Laurey Bright - With His Kiss

Her gaze didn’t quite meet his, focusing instead on the knot of his maroon tie. “Magnus would appreciate your being here. Nigel told you he needs to talk?”

“He told me. I believe you’ve made a room available.”

“Yes.” She was distracted by someone at his elbow leaning across to touch her arm. “Excuse me.”

Steve was sure it was with relief that she turned to the newcomer. Dismissed, he helped himself to a drink from a nearby table and looked about for the lawyer.

Half a dozen teenagers circulated with trays of finger foods. Residents at the house, no doubt, whom Triss had pressed into service rather than paying caterers.

Cheap. Presumably the food had been prepared in the Kurakaha kitchen, too. The cook had outdone himself. Or perhaps these days it was a her. Not a young and attractive her, though. Triss wouldn’t stand the competition.

“Steve?” A burly dark man of about his own age grasped his arm with a large brown hand. “Steve, you sonofa— You come all the way over from America?”

“I flew in last night,” Steve said. “Late. How are you, Zed?”

“Blooming,” the big man beamed. “Still working the gardens here, doing a bit of carpentry and stuff. Got a wife and kids now. Two of ’em. Kids, I mean. How ’bout you? Never heard much after you left.”

“No wife, no kids.”

“Yeah, that’s the way.” The man punched his arm. “Fancy-free, eh? Got yourself some big house and car in Los Angeles, eh?”

“An apartment,” Steve said. “And yeah, I own a car. Don’t you?”

“Ford Falcon.” Zed grinned. “Beat-up old bomb. Bet yours is better.” But his envy wasn’t real, and when his wife joined them with one child in her arms and another clinging shyly to her skirt, Zed glowed with pride as he introduced them, swinging the older one into his arms and planting a smacking kiss on her cheek.

“This is a bugger though,” he added, sobering as he looked about them. “Old Magnus going like that.”

Steve could only agree. “I suppose you don’t know what’s going to happen to the House?”

“I guess Triss will carry on.”

“You think so?”

“She’s been holding the place together since Magnus got sick.”

Protecting her investment?

Maybe she’d changed. Give the woman the benefit of the doubt, Steve admonished himself. You could be wrong about her being the Wicked Witch of the West. Maybe. He said, “I didn’t know Magnus was ill.”

“He didn’t want people to know.”

People? Steve felt a strange, angry pain in his chest. I’m not “people.” Someone should have told me.

She should have told him. The pain became a burning resentment. He looked across the room at Triss. She was talking to a handsome gray-haired man who looked vaguely familiar. After a moment Steve placed him—a seasoned and prominent politician, a cabinet minister when Steve had left the country. He was holding one of Triss’s elegant pale hands in both of his, and she was smiling at him, making no attempt to draw away, listening intently to what he had to say.

Steve’s narrowed stare shifted when a former resident of Kurakaha clapped his shoulder and shook his hand, demanding to know what he’d been doing since he’d left New Zealand. Others followed, and half an hour or more passed in social chat.

Mourners had overflowed into the garden. Steve walked through the French doors thrown open to the long tiled terrace, keeping an eye out for the lawyer.

Old oaks and an ancient, spreading puriri shaded the terrace. Looking across the lawn and the native evergreens edging it, he glimpsed the curved, poplar-lined drive, and remembered the first time he’d seen the two-storied, sprawling white building from the gateway. Magnus had stopped the car there, letting the engine idle, and turned to the sullen teenager that Steve was then, saying, “This is your new home.”

In spite of himself Steve had been impressed by the size of the place and its air of well-preserved colonial gentility. Magnus, in his way, was impressive, too. Tall, erect and already gray-haired and perilously close to unkempt, he had been an odd mixture of artist, idealist and pragmatist.

The young Steve remained suspicious and surly for months. Until it dawned on him that Magnus wasn’t really interested in reforming him. All he cared about was rescuing the raw talent that he’d somehow discerned in this unpromising fifteen-year-old.

Fourteen years ago. And now Magnus was gone.

Steve turned to survey the room behind him, and caught sight of Nigel Fairbrother, the lawyer, just inside the French doors.

“Wait a while,” Nigel said when Steve accosted him. “Triss wants to make sure she’s spoken to everyone first.”

“I thought it was just you and me.”

“Best if you’re both there together,” Nigel said. “No hurry, though.”

After the crowd thinned, Nigel caught up with him again and twitched at his sleeve. “We’re down here.”

Triss was waiting for them in what used to be called the bookroom toward the rear of the house. Besides shelves of books there were rows of video tapes and CDs, and a large TV screen and video player occupied one corner.

She was standing before the window with her hands loosely clasped, the low afternoon sun shimmering on her hair. As Nigel shut the door she sat down on one of the chairs grouped about a heavy, round kauri table, her back rigid.

The lawyer gestured to Steve to sit near her and placed himself opposite, taking charge. Steve left one chair empty between him and Triss.

Nigel dug inside his jacket and pulled out a long envelope. “This isn’t exactly a reading of the will,” he said, “but—” he glanced from Steve to Triss “—I don’t know if either of you know how Magnus…um…disposed of his affairs.”

Triss seemed to pale. She must be anxious about her inheritance.

Steve gave a faint shrug. “No idea.”

“I’ve made two copies so you can both peruse it at your leisure, but essentially, the bulk of his personal estate has been left to his wife, with—ah—conditions attached to some of it.” Nigel nodded toward her. “A portfolio of stocks and shares and investment monies is reserved to maintain Kurakaha in its present form as an educative facility for disadvantaged young men, to be administered as a trust—”

Steve gave a silent sigh of relief, relaxing against his chair back, only to straighten abruptly as the lawyer continued “—by the two of you jointly.”

“What?” Steve snapped.

“The two of…us?” Triss had definitely whitened, her eyes darkening as the pupils enlarged. For a second Steve thought she might be going to faint. Then two smudges of color scorched her cheekbones. “When did Magnus make that will? There must be another one!”

“I’m afraid not.” Nigel looked down at the pages as if checking the date. “He never lodged another with us.”

“But…he had plenty of time.” Triss leaned forward, frowning. “Let me see that.”

Nigel handed it over and passed another copy to Steve, who scanned his quickly before looking up.

Triss looked up, too, the tight set of her mouth failing to disguise its lush femininity. “You drew this up?” she asked Nigel.

“At his request, of course. If you have questions…”

“No questions. It’s very clear. Insultingly clear. And watertight, I suppose.”

Nigel looked unhappy. “I pointed out to Magnus that if he made the whole of his bequest to you dependent on your continuing to live at Kurakaha—because that was his first thought—you might have grounds for contesting. As it stands now he has adequately provided for his widow, although if you leave the House there will be considerably less than if you stay. The actual monetary value of the bequest may have altered over the years, but his accountant will fill you in on that.”