Sanchia’s Secret

by Robyn Donald

  ‘We are not “most developers”.’

  ‘I can see that. The houses look…’ Searching for the exact word, she hesitated, then finished, ‘They look right, fitting. And they please the eye. Is this the sort of thing you’d like to do at Waiora?’

  ‘No,’ he said, his perfectly pleasant voice warning her off. ‘Why do you dislike what’s been done here?’

  And for once she’d tried for tact. ‘I don’t dislike it. I’d just prefer it to be left undeveloped,’ she said quietly. ‘Which is stupid, because it’s been farmed for over a hundred years.’

  ‘A bit naïve, certainly.’ Still in that pleasant, intimidating tone he went on, ‘This place was on the market. If we hadn’t bought it and developed it someone else would have.’

  ‘Yes, I know—’

  ‘To keep coastal land undeveloped you need to start working at District Council level to change the system. As long as farmers are forced to sell their land to pay the rates you’ll have development.’

  She nodded. ‘This is lovely—and it will be even lovelier as the years go by.’

  ‘Did it hurt to say that?’

  ‘No,’ she returned shortly.

  His smile taunted her. ‘If you can’t put conviction into your tone you run the risk of being disbelieved.’

  Exasperated, she said steadily, ‘This will be a superb place for holidays. The houses have been built with discretion and that special ambience you get when both architect and designer are respectful of the landscape.’

  ‘And you wouldn’t live here if you were paid to.’ Caid didn’t know why he was pushing her.

  Her green eyes smouldered and the full, passionate lips tightened. ‘Don’t put words into my mouth.’

  Ignoring the flare of desire in his groin, he looked down at her. Something about her drove him wild—perhaps the contrast between her black cloud of hair and her skin, milky white and translucent, accented by those astonishing eyes and that sultry mouth. She walked like a dream—long-legged, lithe and graceful—and she challenged him on the most fundamental level. Cursing silently, he wondered what quixotic folly had persuaded him to give his word she’d be safe.

  He could take her, he thought, trying to detach himself from a situation that was rapidly becoming dangerous. Something in Sanchia’s eyes, in her husky, controlled voice, in the determined way she posted keep-off signs, told him she wouldn’t reject him.

  Not until the barriers came crashing up, and she stiffened and fought, unable to control her panic. Three years ago he’d thought her fear was because she was a virgin; she’d shattered his pride when she’d rejected him, and so he’d let her go when she ran.

  Not now. If she wouldn’t tell him what had happened, he’d have to find out. Her extreme reaction must indicate a terrifying sexual experience somewhere in her past. With the relentless anger he so rarely revealed, Caid decided that once he’d hunted down the man who’d ruined her inherent passion, he’d make him pay.

  At least he knew she wasn’t like so many other women, who looked at him and saw nice packaging backed up by dollars and sex.

  It wasn’t their fault that women had been programmed by nature to look for men who could give them security. Only a foolish man expected more—and yet his father, poor and proud, had met his mother, rich and indulged, on a simmering day in Greece and she’d given up everything, even her beloved family, to follow him half around the world. Her parents hadn’t forgiven her until Caid had been born.

  Was he suffering from a sudden rush of romanticism to the head for wanting the same sort of love from the woman he’d marry? Possibly it didn’t even exist now; romance seemed out of fashion among his peers.

  Nor would he find it with Sanchia. She might want him, but she didn’t try to hide her dislike of everything he represented.

  There was also the business of just who had extracted an annuity from him. His enquiries so far had revealed that Sanchia was right; her great-aunt had been christened Kate, and the signature on the papers was almost certainly a forgery.

  What he hadn’t discovered yet was who’d committed it. In spite of that damning initial report on Cathy Atkins, he couldn’t yet discount the possibility that Sanchia’s huge green eyes hid deceit. She wouldn’t be the first woman who’d looked at him with eyes just as smokily desirous as hers and lied through her teeth.

  He wouldn’t let his testosterone make up his mind for him.

  Swinging on his heel, he said in a clipped voice, ‘I could build you something like this at Waiora Bay.’

  Sanchia could have hit him. Resisting the impulse, she clenched her fists and sent a savage glance at the wide shoulders, the perfect male triangle poised on lean hips and long, muscular legs, and wished fervently that she could knock him off that pinnacle of self-confidence and watch him grovel.

  Her low, furious voice emerged with hoarse distinctness. ‘I don’t want anything from you.’

  He swung around. Astonishingly he grinned, although there was something disturbing and sexy and challenging about it. ‘One day,’ he said, ‘I’ll let you do exactly what you want to do right now.’

  ‘How do you know what I want to do?’ she asked icily. A reckless need to wring some small surrender from him drove her to stalk deliberately past, her hips swaying, her back stiff. She’d never consciously tried to be provocative, but her body certainly knew how to go about it.

  ‘Sanchia.’

  The quiet, unyielding command stopped her in her tracks. Unwillingly she turned her head and looked at him. Half-closed, glittering eyes promised retribution, but he didn’t move.

  It wasn’t enough. He knew, she thought confusedly, how to deal with simple, straightforward hunger, the primitive call of female to male. What she wanted was much deeper, more subtle, and yet more elemental than that; she wanted to smash through his cool, powerful defences and see him as naked and needy as she was.

  She wanted to be as big a danger to him as he was to her. I’m falling in love with him again, she thought wildly. Oh, what the hell—I never fell out of love with him. These past three years have been a sham.

  ‘Stop this,’ he growled, all coiled aggression as he came up behind her.

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Stop trying to prod me into doing something I promised not to.’ Unless you want me to.

  The words of surrender hovered on her tongue, danced through her brain like the dare they’d been, almost made it to her vocal cords; she just managed to gulp them back, because although she wanted him with every wanton cell in her body, the thought of making love, of letting any man—even Caid—touch her and take her summoned all the demons, all the nightmares.

  Ashamed, she said, ‘I’m not responsible for your actions. I’m only responsible for my own.’

  Although he smiled it didn’t reach his eyes, and his tone showed no amusement. ‘Then be responsible. You’re being as provocative as you can be, inviting a response you don’t really want.’

  She said stolidly, ‘If I ever proposition you, I’ll put it in words you can’t mistake.’

  Laughing beneath his breath, he caught her shoulder. She stiffened, but relaxed as soon as she realised she’d misread him. Instead of the violence she feared, his fingers smoothed across her bare upper arm, skimming it gently, sliding under the green shell top to stroke the skin across her shoulder. Drowning in his brilliant blue gaze, she thought she could feel that light, persuasive touch through to the marrow of her bones, down to her toes.

  Stop it right now, she commanded herself, eyes clinging to the arrogant sweep of his cheekbones, moving slowly up to meet his…

  Sweat sprang out across her top lip, beaded her temples. The sun beat down on her head, burned into her arms, loosening her, weakening her. She could taste salt, and something else—the flavour of longing. That treacherous hunger summoned fire and frustration, a powerful yearning leashed only by fear.

  His intent eyes, blue and deep as the finest sapphires, snared her, holding her as still as a rabbi
t caught in a car’s headlights. The sun gilded the harsh, superb framework of his face, the perfect curves of his mouth. Yet he didn’t tighten his grip, didn’t move. Entranced by his prowling sensuality, she lifted a hand and traced the outline of his mouth, felt his humourless smile against her skin.

  ‘How many lovers have you had?’ he asked, his fingers curling around her shoulderblade, straying tormentingly to the sensitive nape of her neck.

  The rough tracery of his fingertips over the satin slide of her skin sent more shivers racing the length of her spine. His faint male fragrance mingled with salt and newly mown grass to summon a turbulent sensuality from her, emphasised by the sibilant whisper of the waves, the harsh, demanding cry of a gull.

  Caid bent his head. ‘How many lovers?’ he repeated. His breath fanned her lips. ‘Have there been any, Sanchia?’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  SANCHIA shook her head drowsily, then lifted a seeking face.

  Caid dropped a swift, unsatisfying kiss onto her lips. ‘Sweet Sanchia.’ His voice was hypnotic, many-layered, at once soothing and charged with lazy sexuality. ‘Sweet, fiery Sanchia,’ he murmured, and kissed her again.

  Only their mouths touched, clung, parted—met again. Sanchia’s hands quivered, but some dim, wavering spark of common sense kept them clenched at her sides as the need that coiled deep inside her began to flow with silken insistence through every cell; it sharpened her senses to unbearable intensity and spiralled into a demanding urgency that almost broke her fragile control.

  ‘Caid,’ she whispered, the single syllable a long, heated caress against his mouth.

  ‘Yes, it’s all right,’ he murmured, ‘just relax…’

  This time there was no unhurried seduction; desperate, famished, their mouths met in a starving compulsion that blocked everything but the taste of Caid. He didn’t move; although she missed the untamed power of his body as the kiss overwhelmed her, the frightened adolescent that still cowered deep inside her welcomed his restraint.

  His head lifted a fraction; in a rough, ragged voice he said something so frankly carnal she should have blushed and run. Instead she dipped her head and licked the strong, brown column of his throat, savouring the male musk and spice.

  He froze; she could feel his contained breath in the tense cage of his ribs. Smiling secretly, she kissed the pulse beating rapidly at the base of his throat.

  Caid’s hands slid down her back, came to rest on her hips, pulled her into him with a slight rocking movement. His body was taut and ready and claimant; she felt herself softening, felt heat and moisture as a clamorous, storm-driven surrender prepared a path for him.

  ‘Is this what you want?’ he asked, his voice shockingly charged with an overt sensuality. ‘Here? Now? Because it’s what I want, Sanchia.’

  Deliberately he cupped a small, high breast, his thumb moving with obvious sexual intent over the throbbing centre. Sensation shot from her breast to the core of her body. His heavy-lidded eyes searched her face, their vivid colour emphasised by the flash and fire of arousal.

  Swamped by fierce, primal pleasure, Sanchia lifted her head so sharply that it spun. And the erotic mists clouding her brain were torn to shreds, banished by the hard, intent purpose she saw in his face. For a hideous second she saw another man’s features imposed over Caid’s.

  A thin, harsh sound pushed her lips apart; she staggered back, her face paper-white.

  Caid let her go; as she stumbled clear he demanded, ‘Who was it?’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean.’ But her tone lacked conviction.

  ‘Who attacked you?’

  She dragged a breath into her painful lungs, straightened, put a couple of metres between them. Tell him, common sense commanded, but the words wouldn’t come. Great-Aunt Kate had warned her to tell no one, and that prudish command uttered by a reticent, elderly woman still bound Sanchia with the force of an injunction.

  ‘Nobody,’ she muttered, icy with dread and humiliation.

  ‘Then perhaps you think that an edge of frustration will push up the price I’m prepared to pay for the Bay,’ Caid suggested with courteous, cutting cynicism.

  Anger, hot and invigorating, rescued her. Sanchia said disdainfully, ‘Is that all you can think of?’ Long legs eating up the ground in furious strides as she headed towards the car, she hurled a final, caustic word over her shoulder. ‘Money?’

  He caught her up within a couple of paces. Coolly, ironically, he said, ‘When I’m with you money comes way down the list. I think of how elegant your legs are, how your eyes dilate and smoulder when I kiss you, how exquisitely responsive you are—and I wonder why, in spite of the fact that you want me as much as I want you, you pull away every time.’

  ‘Because I’m not a slave to my appetites,’ she shot back, fighting down a reckless impulse to tell him her bitter secret.

  His ruthless hand closed over hers, jerked her to face him. ‘No?’ he murmured, his mouth compressed into a merciless smile.

  And he kissed her again.

  Seething with a desperate cocktail of anger and thwarted desire, Sanchia had no defence. Yet although they began the kiss as antagonists, the moment their mouths touched she went up like wildfire, catapulted mindlessly into a suffocatingly sensual universe where nothing mattered, nothing existed except Caid.

  And just before the fear kicked in she was free, and he was smiling dangerously down at her. He was also breathing faster than usual, his chest rising and falling as colour flared along his cheekbones.

  ‘It seems,’ he said, stepping back, ‘that neither of us should make such a claim.’

  Silently they got into the car; silently Caid drove back down the road. But instead of heading home he turned inland.

  ‘Are we going the scenic route?’ Sanchia asked remotely.

  ‘I want to call on a friend.’

  His tone didn’t encourage further questions. Sanchia tried to suspend thought, to empty out her mind, scour it free of the lingering fumes of desire. She wasn’t ready to face the significance of what had happened on the beach, except that once again she hadn’t been able to bring herself to tell him why she’d never be able to yield to any man.

  Coward.

  Yet old shame, old dread, chilled her bone-deep at the mere thought of explaining.

  She stared straight ahead at hills covered in bush. If Caid loved her, she thought painfully, then she might be able to face the past.

  But he’d never said anything about love. Not three years ago, and not now. He’d spoken of desire and attraction and wanting, but the L word had never passed his lips.

  All he felt for her was physical hunger, so why would he want to stay when it could never be satisfied? Marriages—even good marriages—had failed under such a burden.

  Better to protect herself, to hold aloof, to refuse any more of those heated kisses.

  The road led to a marae, a cluster of buildings around a sacred, ceremonial space that was the meeting place and focus of the local Maori community.

  In the empty car park they were hailed by an elderly man. Striding across, he greeted Caid by name, beaming as he pumped Caid’s hand.

  ‘How are you, boy?’ he asked, letting Caid go to stand back and gaze at him. ‘It’s been too long since we saw you last, and you’ve got a few more lines than you had then. You work too hard.’

  ‘I don’t need to ask how you are,’ Caid said with a smile. ‘You look fit enough to chase a goat over the Southern Alps. Sanchia, this is Ken Hohua. Ken, a friend of mine, Sanchia Smith.’

  Oddly thrilled by such a description, Sanchia shook hands with the elder, colouring as she met his perceptive eyes. ‘How do you do, Mr Hohua?’

  He said gallantly, ‘All the better for seeing you today. Come home, both of you, and have a cup of tea with my wife and me.’

  Ten minutes later they were seated in his house while his wife whipped a batch of scones from her oven and made them tea. After they’d drunk the tea and eaten the feather-light scones—an
d Mrs Hohua had given Sanchia her special recipe for them and the tamarillo jam she’d spread on them—they discussed politics for half an hour or so before they were taken to a housing development within the marae.

  ‘It’s our papakainga, the place where our old people live,’ Ken explained to Sanchia. ‘We needed the houses, but we didn’t like the ones we could have bought; we wanted them to be as self-sufficient as possible, so one day we faxed Caid and asked him how to go about it.’ He grinned. ‘I expected to be fobbed off with an underling, but the next day in comes this helicopter and Caid steps off it and says, “OK, you want houses. Let’s deal.” He’s a tough man, but now we’ve got our houses and Caid’s learned how to cope with Maori protocol.’ He laughed up at Caid.

  ‘Jabber, jabber, jabber,’ Caid returned cheerfully. ‘Meeting after meeting until everyone’s had their say.’

  ‘That’s the way we do things, and we get there in the end.’ The older man winked at Sanchia. ‘He doesn’t take any nonsense, this boy, but he’s well-named—he’s got the patience a hunter needs.’

  On the way home Sanchia said, ‘From the way Mr Hohua was talking, the marae housing is a personal project of yours.’

  ‘I thought it was an excellent idea.’ His tone gave nothing away.

  ‘Why did they approach you?’

  ‘Apparently Ken had read an article about a village we worked with in Fiji. He thought we could probably do business, and he was right.’ Caid sent her a lop-sided smile. ‘We make a profit and they get the sort of houses they want so everyone’s happy.’

  Did he have to be so public-spirited? To keep her eyes off his lean hands on the wheel and her mind off the kisses they’d shared, Sanchia asked more questions. Judging by the mocking note in his answers he knew what she was doing, but the subject filled the time until they reached the Bay.

  They were met by Terry. ‘You’ve had a phone call from the insurance company,’ she told Sanchia. ‘Here’s the number and a name.’