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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.
