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‘I love coming up here alone late at night,’ he exulted softly, tipping his head back to stare up at the vast vault of heaven pricked with stars. ‘Just me…and the rest of the universe.’
The light from the yellow slice of moon was just enough to silver his strongest features, throwing the rest into impenetrable shadow.
‘You can dream dreams here with no one to tell you that they’re futile or feckless. Someone once told me that the way to success is never to stop believing in your dreams, or trying to achieve them…’
Kalera wrapped her arms around herself, soaking up the tranquillity of the night, feeling safe enough under the cover of the darkness to study him for the first time with her heart in her eyes, aching with the knowledge that her own secret dream, the one she had steadfastly refused to admit even to her
self, was still as unreachable as the stars overhead. She loved Duncan Royal, had loved him for much longer than was comfortable to contemplate.
‘After visiting the family mausoleum,’ he murmured, still scanning the heavens, ‘you must know why it’s always been so important for me to be free—to be a renegade who makes his own rules.’
‘Is that why you took me there?’ She turned to look out over the shadowy sea, the lights of the distant shore suddenly blurring in her sight.
Oh, God, had he guessed how she felt? Did he think she had required an object lesson on how little to expect from him? She knew him too well to have believed it would be any different. In spite of his flamboyant gregariousness and greedy appetite for excitement, he travelled through life essentially alone. Just Duncan and the universe of dreams he carried inside him.
She felt him move up behind her, his hands steadying the sway of her slight body in the breeze. ‘I wanted you to understand. You think we’re worlds apart in our outlook but we’re not so very different, you and I, in what drives us to do the things that we do and make the choices that we have. Neither of us wants to be our parents…’
‘I don’t think there’s any danger you’ll end up like your father,’ said Kalera, thinking of the dour, repressive man whose face might have been carved in granite.
His arms replaced his hands, folding around her waist, his chin propped on her moon-silvered top-knot as he drew her securely back against him.
‘And you have too much strength of will to ever be swayed into forsaking your responsibilities for the sake of casual self-indulgence, as your mother did.
‘You had too much freedom in your childhood, I had too little. We both over-compensated. The trick is to hold a balance in your life.’
‘I’d like to learn that trick some day,’ sighed Kalera.
He turned her in his arms, a column of moonstruck fire, and rested his cool forehead against hers. ‘Would you like me to teach you?’ he whispered, nudging her nose with his.
He had obliquely warned her off falling in love with him, and now he was inviting her to accept him for the man he was…
A breath away from being kissed, she lost courage and turned her cheek.
He was not dispirited. ‘Ever since your mother told me you were born on grass I’ve had this lovely fantasy,’ he murmured, nuzzling the silky slant of her delicate cheekbone. ‘You naked as the day you were born on a lush field of grass. Will you make love with me, now, Kalera—here on this bed of grass, in the moonlight…?’
If only she had. If only she hadn’t been too shocked, too shy, too fearful of betraying her most private emotions to act out his fantasy, maybe she wouldn’t be feeling so miserable and confused now…
‘Kalera? Are you going to get into that helicopter or are we going to have to winch you in?’
Wrenched back to the present by Duncan’s impatient growl, Kalera stumbled forward, bending low, and hitched her skirt to climb into the rear of the transport, gasping as she received a caressing boost to her taut rear by Duncan’s cupped hand.
She flushed as she subsided into her seat and was immediately squashed up against the bulkhead by Duncan, who ensured she was buckled in before he issued a thumbs-up to the pilot. The rotation increased sharply and the helicopter shuddered and lurched. Kalera closed her eyes and a warm hand wrapped around her white-knuckled fingers as they swooped off the top of the building. It was several minutes before she opened her eyes and Duncan gave her hand a warm squeeze of reassurance as she looked out of the window, her stomach lurching to see that they were skimming over the sparkling waters of Waitemata Harbour. Soon, though, she was fascinated by the view, eagerly looking out for the landmarks Duncan pointed out in the toy-land unfolding below while Bryan dozed and his four young ‘apostles’, Matthew, Mark, Luke and Brendan, played a series of wildly fast games of cards that competed against the rotors for rowdiness.
It took an hour to get to their secret destination, flying south across the Firth of Thames to an isolated spot in the south-eastern reaches of the Coromandel Ranges. As the helicopter hovered low over a cleared patch of land in the midst of thick native bush, Kalera saw a large, square, single-storey house of white-washed concrete.
She turned wide grey eyes to Duncan’s face.
He nodded, leaning close to her ear to be heard. ‘I call it The Labyrinth.’
‘You own it?’
His navy eyes gleamed. ‘Built it four years ago. My secret hideaway from the world…’
Privately she thought it a rather ridiculous name for such a prosaic dwelling—until she walked through the ceiling-high front door and discovered that the interior was constructed as a clever series of square rooms of various sizes connected by a maze-like interconnection of corridors which doubled as bookshelves and storage areas. All the interior doors were internal sliders which vanished back into the walls, thus preserving the illusion of endless entrances and exits and providing the option of open-plan living or very private bolt-holes.
As Duncan trailed his troop of guests across the polished wood floors, introducing them to the intricate layout of the colourfully furnished white-walled rooms, Kalera murmured, ‘It looks sort of like—’
‘A labyrinth, I know; I designed it that way.’ He rewarded her with an indulgent smile. ‘Let me show you the bedrooms I’ve allocated for you all and then we can get settled in. I have a live-in caretaker who is a fantastic cook, by the way, so anything you want in the kitchen, just ask Jed—except for snacks and drinks; you can help yourself to those.’
