The Mistress Deception. Susan Napier

staunch loyalty to his father had always also extended to himself.

      ‘I’m sorry, Mary,’ he apologised swiftly, his deep voice resonant with sincerity as he ran his fingers through his thick wavy hair, disciplined into a conservative cut that flattered the long bones of his face. ‘I didn’t mean to shout. I’m not angry at you. What with keeping my mother company at the hospital and trying to juggle things here, as well as my own job, I haven’t had much sleep over the past two nights and I’m afraid my temper’s suffered accordingly. But as you said before—this is something that I need to handle myself…’

      As a boy he had always been quick to admit fault and offer amends, thought Mary, and as a man he was equally ruthless with his failings. In fact sometimes she felt he took too much responsibility upon himself…

      ‘I just hope you know what you’re doing,’ she murmured.

      ‘Oh, I know exactly what I’m doing,’ he told her with a savage smile. ‘I’m turning the tables on an extortionist.

      ‘I have a feeling that I may turn out to have a gift for blackmail!’

      CHAPTER TWO

      RACHEL BLAIR sat at the kitchen table sipping her morning coffee and glowering at the letter in her hand.

      ‘Hello, what are you doing up so early?’ Her elder sister came bustling through the door, dressed in her nurse’s uniform and carrying an armful of crumpled sheets and damp towels. ‘I thought you were going to leave it one more day before you went back to work.’ She vanished into the adjacent laundry and Rachel could hear her lifting and closing the lid of the temperamental washing machine and cranking the dial around.

      ‘I felt perfectly fine when I woke up so I changed my mind,’ Rachel called to her through the archway. The mild headache niggling at her consciousness she preferred to attribute to the letter in her hand rather than the lingering after-effects of her ailment.

      ‘Hmm.’ Robyn reappeared in the doorway and gave her a professional once-over. ‘Just make sure you don’t overdo it. Your immune system’s probably still not back to full strength.’

      ‘It was only a virus,’ Rachel pointed out. ‘I’ve finished my course of antibiotics and my cold is pretty much gone—see?’ She sniffed to show that the clogged airways of the past few days had cleared.

      Robyn shook her blonde head in bafflement. ‘I don’t know how you managed to catch the flu in the middle of Auckland’s hottest summer on record. No one else we know has it…’

      With an effort Rachel managed not to blush.

      ‘I guess I’m just ahead of my time,’ she said airily. ‘The doctor said I have the type they’ll be offering a vaccine for this winter.’

      Fortunately Robyn was easily diverted from her speculation on the source of the infection.

      ‘Maybe if you’re lucky they’ll name it after you,’ she grinned.

      Rachel could think of someone far more deserving of the honour of being commemorated as an irksome germ!

      ‘Type-Rachel flu? Do you think I could ask for royalties?’ She grinned back, and the resemblance between the sisters was suddenly pronounced, even though, superficially, they looked as different as chalk and cheese.

      At forty, Robyn was still as slim and petite as she had been as a teenager, her ash-blonde hair and big blue eyes lending her a doll-like air of feminine fragility which was belied by her job as a hard-working practice nurse.

      Ten years her junior, Rachel towered over her sister, and most other women of her acquaintance. Her wide shoulders and full bust would have made her top-heavy if it hadn’t been for the broadly rounded hips flaring below her neat waist, and her long, firmly muscled legs. Her triangular face, framed by a spiky, razor-cut cap of hair the colour of burnt toffee, thickly lashed hazel eyes and thin, determined mouth possessed strength of character rather than beauty…but unfortunately people often tended to judge her from the neck down!

      She knew that her curvy, hour-glass shape rendered her almost a cartoon-figure of female pulchritude, the living embodiment of countless male fantasies.

      It had been rough coping with the unwonted sexual attention when she was young, but she had determined very early on not to let her overtly sexy body image dictate the path of her life. She had fought hard to be her own person, and with maturity had perfected subtle strategies to control the perceptions and prejudices of those around her—dressing casually, in loose, multi-layered clothing, and cultivating a robust good humour which was the opposite of seductive. Fortunately her height and superior strength gave her a physical edge whenever her defensive strategies proved too subtle for over-active male libidos.

      ‘I doubt it—though you’d probably have hordes of guys clamouring to be personally infected,’ chuckled Robyn. Thanks to the considerable age gap between them, and the fact that she had been happily married to Simon Fox for over twenty years, she had never been jealous of her sister’s effect on men.

      A rattling mechanical hiccup sounded behind her and she darted through to give the washing machine a well-practised kick of encouragement.

      Rachel rolled her eyes and returned her brooding attention to her unwelcome letter.

      She was getting fed up with this petty campaign of harassment. At first she had dismissed the escalating stream of annoyances as an unfortunate run of back luck, but too many coincidences had piled up, and now her suspicions condensed into certainty.

      It was typical of her unknown harasser to hide behind a faceless bureaucracy. Whoever had it in for her was a coward—but very a clever one, initiating trouble but never following it through to a point where Rachel might have a chance to identify the source.

      A low growl of frustration purred in the back of her throat.

      ‘What’s the matter?’ asked Robyn, drifting back to the accompaniment of noisily hissing water pipes.

      ‘The council has received a tip that I’m running a business from this address,’ Rachel paraphrased in disgust. ‘They’re warning me that they’re going to investigate and I could be prosecuted for carrying on a non-complying activity.’

      ‘It must be some mistake,’ said Robyn, tucking a shoulder-length strand of hair back into the smooth French twist she wore at work.

      ‘You think so? And was it also a mistake when the phone company was told the same thing and tried to charge me a higher line rental? And when the tax department decided to audit me because someone phoned their hotline and told them I had an undeclared second income? Or when I didn’t get any mail for two weeks and suddenly discovered that the post office had been advised to redirect my mail to a house which just happened to be the residence of a motorcycle gang?’

      Robyn put a hand to her mouth. ‘Oh! That reminds me—Bethany said something arrived for you yesterday afternoon by courier. You were having a bath and she was just leaving for basketball practice so she just signed for it and took off with it in her bag. She forgot all about it until this morning.’

      She crossed the small, sunny kitchen and fetched the bubble-wrapped plastic courier bag which had been tucked with some other papers behind the telephone on the bench, handing it to her sister.

      She glanced at the watch pinned to her breast and let out a little huff. ‘I hope Bethany’s out of that bathroom—I’m sure when you offered to put us up for a few weeks you didn’t expect to have to put up with a teenager who showers twice a day for twenty minutes at a time! I do wish you’d let us pay something towards the water and power, as well as the groceries.’

      Rachel paused in the act of ripping into the zip-locked seam of the bag. ‘Don’t be silly. Just be thankful that Bethany’s into cleanliness, not some ghastly grunge kick. It’s not as if I have to pay rent, or a mortgage. I’ve loved having you to stay.’ There was a hint of wistfulness in her hazel eyes. Since David had died two years ago there had been no one special in her life, no one who