by Robyn Donald
‘Yes.’
It hurt to breathe. ‘So you knew who I was when—?’
‘When we made love. Yes.’ He was watching her with aloof calculation, as though none of this was at all important to him.
Rowan’s fists knotted at her sides. Pain and anger exploded through her, swamping everything in a rage of betrayal. ‘Get out,’ she said in a soft voice that had Lobo on his feet and growling. ‘Get out and never, ever try to see me again.’
Wolfe said, austerely remote, ‘I’m sorry for everything I and my family have put you through, especially for bringing back memories you’d probably hoped never to revisit. I’ll leave you to the solitude I interrupted. Goodbye, Rowan.’ He held out a hand.
Made witless by shock and pain, working on automatic pilot, she stretched out hers. He lifted it and kissed her fingers, and released it, saying with no warmth in his voice, ‘Good luck. No doubt I’ll be seeing your name in the newspapers often. You have a great talent—keep refining it. And if there’s anything I can ever do for you, you have only to ask me.’
It was that final formal offer that froze her into silence. With Lobo pressed against her legs she watched him go, her whole being stormed by unbearable humiliation, the mark of his kiss branded into her skin.
Into her heart.
Numb and speechless, she stayed in the workroom when the helicopter landed on the beach to take him off, stayed there as a couple of men took out the dinghy and navigated the Circe out of the little harbour.
Only then, when the colours of sunset stained the sky scarlet and gold, did Rowan walk from the workroom to her house. The first thing she saw there was her father’s dressing gown, hanging on the doorknob of the spare bedroom. She picked it up with shaking hands and lifted it to her face, at last giving way to great sobs that tore her heart into tatters.
CHAPTER TEN
‘ROWAN, why do you want to wear that same shirt?’ Bobo asked, frowning. ‘I mean, I’m perfectly happy to lend it to you again, and it does look wonderful on you, but now you must be able to afford…’ Her voice trailed away.
Rowan gave her weak smile. ‘Humour me,’ she said. ‘It’s a sort of good luck charm.’
Her agent’s frown cleared. ‘Oh, because everything sold last time? You superstitious thing, you! Take it—it’s yours. It looks better on you than it ever did on me,’ she added generously. ‘Not that you need good luck—what sells your stuff is your creative instinct and your technical brilliance and that other intangible and mysterious quality that only the best artists have. Do you want the bustier as well?’
‘No, thank you, I’ve bought a camisole,’ Rowan said with a smile that hid, she hoped, her apprehension.
‘I must say,’ Bobo chattered on, ‘I really wondered whether you’d made the right decision, branching out into bronze figurines, but they are magnificent.’
For six months Rowan had worked long, exhausting hours, pouring her heart and her skill into this new medium, and the solo exhibition she’d mounted was a multi-media one, part-sculpture, part-pottery.
‘But it’s a gamble that’s more than paid off,’ Bobo said, squinting at herself in the mirror. ‘And of course there’s the prestige thing. Although you’ve earned huge kudos for the pottery, somehow people take metal more seriously. Darling old Frank’s going to rave in the newspaper again.’
‘How do you know? He might hate them.’
‘He’s already told me he thinks they’re wonderful,’ Bobo told her happily, waving her mascara wand. Pulling the standard face, she carefully applied a layer to her lashes. ‘He was ecstatic at the preview, and he’s massively respected, which is great for those of the populace who like to be told what to buy. As well, of course, he really does know what he’s talking about.’
Rowan, who cared for only one person’s impressions of the showing, nodded and slid the gold and black shirt over her new, expensive black silk camisole, tucking both into the slim black skirt.
Would Wolfe come? She knew he’d been sent an invitation—the gallery owner had added him to his list after the last showing. Butterflies—no, bats—had been picketing her stomach for days.
Defiantly she reminded herself that if Wolfe didn’t come she’d know it was definitely over, so she could carry on rebuilding her life without him. During the past six months she’d realised that, like her father, she’d only ever love once, but that didn’t mean she’d wither away.
At the moment her work seemed a dreary substitute for the man, but eventually this aching, empty heart must heal.
Surely…?
Since that last scene she hadn’t seen Wolfe, hadn’t heard from him. She’d told him she hadn’t wanted anything more to do with his family, and, unlike Tony, he’d taken her at her word.
As months passed her anger and humiliation had faded as she’d accepted that, like her, loyalty had driven him to sacrifice his own advantage for a deeply loved parent.
He’d lied; so had she.
Loneliness had bitten deeper, hardening into passionate regret when she’d remembered the way he’d cared for her, her relish in his keen, incisive intelligence, the potent sexuality that had enthralled her, until eventually she’d found herself wishing he’d ignored her bitter rejection.
Each day she’d bought a newspaper, at first so that she could search for his mother’s name in the death notices. When it didn’t appear she’d hoped Laura Simpson had found some sort of peace and renewal—and still kept buying, addicted to the articles about Wolfe Talamantes that appeared regularly.
He certainly wasn’t eating his heart out for her; he was busy taking the world by storm.
Struggling to lose herself in the supple promise and defiance of clay and the more complicated lure of bronze, she’d tried to reassemble the shattered shards of her life into something sturdy and worthwhile, forcing herself to begin building a circle of acquaintances. Approaching the sculptor who’d lent her his equipment and helped her with the technical aspects of converting her clay models into bronze had been the first step, but not the last.
Yet although burying herself in work had helped her get through the long, dreary months, Wolfe had taken up residence in that precious sanctuary too—whatever she did, wherever she was, he stayed with her.
She still dreamed of green eyes flecked with gold, of a man who bestrode the night like a dark angel. In her sleep she heard Wolfe’s voice and felt his hands on her skin, and each morning she woke longing for a love that would never be hers, a love she channelled into the clay models she’d converted to bronze.
For the rest—well, she functioned. Wolfe had eased her demons when he’d believed her; ironic that she’d learned to love him before he’d learned to trust her.
A few days after his departure she’d received a letter from his mother.
I’m so sorry. Wolfe has told me everything, and I can only ask you to forgive us for hounding you so unmercifully. Although there is no excuse for what Tony did, please believe me when I say that until the accident there was no sign of such deviance in him. Knowing the truth has reconciled me to his death. I know you have lost enough through his behaviour to make his name—our names—a horror to you, but Wolfe tells me that you have a compassionate heart and so I hope in time that you can even manage to think kindly of us—perhaps even of Tony, who caused you so much pain and fear.
She’d wished Rowan every good fortune, and said she was hers, Laura Simpson.
So Wolfe had said she had a compassionate heart. The compliment meant so much it frightened her, because eventually he’d put her out of his mind. Lust was a chancy thing—ignore it for long enough and it died.
But love was a different kettle of fish.
Work was no longer the sole focus of her life, but she struggled stubbornly on because surrendering to grief would at last give Tony the power his damaged brain had so craved.
Summer had arrived with a fanfare of trumpets, blue and gold and green, alive with the harsh, shrill music of cicadas and the night calls o
f kiwi and moreporks, the day lyrics of tui and little grey warblers.
Rowan had picked new dwarf beans while pohutukawa flowers dropped in crimson carpets around the trees, clothing the water with colour that slowly drifted away on the tide. When an occasional yacht anchored in the bay she had despised herself for the wild hope that saw her sprinting across the room to pick up binoculars with shaky hands—and for her intense disappointment when not one was Circe.
Now, in Bobo’s flat, she was dressing for another exhibition. Would Wolfe come?
Get real.
Why should he? she thought, applying the cosmetics she’d bought that day with a careful but unpractised hand while the bats in her stomach whirled and flew and waved their picket cards, and taut anticipation warred with common sense. He was probably on the other side of the world, swashbuckling another million dollars into his bank account.
She looked with over-bright eyes at a trembling mouth and brilliant cheeks that owed nothing to cosmetics.
‘You look—great,’ Bobo said, after another keen glance. ‘Right, let’s go.’
People crowded into the gallery, talking, laughing, eyeing each other, quite a few even looking at the exhibits.
‘Everyone’s here,’ Bobo told her gleefully. ‘And lots are buying.’
Rowan cradled a glass of champagne, trying not to look too obviously for a black head above the crush.
‘Everyone who’s anyone’s here!’ Georgie confided later, sleek and satisfied and beaming. ‘Have to say, Rowan, I wondered if you knew what you were doing when Bobo said you were sculpting, but by God you’ve made a real breakthrough. They love them! And so they should.’
Rowan kept looking, but as the evening wore on she had to accept that Wolfe wasn’t going to arrive.
She thought she’d prepared herself for it, but cold, bone-deep pain ached through every cell in her body. It made no difference that she was mourning a love she’d never had, that she and Wolfe had shared no more than a violent, wholly sexual passion.
‘Rowan?’ Bobo’s voice from behind, but oddly uncertain.
Rowan summoned a smile and turned. ‘Yes?’
And froze as she met greenstone eyes in a face carved from granite. A pulse of joy so intense she almost staggered surged through her. The strength and urgency of her emotions shivered across her skin, screwing her nerves to an unbearable pitch.
‘You already know Wolfe,’ Bobo said in a rush as she looked from one to the other. ‘I’ll get you something to drink,’ she told him, and slid away into the crowd like a rabbit confronted by a wolfhound.
Rowan didn’t see her go. Her first incandescent relief was flickering, fading with the renewed beating of her heart. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, barely above a whisper, but he heard her.
‘I recognised the scar,’ he said, flicking open the catalogue to show her the photograph.
A male torso she’d called Love. And there, just below the shoulder, was the scar she’d never seen, the one she’d only ever touched when they made love.
Her eyes searched his face, meeting nothing but unyielding determination in his eyes, in his features, in the ruthless line of his mouth.
‘I never found out how you got it,’ she said, wondering whether he was angry with her blatant declaration, or had decided that the kindest thing to do was ignore it.
But if so, why had he come? Fickle hope soared again, lending a fugitive colour to her cheekbones.
‘You never asked.’ His voice was level, without inflection. ‘Tony did it. When he was about ten I caught him playing with my Swiss Army knife, something he was strictly forbidden to do. He’d already cut himself on it twice, but of course he desperately wanted one. I told him off and he got angry and threw it at me just as I turned my back on him.’
She drew in an appalled breath. Wolfe shrugged. ‘He was terrified when it hit me, and ran away.’
‘Wolfe!’ a female voice cried with the sort of enthusiasm that proclaimed a long and fascinating history together.
He nodded at the woman, a redhead Rowan dimly recognised, grasped Rowan’s elbow and said, ‘Sorry, Tessa, but we’re just leaving.’
Still a prisoner of that wild uprising of joy, Rowan went with him as far as the door, but there she suddenly dug her heels in. ‘No, wait—’
‘Come on,’ he said curtly. ‘Let’s get out of here.’
‘Bobo—’
But Bobo was waving from the edge of the crowd, her small face alight with mischief. Nevertheless, Wolfe’s hand dropped.
With stiff politeness he said, ‘I’m sorry. I need to talk to you, but if you want to stay here, we’ll stay.’
After a swift glance at his expressionless face she returned abruptly, ‘I’ll—we might as well go,’ and set off again. He didn’t touch her again, and at the street door she said, ‘I didn’t think you were coming.’
‘You had to make the first move,’ he told her, austerely inflexible. ‘Tony had damaged you enough. I had to show you I wasn’t like him.’
And that was when she accepted with her brain as well as her instinct and emotions that he spoke the truth.
Both were silent until he’d parked in the basement of the huge apartment block and they’d taken the private lift up to the penthouse. Halfway there Rowan asked thinly, ‘How is your mother?’
Wolfe’s shoulders, made even broader by the black jacket and white shirt, lifted. ‘Her doctor isn’t talking miracles, but it seems like one to me,’ he said drily. ‘She’s much better.’
‘I’m glad.’ She couldn’t think of anything else to say.
And once inside the apartment any coherent thought vanished from her mind. Eyes glittering, Wolfe closed the door behind them and turned her gently to face him, saying roughly, ‘I’ve been waiting for this since the day I left you.’
Taut and expectant, Rowan nodded. If sex was all they had, well, she’d accept that. For the present anyway, she thought vaguely, looking into his eyes and floating through clouds of fireflies, of golden sparks glittering in volcanic green air—air the colour of thunderstorms…
She was drawn to him like a moth summoned by the flame, a phoenix following a preordained path to the fire that would kill it and renew it.
Grimly he said, ‘We should talk first.’
But Rowan went into the arms that awaited her, saying his name, the name written in letters of dark fire and ecstasy and danger across her mind. ‘Later. We can do that later.’
Honey sweetness filled her mouth, heat licked across her skin, and sensation drenched her with delight—warm and heavy and indolent, fresh with promise.
‘Rowan,’ Wolfe said softly. ‘Don’t tempt me too far. What I have to tell you is important.’
More important than this? She lifted weighted lids. Behind his stark features she sensed a starving need that called to her with a powerful, sorcerer’s voice.
She smiled.
It was the smile that smashed through Wolfe’s self-control like bullets through tissue paper. He knew they should get the talking over first—he knew that taking her with the finesse of a stag in rut must kill something in their relationship—but her smile answered a need that had eaten away his will power, a hunger he’d never recognised until he’d met her.
Like the first ever summer, like the promise of paradise, her red mouth beckoned with lazy, untamed desire. Between thick, black lashes the topaz glow of each iris was being swallowed by the dilating pupils.
In artless, almost innocent sensuality she turned her lovely face and nuzzled his throat.
She’d taste of Rowan, he thought savagely, every muscle in his big body clenching. And she’d give him everything—the slow, consuming build-up, the swift, agonising rapture, and the gentle aftermath, the satisfaction of sated desire…
God, he couldn’t even control his thoughts any more, much less use them as he usually did, to distance himself from the importunate demands of his body.
‘I dream about you,’ she murmured drowsily. ‘Wi
ld and free and dominant. Wolfe, take me there…’
The husky, slurred words set him alight. He had to stop this, and stop it now! Mercilessly crushing his hunger, he prevented himself from sliding his hand across the lush, warm curve of her breasts and down, down to the welcoming haven between her legs. ‘Do you know exactly what you’re asking for?’
Her eyes were gleaming jewels between her long lashes, her mouth a soft, red incitement, the cream silk of her skin flushed. He noticed with a black, hopeless fury the tiny mole on her left shoulder, and more than anything in the world—almost more than he wanted to take her—he wanted to kiss that mark.
The extent of his hunger shocked him, as it had each time they’d made love. Although he wanted her this side of madness, he resented her wild, sweet woman’s power over him.
‘Mmm,’ she whispered. Lifting a boneless hand, she splayed fingers across his heart. With her tongue she followed an invisible line across his throat, murmuring softly, helplessly, as though she found him exquisite to taste.
It was the most primal of claimings. Racked by an aching chill that wiped the sensuality from his body, Wolfe realised that her wandering, ravenous mouth had followed the path an assassin would use to cut his throat.
‘Rowan,’ he said harshly, pushing her away with hands that shook, fingers that would leave marks on her skin, ‘Rowan, damn it, listen to me!’
His angry voice banished that enchanted languor. Shocked, Rowan forced her eyes open. Wolfe’s arrogant features were emphasised by an icy intensity in his gaze that stopped her brain from functioning.
She could smell him on her skin, taste him in her mouth, feel his potent masculinity in every nerve. Shame roiled through her in a bitter, painful tide. Oh, God! What had she been doing? Curling herself around him like a cat on heat?
So appalled she wanted to die, she turned her face away and covered it with her hands.
‘It’s all right,’ he said more gently, but he put her away from him with determination. ‘I didn’t bring you here to drag you into bed like some sex-starved pirate intent on taking the first woman he’s seen in six months.’
