Tiger Eyes

He sent her a slanted look from unreadable eyes. ‘What exactly do you mean by that?’

Exasperated, she glowered at him. ‘Well, you obviously put a private detective on to Rick. How else would you have found me? And I’ll bet you didn’t just stop at a name; I’m sure there’s a dossier about me somewhere.’

His hard-edged smile applauded her shrewdness. ‘You’re right, of course. Yes, I know you ran away from home and dropped completely out of sight for a year. Why did you run away?’

‘Doesn’t the dossier have it all set out for you?’

He ignored the sharp sarcasm in her question. ‘Your family say you were always difficult to control, which doesn’t match your reputation at school.’

She shrugged. ‘My foster-parents and I didn’t see eye to eye. I don’t blame them; I must have been impossible to live with.’

‘What happened to your own family?’

Tansy was beginning to realise that she was too vulnerable to this man; she needed barriers. And because she didn’t seem to be able to keep behind the ones of her own making, she decided to hand him some. However, she couldn’t resist asking, ‘Didn’t your detective find that out either?’

‘He wasn’t asked to,’ he said. ‘I know you were four when you went to live with the O’Briens, and that you lived in a social welfare institution before that.’

‘My mother was a prostitute, I believe,’ she said deliberately. ‘She didn’t look after me properly, so the welfare took me away and put me into a foster-home.’

She cast a challenging look at him, but to her surprise there was no sign of disgust or surprise in his face.

‘How old were you then?’

‘Eighteen months.’ He might as well, she thought savagely, know the whole story. It had been a shock to Tansy when Pam O’Brien hurled the truth at her during one of their battles just before she’d run away; it would be an even greater jolt to Leo Dacre, brought up with all the advantages of wealth and security. ‘She went off for the weekend with some man. Apparently a friend was supposed to come and pick me up, but she had a better offer so I stayed in the flat until the neighbours got sick of my screaming.’

He swore under his breath. ‘Humanity can be incredibly cruel,’ he said. ‘Did you ever see your mother again?’

‘No.’ Tansy didn’t want him to pity her. ‘She died a couple of years later. I don’t remember her.’

‘If you lived happily with your foster-family until you were fifteen, what happened to change things?’

Beneath her jersey Tansy’s shoulders moved uneasily. ‘We disagreed on the course my future should take,’ she said, not attempting to hide the ironic note in her voice.

‘Some disagreement.’ He waited several seconds, and, when she remained silent, said, ‘So you ran away. How did you survive that first year on the streets?’

Tansy wasn’t surprised his detective hadn’t been able to discover anything about that year. She’d dropped out, living with a woman who’d made it her life’s work to take in runaways and street kids. With a better knowledge of what could have been her future, Tansy never stopped thanking the fates that the tough, big-hearted widow had noticed the skinny, frightened girl at the railway station and taken her home.

Not only that; it was Mrs Tarawera who had lent her a guitar and suggested she busk for a living, organising an assortment of temporary sons and cousins as bodyguards for a couple of weeks to make sure no one stole her money. At Mrs Tarawera’s house Tansy had learned to be streetwise; those same ‘sons’—street kids and runaways—had taught her what to watch for and how to defend herself.

Mrs Tarawera was dead now, but she had left many living memorials in the people she had befriended and fed. Her kindness, and how much it had meant then, was one of the reasons why Tansy had taken in Rick.

And look where that generous impulse had got her, she reminded herself acidly, keeping her eyes on the road ahead as they drove up towards the Lady Norwood Rose Gardens.

‘Surprisingly easily,’ she returned lightly.

‘I admire determination.’ Skilfully, he passed a cyclist clad in yellow and black Lycra shorts who seemed hell-bent on committing suicide beneath their wheels. ‘Almost as much as I admire loyalty.’

She threw him a tolerant glance. So he thought he was going to be able to smooth-talk Rick’s whereabouts out of her. ‘Both are admirable qualities.’

‘When not taken to excess.’

She picked up the gauntlet. ‘Can one take—say, loyalty to excess?’

‘Oh, I think so.’ The car drew to a stop in the car park. As he got out, Tansy opened her door too. He asked, ‘Are you radical in your feminist beliefs?’ closing the door behind her.

She shrugged. ‘Not particularly. If it upsets you to see me get out by myself I’m quite happy to humour you.’

He laughed, the brilliant, enigmatic eyes never leaving her face. ‘I like the sharp teeth and claws,’ he said amiably.

Something tense and forbidden stirred deep inside Tansy. A dart of sensation quivered through her, altering her, changing her in subtle, unnerving ways. Gazing around, she strove to overcome the unbidden weakness.

Rosebushes, although slightly battered by wind and rain, lifted valiant, colourful heads to the sun. Because the gardens were in a basin surrounded by tree-covered hills the scent of the flowers seemed to be concentrated into a ubiquitous, overpowering fragrance. The seductive perfume wound its way into her being, at once soothing and arousing her, so that she felt like a cat with its fur stroked the wrong way, wary and alert and reckless.

‘Do you like roses?’ he asked.

She nodded. ‘Scented ones, yes. And the ones that are unusual colours.’

His gaze searched her face. She avoided it by stooping to bury her nose in one particularly rich, deep gold bloom, inhaling the sultry sweetness with pleasure.

‘The bride of a friend of mine had all the roses at her new home dug out and replaced,’ he said inconsequentially.

‘Why?’

He was stroking a crimson bloom with slow, almost erotic gentleness. That strange feeling in Tansy’s inner regions melted some part of her she had never felt before. Straightening up, she looked away, trying hard to ignore the image of the same leisurely caress on her skin.

‘They were unfashionable,’ he said, a sardonic note in his voice making his opinion clear.

Tansy said curiously, ‘I didn’t know there were fashions in flowers.’

‘There are fashions in everything, if you have the time and the money to indulge them,’ he said abruptly. ‘Come on, let’s go. I’m hungry.’

So was Tansy. By the time they sat down inside the kiosk she was remembering far too clearly that she hadn’t taken time off for lunch.

To keep her mind off the man who sat opposite she let her glance wander around. Hothouse scents from the begonia house next door provided a striking contrast with the weather outside. Snatches of conversation, made piquant by their impenetrability, floated by. Tansy’s eyes lingered appreciatively on the gilded, feathery fronds of a palm, the crinkly leaves of the low plants about its base.

Everything seemed brighter, with more impact than usual. Perhaps the scent of the roses had made her slightly drunk?

Leo said idly, ‘Apropos of loyalty; surely it can be qualified by the needs of the person one is being loyal to?’

Tansy ate slowly, pretending to consider his remark. ‘If I was sure I knew what they were, perhaps,’ she finally admitted. ‘I’ve always believed that most people understand their own needs better than anyone else, however affectionate or well-meaning the other person might be.’

Leo’s mouth stretched in what was certainly not meant to be a smile. ‘So you give yourself a good reason for opting out,’ he said smoothly. ‘I suppose it satisfies your conscience, but isn’t it rather cowardly? Suppose you knew that someone was in trouble—would you just leave them to flounder along on their own?’

How much did he know? Tansy’s gaze flicked up to Leo’s face, but it gave nothing away, the regular features set into an inscrutable mask, his eyes like green glass.

Choosing her words carefully, she answered, ‘Rick knows what he’s doing, and that’s good enough for me. Why don’t you leave him to make his own way home? He will, eventually. He loves both you and his mother. Give him a chance.’

‘To find himself?’ His quick scorn and the contempt that followed made her shake inside. ‘As you did? How did you earn your living that first year, Tansy? Prostituting yourself? Stealing? No, I don’t really want to know, but do you want Rick to go through that sort of degradation?’