by Robyn Donald
CHAPTER FIVE
ROWAN’S stomach clenched as Wolfe searched her face with impenetrable eyes the hue of darkest jade, so densely coloured they were almost black. His merciless scrutiny stirred something deep inside her.
So he did know who she was, and there was no doubt about his feelings. Yet, although she’d expected him to echo his mother’s attitude, it wounded her acutely to hear the undisguised condemnation in his tone.
Stiff with foreboding, she said steadily, ‘I’ve already told Mrs Simpson what happened with—with your brother. I told her six years ago, and she didn’t believe me. Not only did she not believe me, she blamed me entirely for his death. Why would I want to listen to her accusations again?’
‘She didn’t believe you because your story of not seeing anything was too convenient,’ Wolfe told her bluntly, ‘like your father’s illness and inability to give evidence at the inquest.’
‘He did give evidence,’ she said steadily. ‘It was written, but it was taken by the coroner in the presence of my father’s superior officer.’
‘Both of whom were good friends of his,’ Wolfe said caustically. ‘And who knew he was dying.’
Ignoring this because it was true, Rowan lifted her head. ‘As for his illness being convenient, he died a couple of weeks after the inquest.’
‘I know.’ But his tone revealed no sympathy, no understanding. ‘My mother asked me to tell you she no longer blames you. I doubt if she ever did. She was shattered by Tony’s death, and she intensely regrets taking her anger and misery out on you. And she needs to know the truth because she’s very ill.’
Shame riveted Rowan to the spot as she remembered the lined, weary face of the woman she’d seen in the hotel foyer, and the white hair that had been dark at the inquest. She said hoarsely, ‘I’m so sorry.’ What had Mrs Simpson been doing in the hotel? Waiting for Wolfe? No, she’d been with a group…
‘Will that change your mind?’ When she hesitated, he answered himself with cold, cutting contempt, ‘No, it won’t. I suppose there’s no reason why you should care about her.’
‘That’s emotional blackmail,’ Rowan retorted stormily.
‘It’s the truth,’ he said, stony-faced, watching her with narrowed eyes.
‘It would be useless seeing her because I’ve got nothing else to add, nothing new to tell her. Please go away.’ Her breath rasped in her lungs as she swung on her heel and started along the beach, desperate to leave him behind.
Growling another threat of defiance, Lobo stayed put, reluctantly following only when she called him.
With harsh distinctness Wolfe said, ‘I’m not leaving, Rowan. We have unfinished business, you and I.’
As if to back up his statement, more thunder drummed beyond the horizon. Rowan turned slowly.
Collectedly she replied, ‘You are, of course, perfectly within your rights to shelter here. You were lucky you found your way into the bay. Perhaps in future you’d better listen for the weather forecast. This can be a dangerous coast.’
‘That almost sounded,’ he said with smooth insolence, ‘like a warning.’
In a tone that went from curt to frigid she said, ‘The warning was in the forecast.’ Once again she began to walk away.
‘I’ve reviewed the evidence you gave at the inquest,’ he said, the rasp in his voice more pronounced, ‘and I believe there are enough discrepancies in your story to allow for the police to open the file again.’
Rowan stopped in mid-stride. God, she thought in anguish, would this nightmare never end? She’d been so sure she’d found sanctuary—and now it had been breached by this very powerful, dangerous man. What malicious fate had conspired to bring him to her exhibition at Georgie’s?
But it wasn’t fate that had driven her into his arms, or into his bed! She had to take responsibility for her own weakness.
Swivelling around, she demanded bitterly, ‘Is that going to help your mother?’
The clouds rolled apart and through a rip in their sullen, seething fabric an unnatural light streamed onto him, highlighting the forceful, uncompromising features. A sombre, formidable figure in the midst of radiance, he waited like a keeper of the shadows.
For taut, terrifying moments Rowan stood transfixed, fighting off a clamorous impulse to run. Close at heel, Lobo growled again.
‘Truth is always better than lies,’ Wolfe said.
Still throbbing with profound dread, Rowan returned shortly, ‘I’m very sorry your mother is so ill, but I can’t help her in any way.’ A complex mixture of anger and shame drove her to add, ‘And I’m not going to sleep with you again, so there’s nothing here for you.’
Lobo’s growls erupted into angry barking that sawed across Rowan’s strained nerves. ‘Heel,’ she commanded.
Wolfe hadn’t moved. Coolly, scornfully, he said, ‘I’m not going to touch you. You have one chance of avoiding that interview with my mother—you can tell me exactly what happened.’
Rowan flung over her shoulder, ‘I don’t have to answer any questions. And if I see you on my land again I’ll charge you with harassment and trespassing. Stalking is illegal in New Zealand now.’
She strode off, marching back to the boatshed with straight back and head held high, getting almost to the bottom of the cliff before she heard the burr of the outboard’s engine.
In the shelter of the trees she abandoned any attempt at dignity to race up the narrow path of twisted roots, Lobo hard on her heels. Only when she was close to the house did she stop; with her clenched fist pressed to her heart she watched the dinghy arrive at the sleek yacht.
At least, she thought, he hadn’t known who she was the night they met; she couldn’t have borne that. It would have been the ultimate humiliation if he’d made love to her in the hope of getting information from her.
She turned swiftly away and went into the house, muttering to Lobo, ‘It’s all right. He’s nothing. He can’t do anything.’
Even as she said it she knew she was wrong. Tall, broad-shouldered, with his dark, unwavering gaze and broken nose, his mocking, confident smile and sexy, determined voice, Wolfe Talamantes was very definitely someone—a dangerous, determined someone with the power to make her life even more a hell than his half-brother, because he knew far more about her than Tony ever had.
Sidelined panic kicked her in the stomach, turning her brain to jelly. Although she could keep him off the beach, she couldn’t make him haul anchor and leave the little harbour. He’d found out her address and followed her up from Auckland—was it all going to start again? Did stalking run in families?
‘Don’t be so bloody ridiculous!’ she said explosively.
A couple of loving swipes from Lobo’s tongue as she wiped the sand from his paws comforted her a little, but she had to use gritty determination to shake off her unease. She filled a glass with water and stood staring into it for a moment before drinking.
Then, still buzzing with the adrenalin overload, she went out into the garden. She’d already staked everything against the storm—besides, she wanted to attack, not support. Crouching, she began to haul out weeds from a row of lettuce seedlings. Had Wolfe’s threat to go to the police been empty? But even with the thought barely formed in her mind she shook her head. He didn’t make empty threats.
For years she’d repressed the memories, kept them at bay with her work and the various jobs she’d taken to keep food in her cupboards—jobs that usually involved such hard work that she was able to sleep at night.
Would he leave her alone if she told him that Tony had stalked her, made her life hideous with threats and surveillance?
She yanked a clump of puha from between the lettuces. ‘He wouldn’t believe it,’ she said flatly.
And why should he? Her friends hadn’t; they’d admired Tony’s bombardment of flowers and expensive presents, phone calls and cards and letters, not comprehending how stifled she’d been by the unremitting weight of his obsession. Even her own father, a policeman, hadn’t underst
ood until too late.
Lobo wagged his tail and yawned, showing his splendid set of teeth.
‘Fat lot of good you did,’ she accused. ‘Talk about a washout as a guard dog!’
His grin always lifted her heart, but this time she couldn’t respond. The memories she’d tried so hard to ignore came storming to the surface again, each bearing its load of pain.
What would she do if Wolfe stirred up enough mud to force the police to reopen the files? It wasn’t just her father’s reputation she had to defend. His superior, who’d been wonderful in spite of suspecting there was more to Tony’s death than she or her father were prepared to admit, was still in the force. He didn’t deserve to suffer for his loyalty.
Biting her lip, she attacked a dandelion.
‘All I have to do is stick to the story,’ she said out loud. ‘There’s no new evidence, so they can’t shake me.’
Lobo snorted.
Sitting back on her heels, she tried to smile. ‘I wonder if I chose you because you’re black and tawny like me.’
The dog came over and pushed his head against her shoulder. Obscurely comforted, she gave him a hug as she stood up. ‘No, when you tilted your head to look me over, and then sat carefully on my foot and gave a funny little baby growl at your brothers and sisters, I knew you were the one.’
Grabbing the wheelbarrow’s handles, she steered it between the garden beds and tipped the weeds into the compost bin. After putting the barrow in the car port beside her elderly and fairly reliable motor scooter, she had time to kill half a dozen large snails that were trying to demolish the silver beet before rain pounced again and drove her indoors.
Hours later, dressed for bed, she looked out at a light on the water, small and dim—a watchful, threatening eye in her bay.
If she told Wolfe about his brother’s harassment, would he realise how frightening it had been, or would he simply see it as the overreaction of a lovestruck man? Tony hadn’t said much about his older brother, had never mentioned his name, but the tone of his voice had indicated love and a certain awe.
And Wolfe would have loved his younger brother. He certainly loved his mother. Shivering, she recalled the cold purposefulness in his words, his attitude—and, inevitably, the way he’d made love to her with such fire and passion.
Why did he have to be Tony’s half-brother?
That night she dreamed again, the old dream where a laughing Tony shot her, and woke calling out, with Lobo whining and her face wet with tears.
It had been years since she’d been pitched back into her own private nightmare. She stumbled into the bathroom and waited for the tap to run warm.
‘It was only a dream,’ she reassured Lobo as he pushed against her.
But was it about to start again?
At least there were now laws against stalking, but Wolfe was powerful—no, the police would have to act if she filed a complaint. She washed her face, trying to banish the dream.
It didn’t work. Still shaky, she decided she was in desperate need of a cup of tea, but in her chilly little kitchen, with its window out onto the harbour, she hesitated, letting her hand fall to her side instead of switching on the light.
‘As though he’d be awake!’ she said aloud. However, she made the tea in the fitful light of a sulky moon.
And when it was poured she took it into the dark sitting room and stood at the window. Growling, Lobo got to his feet and paced across to stand beside her, staring down towards the beach as lightning seared the sky.
Rowan quelled a sudden start, because she could see in the bilious flash that there was nothing—nobody—on the beach.
‘Possums again, I suppose,’ she said to the dog, who looked alertly around for the little animals he knew were enemies.
It was ridiculous to make Wolfe into a devil. Granted, he was a man with an effortless charisma that surrounded him like an aura, but he was only a man.
Into her memory there sneaked an image of the way the muscles in his back had flexed beneath the thin material of his shirt when he bent to pull in the dinghy. Rhythmically, smoothly, they had bunched and relaxed, shattering something knotted in the pit of her stomach.
She said through gritted teeth, ‘If he comes above high-water mark again I’ll send him on his way with a charge of pellets in his backside. Size five!’
That was when she remembered the shotgun she’d left in the boatshed.
‘Oh, bloody hell,’ she moaned, furious with herself for neglecting that most basic precaution.
She’d have to go down right now and get it. The combination of salt and dampness wouldn’t be doing the weapon any good, and it was stupid to leave a gun where anyone could pick it up. Her hand stole up to her heart as more memories invaded her mind.
Aloud she said, ‘No one will pick it up because no one knows it’s there.’
But her father had trained her to unload any gun and put it safely away, and to hide the ammunition.
She cast a swift glance at the window. Usually she loved her view, but tonight the crouching trees and sable water vibrated with unseen horrors.
No! She’d worked hard to overcome her fear of the night, and she wasn’t going to let Wolfe Talamantes stir it to life again.
Aggressively setting her jaw, she pulled on jeans and a warm sweatshirt and got into her gumboots. If anyone touched her, Lobo would attack. And, looked at with the cold eyes of logic, the only person likely to be prowling around was Wolfe, and he certainly wanted her alive so that she could talk to his mother. She’d be perfectly safe.
The dog an eager black shadow at her heel, she set off. She could feel his alertness as they slipped beneath the pohutukawa trees and picked their way down the cliff path, illuminated by the moody moon and flashes of lightning from behind the hills.
Inside the boatshed the darkness closed around her in a stifling heaviness. Aiming the torch at the ground, Rowan switched it on. Water glimmered like obsidian, still and shiny, and she could see the blue-black gleam of the shotgun barrel along the joist where she’d left it.
Jolted by relief, she put the torch on the joist and was reaching for the gun when Lobo erupted with a fusillade of barking and leapt towards the entrance, vanishing into the night.
Heart skidding, Rowan snatched up the shotgun and swung around, leaving the torch pointing towards the entrance. Dimly recalling various thrillers she’d read, she scurried sideways as far as she could out of the narrow beam of light.
Above the frantic pumping of her pulses she heard a confident male voice command Lobo to ‘Stay!’ Lobo barked furiously, but clearly he wasn’t attacking.
Shock and paranoia roared into action, fuelling an angry reaction that hovered perilously on the edge of panic.
She took a deep breath and steadied her voice to call, ‘Lobo! Here!’
Still barking, the dog backed around the end of the boathouse into the torch beam. Although Rowan had both gun and dog for protection, the sight of Wolfe’s tall, hard-edged silhouette brought back a sickening burst of memories that swamped everything but the primitive compulsion to run. Frozen by fear, she scrabbled desperately for control.
A fierce light dazzled her as he trained his torch onto her face. Blinking, she shook her head.
‘Put down the gun,’ Wolfe ordered calmly, but the crack of authority in his tone jerked her out of her terrified trance.
Remembering too late her father’s stern injunction never to point even a toy gun at a person, she dragged a breath into her aching lungs and lowered the barrel towards the ground. Growling, Lobo raced down to stand with her. The torch moved closer.
‘Stay there,’ she said thinly.
‘Put down the gun.’
Rowan didn’t move. ‘I feel safer if I keep it where it is.’
‘I’ve got the cartridges.’
Hot rage pumped through her, lending her a spurious feeling of control—rage with herself for being so stupid as to leave them there, and fury with him. ‘Give them back to me right now.�
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‘Not,’ he said laconically, ‘while you’re in charge of a gun.’
It took all of her strength of mind to say roughly, ‘Stealing as well as trespassing, Wolfe?’
The torch beam revealed a brief flash of white, humourless smile. ‘I’ll leave them where I found them when you’ve gone. I don’t trust women who are as careless with guns as you are.’
‘What the hell are you doing on my land? Besides snooping, of course?’ she demanded scornfully, reining in her temper. In the face of his ice-cool composure, losing it would put her at a huge disadvantage.
‘Just looking around,’ he drawled.
He wasn’t, she realised incredulously, even going to try to justify his presence there. Chilled by memories of another man who’d often appeared when she least expected it, she said dangerously, ‘That’s harassment. Any more and I’ll call the police.’ Briefly satisfied at the way his dark brows met above his nose, she added, ‘And don’t ever come back.’
‘Presenting a weapon is also an offence,’ he said on a flinty note that backed up his implied threat.
‘You’re trespassing!’
‘That doesn’t entitle you to wave a gun at me,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m going now. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
Rowan bit back a stinging reply and watched silently as he stepped back into the devouring darkness of the night.
After automatically checking to make sure that no cartridge was in the barrel, she held the shotgun on the point of balance while she switched off the torch. With Lobo in front of her she stood for several minutes until her eyes grew accustomed to the lack of light, then made her way to the entrance, looking around carefully.
Nothing moved. Out in the harbour the light at the top of the mast still glowed like an angry eye. No other light showed; no engine broke the silence. Somewhere out there Wolfe watched and waited.
Old terror, old fears, surged against the barrier she’d built against them. Silently cursing the man who’d reawakened them, she walked up the cliff path.
In the house she locked the gun away and sat down on the edge of her bed, her heart thudding in her chest as though she’d narrowly escaped great peril.
