AllFreeNovel
Share Us
‘I walked across the fields because my car battery is flat,’ she told him, to disabuse him of any notion that she was in the habit of skulking around his property. ‘And you must know why I’ve come!’
‘Must I?’ His eyes were steady over the rim of his cup.
‘Don’t play word games with me!’ Her fingers tightened on the edges of the delicate bone-china saucer as she forced herself to calm down. ‘I’m talking about your phone call last night to Mark Ransom. You made absolutely no effort to contact me to get my side of the story about Saturday night, so I quite naturally assumed that you had got the full truth out of Sean. Now I find out that without even bothering to give me the chance to explain you’ve complained to the college—’
‘Actually, I did try to contact you last night to warn you what I was doing, but I was unable to get through,’ he interrupted, taking a fraction of the wind out of her sails. ‘And this morning I’ve been tied up in conference calls…’
Anya had been careless hanging up after Kate’s phone call the previous night and hadn’t discovered the receiver was still dislodged from the cradle until early this morning. That still didn’t excuse what he’d done. She set her tea down on the coffee table with an angry rattle.
‘You wanted to warn me that you were going to stab me in the back with unsubstantiated lies? Mark is coming to see me and I don’t even know what kind of slanderous allegations he’s going to throw at me!’ She had the satisfaction of seeing him frown. ‘What exactly did you say to him? Do you have any idea what you’ve done?’
‘Calm down…’
‘Calm down?’ She was outraged. ‘This is my career we’re talking about!’
He waved a dismissive hand. ‘I know exactly what I’ve done. And I haven’t made any allegations or complaints about you or your conduct. I merely informed Ransom—as a friendly courtesy—that there was an unauthorised party here on Saturday night and a lot of kids from the school were here with illicit alcohol and that you also were here at one point, collecting some partygoers—’
‘—and prancing around in my underwear,’ she finished his sentence bitterly.
He kept his gravelly voice even. ‘I didn’t mention your state of dress—or lack of it. I was purposefully vague. Ransom knows you, you’re friends—he’s not going to automatically assume the worst.’ As he had! ‘I told him that Sean was being appropriately punished—fortunately his memory of the evening is pretty much a total blur—’
‘Fortunately for Sean, you mean!’
His mouth thinned but he held onto his patience. ‘For both of you. The only things Sean recalls of the latter part of the night is you chewing him out for what was going on, and him throwing up. After that everything’s a blank. He doesn’t even remember me arriving on the scene, let alone what he said to me, or what you were or weren’t wearing at the time…’
Anya felt a brief pang of dizzy relief. ‘Then why on earth did you have to go telling tales to Mark?’
‘Because word has a way of getting round, and it’s easier to attack with the facts than defend against rumours,’ he told her, his blue eyes persuasively intent on her stormy face. ‘Sean says that the party was supposed to be just for his rugby mates and their girlfriends, but it became an open secret around school and more and more people kept turning up on the night.’
He picked up her cup and handed it back to her, still holding her captive with his compelling gaze, and she automatically began drinking, the hot liquid easing the angry tightness in her throat. ‘I had a few calls from concerned parents yesterday about the state their children had arrived home in after what they had been told was an evening of watching videos. The phones have been running hot amongst the kids and before I warned him to keep his mouth shut Sean had already told a few of his mates that you had caught him with “some rich chick”, and no doubt they told a few of their mates, probably embellishing as people tend to do when they’re telling a good story. There are probably others, too, who’ll remember seeing you when you arrived at the party and start wondering why…’
‘Oh, no…’ Anya sighed, beginning to perceive the enormity of the problem in which she was entangled.
‘Oh, yes. Trust me on this, Anya, it’s my own field of expertise: it’s always safer to be the source rather than the victim of information. If rumours are flying around, we definitely don’t want it to look as if we’ve tried to cover anything up, because that implies that there’s something worth covering up in all this. As it is, only you and I know what happened in that bedroom, and as long as we corroborate each other’s story there won’t be problems about it. I’m sorry I couldn’t wait for your prior approval, but it was imperative to make a pre-emptive statement before any whispering campaign got started that could affect you in the classroom, or some parent formally approached the school.’
Trust him? Anya swallowed another mouthful of tea. She supposed she didn’t have much choice, and everything he had said did seem to make solid sense.
‘Well…’ Suddenly she realised the most important point she had almost overlooked. She straightened. ‘So you now admit I was telling the truth about what happened? That you were wrong about me.’
‘You can’t blame me for—’ He halted as she gave him the haughty-eyebrow routine. He inclined his head. ‘On this occasion, yes…I was wrong,’ he conceded, with an obvious difficulty that made the admission all the sweeter as far as Anya was concerned. He picked up the decorative plate of home baking which had remained ignored on the tray, and offered it as a blatant distraction.
‘Biscuit? Mrs Lee has a very light hand with brownies.’
‘Thank you.’ She took her time selecting one and then continued to press her advantage in the same, insistent tone. ‘And, of course, you take back all those terribly insulting things you said to me…’
His eyes narrowed and he put down the plate with a thump, giving her a sharkish smile. ‘I’m afraid I’m not prepared to give you a wholesale retraction. Why don’t you be a little more specific? You tell me what each insult was, and I’ll either agree or disagree to withdraw it.’
And in the process make her repeat every embarrassing one. Anya bit down on her biscuit with unnecessary force and nearly choked on the crumbs that exploded onto her tongue.
He watched her splutter for a moment, her eyes watering as she washed down the crumbs with the dregs of her tea, and leaned forward, his smile shifting into shocking suavity and his voice deepening to a sexy throb. ‘I am, of course, deeply sorry to have caused you any degree of discomfort whatsoever and hope that you’ll accept my most humble apologies for having the temerity to doubt a lady’s word…’
‘Oh, very prettily done,’ she said, outwardly unimpressed while inside her bones were resonating to the rich vibrancy of his tone. ‘A for effort
and acting, but you get a definite F in sincerity.’
His suavity was discarded as he burst out laughing. ‘You’re a hard woman.’
‘I’m glad you finally realise it.’
