The Deception Trap Read online

  ‘It’s gorgeous,’ said Wendy. ‘Isn’t it, Lara?’

  ‘Hmm? Oh, the streak. I don’t care for them myself.’ Lara curled her long-nailed fingers around Ashe’s arm, and Teressa stared at her possessive hand on him. Some flash of memory brought with it a swift, savage feeling that startled her. ‘We’re not going to spend all night in the kitchen, are we, darling?’ Lara pouted.

  Disengaging himself, Ashe took the ointment out of the first aid case and gave it to Teressa. ‘Keep this and put some more on tonight and in the morning —otherwise it might blister.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Warwick,’ she said with downcast eyes.

  Lara was looking impatient at all the attention being lavished on the house help. That should have been pleasing. If only he wasn’t being so …

  ‘Can you manage to clean up in here?’ he asked, and she nodded. ‘Do that then, and go to bed. I won’t need you any more tonight.’

  They went to the door, taking the-replacement cream jug and the coffee pot.

  ‘I’d like you to set the breakfast table out on the terrace in the morning.’ Ashe indicated the service hatch that opened out on to the patio. ‘And clear away afterwards. Okay?’

  ‘Unless of course you’d rather sleep in, dear, and have us bring your breakfast to you,’ Lara added with a brittle laugh. Teressa managed to look bewildered as if the sarcasm had escaped her. She seemed to bring out the worst in Lara. And vice versa.

  ‘Really, Ashe,’ she heard the blonde say as they went down the hall. ‘You are incredibly soft for a businessman. Staff will take advantage of you if you insist on molly-coddling them the way you do … ’

  A deep masculine laugh echoed back along the corridor. Teressa strained to hear his answer. ‘Young Teressa won’t take advantage of me,’ he said. ‘She wouldn’t know how.’

  Ah, but she might. Teressa tidied up the kitchen, bothered that she had created some sort of image with Ashe. One that struck a protective chord in him. He seemed to want to look after her, and that would have been funny except that it made her think of other times when she’d been genuinely gawky and shy. It had been a crystal clear recollection that had rendered her almost speechless this morning when she had turned around and found him there in swimming gear, his hair wet … older but very much as he’d looked once years ago by the Cliffe House pool. He’d been smiling then, one of those hateful sympathetic smiles.

  She hadn’t been wearing a bikini like Cecily’s black, voluptuously filled scraps―not even a one-piece.

  She had been hiding her weight in slacks and a long top and trying to pretend that she didn’t want to swim even though the day was a scorcher and the pool a heartbreaking cool, cool blue. Cecily had insisted on persuading her.

  ‘Come on, Tess. Swimming’s a great way to lose weight,’ she shouted, and dived in, scarcely rippling the water with her sleek body. Teressa turned scarlet.

  ‘It’s just puppy fat,’ said Ashe, and touched her arm.

  ‘Is it?’ She pulled away from his touch as if it burned her.

  ‘I used to be a bit on the heavy side myself, but look at me now,’ he joked, ‘―thin as a rake.’

  But of course he wasn’t. He was tall and muscular and splendid, and his hint that he might have suffered her own pudge was just one of those casual, adult attempts to make her accept her lot. A panacea like the others― ‘but you have lovely skin, Tess’ and ‘never mind your waistline, you have super hands.’

  Lovely skin and super hands hadn’t helped, and neither had Ashe Warwick’s pitying remarks. But she recalled that he had frequently smiled at her and once brought her a kimono from a Tokyo trip. Teressa glimpsed herself in the smoked glass oven door. The silver streak shone in bright reminder in her hair.

  His smiles had been pure amusement most likely. And the kimono had looked repulsive on her.

  The cat was on her bed again. Hands on hips, Teressa regarded him. ‘Escaped scot-free, Intruder. Isn’t that just like a cat!’ She moved him to the armchair where he settled into sleep within minutes. Teressa went to bed, too, leaving the window open to let in the cool air and the hushing sounds of the sea and the faintest snatches of voices and laughter borne on the breeze.

  When she woke abruptly later there was just the lonely sea sound and a plaintive call close by.

  ‘Intruder—?’ The cat gave another cry and leaped off her bed to go to the french windows. He looked up at them and back to her.

  ‘You want to go out?’ Teressa peered at her watch in the suffused glow of the garden lamp that came through the parted curtains. ‘You certainly pick your time!’

  She let him out and he shot into the shrubbery lit by the garden lamp. All the rest of the veranda, stretching away to the back of the house, was in darkness, the black humped shapes of shrubs and trees pressing in on it. Teressa stood waiting, then leaned on a carved timber veranda column. The salted breeze moved her hair and she put a hand up to lift its weight from the back of her neck. Her skin was bare but for the flimsy short nightgown she wore and the cool evening air was a delicious caress. Teressa smiled up at the sky―the stars were clearer, brighter. It was worth being woken.

  One-thirty in the morning on the coast was a magic time. After a while she heard a rustling and smiled.

  Here he was, back again from nature’s call. ‘Well, come on in, Intruder―I must get some sleep.’

  The beam of a torch shafted across the paler garden glow, then switched off, as Ashe Warwick stepped out of the garden on to the veranda with keys clinking in his hand.

  ‘Do you usually invite intruders in, Teressa?’ he enquired, and she backed towards the french windows.

  ‘What are you doing out here at this time of the morning?’

  ‘1―1 was—er―’

  His eyes narrowed as he moved nearer and saw her sheer nightdress. It displayed her shoulders and arms and, she realised, just about everything else beneath its filmy folds. Her hands crept up to hover ineffectually over her breasts.

  ‘And,’ he went on wryly, looking at her tousled hair, ‘what makes you think that you’d get some sleep if your intruder came in?’

  ‘It’s the cat,’ she said, through a dry throat.

  He looked amused. ‘Ah, yes, the mysterious cat that manifests itself to only you, Teressa.’

  ‘It was asleep on my bed.’

  ‘Yes, you said that before, too.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘Go to bed, Teressa. If you wait around in see-through nightgowns you might attract a different kind of intruder.’ How avuncular he sounded.

  ‘Not with you around, Mr Warwick.’

  Ashe raised his head and looked at her through half-closed eyes. ‘At twenty, Teressa, you should be aware that I could be an intruder.’

  The breeze brought with it a frisson of delicious danger.

  ‘You, Mr. Warwick? But it’s your house,’ she said ingenuously.

  ‘Can you really be so naive?’ he murmured, and took a step closer. ‘How’s your arm?’

  She lowered it and he came closer still to look at It, one hand closing warmly about her upper arm .

  ‘Hmmm.’ He turned her slightly towards the light, then his gaze slid away from her burned skin to the outline of her breasts beneath their inadequate lace cover and up over her bare shoulder and neck until her body was tingling as if he’d touched her. Eyes lingering on the hollow at the base of her throat, he hesitated. His hand on her arm contracted minutely, the thumb stroked her flesh. Slowly his gaze climbed to her parted mouth and his grip tightened.

  ‘Put the cream on this again in the morning.’ He nodded at the burn and dropped her arm. ‘And Teressa―wear a housecoat over that if you venture outside again … ‘ Leaning past her, he pushed open the door, and for a moment his face was close―so very close. Teressa stopped breathing and looked into his eyes.

  ‘… there are more ways than one of getting burned,’ he said softly.

  Sunday morning was warm and hazy, prelude to a fine November
day. Everyone greeted the hearty outdoor breakfast with enthusiasm―except Lara, who peeled an orange with the righteous air of the dieter.

  When the breakfast had been served, John O'Brien patted the bench seat beside him.

  ‘Sit down, Teressa―eat with us. There’s stacks of food here.’

  ‘You’re assuming too much, John,’ Lara told him over a segment of orange. ‘Ashe is paying Teressa to work, not to be a guest. Goodness knows, staff cost enough.’

  ‘Well, I get your money’s worth for you out of your staff. Let Ashe worry about his.’ It was an acerbic answer for easygoing John. He put an arm about Teressa’s shoulders when she made to remove herself, and Lara glared. The strength of her displeasure amazed Teressa. If it were Ashe, she could almost assume the girl was jealous.

  ‘Before you get settled, Teressa, I wonder―would you mind fetching me an apple?’ Lara said with exaggerated courtesy. ‘That is, if your poor arm is up to it.’

  ‘Sit down, Teressa,’ John told her evenly, putting pressure on her shoulder as he looked over at Lara.

  Teressa was beginning to feel like the meat in a sandwich. ‘We’ve all seen the spoiled bitch act, Lara. Give it a rest.’ Wendy looked from one to the other and she made a face at Teressa.

  The blonde drew herself up, arrogant and elegant in shorts and a T-shirt bearing her own motif ‘Laramor’.She hissed at John. ‘You go too far sometimes, John. I could fire you for that!’

  ‘Go right ahead, Lara,’ he invited. ‘See if you can find another manager who can stick more than a month of working for you. I’ve been thinking about trying something more congenial myself. Lion taming, maybe.’

  Wendy tilted her head towards the house and Teressa nodded. They left them squabbling in undertones.

  So that was where John fitted in―on the Moore side, but in Lara’s business and not her father’s.

  ‘Of course,’ said Wendy when they got inside, ‘the only reason he does stay with Laramor is because he’s crazy about her.’

  ‘But aren’t she and your brother—?’

  ‘She’s keen on Ashe, yes. Can’t say if it’s mutual to the same degree—’ She took a leftover slice of Black Forest cake from the fridge. ‘Don’t tell John,’ she grinned, escaping with her booty as Ashe came in.

  ‘We’re eating lunch at a hotel, Teressa. When you’ve cleared away breakfast, make up some flasks of coffee and put a bottle of wine in the cooler for us to take down to the beach. Then you can fix the bedrooms and do what you like until about three. Dinner will be brought in tonight again, and you know the routine. Everyone leaves tomorrow morning unless the weather looks like blowing up,’

  ‘Yes, Mr. Warwick.’

  He paused, eyes roaming her concealing, baggy clothes. ‘Did you sleep well last night? No—intruders?’ he smiled.

  ‘No. He didn’t come back.’

  ‘Who didn’t come back, Ashe darling?’ Lara’s face was stormy still from her clash with John and she came in and took Ashe’s arm the way a petulant child grabs the biggest toy and says ‘mine’, Teressa looked at her grip on Ashe. For a moment she felt gauche and sixteen again.

  ‘Teressa’s intruder―a cat.’

  The fine, arched brows rose. ‘A cat? You seem to be always babbling about cats, dear. I haven’t seen one about.’

  ‘It was in my bedroom,’ Teressa told her earnestly.

  ‘Mr. Warwick would have seen it if he’d come along sooner.’

  Teressa put a bikini on under her clothes when she’d finished her work, and walked down to find herself a secluded crescent of sand by the inlet. Ashe and his guests had gone round to the surfing beach with their coffee and wine. Here the sea’s waves had been tamed into pretty frills of lace that frothed on to the sand and shell grit. Further on, fishermen sat as if sculpted to the pier and family groups waded and messed about in boats.

  Her clothes were spread out beside her, the jeans and top splashed when she had misjudged one of the lace frills. In the sun they would soon dry. Teressa lay on her towel, her mind snatching and holding the sounds of the day, to keep her thoughts from new complexities. The shouts of children-the harsh note of a motor starting, then its putter, putter along the length of water to the sea. Gulls shrieked and a family scuffled by.

  ‘Mummy―Mummy, a shell-look!’

  ‘Lovely, darling—’

  ‘I found one too, see―Mummy, see?’

  ‘Yes, lovely, darling— ’

  Then came the thud of footsteps on the damp sand by the water. A jogger, Teressa thought sleepily, hearing the steps pass her then stop. A curious swishing sound turned her head. She opened one eye and saw dry sand still shifting and trickling about two feet. Brown, muscular legs―brief black trunks on narrow hips―a torso, tawny-haired and glinting with the gold of a chain. After the dozing darkness, during which she had tried to keep just this image at bay, her eyes squinted in the glare. But she couldn’t miss the thoughtful attention Ashe was paying her figure .The brief bikini was not the attire of the shrinking violet she had been playing. The clinging red fabric concealed only small areas of her figure, accentuating the swell of her breasts and hips. Anything that Ashe had missed seeing last night, he couldn’t fail to see today.

  He sank on to the sand, leaning on one arm to look down at her with an odd expression. ‘I’m beginning to think, Teressa, that you’re something of a dark horse.’

  Teressa sat up and reached for the cotton top. His gaze wandered again down her body and she felt a heat that had nothing to do with the sun. Putting out a hand he pinned her wrist to the garment.

  There’s no need to put that tent on. If it bothers you, I won’t look. ’Apause. ‘Though you can’t expect men not to stare at you, Teressa. You have a beautiful body.’

  That shot her through with pleasure. A beautiful body. That bridged the time back to the scorching day by the pool with Cecily flirting in and out of the water.

  A beautiful body. That cancelled out the weighty, awkward girl in the hide-and-seek clothes. To hear Ashe say it was almost satisfaction enough to justify this entire crazy deception. He let her Wrist go, and though she made no further attempt to dress, her hand fiddled with the fabric. His admiration was balm, but she had an urge to hide in the jeans and voluminous top. They were, she realised now, chain store equivalents of the things she’d worn in fatter days.

  Teressa watched her fingers pick at the cotton. It seemed to have become a habit-hiding from Ashe.

  ‘I wouldn’t have known it was you but for the clothes spread out on the sand.’ He stretched beside her and she smiled uncertainly. Was he going to sit here talking to his office cleaner’s daughter while lovely Lara and his influential guests were just a short jog away? Whatever Ashe might be, he wasn’t a snob.

  ‘What do you do, Teressa? Surely you left school equipped for something better than office cleaning?’

  In fact she had spent a year studying computer science after leaving school. But it wouldn’t do to tell him that, or that she had held a very good job as a programmer with a top company before her need to work with people turned her to reception and secretarial work. And her new job yet to commence, at one of Sydney’s most prestigious hotels, was not the kind she could claim for poor, meek little Teressa Richards.

  ‘I’m a typist,’ she said, lowering her eyes to concentrate on dribbling sand through her fingers. ‘At present I’m working for a temp agency.’

  ‘Why don’t you have a permanent office job?’

  ‘I did in Perth—’ She bit her lip. Damn! She hadn’t meant to bring that in to complicate things. But she was stuck with it as he asked her where she had lived and worked there, and why she’d come back to Sydney. Teressa rather uncomfortably used the truth but edited a little. She and Cecily had lived with Elaine Curtis, Cecily’s godmother, for two of their years in Perth. She claimed the godmother for her own and left out Cecily’s name.

  ‘—and when 1 left my job, 1 came back here home.’

  ‘I’m surprised
your parents ever let you go away in the first place,’ he said with a frown. Teressa reflected that he would be even more surprised to learn that there weren’t any parents—and that, of the pretend ones she had bumblingly wished upon herself, only one was living anyway. So many lies for Ashe. Teressa squashed a feeling of shame. He deserved it. She glanced up to find him watching her.

  ‘Why did you leave your job?’

  ‘I had to leave because— ‘ she searched around for a wilting violet reason to leave a good job, ‘—because of the boss.’

  ‘He made advances to you.’