but never following it through to a point where Rachel might have a chance to identify the source.
A low growl of frustration purred in the back of her throat.
‘What’s the matter?’ asked Robyn, drifting back to the accompaniment of noisily hissing water pipes.
‘The council has received a tip that I’m running a business from this address,’ Rachel paraphrased in disgust. ‘They’re warning me that they’re going to investigate and I could be prosecuted for carrying on a non-complying activity.’
‘It must be some mistake,’ said Robyn, tucking a shoulder-length strand of hair back into the smooth French twist she wore at work.
‘You think so? And was it also a mistake when the phone company was told the same thing and tried to charge me a higher line rental? And when the tax department decided to audit me because someone phoned their hotline and told them I had an undeclared second income? Or when I didn’t get any mail for two weeks and suddenly discovered that the post office had been advised to redirect my mail to a house which just happened to be the residence of a motorcycle gang?’
Robyn put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! That reminds me—Bethany said something arrived for you yesterday afternoon by courier. You were having a bath and she was just leaving for basketball practice so she just signed for it and took off with it in her bag. She forgot all about it until this morning.’
She crossed the small, sunny kitchen and fetched the bubble-wrapped plastic courier bag which had been tucked with some other papers behind the telephone on the bench, handing it to her sister.
She glanced at the watch pinned to her breast and let out a little huff. ‘I hope Bethany’s out of that bathroom—I’m sure when you offered to put us up for a few weeks you didn’t expect to have to put up with a teenager who showers twice a day for twenty minutes at a time! I do wish you’d let us pay something towards the water and power, as well as the groceries.’
Rachel paused in the act of ripping into the zip-locked seam of the bag. ‘Don’t be silly. Just be thankful that Bethany’s into cleanliness, not some ghastly grunge kick. It’s not as if I have to pay rent, or a mortgage. I’ve loved having you to stay.’ There was a hint of wistfulness in her hazel eyes. Since David had died two years ago there had been no one special in her life, no one who was critical to her happiness—or she to theirs. Usually she kept herself looking resolutely to the future, but these last few days of enforced rest had given her time to dwell on all the ‘might have beens.’
She shook off the cruelly unproductive thoughts. ‘I just wish that Simon wasn’t coming back so soon and whisking you both so far away,’ she said lightly.
‘We’re only moving to Bangkok—not the moon,’ Robyn chided her bracingly. Simon, who worked for a multinational chemical company, was being transferred to Thailand to help build a new manufacturing plant. While he had flown out there to meet his new boss, choose their company-paid accommodation and register Bethany to attend the local International School, his wife and daughter had been packing up and selling their Auckland home and arranging to ship their belongings.
‘We get an annual home-leave, and, anyway, I hope you’ll come up and have a holiday with us. You did say that Westons had some huge contract in the offing that might let you give up your day job!’
Rachel gave a rueful laugh. Her work as a massage therapist and fitness trainer was actually carried out in the early morning or late afternoon and evening, so that she could devote the business hours to the security company which she had inherited from David. No one had been more astonished than herself when she had discovered that her fiancé of six months had altered his will to leave her not only his townhouse but also his fifty-one percent share of the security company which he and his brother Frank, a fellow ex-policeman, had bought.
Although Weston Security Services had possessed a loyal core of clients at the time of David’s death, it had also been carrying a heavy debt-load, and at first, woefully aware of her ignorance, Rachel had been content to remain a silent partner. But as the business had continued to struggle she had realised that it would be a betrayal of David’s trust to watch his cherished dream die without lifting a finger to help.
It hadn’t been an investment that he had given her in his will so much as a part of himself. She might doubt herself, but David had always had faith in her ability to tackle new challenges. To that end she had used her stake in the company to persuade Frank to give her an active role in managing the business. She had waived a salary, preferring to see the money invested in new staff and equipment, and lived off her freelance earnings from two city gyms and a physiotherapy practice.
It had been a steep learning curve, and although Rachel had made plenty of mistakes, her hands-on method of training wasn’t proving the disaster that Frank had feared it would be. In the last few months the company turn-over had shown a promising improvement, but a balloon repayment was looming on the loan, and meeting the debt was largely reliant on a major corporate contract which Frank seemed to be confident was already in the bag. Rachel was not so sanguine.
‘I think it’ll be a while before I can afford to do that,’ she sighed. ‘Frank says that trust and respect build slowly in the security business, and being a woman in a male-dominated industry makes it that much more difficult to get accepted—’
She was interrupted as her sister took another surreptitious look at her watch and dashed for the door with a squawk of dismay.
Rachel returned to ripping open the zip-lock bag. Her birthday wasn’t far away, and she wondered with a lift of her spirits whether someone had sent her an early present.
Her eager anticipation drained abruptly away as she withdrew some photographs paper-clipped to the back of a scrawled note in green ink which slanted across the page, arrogantly ignoring the ruled lines. She washed down her disappointment with her rapidly cooling coffee as she scanned the jolting words.
Did you really think I would let you use me as your free ride to riches?
Of the two of us you’re obviously the more photogenic—a fact which I’m sure the tabloid press will be quick to exploit if these, or any even more explicit, are put into circulation. I always knew you were centrefold material, but while the resultant notoriety might well annoy me, it won’t destroy me. Unlike you. What will happen to Westons’ reputation for probity and discretion when your corporate clients find out that their security rests in the whip-hand of a blowsy, over-blown dominatrix who looks as if she’d be more at home in a brothel than a boardroom?
Sorry, doll.
You lose.
A mouthful of lukewarm coffee was stranded in her mouth as her throat clogged with shock. Her cup crashed down into its saucer as she unclipped the photographs and fanned them out in her hands like oversized cards.
‘Oh, God!’ She choked, spewing coffee droplets across the table in her spluttering horror, dropping the photographs as if they were hot coals.
‘Oh, God!’ Rachel’s horror deepened to bone-bruising humiliation, the outrageous insults in the note suddenly making sickening sense. There was no signature, but she didn’t need one. She knew instantly who to blame for the outrage.
She shuddered, pressing her shaking hands to hot cheeks as she looked down at the shameful photographs. Yes, she had knelt between his legs to unfasten his trousers…but this picture gave the impression that she had been—that she had done it in order to pleasure him. The heavy-lidded smile on his face certainly seemed to suggest that
