A Passionate Proposition. Susan Napier
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be careful you’re not making a mistake, Miss Adams, by riling me when I’ve already told you I’m in a very bad mood. Your position at the moment is rather untenable. It could be construed as contributing to the delinquency of a minor, for example…’
She was quick to scorn his bluff. ‘Apart from the fact that the whole accusation is nonsense—he isn’t a minor.’
He was about to offer a caustic reply when something outside the window snagged his attention. ‘Are you sure you want to argue the point now? Because the natives down there seem to be getting restless…’
She frowned at him, suspecting a trick. ‘What?’
‘There are two girls getting out of a yellow hatchback I presume is yours,’ he said, looking out the window. ‘They seem to be debating whether to approach the house—’
Anya yelped and flew over to see that he was right. Oh, God, she had been so distracted by his presence that she had completely forgotten about the girls! Supposedly her prime consideration on this mission.
She clutched the windowsill, gazing down in dismay as Jessica and Kristin milled uncertainly around the side of the car. Hadn’t she told them not to get out?—but of course by now they must be starting to panic at her extended absence.
‘Perhaps you’d like me to invite them up to join us while we finish the discussion you seem so keen on prolonging…’ came a silky purr.
‘No!’ Anya was too busy castigating herself to notice his openly baiting tone. She could just imagine what four gossipy girls would make of the pernicious scene. She looked at her watch, her thoughts fixated on damage control. If she didn’t get back to camp before Cathy read her note, all hell was likely to break loose. Or, should she say, further hell?
She glared at the cause of her appalling lapse in judgement. ‘I have to go—’
‘Oh, what a pity,’ he said, his voice dripping with sarcasm. ‘Just when I was about to offer you a cup of tea.’
She scowled. Naturally he would see her strategic retreat as his victory. ‘When you get him sober enough to tell you that my presence here was entirely innocent—’ she said, nodding in Sean’s direction as she hurried towards the door ‘—I’ll expect to receive a sincere apology. From both of you! And we’ll consider that an end to the matter.’
She thought that she had succeeded in having the last word, but a surly remark referring to frigid temperatures and the devil’s abode floated downstairs in her wake, making her itch to turn around and hit back with an equally vulgar blow. She managed to cling to her decorum but only by locking up her jaw. For a non-violent person she was beginning to have some very disturbing thoughts. All to do with That Man.
‘Where were you, Miss Adams? We were getting worried,’ said Jessica, as Anya herded the girls back into the car and burnt rubber down the drive in her anxiety to escape the invisible laser-beam eyes she was sure she could feel drilling into her back.
‘We saw that big guy go in and break up the party but you didn’t come out with the others. He looked pretty mad when he drove up and saw all the cars. I bet he went totally psycho at his kid for having a party,’ said Kristin in suppressed excitement. ‘I bet there was a big fight. Is that what took you so long, Miss Adams?’
‘You don’t—want—to—know,’ Anya ground out through her still-clenched teeth, her usually gentle voice so awe-inspiringly crabby that there was dead silence all the rest of the way back to the camp, apart from the occasional frightened sniffle from Emma and Cheryl in the back seat as they contemplated their uneasy future.
CHAPTER THREE
ANYA had a mildly thumping head when she arrived back at the regional reserve, and by the time she drove home the next afternoon it had developed into a full-blown tension headache.
She was just grateful that the decision of what to do with the chastened pair of miscreants had not fallen on her own shoulders. The two girls had produced copious amounts of penitent tears for a livid Cathy Marshall, who had raked them severely over the coals and segregated them out to do all the most boring, arduous and least-liked of the clean-up jobs rostered for the last day.
Seeing Cheryl scraping out the burnt-on muck of ten days of inexpert cooking from the camp oven and Emma mopping floors and grimacing over the application of a toilet brush had given Anya hope that their too-ready expressions of remorse might actually turn into a genuinely felt regret for their misdeeds.
But executing summary punishment hadn’t solved Cathy’s basic dilemma of whether to consider the offence a trivial one satisfactorily dealt with on-the-spot, as was her first impulse, or to put the girls on report to the headmistress when they returned to school, in recognition of the potential danger they had posed to themselves and to the Academy’s reputation.
Anya couldn’t blame her friend for wanting to avoid any official black mark against the camp, but did point out that once their initial fright wore off the girls were unlikely to refrain from boasting about their adventure. If it became common knowledge at the school, it would inevitably reach Miss Brinkman’s ears and she would want to know why she hadn’t been kept fully informed.
When she got on the bus back to Eastbrook, Cathy was still worrying about what to gloss over and what to emphasise in her written report, having reluctantly come to the conclusion that she couldn’t entirely leave it out.
‘I could probably get away with just using my discretionary judgement if it wasn’t for the fact that you found Cheryl with the boy, and you think there might have been some marijuana around,’ she sighed. ‘But don’t worry, nothing I say is going to reflect badly on you, Anya,’ she hastened to add. ‘You did the school a huge favour by helping out these last few days. It was just bad luck that those wretched girls took off when you were there by yourself. I’m going to tell Miss Brinkman you did exactly what I would have done in the same circumstances…’
Not quite. For Anya hadn’t gone into the full, gory details of her humiliating encounter with Scott Tyler. She had merely said that he had arrived after she had sent the girls out to the car, and that he had been angry and rude. She hadn’t wanted to add to Cathy’s anxieties by telling her of the personal hostility that had flared out of control during the confrontation, especially when her friend had instantly recognised the name of her protagonist.
‘Scott Tyler—the lawyer? The one who got that body-in-the-bag murderer—sorry, alleged murderer—off?’ Cathy was impressed enough to be momentarily diverted from her troubles. ‘Wow, I’ve seen him on the TV news—he’s one tough-looking dude. According to the papers he made absolute mincemeat of a watertight case to get that verdict. You definitely wouldn’t want to get on the wrong side of an argument with him!’
Tell me about it! Anya had thought. When they had finally got to bed she had tossed and turned sleeplessly for what had remained of the night, running and rerunning her mental videotape of the experience, thinking of how differently the scenario would have played if she hadn’t let herself be sidetracked by his angry assumptions, and inventing pithy replies to his insults that she wished she had been able to think of at the time.
In the cold light of day she could almost convince herself that it had been a simple case of overreaction on both sides. Once Scott Tyler’s temper had cooled and he was no longer hampered by fatigue he was bound to take a more reasonable view. Surely the cynical lawyer in him would soon conclude that Sean’s spiteful words had simply been a drunken attempt to save his own skin?
He might even be content to act as if the whole unfortunate incident had never occurred. Anya certainly would. In spite of her defiant departing words she would prefer not to have to raise the subject with him ever again.
It would be hard enough having to face him next time they met. Scott Tyler had seen her underwear, for God’s sake! The last time that had happened was on her twenty-first birthday, and the man involved had gone on to break her heart. Not a very happy precedent!
Her