Buch lesen: «With His Kiss»

Chapter One

Steve knew the moment Triss Allardyce saw him, across her husband’s grave as the coffin was lowered into the earth.

The glazed look disappeared from her clear blue eyes that held no hint of tears, and they widened with shock.

Steve felt a savage kick of satisfaction. One black brow rose a fraction in involuntary acknowledgment, and a muscle in his tightly clenched jaw twitched a corner of his mouth into a grim semblance of a half smile.

Triss made a tiny movement, as though she would have recoiled but for the somber-faced, very young men standing close on either side of her, and the crowd of people pressing about them. Then she wrenched her gaze from Steve and turned to take a single white rose from another teenager proffering a basket of flowers.

Shining, pale-honey hair fell forward and hid her face when she stepped up to cast the flower into the grave. Other mourners filed past while she stood nearby, accepting their kisses and handshakes and murmurs of sympathy.

Steve stooped for a handful of earth. Prettifying the ceremony with flowers didn’t make Magnus’s death any easier for those who had loved and respected him. Those like Steve and the boys—for they weren’t much more—now gathered protectively about the supposedly grieving widow.

She’d sat in the front row of the church straight-backed and perfectly still while a hulking adolescent beside her sobbed into his hands. Following the coffin out afterward, she had remained pale and composed and apparently unmoved even when one of the youngsters accompanying her burst into a Maori karakia, the lament sending a shiver up Steve’s spine with its haunting passion and forcing him to swallow hard on a suddenly obstructed throat.

At the graveside she’d appeared more bored than stricken with sorrow, a faraway look in her eyes as though her mind was otherwise occupied.

Steve was tempted to skip the drinks and food offered after the funeral but Magnus’s lawyer who had phoned him in Los Angeles to give him the news, had seemed anxious to ensure Steve’s presence, saying they needed a private meeting.

“At the funeral?” Steve had queried.

“Mrs. Allardyce has agreed we can use one of the rooms at Kurakaha House. She’d like to get the business out of the way.”

She’d like to get him out of the way, Steve figured. Magnus must have mentioned him in his will.

He hoped Magnus had protected the House and its work from his wife’s—widow’s—money-grubbing hands.

Beautiful hands, he had to admit when she extended one to him as he entered the big, carpeted double room, already filled with mourners engaged in muted chatter. As beautiful as the rest of her, which had changed little during the six years since he’d seen her last. She’d cut her hair shorter, just below chin level, and maybe lost a little weight, or possibly the clinging black sheath that she wore without adornment falsely lent that impression.

“I’m glad you came, Steve.” Her voice was as cool as the smooth fingers he held briefly in his.

Liar, he thought, biting back a sardonic laugh. She’d have been happy never to have laid eyes on him again.

Her gaze didn’t quite meet his, focusing instead on the knot of his maroon tie. “Magnus would appreciate your being here. Nigel told you he needs to talk?”

“He told me. I believe you’ve made a room available.”

“Yes.” She was distracted by someone at his elbow leaning across to touch her arm. “Excuse me.”

Steve was sure it was with relief that she turned to the newcomer. Dismissed, he helped himself to a drink from a nearby table and looked about for the lawyer.

Half a dozen teenagers circulated with trays of finger foods. Residents at the house, no doubt, whom Triss had pressed into service rather than paying caterers.

Cheap. Presumably the food had been prepared in the Kurakaha kitchen, too. The cook had outdone himself. Or perhaps these days it was a her. Not a young and attractive her, though. Triss wouldn’t stand the competition.

“Steve?” A burly dark man of about his own age grasped his arm with a large brown hand. “Steve, you sonofa— You come all the way over from America?”

“I flew in last night,” Steve said. “Late. How are you, Zed?”

“Blooming,” the big man beamed. “Still working the gardens here, doing a bit of carpentry and stuff. Got a wife and kids now. Two of ’em. Kids, I mean. How ’bout you? Never heard much after you left.”

“No wife, no kids.”

“Yeah, that’s the way.” The man punched his arm. “Fancy-free, eh? Got yourself some big house and car in Los Angeles, eh?”

“An apartment,” Steve said. “And yeah, I own a car. Don’t you?”

“Ford Falcon.” Zed grinned. “Beat-up old bomb. Bet yours is better.” But his envy wasn’t real, and when his wife joined them with one child in her arms and another clinging shyly to her skirt, Zed glowed with pride as he introduced them, swinging the older one into his arms and planting a smacking kiss on her cheek.

“This is a bugger though,” he added, sobering as he looked about them. “Old Magnus going like that.”

Steve could only agree. “I suppose you don’t know what’s going to happen to the House?”

“I guess Triss will carry on.”

“You think so?”

“She’s been holding the place together since Magnus got sick.”

Protecting her investment?

Maybe she’d changed. Give the woman the benefit of the doubt, Steve admonished himself. You could be wrong about her being the Wicked Witch of the West. Maybe. He said, “I didn’t know Magnus was ill.”

“He didn’t want people to know.”

People? Steve felt a strange, angry pain in his chest. I’m not “people.” Someone should have told me.

She should have told him. The pain became a burning resentment. He looked across the room at Triss. She was talking to a handsome gray-haired man who looked vaguely familiar. After a moment Steve placed him—a seasoned and prominent politician, a cabinet minister when Steve had left the country. He was holding one of Triss’s elegant pale hands in both of his, and she was smiling at him, making no attempt to draw away, listening intently to what he had to say.

Steve’s narrowed stare shifted when a former resident of Kurakaha clapped his shoulder and shook his hand, demanding to know what he’d been doing since he’d left New Zealand. Others followed, and half an hour or more passed in social chat.

Mourners had overflowed into the garden. Steve walked through the French doors thrown open to the long tiled terrace, keeping an eye out for the lawyer.

Old oaks and an ancient, spreading puriri shaded the terrace. Looking across the lawn and the native evergreens edging it, he glimpsed the curved, poplar-lined drive, and remembered the first time he’d seen the two-storied, sprawling white building from the gateway. Magnus had stopped the car there, letting the engine idle, and turned to the sullen teenager that Steve was then, saying, “This is your new home.”

In spite of himself Steve had been impressed by the size of the place and its air of well-preserved colonial gentility. Magnus, in his way, was impressive, too. Tall, erect and already gray-haired and perilously close to unkempt, he had been an odd mixture of artist, idealist and pragmatist.

The young Steve remained suspicious and surly for months. Until it dawned on him that Magnus wasn’t really interested in reforming him. All he cared about was rescuing the raw talent that he’d somehow discerned in this unpromising fifteen-year-old.

Fourteen years ago. And now Magnus was gone.

Steve turned to survey the room behind him, and caught sight of Nigel Fairbrother, the lawyer, just inside the French doors.

“Wait a while,” Nigel said when Steve accosted him. “Triss wants to make sure she’s spoken to everyone first.”

“I thought it was just you and me.”

“Best if you’re both there together,” Nigel said. “No hurry, though.”

After the crowd thinned, Nigel caught up with him again and twitched at his sleeve. “We’re down here.”

Triss was waiting for them in what used to be called the bookroom toward the rear of the house. Besides shelves of books there were rows of video tapes and CDs, and a large TV screen and video player occupied one corner.

She was standing before the window with her hands loosely clasped, the low afternoon sun shimmering on her hair. As Nigel shut the door she sat down on one of the chairs grouped about a heavy, round kauri table, her back rigid.

The lawyer gestured to Steve to sit near her and placed himself opposite, taking charge. Steve left one chair empty between him and Triss.

Nigel dug inside his jacket and pulled out a long envelope. “This isn’t exactly a reading of the will,” he said, “but—” he glanced from Steve to Triss “—I don’t know if either of you know how Magnus…um…disposed of his affairs.”

Triss seemed to pale. She must be anxious about her inheritance.

Steve gave a faint shrug. “No idea.”

“I’ve made two copies so you can both peruse it at your leisure, but essentially, the bulk of his personal estate has been left to his wife, with—ah—conditions attached to some of it.” Nigel nodded toward her. “A portfolio of stocks and shares and investment monies is reserved to maintain Kurakaha in its present form as an educative facility for disadvantaged young men, to be administered as a trust—”

Steve gave a silent sigh of relief, relaxing against his chair back, only to straighten abruptly as the lawyer continued “—by the two of you jointly.”

“What?” Steve snapped.

“The two of…us?” Triss had definitely whitened, her eyes darkening as the pupils enlarged. For a second Steve thought she might be going to faint. Then two smudges of color scorched her cheekbones. “When did Magnus make that will? There must be another one!”

“I’m afraid not.” Nigel looked down at the pages as if checking the date. “He never lodged another with us.”

“But…he had plenty of time.” Triss leaned forward, frowning. “Let me see that.”

Nigel handed it over and passed another copy to Steve, who scanned his quickly before looking up.

Triss looked up, too, the tight set of her mouth failing to disguise its lush femininity. “You drew this up?” she asked Nigel.

“At his request, of course. If you have questions…”

“No questions. It’s very clear. Insultingly clear. And watertight, I suppose.”

Nigel looked unhappy. “I pointed out to Magnus that if he made the whole of his bequest to you dependent on your continuing to live at Kurakaha—because that was his first thought—you might have grounds for contesting. As it stands now he has adequately provided for his widow, although if you leave the House there will be considerably less than if you stay. The actual monetary value of the bequest may have altered over the years, but his accountant will fill you in on that.”

“I know exactly what my husband was worth, thank you.” There was a brittle note in her voice.

I’ll just bet you do, Steve thought. And she hadn’t expected that he’d attach strings to her enjoying what he’d left her.

She held the papers so tightly the edges were crushed. Steve realized that her hand was trembling. Perhaps coming to the same realization, she placed the papers on the table, smoothing them out. She hadn’t looked at Steve. “We’ll have to come to some arrangement.” Her voice was unsteady, too, he noted. She paused, and said more strongly, “I don’t suppose Steve will be moving back to New Zealand, so I hope he won’t feel the need to interfere with—”

“Interfere?” Steve cut across her.

She opened her mouth, then paused again, apparently aware of a tactical error. “There’s no need for you to become involved,” she said carefully, still not looking at him directly, “just because Magnus never got around to updating his will.”

“I am involved. This—” Steve lifted his copy of the document “—makes us joint trustees. I can’t say I was expecting it, but I won’t let Magnus down.”

With a flare of temper Triss said, “Do you think I will?”

Their eyes met, and he wondered how a woman who looked all peaches and cream could have such a steely blue stare. Not that his iron-gray one was probably much different.

Nigel intervened. “I think Magnus believed the two of you had complementary talents and strengths. That’s why he wanted both of you—”

“He didn’t want it!” Triss argued, returning her attention to him. “He just never got around to changing his will. He was always so busy, but he must have meant to. And you—” she rounded on Steve “—you know that!”

“As you said,” Steve pointed out, “he had plenty of time. And he’s not here to explain. I intend to take my responsibility seriously.”

“An absentee trustee?” she scorned.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Steve advised her curtly. He hadn’t had time yet to give thought to the implications of this. “And don’t think you can get away with anything just because I’m not breathing down your neck every minute of the day.”

He knew he’d scored a hit when her eyes flashed blue fire at him for an instant before she let her lids briefly fall. Then she looked up again, her face once more a composed, icily perfect mask. “Naturally I’ll consult you over any really important decisions—and I would hope that you’ll be reasonable and not veto my suggestions out of hand.”

“Now why,” Steve asked her, hiding his own anger under a deceptive gentleness, “would I want to do that?”

Her look told him she wasn’t fooled, but Nigel took the question at face value. “I’m sure both of you have the best interests of the House and its aims at heart.”

“Are you?” Succumbing to temptation, Steve knew that Triss hadn’t missed the mockery in his voice.

Rather than responding, she picked up the papers she’d placed on the table and rose gracefully to her feet. “I must get back to my guests,” she said. “Thank you, Nigel.” Reluctantly turning to Steve, she added, “I suppose we should talk before you leave again for the States. Give me a call in a day or two.”

Without allowing him time to reply she made for the door. Steve got there just before her and paused for a moment with his hand on the knob while she waited, stiff with impatience.

He wasn’t a man who usually gave women a bad time, but this one had always got under his skin, and her brusque order to call her nettled him. Yielding to a desire to bring her down a peg, he swept a measuring glance over her, scouting the enemy, silently inspecting the admittedly stunning feminine outline of her figure while making it clear he wasn’t impressed.

His reward was an infinitesimal lifting of her chin, even as her answering glance told him he was despicable.

The trouble was, after he’d pulled open the door and allowed her to sweep past him, he was inclined to share her opinion.

Not that it made any difference to his opinion of her, he reflected hours later, nursing his third whiskey in the bar of his Auckland hotel, almost an hour’s drive north from Kurakaha. Triss had been furious at having to share the trusteeship. There must be a lot of money tied up in the trust and he was damned sure she’d been hoping to milk it for all it was worth, if she couldn’t break it.

Maybe Magnus hadn’t been dazzled clean out of his mind after all. He seemed to have retained a grain of common sense—enough to not quite trust his wife to carry on his work without someone to keep an eye on her.

Steve was that someone and, although it had certainly surprised him, he didn’t mean to take the old man’s wishes lightly.

A smile touched Steve’s firmly etched mouth. Always larger than life, with the charisma of true genius, Magnus had been a brilliant, world-respected conductor until the early onset of arthritis curtailed his career. As the crippling condition progressed he’d devoted increasing amounts of his time to giving talented but socially disadvantaged young musicians the chance to excel, while filling in other gaps in their education. Taking no more than thirty-five students at a time, for periods of up to four years, Magnus had spared no expense.

Until Triss had come along with her penny-pinching attitude to the House and its work. Steve recalled her apparently gentle nagging about budgets and cost overruns. And Magnus’s quiet teasing at her unnecessary concern. Born to a privileged background, his father descended from successful early settlers, Magnus had inherited wealth and had earned large sums from a short but dazzling international career, and as he said, he had no family to spend it on, only Kurakaha and its inhabitants.

Steve had been the first to arrive. Despite clashes between him and his mentor over Steve’s plan to make a fortune manufacturing specialized keyboards and sound equipment rather than pursue a musical career of his own, the younger man appreciated the tremendous influence Magnus had exercised on his life.

Steve phoned Triss two days later. She suggested he might come to Kurakaha at ten-thirty. “If that suits you?” she added.

An afterthought.

“Perfectly,” he replied, deciding not to be difficult for the sake of it.

“I’ll be expecting you, then,” she said, crisp as a newly ironed shirt collar. She had put down the receiver before he could reply.

Damn the woman. No one else could tempt him to petty revenge. Firmly he put aside the thought of being half an hour late.

It was a minute before ten-thirty when he rang the bell at the main entry, and Triss herself opened the door to him. This time he kept his gaze firmly fixed on her face, but even so he was aware that the open lapels of her cream blouse revealed a faint shadow between her breasts, and that the silk fabric was tucked into a narrow navy-blue skirt that hugged her hips.

As she led him along a corridor to Magnus’s office he couldn’t help noticing also that she had lost some weight, but there was still a very womanly body under that figure-revealing skirt.

He’d always known she was a superficially attractive woman. Hell, he might as well admit it—physically he had always reacted to her. A male biological reflex that no doubt he shared with at least half of his gender group. Even Magnus hadn’t been immune. And Magnus, in his peculiar innocence, had married her, probably not knowing how else to handle it when for the first time in his life, Steve suspected, he fell in love. With a woman half his age.

She went behind the desk that was unnaturally clear and tidy and sat down.

The high-backed leather chair looked too big for her. Steve supposed she was making a point. Magnus’s office, Magnus’s chair. The message was plain: I’m in charge now. She’d taken over.

Yet as he seated himself he had the feeling she was using the wide, solid desk as a shield. He supposed she might find his height and his rugby-broadened shoulders intimidating. He’d given up the game when he left New Zealand for America, but kept himself physically fit with running and weights, still influenced by Magnus’s creed that a sluggish body led to a sluggish mind.

The boys were encouraged to develop their bodies as well as their minds, and Magnus expected them to put maximum effort into everything they did. He’d had no patience with laziness or incompetence.

It had been a tough regime but challenging, and those who survived were grateful. Witness the genuine sorrow at the funeral, grown men who had passed through Kurakaha as students breaking down in tears.

But not the widow.

She didn’t look as though she’d shed a single tear since her husband’s death, the blue, blue eyes as clear and chilly as mountain water.

“There doesn’t seem to be any way out of this,” Triss said with no preamble. “I’ve obtained a second opinion from a different legal firm.”

The day after her husband’s funeral? She hadn’t lost any time.

Briskly she continued, “Unless Magnus did make a later will after you left—and Nigel seems sure he didn’t—we’re stuck with this one. I appreciate your…willingness to do your part, and I’ll keep in touch. Do you have an e-mail address where I can contact you? It would be more convenient than phoning when it may be the middle of the night where you are.”

“Back up, there. It seems to me, reading that will, that Magnus expected me to live here.”

She looked as if she’d smelled something bad. “You know he drew it up when you were living here. I’m sure he wouldn’t expect you drop a lucrative career in America to fulfill an outdated whim.”

“Magnus didn’t operate on whims.” Except once, maybe. When he’d brought home his much younger bride. “He was a stubborn old—” Steve checked himself. “He was stubborn and quixotic and he never liked to admit he was wrong—”

“Where do you get off criticizing him?” Triss flared. “After—”

“After all he did for me?” Steve said impatiently. “I have the greatest respect for Magnus and you know it, but that doesn’t mean I never saw any fault in him.”

Magnus had been temperamental and sometimes wrongheaded. He held a grudge with the fervor of a starving man clutching his last crust. And yet he could be extraordinarily generous. And he had devoted considerable resources of time, money and energy to nurturing natural brilliance found in the most unlikely places.

“So what’s your point?”

Okay, let her have it straight. “Magnus had his reasons and I have to respect them. I’m coming back here to live,” he told her.

From the way she stared, her deceptively lovely mouth parted in shock, he knew she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It’s what Magnus wanted,” he said. “I’ll fly back to L.A. in the next day or two to pack and organize things over there, then I’ll be moving in.”

“You can’t do that!” She’d found her voice, and it sounded almost panic stricken.

“Why not?” His eyes narrowed. “What have you got to hide?”

“Nothing! But…there’s no place for you here!”

Deliberately he stared her down, not caring now if he was intimidating, even hoping that he might be. Although, he conceded reluctantly, she didn’t scare easily. Letting the silence speak, he looked past her, out the window, and then back at her defiant eyes, which held a hint of cornered rabbit in their astonished depths.

“Then you’d better make one,” he said. They both knew this place was way big enough to accommodate an extra person, the rooms reserved for tutors seldom fully occupied. There was always a spare space somewhere.

He pushed back his chair, ensuring this time he was the one to terminate the discussion. “I’ll let you know when I’ve settled things over in L.A. Meantime—” he leaned forward so that he was towering over her in her chair “—you won’t, of course, think of making any major decisions without me, will you?”

Straightening without hurry, he took a card from his breast pocket and flipped it onto the desk in front of her. “My e-mail address and phone number are on there.”

It was very satisfying turning his back on her and strolling to the door. He didn’t look at her again before closing it behind him.