In front of them the darkness was punctuated by lamps whose dispersed halos lit the twists of the path that led down to the beach and her cottage.
She didn’t want to, but she couldn’t resist stealing glances at him every time they passed one of the solar lamps. The first light revealed a head bent, looking away from her, down to the path, as if lost in thought. Then, a few more paces later she glanced at him and briefly met his gaze. She could feel its heat even in the mist that robbed everything of color.
She stopped at the point where the path descended steeply down onto the beach. Below them stood her cottage, just above the sand. They were out of the reach of the lights and darkness slid all around them. There was only the sound of the cicadas, quieter now, in the trees behind them, and the sea surging up the beach and dragging the fine sand down again, into its depth.
“It’s small, but it’s home,” she said pointing down to the utilitarian 1940s cottage that had none of the decorative features of earlier colonial cottages.
“It suits you.”
“Small and featureless?”
“Susie.” He sighed. “Why do you insist on taking everything I say the wrong way. You know I don’t mean that. I mean it’s beautiful. Look at it. The porch, the chair facing the ocean—it’s a perfect retreat.”
“A retreat. Yes, I suppose it is.” She hadn’t thought of it in those terms before. She’d always prided herself on being a realist. But Mac was right. She’d made a place where she thought no one could get to her.
“How long have you lived here?”
“I moved to the island around eight years ago. What with Mum and Dad gone, and my brother traveling, I needed work and picking grapes was all I knew.”
“What about university?”
“Never happened. No money.”
“I’m sorry. You’d have done well.”
She chewed her lip, irritated. She refused to be pitied. She’d never been into self-pity. “I did well without it.”
He stepped back and looked around. “You’re right. You have.”
“Yes, I have. Pete could see what a work horse I was and so let me train up in the business. And I rent the house from the estate. I don’t earn much and the house is a bit of a wreck but I like it. It’s home.” She gave him a sweeping gaze—from his expensive leather shoes, to his stylish shirt and perfectly trimmed dark hair. “But I doubt you really think this is the height of perfection.”
He frowned and didn’t speak for a few moments. “It’s what you used to want, and you have it. That’s achievement in my book.”
There was something wistful in his words that touched her. “And do you have what you used to want, Mac?”
“What do you think?”
“I think you’ve followed your dreams, you’ve reached them, and now you’re wondering if you followed the right ones.”
She saw the barrier fall instantly. It was like a shiny veneer of protection. She understood. She knew all about protection.
“Ah, so wise. You think you know me so well. You think I’ve turned up here to appease my conscience, finding my dreams hollow. Well, Susie, you’re partly right and partly wrong. I’ve had a ball. And I’ll continue to have a ball. We only get one life and I’m playing it hard. But that doesn’t make me a total jerk. I’m here to make reparation and then I’ll be gone.” He stepped away from her, back to the path. “Goodnight, Susie.”
“Goodnight, Mac.
“Tomorrow morning. We’ll meet at nine.”
“Sure.”
She continued down the path to her cottage and, in the instant before she turned on the outside light, glanced up at him. He’d paused by a light, looking down at her. She flicked on the outside light—flooding the front steps, the rough marram grass and sand dunes around it—casting him into shadow. This was how it had to be—him on the outside.
Chapter Three
Out of the corner of her eye Susie watched James enter the foyer. She continued to chat to an early-morning visitor to the winery. Eventually the visitor moved next door to the tasting area, leaving Susie and James alone. Susie walked over to where James was riffling through the visitor information brochures.
“Looking for something in particular?”
He flicked through the bundle of brochures in his hands. “I was looking to see what luxury lodges there were on the island.”
“There aren’t any. Didn’t you sleep well?” It was meant to have been a polite question but, for some reason, it sounded far too personal. James looked up at her with dark blue eyes that were full of innuendo.
“No, I didn’t.” He dropped the brochures onto the oversized oak table. They scattered untidily. “You?”
“Fine thanks. Never better.” Susie tried to cover her lie by immediately tidying up the brochures he’d displaced. But she doubted she’d succeeded, Mac had always been able to see straight through her.
“Is that right? Then what was your light doing on at four this morning?”
“And what were you doing spying on me?”
“I went for a very early morning walk. Thought if I couldn’t sleep I may as well enjoy the garden in the moonlight. The mist had cleared by then and I could see your cottage.”
She shrugged as she deposited the last of the brochures into the display rack, not wanting to look him in the eye, not wanting to give away even an inkling of her feelings during the night. Of how she lay awake, hot and wanting, and knowing that her body could never have what it craved. Not without risking everything she’d earned. James had to be out of bounds. “Probably dozed off with it on.”
“Yeah, right.” He came closer to her. “Want to know why I couldn’t sleep? Want to know what I was thinking of?”
“Not particularly.” She wanted to step away—his gaze was too penetrating, too personal and intrusive. She still refused to meet his eye. “But if you want to tell me then I’m sure I won’t be able to stop you.”
He reached out and touched her and she stilled immediately. His touch ignited a heat and a deep need for him to touch her again that shocked her. She tried to force herself to turn away but was rooted to the spot. Her body reacted despite what her mind told her to do. And her mind was quite clear. Run. Get out of there. Right now. She didn’t move.
His gaze slipped to her mouth, as his thumb shifted up her chin and moved along her lower lip. She swallowed and kept her lips firmly pressed together to stop the trembling that threatened to give her away. He tilted her chin so she was forced to look at him.
“It wasn’t what I was thinking, Susie, that kept me awake. It was what I was feeling. The same as you, judging by your reaction to my touch.”
The heat in his eyes threatened to destroy her. She inhaled deeply, willing her body to calm. “Stop this, Mac. We’ve work to do. Whatever you think, or feel, I don’t want this. This is business only.”
“You’re fooling yourself.”
“I do whatever I have to do to stay safe. End of story. Now, I assume you still want to look around the winery you’ve just bought? Or do you think you’re looking at your new possession right now? Is it me you think you own?”
Much to her consternation he grinned and he didn’t move his hand. “Now, there’s a thought. Owning Susie. Tell me, would you like to be owned?”
She shouldn’t have hesitated but his touch did things to her that her mind had no ability to counteract. The word “owned” conjured up images that made her melt from the inside out. She slapped down his hand. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Too little, too late. I know you. I know you like the thought of us together.”
“You can think what you like.” She swallowed. “Let’s get on with it, shall we? Business. That’s all.” She opened an inner door and the rattle of bottles being carried by a forklift grew louder. “I’ll show you around the winery.” She could do it. Focus on the business, keep a physical distance between them, make excuses not to be alone with him because she simply couldn’t trust herself.
; “Fine. Today the winery and tomorrow…” He walked up to her and tilted his head towards hers. “There’s the weekend.”
Susie winced inwardly. She had to get him to leave before the weekend. It was bad enough fending Mac off, without the added emotional pressure of seeing him with Tom. “You’ll be bored at the weekend. You’d be better off going to Auckland and returning here Monday if you really insist.”
He just grinned, a pleasant but very determined grin. “No. I’ll stay here for the weekend, get to know the place better.”
She sighed and forced her face into a tight, even more determined smile. “Sure. No problem.” And there wouldn’t be. She’d made sure she and Tom would be too busy to see anything of James. Just the thought of seeing these two people together sent her heart racing. If James thought he’d be able to force his company on her this weekend, he had another think coming. “I’ll show you the winery and then show you around the island.”
Susie slammed her foot on the accelerator, taking out her frustration on the old jeep and causing James to brace himself into his seat as they bounced down the rough track. The sight of his white knuckles gripping the door handle gave her grim satisfaction. She accelerated up to the bend beyond which the edge of the cliff lay—it was a spectacular view and an equally spectacularly scary road—and turned sharply. She glanced at James again and couldn’t help grinning as he briefly closed his eyes before turning his narrowed gaze to her.
“So what do you think?” She shouted above the revving engine as she skidded over the juddering ruts of the rough road.
“I think you’re driving hasn’t improved.”
“About the winery.” She changed into a higher gear to give her the control she needed to round another hairpin bend, smiling to herself as Mac was thrown against the door.
“Small but beautifully made.”
She stopped the jeep in a cloud of dust, at a vantage point near the cliff top. “So nothing to change then?”
“I didn’t say that.”
And she knew it. As they’d been going round the winery she’d seen it through his eyes, from the machinery which needed updating, to the lack of polish in the public wine-tasting areas. But a new lodge it did not need.
She pulled on the handbrake and sat back, and watched as James jumped out of the jeep and turned 360 degrees, taking in the unrivaled views. To the east, dark, dense forests covered the rocky terrain, to the south, vineyards raked the land and, to the north and west, the pristine beaches swept around them, fringing the Hauraki Gulf where islands faded in and out of the soft blue haze.
She followed him but went further out to the edge of the cliff and sat down, her legs dangling over the near vertical drop. James didn’t join her. She looked back to him. “Care to elaborate?”
“Not sitting there, I don’t.”
She grinned as she looked out to sea. “You never did like heights.”
“Is that why you brought me here, then? Some kind of small way to torture me?”
She grinned to herself but managed to hide it before she turned back to him. “It’s a good place to look around and see how beautiful it is. To see”—she peered at him over her sunglasses—“how unique it is, how natural and unspoiled it is.”
“And how, I suppose you’re saying, it should remain so.”
“Well, you can’t think otherwise, looking at this, can you?”
He walked up behind her. “I don’t want to spoil anything, Susie, that’s not what I’m here for. I want to leave things better than they were.”
She swallowed and stared out, unblinking at the horizon until her eyes watered. “Okay. Some of the machinery needs updating. I’m sure you noticed that. And we don’t have the marketing expertise we need to earn money from a limited vintage.”
“My friend Guy, who owns Onihau Winery and Lodge, can help you there. Next week, I’m going to Onihau. Come with me and we can discuss his marketing strategies, as well as check out his hospitality business.”
She was torn. She wanted the carrot James was dangling in front of her. It was what she’d been working towards after all. But it would mean spending time with him and his friends, it would threaten the impregnable wall she’d built around herself to keep herself strong, keep herself isolated.
“Do I have any choice in this?”
He sighed. “Of course you do. But you know it makes sense. What are you so scared of? Me?”
“You wish.”
“Do you remember how we used to dare each other?”
She smiled but made sure not to let him see. “Sure. I used to dare you to climb up to the tor.”
He shook his head. “I hated that. It was so high. But I did it. And you, I used to dare you to go walk into the pub and talk to people.”
“And I did that and hated every minute of it.”
“So…I dare you to come to the Wairarapa, to Onihau.”
“We’re not fourteen years old any longer, Mac.”
“Come on. What happened to the old Susie who’d never back down from a dare?”
He was doing it, he was getting to her, just like he wanted to. She banged the heel of her boot against the chalk face of the cliff in irritation, dislodging some stones. She jumped as a firm hand clamped down on her shoulder. “Do not, do that, Susie. I don’t want to have to become a hero and rescue you from half way down a cliff.”
She couldn’t help grinning at the thought and felt a flare of the old devilment that he’d always sparked in her as a child. She kicked her heel against the cliff again. “Now, that’s something I’d like to see.”
He shot her a warning look. “No way.”
An idea—stupid and yet compelling—slid into her mind. “Tell you what, if I accept your dare of coming to the Wairarapa with you, then you’ll have to accept a dare from me.”
“Now who’s being juvenile?”
She laughed. “Oh, yes, that’s right, it’s juvenile if you don’t want to do something.”
He sighed, scuffed the tufting grass under his shoes and then looked up from under a lowered brow with suspicious eyes. “Fair point. Okay. What is it you want me to do?”
She jumped up, hands on hips and nodded to a place where a narrow path ducked down off the top of the cliff and followed a rocky ledge along to a protruding rock, surrounded by nothing but air on three sides with the cliff face behind. “See that rock that sticks out over there? That’s where I like to sit sometimes, look out across the ocean, at the waves, the birds soaring close by, watching passing whales. Dare you.”
He shook his head. “You, woman, are evil. You know full well I never could stand heights.”
“It wouldn’t be a challenge if it was easy.”
He laughed but the laughter died on his lips as he looked at the sheer drop down into the sea. “Jeez…” The word slid from his lips as if someone had punched him in the gut.
“Mac, you owe me…”
“Okay.” His voice was even despite the fact he felt a wave of nausea rise up. He swallowed it down. He took a step towards the cliff edge and decided to play on her brief look of concern. He stretched out his hand and gripped hers. She didn’t push it away.
“Scared, are we?” she teased.
“What do you think?” He didn’t care what she thought, so long as she didn’t take her hand away. He followed her, edging his feet along the stony ledge to a place where the ledge was wider and sloped backwards. “This is madness. You’re not even looking where you’re going!”
She turned to him and grinned. “I know it well, I can feel the path with my feet. Come on.” He edged a step further and stopped, but there was an intensity in her eyes, a sort of defiant urging, that he couldn’t ignore.
It was as if she wanted to see how far he’d go, how far he’d follow her. She didn’t smile just held his gaze with that look of old. It worked. He followed her until he was standing beside her on a wider ledge. Her expression changed then.
“You’re not afraid.”
He wasn�
�t looking at the view. He had eyes only for her. “Not any more.”
She looked away quickly, as if confused and sat down on the ledge. He leaned against the rock face with assumed nonchalance. No way was he going to sit and dangle his feet over the ledge like her. Gulls soared high in front of them, suspended by the updraft. He might have mastered his fear of heights to a manageable degree but he hadn’t felt so terrified in a long time. Nor had he felt so alive. “Jesus, Susie, you really know how to show a man a good time.”
She laughed and he could hear the exhilaration in her voice. “You mean I know how to scare the heck out of them!”
“Is that why you haven’t got a man in your life?”
The smile faded instantly and she turned to him. “Why do you presume that? You don’t know anything about my life now. I could have a string of men for all you know.”
“Do you?”
He immediately regretted his words when her expression softened. He looked away, as if not seeing her would stop him from hearing her answer. “I have… someone.”
Her words were too brief, too unrevealing and ambiguous, but they stung nevertheless. She didn’t need him, she didn’t want him. He felt breathless, winded, and it was totally unexpected. All Pete had mentioned was that Susie was single. Otherwise, he’d been totally unforthcoming about any of his staff’s personal life and he hadn’t pressed his enquiries. Now, to find there was someone after all blindsided him. A wave of nausea swept over him that had nothing to do with vertigo. Twenty-four hours and she’d slipped under his skin again and he hadn’t even realized it.
“This ‘Tom’ I heard Pete mention?”
Susie nodded her head but didn’t elaborate.
“I think we should go. I’ll catch the evening ferry and meet up with friends in Auckland tonight.” He sighed. “I’ll meet up with you Monday at the airport to go to Onihau.”
“Sure.” She fished a phone from her shorts and quickly sent a text. “I’ve ordered a taxi for you.”
Second Chances Boxed Set: 7 Sweet & Sexy Romances in 1 Book Page 35