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No wonder his door was so battered; he must be hell on joinery! she thought to herself as she smiled hopefully at him in the dimly lit passageway.
‘I wonder if you could help me—?’
‘No.’
‘My electricity has gone off and I don’t know where the fuse-box is located,’ she continued calmly as if he hadn’t spoken.
‘God defend me from helpless women!’ he said through his teeth.
‘Why, are you too feeble to defend yourself?’
‘Very funny!
‘Then why aren’t you smiling?’ She threw up a hand. ‘No, don’t tell me, let me guess. You smiled once and the sky fell on you. Well, Chicken Little, you can stop panicking now. All I want is a light and the fuse-box.’
‘And fuse-wire, and a screwdriver, and—’
‘Are you naturally this obnoxious, or is it something you’ve specially trained for?’
‘Look, lady, I didn’t ask you to come thumping on my door—’
‘I didn’t ask you to come thumping at mine either, Mr Lewis, but you did. So we’re even. Now, are you capable of answering one simple question without turning it into a tiresome lecture? Do you know where the fuse-box for my apartment is located?’
For an answer he shut the door in her face and she was just about to scream it down when he reopened it carrying a small toolkit. He looked down at her furiously flushed face, small clenched fists and bare toes curled with rage and, wonder of wonders, produced a slight smile that bracketed the rectangular mouth with deep lines.
‘Temper, temper!’
‘You can talk!’ she said tartly, fascinated in spite of herself. He didn’t look all that much different when he smiled, she realised in amusement. He still looked broodingly dangerous, his black eyes smouldering with hostility and suspicion, their hooded lids giving them a predatory quality.
He didn’t answer, turning his back and walking towards the stairs. Anne got the impression that he did that a lot—turned his back on people.
At the head of the main flight of wooden stairs a sensor turned on a light on the first landing down, revealing a small cupboard in the wall which proved to contain odds and ends of tools and cleaning equipment—and fuse-boxes numbered for both apartments.
‘Thank you.’ Anne waited for him to get out of the way. ‘Excuse me.’ She tapped him on the shoulder as he pulled out the rectangular fuses, checking them. Her finger practically bounced off the armoured muscle. Anne’s four brothers were well-built—even Mike who was still only fourteen was much bigger than she was—so she wasn’t usually impressed by male bulk, but this one was built like a tank.
‘Hold this.’
She ignored the screwdriver.
‘Look, Mr Lewis, I do know how to change a fuse—’
‘Hold this.’
‘No.’
He turned his head. In profile his nose looked every bit as arrogantly prominent as the rest of him. ‘Haven’t you ever been told not to look a gift-horse in the mouth?’
Her eyes shifted to his wide, straight mouth and for no particular reason she felt herself flushing.
‘I’ve also been warned about Greeks bearing gifts,’ she said hurriedly.
‘I’m not Greek,’ he commented, tucking the screwdriver between his teeth and turning back to his task.
‘You’re not a horse either.’ Except maybe the rear end of one! she added silently. ‘If you’ll just step aside I’ll handle my own problems.’
‘And risk you botching it up so you have to come simpering back to my door again? No, thanks.’
‘I’ve never simpered in my life!’ she fumed, eyeing the stiched denim pockets below the black leather belt. One good, hard kick to that tightly packed rear and she would feel a whole lot better.
‘Don’t even think about it, country girl. I’m not only bigger than you, I’m faster.’
He hadn’t even looked around and she was furious at him for guessing what she was thinking, as well as for that mocking dig about her origins. What chance had she to hide anything if he had such acutely perceptive instincts?
‘Yes—at jumping to conclusions. Tell me, what brought on this powerful paranoia you have regarding women? I can’t figure out why you think you’re such an irresistible dish that you have to warn off total strangers. As a “country girl” I’ve seen plenty of beef on the hoof and, believe me, you’re over-pricing yourself.’
He snapped the repaired fuse back into place and depressed the trip-switch before he backed out of the cupboard, forcing her to retreat. ‘That smart mouth of yours is going to get you into trouble one day.’
They were back to mouths again. Now he had turned and was looking at hers and she tightened it deliberately, knowing that her full lower lip tended to give a false impression of sultriness.
‘Is that a threat?’ She bristled under the insolent black stare.
‘More in the nature of kindly advice.’
‘Kindly!’ she snorted. ‘You?’
‘Don’t try and provoke me more than you already have, Miss Tremaine,’ he drawled in that aggravatingly warm voice that was so at odds with his manner. ‘I suppose I’d better check that everything is working…’
Before she realised what he had meant he was up the stairs and heading towards her half-open door. His boast about moving fast hadn’t been idle. Frantically trying to remember whether she had tidied everything away after putting Ivan to bed, Anne flew up after him, and nipped in front just in time to bar his entry with one slender arm across the doorway.
‘The lights are on so obviously everything’s OK,’ she said breathlessly, trying to act casually as his mo- mentum brought his chest up against her restraining arm. He froze and she smiled brilliantly at him. ‘Thank you ever so much for your help,’ she gushed. ‘I don’t know what I would have done without you.’
He was looking at her oddly, through thoughtfully narrowed eyes, and she instantly realised that she was overdoing the gratitude. After the scathing comments she had just flung at him he was bound to be suspicious of such a sudden volte face. ‘You can go back to—er—whatever you were doing now,’ she urged more calmly. ‘I don’t want to put you to any more trouble…’
To her dismay he shrugged. ‘No trouble.’ He leaned forward as he spoke and she felt the straining pressure of that deep chest against her upper arm.
‘No, really, there’s no need!’ she squeaked desperately as he lifted a big hand and effortlessly brushed her re- straining limb aside.
Three steps into the room he stopped, crossing his hands over his chest as he slowly surveyed the territory. Coming up beside him, Anne was relieved to see that there was nothing untoward in the scene. Relief brought back her courage. ‘Satisfied?’ she demanded defiantly.
‘At the very least, from your state of guilty panic, I expected to find an orgy going on in here,’ he mur- mured, confirming her opinion of his acumen. Worse than a nosy neighbour was a suspicious one who could read your mind like a book!
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you.’
‘Oh, you haven’t disappointed me, Miss Tremaine. My expectations of you aren’t high enough for that to be possible. I expect the worst, and if you don’t oblige then I can only be pleasantly surprised.’
‘What a ghastly philosophy of life!’ Anne stared at him disapprovingly. ‘No wonder you’re so bad-tempered. So would I be if I went around in a constant state of gloomy pessimism.’
‘Yes, I can see that you’re one of life’s noisy optimists,’ he said drily. ‘Relentlessly determined to enjoy yourself at all costs.’
‘Only a pessimist could make optimism sound depressing,’ was Anne’s tart reply. ‘And one person’s noise is music to another person’s ears.’
‘I’m a realist, not a pessimist, but we won’t get into an argument about it.’
‘Why not? Afraid you’d lose?’
‘I have better things to do with my time than argue semantics with starry-eyed Lolitas—’
‘Lolita! I’ll have you know I’m twenty—’ She stopped herself just in time and added haughtily, ‘I’m older than I look and I was never starry-eyed. Now that you’ve assured yourself you’re not missing out on an orgy, perhaps you’ll finally go back to where you belong.’
He gave her a small, ironic inclination of his head. ‘Ah, would that I knew where that was…’
She almost softened, intrigued by that weary, cryptic murmur, except that she saw the deep, hooded gleam in his eyes and suddenly knew that he was playing on her compassion deliberately, slyly proving his point about her unsophisticated gullibility.
‘Try hell,’ she said sweetly. ‘I’m sure people often direct you that way.’
A startled stillness gripped his expression, then he threw back his head and laughed, the warm sound rising richly to the high, sloping rafters. His eyes slitted and all the brooding lines of his face seemed to lift with the upward curve of his mouth. She had certainly been right about his handsomeness when he wasn’t scowling. Suddenly his cynical suspicion of a strange woman invading his personal space didn’t seem quite so untenable.
‘I don’t know what you’re laughing at—it wasn’t a compliment,’ she pointed out. ‘You know, for someone so inordinately keen to be left alone you’re singularly difficult to get rid of!’
His laughter ended as abruptly as it had begun and he gave her a slow, measuring look as he began to saunter towards the door in his own sweet time. ‘Such big, pompous words for such a little country girl.’
‘Size and geographical origin has nothing whatever to do with intelligence,’ she said icily. ‘And I’m a woman, not a girl.’
‘That remains to be seen.’
‘But not by you!’
This time she got to shut the door smartly in his face, although her satisfaction was somewhat dimmed by the memory of that last, grimly taunting smile.
It seemed to say that Hunter Lewis would see whatever he wanted to see, whenever he damned well wanted to see it.
She would just have to keep well out of his way and make sure he never got the opportunity.
CHAPTER TWO
‘I THINK they should call it disorientation week!’ Anne groaned as she collapsed with her small backpack on to a seat in the university quad.
‘Decided to give up and go home to the farm?’ grinned the plump blonde already sitting there as she carefully added a dollop of cream from her doughnut to a paper cup of coffee.
‘Are you kidding? I’m having a great time!’ Anne rallied. ‘It’s just taking me longer than I thought to find my way around this maze.’
She stretched out her legs in their age-softened jeans, enjoying the cool breeze playing about the loose neckline of the white shirt that Mike had grown out of six months ago. It had been part of the dress uniform at her brother’s school but her mother had added a jaunty feminine touch with embroidery along the pocket and collar. With sleeves rolled up and shirt-tails hanging out Anne had felt confident of blending in with her fellow students, despite the fact that she was older than most of the other first-years.
‘Don’t worry, even second-year students like me still get lost sometimes,’ Rachel Blake told her sympathetically. She had cheerfully admitted to being a student dilettante whose wealthy parents could afford for her to dabble at university for as long as it took her to get a degree—any degree.
To Anne, who loved to study but had to watch every cent of expenditure, it sounded like an existence to be envied, and yet she didn’t. Such aimlessness was a waste of time and effort and Anne didn’t want to waste a single moment of her time at university. Her aim was to gain her degree in the shortest possible time without overloading herself to the point where she didn’t have enough free time to earn the extra money essential to the continuation of her studies. After that, the world was her oyster!
‘At least you have the stamina for all the trekking about we have to do,’ Rachel added, with a mocking glance down at her own full figure. ‘You country girls probably have the strength of marathon runners from chasing all those sheep up and down the alps.’
Anne grinned. ‘Our farm’s nowhere near the Southern Alps and the dogs did all the running. I just leaned on the gates and whistled.’
Her new friend’s use of the phrase ‘country girl’ sent a small frisson up her spine. In the past two weeks she had seen very little of her surly neighbour, mainly be- cause she had adopted a policy of active avoidance. Apart from the occasional thunderous knocking on the wall whenever she forgot herself and played her tapes a little too loud, or to cover one of Ivan’s rare bouts of crying, he was just as scrupulous at avoiding contact.
Whatever it was that Hunter Lewis did for a living, his hours seemed to be erratic, so that it was no easy task to work out a schedule by which she could be sure of missing him whenever she ventured out. However, an ear to her bedroom wall was usually enough to ascertain if he was at home and therefore unlikely to be encoun- tered on the stairs. Coming back in she just had to keep a sharp look-out and take her chances. Every time she went up or down the stairs it was an adventure, and her heart pounded in her throat with nervous apprehension.
‘So…how’s the rest of your lecture schedule shaping up? I can’t believe you’re taking Japanese and Russian. One language at a time is enough for most of us!’
Anne shrugged. ‘I’ve already done basic correspondence courses in them so it won’t be too much of a shock. I used to love making up and solving codes and cryptograms when I was a kid. I even used to invent languages with proper alphabets and rules of grammar…put the whole works down in little notebooks. It’s just something that I’m good at.’
‘Inventing grammar’? Now I know you’re weird.’ Rachel rolled her eyes. ‘Most of us spend our childhood trying to avoid having to write any grammar! Your teachers must have loved you. So…what do you think of your lecturers so far?’
‘They seem OK.’ It was an understatement. Just to be at university was wonderful and Anne knew she was seeing everything through rose-coloured spectacles.
‘Lucky you. I’ve got some killers from last year. Him for example.’ She screwed up her face and inclined her head at one of the figures crossing the quad. ‘Gorgeous bod, personality of Dracula. You know, there are poor souls who actually take political studies because they think it’s going to be an easy option. Big mistake. The drop-out rate in his class is fierce. He has a fiendish temper and he just piles on the assignments!’
‘So how come you’re still taking it, then? Can’t resist the gorgeous bod?’ teased Anne with a smile as she casually scanned the quad.
‘I discovered I’m actually quite good at it,’ admitted Rachel sheepishly, making Anne laugh. ‘I know, I know…it shocked me even more than it did Professor Lewis. He thought I was just another blonde bimbo looking to plug a hole in my schedule—practically shredded me to pieces that first semester. The Pit Bull, I call him…let him scent a weakness and those big jaws just go chomp!’
Anne wasn’t listening. She had spotted him at the exact moment that Rachel had mentioned his name. He was walking towards them at an oblique angle but there was no mistaking that tight, impatient stride or the saturnine expression. He was wearing a sports jacket over dark trousers and pale shirt and tie, and was carrying a bulging leather briefcase.
‘Professor Lewis? Professor Hunter Lewis?’ she said hollowly, hoping against hope that it was merely a ghastly coincidence.
‘Yeah. You know him?’
‘He’s a lecturer here?’
‘I told you, political studies.’ To her horror Rachel lifted her hand and waved to the man as he approached to pass their seated figures. ‘Hi, Hunter.’
She received a grunt in reply and a brief glance that didn’t even break his stride. Anne was relaxing again when the big head suddenly snapped back around and he came to a halt. Before he could beat her to it Anne scowled at him. As if it weren’t enough that she had to avoid him around the flat, now she was going to have to worry about running into him on campus as well.
To her dismay he backed up, ignoring his student, and stared at Anne. ‘What are you doing here?’ he snapped.
As if it had anything to do with him!
‘Following you, of course,’ she snapped back, flicking her long plait back between her defiantly stiff shoulder- blades.
His face darkened. ‘What in the hell for?’
He believed her! The incredible egotism of the man. ‘I’m a masochist. I’m hoping if I throw myself in your path often enough you’ll fall in love with me and invite me to live miserably with you ever after.’
Anne heard Rachel’s soft gasp, but ignored it in favour of maintaining her defiant front. He wasn’t her professor. To her he was just an obnoxious stranger.
‘Is that supposed to be a joke?’
‘Not to someone who doesn’t have a sense of humour.’
He didn’t dispute the point, instead abruptly switching tactics. ‘Are you taking an extension course here at the university?’ he asked more politely.
Ah, it was finally beginning to sink in that her life might not revolve entirely around him. She widened her eyes innocently. ‘Actually I’m thinking of enrolling in political studies.’
A brief spark of emotion glowed in the hooded gaze and then Anne was subjected to a long, silent look that would have made her blush if she hadn’t been so annoyed. ‘Sorry, my class already has a waiting-list,’ he said with silky insincerity.
‘Oh, dear, and I’m sure there won’t be any vacancies opening up when the term is under way and your students realise what a sweet-tempered and tolerant being you really are behind that gruff exterior.’
This time Rachel gave her a sharp nudge of her elbow in the kidneys and Anne felt guilty for allowing her temper to get the better of her discretion.
The dark gaze switched from Anne to Rachel’s flushed and curious face. ‘Been telling tales out of school, Rachel?’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it, Professor,’ said Rachel with glib mock-deference.
‘Oh, be my guest,’ he responded mildly. ‘I’d much rather have the wheat sorted from the chaff before the first lecture.’
‘The chaff being those who don’t treat every utterance of yours as a pearl of indisputable wisdom, I suppose,’ Anne murmured.
‘I’m surprised at a country girl mixing up her barnyard analogies. Perhaps you don’t know as much as you think you do, Miss Tremaine. It’s swine and pearls.’
She knew his condescension was deliberate but she couldn’t help responding to the provocation. ‘We didn’t keep pigs. I had to come to Auckland to encounter the behaviour of common swine.’
‘Er…hadn’t we better be going now, Anne?’ Rachel said hastily, picking up her leather satchel and getting to her feet, tugging her friend up with her.
‘Anne?’ The black eyebrows flattened. ‘I thought your name was Katlin.’
It had had to happen and Anne was proud of the way she handled it, letting none of her trepidation show.
‘My family calls me Anne,’ she said with perfect truth. ‘With an “e”,’ she added helpfully.
‘Why?’
He wasn’t asking about the ‘e’.
‘Because it’s one of my names,’ she said evasively. ‘A lot of people don’t like their middle names,’ she said, choosing her random comments carefully to avoid an outright lie. ‘I happen to like Anne. It’s a good, plain, uncomplicated name.’
Now that was a lie. She had always wanted to be called something more dramatic. Alexandra or Laurel…or even Elizabeth would have done. A name you could do some- thing with…
His eyebrows rose again and she knew that he was thinking exactly what she was—that a plain, uncomplicated name suited her looks. Though her eyes were large and thickly lashed they were an indeterminate colour-sometimes hazel, sometimes muddy blue, more often hovering disappointingly somewhere in between. She might have just scraped by as pretty with her winged brows balanced by a nicely shaped mouth, except that in between was the noble Tremaine nose which threw her small face all out of kilter. Her brothers used to tease her that it was lucky she had also inherited the impressive Tremaine chest when she went through puberty, otherwise her centre of gravity wouldn’t have shifted south of her chin!
Another impressive attribute, one that her brothers never teased her about because it had proved so vital to the family’s well-being, was her unshakeable, unbreakable loyalty towards those she loved.
The car accident that had severely injured her mother’s back when Anne was fifteen had been the start of the long process that had shaped her adult personality into that of a deeply compassionate woman, always willing to help those less fortunate than herself. Katlin had always been hopeless on the domestic front and at the time of the accident had already embarked on her ob- session with writing, so it had naturally fallen to Anne to put aside her quiet dreams of university study and travel and buckle down to the task of being ‘little mother’ to the rest of the family. She had done it as she did most things, with a good-natured enthusiasm that had served to reassure her father and brothers, and especially her bed-ridden mother, that it was no great self-sacrifice for her to leave school without even minimum qualifications. In between the cooking and cleaning and caring for her mother Anne had plugged away at correspondence courses, which had gone some way to appeasing her hunger for knowledge and intellectual stimulation, and if occasionally she felt sorry for herself she never let it show.
Over the years she had maintained an attitude of obstinate optimism towards her mother’s condition while everyone around her was losing hope. It had been a long, slow haul, but after numerous operations and continuing physical therapy Peg Tremaine’s condition had gradually improved to the point where, although she still wasn’t pain-free, she could move about and perform most household tasks without help. At last Anne had felt free to reclaim some of her childhood dreams, to fly the family nest and seek her own destiny.
But that destiny had immediately become inextricably bound up with Katlin’s. Typically, Anne had found the bonds of love were too strong for her selfishly to ignore her sister’s cry for help. So here she was, plain Anne masquerading as complex Katlin and shamefully beginning to enjoy it.
She frowned, daring him to take advantage of the opportunity for a fresh insult. It struck her that she had never frowned so much as she did in Hunter Lewis’s company. It must be infectious.
‘Anne was my grandmother’s name,’ Hunter Lewis said unexpectedly, a taunting amusement lightening his expression as he watched Rachel try a second time to edge her fierce little friend away.
‘I suppose you’re going to tell me she was tough as old boots and as mad as a snake,’ said Anne darkly, shrugging off the tug at her elbow.
‘Actually she was a darling, a sweet little lady with a heart as soft as butter.’
Anne waited warily for the punch line but it didn’t come.
‘Yes, well, I’m sure any grandmother of yours wouldn’t dare be anything else,’ she told him stubbornly. The expression in his eyes was masked as he glanced down at his watch and she added sarcastically, ‘Oh, please, don’t let us keep you. I’m sure there must be other people who actually have appointments to be intimidated by you.’
She was faintly appalled at the way she was carrying on but he merely gave her a sardonic smile. ‘Are you saying I intimidate you, Anne?’
She had to tip her head back a long way to look him boldly in the eye. ‘No.’
‘I didn’t think so,’ he said drily. ‘Then you won’t be upset if I tell you that next time you leave anything behind in the washing machine I’m going to put it through the office shredder. Thanks to your carelessness I now have three pink shirts.’
Her red T-shirt! Anne put a hand over her mouth to stem a sudden giggle. She had wondered where it had gone after the last wash. Because it was a cheap one the unreliable dye meant it had to be separately washed in cold water and she had thrown it into the machine after having done Ivan’s nappies on a hot cycle and scurried back to her loft to hang the nappies on a makeshift drying frame she had rigged up in front of her window. They took longer to dry than they would have flapping on the clothes-line outside the rooftop laundry-room but Anne couldn’t risk using that any more than she dared leave them in the glass-fronted dryer.