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‘You should have been a lawyer,’ she grumbled as he pushed open the door to the restaurant with far too white a grin for a man who had just covered himself with sackcloth and ashes.
‘Like dear old Dad? No, thanks; too many boring precedents to follow. I tried law, you know, after I dropped out of Med School, but it definitely wasn’t my scene.’ His smile mocked his own youthful fickleness. ‘Nothing really clicked for me until I took time off from university to work for Terri’s father’s America’s Cup yachting syndicate and discovered computers. Up to that point my parents were convinced I was going to end up as an over-educated bum.’
She hadn’t known, but it didn’t surprise her to learn that he hadn’t followed a straight and narrow academic path like his father, an eminent QC. Since Duncan now possessed a doctorate along with his fame and fortune, the hell-raising at high school and undergraduate level to which Stephen had disparagingly referred had obviously been the restlessness of a brilliant mind as yet unfocussed.
The deal discussed over smoked salmon and scrambled eggs secured Duncan a small corporate contract for a security and access management program which Labyrinth was launching the following month. But Duncan had shrewdly picked the small corporation as being at the leading edge of a growth industry, and was confident that getting in on the ground floor would ensure big future profits for its network software developer.
Watching him translate his dazzling techno-vision of the future into language the CEO could understand without condescending to the man’s fresh-faced, gee-whiz-kid information systems manager reminded Kalera all over again of how much she loved her job and what a wrench it would be to leave all this vicarious excitement behind.
Later, watching Duncan high-five around the office sharing the good news, she felt for the first time immune from the infectious air of celebration, realising that she wouldn’t be around to see the contract honoured. In fact, she wasn’t quite certain where she’d be in a month’s time, and the thought sent a brief flutter of panic jumping along her nerves. She had moved too many times in her childhood, lived among too many strangers, to view the prospect of radical change with anything but apprehension, and the sudden, traumatic loss of her husband had merely reinforced her fear of emotional displacement.
But she had Stephen now, she consoled herself. He, too, was seeking emotional security, and their needs seemed to dovetail so perfectly that it was natural that their mutual desire for companionship had so swiftly turned to romance. But they were both too cautious to allow themselves to be swept away by its momentum. Getting engaged had been a big step—just how big Kalera hadn’t realised until she had stumbled up against Duncan’s furious opposition!
And Duncan wasn’t the only one. The news of her controversial engagement spread through the Labyrinth network like wildfire and over the next few days Kalera found herself inundated with friendly advice. A few people, mostly women, offered their congratulations unencumbered, but the rest of the responses ranged from mild dismay to rowdy disapproval.
‘I suppose he is pretty spunky-looking,’ conceded Anna Ihaka as they were both touching up their make-up in the women’s restroom. Kalera followed her gaze to the picture of Stephen, scanned from the Financial Star by some anonymous joker and reprinted with the famous red circle-and-slash ‘No’ graphic adorning his smiling face, which was tacked to the wall beside the mirror. The posters had begun appearing all over the office after Duncan had confirmed her impending defection, and Kalera had given up trying to track down the mysterious perpetrator. Whenever she took one down, two popped up in its place.
‘Thanks,’ she said, powdering the sheen off her nose. ‘But I’m not marrying him for his looks…’
‘Sure—but no one wants to fall for a complete gargoyle, right?’ said Anna, who fell in and out of love with monotonous regularity and consequently considered herself something of an expert on romance. ‘I mean, let’s face it, a guy with a gorgeous bod has a natural advantage over a homely little creep with personality. Who would you rather be seen out with? And when your eyes go zing with a stranger across a crowded room it’s because you’re thinking, Wow, that guy looks hot! Not, Gee, what an attractive personality!’ She whisked some blusher over her cheekbones and started applying another layer of brilliant gloss to her lips.
‘Yes, well, fortunately Stephen has both,’ said Kalera, snapping her compact closed and taking out her lipstick. She had to admit that there had been an element of vanity in her acceptance of that first date—she had been flattered that such an elegant, urbane man was interested in her rather ordinary company.
Anna blotted her lips with a paper towel. ‘Someone said you met at a wild party?’
No doubt that ‘someone’ had relayed the facts with his usual flair for subjective embellishment. Duncan had employed Anna five years ago straight from school on the strength of a few meetings on the Internet, and despite her cheeky irreverence she was still inclined to accept his every word as gospel.
‘It was a very sedate sit-down dinner. We got talking and liked each other so we ended up talking some more—’
‘Doesn’t sound very exciting,’ Anna said dubiously.
Kalera outlined the bow of her upper lip. ‘Neither of us was looking for excitement,’ she said, blocking in the rest of the colour. ‘But I guess it found us anyway,’ she added wryly, thinking of the furore their engagement had created.
Anna shovelled her make-up back into her shiny black bag. ‘Yeah, well…I think it’s too weird,’ she sighed. ‘I mean, I always thought that, if you got it on with anyone, for sure it would be the chief.’
Kalera’s lipstick clattered into the ceramic basin and she scrabbled to pick it up, screening the panic in her eyes with her lowered lashes. ‘Why on earth would you think that?’ she croaked.
Anna shrugged, her cropped top revealing a flash of brown skin above her wildly patterned leggings as she leaned forward to check the disposition of her beaded locks. ‘’Cos he’s been crazy about you for years, I suppose.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ muttered Kalera, stunned into stammering confusion. ‘He—I—he—Harry…’
Amazingly Anna seemed to understand her incoherent fumblings. ‘Oh, I know he was happy to, you know, like—worship you from afar with his respect and all that while he thought you were still hung up about losing Harry, but jeez, you must have noticed he behaves differently around you…He doesn’t flirt the way he does with other women, and he’s always sort of gentle—you know, as if he’s trying to slow himself down to your speed…’
‘No, I don’t know!’ choked Kalera. As far as she was concerned Duncan had only one speed and that was a hundred kilometres per hour! ‘For goodness’ sake, Anna, it’s too absurd for words.’ She went hot and cold with alarm. ‘Oh, God, don’t tell me everyone else thinks that too?’
Anna sniffed. ‘Of course not! As Duncan’s assistant I’m around you two a lot more than most people and guess I pick up on the little things that nobody else notices—’
‘Good, because the idea is totally off the wall,’ Kalera interrupted. ‘Duncan and I are absolute polar opposites; we have practically nothing in common…’
But Anna’s fertile romantic imagination was immune to logic. ‘Right—and everyone knows that opposites attract!’
Kalera reeled from the restroom, shell-shocked, and ran slap-bang into Duncan striding down the hall.
He gripped her by the arms as she rebounded off his chest, his eyebrows rising at the sight of her unusually flushed face.
‘What’s up? Not coming down with summer flu, are you?’ He let go of one of her arms and applied his cool knuckles to her hot cheek.
‘I’m fine,’ fibbed Kalera, shying away from the casual intimacy of his touch, acutely conscious that at any moment Anna was going to come bouncing through the door behind her, and would no doubt see the little tableau as proof of her wild speculations.
