by Robyn Donald
Futile desire, futile need, futile love.
‘Drink up,’ Caid ordered.
‘Have you had any?’
After a moment he said, ‘No.’
‘You inhaled just as much smoke as I did. More, actually—you were working like a demon to save the bush.’ She’d never forget the easy rhythm of his actions, the graceful silhouette against the burning bach as he’d beaten out the fires in the dry grass.
Swallowing, she turned around and held out the glass to him. ‘Have the rest—I’ve drunk enough.’ She frowned as she noticed a patch of red skin across one cheekbone. ‘You haven’t put any of this on your face—let me look.’
His brows lifted; a light kindled in the blue eyes. Sanchia sucked air into famished lungs.
‘All right,’ he said, handing over the ointment. He took the glass from her and drank some of the liquid.
Sanchia dipped her finger into the pot and moved around him, examining telltale marks on his arms and throat.
Last night she’d dreamed about him, and she’d dreamed accurately. Heart throbbing in a primitive rhythm, she spread the cool gel wherever she saw the marks of fire, making each stroke a tiny caress.
The sparks had only reached his hands and around his neck and face, but she said, ‘Just bend down a bit, will you?’ Her voice sounded odd—distant, almost breathless.
He paused—it was impossible to think of him hesitating—before stooping towards her. Sanchia found a couple on the back of his neck. ‘Honourable wounds,’ she said, anointing them.
Straightening abruptly, Caid took the pot of gel and set it and the empty glass down onto a table. His eyes darkened to the colour of a stormy midnight.
‘Making love to me last night,’ he said, incredibly, ‘wasn’t a dream, Sanchia. It happened.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘NO,’ SANCHIA croaked.
Caid said calmly, ‘It happened, Sanchia.’
She had to accept it. Seared by humiliation, she demanded fiercely, ‘What were you doing in my bed?’
‘I spent a couple of hours down at the bach with the firemen, and then, when it was obvious there were no hotspots to worry about, I came home and showered. I heard you cry out, but when I came in you were so deeply asleep I couldn’t shake you out of the nightmare.’
Enigmatic eyes met hers, giving nothing away.
‘So I slid into bed beside you,’ he said steadily. ‘You came into my arms as though you belonged there, and quietened down. And we both went to sleep. For a while.’
Scarlet, she clamped her eyes shut so that she wouldn’t have to look at him. ‘Oh, God,’ she said harshly. ‘Why didn’t you stop me? Why didn’t you stop me?’
He paused before saying in a cool, inflexible voice, ‘Tell me about the man who attacked you.’
Moving slowly, Sanchia walked across to the side of the bed and sat down on it. ‘How did you know?’
‘Three years ago you kissed me like a shy houri, passionate and sweet and eager; I realised you’d had very little experience so I went as slowly and carefully as I could, but I always felt a barrier. And when you ran away and left behind a cowardly, prim little letter saying you didn’t want to see me again, I asked your great-aunt—’
Sanchia made a sharp, indeterminate noise and flashed him a swift look.
Correctly reading her response, he said levelly, ‘Yes, I suspected she hadn’t told you anything about that conversation.’
It was impossible to tell what he was thinking or feeling; this was how he must seem to his business associates—remote, awesomely self-reliant, the handsome face a mask for his deeper emotions.
Without inflection he went on, ‘She pointed out that you’d made your decision, and any attempt to follow you would be harassment.’ After a moment’s pause he added drily, ‘And she was right. Your rejection was final and more than definite, so I didn’t do what I wanted.’
‘Which was?’
‘Come after you,’ he said casually. ‘When you arrived the other day, I wanted you the moment I set eyes on you again, and as soon as I touched you I knew you wanted me.’
Astounded, Sanchia shook her head. Heat coloured her skin, dried her mouth. Of course he’d seen the signs of her arousal, and he was too astute not to have read them correctly.
His uncompromising voice went on, ‘Yet even when you kissed me the barrier was still firmly in place, as though you were waiting for something to happen, something you dreaded. A sexual attack some time in the past seemed a logical reason.’
Sweat sprang out along Sanchia’s brows, beaded across her nose and down her back. ‘Yes,’ she said.
A killing rage blasted through Caid; he had to discipline his voice to a level, almost uninterested tone. ‘Had you ever made love before last night?’
‘No.’
Caid barely heard the monosyllable. He paused, then said quietly, ‘If I’d realised you were asleep, I’d have woken you, but I was asleep too. And when I did wake up—believe me, Sanchia, the last thing I wanted to do was fight you off. Hell, I couldn’t! Besides, you seemed to know exactly what you were doing. You even had your eyes open. It wasn’t until you told me it was all a dream that I realised what had happened. And I can’t regret it—apart from being one of the more transcendental experiences of my life, at least you know now that you can make love without terror and pain.’
Her black head drooped on her slender neck, hiding her face.
Fighting an overpowering urge to protect her, he coaxed gently, ‘Tell me what happened.’
He thought she wasn’t going to answer, but after several taut, silent moments she said in a subdued, expressionless voice, ‘He was Cathy—my aunt’s—boyfriend when I went to live with her after my parents died.’
She hadn’t even been thirteen. Choking back the black rage that curled his fingers, Caid spoke slowly and calmly. ‘What was his name?’
‘Robert Atkins.’ Her hands writhed in her lap; she clenched them together and shivered.
Caid bit back an obscenity. No wonder she’d looked sick when he’d told her Cathy was married to the man.
Uneasily he wondered whether he should have called in professional help. Last night, in that half-dazed state between waking and sleeping, he hadn’t been able to control his responses to her innocent seduction. It had been a dream-like enslavement, a fantasy that had hovered at the back of his mind for years, and he’d surrendered to it.
This morning he’d been sure that letting her fulfil her desire could only have helped her.
If he’d been wrong, if it had damaged her further, he’d make sure she got help. But first he had to see whether she hated his touch.
Odd how much determination it took to walk across to the bed.
‘Sanchia, look at me,’ he commanded, crouching down beside her so that their faces were level.
But the big eyes slid sideways, avoiding his. When she spoke it was so softly he could hardly hear her. ‘She called him Robbie,’ she said.
Gripped by a sudden fear, he controlled it and asked in a calm, level voice, ‘What did he do?’
Her eyes darkened and he hoped for a moment that she was going to cry. He could deal with tears.
But although her voice trembled, she said clearly enough, ‘He used to touch me. I hated it, but he—I didn’t know how to deal with it. I had no one to talk to. He—he threatened me.’
Caid covered her hands with his, clasping them. The pale, slender, competent fingers quivered in his, but at least she didn’t flinch.
He thought savagely that he could probably have hit her and she wouldn’t have noticed. Her green eyes were opaque, and the woman who’d driven him mad with desire and angry suspicion had gone, leaving a powerless wraith in her place.
She said, ‘Then one night he came into my room when I was getting ready for bed and tried to—he held me down with an arm across my throat and—’
Her skin was milk-white, as white as her lips, with great dark smudges under her eyes like brui
ses. Caid remembered the girl who’d come to Waiora Bay, a child with a child’s heartbreaking innocence.
He fought back the low growl at the back of his throat.
Still in the same toneless voice she went on, ‘He grabbed at my breasts and—’
‘You don’t need to tell me this,’ he cut in, appalled at having made her relive such horror.
Her great, empty eyes returned to their hands intertwined in her lap. ‘My father had taught me how to look after myself. When I tried to gouge his eyes out he yelled and let me go, and Cathy came in and threw me out of the house.’
‘She threw you out?’ Mingled with the disgust and raw fury in his tone was complete disbelief.
Sanchia shrugged. ‘He was her meal ticket, whereas I was a constant drain on her finances.’ Her voice was steady, toneless. ‘I spent three nights hiding in a park nearby, stealing food, before Great-Aunt Kate found me.’
‘How did she know you’d run away?’
He watched the muscles move in her long, slender throat as she swallowed. ‘She rang to wish me a happy birthday. When Cathy couldn’t produce me she came down to Auckland and started searching.’
‘Did you tell her what happened?’
Sanchia nodded. ‘She said to forget it, that it was over, and she took me away from all that ugliness and became my legal guardian, even though a traumatised kid must have been the last person she’d choose to live with. She gave me back my life, Caid.’
Whereas Cathy and Robert Atkins, Caid thought with narrowed eyes, were about to have their lives severely disrupted.
The violence of his anger drove him to his feet, but he couldn’t work off the adrenalin yet; he looked down at Sanchia and saw her stiffen her shoulders and lift her head in a gallant movement that ripped through him. Without thinking, he began to work on her tense muscles with his thumbs, hoping to give her some comforting, unsexual contact.
Relief flooded him as he felt a slow easing of tautness beneath his hands.
Yet it was still in that frightening, muted voice that she continued, ‘Great-Aunt Kate didn’t want to hear what had happened. She told me not to talk about it, not even to think about it, to push it to the back of my mind. So I did. Then, three years ago—after that summer with you—I went to a therapist. She helped me a lot, but I still wasn’t able to—well, you know.’
‘Make love. Well, now you know you can.’
As though his words had touched some inner nerve, she leapt to her feet and swung around, hands clenched at her sides. Colour flamed across her high, aristocratic cheekbones.
‘Is that why you didn’t stop me? Because you thought it would get rid of this inconvenient complex I’d developed?’
How to handle this? He decided to go with instinct, shooting back just as tersely, ‘I told you, by the time I realised what was happening it was too late to stop.’
All he’d been able to do was make sure he didn’t terrify her with the force of his response, and she’d never know how much self-control he’d had to call up for that.
Sanchia almost exploded with sudden, reviving rage. He’d hesitated just too long before he’d answered her question. Surely he hadn’t let her use him like some sort of therapeutic sex aid—not because he wanted her, but because he felt sorry for her!
She blurted, ‘I thought I was asleep—when I think of what I thought—what I did—’ Shame choked her. She rubbed the back of her hand across her mouth.
‘Sanchia, don’t,’ he said deeply, and although she tried to ward him off he took her in his arms and held her still.
But whatever he’d been going to say remained unspoken when someone knocked on the door.
‘Sanchia, are you in there?’ Terry’s voice.
Sanchia stared into the face of the man she’d love until she died.
‘Answer her,’ he said quietly. ‘I’ve got a call coming through from America in ten minutes. We’ll finish this later.’ He dropped a kiss on her forehead, then let her go and without looking back walked out through the open doors and along the terrace.
‘Sanchia?’
‘Coming,’ Sanchia said weakly.
Terry didn’t seem to notice that Sanchia’s world had tipped upside down since they’d last seen each other. ‘Will’s just come up from the bach,’ she said. ‘He says there’s a Mr Woodward down there who wants to talk to you.’
‘Woodward?’ Sanchia frowned. ‘Who is he?’
‘No idea, but he seemed to know you.’
Woodward? Oh, hell, that Woodward—the man from the District Council.
At least it would give her something else to think about besides Caid. ‘I’ll go on down,’ she said.
Terry grinned. ‘Not like that, I hope,’ she said pertly. ‘You’ll give him a heart attack!’
Sanchia huddled into an inconspicuous skirt and little shell top the same green as her eyes, and sneaked off down the cliff path.
Mr Woodward looked and spoke like a bureaucrat, discreet, close-mouthed, his only concession to the summer heat a short-sleeved shirt. He had the survey plan with him, checking it as they walked around the property boundaries.
Back at the bach, he said, ‘So the only access to Waiora Bay is across Caid Hunter’s property?’
‘Yes, but it’s a dedicated road, isn’t it?’ she asked.
He shook his head. ‘No, but don’t worry about that. Thank you very much for showing me around. It’s a magnificent property, and it’s very civic-minded of you to want to give it to us. As soon as it’s been discussed in Council we’ll get back to you.’
Something compelled her to ask, ‘What will happen if the Council decide against a reserve here?’
He looked at her for a moment, then said, ‘I don’t know.’
He drove away and Sanchia walked quietly past the burnt-out shell of the bach. The stench of smoke and wet ashes and burning still hung on the humid air. For long moments she stood and said a silent, heartfelt farewell to all that remained of eleven years of her life. The bach wasn’t hers—had never been hers. It had only been a temporary haven.
Until then she hadn’t allowed herself to think about the implications of what had happened the night before, when she’d swung so giddily from despair to rapture. Caid might be pleased that he’d freed her from a stifling sexual terror, but once he discovered what she planned to do with the Bay, he’d probably throw her out!
Sanchia bent down and picked a blue flower, miraculously unscathed by heat and firemen, from the agapanthus clump. She twirled the simple, bright bloom, and made a decision.
If all Caid wanted was a holiday fling she’d give him that, if she was able. Even though she already knew what the ending would be. Men like Caid, who regularly escorted models and film stars and women with titles, didn’t promise everlasting love to women like her.
She turned and walked away, beneath the cool shade of the pohutukawa trees, along the beach and up the cliff path.
Caid met her halfway up; he looked at her keenly, but didn’t touch her.
‘How did your call from America go?’ she asked, wondering whether anyone had told him about Mr Woodward.
‘Fine,’ he said casually. ‘You should have waited until I could come down with you.’
Sanchia gave him a pale smile. ‘It’s all right,’ she said.
Another of those keen glances showed that she hadn’t convinced him, and once on the terrace he bullied her gently into a chair beside a round iron table on which Terry had put an antique urn filled with an exuberant arrangement of roses and lilies and foliage. Shaded from the sun by an umbrella, the table and chairs, the flowers, and a tray set with glasses and a glass jug of pale pink juice breathed chic sophistication.
Sanchia said, ‘If you gave Terry three pieces of grass and a broken shell from the beach she’d conjure a perfect still-life.’
‘Terry’s talents are inborn, but she’s worked hard to hone them.’
‘As you have yours?’ Sanchia’s voice sounded a brittle note in the lazy ai
r.
‘As I have,’ he agreed drily. His gaze rested a moment on her mouth before flicking up to capture hers. A challenge blazed in his blue eyes as he drawled, ‘What are your talents?’
Although Sanchia’s throat was parched she had to force herself to drink, using the fruit juice as a barrier against him until eventually she put the glass down. ‘I can read extremely fast,’ she parried. ‘And I seem to have a knack with Asian languages. Nothing artistic, like your mother’s ability to design settings, or Terry’s with food and flowers.’
‘Perhaps you haven’t discovered yours yet.’
Something in his tone brought swift colour to her skin. ‘Perhaps,’ she said dismissively.
Caid’s smile added emphasis to his comment, but he began to talk of his mother’s attempts to reproduce a small piece of Europe in New Zealand, and slowly Sanchia relaxed.
‘You’re too astute,’ she said, when the guava juice had almost reached the bottom of her glass. ‘How did you know that I needed to sit here and let the sun warm me again? I suppose an excellent understanding of human nature is very useful for high-powered businessmen.’
His mouth straightened. ‘For anyone,’ he said, deflecting the sting in the comment.
Sunlight danced along the rim of her empty glass, shimmering and breaking up into a rainbow before reforming. Keeping her eyes on it, she said, ‘Another of your talents is to create beautiful places. The development at Macgregor’s Bay is lovely, and so are the marae houses.’
‘They were designed by a woman who reminds me a bit of you—Lecia Spring. She’s extremely good.’ His mouth curved. ‘Stroppy and forthright and interesting.’
A dark turbulence arrowed through Sanchia.
‘And very happily married,’ he finished blandly.
Flushing, Sanchia said lightly, ‘She’s lucky.’
‘She and her husband look alike—a freakish similarity, because the single ancestor they share lived well over a century ago. Their three children, however, look nothing like them and nothing like each other.’
