Читать книгу Tiger, Tiger - Robyn Donald - Страница 7

CHAPTER TWO

SEPARATED from the harbour by a busy road and docks, the apartment block was only a kilometre along the waterfront from the Viaduct Basin, where the South Seas was. Invigorated by the salty air, Lecia set off.

In summer the central city and waterfront was mostly given over to tourists, bright and noisy as a flock of transient birds. Exchanging smiles with several, Lecia passed the refurbished ferry building, still serving its original function between the trendy shops and restaurants that had infiltrated its old galleries. She told herself stoutly that she was looking forward to seeing whether the South Seas was as good as its reputation.

And that was all.

Outside the restaurant, under canopies like sails, people sat talking and eyeing the passers-by, but Keane Paget was waiting in the bar, reading something that looked like business papers.

As Lecia walked through the door he looked up, and in his face she caught a glimpse of the complicated shock she felt whenever she saw him. It vanished as he got to his feet.

Made absurdly self-conscious by his hooded scrutiny, she tried to ignore the swift glances and subdued speculation that followed her across the room. At least they won’t assume we’re lovers! she thought with mordant amusement, holding her head high.

‘With your hair up like that,’ Keane said, seating her before resuming his chair, ‘the resemblance is even more marked.’

She met his eyes frankly. ‘It’s uncanny,’ she said. ‘Like meeting a doppelgänger.’

‘I know. All the old fairy tales come ominously to life. What do you normally drink?’

‘Lime and soda, thank you.’

One dark brow—exactly the same shape as hers—lifted. ‘Nothing alcoholic?’

‘No. If I drink in the middle of the day I spend the afternoon fighting off sleep.’

He looked across the room. A waiter hurried up and Keane ordered her soda and a light ale for himself. ‘It slows me down too,’ he said, with a smile that was oddly unsettling.

Lecia’s stomach flipped. Keep cool! she commanded. Stop overreacting. So what if alcohol in the middle of the day turns us both into zombies? That happens to plenty of people—it doesn’t signify some sort of cosmic link!

After the waiter left Keane looked at her and said, ‘Would you have rung me?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’

Made aware by his coolly measuring glance that she wasn’t going to get away with an evasion, she said slowly, ‘I thought it might be wiser if I didn’t.’

‘Why?’

She stopped herself from shrugging. Instead, she looked a little blindly around the room. Several people hastily averted their fascinated gazes.

‘No logical reason,’ she said at last. ‘As you said, there’s something vaguely ominous about meeting someone with your face.’

‘I did wonder whether we were actually half-brother and sister,’ he said, tackling the subject head-on, ‘but we both resemble our fathers so that isn’t an issue.’

‘How do you know that?’

He gave her a direct, unsmiling look. ‘I had you investigated, of course,’ he said, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do.

Lecia stiffened. ‘I see,’ she said grittily. ‘That explains the past week of silence.’ And immediately wished she’d bitten her unruly tongue.

‘Yes,’ he said, watching her with amused, not unsympathetic eyes.

Fortunately the drinks arrived, giving Lecia time to compose herself. The nerve of him! Unable to swallow, she only touched her lips to the cold, moist glass before putting it down.

‘I presume,’ she said rigidly, ‘that your investigations went back as far as my childhood.’

‘I know that you’re Lecia Spring, born twenty-nine years ago in Australia to an Australian father and New Zealand mother. A year after your parents’ marriage in Melbourne your father had a severe fall and never recovered; he died before you were born.’

‘Your investigator is good,’ she said through her teeth.

‘The best. Monica, your mother, moved to New Zealand to be close to her parents, remarried when you were four, and now lives in Gisborne with her second husband, the owner of a very successful food processing business. You’re a clever, well-respected architect, with a lucrative practice that you keep small by working alone from your home. Why, incidentally?’

‘Because I like to be my own boss,’ she snapped, repelled by his dispassionate recital of the facts of her life.

‘So,’ he said, watching her from half-closed eyes, ‘do I. But you could expand, set up your own firm, employ other architects, and still be the boss.’

‘I’m not ready for that yet. I need more experience.’ It was her standard reason, and before it had always seemed perfectly adequate. It didn’t now.

However, he didn’t pursue the subject. Scrutinising her with leisurely, infuriating thoroughness, he continued, ‘When you were twenty-two you became engaged to another architecture student, but broke it off three months later. What happened?’

‘Looking like my brother does not give you any right to pry into my personal life,’ Lecia said with bleak, barely controlled precision, cringing at the thought of Keane Paget reading about that tragedy.

‘Technically speaking, I think you look like me,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m six years older than you, which must give me a priority claim on the genes.’

She choked back a reluctant gasp of laughter. ‘We’re not brother and sister,’ she observed, ‘but we certainly sound like a bickering pair. Have you got any?’

‘Brothers and sisters? No. There’s just me.’

The heavy lids half hiding his eyes imbued his gaze with a disturbing sensuality that set her nerve-ends jangling. However, nothing could conceal the keen perception in the steel-blue depths.

Trying to shake off her debilitating response so that she could speak objectively, she said, ‘We must be related, either through an illegal liaison or a common ancestor back in England before either side emigrated. The Springs have been in Australia for almost a hundred years, which puts any shared ancestor a long way back. And I don’t think any of them crossed the Tasman to New Zealand.’

‘The Pagets have been here for six generations,’ Keane said in a neutral voice. ‘I don’t know about any cross-Tasman voyaging amongst them, but it’s not wholly unlikely. And as we both look like our fathers—and mine looked very like his father—’

‘Mine too,’ she interpolated. ‘I’ve seen old photographs of my grandfather and great-grandfather, and they all have a very strong family likeness.’

He shrugged. ‘There has to be a connection somewhere. I refuse to believe that this uncanny resemblance is just a coincidental arrangement of genes.’

The waiter came over to say smoothly, ‘Your table is ready, Mr Paget.’

After they both got to their feet Keane took Lecia’s arm in an automatic grip, as though he did this with every woman he escorted. Old-fashioned manners, she thought, but he carried them off.

He could carry anything off—inctuding most of the women in this room, if their sideways glances were any indication.

When they’d been seated, the menus scanned and their orders given, Keane said, ‘I already know quite a lot about you, so what do you want to know about me?’

Everything, she thought hollowly. Aloud she said, ‘Are both your parents still alive?’

‘No.’ His expression didn’t alter but she knew she’d hit a nerve. ‘They died just before I turned six.’

‘I’m sorry.’

He drank some water, then set the glass down and said in a coolly dismissive tone that didn’t ring quite true, ‘It happened nearly thirty years ago. I can barely remember them.’

‘That would be about the same time my father died.’

‘The same year. His accident and its aftermath must have been damned tough on your mother.’

‘She doesn’t talk about it much, but yes, I think she suffered as much as he did. Still, she managed.’ Lecia looked up and met his eyes, her unruly heart-rate accelerating as she admitted, ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing here.’

‘Curiosity,’ he told her, his narrow smile not free from self-derision. ‘For both of us. However hard reason tries to convince me that we’re strangers, we wear our shared pedigree in our faces. Architecture is an unusual profession for a woman, surely?’

She shook her head. ‘Not that unusual, although there aren’t many of us yet—I think about four per cent of architects are women. Lots more are coming through university now. I love it.’

‘Do you design houses or commercial buildings?’

With something close to a snap, she said, ‘Surely your dossier tells you all that?’

‘I’m asking you,’ he said coolly, those perceptive eyes noting her defensiveness.

I’d hate to lie to him, she thought, saying aloud, ‘I’ve worked on several commercial developments, but I do enjoy houses. And shopping centres.’ She gave him a set little smile. ‘All very feminine.’

‘Do you have a problem with that?’

‘You sound,’ she said evenly, ‘like a psychologist.’

Although his brows rose, he said nothing, just sat there surveying her with cool self-assurance.

Lecia sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit sensitive, I suppose. Some men—and women too—think that designing domestic buildings is an easy option.’

‘I was in one of your houses yesterday,’ he said. ‘It is charming and serene, and the owner loves it, says she’s never going to move and won’t have a thing changed.’

Her eyes lit up and she smiled. ‘What a lovely compliment!’

‘Especially as the house wasn’t designed for her. My great-aunt has just moved into it.’ He told her the address.

‘I remember it.’ Her expression sobered, because the woman she’d designed the house for had died six months before. ‘I hope your aunt enjoys living there,’ she said.

‘Perhaps you could go and find out,’ he said levelly. ‘She likes visitors.’

Lecia froze. It seemed to her that the invitation was significant, as though he’d decided to accept her into his family, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. After all she had a perfectly good family of her own.

She looked up. Keane Paget was watching her with eyes the colour of the sea beneath a summer cloud. Very steady, those eyes, hard and dispassionate and enigmatic—as unreadable as the rest of his face.

Mesmerised, Lecia listened as he went on, ‘She’s also the family historian. If anyone can fathom out the connection between us, Aunt Sophie can. Furthermore, she’ll love doing it. She has the finer instincts of a bloodhound. I can’t begin to tell you the number of skeletons she’s dragged out into the full light of day and displayed with a relish that’s definitely mischievous. Her motto is: The only good secret is an exposed secret.’

Captivated, Lecia laughed. ‘She sounds like one of the blood-thirstier genealogists.’

‘She likes to do things well. When she first became interested in hunting down ancestors she researched every method of organising information before deciding that the only way to do it properly was on a computer. So she bought the latest laptop.’

‘How old is she?’

‘Almost ninety. The Pagets either die young or live forever.’

‘Is she enjoying her computer?’

‘She’s an expert.’

His wryly affectionate smile slipped through Lecia’ s defences, reaching some inner part of her that had never been touched before. Uncertainly, she said, ‘She sounds fascinating.’

‘She’s certainly an identity. I’ll organise a time for you to meet her.’ He spoke confidently, as though it didn’t occur to him that his aunt might not want a strange young woman introduced to her.

Lecia said, ‘Oh—but—’ then stopped, realising she’d been outmanoeuvred by an expert.

‘But?’

‘Nothing,’ she said lamely.

And was assailed by a sensation of having walked through a forbidden door, one that had closed smoothly yet inexorably behind her.

You weren’t going to do this, her conscience—backed by the big guns of common sense—wailed. Remember—no further steps down that slippery road to obsession? He’s dangerous, and you’re behaving like the idiot you were when you first met Anthony.

The waiter arrived with their lunch—scallops in white wine for her, rare beef salad for him—and over it Keane asked, ‘Where did you get your pretty name?’

‘I think it’s come down through the family. At least I didn’t get lumbered with the name in all its medieval glory—Laetitia! Or worse, Lettice.’

‘It’s from the Latin, isn’t it?’

‘Yes. It means gladness.’

He picked up his water glass. Lecia’s gaze followed the lean, strong hand—long-fingered, tanned and confident. Sensation shivered the length of her spine.

‘And are you glad?’ he asked quietly.

No, terrified.

And even worse, excited.

She managed to produce a shrug. ‘I’m reasonably optimistic—quite even-tempered,’ she said. ‘It probably does describe me.’

‘No highs, no lows, just a pleasant state of wellbeing?’

‘Mostly.’

And she’d fought to achieve that state, had spent years struggling towards it. However intriguing this situation—and this man—she refused to risk her contentment.

Gripped by the uncomfortable feeling that she was admitting things, giving herself away, Lecia embarked on another round of silent warnings. Keane himself was no threat to her. What she had to fear was her helpless, headlong response to the forceful masculinity that prowled behind the bars of his will.

‘How about you?’ she asked, ignoring the secret messages from her body, trying desperately to sound relaxed and calm and only idly curious about this distant cousin. ‘Are you a typical tycoon, working all day and into the night?’ She glanced at the leather briefcase at his feet.

His smile should be banned, she thought; it was challenging and utterly compelling and a threat to womankind. Humour lurked in it, and danger spiced the hint of arrogance that illuminated his angular features with a special magnetism.

‘It sounds as though you’ve been doing a little research of your own,’ he said blandly.

Lecia ate another scallop, appreciating the rich, delicate flavour with less than her usual enjoyment. ‘The friend I was with at the opera in the park gave me an article about you from one of the business magazines.’ Andrea had tracked it down and faxed it through the day before. Lecia had no intention of telling him she’d read it then thrown it in the rubbish. ‘There was a photograph too. It gave me quite a jolt,’ she confessed.

‘How do you think I felt, seeing my face in the crowd? I wanted to drag you out and ask you what the hell you were doing with it!’

Lecia’s brows shot up. ‘You didn’t move a muscle. I’m sure your—the woman with you didn’t notice.’

‘No, she didn’t.’ An edge of mockery sharpened his tone.

She’d been beautiful, the woman in the park, with subtle, clever style when it came to clothes. Well, Lecia thought, she herself wasn’t bad-tooking—

Whoa, there! This was not a contest, with Keane the prize!

The way her mind was running shocked and bewildered her. All right, she was attracted to Keane Paget; she could cope with that. It wasn’t even so surprising. He exuded an innate air of disciplined authority, of uncompromising competence. Allied to his obvious intelligence and unfair, far too potent charm, it made him, she thought shrewdly, a walking, talking summons to most women.

What scared her was the hint of risky decadence that cast a dark shadow across her response. Was part of this unsettling, goaded attraction a prohibited thrill at their close resemblance, the way her features were manifested in his more chiselled, hard-edged face?

Damn it, she thought, pushing the last scallop around her plate, she’d been interested in men before and never felt as though she stood on the brink and one step could fire her into heaven—or drop her straight into hell.

Not even with Anthony, the man she’d once loved so violently, who’d made her feel that all control of her emotions. was being wrested from her by forces too strong for her to resist.

Because she’d hated that helplessness, she’d learned from the whole, horrible experience, developing both judgement and the prudence to pull away from danger before she got in too deep. Her eminently satisfactory life was not up for grabs.

Besides, Keane could be another woman’s lover. And Lecia never poached.

So she’d call a halt. Tactfully, she’d refuse any invitation to meet his aunt. It wouldn’t take long, she thought, avoiding those penetrating eyes, for Keane to get the message.

She found something else to talk about, hoping she’d managed the switch of subject smoothly enough to appear sophisticated, and was relieved when the meal ended. Logic—and pragmatic, boring old common sense—warned her that the more she saw of Keane the more difficult it would be to refuse his invitations, to stop thinking about him—dreaming of him...

Not that he wanted to linger. After she refused a cup of coffee he glanced across the room and almost immediately a waiter headed towards them.

This ability to summon waiters from the void fascinated Lecia. Perhaps it was because Keane was well-known in the restaurant and a good customer.

Perhaps, but she thought wryly that it probably happened whenever Keane Paget looked up. He had presence, the sort of aura that caught people’s attention.

Paying for the meal took little time, and when they rose Keane once more took Lecia’s arm. Scoffing that the tingle of electricity that leapt from nerve-end to nerve-end when he touched her was not only improbable but a cliché, she allowed herself to be steered across the Italian tiled floor towards the bright sunlight outside.

From somewhere close by a man said something and laughed.

Lecia felt the colour drain from her skin in a clammy rush. Blinking, she forced her gaze in the direction of the voice.

Of course it wasn’t Anthony. A perfectly strange man with a blond moustache leaned across a table and lifted a woman’s hand to his mouth. Anthony had been dark and sophisticated, and he’d no more have kissed her hand in public than he’d have taken his shoes off.

As she registered the sweet rush of deliverance Lecia realised that it wouldn’t have mattered if the stranger had been Anthony. She no longer loved him—had never loved the real Anthony, the married man whose mistress she’d been for a few short weeks until someone had told her about his wife.

Without missing a step, she walked on.

‘Are you all right?’ Keane asked, the sensuously rough timbre in his voice suddenly transmuted to harshness.

Remotely she said, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’

But she wasn’t, because when he said, ‘I’ll drop you off,’ she nodded and thanked him and went into the parking building with him.

In the car, Keane asked, ‘What happened?’ He didn’t switch on the engine, so the words hung heavily in the dim quietness.

Lecia drew in a painful breath. ‘It was just—I was surprised.’

‘Is he the man you were engaged to?’

‘No!’ And before he could probe further she said aloofly. ‘I’m surprised your detective didn’t discover that Barry lives in Wellington now.’

Keane ignored that. ‘Then who was the man who laughed inside the restaurant?’

‘A total stranger. I’ve never seen him before in my life.’

‘But he reminded you of someone you’re afraid of.’

‘No!’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not afraid of anyone.’

Only of herself. Of this weakness that made her fall in lust with a certain sort of man.

‘Do you usually go white so dramatically whenever a man laughs?’ Keane touched her cheek. ‘You’re still cold,’ he added judicially, his sharp, perceptive eyes relentless.

His hand slid to the pulse beneath her ear, lingering there for a second. Lecia’s breath clogged her throat so that she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think above the fast chatter of her heartbeat in her ears.

Clenching her jaw, she froze. What prevented her from seeking comfort by turning her face into that warm, strong hand was not willpower; it was an understanding, based on intuition rather than reason, that Keane Paget would take swift advantage of any surrender, however symbolic.

When he pulled his hand away she felt bereft, cold, aching for something she couldn’t even name.

‘Clearly whoever you mistook him for was the last person you wanted to see,’ Keane said aloofly.

Rallying, Lecia told him, ‘He reminded me of somene I disliked.’

Keane must have decided that he didn’t want to get any further involved, for he didn’t press her.

However, after starting the vehicle and avoiding a car that had stalled in the middle of the road, he said thoughtfully, ‘I find it rather difficult to imagine any circumstances that would shock you to that extent. I thought you were going to faint.’

‘Hardly. And, like most other people, I have an occasional skeleton walled up in the past.’

‘Not entirely forgotten.’ Buried beneath the level voice, like hidden rocks in a stream, was anger.

Taken aback, Lecia deliberately stilled her nervous hands and stared out of the side window.

The harbour danced under the summer sun; sails flew above it, white and rainbow-coloured against the low peninsula that ended in the naval base at Devonport. Behind it, separated by a narrow channel, brooded the forest-covered slopes of Rangitoto, the last little volcano to emerge on the isthmus. That had happened only a few hundred years ago, and geologists expected more to thrust up from the hot spot that lurked a hundred kilometres or so beneath Auckland.

Not in her time, Lecia fervently hoped. She felt as though she was sitting over that hot spot right then.

Keane observed, ‘I suppose it was an affair.’

‘I’m sure that if you had a sister she’d tell you to mind your own business.’ She tried to make her voice amused rather than tense, but didn’t think she’d succeeded.

He’d come too close to the truth, and she couldn’t bear him to learn how stupid and utterly naïve she’d once been. Lecia’s mouth twisted in derision. She’d never thought she’d be glad of Anthony’s sordid discretion, but at least it meant there were no records for anyone to paw through.

‘I rather wish you were my sister,’ Keane said, halting the car outside the entrance to her block.

Of course—his private detective would have told him where she lived.

The hard angles of Keane’s face were much more pronounced, and there was an unsettling watchfulness in the compelling eyes—eyes the colour of the sheen on a gun barrel, Lecia thought suddenly, and shivered, because he’d admitted that she wasn’t the only one fighting the dark temptation of desire.

‘Yes, you’d be much more comfortable as a brother,’ she said quietly, formally. ‘Thank you for lunch; I enjoyed it very much.’

Dark brows pulled together. ‘I’ll come up with you,’ he said.

Shaking her head, Lecia opened the door. ‘There’s no need, I’m perfectly all right. Goodbye.’ And she got out, closed the door firmly behind her, and walked across to the entrance of the apartment block without once looking back.

Nevertheless, she knew that Keane waited until she got to the two shallow steps before he drove away.

Lecia headed straight across the foyer and out into the garden, collapsing on a seat beneath the jacaranda tree.

That had been a nasty moment. Odd that although she no longer cared for Anthony at all she couldn’t get over this sickening guilt.

Staring at the starry flowers of the summer jasmine that draped itself eagerly over a nearby pergola, inhaling the sweet scent drifting on the humid air, she tried to calm herself with the plant’s simple beauty. The flowers blurred and she pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, holding back a dull throbbing.

However tempting it was to stay there, she had to do something about this headache because she had clients to see in an hour. If she took an aspirin immediately she’d probably be all right.

By the time her clients arrived the headache had dwindled to a drained, dispirited lassitude that made her normal cheerful professionalism difficult to achieve. Fortunately the young couple loved the sketches and the concept, and were very enthusiastic over her cost-saving ideas; although they agreed to think it over and contact her the following day Lecia was almost sure it would be a formality.

She should be celebrating. Instead, she drank a glass of orange juice and gazed blindly at the street below. Because hers was one of the cheapest flats in the development she had no view of the harbour. She didn’t miss it. One end of the sitting room looked down onto the visitors’ parking area and the street, but from her bedroom and kitchen she could see the garden, and usually that was refreshment enough for her soul.

Not today, however.

She’d made the right decision to cut off any communication with Keane Paget—the only decision! The echo of the past that had seen her glimpse Anthony in the man at the restaurant had reinforced it for her. Keane was the same type as Anthony; both possessed enormous masculine charisma wrapped up in a gorgeously male body, both were powerful men, driven to achieve, clever and tough and more than a little ruthless.

Sourly hoping that Keane had more honour than Anthony, she sat down and began to check through yet another set of specifications.

Much later, the irritating summons of the telephone interrupted her concentration. Blinking, she realised that it was getting dark outside, which meant she’d missed dinner again.

Absently, her mind still full of stress loadings and other figures, she got to her feet, knocking a pile of papers to the floor. The answering machine was on, so she bent to pick up the scattered sheets, aware that it might be Peter.

It was not. Instead, Keane’s deep voice said, ‘My great-aunt would be delighted to meet you and thank you for her new house. I’ll pick you up tomorrow evening at seven.’

Click as he replaced the receiver.

Lecia scrambled to her feet, dumped the papers on the desk and muttered, ‘Why didn’t you wait, for heaven’s sake? I’d have got there.’

Damn. Damn, damn, damn! Now she’d have to ring him back and tell him she wasn’t going.

His card! Where had she put his card?

Five minutes later she knew it hadn’t gone into her daily file, and it wasn’t in her bag or her diary. Had she thrown it away? She couldn’t remember doing so, but she must have.

Quite sensible of her unconscious mind if she had! Sighing in disgust, she pulled out the telephone directory. There were quite a few Pagets, three of whom had the initial K. None of those lived on the North Shore. Setting her chin, she rang Directory Service, only to be told that Keane’s number was unlisted.

She couldn’t remember what the name of his business was, and it would be crass to ask Peter, who did know. But there was the article Andrea had given her—no, she’d thrown that away too.

Glowering balefully at the telephone, she said, ‘Bloody hell!’ and stamped out into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Unless she found that wretched card soon she was going to have to be ready at seven tomorrow evening.

When the telephone rang again she dropped the knife with which she was eviscerating an avocado, put the fruit on the bench and raced to answer it.

This time it was Peter.

‘Hello, Lecia,’ he said, cheerfully buoyant. ‘How nice to see you last week.’

Resigned, she said, ‘We had a super day, didn’t we? I especially enjoyed the fireworks.’

‘I enjoyed looking at you as you enjoyed them,’ he said somewhat ponderously. ‘I wondered whether you’d like to come to Don Giovanni with me next weekend. I hear it’s an excellent production.’

Gently, she said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I won’t be able to do that.’

His voice altered a fraction. ‘Then—dinner?’

‘No, thank you,’ she said.

Recovering quickly, he chatted for a few minutes and then hung up. She would not, she thought, be hearing from him again, and she hoped he hadn’t been building dreams because she hated having to hurt him. He was a nice man.

It was just unfortunate that she seemed attracted to men with an edge to them.

Dangerous men.

Men like Anthony—and like Keane, who was quite possibly having an affair with the lovely woman he’d escorted to the park.

Forbidden men.

Perhaps that was her hang-up. At least she’d learned to stay well away from such men. Never again was she going to endure that guilt and shame and degrading humiliation.

As Keane’s card remained obstinately lost, at seven the following evening Lecia was ready, wearing the shades of peach and gold that best flattered her skin and eyes. For some reason—one she didn’t plan to explore—she didn’t want him to see her apartment; she waited in the garden on a seat skilfully placed so she could see through the vestibule to the main entrance.

And, in spite of the stern talking-to she had given herself, an unwanted, unbidden knot of excitement twisted in her stomach, and she had to keep her hands open because sweat collected in tiny beads on the palms.

As soon as Keane’s tall form appeared at the front doors she got to her feet and walked into the vestibule. Silhouetted against the sunny street outside, he watched her without moving. He was, she realised with a subtle stirring of the senses, a very big man. Within her, tension tightened a notch into anticipation. Hoping that none of her inner turmoil showed, she smiled as she came up to him.

He said, ‘You look almost edible.’ A note of mockery in the deep, sensual voice robbed the compliment of sweetness.

‘Summer fruits. And I look like you,’ she retorted, reminding herself as well as him.

His eyes lingered for taut seconds on her face. ‘Had a bad day?’

Unwillingly her mouth eased into a wry smile. ‘I spent the morning at a building site, arguing with a man who apparently can’t read plans or specifications and is convinced no mere woman can either.’

‘How did you deal with that?’

‘I have this trick.’ She could feel some of her irritation fading as she spoke. ‘I pick up a nail and a hammer, put the nail into the wood and slam it in with one blow of the hammer. For some reason the fact that I can drive a nail straight and true and right in to its head persuades most men that I know what I’m talking about.’

He laughed. ‘How long did you have to practise?’

‘A week,’ she said, straight-faced.

‘There’s nothing like a dramatic gesture to get the picture across. What happened this afternoon?’

‘Ah, this afternoon I discussed costs with a possible client who thought he’d be able to get a mansion at cottage prices. He also thought that I’d be prepared to sleep with him for the honour of being his architect. He’s no longer a possible client.’

Oh, stupid, stupid! Why had she told him?

Keane said something under his breath that made her flinch before demanding with harsh distinctness, ‘Who is he?’

Lecia shrugged, her gaze never leaving the hard-hewn contours of his face as she said evenly, ‘It doesn’t—’

Very quietly he repeated, ‘Who is he?’

Lecia’s throat closed. She stared into eyes as cold and piercing as ice spears, saw his mouth set into a thin, straight line, and the tiny pulse that flicked against his jawbone.

‘Don’t try to be brotherly.’ Her voice sounded strained and unnaturally steady. ‘I’m not your sister and I can look after myself.’

‘Does it happen often?’ His tone was cool, almost impersonal, but she needed only to look at the stark, arrogant line of his jaw to know that he was still dangerously furious.

‘Not often,’ she said, ‘but it does happen. And not only to me—lots of women in business and professional life have to deal with harassment.’

‘I want to know who he is.’

She met the fierce glint in his eyes just as fiercely. ‘I’m not going to tell you.’

And she saw the leash of his will rein in the killing fury, watched it die down until his face reflected nothing but a flinty, unyielding detachment.

‘Very well.’ He took her arm and led her around the corner towards the narrow parking lot for guests’ cars. ‘Come on, we’d better be on our way or Aunt Sophie will think I’ve forgotten.’

Lecia had to remind herself to breathe. Although she’d sensed that uncompromising temper right from the start, she hadn’t understood just how formidable he could be. And yet, in spite of it, just to be with him caused a white-hot anticipation mixed with pleasure of such intensity that she’d already relegated the frustrations of the day to limbo.

And that’s how it started last time, she reminded herself grimly as he put her into the front of his large, opulent car. Anthony made you laugh and scrambled your brain until you couldn’t think straight.

Just remember how you dealt with that!