Merger By Matrimony

She reduced the volume of her voice at the sound of approaching footsteps, but the rankled feeling managed to stay with her for the remainder of the evening. Even more infuriating was the fact that her fulminating looks did very little more than provide him with a source of barely contained amusement.

Only Stephanie’s cheerful banter, as she dragged out details of Panama from her guest, besieging her with interested questions, squealing with delight when Destiny talked about the children she taught and gasping with little cries of horror at her stories of the jungle and what it contained, saved the evening. Destiny wondered if her stepcousin knew that she would be marrying someone who made the most ferocious jungle animal pale in comparison.

They had spoken not one word of business by the time eleven-thirty rolled around and she stood to leave, feeling woozy from the wine, to which she was in no way accustomed, and exhausted by her jet lag.

‘So, what did you make of the buffoons at the company?’ Callum asked, standing up as well and shoving his hands into his pockets. ‘I suppose they pulled out all the stops? Made you pore over cobwebbed reports of how great and good the firm used to be years ago? Played down what a shambles it’s in now?’ Despite consuming what had seemed, to Destiny, prodigious amounts of wine during the evening, the man still looked bright-eyed, alert and rearing to attack.

She threw him a wilted looked and stifled a yawn.

‘Mmm. That interesting, was it?’ A wicked glint of humour shone in his eyes.

‘I wasn’t trying to make a comment on what the meeting was like,’ Destiny said with lukewarm protest in her voice. ‘I’m tired.’

‘Leave her alone, Callum,’ Stephanie said sympathetically.

‘Business has to be discussed, Steph.’

‘Why now? It’s so boring.’

‘Boring for you perhaps, but you want to remember that your finances are tied up with what happens next in this little exciting scenario. I buy the company, play with it a bit until it’s running along smoothly, and your shares go up. Our Panamanian heiress keeps the company and—’

‘Do you mind not talking as if I wasn’t here?’

‘Have you ever been to London before, Destiny?’ Stephanie linked her arm through her stepcousin’s and ushered her to the front door, pointedly turning her back on her fiancée.

‘No. It’s all new and—’ she glanced over her shoulder and her eyes clashed with Callum’s ‘—a little scary.’

‘It would be. You’re just so brave to come all this way, on your own. I’d never dream of doing it!’

‘No.’ Callum’s voice behind them was silky. ‘It takes a certain type of woman to do that. Some might call it brave, darling; others might just call it—well, let’s just say that it’s a very masculine response.’

At which Stephanie flew around to face him with her hands on her hips and a simmering look in her baby-blue eyes. ‘Don’t be horrible!’

‘Me?’ He raised both his hands in innocent denial, but the blue eyes that locked with Destiny’s were unrepentant. ‘Horrible? It was meant to be a compliment! A glorious example of how far the women’s movement has got!’

‘What women’s movement?’ Destiny asked, her body language echoing Stephanie’s. ‘I’ve never been a part of any movement in my life before!’

‘No?’ He tried to stifle a grin and failed miserably. ‘Well, let’s just say that feminism has missed out there.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that I’ll give you a lift back to your place.’ He bent over to give Stephanie a gentlemanly peck on the cheek and a pat on the back. ‘That all right with you, darling?’

‘Don’t badger her, Callum.’

‘I wish people wouldn’t constantly stereotype me.’ He pulled open the front door and gave Destiny an exaggeratedly wide berth to exit ahead of him into a clear night that was considerably more bracing than it had been earlier on in the evening.

‘What about tomorrow?’ Stephanie asked him, standing in the doorway to see them off, an angelic, diminutive shape that made Destiny feel like an Amazonian hulk in comparison. ‘The Holts have invited us to supper. Did you remember? Daisy and Clarence are going to be there as well. Oh, and Rupert.’

Callum paused and frowned, appearing to give the matter weighty thought, then he said with a shrug,

‘Meeting. Sorry, darling. You go, though. Don’t stay in because of me.’

‘You’re always at meetings,’ Stephanie said in a childish, sulky voice. ‘He’s always at meetings,’ she addressed Destiny in an appeal to sisterhood, which Destiny took up with sadistic relish.

‘If he loved you, he’d cancel, I’m sure.’

‘If you loved me, you’d cancel.’

There was a brief silence. ‘I’ll do my best.’ He sighed and Stephanie’s face radiated at this unexpected victory.

‘Oh, goody!’ She blew them both a delighted kiss and shut the front door on them.

CHAPTER THREE

‘THANK you. Thank you very much,’ he grated sarcastically, as the engine of his powerful car purred into life. He pulled away from the kerb unnecessarily fast and Destiny clutched the car door handle to steady herself.

In the shadows of the car, his averted profile was hard and unsmiling and she had to stifle a desire to burst out laughing. Suddenly, sleep was no longer beckoning at her door. In fact, she felt surprisingly revived, and wondered whether her body might not just have been craving some fresh air.

Not that the London air was particularly fresh. Back in Panama, when she breathed in, she could smell everything. The musky aroma of hot, hard-packed dirt, the rich fullness of the trees and the bushes, the distant freshness of the snake-like river coiling its way lazily into the heart of the jungle. At certain times during the day she could smell the fragrance of food being cooked. Sometimes, when she closed her eyes, she could almost seem to detect the smells of the sky and the clouds and the stillness.

Here, she felt stuffy. Pollution, of course. Not as severe as she had seen in Mexico years ago, where the pollution bordered on contamination, but there nevertheless, unseen but ever-present.

‘Thank you for what?’ she asked innocently, playing him at his own game, and his mouth turned down darkly at the corners.

‘You know what for,’ he accused, looking away briefly from the empty road to glare at her. ‘I’d hoped Stephanie had forgotten all about that damned dinner party. Now I’m going to have to go and spend at least three agonising hours being bored to death by Rupert and his cronies.’

‘Oh, dear,’ she said unsympathetically, which provoked another blistering look.

‘Where,’ he asked, ‘did you get that?’

‘Get what?’ Her voice was genuinely surprised.

‘Your sarcasm. I always thought that missionaries were supposed to be glucose-sweet.’

Destiny bristled. ‘I am not a missionary, actually. If you’d done your homework properly, you might have discovered why we’re on a compound in the heart of Panama, and it has nothing to do with converting anyone to any kind of religion. We’re there to help educate people in desperate need of education, and I’m not really talking about reading, writing and arithmetic.’

‘What, then?’ He could feel himself reluctantly being drawn in, like a fish on the end of a line, curious to find out details of the background that had produced the creature sitting next to him. It felt peculiar to find himself hanging on to a woman’s conversation when normally he was the one playing the conversational game, digging into his reserves of wit and charm without even realising it. He wasn’t sure whether he liked it or not. He felt himself relax his foot on the accelerator so that the car meandered along.

‘We teach them how to use the land they have to maximise their crops—how to be self-sufficient, in other words. We help them with distributing crafts. Some of them make things for the tourist market in the city. And naturally we teach them the usual stuff.’

‘We?’

‘Yes. All of us. We work together. I’m a qualified doctor, but I’m also responsible for the formal classes. Of course, we have specialists on the compound as well. Not just the children need education; so do the adults. How to use their resources to their best advantage, how to rotate certain crops so that the land is never unused. How to take advantage of the rains when they come. Our agricultural expert is responsible for that side of things, but we all chip in.’

‘Like one big happy family.’

Destiny narrowed her eyes on him, but she couldn’t read his expression and his voice was mild.