by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
It wasn’t too late to call a halt. Bending to pick up a dry twig and throw it into the sea, she watched the small stick fall, lifting in the breeze now and then, until it landed on the flat rocks at the base. A wave came over and when it sucked back the rock ledge was empty.
She could still walk away without any serious damage done.
If she was a coward.
Keir had been watching her, his eyes hooded and speculative, but when she straightened up he was on his feet, tiger-striped by the sun through the leaves. ‘If it’s any consolation,’ he said drily, ‘it hasn’t happened like that to me again, either.’
‘It is some sort of consolation,’ she admitted with gritty frustration, ‘but I resent the—the mindlessness of it.’ She thumped a furious hand on the railing. ‘What is it, anyway?’
It was just a rhetorical question, a way to use up some of the adrenalin that seethed through her, but Keir laughed quietly, almost grimly, and said, ‘Most scientists seem to feel it’s to do with the balance of chemicals in the brain.’
‘Oh, really!’ Anger, quick and cathartic, flagged her skin. ‘I resent that, too. I’m more than just a collection of hormones and chemicals. And even if it’s true, what sets them off?’
‘Who knows?’ His mouth crooked in a smile that held something of amusement but more of irony, he caught her hand and lifted it to his mouth.
Hope froze, her whole being focused on the place where his lips met her palm, concentrating so intently that the only sounds she heard were the unsteady thunder of her heart and her quick, ragged inhalation when his tongue traced across her sensitive skin. Tendrils of need uncurled from the skin under his mouth and wound through her, tightening in her breasts before diving down to the point between her thighs where passion flowered. She wanted to arch her body against his, she wanted to stretch beneath him and take from him the strength and heat of his body—she wanted everything…
‘That’s your heartline,’ he said softly against her hand. ‘And this is your lifeline. You’re shaking, Hope.’
‘I know,’ she said raggedly.
‘I never forgot you. You still take up far too much room in my mind.’ He stopped and stared at her, pale eyes glittering in his tanned face. ‘And you didn’t forget me.’
Sweat trickled down Hope’s back, gathered in beads across her temples. Somewhere close by a bird screamed, the harsh sound closely followed by a liquid melody she barely heard; both calls were blocked by Keir’s words—brusque, emphatic, angry—tumbling inside her head.
‘I didn’t forget you,’ she whispered, and knew there’d be no turning back now. The reckless violence of her response convinced her that she had to surrender, sate herself in what he offered before she could at last leave him behind. Forbidden excitement stirred her senses, sang through her veins, spurred on her responses. She should be exultant, but it was terror that gripped her.
No, not terror—just fear of the unknown. She had nothing to lose.
‘Someone’s coming. Let’s go,’ Keir said on a raw note, turning away.
He’d taken three strides along the path before Hope realised that he wasn’t going to wait for her to reassemble her shattered poise. Swallowing, she dragged in a couple of shallow breaths before setting off after him.
Keir glanced over his shoulder and slowed.
‘I’m right behind you,’ she said, and immediately wished she hadn’t spoken, because her emotions ran in a husky current beneath the words.
A group of people strolled towards them, laughing, calling out. Keir took Hope’s elbow and eased her to one side so they could pass, then released her.
‘There’s a colony of koalas in these trees,’ she remarked when she could once more trust her voice. For the next ten minutes she pointed out anything she thought might be of interest to him, and quite a lot that probably wasn’t.
It gave her time to recover, although she caught sardonic comprehension in his eyes when she indicated Double Island Point far to the north and informed him that it was a volcanic headland responsible for anchoring the splendid northwards sweep of Cooloola Beach and Rainbow Beach.
‘Have you seen the coloured sand cliffs?’ she asked chattily.
‘No.’
‘Oh, you should! They’re very impressive. And Sunshine Beach—’
‘Hope, we’re both New Zealanders,’ he said mockingly. ‘Why would we go to see beaches? We have enough of our own.’
‘Then you must go up Lake Cootheraba,’ she hurried on. ‘It’s a great trip. The water in the river is so heavily stained with tannin that the reflections are wonderful.’
He said crisply, ‘I plan to see the lakes one day.’
A sneaked glance at his face revealed nothing but a relaxed interest in the bush and the scenery; he began to ask about birds they heard, and Hope tried to answer as though that kiss had never happened.
Perhaps to him it meant nothing.
No, she thought, he couldn’t hide his response; to him that kiss signified the same limiting, inconvenient obsession that had never died in her.
Eventually they arrived at Alexandria Bay, and strolled along the sand, looking south along the white arc of Sunshine Beach.
They decided to go back over the hill instead of repeating their outward path, and were halfway there in the rapidly heating sun when Keir suddenly grasped her arm to bring her up short, and in a continuation of the swift movement pushed her behind him.
‘What—?’ she demanded, peering around his broad back.
‘I saw something—’ His voice cut off. After a second he laughed quietly. ‘I thought they stayed in the trees.’
‘What?’ She peered past him. A small, dusty-looking koala was shambling towards them, its fur dull, its eyes blinking in the sun, its teddy-bear charm worn shabby. Uncertainly Hope said, ‘I don’t think they come out in the daytime, and they certainly don’t usually come up to people.’
‘It’s sick, then.’
‘It must be. Oh, look, look—it’s stumbling, poor thing.’
Pathetically, the koala fell, hunching on the dusty ground. Hope started towards it, to be prevented by a ruthless hand around her wrist.
‘Don’t touch it,’ Keir commanded. ‘I’ll ring for help. The rangers will know how to deal with it.’
He took out his cellphone, and within seconds was talking crisply. ‘Exactly where are we?’ he asked Hope, handing over the phone so she could explain.
When she gave it back to him he said, ‘We’ll stay until you get here,’ he said. ‘No, we won’t go near it.’
In a surprisingly short time a uniformed ranger arrived, congratulated them on leaving the animal alone, and within seconds had it safely secured.
‘It’s probably some infection,’ he said. ‘I’ll get it to the vet. Thanks, both of you, you’ve given it a chance.’
His smile at Hope conveyed appreciation of her legs and the respect a man gives to the alpha male’s partner. Gritting her teeth, she smiled back.
Mockery glimmered in Keir’s eyes, curved the corners of his mouth.
‘For a moment,’ he said in a dry voice when the ranger had left them with his precious bundle, ‘I wondered whether he was going to scoop you up and take you away instead of the koala.’
‘I hope the koala is all right,’ she said, taming the snap in her tone.
‘I hope so, too.’
Curiosity made her ask, ‘What’s your favourite animal?’
‘Cats,’ he said. ‘I like their independence and their single-minded determination to get their own way. What’s yours?’
‘Cats, too.’
He smiled at her, and her heart flipped. ‘So we have that in common,’ he said quite gently. ‘And we’d better get going; it might be what passes for winter here but the sun’s hot.’
Back at her place, he switched off the engine, but before he could speak the Petrie children appeared at the end of the drive, fizzing with eagerness.
Abby announced importantly, ‘Mum says co
me for lunch, Hope. We’re having a barbecue, and she said if the man wants to come, too, he can, ‘cos we need all the help we can get.’
Australians were famed for their hospitality, and never more so than to strangers; at that precise moment Hope considered it a vastly overrated quality.
Val Petrie, the children’s mother, arrived behind them. ‘I didn’t put it exactly like that,’ she said to her offspring, and directed a smile at Hope. When she transferred it to Keir, the older woman’s gaze widened in involuntary tribute to his uncompromising masculinity.
After the introductions Val said, ‘Keir, we’d like it very much if you’d come for lunch, too. And, in spite of my sports-mad kids, it’s not because you’re a good batsman, although this is the equivalent of a test match.’
Keir’s charged charm blazed forth in his smile, further dilating Val’s eyes. ‘I’d like it very much,’ he said. ‘What time does this test match start?’
‘The men have just come in from fishing, so we’ll eat some fish and the prawns with salad, and then get going. Come up now, if you like.’ Val’s eyes gleamed with laughter. ‘It’s always nice meeting Hope’s friends, especially when they play a good game of cricket.’
Keir’s mouth tightened, but his voice was smooth and amused. ‘I’m making no promises,’ he said.
At ten o’clock that night Hope and Keir walked down the Petries’ driveway and along the short stretch of footpath to his car. The exotic, disturbing musk of jasmine flowers floated in the sultry air, mingling with the faint, ever-present tang of eucalyptus.
‘Did you enjoy the evening?’ Hope asked.
When Val had suggested they stay for dinner Keir had lifted his brows at Hope, and at her nod had agreed.
He said now, ‘Very. They’re a pleasant bunch. It would have been nice if we’d beaten the team from Bundaberg, though.’
‘Competitive to the end,’ she said, smiling.
‘That’s me.’ His voice was level.
In spite of the best efforts of the home side, the hard-fought test match had been won by the visitors. Afterwards the men had turned sausages and chicken and more delicious fish on the barbecue, to the tune of excited laughter and shrieks from the pool. They’d talked about fishing and football and politics and whether haute couture was serious or just a big con job, and whether New Zealand would ever become an Australian state.
A typical Sunday night, completely transformed by Keir’s presence. Hope had wondered whether he might not feel out of place, but she should have known better. He hadn’t courted popularity, yet within minutes he’d fitted in. Men, she knew, were acutely conscious of status, and they’d taken one look at Keir and accepted him as worthy of respect.
And the women had looked at him with open appreciation that marked his height and his wide shoulders and long legs, his lithe male stance, and the vital essence of masculinity that radiated from him like a dark flame.
As for the children—well, his prowess with the bat had reduced the boys to hero-worship, and he’d been targeted by one three-year-old girl who’d flirted shyly with him for the first part of the evening and spent the second half in his arms, sound asleep.
All in all, he’d been a resounding success and charmed the pants off her friends.
Hope wondered why she was so irritated.
‘What was the weather like when you left Auckland?’ she asked too abruptly, breaking into a silence that had assumed a prickly significance.
‘Wet. Cold.’ His expression told her he knew what she was doing, but he went on, ‘It’s hard to believe it’s winter here.’
It still amused her when the locals shrugged into jerseys and sweatshirts. ‘Queenslanders would die in a typical southerly. Mind you, so would I now.’
Although they weren’t touching, his closeness echoed through every singing cell in her. If this, she thought mordantly, was a mere chemical reaction, it was a miracle someone hadn’t found out how to bottle it. They’d make their fortune. She felt truly alive—alive and aware, and eager for something she’d never experienced.
It was a dangerous sensation, one she had to control.
Swallowing, she said in a bright, unconvincing tone, ‘I used to envy kids who could laugh with their parents. Is that the sort of family evening you had when you were a boy?’
He stopped by his car and looked down at her, his mouth twisting in his dark face, his eyes half closed. ‘Something like that,’ he murmured. ‘I had a very ordinary, standard childhood. My parents loved me; my mother was the classic stay-at-home who spoiled me and my father always had time for me. I grew up, worked hard, and here I am.’ His voice altered, deepened. ‘And here you are.’
He turned her gently into his arms and looked down into her face. The erotic scent of the jasmine lapped around them, filling her head with fumes, but it was Keir’s touch that transformed the tension she’d been suffering all evening into a lazy, drugged hunger.
‘You’re so beautiful,’ he said, his voice harsh. ‘Glowing and golden—a summer woman, with summery eyes and a husky summery voice, and a laugh like liquid sunshine.’
Yet he didn’t kiss her—or not where she wanted him to. Instead of the fiery passion Hope expected—craved—his mouth touched her forehead gently.
‘You even smell of summer,’ he murmured. ‘Sunshine, jasmine and just a hint of barbecue…’ He kissed her temples, and the soft lines of her lashes, and the tip of her nose.
Charmed, lulled, mesmerised, she lifted her seeking face. His mouth settled briefly on one corner of hers, traced the outline in a series of light kisses that left her increasingly hungry.
Astonished and embarrassed, Hope heard herself make a sound in her throat, half-growl, half-purr. She felt his smile against her skin, then that tormenting, tantalising mouth found the edge of her jaw under her ear, and he nipped the satin skin there.
It didn’t hurt, but shock jerked her backwards. Not far, however, for his arms contracted and she was pulled into the vital strength of his big, aroused body, held there while his possessive mouth took her famished kiss and returned it.
Locked together, they kissed in the friendly darkness until Hope could no longer think, until all she could feel was a vast, compelling urgency that rode her with fearsome insistence, more necessary to her than her own breath.
The noise of a car missing a gear on the hill finally broke into the swirling, heated cocoon of desire that enclosed them. She breathed Keir’s name into his skin, and wondered at the blurry, disconnected sound of her own voice.
He said in harsh, impeded tones, ‘I’ll walk you to your door.’
‘Yes,’ she said thinly, and went with him into the yard and along the path to her door.
‘Sleep well,’ he said, waiting until she was inside with the door safely locked between them before striding back to the car.
Disappointment sawed through her. Standing well back from the windows, she watched him through the screen, every cell in her body tortured with frustration. How could he shut down that intense, demanding passion so abruptly?
Easily. Four years previously he’d kissed her and excited her, courted her and made her feel beautiful—and then, night after night, week after week, month after month, taken her home.
The headlights flashed a moment; she shielded her face with her hand, hoping he hadn’t seen her through the window. Striving to tamp down the seething hunger that prowled through her, she listened as the hired car purred slowly away.
Only when she could hear nothing more did she turn and walk into the tiny bathroom.
A vicious twist of her fingers took the cap off the bottle of cleanser. Almost shivering, she patted the liquid over her hot face.
Four years ago she’d been little more than a schoolgirl. Her friends had spent their evenings fighting off their boyfriends, but Keir had treated her with a leashed courtesy she’d innocently taken to be respect.
God, she’d been such a baby!
She wiped her face and stared unseeingly at her
reflection. Had she missed an opportunity tonight? If she’d asked him in, would he have come?
‘But you didn’t ask him,’ she told her reflection irritably. ‘And why are you talking to yourself in the mirror? Perhaps you should get a cat.’
She pulled a face and stripped, tossing her clothes into the basket. Uneasy, still possessed by a raging need, she showered, turning the cold tap onto full and letting the water play over her until she began to shiver.
The seesaw of decision-making flung her earthwards again. The sensible thing to do would be to refuse Keir’s invitations, make sure she never saw him again.
Yet that traitorous hunger played devil’s advocate. Almost wrecking her wrist with a savage jerk on the shower controls, she stepped out and began to rub herself dry.
She didn’t want to be sensible. She wanted to experience what Keir offered, the hazardous—and temporary—promise of sexual fulfilment.
And freedom, she reminded herself, from this feverish need.
‘Oh, why not say it? You want Keir Carmichael,’ she said aloud. ‘You lust after him, you eat him with your eyes, you want to go to bed with him, you want to know what it’s like to feel him inside you. You’re completely hung up on the man, and you have been ever since you met him.’
Ever since he smiled at you at your first grown-up party, a prim inner voice scoffed.
Her vigorous towel strokes slowed, stopped, as flames licked through her skin, through secret inner pathways, through every sinew, every cell—a heat that carried the seeds of its satiation.
She wanted him so much she ached with it.
Was this how her mother had felt about her father—this physical compulsion to give and give and take and take?
Shivering, she finished drying herself off. Yes, she had only to think of her mother to quench the sudden charge that fired her blood.
But when she’d pulled out her diary she stared blindly at the heavy notebook and wondered whether she was crazy for hoping that an affair with Keir would finally set her free of this dark obsession.
Gritting her teeth, she began to write, only stopping an hour later when she realised that she’d strayed into fiction, and that the scene unfolding beneath her racing fingers was so incendiary it almost smoked off the page.
