had a good time while I was at university,” Alysia said. “Your mother never locked me in.”
Valda laughed. “Good for you. Well, if you’re happy—Robbie, I said stop that! Where’s that husband of mine?”
“I’ll find him,” Alysia offered, and made for the house.
Between Christmas and New Year, Alysia drove to Auckland to help her university friends celebrate one of their birthdays.
Seated round a large table in an upmarket restaurant, the group bantered with the waitress, laughed at corny jokes and enjoyed being together again.
They had reached the dessert course when Alysia saw Chase Osborne across the room, dining tête-à-tête with a dark, sultry young woman wearing a slinky black dress that showed off her generously curved figure.
The woman was talking, using her hands for emphasis, showing off long, elegant nails painted a brilliant pink, and occasionally pushing at the riot of loose curls about her face. Chase smiled now and then at something she said, and once laughed outright.
That was when he noticed Alysia, his eyes catching hers across the room, laughter still on his mouth as he lifted a hand to her.
She felt the impact of that look like a small shock, and nodded to him, mustering a smile.
His eyes took in her companions and then returned to his partner. Alysia tore her gaze away. The birthday boy had called for another bottle of wine and was refilling glasses over laughing protests.
When the waiter carried in a cake ablaze with candles the party became even more lively, attracting the notice of other diners, some of whom good-naturedly joined in the singing of “Happy Birthday.” Determined not to glance in Chase’s direction again, Alysia was nevertheless acutely aware that he too had looked up at the cheers and laughter.
As the group left the restaurant, the host’s unsteady steps being hilariously directed by two other young men, Chase and his companion were in the foyer. With a word to the woman, he crossed to Alysia and drew her aside. “You’re not driving home tonight?”
“I’m staying with my cousin in Auckland.”
“Did you bring your own car to the restaurant?”
“No. What does it have to do with—”
“I can give you a lift.”
Astonished, she looked past him to where the sultry beauty waited. “Your girlfriend might object to that.”
“Your father might object to you being driven by some young idiot who’s over the limit.”
“My friends are not idiots. Donna doesn’t drink at all, and she’ll be driving some of us home. The others are taking a taxi. Not that it need concern you.”
He released her arm without apology. “I’m glad to hear it. You’ll be all right, then?”
“I’m not a silly teenager, Chase.”
“Okay. You go home tomorrow?”
“Yes.”
“Me, too.” He cast a comprehensively critical glance over her friends in the background. “See you back in Waikura, then.” He walked off to rejoin his dinner date, who tucked a hand into his arm and lifted her face to give him a dazzling smile.
Alysia left the restaurant with the others and tried to share in their hilarity as they made for the car and piled in to it. She had enjoyed the chance to relax, be young and a little goofy with her friends. But now they seemed very juvenile, and their tipsy humor failed to amuse her anymore. Somehow tonight was spoiled for her.
“Your boss’s daughter?” Mariette asked Chase as they walked to his car.
“Yes.” He’d told her that when he went to speak with Alysia. To make sure she wasn’t going to do anything silly and dangerous.
“Is she underage?”
“For drinking? No.” Feeling a need to justify himself, Chase added, “But her father’s very protective.”
Mariette gave him a sideways look. “Seems he’s not the only one. She didn’t look too thrilled with you.”
“She doesn’t like me much,” Chase admitted shortly, not sure why that irritated him.
Before the Christmas party he’d scarcely thought of Alysia Kingsley at all. She’d only appeared during vacations from school or university, not changing a great deal from the quiet, pretty, but rather colorless kid he’d first met.
At the party he’d noted that the duckling who had never been ugly was definitely a swan, but it wasn’t until he’d found her in the garden, looking pensive and somehow poignant, that he’d had to quell a surprising impulse to take her in his arms, not only to comfort, but to find out what that slight but feminine body would feel like snuggled against his.
Her instant resentment of his presence, the fierceness of her unsuspected dislike, had if anything heightened the sexual curiosity she’d aroused. He’d been unable to resist kissing her even though he knew she wouldn’t welcome it. Not at all his usual style.
And despite her effort to freeze him off he’d recognized the subtle signs of her instinctive response.
She was a bundle of contradictions. A spoiled daddy’s girl who somehow managed to seem insecure, vulnerable. Docile and compliant with her father, but capable of a cutting arrogance with lesser mortals. She didn’t hide her hostility to Chase, yet he’d swear she felt the same sexual buzz he did when he touched her.
And tonight he shouldn’t even be thinking about Alysia Kingsley while another woman hung on his arm saying something he hadn’t even heard. He smiled down at Mariette. “Sorry, what did you say?”
“Are we going back to my place?”
Although he’d had every intention of doing so when he phoned and suggested a date, Chase shook his head. “I’ll drop you off,” he said, pleading pressure of work. It wouldn’t be fair to accept the invitation when another woman was annoyingly uppermost in his thoughts. He’d drive to Waikura tonight.
“Good birthday party?” Spencer enquired at breakfast on Monday. Alysia hadn’t returned from Auckland until late on Sunday night, and when she’d let herself in the house had been in darkness.
“Fine,” she answered automatically. “It was nice seeing my friends again.”
“You have friends in Waikura,” Spencer commented.
“Not really, now.” Away at boarding school through her high school years, she had lost touch with her earlier playmates.
In the days that followed, making the most of her last long holiday, Alysia swam, pottered around the house and indulged herself with books that weren’t prescribed for exams.
On New Year’s Eve, dressed in a brief tube top and shorts, she was lying on a rug under the pepper tree, absorbed in a fat romantic historical saga, when Chase found her.
He’d
