by Susan Napier
‘It couldn’t have done much for your school grades.’
His mouth held shades of the cocky kid. ‘It wasn’t my academic record that caught Scotty’s attention; it was my willingness to hustle, to tackle anything that was thrown at me, to persist until a job was done…’
His fascinating frankness, Nora realised, had been a deliberate ploy to take her mind off their surroundings, but now that they had reached the top of the stairs she was hit by the full impact of his private eyrie.
The open-plan living area was centred around a square firebox enclosed in glass, capped by a stainless steel flue and flanked on three sides by long couches in vibrant dark blue, deep-cushioned and luxurious. Bifolding glass doors and windows ran the length of the house, opening out to a wide sun-drenched terrace flanked by roughcast walls smothered in a dark creeper, the outer edge of which fell away with heart-stopping suddenness into a zigzag shaped swimming pool. An aptly named infinity pool, for beyond the shimmering sheet of captive water was…nothing…striations of blue sea and sky dissolving into an indistinguishable horizon.
Nora’s scalp tightened over her throbbing skull, her whole body going rigid with alarm. ‘There’s n-no guard rail out there—’ she stuttered.
‘Yes, there is. You just can’t see it from here. There’s a strip of garden a metre and a half below the far edge of the pool, closed in by a solid balcony wall…’ Which provided safety, but no security against Nora’s soaring imagination.
Her lips parted on a soundless mew of protest but Blake had already turned her smartly in the opposite direction.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve given you one of the guest rooms at the back of the house,’ he said, his hand flat between her shoulderblades as he propelled her through an archway on the other side of the stairs and down a wide windowless hallway into a high-ceilinged room with walls of palest coffee and Persian rugs splashed across the bleached carpet.
‘See—’ he said, crossing to the bay windows and whisking back the filmy curtains to reveal the dense native bush which formed a natural screen on the other side of the glass. ‘No view whatsoever. You’re tucked right up against the slope of the hill here. If you don’t want to use the air conditioning you can switch on the ceiling fans, and there’s a home entertainment centre in that lattice-wood cabinet. Your en suite bathroom—which is minus a bathtub, by the way—is through that archway. I’m sure you’ll find everything very suitable to your needs.’
Suitable wasn’t the word which sprang immediately to mind as Nora’s jittery gaze fell on the queen-sized platform bed draped in white mosquito netting which dominated the room. Flanked by huge glazed pots sprouting luxuriant palms, the bed seemed to float above the floor on its polished wood pedestal, and behind the folds of the gauzy hangings textured silk cushions in jewelled colours and dense patterns were piled on the white bedspread, adding to the aura of exotic luxury.
Talk about Arabian Nights! Nora visualised herself languishing in sensuous abandon amidst the mounding of pillows, the silk cool against her hot skin, a temptress worthy of a sultan’s favour…a tall dark grey-eyed sultan with a hawkish face and a black frown that made everyone tremble before him—everyone, that was, but the woman who could bring him to his knees….
‘Well, what do you think?’
She blushed, tearing her mind from her silken fantasies, seeking refuge in cool flippancy.
‘What—no bars on the window?’
He let the curtains drift back into place. ‘Why should there be? I thought we’d agreed that you’re a guest here, not a prisoner.’
His innocent expression fooled neither of them. ‘You and I obviously have different definitions of the word “guest”,’ she sniffed. ‘Which reminds me—you were going to tell me why you brought me here.’
‘Of course. But why don’t I let you get settled in first?’ His grey-eyed gaze slid over her crumpled figure. ‘You might feel more disposed to relax if you change into something more casual….’
He placed the small bag he had been carrying on top of the squat wooden chest at the end of the bed—and for the first time Nora noticed the distinctive home-made tags.
‘Hey, where did you get that? That looks like mine!’
He gave a wry shrug and suspicion turned to fresh outrage as she elbowed him out of the way to unzip the lid and throw it open. A very familiar pattern of cartoon rabbits stared back up at her.
She flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘You stole my laundry!’
He shrugged, unrepentant. ‘I was being a good host. I doubt you would have wanted to spend the entire weekend in the same set of underwear.’
She was ransacking the contents, recognising several things that hadn’t been in the plundered laundry basket. ‘You went through my chest of drawers, too!’ she accused.
‘I thought you’d want a reasonable selection of your own things to wear. I know how women are about their clothes—’
‘I bet you do,’ she muttered darkly.
‘Growing up with three sisters, I could hardly help but gain an insight into the female perspective,’ he reminded her.
Her flush deepened. She doubted that his insight was solely due to sisterly influence. ‘That’s not the point. I didn’t give you permission to go into my things—’
‘Are we going to have an argument now over who first invaded whose privacy?’ he drawled.
Her anger deflated like a pricked balloon. ‘I already admitted that was a mistake,’ she said.
‘Which you’re now going to rectify by behaving like the perfect guest,’ he said smoothly.
‘My laptop’s not here—’ she realised.
‘Sorry, I must have left it down in the car—I’ll bring it up later. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to get changed myself. Meantime, feel free to explore. My room is at the opposite end of the hall.’
Was that a warning or a tacit invitation? Nora wondered with a shivery frisson that led her to close the door with a slight snap at his departing heels. Either way, her first inclination was to do the exact opposite of whatever it was he wanted.
However, she had no intention of cutting off her nose to spite her face, so she peeled off her hastily donned office battle armour and substituted an amber sleeveless T-shirt and a pair of loose white cotton shorts, both still fragrant with sunshine and washing powder, from her open bag. Then she ventured into the compact luxury of the en suite bathroom to splash water on to her face.
She nosed shamelessly into the drawers of the marble-topped vanity and found a mixture of used and new make-up and feminine toiletries of various brands. Evidence of sisters or his string of Insignificant Others? she wondered moodily.
Back in the bedroom, she couldn’t resist crawling under the voluminous mosquito netting to find out if the bed felt as gorgeous as it looked.
It did. Soft, yet resilient, the mattress sank under her testing weight. Sliding her bare toes over the nubby silk, Nora experimentally stretched out to her full length, draping limp arms over the mound of cushions and letting her tired bones melt into the welcoming depths of the downy softness. Her puffy eyelids felt as if they had little weights attached and it was an effort to keep them open. Motionless, Nora became aware of the heavy silence hanging over the house, absorbing the continuous muted roar of the ocean and transforming it into a lullaby of white noise. Perhaps if she didn’t move for a few minutes the warring factions within her body might make their fragile peace, she thought hopefully, and render her fighting fit for another round of verbal fisticuffs with Danger Man.
Her mouth curved into a bitter smile. Blake MacLeod might think that because she had let herself be temporarily swept away by his aggressive arrogance she would be putty in his hands, but she was no longer a naive soft-hearted idiot who trusted people to act with honour. No, she was a hardened cynic. From now on she would be a taker rather than a giver—smart and ruthless. And beautiful, of course…. She snuggled deeper into the gratifying fantasy of herself as a voluptuous sexy femme fatale
, a fascinating woman of passion and mystery, an irresistible and unconquerable challenge to men everywhere.
And to one infuriating man in particular….
CHAPTER EIGHT
NORA DIDN’T BELIEVE in ghosts, but the white shrouds swirling around her in the smothering darkness made her rear up with a cry of alarm.
As she lashed out at the floating phantoms, the ghosts abruptly transformed themselves into billowing folds of mosquito netting dancing to the slow beat of the ceiling fan chopping quietly overhead.
She blinked and her vision cleared. Waking up in a state of horror seemed to be an ongoing feature of her relationship with Blake MacLeod, she thought wryly, batting away the wispy veils and scrambling off the wide bed. She could have sworn she had only closed her eyes for a few minutes, but her cramped limbs were telling another story.
Groping through the gloom, she located the familiar shape of a switch on the wall. The mellow glow of uplights sprang to life, but her relief turned to dismay as she stared at the dark rectangle looming behind the sheer curtains at the window.
She looked down at her watch in disbelief, verifying what her disordered senses were telling her. It was well into the evening. She had been crashed out all day!
A mortified groan rusted across her dry lips as she realised who must have turned on the fan. The thought of Blake looking in on her as she slept made her feel shivery inside.
Of course he had seen her asleep in his car, too, she reminded herself—but his disciplined mind would have been totally focused on his driving. This was different—even though she was fully dressed, the surroundings were far more intimate….
Crushing down her embarrassment, she ventured out, following the faint sounds of a tap gushing and utensils clattering, underscored by some mellow jazz. The kitchen, she recalled vaguely, was at the far end of that huge open living space….
She marched into the almost dark room and came to a halt with a stunned gasp.
There was a sharp movement off to her far left, where angled halogen spotlights bounced off polished surfaces.
‘What’s wrong?’
Nora pressed her hand to the fluttering pulse at the base of her throat, a foolish reaction to the sound of his voice. ‘Nothing…For a moment I thought there’d been some kind of volcanic eruption out there,’ she said sheepishly. ‘It looks like the whole rim of the earth is on fire!’
The wall of glass on to the west-facing terrace had been folded open, and far out in the darkness a thin line of molten red bled across the width of the sky, radiating hot colour up into shadowy clouds boiling with crimson, orange and gold: the last throes of the dying day. A velvety blackness, already pricked with stars, bore down from above, poised to smother the final rays of the red sun.
‘Another minute or so and you would have been too late. The sunsets here are always spectacular—no smog to diffuse the light particles.’ Even as Blake spoke, the last sliver of fire was swallowed by the black glitter of the sea and the hot crimson cooled to a golden-pink blush.
‘I wish I’d had a chance to see it properly,’ Nora murmured. When was the last time she had paused to appreciate the splendours of nature? Since she had come to Auckland she had allowed Ryan’s scorn for such unsophisticated pastimes to stifle her enjoyment of the simple pleasures of life.
‘There’s always tomorrow night….’
The cool assumption in the gravelly voice spun her around.
Blake was leaning behind the curving granite-topped breakfast bar that divided the big kitchen from the rest of the room. With a shock, Nora saw that he was bare above the low-slung waist of his white drawstring pants. His raw masculinity was like a punch to the stomach, a violent reminder of the last time she had seen him stripped for action. A faint glistening of moisture dotted the dark hair on his tawny chest and imparted a glossy sheen to the streamlined muscles which rippled in the arms braced against the gleaming granite. Not an ounce of surplus body fat marred the ridged lines of his abdomen or the taut curve of his waist where it tapered to meet his lean hips. Nora hurriedly lifted her gaze from the tantalising streak of damp hair that arrowed down from the flat scoop of his navel to disappear beneath the loose gathers of white linen. The hair on his head was also wet, gleaming blue-black under a halogen halo and slicked back from his hard forehead to emphasise the dramatic widow’s peak. The thick straight brows cast his grey eyes into shadow, but Nora could tell that he was amused at her flustered reaction.
‘Excuse my state of undress, but I’ve just had a swim,’ he said lazily. ‘The pool is solar-heated but it’s cool enough to be refreshing, if you want to take the plunge…’
Nora had the feeling that she’d already plunged in way over her head. He must have shaved very recently, she noticed with a fresh tingle of awareness, for the long masculine jaw was invitingly smooth and glossy.
‘Uh, no, thanks.’
‘I did pack a swimsuit with your things,’ he continued as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘but you might prefer to do as I do and not bother with any encumbrance. There’s no one overlooking us here, so you don’t have to worry about peeping Toms—’
‘Only peeping Blakes,’ she said, walking self-consciously towards him, the soles of her feet shrinking at the change from soft carpet to the slick hardness of the unglazed tiles.
‘Ah, but there’s not much I haven’t seen of you already, is there, Nora?’ he responded lazily, looking her over from sleep-creased cheek to dainty toes. ‘You have nothing to be shy about, as I recall—you have a very nice body.’
She could feel her freckles popping at the blatantly patronising phrase. Nice? There was that damning, dull-as-dishwater word again. She had a good mind to peel off all her clothes and prance out into his pool just to show him that being nice was no longer on her agenda!
‘Thank you, but I don’t feel like a swim right now,’ she said primly. Much less in a pool that dropped off the edge of a cliff!
He shrugged, a supple flex of his shoulders that drew her attention back to his tapering torso. Why had she ever thought that Ryan’s thick and chunky rugby player’s physique was the height of attractiveness? This man, nearly ten years his senior, had a honed sleekness which made Ryan’s slabs of gym-inflated muscle seem like puppy fat, and a potently mature confidence in his own strength and sexuality which was more persuasive than any boast.
‘How are you feeling?’ he asked, and she ran a self-conscious hand through her rumpled locks, wishing she had stopped to look in the mirror before she had come marching out.
‘Fine,’ she said, pleased to realise that it was only a slight exaggeration.
She glanced around. The breakfast bar stepped down to a working bench that ran around two sides of the kitchen. Beneath the windows overlooking the terrace was a double sink and on the opposite wall twin ovens topped with a fearsomely professional-looking gas cook-top interrupted the smooth flow of the granite surface. Lacquered grey cabinetry complemented the brushed stainless steel of the appliances and hooded extractor.
It was a well-planned kitchen. One with a definitive style and a serious purpose. Just like Blake MacLeod. She would do well to remember that he reputedly never made an uncalculated move.
‘I checked up on you several times through the day, but you were so deeply asleep that I thought it best to leave you to wake up naturally—you obviously needed the rest,’ he told her. ‘I only turned on the fan when I decided your skin felt overheated—’
‘Felt?’ Her tangled dreams suddenly rose up to haunt her. ‘You mean you came in and touched me?’
The little shrill of guilty alarm in her voice goaded him to say innocently, ‘You were very flushed and sweaty. I was concerned you might be suffering from more than just a hangover—dehydration can cause some nasty complications.’
Her imagination ran riot. ‘You should have woken me—’
‘As befits a Sleeping Beauty? I tried, but the evil spell of the demon drink must have been too strong.’
The riot became
a rampage. ‘You k-kissed me?’ she said, her eyes instinctively falling to his firm mouth.
‘Actually, it was vice versa. I just put my hand against your cheek and you grabbed me and wrestled me down on to the bed.’
Her hazel eyes jerked back to his, flaring with embarrassment. ‘I did not!’ she protested.
‘You were all over me like a rash,’ he drawled. ‘I worked up quite a sweat myself, trying to fight you off without hurting you.’
She clutched at the edge of the breakfast bar to support her wobbly knees. ‘I wouldn’t! You’re making that up!’
‘How do you think I got these scratches?’
He touched a hand to the right side of his chest. Nora’s fingers curled into her palms as she stared in appalled fascination at the four parallel pink lines scoring the smooth skin just below his flat brown nipple.
‘You can examine me inch by inch if you like…. You branded me in other places, too,’ he prompted softly.
She flushed, tearing her compulsive gaze from his hard chest. ‘That doesn’t prove anything. You could have scratched yourself for all I know, or it could have happened last night—’ She broke off, aware of her tactical error.
He took full advantage of her confusion. ‘Ah, yes…so it could. Some women are all teeth and claws in the sack, honey—here’s proof that you’re one of them.’
‘We never got as far as the sack,’ she growled.
‘Until today.’
That was definitely mockery in his tone. Nora tossed her caramel curls, more certain of herself. ‘Nothing happened. Or, if it did, it was only because I was having a nightmare.’
‘It seemed more like an erotic dream to me—’
‘And you would be an expert on those, I suppose?’ she shot back unwisely.
Another distracting shrug of his superb shoulders. ‘What can I say? I seem to attract women who like to talk to me about their sexual fantasies….’
