Читать книгу Forbidden Pleasure - Robyn Donald - Страница 7

THE view, Ianthe Brown decided as she glowered through the window, was picture pretty, everyone’s idea of the tropics—dazzling white sand, water so blue it throbbed against the hot air, gently waving trees. All that was missing was the sound of surf on the reef and the traditional happy-go-lucky attitude of the Polynesians who lived on those smiling, palm-tasselled islands. And the palms.

Not surprising, since they were two thousand kilometres to the north of this northern part of New Zealand.

Ianthe frowned at the fingermarks on her reddened wrist, then stooped to massage her aching leg. The man who’d jerked her out of that haven of tranquillity and escorted her into this house was as far removed from happy-go-lucky as anyone could be; his mission had been to get her inside so someone else could interview her, whether she wanted that or not. Normally she’d have torn verbal strips off him; a sleepless night and the drugged pleasure of having at last closed her eyes and drifted into unconsciousness had temporarily scrambled her brain.

It was back in full working order now, and she was furious.

Of course she could climb through the window and run away, but she had no taste for humiliation; in her present state she’d be ludicrously easy to catch.

She surveyed the room with critical eyes. Luxuriously spare, it oozed the kind of casual perfection that proclaimed both megabucks and a very good interior decorator. What little she’d noticed of the rest of the house revealed the same sophisticated simplicity.

A far cry, she thought ironically, from her spartan quarters of the past few years. The cabin on the schooner had been so small she’d been able to stand in the middle and touch all four sides without too much stretching.

Absently she transferred her weight to her good leg. Five minutes ago she’d been sound asleep in the shade of the pines, only to be hauled off her rug by an idiot with a manner cribbed from the more mindless and violent films, who’d ignored her vigorous objections and frogmarched her the hundred metres to a house she hadn’t noticed.

Had she, Ianthe wondered with a shiver of foreboding as she straightened, stumbled into one of those films?

No, this was New Zealand. Mafia godfathers didn’t exist here.

Awareness prickled across the back of her neck. Without moving—without breathing—she strained to see from the corner of her eyes. On the very edge of her vision waited the tall, lean shadow of a man, intimidating and silent. A mindless panic tightening her skin, she set her teeth and turned.

She’d expected the frogmarcher, but the man who watched her with narrowed, icy eyes—eyes so pale in his tanned face that her stomach jumped—was an infinitely more threatening proposition. Such eyes, Ianthe thought on a swift, involuntary breath, could indicate an Anglo-Saxon heritage, except that the strong, dark features were cast in a far more exotic mould—Italian, perhaps.

‘Who,’ she asked steadily, ‘are you, and what right do you have to kidnap me?’

Although something flickered in the brilliant gaze, his expression didn’t alter. Urbanely he asked, ‘Don’t you have laws against trespassing in New Zealand?’

He spoke like an Oxford-educated Englishman, each clipped, curt word at subtle variance with the deep, rich voice, textured by the maverick hint of an accent she couldn’t place.

About six feet tall, he was startlingly good-looking, the angular, autocratic face emphasised by a forceful jaw and a hard, deceptively beautiful mouth. Yet the ice-blue eyes—piercing as lasers, wholly without warmth—dominated his tanned features, and beneath that uncompromising exterior Ianthe sensed vitality, a fierce energy barely contained by his will-power.

Into her mind sprang the sudden glittering image of a hawk high in a summer sky, poised against the shimmering incandescence for a moment out of time before it plummeted lethally to earth and its prey.

Beautifully cut shirt and trousers fitted him with the casual elegance of excellent tailoring. Irritated, Ianthe realised that if he’d been clad in scruffy jeans and a shirt off the peg he’d be just as imperious and formidable and dangerously compelling.

In old shorts and a loose T-shirt that had faded into shabbiness, she must look downmarket and conspicuous. Her chin lifted a fraction of an inch. ‘Trespassing laws in New Zealand are lenient. Anyway, these lakes are reserves.’

‘Not this one. The land around it is privately owned—as you are well aware. You had to climb over a locked gate to get here.’

Ianthe had wondered, but her need for solitude had been greater than her curiosity. She drew in a deep breath. For the first time since she’d woken in hospital with over a hundred stitches in her leg she felt alive, every cell in her body alert and flooded with adrenalin.

‘Whatever,’ she countered, ‘it still doesn’t give your henchman the right to manhandle me. All he’s entitled to do is tell me to get off your property. If I’d refused to go after that you might have a case, although it’s probably only fair to warn you that you’d have to prove I’d done some damage before any court would take you seriously.’

‘It sounds as though you make a habit of trespassing.’

Ianthe stared at him.

‘You know so much about your rights,’ he elaborated, a lurking note of sarcasm biting into her composure.

Crisply she retorted, ‘I once worked for a summer with the Department of Conservation, where you soon learn all about the laws of trespassing. By dragging me here, your offsider has put himself well and truly in the wrong. The New Zealand police don’t take a kindly view of assault. As he knows, because he’s a New Zealander himself.’

She didn’t hold up her reddened wrist, or even look at it, but the man’s gaze fastened onto her skin and something explosive splintered its cold clarity before the long lashes, dark as jealousy, covered his eyes again. ‘Did he hurt you?’ he asked in a voice that pulled every tiny hair upright over her body.

‘No.’

He came across the room with silent speed. Ianthe watched with bewilderment as he picked up her hand and looked at her wrist. A chill tightened her skin, jerked with sickening impact in the depths of her stomach.

‘He’s bruised you,’ he said slowly.

Feeling strangely sorry for the frogmarcher, Ianthe said, ‘I bruise very easily, and he didn’t hurt me. In fact, he did this when I stumbled. He stopped me from falling into the water.’

Her voice faded. Looking down at the contrast of dark fingers locked around the delicate whiteness of her wrist, she swallowed and pulled away; he resisted a moment, then the long fingers loosened and she was free. Completely unnerved by his reaction, she took a stumbling step backwards and leaned heavily against the windowsill.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a frigid remoteness.

Quickly, her voice oddly gruff, she said with stubborn insistence, ‘Besides, I was on the Queen’s Chain.’

‘The Queen’s Chain?’ he asked silkily, pinning her with that laser glance.

Sensation slithered the length of Ianthe’s spine. Doing her best to ignore it, she replied didactically, ‘In New Zealand almost all waterways are surrounded by the Queen’s Chain. The land twenty metres back from the water’s edge, although used by the landowner, is actually owned by the Crown—specifically so that people have access.’

‘Your Queen is a landowner indeed,’ he said softly, not attempting to hide the mockery in his words. ‘And to get to that Queen’s Chain you had to cross private property.’

Your Queen, so he wasn’t English. Her confident tone belying her hollow stomach, Ianthe snapped, ‘Possibly, but I wasn’t trespassing when that idiot decided to prove what a big, tough man he is by dragging me here.’

Ianthe was of medium height, but a year in and out of hospital had stripped flesh from her bones so that she weighed less than she had for the last five years. She’d been no match at all for a frogmarcher built like a rugby forward.

His boss smiled at her. ‘He’ll apologise,’ he said.

How could a mere movement of muscles transform aloof arrogance into something so charismatic? He looked like a Renaissance princeling, at once blazingly attractive yet dangerous, cultured yet barbaric, his handsome features strengthened by the disciplined ruthlessness underpinning them.

‘You are,’ he went on, ‘quite right, and I apologise for Mark’s rather officious protection of my privacy. He had no right to touch you or haul you in here.’

Ianthe suspected that behind that spell-binding face was a keen brain that had rapidly chosen this response, knowing it would soothe her. In other words, she thought sturdily, she was being manipulated.

After returning his smile with one of her own—detached, she hoped, and coolly dismissive—she said, ‘New Zealanders love their country, and one reason is because they can go almost wherever they like in it.’

‘Subject, one assumes, to the laws of the countryside? Closing gates and so forth?’

‘Of course,’ she said, knowing that she’d left no gate undone behind her.

Dark lashes drooped, narrowing the pale gaze. ‘To make up a little for Mark’s unceremonious intrusion into your life, can I offer you a drink? Tea, perhaps, or something alcoholic if you’d prefer that? And then I’ll take you back to your car.’

Stiffly, nerves still jangling from the after-effects of that smile, Ianthe said, ‘No, thank you. I’m not thirsty.’

‘I can understand that you have no wish to stay in a house where you underwent such an unpleasant experience,’ he said smoothly, ‘but I’d like to show you that I’m not some Mafia don on holiday.’

Her glance flashed to his unreadable face. Could he read her mind? No, of course not. She’d barely articulated the thought.

Off balance, she said hastily, ‘I’m sure you’re not—’

‘Then let me make whatever amends I can.’

Charm was a rare gift, and an unfair one. When backed by pure steel it was almost unforgivable. Reluctant, angry because her leg was threatening imminent collapse, Ianthe said, ‘You don’t need to make amends, but—I’d like a cup of tea, thank you.’

‘It would be my pleasure.’

She eased herself away from the window and limped towards him, waiting for signs of shock. But the ice-blue gaze remained fixed on her face, although he took her elbow in an impersonal grip.

He’d probably blench when he saw the scar, she thought savagely, but she was used to that.

The long tanned fingers at her elbow lent confidence as well as support. They also sent a slow pulse of excitement through her. Of course she didn’t allow herself to lean on him as he escorted her through the door, across a hall floored with pale Italian ceramic tiles and into a breathtaking room where the light from the lake played across superb angles and planes and surfaces.

‘Oh!’ Ianthe said, abruptly stopping.

His fingers tightened a moment on her elbow, then relaxed. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’ Feeling foolish, she explained lamely, ‘The lake looks wonderful from here.’

He urged her across to a comfortable seat. ‘It looks wonderful from any vantage point,’ he said. ‘I’ve travelled widely, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like the colour of this water.’

Ianthe sat down, keeping her face averted. Glass doors had been pushed right back to reveal a wide terrace and the brilliant beach. ‘It’s because it’s a dune lake,’ she said. ‘The white sand reflects the sky more intensely.’

‘Whatever causes it, it’s beautiful,’ he said, sitting down in a chair close by. ‘But then, New Zealand is a glorious country. So varied a landscape, usually with mountains to back up each magnificent vista.’

‘Mountains are all very well in the background, but that’s where they should stay. Give me a nice warm beach any day.’ A year ago she’d have meant it.

His considering glance fomented a disturbing, forbidden pleasure deep within her. They were so distant, those eyes, so dispassionately at variance with his warm Mediterranean colouring. Bronze skin and blue-black hair sharpened the impact of their frosty intensity, until she felt their impact like an earthquake, inescapable, terrifying.

In an amused voice he said, ‘You don’t look as though anything much frightens you.’

‘I like to be warm,’ she said, thinking, If you only knew! ‘I was born in Northland, so I’m not used to snow.’

‘Yet water can be cold.’

He still hadn’t looked at her leg, but Ianthe wished fervently that she’d chosen to wear trousers rather than shorts. She had no illusions about the ugliness of the puckered, distorted skin that ran almost the full length of her leg. Although future plastic surgery would tidy it up, it would always be there, a jagged, unlovely reminder of past pain.

‘Only if you’re silly enough to keep swimming after you start to shiver,’ she said, adding drily, ‘And unless you’re swimming in the Arctic, it’s nowhere near as cold as snow. Of course, where you come from the mountains all have either a rack railway up the side or a hotel perched on top. Or both. It makes them hard to take seriously.’

Strong white teeth flashed for a second as he smiled. ‘So you didn’t enjoy the European Alps,’ he said blandly. ‘Although I was born in Europe, I spent much of my youth in Australia.’ His eyes glimmered. ‘No mountains there, nothing much but sky.’

‘I’ve never been to either place, but I’ve seen photos.’

‘Perhaps it’s a human characteristic to want to tame those things that threaten us.’ His gaze moved slowly over her face, rested a tingling fraction of a second on her soft mouth, then flicked to the tumbled bounty of her hair, its gentle, honey-coloured waves streaked with natural highlights the colour of untarnished copper. In a cool, speculative voice he continued, ‘I don’t think mountains in New Zealand have either railways or restaurants, do they?’

Her nerves jumping, she said huskily, ‘Not to the summit, no.’

The door opened. Ianthe watched warily as Mark the frogmarcher, fair and with the solid, blocky body of a surfer, carried in a tea-tray. Her host—whoever he was—must have given the order before he’d seen her, Ianthe thought, wondering why she let herself be irritated at such blatant damage control.

Mark set the tray down on the table close to her chair, then moved the table so that she didn’t have to reach. Both tea and coffee, she noticed. He’d left nothing to chance.

‘I hope you will pour,’ the owner said.

‘Yes, of course.’

Standing back, Mark said woodenly, ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you, but you were trespassing.’

With equal formality, Ianthe said, ‘Property rights don’t confer manhandling privileges, but I accept your apology.’

Summoning her most limpid smile, she directed it at him until colour rose in his skin. He sent a swift, frowning glance to his employer, who said, ‘Thank you, Mark.’ With an abrupt nod the younger man turned jerkily and left the room.

Her host laughed quietly. ‘You New Zealanders!’ he murmured. ‘I’d say the honours went to you that time.’

With an unwilling smile Ianthe poured tea with a strong, tarry smell. When she asked what sort it was, he answered, ‘Lapsang souchong—Chinese tea. Don’t you like it? Shall I get another—?’

‘No, no,’ she interrupted. ‘I just haven’t come across it before. I like trying new things.’

He waited while she sipped it, and smiled lazily when she said, ‘It’s different, but I like it.’

‘Good,’ he said, and picked up the cup he’d collected from her. ‘Are you a local, or holidaying like me?’

‘I’m on holiday.’

‘At the camping ground?’

‘No, I’m staying in a bach.’ His lifted brows led her to enlarge, ‘In New Zealand a bach is a small, rather scruffy beach house.’

His scrutiny shredded the fragile barrier of her confidence. Ianthe stopped herself from blinking defensively; whenever he looked at her something very strange happened in the pit of her stomach, a kind of drawing sensation that hardened into an ache.

Dourly she told herself that he probably had an equally powerful effect on any woman under a hundred. Those eyes were hypnotic. Perhaps he was conducting a subtle interrogation; if so, he’d mistaken his adversary. He hadn’t told her who he was, so she wouldn’t tell him anything about herself.

Childish, but she felt threatened, and defiance was as good a reaction as any.

He broke into her thoughts by saying, ‘Ah, those small houses near the camping ground.’

‘Yes.’

‘I heard that they’re under threat.’

Ianthe nodded. ‘They’re built on what’s now reserve land. The owners aren’t allowed to alter the buildings beyond any necessary repairs, and when they die the baches will be torn down and the land returned to the Crown.’

‘And is yours a family bach?’

She said warily, ‘It’s owned by friends.’

He changed the subject with smooth confidence. ‘I hope the weather stays as idyllic as it’s been for the past couple of weeks.’

‘It should, but Northland—all of New Zealand, in fact—is a forecaster’s nightmare. The country’s long and narrow, and because it’s where the tropics meet the cold air coming up from the Antarctic we get weather from every direction. Still, it’s high summer, so with any luck we’ll have glorious weather until the end of February.’ The pedantic note in her voice was her only defence against his speculative, probing gaze.

She added, ‘Unless another cyclone comes visiting from the north, of course. We’ve already had two this holiday season, although neither of them amounted to more than heavy rain.’

‘Let’s hope the tropics keep their cyclones to themselves,’ he said, giving no indication of how long he intended to stay.

After that they spoke more generalities—conversation that meant nothing, revealed nothing, was not intended to be taken seriously or recalled. Yet beneath the surface casualness and ease there were deeper, questionable currents, and whenever she looked up he was watching her.

Eventually Ianthe put down her empty cup and said, ‘That was lovely, thank you. I’d better be getting back.’

‘Certainly.’ He got to his feet with loose-limbed masculine grace. ‘I’ll drive you to your car.’

‘I can walk,’ she said automatically.

Without taking his eyes from her face he asked, ‘And make your leg even more painful?’

She grimaced, because it had now begun to throb, and she knew that the only way to keep it from getting worse was to lie down. ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, adding, ‘Thank you very much.’

‘It’s very little recompense for Mark’s officiousness.’

He’d come to take her elbow again. Ianthe knew that his fingers didn’t burn her skin as he helped her up, but that was what it felt like. ‘Mark’s responsible for that,’ she said tersely, tightening her lips against the odd, shivery sensations running through her.

‘He’s employed by me,’ he said, ‘so I’m responsible.’

Ianthe took a few stiff steps, her limp becoming more pronounced as the ache in her leg suddenly intensified.

He said something under his breath, and with an economy of movement that shocked her, lifted her in his arms.

‘Hey!’ she exclaimed, unable to say anything more as a secret, feverish excitement swallowed her up.

‘Perhaps you’d rather Mark carried you,’ he said, locking her against his hard-muscled torso with casual strength as he strode with surprising ease towards the wide hall that led to a big front door.

The promise of masculine power hadn’t been an illusion. The self-control that gave authority to his spectacular, hawkish good looks had been transmuted into sheer, determined energy.

An alarming combination of flame and ice electrified Ianthe. Striving to sound level and prosaic, she said, ‘I don’t need to be carried.’

‘You’re as white as a sheet and sweat is standing out on your forehead. Please don’t try to make me feel worse than I already do.’

Because Ianthe hated being pitied she returned coldly, ‘I’m not. My leg hurts, but I’d get there.’

‘Even if you had to crawl,’ he said with caustic disapproval. ‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face not only wastes time, it turns perfectly legitimate sympathy into intense irritation.’

Which left her with nothing to say. Clearly he did feel responsible for his henchman’s behaviour, but Mark’s macho hijacking no longer concerned her.

Her heart jumped as she stole a glance at the splendid profile, outlined by an unexpected blaze of gold as they stepped out of the door beneath a skylight. Attraction, she told herself with contemptuous bravado. It’s just attraction—that common meeting point between male and female. It means nothing.

Bracing herself against it, she forced her attention away from him and onto her surroundings.

Whoever had designed the house had understood Northland’s climate. A porte-cochère extended from the door across the gravel drive, offering shelter from summer’s heat as well as from the downpours that could batter the peninsula at any season. In its shade waited a Range Rover, large and luxurious and dusty.

‘I’ll have to put you down,’ her host said, and did so with exquisite care.

She clutched at the handle of the vehicle, and for a second his arms tightened around her again. Her bones heated, slackened, melted in the swift warmth of his embrace and the faint, potently masculine tang she’d been carefully not registering. He waited until she let go of the door handle and straightened up, then stepped back.

‘Can you manage?’ he enquired evenly as he opened the door.

‘Yes.’ Refusing to acknowledge the ache in her leg, she climbed in, took a deep, steadying breath and reached down to clip on her seatbelt. She didn’t look at the man who walked around to his side and got in.

‘I presume you left your car at the gate,’ he said as he started the engine.

‘Yes. In the pull-off.’

He handled the big machine with skill on the narrow gravel road. Ianthe sat silently until she saw her car huddled against a pine plantation, shielded from the dusty road by a thick growth of teatree and scrub.

‘Here,’ she said.

‘I see it.’ He drove in behind her car and stopped.

As she got quickly down and limped across to her elderly Japanese import, Ianthe repressed an ironic smile. The only things her car shared with the opulent Rover were the basic equipment and a coat of dust.

The sun had sailed far enough across the sky to bypass the dark shade of the trees and heat up the car’s interior. With a last uncharitable thought for Mark, Ianthe wound down windows and held the door open, wishing desperately that her unwilling host would just get back into his big vehicle and leave her alone. She felt balanced on a knife-edge, her past hidden by shadow, her future almost echoing with emptiness.

‘There, that’s cool enough,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘I should be thanking you for not prosecuting me,’ he said, amusement glimmering for a second in the frigid depths of his eyes. ‘The only recompense I can make is to offer the beach to you whenever you wish to swim.’

‘That’s very kind of you—thank you.’ The words were clumsy and she couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice, so she nodded and retreated to her car, thinking, Not likely.

Pity had produced that offer, and she loathed pity. Since the accident she’d endured more than a lifetime’s quota, defended from its enfeebling effects only by a stubborn, mute pride.

With a savage twist she switched on the engine, furious when it grumbled and stuttered before coughing into silence. Thin-lipped, she tried it again, and this time it caught and purred into life. Smiling politely, she waved.

Before she let the brake off he leaned forward. ‘I’ll follow you home, just to make sure you’re all right.’

‘There’s no need,’ she began, but he’d already stepped back and headed towards the Rover.

Unease crept across her skin on sinister cat’s paws. For a moment she even toyed with the idea of going to someone else’s bach, until common sense scoffed that a few questions would soon tell him where she lived.

She wasn’t scared—she had no reason to fear him.

So she drove sedately down the road until she came to the third bach by the second lake, and turned through the shade of the huge macrocarpa cypress on the front lawn, then into the garage. The Range Rover drew to a halt on the road outside, its engine purring while she got out of the car, locked it, and went towards the door of the bach.

He waited until she’d actually unlocked it before tooting once and turning around.

The last Ianthe saw of him was an arrogant, angular profile against the swirling white dust from the road and the negligent wave of one long hand. Her breath hissed out. For a moment she stared at the faded paint on the door, then jerkily opened it and went inside.

Heat hit her like a blow. Pushing wide the windows, she thought briefly of the wall of glass, open to the lake and the air, then shrugged. When this bach had been built bi-fold windows that turned rooms into pavilions had not been a part of the ordinary house, let alone a holiday place like this.

Who was he? And why did he feel the need for someone like Mark in a place like New Zealand? Perhaps, she thought, curling her lip, he had a fragile ego that demanded the reassurance of a bodyguard.

It didn’t seem likely, but then what did she know of the very rich? Or the very beautiful? If the camera liked his face as much as her eyes had, he might well be a film star. As it was, his face had seemed vaguely familiar, like a half-remembered image from a stranger’s photograph album.

From now on she was going to have to confine herself to the shore of this lake, which meant curious looks and often audible comments about her leg. She looked down at the scar. Purple-red, jagged and uneven, it stretched from her thigh to her ankle. She’d damned near died from shock and loss of blood. Sometimes she even wished she had.

Her capacity for self-pity sickened her. It was new to her, this enormous waste of sullen desperation that so often lay in wait like quicksand.

Determinedly cheerful, she said out loud into the stifling air, ‘Well, Ianthe Brown, you’ve had an experience. Whoever he is, he’s not your common or garden tourist.’

Lifting heavy waves of hair from her hot scalp, she headed for the bathroom.

Tricia Upham, the friend whose parents owned the bach and had lent it to Ianthe for as long as she needed it, had said as she handed over the key, ‘Now that your hair’s grown past your shoulders, for heaven’s sake leave it alone. Chopping it off and hiding it behind goggles and flippers was just wicked ingratitude.’

‘Long hair’s a nuisance when you spend a lot of time underwater in a wetsuit,’ Ianthe had replied.

Now it didn’t seem as though she’d ever get back into a wetsuit.

In fact, she’d be glad if she could just get into the water. Setting her jaw, she washed her face and towelled it dry. ‘Self-pity is a refuge for wimps,’ she told her reflection, challenging the weakness inside her.

Soon she’d be able to swim again.

Surely.

She only needed determination.

The man behind the desk called out, ‘Come in.’

Mark appeared. ‘Before you tell me how big a fool I am,’ he said stiffly, ‘I’m sorry.’

The frown that had been gathering behind Alex Considine’s eyes vanished. He smiled with irony. ‘Just don’t let your enthusiasm override your common sense again.’

‘I won’t.’

‘If you see anything suspicious, report to me.’ His smile broadened. ‘I gather my mother got to you.’

Mark grinned and relaxed. ‘Several times,’ he said, adding, ‘She said you were in danger and emphasised that I should treat everyone with suspicion.’

So why bring a trespasser into the house? Alex wondered drily. Still, his mother was very persuasive, and Mark was a caretaker, not a bodyguard. ‘She’s spent her life worrying about me. I’m not in danger, especially not from slight young women of about twenty-five with a limp. Don’t take any notice of my mother.’

He hadn’t been able to convince her that, although there were people who’d rejoice at the news of his death, nothing was likely to happen to him in New Zealand. It had its problems, this little South Pacific country, and was fighting the worldwide increase in crime like every other country, but a man was probably as safe here as he would be anywhere.

He looked down at the pile of faxes on his desk and asked, ‘Who is the trespasser?’

Mark gave him a startled look. ‘How did you know I recognised her?’

‘If she’d been the usual tourist you’d have escorted her to the gate and sent her on her way.’

‘Yeah, well, I knew I’d seen her somewhere, and I knew it was on television, so I thought she was a reporter. That’s why I brought her back here. I thought you might want to interrogate her.’

Alex Considine nodded. ‘But?’

‘When I came in with the tea-tray I remembered who she was. She fronted a series of wildlife documentaries a year or so ago, until she got bitten by a shark somewhere up in the Pacific.’

So that was what had given her the limp and that hideous scar. Alex’s blood chilled. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Ianthe Brown. For a while she turned up on all the covers of the women’s magazines. She lost her job after she got bitten, of course.’ He shrugged. ‘The girl they got to replace her looks just as good in a bikini, but she’s not as good in her job. You could tell Ianthe Brown really liked what she was doing.’

Alex nodded, and Mark said, ‘By the way, I didn’t mean to hurt her wrist. She almost fell into the water and then she just lost it—started to shake and went as white as a sheet. Scared the hell out of me, so I hauled her out a bit too roughly. But I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ he repeated bluntly.

‘She’s probably nervous in the water,’ Alex said. ‘After an attack like that, anyone would be.’

‘Well, yeah, she might be, although we don’t have any sharks in the lakes.’

Alex laughed. ‘It’s not quite so easy as that,’ he said drily. ‘All right, on your way.’

‘What time do you want dinner?’

‘Eight.’ He was already looking at the first paper, and barely heard the door close behind the other man.

An hour later he lifted his head and got up, walking out onto the deck. The lake danced before him, ripely blue as the sheen on a kingfisher’s wings, and he summoned the face of the woman.

Intriguing, he thought.

But he’d known women who were more than intriguing, who exuded sexual promise with every smile, every movement of their bodies. This one wasn’t like that. Oh, she had a good figure and skin, and her golden eyes were miraculous, but she limped badly, and although she had regular, neat features she wasn’t beautiful in the modern sense.

He frowned. At first those hot amber eyes had glittered with anger, the long dark lashes almost hiding the wariness. And that hair! Hair to tangle around a man’s heart, he thought sardonically, knowing his was safe. This was a more primitive reaction; he wanted to see her hair spread out on his pillow, that delicately sensuous mouth blurred by his kisses, those eyes heavy and slumbrous with passion.

When their eyes had met, his stomach had contracted as though he’d been punched in the solar plexus. A savage, unmanageable physical desire had bypassed defences set up and reinforced since early adolescence.

Using the cold, analytical brain that served him so well, he recalled her face, her defiant stance, the square chin, the gentle, womanly curves—and watched his hands clench in front of him as his body responded helplessly.

What quality in her summoned such a response? She’d had no tricks, no artifice. The soft mouth had been naked of lipstick, and the glinting eyes hadn’t been emphasised by mascara and eyeshadow. Yet beneath her delicate, slightly old-fashioned prettiness he’d sensed a smouldering intensity, a primitive carnal power that threatened while it beckoned.

What had those amazing eyes seen when she’d looked at him the first time?

Grimacing, he forced his hands to relax. She’d seen what he saw in the mirror every morning—the face that proclaimed his pedigree and announced his heritage, features that could be traced back a thousand years.

Those great eyes had viewed him with nothing but suspicion, he thought, trying to find something amusing in that, a thread of irony that would quench the fever curling through his loins.

Her cool composure had challenged the primitive, fundamental male in him, as had her burning, golden eyes and her pale skin and that hair. And, he thought ironically, the body beneath those appalling clothes. Oh, yes, he’d responded fiercely to the slim legs and the sleek, lithe curves of breast and hip, the oddly fragile line of her throat and the thin wrists and ankles.

Different, but just as fierce, had been his reaction to that abomination of a scar, to her limp, to the pain in her eyes and the pallor of her face when her leg hurt. That unwilling, highly suspect need to protect her shocked him.

He was a man of strong passions and even stronger control. Celibacy was no stranger to him. And he was, he admitted, cynical about women, and regrettably bored with professional beauties.

Yet when he’d opened the door and seen her staring out of the window, her long legs and neat little backside revealed by her shorts, somewhere at a deep, cellular level he’d responded with a white-hot leap of recognition.

Damned inconvenient, he thought caustically, walking back into the room to straighten the pile of papers beside the laptop computer. He might crave the physical release of sex, but now, of all times, he needed to keep his mind clear.

For a moment he summoned the face and gorgeously voluptuous body of a woman who would have been furious to hear herself described as a call girl, but who would, he knew, be on the next flight if he asked her. His mouth tightened. He had no illusions; apart from his power and his money, Isabel wanted him because he had never succumbed to her lush expertise. He’d never used women, and his irritating desire for the interesting intruder wasn’t going to drive him in that direction.

There were other, far more important things to think about. That was why he’d come to New Zealand—to think. The decision he had to make would affect not only his life, but those of millions.

And for the only time since he’d grown up he couldn’t weigh the facts and measure the results of any given decision. His self-contained mind—razor-sharp and cold-blooded he’d been called often enough to make the terms clichés—didn’t even want to face the prospect.

The finely etched features of Ianthe Brown coalesced in the recesses of his brain. The contrast between her elaborate first name and her prosaic surname amused him. Ianthe meant violet flower, although the first Ianthe, his classical education reminded him, had been a Greek nymph, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.

All suspiciously appropriate.

Those delicately etched features were the sort adored by the camera. He caught himself wondering if the camera also revealed that latent wildness in her. Had she ever indulged it? Or was she a passionate puritan, afraid to give rein to her emotions?

Frowning, he looked out of the window and across the impossibly blue water of the lake. Once Mark had told him who she was it had been easy to find out more about her. The investigator in Auckland had worked fast and the pages had come through on the fax a few minutes ago.

Nothing, however, about her personal life. Apparently when featured by the women’s magazines she’d spoken only about her work, which had seemed to consist of swimming decoratively with whales and dolphins.

And sharks. No doubt the tense line of her succulent mouth and the frequent opacity of her eyes were other, more subtle results of that attack.

Once again gripped by a ferocious instinct to protect her, he pressed the buzzer beside the desk, then put the detective’s findings into a drawer.

When Mark appeared he said, ‘You’re going into Dargaville tomorrow morning, aren’t you? Go to the video shop and get me any that have Ianthe Brown in them.’

When he was alone again he picked up the papers on his desk and began to read, banishing memories of a passionately sculpted mouth, and hair the mixed colours of gold and new-minted copper, and skin translucent and delicate as silk.

And huge golden eyes that reflected the sheen of firelight and hinted at passions he’d never waken.