Alysia stirred, and her bare arm brushed Chase’s sleeve.
Turning away from him, she pulled her safety belt from its housing and clicked it into position.
She lifted an errant strand of hair from her cheek and put it behind her ear, then sat with her eyes focused straight ahead. The car park was lit with street lamps, and a few spiky cabbage trees shivered in a breeze, their slim, patterned trunks rising from floodlit flowerbeds.
Chase switched on the key and the engine murmured into life. He swung the car onto the road, drove through two sets of traffic lights and turned along the riverside. Between the boathouses and marine businesses, glimpses of dark water reflected wavery ribbons of light.
“So you have your own car now?” Chase asked.
Not sure why she felt defensive, Alysia said, “My father bought it as a graduation present.”
“Congratulations on your diploma, by the way.”
“Thank you.”
“I was surprised you decided to do a journalism course after all.”
“Why?” Surely nothing could have been more obvious.
“I had the idea you didn’t particularly care for the newspaper business. We don’t see you down at the office much.”
Alysia felt her skin tighten but she kept her voice calm. “The last few years I’ve been studying,” she reminded him. “Of course I care—I’m a Kingsley.”
“Ah…the Kingsley dynasty,” he murmured.
“I prefer to call it a tradition.” Alysia didn’t like the irony coloring his voice.
He was silent for a couple of seconds. “Spencer doesn’t have a lot of time for high-powered career women.”
Spencer tended toward archaic views on women in business—in fact on women in general—but he didn’t have a choice in her case. The newspaper was a family institution, and Alysia was the only family he had. When she told him she wanted to first gain a commerce degree and then study journalism for a year, he had talked approvingly about the value of qualifications.
“I’m starting at the Clarion after the New Year,” she said. “Hasn’t my father mentioned it?”
“He suggested we make a place for you.”
Alysia guessed from the reserve in his voice that Chase Osborne didn’t approve of nepotism. Too bad. It might be old-fashioned, but it was the way the Clarion had always operated, each generation succeeding the last. One day the newspaper would pass to her. Her father couldn’t deny her that.
Her hands clasped almost painfully together. “I’m qualified.”
She willed away a nasty, sick feeling in her stomach. She was an adult now. Time she acted like one, instead of like some scared little schoolgirl.
Chase made a sound like a short, scornful little laugh. “You have a brand-new diploma.”
“Even you must have been a beginner once.” She knew she sounded snippy. “I don’t mind starting at the bottom. Like my father.” Though heir to the business, he’d begun as a junior reporter, straight from school.
“He’s a good journo,” Chase conceded. “I’ve learned a lot from him.”
“And so will I be,” Alysia asserted.
“You mean it’s in the blood?”
The mockery in the remark stung, although he couldn’t know how it reached a particularly sensitive place in her heart. Her throat tightened. “Anyone can learn.”
They reached the house and she was out of the car before Chase came round it to open the door for her.
“I’ll see you inside.” He followed her up the wide path to the front door and waited while she opened her bag, fumbling for her keys. She let out a short, annoyed exclamation and he said, “What’s wrong?”
“I assumed I’d be coming home with Dad. I’ve left my house key on the ring with the car keys.”
“So you can’t get in.”
“Damn! How stupid!” She glared at the firmly locked front door as if that might miraculously open it.
“No hidden keys?”
“We don’t do that.”
“Probably wise. What about open windows?”
“The bathroom, maybe. But it’s too high.”
“Show me.”
“You can’t…” But she showed him all the same, and then watched as he swung onto the roof of the veranda.
He moved with grace and economy and Alysia was unwillingly fascinated by the play of muscles under his shirt, the lithe masculinity of his body. Sternly she thrust away the stirring of sexual curiosity.
Chase made surefootedly for the slightly open window, thrust it wide and hoisted himself through the narrow space.
A few minutes later lights went on and he opened the door for her, stepping back to allow her in. He was fishing in his pocket with his left hand, holding his right hand up while blood trickled from the knuckles.
“What have you done?”
“Grazed myself getting the window open properly. There wasn’t much room. It’s nothing.” He’d found a handkerchief and was clumsily trying to wrap it about his bleeding hand. “I don’t think I’ve messed the carpet. Can you tie this for me?”
“Come upstairs again and I’ll get a plaster for it. Come on,” Alysia insisted as he looked about to argue.
She led him to the main bathroom, placed her bag on the floor and took a first-aid box from the cupboard under the hand basin. She unscrewed the cap on a bottle of disinfectant. “Is it dirty?”
“No. Just pour a bit of that on,” he said, holding his hand over the basin. “It’ll kill any lurking germs.”
He winced slightly as she did so, and she murmured, “Maybe we should have diluted this. It stings.”
“I noticed.” He seemed very close, watching her as she swabbed the wound dry with a piece of gauze and pressed a plaster over it. Although he shifted back a little while she replaced the disinfectant and plasters, she was conscious of him right behind her.
When she turned he didn’t move, and she found herself trapped against the basin. She raised wary eyes, and caught a strange look in his. A look that seemed attentive and faintly puzzled. Without speaking he lowered his head, pressing a quick, warm kiss on her mouth.
It was over before she had a chance to either reciprocate or protest, or even decide which she wanted to do.