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‘I used to sit in the back row,’ Scott murmured, picking up the spectacles and folding them up.
‘Why am I not surprised?’ It came out a little tarter than was strictly polite and was rewarded with instant punishment.
‘They must make you look even more like the quintessential schoolmarm,’ he said, handing them back for her to stuff in her purse, his eyes wickedly bland as they reminded her of his supposed predilection.
Heather Morgan chuckled sympathetically at what she assumed was a disparaging remark. ‘Did you use them to drive here tonight?’ Her speculative brown eyes shifted from Anya to Mark. ‘I thought you two were here together…?’
‘I got called out to a fire alarm at the college, so I wasn’t able to pick Anya up as we’d planned,’ Mark told her. ‘It turned out to be a false alarm, but with vandalism as rife as it is we don’t like to take chances, so I got the fire department to do a full check of the premises.’
‘We had other plans, too.’ The diamonds in her ears glinted as Heather tossed a mildly reproachful look across the table. ‘We were supposed to be going to a Law Society dinner in the city but Scott got caught up in some fresh drama with his little daughter that he’s not talking about, didn’t you, darling?’ The clipped consonants indicated a hint of overstrained patience. Anya had already gathered from Petra that the girl’s arrival was viewed as a tiresome but temporary blip on Heather Morgan’s personal radar. Her condescending interest had not endeared her to Petra.
‘I did suggest that you could go without me,’ drawled Scott, as the waiter served their drinks.
‘But of course I wouldn’t hear of it, even though the dinner was honouring the achievements of one of my colleagues in the firm,’ Heather continued with an attractive little moue of her glossy carmine mouth which emphasised the extent of her self-sacrifice. ‘Since I’d skipped lunch in anticipation of a big dinner, Scott decided he’d better feed me at the nearest decent local eatery.’ She opened the folder in her hands and studied it with critically raised eyebrows. ‘It’s quite an extensive menu, but a little on the unimaginative side.’
‘It’s excellent food, though,’ said Mark. ‘They have a live band on Friday and Saturday nights, too. Not the head-bashing stuff they have in the public bar, but a good blend of dance music…’
They ordered their meal and Anya, who had not felt much like eating anyway, now found her stomach churning at the thought of anything on the menu. She finally opted for the blandest thing she could find—consommé followed by grilled fish and a green salad.
The talk was blessedly impersonal for a while, with Anya valiantly keeping up her end of the general conversation in spite of some distracting asides from Scott which were designed to force her to turn her head, or risk seeming spectacularly rude to the man who was paying for her meal. When the wine list arrived and Mark deferred to him as host, Scott consulted Anya’s opinion on his choices and she had to confess her ignorance.
‘If I like the taste, I’ll drink it, but the only thing I really know anything about is champagne—’
‘You mean the local bubbly?’ Heather interrupted, her voice nasal with disdain. ‘They’re not allowed to call it champagne any more, it has to be méthode champenoise.’
‘Oh, I meant Krug and Dom Perignon,’ Anya was startled into saying. ‘Champagne is the only alcohol my mother ever touches. She says it’s good for the throat. Even as a child I was given a small glass and expected to toast her success.’
Scott unwisely chuckled at Heather’s ill-concealed chagrin and earned himself a chilly look. He explained about Anya’s background, adding several details that he could have gleaned only from Petra. The thought that she was an object of conversation between Scott and his daughter gave her an odd frisson.
‘Why didn’t you go to an American private school if your parents were living in the States?’ Heather wanted to know.
Anya could imagine the supercilious reaction if she said that to her parents she had been a woeful distraction from their joint careers. They’d despaired of what to do with the quiet little cuckoo in their moveable nest, and
had been relieved at her naively expressed desire to live in Auckland, ‘near where Aunty Mary and Uncle Fred used to live’.
‘Because she considers New Zealand her spiritual as well as her birth home.’ Scott spoke for her with a lazy blend of amusement and approval which suggested a degree of familiarity that made Heather’s face turn even more frosty, and retaliate by shifting the main focus of her attention onto Mark.
Her cold-shouldering had no effect, and instead of competing to recapture her interest, as he was supposed to, Scott was left free to torment Anya with his full awareness. Heather’s displeasure became even more pronounced when, over their main course, Mark made a passing remark about the college’s reputation for equality and fairness and Scott swiftly took him to task for his lack of recent fairness to Anya, countering every excuse he presented.
‘Well, Anya has sure got you on her side,’ said Mark ruefully, when Scott had manoeuvred him into admitting and apologising for his over-zealousness.
‘Doesn’t that present you with rather a conflict of interest—seeing as you’re the college’s legal representative?’ Heather pointed out acidly.
‘Naturally I couldn’t have advised her myself—but Anya would have had excellent grounds for suing if Mark had suspended her on the speculative fear of a future rumour rather than any eye-witness testimony of wrong-doing…’
The others had finished their mains and Scott watched as Anya pushed the salad around on her plate to disguise the fact she’d hardly touched her food.
He leaned over so that his shoulder touched hers. ‘Not hungry?’ he asked softly, under cover of the talk on the other side of the table.
‘I was,’ she lied pointedly, in a correspondingly low tone. ‘But something in the vicinity seems be turning my stomach.’
Instead of being chastened, he chuckled. ‘Let’s see if we can’t do something to exercise your appetites.’ He began to shift across the banquette, nudging her off the bench seat with the hard pressure of his hip and thigh.
‘You two carry on with your conversation—Anya and I are just going to try out the band,’ he said, and had her in the centre of the small group of slow-dancing couples on the dance floor before she or anyone else had a chance to express an opinion of his manners.
‘Your girlfriend is not amused at your behaviour,’ said Anya, helpless to prevent her body shivering against his when his arm contracted across her back, enfolding her in the wings of his open jacket, his other hand cupping hers against the smooth weave of his shirt instead of in the correctly polite position. Her head was turned to one side, to prevent her nose being buried in his snowy breast, the top of her head barely reaching his collarbone.
‘Then it’s as well I’m not her court jester. I’m not any more amused at her mood. And she’s hardly a girl,’ he said, turning her so that she could no longer see their table, his foot pivoting between hers, his knee briefly kissing the inside of her thigh.
