Mistress Of The Groom

Treasuring this glimpse into the complexity and contradictions of the man she loved and yet found so difficult to understand, Jane met the perceptive hazel gaze in the mirror.

‘If you’re asking did I think they were unsuited,’ she said carefully, ‘then, yes, I thought they were deeply unsuited.’ And her tone suggested that was as much as she was prepared to say.

Peggy nodded. ‘Tell me, just out of interest, what would you have done, Jane, in those circumstances? If some other woman had tried to stop you from marrying Ryan at the brink of the altar...?’

Jane swung around, blood in her eye, and Peggy rose with a quietly satisfied smile.

‘Quite. Pistols at dawn rather than lady-like hysterics. Well, goodnight, my dear. Sleep well. And I suggest you lock your door if you consider you’ve already said a sufficiently polite goodnight to my son!’

Jane blushed...but did as Peggy suggested. She was deeply grateful for this unexpected gift of Peggy’s moral support—whatever her motives might be—for without it she knew she could easily become a victim of her own desires. Drained by the upheavals of the day, she fell into bed and slept like a log, blissfully unaware of Ryan’s soft tapping on the door an hour later.

The next morning followed the pattern set the previous afternoon, with Ryan’s suggestion of a drive over to Karekare and a walk amongst the towering black sand-dunes overridden because Peggy wanted to look at the fashion sketches that Jane had mentioned at dinner.

She was encouragingly enthusiastic, and when she learned that Jane had been a keen sewer at school and was eager to take it up again she offered to give her a refresher course when her hands had healed enough to handle scissors and pins. Whisked up to the sewing room off Peggy’s bedroom, Jane admired the state-of-the-art electronic overlocker and sewing machine, and shyly confided her dream of one day making a living out of sewing her own designs for sale at the markets, or in one of Auckland’s many individualist boutiques.

Melissa mooched in on them and found herself reluctantly drawn into a discussion about the designers she liked. Shut out by a conspiracy of female opinion, Ryan gave up and retreated to the downstairs library that he used as an office.

At lunch he was surly and made no enquiry as to what Jane intended to do afterwards, an attitude that was explained by the arrival of Carl Trevor carrying a bulging briefcase. The women went down to the beach, and when they came back to find Carl’s meeting with Ryan dragging on into the evening Peggy invited him to stay the night in comfortable tones of long familiarity. He accepted with an alacrity that was regarded sourly by his chief, especially when he produced an overnight bag from the boot of his BMW.

Recalling their two previous encounters, Jane was highly embarrassed to be seated next to Carl at dinner, but he smoothly exerted himself to put her at ease and she was soon laughing at his sardonic wit, relaxed enough to tease him about his jaded view of the world and joke about her newly acquired homesteading skills.

Peggy’s maternal authority held sway, and Ryan and Melissa were briskly dispatched to do the dishes while Carl stretched and complained about the kinks in his back from an overly enthusiastic session at the gym that morning.

‘Why don’t you hop in the spa pool?’ said Peggy, indicating the tiled round pool sunk into the lower level of the terrace on which they sat. ‘A hot soak is probably what you need to loosen you up.’

‘Good idea—Jane?’

She was frankly envious. ‘Oh, I couldn’t—my hands... Besides, I haven’t got a bathing suit,’ she said wistfully.

‘I have plenty of spares for guests...there’s bound to be one your size. And you can fold your arms on the edge to keep your hands out of the water. Carl will be there to catch you if you slip. Go on, Jane,’ urged Peggy. ‘It’s a wonderfully relaxing way to watch the sun go down.’

And so it was—until Ryan reappeared to find his personal adviser advising a giggling Jane on how to keep her straw in her glass of wine as she was buffeted by the bubbling water jets.

‘Come to join us, Ryan?’ grinned Carl, floating on his back in the water, his lithe physique outlined by the underwater lights.

Ryan’s eyes glinted over Jane’s body, encased in what she had thought was a very modestly cut black swimsuit. Her hair was twisted into a knot on the top of her head but steamy tendrils were escaping to corkscrew aroun

d her glistening face. She was flushed from the heat, her dark lashes spiky with moisture and her perpetually serious expression softened by the damp feathering of her thick eyebrows and the laughter lingering around her mouth.

Standing at the edge of the pool, the tip of his shoes almost touching the towel on which her hands rested, Ryan seemed impossibly tall, and as Jane tilted her head back to look up into his face she inadvertently gave him a swooping view straight down into the scooped neck of her swimsuit, where her creamy breasts, buoyed by the water, jostled for room against the tautly straining fabric.

‘I want to talk to you.’

He had the gift of making a simple statement sound ominously like a threat, but Jane felt safe with Carl at her back. He, at least, didn’t tangle her up in emotional knots and make her think sinful thoughts.

‘So...talk,’ she said with an airy shrug of her pale, gleaming shoulders that made her breasts bob gently on the surface of the water as Carl swam up beside her to take a sip from his glass of wine.

A muscle jumped in Ryan’s jaw. ‘Not here. Inside. Now.’

‘But I’m not ready to come out,’ she pouted, encouraged by his clipped restraint. He obviously wasn’t going to risk a scene in front of his PA. ‘Carl and I are working out our kinks, aren’t we, Carl? Your mother recommended it. You should try it, Ryan, you strike me as a man with an awful lot of kinks—’

‘Uh-oh...’

She barely had a chance to register Carl’s breathy sing-song of amused warning as Ryan bent down, grasped her under the armpits and hauled her startled body out of the water with barely a grunt of effort.

‘Is this kinky enough for you?’

Suspended from his grip, Jane flapped like a landed fish. ‘Ryan!’