by Susan Napier
‘You mean cross my fingers and hope for the best!’ Ryan translated cynically.
‘If you like. It’s your call.’
Ryan looked struck by the idea that he was still in control of his destiny. ‘In that case, you’re right,’ he admitted. ‘Wait and see sounds a far preferable strategy to my walking stone blind into the arms of the system.’
‘Okay. So there’s no rush, no performance pressure. You don’t have to try to force your memories to surface. You can relax and let them lap over to you. You never know, someone around here may recognise you, and in the meantime you couldn’t have landed yourself with a more ideal hostess—’
‘Wait a minute!’ Nina dropped the billfold from nerveless fingers. ‘You’re not suggesting that he stays on here!’
‘Why not? You’ve got the room,’ Dave pointed out genially. ‘And it’s not as if you aren’t used to having male boarders.’
‘I thought you lived here alone,’ Ryan said, frowning.
‘I…in the summer, Ray rents out the spare rooms to some of the conservation department workers and volunteers who come to do ecological surveys and study projects at the nature and marine reserves,’ she said reluctantly, knowing that with Dave listening she had no choice but to admit the truth.
‘They only stay for a few weeks at a time and I don’t have to pay Ray any rent while I’m playing landlady.’ Most of the workers were young and idealistic, committed to saving the planet, and while Nina had enjoyed the stimulation of their company, she had been happy to wave them off again and return her undivided attention to her work. ‘But I’m really only a tenant, too, and while Ray is away, I don’t think I should…’ She broke off as Dave’s salt-and-pepper eyebrows rose in surprise at her apparent hesitation.
‘I’m sure he wouldn’t mind your putting Ryan up for a few days. Ray’s always had a helping hand for strays. In fact, didn’t he do the same for you when you arrived on Shearwater in very similar circumstances, hurt and with nowhere to go? Offer you a place to live until you sorted out what you wanted to do—which in your case was to stay on? Is he off at his daughter’s? If you’re worried about having his permission, why don’t you call him there and ask?’
Nina was beaten and she knew it. ‘I suppose you’re right,’ she said weakly. ‘It’s just that I’m really busy finishing a commission right now—’
Ryan, who had been letting Dave do the persuading, interrupted smoothly. ‘I won’t interfere with your work. You’ll hardly even know I’m here.’
Oh, she would know, Nina thought grimly. She had the feeling that every moment he was in the house she would be aware of him with every fibre of her being.
‘And it’s good to know that there’s someone on hand with some personal experience of what I’m going through,’ he added ominously. ‘Maybe you can give me some useful tips on how to cope.’
She went cold all over. ‘I don’t think so.’
He didn’t take the hint. ‘I heard you and Dave talking about your amnesia last night. How did it happen?’
Nina suppressed her welling panic. With this interested audience, she knew it wouldn’t do to overreact. She would satisfy his curiosity and hope he dropped the subject. ‘I fell down a wet companionway coming over here on the ferry and bumped my head on the stair rail,’ she clipped, gathering up the coffee mugs from the table. ‘Or so I’m told. It’s all rather hazy.’
‘Were you badly hurt?’ His voice was taut with a controlled emotion that she refused to recognise.
‘I wasn’t hurt at all, just dazed,’ she dismissed with a shrug. ‘All I got was a small graze on the side of my face—nothing to make a big fuss about—’
‘But you still have the amnesia.’
‘Look, it’s no big deal,’ she said impatiently, carrying the mugs over to the sink. ‘I was a footloose traveller and had all my worldly goods in a backpack. I’d obviously intended to stay on Shearwater for a while, so there was no urgency for me to get back to wherever I’d been before, especially when I discovered how much I enjoyed living here.’
Her green eyes suddenly lit with humour. ‘You might even say it was preordained because the ferry company was so relieved that I wasn’t interested in suing that they gave me a big fat cheque by way of apology, which I used to pay Ray for my first few months rent in advance. Then I started painting and never looked back. So you see, everything actually worked out perfectly for me in the end!’
She turned her back on his dubious expression and concentrated on washing out the mugs with overly meticulous care.
Behind her she heard Dave draw Ryan aside for some low-voiced counsel about his condition, and then he announced he should be getting back to his whip-cracking wife.
Nina quickly dried her dripping hands on a tea-towel. ‘I guess you’d better have your cell phone back,’ she said, handing it to him from the bench.
‘Maybe it’s time you talked Ray into having a phone line put in here,’ he commented, slipping it into the hip pocket of his trousers.
She shook her head. ‘It’s much more peaceful without. I like not being available to all and sundry at the push of a button. People think twice about interrupting you if they have to make the effort to do it in person!’
‘That’s definitely my cue to leave!’ Dave chuckled. ‘Well, good luck, Ryan.’ He clapped him on the arm. ‘Let me know how you get on. I’m in the green house at the end if you need anything else, and Jeannie and I are going back to Auckland the day after tomorrow, weather permitting, if you want company on your way back to civilisation.’
‘Thanks for the offer.’
‘Uh, are you sure you don’t want another cup of coffee?’ Nina blurted, suddenly loath to see him go. Nervous as he made her, she was much more nervous about being alone with her disturbing guest.
‘I think she’s afraid that I’m going to grow fangs as soon as your back’s turned,’ Ryan said with uncanny perception.
‘You could be a serial killer for all we know about you,’ she pointed out nastily.
Dave scratched his head. ‘Well, based on many years of experience observing what we in the psychiatric profession refer to as “total wackos”, I can honestly say that I don’t think that Ryan is one of them.’
“‘Total wackos”?’ Nina echoed faintly.
He grinned. ‘It’s a clinical term—I guess you’d need seven years of medical school to understand it. To put it in layman’s terms, Ryan shows no signs of a psychotic personality.’
Ryan was grinning now, too, and Nina’s feathers were thoroughly ruffled by the male conspiracy.
‘He might just be very good at hiding it,’ she said tartly.
‘That’s true. So what do you want me to do?’ The question was sober, but the glint in his eye was definitely amused. He seemed to guess that she didn’t seriously view Ryan as a physical threat.
She was not going to play head games with someone who was way overqualified to tie her up in embarrassing knots. Who knew what inner secrets she might be tricked into revealing? God, what if she found herself telling him that she and Ryan had already crossed the line between hostess and guest?
As her face burned with guilt, she saw Dave’s speculative gaze suddenly shift to Ryan, who unfortunately was wearing a glaringly obvious poker face.
‘Oh…go home to your wife!’ Nina said in exasperation, waving him towards the door.
‘Right!’ Dave said cheerfully, picking up his coat. ‘Uh-oh, sorry…’ As he opened the door, Zorro had shot in between his legs on mud-soaked paws.
‘Hey, where do you think you’re going, mate!’ Nina’s heart flipped at the hint of Australian drawl, and Zorro screeched to a halt as Ryan stooped and cupped his furry face in his elegant hands to look into his eyes and deliver a stern lecture on consideration for others. ‘You don’t get to run around in here until we’ve got you cleaned up,’ he finished.
Unoffended by the reprimand, Zorro stretched up on his hind legs to try to lick the nose that had just poked itse
lf into his business, a tribute to the new dominant male of the household. Ryan laughed, a rich, vibrant sound of pure enjoyment that made Nina’s heart flip again. Laughing, he was another man entirely—warm and appealing rather than cool and brooding. Looking at him was like peering down a kaleidoscope, each shake of his personality presenting a different arrangement of the disconnected fragments of his life.
‘You know how to handle dogs,’ Dave said from the stoop, fighting the wind to get his arms into his coat. ‘Have you got one yourself?’
‘No, but—’ Ryan lifted his head, his eyes shimmering ‘—but I did have one as a child,’ he said slowly. ‘A big white dog with lots of spots…like in that Disney movie.’ His words were unconsciously boyish. ‘He was a Dalmatian.’
‘Do you remember his name?’
Ryan thought, then shook his head.
‘Spot?’ Nina suggested facetiously.
He shot her a scathing look. ‘I should hope that I was a bit more creative than that!’ He glanced back down at Zorro, his frown suggesting he was struggling to expand the picture in his mind. ‘There was a big yard…and a tree—the dog used to sit in the shade and the leaves’ shadows would look like more spots. But…no…’ He let out a puff of frustration. ‘I can’t remember any more.’
‘That’s the way things usually start coming back,’ Dave encouraged, flicking up his hood against the rain. ‘Distant recollections pop into your mind first, then progressively more recent memories begin to appear. I told you it would happen!’ He went off, smug in the knowledge that his professional reputation was still intact.
Nina shut the door behind him and took a deep breath as she turned to face her unwelcome duty, only to have the wind sucked out of her sails.
‘I know you’re busy, so if you want to go off and paint or whatever, I’ll wash this grubby wretch for you.’ Ryan ruffled Zorro’s head affectionately, not seeming to care about the amount of dirt he was getting on his hands. ‘And once I’ve cleaned up that bag of mine—’ he jerked his head towards the limp mound of expensive leather ‘—I can give this floor a good mopping.’
Even though he was dressed in Karl’s sloppy clothes, Nina found it hard to picture Ryan Flint doing mundane domestic chores. There was a kind of natural arrogance about him that made it easier to visualise him paying someone else to do his cleaning.
‘Oh, you don’t have to do that…’ she began awkwardly.
He rose, holding out his flat hand to instruct a quivering Zorro to sit and stay, which—miraculously—he did!
‘I may have lost my memory, but I’m not helpless,’ he said firmly. ‘I know I’ve been foisted on you and I don’t intend to be a burden. I want to make myself useful, not just lie around brooding over my problems. Please—go ahead with your work and forget that I’m here.’
Faced with such a graceful offer, what could Nina do but grudgingly accept? However, just as she had expected, it was easier said than done, and over the next two days, cooped up inside with him by the continuing bad weather, Nina felt more and more like a prisoner in her own home, the boundaries of her personal space shrinking with each successive encounter with her unsettling guest.
Even tucked away in her studio with the door firmly shut, radio going and the wind providing sufficient ambient noise to block out anything that was happening in the rest of the house, she found that she couldn’t summon the tightly focused concentration she needed for sustained close work.
So while George’s plants languished on her drawing board, she turned to practising some sky studies, creating free adaptations from the sketches she had made the last time she had walked on the beach, early on the morning of the storm, when striking formations of clouds were building up against the horizon, the rising wind tugging at the pages of her sketchbook as she raced to capture pencilled snapshots of the rapidly changing scene.
She worked quickly as she painted, keeping the paper damp so that the edges of the clouds melted into one another, their varying tones building in intensity where the colours overlaid one another. The longer she worked on that first day, the more relaxed she became, and she might have eventually succeeded in her aim of pushing Ryan Flint right out of her mind if he hadn’t come knocking on her studio door.
‘I hope it’s okay that I helped myself to some lunch. I thought you might be hungry by now, too,’ he said, handing her a piled plate as he sauntered past. ‘So this is where you work. Would you mind if I had a look around?’
Since he was already doing so, his polite question was rather redundant, but Nina had minded, and the delicious grilled cheese-and-tomato sandwiches were not enough of a bribe to prevent her from firmly telling him that her studio was off-limits to visitors. She didn’t like the expression of curious absorption on his face as he roamed the room, studying the orderly clutter. Even when he pronounced himself fascinated by the contrast between her botanical drawings and the moody seascapes lining the walls, she felt no pleasure in his praise, only a knotted tension in her stomach that didn’t go away until she had shooed him out of the studio.
‘I think I know about this,’ he said quietly as she hustled him out the door. ‘It feels familiar….’
‘Really? Good for you,’ she said, in no mood to deal with another of his spooky forays into the distant past. She was an artist, not a therapist, she told him.
But out of sight was not out of mind, and although she tried to keep their contact to a minimum, she was haunted by a passionate awareness that with every word, every look, every touch, he was drawing her closer to the brink of a dangerous abyss.
When she woke on the third morning to the weak rays of the sun and the raucous cries of gulls reclaiming their scavenging rights on the beach, Nina felt a sharp sense of anticlimax.
The air was still. The storm was over. The danger was past. She hadn’t given in to her treacherous desires. Today Ryan Flint would be out of her life forever.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘RYAN?Ryan?’ Nina moved through the house, her voice bouncing emptily off the painted walls.
When she had had her shower, the walls were still dewy, the small cake of guest soap she had put out still covered with remnants of foam, so she had assumed that Ryan was already up and about, probably getting breakfast for both of them as he had insisted on doing the previous morning.
But there was no sign of Ryan in the living area and her heart began to thump uncomfortably fast as she hurried back up the hall.
Last night, when she had tried to bring up the subject of his leaving, Ryan had said he was tired and wanted an early night, but even though she had mentioned that if the ferries were sailing there would be an early commuter run, surely he wouldn’t have left without saying goodbye!
She cautiously opened the door to his room, her jaw relaxing when she saw the black leather bag sitting under the neatly made bed.
Her eyes swept around the pristine room. Ryan was still only experiencing vague flashes of recall, but obviously the habit of personal tidiness was too deeply ingrained to be ignored. It might simply be that he was consciously on his best behaviour, but she was inclined to think that perhaps Ryan Flint was a domesticated animal after all.
Not necessarily tamed, just domesticated. Perhaps even married. She had used that unpalatable thought to help her dam the cascade of little thrills that had flooded through her whenever she turned and caught Ryan unexpectedly watching her with that sexy narrowing of his eyes.
Retracing her steps to the living room, Nina saw that the fire had been restoked and suddenly realised that Zorro, too, was missing. For the past couple of days, with Nina doing her best to make herself inaccessible, man and dog had been inseparable companions.
Perhaps they’d gone for a walk along the beach. Maybe Ryan had wanted to see if anyone would recognise him or vice versa, or perhaps he had wanted to call in on Dave Freeman to ask for a lift over to the jetty.
Nina grabbed the elderly binoculars from the bookcase and pushed open the sliding door, then stood on the
deck to scan the beach, her body soaking up the weak rays of sunshine, which didn’t quite compensate for the chilly sea breeze lifting the loose hair off her shoulders and knifing keenly through her hand-knitted green jumper.
There were only three people visible on the right, two of them scrambling over a yacht that had been blown from its mooring up onto the beach. The other figure was so tall and skeletally thin it had to be Chas Peterson, dipping and bending as he dragged a large sack along the snaking high-waterline, collecting seaweed to feed the voracious compost heap that fertilised his highly prized vegetable garden.
In the other direction, on the short, triangular section of beach where the creek that ran down the rocky, scrub-covered hill flattened out to meet the sea, a large black Labrador was chasing seagulls away from a lump on the wet sand, while two children prodded ghoulishly with sticks at the obviously fishy corpse.
As Nina lowered the binoculars, she caught a glimpse of movement next door, a grey head moving off around the side of the house.
Ray Stewart was home again.
That meant the ferries were definitely back on schedule.
Normally, she would have gone straight over to say a cheery hello and listen to all Ray’s news about his family and fill him in on anything interesting that had occurred while he was away, but this morning she slunk back inside the house, guiltily aware that she was only putting off the inevitable.
She knew Ray would be annoyed that he had missed the drama of Ryan’s arrival and would want to share in the vicarious excitement by peppering her with questions about her mysterious guest. Nina had too many unanswered questions herself. She didn’t want to probe too deeply into her reactions to Ryan or think too hard about the dichotomy of her feelings—the compulsion to keep him at arm’s length that warred with the powerful undercurrent of attraction.