Storm Cycle Read online

  Macadam was silent. Zoe dragged her gaze from the stormy ocean to glance at him. He turned his head and their eyes met. His were glittering strangely. 'Do you like Graham?' he asked.

  'Yes,' she replied frankly. 'Everyone does.'

  'Well, just watch it, Zoe,' he advised sharply. 'Graham has been around.'

  'Most men have, according to Gran, but I can look after myself.'

  His expression said he doubted this very much. 'What's Taggart going to say if you go?'

  Zoe shrugged. 'I'll worry about that when the time comes. Grandfather isn't all that unreasonable, you know. If he thought something meant a lot to me he wouldn't stand in my way.'

  'And Graham means a lot to you?'

  'Not yet,' she replied cautiously.

  'But he might?'

  A little devil drove her on. 'Would you have any objections, Macadam?'

  'Graham costs me a lot. I'd rather he concentrated on our new design. We have a lot of money sunk in it.'

  'You feel I could distract him?'

  'Possibly,' Macadam's voice was clipped.

  Zoe's attention wandered again to the thundering surf, 'I think he's lonely.'

  'Don't let pity swamp your better judgment, Zoe.'

  'Maybe I'm lonely too,' she shrugged.

  He frowned. 'Lonely for what?'

  'I'm not sure,' she bit her lip. 'It's just a feeling I haive,'

  Impatiently he said, 'You're so young your feelings are bound to confuse you. It's all part of growing up.'

  Moodily she stared at him, shaking her head. 'I don't expect you to know what's wrong with me, Macadam, bun I thought you'd be more helpful than that. I seem to be changing somehow. It's not easy to explain, because I don't really understand myself.'

  'You probably soon will,' he replied dryly. 'And I don't want you to be with Graham when you do discover what it's all about.'

  Macadam was being enigmatical again. She hated it when he talked this way. Confused, she said, 'I'm sure Ian wouldn't harm me.'

  'It depends what you mean by harm. I think he's too old for you.'

  'He isn't thirty,' she protested, 'not as old as you.' 'What's that got to do with it?' he snapped. 'I don't happen to have questionable designs on you.'

  'I never for a moment imagined you had!' Sulkily she tilted her chin, while wondering why she felt so depressed. Closely she scanned his hard face, the lean, tough body which had proved over and over again its limitless endurance at sea. Suddenly she was aware of a deep admiration which she felt bound, if only because of their old feuds, to hide from him. Yet he had taught her so much that if she had anything else to learn she would rather it was from him. Despite the way she constantly questioned his authority she had to admit he was nearly always right about most things.

  As she became conscious of how intimately she was regarding him, her cheeks went pink and she dragged her eyes away from his. A peculiar kind of tension was mounting rapidly between them, driving her to say hurriedly, 'You'd better take me home. It's getting late. Grandfather . . .?

  He nodded curtly, with a last quick glance at her averted face. 'He's another feature in your life that will have to change.'

  As he drove her back to the straggling town, then through it to where her grandparents lived, they were both silent, busy with their own thoughts. Outside the modest cottage, overlooking the sea, the car had no sooner stopped than her grandfather was there, con­fronting them.

  'A fine time of night this is to be coming home!' He glared from Zoe to Reece Macadam angrily. 'I went to the yard, but you weren't there. Where've you been, Zoe?'

  Taggart Kerr, Zoe's grandfather, was a huge man with flowing white hair and a beard to match and a pair of snapping black eyes. His temper was renowned throughout the district and most people were slightly afraid of him. Only Macadam stood up to him, but Zoe doubted if Macadam had ever been afraid of any­thing or anyone in his life.

  He said now. 'It's my fault, Taggart. I kept Zoe talking.'

  'What about?' Taggart glowered, as Macadam went casually to help Zoe out. He watched suspiciously as Macadam kept his arm around the girl. He didn't know Macadam left it there because he could feel Zoe shak­ing. 'What about, man?' Taggart repeated.

  Macadam looked him straight in the eye. 'Nothing that need concern you,' he replied evenly.

  'Don'l tell me my granddaughter is no concern of mine!' Taggart exploded. 'I demand an explanation!' Zoe shrank closer to Macadam, drawing comfort from his strength as she glanced at her grandfather nervously. His temper was rising. Macadam had a temper, too, and she warned to avoid a head-on clash, between them. They were liable to wake half the town, if they once got started.

  'There's no explanation to give, Grandfather,' she intervened quickly. 'I was working late and fell asleep. Macadam was passing the office with Miss Findlay and came to investigate. He brought me home, that's all.'

  Taggart's great bushy brows drove together, but he appeared partly mollified with the half-truths of Zoe's brief statement. 'You ought to get your locks changed, Reece, andrefuse to give her a key. You're her employer, you shouldn't allow her to stay there until all hours. She's beginning to grow up and there'll be gossip.'

  Macadam's eyes glinted and his hold on Zoe tightened. 'What sort of gossip had you in mind, Taggart?' he asked silkily.

  The old man, still almost as steel-nerved as the man who faced him and without discretion when it came to his beloved granddaughter, bellowed, 'About you and her, man! People will talk about anything, given half a chance.'

  'Only if they have minds like yours,' Macadam retorted furiously. 'The first man I hear saying any-thing about Zoe won't know what hit him, and that includesyourself!'

  Zoe felt something startling leap through her, but hadno time to decipher what it was. 'Please, Macadam,' she said sharply, pushing him away when she wanted to cling to him, 'thanks for the lift, but don't say anything more. I don't want you threatening my grandfather because of me.'

  'I'd do more than threaten,' he muttered dangerously, his breath suddenly warm on her face. Frowning, he gently touched her pale cheeks. 'Are you sure you'll be all right?'

  Immediately suspecting he was taunting Taggart indirectly, she jerked back. 'Of course I'll be all right. I can fight my own battles.'

  'Some of them,' he conceded, getting in his car. 'Fortunately there aren't many men around like your grandfather.'

  Before Taggart could recover sufficiently from such an insult to reply, he was gone, leaving them both star­ing after him, if with very different expressions on their faces.

  'I don't want you coming home at this hour with Reece Macadam again.' As if hoping to regain what little face he had lost, Taggart lost no time in turning on Zoe as soon as the cottage door closed behind them. 'Did you hear what he said to me, the way he spoke to me? If his uncle had still been alive—God rest his soul, I would have gone immediately and had a word with him!'

  Zoe, retrieving her composure, merely shrugged. 'It's only after eleven, for goodness' sake! And if you don't be quiet you'll have Gran down.'

  'At least she's a good woman, quiet, respectable and God-fearing, not like some!'

  'Oh, Grandfather,' Zoe glanced at him, grinning wryly, 'I'm not that far beyond hope, surely?'

  'I have to watch you because of your father,' Taggart retorted sulkily.

  Zoe sighed helplessly. She could barely remember her father, since she had only been a few years old when her parents had both died in an accident. 'You talk about being God-fearing,' she muttered, 'yetsurely no Christian would be forever remembering how his son displeased him. It wasn't as if my father had committed any crime!'

  'No crime!' Taggart's voice rose wrathfully. 'Didn't I do without to give him a good education, and what did he do? He married a foreign student as soon as he got his degree, instead of coming back here to support your grandmother and me in our old age.'

  'You know I'm sorry about that,' said Zoe, 'but it's not as if you've ever had to do without.'
/>   'On top of that,' continued Taggart, as if Zoe hadn't spoken, 'your parents gave you your outlandish name, which we've all had to live with.'

  Zoe, in fact, loved her name, but she hoped her grandfather would never discover it was the Greek name for life. Gran knew, but they had a pact not to tell him, asthey feared it would hurt him too much. While he might pretend not to, Taggart had practically worshipped his son, his only child.

  Zoe's mother, a Greek orphan, had been rejected by the distant cousin who was her guardian, after she had married a penniless Scotsman. Taggart Kerr had washed his hands of his son, too, so that the first few years of Zoe's life had been spent in the south of England, where her clever parents had both taught at a famous university. It wasn't until after her parents were killed that Zoe met her Scottish relations for the first time.

  At seven, she had delighted and comforted a sor­rowing Taggart by showing an immediate understand­ing of boats. She had told him, in her rather precocious manner, which had confused her grandparents at first, how her father had owned a small boat on the Thames and had taken her sailing from almost the day she was born. Taggart's delight had increased when she had formed a remarkable affinity with the boatyard where he had worked all his life. Every chance Zoe had gotshe had been there with him, soaking up knowledge like a sponge, over the years developing an expertise which astonished him.

  Reece Macadam's uncle, Farquhar McNeill, was a hard man with little time for children, but he had tolerated Zoe, liking her spirit. When he died he left her a hundred pounds. He hadn't been married and had left everything else he possessed to his nephew.

  Farquhar's sister, Reece's mother, had married the son of a rich Edinburgh family. Zoe had overheard him talking to her grandfather one day.

  'They didn't think Fiona good enough. I imagine their fine feathers will be ruffled again when they dis­cover her son is joining me.'

  'As long as the joke doesn't rebound on yourself, Farquhar,' Taggart had warned sourly. 'I wouldn't like to see any young upstart wreck a business you've taken years to build.'

  Zoe hadn't known what they were on about, but Gran had explained. Casting a quick glance at Taggart, she said quietly.

  'Farquhar's nephew, Reece Macadam, is very keen to come here and learn everything about boats. He wants to build them and repair them, you see. He's a very nice young man, I believe, with a good education.'

  'If it's done him as much good as it did Angus,' Taggart grunted, 'he'd be better off without it.'

  Gran had been a teacher before she married Taggart and it had been she who had insisted that their son Angus went to university—something Taggart didn't allow her to forget.

  'He doesn't mean anything,' she had often told Zoe. 'It's just when the bitterness comes over him that he can't help himself.'

  From practically the first day he arrived, Reece Macadam had made changes at the boatyard. He was a tall, broad young man, whose air of terse authoritymade him seem older than his twenty-four years. Zoe had been barely nine. As time went by Reece turned what had been a modest little business into an ex­tremely substantial enterprise. He achieved what his uncle proudly liked to call miracles, but not without some dissent from his uncle's right-hand man, Taggart Kerr.

  Taggart had fought Macadam almost every inch of the way, those first years, before he was ready to admit grudgingly that the younger man knew what he was doing. Zoe remembered their many battles, with her grandfather's booming bellows heard halfway over town, and Macadam's clipped, uncompromising replies. Macadam usually managed to control his own not unformidable temper, but occasionally he wasn't above losing it.

  Zoe recalled one incident in particular, because it marked the beginning of the antagonism which still still existed between Macadam and herself. That day Macadam had been furious. Taggart had done something quite contrary to his orders and he demanded an explanation. When Taggart, a huge, Biblical figure, with his flowing white locks, began bellowing, Reece Macadam had shouted him down. Language had been used which had coloured the air, making even the raucous seagulls fly off.

  Zoe had been told by her grandmother never to interfere, but unable to stand it any longer, she had flung herself fiercely at Macadam, her small face red with indignation, ordering him wildly to stop bullying her grandfather.

  Macadam with his superior strength had thrust her aside, without even sparing her a second glance. 'Can't you leave that damned brat of yours at home for a change, Kerr?' he'd snapped.

  'Don't you bloody well swear at me, Macadam!' Zoe had shouted.

  He had picked her up then, by the scruff of her neck, and thrown her over his knee. With the entire boatyard looking on, he had laid into her, ignoring her loud screams, while Taggart had practically danced with rage and threatened everything, including his resigna­tion.

  When he had let her go Zoe had quietly hated him. She wasn't sure that she still hated him, but from that day on it had been Macadam. No one could ever re­member her calling him anything else. And, strangely, she was the only one ever allowed to call him Macadam. To the men he was cither Reece or Mr Macadam, according to their age and length of em­ployment. The men accepted that Zoe addressed the boss differently, it was doubtful if now they ever gave it a thought. Neither had Zoe, at least, not until recently, when, to her astonishment, one afternoon, she had found herself staring after him as he left the office, whispering his Christian name experimentally, as though she had an irresistible urge to try it out.

  As a faint flush coloured her pale cheeks, Taggart asked suspiciously what she was dreaming about. Suddenly coming back to earth, she apologised quickly.

  'I'm sorry if you've been anxious, Grandfather, but let's not quarrel any more,' she pleaded. 'I promise I'll try to let you know if I'm going to be late again. Now how about a cup of tea?'

  'You'd better put a wee drop of something in mine.' Taggart's pious tones suggested she had put him through a far greater ordeal than she realised.

  With a wry smile, Zoe departed to the kitchen and plugged in the kettle.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Taggartwent to bed still muttering, and Zoe followed suit. Next morning she was at the office early. Macadam was already there, talking to Ian Graham. They had their heads together over a drawing board in the design department.

  'Good morning,' she called as she went past the door.

  'Oh, hello, Zoe,' from Ian. 'See you later.'

  Nothing from Macadam but a dark nod. She hoped it wasn't an indication of his mood for the rest of the day.

  She continued upstairs to the main office. The clean­ers had been through, leaving everything neat and spotless. After hanging up her coat she went and opened the windows to get rid of the smell of dis­infectant. Mrs Scott must think they were all suffering from some contagious disease, the way she used it!

  The mail hadn't arrived yet, but there was plenty to be getting on with. Despite this Zoe lingered by the last window she opened. The morning sunshine beckoned as it played on the waters of the harbour. Wistfully she gazed down on it. March in the Western Highlands could be a very stormy month and during a spell of fine weather like this it suddenly seemed a crime to be stuck indoors.

  She glanced across to where some men were working on the boats moored to the wharfs. There was the sound of machines starting up from the big sheds on the shingle above the high water mark. Zoe sighed with envy, wishing she could be out there with them.

  Resolutely she turned her back on temptation to sit down at her desk. Carefully she removed the cover from her typewriter and inserted a clean sheet of paper. If Macadam was out of temper it would never do for him to come and catch her idling! Sometimes she wondered what she was doing here. It had been Macadam who had insisted she trained as a secretary after she had disagreed with Gran about going to university. It had nothing to do with her dad, she had argued, she just didn't feel cut out for an aca­demic career.

  'I'd rather work at the boatyard, like Grandfather,' she said.

  'Call it sex discrim
ination or what you like,' Janet had declared, 'but you know Mr Macadam would never employ you.'

  'Grandfather's retiring soon. There'll be a vacancy.'

  'No!' said Macadam, when she approached him. 'Definitely not.'

  'What shall I do, then?' she had glared at him, her manner suggesting he had deprived her of the only job she was ever likely to get.

  'Take that self-pitying expression off your face for a start,' he had snapped.

  'I—I know as much about boats as any of your men,' she had spluttered, outraged.

  'So you do,' he admitted, doing one of his quick turnabouts which never failed to confuse her. 'I tell you what, Zoe Kerr, go and get some clerical training and I'll give you a job. A trial run, anyway, to see if you suit me.'