An Indecent Proposal Read online

Patrick turned his mind firmly to matters of the present. “How can you be sure Jacko Bullock isn’t one of those?”

  “I can’t be. But I trust him more than I do Andrew Preston.”

  “What do you have against Preston?” Patrick tried to keep his voice neutral.

  Louisa’s face tightened slightly. “I don’t like change, Patrick. That’s all. And I don’t like situations I can’t control.”

  Patrick agreed with the sentiment that Andrew Preston wasn’t about to be controlled by anyone. His mind’s eye, however, continued to see the long, straight auburn hair of the woman who’d gotten out of the Toyota, reminding him of another woman with long, straight auburn hair.

  “Wesley,” Bronwyn hissed at her son as she finally persuaded him to sit on a stone wall outside the head housekeeper’s office. “I’m trying to get a job,” she said, moving her full-size backpack—one that had belonged to Ari—and Wesley’s smaller tote bag so that they sat together. Bringing everything she owned to Fairchild Acres hadn’t been practical. Instead, she’d hired a small—very small—storage unit in Sydney and prayed that she’d find a way to pay the monthly rentals until she could collect the rest of her belongings, belongings for which she was pretty sure there would be no room in the Fairchild Acres employee bungalows.

  “It’s important that you are quiet and stay out of the way here,” she continued whispering to her son. “I have to have this job. Don’t you see that? We have no money since your— Anyhow, we have to make our own way, Wesley, and that means I have to work.”

  “Why couldn’t you get a job in Sydney?”

  “It’s expensive to live in Sydney.” This wasn’t the whole reason for her calling about the job she’d seen advertised at Fairchild Acres, however, and Wesley seemed to know it.

  He said, “You always think you’re smarter than everyone else.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Like Nam. You thought he couldn’t understand English.”

  Bronwyn’s cheeks burned anew. When she’d bade their driver farewell, he’d said in perfect English, “He must have caused you a lot of trouble.”

  Ari.

  Well, that was one way of putting it.

  Yes, it was easy to blush, remembering her mistake.

  “Wesley, could you please sit here quietly while I go in for my interview?”

  “What if you don’t get hired?”

  Bronwyn didn’t want to think about that. “I’m going to get hired. Now stay here. Don’t wander around.”

  She approached the door of the estate manager’s office, which was labeled Office, as she’d been told it would be. She knocked, and as she did, a small, extremely pretty young woman with short blond hair looked out of the next door, which stood open. It appeared to be the door to the kitchens, though also part of the main house.

  “She’s not here,” the woman called.

  “What?” Bronwyn turned.

  “Are you here about the dishwasher’s job?” the blonde asked.

  Bronwyn nodded, noting the perfection of her skin and thinking that Patrick Stafford had no shortage of beautiful women at Fairchild Acres. But he probably had a girlfriend, for all Bronwyn knew. She certainly wasn’t here to resume any romantic relationship with him after a ten-year separation. Nonetheless, this pretty female made Bronwyn want to find the nearest sink and mirror so she could clean up after the hot, dusty truck ride. How could anyone come out of that obviously steaming kitchen looking so good?

  “Well, Mrs. Lipton is gone for the day. She’ll be back tomorrow. You’ve come on her day off.”

  “But I have an appointment.” This was impossible.

  “You’re the woman who’s supposed to be coming tomorrow?” the blonde asked, her eyebrows drawing together.

  How could there be such a mix-up? Bronwyn wondered. It was late in the afternoon and Nam had already headed back to Sydney. Not that she could have afforded to have him make the trip again the next day. Were there hotels nearby? Bronwyn wasn’t destitute, but she didn’t want to spend any of the little cash she possessed. She could live on the smell of an oily rag better than most, but there was no point in depleting her resources unnecessarily.

  “Look, I’m Marie,” said the blonde, sticking out her hand, which Bronwyn took, grateful for the offer of friendship which the woman seemed to be making.

  “Bronwyn Davies.”

  “Yes, now what you want to do is go over to that door and go in and find Agnes. She’s the assistant housekeeper, and I dare say she’ll find you a place to sleep tonight. Is that your boy there?”

  “Yes, that’s Wesley.”

  Marie nodded, smiling. “He’s a handsome one, isn’t he?”

  “Too handsome for his own good,” Bronwyn admitted. “He’s been known to get away with plenty.” She hesitated. “Which door?”

  Marie pointed, and Bronwyn turned to see where she’d indicated.

  “Right. Well, thank you.”

  “No worries.”

  As Marie ducked in the kitchen, Wesley said, “Brilliant, Mum. Wrong day.”

  Bronwyn nodded in resignation. “Well, you better come with me.” She stooped to shoulder her heavy pack then fastened the hip belt. Wesley picked up his tote, swinging the strap over his shoulder. Bulging with his most prized possessions, the bag seemed to dwarf him, and Bronwyn thought how very young he was to have to go through all that he had in the last months—culminating, of course, in Ari’s murder.

  I’ve got to stop saying nasty things about Ari, she thought.

  After all, Wesley loved the man, loved his memory still.

  Bronwyn, too, had loved Ari. Once.

  I can’t think about it, about any of it. Unlikely as it might have seemed that she had loved a man twenty years older than her, that had been the case. Probably her attraction to him had something to do with the fact she’d never known her own father, who’d died before she was born, leaving Bronwyn’s mother to fend for herself and her infant in urban Sydney.

  Bronwyn would do a better job of that than her mother had. She and Wesley were not going to do any sleeping under bridges—or in shelters, for that matter.

  She said, “Wesley, you’re the best, y’know?”

  “Mmm,” he answered.

  She led the way up a red stone path to the door Marie had indicated. As she turned up the path, the door at the end opened, and a man stepped out.

  Her breath caught, and she stumbled on the walk. Graceful, Bronwyn.

  She would have known him anywhere, and already her eyes were seeking out that cleft chin, the jaw and delicate yet prominent bones she remembered in his face. His medium brown hair was a little too long, parted on the side, and still had a tendency to dash across his hazel eyes.

  The eyes Wesley had inherited.

  Patrick Stafford stopped in his tracks. He paused, gave her one derisive look, and said, “Why doesn’t this surprise me?”

  Chapter Two

  Patrick Stafford wasn’t surprised to see her? Well, Bronwyn wasn’t surprised to see him, either. After all, wasn’t seeing him part of her purpose in coming to Fairchild Acres? Hadn’t she subtly quizzed college friends about the old crowd until they’d gotten around to Patrick, until finally she’d learned where he was? He was Wesley’s father, and both father and son deserved the chance to meet, to get to know each other.

  But now, face-to-face with Patrick, Bronwyn remembered how angry and hurt he’d been when she’d refused his proposal. We were so young, she thought. She definitely intended to let him know that Wesley was his son, but not in front of Wesley.

  He paused, seeming to take in the heat, sweat, dirt, backpacks, soccer ball, everything.

  “I’m looking for the assistant housekeeper,” Bronwyn said.

  “And here I was sure you were looking for me.”

  He had a fine nose, perfect for looking down at her, Bronwyn thought.

  “Let me fill in the blanks,” he added, “to save you the trouble.”

  He
stood over her, and Bronwyn felt the weight of the burden on her hips and shoulders and wished she could set down the huge pack, but it was too much trouble to get it back on.

  “Sugar daddy is gone,” he said, “so you tracked down Patrick Stafford to see if he might step in.”

  The presumption floored Bronwyn. On top of the heat, the truck ride, the mix-up over the days, this was too much. Patrick thought she hoped he would support her? How ridiculous. “Even I,” she said, “don’t have such an inflated opinion of my own charms.”

  “Your arrival here on the tails of Theodoros’s untimely demise strikes me as more than coincidental.”

  As it was. The job opening at Fairchild Acres had been pure serendipity, but Bronwyn had hunted job ads in the Hunter Valley in the hope of finding something. She was hanged if she’d admit so now, especially with Wesley listening.

  “Do you mind?” she said, her eyes indicating that a child was present, a child who regarded Aristotle Theodoros as his father. For the first time she wondered if maybe Wesley might be better off without Patrick in his life. How insensitive could the man be, talking so casually about Ari’s “untimely demise”? “You could actually point us in the right direction. I have an appointment with Mrs. Lipton for tomorrow about a job in the kitchens. I thought it was today, and we’ve arrived too early.”

  “Then, you ought to trek out to the highway and get a lift to the nearest hotel.”

  After Marie’s kindness, Patrick’s callousness stung. Suddenly, Bronwyn felt close to breaking down. But she managed to repeat, “If you could let the housekeeper know I’m here or tell me where to find her.”

  Patrick saw that her lips, lovely lips against that honey-colored skin he remembered so well, trembled. You ass, Patrick, he thought. There wasn’t a chance in the world that Bronwyn’s showing up here was coincidence, but she had no chance of worming her way into his good graces. So why not behave decently toward her? She was, after all, a widow accompanied by a young child, and the kid didn’t deserve to suffer for his mother’s—not to mention father’s—crimes.

  The boy would be mourning the loss of his dad; that would be natural.

  Turning, he nodded toward the door in the big house through which he’d just come. “Go on in. Agnes is inside, first door on the right.” Then, looking again at the kid, whose gaze had now turned cold—toward him, Patrick realized—he sighed and pulled open the screen. “Come in. We have room for you for the night.”

  Bronwyn marveled that Patrick even smelled the same. It wasn’t a strong scent, and she hadn’t been terribly close to him, yet he smelled familiar, from that years-ago time when they were lovers, back when she’d been a waitress in the campus coffee shop and he one of those lucky students who didn’t have to work his way through uni.

  “Agnes, this is Bron Theodoros—”

  “Bronwyn Davies,” Bronwyn corrected. Bron. Many people naturally shortened her name to Bron. Ari had hated it. Like “brawn.” You’re not brawny. And Bronwyn had begun to insist upon the use of her whole name—even in the last weeks she’d retained friendship with Patrick before their horrible parting.

  Patrick cast her a quick look, but didn’t argue. “Bronwyn Davies and her son…”

  “Wesley,” Bronwyn supplied.

  “Bronwyn has an appointment with Mrs. Lipton tomorrow, and she arrived on the wrong day. I’m sure we can put these two up for the night in the house.” He put subtle emphasis on the last three words. “Bronwyn and I are old acquaintances from uni.”

  “If there’s room in the employee cottage,” Bronwyn put in, “I’m sure that will be fine.”

  “Well, the available room got painted out there, and I know it’s no good tonight because of the fumes,” Agnes told her. Agnes was a fiftyish woman who wore her hair in a neat French twist. Her black-and-white uniform was spotless. Bronwyn remembered that Marie, in the kitchens, had worn a T-shirt with Fairchild Acres on it, so Bronwyn supposed that would be her uniform in the future. “We can put you up in the western corner.”

  Hot, Bronwyn thought. But the house was air-conditioned, blessedly so, so even the west part would be lovely. A roof over her head would be terrific.

  “Is the room ready?” Patrick asked.

  “Certainly,” said Agnes, with an air of being vaguely insulted at his suggestion that it might not be.

  “Then I’ll show them the way,” he said, surprising Bronwyn again. Nonetheless, she couldn’t believe that he was doing so as a gesture of hospitality. No doubt he planned to tell her again that he wasn’t going to support her. As if she would let him. She’d only wanted to give him the chance to know Wesley. But now she’d begun to wonder if that was such a good idea.

  She and Wesley followed Patrick down the hall to a stairway, which, though clearly not the main set of stairs, was wide and led to an upstairs open hallway that looked down on what appeared to be a conservatory below. The upstairs hall was lined with photographs of horses, horses covered with blankets of roses, horses in the winner’s circle. Accompanying many of them was the same tall, straight-backed woman at different stages throughout her life. Bronwyn had seen her before— from a distance at one or two events she and Ari had attended—and in photographs, as well. Louisa Fairchild. Bronwyn half hoped she would never come face-to-face with the Hunter Valley matriarch. Would Louisa meet any prospective employee? Bronwyn could just imagine the reaction of this seemingly indomitable woman at the news that Aristotle Theodoros’s widow was on the premises. Did she dare ask Patrick not to mention the fact?

  No. He would scorn her for asking him to help her cover up for…for what?

  For having been married to a criminal.

  There were two upstairs bedrooms in the south corner, and they shared a bathroom. The actual corner room with its four-poster bed was to be Bronwyn’s, and a smaller room looking out on one of the paddocks was Wesley’s.

  “No soccer inside, mate,” Patrick told Wesley as he showed him into the room, which contained a silky oak double bed.

  “He knows that,” Bronwyn said. She felt like a grease spot, but however miserably hot and sweaty she looked—and Bronwyn was far less sensitive to this question than any other woman she knew—Patrick shouldn’t be assuming that Wesley hadn’t been raised right.

  “No doubt,” Patrick answered coolly, “but Louisa wouldn’t like it, so I thought I’d err on the side of caution.”

  “In that case, thank you,” murmured Bronwyn.

  “There are towels in the bathroom. If there’s anything you need, please ask Agnes. The staff eats in the dining room attached to the kitchens, and I’m sure you’ll be welcome there,” he continued. “Maybe Wesley would like to spruce himself up a bit first.”

  Wesley looked baffled by the suggestion, but Bronwyn read the undercurrent in the words. Patrick wanted to speak with her alone. “Wesley,” she said, “we did have a hot sweaty trip, and I’m definitely going to take advantage of the shower. Why don’t you run yourself a bath first?”

  “Okay,” said Wesley, eyeing his mother and Patrick suspiciously.

  Patrick stepped out of Wesley’s room, and Bronwyn followed, closing the door behind her.

  He said, “Please come and join me in my study. It’s just down the hall.”

  Bronwyn knew it would be churlish to argue, so she followed him, remembering the breadth of his shoulders beneath the chambray shirt he wore, admiring his long legs in cream moleskin pants. Yes, he looked affluent and secure, yet he was also stiff, remote, serious, quite different from the Patrick she remembered from school. Of course, that Patrick hadn’t been serious enough for her. A history major who’d wanted to travel and to write. Nothing specific, of course, and no sign of a genuine enthusiasm for writing. Just impractical plans. And then he’d asked her to marry him. And that proposal had suddenly accentuated for her how immature he was, how unready for marriage. She’d broken up with him and soon met Ari. A whirlwind courtship and another proposal of marriage, this one from a more mature man.


  Of course, Ari’s proposal had seemed to come from a legitimate businessman, not a mobster.

  When had she begun to suspect the truth about Ari, the indecent truth that the person he seemed to be with his family was not at all the person he was in his business dealings? She shut the door on the question, a question she’d spent too much time examining over the months since Ari’s arrest.

  Patrick’s study was a large, comfortable room, the furniture polished cherry, with a desktop computer which looked as though it could communicate with a space station and a separate rolltop desk complete with a banker’s lamp. Prominently displayed on the small desk was a photo of Patrick and his sister, Megan, whom Bronwyn easily recognized. She stepped over to examine the photo. Megan’s sense of style, her comfort with fashion, was apparent even in the head-and-shoulders photo, simply from her choice of earrings. But what Bronwyn remembered was the kindness of her eyes, eyes very much the shape of Patrick’s, and the mouth that had always been so quick to laugh.

  But Bronwyn also remembered the slight chip she’d had on her own shoulder when she’d first gotten to know Patrick’s sister, whose childhood had been the antithesis of Bronwyn’s. Megan was the product of exclusive private girls’ schools, an affluent upbringing. Bronwyn, in contrast, had always been a survivor. “How is she?” she asked.

  Patrick paused at the side bar, where several bottles sat on a silver tray. “Great. She’s met a very nice man, a detective, actually, with a fourteen-year-old daughter. A cocktail?”

  Bronwyn hesitated, reluctant to accept so much as a glass of water from this man who had accused her of coming to Fairchild Acres in search of a new sugar daddy. But a drink was what she very much wanted right now. That and the shower she’d told Wesley she planned to take before dinner. “Thank you,” she said.

  “Cognac?” he asked.

  Bronwyn had never tasted cognac in her life until Patrick had ordered her some one evening when they were out together. It’s not exactly in my budget, she’d pointed out.

  He’d said, Maybe if you get used to the finer things, they’ll find you.