I be?’ They looked at each other, a world unspoken in the glance.
‘She didn’t really want to stay with me, anyway,’ Rachel dismissed. ‘It isn’t a rejection of you and Simon. She’s just temporarily got cold feet.’
‘I know. But, still, if you’d given her the choice she was asking for it could have made things very difficult for us over the next few years.’
‘Well,’ said Rachel, ‘I do have a pretty crammed life already. God knows I don’t need the added complication of trying to cope alone with daily doses of teenage angst!’
Robyn wasn’t fooled by her flippancy. ‘Oh, Rachel, you would have got on famously, and you know it. If you were only thinking of yourself you would have said yes to her in a New York minute! I know you hated to hurt her, but she’ll get over it. From what I heard she was trying to manipulate you with a sneaky form of emotional blackmail.’
So…she was the victim of two separate blackmail attempts in one day, Rachel thought with an unexpected sting of humour—and it was still only breakfast!
‘Do you think she’ll ever forgive me for letting her down?’ she couldn’t help asking.
Robyn crossed to give her the hug she so badly needed. ‘You haven’t let her down. You love her and want the best for her. You always have. She knows that.’
‘I’m going to miss you all horribly,’ she admitted gruffly. Up until now she had been careful not to let them see how shattered she had been by their decision to move abroad.
‘I know.’ Robyn responded to the rib-crushing fierceness of her hug with a little gasp. ‘But we’re only going to be an e-mail away, and at least I’ll have plenty of spare time to keep you up to date with our doings. We can even send each other photos over the Internet!’
A short while later, when Robyn and Bethany had departed for school and work, Rachel dragged the abused package out of her handbag, grappling with the awful spectre that her sister’s innocent words had raised.
There were worse things than having yourself splashed all over the tabloids. What if Matthew Riordan decided to go global and posted those frightful pictures on the Internet!
She smoothed out his loathsome note and forced herself to go over it again, word by horrible word.
In places the slashing green down-strokes almost seemed to dig through the page, as if they’d been written in a rage. Having seen the reputedly buttoned-down Riordan heir in the raw, both literally and figuratively, Rachel could well believe he was not as cold-blooded as his reputation made out, but this outpouring of contempt made him sound dangerously reckless.
What did he really mean by his threats? They were actually rather vague. Should she wait for him to deliver more specific demands…or was he assuming that she knew what they were?
Perhaps he intended to broadcast the photographs regardless of her response—or lack of it? How could she defend herself if he started sending copies to the press, to Westons’ clients? Her family and close friends might believe her explanations, but to everyone else she would be reduced to an obscene joke. As Frank was constantly drilling into her, reputation was everything. He was so proud of the Westons name. If he found out that there was the slightest possibility of Rachel being involved in a scandal he would be furious. In order to protect the business she might well have to resign.
Rachel bit her lip, battening down her fear. She mustn’t let herself be panicked into doing anything stupid. She should be thinking damage control, not capitulation.
She had heard Kevin Riordan boast that his son intended to run for City Council in this year’s local body elections, with an eye to contesting the Mayoralty some time in the future. Logically, that meant Matthew Riordan had almost as much of a vested interest in keeping compromising photographs out of the public eye as Rachel did.
It was that ‘almost’ which gave him his ruthless edge. He was prepared to subject himself to public humiliation and rely on his PR clout for damage control afterwards…but surely only as a last resort. At the moment the primary value of the photographs to him must be as a weapon to hang over her head.
All Rachel had to do was keep cool and try to exercise some damage control of her own.
If only she had known what she was getting into she would never have taken on the job of watching over Merrilyn Freeman’s wretched dinner party!
CHAPTER THREE
‘YOU’VE got to do something!’
Rachel jumped as Merrilyn glided up behind her and hissed urgently in her ear.
‘About what?’ Relaxed yet alert, Rachel thought everything was going swimmingly. A string quartet played exquisitely civilised Baroque on the terrace, the champagne was flowing, the caviare circulating, the conversation buzzing, and there had not been a hint of a problem with gatecrashers, light-fingered guests or suspiciously wandering staff.
Merrilyn’s fingernails bit into her bare arm as she tugged her out of the way of a passing white-jacketed waiter. A slim redhead in an arresting green taffeta dress, she vibrated with nervous anxiety. ‘He’s going to ruin everything, I just know it!’ she whispered frantically. ‘I’ve spent months planning this! My first big formal dinner party and it’s going to end up a total disaster!’
Rachel had been Merrilyn’s fitness trainer for a year, and she was well acquainted with the young woman’s propensity for worrying over trifles. The exclamation mark might have been invented with Merrilyn in mind.
‘What on earth are you talking about?’ she murmured soothingly, transferring her dangerously tilted champagne glass to her free hand. ‘Everyone’s having a great time.’
‘I’m talking about him!’
Rachel followed her agonised gaze to the archway between the huge lounge and the sunken dining room, expecting to see some ill-bred, loutish interloper dipping his fingers into the caviare bowl.
‘Matthew Riordan?’ she said incredulously.
‘Oh, God, just look at him…’ Merrilyn moaned.
Rachel looked, ignoring the shivery frisson that lifted the fine hair on the back of her bare neck. She always instinctively bristled when she saw Matthew Riordan, and had learned not to take any notice of the uncomfortable sensation, which was normally a harbinger of trouble.
Viewed from the side, in formal black he looked leaner than usual, but otherwise impeccable, his knife-sharp profile tilted down as he poured champagne into the glass of a young society matron from a bottle which he had produced from under his arm. Whatever he was saying made her blush, and her middle-aged husband stiffen at her side.
‘You see!’ hissed Merrilyn, her nails stabbing at the nerve in Rachel’s elbow. ‘He’s at it again.’
‘At what?’ asked Rachel reluctantly, easing her arm out of her clutches. She had done a sterling job of avoiding Matthew Riordan so far tonight, and would prefer to keep it that way.
‘Saying wickedly provocative things to people.’ She sounded on the verge of tears.
‘Matthew Riordan?’ Rachel said again, just to check that they were indeed
