by Robyn Donald
‘I must have been a total idiot to let him fool me.’
‘Only for a little while,’ Liz said quickly. ‘You soon saw through him.’
Natalia said with dry self-derision, ‘I was crazy for him, but when I found out about his wife it just evaporated—pouff! Like mist in the sun. I’m a lot more sensible now.’ And she hoped it was true.
‘It’s not sensible to shut yourself away in case someone hurts you again! Nat, I worry about you—you don’t smile nearly as much as you used to, and that control is getting a bit scary.’
‘I’m fine.’ She smiled deliberately. ‘I promise to smile at least ten times a day, and to lose my temper occasionally. You’d have been proud of me when I realised some louse had siphoned the petrol from the truck. I threw a proper tantrum, dredging up some of my grandfather’s meatiest Russian curses.’
And Clay had laughed, a deep, sexy laugh that lit up his eyes and sent a kind of hot chill through every nerve in her body.
‘I’ll bet it did you the world of good.’ Liz knew when to push, when to stay silent. ‘Keep in touch,’ she said. ‘One letter a week.’
‘You won’t have time to write one letter a week.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, of course I will. And if I don’t get a letter every week I’ll set my mother on to you.’
She would too, and Mrs Kaiwhare had a ferocious maternal streak that would bring her storming up to Xanadu to see what the problem was. ‘One letter a week,’ Natalia promised. She stopped and turned. ‘There, look at that.’
Around them whispered a cool breeze, sweet and tangy. The hills fell away in graceful folds to the sea, a brilliant silver-blue under the radiant sky. On the horizon islands lay like forgotten dreams.
‘Nat, I don’t want to go,’ Liz said shakily.
‘You’ll have a ball. Think of blissfully diving into archives, and those wonderful old houses, and think of all the museums and libraries and theatres and nightclubs and the shops, Liz—think of all the shops!’
‘At the moment it doesn’t seem much recompense for all this,’ Liz admitted. ‘What are you looking at?’
Natalia frowned at a tractor working on Pukekahu. ‘Phil must be stockpiling the materials for the new fence around the boundary.’ She turned away, smiling at her friend. ‘Don’t forget us.’
‘As if I could!’
Half an hour later, beside Liz’s car, they hugged. ‘I know I’m going to enjoy it when I get there,’ Liz said, wet-eyed. ‘You take care of yourself, all right? And for heaven’s sake, if Clay Beauchamp asks you out, say yes and wear that green dress.’
‘And you enjoy Oxford. Find yourself a Regency buck.’
Liz grinned. ‘I’ll have fun trying.’
Natalia waved the car off, closing her eyes so that she didn’t see it disappear out of sight—one of her mother’s superstitions. Then she checked the hydroponic system again.
She glanced at her watch. Yes, she had enough time to satisfy her curiosity about the heap of materials on the boundary fence.
It was surprising that Clay hadn’t got in a team of contract fencers, but no doubt he had a reason for setting Phil to do it. Well, Natalia thought sarcastically as she crawled under her electric fence, of course there’d be several excellent reasons, apart from the fact that he didn’t want her to do it! Clay Beauchamp wasn’t a man who worked by instinct or emotion. The cool depths of those amber-gold eyes suggested that he based all his decisions on coldly rational motives—and the bottom line.
Except that he’d been kind in his acerbic way to her. But then, if you intended to make a woman your mistress, kindness was a good thing to cultivate! And he hadn’t been coldly rational—or thinking of the bottom line—when he’d kissed her.
Squelching an excitement that threatened to get out of control, Natalia stopped to admire the small, pure white flowers of a manuka, then made her way out of the scrub on to the swamp.
The equipment for the boundary fence was impressive—large piles of wooden battens, concrete strainer posts and coils of wire all neatly stacked. A lot of money wrapped up in materials. Pukekahu would bloom with all this attention.
‘Natalia!’
Phil, she realised, with a swift dread founded on her smarting conscience. Beaming, he walked jauntily around the heap of battens. Too late she saw a flash of red from the tractor behind the fencing materials. She hesitated, but Phil waved, and with a hidden reluctance she picked her way across the swamp, jumping from one clump of tussocks to another until she reached the stream that drained it.
There she stopped, using the metre-wide creek as a psychological barrier. ‘Hello, Phil,’ she said, striving to sound friendly but non-committal.
His eyes devoured her. ‘Hi, Natalia.’ He struggled with himself, but his question was swift and jealous. ‘Have a good time at the masquerade ball?’
‘Yes, it was great fun.’ Before he had a chance to reply she tacked on, ‘How’s Rachel?’ Rachel was the pleasant woman who’d been in love with him for years.
‘She’s all right.’ He jumped the creek and came towards her, his good-looking face starkly outlined. ‘Natalia,’ he began. ‘Please, Natalia, couldn’t we at least talk—?’
She held out her hands in the time-honoured gesture of repudiation. ‘I’m sorry,’ she broke in, hating to hurt him all over again, yet angry with him for not accepting that their very mild relationship was over—had died stillborn. And she was tired of feeling guilty! ‘Phil, we’ve already talked and I don’t—’
‘Please,’ he said, his voice cracked and desperate. He reached for her and snatched her close, trying to kiss her with a raw, frenzied hunger that appalled her. ‘Please, darling,’ he whispered, ‘please don’t turn me away—’
When Clay had touched her she had forgotten every maxim of the self-defence classes she’d attended; not so now. She could hurt Phil quite severely, but although she could never love him he was a nice man.
‘No,’ she said firmly, pushing at him. ‘Phil, stop this! Stop it!’
He gabbled wretchedly, ‘I can’t; God knows, I’ve tried, but I can’t. I know you’ve never loved me, but you’ve gutted me, Natalia. I can’t stop loving you.’
‘You could if you tried—you just haven’t given it long enough.’ The inflexible male voice froze them both.
Natalia flinched as Phil’s arms fell away from her and a dark, painful colour patched his cheekbones. Instinctively protective, she swivelled to face Clay, her chin angling upwards.
He’d stopped a few metres away, his expression an intimidating mix of authority and lack of tolerance as his voice cut through the taut silence like a whiplash. ‘Until then, don’t do your courting on my time—especially as it’s so clearly not welcome. You’ve got another load of stuff to deliver.’
Phil’s jaw tightened. Without looking at Natalia he muttered, ‘All right,’ and walked doggedly away.
Natalia waited with the wary aggression of a duellist until the tractor started up and roared up the hill.
Before she could speak Clay said in a lethal voice, ‘I told you not to torment him.’
‘I didn’t know he was here.’ Even to her it sounded lame. Almost vibrating with antagonism, she added, ‘And I don’t take orders from you.’
‘While he’s working for me you’ll stay out of his way unless you want to see him sacked.’
Dry-mouthed, she stared at the relentless framework of his face in the winter sunlight. She said, ‘He doesn’t deserve that. And you needn’t worry—I don’t want to encourage him,’ finishing with a snap, ‘either on your time or his.’
‘So why did you come down here?’ Clay asked with unsparing insistence.
The incident with Phil must have upset her more than she’d realised because she said, ‘I was just curious.’
‘And now you’ve satisfied it, you can forget about the fence,’ he said softly, his golden eyes half-closed as they roamed her face. They came to rest on her mouth, and narrowed into sudden, dangerous sli
ts.
She jerked back as he took two strides towards her. ‘He hurt you,’ he said harshly, touching her upper lip with a long forefinger.
Natalia said indistinctly, ‘No.’
Clay stroked across the generous curve. Her eyes stayed fixed on his shirt button, but that light caress melted every bone in her body.
‘Your lip is swollen.’
Startled by the ferocious undertone to his statement, she looked up into eyes cold as crystallised fire. ‘He didn’t hurt me,’ she protested. ‘Phil wouldn’t hurt anyone.’
‘You’re remarkably innocent,’ Clay said grimly. ‘It looked as though he was forcing you to stand still while he kissed you. In my book, that’s violence.’ His finger traced the edge of her lips, lightly, almost possessively, as though staking a claim. ‘If you want that pretty face to remain unmarked you’d better learn to recognise men who are capable of it.’
His touch seared through her, scrambling her mind, confusing her. Stepping back, she repeated, ‘Phil would never hurt me—or anyone else.’
‘He’d better not,’ Clay said harshly. ‘Keep away from him. I don’t want him mooning around because he wants you and can’t get you. To someone in his state, even a casual meeting and a flash of that singularly provocative smile is encouragement.’
Unfortunately he was right. Natalia said stiffly, ‘Thank you for the advice. I’ll leave you now.’
Some other, more suspect emotion lit the golden embers in his eyes to a muted life. ‘Do you have to?’
Quite deliberately he moved closer, filling her with a feverish panic.
Natalia’s heart began to pick up speed. Because she wasn’t going to let him see that she was intimidated, she nodded and said casually, ‘See you later,’ as she turned away and began to thread her way across the spongy ground.
He caught up to her with a couple of long silent strides, saying conversationally, ‘You smell of flowers.’ And as her eyes widened, he added, ‘Wild flowers.’
She recognised the mockery in his gaze and in the curve of his hard mouth, and squared her shoulders. ‘Ragwort,’ she said sweetly, taking the opportunity to step over a puddle and away from him. ‘Or perhaps it’s gorse.’
‘Thistles?’ he suggested, the gleaming topaz gaze darkening as it dropped for another fraught second to her mouth.
Natalia turned her head and gave him a smile that stopped just short of baring her teeth. ‘No thistles,’ she said, grabbing at the strap-like leaves of a flax plant to haul herself over a patch of ground turned to oozy mud by the hooves of cattle. ‘I grubbed them out last spring.’
His brows twitched together, but he said merely, ‘You don’t need to point out how tough you are, Natalia. I know.’
‘I work the farm, so of course I’m strong.’ It irritated her that he managed the bog as easily and lithely as he’d waltzed.
‘Graceful too.’
Struggling to retain her poise, she said, ‘How kind of you.’
‘But you don’t believe it?’ A taunt underlaid the question.
She said formally, ‘I enjoy a compliment as well as anyone. Even if I don’t really deserve it.’
Mockery showed for a moment in the angular face. ‘When people refute a compliment it’s often because they want to be convinced of it.’
‘That’s a cynical thing to say,’ she retorted, feeling colour burn through her skin. Anger, she decided staunchly, not embarrassment.
As she angled her chin he said unexpectedly, ‘Yes, it was.’ Those tawny-gold eyes were now cool and dispassionate, the deep voice withdrawn, hawkish features under masterful control.
Chilled, Natalia stopped by the scrub that clothed the side of the gully. Crisp and bracing, the scent of damp manuka enclosed them. ‘I’ll see you around, then. Goodbye.’
His mouth curved in a tilted, unpleasant smile. He’d stopped as well and was looking at her, his eyes alert and far too perceptive. ‘I’ll walk you home. There might be other lovelorn swains around.’
‘Not a one, I promise. I don’t need to be escorted,’ she said politely. ‘I can look after myself.’
‘I saw how capable you are. He was mauling you and all you were doing was saying stop. You should have hit him in the solar plexus.’
The icy distaste in his voice made her blink. ‘I’m not frightened of Phil,’ she said, exasperated because he wouldn’t listen.
‘Nevertheless, stay away from him.’ Clay’s voice was cold and specific. Before she could respond he asked, ‘Have you got your wasp pills with you?’
She clapped a hand on the back pocket of her jeans. ‘Yes,’ she said in a clipped voice.
He smiled and stepped back. ‘Then off you go,’ he said blandly.
For a furious moment she stared at him, until the amusement in his eyes burned through her stupid disappointment.
‘Goodbye,’ she said frigidly and strode into the moist dimness of the scrub, fuming all the way to the house.
Once inside she poured herself a glass of water and went out on to the verandah to drink it, looking out over her paddocks. Cattle grazed with afternoon enthusiasm, the westering sun picking out their hides so that they glowed. On her way in she’d let out the hens; they were now busily scratching up their quota of seeds and insects in the paddock. Only the tunnel-houses were ugly in their hi-tech plastic, like huge, stumpy white caterpillars, but between the cattle and the capsicums she was keeping her head above water.
As she was doing with Clay. Her mouth relaxed into a mirthless smile. Treading water wasn’t as glamorous or inspiring as striking out for the shore, but it kept you out of danger.
Falling in love left you too vulnerable, too open to pain. Poor Phil had found that out. In spite of the electricity that sang through her whenever she saw Clay, she wasn’t going to give him any chance to break her heart.
She drained the glass of water and went back inside, frowning at the mail she’d dumped that morning. The bank envelope sent a shiver through her, but although tempted to ignore it she firmed her lips and slit the envelope, then checked the statement inside.
‘What on earth…?’ she said slowly, because the balance on the page was far more than it should be. Common sense told her it was a mistake, but hope glimmered while she read down the credits. Perhaps she was the one who’d made the mistake and she was much better off than she—
A name leapt out at her. Clay had paid in an outrageous sum of money to her credit.
The sheet of paper jerked as her fingers tightened on it. It took all her control to relax them, to put the paper down on the bench and draw in a ragged breath.
Never take on anyone when you’re angry, her father used to say. Wait until it’s died down.
With an odd sort of detachment she realised she was shaking. The very strength of her reaction frightened her. She’d never felt like this before, not even when Dean had admitted that he was married, then suggested it made no difference.
‘Calm down,’ she muttered as if it was a mantra. ‘Calm down, calm down, calm down…’
But she had to go out and dig in her garden until the sun had gone before she’d exhausted her anger. Even then, while she showered and deliberately chose clean jeans and a sweatshirt that came close to being an antique, rage smouldered away inside her.
Tamping it down, she rang Pukekahu, only to get Phil in the manager’s cottage.
It hurt to hear the eagerness in his voice. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said tiredly. ‘Phil, I’d forgotten there was no phone in the homestead—I didn’t mean to interrupt you.’
She sensed that he was pulling himself together. ‘Did you want Clay? He has a mobile number—but I don’t know whether I should give it to you.’
‘Don’t bother,’ she said.
‘I suppose I should have expected it,’ he said curtly. ‘He’s a much better catch than I am. I’ll ring him and tell him you want to contact him.’
Natalia bit back the angry words—she had no need to justify herself to Phil. Besides, he migh
t finally understand she had nothing but friendship to offer him if he believed she was chasing Clay. ‘I’m sorry,’ she repeated briskly, and hung up.
Life would have been much simpler if she could have fallen in love with Phil. He was a kind, decent man.
She’d only taken a couple of steps away from the phone when it rang.
‘You wanted to contact me?’ Clay’s deep voice was abrupt. ‘Have you got a pen? Copy down this number.’
‘I won’t need it again,’ she said, each word curt and distinct.
There was a brief pause. ‘So you got your bank statement today. All right, I’m on my way.’
‘I don’t—’ The phone went dead.
Natalia stood with her fists clenched at her sides, fighting her desire to run and change into something more feminine, more attractive than the elderly sweatshirt and faded jeans. She’d been too angry to do anything about dinner or lighting the fire, and now a chill was creeping up from the floor and she had a hollow instead of a stomach.
How dared Clay think she could be bought? She wanted to shout at him and rage against whatever fate had made her so attracted to him. But not in her bare, cold house with its pathetic sticks of cheap furniture and her even more pathetic reminders of lost dreams pinned on the wall.
She took several quick strides across, intending to rip the sketches down, then stopped.
No, she wasn’t ready to surrender them yet. Not yet…
Filling the kettle with water, she switched it on and waited tensely for the sound of his big car. Just as the kettle boiled it came quietly out of the night; she got down two mugs and a tea caddy and made a pot of tea.
Nerves jumping, she waited for the knock. When it finally came, she walked out and opened it, standing back to let Clay in.
He was suffocatingly large in the almost empty room that had once been a pleasant, comfortable sitting room; it didn’t seem fair, she thought fleetingly, that he should have so much sheer male presence!
‘Sit down,’ she said stonily, waving at the armchair.