A Taxing Affair Read online

  As she wound her way towards the coast, forced to concentrate on her driving by the constant presence of log trucks that loomed up behind her with fearsome determination when loaded and swayed alarmingly when approaching empty and headed back inland, she found the incident and all its ramifications flouncing through her mind like the aftermath of a pillow-fight.

  Janice Gentry’s involvement was the easiest to comprehend and, surprisingly, to simply ignore. It was nothing more or less than sheer bitchiness, so obvious a ploy that she ought to have expected it.

  But the accountant’s use of such a ploy in Phelan Keene’s presence suggested, at the very least, that it was a subject she had already discussed with him. And if with Phelan, then logically also with his brother and sister. But when?

  Surely, Vashti thought, it couldn’t have been before the weekend; it was ludicrous, considering Alana Keene’s warm and genuine attitude on Saturday, to assume Alana could even have been aware, at the time, of Janice Gentry’s vindictive accusations.

  Sunday? Possible, she thought. Probable, she ultimately decided, reviewing in her mind all that had happened. Phelan had obviously intended to see the Gentry woman on Saturday evening, probably had done so on Sunday.

  Was the accusation linked to his earliest meeting with Vashti, when he’d been undeniably hostile, and quite dearly marked her as ‘the enemy’ and treated her as such?

  That, she thought, made some modicum of sense, but only if she could ignore Saturday entirely. Surely no man could be so attentive, so charming, to a person he thought guilty of such behaviour?

  It was that, she decided, that galled the most. Such behaviour was not only unthinkable to her personally, given her regard for old Bede Keene — it was damned well unprofessional!

  And for him to have spent half of Saturday being deliberately nice to her, more than just nice. To have used his charm so blatantly, to have touched her, kissed her ... when he felt like that. It was disgusting!

  All these thoughts dashed helter-skelter through her mind as she drove mechanically, avoiding the log trucks, back to Hobart that afternoon, arriving at the office just at knock-off time.

  She skimmed through the various telephone messages, mostly from Phelan Keene and automatically, therefore, discarded unread, than locked up her desk again and drove home.

  She had parked and was halfway up the footpath when the decrepit old utility clanked to a halt behind her small sedan, and, although she did her best, Vashti couldn’t reach her door and get herself safely behind it before Phelan Keene’s strong fingers were clamped firmly around her wrist.

  ‘Let go of me.’ She growled the command without looking at him, twisting her body in a futile attempt to enforce her demand.

  ‘Not a chance,’ was the reply, soft and yet threatening in her ear. Long, tanned fingers reached out to pluck her keys from fingers too weak to resist, and he reached forward to unlock her apartment door while still holding her in an iron grip.

  ‘In!’ he commanded, his voice overriding her own squeal of protest. And in she went, thrust into her own home like a bag of groceries.

  Vashti stumbled forward, almost tripping over her own coffee-table as Phelan slammed the door behind them. Even as she regained her balance and turned to cry out her objections to this invasion, he was flipping on the night-latch and turning to face her, eyes blazing.

  ‘Now,’ he said. ‘No telephones, no lying little switchboard operators, no screaming hysterics.’

  Vashti could have laughed at the last; her breath was coming in uneven gasps, her heart was thumping as if to batter its way out of her breast, and she thought her legs would collapse beneath her any instant.

  ‘Get out. Leave me alone,’ she gasped. ‘Get out ... get out ... get out ...’

  ‘Not,’ he said grimly, ‘until we’ve talked this thing through.’

  ‘There’s nothing to talk about,’ she snapped in reply, part-way back in control now. ‘Nothing!’

  ‘The hell there isn’t.’ And his voice was as fierce as her own was angry, the fierceness matched by the explosive expression in his ice-green eyes.

  ‘There isn’t.’

  He was dressed as her mind always pictured him now, in faded jeans and a light checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal his powerful forearms. His hair was its usual curly crispness and, although he was clean-shaven and smelted of the unique aftershave he used, his face was drawn, the shadows under his eyes revealing ... what?

  Certainly they weren’t revealing anything like a quiet, even temperament. He stalked towards her across the tiny battleground of her lounge, looming huge in the small room. Vashti backed away the few steps available to her, then squealed with alarm as he reached out one forefinger and quite literally pushed her backwards on to the sofa.

  ‘Now listen,’ he growled, shaking that same finger in admonishment, as if by the very action he could forestall any attempt to argue. He kicked aside Vashti’s handbag, which she’d dropped as he pushed her, and stepped closer, so close that he had to bend to look directly into her eyes.

  ‘No!’ She shook her head, lifting both hands to cover her ears, knowing it appeared childish — probably, in fact, quite ridiculous — but doing it anyway. Just to be doing something, anything but just accepting his assault.

  ‘Yes!’

  He reached down and lifted her by the wrists, forcing her nose to nose with him, glaring into her eyes and shaking her so vigorously that it seemed her arms would be wrenched from their sockets.

  ‘I had no idea Janice Gentry was going to say what she did.’

  He made the statement in direct, forceful tones, keeping his voice flat, almost totally unemotional.

  ‘Who ... cares?’

  Vashti’s voice was far from flat; the two words burst from her gasping lips, pushed by the pain in her shoulders as much as by the emotional pain she felt and tried to disguise.

  ‘I care. And you care, whether you want to admit it or not,’ was the reply, not flat now, but growled from lips only inches from her own.

  ‘I don’t. Let me go! Damn you, let me go, I said.’

  She might as well talk to the wall. His fingers never slackened for an instant, nor did he ease his grip to let her get where she wanted most to be — away from him. No breathing space, no thinking space.

  She didn’t have to think; the thrust of her knee was almost instinctive. And, considering her position, should have been effective as well. Only he turned his thigh, or twisted his body somehow; she didn’t know just what, only that instead of the release she expected she gained only a grunt of effort, a quick shake of his head as he negated her assault.

  ‘Naughty,’ he growled then. ‘Not at all nice.’

  Vashti lashed out again, knowing it was a waste of time but unwilling to give in.

  ‘Stop that, dammit!’

  ‘Let me go.’ She gasped out the command, but tried to level her voice into a firm insistence, rather than the panicky response she felt inside.

  ‘Not likely,’ was the response, and his fingers clenched briefly round her wrists as if to accentuate the remark.

  Vashti lapsed into what she hoped would seem passive acceptance, then lashed out in a third attempt to destroy his manhood, both feet kicking now, both knees thrusting, and felt a sudden great surge of joy as one toe struck something firm and she felt him wince.

  Then, without warning, she was lifted, tipped half upside-down, and found herself sprawled in his lap as he landed with a thump on the sofa. One hand miraculously maintained the grip of two on her wrists while the other casually removed her shoes and then clamped itself around her knees, locking her into a totally helpless position.

  ‘Right,’ he growled. ‘Now about all you can do is go for the jugular, and, although I wouldn’t put it past you, I’ll take the chance that the taste of blood would put you off. So I shall talk, and you, Msssss Sinclair, will listen. OK?’

  With her arms stretched above her head and the rest of her body firmly contro
lled by his strength, Vashti didn’t bother to reply. Instead, she glared up at him, baring her teeth and curling her lip in a snarl. Irreverently, she had a mental picture of a farm kelpie she’d once seen edging up to a fight, its teeth fairly clattering as it threatened. In any other circumstance, it might have been funny, but she now thought she knew how the dog had felt.

  ‘I did not know that woman was going to say what she did,’ Phelan said, spacing each word out as if he were someone predicting the end of the world. ‘If I had known, I wouldn’t have allowed it. Is ... that ... clear?’

  His eyes burned into hers, then, unaccountably, broke the contact to move slowly, deliberately, across her face, down her throat, and along the cleft of her dishevelled blouse. Vashti squirmed, which only made her more aware of the heat of his groin against her hip, of the way her skirt was rucked up almost to her waist.

  ‘I ... don’t ... care,’ she replied, spacing the words as deliberately as he had. It was a lie, but he’d never know that, she vowed. Sort of a lie. What she did care about, suddenly realised all she cared about, was whether Phelan Keene had believed the accusation. Whether he’d have allowed it didn’t matter a damn; whether he believed it...

  ‘Of course you care; stop being so obtuse,’ he snapped. ‘You’re not a fool and we both know it, so quit acting like one.’

  The comment was punctuated by a slow, circling motion of his thumb against the back of her knee, a motion so light in its touch that for an instant she wasn’t aware of it. Then she was!

  ‘Damn you... Stop that!’ Vashti snapped, wriggling to no real effect against the strength of his grip. He did stop, too, which served only to make her more aware of the warmth where their bodies touched, of the male strength of him growing now against her hip.

  ‘Stop what?’ And his face suddenly changed, sliding into a picture of such bland, total innocence that she almost laughed. Again that insidious thumb, moving against the thin, delicate skin behind her knee, moving in slow, deliberate circles as his elbow kept her from kicking free.

  Vashti didn’t answer; she just forced herself to meet his eyes, to deny the effect he was having on her, to maintain her rage, her sense of betrayal.

  One dark eyebrow lifted in a sarcastic query; his teeth flashed in a sudden, wolfish grin that disappeared as quickly as it began. And always his eyes, those pale, pale eyes, maintained their grip on her. He was so close that she could see the tiny rays of colour up through his irises, minute rays of cold that shot like sunshine through the green ice.

  ‘This?’

  His voice was a whisper of warmth against her lips, but the question was for a firmer touch, the warmth that went with the exploration of his fingers along the length of her thigh.

  Vashti could answer neither, because as she parted her lips to speak they were captured immediately by his mouth. And as she writhed against the arousing touch of his fingers, the movement only served to make their journey more erotic, more intimate.

  More maddening!

  ‘Damn you,’ she muttered, wrenching her mouth from his, shaking her head furiously to avoid a continuation of his kiss. ‘Damn you...’

  The curse was muffled this time, because as she stopped shaking her head to speak his lips were there to claim her, to stifle her curse half-uttered as his tongue tasted her breath, fluttered against her fury. And his fingers never stopped their caressing exploration, moving always closer to an objective that would defeat her entirely.

  ‘You don’t want to damn me,’ he whispered after an eternity.

  ‘I do... I do…’ she sighed, lying to both of them now in the last vestiges of her defence. His lips remained only a touch away from her own; his eyes were huge, encapsulating her vision.

  ‘Pretty hard to damn someone with your glasses all skew-whiff,’ he muttered, and, miraculously, freed her legs as he automatically reached up to push them into place. It was a gesture she had, Vashti realised, already come to think of as ‘special’, as something somehow intimate between them.

  Something he probably did to Janice Gentry’s glasses as well, she now thought with a driving, hurting anger. And before he could reposition that hand she was twisting, thrusting, driving her body into a furious bid for freedom.

  Waste!

  He laughed, a laugh that seemed to boom through the small flat, as he twisted his own position so that he could clamp her legs between his own now, holding her even more securely than before.

  But this left him with one hand free, free to explore her body at his leisure, ignoring her attempts to twist free, ignoring her objections, by the simple expediency of closing her mouth with his own, easier now that he had that free hand to manipulate her as he pleased.

  His fingers touched at her jaw line, gently but firmly shifting her head to make her mouth more accessible. And as he kissed her, that hand traced its deliberate way down the length of her throat, pausing only briefly at the hollow where her breathing bubbled with a curious mixture of fear and anger and passion.

  Then he stopped kissing her, just for an instant, and his hand lifted to take her glasses away, lifting them from her nose as gently as his lips returned to claim her mouth.

  Vashti was silent during that interval, silent and still as the proverbial church mouse. Her glasses gone, she somehow felt suddenly more vulnerable, assuming that could be possible, than before. And again, it divided her attention, as she instinctively worried about the spectacles, and, instead of avoiding his touch, was concentrating on what he would do with them.

  And through her head, ridiculous at such a moment, ran the hoary old saying: ‘Men seldom make passes at girls who wear glasses.’ Over and over and over, like white noise, blanking out both anger and the warmth that now spread along her thighs, rising like mercury in a thermometer from where his erect maleness thrust against her.

  ‘Not to worry.’

  Had he actually said that? she wondered, unsure despite seeing his hand reach back to place the glasses safely on a side-table, feeling the hand return to lift the hem of her skirt, feeling the fingers trace intricate intimacies along her thighs.

  Now his eyes followed, and their gaze as her skirt rode high, exposing all of her hips and thighs, increased her vulnerability as she felt her body temperature soar in response to his visual caresses.

  ‘Stop.’

  Her voice sounded false in her own ears, and sounded so weak that she wasn’t sure he’d even hear her, much less pay any attention.

  ‘But we haven’t hardly begun.’

  His voice was a delicate whisper now against her throat, a whisper translated as if into Braille by fingers that followed his words, down into the cleft of her breasts, touching just ahead of his breath, his tongue, his kisses.

  The buttons of her blouse, miraculously having survived the writhing and twisting of her futile defence, now fell to his gentler, yet more insistent assault. And his lips followed to let his tongue touch at the edges of her bra, to the soft hollow between her breasts.

  Vashti felt her breath go ragged; her nipples throbbed against the fabric of the bra until his fingers dipped to free first one breast, then the other, to his touch, to his mouth.

  Her mouth parted in an agony of sensual torment; she could only writhe in helplessness as his lips fluttered against the warm softness, plucked at her nipples, and teased them to a magic life of their own.

  Vashti could only sigh her delight, moan her acceptance; their argument, her earlier fury, both were barely memories now, memories from a past that grew more distant with each touch of his lips, each probing lick of his tongue.

  Part of her yearned for him to free her hands, to let her return his caresses, allow her the freedom to touch his mouth, his hair, his muscular shoulders. Her legs, trapped as they were, yearned to be free, to be able to shift and allow his touch greater access to the secrets of her body.

  And within her, the tiny voice of logic, of reason, of danger, screamed almost silently against the winds of her passion, the roaring of her blood,
as it surged to meet his touch, to carry the messages of his fingers, of his lips.

  ‘This is madness.’

  The voice plucked at her conscience, at first timidly, then with growing force as she realised it wasn’t her own voice, but his!

  And even as her fevered brain cried out for an explanation, ignoring the body that screamed only for more of his kisses, more of his caresses, his lips fled from her nipples, his fingers lifted from their journey up her thighs.

  ‘It’s no way to have a discussion,’ he said, reaching up now to touch her cheek, to seek her gaze with eyes somehow soft and gentle beyond all logic. Vashti met his eyes blankly, her own unfocused grey eyes those of a zombie, a sleep-walker. His voice crept into her consciousness, but the words held almost no meaning, made almost no sense.

  Until, ‘Are you ready to stop fighting me now? Ready to listen without trying to unman me or scratch out my eyes?’

  That question got through to her, if only enough to make her cognisant of Phelan’s next words, which he uttered almost dreamily as he reached down to tug her skirt down against the place where his own leg still held her captive. ‘Sometimes I really do feel it’s a shame they invented these damned tights,’ he muttered, and the words were, she thought, more for himself than for her. ‘Proper stockings are just so much...’

  She could hear the rest without him saying it, could feel what he meant, could feel his fingers against the heat of her near-submission without the scanty protection of tights.

  And for whatever reason — Vashti was no more capable of considering reason than she was of flying, given the situation — his words touched her mind like a torch to a still, unseen pool of petrol.

  ‘You rotten mongrel,’ she squealed, angered that he could have so assaulted her senses while still himself having the control to think about their original argument, their business dealings, while she had become lost — almost irretrievably lost — in the mingling of their feelings. Her feelings! Which made her all the more angry.