The Final Proposal

She put the receiver down and wandered out onto the terrace. Ahead, in blissful solitude, stretched the afternoon and early evening. The polo stunt had been the last of the photographic shoots, for which Jan was extremely thankful. In a couple of months Gerry’s article and the photos would appear in the magazine.

Her cousin had even promised to slip in a mention of the centre, and that group of dedicated, mostly unpaid women who worked with and worried about the girls and young women brought to them—many in severe trouble, most just trembling on the brink of it.

Money, Jan thought; it all came down to money. Or the lack of it.

A van, which would be enormously useful, was just a pipedream.

Still, she thought drily as she moved a lounger into the shade of the sky-flower vine that rambled over her pergola, Gerry’s project would put some extra money in the coffers.

She must have gone to sleep, because although the telephone bell invaded her dreams like a berserk bee she was unable to wake herself up in time to answer it. Whoever it was hadn’t left a message, so it wasn’t a summons from the centre. However, the imperative call had destroyed her serenity, leaving her to wander restlessly around the house looking for something to do.

Yawning, she wondered how the trip was going. Ten of the girls who’d been recommended to the centre by a social agency were with selected adults at a camp on one of the islands in the Hauraki Gulf. A weekend wasn’t long enough, of course, but it would help.

Unfortunately, they needed more than an occasional weekend if the lessons they learned there about their capabilities, and the self-esteem they gained, were to stick with them. On the centre’s wish-list was a camp of their own, where the girls could stay for several weeks if needed, away from the many temptations of the city and from bad companions.

Another pipedream.

A few weeks ago Jan and her committee had worked out how much they needed. ‘We’re not asking for a lot—just the world,’ one of the women had said, staring glumly at the figures.

Now, as she recalled the enormous set-up costs, Jan’s heart quailed. Over the last few years she’d organised exhaustive and very vigorous fundraising to build up their financial base. They no longer had to worry about the rent, and they could afford the social worker’s salary, but, as costs climbed and more girls turned up on their doorstep, they needed another paid social worker.

Every year they still had to go cap-in-hand to various organisations just to get money to struggle along.

So many organisations, all worthwhile, all seeking a share from the public’s generosity.

‘I must be running out of steam,’ she told the potted bay tree out on the terrace as she watered it.

Thirty-one was not old, but it did seem to mark some sort of milestone. Perhaps it was the siren call of her hormones, warning her that time was frittering away.

For the first time Jan didn’t want the party her mother planned with such care to mark each birthday. It was a family tradition, the end-of-summer, welcome-to-autumn party, and friends and relatives from all over the city and its environs came to wish her luck and enjoy themselves enormously.

Possibly this feeling of slow melancholy was what another of her cousins had warned her about.

‘It’s a crunch year—everyone has one,’ she’d said, smiling wryly. ‘Mine was my thirtieth. I woke up in tears, and wept all day. Everyone thought I was mad, but it’s surprising how many women have one awful birthday—usually in their early thirties.’

Jan had enjoyed her thirtieth, which made it ridiculous to feel so ambivalent about her thirty-first. ‘Stop right there,’ she told herself aloud, wandering into the kitchen to pour herself a glass of feijoa and grapefruit juice.

Her gaze fell on the gaily wrapped present her half-sister had given her the day she and her husband left for their South American trip, with instructions to open it just before the party.

Where were they now, Anet and her husband of almost a year? Slashing their way through some tropical jungle, probably. For the first time, Jan allowed herself to admit that she envied Anet and Lucas the unmeasured, consuming love they shared.

Because she’d never fallen in love.

Not once.

Oh, there’d been a lover when she was twenty—she shivered, recalling the painful, humiliating end to that affair, if affair it could be called—and since then several men had asked her to marry them. A couple of them she’d liked and been attracted to, but she hadn’t ever felt that complete confidence, the essential trust that allowed normally sensible and wary people to confide their life and their happiness to another person.

She just wanted everything, she thought sardonically: the electric, passionate involvement, the eager companionship and the complete faith in each other. And if she couldn’t have it all, she wouldn’t settle for less.

Relishing the tangy flavour of her drink, she sipped slowly while into her mind came an image of the man who had wrenched her out of the way of the horse.

A disturbing heat expanded through her. He had presence. However, that wasn’t why she remembered him. She was accustomed to men with presence; her stepfather had it, so did Lucas. And so did Drake Arundell, the husband of a great friend of hers.

The stranger had more than presence; he possessed a disciplined, formidable authority that sent out warning signals. And he moved with the dangerous, predatory swiftness of a hunter.

Finishing the juice, she eyed the dishwasher, then with a half-laugh washed the glass and put it away.

‘He’s probably just your ordinary, average polo player,’ she said firmly as she walked across the passage to her office. ‘Overpaid, oversexed and over here.’

Weaving fantasies about a man she didn’t know and wasn’t likely to see again was stupid and futile. Life was not slipping by; she helped people as best she could, she was good at what she did and she earned good money doing it—and she had a warm, appreciative family. If she never married she’d be a superb aunt to Anet and Lucas’s children when they had some.

Perhaps she should see about getting a cat.

Dressed in a smooth-fitting ivory dress, its neat lines conforming discreetly to her body, Jan walked with her mother across the big sitting room and out onto the wide terrace. A group of her friends were already there, and as she came through the French windows-they began clapping, and called out birthday wishes.

‘You look great,’ Gerry said exuberantly when they had a moment to talk. She, as befitted an entirely more dramatic personality, wore a floating outfit of purples and blues and plum.

‘Thanks,’ Jan said lightly.

Gerry eyed the demure dress. ‘You’re well covered up. Bruises?’

‘A few,’ Jan admitted. ‘Nothing to worry about.’

‘I should have anchored that damned hat,’ Gerry sighed.

‘Yes, well, I’m just glad that no one got hurt. And that the horse and the rider were OK.’

‘The hero was gorgeous,’ her cousin said thoughtfully. ‘I wonder who he was.’

‘One of the polo players.’

‘Perhaps we should have suggested your mother invite a few.’ She leered unconvincingly. ‘They’d give your party a certain je ne sais quoi. All those splendid muscles rippling beneath their shirts. Not to forget the equally splendid ones beneath—’ Stopped by Jan’s raised brows, she broke into a gurgle of laughter and finished, ‘In their legs.’

‘Most of them probably can’t string more than ten words together,’ Jan said, knowing she was being unfair.

‘Who cares? They look like gods.’

‘Centaurs.’

Gerry laughed. ‘OK, although they’re not exactly joined at the waist to their horses. And even if they can’t speak in words of more than two syllables, we could just sip a little champagne and admire their form. Speaking of which—Oh, good Lord—’

Jan turned to follow her entranced gaze. There, standing beside Sally Porter, a friend from schooldays, and directing that killer smile at her mother, stood the man who had saved Jan from being squashed a few hours ago—all six feet two or three of him.

‘Sally’s latest?’ Gerry muttered. ‘I didn’t see her at the polo, but of course she could have been there.’

Jan barely heard her. A hateful, febrile anticipation prickled through her.

‘I’d better go and greet them,’ she said with enormous reluctance when she saw her mother look across to her.