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Shadowing Shahna
Laurey Bright
Leaving Kier Remington had been hard, living without him even harder.Shahna Reeves never expected him to find her, never imagined he would even bother to look. Until he walked back into her life, long, lean and reminding her too well of things she'd been trying to forget. Not a day passed that Kier hadn't thought about Shahna, ached for the feel of her in his arms.He told himself it was a simple interest in her well-being that motivated him, but now that he had her back in his life - her and the adorable baby he hadn't known existed - he knew it was so much more .
“Well, now that you’ve found me, what do you want?”
“To find out how you are,” he said, “and what made you leave.”
“I’m fine. And I left because I wanted to.”
If Shahna hadn’t known him so well, she might have missed the flexing of a muscle in his cheek as he clenched his teeth. Kier had a formidable temper that he usually kept rigidly in check. “That’s no answer,” he rasped. “Why don’t you tell me the truth?”
The truth? Where would she start? “The truth is,” she said, “I’d had enough—of everything. Sydney, the rat race.” Of living life on the surface, of a relationship that wasn’t going anywhere, of hiding my real feelings because you didn’t want to know about them, of being afraid that you’d find out and cut me from your life as ruthlessly as you had every other woman who shared it for a brief time. “I needed…wanted something different.”
Dear Reader,
It’s August, and our books are as hot as the weather, so if it’s romantic excitement you crave, look no further. Merline Lovelace is back with the newest CODE NAME: DANGER title, Texas Hero. Reunion romances are always compelling, because emotions run high. Add the spice of danger and you’ve got the perfection of the relationship between Omega agent Jack Carstairs and heroine-in-danger Ellie Alazar.
ROMANCING THE CROWN continues with Carla Cassidy’s Secrets of a Pregnant Princess, a marriage-of-convenience story featuring Tamiri princess Samira Kamal and her mysterious bodyguard bridegroom. Marie Ferrarella brings us another of THE BACHELORS OF BLAIR MEMORIAL in M.D. Most Wanted, giving the phrase “doctor-patient confidentiality” a whole new meaning. Award-winning New Zealander Frances Housden makes her second appearance in the line with Love Under Fire, and her fellow Kiwi Laurey Bright checks in with Shadowing Shahna. Finally, wrap up the month with Jenna Mills and her latest, When Night Falls.
Next month, return to Intimate Moments for more fabulous reading—including the newest from bestselling author Sharon Sala, The Way to Yesterday. Until then…enjoy!
Yours,
Leslie J. Wainger
Executive Senior Editor
Shadowing Shahna
Laurey Bright
LAUREY BRIGHT
has held a number of different jobs but has never wanted to be anything but a writer. She lives in New Zealand, where she creates the stories of contemporary people in love that have won her a following all over the world. Visit her at her Web site, http://www.laureybright.com.
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 1
He came out of the mist.
Morning cloud lay softly in the hollows of the blue hills embracing the Hokianga Harbour, and drifted across its glassy waters.
Shahna Reeves, about to enter her cottage, paused at the steady put-putter of an engine. A small basket of fresh, warm brown eggs held between her hands, she watched the white hull of a motor launch emerge from the curling wisps of vapor.
The boat turned and slowed until it was nudged expertly alongside the weathered and worn jetty. There were two men aboard—the boat’s chunky, brown-skinned owner-driver, Timoti Huria, and…
Already on her way down the grassy slope, Shahna abruptly paused, her heart jumping erratically, her breath snagged in her throat.
The taller man leaped onto the jetty and took a backpack from Timoti’s big hands. A gray T-shirt stretched across taut muscles as he swung the pack to the worn, uneven boards, and designer jeans molded a trim male behind and long legs.
Timoti called to Shahna, “Brought you a visitor, Shahna. Okay?”
The newcomer, hoisting the pack onto one shoulder, turned and lifted his dark head, fixing her with a challenging ocean-blue stare.
Shahna swallowed. It wasn’t okay. Far from it. But if Kier Remington had come this far to find her he wasn’t going to go away just on her say-so. And she didn’t want to involve Timoti in a physical confrontation. Jerkily she nodded, then found her voice. “It’s okay. Thanks, Timoti.”
Satisfied, he revved the engine, and the launch backed and proceeded along the harbor, stirring a white-edged trail in the water.
His passenger started up the hill, coming to a halt in front of Shahna, their eyes level because the sloping ground negated the six inches’ difference in their height.
He subjected her to a leisurely inspection, from the dark brown hair curling gently about her ears, the loose T-shirt and unfashionable denim cutoffs, and down lightly tanned bare legs to the disreputable sneakers that she had thrust on her feet to go feed the hens.
Traveling upward again, his scrutiny halted on the basket of eggs.
A slight, disbelieving smile curved the explicitly masculine mouth. Shahna remembered how that mouth had felt on hers, firm and sure, warm and hungry. Shockingly she remembered too her own hunger for him, for his kiss, his touch, his arms around her, his male scent in her nostrils, his skin sliding against hers, hot and slick and exciting.
A familiar, long-denied longing assailed her body and made her legs weak. “What are you doing here?” she demanded.
The last thing she had expected was that Kier would come looking for her. Dismay warred with exhilaration at the thought that he might have cared enough to do that.
He lifted his eyes to hers. “More to the point, what are you doing here?”
His gaze went beyond her to the cottage. Despite the white paint she’d lavished on the worn boards, the fresh green trim on the windowsills, and the new corrugated iron roof, she knew the sagging front steps and big up-and-down windows betrayed its colonial-era beginnings.
Shahna said, “The Hokianga is one of the most beautiful places in the world.” Dodging the real question.
He half turned to survey the harbor that thrust deep into New Zealand’s North Island, its myriad inlets and tributaries snaking through bush and farmland.
The sun was slowly bringing it to life, glinting on lazy ripples chasing each other across the surface as the mist melted away and crept up the hillsides, lingering on the bush-covered curves.
“It’s very pretty,” he agreed politely, and turned his attention to the immediate environs.
Around the cottage the grass was kept short by sheep that had fled at the sound of the approaching boat. A stand of dark-leaved trees, relieved by nikau palms and lacy tree-ferns, protectively embraced the small clearing.
His deep-blue gaze came back to her, and a lean, strong hand reached out to touch a tiny curled feather adhering to one of the eggs. “Very earth mother.”
Shahna stiffened, something uncomfortably like fear cooling her heated skin, and he said, “Are you going to invite me in?”
Panic nearly sent her running into the cottage, to slam the door behind her. Childish, and almost certainly futile.
She didn’t really have a choice. “All right. Come on in.”
Reluctantly Shahna led him inside.
Kier dropped the backpack on the old hinged-seat settle near the door and followed her across the polished kauri boards and colorful scatter rugs.
The kitchen, separated from the cosy main room only by cupboards beneath a waist-high wooden counter, was small and narrow. Shahna had placed the round dining table and four wooden chairs on the living room side of the counter after her landlord knocked out the partition between the rooms.
Ignoring the chairs, Kier propped himself against the wall between the two areas and resumed his study of her, his relentless gaze intensifying the jittering of her nerves.
He seemed alien here, out of his normal city environment. Even away from his own country. Shahna could almost believe she was dreaming, had conjured him from her subconscious as she too often did in sleep. Except that he was too real, too solid, too altogether male—dangerously so. There was nothing dreamlike about this.
She put the eggs down without looking at him. If she did, she might not be able to prevent herself from staring back, drinking in the sight of him, absorbed in the sheer seductive pleasure of his sudden appearance from the blue.
Trying for normality, she asked in a voice that seemed unreal, “Do you want some tea, or coffee?”
“Coffee would be good.” Watching her fill an electric kettle, he remarked, “You do have electricity, then.”
A wood-burner warmed the cottage in the winter and heated her water, but it was too hot for that now. “All mod cons.” She gave him a straight look, deliberately tamping down her wayward emotions—the fluttery fear, the guilty excitement, the sheer wonder at his presence. “All those I need, anyway.”
His eyes lit on the telephone sitting on the counter. “Your number’s not listed.”
“It’s under the landlord’s name. I lease this place from the farmer next door—it was the original homestead in the days when the main transport was by water.”
“The sheep aren’t yours?”
Shahna laughed. “The McKenzies run a few sheep on their farm along with dairy cattle.”
She took sugar and pottery mugs from a cupboard, busying herself to keep in check a foolish desire to fling herself into his arms and seize the moment that, with a sick dread in her heart, she knew couldn’t possibly last.
Glancing at him while she fixed the coffee, she saw that Kier was looking around now with assessing, perhaps disparaging eyes.
The furniture wasn’t new, not because she couldn’t afford it but because it would have seemed inappropriate in the mellow old building.
She’d chosen mellow colors too for walls and upholstery and the grooved decorative frames around the uncovered windows. Soft blues melded into grays and greens, with touches of old-rose and lavender and an occasional splash of deep crimson.
Colors that echoed the hazy bloom that blurred the distant hills, the ever-changing mirror of the harbor, the dark green leaves of the native trees with their paler undersides, and the starry bursts of pohutukawa flowers at Christmas.
Kier’s coolly critical appraisal helped to steady her unruly emotions.
He had given her no clue that this was anything more than a casual visit. With a bit of luck and a lot of self-control, she’d survive it with her hard-won serenity intact, her self-respect preserved and her secrets safe. “You’re out early,” she said, her hand on the coffee plunger. It was barely eight o’clock.
Kier returned his gaze to her. “Timoti had to catch the tide. He was going to pick up his wife’s sister and I caught a ride.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“Timoti’s wife gave me bacon, sausages and eggs.” The couple ran a bed-and-breakfast in the waterside village of Rawene and took tourists on fishing or sightseeing trips. “What about you?” he queried.
“I’m okay.” She put a plate of coconut cookies on the table, poured the coffee and sat down. “Help yourself.”
She lifted her mug, using both hands because they were shaking a little and she was afraid of spilling her coffee. The bitter liquid scorched her tongue.
Questions raced through her mind but caution urged her not to ask them.
Kier looked around again at the old kauri dresser holding plates and cups, the pots of herbs on the kitchen windowsill, the sparse furniture. “Doesn’t seem like you, Shahna.”
Shahna shrugged, a good stab at seeming indifference. “Maybe you didn’t know me as well as you thought.”
His voice turned brusque. “What does that mean?”
She lifted her head from her contemplation of the coffee in her mug, making her eyes blank, her face expressionless. “Just what I said.” He had never known how deeply she had allowed her emotions to become engaged in their relationship. Thank heaven.
He had never cared enough to find out, she reminded herself acridly. But, to be fair, she had guarded her secret well.
Kier kept looking at her, as though expecting more. But she certainly wasn’t going to divulge to him here what she had kept hidden for so long and at such cost. Even if he’d had an unlikely change of heart, too much lay between them now. There was no going back.
When she didn’t offer anything further he said, “After three years, I’d have said you owed me more than three lines of farewell.”
Shahna’s hands tightened about the warmed curve of the mug. “I don’t owe you anything, Kier. That was part of our…arrangement. No strings, remember? The way you wanted it.”
A faint flicker of straight black lashes was the only sign that she’d disconcerted him. “What you wanted too, as I recall.”
Oh, she’d fooled herself for a short while that it was enough. She’d gone into their relationship with her eyes wide open, knowing the terms, and agreed to everything, imagining she was getting the best of all worlds. Good worlds. Plenty of people would have said she was mad to give that up. Sometimes she thought so herself. Although in the end the choice had been out of her hands. “That isn’t what I want anymore,” she said.
“And this is?” Kier’s unsparing glance swept again around the confined space. He shook his head. “I don’t believe it,” he said flatly.
She hadn’t cluttered the small rooms with furniture and decorations but she thought the cottage looked fine. “How did you find me?” she asked, deflecting him.
