One More Night Page 3

  She couldn’t help but know that she possessed the kind of stunning looks that turned heads wherever she went, but there had been times when she would gladly have traded them for something else, something more subtle.

  Perhaps, she mused as she stared at herself, that’s why Richard Carlisle Emerson got under my skin so thoroughly. I really do detest being whistled at and treated to lecherous looks from perfectly strange men. It’s degrading, and I don’t think one has to be a militant feminist to think so. Incidentally, Evonne, what are you going to do about him? How will Amos react if you walk out on his nephew? I mean, I wouldn’t really care normally, but… She sighed and realised she wouldn’t like to hurt her boss’s feelings. Then a frown creased her brow and her thoughts took another, though related, tack. Had Amos deliberately misled her into thinking his nephew was barely out of his teens? Or—well, yes, she acknowledged to herself, you’ve known Amos long enough to know that beneath that shrewd brain, the vision and all the rest of it, he can be oddly naive and… I don’t know what the right word for it is, but the kind of thing that makes a man who’s made a fortune wear his wife’s hand-knitted jumpers and wear them with pride even though she gets the pattern a little mixed up at times. Does that same fond blindness genuinely extend to his nephew? I suppose it’s just possible it could…

  Richard Emerson’s unmistakable knock sounded on her door again, breaking into her thoughts and causing her expression to become so severe that she startled herself and had to smile ruefully and admonish herself, That’s not the way to play it at all, Evonne. Take care!

  She took her time about putting on her watch and the slim gold bangle she always wore before she answered the door.

  His reaction as she opened the door was predictable—at first. He pursed his lips to whistle softly, but stopped himself with a wry grimace and an odd glint in his green eyes. ‘Dear me,’ he drawled, ‘you could be right, Patterson. There must be an enormous generation gap between us—something about you has to be responsible for these boyish outbursts you keep provoking in me!’

  But Evonne had herself well in hand. ‘If you’ve just spent a year studying the Kukukukus—if that part of the story is correct, at least, any female who doesn’t wear a bone through her nose would probably appeal to you.’

  He laughed with a flash of white teeth and for a second the impact, the golden impact of his tanned skin, sun-bleached hair and the startling contrast of his green eyes, together with his intensely alive, carefree, quizzical yet curious, clever but laid-back aura, took Evonne’s breath away. In the instant that followed, she discovered to her amazement that she felt about a hundred years old, then she realised that he was staring at her with his laughter fading.

  ‘What’s wrong?’ he queried.

  ‘Nothing,’ she said hastily—too hastily.

  ‘You looked—for a moment you looked…’ He shrugged, but his eyes were alert and intent as they lingered on her face.

  She suppressed a curious shiver, like a warning bell striking at her nerves but warning her of what? ‘I really am very hungry,’ she explained.

  ‘My apologies, ma’am! Do you mind if I lead the way?’

  ‘Not at all,’ she said politely.

  The restaurant was upstairs on the second and top floor of the long building that housed several lounges and bars as well as the island shop. It had a broad veranda also set with tables and chairs and faced the beach and water. The last lingering light of the sunset was laying a metallic sheen on the sea as they took their seats at a table for two next to the full-length glass front walls of the restaurant.

  Evonne looked around, then back at her companion, and was vaguely relieved to feel normal and in command of herself. Why she should have felt otherwise she couldn’t imagine, but here, amid the subdued chatter of other diners, amid the soft chinking of glassware and cutlery, the background music, the dim light, the aroma of food, even Richard Carlisle Emerson looked as if he could be coped with.

  A faint smile curved her lips as she studied him and recalled her mental image of him. Shortsighted and earnest he was not. Damp-palmed? Well, she doubted it—all the opposite, in fact, in his casual, loose-fitting white shirt with two big pockets that were all the rage, his stone-washed grey jeans, his streaked hair falling across his brow… I’ve dealt with hundreds of the likes of him, haven’t I? she reflected.

  ‘May I share the joke?’

  ‘You may,’ she said promptly, and told him what his uncle’s description of him had conjured up in her mind’s eye.

  He looked amused. ‘No wonder I came as a bit of a surprise! I gather either the imminent prospect of food or the half-hour of reflection you had while you dressed has seen some changes to your earlier mood of extreme militancy?’

  It was some time before Evonne got the chance to reply, as the waitress descended on them and they ordered their meal and a bottle of wine of Richard’s choice. Then Susan stopped at the table with details of the night’s entertainment, which was to take the form of a talent contest, and the news that interested parties were being asked to form groups to either sing, dance or whatever took their fancy.

  ‘Susie, no,’ Richard said laughingly. ‘I do not intend to expose myself that way.’

  ‘But, Rick, just about everyone I’ve spoken to wants you to join their group. You’re the most sought-after person here tonight—you sing, you’re a mimic—you can even dance with a walking-stick. Please, Rick!’ she pleaded.

  ‘Don’t mind me,’ murmured Evonne.

  ‘Would you care to be involved in this madness?’ Rick enquired of her.

  ‘No,’ Evonne said definitely.

  ‘Sorry, Susie,’ he said promptly. ‘It is Evonne’s first night—perhaps tomorrow we’ll join in whatever you’ve got planned.’

  ‘Oh, all right,’ said Susan with a grin. ‘Just don’t forget you’re in the golf competition tomorrow. Can I put your name down for that, Evonne?’

  Evonne hesitated.

  ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re the most rank amateur—it’s all a lot of fun, I promise you.’ Conscious of Rick’s eyes on her and conscious that she had made the transition from thinking of him as young Ricky Emerson and then Richard Carlisle Emerson in capitals and now to Rick, which seemed to suit him eminently, she nodded at last. ‘All right.’

  ‘Great!’ Susan wandered off in search of more victims.

  ‘I thought these island resorts were supposed to be havens of peace,’ Evonne remarked as her entree was placed before her.

  ‘You don’t have to do a thing if you don’t want to. Is that the type of person you are?’

  ‘I’m not much good at sport, if that’s what you mean. And I’m a lousy singer, hopeless as a mimic, although I can… well, all in all I must be that type of person,’ she said ruefully.

  ‘And yet you must be frightfully efficient—I imagine being Uncle Amos’s personal assistant is a pretty high position, not to mention one that frequently places you in the spotlight.’

  Evonne finished her prawn cocktail. ‘That’s different,’ she said quietly.

  ‘Which must mean there are two very different Pattersons—the public and the private one.’

  She dabbed her lips with her napkin, then looked across at him. ‘Probably.’

  ‘I wonder,’ Rick said slowly, ‘how much I’ll ever get to know of the private one. By the way, you haven’t had a chance to comment on my earlier supposition.’

  She sipped her wine, then said evenly, ‘Rick— if I may call you that…’

  ‘Be my guest. You could call me Emerson, then I wouldn’t feel so bad about calling you Patterson, which just seems to spring to my lips.’

  Evonne stared into his amused, oddly mocking green eyes. ‘I don’t mind what you call me,’ she said, ‘but if you want me to stay, it will have to be on my terms.’ She held his gaze deliberately.

  ‘Go on,’ he murmured.

  ‘I promised your uncle I’d give you three weeks of my time. I also promised him I would�
�� test the water concerning your future ambitions, but you’ve made it quite clear there’s no point, so, if you do need help with your book, I’ll confine myself to that. But it will be a business arrangement, no more.’

  ‘What made you change your mind?’ he enquired after a long pause.

  ‘I’m very fond of your uncle—and your aunt. He in particular has been very good to me. I don’t care to hurt his feelings or go back on my word to him.’

  ‘Are you saying your conception of me would hurt his feelings?’

  ‘Yes,’ Evonne said coolly.

  A bright little flame sprang up in those green eyes, rendering them curiously tiger-like. ‘You make some very snap judgements, Patterson.’

  She shrugged and crumbled a roll between her fingers.

  ‘You’re not going to refute the charge?’ he drawled.

  ‘If you really want me to, I will, although I’ll only be repeating myself. I’m curiously allergic to your type of man,’ she said simply.

  He laughed, but as if he was genuinely amused, which surprised Evonne a little as she recalled that tiger-like gleam in his eyes which seemed to have been doused and was only an elusive memory now. But of course he retaliated, as she knew he would. ‘I just hope you don’t live to regret these summary decisions, my dear,’ he said lightly, still smiling slightly. ‘So,’ he added, ‘now you’ve sorted that out, what are we left with?’

  ‘If you’d like to show me your notes after dinner,’ Evonne said tranquilly, ‘I might get some idea of what’s involved. Perhaps I should make one last point, though. There’s a limit, fond as I am of your uncle Amos, to what I’ll undergo on his behalf.’

  ‘You know,’ Rick said immediately, and topped up her wine, ‘if you really are so allergic to masculine admiration, I’m surprised you haven’t joined a nunnery, I really am.’

  ‘I’ve thought…’ She bit her lip.

  ‘You’ve thought of it?’

  ‘No, not really.’

  ‘It doesn’t surprise me. Not now that I know what one innocent wolf whistle has unleashed,’ he marvelled. ‘I tell you what, I’ll think twice before I ever do it again. Are you sure the feminist movement hasn’t employed you to go around the world crushing;..’

  It was the arrival of the main course that saved Evonne, in more ways than one. Because as he spoke, she had found herself thinking involuntarily that she might, just might have gone over the top. Why? she wondered, as she stared at the vegetables being dished on to her plate. And what on earth had made her admit that one halfformed and since wholly discarded idea that a nunnery might be the only place she could survive?

  She tore her gaze from her plate, blinked and said at random, ‘Sorry. But if you knew what it was like to be whistled at and… looked at in a certain way, and how tired you get of it… Perhaps I over-reacted. All the same…’ She stopped a little helplessly and their gazes caught and held.

  ‘Well now,’ Rick said softly, ‘that puts a different complexion on things.’

  ‘It doesn’t, you know,’ she said. ‘I mean, while I apologise for…’

  ‘Swatting a fly with a concrete mixer?’ ‘Something like that,’ she said ruefully, ‘but all the same…’

  ‘There’s absolutely no future for me with you?’ he proffered.

  ‘No. Not… no.’

  ‘Not romantically?’ ‘No.’

  ‘One last question—are you some other man’s sole domain, Patterson?’

  For a second something protesting within her cried out, but she stilled it, and took refuge in silence, letting only her eyes speak for her in a dark, shuttered glance.

  ‘All right,’ he said abruptly, and surprised her by adding, ‘eat your dinner, it’s getting cold and you were starving, remember?’

  After the remainder of their meal, during which he had made charming but entirely neutral conversation, Rick took her downstairs and bought her a liqueur in the lounge bar later to be used for the talent contest. There was a dance floor and stage and many comfortable cane chairs and tables from which to view the proceedings, but it was dim and quiet and deserted as they sipped their drinks at the bar.

  ‘Not taking part tonight, Rick?’ the barman queried in a friendly manner but with his eyes lingering on Evonne.

  ‘No. I may come back and watch later, but tonight I’m going to let everyone else make fools of themselves,’ said Rick with a grin.

  ‘The old ankle playing up?’

  ‘That’s as good an excuse as any!’

  ‘How is your ankle mending?’ Evonne asked as the barman drifted away to serve a newcomer.

  ‘Apart from the odd ache when I overdo things, it’s pretty good.’

  ‘How did you break it?’

  ‘I…er…tripped.’

  She raised an eyebrow. ‘Down a vine-infested jungle pathway in the wilds of Papua?’

  ‘Down a pathway,’ he agreed, and his green eyes glinted wickedly.

  ‘You might as well tell me,’ she said.

  ‘I don’t think I ought to tell you at all—but then again, what have I got to lose? The damage has already been done. I was… er… attempting to make a hasty getaway from a house in Port Moresby where I’d been invited to… er… spend the night by this charming little Swiss lady who had assured me her boyfriend was many, many miles away, and that anyway he was such a boor, fhe really wanted to dump him and was in need of advice and… consolation. I really,’ he marvelled, ‘can’t believe my own naivete!’

  Evonne had to smile, which caused Rick to raise his eyebrows. ‘You’re not absolutely disgusted?’ he asked quizzically.

  ‘Tell me what happened.’

  ‘Well, before any…er…real consolation could take place, the boyfriend turned up, and he turned out to be a massive Yugoslav in a very bad temper because he’d walked, flown and clawed his way from Ok-Tedi, which is this goldmine rather a long way away from Moresby, to spend the weekend with his beloved, to surprise her. What really surprised me and all but cost me my life was how the lady reacted. Her emotions did a complete about-face, she started to tear what little clothing she had left on to shreds, in an instant she reduced her hair-do, which had been a work of art, all golden and braided, to incredible disorder, and if all that wasn’t bad enough, she proceeded to accuse me, in a voice that would have done a banshee credit, of trying to rape her. I had no choice but to leave rather hurriedly, via a window and then this tortuous path, which was extremely steep and…you’re laughing,’ he said reproachfully. ‘Believe me, it was no laughing matter at the time.’

  ‘I can imagine,’ Evonne said unsteadily.

  ‘You know something—you should laugh more. It’s like… it’s like moonlight shining on dark glossy water.’ Rick stared at her, his eyes alert and curious.

  Evonne sighed, but a smile still played on her lips. ‘And I’m beginning to think you’re incorrigible, you know,’ she said mildly. ‘Will you show me your notes now or should we leave it until tomorrow? I’m… actually I’m a bit tired I don’t know why,’ she added with some surprise

  ‘Perhaps you’re just human, after all,’ he observed. ‘And before you get your hackles up, I mean susceptible to leaving home at the crack of dawn and flying across a continent, susceptible to a rather radical change in climate—this humidity does take it out of you—like the rest of us mere mortals.’

  ‘I’m really not surprised you’re a writer, or trying to be,’ she said tartly before she could stop herself. ‘You’re obviously intoxicated with words, but perhaps you should be an actor instead. Then you could really spout away to your heart’s content.’

  ‘Now that’s not very nice,’ he drawled, ‘but I’ve noticed this rather surprising tendency you have before.’

  Evonne closed her eyes wearily.

  ‘This tendency,’ he went on, not the least perturbed, ‘you have of—how can I put it?—of allowing the sophistication and containment and maturity you wear, like a beautiful curtain almost, to fall aside very fleetingly to reveal just a
glimpse of…claws and a rather street-wise toughness,’ he said with a considering frown.

  Evonne compressed her lips and tried to contain her response, but again without success. ‘I am tough and street-wise, Mr Emerson,’ she said coldly. ‘Like your bad-tempered Yugoslav, I’ve also clawed my way up.’

  ‘That’s very interesting,’ Rick said quietly, his green eyes never leaving her face.

  She made a futile sound and stood up. ‘I’m going to bed,’ she said curtly.

  ‘I’ll walk you there.’ He stood up.

  ‘That’s not necessary…’

  ‘Yes, it is, you could run into anything out there.’

  ‘You must be joking!’ she said incredulously, and turned on her heel.

  But he was not, and he followed her out but at a little distance after signing for the drinks, so that she was half-way down the path towards their block ahead of him, when something ghostly and black and feathery, thin and sinuous of neck and with a malevolent eye, appeared out of the darkness beside her and made a noise she could only afterwards describe as a petrifying whoomp of sound.

  She jumped, gasped and fell back with her heart racing madly and her mouth going dry as the thing advanced on her.

  ‘It’s all right,’ Rick Emerson said from right behind her. ‘It’s only your namesake.’

  ‘My…’ Her Ups trembled. ‘Oh, lord, the emu!’

  ‘Mmm. She’s really quite harmless. Look.’ And he proceeded to scratch the bird’s neck, which caress was accepted with another, this time deeply gratified, whoomp.

  ‘Oh,’ Evonne said weakly. ‘What else lurks around here at night?’

  ‘Kangaroos,’ he replied promptly, and took her hand as Yvonne wandered off. ‘They’re generally shyer than Yvonne, but they do roam around all over the island. It’s quite a sight to see them feeding on the golf course after dark—you can see them by the tennis court floodlights. Would you like to wander down to have a look now?’

  ‘I…’

  ‘You’re still shaking,’ he said.

  ‘I feel very foolish,’ she admitted ruefully. ‘Perhaps another night. You’ve left your walking-stick behind.’