Mistresses: Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds. Sandra Marton
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her diversion had worked on one level. ‘I saw him from my window, splashing and yelling. Dad told him to stop whining for help, that he had two choices: sink or swim. So he swam to the boardwalk and Dad hauled him out.’
‘Goodness!’ Hazel covered her mouth, and Regan couldn’t decide whether she was concealing a gasp of horror or a smile.
‘Serves the young fool right!’ pronounced Sir Frank.
‘But he could have drowned!’ Regan thought she was the only one showing any compassion. ‘Particularly in his state.’
‘You mean drunk,’ said Joshua.
‘Why didn’t you help him straight away?’ Regan chastised, her eyes flashing. ‘Instead of standing there taunting him.’
‘Because I believe in tough love,’ he said laconically. ‘He’d got himself into a jam and there was no reason he shouldn’t at least try to get himself out of it. Besides…I didn’t want to risk ruining my clothes,’ he drawled with a baiting smile. ‘I was wearing some recently acquired items of great sentimental value.’
‘It was OK, really—Uncle Chris used to be a champion swimmer at his school,’ offered Ryan, torn between his natural loyalty and the delightful novelty of seeing his father being sternly lectured on behaviour by a slip of a woman. ‘And Dad did throw him a lifebelt from the dock.’
‘How kind of you,’ Regan bit out at the mocking face across the table, fuming over the veiled reference to his cufflinks. Whatever sentiments he attached to them, she knew they wouldn’t be the tender ones that he was implying!
‘I was aiming for his head,’ he said succinctly, and suddenly she couldn’t help the quiver of a smile escaping her control. She chewed it off her lips, totally bewildered by her reaction. How could he make her feel like laughing when she was so angry with him?
‘I wonder what’s keeping Carolyn? She did know you were coming, didn’t she, Joshua?’ interrupted Hazel, squinting at the exquisite diamond watch whose face was a trifle too dainty for her aging eyes.
‘I don’t think I specified an exact time. I know she was planning on going yachting with the Watsons this afternoon, but I’m afraid some work has come up…’
‘On a Saturday?’
‘Money never sleeps, Hazel,’ Sir Frank trotted out. ‘Wade can’t afford to be out of touch with what the market’s doing. You can use the library again if you need it, Joshua.’
‘Thanks, but I have everything back on-line at the condo again—thanks to Ryan’s genius for electronics. If I get time I might even call in and see how things are going in the sales office.’
Hazel was looking unimpressed. ‘Oh, dear, Carolyn will be disappointed.’
‘Maybe she’ll change her mind about going sailing once she sees how windy it is,’ said Regan. She would have thought that the last thing anyone suffering from the nausea of early pregnancy would enjoy would be a ride on a rocking boat. How far along was she? Three months? Four? Obviously not long enough for her body to have stabilised to the added flow of hormones raging through her increased volume of blood.
‘No, she won’t—the girl loves a good blow! Got a great pair of sea legs,’ beamed Sir Frank.
‘I wonder if I ought to go and wake her?’ Hazel was pondering dubiously. She had quietly divulged to Regan over last evening’s sherry that Carolyn had been unpredictable in her moods of late, and extremely touchy about her privacy. From which Regan had deduced that she was disappointed that her daughter’s daughter, whom she had brought up from babyhood after her parents were killed in a plane crash, was not co-operating wholeheartedly on the home front.
‘I suppose it’s all part of her growing up and preparing to move out into her own separate life, but it makes it a bit difficult when I’m trying to work out what she wants for the wedding,’ she had admitted. ‘She’s so inconsistent—one minute she’s madly enthusiastic; the next minute she’s yawning with boredom. One day she seems happy; the next everything’s a tragedy. Perhaps it’ll be good for her to have another young woman in the house who can relate to something of what she’s going through…’
‘Would you like me to nip up and see if she’s up and about—and let her know that Joshua’s here?’ asked Regan now.
‘Not if you haven’t finished your own breakfast, dear,’ demurred Hazel.
‘But I have.’ She smiled, pushing back from the table and trying not to look too eager to escape. ‘I don’t usually have a great appetite in the mornings—’
‘You save it all up for the evenings?’ murmured Joshua, rising to his feet in unison with his son as she stood up. Whatever else kind of father he was, he had made the effort to teach his offspring old-fashioned manners. The top of Ryan’s dirty-blond head only reached Joshua’s eyes, but he was obviously still growing, and Regan guessed that one day he would be even taller than his father. There also seemed to be a mutual respect and easy affection between them that spoke volumes about their relationship.
‘Well, it was nice meeting you again, Ryan,’ she said, concentrating on the safer of the two. ‘Good luck with your exams.’
‘Luck should have nothing to do with it,’ his father answered for him. ‘But don’t make it sound as if you’re saying goodbye, Regan. Didn’t anyone tell you that the condominium I’m living in at Palm Court is the one I bought as my personal investment in the project?’ He paused a moment to let her sense the axe that was hovering over her head. ‘And my visit here is proving so…fruitful and enlightening…that I’ve decided to stay on at the condo while Frank and I sort out the fine print on our deal. I can commute down to Auckland whenever I need to touch personal base with my staff, and Ryan’s school holidays start in another week, so he only has to commute daily until his exams are over, then he has two weeks of freedom.’
Weeks! Regan’s face paled slightly above the cherry-red dress as fresh panic fluttered in her chest. She had thought that it was only the weekend she would have to endure. Joshua lurking around for two days taunting her with his veiled threats and stalking suspicions was bad enough, but now he was talking about weeks of having to cope with him breathing down her neck, monitoring her behaviour and possibly thwarting her attempts to put her plan into action. Not to mention arousing forbidden desires!
‘Dad says I can fly down and back in the company helicopter every day,’ Ryan informed her.
‘Won’t that be rather expensive?’ she said faintly.
‘Perhaps, but I can afford it,’ said Joshua. ‘I look after my own, and I don’t consider it extravagant when you consider what I’m getting in return.’
‘And what would that be?’ she braved.
‘Peace of mind.’
‘And of course you’ll be able to spend much more time with Carolyn,’ chirped Hazel.
‘There is that,’ Joshua replied gravely.
‘I’ll just go and see what’s keeping her,’ said Regan, and fled.
I look after my own.
Regan wasn’t one of his own. She was an outsider, a threat to his established order, and it seemed he was preparedto go to any lengths to neutralise her as a possible source of trouble.
There was no answer to her brisk tap on the door, but when she tentatively poked her head into the bedroom she found Carolyn lying on her back in bed, wide awake. She had propped herself up on her elbows as the door opened.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ she said, letting herself collapse back against the heap of pillows.
‘Your grandmother just wondered if you were coming down to breakfast,’ said Regan, taking that as an invitation to enter. The bedroom was twice as big as her own, with a prime view over the lake from the