by Robyn Donald
‘To the left, second door down.’
He walked beside her, close enough to intimidate, not close enough to touch. Just as well—she’d go up like a fireball if he laid so much as a finger on her. All right, so it was merely the physical passion he’d called it, but oh, God, it was overwhelming—like being branded by him so that her body registered him, recognised him, yearned to know him intimately.
Feared him.
Because the one time she’d tried to break past the arbitrary limits her body had set, it had frozen in fierce, unreasoning rejection.
He asked coolly, ‘Does that mean there have been no affairs—or just no petty, sordid ones?’
‘Mind your own business!’ she retorted fiercely.
‘You are the person who used the word sordid.’ Stone-faced, he pushed the door open and stood back to let her through. ‘And any affair between us would never be petty. I promise you that.’
CHAPTER THREE
THAT last comment didn’t just sound like a threat, Sanchia realised with an inner shiver as she glanced at Caid’s harshly beautiful face, it definitely was one.
The intriguing scent—faint, potent—of aroused male made her grit her teeth as she walked past him into a room set up as an office. Apprehension roiled her stomach as she stopped in the middle of the room and waited in silence while he bent to open the door of a safe.
She’d hoped counselling would free her of the suffocating fear of sexuality that had preyed on her for so long, but, in spite of the therapist’s insights, ugly terror still lurked behind the fireflash of desire.
Caid straightened and put a piece of paper on the desk. ‘You’d better read it first.’
‘I don’t sign anything without reading it,’ she said huskily, but she had to concentrate ferociously on the print dancing in front of her eyes.
It was quite straightforward. When she came to sell the land known as such and such on the district plan she would offer it to him first, the price to be negotiated then. If he refused it she was at liberty to do what she wanted with it.
Sanchia read it through twice before handing it back. ‘It seems fair enough.’
‘Did you know that all the land in this area has just been revalued?’
She gave a brief nod.
‘Waiora Bay’s blue water title adds quite considerably to the value of the place because it means no one can land on the beach.’ Caid paused, and added smoothly, ‘I believe the rate increase this year is somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five per cent.’
Sanchia had just emptied her bank account to pay a quarterly instalment of the rates, and it would take stringent saving to manage the other three instalments.
She set her jaw. Once she began negotiating with the council she should be able to come to some agreement about any charges due.
‘I know,’ she said coldly. ‘Do you want witnesses to my signature?’
‘Not unless you do—it’s not a will.’ A long, lean-fingered hand offered a silver pen.
Accepting it, she ignored the jump in her heart-rate when their fingers touched. Caid waited until the pen had almost reached the paper to say, ‘And of course I trust you.’
Sanchia signed and dated the option with slashing writing that came close to expressing her chaotic emotions. ‘There,’ she said, dropping the pen on the desk, ‘although you bought it dearly, even for a dollar.’
‘I like to cover all bases,’ Caid told her with a flinty, level glance that set alarm bells jangling. He folded the paper and dropped it onto the dark polished surface of the desk. Unsmiling, his eyes too calculating, he ushered her towards the door. ‘Can I get you something to drink? You look a little hot.’
No doubt her face was scarlet. Resisting the urge to moisten lips still tender from his kisses, she said quietly, ‘No, thank you. I’ll head back home now.’
‘Of course.’ Now that he’d got his worthless option he’d retreated behind a mask of polite indifference.
Sanchia walked beside him down the wide, airy hall and out onto the terrace that ran across the entire sea-front of the house. Bordered by a stone balustrade with wrought-iron infills, the charming terrace was a clever salute to Mrs Hunter’s European heritage. Yet both house and terrace fitted into the splendid, entirely New Zealand surroundings.
‘I’ll go back by the beach,’ Sanchia said, heading towards the cliff path. ‘Don’t come with me; I know the way.’
But he insisted on walking her down the twisting, narrow path beneath the trees, and along the beach to the boundary fence that ran back from the sand.
Stopping there, he tilted Sanchia’s unwilling, defiantly composed face with a deft, strong hand beneath her chin. ‘An affair between us wouldn’t be sordid, either. Cosmic sounds much more like it.’
And he kissed her again, holding her still with not ungentle hands in her hair.
This kiss had all the flash and fire of the other, but added to it was something else even more dangerous—a seducing sweetness that stole Sanchia’s wits and checked her instinctive fear for long, betraying moments.
Yet when it was over she growled, ‘I meant every word I said about selling.’
‘So,’ he returned pleasantly—if she discounted the fine underpinning of steel to every word, ‘did I.’ He dropped his hands and stood back.
Routed and temporarily without an answer, Sanchia kept her face turned away while she walked away from him along the brazen beach, the sensitive hollow between her shoulderblades informing her that Caid watched her until she disappeared into the welcome shade of the pohutukawa trees.
Thrumming with adrenalin, she poured a glass of water from the jug in the refrigerator, but only drank half of it before she plonked the glass down and strode through the living room of the bach onto the deck, ferociously creating cutting, witty answers she could have flung at him.
You’re making too much of the whole thing! she finally told herself sternly. He tried to soften you up, that’s all. And even if he does want you, that means nothing. Men can want women they hate. So stop being an idiot! She dropped into an elderly wicker chair, only to leap out of it immediately. ‘Ouch!’
She sprang out again and peered at the ragged hole in the seat before twisting to examine the scratches on her leg where the broken wickerwork had attacked her.
Her aunt’s favourite chair; it had sat too long out in the weather. Swallowing hard, Sanchia went inside to dab the thin line of blood with antiseptic.
‘All he did was kiss you,’ she muttered, turning on the tap over the sink to make a cup of tea. Watching several drops sputter out, she said loudly, ‘Just a kiss. Well, two kisses. Nothing important. You’ve been kissed before and liked it and this was no different.’
She lied. Cosmic, Caid had said. Trust him to choose exactly the right word. That first kiss had rocketed her out of her settled, placid existence and spun her into unknown realms of sensation.
And the second one had simply reinforced her complete inability to deal with him. Caid had kissed her with a fierce, potent sexuality that had scared her witless, yet she’d kissed him back with all the subtlety of a lioness in heat.
Impatiently she wrenched the uncooperative tap off and on again. ‘Come on, water!’
But no stream of rainwater emerged, and the pump whined and spluttered before settling into a monotonous moan from its cupboard in the laundry.
‘Oh, no!’ The pump was notorious for misbehaving, and it would be difficult and horribly expensive to get a tradesman out during the holiday season.
Thumping the kettle down, she raced into the laundry and opened the cupboard to peer suspiciously inside. Apart from its irritating whine the pump seemed perfectly normal, without any signs of haemorrhaging oil or water.
Sanchia tried every other tap in the bach, a fruitless exercise. Unable to get up to pressure, the pump continued to labour with ominous persistence until she turned it off at the switch.
The only reason she could think of for the pump’s failure to deli
ver water was so scary she had to force herself out to the large, circular concrete tank behind the bach. Armed with the long-handled broom, she tapped from the top of the tank to the bottom, the same hollow clunk, clunk, clunk all the way down confirming her worst fears.
No water.
And, once she looked for it, the reason was obvious. The guttering around the far side of the bach had rusted away, diverting all the precious rain of spring onto the ground. Last time Sanchia had stayed she’d been using water that couldn’t be replenished.
‘Let’s not panic here,’ she said out loud. ‘It’s a nuisance, but it isn’t the end of the world. The electricity’s still on and the gas bottle’s more than half full. Buy some water.’
But she’d had the telephone disconnected. And she’d have to find out how much water cost; her bank account was too anorexic to be able to deal with more than a few dollars.
Of course, there was always her credit card.
‘So find out how much a tanker-load of water costs, Sanchia,’ she said aloud into the humid, unresponsive air.
Normally she’d have gone to the caretaker’s flat behind the big house and asked to use their telephone, but the prospect of meeting Caid again set her skin prickling.
All right then, she’d walk to the farm manager’s cottage.
After replenishing her sunscreen, she clapped on a wide-brimmed straw hat and set off for the Henleys’ house, a beautifully renovated old farmhouse a couple of bays along.
It took her half an hour—thirty minutes of watching nervously for Caid Hunter to gallop over a hill on a gleaming black stallion like something from a fairy story. Except that in fairy stories the prince always arrived on a white horse, she thought with a wry smile.
But then Caid was no prince, no romantic stereotype. In the world of fairy tales he might even be the villain—devious, impossibly handsome, a little brutal.
And determined.
‘Of course you can use the phone,’ Pat’s wife told her when Sanchia got there, hot and sticky and puffing slightly. ‘I’ll make some coffee while you’re doing it.’
She even gave Sanchia the number of the tanker owner, whose wife wasn’t nearly so welcoming. ‘Do you know how many people have used up all their water already?’ she asked wearily. ‘Brett’s working fifteen hours a day trying to keep up with the demand. Where did you say you are? Oh, Waiora Bay. Well, there’s no way we could get our tanker down that hill. The corners are too sharp.’
Sanchia felt sick. Without water she’d have to go back to Auckland. Until then she hadn’t realised how much she’d banked on this final holiday to give her some sort of closure. Compulsively rolling a pen back and forth, back and forth, she asked, ‘What about a small tanker?’
‘We haven’t got one,’ the woman said, marginally more sympathetic. ‘You could try Kerikeri—or even Kaitaia—but I don’t think either of them have one either, and they’re busy too. It’s been a dry spring and summer all over the north.’
‘I see,’ Sanchia said woodenly. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘Look, I’ll take your number—’
‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a phone.’
From the kitchen Molly Henley called, ‘Give her our number, Sanchia.’
Gratefully Sanchia did so, and the other woman took it down, but warned, ‘I can’t promise anything.’
‘I know. Thanks very much.’
‘Bummer,’ Molly commiserated when she’d hung up. ‘Come and have your coffee while we work out what to do next.’
Things didn’t seem quite so bad when Sanchia was sitting out on the verandah with a mug of coffee in her hand, feet propped up on the balustrade, the sun pouring onto a sea as blue and tender as a Madonna’s robe.
Her hostess said practically, ‘Caid had a bore put in for us so we’ve got plenty of water. Wait until Pat comes back—he’ll work out some way of transporting it to the bach. Now, tell me what you’ve been doing since we saw you last.’
‘Just the usual,’ Sanchia said lightly. ‘What have you been up to?’
Molly embarked on a funny, racy overview of district gossip, then asked, ‘Have you seen Caid yet? He got in yesterday.’
‘Yes.’ Sanchia fiddled with the handle of her mug. ‘Is his mother coming?’
‘Haven’t heard. I hope so; I like her. She’s a bit stately—I think she finds us Kiwis really casual—but she’s lovely. And she always brings presents for the children; nothing expensive, just thoughtfully chosen. I suspect she wants grandchildren.’ Molly gave a comfortable laugh. ‘She might have a wait on her hands because Caid doesn’t seem ready to settle down yet. I know he doesn’t turn up much in the newspapers, but I did read a snip about him and a high-powered magazine editor last year, and did you see the photo of him with that film star? Leila Sherif? She looked besotted. I wonder if she’ll be here this summer.’
Repressing a snake-slither of jealousy, Sanchia said, ‘Perhaps.’ She had no right to be jealous.
‘She won’t if Mrs Hunter’s coming,’ Molly decided. ‘He doesn’t usually bring his girlfriends when his mother’s in residence. Rather old-fashioned and nice of him, when you think of it.’
‘He might be scared of her,’ Sanchia suggested frivolously.
‘Oh, for sure,’ Molly scoffed, laughing. ‘I can just see him shivering in his handmade shoes when she frowns at him. He’s no mummy’s boy. You didn’t know his father, did you?’
‘No.’
‘Well, Caid’s a real chip off the old block—tough as they come but fair with it. A good boss, although he gets his money’s worth. I suppose he’ll get married one day, but I doubt if it will be to please his mother.’
‘Not many men do that,’ Sanchia said drily, and steered the conversation to her hostess’s children, a topic Molly indulged to the full with a willing listener.
A few minutes later Pat arrived. When Molly had explained Sanchia’s predicament he said, ‘Caid told me to keep an eye on the bach and I’ve checked it out regularly, but I never thought to look at the guttering. Yeah, I can take some water across on the tractor—I’ve got a forty-four gallon drum that’ll do the job.’
‘Thanks very much.’ Sanchia smiled gratefully. ‘It won’t be too much trouble for you?’
‘Not a problem. No need for you to head back to Auckland.’ He made it sound as though she was planning to return to Sodom. ‘I’ll go and fill the drum now.’ He winked at her. ‘If you’ve finished gossiping, I’ll give you a ride back on the tractor. Save you from another long, hot walk.’
Half an hour later Sanchia was perched on the tray of the tractor, laughing as she anchored her hat to her head—laughter that was cut off abruptly by a short toot from behind. She swivelled to see Caid at the wheel of an elderly Land Rover.
So much, she thought feverishly, for her character analysis—this vehicle was about as far as you could get from a Lamborghini! Pat’s tractor was newer and more luxurious.
Obeying the unspoken command, Pat pulled into the side of the road and switched off the engine. The Land Rover eased to a stop and Caid got out. He was not smiling.
Sanchia’s heart gave a peculiar leap in her breast.
‘What are you doing?’ he asked, his glance not leaving her face.
She felt as though she’d been branded for life by that intent, unsparing regard. ‘Getting a ride home,’ she told him in a voice spiked with antagonism.
Uncompromising blue eyes switched to Pat. ‘It’s illegal to take a passenger on a tractor.’
Sanchia protested, ‘It’s as safe as a quad,’ referring to the sturdy little four-wheeled vehicles, a cross between a motorbike and a tiny tractor, that had become a farming workhorse.
‘You’re not supposed to carry passengers on quads, either. Pat?’ Caid said with a quiet authority that demanded an answer.
Pat tipped his hat back on his head. ‘We’re sticking to the road, Caid, not heading over the hills. She’s pretty safe.’
Caid’s expression didn’t al
ter. ‘Sanchia, I’ll give you a ride home.’
She wasn’t going to brawl with him in front of Pat, who didn’t deserve any trouble with his employer, especially as technically Pat was in the wrong. So, although she made no attempt to hide the animosity glittering in her eyes and avoided Caid’s outstretched hand, she jumped down from the tray and said over her shoulder, ‘There’s not so much dust in his Land Rover, Pat.’
Pat winked. ‘I’ll see you at the bach, then.’
Ignoring Caid, she clambered into the Land Rover and gazed deliberately around the cab; spartan the vehicle might be, but it was well-maintained. She let her gaze slip through the windscreen and saw Caid say something to Pat, who grinned as he replied with a quick gesture. Caid flung back his black head and laughed.
No, she thought in anguish. I can’t bear this all over again. Three years ago she’d cut him from her life with ruthless, single-minded determination; instinct warned her that if she let him get too close this time, she’d be left with more than a badly scarred heart.
When he turned to get into the car his face was almost grim, the angular features hard and inflexible. Fine, she could deal with that.
He closed the door behind him with a control that jolted her nerves, then drove past the tractor slowly so the manager didn’t get showered in dust.
‘Home?’ he asked, his polite tone setting her teeth on edge.
‘Yes, thank you.’ She paused, then said, ‘I know it’s illegal to take passengers on a tractor, and I can understand that no one should ever carry children, but—’
‘If you’re trying to make sure I don’t sack Pat you can stop right now,’ Caid interrupted in a steely voice. ‘He won’t be carrying passengers again, and he’s too good a man to lose to the enticement of sultry green eyes and a sexy smile.’
Sanchia opened her mouth, then snapped it shut on the words that jostled on the tip of her tongue.
Caid said, ‘And don’t tell me he’s old enough to be your father or that he dandled you on his knee when you were a baby. He’d have to be dead not to respond to you.’