Love Against Duty

The romantic music drifted up from the balcony of the duplex building that occupies a restaurant and club called The Bugatti, and Queen, who stood alone in a wall to ceiling view of the games room, softly hummed a few lines of the slow song to which the couples danced. I want to feel the passion in this romance. Now hold me and touch me. A faint smile touched her lips, and a pensive look crept into her eyes. No other song could have been perfect for her present mood, as if the lyrics were written because of her.

Austin Springhill was handsome and from a well-to-do family, and Queen's Aunt approved him. But Queen had known from the start that she wasn't in love with Austin. The proposal and engagement had been a flash; it happened so fast that she couldn't even remember all the things he said and all the things he promised. Marriages between the rich are just alliances and have a way of happening. A kind of moving with a tide of social pressure, not enforced but urged on, until the man found himself on one bended knee offering a ring and the girl found herself accepting it. Such marriage arrangements had a beauty of their own, but where was the heart melting romance and passion? The ones that make you throw caution in the air and do stupid things? Queen wondered.

Then again, she owed Aunt Christy Parkview everything; her father's step sister had taken her in when she was just five years old, after Christopher Jameson swindled all his money on gambling and went broke. For years afterwards, Christopher, her father, had lived in a dilapidated bungalow in Australia, until one day he just vanished into thin air, and it was assumed he walked into the fire and burned all his disappointments. Queen had been made the legal dependent of Christy, who has taken full custody of her, bringing her up as if she were a real daughter, paying for her education at exclusive schools, and hammering into her that Christopher had been a black sheep of the family who had driven their parents and his wife into an early grave and then involved himself with gangsters who have finally led him into the shadow of prison, where he would have ended up if Christy hadn't paid for his defense by one of the best Australian lawyers.

Queen had never fully understood why her aunt had this love-hate attitude towards her father; maybe at some point she had loved him, but the fact was that in her overbearingly charming way, Christy made Queen feel indebted to her, as if she owed her that extra bit of gratitude for the good home, the beautiful and expensive clothes, and the cool reserve that made her suitable for the Springhill as a daughter-in-law.

Queen knew that, with the skill Christy embedded in her and a strong sense of duty, she allowed herself to become engaged to Austin because Christy wanted it. After all, it was a small payment for the safe and beautiful life she lived at Greco Villa, which, over the years, Queen had grown to regard as her home. She loved the place with its rambling garden of orchards and apple trees. She could still remember the hardships of her early life with her father and the unexpected sweetness of life at Greco Villa. It seemed that the one thing she was most afraid of was being insecure again. The very thought was enough to send the feel of ice dribbling down the back of her shapely body.

The drifting music changed to another tune, but Queen hardly heard it. For some reason, she felt a change in her mood-a sudden tension as if she were no longer alone. She looked around, but she was still the only one in the room.

Queen returned her attention to the small lake facing the window, and she was staring out there, lost in her thoughts, when suddenly beside her was a face reflected in the glass window. She gave a start, for she heard no footstep across the rug that covered the floor of the games room, and she felt as if something gripped her heart as she stared at that reflected face and saw that it belonged to a man. The eyes, even through the glass, held hers with an intentness that was greatly disturbing, and there was no escaping them, for when she swung around there they were again, holding a sort of wild quality she had never seen before.

He didn't speak, and neither did she. He was somehow like a painted sculptor, brown-skinned and hard, with a tick of black brows above silver gray eyes. In the silence of that long moment, Queen's impression was that a foreign sculptor had made this man and then stood him in the wind and the sun and allowed them to weather his face into a dangerous attraction. He was a bit forceful, but not in a bad way.

It's a game of two, not one, he said, and his voice-a certain something that touched her nerves and made her feel menaced. What was it she sensed? A relentless, driving energy or the restlessness of a lion at nightfall? What game are you talking about? She asked, and she didn't dare to wonder what he had in mind-this handsome and slightly threatening stranger who found her alone like this, while everyone else was dancing in the club or having dinner in the restaurant. Where was her charming Austin when she needed him? Probably talking football with his friends!

It could be anything, don't you think?' He gestured around the games room, and in his hand was a glass of white wine, used to highlight a point. There is the pool table, and another with the scrabble board laid out. Make your choice.

Are you asking me to play? She looked at him with blue eyes that were set at a slant in her otherwise quiet face. Her long blond hair was styled in a ponytail, which added to her cool, regal beauty.