Best of Virgins Bundle

by Cathy Williams

  She sounded so elaborately offhand that Paige realised it was a job she wanted very much. ‘Where?’ she asked. ‘Doing what?’

  ‘In the country—well, about twenty kilometres out of Napier. I saw it in the paper after you left, and when I rang they were quite keen.’ She gave a little laugh. ‘It’s light housework and taking care of a couple of kids after school. There’s a free flat for me and Brodie.’

  ‘It sounds perfect.’ If Sherry got that job, Paige wouldn’t be able to afford the unit. She pushed the thought to the furthest reaches of her mind and said heartily, ‘I’ll keep my fingers crossed for you.’

  ‘Yeah, well, the money’s not as good, of course, but I’ll be able to save most of it. And it’s more wholesome for Brodie to grow up there. Oh-oh, he’s stirring. I’d better hang up.’ Dropping her voice, Sherry said, ‘Have a great time, and for once start looking out for yourself, OK?’

  Paige’s smile faded as she hung up. She switched off the light again and lay down, blessing the employer who was prepared to look past the stripper to the warm, responsible woman that Sherry was.

  The telephone rang again. Lifting herself onto her elbow, Paige stared at it, then slowly reached for the receiver.

  Marc asked, ‘Is everything all right?’

  ‘Fine, thank you.’ She heard Lauren Porter’s voice, sharply urgent.

  Marc said, ‘I’m sorry, I have to go. Goodnight, Paige.’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  But it seemed hours that she lay listening to heavy showers hiss across the sea and pounce onto the house. Was the emergency an all-night affair? Or was Marc with Lauren, making love on a bed even bigger than this one?

  She turned over onto her stomach, thrusting her face into the pillow, and tried to block out the images that flashed through her brain. Eventually she drifted off to sleep, but she spent the rest of the night tormented by dark, agitated dreams, and woke with a jolt, aching all over, to the sound of the helicopter taking off.

  Marc was leaving. Without conscious thought, she bolted out of bed.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  BY THE time Paige had pushed the curtains back, and wrestled open the shutters onto the terrace, the sound of the chopper’s engines had faded across the sea. The sudden hollowness beneath her ribs was invaded by a pain so acute she had to lean against the wall; narrowing her eyes, she frantically searched for the helicopter.

  And when at last she caught the tiny silver glint buzzing across a cloudless sky, she whispered, ‘Goodbye,’ on a silent sob.

  ‘Good morning,’ Marc said from far too close.

  Stiff with shock, she whirled around. Clad in well-cut trousers and nothing else, he’d walked out through another set of doors only a few feet from hers. The sun gilded his broad shoulders and magnificent torso and revealed the shadow clinging to his unshaven jaw. He looked like a buccaneer, sexy and sinful and formidably dangerous in every meaning of the word.

  Heat exploded deep in the pit of her stomach. Squelching her first impulse to flee back into her bedroom, drag the curtains across and hole up there until the helicopter arrived back to rescue her from such reckless temptation, Paige stood firm and took a deep breath. If only she’d combed her hair before she came out! She could feel it rioting around her head like spun toffee.

  Refusing to glance down at the shabby T-shirt she slept in, she said, ‘Good morning.’ And, while the smile curling his sculpted mouth wreaked untold damage on her nervous system, she blurted, ‘Where’s the helicopter going?’

  ‘It’s taking Lauren to Kerikeri. She has to catch the eight o’clock plane to Auckland.’

  Dry-mouthed, she said, ‘I thought you were leaving with her?’

  ‘I’m not going until after lunch,’ he said, almost as though she had the right to ask.

  She met his eyes steadily, but couldn’t read anything in his enamelled blue eyes and calm, outrageously handsome face.

  The smile returned, high voltage this time. ‘Did you sleep well?’

  Tamping down a wild response, she told him shortly, ‘Very well, thank you.’ No lie, either. Once she’d chiselled those images from her brain she’d gone under like a drowning victim! But some masochistic urge persuaded her to ask, ‘How about you?’

  ‘When I finally got to sleep.’ And before she had time to torture herself further with pictures of him in bed with Lauren he said, ‘I’m sorry about last night. I had to deal with something that wouldn’t wait.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter.’ A cool breeze from the sea breathed on her, puckering her skin. ‘It was a pleasant evening, and I enjoyed the film.’

  He frowned. ‘You’d better get into some warmer clothes.’

  Did he ever miss anything?

  He finished, ‘I’ll see you at breakfast in half an hour.’

  ‘Certainly,’ she said crisply, and walked inside, closing the shutters behind her.

  Half an hour later he was coming along the passage when she emerged from her bedroom.

  ‘A punctual woman,’ he said. He regarded her with sardonic amusement. ‘Hungry?’

  She had been, but the sight of him, shaven and with his splendid torso concealed by a shirt that darkened his eyes to smoky sapphires, stole her appetite.

  Trying to marshal her tumbling emotions into some sort of order, she went with him to the room where she’d eaten her solitary dinner the night before. The dog Fancy ambled in through the open doors of the terrace to gaze adoringly at Marc, her tail wagging with expectation until he greeted her. Then, politely, she came across and let Paige stroke her head.

  ‘She must miss you when you’re away,’ Paige observed, approaching the chair Marc held for her.

  ‘I don’t think so.’ He looked down at the dog with a half-smile. ‘I probably miss her more. According to Rose Oliver she sleeps a lot.’

  It felt as though a century had gone by since this time yesterday, when she’d been walking the dogs in Napier, Paige thought despairingly as he slid the chair in beneath her.

  Well, things had happened—she’d flown up here, and she’d kissed Marc Corbett. A truly life-changing event, she mocked.

  She surveyed her empty plate with absorbed interest while the scents of breakfast teased her nostrils—toast and bacon, the sweet tang of orange juice straight from the tree, the delicious promise of coffee.

  Kisses didn’t have to mean anything, common sense assured her bracingly.

  But Marc’s kisses had spun her world off its axis. When she’d caught fire her surrender had shattered her life’s safe, prosaic foundations into splinters.

  ‘Something wrong?’ Marc enquired. ‘No, I remember—it normally takes you a while to wake up in the morning. Do you need a kick-start—coffee, perhaps?’

  Sitting mute as a fish was hardly cool. She said evenly, ‘Coffee helps.’

  ‘Pour yourself a cup, then. And one for me, if you don’t mind—black.’

  It figured. Glad to have something to do, she lifted the pot and, while he made a sortie to the sideboard, carefully poured two large cups of coffee.

  When he sat down she glanced at his plate, and in a voice she hoped sounded amused and light, asked, ‘Do you eat porridge every morning?’

  ‘At home I do.’

  ‘Like father, like son.’ The moment she said the words she’d have given anything to call them back. His father’s nickname of the Robber Baron hadn’t been affectionately given.

  Marc shrugged. ‘In matters of breakfast,’ he confirmed blandly. ‘What would you like?’

  ‘Fruit, thank you, and toast.’

  She got up and helped herself. Spooning yoghurt over tamarillos, she wondered angrily how just being in the same room as him made her respond so much more vividly; the yoghurt blazed like white fire against the ruby-coloured fruit, and the air stroking her skin was potent with fragrance.

  While she ate Marc made polite conversation, his ease chipping away at her self-confidence. If those searing kisses had meant anything to him he’d be like her, almost
raw with awareness, instead of giving off an aura of self-possession that meant he was fully in control.

  ‘As the weather has settled we’ll go around the island this morning,’ he said urbanely. ‘It will give you some idea of what the place looks like from the sea.’

  It took all her will power to answer sedately, ‘That’s very kind, but you don’t have to entertain me.’

  His brows rose. ‘It would be a pity if you don’t see some of the Bay while you’re up here.’

  ‘You don’t have to feel obliged—’

  ‘Paige,’ he said, his pleasant tone failing to hide a steely note, ‘I won’t kiss you again.’

  A tumult of colour scorched her skin. Outside a dove cooed seductively, the soft sounds floating across the terrace and in through the wide doors.

  ‘You won’t get the chance,’ she said, hurrying the words out so fast they arrived joined together. She breathed in deeply, and asked with stilted steadiness, ‘Is there any chance of me seeing Juliette’s legacy this morning?’

  She felt greedy, and somehow sordid, but she wasn’t going to pretend that this was a simple, carefree holiday, with yesterday’s exchange of kisses a diversion to be easily ignored.

  ‘Certainly,’ he said with a hint of frost in his tone. It had disappeared when he said, ‘I’ll make a bargain with you.’

  Startled, she looked up into eyes as cool and crystalline as the heart of a sapphire. ‘What?’ she asked, oddly breathless.

  ‘I’ll get Rose to bring the box along to your room after we come back. In return, promise to stop looking at me as though I’m going to leap on you. I’m sorry for kissing you yesterday.’ His eyes were opaque blue gems against the tanned skin of his angular face as he scanned her face. When she moved uncomfortably in her seat, he said calmly, ‘I won’t make any excuses—you are deliciously desirable, and I temporarily lost my head—but it won’t happen again.’

  Because he’d spent last night in Lauren Porter’s arms? Perhaps he did feel some loyalty towards his long-term mistress after all.

  And she was very happy about his promise, Paige told herself, lying like an expert. ‘All right,’ she said gruffly.

  ‘Now, do you think you’ll be able to eat your breakfast instead of pushing it around the plate?’

  Well, of course he was amused. He probably thought she was gauche and green and still wet behind the ears. No doubt he was kicking himself for losing his head temporarily yesterday, and this hideously embarrassing and painful conversation was his attempt at damage limitation.

  ‘Yes,’ she said stiffly, and began to force the food past the obstruction in her throat.

  Marc’s motor cruiser was smaller than the big yacht; nevertheless, Paige decided, eyeing the galley and comfortable cabin, it was nothing like the family boats owned by so many New Zealanders. As well as looking like a rich man’s toy it exuded modern technology and luxury.

  An uncharacteristic melancholy stole some of the warmth and colour from the day.

  ‘Do you know anything about boats?’ Marc asked, standing back to let her climb a set of steps from the deck to a high cabin above the main one.

  ‘I can row,’ she told him, going up nimbly. ‘That’s about it.’

  At the top of the stairs he said, ‘This is the flybridge.’ He indicated an impressive bank of dials and screens in front of a leather chair fixed to the deck. ‘Sit down and we’ll get moving.’

  Leather sofas stretched around the sides beneath windows that provided a panoramic view on three sides. The fourth opened towards the rear of the boat. Gingerly Paige sat down and watched Marc, big and dark and competent, take the wheel and deal with the array of dials.

  Once they were out of the Bay and moving slowly down the coast he said, above the noise of the engine, ‘Glad I made you put on a jacket?’

  She smiled and bent to stroke Fancy’s gleaming head. ‘Yes.’

  ‘It’s always colder on the sea. Would you like to try a stint behind the wheel?’

  She hesitated, met a gleaming challenge in his eyes, and shrugged. ‘Provided you don’t abandon me there,’ she said carefully.

  ‘Trust me.’

  Into a silence heavy with unspoken thoughts, she said, ‘I hope you know the way.’

  ‘I know the Bay like the back of my hand.’

  He stepped aside and showed her how to hold the wheel. Trying not to notice that he avoided touching her, for a glorious half-hour she steered the boat with Marc beside her as he showed her his island.

  Finally he took over again and brought them into a small cove where white sand gleamed against a thick forest of cabbage trees. Behind their spiky, surreal tufts of leaves reared forest giants, tall and dark and sombre as they climbed the hills backing the beach. Massive, sprawling pohutukawas clung to the cliffs of both headlands, their reddish aerial roots dangling in the spray.

  The sound of the engine muted into a low throb, barely noticeable. ‘Cabbage Tree Bay,’ Marc told her.

  ‘I can see why.’ She admired the clumps of tall-stemmed plants, each slender trunk finished by a tuft of long, strap-like leaves. ‘It’s a lily—did you know? The biggest lily in the world.’

  When he smiled her heart performed an aerial ballet in her chest.

  ‘I didn’t know. My father told me that the Maori and the early settlers used to eat the tender end of the inner leaves, which is why it’s called a cabbage tree.’

  ‘They were a prosaic lot, our forebears,’ she agreed, ruthlessly ignoring the expanding bubble of excitement in her breast.

  ‘Have you always been interested in plants?’

  Paige fiddled with a button on the jacket she’d discarded. ‘Always. I used to drive my mother crazy long before I went to school. I’d haul up her seeds and seedlings to see what was happening under the ground. When I got older I was fascinated by the whole miracle of it—how you could plant a tiny seed and this glorious plant would grow from it.’

  ‘So you’re more interested in plants than in landscaping?’ Marc asked with a lift of his brows.

  She concealed her self-consciousness with a half-smile. ‘There are two sorts of gardeners: artists who paint pictures with plants, and jewellers who treat each plant like a precious gem and try to find the perfect setting for it. I’m the second sort.’

  When the silence stretched too long she risked a glance upwards. He was looking above her head towards the shore, his expression hard and ruthlessly aggressive.

  Chilled, Paige felt Fancy push her head into the palm of her hand. Without looking down, she stroked the dog’s head.

  Marc said, ‘Would you go to university if you could afford it?’

  She shrugged. ‘Of course. But it’s not going to happen in the near future.’

  He leaned forward and pressed a button. Startled, she heard a chain rattle.

  ‘It’s the anchor going down,’ he told her. ‘What sort of career do you have in mind?’

  Career? She was silent, realising that her fight to survive had banished every dream she’d once had into a grey limbo.

  Eventually she said slowly, ‘I’d like to hybridise plants. New Zealand does so well in that field because we can grow such a wide variety. There’s nothing I’d get more pleasure from than seeing a plant of my breeding flower for the first time.’

  The silence that followed her words assumed overtones she couldn’t decipher.

  With a narrow smile Marc nodded at the dinghy on the stern. ‘I’ll put the dinghy out and you can show me how well you row.’

  ‘Why?’ Paige knew she sounded bewildered.

  Blue eyes gleaming, he said smoothly, ‘Because you might feel like puddling around in it. The homestead is just over the hill there; it’s an easy row from there to here. Satisfy me that you know what you’re doing and you can take the dinghy out whenever you want to, provided you wear a life jacket.’

  Paige picked up the life jacket he’d given her and put it on, then ran lightly down the steps from the flybridge. After Marc had sho
wed her how to heave the rubber dinghy over the stern he ignored Fancy’s excited barks and stood watching as with calm competence Paige worked the oars to move the little craft away from the cruiser.

  It had been over a year since she’d rowed anywhere, but it was like riding a bike; you didn’t forget. This dinghy was wider and more clumsy than Lloyd’s old plyboard one, but it slipped through the water far more easily.

  Under Marc’s assessing gaze she rowed around the cruiser and then out into the centre of the Bay, returning when the palms of her hands indicated that this was as much work as they were prepared to deal with that day.

  ‘You can row,’ he said as she shipped the oars and brought the dinghy against the stern of the boat. ‘Stop whining, Fancy—see, she’s back.’

  Paige took his outstretched hand and was hauled up, up, up—almost into his arms. He let her go just before she got there and smiled down at her, his eyes narrowed into gleaming sapphire slivers.

  ‘Fancy loves going out in boats,’ he said, a note of mockery threading through his tone, as though he could read the mute, dark frustration that weighted Paige’s limbs. He glanced at his watch. ‘We’d better get back.’

  Neither spoke in the few minutes it took the cruiser to reach Home Bay. Marc was withdrawing, his expression stern, as though the world beyond this idyllic island was already taking him over with its demands and pressures.

  But as they walked up to the house he said, ‘Promise me you’ll ask Rose Oliver whenever you want to take the dinghy out. She was born on the island and she knows it well. She’s also pretty good on the weather.’

  ‘I’ll tell her where I’m going and listen to her if she says it’s not safe,’ Paige said evenly. ‘I’m not stupid.’

  He gave her a glinting look, hard mouth curling into a smile that sent a million tiny darts of pleasurable excitement through her. ‘Far from it.’ And as they reached the door he said, ‘I’ll send Rose along to your room with Juliette’s parcel.’

  In her bedroom, Paige sat down on the chair, struggling against a stupid urge to cry. She stared tensely across the subtle, sophisticated room; through the dark wooden slats of the shutters the sea danced and glittered in shards of pure, brilliant colour.