Surrender To Seduction

‘Don’t worry,’ Jan said in a bracing voice. ‘Even if you don’t buy my business a job will come hopping along saying, Take me, take me. I’m fascinating and fun and you’ll love me. Why don’t you go overseas for a couple of weeks—somewhere nice and warm? I don’t blame you for being out of sorts; I can’t remember when New Zealand’s had such a wet winter.’

‘My mother used to go overseas whenever life got into too tedious a routine,’ Gerry said.

‘You are not like your mother,’ Jan said even more bracingly. ‘She was a spoilt, pampered brat who never grew up. You are a darling.’

‘Thank you for those kind words, but I must have ended up with some of her genes.’

‘You got the face,’ Jan said drily. ‘And the smile—but you didn’t get the belief that everyone owed you a life. According to my mama, Aunt Fliss was spoilt stupid by her father, and she just expected the rest of the world to treat her the way he did. You aren’t like that.’

‘I hope not.’

‘Not a bit. Gerry, I have to go—your goddaughter is yelling from her bedroom, and by the tone of her voice it’s urgent. I’ll ring you tonight and we can really gossip. As for a new job—well, why not think PR? You know everyone there is to know in New Zealand, and you’d be wonderful at it. One flash of that notorious smile and people would be falling over themselves to publicise whatever you want.’

‘Oh, exaggerate away!’ Gerry laughed, but after she’d hung up she stood looking down at the table, tracing the line of the grain with one long finger.

For the last year she’d been fighting a weariness of spirit; it had crept on her so gradually that for months she hadn’t realised what it was. The curse of my life, she thought melodramatically, and rolled her eyes.

But it terrified her; boredom had driven her mother through three unsatisfactory marriages, leaving behind shattered lives and discarded children as she’d searched for the elusive happiness she’d craved. Gerry’s father had never got over his wife’s defection, and Gerry had two half-brothers she hardly ever saw, one in France, one in America—both abandoned, just as she’d been.

She sat down with the newspaper, but a sudden scatter of rain against the window sent her fleeing to bring in the clothes she’d hung on the line an hour before.

A quick glance at the sky told her they weren’t going to get dry outside, so she sorted them into the drier and set it going. Staring at the tumble of clothes behind the glass door, she wondered if perhaps she should go overseas.

Somewhere warm and dry, she thought dourly, heading back to pick up the newspaper from the sofa. The model disporting herself beneath palm trees was one she had worked with several occasions in her time as fashion editor; Gerry was meanly pleased to see that her striking face was at last showing signs of the temper tantrums she habitually engaged in.

‘Serves her right, the trollop,’ she muttered, flicking the pages over before putting the newspaper down.

No, she wouldn’t head overseas. She couldn’t really afford it; she had a mortgage to pay. Perhaps she should try something totally different.

She read the Sits Vac with mounting gloom. Nothing there. Well, she could make a right-angle turn and do another degree. She rooted in a drawer for the catalogue of extension courses at the local university, and began reading it.

But after a short while she put it to one side. She felt tired and grey and over the hill, and she wondered what had happened to the baby. Had she been checked, and was she now in the arms of a foster-mother?

Gerry decided to clean the oven.

It was par for the course when halfway through this most despised of chores the telephone beeped imperatively.

An old friend demanded that Gerry come to lunch with her because she was going through a crisis and needed a clear head to give her advice. Heaving a silent sigh, Gerry said soothingly, ‘Yes, of course I’ll have lunch with you. Would you like to eat here?’

Her hopes were dashed. ‘We’ll go to The Blue Room,’ Troy said militantly. ‘I’ve booked. I’ll pick you up in half an hour.’

‘No, I’ll meet you there,’ Gerry said hastily. Troy was the worst driver she knew.

Coincidences, Gerry reflected gloomily, were scary; you had no defence against them because they sneaked up from behind and hit you over the head. Bryn Falconer was sitting at the next table.

‘And then,’ Troy said, her voice throbbing as it rose from an intense whisper to something ominously close to a screech, ‘he said I’ve let myself go and turned into a cabbage! He was the one who insisted on having kids and insisted I stop work and stay at home with them.’

Fortunately the waiter had taken in the situation and was already heading towards them with a carafe of iced water, a coffee pot and a heaped basket of focaccia bread.

Very fervently Gerry wished that Bryn Falconer had not decided to lunch at this particular restaurant. She was sure she could feel his eyes on her. ‘Troy, you idiot, you’ve been drinking,’ she said softly. ‘And don’t tell me you didn’t drink much—it only takes a mouthful in your case.’

‘I had to, Gerry Mrs Landless—my babysitter—had her thirtieth wedding anniversary party last night. Damon wouldn’t go so she saved me a glass of champagne.’

‘You could have told her that alcohol goes straight to your head. Never mind—have some coffee and bread and you’ll soon be fine, and at least you had the sense to come by taxi.’

Her friend’s lovely face crumpled. ‘Oh, Lord,’ she said bitterly, ‘I’m making a total idiot of myself, and there’s bound to be sh-someone who’ll go racing off to tell Damon.’

Five years previously Gerry had mentally prophesied disaster when her friend, a model with at least six more years of highly profitable work ahead of her, had thrown it all away to marry her merchant banker. Now she said briskly, ‘So, who cares? It’s not the end of the world.’

‘I wish I was like you,’ Troy said earnestly and still too loudly. ‘You have men falling in love with you all the time, and you just smile that fabulous smile and drift on by, breaking hearts without a second thought.’

Acutely aware that Bryn Falconer was sitting close enough to hear those shrill, heartfelt and entirely untrue words, Gerry protested, ‘You make me sound like some sort of femme fatale, and I’m not.’

‘Yes, you are,’ Troy argued, fanning her flushed face with her napkin. ‘Everyone expects femmes fatale to be evil, selfish women, but why should they be? You’re so nice and you never poach, but nobody touches your heart, do they? You don’t even notice when men fall at your feet. Damon calls you “the unassailable Gerry”.’

Gerry glanced up. Bryn Falconer wasn’t even pretending not to listen, and when he caught her eyes he lifted his brows in a cool, mockingly level regard that sent frustration boiling through her.

Hastily Gerry looked back at Troy’s tragic face. Tamping down an unwise and critical assessment of Damon’s character, she said firmly, ‘He doesn’t know me very well. Have some coffee.’

But although Troy obediently sipped, she couldn’t leave the subject alone. ‘Have you ever been in love, Gerry? I mean really in love, the sort of abject, dogged, I-love-you-just-because-you’re-you sort of love?’

Gerry hoped that her shrug hid her burning skin. ‘I don’t believe in that sort of love,’ she said calmly. ‘I think you have to admire and respect someone before you can fall in love with them. Anything else is lust.’

It was the wrong thing to say, and she knew it as soon as the words left her mouth. Bryn Falconer’s presence must have scrambled her brain, she decided disgustedly.

Troy dissolved into tears and groped in her bag for her handkerchief. ‘I know,’ she wept into it. ‘Damon wanted me and now it’s gone. He’s breaking my heart.’

Gerry leaned over the table and took her friend’s hand. ‘Do you want to go?’ she asked quietly.

‘Yes.’

Avid, fascinated stares raked Gerry’s back as they walked across to the desk. She’d have liked to ignore Bryn Falconer, but when they approached his table he looked up at her with sardonic green eyes. At least he didn’t get to his feet, which would have made them even more conspicuous.

Handsome meant nothing, she thought irrelevantly, when a man had such presence!

‘Geraldine,’ he said, and for some reason her heart stopped, because that single word on his lips was like a claiming, a primitive incantation of ownership.

Keeping her eyes cool and guarded, she sent him a brief smile. ‘Hello, Bryn,’ she said, and walked on past.

Fortunately Gerry’s custom was valuable, so she and the desk clerk came to an amicable arrangement about the bill for the uneaten food. After settling it, she said, ‘I’ll drive you home.’

‘I don’t want to go home.’ Troy spoke in a flat, exhausted voice that meant reality was kicking in.

‘How long’s Mrs Landless able to stay with the children?’

‘Until four.’ Troy clutched Gerry’s arm. ‘Can I come with you? Gerry, I really need to talk.’

So sorry for Troy she could have happily dumped a chained and gagged Damon into the ocean and watched him gurgle out of sight, Gerry resigned herself to an exhausting afternoon. ‘Of course you can.’