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‘Maybe not in looks—’ Anne’s anxiety subsided a little ‘—but you certainly have her eternal, exhausting optimism.’
‘Because I’ve learnt that believing the worst will happen is a powerful reason for giving up on life,’ said Anne fiercely, thinking of her mother who had, in the early days after her accident, come close to accepting the medical opinion that she would probably never walk again. ‘You’re an optimist too, even if you don’t want to admit it, or you wouldn’t write books where the hero triumphs in the end. You’d write gloomy, turgid tomes that pander to the intellectual snobbery that insists that only the certainty of death and the misery of human suffering make literature worthwhile—’
‘Pax, pax.’ He was laughing, catching her waving hand in both of his. ‘Calm down. I wasn’t criticising you—it was merely an idle comment…’
‘None of your comments is idle,’ she retorted, trying to ignore the way he was gently separating her fingers. ‘They work very hard at being cryptic.’
’What was so cryptic about saying you’re an optimist?’ he asked, turning her hand over so that his fingers slid between hers.
‘It was the way you said it,’ she insisted darkly.
He lightly restrained her hand when she would have tugged it free. ‘Why do you find it so difficult to accept that I might admire and envy your joyful confidence that life will treat you kindly?’
She looked at him through her lashes. To be admired and envied wasn’t what she wanted from him, but perhaps it was a start…
‘You didn’t think I was so admirable a couple of hours ago…’
‘I didn’t know you as well then as I do now,’ he said mockingly. ‘And a couple of hours from now perhaps I’ll know you even better…’
Anne blinked. ‘You can be very silver-tongued when you want to be,’ she muttered warily.
If only she had the experience to judge whether his words were an invitation or merely idle teasing. She didn’t want to mistake sophisticated flirtation for redhot desire and embarrass them both by bursting prematurely into flames. She was fairly close to spontaneous combustion as it was!
‘It was an essential qualification in my first career. I was a military attaché at several diplomatic postings.’
He couldn’t have chosen a better way to divert her from her self-doubts.
‘You were in the army?’
Anne was stunned, although, come to think of it, his physical and mental toughness could well be a hangover from military training. It would also explain that irritating habit of expecting people to jump to his orders.
‘I went through university on a military scholarship,’ he confirmed, his smile acknowledging the silent question immediately evident in her eyes as he continued. ‘That was in the days when we suffered in genteel poverty for the sake of Mum’s undiscovered genius. When she started achieving success she offered to buy out my commission but I figured that I owed the army their minimum five years after I graduated, especially when they offered me post-graduate studies at Duntroon after my officer training.’ The prestigious Australian military academy explained the puzzling abbreviation that had accompanied his degree in the calendar that Anne had consulted. ‘I minored in military history and tactics and made sure there was sufficient language content virtually to assure me overseas duty—’
A light went on in her head at his overt blandness. ‘Let me guess. Russia!’
He inclined his head in amusement at her envious exasperation. ‘My speciality was Soviet—now post-Soviet —politics.’
‘You speak Russian, don’t you?’ she accused. ‘I bet you’re as fluent a speaker as you are a reader. All those books in your bookcase…You knew I was taking Russian but you never said a word—’
‘Because I don’t give private tuition,’ he cut her off in his clipped, professional tone. ‘To anyone. I have enough on my plate. But you’re welcome to borrow any book that you think might be helpful to you.’
Instead of taking offence at his stand-offishness, Anne found herself in complete agreement. Hunter was enough of a distraction when he was nowhere in sight, let alone shoulder to shoulder, mind to mind. The only private lessons that she would like from him had nothing to do with academics! Still, she owed it to her god-child to know something of the land of his father.
‘How long were you in Russia?’ Her fingers tightened on his in unconscious demand. ‘Have you been inside the Kremlin? Seen the armoury…?’
By the time they were driven out of the restaurant door by the staff’s pointedly sweeping around their feet Anne was starry-eyed with determination that she would one day see the country that Hunter had brought alive for her so vividly. No wonder he was a successful writer; he had a gift for communicating not just the concrete reality of a place, but the emotional impact of it too.
It wasn’t until they were walking back up the hill towards the warehouse that Anne realised that the underlying tension between them was back in full force. It had never really gone away, merely been masked by a more acceptable form of enthusiasm.
‘Perhaps we should have brought your car,’ she said, breaking the unnerving silence. Although he didn’t seem to use it often, she knew he had a cream-coloured Mercedes which he parked in the rental garage two buildings away from the warehouse.
‘The walk will do us good after all that cholesterol,’ Hunter replied, cupping her elbow to guide her across the deserted street. Under the bleaching, blue-white street-lights he looked almost like a stranger, hard-faced and remote. ‘Are you afraid?’
Just in time she realised that he meant of the city at night. ‘No, it’s just that it smells like rain.’
‘Are you hoping for a polite discussion of the weather all the way home to avoid more personal topics?’ he asked, with his usual skill at sensing her nervousness.
As he spoke a very fine mist of moisture began to drift gently down around their shoulders, haloing the overhead lights with reflective streamers. He laughed softly as he urged her into a run towards the first of the row of huge plane trees that marched towards the university, their pale, piebald trunks rising from the black tarmac where the street had been widened around them—nature victoriously fighting back against the encroachment of the city.
