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‘No time,’ said Duncan flatly. ‘Sorry.’
Kalera didn’t think he looked very sorry.
‘Are you sure it’s safe to take off in this wind? It seems pretty gusty.’ Her voice lifted to compete with the rising throb of the blades.
‘It landed, didn’t it? Come on, Kalera, any woman who can drive an F1 the way you did on Saturday night can’t be afraid of a little breeze.’
Kalera pushed at the hem of her skirt as the swirling air stirred up by the helicopter flipped it up her thighs. It still unnerved her to remember how power-crazed she had acted when she had got behind the wheel of his ridiculously expensive macho-machine.
The sexy purr of the engine, the roar of the tyres on the road and the wind past her open window, and the sweet vibration of all that power, had been an exhilarating combination. With Duncan gritting his teeth in the passenger seat she had cruised through the suburbs, getting used to the superb handling, and then planted her foot down on the motorway with reckless disregard for the speed-camera signs.
When Duncan had kindly pointed them out she had laughed. It was his car…if she was flashed, then the traffic department would be sending him the fine—and it would be a small price to pay for all the trouble he had caused!
She had driven eighty kilometres out into the country before she’d turned around, and by the time they’d made the outskirts of the city again most of her anger had been dissipated in the concentration it had required to navigate the dark roads. Easing off the pedal, she had taken an off-ramp at random and Duncan had unclamped his hands from the edge of his seat and croaked, ‘Where to now?’
Kalera ducked her head to read a fluorescent street name. ‘I’m not sure—I don’t know where we are…’
‘I do. Why don’t you let me—?’ She shot him a searing look and he altered his next word before it issued from his mouth. ‘Navigate from here.’
‘I’m not going to your place,’ she warned fiercely. She had made enough mistakes for one night.
‘Fine…’ His face was calm, as if no such thought had even entered his head. ‘Take the next left, and then go right, at the intersection…’
When he finally directed her through huge, twin stone pillars and up a narrow road lined with box hedges she was completely mystified by his choice of destination.
‘What is this place—a museum?’ she murmured, parking where instructed and looking up at the classical stone building, its exterior softly illuminated by concealed spotlights in the formal shubbery that ran along the frontage. There were also lights showing through the downstairs windows.
‘It’s the house where I grew up. My parents live here.’ He unclipped his seat belt, and then hers, leaning over to flick off the headlights. ‘We’re probably just in time to join them for coffee and liqueurs—they like to keep fashionably late hours.’
She gaped at him as he got out and walked around the front of the car to open her door.
‘You brought me here to see your parents?’ she squeaked.
He bent down to offer her his hand. ‘You took me to see yours—’
‘You invited yourself!’
‘Well, now I’m inviting you.’
‘I can’t go in there now!’ she said feverishly, shrinking back into her seat.
‘Why not? They don’t know what’s happened,’ he said, prising her out. ‘And what better time to meet people than when you’re dressed to impress? Aren’t you the least bit curious about my background?’
In truth she was fascinated, but half an hour later Kalera had satisfied her curiosity and was dying to leave.
Jacob and Serena Royal were both handsome, highly educated, articulate and opinionated. They were also amongst the most boring people that Kalera had ever met. Their lack of humour made the conversation turgid and their subtly domineering attitude towards their son made Kalera inwardly bristle on his behalf.
‘If you’d gone to the Bar you probably would have taken Silk by now,’ was all his father said when Duncan mentioned a recent Labyrinth product which had won a leading computer magazine award. It was evident from their condescension that Duncan’s brilliance and success in a field for which his parents had little respect or understanding meant less to them than the academic failures and peripatetic nature of his past. Kalera felt a surge of gratefulness that he had managed to escape the straitjacket of conformity into which his mother and father had tried to force him.
Perched on the edge of an uncomfortable antique sofa, balancing a wafer-thin cup of Colombian coffee on her knee, Kalera weathered another quarter of an hour of excruciatingly dull conversation before Duncan blandly asked if she could bear to tear herself away.
When the door shut behind them they both uttered identical, deep sighs of relief and their eyes met in an exquisite moment of perfect understanding. Duncan grinned and she realised that he hadn’t smiled once inside the stultifying solemnity of that house.
‘Freedom!’ He caught up her hand and together they ran down to the car, laughing, like two children escaping school for the summer.
Without discussion, Duncan took the wheel, surprising her yet again when they ended up at a regional park high on the cliffs overlooking Waitemata Harbour.
There were a few other cars parked on the access road, a lovers’ lane of steamy windows, but Duncan drove past them, over a cattle grid and up to a dead end where a wire fence supported a wooden stile. There he took off his shoes and socks and made Kalera do the same, teasing her as she made him turn his back for her to unroll her stockings, and walked her across the rolling, moonlit fields, the grass already damp with spring dew, to where the sea breeze met the edge of the cliff, throwing up a salt-perfumed gush of air.
