Shadowing Shahna

Chapter 4

He’d wanted to ditch his meetings and find Shahna. Instead he’d persuaded himself to be coolheaded, concluded his business in Auckland as speedily as possible and then hunted her down.

He picked up a glass jar full of small seashells—some white patterned with brown, others purple or brilliant orange.

There were more jars holding weathered bits of glass, lumps of golden kauri gum, colored stones, even fragments of old china. A magpie collection.

Kier smiled, remembering her fascination with junk shops and markets where she’d buy bits and pieces he could see no use for.

She’d turned old, ugly and broken costume jewelry into quirky earrings and bracelets, or decor accents, like the drift of colored glass cabuchons spilling from a conch shell on her bathroom windowsill, catching the sun in the mornings.

Once she’d fallen in love with a faded fringed silk shawl and hidden the tears in the delicate fabric by draping it in folds on the wall over her bed.

He wondered if she still had it, if it hung over her bed now.

Hearing her voice, he looked through the open window, directly into another a few yards off, glimpsing a corner of a child’s cot. Shahna bent over it, and although Kier couldn’t see Samuel, he heard the little boy chuckle as Shahna laughed.

Her head lifted and her eyes met Kier’s. Feeling almost voyeuristic, he raised a hand to her. She lowered her eyes and turned away.

Minutes later she was back in the studio, Samuel in her arms. “Thanks for looking after him,” she said, “but it’s getting close to his tea time now. There’s no need for you to stay any longer.”

“It must be difficult,” Kier said, “working around a baby.”

“I do a lot while he’s asleep. And as long as I’m not using acid or soldering, he can play here quite happily while I’m busy.”

Kier looked about. “You’ve turned a hobby into an art.”

“I took a six-month course with a good tutor,” she said. “And I’ve had help from local artists here. They’ve been wonderfully supportive.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to find markets in the city?”

“I made some contacts in Auckland before I left. Enough to start me off.”

He indicated the corkboard. “Those are your work?”

“Yes. I photograph everything before it’s sold. There’s an album in the drawer, there.”

He opened the drawer of a battered chest that supported one end of the solid workbench, and took out a tooled leather volume. “This?”

She nodded.

“I’ll leave you to it while I fix something for Samuel to eat.”

“He can stay with me while you do that if you like.”

She gave him a strange look, and shook her head. “We’ve imposed on you enough.”

He felt as though she’d slapped him. As she went back to the house he had a strong urge to follow her and force some kind of confrontation. Instead he bent his attention to the pictures in front of him.

Shahna almost wished she hadn’t invited Kier to look at the album, although she was proud of her work and wanted him to know it. Seeing him prowling ’round her studio, his keen gaze taking in everything before he looked back at her, had unsettled her.

When he rejoined them she was placing a peeled banana half in Samuel’s outstretched hand and removing the empty bowl in front of him.

“I’m impressed,” Kier said, making her feel ridiculously pleased and proud. She already knew she was good—people with much more knowledge than he had said so. Yet Kier’s praise gave her greater pleasure than anyone’s.

“Thank you.” She tried to sound nonchalant.

“If you don’t mind I’ll leave my things to dry here and pick them up tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow? I thought you’d be moving on today.”

“No,” he said. “I won’t be.” He was regarding her narrowly as though watching for her reaction. “I’m staying.”

“Staying?” Shahna stared blankly at him, her heart doing a flip. “You can’t! Not here.”

Perhaps annoyed at her obvious dismay, he said shortly, “Ace offered me a bed at the farm. Hokianga hospitality, he said.”

It was famous, but Shahna hadn’t bargained on Ace being quite so ready to volunteer it, although she knew his parents would happily give Kier one of their spare rooms for the night.

“He said they’d expect me for dinner,” Kier said. Unless he was intending to stay in the cottage, Ace had said, adding with a sidelong glance, “But Shahna’s only got the two bedrooms, and there’s plenty of room at our place.”

Kier had wondered if the invitation was a means of discovering just how close he and Shahna were. Or even of ensuring that he didn’t spend the night with her.

But Ace had quite cheerfully gone off and left Kier to find his own way later to the farmhouse. He didn’t act like a jealous lover.

Shahna watched Kier walk away until he was out of sight among the trees. In the morning she would hand over his washing and make it clear she had no claim or interest in him before sending him on his way forever.

Never mind that the thought made her heart turn to lead and brought a lump into her throat that threatened to choke her.

And never mind that she dreamed of him all night—disturbingly erotic dreams that left her lethargic and yet dissatisfied.

In the morning Samuel was eager to explore his newly fenced domain.

First, though, Shahna wanted to get rid of the sheep droppings. She was busy with a bamboo rake while Samuel watched her from behind the barrier across the doorway, occasionally complaining at his imprisonment, when Kier arrived.

She turned from her task to see him striding across the space between them, stunning in fresh jeans and a shirt a shade darker than his eyes. Before she’d had time to catch her breath and say good morning, he’d taken the rake from her. “Let me do that.”

“I can manage.”

But he was already getting on with the not-too-pleasant task, and Samuel chose that moment to protest in earnest about being left out of all the fun.

“Look after Sam,” Kier said, as if she wasn’t doing that, Shahna thought with mild annoyance as she went to quiet the baby, then carried him over to say hello.

“What do you want me to do with this stuff?” Kier asked.

“Bag it and add it to my compost. Now that we have a fence I plan to put in a flower garden along the front of the house.”

“The ground’s pretty hard,” Kier said.

He would know, after digging holes for the fence yesterday. “It’s fertile,” she told him. “There’s plenty of manure from the sheep and my hens, and Morrie promised to get me a load of untreated sawdust.”

“Do you have a spade?”

She fetched it for him and held a bag while he emptied the sheep manure into it, then he hauled it around the back and forked it into her compost heap. After that the least she could do was offer him a cup of tea.

While Samuel chewed on a piece of toast in his high chair, she asked, “Do you know how Morrie’s hand is?”

“It looks bad. Alison insisted on taking him to get it looked at this morning.”

Shahna was fairly sure that Morrie wouldn’t have let his wife persuade him if he hadn’t been in considerable pain and probably more than a little worried. “Poor Morrie. I must phone Alison later.”

“You’re quite close to…the family?” Kier inquired.

“They’ve been good to me, and I try to repay them any way I can.”

“You can’t have many friends, out in the country like this.”

“I know most of the locals, at least to say hello to. And there’s a playgroup that I take Samuel to twice a week. All the mothers get a chance for some adult company.”

Kier glanced at her shrewdly. “Do you miss that? Adult company?”

“Not much. But it’s nice to talk to people with similar interests now and then.”

“Similar interests?” Kier looked incredulous.

“We all have young children, for one thing,” she reminded him rather tartly. “But we talk about a lot of other things too. Books, art, the education system, what’s in the news, farming, TV—I don’t have one, but the McKenzies ask me over sometimes when there’s something special on… It isn’t all knitting and cooking.”

“I’m sure it’s very stimulating.”

She flashed him a look. “It may sound boring to you—”

“It just doesn’t sound like you,” he commented. “Unless you’ve changed a lot.”

“A baby gives you a new perspective on life.”

Kier scowled at her, perplexed. “It doesn’t lead many people to alter their life so radically.”

“I suppose not,” Shahna acknowledged. “But it was the right thing for me…and the Scamp.”

Hearing his nickname, Samuel began to bang on the tray of the high chair, making little crowing noises. Shahna offered him another piece of toast that he declined decisively by throwing it on the floor. Chiding him, she picked it up and popped it into the scrap bucket she kept for the hens before releasing him from the chair.

Kier stood up too. “I’ll dig that garden for you.”

“There’s no need…”

But he didn’t listen, merely casting her a withering look and going right ahead anyway.

He certainly got it done faster than she would have and with less effort. Shahna discouraged Samuel from helping and took him inside to distract him with toys, before returning alone to see Kier chopping up the last of the turned sods. “Thank you,” she said sincerely. “I’m very grateful.”

He plunged the spade upright in the soil. “No sweat.” A lie; his face was glistening, but it only added to his attraction.

He swiped an arm across his forehead and grinned, as if realizing he’d used the wrong words. Shahna caught her breath, her heart tumbling. It was rare, that grin of pure enjoyment. Kier had always been sparing with his smiles, and often they hid less innocent emotions.

She couldn’t help an answering smile, looking up at him as the sun lit his eyes, making them bluer than ever, and picked out glints in his dark hair.

“Of course, if you really want to thank me…” he said softly, and stepped toward her.

She should have protested, or at least turned away, made it clear his kiss was unwelcome. Instead she waited with a sense of expectation as he took her shoulders gently and bent his head until his mouth met hers.

She closed her eyes, and involuntarily her lips parted under his warm persuasion. She could feel the sun beating on her hair, and hear the water rippling along its bank, Samuel babbling a wordless little song in the background.

Everything faded as Kier’s mouth worked a familiar magic, making her breath come unevenly and her skin tingle with anticipation when his hands slid down her arms and fastened on her waist to draw her closer.

She lifted her hands, momentarily resting them on his chest, fighting the urge to fling her arms around his neck. Instead, with a supreme effort, she pushed against him, and wrenched her mouth from its erotic enthrallment.

His hands tightened for a second on her waist, and then he let her go. They stared at each other, her cheeks hot, his eyes glittering with a fierce satisfaction.

Shahna swallowed hard, unable to tear her gaze away. Dumbly she shook her head in futile denial.

Kier smiled. Quite differently from before. This smile was knowing and confident and very, very male. It spelled trouble.

I must be crazy, Shahna thought. Why had she allowed him to do that?

“You’ll want your clothes,” she said, trying to appear unaffected by the kiss. “They’re dry now.”

“If there’s anything else you need done…”

“You’ve done enough,” she answered huskily. “And had your payment.”

Immediately she wanted to bite her tongue. A stolen kiss that she hadn’t made the least effort to avoid was hardly compensation for the amount of work he’d put in both yesterday and this morning.

Kier smiled again, tipping his head to one side as he regarded her with lurking amusement. “And very nice too,” he said.

Anger dispelled the warm afterglow of the kiss. Was it a game to him? Coming here, upsetting her hard-won equilibrium, intruding on the life she’d made for herself and Samuel, simply for some sort of whim.

“I’ll get your things,” she told him, and marched back to the house. As she climbed over the barrier keeping Samuel inside, Kier was right behind, entering after her.

Samuel was absorbed in poking wooden shapes into matching holes in a colored plastic bucket. He stopped to watch the two adults pass, then returned to his task.

Shahna picked up the neatly folded garments from the top of the washing machine and turned to present them to Kier. But as he held his hands out to take them she gasped, staring at his upturned palms.

He looked down too, at the reddened skin and broken blisters. “It’s not as bad as it looks,” he said, letting his hands drop.

“It’s bad enough!” Shahna felt quite sick. “Have you put anything on them?”

“Disinfectant, last night when I broke the blisters I collected yesterday. And Alison gave me some salve.”

But he’d been digging her garden this morning! Unaccountably angry, she said, “What the hell are you trying to prove?”

“Apart from the fact that I’m not accustomed to using my hands for physical labor,” he said wryly, “nothing. But I’d hate to see this happen to you.”

So he’d taken over the job when he realized she meant to dig the soil herself. “I wouldn’t have gone on working if it had,” she retorted.

He reached out again and took the clothes she held. “Thanks for this,” he said, not moving away, and she found herself crowded against the washing machine. The laughter had left his eyes and they were searching, intent. “I’ll be back,” he said.

“What?” Her own eyes widened.

Kier frowned. “Why are you scared?”

“I’m not!” Shahna floundered, torn between a useless hope and the prospect of future heartbreak. “I just don’t know why you’d bother.”

“What is it with you?” He sounded exasperated. “I’d never thought you lacking in self-esteem.”

“There’s nothing wrong with my self-esteem, thank you! I told you, I’ve changed.”

“Some things don’t change.” His gaze lingered on her mouth, then he lifted his eyes to hers in challenge and added softly, “Do they?”

What was the point of arguing? He was leaving anyway, and once back in his own milieu, absorbed in the world he knew and loved being a part of, he would forget her again.

After all, he hadn’t chased her up until the sight of her name on her jewelry had reminded him of her existence. “It was nice seeing you,” she said, striving for a pleasant indifference, “but I won’t be holding my breath for another visit. Enjoy your life, Kier.” She had to look away in case he saw sadness in her eyes, guessed at the tug of grief inside her.

“I intend to.” A grittiness had entered his voice. “What about you?”

“My life is just fine. I have everything I need.”

“Including a lover?”

She glared at him. “Like I said before, I don’t need a man.”

“You’re a passionate woman, Shahna. How long do you think you can do without sex?”

“Just as long as I want to,” she returned, meeting his eyes defiantly. “There are plenty of other pleasures in life.”

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