Читать книгу Temporary Mistress: Mistress for a Weekend / Mistress on Demand / Public Wife, Private Mistress - Susan Napier, Maggie Cox - Страница 13

‘PROPERTY—?’ Nora broke off, a smile of relieved enlightenment dawning on her pallid face. ‘Ohh—oh you mean that…’

There was no answering humour in his expression. ‘Yes, that,’ he echoed grimly.

‘I told you I wasn’t thinking straight this morning, otherwise I would have clicked straight away,’ she said, embarrassed by her obtuseness. ‘Of course you want your disk back…I’m really sorry for the mix up. I’ll just go and get it—’

She moved, confidently expecting him to give way, but he didn’t and she walked straight into his solid chest. His hands closed around her upper arms as her bare feet stubbed themselves against his polished shoes. She gave a little squeak as he lifted her until her face was level with his.

‘Go where, exactly?’

‘To my bedroom,’ she gasped, conscious of her dangling legs bumping against his iron thighs, of the effortless ease with which he had lifted her. ‘If you’ll put me down, I’ll fetch it for you—’

‘Like an obedient little bitch? I don’t think so.’ His acid words were etched with cynicism. ‘I’m sure you’ll understand if I insist on coming with you. I wouldn’t like you to vanish on me again.’

‘For goodness’ sake, what do you think I’m going to do? Climb out the window?’ she protested shakily, pushing against his iron shoulders to little effect.

‘At this point, I wouldn’t put anything past you,’ he said, setting her back down on the ground, but keeping a firm grip on one slender elbow.

‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, hurrying into the bedroom, trying to ignore his overwhelming closeness and the electric tingle of his fingertips against her skin. ‘It’s not as if I meant to take it. It must have got caught up in the folds of my coat when I grabbed it off your desk last night. I was going to courier it back to you today—’

‘Really?’ He drew out the word into a sceptical drawl.

Nora had always thought her bedroom was airy and spacious, but as soon as Blake stepped through the door the proportions suddenly seemed to shrink and the oxygen supply dip below the level of comfort.

‘It’s not usually this messy,’ she was annoyed to find herself explaining, hastily gathering up the scattered clothing from the rumpled bedcover. ‘I—I left in rather a hurry yesterday.’

His all-encompassing glance had taken in the orderly possessions on her mirrored dressing-table, the neatly coordinated clothes hanging in the open wardrobe and the tidy row of photo frames on her tallboy.

‘Are these your parents?’

‘What?’ She looked up from rummaging in the bulging side pocket of the soft-sided case that held her laptop to see him studying a photo of herself aged ten, flanked by a blond couple exchanging laughing looks over her nut-brown head. ‘Oh, no, they died when I was little—that’s my father’s sister and her husband—Aunt Tess and Uncle Pat—they brought my brother Sean and me up.’ Her voice was coloured with unconscious warmth as she attempted to take the edge off his hostility by adding, ‘They hadn’t planned on having kids themselves, so we were a bit of a drag on their lifestyle, but they never made us feel unwanted—’

‘Do they still live in Invercargill?’

She stiffened. She was sure she hadn’t mentioned her origins last night. He must have discovered it while delving into her identity. It gave her a shivery feeling to think that he knew things about her that she hadn’t chosen to tell him. Not that she had anything to hide, she consoled herself. The fact that she had lived the majority of her life in a small town on the southernmost tip of the South Island was a point in her favour as far as she was concerned.

‘Yes, they do. As I’m sure your paid snoop will confirm,’ she said tartly, pulling out the compact disk in its clear plastic protector. She had been a self-deluded idiot to think for even one second that Blake MacLeod’s unfinished business with her was anything to do with what had happened between them in his room last night.

He turned. ‘A wise man knows his enemies.’

‘I’m not your enemy,’ she protested, slapping the disk into his outstretched hand. ‘And I don’t steal,’ she added with all the force of angry sincerity. ‘When I found this lying on the back seat of my car last night, I had no idea where it came from—’

He stared impassively down into her wide-set eyes. ‘Copies?’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘I want any and all copies you’ve made,’ he said, slipping the CD into the inside pocket of his jacket. ‘And don’t bother to tell me you didn’t burn any, because I wouldn’t believe you.’

She gritted her teeth. He made it sound as if good computer housekeeping was a criminal act. ‘Since I didn’t know what the disk was, of course I made a back-up copy before I tried to open it,’ she informed him.

‘Is that where you were last night…at your office, downloading my confidential data on to Maitlands’ network? I suppose you were hoping I wouldn’t notice anything was missing until today. Unluckily for you, I decided to do some more work after you ran out on me—’

‘Don’t be ridiculous! I never went near the office,’ she said tightly, massaging her aching temple. ‘Why would I? I told you, I didn’t know what the disk was, and I couldn’t very well return it until I found out who it belonged to, could I? I happened to have my laptop with me, so I used that to check it out.’ She found the copy she had made and shoved it at him. ‘There. Now, feel free to leave after you apologise!’

Her bitter sarcasm had little effect. ‘Did you make a printout or email it to anyone?’

Her generous mouth thinned. ‘Of course not. And, no, I’m not going to turn over my computer to you—you’ll just have to take my word for it.’

‘And why should I do that?’

‘Because I’m a very trustworthy person,’ she snapped.

His steely gaze was unrelenting as it inspected her shiny face. ‘You expect me to believe this was all an unfortunate coincidence…? That you didn’t seduce me in order to gain access to information in my hotel room—’

‘Any seduction going on was entirely mutual!’ she choked.

A faint gleam appeared in his grey eyes. ‘You have an odd idea of mutuality. Or do you usually get your kicks from picking up strange men and skipping out on them as soon as you’ve taken your own pleasure?’

She clenched her hands at her sides. ‘I don’t usually pick up men at all,’ she rebutted fiercely. ‘I don’t go in for meaningless one-night stands—’

His voice deepened into a dark drawl that wrapped around her like black velvet. ‘Then why did you invite yourself to my hotel room? Why did you lead me on the way you did…let me undress you, touch you, taste you…?’

She shivered at his evocative words, her skin prickling from her scalp to her toes at the erotic memory of his sensuous skill, her limbs weighted with a strange heaviness that had nothing to do with fatigue.

‘Look, you’ve got your disk back and I’ve apologised; what more do you expect?’ she said raggedly. ‘Can’t we just forget about last night?’

‘No, I’m afraid we can’t,’ he said, with an implacable gentleness that seemed more threatening than his former raging temper. ‘Because we both know that you opened and read those files—didn’t you, Nora?’

His soft words made it more of a statement than a question and her gaze dropped to the item in question, her thick brown lashes screening the guilty expression in her eyes as she watched him pocket it with its twin. ‘It was security protected.’

A sceptical sound rumbled in his chest at her evasive answer. ‘R-i-g-h-t. And you’re a hacker from way back. You’re one of Maitlands’ resident computer whizkids, constantly manipulating the interface between man and the sharp end of technology.’ He flaunted his newly acquired knowledge of her background with ruthless intent: ‘You took papers at Otago University while you were employed there, but you never bothered doing a full degree course—you’d already proven yourself in the market-place, hawking your software skills since you were in high school. Coming up against a good security block like the one on this disk would be a challenge rather than a deterrent to someone like you.’ His cool contempt was not unmixed with admiration. ‘Given the time, opportunity and Internet access, bypassing it would be well within your capabilities. So don’t insult my intelligence by pretending to be an innocent fluff-head.’

She winced at the accuracy of his insight, his accusing words pounding into her tender skull like hot nails. ‘OK, OK—so I peeked at your boring reports,’ she admitted sulkily. ‘I know I shouldn’t have—but, well—it was a choice of that or the porno channel.’

‘What in the hell are you talking about?’

His abrupt scowl made her regret her loose tongue. ‘I—I stayed the night in a motel a couple of blocks from here.’ The words dragged themselves reluctantly out of her mouth. ‘I couldn’t sleep, the TV reception was dreadful and the inhouse video channel was playing adult movies, so I decided to pass the time with my laptop.’

Finding that her computer was still in the car had been the saviour of her sanity through the long lonely hours. She had welcomed the company of a trusted old friend, one who was endlessly entertaining and who had never let her down. And the mystery disk had been a convenient distraction from her personal problems. With a complex puzzle to focus on, Nora had been able to shove her own misery to the back of her mind, her steady ingestion of vodka muffling any whispers of conscience.

‘A motel? What were you doing at a motel?’ Blake’s face had tightened with renewed suspicion, his nostrils flaring with distaste.

Nora squirmed inwardly under his accusatory gaze.

‘It’s a long story.’ she muttered. ‘A very long, very boring story,’ she hastened to emphasise as she saw his eyes flare with curiosity. ‘And it really has nothing to do with any of this…’

He put his hands on his hips, his sleek dark suit cloaking a lean frame that bespoke both immovable object and irresistible force. ‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’

She felt too fragile to keep battling his bull-headed stubbornness.

‘If you’ll just get me a couple of aspirin from the bathroom, I’ll tell you,’ she stalled, directing him with a limp wave of her hand. ‘They’re in the mirrored cabinet above the basin.’

She groaned as he remained welded to the spot. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—I’m not going to run away as soon as your back is turned. I have a thumping great headache and I don’t want to go in there right now, OK?’

‘Why? Is there a body in the bath?’

His sarcasm conjured up the images she was trying so hard to scrape out of her skull. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she said, rubbing at her bloodshot eyes.

‘Explain.’

She automatically baulked at the rapped-out order. ‘Can’t you get the aspirin first?’

‘Stop whining and start talking.’

Nora had never whined in her life. Infuriated by his intransigence, she exploded and gave him an earful of her stored resentment, drawing a graphic picture of the sordid events of the previous day and taking a masochistic delight in painting all the gory details of her humiliating failure to satisfy the man she had honoured with her long-time affections.

‘Is it any wonder that I didn’t want to come home last night? I’d be happy never to see either of them ever again, but we all work for Maitlands so I’m stuck with having my nose rubbed in my stupidity five days a week.’

There was a crackling silence. ‘So what was I supposed to be?’ he asked with a distinct edge. ‘Your revenge on the straying boyfriend?’

‘No!’ The instinctive denial came from the depths of her femininity, but was tempered by her innate honesty. ‘Yes—no—maybe—I really don’t know.’ Nora slumped down on to the edge of the bed, closing her eyes and propping her elbows on her knees, resting her heavy head in her hands. ‘Maybe it started out that way, but I don’t know what I was thinking by the time I—we…It all seems so surreal now, like a bad dream…’

She heard him move away and was conscious of him using his cell-phone, but was too tired to strain to hear the lowvoiced conversation and when next she opened her eyes it was to see him crouched in front of her, holding out two flat white pills and a half-filled glass of water. Disorientated, she blinked, wondering whether in her state of extreme tiredness she had dozed off.

‘Thanks,’ she said, and downed them quickly, puckering her mouth at the chalky taste. ‘That wasn’t arsenic, was it?’ she joked weakly.

He eyed her pale face as he put aside the empty glass. ‘Have you given me reason to want to murder you?’

She smiled weakly. Even if she had gained his sympathy, his trust was obviously not so easily obtained.

‘Not that I can think of. I just thought—well—you might feel that I’d insulted your manhood…uh, the frail male ego and all that—’

He stood, towering over her. ‘My ego is very healthy, thank you…particularly after last night. There’s nothing more flattering for a man than to watch a woman come helplessly apart in his arms,’ he mused in that dark and dangerous drawl. ‘So violently aroused that she melts all over his fingers like sweet hot honey, and moans his name like a sexy mantra as she shudders to her first climax…’

Nora’s lips parted, but not a breath of sound trickled out of her shocked mouth, a wave of heat chasing away her pallor.

‘Or are you going to try and dismiss that as a bad dream, too?’ he goaded silkily, his eyes riveted to her upturned face as he watched the wild flush creep up to her hairline. ‘If you doubt my veracity as an eye-witness perhaps we could try a re-enactment to jog your obviously deficient memory…’

She shot off the bed as if the sheets were suddenly on fire. ‘Uh, I think perhaps I will go in to work after all. I mean, I have to face up to Kelly and Ryan some time, don’t I?’ she babbled, raking the tangle of curls away from her hot cheeks.

‘You’re obviously still feeling pretty fragile right now.’ He cut ruthlessly across her hectic tumble of words. ‘Do you really think you’re up to the challenge of confronting them in front of all your coworkers?’ His subtle emphasis on the provocative word triggered a predictable bristling of Nora’s pride.

‘Of course I am,’ she insisted thinly, despite a backbone that went to jelly at the thought. ‘After all, I’ve done nothing to be ashamed of!’

‘Quite.’ Her gaze shot suspiciously to his and met an expression of such bland innocence that she frowned.

The brackets around his mouth deepened into a smile that made her stomach twist itself into fresh contortions. ‘In that case, why don’t you get dressed for work and allow me to drop you off?’ he offered smoothly. ‘It’s the least I can do in the circumstances.’

She didn’t want to dwell on the circumstances. ‘Thanks, but I have my own car—’

‘If you drank the amount you claim you did last night, then your blood alcohol level would still be well above the legal limit,’ he pointed out sternly. ‘What would have happened if you’d been involved in a car accident this morning?’

She was shocked to realise that the thought hadn’t even occurred to her. She probably shouldn’t have been behind the wheel last night either, given the several glasses of wine she had consumed on an empty stomach, she thought, appalled at her criminal self-absorption.

‘Statistically, most car accidents happen within a few kilometres of home,’ he said, piling on the guilt. ‘I’d be reneging on my duty as a responsible citizen if I let you get behind the wheel again.’

She nibbled her lower lip. Why did the thought of the ruthlessly ambitious Blake MacLeod as a virtuous citizen set alarm bells ringing in the back of her mind?

‘Does this mean that you’ve finally decided that I’m not a modern-day Mata Hari?’ she ventured.

He gave her a measuring look. ‘I suppose that depends on what you intend doing with the information you’ve unexpectedly acquired.’

‘Nothing!’ she was quick to assure him. ‘It’s of no matter to me if you want to acquire a dozen shipping companies—’ She broke off as his fierce black brows snapped together. ‘What?’

‘I find that rather hard to believe,’ he said, ‘considering that one of Maitlands’ leading clients is the preferred bidder for TranStar Shipping—the white knight elected to fight off big bad PresCorp’s attempts to acquire a majority shareholding.’

‘Is it?’ She spread her fingers dismissively wide. ‘I don’t have anything to do with the acquisitions side of the business; I’m just a technician. Is that why you jumped to the ridiculous conclusion I was some sort of spy? Well, you don’t have to worry about it, truly—because I really wasn’t interested.’ She pinned him with a hopeful look. ‘Actually, my memory is pretty hazy on everything that happened last night.’

‘But what you do recall of strategic value you’ll no doubt feel honour bound to pass on to your employers.’

She frowned at his sardonic response. ‘Not when the information was obtained unethically.’

There was a moment of stunned silence.

‘You can’t be that naive,’ he said, in a voice so dry that it crackled.

She was stung by his obvious incredulity. ‘It’s not naive to have principles.’ The tilt of her freckled nose indicated her haughty displeasure. ‘Maybe if you were more trusting of people you might find yourself pleasantly surprised by the rest of humanity—’

‘Like you were, you mean, when you stumbled in on your boyfriend and his busty blonde cavorting amongst the bubbles?’

She took the jab with a sharp intake of breath. ‘It must be really depressing to be so cynical and pessimistic,’ she counter-punched weakly.

‘On the upside, I’m rarely disappointed in my expectations,’ he parried. ‘Shall I help myself to a cup of coffee while I’m waiting for you to change? Or do you intend to cut off your nose to spite your face and spurn my offer of a ride?’

He seemed to expect it, so she took perverse pleasure in disappointing his jaded expectations. ‘Give me ten minutes.’

His mouth twisted downward as he backed towards the door. ‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep. Women aren’t programmed for a quick turn-around.’

Fifteen minutes later she stalked out of her room, bracing herself for a snide remark, and surprised Blake MacLeod delving in the laundry basket which sat on the washing machine at the far end of the kitchen.

‘What on earth do you think you’re doing?’ she screeched, visions of perversion dancing in her head.

‘Folding your clean laundry.’

She snatched the lacy black 36D quarter-cup bra out of his fingers and threw it back into the overflowing basket. ‘That’s not mine; it’s all Kelly’s—my laundry is over there!’ She pointed to the neatly folded pile of fragrant clothes sitting on the fold-down ironing board. To her horror, lying on top was a pair of white cotton panties figured with cartoon rabbits, a pathetic contrast to Kelly’s sexy wisps of lace.

‘I see…’ His voice was smoky with speculation as he turned to survey her boyish figure in the narrow buff skirt and creased short-sleeved white cotton shirt that she had hurriedly snatched out of her wardrobe.

‘What do you see?’ She regretted the snappish words the instant they were out of her mouth. She didn’t need to be told she looked less than her best. She tightened her clammy grip on her laptop and hitched on the strap of her shoulder bag, trying to summon the stamina she would need to get through the rest of the day.

‘I see that you’re ready to go,’ he said with an evasiveness that was more annoying than any critical remark. ‘Are these your keys?’

Without waiting for an answer, he scooped them up from the bench where she had tossed them and smoothly shepherded her from the flat, locking the deadbolt and escorting her out into the dazzling sunshine. Nora’s headache instantly flared as the hot needles of light stabbed into her brain and she submitted meekly to the firm hand in the small of her back which propelled her towards a long, sleek, low, wine-red coupé with tinted windows parked against the kerb. Eyes watering, she groped blindly in her shoulder bag for her dark glasses, muttering under her breath as they eluded her grasp.

He opened the passenger door of the car and she sank gratefully into the inviting dimness, still rummaging in her open bag.

‘Here, let me put that in the boot for you and give you more leg-room,’ he said, removing her laptop from her feet and suiting his action to his words.

He dipped his head as he returned to her open door. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘I can’t find my sunglasses,’ she whimpered.

‘I’m not surprised, given the quantity of clutter you seem to cart around with you,’ came the unsympathetic answer.

She gritted her teeth as she tried to think up a suitably scathing reply, only to be cut off by his impatient curse as he straightened, his hand tightening around her keys.

‘Damn! I must’ve left my cell-phone on your table. Wait here—I’ll be right back.’

‘See if you can find my sunglasses, too,’ she just had time to fling at him before the car door was closed firmly in her face and he strode back towards the flat with an energy that made her feel doubly exhausted. She slumped back in the butter-soft leather seat and discovered that her fingers were resting on the elusive eyewear. She debated calling after him, but couldn’t work up the energy to reopen the door. Serve him right if he had to waste some more of his precious time on a fruitless search. Nora slid the sunglasses out of her bag and on to her nose. She clipped on her seatbelt and lay back in the soothing dimness, waiting for the painkillers she had swallowed to kick in.

She closed her eyes, the better to brood on the iniquities of men in general and one or two in particular, and only opened them again when she felt a vibrating thud from the rear of the car. She discovered she had slumped sideways in her seat and hurriedly sat upright as Blake MacLeod walked around from the back of the vehicle. He had taken off his jacket and tie and must have stowed them in the boot. She wondered why he had bothered for such a short trip.

He slid in behind the steering wheel. With the collar of his navy shirt unbuttoned he looked as comfortable as she felt grotty.

‘What took you so long?’ she needled.

He fastened his seatbelt and started the car, ignoring the provocation. ‘I see you found your sunglasses,’ he commented over the signature rumble of a V-8 engine.

‘They were in my bag all along,’ she admitted with sweet malice.

‘Why didn’t you phone your flat and let me know I could stop hunting?’

‘Because I don’t have my mobile with me. I left it at work yesterday,’ she shot back.

‘Really? A technophile without her phone? Isn’t that a contradiction in terms?’ he said as he glanced in the rear-view mirror and executed a neat U-turn, sending the cluster of black-on-white dials under the steering column jumping.

She concentrated on adjusting to the unwelcome motion. ‘I was in a rush to get home,’ she remembered sourly.

‘Lucky for you.’

‘Lucky?’

‘Ignorance isn’t always the bliss it’s made out to be,’ her companion commented. The car pulled out on to the main road with a bellowing surge of speed that sent Nora’s stomach lurching back against her spine.

‘Would you mind slowing down a bit? I don’t think I can take too many corners like that,’ she asked through clenched teeth.

He eased off the accelerator and the car instantly responded to his command, the aggressive bark settling back into a guttural growl. ‘Better?’

Sweat prickled across her brow. She swallowed the moisture that had gathered under her tongue before she answered. ‘Thanks.’

‘If you’re feeling too weak to do this, I could turn around and take you back home,’ he offered.

Too weak? So he no longer saw her as a sexy seductress, a proud Boadicea to his Roman general, but an object of pity? ‘It’s just the sudden change in direction. Keep driving—I’ll be fine.’

‘If you say so.’

‘Don’t worry; I’m not going to throw up on your expensive upholstery.’

‘It’s you I’m worried about, not the car,’ he said, showing a stunning disregard for the possessive pleasure with which his fingers caressed the steering wheel. ‘Why don’t you just try to relax—take a power nap for a few minutes? Here, maybe this will help.’ She heard a muted click and a delicious breeze sprang up to whisper against her face and throat, chilling the perspiration on her exposed skin. A soft burr signalled the loading of a CD and quiet classical music began to flow around the sculpted curves of the sealed cabin.

‘Mmm, that’s lovely…’ Her smooth brow wrinkled as she pursued an elusive familiarity. ‘What is it?’

‘Ravel’s Pavane,’ His voice was leaden with patience.

‘Do you usually listen to music like this as you drive?’ she murmured.

He was quick to detect the trace of surprise in her tone. ‘Do you expect me to be a cultural barbarian just because I don’t have a higher education?’

Behind her closed eyes she mentally blinked. Did he carry a chip on his shoulder about his background? If he cultivated the image of himself as a ruthless savage in the business arena then he could hardly complain when there was a spill over of that opinion into his private life. ‘No, it’s just that it doesn’t really gel with your public image. I expected something more…more—’

‘Crude?’

‘Elemental.’

‘Gangsta rap, perhaps?’

She blunted his sarcasm with a yawn. ‘Why should I think that? Was there a lot of gang activity where you grew up?’ she wondered.

‘You could say that.’ Ironic humour replaced the sardonic edge in his voice. ‘If you’re one of those people who think official trade unions are legalised gangs. As for street gangs—yeah, we lived in a fairly rough neighbourhood, but I was too busy to waste my time posturing about on the streets. Dad was a hard-line unionist with no time for slackers—a rough-asguts waterside worker who died on the job when I was twenty. Mum’s a union activist from way back. There were four of us kids and we were all expected to pull our own weight from the time we were old enough to hold down a job.’

‘You have three brothers?’ It would be no surprise if he was raised in a swamp of testosterone.

‘Sisters. I have three strong and opinionated older sisters,’ he corrected, squelching her theory about his macho origins.

‘So you’re the baby of the family.’ She smiled dreamily at a startling vision of Blake MacLeod as a chubby toddler bossed about by a trio of females. ‘Do you still see much of them?’

‘Too much. They live to complicate my life.’ His wry affection congealed into irritation. ‘Now, why don’t you give that insatiable curiosity of yours a rest and let me concentrate on my driving?’

‘Surely not difficult in a car like this,’ she scoffed, her consonants slurring slightly as a pleasant lethargy stole through her veins. ‘What kind is it, anyway?’

‘A ninety-six TVR Cerbera—a classic British sports car.’ He sounded typically male, shedding the hard-bitten cynicism for an endearingly boyish enthusiasm.

‘Really?’ Her eyelids were far too heavy to lift. She conquered another cracking yawn. ‘I bet it costs a fortune to run.’

‘You sound like my mother.’

Great! Now she reminded the most dangerously sexy man of her acquaintance of his mother! ‘Cerbera…isn’t that some character in Greek mythology?’ she mumbled vaguely, hoping to redeem herself.

‘Cerberus is the three-headed dog who guarded the entrance to Hades.’

‘Mmm…hell and wheels—now what phrase does that particular combination of words bring readily to mind?’ she teased drowsily, the leather of the padded headrest cool against her cheek as she sought a more comfortable position.

When he didn’t immediately pick up the thread of the conversation, it slipped beyond her grasp. Nora’s lightly drugged consciousness floated away with the music, weaving it into dreams, her weary body rocked deeper into the arms of Morpheus by the rumbling vibration of the car.

Her curls shivered in the breeze from the air conditioner as she slumped bonelessly in the cradle of her seat, her lips parted on a soundless sigh, her sunglasses sliding askew down her lightly freckled nose. When her companion reached out to tip them off and let them drop into her lap she didn’t stir by as much as the flicker of a lash.

Blake’s hard mouth kicked into a triumphant grin as he abruptly changed lanes and turned down a narrow side street. Snarling his way out of the prison of downtown traffic, he joined the steady flow of cars on the motorway and within half an hour was cruising on the open road.

Keeping a sharp eye out for the law, he exploited the road-hugging aerodynamics of the car as he wound up over the bush-clad Waitakere Ranges north-west of the city. Apart from the network of walking and tramping tracks in the dense native forest, the narrow dual carriageway was the only route to the isolated enclave of famously wild surf beaches on the other side of the ranges.

Blake’s fierce satisfaction at the unexpected turn of events was charged with exhilaration. The Cerbera was a challenge to handle at higher speeds—a pleasure that he rarely permitted himself—but now he had the perfect excuse to put the car through its high-performance paces. Dust kicked up at the ragged edge of the sealed surface as he hurtled towards his destination, the leafy undergrowth and graceful ferns that fringed the roadside whipping and bowing in homage to his velocity.

The leisurely trip to his beach house from his home in central Auckland usually took just over an hour, but right now he wanted to get as far as he could, as fast as he could—before his unwitting passenger awoke to the fact that she had been hijacked.

Her story was so bizarre it was probably true, but there was too much at stake for him to risk giving her the benefit of the doubt. The fact that she had been pathetically easy to manipulate into assisting in her own abduction didn’t automatically make her innocent of all charges. Unfortunately, at this point, wilful naivety could be just as damaging as malicious intent. Guilty or innocent, Nora was the equivalent of an unexploded bomb—one that it was going to be his very great pleasure to defuse…

A kick of anticipation tensed his muscles and his foot sank sharply on the accelerator. He had no doubt that once Nora recovered from her hangover her natural intelligence would reassert itself, turning her into a potentially dangerous opponent. But a fascinating one.

He glanced sideways at his dishevelled guest, deep in a trusting sleep. Far from disarming him, her vulnerability was unexpectedly arousing. Her shirt had slipped a strategic button and he could see a glimpse of smooth freckled skin above a white cotton bra, very different from the sheer black number she had flaunted last night. Perversely, he found the faux innocence of the opaque cotton even more of a turn-on.

A carnal image of Nora’s pale body splayed out against the dark leather, her restless hands restrained by the tangled black webbing of her seatbelt suddenly flashed into his mind. It was so diverting that Blake over-steered a corner and almost clipped the crumbling clay bank.

Sweating and swearing, he spun the wheel to correct his mistake, shifting in his seat to relieve the sudden constriction in his loins. He was startled by the unruly reaction of his body to his erotic flight of imagination, and distinctly unnerved. He didn’t usually indulge in fantasies of bondage and submission. His tastes were straightforward and earthy, and he had never felt possessive enough about any one woman to daydream about dominating her body and mind to the exclusion of all others.

This one was different. Unique in his experience. She had slipped under his guard with annoying ease: intrigued, amused, seduced, insulted and enraged him in swift succession. She had kicked him squarely in the ego and then had the nerve to appeal to his sympathies. As far as he and the rest of the world was concerned, Blake MacLeod had an ice-cool head and a heart to match, but all it had taken to explode that myth in his face was one ruffled brown sparrow on an emotional bender. This morning she had caused him to act on an impulse that was guaranteed to create havoc in his smoothly run life…and, to top it off, she had almost made him crash his cherished car!