Fallen Angel. Anne Mather
mostly about breeding the horses and cattle which were his real love. It was almost as if he had spent his whole life searching for that one reality, and once he found it, he held it fast. And then, six weeks ago, he got the letter …
The ringing of the telephone interrupted his train of thought, and moving lithely across the room, he lifted the receiver.
‘Tarrant,’ he supplied tersely, and then relaxed when the hotel operator said: ‘There’s a young lady here to see you, Mr Tarrant. She says you’re expecting——’
‘That’s right,’ Jason interrupted the flow. ‘You can send her right up.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘Oh——’ Jason chewed on his lower lip for a moment, ‘I’m—er—I’m also expecting someone else. A boy. When he arrives, let me know at once, will you?’
‘Yes, Mr Tarrant.’
Jason replaced the receiver on its rest thoughtfully, flexing his shoulder muscles as he contemplated the interview ahead. This wasn’t quite his line—interviewing a prospective tutor for the boy, particularly a female one, but there seemed few male tutors willing to abandon the bright lights of London for a remote ranch house in the Sierra Grande. He hoped the woman wasn’t too young, although these days appearances could be deceptive, and Estelita wouldn’t approve of him taking any female under the age of thirty-five into his home.
As he waited he crossed the room again, catching a glimpse of himself in the long Chinese mirrors that flanked the marble fireplace, an anachronism now in the centrally heated hotel. A wry smile crossed his lips at the image of the dark-suited businessman they reflected, his lean frame encased in the mohair jacket, pants and waistcoat which the tailor in Valvedra had assured him was the latest fashion. Certainly his attire gave the illusion of a man accustomed to city ways, but Jason couldn’t wait to don the mud-coloured shirts and Levis which were his usual garb back home. Instead of fine suede, he would wear leather gaucho boots, and his dark hair, so smoothly combed, would be rough beneath the wide brim of his slouch hat. His lips twisted as he wondered what Charles Durham would think if he could see him now. The older man would no doubt have been proud of his success, and he regretted the carelessness which had lengthened the distance between them all these years. Still, it was too late now to feel remorse. Instead, he would do everything in his power to give the boy the home he himself had lacked.
He surveyed the luxurious hotel suite with critical eyes. Was this the most suitable place to conduct an interview of this kind? he wondered. Ought he to have had another woman present? But who? He knew few people in London. The hotel receptionist perhaps. She had certainly shown sufficient interest in him when he arrived, but without false modesty he admitted that the kind of interest she had shown was hardly appropriate to the occasion. No, this was something he was going to have to do alone, and trust his own judgment in assessing the woman’s capabilities.
He paced a trifle restlessly across to the fireplace. The two men he had interviewed for the post had both laboured under the misapprehension that because he was a wealthy man he must needs live in Puerto Novo or Valvedra. When they learned that his estancia was over a hundred miles from the coast, they quickly lost interest in working in such remote surroundings. So why should a woman feel any differently? His eyes narrowed. Unless she was some dried-up old spinster, who saw this post as a golden opportunity to ingratiate herself with the master of the household. He grimaced. He was cynical, he admitted it. But years of hard living and fending for himself had taught him never to trust anyone’s motives at face value. Only Charles Durham had ever helped him, and now he was dead Jason was determined to do what he could for his son—but not at the cost of his own freedom. He had had one taste of so-called connubial bliss, and like the use of methadone in drug addiction, it had cured him of the craving. He liked women, he couldn’t deny it. He was like any normal healthy male in that respect. But marriage no longer figured in his plans—a circumstance that fired Estelita’s hot Latin blood.
A knock at the outer door of the suite brought him upright with a certain tightening of his flat stomach muscles. Stretching the long brown fingers at his sides, he strode purposefully across the room and swung open the door. Then he stood back aghast as a smiling girl of perhaps sixteen years of age stepped forward and, reaching up, bestowed a kiss on each of his taut brown cheeks. A little above medium height and slender, she was only slightly boyish in her fringed suede pants suit, the long curtains of silvery fair hair which fell from a centre parting easily decrying such a supposition. Silky gold-tipped lashes framed wide eyes of a smoky shade of violet, while the smiling mouth was full and generous.
‘Jason!’ she said, and her voice was low and husky. ‘Yes, it has to be. You’re exactly as Daddy described you.’
‘Daddy!’
Jason was feeling distinctly confused now, particularly when the girl passed him to enter the suite uninvited, looking about her with evident fascination.
‘Look—who are you?’ he exclaimed, but even as he asked the question he knew, and a sinking feeling invaded the lower regions of his abdomen. ‘You … can’t be …’
‘Alex Durham, yes.’ The girl turned, unconsciously graceful in all her movements. ‘Weren’t you expecting me?’
Jason’s mouth opened and closed on an ominously thin scowl. ‘Alex Durham?’ he repeated tersely, and her smile gave way to a grimace of uncertainty.
‘Alexandra, actually,’ she admitted. Then, adopting a defiant stance, she added: ‘Everyone calls me Alex.’
‘Do they?’ Realising the door was still standing open, Jason closed it, albeit reluctantly, with a definite click. ‘But you knew I thought you were a boy, didn’t you?’
‘Did you?’ She lifted her shoulders in an offhand gesture. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would make that much difference.’
Jason moved away from the door, annoyed to find that it was he who was disconcerted here. The correspondence he had had with Durham’s solicitors had not been explicit. Obviously, in the circumstances, they had assumed that he would know the age and sex of the child. Child? His lips tightened. Even after so short an acquaintance, Jason could see that Alexandra Durham was not a child. How old was she? Charles had never mentioned a wife in all the time he had known him, and consequently Jason had assumed he had married after returning to England. That would make the boy—girl!—twelve at most, whereas this girl was obviously fifteen or sixteen at least. A shorter guardianship than he had expected perhaps, but what a complication!
‘Do you live here?’ the girl was asking now, and Jason forced himself to concentrate on what she was saying.
‘No, of course not,’ he retorted, rather snappishly. ‘You know my home is in Santa Vittoria.’
‘I meant while you were in England,’ she explained politely, her reasonableness irritating Jason even more. ‘I’ve never stayed in an hotel. The nuns didn’t approve of that sort of thing. Some of the girls used to spend holidays with their parents, you know, at places like St Moritz and Chamonix in the winter, or Nice or St Tropez or Cap d’Antibes in the summer, but I’ve never been to those places. Daddy was always on some dig or other——’
‘Just a minute.’ Jason halted this monologue with a curt intervention. ‘Don’t you think you ought to explain why you chose to leave me in ignorance of the fact that you’re female, and what the hell you expect me to do about it as you are?’
She frowned then, a furrow appearing on the smooth brow. ‘What I expect you to do about it?’ she repeated softly. ‘What do you mean? You’re my guardian, aren’t you? Whatever sex I happen to be.’
Jason expelled his breath on a heavy sigh. ‘I can’t believe you’re that naïve, Miss Durham. You know as well as I do that I expected a boy!’
‘So you keep telling me, but I don’t see what I can do about that,’ she retorted, half laughingly, and her amusement was the last straw as far as Jason was concerned.
‘Then I’ll