Marc straightened and gave her a very level, very blue glare. ‘Why didn’t you anchor and wait for someone to come looking for you?’
‘There’s no anchor in the dinghy.’
His jaw hardened and he swore beneath his breath. ‘I’m sorry. From now on there will be,’ he said grimly.
Fancy chose that moment to shake herself again, sending drops of water flying around her like silver bullets.
Paige watched spots darken Marc’s fine cotton shirt and the tailored trousers that clung to his lean hips and long legs, and started to laugh helplessly. For that moment the world shone with the promise of delight, because Marc had come home.
His hard face relaxed into a grin, and her laughter faded as she realised with a spasm of sheer, mindless panic that she’d fallen in love with him.
Common sense warned her that she didn’t know him well enough. A deeper, more primitive instinct told her she’d loved him—painfully, hopelessly, fiercely—since the moment she’d first seen him.
Some hidden part had recognised him as the man she could give her heart to. And she had; in spite of trying so hard to convince herself that it was nothing more than a crude sexual urge, she’d always known that she loved Marc.
She turned her head sideways to hide the tears that stung her eyes.
But he’d seen. ‘You’re exhausted,’ he said, his amusement obliterated. ‘Come into the cabin—I’ll make you a drink.’
‘I’m wet,’ she blurted.
‘So am I.’ When she still didn’t move he picked her up, ignoring her squeak of astonishment to shoulder his way into the main cabin.
Paige blinked desperately, fighting the lure of that strong shoulder. ‘It was my fault,’ she muttered. ‘I was throwing a stick for Fancy and it got caught in the current off Cabbage Tree Bay and she took off.’
‘So you rescued her. It’s all right.’ He sat her down on one of the seats and stood back, his eyes searching her face. ‘Do you want a shower?’
Paige could have killed for a shower, but she had no other clothes to get into, and the thought of climbing back into salty wet clothes was distasteful. ‘I’ll wait until we get back ho—to the house.’
Scarlet with humiliation, she closed her eyes. She had almost called the homestead home—as though she had some claim to the place!
She felt him look at her, but kept her eyes obstinately closed. However, when she heard soft sounds from the galley she forced herself onto her feet, wondering why her body felt like lead.
‘Sit down,’ he said, arriving with a glass of very pale orange juice.
She looked at him with a spark of defiance. ‘If I stay there I might never get up again.’
‘You will,’ he said coolly. ‘You don’t give up.’
She accepted the glass. ‘I try not to.’
‘We have that in common,’ he said, and put a hand on her shoulder, urging her back onto the banquette. ‘Stay there until you’ve got some liquid into you. It’s water with a splash of orange juice to flavour it. Straight juice isn’t good for anyone who’s dehydrated.’
‘It looks wonderful,’ she said, abruptly dry-mouthed and incredibly thirsty. ‘But I don’t need flavouring for water; I like the taste.’ She sipped slowly.
His gaze burned like a blue flame. ‘Honest and straightforward,’ he said curtly. ‘Yet you’re complex too, layer after layer after layer, and you resist every attempt to peel you back.’
Deluged by a slow, simmering tide of honeyed sensation, she veiled her eyes with her lashes. ‘You make me sound like an onion. Peeling them makes people cry.’
‘Some men might take that as a challenge.’ His mouth curved in a smile that had mockery and speculation blended in equal parts.
‘I’m not up to challenges at the moment,’ she returned promptly.
‘How do you feel? How stiff are your arms and shoulders?’
She wriggled experimentally. ‘Not too bad,’ she said, surprised.
‘You’re probably fitter than you think. Show me your hands.’
Blinking, she held them out. He startled her by taking them in his and turning them over so that he could inspect the palms. A sharp sizzle of electricity banished exhaustion; she drew in a sharp breath and had only just enough will power to force them to lie limply in his.
He felt it too, that hidden, dangerous warmth. Sparks glinted in his eyes and he let her go, saying harshly, ‘Another five minutes or so and you’d have had raw patches. When we get home I’ll get you some cream for those blisters. Stay there and drink your water slowly while I get us back.’
Silently she watched him go out and up the set of stairs that led to the flybridge. Her breath eased out between her lips and her heart-rate steadied, although it still raced. And, because it was inexpressibly pleasant to be looked after by Marc, she did as she was told, sipping slowly in bemused compliance.
Too soon, however, she began to swelter. She got up and stripped off the life jacket, then went out into the breeze. Fancy was snoozing in the cockpit; she opened one eye as Paige went up the steps to the flybridge.
‘Oh,’ she said, startled because they were in Cabbage Tree Bay. ‘I thought we were going back to the homestead.’
The anchor went into the water with another swift outcry of chain. Marc gave her a keen glance that settled into a scrutiny. ‘It won’t take us a moment to pick up your gear. I’ll do it; you and Fancy can stay on board. You look feverish.’
She raised a self-conscious hand to her flushed face. ‘Just a bit hot; I was stewing in the life jacket.’ She cleared her throat and found an innocuous subject. ‘Fancy looks very relaxed. I hope she’s all right—she was in the water for quite a long time.’
‘She spends summers mostly in the water. She’ll be fine. You’ll be the one who’ll be stiff tomorrow morning,’ Marc said, a definite note of reserve in the words.
‘I don’t think so. One thing taking care of a baby does is strengthen your arms and shoulders.’
She squinted into the sun and he said, ‘Go down and get into the cabin. You’re turning slightly pink, and the reflection from the water will make it worse.’
He watched her walk to the top of the companionway and disappear, using her hands carefully. No sign of stiffness yet; she moved freely, with the swaying natural grace he’d noticed the first time he’d seen her—an unconscious, elemental invitation to every male in sight. His groin stirred and he turned back to the wheel with a silent, impatient oath.
This, he thought with biting irritation, was getting to be inconvenient.
It had been a bitch of a trip. He’d been presented with a clear case of corruption by one of his senior executives, and apart from his cold fury at the deception tidying it up was going to cost; keeping it quiet was going to be damned near impossible. As well, a subsidiary in Asia had managed to offend someone very important in the government, which had meant a side trip to smooth things over there.
Yet for the first time he’d had to fight to keep his mind on the issues. It had exasperated him; he’d resented this woman’s ability to infiltrate an area of his life that had always been inviolate.
So he’d come back early, and realised just how much Paige had subverted his mind when Rose Oliver told him she wasn’t there. He’d taken the launch out because it was the quickest way to get to her.
And his blood had run like ice in his veins when he’d rounded the point and seen her rowing valiantly across the current.
The sooner they went to bed the better, he decided bleakly. Then he’d be able to get her out of his system.
He set off down the companionway, but Paige met him at the door of the cabin.
‘You took a bottle of beer out of the fridge,’ she said. ‘Do you want it?’
He’d intended to drink it, until touching her hands had driven the idea completely from his mind. ‘Thanks.’ He lifted the small cold bottle to his mouth to take a good gulp, relishing the honest taste and the refreshing chill of the liquid.
&nbs
p; ‘I didn’t know you were coming home today,’ she said out of the blue. She was keeping her head turned away on the pretext of looking at her juice, but her knuckles were white against the frosted glass.
‘Just as well I did,’ he said curtly. ‘I won’t tell you what I felt when I saw you being carried out to sea by the current.’
Her full mouth quivered, then tightened. ‘I was making headway,’ she objected. ‘I’d have got there. But I was very glad to see the boat come around the point.’
‘The most sensible thing would have been to let Fancy go. A dog’s life is not as valuable as a human’s.’
Paige’s head shot up. ‘Intellectually I know that, but I couldn’t just let her drown.’
‘You’re too soft for your own good,’ he said drily, eyes very blue as he surveyed her.
‘Ha!’ The word and the smile that accompanied it were pure challenge.
‘A woman who gave up her chance of a career to stay at home and care for her mother, then asked a pregnant down-on-her-luck stripper to move in has to be softhearted,’ he pointed out ironically.
‘How did you know that?’
‘Sherry told me you rescued her from almost certain destitution.’
‘Rubbish!’ she interposed robustly.
‘When her husband left her. You offered her a bed, helped her get benefit from the government, and you sat with her during her labour and the birth with all the devotion of a sister.’
‘Who wouldn’t?’ she asked matter-of-factly.
‘Not everyone would have taken in a stripper,’ he said drily.
Made uncomfortable by his keen scrutiny, Paige shrugged. ‘She stopped stripping as soon as she got pregnant. And all she needed was support.’
His brow lifted. ‘For which she’s eternally grateful, as she should be. She also made sure I knew that while you were soft she was not, and more or less warned me to watch myself.’
Paige’s jaws met with an audible click, damming the hot words that threatened to spill out.
‘Your eyes turn pure green when you’re angry,’ he said conversationally. ‘And they gleam gold when you’re aroused. It’s like being drowned in fire. I’ll see you in ten minutes or so.’
Stunned, she watched him free the dinghy and push it into the water, tell Fancy severely that she wasn’t going with him, and row for the shore.
He was back in the ten minutes he’d promised, and unloaded her gear onto the cruiser with another stern word to Fancy, who showed signs of wanting to leap into the water again. He looked up as Paige came out of the cabin to help.
‘Stay out of the sun until we get back to Home Bay,’ he said austerely.
‘Yes, sir.’
One dark brow lifted. ‘You’re not up to it,’ he said softly, and went up to the flybridge.
Once the wooden planks of the Home Bay jetty were safely under feet, Paige smiled in Marc’s general direction and said, ‘I’ll have that shower now.’
‘I’ll see you later.’
Which sounded ominous. Keeping her face and eyes averted, she picked up the rug and her bag and walked steadfastly away from him.
CHAPTER TEN
MARC caught her up as she reached the door of the house. ‘Get under the shower and let the water play on your shoulders and back. You know how to alter the head setting?’ At her nod he said, ‘Stay under it for as long as you can. I’ll send Rose along with that cream for your hands.’
Safe at last in her bathroom, Paige leant into the heavy pulse of the spray, trying to relax as the jets massaged away the ache in her upper arms and shoulders. Although the pummelling hot water brought her superficial ease, a deep inner tension still knotted her nerves.
What a naïve, weak-willed idiot she was! Somehow, in spite of everything she’d done to prevent it, she’d allowed herself to fall in love with Marc Corbett, world-famous tycoon and heartbreaker. Helpless against her hidden desires, she’d let herself be carried along by a force of nature, and inevitably she’d succumbed.
‘Like so many other women,’ she muttered, pushing her wet hair back from her face. ‘Like Lauren.’
A profound grief shadowed her soul. She couldn’t give way to it because she still had the rest of the evening and the night to get through, not to mention tomorrow morning before she left for Napier. Marc had organised it all; at nine the helicopter would take her across to Kerikeri, and the same executive jet that had brought her to Arohanui would take her away.
Only this time he wasn’t coming with her.
Choking back a sob, she grimly washed the sweat and the salt from her hair. ‘I can cope,’ she said beneath her breath. But the words echoed with bitterness, and she added silently, Because I have to. I’m not going to let myself end up like my mother, so fixated on one man that life without him was a dead end.
Eventually, when her hands started to wrinkle, she got out and wrapped herself in a large white bath towel before picking up the hairdryer. The play of warm air on her head normally soothed her, but not now. Raw grief waited like a predator, ready to catch her the moment she let her guard down.
She’d just finished when she heard the knock on the door. Tightening the knot that kept the towel safe, she shook her hair back and hurried across the bedroom.
Only it wasn’t the housekeeper with cream for her hands. Marc stood outside. He too had showered and changed, and he was utterly overwhelming—a proud prince of darkness—with the leaping blue lights in those astonishing eyes the only sign of emotion in his handsome, ruthless face.
Heart jumping in her chest, Paige opened her mouth to say something—anything!—and seized gratefully on the arrival of Fancy, who demanded a pat.
Stooping, one hand on the knot between her breasts, Paige stroked the dog’s head and tried to think of something sensible to say. ‘Oh,’ she murmured vaguely, ‘she’s still damp.’
‘I’ve just washed the salt water out of her coat. Here’s the cream I promised you for your hands.’
His voice was steady, almost deliberate, but the rasping note beneath the banal words tightened her every muscle, set every cell humming.
She straightened and without meeting his eyes said brightly, ‘Thank you. My palms are starting to regret the last ten minutes in the dinghy.’
Marc held out the tube. With a foolish nod she took it, careful not to touch him. Tiny drums beat in her ears, and she resisted a strong urge to say his name and look at him.
Clumsily she stepped back, and tripped over Fancy, who’d sidled behind her to check out the bedroom. Paige cried out and time slid backwards, replaying itself in slow motion. Again she jerked sideways, this time trying to avoid falling on the dog.
Once again strong arms caught her. Once again she was turned into Marc’s arms and looked up into eyes whose brilliant colour was being overwhelmed by darkness.
Paige’s breath came fast and soft through her lips. Mutely she stared at him.
‘This is getting to be a habit,’ Marc said in a silky voice that sent the blood beating through her veins in a merciless tide.
‘No,’ she whispered, but whether it was an answer or a weak plea for him to let her go she didn’t know, because her brain had turned to marshmallow the moment he touched her.
When his lips met hers it was like diving into the heart of the sun. Yet she tried to resist until her newborn love, reinforced by the bleak knowledge that after tomorrow she’d never see him again, flamed into a need so potent, so urgent, she surrendered to its insistent demand.
They kissed with a starving desperation that consumed her in a storm of sensation. Her hands stole up to clasp his neck and she opened her mouth and lost the last bit of herself in the taste, the scent of him, the heat from his body and his unleashed male power. Helplessly she responded to the rhythm of those kisses, falling further and further under the dark enchantment he wrought with his mouth and his touch.
She shuddered when he cupped her breast, shuddered again when his thumb moved across the urgent nipple. Sensations
so exquisitely fresh they were almost anguish sliced through her in sweet ferocity. At last she was going to find out what real desire was like—and she was fiercely glad that she had waited until she loved him before yielding.
She had no sexual tricks, no sophisticated techniques to offer him, and he didn’t want her love, but this she could give—the untrained, honest responses of her body and her heart.
Yet he didn’t know she was a virgin, and he might not value her gift. For a moment she froze, assailed by a chill of shyness.
‘Paige. Look at me.’
The way he said her name and the kiss that accompanied it mixed desire and tenderness, as though he understood her fear.
She looked up, and he smiled and kissed her again, little kisses along her throat and across her shoulder, his mouth warm and seeking.
Her knees gave way; with a low, triumphant laugh he picked her up and lifted her high. Marvelling at the easy flexion of his body against hers, she looked up into his face. Passion emphasised the hawkish angles, gleamed darkly in his eyes, heated the skin across his sweeping cheekbones.
And then she remembered Juliette, and Lauren Porter. If she surrendered she’d be joining all those other women who’d loved Marc, only to discover that their love hadn’t been enough for him.
He saw it happen. His expression hardened into distaste, the blue eyes glittering like frozen fire. ‘You little tease,’ he said, in a voice that blended savage anger and contempt, and set her down on her feet.
Humiliated, because her damned knees still wouldn’t hold her upright, she had to grab his arm for support. But she found the strength to let him go and step back, although each movement weighed her down as though she was walking through quicksand.
‘I take it that’s a refusal,’ he said with a slow, dangerously threatening smile.
She shook her head, feeling the heavy weight of her hair hot and tumbled on her neck. ‘I’m not into fulfilling temporary needs,’ she said huskily, despising herself for the bitter ache of grief.
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