Читать книгу Black Ice - Sandy Curtis - Страница 10

Philip Weyburn closed down the computer program with a sigh. How his father had managed to keep his embezzlement from being found out was beyond him. If Daniel Brand had come to Australia and demanded a copy of the company's records before this, Jim Weyburn's theft would have been discovered.

Gazing down at the photo of his mother in the gilt-edged frame standing on his father's desk, Philip was conscious of the terrible legacy his father had left him. His mother's mental health was precarious, had been for some years, with mood swings and depression that had almost destroyed his parents' marriage. But she had been a loving parent in his youth and he was determined to protect her from the scandal that would eventuate if his father's crime was revealed.

Once his father's half of the company's shares had been transferred to him, Philip would have as much control as Daniel Brand, but in the meantime -

'Is there anything I can help you with, Philip?' The low voice from the doorway spun him around in the chair. Stella Quinlan's statuesque body moved with a relaxed grace that belied her usually controlled demeanour as she walked over to his desk. She was smiling with a warmth that didn't really reach her eyes, and he felt a prickling between his shoulder blades. She was his age, but he had the feeling she was light years ahead of him in areas he hadn't explored until now.

Philip cursed his previous reluctance to learn more about the financial management side of the company. He'd always enjoyed the more practical side of construction, and he excelled at it, never gaining the same satisfaction from the necessary, but to him, boring investment and finance strategies that his father had handled. Over the last couple of years, his father had turned more to Stella for assistance, and now Philip found himself wondering if she knew about the embezzlement.

He scrutinised her face, the perfect though understated makeup, the dark expressionless eyes he'd always felt hid an inner insolence. She reminded him of a shark - cold, calculating, ready to close in for the kill. He was determined not to give her that chance. For the time being he needed her, but soon she would have to be removed.

The prospect gave him a great deal of pleasure.

'I'm sure your father would have wanted me to assist you in any way possible.'

If it was in Stella's nature to purr, Philip suspected she would have done so. Since his father's death, Stella's polite business-like attitude towards him had warmed considerably, but he couldn't bring himself to reciprocate. There'd been an easy intimacy between Jim Weyburn and his private secretary that had always made Philip feel excluded, and he viewed her changed behaviour with suspicion. Perhaps she felt her job was now in jeopardy …

'Have you confirmed Mr Brand will be available to pick you up at the airport?'

'We didn't discuss it. Apparently Daniel was involved in a hit-and-run accident yesterday.'

She inclined her head in surprise, her chin-length blonde hair forming a smooth halo around her face. 'As the victim or the driver?'

'The victim.'

'And do they know who the driver was?'

Philip shook his head. 'No. But Daniel's seeing the police today. Perhaps they'll have more information for him then.'

A slight movement of her shoulders dismissed Stella's interest in the topic. 'Would you like me to clear out your father's desk for you? It has been almost two weeks …'

'I know!' Philip fought the impatience that gripped him. He wondered whether Stella realised just how much her officious manner irritated him. She was good at her job, he had to admit that, and he'd wondered more than once why she'd taken on a secretarial position when she had a degree in business management. She was a smart bitch, all right. Pity her personality didn't match.

He looked down at the large mahogany desk, at the drawers he knew would be cluttered with the numerous pieces of seemingly irrelevant paper his father had kept for years, and sighed. 'I'll bring in some boxes tomorrow. Then I can take it all home and sort through it when I have time.'

Stella smiled her mouth-only smile, but her dark eyes gleamed with satisfaction.

'It's … it's Catelyn.' Kirri traced the face of the child in the photo with a gentle finger.

'No. It's my mother.'

She looked up at Daniel, shaking her head in stunned disbelief. Then she focussed again on the photo. Focussed on the small black-haired child dressed in fringed white trousers and tunic. Except for the straight hair pulled into a plait, the child in the photo was the image of her daughter.

'She's Native American,' she whispered.

'Her mother, my grandmother, is Native American.'

Kirri fought back tears. 'I looked … at every man who came into my art gallery in Cairns and here at Noosa. Catelyn doesn't look like me, except for the curls, so I assumed she must look like her father. I never suspected …' She shook her head. 'You don't look like your mother.'

'I take after my father. We're very similar.' He showed her the other photo he carried in his wallet, and she nodded her agreement. Similar in more than looks, Daniel thought, acknowledging the constancy of his love for her. His whole body was aching, not just from the bruising inflicted on it the day before, but with intense need. The need to take Kirri's slender body in his arms and offer her comfort. To run his fingers through her tumbling cloud of red hair and draw her face to his and kiss away the distress etched on the paleness of her skin.

To love her as he had before.

But things were different between them now. He was changed - harder, tougher, with responsibilities that weighed him down. And Kirri was changed, too. There was a wariness in her that hadn't been there before. And she didn't remember him at all!

Or did she?

'Kirri, how did you know to paint Catelyn in an outfit so much like my mother's if you have no memory of your time in New Orleans? And the painting of the cottage? That was in New Orleans as well.'

'I have no idea.' Kirri rubbed at her head with one hand, but she still clutched the photo with the other. 'Everything about that time is just a black hole. But sometimes … something … like the smell of honeysuckle …' she looked up at Daniel, imploring him to understand, 'it must trigger a chord, and I paint whatever the picture is that forms in my mind. But I have no idea where it is or what it relates to. Catelyn's painting was formed in my mind when I woke up one morning.'

She looked down at the photo, at the sombre, unsmiling child standing defiantly, staring at the camera. 'Did you show this photo to me in New Orleans?'

Daniel nodded. 'Yes. My grandmother told me my mother hated having her photograph taken, and it showed there. Apparently she was a very determined young child.'

'Like Catelyn.' Kirri touched the photo again, wishing, hoping, trying to make some connection to the weeks she had lost. 'Will your mother be pleased to know she has a grand-daughter?'

'My mother died when I was three years old. But I'm sure she would have loved our daughter.'

Our daughter!

Kirri froze. Catelyn had been hers, and hers alone, not only since birth, but from those first faint flutterings of life in a stomach that was still remarkably flat, and a body still healing from the trauma it had endured. She wasn't sure she was prepared to share her with Daniel Brand.

Panic gripped her. For a long time she'd wanted to know who was the father of her child, but now that she did she was afraid. She'd heard of many cases where one parent would fight the other for custody simply out of spite. Nothing would make her give up her daughter. She looked at Daniel, defiance tightening her mouth.

But as she saw the shadows of pain on the face of the man standing before her, her resolve melted in a flood of compassion. He had lost his mother, his father, and, according to what he had told her, he had lost her, the woman he loved. How could she deny him his daughter?

'Daniel, why didn't we take precautions? I know I wasn't a virgin, but I didn't sleep around either. And I never had unsafe sex.'

'A condom broke. Two days before your period was due. You assured me you were always regular and there was nothing to worry about.'

'So obviously I believed you were disease free.'

A slow smile transformed Daniel's face. 'You said you knew you could trust me.'

'Except to keep your fertile sperm to yourself, obviously.' Kirri made an exasperated sound, and saw the smile on Daniel's face deepen into a grin. It melted her bones, the sight of this big, serious-looking man grinning like a schoolboy who'd been handed a wonderful treat.

Suddenly she was at a loss to know what to do next. She handed back the photo, watched Daniel's strong fingers slip it gently back into his wallet.

'Well, where do we go from here?'

'I guess you have more questions you need answers to.'

Kirri shook her head. 'I don't think I can cope with any more information right now.'

Daniel reached out and gently took her hand, a light touch that showed her he was aware just how fragile her emotions were at the moment. 'There's something I need to know.'

Her skin grew warm from the contact with his, and her body reacted before she could prevent it, leaning closer. 'Yes?' The word came out almost as a whisper.

'Why did you think you may have been raped?'

Kirri withdrew her hand and walked out onto the verandah. She gazed down at the sparkling waters of the bay, then closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, drawing in the scent of the ocean and the tang of the eucalyptus leaves. Her mind registered green, slivered with a sharp clear blue. It was a strange talent, this ability to smell and taste in colours. It heightened her awareness of everything around her. Most of the time it was so subliminal she forgot she was doing it. Sometimes she used it as a shield to protect herself from other sensations or thoughts that were too unpleasant to cope with.

Suddenly another scent invaded her nostrils. A woodsy aroma, deep rich brown and emerald green. A scent that made her pulse beat faster. She didn't have to open her eyes to know it was Daniel, and she suddenly realised that she had been denying his scent, afraid to acknowledge the colours it conjured up.

He had walked up so closely to her that there was barely a hand's span between them. Kirri took a step back, saw the disappointment in his eyes.

'When I learned I was pregnant, J.D. flew over to New Orleans to see if he could track down the … the… To find out who I might have been seeing. He didn't learn much, except from the desk clerk where I stayed who said I had gone out with a tall man whose accent wasn't local.'

'So why would that lead you to think you'd been raped?'

Kirri closed her eyes, recalling her step-brother's tired strained face as he'd told her. 'Apparently, according to the receptionist where I stayed, when I checked out that afternoon I was visibly upset and in a terrible hurry.'

'You were upset for me. You knew how close I was to Dad.'

'The receptionist … wondered if I was running away from the man I had been seeing. J.D. didn't want to tell me that, but he said if ever I met the man who'd … shared my bed … I needed to know so I wouldn't be taken in if he … came back into my life. I also had tests to see if I'd contracted an STD. I must have had unprotected sex, after all I was pregnant, so I worried that I could have caught something.'

Daniel said nothing. He knew the results would have been negative, but the full impact of what Kirri had gone through finally hit him. And so did a massive load of guilt that she had had to go through that trauma on her own.

'Did your family stand by you?'

Kirri nodded. 'Mum went over to the States to be with me in hospital, then flew home with me.' Her fingers clenched into fists as she recalled the long days and nights of pain and her mother's patient encouragement. The memories overwhelmed her and she shook her head to clear them away.

She looked up to see Daniel watching her, his face a mirror of the pain she was feeling. 'Daniel, I'm sorry, I have to go. I need time to think.'

He nodded, but his hands lifted as though to detain her. 'Let me help you, Kirri. We can work through this together.'

Together. For two years she had been alone. Long days and even longer nights with nothing but questions and a deep aching need to know. And now she did, she would have to face the consequences of that knowledge.

She shook her head. 'You're a stranger to me, Daniel. I … I don't know you.'

Her words were a knife wound to Daniel's heart. The gulf that stretched between them seemed to widen. In desperation Daniel closed the physical gap and took her into his arms.

And kissed her.

The colours in Kirri's brain spun gently to a halt as Daniel's lips left hers, but if his arms hadn't held her up she was sure she would have fallen to the floor.

'It can't be …' she gasped.

Daniel nodded in contradiction. 'Synaesthesia,' he said, 'You taste and smell in colours. You told me about it. How a small number of people have a mixed up sense of the world because their sight, hearing and sense of smell and taste are not processed separately by the brain.' His golden-brown eyes bore into hers, willing her to acknowledge what he said. 'You told me that some musical composers claim to be able to hear in colours or smell sounds.'

Then he confirmed what she was trying to deny to herself.

'And you also told me that you had always vowed you would marry a man who tasted like rainbows.'