Читать книгу Trust Too Much - Jayne Bauling - Страница 6

‘REMEMBER the lovely parties you used to organise for me when I was little?’ Fee Garland smiled affectionately at her stepsister. ‘But it’s not my birthday now, and I don’t know what else you think there is to celebrate. I haven’t exactly come home in a blaze of glory. Deepest disgrace is more like it.’

‘Don’t be so silly,’ Babs dismissed the rueful suggestion bracingly, but her sherry-coloured eyes were kind as she glanced up at Fee’s pale, sensitive face. ‘But if you’re worried about what people might say, let them think you’ve been retrenched. That always gets sympathy.’

But Fee shook her head, unwilling to let herself be misled on that score.

‘Don’t try to pretend the news hasn’t reached Hong Kong, Babs,’ she protested shakily, the array of flowers Babs had called her into the lounge to see blurring momentarily before she managed to blink back a rush of tears.

‘All right, I have to say that it has, but no one cares, Fee. Everyone here is on your side,’ Babs insisted loyally.

‘You are, anyway. You always have been,’ Fee acknowledged gratefully.

‘And you’re home, back where you belong. That’s reason enough to celebrate,’ Babs added determinedly, and Fee had to laugh at the resolution firming the piquant little face beneath a fringe of shiny, streaky hair.

‘Who have you invited?’ She gave in.

‘Oh, the usual crowd. I couldn’t remember who all your special friends had been—it’s nearly four years, after all—but I did seem to remember that you were once quite friendly with Warren Bates, so I’ve asked him and he has accepted. As for the rest—oh, masses of people from the old days as well as some new friends you won’t know yet.’

Sociable people, Babs and the man she had married had always had scores of friends, Fee recalled as she tried to visualise Warren Bates, the difficulty she experienced in doing so somewhat disconcerting since he had been her very first love.

But the attraction had foundered before anything remotely resembling a relationship could develop, so perhaps her inability to recall his features clearly wasn’t so surprising after all, her recollection of the man who had sunk that fragile first romance far more vivid.

‘Are your parties still so wild?’ she questioned Babs teasingly, her mind returning to present concerns. ‘Or has marriage turned you all sedate and sober? The people I knew in Australia were much more conventional than you and your crowd used to be. That’s why…’

As she hesitated self-consciously, Babs spoke emphatically. ‘Well, we’re all still as broad-minded as ever, so you can stop worrying about how people will react to your little adventure if that’s what’s troubling you.’

‘I’m not really worrying, I’m just not exactly looking forward to having a lot of people all looking at me and wondering what really happened. But they’ll just have to go on wondering because I don’t want to talk about it. I don’t have to, except that I’d like to tell you that nothing happened and I never did or said anything to make Mr Sheldon think the way he did, or nothing that I’m aware of, anyway.’

‘Of course you didn’t, darling Fee.’ The unquestioning acceptance was warming.

‘And if anyone as much as hints otherwise, just you refer him to me.’ Charles Sandilands had joined them in time to overhear and he stood in the doorway looking down at his hands and flexing his fingers thoughtfully.

‘And if it’s a woman, refer her to me,’ Babs adjured cheerfully. ‘But go and get changed, precious. People will start arriving any minute now, and there’s really nothing for you to do down here.’

‘Poor little thing,’ Fee heard Charles saying as she left the lounge. ‘The person I’d really like to get my hands on is Sheldon.’

‘The monster,’ Babs was agreeing. ‘An innocent like Fee!’

‘She has changed, though,’ Charles sounded a cautionary note. ‘I hardly recognised her when we met her at Kai Tak yesterday.’

‘Outwardly, but she’s still our little Fee,’ Babs insisted obstinately.

Combined irritation and amusement banished the threat of tears which had prompted Fee’s speedy departure. Everyone, including old friends who had rung up since her return to the hillside house overlooking Repulse Bay, kept calling her ‘little’, but Babs was the funniest, being six inches shorter than Fee’s five-feetten.

But Babs was five years older, and she had mothered Fee from the moment Jim Garland had brought her and her mother home to his three-year-old daughter, and through all the years afterwards when all they had had to depend on was each other, Jim usually away among his beloved mountains, Angela invariably out pursuing some new man.

Showering hastily, Fee let her mind drift back to Warren Bates, wondering how the teenage attraction between them might have developed if that vile man Simon Rhodes hadn’t interfered so unforgivably.

Then, inevitably, her thoughts returned to the situation she had left behind in Australia, with her name and photo all over the sleazier examples of the popular Press, Mrs Sheldon disillusioned, Miss Betancourt disappointed, and the famous Vance Sheldon himself in a towering rage, blaming her and some of his rivals equally for the way he was suddenly an object of derision all over the country, and ringing her up at intervals, alternately to vent his anger and to attempt to bully her into co-operating with his efforts to restore his previously respectable public image by returning to work just as if nothing had happened.

She hadn’t done anything wrong. Fee knew that most of the time, but the knowledge couldn’t alter the fact that people had been hurt just because she had been so gullible—so stupidly trusting. She too had been hurt, mostly in her self-confidence, because she had misread a situation, and she grieved over the loss of a job she had liked, but it was the way she shrank from public attention that had sent her fleeing for home, that shrinking a legacy from her teens when shyness and her height combined had made her physically awkward in company. She had learnt to move gracefully since, but she still hated attention, and the way the Press had pursued her had terrified her. Sometimes they had actually seemed to be baying, like some pack of wild animals, after her blood.

It took a physical effort to wrench her mind free of the echoes and concentrate on her reflection in the bedroom mirror. During the years away from Hong Kong, she had cultivated a softly sophisticated image, but as she knew only too well, and as Babs had obviously realised, it was only that, an image.

Always slim, the weight she had lost in recent weeks had left her willowy and over-slender now, with the shadowy hollows at her temples and beneath her cheekbones giving her a frighteningly fragile look. She just didn’t look tough enough, she reflected unhappily, and, with the way her fair skin inevitably betrayed her with blushes, how was she going to withstand everyone’s curiosity? But she looked composed enough now, her pallor pronounced, emphasising the natural flush of her sensitive lips while her eyes were always shadowy, their blue colour too dark to be identified from a distance, and her graceful black and white skirt worn with a simple sleeveless black top for this warm July night added to the subdued but subtly sophisticated effect. Only her long dark hair, with its tendency to unruly curls unless she wasted time trying to discipline it, provided a contrast.

Having been hearing sounds of people arriving for some time now, she went downstairs reluctantly, apprehension mounting as she reached the hallway and heard the rising swell of sound from the lounge, the noise reminding her a little of those reporters in Australia even though she knew that this wasn’t hostile.

And what was she going to do if everyone was as kind as Babs and Charles and the people who had phoned? Everyone had been so nice to her, and it just wasn’t doing her any good. She had come home quite instinctively when the pressure had become unbearable, thinking she would be tougher here, among people who had known her since childhood, but it wasn’t working. The support and sympathy she was receiving weakened instead of strengthened, and she was furious at finding herself frequently on the verge of tears in response.

‘Little Fee should be down in a minute,’ Babs was telling someone just inside the lounge.

‘Little Fee?’ At least there was one person who didn’t subscribe to general opinion, and Fee stiffened in shock, instantly recognising the sardonic drawl despite the years gone by since she had last heard it, and in no doubt that nothing complimentary was meant by the contradiction. ‘As I recall, she was always a great gangling girl, lurching around all over the place, tipping drinks over people and depositing herself in their laps. I wonder if that’s how she caught the great Vance Sheldon? It would need to have been something either original or extreme, with a high-flyer like that.’

‘Stop being so vile, Simon,’ Babs protested. ‘Obviously the man took advantage of the child.’

‘Child? She must be—how old?’

‘Twenty-two, but…’

Fee had turned and begun to creep back up the stairs, so she didn’t hear any more, but halfway up she halted and sat down although she was still in full view of anyone who might come out into the hallway. Resolve lifted her chin. She couldn’t allow what had happened in Australia to drive her back into the shell from which she had spent painful years struggling to emerge.

But Simon Rhodes! Somehow she had believed that he would have moved on, now that Babs and Charles and, presumably, most of the people who had made up their hedonistic social circle were all respectably married.

Because Simon wouldn’t be.

Of course, he and Charles had been friends, she recalled, her shock beginning to recede, and Charles had once been almost as enthusiastic a bachelor as Simon, but how could they have anything in common now? As it was, Simon had tended to become bored with people in general almost as quickly as he tired of the women with whom he involved himself, simply because he was so over-endowed with intelligence.

As for his girlfriends, Hong Kong must be teeming with his rejects by now unless he had changed quite dramatically, Fee reflected with an amusement she had never been able to feel back in the days when Simon Rhodes had always managed to embarrass her in one way or another.

She had detested him then, always uncomfortable in his presence and resenting him for it, although she knew her own inadequacies had been partly responsible for that, having been in her teens and recently grown too tall, too fast to have acquired any sort of grace. But Simon had played his part too, a man whose devastating charm and sophistication had made her feel charmless and gauche by contrast, and whose self-confidence and public success had awed her.

Even then, five or six years ago, Rhodes Properties had reputedly made him a millionaire, and a highly visible one, thanks to his energetic social habits. Rumoured to be a genius, and definitely clever, his womanising contradicted both rumour and fact since most of his short-lived romantic or sexual liaisons featured women of distinctly limited intellect, although some great female minds were also said to have succumbed to his undeniable charm.

He was also known to be temperamental, and Fee, who substituted selfish and superficial for all the more popular descriptions, had twice found herself on the receiving end of his temper, the first occasion being when he had rejected one woman in favour of another at one of Babs’ parties, the memory still capable of making her cringe. Fee needed to think a minute before recalling that the woman had been one Ismay Compton. Oh, she had been so naive, raging at him like that after overhearing his coolly ruthless rejection and witnessing Ismay’s tearful departure.

‘How can you be so brutal?’ she had stormed at him on emerging from the downstairs room in which they had installed the computer which, infuriatingly, Simon had helped her and Babs to choose after the latter had decided that Fee needed one at home in order to assist the commercial course she was taking at school and had somehow got the money out of Jim Garland. ‘Can’t you see she loves you, you horrible man?’

‘Quite possibly she does, but love doesn’t last, as you’ll find out for yourself, darling.’ Clearly hovering between amusement and the irritation that was making his eyes glitter, Simon had paused, examining her critically. ‘Although not from me, I’m afraid, if that’s what you’re hanging around in the hope of, as I find teeny-boppers a singularly unprepossessing species. But see me when you’ve grown up and acquired some looks and experience, and I might be prepared to reconsider.’

In those days, she had lacked the composure to correct his arrogant assumption, rage and embarrassment rendering her inarticulate, and she had followed Ismay’s example and fled.

Now a nervous little laugh escaped her as she recalled the other incident—that to which Simon Rhodes had been referring—but anger followed. She thought it had happened four years ago, about a year after she had attacked him over his rejection of Ismay Compton. There had been a barbecue but it had rained and everyone had gone inside—except for her and Warren Bates. The two of them had been looking shyly at each other at school for ages, and she had finally found the courage to invite him to the barbecue. They had been so tentative, nervous of each other but reluctant to become part of the crowd indoors, both jumping with embarrassment when their hands touched before deciding that they liked the feeling, linking their fingers, smiling self-consciously at each other.

It was at that precise moment that Simon had stepped out into the softly falling rain, probably bored by the company inside. He had looked at them, standing there holding hands, and then Fee had seen the icy anger gathering in his eyes.

‘You’re not part of the regular circuit, are you?’ he had addressed Warren contemptuously. ‘These parties are closed affairs.’

‘I invited him,’ Fee flared heatedly as Warren snatched his hand away, sulky and scarlet-faced.

‘And who invited you, darling?’ Simon retorted coolly. ‘This is an adult party.’

‘I happen to live here!’ She had been so angry that for once she’d been able to address him without any self-conscious stammering.

‘Which entitles you to what precisely?’ He had remained coldly angry.

‘Babs—’

‘Babs is broke as usual, so this isn’t her party. Charles Sandilands and I happen to be financing it, and we put a ban on gatecrashers and juveniles, so get rid of him and make yourself scarce.’

Then he had turned abruptly and gone inside again. Nothing Fee could say or do had succeeded in soothing Warren’s wounded pride, and he had departed without re-entering the house, leaving her to rejoin the adults defiantly, seething with fury as she met Simon’s eyes.

‘I thought I told you to make yourself scarce? Evidently love’s young dream is more amenable to taking a hint than you are,’ he suddenly commented with a slight edge to his voice, addressing her from a chair close to the table from which she had just helped herself to a glass of wine.

‘Hint? I hate you,’ she had muttered furiously. ‘Just because you’re in a bad mood about something—’

Fee had never been sure what had happened then. Rage was choking her and all her co-ordination seemed to desert her and as she tried to prevent the accident, too late because it had already happened and a startled Simon was drenched in wine, either she or the floor had tilted and she had ended up sprawling over him.

The subsequent explosion of temper had shocked everyone present, their laughter dying as Simon’s considerable sense of humour had deserted him for once, while Fee could only stand there stammering, dying of humiliation as he had expressed himself uninhibitedly on the subject of her clumsiness specifically and the presence of adolescents at adult parties in general.

Babs had eventually dragged her out of the room and comforted her, and after that day Fee had taken pains to remain hidden in her bedroom whenever he was around. That period hadn’t lasted long, though, as she had just passed her final exams, and the increasingly restless urge to discover the world beyond Hong Kong that had kept her and two schoolfriends diligently saving every dollar they earned over several years at their part-time jobs on supermarket tills had at least seen them heading for Australia.

Now she was home, and Simon Rhodes was still around, as insensitive as ever.

Fee stood up again and began to descend the stairs, suddenly eager to confront Simon and show him that she was no longer the gauche teenager of four years ago, bereft of any defiance against his contempt. What she had overheard had first embarrassed and then angered her, but now her anticipation was unexpectedly mixed with an odd pleasure. It was just ironic that his unsympathetic attitude should be giving her this sort of strength, when everyone else’s kindness had merely succeeded in weakening her.

To her satisfaction, Simon was standing just inside the lounge, close to the door, apparently listening to the breathless chatter of one of the loveliest women Fee had ever seen—only apparently, because his eyes, of a blue that was utterly different from the blue of hers, were roaming the room and lingering typically every time they came to rest on an attractive woman.

Fee felt a surge of sheer excitement as she observed him, like the exhilaration of an adrenalin-rush, but she knew it wasn’t really personal. Simon just had that effect on people generally. In his presence, women sparkled and men were on their mettle, upping the level of their conversation, becoming wittier and cleverer.

He was tall, probably over six feet, and preposterously handsome, exactly as she remembered him although he was in his thirties now and his lifestyle ought to be telling; but there were no signs of dissipation that she could see so far, only the same arrogant enjoyment just touched with a contradictory trace of boredom. Leanly built, he looked elegant but subtly powerful in his immaculate smart-casual clothes, and superbly healthy, skin as tanned and light hair as naturally sun-bleached as ever because, as Fee recalled, he played as enthusiastically as he worked, regularly disappearing to exotic and glamorous pleasure-spots all over the world, usually taking a woman along with him.

The beautifully shaped head turned as if he had sensed her approach and for a second his glance was alert yet simultaneously indifferent, and she remembered how ruthless he could be in his dismissal of people, both men and women, who failed to interest him.

‘May I lurch past you, please?’ she requested limpidly, with a smile for his companion.

‘Fee.’ As recognition lit those bright, warm blue eyes, it was as if all his natural vitality blazed up into full life, touching all those around him, and yet seconds later his expression was hardening, eyes narrowing in cynical appraisal. ‘And look at you, all grown up and home from the wars.’

‘The lynch mob is more like it. How are you, Simon? Don’t worry, I’m quite safe without a drink.’ She showed him her empty hands and gave the woman beside him another smile. ‘Hello, I don’t think I know you, do I?’

‘You heard,’ Simon realised softly, the cynical look vanishing and his slow smile of wicked enjoyment revealing perfectly white and even teeth. ‘And you’re cross with me, but I refuse to apologise as eavesdroppers only ever hear the truth and you were a physical threat to everyone in your vicinity—although, looking at you now and guessing where the glamour comes from, I think that these days I might find one of the collisions in which you specialised somewhat more exciting than I did back then.’

Then, without giving her time to react, he introduced her and Loren Kincaid to each other. A few years older than Fee, Loren was small but exquisitely endowed with perfectly proportioned curves, as well as a shining cap of jet-black hair and huge violet eyes. She had been looking insecure, Fee had noticed, a familiar state among Simon’s women when his gaze started travelling, but now her rosebud mouth relaxed into a genuinely friendly smile, presumably because she had decided that Fee wasn’t to be regarded as a rival for this glamorous, gorgeous but incorrigibly restless man.

‘This party is to welcome you home, isn’t it? I think you did the right thing, Fee, coming back,’ Loren assured her with earnest goodwill. ‘You’ll feel safe here.’

‘Why in the world should she want to feel safe?’ Simon expressed exaggerated astonishment, his gaze probing as it swivelled to Fee. ‘It did occur to me that your stepsister might have a point when she was loyally insisting that you’d been taken advantage of, but that was while I was still visualising the old Fee. Now that I see you, I refuse to believe it. Quite clearly you’ve learnt to take care of yourself and are safe anywhere. Congratulations. You had your fun, pulling one of Australia’s top financiers and then leaving him looking a total prat into the bargain. I imagine you’ve come home to celebrate.’

‘I didn’t pull—’ Fee stopped herself, realising that she was about to sound like the gauche eighteen-year-old she had been when last she had seen him, because that was how he had momentarily made her feel again. ‘I know you’ve never minded it, Simon, but not everyone enjoys seeing their name all over the newspapers, and having lies written about them, and reporters in the garden shouting questions at them every time they open the door to try and go out and buy milk.’

He shrugged indolently. ‘No, I’ve never minded, since just about everything written about me is true. I’ve never had anything to hide.’

‘Or be ashamed of?’ Fee prompted drily.

‘You’re not ashamed of what you did, are you?’ Simon laughed. ‘Don’t be—’

‘I didn’t do anything,’ she interrupted, eyes blazing as she realised that, probably alone among the people here tonight, he believed that she had been as actively responsible as Vance Sheldon for the scandal that had entertained all Australia in recent weeks. ‘Thanks, Loren, I know I’ll be safe here. Excuse me, please, I’d better go and say hello to everyone, especially since this party is supposed to be for me.’

Simon laughed and said something in a low voice to Loren as she left them, trying to make her movements slow and even as it was haste and hesitation which had caused the physical disasters of her teens. The trouble was that somehow Simon had made her feel like a teenager again, all hot and bothered, and yet angry too, especially now that she kept catching him watching her with idly speculative interest as she moved around the room, renewing her acquaintance with old friends and being introduced to strangers.

But at least he hadn’t been kind!

As she had feared, everyone else was very kind, the more tactful pretending that there was nothing out of the ordinary about her homecoming, a few embarrassing her by referring openly to what had happened, and all firmly convinced of her innocence.

It made Simon Rhodes unique. Everyone else still saw her as the child she had been when she had left Hong Kong, Fee realised ruefully, although she wasn’t sure she found Simon’s view of her any more flattering.

At least Warren Bates ought to see her as an adult, having once been romantically interested in her, she reflected wryly, finally placing the young man who was approaching her now, and perhaps as the sort of adult she really was, without making any of Simon’s cynical and gratuitous assumptions.

Once Warren had seemed the most beautiful male creature in the world, and the green eyes with their thick fringe of black lashes still stirred her, but his personality seemed mediocre and somewhat repressed now. He spoke in polite platitudes, only becoming human when he mentioned Simon.

‘I saw you speaking to him when you came in. The man is a swine. I didn’t know he’d be here.’ His tone implied that he wouldn’t have come had he done so.

‘Oh, he and Charles are old friends. Their circle doesn’t seem to have changed much over the years, even if marriage has given most of the women new surnames,’ Fee laughed. ‘That redhead over there used to be Ismay Compton, for instance. She must have got over Simon if she can bear to be here. You have to give him credit for managing to stay friends with most of his ex-girlfriends.’

‘You seem very interested in him.’ Warren sounded resentfully suspicious and, remembering how Simon had once treated him, Fee was contrite.

‘Never mind Simon, tell me what you’ve been doing all these years…Only give me a minute first, please? I think Charles and Babs have forgotten to put any soft drinks out and I’m still too dehydrated from the flight yesterday to risk alcohol. Don’t go away.’

To Fee’s surprise, Loren Kincaid followed her into the kitchen.

‘You mustn’t mind Simon being so nasty to you,’ she told her kindly, examining the drinks Fee was extracting from the fridge and finding nothing of interest. ‘It’s just his way.’

‘Oh, I’m used to him,’ Fee assured her, touched.

‘I’m sure he knows you’re an innocent victim, really. Everyone who knows you says so, and it’s obvious from the newspaper stories—even to me, and Simon says I’m an airhead. But I’d better get back to him.’ She laughed bravely. ‘There are too many attractive women around for my liking. He really is awful!’

And in the end Loren would get hurt, just like all the others, Fee reflected drily. Simon was impossible.

Carefully, she carried a tray laden with a variety of non-alcoholic drinks into the large, elegantly furnished lounge and put it down, helping herself to a glass of mineral water as Warren Bates rejoined her. Suddenly she felt tired, and a little depressed, and she glanced longingly out towards the patio beyond the sliding glass doors which stood open.

‘I don’t think I’m really a party animal,’ she confided. ‘Let’s go outside for a minute, and you can tell me all your news. Or are you with someone?’

He wasn’t, so they sat on the stairs leading down to the swimming-pool, talking about simple things that didn’t hurt, and Fee found herself telling him how the house still belonged to her father.

‘It seemed practical for Charles to move in when he and Babs married because they’ll be going to England once his stint in charge of his father’s factories here is up. He used to tell people he was the modern equivalent of a remittance man—’

She broke off, hearing someone else behind them.

‘This isn’t very sociable of you, Fee,’ Simon Rhodes said mockingly. ‘Especially when you’re the guest of honour. Or do you intend to renew your acquaintance with each of us separately? You never much liked crowds, I remember. In that case, your time is up, Bates, and it’s my turn.’

His tone held an undercurrent that was obscurely significant, and Warren glared at him as he stood up, but he wasn’t old enough or sufficiently sure of himself to accept it as a challenge. Fee felt vaguely disappointed in him. She had learnt to fight back, however unsure of herself she might feel inwardly, so why hadn’t Warren?

But simple kindness and the sensitive awareness that any reference to his previous encounter with Simon Rhodes would discomfit him dictated that she wait until he had departed, muttering, before saying tartly, ‘Talk about déjà vu! What have you got against him?’

One of the strangest things about Simon was the way his presence made people feel more alive, she reflected, her tiredness vanishing as he took Warren’s place beside her. He seemed to radiate a kind of energy that affected everyone around him. It was a visible thing, a vibrant blaze that came from within, probably merely a manifestation of his sheer vitality, and highly unfair, because it should have been a sign of great goodness or spirituality, and there was nothing remotely saintly or inspiring about him.

‘Renewing an old acquaintance, or resuming a relationship, Fee?’ Simon settled himself comfortably.

‘There wasn’t any relationship to renew,’ she retorted resentfully. ‘Thanks to you.’

‘And you’re wondering what you missed out on?’ he guessed wickedly. ‘I suppose his youth is what appeals to you after that old man you were involved with in Australia.’

Fee gave him a furious look as the soft light streaming from the house above them showed her that he was only half joking.

‘I suppose it’s inevitable that you should think like that, given your own history, but I think I’m a little more discriminating than you are, Simon,’ she snapped.

‘Where Bates is concerned? Or Sheldon?’ Simon returned mockingly, his lips quirking as he cast her a quick, curious glance. ‘I’m intrigued. Do you really prefer old men, sweetheart, or is it some power game you’re playing, with the final denunciation written into the play before it even gets underway?’

Fee knew he was a cynic, but it was still disconcerting to realise he could believe such things of her.

‘There was nothing between me and Mr Sheldon,’ she insisted tightly.

‘Oh, come on, darling. You were in that hotel room together, weren’t you?’ Simon laughed. ‘All right, it was probably going too far to suspect someone like you of deliberately setting the guy up—not that it doesn’t sound as if he richly deserved it—but why are you so defensive about it all?’

‘You actually think it’s funny, don’t you?’ Fee realised furiously. ‘Why aren’t you disgusted?’

‘Why the hell should I be?’ Simon laughed. ‘You’ve obviously benefited from the experience, and we all have to sow a few wild oats, if I may be utterly trite.’

‘They’re hardly still wild oats at your age,’ she retaliated, grasping eagerly at the chance to change the subject.

‘I’m not quite ready for a retirement resort yet. Thirty-three,’ he drawled lazily.

‘As I said, at your age,’ Fee emphasised sweetly, and added, ‘Loren is nice.’

‘Beautiful,’ Simon agreed, infuriatingly relaxed. ‘But none too bright.’

‘Bright enough to have noticed your roving eye,’ she asserted waspishly.

‘I’m not in any need of advice about my love life, thanks, Fee.’ Abruptly there was a slight but audible edge to his voice, cool and sharp.

‘What has love got to do with it?’ she wondered innocently.

‘Everything. I love women.’

The statement, so outrageous and so simple, silenced Fee for several seconds. It was the absolute, unadorned truth, she realised, and any further explanation of his playboy habits would be superfluous. Simon loved women, so much that he was incapable of loving just one for any length of time, if in fact he ever actually loved them as individuals.

‘You never used to state the obvious,’ she taunted softly.

‘You seemed in some doubt,’ Simon countered derisively. ‘But as I’ve said, it’s your love life that intrigues me right now. Tell me about Sheldon. Were you his personal assistant?’

‘I hadn’t risen quite that high yet. I was assistant to his real assistant, but the position was supposed to lead to promotion eventually.’

Her bright, tender mouth drooped as she recalled the trouble Miss Betancourt had taken, grooming her to be her replacement when she retired in a few years’ time. All for nothing—

‘You must have counted it worth sacrificing since you were prepared to incur Sheldon’s anger by making the thing public knowledge,’ Simon cut into her reflections unsympathetically.

She hadn’t had any choice, unless she had been prepared to let Vance Sheldon rape her, since the Press, so much more cynically suspicious than she, had been on the spot, ready and waiting, eager for drama.

She flung Simon an angrily resentful look as she picked up her glass from beside her on the step and took a sip of mineral water.

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she stated tautly. ‘As everyone knows, he fired me or I resigned, depending on which version of the story you believe, so I’ve got more important things to think about, like finding myself another job, and somewhere to live, and a car.’

‘Here in Hong Kong?’ he probed.

‘I think so, yes.’ She couldn’t face going back, although she wasn’t about to reveal her vulnerability by admitting it. ‘Hong Kong is my home. I belong here.’

Simon sent her a glance sparkling with mockery. ‘And you’ll be able to behave as badly as you like within a circle where no one will judge you and make a scandal of it as they seem to have done in Australia, since we all behaved equally badly most of the time. It’s just strange, or perhaps ironic, that you had to go away to become one of us. I like the change, but what happened to the old Fee? Is there any of her left there inside the sophisticated packaging?’

‘There’s hardly likely to be, is there? I’m twenty-two, but on her behalf, since she could never stand up for herself or answer back…Yes, you do all behave badly, especially at these parties, I remember, so why shouldn’t I?’ As she spoke, Fee stood up, still holding her glass, looking down into it for a moment before pouring the remainder of its contents into his lap. ‘Last time was an accident, Simon. This was deliberate, in case you’re in any doubt. Sorry it had to be in the region of both your intellect and your emotions.’

Simon swore, following it with such absolute silence that she couldn’t resist the temptation to look back as she gained the patio. His shoulders shook, and then she heard his laughter.

‘Oh, you were right, you truly do belong here.’ His amused voice drifted up to her. ‘You’re one of our own. Welcome home, Fee.’

Fleetingly, it gave rise to apprehension which subsided when he made no move to detain her.

She hadn’t felt this good in weeks, Fee realised. The only disconcerting thing about it was that it should be Simon Rhodes, of all people, who had revived her fighting spirit.