The Seduction Season

Helen Bianchin was born in New Zealand and travelled to Australia before marrying her Italian-born husband. After three years they moved, returned to New Zealand with their daughter, had two son, s then resettled in Australia. Encouraged by friends to recount anecdotes of her years as a tobacco sharefarmer’s wife living in an Italian community, Helen began setting words on paper and her fi rst novel was published in 1975. An animal lover, she says her terrier and Persian cat regard her study as much theirs as hers. Helen is one of Mills & Boon® Modern™’s top authors and loved by readers around the world.

by

Helen Bianchin

MILLS & BOON

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CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS neither wise nor sensible to drive for hours through the night without taking a break, but Anneke didn’t feel inclined to covet wisdom.

And ‘sensible’ wasn’t a suitable word to apply to someone who, only that morning, had told her boss precisely what she thought of him, then walked out of his office and out of his life.

Men. Anneke swore viciously beneath her breath. Words at which her sweet Aunt Vivienne would have blenched in dismay had she heard them uttered from her favourite niece’s lips.

‘Oh, darling, no,’ Aunt Vivienne had responded in genuine empathy to Anneke’s call. ‘Come and stay with me for a while. The weather is beautiful, and you can relax.’

Family. How wonderfully they rose to the occasion in times of need, Anneke reflected fondly. Especially this particular member, who was surrogate mother, aunt, friend.

The small seaside cottage situated on a relatively isolated stretch of beach in northern New South Wales was idyllic, and it had taken Anneke only an hour to make a few essential phone calls before tossing some clothes into a bag. Then she locked her elegant small flat in Sydney’s suburban Lane Cove, slid behind the wheel of her car, and headed for the main highway leading north.

‘I won’t arrive until late,’ she’d warned her aunt, who had blithely responded it didn’t matter in the least; the front door key would be left in the usual place.

Anneke glanced at the illuminated digital clock on the dashboard. Three minutes past midnight. It would take another hour to reach the outskirts of Byron Bay, a few more minutes to traverse the road leading down to her Aunt’s beachside cottage.

It was a dark night, with no moon to cast an opalescent glow over the countryside, and she leaned forward to switch on the air-conditioning in an attempt to sharpen a brain dulled by more than nine hours of driving with only two minimum breaks along the way.

The car’s headlights probed the ribbon of asphalt and its grassy fringes, and she held back from increasing speed. A semi-trailer barrelled past her, its rig brightly lit, followed a few minutes later by another. Drivers on a tight schedule hauling freight overnight.

Anneke stifled a yawn, rolled her shoulders, then turned on the radio, scrolling through the stations until she found one providing upbeat music.

It was one o’clock when she reached the familiar turnoff and only minutes before she drew the car to a halt on the grassy verge adjacent her aunt’s garage.

The outside light was on in welcome, and Anneke switched off the engine, withdrew her bag from the boot, then trod the path quietly to the front porch, retrieved the key and let herself in.

It was an old brick cottage, renovated over the years to incorporate modern conveniences, and immaculately maintained. Its design was basic, with rooms leading off a wide central hall that ran the length of the cottage. Lounge, dining room and kitchen on the right; three bedrooms, bathroom and laundry on the left.

Anneke shut the front door and locked it, then moved quietly to the rear of the house. She’d deposit her bag in the guest bedroom, then make a much needed cup of tea.

There would, she knew, be a cup and saucer set out on the buffet in readiness, and a small plate of sandwiches beneath film-wrap waiting for her in the refrigerator.

A thoughtful gesture by a very kind lady.

The guest bedroom looked endearingly familiar. A double brass bed occupied centre space, with its old-fashioned white lace bedspread heaped with lace-covered cushions. Above the headboard was a snowy white canopy holding a billowing mosquito net. Superfluous, considering the screened windows, but Aunt Vivienne had wanted to retain the old-fashioned ambience, so the canopy remained.

White lace frilled curtains at the window, old-fashioned wooden furniture, and highly polished wooden floors.

It would be so easy to slip off her shoes, shed her clothes, and sink into bed. For a moment she almost considered it. Her shoulders ached, her head ached, and she was so tired, not to mention emotionally exhausted.

She was inclined to add ‘devastated’. Although that wasn’t quite the description she wanted. Angry, certainly. With Adam, her boss. And herself. Especially herself, for believing in him. She’d been a fool to think she was different from the steady stream of women who inhabited his life.

The type of man, she reflected viciously, who constantly sought challenges on a professional and personal level, Adam knew all the right moves, which buttons to press. He was very, very good at setting the seduction scene.

But not quite good enough. She retained a clear image of his surprise when she’d announced her intention of walking out. The practised hurt when she’d refused to accept his assurance she was very important to him. The slightly wry smile and the spread of his hands in silent acceptance of her vilification that he’d never change.

The only satisfaction she had…and it was very minor…was the knowledge she’d been the one to end the affair. Something she was sure had never happened to him before.

The bravery had lasted as she’d walked out of his office, and all through the long hours of driving.

Now that she was here, reaction began to set in, and she could feel the prick of angry tears.

A quick shower first, she determined wearily, then she would go into the kitchen.

Five minutes later she emerged from the bathroom wearing an oversize tee-shirt. Her face was scrubbed clean of make-up, and her hair hung loose halfway down her back.

In the bedroom she reached into her bag and extracted a few necessities, then she made her way towards the kitchen.

If she didn’t know differently, she would almost swear she could sense the subtle aroma of freshly brewed tea.

A faint frown creased her forehead, and she suffered a pang of guilt. Surely she hadn’t disturbed Aunt Vivienne, and the dear woman hadn’t risen from her bed to offer tea and comfort at this late hour?

It was typical of her caring aunt, and she summoned a warm smile in welcome as she entered the kitchen.

Only to have the smile freeze on her face as a tall, dark-haired stranger shifted his lengthy frame from a leaning position against the servery.

A very tall man with broad, sculpted features, dark grey eyes, and black hair that fell thickly almost to his shoulders.

Anneke swept him from head to foot in a swift encompassing appraisal, and didn’t like what she saw.

He was in need of a shave, and bore what looked like a full day’s growth of beard that, combined with his dark eyes and long loose hair, gave him a decidedly devilish look. Add well-washed tight-fitting jeans, a black sweatshirt, and he resembled a man who was the antithesis of ‘friend’.

‘Who the hell are you?’

Uncertainty, defensiveness, fear. He glimpsed each of them in the fleeting emotions chasing across her expressive features.

He should, he reflected with mild exasperation, have taken the time to shave. And, if he’d had a mind to, he could have bound his hair into its customary ponytail at his nape. Could, perhaps should have changed into casual trousers and a polo shirt.

Except the story had been running hot, and he’d lost track of time as he transposed the images in his head into words on the computer screen.

And he’d promised Vivienne that he’d pop over the minute her niece arrived and explain in person why the cottage was empty.

‘I’ve made some tea,’ he indicated in a faintly accented drawl. ‘Vivienne said you favour Earl Grey.’

Anneke’s eyes narrowed. Vivienne. So he knew her aunt. That meant he wasn’t an escapee, a felon, or someone of ill repute. Although, looking at him, she wasn’t too sure about amending the last description.

‘I locked the front door.’ Eyes flashed a fiery emerald, then deepened in wariness. ‘How did you get in?’

She was attractive, if you had a penchant for tall, slender, long-haired blondes, he mused. Natural, although these days it was hard to tell without getting intimate. Lovely green eyes, beautiful mouth. He felt something stir, then banked it down. Women could complicate a man’s life, and he didn’t need the aggravation.

Anneke. Pronounced Ann-eek. Scandinavian mother, English father, no siblings. Twenty-seven, para-legal secretary. Just walked out on a louse.

He took one long look at her, and just knew she’d hate it that Vivienne had confided in him.

‘Sebastian.’ He leant one hip against the servery, and attempted to keep the amusement out of his voice. He partly lowered his eyelids to diminish the gleaming depths. ‘And Vivienne gave me a key.’

For tonight? Or had he possessed a key for a while? Aunt Vivienne and a toyboy? The latter aroused an improbable scenario which she instantly dismissed.

Anneke drew herself up to her full height, unaware that the hem of her tee-shirt rose two inches up her thighs. Her voice rose a fraction. ‘Sebastian who? And you’d better explain real quick why Aunt Vivienne asked you to come into her house at this ungodly hour.’

Dammit, was she wearing anything beneath that thing? Definitely not a bra. Briefs? If she lifted her shoulders much higher he was sure going to find out.

And precisely what, he mused tolerantly, did she think she could do to defend herself against him that he couldn’t counteract and deal with before she’d even moved an inch? Kick-boxing, karate? He was trained and adept in each.

‘Lanier,’ he responded indolently.

So he was French. That explained the slight accent.

‘Friend and neighbour.’ One eyebrow slanted, and his mouth tilted fractionally. ‘Requested by Vivienne to tell you in person news she felt would be too stark if penned in a written note left for you to read in the early-morning hours.’

Anneke was trying hard to retain a hold on her composure. ‘So on the basis of good neighbourly relations you came over here at—’ she paused to check her watch ‘—one-thirty in the morning, made me a cup of tea, and waited to tell me-what?’

‘You’re a mite ungrateful.’

His slow drawl held a degree of cynical humour, and it made her want to throw something at him. Surely would have if the sudden sharpness in those dark eyes and the subtle reassemblage of facial muscle hadn’t warned her it would be infinitely wise not to follow thought with action.

‘I’ve been on the road for eleven hours.’ Her body stance changed, became more aggressive. ‘I let myself in to my aunt’s cottage and discover a strange, disreputable man calmly making himself at home in her kitchen, and I’m expected to smile and say, Hi, my name is Anneke, what’s yours? How nice, you’ve made some tea?’

‘And impolite,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

‘What do you object to? The “disreputable” tag?’ Her eyes raked his lengthy frame, skimmed over broad shoulders, muscled chest, narrow hips, long, muscular legs, then slid back to his face. ‘Sorry, Sebastian.’ She gave his name faint emphasis. ‘From where I’m standing, you hardly represent a trustworthy image.’

The eyes lost their tinge of amusement and acquired a perceptive hardness that changed his persona into something dangerous.

He watched those splendid emerald depths dilate, and felt a moment’s satisfaction. ‘Vivienne is in Cairns.’ The unadulterated facts. He gave them to her without redress. ‘She had a call an hour after yours to say her daughter had gone into labour six weeks early. She caught the late-afternoon flight out of Coolangatta.’

Colour drained from her face. Elise was expecting a second set of twins. Six weeks premature. ‘How is she?’ The words whispered from her lips.

His eyes narrowed faintly. So she cared. Deeply. That was something. ‘Vivienne said she’ll ring early morning with an update.’

The exhaustion seemed more marked, the faint smudges beneath her eyes a little darker. She looked, he decided, as if she should sit down. He crossed to the small kitchen table and pulled out a chair, then transferred the cup and saucer from the buffet.

‘Tea. Hot, white, one sugar.’

Just the way she liked it. Anneke owed thanks to her aunt. And an apology to this large, faintly brooding stranger.

Neighbour? There was only one cottage in close proximity, and that was owned, according to Aunt Vivienne, by a lovely author who kept strange hours. He was also something of a handyman who had, Anneke recalled sketchily from her aunt’s correspondence, fixed her roof, replaced a blown fuse, lopped two overgrown trees, and undertaken some heavy garden landscaping.

Anneke regarded the man standing at the table with a faint frown. Not by any stretch of the imagination could she call him ‘lovely’.

Mid to late thirties. Ruggedly attractive in a dangerous sort of way, with the type of physical frame that seamlessly melded honed muscle and leashed power together to present a formidable whole.

Let loose, he’d present a ruthless force no man in his right mind would choose to oppose. The woman, she perceived, who willingly stepped into his space would never be sure whether she’d dice with the devil in hell, or soar to heaven with a tutelary saint.

‘Are you done?’

Anneke’s lashes swept high at his quizzical query, but there was no confusion apparent, no embarrassment. Just analytical regard.

OK, so men weren’t her favourite flavour of the month. Justifiable, according to Vivienne, whom he’d driven at speed to the airport that afternoon.’ Such a dear girl.’

Familial beneficence tended to be biased, he mused. ‘Dear’she might be…as a niece, a cousin, a friend. But the woman who stood before him was cool, very cool. With fire beneath the icy façade. He had a very strong desire to stoke the fire and watch the ice melt.

‘It was kind of you to carry out my aunt’s wishes,’ Anneke said formally. It was the closest she intended to get to an apology.

Sebastian inclined his head in mocking acknowledgment. Given the circumstances, and the late hour, he should simply wish her goodnight and leave.

‘I’ll make fresh tea.’ Suiting words to action, he easily dispensed with the cup’s contents, flicked the kettle to reboil, and took another teabag from a glass container.

Damn him, did she have to spell it out? ‘I’m quite capable of making it myself.’ She crossed to the refrigerator and extracted milk, then took it to the servery.

Big mistake. For it brought her within a hair’s breadth of a hard male frame that seemed disinclined to move. Something that tripped the trigger on all her banked-up anger.

The silent rage she’d managed to contain all day burst free. ‘You’ve more than done your good deed for the day.’ Fine fury lent her eyes a fiery sparkle, and her knuckles shone white as she clenched her fists. ‘I owe you one.’

He looked at her carefully, noted the thinly veiled anger, the exhaustion. ‘So please leave?’

‘Yes.’ Succinct, with an edge of sarcasm.

‘Gladly,’ he intoned in a dangerously silky voice.

Something shifted in those dark eyes that she didn’t want to define, and there was nothing she could do to avoid the firm hands which cupped her face, or prevent the descent of his head as he fastened his mouth over hers.

It was a hard kiss, invasive, with erotic power and a sweet sorcery that took what she refused to give.

No other part of his body touched hers, and he fought against leaning in and gathering her close.

A spark ignited deep inside and flared sharply to brilliant flame. For both of them. He could feel her initial spontaneous response before she refuted it. Sense her surprise, along with his own.

He softened his mouth, took one last tantalising sweep with his tongue, then slowly raised his head.

She looked-shattered. Although she recovered quickly.

He smiled, a slow, wide curving of his mouth as he regarded her stormy features, and he dropped his hands from her face. ‘Now we’re even.’

Then he turned and walked from the kitchen, trod a path down the hall to the front door, then quietly closed it behind him.

It irked Anneke dreadfully that a few seconds of stunned surprise had rendered her immobile and robbed her of the opportunity to hurl something at him, preferably hard enough to do damage to any part of his anatomy.

Dulled reflex action, brought on by a degree of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion. Something that a good night’s rest would do much to rectify, she perceived as she set the kettle to boil again and made fresh tea.

Men, she brooded as she sipped the delicious brew, were arrogant, heartless, self-oriented, entirely governed by their libido, and not worth a minute of her time.

A thought which persisted as she finished her tea, then she crossed to the bedroom and slid in between crisp, clean white sheets.

On the edge of sleep, one image invaded her mind, and it wasn’t the sleekly groomed city lawyer in his three-piece business suit.

CHAPTER TWO

HAMMERING noises in close proximity were not conducive to restful slumber.

Anneke heard them in the depths of her subconscious mind and slowly drifted into wakefulness. Still the noise persisted.

What the hell…? She opened one eye and looked at the clock atop the bedside pedestal. Dammit, it was only seven. On Saturday.

Surely her aunt hadn’t arranged for a contractor to do some work and forgotten to mention the fact?

Maybe if she buried her head beneath the pillow she could go back to sleep, she decided, suiting thought to action, only to groan out loud minutes later as the sound still penetrated with no seeming loss of intensity.

Annoyance had her sliding out of bed and pulling on a pair of shorts, and she paused briefly to drag a brush through the length of her hair before storming into the hall to assess where the hammering seemed loudest.

Rear, she decided, and made for the back door.

Quite what she’d expected to see when she opened it she wasn’t sure. Certainly not Sebastian Lanier’s tall, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, jean-clad frame perched partway up a ladder, wielding a hammer as he stroked in one nail after another.

‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’

Well, now, there was a pretty sight to tempt a man’s eye at this early hour. Nice legs. He followed the slender calves, the well-shaped thighs. Good muscle tone, he noted approvingly.

Narrow hips, neat waist, and the slight swing of her breasts made him itch to slide his hands beneath the oversize tee-shirt and see how well they fit his palms.

Slowly he lifted his eyes and took his time examining her mouth, and remembered the feel of it beneath his own.

He moved up a few inches and looked straight into a pair of bright, furious eyes whose emerald depths threatened nothing less than murder.

Sebastian smiled. A long, slow, curving movement that lifted the edges of his mouth and showed the gleam of white teeth. ‘Good morning.’ He positioned another nail and hammered it in.

Clean-shaven, his hair bound neatly at his nape, he looked almost respectable. It was the ‘almost’ part she had trouble coming to terms with. None of the men in the circles in which she moved resembled anything like this man.

Calm, she must remain calm. ‘Do you know what time it is?’

Of course he knew what time it was. He’d been up since six, had orange juice, gone through his daily exercise routine, then assembled a high-protein drink in the blender and sipped it while he scrolled through his e-mail.

‘Am I disturbing you?’

Oh, he was disturbing her, all right. Just how much, he was about to discover. A last attempt at civility, then she’d let him have it with both barrels blazing. ‘Perhaps you’d care to explain what exactly it is that you’re doing?’

She possessed a fine temper. He could see it in her eyes, the tilt of her chin, the way she stood.

‘Yesterday I removed a section of worn guttering. Today I’m putting up new.’ He held another nail in position and nailed it in. Then he turned his head to look at her. ‘I arranged it with Vivienne.’

There was that faint smile again. Anneke gritted her teeth.

He moved down the ladder and shifted it, checked its stability, then stepped up again. And hammered in another nail.

‘I suppose you’re one of those irritating people who manage to get by on an indecently few hours of sleep?’

‘Five or six.’ He lined up another nail and rammed it home.

Anger coursed through her body, heating her veins, and erupted in voluble speech. ‘You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you?’

He cast her a long, measured glance, noted the twin flags of colour high on each cheek, the firm set of her mouth. ‘Is that an accusation?’

‘Damned right it is,’ she bit out furiously.

Sebastian hooked the hammer into his toolbelt and descended down to the ground. ‘Let’s get one thing clear. I boot up my computer at one in the afternoon. Vivienne needs something fixed; I fix it for her. In the morning.’

His voice was quiet, almost too quiet. And silky, she decided. ‘You have to start at seven?’

‘I’m due in town at ten,’ he explained reasonably. ‘I won’t have time to do anything when I get back from town except grab some lunch, and—”’

‘Go boot up the computer,’ Anneke finished for him. ‘And you just had to finish this section before you left.’

‘Yes.’

‘Today.’

‘It could rain,’ he responded solemnly.

Most unlikely. Her voice rose a pitch. ‘You waltz over here and begin hammering shortly after dawn?’

‘Dawn was five-thirty, daylight saving time,’ Sebastian informed her mildly.

‘I don’t give a tinker’s cuss when dawn was.’ She advanced a step, and crossed her arms across her chest. ‘I want you to stop hammering so I can get some sleep.’

‘Ask me nicely.’

Her jaw went slack. ‘I beg your pardon?’

His lips twitched. ‘Ask me nicely,’ he reiterated.

So he was amused. Well, she’d wipe that smile right off his face! ‘You can go—’ she enunciated each word carefully ‘—jump in the ocean.’

The phone rang, its peal issuing an insistent summons she chose to ignore. Temporarily.

‘That’ll probably be Vivienne.’

It didn’t help any that he was right. Elise was stable; the unborn twins were fine. However, Elise would stay in hospital, probably until the twins’ birth, anticipated prematurely. Naturally Aunt Vivienne would remain in Cairns.