Reckless Engagement

“You’ve…been sitting with me. They tell me you were very…faithful.”

“I had the time,” Katrien said, not knowing how to deal with this. She looked away, clasped and unclasped her hands, and finally said, “I wanted to help.”

“I’m…grateful.” Zachary paused, took a couple of labored breaths. “Only a bit…confused.”

“Yes, I—” Where did she start explaining?

“Must be the…hypothermia.” He drew a struggling breath. “Along with…everything else…seem to be suffering…a bit of amnesia. I love you, Katrien…but…when did we get engaged?”

DAPHNE CLAIR lives in subtropical New Zealand, with her Dutch-born husband. They have five children. At eight years old she embarked on her first novel, about taming a tiger. This epic never reached a publisher, but metamorphosed male tigers still prowl the pages of her romances. She has won literary prizes for short stories and nonfiction, and has also published poetry. As Laurey Bright she writes for Silhouette.

Reckless Engagement

Daphne Clair

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

THE man of her dreams.

She knew him. Knew him in the abrupt tightness of her breath, and in the hot quicksilver that had suddenly replaced her bones, so that her body seemed held together by nothing but the startling tension that suffused it.

Across the big high-ceilinged room, filled with people holding glasses of wine and restlessly chattering, the man’s head lifted as though he’d felt the concentration of her stare, and his eyes met hers.

A dark brow lifted in amused enquiry, and a hint of masculine speculation entered fathomless sea-green eyes. The hard lines of his mouth took on a subtle curve.

‘Katie?’ Callum touched Katrien’s arm, and she flinched. ‘Katie?’

Her eyes ached. She blinked, moistening them. ‘Sorry. I was thinking.’ Her fiancé’s familiar features and perfectly groomed sandy hair, and the kind blue eyes peering worriedly into her clear silver-grey ones, seemed faraway, in another dimension.

The stranger’s hair, almost as black as his decisive brows, was carelessly cut, showing a tendency to curl onto the collar of his dinner suit. He stood with a hand thrust into a trouser pocket, his stance one of casual ease, and yet he didn’t seem to belong in this elegant gathering. Perhaps it was because he was so big—broad in the shoulders and tall.

‘I’ll get you a drink,’ Callum offered, steering Katrien further into the crowd. He beckoned a passing waiter and took two glasses from the silver tray the man proffered. ‘Here, you look as though you need it.’ As her hand closed about the glass, Callum worried, ‘You haven’t really got over that flu, have you? You’ve lost weight.’ He touched a strand of the thick, russet-lit hair that lay on her bared shoulders, and smoothed it back from her cheek.

Katrien made her lips move into a smile. ‘I’m fine, really.’ She took a sip of the wine, cool and dry to her tongue. And smiled again. ‘Models are supposed to be thin.’

Callum smiled back, making an intimacy of it. ‘I don’t want you too thin.’ He raised his glass at her before drinking from it. ‘To us…our future.’

An inexplicable panic fluttered about her heart. Then a couple they knew swooped on them, and while the man clapped Callum on the shoulder the woman demanded to see her ring.

Katrien obligingly held out her left hand, regarding the large diamond flanked by two smaller ones with disturbing detachment, almost as though she hadn’t been there when Callum had plucked it from the jeweller’s tray and smoothed it onto her finger, declaring with satisfaction that it fitted so perfectly it might have been made for her.

She tried to recapture the glow of warmth that she’d felt then, scarcely two weeks ago. Tried to fix her mind on the conversation of her companions. But all the time she was fighting an urge to look for the man who had evoked that powerful sense of recognition when she’d first entered.

Some inward antenna seemed to tell her when he moved, coming closer. A shiver passed over her skin, and she couldn’t stop herself from turning her head, hunting him down. He wasn’t looking in her direction, but at the touch of her gaze she saw his shoulders tauten, his head begin to swivel, and she forced herself to look away, fixing Callum with such an attentive look that he faltered in what he was saying and looked at her enquiringly.

Katrien gave him an encouraging smile, and drank some more of her wine. She hadn’t the faintest idea what the topic of conversation was.

The man moved away, and now the crowd was drifting towards the tables in an adjoining room.

Callum took her emptied glass and deposited it with another waiter. She felt as though she was walking on a layer of fog between the high heels of her shoes and the floor. Maybe she had downed the wine too quickly on an empty stomach. Just as well they were to have dinner.

It was a charity affair in aid of the widow and children of a mountaineer who had died on a New Zealand expedition to the Himalayas some months ago, the after-dinner speech to be given by a friend who had survived the journey—Zachary Ballantine. There had been photographs of him in all the national papers at the time of the tragedy—grainy snapshots of a gaunt and bearded man with haunted dark eyes shadowed by snow-frosted brows under the fur-edged hood of his parka.

Every TV station and newspaper in New Zealand must have wanted his story, but he had shunned the news media, refusing to give interviews. Yet someone had persuaded him to speak tonight.

The man she found so unsettling was seated at a table near the shallow dais on which a microphone stood ready. Katrien looked at him once and then dragged her gaze away. She hardly tasted the food that was put before her, mechanically emptying the plates until she found herself staring at a mound of chocolate cake and cream, and her stomach revolted. She pushed away the dish and grabbed her wine glass. It was empty—again. She’d already drunk far more than usual, but when Callum refilled the glass she gave him a distracted smile and raised the glass to her lips.

His arm came around her, a hand squeezing her shoulder. ‘Are you okay?’ he whispered, glancing at her untouched dessert.

‘Of course. You know I don’t usually eat sweets, and anyway I’m full.’

He smiled and nuzzled her temple with his cheek. ‘It’ll do you good.’ He drew back slightly and his gaze lingered on her bare shoulders and the low neckline of her dress. ‘You can do with a bit more weight. Not that you aren’t gorgeous.’ His fingers tightened. ‘I can’t wait to get you alone.’ Turning aside briefly, he took a spoon and scooped up some of the untouched dessert, presenting it to her with a teasing grin. ‘Open up.’

Katrien laughed and shook her head, but he insisted, and she parted her lips and let him slide the spoonful between them. It tasted sickly, and when he repeated the gesture she put a staying hand on his wrist, smiling so that he wouldn’t think she was angry. ‘No, really. I can’t eat any more.’

Callum was smiling too. ‘You have a bit of cream…’ He ducked his head and licked it from the corner of her mouth.

Someone across the table laughed, and Katrien drew back, turning away.

Her gaze collided with a stormy, deep green one across the room.

She felt heat along her cheekbones as the man’s brooding expression changed to amusement tinged with satire. A faint anger stirred inside her, along with an odd recurrence of fear.

Callum said, ‘I was only teasing—’

‘I know.’ She turned back to him. ‘It’s okay.’ Callum was sensitive to her moods. It was one reason why she loved him.

Coffee was served and the chairwoman of the committee got up to introduce the guest speaker with a long spiel about his adventurous career climbing mountains, working in the Antarctic, helping to build a hospital in Nepal, and exploring the world’s highest, wildest regions. She stepped down and led a round of introductory applause for Zachary Ballantine.

The lights dimmed except for the spotlight illuminating the dais. And with a curious lack of surprise Katrien watched the man who got up to walk forward with an unhurried, confident stride to take his place behind the microphone. Without the beard she hadn’t recognised him earlier.

He looked around the room, and she thought his seacoloured eyes flickered as they met hers; then he glanced at a card in his hand and began to speak.

Katrien stared at the cup of coffee before her, watched the steam rising from it, and picked up a spoon, then quietly replaced it in the saucer. She took her coffee black, no sugar.

He had a resonant voice like dark, slightly gritty honey. At the first syllable Katrien felt a profound sense of recognition, a reverberating bell note deep in her soul.

For a long time she just listened to the sound, not the words, fixing her gaze on the white tablecloth before her. But in the end her eyes lifted and found him where he stood on the raised dais, commanding the room. And as if he knew, his head tilted and he paused, his gaze momentarily homing in on her. He looked away and consulted the card in his hand again before shoving it into his pocket and continuing his speech.

She tried to curb the hurried rhythm of her heart, telling herself he could scarcely see anyone in the partially lit room.

Beside her Callum stirred, his fingers still resting lightly on her bare shoulder, and she fought an extraordinary urge to shrug away from his touch.

‘There’s no feeling quite like being literally on top of the world,’ Zachary Ballantine was saying. ‘Standing on the summit of Everest, looking down across those mountains, a view that goes on for ever—it puts all the pain, the effort, the danger into perspective. You know then that whatever you went through to get there, it was all worth it. Every climber wants to do Everest. Ben and I did it for the first time together—five years ago. It was something neither of us would ever forget.’

He paused again, staring at the floor as if searching it for inspiration. Someone clinked a coffee cup into its saucer. Someone else shuffled a chair.

Zachary Ballantine looked up slowly. ‘After that, all you can do is search for harder climbs, untried routes, more challenges, mountains that are still unconquered.’

‘Why?’ Callum muttered humorously in Katrien’s ear.

Katrien shook her head slightly. She didn’t understand either, but suddenly, passionately, she wanted to. She was concentrating now, intently, afraid to miss a word.

‘There’s always another mountain.’ The man in the circle of light placed a hand on the gleaming chrome of the microphone stand and gripped it. ‘Always another challenge, another risk, another Circe luring men to lay down their lives for her…’

His voice had lowered and he was staring at his hand clasped about the cold metal rod before him. This time when he stopped speaking no whisper of sound touched the silence.

Katrien was sure that for a second or two he had forgotten his audience and departed from his prepared script. He released his hold and thrust his hand into his pocket.

‘Men,’ he said slowly, his gaze seemingly fixed on some distant point outside the room, ‘and women, make mistakes. And the mountains are unforgiving. Last year they took the closest friend I’ve ever had—or ever will have. Ben Storey was the best.’ His head turned slightly and his eyes shifted and refocused to meet Katrien’s. She felt her own head lift infinitesimally, her gaze caught by the naked pain in his. ‘The best friend, the best mountain man, the greatest person I’ve ever known. I miss him.’

He stepped back then one pace, out of the brightness of the light. His pain crashed around her, and she closed her eyes against it, her body trembling, her throat aching with the effort not to cry.

When she opened her eyes he was gone, taking his seat again amidst a wave of applause. Callum had removed his clasp from her shoulder to join in the clapping, and she wrenched apart the hands locked damply in her lap and did the same.

A woman across the table picked up her napkin and wiped away a tear.

I’m not the only one, Katrien told herself. He probably had the same effect on every woman in the room.

The purpose of the evening was to raise funds for the dead mountaineer’s family. Zachary Ballantine’s speech had been calculated to arouse sympathy. And no doubt he had been genuinely fond of his friend. It was very sad but she knew neither of them, and when the news had first broken of the disastrous expedition her chief emotions had been pity for the woman who had lost her husband and the father of her two children, and a sort of distant anger with the man who had deliberately put his life in danger despite their dependence on him.

She had never understood what drove anyone to take insane risks in order to experience some adrenalin high that apparently came with the knowledge that death was breathing down one’s neck. It seemed to her a bizarre, aberrant way of living.

Watching Zachary Ballantine rise to shake hands with a pretty young woman who had rushed to his table and now gazed at him with something approaching adoration, Katrien was unexpectedly angry all over again. How could they—men like him, with grace and attraction and the glamour that clung to them as known adventurers—make women love them, and then carelessly throw away their lives in pursuit of some Boys’ Own dream? It was unfair, and downright cruel.

The young woman smiled and touched his arm, her white, ringless hand resting on the sleeve of his jacket, her lovely face earnest as she spoke to him, no doubt artlessly telling of her admiration, leaving herself open to being hurt by him.

‘You fool.’ Katrien’s lips shaped the words.

‘What?’ Callum leaned closer.

She shook her head. ‘Nothing. Can we go now?’ She didn’t think she could bear watching this any longer. Her emotions seemed to have turned into some ill-tempered steed, bucking and swerving all over the place. Maybe Callum was right; she hadn’t fully recovered from the bout of flu that had recently attacked her.

‘You don’t want to speak to the guest of honour first?’ Callum enquired.

There was a bevy of people around him now. The girl was standing on the outskirts, looking slightly crestfallen. ‘No,’ Katrien said. ‘He has plenty of admirers. And I’m…tired.’

Callum gave a surprised grin at the unintended waspishness in her tone. He stood up to pull out her chair. ‘Come on, then. I’ll get us a cab.’ He never drove his car if he was going to be drinking. Callum’s strict sense of responsibility was another of the things she liked about him. He would never worry her by going off on some wild, hazardous adventure.

He left her standing in the carpeted foyer, a light woollen wrap draped about her shoulders, while he ventured into the street to find a taxi.

She shouldn’t have drunk so much. Her head felt weightless and a bit swimmy. Shifting from foot to foot, she looked around for a chair. The only two—gilt affairs flanking a tiny marble-topped table—were occupied by a couple having a low-voiced but apparently passionate conversation.

Closing her eyes, she leaned back against the embossed paper on the wall.

‘Are you all right?’

Recognising the deep voice, Katrien straightened with a jerk, her eyes flying wide. Black spots danced before her vision and her forehead went cold and damp.

Hard hands clamped on her arms, steadying her. She ducked her head and closed her eyes again, willing away the brief dizziness before slowly and carefully looking up.

So near, Zachary Ballantine’s sea-green eyes were uncomfortably penetrating. She could see the lift of his cheekbones beneath faintly tanned skin, and a tiny white scar at the corner of his upper lip; smell soap, and wool suiting and a hint of something that brought to mind pine trees and wooded, snowy slopes. Aftershave?

She said, ‘Yes, I’m all right. Thank you.’

He still held her arms. ‘You’re very pale.’

‘I’ve had the flu.’ His grasp was less tight now, his thumbs making absent stroking movements against her skin. Katrien’s breath clutched at her throat, and she swallowed. ‘You’re not leaving?’ she asked him. There must still be dozens of people wanting to speak to him.

‘I was on my way to the men’s room,’ he said, ‘when I saw you alone and palely loitering…’ He smiled. ‘I thought you were about to faint.’

No man should have a smile like that. It was positively lethal, glinting in his eyes and tilting the masculine planes of his mouth into a seductive curve framing a glimpse of white, even teeth.

She felt the involuntary tightening of her facial muscles, the widening of her eyes. And knew he’d read the startling, inappropriate quickening of sexual awareness when his own eyes darkened and the smile died from his mouth. She saw the slight flare of his nostrils as he took a deeper breath, and long dark lashes momentarily veiled his eyes as he dropped his gaze a few inches to her parted lips.

Katrien felt dizzy again, and perhaps he noticed, because his hold on her arms became more urgent, almost painful.

Her body curved towards him, her spine arching subtly, her head tipping back—movements that were small but unmistakable. Her eyelids fluttered, and she watched his mouth part as he leaned towards her.

Then Callum’s voice said, ‘Okay, Katie—got one.’ And, more sharply, ‘What’s going on?’

Katrien jumped, automatically raising her hands to push ineffectually at Zachary Ballantine’s chest as her body stiffened.

His hands slid from her arms without haste and he turned. ‘Who are you?’ he demanded of the man who had been at Katrien’s side all evening and was now striding towards them.

Callum blinked, looking both outraged and uncertain.

Katrien laid a hand on his arm as she stepped to his side. ‘This is Callum Steward,’ she said. ‘My fiancé. Mr Ballantine thought I was going to faint, Callum,’ she explained. ‘He was kind enough to stop and…offer his help.’

Her cheeks burned. She knew that her fiancé’s searching glance would see no sign of paleness now.

Callum’s arm slipped about her waist. ‘You felt faint?’

‘Just a bit. I’m all right now.’ She risked a fleeting glance at Zachary Ballantine, and saw that he appeared cynically amused.

Addressing Callum, he said, ‘I wouldn’t leave her alone if I were you.’ As she looked up again his eyes shifted, giving her a cool, assessing stare. ‘She seems likely to fall into the arms of any passing stranger.’

Katrien sucked in a choking breath. ‘Not at all. It was a momentary dizziness. I’m sure it would have passed.’

‘Apparently,’ Zachary Ballantine observed, ‘it has.’

‘Still,’ Callum said with a shade too much heartiness, ‘I’m grateful you were there to catch her, Mr Ballantine. We enjoyed your talk, by the way.’ He held out his hand, and after a moment the big man took it in his.

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank you for looking after my fiancée. Now if you’ll excuse us, I’ve got a cab outside. Come on, darling…’

As they walked away and Callum pushed open the door, ushering her into the wintry air outside, Katrien knew that the other man was watching them. She resisted turning to look back at him.

Zachary Ballantine was the stuff dreams were made of. Every woman’s fantasy. His friend who had died on the mountain had been another one. She recalled a picture of Ben Storey published in the aftermath of his death—a young god smiling against the backdrop of a snow-covered mountain, the sun glinting on his golden hair, the hood of his parka pushed back and a pair of goggles slung about his neck.

On the same page had been a picture of his widow, looking with tearless bravery straight into the camera as she cradled the youngest of her children in her arms while the other leaned against her knee.

Katrien even remembered the caption: ‘Mountaineer “died doing what he wanted”.’ The quote had been from Wendy Storey, the woman who had supported his insane aspirations and borne his children. Like everyone else she had praised his courage. Katrien had admired hers more.

‘Thank heaven,’ she said to Callum as he got into the cab beside her and took her hand in his, ‘you have no desire to conquer mountains.’

‘How do you know?’ he asked her lightly.

Katrien directed him a look of undiluted horror.

Callum laughed, pulling her into his arms. ‘I have other desires,’ he growled in her ear.

She let him kiss her, and kissed him back, trying to banish from behind her closed lids the vivid memory of aroused male curiosity in a pair of deep green eyes.

When the taxi driver let them out at the door of her flat in the inner suburb of Herne Bay, her hair had lost its sleek styling and Callum was breathing less than evenly. He fumbled as he dug in his wallet for money to pay the driver before following Katrien inside.

She made coffee and they sat side by side on the comfortable softness of the two-seater sofa in her sitting room while they drank it, but when he took her in his arms again she laid her head on his shoulder and said, ‘I’m really tired, Callum.’

He stroked her hair. ‘I’m a selfish brute.’

‘No, you’re not. You’re the nicest man I’ve ever known. But I guess you’re right…I haven’t quite got over the flu bug. I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t worry about it.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘I’ll wait until you’re properly well again.’

He was the nicest man she knew. So why was she suddenly finding it impossible to look at him? Why did she feel that if he didn’t leave soon she’d scream?

She kissed him on the lips, not giving him a chance to reciprocate before she pulled away and turned to rise from the sofa and pick up their cups. ‘Maybe next time…’ she muttered vaguely.

Almost any other man would have swept her into bed the minute he’d got a ring on her finger, if not before. Callum had too much finesse for that. He’d been prepared to wait for the right moment. And when the right moment was delayed by her inconveniently succumbing to the nasty ailment that seemed to have afflicted half the population this winter, he’d sent her flowers and phoned every day, even called in person with offers of nursing and food.

She’d wanted only to be left alone to subsist on packet soups and orange juice, and not to have him see her looking and feeling like a sodden and aching dishrag.

His offers spurned, Callum had phoned her sister, and Miranda had come round regularly with chicken soup and aspirin and bracing sympathy, sometimes bringing the youngest of her three children, with strict instructions to stay out of the sickroom and not disturb Aunty Kat.

Callum phoned for another cab while Katrien took the cups into the kitchen. She fussed around washing and drying them and putting away the sugar bowl she’d taken out for Callum’s coffee, making sure that no grains had spilled on the bench to attract Auckland’s voracious ants. Of course there were none. If there had been Callum would have wiped them up himself.

She was hanging up the tea towel when he came to the kitchen doorway. ‘I’ll be off, then,’ he said. ‘The cab will be here in a few minutes.’

She walked with him to the door, and he kissed her gently and lingeringly, his thumbs stroking her cheeks as he lifted his head and smiled down at her.

She recalled Zachary Ballantine caressing her arms. His skin had been less smooth than Callum’s, the pads of his thumbs faintly rasping.