Unwelcome Invader

She stared at him in horror as the implication of his words sank in. If she stayed here then every mouthful she ate, every bar of soap she washed her hands with would be paid for by Marc Le Rossignol! And the taunting smile that touched the corners of his mouth showed that he was thinking exactly the same thought.

‘Yes, chérie, I’m afraid so. If you stay here you will have to come down every morning and beg me sweetly to share my croissants with you. You’ll have to ask me for money to go shopping or to buy petrol for the car. Is that what you want?’

‘Oh, go to hell!’ flared Jane.

Marc laughed, in no way upset by her spurt of temper.

‘I’ve always thought my ideal woman would be tall, red-haired and gracious in any situation,’ he remarked. ‘But you, you remind me of…What’s that ferocious little creature you have here? The one that snarls and bares its teeth? A devil, that’s it. You’re a little Tasmanian devil, aren’t you?’

Jane gave him a long, smouldering, silent glare.

‘They’re very bad-tempered creatures,’ continued Marc in a conversational tone. ‘Although I’m told they make good pets if you can tame them—but only one man in a thousand is capable of doing it.’

‘Just try!’ snapped Jane.

Marc smiled provocatively.

‘I might. It would be a challenge to see if I could get you eating out of my hand. All right, enough of these games! What’s to become of you?’

‘I’m staying here,’ insisted Jane.

‘What about when you want to go to the shops, or to buy petrol, or clothes, or to visit the hairdresser’s?’

‘I never go to the hairdresser’s!’

‘Never?’ marvelled Marc. ‘You mean all that long, blonde, wonderful hair is natural?’

‘Yes.’

‘It’s very beautiful,’ said Marc, momentarily diverted. ‘But we must not lose the thread of our conversation. Even if you don’t go to the hairdresser’s, there must be some place where you need to spend money.’

‘I won’t go out at all,’ threatened Jane. ‘I’ll just stay here at the house until you leave.’

Marc’s lips twitched. ‘And if I choose not to feed you?’

‘I’ll eat grapes.’

‘Quelle drôle de femme! Comme elle est farouche! No, no, Jane, this won’t do. In any case, I need all the grapes I can get to make the best possible wine here. I have a much more sensible idea. I’ll employ you.’

‘Employ me?’ echoed Jane in a baffled tone.

‘Yes, you can be my personal assistant for the next three months on a salary of——’ He named a figure which made Jane blink at its generosity.

‘Why?’ she asked suspiciously. ‘Why would you want to do a thing like that?’

Marc shrugged.

‘It seems a very good idea. You could learn a lot from me, Jane. I’m thirty-four years old; I’ve been a professional winemaker for the last twelve years and I’ve been working in my family vineyard for even longer than that. It’s an excellent opportunity for you.’

‘Maybe,’ admitted Jane grudgingly. ‘But what’s in it for you?’

‘Well, I don’t want you starving on the streets or plotting sabotage behind my back. This way I can keep an eye on you. Besides, I’d like to try my skills at taming a genuine Tasmanian devil.’

Jane hated being teased. Ever since childhood it had been the surest way to make her fly into a rage. Now she opened her mouth to protest hotly, to refuse Marc’s stupid, insulting proposition, and then paused. If she didn’t accept, what could she do? She would either have to leave the place entirely or stay here on even more humiliating terms. Was she really prepared to beg for croissants every morning? No way! Wasn’t it better to be Marc’s employee? Besides, if she stayed then she might be able to talk him out of buying the property at all…

A sweet radiant smile replaced her scowl.

‘All right,’ she agreed meekly. ‘It’s a deal.’

Marc suddenly looked uneasy.

‘There are conditions,’ he warned. ‘No bombs in the car, no fires in the equipment shed, no poison in the coffee.’

‘Moi?’ demanded Jane innocently.

Marc sighed and shook his head.

‘For centuries the men of my family have had the gift of prophecy,’ he lamented. ‘They are forewarned of disaster to the Le Rossignols by a mysterious prickle down their spines. Me, I have a mysterious prickle down my spine.’

In spite of Marc’s foreboding no disasters happened immediately. As a matter of fact he and Jane soon developed a strong professional respect for each other. Yet, much as she admired Marc’s knowledge about vineyards, Jane found the whole situation fraught with unbearable tension. In her rash determination to hold on to her territory at any cost, she had not stopped to consider what an intimate situation she was being plunged into with this suave, mocking Frenchman.

Morning after morning she came downstairs and had to look at him over the breakfast table, just as if they were married. There were so many decisions to be made about what they would eat for dinner, whose turn it was to load the washing machine, whether or not friends should be invited over for Sunday lunch. Worst of all was the alarming and wholly unwelcome attraction that she felt towards him. Even though she tried to fight against it, Jane was no more immune to Marc’s smouldering animal magnetism than any other woman would have been. Her weakness infuriated her. She had never trusted men with those brooding, bedroom eyes or that hoarse, caressing voice. At any rate not since she was nineteen years old and had fallen violently in love with Michael Barrett, her chemistry tutor in Adelaide.

Michael had pursued her with an ardour that had flattered and excited her and she had been bitterly disillusioned to overhear other students joking crudely about the way he always tried to seduce the prettiest girl in each new class. Fortunately matters had not gone quite that far between them although they had gone quite far enough to lacerate Jane’s pride. Her cheeks burned even now whenever she thought of one particularly torrid evening in Michael’s flat when he had kissed her violently and——Well, she felt bitterly certain that Marc was another man just like that. Someone only interested in scoring women as if they were goals in a soccer match, and Jane had no intention of adding to his tally!

All the same, it became harder and harder to face him calmly over the breakfast table each morning, particularly since he was in the habit of appearing in a navy-blue towelling dressing-gown that left the top of his muscular, tanned chest exposed. Again and again Jane felt her eyes straying in horrified fascination to the dark, springy hairs that curled over the V of fabric, then up the brown column of his neck to the aggressive line of his jaw and the taunting half-smile that always seemed to hover around his lips as he read the newspaper. What a fool she was! Why couldn’t she just settle for someone dull and nice and devoted like Brett? The restless yearning she felt for a man who would make her blood pulse like molten fire through her veins was probably quite insane! It seemed to be a law of nature that the only men who made her heart pound and her breath come faster were utterly worthless like Michael. Or dangerous and probably untrustworthy like Marc. No, she would be much wiser to give up crying for the moon and settle for second best.

When her twenty-seventh birthday arrived two weeks after her return from France, she was so depressed that she almost made up her mind to do exactly that. Over breakfast she sat gloomily stirring her coffee and sighing quietly to herself. If she knew Brett, he was bound to arrive some time during the day, probably with a bale of wire for the vineyard and definitely with another one of his matter of fact proposals. Well, this time she really ought to accept! After all, she wanted a home and children and she was fond of Brett. Besides, she wasn’t getting any younger and she didn’t want to feel as if love had passed her by completely. Sometimes she thought she was probably the only twenty-seven-year-old virgin in Australia. Or even in the world. She sighed again.

‘Mon Dieu!’ exclaimed Marc. ‘What is the matter with you? Do you have asthma?’

‘No,’ retorted Jane with a scowl. She rose to her feet abruptly, pushing away her coffee-cup, and headed for the French doors which led out of the kitchen into the garden.

‘Where are you going?’ demanded Marc with a frown.

Jane paused with her hand on the door handle and turned back to look at him. An unwanted thrill of excitement tingled through her as she scanned every detail of his body from his carelessly brushed-back hair, his narrowed eyes and twisted smile to his lean, muscular body which seemed to strain against the confining dressing-gown. She shuddered and looked away.

‘Into the garden,’ she replied drily and then chanted half to herself, ‘Nobody loves me, everybody hates me, I’m going into the garden to eat worms!’

The baffled look on Marc’s face almost made her laugh as she escaped into the cool, dewy crispness of the garden. Luckily the fine autumn weather was holding well. Although there was an early morning freshness in the air, the cloudless blue sky held the promise of a fine day. If the good weather held she should soon have an excellent harvest.

Yet the lift in her spirits was only momentary and before long she was pacing around the shrubs and flowerbeds feeling tragic again. What a mess everything was! It looked as if she was going to lose her home and her livelihood; nobody did love her except Brett and she really wished he wouldn’t and, worst of all, she was locked into this ridiculous, humiliating situation with Marc Le Rossignol, whom she both desired and disliked, with equal fervour!

She was on her third circuit of the garden when she heard the sound of a utility truck pulling up in the turning circle behind the house. Her spirits plummeted even further. It had to be Brett! Feeling as if she were about to make a visit to the dentist, Jane sat down at the pine table near the barbecue. If he asks me to marry him, I’ll say yes, she told herself defiantly. At least it will make Brett happy and it will get Marc Le Rossignol out of my life forever!

A moment later Brett came strolling around the corner of the house with a lettuce under his arm.

‘Happy birthday,’ he said.