Читать книгу Stepping out of the Shadows - Robyn Donald - Страница 6

HEART thudding more noisily than the small plane’s faltering engine, Rafe Peveril dragged his gaze away from the rain-lashed windows, no longer able to see the darkening grasslands of Mariposa beneath them. A few seconds ago, just after the engine had first spluttered, he’d noticed a hut down there.

If they made it out of this alive, that hut might be their only hope of surviving the night.

Another violent gust of wind shook the plane. The engine coughed a couple of times, then failed. In the eerie silence the pilot muttered a jumble of prayers and curses in his native Spanish as he fought to keep the plane steady.

If they were lucky—damned lucky—they might land more or less intact …

When the engines sputtered back into life the woman beside Rafe looked up, white face dominated by great green eyes, black-lashed and tip-tilted and filled with fear.

Thank God she wasn’t screaming. He reached for her hand, gave it a quick hard squeeze, then released it to push her head down.

“Brace position,” he shouted, his voice far too loud in the sudden silence as the engines stopped again. The woman huddled low and Rafe set his teeth and steeled himself for the crash.

A shuddering jolt, a whirlwind of noise …

And Rafe woke.

Jerking upright, he let out a sharp breath, grey eyes sweeping a familiar room. The adrenalin surging through him mutated into relief. Instead of regaining consciousness in a South American hospital bed he was at home in his own room in New Zealand.

What the hell …?

It had to be at least a couple of years since he’d relived the crash. He searched for a trigger that could have summoned the dream but his memory—usually sharply accurate—failed him.

Again.

Six years should have accustomed him to the blank space in his head after the crash, yet although he’d given up on futile attempts to remember, he still resented those forty-eight vanished hours.

The bedside clock informed him that sunrise was too close to try for any more sleep—not that he’d manage it now. He needed space and fresh air.

Outside on the terrace he inhaled deeply, relishing the mingled scent of salt and flowers and newly mown grass, and the quiet hush of the waves. His heart rate slowed and the memories receded into the past where they belonged. Light from a fading moon surrounded the house with mysterious shadows, enhanced by the bright disc of Venus hanging above a bar of pure gold along the horizon where the sea met the sky.

The Mariposan pilot had died on impact, but miraculously both he and the wife of his estancia manager had survived with minor injures—the blow to the head for him, and apparently nothing more serious than a few bruises for her.

With some difficulty he conjured a picture of the woman—a drab nonentity, hardly more than a girl. Although he’d spent the night before the crash at the estancia, she’d kept very much in the background while he and her husband talked business. All he could recall were those amazingly green eyes in her otherwise forgettable face. Apart from them, she had been a plain woman.

With a plain name—Mary Brown.

He couldn’t recall seeing her smile—not that that was surprising. A week or so before he’d arrived at the estancia she’d received news of her mother’s sudden stroke and resultant paralysis. As soon as Rafe heard about it he’d offered to take her back with him to Mariposa’s capital and organise a flight to New Zealand.

Rafe frowned. What the hell was her husband’s name?

He recalled it with an odd sense of relief. David Brown—another plain name, and the reason for Rafe’s trip to Mariposa. He’d broken his flight home from London to see for himself if he agreed with the Mariposan agent’s warnings that David Brown was not a good fit for the situation.

Certainly Brown’s response to his offer to escort his wife back to New Zealand had been surprising.

“That won’t be necessary,” David Brown had told him brusquely. “She’s been ill—she doesn’t need the extra stress of looking after a cripple.”

However, by the next morning the man had changed his mind, presumably at his wife’s insistence, and that evening she’d accompanied Rafe on the first stage of the trip.

An hour after take-off they’d been caught by a wind of startling ferocity, and with it came rain so cold the woman beside him had been shivering within minutes. And the plane’s engines had cut out for the first time.

If it hadn’t been for the skill of the doomed pilot they’d probably all have died.

Of course! There was the stimulus—the trigger that had hurled his dreaming mind back six years.

Rafe inhaled sharply, recalling the email that had arrived just before he’d gone to bed last night. Sent from his office in London, for the first time in recorded history his efficient personal assistant had slipped up. No message, just a forwarded photograph of a dark young man wearing a look of conscious pride and a mortarboard, a graduation shot. Amused by his PA’s omission, Rafe had sent back one question mark.

Last night he hadn’t made the connection, but the kid looked very much like the pilot.

He swung around and headed for his office, switched on the computer, waited impatiently for it to boot up and smiled ironically when he saw another email.

His PA had written, Sorry about the stuff-up. I’ve just had a letter from the widow of the pilot in Mariposa. Apparently you promised their oldest boy an interview with the organisation there when he graduated from university. Photo of good-looking kid in mortarboard attached. OK to organise?

So that explained the dream. Rafe’s subconscious had made the connection for him in a very forthright fashion. He’d felt a certain obligation to the family of the dead pilot and made it his business to help them.

He replied with a succinct agreement to London, then headed back to his bedroom to dress.

After a gruelling trip to several African countries, it was great to be home, and apart from good sex and the exhilaration of business there was little he liked better than a ride along the beach on his big bay gelding in a Northland summer dawn.

Perhaps it might give him some inspiration for the gift he needed to buy that day, a birthday present for his foster-sister. His mouth curved. Gina had forthright views on appropriate gifts for a modern young woman.

“You might be a plutocrat,” she’d told him the day before, “but don’t you dare get your secretary to buy me something flashy and glittering. I don’t do glitter.”

He’d pointed out that his middle-aged PA would have been insulted to hear herself described as a secretary, and added that any presents he bought were his own choice, no one else’s.

Gina grinned and gave him a sisterly punch in the arm. “Oh, yeah? So why did you get me to check the kiss-off present you gave your last girlfriend?”

“It was her birthday gift,” he contradicted. “And if I remember correctly, you insisted on seeing it.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Of course I did. So it was just a coincidence you broke off the affair a week later?”

“It was a mutual decision,” Rafe told her, the touch of frost in his tone a warning.

His private life was his own. Because he had no desire to cause grief he chose his lovers for sophistication as well as their appeal to his mind and his senses. Eventually he intended to marry.

One day.

“Well, I suppose the diamonds salvaged a bit of pride for her,” Gina had observed cynically, hugging him before getting into her car for the trip back to Auckland. She’d turned on the engine, then said casually through the open window, “If you’re looking for something a bit different, the gift shop in Tewaka has a new owner. It’s got some really good stuff in it now.”

Recognising a hint when he heard one, several hours later Rafe headed for the small seaside town twenty kilometres from the homestead.

Inside the gift shop he looked around. Gina was right—the place had been fitted out with taste and style. His appreciative gaze took in demure yet sexy lingerie displayed with discretion, frivolous sandals perfect for any four-year-old girl who yearned to be a princess, some very good New Zealand art glass. As well as clothes there were ornaments and jewellery, even some books. And art, ranging in style from brightly coloured coastal scenes to moody, dramatic oils.

“Can I help you?”

Rafe swivelled around, met the shop assistant’s eyes and felt the ground shift beneath his feet. Boldly green and cat-tilted, set between lashes thick enough to tangle any heart, they sent him spinning back to his dream.

“Mary?” he asked without thinking.

But of course she wasn’t Mary Brown.

This woman was far from plain and an involuntary glance showed no ring on those long fingers. Although her eyes were an identical green, they were bright and challenging, not dully unaware.

Her lashes drooped and he sensed her subtle—but very definite—withdrawal.

“I’m sorry—have we met before?” she asked in an assured, crisp voice completely unlike Mary Brown’s hesitant tone. She added with a smile, “But my name isn’t Mary. It’s Marisa—Marisa Somerville.”

Indeed, the assured, beautifully groomed Ms Somerville was a bird of paradise compared to drab Mrs Brown. Apart from the coincidences of eye colour and shape, and first names beginning with the same letter, this woman bore no resemblance to the woman he’d seen in Mariposa.

Rafe held out his hand. “Sorry, but for a moment I thought you were someone else. I’m Rafe Peveril.”

Although her lashes flickered, her handshake was as confident as her voice. “How do you do, Mr Peveril.”

“Most people here call me Rafe,” he told her.

She didn’t pretend not to know who he was. Had there been a glimmer of some other emotion in the sultry green depths of her eyes, almost immediately hidden by those dark lashes?

If so, he could hear no sign of it in her voice when she went on, “Would you rather look around by yourself, or can I help you in any way?”

She hadn’t granted him permission to use her first name. Intrigued, and wryly amused at his reaction to her unspoken refusal, Rafe said, “My sister is having a birthday soon, and from the way she spoke of your shop I gathered she’d seen something here she liked. Do you know Gina Smythe?”

“Everyone in Tewaka knows Gina.” Smiling, she turned towards one of the side walls. “And, yes, I can tell you what she liked.”

“Gina isn’t noted for subtlety,” he said drily, appreciating the gentle feminine sway of slender hips, the graceful smoothness of her gait. His body stirred in a swift, sensually charged response that was purely masculine.

She stopped in front of an abstract oil. “This is the one.”

Rafe dragged his mind back to his reason for being there. Odd that Gina, so practical and matter-of-fact, couldn’t resist art that appealed directly to the darker, more stormy emotions.

“Who’s the artist?” he asked after a silent moment.

The woman beside him gave a soft laugh. “I am,” she admitted.

The hot tug of lust in Rafe’s gut intensified, startling him. Was she as passionate as the painting before him? Perhaps he’d find out some day …

“I’ll take it,” he said briskly. “Can you gift-wrap it for me? I’ll call back in half an hour.”

“Yes, of course.”

“Thanks.”

Out of the shop, away from temptation, he reminded himself curtly that he’d long ago got over the adolescent desire to bed every desirable woman he met. Yet primitive hunger still quickened his blood.

Soon he’d invite Marisa Somerville to dinner.

If she was unattached, which seemed unlikely in spite of her ringless fingers. Women who looked like her—especially ones who exuded that subtle sexuality—usually had a man in the not-very-distant background.

Probably, he thought cynically, stopping to speak to a middle-aged woman he’d known from childhood, he’d responded to her so swiftly because it was several months since he’d made love.

From behind the flimsy barrier of the sales counter Marisa watched him, her pulse still hammering so loudly in her ears she hardly heard the rising shriek of the siren at the local fire-brigade headquarters.

She resisted the impulse to go and wash Rafe Peveril’s grip from her skin. A handshake was meant to be impersonal, an unthreatening gesture …

Yet when he’d taken her outstretched hand in his strong, tempered fingers an erotic shiver had sizzled through every cell. Rafe Peveril’s touch had been unbearably stimulating, as dangerous as a siren’s song.

If a simple, unemotional handshake could do that, what would happen if he kissed her—?

Whoa! Outraged, she ordered her wayward mind to shut down that train of thought.

For two months she’d been bracing herself for this—ever since she’d been appalled to discover Rafe Peveril lived not far from Tewaka. Yet when she’d looked up to see him pace into the shop, more than six foot of intimidating authority and leashed male force, she’d had to stop herself from bolting out the back door.

Of all the rotten coincidences … It hadn’t occurred to her to check the names of the local bigwigs before signing the contract that locked her into a year’s lease of the shop.

She should have followed her first impulse after her father’s death and crossed the Tasman Sea to take refuge in Australia.

At least her luck had held—Rafe hadn’t recognised her. It was difficult to read the brilliant mind behind his arrogantly autocratic features, but she’d be prepared to bet that after a jolt of what might have been recognition he’d completely accepted her new persona and identity.

She swallowed hard as the fire engine raced past, siren screaming. Please God it was just a grass fire, not a motor accident, or someone’s house.

Her gaze fell to the picture she’d just sold. Forcing herself to breathe carefully and steadily, she took it off the wall and carried it across to the counter.

Gina Smythe was the sort of woman Marisa aspired to be—self-assured, decisive, charming. But of course Rafe Peveril’s sister would have been born with the same effortless, almost ruthless self-confidence that made him so intimidating.

Whereas it had taken her years—and much effort—to manufacture the façade she now hid behind. Only she knew that deep inside her lurked the naive, foolish kid filled with simple-minded hope and fairytale fantasies who’d married David Brown and gone with him to Mariposa, expecting an exotic tropical paradise and the romance of a lifetime.

Her mouth curved in a cynical, unamused line as she expertly cut a length of gift-wrapping paper.

How wrong she’d been.

However, that was behind her now. And as she couldn’t get out of her lease agreement, she’d just have to make sure everyone—especially Rafe Peveril—saw her as the woman who owned the best gift shop in Northland.

She had to make a success of this venture and squirrel away every cent she could. Once the year was up she’d leave Tewaka for somewhere safer—a place where her past didn’t intrude and she could live without fear, a place where she could at last settle.

The sort of place she thought she’d found in Tewaka …

Half an hour later she was keeping a wary eye on the entrance while dealing with a diffident middle-aged woman who couldn’t make up her mind. Every suggestion was met with a vague comment that implied rejection.

Once, Marisa thought compassionately, she’d been like that. Perhaps this woman too was stuck in a situation with no escape. Curbing her tension, she walked her around the shop, discussing the recipient of the proposed gift, a fourteen-year-old girl who seemed to terrify her grandmother.

A movement from the door made her suck in an involuntary breath as Rafe Peveril strode in, his size and air of cool authority reducing the shop and its contents to insignificance.

Black-haired, tanned and arrogantly handsome, his broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped body moving in a lithe predator’s gait on long, heavily muscled legs, he was a man who commanded instant attention.

Naked, he was even more magnificent …

Appalled by the swift memory from a past she’d tried very hard to forget, she murmured, “If you don’t mind, I’ll give Mr Peveril his parcel.”

“Oh, yes—do.” The customer looked across the shop, turning faintly pink when she received a smile that sizzled with male charisma.

Deliberately relaxing her taut muscles, Marisa set off towards him. He knew the effect that smile had on women.

It set female hearts throbbing—as hers was right now.

Not, however, solely with appreciation.

In Mariposa his height had struck her first. Only when he’d been close had she noticed that his eyes were grey, so dark they were the colour of iron.

But in Mariposa his gaze had been coolly aloof.

Now he made no attempt to hide his appreciation. Heat licked through her, warring with a primitive sense of approaching danger. She forced a smile, hoping he’d take the mechanical curve of her lips for genuine pleasure.

“Hello, Mr Peveril, here’s your parcel,” she said, lowering her lashes as she placed it carefully on the counter.

“Thank you.” After a quick look he asked, “Do you give lessons in parcel wrapping and decoration?”

Startled, she looked up, parrying his direct, keen survey with a mildly enquiring lift of her brows. “I hadn’t thought of it.”

A long finger tapped the parcel. “This is beautifully done. With Christmas not too far away you’d probably have plenty of takers.”

Easy chitchat was not his style. He’d been pleasant enough in Mariposa, but very much the boss—

Don’t think of Mariposa.

It was stupid to feel that somehow her wayward thoughts might show in her face and trigger a vagrant memory in him.

Stupid and oddly scary. It took a lot of will to look him in the eye and say in a steady voice, “Thank you. I might put a notice in the window and see what happens.”

As though he’d read her mind, he said in an idle tone at variance with his cool, keen scrutiny, “I have this odd feeling we’ve met before, but I’m certain I’d remember if we had.”

Oh, God! Calling on every ounce of self-preservation, she said brightly, “So would I, Mr Peveril—”

“Rafe.”

She swallowed. Her countrymen were famously casual, so it was stupid to feel that using his first name forged some sort of link. “Rafe,” she repeated, adding with another meaningless smile, “I’d have remembered too, I’m sure.” Oh, hell, did that sound like an attempt at flirtation? Hastily she added, “I do hope your sister enjoys the painting.”

“I’m sure she will. Thank you.” He nodded, picked up the parcel and left.

Almost giddy with relief, Marisa had to take a couple of deep breaths before she returned to her customer. It took another ten minutes before the woman finally made up her mind, and while Marisa was wrapping the gift, she leaned forwards and confided in a low voice, “Gina Smythe’s not really Rafe’s sister, you know.”

“No, I didn’t know.” Marisa disliked gossip, so she tried to make her tone brisk and dismissive even though curiosity assailed her.

“Poor girl, she was in a foster home not far from here—one she didn’t like—so she ran away when she was about six and hid in a cave on Manuwai.”

At Marisa’s uncomprehending glance she elaborated, “Manuwai is the Peveril station, out on the coast north of here. The family settled there in the very early days. It’s one of the few land grants still intact—an enormous place. Rafe found Gina and took her home with him, and his parents more or less adopted her. Rafe’s an only child.”

“Ah, I see.” No wonder Gina and Rafe didn’t share a surname.

And she’d been so sure the woman’s sense of confidence had been born in her …

The woman leaned closer. “When I say his parents, it was his stepmother, really. His birth mother left him and his father when Rafe was about six. It was a great scandal—she divorced him and married a film star, then divorced him and married someone else—and it was rumoured the elder Mr Peveril paid millions of dollars to get rid of her.”

Shocked, Marisa tried to cut her off, only to have the woman drop her voice even further. “She was very beautiful—always dashing off to Auckland and Australia and going on cruises and trips to Bali.” Her tone made that exotic island paradise sound like one of the nether regions of hell.

Hoping to put an end to this, Marisa handed over the purchase in one of her specially designed bags. “Thank you,” she said firmly.

But the woman was not to be deterred. “She didn’t even look after Rafe—he had a nanny from the time he was born. His stepmother—the second Mrs Peveril—was very nice, but she couldn’t have children, so Rafe is an only child. Such a shame …”

Her voice trailed away when another customer entered the shop. Intensely relieved, Marisa grabbed the opportunity. “I’m pretty certain your granddaughter will love this, but if she doesn’t, come back with her and we’ll find something she does like.”

“That’s very kind of you,” the woman fluttered. “Thank you very much, my dear.”

The rest of the day was too busy for Marisa to think about what she’d heard, and once she’d closed the shop she walked along the street to the local after-school centre. She’d chosen Tewaka to settle in for various reasons, but that excellent care centre had been the clincher.

Her heart swelled at the grin from her son. “Hello, darling. How’s your day been?”

“Good,” he told her, beaming as he always did. To five-year-old Keir every day was good. How had Rafe Peveril’s days been after his mother had left?

Keir asked, “Did you have a good day too?”

She nodded. “Yes, a cruise ship—a really big one—came into the Bay of Islands, so I had plenty of customers.” And most had bought something.

Fishing around in his bag, Keir asked, “Can I go to Andy’s birthday party? Please,” he added conscientiously. “He gave me this today.” He handed over a somewhat crumpled envelope.

Taking it, she thought wryly that in a way it was a pity he’d settled so well. A sunny, confident boy, he’d made friends instantly and he was going to miss them when they left. “I’ll read it when we get home, but I don’t see any reason why not.”

He beamed again, chattering almost nonstop while they shopped in the supermarket. Marisa’s heart swelled, then contracted into a hard ball in her chest. Keir was her reason for living, the pivot of her life. His welfare was behind every decision she’d made since the day she’d realised she was pregnant.

No matter what it took, she’d make sure he had everything he needed to make him happy.

And that, she thought later after a tussle of wills had seen him into bed, included discipline.

Whatever else he missed out on, he had a mother who loved him. Which, if local gossip was anything to go by, was more than Rafe Peveril had had. He’d only been a year older than Keir when his mother had left.

She felt a huge compassion for the child he’d been. Had that first great desertion made him the tough, ruthless man he was now?

More than likely. But although the sad story gave her a whole new perspective on him, she’d be wise to remember she was dealing with the man he was now, not the small deserted boy he’d once been.

That night memories of his hard, speculative survey kept her awake. She hated to think of the way she’d been when she’d first met him—ground down into a grey shadow of a woman—and she’d been hugely relieved when he didn’t recognise her.

Images sharpened by a primitive fear flooded back, clear and savagely painful. Two years of marriage to David had almost crushed her.

If it hadn’t been for Rafe Peveril she’d probably still be on that lonely estancia in Mariposa, unable to summon the strength—or the courage, she thought with an involuntary tightening of her stomach muscles—to get away.

It had taken several years and a lot of effort to emerge from that dark world of depression and insecurity. Now she had the responsibility of her son, she’d never again trust herself to a man with an urge to dominate.

Twisting in her bed, she knew she wasn’t going to sleep. She had no camomile tea, but a cup of the peppermint variety might soothe her enough.

Even as she stood in the darkened kitchen of the little, elderly cottage she rented, a mug of peppermint tea in hand, she knew it wasn’t going to work. She grimaced as she gazed out into the summer night—one made for lovers, an evocation of all that was romantic, the moon’s silver glamour spreading a shimmering veil of magic over the countryside.

Bewildered by an inchoate longing for something unknown, something more—something primal and consuming and intense—she was almost relieved when hot liquid sloshed on to her fingers, jerking her back into real life.

Hastily she set the mug on the bench and ran cold water over her hand until the mild stinging stopped.

“That’s what you get for staring at the moon,” she muttered and, picking up her mug again, turned away from the window.

Seeing Rafe Peveril again had set off a reckless energy, as though her body had sprung to life after a long sleep.

She should have expected it.

Her first sight of him at the estancia, climbing down from the old Jeep, had awakened a determination she’d thought she’d lost. His raw male vitality—forceful yet disciplined—had broken through her grey apathy.

From somewhere she’d summoned the initiative to tell him of her mother’s illness and that she wasn’t expected to live.

Then, when David had refused Rafe’s offer to take her home, she’d gathered every ounce of courage and defied him.

She shivered. Thank heavens she was no longer that frail, damaged woman. Now, it seemed incredible she’d let herself get into such a state.

Instead of standing in the dark recalling the crash, she should be exulting, joyously relieved because the meeting she’d been dreading for the past two months had happened without disaster.

Oh, Rafe had noticed her, all right—but only with masculine interest.

So she’d passed the first big hurdle. If only she could get rid of the nagging instinct that told her to run. Now—while she still could.

What if he eventually worked out that she and Mary Brown were the same woman?

What if David was still working for him, and he told her ex-husband where she and Keir were?

What if he found out about the lie she’d told David—the lie that had finally and for ever freed her and her son?

Marisa took another deep breath and drained the mug of lukewarm tea. That wasn’t going to happen because her ex-husband didn’t care about Keir.

Anyway, worrying was a waste of time and nervous energy. All she had to do was avoid Rafe Peveril, which shouldn’t be difficult, even in a place as small as Tewaka—his vast empire kept him away for much of the time.

Closing the curtains on the sultry enchantment of the moon, she tried to feel reassured. While she kept out of his way she’d make plans for a future a long way from Tewaka.

Somewhere safe—where she could start again.

Start again …

She’d believed—hoped—she’d done that for the last time when she’d arrived in Tewaka. A soul-deep loneliness ached through her. Her life had been nothing but new starts.

Sternly she ordered herself not to wallow in self-pity. Before she decided to put down roots again, she’d check out the locals carefully.

Also, she thought ruefully, if she could manage it she’d buy some dull-brown contact lenses.