Laurey Bright - With His Kiss

“I know exactly what my husband was worth, thank you.” There was a brittle note in her voice.

I’ll just bet you do, Steve thought. And she hadn’t expected that he’d attach strings to her enjoying what he’d left her.

She held the papers so tightly the edges were crushed. Steve realized that her hand was trembling. Perhaps coming to the same realization, she placed the papers on the table, smoothing them out. She hadn’t looked at Steve. “We’ll have to come to some arrangement.” Her voice was unsteady, too, he noted. She paused, and said more strongly, “I don’t suppose Steve will be moving back to New Zealand, so I hope he won’t feel the need to interfere with—”

“Interfere?” Steve cut across her.

She opened her mouth, then paused again, apparently aware of a tactical error. “There’s no need for you to become involved,” she said carefully, still not looking at him directly, “just because Magnus never got around to updating his will.”

“I am involved. This—” Steve lifted his copy of the document “—makes us joint trustees. I can’t say I was expecting it, but I won’t let Magnus down.”

With a flare of temper Triss said, “Do you think I will?”

Their eyes met, and he wondered how a woman who looked all peaches and cream could have such a steely blue stare. Not that his iron-gray one was probably much different.

Nigel intervened. “I think Magnus believed the two of you had complementary talents and strengths. That’s why he wanted both of you—”

“He didn’t want it!” Triss argued, returning her attention to him. “He just never got around to changing his will. He was always so busy, but he must have meant to. And you—” she rounded on Steve “—you know that!”

“As you said,” Steve pointed out, “he had plenty of time. And he’s not here to explain. I intend to take my responsibility seriously.”

“An absentee trustee?” she scorned.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Steve advised her curtly. He hadn’t had time yet to give thought to the implications of this. “And don’t think you can get away with anything just because I’m not breathing down your neck every minute of the day.”

He knew he’d scored a hit when her eyes flashed blue fire at him for an instant before she let her lids briefly fall. Then she looked up again, her face once more a composed, icily perfect mask. “Naturally I’ll consult you over any really important decisions—and I would hope that you’ll be reasonable and not veto my suggestions out of hand.”

“Now why,” Steve asked her, hiding his own anger under a deceptive gentleness, “would I want to do that?”

Her look told him she wasn’t fooled, but Nigel took the question at face value. “I’m sure both of you have the best interests of the House and its aims at heart.”

“Are you?” Succumbing to temptation, Steve knew that Triss hadn’t missed the mockery in his voice.

Rather than responding, she picked up the papers she’d placed on the table and rose gracefully to her feet. “I must get back to my guests,” she said. “Thank you, Nigel.” Reluctantly turning to Steve, she added, “I suppose we should talk before you leave again for the States. Give me a call in a day or two.”

Without allowing him time to reply she made for the door. Steve got there just before her and paused for a moment with his hand on the knob while she waited, stiff with impatience.

He wasn’t a man who usually gave women a bad time, but this one had always got under his skin, and her brusque order to call her nettled him. Yielding to a desire to bring her down a peg, he swept a measuring glance over her, scouting the enemy, silently inspecting the admittedly stunning feminine outline of her figure while making it clear he wasn’t impressed.

His reward was an infinitesimal lifting of her chin, even as her answering glance told him he was despicable.

The trouble was, after he’d pulled open the door and allowed her to sweep past him, he was inclined to share her opinion.

Not that it made any difference to his opinion of her, he reflected hours later, nursing his third whiskey in the bar of his Auckland hotel, almost an hour’s drive north from Kurakaha. Triss had been furious at having to share the trusteeship. There must be a lot of money tied up in the trust and he was damned sure she’d been hoping to milk it for all it was worth, if she couldn’t break it.

Maybe Magnus hadn’t been dazzled clean out of his mind after all. He seemed to have retained a grain of common sense—enough to not quite trust his wife to carry on his work without someone to keep an eye on her.

Steve was that someone and, although it had certainly surprised him, he didn’t mean to take the old man’s wishes lightly.

A smile touched Steve’s firmly etched mouth. Always larger than life, with the charisma of true genius, Magnus had been a brilliant, world-respected conductor until the early onset of arthritis curtailed his career. As the crippling condition progressed he’d devoted increasing amounts of his time to giving talented but socially disadvantaged young musicians the chance to excel, while filling in other gaps in their education. Taking no more than thirty-five students at a time, for periods of up to four years, Magnus had spared no expense.

Until Triss had come along with her penny-pinching attitude to the House and its work. Steve recalled her apparently gentle nagging about budgets and cost overruns. And Magnus’s quiet teasing at her unnecessary concern. Born to a privileged background, his father descended from successful early settlers, Magnus had inherited wealth and had earned large sums from a short but dazzling international career, and as he said, he had no family to spend it on, only Kurakaha and its inhabitants.

Steve had been the first to arrive. Despite clashes between him and his mentor over Steve’s plan to make a fortune manufacturing specialized keyboards and sound equipment rather than pursue a musical career of his own, the younger man appreciated the tremendous influence Magnus had exercised on his life.

Steve phoned Triss two days later. She suggested he might come to Kurakaha at ten-thirty. “If that suits you?” she added.

An afterthought.

“Perfectly,” he replied, deciding not to be difficult for the sake of it.

“I’ll be expecting you, then,” she said, crisp as a newly ironed shirt collar. She had put down the receiver before he could reply.

Damn the woman. No one else could tempt him to petty revenge. Firmly he put aside the thought of being half an hour late.

It was a minute before ten-thirty when he rang the bell at the main entry, and Triss herself opened the door to him. This time he kept his gaze firmly fixed on her face, but even so he was aware that the open lapels of her cream blouse revealed a faint shadow between her breasts, and that the silk fabric was tucked into a narrow navy-blue skirt that hugged her hips.

As she led him along a corridor to Magnus’s office he couldn’t help noticing also that she had lost some weight, but there was still a very womanly body under that figure-revealing skirt.

He’d always known she was a superficially attractive woman. Hell, he might as well admit it—physically he had always reacted to her. A male biological reflex that no doubt he shared with at least half of his gender group. Even Magnus hadn’t been immune. And Magnus, in his peculiar innocence, had married her, probably not knowing how else to handle it when for the first time in his life, Steve suspected, he fell in love. With a woman half his age.

She went behind the desk that was unnaturally clear and tidy and sat down.

The high-backed leather chair looked too big for her. Steve supposed she was making a point. Magnus’s office, Magnus’s chair. The message was plain: I’m in charge now. She’d taken over.