Breaking/Making Up: Something Borrowed\Vendetta (11 page)

‘I’ll give it to our first daughter,’ he said in a thickened tone. ‘And when she’s old enough I’ll tell her the story behind it.’

Ashleigh linked arms with him and they started walking slowly back to the kitchen, where Kate was sure to be waiting impatiently for them. ‘How many children would you like, Jake?’ she asked softly.

‘Lots.’

‘That’s good. Because if I’ve done my sums right expect the first in about nine months’ time.’

When she looked up at him, expecting a measure of shock, Jake was smiling wryly down at her.

‘Jake Hargraves!’ she gasped. ‘You
knew
I might get pregnant tonight, didn’t you?’

‘Aye,’ he agreed with mock contrition. ‘That I did. James let the cat out of the bag when I—er—questioned him about how far things had gone between you two.’

‘But why...I mean...why didn’t you say something?’

‘I thought I’d best keep an ace up my sleeve, in case you decided we weren’t quite right for each other. I rather thought a wee babe might change your mind.’

‘Why, you sneaky, rotten...’

‘My God, you two aren’t fighting already, are you?’ Kate groaned from the kitchen doorway.

‘Who? Us?’ Jake scooped an arm around Ashleigh’s waist and pulled her close to his side. ‘Never!’

‘Certainly not,’ Ashleigh giggled, seeing the funny side of it.

Kate eyed them both suspiciously. ‘I hope not. People make their own luck in life, isn’t that what you always say, Ashleigh?’

‘Oh, definitely.’

‘In that case,’ she rushed forward, an anxious look on her face, ‘would you have a spare room for me in Thailand if I came over for a while after I find a buyer for my salon? I think I’ll take Rhys up on his offer.’

The front doorbell rang, and Jake stepped over to open it.

Rhys stood there, an equally anxious look on his face. ‘All right, give me the bad news. She sent you packing once she found out, didn’t she? I did tell you, Jake, this wasn’t the way to handle it. Women don’t like to be deceived, you know. They...’

He gaped into silence when Ashleigh walked forward and slipped a loving arm through Jake’s. ‘Now, Rhys, don’t be so melodramatic. I’m not angry with Jake at all. I adore him and we’re going to Thailand together to live and have babies while Jake writes and I doctor. We have only one further favour to ask of you.’

His mouth flapped open, but no words came out.

‘Of both of you, actually,’ she went on, her glance encompassing Kate as well. ‘Would you two be our witnesses again when we really, truly get married,
legally
next time?’

‘Well, of course,’ Rhys agreed, still rather bemused by the turn of events.

‘But only if you uphold all the traditions,’ Kate inserted sternly. ‘White dress and all the trimmings. I don’t believe in any of those register office jobs.’

Ashleigh grinned. ‘All right, Miss Tradition. But you’ll have to come up with a different “something borrowed” for me. That locket just won’t do any more. It’s been “returned to sender”.’ And she looked lovingly up at Jake.

‘Returned to...’ Kate frowned. ‘But I thought Nancy had... I mean... Ashleigh O’Neil!’ she wailed. ‘You’ve been keeping secrets from me!’

‘I wonder why,’ she laughed, and, smiling, went up on tiptoe to kiss the man she loved.

SUSAN NAPIER

Vendetta

To my father, Ted Hedges, the Intrepid Traveller

CHAPTER ONE

T
HE time had come.

Ten years...

For ten years he had looked forward to this moment with a savage anticipation that had blotted out all lesser ambitions. He had forced himself to watch, to wait, to plan, to carry on with the rest of his life as if revenge had not become the pivot of his existence.

Of course, outside the waiting, the plotting, he had gone through all the right motions, maintaining the fiction of Christian forgiveness...smiling, talking, moving, interacting with those around him, accepting their praise for his achievements, cultivating their admiration and envy, consolidating his wealth. But none of it had had any meaning, any reality for him.

The admiration, the envy, the wealth were necessary only as a source of power. The power to see justice done. The power to punish...

He pressed his right hand on the hard, highly polished surface of his desk, watching the faint mist of heat from his skin bloom across the cool, dark surface between his splayed fingers. A heavy gold ring engraved with an entwined briar and snake on the flat shield flashed in the firelight, the only source of light in the coldly elegant room, as he turned his hand over and stared at the bold tracery of life-lines on his palm. They mocked him with their energy. He had had such grand hopes of life until
she
had come along and casually crushed them.

But now the long, bitter years of waiting were over. He finally had her exactly where he wanted her...in the palm of his powerful hand. And the timing was perfect. She thought that she was safe. She thought that she had got away with it, that everyone had forgotten her crime. Soon, very soon, she would learn differently. There was no statute of limitations on murder.

He curled his fingers inward to form a brutal fist. All he had to do now was close the trap and watch her futile struggles to free herself. She would probably weep and cry innocence, or bluster and threaten, or, better still, cringe and beg for his entertainment. Then he would strip away her pride and her self-respect and stand witness to the death, one by one, of all her hopes and dreams. It was an image that he treasured in the depths of his embittered soul.

He picked up the squat crystal glass next to his hand and took a long swallow of potent, twelve-year-old Scotch. The raw, smoky bite at the back of his throat was pleasurable, but it was no match for the intoxicating taste of revenge that was flooding his senses. For the first time in a decade, he felt almost whole again.

The time had come...

CHAPTER TWO

V
IVIAN took the last two steps in one grateful stride and then paused for breath, forcing herself to look back down the narrow staircase that was chipped out of the rocky face of the cliff.

In spite of the fact it was a cold and blustery day, typical of New Zealand’s autumn, sweat was trickling down her torso inside her cream blouse and her palm had felt appallingly slippery on the single, stout wooden rail that had been the only barrier between her and the rock-strewn, sea-green oblivion below.

She shuddered faintly as she watched the two men far below, unloading the cargo from the hold of the squat little ferry-boat.

Reaction hit and Vivian swallowed, her dry mouth suddenly thick with moisture. Her legs felt like jelly and she swayed, fighting the urge to sink weakly to the ground.

She pressed a hand to her abdomen, trying to control the unpleasant churning feeling as she turned away and followed the sharply rising, stony path up through the low, scrubby trees. She had to get a grip on herself before she reached her destination. She smoothed down her neat dark green skirt and adjusted the matching blazer as she went, nervously switching the soft-sided leather satchel from one sweaty hand to the other as she tried to calm herself by projecting a mental aura of professionalism.

She had a reputation to uphold. She was here as a representative of Marvel-Mitchell Realties to close a vital property deal. A lot was depending on her. It wasn’t just the money, but the future happiness of people that she loved that was at stake.

It hadn’t helped that what she had been told was a forty-minute journey from the north-east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula to the island had actually taken over an hour and a half in very choppy seas. After a rushed three-hour drive from Auckland last evening, and an anxious, wakeful night in an uncomfortable motel bed, her close encounter with the Pacific Ocean had not been pleasant.

Since her destination was the private island of a millionaire, Vivian had naïvely expected a luxury launch or hydrofoil to be her mode of transport, not the ugly old tub that she had been directed to at Port Charles. She had also expected the island to be a lush private sanctuary, with beautiful white-sand beaches and flourishing vegetation, rather than a wind-swept, surf-lashed rock in the middle of nowhere. Although the name should have given her a clue, she thought wryly.

Nowhere. She had thought it quaint; now she realised it had been highly descriptive!

What kind of man would drag someone out all this way to conclude a business deal that would have been better, and more safely handled in a city office? Unfortunately, she thought she knew exactly: a man bent on causing trouble. A machiavellian man who would not be appeased by an easy victory. If she was to thwart any of his aims she would have to play his game first.

Vivian came through a small, wind-mutilated grove of low-growing trees and halted, her mouth falling open in shock.

Across a small ridge, perched on a flat tongue of land at the end of a rocky promontory, was a lighthouse. If she hadn’t been so busy hanging miserably over the rail of the boat, wondering whether to cast up her rushed motel breakfast into the sea, she would have seen the tall white tower as they approached the island.

She lifted bleak eyes from the wide concrete base, up, up past the vertical line of four tiny windows to stare at the open balcony just below the diamond-shaped glass panes that housed the light. How many stairs to get to the top of
that
?

Her appalled gaze sank back down again and settled with overpowering relief on the low, white-painted concrete building that adjoined the towering structure. A keeper’s cottage.

She got a grip on herself. No need to let your imagination run wild, Vivian. All New Zealand lighthouses were now automated. It might even have been decommissioned. She had no business with lighthouses. It was the man in the nice, ordinary,
low
building beside it that she had come to see!

The narrow pathway across the short ridge was fenced on both sides with white pickets, offering her at least a notion of security as the wind swept up one side of the steep, rocky face and wrenched at her hair and clothes with berserk glee. She touched each picket with her free hand as she passed, counting to take her mind off what lay at either side, aware that her neat bun was unravelling more with every step.

By the time she reached the stout, weathered timber door, she was resigned to looking like a freak. A quick glance at her reflection in the curtained window beside the door confirmed the worst. Her shoulder-length hair, inclined to be wild and woolly at the best of times, was making the most of its partial freedom in the moisture-laden air, and there was no time to try and torture the tight ginger curls back into businesslike obedience. Hurriedly Vivian pulled out the few remaining pins. Now, instead of resembling a lop-sided hedgehog, she merely looked like a frightened lion.

She took a deep breath, straightened the side-seams of her skirt, and knocked loudly.

After several moments she knocked again, then again. Finally she tried the door-handle and found to her surprise that it opened easily. She tentatively edged across the threshold.

‘Hello, is anybody there? Mr Rose? Mr Rose!’ The door closed behind her with a weighty clunk, sounding unpleasantly like the door to a cell.

She walked warily down the short narrow hall and into a large room, sparsely furnished in everything except books—walls of them.

A long, well-used, brown leather couch was drawn up in front of a coal-blackened fireplace and there was a big roll-top desk and chair beside a window overlooking the sea. Another small port-hole window among the books showed the smooth white rise of the adjoining lighthouse tower. There were a few rugs on the polished hardwood floor and a large, smooth-sided antique chest that obviously doubled as a coffee-table, but there were no ornaments or plants, paintings or photographs. Nothing that betrayed the excessive wealth of the owner. Nothing but the books to give the room character...and a rather daunting one at that, thought Vivian, eyeing some of the esoteric titles.

Like the adjacent lighthouse, the house was obviously designed to withstand the constant buffeting of sea-storms, the interior walls made of the same thick, roughcast cement as the outer shell. She wondered nervously whether perhaps it was also designed to endure buffetings from within. The mysterious and formerly benignly eccentric Mr Rose, with whom Marvel-Mitchell Realties had dealt quietly and successfully for years via lawyer, letter and fax, was shaping up to be a chillingly ruthless manipulator. She didn’t doubt for one minute that this wait was designed to make her sweat.

Unless he had never intended to turn up at all.

Vivian shivered. She put her briefcase down by the desk and began to pace, trying to burn off her increasing tension. There were no clocks in the room and she checked her watch frequently as ten minutes ticked slowly past. The captain had said the boat would be leaving again in an hour. If Mr Rose hadn’t arrived by then she would simply leave.

To pass the time, she re-applied her lipstick and brushed her hair, cursing herself for not tucking extra hairpins into her bag, when suddenly her restless thoughts were drowned out by a loud, rhythmic beating that seemed to vibrate through the walls. Vivian turned towards the window to see a sleek white helicopter descending towards a flat circle of tussock just below the cottage.

She felt her temper fizzle bracingly as the craft settled to rest and the door opened and two men got out, heads ducked low as they battled the whirlwind created by the slowing blades.

Nicholas Rose had a helicopter! Instead of her spending an eternity on a heaving boat, he could have had her
flown
out to the island in minutes! For that matter, he could probably have got to Auckland and back in the time it had taken her to cross the angry patch of water.

She watched as the first passenger, a huge, blond bear of a man in jeans and a sheepskin jacket, stood back and respectfully allowed the man in the dark blue suit to pass him.