by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
Severe mouth compressed in irony, Keir said, ‘It’s called desire. It exploded between us the first time I saw you, when you were eighteen and so busy hating your father you barely saw anyone else in the room. I looked at you and wanted you. And although you didn’t understand it, you wanted me as much. It was mutual then, Hope; it’s mutual now. But then it was impossible; it’s not now.’
The warm air quivered and the sounds of the waves faded until all Hope could hear was the rapid rasp of her renewed breathing.
Reinforcing her courage with a steady voice that owed more to an arid throat than to resolution, she said crisply, ‘Desire’s a pretty word used by lovers. What you’re talking about is closer to lust.’ Or compulsion—heated, mindless and ultimately degrading.
Keir’s long, measuring look attacked her defences again. ‘It could grow into something more—satisfying—if we give it a chance.’ His words were coolly reflective, almost thoughtful.
The soft click-click of sandals signalled a reprieve. Shrugging, Hope waited until the waitress had put down their coffee and departed before saying flatly, ‘Have an affair, you mean.’
Keir avoided a direct answer. ‘If that’s what it takes. Finishing what we started four years ago might be good for both of us, but I’m not going to pressure you, Hope, so you can wipe that mulish look off your lovely face. I wish you’d told me what your father tried to force you to do, instead of running away.’
A cynical smile turned down the corners of her mouth. ‘What would you have done?’
‘Stopped it,’ he said calmly.
She picked up her coffee, inhaling its delicious scent, sipping the black, aromatic brew until it steadied her. ‘He was desperate enough to use whatever weapons he had, and I knew how—unreasonable he could be. It seemed sensible to remove myself from the war zone.’
‘Running away is the refuge of the coward. It never solves anything,’ he said, ignoring another chance to explain his actions four years previously.
‘Cowardice,’ Hope was stung into saying, ‘is another word for self-preservation.’
‘At what cost?’ Keir smiled a slow challenge that set her heart pounding and dried her throat. ‘Cowards never know the exhilaration of risk and adventure, of beating the odds, of winning. They live a mean, snivelling life without the joy or satisfaction of testing themselves, always skulking and looking over their shoulders.’
‘Wasn’t it the Chinese who said that of all the thirty-six alternatives, running away is best?’ she fired back, biting out the words like small, glittering missiles. ‘Once I left, my father had no leverage. He couldn’t force me to do what he wanted by threatening to make my mother suffer.’ Her voice still sounded barbed, so she took a swift, steadying breath.
Keir said something she was glad she didn’t catch, then continued, his voice sliding into gentleness, ‘What sort of childhood did you have?’
‘A surprisingly stable one.’ She stopped and shrugged. ‘He wasn’t home much. My mother loved me—in spite of everything, I always knew that. And so did her mother, my grandmother. I used to go and stay with my gran, and we had such fun together.’
Perhaps it was the violence of the emotions they’d been discussing, but she became acutely aware of a powerful, visceral response to the tang of the salt air, the warm, fecund scent of greenery and the jolt of coffee.
Looking past Keir to the beach, she watched a small boy run down to the water and dip a bucket in.
Keir said, ‘I’m glad. Every child needs love. I knew right from the start that your father pushed you at me, and I knew why. I thought you were in on it—’
‘I was not!’
‘You were an enchanting thing, yet there was always this reserve. I wondered—perhaps it was a case of like father, like daughter.’
Hope’s clenched hand hit the table, setting the coffee cups chattering in their saucers. ‘You were totally wrong.’
‘Why did your father hate you? Was it because he wanted a son?’
The small boy on the beach was now making a sandcastle with his father. Watching him, Hope said, ‘He’d probably have hated a boy more—a son would have been real competition.’
Keir’s black brows drew together. ‘For your mother’s love?’
‘Exactly,’ she drawled.
He leaned forward, ice-grey eyes probing, merciless. ‘Let me get this right. Your father resented the fact that your mother loved you?’
‘Exactly,’ she repeated. Her mouth twisted into a tight, humourless smile. Holding her voice level, she went on, ‘Apparently my mother used to be his secretary, and became his lover; he didn’t marry her because he already had a perfectly good wife. So my mother left her job and married my birth father, who died before I was born. By then James Sanderson had divorced his first wife; he came looking for Mum and persuaded her to marry him, and then he adopted me. For the rest of her life he used me to punish her whenever she refused to obey him.’
‘Obey?’ Keir asked incredulously.
‘That’s how he thought of us,’ she said. ‘He owned her. He owned me. Of course, he could also use her to force me to obey him.’
Keir said something under his breath, icy eyes glittering with furious contempt.
Swallowing to moisten her dry mouth and throat, Hope muttered, ‘It was a long time ago.’
‘I should have stuck to my original plan and ruined him.’ He spoke with a chilling lack of emotion.
The cup in Hope’s hand quivered. Settling it onto the table, she asked casually, ‘Why didn’t you?’
He paused a moment before answering, and she looked up sharply. Was he holding something back? His harsh features revealed nothing. ‘I thought he was supporting you.’
Dared she believe him? No, of course she didn’t—but, oh, it was such a subtle temptation.
Crisply she said, ‘Looked at from his point of view, selling me was quite a cunning plan. He probably thought it was time I paid for my board and lodging, and he wouldn’t have cared if you’d broken my heart and danced on the pieces.’ Hope picked up her coffee cup again and drank from it, warming herself with its heat and the quick bite of caffeine. ‘I’m glad you didn’t bankrupt him. He’d have found a way to blame my mother,’ she said remotely.
Keir’s smile showed his teeth. ‘Instead I put in a receiver who traded the firm out of insolvency. Your father lost his firm, but not all his money. None of which, I gather, got to you.’
Setting the cup down with a little clatter, she said fiercely, ‘I wouldn’t take a cent from him. Anyway, none of that matters now.’
‘If it doesn’t matter, why are you still running?’
‘I’m not.’ Unflinchingly she met eyes the frosty clarity of a winter sky.
His lean cheeks creased into a smile—sexy as hell, an invitation to recklessness. ‘So what have you been doing since you left New Zealand?’
Relieved, she told him of the six months she’d spent travelling around Great Britain and Europe with three other women in a temperamental camper-van.
He laughed at their funny, hair-raising experiences, but when she stopped he asked, ‘What does Australia have that New Zealand doesn’t?’
‘I’m not ready to settle down.’ It seemed an appropriate time to flirt a little, show that she was responsive to his suggestion of an affair. With a swift, provocative glance from beneath her lashes, she continued, ‘Strange that if your friend hadn’t decided to buy herself a souvenir of Noosa you’d never have known I was living here.’
Ignoring her reference to Aline, he observed dryly, ‘I’d have noticed you at the reception last night.’
Hope gave an unwilling gurgle of laughter. ‘It would have been hard not to. That wretched dress—and all those diamonds!’
‘Vulgar, weren’t they?’ he agreed. ‘If your boss had any taste he’d have realised that one perfect stone—one that hinted at the warmth of your skin and hair—in a modern setting would have suited you much better than all that bluewhite glitter.’
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The compliment, delivered in a lazy, smoky voice, teased along her nerve-ends like a caress. When she could trust her voice to be steady, she said, ‘Markus was desperate to advertise his wares, which was the reason for the dress, and to be fair it seems that it might have worked. Some people believe that you can’t have too much of a good thing.’
‘I’m beginning to see their point,’ Keir drawled.
He had a trick of making innocuous statements reverberate with a hidden meaning. How many delicious hours had she wasted going over his conversations sentence by sentence, searching for the secret significance buried beneath the words? Too many.
‘I doubt if you’ve ever had a lapse in taste in your whole life,’ she said crisply, wishing their breakfast would arrive. She’d decided on fruit, followed by fish with an avocado salsa, while Keir had chosen fruit, too, then bacon and eggs. At least the coffee gave her something to do with her hands when he tossed those ambiguous comments at her.
Turning her head, she checked out the surroundings. The café was filling up now, with people laughing and talking and calling from table to table—Noosa on a Sunday morning, bright and brash and cheerful, with everyone determined to enjoy themselves.
One of the agreeable things about Noosa was that no one took any notice of her, even though she wore no make-up and sat with salt water drying in faint patterns on her skin, whereas every other woman in the café looked as though she’d spent at least an hour choosing delectable resort clothes and applying cosmetics.
Keir smiled. ‘Of course, you know me so well,’ he mocked.
Hope looked directly at him. ‘I don’t really know anything about you, except that we’ve got nothing in common.’
With narrowed eyes he surveyed her face. ‘Lying to yourself is cowardly, too. What we’ve got in common is an extremely inconvenient response to each other. Four years hasn’t dulled that appetite.’ Irony lifted the corners of his mouth as he leaned over and took her hand.
With a remorseless precision that melted her bones and fired arrows of sensation through her, he kissed the fragile inner side of her wrist.
The chatter in the busy café, the laughter of the children on the beach, the soft sound of the waves—all faded into a distant hum, flat and without resonance. The only sound Hope could hear was the roaring of her blood in her ears.
Thoroughly demoralised, she blurted, ‘I don’t go in for casual sex.’
A smile hardened his face; his gaze rested for long, taut moments on her mouth before dropping to where the damp cotton of her shirt moulded over her breasts. Although openly sexual, that look was a stripped, stark claim, without hinting at the smutty, prying indecency of a leer.
Keir said softly, ‘Neither do I. It won’t be casual, Hope.’
Brazen sensation spiked through her, tightening her breasts. In spite of her clothes she felt naked, exposed, almost squirming at the clutch of desire deep inside. Only this man, she thought numbly—only Keir—had ever had this effect on her.
A man she could never allow herself to trust.
He murmured, ‘I don’t consider sex to be a treat, like a cold drink on a hot afternoon, a comfortable way to end the day.’
She forced herself to ignore the sensual turbulence. ‘Perhaps not, but I suspect in some ways you’re more like my father than you care to think.’
His lashes drooped. ‘In what way?’ he asked with silken aggression.
‘You used my—the way I felt about you to get close to my father.’
‘How? I didn’t ask you questions about his firm; I didn’t try to extract information about him. He thought of you as a bargaining tool, Hope, I didn’t.’ His formidable will pulled down a screen of control over the implacable features. ‘I didn’t even coax you into bed. Although it was bloody difficult, I behaved like a gentleman.’
The sarcasm in his voice flicked her on the raw, but before she could react a woman called out sharply, her voice rising. ‘Jen! Jenny Anderson! Come back here this minute!’
Keir was already three steps towards the beach when he stopped, his big body relaxing. The little girl had scuttled only halfway to the water, and was already being picked up by a bystander.
The sheer, daunting speed of Keir’s reflexes hit Hope like the flick of a whip. Her stomach tight with tension, she looked sideways through the screen of shrubs. It felt as though she’d been trapped at the table with him for hours.
He watched the child’s mother run down and scoop her up, scolding as she carried the toddler up to another table, before he strode back, the bright, clear light dwelling on his beautifully cut mouth, the formidable line of jaw and cheek.
Hope waited until he was sitting down again before saying dryly, ‘Oh, you were always a perfect gentleman.’ It was amazing how skilfully he’d picked his way through the conversation without admitting his reaction to her father’s offer.
But then, he was a very clever man, well seasoned in the cut-throat world of international banking; fooling a bedazzled young woman would be a doddle.
The sun shone across the black fans of his lashes, gilding the tips. Twisted by a shocking, unwelcome tenderness, Hope let her lips part slightly.
He said, ‘Of course I was. You were only eighteen, young and sweet and very, very innocent.’
Keir’s smile was a miracle, pure male glamour made dangerous by a dark enchantment—a heartbreaker’s smile, untainted with the toothy, smug shallowness of many men who knew themselves attractive to women. It shredded the defences she’d erected with such agonising determination.
He could hurt her all over again.
But she’d survived the pain before; if she didn’t take this opportunity to find out what he was like as a lover, she’d spend the rest of her life wondering and obsessing about him.
‘And now,’ she said smoothly, hoping he couldn’t see that she was clutching her courage about her, ‘I’m not so young, and definitely not so sweet or so innocent.’
Brows drawn together, Keir leaned back in his chair and surveyed her with a hint of enigmatic mockery. ‘Then let’s pretend we’re simply old friends who’ve met again after some years. What good films have you seen lately?’
She knew what he was doing—gentling her—but because she wanted to eat without a churning stomach she readily told him of her reaction to the latest blockbuster, and while their food arrived, and they ate it, they spent enjoyable minutes tearing to pieces the story, the casting, the acting, and the values the movie promoted.
Too enjoyable.
From there they side-stepped to music, charting a course between her pleasure in pop and the romantic composers, and his favourites, the composers of the twenties and thirties, and the more astringent modern music.
Pulling a face, she said, ‘I like a tune, not that atonal stuff. What turns you off the folk movement?’
‘All the pretty idealism,’ he said promptly. ‘The original folk songs were earthy and practical and often cynical, honed by the centuries to purity. Apart from a few exceptions, I find modern folk music mushy.’
They’d finished eating and the plates had been removed. Hope looked up from her second cup of coffee and said wryly, ‘You’re not an idealist.’
‘People with ideals have caused an enormous amount of damage in the world.’
He meant it, too.
Chilled, Hope said, ‘That’s a sweeping generalisation if ever I’ve heard one. A world without ideals would be a cold, soulless place. Everyone needs principles.’
‘I’m not talking about them,’ he said calmly. ‘I have principles.’
‘What’s the difference?’
He lifted a devastating brow. ‘A principle is an ideal with purpose and backbone.’
‘It sounds good,’ she agreed, ‘but I’ll bet that’s not what the dictionary says. I’ll look it up when I get home.’
‘It’s the definition I live by,’ he said, glancing at her empty coffee cup. ‘What would you like to do now? Swim again? Go for a drive? Walk?’r />
‘I’d like to go home and shower,’ she said promptly.
‘And then?’
Hope dithered silently. She looked up, and met eyes that were cool and dispassionate. No pressure, he’d said; the onus was on her.
It gave her a satisfying feeling of control to know that she’d already made the decision before he’d flung down his sexual challenge.
‘We could walk in the National Park,’ she suggested, keeping her voice crisp and steady. ‘Have you been there?’
‘No, but I’d like to.’ He got to his feet and picked up her bag, reaching into his pocket as they came abreast of the till.
‘Keir!’
Carefully smiling, the new owner of the goanna pin came towards them. Her veneer of poise couldn’t hide the colour that winged up through her skin, or the hungry glitter in her eyes—a glitter replaced by shock when she registered Hope’s presence.
‘Hello, Aline,’ Keir said. ‘Have you met Hope Sanderson? Hope, this is Aline Connors, a colleague of mine.’
Of course the woman recognised her. Her face froze, and the hand she’d been about to thrust forward clenched, long fingers curling for a stiff moment before she gave a gracious inclination of her head. ‘Hello, Hope.’
She was superbly dressed in a loose white ankle-length dress that skimmed a slim figure and hinted at good legs. A straw hat shaded her beautiful face.
Ideal resort wear. Expensive, too, in its casual subtlety.
No emotion showed in the regular features, in the large, tactfully enhanced eyes, and yet Hope felt a pang of pity. ‘Hello, Ms Connors,’ she said easily. ‘Have you worn your pin yet?’
‘Actually, no.’
Into the curt little silence Keir said smoothly, ‘Hope and I are just off.’
Aline Connors’s smile slipped, and was hastily retrieved. ‘I just wondered what your plans are. I have a couple of e-mails I thought you might want to see, and Masterson has contacted us. He wants an answer straight away.’