Andrea dragged her gaze away to scan Lecia’s taut face. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said slowly. ‘Come to think of it, I wouldn’t like to meet my double, however gorgeous he was.’
By this time it was plain that the man and his companion were making for the corporate tents on the low hill behind the crowd. All his attention seemed to be on the woman at his side, but when a small child barrelled out in front of him and tripped, he stopped in mid-stride and picked the child up, setting her on her feet with a gentleness at variance with his autocratic air.
The toddler puckered up her face and let out a wail. Immediately the man swung her to his shoulder and turned so that the people in the crowd could see the child. A woman scrambled to her feet and began to shuffle through the blankets and picnics and umbrellas and seated people.
When she reached him the man handed the child over with a few unsmiling words before walking on. Cuddling the toddler, the woman stared with an offended expression after the tall, lean figure. Not until somebody bumped into her did she shrug and make her way back into the crowd.
‘I wonder what he said?’ Andrea hissed. ‘Judging by the frown on the mother’s face it wasn’t exactly a compliment.’
‘The child shouldn’t have been able to get that far without her noticing,’ Lecia said curtly. ‘It would be so easy for a little thing to get lost in all this crowd. Her mother should have kept a closer watch on her.’
Andrea laughed. ‘That’s probably exactly what he said. You see, you even think alive.’
The stranger was only a few metres away. For some reason Lecia wanted to hunch down, keep her head low in case he saw her. It was a ridiculous impulse, and one she refused to obey, although she did turn her face away and look across to the stage.
But at the sound of her name her head whipped around, and her gaze collided with that of the stranger.
Something dissolved in her stomach—no, she thought dazedly, in her bones. His dark blue eyes registered astonishment before they hardened into a polished, unreadable sheen.
‘Here you are, girls,’ came a male voice. ‘Eat them quickly because they’re already melting.’
Peter Farring looped an arm around Lecia’s shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of her head before she had time to move away. The stranger’s burnished gaze flicked over the man beside her. Without breaking stride, he switched it to the path ahead and walked on up the hill.
Shakily Lecia took the proffered ice-cream cone, took a deep breath and produced a smile. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘My pleasure,’ Peter said gallantly.
Between enthusiastic ticks, Andrea told him all about the man with Lecia’s face. ‘Lecia says he looks just like her father,’ she finished, ‘in spite of the fact that she doesn’t have any relatives on her father’s side.’
‘None?’ Peter asked, intrigued. ‘But there could have been—ah—well, not all families know exactly who all their relatives are.’ His flush made his meaning clear.
Lecia shrugged. ‘That’s the only possibility, but this man’s ancestor must have visited Australia, because I’ve never heard of a Spring travelling to New Zealand until my mother and I came back after my father died.’
‘If he’s not reasonably closely connected,’ Andrea pronounced, ‘I’ll give up champagne for a year.’
‘He must be beautiful.’ Peter’s tone made it obvious that the compliment was only directed at Lecia.
Andrea gave a little crow of laughter. ‘No, although he is gorgeous. He has the same features as Lecia but they’re completely, arrogantly and very sexily masculine. You know how brothers and sisters often look alike, yet there’s no mistaking which is the man and which the woman? Well, Lecia and this guy could be twins. Same physique too—he must be well over six feet. They even walk the same—that smooth, graceful gait with something slightly predatory in it.’
‘Oh, good Lord,’ Lecia sighed, unusually irritable. ‘What an imagination you have!’
‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’ Andrea said to Peter with the stunning lack of tact that occasionally made Lecia wonder why she was still her best friend. ‘There’s something not quite tamed about Lecia. That’s the way this guy looks; golden and lithe and dangerous. Monarch of all he surveys.’
And then, too late, Lecia saw her remember that, although Lecia liked Peter, only a week ago she’d decided not to encourage his pursuit of her.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Peter said with a slow, smiling glance that made Lecia squirm inside.
As Andrea’s current lover didn’t enjoy opera, she’d proposed that she and Lecia spend the afternoon together. Unfortunately, no sooner had they settled on their rug beneath the sun umbrella than Peter had seen them and suggested they join forces. There was no reason why they shouldn’t—except, Lecia thought with brutal honesty, that it was always disconcerting to meet someone who showed every sign of being in love with you when you couldn’t reciprocate.
Consciously unpleating her brows, Lecia said lightly, ‘Probably if you saw us side by side we’d only resemble each other very superficially.’
But the impact of that swift, shocking moment when her eyes had linked with the stranger’s had left her with a racing pulse and a body awash with adrenalin. She wanted to hide, to make sure he didn’t see her again.
Most emphatically she didn’t want to discuss him. Andrea, however, hadn’t finished with the subject. ‘It sounds as though the only possible link must be some sort of illicit liaison.’
Briskly Lecia conceded, ‘Almost certainly. According to my mother—one of the few bits of family history she knows—the first Spring came out to Australia from Britain, and apparently he always said he had no relatives.’
‘Of course nobody in those days would say anything about kids born on the wrong side of the blanket. He could be a long-lost second cousin several times removed,’ Andrea decided. ‘You should have made contact with that gorgeous beast, Lecia.’
Lecia shrugged. ‘Let sleeping beasts lie,’ she said curtly.
Within the space of a heartbeat the stranger had seen her, recognised their similarity, and rejected it. No way was she going to pursue him.
But she couldn’t get him out of her head. It had been so uncanny, that unexpected sight of her own features stamped in a more arrogant mould.
Once her mother had told her an old story of a girl who had looked into a well and seen beside her reflection the face of the man she would eventually marry.
In the hot sunlight Lecia’s skin chilled. Now she knew exactly how that girl felt.
‘...so Lecia told him that she wasn’t going to design a house for a woman she didn’t know,’ Andrea said, breaking into infectious laughter.
Scandalised, Peter said, ‘Lecia, how could you? What did he say?’
Amidst more gurgles, Andrea told him, ‘He said he liked a woman with spirit. And then—get this!—and then he asked her out to dinner to meet his wife!’
