A Reluctant Mistress

“I give you fair warning,” he continued. “I’m hunting.”

Her jaw dropped. Stunned, she stared at him, imprisoned by the implacable, leashed hunger of his eyes.

“At least you didn’t say that you wouldn’t sleep with me if I were the last man on earth.”

“You’re accustomed to that response?” she asked. “Then it’s time you moved up to a better class of mistress. Not me—I’m sorry, I’m too busy at the moment.”

“So much for honesty,” Clay said ironically, and once more tightened his arms around her.

To her intense humiliation Natalia’s body betrayed her. Although superhuman will held back her rash impulse to signal surrender, she had to fight a bitter battle with untamed need—and he, damn him, knew it!

ROBYN DONALD has always lived in Northland in New Zealand, initially on her father’s stud dairy farm at Warkworth, then in the Bay of Islands, an area of great natural beauty, where she lives today with her husband and an ebullient and mostly Labrador dog. She resigned her teaching position when she found she enjoyed writing romances more, and now spends any time not writing in reading, gardening, traveling and writing letters to keep up with her two adult children and her friends.

Robyn Donald

A Reluctant Mistress

For Barbara and Peter Clendon. The best of friends

and booksellers extraordinaire. Thank you.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

STANDING in a land agent’s office pretending to check out a couple of likely prospects, Clay Beauchamp looked up sharply when a low, husky laugh teased his ears.

Outside in the street a woman had stopped to talk, and the smoky sensuality of her voice homed straight through his defences, waking his male response to instant, lustful life.

The subtropical sun of an early Northland autumn picked out a head of curls black as a sinful midnight; they looked as though she’d taken to them in exasperation with a blunt pair of scissors, but the bad cut only emphasised their springy vitality. As Clay’s eyes narrowed, she turned her head.

His stimulated hormones surged into clamorous over-drive. Deliberately controlling his physical arousal, he surveyed a face made to star in erotic dreams.

Not that she was pretty—or even beautiful. No, she possessed something much rarer than either—a cool, guarded sensuality produced by the happy genetic accident of a softly voluptuous mouth and large eyes set on a provocative slant. The tempting, tantalising combination of mouth and eyes overshadowed ivory skin and neat, regular features.

Moving slightly so that his unbidden and uncomfortable response was partly hidden by the sheaf of papers in his hand, Clay studied her with speculative, intent interest. Five feet eight, he estimated, with wide shoulders and curved hips that hinted at a generous sexuality—and although she spoke with a New Zealand accent he’d bet some intriguing bloodlines mingled in that lithe, long-legged body.

The man she was talking to interrupted, laughing. Clay frowned. Without the play of speech her face settled into a watchful, disciplined wariness that denied access to her thoughts and emotions.

But that mouth! Full and red and eager when she relaxed, it summoned all too vivid images. What would it take to see that restraint shattered in passion? Sweat beaded Clay’s temples and his breath strangled in his throat as his body reacted with violent enthusiasm to the thought.

Helen of Troy, he thought with annoyed irony, had probably had the same effect on the men who had desired her.

‘She’s a looker, isn’t she?’

The land agent’s nasal voice broke Clay’s concentration. Irritated that he’d been caught staring at an unknown woman with the fervour of a stag in rut, he asked curtly, ‘Who is she?’

‘Natalia Gerner. Her father bought a chunk of Pukekahu Station—it’s the second in the file. Yeah, that one—’ he said as Clay shuffled the papers.

The land agent went on, ‘Would have been about thirteen years ago, when old Bart Freeman from Pukekahu had the Inland Revenue Department hot on his trail for unpaid taxes and he had to find money damned fast. The only way he could come up with the cash was to cut off several parcels of land. Natalia’s father—straight from Auckland, never been on a farm in his life before!—bought one, gave it some damned stupid poetic name and did his best to railroad himself into bankruptcy.’

He snorted as Natalia Gerner laughed outside the small office, the liquid feminine sound sheer enticement. Clay continued looking at the paper in his hand, but the words blurred as every sense sharpened. Resolutely he overrode the unruly demands of his body, forcing his mind back to the business at hand. He’d come here for a specific purpose, and nothing was going to get in his way.

The land agent continued, ‘Mind you, they had bad luck too—her mother died when Natalia was eighteen, then her father dropped dead of a heart attack—three years ago it’ll be now. If you decide on Pukekahu—and you’ll never get land in the North cheaper—she’ll be your neighbour.’

Clay frowned, striving to push Natalia Gerner’s exotic face and sexy laugh to the back of his mind. This was business, and no woman—not even one with a face like a courtesan and a body that hinted at all sorts of decadent pleasures—interfered with his business.

Actually, this was more than business. It was the culmination of years of quiet, persistent, ruthless effort and struggle. He tamped down the flicker of triumph even as he felt it. However leggy and tormenting, the woman with a laugh like Eve wasn’t going to cloud his brain today.

The land agent grinned, his middle-aged face sly. ‘She’s a very generous girl, they say. She and Dean Jamieson—that’s the vendor—had a good thing going there a while back, but it fizzled out.’

Life had taught Clay that too much emotion led to grief and defeat; over the years he’d learned how to discipline his responses, even his pleasures. Yet he had to pretend to read the page of figures and stare at the photograph of a huge Victorian villa in the last stages of disintegration while he struggled to restrain a red tide of rage.

The land agent gave a snort of laughter. ‘She probably thought she had it made then, but he wasn’t going to break up his marriage for her. I heard she got greedy and wanted him to pay her debts off. I don’t blame her—why shouldn’t she get the best out of the situation?’

Clay’s memory summoned only too vividly a seductive mouth, green eyes and skin like ivory silk, a lithe body. His treacherous mind also summoned other images—ones he banished, but not before heat clamped his body, subduing the processes of his brain with a surge of raw lust.

When he could trust his voice he asked abruptly, ‘Why is Jamieson selling Pukekahu?’

He’d already flown over the cattle station, so he knew these photographs had been taken in a very good light—possibly even doctored a little. The paddocks he’d seen hadn’t had fertiliser on them for far too many years.

The older man shrugged. ‘He’s one of the South Island Jamiesons,’ he said. ‘His stepmother—she was Bart Freeman’s daughter—left him Pukekahu when she died, but I suppose it’s too far from his other holdings to make it worth his while to keep it.’

It had, however, Clay thought savagely, been worth his while to strip the place of everything of value, running it down so that it was now worth practically nothing. Yes, Dean would have enjoyed that; it would have satisfied his mean, petty soul.

Perhaps misunderstanding Clay’s continued silence, the land agent said quickly, ‘He’s a very willing vendor.’

Another throb of feminine laughter turned both male heads. Coldly angry with himself, Clay wrenched his attention back to the papers in his hand.

Grinning, the older man revealed, ‘That’s Pukekahu’s farm manager she’s talking to. I doubt if he’ll stay the course. Not enough money, for a start—Phil’s never going to be more than a manager. He’s good, mind you. If you buy the station you couldn’t do better than keep him on, but he has to be told what to do. Easy meat for Natalia; she’ll be bored soon. Won’t take her long to find someone new—there’s always been men buzzing around her.’

Disgusted because he wanted to hear about the woman who was still smiling at Phil Whoever-he-was—even more disgusted because he wanted to claim that smile, that fascinating, vital face, that strong, delectable body—and thoroughly furious at the flare of raw jealousy that sliced through him, Clay said evenly, ‘If I buy Pukekahu it will be because it fits into my portfolio, not because the woman next door is promiscuous.’

The land agent’s face flushed in unpleasant patches. ‘Of course,’ he blustered. ‘Anyway, I didn’t say she was promiscuous! She’s had a rough spin, that girl…’

Something in Clay’s face must have alerted him because he stumbled on, ‘Her father left her with a tunnel-house setup and debts so big she’ll probably still owe money when she’s fifty. The only thing she’s got in her favour is her looks, and I don’t blame her for setting her sights high enough to get herself out of hock. Still, if anyone can make it she will; she’s always been tough and stubborn and she’s a damned hard little worker.’

So she had more than her looks in her favour. Pity about the mercenary streak…

Clay set a discarded sheet of paper down on the desk and pretended to study the next. In a barely interested voice he asked, ‘Why’s she paying off her father’s debts? She isn’t legally obliged to unless they were partners.’

The agent shook his head. ‘Her father borrowed from his friends to set up the tunnel-houses. He planned to grow orchids, but—story of his life!—he was too late for the boom years. When he died Natalia sold just about everything that wasn’t nailed down and realized enough to pay off some of the debt, but the major creditors are an elderly couple. If she reneged on the rest of the loan they’d be left with practically nothing.’

So the carmine-lipped houri had a conscience—an over-active one if it had led to her mortgaging her future for the sake of an elderly couple. Suppressing an odd protectiveness, Clay said curtly, ‘All right, tell me why I should buy Pukekahu.’

This was what he’d come for, this derelict cattle station. That was why he’d chosen this small-town agent who’d probably never heard of his company, Beauchamp Holdings, because nothing would give Dean Jamieson more pleasure than to ratchet up the price of Pukekahu if he knew Clay was buying it.

In fact, he’d probably refuse to sell the place to him, even though he needed the money desperately.

Clay wanted Pukekahu with a hunger that was based on that most dangerous of emotions, revenge, but he didn’t plan to pay a cent more than it was worth.

And he had no intention of letting the fact that Natalia Gerner lived half a mile from its front gate affect him.

CHAPTER ONE

‘LIZ, I can’t go.’ Natalia Gerner rubbed at her brows, erasing a frown. The other hand clenched more tightly around the telephone.

‘Why not?’ her best friend demanded.

‘I haven’t got a partner, for a start.’ Let alone a dress suitable to wear to a masquerade—a masquerade ball, for heaven’s sake! What had possessed the Rotary and Lions Clubs to sponsor a masquerade ball? Reining in her frustration, Natalia tried to sound reasonable and practical. ‘This is New Zealand, not Regency England, and here in Bowden we entertain with barbecues. If we can cook we do dinner parties. Whatever, we don’t do balls.’

Her friend laughed. ‘Don’t be so curmudgeonly—it doesn’t sit well on twenty-three-year-old shoulders. It’ll be a real hoot. Mum and Dad have organised a party, and you have to come. You won’t need a partner; Greg’s home, and he adores dancing with you. Mind you, so does everyone else—you dance like a dream.’

‘I used to do a mean tango,’ Natalia admitted. Her heavy-lidded gaze lifted to the window, dwelt a moment on the curved, half-moon tunnels covered in white plastic and packed full of capsicum plants, then moved on to the paddock where a very small herd of beef cattle grazed placidly in the winter sun.

Liz had never been one to give up easily. ‘We’re not going to do minuets and country dances, for heaven’s sake. And you—of all people—can’t have forgotten how to foxtrot and stuff.’

‘I probably have.’

Trenchantly, Liz retorted, ‘It’s like swimming and riding a bike—you never forget—so stop wimping out. Your father would hate to hear you say no to an evening of fun. And so would your mother.’

Natalia closed her eyes. One of the disadvantages of their long friendship was Liz’s unerring aim at her weakest spots.

With ruthless accuracy Liz went on, ‘And don’t tell me you haven’t got a dress to wear. Remember the silk one I bought in Auckland last year because I hoped it would make my eyes the same colour as yours? Well, you can wear that.’

‘You have beautiful eyes,’ Natalia said feebly, knowing she was losing the battle.

‘Possibly, but we both know they’re not in the same league as yours! I was going to give you that dress before I went to England, anyway.’ Her voice altered. ‘Nat, do come. We’ll have a great time. The Barkers have opened their ballroom and—’

‘I can’t afford it,’ Natalia interrupted.

After a short silence, Liz said, ‘We’ll pay. Nat, please don’t let pride stand in your way—you know you’d do the same for me.’

Natalia chewed her lip. ‘That’s not fair.’

‘Vowing to be eternal best friends on our first day of school gives me the right to be unfair. Ever since your father died you’ve buried yourself up on your hill like Rumpelstiltskin.’

‘You’ve got the wrong fairy tale. I don’t ask riddles and threaten to kidnap babies. And I certainly don’t spin straw into gold.’ Which would have been immensely useful these past three years.

Liz, being Liz, didn’t accept her unspoken capitulation, but insisted on dotting ‘i’s. ‘You held my hand through a couple of broken hearts and assorted childhood traumas—won’t you at least let me do this?’

‘That’s two hundred per cent not fair!’

‘But you’re going to give in to emotional blackmail, aren’t you?’

Natalia unclenched her fingers from the telephone. ‘How much are the tickets?’

‘I’m not going to tell you.’ Real exasperation snapped through Liz’s tone. ‘If you’re determined to be sticky about it, consider yours a birthday present.’ She laughed. ‘Come on, Nat—stay the night, and we’ll get ready together and giggle and pretend we’re seventeen instead of twenty-three, and that I’m not heading off to Oxford to bury myself in mediaeval English texts, and you’re not stuck in Bowden working your heart out because of some quixotic belief that you’re responsible for your father’s debts. For one night we’ll pretend that our lives are going to be the way we wanted them to be when we planned them at high school. Do you remember—I was going to marry Jason Wilson and have his children? And you were going to be a botanist and paint exquisite pictures of native plants. That, of course, was before you fell in love with Simon Forsythe in the seventh form!’

Natalia had to force a laugh. ‘All right, all right, I’ll come,’ she said, ‘but only because I want to see Mr Stephens from the garage in a mask. And I’ll get dressed at your place. I won’t be able to stay, though, because I’ve got to catch the early transport to the markets.’

‘I knew you’d do it,’ Liz said warmly. ‘You need some fun, and we’ll have it, I promise. And don’t worry about a mask, either—I’ve got the perfect one for you!’

Sequinned and frivolous, the exact green of her eyes, the perfect mask flaunted exotic feathers that winged out against Natalia’s black curls. It matched Liz’s discarded silk dress, the most glamorous thing Natalia had ever worn. Demure of neckline in the front, the back swooped down past her shoulder blades towards a nipped-in waist, below which the skirts frou-froued, stopping short enough to reveal a lot of Natalia’s legs.

‘Stop jittering!’ Liz commanded. ‘No, you can’t wear a bra with it, but you look great without one, and, yes, it’s short, but you’ve got truly excellent legs. It’s very, very sexy—I knew it would suit you.’ Without chagrin, Liz smoothed her own slinky black dress before adjusting her black and white mask. ‘But then, everything does. It’s those fine, aristocratic features. They fool everyone into thinking you’re a sweetly pretty girl—until they get a load of those wicked, come-hither eyes.’

‘Come-hither! In other words, I’ve got heavy eyelids. You’ve been reading Regency books again,’ Natalia accused, laughing. ‘I’ll bet your supervisor didn’t know you devoured popular fiction when she steered you into firstclass honours with your MA.’

‘I like Regencies,’ Liz told her unrepentantly. ‘I have this thing for tall, dark, handsome, very rich aristocrats.’

‘You might find one in England.’

Liz sighed. ‘I don’t think they breed them any more.’

As they walked into the splendid ballroom in the district’s biggest homestead, Natalia said, ‘How mysterious and interesting we look. Perhaps we should go around in masks all the time!’

The rest of their party trooped in after them in a cloud of laughter and conversation. ‘Hmm, yes, very mysterious—and ultra-sexy. Even Greg,’ Liz added, casting a quick glance at her brother.

‘He’s a very handsome man,’ Natalia said lightly.

‘But not for you.’ Liz had made no attempt to hide her wish that her favourite brother and her best friend might one day fall in love.

‘No.’

‘Ah, well, perhaps you’ll meet some gorgeous hunk tonight.’ Liz gazed openly around, waving to friends, smiling. ‘I can’t see one,’ she murmured, ‘but there’s Mr Stephens with the Barkers, Nat—and he looks pretty good in a mask!’

Halfway through the evening Natalia admitted that Liz had been right to nag her to come. She’d had a great time, dancing with old friends and flirting lightly with several newcomers, talking to people she hadn’t seen for months.

Waiting until her latest partner had set off to rejoin his wife, Liz hissed, ‘He’s here!’

‘Who?’ Natalia lifted her glass of iced water.

‘The hunk we ordered. Sidle a look towards the door. You can’t miss him.’

More to humour her than anything, Natalia set her glass down and turned her head.

The stranger was definitely unmissable, partly because he was a head above most of the other men. At least six foot three, Natalia estimated, with shoulders in proportion and an air of cool command that dominated the room.

Severe black and white evening clothes contrasted magnificently with golden skin. Light gleamed on wavy black hair, highlighted an autocratic, hawk-nosed face with a square, slightly cleft chin and a wide mouth. Long-legged, narrow-hipped, a conventional black mask emphasising those strong features, the stranger could have walked out of one of Liz’s Regency novels—or an X-rated myth.

He was talking to a woman Natalia didn’t know, a well-rounded creature whose scarlet mask—scattered with tiny chips of mirror glass—couldn’t conceal her look of desperate anticipation, as though she’d just found water in the Sahara.

Natalia didn’t blame her. The stranger’s height and archetypal, dangerous good looks made him stand out, but what compelled attention was his air of vibrant, vital sexuality, a coiled, dynamically masculine magnetism. He had the invisible aura of a man who knew he was attractive to the opposite sex—an inbuilt confidence that set her teeth on edge.

Fanning herself with vigour, Liz made a noise like a vocal leer. ‘I need a cold shower,’ she growled. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Never seen him before.’

Liz grinned. ‘He’s looking at you.’

‘Hope he likes my profile, then,’ Natalia said, turning to smile ironically at her friend. ‘Yes, he’s gorgeous, but men like that have wives, or very glamorous girlfriends who work in television. Guaranteed. Perhaps the woman with him?’

‘A cynical little statement, but you could be right, alas.’ Liz sighed. ‘However, if he asks me to dance I’m not going to let any possible girlfriend concern me. I don’t think he looks married.’

‘Neither did the last hunk I met at a party,’ Natalia said softly, icily.

Liz sighed. ‘Sorry, love, I’d forgotten about Dean Jamieson. Which is what you should do.’

‘I try, but it’s not often a man thinks that the excitement and privilege of sleeping with him should outweigh a few inconveniences like a wife.’ Natalia reined in the anger that still fired her temper whenever she thought of the man who owned the property next door. ‘The only thing that comforts me about that situation is the look on his face when I said, no, thank you, I have this strange, old-fashioned idea that marriage means trust and fidelity, so although you’re a very sexy man I’m not going to bed with you!’

‘He was a rat,’ Liz soothed. ‘You know, I suppose it never occurred to Dean that you’d find out he was married. Just as well my mother has this network of old friends the full length of New Zealand, or you might have been really hurt.’

Natalia shrugged. ‘He hurt my pride and dented my heart a little, that’s all.’

‘More than a little, I think.’

Natalia looked down at her restless fingers in her lap. ‘I was an idiot,’ she said quietly. ‘I suppose I thought he was Prince Charming, and that he might be the one to whisk me off and marry me and rescue me from my life of drudgery. He was funny and intelligent and very attractive, and he seemed genuine.’

‘I’m sure he was genuine.’ Liz’s tone was both understanding and crisp. ‘He saw a woman he wanted, and he didn’t care whether he broke your heart provided he got you.’

‘He didn’t break my heart,’ Natalia said steadily.

‘I know,’ Liz said. ‘You’ve got too much sense to let an attack of wishful thinking blind you for too long.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ But Liz didn’t know just how close she’d come to succumbing to Dean Jamieson’s practised charm.

‘Think nothing of it.’

Natalia said evenly, ‘What really makes me mad is that he told everyone in Bowden that I knew he was married.’

‘It was a lousy, malicious, petty thing to do, but at least you know what sort of man he is.’

‘You’re so right. A snake. One I came perilously close to falling for, which gives me a very low opinion of my intelligence!’

Liz primmed her mouth and endeavoured to look affected—difficult when her small face was alight with laughter. ‘Anyone can be taken in once. The important thing is to not let it happen again.’ She relaxed into a sly grin. ‘So I’ll do my best to find out who the newcomer is, and whether he’s got an encumbrance. I don’t think the woman with him is his—she’s too hungry. And he doesn’t look like a man who believes in abstinence.’

Half an hour later, as Natalia was coming back into the ballroom after a swift visit to the cloakroom, she was hailed by an old friend, a man who’d been a couple of classes ahead of her at school. They were laughing together when his wife of six months arrived with the speed, determination and subtlety of a mother rhinoceros seeing a lion examine her infant.