Tiger, Tiger. Robyn DonaldЧитать онлайн книгу.

      CHAPTER TWO

      SEPARATED from the harbour by a busy road and docks, the apartment block was only a kilometre along the waterfront from the Viaduct Basin, where the South Seas was. Invigorated by the salty air, Lecia set off.

      In summer the central city and waterfront was mostly given over to tourists, bright and noisy as a flock of transient birds. Exchanging smiles with several, Lecia passed the refurbished ferry building, still serving its original function between the trendy shops and restaurants that had infiltrated its old galleries. She told herself stoutly that she was looking forward to seeing whether the South Seas was as good as its reputation.

      And that was all.

      Outside the restaurant, under canopies like sails, people sat talking and eyeing the passers-by, but Keane Paget was waiting in the bar, reading something that looked like business papers.

      As Lecia walked through the door he looked up, and in his face she caught a glimpse of the complicated shock she felt whenever she saw him. It vanished as he got to his feet.

      Made absurdly self-conscious by his hooded scrutiny, she tried to ignore the swift glances and subdued speculation that followed her across the room. At least they won’t assume we’re lovers! she thought with mordant amusement, holding her head high.

      ‘With your hair up like that,’ Keane said, seating her before resuming his chair, ‘the resemblance is even more marked.’

      She met his eyes frankly. ‘It’s uncanny,’ she said. ‘Like meeting a doppelgänger.’

      ‘I know. All the old fairy tales come ominously to life. What do you normally drink?’

      ‘Lime and soda, thank you.’

      One dark brow—exactly the same shape as hers—lifted. ‘Nothing alcoholic?’

      ‘No. If I drink in the middle of the day I spend the afternoon fighting off sleep.’

      He looked across the room. A waiter hurried up and Keane ordered her soda and a light ale for himself. ‘It slows me down too,’ he said, with a smile that was oddly unsettling.

      Lecia’s stomach flipped. Keep cool! she commanded. Stop overreacting. So what if alcohol in the middle of the day turns us both into zombies? That happens to plenty of people—it doesn’t signify some sort of cosmic link!

      After the waiter left Keane looked at her and said, ‘Would you have rung me?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Why not?’

      Made aware by his coolly measuring glance that she wasn’t going to get away with an evasion, she said slowly, ‘I thought it might be wiser if I didn’t.’

      ‘Why?’

      She stopped herself from shrugging. Instead, she looked a little blindly around the room. Several people hastily averted their fascinated gazes.

      ‘No logical reason,’ she said at last. ‘As you said, there’s something vaguely ominous about meeting someone with your face.’

      ‘I did wonder whether we were actually half-brother and sister,’ he said, tackling the subject head-on, ‘but we both resemble our fathers so that isn’t an issue.’

      ‘How do you know that?’

      He gave her a direct, unsmiling look. ‘I had you investigated, of course,’ he said, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do.

      Lecia stiffened. ‘I see,’ she said grittily. ‘That explains the past week of silence.’ And immediately wished she’d bitten her unruly tongue.

      ‘Yes,’ he said, watching her with amused, not unsympathetic eyes.

      Fortunately the drinks arrived, giving Lecia time to compose herself. The nerve of him! Unable to swallow, she only touched her lips to the cold, moist glass before putting it down.

      ‘I presume,’ she said rigidly, ‘that your investigations went back as far as my childhood.’

      ‘I know that you’re Lecia Spring, born twenty-nine years ago in Australia to an Australian father and New Zealand mother. A year after your parents’ marriage in Melbourne your father had a severe fall and never recovered; he died before you were born.’

      ‘Your investigator is good,’ she said through her teeth.

      ‘The best. Monica, your mother, moved to New Zealand to be close to her parents, remarried when you were four, and now lives in Gisborne with her second husband, the owner of a very successful food processing business. You’re a clever, well-respected architect, with a lucrative practice that you keep small by working alone from your home. Why, incidentally?’

      ‘Because I like to be my own boss,’ she snapped, repelled by his dispassionate recital of the facts of her life.

      ‘So,’ he said, watching her from half-closed eyes, ‘do I. But you could expand, set up your own firm, employ other architects, and still be the boss.’

      ‘I’m not ready for that yet. I need more experience.’ It was her standard reason, and before it had always seemed perfectly adequate. It didn’t now.

      However, he didn’t pursue the subject. Scrutinising her with leisurely, infuriating thoroughness, he continued, ‘When you were twenty-two you became engaged to another architecture student, but broke it off three months later. What happened?’

      ‘Looking like my brother does not give you any right to pry into my personal life,’ Lecia said with bleak, barely controlled precision, cringing at the thought of Keane Paget reading about that tragedy.

      ‘Technically speaking, I think you look like me,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m six years older than you, which must give me a priority claim on the genes.’

      She choked back a reluctant gasp of laughter. ‘We’re not brother and sister,’ she observed, ‘but we certainly sound like a bickering pair. Have you got any?’

      ‘Brothers and sisters? No. There’s just me.’

      The heavy lids half hiding his eyes imbued his gaze with a disturbing sensuality that set her nerve-ends jangling. However, nothing could conceal the keen perception in the steel-blue depths.

      Trying to shake off her debilitating response so that she could speak objectively, she said, ‘We must be related, either through an illegal liaison or a common ancestor back in England before either side emigrated. The Springs have been in Australia for almost a hundred years, which puts any shared ancestor a long way back. And I don’t think any of them crossed the Tasman to New Zealand.’

      ‘The Pagets have been here for six generations,’ Keane said in a neutral voice. ‘I don’t know about any cross-Tasman voyaging amongst them, but it’s not wholly unlikely. And as we both look like our fathers—and mine looked very like his father—’

      ‘Mine too,’ she interpolated. ‘I’ve seen old photographs of my grandfather and great-grandfather, and they all have a very strong family likeness.’

      He shrugged. ‘There has to be a connection somewhere. I refuse to believe that this uncanny resemblance is just a coincidental arrangement of genes.’

      The waiter came over to say smoothly, ‘Your table is ready, Mr Paget.’

      After they both got to their feet Keane took Lecia’s arm in an automatic grip, as though he did this with every woman he escorted. Old-fashioned manners, she thought, but he carried them off.

      He could carry anything off—inctuding most of the women in this room, if their sideways glances were any indication.

      When