by Susan Napier
‘I thought you already did.’
‘Anyone who can cook the way you do can’t be all bad.’
She regretted the impulsive reply as soon as it slipped out, but instead of seizing the opportunity to put her to the blush, he merely inclined his head in lazy acknowledgment of the compliment.
The cloudless warm day had turned into a crystal-clear cold night, and as Nina carried the dishes out to the kitchen and stacked them to soak for a while in the sink, Ryan rose with his glass of wine and strolled over towards the beckoning warmth of the fire.
When she came back into the room, he was lounging at ease on the hearth, propped up on one elbow as he toasted the long line of his back, his legs extended across the flokati rug, Zorro dozing in his favourite spot by the woodpile just beyond his feet.
‘Come over and sit by the fire.’ Ryan put his wineglass down to one side and held out his hand in a casual gesture of invitation.
Nina automatically extended her hand, gliding towards him with the blankness of a sleepwalker, but then she stumbled to a stop, her eyes widening as they fixed on the shaggy, cream woollen rug on which he was lying.
‘Nina?’ he murmured, the soft caress of her name echoing and re-echoing in her mind….
His nude body looked like polished teak in the firelight, smooth and sleek, bold in its arousal, the cloud of midnight hair in his groin a dark frame for the thick shaft that rose against his hard belly and nudged against her restless thighs. His mouth was as hot as the flames that bore mute witness to their passion as it seared across Nina’s skin, leaving her swollen breasts glistening with moisture and her nipples engorged with fiery sweetness.
The thick rug generated a soft friction against her undulating back as he pressed her down against the unyielding floor, providing an erotic contrast to the sensual slide of his slick skin against hers, his entwining limbs moving over, under, around, between, seeking and finding every delicious pressure point in her eager woman’s body.
His mouth moved to capture her wild cries, enrapturing her senses while his body ravished her with ruthless pleasure, his hands sliding down to cup her bottom and tilt her hips so that he could—
‘Nina, aren’t you going to sit down?’
Her soaring passion fell to earth with a crash as the scene telescoped back into her head. Ryan had lowered his hand and was sitting up, his eyes on her glazed face.
‘Nina?’ he repeated very gently, as if afraid of jolting her out of her seeming trance. ‘What do you see?’
She couldn’t answer, her jaw locked as she struggled to conceal her ragged emotions.
He stroked his hand across the shaggy rug, threading his fingers into the long, soft strands, drawing her fascinated gaze. ‘Is it this rug? Does it remind you of something?’ His voice lowered to a husky drawl, his fingers curling sensuously into the thick, wavy wool. ‘We used to make love for hours on the big sheepskin rug at home. You loved being naked with me in the firelight, watching me make love to you with those gorgeous, sexy green eyes.
‘Did you know you never close your eyes when you have an orgasm, Nina? Not until you’ve seen me climax, too. Are you remembering how incredibly arousing it is to watch each other in the throes of an orgasm? And when we made love in front of the fire, you always wanted it to be slow and easy so that it would last a long, long time. Sometimes we even used to have fires in the middle of summer just for the sake of pleasuring ourselves with prolonged bouts of hot, sweaty sex interspersed with refreshing romps in the pool….’
He trailed off and a furious blush engulfed her, breaking the mesmerising spell of his evocative words. ‘I’m tired. I want to go to bed,’ she blurted.
‘It’s too early. You’ve just eaten. Come and sit by the fire where it’s warm,’ he murmured enticingly, patting the rug. ‘You know you want to.’
That was the problem. ‘I have to do the dishes—’
‘I’ll do them later. I created the mess. Let me clean it up. What’s the matter, Nina? Afraid you won’t be able to resist me? Why don’t you come here and prove that you can?’
She was not fool enough to fall for that childish challenge, not when her feelings for him were anything but childish.
‘I—I have some work to do.’ She lifted her chin at his mocking expression of disbelief. ‘I have someone picking up some commissions tomorrow. I’m sure you can keep yourself entertained—you seem to be doing pretty well at it so far,’ she said tartly.
‘Well, I was never one for solitary pleasures, but I’ll give it a try,’ he said blandly. ‘If I have a problem, I’ll be sure to use you as my inspiration.’
After another restless night of broken dreams, Nina was chagrined to wake up in a shaft of unruly sunlight and realise that she had overslept. She bounced out of bed and was surprised to find that, for once, she was up before Ryan.
She was sitting at the table eating her breakfast when he sleepily emerged, looking impossibly sexy in his rumpled work clothes, his hair frankly mussed, rasping his hand over his unshaven chin and generally acting like the man of the house.
‘Morning, darling,’ he greeted her, stooping to plant a leisurely kiss on her startled mouth before moving smartly out of striking distance to shake cereal into his bowl. ‘What are we doing today?’ he said, sliding into the chair opposite and raising amused eyebrows at her fulminating glare.
‘We? I know what I’m doing,’ she said through tingling lips. ‘I have no idea what your plans might be.’
He grinned. ‘Oh, I think you do. That’s why you’re looking at me like a scared rabbit.’
She refused to dignify that with an answer. ‘You have work to do at Ray’s—’
‘He knows that my first priority is looking after you.’
‘I don’t need any looking after,’ she gritted.
‘That’s a matter of opinion. It’s going to be another lovely day,’ he said, looking out the window, ‘although that wind looks as if it might have a razor’s edge. Do you have any more blankets, by the way? I was quite cold during the night.’
Had he been as restless as she was, and for the same reason? He couldn’t have been—otherwise he would have wanted cold showers, not more blankets!
‘In the other spare room. Help yourself,’ Nina replied shortly. How could he talk about mundane things like the weather and blankets when there was so much unresolved between them? Every time they looked at each other, the air sizzled.
He kept up the innocuous patter over coffee and toast, and by the time there was a knock on the back door, Nina was on the verge of screaming.
Ryan paused, looking at her quizzically over his coffee cup. ‘Are we expecting someone?’
That irritating ‘we’ again. ‘That’ll probably be George,’ she said, dabbing the toast crumbs from her mouth as she got to her feet. ‘He said he was coming over sometime today to collect the latest paintings for his book.’
Ryan put his cup down, pushing his chair back from the table to give himself a good view of the door. ‘Ah, yes, the botanist you’re doing those plant studies for. Ray says you’ve been working more closely with him recently.’
‘Well, George likes to keep up with my progress. It’s a good income for me, and I’ve always enjoyed painting plants and flowers.’
‘He lives over by the reserve, doesn’t he?’
‘Only temporarily. He’s a professor at Auckland University, spending a year’s sabbatical here while he completes his research. He’s already discovered a new species of native fern.’
‘Bully for George,’ he muttered, and watched her absently check the tuck of her green blouse in the waistband of her snug moleskins and smooth back her hair as she looked towards the door, all instinctively feminine actions that made his eyes narrow.
She caught his look and sensed trouble. ‘I’ll take him into the studio,’ she told him hurriedly. ‘If you wouldn’t mind staying out of the way—this is business.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ he grunted, serving her a friss
on of unease as she opened the door.
George Franklin had been extremely reserved when they first met at a working bee on one of the reserve’s many bush tracks, but as their collaboration advanced, Nina had discovered that he was more preoccupied than deliberately aloof, and in the past couple of months their mutual liking had warmed into comfortable friendship. Nina felt no excitement in his company, but she liked him and lately had been wondering if she should react to his tentative hints that he would like their friendship to ripen into something more.
Now, as he greeted her with his slightly abstracted smile and a warm kiss on her cheek, she wondered how on earth she could ever have considered him in the light of a romantic attachment. He was only a few years older than her, and good-looking in a boyish kind of way, with sandy hair, freckled face and golden-brown eyes, but there was nothing about him that would ever call to her soul.
She stiffened as Ryan came up behind her, sliding his arm around her waist and drawing her firmly back against him, his other hand extended politely to the other man. ‘Hello, George. Ryan Flint.’ He gave the automatically proffered hand a white-knuckled shake that caused the professor’s eyes to widen.
‘Don’t leave him standing on the doorstep, darling,’ he said in Nina’s ear, accompanying his words with a chiding nip of her soft lobe.
‘Would you like me to make you a coffee, George, while Nina is showing you the paintings?’ He gave the disconcerted visitor a charmingly affable smile. ‘I think you’ll be pleased with what she’s done—Nina has a real feeling for the work. In fact, she’s one of the most gifted botanical artists I’ve seen in a long while. She makes a very good argument for the superiority of botanical art over photographic reproduction.’
George looked as if he was about to cut in with something condescending, so Nina conquered her stunned reaction to Ryan’s lavish praise and rushed to explain.
‘Ryan is an art dealer, George,’ she said, surreptitiously pinching the encompassing arm until she was allowed to wriggle free. ‘He owns the Pacific Rim Galleries.’
‘Really?’ George looked warily from Nina’s flustered face to Ryan’s formidably square-jawed expression. ‘I’ve heard of them, of course, but…well, I’m afraid I don’t know much about modern art—’
‘And I don’t know much about botany,’ Ryan said smoothly. ‘But I do know that some of those paintings of Nina’s are good enough to be framed as individual works. Have you considered conducting a gallery showing in conjunction with the publication of your book? It’s a very specialised area and I know academic publications are usually slid into the market without any fanfare, but there’s no reason it couldn’t be a success if it was expertly organised. I know for a fact there are a number of notable botanical-art collectors in Australasia.
‘If you had your book launch in an art gallery, it would not only be good publicity for your book, but it would give Nina—and you—a wider audience recognition. Not to mention the potential additional profit for you both, of course.’
‘You really think I could do that?’ George looked much intrigued, and Nina was incensed when they went through to her studio and he skimped on his normally laborious study of each painting in order to spend most of his visit brainstorming with Ryan about the possibility of a showing at Pacific Rim.
In spite of her best efforts to distance herself from Ryan’s constant smiling glances and give the impression that the casual ‘darlings’ with which he peppered her during conversation were merely an arty affectation, by the time George left she knew that she wouldn’t be getting any more tentative invitations to picnics in the reserve.
Sure enough, there was no friendly buss on the cheek at the door, just a rueful wave. Then Ryan insisted on helping him carry the paintings out to his muddy station wagon so he would only have to make one trip, leaving Nina quietly fretting in the kitchen, gnawing her lip when she peeped out the window and saw Ryan talking expressively before offering a few comradely pats on the shoulder in farewell.
‘How dare you take over like that!’ Nina said to him when he came back inside. ‘I told you to stay out of the way.’
‘I was only trying to give both your careers a boost,’ he said piously. ‘What’s wrong with that? I thought you’d be pleased I was so friendly to your friend.’
‘Friendly!’ Nina had another word for it. ‘What were you saying to him out there at the end?’ she demanded.
‘I was telling him to look for another woman as you’re already taken. By me.’
‘You didn’t tell him like that?’ she screeched.
‘Well, I put it a bit more tactfully, of course,’ he lied. ‘Don’t look so horrified. He wouldn’t have been any good for you as a lover anyway. You need someone earthy, someone who has sensual appetites to match your own. And he knows nothing about art, for goodness’ sake—and you’re an artist! What would you talk about out of bed? You need someone who understands your moods, your passions, your frustrations.
‘Face it, Nina, you need me. You’ll never find a lover more perfectly attuned to your desires, and the bonus is—I’m right here for the taking!’
CHAPTER EIGHT
NINA plunged full tilt down the steep, uneven dirt track, clutching at the slender, peeling trunks of the kanuka trees on either side of the narrow trail in an attempt slow her reckless momentum as she approached the bottom of the hill and finally shot out into the open grove to be brought up short by Ryan’s open arms.
He staggered as she hit his chest, and they almost fell onto the carpet of leaf mould in a wild tangle of limbs.
‘Dammit, Nina, you should be more careful. You could have broken your neck,’ he said as he steadied her briefly before firmly putting her away from him.
‘Sorry, I started off a little fast and once I got going I just couldn’t seem to stop myself,’ she said, panting, her body still thrilling from the forceful impact with his.
‘Believe me, I’m familiar with the feeling,’ he said with involuntary roughness.
Nina glided him a look from under her lashes. ‘Then why fight it?’ She had been trying for three days to needle him into action, and to her frustration all he seemed to want to do was talk. She began brushing imaginary dust from the open neck of her blouse with fluttering little strokes of her fingers, even flicking open another button to reveal more of her cleavage.
His hand snapped around her wrist. ‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘Making myself more comfortable.’ She gave him a look of wide-eyed innocence.
‘You can take it off altogether if you like,’ he clipped. ‘It’s not going to make any difference.’
‘Why, because you’ve seen it all before?’ she taunted him.
‘No, because you can trust me not to take advantage of your more foolish impulses.’
‘What if I want you to take advantage of them?’ she declared recklessly.
‘You want me to grab you and throw you to the ground and have sex with you right here in the dirt in the middle of a public reserve?’
She flushed.
‘Because I am physically capable of it, Nina,’ he said, gesturing angrily down at himself. ‘But I’m not capable of pretending afterwards that it hasn’t happened. When and if you want us to be lovers again, then you have to be prepared to face the consequences.’ He turned and continued along the track that would bring them out at the eastern edge of the scenic reserve.
‘What consequences?’ she cried in frustration, dragging him to a halt by the sleeve of his shirt. ‘I’ve admitted I remember the beginning of our affair. How can I be expected to face what I still can’t remember? If it’s so important, why don’t you tell me?’
‘Because just telling you about your past life won’t make it any more real to you if you can’t attach any feelings to the memories. Although you thought you’d forgotten I existed, you still had the emotional memory of me, which started you on the road to remembering.’
This time, it was Nina’s turn to walk away. ‘
You’re implying I have some sort of control over this thing.’
He caught up with her easily on the narrow track. ‘I’m only pointing out that you seem more afraid of remembering than you do of forgetting,’ he said quietly. ‘Maybe that fall on the ferry completed a process that had already begun, and hitting your head provided your mind with a perfectly logical opportunity for you to dissociate yourself from the problem period in your life.’
‘My problem period being my entire relationship with you!’ she said bitterly. ‘In other words, you’re saying you don’t believe I have amnesia at all.’
‘Oh, I have no doubt that you do—just not the brain-injury kind. And I think you subconsciously know that, which is why you’ve been avoiding doctors.’
‘I avoid doctors because I had enough of medical experts while Gran was dying! It was a truly horrible time. If I was looking for a period of my life I wanted to dissociate from, surely it would have been that one!’
They walked the rest of the road in uneasy silence, but when they got back to the house, Ryan went straight into his room and came back carrying a plastic folder of photographs.
‘You missed them when you frisked my bag—they were in the side compartment,’ he said, placing them on the bookshelf. ‘I’ll leave them here for when you’re ready to look at them.’
His caution was like a red rag to a bull. ‘I’m ready now!’ declared Nina, determined to prove that she wasn’t entirely a cringing coward. ‘Are you going to tell me what they are?’ she asked as she sat at the table and took them out of the folder.
‘Why don’t you just look at them and ask me questions?’ He straddled a chair and folded his arms along the curved back.
There were twenty in all—glossy, sunny photographs that showed no hints of any lurking unhappiness—mostly of Ryan and Nina together, but there were a few pictures of a big, white, double-storeyed, Mediterranean-style house, a large swimming pool surrounded by clusters of lush palms and of people she didn’t know, including one of a little boy not yet out of nappies, dressed in cute denim overalls and sitting astride a push-along wooden horse, his curly black hair standing up all over his head, his blue eyes twinkling with laughter at the camera. Nina barely glanced at that one, her eyes blanking with disinterest as she pushed it quickly aside under the others.