by Robyn Donald
She looked away, her mind scurrying to find some reason she could give him without sounding like a love-sick idiot.
The corners of his chiselled mouth tilted into a humourless smile. ‘Tell me the truth,’ he invited softly. ‘We’ve got the rest of a long summer day, and then there’s the night.’ An undercurrent of intimacy ran beneath the dispassionate words.
Rigid, her cheeks stung by spots of colour, she refused to lower her lashes. ‘Because unless Cathy’s changed a lot, she’s spent all the money she stole from you.’
He surveyed her with half-closed eyes. ‘So? You said once that you had no moral obligation to see me recompensed, and you were right.’
‘I was wrong. Great-Aunt Kate would have made sure you got the money,’ Sanchia said quietly.
His mouth tightened. ‘She wasn’t—and neither are you—responsible for Cathy’s debts. So why the change of heart, Sanchia?’
She could have borne his shouting better than this purring mockery. Her frigid gaze clashed with his. ‘Perhaps because I’m not greedy and self-serving and debauched.’
A muscle jumped in his jaw. ‘I didn’t mean it! You must have known I was stupidly, recklessly angry.’ He laughed, a chilling, unamused sound. ‘When we made love the second time I thought—that’s it, at last you’d learned to trust me! It was—well, it was a transcendental experience.’
Sanchia’s heart jumped in her breast. Surely—
He resumed in a voice that killed any chance of hope, ‘The very next day I found out that you’d been planning all along to give the Bay to the Council.’
Sanchia’s brain had dissolved, collapsed. She wanted—needed—to shake her head violently, in the hope it might marshal her thoughts, but she couldn’t move. So she drew in a long silent breath. ‘I knew you wouldn’t like it.’ The words came out defiantly, aggressive enough to be a challenge.
‘You’re too perceptive,’ he retorted sarcastically. He paused, reining in his anger so that when he spoke again it was in a detached tone. ‘You said once that your great-aunt wanted to safeguard the pohutukawas and the butterfly tree.’
‘Yes.’
He gave her a keen glance. ‘Was it important to her that the public have access to the Bay?’
Sanchia frowned, trying hard to recall her aunt’s words. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said at last. ‘She hated the way so much of the coastline is being developed, and she wanted to safeguard the trees and the bush. The only way to do that is to make it a reserve.’
‘For two intelligent women,’ he said sardonically, ‘you’ve caused yourselves—and me—an immense amount of trouble. If public access is not the issue, the simplest way to make sure that the land won’t ever be developed is to put it into a special trust—the Queen Elizabeth the Second Trust.’
‘I’ve heard of that—but isn’t it for farmers?’
‘It’s mostly farmers who use it to protect land of outstanding natural beauty, but it’s available to anyone. The land remains in the farmer’s estate, but no one can fell the bush or develop the land.’ He paused, his intent gaze searching her face. ‘If you sell the Bay to me, I’ll replant it in coastal forest and deed it to the Trust.’
For a second she thought that deliverance had come, until she remembered. Hiding her intense disappointment, she said, ‘I can’t—I’ve told the Council that I’m going to give them the land.’
He said calmly, ‘If I deal with the Council, will putting the Bay into the QEII Trust satisfy your obsessive need to pay back what you feel you owe your great-aunt?’
‘I—yes.’
He pinned her with a searching, unsparing glance. ‘But you’re not happy about it.’
How could she explain this emptiness? If she thought that she was anything more to him than a transcendental experience in bed she might try, but he didn’t love her.
Before she could speak he said forcefully, ‘Sanchia, you don’t—didn’t—owe your great-aunt anything. In the years you lived with her you gave her an entirely unexpected joy in life,’ he said, his voice as unrelenting as his angular features. ‘She loved you and wanted you to be happy—she’d have been appalled if she’d known that her desire to safeguard the Bay was going to cause you such trouble.’
Sanchia fixed her stare on the busy little world outside the window.
He paused, then went on deliberately, ‘And my attitude didn’t help.’
On the harbour a small yacht went about, its sail flapping for a second, then filling. The little yacht pulled away steadily, heading for the islands of the Gulf. Afraid to think, Sanchia kept her gaze riveted to it.
Caid said, ‘I won’t lie to you—the last thing I want is for the Bay to be turned into a reserve. But that wasn’t why I was so bloody-minded about it.’
‘So why were you?’ Her voice sounded flat, uninterested.
‘A variety of reasons,’ he said ambiguously. ‘I admired your loyalty yet I resented it. It wasn’t long before I realised that it was because carrying out your aunt’s last wishes meant more to you than I did. I wanted you to give in, to tell me it didn’t matter, that the only thing that you cared about was me. I wanted you to surrender everything.’
Moisture dampened Sanchia’s temples and she forgot to breathe. ‘Why?’ she croaked, turning her head slightly so that she could see him.
That beautiful mouth eased into an ironic smile. ‘Can’t you guess? It was arrogant of me, I know, especially as you never gave any indication that I meant more to you than a convenient way to get rid of your virginity.’
Her cheeks stinging with colour, she returned, ‘You must have known that I didn’t see it as anything to get rid of.’
‘I wondered, when I realised that I was the first man you’d been able to relate to after your experience with that swine.’ He spoke neutrally, watching her with hooded eyes.
Sanchia discarded words as soon as she chose them, then decided to be as frank as he was. ‘You were—remember when you carried me back from the butterfly tree after I wrenched my ankle? That’s when I realised that a man’s touch could be comforting and reassuring and—exciting.’ Hope battled with caution when she said warily, ‘I didn’t make love with you to get rid of my virginity.’
‘So why did you?’
Suddenly pride no longer mattered; she’d take whatever she could get from him. Tension rode her without mercy as she said, ‘I wanted you.’ She met his eyes and said with a hint of defiance, ‘I’d do the same again.’
It was an open invitation. When he ignored it, continuing to regard her from beneath half-lowered eyelids, the heat and colour in her skin colour ebbed away into the clammy chill of rejection.
Frowning, he said, ‘After I told you to go I realised I’d made the Bay a test. If you’d given up on the reserve idea, it would have meant I was more important to you than Kate’s bequest. I wanted all your fierce loyalty for myself, yet I’d offered you nothing in return.’
Words tumbled in free-fall through her brain, disconnected, unspoken. Was he going to suggest they resume their short-lived affair? She wanted so much more from him now…
‘I still want your loyalty,’ he said, his voice low and raw and uncompromising. ‘And although I can promise you my loyalty in return, loyalty is not what this is all about.’
Her heart missed two beats before she found the courage to say, ‘Then what is it all about?’
Through lips that barely moved he said, ‘I want everything you can give.’
A wave of love overcame her, fired her eyes to brilliance, trembled through her lips. ‘That’s a two-way thing. I want everything you can give too,’ she said steadily, each word a vow.
Raggedly he said, ‘Sanchia, I love you.’
It was as simple as that. She smiled as he came towards her and said, ‘And I love you.’
A long time later he tucked her head under his chin and murmured, ‘Not that I believe you.’
Frowning, she said, ‘What don’t you believe?’
‘That you
want everything from me,’ he said judiciously. ‘My bad temper?’
By then she would have forgiven him anything. ‘I never saw you lose it until that last day at the Bay.’
He pulled a strand of hair across her white breast, surveyed it gravely, then bent to kiss it and the smooth skin beneath. ‘I’ve worked damned hard to keep it under control,’ he admitted, ‘and I can promise you I won’t subject you to it when we’re married.’
His statement cut though her composure like a blade. She twisted to look up into his face, but iron arms held her against his naked chest, against the stirring strength of his loins.
‘You do want to marry me, I hope?’ he asked, no longer able to mask the taut undertone. ‘I’ve lived in hell’s lowest circle since you left, but I didn’t contact you because I wanted to get the Bay out of the way. It had become a symbol, and like all symbols it was too emotive, too important to deal with directly.’
‘What would you have done if I’d insisted on handing it over to the Council?’
He lifted her face and surveyed it, the cobalt eyes clear and unwavering. ‘Accepted it.’ Then his mouth curved in a slow, teasing smile. ‘I planned to have a lot of pleasure trying to get you to change your mind, but when I found I couldn’t bear the thought of you suffering because you hadn’t fulfilled Kate’s wishes, I realised that what I felt for you—this elemental, completely out of control need to see you happy—had to be love.’
Sanchia told him quietly, ‘I won’t suffer. She wanted the place to be cared for. You’ll do that.’
Piercing, probing, his gaze held hers, demanding the truth. She met it frankly.
His chest lifted and fell in a huge sigh—of relief, she realised with astonishment, and finally let herself believe that this was real, this was happening. Caid Hunter loved her, wanted to marry her. Deep inside a tight lump of apprehension dissolved, vanishing into nothingness.
‘Not,’ he said on a grim note, ‘that I was going to let you slide through my fingers again, although I had no idea how to break through the impasse. I toyed with the idea of kidnapping you and making you my love slave—’
‘Fat hope,’ she purred, kissing his throat. Her heart shivered as she felt his response, and his taste filled her mouth. She whispered, ‘You didn’t have to make me anything. I think I fell in love with you when I was sixteen and you carried me back to the bach and made me laugh.’
He stretched lazily. She could feel him smile, feel the vibration of his voice as he said, ‘That was when I realised I was far too interested in someone far too young. I didn’t give it a chance to grow, but when I saw you three years ago I wanted something that even then I understood, in some dim part of my brain, you weren’t ready for. I thought it was sex, but I wanted more.’
‘I think that’s why I ran,’ she said, resting her cheek against the fine tangle of hair across his chest. ‘It wasn’t just the sex that terrified me, it was the secret realisation that if I gave myself to you, if I took you, nothing would ever be the same again.’ She hesitated, then added solemnly, ‘I’d never be the same again.’
‘Yes,’ he said, his voice so quiet she had to strain to hear it. ‘Always, beneath the heat and the fire and the promise of an unbearable ecstasy, there was the threat of something deeper, more primal—a loss of autonomy, of control. I’ve never admitted it until now, but that’s the real reason I didn’t come after you three years ago. I wasn’t ready to give up that selfish feeling of being master of my own life. I couldn’t bring myself to surrender.’
Sanchia nodded. ‘It’s frightening.’
‘But glorious,’ he said on a half-laugh. ‘When I saw you jump back as the car shocked you, I thought, Damn it all to hell, here she is. It was like a rearrangement of my mental processes—everything just slid away to make room for you and you moved in and took over. Oh, I didn’t admit it straight away—’
‘You certainly didn’t! You were overbearing and critical and—’
He stopped her with a swift, hard kiss. ‘I was completely winded! And then we made love.’ He stopped and said quietly, ‘That was—I can’t describe it. I warned you that making love changed everything—I didn’t realise that it would change me too.’
Unprompted, the words tumbled out. ‘You’ve made love before.’
‘And I won’t lie and tell you that I haven’t enjoyed it.’ His hand came to rest on her thudding heart. ‘But I’d never made love with someone I love.’ His voice deepened, became rough. ‘My heart, my darling girl, I can’t tell you what it was like for me. Like being reborn. Like being handed paradise on a platter—all I ever wanted in one slim, silky body, one lovely smile, one pair of green, depthless eyes, one fierce, inconvenient loyalty. Then this whole bloody business about the Bay exploded in my face and I could see you weren’t going to give an inch. What made it worse was that I could understand how you felt—and I admired and coveted your loyalty. Of course I didn’t want a reserve next door, but that wasn’t why I blew up.’
Sanchia’s brows shot up.
‘You’d hidden the truth from me,’ he said calmly. ‘I hated that, but not as much as I hated the prospect that you’d deliberately seduced me, possibly to keep me off-balance until you’d got the reserve through.’
She sat bolt upright and glowered down at the man she loved, magnificently naked in the huge bed, all flagrantly golden maleness. ‘I wouldn’t ever—’
‘I know,’ he said, his eyes appreciating her complementary nudeness, white and slender with her black hair in wild disarray.
He reached up and pulled her down, smoothing the mass of silk back from her indignant face. When she still fixed him with a simmering stare he kissed each green eye closed. ‘It was only a momentary suspicion; you gave me so much, all of yourself, that I knew it couldn’t be true. That’s when I realised that I loved you. And, selfishly, I wanted you to love me enough to sell me the Bay. Today, when you told me I could have it, I realised that I’d been testing you, and I was ashamed.’
Caid kissed her forehead and stroked the hair back from it, his hand tender amongst the midnight strands, soothing and exciting her at the same time.
Sanchia muttered, ‘But you ignored me!’
‘I wanted to deal with Cathy first.’
‘Oh.’ Her aunt’s name chilled her. ‘What are you going to do with them?’
He lifted her chin and looked into her eyes. ‘I’d like very much to kill him, but I’m not going to jeopardise our future so I settled for scaring the hell out of him. They’ve both signed documents admitting the fraud. While they keep out of our life and out of the news, they’re safe enough.’
Sanchia considered this, then nodded. ‘Thank you.’ She shivered as he ran a lazily possessive hand from her throat to her hip.
‘When you offered me the Bay it seemed like a peace offering, a very small, tentative olive branch. It was like seeing the sun after winter at the South Pole.’
‘You said it no longer mattered. I thought it meant nothing.’ She paused, then sighed and said, ‘That I meant nothing.’
He lifted his head. ‘You’re all I ever want—all I’ll want for the rest of my life.’ Incredibly, his voice shook. ‘When are we going to get married?’
She had to swallow an obstruction in her throat before she was able to say, ‘Whenever you want.’
‘In three days’ time?’ he pressed.
‘Won’t your mother want a big wedding?’
His chest moved beneath her cheek. ‘Of course she will,’ he said. ‘But she’s terrified I’ll let you get away again. She’s been giving me reproachful glares ever since you left.’
When Sanchia didn’t answer he asked, ‘What’s the matter, my darling?’
She hesitated, then whispered, ‘It just seems so—impossible. Everything. I’m terrified that I’ll wake up and it will all have been a dream.’
His mouth very tender, he said, ‘If it’s a dream, we’re both in it together, and it’s going to last us a lifetime.’
&nb
sp; A lean hand tilted her chin, lifting her face. Brilliant blue eyes scrutinised it, searching out the tender, blurred mouth, the skin made rosy by his lovemaking, then moved to her small, sensitive breasts.
‘God,’ he said thickly, his emotions finally breaking through the armour of his will. ‘God, you have no idea how much I love you. Tell me you’ll be happy with me, Sanchia.’
She hugged him, kissed him, her hands slipping across his fine-grained skin with growing confidence. ‘We’ll be so happy together, my darling.’ It was true; she had no doubts about it now. She murmured, ‘I’ll give the money you pay me for the Bay—after you’ve taken out the amount Cathy owes you—to charity. One dealing with conservation.’
Shock held him rigid for a second, then he relaxed and laughed. ‘Kate would like that. You know, I’m actually looking forward to the problems that conscience of yours is going to cause me. Only, no more secrets, all right?’
‘No more secrets,’ she promised, secure at last in the safe haven of Caid’s arms.
ISBN: 978-1-4268-7294-5
SANCHIA’S SECRET
First North American Publication 2004.
Copyright © 2000 by Robyn Donald.
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