A Passionate Proposition

‘Let’s see if I can’t find a nice can of tuna for us to share,’ said Anya, following George up the narrow brick path that she had laid herself, bordered by the flower beds already dug over in preparation for planting out. Although it was still unseasonably warm for mid-April, the clouds were gathering over the Hunua Ranges and she could scent a hint of rain in the sultry air.

Once inside she kicked off her shoes with a sigh of relief and went around opening the windows to air out the stuffy rooms. It was too early for her evening meal but she carefully divided up a tin of tuna and set down a saucerful on the kitchen floor for George while she tossed the rest with the salad ingredients she had picked up from a roadside stall on the way home and put it in the fridge for when she got out of the bath.

She intended to have a glorious, long, hot, mindless soak in lavender-scented water to steam out all the weary kinks in her body and the nagging worries in her brain. Then she would have her solitary salad with a glass of crisp white wine and relax amongst her books, with perhaps a delicate piece of Bach on the stereo. Oh, the bliss of being free of rules and regulations, and the obligation to be considerate of the rights of others. She didn’t even have to worry about how deep to fill the old-fashioned bath, for there was no one to moan if she selfishly used up all the hot water.

Leaving George licking his chops over the empty saucer and eyeing the rush mat by the back door where he invariably liked to curl up and digest her largesse, Anya ran her bath and sank into it with a groan of sybaritic pleasure.

But the bath wasn’t the total escape from reality she had expected it to be, for as the enervating heat sank into her tired bones and the fragrant steam wreathed her face in dew, Anya’s drifting thoughts circled relentlessly back to the annoying subject of Scott Tyler.

How was it he always managed to get her in tongue-tied knots?

When they had first been introduced she had had fond hopes of their establishing a friendly connection.

She had been welcomed to her afternoon interview in the college boardroom by the chairman of the board, a grizzled man in his sixties, and they had still been shaking hands when he’d suddenly beamed over her shoulder.

‘Oh, good, there you are, Scott! I wondered if you were going to make it back in time to sit in on this last one. Come and meet our final candidate—the lass from Eastbrook. We’ve already talked over her credentials…’ He performed a rather perfunctory introduction, distracted from his task by the throaty laugh from the tall, svelte brunette attached to Scott Tyler’s arm.

‘Sorry, Daddy,’ said the woman, giving him an unrepentant buss on the cheek. ‘I’d just finished a case in the district court so I buzzed Scott on his cell-phone and took him out to lunch. He and I got to talking shop and the time just slipped away from us.’

‘Heather works for a big law firm in the city,’ Hugh Morgan explained to Anya with fatherly pride, giving her the excuse to turn away from the jolting connection with a pair of unusual, electric-blue eyes. ‘Does heaps of Crown prosecutions. Very clever girl. Came top of her year at law school.’

‘Oh, Daddy, that was a little while ago now,’ Heather Morgan fluttered with a coy modesty that didn’t quite gel with her seriously elegant suit and ambitious air of self-importance. Anya estimated the ‘girl’ to be somewhere in her early thirties. That coy ‘little while’ was likely to be more than a decade ago, she thought with uncharacteristic bitchiness.

‘You know I don’t like to rest on my laurels,’ she continued, casting a teasing sideways glance out of her dark almond eyes at the imposing man at her side. ‘Especially with Scott around to keep me on my toes.’

She finally directed a condescending smile at Anya in belated acknowledgement of her reason for being there. ‘So you’re a schoolteacher?’ Her bored inflection made it sound like the most dreary and uninspiring job on earth.

Anya inclined her head politely, keeping her tongue behind her teeth as she was wished an insipid good luck. She was amused rather than offended by the woman’s arrogant assumption of superiority. The fact that she had graduated her history degree with first-class honours and won a scholarship to Cambridge which she had waived in order to train as a teacher, would doubtless cut no ice with Miss Morgan. Like Anya’s parents she would probably just consider it a pathetic waste of potential; because there was no serious money to be made in teaching, no important status to claim, no high-profile perks and rewards for a job well done. Just a quiet satisfaction at having helped guide and expand the minds of future generations of lawyers and teachers.

Anya stood quietly by as the other three continued to exchange personal pleasantries, trying not to let her nerves show, only stirring when she heard a passing reference to Scott Tyler’s home.

‘You live at a property called The Pines?’ she was startled into saying. ‘Not the house that’s on the road out to Riverview?’

‘Yes, that’s it.’ Scott Tyler looked down at her, the clipped wariness of his words emphasised by a hint of cool reserve in his eyes.

‘Have you driven past it? Charming, isn’t it? He bought it about…five years ago, didn’t you say it was, darling?’ Heather Morgan was more forthcoming, deftly making it clear that their relationship was not only professional. ‘Mind you, he says it was in a pretty run-down state at the time—the absentee landlord hadn’t bothered with anything but basic maintenance for years—so Scott’s had it completely redecorated inside and out since then.’

‘If it was five years ago then you must have bought it from a close relative of mine,’ Anya told Scott Tyler eagerly, delighted at the prospect of a common point of interest that might help individualise her in his eyes during the next hour of question-and-answer. ‘Kate Carlyle. She was over here from London to accept an offer on the house. I’m sure you’d remember if you had met her. She’s an extremely striking woman—rather famous in America and Europe as a concert pianist…’

He had stiffened slightly. Did he suspect her of being a shameless name-dropper? Well, perhaps so on this occasion—but she was also genuinely proud of Kate’s brilliant achievements.

‘Oh, yes, I remember Kate Carlyle,’ he said, his deep, harsh voice banked with unidentifiable emotion. No doubt, then, that the meeting had been memorable. Even when she wasn’t trying, Kate always had a big impact on men. ‘Exactly how closely are you related?’

‘She’s my cousin on my mother’s side,’ she said happily, tilting her small face to meet his demanding gaze.

His expression tightened in what she took to be suppressed scepticism. ‘And how much—or how little—do you have in common with your famous cousin?’

Her rueful smile forgave him for having doubts. He was obviously too polite to wonder out loud how such a beautiful, glamorous and talented creature as Kate could be related to plain, unremarkable Anya Adams, who didn’t have an artistic bone in her body—much to her parents’ enduring disappointment!

‘Well, since we’re both living on opposite sides of the world we very rarely see each other any more,’ she admitted, ‘and Kate does a lot of travelling, but we’re still family so we naturally try to keep in touch.’ At least Anya did. She supposed the occasional rushed few lines of e-mail from Kate in belated response to a long, newsy, handwritten letter from herself could be considered an effort, however feeble, to keep in touch.

‘That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?’ he drawled, with a sardonic twist of his mouth. ‘Perhaps I should have phrased it differently…asked if you share similar character traits, and perhaps her personal philosophy of life…?’

Anya was bewildered. She wasn’t sure quite where his question was supposed to be leading, and it was obvious from his mocking expression that he was ready to pounce on any response.

What on earth did he want her to say? As far as she was aware Kate wasn’t of any particular philosophical bent—unless you counted her dictum of ‘music first’. Whatever else Kate might be, she was a consummate professional.

‘Well, considering our shared background I guess a certain similarity is inevitable,’ she ventured cautiously. ‘When Kate was orphaned she came to live with my parents and me. For a while we were brought up together, just like sisters.’ With Kate being the senior by four years, and very much the dominant one, already obsessed by music and not at all patient with the childish preoccupations of her eight-year-old cousin.

‘So, you’re sisters under the skin?’ he confirmed with a hint of contempt, paraphrasing her words in a way that gave them a whole different meaning.

For some reason, the closer the kinship she claimed with Kate, the less Scott Tyler seemed to be impressed. Did he think she was exaggerating her own importance in order to curry favour? Did he perceive it as an indication of a sense of personal inadequacy on her part—one that might affect her authority of her students?