Читать книгу: «The Heiress Bride»

Chapter One

It was a humid summer evening, and the annual Waikura Clarion Christmas party was in full swing.

Checking that the guests were enjoying themselves, Alysia paused in the doorway of the big front lounge.

Her father, wine glass in hand, held forth to a respectful circle of his employees. Spencer Kingsley was a big man, and his confident stance, rich baritone voice and command of language ensured that people listened to him.

Only one person had let his attention stray; Chase Osborne, the chief reporter, stared absently into his glass.

As Alysia stood watching, Chase raised his dark head and looked directly at her with unblinking green-brown eyes under emphatic black brows. He gave her a courteous nod, then his gaze left her as her father threw back his head in laughter, echoed by the rest of the group.

Chase’s firmly delineated mouth moved only a fraction of an inch at one corner before he downed the remainder of his drink.

He had scarcely noticed Alysia, despite the green chiffon designer dress that exposed the smooth skin of her arms and shoulders, complemented her fine, fair hair, and emphasized eyes the same clear light green as the pendants in her ears, carved from translucent New Zealand inanga jade.

Her eyes were her best feature, though when she was younger she’d thought green a wishy-washy color, longing for a more positive blue or brown.

Once she had horrified her father by using a strawberry rinse in her hair. Now she occasionally had her hairdresser use highlights in the winter to give it a bit of life.

She was no great beauty, but tonight several people had commented favorably on her appearance, and even her father had said that she’d never looked prettier, lighting a tiny glow inside her.

For Chase Osborne she might have been just another piece of furniture in the crowded room.

“Allie!” A rotund middle-aged man appeared at her elbow. The Clarion’s advertising manager, Howard Franklin was one of the few people who habitually shortened her name. “You’ve done a great job.”

“Thank you, Howard.” She actually had done very little. Her father had told her which catering firm to hire and given her a list of staff members to invite. “I hope you and Mollie are enjoying yourselves.”

Everyone seemed to be having a wonderful time. The younger contingent had gravitated from the swimming pool to the games room. Several couples were dancing on the terrace to music from a tape player, while older staff and their partners gathered in the lounge.

“Great, great,” Howard assured her. “But you don’t have a drink. Busy looking after everyone else, eh? Let me get one for you.” He took her arm to guide her toward the bottles and glasses on a table in a corner.

A burly man with a flushed face turned from it as they approached, two frothing beer mugs in his hands. Verne Hastie was the print room manager. “Allie!” he said in overhearty tones. “Long time no see. All grown up, too!” Bold blue eyes approved the shoestring-strapped dress and fitted bodice.

Alysia stiffened as her cool gaze briefly met his.

Verne grinned widely at Howard. “How come you’re with the prettiest girl in the room, an old fogy like you?” he demanded. He laughed uproariously.

“I’m just getting Alysia a drink,” Howard said. “What would you like, Allie?”

She turned to him with relief as Verne went off across the room. “Gin with lemon bitters. Make it strong.”

Howard chuckled. “Well, you’ve had your twenty-first birthday.” He poured the drink and handed it to her. “Here you are.”

She gripped the glass tightly in a damp hand and took a generous gulp from it. Sweeping a glance around the room, she encountered Chase Osborne’s dark eyes again. This time they were alert, his gaze dropping, apparently to gauge the level of the liquid in her glass before rising again to hers, curiosity and something that might have been a hint of concern stirring in his eyes.

A spoon tinkling against a glass brought Alysia’s attention to her father, who was standing near Chase. Someone killed the tape player and the dancers gathered at the French doors leading to the terrace, while other people were summoned from the games room.

Spencer cleared his throat. “Christmas being a family occasion, and you all being part of the Clarion family, this seems an appropriate time to make an announcement.”

As Spencer’s proud gaze traveled around the room Alysia felt a surprised thrill. She hadn’t expected a formal announcement, though everyone probably knew already she was about to start working with them, her very first real job after leaving university.

Spencer smiled and continued. “As I’m getting on in years—” he paused for muted laughter and murmured denials around the room “—it’s time I started thinking about the future. Young blood is always good for an old business and the Clarion is no exception. I’ve decided, therefore, to appoint a deputy editor.”

Deputy? Alysia felt dizzy. Not a junior position in the newsroom after all. Instead a new position created just for her.

The business degree she’d taken before attending journalism school might have made her father think she’d be more valuable in management. But she’d expected to work her way up, not be presented with a plum position working at his side.

Flushing with embarrassed excitement, she took a step forward.

“So…” Spencer raised his glass. “Please drink to my right-hand man and the Clarion’s deputy editor.”

He turned to Chase and put an arm around his shoulders. “Chase—here’s to your new position. Congratulations.”

All the blood drained from Alysia’s cheeks. She felt herself go pale and cold, her temples thudding.

Everyone was raising their glasses, calling out their congratulations, and a smattering of applause broke out. Thank God no one was taking any notice of her. What a fool she’d almost made of herself.

Chase was smiling as Spencer shook his hand. “Thank you all very much,” he said. “And Spencer, I’m deeply honored by your confidence in me.”

Sycophant. Toady! A sour taste rose in Alysia’s throat, almost choking her. While everyone else surged around the two men, offering Chase congratulations, she left the room, almost running along the wide passageway to a door that opened onto the old back veranda and the garden. She had to get away before anyone saw how upset she was. How betrayed she felt.

Quickly she descended the broad steps and crossed the moonlit lawn bordered by a mixture of native New Zealand evergreens and exotic hibiscus, roses and lavender. The trailing leaves of the pepper tree whipped at her face, startling her, and she breathed in their sharp scent as she went on.

Beyond the formal garden a path wound between thick shrubs, and at its end a low stone wall served the double function of retaining the steep bank and providing a place to sit and survey the view.

A sea of lights spread out far below, a winding curve of blackness marking the river that bisected the town. And beyond the farthest lights a range of hills created another black uneven line below the five stars of the Southern Cross and the pale misty swathe of the Milky Way.

Alysia sat on the wall, half turned to stare unseeingly at the winking of the lights imitating the crowded night sky overhead.

Gradually the turmoil inside her subsided, while she castigated herself for being such a fool. It didn’t mean her father didn’t love her…only that she was too young and inexperienced for a senior position and he knew it. She knew it. Her sickening disappointment was based on a fleeting false impression. She would just have to get over it.

Once she did start work she’d show him, show everyone—she’d be the best damned reporter the Clarion had ever had. Better even than Chase Osborne. And in a few years she’d be given her rightful place as the heir to the Kingsley heritage. Because she’d have earned it.

She stayed unmoving for a long time, scarcely hearing the revelry from the house, until the breeze wafting uphill from the river rustling and rattling the manuka and flax and occasional tall, lacy ponga fern covering the slope, made her shiver.

Rubbing at her bare arms, she got up, stopping with a small gasp as she saw the dark bulk of a man standing rock-still a few feet away.

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” Chase Osborne said.

“How long have you been there?” Her tone was sharper than she’d meant it to be.

Perhaps that was why he didn’t answer straight away. “Your father sent me to find you.”

It didn’t answer her question, but after a half second’s reflection she decided not to pursue it. “How did you know where to look?”

“It took me a while.” He paused. “Are you all right?”

“Why shouldn’t I be?” He hadn’t guessed, had he, how nearly she’d invited humiliation? Her cheeks burned and she was thankful for the dim light.

Chase said, “You seemed to be knocking back your drink in there as if you needed a fix.”

“I can handle my liquor. It was one glass of gin and lemon and I didn’t even finish it.” Or had she? She couldn’t remember now what she’d done with it in her blind need to escape. Anyway, she was an adult. How much she drank needn’t concern him. “I’m fine,” she asserted.

She had an uneasy feeling he didn’t believe her, but after a moment’s silence he changed the subject. “This is quite a sight, isn’t it?” He came to her side, looking down at the lights and the invisible river. The sleeve of his jacket brushed her arm, and she involuntarily flinched away.

Chase turned his head, and even in the dark she sensed his air of amused curiosity before he switched his attention back to the view.

“You must have seen it before,” Alysia said.

“Never at night. Kingsley’s kingdom.”

Something in his tone made her defensive. “It’s only a town.”

He turned to her again. “Your family’s town.”

“We don’t own it. Not anymore.”

“In your great-great-grandfather’s day—”

“That was a long time ago.” Jasper Kingsley, only weeks off an immigrant ship from England, had bought land from the local Maori tribe, milled the standing timber that covered it, raised a settlement on the banks of the river—in those days a navigable water-way—and leased the cleared land to small farmers, making himself a sort of unofficial squire. He’d built the big house, at that time the only house on the hillside, from which he could survey his creation. But in over a century and a half the town had grown and times had changed.

“All we own now is the house and the newspaper,” Alysia pointed out. “And a few old buildings,” she added punctiliously. Plus various stocks and shares.

“Those old buildings are on prime sites,” Chase reminded her. “Worth quite a lot in today’s market.”

She had no doubt he was right. Not that it was any of his business.

His voice butter-smooth, he added, “And one day they’ll all be yours.”

“I hope that day is a long way off,” she told him tightly. And hoped he understood that she found discussing her father’s death—even indirectly and only in theory—distasteful.

Chase turned, altering his stance so that he appeared to loom over her. He was blocking her way to the path. When she stepped forward he didn’t budge.

Alysia raised her eyes to his face, half-lit by the blue-white moonlight. She’d never thought him a particularly good-looking man—his strong features were too well-defined, the bone structure too obvious. But he was striking, and close-up he presented a formidable air of masculinity.

She didn’t recall that they had ever been alone before, unless she counted occasions when he had come to the house and she’d let him in to her father’s study.

She smelled a faint aroma of clean clothing, soap and an underlying pleasant tang that reminded her of the sea. Aftershave? As he looked down at her the planes of his face seemed angular, the chin jutting and the straight black brows almost merged in a frown.

The noise of the party suddenly seemed very distant. The moon slipped behind a high cloud, deepening the darkness.

Alysia stepped back and felt her legs touch the wall. “By the way, congratulations.” She hoped her voice sounded casual.

“Thank you. Do I get the feeling you aren’t thrilled about my promotion?”

“What my father does at the Clarion, whom he appoints, is entirely up to him…at least for some years yet.”

There was a telling silence while he absorbed the subtle warning. Then Chase enquired smoothly, “Looking to the future, are you? To when your father retires?”

“Are you?”

They remained staring at each other, the gloom making it difficult for her to see his expression.

Chase said, “I’m not a Kingsley.”

“You needn’t worry about your job yet.” It would be years before she was ready to take over the business. Embarrassment at her brief earlier assumption crawled in her stomach.

“Did I say I was worried?” Chase sounded confident, amused. As though he saw her as a puny threat, at best.

“By the time my father retires I’m sure you’ll have found yourself some wider, greener pastures. I promise I won’t hold you back.”

He rocked a little on his heels, his head slanted to one side, hands sliding into his pockets. “You won’t?” he said very softly. She knew he meant: You think you could?

Alysia’s chest felt constricted, her cheeks hot. “You’re ambitious,” she said. “My father may think you’ll stick around out of loyalty to him, but…”

“What do you think?” he challenged her. His voice deepening, he added, “Are you telling me this town isn’t big enough for both of us?”

“Is it big enough for you?” She’d never thought so. Surely this job with a provincial, family-owned paper, however respected and prosperous, was a mere stepping stone in his career path.

He said, “That depends.”

“My father won’t give up control for a long while yet. It’s always been a family concern.”

“And you’re the last of the family.”

Alysia discovered that her hands were clenched. She loosened her fingers, flexed them secretly. “Within the next five, ten years…”

“You think you’ll be ready to take over?” Chase queried.

Alysia’s teeth hurt, and the incipient headache that had begun with her father’s announcement had become an insistent throbbing. She hadn’t meant to go so far. But if Chase Osborne imagined he was in line for editor-in-chief, a title that had always remained in family hands, it was time someone disillusioned him. It had only been fair to spell it out. She took in a quick breath. “If my father wants me, hadn’t we better—”

Chase interrupted. “I didn’t say he wanted you.”

Her discomfort with his dark presence crystallized into a jagged antagonism. Her chin lifted. “You told me—”

“That he sent me to find you,” Chase said. “He wondered where you’d got to.”

“Well, you’ve found me. Now either go back and tell him I’m here and I’m fine, or get out of my way.”

He made no attempt to do so. “All in good time, Princess,” he said lazily. “I’m not your lackey.”

Unaccountably Alysia’s heart was hammering. He hadn’t moved an inch, but she sensed anger behind the deceptively gentle tone. An irrational, atavistic fear made her lash out with words. “No,” she said, her head lifting to an unconsciously arrogant tilt. “You’re my father’s.”

He seemed to be contemplating her, holding himself so still it was uncanny. The moon reappeared, throwing a faint nimbus around his head but scarcely lighting his face except for the glitter of his eyes. He made a short, sharp sound that might have been the beginning of a laugh. “Is that what you think?” he asked her. “He’s my employer.”

“So you jump when he says ‘Jump’ and obediently check up on his daughter when he tells you to. I didn’t know that was part of the deputy editor’s job description.”

“It’s part of being a guest in Spencer’s house,” Chase replied. “He didn’t like to leave the party, as he’s the host. I take it you didn’t want to be found.”

Ignoring the implication that she was neglecting her duties as her father’s hostess, Alysia said, “I didn’t need to be found! I would have been coming back in a minute anyway.”

“Well, then—” at last he moved aside so that she could precede him “—I’ll escort you.”

She swept past him, and Chase followed, not speaking again. But she could feel his gaze like a burning laser right between her shoulder blades.

When they reached the pepper tree he stepped forward and lifted the hanging branch. As she passed under it a cool, spice-scented leaf brushed her cheek. Her bare shoulder came in contact with the fabric of Chase’s jacket.

The house, lit from end to end, was before them, but they were still in the shadow of the tree when he caught her arm, drawing her back to face him.

Surprised, Alysia raised her head. “What is it?”

“Just this,” he answered.

His hand slid about her waist, pulling her against him so that her body curved at the hard bar of his arm, and her head fell back in astonishment before his mouth descended on hers.

He ignored her startled movement, one hand going to her nape while his mouth continued to explore hers in a kiss that was surely too expert.

Too surprised at first to resist, she had let her lips remain soft under his, but now she closed them firmly against the seductive coaxing that invited her to reciprocate. She made herself rigid in his embrace, her hands splayed on his upper arms, feeling the tensing of the muscles when he tightened his hold. As his mouth insisted on a response from her, she counted to ten and refused to give in to the growing urge to kiss him back.

His fingers tangled in her hair and his lips compelled hers apart—until Alysia sank her teeth briefly and quite hard into his lower lip. She heard him give a low grunt deep in his throat before he raised his head and she was free.

Her high heels sinking in to the yielding turf beside the path, she nearly overbalanced. Chase grabbed at her wrist, half holding her off and half supporting her, and as she recovered herself she saw that he was silently laughing. He touched a finger gingerly to his lip and said, “Not quite what I expected.”

“What did you expect, then?” she asked, her voice low but shaking with anger and a peculiar sense of excitement. He surely hadn’t thought she’d capitulate?

“What you tried at first,” he said frankly. “The stone statue impersonation. It was quite effective, too. But this—” he touched his lip again “—is…interesting.”

His tone held a kind of speculative respect.

He hadn’t hurt her. But beneath the experienced technique that had forced her to fight her own arousal, the kiss had been an expression of dominance. She’d deliberately taunted him, admittedly inviting retaliation, and he’d chosen a very male way of showing her that he wouldn’t allow her to get away with it.

Inwardly seething but not deigning to reply or even give in to the temptation to slap him, which would no doubt amuse him further, she turned and walked from him toward the house, but when she reached the steps he was right behind her.

Inside it was warm and seemed stuffy. Her father was seeing people off at the front door. As Alysia and Chase approached he said, “There you are! Come and say good-night to Howard and Mollie, Alysia.”

She expected Chase to leave her. Instead he stayed at her side, and when the Franklins had left he said, “I’ll be off, too.”

“It’s early!” Spencer protested. “The young ones are still dancing—why don’t you two go and join them? I think Alysia deserves to enjoy herself now.”

“Alysia?” Chase turned to her, the perfect picture of courtesy.

“Thank you,” she said precisely, “but I have a headache, and the music is a bit loud.”

“Perhaps you’d rather go to bed,” he suggested, his tone all concern, but his eyes held a wicked challenge.

She kept her own face schooled to a polite mask. “I’ll see our guests off first,” she told him. “You said you were going?”

Her father looked at her with surprise, but Chase gave her an appreciative grin and said, “If you’re not going to partner me after all.”

The grin was amazingly attractive. He seemed to have forgotten his flare of temper in the garden and the devastating way he’d expressed it. Now he regarded it as some kind of joke.

Alysia said, letting her eyes show her angry contempt, “I know you’ve enjoyed yourself.”

“Even more than I anticipated,” he assured her. “Thank you for making the evening so—stimulating.”

Her eyelids flickered and she fought the impulse to look at her father to see if he was catching any hint of the undercurrents.

To her relief, Chase turned to him, shaking his hand. “A great party.”

Spencer beamed. “Alysia did a wonderful job.”

“Really, all I did was hire the caterers,” she protested mildly. But pleasure at her father’s rare praise warmed her cheeks and a spot somewhere in her midriff.

Verne Hastie came to say goodbye, and Alysia fixed a hostess smile on her face, turning from his beery breath as he kissed her cheek, his big hands squeezing her bare shoulders.

“We should entertain more often,” Spencer suggested when he’d closed the door on the last of the guests. “The Clarion’s a family paper—the staff needs to feel a part of it.”

“Of the family?” Her father was proud of the Kingsley tradition, of his ancestry and of the Clarion’s long—by New Zealand standards—history, but tonight was the first time she’d heard him claim the paper’s staff as family.

“The younger ones,” he said vaguely, “need to feel they belong. I lost two good people this year. Moving on.”

But he was gaining another in the New Year—Alysia. Who wouldn’t be leaving. She said, “Not many people nowadays stay with a company for life.”

“Pity. No sense of continuity, of loyalty.”

Chase ought to be held for a time by loyalty, by gratitude for the fast series of promotions he’d enjoyed under Spencer’s patronage.

But didn’t Spencer see that the very ambition he had admired and fostered in the younger man must inevitably lead to his desertion?

Alysia said, “Chase Osborne can’t rise any higher at the Clarion, can he?” The Kingsleys always retained the top positions. It was one of the few truly family newspapers left.

Her father’s gaze was penetrating while at the same time she had the impression his mind wasn’t fully on their conversation. “I didn’t train up a man like Chase to lose him to some big city corporation. He knows I’ll see him right.”

Had Chase already been looking elsewhere? Alysia wondered later as she prepared for bed. Was that what was behind the promotion, the creation of a prestigious new position for him?

But in a year or two would that be enough to hold him, in a job where he could go no further?

She turned on her pillow and told herself it didn’t matter if he left for better prospects, except that her father would be disappointed. And probably furious.

Chase Osborne was an opportunist by nature. Witness the way he’d climbed the ladder of success from lowly agricultural reporter to his present position, while older and more experienced staff remained stuck in the newsroom.

He was her father’s blue-eyed boy—except that his eyes were actually an uncomfortably knowing hazel-green—and she gathered that his meteoric rise had created some antipathy among other employees. Chase apparently cared for the criticism no more than Spencer did. Those who were jealous or aggrieved either accepted the changes or left.

As she began to drift into sleep she found herself reliving the kiss under the pepper tree, vividly recalling every detail.

With an effort she opened her eyes, and restlessly turned on the pillow.

Chase Osborne believed in making the most of his chances. In the darkened garden he’d acted true to type—stung by her less than enthusiastic reaction to him and his promotion, and perhaps aided by a certain amount of alcohol which might have blunted some natural inhibition about kissing the boss’s daughter. He’d wanted to make her succumb, to assert the most primitive kind of male power because she’d shown him how little the other kind impressed her.

Maybe he was regretting it now. If she’d complained to her father he might have found himself less in favor. That would have been a setback to his flagrant ambition.

Contemplating the thought briefly, she quickly discarded it. Spencer would tell her she was making a mountain out of a molehill—if he believed her at all. Bitter memory rose to haunt her, and she determinedly pushed it away.

Put the kiss down to an excess of Christmas spirit and forget it.

Surprisingly difficult. She lay wakeful for ages, plagued by images of a dark head bowed over her, a glint of laughter in moonlit eyes, a warm masculine mouth confidently moving on hers, hard arms holding her firmly but not cruelly.

And she woke in the morning with the scent of the pepper tree still in her dream memory.