must have been terrible for Lucas.’
‘I don’t know how he got over it. She doted on him, you could tell, and although he didn’t show it so much, he thought she was everything. Hell of a thing to happen. He’s never said anything about it, but I think that’s why he went bush after she died. He disappeared for nearly a year. Nobody knew where he was or what he was doing until he marched into the capital with the freedom fighters.’
‘I suppose he blamed himself for his wife’s death,’ she said.
Scott nodded. ‘Yeah. Years later in a bar in Greece I met a journalist who knew him quite well; he and I got talking one night over a bottle of whisky and he swore that Lucas had hunted down the men who’d planted the bomb.’
‘Killed them?’ she asked faintly.
‘Well, delivered them to justice.’
Anet shivered. Yes, she thought. Yes, I can imagine him doing that. He’d be utterly merciless. ‘Poor Lucas,’ she said, unfolding herself from the front seat of the car. Poor Lucas, and poor Cara, and the poor unborn child.
Could anyone ever get over such wholesale destruction of their family?
If anyone could, Lucas Tremaine looked as though he was the man; he exuded a concentrated, self-sufficient toughness that had been grafted onto an already strong character. But even he might find it hard to forgive himself for the death of his wife.
‘You have the shower first,’ Scott said generously as they went into the house. ‘I’ve got paperwork to do and people to telephone.’
Cool water washed away the sweat of the day, sleeking down her body, giving Anet an illusion of freshness as she shampooed. Once out, she dried herself off, sighed as the humid heat enveloped her once again and combed back her fine black hair, wondering just what Cara Tremaine had looked like.
Scott eyed her dubiously when she emerged from her bedroom. ‘You should go and have a shopping session,’ he said.
She knew what he meant. The linen shirt-dress, striped in off-white and a dusky pink, suited Auckland, not the vivid colours and heavy, sensuous atmosphere of Fala’isi. ‘Perhaps I will,’ she said airily.
He gave her a sharp look. ‘Have you got any money? And don’t frown—I know you. Too independent for your own good.’
She lifted haughty black brows at him. ‘This sounds a little strange coming from the man who turned his back on his family to make his own way in the world.’
Grinning, he aimed a punch at her upper arm, then reeled back dramatically and shook his knuckles, wincing and blowing on them. ‘God, will I never learn,’ he mourned, ‘that you’ve got muscles like a drain-digger?’
‘If you keep punching me you’ll learn it very soon.’ She looked at him sideways and said demurely, ‘Although you were never exactly noted for rapid understanding, were you?’
He opened his mouth to return her amiable insult with one of his own, then changed his mind. ‘Did you bring any money?’ he persisted.
She sighed. ‘We live in the era of the credit card, my dear.’
‘Oh, yes, I keep forgetting you’re an heiress.’
She said cheerfully, ‘I used the last of Gran’s money to buy into the practice.’
‘So you’ve got—?’
She shook her head at him. ‘Dad advanced me some money. I’m all right, Scott. I certainly don’t need anything from you, and if by any chance I do, I’ll let you know, don’t worry.’
Scott’s reply was forestalled by the sound of the doorbell. ‘See that you do,’ he said. ‘That’ll be Lucas,’ and went off to let him in.
Anet smoothed a hand over her hip. Resisting the sudden need to swallow, she picked up a birthday card from a Canadian woman she’d beaten years before, after a particularly tense competition in Rome, and turned it over in her hands. In spite of their torrid struggle they’d become firm friends.
‘Have a beer with us?’ Scott was asking as the two men came into the room. ‘Or better still, why don’t you come out to dinner? We’re going to The Jade Horse and then on to the Plaza’s island night.’
An involuntary protest trembled for a second on Anet’s tongue, before being swallowed unspoken.
‘I didn’t intend to butt in,’ Lucas said, his expression unreadable. He wore grey trousers and a shirt that was superbly cut across his wide shoulders. Hair the golden brown of dark honey gleamed in the light of the central lamp; in his long, tanned hands he held a small package.
‘You’re not,’ Scott told him. ‘Is he, Annie?’
‘No, of course not.’ Smiling stiffly, she added, ‘We’d like it very much if you came.’
He sent her a considering glance before saying with a politeness that came perilously close to parody, ‘Thank you. I’d like it too.’
‘OK, that’s settled.’ Scott grinned at them both and headed towards the door. ‘I’ll ring the restaurant.’
Anet put down the card and looked across at the man who stood watching her, his attitude oddly forbidding. Summoning a wry smile, she said, ‘He feels he has to entertain me on my birthday.’
‘You seem to be a close-knit family.’
‘Very,’ she said, thinking of her lovely, laughing mother and sister, and her reserved, drily humorous father, as well as his two sisters and three brothers—parents to a whole horde of cousins who had alternately delighted and plagued her childhood.
‘You don’t look much like your sister.’
‘We’re half-sisters, actually. Jan is five years older than I am.’
‘Ah, that explains it. Here,’ he said, proffering the parcel, ‘is my commission.’
Anet took it and turned it over, more curious about Olivia’s reasons for sending it with a courier than its contents. ‘I wonder what it is?’ she murmured.
He laughed softly. ‘If you open it you might find out.’
So she sat down and, feeling absurdly self-conscious under his enigmatic gaze, began to take off the wrapping. Beneath it she discovered a flat box. After wrestling with the fastenings, and more bubble plastic than seemed necessary, she managed to get it open and slide its contents out. In her hand lay a tiny portrait in a frame. Anet gasped as she stared down at the delicate little countenance some eighteenth-century artist had painted on ivory.
Luminous, glowing, a very young woman looked out at the world with solemn blue eyes set in a sweetly imperious face. The features were fine yet not weak, and a squareness to the jaw hinted at an interesting personality.
‘Intriguing presents you give one another.’ Lucas’s voice was noncommittal.
Her brows meeting, Anet looked at the back. A tiny clip held a flap in place. With extreme care she turned it over so that once more she could see
