anything had changed much, it was that his habitual understated self-assurance had morphed into a positively commanding presence. Something fluttered in Rachel’s midriff and she hesitated on the bottom step of the bus before stepping onto the pavement.
Bryn’s eyes seemed silvery in the afternoon light as he inspected the arrivals. When the sweep of his gaze found her and she started towards him, she saw a flash of surprised recognition.
He didn’t move, except that his mouth curved slightly into a controlled smile as he watched her approach, while his eyes appraised her jade-green linen jacket over a white lawn blouse, the matching skirt that skimmed her knees, and the Brazilian plaited leather shoes she’d worn for travelling.
He seemed to approve, giving a slight nod before raising his eyes again to the dark hair she’d tamed into a tight knot, which she hoped gave both an illusion of extra height and a mature, businesslike appearance.
Only when she came to a halt in front of him did she notice the incipient lines fanning from the corners of his eyes, a faint crease on his forehead.
“Rachel,” he said, his voice deeper than she remembered. “You look very…smart.”
Meaning, she supposed, she was no longer the hoydenish teenager he remembered. “It’s been a long time.” She was glad her voice sounded crisp and steady, befitting a successful woman. “I’ve grown up.”
“So I see.” A spark of masculine interest lit his eyes, and was gone.
Rachel inwardly shivered—not with fear but an emotion even more perturbing. Ten years and he still affected her this way. How stupid was that?
“Your mother…?” she inquired. When Mrs Donovan— Lady Donovan now, Rachel reminded herself—had said on the phone, “But of course we’ll pick you up in Auckland… No, you can’t struggle onto another bus to Donovan’s Falls with your luggage…and a computer, too, I suppose,” Rachel hadn’t thought “we” meant Bryn.
“She’s waiting for us at Rivermeadows,” he told her, “with coffee and cakes.”
Once they’d collected her luggage and were on their way out of the city in his gleamingly polished BMW, Rachel removed her gaze from the mesmeric, sun-sequined blue of the Waitemata harbour’s upper reaches alongside the motorway and said, “Thank you for picking me up. I hope it hasn’t inconvenienced you.”
“Not at all,” he replied with smooth politeness.
“But you don’t live at home—I mean, at Rivermeadows now, do you?” she queried, keeping anxiety from her voice. Hadn’t her mother said something about Pearl “rattling around alone in that huge house”?
“I have an apartment in the city,” he confirmed. “But since my father died I’ve been spending most weekends with my mother, and occasionally staying during the week. I suggested she move out of the place, but she seems attached to it.”
The Donovan estate had once been the centrepiece of a small, scattered rural community, but even before Rachel and her family left, it had become an island of green amongst creeping suburbia, not far from a busy motorway.
“It’s only half an hour or so from the city,” Rachel reminded him. “Does your mother still drive?” She recalled Pearl Donovan had adored her sporty little cherry-red car, sometimes driving in a manner that caused her husband and son to remonstrate, at which she only laughed, saying they had the common male prejudice about women drivers.
A frown appeared between Bryn’s brows. “She’s hardly left the house since my father died.” He paused, then said with a sort of absentminded reluctance in his tone, “Maybe having you there will be good for her.”
If he wasn’t overjoyed, it wouldn’t have been Rachel’s preferred choice, either. When her own mother, so pleased with herself, said she’d found the perfect temporary job for her newly arrived daughter, Rachel had to hide dismay on discovering it was at Rivermeadows.
She’d covered it by saying, “It’s…um…so far away from you and Dad.” To which her mother replied logically that it wasn’t nearly as far as America.
Unable to find a more convincing excuse, especially as the hourly rate was way beyond what she could expect from any other temporary position, Rachel saw no choice but to accept. She didn’t intend to sponge on her parents for months.
Hoping she’d mistaken Bryn’s decidedly unenthusiastic tone, she said, “I’m looking forward to seeing Rivermeadows again. I have some wonderful memories of it.”
He cast an unreadable glance at her that lingered for a tiny moment before he switched his attention back to the road.
Rachel turned to look out of the window, trying not to think about one particular memory, having sensibly persuaded herself that he’d have forgotten the incident entirely. It might have been a defining moment in her young life, but while she’d been a bedazzled teenager with an overflow of emotion, even back then Bryn was already a man, someone she’d always thought of as one of the grown-ups.
She said, “I was sorry to hear about your father.” Risking a quick look at Bryn, whose expression now appeared quite indifferent, she added, “I sent a card to your mother.”
He nodded. “His death was hard on her.”
The frown reappeared, and Rachel said softly, “You’re worried about her.”
“It’s that obvious?”
About to say, Only to people who care about you, she stopped herself. He’d think she was presuming on an old acquaintance, and rightly so. Devoutly she hoped he had never realised how closely she’d watched his every movement or expression for a whole year or more every time he came near.
Since then she’d become a different person, and maybe he had too. At twenty-five he’d been handed full responsibility for a new sector of the Donovan business, Overseas Development. And he’d run with it, done spectacularly well at bringing the Donovan name to the notice of international markets and establishing subsidiaries in several countries. Now he was in charge of the entire company. No wonder he gave the impression of a man who had the world securely in his fist and knew exactly how to wring from it every advantage.
The house was as Rachel remembered it, a beautifully preserved, dormered two-storey mansion of white-painted, Donovan-milled kauri timber, dating from the late nineteenth century. Its upper windows were flanked by dark green shutters, and a rather grand front veranda extended into a pillared portico.
Old oaks and puriris and the magnificent magnolia that bore huge creamy, fragrant cups of blossom, cast their benign shadows over the expansive lawn and gardens, and the half circle of the drive was still edged with lavender and roses.
Bryn stopped the car at the wide brick steps leading to the ornate front door sheltered by the portico. Almost immediately the door opened and Pearl Donovan, wearing a pale lemon, full-skirted dress, stood for a moment, then hurried down the steps. Rachel went to meet her and was enveloped in a warm, scented hug, her cheek kissed.
“How nice to see you!” Lady Donovan stepped back with her hands on Rachel’s shoulders to inspect her. “And you’ve grown so lovely! Isn’t she lovely, Bryn? Quite beautiful!”
Bryn, having removed Rachel’s luggage from the
