The Heiress Bride. Laurey Bright

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      When they’d had coffee Chase pushed his cup aside. “Thanks for the meal, Spencer. Shall we call it a night?”

      Howard said, “I want to talk to Spencer about a problem with the classifieds.”

      Spencer called the waiter for more coffee, but Chase and Alysia both shook their heads.

      “You don’t need me anymore,” Chase said. Again his eyes lighted on Alysia, with that new and disconcerting intentness. “Alysia looks tired. If you two want to stay on, I can take her home.”

      “I don’t mind waiting,” Alysia said.

      But Spencer waved a hand benevolently and said, “Go with Chase, my dear. I’m sorry if this is a bit tedious for you.”

      Didn’t he know she wanted to be involved in anything to do with the paper? It was her future. “It isn’t at all—”

      But Chase was already on his feet, and she had little choice. Gathering up her bag, she said good-night to Howard and walked beside Chase to the entrance, then into the cooler night air in the car-park.

      Chase paused outside the doorway and let out a brief, whistling breath.

      “You didn’t need to offer to take me home,” Alysia said. “It’s out of your way—”

      “No problem.” He curled his fingers around her arm in a light hold. “I’m grateful for the excuse.”

      Alysia was silent, and as they neared his car he said, “Sorry. That was tactless.”

      Not sure if the apology was for the implication that he’d wanted to get away from her father, or for suggesting that taking her home was no more than a pretext, she said coolly, “It’s all right, Mr. Osborne.”

      He unlocked the passenger door and turned his head to glance at her probingly as he opened it.

      With careful grace Alysia sank into the seat and waited while he closed the door.

      When he slid in beside her he didn’t immediately start the engine. Instead, his hands resting on the steering wheel, he turned to her and queried, “Mr. Osborne? We’ve known each other since you were a skinny little schoolgirl, Alysia.”

      Alysia had been nearly sixteen when Chase came to work for the Clarion. Leaving school eighteen months later, she had completed her Bachelor of Commerce in Auckland, several hours south of Waikura, before enrolling in journalism school still farther south in Wellington for a graduate diploma.

      And in those few years Chase Osborne had climbed through several grades to chief reporter. And now deputy editor, although he couldn’t be more than thirty.

      “I might have been skinny then,” Alysia said, “but actually I was tall for my age.”

      His mouth curved. “And you’re not skinny any longer.”

      His eyes remained on her face, but she recalled his almost absentminded assessment of her legs when she’d sat in her father’s office, and again the memory of that devastating kiss under the pepper tree surfaced, tingling in her blood.

      “All grown up, in fact,” Chase said. “But I hope you don’t expect me to call you Miss Kingsley.”

      “I’m not a snob.”

      “No?”

      Alysia stirred, and her bare arm brushed Chase’s sleeve.

      Turning away from him, she pulled her safety belt from its housing and clicked it into position.

      She lifted an errant strand of hair from her cheek and put it behind her ear, then sat with her eyes focused straight ahead. The car park was lit with street lamps, and a few spiky cabbage trees shivered in a breeze, their slim, patterned trunks rising from floodlit flowerbeds.

      Chase switched on the key and the engine murmured into life. He swung the car onto the road, drove through two sets of traffic lights and turned along the riverside. Between the boathouses and marine businesses, glimpses of dark water reflected wavery ribbons of light.

      “So you have your own car now?” Chase asked.

      Not sure why she felt defensive, Alysia said, “My father bought it as a graduation present.”

      “Congratulations on your diploma, by the way.”

      “Thank you.”

      “I was surprised you decided to do a journalism course after all.”

      “Why?” Surely nothing could have been more obvious.

      “I had the idea you didn’t particularly care for the newspaper business. We don’t see you down at the office much.”

      Alysia felt her skin tighten but she kept her voice calm. “The last few years I’ve been studying,” she reminded him. “Of course I care—I’m a Kingsley.”

      “Ah…the Kingsley dynasty,” he murmured.

      “I prefer to call it a tradition.” Alysia didn’t like the irony coloring his voice.

      He was silent for a couple of seconds. “Spencer doesn’t have a lot of time for high-powered career women.”

      Spencer tended toward archaic views on women in business—in fact on women in general—but he didn’t have a choice in her case. The newspaper was a family institution, and Alysia was the only family he had. When she told him she wanted to first gain a commerce degree and then study journalism for a year, he had talked approvingly about the value of qualifications.

      “I’m starting at the Clarion after the New Year,” she said. “Hasn’t my father mentioned it?”

      “He suggested we make a place for you.”

      Alysia guessed from the reserve in his voice that Chase Osborne didn’t approve of nepotism. Too bad. It might be old-fashioned, but it was the way the Clarion had always operated, each generation succeeding the last. One day the newspaper would pass to her. Her father couldn’t deny her that.

      Her hands clasped almost painfully together. “I’m qualified.”

      She willed away a nasty, sick feeling in her stomach. She was an adult now. Time she acted like one, instead of like some scared little schoolgirl.

      Chase made a sound like a short, scornful little laugh. “You have a brand-new diploma.”

      “Even you must have been a beginner once.” She knew she sounded snippy. “I don’t mind starting at the bottom. Like my father.” Though heir to the business, he’d begun as a junior reporter, straight from school.

      “He’s a good journo,” Chase conceded. “I’ve learned a lot from him.”

      “And so will I be,” Alysia asserted.

      “You mean it’s in the blood?”

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