The Final Proposal

The road finished at what was obviously the entrance to Kear’s farm. A notice proclaimed that it was called Papanui, and five letter-boxes indicated a surprisingly large workforce. Jan stopped and examined them in case one had her grandfather’s name on it. None did.

She stood looking around, breathing in the sharp, sea-scented air, smiling a little as she recalled the swift glint in Kear’s eyes when she’d teased him about the quality of rural air. A cattlestop kept animals within while allowing vehicles through without the bother of opening and closing a gate. On the edge of the road an old rosebush scrambled in an untidy heap over a bank that revealed the shells of cockles, washed bone-white by rain and sun. An ancient Maori midden, probably.

Jan drew an unsteady breath and got back into the car. After some careful driving through what even to her city eyes were obviously fertile paddocks, she came to a place where the road divided; obeying her instructions, she took the right-hand fork. Immediately the surface of the road deteriorated into a series of ruts as it plunged down through a thick forest of feathery kanuka trees.

‘It’s all right,’ she comforted the MG. ‘Not much longer now.’

But it seemed to go on for ever, gouged into deeper and deeper furrows by the same rains that had produced the lush green grass on Kear Lannion’s station. Jan changed gear so cautiously that she felt she was on tiptoe, and finally, after creeping down a last steep grade, emerged onto a swathe of what had once been grass but was now reverting rapidly to coastal teatree scrub.

‘Oh, my God,’ she said as she saw the house.

She stopped on a final flourish of white road metal and, half-horrified, half-delighted, got out of the car.

The flat area, about three acres of it, was cradled by hills and bordered by a beach of white sand. To one side of the bay a little stream debouched into the sea. So far, so good. However, on the other side of the stream mangroves crouched, olive-green and sinister, their gnarled roots anchoring them into mud that seemed to have a life of its own, if the furtive movements she could see from the corners of her eyes were any indication.

‘Oh, hell,’ she said aloud, repressing a shiver. It looked the sort of place that should have crocodiles lying in wait.

Worse even than that was the house, an old weatherboard bach left over from the days when families used to camp out all summer in such affairs, with a large brick chimney supporting the end wall. Further back from the beach, and on higher ground, stood a floorless, three-sided shed clad in sheets of rusting corrugated iron. The two buildings looked forlorn and dingy and lonely, a jarring note in the serenity of sea and sky.

‘Why,’ Jan asked herself aloud, ‘don’t you listen when people tell you you’re too impetuous for your own good? And why on earth did he want me to spend a whole month here?’

Tears sprang to her eyes. No man should have to live in conditions like this when he was old and death not far away. The fact that her grandfather had chosen it didn’t help.

She fished out a handkerchief and wiped her eyes before heading determinedly across the coarse, springy grass towards the bach, the key to the door in her hand.

‘It’s highly unlikely,’ the solicitor had told her as he’d handed it over, ‘that it needs locking. However, your grandfather was a careful man.’

Careful? Jan nearly laughed. Anyone who lived in this shack had to be positively reckless! It looked ready to collapse at any minute.

It should have been impossible, but the inside was even worse than the exterior. Dust lay squalidly on the few items of old furniture and coated every other surface. Mixed with salt and rain-stains on the windows, it was so thick that she could only just see through the panes.

Jan was standing in the middle of the main room, looking helplessly around, when she heard the sound of an engine. It startled her so much that she scanned the room desperately, searching for a place to hide.

‘Don’t be an idiot!’ she commanded stoutly. But she stood out of sight as a Land Rover came down the hill, considerably faster than she had, and pulled to a stop beside her car, so incongruously sporty and chic.

Jan’s heart thumped erratically in her chest. She’d recognise that lithe form anywhere.

At Kear Lannion’s curt command the black and white dog on the back of his vehicle stopped its eager suggestions that it get down and explore and settled back quietly, its eyes fixed on him as he came towards the house.

He could be an axe murderer, but at that moment he represented safety. The oppressive weight of her grandfather’s fate lifted slightly as Jan walked across the cracked linoleum floor-covering to stand in the doorway.

‘Hello,’ he said, looking, she saw with a spurt of anger, unsurprised, although the narrowed grey eyes were enigmatic. ‘This is a long way from Auckland.’

‘Isn’t it just? Another universe.’ The flippancy of her reply sounded crudely out of place, but it was all she could manage.

He smiled, not very nicely. That comprehensive survey had taken in her narrow linen trousers and elegant boots, the fine weave of her cotton shirt and the thin gold chain around her neck.

‘This is private property,’ he said.

Jan discovered that she disliked him in equal measure to her unbidden, reluctant attraction to him. ‘My private property,’ she told him, not without relish.

He didn’t move but she detected a waiting kind of stillness in him, an unexpressed astonishment. Aha, she thought maliciously, you didn’t know that.

Not even trying to hide the dismissive note in his words, he said, ‘How did this happen?’

‘Fergus Morrison was my grandfather.’

His brows came together. For a moment she sensed a cold, deliberate patience that sent an icy chill down her back.

Then he said, ‘I see. I assume you plan to sell it.’

Later, she would understand that that was when she’d made up her mind to keep the place, but at the time she was too busy trying to ignore his effect on her to realise anything. ‘Possibly,’ she said.

It was just his size; short, thin people tended to be a bit wary of big people, especially when those big people walked with head erect and a rangy, almost arrogant self-assurance that sent out all sorts of messages—most of them tinged with intimidating overtones.

Kear went on conversationally, ‘If you do, I’d like first refusal.’

It didn’t seem too much to give him, but something held her back. She said, ‘I’ll have to talk to my solicitor about that.’

‘Of course,’ be said laconically. Nothing altered in his expression, no emotion darkened the pale gaze, but every nerve in her body suddenly screamed a warning.

He said, ‘Where do you plan to stay the night?’

As wary as a deer in tiger-haunted jungle, she swallowed. ‘Here.’

There was an alarming silence. Or perhaps it was stunned. No, a swift upward glance revealed that the first word had been the right one. Kear Lannion kept tight rein on his emotions, but his mouth had compressed and there was a glint of irritation in the frigid depths of his eyes.

‘Do you know how to work the range? The water?’

‘No,’ she said.

With brusque impatience he demanded, ‘Don’t you think it would have been a good idea to find out what the conditions were before you came up to gloat over your inheritance?’

Jan raised her brows, delicately questioning his right to make such comments. ‘I’ll manage.’

His icy gaze slid across her face, cold enough to burn the ivory skin. She thought she actually felt the welts as he said, ‘So, even though you never came near Fergus Morrison, he left what he had to you when he died?’

‘He did.’ It angered her that this man somehow managed to strip off the comfortingly opaque social mask she took for granted. She never lost her temper—never—and yet she wanted to stamp her feet and scream with childish, uncontrolled rage. In a voice that could have congealed lava she told him, ‘I’m his only descendant, apparently. I thought he was dead—we all did. He left for Australia after my father died, and didn’t contact us when he came back.’

‘I wonder why?’

‘My mother told me he adored my father and went a little mad when he was killed.’

‘He certainly turned into a hermit,’ he said. ‘Jan, you can’t stay here. You’d better come back and spend the night at my place.’

CHAPTER THREE

‘THAT’S very kind of you,’ Jan said formally, ‘but I’ll be perfectly all right.’