by Robyn Donald
Silently he picked her up, enveloping her in the heat of his body for as long as it took to lower her into the water. ‘All right?’ he asked. ‘Can you sit up?’
‘Yes, th-thank you.’ Touched by his concern, she relaxed into the delicious comfort.
‘The water’s not too hot?’
‘N-no, it’s wonderful.’
‘I’ll rub Lobo down and then make you a hot drink,’ he said over his shoulder, leaving the door open behind him.
The warmth found its way right through her lax body and into her bones. She lay for what seemed ages, listening to the rumble of Wolfe’s voice as he talked to Lobo. He knew about dogs; his voice was deep with affection and understanding, which was possibly why Lobo liked him.
Once she stopped shivering she forced herself to her feet, clutching the taps for support but determined to get out. Wolfe was also wet, and by now he’d be starting to feel very cold.
‘Get back in,’ he commanded from the door.
She stumbled; he caught her before she hit the bath.
‘Sit down,’ he said, and such was the ring of authority in his voice that she found herself in the water again.
‘I’m not Lobo,’ she flared, ‘and I’m not shivering any more. It’s your turn—you must be freezing.’
She glanced up and realised that he’d found the hot water cupboard in the laundry and looted it. Instead of his wet clothes he wore a huge old woollen jersey that had been her father’s, and had wrapped a blanket beneath his arms.
He should have looked funny. He didn’t. He looked barbaric and invincible.
‘I’m warm enough,’ he said, his even tone not hiding the steel beneath as he surveyed her face. ‘I’ve been stoking the fire. Stay there until you’ve drunk the cocoa.’
He disappeared, returning before her sluggish brain had time to formulate a sensible reply.
‘Can you manage it?’ he asked, setting the mug down on the edge of the bath. ‘I’ll hold it for you if you can’t.’
Rowan was not going to let him feed cocoa to her. Gritting her teeth, she reached out a white hand and lifted the surprisingly heavy mug to her lips. It was hot and rich and thick, and it tasted like nectar.
‘Drink the whole lot,’ Wolfe ordered.
‘Yes, sir.’
He grinned, lights dancing in his eyes for a second before they shut down and he turned away.
He was at the door when she said, ‘Lobo—’
‘Is hosed down and drying off in front of the fire,’ he told her, and walked out.
Rowan drank the cocoa down to the dregs before forcing her leaden legs to carry her out of the bath. Taking off her bra and briefs almost exhausted her, but she dried herself sketchily and then wrapped the towel around beneath her shoulders, hoping it hid the essential parts but too tired to care much.
She heard Wolfe moving around in the kitchen. It took her two attempts before she could call, ‘The bath’s free now. The towels are in the hot water cupboard,’ and walk into her room.
He followed her. ‘Are you dry?’ he demanded from the doorway, eyes scanning her face.
‘Yes!’ She glared at him, daring him to say anything more.
There was an electric heartbeat of silence, before he nodded and turned away. ‘There’s tea in the kitchen. Drink at least two cups of it in front of the fire. No alcohol.’
‘There isn’t any in the house,’ she said to the empty doorway.
Slowly and creakily, she pulled on an elderly pair of tan trousers and a jersey the same tawny-gold as her eyes. After some frustrating minutes brushing her hair, she pulled it back from her face with a tie and set off towards the bathroom, carrying the man’s green dressing gown that always hung on the back of her bedroom door.
‘Come in,’ Wolfe called in answer to her tentative knock.
He was standing with a towel knotted around narrow hips, his wet clothes tossed with hers into the empty bath. Too much skin, she thought dizzily, coppery and smooth and gleaming with dampness, each taut swell of muscle and sinew a profound statement of strength and masculine potency. Shoulders that loomed, and a pattern of hair spearing downwards to disappear beneath the folds of the towel; overpoweringly and uncompromisingly male, Wolfe dominated the room and her thoughts, sending jagged pangs of excitement through her.
Quick colour scorching her skin, Rowan held out the dressing gown. ‘This should fit you,’ she said woodenly.
Before taking the robe, he surveyed her with unwavering eyes for a leisurely, unbearable moment, before asking, ‘Who does it belong to?’
CHAPTER SEVEN
ROWAN understood how her dog felt—baffled, resentful and suspicious, yet unable to resist Wolfe. His green eyes mesmerised her. She felt that if he tried he’d be able to pry her thoughts from the innermost recesses of her brain. Angrily, she lifted a mutinous face and met the icy brilliance of his gaze with stubborn defiance.
‘It’s none of your business,’ she said without expression, ‘but as it happens it was my father’s.’
He took it from her. ‘How do you feel?’
‘A bit tired,’ she admitted.
‘You’re stronger than you look.’
She stooped to pick up the wet heap of clothes, his and hers intermingled, wondering at her reluctance to touch them. Such extreme reactions were not normal for her—but then, meeting Wolfe had transformed her into another woman, one whose turbulent emotions kept threatening to break down the fragile armour of her control.
He commanded, ‘Leave those. I’ll deal with them.’
‘I’ll put them on to wash. The sooner they get in front of the fire the sooner they’ll be dry.’
‘In front of the fire is where you’re going right now,’ he said grimly. ‘I’ve built it up again. I’ll put the clothes in the washing machine.’
‘I can—’
‘Just get in there and sit down,’ he interrupted, ‘before I pick you up and carry you there.’
‘Oh, all right,’ she said stonily, backing out.
Collapsing onto the sofa in the sitting room, her fingers buried in Lobo’s dark ruff, Rowan accepted bleakly that the only way to banish Wolfe from her life before he permanently damaged it would be to tell him what he wanted to know.
If she didn’t, he’d keep pushing until his patience and temper snapped, and then he’d carry through on the threats he’d made.
But she couldn’t tell him. And as the night they’d spent together clearly meant nothing to him, she couldn’t allow it to mean anything to her—not that, nor Mrs Simpson’s anguish.
Guilt at this thought clenched her hand in Lobo’s fur. He made a questioning sound and blinked at her.
‘Sorry,’ she said, her voice catching in her throat as she rubbed around his ears in the particular way he loved.
Should she contact her father’s superior, the man who’d tacitly made it possible for them to cover up the circumstances of Tony’s death? No, of course she couldn’t! He was a policeman, and if she told him what had really happened he’d be forced to investigate, especially when Wolfe began to press him.
Because if he couldn’t get anything from her, Wolfe would dig deeper; he’d found her, and it would be much less difficult to find her father’s superior officer, now much higher in the police force after six years.
All she had to do was stick to her story and again learn to live with a conscience that had always pricked her. Taking meagre comfort from the fact that telling Mrs Simpson what Tony had tried to do couldn’t help her—would make her realise just how dangerous her beloved son had been—Rowan stilled her hand. Lobo pushed his head against her leg.
‘Good boy,’ she murmured.
He was still damp, but Wolfe had dried him down—and brushed him too, by the look of him. Which meant that Lobo had trusted him enough to let him handle him.
Or that, like her, Lobo had had no choice. She looked at the big dog with a cynical smile. ‘Pathetically helpless against him, both of us,’ she said beneath her br
eath.
Somehow, without knowing it, she’d become—no, not dependent on Wolfe, but vulnerable to him in a way even more frightening than the fierce physical attraction that still shocked her. She stared into the flames, trying to work out how he’d managed to penetrate her defences. Of course she wasn’t in love with him—it didn’t happen that fast.
But apart from that acute, passionate awareness, she liked him in lots of ways. She even admired his determination…
She was balanced on the horns of a dilemma—convince Wolfe that he was wrong about Tony’s death and she’d never see him again; fail to convince him and he’d carry out his threats, ruthlessly staining the career of a man whose only fault had been to stand by her dying father.
Both prospects were unbearable.
Her hand stole to her breast; terrified, she listened to the rapid skip of her heart. No, she couldn’t be falling in love with Wolfe. No and no and no.
‘I won’t let it happen,’ she whispered fiercely.
Yet her body sprang to life when Wolfe came through the door carrying a tray, the arrogant angles of his face clamped into an intriguing, invulnerable mask.
He’d retrieved milk from the battered refrigerator and even found some sugar. Against the white tray and the delicate glaze of a tea-set she’d thrown years ago his hands looked dark and boldly male.
You are not, Rowan told herself trenchantly over the buzzing in her ears, going to give in to this humiliating craving. It will pass.
It has to pass…
It was impossible to read the thoughts behind his impassive face, those hooded eyes. His glance speared hers before dropping to her hands.
‘I’m not shivering any more,’ she said, holding them out so that he could see their steadiness.
‘And your lips are a normal colour again.’ There was a disturbing intimacy in the way he scrutinised her mouth. ‘How’s your breathing?’ he asked, setting the tray down beside her.
Rowan reached for the teapot and concentrated on pouring, careful not to touch the spot on her hand where she’d pulled out a splinter. ‘Perfectly normal.’
Which was a lie. She felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach. Scent, she thought violently, had to be the most evocative of all the senses. When he’d put down the tray he’d been close enough for his faint fragrance—masculine, incredibly arousing—to set up an instant clamour inside her.
Struggling to regain control of her voice and her mind, she said, ‘If you like cake, there’s some in the tin in the pantry.’
‘I’ll get it,’ he said, and left the room.
Rowan put down the teapot. Her father had been a big man, but the green dressing gown strained at Wolfe’s shoulders and reached to just above his knees.
Men, she’d always thought, looked mildly ridiculous in dressing gowns. The most handsome actor tended to go from sexy to boyish when he donned a dressing gown.
This man hadn’t. The sombre green towelling that filled his startling eyes with shadows made him more tough and forbidding. Hastily, before she could head down that dangerous path again, Rowan began to pour the second cup of tea as he came back into the room with several slices of cake on a plate.
She put the teapot down and looked up at him. Coaxing the words past a raw patch in her throat, she said, ‘Thank you for saving my life.’
‘You’d have made it out if your damned dog hadn’t tried to drown you first,’ he told her, sitting down in the chair.
‘He’s not much good as a lifesaver,’ she agreed, adding soberly, ‘And I wouldn’t have made it—I was just about to pass out when you grabbed my hair. I’d have breathed in water, and then I’d have drowned. So—thank you. I’m grateful.’
‘You wouldn’t have felt obliged to see me off if I hadn’t been prowling around the night before.’ Leashed anger roughened his tone. ‘Hauling you up was the least I could do.’
It wasn’t exactly an apology, especially as he followed it with a cold, uncompromising smile. ‘Besides, you haven’t yet told me what I want to know. As for Lobo, he might be no great shakes as a lifesaver, but he barked loudly enough to carry above the sound of the outboard.’ He reached out and ruffled Lobo’s ears. The dog accepted the caress with dignity.
‘So he should have,’ Rowan said, ignoring the threat. ‘I fell over him!’ She picked up the milk jug. ‘Do you like your tea adulterated?’
‘No,’ he said, smiling with a hint of mockery.
‘We’d both better have sugar. It’s good for hypothermia and shock.’ Not that Wolfe seemed to be suffering from either. ‘Two spoons, I think.’
He didn’t object, so she ladled the sugar in. He was watching her closely, however, and when he’d accepted the mug he said, ‘How do you feel?’
‘Oh, I’m fine.’ She gave a brief smile. ‘The bath worked wonders. How about you?’
He shrugged. ‘No problems. But then, I wasn’t anywhere near drowning.’
Rowan bit her lip and drank some tea. ‘I was getting desperate,’ she admitted.
‘Not,’ he said grimly, ‘half as desperate as I was, believe me. It’s going to be a long time before I forget the sight of you falling into the water and Lobo going berserk before jumping in after you.’
Rowan shivered. ‘It was such a stupid accident. I tried to twist sideways so I didn’t land on him, and lost my balance.’
‘I assumed it was something like that.’ He glanced at the dog. ‘He was doing his best to reach you. I had to push him away before I could haul you up.’
‘Thank you,’ Rowan said. ‘He’d have done his best, but I don’t think he’d have got there. It’s quite deep in the boathouse, and he’s not strong enough to haul me up.’
Wolfe got up and crouched in front of the fire, deftly adding a chunk of driftwood from the basket at the side. Multi-coloured flames flickered higher, seizing greedily on the dry, salty wood. Lobo sat up to watch Wolfe’s strong, skilful hands feed in another couple of logs, stacking the fire for maximum heat.
The tea tasted of nothing in Rowan’s mouth. It seemed hours since they’d left the room to go out into the night; everything felt different, as though she’d walked through an invisible door into another dimension. She felt different too—a new person, altered in subtle, immutable ways.
Amazing, she thought with a flash of acerbic irony, what a dunking and a fright can do to you!
When Wolfe resumed his place on the sofa Rowan offered him the plate. ‘Have some cake.’
‘Thank you.’ He took a piece and bit into it. ‘I don’t recall having tasted a cake with feijoas in it before,’ he said, referring to the oval green fruit with scented, sweetly tart flesh that grew in every Northlander’s garden. ‘It’s delicious. Did you make it?’ When she nodded he said casually, ‘An unusual skill amongst women of your age.’
What did he know about ordinary people’s lives? Rowan thought trenchantly, taking a slice of the moist cake. Lobo looked up eagerly, although good manners forbade him to beg.
Sedately she said, ‘My grandmother was a wonderful cook. She taught me how to bake. It’s Lobo’s and my besetting sin. I never ice cakes, though. That would be decadent.’ She divided her slice and dropped the larger portion into Lobo’s waiting mouth.
One of Wolfe’s brows rose with lethal effect. Rowan thought of Regency rakes—sophisticated, deadly dangerous and showing a confidence so inborn it approached arrogance, yet with a sharp, subtle sense of humour and a rock-hard code of conduct.
‘And whatever you are,’ he said evenly, ‘you’re not decadent.’
‘You have a problem with that?’
His long black lashes lay straight and dense for a second on the tanned skin above his high cheekbones. They lifted to reveal a cool, guarded glance that rebuffed her as conclusively as an acid comment. ‘Seductive teasing is a cold, naked exercise in power. That comes pretty close to decadence for me.’
Sickened and startled by the open attack, Rowan put her cake down. ‘If you’re referring to your b
rother—’
‘Who else would I be referring to?’ His scathing tone flayed her composure.
Proudly, because pride was all she could summon, she resumed, ‘I didn’t tease him.’
‘Going out with him, telling him you loved him and then dumping him wasn’t a tease?’
She said quietly, ‘So no one should ever change their mind? Where is it said that a few evenings together constitute a lifetime commitment?’
‘Nowhere,’ he said curtly. ‘You’re twisting my words.’
A soft growl from Lobo turned both their heads. ‘It’s all right,’ Rowan said automatically. She looked at Wolfe, speaking with passionate intensity. ‘I went out with Tony for two months. I don’t know how he felt, but the word ‘‘love’’ was never spoken by either of us in those months.’ She pushed the bad memories into the furthest part of her mind, the part where demons gibbered and mouthed. ‘And he didn’t love me. He—’ She stopped.
‘He—?’ Wolfe drawled, watching her with hard, narrowed eyes.
‘He assumed too much, too quickly,’ she said bluntly, her stomach churning. She couldn’t eat; instead of leaving the half slice of cake, she unthinkingly fed it to Lobo, and realised the moment it disappeared behind his teeth that she’d revealed her inner turmoil.
Unable to stop herself, she shot a swift glance at the man opposite.
Wolfe’s gaze lingered on the dog, then flicked up to her face with the impact of a sword. ‘In what way?’
‘In every way,’ she said shortly.
She expected a further inquisition, and was relieved when he said as he picked up his tea, ‘Did you make these?’
‘The mugs?’ Rowan asked. ‘Yes.’
‘They’re good,’ he said calmly.
‘I know.’ She stretched out to pick up her own.
‘What have you done to your hand?’ he demanded, getting to his feet. ‘Show me.’
He didn’t wait for permission; long fingers enclosed hers and turned her hand over so that he could examine the palm.