The Deception Trap Read online

  ‘All right.’ He poured a small amount of whisky over a half glass of ice and handed her the drink. ‘But take it easy.’ He dropped on to a three-seater lounger, one leg over the leather arm. Teressa sat herself down at the far end and looked along at him.

  ‘I suppose you think I’m stupid to let storms frighten me?’ Now there was a seductive opening, she thought wryly, realising she didn’t know how to go about seducing a man.

  Slowly his eyes roved over her. ‘It’s smart to be afraid of some things. You’re a little more apprehensive about some than you should be at twenty. In time I suppose you’ll gain in confidence-experience. Innocence doesn’t last for ever. It’s a miracle to find it in someone your age…’

  ‘I’m not innocent, Ashe. I know about the facts of life. Sex.’ She said it with a sort of bravado and he laughed.

  ‘Ah—you’re a woman of the world, are you, Teressa?’

  ‘I’ve had other boyfriends besides Tony—they made love to me.’

  Another laugh. ‘A few kisses and fumbles don’t count.’

  ‘How do you know I haven’t slept with someone?’ she protested, and put her head on one side to see how he took that.

  Ashe got up and paused a moment to look down at her. ‘I just know.’ He patted her shoulder and fetched himself another drink. While he was at the bar he took a battery-powered cassette player from a cupboard.

  Inserting a tape, he roamed around the room beyond the pool of light, sipping at his Scotch. The voice of Lou Rawls began a Latin-rock contest with that of the storm.

  ‘I wish I could dance to music like that,’ Teressa said, conscious of Ashe somewhere in the dark behind her. Her heart began to pound. It was pretty pathetic she thought, in the way of seduction. Semi-seduction, she corrected. She threw back a mouthful of whisky.

  ‘Why can’t you?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Somehow I always end up treading on my partner’s feet.’ She didn’t, her dancing wasn’t bad at all, but lately she’d done little but disco, or shuffled about trying to break out of Tony’s bear-hug embrace. Ashe’s feet swished across the thick carpet. As lightning hung in the sky, Teressa saw him silhouetted in a window.

  ‘It’s just a matter of practice,’ he said. Ice tinkled as he raised his glass and drank.

  ‘Are you a good dancer, Ashe?’

  He came back into the light suddenly. ‘Not bad.’

  ‘Could you teach me?’

  He looked broodingly at her, down at his feet, back again at her. Then he set his glass down. ‘Why not?

  It’ll help pass the time till the lights come on.’

  He held out a hand to her and lifted her from the lounge. His touch was impersonal-his voice matter-of-fact.

  ‘Loosen up,’ he said, jogging his hand at her waist, ‘you’re too tense … don’t worry about any fancy steps, just let me guide you … ‘ He sounded like a teacher. It wasn’t working out at all the way she’d hoped. ‘If I step forward like this—’ His thigh touched hers and she moved back immediately. It was she who was tense and uptight, not he—not the way she’d expected.

  ‘—that’s right. You step back. Now again—’

  It was awful. Teressa wanted to be held close, wanted him to press his cheek to hers … she stumbled several times. Genuinely stumbled. But Ashe corrected her with a masterful hand at her waist and eventually they achieved a rapport that might have I been pleasing had she been taking a lesson from a tutor. Teressa was burning with frustration. Upstairs he had seemed so vulnerable, yet now he was in complete control.

  ‘There—’ he said after a while, smiling down at her, ‘you’re not treading on my toes any more. With the right partner you could be a good dancer, Teressa.’

  ‘It’s easy with you, Ashe. I wish—’

  ‘Wish what?’

  ‘That the boys I met were more like you. I feel comfortable with you.’

  ‘Comfortable?’ His voice roughened a bit. There was a perceptible tightening of his hold on her. ‘Do you mean safe?’

  Smiling at him, she thought about it. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’

  ‘That’s a foolish assumption to make with a man, Teressa,’ he said roughly.We’re here alone. You can’t assume you’re safe. If I decided to-e-make love to you, what could you do about it?’

  She laughed. ‘As if you would!’ It was working, she thought, as Ashe tensed under the mantle of her trust.

  ‘You’re underestimating yourself and overestimating me. I’m no saint–’ His hand inched further about her waist. ‘You’re a lovely girl-desirable. I’d like to do more than just hold you, Teressa. At your age you should be able to tell,’ he chided. ‘Most men would go right ahead, so don’t be too quick to trust.’

  ' I trust you.’

  He drew a deep, exasperated breath, let it out slowly. After a moment he stopped dancing. ‘You’ll have to learn when to back off from trouble, Teressa,’ he said huskily, and pulled her hard against him to stare into her wide grey eyes. He touched her hair, pushed his fingers deep into its thickness at the base of her neck. ‘Like now.’

  The room flared with lightning as the storm triumphed. Rain curtained down in its own applause.

  The ocean’s drum roll sounded a fraction ahead of more thunder.

  ‘Now?’ she whispered.

  Ashe lowered his head and put his mouth to hers.

  His lips were light, undemanding. It was the kiss of an experienced man for an untried girl and the warm pressure of it moved her as other, earthier kisses had not. Teressa held on to his shoulders, feeling the tension in him as he remembered her youth and innocence. For one moment it seemed that he might forget.

  His lips moved in adult persuasion before he turned his head and pressed them instead to the soft skin of her neck. The fire of it made her want more. To be kissed by him as an equal partner, to be caressed—loved in his big brass bed—

  ‘Ashe—’ she breathed in shock at her wantonness. And her forgetfulness.

  Abruptly he put her from him.

  ‘You see what I mean, Teressa?’ He walked away and she heard the sound of the whisky decanter against glass. She didn’t turn around. ‘Think of it as another lesson. Go to bed. Lock your door if you no longer feel safe with me. But it won’t be necessary.’

  It had been a lesson, Teressa admitted the next day as she passed Sydney’s Mascot Airport on her way home again. A lesson that seeking revenge with a man like Ashe had been crazy right from the start. But, she reflected as the Princes Highway traffic slowed, she hadn’t expected that her puny attempts to hit back at him would make her feel so guilty, so confused. So—ashamed.

  Everything went wonderfully well, she told Mrs Richards, who nipped in to see her the minute she got home. The guests were very interesting, the house divine, everyone seemed to enjoy themselves. Wendy Warwick was an actress in soapie Plaza Nine. Well, I never! And Mr. Warwick? Oh yes, Mr. Warwick seemed pleased with her services. He thought Teressa was a nice girl.

  But Teressa didn’t feel nice at all. In fact, she had come back from Deception a stranger to herself.

  Mrs Richards talked ecstatically about her weekend with Maggie and Ron and granddaughter Debbie, and Teressa listened, trying to pluck up the courage to confess the several lies that might rebound on the woman. But she postponed it in the face of her neighbour’s enthusiasm. That evening, as luck would have it, Mrs Richards left for Warlord a good half hour earlier than usual and Teressa missed seeing her.

  She could only hope that Ashe wasn’t working late tonight. If he was there and started talking about a dowdy daughter … what would he do if he found out she had fooled him, deliberately led him on?

  Mrs Richards gave her an old-fashioned look as Teressa opened the door to her later that night.

  ‘Mr. Warwick apologised to me about last night,’ she said as they began their tea ritual.

  ‘Last night?’

  ‘About the mix-up and you having to stay there alone with him. I must say he was very reassuring�
�said you were quite safe with him.’

  Safe. ‘Oh. Did he?’

  Thelma Richards accepted a cup of tea. ‘And I believe him-as I told him,’ she said, and her pale blue eyes were bright. ‘He seemed to be under the impression that I was your mother. Well—I was so surprised, then his phone went and I didn’t get a chance to tell him I wasn’t.’

  Thank heavens for that! ‘I can explain, Mrs Richards—’ She did, leaving out Ashe’s more mercenary inclinations and her own wish for revenge.

  ‘But he was engaged to my sister once and I thought it might be embarrassing if he knew who I was, what with Miss Moore there, and before I knew it I’d got myself in a mess with one fib and didn’t correct it quickly enough.’

  ‘You never said you knew him, dear, when you helped out that other time,’ Mrs Richards said thoughtfully. ‘But oh, I know how a mix-up like that can happen.’ She reflected on her own deception with Mr. Warwick. ‘But I’ll have to tell him, Teressa, if he asks outright. It’s going to sound silly, though…’

  ‘He thinks I’m going away to Perth soon,’ Teressa interposed. ‘I told him that so that he wouldn’t keep asking you questions. After this week he’ll have forgotten all about it. And I really would rather he didn’t know who I am. It’s so embarrassing.’

  The old lady looked dubious. “Tch, tch! Well, I suppose we could just leave things as they are…’

  ‘Sorry Mrs Richards.’

  ‘Call me Thelma, dear. After all, you’re almost one of the family.’

  The week brought several days of work through the agency and Teressa was glad to be kept occupied.

  That weekend at Deception nagged at her. On impulse she drove out to look at Cliffe House one morning, hoping that it would remind her of days gone and help wipe out the lingering sense of shame she felt.

  Teressa turned into the familiar street with an odd feeling of unreality. It was neither so wide nor so long as she had thought. She stopped the car. The wrought-iron gates, overhung with poinciana branches, were open, giving her a wedged view of her old home. It was white and beautiful, ornate and preposterous, its original vulgarity smoothed into dignity by time. Just as she remembered it, but smaller.

  Where were the proportions she recalled-the dreamlike, surrealist sweep of lawn and drive, the majestic height of her tower? She had been carrying around an image on a giant canvas when a cameo would have done. It was beautiful, imposing-but it was just a house. It had been a sprawling, original background for all the real memories … her mother hugging her and telling her not to worry about her looks. ‘You’re thirteen, darling,’ she’d said just a few months before she’d died, ‘—the outside will take care of itself. It’s the job you do on the inside that matters.’

  And years after her death, Damien—flamboyant and boyish-running into the back garden, a bottle of champagne gushing, shouting his exhilaration at a new gamble won. He’d jumped in the pool that day, clothes, champagne and all. And Cecily—partying with her friends on the front lawn under coloured lanterns … beautiful, vivacious Cecily dancing in Ashe’s arms until he whirled her beneath the poinciana’s parasol and kissed her. Herself, watching from her tower. The kiss had lasted three or four minutes and she had turned from the balcony and run down the spiral stairs before it ended.

  Teressa started the car. That was probably an exaggeration. Ashe and Cecily would have come up for air sooner than that. If she could so inflate her memories of the home she’d known so well, then she might have distorted some others as well. It was an uneasy thought. She drove away. Seeing the house hadn’t helped at all, for she felt sad and frustrated, jealous and resentful. Her mother might not have liked to see what sort of an inside job she’d done.

  The Merrows’ dinner party turned out to be a semiformal affair for eight. Mrs Merrow was wearing a rope of pearls and diamonds. Jane’s boyfriend, David Pointer, was there and Sidney and Georgia Bryant, friends of the hosts. The decor had changed but the mirrors hadn’t—massive gilt-framed things bought in Europe on one of Raine Merrow’s antique hunting trips. Teressa almost expected to see her old self reflected in them-a lumpy adolescent dressed to no effect in designer teen clothes. Blink. Six years gone.

  No fat, no braces. No designer gear this time either, Teressa thought wryly. All off the peg and sale stuff.

  What a pity she had never got the two together-her present-day looks and her long-ago dress allowance.

  ‘You’ll remember Tess,’ Jane said to her parents.

  ‘Tess,’ said Mrs Merrow with a certain caution.

  ‘How lovely you look.’ Her eyes lingered on her silver-grey dress and the matching streak in her hair.

  ‘Didn’t I tell you she’d changed?’ Jane beamed.

  ‘Joel will get quite a shock!’

  Her mother didn’t look too thrilled at that, and Teressa was pleased. She remembered still all the excuses an embarrassed Jane had given to withdraw from a weekend at Cliffe House after Damien’s troubles had begun. And then she’d overheard her tell someone else, ‘Mummy won’t let me go over there any more—’

  They enjoyed dry sherry and medium-sweet small talk until Joel Merrow arrived. He strode in with no apologies for his lateness, hugged his mother who made feeble remonstrations about her hairdo clapped his father on the shoulder and made a sort of royal progress around the room until he came to Teressa.

  At twenty-six, Joel had acquired a rugged masculine appeal that hadn’t been so apparent at nineteen when Teressa had first met him. But even then girls had fallen over him, drawn by Joel’s devil-may-care attitude and the Merrow money which was a blend of old and new. Now, by the good management of his father, he still had money and the dark, wearied looks of a man who’d played harder than he’d worked. It was a fascinating combination. Teressa remembered having a severe crush on Joel in her pudgy, orthodontic days. She remembered too how, whenever she had visited Jane, he had made jokes at her expense even though he knew how she felt. So it was balm to old wounds to find his bored hazel eyes warm with interest now.

  ‘Tess?’ he said warmly. ‘You’ve changed.’

  ‘On the outside,’ Teressa said drily.

  ‘But you were such a dumpy little thing.’ He flashed his playboy smile. ‘And you had a crush on me.’

  ‘We’re all allowed one mistake.’

  Joel laughed. ‘Changed on the inside too! Not so shy now, Tess?’

  ‘Call me Teressa,’ she said, remembering for no good reason, a deep voice long ago saying ‘Tess’.

  A maid served the dinner in the red and gold diningroom.

  At least tonight, Teressa thought, she was a guest and not the domestic help. She raised her glass and was reminded of the dinner she’d shared with Ashe. ‘Cal1 me Ashe,’ he had said in that deep amber voice of his. She lifted a hand to her left temple and smoothed back the already smooth silver strands.

  Damn him! she thought in a rush of anger. He had no right to that sexy face and body or to that voice. How could he look so good on the outside when he was rotten inside? Perhaps he had a portrait in his attic—a picture that had the paunches, pouches, the thinning hair and the dyspeptic look that he deserved.

  Later they went to the lounge for coffee. Teressa avoided the mirrors; her own image bothered her. It occurred to her that a portrait in her attic might not be such a pretty picture either.

  Joel was flatteringly attentive. He asked her out and she hedged. It was something of a coup—another tribute to her change from pudgy Tess to slim, trim Teressa—but Joel was spoiled and way out of her class. He was, no doubt, accustomed to an entirely different kind of girl.

  ‘I have theatre tickets next week—‘ he smiled, and in the end she said yes. Joel looked just a bit wolfish. He wouldn’t look so pleased if he knew that she hoped a date with him would stop her thinking about Ashe.

  When he turned up on Wednesday evening and his dark eyes smouldered over her, Teressa had a moment’s misgivings. Tony looked at her like that, but she could deal with Tony. J
oel Merrow, playboy, treated like a prince from childhood—could be a different matter.

  ‘Sensational, Teressa.’ He lightly touched her shoulder, running a finger down her arm.

  She was wearing the pink and silver dress that had remained hidden at Deception. What would Ashe have thought if he’d seen her in it … ? The thought brought a jolt of alarm. What if she should run to Ashe one day—or night’? If he saw her looking like this … Joel smiled and she took his offered arm. So what if she saw Ashe? All the better. He would feel a complete fool. And for that it was worth nursing a little self-disgust.

  The evening passed smooth as silk between the fingers. Their pre-theatre dinner was superb, the play funny and the champagne at the interval ice-cold.