A Ruthless Passion
Robyn Donald
“Cancel the wedding now.”
Nick struggled to leash the ruthless passion that clamored through every cell in his body, urging him to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom and there lay claim to her. “Cat, you can’t marry Glen,” he said steadily, pouring his considerable power to persuade into his deep voice. “Cancel the wedding—I’ll help you with the arrangements. It will be difficult, but we’ll cope.”
He almost had her. He could feel her hunger, feel her urge to surrender. She closed her eyes; when her lashes lifted the blue irises were smooth and opaque as enamel. “I don’t know what this—thing—is between us, but it can’t mean anything, because I don’t know you. I do know Glen, and I not only love him, I respect him.”
His demons unleashed by three sleepless nights and intense, aching frustration, Nick kissed her startled mouth.
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Robyn Donald
A Ruthless Passion
Passion
Contents
PROLOGUE
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
PROLOGUE
NICK waited in the foyer of the hotel until Glen and Mrs Courtald had left for their appointment with the lawyer. He despised subterfuge, but what he had to say to Cat was too important to risk any interruption—especially not from her mother or fiancé.
When he knocked on the suite door he noted with an odd remoteness that his pulse-rate was up. And when he heard her call, ‘Coming,’ in the low, husky voice she’d grow into when she’d learned what sex was all about, his gut clenched and a charge of male hunger hit him with the force of a bomb.
The door opened. Cat’s smoky blue eyes widened; colour surged through her exquisite skin before draining away. Her fingers tightened on the veil she’d been trying on—short and fluffy as befitted an eighteen-year-old bride.
‘N-Nick,’ she said unevenly. ‘This is a surprise.’
‘Ask me in,’ he said tersely.
She hesitated, then stepped back. ‘You’ve missed Glen—he and my mother have just gone.’
‘I didn’t come to see them,’ he said, walking into the suite Glen had reserved for the girl he was marrying the following day—the best hotel in Auckland, as befitted the bride of one of New Zealand’s top advertising men.
Its impersonal opulence should have overshadowed such a small person, yet in spite of her youth and her fragility Cat stood very erect, the ridiculous veil still perched on hair the polished red-brown of a chestnut, and although he sensed her unease, her gaze was direct and steady. ‘What do you want?’ she asked quietly.
Nick had had erotic dreams about that hair, and her slender body, and that ripe mouth, still innocent in spite of her engagement to his friend. Glen was being very careful with her, apparently content to wait until they were married before consummating their relationship.
Clamping down on a bitter, raw jealousy that astonished and infuriated him, Nick said bluntly, ‘Have you thought what marriage to Glen will involve?’
‘I might be only eighteen,’ she returned with a cool dignity he found both maddening and provocative, ‘but I’m not a total idiot. Yes, I know what marriage involves. I watch television, read newspapers and magazines and books, go to films, talk to people.’ She paused before adding with delicate sarcasm, ‘And my parents were married.’
Did she know that his hadn’t been? Possibly; Glen might have told her. ‘What people have you talked to? The pupils at that expensive boarding school you graduated from at the end of last year? What do they know?’
With a spark of temper she retorted, ‘As much as any kid who grows up on the streets, actually. Just because they come from a different socio-economic group doesn’t mean that the same problems don’t affect them.’ Small face hot with dismay, she went on swiftly, ‘I’m sorry—I didn’t mean that you—’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he interrupted. ‘I did grow up on the streets, but I’m talking about the realities of life as a very rich man’s trophy wife.’
Her cheeks stung as though he’d hit them. ‘I thought a trophy wife was someone who took the place of the real wife. Glen hasn’t dumped anyone for me.’
Nick bit back his first, lethal response. It was no use dragging in Morna’s private tragedy; besides, technically Cat was correct. Glen had never offered to marry the woman who’d been his lover for the past five years.
Instead, he said relentlessly, ‘Glen is going to expect you to run his house, to plan dinners, to organise parties, to meet and charm clients. Can you do that?’
‘I can try,’ she said, adding on a note of uncertainty that wrung his heart, ‘My mother will help me.’
‘Your mother is not well.’
A shadow darkened her features. How much pressure, Nick wondered savagely, had Cat’s charming, gentle, uncomplaining mother applied? Oh, nothing overt, but with her father dead, and his small annuity gone with him, Mrs Courtald must have seen Glen as the answer to all her prayers.
Cat said, ‘She’s—well enough.’ Her full, soft mouth, tantalisingly red, tightened. ‘And I’m a quick learner,’ she finished on a challenging note.
She was going to go through with it. For only the second time in his life Nick braced himself as a shaft of panic overturned the processes of his cool, incisive brain. Reasserting control, he asked with cutting scorn, ‘Why are you marrying him, Cat? If it’s money—’
‘It is not money!’ Indignation woke those sleepy eyes to fiery alertness, jutted the small, pointed chin. Coldly she retorted, ‘Glen’s an attractive, exciting man, kind and thoughtful and fun to be with—’
‘And twenty years older than you.’
Her chin jutted even further. ‘So? I like older men.’
‘Because you want a father to replace the one you’ve just lost,’ he said brutally; he was doing this all wrong and he didn’t know how to rescue the situation. ‘But Glen is not yet forty, and he’s no father figure. He’s going to want to sleep with you, Cat—’
‘Don’t call me that!’
‘Why not? You’re like a cat, sweet and kittenish when everything’s going your way, but I can see the feline in you. Glen can’t—he thinks you’re docile and obedient and playful. He’s a virile man, experienced and vigorous. Have you thought of what it will be like to make love to him?’
Once again the colour drained from her face. Her lashes fell as she said angrily, ‘I’m going to be the best wife I can possibly be to him—’
‘Even though you want me?’ Nick demanded.
Head down, face averted, she was shaking her head, the folds of tulle swinging in soft waves. ‘No,’ she said fiercely. ‘I love Glen.’
‘But you want me,’ Nick repeated, sliding his hand beneath her chin, lifting her face. Mouth trembling, she looked at him with desolate, hungry eyes.
‘Cancel the wedding now,’ he pressed quietly, struggling to leash the ruthless passion that clamoured through every cell in his body, urging him to pick her up and carry her into the bedroom and there lay claim to her in the most primitive, effective way, stamp her with his possession, make her shrink with horror at the thought of any other man touching her. ‘Cat, you can’t marry Glen,’ he said steadily, pouring his considerable power to persuade into his deep voice, into his expression. ‘Cancel the wedding— I’ll help you with the arrangements. It will be difficult, but we’ll cope.’
He almost had her. He could feel her hunger, feel her urge to surrender—until her lashes dropped and her mouth tightened, and she said, ‘And then what, Nick?’
His hand dropped to his side. ‘I can help you,’ he repeated, knowing as he said it that she wasn’t going to give in on such a vague promise—and angry because he could offer her nothing more. Glen might be prepared to take advantage of a girl straight from school, but Nick knew she wasn’t ready for marriage to anyone, much less the passion that hardened his body the moment he touched her.
She closed her eyes; when her lashes lifted the blue irises were smooth and opaque as enamel. ‘I don’t know what this—thing—is between us, but it can’t mean anything because I don’t know you. We only met three days ago. I do know Glen, and I not only love him, I respect him. I couldn’t put him through the pain of such a public humiliation because of something that I don’t understand and don’t trust.’ She looked at Nick directly. ‘I’d have thought that as his closest friend and his protégé, you’d be ashamed even to suggest it.’
His demons unleashed by three sleepless nights and an intense, aching frustration, Nick kissed her startled mouth, forcing it open. Her scent, sweet and womanly, filled his head with narcotic fumes; he tried to drop his arms, lift his head and step back, but he couldn’t move, overthrown by a ferocious, dangerous pleasure.
She didn’t resist; after a few rigid seconds she yielded, her body sinking against his, her mouth softening beneath his.
So this, he thought dimly, was paradise…
When she stiffened and tried to push him away he let her go, only then aware that somebody was knocking on the door.
Huge, shamed eyes slid away from his. Cat pressed her hand against her mouth, then with sudden, deliberate violence wiped his kiss off. ‘Get out,’ she whispered. ‘Just get out of here, and never come back. I wouldn’t marry you if you were the last man in the world.’
Nick leaned over and straightened the crushed tulle of her veil. Amazingly his hands remained gentle, although he’d never felt so much like smashing everything in his life to bits.
‘I don’t remember offering you marriage. Think of that kiss when you’re in bed with Glen,’ he said savagely, and turned and walked out, striding without a backward look past the hotel maid who waited there.
CHAPTER ONE
Six years later
CAT stopped at the busy crossing, staring apprehensively at the building on the other side of the road. In the quick intimacy of a crowd, the man beside her followed her gaze.
‘Magnificent, isn’t it?’ he observed chattily, his admiring gaze returning to Cat’s small, fine-featured face. ‘It’s already won several New Zealand awards, and a couple of overseas ones. Nick Harding commissioned it.’
At Cat’s blank look he expanded, ‘An amazing man—he started off in advertising, made a fortune and won awards, then moved on to set up the best and biggest Internet provider in New Zealand. He’s coining money, and according to the financial press he’s in the middle of a deal that’s going to boost him right into the stratosphere. And he’s still in his early thirties!’
Thirty-two, to be exact. Cat swallowed and nodded. The building on the other side of the street gleamed prosperously, a vast contrast to the drab suite of rooms in a rundown industrial complex on the outskirts of Auckland that had originally housed Nick’s business.
Somewhere in this palatial new building, perhaps behind one of those windows, he was waiting for her.
Her heart thudded sickeningly and moisture collected in her palms. Apart from a few newspaper photographs, she hadn’t seen Nick for two years. Would he have changed? Would he think she’d changed?
‘Are you a visitor to Auckland?’ the man beside her asked.
‘No,’ Cat returned, too tense to be polite.
Rebuffed, he said, ‘Oh. Well, have a nice day.’ He moved away, losing himself and his dented pride in the growing crowd.
Carefully Cat wiped her palms on her handkerchief. A quick glance at her watch showed that she still had five minutes.
A month after she’d married Glen, Nick had walked out on his executive position in Glen’s advertising agency, turning his back on everything Glen had done for him.
‘Bloody ingratitude,’ Glen had stormed. ‘I took him in off the streets, gave him the best education in New Zealand and then sent him overseas to university, made him what he is, treated him like a bloody crown prince—and he betrays me.’
Impossible to imagine Nick—tall, harshly good-looking, wearing his expensive clothes with casual elegance—living on the streets! Yet everyone knew the story. Still raw with guilt at the memory of her response to Nick’s unsparing kiss, Cat had asked, ‘If he was a street kid, how on earth did you meet him?’
Glen had shrugged. ‘Well, he wasn’t living on the street; he shacked up with some girl in a hovel.’ For a moment he’d looked uncomfortable. ‘He baled me up outside the agency one day and asked for a job. I said, “Why should I give you a job?” And he said, “Because you’re the best, and I plan to be better than you one day.” He was only fourteen, but I could tell he meant it. I liked that, so I sent him off to my old school.’
Cat, who’d had first-hand experience of the casual cruelty of adolescents at an expensive boarding school, had asked, ‘How did he deal with that?’
‘With style and arrogance,’ Glen had said indifferently. ‘Had everyone eating out of his hand within a week. I knew he would; I recognised that steely self-confidence straight away, and it took me only ten minutes to see that he was brilliant. He worked like a demon, graduating with the highest grades, an A bursary and a whole new set of social skills. Blazed through university like a rocket! Now he’s thrown the whole lot away to go on a wild-goose chase into the internet. It’s going to collapse, and he’ll go down with it.’
But he hadn’t. Nick had ignored the gossip, ignored Glen’s frustrated anger, and shown that he knew how to use determination and his ruthless intelligence to push his fledgling company to heights beyond anyone’s guessing. Within a few years he’d ridden the eagle to become a multimillionaire.
Now, no longer a player only in the South Pacific, he was expanding into communications technology. He was set, so one business writer had pronounced tritely but apparently truthfully, to conquer the world.
Glen, who’d respected power, had eventually welcomed him back into the fold, only to be killed a few months later in a car accident.
That was when Cat had discovered that he’d appointed Nick to oversee the trust he’d set up for her. Still numb from the double deaths—for her mother had died only a month before Glen—she’d been relieved when Nick had treated her with remote courtesy. Except, her inconvenient memory reminded her, for a few searing moments after the funeral, when what had begun as a comforting touch had been transformed into desperate passion.
That desperate kiss had sent her fleeing overseas, and the only communication she’d had with him since then had been via her solicitor.
Soft mouth tightening, Cat obeyed the familiar buzz of the crossing signal. Now it was time to face Nick Harding again, woefully unprepared as always. Clad in a silk suit three years out of date, she swallowed to ease her dry throat, but there was nothing she could do about the butterflies in her stomach; they threatened to mutate into a herd of dinosaurs as she turned into the splendid foyer of his headquarters.
Tensely, Cat gave her name to the receptionist.
After a discreet glance at the wedding ring on Cat’s hand, the woman said, ‘Mr Harding’s expecting you, Mrs Courtald. Take the lift to the fourth floor and his personal assistant will meet you.’
His personal assistant was altogether more intimidating; elegant in a severe midnight-blue suit, she waited by the lift door, her face revealing nothing but polite enquiry. ‘Mr Harding won’t be long,’ she said as she ushered Cat into an impressive ante-room. ‘Can I get you some coffee while you’re waiting?’
Cat’s stomach lurched. ‘No, thank you.’
Coffee grew on the hills of Romit, a large island to the north of Australia—delicious, fragrant coffee that drew its superb flavour from red earth basking beneath a tropical sun. Cat never drank it now without being propelled back to a land torn apart by a bloody civil war that had left thousands dead.
But Juana lived, and it was for Juana she’d come here. Another bubble of foreboding expanded slowly in her stomach.
‘Do sit down,’ the personal assistant urged. ‘Mr Harding won’t keep you waiting for long.’
Smoothing out her frown, Cat sat in a chair and picked up a magazine, glancing at it without registering a word. Desperation had driven her to this place; she’d been turned down by bank after bank, the loans managers shaking their heads with professional solemnity and refusing her with equally professional courtesy—and insulting speed.
A blur of motion lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. She looked up, her skin prickling.
Like a panther, all noiseless, graceful intimidation, Nick strolled into the subdued luxury of the office and surveyed her with flat, unblinking eyes burnished the tawny colour of old gold—eyes that flicked across her face, then down to the finger on which, driven by some obscure need for protection, she’d pushed her wedding ring. Unworn for the past year, it weighed her hand down.
Driven by a need to establish some sort of physical parity, Cat stood up. For a horrifying second she thought the floor lurched beneath her feet. He reached her just as she clutched the back of the chair and dragged a deep breath into her lungs.
His hand closed around her upper arm, lean fingers gripping hard. ‘Careful!’ he barked.
She froze.
Shock splintered in his eyes, but the flare of emotion lasted less than a heartbeat; almost immediately a smile, as aggressive as it was humourless, curled his beautiful, chiselled mouth.
Oh, God, she thought hopelessly. Memories of him were seared on her brain, carved into her heart. She’d never forgotten his voice—deep, textured, a voice that could turn instantly to ice. It had featured in her dreams, tormenting her through endless nights.
‘Hello, Cat,’ he said with chilling courtesy.
Although a little harsher in feature, even more brazenly handsome, he hadn’t changed much. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and long-legged, radiating male power and authority, Nick Harding still dominated every room he walked into, taking up all the space and all the air, so that she breathed quickly and shallowly while her heartbeats thudded in her ears.
And he still looked at her with utter and complete contempt in his lion-coloured eyes.
Cat fought back a flash of mindless panic. How many times in two years had she dreamed of meeting Nick again, imagined it in loving detail in those drowsy moments between sleep and wakefulness when her defences were down?
Hundreds.
And now it was happening and she couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything but respond with helpless intensity.
Nothing had changed.
‘Hello, Nick,’ she said thinly, acutely aware of the personal assistant’s glance sliding cautiously from Nick’s tanned, gypsyish face to Cat’s clammy one.
He said, ‘Come on through,’ and stepped back to let her go ahead. ‘No interruptions, Phil, please.’
Tension sizzled across the ends of Cat’s nerves as she preceded him into his office and looked around. The severely organised room shouted his success—massive desk, state-of-the-art computer, tall bookshelves and black leather chairs around a low table. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over Auckland’s harbour.
‘Lovely view,’ Cat said inanely.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ he returned with sardonic courtesy.
Furious with herself for giving him an opening for sarcasm, Cat found her gaze drawn to a painting. Not the usual bland business print; this was an original oil of a naked woman, her back to the artist. All that could be seen of her face was the curve of her cheek. It had been painted by a genius who’d imbued the banal pose with dark mystery and threat.
And it had to be pure coincidence that the fall of hair shimmering over the woman’s ivory shoulder and down her back repeated the colour of Cat’s—the burnished red-brown of a chestnut.
Once hers had been as long as that; now it was short and feathery.
Nick’s eyes were hooded, impossible to read, but the black brows lifted in cool irony. ‘Charming. As always. Clever to choose a silk so blue it turns your eyes to pure cornflower.’
In spite of the pathetic contents of her wardrobe it had taken her an hour to decide on the suit. Trying to control the violent mixture of emotions that pulsed through her, she retorted, ‘And you’re as subtle as always.’ She stiffened her spine. ‘How are you?’
His insolent golden gaze mocked her. ‘All the better for seeing you.’
Long-repressed anger came to her rescue. She said bluntly, ‘I don’t believe that for a moment.’
It gave her a quick satisfaction to see Nick’s brows snap together, but the counter-attack was swift and brutal. ‘How did you enjoy the traditional widow’s therapy?’ At her startled look, his smile turned savage. ‘Although most widows might feel that two years roaming the fleshpots of the world is a trifle excessive.’
‘Roaming the fleshpots?’ she parroted indignantly.
His survey seared the length of her body. ‘You didn’t buy that pretty thing in Auckland.’
‘I—no.’ Glen had bought it in Paris.
The words stuck in her throat, and before she could get them out Nick nodded. ‘When did you get back to New Zealand?’
‘In February.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘What have you been doing since then?’
‘Finishing my degree.’
‘Really?’ he drawled. ‘Do I congratulate a fully-fledged accountant?’
‘If I pass my finals.’
‘Oh, you’ll pass,’ he said easily. ‘Your intelligence has never been in doubt.’ The insult buried in the words tested the fragile shell of her composure. ‘Sit down, Cat.’
When she’d seated herself he walked around to the other side of the desk and sat there. Cat’s stomach jumped, but he said mildly enough, ‘Accountancy seems an odd profession for someone like you.’ He waited before adding with smooth insolence, ‘Although perhaps not.’
‘I like figures,’ she said crisply. ‘You know where you are with them.’
‘Much neater than all those messy emotions,’ he agreed with a hard smile. ‘And so convenient for keeping track of your finances.’
The implication that gold-diggers needed money skills angled Cat’s chin upwards. Shrugging to hide her hurt, she wished she was eight inches taller—as tall as his PA. Height impressed people who thought small, fine-boned women were ultra-feminine, and therefore stupid and greedy. ‘Exactly.’
‘So, to what do I owe the honour of this visit?’ he said indolently.
There was no easy way to say it, so she settled for blurting it out. ‘I need some money.’
His golden eyes hardened. ‘Of course you do,’ he replied scathingly, leaning back in his chair and steepling his hands—just like all the finance managers who’d already rejected her, Cat thought with a flare of temper.
Eyes half closed, he said, ‘As the trustee of Glen’s estate I made sure your annual allowance was transferred to your account four months ago. You’re not entitled to any more for another eight months.’
‘I need an advance.’
‘How much, and why?’ he asked, silkily insistent.
‘Twenty thousand dollars.’
She didn’t know what she’d expected—outrage, anger, disgust? But none of those emotions showed in the harsh, good-looking face, although Nick’s iron control over his face and body blazed a clear warning.
Almost gently he asked, ‘Why do you need twenty thousand dollars?’
Cat opened her bag and extracted a photograph. Her fingers shook as she pushed it across the wide desk. ‘She needs an operation.’
He glanced down. Surprise, then something like black fury replaced the glitter in his eyes. He looked up and asked in a level, almost soundless voice, ‘Is she your child?’
‘No!’ Cat sucked breath into starved lungs.
This time he examined the photograph for long seconds before asking, ‘So who is she, and why do you need twenty thousand dollars?’
‘Her name is Juana.’
He lifted a dispassionate gaze. ‘Are you sponsoring her? Because no reputable aid agency demands twenty thousand dollars—’
‘I’m not sponsoring her. I’m responsible for her, and you can see why I want the money.’
Once more he looked down at the photograph. Still in that calm, toneless voice he said, ‘I can see she needs surgery, but what has that to do with your request for an advance on your allowance?’
‘She has a cleft palate,’ Cat told him crisply. ‘At first the doctor thought that she’d be fine with just the one operation to fix it and the hare-lip, but once they got her to Australia they realised she’d need ongoing surgery. They booked her in for the next operation when she was two, but she’s grown so much she’s ready now. In fact, to be entirely successful it has to be done within the next couple of months. And as she’s from Romit, and therefore not an Australian citizen, everything has to be paid for.’
Nick noted the way her lashes hid her eyes, admired the artistic tremor in her voice. To give himself time to rein in the hot anger that knotted his gut, he got to his feet and walked across to the bookshelves.
Deliberately choosing the position of power, he leaned a shoulder against a shelf and surveyed the woman in front of him. Normally he never bothered with the techniques of intimidation—he didn’t need to. Only with this woman did he craft every inflection in his voice, the movement of every muscle in his body.
He had to give her credit for nerve. After two years without a word she’d walked into his office as coolly as though she had a dozen valid reasons to demand this money, and she wasn’t giving an inch even now.
Of course, a woman with her assets had no reason to doubt herself.
Not that she was exactly beautiful. Cat Courtald—significant that she’d gone back to her maiden name!—had matured into an intriguing, fascinating, infinitely desirable woman, one with the power to sabotage both his will and his conscience. But then, he thought with hard self-mockery, recalling the times he’d touched her, she’d always had that power.
It had to be something to do with tilted blue eyes that smouldered with a secretive, lying allure, and skin like ivory silk, and a passionate, sultry mouth—and that was just her face! Her body almost tempted him to forget that this delicate, sensuous package hid a woman who’d sold herself to his mentor for security.
His rich mentor, he amended cynically. Four years later she’d tearlessly watched Glen’s coffin lowered into the ground, her tight, composed face a telling contrast to the grief she’d shown at her mother’s funeral.
She got to her feet to face him, her body stiff with anger. ‘I need the money for her, Nick, not for myself.’
This from a woman who’d never shown any sign of liking children! Yet, in spite of everything, he wanted to believe her. Like all good actresses she projected complete and total sincerity.
Her attempt to use the little girl in the photograph made him sick and angry.
‘Sit down, Cat,’ he said evenly, ‘and tell me how you got involved with this child.’
After a second’s hesitation, she obeyed, disposing her elegant limbs neatly in the chair before lifting her arrogant little nose and square chin to say in the voice that made him think of long, impassioned nights and hot, maddening sex, ‘I made myself responsible for her.’
Hunger ripped through him, ferociously mindless. Furious at his body’s abject response to that degrading, treacherous need, he turned and walked behind the desk. Hiding, he thought sardonically. ‘Why?’
‘She was born on the first of November last year.’
Nick frowned. ‘So?’
‘So it was exactly a year to the day after my mother died.’ The colour faded abruptly from her skin, sharpening her features. Yet she said steadily, ‘I was in Romit. Her mother died having her. I—I made myself responsible for her.’
Clever, he thought objectively, to choose Romit as the scene of this drama. Unable to do anything to stop the carnage, unable to get help to the victims, people had watched in worldwide anguish as the images of a savage civil war had flicked with sickening vividness across their television screens. Even now, with the rebels beaten and a peace-keeping force in residence, the people of Romit were the poorest of the poor. Residual guilt should certainly prise his hands from the pursestrings. ‘I see. Which agency is organising this operation?’
‘None.’
His mouth thinned. ‘Only a total idiot would fall for a story like that,’ he said callously. ‘What do you really want the money for, Cat?’
The light died out of her eyes, leaving them a flat, opaque blue as hard as her voice. ‘I knew you’d accuse me of lying, so I’ve brought my passport and a letter from the nun who runs the clinic where Juana’s being cared for. Sister Bernadette’s explained where the money will go and why it’s necessary now.’
Whatever he’d expected, it wasn’t this.
He frowned as she opened her bag and held out a battered envelope and her blue New Zealand passport. Her long fingers flicked open the pages. ‘Here are the dates I went into Romit,’ she said coldly, ‘and came out.’
How would those fingers feel on his skin? Would they cling and stroke? A volatile, potent cocktail of guilt and desire charged his body.
Repressing it, he focused on the stamped pages. God, he thought, fighting back a chill of fear. ‘What the hell were you doing in Romit in the middle of a civil war?’
‘I was working in a hospital—well, it was more a clinic, really.’
The customs stamps danced before his eyes as he recalled the hideous stories that had come out of the uprising. ‘Why?’
She stared at him as though he’d gone mad. ‘I told you— I was working.’
‘You? In a Third World country, in a hospital?’ He laughed derisively. ‘Pull the other leg, Cat.’
With a sudden twist of her body that took him by surprise, she got to her feet.
Automatically he followed suit. Before he could speak she said in a tight voice, ‘Read the letter, Nick.’
‘I don’t doubt for a moment that it purports to be from a nun in a clinic somewhere on that godforsaken island,’ he said curtly. ‘Easy enough to fake, Cat. You must have forgotten who you’re dealing with. What were you doing on Romit?’
She shrugged. ‘After my mother and Glen died a friend suggested I go and stay with her on the island—her father was attached to one of the UN agencies.’ She hesitated a moment. ‘The clinic was next door to their compound and running on nothing. When the fighting started at the other end of the island refugees poured in and they were desperately overworked at the clinic, so Penny and I helped. Then her father was pulled out; he insisted she go with him, but I stayed.’
‘Why?’ he asked harshly.
She stood with her head averted, hands held clenched and motionless by a fierce will. Outside a cloud hovered across the sun. In spite of everything, Nick had to stop himself from taking three strides and pulling her into his arms.
‘I don’t know,’ she said at last in a muted voice. ‘They were—are—so valiant. They had nothing at all, but they laughed and they were kind to each other and to me. The children liked me. And I had no one else.’
Oh, she did it well. Cynically he thought that she was lucky; those fragile bones made every man long to protect her.
Furious at his weakness, he said, ‘Couldn’t you get out? The Cat Withers I knew would have run like hell in case something happened to her pretty little hide.’
‘Courtald,’ she flashed back at him. ‘I’m Catherine Courtald! And you don’t know anything about me—you never did. You looked at me and your prejudices sprang into life without reason or logic!’
‘I had reason,’ he said caustically. ‘Or are you going to tell me that you were passionately in love with Glen when you married him—that you didn’t even think that with his money you could take care of your sick mother and secure your own future?’
She flushed violently, and her gaze fell, her thick lashes hiding her eyes. ‘I told you then—I was in love with him,’ she said in a stifled voice.
‘How could you be, when you looked at me and you wanted me—almost as much as I wanted you?’
‘Have you never done anything stupid?’ she demanded, squaring her shoulders.
‘Yes. Six years ago I looked at my best friend’s fiancée and lusted after her,’ he said cruelly.
The colour fled from her skin. She made an abrupt gesture, then forced her hands back by her sides, her face into an exquisite mask.
Yet he still wanted to believe her. He strove to control the repressed lust and angry remorse—and a debilitating urge to shelter her.
Aloud he said, ‘It’s a good story, Cat, and you’ve done your research well, but I’m afraid I’m finding it very difficult to believe a word of it.’ He flicked the photograph. ‘Or a picture of it.’
Sheer stubbornness kept Cat upright. She couldn’t go to pieces now; she’d never forgive herself—or Nick—if his dislike and distrust stole Juana’s future.
‘Why don’t you at least make an effort to find out whether I’m telling the truth?’ she asked woodenly, picking up her bag. ‘You can take the money out of next year’s income.’
He lifted his brows. ‘Twenty thousand dollars? What would you live on? Unless you’re planning on finding another rich man to marry,’ he said, adding with pointed courtesy, ‘But as your trustee I have to remind you that if you do that you give up any further claim on Glen’s estate.’
‘I’m planning on finding a job,’ she said between her teeth, and walked across the room.
Without looking at him, she closed the door behind her with precision, listening to the sound reverberate off every shiny surface.
Forcing herself not to flee cravenly, she nodded at the elegant, startled PA, who was hurriedly getting to her feet at her desk, took the lift down and strode out into the sunlight, greedily soaking up the heat. Chills rose through her, tightening her skin so that she felt as though she was suffering from a fever.
Nick Harding fever, she thought desperately. It hadn’t gone away after all—instead it had lodged like a deadly virus inside her, waiting for one look, one touch, to set her afire again.
For heaven’s sake, woman, get a grip, she commanded. You have to work out what you’re going to do if he refuses to advance you that money.
Whatever happened, however she raised the money, Juana was going to have her chance.
CHAPTER TWO
A TENSE week later Cat was walking out of the university library when her companion nudged her and growled, ‘Whooor! Fantasy fodder at eleven o’clock.’
It was Nick, leaning indolently against a long, low car of the sort that had even the carefully sophisticated students looking sideways.
‘What’s my favourite colour?’ her companion asked rhetorically. ‘The colour of the last piece of clothing that man takes off in my bedroom!’
Cat unclenched her teeth to say with a lightness she hoped sounded real, ‘Sinead, you’ve already got Jonathan—don’t be greedy. Anyway, this one would break your heart.’
‘Hearts mend, and from the look of him it’d be a wild affair, the sort you shock your great-grandchildren with.’ She stopped as Nick straightened up and scrutinised Cat. ‘Hey, you know him?’
The spring sun beat down on Nick’s black head, glowed lovingly along the high, flaring cheekbones. He looked like a pirate—ruthless and forceful.
‘I know him,’ Cat said. ‘Not well, but enough to be very wary.’
‘If you don’t want him, introduce me?’ She laughed at the glint Cat couldn’t banish from her eyes. ‘It was worth a try. Go on, off you go—you can tell me all about him tonight.’
Alone, Cat walked over to the car, shoulders held stiffly, her face composed.
Nick’s dark suit clung with the finesse of superb tailoring to his wide shoulders and narrow hips, but the formidable assurance and the slow burn of danger came from him alone.
Foolishly, Cat wished she’d worn her pretty blue suit again; jeans, even when topped by a cream shirt and a jersey the colour of her hair, couldn’t live up to his clothes.
‘Hello, Nick,’ she said as she came up to him, her voice so constrained she sounded like a prim schoolgirl.
His mouth curved into a speculative smile. ‘Cat.’ He pushed the door open and held out a hand for her bag.
After a moment’s hesitation she handed it over.
‘This is far too heavy for you,’ he said, frowning, as he dumped the bag in the back seat.
‘Books always weigh a lot. Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere that isn’t quite so public as this.’
She nodded and slid past him into the car, folding her hands in her lap with a stern mental command to them to stay still. Resolutely she kept her eyes fixed straight ahead, although she registered nothing of the streetscape until they arrived at an elderly Art Deco apartment building beside one of Auckland’s mid-city parks.
‘This isn’t your office,’ she said sharply.
He switched off the engine. ‘No.’
Just one word, but she sensed there was no moving him.
When she reached for her bag he said, ‘It’s all right where it is. I’ll take you home later.’
At her straight look he smiled, a cool, intimidating smile that pulled every tiny hair on her body on end. He was up to something—but what?
‘I’ll bring it anyway,’ she said evenly.
‘Then I’ll carry it.’ He hauled the bag out in one smooth, powerful movement.
The modernised lift whisked them up quickly and silently, but once inside Nick’s apartment Cat noted that the high ceilings and worldly charm had been left intact.
Nick ushered her into a huge sitting room that overlooked a sea of budding branches in the park. The usual municipal obsession with neat rows of flowers hadn’t prevailed there; instead, showered by soft pink petals from a cherry tree, a graceful marble goose acted as a fountain, standing in a pond bordered by clumps of irises and freesias and small, starry, silver-blue flowers.
Grass stretched to a line of oaks; a few weeks previously they’d exploded into huge lime-yellow ice-creams and were now settling down with a dignified, dark green mantle. Their branches stirred with austere beauty in the lazy wind that was all this unusually warm season could produce.
Just keep your cool, Cat told herself, swallowing to relieve the stress that had built up beneath her breastbone.
‘Can I get you something to drink?’ Nick asked.
‘No, thank you.’ Not even though her mouth and throat felt as dry as the Gobi Desert.
‘I’m thirsty, so excuse me,’ he said abruptly, and disappeared through a door.
Tensely she looked around the room. If Nick had chosen the furniture he’d made a good job. It suited him, the proportions matching both the big room and his height and presence, but the black leather chairs and sofas, the exquisite Persian rug and the stark abstracts on the wall, intimidated her.
This, she thought distractedly, was how children must feel—helpless, ineffectual in a huge adult world.
Well, small she might be, but ineffectual she was not. Squaring her shoulders, she marched across to the bookshelves, oddly cheered when she noted some well-thumbed favourites of her own.
She was glancing through one when Nick returned with a tray. Setting it down on the table, he said, ‘I made some for you too. Sit down and pour, and for heaven’s sake stop looking at me with the whites of your eyes showing. I’m not going to leap on you.’
With a distrustful glance, Cat put the book down and lowered herself onto a cold, smooth leather chair. At least the coffee gave her restless hands something to do. She poured his as he liked it, black and strong and fierce, and added a lot of milk to her own.
Nick had seated himself opposite, long legs stretched out. Accepting his cup, he asked, ‘Why did you go back to your maiden name?’
Startled, she kept her gaze on the milky surface of her coffee. ‘I wanted to.’
It was the wrong answer, but with Nick there were no right ones.
‘You still wear his ring on occasion.’ Smile hardening into contempt, his gold eyes flicked over the telltale lack of white skin on her bare finger. ‘No doubt only when it’s expedient to remind me that the man you married gave me a future.’
Shamed heat burned her cheeks; she’d used the ring as a talisman because it gave her the illusion of safety. ‘Then you should understand how I feel about Juana. Glen gave you a future; I want to do it for her.’
‘That’s very clever, Cat,’ he said softly. After a taut silence he went on, ‘I checked with the clinic. What whim persuaded you to take responsibility for the child?’
Filled with a strange reluctance, she muttered, ‘She only had an aunt—her mother’s sister Rosita, just fourteen. Her father had been killed by the insurgents and I don’t know what happened to the rest of her family. Rosita couldn’t, or wouldn’t, say.’
‘That hasn’t answered my question.’ When she didn’t go on he probed uncompromisingly, ‘What made the baby your responsibility?’
‘Rosita had no money and no way of earning any. They were refugees. I couldn’t just let the baby die when I knew she could be saved.’
He frowned. ‘How did you find out about her?’
‘I was there when she was born. I held her while the doctor tried to save her mother.’ She gave him a swift glance from beneath her lashes, but his face was stern and unreadable. ‘And she was special because she was born on the day my mother died. It seemed—significant, somehow. Symbolic.’
She waited for a sneer, for anger, but none came.
He was watching her through half-closed eyes, his mouth an unreadable line. ‘Do you want to adopt her?’
She shook her head. ‘Sister Bernadette convinced me she’ll do better in her own culture with an aunt who loves her. Juana is all that Rosita has left—the only thing she has to live for.’ Cat lifted her cup and drank some of the hot liquid, then set the cup down and looked him straight in the eye. ‘I want to make sure she has all the surgery she needs—the doctors in Brisbane said there’ll be at least a couple more operations, and she might need a dental plate too.’
‘How long will all this take?’
‘At least five years.’
‘A long-term commitment,’ he said coolly. ‘And after that?’
‘At the very least I’m going to make sure Rosita gets onto her feet somehow, so she can continue to care for Juana. Life for a girl with no family, no one to protect her, is difficult in Romit.’
‘So you’re planning the future of two girls?’
‘Yes, I suppose so.’
Silence hummed between them, heavy with unspoken thoughts. Nick said quietly, ‘In his will Glen made it impossible for me, as the trustee, to advance you any more than your yearly allowance.’
Cat bit back a protest; she’d been so shocked after Glen’s death that she hadn’t taken in much of what the solicitor had explained to her. Glen had always seen her as the naïve adolescent he’d swept off her feet, so his refusal to trust her didn’t surprise her as much as it dismayed her.
Nick said deliberately, ‘You could always ask me to help you.’
Why did suspicion darken her mind with ugly speed? ‘I have asked you. You’ve just refused.’
‘I can’t ignore Glen’s instructions. However, he trusted me to look after you.’ He looked down at the letter and her passport. ‘I could make you a personal loan. Or a gift.’
For a moment hope clutched her, but one glance at his hard, hunter’s face killed it. She said with icy, desperate precision, ‘For a price, no doubt. What do you want in return?’
‘Perhaps I don’t want anything,’ he said, his eyes gleaming with a predatory light.
She gave a cynical little laugh. ‘I doubt that very much. That’s not how things work.’
Unblinking, he surveyed her. ‘What are you prepared to give?’
More than anything she wanted to lick her dry lips, drink some more coffee to ease the passage of words through her arid throat. ‘I only give to the people I love,’ she said.
‘By your own admission, you’ve broken that rule twice. Three times if we accept that you didn’t love Glen when you married him.’
Colour burned her skin but she met his cold, golden gaze unwaveringly. ‘But I did love him.’ Because she’d been a starry-eyed innocent, dazzled and overwhelmed by Glen’s sophistication.
‘Setting aside your marriage to Glen, the other incidents were certainly errors of taste.’ His voice was level, almost amused, but each word flicked her on the raw. ‘After all, it’s not done to make passionate love to—’
‘We didn’t make passionate love—we kissed; that’s all,’ she interrupted, hot-faced and shamed. ‘And there were two of us—’
‘Oh, there were indeed two,’ he returned roughly. ‘You and me, kissing as though we wanted to make love right there and then, the day before you married Glen, and the day we buried him.’
Coffee splashed over the edge of the cup onto her hand; Cat dragged in a shuddering breath.
‘Have you scalded yourself?’ Nick demanded, leaping to his feet to crouch by her chair. ‘Let me see.’
He removed the coffee cup from her grip and set it down on the table. In spite of the sunny room ice froze Cat down to her bones.
‘Just as well you drink it with a lot of milk,’ he said, and lifted her stinging hand to his mouth as though he couldn’t stop himself.
Cat’s throat constricted. Dazed, she stared at him with dilating eyes, watching his lashes fall as his beautiful mouth touched the fragile skin of her wrist. Her fingers curled at the warmth of his mouth and sensation poured through her—hot, languid, remorseless as a river breaching its banks.
Shudders racked her body when she tried to pull away, but her strength had gone. She knew what he saw when he looked at her face—drowsy eyes and seeking, sensuous mouth—and she expected his slow, bitter smile. Hunger banished everything but a stark, stripped need; his angular features were stamped with it, the amber eyes smouldering, and his mouth—oh, God, his mouth…
She’d tried so hard to forget how it had felt on hers; for years she’d lied to herself, refused to accept that her desire for this man had never died. Unwanted and baseless, the treacherous physical attraction still burned inside her.
At eighteen she’d known too little of men to understand that Nick had been caught up in the same powerful attraction—until he’d kissed her and she’d gone up in flames, for the first time understanding the force of explosive sexual hunger.
Shocked and afraid, she’d turned her back on it, because she’d been naïvely certain it meant nothing compared to her respect and affection for Glen. During her marriage she’d banished Nick from her mind, only to crash and burn in the powerful force-field of that elemental hunger after Glen’s death. The kiss after his funeral had begun as an attempt to comfort Nick—and ended when he’d pushed her aside and walked white-faced out of the house.
Nick hated himself for those endless moments in each other’s arms. Cat understood; his regard for the man who’d given him his chance in life meant that there was no possibility of any future for them.
Not then, not ever.
Still with her hand against his mouth, Nick said harshly, ‘Cat.’
He stood up, pulling her with him, and kissed her, and again it was like being spun into some alternative reality where the only thing that counted was Nick’s mouth and his hard body against her, and the mingled scents of coffee and the musk of arousal.
And then she was free, clutching her shaking arms around her, and he was watching her with a guarded face, no expression on it at all.
‘Damn you,’ he said sardonically, ‘you still kiss like a virgin.’
‘And you,’ she hurled back, ‘still kiss as though you know exactly what you’re doing, as though it’s part of some plan.’
‘It was never my plan to want you. At first I told myself that it was that patrician little face, those impeccable manners, that background. Not much money, but birth and breeding by the century.’ His smile was cynical. ‘An untouchable princess, irresistible to a boy from the streets.’
She said shakily, ‘That’s incredibly offensive.’
‘But true.’ He turned away, reached for the coffee cup and pushed it towards her. A muscle flicked in his jaw, and leashed tension prowled through him like a baulked tiger. ‘Drink up.’
Her heart cramped. Ignoring the coffee, she started to leave. ‘This is getting us nowhere; I’d better go.’
He shrugged. ‘If you want that money, you’d better stay.’
Cat hesitated, hating this, hating him, but eventually she sat down again. She’d made herself responsible for Juana and she’d stick it out whatever it cost in pride.
Nick said with scathing honesty, ‘Can you look me in the face and tell me you don’t want me?’ He waited, and when she remained stubbornly silent he finished, ‘And that you don’t hate being imprisoned by such a degrading desire? You resent it as much as I do.’
Cat’s fingers tightened around the mug of coffee; any denial would be a lie. She lifted the cup to her mouth and drank the liquid, longing for the caffeine to kick in. She could do with some artificial support.
Nick let the silence stretch on until she said stiffly, ‘Wanting is not enough.’
He laughed without humour. ‘It’s all we’ve got, Cat.’
Nothing had changed.
All they had in common was this driving sexual urge and money, she thought distastefully, trying to banish the image of Juana’s face from her mind, because the sex would be wonderful, and the money would give the child a future.
She watched the coffee swirl as she turned the cup back and forth. Scraps of thoughts jostled and pushed in her brain, coloured by emotion’s false hues, patternless and inchoate until one gained form, tantalising her into wondering if this was a chance to make Nick see her as she really was…
Seductive, alluring, the possibility filled her mind, banishing prosaic common sense.
Nick paced over to the window and stood staring out at the park, completely at home in the room he’d earned with determination and discipline and a huge expenditure of energy. From somewhere outside a horn tooted, followed almost immediately by the clear, liquid call of a thrush.
He said remotely, ‘I’d give you fidelity, but I’d expect it too.’
Did he know Glen had been unfaithful, the first time within a year of their marriage when she’d insisted on going to university? Glen hadn’t been a good loser.
Nick turned and looked at her, amber eyes missing nothing.
‘No,’ she said aloud, making up her mind in a flash of anger. She might have developed a taste for danger, but she was worth more than this! ‘I won’t have an affair with you, Nick, so that you can get me out of your system. I’m not some kind of disease you can inoculate yourself against. Yes, I want you, but I’m not going to sleep with you to scratch an itch that won’t go away. I can do without you. I’m making a good life for myself; I’m settled and contented—’
‘Contented!’ He came across and took the mug from her, setting it down on the table. ‘Contentment is for cows!’ Eyes narrowed and hard and bright, he touched her face, long fingers stroking her cheek, easing down the line of her throat. ‘You’re so lovely,’ he said, his voice dropping several notes, ‘and when you smile you light up the world. Smile for me, Cat.’
His words melted her defences like flames on ice. Although she fought it, the beginnings of a fugitive smile curled her lips.
‘And when you say my name,’ he murmured, drawing her closer, ‘it sounds like “I want you”. I like to hear you say it, like the way you look at me when you think I can’t see you…’
He bent his head until his mouth was a fraction away from hers and she could feel the words as he said them. ‘The tiny flutter in your throat drives me crazy, and so does the colour that stains your skin, the way those exotic eyes go heavy and smoky and seductive when you look at me….’
By then she was desperate for him, her body so keenly attuned to his voice, to the faint fragrance that was his alone, to the shimmering sexual aura surrounding them, that she couldn’t have refused the kiss.
Stark self-preservation clamped her eyes shut, and once she’d blocked out his face she could summon the energy to say hoarsely, ‘I will not prostitute myself, not even to help Juana.’
‘Why not? You prostituted yourself for your mother.’
Eyes flying open in shock, she whispered, ‘I did not!’ As his brows lifted she said lamely, ‘It wasn’t like that.’
‘If she hadn’t suffered from a heart complaint that meant she needed twenty-four-hour care, would you have married Glen?’ Nick’s voice was remote, his cloak of control pulled around him so that she could no longer guess at the emotions that lay beneath. He dropped his hand and stepped back, watching her with the merciless calculation of an enemy.
‘If your father hadn’t just died, leaving you penniless, would you have married Glen?’ he probed unsparingly. ‘You were alone and adrift, with a sick mother, no house, no job, and, thanks to some pretty antiquated ideas of child-rearing, no idea of how to find anything that would pay more than the most basic wage. When Glen came along like a slightly tarnished knight waving a chequebook, you saw deliverance and you couldn’t marry him fast enough.’
She said indistinctly, ‘My reasons for marrying him are none of your business.’
‘Would you have left him at the altar if I’d offered marriage, Cat?’ he asked cruelly. ‘Or perhaps you’d have found the offer of money more attractive.’
She had no answer. When he’d asked her to cancel the wedding he’d offered her nothing. The prospect of failing her mother, of betraying Glen, had filled her with appalled apprehension.
And she had really believed that she loved Glen.
‘No,’ he said with a smile that chilled her soul, ‘of course you wouldn’t have. I didn’t have half the money he had.’
In a quick, acid voice she returned, ‘None of this matters now. My mother’s dead, and Glen is too. Forget I asked for the money, all right? Forget I came to see you. Make things easier for both of us and pretend I’m still on Romit.’
Desperately she headed for the door.
But before she got there Nick caught her by the arm, swinging her around to face him, the gypsyish face taut with arrogant anger. ‘What have you spent your income from the trust on? Why are you living in a hovel with five other students? Why are you working in a backstreet restaurant to put yourself through university?’
‘You have been busy spying since I saw you last!’ She’d expected him to check out her time in Romit, but the discovery that he’d run a survey on her since she’d got back to Auckland fuelled a feverish rage.
So angry that she could have slapped his face, she grabbed his shoulders and shook him. It was like trying to move a kauri, the largest tree in the southern hemisphere. ‘Keep out of my life, Nick.’
‘You invited me back into it.’ But his voice had changed—become deeper, less furious.
The fingers around her arm eased their grip and slid up to her shoulder just as Cat realised that she’d got herself into an extremely perilous situation. Run! prudence yelled, but she couldn’t let him go. Instead her hands moulded the sleek, firm muscles across his shoulders.
Eyes glinting, he said, ‘You made the first move, Cat,’ and kissed her, and this time she went under like a stone dropped into still, deep waters.
Always previously there had been anger and a driving desperation in his kiss; this time the anger was muted, soon replaced by a hunger that roused both urgency and an avid need—a potent, ferocious combination against which she had no defences.
Sensation tore through her; in a surrender as symbolic as it was unconscious, she opened her mouth to his, shuddering with pleasure when he accepted her yielding response and plundered the innermost reaches of her mouth, his arms tightening around her as he picked her up.
His mouth branded the length of her throat, summoning a raging tempest from every part of her singing, exultant body. Suddenly the progression from desire to passion, and thence to fulfilment seemed so simple, so natural and inevitable, tempting Cat unbearably with its honeyed promise of rapture.
His face against her throat was hot, his mouth demanding, yet she had never felt so safe, she thought dazedly, registering with a violent shock the touch of his hand on her breast, confident, overpoweringly erotic.
She shivered as passion needled exquisitely through her; expectant, breathless, she waited while he cupped the gentle curves.
And she knew she had to stop it now, while there was still time.
‘Cat,’ he muttered, the word slurred and heavy.
Summoning every ounce of will-power, she put her hands on either side of his face, lifting it until she could meet his eyes. ‘No,’ she said as distinctly as she could.
And watched helplessly as icy self-control drowned the golden turbulence of his eyes. He set her on her feet and stepped back, looking down at his hands as though they had betrayed him.
Grief proved greater temptation even than desire; shivering, she stopped herself swaying towards him.
‘It won’t work,’ she said raggedly, stepping out of the danger zone. ‘I’m going home.’
‘I’ll take you.’ He ignored her headshake, picking up her bag.
Silently Cat went with him down to the car. She didn’t give him her address, and he didn’t ask; he drove straight to one of the few old houses in the inner city still divided into students’ apartments. Cheap, dilapidated, it was close to the university and the restaurant she worked in at night.
‘Did you know this place is due for demolition?’ he asked as he braked outside it.
‘Something else your spy discovered? Yes, I knew.’ His dark frustration beat at her as she slid out of the car and pulled her bag out of the back. ‘Goodbye, Nick,’ she said in a calm voice that hid the painful thudding of her heart.
He didn’t start the car until she looked out from her bedroom window.
Whenever she’d seen him she’d watched Nick secretly, imprinting on her too-susceptible heart the exact shade of his eyes, the way his lean cheek creased when he smiled, the sheer male grace with which he walked, the inborn aura of power that shimmered around him.
Yet somehow she’d managed to convince herself that her absorption meant nothing. She’d tried so hard to be a good wife that she’d lost herself, concealing the real Cat beneath the glossy surface of Glen’s wife.
How foolishly naïve she’d been. Impressed, secretly proud that someone like Glen could fall in love with her, she’d let herself be persuaded into a marriage that had been fake from the moment she’d seen Nick. Would she have abandoned Glen if Nick had made some move towards her, had followed up on the potent attraction that spun itself between them? If he’d claimed her instead of standing back that day at the hotel?
One hand clenched at her side, she turned away from the window. She’d never know.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IF THAT man at table six calls me girlie one more time,’ Cat said viciously, ‘I’ll pick up what’s left of his Thai lamb and pour it and the crisp noodle salad down the back of his neck.’
Sinead gave her a sympathetic smile. ‘I think he’s trying to impress his girlfriend.’
‘From the way she’s giggling and simpering,’ Cat snorted, ‘she already thinks he’s the greatest wit of the millennium, so he can stop it right now.’ Swiftly, competently, she began to assemble another salad.
‘I’m glad he’s yours,’ Sinead said, tearing off her sheet and spiking it in front of Andreo, owner and chef in the small family restaurant, who was stir-frying.
After a quick glance he grunted acknowledgment, and said, ‘Mind your temper, Cathy. If he touches you, yell all you like, but otherwise keep him happy. We want all the customers in those flash new restaurants down at the yacht basin to come back once the regatta’s over and the billionaires have taken their super-yachts off to the West Indies, or wherever they migrate to at this time of year. If you make a habit of tipping good food over customers, it’ll get around.’
‘It’s a severe temptation,’ Cat said dourly. Working here had certainly opened her eyes to the many and varied types of humanity that existed in the only large city in New Zealand.
The soft tinkle of the doorbell sent her into the restaurant. She stopped suddenly, meeting the lion-coloured eyes of the tall man at the desk. A fierce, angry pleasure stained her cheeks, sent her heart soaring.
With an effort that probably showed in her face, she pinned a smile to her face. ‘Table for one, sir?’ she asked sweetly.
Unsmiling, Nick looked down at her. In black trousers and a black shirt—casual yet sophisticated—he was a creature of the night, dangerous, disturbing, his sexuality open and elemental. ‘Yes.’
Cat picked up both menus and escorted him to a table set for two, whipping away the extra silver as he sat down. Concentrating on a point a little higher than his shoulder, she put the menus in front of him and recited the specials. It was difficult to ignore the excitement humming through her but she thought she managed, although she couldn’t do anything about the colour burning along her cheekbones.
He didn’t look at either menu. ‘What’s the best dish?’
‘The fillet of beef with ratatouille and herb salad is particularly good, sir.’ Dicing with danger, she thought as he looked up, his eyes gleaming gold fire. Excitement stroked along her skin, surged through every cell.
‘Then I’ll have that, and scallops for an entrée,’ he drawled.
‘Would you like a drink, sir?’
He shook his head. ‘A beer will do.’ And named one of the boutique beers they stocked.
‘Yes, sir,’ she said.
When she brought the beer he thanked her and lifted his gaze to her face. ‘Don’t call me sir,’ he commanded, steel running through the words.
An odd sensation slid down her spine. ‘It’s traditional,’ she countered.
‘That’s not why you’re doing it.’
From behind her came a cry of, ‘Girlie! Girlie! Where’s that waitress?’
‘Excuse me,’ she said, almost giddy with relief, and scrambled back to the man at table six and his giggling girlfriend.
‘You’ve made a mistake with this bill,’ he said loudly. ‘I’ve checked it on my calculator and you’ve charged me an extra seven dollars.’
It took some minutes for her to go through the orders with him, show him that they were down on the bill, and get him to run it past his calculator again, this time with the result that appeared on the bill.
Of course he didn’t say he was sorry.
‘And I’ll bet he didn’t tip, either,’ Sinead muttered, keeping an alert, fascinated eye on Nick.
‘I didn’t expect him to. Why should he? Tipping’s not a New Zealand custom,’ Cat said, keeping her eyes on the till as she ran another bill through it. ‘Not unless we do something outstandingly wonderful for the customer.’
‘You didn’t kill this one, which I think was outstandingly wonderful of you! Anyway, your tall, dark and handsome didn’t like it when that guy made a fuss,’ the other woman said with relish. ‘Talk about filthy looks!’
‘You’re imagining things. He’s not mine.’
‘That may be so,’ Sinead said cheerfully, ‘but from the way he watches you I’d say he thinks of you as very much his.’
‘Don’t be silly,’ Cat said ineptly.
‘Oh, Cat, sometimes I think you’re the sweetest little old maid in disguise!’ Laughing, Sinead patted her on the head. ‘Live a bit, why don’t you? Look at him! He’s very cool and thoroughly all right in a plutocratic sort of way—just the sort of guy to give you a really good time. Who is he? I feel I should know him.’
‘Nick Harding,’ Cat said without emphasis.
‘So is he your boyfriend?’ Clearly the name meant nothing to her.
‘No.’
‘Hmm.’ Sinead was studying art. She lowered her voice and said with relish, ‘Splendid bones. Good clothes sense too—black suits him superbly. And I do admire that louche, untamed air—all smouldering and intense and yet somehow ferociously disciplined. I’ll bet he’s so utterly dynamic in bed.’
‘Have you ever thought of changing your major?’ Cat enquired, alarmed by a knife-slash of jealousy. ‘To creative writing, perhaps? And what about Jonathan, who is probably even now revving up his motorbike so he can take you to a nightclub?’
Sinead chuckled. ‘All right, you saw him first—but, hey, a girl can dream, can’t she?’
Ten minutes later she hissed, ‘I’ve just realised who Nick Harding is.’ She paused and when Cat raised her brows, she probed, ‘I presume he is the Internet zillionaire?’
‘Yes.’
Sinead picked up a pepper grinder. ‘Makes you rethink all the definitions of computer nerd, doesn’t it? He looks like some swashbuckler from the days when buckles were swashed as a regular thing. Hunk doesn’t apply—too everyday. Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a word that means good-looking as sin, with an edge of ruthlessness and danger.’ She winked at Cat. ‘I sense hidden depths and dark secrets and a certain wild recklessness that sets my hormones buzzing. Why, I wonder, isn’t he down at the yacht basin with all the other billionaires and high society people? Could it have anything to do with your mysterious, slanted eyes?’
Grinning triumphantly, she carried the grinder off.
Cat was on edge for the rest of the evening, even after Nick had drunk his beer, eaten his dinner, and left with no more than a nod. He didn’t try to tip her, which was a relief; she would, she thought vengefully, have flung it back in his face, and then Andreo would have had a fit.
It was late when she finally stepped out onto the footpath outside the restaurant, waving Sinead and her Jonathan off on his motorbike.
‘No, you don’t have to see me home,’ she told them when they hesitated. ‘Go and dance all night!’
‘You’re sure?’ Sinead peered at her.
‘Dead sure. When has there ever been a mugging here? Off you go.’
Sinead seemed as though she was going to insist, but then she looked past Cat and gave a quick nod. ‘OK, see you tomorrow!’
They took off and she turned and walked briskly away. The sky hung low, threatening rain on a warm wind from the tropics. Because Auckland was spread across on an isthmus between two harbours, one on the west coast, one on the east, every wind and breeze came salted with the sea.
Other scents floated across from the Domain park—newly mown grass, some exotic perfume that hinted of the tropical plants sheltered in the elegant glass Wintergardens, and the sweet, potent fragrance of datura flowers behind a nearby hedge.
Although it was after midnight, traffic hummed along the motorway; Cat wished she could drive north as far as she could, and settle in some small town so far away from Nick that he’d never find her.
The sound of her name jerked her head up. A swift flare of excitement set her blood afire as she saw Nick walking around his long, sleek monster of a car. Had she summoned him just by thinking about him?
No wonder Sinead had gone off so happily!
‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said. ‘I hope you’re not in the habit of walking by yourself at this hour of the night.’
‘Sinead and I usually go home together.’ Made uneasy by his closeness, Cat shrugged further into her jacket. ‘We live in the same house.’
‘Get in.’ When she hesitated, he said curtly, ‘Unless you want me to follow you all the way home?’
Fuming, she obeyed, sitting in eloquent silence while he set the car in motion. If he touched her, she thought nastily, she’d hit him where it hurt most. She wasn’t going to endure again the consuming lash of his sexuality and her own feral response. It was humiliating.
He made no attempt to touch her. They were almost at their destination when he said, ‘Why, when you get a very adequate allowance from your trust fund, do you work every night at a second-rate restaurant?’
She bristled. ‘Andreo is a superb cook—’
‘That’s not the issue,’ he cut in incisively. ‘Why are you so cagey? I assume the answer’s got everything to do with the ecstatic answer I got from the clinic in Ilid. According to Sister Bernadette you are a major benefactor—in fact, the only benefactor the clinic has. Thanks to your generosity, she told me, they now own some piece of equipment I can’t even spell, let alone pronounce.’
‘It’s a—’ She bit back the words.
He drew the car to a halt outside the house. ‘Yes, I thought you’d know all about it. How much did it cost?’
Cat stared at the dark window that indicated her shabby room. If she’d known Juana was going to need this second operation she’d have kept twenty thousand dollars back, but she couldn’t regret that the clinic now had a functioning surgery ward and theatre.
Eventually she said, ‘It’s none of your business. All you have to do is see that the income from the trust goes to the right place once a year.’
‘If you think that’s all a trustee does,’ he said cuttingly, ‘you should, perhaps, re-read the relevant pages in your textbooks. Glen certainly didn’t intend you to send it all to a hospital in Romit. I don’t need to tell you he’d be horrified to see his wife waiting in a restaurant, however good the chef. He wanted you to be taken care of.’
She said distantly, ‘I can look after myself.’
Nick switched off the engine and turned to look at her, both hands still on the wheel. ‘Not very well. You’ve got dark circles under your eyes.’
She remained stubbornly silent.
‘All right,’ he said, dismissing the subject, ‘forget it. If it makes you happy, spend every cent you get on the clinic. I have a favour to ask of you.’
‘A favour?’
Glen had used to grumble about Nick’s damned, stiff-necked pride. Nick followed his own road with a self-contained authority and confident determination that got him where he wanted without asking for help. A sideways glance revealed his profile—granite-hard and uncompromising.
A flash of white indicated his narrow smile. ‘You heard,’ he said crisply. ‘It won’t be easy, and it will involve moving in with me. You’ve heard of the Dempster Cup, I assume?’
‘I do read the newspapers,’ she retorted, her heart lurching in her chest. Steadying her voice, she added, ‘Next to the America’s Cup it’s the most prestigious yacht race in the world, and this year it’s in Auckland. And so, of course, are all the rich people who follow rich yacht races in their super-yachts. What on earth does a sailing competition have to do with a favour from me?’ In a tone edged with sarcasm, she added, ‘Especially one that involves moving in with you.’
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