by Robyn Donald
CHAPTER ONE
ORIEL RADFORD huddled into a chair; outside the world was drenched, battered by a cyclonic storm all the way from the tropics, but inside it was warm and dry. Her exhausted eyes surveyed what the housekeeper had called the morning-room. A somewhat old-fashioned term, she thought vaguely, for a comfortable, very pleasant living-room.
Even with a blanket slung around her shoulders she was unable to repress the shivers that racked her long body. Muddy water dripped from lank black curls on to the towel around her neck, she knew her lips were blue, and every bone in her body ached with deep-seated persistence. Thin fingers trembled as they gingerly explored one high cheekbone, and she winced at the swelling; she hesitated, then as carefully as she could investigated her throbbing temple. The same rock had bruised both her cheekbone and the side of her head; she had hit it when she had fallen into a hole as she forced her way through bush towards the beach.
A pale attempt at a smile touched her wide, soft mouth. Clumsy, her mother was always saying.
She had read somewhere that the body could only cope with so much pain; after a certain amount no more was felt. Clearly she hadn’t yet got there. Without even trying she could feel her foot, a sullen ache that peaked in a distinct sharp crescendo every time she moved it.
Not too far away a deep masculine voice with an in-built note of authority spoke incisively into a telephone. She lifted heavy eyelids and stared across the shadowed room. He was big, about six feet three, she estimated now, and very powerful. Oriel knew just how strong he was, for when she had collapsed in front of him on the beach about ten minutes ago those strong arms had lifted her and without any visible effort carried her into the house.
Another rigour shook her thin frame. His voice came nearer. ‘Right,’ he said crisply. ‘That’s Civil Defence informed, they’ll organise a helicopter to get your companion out. Now, I’ll carry you up to the bath my housekeeper should have ready for you.’
‘Will they know where David is?’
He bent to pick her up, ignoring her tiny involuntary flinch. ‘Yes, your directions were very explicit, and the pilot knows the Bay Iike his own back yard.’
Numbly, she nodded. ‘I hope they find him soon.’ The heavy lids, that even when she was wide awake and alert gave her a disconcertingly sulky air, drooped over her slanting, lack-lustre eyes, their normally dense blue washed almost completely from them.
She hadn’t been embarrassed when he’d carried her into the house, but she was now. In spite of her effort to appear calm and collected, her stiff body betrayed her inner uneasiness. Somehow, in some dim region of herself that still functioned in spite of her weariness, the first faint tendrils of fear uncurled. Ludicrous though it was, she felt threatened.
He negotiated the door with a lithe grace that seemed unusual for such a big man, but again, there were no signs of undue exertion. Such strength was somehow unnerving.
The muscles of his big body bunched and flowed against her. She was too aware of a faint scent teasing her nostrils. The secret, intimate perfume of masculinity, she deduced, arousing and endlessly fascinating. It was blatant sexual magnetism, almost entirely dependent on the senses, scent, the fine-grained texture of a man’s skin, the smooth play of muscles…
A pulse beat like a trip-hammer in her throat as her body clenched in response to the hidden, subliminal signals.
‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Did I hurt you?’
Her eyes recoiled from the hard angularity of his features. ‘No, not at all,’ she said inanely, then added in a little rush. ‘I don’t really need to have a bath here, I can wait until the helicopter arrives.’
‘The chopper isn't going to arrive. It’s too close to dusk to anything but the most necessary trips now. Your companion is necessary, you are not. Possibly tomorrow, when the floods go down.’
‘Perhaps I could get a lift-’
He shook his bronze head. ‘Sorry, the road’s closed. In Northland, if there's more than four inches of rain a day the hills start to slip away. I estimate that we’ve had at least six inches since this started last night. And there's more coming. This is a tropical storm, and the latest forecast says it's being chased up by another one from Fiji.
Oriel said what everyone else had been saying in this unseasonably wet and wild New Zealand summer. ‘I’m so tired of all this rain. But I can’t stay here, I’ll be an awful nuisance Her voice trailed away under his amused regard, but she finished with an attempt at her normal crispness, ‘Unfortunately it sounds as though l have no choice but to accept Thank you.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ re geared for guests.’
‘Not crippled ones,’ she said miserably.
His wide shoulders braced a little as he began to make his way up a shallow flight of stairs. In a more gentle voice he said, ‘There’s nothing we can do about that now. When did you hurt your foot?’
‘I don’t know. I didn’t look at my watch when it happened.’ She swallowed. ‘It was nearly nine this morning when the flood came down, and it took me an hour to find David and get him as comfortable as I could.’ Her voice wavered, but she didn’t mention the nightmare minutes of searching through the floodwaters and the amazing amount of debris brought down by the small creek in the hills, or her growing conviction that David had to be dead. Until at last she had seen him, unconscious and with a broken leg, thrown up by the force of the initial surge on to the bank.
The man carrying her must have understood the panic and dread of those moments, for his arms contracted about her in a comforting hug, and he smiled down into her face, his unusual pewter-coloured‘ eyes compassionate.
‘It’s all right, you’re safe now. Kathy was a nurse before she married and came to live here with her husband. She swears your foot’s only wrenched. But it must have been hell walking on it.’
Oriel’s mouth stretched wide in a trembling smile. ‘It hurt, but I used a stick as a crutch, and when I got to the beach it was easier.’
There was as moment’s silence as they both recalled her uneven, staggering progress along the beach, ending in collapse. She had been weeping with exhaustion, but even as he’d raced towards her she had begun to crawl.
He asked brusquely, ‘What’s your name?’
Colour washed her skin, pale beneath the golden tan she never lost. ‘Oriel Radford.’
‘I’m Blaize Stephenson.’
‘Where is this?’ she asked as he manoeuvred her through another door at the landing.
‘Pukekaroro, a station on the southern side of the Bay of Islands.’
‘Seagull Hill,’ she murmured.
‘Do you understand Maori?’
‘A little. I grew up in Fiji, and although the languages are different the basic structure must be enough alike for me to pick up Maori quite easily when I came to New Zealand.’
He showed a set of strong white teeth in a grin that made him look a little younger than his age-the early thirties, she estimated. ‘An unusual upbringing,’ he said. His lithe body twisted: for a moment she was pressed hard against him as be negotiated the door into a warmly lit bedroom. Her breath died in her throat as a spark caught fire deep in her body.
Did she imagine it, or did he stiffen slightly? Mortified, she held herself rigid. Without speaking he carried her to another door, also open, where a few strands of scented steam revealed the presence of a bathroom.
There the housekeeper was waiting, a cheerful young woman of thirty or so with red hair and the freckles that went with it, and an air of unquenchable competence. ‘Blaize, if you put-’
‘Oriel Radford.’ he told her. ‘Oriel, this is Kathy Howard.’ I
‘How do you do, Miss Radford? Blaize-yes, that’s it, on the chair. Fine, I’ll be able to cope from now on.’
Again the sensuous flexion of muscle and sinew as he deposited Oriel carefully, managing it so well that she did not knock her foot. Then he said, ‘Let Kathy know if there’s anything you want, Miss Radford. I’ll see you later.’
With him gone the room seemed twice as big. Oriel expelled a breath and smiled cautiously at the housekeeper. ‘I hope I’m not being too much of a nuisance,’ she said, shyness adding to the natural slight hesitance of her voice.
‘Nope-an excitement. We’ve been shut up here for weeks, it seems, and believe me, we need something to take our minds off the wretched weather! Now, let’s get those wet shorts off and you cleaned up a little.’
Half an hour later Oriel was sitting up in bed, a little pale but washed as clean as Kathy’s brisk hands could make her, although the face that met her eyes in the hand-mirror was enough to dismay anyone. A long scratch snaked from just below her eye to her chin, blatantly yellow-brown with iodine. Across one of her high cheekbones was a rapidly darkening bruise. Tomorrow, she thought gloomily, she was going to have a black eye. Her temple still throbbed, but Kathy’s careful examination had convinced her that there was no serious damage, merely another thumping great bruise.
Still, at least the mud had been washed from her hair, although it was drying in a wild aureole of blue-black curls, and the delicious soak in hot water had taken some of the ache from her bones. She looked a real guy, but she was comfortable in spite of the waves of tiredness that washed over her.
Pulling a face at her reflection, Oriel ran long fingers through her hair, trying without much success to control the riotous tangle.
‘l’ll get you a hairdrier for that,’ Kathy said. By now they were on first-name terms. ‘It’s incredibly thick, isn’t it, but fine with it. Glorious!’
Oriel gave her a startled look, but the housekeeper seemed serious enough. Brought up to consider her hair yet another cross to bear, along with her height and her lack of feminine curves and graces, Oriel had grown up listening to her mother complain about the thick mop. Her cousin David had tormented the life out of her by calling her Bushytop, until she grew big enough to enforce her real name. ‘It’s a nuisance when it’s wet,’ she murmured. ‘Unmanageable.’
‘At least it’s got a bit of body to it, not like mine.’ Kathy found the drier in the bathroom and handed it over before disappearing into the passage. 0riel’s hands moved slowly as she dried out the riotous tresses, smoothing them down into some semblance of order. She had just clicked the drier off when the housekeeper reappeared in the doorway carrying a tray with a mug of soup and some crisp toast.
‘I’ll be back in ten minutes,’ she said as she left again. ‘See that you’ve got it all inside you by then.’
Oriel suddenly realised that the ache in her stomach was hunger. Almost greedily she swallowed the soup, which was thin and tasty, finally putting the mug down with a slow, replete smile as she lay back on the pillow, wryly admiring the pale green cotton pyjamas Kathy had found. They fitted around the most important parts, but the legs came halfway up her calves. One of the penalties of being almost six feet tall, she thought whimsically.
In her more self-pitying moments she couldn’t decide which physical characteristic had caused her more despair, her height or the fact that, tall as she was, she had narrow hips and almost no bust. An early developer, she had spent years of her life suffering the taunts and teasing that came with being the tallest in the class.
Since then she had grown into the long legs and arms and fought for a hard-won sophistication, but sometimes in moments of stress, such as now, her self-control leached away and she was miserably aware of just how thin a veneer it was. Beneath it, she was still the awkward, shy child who had watched with wondering eyes as her small, exquisite mother charmed everyone in sight.
Some change in the atmosphere, some electricity, lifted her heavy lids. Her heart gave an odd little jump as she focused on Blaize Stephenson, who was almost filling the doorway, bronze hair gleaming with copper high-lights as his eyes searched her face. Through lashes that trembled she watched him warily as he came across the room, moving with that loose-limbed grace-a predator’s stride, she thought fancifully.
‘How are you feeling now?’ he asked.
‘Much better, thank you.’
He stopped by the big double bed. Oriel immediately felt exposed, the lines of her long legs and body revealed only too clearly by the sheet and thin blanket that was all she had over her. Ignoring twinges of pain, she sat up, curling her bare arms around her knees.
There was a note of irony in the decisive voice as he said, ‘I’ve just been talking to Civil Defence. They got your companion out, and he’s all right. You did exactly the right things-splinted his leg and protected him from the weather. He’s showing no signs of exposure. The leg is definitely broken, so he’s in considerable pain, but he’ll come to no permanent damage.’
Sighing, she leaned her head on to her arms, her lashes fluttering down. ‘Thank God,’ she whispered, relief and weakness releasing the tears she had held back since those first frightening moments of the flood.
The side of the bed depressed. Firmly he brought her across to lie against his shoulder. She hiccupped and tried to pull away, but he held her there, and she succumbed to the age-old masculine comfort, sobbing into the hard warmth.
Humiliated by her weakness, she took a few minutes to regain control. She had almost succeeded in forcing back her tears, ducking her head to hide from those strange silver eyes, but his hand on her chin was irresistible. As gently as though she were a loved child he touched her quivering mouth with a lean forefinger. The tears stopped, making her eyes huge, the blue blurred and slumberous. Again that needle of sensation, hot and frightening, seared through her. Her lashes flicked against the suddenly tender skin of her cheeks.
‘All the oracles say that that should have done you the world of good,’ he said drily, ‘but I must say it rips my heart out to listen to you. Kathy says you’re still in shock, so I suppose I’ll have to bear with them. She also says there are no bones broken, no great damage done. Now, I want to know exactly what happened.’
She hit her lip, and he resumed gently, but with an inflexible note in the deep tones, ‘Tell me, Oriel. I think it will probably be good for you.’
Whether or not, he had been kind when she’d needed it; he deserved to have his very natural curiosity satisfied. She blew her nose on the linen handkerchief he had given her and sat up, banishing the tremor in her voice with stubborn determination. ‘I’ve never seen anything like it-one minute it was in flood, but nothing dramatic, and the next a wall of water and logs and stones came hurtling down the gully. It was terrifying! Dave was in the tent-’ Her soft mouth tightened.
‘And you were where?’
‘I’d just scrambled up the bank to get a better look at it. I was worried. I wanted to see how high the creek had risen, because I thought we were too close. But David wouldn’t-’ She had wanted to pitch the tent higher up the hill, but David had insisted on setting up camp on a level patch of ground closer to the creek, right in the path of the flood. Still, family loyalty kept her silent.
‘It sounded like a train coming at first, and then-a roar like something out of hell. The tent was washed away, and Dave with it, but he was lucky. Somehow the currents tossed him high on the bank out of reach of the rest of the flood, so he didn’t drown, but he was hit on the head. I didn’t know how badly hurt he was, but he was unconscious for what seemed ages.’ She couldn’t speak about the appalling minutes when she had searched for her cousin, convinced that he must have been killed.
‘So you set out to get help, and you succeeded, in spite of hurting yourself quite badly. I think you should try to get some rest now,’ Blaize said quietly, in a voice she found infinitely comforting. ‘You’re exhausted, and no wonder, after struggling damn near ten miles through the hills. Don’t worry about anything, Oriel. You’re safe, and everything’s under control.’
He was a man you instinctively trusted, with a voice that would make you believe anything, she decided as she watched him go through the door. Which made his promise that she was safe rather a mockery. She doubted very much whether any woman had felt safe with Blaize Stephenson since he’d reached puberty.
Perhaps that quick, instinctive trustworthiness had something to do with his size, although such a big man could be threatening-and in some ways he was. Rather uneasily she recalled the moment when her body had responded with a ‘wild frisson to his nearness. But he exuded a rock-solid dependability that demanded confidence. He was, of course, totally assured.
It was a quality Oriel envied. The only time she ever felt confident and secure was in front of her class of eight-year-olds. But then, in spite of a nose that had been broken some time ago, Blaize was also very good-looking in a rugged way, which would help. Her roving, slightly dazed mind selected the word Viking. Size again, of course; the Vikings were all huge. And he was fair, with that bronze hair highlighted in glowing amber and copper, and the piercing grey eyes. ‘Tanned skin, though, she thought dreamily, staring down at the golden length of her arms against the white sheets.
And reminiscent of those long-ago sea rovers was the fact that there was something untamed about Blaize Stephenson, a compelling hint of danger that set her instincts jangling.
Which should have sat uneasily with the fact that in spite of his size and the casual clothes he wore with such an air, he emitted a kind of moneyed worldliness she had never encountered before. Of course, at twenty-three Oriel had grown past the stage of being intimidated by rich sophisticates, but somehow it was difficult to convince herself.
Actually the whole set-up was out of place. All through that nightmare trek through the hills she had been making for Pukekaroro, but she had expected it to be like every other large farm she had tramped over. But even as he had carried her across the lawn she had realised that this was like no other homestead she had ever seen.
It was the interior that had really astonished her. Exhausted as she was, a keen sense of beauty had made sure that the house impinged on her consciousness. And inside this house was beauty, simple although far from inexpensive, collected by someone who had a connoisseur’s eye and a love of lovely things. Yet the furniture and the objects with which it was decorated did not look stiff and obvious, -and for all its loveliness it was definitely a beach house, one where sandy swimmers and children were welcome.