A Taxing Affair Read online

  And when Vashti emerged from the building at noon, Alana was there, her normal bright smile like a banner that sagged visibly when they were close enough for her to see Vashti’s haggard expression.

  ‘Not only off your tucker, you haven’t been sleeping real good either, I see,’ she said with a shake of her auburn hair. ‘If I were you, I think I’d take a sickie for the afternoon, have a long and very liquid lunch, and then try and sleep until Monday. But I suppose that would be asking too much, eh? Hardly professional.’

  ‘Hardly,’ Vashti agreed, not bothering to admit that she’d been thinking the exact same thing.

  She knew her eyes were hollow, knew she was as tired as she looked, if not more so, and knew also that she was not about to be led into any discussion at all about why she looked and felt so weary.

  It wasn’t that she didn’t feel Alana could be trusted; it was that both girls knew Phelan’s sister was blatantly matchmaking, which was the absolute last thing Vashti needed just at the moment.

  Neither did she need the minor effort of introducing her companion to Ross Chandler, but it couldn’t be avoided when the boss emerged while they were still standing there.

  Chandler acknowledged the introduction gracefully, his shrewd, tiny eyes glinting with appreciation of Alana’s youthful loveliness.

  ‘Make it a long lunch,’ he suggested upon being told their plans. ‘In fact why not make it an executive-type Friday lunch, Vashti? And I’ll see you Monday — hopefully looking a bit more rested.’

  ‘You must be some kind of witch,’ Vashti said after the man had departed with a beaming smile at Alana. ‘I’ve never seen him react like that to ... well ... anybody. I’d have bet I could have been dying on the floor in front of his desk and he wouldn’t have given me the afternoon off.’

  ‘Sex appeal,’ Alana replied with a flashing grin. ‘Does it every time; you ought to try it some time.’

  Vashti didn’t bother to reply, merely raised one eyebrow. Alana took the hint. They walked down to Liverpool Street and their restaurant and began a lengthy lunch in which Alana did her very best not to mention her brother.

  Not that her best was all that good; it seemed to Vashti that every second comment had to be amended or cut short because it might involve some mention of Phelan, where he was or what he was doing.

  And when Alana finally gave up and changed the subject entirely, things only got worse. Vashti herself became the centre of discussion and, as usual, Alana was less than tactful.

  ‘I invited you for lunch because I’ve been worried about you, for some reason,’ she said. ‘And now that I’ve seen you, I’m glad I did. You look like something the cat dragged in at midnight, if you don’t mind me saying so.’

  ‘Thank you so very much; just what my ego really needed,’ Vashti replied with a weary smile and a shake of her head. ‘Have you got any other compliments, or is that your best?’

  ‘Better than you deserve, love. What on God’s green earth have you been doing to yourself? Or I suppose I should ask what Phelan’s been ... oh, sorry.’ And Alana had the good grace to at least try to look contrite.

  Only to blow it all, in total innocence, a moment later by trying to change the subject and embarking on a dissertation involving stockings and suspender belts.

  ‘Absolutely stunning,’ she was saying, ‘except for the price, of course. You just wouldn’t believe what you’ve got to pay for...’

  And halted mid-sentence in astonishment as Vashti’s face contorted with spasms of laughter she fought to contain within, lest she explode into either tears or laughs that would make their table the centre of attention in the crowded restaurant.

  ‘Put my foot in it again, eh?’ Alana quipped without showing the slightest remorse. ‘And of course you wouldn’t dream of telling me why that was so hilarious.’

  ‘I ... I ... can’t,’ Vashti gasped, hardly able to speak at all through the emotions that bubbled up inside her. And hugged herself, eyes downcast. If she tried to explain she’d either burst into tears or scream with laughter, and she didn’t want either. Not here; not now.

  Instead, she gulped down the remains of her drink, kept her eyes averted as Alana ordered refills for both of them, and struggled to assemble control, at least some control, before the waitress returned with the drinks.

  ‘It’s not your fault,’ she said after the refill arrived and she’d finished half of that, too. ‘It’s just that, well, I went out last week and blew my plastic absolutely into orbit on exactly that. And I don’t even know why!’

  ‘Well, I do, of course,’ Alana replied matter-of-factly. ‘And no, I won’t mention the mongrel’s name.’

  ‘Good. Don’t.’

  ‘I said I wouldn’t and I won’t,’ Alana replied almost snappily, conveniently forgetting that she already had and didn’t — in any event — need to do it again to keep the conversation in troubled waters. ‘But if that steak doesn’t get here pretty damned soon, I’ll mention a few others.’

  ‘Having told the nice lady we were in no hurry at all,’ Vashti remarked. ‘Now who’s being cranky?’

  ‘I always am when I’m hungry,’ was the reply. ‘Or when I start dumping grog into an empty stomach. There are people who really shouldn’t drink, and I think I’m one of them.’

  ‘Just makes me sleepy,’ Vashti replied, but was as pleased as her companion when their steaks arrived a moment later.

  ‘You get stuck into that,’ Alana said, suiting action to her own words. ‘It’s hard to say from looking at you which you need more — the food or the rest.’

  They finished up with rich desserts and coffee with liqueurs, by which time Vashti could hardly keep her eyes open. Alana, by comparison, had returned to her usual brightness and was carrying the conversation virtually on her own.

  ‘Which is a waste,’ she concluded. ‘I can stay home and talk to walls at far less expense and you should be home, before you go to sleep where you’re sitting. So I’ll be quick about asking this favour and then we’re going to put you in a cab and send you home.’

  Presuming Vashti’s nod to mean she still had an audience, she reached into her handbag and pulled out a small tan-coloured envelope, from which she finally extracted a theatre ticket.

  ‘Presuming you’ve wakened up by tomorrow night, and presuming you wouldn’t knock back a chance to see the Chrissie Parrott Dance Collective from the front row of the dress circle, and presuming you’re even listening to me — are you?’

  Vashti managed another nod.

  ‘Right. So here’s your ticket. I’m probably going to be late, so don’t wait for me; just get there on time yourself and I’ll make it when I make it. See here? It says eight-fifteen, which as you know means you’ll have to be there a bit early, because the old Theatre Royal can be slow filling up.’

  ‘But ... who ... why ...?’

  ‘Because Ph... that mongrel who shall remain nameless was supposed to go with me and now he won’t and I hate going alone, that’s why. Now are you going to be in it or have I just wasted lunch and have to run around finding somebody else to join me?’

  There was laughter in Alana’s eyes, but a hint of something else, too. Maybe, Vashti thought, she really did hate going out alone.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said, reaching out for the ticket. ‘For this and for lunch, which, no, was not wasted. I will join you, I promise, unless I somehow manage to sleep right through from the moment I get home today. And even I couldn’t manage that, I don’t think.’

  ‘Good. Now let’s go find you a cab. I’d drive you, although not after the liquid part of that lunch, except that I am without transportation until my sane brother, whose name I can mention, gets round to collecting me. Provided he remembers, of course. He may be saner than the other one, but he’s a damned sight less reliable sometimes.’

  It astonished Vashti when she wakened to find herself feeling so rested, so totally rested, and her bedroom still bright with daylight. Until she realised it was morni
ng daylight, confirmed by the digital bedside clock-radio.

  ‘Four in the afternoon until near as dammit eight o’clock in the morning,’ she muttered aloud with considerable amazement. ‘Well, I must have needed it.’

  No lie there, and it would be something to tell Alana at the theatre that evening. On the way home in the taxi, she had wondered at the wisdom of accepting the ticket, had really not wanted to accept it in the first place. But this morning the idea seemed far more pleasant; she liked Alana and she liked modem dance and, well, why not?

  Bouncing out of bed with a wondrous, unexpected feeling that, for once, all was right with her world, she climbed into her weekend housework clothes and rushed through the necessary chores — washing, ironing, even cleaning the oven.

  Only then did she permit herself the usually earlier luxury of sprawling on the lounge floor to devour the weekend papers page by page, article by article. Two hours later she compounded the decadence by retiring to a hot, filled-to-the-brim bath with a jug of white wine and the latest novel.

  Her buoyant mood persisted; when it came time to dress she had no difficulty making decisions. Out came the most flamboyant ‘after five’ outfit she owned. And with it, carrying a hint of apprehension small enough to be ignored, The Lingerie.

  ‘And to hell with you, Phelan Keene,’ she muttered to a quite splendid image in the mirror. The stockings were, she decided, quite magnificent, and the fact that nobody was going to see what kept them up was irrelevant. She would know; she did know, and that slight nuance of naughtiness almost made it worth the price.

  The overall effect called for at least one drink at the Theatre Royal Hotel before the show, so Vashti left with plenty of time in hand and was lucky enough to secure a parking spot just over the road from the theatre.

  Outside the theatre, people were already gathering, dressed in everything from jeans to evening wear; Hobart was nothing if not tolerant about what should be worn to the theatre. Vashti strolled across Campbell Street at the first opportunity, nodding to several acquaintances, but searching in vain for Alana.

  Even knowing her friend had expected to be late, Vashti kept an eye open as she moved into the throng at the pub next door and fought her way to the serving bar. Here, again, were one or two acquaintances, along with a fair few men whose glances said they’d like to be.

  It was, she decided, quite worth the price of quality clothes to deliver so many sops to the ego in a single evening. Nobody made an out-and-out pass at her, which was just as well, thank you, but there was sufficient interest to make her brief stay in the pub exceptionally enjoyable.

  Alana still hadn’t put in an appearance, however, when the ushers began ringing their bells and it came time to find her seat. Vashti kept looking for her as she made her way across to the theatre, and, once inside, upstairs and along to the front row of the dress circle. Only two seats there were vacant, by this time, and she automatically settled into the one furthest from the central aisles, still looking round for her friend. But even when the lights had dimmed, then focused on the stage and the vivid intricacy of the first dance number, there was no sign of Alana.

  The vacant seat was taken, however, during the first fade between numbers, and as the tall, lean figure of Phelan Keene politely made his way to her side Vashti felt herself grow first hot then icy-cold with anger at the deceptions that had to be involved.

  She visibly shrank away from him as he levered himself into the seat beside her, saying nothing, not even looking at her. Nor did he, during the second presentation, which began almost the instant he was seated. He sat like a grim spectre, only his profile visible in the dim lighting, with his eyes and attention apparently focused on the lithe, almost hypnotic movements on-stage.

  Vashti couldn’t ignore his presence. Had she been blind and deaf, she thought, she would have known it was him the instant he sat down. But she could force herself to emulate his indifference, and she tried her best to fixate on the dancing, to try and let the musical accompaniment drown out the roaring inside her.

  The music was good, the dancing better, the seats, unfortunately, still the most uncomfortable in the known world of theatre. But even as she sat with a self-constructed mental wall of thorns between herself and Phelan, Vashti was eventually able to give herself over to the performance and enjoy it.

  Until the interval!

  She had planned for it, hoping against hope that the people on her left side were smokers, and would move quickly to get out to the foyer. That way she could be free to leave without having to move through the tiny space before Phelan’s legs, without having to look at him, to speak to him.

  They did move quickly; he was quicker still. A hand caught her elbow before she had a hope of moving, and he was there, leaning to force her attention. So close, almost kissing-close, she thought irrelevantly. But kissing appeared the last thing on his mind.

  He spoke. So did she, and their words were so much the same that it would have been laughable under any other circumstance. ‘I’m going to kill your ... my ... sister for this!’

  But it was Phelan who continued.

  ‘You’ll have to stand in line,’ he said grimly, then grinned, his teeth gleaming but his eyes like coals. ‘Unless you’d like to help, of course. This being the first thing we’ve ever agreed on, maybe we should share the experience.’

  ‘You’ll only kill her in a book,’ Vashti heard herself reply. ‘I am going to ... to ...’ Possibilities occurred to her — shocking possibilities — but she couldn’t put them into words she was game to say aloud.

  Especially as she had suddenly realised he’d let go of her elbow; now he held her wrist, and it was anything but a confining grip, the way his thumb moved caressingly across her pulse.

  ‘Come and I’ll buy you a drink. We can discuss the gory details after the performance,’ he said, rising to his feet and lifting her along with him.

  Never so much as a thought that she might not want a drink, Vashti thought as she toddled along behind him. Much less that she might not want a drink with him. And if he’d given her half a chance she wouldn’t have left her wrap there on the seat; she could have just walked out and left him!

  ‘This is too good to waste by stomping off in a huff halfway through,’ he said. Reading her mind again? ‘So if you’re planning that, tell me now, and I’ll just fetch one glass of wine.’

  This was all spoken with a straight face and eyes that danced with devilish laughter, daring her to make a scene, double-daring her to take up his offer and flee, much as they both knew she wanted to.

  ‘White wine, please,’ she replied, calmly and politely. ‘Which I may very well dump down the front of you,’ she added to his departing back, noting as she spoke how superbly the dinner suit fitted him, how easily he seemed to make his way through the throng at the bar.

  And when he returned, casually carrying two glasses of wine in one hand while he used the other to fend his way through the crowd, she wondered how he could do that so easily and never take his eyes off her the whole time. Because he didn’t. From the instant he’d made sufficient progress to be able to see her, his eyes roamed over the terrain of her body, climbing a breast here, descending a leg there.

  Did he realise how much the stockings he appeared to be admiring had cost? she wondered. Not to mention the wispy suspender belt that now felt more fragile than risqué? For an instant, as she reached out to accept the glass from him, she had a ridiculous desire to ask him, to see if he thought the price justified. Vashti had to lower her head to hide the inner laugh that thought caused.

  ‘I hope that chuckle was prompted by some suitable punishment for my almost departed sister,’ Phelan said. And his own grin was far from humorous. It was wolfish, totally predatory, frightening.

  But his eyes weren’t. They met her own over the wine glass he raised in a mocking salute, then brushed across her face with a curious gentleness, touching her lips, her throat...

  ‘What I’d like to do to her,
well, there aren’t suitable words to be used in public,’ Vashti said, raising her own glass before gulping half the contents down in a futile bid to cool her sudden flush.

  ‘I agree. It’s a pity Dad didn’t use his good old razor strap on my dear little sister while she was growing up!’ Phelan said. ‘It might’ve put her off pulling stunts like this one!’

  Vashti replied, quietly and seriously, ‘But really, I’m just astonished that she’d even think of doing a thing like this. It’s just ... just …’

  ‘Totally in character. My darling baby sister is probably the world’s greatest pure romantic. She’s been trying to marry off both Bevan and me for years, although to be fair tonight’s little performance was a bit off the wall even for her!’

  ‘She’s off her head, never mind being off the wall,’ Vashti retorted.

  Phelan laughed, a curt, low bark that offered only a glimpse of flashing teeth and no real sign of humour. But whatever he might have been going to say was cut off by the bells recalling them to their seats.

  Vashti followed Phelan down the darkening aisle, and was all too conscious of his hand on her arm as he guided her along the row and into her seat. She was equally conscious that he didn’t maintain his touch once she was in her seat and the house lights went down to announce the second performance.

  Throughout the second half, he maintained his attention only on the stage and the dancers, while Vashti found her own attentions divided. She very much enjoyed the performance, but was also very much aware of the tall figure beside her, of the strong profile lurking in her side-vision and even, she fancied, of the man’s very aura.

  Because Phelan Keene did have an aura, she thought. Or perhaps it was easier described as a presence; the semantics weren’t important. It was enough that she was strongly aware, too strongly, if anything, of the man beside her, despite his silence, despite his apparent attitude of ignoring her.

  When the show was over, stimulating several well- deserved curtain calls, Vashti turned to bend down for her wrap, only to find it already in Phelan’s hands. Without thinking, she turned to let him spread it over her shoulders, feeling the touch of his fingers on her bare skin as he did so, fancying that his fingertips lingered briefly, tantalising. Or was it only fancy? Certainly it was fact that he took her arm to guide her into the aisle, that he kept her elbow in the cup of his palm as they made their way downstairs and out on to the crowded footpath.