Maggie hesitated. ‘I know it must have looked rather strange, what I did,’ she said slowly, ‘and I suppose I can’t blame you for wondering what on earth was going on. Therefore everything you said, even although I found it offensive—’
‘All that cheap rubbish?’ he interrupted gravely, although with an inward grin.
‘Yes.’ She eyed him briefly and sternly. ‘Therefore everything you said was—understandable, perhaps, so—’
‘I see.’
‘Will you stop interrupting?’ she commanded. ‘This is hard enough as it is.’
‘My lips are sealed,’ he murmured.
She eyed him dangerously this time. ‘Put plainly, I’d much rather you disliked me and were irritated by me than any other ideas you might have had, all the same!’
He laughed softly, then he watched her intently for a long moment. ‘Are you really that naïve, Maggie Trent?’
‘What’s naïve about it? Well,’ she hastened to say, ‘perhaps I am, in a general sense. I did have a very sheltered—’ She broke off and bit her lip.
‘Upbringing?’ he suggested.
‘My father—’ She stopped again. She might have her problems with her father—she did!—but broadcasting them to strangers was another matter.
‘Saw to that, did he?’ Jack McKinnon eyed her reflectively. ‘I’m surprised he let you out of his sight.’
Maggie drew a deep breath, but discovered she couldn’t let this go. ‘The fact that I actually have a job and live on my own is testimony to a battle for independence that you might find quite surprising.’
He said nothing, but the way he stared at her led her to believe he might be reviewing all the facts he now had at his disposal, and changing his opinions somewhat. Good, she thought, and, with a toss of her head, stood up.
She would have died if she’d known that he was actually contemplating the—pleasure?—yes, of having her as his dinner companion at his mythical dinner in Sydney, then disposing of her clothes article by article in a way that drove her wild with desire even if she didn’t like him particularly…
‘You know,’ she said blandly, ‘it’s just occurred to me that I could alleviate at least one of your discomforts.’
He looked supremely quizzical. ‘You could?’ And wondered what she’d say if he told her at least one of his discomforts sprang from the way he kept thinking how she’d look without her clothes…
She went over and rummaged in the kitchen cupboard. What she produced was half a bottle of Scotch. She gathered two glasses and a jug from below the sink. She rinsed them all out, filled the jug with water and placed everything on the table.
‘It may be tinned food rather than steak, oysters and cheese but at least we can have a drink—we may even find it puts us in a better mood.’
He studied her offerings, then studied her expression. ‘Miss Trent, you are a peach.’ He reached for the bottle.
She was right.
After a Scotch and a meal of a heated-up Fray Bentos steak pie and baked beans, Jack McKinnon was rather more mellow.
‘Tell me about the Smiths,’ he said as she prepared to wash the dishes.
Maggie looked rueful and did so as she found a small bottle of dish detergent and squirted some green liquid into the sink. ‘The thing is—’ she turned on a tap ‘—is it ethical?’
‘To offer people who hold out more money?’ he mused. ‘There’s no law against it.’
Maggie eyed the mound of bubbles building in the sink. ‘It’s going to drive Sophie and Ernest mad for the rest of their lives.’ She switched off the tap.
‘Don’t you think the heart of this dilemma might lie elsewhere?’
She turned to him. ‘Elsewhere?’
‘Such as…’ he paused ‘… Ernest jumping at the chance to get out of a property he was finding too much for him—and even the original price was a very fair one, believe me—while Sophie wanted to stay? A marital lifestyle dilemma, in other words.’
Maggie started to wash the dishes in silence. ‘Perhaps,’ she said eventually.