by Susan Napier
Blake froze, the bottle still held high, watching the shimmy of her hips and the matching shimmer of her breasts against the thin covering of Lycra.
‘The colour of that suit is almost the same shade as your freckles. From a distance you look as if you’re not wearing anything at all.’
She forced herself not to move. ‘I do not!’
‘How do you know?’ he goaded. ‘I bet that’s why Steve came hotfooting over—he thought you were sunbathing in the nude. Did he look wildly disappointed when he got up close?’
‘No, he didn’t!’ she gritted, although, come to think of it, he had given her a rather sheepish grin. ‘I’ve had this suit for ages; no one’s mentioned anything before—’
‘Maybe lover boy enjoyed the view too much.’
‘We hardly ever went to the beach together—or the pool,’ she recalled. ‘Ryan doesn’t like swimming.’
‘Except in bathtubs.’ He took another cool swig of water. ‘I forget, was it the breast-stroke he was doing—or the crawl?’
Nora’s voice suddenly trembled on the verge of a laugh and her riposte was correspondingly weak. ‘You’re an insensitive pig!’
‘And he apparently never cared enough to do with you the things that you liked to do. You’re a genuine water-baby, aren’t you? Doug said that you used to swim as a teenager and you still do lengths at the local pool several times a week, summer and winter.’
‘I only took it up because I wanted to lose weight,’ she found herself confessing. ‘And then I kept on because I loved it—the swimming part, I mean, not the competing.’
‘I didn’t see it at first because of that ghastly dress you were wearing,’ he said, ‘but you have the classic swimmer’s body—strong shoulders, high breasts, slim hips and long slender legs that look as if they have a real kick in them.’
He was leaning over, his shadow falling across her like a cool, dark caress, and for a shattering moment Nora hoped he was actually going to follow through on his softly flattering words but he suddenly rocked back on his haunches and jack-knifed to his feet, tossing the water bottle into the sand.
‘I usually cool off in the surf after a beach run.’ He started towards the line of breakers, casting a careless invitation over his shoulder. ‘Join me if you want to give that suit a workout….’
His tantalising advance and retreat set the scene for the entire day. They spent the morning on the beach and went back up to the house for a lunch which meandered into midafternoon, then lazed around on the terrace, with Nora in a sun-lounger firmly wedged up against the glass doors of the house, her heart in her mouth every time Blake rolled indolently into the pool to disport like a seal in the silky blue water. Envy and a much fiercer emotion burned in her breast, but no amount of subtle encouragement or needling, or outright flirting on Nora’s part, succeeded in provoking the desired response. His eyes intermittently smouldered with banked fire and he made plenty of excuses to touch her, but any impulse to turn the fleeting contact into anything more intimate was firmly diverted into conversational channels.
Not that Nora was bored. She learned all about his mother and his sisters—thirty-seven-year-old Kate and her Terrible Twins, whose father had dropped out of sight before they were even born; Maria, the thirty-five-year-old union lawyer who resided with her live-in lover and was following in her mother’s activist footsteps, delighting at nipping at her brother’s corporate heels; and his youngest sister, Sara, who worked at the restaurant managed by her husband, and whose two daughters were sports mad.
‘I don’t know why you need nephews; it sounds like the family females have all the bases covered,’ she kidded.
‘It’d be nice to have at least one of the next generation of MacLeods who sees the world from my perspective,’ he said wryly.
‘Well, it’s obviously being left up to you to provide the masculine branches on the family tree.’
Something shifted behind the hawkish features, the steel-grey eyes darkening as they registered a seismic shift in his perceptions, then the cynical mask snapped back into place. ‘Wondering if I’ve left any stray twigs lying around, Nora? I haven’t, I assure you—I take all my responsibilities seriously.’
It was only natural that Blake’s relaxed talk of his assorted relatives should lead Nora into comparisons with her own family, and stories of growing up in Invercargill and how Tess had been a great substitute mother, just not very domesticated. While her aunt and uncle were busy running their sales business it had fallen to Nora to manage the family household and do most of the shopping and cooking.
She was eager to boast about Sean, especially when Blake showed a genuine interest in her brother’s career as a marine salvage diver and sometime Caribbean treasure-hunter. Over pre-dinner cocktails she confided that Sean’s tales of his treasure-seeking expeditions had inspired her to start designing a computer programme which would help him more accurately predict the break-up and dispersion pattern of ancient wrecks in any given combination of sea-floor topography and wind and sea currents. Chin propped on his hand, Blake listened with such rapt absorption to her enthusiastic description of her ideas that she stopped worrying about his unfathomable behaviour and gave in to the sheer joy of being in his company, licensing herself to ignore the whispered warnings from her vulnerable heart.
Cocktails flowed almost seamlessly into another delicious home-cooked dinner, but in spite of Nora rifling her meagre cache of clothes for her one and only dress—a simple floral wraparound with a flirty flimsy skirt—the combination of excess sun, sea, fresh air and nervous tension took their inevitable toll and she actually yawned when Blake walked her along to her room and took her tightly in his arms.
He had finally got around to kissing her again and Nora had yawned! Worse still, instead of being offended or annoyed, he had laughed….
Nora groaned more deeply into the pillow, pounding it with her fists and kicking her feet against the confines of the top sheet, which had been tangled into damp skeins by her sweaty, dream-shot night.
Her mini tantrum over, she went into the bathroom, opening the frosted window, the better to enjoy the chorus of bird-song and the earthy scent of the bush while she brushed her teeth. Her mouth was full of foam when she heard the rumble of a high-performance engine floating up through the window. Was that the TVR in the driveway? She doubted Blake would be sneaking off to church!
She rinsed her mouth and gave her face a smear with a dampened flannel, running her fingers through her wildly kinked hair as she hurried out to the stairs. She flew down the first flight, her bare feet silent on the thick carpet, and came to a skidding halt by the rail on the landing as she saw Blake with his back to her, one arm braced high against the open front door and security grille, greeting someone crossing the entry bridge. The back of his head was still bed-ruffled, he was barefoot, the belt of his black jeans dangling from the tabs at his hip, and—why hadn’t he put on a shirt? His room was at the front corner of the house…He must have dashed down here as soon as he heard the car.
Nora crept forward for a better view, sidling up to a large ornamental urn stuffed with dried flowers so that she could see but not be seen.
The car was a late-model silver Mercedes convertible, the driver a very late-model blonde, her generous curves shrink-wrapped in a glittery pink crop-top and black leather miniskirt. Her sequinned pink high-heeled sandals matched the wide leather belt that cinched her waist and her long straight hair was razor-cut to frame a youthful face boldly made up to seem older. From the way she was smiling as she stepped off the bridge on to the tiled porch she was supremely sure of her welcome. Was this one of Kate MacLeod’s notorious twins?
‘Hi, Blake.’ The greeting was accompanied by a coy wiggle of coral-tipped fingers. Having got to the doorstep and finding that he wasn’t stepping aside, the wattage of the smile increased. ‘Surprise, surprise!’ She placed her fingertips on Blake’s chest and walked them provocatively up towards his unshaven chin. ‘Happy to see me?’
Whoa!
Not very niecely behaviour, Nora fumed, watching Blake jerk his head back and catch the wandering fingers in his free hand.
‘What are you doing here, Hayley?’ His voice was neutral but Nora’s straining ears detected a hint of deep unease.
The young woman gave a throaty laugh that made Nora revise her age up a few years. ‘We had a date last night and you didn’t show. It was a fantastic party, too; you really missed some fun.’ She pouted a playful lower lip, slick with gloss, to show there were no hard feelings. ‘I was so disappointed, but when Uncle Prescott explained all the pressure you were under and told me you’d snuck away for the weekend I realised that you just weren’t in the party mood.’
Uncle Prescott? Nora’s brain went on red alert. Hayley was the niece of Blake’s boss? And she and Blake had been dating?
‘Poor Blake,’ Hayley was commiserating, snuggling up to his side with a nauseatingly kittenish air. ‘Uncle Prescott said he was sure you didn’t mean to let me down—you know how he likes to see me happy—so I decided to give you another chance. I thought I’d come and provide you with my special brand of stress relief….’
The kind of ‘relief’ she was talking about was obvious from the way her hand was creeping up Blake’s thigh.
Nora’s suspicions went ballistic. A red mist covered her vision and for a moment she thought she was going to be sick. For the first time she faced the real truth about her feelings for Blake. The dangerous attraction she had felt from the moment she first saw him wasn’t just physical, but her painfully mixed up emotions had refused to believe she could have fallen for him so completely, so fast. Even when she had mistrusted his motives, she had still respected him and, yes, admired the fierce commitment he brought to everything, whether it be his lovemaking or his ruthless pursuit of his goals.
Only maybe his real goal was marrying the boss’s niece!
At least this resolved any question of his paternity, she thought sickly. If Prescott Williams was keen on promoting a match between Blake and Hayley, then Blake couldn’t be his son.
The red mist became a fog of fury. Kelly and Hayley—two spoilt young madams, both nieces of men who could pull company strings for their lovers!
Silently Nora fled back up the stairs and ducked into the first room she came upon—Blake’s bedroom. Her wrathful gaze fell on the racks of clothes in the huge open wardrobe and her mouth curved in a vicious smile. She tore off her nightie and threw it on to the unmade bed. Naked but for her cotton briefs, she stormed over to the wardrobe and pulled a crisp white business shirt off its wooden hanger. She twisted it in savage fists and dragged the crumpled result on, rolling up the cuffed sleeves to her elbows and fastening five of the small pearlised buttons that marched down over her midriff. She looked at herself in the full-length mirror next to the bathroom door and undid the top button to reveal more cleavage. Leaning in to the mirror, she pinched roughly at her cheeks and chewed at her bottom lip. Her hair was sufficiently wild not to need any help in looking as if she had just climbed out of a passion pit!
Barely a couple of minutes had passed and when she reached the top of the stairs again she could hear the murmured conversation still going on at the door.
Let him talk himself out of this!
She took a deep breath that cleared some of the choking rage from her throat. Then she called out, using the sugar-sweet whine she had heard Kelly use when she wanted to twist a man around her manicured finger.
‘Bla-ake! Where are you? Come on, Babycakes, what’s taking you so long? You must have got rid of whoever it was by now!’
She heard the muted talk downstairs come to a sudden halt. ‘Bla-ake! I’m getting cold and the champagne is getting warm!’ she sang in a sexy lilt.
Dead silence. Nora began to trip down the stairs, changing her voice to a teasing sing-song. ‘Oh, Bla-ake! Are we playing another of your kinky games of hide and seek? Then…coming, ready or no-ot!’ she trilled, making the familiar playground call sound wickedly adult.
‘Oh!’ She came to a sudden stop halfway down the final flight, one hand on the railing, the other covering her open mouth as she pretended to see the couple below for the first time. They were still standing in the doorway, Blake holding both of Hayley’s hands in his.
‘Oh, dear,’ Nora gurgled. ‘I didn’t realise there was someone still here! I’m sorry, Blake. Have I let the cat out of the bag? I know we weren’t supposed to let anyone know I was here….’
She waited expectantly for him to explode, but instead he appeared to be transfixed by shock as Hayley wrenched her hands out of his and said shrilly, ‘Who’s she? Why isn’t anyone supposed to know? What’s going on, Blake?’
‘Yes, aren’t you going to introduce us, Blake?’ simpered Nora, slinking down the last few steps and sauntering up beside him.
‘I don’t think so,’ he said with a tight-lipped grimness that gave her spiteful pleasure.
She mimicked Hayley’s sulky pout and it must have been successful, for the younger girl took a step back, clutching her pink handbag to her glittering breasts, and sent Blake an angry look of scorching reproach.
‘I’m Nora—Nora Lang,’ said Nora helpfully, stirring the pot. ‘Blake and I—well, we…’ she ran a hand through her tousled curls, drawing attention to the suggestive pink marks on her cheeks and her sensuously bitten lips, as well as the brevity of her attire ‘…I suppose I could say we were just good friends, but in the circumstances that would be rather silly, wouldn’t it?’
Hayley glared disdainfully at Nora with hard china-blue eyes, showing no hint of apology or discomfort.
‘Uncle Prescott told me that you came down here alone,’ she insisted stridently to Blake, wielding the name as an implied threat with such practised ease that Nora, who had been suffering a pang of empathy, felt her sympathy wither.
‘Yes, well, “Uncle Prescott” isn’t privy to everything that goes on in my personal life,’ Blake replied coolly. ‘Nowhere in my employment contract does it say that I have to clear it with the Chairman of the Board if I want to spend the weekend with the special woman in my life.’
Hayley’s bee-stung mouth fell open and Nora sensed her own jaw sagging in stunned disbelief. She started to jerk away, experiencing a thrill of alarm, when Blake’s arm snapped across her lower back, his heavy hand settling on her hip-bone, locking her against his hard flank. ‘As I was saying before Nora so charmingly interrupted, you should have talked to me before driving all the way out here, Hayley. I could have saved you the trip.’
Hayley went pale with anger. ‘You never seemed to mind me dropping in before!’ she said petulantly, digging around in her handbag to produce a bright pink cell-phone. ‘And anyway, I did call. I texted and left a message on your mobile to say I was coming, because every time I dialled it kept cutting straight to the answerphone!’ She brandished the phone in his face.
‘Perhaps the fact that I wasn’t responding to my messages should have warned you that I didn’t want to be disturbed.’ Blake’s cruel bluntness added to Nora’s growing fear that she might have just made the biggest mistake of her life! ‘I have asked you to stop turning up unannounced—to avoid just such an awkward situation as this,’ he continued. ‘I know that, as his late brother’s stepchild, Scotty wants you and me to be friends, but even my family respects certain boundaries in my life. Naturally, I wouldn’t have chosen to have you find out about Nora like this, but perhaps it’s best that it’s out in the open—’
‘Then why did she say no one was supposed to know? You’ve never bothered to try and hide your mistresses before.’ Hayley slashed wildly out at Nora. ‘I suppose she’s married or something!’
‘Or something,’ murmured Blake, his hand tightening warningly on Nora’s hip as she stiffened. ‘And Hayley—you and I didn’t have a date last night. You told me last week that you were hosting a party on your uncle’s yacht and invited me along. I said I’d see if I could make it. I didn’t know then what Nora was planning
to do for the weekend. As you might have gathered, I find her utterly irresistible and our time together is precious…’
‘Blake!’ Nora was jolted out of her dumbstruck silence by his outrageous embroidery, realising how thoroughly he had turned the tables. Instead of trying to talk himself out of trouble, he was intent on digging them in deeper, blatantly using Nora as an excuse to extricate himself from the sticky tentacles of an inconveniently possessive woman!
Before she could articulate her thoughts, he had pulled her up on to her toes and kissed them out of her head with devastating efficiency. He hadn’t yet shaved and the scrape of his beard brought back torrid memories. By the time he let her go her brain was so oxygen starved that black dots danced in front of her eyes.
Through the mist of darkness she saw Hayley watching them with a disturbingly malign intent. She still had the shiny pink cell-phone clutched in her talons as she backed across the porch.
‘You won’t care if I tell Uncle Prescott you’re here with her then!’ she threatened, still refusing to dignify Nora with a name.
‘That’s up to you,’ said Blake, relinquishing Nora to her uncertain balance as he moved to see his unwelcome guest on her way, ‘but before you blow this trivial encounter out of proportion, you might want to consider whether you want it known that you intruded into my love-nest under the mistaken impression that you’d be welcome. It might be less amusing for your more bitchy friends if we can simply agree that this never happened.’
Nora’s last glimpse of Hayley was of a blonde fury flinging herself into the convertible, a vindictive glitter of thwarted rage in the sullen blue eyes.
Suddenly recalling that discretion was the better part of valour, Nora felt silently for the tread with her bare toes as she began to back stealthily up the stairs.
The security door clanged into place and the front door swung closed with a definitive thud. Nora froze into wary stillness as Blake turned in a fluid ripple of muscle, his laser-like gaze zeroing in on her apprehensive face.