Phantom Lover Page 13

  There was something not quite right about him in the stark elegance of a dinner suit, she thought dizzily. He looked magnificent, but rigid and uncomfortably formal.

  She wondered if he had looked so cool and austere on the night of the Valentine’s Ball. Probably. She had learned from Joy, after some judicious prompting, that he had gone that night in a threesome with Zach and Tania in the latter’s brand-new Holden Commodore—Helen’s contemptible US-influenced ‘station wagon or something’—with some reluctance.

  Mary had been born on the fifteenth of February and he was always a bit broody and melancholy on the eve of her birthday anniversary, Joy had confided, and his family had thought the distraction would be good for him. In his vulnerable state it wasn’t surprising that he had been a sucker for a damsel in distress, Honor had thought gloomily, especially if Helen reminded him of his beautiful wife. He himself had confessed that sending the valentine card the next day had been pure impulse, intended merely as a whimsical passing tribute to an intriguing beauty, and the swift, entertaining reply had taken him by surprise.

  ‘You’re back!’ she blurted inanely. She had watched his Mercedes roll out of the drive not twenty minutes ago, heading for a business function in Auckland. Even as the tail-lights disappeared into the fine mist of evening drizzle she had been busy planning how to take full advantage of his unexpected absence.

  Honor watched him carefully close the door by leaning back against it.

  ‘Not before time, it would seem,’ he said silkily. ‘You’ve obviously lost something of value. Or should I say—failed to find it?’ His gaze went thoughtfully over her black muslin draw-string skirt and matching crop-top. ‘Are you dressed that way for dinner, or for cat-burglary? Basic black is so versatile that way, don’t you think?’

  ‘I thought you were going to be away for hours—you said you might even stay in town overnight.’ Honor glared at him, as if he were the one who had been caught red-handed.

  ‘I had a flat just down the hill, at the turn-off for the Scenic Drive.’ He brushed at his shoulders, drawing her attention to the glittering sheen of dampness on the fine black fabric and the speckles of mud ringing the lower edges of his trousers. ‘Since I was going to get wet and dirty whatever I did, it seemed quicker to leave the Merc and come back for a change of clothes and another car. But perhaps now I won’t go at all. Not when the prospect of a far more interesting evening has come up...’

  She couldn’t mistake what he meant as he moved—no, prowled away from the door into the room, the unfamiliar stiffness melting into something more provocatively familiar as he flicked open the black tie and unbuttoned the high collar of his white shirt with a sigh of pleasurable relief.

  He shrugged out of his jacket and tossed it with typical careless disregard for its expensive tailoring across the back of the small two-seater couch opposite the wall of bookshelves. Still in leisurely motion, he skirted behind his desk, reaching into his deep pocket to draw out a set of keys, the smallest of which he used to unlock the drawer that had given her so much frustration. He opened it with a small, theatrical flourish and stood back with an inviting flip of his hand that invited her to investigate.

  She didn’t even bother to look down, her attention riveted by the liquid gleam in his eyes and the dangerous sweetness of his smile. Her head throbbed and her heart fluttered. It wasn’t his anger she had to fear...

  ‘Not interested? There are some papers in there containing commercially sensitive information that certain people would pay you well for. And there’s my safe—have you tried that yet?’ He waved towards the wall.

  His sarcasm had its usual bracing effect. ‘You know very well I’m not an industrial spy,’ she said truculently. ‘I just want what’s rightfully mine...’

  And that includes you. Honor pressed her hand over her mouth, horrified that the careless words might actually have slipped out.

  They hadn’t. Adam continued to look at her with that seductive mockery.

  ‘Poor Honor, you really are tied up in knots about those letters, aren’t you?’ he said gravely. ‘Here, let me look at that bump.’

  Only he didn’t just look at it. His hand winnowed through her curls to hold her head still while the fingers of his other hand gently sought the stinging bruise.

  She shied away when he touched it, conscious of the mingled scent of damp fabric and musky male sweat that rose from the heat of his body.

  ‘Adam—’

  ‘Shh, hold still. Mmm. I don’t think you’re in any danger of complications. I know what’ll make you feel better—’

  Honor closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. Yes, so do I—you! she replied silently.

  ‘The same as I do—a good, stiff drink,’ he said disappointingly. ‘Come and sit down; it’s about time we had a serious talk about something that might change your mind about continuing your criminal career.’

  With those ominous words he led her, unresisting, over to the couch and pressed her down into the soft cushions, leaving her there while he slid back a panel in the bookcase, revealing an array of bottles and a mini-fridge. Honor was chagrined to realise that she hadn’t even discovered that innocuous little hiding place during her hasty, intermittent searches. Some criminal mastermind she would make!

  He poured himself a large whisky on the rocks and added ginger ale to her small one, by now accustomed to her preferences.

  ‘Now—’ He sat down beside her and waited until she took a sip, turning his glass slowly between his hands as he said slowly, ‘I have a confession to make—’

  Honor didn’t let him finish. ‘I knew it! You don’t have them. You’ve already thrown them away!’ she interrupted bleakly. Suddenly it didn’t seem the most favourable of the worst-case scenarios she had lined up after all.

  That day beside the pool she had been so grateful of any excuse to stay that she had meekly let Adam think that he had threatened her into submission, but in the magic week that followed she had had time to regret her weakness. Did he still have those letters or didn’t he? Was he a control freak or an opportunist? In the end she had taken matters into her own hands and begun her surreptitious quest.

  Meanwhile, although she had continued to perform all her regular work without hindrance, somehow something was always coming up to stop her from completing the Blake pamphlet...usually Adam himself. He was working in his own office downstairs but he seemed to have a sixth sense operating, for whenever she got to the point of calling up his file on her computer with the intent of fixing the final layout he would arrive with additional inclusions that necessitated editing or rewriting several other passages.

  He had also insisted that in order to be fully involved in the project she had to know the people and places she was writing for and about. Nearly every day he whisked her away for a few hours to explore some interesting new corner of the sprawling Blake empire, providing her in the process with her first true inkling of what an important man he was, and the incredible weight of responsibility he now bore on his broad shoulders.

  Often they had Sara chatting along in tow, a slyly observant chaperon, apparently perfectly happy but still rigidly avoiding the subject of school. Adam had gone into Auckland one day to see the headmistress, gaining her agreement to keep Sara at home a bit longer as long as she undertook to do several hours’ set schoolwork a day. He had taken Honor with him, dropping her at a radio station in the morning where she’d spent the day recording a new set of station promos.

  ‘If you knew I didn’t have them, why were you searching my office?’ Adam asked with impeccable logic.

  She took another hurried sip, then a full-throated swallow. It lubricated her thoughts considerably and warmed her hollow stomach.

  ‘I thought you might have just misplaced them. You have an awful lot of paperwork floating around here, and I thought if I had a look around...’ She drank thirstily. It gave her something to do with her hands and her flapping mouth. Why didn’t he help her? This was supposed to be his
confession! ‘Do you think I could have another of these?’

  Adam looked down at his full glass, then put it down and silently got up to fetch her another one, a little larger than the first.

  ‘You should have just told me,’ she continued as he came back beside her. ‘I would have understood. I mean, I wouldn’t have been offended or anything. I realise you must have found them hideously embarrassing—’

  ‘Must I?’

  His quiet tone soothed her fears. ‘I mean, let’s face it, we all do things that we later regret. I don’t want you to think that I thought you thought I would take you seriously...’ She frowned as she heard how complicated that sounded. Was that what she had meant to say? She didn’t know, so she decided to put it another way. ‘Not that I have men writing me passionate love-letters so often I’m blasé about it or anything, but you have to take that kind of thing with a grain of salt if you’re sensible...’

  ‘And you’re very sensible.’

  She was glad he understood that. ‘Yes.’

  ‘So sensible that you wrote back and told me very sensibly to stop writing such nonsense to you.’

  Honor went scarlet and choked on the dregs of her whisky. He obligingly thumped her back until she got herself under control. By then her eyes were streaming.

  He took a slightly limp, rain-spotted handkerchief out of his trouser pocket and she scrubbed her eyes with it fiercely, glad she hadn’t got around to putting on her make-up. Dining with Tania was always a case of Full War-Paint Will Be Worn. At least having a model as an elder sister had meant she could hold her own in the skill of application, even if she didn’t have the other woman’s prime raw material to work with.

  ‘You know very well—’

  ‘Ah, but that’s the catch. I don’t. You see, I’ve never written any passionate love-letters to you, so how could I have received replies to them? The only correspondence I’ve ever had with you are those amiable and argumentative, touching and funny letters we exchange once a month—’

  ‘But that’s impossible—they were in your handwriting—they were addressed to me—that is, to Helen—but they came to me!’ She was shocked by his absurd attempt to deny what they both knew were the facts. This was his grand confession?

  ‘But not hand-addressed. The envelopes were computer printed, weren’t they? Because after the first few letters I formatted your address-label into my word-processing files.’

  ‘But the letters—’

  ‘Oh, the letters were mine, I admit that. But they weren’t yours. They were never meant for you...or for your sister. The only love-letters I’ve ever written in my life were sent years and years ago, when I was still in my impetuous youth, to a sweetheart I was head over heels in love with...’

  ‘I...I don’t understand.’ The whiskey fumes that had gone to her head were dispelled by a cold chill. She was very much afraid that she was beginning to understand what he was trying, very gently, to break to her.

  Another Helen? Not Helen Sheldon? Not her sister?

  The magnitude of his revelation hit Honor like an avalanche.

  My God, there was yet another gorgeous woman haunting his past! She couldn’t imagine him being unfaithful to his flawless Mary so that meant that Helen must have pre-dated her, a young man’s first dream of passion where Mary had been the paragon of his maturity.

  And every ‘darling’, every ‘sweeting’, every romantic word of Shakespeare and John Donne...‘If ever any beauty I did see, Which I desir’d, and got, t’was but a dreame of thee’...every dear, delicious loop and curl of every exquisite, erotic word that Honor had treasured was so much meaningless gibberish! It wasn’t the shining beauty of her inner soul revealed to him on paper that had seduced him into his intense love-affair with words, it was the ghostly image of a former lover preserved!

  Honor winced. One paragon to contend with had been depressing enough to contend with...but two? At least she no longer had to worry about her sister being a rival. Adam was not one to pine helplessly over lost opportunities. If he had really wanted to contact Helen he would have had no hesitation in asking Honor for her address!

  ‘Oh, Honor, there’s really no delicate way of telling you this, is there?’ he said, taking a brooding slug of his own drink before continuing bluntly, ‘As far as I know, those old letters were up in one of the attics here somewhere, in a suitcase along with a lot of my other happy memories.’ He looked down at her fist, white knuckles clenched around his monogrammed handkerchief. ‘She made a point of giving them back to me, you see...so I would never be able to forget what it had felt like to first fall in love. As if I would or could! Anyway, they...well, you can understand what they meant to me...they were a very precious part of my personal history.’

  Oh, yes, Honor could understand all right. She knew exactly what it meant to cherish a dream.

  ‘When Malcolm told me you were cleared and showed me the letter he’d taken off you, I couldn’t believe it! I rushed back here and hunted through the attic like a wild man, and when I couldn’t find them—well, I can’t describe how I felt. That’s why I burst in on you like Attila the Hun. If you had them then for my own peace of mind you had to be guilty of something...anything! But, instead of getting answers, all I found were more questions. You didn’t have all the letters for a start. And, in case you didn’t notice, almost all those you were sent seemed carefully selected to preserve a kind of anonymity on both sides—no names or addresses...’

  ‘Oh, I noticed all right...too late,’ said Honor grimly.

  ‘It was just a wretchedly unfortunate coincidence that it came to a head at the same time as this other thing.’ Adam tipped her chin with his hand, forcing her to meet his earnest gaze. ‘You can see that I had to keep you here, can’t you? I had to find out if you had the others, if it was just a silly charade or a conspiracy...’

  Honor jerked her head away from his touch. ‘Well, it wasn’t!’

  ‘I realised that in fairly short order,’ he said wryly. ‘But that only made things worse as far as I was concerned. It meant I had to look closer to home for the culprit. Reasoning it out from the postal dates on the envelopes, the first switch occurred not long after I moved in here, after Zach’s death. It had to be someone who had access to the attic and the opportunity to pull the necessary switches—lift my regular outgoing correspondence to you and substitute the fake letters. Not only that, but they would have to intercept your replies, otherwise I would realise something was going on.’

  Honor blanched at the thought of her love lying bleeding in the hands of some psychologically disturbed individual. But not a stranger. This was nothing to do with Adam’s company, this was very, very personal. Therefore it stood to reason that it had to be someone personally very close to Adam. That was the reason for his solemn calm.

  ‘But what possibly could be the motive?’ she cried, not wanting to believe that anyone he trusted could betray him so viciously. ‘A practical joke? Surely not? Who would want to be so unbearably cruel...not just to me but to you?’

  Adam remained silent, watching her as she groped towards the consciousness of what he had already guessed.

  Honor could only think of one person who resented her badly enough to want to hurt her.

  ‘I don’t...surely Tania wouldn’t—?’

  ‘Tania?’ Adam shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t put it past her deliberately to cause a few letters to go astray if it suited her purposes, but go to all that trouble to generate a potentially violent awareness between us? I think not.’ Adam’s hand slid over both of hers, trapping their restless mangling of his handkerchief. ‘If she wanted to throw a spanner into our relationship, why would she make a meeting between us inevitable by encouraging you to believe that I was in love with you? I presume in your letters you referred to mine?’ She nodded, colour returning in a rush to her cheeks, and he studied her with glinting satisfaction. ‘That’s why I wasn’t allowed to receive any replies. It would have given the game away too soon. You nee
ded to be convinced first...’

  ‘But why?’ Honor still couldn’t conceive of a motive for a plan of such pointless complexity.

  ‘Perhaps for the best reason in the world. Love.’

  ‘Love?’ Honor’s exclamation made it sound as if she’d never even heard of the word.

  He smiled crookedly at her confusion. ‘Perhaps someone who loved me was worried about me. Maybe they thought that I was urgently in need of a love-life—even if it was of the mail-order kind—to rescue me from emotional limbo.’

  Honor sucked in a startled breath. ‘Your mother...?’

  ‘I think it’s the most likely possibility, don’t you think?’

  She remembered the way that Joy had welcomed her into the house, declaring that she knew how special she was to Adam.

  ‘Have you asked her?’

  ‘Not outright, no.’ His smile took a downward trend as he admitted ruefully, ‘It’s a pretty tough assignment—accusing your own mother of theft and forgery when you don’t have a shred of proof. If I’m wrong she could be terribly hurt. And if I’m right...well, I was worried that it might mean Mum is getting as bad as Tania’s been suggesting.’ He stroked his thumb absently over her knuckles as he chuckled. ‘But then I realised the opposite was true; no one in a state of mental confusion could possibly have succeeded in carrying out such a complicated, machiavellian scheme. Hell, I doubt even I would have been able to pull it off half so well!’

  ‘I think you’re actually proud of her,’ Honor murmured wryly. It was fine for him, but she was in a far less enviable position. ‘I don’t care about where the rest of your letters are, but what has she done with mine?’

  ‘Ah, yes, the sober, sensible replies to my intoxicated ramblings.’ He slid his arm along the back of the couch, dislodging his damp jacket, his other hand covering both of hers as he leaned teasingly towards her. ‘What will you give me if I promise to get them back for you?’

  ‘I don’t have to give you anything,’ she said breathlessly as he loomed closer. ‘You’ve already promised to give them to me, with no strings attached.’