by Susan Napier
A hot tingle streaked from the pit of Nora’s hollow stomach to the tips of her breasts. She could feel her nipples begin to bud against the stretchy cotton of her bra and hurriedly hitched her bottom on to the nearest bar stool, planting her elbows on the granite and folding her arms to shield the front of her snugly fitting T-shirt.
Her apparent nonchalance was a dismal failure.
‘You’re starting to look overheated again, Nora,’ he murmured, a thread of open amusement in the deep voice. ‘Here, perhaps this will help.’ He poured her a tall glass of amber liquid from a jug tinkling with ice cubes. ‘I made it for you earlier.’
‘What is it?’ she asked suspiciously, curling her fingers around the frosted glass, keeping her gaze firmly above his neck as he resumed his former position.
‘Iced tea,’ he said.
She took a cautious sniff, then hesitated, with her lips touching the icy rim. ‘Why aren’t you having any?’
‘Because I’m drinking something else.’ He tilted his head towards a glass of red wine standing on the kitchen windowsill above the double sink.
Still she hesitated, and he made a rough sound of impatience. ‘What’s the matter? Afraid it’s spiked? Do you really think I brought you here with the sole purpose of keeping you drugged and helpless?’
Her eyes widened and he gave an exaggerated sigh.
‘I’ve already had ample time to have my wicked way with your unconscious self—remember? I try never to repeat myself!’
She felt foolish. But it was his fault for making her so jumpy. ‘You can’t blame me for being suspicious after the way you carried on this morning. How do I know what’s going on in your devious male mind?’
He shot her a cynical look from beneath drooping eyelids. ‘Oh, I think if you try very, very hard you could make an educated guess….’
She blushed. ‘I—you—’
‘Drink your drink and stop trying to pretend you’re not as curious as I am.’
‘About what?’ she said, fighting to keep her end up.
‘About what it would be like to finish what you started when you deliberately poured that glass of wine all over my jacket.’
Nora was tempted to bluff it out, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. While she tried to think of a clever answer she buried her pinkened face in her drink. It tasted innocuous. She swilled more of the icy beverage over her tongue; in fact, it tasted quite delicious!
‘You said you made this?’ She gulped greedily, her parched mouth and throat absorbing so much moisture that only a trickle seemed to make it as far as her stomach. ‘From scratch?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ he murmured, topping up her empty glass. ‘I’m quite competent in the kitchen.’
He was much more than competent if he knew how to make iced tea. It wasn’t a common Kiwi beverage.
‘You just don’t seem the domesticated type,’ she said.
He turned to the bench by the sink where an assortment of partly sliced vegetables were strewn across the big chopping board. ‘What type am I?’
She eyed the flashing knife, wielded with lethal precision against a defenceless red pepper. ‘Rich single male—the type who eats out a lot and delegates all the grunt work to someone else.’
The knife turned expertly on an unwary onion. ‘You think I’m lazy?’
‘Quite the opposite. I think you’re probably far too busy to bother with the mundane details of life.’
‘Wrong. The devil is in the detail, Nora. It can make men’s fortunes—or break them. The fact that I’m rich and single makes it more, not less imperative that I maintain my basic survival skills. Actually, I like to cook; I find it relaxing.’
To Nora, who found it a chore, he sounded insufferably superior.
‘I suppose you’re going to claim you do all your own cleaning, too?’ she said sceptically.
‘I’m self-reliant, not stupid,’ he said, pausing to sample his wine. ‘My eldest sister runs a co-operative of domestic cleaners—she gives me a good deal on a contract for my home in town and this place gets done for free, since the whole family uses it….’
A chip of ice caught in Nora’s throat. ‘Your sister’s a cleaning lady?’
Her choking disbelief induced a grin that exploded the harsh angles of his face. ‘Don’t let Kate hear you call her a lady, she’ll be insulted—she’s a working woman. She started up a business which now supports her and her kids, not to mention giving other solo mums a chance to earn a decent wage without having to pay for childcare. I consider that a pretty admirable achievement, don’t you?’
‘Well, yes, of course it is…I just thought—’
‘What? That because I’m wealthy my family must live in the lap of luxury?’
‘It’s a reasonable assumption,’ she defended herself. ‘Most people like to share their good fortune with their loved ones—’
‘Not if the loved ones are pig-headed idealists who would throw the offer back in his condescending teeth,’ he said wryly. ‘You forget, the MacLeod roots are staunchly working class—I’m the renegade in a bunch of social reformers. Mum would take every cent I had for one of her causes, but for herself she doesn’t believe in soft living or idle hands. She’s a union activist who sees it as her duty to remind me that the average working Joe’s health and welfare depend on men like me sacrificing a few points from the bottom line.’
A belated recognition clicked in Nora’s brain. ‘Your mother’s the Pamela MacLeod who chained herself to an official limo during the Commonwealth trade talks in Wellington!’
‘Actually, it was my official limo, and, yes, she managed to get herself arrested on primetime news. Again. Much as she’s against the globalisation of industry she seems to have no problem using the information highway to globalise her fight against oppression. That artistic photo of her plastered against my grille was all over the Internet within minutes of it being taken.’
There was amused exasperation in his tone, a rueful respect that told her more about his feelings for his mother than any amount of words.
‘She doesn’t sound very oppressed.’ Nora chuckled.
He rolled his eyes. ‘I wish!’
She didn’t believe it for a moment. ‘Would you prefer to have the kind of mother who cooed and clucked over you and believed her darling boy could do no wrong?’
He shuddered—a very distracting ripple of that long, lean masculine back. Was he that same melted honey colour all over? she speculated helplessly. Her gaze slipped lower down his profile and she couldn’t help noticing that the finespun fabric of his drawstring pants clung patchily to his damp flanks in a way that suggested he wore little or nothing underneath.
He turned towards her and her eyes shot hastily up to his face.
‘Chicken.’
What was he? A mind-reader? ‘Of course not!’ She was embarrassed to have been caught sneaking an ogle.
He looked taken aback by her vehemence. ‘If you don’t want chicken, I could defrost some prawns…’
‘Oh!’ She fought down another blush, determined not to encourage the speculation stirring in his hawkish gaze. ‘I—uh—chicken is fine, but really, I’m not very hungry—’
‘You will be,’ he said, cutting through her defensive babble. ‘By my estimation, you haven’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. You’ll run out of steam very quickly if you don’t put something solid in your stomach.’
At the moment the inner heat she was generating was enough to power a small city! Nora fumbled to pour herself another drink, her damp hand slipping against the handle of the jug, almost shattering the lip of the glass. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, leaping to her feet as iced tea spilled on the counter. ‘Let me get that.’ She snatched up a handy cloth and mopped up the pooling liquid.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured. ‘May I have my shirt back now?’
She looked down at the crumpled white cloth in her hand and noticed a button poking out between her thumb and forefinger. A tiny embroidered polo
player, now stained with brown, stared accusingly up at her. ‘Oh, God! I’m sorry—it was just lying there—I thought it was a dishcloth!’
‘So much for my taste in clothes,’ he said wryly. ‘You really are hell on a man’s wardrobe, aren’t you, Nora?’
‘I don’t suppose it’s a cheap knock-off rather than the genuine article?’ she said with a sigh.
His trademark scowl wiped the amusement from his expression. ‘Now you’re adding insult to injury. Do I seem like the kind of cheapskate who would buy fakes when I can afford the real thing? Or do you think I’m just too undiscriminating to be able to tell the difference?’
‘I think your inferiority complex is showing again,’ she told him. ‘I’m the one who can’t tell the difference. What do I know about designer labels? I used to sew all my own clothes before I came to Auckland, and I still get most of my stuff from chainstores.’
He cocked his head. ‘Is money a problem for you?’
She wasn’t fooled by the casual way he tossed out the question. Her soft mouth tensed. ‘Why bother to ask? I’m sure your snoop ran a full credit check on me.’
‘And you came up clean as a whistle. But, as Doug pointed out, some debts don’t show up on official files—’
‘I’m not being blackmailed, I don’t have a drug or gambling habit or any other form of secret addiction,’ she declared, her voice rising above the smoky jazz. ‘With me, what you see is exactly what you get!’
His mouth kinked, his gaze flicking over her slight figure. ‘That’s very generous of you, Nora, but I think we should eat first…’
She spluttered, as he’d known she would. ‘That’s not what I meant!’ She glared in frustration as he carried the board of chopped vegetables across to the hob, watching him line up bottles of cooking oil, soy and sweet chilli sauce within easy reach of the wok.
‘You’re not going to cook like that, are you?’ she felt compelled to say. ‘What if the oil spits when you add the food? Here, maybe you should put this back on.’
He turned just in time to catch the balled shirt—thrown with a little more force than was necessary—as it hit his bare chest. ‘Thanks, but I think I’ll go and get myself something less clammy,’ he said with a grimace.
She averted her eyes from temptation as he strolled past her, and while he was gone she decided to make the most of her opportunity to poke and prowl. She was rifling the telephone table at the top of the stairs when a voice sounded in her ear.
‘Are you looking for something in particular?’
Nora jumped, her knee knocking against the open drawer, trapping her groping fingers inside.
‘Ouch! I—uh—’ She pulled her hand free and sucked on her stinging fingertips, flustered by Blake’s sudden reappearance in a tight black T-shirt that was but a small improvement on the distraction of his bare chest.
‘I was just wondering where the telephone was,’ she mumbled.
‘Why?’
‘I thought I’d ring home…’ she confessed, further unnerved by his looming intensity.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You want to call your flat? I thought you said your flatmate had gone to work. Who was it you expected to pick up?’
She nibbled at her lower lip, presenting an unwitting picture of guilt. ‘Nobody.’
The straight black bars of his eyebrows rose above eyes steely with suspicion and she sighed.
‘I just thought I’d better leave a message on my machine, saying where I was and when I’d be back, that’s all. You know—contact details in case of emergency.’ She tugged at her wrist and his fingers tightened.
‘You mean as insurance against any plans I might have to make you permanently disappear?’ He invested his words with a silken menace.
‘Yes—I mean, no! I’m sure you’re a very law-abiding citizen,’ she added hurriedly.
His eyelids drooped. ‘I’m flattered by your faith in my honour.’ His sarcasm was designed to intimidate.
‘The phone?’ she reminded him with dogged persistence.
‘There isn’t one.’
‘No phone?’ She was startled as much by what he said as his tone of grim satisfaction. ‘But…there are phone jacks all over the place—’
‘To be functional they have to be connected to a network,’ he pointed out, stalking back to the kitchen. ‘I come here to get away from all that—to have some uninterrupted down-time.’
Nora trailed after him. It sounded like an excellent theory, but…
‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered. ‘I bet you didn’t get where you are today by working nine-to-five five days a week. It would be tantamount to professional suicide for you to totally cut yourself off here, especially when your boss happens to be in the middle of a hostile takeover bid—’
‘Which is why I regularly check for messages on my mobile,’ he said, abruptly curtailing her speculative musing.
‘Oh,’ She felt foolish for forgetting. ‘Of course. Then…may I borrow it for a minute?’
‘Unfortunately, the battery’s very low and I forgot to bring a charger down with me,’ he continued smoothly. ‘I’m sure you don’t expect me to risk professional suicide for the sake of giving your untrustworthy flatmate a heads-up on your whereabouts?’
Nora mistrusted his bland expression. ‘Then I suppose you’ll have to drive me out to the nearest public phone booth so I can make my call,’ she persisted.
His trademark scowl descended as he silently debated the extent of her stubbornness. Victory was sweet when he reluctantly fetched a slim state-of-the-art phone, bristling with all the latest software bells and whistles.
‘Gee, thanks,’ she said with a grin.
‘Make it short,’ he ordered, and flagrantly eavesdropped as she delivered her self-conscious little message to the answer-machine at the flat.
‘Satisfied that I didn’t pass on any state secrets?’ she said when she finally slapped the phone back into his outstretched palm.
‘You could have been speaking in code,’ he pointed out.
She sucked in a frustrated breath. ‘My God, you’re suspicious—’ she began furiously before noticing the provocative slant to his mouth. She lifted her chin and flounced past him to pick up her drink.
To her secret disappointment he meekly lapsed into bland amiability, delivering a smooth line in unthreatening patter as he expertly finished cooking the prepared food. He finally scooped the glistening contents of the wok into two white porcelain bowls and picked them up, along with his wineglass.
‘I usually dine al fresco, weather permitting, but I thought you’d prefer us to eat inside,’ he said, seating her at the polished slab of wood which dominated the dining alcove around the corner from the kitchen. Here the bifold doors were firmly closed, screened by wooden shutters slanted to obscure the view of the darkened terrace. Cutlery gleamed against the woven placemats grouped intimately at one end of the long table, burnished by the light from a row of tea candles in a tortured metal holder.
‘You needn’t have bothered to change your habit for my sake,’ she said stiffly. ‘I would have managed.’
He sank into the chair to her right ‘It was no trouble.’
She bristled. ‘Then why mention it?’
‘Why, to make you feel indebted to me, of course,’ he said, playing blatantly to her suspicions. He picked up his fork. ‘And for the purpose of hearing you express your gratitude so prettily….’
Her freckles glowed, mini-beacons of mutinous embarrassment, as she shook out the paper table napkin and draped it across her lap. ‘You’re not exactly the most gracious of hosts,’ she muttered.
‘Shall we duel over our manners later?’ he suggested. ‘We may as well eat our food while it’s still hot.’
The fragrant chicken was scrumptious, and after only a few bites Nora felt her spiky hostility melt away.
‘This is really delicious,’ she said, her voice an unwitting purr of sensual appreciation.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ he res
ponded, watching her golden eyes haze with pleasure as she licked an enticing drop of spicy red sauce from the corner of her wide mouth. She ate with a delicate gluttony that sparked his own baser appetite.
‘You missed a bit,’ he said.
‘Where?’ she asked innocently, and he mirrored her actions with his tongue against his own cheek to demonstrate the spot. To his banked amusement, her gaze fixated on his mouth while a forgotten load of vegetables slid off her fork and landed with a splat on the table.
‘Oh, dear!’ She tore her gaze from his lips and jerked back, dabbing at the sticky pile with her napkin. ‘Oh! Oh, no!’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, snuffing out the flaming edge of her napkin where it had drifted into one of the tea candles and ignited with a soft ‘whuff’.
‘I’m so sorry—’ She frantically chased an elusive wisp of blackened paper as it broke away and floated in the air between them.
‘It’s only paper, Nora,’ he said, capturing the ash as it settled into his drink. ‘The napkins are designed to be disposable.’
‘Not by incineration at the table,’ she said, rubbing at the burnished surface, searching for scorch marks.
‘Nora—’
‘I don’t think there’s any permanent damage,’ she discovered, thumbing up a tiny pile of soot.
‘Nora!’
Her mortified eyes skittered up to meet Blake’s winter-grey look of amused exasperation.
‘Relax!’ He pressed a folded replacement into her restless hand. ‘Everything’s fine. Just be thankful the smoke alarm didn’t go off and bring the local volunteer fire brigade battering down the door. They’re always eager to get some practice in.’
Her face registered a brief flare of horror before she realised he was teasing. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why these things keep happening to me.’ She sighed, turning her attention back to her food.
‘Chemistry. You’re a natural catalyst,’ he added when she looked puzzled.
‘Should I take that as a compliment or an insult?’ she asked wryly.
‘Well, it means that life around you would rarely be boring.’