by Susan Napier
"I hate you, Ross Tarrant—"
she began
"No, you don't. You just hate it when I'm right," he responded with lazy perception. "Admit it, Princess, you got a big thrill out of besting me and that damned crevasse."
Perhaps she did need to be prodded out of her native caution once in a while, she thought, as she sat down on the rocks beside him.
"I suppose on your great travels you pursued your usual obsession for danger. What's the attraction about dangerous sports?"
"It's not the danger itself, it's the challenge of testing oneself, of discovering just how far one can push one's limitations."
Ross's philosophy was unsettling to Fran. The man himself was a challenge, she thought and felt. More than a challenge— a threat. He seemed able to persuade her to do things she really didn't want to do....
SUSAN NAPIER was born on valentine's Day, so perhaps it is only fitting that she should become a romance writer. She started out as a reporter for New Zealand's largest evening newspaper before resigning to marry the paper's chief reporter. After the birth of their two children she did some free-lancing for a film production company and then settled down to write her first romance. "Now," she says, "l am In the enviable position of being able to build my career around my home and family."
Books by Susan Napier
HARLEQUIN PRESENTS
885—SWEET AS MY REVENGE
924—THE COUNTERFEIT SECRETARY
940—THE LONELY SEASON
1051—TRUE ENCHANTER
HARLEQUIN ROMANCE
2711—LOVE IN THE VALLEY
2723—SWEET VIXEN
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Harlequin Presents first edition July 1988
ISBN 0-373-11093-6
Original hardcover edition published in 1987
by Mills & Boon Limited
Copyright © 1987 by Susan Napier. All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.
All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
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CHAPTER ONE
Ross Tarrant!
It had been over a decade since Francesca Lewis had laid eyes upon him, but she recognised him instantly. He had barely changed. He was still big and fantastically handsome, the maturity of years adding to, rather than diminishing his attractiveness.
Francesca blamed her dizziness on the shock of his sudden appearance, but the plunge of her heart and the tingle shooting up her spine were old, annoyingly familiar signs. She had always felt breathless and lightheaded in his presence... even a glimpse of him used to be enough to set her off.
Ross Tarrant. Where had he been all these years? With his great athletic prowess, everyone had expected him to win fame for himself and his country in the international sports arena, but in the years since she had left Whaler's Bay Fran had heard nothing of him. Secretly she had been relatively unsurprised. It was just as she had predicted. He didn't have the drive to succeed. Everything had always been too easy for him. He had no need to stretch himself because everything he had ever wanted had always fallen straight into his lap.
Her eyes travelled up over the booted feet, up the tight, faded denims that hugged his thighs and strained across the strong hips, and over the wide expanse of rumpled fisherman's-rib sweater. God, he might have grown a bit with the years, but she could swear he was wearing the same clothes he had worn when he was seventeen!
By the time she looked up into his face she was braced against its devastating effect. His hair was darker than the teenage Tarrant's had been. It was a thick, glossy chestnut now instead of sun-bleached fair, and cut unfashionably long to brush the rolled neckline of his sweater. The nose which had once been broken in a game of rugby was, to her surprise, perfectly straight. Plastic surgery hardly fitted in with the swaggering macho image he had cultivated as the local, lovable 'bad boy'. The square jaw still did, and the eyes...those fathomless blue eyes, drooping slightly at the outer corners to give him the lazily sensual look that had plunged numerous schoolgirls into fits of delight. Francesca, too, at one time.
The memory brought her up short. 'Don't you know that it's dangerous to point guns at people?' she snapped belatedly, hoping that he wouldn't realise it wasn't the sight of the double-barrelled shotgun aimed in her direction that had frozen her with shock, but the man behind it.
His wide-spread stance relaxed, the shotgun drooping against the hand that supported the barrel, the stock resting securely in his crooked elbow. Now he smiled, the lop-sided smile that had been famous over three counties. Fran found it as endearing as a crocodile's grin.
'Not half as dangerous as what you're pointing at me,' he drawled.
Horrified, Fran realised that the underwater light, which she had switched on when she got into the spa, was still on. Ross Tarrant, standing above her, could see all... her breasts bobbing freely just beneath the surface of the steamy pool, the ribs lacing her new slimness down to the curving spread of her hips with their dark, shadowed centre. With an angry gasp she reached up and hit the light switch on the tiled edge of the sunken pool, then the bubble button for good measure, sinking deep into the water as the concealing froth drew an opaque screen over her nakedness. Oh, why hadn't she stopped to put on her bathing suit? She had been stiff and tired after the three-hour drive from Auckland and had merely dumped her luggage inside the cabin before seeking out the screened-off spa on the deck, too grateful for the luxury to question why it was switched on when no one had been expecting her arrival. She had thought the lateness of the hour and the cabin's isolation guarantee enough of her privacy.
'How dare you walk in here and threaten me?' Fran-cesca blustered in the voice which she used to keep junior nurses jumping on the ware. 'You can just turn around and walk straight out again!'
'Uh-uh.' He shook his head, grinning, gun now pointed at the deck as he looped his thumbs into the front of his jeans. 'How do I know you won't plug me in the back?' He dropped into a grating Bogart impersonation, 'Stand up, sweetheart, and reach for the sky. I want to make sure you're not packing any concealed weapons, other than that lethally gorgeous body of yours...'
'Am I supposed to be amused by your cuteness?' she demanded stiffly. There was a time when she would have paid in blood to receive a compliment from Ross Tarrant. Thank God she had grown up! 'Is that thing loaded?' she demanded quellingly.
'Do I look stupid?' He shifted his weight, confidently inviting the negative.
'Frankly, yes!' Fran snapped, though it was far from true. As well as being a star sportsman, Ross had been highly intelligent at school, but too lazy to take advantage of it, content to coast through his lessons with minimum effort. 'Too stupid, obviously, to know that you shouldn't point a gun—even an unloaded one—at people.'
; 'I was out hunting possums when I saw the light on.' He looked amused at her little lecture. 'There have been quite a few thefts lately from holiday homes—with firearms among the stolen goods. It doesn't pay to be too trusting these days, especially in an isolated place like this.'
'My sentiments exactly, Ross Tarrant. Now would you mind going and waving your lethal weapon at some other innocent citizen and leaving me alone.'
His eyes narrowed at her use of his name. 'Do we know each other?'
'Unfortunately, yes.' Now that was real flattery, his not connecting her twenty-eight-year-old self with the shy, pudgy teenager who had proved so embarrass-singly easy to humiliate. Not that he had much to go on. Her long, dead-straight hair was now permed into shoulder-length brown curls, and her recent illness had given her cheekbones for the first time in her life. The blue-grey colour of her eyes was too uncertain to be memorable and, in any case, Ross Tarrant had good reason not to want to remember Francesca Lewis. It gave her pleasure now, to remind him.
'I'm Francesca, Francesca Lewis. I've come up from Auckland to settle Grandfather's estate.'
'Francesca?' His thick brows shot up and then snapped down again as his humour quickly died. The blue eyes were filled with a speculative contempt that made Francesca bristle. Did he still bear a grudge after all these years? He had, after all, only got what had been coming to him...
'Well, well, well...' The brown-sugar voice burned acrid with mockery. 'Princess Lewis in the flesh. Should I genuflect?'
The nickname had never been an affectionate one, and Fran was dismayed at the defensive prickle it evoked. Suddenly she could feel the steam heating the sweat beading her damp face and knew that it was time to get out of the water. But she couldn't, not while he was standing there looking down at her with such bold scorn.
'I don't care what you do, as long as you don't do it here,' she said hollowly, blinking to try and dispel a sudden wave of dizziness that she knew, this time, had nothing to do with his disruptive presence. 'Would you mind going away while I get out?'
For a moment he didn't move, his eyes on her steam-wreathed head, then he squatted down, putting the gun carefully aside and frowning into her flushed face.
'Are you all right?'
'No, I'm not all right, I want to get out.'
'Feeling dizzy?'
'A bit.' She hazily resented his demand.
'Is this your robe?' He lifted the towelling wrap off the railing that ran around the wooden deck and stood up again, shaking it open for her. 'Come on. Unless you want me to come in there and give you mouth to mouth. If you faint, you'll go under.'
'Just leave it there and I'll get out when you go,' she said weakly.
He made a rude noise. 'Princess, I'm a full-grown man. I've seen more naked women than you could shake a stick at.'
'I'll bet you have!' Annoyance momentarily cleared her head. She wished now that she hadn't turned on the deck light. It was directly above his head and made it look as though he was wearing a halo of light. Ross Tarrant, angelic? Preposterous! 'I don't suppose you've changed much in that respect. The boy most likely to score, weren't you, both on and off the field?'
'And you were the girl most likely to stay on the shelf,' he reminded her brutally, his eyes flickering briefly to the ringless left hand that clutched the tiles. 'Prediction right, I take it?'
She glared at him. 'I have better things to do with my life than be some man's domestic slave.'
'Ah, yes, the selfless career...'
'At least I have one. What do you do for a living?'
'At the moment, nothing.'
'Huh!' She would have said more, but suddenly his face was all hazy again.
'We can't all be model citizens, Princess, and in my
experience it's often the model citizens who are the worst hypocrites. . .'
Fran had been unaware of her head, like her thoughts, drifting downwards, until she suddenly felt cold, hard hands grasp her upper arms, completely encircling the overheated flesh and hauling her unceremoniously out of the water. His left hand slipped as he lifted her out on to the decking and they staggered for a moment in an ungainly dance, almost falling. Fran didn't have time to be embarrassed about her glistening nudity, for Ross Tarrant stooped and picked up her thick robe, wrapping her up in it without glancing at her body and plucking a towel from the deckchair for her hair.
'You're hurting,' she complained as he briskly rubbed the sodden mass.
'At least you're alive to feel. You've been ill, haven't you?' She nodded reluctantly. 'Don't you know better than to lie around in hot water when you're not up to par? And you a nurse!'
He leant over, keeping a supporting hand on her shaky frame, and twitched the pool cover back into place. Then he pushed her across the deck and through the sliding glass doors into the warmth of the cabin.
'Get into your night things and wrap up warm.' He gave her a little shove. 'I'll put my gun away and stoke up the fire.'
Fran went unsteadily into the small bedroom to find her long, practical nightgown and thick blue robe. It was a measure of her state of mind that she hadn't even noticed the new pot-belly in the corner of the living-room when she had arrived. She looked at herself in the mirror. How had Ross known that she was ill... because of her slimness? A militant sparkle entered her eyes. Francesca had battled plumpness for most of her life and she was proud of her current lack of weight, even though she was resigned to it being only temporary. As soon as she was fully recovered her natural metabolism would reassert itself and repad her five-foot-seven frame with its over-generous curves.
Now, you go out there and get rid of him, she told herself sternly. Be gracious and polite, but firm. The trouble was that her darkened eyes and nervous mouth gave the lie to her confidence. Ross Tarrant was an uncomfortable reminder of an embarrassing naïveté and, what was more, she sensed he knew it.
She sighed with relief when she finally ventured out to find the cabin empty. Calling it a log cabin was a bit of a misnomer, she thought, as she crossed to warm her hands over the pot-belly. Although the exterior was constructed of split-logs, inside it was more like a luxury apartment, completely panelled in native timber, thick scatter-rugs softening the gleam of polished-wood floors. With twin beds in the bedroom and two lounge-settees in the open-plan living area it could comfortably sleep six. The kitchen was spacious and well equipped, opening out on to a small, covered deck at the back and the separate bathroom and laundry, which meant that summer residents didn't have to track sand through the house when they wanted to shower off after a swim. It was usually only in summer that the cabin was rented out. In the winter it was closed up, for Ian Lewis had been determined to preserve the unspoiled nature of the few acres he had retained when he retired from farming.
Intent on some melancholy memories, Fran was almost startled out of her skin by a movement behind her.
'It's only me.' Ross Tarrant closed the back door and hefted a cleaned fish on to the tiled kitchen bench which jutted out to form a breakfast bar. Using a wicked-looking curved knife he began to expertly fillet the fish.
'I thought you'd gone.'
'You mean, you hoped I had,' he informed her with annoying perception, and she tightened the cord of her robe nervously as she noticed the frying pan heating on an element on the stove, and the flour and butter and seasonings standing ready on the bench.
'What do you think you're doing?' she demanded sternly.
'Fixing dinner.'
'Dinner!' Her voice was thin with dismay. She should have known that Ross Tarrant would delight in upsetting her.
'That meal you have in the evenings,' he added helpfully, intent on the flashing knife. 'I caught this off the beach earlier. You haven't eaten yet, have you?'
'Now, look here—' She stopped, suddenly thinking that he seemed very familiar with the layout of the place, and very cool for a man who had been ordered off the premises. 'Did you have some sort of an arrangement with my grandfather about using
the facilities here?'
'Some sort,' he conceded unrevealingly, and her frowning eyes drifted from his handsome face to his busy hands. Odd that such square, solid hands could wield a knife so delicately. She had seen surgeons at work who were clumsier, men whose hands were pampered and cared for, not brown and weathered like Ross's.
'Well, you must realise that things have changed since he died,' she said with what she thought was patient reason. 'I'm going to be staying here for a week or so while I settle things with his lawyer, so you won't be able to come and go as you like, though of course you can still use the beach...'
'Why, thank you, ma'am,' he drawled, with an excessive humility that made her flush. She hadn't meant to sound condescending, only to make it quite clear that she wanted her privacy. Her grandfather hadn't actually owned the little curve of black sand just below the steps of the front deck, but he did own all the land which surrounded the beach. Locals, of course, took for granted their right-of-way. Did that mean that Ross still lived here, Ross of the itchy feet and the big plans to travel? It was his younger brother, Jason, who had wanted to stay in Whaler's Bay and take over the family crop-dusting business when his father retired.
'Why don't you take your catch home and eat it there?' she suggested, assuming that the Tarrants still lived a few kilometres down the road. Nothing much changed in Whaler's Bay. But Ross didn't satisfy her veiled curiosity.
'And if I don't?' he asked, dipping a thick fillet in flour and shaking it.
'I'll—' What? Even arguing with him made her feel exhausted, and the idea of using physical force was ludicrous. The black wool of his sweater rolled over impressively powerful shoulders and tapered down to a hard-looking waist. His sleeves were pushed up to his elbows, displaying muscled forearms covered with dark brown hair.
'I'll... I'll call the police and have them remove you,' she said foolishly, suddenly noticing another new addition ... a telephone on a low table in the corner.