by Lucy Gordon;Sarah Morgan;Robyn Donald;Lucy Monroe;Lee Wilkinson;Kate Walker
‘He can wait until tomorrow,’ Keir told her indifferently. ‘Forward the e-mails on to me.’
‘I’ll do that.’ Another restrained smile. ‘Enjoy your day.’
A very composed lady, Hope decided as they left. Those turquoise eyes hadn’t once flickered across her sandy, salty clothes.
‘I’ll be back here in an hour,’ Hope said, feeling sleazy. She was nobody’s rival—she certainly had no intention of fighting a battle over this man. She met Keir’s ironic, questioning glance square-on, giving nothing away.
‘Don’t you want me to find out where you live?’ he asked cynically.
‘I don’t like being used to warn off an encumbrance.’
They’d reached the discreet entrance to Noosa’s most expensive and exclusive apartment block. Stopping, Keir returned curtly, ‘Eighteen months ago Aline’s husband—a friend—was killed in an accident. They’d been very happy together. For some reason she’s persuaded herself that she’s in love with me. I value her as a colleague and I care for her as my friend’s widow. Eventually she’ll get over it, and in the meantime I can deal with the situation—I don’t need to drag anyone else into it.’
He finished in an uncompromising tone, ‘This has nothing to do with Aline.’ And he bent his head and kissed the spot where Hope’s neck met her shoulder.
His lips were cool and gentle, and then they were hot and hard, and at their touch desire burned like an unstoppable blast of lightning, fierce, potent, as searing as the icy fire of his eyes.
It wasn’t enough, Hope thought dazedly.
Keir imprisoned her hand against his chest, so that she could feel his heart driving into the palm, a jagged counter-point to the oppressive desire that shuddered through her.
A hair’s breadth from her skin, he said implacably, ‘This is between you and me, Hope; no one else has any part in it.’ Each word, each unbidden almost-kiss, battered at the foundations of her control.
‘No,’ she breathed, horrified because the hunger inside her demanded instant satisfaction. Instinct drove her to pull away.
For a moment his hand clamped on hers; their eyes locked, frost duelling with flame, but before she had time to utter the protest on her lips he let her go and took a step back.
‘You’re free,’ he said with a detachment belied by the glitter in his eyes, the raw note in his voice. ‘Free to go wherever and whenever you like.’
‘I thought—but I don’t want this,’ she said unsteadily, her driving purpose forgotten in a blast of primitive alarm.
‘Do you think I do?’
‘I didn’t know…’ The words trailed away into silence.
Keir didn’t touch her. He gave her no easy excuse, exerted no calculated fascination, so that she couldn’t ever look back and say, It wasn’t my fault, he persuaded me into it. He simply watched her with those glacial eyes.
Thoughts tumbling endlessly, Hope felt the imprint of his kisses on her skin as though he’d branded her, claimed her in a primal way beyond the reach of reason.
‘You’re free to do whatever you want,’ he said with biting clarity. ‘But always remember that you were the coward, the one who ran.’
Her eyes roamed the slashing, strong angles and planes of his face, the ruthless jaw and chin, the black brows and lashes. Just once, she thought with a swift rebellious flare, she’d like to know real passion, real desire—yes, even real lust.
If she dared, she’d experience something potent and primal—a relationship with no commitment, no strings, no unbearable emotional claims; a relationship that was true and untrammelled because both she and Keir understood that there’d be nothing more to it than the satisfaction of a need, the sating of frustration left to seethe unsuspected for too long.
Reckless hunger uncoiled inside her, insistent, demanding, twisting through her body, pulling urgently at her.
‘Well, Hope?’ Keir’s voice shattered the thick, seductive silence.
Swallowing, she said, ‘I can walk away,’ because it was important he understand this.
He nodded, an enigmatic smile curling his hard mouth.
She finished, ‘But I choose not to.’
Something kindled in the pale eyes. ‘I understand,’ Keir said, his voice deep and a little harsh. ‘I’ll get the car keys and drive you home.’ He took her arm and turned her towards the entrance of the apartments.
Head spinning, because she’d just agreed to an affair with Keir Carmichael, Hope walked beside him into the foyer, all glass and marble and manicured foliage. A waterfall splashed discreetly from the wall into a pool adorned by a sculpted bronze waterlily leaf, on which basked a large frog, also bronze.
Clad in a damp shirt and sarong, neither of which had been elegant to begin with, Hope felt distinctly out of place, especially when a woman whose smart suit appeared to have been sprayed onto her approached them. ‘I have a message for you, Mr Carmichael,’ she said, carefully not looking at Hope. ‘It’s marked “urgent”.’
Frowning, he said, ‘Thank you.’ He turned to Hope.
Before he could speak she said quickly, ‘I’ll wait here,’ and walked across to the edge of the waterfall. To the sound of its soothing murmur she admired the talent it must have taken to set up this calm oasis.
Although she’d grown up shielded from poverty, the past few years had shown her another side of life. There was nothing, she thought cynically, like being poor to change your outlook. Why hadn’t all this money and talent been used to help people who were desperate for the basics of life?
Not that it was as simple as a straight transferral of money from one pocket to another. Nothing in this life was ever simple. And now she was doing what she’d always vowed she’d never do: waiting around until some man had time for her.
The bravado that had driven her decision to take Keir for a lover ebbed away, leaving her as bewildered as a fish stranded in a rock pool. Panic compelled her to her feet, but before she had time to take more than two steps towards the doors, a woman came through them, a woman whose face set into rigid lines when she saw Hope.
‘Are you waiting for Keir? He shouldn’t be long,’ Aline Connor said with odious, patronising sympathy. ‘Shall we go and sit down over there? It’s well done, this foyer, isn’t it? It strikes just the right note for a place like Noosa—light-hearted yet luxurious. Have you been here before?’
Leading the way, she headed towards a group of chairs and sat down in one, clearly expecting Hope to do the same. Unable to get away without looking a total idiot, Hope joined her.
‘No,’ she said evenly. ‘I haven’t.’
Aline Connors gave her a swift look. ‘You’re very beautiful,’ she commented.
‘Thank you,’ Hope murmured, uneasy now.
The older woman said unexpectedly, ‘I’d probably like you if we got to know each other. You remind me a bit of someone very dear to me. She had that sort of golden luxuriance about her, too—a warm richness that reminds me of an Earth Mother.’ She gave a little laugh with no humour in it. ‘You can treat this as the warning of a jealous woman if you like, because to some extent it is. However, I think you should know that Keir doesn’t want commitment.’
Firmly repressing the urge to inform her that commitment was the last thing she wanted from Keir, Hope said, ‘I don’t think you should be discussing him with me.’
‘He’s been chased all his life,’ Aline Connors said thoughtfully. ‘He’s always been extremely attractive to women—and of course his power and money make him even more of a target. Our sex can be utterly ruthless. He doesn’t trust women.’
Hope kept silent.
After a moment Aline resumed, ‘Eventually he’ll want to marry, and he’ll choose someone who won’t demand intense emotions from him.’
With a stark flash of insight, Hope realised that because Aline had already loved with all-consuming desperation she didn’t expect it to happen again. So she’d made a lifestyle choice and planned to take what she believed were the only
things Keir could give her—money, children and an assured position.
‘Why are you telling me this?’ Hope asked quietly.
Aline Connors surveyed her nails—short, practical, discreet, yet immaculately presented. ‘To warn you off,’ she admitted, looking up with a sympathetic smile. ‘If all you want is a fling, then he’s brilliant in bed and generous and thoughtful—perfect. But if you want any more, you’re going to be very unhappy.’
I don’t believe he’s made love with you, Hope thought, revolted and angry—then wondered whether she was being naïve again. Aline was entirely confident; she saw Hope as no threat to her plans, nothing but a pretty bimbo who could be dismissed in this offhand way.
She and Keir deserved each other.
The older woman’s eyes went past Hope; her face smoothed into a warm smile and she got gracefully to her feet. ‘Ah, there you are, Keir. I’ve been keeping Hope company.’
‘Thank you,’ he said crisply, his glance resting for a disturbing second on Hope’s face.
Chapter Five
KEIR waited until they were in his anonymous rental car, and Hope had told him which road to take, before asking, ‘What did Aline have to say?’
‘She was just being friendly.’ Whatever suspicions Hope might have about the other woman’s integrity, she couldn’t see any point in revealing them, so she concentrated on directing Keir.
‘Here?’ he said, pulling into the driveway beside the leafless branches of the frangipani.
‘Yes. I won’t be long.’ Hurriedly she asked, ‘Did you bring a hat? Sunscreen?’
‘Both,’ he said blandly.
Because it seemed rude to leave him in the car, she said, ‘I’d ask you in, only it’s just one room.’
His mouth tightened. ‘I’ll wait here.’
Ten minutes later she walked sedately through the door, absurdly concerned to see an empty car. A glance along the street revealed Keir talking to the two children and the dog from next door.
‘Hello,’ she said as she approached. ‘Hi, Jaedan, Abby, Butch.’
‘Hi, Hope,’ the children chorused, grinning as widely as the dog.
‘Hope,’ Keir said, his eyes amused, ‘why didn’t you tell me you’re a demon bowler?’
‘Only in this neighbourhood,’ she told him, patting the head of the black and white border collie. ‘Have you kids been telling tales out of school?’
‘Can’t see any school around,’ Jaedan said cheerfully, ‘so we musta been. You gunna play cricket for us today?’
‘Not this morning; we’re going out,’ Hope said.
‘We’re not playing until after lunch.’ Jaedan pulled a hideous face. ‘If you don’t come they’re gunna slaughter us.’
‘Our cousins and uncle and auntie from Bundaberg are here,’ Abby informed her gloomily, ‘and they’re good. Mum’s the best, but you know Dad, he’s got butterfingers, and although Butch tries hard he runs away with the ball.’ She eyed Keir up. ‘Can you catch?’
‘Reasonably well,’ he said, adding, ‘I’m quite a good batsman.’
‘Then you come, too,’ Jaedan instructed with the eagerness of someone who sees salvation on the horizon. ‘Ab, we’d better go.’
Abby looked at Keir. ‘Thank you for grabbing Butch. He goes crackers when he sees magpies—just won’t listen. I thought he might get run over again. Last time it cost about a thousand dollars to fix him up, and Dad said if he did it again Butch’d have to earn the money for the vet. But a dog can’t work.’
‘You could try aversion therapy,’ Keir suggested, looking down at the dog, all panting eagerness and wagging tail. ‘Squirt him with a water pistol whenever he does anything you don’t like. A friend of mine did that with a Boxer that chased cars, and it worked. You’ll probably find a book on dog training in the library, or you could talk to the vet.’
‘Yeah,’ Abbey said thoughtfully.
Back in the car Keir said, ‘Nice kids.’
‘They’re great kids.’ He’d been good with them, not treating them like another species the way some adults did. When he finally settled to his miserable, emotionless marriage with Aline, or someone like her, he’d make a good father.
‘When Australians get nostalgic overseas, they burn eucalyptus leaves and cry into their beer,’ Hope said, stepping back to admire the smoothly marbled trunk of one of the big gum trees in the National Park. Sunlight poured amber through the sparse canopy of leaves and over the grey-green and gold and silvery tan of the bark.
‘Do you long for our bush?’ Keir asked lazily in his deep, even voice with its tantalising undercurrent of sensuality. Sitting on the ground—long legs stretched out in front of him, back against the tree, face shadowed by the brim of his hat—he was as relaxed and graceful as a tiger after a kill.
Pacing across to the edge of the cliff, she frowned over the fence at the waves purring against the rock ledges below.
‘I do miss it,’ she admitted. ‘It’s so different from this dry eucalyptus woodland.’ Anchoring her gaze to the tracery of foam against the rocks, she went on, ‘When I was five or six we visited a kauri forest in Northland. It was summer, but a huge thunderhead was building in the sky and the air was very still. You know that odd green light you get when it’s going to thunder, and the heavy silence?’
‘Yes.’
‘I had a friend with me and we ran down the tracks yelling and laughing and whooping like banshees. Our voices echoed and rang through those enormous trees that waited and watched and weighed us down with their presence. I remember what it smelt like—rich and damp and mysterious.’
‘Not an entirely happy recollection.’ Opaque as molten silver, his eyes successfully hid his thoughts.
A dizzying vortex of sensation robbed Hope of words, of thought, flinging her into a space where all she could experience was the oppressive heat, and the tangy scent of the gums, and Keir’s unsettling scrutiny.
Wrenching her gaze away, she said thickly, ‘Not entirely.’
‘Your father?’
He was too astute. ‘He didn’t say anything, but Mum and I knew he was angry—we could read the signs. He waited until my friend was dropped off and then he went ballistic because I was so undisciplined. When we got home he made Mum give me a hiding.’ Her hand stole up to the little scar on her chin, then dropped away.
Keir said between his teeth, ‘He’s a psychopath.’
She didn’t hear him get up, but her skin announced his arrival and without resistance she leaned into his embrace, taking a complicated comfort from his power and his strength.
‘Did your father abuse you?’ Keir asked in a swift, lethal voice that dried her mouth. ‘Is that why you won’t go home?’
‘He never lifted a hand to me.’
After a moment’s silence he said harshly, ‘There are other types of abuse.’
Heat from his body enveloped her, and to her astonishment she realised she felt secure. ‘He didn’t sexually or physically abuse me.’
‘What about that scar?’
She hesitated, then admitted, ‘My mother’s engagement ring caught my skin. It was barely a scratch.’
‘So he emotionally abused you both.’ The silky undernote in his voice gave the words a deadly inflection. ‘I wouldn’t wish dementia on my worst enemy, but it seems almost a just retribution that he’s now in the secure wing of a hospital, immobilised with it.’
Horrified, she shuddered, but a weight she’d never suspected eased from her. ‘I didn’t know,’ she muttered.
Keir said, ‘It’s bitterly ironic that the money he wanted so much is being used to pay for his nursing. Come and sit down.’
It was too easy to accept his comfort, and comfort was not what she wanted from him. Keeping her face averted, she sat a careful distance away, fixing her eyes on the limitless, glowing blue of the Coral Sea in front. Insects, tiny gleaming bullets in the shimmering air, hummed and buzzed around them. A bird of prey soared above, head and breast radiantly white in the s
un as it tilted and manoeuvred on the air currents before swooping with lethal speed on some small animal or bird in the bushland behind them.
‘What is it?’ Keir asked, following her gaze.
‘A brahminy kite,’ she told him. ‘They’re quite common.’
‘Do they frighten you? You shivered.’
‘No. I was thinking of my father.’ She paused before finishing brightly, ‘I’m terrified of snakes. And I don’t like spiders much. Unfortunately Australia has a good quota of both.’
Ice-coloured eyes searched hers, piercing, almost hypnotic, probing for something she wasn’t prepared to yield. Quickly, before he found it, she hid behind her lashes.
‘Hope,’ he said quietly.
With one sense blocked the others were much more acute, yet she heard nothing, felt nothing, until his arms came around her again.
Still hiding behind her lashes, she lifted her face in silent invitation.
This time he didn’t offer comfort. His mouth was hard and consuming; he kissed her like a conqueror, and he tasted like danger—an edged danger that mingled with the flavours of desire and passion—like everything her untried body and heart had sought without knowing all through the years.
Hope forgot the rest of the world in the keen delight of his mouth and the singing hunger that soared up from some well-spring inside her. By the time the kiss ended she’d have followed him across the world. Blindly, mutely, she turned her face into his throat, ensnared by the heavy thudding of his heart as she fought for control.
‘All right?’ he murmured into her hair.
For a last, precious moment she lay against him, then pulled away, opening her eyes to stare sightlessly across to the dazzling ultramarine of the horizon.
‘I’m fine,’ she said brusquely, getting to her feet and smoothing her hair back from her face with shaking, uncertain hands as she walked towards the railing above the cliff.
This incandescent physical attraction was even more shattering than it had been when she was eighteen. Repressed and slumbering, it had been four years proving. If she gave in to it she could end up addicted.