by Susan Napier
‘What did you say to her?’ she asked hoarsely.
‘You hadn’t told her very much in that one phone call, had you, Jane?’ he said with an infuriatingly unrevealing smile. ‘Rather ironic, isn’t it? First you lie to her about us being lovers when we’re not, and then you lie to her by not telling her we’re lovers when we are. Who were you supposed to be protecting this time?’
‘She wouldn’t have just told you where I was—’choked Jane, fighting a sense of betrayal. She had impressed on Ava that no one was to know her whereabouts, just in case Ryan had been lying about calling off the dogs. Maybe she should have told her friend more, but she hadn’t really expected Ryan to personally hunt her down, not after she had scrawled that brief message to him on hotel notepaper, posting it on her way back to her flat in a taxi for which he himself had prepaid.
‘Not during our first conversation, no. But I can be irritatingly persistent, and extremely persuasive...’
Jane had a sudden mental image of some of the more erotic methods of persuasion he had used on her in that hotel room and scowled.
‘Fortunately you don’t have a phone down here,’ he added purringly. ‘Otherwise I’m sure she’d have rung to warn you she’d let the cat out of the bag.’
More likely it had been scared out! ‘If you bullied or threatened her—’ she began shakily.
‘What?’ Ryan put his cup down, leaning his forearms on the table. ‘What will you do about it if I did? What can you do?’
Exactly nothing and they both knew it. ‘I’d think of something,’ she said darkly.
‘You could try,’ he said amicably. ‘But you needn’t worry. Ava’s a lot less fragile than she used to be. As it happened we ended up having a full and frank discussion that proved enlightening on both sides...’
Jane’s heartbeat accelerated. ‘How full and frank? Did she tell you about Conrad?’
She knew immediately that she had made a mistake. His eyes narrowed. ‘How frank do you think she should have been? And what about Conrad?’
‘I mean...that it was—well, it was sort of Conrad’s idea to let me have a go at doing this place up for them to sell while I was here,’ she improvised hurriedly.
It had been foolish to think that after all this time Ava might have felt impelled into a spur-of-the-moment confession that she and Conrad had fallen in love during the last few months of her engagement to Ryan. That was why Ava had pleaded so hard for Jane’s help the day before the wedding.
Ava and Conrad, her parents’ former chauffeur, had finally stopped fighting their feelings and admitted their love for each other. If Jane hadn’t found a way to stop the wedding then Conrad would have stepped in and done so, but, having met the quiet, lanky young man with his shy smile, gentle way of talking and fear that he wasn’t good enough for the girl he loved, Jane had known that Ava was right when she’d sobbed that her parents and Ryan would make mincemeat out of him.
Jane would have had to be iron-hearted to resist the appeal of the star-crossed lovers, though if truth be told, she had also been angry with them for the hurt they were about to inflict in grabbing at their own happiness at the expense of others’, a resentment that had been inextricably mixed up with her angry defiance of her own emotions.
‘Oh, really?’
She realised that while she had been brooding Ryan had been feeding his suspicion by watching the rapidly changing expressions on her face.
‘Why did you come?’ she asked abruptly.
He raised an eyebrow. ‘Maybe to find out what you did with my ten grand—the cheque hasn’t been cashed yet.’
Trust him to have found out!
‘Only because I haven’t been able to get to a bank,’ lied Jane, her blue eyes stormy. ‘I told you you weren’t going to get it back. As you were so kind to point out at the time, I earned every cent of that money.’
She had intended to hold a ceremonial burning, but somehow she hadn’t been able to bring herself to destroy what was the only physical evidence of their explosive night of passion. The cheque lay carefully folded in her otherwise almost empty wallet, a tribute to the triumph of pride over practicality. It also served as a concrete reminder of the futility of the treacherous, happy-ever-after fantasies that lurked deep in her soul.
‘So you did,’ he admitted blandly. ‘I just thought you might have since misplaced it, that’s all.’
He knew she had no intention of cashing it! Immediately Jane decided to do so at the first opportunity. But she wouldn’t do anything selfishly sensible with it, like reduce some of her debts. No, she would take his damned money and secretly donate the whole lot to a charity devoted to fighting the oppression of women! Let him stew over what she had done with it!
‘Because if you have I could always write you another.’
Realising that he was winding her up, Jane turned her attention belatedly to her cooling tea, only to discover that she had trouble picking it up. The taped fingers of her left hand hurt when she tried to lift the cup by the handle, and if she cradled it in both hands her burned right palm was seared by the heated china in spite of the thick cotton wool padding. With some juggling she managed to balance the bottom of the cup in her left palm, keeping it straight with the guidance of her bandaged hand while she lifted it to her mouth.
‘Going to be difficult, isn’t it?’
‘What is?’ she said, afraid to put the cup down again in case she spilled the contents. She hastily drank some more, pulling a face at the syrupy sweetness.
‘Surviving. I guess it was tough enough doing things with one hand, but Graham says it will be several days before that burn starts to heal. Meantime the dressing has to be changed each day and kept clean and dry so infection doesn’t set in if the blisters burst. You can hardly even hold a cup of tea straight; how are you going to cook, or wash, or clean...in fact do anything around the house?’
‘I can manage,’ she claimed, infuriated by his logic. He was so smug and male, so...whole.
‘But why should you have to?’ he said smoothly. ‘After all, as you pointed out, it’s my fault you’re in this state, and I did promise Ava I’d make sure you were OK. She was most concerned to learn that you’d come down here with a broken hand. You didn’t tell her that, either...’
Her cup crashed down sloppily in its saucer. ‘Damn you, she hadn’t seen the newspapers—I didn’t want to go into all that—’
‘Neither did I, so I didn’t tell her you’d broken it on my face! Didn’t you believe me when I said I was calling it quits? When you come back to Auckland you’ll find I’ve already spread the word that you and I have settled whatever differences we had.’
Jane looked down at her hands as the realisation that had been slowly building over the past two weeks burst, fully-formed, upon her consciousness. She didn’t want to go back. Ryan’s act of revenge had inadvertently given her the chance to start life completely afresh. Yes, she was afraid of her uncertain future, but she was also exhilarated by her freedom. Cut adrift from the stresses and expectations of the past, she could shape her own destiny. She didn’t ever want to go back to being the person she had been—obsessed with success and maintaining control, lonely, driven, profoundly unfulfilled...
She drew in a deep breath. ‘Look, I don’t know why you bothered to follow me down here—’
‘Don’t you?’ He moved around the table. ‘You think I should have accepted your insultingly brief note as the last word on the matter? If you were serious about giving me the kiss-off the least you could have done was to give it to me in person!’
At the mention of kissing her eyes moved helplessly to his mouth and flickered away, but he had seen the brief flash of hunger.
His voice deepened with predatory shrewdness. ‘Or maybe you just didn’t trust yourself to be able to say no to me face to face. Afraid your desires might slip the leash again, Jane, and that we’d end up back in bed together? Is that what sent you scuttling down here?’
As usual he made her
uncomfortably aware of the conflict in her behaviour. Had she been subconsciously delivering a challenge when she had run away? Jane crossed her arms over her chest, shaking her head sharply again, but this time Ryan reached out and caught her pony-tail as it flipped past her ear, winding the silky black skein around his hand, forcing her head to a stop. With his other hand he tipped up her chin.
‘Coward!’ he taunted.
For once she didn’t rise to his bait. ‘Is it so impossible for you to believe that I’m just not interested?’ she asked steadily.
‘Not impossible...’ He dragged his thumb suggestively across her lower lip and watched her eyes dilate and her breasts tremble with a ragged inhalation. ‘Just highly unlikely.’
And before she could argue with the breathtaking arrogance of that he added quietly, ‘Given our history, maybe you’re right to be afraid...but why let the past deny us a chance to explore the unique pleasure that we give each other? Why not let something good come out of the bad, get it out of both our systems...?’
His thumb rubbed at her mouth. ‘You’re a city girl. You don’t have to live like this—you don’t belong out here. Come back with me and I’ll provide you with as much challenge and excitement as you can handle. We both know from bitter experience there are no guarantees in life, but one thing I can promise is that I’ll do nothing more to deliberately hurt you...’
She believed in the sincerity of his words but the promise rang hollow in her heart.
No, Ryan might never hurt her deliberately, but he would hurt her all the same. It was as inevitable as the tide rolling up Piha beach each day that if they became lovers Jane would be the one to suffer most from a break-up. If anything, she felt even less equipped to handle an affair than she had been two weeks ago. This time alone had stripped from her the hard shell of sophistication that she had always worked so hard to maintain.
Becoming Ryan’s lover might temporarily satisfy the yearning of her body but it would only intensify the craving in her soul. He was like an escalating addiction, and the only safe way to escape before she was totally hooked was to give him up cold turkey.
‘Good, you’ll turn around and leave, then,’ she said stonily. ‘Because it so happens that I actually like living “like this”.’ She jerked her pony-tail out of his grip with a fierceness that made her eyes brighten with tears, waving her bandaged hands vaguely in the air. ‘I don’t want to leave Piha and I certainly don’t want to get involved in an affair with anyone at the moment! I just want to be left alone. Is that clear enough for you?’
She was devastated when he didn’t even try to argue. He merely gave her a hard, all-encompassing look, a grim nod and strode out of the house. She watched his powerful car spitting angry stones from the tyres as he turned on the gravel shoulder of the road outside her gate and roared out of her life. Then she sat back down at the table and sobbed her heart out.
Mopping up, she told herself that his giving up so easily had proved her doubts about any relationship they might have had. He couldn’t have wanted her so badly after all. His ego had demanded he track her down but when he found her in her unkempt surroundings looking plain and scruffy, an object of pity rather than lust, he had realised that she was no longer a challenge to either his intellect or libido.
All morning, as she doggedly struggled against her new handicap, she told herself that she was better off without him. She would survive this as she had survived every other setback in her life—alone.
Several hours later she was out in the back garden, tired and sweaty, hunting along the hedge for more eggs, when she thought she heard a strange noise in the house. She put her basket down and moved around the side of the garage, frowning at the sight of a white panel van parked on the sun-burned grass of her front yard, a telephone company logo emblazoned on its side. She walked around the front just in time to see a man in white overalls disappearing through the open front door.
‘Hey!’ Jane shouted, and ran after him, nearly tripping over a woman in the same telephone company overalls who was crouched in the narrow hall, drilling into the chipped skirting board. ‘Hey, what’s going on here?’
‘Hooking you up for phone and fax,’ said the woman, around several screws clenched in her teeth. ‘Your connection to the house checks out OK, but some of this cabling has to be upgraded.’
‘You must have the wrong place. I didn’t order anything. You’ve got to stop!’ When the woman didn’t take any notice Jane gritted her teeth. She still hadn’t got used to the fact that people no longer jumped to comply when she gave orders. ‘Who’s in charge here?’
The woman jerked her cropped blonde head in the direction of the living room where the man had gone, and Jane hurried to confront the culprit. He was setting up a top-of-the-range fax in the corner on an old kauri desk that Jane had devoted her evenings to restoring, scrubbing away the grime of years and rebuilding a fine patina with oil and beeswax. He was young, and aggravatingly unconcerned by her protests.
‘Look, there’s obviously been some mistake—’ If Ava was desperate to warn her that Ryan had discovered her whereabouts she might have ordered a phone, but no way would she have bothered with a fax, let alone such an extravagant model. ‘Have you got a worksheet with you?’ she demanded. ‘I want to know who ordered these things—’
‘I did.’
For the second time that day Jane nearly suffered a heart attack at the sudden appearance of Ryan, striding into the room carrying a large suitcase and a laptop computer. He glanced into the largest and sunniest of the bedrooms, which she had commandeered as her own, and walked into the next one. He set his things down on the faded carpet square next to the heavy oak bed.
‘I need the phone and a separate fax line if I’m to keep in touch with my office. Fortunately, these days I don’t need to be there in person to run things. I can access Spectrum’s mainframe from my laptop and I’ve got plenty of highly competent deputies willing to handle the meetings in my absence. With fax and e-mail I can have their reports sooner than I would have had the hard copy delivered to my desk.’
He made it sound as if he was moving in! ‘Wh-what are you talking about?’
Jane followed, still spluttering, as Ryan calmly skirted the worker in the hall and went back outside to a vehicle parked out of sight on the other side of the panel van—not the sleek Mercedes that he had departed in earlier, but a rugged four-wheel drive that looked well-used but well-cared-for. He placed a hand-tooled boot on the lower rung of the rear bull bars and reached in to haul out another case. Standing behind him Jane was treated to a close-up of faded denim whitening across taut masculine buttocks. He turned and caught her looking, and gave her a smile that made her scalp tingle.
‘Did you think I’d run away with my tail between my legs, Jane?’ She flushed at the sexual connotation of his words and he uttered a gravelly laugh that suggested he had noticed her pink eyelids. ‘Serves you right. But actions speak louder than words, especially to a bullheaded woman like you. Like it or not, you need help right now, and if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed...’
She was still arguing with him when the two greatly intrigued telephone workers tested their state-of-the-art communications system and reluctantly left.
‘You can’t just move in on me like this.’
‘I already have,’ said Ryan. Having ordered his possessions to his liking, he stretched out on the bed he had chosen for his own, grimacing at the dust that rose and the sag in the middle of the creaking old wire weave that barely supported the mattress. ‘Is yours any better than this?’
She refused to answer so he went and investigated for himself, lying out full length on her large divan bed and bouncing his hips a few times. ‘Ah, that’s better. Not much, but better.’ He folded his arms behind his head and looked at Jane, who was glaring at him from the end of the bed. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to swap?’
‘No!’
He looked at her from under dark lashes. ‘Or share?’
/> She jerked her eyes away from that hypnotic glitter.
‘What’s the matter, Jane? Does it disturb you to have me in your bed? Mmm...’ He turned his head and rubbed his cheek against the pillow, sniffing, reminding her vividly of how erotic he had found the scent of their lovemaking.
‘You can’t stay here!’ she said raggedly. ‘I won’t let you—’
‘What are you going to do, call the police and have me thrown out?’ His eyes were bright blue with curiosity. ‘Because that’s the only way you’re going to get rid of me.’
She was searching for a suitably devastating put-down when the phone rang. He groaned and got up to answer it. It was his secretary and he was immediately all business, sitting down at the desk, switching on his laptop and talking as he called up a series of files.
She went out into the kitchen, wishing she could slam things around to express her frustration but prevented by her injured hands. She had to be content with muttering to herself under her breath. By his confident behaviour he was implying that she had expected him to chase after her, whereas nothing was further from the truth. She wasn’t going to take the blame for his predatory sexual instincts!
‘Where’s your vacuum cleaner?’
She jumped. ‘What?’
‘I thought I’d vacuum my room...bed included. Where do you keep the vacuum cleaner?’
‘I don’t,’ she told him with malicious satisfaction. ‘There’s only an old-fashioned carpet sweeper.’ He opened his mouth. ‘And don’t you dare have one delivered or I’ll chuck it in the tide.’
‘Like doing things the hard way just for the sake of it, do you, Jane?’
She looked as haughty as it was possible to do in a slightly grubby T-shirt and shorts. ‘What’s the matter, Ryan, too used to soft living to expend a bit of honest domestic elbow-grease? I don’t think I’m going to need the police to get rid of you; the petty inconveniences of living down here will do it for me!’
He shrugged and turned away and she yelled after him with relish, ‘Just remember you’re supposed to be conserving water and electricity. And you can get your own meals, too. I’m not going to pay the price of your extravagance!’
