The Everywhere Man Page 9

  When he joined her, finally, there was a casual arrogance about him, an aura that left Alix feeling somehow that it had been she who had transgressed, she who had been the aggressor.

  They drove off in silence, each lost in thoughts that Alix, for her part, considered best kept private. Her body still throbbed to the wondrous music of this man’s lust and her own, and she felt her softly swollen mouth with a tentative tongue-tip. The fires in the cane were nothing compared to the white-hot lava he had stirred within her, and she realised that he knew as well as she how close her surrender had actually been.

  ‘I suppose you expect me to say I’m sorry,’ he muttered, the words almost a whisper in the breeze that caressed Alix through the open window. ‘I won’t, you know. Because I’m not.’

  ‘I’d hardly expect it,’ she replied, not knowing herself exactly what she meant, but feeling obliged to say something.

  ‘Are you? Sorry, I mean?’

  It was an unexpected question. And even more unexpectedly difficult to answer. Alix was no child; she had been kissed before and enjoyed it and likely would have the experience again. But she had never before felt the surge of raw emotion that Quinn Tennant had raised within her, never felt the pending total abandon of willing surrender. And she could never dare to let him know that.

  ‘What is there to be sorry about?’ she replied with a coolness she certainly didn’t feel. ‘Or did you want a critique of your performance?’

  ‘That was uncalled for,’ he replied with an edge to his voice.

  ‘Then so was what you said. One shouldn’t do things one feels constrained to apologise for.’

  ‘Miaow!’ he replied with a grin that held little humour. ‘Besides, I never said I was even thinking of apologising.’

  ‘Well, you should have.’

  ‘Why? I didn’t get the impression you were being forced into anything against your will.’

  ‘I wasn’t. I mean, I ...’ She halted, totally confused and all too aware that he had led her into it deliberately.

  ‘Personally, I enjoyed it immensely,’ he said with a friendly chuckle. ‘It’s going to make that rain check eminently enjoyable.’

  ‘I do wish you wouldn’t keep bringing that up,’ Alix replied hotly. ‘And besides, I would have thought your latest performance was more than rain check enough. I certainly don’t feel myself under any obligation.’

  ‘Nor should you,’ he replied glibly. ‘But that performance, as you called it, had nothing whatsoever to do with my collecting on the rain check. I’m saving that for a better time and place.’

  ‘I think you’re expecting rather a lot,’ she retorted. ‘With that attitude I’m rather surprised you haven’t found some ingenious way for me to repay your so-called bonus.’

  The heavy car slid to a halt on the narrow bitumen road, stopping so quickly that Alix was thrown forward and would have struck the dashboard but for the seat belt and Quinn’s huge hand on her shoulder.

  ‘Now that,’ he said grimly, ‘is going too damned far. You will apologise.’

  His eyes were dark coals in a face whitened by his anger, and Alix realised that he was not only frighteningly angry, but quite justified in being so.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t called for and it was extremely rude and I apologise.’

  Quinn didn’t answer, but he released her shoulder and the car began to move, if somewhat slowly. Alix was conscious of his deep, regular breathing, and felt instinctively that he was seeking control of his emotions before speaking.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said earnestiy, and was rewarded with a wolfish grin from the driver, who finally broke his silence.

  ‘All right,’ he said. ‘And now that it’s settled may I say I like the dress you bought with the bonus — without getting my head snapped off?’

  ‘You may indeed,’ she said, suddenly more relaxed than she had been all evening. They both smiled then, and the mood of contentment continued as they reached the restaurant and went inside.

  It wasn’t until they had drinks before them and their dinner ordered that Quinn brought up the subject of the bonus again, and this time he wasn’t seeking a fight, but information.

  ‘I don’t quite understand why you were so surprised at that bonus,’ he said very seriously. ‘Surely you must have gained similar credit for your work where you were before. And the designs you got awards for a year or so ago, they were excellent.’

  Alix explained that her designing hadn’t been significant to her work in an architectural office, since architecture wasn’t something she had ever felt totally comfortable with. And then, to her own surprise, she found herself being skilfully drawn out about the designs Bruce had appropriated, and ultimately about the rise and fall of the romance itself.

  Quinn’s anger was evident in the rude language he used, without apology, to describe what should be done to people like Bruce. ‘And although I’d like to be able to tell you it’ll all catch up with him some day, I shan’t,’ he said then. ‘Unfortunately it doesn’t work that way in the real world, and swine like that can go a long way on other people’s talent, provided they’re lucky enough or have enough gall.’

  ‘It really isn’t important any more,’ Alix replied. ‘It’s over and done with now, and in some respects I suppose it’s a small price to pay for learning.’

  ‘Depends what you learned,’ he replied grimly. ‘And unfortunately it seems all you’d be likely to get out of that particular experience is a healthy wariness towards men in general.’

  ‘And what’s wrong with that?’

  ‘It’s a negative reaction, and for somebody like you, an essentially positive person, it isn’t the best alternative,’ he said seriously. ‘I’d hate to see all that warmth and vitality dissipated by one lousy experience.’

  ‘Thank you, I think,’ It had sounded like a kind of compliment, but one Alix couldn’t quite bring herself to totally accept. ‘But aren’t you making just a bit much of all this? I mean, I haven’t exactly turned into a confirmed man-hater or anything. I’m just a little more cautious than I was before. Personally, I don’t think it’s all that important.’

  ‘That’s because you’re not looking at it from my viewpoint,’ he grinned. ‘I’m not exactly enthralled at the idea of being tarred with the same brush as this Bruce ... what was his full name, anyway?’

  Alix told him without thinking, then wondered why he wanted to know and asked him. Quinn merely shrugged.

  ‘Just assessing former competition,’ he replied, and she bristled at the implications.

  ‘I don’t particularly enjoy being considered as some kind of raffle prize or something,’ she said quite coldly, but Quinn only laughed.

  ‘I wasn’t thinking of a raffle, and well you know it,’ he said. But the waitress arrived with their first course before he could expand on that statement, and even after the meal had ended Alix wasn’t sure he had ever intended to expand on it.

  Instead, he turned to conversation on much safer topics, and by the time they had finished their coffee and liqueurs Alix was more relaxed and content than she had been in months. When he wasn’t trying to provoke an emotional reaction from her, Quinn Tennant was an urbane, charming and quite worldly fellow. His jokes were sophisticated without being smutty, and more important—they were funny. Laughably funny, without taking their humour from other people’s hurts or from sexual innuendo.

  By the end of the evening, too, Alix had learned quite a bit that she wanted to know about Quinn’s engineering operation, and realised that for him, it was only one of several widespread business interests.

  And, she realised, he knew quite a bit about her. Perhaps much more than she had ever intended to reveal, but Quinn was a skilled inquisitor. He seemed honestly, openly interested.

  But when they arrived back home, earlier than Alix would have expected, he made no attempt to resume his earlier lovemaking. It was, she decided later in bed, nicer that way. But just a little disappointing, someho
w, and she drifted into sleep without figuring out exactly why.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  The next few weeks passed in an almost dreamlike lassitude in which Alix lived only one day at a time, revelling in the subtropical climate, the job which provided her with a growing sense of fulfilment and the periodic presence of Quinn Tennant.

  She did very little, outside of her work. A little quiet reading, a great deal of exercising both her own dog and Anna by walking the many district beaches, and very little conscious thinking about her own status and the impact of her dynamic landlord/employer upon it.

  Quinn was a constant part of her life both at work and during the occasional morning or evening walk he shared with her and the two dogs. The fact that he was a model of circumspect behaviour and, outside the office, an unusually silent companion only seemed to enhance the rapport which Alix found increasingly enjoyable.

  They walked, one Saturday morning, for miles up the long expanse of beach at Moore Park. They were on the beach with the dogs and far from human interruption long before the sun floated up from the sea to bathe the beach in a growing warmth. But although they were together, they were also apart; except for a smiling ‘good morning’, Quinn said not one word during the hours of their trek. And Alix was content with his silence, since it seemed to match her own need for shared solitude.

  Most mornings she greeted the dawn alone, rising early to drive with one dog or both to a secluded area at the north end of the beach at Mon Repos, where hares abounded in the scrub-covered sand dunes and virtually no one came except at weekends.

  In the evenings, she sometimes drove farther afield, to Moore Park, or the rugged coastline of black lava rock between Bargara and Elliott Heads.

  Very occasionally, Quinn would accompany her in person, and on one warm evening he sat with her on a high crest near Innes Park and explained the story of his illegitimacy, making an almost ribald fairytale from what Alix blew must have been a lonely, poignant childhood. He had come through his early life in a hard school, abandoned by his unmarried mother while still in nappies and thrust from orphanage to orphanage, foster-home to foster-home m a childhood where his own independent spirit and private distrusts caused as many problems as anything else.

  Mrs Babcock had been one of his earliest teachers in secondary school, and his story implied rather than specified the mothering role the tiny woman had assumed over the years. Alix’s own observations could fill in many of the details about the relationship between the tall, mature businessman and the one woman who seemed so obviously to have shaped his ideas and character.

  The adult Quinn Tennant mixed a worldly cynicism and toughness with a well hidden tenderness and compassion that exposed itself in unexpected ways.

  His employees faced constant high standards and often impossible deadlines, but were compensated by bonuses and time off that often far outweighed the work involved. Personal problems, especially where children were involved, always received a hearing that was objective and fair, and Alix wasn’t surprised that most of Quinn’s employees revered him.

  His arrogance and temper were reserved, it seemed, for those he considered stable enough to cope with them, but he showed little patience with people who underrated their abilities, and Alix sometimes sensed that he was evaluating her own attitudes towards her work and her particular talents.

  Certainly he encouraged her to try new ideas, to explore any aspect of the job which interested her. He was both mentor and enthusiastic supporter, and it was hardly surprising that her work became the centre of her existence during those first weeks of settling in a new life style.

  But he couldn’t, Alix hoped, realise just how significant his support was becoming, both inside the office and out of it. Since their dinner together, he had not laid a finger upon her in anything but companionship, had said no word that could be interpreted as any form of sexual or romantic approach. Yet when he took her hand to help her down from the high seats of his Range Rover, her entire body quivered with the surge of pleasure she felt. When he smiled, her heart leapt in response.

  By the end of the first fortnight she was in love with him, despite her personal avowal that it simply couldn’t be happening. And he didn’t even notice.

  It was, she decided, entirely her own fault. She had, after all, made her initial lack of interest totally clear, and now simple pride kept her from making any obvious advances herself. Especially in view of the continuing influence of Michelle Keir, who seemed to have no problems in gaining Quinn’s attention.

  Alix knew Quinn was seeing a good deal of the other woman. She was a frequent visitor to his home, and seemed able to time her attendance at dog obedience classes to match those infrequent occasions when Quinn was also present.

  Alix attended faithfully. Thursday evenings and Sunday mornings became as regular a part of her routine as her morning runs with the dog. She enjoyed the regimen of advanced training with Nick and the easy familiarity of people whose interests were similar.

  But she did not like Michelle. And those feelings were abundantly returned, although neither woman went out of her way to seek confrontation or involvement. They were, Alix decided, very like two strange dogs meeting on neutral ground; unwilling to fight but equally unwilling to give any advantage to the other.

  Her own problem was easily recognisable; she was jealous. But Michelle didn’t have any need to be jealous, yet she went out of her way to ensure that Alix was not only snubbed, but knew she was being snubbed. If it weren’t for the growing clarity of her feelings towards Quinn Tennant, Alix would have considered Michelle’s attitude more humorous than anything else, but being treated like a lovesick teenager by the sophisticated older woman created a growing feeling of uncertainty in Alix every time they chanced to meet.

  And he never noticed. Although how he could ignore the tension between them Alix couldn’t understand. Indeed, sometimes he almost seemed to deliberately throw them together, just to see the sparks fly.

  Michelle obviously enjoyed any opportunity to lord it over Alix, but Alix quickly found herself growing mightily sick of the game. The final straw was the start of the August school holidays and the obedience club’s regular ‘Fred Bassett’ school for children.

  It was a feature aimed at both promoting the club’s image and at trying to help children with dogs to learn better control of their pets and the rudiments of obedience work. And for reasons Alix didn’t bother to try and understand, it was Michelle’s pet project, which made it comforting to know that she herself would be too involved in her own work to devote time to an extra-curricular project during working hours.

  Only Quinn had other ideas.

  ‘I won’t do it,’ was Alix’s initial reaction when he called her into his office a few days before the class began and coolly informed her that she had been ‘volunteered’ to help out.

  ‘What do you mean you won’t do it? Of course you’ll do it,’ he replied with a stern arrogance that served only to make Alix even angrier.

  How could he dare to simply volunteer her like this? And for something which would gain nothing but increased kudos for Michelle, probably at Alix’s expense. ‘I’m very sorry, but I meant what I said,’ Alix replied. ‘I’m not qualified for such a thing, and besides, I have quite enough on my plate right here. Or hadn’t you noticed?’

  ‘I notice everything that goes on in this office,’ he replied sharply. ‘But since I’m the one who pays you, I think it’s only fair that I be the one who decides what you do with the time I’m paying for. And frankly I can’t imagine why you’re objecting. You like children, you like dogs, and a couple of hours every weekday afternoon isn’t going to harm your work in the slightest.’

  But I don’t like your girl-friend and I’d sooner have nothing to do with any project she’s in charge of, Alix thought, although she didn’t say it. Instead, she hedged around the issue with several other objections, all of which were blithely and then firmly ignored.

  ‘Look, I have no int
ention of arguing about this,’ he replied finally. ‘It’s costing you nothing, it helps the club, and you’re going to do it if I have to drag you down there every day by the scruff of the neck. It’s about time you started to put your obedience training to some practical use anyway.’

  ‘And just what is that supposed to mean?’ Alix replied hotly.

  ‘It means just what I said,’ he retorted. ‘Think about it, woman. You’ve got a first-class gun-dog — or could have — and what do you do with him? You puddle around twice a week doing regimented exercises and bore the poor animal half to death. He’s a hunting dog, or would be if he ever had a chance.’

  ‘And just what does that have to do with me being conscripted to help your girl-friend with her pet project?’ Alix demanded angrily. ‘It strikes me that you’re getting into an issue that’s purely none of your business.’

  ‘None of my business, maybe.’ Quinn was stolidly firm and unsmiling. ‘But I meant what I said about Nick. It gives me the absolute pips to see a potentially good working dog treated like a toy.’

  ‘You’re ... insufferable! It’s absolutely none of your business if I choose to hunt with Nick, and you know it. But I suppose that’s why you flunked him in the trial — because you think he should be out chasing quail or something instead of working in obedience?’

  ‘I did not! I flunked him because he broke his stay, and you, dear Miss McLean, know that very well indeed. All I’m saying is that he was bred to be a gun-dog and he should have the chance to work as a gun-dog, not a bloody lapdog. Or haven’t you even bothered to notice how often he points birds when you’re walking out?’

  ‘Of course I’ve noticed it, but it has nothing to do with what we’re discussing,’ Alix shouted. ‘Nick is perfectly well trained both as a pointer and a retriever, I’ll have you know — and neither has anything to do with training children in how to handle their dogs.’