Sandra Marton - Mistresses - Bound with Gold / Bought with Emeralds

At sixty-six, Sir Frank complained that he was too young to stagnate, but even when he had handed responsibility for Harriman Developments over to Carolyn’s new husband and retired to the family property adjoining the Palm Cove marina, Regan suspected he wouldn’t be idle. He would just nose around until he found something else to engage his restless energies.

‘Not quite over,’ Regan said. ‘I don’t know how much help I’m going to be—I’ve never organised a big wedding before.’ She and Michael had been married in a register office.

He waved a dismissive hand. ‘Hazel knows what has to be done; she just needs a sympathetic someone to do all the running around until she’s fit on her feet again. And you’re a relative—she knows you, so she can’t complain I’m foisting a total stranger on her…’

‘Only a very distant relative. I still think you should have warned her I was coming,’ said Regan uneasily. ‘She might have rather have help from someone closer in the family—’

Sir Frank shuddered. ‘The last thing she wants is any of that bossy lot moving in for the duration—they’d try to take over and ruin it for Hazel. No children of her own left to fuss over, y’see, and Carolyn’s her only grandchild, so this’ll be the last wedding she gets to play an important part in…I just want to make sure she doesn’t overdo it.’

Regan could feel his frown fill the car. ‘At her age a sprained ankle and broken wrist are nothing to be sneezed at,’ he added darkly. ‘She’s lucky she didn’t break her neck rolling down that hill. Old ladies’ bones can snap like dry twigs, you know—I asked my doctor about it.’

Browbeat it out of him, more like.

Knowing that Hazel Harriman was only two years older than Sir Frank—who would howl if anyone called him an old man—Regan bit her tongue. She suspected that the crusty bachelor carried a torch for his elder brother’s widow, and by dragooning Regan into helping with the runup to Carolyn’s wedding—now a bare month away—he hoped to bask in her good graces.

‘I told her she should use a golf cart instead of trudging up and down all those gullies,’ he grumped. ‘Trouble is, she’s too damned thrifty to rent one, no matter that John left her as rich as Croesus! Well, I shall just have to buy her one myself, that’s all. I could get it done up in snazzy colours…maybe with her name painted on it. D’you think she’d like that?’

Regan had only met Hazel Harriman twice, but had recognised her at first sight as a lady of countrified elegance and good breeding. ‘Uh, I think something a little more discreet might be preferable, Sir Frank,’ she advised.

‘I know you insisted it be Sir Frank at head office, but you don’t have to “Sir” me everywhere else, too.’ He tripped off on another tangent. ‘Your mother would turn in her grave to hear you calling me by a silly title…’

Regan swallowed a chuckle ‘My mother’s not dead,’ she pointed out.

She took another well-signposted fork at the top of a hill which gave her a temporary view of both sides of the peninsula. The gentle north-facing slopes were crowded with modern houses, motels and holiday homes leading down to flat, white sandy beaches lapped by a clear blue-green sea, while on the less fashionable southerly side the housing was more old-fashioned and rocky cliffs descended to small, pebbly inlets and the deep natural harbour where fishermen and yachties moored their boats.

‘Might as well be!’ Sir Frank replied with his customary contempt for tact. ‘Buried in that compound with all those religious loonies. Never did hold with cults. Look what they brainwashed Joanne into doing—abandoning her only child and emigrating to the middle of the Australian desert!’

‘It was hardly abandonment; I was eighteen,’ said Regan. If anything, it had been a relief to wave goodbye to her mother at the airport. Joanne Baker had grown ever more narrow-minded and unpleasant to live with in the years following her husband’s death, especially when her daughter had refused to embrace her apocalyptic beliefs.

Her companion hurrumphed. ‘She should have at least made sure you were settled in at university—and kept in touch.’

‘She did write to you about me before she left,’ Regan felt constrained to remind him.

At first she had been horribly embarrassed that her mother had taken advantage of such a tenuous connection. The Harrimans were only very distant cousins of her mother, and Regan had been taken aback when she had received a letter from Sir Frank expressing interest in her plans for a law degree and offering her work in Harriman Developments’ legal department during the holiday breaks in her course. The job would pay for her law school costs, accommodation fees for the university hostel, and allow her to save a little.

‘Good thing she did, too—because you never would have looked us up, would you? You need to be brash to get on in this world. Like that husband of yours! Michael wasn’t slow about approaching me for a job—very up-front about it, he was…telling me that he wanted to be able to afford to make a good home for his wife and family.’

‘Yes, I know.’ Regan couldn’t help the clipped tone of her voice.

She had been careful never to act like an encroaching poor relation, but soon after they’d been married Michael had announced his discontent with his real estate job and had persuaded her that it was selfish to deny him the chance to fast-track his sales career through her family contacts. So she had got him an appointment with Sir Frank and he had talked himself into a job with the marketing team being set up for the Palm Cove condominiums, at that time still in the initial planning stages.

Michael had always been very glib.

‘Now, now—I didn’t meant to bring up unhappy memories.’ Sir Frank patted her arm vigorously, with a dangerous disregard for her steering. ‘I know you’re still finding it difficult to carry on without him. Maybe staying at Palm Cove for a few weeks is just the tonic you need.’

Regan managed a strained smile at his heavy-handed sympathy. His kindness made her feel guiltier than ever about her ulterior motive for agreeing to assist in his timely—for her—family crisis.

‘I’m sure it will,’ she muttered.

‘You could have come to us after he died, you know,’ he added, piling on the coals of fire. ‘Hazel would have known how to look after you. She had a bad time of it herself when m’brother died!’

‘I needed to know that I could make my own way,’ Regan defended herself awkwardly.

‘I know, I know—you’re touchy about your independence. Still, I could have given you some advice about the house. It was a bad time to sell—with the market in a slump.’

Unfortunately, Regan hadn’t had any choice in the matter.

‘It was far too big for one person.’

Sir Frank believed she was comfortably situated financially, and she preferred to leave it that way.

‘If you didn’t want to stay at the house we could have put you into one of the show condos—it’s only an hour’s drive from Auckland; you could still have commuted to your job…’

‘I might not have a job when the new boss takes over,’ said Regan lightly, her fingers tightening on the wheel at the thought of the new regime that was poised to send in the auditors before the final purchase agreement was signed.

‘Oh, Wade’s a shrewd judge of character—he’s tough, he’s demanding, but he’s honourable and fair—he’ll look at your record and realise it’s not just nepotism that got you the job!’

Regan had never heard of Carolyn’s fiancé, an Auckland businessman with worldwide connections, but Sir Frank had assured her that Joshua Wade was highly respected in financial circles. ‘Fred tells me you’re one of the best legal aides he’s ever had—meticulous to a fault! He thinks you’ve got big potential—’