Murder had been the last thing on her mind, but she was being stupid; Marc was too worldly—and had far too much self-control—to give in to any wild clamour of the senses.
It was her own responses she was afraid of. However, as she certainly wasn’t going to fling herself into his arms and pant, Take me! she’d be safe enough.
But she continued, ‘What about your friend—the person who owns the house? I haven’t been invited.’
‘They’re not here at the moment.’ His hooded blue glance skimmed her face. ‘They work. They know that you’re coming to breakfast, and if it makes you feel better I’ll take you to meet them on the way home and introduce you.’
He sounded thoroughly fed up. ‘That won’t be necessary,’ Paige said uncomfortably, and at last got out.
She could just imagine what his friends would be like—Hawke Bay aristocracy, with children who went to exclusive and expensive boarding schools and a circle of friends as sophisticated as Marc.
Sure enough, the house was luxurious—and superbly decorated. A crawling tension knotted her stomach as he escorted her into a dining room filled with sun and reflected light from the sea below.
‘Sit down,’ he said, indicating a table set with cheerful napkins and china. ‘You look as though you could do with a jolt of caffeine.’
Once she was seated he brought in toast, fruit, porridge and coffee and juice, moving with the confidence of someone who had done this frequently.
Surprised, because she’d understood from Juliette that they had lived in some state—even his New Zealand home in the Bay of Islands had a resident housekeeper—Paige managed to eat a piece of toast and sip orange juice while he demolished a plate of porridge.
With a swift quirk of his lips he said, ‘My father was one of the old school—he firmly believed that a man couldn’t work on anything other than a plate of porridge.’
She smiled. Clearly robber barons had traditional tastes. ‘Mine loved sausages and bacon.’ Her mother had tried to convince him that he’d die of a heart attack. And he had.
But not until he’d been long gone from their lives.
Marc’s sharp scrutiny sent a swift jab of sensation up her spine, but he began to discuss the upcoming election and she relaxed—as much as it was possible when she felt as nervous as though she was perched on the lip of an active volcano.
Eventually he said without preamble, ‘The box Juliette left you is at Arohanui, my home in Northland. In her will she asked that you come to the island and collect it. She wanted you to stay a week there.’
Paige was already shaking her head. ‘No,’ she said huskily. ‘It’s impossible.’
‘Why?’
Impatiently she retorted, ‘I have to look after Brodie.’
He drank from his cup of coffee then set it down. ‘Is that the only reason? Do you have someone who’d object? If so, bring him.’
Paige flushed. ‘There’s no one,’ she said shortly, secretly resenting his indifference at the idea of her with another man. ‘Brodie’s the main reason I can’t come, but I also walk the dogs every morning. You’ll have to post it to me.’
‘It’s not that easy.’
Her voice settled into syrupy sweetness. ‘It’s not too hard to post a parcel, you know. You just wrap it up—possibly the housekeeper could do that for you—and take it to a post office. They’ll do the rest.’
‘Provocation isn’t going to get you anywhere,’ he drawled. ‘The dogs and Brodie can be taken care of.’
Paige looked at him with simmering dislike. ‘I’ve no doubt you can do that, but I need to earn some money until I get a job.’
‘Do you have any interviews scheduled?’
‘No,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘Still, I’m not going to find jobs in Napier advertised in the local newspaper in the Bay of Islands!’
‘I can organise that too,’ he said casually. ‘Most of the local papers will be on the Internet; if they’re not, I’ll get someone down here to look at the Sits Vac while you’re away. Juliette wanted you to come up to Arohanui, and I think it’s the least you can do for her.’
Paige bit back caustic words. And your mistress? Will she be there too?
Instead she spread her hands in bewilderment. ‘What made her think of leaving me something? She couldn’t have had any idea that…that she was going to die so tragically.’
‘I insisted she made a will after we were married,’ Marc said evenly. ‘As for leaving you a memento—why not, for a friend she loved dearly? It’s often done.’
She peered up through her lashes, saw his tanned skin tighten over the thrusting bone structure beneath. He looked completely self-assured, but his eyes were sombre beneath their heavy lids.
Reluctantly she accepted that although he might have hurt Juliette, he could miss her and grieve for a life cut so unfairly short.
The taste of coffee bitter in her mouth, Paige said, ‘I didn’t expect anything from her.’
‘I know. And if you’re wondering why you weren’t told of this sooner, she specifically stated that her bequest not be given to you until two years after her death.’
Startled, she glanced at his face, met eyes as coldly crystalline as the blue depths of a glacier.
‘Why?’ she asked blankly. ‘It seems odd to wait for two years, then ask me to go to Arohanui. She wasn’t a person to indulge in whims, and she didn’t even like—’
‘The island? I know.’ He lifted his shoulders in an eloquent shrug. ‘She would have had a reason. Unfortunately, I have no idea what it was. But I intend to see that her wishes are met.’
Paige stared at the lazily swirling surface of her coffee. Some part of her wished violently that Juliette hadn’t remembered her like this. ‘Do you know what it is, whatever she left me?’
One black brow shot up. ‘No. It’s small, so I suspect it’s a piece of jewellery or some keepsake.’
‘I can’t afford to go,’ she said baldly. ‘I mean it; I haven’t got the money to get there or home again.’
‘That isn’t relevant.’
She bristled. ‘I don’t want charity.’
Marc fixed her with another frigid shaft of ice-blue. ‘She wanted to give you this,’ he said, crushing and blunt. ‘Is it too much of a sacrifice? A week of your time to fulfil the last thing she will ever ask of you?’
Paige scrambled to her feet and faced him across the table. ‘You’re a devious, manipulative swine,’ she whispered.
He rose also. ‘But you already knew that,’ he said, his courteous tone a more pointed sword than any insult.
‘I know exactly what you are,’ Paige said between her teeth.
With a contemptuous smile Marc returned, ‘Whatever you think of me, be assured that I have enough self-control not to force myself on women who don’t want me.’
‘I—I don’t think…I mean, I wasn’t thinking of that,’ she said huskily.
But she had been, and he knew it. Humiliation ate into her composure; she was being ridiculous, because although he might find her attractive his self-control was legendary. She was making too much of this fierce awareness; what did she know about sex? Or the relations between the sexes, come to that? Her last boyfriend had been at high school, and she was that rare and exotic creature, a twenty-three-year-old virgin whose experience was confined to a little mild groping and a few enthusiastic but innocent kisses.
Marc was probably laughing at her.
He said calmly, ‘If it makes you feel more confident, I plan to fly to Australia the day after I drop you off at the island.’ He watched her with narrowed, piercing eyes, yet his voice warmed into a reassurance that sapped her will. ‘Paige, please come up to Arohanui. I’ll fly you up, and you can come back any way you choose to travel.’
Marc examined her pale, set face, despising himself because a ruthless need burned beneath the honest desire to do this last thing for Juliette.
A sardonic twist to his lips matched his emotions. He could do this; he could ma
ster his hunger.
Even as he monitored Paige’s face for clues to her decision he was wondering what made him want her. Something subtler, more enigmatic than beauty, although his eyes appreciated skin like satin and the fine regular features that weren’t particularly memorable—if you excluded green-gold eyes on a tantalising tilt, and a very determined chin.
Not to mention a lush mouth that beckoned with sultry promise in spite of its tight discipline, and a body that hinted of sensuous delights—slender and lithe and rounded. He tried to ignore the inconvenient stirring in his loins.
She was no push-over, but at the moment her defences were almost breached; she looked exhausted, and he resented the protective feeling that gripped him again.
‘Don’t make a big deal out of it,’ he said, and took her cold hands in his, producing his trump card. ‘I don’t know why Juliette made it a condition that you come up to Arohanui, but as she did I’d like to see that her wishes are carried out.’
She shivered, shadows darkening her eyes to a defeated green as she lowered her lashes and looked away, and he knew he had her.
Pulling her hands free, she walked across to the window, her jerky movements revealing her agitation. When she turned back to face him he couldn’t see her expression against the brilliance of sky and sea outside, but the tension in her shoulders told him she’d made a decision.
‘All right,’ she said, reluctance flattening her voice, ‘but I’ll have to organise things. I’m not going if Sherry can’t get the time off to look after Brodie.’
Marc reined in a surge of satisfaction that eroded his control. ‘I can help there.’
She gave him a slanting, rebellious look, but said with polite dismissal, ‘Thank you, but that won’t be necessary.’
A realist, and more than a little cynical, Marc knew that even without his wealth he’d be attractive to the opposite sex, so he was accustomed to women who looked at him and saw the promise of security. Or, at the very least, relished the prospect of fattening their bank balance while enjoying sex with him.
It was, he admitted wryly, unusual to have a woman treat him with barely concealed distrust. Was that why she was such a challenge?
No, he wasn’t that cynical—or that shallow. For some reason she intrigued him at a primal, gut level that had the power to overthrow the checks and restraints he’d imposed on his passions.
‘We’ll see,’ he said levelly. ‘Now, I’m going to have bacon and eggs. Would you like to join me?’
Paige was astonished to feel her stomach growl softly in response. ‘I—thank you.’
‘Sit down and I’ll bring some through—or you can come and watch me cook, if you like.’
‘You can cook?’ She didn’t try to hide her astonishment.
When he smiled her body’s demands changed to hunger of a different sort. ‘Of course I can cook,’ he said calmly, opening the door into a room that turned out to be a kitchen.
Not just any old kitchen, either; this one was a chef’s dream. He stood back to let her through, the courtesy so automatic it meant nothing.
‘And I suppose you can climb mountains without oxygen and fight grizzly bears with your bare hands?’ she scoffed, but she went ahead of him.
‘No, I only tackle lions bare-handed. For grizzly bears I carry a knife between my teeth,’ he said cheerfully.
Paige laughed spontaneously. After a swift, heart-shivering smile, he set about grilling bacon. Paige watched his efficient handling of kitchen tools with something like wonder.
She’d become accustomed to thinking of him as the man who sparked her hormones into a sexual frenzy—and as Juliette’s husband. Forbidden fruit, in other words. His relationship with Lauren Porter had reinforced her view of him as a predator whose only interest outside business was sexual intrigue.
The man deftly cooking her breakfast bore no resemblance to the bogeyman she’d manufactured. And that made him more risky, because she could despise a sexual predator.
An hour later Paige got out of the car and said pleasantly, ‘Thank you for breakfast. It was delicious.’
He glanced at the thin gold watch on his tanned wrist. ‘I’ll see you at nine.’
With a scintillating, seething glance she spluttered, ‘That’s ridiculous. I can’t organise everything in such a short time.’
‘In two hours, then,’ he said inexorably, concealing his keen scrutiny with a veil of long lashes.
Used like that, they were weapons. Fighting their effect, she said stiffly, ‘I can’t promise anything.’
He smiled and said, ‘At ten o’clock, Paige. Don’t worry, I’ll take care of everything.’
Watching Marc taking care of everything was an education in raw power.
Standing at the window, Sherry watched his car leave the car park and said in a stunned voice, ‘Whew! Talk about dynamite. I can see how he got to be a zillionaire!’ She looked self-consciously at Paige. ‘I’m sorry you disapprove of him paying for me to stay home with Brodie.’
Paige continued firing clothes into the only case she possessed—a pack Lloyd had given her one Christmas. ‘I don’t disapprove,’ she said lightly. ‘It’s got nothing to do with me. But won’t your boss object?’
Looking slightly smug, and rather too self-conscious, Sherry shook her head. ‘No. I know I shouldn’t have taken Marc’s money, but he’s not going to miss it.’
It wasn’t a question, but Paige answered it. ‘No, of course not.’ She added more clothes and her sponge bag, wishing with futile foolishness that she had some outfit that didn’t proclaim its provenance—a mail-order catalogue. ‘I hate surprises! I wish you hadn’t told him where I was this morning.’
Sherry flushed and patted Brodie’s back. ‘He’s not the sort of man you refuse,’ she said a little guiltily.
‘I know. Don’t take any notice of me—I’m just angry at being more or less railroaded into this.’
‘Are you sure it’s a good idea?’
‘No,’ Paige said on a sigh. ‘But—well, if Juliette wanted me to go to Arohanui to pick up her bequest, I feel I’d be letting her down if I didn’t.’ She tucked a pair of socks into her sandshoes and zipped up the pack. ‘That will have to do.’
In the sitting room, Sherry sat down on the sofa and smiled at her son. He lifted a small arm and waved it around, cooing as his mother kissed his face.
‘How come you were such great friends with his wife?’ she asked. ‘This dude of yours is seriously loaded; that sort marry their own kind. And usually they make friends with their own kind.’
‘He’s not my dude!’ Paige filled the new kettle. Above the sound of running water, she said, ‘Juliette and I lived next door to each other in Wellington. She was five years older, but she adored kids—she used to call me her pretty little sister, although she was the pretty one. When they moved I cried so much that she promised me I could be her bridesmaid. At eleven that’s a big deal.’
Sherry looked intrigued. ‘You’re right. And she followed through?’
‘Yes, with a week in Paris and the most gorgeous dress.’
And Marc’s locket.
Sherry said drily, ‘So Juliette was loaded too?’
‘I never thought of it, but her family must have been. Her father was in the diplomatic service.’
‘She sounds nice.’
‘She was great—kind and fun. She kept in touch even after she was married.’ Heat stung Paige’s cheeks as she poured boiling water into the mugs.
‘And then she got killed,’ Sherry said sympathetically. ‘That’s tough.’
What was tougher was that for Marc the marriage had been a sham, a marriage of convenience entered into because he’d needed a suitable wife.
‘Yes.’ Frowning, Paige looked around. ‘Now, are you sure you’ll be OK?’
‘We’ll be fine,’ Sherry repeated patiently. ‘How did you get on with the dogs?’
‘Mrs Greig grumbled, but the high school boy next door will do them until I come back.
’ She carried the two mugs of coffee across and sat down on a chair.
Sherry put Brodie down on the sofa to kick. ‘You can’t get out of this, so you might as well treat it like a mini-holiday,’ she said, looking up from rapt admiration of his chubby legs. ‘Heaven knows, you could do with it. You’ve had a rotten spin in the last year. It’ll be warmer up in the Bay of Islands—see if you can get a little bit of tan.’
Paige looked up as a car drew up outside and Marc got out. ‘Time to go,’ she muttered, her heart jumping.
Sherry picked Brodie up and turned to scrutinise Marc. ‘Oh, boy, he really is something,’ she said softly. ‘You be careful, Paige.’
Skin tightening, Paige went across and opened the door.
‘Ready?’ Marc asked.
‘Yes.’
She stood back to let him in, and Paige wasn’t surprised when Sherry, dazzled out of her usual cynicism where men were concerned, proudly handed the baby over to him.
Marc cradled him with confidence, smiling into the little face. For once the baby didn’t deliver the usual roar he kept for strangers. Solemn-faced, he stared up at Marc, before producing a one-sided smile and clenching his fists in an energetic fashion.
‘I think he knows me,’ Marc said, smiling with immense charm.
Clearly dazzled, Brodie lifted an arm and waved it vaguely above his head while he produced soft gurgles.
Sherry nodded briskly and took the baby back. ‘Looks like it. Before you go, I’d better have an address and a phone number—just in case I need to contact you, Paige.’
‘I’ll give you my card.’ Marc pulled a sleek wallet from his pocket and took out a card, scribbled on the back and handed it to Sherry.
She made no bones about reading it. ‘Arohanui Island. Where’s that?’
While Marc told her, Paige watched the corners of his mouth tuck in as he fought a smile. Of course he knew what Sherry was doing—her implied warning wasn’t very subtle.
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