by Robyn Donald
Setting her glass down, she said, ‘I don’t feel I can spend my mother’s legacy on clothes I might never wear again.’
‘Is what you wear so important?’ he asked with apparent idleness.
She snorted inelegantly. ‘Not many people are confident enough to feel good in clothes that don’t fit the occasion,’ she said, and only when she’d finished realised that she was probably talking to one.
‘You’re right, of course. I’m sorry you can’t come with me; I think you’d have enjoyed it.’
He began to talk about the forthcoming election, and eagerly she followed suit, enjoying that keen, incisive brain until Fran appeared at the door and said, ‘Dinner’s ready.’
As she went with him into the morning room Jacinta knew she’d never forget that Paul McAlpine had once asked her to go with him to a party.
After eating the superb dinner without actually tasting it, she went back to work in her room so that Paul didn’t feel obliged to entertain her. She wanted too much to stay there and talk to him, and listen to that slow, deep voice, and watch that arrogantly handsome face, and feel little chills of awareness run through her like a summons to heaven.
However, running away didn’t work.
She closed the curtains to prevent marauding huhu beetles and moths and mosquitoes from dive-bombing her, and sat in front of the computer and stared at the screen, summoning a variety of images, none of which had anything to do with writing.
Eventually she shook her head and switched off the machine before getting ready for bed. When she’d turned the light out, she opened the curtains again to let the sweet, salty air wash into the room.
Perhaps because she went so early to bed she didn’t sleep well, waking with a jolt at one in the morning and spending the next hour tossing and turning and trying to blank out the pictures in her mind. Around two she got up and, thinking ironically that life in New Zealand would be a lot easier without the assorted insects that roamed the night, closed the curtains once more before sitting down to write.
An hour or so later a quiet tap on her door made her jump.
‘Just a minute,’ she called out, dragging on her dressing gown.
It was Paul, clad in shirt and trousers. ‘Are you all right?’ he asked, scanning her face with unhurried thoroughness.
She nodded. ‘I’m fine. I just couldn’t sleep so—am I disturbing you?’
‘No,’ he said abruptly. ‘I couldn’t sleep either, so I went for a walk and saw your light on. I thought I’d better investigate.’
‘Thank you for checking.’ She hesitated, then said, ‘Goodnight.’
‘I’m going to make some tea,’ he said. ‘Do you want some? Or do you prefer cocoa at this hour of the night?’
She should say no. She should be firm and aloof and definite—but polite, of course. Instead she yielded to unbearable temptation. ‘Tea will be perfect.’
‘Would you like me to bring it here?’
‘No.’ The word came out far too fast and hard. Conscious of her hot cheeks, she said, ‘I’ll come along to the kitchen,’ and stepped back.
He said, ‘I’ll see you soon,’ and went off down the hallway, moving soundlessly.
Five minutes later, respectable in a tee-shirt and a pair of jeans, Jacinta padded quietly down the hall and into the kitchen.
As she came in Paul lifted the electric jug to pour the boiling water into a teapot. When the pot was filled he looked up and smiled.
You should have said no, Jacinta told herself—too late to be of any help. Oh, you should have said never, not at this hour of the night, not if you’re going to smile at me...
‘Were you working?’ he asked.
‘Yes.’
‘What exactly are you doing on Gerard’s computer?’ He reached to get a couple of mugs down from the cupboard.
Unwillingly Jacinta’s eyes followed the slow, purposeful cod and flexion of muscles, the smooth signs of latent energy that marked his every movement. A sweet pang of desire caught her by surprise, demolishing her defences.
She had to force herself to concentrate on what he was saying.
‘Fran’s dying to know, although she’ll never ask—not even me. She’s been dropping hints, however. And I must admit to considerable curiosity myself. If it’s a secret don’t tell me.’
‘I think I’m writing a book,’ Jacinta confessed, amazed at her surrender.
‘Well, yes, I rather gathered that you were. What sort of book?’
Flushing, she said resolutely, ‘My mother used to really like reading science fiction, but she found that a lot of it was too technical.’
‘The hard stuff,’ he said. ‘She was a Star Trek fan, I’ll bet.’
She laughed. ‘Of course she was. And she loved the Star Wars trilogy too. When she got too sick to be able to read herself, I used to read to her. We got talking about one particular book, and I said that it was all wrong, the characters didn’t fit the plot. So she challenged me to give them a plot that fitted them better, and I began to make up a story about a group of people in an alternative universe, where unicorns had always existed, along with dragons and the phoenix.’
She blinked a couple of times and steadied her voice. ‘She loved it, and after a while she started to come up with ideas too, and we’d discuss how we could fit them into the book. It gave her something to think about, helped her get through some pretty bad times. When medication clouded her mind so that she began to forget incidents, she suggested I make notes.’ Uneasy at the way he was watching her, his eyes remote and yet oddly sympathetic, she looked away briefly.
Gently, he asked, ‘Is this another promise?’
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever done any writing before?’
Jacinta shrugged. ‘I told stories continually throughout my childhood to anyone who’d listen. And when I was an adolescent I wrote obsessively—all about death and destruction and myself. Very gloomy and self-centred.’
‘I find that hard to believe,’ he said, his eyes amused.
‘Aren’t all teenagers?’
‘I don’t recall being gloomy,’ he said. ‘Self-centred—yes, I’ll admit to that. But everyone’s self-centred when they’re fifteen.’
‘I certainly was,’ she said with a grimace, wondering just what he’d been like as an adolescent. Always confident, no doubt; that assurance was as much a part of him as the colour of his hair and his brilliant eyes.
‘So how is the manuscript getting on?’
‘Slowly. It’s the oddest thing. I know this story and these people so well, yet I’m having real trouble getting it right.’
‘I imagine that in telling a story you use voice and gesture and timing,’ he said thoughtfully, reaching into the fridge to get out the milk. ‘You have to supply that with words in writing.’
Secretly impressed, Jacinta said, ‘That’s it exactly. It’s far harder than I thought it would be, but I am enjoying it.’
‘Fran worries about the long hours.’
‘Fran should have been a nanny,’ Jacinta said, smiling. ‘I told her not to bother getting me meals, but she keeps knocking on my door and insisting I eat regularly. Which, I believe, is your fault.’
‘Do you want me to tell her to leave you alone?’
Rather shocked at his cool authority, she shook her head. ‘Oh, no, I like structure to my day. I like the food, too.’
‘In that case she can continue to knock,’ he said dryly, pouring the tea.
They drank it in the morning room. Jacinta chose an armchair, very comfortable and slightly oversized, as everything in the house was. To go with the owner, no doubt.
Paul settled lithely onto the sofa, long legs straight in front of him, broad shoulders against the back, the mug of tea somehow not in the least incongruous in his hands. Jacinta thought—before she realised where her mind was taking her—that his masculine grace overcame the full impact of his size, preventing him from looking clumsy or hulking.
‘Gera
rd certainly wouldn’t approve of the use you’re making of his computer,’ he said thoughtfully, watching her from eyes that should have looked sleepily half closed, but instead revealed the quick, clever mind behind his handsome face.
The name jarred across her contentment. She said quietly, ‘I do intend to work on several proposals for the subject of my thesis. I probably should be doing them now, but I don’t want to stop writing.’
‘I see,’ he said, and that smile set her spine tingling. ‘You’re hooked!’
It was foolish to feel that he’d lightened a burden for her. ‘That’s it exactly,’ she said. ‘But Gerard wouldn’t understand. His taste in light reading tends to be—’
‘Heavy,’ Paul supplied laconically. He was silent for several moments, then asked, ‘Have you done any walking while you’ve been here?’
‘Oh, yes.’ She leaned forward eagerly. ‘Dean took me over to the bach yesterday afternoon. How on earth are you going to get rid of that awful smell?’
‘We’ll dig it out and make sure there’s no way they can burrow underneath again,’ he said lazily, his lashes drooping.
She frowned. ‘Where will the penguins nest then?’
‘They’ve bred perfectly happily in the caves at the base of the headland for thousands of centuries; they’re like humans, taking the easy way, the shortcut, whenever they can. I hear you’ve learned to ride the quad. Fran said you looked as though you’d been on one for years.’
She laughed and told him about it. ‘It was great fun, and in the end even the dogs deigned to ride with me.’
‘Then you must have impressed them with your skill.’ Beneath his heavy lids his eyes gleamed, blue as the bluest sapphires. ‘Did Dean tell you that he and Brenda intend to buy their own farm soon?’
‘Yes.’ And because Paul believed in helping hard work, he’d offered to finance them. Dean and Brenda spent most of their spare time with land agents. ‘I think it’s a wonderful idea, and very generous of you.’
He frowned. ‘He told you a little too much,’ he said curtly. ‘What else have you been doing?’
There was a slight note of—sarcasm? cynicism?—in his voice. Jacinta drank some of the tea before saying, ‘I went into town with Fran and changed my library books Apart from that, not a lot.’
‘Swimming, obviously. How’s the water?’
‘Lovely.’ Hastily, before she could blush like a fifteen-year-old, she added, ‘Like swimming in silk.’
‘I must come with you tomorrow.’
Which brought even more vivid images to her mind, so vivid that she drank the tea down too quickly and excused herself as soon as she could without being rude.
CHAPTER FIVE
HALF an hour later, back in bed but too tense to sleep, Jacinta relived those words. Her stomach jumped the way it had when he’d said them, at the vision her reckless brain had produced of Paul in swimming togs
He’s not for you, she told herself sternly, turning over to find a cooler place in the sheets. Not for you at all. Just grit your teeth and endure this violent crush because eventually it’ll wear out. They always do.
But, oh, how potent it was, this singing in the blood, this untamed hunger that prowled through her days and nights, constantly testing the bars of her will and common sense. Eventually, when the stars were paling in the dawn sky, she managed to drift off into a heavy, dreamless slumber.
Next morning when she sat down and read over what she’d written the day before, she realised that the hero of the book was becoming more and more like Paul McAlpine.
Gritting her teeth, she went through and changed him back into the man she’d originally imagined; if she let Paul infiltrate the pages the characters would be set wildly at odds, because the plot she and her mother had created depended entirely on the interplay of each personality.
And her hero needed nothing of Paul in him.
Well, perhaps a little, she thought, lifting her eyes from the screen to gaze out across the lawn, still wet from heavy dew. Below the verandah the apricot and pink spider flowers of a grevillea bobbed as a tui landed heavily in the bush and proceeded to plunder their nectar. Sunlight burned across iridescent feathers, bathing him in blue and green and purple fire against the crisp white pompom at his throat.
Yes, there were similarities between Paul and Mage; both were leaders of men, both possessed the authority that came from confidence and success. But Mage was a grimmer, more severe man, and he had a fatal flaw, one he had to overcome. He loved jealously, absolutely, utterly.
A far cry from Paul’s serene self-assurance, Jacinta thought with a wry grimace.
Although if Gerard was right—if he’d loved Aura so much that he could never love another woman—that indicated an extravagance of passion very much at odds with the man Jacinta knew.
Moodily she wondered how the unknown Aura, that dark flame of a woman, had captured Paul’s heart so completely. And what sort of person was she to leave him like that?
‘None of your business,’ she told herself robustly, and got back to work—using it, she realised with some shame, to block out her emotions. It seemed a cowardly way to cope with them, but at least she didn’t spend all day longing for Paul to return from his office in Auckland, and she certainly finished a lot of pages.
When the sun dipped westwards anticipation began to condense within her, almost physical in its impact, until she was wound as tightly as a spring. In a pathetic attempt to ease it, she went for a walk along the beach, striding strongly while she pretended to be thinking of the next day’s work, trying to ignore the need and excitement that strummed a fiery counterpoint inside her.
She’d turned beneath the headland and was walking back in the dense shade of the trees when she saw a tall figure on the beach. Stopping, she feasted her eyes in passionate, eager scrutiny of the sleekly muscled wedge of his torso gleaming above brief black trunks, his lithe grace as he strode across the sand. Like a god, she thought, gilded by the sun, a primeval figure of beauty and power and leadership.
Almost immediately he turned his head and stopped. The air between them sparkled and spun, danced with tension, formed a glittering chain that linked her to him like shackles, like a psychic union.
It lasted only a second. He waved and turned towards the sea. Her heart thudding, Jacinta waved back before fleeing through the garden to the back of the house.
‘Aren’t you going for a swim?’ Fran asked, looking up from the herb bed. ‘Paul’s just left.’
‘How about you?’ To hide her face, Jacinta bent to pick a blue borage flower, the exact colour of Paul’s eyes.
‘Too busy,’ Fran said briefly.
Jacinta stood up. ‘I’ll see you later,’ she said vaguely, her pulses still jumping, her body throbbing.
She didn’t have to swim. Oh, Fran might think it odd if she didn’t—but why should she? Why should she think about you at all? Jacinta asked as she headed for her bedroom. Let’s be honest. You’re looking for excuses to share an experience with him. You want to swim in the same sea as he is, breath the same air, be warmed by the same sun.
Expectation scorched from nerve-end to nerve-end, hollowing her stomach, tightening her skin.
Closing her door behind her, she said aloud, ‘All right then, do it, but at least accept what you’re doing. And no more nonsense about quivering air and psychic links!’
Once in her bikini she hesitated for a moment, then pulled on a tee-shirt; she’d keep it on even when she was swimming. If anyone—if Paul—made any comment, she’d say she didn’t want to burn.
When she came out onto the beach he was swimming strongly several hundred metres from shore Her sensible half was relieved; the other—the secret half, the half that longed intolerably for him—was eaten by disappointment. Briskly she strode into the water and struck out away from that gleaming dark gold head, trying to purge herself of the tides that washed through her so darkly, so inevitably, gathering momentum day by day.
Even though s
he was exhausted when she finally made her way back across the sand, the cure hadn’t worked. She dragged in deep, shuddering breaths, raking a trembling hand through her hair as she pulled the old rubber cap off and shook her hair down past her shoulders.
Behind her, Paul was heading for land. Perhaps, she thought tiredly, he had demons to exorcise too.
Moving slowly, she scooped up her towel and wrapped it around her waist, then made her way through the cool shade of the trees, climbed the steps up the bank and set off across the lawn.
Vibrant whistling warned her that someone was coming from the gate; summoning a smile, she glanced up as Dean strode around the corner of the house.
He finished with a loud, clever variation of a wolf whistle, then as he got closer eyed her with some concern. ‘You look as though you’ve been pushing it,’ he commented. ‘You’re a bit pale.’
She made a comical face. ‘I decided I was getting slack, sitting in front of a computer all day, so I swam too long.’
‘No,’ he said, grinning, ‘not a sign of slackness.’ His eyes moved and his grin widened as he said to the man coming up behind her, ‘No sign of slackness in you, either.’
‘I should hope not,’ Paul said. He’d swum for longer than she had, but he wasn’t even puffing.
As Jacinta turned she felt the casual grip of his hand on her shoulder, burning through the wet material of her tee-shirt, scorching her composure. Startled, her lips parted and she looked into his face.
He didn’t return her puzzled glance. His eyes, cool and unyielding between his thick, wet lashes, were fixed on Dean. ‘Did you want to see me?’ he asked, lifting his hand from Jacinta’s far too responsive shoulder.
‘I do,’ Dean said, his voice oddly formal. ‘We need to discuss a staffing problem.’
‘I’ll see you in the office in ten minutes,’ Paul said. ‘See if Fran will get us a drink, will you?’
‘Sure,’ Dean said, smiled at Jacinta with none of his usual cheerful cheek, and left them.
‘Are you all right?’ Paul asked calmly.
Jacinta nodded. ‘Fine. I just went for too long, but I don’t want to get unfit. And writing all day is not exactly exercise.’