Potrait of Jamie Read online

  'In a lost world, you mean,' he said very deliberately.

  Jaime glanced over her shoulder and back at him. 'Are you trying to tell me only a man who makes money is important?'

  'I assure you a lot of people think it's important.'

  'Then they should get out into the fresh air. Recover a sense of proportion.'

  'That's what's wrong with them, Jaime, they can't!'

  'You talk the same language, don't you?'

  'Definitely, but only up to a point. Remember that carefully.'

  He sounded a little formidable, but there was a cool sensuality in his voice she couldn't fail to notice. 'When would you expect me to leave?' she asked quietly.

  Tm due back in Sydney in three days.'

  'Do you think I could handle them?' She appeared to be addressing the timeless ocean.

  'You don't belong with them, Jaime,' he responded.

  'Yet you expect me to go and live with them for old times' sake—Rowena's daughter come home.'

  'That's not overstating it. Only you're not Rowena. There are small differences.'

  'There are big differences,' she said emphatically, 'and one day you'll all see them.'

  'I think we can expect that,' he said, his eyes never leaving her.

  'So you see you weren't sent to recover a lost child at all.'

  'What, then?'

  She had been speaking with soft animation, not looking at him but out towards the first foaming line of the breakers, so that his presence right behind her came as a shock. She wanted to turn and say something, anything, but simultaneously his arm closed about her, her head brought back against his shoulder. Pure instinct precipitated a bid for freedom. She brought up her two hands, pushing down on his arm in a vain attempt to break his hold, her self-possession shattered like a falling star.

  'You're twenty in three months, Jaime,' he said with smooth mockery. 'A grown woman.'

  'Don't tell that to me now!'

  'Turn round,' he ordered.

  'No, I won't! What you're after is some sort of symbolic act, a surrender.'

  'What I'm after, Jaime, is the touch of your mouth. It talks a lot of sense—sometimes.'

  'Well, when you put it like that...'

  'Don't misunderstand me. I'm through talking!' He spun her with just a little force right into his arms, cupping her face and turning it up to him with all the skill of a sorcerer.

  'If you're going to kiss me, kiss me!' she said in defiance, staring up at him with wide, shining eyes.

  'You don't want it?'

  'I don't want it... yes, I want it!'

  'That's what I thought you said.'

  She heard his soft laugh and was glad of it, thinking in her inexperience that a kiss would be only a gesture from this strange, complex man, but the first touch of his mouth started an intolerable showering of sparks, an actual physical ache. There was a droning sound in her ears, a muffled droning, like a frail swimmer predictably and about to be doomed. She no longer cared a hoot what he thought of her, her slender body blazing like bushfire under his hands. It couldn't be that she was out of control. It couldn't be that she was ingenuous or precariously stupid. She was vulnerable to this man and she had recklessly shown it from the very first minute. If she couldn't understand her reaction either, he was proving very conclusively that the mind and the body led different lives.

  'Stop kissing me,' she whispered. 'Just stop.'

  His hands shifted to her shoulders, just barely hurting her. 'The hell with that!'

  'This isn't part of the plan, Quinn, is it?'

  'What you're asking is, did I set out to kiss you. No, I didn't, but I do get my flesh and blood moments.'

  'Then it's for the cold-blooded?''

  'Do you still think I am?' he asked laconically.

  'No.'

  'Neither are you. I could make love to you until I'm too old to succumb to temptation, but all it would do is hurt both of us.'

  'How?' she asked, throwing discretion to the winds.

  'I deal in hard facts.'

  'You're stunning!' she said in a near whisper. Her skin was so sensitised that she could still feel his touch when he had half turned away from her. She might still have been clinging to him, her heart striking into his as if it were her preordained destiny. A little frantically now she shook back her hair so that it flowed about her face in silky turbulence. 'It's been a very nice evening, Mr Sterling, but do you mind if we go home now?'

  'It's where you belong for tonight!'

  Her words seemed to have brought him back from an immense distance. She looked around for her sandals, that one of them or both had thrown down on the sand. She couldn't for the life of her remember which one. 'Don't even think of my coming to Falconer!' she said with pleasurable, renewed hostility, on course again.

  'You will!' he said briefly, leaning down and retrieving the small, strappy sandals.

  'You're a very strange man. You alarm me,' she said, not even thanking him. She almost ran across the sand, her dress fluttering, and hesitated at the foot of the stairs to slip on her shoes. In another minute she had almost reached the car.

  'Stop it, Jaime,' he caught up with her and locked her wrist, flaring excitement at will. 'Come with me and you'll learn a lot in the process.'

  'I've learned a lot already!'

  'You don't know a damn thing!'

  'I know what you've taught me.'

  'We won't mention it,' he smiled at her, 'until I kiss you again.'

  'Now that's something that won't happen!' she said with almost comical panic.

  'How would you set about stopping me?' He sounded as if he was genuinely interested.

  'I've a few tricks of my own,' she assured him.

  'You don't need any tricks at all. All you have to be is exactly you!'

  'Thank you,' she murmured with a kind of impotent rage beating at her temples.

  'Don't be silly, Jaime, you've no reason to be annoyed with me. I'm not your enemy.'

  'You could seriously reverse my fortunes!'

  He looked down at her passionate young face, an odd smile in his eyes. 'You're fascinating, Jaime, do you know that? I wouldn't have missed out on this trip for the world. In a lot of ways it's been a fantastic surprise.'

  'Don't congratulate yourself yet!' she said to him with a certain imperiousness.

  Quinn smiled and smoothed back the black silky sweep of her hair. 'Don't ever lose that fighting spirit. It's a precious commodity.'

  'I'm glad I have it, if there are men like you around.'

  'There you go again, and it's fatal!'

  'I'll tell you what,' she said purposefully, 'we could strike a bargain. Get in the car and I'll tell you about it.'

  'Splendid!' he said, staring into her face. 'You're rather a breathless character, Jaime. A man would have to look high and low for your like!'

  He unlocked the car with barely concealed impatience for her to continue, even going so far as to turn on the interior light, his arm sliding along the back of the seat as he trained on her a brilliant black scrutiny. 'Please go on. I keep feeling a shift in our positions. You're a born boss.'

  'If I come to Falconer, Quinn,' she said earnestly, 'could you back me in a business venture?'

  'Great God, what is this, blackmail?'

  'Don't mention that word, it isn't in my vocabulary. I'm not shy and retiring, you can see that; I don't have to be stupidly modest like a Victorian relic, I have real ability. I just know I could be a good designer. You told me yourself you liked this dress.'

  'I love it!' he said with black, amused malice. 'But not one half as much as the girl in it.'

  'Men are unduly preoccupied with that sort of thing. Please be serious, Quinn.'

  'Do you mean to tell me we're going to sit here and discuss business?'

  'Why not?'

  'Why not, indeed! All right, Jaime, fire away. You've got exactly five minutes. But first tell me, why me?'

  Jaime's blue eyes were startlingly bea
utiful, ablaze with enthusiasm. 'It could never be my grandfather, for obvious reasons. That megalomaniac bit has always stuck in my head and I never even knew who he was. I know perfectly well you're too hard-headed to come into anything foolish, but with a little help I could build up .a successful business in time. I have a natural flair and I can do everything. The lot! Others have done it, Pru Acton and Jane Cattlin, why not Jaime Gilmore? The ideas just flow out, but precisely nowhere. I have to have help, then I'll work my fingers to the bone to prove myself.'

  'I'm indeed glad you mentioned that,' he said dryly. 'One thing you might have overlooked, your grandfather won't allow a moment of your time to be diverted from him.'

  'Don't you think I can guess that?' She leaned forward and grasped his sleeve, staring up into his dominant dark face. 'Does my idea make sense to you?'

  'Go easy, Jaime! My head's spinning, and not only with your proposal. I mean, I have to mix business with pleasure, but you?' He imprisoned the golden-skinned hand on his sleeve, turning it this way and that as though he could read her future in her palm. 'Beautiful hands, Jaime, neat and elegant like the rest of you. I hate to think of them emaciated through overwork.'

  'I've got sketchbooks galore to show you,' she hurried on, 'I make all my own clothes, I've done so for years. I've made clothes for my friends, for nothing of course, they bought the material and I just liked doing it. I've even made a wedding dress and it was absolutely super, everybody said so.'

  'My God, and to think I wasn't warned!'

  'Take me seriously, Quinn, please. This really matters to me.'

  'A leaf out of the Old Man's book?' he enquired.

  'What did you expect, another Sue-Ellen or Leigh?' , 'No, I get very tired of them.'

  'This is business we're discussing,' she said urgently as the palm of her hand began to tingle.

  'Of course, Miss Gilmore. Does your father know of this burning ambition?'

  'I've tried discussing it with him many times, but...'

  'All right, I know the score. Ideas are all very well, Jaime, so is creative ability, but there's so much more to it, and I'd have to see a lot more of your work.'

  'You will, I promise you, and once you do I'm sure you'll decide in my favour.'

  'Jaime, you're irresistible!' he said, carrying her hand to his mouth. 'The soft sell!'

  She frowned. 'Don't spell it out like that! I want nothing but a little strictly legitimate help and encouragement. Everyone needs a patron. Look at Michelangelo and the Pope!'

  'Please don't bring them into it, Jaime. I tell you, it's unnecessary.'

  'I'm not asking you to back a failure, Quinn. I know I can make it. I just know!'

  Quinn looked thoughtful. 'It's given to some of us to know, Jaime, I can't deny that. That's how we find the strength to get to the top. Let's say for the time being you have me interested, but I promise nothing. You're on trial about a lot of things.'

  'So are you!' she said, feeling closer to him than any other human being on earth, which was extremely odd. 'I didn't say I approve of you entirely.'

  'Well, you'd better keep quiet about it, or you won't get a penny. Perhaps you could talk it over with my grandmother. She's an extremely clever woman and her taste in all things is superb.'

  'She might hate me.'

  'She'd never hate you, Jaime, she's above that sort of thing. Quite uncivilised, I can hear her saying it. She might, however, stop short at the sight of your face, but I suppose she'll have to get used to it.'

  'But for heaven's sake, why shouldn't she bury the hatchet?' she demanded.

  'Now you sound nineteen! An ignorant little girl who hasn't seen life.'

  'I am nineteen, Quinn,' she said in a quick flood of words, her blue-violet eyes shimmering. 'I can't be an all-suffering, sophisticated woman of the world yet.'

  'I don't want you to ever be,' he rejoined.

  'I expect it will have to happen!'

  'Particularly if you're going to set the fashion world on fire,' he grinned..

  'Sister Monica always used to say she could teach me anything and I let her, but actually I knew far more about sewing and handling material then, than she'll ever know!'

  'Poor dear Sister Monica, God help her! Perhaps she should have had a patron.'

  'I knew you'd be extremely interested in my proposition,' she said, scarcely hearing him.

  'You're convincing, that's for sure! Now, not another word if you don't mind. I'm not all that keen on career women.'

  'Let's shake hands on it,' she said, almost feeling the wine of success in her veins.

  'I've a better idea.' His hand wound her black hair like a silk rope, drawing her to him. 'I'm not sure you're not. unique. You even manage to delight my mind!' Relentlessly he lowered his head with no ordinary gift for making love to a woman, ousting every other thought from Jaime's mind. It was a brief caress, controlled, but it impressed itself deeply on Jaime's consciousness. She didn't attempt to evade him, just turned up her mouth, her lids falling. She was trembling when he released her, staring at him with an almost childlike wonder.

  He spoke casually, as though she were a secretary across a desk. 'I'll ring you the day after tomorrow.'

  'I never discuss business on the phone. Besides, this is between the two of us.'

  'What a good idea, and I'm not even excessively surprised. Now let me get you back to your father.'

  CHAPTER THREE

  Falconer was a piece of old England, a beautiful manor house built on the foreshores of Sydney Harbour. Turreted, towered with romantic Gothic windows in jewel colours, its rosy sandstone walls were almost covered with ivy and scented creepers, its terraced gardens sweeping down to the blue harbour, sheltered and enclosed on all sides by magnificent native and exotic trees that soared to such a height that the house was guaranteed a splendid isolation. Built in the 1840s by an important Colonial official, Sir Edward Wyndham, the original brilliant estate had been drastically reduced in size to the present extremely valuable but relatively small block of land, and had passed out of the hands of Sir Edward's descendants and into the vastly enriched hands of Sir Rolf Hunter Some thirty years before.

  It was without question the most beautiful and romantic house Jaime had ever seen or even dreamed of entering, set like some architectural jewel looking out on to the-blue sparkling harbour. Only Quinn's hand beneath her elbow kept Jaime steadily walking towards it. When she had first glanced up after getting out of the car, she had glimpsed a figure at one of the upstairs windows. She was certain it had been a woman; perhaps her Aunt Georgia. Quinn, in turn, glancing down at Jaime, noted the fact that she was extremely nervous and had lost colour; apart from that she couldn't have looked better, polished but casual in one of the incredibly chic and inventive three-piece outfits she had made herself. This one was the colour of young claret, with a beautiful contrasting blouse in a patterned silk which accented the golden tan of her skin and intensified the blue-violet of her eyes until they blazed in her small face. She had an intuitive, highly artistic sense of style, very likely inherited from her father, and she'd be too much for Georgia and Sue-Ellen who loathed competition above all things.

  'Steady,' he said, bending his dark head nearer her. 'You look super, to use one of your own words.'

  'I feel a complete stranger to myself,' she confessed. 'What am I doing here?'

  'Sticking to our bargain, I hope. By the way, don't breathe a word of it,' including the fact you're a knockout with the scissors and the sewing machine.'

  'I think I'll have my hair cut now I'm in Sydney. They have superb stylists here.'

  He smiled and looked down at her. 'Can't you hold on to that black inane? It's very sensuous, to say the least.'

  'You'll like what I have in mind,' she assured him.

  'I'm sure I will. You're destined to go a long way, Jaime.'

  'It's not going to be easy,' she said, with a sudden premonition that touched him as well, for he briefly agreed:

  'No.' He look
ed up towards the house again and his face changed, becoming guarded and faintly saturnine. A woman in a deep sea green caftan was gliding towards them, the sunlight streaming over her beautifully blonded hair.

  It was easy to classify her—the wife of a very rich man, all subtle arrogance, her narrow green eyes smiling as they moved swifter than light over Jaime. In a few seconds she was upon them, giving Quinn an intimate smile, pressing a white jewelled hand to his cheek, and greeted Jaime with a high concentrate of attention, then took the girl's hands and kissed her cheek.

  'My dear child, you're the image of your mother!' she said as though that covered everything.

  'Aunt Georgia!' Jaime responded, trying to fight out of the persuasive fumes of a very expensive and adventurous perfume.

  'Welcome to Falconer, my dear,' Georgia offered belatedly, a constriction somewhere under her breastbone. She turned to Quinn almost with relief and linked her hands around his jacketed arm. 'How lovely to have you back again. We've missed you,' she said as though he had been to the moon and was back again to a terrestrial paradise. Her green eyes found Jaime's. 'You've no idea how fortunate you were to have Quinn. He's nobody's guide as a rule.'

  'He was a lot of fun, actually,' Jaime said in a fit of devilment, which made Georgia's smile chip at the corners.

  'Don't let my Sue hear you say that!' Georgia warned playfully. 'She would throw her life away for this man.'

  'How wasteful!. May I see my grandfather, Aunt Georgia? I'm looking forward to meeting Sue and the rest of the family.'

  'As they're anxious to meet you, dear,' Georgia maintained, substituting avid for anxious in her own mind.

  The girl was a shock; Rowena all over again, more poised and well turned out than Georgia could credit with the insignificant background her appalling father had provided for her. Her outfit had everything; cut, line, a wonderful colour with that enviable Queensland tan, and she wore it like a professional model with considerable élan. Rowena's exotic hyacinth gaze mocked her, dominating the young face with its Indian black hair. Georgia was horrified and alarmed. In fact she earnestly wished the child had died with the mother. Rowena had always caused trouble, and her daughter struck the same chord. Georgia turned and led the way with Quinn and Jaime a few measured steps away from her.