Daphne Clair - Infamous Bargain

Briar was accustomed to people assuming that she skipped sweets because she was dieting, and usually it didn’t bother her. Now, although he hadn’t commented, she found herself biting her tongue to stop herself snapping, ‘I just don’t have a sweet tooth!’ to correct Kynan Roth’s tacit preconception.

When they all returned to the other room for coffee, she helped Laura pass the cups. Her father was talking to Kynan, who listened with his head inclined, his eyes intent and watchful. She let Laura take them coffee, carrying a second tray in the opposite direction. But when Kynan Roth’s cup was empty, Xavier brought it to her for refilling, and muttered, ‘Take this to Kynan, will you? There’s an empty seat beside him now.’

She had to sit by him, since every other chair was occupied. He took his cup from her and regarded her over it before his eyes lowered and he took a sip. ‘Good coffee,’ he said. ‘Where do you get it?’

‘I’ve no idea. That’s Laura’s decision.’ Laura was actually quite good at housekeeping and at backstage organisation, never leaving anything to chance because she suffered such agonies if the smallest thing went wrong. Her indecisiveness and nervous anxiety could drive people like her husband wild, but the professionals she employed liked her, perhaps because she was always grateful for their expert advice.

‘You call your mother Laura?’

‘Stepmother,’ Briar explained briefly.

He didn’t ask for details. ‘You seem to get on well with her.’

‘She’s been extremely good to me.’

‘A change from the stereotype.’

‘Stereotypes are often wrong. I’m no Cinderella.’

‘I can see that.’ His gaze held a shade of mockery. ‘And no ugly stepsisters?’

‘No sisters or brothers of any sort.’

‘You’re an only child?’

‘Yes.’ Laura would have liked children of her own, she was sure. Briar didn’t know if the lack of them had been an accident of fate or a deliberate choice of her father’s.

A bearded man with an incipient paunch came over and said to Kynan, ‘Kath tells me you’re a cricketer.’

‘Used to be,’ Kynan answered. ‘Nowadays I just watch, mostly.’

Clive Bailey, patting his expanding waistline, grinned. ‘Me, too. Our son’s a great little goer, though. Got any kids in the game, yourself?’

‘No kids,’ Kynan said easily. ‘I’m not married.’

‘Thing is,’ Clive explained, ‘our club’s looking for coaches for the juniors—’

Briar finished her coffee and said, ‘Please excuse me. I think Laura needs some help.’

Laura, as always preferring making herself busy to making conversation, had begun collecting empty cups. Kynan emptied his and handed it to Briar as she stood up. She gave him an automatic smile and went to join her stepmother. She’d done her duty by the special guest; her father ought to be satisfied that he’d not been neglected.

But later Xavier cornered her, with Kynan in tow beside him. ‘Kynan’s interested in early New Zealand paintings,’ he told her with an air of something approaching triumph. ‘I told him you’d show him our Heaphy in the library. I don’t like to leave the other guests.’

The other guests, Briar might have told him, would almost certainly not be aware of his absence for five or ten minutes. Good manners prevailed. She mustered a pleasant smile and said, ‘Of course.’

Xavier squeezed the other man’s arm. ‘Briar will look after you.’

Briar reflected that her father appeared to have decided that her mission in life was to look after Kynan Roth. She took a fleeting look at the object of all this attention, and found an ironic glint in his dark eyes, coupled with something else even more disturbing. It occurred to her that she didn’t want to be alone with this man.

But she could hardly come to any harm in a room only two doors away from here. ‘This way,’ she said, turning as they reached the passageway.

He walked at her side, and when she reached out to open the library door he stepped quickly in front of her, so that she steeled herself not to snatch back her hand as his fingers closed about the gleaming brass knob. He cast her a questioning glance and swung open the door, then stood back to let her go first.

Xavier seldom read anything other than newspapers, financial magazines and business guides, though occasionally he skimmed through a book that had hit the best-seller lists or that someone had given him. But the previous owners had stocked the library with classics, travel books and biographies, to which had been added some well-reviewed modern fiction. Xavier frequently worked there on his portable computer, or waded through mountains of paperwork at the huge antique desk.

The Charles Heaphy original, a watercolour of a bracken-covered hillside washed in light, with a painstaking rendering of delicate ponga ferns in the foreground, hung on the wall to one side of the desk.

‘That’s it,’ Briar said unnecessarily. Kynan was already crossing the carpet to inspect it.

Briar stood in the centre of the room waiting for him. Finally he said over his shoulder, ‘Quite a good example, isn’t it?’ He returned his attention to the painting.

‘Is it? I’m no expert, I’m afraid. I’ve always rather liked it, though.’ She walked over to stand beside him, admiring it.

‘Has it been in the family for long?’ He glanced at her again.

‘In the family?’ She shook her head. ‘Dad bought it a few years ago, when the financial wizards were saying that art was a gilt-edged investment for the future. I gather that it hasn’t increased in value as much as he was led to believe it might.’

‘So he’s not a connoisseur?’

She wondered if her father had been trying to impress Kynan with art talk. Xavier was good at picking up snippets of information and trotting them out at opportune moments, giving the impression of more knowledge than he really had.

‘Are you ?’ she countered, deflecting the question.

‘I have an interest, but I doubt if I could spot a fake.’

‘This isn’t a fake.’ Her father would have had that thoroughly checked.

He turned to her. ‘I haven’t suggested that it is. Not my field, except in an amateur way.’

‘What is your field?’ she asked him. She’d been wondering all evening. His name had sounded vaguely familiar, but she was unable to make the necessary connection.

‘Didn’t your father brief you?’

‘Brief me?’ She looked at him blankly, finding knowing laughter lurking in his eyes, and dropped her gaze as she recalled being told to be nice to him. She felt as though he was reading her mind, an uncomfortable sensation.

‘I’m in company finance,’ he told her, ‘among other things.’

‘An entrepreneur?’

‘I prefer the term investor. These days entrepreneur tends to be a term of opprobrium.’

‘How times have changed.’

‘Are you old enough to remember?’

‘I’m not a child.’

‘No.’ His eyes gleamed.

Briar looked away.

He said softly, ‘You’re not pretending to be shy?’

She looked up then, and found the cool, piercing eyes on her face, a hint of cynicism in them. ‘I’m not shy.’

‘No, I didn’t think so. Your father tells me he depends on you a lot. I gather your stepmother isn’t nearly as reliable.’

‘She just needs a bit of self-confidence. She’s...’

‘Decorative?’ Kynan suggested drily.

‘She’s also a very nice person!’

‘I’m sure she is. How long have she and your father been married?’

‘About thirteen years.’

‘That long? You must have been just a kid.’

‘A teenager—nearly. Laura was my salvation.’