by Susan Napier
‘Lovers are friends, Jane.’
She flinched.
‘Not always,’ she denied. There had been nothing friendly about their sexual encounter in the hotel. And James—he had never mixed sex with friendship, either. As far as he had been concerned making love to Jane had been just a shrewd business move, an attempt to cement her loyalty.
‘Have you had many?’
Her eyebrows shot up haughtily. ‘Friends?’
‘Lovers.’
‘One or two.’ She tried to sound blasé and to her chagrin he took her literally, thereby guessing the truth.
‘Well, I didn’t take your virginity so I guess that makes me number two,’ he said teasingly. ‘Was I better than the other guy?’
She jumped to her feet, gesturing towards the carrots with a shaking hand. ‘Those need to be weeded and thinned out or their growth will be restricted,’ she said, quoting the gardening guide she had consulted that morning.
‘I take it that’s a “yes”!’ he called after her as she retreated hastily back into the house.
God, he was infuriating, she thought now, as she found a box of old clothes to sort through, most of all when he was right!
If only she could figure out his true motive for inflicting his presence on her. If it wasn’t revenge, if he felt genuine remorse for reducing her to her present circumstances, surely he would have granted her her plea to be left alone?
And if he had come here to seduce her, why didn’t he just get on with it with his usual relentless efficiency, dammit, instead of playing this drawn-out game of cat and mouse?
That first, bewildering night had set the scene. Ryan had the unique ability to tease her, annoy her, irritate her with his ‘take charge’ bossiness, only, in the next breath, to confuse her with such tender caring that she was in danger of believing in miracles... Then, just when he had her on the verge of surrender, aching for him to ruthlessly take advantage of her heightened vulnerability, he would withdraw, leaving her hollow with loneliness and seething with physical frustration.
Also, he had a way of looking at her—just looking—through half-closed eyes that reminded her of those heated hours they had spent together in that hotel room and the way he had looked at her then—all fury and wild desire. And once the memory was roused it was infuriatingly difficult to dislodge from her consciousness.
In this she was her own worst enemy. She should never have allowed him to continue to perform those intimate personal services—helping her dress and undress, brushing her hair each morning and night, dressing her wound—but she had been unable to deny herself the exquisite torture of his touch. She was an intelligent woman; she could have found a way around her temporary disabilities if she had really tried. Instead, while she had whined loudly at him for curtailing her freedom, a wicked part of her, a primitive throwback to preliberated times, had secretly wallowed in her helplessness.
It had to stop!
The situation was more innocent yet potentially far more dangerous than the one from which she had escaped. She could imagine the screaming headlines if the Press found out that Jane Sherwood had the millionaire tycoon who had caused her financial ruin acting as her unpaid domestic slave. They would come up with all sorts of kinky scenarios to explain the bizarre set-up—and they wouldn’t be far wrong—she thought with a frisson of excitement at the memory of some of the deviant desires that Ryan aroused in her breast.
Oh, God, what if Ryan had planned for the story to leak to the Press? He was quite capable of such Machiavellian cunning. But no. She hastily dismissed the idea. For it would be Ryan’s reputation that would suffer most if they were embroiled in a sex scandal that implied he was some kind of S&M freak who enjoyed playing a submissive role.
She was still brooding on the alarming possibilities when there was a sharp knocking on the front door. Assuming the worst, she opened the door warily, but it was no sleazy journalist lurking on the sagging porch.
‘Is Ryan in?’
Jane stared at the tall, skinny, sulky-looking redhead in the skin-tight acid-green dress who stood tapping a sandalled foot on the cracked boards, oozing hostile impatience. Parked haphazardly next to the four-wheel drive was a sporty convertible, its engine still ticking.
‘Uh, yes.’
‘Good.’ Without waiting to be invited, the young woman brushed past Jane into the house, her green eyes darting curiously about, widening at the sight of peeling paintwork and faded furniture.
‘Where is he—in here?’ She headed towards the hum of the fax machine in the living room.
Jane felt her blood begin to simmer. How dared Ryan invite a strange woman to her home? Especially a beautiful, long-legged waif who made Jane feel like a clumping Amazon.
‘No, he’s out the back, digging in the garden,’ she said sourly.
‘The garden! But Ryan hates gardening!’ The statement came out shrill and accusing.
Jane smiled into her incredulous face, enjoying a petty sense of revenge on both of them.
‘I know. Isn’t he a darling? He just can’t seem to do enough for me!’ she trilled, earning herself a vitriolic glare from kohl-lined eyes as her visitor rushed to find the back door. Her coltish grace made Jane realise that under the sophisticated make-up the waif was younger than she had first appeared—much too young for a hardened cynic like Ryan Blair.
Cradie-snatcher! she thought balefully as the girl ran towards Ryan, the long red locks—which could only have come from a bottle—flouncing down her back as she called out his name.
She was only slightly mollified by the dismay on Ryan’s face as he rose to his feet, a clutch of wispy carrot plants dripping from his large hand. So...he hadn’t been expecting a visit from his little totty!
A moment later he dropped the carrots as the girl launched herself into his arms for a hug that made Jane’s bones ache. They fitted together with the ease of long-standing intimacy. Jane folded her arms across the tightness in her chest as the pair began an animated conversation, the girl’s thin arms gesticulating wildly and Ryan’s body language surprisingly defensive. Good! She hoped he was having a great deal of trouble explaining himself!
He saw Jane still standing on the verandah and slung his arm across the girl’s narrow shoulders, tugging her back towards the house in spite of her obvious reluctance.
‘I hope Melissa wasn’t rude. Sometimes she tends to act first and think later when family matters are at stake,’ he said, coming up the steps.
‘Melissa?’ Jane echoed faintly as the truth hit her. She tried not to gape as she compared the sulky, slinky creature in front of her to the vague memory of a plump brown-haired sixteen-year-old trailing Ava down the aisle. No wonder the hostile green eyes had seemed so familiar. Although she had never met Ryan’s sister she recalled Ava describing how excited Melissa had been about being a bridesmaid for the first time and how much she had loved her frothy dress.
Ryan was digesting her ill-concealed shock. ‘Of course...who did you think she was?’ he asked curiously.
Jane stiffened. ‘I had no idea, since she didn’t stop to introduce herself,’ she said coldly, to hide her chagrin.
She was so busy grappling with the implications of Melissa’s arrival that she allowed herself to be hustled into the kitchen where Ryan calmly set about the ritual of morning tea.
‘Jealous, Jane?’ he murmured in her ear as he moved past her to place the kettle on the stove.
‘In your dreams!’ she muttered, haughtily ignoring his knowing smile, aware of Melissa’s resentful regard.
‘Oh, yes—frequently...’ His soft words were accompanied by a brief resting of his hand on her hip, ostensibly to move her out of the way so he could reach the mugs on the shelf behind her.
‘You still haven’t been formally introduced, have you?’ he said as they all sat down at the kitchen table. ‘Jane Sherwood, my sister Melissa, who’s an aspiring model—’
Melissa’s head jerked back. ‘I’m not aspiring. I already am a
model!’
‘Part-time—’
‘Only until my career takes off. As soon as I get more jobs than I can fit in with my lectures I’m dropping out. I can always go back to university later—’
It was obviously an old argument. ‘But you won’t. It’s much harder to get back into studying after years away from it. I don’t know why you can’t continue to fit your modelling around your lectures.’
‘Because a modelling career doesn’t last very long—’
‘So much more reason to have other qualifications to fall back on.’
‘So you have to strike while the iron’s hot, make the most of your opportunities when they occur. If I want to succeed I have to make myself available when photographers want me to be available, not the other way around.’
‘What do you think?’ Ryan asked Jane unexpectedly.
‘What’s it got to do with her?’ snarled Melissa, tossing her head in a swirl of fire.
‘Absolutely nothing,’ said Jane flatly. ‘It’s your life. What you do with it is entirely up to you.’ She looked across at Ryan. ‘Don’t let anybody tell you any different.’
She could see that Melissa was torn between the desire to use the comment to support her own views and the equally strong desire not to agree with anything Jane said.
‘Troublemaker!’ said Ryan. ‘Here—’ he dunked a straw into Jane’s mug. ‘Drink your tea. Jane wanted to be a dress designer but she let her father bully her into business,’ he told his sister.
Again that flicker of confusion as Melissa frowned at the dressing and tape on Jane’s hands. ‘I don’t see why I should be expected to feel sorry for her,’ she burst out, gnawing on her pouting red lips. ‘Or why you had to move in with her. I couldn’t believe it when I found out where you were—’
‘I’ve already explained all that.’
So that’s what they had been discussing so heatedly in the garden. Jane would have traded her last cent to have heard his explanation!
‘But—’
‘Melissa!’
The quiet thunder only slightly subdued the girl’s rebelliousness. ‘I only wanted to ask why it had to be here!’ She cast a disparaging look around the kitchen, much as her brother had done several days before. ‘At least up the hill you’d have tons more room and all the mod cons!’
‘Up the hill?’ Jane frowned in puzzlement.
The breath hissed through Ryan’s teeth as Melissa said sullenly, ‘At our place. Why couldn’t you have stayed there instead of making my brother live in this dump?’
‘I didn’t make him do anything,’ gritted Jane, before the true import of Melissa’s words sank in. No wonder Ryan had wanted to shut his sister up! ‘Wait a minute... your place? Are you saying that you have a bach here at Piha?’
Melissa laughed scornfully. ‘I’d hardly call a five-bedroomed house on three acres of headland bush a “bach”!’ It was her turn to frown as she looked from Jane’s blank shock to her brother’s annoyed expression. ‘You didn’t know? You didn’t tell her we had a house here?’ she asked Ryan in a deeply disconcerted tone of voice.
‘No, he didn’t tell me!’ said Jane, feeling just as unhappy as she glared at the culprit.
He had the gall to shrug coolly. ‘Since you were adamant you wouldn’t leave here, it didn’t seem relevant. Besides, technically the house isn’t mine—I bought it for our family trust a couple of years ago.’
‘Not relevant!’ she repeated with outraged shrillness.
‘Well, was it? Would you have accepted an invitation to be my guest while your hand healed?’
‘No! But I didn’t invite you to stay here, either, and that didn’t stop you going ahead and doing it anyway!’ she pointed out.
‘Because you’re too stubborn to admit you need help with everything but the lightest of tasks. I’m not leaving you alone until you can prove otherwise—’
‘Why don’t you just hire a nurse for her?’ Melissa interrupted truculently.
‘Because Jane is my personal responsibility,’ said Ryan, with a faint emphasis that made Jane flush. ‘And as you know, Mel, I always take my responsibilities seriously.’
The quiet implacability of his statement sounded like a warning, although Jane wasn’t sure whether it was intended for herself or his sister. But Melissa obviously possessed a full measure of the dogged Blair tenacity, for while she appeared to let the subject drop she returned to it from different angles again and again, with terrier-like persistence.
‘But it’s mid-term break—you know I only have a week off. If you’re going to be down here you should at least be staying with us.’
Jane could have retreated to her room, but she was not going to be driven even further into exile by this family. If they wanted to discuss their private business then they would be the ones to withdraw. So she sat in silence, her face a mask of haughty indifference as she sipped her tea, secretly fascinated by the interaction between brother and sister.
Ryan was revealing another facet of himself, mild and restrained, as he dealt with Melissa’s youthful dramatics. The deep bond of their affection for each other was revealed in the freedom with which they argued, unconstrained by fear of being rejected or belittled for their beliefs. Even though they sparred vigorously there was none of the bitterness that had characterised Jane’s father’s attacks on her actions and opinions.
It was something Jane had never had, and envied horribly—that easy affection, that wonderful security of knowing that you’re loved whatever you say or do. So she was almost sympathetic when Ryan briefly left the room to check an incoming fax and Melissa rounded on her like a virago.
‘As far as I’m concerned you deserve everything that’s happened to you! If you think you can sink your claws into my brother you’ve got another think coming!’
‘I don’t think there’s much danger of my doing that at the moment,’ said Jane wryly, indicating her damaged hands.
‘I don’t believe that pathetic helpless act for one minute.’ The green eyes blazed fiercely. ‘And I bet Ryan doesn’t, either! He said you were a lying, scheming bitch!’
‘Then you have nothing to worry about, do you?’
Ryan came back before Melissa could think of a comeback but, a few minutes later, she jumped up from the table.
‘Well, if you’re not going to stay up at the house, then neither am I,’ she announced dramatically to her brother. ‘I’m going to stay here with you!’
While Jane gaped at her presumption, Ryan merely leaned against the sink, looking indulgently amused. ‘You—in this dump? Where there’s no running hot water, no television and you have to do your laundry by hand?’
Melissa looked briefly aghast before tossing her head in annoyance. ‘If you can hack it, so can I. I’m driving up to get my things. I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
And with a triumphant look at Jane’s stunned face she flounced out of the house.
Jane recovered her voice. ‘She’s not serious, is she?’ she cried, crossing to the window to watch the girl fling herself behind the wheel of her jazzy yellow car and rev it unnecessarily as she backed into a turn. ‘Does she think I’m running a free boarding house for stray Blairs? It’s ridiculous! One uninvited guest is bad enough. If she comes back you tell her she can’t possibly stay here!’
Ryan shrugged as he put their cups in the sink. ‘Once Mel gets an idea into her head it’s difficult to dislodge it. She’s very big on family togetherness. For a long time I was the father figure in her life, and even after Mum married Steve I was the one to whom Mel looked for primary advice and guidance—consequently she’s rather possessive of me.’
He gave Jane a sly, sidelong look. ‘As soon as she found out I was here with you she came hotfoot to check the situation for herself. For some reason she seems to think I need protecting from your wicked wiles.’
‘Maybe the reason being that you told her I was a lying, scheming bitch,’ said Jane acidly.
‘Ah, well...’ He spr
ead his hands ruefully. ‘Perhaps she did overhear me say a few uncomplimentary things about you in the past.’
‘How did she find out where I was? How many other people know you’re here?’ she asked jerkily, feeling the world she had escaped threatening to close in on her again.
‘Just Carl, Irene—my secretary—Graham Frey...and my mother, of course. As far as everyone else is concerned I’m having a break from deadly office routine at the family holiday home—’
But Jane’s brain had frozen. ‘Your mother?’
He looked at her gravely. ‘There are no secrets in my family, Jane. We’ve always been frank with each other. Mothers tend to worry if they don’t know where their children are, even when they’re adults.’
Oh, God... ‘What did you tell them? How much does Melissa know about me?’
‘Everything.’
‘Everything?’ Jane was appalled; her hands rose to her hot cheeks.
Gently Ryan shackled her wrists and pulled her arms down, preventing her from hiding her devastated expression. ‘I don’t mean the intimate details—that I tried to treat you like a prostitute and you tried to treat me like a one-night stand. I don’t involve my sister in my sex life,’ he said, ruthlessly excising her shame. ‘But she certainly knows the rest—what your father did to ours was always openly discussed in our house, and she knew I was obsessed with getting revenge on him, and then on you...’
She couldn’t look at him. ‘So she knows that it was me—at the wedding—’
‘Of course. My family believed in me, even if others were quick to condemn—they deserved to know their faith was justified. They didn’t agree with my decision to protect Ava by refusing to make a scandal out of your lies, but because they loved me they accepted it and supported me with their silence—even though it strained some of their own friendships.’
‘Oh, God...’ She shivered. No wonder Melissa had looked at her with hatred and contempt.
Ryan’s hands ran up and down the back of her goose-pimpled arms, warming the chill from her skin, pulling her against the solid column of his body. Their height difference was accentuated by her lack of shoes, and Jane’s nipples tightened treacherously against the lace of her bra as her belly nudged his denim-clad hips.
