Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds

Only, where Regan was concerned, his past had come back to tempt him to dishonour…

She stiffened as there was a light tap of the door.

‘Ahem…monsieur? Excusez-moi, but I thought you’d like to know that we’ve arrived back at the moorings. The captain is just backing into the slips…and your brother is waiting on the dock.’

‘Chris?’ Joshua swore in a low voice while Regan automatically yanked the edge of the satin cover over her nakedness. ‘What in the hell is he doing here?’ He lifted his voice. ‘Thanks, Pierre—I’ll be right up. Tell Grey not to lower the gangplank until he sees me on deck.’

He climbed lithely over Regan’s prone body and began pulling on his discarded clothes.

‘No—you stay here,’ he commanded as she made a move to do the same, checking himself in the full-length mirror on the en suite bathroom door, raking his hair back with his fingers before buttoning the open collar of his shirt to hide the tell-tale red mark glowing on the skin on the unblemished side of his throat. ‘He probably only wants to ask if he can stay the weekend in the condo. I’ll be back as soon as I get rid of him.’ He swooped and sealed his hastily made promise with a brief kiss on her dismayed mouth.

As soon as the door closed behind him Regan scrambled out of the bed and darted across to bolt the door. She picked up her clothes and shook them out. The skirt was a bit crumpled, but luckily the creases wouldn’t show up on the dark fabric, and her cotton-knit top was uncrushable. She would have liked to have a shower, but didn’t know whether the sound of the pipes would be audible above deck and instead contented herself with a quick spongedown in the bathroom before hurriedly dressing.

She dashed warm water in her face from the marble basin and used a comb from the vanity to return her hair to silky smoothness. Her face looked naked without make-up, her lips pouty and swollen, and she could see whisker burns on her chin and throat. To her horror she remembered that she had put her handbag down somewhere in the lounge, when Joshua had been showing her around. Unfortunately the drawers in the vanity yielded strictly masculine toiletries, and without recourse to make-up she had to satisfy herself with a pat of male moisturiser and a dab of cologne.

Although the boat no longer felt as if it was moving, the engine still continued to hum, and even straining her ears she could detect no sound from above. The luxury interior fittings obviously included soundproofing.

However, for added safety, she closed the bathroom door and perched on the closed toilet seat to await her rescue. When fifteen minutes had passed by the tick of the excruciatingly accurate platinum watch on her wrist she paced back out into the cabin and peered out of the porthole, but all she could see was the stylish super-yacht parked in the next slip.

After twenty-five minutes she could bear it no longer. Perhaps Joshua had taken Chris across the boardwalk to his condominium. All the two-storeyed condominiums that edged the dock had electronically coded security gates that opened from the boardwalk into private courtyards, and it might be possible for her to slip off the boat without being seen, unless the two men were standing at one of the huge picture windows overlooking the canal.

She silently cracked open the cabin door and peeped down the empty corridor towards the companionway. Everything was quiet. She decided that she would creep as far as the stairs and see if she could hear any conversation from the lounge. Her hand had just touched the smooth, polished stair-rail when there was a slight sound behind her.

‘Looking for this?’

She spun around, hoping that Pierre had tidied up his accent.

Christopher Wade stood in the open doorway of one of the end cabins, her navy jacket dangling from a coat hanger on his finger.

He was looking very casual in white jeans and a striped T-shirt, and behind him an open suitcase lay on the threequarter bed. Regan realised that whatever had brought him back to Palm Cove for the second consecutive weekend, he hadn’t arrived expecting big brother to give him houseroom. In view of the tension between them he had evidently chosen to stay on the boat.

‘Yes, I was, thank you,’ she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound as nervously shrill to him as it did to her own ears. ‘I spilled a drink on myself and Pierre was cleaning it for me.’

‘He left it hanging on the shower door of the main bathroom. I found it when I went in to recharge my razor.’ His gaze went from her slender figure to the cabin door she had foolishly left ajar. ‘I knew it couldn’t be Carolyn’s—she never wears navy.’

She sustained his steady blue gaze with extreme difficulty as he slipped the jacket off the hanger and held it out to her. ‘It seems to be cured of whatever befell it—do you want to put it back on?’

She cleared her throat. ‘No, thanks—I’ll just carry it; it’s a bit warm.’ She smiled as she took it from him, but his expression was uncharacteristically cool.

‘You’re going to have a fairly tender bruise there tomorrow,’ he said quietly, and touched the soft skin at the outermost swell of her breast, where it was exposed by the cut-away armhole of her top. ‘In fact, you’re going to have quite a few by the looks of it,’ he continued, his eyes moving over her bare throat and shoulders. ‘And here I always thought Josh’s bark was worse than his bite…’

Regan fell back a step, clutching her jacket to her chest, feeling worse than naked, her cheeks stinging hot.

‘I—I—’

‘I wondered why he seemed so unusually twitchy when I wanted to come down and settle in. He tried to convince me that I’d be better off at the condo—when we both know I’m the last person Carolyn would want around as a chaperon.’

‘I’m sorry—’ Regan’s awkwardly expressed compassion caused a muscle to jump in his jaw, making him look markedly like his brother did when he was in a smouldering temper.

‘Oh, so you’re already in on that sordid family secret, are you?’ he guessed bitterly. ‘Josh is usually more discreet about his problems. I wouldn’t have thought he was the type to indulge in careless pillow talk, but then neither did I think he regarded sex as a combat sport—’

‘That’s enough, Chris,’ Joshua’s voice crackled out as he came down the stairs two at a time, jumping the final distance and coming up behind Regan. ‘There’s no need to embarrass yourself more than you have already.’

‘I’m not embarrassed.’

‘Well, you should be. You’re insulting a guest and I thought I’d taught you better manners. Come on, Regan, I’ll give you a lift back to the house.’

‘Why hustle her off in such a rush just because I’ve inconveniently turned up? Could it be you’re the one embarrassed at being caught with your pants down?’

Joshua stepped in front of Regan, shielding her from his brother’s crudity.

‘You’re asking for a punch in the mouth!’

‘Why? Because I’ve found out the truth?’ Chris said rawly. ‘That you’re not as lily-white as you like everyone to believe? I always knew you were a manipulative bastard, but to con Sir Frank into bringing your mistress up here so that you can flaunt your affair under Carolyn’s unsuspecting nose—’

‘I am not flaunting her, and she is not my mistress!’

‘You’re going to tell me you two were innocently playing checkers before I came on board? Don’t make me laugh! Regan has your brand stamped all over her—God, she even smells of you.’

Regan went hot all over. She hoped he was talking about the expensive cologne!

‘Dammit, Chris—’

‘No—damn you! Don’t you know how humiliated Caro would be if she knew? She trusts you, dammit!’ His voice was thick with torment. ‘She was so very quick to believe that I would let her down that she wouldn’t listen to anything I said afterwards—but big Josh—oh, no, never! She really believes that you’re the saint and I’m the sinner. And she likes Regan, she thinks of her as a friend…and all this time her new friend and her so-called fiancé have been—’

‘Don’t say it!’ Joshua ground out as Chris teetered on the brink of obscenity.

His brother laughed harshly. ‘I knew you were attracted to her, but I naively thought that—being such a stickler for men doing the right thing by their women—you’d merely suffer the tortures of the damned denying yourself.’

Instead of trying to douse the inflammatory situation with his cool reason, Joshua inexplicably chose to pour gasoline on the flames. ‘Or, if I gave in to the attraction, that I’d feel compelled to confess all to Carolyn? Is that what you were hoping would happen, Chris? So that you could rush in and replay the big dramatic scene that you flubbed a couple of months ago, this time with you as the valiant saviour and me as the faithless villain? Forget it. You had your chance and blew it. As it happens, I’ve decided that Carolyn will make an ideal wife. There’s a distinct commercial advantage in a businessman being associated with a beautiful, well-bred wife bouncing the evidence of his potent virility on her pretty knee…’

Regan felt Joshua’s callous, careless taunt like a blow to her heart, but Chris looked utterly shattered. His young face was haggard as he looked at the brother he had idolised for so many years with an expression of pure loathing.

‘You bastard. You think you’re going to have it all, don’t you? I won’t let you do it! If you hurt Caro—’

‘If you keep your mouth shut and mind your own business, she need never find out!’ Joshua snapped. ‘Get real, Chris—Carolyn may have been the embodiment of your boyish sexual fantasies, but, frankly, my tastes are a lot more mature. Now, if you don’t mind, Regan and I will skip the rest of the moral lecture!’

Joshua was tight-lipped and broodingly morose on the way back to the house, and Regan made a coward of herself by pretending that she had a headache and ducking dinner. She had no wish to sit across the table from Carolyn and listen to her talk about her latest wedding dress fitting, or speculate feverishly on where Joshua might take her on their honeymoon.

But there was no avoiding the other woman early the next morning when she crashed into Regan’s room just as she was finally managing to doze off after tossing and turning sleeplessly all night.

‘What’s the matter?’ Regan asked blearily, struggling to sit up as Carolyn threw herself dramatically into the chair by the bed.

‘I’m bleeding,’ she moaned, and Regan’s eyes snapped wide, noticing the tear-tracks on Carolyn’s normally flawless cheeks and her unnaturally pasty expression.

‘My God, do you think you’re having a miscarriage?’ she said, leaping out of bed.

‘No—I’m bleeding—I’ve got my period.’ Carolyn wrung her slender hands and rocked to and fro in the chair. ‘Oh, God, Regan—what am I going to do?’

‘But—but—you’re pregnant…’ Regan squawked, and Carolyn shook her head.

‘No—no, I’m not. It was a mistake—’

Regan collapsed on the side of the bed. ‘A mistake? But you had a test…’

‘It was wrong. It happens—not often, the doctor says, but it happens. I never went back for a physical examination, you see. But I started feeling some cramps yesterday afternoon, and so I drove over to Granny’s GP and…’ her big golden-brown eyes filled with tears ‘…and she said she couldn’t feel anything when she palpated me, so she sent me for another test and it came back negative…’

Regan’s brain was reeling. ‘But, how could that be…surely you had all the symptoms?’

‘The doctor said sometimes a woman’s body can mimic the early physical signs if she really believes that she’s pregnant, and I did believe it—I did!’ Carolyn’s light contralto rose sharply, as if to convince herself of her own sincerity. ‘My period didn’t come and then I felt nauseous nearly all the time, and my breasts started to feel sore and I put on weight…of course I thought I was pregnant!’ she shrilled.

‘The doctor said part of it was probably only fluid retention because my cycle was disturbed. I couldn’t believe it—I didn’t dare tell anyone in case it turned out to be another ghastly mistake. And then, when I woke up this morning…I found I had my period! There is no baby—there never was!’ Her exultation held more than a hint of hysteria, and a volatile mixture of joy, misery, relief and despair. ‘I need never have had that fight with Chris. Oh, God, he’s never going to want me now. He’ll hate me even more than he does already. I put us all through this torture for nothing!’ She buried her head in her hands, her hair falling around her body like a golden veil. Then she wrenched her tragic face up again. ‘And Granny—the wedding! Regan—please help me…what do you think I should do?’

Regan forced herself to be calm, not to choke on the throttling hope that threatened to close off her air supply. ’The first thing you have to do,’ she said carefully, ‘is tell Joshua.’

Carolyn looked white-eyed with panic. ‘Oh, no, I can’t tell Jay!’

‘Why can’t you?’ asked Regan hollowly. Was Carolyn now going to proclaim she’d fallen out of love with Chris and in love with Joshua?

‘I just can’t,’ she babbled, clutching the arms of the chair. ‘Not after all he’s done for me. He and Chris had never had a serious argument in their lives until I came along, and now, because Jay stood up for me and tried to help me, even knowing how much I love Chris—Oh, God, neither of them are going to forgive me…it’s all going to be so humiliating…you just don’t understand!’

Better a little humiliation now than a lifetime of unhappiness ahead, thought Regan acidly. How in the world had Carolyn thought she could be happy in a marriage that would have made her a sister to the man she still truly loved? How could even Joshua have been so arrogant as to believe he could make Carolyn content with such a situation? It was a recipe for emotional disaster whether or not the estrangement between the brothers remained permanent.

‘No, I don’t understand,’ she said steadily. ‘But I do know that you can’t go through with the wedding with Joshua still thinking that you’re going to have his brother’s baby. You must know how he feels about honesty. Remember what happened last time he married a woman who tried to use a pregnancy to manipulate him? As a matter of honour—his and yours—you have to tell him.’

‘He’ll think I’m a moron—so will Chris!’

‘Chris is a doctor, for goodness’ sake—he should have considered the possibility of something like this and insisted you both reserve any decisions until you’d had a proper examination. Of course, that would have been the rational thing to do, and people in love aren’t always rational.’

Carolyn’s eyes suddenly went dreamy. ‘No…that’s true…I know I sprung it on him badly, when we were in the middle of a fight about something else, and he felt cornered—but so did I! Maybe I should tell Chris first. After all, it was supposed to be his baby—and he could tell Jay…’

Regan eyed her cynically. ‘I don’t think it’s the sort of thing Joshua would appreciate hearing second-hand.’

All Regan’s advice seemed to fall on deaf ears, and by the time she went downstairs she had a real headache, which suddenly got worse when Sir Frank greeted her in the breakfast room with cheerful congratulations on her excellent timing—because Joshua had just arrived and was waiting to see her in the library.

‘I put him in there because he said it was business and he wanted somewhere you wouldn’t be disturbed. I hope he’s not going to try and poach you away from Harriman’s before the takeover—but then, that would sort of be like poaching you away from himself, wouldn’t it?’

His chuckle followed her down the hall, but Regan didn’t feel at all like laughing. As soon as she walked into the library and saw Ryan standing slouched beside the desk, nervously pushing his glasses up his nose, her heart sank.

Joshua, standing behind the desk, threw a sheaf of computer printouts on the desk, scattering them like confetti.

‘Perhaps you’d like to explain these?’ Icicles dripped from every syllable.

Out of the corner of her eye Regan could see Ryan wince. Whatever he had done, against her express instructions, she knew she couldn’t let him take any of the blame. ‘I—what are they?’

Joshua’s fist crashed down on top of the papers, the ice melting to reveal the molten volcano of temper beneath.

‘Don’t compound your lies by pretending innocence!’ he roared. ‘No wonder you were so eager to join me on the boat yesterday. It provided you with the perfect alibi!’ He raked her with a look of searing contempt. ‘You had my son back at the office doing your dirty work for you, while you kept me safely out of the way. I compliment you on your technique—suborn the son and seduce the father.’

Regan had done neither, but she could see he was in no mood to listen. She tentatively picked up one of the pieces of paper. ‘But, surely, you must be able to see—’

He lunged forward and dashed it from her hands. ‘I see, all right!’ he erupted. ‘I see that you used him…you used my son—’ in his ungovernable outrage, his passionate protectiveness towards his family had never been more apparent ‘—to cover up a crime! You used his feelings for you to make him an accessory to fraud. When I found these in his room this morning I knew that I was the fool being taken for a ride yesterday.’

‘But, Dad, I told you—Regan said she didn’t want me to—’

‘Be quiet, son, you’re in deep enough trouble as it is! What Regan says and what she means are two different things.’ He swung his attention back to her guilty white face. ‘Was this a set-up right from the beginning—from that first night in my apartment?’

Regan rallied, as outraged as he by the notion. ‘No! You know it couldn’t have been!’

‘And you expect me to believe you?’ he slashed sardonically, but seemed to accept that his accusation was incompatible with subsequent events as he went on, ‘Serendipity, then, when you were given the chance to come to Palm Cove and realised that you might use our former…liaison to help create a smokescreen for your actions. Were those sexual tricks you performed on me yesterday supposed to be your version of a personal insurance policy? Designed to make me reluctant to summon the police in the event of your being found out—’

‘Joshua!’ she gasped in agonised protest, glancing meaningfully at Ryan, who was following the conversation back and forth with a deep, and noticeably unrepentant fascination.

Her concern seemed only to trigger an even greater fury. ‘What? Do you think we might be corrupting his innocence? It’s a little late to worry about that, isn’t it? I think, for his own future protection, it’s about time he learned the difference between an honest woman and a conniving little whore!’

Chapter Ten

‘LEAVE? But you don’t have to leave!’

Sir Frank’s bluff response to her miserable confession made Regan feel marginally better. Her coruscating encounter with Joshua had ended shortly after his ugly outburst, when he had seemed to recognise that his inability to control his rising fury at her brave defence of her character rendered him unacceptably vulnerable in his son’s eyes—and his own. He had stormed out of the house leaving a dozen menacing threats hanging in the air, with a stunned Ryan mouthing silent apologies and flapping cryptic hand-signals to Regan that she presumed were meant to be reassuring as he was frog-marched to the door.

It had all happened so fast that Regan had felt as if she had been the victim of a lightning razor attack—there had been no pain, only a numb shock as she’d contemplated her numerous slicing wounds. She had limped back to the dining room and summoned the presence of mind to make a clean breast about Michael’s theft, and her failed efforts to replace the money, to an astonished Sir Frank and Hazel.

She hadn’t mentioned Ryan, merely saying that Joshua had discovered what she was doing, and she had been staggered when, instead of accusing her of aiding and abetting her husband’s crime, or condemning her stupidity, the Harrimans had rallied round with shocked support.

At her implacable insistence, Sir Frank had reluctantly accepted her resignation, but he was baulking at her proposal to immediately return to Auckland.

‘Of course I do,’ she said proudly. ‘You trusted me and I’ve let you down.’

‘Not you—that wretched bounder Michael!’ Sir Frank growled in his quaintly old-fashioned terminology. ‘If it’s a matter of the money, don’t you worry about it, lass. You know I’ll see things right.’

She clung to the wreckage of her pride, devastated by the unexpected expression of faith. ‘No…I have the bank cheque for the full repayment upstairs; I’ll give it to you before I leave—’

‘Now, Regan, you know we won’t turn away from you just because you made a wrong choice under stress,’ said Hazel gently. ‘It’s your intentions that count, and we understand that you were just trying to do what you thought was best. You’ve paid much too dearly for Michael’s sins as it is, so you don’t have to go on covering yourself in shame…’

Regan swallowed hard, overwhelmed by her kindness. She had thought that the Harrimans would be glad to see the back of her. And no doubt they would if they knew the true extent of her shame! As for the wedding—Regan didn’t know what was going to happen on that score and was desperate not to care.

‘I’m sorry…but I know Joshua won’t agree with you. I realise I’m letting you down double-fold, but—’

‘But nothing!’ said Sir Frank. ‘I’m sure Wade will come round once he cools down and hears all the mitigating factors.’

‘He knows them already,’ said Regan tightly, afraid she was going to burst into tears.

‘Well, you’ve admitted everything and done everything in your power to put things right—that puts you on the side of the angels as far as I’m concerned, and I’ll tell him so,’ he gruffed.

‘It’s not just that.’ She knew she was going to have to come up with a definitive argument. ‘I’m afraid I’ve also fallen in love with Joshua,’ she said flatly. ‘It’s very awkward and embarrassing, and I’m sorry to complicate matters, but I really think it would be better all round if I went home…’

Her honesty paid off. Sir Frank continued to bluster in a muted kind of way, but Hazel instantly empathised with the horror of an unrequited love. She hugged Regan, delivering a blizzard of sympathetic assurances that of course she understood her urgent desire to leave, and of course she could manage without her, especially now that she had discarded her crutch and was hobbling about on her rapidly improving ankle.

Regan packed and was gone within the hour, driven back to Auckland by Alice Beatson’s lanky, monosyllabic husband Steve.

Fortunately, Lisa and Saleena were at work when he dropped her off at the flat, for, once inside, her fragile facçde of dignity shattered and Regan indulged herself in a storm of weeping, the bitter culmination of months of pain and strain to which had now been added this wrenching new loss, greater than all the others added together.

When the fit of anguish was over her throat was raw, her face looked like soggy puff pastry and her bones ached as if she had been beaten all over with a baseball bat. Her throat was soothed with lemon and honey, and her face marginally improved with a cool wash, but she knew the ache wasn’t really physical. Until the psychological bruising came out she knew she wouldn’t feel much better, however much she cried, and there was no way that she knew to hurry the healing.

If she could have despised Joshua it would have been so much easier, but she understood him far too well. From his perspective he was perfectly justified in questioning her morals and suspecting her motives, and the fact that her actions had placed his son in jeopardy would be impossible for him to forgive. As he had once told her so forcefully, no one got a second chance to breach his trust.