably.

Something tense and forbidden stirred deep inside Tansy. A dart of sensation quivered through her, altering her, changing her in subtle, unnerving ways. Gazing around, she strove to overcome the unbidden weakness.

Rosebushes, although slightly battered by wind and rain, lifted valiant, colourful heads to the sun. Because the gardens were in a basin surrounded by tree-covered hills the scent of the flowers seemed to be concentrated into a ubiquitous, overpowering fragrance. The seductive perfume wound its way into her being, at once soothing and arousing her, so that she felt like a cat with its fur stroked the wrong way, wary and alert and reckless.

‘Do you like roses?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Scented ones, yes. And the ones that are unusual colours.’

His gaze searched her face. She avoided it by stooping to bury her nose in one particularly rich, deep gold bloom, inhaling the sultry sweetness with pleasure.

‘The bride of a friend of mine had all the roses at her new home dug out and replaced,’ he said inconsequentially.

‘Why?’

He was stroking a crimson bloom with slow, almost erotic gentleness. That strange feeling in Tansy’s inner regions melted some part of her she had never felt before. Straightening up, she looked away, trying hard to ignore the image of the same leisurely caress on her skin.

‘They were unfashionable,’ he said, a sardonic note in his voice making his opinion clear.

Tansy said curiously, ‘I didn’t know there were fashions in flowers.’

‘There are fashions in everything, if you have the time and the money to indulge them,’ he said abruptly. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’m hungry.’

So was Tansy. By the time they sat down inside the kiosk she was remembering far too clearly that she hadn’t taken time off for lunch.

To keep her mind off the man who sat opposite she let her glance wander around. Hothouse scents from the begonia house next door provided a striking contrast with the weather outside. Snatches of conversation, made piquant by their impenetrability, floated by. Tansy’s eyes lingered appreciatively on the gilded, feathery fronds of a palm, the crinkly leaves of the low plants about its base.

Everything seemed brighter, with more impact than usual. Perhaps the scent of the roses had made her slightly drunk?

Leo said idly, ‘Apropos of loyalty; surely it can be qualified by the needs of the person one is being loyal to?’

Tansy ate slowly, pretending to consider his remark. ‘If I was sure I knew what they were, perhaps,’ she finally admitted. ‘I’ve always believed that most people understand their own needs better than anyone else, however affectionate or well-meaning the other person might be.’

Leo’s mouth stretched in what was certainly not meant to be a smile. ‘So you give yourself a good reason for opting out,’ he said smoothly. ‘I suppose it satisfies your conscience, but isn’t it rather cowardly? Suppose you knew that someone was in trouble—would you just leave them to flounder along on their own?’

How much did he know? Tansy’s gaze flicked up to Leo’s face, but it gave nothing away, the regular features set into an inscrutable mask, his eyes like green glass.

Choosing her words carefully, she answered, ‘Rick knows what he’s doing, and that’s good enough for me. Why don’t you leave him to make his own way home? He will, eventually. He loves both you and his mother. Give him a chance.’

‘To find himself?’ His quick scorn and the contempt that followed made her shake inside. ‘As you did? How did you earn your living that first year, Tansy? Prostituting yourself? Stealing? No, I don’t really want to know, but do you want Rick to go through that sort of degradation?’

Mrs Tarawera had saved her from such an existence; when she saw Rick, as young and as frightened as she had been, her reaction had been instinctive.

Opening her mouth to tell Leo that his brother was not on the streets, she realised just in time how close she had come to betraying him. Thinking rapidly, she said, ‘You haven’t much faith in his basic strength of character, have you?’

If her recalcitrance irritated him he didn’t let it show. His handsome face stony and unrevealing, he said evenly, ‘So far he hasn’t given much indication of any character, except a talent for getting into trouble.’

‘Have you any idea why?’

‘Oh, I’ve no doubt it’s for the same reasons you left a perfectly adequate family. Unfocused resentment, a need to—where are you going?’

Tansy was on her feet. She had never come so close to hitting anyone in her life, and she had to get out. With a smile that showed small white teeth, she said sweetly, ‘I don’t have to listen to you rabbiting on about things you know absolutely nothing about. If you’d once climbed down off that pedestal and looked at real people for a change you might have been able to stop Rick before it was too late. Goodbye, Mr Dacre.’

He caught her up before she took two steps, his hand fastening on to her upper arm in a grip that almost numbed her wrist.

‘Let me go,’ she threatened beneath her breath, ‘or I’ll scream for help.’

His smile dazzled, a blatant contrast to the icy calculation that gleamed beneath thick lashes. ‘And if you do,’ he said just as quietly, ‘I’ll tell everyone here that we’re having a lovers’ quarrel.’

Tansy’s mouth turned down. ‘None of them would believe a word of it,’ she said tensely. ‘You and I don’t go together.’

Taunting green eyes travelled slowly from the tawny flames of hers to the too-controlled mouth, and then down the pale length of her throat. Wherever that experienced gaze rested tiny explosions of sensation left colour in their wake, stimulated shivers along her nerves. An odd heaviness settled in the pit of her stomach, a melting combination of heat and hunger.

‘Don’t be silly,’ he said softly, the words overlaid with ridicule. ‘They see a young woman so vital that sparks seem to fly from her, and a man who would give anything to capture that passion for himself.’

The cold, cynical amusement in his tone hurt; it was like a slap in the face. She said clearly, ‘Let me go, or I’ll scream the place down.’

‘Go ahead,’ he said, urging her towards the door. ‘This is the second time you’ve walked away from me. I don’t like it.’

Opening her mouth, Tansy took in a deep breath. To her utter astonishment he swung her around, bent his dark head and kissed her.

His mouth was warm and compelling. Responses rioting into overload, unable to react because it was totally unexpected, Tansy gasped while he kissed her thoroughly and with flair, holding her so closely against his lean body that she could smell the faint but unmistakable tang of male, feel the hard, masculine contours against her.

She sagged, her slight body trembling. Instantly his arms contracted even further.

Through the ringing in her ears she dimly heard laughter and scattered applause, and then she was being picked up and he was carrying her through the door. She lifted weighted eyelids to stare witlessly at austere features emphasised by the taut skin across his cheekbones, an implacable mouth curved into a mocking smile.

When at last he stopped, she sputtered, ‘I’ll kill you,’ scarlet with temper and humiliation and confusion. Furious with him for doing such a thing, she was even more incensed with herself for responding so violently.

He set her on her feet. The amusement had gone from his face, leaving it tough and forceful. ‘Don’t ever dare me again,’ he said calmly.

‘I was not—’ Tansy’s hands clenched into small but serviceable fists.

‘Oh, yes, you were.’ There was a note beneath the cool insolence of his reply that stopped her from erupting into a tantrum. ‘I don’t take kindly to being manipulated.’

With colour still stinging her skin, she stepped back, making a sudden grab at her beret. That unrestrained embrace had knocked it askew, and now the wind levered it the last few centimetres and carried it triumphantly off. Freed at last, her hair sprang out around her head in wild, defiant exuberance.

She seized a couple of handfuls and dragged it back from her face, saying violently, ‘See what you’ve done!’

‘What amazing hair,’ he said in a constricted voice. Two vertical lines appeared between his brows as he scrutinised her. ‘It crackles. Why do you keep it covered all the time?’

‘Because idiots like you feel obliged to comment on it,’ she snapped.

He grinned. ‘It’s hardly Titian red, is it?’

‘No, it’s ginger. Honest, unromantic, down-to-earth ginger. Why are we talking about my hair?’

It came out as a disconcerted wail. His gaze seemed to hold nothing but appreciation; it was as though those moments in the kiosk when he had kissed her had never happened. Except, she thought dazedly, a residue of the sensations his roving eyes and that firm, far too knowledgeable mouth had roused in her still seethed through every cell in her body, potent as cheap wine and just as bad for her.

‘It’s rather difficult not to talk about it the first time you see it uncaged,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on the riotous mass. ‘It appears to have a personality of its own.’

She flared, ‘Don’t you make fun of me.’

‘Tansy,’ he said with such relaxed assurance that she almost believed him, ‘that is the most glorious head of hair I have ever seen. I swear I’m not making fun of you.’

Her astonished eyes searched his face, finding nothing but a bewildering sincerity. The anger and excitement and tension faded, leaving her flat in the aftermath of an adrenalin rush. ‘You’ve got peculiar tastes,’ she grumbled, looking around for her beret.

It was snagged on a rose bush. Jerking it free, Leo said lightly, ‘I should throw the damned thing away. It’s a crime to keep hair like that covered.’

‘Don’t you dare.’ She almost snatched it from his hand, jamming it on to her head with defiant irritation, this time directed at herself. She had no idea what was happening to her, but she had the ominous feeling it was not going to be pleasant, and she wanted nothing more than to get out of there and away, back to her own life.

‘Come on,’ he commanded.

Tansy scowled suspiciously through her lashes.

‘I’ll take you home,’ he explained with the patient tolerance of an uncle for a rather dimwitted niece.

More than anything Tansy would have liked to tell him to go to hell, but she wasn’t in the business of cutting off her nose to spite her face. He had brought her here; he could do the decent thing and take her home.

‘Very well,’ she said ungraciously.

He didn’t speak until he had pulled up outside her flat. Then, when she went to open the car door he said absently, ‘It’s locked. Tansy, listen to me. I can see I’ve handled this all wrong. Will you come to dinner with me tonight and let me explain about Rick, and why I need to know where he is?’

Tension stiffened her jaw. ‘You’ve already done that and it doesn’t make any difference,’ she told him. ‘I can’t help you.’

His mouth compressed, but he said in the same moderate voice, ‘At least listen to me.’

‘All right.’ Her lashes flew up in shock. She didn’t intend to say that! A swift look at his hard, handsome face made her heart give a flip. Dicing with the devil was dangerous business.

‘Good,’ he said immediately, before she could take the words back. He did something on the dashboard and said, ‘The door’s open now. I’ll pick you up at seven.’

‘I’ve changed my mind,’ she said.

He grinned. ‘Tough.’

Tansy’s face sharpened. She looked him straight in his alien’s eyes and said calmly, ‘Don’t threaten me.’

‘I’m not threatening you,’ he said, sounding odiously reasonable. ‘If you haven’t got any suitable clothes, don’t worry. I’ll bring dinner with me.’

Oh, but he was clever. Tiny flakes of apricot heated her cheekbones. Chin jutting, her eyes steady, she said, ‘Don’t bother. I won’t be here.’

‘Then I’ll come in now.’

Although he was smiling, Tansy sensed an unyielding determination to have his own way. He was going to say his piece sooner or later: accepting that, she accepted that it might as well be said on neutral ground.

Not that the kiosk at the rose gardens had inhibited him at all! However, if they went out to dinner he couldn’t let slip the leash of his temper when she still refused to tell him where Rick was.

And although she didn’t dare admit it, he fascinated her. When she was with him she felt more alive than she ever had before.

She said offhandedly, ‘Oh, don’t bother, I’ll go out with you tonight. I can see I’m not going to get any peace until I do. But McDonald’s will be all right. I haven’t any formal clothes.’

His smile was twisted. ‘Wear what you’ve got on now, except for that beret. People won’t be looking at your clothes when they can see your hair.’

She shot him a last, fulminating glare, then got out of the car, slamming the door behind her. Unfortunately, it closed with the kind of solid heaviness that indicated excellent engineering and no damage done. Ignoring his laughter, Tansy stalked up the steps to her flat, her back held so stiffly her shoulders started to ache. Even safely inside she couldn’t relax until the car moved away.

She did have formal clothes, of a sort. When the music department at the university gave recitals of students’ work, each student conducted their own compositions. For those occasions she had assembled as near an approximation of conductors’ clothes as she could find. Several forays through charity shops had yielded an oldish but extremely well-cut dinner-jacket which she wore with a white shirt and tailored trousers.

At half-past six she gritted her teeth and began to dress.

The severe lines of the jacket and the ruffles down the front of the shirt camouflaged slightly too opulent breasts, and her one pair of court shoes added the extra inch and a half she needed to give her some degree of confidence. For a change she didn’t try to tame her hair. If Leo Dacre liked it so much, she thought, pushing a wilful tress back from her oddly flushed cheek, he could see it.

Except for a faint tinge of blusher along her high cheekbones and some gold eyeshadow, her skin and lips were as nature intended them. If she wore lipstick it made her mouth rather pouty and obvious. Her one luxury, the six-weekly dyeing of her pale lashes and brows, meant that her eyes were clearly defined. Fortunately they were large and dark enough to dominate a face that was too thin to be seductive.

Not, she assured herself as she turned away from the small mirror, that she wanted to be seductive. Not in the least. Brisk and businesslike—even formidable—was what she aimed for. Instead she looked short and slight and nondescript, except for her hair, which had enough character for ten people.

On the stroke of seven Leo’s knock sounded on the door, and if she had dressed to please him she would have been rewarded by his candid, unashamed survey, the slow kindle of flame in the green eyes, and the half-smile that tucked up the corners of the wide, mobile mouth.

‘Hello,’ he said. ‘You scrub up well, Tansy.’

The open laughter in his tone changed her initial reaction of fury and bleak resentment to a reluctant amusement. Stung because she was so easy to manipulate, she said, ‘So do you.’

In a leather jacket over superbly cut shirt and trousers, he looked relaxed and informal, yet he was marked by an inherent sophistication that made Tansy feel suddenly young and very gauche. She was streetwise, he was worldly; there was an immense gulf between the two. Why that should disturb her she didn’t know.

He opened the car door and held it with a teasing smile that invited her to comment. Tansy didn’t. Once in the car, however, he didn’t immediately start the engine.

Instead, scanning her profile, he said, ‘Why don’t we leave things as they are for the moment? I’d like to eat a meal without worrying in case you get up and storm away, or tip your plate over my head. I have to go back to Auckland the day after tomorrow; shall we go out to dinner tonight and tomorrow night, and after that I’ll talk to you about Ricky?’

Say no, her common sense commanded her. Say no right now and go back inside and take off your pathetic attempts to look sleek and fashionable, and never see him again.

But something more fundamental than common sense prevented her from such drastic action.

Aloud, slowly, because she knew she was being stupid, putting herself in danger, she said, ‘Yes, all right,’ and comforted her sensible self by remembering that he was going away soon.

Besides, she reminded herself with a certain tough practicality that came from years of watching every penny, the free meals were saving her money.

To make things absolutely clear, she said brusquely, ‘I’m only going out with you because you’re paying for my dinner.’

His smile was cold and fleeting. ‘I know,’ he said.

That smile and the dispassionate tone of his voice sent a shiver tiptoeing delicately along her nerves.

He took her to a restaurant Tansy had heard about but never expected to visit. It was very expensive—part club, part café, and entirely fashionable—and she realised immediately that the unwritten dress code stipulated only that clothes be worn with panache. After several minutes she relaxed. She certainly wasn’t the most outrageously dressed woman there by any means. In fact, she was one of the more conventionally garbed.

What she hadn’t expected was the attention. Leo was clearly as well known here as in his native Auckland. After the third expensively dressed couple had stopped at their table, been introduced, and bubbled with enthusiasm and very cultured vowels at seeing him, she looked at him, lean and assured, sexy in a way that undermined her carefully constructed defences, and asked on a light note of provocation, ‘Do you know everyone in New Zealand?’

‘A lot,’ he returned, his tone as casual as hers. ‘I think I’m probably related to most of them. Both my parents came from very large extended families, so I’ve got cousins all over the place. As well, my father was active in public life. And I come to Wellington quite often.’

Which made it surprising that Rick had come here. Unless, of course, he had wanted to be found. More than once he’d admitted that he was very dependent on his brother, so perhaps unconsciously he’d been waiting for Leo to rescue him.

Instead, he’d decided to rescue himself. It had taken courage, and he should have his chance to ‘find himself’, as Leo so sneeringly put it.

‘That’s a very stubborn look,’ Leo said softly.

Tansy’s long lashes quivered. ‘I’m a very stubborn person,’ she returned.

‘But not tonight. Tonight you don’t have to be stubborn. Do you want to dance?’

A sudden deliquescence at the base of her spine warned her that dancing with him wouldn’t be a good idea. ‘Not just now,’ she said. ‘Tell me what it’s like being a barrister.’

He looked surprised. ‘Stimulating,’ he said after a moment’s consideration. ‘Exhausting. It ranges from intense satisfaction to times when the world seems a wholly negative place. I wouldn’t be anything else.’

Apart from her foster-father, whose only aim in working seemed to be the desire to make enough money so that his wife could buy the things she wanted, Tansy had little experience with men. Neither Les O’Brien nor the men she studied with at university were anything like Leo Dacre, who had a compelling magnetism that was unique.

From behind the menu she said, ‘It sounds unsettling.’

‘Don’t you find life like that? Days when you think you can conquer the world, and other days when life puts you neatly back into your insignificant place?’

She was startled. It was difficult to imagine such a self-assured man feeling insignificant. ‘Yes, of course, but I didn’t think you would.’

‘Why not?’ Straight dark brows rose. He smiled at her swift colour and asked, ‘Stereotyping me, Tansy?’

‘I suppose I was,’ she agreed reluctantly.

‘I’m a man, like all other men. If you cut me, I bleed.’

A harsh undertone in his voice made her wince but she returned robustly, ‘You don’t have to convince me.’

‘No?’ He paused, his expression unreadable, then said abruptly, ‘Tell me what you’re doing studying composition in the music department at the university here.’

She shrugged. ‘I think I was born making music. When I was a toddler I sang instead of talking. My foster-parents aren’t at all musical, so it was lucky for me that Pam, my foster-mother, used to clean house for an old lady who lived not far from us. She’d been a music teacher, and I think she missed it.’

She had shown Tansy how to play, and, when she realised how fascinated the child was, had begged to be able to teach her. Pam O’Brien had refused, citing lack of money, so Miss Harding had contacted the social welfare department. Some understanding person there had thought it a wonderful idea and organised the payments.

That had been the beginning of Tansy’s double life. At home she had been the odd one out. At Miss Harding’s she learned to round her vowels, discovered a whole new set of rules to govern her behaviour, listened with tears running down her face to the great composers, been made over for the best of motives into her mentor’s image. But Tansy’s happiness there, her sense of fulfilment, her eagerness to learn and desire to copy her mentor, set up tensions that eventually led to her flight from home.

‘When I had piano lessons,’ she went on, ‘I spent most of my time trying to work out the theory rather than actually play the piano. I knew right from the start that I wanted to write music.’

Although forbidden to, she’d written at night, waiting until her older sister was asleep to work by the light of a torch. Of course, the inevitable happened; she was discovered. Angry with her for her disobedience, Pam had burned six months’ work, so from then on Tansy had become even more secretive, losing herself for hours at a time in the special world she shared with Miss Harding.

Scrawny, intense, prone to temper tantrums and obstinacy, unable to compromise, she had been difficult. Like all creative people, she thought mockingly, she had suffered for her art. And so had her foster-parents. They hadn’t been actively unkind; they had simply not understood her. Part of Pam O’Brien’s resentment was due to the fact that she couldn’t afford such lessons for her own children. It had been with a certain suppressed satisfaction that she had told Tansy one day in her fourteenth year that the old lady was dead.

After that things had gone from tense to impossible.

She and Miss Harding had spoken of her future often, a future in which university loomed large. And she might have been able to go if she’d done well at school. But she hadn’t—apart from high marks in music and maths she had barely scraped through her examinations.

Unfortunately, the understanding case worker had been made redundant, and the new one was inundated with work, and not musical.

It would be, everyone decided, a waste of money for her even to try, just as it was a waste of money to go back to school for the seventh form. So at the end of her sixth-form year her foster-mother had organised a job for her in a supermarket.

Left bereft by Miss Harding’s death, with no one to counsel her, Tansy had run as far and as fast as the pitifully small amount in her savings bank had allowed her, ending up in Wellington because it cost too much to take the ferry across the Cook Strait to the South Island.

Although after that first year she had re-established contact with the O’Briens, she no longer felt like one of them. In fact, she never had. And she certainly didn’t regret leaving; it had been the only thing to do.

‘What sort of music?’ Leo asked.

She shrugged. ‘All sorts,’ she said evasively.

‘The ballad you were singing yesterday?’

‘That was a pastiche,’ she said aggressively. ‘I lumped all the ingredients of a folksong together and came up with that. As you realised.’

‘It sounded good.’

‘Yes, of course it did. What’s the use of singing a song if it doesn’t sound good?’

‘Particularly,’ he said idly, ‘if you want people to pay for the pleasure.’

‘Especially then.’

‘Do you like busking?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s a living.’





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