by Susan Napier
She wearily accepted the grudging concession, and when he brought it over she was forced to let him help her slide her arms into the long sleeves. Surprisingly, he made no sarcastic comments as she scrabbled to keep the sheet between them until she was completely covered by the robe. With the towelling safely belted around her, Jane decided she badly needed a shower, which led to another battle, interrupted by a knock on the door that made Jane stiffen in alarm. Surely it was too soon for the doctor? She caught Ryan’s solid forearm as he swung away.
‘If it’s Dan, I don’t want to see him—’
‘Are you pleading for my protection, Jane?’
She let go of his arm like a hot coal and scowled at him. To her shock he grinned, a sheet-lightning flicker of pure humour that illuminated his rakish features, making them look unbelievably boyish and innocent as he strolled to the door, buttoning up his shirt. There was a murmured conversation just out of her sight, and when he came back he was carrying a tray of covered silver dishes.
‘What’s that?’
‘Breakfast. I ordered it earlier.’ He set the tray down on the small desk on the other side of the bed and lifted off the silver covers, revealing bowls of cereal and fresh fruit, a rack of wholewheat toast and a cafetière of coffee.
‘I’m not hungry,’ she said truculently.
‘No, but I am,’ he said, sitting at the desk and draping a starched napkin across his knee. ‘I have a full day’s work ahead of me.’
And she didn’t. Trust him to rub it in! Jane drew in her lower lip, feeling the hot pressure build up behind her eyes as he ate in silence. She could feel him watching her and tried to arrange her face into the familiar pattern of haughty indifference, but somehow the old tricks just wouldn’t work any more. She was sick of being brave. She was sick of pretending she was something she wasn’t. Who was she fooling but herself, anyway?
The arrival of Dr Frey in an elegant grey suit was as embarrassing as Jane had expected it to be, not least because he didn’t arrive alone. He was preceded by a familiar lithe fair-haired man who prowled into the room with a panther-like grace, making a quick survey of the exits as he handed Ryan a small black suitcase. It was the same silver-eyed man who had been at Ryan’s side when she had thrown her punch—the one who had opened the restaurant door for her afterwards.
His eyes widened when he saw Jane sitting in the bed and she lifted her chin as Ryan casually introduced his personal advisor. He didn’t say what sort of advice Carl Trevor specialised in, and she quailed inwardly as the astute silver-grey eyes moved thoughtfully from her swollen hand to his employer’s solid chin.
‘Mr Trevor,’ she acknowledged repressively, hoping to nip any open speculation in the bud.
‘Call me Carl,’ he said easily, undiscouraged by her formality. He came closer and nodded towards her hand with a charming smile of sympathy. ‘That looks like a pretty painful injury, Miss Sherwood, no wonder Ryan was concerned.’ The smile became more personal as he added in a soft murmur, ‘Metacarpal, is it?’
Jane flushed, but before she could summon a reply Ryan cut in and shunted his advisor towards the door with an impatient frown. ‘Thanks, Carl, but I think the doctor and I can handle things from here...’
‘Shall I wait for you outside?’
The bland enquiry earned him another darkling look. ‘I have my own car here so there’s no need for you to hang around unnecessarily. I don’t know how long this might take, so why don’t you go on to the office and let Irene know I might be late in this morning. Get her to rearrange the early part of my schedule.’
He tossed several more pithy instructions into his advisor’s increasingly amused face before firmly shutting him out and striding back to hover over the grey-haired doctor, who had drawn up a chair beside the bed and had begun his gentle examination.
Jane fought back the waves of pain, answering his quiet questions about her previous medical treatment with a reluctance which was justified when Ryan exploded, ‘Broken! Then why aren’t you wearing a damned cast? What in the hell kind of witch-doctor did you go to? Dammit, Graham, she shouldn’t be in this much pain, should she? Why don’t you do something about it?’
Dr Frey was obviously a friend as well as a physician, for he ignored the arrogant outburst, focusing his beetle-browed attention on Jane as he meticulously went over the treatment she had received and sternly chided her for removing the strapping before the bones had begun to knit. It was apparent that he assumed that vanity had been the reason for her actions and Jane was happy to let his misapprehension stand.
‘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 t
hat 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 exactly 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 han
d 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...