But how could she join her life to someone who had no respect for her? To whom she was a convenience? A handy virgin. A mere vessel for his firelings. She couldn’t do it. She shouldn’t do it. She deserved love and respect and a husband who valued her for more than her fertility.
When he roused slightly and groaned she pushed at him and slid out from under. A cold shower and a change of clothes confirmed her in her feelings. She looked at the woman in the mirror and lifted her chin. She had value. She was smart and hardworking and a prize. She didn’t have to settle for being some rich man’s plaything. And how could she trust that he would not be out pursuing his usual anorexic supermodels the second she had a bun in the oven? She couldn’t. Not if he didn’t love her.
Look at the way he had neglected her? Twice in the last month he had disappeared without a word and never explained where he had gone. He had not really apologized for missing her defense. Not really. The dive watch was not a real apology. Not that skipping that landmark day was forgivable. Did she want to be treated like that for life? Did she want to live wondering where her own husband was half the time? She did not. She would have to be insane to marry Roland Voros — Baron Faithless the Playboy Tycoon.
Determinedly she gathered up her possessions and repacked her weekend bag and marched militantly out to the living room where he was sitting nude staring into the unlit fireplace. He raised his big blond head at her approach and his green eyes narrowed when he saw the bag in her hand.
“I want to go home,” she said firmly, quite forgetting that she normally hated confrontation. “Take me to Ara Ma Station, please.”
“You want to go to your uncle’s farm, when I have asked you to be my Baroness?” Disdain dripped from every syllable.
“There is nothing wrong with a sheep farm,” she said. “I am not ashamed of being a country girl. And I’ve never pretended to be anything else.”
He stood up. “I’ll get dressed and take you there.” He bowed formally and strode out of the room without looking as foolish as she thought he ought to have done, considering that his engorged cock was purple and crusted with the dried juices of their lovemaking.
* * *
Roland landed his helicopter in the empty paddock indicated by Kayla. She had sat silent and hostile beside him all the way from Invercargill to Ara Ma Station. The closer they got to the farm the tenser her hunched shoulders became. Interesting. She had said she wanted to go home to her family, but her body said she lied.
Well, he was in no mood to run interference between his recalcitrant little mate and her aunt and uncle. He turned the aircraft off and waited for the rotors to stop before he opened the doors. A couple of sheepdogs and a dark green ATV came racing down the hillside to the paddock where they had landed. Kayla slowly and reluctantly unbuckled her seatbelt. It was obvious that she did not want to descend.
Smiling broadly Roland reached across her stiff body and slid her door open before opening his own and climbing down. By the time he came around the rear of the chopper Kayla had grabbed her bag and was stepping carefully onto the thick grass. The man on the ATV was still some distance away as one of the black and white dogs reached her feet and stood happily waving its tail and woofing softly.
Roland watched with interest as Kayla ignored the approaching vehicle to drop to her knees and bury her face in the dog’s long black and white coat. “Oh, Lass,” she said brokenly, “How I’ve missed you!” The border collie licked her face and mopped up her tears. His stomach clenched. She had nothing to cry over. He had offered her marriage and his fortune.
“G’day,” said the man on the ATV as he brought it to a halt. A stocky man with gray hair and a stubbly face dismounted. “We didn’t expect you today,” he said brusquely, swaggering over to Kayla. He snapped his fingers at the dog who retreated and looked warily at her master’s dusty boots.
“I came a little early, Uncle Chester,” Kayla responded quietly. “This is my...friend, Roland Voros. Roland, my uncle, Chester Goff.”
Roland extended his hand and as Chester reluctantly clasped it, he noted that the older man had made no attempt to hug or kiss his niece. Kayla picked up her bag awkwardly and Chester glared at it as if it were a steamer trunk rather than a small roll-on suitcase.
“Dunno what all your aunt will have to say,” he muttered. “You’ll have to make your own way to the house.” He turned to clamber back onto the little green ATV.
Roland plucked Kayla’s bag from her hand and deposited it in the carrier at the back of the vehicle. “You might as well take this,” he said pleasantly, but his voice brooked no denial.
Chester whistled for the dog who trotted after him casting longing glances back at Kayla over one shoulder. Roland decided to ignore Uncle Chester’s rudeness. There was something very wrong here, but he had a feeling it would suit him better to play a waiting game. He waved an airy hand at the pasture. “Shall we go?” he asked.
Kayla was much less spry than when she had been ticking him off this morning. Roland didn’t like the hard knot he got in the pit of his stomach as she trudged up and down hill towards the black and white house in the valley. Even though he was sure it wasn’t in his best interests to offer her a shoulder to cry on, he didn’t like the uneasy feeling her set face gave him.
They went around to the back of the house and entered through the screened back porch. Roland held the wooden screen door for Kayla and they skirted the edges of the long trestle tables and benches that occupied most of the floor space.
“It’s so Aunt Audrey can feed the shearers,” Kayla explained. “There isn’t room for everyone in the kitchen. Besides, it’s cooler out here.” She opened the door into the kitchen and he found himself in a scrubbed white room with faded linoleum floors and chipped Formica counters. It was both humid and stuffy. Boiling mutton scented the air.
Audrey Goff left the pot she was stirring to block their path. “I wasn’t expecting you today,” she said peevishly.
Kayla’s face flamed. “This is my friend Roland Voros, Aunt,” she said. “Roland, my aunt, Mrs. Goff.”
Audrey put out a reluctant hand and gave Roland two fingers before wrapping her hands in her print apron. “I’m sure I don’t know where your young man can sleep,” she said in a peevish whine.
Short iron-gray hair scraped back from a narrow face and bristling black eyebrows did nothing to enhance Audrey’s discontented face. She stopped speaking with her mouth open to look Roland over from head to foot. Her lips thinned even more, as though she did not care for what she saw. Roland smiled his most charming smile at the older woman, but her disapproving expression did not waver.
“I’m not staying,” he said easily. “I have to be in Auckland by nightfall. I just brought Kayla — as it was on my way.”
“Oh.” Audrey looked between Kayla and Roland. “I’ve put one of the girls in your room,” she told Kayla. “You will have to share.” She turned back to Roland. “I suppose you want your tea.”
Kayla eyes fell. She was clearly mortified. Roland hardened his heart. But Kayla squared her shoulders. “Roland will have a cup of tea before he leaves,” she said clearly and distinctly into the hostile atmosphere created by her aunt. “I’ll put the kettle on.” She moved to the big range and grabbed a huge, blackened kettle and took it to the sink to fill it.
“What’s your business in Auckland?” Audrey demanded.
“I have a great many interests in New Zealand,” Roland said calmly. “Transkona is a very large and diversified corporation.”
“And you would be working for Transkona?” Audrey Goff’s disbelief was plain.
Roland smiled.
“He owns it,” Kayla said from the sink. “He’s the CEO.”
“Humph.” Audrey Goff turned to the potatoes she had left on the kitchen table and picked up the peeler. “You might as well sit down.” She waved a hand at a chair.
Conversation did not improve after that. Kayla tried. Roland could tell that she wanted to smoot
h over her aunt’s lack of welcome, but the older woman would not cooperate. After he had drunk his tea he rose to his feet. “Thank you, ma’am,” he said inclining his head courteously. “Kayla, I will be seeing you very soon.” He kissed his mate’s pale cheek. “It was a pleasure to meet your family.”
Kayla trailed after him to the door and he felt a pang leaving her where she was plainly so unwanted. But he steeled his heart against such weakness. A week with the Goffs would surely make her realize just how honored she had been to receive a proposal of marriage from rich, kind, courteous Lord Voros. He would return to a tamed bride.
But the memory of her strained unhappy face was like acid around his heart. And his tattoo began to ache and throb anew.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Kayla was chagrined by her aunt and uncle’s behavior. Why did Aunt Audrey have to embarrass her like this? Why had Uncle Chester not come up to the house to properly meet her guest? They could not have been less enthusiastic about her return if they had tried with both hands. Roland had noticed. How could he not? But she wasn’t going to put up with it. If they didn’t change their attitude, when she left she would never return.
Audrey and Chester Goff were angry, bitter people. Their farm was not as prosperous as hard work should have made it. But it was not doing as poorly as their parsimonious ways would have led the unwary to believe. They paid their shearers so poorly that they could never keep the good ones. That left them at the mercy of the clumsy and the inexperienced, and meant their wool was always graded poorly. Poorer grades received lower prices. It was a vicious circle, but they never learned.
In the kitchen, after she had helped Audrey serve plates of mutton stew and loaf after loaf of buttered bread to the hungry workers, Kayla listened idly to her aunt and uncle as she washed the greasy pots.
“Did you see the clothes he had on?” Chester said with a snort.
“To visit a farm!” agreed Audrey scornfully. “He’s told her some tale about owning a big corporation.” She snorted genteelly as if she would never believe any such foolishness.
“You didn’t see that helicopter!” Chester objected. Awe laced his voice.
“Doesn’t mean he owns it,” Audrey objected. “What would some rich CEO want with Kayla?” She turned her head towards her niece. “A man like that wants just one thing from a girl like you. And by your face I can see he’s already had it,” she sneered.
Kayla dried her hands carefully on the dishtowel and straightened her shoulders. Head high she walked across to the table and looked down at her aunt. “What do you mean, a girl like me?” she inquired pleasantly.
“A half-breed fatty,” snapped Audrey. “Look at you. Don’t you think if he really was a rich man he couldn’t do better? A man like that is after only one thing,” she said raking Kayla’s voluptuous curves with a scornful eye. Kayla didn’t know if Aunt Audrey merely thought she was obese or a slut or both. “I don’t know what you think you’re doing bringing him to New Trafalgar.”
“As a matter of fact, I don’t think he could do any better than me,” Kayla replied in the same pleasant voice. She paused and wondered if she should defend herself. Bring up her newly minted doctorate? What was the use? Audrey and Chester weren’t going to be happy with her accomplishments whatever she said.
Kayla didn’t mention that Roland had proposed, because obviously she couldn’t marry a guy who only wanted her because she could bear him an heir. And there was no way she was going to expose her broken heart to her aunt’s unsympathetic scrutiny.
“What have you done with your glasses, girl?” demanded Chester.
“Lasik surgery,” Kayla lied sweetly. “It was Roland’s graduation gift.”
“Humph.”
“I’m going to bed. Good night, Aunt Audrey. Good night, Uncle Chester.”
She knew she ought to be more grateful to the Goffs for taking her in when both her parents had died. But she had always been treated as if she were a loathsome duty being fulfilled unwillingly. Of course, it had to be a burden to be saddled with a child when you were long past the age of raising children, and especially if you had none of your own. But she really didn’t think she had been such a bothersome child.
But Kayla wasn’t even Aunt Audrey’s real niece, she was merely her sister Estelle’s adopted daughter. Audrey had had no qualms about making it plain that she would not otherwise have considered having a girl with Maori blood in her household. It had taken years for Kayla to understand that her aunt and uncle were mean-spirited racists who had little love in their hearts for each other and none for her. But she understood it now.
Standing in her small, hot room under the eaves she wondered if the Goffs had always been so miserable. She cast her mind back over her girlhood and decided that she was done making excuses for them. Her transformation into a dragoness seemed to have made a new woman out of her. Her hazel eyes looked only a shade greener but they saw more sharply. Not just what was in front of her, what was in people’s hearts.
By morning she realized that she could never call Ara Ma Station home ever again. Aunt Audrey wasn’t interested in her niece’s career, and she hadn’t been impressed by her rich boyfriend. The Goffs were really worse than no family. She took the Sunday afternoon bus to Christchurch and was on the way to Picton and the ferry to the North Island before she had thought about what she was returning to Auckland for.
It was time to reassess her life. What was she going back to Auckland to do? To work for peanuts in Dr. Whitcomb’s lab? He might be persuaded to give her a full time position as a post doc, but he had made no such offer. She knew his hands were tied by funding issues. It always came down to money. Half his time was spent writing grants and wooing money people like Voros.
But if he had no work for her, he likely knew someone who did. She had done good work for Whitcomb. Her thesis had burnished the reputation of his lab. She had to stop waiting like a good little girl hoping someone would recognize her hard work and give her a gold star. Before she got off the ferry, she should call Dr. Whitcomb and ask what he had in mind for her. It was time to take charge of her life.
* * *
“Unless I get more funding, the projects on Ngaire Island are on hold, Dr. Whitcomb said apologetically. “I do have some proposals written, but in this economic climate, even getting past ones renewed is a problem. Every year there are new people who need to be convinced of the value of our research.” He stopped and sighed bitterly.
“What do you think I should do, Doctor?” Kayla asked.
“I have a colleague on Whangaparoa Island who needs someone to run his samples,” admitted Whitcomb. “He runs a nature preserve and is investigating whether parasite load on prey species is affecting the sea lions in his bay.”
“Do you think he’d give me the job?” Kayla asked bluntly.
“Probably. But I’d hate to lose you, Kayla. And being a lab tech is well below your capabilities.”
“If I am no longer eligible for the stipend paid to teaching assistants in your lab, I need a job or I won’t eat,” she reminded him bluntly.
“I’ll give him a call,” Whitcomb assured her. “I’m sure he’d be delighted to have someone with your qualifications, and if something turns up here in Auckland, I know where to reach you.”
“Thank you, Dr. Whitcomb.”
Kayla stayed overnight in her flat. She packed her kit and asked Dave Foster to store what she couldn’t take on the bus to Whangaparoa Island and left Auckland with no regrets. The thought of her arrogant, insensitive lover made her heart ache, so she didn’t think about him — much. In the long watches of the night, she would wake from a dream in which his long, expert fingers were tantalizing her yearning flesh, but she disciplined her unfulfilled body to go right back to sleep. She did not need anything from that sexist dragon.
* * *
When Roland went back to Ara Ma to retrieve Kayla he was met once again by Chester and the sheep dogs.
“She’s gone,” the weat
her-beaten farmer told him, not even bothering to conceal his glee or his sneer.
“Gone?” Roland glared at Chester Goff.
“Took the bus to Christchurch. Gone back to the University,” Goff said scowling suspiciously at Roland. “Didn’t even stay to help with the shearers. You should have said if you were coming to fetch her. She had to pay for her ticket,” he finished querulously.
Roland inclined his head in a red-misted fury. What the devil did Kayla mean taking off alone? His bride should not be traveling on the public bus. He could see why she would want to leave this disagreeable couple, but she should have waited for him to return. Now he was going to have to return to Auckland and conduct his courtship under the censorious gaze of half a dozen Maori sword bearers.
Kayla was going to have to learn to obey and serve him. She needed a lesson, and he was just the dragon to give it to her. All the way back to the North Island, he thought about how best to bring his obdurate mate to heel.
But when he arrived in Auckland Kayla was gone. She did not answer his texts, or pick up when he called. He launched a discreet search for her using his corporate security team rather than one of his Maori sword bearers. They finally tracked her to Whangaparoa Island.
* * *
“Kayla Cooper no longer works at the University of Auckland,” Dr. Whitcomb informed Roland Voros. His voice was tinged with anxiety. Clearly he did not relish having to give his patron bad news.
Roland knew better than to ask where Kayla had gone. That would force Dr. Whitcomb to either disappoint him or violate employee confidentiality. Far better to finesse the situation. “I was very impressed by her dedication,” he said smoothly. “I didn’t think she would leave her crabs,” he probed delicately.
Whitcomb sighed down the telephone. “She left us because she was no longer eligible for her stipend,” he said regretfully. “Your generous donation is only available to graduate students. Once she had her doctorate, Kayla could no longer receive it.”
Dragon's Successor (BBW/Dragon Shifter Romance) (Lords of the Dragon Islands Book 2) Page 9