A Passionate Proposition Page 18

  ‘He told you I was in love with him?’ she asked numbly. A total stranger, and a reporter at that? The bastard! He must have still been rawly furious when he got back from wherever he’d driven.

  ‘Ummm, no, not exactly—actually I think it was the other way around,’ he staggered her by saying, leafing pedantically back through his notebook to the reference.

  Anya nearly fell off her chair.

  ‘What—exactly—did he say?’ she asked tensely.

  ‘You want the full quote?’ He consulted his notebook. ‘Here it is…ummm…’ He pondered his squiggles, making a few seconds seem like several centuries. ‘Ah, yes: “Kate was certainly a stunning woman, but it’s her cousin I fell in love with. Anya has a kind of quiet grace and inner beauty that hits me square in the heart every time I see her. I think some part of me recognised that on the day we met, and I loved her even before I knew I was capable of it.” Not a bad turn of phrase. The guy could be a writer himself.’

  ‘But he said that to you off the record, right?’ she said in a strangled voice.

  ‘Nope. Got it on tape, too.’ He tipped her a sly grin. ‘Why? Would you like me to make a copy of it for you to replay to him every time you have an argument?’

  He had been clearly looking forward to the offer of a second cup of tea, but instead found himself unceremoniously bundled out of the door.

  Anya’s finger was shaking as she punched in the numbers on her kitchen telephone from the business card in her wallet. ‘I’d like to make an appointment to see Scott Tyler, please. Today. My name is Anya Adams.’

  The businesslike voice on the other end was professionally regretful. ‘I’m afraid Mr Tyler is working reduced hours at the moment and he doesn’t have any free appointment slots for the rest of the day. He’s booked right through until he leaves at four o’clock.’

  Anya clutched the phone with both hands. ‘But he is in the office?’

  ‘Oh, yes—but as I explained, Miss Adams, he doesn’t have any spare—’

  ‘Thank you.’ Anya quickly put the receiver back in the cradle, cutting off a hasty cry.

  ‘Oh, wait—Miss Adams—’

  Remembering the adage about dressing for success, Anya took the time to select her clothes carefully and took extra care with her make-up and hair. She got into her car looking what she hoped was serene and confident, but tension and excitement took its toll and her cool became slightly unravelled in the hour it took to drive to the huge Manukau City shopping centre where Scott’s chambers were located. It was another anxious fifteen minutes before she found the tower block she was looking for and somewhere to park, and in the express lift her stomach seemed to arrive at her destination well before she did.

  The professional offices of Tyler & Partners weren’t as intimidating as she had expected—the reception and waiting area actually showing the impact of natural good taste rather than cutting-edge interior decoration. The atmosphere, too, was informal and, by the look of the comings and goings and the number of people flicking through glossy magazines in the waiting room, business was good.

  Squaring the jacket of her classically cut powder-blue suit, she approached the reception desk, eyeing the politely enquiring face, calculating whether haughty assumption or confiding friendliness was going to work better.

  But when she opened her mouth, the young receptionist spoke first.

  ‘It’s Miss Adams, isn’t it?’

  ‘I—yes.’ Was it someone she should know? A former pupil, perhaps?

  ‘Julie!’ The receptionist waved another, older woman over. ‘This is Miss Adams.’ She mouthed the next two words rather obviously. ‘For Scott.’

  ‘Oh, yes, of course.’ Anya recognised the voice she had spoken to on the phone. ‘Thanks, Melissa. Miss Adams? This way, please.’

  Anya found herself whisked along to the end of the corridor, unprepared for the ease and rapidity of her progress.

  ‘But, I—don’t—’

  ‘—have an appointment. I know.’ The woman gave her an amused look. ‘Scott came in just as I was telling you he was all booked up. I must say he described you to a “T”.’

  Anya frowned. ‘You mean he’s expecting me?’

  ‘Well, if he wasn’t he will be now. Melissa just buzzed him to get rid of his client.’

  Anya clutched her cream handbag. ‘I don’t want to put anyone out. I thought you might just manage to squeeze me in when he had a few spare minutes…’

  It was too late for cold feet. She was already being ushered into a large office to see Scott closing an adjoining door, spinning around on the plush green carpet to face her.

  He looked wonderful, she thought fretfully. While she had been suffering from a thousand cuts of guilt he had been burnishing his skin and glossing his hair and generally making himself look like a million dollars. And there was no sign of joyous welcome in his eyes, just a watchful reserve.

  ‘Crime obviously pays,’ she said drily, looking around the office.

  ‘The defending of it certainly does. It’s a growth industry. Did you come here to assess my net worth?’ he drawled.

  She bit her lip and gripped her bag harder, reminding herself that she had it on very good authority that she hit him in the heart. Unless he had been making an ironic joke.

  ‘No. I’m sorry; I don’t know why I said that.’

  ‘You’re nervous. Sit down.’ He indicated the chair in front of the desk, but instead of going around to the leather swivel chair when she had seated herself, he sat on the edge of his desk, legs relaxed, extended and casually crossed at the ankles, arms folded across his chest. He didn’t look as if he had a nerve in his big, gorgeous body, damn him!

  ‘Why aren’t you in school?’

  ‘I called in sick.’

  He dropped his hands to the desk, gripping the edge on either side of his hips. ‘You’re ill?’ he asked, searching her delicate face.

  Sick with love. She looked away from his penetrating gaze and shook her head. ‘I just felt like a day off.’

  ‘And you’ve come to spend it in my office? Or have you come for my professional advice? If you’re going to take up housebreaking as a full-time job you’d better put me on a retainer. You don’t seem to have much talent for the job.’

  Her heart quickened at the wry amusement in his voice. If he could joke about it…

  ‘Russell Fuller came to see me a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Did he, indeed?’ A lazy eyebrow rose, but she noticed with another skip of her pulse that his fingers were tightening under the overhang of the desk. He wasn’t any less nervous than she; he was simply better at disguising it.

  ‘Yes, he did. And he told me certain things. Things that you said to him. About me and you,’ she said defiantly. ‘Were they true?’

  ‘What do you think?’

  She looked at him in silence, torn by hope and fear. Suddenly she was tired of being brave and feisty, and her eyes began to sting.

  ‘I think if you have to go through a third party to tell me what you feel, that doesn’t bode very well for our future relationship,’ she whispered, a tear spilling down her cheek.

  He instantly lunged forward. ‘Oh, God, no—don’t cry—’ He grabbed her out of the chair, and drew her into his strength, rubbing up and down her back with his big hands. ‘Please—don’t cry—Of course they’re true, Anya. I was wilfully blind not to see it before. Of course I love you. That’s why all this hit me so hard. When I was talking to Fuller it just suddenly all fell into focus, and then I spent the rest of the weekend agonising over it, figuring out why I’d been so anxious to lash out, to push you away, and blame you for things that weren’t your fault. You said you were afraid of losing me—imagine how terrified I felt. This is all new territory for me. I’ve never, in my whole adult life, had anyone to belong to, or belong with—I’ve always felt like a loner. And then Petra came along, and you burst into my life—you, who’d been hovering around the edges of my mind for months, making me feel i
tchy and angry and aware. I built you up in my mind as someone I couldn’t want, but then I wanted you anyway. My heart was already setting me up for the fall. Even when I seduced you I knew that you weren’t the kind of woman to sleep with a man without feeling some deep emotional tie, but I couldn’t help myself.’

  His arms tightened possessively around her, as if trying to absorb her into his very being. ‘And you turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to me. The one who made me feel that I wanted to belong—I wanted to be a husband, a father, and I wanted to be those things with you. Deep down I knew you were nothing like Lorna or Kate—it was just a form of panic, the shock realisation that you could hurt me far more than they ever had—it was the old protective reflexes kicking in. But I can’t live in that kind of vacuum any more. I need you to love me, and I promise I’ll learn to be more open about the way I feel—you can teach me. So please, stop crying now. I didn’t mean to make you cry,’ he said, pressing desperate kisses all over her damp face.

  ‘Well, what did you expect me to do?’ she sobbed into his chest.

  ‘I don’t know—yell at me, slug me one, laugh…’ He groaned. ‘I thought you might find my way of telling you I loved you quirky—romantic—’

  Her head jerked back. ‘What!’

  He smeared a tear away from her cheek with his thumb. ‘You know—like sending a troubadour, to serenade you…’ he said ruefully.

  ‘Are you crazy?’ she demanded.

  ‘Yes, of course I am—crazy over you. Why else would I do such a stupidly juvenile thing? Fuller told me on Saturday he was intending to try and see you on Monday so I rang him last night at his hotel and asked him to tell you what I said.’

  ‘Why didn’t you just come over and tell me yourself?’ Anya was trying hard to be angry him, but it was difficult with so much joy in her heart.

  He bowed his head against her shoulder. ‘I was ashamed,’ he confessed, his voice muffled in the curve of her neck. ‘You’d told me you loved me and I’d thrown it back in your face. I called you a prostitute, and then treated you like one. I used sex to try and show you that you meant nothing to me. I thought you might hate me for that and I was afraid to face you. I thought: How can she possibly love a man who treats her that way?’

  She sniffed, shaken yet reassured by the depth of his anguished self-doubt. ‘It’s a dirty job but somebody’s got to do it.’

  He lifted his head to receive her glowing smile of benediction. ‘And that someone has to be you,’ he vowed. ‘Only you.’

  ‘Hmmm.’ She spread her hands across his chest and looked up at him, her nose pink, her rain-washed grey eyes loving. ‘What are the pay and conditions?’

  ‘No pay, but plenty of rewards. As for the conditions: you have to marry me, come and live at The Pines, let me seduce you out of your scandalous underwear every night, have my babies, be a stepmother to my brilliant, smart-mouthed daughter and fill my house with all the love and laughter it can hold.’

  ‘And a puppy?’ she bargained slyly, plucking at a button on his waistcoat. ‘A family isn’t complete without a family pet.’

  He hesitated, a secret smile in his voice as he conceded, ‘Maybe a puppy. But only if you’re good.’

  She tilted up her face to him, her hands sliding down under his jacket to settle down around his hips as she insinuated the centre of her body against his, pushing him back against the edge of the desk. ‘Oh, I’m very, very good…’ she purred.

  His eyes smouldered and his mouth came down on hers, and as she allowed herself to be swept up in his loving passion she blissfully contemplated just how very badly she was about to misbehave….

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-4584-0

  A PASSIONATE PROPOSITION

  First North American Publication 2001.

  Copyright © 2001 by Susan Napier.

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