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‘Hah! I knew you were lying,’ she crowed, tapping at the keyboard. First item on the agenda: an Internet phone call to her boss at Maitlands.
Half an hour later her hands were slipping sweatily on the steering wheel of the TVR as she finally jerked out of the gravelled side road and on to the Waitakere dual carriageway. There had been no manufacturer’s booklet in the car but after she had downloaded the results of her Internet search on the Cerbera she thought she had all the information she needed.
She now knew why Blake had chosen not to drive it back to Auckland. From the noises it was making there was something seriously wrong…unless it was just her driving. For a ghastly moment Nora wondered if she’d crept all the way up the steep gradient with the handbrake on. She glanced down to check and in doing so must have turned the wheel, for the steering reacted with the quickness for which it had been fashioned and the car headed obediently into the clay ditch at the side of the road.
With a graunching of its low-slung rear, the TVR settled at a drunken angle in the shallow depression. Quickly Nora punched the red button under the steering wheel and there was instant silence from the engine. She closed her eyes in stricken disbelief.
She didn’t know how long she sat there, her head bowed over the steering wheel, but she was roused from her misery by a tap on the window. A car had stopped on the opposite side of the road and a tall dark-haired woman had crossed over to bend down and peer in at Nora’s wilting figure. Nora searched for the little button on the side pocket which opened the door and climbed gingerly out.
‘Are you OK?’ The woman looked to be in her mid-thirties, wearing mirrored sunglasses and a smart suit which made Nora feel drab.
‘Fine.’ She smiled shakily. ‘I don’t think the car is, though.’
To her outraged astonishment the woman started laughing when she walked around to study the rear of the car. ‘I’m afraid not! Boy, is he ever going to be ticked!’
She came sauntering back, removing her sunglasses and Nora found herself staring up into a pair of very familiar-looking grey eyes.
‘On the other hand, it could just strengthen your hand if you want to make a personal grievance claim.’ The woman’s eyebrows snapped together thoughtfully as she tapped her folded sunglasses against her mouth. ‘You do know you could sue him for what he’s done? You could make megabucks if he detained you without your consent—and then there’s the question of restraint of trade…I mean, his actions prevented you from working at your job, right?’
‘Right! You must be Maria,’ Nora said drily, recognising more than a superficial fam
ily resemblance.
‘How did you guess?’ The older woman grinned, arching her thick black eyebrows. ‘And you’re Nora. I just know we’re going to get on like a house on fire.’
‘I think I’ve caused enough damage for one day without adding arson to the list,’ Nora said glumly. ‘Did Blake send you to give me a lift home?’
‘Hell, no!’ Maria looked swiftly around as if her brother might rampage out from the bushes. ‘He’d have a fit if he knew I knew! No, I just happened to be at Mum’s when he rang and asked her to do him a favour. He gave her a quick run-down on the situation—’ she laughed at Nora’s appalled face ‘—expurgated, I’m sure!’ She turned and waved at the other car and Nora saw a slim grey-haired version of the woman beside her waving back.
‘He asked his mother to come and get me?’ she squeaked.
‘Yeah, I guess you don’t know yet what a terrible Mamma’s boy he is! He didn’t mention that you might be using his TVR, though.’ She looked at Nora’s guilt-stricken face and skated briskly on. ‘Anyway, let’s transfer your stuff and lock up. I’ll make a call to Blake’s mechanic and we can leave this heap of expensive junk for the tow-truck to pick up.’
Nora wasn’t sure what to say to her lover’s mother, but Mrs MacLeod soon solved the problem. She directed her daughter to take the wheel and joined Nora in the back seat, getting down to brass tacks by dismissing Nora’s garbled attempts to tell her about the car as irrelevant to the key issue. ‘So…how do you feel about my son?’
At least her eyes weren’t that haunting grey that sent shivers up Nora’s spine. They were a very kindly, but very insistent blue. ‘I—We only met last Thursday—’
‘That wasn’t what I asked.’ Pamela MacLeod smiled. In jeans and a sweatshirt, she didn’t look very intimidating, but Nora had a feeling that tenacity was another common family trait.
‘I…well—’ God, how did you describe a man who was great in bed to his mother? With his sister listening? Nora could feel herself pinken. ‘He’s very—very um—’
‘Interesting?’
That would work! ‘Yes, Mrs MacLeod, he’s very interesting.’
‘Call me Pam.’ The grey head tilted enquiringly. ‘In what way would you say he was interesting?’
Nora began to sweat. ‘Well, he’s a…He’s very complex…. He has a very…er…forceful personality….’
‘Yes, he’s very like his father in that respect,’ said his forceful mother. ‘No looks or charm to speak of, so he has to make up for it in charisma!’
What planet was this woman living on? ‘Blake’s an extremely attractive man!’ contested Nora hotly.
‘Oh, I didn’t say he wasn’t attractive,’ Pam replied with a twinkling smile that softened her angular face into maternal smugness. ‘Just that he’s not pretty in that metrosexual way that’s so popular these days. His father was a big, gruff, crude man—but I like a bit of the primitive in a man, don’t you?’
Nora wasn’t going to touch that one with a ten-foot pole. ‘His father?’ she stumbled. ‘You mean your husband?’
‘Yes. Neil. Who else would I mean?’ Unfortunately Blake’s mother was as alarmingly perceptive as her son. ‘Don’t tell me you’ve heard that silly story about Prescott.’ She looked amused. ‘Have you ever met Prescott Williams?’
