by Robyn Donald
The amusement deepened in his eyes, but he said blandly, ‘Why not?’
After he’d switched on the kettle he showed her the book-lined hallway that led to the other bedrooms, saying, ‘Borrow anything you like.’
Her gaze skimmed the shelves. ‘A very eclectic collection,’ she murmured, pulling out an impressive tome on the relationship between science and religion.
‘I have wide interests,’ he said, dead-pan. ‘So do you.’
Hot-eyed, she stared at him.
Aline thrust the book back onto the shelf. ‘I’ll hang out the clothes.’
‘Where had you planned to walk? If it’s to the other side of the island it will take at least half an hour, and unless you don’t mind retracing your footsteps over the hill we’ll have to leave within twenty minutes to catch the tide right.’
Dismayed, she exclaimed, ‘You don’t need to come!’
‘You’ll want a guide,’ he told her easily, lion-coloured eyes as enigmatic as his smile.
Aline clamped her lips shut, holding back the tumbling words while Jake surveyed her with more amusement. After a sizzling few seconds she said stiffly, ‘Thank you.’
‘My pleasure.’ His arrogant face was as unreadable as his voice, but the words were laced with enough mockery to set her teeth well and truly on edge.
As she pegged the sheets onto the line outside the back door she decided angrily that he was working to some hidden agenda. It might only be to persuade her back into his bed, but she sensed uncompromising determination behind his cool self-assurance.
The week stretched in front of her like seven years.
They drank the tea out on the deck. Aline tried very hard to enjoy the silence and the warmth, the glitter of the ocean and the fresh, mingled scents of plants and salt. From somewhere close by some insect strummed its tiny zither, an oddly croaky noise that nevertheless soothed her jumpy nerves.
‘Have you got a hat?’ Jake asked lazily from the steamer chair. When she nodded, he went on, ‘Sunscreen?’
‘Yes, thank you.’
‘Have you put it on?’
She got to her feet. ‘I’ll do it now,’ she said, trying to sound reasonable, cheerful, composed, as though she was a normal woman and this a normal occasion.
As though she could remember who she was and how she’d got to be there; as though she hadn’t made love with the man who watched her with such steady, ruthless patience.
When she came back she noticed the swift glance with which he checked her hat and the fact that she’d anointed herself with protection from New Zealand’s notorious sun.
‘Do you want to go along the coast first or over the hill?’ he asked.
‘Over the hill,’ she said without thinking.
His mouth curled. ‘Checking to make sure this is really an island?’
She flashed him a glittering smile. ‘Of course.’
‘Sensible woman,’ he said lazily. ‘One of the things I like about you is that you have a mind like a steel trap.’
A steel trap that was firmly closed against her, she thought, rattled by a gust of futile anger. ‘For a moment I wondered if you were going to say I had a mind like a man,’ she returned sweetly.
‘Heard that before, have you?’ He turned and walked through the glass door onto the deck.
Confused, she hesitated before following her gut instinct. ‘Yes, I think I have.’
He glanced back, brilliant eyes gleaming. ‘And you didn’t like it?’
‘It’s not a compliment for any woman to be told she thinks like a man,’ she said coolly. Thick grass clutched her feet; walking across the lawn was like wading through ankle-deep carpet until they reached the trees at the bottom of the hill. ‘It implies that women can’t think “properly”.’ She invested the last word with trenchant scorn.
‘Women tend to think differently.’
‘Why should that be considered inferior?’
‘Because until very recently men made the rules,’ he said, and laughed at her snort. ‘It’s no use trying to pick a fight with me, Aline. I agree that it’s no compliment, and the women in my organisation are valued for the same things I value in the men—their ability to get results. Watch your step here. The path tends to get overgrown during the winter.’
Behind the house the low hill climbed steeply beneath its cloak of native trees, a small remnant of the forest that had clothed New Zealand before man came.
‘You call this a path?’ Aline asked dryly, hauling herself up the first abrupt bank with the aid of a sturdy vine that looped down from the heights. ‘It looks like a creek bed.’
‘In winter it is. Just be thankful it hasn’t rained for a couple of days,’ Jake said, stepping aside so that she could go ahead. ‘Go on,’ he said, when she stopped and stared up at him. ‘If you slip I’ll catch you.’
‘I won’t slip.’ She brushed past him.
As she climbed Jake watched the material of her trousers stretch across a heart-shaped, very sexy backside. Elemental instincts burned into an aching, desperate hunger; he had to stop his hands from reaching for her, his mouth from claiming her, his body from stamping her as his over and over again until she gave up this charade and accepted what had happened between them.
He’d always known that in him the hunter was barely hidden beneath a civilised veneer, but until he’d met Aline Connor he’d found it relatively easy to curb his appetites.
Last night had blown that control to bits. Now whenever he looked at her he felt like a sixteen-year-old again, barely able to leash his new-found lust.
Although he’d always liked restrained, intelligent women, what had first fired his alert interest in a beautiful woman into outright desire was the subtle hint of untamed sexuality beneath Aline’s patrician exterior.
For a couple of days he’d wondered about her sexual orientation, until her stubborn refusal to see him as anything more than a client had given him the first clue to her concealed awareness. Jake wasn’t vain, but from the time he’d needed to shave his damned face had proved to be one that most women liked to look at.
His smile assumed a wolfish edge as he followed her up the track. Although she’d tried, she hadn’t been able to hide the tiny subliminal reactions that revealed her response. Whenever she’d looked at him her eyes had darkened and colour licked across her pale skin; intrigued, and by that time definitely on the hunt, he’d counted it a minor victory when she’d begun to fix her turquoise gaze on a point just past his head.
He hadn’t been able to pursue her because they’d been deep in business discussions, but the long weeks he’d waited out had whetted his appetite.
Now, watching her elegant long legs take the hill, his body tightened in instant arousal when he remembered how they’d felt clamped around his thighs. Desire was the very devil. Perhaps last night shouldn’t have happened, but he’d no more been capable of refusing her than he had of swimming the Tasman Sea.
His anger at her rejection was unnerving, indicating just how much her passionate abandon in his arms had clouded his judgement.
If she hadn’t made up such a ridiculous story—and yet a couple of times this morning he’d seen a kind of terrified desolation in her brilliant eyes that had made him wonder.
Bitter regret at finally jettisoning a love long past its use-by date?
Or had she really woken this morning with no memory of who or where she was? She was either a damned good actress or some trauma had cut her past cleanly from her.
Irritated with himself because he half-hoped that her outrageous claim was true, he kept a watchful step behind her as they climbed the hill. Not, he thought with a grim smile, that she’d ever ask for help. Even when she’d knocked her head getting out of the helicopter she’d tried to ignore it.
Would such a minor blow to her head combined with what she’d learnt the previous day about her idolised husband have been sufficiently traumatic to give her amnesia?
Or had it been making love with him? That
possibility flicked Jake’s pride, but somehow this had become no longer a simple matter of an affront to his masculinity, and he wasn’t too sure what he planned to do about it.
Nothing at the moment. First he had to deal with the implications of Tony Hudson’s concerns about the charitable Connor Trust. Tony might have chosen a better occasion to have confessed that he was worried, but what he’d said at the christening had certainly alerted Jake’s sensitive alarm monitors.
He hadn’t built his life and his career on making impetuous decisions. He had seven days.
Over the brow of the hill the vegetation changed from heavy forest cover to tall kanuka, feathery and fragrant. As they reached the edge of the trees Aline broke off a small tuft of leaves like soft little arrow heads and crushed them in her hands, then cupped her palms together and inhaled deeply.
‘Mmm, I love this scent,’ she said huskily, her spine still tingling from Jake’s closeness. He hadn’t touched her and if she hadn’t known he was there she’d never have suspected, because he moved silently and swiftly like a big cat, but her skin had prickled with a primitive acceptance all the way up.
He caught her hands and brought them up to his face. Sensation stabbed her, direct and sinful and compelling. She thought she might always remember this moment, standing on a hill overlooking the sea with Jake’s fingers around her wrists, his eyes holding hers.
‘Green and fresh and crisply herbaceous,’ he said, adding obliquely when she tugged her hands free, ‘Almost astringent, yet there’s an elusive sweetness underneath it.’
What would it be like if he smiled at her freely, openly, with no hidden emotions or thoughts…?
Too much, she thought grimly. And highly unlikely. This was a man who played his cards close to his chest.
‘I thought you wanted to make sure this was an island,’ he said.
Until then she’d forgotten her reason for the walk! Feeling foolish, Aline stared around at the wide channel sweeping around the island. Yachts danced over that gleaming blue expanse, and other islands sprawled across it. Some distance away a long peninsula poked out. Squinting into the light, Aline realised that it was covered in a rash of houses.
‘Satisfied?’ Jake asked, the word a barely concealed taunt.
‘This is very definitely an island.’ Her voice was deliberately neutral. ‘Where are we exactly?’
‘That’s Whangaparoa Peninsula you can see on the horizon. You live on the south side—the side away from us,’ he expanded at her blank glance.
After a taut second he pointed towards the land. ‘Keir and Hope live inland just there.’ When she didn’t answer he looked at her with a twisted smile and elaborated, ‘Your boss and his wife, with their baby, Emma, who was christened yesterday.’
Her face froze. ‘I see,’ she said remotely.
He drawled, ‘As if you didn’t know.’
It was no use. Tamping down a blast of bitterness, she asked, ‘Can we get to the beach from here?’
‘If we follow the bush down the valley we’ll come out on this side of that headland—the one with the ruins on it.’ He checked his watch. ‘It’ll be half-tide in an hour, so we’ll make it if you don’t mind scrambling over rocks a couple of times.’
‘Not at all,’ she returned, walking away rapidly.
He warned, ‘It’s further than it looks.’
‘I’m not a fragile flower.’ She tried very hard to use a politely impersonal tone. ‘This island doesn’t look big enough to exhaust anyone.’
‘It’s deceptive.’
They talked as they walked along the beach, conversation that was easy and pleasant on the surface although every so often tension snagged them, jagged as reefs beneath the waves. They examined the denizens of the rock pools, even finding a tiny octopus trying to look inconspicuous in the corner of one.
Jake was right; it was further than it looked. By the time they finally reached the house Aline’s leg muscles were pulling slightly and she had to force her feet through the clinging sand above the tide line.
‘All right?’ Jake asked.
‘Fine,’ she said brightly. Somehow he’d stopped being a stranger and an enemy. Although she’d been resisting him ever since she’d woken in his bed, she was oddly, recklessly glad that they’d achieved this fragile truce. ‘It’s a lovely island. How long have you owned it?’
The broad shoulders lifted. ‘A hundred and fifty years ago there was a thriving little copper mine on the other side, until the sea broke into the tunnels. The first Howard bought it after that. He farmed and fished and gardened; he and his wife raised eight kids here.’
Aline stopped and gazed around. ‘It must have been a lonely life,’ she said softly.
‘With eight children?’
Laughing, she looked up at him. His expression froze. Jerking her chin up, she said, ‘What have I done now?’
‘Nothing,’ he said absently, his eyes hooded against her. ‘I like your laugh. It’s very pretty. And did you know that when you’re angry your eyes go green?’
The comments sliced through her composure. ‘Thank you,’ she said, falling back on good manners to cover her embarrassment. ‘Although I doubt very much whether eyes can change colour.’
‘Yours turn green and dangerous,’ he said, his voice deep and decisive. ‘When we first met I enjoyed your beautiful voice—it is creamy and cool, but always under very tight discipline. Except for that surprising laugh—you slip the leash a bit then. This is the first time I’ve heard it.’
‘Surely not,’ she said, genuinely shocked.
‘Trust me—I’d have remembered. For a few seconds you sounded young and carefree.’
‘Most people sound young and carefree when they laugh,’ she returned doggedly.
‘Perhaps,’ he said, his beautiful mouth curving into a smile that held a cool challenge. A pure gold shaft of light lit up his eyes—an optical illusion, born of the sun. ‘Come on, let’s go in and have some lunch.’
They ate salad and delicious cold chicken, following it with fruit and cheese. Afterwards, sheltered from the blazing sun, they drank coffee outside beneath the creeper-covered pergola.
When her heavy eyelids drifted down he commanded lazily, ‘Go and have a nap.’
‘It’s such a middle-aged thing to do,’ she objected, hiding a yawn.
‘Rubbish. It’s a sensible thing to do on a day like this.’ His voice deepened. ‘Stay here, then. I’ll enjoy watching you sleep.’
Not in this lifetime, she thought grimly, struggling up from the lounger. ‘No, thanks. I might as well be comfortable so I’ll retire to privacy. Besides, I probably snore.’ The minute the words left her mouth she knew she’d left herself open to some clever come-back.
He got to his feet too, reminding her again of his size and that effortless, unsettling dominance, the male assurance that challenged her in every way. ‘Occasionally you make charming little snuffling noises, but I certainly wouldn’t call them snores.’
Fire scorched her skin. She opened her mouth to say something scathing, but had to clamp it shut when her mind remained obstinately blank. Her eyes slid warily past his face and fixed on a point behind his right ear.
‘We can’t get away from it, memory or no memory,’ he said deliberately. ‘Last night you made love to me like every man’s secret dream, and you slept in my arms with complete confidence.’
Her gaze fell on his hand, relaxed on the back of the lounger. A feverish shiver ran from her fingertips to her spine. That strong masculine hand knew her intimately…
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘YOU want me almost as much as I want you,’ Jake told her bluntly. A cynical smile curved his beautiful mouth. ‘Don’t look so horrified—I can control my libido. I’m not going to leap on you from behind a door in the middle of the night and force you to submit to me.’
‘I do not want this,’ Aline muttered inanely, and headed blindly past him.
An outstretched arm barred her way. She lifted her h
ead, defiantly meeting smoky, intense eyes as he trailed his fingertips across her cheekbone and on to her earlobe. Light—so light she barely felt it—yet his touch sizzled through her body, igniting cells, inflaming nerves, robbing her of the ability to think, to talk, to do anything but ache with a clamorous desire.
‘Such pretty ears,’ he said softly. ‘One day, when your memory comes back, I’ll buy diamonds for each one, and make love to you while you’re wearing them.’
Battered by a storm of passionate recklessness, Aline froze.
‘And nothing else,’ he said calmly, stepping away from her.
Aline stared at him, her eyes wide and dazed, then angled awkwardly past him, forcing herself not to scuttle cravenly as she headed for the safety of her room.
Once there, she stripped, pulled a T-shirt over her briefs, and jerked back the coverlet on the huge bed to burrow into the pillows as though she might find in them the memories she so desperately craved.
But the only memories she found were those connected to Jake Howard—the scent of his skin, faint yet disturbing, the smooth glide and flexion of muscles beneath tanned skin as he moved, the gilded mystery of inscrutable eyes, and the tawny lights in his black hair…
That way lay danger. Hastily she switched to exploring the dream she’d had just before she woke that morning. She recalled a sensation of overpowering love and comfort, and then a terrible fear as the source of those emotions dissolved.
Apart from that, nothing.
Jake had said she was a widow. Surely if she’d loved a man enough to marry him she’d remember him?
Why couldn’t she remember?
A bird screamed outside, a high-pitched wail both familiar and alien. She jumped, then tried to relax, going through a familiar routine of counting and breathing in and out—
She stopped, every muscle painfully taut. How had she known that breathing slowly to a count would ease her tension?
Twisting, she punched the pillows, muttering, ‘Because in your brain, behind a very brittle wall, there’s everything you’ve ever done and said and thought and felt. Everything!’ Including the previous night, when she and Jake had shared this bed.