The Temptress Of Tarika Bay

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.

Cathy turned swiftly, her face lighting up. ‘We were talking about Hawke,’ she told her husband.

A stab of painful, undiluted envy alarmed Morna. Cathy glowed with a radiance that increased almost to incandescence when Nick tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow. Perhaps one day she’d look at a man with the same naked love that lit Cathy’s face now.

But probably not, she thought cynically.

Nick asked, ‘What did you think of him?’

Morna watched Hawke Challenger present a large silver cup to a slim woman on a shimmering chestnut horse, her excellent legs revealed by skin-tight jodhpurs. Blonde hair flowed as she removed her helmet and bent to kiss him. The crowd applauded, and when Hawke stepped back he said something that made the woman laugh.

‘He’s probably gay,’ Morna said outrageously.

‘If he is, no one’s told the actress from that TV show The Watchers,’ Cathy returned. ‘They’ve just broken up and apparently she’s shattered, poor woman.’

Morna didn’t want to ask, but the words escaped before she could pen them up. ‘How long had they been together?’

‘I don’t know that they ever lived together, but they must have been an item for six months or so.’ Cathy smiled at her husband. ‘What do you know about him, darling?’

Nick shrugged broad shoulders. ‘Good family, money for generations, rigorous ethical standards. Hawke’s no self-absorbed lightweight—he’s tough all the way through, and he’s got a brilliant business brain. He might have started out with a silver spoon in his mouth, but he’s going to end up with the keys to the kingdom. Don’t be fooled by the handsome face. If you cross him you can expect to suffer for it.’

Morna dangled her sunglasses from her forefinger and said lightly, ‘Thanks for the warning, but I wasn’t thinking about crossing him. I wasn’t even thinking about having a fling with him, although your wife seems to feel I should at least be considering it.’

Nick glanced at Cathy, who said indignantly, ‘All I said was that you work too hard and that it’s time you started a social life!’ She laughed at Morna’s wicked, unrepentant grin and said, ‘Oh, all right—I want everyone to be as happy as I am. But I don’t think Hawke is the sort of man you have a fling with. He’s dangerous.’

Morna slid her sunglasses back onto her nose. ‘Dangerous? Surely not. Anyway, I don’t play with toy boys; I like maturity in my men.’

‘What men?’ Cathy shot back. ‘In the years I’ve known you, you haven’t gone out with one.’ She indicated Hawke Challenger, who’d moved on from the woman with the perfect legs and was now presenting a smaller cup to an immaculately turned out child on a stubby chestnut pony. ‘I certainly wouldn’t call him immature, or a toy boy. I doubt very much whether he’d be so easy to manage.’

Something torrid and primitive stirred inside Morna. ‘All the better reason to stay away from him,’ she said casually. ‘I don’t go looking for trouble.’

The elderly car struggled a bit on the hills, complaining with a couple of coughs as it crested the last one and swung around the worst of an endless series of tight corners.

‘There, I knew you could do it,’ Morna encouraged it, turning onto a drive that dived steeply down through feathery kanuka trees.

The ancient cattlestop rattled energetically beneath the wheels, its noise transmuting to the crunch of gravel as the car headed towards the slightly seedy, comfortable little house that always made Morna think of a badly cut gem in a perfect setting.

She’d spent until mid-afternoon in the well-equipped workroom behind her shop in Auckland, finishing a commission—transforming a clumsy, inherited diamond necklace into something her client could wear with pride.

Morna had enjoyed both designing and making the piece. Now, with fingers still blackened by the jeweller’s rouge she’d used in the final polishing, she was ready to relax in her rented portion of paradise, where ancient trees hung over sand the colour of champagne.

After a hurried trip to the supermarket she’d called in to see the Hardings, drinking coffee with them but refusing Cathy’s offer of dinner.

Morna skirted several daunting potholes, wondering if Cathy’s delicacy extended to more than her looks. Nick had certainly kept a close eye on his wife at the show yesterday. Morna frowned into the sunlight as the vehicle emerged from the bush, and all thought of her friends vanished.

There, right in front of the bach, lounged a thumping great Range Rover, a sturdy vehicle that proclaimed its ability to deal with anything a country road could throw at it.

And standing beside the passenger’s door as though he had every right to be on her land was Hawke Challenger, tall and formidably confident in the warmth of the late autumn afternoon, hair gleaming blue-black in the sunlight, his stance relaxed yet alert—almost territorial.

Morna’s mouth dried. She blinked several times before realising she’d almost driven off the track. Oh, great, she thought bitterly, white-knuckled hands clutching the wheel as she steered the car to a halt beside his, switched off the engine and wound down the window.

‘Hello,’ she said in her most remote tone, resenting that bland green scrutiny.

Morna Vause was ready for war, Hawke saw.

Not that most people would have noticed; a very cool lady, she kept herself under strict control. But, in spite of her steady eyes and aloof expression, he sensed tension vibrating through her like the throbbing of distant drums. Some feral part of him responded with aggressive anticipation.

It took iron will-power to discipline it. This erotic awareness was a weakness.

‘You didn’t come to the dinner last night,’ he said.

A flare of emotion turned her eyes to molten gold. ‘You didn’t think I would, surely?’

‘It might have been a late invitation, but I meant it.’

A fast pulse throbbed at the base of her throat, but although she couldn’t hide her involuntary response the only change in her expression was a swift, disbelieving lift of her brows. ‘You didn’t wait for an acceptance.’

‘Because you unsettle me.’

Hawke could tell his frankness startled her. Colour burned her skin and she looked away, lashes flickering in an oddly ingenuous response for a woman who’d had at least one long-term lover. Was she playing coy?

With more than a hint of acid in her tone, she said, ‘It’s called attraction—a nice little joke played on us by Mother Nature to make sure the species doesn’t die out. It doesn’t mean anything and you don’t have to do anything about it. If you just ignore it, it will eventually fade away.’

That sounded more like a woman of experience.

He took the two steps across to her door and opened it, standing back to let her get out. She gave him a baffled, glittering glance, but obeyed his unspoken suggestion. Swinging out long, elegant legs clad in black designer jeans, she straightened, her cold defiance at odds with the curvy body revealed by a fitting black top that clung too closely to be a T-shirt. She’d covered it with a black and white striped shirt that hung open so that he could see the firm thrust of her breasts beneath. The shirt-sleeves were pushed up her arms, giving her a jaunty, sporting look.

An interesting set of mixed messages, Hawke decided cynically. He clamped down on an elemental male response and surveyed her composed face with its strongly marked features.

Twenty-four hours hadn’t changed his first reaction. He still wanted her, and her stubborn, silent resistance intrigued him as much as it frustrated him. From the time he’d reached six feet and grown into his shoulders, Hawke had been a target.

And although he’d be lying if he said he hadn’t enjoyed his lovers, he was fastidious. He’d never made love to anyone he didn’t like and respect. Now, confronted by a woman who’d turned obstinate wariness into an art form, he wondered if it was the novelty of her antagonism that hooked him.

Driven by a primitive male imperative, he took a step forward, standing close enough to make it difficult for her to move away from the car, but not so close that she’d feel trapped. He didn’t think for a moment that she’d be intimidated.

Nevertheless, the colour faded from her warm ivory skin and her eyes darkened, although they didn’t waver.

She wasn’t afraid of him, he decided objectively, just very, very cautious. Why? He said, ‘Am I forgiven for delivering such a cursory invitation yesterday?’

‘Of course,’ she said neutrally.

‘Then shall we shake to a new beginning?’

For a charged moment she didn’t speak, and her hand stayed firmly by her side. When it became obvious that she wasn’t going to do any more than deliver a small, dismissive smile he extended his hand, driven to bad manners by an overwhelming urge to force her to acknowledge him.

After a reluctant pause she took it, her strong fingers quivering in his light clasp.

At her touch all Hawke’s control disappeared, consumed by sensation. Stunned, he cursed noiselessly as fire hammered him in his most vulnerable places, burning away the shackles his coldly intelligent brain had forged around his sexual appetite.

With painfully sharpened senses he heard the ragged intake of her breath, and watched her breasts tighten against the black top.

No, she wasn’t intimidated—she wanted him. Exultant fire burned in his gut and for the first time in his life he understood how a man could lose his head over a woman.

Without thinking he let his other hand come up, lifted hers, and kissed the fragile skin at the wrist, a primal instinct relishing the rapid thunder of her pulse against his mouth. He felt her fingers splay out in rigid rejection, before miraculously curving along his jaw in a caress that set his body surging.

But she said in a tight, hoarse voice, ‘No.’

Hawke’s fingers slid along her hand, holding it against his face. He watched the heat drain from her skin and then flood back across her wide cheekbones, softening her mouth into ripeness and provocation.

Through the fog clouding his brain he knew he had to stop this right now. It was far too early—besides, he’d spent the weekend doing informal research on her, and he didn’t like what he’d discovered.

Yet it appalled and infuriated him to find out how much will-power it took to release her and step back.

Robbed of strength, Morna staggered, flinching away when his hands shot out to catch her. ‘Just leave me alone, all right?’ Anger and an odd, creeping dread lent her enough backbone to continue with brittle determination, ‘I don’t want an affair with you, much less a one-night stand.’

Cruelly he said, ‘The feeling is entirely mutual.’

‘Good,’ she snapped, her head coming up in unspoken challenge.

He went on as though she hadn’t spoken, ‘What have you got on your hands? Have you been gardening?’

Pierced by an image of a huge bed, of Hawke’s burnished bronze skin contrasting erotically with her own, of surrendering to his strength and that wildly sexual charge between them, Morna didn’t understand his question at first. She forced her brain to go back and snatch the words rattling around inside it, then sort them into some kind of order. Finally she dragged air into empty lungs and glanced down at the faint stains her scrubbing hadn’t removed.

‘Jeweller’s rouge,’ she said gruffly. ‘I’ve been working. Don’t worry—it’s not transferable, so it won’t have stained your hands. Goodbye.’

She swivelled around, leaned into the car and pulled out her bag and the two plastic ones that held her groceries.

Automatically Hawke took the heaviest from her. Because struggling with him would be stupid and undignified she let it go, but positioned the other bag and her handbag in front of her like a shield as she turned towards the house.

Halfway there he said levelly, ‘How long do you plan to live here?’

‘Until I’m ready to leave,’ she said distantly, antagonised all over again. Hawke had no right to ask her what she was doing and when.

Taut silence linked them, humming with unspoken thoughts, forbidden hungers. Warned by an instinct as old as time that this man was incredibly dangerous to her, Morna waited tensely for his next words.

They came at the door to the bach. ‘Or until it’s sold?’

‘Perhaps.’ She’d tried for aloofness, but her response came out guarded and cagey.

Of course he noticed. His eyes narrowed, slashing her with knives of pale jade. ‘Is it true that Jacob Ward died here only a couple of weeks after you moved in?’

Morna fixed him with a cold stare. Jacob had been an old man with a weak heart, still mourning his only child—a son who’d been killed a couple of years previously. With no other family he’d been ready to go, but his collapse as they’d been drinking coffee had been a shock, and his death a grief.

‘Yes,’ she said evenly, schooling her face into immobility. ‘When he had to go into a nursing home he let me rent the place provided I brought him home once a week.’

Although Hawke said nothing, and she couldn’t read any expression in his handsome face, she knew what he was thinking as clearly as if he’d said it.

Her chin came up. She hated the insinuations; they were disrespectful to Jacob, who’d hunted gems around the world before arthritis and a longing for his homeland had driven him back to New Zealand. He’d been lonely—at least until he’d wandered into her shop one day and fascinated Annie, her assistant, into calling Morna out from the workroom.

Like Morna, he’d loved the glittering romance of gems, and he’d had a fund of stories about prospecting; he’d admired her skill with them, and often sat in the workroom watching as she worked. Over time their acquaintance had ripened into friendship, and because he’d had no one else he’d left her Tarika Bay.

So the rumours his legacy had caused—rumours it was obvious Hawke had heard—were hugely distasteful.

Yet he surprised her again. ‘If I invite the Hardings, will you come to dinner at the resort tomorrow night?’

Morna met the disturbing challenge in his green eyes. Her stomach contracted as though someone had hit her, but the agitated sensations rioting through her were piercingly carnal. His mouth curved into a smile so loaded with charm she almost buckled; he knew that when he’d kissed her wrist she’d wanted him to kiss her properly…

She saved herself from the snowballing temptation to agree by saying, ‘I don’t think that would be a good idea.’

‘Why not? As it happens, I’ve already asked the Hardings, and they’re coming.’

‘They’ve agreed to go to dinner with you two nights in a row? Why?’ she asked, swift anger almost quenching her reckless excitement. She already knew why—Cathy’s decision that she needed a social life! One made with the best of intentions, but Morna felt like prey being remorselessly hunted down.

‘Last night was hardly a private dinner,’ he drawled. ‘Saturday night and Monday night aren’t consecutive either. As for why the Hardings agreed—I don’t know them all that well, but I can only assume that they don’t see an invitation to dinner as an insult.’

Morna had to swallow, because his amused, potent smile sliced through her defences with insulting speed. Glen, she thought desperately, but his memory was fading, dwindling, the lessons she’d learned from him overlaid by the powerful impact of this man’s personality.

‘Or a threat,’ Hawke added mockingly.

‘I don’t consider you a threat,’ she retorted, knowing she’d given him that opportunity.

His eyes glinted beneath their heavy lids. ‘I’m not going to ignore the mutual interest we have in each other, but as we’re neighbours I’d like to get to know you socially.’

Morna dithered. It was only a dinner…

If she agreed he might be bored with her, and that would be an end to it.

‘I’m sure Cathy and Nick will be more than adequate chaperons,’ he murmured, the gravelly note in his voice very pronounced as he smiled again.

It was a killer, that smile, and he knew what effect it had. Her heart skidded to a stop and then began to beat again, swift and uneven. ‘All right, I’ll be there,’ she said, regretting her surrender the moment the words left her lips.

Suckered by a million-dollar smile—and a crazy fascination that had smashed across her life, roaring in like a comet from outer space, bent on destruction.

So when she went to dinner tomorrow night, she decided after he’d left, she’d keep in mind the last time she’d felt like this—shooting stars in her stomach, feet not touching the ground, unbearable anticipation.

When she’d first met Glen.

Morna eyed her glass of New Zealand Riesling and took another tentative sip. Although they’d finished a superb dinner, she was still on her first drink because she needed to keep her head.

Even now she wasn’t going to admit that part of the reason she’d accepted Hawke’s invitation was sheer, blatant curiosity—some of which had been satisfied. Over dinner she’d discovered that he actually lived at his small, exclusive and very luxurious resort.

Excellent pickings for a good-looking man here, she thought, trying hard to be cynical. Quite a few eager unattached women were strolling about, not to mention jaded trophy wives. Scattered around the dining room, several of each watched the men at her table with the secret, starving intensity of a dieter tantalised by forbidden food.

Not that she blamed them. Tall, dark and handsome might be a cliché, but men who matched the description were rare—and to see two of them at the same table was probably unique outside Hollywood.

Stick to Hawke, she advised the avid watchers silently. Nick has given his heart.

Yet the thought of Hawke with anyone else summoned a hollow outrage that scared her. Her first instinct had been right—she should have refused to come. If he asked her again she’d turn him down.