Wife in the Making

Not that she hadn’t suspected it at the interview in Brisbane but it had come as a bit of a shock to see him like this after his sartorial elegance that day. Nor had the way he’d been dressed at the interview given her to suspect that when in Clam Cove restaurant mode, as opposed to beachcomber mode, he would wear a red bandanna around his longish tawny hair, black trousers and a white pirate shirt with an emerald cummerbund.

The first time she’d seen him thus arrayed she’d been tempted to laugh, but had desisted on receiving a laser-like glance from those hazel eyes that seemed to promise she could be made to walk the plank should she exhibit any amusement.

Strangely enough she soon realized that, although the surprise of it had been amusing, she was not alone in finding him oddly magnificent in this get-up. Many a woman guest followed him around with their eyes. Especially on those starry, romantic nights. Were they visualising being tossed over his shoulder and carried off to be made love to in a way that his physique and sheer, magnetic arrogance made promise of an experience never to be forgotten?

She stirred in the hammock as she watched Bryn Wallis stand in the shallows with his hands planted on his hips, with his back to the beach, as he watched Stella and Tom race towards him, and felt an odd little contraction at the pit of her stomach that reinforced the fear she had that she might be no different from some of his restaurant guests…

So, she thought, he wasn’t being impossibly egotistical when he said he had a problem with women. Damn. And she turned to her other side restlessly and closed her eyes determinedly. Remember, Fleur, she told herself, no more men…

A week later, the day started out like any other.

She went for an early morning swim, alone. She had a simple breakfast of fruit and muesli with Tom and Julene. Eric was out fishing, it appeared, but of Bryn there was no sign until Tom explained why.

‘Bryn didn’t get back from the resort last night—I wonder why?’ Tom had the habit of calling his father by his first name, which always made Fleur want to smile. But there was no doubting whose child he was—he had fair hair but his father’s hazel eyes, and not only that; although only six, he also had his father’s, when Bryn chose to be that way, charm and wit.

Julene removed Tom’s empty plate and said soothingly, ‘That’s why you spent the night with us, honey, remember? In case it got too late for your dad to come home. I expect he’ll be here any time soon!’

‘I hope it’s before I go to school!’ Tom said enthusiastically.

‘I guarantee he’ll be here when you get home after school!’ Julene promised. ‘And, talking of school, you’ve got five minutes before the bus arrives! Off you go—and don’t forget your lunch,’ she added, pointing to a plastic box on the counter.

Tom went, scooping up his lunch on his way past.

Julene subsided and poured herself another cup of coffee to which she appeared to be addicted. She was an easy-going, friendly, bottle-blonde in her late thirties who loved nothing better than a good chat and displaying her voluptuous figure in a series of vibrantly coloured sarongs that made Fleur feel dull by comparison in her sensible shorts and T-shirts.

Now she grimaced as she sipped her coffee. ‘I’d say la Stella is putting on an act. Although we often baby-sit Tom for him, he doesn’t usually stay overnight.’

Fleur gazed at her. ‘What kind of an act? They always seem so…relaxed and well-suited when she’s here.’

‘I’m sure that’s what she thinks,’ Julene commented, ‘which is why it’s probably a puzzle to her that she’s not getting any further forward with our Bryn.’

‘As in…?’

‘As in nailing him, honey, trotting him down the aisle, getting a ring on her finger,’ Julene explained laconically. ‘The man is dynamite, in case you hadn’t noticed.’ This time she frowned at Fleur.

Fleur shrugged, decided that denying it would give cause for curiosity if not be a waste of time, and said laconically back, ‘Yep. But I got the impression she was a career woman and, well…’ She paused.

‘That’s the effect Bryn has! Lord knows even I wasn’t immune at first.’

Fleur blinked. ‘But you and Eric are such an ideal couple.’

‘We still are. It doesn’t stop you from looking over the fence occasionally and,’ she spread her hands and laughed infectiously, ‘wondering, now, does it, doll?’ she added.

‘I’ve never been married,’ Fleur replied with a glint of laughter in her eyes. ‘But I don’t think it would do me the slightest good to wonder too much about Bryn. In case you hadn’t noticed, he treats me as if I’ve crawled out from under a stone.’

Julene sobered. ‘I must say, you could have knocked us over with a feather when he produced you, Fleur. Still, I guess he had his reasons!’ She got up and began to collect the dishes.

‘He did. He was desperate.’ Fleur rose and helped her clear the table. ‘Mind you, I can see why. His bookwork is chaotic. It’s going to take me all of the three months to sort it out and his last tax return has been queried. Strange,’ she said more to herself than Julene, ‘you wouldn’t think he’d be that, I guess, uninterested in his own affairs.’

Julene was silent and when Fleur looked at her it appeared as if the other woman was debating with herself. She even opened her mouth, closed it, then said simply, ‘Takes all kinds, doll! Don’t you worry about the dishes!’ and departed for the washing-up area round the back of the restaurant.

Fleur hesitated with the feeling she’d had a door closed in her face, then neatly stacked the salt and pepper shakers on the rack, shook out the tablecloth—and went to her office.

“Office” was a misnomer.

She had a small room also off the back of the restaurant with one table, one chair, a computer, yes, but no drawers, no filing cabinets—none of the normal office furniture in fact. Bryn’s preferred system of filing had been nails in the wall onto which he affixed his paperwork, but by no means all of it. The rest of it had overflowed across every available inch of table surface. And the computer had obviously just come out of the box but not even been connected yet.

She’d drawn a deep breath on being introduced to her office, had turned to Bryn Wallis to protest that no one could be expected to work like this—but had changed her mind suddenly. Because he’d been watching her with the obvious and cynical expectation of her making a fuss and more than that, a certain relish at being able to point out to her she was unequal to this particular job.

An extremely unladylike piece of advice for him had crossed her mind but she’d managed not to say it. She’d merely shrugged and turned back to the computer.

‘Good enough for you, Ms Millar?’ he’d enquired.

‘More than good enough.’ She’d paged through the literature. ‘You have enough memory here to store the workings of a worldwide chain of restaurants but I always say better to have too much than too little—memory, that is. I’ll need a screwdriver, Mr Wallis. Do you intend to get an e-mail address for the restaurant, incidentally?’

‘That was the idea. Can you handle the setting up of it, Miss Millar?’ he’d replied, stressing the AR at the end of her surname.

‘I can; I see you have an internal modem but I need a phone line in here.’ She’d looked around.

‘Voilà—I’m not quite as useless about all this as you imagine,’ he’d drawled and picked up a stack of papers to reveal a phone. ‘Not only did I get this phone installed but it is also on a separate line.’

‘Good thinking,’ she’d murmured coolly. ‘Uh—would there be anything resembling stationery?’

He’d subjected her to a lengthy aren’t-you-a-clever-little-miss? gaze then strolled across the room and hefted a cardboard box onto the tables. ‘Pads, pens, paper for the printer, envelopes—I even got stamps.’

‘How thoughtful,’ she’d commented.

Their gazes had clashed then he’d smiled sweetly. ‘Thank you—well, I’ll leave you to it, Fleur.’ And he’d walked out.

She’d gritted her teeth and restrained herself from throwing something at him. But she’d reminded herself that she’d almost always known this would be a challenge and now was not the time to get faint-hearted. By that evening, with Eric’s help—he’d provided her with some boxes she could use as file boxes and rustled up another table—she’d been more or less up and running, even able to play computer games with Tom.

It was Tom who’d, at the same time, told her that Bryn had a laptop computer in their bungalow but never seemed to have the time to play computer games with him.

‘So—what does he do on it?’ she’d asked, taken by surprise because she’d formed the impression her boss was computer illiterate.

‘He just writes things, that’s all. Oh, wow! We’ve got that new computer game, Fleur. Let’s play that!’

But, she reflected, coming back to the present as she looked around her ‘office’, three and a half weeks of utter professionalism and making the best of things without one murmur of discontent had obviously not changed Bryn Wallis’s view, whatever it was, of her.

She pulled her chair out and sat down but, for perhaps a good five minutes, stared unseeingly at the wall with a frown in her eyes. Then she shrugged and switched on the computer.

At five o’clock that same evening the day was starting to assume catastrophic proportions. Julene took to her bed with a migraine. Lobster, a great favourite on the Clam Cove menu, had to be struck off because the outboard motor on the dinghy, the only dinghy used to catch the lobster fresh every day from the waters around the island, seized up and required a part to be sent from the mainland, something that could take a day. Tom came home from school feeling feverish and uncomfortable, and with the news that his best friend had chickenpox.

Fortunately the reservation list for dinner was small; on the other hand only one waitress from Bryn’s list of casual local staff had been rostered on and she called in late afternoon to report that she’d just sprained her ankle. Frantic telephoning around had not produced a replacement for her although Bryn had enlisted the aid of the community nurse to sit with Tom.

It was when he’d exhausted all possibilities of getting anyone to replace Julene or the waitress that Bryn slammed the phone down and said savagely to Fleur, ‘Let’s see how you cope with this, Miss Competence Personified!’

‘Just you and me?’ she hazarded.

‘Eric can help wait tables,’ he said shortly and eyed her sardonically. ‘Are you on?’

‘Of course,’ she replied calmly.

Five hours later, the last guests had departed, the candles were guttering in their glasses and the cooking area was a scene of colourful chaos.

Fleur looked around at the tables that needed to be cleared, at the huge, decorative bowl of fruit on the counter. Her gaze drifted on over the dirty sauce pots in which fragrant, pastel and delicious sauces had been prepared, the lined-up empty bottles of wine, and paused as she spotted one that was not empty—a half-full bottle of Chianti in fact.

Whereupon she ceremoniously removed her apron, reached for a glass and poured some of the wine, then turned to her boss, who was looking at her quizzically, and threw the Chianti into his face.

‘Take that,’ she spat at him. ‘I have never in my life witnessed such an exhibition of boorish behaviour or been treated so shockingly when all I was trying to do was help! Not only trying, incidentally, but it’s only thanks to me that they didn’t all get up and walk out!’

Bryn blinked several times and wiped his eyes. ‘I was under a bit of pressure,’ he started to say, ‘which I’m the first to admit can affect me adversely—’

‘Rubbish!’ she yelled at him. ‘You deliberately set out to make this evening as difficult as possible for me with your cutting little remarks, your dreadful impatience, your insolent looks and all the rest. You deliberately set out to get me as flustered as possible—just as you have been ever since we set eyes on one another. Well, here’s what I think of you, Bryn Wallis!’ This time it was a bowl of unwhipped cream she poured over him.

And when he started to laugh, she upended another bowl down the front of his clothes—a bowl of raspberries. But as she turned to find something else to pour over him, he simply picked her up and carried her, kicking and fighting, down the stairs to the beach, where he walked straight into the sea with her.

CHAPTER TWO

‘PUT me down!’ Fleur ordered and pummelled Bryn ineffectually.

He did so, up to her knees in water, but kept his hands around her waist.

‘Now let me go!’ she gasped, unable to believe what was happening to her as her skirt billowed wetly around her legs. ‘I don’t know who you think you are or what you think you’re doing, but this is crazy.’

She looked around wildly but Clam Cove was serene with its curve of white beach fringed by shadowy palm trees. There were no lights on in any of the cottages, although the restaurant was still lit, there was no sign of Eric, and beneath the surface of the water her shoes sank into the sand.

‘Fleur,’ he said mildly, ‘you’re almost as messy as I am.’

She glanced down at herself then up to the heavens in furious exasperation because she was also now liberally coated with cream and raspberries.

‘Therefore,’ he continued reasonably, ‘I thought we both might avail ourselves of the sea’s cleansing properties.’ And, so saying, he lifted her off her feet and moved to deeper water so that when he put her down again, it lapped around her shoulders and was about mid-chest height for him, but still he didn’t release her waist.

And he actually smiled down at her as he said, ‘Now, that’s not so bad, is it? A bit cool but then we were both overheated—emotionally at least.’

But Fleur was not ready to be placated in any way. ‘Cool?’ she retorted with her teeth chattering. ‘I’m freezing and you’re mad, Bryn Wallis! Not only mad but horrible and…and…’

As her voice broke he released her waist but took her hand. ‘Can you float on your back, Fleur?’

‘Of course I can float on my back but it’s not something I usually do fully clothed and with my shoes on in the middle of the night!’ she replied witheringly.

‘Take them off and give it a try,’ he suggested. ‘The Southern Cross is up there bright and clear—it’s a marvellous way to do a bit of star-gazing.’ He let her hand go and pulled off his bandanna then his shirt and tossed them away from him.

‘If you’re suggesting,’ she said arctically, ‘that I—’

‘Just down to your undies,’ he reassured her and, not without some difficulty, pulled his trousers off under the water and threw them away too. ‘Feels wonderful!’ Two shoes and a pair of socks bobbed away from them. ‘And I’m still quite decent, believe me.’ He lay back to reveal a pair of boxer shorts and, with his ankles crossed, floated gently and with little effort. ‘The more you’re in it, the warmer it gets incidentally,’ he told her seriously. ‘Wow, just saw a falling star!’

Fleur muttered something and, with no real idea why she was doing it other than that she felt awful with her voluminous dress clinging to her and weighing her down, struggled out of it and threw it away from her. To her surprise, she was immediately conscious of a sense of liberation mental as well as physical. So she reached for her shoes and consigned them to sink or swim, and dived beneath the water. When she surfaced she dragged her hair out of her eyes and flipped onto her back to float as effortlessly as did her tormentor.

There was a sheen of starlight on the dark surface of the water, and the soft, rhythmic sound of waves breaking on the reef that protected Clam Cove. The Milky Way looked like silver tinsel pasted to a midnight-blue heaven, so close you felt you could reach out and touch it.

‘Not such a bad idea after all?’ he suggested.

‘I still think you’re quite mad,’ she replied after a long moment. ‘Nor have I forgiven you for anything, but…the stars are fantastic.’

He laughed softly. ‘You were fantastic tonight as a matter of fact.’

Fleur sank beneath the surface and came up spluttering. ‘So why…?’

‘Race you to the beach, and after I’ve made you a nightcap I’ll tell you.’

‘No—’

‘Fleur, lovely as this is, enough is enough.’ He flipped over. ‘Ready?’

‘I…oh, all right!’

They reached the beach together and he took her hand as they waded out of the water. ‘Let’s run,’ he suggested. ‘Just to your bungalow.’

‘Hang on—what other Olympic endeavours do you have in mind for me tonight?’ she enquired a little bitterly.

‘None,’ he assured her, ‘but it will ward off the cold.’

She hesitated then remembered she was standing before him in her bra and briefs. Indeed, as she hesitated his gaze slid up and down her sleek wet body and a frisson communicated itself to her to be beneath his gaze wearing only a mostly lace bra and a triangle of matching satin and lace, both pasted to her skin revealingly… Had it come from him through their hands? she wondered. Or was it only she who was responding, not only to her state of undress but also to Bryn Wallis, who was tall and rangy and rather magnificent?

She shook her head to dispel these thoughts and said with some acerbity, ‘OK, but that’s my last form of exercise for the night!’

He grinned and they started to jog down the beach towards her bungalow.

Twenty minutes later she’d showered and was wrapped in an ice-blue towelling robe and drying her hair, when he returned bearing a tray. He came into the bungalow wearing an old football jersey with cut-off sleeves and a pair of khaki shorts, with his tawny hair ruffled and spiky as if he’d dragged a towel through it then used his fingers as a comb. And he had on the tray two of the house specials—Irish coffee à la Clam Cove in tall glasses with filigree silver holders, topped with swirled cream and sprinkled with chocolate.

She raised an eyebrow but didn’t comment and sat down on the bed beneath the furled-up mosquito net so he could have the only chair. In typical Bryn Wallis fashion, however, which was to say there was never any disputing who owned and ran the place if not to say dominated it, he made a few adjustments to the room before he sat down. He lit the oil lamp she never used because he’d explained to her it was only for power failures, and switched off the overhead light. Then he adjusted the pole that lowered the palm-frond window so that it was only open a few inches.

Finally, he looked around and commented that she needed another chair.

Fleur lowered the towel she was using to dry her hair and replied that she wasn’t planning to entertain anyone in her bungalow on a regular basis so one chair was fine with her.

‘Yes, well,’ he said a little drily and brought her coffee over to her, ‘perhaps you should.’

Her eyes widened, then she smiled ironically. ‘You were the one who was afraid of just that,’ she reminded him.

He studied her comprehensively, her fresh, perfect, radiant skin, the fair silk of her drying hair, the elegance of her chin, her slender neck enfolded in the blue terry towelling and the twisted grace of her body as she sat sideways on the edge of her bed, her slim bare feet. Then their gazes caught and held again and, because of the long moment during which neither of them were able to break it, it was unspoken but obvious that a physical awareness of each other had come into play between them.

Fleur swallowed visibly and her fingers tightened on the towel as she wondered how to get across to Bryn Wallis that she had no intention of responding to this physical tension that had sprung up even though she couldn’t deny it. But he was the one who broke the unseen form of electricity that was flowing between them. A frown grew in his eyes then he looked down at the coffee glass in his hands, and carefully put it down on her bedside table. And he strolled over to the only chair and sank down into it.

‘The thing is,’ he said, picking up his own glass and gazing at it reflectively, ‘one of the problems I have is that you remind me of someone I don’t particularly want to be reminded of. But…’

He paused and looked up at last. ‘The far greater part of it is—you’re too good to be true, Fleur. The most human thing I’ve seen you do is pour food and drink all over me. It’s,’ his lips twisted ruefully, ‘unnerving to witness such a gorgeous twenty-three-year-old girl who is also so reserved and contained and buttoned up and—solitary.’

He looked around and continued, ‘There’s nothing here, no photos, mementoes, nothing—apart from some books. By the way, I have quite a library in my bungalow. Please feel free to help yourself.’

Fleur shook her head as if to clear it. ‘Am I buttoned up with Tom?’ she protested after a moment.

‘No. But that’s different—kids are easier to relate to.’

She was silent for a long time, then she said composedly, ‘OK, I’m trying out a new kind of life. I woke up one day and discovered I was going down a road I didn’t like, so,’ she shrugged, ‘I opted out. Would I be right in thinking you yourself might have opted out, Bryn?’

He smiled faintly. ‘Touché. On the other hand, has that steel-trap mind of yours perceived a difference between us? For example, I may have opted out of the rat race but I haven’t cut myself off from people.’

Fleur raised her eyebrows. ‘I had noticed that—I’m not blind,’ she said wryly. ‘A mind like a steel trap, though? Isn’t that a bit of an exaggeration?’

‘No,’ he replied flatly. ‘Otherwise I’d have broken you down a lot sooner, Ms Millar. Three and a half weeks of putting up with me at my worst, with such composure, definitely denotes a steely mind.’

Fleur’s lips parted and her eyes widened.

‘Which is not to say,’ he mused, ‘that I did actually break you down, not in the way I anticipated anyway. No one,’ he emphasized, ‘has ever thrown a drink in my face let alone poured raspberries and cream all over me. In fact,’ he looked briefly gloomy, ‘the honours go to you, Fleur, which is a little demoralizing, to be honest.’

Fleur struggled through several emotions then started to smile reluctantly.

‘That’s better,’ he murmured and sipped his coffee.

‘It’s not really,’ she denied. ‘I only found it amusing that you’ve managed to escape that fate for so long, to be honest. Otherwise, you’ve admitted to being highly manipulative if nothing else.’ She wrinkled her brow. ‘What I don’t understand is why you care one way or the other?’

He took another sip and said at length, ‘In another life I was a journalist. Old habits, such as digging out the truth of things, die hard, I guess. So, going to tell me why you’ve decided there should be no more men in your life, Fleur?’

Fortunately Fleur had put her coffee glass down on the bedside table, otherwise the sheer accuracy of this observation might have seen her spill it. Even so, her restless movement didn’t escape him.

‘You don’t need to be a genius to see that,’ he said. ‘Julene is of the opinion you got your heart broken and Eric thinks it might have happened a couple of times. Mind you, while they needed a couple of weeks to work it out, I did spot it straight away,’ he said modestly.

Fleur sat up straighter and said in a strangled voice, ‘You…you’ve all discussed it? Behind my back!’

He shrugged. ‘Human nature.’

‘No…I… Darn it, it’s unforgivable…and you…’ She could only glare at him.

He shrugged again. ‘You think that because of how much you have cut yourself off from the rest of the world. But nothing on earth would have stopped Julene having a good gossip about you, me included.’

‘You didn’t have to participate, though,’ she said through her teeth.

He smiled crookedly. ‘I didn’t contribute that much. In fact it came up when Eric told me I was being extremely unkind to you.’

‘What a pity you don’t take more notice of Eric,’ she shot back.

Bryn lay back in his chair. ‘I do. Well, sometimes. Eric and I go way back and, on the whole, I’ve found his advice to be wise—I just wasn’t in the mood to take it this time.’