Price of Passion (7 page)

He brushed aside her argument, too intrigued by his paranoid fantasy. ‘You don’t even have a phone connection in the house, let alone wireless coverage, and the cellular signal is erratic at best. Your mind is far too tidy to leave things like that to chance…no, there’s got to be something—’

‘For goodness’ sake, this isn’t the middle of the Gobi Desert, Drake,’ she cut in with exasperation, not sure whether he was serious, or simply winding her up. With Drake’s sardonic sense of humour it was sometimes difficult to tell. ‘I
could
just stroll next door and ask to use
your
internet connection. And don’t tell me you don’t have one, because you email your manuscripts and revisions.’

He folded his arms over his chest, his smooth jaw set at a stubborn angle as he moodily toyed with the suggestion. ‘So you could. Maybe that’s the whole idea—access to my computer. I told Marcus there was a good reason the first few chapters are late. He knows I’ll deliver the goods. Is he throwing the panic switch already just because I’m not answering his emails? Did he put the squeeze on you to do him a personal favour?’ He snorted. ‘Threaten your job if you didn’t use your leverage with me to find out what’s going on with the new synopsis, and why I haven’t sent the partial? Because if he did any of that, you can tell him that he’s violated our confidentiality agreement and he can kiss goodbye to any more books from me.’

‘What a shame, and you two have been such loyal friends through all these years, and had such a wonderfully successful run together—you’ve stuck with Enright Media, even though you must have been wooed by every big publisher in the business,’ said Kate, her voice dripping with false compassion at his outrageous threat. ‘It seems you just can’t trust anyone these days, can you?’ Then she clapped her hand to her cheek. ‘Oh, that’s right, I forgot—you never
do
trust anyone, anyway. How nice it must be to have proof that your lack of faith in your friends has been justified.’

He cooled off instantly. ‘I haven’t proved anything,’ he growled defensively.

She gave him an oozing smile, destined to trigger every warning instinct in his wary nature. ‘Just out of interest, why
haven’t
you sent him the partial?’

He momentarily froze, and then let out a shuddering breath, running his hand over his head, raking his hair into disturbed peaks. ‘Hell, Katherine, rub it in, why don’t you?’

‘Thank you, I will.’ She relished the chance to take her revenge. ‘If you really believed that farrago of nonsense it’s a short step to thinking that Marcus might have introduced me to you at that party two years ago as part of his long-term strategy of betrayal. I could be a mole.’

‘I don’t think moles go in for sunbathing, and certainly not in purple bikinis,’ he murmured, showing that he was not as impervious as she had supposed. ‘They’re very solitary, dark-loving creatures, with powerful appetites…’

‘That sounds familiar. Maybe
you’re
the mole,’ she suggested.

‘With what mission—to betray myself?’

‘Well, it would cut out the middle man.’

A flicker of amusement in his eyes indicated a mocking self-awareness—but as usual when their conversation threatened to breach his invisible walls he deflected her attention away from himself. ‘At least we’ve narrowed down the list of possible motives for you being here. The process of elimination will eventually bring us down to the truth.’

‘“You can’t handle the truth!” The angry quote from
A Few Good Men
floated into her mind and tripped off her tongue before she could stop it.

‘Not been around long enough to qualify as a classic yet, Kate, but it was Jack Nicholson playing Colonel Jessep. And he was wrong, wasn’t he? Because people are constantly having to adjust to newly revealed truths…it’s called
living
…’

‘Some people are too busy crying wolf on their friends or looking for reds-under-the-bed to fully engage in living,’ she said, suddenly feeling on the brink of tears. She wasn’t going to be stampeded into telling him about their baby in a burst of anger at his wilful lack of understanding. ‘Or, in your case, perhaps I should say reds-
in
-the-bed!’

In a flutter of iridescent green she turned to flounce back into the house, but was halted as he grabbed a piece of handkerchief hem.

‘Melissa’s a freelance editor.’

Kate stilled at the revelation, but didn’t turn around. After a moment, he spoke again, his voice rusty with reluctance. ‘She’s worked on nearly all of my books. I pay her to read the manuscripts for me, give me an overview and correct punctuation and grammar before I send them in. Why do you think my manuscripts are so polished when they land up at Enright’s?’

Kate turned slowly, tethered by his fistful of green gauze. She had heard that he only ever required the occasional line-edit. ‘But doesn’t the editorial department usually do all that stuff?’

He hunched his shoulders. ‘I don’t get a say at who Marcus employs—I don’t like people I don’t know taking over and changing things. But I had to do something after the nightmare I went through over the editing on the first book. I have a mild form of dyslexia and never paid much attention to formal English at school so I have two strikes against me. But it is
my
story to tell—and I want to give the nit-pickers as little excuse as possible to tinker with my intentions.’

The light bulb went on inside her head. Of course. This was a Drake Daniels she knew very well. He would do everything he could to minimise the exposure of his weaknesses to others. It was all about
control
.

‘But you let Melissa tinker,’ she said, eaten up with a jealousy that was far more than sexual.

‘We go over it together. She’s good at what she does. I know she’ll fix the technicalities and throw in a few criticisms and leave the final interpretation to me.’

‘Does Marcus know?’

‘He doesn’t need to know.’ He shrugged. ‘He doesn’t care about the process; all he cares about is that I deliver him a saleable book at the end of it.’

Kate stared at him. She shouldn’t be so surprised.
Need to know
. He operated his whole life on that basis.

His fist tightened, putting tension on her wrap as he misinterpreted her long look. ‘I suppose now you’re wondering if she’s more a ghost-writer than an editor.’

It had never even occurred to her. Knowing Drake, she would bet that Melissa had a major battle on her hands with every altered comma.

‘Actually, I was wondering how long you two have been together.’

‘We’re not
together
,’ he rejected instantly. ‘I send her chunks of the book to read and she comes here to work with me on the edit, that’s all. It never takes more than a few days.’

‘She calls you “Darling”.’

‘She calls everybody “Darling”.’ He clenched his teeth. ‘Melissa and I have never slept together.’

His statement fell starkly between them. ‘But she obviously would like to,’ said Kate.

‘A lot of women want to sleep with me; that doesn’t mean I do,’ he snapped impatiently, hitting on a source of increasing agony for Kate.

‘Why not? What’s to hold you back?’ she gouged viciously at the open wound.

‘For God’s sake, Kate, I’m not interested and Melissa knows it. Nor is she. That was all an act! She makes a mint off her contract with me, she wouldn’t ever want to jeopardise it. Apart from anything else she’s
married
.’

‘That’s no barrier these days.’

His head reared up at the splash of acid in her voice. ‘It is for me.’

She would concede that. Too many messy complications.

‘What if she got a divorce?’ prodded Kate.

‘I’m not going to sleep with her, Kate, not even to justify your jealousy.’

He was so smug! ‘I’m not jealous!’

He flipped his wrist, winnowing the thin fabric, wafting warm air around her bare thighs and midriff. ‘You look pretty green to me!’

His sly humour struck her on the raw. ‘Green also happens to be associated with harmony, growth and fertility—’ She stopped, stricken. He continued to hold on, his eyes alert with sharpening curiosity, and with a little gasp she rotated quickly away in a balletic twirl that shed her gauzy cocoon, leaving him holding an empty snatch of nothing as her bikini-clad figure disappeared into the house, a sharp click of the latch signalling that her tantalising flight was not an invitation to pursue!

K
ATE
was still alive in a state of angry embarrassment a few mornings later when she backed her car out of the garage to head down to the wharf and see if any of the fishing boats she had seen coming in were willing to sell some of their catch from the boat.

The anger was mostly with herself for being a wimp. After coming all this way to challenge Drake, she was now ducking and diving to avoid being seen until her chaotic hormones stopped her leaking tears at inappropriate moments, skulking around inside the house with the doors locked, taking long walks up the beach to find a hidden spot in the sand-dunes where she could do her sunbathing, and driving up into the hills to explore the nature trails.

The embarrassment followed a very uncomfortable second encounter with Melissa Jayson at a local roadside vegetable stall, where Kate had paused on one of her carefully timed walks to buy a bunch of leafy green silver beet, a brown bag of crunchy sugar-snap peas and a large head of broccoli. The stall was a little wooden shed at the entrance to a long driveway heading down into the bush along the estuary shore, the method of payment an honesty box with a large, rusting padlock attached. Kate had been fishing in the lightweight fanny-pack clipped around her waist for the coins to post in the slot when the crunch of tyres and whirr of an electric window had made her turn her head.

‘Hello,’ Melissa Jayson called from the driver’s seat on the far side of the late-model station-wagon. She was in a figure-hugging dress with full make-up emphasising her striking features, but this time all Kate could see was the wedding ring prominently displayed on the finger tapping the steering wheel in time to the beat on the stereo. ‘Would you like a lift back to the house?’

‘No, thanks, I’m going in the other direction. I’m walking for fitness,’ Kate said quickly as her coins clinked into the box.

‘Are you sure?’ Kate could hear her scepticism. It did seem rather unlikely that she would carry a large bouquet of vegetables around to wilt in the hot sun, when the logical thing would have been to buy them on her way back.

‘I’m sure.’ Was this an olive branch or a prelude to more backbiting? Should she apologise for calling her a Grade-A bitch? According to Drake the poor woman had only been trying to guard her client’s back, or protect her investment, even if with questionable vigour.

‘Would you like me to at least take the vegies for you? I could put them in our fridge until you’ve finished your walk.’

Our fridge? It was ridiculous how much that casually possessive little word grated.

‘No, thanks. Really, I’ll be fine. I haven’t got that much further to go.’ For all Drake’s protestations that there was nothing between them, Kate was still picking up a vibe that suggested a more than simply professional interest on the redhead’s part.

‘Well, OK, then, if I can’t persuade you…’

‘No, but thanks for stopping,’ she made herself say.

The Other Woman laughed wryly. ‘Really? I bet you wished I’d kept on driving—straight on down into the estuary.’

‘The thought did cross my mind,’ Kate admitted.

‘Well, if it’s any consolation, darling, Drake was in a furniture-chewing mood when he came back to the house the other day. He practically got out the thumbscrews to find out what we’d said to each other.’

‘Did you tell him?’

This time Melissa’s laugh was genuine. ‘Are you kidding? After he prowled about like a cat on hot bricks when you arrived, moaning that he wasn’t going to be able to write a word while you were breathing down his neck, and then acted as if I’d violated one of the ten commandments by telling you? Let him stew! I gather you didn’t tell him much, either—just enough to set him marinating in his own juices. Once he’s done he might go well with that broccoli.’

Damn! thought Kate as the car roared off. I wanted to keep hating her and now she won’t let me. Sharp, pushy, but up front and funny…Kate could see why Drake might find her good to work with.

It was all his fault. If he hadn’t primed both women to resent each other with his manipulative behaviour, she and Melissa might even have been friends. But, of course, Drake wouldn’t want that to happen, she brooded—the two opposite sides of his life meeting instead of keeping to his rigid lines of demarcation…

And there was still one good reason to resent Melissa, she reminded herself. She was obviously great at her job. Her position with Drake was highly valued and secure, whereas Kate’s was already shaking on its flimsy foundations. Drake would have no trouble finding another lover, but first-class private editors were extremely thin on the ground.

Knowing that she was letting her fears for the future paralyse her will put Kate even more out of sorts. Procrastination had the effect of concentrating her mind on safely trivial concerns, like the fact that every time she set foot outside her door the three-legged dog would dash out of nowhere, drool a greeting over her toes, and hang about with a lugubrious expression until she fed it a few biscuits or a bowl of yoghurt. Or the elusive rodent whose phantom squeak was bothering her at odd times of the day, as well as spooking her at night. She had found an old mousetrap pushed to the back of the cupboard under the bench in the kitchen, still baited with a rock-hard lump of old cheese, but it looked a bit flimsy for the task. Judging by the volume of the squeak her unwanted house-guest was not your average house-mouse.

It occurred to her that she could ask Drake if he was any good at rat-catching. Perhaps it would be a face-saving way of re-approaching him, with the added bonus of being genuine, so if he rebuffed her with the name of a local exterminator she would still have gained something. And if he did offer to personally crawl under her house with a torch and a rat-trap, well…this time she would make sure she didn’t let her hormones run riot!

Her sudden craving for a nice piece of fish scotched the rat idea by suggesting a more mature approach. They did say the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach and according to her reading the waters around Oyster Beach were famous not only for oysters and a teeming variety of fish, but for particularly plump, juicy scallops.

Drake was a sucker for a scallop.

He had always declared his own cooking skills to be rudimentary, and since there was nothing so glamorous as a restaurant in the small community, and she doubted the take-away joint next to the gas station ran to Coquilles St Jacques, perhaps offering him a feast of his favourite meal made with delicacies fresh off the boat would create the right atmosphere to re-establish communication. If she also had to invite Melissa for the sake of politeness, well…so be it. It might even prove ultimately more informative than just having Drake by himself. After all, it was thanks to Melissa she was now in possession of a few more intriguing facts…about the way Drake worked, about the dyslexia that might very well be inherited by his son or daughter. She was rapidly coming to understand that even if Drake
wasn’t
emotionally involved in his baby’s birth and upbringing, there were lots of ways in which he would critically influence the child’s life.

Arriving back from the wharf with a bulging plastic bag of scallops, kindly dug from their shells by the grizzled fisherman for no extra charge, Kate swung into her driveway. Halfway back into the garage she remembered she would need mushrooms, too, for the Coquilles. She might have to go as far as the store for those, unless there were some available from roadside stalls on the way. She shifted the car into reverse and put an impatient foot on the accelerator. As she shot back down the driveway in a burst of revs she glimpsed a whisk of mottled grey out of the corner of her eye as it scooted behind the car. She instinctively swerved and jammed on her brakes but there was a jarring thud and high-pitched yelp as the rear wheel ran up onto something and bumped down again.

Kate was out of the car and kneeling beside the back tyre within seconds, scraping her hands on the decorative rocks that lined the drive as she braced herself to peer underneath. Wedging the mud-flap against black rubber tread was the ubiquitous three-legged dog, no longer irritating her with its foolish antics but lying lax, and ominously still. Grateful that the wheel wasn’t actually resting on the dog, Kate scrambled back into the idling car, and with shaking hands slowly drove it forward until she estimated it was well clear of the fallen victim.

This time when she knelt on the driveway beside the dog, she was relieved to see its side shuddering and its head lift briefly before thumping back onto the rough concrete with an accompanying low whine, the stump of the missing leg twitching pathetically, the ridiculous tail limp and streaked with a dark stain she feared could be blood.

‘Oh, God—’ Stricken with guilt, she tentatively touched the trembling coat, wary of causing any more damage to broken ribs. ‘It’s all right,’ she said shakily, daring a few, butterfly-light, pats. ‘You’ll be all right once we get you to the vet…he’ll fix you up…’

She knew there was no way she was going to be able to lift the heavy animal into the car by herself, nor did she have any idea if there was a vet anywhere close. Murmuring foolishly to the dog that she’d be back in a moment, she ran around into Drake’s paved front yard and hammered violently at his door. It seemed to take an age for him to open it and as soon as he did she gabbled wildly:

‘I’ve hit a dog with my car. I think it might be badly hurt, but I’m not sure. It’s just lying there, whimpering, and I don’t know who owns it or what to do. Is there a vet around here, or a doctor I could take it to for help?’ But in her panic she didn’t think to wait for an answer, she was running back, anxious not to leave the dog injured and alone. If it died she didn’t want it to die alone.

By the time she got there Drake was beside her, cursing under his breath when he saw the animal, crouching down and running his large hands over the hairy hide, running explorative fingers through the thick pelt, eliciting a feeble flicker of the tip of the foolish tail.

‘It was my fault—I mustn’t have looked properly,’ Kate agonised. ‘It ran behind the car when I was backing. Thank God it wasn’t a child!’ The thought made her feel ill. ‘I can’t have been going very fast but I think maybe it went under the wheel—’

‘Him,’ said Drake tersely, cutting off her semi-hysterical spate of words.

‘What?’

‘It’s a “him”, not an “it”. He’s obviously a male,’ he said, his face oddly desolate and blank of expression as he gently manipulated each of the three big paws and quieted the broken whines with an indistinct murmur.

‘Oh, I wasn’t sure…with all that hair,’ Kate quavered, grateful to cling to a steadying fact in a sea of wretched uncertainty. ‘He’s been hanging around ever since I got here, but I don’t know where he comes from. Do you think he’ll be OK?’ she asked anxiously.

‘I don’t know. I can’t feel anything broken but we need to get him to a vet as soon as possible in case he’s bleeding internally. There’s a clinic about thirty kilometres away, near Whitianga—it covers a big rural area as well as the town, but they always have more than one vet on call.’

Internal bleeding! Kate’s stomach twisted as Drake continued, ‘The only visible sign of trouble I can see is this graze on his muzzle.’ He withdrew his hand from the dog’s mouth and turned it over to show her the bright red splodge of blood on his palm. Kate’s senses swam and she turned away and was promptly sick on the edge of the grass.

‘Sorry…shock,’ she mumbled, taking the handkerchief he thrust at her and wiping her mouth.

‘You didn’t hit your head?’ he asked sharply, his face pale and set, his mouth grim.

He looked more shaken than she had ever seen him, fighting some inward battle for calm, and she realised he must be worrying about concussion. She put her hand over her belly, freshly aware of the fragility of life, and grateful for her habit of caution.

‘No, I was wearing my seat belt, of course, and anyway, as I said, I wasn’t going that fast—’

He shifted his crouch, leaning forward to slide his arms under the dog’s recumbent form, smoothly straightening his legs in order to rise to his full height without jolting. As Kate suspected, the big-boned dog was even heavier than he looked and the strain on Drake’s neck and shoulders was clearly visible as he adjusted his unwieldy burden against his chest. Kate winced at the pitiful yelp that the move elicited, and hurried to open the rear door of the car, but Drake was already moving in the opposite direction.

‘Where are you going?’ she cried, almost tripping as she hastened on his heels.

‘He’s obviously not going to fit in your car lying down. I have a four-wheel drive with very good suspension—he’ll be less likely to be cramped or jostled. Go and get my keys from Melissa, and tell her to call the vet—the number’s in the red index on my desk.’

By the time she had breathlessly returned Drake had the dog lying full length on a tartan rug on the wide back seat of his battered grey Land Rover. He grabbed the car keys from her hand and hefted himself up into the front seat.

‘Wait!’ said Kate, scrabbling at the back door handle as he gunned the ignition.

He frowned impatiently at her through the open window. ‘There’s no need for you to come. I know where I’m going—’

Kate’s shaking hands succeeded in getting the door wrenched open. ‘Of course I have to come,’ she said, shocked he would think otherwise. ‘I injured him; I’m responsible for him. I can’t just abandon him for others to look after!’