iced with offhand disdain, as though she wasn’t important enough to get really angry with. The hair on the back of Tansy’s neck lifted in involuntary response; the temper she kept so tightly curbed stirred and flexed. She drew in a deep breath, applying the restraints and checks she had learned, sending it back to its den.
‘Did he tell you much about his home?’ he asked, apparently idly.
Tansy shrugged. ‘A little.’
‘Then perhaps he mentioned his mother.’
She drank some of the milk. ‘Yes,’ she said ungraciously, ‘once or twice.’
‘They are—very close.’
Veiling her eyes with her thick lashes so he couldn’t see the indecision in their tawny depths, she hardened her heart. Rick had worried about his mother, although to Tansy Grace Dacre had sounded rather neurotically possessive. ‘So I gathered,’ she said remotely.
‘He can’t know that she’s desperately afraid and worried, unable to sleep in case something awful is happening to him.’
Oh, he was clever. No hint of contempt in the dark, bland voice now, merely concern. If Rick hadn’t talked incessantly about his half-brother, she’d have surrendered then. But Tansy knew more about this man than Rick, still starry-eyed with hero-worship, realised he’d told her. Leo Dacre was high-handed and unmerciful; he saw people as pawns to be manipulated.
‘He was fine when I saw him last,’ she said casually.
The magnificent eyes were hooded, like those of a bird of prey as it strikes. ‘She has also just come out of hospital after a severe operation,’ he said. ‘Cancer.’
That was a bodyblow. But Tansy had made a promise to Rick.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said awkwardly.
‘Unfortunately she has to have further treatment, and she wants him with her.’
‘Naturally.’ It took a real effort to keep her face set in an expression of mild sympathy. This changed everything. Although Rick might chafe under his mother’s possessiveness, he loved her and he would certainly want to be with her when she needed him.
Tansy looked down at the hands clenched around her glass. Surreptitiously she relaxed the long, strong fingers while her brain raced, trying to find an answer to an insoluble question. What on earth should she do?
There was a balked silence, tingling with Leo Dacre’s frustration. ‘So you’re not going to help,’ he said.
He spoke quietly, but an inflexion in the smooth voice dragged Tansy’s gaze to his face. A muscle flicked several times just above the tough line of his jaw. It fascinated her; her eyes lingered compulsively on the tiny betrayal, made all the more obvious because his face revealed no other emotion. Yet anger emanated from him in dark waves and she knew with a sudden terrible intuition that he was holding on to his control with a fierce effort of will.
‘I can’t help you,’ she muttered, cross with herself because she was afraid. Striving to appear detached, she suspected she achieved a sullen boredom instead.
‘How much would it cost?’
His callous emphasis on payment brought topaz sparks to her eyes. In her most offhand tone she said, ‘I’m not interested in any money, thanks.’
‘Don’t make up your mind right away. Think about it overnight, and tell me tomorrow what your decision is,’ he said, his voice warm and persuasive.
Tansy remembered that he was a barrister, a courtroom expert, with all the acting skill that that implied. She could see now why Rick said he was heading straight for the heights of his profession. He used his voice and his expression, his powerful presence, like weapons. In a courtroom he must be lethal; pity any poor witnesses who allowed themselves to be seduced by that voice and the implicit sympathy in his tone.
She looked directly at him, her shuttered eyes concealing the turbulent emotions that rioted through her. ‘Sorry,’ she repeated, drained the milk and got to her feet, picking up her guitar case on the way. ‘Don’t waste your time, Mr Dacre. I can’t help you at all.’
As she made for the door she felt the intense impact of his stare right through to her bones. In its time Wellington had endured some awe-inspiring earthquakes, but the effect of that look, Tansy thought, trying to salvage some mordant humour from the situation, could well ricochet her off the top of her personal Richter scale. She tried hard not to be impressed.
Nevertheless, she noticed her boots took her across the floor faster than she wanted to go; she’d have felt better if she’d been able to saunter away, swinging her hips in a maddening parody of a sexy, come-hither walk.
Except that she didn’t think she could. Tansy had learnt to blend in, and she’d tailored her walk accordingly, moving with enough confidence to be rejected as a victim, but without provocation.
Once outside she exhaled in a rush, looking around with bright, dazed eyes that only slowly took in the familiar buildings of Quay Street and the usual scurrying people. Presumably he expected her to go home now that she had her fifty dollars. So, adjusting her pointed chin to a jaunty angle, she went back to her patch.
All the rest of the afternoon as her fingers moved across the guitar strings and her voice flowed from song to song, she kept her eyes open for Leo Dacre, and couldn’t have said whether she was relieved or disappointed when she didn’t see him again.
Not that she liked the man. He was an overbearing, high-handed bully, with a fine talent for intimidation! However, it wasn’t easy to banish an image of Rick’s mother, ill and wanting him home. Although Rick found her unbearably clinging, he understood his mother’s dependence on him. An inherited condition had almost killed him several times before he was five, a condition she had handed on to him. It had taken a miracle of science to snatch life from his living death, and years for him to recover and gain some strength. Horrified, his mother had refused to have more children.
He would, Tansy knew, want to be with her now.
What on earth should she do?
Still unsure when it was time to pack up, she struggled home in the teeth of the gale to her bed-sitting-room. Built under one of Wellington’s old wooden houses in the inner city, it was within walking distance of the streets she worked and the university, which offset the higher rent she paid for its situation. On the floors above were a couple of flats with constantly changing occupants.
Tansy’s room was small and dim, cold and more than a little musty. Sparsely furnished with a three-quarter bed and a chair that unwrapped into a single mattress, it had its own bathroom, if you could call the cupboard beneath the stairs that, and a tiny kitchen alcove. Not that she needed anything larger; her cooking tended to be just as spartan as her room.
All in all, the place was about as basic as it could be, yet Rick had fitted in quite unconcernedly.
Pulling off her coat and beret, she put them away in the cupboard that served as her wardrobe, and wondered caustically whether Leo Dacre had ever seen a place as down market as this. Probably not. Shrugging, she tidied the wild ginger tangle of her hair, eyeing her reflection in the mirror above the old chest of drawers beside the bed.
Her clothes were warm and clean, but showed their age and
