A Lesson In Seduction

Rosalind struggled free of the fond maternal embrace. ‘Pull together?’ she snorted, waving the tickets under her mother’s elegant nose. ‘You’re bribing me to go thousands of miles away!’

‘We thought it would be a nice early birthday present,’ her father ventured.

‘My birthday isn’t for seven months!’ Rosalind pointed out sardonically.

‘A very early birthday present,’ Constance Marlow said, giving her husband a repressive look that told him not to deviate from the script.

She shrewdly studied her daughter’s sullen expression and abruptly changed her tactics. She threw up her hands in disgust and said crisply, ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake, Roz. Talk about people blowing things out of proportion! Stop behaving as if you think we’re trying to sweep a blot on the family escutcheon under the carpet.’

She ignored the disrespectful snickers of her offspring at the atrociously mixed metaphor and continued with steely emphasis, ‘We’re very proud to have you as our daughter; we just don’t want to see you hurt unnecessarily. And it is so unnecessary, darling, what you’re putting yourself through. Unless you like playing the helpless martyr, of course—then I suppose there’s nothing more to be said. I might say that most children would be delighted if their parents offered to send them on an all-expenses-paid holiday...’

‘I know I would,’ said Richard with a languishing sigh.

‘I see the Met Office predicts a cold front this weekend,’ said Michael Marlow, apropos of nothing. ‘They say winter is going to arrive with a vengeance.’

‘Tioman does look wonderfully lush and Gauguin-ish,’ said Olivia traitorously, her soft, rain-washed green eyes wistful, her smile tinged with strain.

It struck Rosalind that it was her twin who looked as if she needed a holiday, and it was on the tip of her tongue to say so. She glanced at Jordan and found him watching his wife with a narrow-eyed concern that stilled the words in her throat. She felt a flutter of inexplicable panic and her fingers tightened on the tickets in her hand.

‘You know, you should make the most of your freedom while you can, Roz,’ advised Joanna, rescuing a soggy rusk from the carpet. ‘Once you have children, taking a holiday is like going on military manoeuvres.’

As if on command, Hugh’s three pre-schoolers came thundering into the room, their diminutive blonde mother breathless in their wake.

‘Oh, you are going to Tioman, then? Good on you!’ Julia panted, seeing the folder in Rosalind’s hand. ‘I told Hugh you’d do it, even if only to cock a snook at those sneaky reporters. You know, one of those gossip columnists followed us to the supermarket yesterday and tried to chat up Suzie when I left the trolley for a moment in the confectionery aisle. The idiot even offered her a lollipop.’ She ruffled the curly brown head leaning against her knee. ‘Luckily Suzie blitzed him with her favourite word.’

Suzie blinked up at Rosalind, her blue eyes huge in her doll-like face. ‘No!’ she bellowed proudly. ‘No! No! No! No!’

Julia chuckled. ‘She made such a racket that the guy had a hard time convincing everyone he wasn’t a child-molester. I bet that put a crimp in his column!’

‘He’s lucky I wasn’t there; I would have put a crimp in his face,’ growled Hugh, whose gentleness was known to be in direct proportion to his size.

Rosalind smiled weakly, stricken by the thought that her uncompromising stance might have put the trusting innocence of her nephews and nieces in jeopardy. Typically, she had been so swept up in her own problems that she had taken her family’s support for granted, without thinking how much it might cost them in terms of their own privacy.

Her certainty that she was doing the right thing by standing her ground dwindled further. Perhaps she should just abandon her principles and run for the hills...or rather the South China Sea.

It seemed such a callous thing to do while Peggy Staines still hovered between life and death in the intensive care unit at Wellington Hospital. But it wasn’t as if Rosalind could provide any positive help for her recovery. Quite the reverse—knowing that she was around might cause Peggy to have another heart attack.

A brief word of sympathy with a distracted Donald Staines in the hospital waiting room was all that Rosalind had permitted herself. He had asked what had happened but not why, and Rosalind had caught a plane back to Auckland before he or any of the other members of the Staines family had rallied sufficiently from their shock to ask for the details. Until Peggy had recovered enough to carry on a lucid conversation—if she recovered—Rosalind was bound by her conscience to remain silent.

Thank goodness the police hadn’t become involved, although Rosalind had the sinking feeling that if the publicity continued to escalate either they or someone involved in national security might feel obliged to come sniffing around with some serious questions, and then she might have no choice but to betray her conscience.

‘Well, what do you say, darling?’ her mother asked eagerly, visibly frustrated by Rosalind’s lack of enthusiasm. ‘I can’t believe you’re even hesitating...’

A disturbingly familiar tension began to crawl around the back of her skull as Rosalind looked into the expectant faces around her. A paralysing sense of her own vulnerability swept over her, but she knew she mustn’t allow it to dictate her actions. She couldn’t let the fear win.

Surprisingly it was Jordan who came to her rescue. Her brother-in-law rose to his feet, dominating the room with his muscled bulk, almost dwarfing Hugh.

‘I think we should back off and let Roz make up her own mind in her own time,’ he said with the ease of a man confident of his authority. ‘She’d probably like to go home and think things over without the rest of us breathing down her neck.’

Rosalind cast him a grateful look and he continued smoothly, strolling over to take her by the elbow, ‘Why don’t I run you back to your apartment now, Roz, so you can do just that? Here, take these with you.’ He scooped up a handful of brochures and thrust them into her free hand, and picked up her embroidered tote bag from a chair, looping it over her shoulder.

‘You can leave your own car here as a decoy,’ he said. ‘The reporters won’t bother to follow me if they see me leave alone. You can nip out over the back fence and through the neighbours’ gardens and I’ll drive around the block and pick you up in the next street.’

‘Uh, but I’m going to need my car later,’ said Rosalind, disconcerted by the unexpectedness of the offer and the firmness of the grip steering her towards the door. Although Rosalind and Jordan were cordial to each other, she had always been very careful to maintain a cool distance between them that had precluded friendship. Out of the corner of her eye she could see Olivia observing her husband’s urgency with a worried crease of suspicion on her smooth brow.

‘Richard or one of the others can drop it over to you later.’ Jordan brushed aside the feeble protest. ‘At least it’ll give you a temporary respite from all the unwelcome attention you’ve been getting.’

The idea of a few hours’ respite from the bloodhounds outside was undeniably appealing. ‘well... I suppose...OK, thanks.’ She dug her heels in and skewed round to look over her shoulder. ‘Uh, are you coming, Olivia?’

‘Olivia wants to stay and chat with Connie, don’t you, kitten?’ Jordan cut in as his wife opened her mouth. ‘We’re going back to Taupo tonight and with her exhibition coming up she might not get the chance to visit again for a while...’

There was a hasty flurry of startled goodbyes as Rosalind found herself hustled out into the hall.

‘For heaven’s sake, what’s the big rush?’ she hissed as Jordan practically pushed her out the back door. ‘Did you see Olivia’s face? She looked awfully suspicious...’

‘Maybe she thinks you’re going to try and seduce me again,’ said Jordan sardonically, blocking the doorway as she made a tentative effort to go back inside.

Rosalind, who never blushed, went hot at the reminder of one of the most mortifying encounters of her life. ‘That was all a horrible mistake and you know it,’ she gritted fiercely. ‘I didn’t know you two had even met when I pretended to be Livvy... and anyway, nothing happened—’

‘Quite. There’s zero physical attraction between us. I know it, you know it, and Olivia certainly knows it. After all, even when I thought you were her and wanted you to turn me on, you failed miserably.’

‘OK, OK, I get the picture,’ Rosalind grumbled, jerking her elbow out of his grip. ‘But I might point out the failure was completely mutual.’

He grinned, his odd-coloured eyes warming with laughter. ‘True. So now we’ve finally got that out in the open maybe we can relax around each other. Olivia is beginning to worry that we intend to keep up the pussyfooting for ever.’

Rosalind grinned back, relinquishing the last vestige of embarrassment which had constrained her natural, exuberant friendliness. ‘Well, I guess if you can accept your total lack of sex appeal, so can I,’ she teased with deliberate ambiguity.

‘Big of you,’ said Jordan, ignoring the overt provocation. ‘Do you need a boost over that wall, or can you make it yourself?’

At five feet nine Rosalind wasn’t used to men treating her as a wisp of delicate femininity and she reacted with her usual bravado to the implied challenge. Waiting in the quiet cul-de-sac on the other side of the neighbours’ property a few minutes later, she brushed off her painfully grazed palms with a rueful acknowledgement that at her age maybe she should start thinking about putting dignity before daring.

Jordan’s car turned out to be a macho four-wheel drive, scarcely less attention-grabbing than Rosalind’s beloved fluorescent green VW, but, as he had predicted, the journalists outside the Marlows’ gate had let him go unhindered when he had forced his way through the gauntlet of their questions.

‘So...what’s the real reason why you offered me a lift?’ asked Rosalind quietly as they cruised towards the city. ‘Don’t tell me it was just to clear the air between us. You could have done that any time. It’s something to do with Livvy, isn’t it? Why she was looking so...pulled back there at the house...’

She watched Jordan’s big hands tighten betrayingly on the wheel, highlighting the nicks and scars that were the legacy of his work as a sculptor.

‘She’s pregnant,’ he said baldly.

The words hit her like a sharp blow. Rosalind’s ears rang and she felt a chill across the base of her skull and tasted metal on her tongue.

‘Pregnant?’ she whispered. She felt a floating sense of utter separation. Olivia. Her sister. Her twin.. the other half of herself...was going to have a baby...contribute to the growing brood of Marlow grandchildren?

Rosalind was shocked...and more; emotions boiled through her that she didn’t dare examine too closely.

‘I thought she didn’t want a family yet,’ she said, when she could get her stiff mouth to work. ‘She said she wanted to concentrate on her painting—’

‘I know,’ Jordan’s voice was clipped and slightly grim. ‘We agreed we were going to wait a few years...but fate evidently had other plans for us. Olivia found out last week—she’s still trying to come to terms with it herself; that’s why she doesn’t want to tell anyone just yet... No one else in the family knows and she wants to keep it that way for another few weeks. Apart from her own ambivalent feelings, there are one or two early warning signs, like elevated blood pressure, that the doctor is nervous about...’

Rosalind sensed rather than saw the sidelong look that Jordan gave her as he continued carefully, ‘It’s a little too soon to confirm it, but the doctor suspects from his physical examination that it could be twins...’

Twins. Of course, given their family history, it was only to be expected, but Rosalind’s sense of shock deepened. Livvy, the mother of not one child but two. The buzzing in her ears increased and she put her hand over her clenching stomach in sudden awareness. ‘Livvy’s been having dreadful morning sickness, hasn’t she?’

‘Yes; how did you know?’

Rosalind’s mouth twisted. ‘I’ve been a bit nauseous myself every morning for the past couple of weeks. I thought it was just nervous tension, or something I picked up doing that wretched film. The food was quite dreadful...’

Pregnancy was the one thing that she had firmly been able to rule out from her self-diagnosis. Oh, God! Her skin prickled with fresh horror. What if she had to suffer these shadow symptoms all through Olivia’s pregnancy? What an unspeakable irony that would be...

‘Well, Olivia’s been as sick as a dog and the doctor’s advised as little stress as possible in the next few weeks,’ said Jordan bluntly. ‘That’s why I was hoping that you’d graciously accept Connie’s offer. It would mean one less source of emotional turmoil for Olivia. If she thinks you’re frolicking happily in some nice, safe tropical haven she might stop beating herself up that she’s abandoning you in your time of need...’

‘So much for your wonderful idea of whisking me away to make up my own mind in my own time,’ said Rosalind, her sarcasm hiding a leap of relief that here was a cast-iron, honourable excuse for running away from her problems. If Livvy had a miscarriage, Rosalind would never forgive herself if there was even the slightest possibility that she was a contributing factor.

Jordan gave a rueful shrug. ‘I didn’t want to push it too strongly in front of Olivia. She wouldn’t thank me for trying to protect her, especially if it compromises her loyalty to you. If you don’t go to Tioman, Olivia intends to ask you to come and hole up with us at Taupo, even if it means dragging along your press contingent, not to mention your other little problem...’

Rosalind stiffened, her fingers clutching the seat as he suddenly swung sharply into a parking spot beneath the warehouse that housed her inner-city loft. ‘What other problem?’

Jordan switched off the engine. ‘You have so many you don’t know which one I’m referring to?’ he murmured, shaving much too close to the truth for her liking. ‘I’m talking about the fan who’s been making such a nuisance of himself.’

‘Oh.’ Aware of his shrewd eyes on her face, Rosalind tried not to reveal any of her turmoil as she probed warily, ‘Olivia told you about that?’

She couldn’t help a trace of outrage creeping into her voice, although, come to think of it, she had only asked that her twin not tell their parents, or their over-protective brothers.

‘We are married, Roz,’ said Jordan drily, effortlessly picking up the nuances. ‘That’s what marriage is all about—sharing a life, listening to each other’s secrets and worries. Olivia said you tried to treat it as a joke but the mere fact that you brought the subject up made her think you were a lot more concerned than you let on, and the tenor of some of the guy’s letters disturbed her. She thought they could be interpreted as stalking letters, said that he wrote as if he believed he had a personal relationship with you, one that gave him some sort of a claim on you...’

‘I told her I get lots of fans writing to me off and on—’

‘But this Peter is very persistent, Olivia said. You told her it had been going on for several years, and that lately he’d escalated from an occasional letter to one or two a week, never with a full name or a return address. He boasts of going to extraordinary lengths to see your performances and even claims to have met you several times at public appearances, though he apparently never identified himself.

‘Olivia said she didn’t like the obsessive nature of his interest, especially as he knows where you live. She said you had extra locks fitted at your apartment because you were uneasy when he started sending gifts as well as letters. She also thought that one of the reasons you took that film job in such a hurry was because you hoped he might lose interest if you weren’t performing live any more...’

‘Well, it was better than her idea of involving the police,’ Rosalind muttered, shuddering at the thought. ‘They probably would have laughed in my face...there was nothing in the letters that was overtly threatening. Anyway, I’ve thrown most of them away,’ she said truthfully, hoping that would put paid to the subject. ‘As I told Olivia, the best way to handle these things is to ignore them.’

‘Mmm.’ Jordan’s face was sceptical. Rosalind had the sinking feeling that she had just acquired another over-protective relative.

‘Nothing arrived while I was away,’ she pointed out. ‘Maybe he’s finally given up.’

‘And another sudden sojourn out of the country might be the perfect way to discourage him even further,’ Jordan said smoothly. ‘It’s either that or the police, Roz—or I could get someone from the Pendragon Corporation’s security section to provide you with personal protection while a private investigator tracks this guy down and turns him inside out.’

Rosalind blanched at the implications. ‘Me, with a bodyguard? God, can you imagine what the Press would make of that?’ She threw up her hands, hastily conceding defeat. ‘You’re something of a pirate, aren’t you, Jordan? I suppose if I don’t allow myself to be blackmailed into going I’ll find myself shanghaied...’

‘There’s little I wouldn’t do to ensure Olivia’s wellbeing,’ he agreed blandly, but with irrefutable honesty.

‘Oh, all right!’ At least he was allowing her to save face by pretending that she was doing this for her sister’s sake, rather than her own. ‘If I’m going to be shanghaied, I suppose I may as well make the most of it.’ She grinned, her eternal optimism fizzing back to the surface. ‘I might even find my own form of protection. Who knows? I might run into my beau idéal in paradise, a man “gentle, strong and valiant” who’ll romance me under the tropical stars and pledge his heart to me for ever! Or, failing that, I’ll settle for a gorgeously tanned beach boy who can make me laugh!’

CHAPTER TWO

ROSALIND stood impatiently tapping her scuffed cowboy boot as she watched the man dithering at the check-in counter.

He was tall and thin, his thick, straight, mid-brown hair flopping over his forehead as he bent over to attach the tags to his two suitcases with fumbling fingers. He had a distracted, disorganised air that had Rosalind immediately pegging him as some sort of head-in-the-clouds academic, one of those people who were sheltered by their narrowly focused intellects from the real world—or perhaps he was a computer nerd, she thought as she noted the laptop he was carefully guarding between his feet. The jacket of his dark pin-striped suit fell open as he leaned forward and she saw the pens and folded spectacles tucked into the breast pocket of his white shirt. Ah, definitely a nerd!

Whoever he was, he was holding her up. Didn’t he realise that first-class passengers didn’t expect to have to queue? They were supposed to breeze in and out while staring down their noses at the lesser mortals lining up at the parallel desks.

She glanced around the terminal. She was anxious to be out of the public arena and into the relative privacy of the first-class lounge as soon as possible. She had got this far without being spotted, by dressing in androgynous jeans, baggy shirt and denim jacket and shaggy blonde wing à la Rod Stewart under a dark fedora.

She had swopped places with Olivia the previous night and knew her regular pursuers were being well and truly led off on the wrong trail, but news organisations often employed stringers or informants at airports. In her boyish guise she hoped that no one would give her a second look, but the longer she stood around, the greater the risk of being accidentally rumbled before she boarded her seventeen-hour flight to Singapore.

The check-in clerk pointed at the weighing machine beside her desk but instead of obeying her polite instruction the man leaned forward to mumble something, patting absently at his pockets.

Rosalind’s impatience burst its bounds. Stepping around a polite Japanese couple, she tapped the laggard briskly on the shoulder, lowering her naturally throaty voice an extra notch.

‘Hey, mate, she’s asking you to put your luggage onto the weighing machine.’

‘What?’ The man turned his head and his body followed, straightening with an uncoordinated jerk that caused him to almost fall over his laptop. Colour streaked across his high cheekbones as Rosalind snickered.

He was younger than his fussy mannerisms had led her to expect—about her own age, Rosalind guessed. His dark olive skin was unlined, and as he raked back his fine, straight hair with well-kept fingers he revealed an exaggerated widow’s peak bisecting a smooth, deep brow. His face was narrow, his steeply slanting dark eyebrows peaking to sharp commas just beyond the outer corners of his eyes, giving his expression a strikingly devilish cast. However, the look in his dark brown eyes was anything but satanic. They were wildly dilated, watching with blank consternation as Rosalind snatched up one of his bags and plonked it onto the platform.

‘She can’t process you until you weigh your luggage,’ Roz told him, her own eyes shooting impatient green sparks at him from under the brim of her hat as he made no attempt to follow her example. He was certainly slow on the uptake. If it hadn’t been for that computer she would have thought he was two bricks short of a load. Or maybe he was simply foreign, and didn’t understand what was being asked of him.

He cleared his throat. ‘Uh...I didn’t think weight mattered for first-class passengers...’ he murmured vaguely, his mild New Zealand accent immediately shattering her theory.

Rosalind’s impatience drained away to be replaced by amused condescension. He was obviously a complete greenhorn.

‘The airline still has to know what total weight the plane is carrying,’ she pointed out. ‘If you’re packing elephants with your underwear they might have to shed a few economy passengers to accommodate your eccentricity.’

‘Yes, yes, of course,’ he muttered, not a glimmer of a smile touching his narrow mouth. She might have known he’d have no sense of humour. He continued to stare at her with the glazed abstraction of a man whose brain was temporarily otherwise engaged. To Rosalind, used to provoking sharp male awareness of her femininity, his lack of reaction was further proof of the effectiveness of her simple disguise. There were quite a few Shakespearian heroines who disguised themselves as boys, and Rosalind had played most of them with great gusto. She knew that gender confusion was largely a matter of body language.

She hooked her thumbs through the belt-loops of her jeans and widened her stance. ‘Well?’

He blinked warily at her challenge. His lashes were surprisingly thick, veiling a subtle shift in his expression. ‘Well what?’ he asked guardedly, his fingers clenching convulsively around the blue travel folder he carried in his left hand.

His white-knuckled tension indicated that he was braced for some sort of scene. Did he think she was angling for a tip? Rosalind rolled her eyes and picked up his other suitcase. It was hefty enough to make her grunt, but her lithe body had the strength demanded by her profession and after staggering slightly she heaved it onto the platform next to the lighter bag.

‘It was supposed to be a joke about the elephants,’ she commented, panting slightly as she stepped back, tilting her chin to look up at him. ‘What have you got in there, anyway?’

‘Uh...books,’ he said, still in that same thready voice adrift with uncertainty.

It figured. Her gaze swept the empty floor around his immaculately shod feet and a mischievous impulse prompted her to stoop for the case between his polished shoes.

At last she got an unequivocal reaction. ‘No! Not my computer!’ he exploded, grabbing it up and cradling it protectively against his chest like a baby. ‘I’m carrying it on with me.’

So he could move faster than snail’s pace when he wanted to! Rosalind grinned and tipped him a mocking salute on the brim of her hat.