Reckless Conduct, page 11
‘Hungry?’ asked Marcus, looking up from his menu to catch Harriet’s muted glare.
She lowered the menu to show him her teeth. ‘Ravenous!’
‘Good. You look as if a puff of wind would blow you over. Soup to start with, and then something more substantial, don’t you think?’
‘Mmm, I’m starving!’ said Nicola, triggering a pang of guilt in Harriet at her thoughtlessness in brushing aside the younger girl’s comments about finding something to eat during their shopping spree.
‘It’s too hot for soup,’ she announced contrarily, having been eyeing the description of the mouth-watering soup of the day. She rapidly skimmed down the prices, seeking the most expensive items on a very expensive menu.
She had to pay him back somehow for contriving to torture her with his company! At the restaurant that he had whisked them off to yesterday, Harriet had been too embarrassed by the memory of herself crying in his lap to do anything but pick at the omelette that she had distractedly ordered. Marcus had been infuriatingly relaxed and natural, refusing to leave her out of the conversation, so that, for Nicola’s sake, she had had to talk and smile and act as if she were perfectly comfortable lunching with the chairman of the board.
It had been the first time that she had spoken with him since he had kissed her on her doorstep, and Harriet had had great difficulty in keeping her eyes away from his mouth, suddenly seeing sensuality where before she had noticed only sternness. Marcus had claimed that he had wanted to allow Nicola a full day to settle in before he formally celebrated her new job by squiring her to lunch, but Harriet had wondered whether he had waited to be sure that she wasn’t going to presume too much on a casual kiss now regretted. As if she would! The modern, free-thinking woman dispensed such favours like candy.
She glowered at the menu. So what if his kiss had been the equivalent of Belgian chocolate on the candyscale? That was merely because so far she only had boiled sweets with which to compare it. She wasn’t going to let one disastrous evening put her off. Yesterday she had allowed him to tie her into knots worrying about what he was thinking and what he thought she was thinking. Today she didn’t care!
‘Harriet?’ She looked up to find the waiter standing patiently beside her, as he had obviously been for some time. Marcus leaned across to run a kind finger along the top of her menu. ‘Would you like me to explain anything for you?’
Now he was implying that she was too unsophisticated to understand restaurant French. It was about time he forgot her pathetic performance of the other night and learned to respect her toughness!
‘Yes,’ she said crisply. ‘You can explain why men complain about the talkativeness of women but insist on interpreting their thoughtful silences as helpless confusion.’ Harriet snapped her menu closed and reeled off her exorbitant choices, her eyes directly challenging his.
She was immensely gratified when he was the first to look away. His lids fell, his long black lashes concealing his expression as he looked down at his menu. A tiny compression of his mouth a few seconds later was the only hint that he realised what she had done.
‘Wow! Are you really going to eat all that?’ said Nicola, impressed, as she gave the waiter her small order with a shy smile.
‘Of course she is,’ commented Marcus, neatly cutting off any thought of a dignified retreat. ‘Harriet is a woman governed by her appetites. Just the soup of the day and the grilled fish, thank you, Sean.’ He handed the menu back without taking his eyes off Harriet’s flushed face. ‘Isn’t that right, Harriet?’
‘The soup and the fish?’ She deliberately misunderstood. ‘You’d know that better than I, since you obviously come here often.’
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You called the waiter by name.’
‘He was wearing a name-tag,’ said Marcus blandly. ‘Didn’t you notice?’
No. Of course she hadn’t! Marcus Fox had a habit of narrowing down her range of focus to a dangerous extent. She made great play of looking around her now, pretending an interest in the other diners that she didn’t feel. Several men caught her eye and she gave them each the bold hint of a smile and immediately felt better. She picked up the wine list that Marcus was ignoring and leafed idly through it.
‘I know something that you haven’t noticed,’ she heard Nicola say.
‘Oh, and what’s that?’ Her father instantly turned all his attention to her. ‘That you’ve spent your first paycheque before you’ve even earned it? How like a woman!’
Harriet winced, but Nicola didn’t seem to mind his rampant sexism. Perhaps she thought he wasn’t serious, but Harriet detected the inherent cynicism in the teasing remark. ‘I hardly bought anything. It was Harriet who was doing all the shopping. She bought tons of new clothes…she even offered to buy some for me but they weren’t really things that I would wear.’
‘Poor Harriet. Is my daughter proving difficult to corrupt?’ Marcus transferred his teasing to her.
She smiled thinly at him as Nicola laughed. ‘Come on, Daddy, there’s something different about me from this morning.’ She turned her head from side to side suggestively.
Through her lowered lashes Harriet watched in malicious enjoyment as Marcus’s shoulders tensed and his teasing expression stilled. ‘You’ve had your ears pierced.’
Nicola ignored the slight reverberation of shock in his voice. ‘Yes; do you like it?’ she said eagerly.
There was an anxious moment and then Harriet saw his shoulders relax. ‘Very chic, darling. I’m glad you prefer the elegant look to the punk appeal of a stud through the nose!’
Nicola looked at Harriet and giggled at the memory of their earlier exchange.
Marcus noticed the glances. ‘Was this pre or après Porsche?’ he asked drily.
‘Oh, before,’ said Nicola, looking suddenly uneasy as she sensed the dichotomy in his attitude. She fiddled with her napkin. ‘You really don’t mind, then, Daddy?’
He covered her hand with his, squeezing it gently. ‘I do, actually, but only because it’s made me realise that my little girl is even more grown-up than I realised…you don’t come rushing to me with every bump and scrape any more and you have rights to privacy and independence that exclude me. I’m just being selfish, I suppose…but I’m glad that you still respect my judgement enough to ask for my opinion—even if it’s after the fact!’
‘I did think I ought to ask you first,’ Nicola allowed generously, ‘but Harriet said I was old enough to make my own decision.’
‘Did she indeed?’ he murmured, removing his hand and contemplating Harriet’s guilty face.
‘Well, she is,’ Harriet defended herself.
‘Oh, I agree. Didn’t I just say that?’ he asked with a mildness that sent nervous shivers down her spine. Surely he would now want to reassess her position of influence over his daughter?
‘I thought it might hurt, but Harriet hadn’t flinched at all,’ continued Nicola blithely, ‘so I knew it must be OK, because she said she’s a coward about pain…’
Something flared in the blue eyes as Marcus suddenly reached across the table and thrust his fingers into the wavy blonde mass brushing Harriet’s cheek, combing it back to expose her ear with its small, shining stud.
‘Well, well, well; so you’ve had your ears pierced too,’ he said huskily, tucking the curls behind the curve of her ear so that he could study the full effect, the tips of his fingers brushing against the little strip of sensitive skin there, causing a small, electric buzz in her hearing. ‘What a tempting example of your daring to set before an impressionable teenager.’
It struck her that he was using his curiosity as an excuse to touch her, to deliberately cross some hidden boundary of acceptable public behaviour, but before she could move out of his reach his thumb slid forward and stroked the soft pink lobe, and she jumped. ‘Sore?’
He was mocking her. He knew that wasn’t the reason for her sensitivity. ‘Just a little bit tender,’ she said, tilting her head so that his only polite choice was to let his hand fall back to the table.
‘Like your conscience?’ he murmured, hitting the nail on the head with his usual annoying precision as their first course arrived. ‘I suppose I should consider myself lucky you didn’t come back with matching Porsches as well!’
‘I haven’t learnt to drive yet,’ Nicola reminded him, digging into her salad. ‘Some of my friends got their licences as soon as they were fifteen—’
Marcus shuddered and sternly cut in, ‘Harriet is not, I repeat not going to teach you to drive in her Porsche. And you are not to even think of asking her.’
‘But you will, won’t you, Daddy?’ Nicola said confidently. ‘Then I wouldn’t have to ask Granny to take me everywhere when you’re away.’
‘You needn’t think that a driving licence automatically comes with your own car,’ Marcus warned over a spoonful of fragrant soup, ‘because you’ll have to have at least a year’s experience on the road before I’ll even consider buying you one. I’m willing to start you off but I think a driving school is the best place to learn to cope with today’s traffic—and then a defensive driving course.’
‘Who taught you to drive, Harriet?’ asked Nicola, obviously seeking an ally.
Harriet, who had never tasted caviare before, was discovering that she hated it. As soon as she got home she was going to toss out the unopened jars from her fridge, since there was no longer any Frank to dine on her scraps.
‘My father was too impatient and my mother too terrified, so my elder brother, Tim, ended up teaching me,’ she said, putting off the evil moment when she would have to pass another fishy, squelchy mouthful across her shrinking taste buds.
‘I didn’t know you had a brother,’ said Marcus, his eyes bright blue with curiosity, and Harriet knew that she couldn’t stomach another mouthful.
‘That was delicious,’ she lied, pushing the rest of the caviare out of her olfactory range.
‘I think caviare’s revolting,’ said Nicola frankly, wrinkling her nose. ‘Granny had it at one of her cocktail parties. I don’t know how you can bear to eat it.’
‘Actually she didn’t,’ Marcus pointed out with a straight face, but with eyes that were mocking.
‘I only wanted a taste,’ said Harriet airily.
‘Are you going to only taste everything else you ordered too?’ asked Marcus wryly.
She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I live from moment to moment.’ At least she had got him off the subject of Tim.
Fortunately for her stomach, for she had discovered that her flippant claim to being ravenous was actually fact, her main course was divine, and she fell on it with dainty greed, closing her eyes in blissful gratitude as her first bite of venison melted on her tongue, releasing a tantalising burst of flavour from the exotic stuffing and cunningly blended medley of sauces. When she opened her eyes it was to see Marcus, fork arrested in the air as he watched her embrace the glory of the food with her whole being.
‘Good?’
It was—so much so that she couldn’t resent his amusement.
‘Fabulous!’ she sighed. In the past year she had been in danger of forgetting that food could be more than merely fuel for the body, it could be an inspiration to the senses!
‘Well, perhaps this is a good time to suggest that it might be an excellent idea to have someone give you a few lessons on the correct handling of a high-performance vehicle, so you don’t attract the attention of any more friendly policemen.’
Harriet almost choked on a piece of meat. She coughed into her napkin and stared at him suspiciously over the starched white folds. ‘Like who, for instance?’
‘Well, I’ve owned a sports car or two myself, in my distant, salad days…when I had more testosterone than sense. I think I could provide you with some valuable advice.’
The idea of being trapped in the intimate confines of her sexy new car with Marcus Fox critically observing her every reaction to the traffic—and to him—gave her the shivers.
‘Thank you, but I don’t think—’
‘I think you should, Harriet,’ Nicola interrupted quietly. ‘The man who killed my mother was driving a rental car, and Granny told me that the police said he put it into the wrong gear when he was trying to avoid a collision and that’s why he swerved into Mummy’s car.’
‘Oh, I didn’t know,’ said Harriet, her antagonism abruptly subdued.
‘Daddy’s good at explaining things and he’s really patient. He won’t shout at you if you do something wrong.’
‘Consider it a small favour in exchange for a large lunch,’ he said blandly. ‘Shall we say you’ll take me for a small spin after work this evening?’ His mouth quirked. ‘Not literally, of course…’
‘I’m sorry, I’m busy this evening,’ Harriet was pleased to be able to tell him truthfully. ‘I’ll have to rush home to get ready as it is.’
‘Nightclubbing again?’ he asked sardonically.
‘No, I have a lesson in Thai cooking.’
‘Fair enough. Tomorrow evening, then.’
‘Tomorrow is Saturday,’ she pointed out.
‘All the better.’
‘Not for me. I’m going to be away all weekend,’ she said cheerfully.
His cool look became alert. ‘Away where?’
‘The tramping club I’ve joined. We’re going down to Coromandel to tramp a national-park trail. We won’t be back until late Sunday night.’
He frowned. ‘Monday, then.’
She had to think. ‘French For Beginners.’
‘Tuesday?’
Ah, that one she didn’t have to think about. ‘On Tuesday I have a date.’
‘With whom?’ he queried politely.
She shrugged. ‘No one you would know.’
‘Try me.’
She sighed. ‘His name is Greg Pollard.’
‘What does he do?’
‘Something to do with travel, I think.’
‘You think? You don’t know?’
‘Well, I haven’t met him yet,’ she said, nettled.
‘What is this—a blind date set up by a friend? Or did you advertise in the personal column?’
‘No, of course not.’ She treated his sarcasm with the contempt it deserved. ‘I’ve joined a computer dating service,’ she said, proud of her bold initiative. ‘They security-screen their clients and guarantee a seventy-five per cent compatibility rating—’
‘Computer dating!’
‘I thought you said he never shouted,’ said Harriet to Nicola, who was looking at her father’s red face in fascination.
He recovered his control with admirable swiftness, not even bothering to notice the ripples of interest that he had created at surrounding tables.
‘I’m sorry but—dammit, Harriet,’ he burst out softly, ‘do you know what an incredible risk you’re taking? A computer can’t make character judgements; it’s totally reliant on people being honest about themselves on the input data. No matter how well they’re run, those kinds of organisations are rich feeding-grounds for con men and psychos who prey on the hopes and dreams of lonely, desperate people—’
‘Greg sounded very nice on the phone—’
He dropped his knife. ‘You gave him your phone number?’
‘For goodness’ sake, I’m not that stupid! The service gave me his number and I rang him…’
The rest of the lunch gave Harriet a very bad case of indigestion as she was forced to dine on Marcus’s quiet, compelling lecture on the dangers of being too trusting.
By the time the embarrassingly large bill arrived twenty minutes later even Nicola was beginning to look a little shell-shocked, and it was small consolation when she confided later that afternoon that Harriet was the first person she had seen discompose her father so completely.
CHAPTER SEVEN
HARRIET sprawled backwards onto the luxuriously soft bed and stared up at the recessed lights in the creamcoloured ceiling with a smile of glorious anticipation.
She couldn’t believe her luck—to find such a marvellous apartment on the first day of looking and at such a good price was little short of a miracle. She must remember to buy Nicola a small gift of appreciation, for it was she who had mentioned that there were apartments in the Harbourside Building being advertised for sale and lease.
To Harriet, who had been at a loss as to where to begin the apartment-hunting expedition that she had boldly proposed for lunchtime on Monday, it had seemed like fate.
And so it had proved. She had been instantly enchanted by the dashing face-lift that the old building down near the city’s waterfront had received, and the real-estate saleswoman who represented the vendor had been so friendly and enthusiastic and devoutly keen for Harriet to buy that she had impulsively agreed on the spot. All her instincts had told her that the light and airy one-bedroomed apartment was the perfect setting for her new lifestyle.
Besides, the price was practically a steal, and the vendor had even given the real-estate agency permission to take a deposit to the value of a short-term lease if the buyer wanted to take immediate possession. If the sale fell through for any reason after Harriet had moved in, she would still have the three-month period of the lease to look around for something else.
The fact that she’d been able to move in immediately had been the real clincher. Leaving the only home she’d ever known was an emotional wrench that Harriet had wanted over and done with as soon as possible, but even she hadn’t thought that it could be achieved in only two days!
Harriet rolled onto her side and propped her head up on her hand as she surveyed the spacious, high-ceilinged bedroom. Although she had only been here a couple of hours she loved her new home already; it was modern, with a hint of the gothic character that featured so strongly on the façade of the building.
The cream walls and carpets contrasted with the muted pastels of the mostly built-in furniture, and the price had included a few of the showroom pieces which had been used as a sales tool, so that moving in had largely been a matter of transferring her personal belongings and the contents of her kitchen, enabling her to offer her old furniture to a second-hand dealer as a house-lot. Harriet had paid a removal company to do most of the moving while she was at work, and a few round trips in the Porsche had taken care of the rest.
