by Karina Bliss
Joe swallowed hard. His back still to Tim, he wiped his palms on his T-shirt, then began walking again. Fast. He got to the end of the corridor, changed his mind, spun around and headed back. He wasn’t going to chicken out this time. This time he’d make that call. If Tim could beg, so could he.
Tim had already hung up. Shoulders hunched, one hand pressed to his forehead, he was staring down at his shoes. He straightened as Joe approached. “The kids.” He shrugged helplessly. “How can I fight her when she’s doing what’s best for the kids?”
Joe’s resolve evaporated, replaced by self-loathing. What the hell do I think I’m doing? He put a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “You can’t.”
The two men fell into step. “Hey!” Tim stopped, confusion on his broad face. “Weren’t you waiting to use the phone?”
“The urge passed.”
Tim wouldn’t have it. “C’mon, what’ve you got left to lose?”
“Hope,” said Joe, and kept on walking. “Another day of hope.”
DAWN WAS KEZIA’S FAVORITE TIME to run, especially on a cool summer morning when the dew released the scent of pasture and pine. She also discovered, on their first run together, she could relax her guard when Christian’s gaze was on the road ahead and all that Kelly charisma has space to dissipate.
In the four days since his arrival, he’d taken to flirting with her in a lazy teasing way that was clearly second nature to him, but which alerted Kezia to the differences in their worlds. She’d spent her adulthood dating governable men, she realized. Managing a wolfish ex-lover—even one she’d gotten over—was a hell of a lot more challenging.
The pace quickened; Christian was waking up.
“Had another thought,” she said, panting. “Community hall…too big for smaller groups. Could…hire out club lounge.”
Their running shoes pounded in unison on the blacktop road while he thought about it. “I like it. You come up with some great ideas.”
They brainstormed the conversion details, Christian fluently, Kezia truncating sentences between gasps. “Damn your…fitness…I haven’t got…breath to…argue,” she huffed when he challenged her on a key point.
“No kidding.” At the smugness in his voice, she reached out and shoved him. He laughed. Around the bend, meandering cows blocked the road. Kezia shambled to a grateful halt.
She’d just managed to lower her heart rate when Christian stripped off his T-shirt and used it to towel down. Kezia’s mouth went even drier and she averted her gaze, but as he mopped his face, her curiosity won. She wouldn’t call it temptation.
Once she’d known Christian’s body intimately, but it wasn’t the body he had now. He was taller, broader, with muscle hardened over a powerful frame. If the boy had been liquid grace, the man was hewn rock.
Her appraisal picked up other differences—a smattering of silky hair on his chest and belly where none had been before and the sort of muscle definition that called to a woman’s hands. Made a woman want to start at the smooth, taut pectorals and slide her palms slowly down over the masculine planes and angles, down the flat stomach, all the way down.
“Your body’s changed, too.”
Kezia started as though she’d been shot.
Casually, Christian made his own inspection, scanning her curves in a male appraisal that set Kezia’s teeth on edge. “It’s more…womanly.” His gaze lifted and she saw it was nowhere near as dispassionate as his tone. “Your breasts—” he began huskily before she found her voice.
“Don’t.”
“Don’t what? Look? Wonder?”
“Anything!” The last of the cattle passed, flanked by two border collies. A man on a farm bike tooted his thanks and Kezia waved, glad the tension was broken. “Don’t flirt with me,” she said, and started running.
Christian caught up effortlessly. “Why? Do you have a jealous lover?”
The loaded question shocked her into mistiming her stride. Christian put out a hand to steady her but she shook it off. “That’s my business!”
“I thought not,” was his cryptic reply.
She stopped short and stared after his retreating back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
Christian turned and started running backward. “You act like a woman who isn’t getting any.”
She put her hands on her hips. “And how is that?”
He halted to think about it. “Uptight. Orderly in an obsessive way. Eating too much chocolate. Practical clothes and plain underwear.”
Kezia didn’t know where to start, she was so furious. “For your information, all my underwear is scarlet lace,” she retorted, then remembered the clothesline was under his window.
“But mainly…” He turned for home.
“Oh, yes?” She powered up behind him.
“Mainly…” He turned suddenly and she fell back. “You’re jumpy as hell around me. Either we still have chemistry or you’re out of practice. Which is it?”
She forced herself to bridge the distance and run alongside him. “Definitely not the chemistry thing. Definitely,” she repeated. “I’m out of practice.” She really didn’t want to be telling him this but he had to believe she wasn’t attracted to him. “Like you, I’m between lovers. Unlike you, discrimination governs my sex life, which means I get a dry spell occasionally.” You mean a drought. “I happen to be in one.”
They jogged around the hotel to the fire escape leading to the top floor.
“Well, I guess I’m wrong then.”
“You are,” she said emphatically, and headed up the fire escape before her nose started to grow.
She was halfway up when he called, “Let me know if you want to practice.”
CHRISTIAN GOT THE PHONE CALL late that afternoon when he and Kezia were on their hands and knees pulling out the last of the carpet tacks. He picked up his mobile and talked into it, sitting dirty and disheveled on a roll of discarded and moth-eaten carpet.
Kezia hid a smile, wondering if London, Toronto or Japan—or whoever it was this time—realized they were doing business with someone covered in carpet fluff. She removed a piece from her mouth and tried not to listen, but when Christian swore loud and long, she sat back on her heels and frowned.
He cut the call short and with deadly accuracy hurled the phone across the room and through the open window. Kezia had grown so accustomed to his unshakeable sangfroid that she could only stare at him.
“Sorry.” He didn’t sound it. “I’m being played for a fool and there’s not a damn thing I can do about it.”
“What’s the problem?”
“I’ve got a spoilt heiress who’s refusing to sign an eight-million-dollar deal her father and I negotiated because I’m not at a meeting in Auckland. In three hours, she’s flying to Europe for four months.”
Christian began pacing. “Meanwhile, thanks to one crazy old lady, I’m stuck in Hicksville pulling out carpet tacks to save a few hundred lousy dollars! Her lawyers will have no trouble sinking the deal.” He looked around for something else to throw and Kezia hid the hammer.
“I think I can fix it,” she said calmly as she went downstairs to retrieve his phone from the flower bed. It still worked.
Upstairs, Christian leaned out the window. “You’re kidding.”
She lifted a hand. “Hi, Bruce, this is Kezia. I hoped it would be too windy for crop-dusting today. Listen, I’ve got a guy who needs to get to Auckland within the hour. Can you do it? Oh yeah, I think you can charge him plenty. He’ll be there in thirty minutes. ’Bye.”
“Come up here,” Christian demanded. “I have to kiss you.”
“I prefer to be worshipped from afar.”
“You’re an angel, a goddess, words can’t describe your beauty….”
“That’s odd,” Kezia mused. “Someone told me I was an uptight, orderly, obsessive chocoholic who wasn’t getting any.”
“Only because mortal men aren’t worthy of you.”
“You’re good,” she said admiringly. “Now go shower.�
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Fifteen minutes later she was in her ancient station wagon driving Christian, cool and composed in a summer-weight Italian suit and Ray•Ban sunglasses, to the airfield. He released a faint scent of expensive cologne every time he moved to accommodate the rough ride.
“This car,” he said less-than-politely, “how old is it?”
“Too old to ask,” she replied shortly, hot and bothered by his proximity. “Unlike you, I’d rather put my money into something that appreciates in value.”
“Like land,” he said, adding astutely, “I’m sure one day you’ll be able to buy it back.”
Not with prices rising the way they were. Kezia graunched the gears. “Let’s talk about something else.”
“Our meeting at the bank in Everton tomorrow?”
Apprehension tightened Kezia’s throat. “Something else else.”
The car forded a pothole, Christian moving easily with the swaying vehicle. “Okay. You know why you’re being so helpful to me, don’t you? You figure you owe me a favor for all this and want to cross me off your list.”
“I’m not that bad,” she protested.
“I’ve seen you noting every volunteer’s name in your little black book.”
“It’s blue. And you’re starting to get on my nerves.”
“So how does the debt stand between us? Does this make us even?”
“It puts me way ahead. I doubt you could ever catch up.”
He laughed and she kept her eyes on the road because he got too damn handsome when he did that. It was his laugh that had made her like him all those years ago. The freedom from care it promised. And at the time she’d had a lot of cares, convalescing from a serious illness and living with a grandmother—and in a country—she barely remembered.
As if reading her thoughts, Christian asked casually, “How are your parents? I expected to see them at the funeral.”
She tried to keep the defensiveness out of her voice. “They’re stationed in a remote part of Indonesia and couldn’t get back in time.”
“Your father didn’t inherit.”
“No. Nana was afraid Dad would sell up and give away the money.”
“And charity begins at home,” Christian said, quoting Muriel’s favorite adage. “When did you last see them?”
The road forked and Kezia took the left. “Two years ago when they came home between assignments. I’d visit but they always seem to be working in countries with dengue fever and I can’t risk another hemorrhagic attack.”
“So they left you to deal with this alone?”
“They’re aid workers, Christian. They have more important priorities.”
“You always did make excuses for them.”
“And you’ve always criticized them. Well, don’t. They’re all I have left.” When he said nothing to that, she insisted, “I had a very happy childhood.”
“Sure you did,” he said affably. “Almost as good as mine.”
Ahead, a hawk feasted on roadkill. Kezia tooted her horn, and it lifted into the air with two slow, insolent flaps. “Why did you never tell me how bad your home situation was?”
There was a brief silence. “What could you have done, Kez?”
“Given you sympathy at least.”
“I was happy with the other things you were giving me, babe,” he drawled.
But she was on to him now; knew he was deflecting her. “We went to your father’s funeral,” she said as though he hadn’t spoken. “Muriel and I and Bernice May.”
Her tone told Christian that she knew about what he’d once gone to such pains to hide from her—his father’s drunkenness and neglect. “Did he…did he ever hit you?”
He opted to lie. “No.” Yet someone had been telling tales if both Kezia and Bob Harvey knew details of his childhood. “Who told you? I know it wasn’t Muriel.” Surely Don hasn’t broken faith after all these years?
“Bernice May, until Nana hushed her up. I’d asked why you weren’t there.”
“I paid for the funeral,” he said, “for my mother’s sake. That was all I could bring myself to do.”
“You used to talk even less about your mother than your father.” Kezia kept her eyes on the road.
“And you’ve been wondering since that episode in the kitchen.”
“Yes,” she said simply. “So some of your childhood was happy?”
“Yes. Your turn to change the subject.”
Kezia retreated into farmer’s talk—bemoaning the lack of decent rainfall and, when that subject was exhausted, moving on to the merits of Rhode Island Reds versus bantams.
By the time she pulled into the paddock that passed as an airfield, she was sick of the sound of her own voice. The Cessna’s engines were already whining through their warm-up.
Christian could exchange one drone for another, she thought wryly. She turned to see his mouth twisted in a half smile.
“What?”
“I didn’t think you and I could ever be friends.” His voice was deep and husky and sexy as hell. “But damn, if you don’t make me like you sometimes, Kezia Rose.”
Oh, no…Don’t do this to me. Not again.
“I see that scares you.”
“It horrifies me. Let’s get this straight, Christian, once and for all.” She made her tone deliberately brutal. “You and I could never be friends.”
“Hell, you’re right.” He leaned forward and lightly nipped her lower lip with the intimacy of someone who’d done it many times before. “You and I weren’t made to be friends.” Then he got out and strode toward the plane.
Only when the Cessna taxied down the runway and lifted into the blue haze did Kezia realize she should have slapped his face.
“HELLO?”
Telephone to his ear, Joe hesitated. He hadn’t expected his son to answer. It wasn’t in the script.
“Hello?” There was silence as the kid waited for a response. “You need to talk back, you know,” the boy suggested helpfully.
Joe’s throat seized up. His baby sounded so grown-up…so confident. They’d only been apart three months and already Joe had missed a transition. It hurt, hurt like hell.
“Who is it, honey?” Her voice.
“There’s someone there. But they’re not talking, just breathing sort of fast.”
“Give me the phone. Hello? Who is this?”
Joe opened his mouth. But, trapped in some kind of guilt-stricken limbo, he couldn’t say a word.
“Joe?” Her voice was hesitant now. “Is that you?”
Panicked, he hung up.
He turned and banged his head against the wall beside the pay phone. Damn, cowardly, stupid dickhead! But the waver in her voice had killed him. A waver that might have been fear.
Last time he’d seen her, she’d been sprawled on the floor, staring up at him in shock and disbelief. She screamed at him to get out and never come back.
Because last time he’d seen her, he’d hit her.
CHAPTER FIVE
CHRISTIAN HATED William J. Rankin the Third after ten minutes.
The bank manager was well mannered in that in-offensive style adopted by funeral directors. His robust frame carried a little extra weight, which Christian soon attributed to William J.’s inflated idea of his own importance. He seemed to be in his late thirties and, by his manner, had been most of his life.
The first real indication of trouble had been the vicelike handshake that told him William J. had competition issues, which Christian didn’t help by grinning when he saw William J. Rankin III in gold-embossed letters on the door.
“A gift from my mother,” William J. said shortly.
To which Christian replied politely, “Very thoughtful of her.”
When the banker swung back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head as he listened to Kezia outline her proposal, Christian wished to God he’d let Kezia come alone. His presence here was doing her no good.
Certain men reacted to his wealth this way, adopting a studied nonchalance w
hile their body language screamed alpha male marking territory. He generally cut the negotiations short—he was too old for pissing contests. Unfortunately this man held the loan on the hotel.
So he adopted a deferential pose, his shoulders slightly slumped and his expression respectful. How’s that, you bastard?
“So what I’m asking for, Bill,” said Kezia, looking damn fine in that white linen suit that accentuated her curves, “is for the bank to transfer the outstanding loan to me. This new business plan—” she forced William J. to drop his gorilla pose and take it “—will kick-start the business and enable regular repayments.”
“Your grandmother took out the original loan on a similar basis five years ago.” William J. opened another file on his desk. “Her business plan included substantial refurbishment—reroofing, repainting and modernizing the accommodation to attract out-of-towners. Five years down the track the property is still in desperate need of an upgrade and—forgive me for being blunt—you’re broke.”
“If you look at the plan, you’ll see I’ll clear thirty thousand dollars when I’ve repaid the mortgage on the land I’ve sold to Bob Harvey,” replied Kezia quietly. “When the money comes through next week, I’ll use it for the most urgent repairs. And I’m sure my grandmother had every intention of putting the money she borrowed into the hotel but she had a soft heart. When a friend needed a hip replacement, she picked up the bill.”
“Yet Bernice May could have got it free under the public health system.”
Kezia made an impatient gesture. “If she’d waited five years. Look, Bill, I’m not here to hide anything. We both know Nana had a gambling habit and that she also gave extravagant gifts.” She smiled mischievously. “I imagine you still have the cashmere sweater. But Muriel’s spending habits have nothing to do with my application.”
“Unless you inherited them.” William J. plainly didn’t like being shown up and Christian didn’t blame him. What the hell was Kez playing at? She wasn’t just airing dirty linen, she was beating it with a stick.