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‘I hope you will pour,’ the owner said.
‘Yes, of course.’
Standing back, Mark said woodenly, ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you, but you were trespassing.’
With equal formality, Ianthe said, ‘Property rights don’t confer manhandling privileges, but I accept your apology.’
Summoning her most limpid smile, she directed it at him until colour rose in his skin. He sent a swift, frowning glance to his employer, who said, ‘Thank you, Mark.’ With an abrupt nod the younger man turned jerkily and left the room.
Her host laughed quietly. ‘You New Zealanders!’ he murmured. ‘I’d say the honours went to you that time.’
With an unwilling smile Ianthe poured tea with a strong, tarry smell. When she asked what sort it was, he answered, ‘Lapsang souchong—Chinese tea. Don’t you like it? Shall I get another—?’
‘No, no,’ she interrupted. ‘I just haven’t come across it before. I like trying new things.’
He waited while she sipped it, and smiled lazily when she said, ‘It’s different, but I like it.’
‘Good,’ he said, and picked up the cup he’d collected from her. ‘Are you a local, or holidaying like me?’
‘I’m on holiday.’
‘At the camping ground?’
‘No, I’m staying in a bach.’ His lifted brows led her to enlarge, ‘In New Zealand a bach is a small, rather scruffy beach house.’
His scrutiny shredded the fragile barrier of her confidence. Ianthe stopped herself from blinking defensively; whenever he looked at her something very strange happened in the pit of her stomach, a kind of drawing sensation that hardened into an ache.
Dourly she told herself that he probably had an equally powerful effect on any woman under a hundred. Those eyes were hypnotic. Perhaps he was conducting a subtle interrogation; if so, he’d mistaken his adversary. He hadn’t told her who he was, so she wouldn’t tell him anything about herself.
Childish, but she felt threatened, and defiance was as good a reaction as any.
He broke into her thoughts by saying, ‘Ah, those small houses near the camping ground.’
‘Yes.’
‘I heard that they’re under threat.’
Ianthe nodded. ‘They’re built on what’s now reserve land. The owners aren’t allowed to alter the buildings beyond any necessary repairs, and when they die the baches will be torn down and the land returned to the Crown.’
‘And is yours a family bach?’
She said warily, ‘It’s owned by friends.’
He changed the subject with smooth confidence. ‘I hope the weather stays as idyllic as it’s been for the past couple of weeks.’
‘It should, but Northland—all of New Zealand, in fact—is a forecaster’s nightmare. The country’s long and narrow, and because it’s where the tropics meet the cold air coming up from the Antarctic we get weather from every direction. Still, it’s high summer, so with any luck we’ll have glorious weather until the end of February.’ The pedantic note in her voice was her only defence against his speculative, probing gaze.
She added, ‘Unless another cyclone comes visiting from the north, of course. We’ve already had two this holiday season, although neither of them amounted to more than heavy rain.’
‘Let’s hope the tropics keep their cyclones to themselves,’ he said, giving no indication of how long he intended to stay.
After that they spoke more generalities—conversation that meant nothing, revealed nothing, was not intended to be taken seriously or recalled. Yet beneath the surface casualness and ease there were deeper, questionable currents, and whenever she looked up he was watching her.
Eventually Ianthe put down her empty cup and said, ‘That was lovely, thank you. I’d better be getting back.’
‘Certainly.’ He got to his feet with loose-limbed masculine grace. ‘I’ll drive you to your car.’
‘I can walk,’ she said automatically.
Without taking his eyes from her face he asked, ‘And make your leg even more painful?’
She grimaced, because it had now begun to throb, and she knew that the only way to keep it from getting worse was to lie down. ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, adding, ‘Thank you very much.’
‘It’s very little recompense for Mark’s officiousness.’
He’d come to take her elbow again. Ianthe knew that his fingers didn’t burn her skin as he helped her up, but that was what it felt like. ‘Mark’s responsible for that,’ she said tersely, tightening her lips against the odd, shivery sensations running through her.
‘He’s employed by me,’ he said, ‘so I’m responsible.’
Ianthe took a few stiff steps, her limp becoming more pronounced as the ache in her leg suddenly intensified.
He said something under his breath, and with an economy of movement that shocked her, lifted her in his arms.
‘Hey!’ she exclaimed, unable to say anything more as a secret, feverish excitement swallowed her up.
‘Perhaps you’d rather Mark carried you,’ he said, locking her against his hard-muscled torso with casual strength as he strode with surprising ease towards the wide hall that led to a big front door.
The promise of masculine power hadn’t been an illusion. The self-control that gave authority to his spectacular, hawkish good looks had been transmuted into sheer, determined energy.
An alarming combination of flame and ice electrified Ianthe. Striving to sound level and prosaic, she said, ‘I don’t need to be carried.’
‘You’re as white as a sheet and sweat is standing out on your forehead. Please don’t try to make me feel worse than I already do.’
Because Ianthe hated being pitied she returned coldly, ‘I’m not. My leg hurts, but I’d get there.’
‘Even if you had to crawl,’ he said with caustic disapproval. ‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face not only wastes time, it turns perfectly legitimate sympathy into intense irritation.’
Which left her with nothing to say. Clearly he did feel responsible for his henchman’s behaviour, but Mark’s macho hijacking no longer concerned her.
Her heart jumped as she stole a glance at the splendid profile, outlined by an unexpected blaze of gold as they stepped out of the door beneath a skylight. Attraction, she told herself with contemptuous bravado. It’s just attraction—that common meeting point between male and female. It means nothing.
Bracing herself against it, she forced her attention away from him and onto her surroundings.
Whoever had designed the house had understood Northland’s climate. A porte-cochère extended from the door across the gravel drive, offering shelter from summer’s heat as well as from the downpours that could batter the peninsula at any season. In its shade waited a Range Rover, large and luxurious and dusty.
‘I’ll have to put you down,’ her host said, and did so with exquisite care.
She clutched at the handle of the vehicle, and for a second his arms tightened around her again. Her bones heated, slackened, melted in the swift warmth of his embrace and the faint, potently masculine tang she’d been carefully not registering. He waited until she let go of the door handle and straightened up, then stepped back.
‘Can you manage?’ he enquired evenly as he opened the door.
‘Yes.’ Refusing to acknowledge the ache in her leg, she climbed in, took a deep, steadying breath and reached down to clip on her seatbelt. She didn’t look at the man who walked around to his side and got in.
‘I presume you left your car at the gate,’ he said as he started the engine.
‘Yes. In the pull-off.’
He handled the big machine with skill on the narrow gravel road. Ianthe sat silently until she saw her car huddled against a pine plantation, shielded from the dusty road by a thick growth of teatree and scrub.
‘Here,’ she said.
‘I see it.’ He drove in behind her car and stopped.
As she got quickly down and limped across to her elderly Japanese import, Ianthe repressed an ironic smile. The only things her car shared with the opulent Rover were the basic equipment and a coat of dust.
The sun had sailed far enough across the sky to bypass the dark shade of the trees and heat up the car’s interior. With a last uncharitable thought for Mark, Ianthe wound down windows and held the door open, wishing desperately that her unwilling host would just get back into his big vehicle and leave her alone. She felt balanced on a knife-edge, her past hidden by shadow, her future almost echoing with emptiness.
‘There, that’s cool enough,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘Thank you.’
‘I should be thanking you for not prosecuting me,’ he said, amusement glimmering for a second in the frigid depths of his eyes. ‘The only recompense I can make is to offer the beach to you whenever you wish to swim.’
‘That’s very kind of you—thank you.’ The words were clumsy and she couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice, so she nodded and retreated to her car, thinking, Not likely.
Pity had produced that offer, and she loathed pity. Since the accident she’d endured more than a lifetime’s quota, defended from its enfeebling effects only by a stubborn, mute pride.
With a savage twist she switched on the engine, furious when it grumbled and stuttered before coughing into silence. Thin-lipped, she tried it again, and this time it caught and purred into life. Smiling politely, she waved.
Before she let the brake off he leaned forward. ‘I’ll follow you home, just to make sure you’re all right.’
‘There’s no need,’ she began, but he’d already stepped back and headed towards the Rover.
Unease crept across her skin on sinister cat’s paws. For a moment she even toyed with the idea of going to someone else’s bach, until common sense scoffed that a few questions would soon tell him where she lived.
She wasn’t scared—she had no reason to fear him.
So she drove sedately down the road until she came to the third bach by the second lake, and turned through the shade of the huge macrocarpa cypress on the front lawn, then into the garage. The Range Rover drew to a halt on the road outside, its engine purring while she got out of the car, locked it, and went towards the door of the bach.
He waited until she’d actually unlocked it before tooting once and turning around.
The last Ianthe saw of him was an arrogant, angular profile against the swirling white dust from the road and the negligent wave of one long hand. Her breath hissed out. For a moment she stared at the faded paint on the door, then jerkily opened it and went inside.
Heat hit her like a blow. Pushing wide the windows, she thought briefly of the wall of glass, open to the lake and the air, then shrugged. When this bach had been built bi-fold windows that turned rooms into pavilions had not been a part of the ordinary house, let alone a holiday place like this.
Who was he? And why did he feel the need for someone like Mark in a place like New Zealand? Perhaps, she thought, curling her lip, he had a fragile ego that demanded the reassurance of a bodyguard.
It didn’t seem likely, but then what did she know of the very rich? Or the very beautiful? If the camera liked his face as much as her eyes had, he might well be a film star. As it was, his face had seemed vaguely familiar, like a half-remembered image from a stranger’s photograph album.
From now on she was going to have to confine herself to the shore of this lake, which meant curious looks and often audible comments about her leg. She looked down at the scar. Purple-red, jagged and uneven, it stretched from her thigh to her ankle. She’d damned near died from shock and loss of blood. Sometimes she even wished she had.
Her capacity for self-pity sickened her. It was new to her, this enormous waste of sullen desperation that so often lay in wait like quicksand.
Determinedly cheerful, she said out loud into the stifling air, ‘Well, Ianthe Brown, you’ve had an experience. Whoever he is, he’s not your common or garden tourist.’
Lifting heavy waves of hair from her hot scalp, she headed for the bathroom.
Tricia Upham, the friend whose parents owned the bach and had lent it to Ianthe for as long as she needed it, had said as she handed over the key, ‘Now that your hair’s grown past your shoulders, for heaven’s sake leave it alone. Chopping it off and hiding it behind goggles and flippers was just wicked ingratitude.’
‘Long hair’s a nuisance when you spend a lot of time underwater in a wetsuit,’ Ianthe had replied.
Now it didn’t seem as though she’d ever get back into a wetsuit.
In fact, she’d be glad if she could just get into the water. Setting her jaw, she washed her face and towelled it dry. ‘Self-pity is a refuge for wimps,’ she told her reflection, challenging the weakness inside her.
Soon she’d be able to swim again.
Surely.
She only needed determination.
The man behind the desk called out, ‘Come in.’
Mark appeared. ‘Before you tell me how big a fool I am,’ he said stiffly, ‘I’m sorry.’
The frown that had been gathering behind Alex Considine’s eyes vanished. He smiled with irony. ‘Just don’t let your enthusiasm override your common sense again.’
‘I won’t.’
‘If you see anything suspicious, report to me.’ His smile broadened. ‘I gather my mother got to you.’
Mark grinned and relaxed. ‘Several times,’ he said, adding, ‘She said you were in danger and emphasised that I should treat everyone with suspicion.’
So why bring a trespasser into the house? Alex wondered drily. Still, his mother was very persuasive, and Mark was a caretaker, not a bodyguard. ‘She’s spent her life worrying about me. I’m not in danger, especially not from slight young women of about twenty-five with a limp. Don’t take any notice of my mother.’
He hadn’t been able to convince her that, although there were people who’d rejoice at the news of his death, nothing was likely to happen to him in New Zealand. It had its problems, this little South Pacific country, and was fighting the worldwide increase in crime like every other country, but a man was probably as safe here as he would be anywhere.
He looked down at the pile of faxes on his desk and asked, ‘Who is the trespasser?’
Mark gave him a startled look. ‘How did you know I recognised her?’
‘If she’d been the usual tourist you’d have escorted her to the gate and sent her on her way.’
‘Yeah, well, I knew I’d seen her somewhere, and I knew it was on television, so I thought she was a reporter. That’s why I brought her back here. I thought you might want to interrogate her.’
Alex Considine nodded. ‘But?’
‘When I came in with the tea-tray I remembered who she was. She fronted a series of wildlife documentaries a year or so ago, until she got bitten by a shark somewhere up in the Pacific.’
So that was what had given her the limp and that hideous scar. Alex’s blood chilled. ‘What’s her name?’
