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‘I’m a self-employed businesswoman; I have to work hard.’
Besides, she had an old debt to pay off.
At that moment Hawke Challenger looked deliberately at Cathy and smiled. It felt like a betrayal when Cathy’s face lit up with a warm response. Morna’s lips tightened. Why couldn’t her intelligent friend catch that painfully evocative resemblance to Glen?
Not in looks—although Glen had been a good-looking man, he wasn’t in the same league as Hawke Challenger. But both men wore an air of arrogant confidence, of complete conviction that they could do what they wanted because of who they were.
Cathy seemed quite blind to it. In a tone that could only be called cheerful she said, ‘So now you know you’ve got a truly fanciable man living right next door.’
‘Well, just over the hill,’ Morna agreed. She added tautly, ‘And I’m certain every time he thinks of Tarika Bay, with its three acres and that lovely little beach, he comes over all acquisitive. Before he died Jacob told me that “the Challenger circus” had approached him a couple of times to sell. Jacob turned each offer down, but I’ll bet Hawke Challenger believes he’s going to buy it off the estate.’
Cathy said fairly, ‘I can understand why Hawke wants it. His land surrounds Tarika Bay.’
‘He might want it,’ Morna told her with calm determination, ‘but he’s not going to get it.’
Cathy sighed. ‘You’ve decided to dislike him. I recognise that mulish jut to your jaw!’
‘I haven’t made up my mind,’ Morna said. ‘Anyway, it doesn’t matter what I think of him. I’m the interloper here, not him. He fits in very well with all these splendid animals: big and well-muscled and seething with testosterone. The colour’s right too—I’ve seen several bulls exactly the same bronze as his hide. And you can take that matchmaking look off your face. He’s years younger than I am!’
Cathy returned, ‘Turning thirty-four yesterday didn’t transform you into a hag overnight. As it happens, he’s two years younger than Nick—’
‘Which makes him two years younger than me,’ Morna interpolated.
Cathy sent a resigned glance skywards. ‘Who’s counting? Who cares?’
The man they were both watching chose that moment to direct a long, speculative stare at Morna. Hawke Challenger’s light eyes duelled with her golden, resentful ones before he lifted one straight black brow in a mocking acknowledgement and turned his attention back to the people with him.
Morna fumed. Over-confident bastard! She’d trained herself not to be intimidated by his type, but it irritated her that while she’d been grateful for the wide brim shadowing her face, he’d held his autocratic head high.
Without expression she commented, ‘He certainly doesn’t look like your average farmer.’
‘He’s not—he’s the New Zealand equivalent of the landed gentry.’
‘I’ve designed jewellery for some of them,’ Morna said thoughtfully. ‘They demand quality and they’re not afraid to go modern.’ She shrugged, adding, ‘But, unlike the fanciable Mr Challenger, most of them are pretty weather-beaten. I can see him cutting a swathe through impressionable tourists at his resort—even showing off on a prancing black stallion to match his hair—but I’d be surprised if he does any of the grunt work, either at the resort or on the station.’
‘He’s really getting to you, isn’t he?’ Cathy surveyed her curiously. ‘He grew up on a family cattle and sheep station on the East Coast, north of Gisborne, so I imagine he’s competent on a farm.’
Another trickle of awareness snaked through Morna. ‘If he doesn’t mind hard work and getting his hands dirty, why did he abandon agriculture to go into tourism?’
‘He didn’t. He owns land all around New Zealand, mostly agricultural land. Overseas too—he does a lot of travelling. This is where he’s settled; his office is in Orewa.’
Interested in spite of herself, Morna nodded. Orewa was a seaside town a few miles away. ‘If he’s got the whole country to choose from, I wonder why he decided to come up here instead of settling on his ancestral acres.’
‘Ask him,’ Cathy said smartly. ‘Somerville’s Reach was practically derelict when he bought it. He poured money into it until he’d whipped it into shape, which provided four new jobs for the district. Then he demolished the old homestead in Somerville’s Bay—’
‘Barbarian!’ Morna interjected on a scornful note.
Cathy returned serenely, ‘It was a ruin, and the district’s gained lots more jobs from the resort. You won’t find anyone here complaining about his development plans. And when Hawke turned the gumlands into a fiendishly tricky golf course, that brought more tourists and yet more employment.’ She glanced up at Morna. ‘As you well know, because you drive through the golf course twice a day from your little shack to Auckland and back.’
‘It’s not a shack, it’s a bach,’ Morna said automatically, turning a fraction to sweep Hawke Challenger’s uncompromising features with another rapid glance.
As though he felt it, he lifted his head and once more their eyes met and clashed. His wide sexy mouth—classically chiselled into perfection—lifted at the corners in a smile that held no warmth, nothing but potent sensuality.
A flash of foreboding darkened the day. Lowering her lashes as a shield, Morna scrambled to remember what they were talking about.
Cathy said, ‘In your case, bach and shack are synonyms.’
‘Baches are New Zealand icons!’ Ignoring Cathy’s sniff, Morna stressed, ‘OK, it’s shabby and old, but it’s clean and it’s comfortable. Although until Jacob’s will is probated it’s not mine. I’m paying rent to the estate for it.’ Her voice turned tart. ‘I don’t imagine I’ll see much of Hawke Challenger—rich, well-connected resort owners might buy jewellery, but they don’t socialise with the people who make it.’
She sneaked another glance, only to have Hawke Challenger catch her again. This time he deliberately examined her face, his own coolly judgmental.
Startled colour flamed across her ivory skin and burned through every cell. Bewildered, she tore her eyes free, swallowing as the music and chatter drummed around her.
Cathy’s voice broke the spell. ‘Minimal rent, I hope.’
‘Pretty minimal.’ In fact, very minimal. The bach was sturdy, but basic.
‘It’s great to have you living so close. Nick worries about you.’
‘Nick still thinks of me as the kid he used to protect and bully for my own good.’ Morna’s smile was wry, almost wistful. ‘I know I relied shamelessly on him, but I’m over that now.’
‘He thinks you’re mad to insist on donating Glen’s legacy to a charity,’ Nick’s wife said honestly. ‘And so do I. Glen knew he’d treated you badly.’
At twenty-one Morna had fallen head over heels, fathoms deep in love with Glen Spencer, Nick’s mentor and the owner of the advertising agency where he’d worked.
Glen had been her first—her only—lover, and she’d been—well, sinfully naïve. Certainly stupid! When he’d asked her to live with him she’d ignored Nick’s warnings and moved into his opulent apartment. And she’d been lyrically happy, smugly convinced that Glen loved her and that her fierce loyalty was returned.
And then he’d met Cathy, young and beautiful and vulnerable.
Five years of loyal love turned out to mean less than nothing; brutally pragmatic, Glen dismissed Morna from his bed and his life by dangling the offer of a fully paid course at a prestigious design institution half the world away.
She had swallowed her bitter pride to accept his conscience money, and as soon as she’d been out of the way he’d married Cathy with as much pomp and ceremony as he could command. But Morna had attacked his ego when she’d stubbornly treated the fees as a loan and repaid them, month by month.
Cathy had known none of this, nor that Glen’s ruthless rejection of Nick’s foster-sister had persuaded Nick to leave his fast-track career at the agency and strike out on his own in the crazy, dangerous, high-octane world of information technology. Glen had been the only person surprised when Nick’s cutting intelligence and business skills had catapulted him into huge wealth and international power.
Although Cathy had been married to Glen for four years before his untimely death in an accident, she still didn’t understand the way Glen’s mind had worked. In his will he’d left Morna the exact amount of the tuition fees, down to the last cent, throwing the money back at her in a final sneering insult.
With these thoughts churning through her head, Morna said to Cathy, ‘How did you know about the course fees? I suppose Nick told you.’
‘He told me you wouldn’t let him repay Glen, or lend you the money to do it. Instead you worked as a waitress in nightclubs to get it,’ Cathy said, distressed but determined.
‘Excellent tips in nightclubs,’ Morna said succinctly. ‘It wasn’t Nick’s problem. And I refuse to stay beholden to Glen.’
‘At least you used his legacy to set up your shop! But he’s dead, Morna—he has been for years. Why repay a dead man by donating most of your income to a charity?’
‘I only ever considered it to be a loan.’ Morna’s voice was cold and sharp, brittle as an icicle.
‘You’re too stiff-necked and principled for your own good,’ Cathy returned doggedly. ‘Nick would have been proud to stake you—’
‘I know.’ Morna’s voice gentled. ‘Cathy, I’m not going to sacrifice my independence to another man ever again—not even Nick. Using Glen’s legacy got the shop off the ground, but if I didn’t treat it as a loan I’d always feel—I’d feel that the five years I lived with him were a sort of prostitution. It wasn’t like that—not for me.’
Cathy’s face softened. ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ she agreed. ‘I do understand. It’s just—well, it seems such a waste—to scrimp and save when you don’t have to.’
‘What happened to his bequest to you?’
Cathy flushed. ‘I use it to support the hospital in Romit,’ she admitted.
‘So you use it for a hospital in the Coral Sea, and I use it for deprived children here.’ Morna’s voice gentled. ‘Don’t worry, and don’t let Nick worry. I’m managing.’
‘Oh, yes—buying your clothes from second-hand shops, driving around in a car that gives Nick a heart attack whenever he thinks about it, ploughing everything back into the shop—!’ Dismayed, Cathy caught herself up. ‘I’m sorry. I admire your determination to do what you think is right, but you can overdo independence.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I know you’d do anything to save Nick a moment’s worry.’
‘Of course I would,’ Cathy said briskly, ‘but I’m concerned for your sake too!’
‘At least admit I buy my clothes from exclusive charity shops,’ Morna said lightly.
Cathy smiled, but her blue eyes revealed a lingering anxiety. ‘OK, I’ll admit that. Not that it matters—you’d look good in a flour sack.’
‘I doubt it.’ A grin widened Morna’s mouth, but she sobered quickly. ‘It’s time we all forgot the past and concentrated on the present.’
‘That,’ Cathy murmured thoughtfully, looking past her, ‘would involve concentrating on Hawke Challenger. He’s headed this way.’
Morna swung around. He stopped beside her and smiled down, translucent jade-green eyes scanning Morna’s face.
Thank heavens for sunglasses!
‘Good to see you here, Cathy,’ he said, with a smile that sent zings of lightning through Morna’s body. Deep, controlled, his intriguing voice was textured by a lazy, untamed note.
Anticipation punched her in the solar plexus and bolted down her spine. It took every shred of will-power to summon a guarded smile as Cathy introduced them. Only good manners drove her to take off her sunglasses and smile briefly at him before retiring behind them again. And no way was she going to shake his hand.
CHAPTER TWO
MORNA VAUSE wasn’t traditionally beautiful.
Hawke decided that it didn’t matter—skin like warm ivory, eyes the colour of malt whisky and a silky black bob highlighted in dangerous red glints by the sun did enough for her.
And that didn’t include her lush, sulky mouth—a sensual incitement he’d watched transform from repose to gamine wickedness in a heady flash.
An interesting situation, Hawke thought; although these women appeared the best of friends, Cathy had once supplanted Morna in Glen Spencer’s affections. Hawke didn’t gossip, but he’d have had to live in a Trappist monastery to miss knowing that Spencer had flaunted his young trophy mistress until he’d dumped her for an even younger trophy wife.
And he hadn’t been close-lipped about the amount that exchange had cost him; Morna Vause had been handsomely rewarded for her years in his bed by the best tuition the world could offer in her chosen field, and a considerable legacy.
Clearly she knew how to manipulate the men in her life to her best advantage.
‘How do you do, Mr Challenger?’ Each word rang like silver, crisp and impersonal.
‘Hawke.’
Morna hesitated before repeating in a flat tone that didn’t hide the husky note beneath it, ‘Hawke.’
Whisky-coloured eyes, and a voice as rich and complex as the best single malt. ‘Morna,’ he said laconically. ‘A pretty name—Celtic, isn’t it? What does it mean?’
Morna forced her lips into a stiff, unnatural smile. Still in that level, unemotional tone, she said, ‘Beloved, or so my mother always told me. But then, she got a lot of things wrong.’
Stop behaving like a shrinking violet, she commanded. She was no sweet, shy virgin—in fact she’d never been sweet or shy in her life! Fighting for survival soon demolished any softness in a child.
‘Yours is unusual too,’ she said. ‘Were you born in Hawke’s Bay?’ She’d only visited that sun-baked province once, but she’d fallen in love with its Art Deco cities and superb vineyards.
Green eyes mocked her. ‘No, and although my mother was a Hawke she didn’t belong to the family Hawke’s Bay was named after,’ he told her calmly. ‘However, she’s the last of her line, and she wanted the name to continue.’
The confident reference to breeding and background scraped across Morna’s already sensitised nerves. She’d grown up in poverty and hopelessness without knowing the name of her father.
Hawke watched her. She might think she’d camouflaged her emotions behind those sunglasses, but her square chin, angled with a hint of defiance, told him more than she realised.
As did that tantalising mouth. His hormones growled softly in unexpected need. She had the mouth of a born sensualist—and that was a total contradiction of the little he knew about her.
A second glance revealed the discipline that tucked in the corners of her lips, keeping them under control. Sensualist, certainly, but he suspected her appetites were firmly leashed, an asset to be used rather than a tendency to be indulged.
He wanted her.
So? He’d wanted other women. But not, he thought with the cold logic he used even on his own reactions, with this fierce intensity. And none of them had ever looked at him with such aloof indifference. He smiled, ruthlessly summoning the charm he knew gave him an advantage over most other men.
Her sultry mouth parted for a second before colour swept along her high cheekbones and she compressed her lips into a straight line.
Yes, she too felt that elemental, fiery tug of the senses; controlled she might be, but she was giving off signals like a sunstorm.
In a judicial way he admired her composure when Cathy Harding bridged the tense atmosphere with conversation. Instinctively courteous, he followed Cathy’s lead, realising with an elemental satisfaction that Morna Vause wasn’t normally as quiet as she was now.
A few minutes later the sound of his name thrust its way through the air.
‘Hawke Challenger,’ the loudspeaker asked, ‘can you come up here and present the prizes now, please? Come on, Hawke, I can see you—’
‘I have to go,’ he said abruptly. Ignoring the silent woman beside her, he smiled at Cathy. ‘I hope we’ll be seeing you and your husband at the dinner after the show?’
‘Yes, we’re going.’
He transferred his gaze to Morna, imprinting the lines of her half-shadowed face on his memory. ‘And of course you must come too,’ he said politely.
Without waiting for an answer he swung off through the crowd—a crowd, Morna noted, that separated in front of him like the sea before Moses.
‘Well!’ Cathy laughed. ‘That was more or less the equivalent of a royal invitation.’
‘Ha! If he thinks I’m impressed—’
‘Get off your high horse,’ Cathy interrupted. ‘He’s going to be your neighbour, so it might be a good way to get to know him.’
‘Get to know whom?’ Nick asked from behind them.
