by Robyn Donald
‘If I can’t, I’ll sell Xanadu, pay the Ogilvies what I can, and then I presume I’ll have to file for bankruptcy.’ Her voice lacked emotion. ‘Do you still want to buy the place?’
‘It depends on the price,’ he said laconically, ‘and I imagine that will be set by the Ogilvies. They’ll probably get someone in to value everything. Don’t do anything for a few hours.’
‘What difference will a few hours make?’
‘Exactly.’ His tone gentled as he went on, ‘You shouldn’t have to go through this.’
‘I’m young and strong,’ she returned woodenly. ‘It’s not the end of the world.’
‘Only the end of a dream.’
‘Damn you, stop it,’ she whispered.
The car turned into her gateway, rode the potholes and drew up outside the shed. In a cool, deliberate voice he said, ‘It was never your dream, Natalia. What would you do if you had the choice? What are your dreams?’
Staring through the windscreen at the overgrown garden and a house that desperately needed paint, she said bleakly, ‘I don’t think I have any left.’
Silence lengthened until he finally said, ‘I’m coming in with you.’
‘Haven’t you got things to do?’
‘I’ll help you work out what you can salvage.’
Her heart leapt. ‘Thank you,’ she said slowly.
He leaned over and turned her head, dropping another fierce kiss on her mouth. Her lips clung, and the kiss deepened. They were both breathing faster when he lifted his head. Eyes raking her face, he said, ‘Soon you and I are going to stay in a bed all day.’
Hugging his words, because they meant he wanted some sort of future with her, she went into the house and dropped off her clothes, then fed the hens.
‘Perhaps Liz’s mother might want them,’ Natalia said. ‘She likes hens.’
‘That sounds a good idea.’ Clay closed the gate behind her and they walked back to the tunnel-houses.
Sick at heart, Natalia looked around the dying plants. The capsicums were limp, their dull leaves folding in on themselves. Fingering one glossy green fruit, she said, ‘They’ll be all right if I strip them now.’
‘I’ll help you.’
They ended up with several bins of second-grade fruit. ‘What do you want done with these?’ Clay asked as she picked up the last pepper.
‘Sort them and pack them and send them off to the markets.’ Carefully staring down at the smooth green skin, she hefted it in her hand. ‘Clay, you don’t need to stay. There’s nothing for you to do here.’
‘Then I’ll see you in a couple of hours,’ he said, and bent to kiss her. Against her mouth he said, ‘Don’t do anything final while I’m away.’
She pulled back. ‘I have to get the peppers—’
‘Anything about this financial mess of yours,’ he qualified impatiently, eyes narrowing.
The pepper weighed heavily in her hand. For three years she’d cared for capsicums as though they were her children; she’d got used to the scent of them, used to the mess they made of her hands, accustomed to their smooth green blocky shape.
Now it was all over. ‘All right,’ she said at last.
She’d just returned from taking the cases down to catch the carrier when she heard a car. Lithely she jumped down from the truck, her eyes lighting up as she saw Clay’s BMW turn into the gateway.
He got out, long legs moving with deceptive ease as he came towards her, tawny eyes gleaming, hair black as night in the sun. They kissed, and this time he said, ‘Mmm, you always smell so good. Warm and secret and sexy.’
‘I smell like capsicums,’ she said on a half-laugh, hugging him. ‘Have you had lunch?’
‘No. How are things?’
‘The peppers are on their way to the markets, but I haven’t had time to do anything else.’
‘Good.’ He turned her towards the house. ‘Feed me and then we’ll talk.’
She said sweetly, ‘I won’t feed you, but I’ll provide the wherewithal for you to eat.’
He laughed. ‘One day I’ll show you how very erotic feeding someone can be,’ he said, looking down at her with a disturbing intensity that sent a shiver through her.
They ate lettuce and some cold roast meat and a potato salad with a Russian dressing that had been her mother’s favourite. Then she made tea while he rinsed the dishes, and they took their cups out on to the verandah.
Leaning against the balustrade, his cup lost in his hands, Clay surveyed her face.
In an expressionless voice he said, ‘I’ll buy the place from you as a going concern.’
She gazed blindly out over the neglected, unfertilised paddocks. ‘You’d probably get it cheaper if I sold everything up,’ she said remotely.
‘It’s unlikely.’ Dark brows drew together. ‘Buying Xanadu is a business decision, Natalia.’
She gave him a surprised look. ‘I know.’
The midday sun lured hidden flames from his black head. Hard features hardened further, if that was possible, and his eyes were very steady and level, golden and predatory.
‘My next offer isn’t,’ he said. ‘I want to pay off the rest of the mortgage.’
Natalia shook her head, not letting herself feel. ‘I can’t let you do that,’ she said uncompromisingly.
‘Why not? I can afford it.’
‘That’s got nothing to do with it.’ She spoke rapidly, brusquely, unable to deal with the emotions clawing at her. ‘I couldn’t accept it.’
He shrugged. ‘I want to do it. And at least this way the Ogilvies will get their money.’
Oh, that was cruel! Tears stung her eyes as she turned away. ‘Clay—please don’t. I’d never be able to pay you back.’ Painfully, her voice stiff with pride, she added, ‘I’m not like my father.’
‘Everyone in Bowden knows you’re not like your father. There’d be no question of payment,’ he said, his voice edged with something more than exasperation, ‘if you were living with me.’
Until that moment Natalia hadn’t understood what fantasies she’d been weaving, what hidden hopes had germinated in the depths of her heart. She’d said that she wasn’t like her father, but she was, she was, because she too had begun to weave fantasies out of moonbeams.
Except that her dreams would harm no one but her.
Her head came up. ‘I don’t think I’m very good mistress material.’
‘I don’t want a mistress,’ Clay said curtly.
That doomed hope flickered a little. ‘Then what?’
He didn’t hesitate or pause, but she got the impression that he was choosing his words with more than usual care, and when he spoke it was with a cool, inflexible logic that hurt because she didn’t understand it. ‘You need help—’
‘I’d rather be your mistress than an object of pity,’ she flashed, wounded in some exquisitely tender place and desperate to stop him from inflicting any more pain. Without giving him time to speak, she added curtly, ‘At least I’d have some personal freedom if I were bankrupt.’
‘Hardly. Do you know the terms for bankruptcy?’ he asked roughly. ‘You’d find them extremely restrictive.’
She shook her head. ‘More restrictive than being your mistress? All I want is to be free,’ she said angrily, because anger was easier to endure than the anguish that clawed her heart. ‘Is that so hard to understand?’
‘I do understand.’ But his face was closed against her, his eyes opaque and hard, the mouth that had ravished her the previous night now an uncompromising line.
‘Then why ask me to be your mistress?’
He snarled something below his breath before answering roughly, ‘I said nothing about you being my mistress—you’re the one who keeps tossing that word around. I want to pay your debt because you’ve had a bloody awful time and you’ve worked your heart out and this final straw is totally unfair! And because you’ll never forgive yourself for not repaying the Ogilvies. I know you, Natalia—it will eat into your soul for the rest of your life
.’
Keeping her eyes on the hens busily scratching their way through her newest bed of seedlings, she said wearily, ‘But it’s not your problem.’
He set his mug down on the balustrade and turned to follow her gaze, giving her the chance to feast her eyes on the width of his shoulders, the sheer male strength that had been tempered for her last night—and then unleashed in all its power. Her heart cramped, tightened, knotted in her chest.
How had it happened? How had she moved so swiftly, so secretly from acute awareness to fascination, and from there to this exultant, terrifying love?
And now Clay was tempting her with the promise of heaven.
But it was heaven with a sting in the tail, a paradise with poison at the heart of it. He offered her the rootless, carnal pleasure of desire when she longed for the hardy, tenacious plant of love, with its rare beauty and strength and commitment—love, with the resilience and determination of the jasmine that had kept Clay’s homestead together, she thought bleakly.
‘You are my problem,’ he said, keeping his eyes on the sun-washed paddocks she’d tried to conserve. Levelly, without emotion, he went on, ‘I can’t bear to leave you in this mess. If you live with me, accept the money, you’ll be free to go whenever you want to. You can make plans for the future, even go to university or art school if that’s what you want.’ His voice deepened as he turned her head and surveyed her face, the banked golden eyes alert and calculating. ‘And free of paying for your father’s pain and his mistakes. You’d hate it if the Ogilvies suffered because you were too proud to take the money.’
‘I’d hate even more to live with the stigma of being paid for sex,’ she retorted icily, furious at the moral blackmail.
Flames leapt in the dark gold of his eyes. ‘If that’s your take on it, then we’ll say goodbye.’
She didn’t—couldn’t—move; the thought of seeing him go literally paralysed her.
In a calmly reasonable tone, Clay went on, ‘Look at this logically. I can afford to pay the Ogilvies in full. You can’t. And I want to pay your debts because you’re important to me, not because I’m trying to buy you. If I thought you were for sale I wouldn’t want you, Natalia.’
Struggling to find some answer to that, she bit her lip and looked away.
‘On second thoughts,’ he said curtly, ‘perhaps logic has nothing to do with it.’ In one lithe, silent movement he came away from the balustrade and tangled his hands in her hair and kissed her.
Natalia fought but it was no use; he used his great strength to subdue her, although not to hurt.
She should have bitten him, punched him in the solar plexus, kneed him. Instead she responded with a feverish intensity that was partly based on a baffled, frustrated anger, partly on the wildness he summoned in her, a need the previous night hadn’t assuaged. Their tongues duelled, and then she gave up, surrendering with a low groan to the hunger that overwhelmed her.
‘You’re like a drug,’ he muttered, his lips barely moving, his eyes glittering, ‘all sweetness and passion and fury—I can’t get enough of you. Whether you like it or not, Natalia, pride and stiff-necked resistance aren’t going to keep us apart. Come and live with me and we’ll set the world on fire.’
‘And then?’ she asked in a muffled voice.
His hand moved to her hip and held her against him. ‘What do you want?’
Oh, just the world—to know that he loved her as she loved him. ‘I don’t know,’ she said painfully. ‘When you touch me I can’t think.’
Shaking her head, she pulled back.
Although he let her go, he watched her through half-closed eyes. ‘I wonder what it is about you that makes me forget everything I’ve ever learned about women? At first I thought it was your mouth…’ he leaned down and kissed it with tormenting gentleness ‘…then that it was your eyes…’ Two kisses sealed them. His voice had sunk to a deep smooth murmur, intensely erotic as his mouth roamed her face.
Against her cheek he said, ‘Then I wondered if it was the texture and colour of your skin, ivory and pearls and magnolia flowers, all woman, all mystery. But I got sidetracked by your laugh, and the way you look when you’re angry, and the way your mind works…’ He smiled against her temple and finished, ‘I think I’m fixated on you.’
Surely this was enough? He might not yet know it, but surely he loved her? And if he didn’t, then perhaps he would learn to.
If she went with him.
Shivering, her heart thudding in her ears, Natalia could only give an inarticulate response.
‘Come with me,’ he said roughly. ‘I’m crazy for you.’
‘Clay—’
‘We’ll work things out.’
He was manipulating her with that caressing voice and the slow slide of his fingers across her skin, and the touch of his mouth at the corners of hers, and then under her ear. She flinched when he closed his teeth gently on the exquisitely sensitive lobe.
He whispered, ‘Say yes, Natalia, sweet witch, come and live with me.’
‘Yes,’ she groaned as his tongue stabbed into the inner reach of her ear, and she went up in flames. Some day, she thought dazedly, some day she’d pay him back—somehow…
A cough splintered their heated, sensuous moment; Natalia stiffened, but Clay held her locked against him, looking above her head at the intruder.
‘What is it?’ he asked, his voice intimidating.
‘I called in to see Natalia.’
Phil. A note of defiance in his voice, a resolution she’d never heard before. Clay’s arms tightened, but when she looked up at him with angry eyes he let her go.
Turning, hoping that her face didn’t show the effects of dazed passion, she said, ‘Hello, Phil.’
He looked sick, white around the mouth, his eyes turbulent. ‘I called in to see whether there was anything I could do for you.’
‘No, there’s nothing, thank you,’ Natalia said, hating to hurt him, knowing she had to.
Phil looked from her face to Clay’s and then back again. In his face she saw a kind of grey horror. He tried to speak a couple of times, then managed to say, ‘Last night he said you were here when the—when someone cut down the capsicums.’
A small frown pleated her brows. ‘Yes—I was asleep,’ she said quietly.
He wet his lips. ‘And you only went with him—with Clay—when—after you found them. The capsicums.’
‘Yes.’
He stared at her. ‘I came in,’ he said. ‘When I came home after dropping Rachel off I saw the lights at the homestead and I turned around and came down here. I knocked on the door but no one answered.’
Natalia stiffened, and Clay’s hand gripped her shoulder, giving her support. ‘I was tired,’ she said. ‘I’ve been getting up every two hours during the last two nights to check the hydroponics. One of the steers broke a valve.’
Keeping his eyes on the ground, Phil nodded. ‘I thought you were at the homestead with him, and I—’ he wet his lips ‘—and I think I must have had a brainstorm. I went over to the tunnel-house and saw that someone had stolen the computer and I—I cut all the plants.’
Natalia’s head spun. Clay’s other hand came up to hold her upright, but after a moment she stiffened her shoulders and looked fully at the man she had always liked, always admired for his steadfast devotion to duty. ‘Why?’ she asked clearly.
He said with a hopeless attempt at a smile, ‘I was jealous. So it serves me right that what—what I did drove you to spend the night with him. Natalia, I’m very sorry. I must have been mad, but I won’t ever bother you again. And I— I wish you all the best.’
He gave a jerky nod and blundered around the side of the house.
Clay’s hand tightened on her shoulders, ‘Where do you think you’re going?’
Natalia listened to Phil’s vehicle start up and go too fast down the drive, then said wretchedly, ‘I wish I hadn’t ever gone out with him. I didn’t mean to hurt him.’
‘The poor fool was obsessed with y
ou,’ Clay said harshly. ‘However, I think he’s realised how dangerous that obsession was.’ He turned her and looked at her, golden eyes piercing and ruthless. ‘You can’t do anything for him beyond keeping away from him.’
‘You knew,’ she said wonderingly. ‘How did you know it was Phil?’
He paused, then pulled her into his arms. ‘The way he behaved last night, I think. Also, the cattle and the computer and the fencing materials had been professional jobs, done with quick, tidy precision. Whoever had slashed the capsicums had been savagely angry. The two didn’t go together.’
Natalia shivered. ‘I thought I knew him,’ she said quietly, drawing strength from Clay’s solid warmth and strength.
‘It’s always a shock to be faced with a friend’s perfidy.’ He kissed her forehead. ‘You need a change of air. Pack what you want to take and we’ll go to Auckland.’
Natalia felt her mouth drop. ‘Just like that? Clay, I can’t leave—’
‘What’s keeping you here?’
Bulldozed by the driving force of his will, she said, ‘The hens—’
‘Mrs Kaiwhare will be up this afternoon to pick them up.’
‘The Ogilvies—’
‘Will be just as happy to deal with you in Auckland through fax and phone.’ He was relentless.
‘But the homestead—’
His eyes kindled. ‘I only stayed because of you.’
He was right—Xanadu had never been her dream. Now, faced with the ruin of everything she’d worked for, and Phil’s pain, and—yes, why not admit it?—the gossip that her moving in with Clay would cause, she was racked by an urgency, a cowardly desire to get out of Bowden and leave behind the wreckage of her father’s fantasies.
Torn by indecision, she pulled herself free of his arms and stared down at the peeling paint on the balustrade. ‘I’ll be running away.’
‘From what? There’s nothing here for you now. Come with me.’ His voice was hard, almost merciless.
Natalia glanced at him, hoping for something—some tenderness—in the handsome, autocratic face.