by Susan Napier
'And the accident occurred...how?' he enquired delicately, when he had elicited the date of her injury and subsequent visit to the clinic. From his tone she could tell that he had drawn the same conclusion as the doctor in the clinic. She wasn't going to be able to get away with claiming she had got it caught in a door.
'It wasn't exactly an accident,' she muttered warily, having seen Ryan stiffen into alertness when she had mentioned his birthday. He was now fingering the scar on his lip, and she decided that it was pointless to prevaricate any longer. 'I-I hit someone,' she sighed.
'Oh?'
'Yes. Me!' Ryan announced tightly. He looked furious at being made to feel guilty. 'She underestimated my hard-headedness, didn't you, Jane? A big failing of yours-underestimating your opponents...'
'I still knocked you flat on your back,' she flared. 'Yes, but at what cost?'
'It was worth it!'
The doctor cleared his throat and opened his cavernous black leather bag. Jane blinked rapidly, telling herself that the tears in her eyes were because of the pain. Ryan swore under his breath and moodily poured himself another coffee.
'I'll retape your hand but I want you to strictly follow orders this time, or you're going to end up needing that surgery your doctor warned you about,' Dr Frey instructed Jane gravely. 'As it is, this renewed inflammation is going to set back your recovery. So from now on, Miss Sherwood, please leave the doctoring to the experts.'
In spite of Dr Frey's ultra-gentle touch, by the time her hand had been rewrapped Jane was in real tears, and Ryan was ominously controlled as the doctor took his leave.
'Don't worry, Graham, I'll make sure she doesn't behave so irresponsibly in future...'
Jane just had time to surreptiously scrub at her eyes with the corner of the sheet before he swooped back planting himself down on the bed and caging her against the pillows with his strong arms.
'You shouldn't have implied you have any control over my behaviour,' she began, with a pathetic attempt at her former haughtiness. 'I'm perfectly capable of looking after myself-'
'You can say that? After last night?' Ryan said, piercing her with a look that made her flush and clutch the gaping neck of the oversized robe. 'Why? Why go to such lengths to hide it from me?' He laughed grimly. 'No, don't bother to answer, I think I know. Did you hear what Graham said? You could have caused permanent nerve damage-and all because of your damned inflexible Sherwood pride! Your father never taught you to recognise your own limitations, did he, Jane? You'd rather cripple yourself than admit to a simple case of human weakness!'
He ran a hand through his damp spiky hair and down over the back of his skull, shaking his head incredulously. 'I still can't believe you took such a risk. What in God's name possessed you?'
'Obviously you did!' Her acid retort was flung at him without thinking, and they both froze as the literal truth of her heedless statement sank in.
'I-I didn't mean-' Jane began to inch backwards against the pillows as Ryan lowering his arm, studying her with eyes that transmuted from angry blue to a sensuous blue-black.
She was breathing in light, quick gasps, high colour back in her pale cheeks, her thick black eyebrows clashing in defiance of the secret excitement glimmering in her wide-eyed gaze. The throbbing in her left hand had dimmed to an extent that she was reawakened to the numerous other, more pleasurable aches in her body, the subtle reminders of how thoroughly she had enjoyed his possession.
'So I did,' he murmured softly, towering over her. 'And what's done is done, isn't it, Jane? I can't very well unpossess you...’
He cupped her chin and brushed a thumb over the dampness in the shadowed hollow under her eye.
'And nor, I think, would you want me to,' he added huskily. Although there was a masculine smugness to his certainty, it wasn't the offensive, gloating triumph of an enemy over a vanquished foe, and Jane's heart fluttered in her chest.
'I-'
His thumb flirted over her patrician cheekbone to slant across her trembling mouth. 'Don't! Don't lie, Jane. Let there at least be honesty between us about this.'
He bent and replaced his thumb with his mouth. He kissed her, not voraciously, devouringly, as he had kissed her all through the night, but softly, sweetly, seductively ... almost forgivingly. A morning kiss, full of such delicate promise that Jane was bewitched with a bewildered yearning. She felt his hand slide under the lapel of her robe and shape her warm breast, gently exploring the stiffening peak. She might have found the strength to defy his passion, but against his tenderness she had no defences. No man had ever considered her worthy of tenderness.
'Oh, yes, it was good for both of us, wasn't it, sweetheart?' he whispered, sipping at her lips. 'Spectacularly good. So why should we fight it? Maybe it's time to stop looking back and start looking forward.'
'To what?' she asked, her mind blurred by the addictive sweetness of kisses that were far more potent than any drug.
'To what we can do for each other.' His voice lightened to a sexy, teasing drawl. 'After all, I did promise the doctor I'd look after you...'
Years of self-denial prompted her instinctive reaction. 'I don't need-'
'Of course you do--we all do at some time in our lives,' he told her, lifting his hand from her breast to comb the tumbled waves off her smooth brow, arranging them in a dark frame around her serious face. 'And you're more needy than most, sweetheart ... or you wouldn't have been so quick to sell yourself last night.'
A scalding sense of shame swept over her. She wanted to tell him that he had paid a great deal too dear for what had been given freely, but that would give far too much away. 'It wasn't like that-I was angry-'
'I know, so was I,' he soothed her, with a honeyed understanding that was even more seductive than his kisses. 'Because all the time we were mouthing insults at each other I was imagining what it would be like to have you beneath me in bed.' He stilled her restless movement by weaving his fingers into her hair, trapping her head on the pillow.
'Do you think I haven't realised that you only took the money for spite? You've got far too much pride to play the whore for me or any other man. You went off with Dan because I'd pushed you too far and you wanted to twist a knife in my guts, and things got out of hand ... ' His mouth twisted into a cynical line. 'But that's OK. I know how these things can happen. I'm intimately acquainted with the subtle ways that revenge can suborn the soul...'
His cobalt eyes seemed to blaze with an inward fire as he gently manoeuvred her forearm so that her injured hand lay across his large, flat palm.
'I have a serviced apartment on the beach at Mission Bay,' he said quietly. 'Small but with all the built-in luxuries you could ask for, and very private, no one need know where you are, if you want to handle it that way. If you like you could move in today.'
It took her a moment to work out what he was saying. 'Are you asking me to live with you?' she croaked.
'I don't live there; I have a house of my own. The apartment would be yours,' he corrected her scrupulously, 'for the duration.'
For the duration?
'But I'd visit as often as was agreeable to both of us, and probably stay overnight fairly regularly, so naturally I'd take care of all your living expenses,' he clarified.
But Jane was still grappling with his original statement.
For the duration? He was talking about the duration of an affair!
Her pulse went wild. 'You want me to be your mistress?' she gasped.
He shot her a reproving look through thick, dark lashes. 'That's a very old-fashioned term. I have in mind a more modern partnership, one of mutual pleasure and mutual independence.'
'More modern, maybe, but no more equal,' she said shakily, while inside elation soared above her shock. So he didn't just want a torrid sexual fling-he was laying down the parameters of a relationship. And, typically for a dominant male, he expected it to be all on his own terms. She strove to feel insulted by his offer. 'I wouldn't exa
ctly be as independent as you, would I? Not if I'm living in your flat on your money...'
His eyes glinted. As an experienced negotiator he was a skilled interpreter of the nuances of language and behaviour. Alert for the slightest hint of complicity, he noted that Jane's use of the present tense altered her answer from rejection to mere objection. Neither had he missed the tiny flare of her nostrils, nor the uneven rise and fall of her magnificent breasts. The lady was definitely intrigued by the bait. It only remained to reel her in.
His fingers curled lightly round her bandaged hand, caging it without pressure. 'If you still want to get a job after your hand heals, that's up to you-I'm sure you'll no longer have trouble finding one. I just want you to know that there's no need to worry about how you're going to survive in the meantime, or to fear any reprisals, whatever happens between us.'
'What are you saying?' she whispered, afraid to believe the message implicit in his words.
He shrugged with quiet resignation. 'I'm calling off the dogs, Jane.'
Instead of relief she felt a gush of pure, unadulterated terror. To believe she would have to trust him without reservation...
'Why?' She pushed him away, scrambling off the bed in a flurry of towelling, and this time he made no effort to stop her. 'Why now? If this is another one of your mind games ... ' she faltered to a halt, wrapping her arms around her waist to stop them reaching out to temptation.
He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender as he slowly rose to his feet. 'No games. Just the truth-that we make good enemies but even better lovers. And one night of hot-blooded passion hasn't doused the flames, has it, Jane? Until this thing burns itself out neither of us is going to get any peace.'
She could tell him that it was never going to burn itself out-not for her. 'And then what? Then we become enemies again?'
His face was sombre, moody. 'No, that's over. You won't get Sherwood's back, but I won't pursue the debts any further.'
He crossed to the black case that Carl Trevor had left and opened it, taking out a cordless electric razor and a clean shirt. Looking at his broad, unrevealing back, Jane was struck with a sudden burst of insight.
'I could never quite work out why you came after me the way you did. Even considering what I'd done, it seemed like overkill... You didn't just want to ruin me, you seemed to want to obliterate my identity.'
She moved until she could see his tense profile. 'But it was never just me, was it?' she said, slowly feeling her way with every word. 'There was something else, something to do with my being a Sherwood. You always made my surname sound like an insult. It was my father, wasn't it...?' She wondered why she hadn't made the connection before-perhaps she hadn't wanted to compete yet again with the memory of her parent. 'You knew my father-'
'And to know him was to hate him?' he interrupted, with a cool amusement that only strengthened her suspicions.
'Did you hate him? Why? What did he do?'
He crossed to the mirror over the dressing table and switched on the razor. 'Leave it, Jane.'
'No, I won't.' She followed him and stayed his hand before it reached his chin, meeting his gaze steadily in the mirror. 'You asked for honesty from me, Ryan ... don't I get any in return? Are you going to make me find out for myself?'
His eyelids drooped and his voice took on a husky intonation. 'Do you know, that's the first time you've used my name this morning? Last night you couldn't seem to stop yourself saying it...'
She almost wavered. 'Don't change the subject.'
His mouth thinned. 'He's dead. It's nothing to do with us anymore. Whatever he did, it's over and done with-'
'He was dead yesterday, too, but it still mattered to you then,' she persisted over the burr of the razor. 'Why won't you tell me? Do you think I'd be shocked? I wouldn't. I know what kind of man my father was.'
'He was like a Rottweiler when he scented blood. He sank his teeth in and never let go.' Ryan sighed and clicked off the razor as he turned around. 'Rather like you.'
The comparison cut her to the quick, and Jane lifted an imperious chin in a characteristic attempt to hide the hurt, but before she could dredge up a defensive reply he touched her cheek in a tacit apology.
'I suppose his tenacity was the one thing I admired about him,' he said ruefully. 'All right, Jane, I suppose I owe it to you to tell you what you want to know after you've dressed.'
He tunnelled his fingers under her hair and guided her into a kiss that warmed the chill of loneliness from her soul. His mouth was aggressive, but contained none of the repressed anger of the previous night, just a hunger he made no attempt to conceal. 'I have to leave for the office soon and I need to make some phone calls first, so let me shave and make my calls and then we'll talk ...'
Jane stood on the porch of her dilapidated little beach house and watched the wind-tossed seagulls ride the swirling air currents in the sky above Lion Rock. If she hadn't been so greedy for the poisonous fruit of knowledge maybe she would still be in Auckland, living in the hope that Ryan's caring would one day become much more than casual.
But that was purely wishful thinking. The twenty-year-old scar that she had ripped open when she had sabotaged Ryan's wedding could never be fully healed. To Ryan, she would always be the daughter of the man who had murdered his father.
Oh, Mark Sherwood hadn't wielded a knife or a gun, but the impact of his actions on his victim had been ultimately just as fatal as a killing blow.
True to her word, Jane hadn't been shocked by the tale of a crooked home-building deal which Mark Sherwood had set up two decades before; she knew all too well that her father had had little respect for the law where it interfered with his own interests and protected 'fools and losers'.
By his definition Charles Blair would have been a loser, even though as a carpenter and builder he had built up a respectable business, because Ryan's father had been too honest to take his profits and run when the deal had inevitably collapsed. Instead he had tried to honour the promises he had made. As a result he had been bankrupted, and his reputation and means of livelihood destroyed when rumours that he had been using substandard building materials began to circulate. In desperation he had naively confronted Mark Sherwood, pleading for help, and Jane's father had laughed in his face, threatening to produce documentary evidence that it was Charles's embezzling that had caused the scheme to fail.
Charles Blair had died not long afterwards, electrocuted in his home workshop, and rumours of suicide had thrown further shadows over his blackened reputation. His pregnant wife and thirteen-year-old son had been left homeless and destitute after the debts that he had assumed responsibility for had been paid.
While Mark Sherwood had gone on to build a financial empire on his ill-gotten gains, Charles's widow had been trapped in a cycle of poverty, supporting her son and new baby daughter in a hand-to-mouth existence, taking menial positions because of her lack of qualifications and often working two jobs to make ends meet. She was now remarried, but for fourteen years she had struggled alone, haunted by her husband's undeserved legacy of shame, watching her son grow from a secure little boy into an angry young man who had sworn that one day he would be rich and powerful enough to destroy the company that had been built on the ruins of his father's honour.
But by the time Ryan had amassed a sufficient fortune and manoeuvred himself into a position to put his vengeful plan into action Mark Sherwood had been a dying man, no longer at the helm of Sherwood Properties. Unwilling to cause the innocent to suffer for someone else's crimes, as he and his family had unjustly suffered, Ryan had reluctantly curbed his lust for revenge ... until Jane had proved herself as treacherous, deceitful and lacking in moral conscience as her father.
Jane shivered as the breeze whipped across the porch and she turned to enter the shabby kitchen.
She had never had a chance. As soon as Ryan had been once more in a position to attack he had done so without hesitation and without mercy-and who could blame him?
Not Jane.
That was why she couldn't believe that Ryan really wanted her in his life, except as the crowning achievement of his search for natural justice. Maybe it wasn't even conscious. Maybe he genuinely thought that the attraction that had flared between them was worth burying his resentment to explore. But Jane didn't flatter herself that she was so special that he could be persuaded to permanently relinquish the jealously guarded bitterness that had shaped his ambition.
No, it was more likely that by making her his mistress he would be completing his revenge. He couldn't make Mark Sherwood suffer, but he could spit on his grave by stamping both his company and his daughter as his own personal possessions.
Jane had spent too much of her girlhood loving a man who had been incapable of appreciating the preciousness of her gift. She had no intention of wasting her adulthood in the same way.
So, like the coward that she was, she had let Ryan leave the hotel that morning confident of his impression that she would fall in with his arrangements. Then, sitting on the unmade hotel bed in her tacky green dress, she had picked up the telephone and reluctantly called Ava.
And, to her surprise, found her secret bolt-hole.
CHAPTER SEVEN
FOR breakfast Jane boiled herself an egg obligingly laid by one of the clutch of bantam hens that scratched a living in the bach's huge back yard and set the kettle on top of the wood-burning stove. As she ate at the scrubbed kitchen table she inhaled the rich, yeasty scent of baking bread that swelled out of the oven.
In two short weeks she had come to greatly appreciate the simple pleasures of life, just as she had begun to enjoy the challenge of bringing domestic order to the chaos that had greeted her on arrival.
