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Regan glanced in amusement at her employer, who was fidgeting in his eagerness to get to their destination.
‘Next on the right!’ The bullhorn bark belied his benign, roly-poly appearance, and she swiftly returned her attention to her driving.
Two months ago she wouldn’t have had the confidence to chauffeur the big, expensive Jaguar, but since That Night she had discovered an adventurous spirit within herself which had encouraged her to believe that she could conquer all her problems if she just had the courage to try.
That Night.
It stood in capitalised italics in her memory. Her deliciously guilty secret. Her infamous one-night stand.
She had forbidden herself to think about it during the day, although there was no keeping Adam out of her nighttime fantasies—which was exactly where he belonged, she told herself sternly. She had never heard another peep out of Cleo about that evening, and her chief feeling was one of ardent relief that she had got away with her reckless stunt. But one tiny, primitive part of her couldn’t help harbouring a brooding disappointment that Adam obviously hadn’t asked Derek for a return visit from the non-existent ‘Eve’. It would almost be worth having her cover blown to have him affirm that he had enjoyed their night of unbridled passion so much that he wanted to repeat the experience.
But, given the way that she had left, sneaking out before dawn while he was still asleep, and her parting gesture, she knew she should count herself lucky that there had been no embarrassing repercussions.
‘Here! Turn here! Now! Now!’ A stubby freckled finger stabbed in front of her nose.
‘Yes, I can see the sign,’ she said mildly.
Sir Frank gave a wry chuckle as they flashed past the huge billboard advertising the Palm Cove condominium and marina development and turned off the main highway onto the wide, winding road which cut across the narrow, hilly peninsula of land jutting out into the waters of the Hauraki Gulf.
‘Sorry, it’s just that I’m looking forward to seeing Hazel’s face when I tell her that all her worries are over.’ He beamed smugly as he envisaged his sister-in-law’s gratitude.
Since his doctor had diagnosed his heart condition Sir Frank had been trying to cut back on his stress levels, with mixed success. He had given up driving, fatty foods and smoking his beloved cigars, but he had found it harder to relinquish his habit of command. Selling the large development company which he had expanded from the single soft furnishings store he had inherited from his father was proving a wrench, even though it was staying more or less in the family—bought by a corporation headed by the man who was on the verge of marrying Hazel’s orphaned granddaughter.
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 run-up 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.
