by Susan Napier
A growl rolled back down the hall, and a short time later she heard the thumping rattle of the old carpet sweeper. She watched him haul his mattress out into the yard, as she had done with her own two weeks ago, and attack it with the side of a broom, releasing clouds of dust that frosted his dark hair and made her bite her lip to stop herself laughing. She stopped laughing when he efficiently remade his bed with fresh sheets he found for himself in a crammed linen closet and started poking about, investigating the building’s structural deficiencies.
To avoid his disruptive presence Jane snatched up a towel and a book on self-sufficiency and went down to the beach, only to have Ryan settle down on the sand less than a metre away, wearing electric blue swimming briefs that left nothing to the imagination.
Without even asking her, he dug a faded beach umbrella—which she recognised as coming from a jumble of beach furniture in the garage—into the sand and angled it so that she was fully protected from the sun. Then he lay down on his towel and slowly massaged sunscreen over his thickly muscled body. If she had been wearing sunglasses Jane might have been able to safely ogle him in secret, but she had only the brim of Great-Aunt Gertrude’s moth-eaten straw hat to hide behind, and consequently had to pretend not to notice his actions.
Since she couldn’t go in the water, except to paddle, Jane hadn’t bothered to struggle into a swimsuit, but now she felt a desperate need to cool off, especially when a passing bikini-clad blonde detoured from her path to laughingly offer to do Ryan’s back.
He grinned as he modestly refused. ‘My girlfriend is very jealous,’ he said, casting a look at pink-faced Jane. ‘She looks fairly innocuous, doesn’t she? But, believe me, she’s a tigress when she’s defending her territory.’
She was still boiling at the memory later that evening, when Ryan refused to allow her into the kitchen to heat up some soup for her dinner, propping a chair under the doorhandle and ignoring her strident demands and savage kicks at the solid panels while he cooked up a storm. He finally let her in, but only when she had grudgingly agreed to share his meal.
The fact that his colourful stir-fry of vegetables and noodles was more delicious than anything Jane had yet cooked for herself added to her resentment. She was only slightly mollified by the sight of some of her bread, salvaged from the morning’s accident, cut into neat triangles and generously buttered.
He had taken her at her word about the electricity and set candles on the kitchen table instead of using the overhead light, the warm, flickering glow creating a romantic atmosphere that Jane hadn’t reckoned on when she had whined about the power bill. But for once Ryan was the perfect gentleman, allaying her fears as she ate by chatting about how he had learned to cook when his mother was doing shift work, how he had also looked after his baby sister, Melissa, and how his mother was now married to a chef who owned two restaurants, one of them in partnership with his stepson.
Jane said very little, concentrating on gingerly balancing her fork between the good fingers of her left hand, and as soon as dinner was over announced her intention of going to bed to read.
‘Is that wise straight after eating?’ frowned Ryan. ‘Why don’t we go for a stroll along the beach? The moon won’t be over the hills yet, but I have a torch in the Rover.’
Warm night, dark beach, crashing waves, sexy man... Jane could feel her heart palpitating at the possibilities.
‘I’m too tired,’ she said truthfully. Too tired to feel like wrestling her own desires as well as his! Ryan’s swift first aid had prevented her burn penetrating through many layers of her skin, but it was still smarting quite badly.
He followed her down the hall and watched her put the candle she was carrying on the low cabinet by her bed. ‘How are you planning to wash? After a hot day like today I know you must be dying for a nice soap-down so your skin is soft and clean when you slide between the sheets, but now you’ve got both hands out of commission.’
His words were so evocative that Jane instantly felt every grain of sand and every microscopic speck of dust weighing like boulders on her sun-parched skin.
‘My left one is much better than it was. I’ll manage.’
‘Not if your fork-handling is anything to go by. Don’t be silly, Jane. You’ll take ages and probably hurt yourself in the process. Why not let me give you a nice wash?’
Jane turned around, her mouth falling open. Standing in the doorway of her room, the devil even managed to look pious as he said, ‘You’ll feel much better afterwards.’
She could just imagine!
Her jaw snapped shut. ‘I think I’ll skip a wash tonight!’
He stepped over the threshold, seemingly undismayed by her vehement refusal. In the candlelit shadows he looked very big and very dark. ‘What about your night-things? What do you wear to bed?’
With her injured hand she had found it easier to sleep nude than struggle into one of the silky confections that the valuers had fastidiously overlooked. ‘None of your business.’
He took another step. ‘I see,’ he said and from the huskiness in his voice he saw all too well. ‘But maybe with me in the house you’d feel more secure if you wore something. Do you need me to help you get undressed?’
She shook her head, biting her tongue. He came closer and fingered the bottom of her T-shirt. ‘Are you sure?’
She nodded dumbly.
‘What about your bra? Does it fasten at the front or back?’
‘Back,’ she whispered. Trust him to know that her bra was the weak point in her defence. She had tried going braless after she had broken her hand, but her size had made it uncomfortable and she had been too self-conscious about the way her breasts moved beneath her clothes to go out that way in public. Putting on a bra with only one good hand had been difficult, but not impossible, but now...
Jane closed her eyes, surrendering to the inevitable. But he didn’t pull off her T-shirt. His hands were warm as they skimmed her waist under the loose fabric, separating to slide up around her ribs and meet again at the centre of her back. His breath was just as warm on her forehead as he deftly unhooked the tiny fastening and her full breasts shifted, settling lower on her chest, lightly brushing against his...
They stood for a frozen moment, then Jane felt him sigh and his hands fell away as he stepped back. She opened her eyes. His gaze was sombre, steady.
‘If you want any more help, you’ll have to ask for it.’
She couldn’t say it. She just couldn’t get the words out of her fear-locked throat, past her stubborn lips.
His nostrils flared and his features seemed to tighten, accentuating the broad, flat cheekbones and thrust of his jaw.
Without a word he peeled off her T-shirt and gently slid the bra down her arms. He knelt and unzipped her shorts and drew them off, along with her panties. Not once did he take his eyes off hers.
He rose to turn back her bed and guided her down onto the cool white cotton, draping the top sheet carefully over her voluptuous nudity. Then he left the room, returning a few minutes later with a bowl of warm soapy water, a face cloth, a towel and her hair brush.
Silently, rinsing the cloth often, he sat on the side of the bed and slowly washed her face, throat and shoulders, and the upper swell of her breasts that rose above the folded sheet. His face was a fascinating golden mask in the candlelight as he patted her skin softly dry and loosened her hair from its pony-tail, brushing it out in a wavy black fan across the white pillow.
He leant over and blew out the candle, and in the velvety blackness she felt his lips press briefly over her ruffled brow, her eyes—each in turn—and her mouth. Then, still without speaking, he was gone, closing the door behind him with a quiet click.
CHAPTER EIGHT
HE WAS driving her crazy!
Four days later her uninvited house guest was still firmly ensconced, and Jane’s peace and quiet had been irrevocably shattered. The phone was constantly ringing and Ryan was a perpetual whirlwind of activity. If he wasn’t firing off mem
os and faxes or conducting conference calls, he was despatching his domestic duties with infuriating efficiency or tackling some of the most urgently needed repair work on the house with tools and materials he had salvaged from the garage.
He seemed impervious to the discomforts of the cramped cottage—indeed, seemed to treat the daily drudgery as a challenge! If she escaped down to the beach he imposed his presence on her there, too—jogging, body-surfing, leafing through reports or pestering her with conversation that was impossible to ignore. He was every bit as relentless on his mission of mercy as he had been at pursuing his vengeance.
‘Don’t you ever relax?’ she had grumbled at him on the second evening, when he was once again nagging at her to play a game of chess rather than curling up next to the oil lamp with her book. For all he wouldn’t let her lift a finger he seemed determined to involve her in everything he did.
He looked genuinely surprised. ‘I am relaxed.’
‘If this is you relaxed I’d hate to see you excited,’ she said drily, and instantly regretted her words when his eyes gleamed with amusement.
‘You already have,’ he reminded her. ‘And you didn’t hate it at all.’
She scrunched deeper in the comfy old easy chair, wishing he didn’t look so impossibly sexy in black. His trousers and short-sleeved shirt were plain, and unadorned by designer labels, yet somehow were rendered elegant by the wearer. He could ring the changes in a wardrobe that seemed to mysteriously grow larger by the day while Jane was forced by convenience to wear whatever was easiest to put on—usually the ubiquitous shorts and T-shirt.
She tossed her head. She didn’t care how she looked, she was no longer one of the dress-to-impress brigade.
‘I meant you seem to think you have to fill every waking moment with activity,’ she said, watching him set out the chess pieces he had found in some dusty corner. ‘The only time you rest is when you’re sleeping.’
She’d used to be like that, too, she realised—constantly wound up, always restlessly looking for the next challenge, alert for the next stab in the back from friend or foe. Until it had all been snatched away from her she hadn’t realised how subtly it had ground down her enjoyment of life.
He shrugged. ‘It comes naturally to me. I’ve worked hard all my life. In fact, this is the closest thing I’ve had to a holiday for years.’ His eyelids drooped as he remembered that the last holiday he had planned was going to be his honeymoon.
Jane shifted uncomfortably under his stare. ‘Ava always said you found business more interesting than you did her,’ she blurted, unknowingly echoing his thoughts.
He abandoned the chess pieces to come prowling across the room. ‘Did she come running to you with all her petty complaints about my shortcomings?’
‘They weren’t petty, not to Ava.’
‘Obviously not. But if she had come to me with them, instead of you, we might have worked them out.’
‘I doubt it,’ said Jane involuntarily, remembering Ava’s soft brown eyes brimming with anguished tears over her love for Conrad. Whatever Ryan had suffered, at least he hadn’t had to cope with the added humiliation of knowing he was being dumped for a man who didn’t have a tenth of his personal charisma.
His eyes narrowed as they always did when he aimed one of his stinging verbal darts. ‘Didn’t I satisfy her in bed? Was that why she was so quick to believe I’d been having an affair with someone else?’
‘You weren’t even sleeping together—’ Jane protested, and bit her lip as she realised the trap he had set.
He looked grimly satisfied by her admission that she had been privy to the most intimate details of his relationship with Ava. ‘Did she also tell you why?’
‘It was none of my business,’ she said, looking away. Maybe if she hadn’t actively discouraged Ava’s early confidences about her relationship with Ryan events might not have been forced to such a drastic turn. But she had dealt with the fierce envy that she had felt whenever Ava had talked about Ryan by appearing to be supremely uninterested.
‘I guess you knew she was still a virgin. She said she wanted to wait until we were married,’ he said softly, his shrewd gaze on Jane’s guiltily averted face. ‘Did you encourage her in that view, during your girlish chats, by any chance...?’
Jane’s blue eyes flashed as her chin tilted proudly up. ‘Oh, no, you don’t—you can’t blame me for that! I never did understand how she could—’ She clamped her jaw shut before she said too much.
‘What? Deny me? Resist me?’ he probed, with a trace of his former silky malice. ‘I know you find me sexually irresistible, Jane,’ he said, making her blush. ‘But we’re talking about someone with a strong sense of morality and an innate shyness.’
Jane couldn’t help snorting. It hadn’t been morality that had stopped Ava from sleeping with her fiancé—it had been her love for another man. She certainly hadn’t been shy with Conrad!
‘Whereas you...’ he murmured speculatively. ‘I think that if you were in love with a man, he wouldn’t be able to keep you out of his bed.’
Her flush deepened as she thought of the wanton way she had behaved in that hotel room. ‘If you’re implying that I have no sense of morality...’
‘Not at all. I’m just saying that once you commit yourself to a course of action you commit yourself utterly—no half measures, no holding back...full steam ahead and damn the torpedoes! A lot of people find that kind of overwhelming strength of purpose intimidating, especially in a woman.’
‘That’s their problem!’ declared Jane, not sure whether to be flattered or insulted by his character sketch.
‘I agree. Fortunately it’s not mine. I’m not easily intimidated.’ He rubbed his jaw reminiscently.
‘Nor am I,’ she said, staring resentfully up at his towering figure. ‘So you can forget about hassling me into a chess game. I’m relaxing with a book, and when I’ve finished this chapter I’m going to go to bed—to sleep,’ she added hurriedly.
He didn’t move away. ‘I’m not used to having such early nights. I’m having trouble sleeping. I toss and turn for hours in my lonely bed—’
‘Probably the lumps in the mattress,’ said Jane repressively, warned by the wicked quirk at the corner of his mouth.
‘One lump in particular,’ he agreed. ‘Care to come to my room and help me smooth it out?’
With difficulty she kept her eyes on his, acutely aware that his hips were level with her face. ‘Sorry—no hands,’ she said sweetly, holding up her bandaged mitts.
‘You won’t need them; you can use your mouth—I happen to know you have a very versatile tongue,’ he shot back silkily, and laughed at her glowering expression, sending a kick of exhilaration along her nerves. ‘Walked right into that one, didn’t you, sweetheart? You know, I think you’re right—an idle chat is far more relaxing than a tense battle of chess that takes all one’s concentration.’
He stretched his impressive musculature, abandoning the chessboard to stroll over to the couch where she was sitting with her book in her lap. ‘Let’s just sit here cosily together and talk some more about ourselves...’
That was the last thing she wanted, since he had an infuriating knack of provoking her into saying things that were better left unsaid.
So, of course, they had ended up playing chess, with Jane being roundly beaten even though all Ryan’s concentration had definitely not been on the game.
The trouble was that no matter how absorbed he appeared to be in his own activities he always seemed to know where Jane was and what she was doing.
She couldn’t even potter about in the garden without his interference. Only this morning she had waited until he was safely engaged in his morning conference call to his office before sneaking out to the garden to do some surreptitious weeding. She had only just worked out a painless technique, using a short length of bamboo stake to burrow under the weed roots and flick them out of the soil, when a shadow loomed and the stick was whipped from her hand.
&n
bsp; ‘Do you have to do this right now?’
His irritation was music to her ears. ‘Yes.’
He sighed heavily. ‘Tell me what to do.’
‘Don’t tempt me,’ she said sarcastically, eyeing the stick in his hand.
He looked down at her, kneeling at the edge of the garden. ‘I know you’re frustrated by the enforced inactivity, but I don’t want you getting that dressing dirty now that those blisters are oozing.’
‘You don’t want me doing anything!’ she burst out irritably. That soothing, reasonable voice of his got on her nerves. She didn’t want him to be kind, she wanted him to be angry and hostile and easy to hate.
‘Just following doctor’s orders,’ he said. ‘Most women would be pleased at having a man run around at their beck and call.’
‘Running around maybe, riding roughshod over no!’
‘I’m just trying to help—’
‘Are you? Or are you just here to enjoy watching me suffer?’
Her bitter utterance was followed by a pregnant silence. He crouched down beside her. ‘I’m sorry if you believe that,’ he said gravely. ‘Maybe it was true—once. But that was before I got to know you—’
She bristled. ‘You don’t know me—’
‘As well as anyone, I suspect. The fact that your best friend lives in Wellington says it all, really, doesn’t it, Jane? You don’t like people getting too close. You’d rather keep them at arm’s length, in case they find out you aren’t as tough as you pretend to be.’
She stiffened. Was that pity she heard in his voice? ‘Spare me your cheap psychoanalysis.’
‘Don’t be so defensive. I’m trying hard to build up some trust here, Jane—how about meeting me halfway? We’ve both been guilty of malice and misjudgement in the past. You said you were searching for new beginnings at Piha. So why won’t you begin by accepting my offer of friendship?’
‘Because you don’t want to be friends,’ she said harshly.