The Greatest Love

Chapter One

Deanna Carter breathed deeply, fighting the butterflies which had suddenly decided to use her insides to practice their take-off and landing skills. Her breath came out a little shaky as she stood on the threshold of the hotel ballroom, gazing at the crowd of people laughing and chatting like old friends.

She recognised no one. Then again, why would she? This was not the world she was used to. The product of a middle-class upbringing, she was not accustomed to, as her father used to call them, “the rich and shameless.” It was a world that was almost alien to her.

What am I doing here? she thought, not for the first time.

The rings on her finger felt heavy. She flexed her hand, her thumb twisting the bands as if that would help ease her anxiety. Where was Richard?

He had called earlier that day, telling her he was going to meet her at the function instead of picking her up at home. His cool response to her anxious request for a reason implied that he considered her grown-up enough to drive down to the city and find her way to the charity fundraiser. She didn’t need him to hold her hand, he had told her.

That was all very well, she thought, but he also needed to remember that she didn’t know anyone and had no idea how they were going to react to her.

His mother had not been happy when Deanna had met her. As far as Julia Carter was concerned, no one was good enough for her son, and for him to marry a young woman she had not approved of, or chosen herself, was just unacceptable.

The way she had wrinkled her nose and looked like she was sucking on a lemon when Dee had shyly introduced herself had been difficult enough. When she had refused to shake Dee’s hand, her expression akin to someone about to dip their hand in something disgusting, it was proof that the older woman was determined not to like her new daughter-in-law to-be.

Now, here she was, forced to enter the lion’s den alone. Dee smoothed down the skirt of her cocktail dress. It tapered down, following the shape of her lower body, the hem reaching to just below her knees. The waist slightly bulged. For all the exercising and calorie counting she had done before her marriage, she had been unable to shift the last few kilos that appeared to amass at her middle.

The assistant in the shop where she had bought the dress had guided her to some new shapewear which she had promised would flatten the bulges and give her figure a more flattering shape in the dress. Dee just felt like a blimp, barely able to breathe for fear of popping something.

The dress was … okay, she thought. It was navy blue lace over a silk lining with long sleeves and a knee-length skirt. The neckline was a modest V-neck, showing little in the way of cleavage. Her husband had never approved of her showing off too much of her figure.

The assistant had assured her the dress was appropriate for the occasion. Since she had never been to a charity event before, she had no idea if the assistant was right. She had never been a fan of reality television shows that told women ‘What Not to Wear,’ and social events for those with money was something she had never experienced growing up. She might have watched dramatised versions of them on television, but even those hadn’t told her what to expect.

She caught her reflection in the glass of the door that was wide open and locked against the wall with a strong hook. She had gone to a hairdresser, asking them to create an up-do. Richard had criticised her lack of skill in hair styling. She had always worn her dark-blonde hair either short or shoulder-length but, after they had got engaged, he had persuaded her to grow it out. The length was still reasonably short, but the hairdresser had made a good job of styling it to look fuller, leaving short pieces around her ears to frame her face.

Dee briefly touched her hair. It was sticky and hard from the styling gel and hairspray in it. She supposed it looked good but she wasn’t the best judge where that was concerned.

That was another thing her husband often criticised her for. She had always lacked self-confidence. Being rather shy and insular, she had never been the type of person who enjoyed being the centre of attention. It wasn’t that she didn’t consider herself attractive. It was more that she would rather downplay that attractiveness. She had been told far too many horror stories from friends who had been hit on by creepy, strange men because of their apparent attractiveness.

She stepped further into the room, half-paralysed by her anxiety. While she had tried to make as quiet and unobtrusive an entrance as possible, it felt like every pair of eyes in the ballroom turned to look at her.

Swallowing hard, she decided to bite the bullet and continued walking.

A waiter intercepted her before she could make it to the bar.

“Ma’am?” he offered her … He was holding a silver tray where several crystal glasses were balanced on top. Some of them were filled with orange juice while the others she assumed were filled with champagne.

She looked at him questioningly before taking a glass of orange juice. He nodded and turned away to serve the next guest.

Thankfully, once she had taken the glass, the rest of the guests appeared to ignore her. She assumed that the initial looks were to gauge if she really belonged here. Once she had been served a drink, they felt free to continue conversing with their companions.

God, what am I doing here? she thought. There was still no sign of Richard. He had told her two days earlier that he had to go on a business trip and hadn’t expected to be back until tonight. He hadn’t told her exactly what time he would be arriving nor had he trusted her with his flight information.

She didn’t have the nerve to confront him. As his wife, she felt she had every right to know when he was coming home, especially considering the fact they were expected at this function tonight. That didn’t seem to matter to him.

She sighed as she sipped her drink. They had been married six weeks, and this was not how she’d imagined it would be when she’d agreed to his proposal. She couldn’t help thinking about the way it had all happened. She had grown up reading romance novels, never thinking for a second that they were a true reflection of reality. In many ways, romance fiction was like a modern-day fairy tale, where boy would meet girl, they would discover some obstacles to be overcome and then they would live happily ever after.

Having witnessed her parents’ miserable marriage, Dee was under no illusion that love could solve any problem. As far as she knew, her parents, Jack and Linda Hargreaves had married for love. Yet they just couldn’t seem to work together to resolve the issues that would often come up. If it wasn’t financial problems, it was work. Or it was her mother’s ambition to be anything other than a secretary.

Jack had always been the kind of man who felt that certain people were born to a certain class and they should never aspire to be anything but what they were. Jack Hargreaves lacked ambition and thought he could control his own daughter by refusing to support her dreams.

It wasn’t that he didn’t consider her smart. She had, after all, achieved above-average marks in school. Jack had, at least, been savvy enough to realise that girls were not limited by their gender. He was a child of the late ‘60s when the feminist movement was just taking off. Yet he was still rather old-fashioned in many ways.

Dee wondered if part of her father’s problem had been fear. Fear that she would walk away from him, the way her mother had done. Linda had finally had enough when Dee had been a teenager. She had packed a suitcase and walked out of the family home, leaving her husband to pick up the pieces. She had gone off to ‘find herself.’ It wasn’t that she hadn’t wanted to take her daughter with her, Linda had explained when Dee had gone to stay with her several months later. At fifteen years old, Dee had known enough about divorce to realise she had nothing to do with her mother’s leaving.

There had been no custody battle, no court order forcing either parent to give up their time with their child. Linda had simply chosen not to uproot her from her school, where she was in her third year of high school, and it was the first year where her end-of-year exams would decide her future.

She didn’t blame her mother for leaving her with a man who really had no idea how to raise a child to be independent. He thought being a parent meant doing everything for his daughter; the result being that by the time she was old enough to be doing everything for herself, she had no idea how.

At eighteen, Deanna had left Petone Girls’ High School with nothing but her newly-acquired exam results. With no experience, she couldn’t get a job in anything except for unskilled work. Forced to work in fast food, she did her best to consider it a blessing in disguise. At least there she wasn’t under her father’s thumb.

The only problem with working in such an environment was that two of her coworkers believed that was their lot in life and claimed they had no dreams beyond getting into the management programme. One of them was her manager, who quickly proclaimed that Dee could also become a manager if she worked hard enough.

The last thing she saw herself doing was getting into management in what was essentially a low-wage job, even if their management training programme was considered one of the best in the industry.

She had always wanted to become a photographer. Dee had a restless nature. Being stuck living in the same town - about half an hour’s drive from Wellington on a good day, or at least an hour in peak traffic - never venturing further, was something that didn’t appeal to her. She wanted to travel the world.

Jack, who had grown up in the town and had never even had a passport, would never have approved. He had been firmly against it when she had told him she wanted to move away to a city about two hours away; to take up a course at the local tertiary institution while working part-time. Even at twenty-one, the powers-that-be, in their infinite wisdom, had decreed that she could not be considered independent and still had to get her parents’ approval before she could apply for any kind of support while studying.

Forced to put her own dreams aside to please her father, Dee had continued to work in the restaurant for another year, secretly putting some money aside so she could save for the day when she could leave for good.

She was stunned when her father told her one day that he had found her another job, as an executive assistant to the general manager of a technology company that had its biggest branch in the town. Headquarters was in the city north of Petone.

Her father had been so excited about the job. Having worked in I.T. himself for nearly thirty years, he had built himself a network of contacts and had heard through the grapevine that the role was coming available. He had talked her up to his contact who had, in turn, talked to the man. Given that her only experience had been in fast food, the man who would be her prospective employer had been a little unsure that she would be the right fit, but she had agreed to attend the interview and had secured the role.

Robin Daly had taken a chance on her and Dee had found (to her surprise) that she did enjoy her work. It was more challenging than managing the restaurant but, soon enough, she realised she was more than ready for that challenge.

She had been there a year when Robin told her that he needed her to go with him to a meeting with the company’s owner. He very rarely came down to the branch office, relying on his employees to run things efficiently.

Dee had been expecting an office in one of the buildings in the central city. What she hadn’t expected was to be driven out of town into one of the city’s newer suburbs. Or for the man’s office to be in a separate wing of what could only be described as a two-storey mansion.

The house sat on a hill about ten minutes’ drive out of the city centre. It had huge plate-glass windows which overlooked a sweeping view of the city. As she followed her boss to the wing where they would be meeting with the owner, she could see a light haze over the city. While it wasn’t as expansive as some cities in New Zealand, and the buildings were not tall skyscrapers, the vista was still impressive from the house.

The maid, or whoever she was, led them to a room with double doors which swung inward when open. A man, about ten or so years older than her, was sitting at the desk but rose from his chair to greet them.

Robin introduced her, and she studied the older man as she stepped forward. He was extremely good-looking with dark blond hair, greying at the temples. The flesh around his eyes was slightly crinkled at the corners, indicating a man who smiled often.

“Hello, Deanna. It is Deanna?”

“Most people call me Dee,” she replied.

He smiled, taking her hand in his. She was quick to notice his hands were almost twice the size of hers and were warm, where hers were cool.

“I’m Richard,” he said.

When the meeting began, she sat down and began to take notes; the main reason why Robin had brought her to this meeting. She couldn’t help noticing the occasional glance Richard would send her way and she felt an odd … chill, no, not chill, she thought. A shiver, she amended silently; up and down her spine.

The more glances he sent her way, the more disconcerted she felt. Dee knew she was attractive, but. certainly not beautiful. Having lived under what she supposed was the controlling thumb of her father, she was unused to such attention from men. Especially a man who was a fair few years older than herself and surrounded by wealth.

They broke for lunch after about two hours. The maid brought in what looked like homemade pumpkin soup and club sandwiches made with the softest bread Dee had ever tasted and fillings so fresh it was as if the vegetables had been just picked and the eggs laid that morning.

Richard sat next to her. “How are you enjoying the sandwiches?” he asked.

“They’re delicious,” she replied.

“The bread is baked fresh each day,” he told her. “My housekeeper bakes it every morning.” She blinked at him, not sure what to say. He smiled at her. “You seem a little … surprised.”

She swallowed the bite of sandwich. “No, it’s not that. It’s just … well, I would have …”

He appeared amused. “You would have thought my lunch would be something like caviar and pâté?”

The thought had crossed her mind, but she wasn’t about to voice that thought, considering the man was her boss’s boss.

“I’ll let you in on a little secret about most rich people. Or at least the ones I know. We can’t stand the stuff. Of course, I can’t speak for the Hiltons and the Rockefellers of this world since I don’t personally know them and don’t care to. And we do put our pants on one leg at a time.”

Dee had the impression that Richard was laughing at her innocence. Since she had never really been around wealth before, she knew she came across as naïve and unsophisticated. She couldn’t help it.

As Robin was a keen gardener, he went out to explore the gardens, while Dee stayed indoors, checking emails, and going over her meeting notes.

Richard placed a glass of iced tea in front of her.

“Tell me about yourself,” he coaxed.

She looked up at him over the steel rims of her glasses. She had worn glasses for over ten years and was so used to them that she barely noticed them on her face, but she was momentarily surprised at the blurred view of the man standing almost over her.

“Um, there’s really nothing to tell,” she remarked.

“Oh, I would have to disagree with you there,” he replied with what sounded to her like a drawl. “I know what Robin’s told me about you. Now I’d like to hear it from you.”

She told him about growing up in the town, her parents’ divorce and the last few years living with her father. She was careful not to talk about the way he had tried to control her life. Whenever she had mentioned it to a coworker in the past, they’d quickly changed the subject, as if they didn’t want to hear about it. Her father had always had a reputation as a decent man, and she had very quickly realised that no one wanted to hear anything that might contradict that.