Just Once
Susan Napier

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘WHAT the hell do you want?’

Kate Crawford kept the polite smile pinned to her lips as she confronted the man who had wrenched his front door open with an impatient snarl.

Framed in the doorway he appeared intimidatingly large, his broad shoulders and muscled chest straining the seams of a well-worn grey tee shirt, scruffy blue jeans encasing his long, power-packed legs. His short-cropped hair stood up in untidy spikes, as if he had been running his large, battered hands through the dark brown thicket, and his deeply tanned face was chiselled into tight angles of hostility.

In spite of his obvious bad temper he was devastatingly handsome, a potent combination of classic male beauty and simmering testosterone. In fact, he looked more like a professional athlete than a best-selling author who spent a good portion of his time sitting at a desk.

‘Sorry to disturb you, but I wondered if I could borrow some sugar?’ she said, lifting up her empty cup and watching the shock that had rippled across his sculpted features congeal into a shuttered wariness. She was suddenly glad that she was wearing a casual sundress rather than the tailored elegance that was her signature in the city. The last thing she wanted to do was look as if she had dressed to impress. She hadn’t even bothered with make-up. After all, she was now officially in holiday mode—the old-fashioned, do-for-yourself, bucket-and-spade, sand-in-the-sandwiches type of holiday, the kind that she had never had as a child.

‘I’ve just moved in next door,’ she explained pleasantly, affecting not to notice his stony silence as she waved her free hand towards the beach-front property on the other side of the low, neatly clipped boundary hedge—a small, ageing wooden bungalow, which was dwarfed by the modern, two-storeyed, architect-designed houses that had sprouted up on the two adjoining sections.

‘I’m renting the place for a month, and thought I’d brought everything I needed with me, but when I went to make myself a cup of coffee I realised I’d forgotten one of the basics,’ she continued with a rueful lift of her slender shoulders. ‘I know there’s a general store a few kilometres back but, well…I’ve just spent four hours driving down here from Auckland and I’d rather avoid having to get back in the car for a while. So, if you wouldn’t mind tiding me over until tomorrow, I’d appreciate it; and of course I’ll pay you back in kind…’

She kept her voice steady, confident that she looked a lot more composed than she felt. Although she was only a little taller than average, the willowy curves, elegant bone structure and haughty facial features that Kate had inherited from her undemonstrative mother helped project an air of cool sophistication and graceful poise, regardless of her inner turmoil. It had never mattered to her mother if the serenity on display was only skin deep. Strong emotions were ruinous to logical thought processes, and therefore to be discouraged. An ambitious criminal lawyer determined to be the youngest woman appointed to New Zealand’s judicial bench, Jane Crawford had wanted her daughter to follow in her footsteps, but Kate had proved a severe disappointment on all fronts. A gentle and imaginative child, she had worked hard at school for only average results and had acquired neither the academic credentials nor the desire to compete with her brilliant, perfectionist mother. In quiet rebellion she had chosen to follow a totally different career path, one that had proved unexpectedly successful and wholly satisfying.

However, at times like this she was thankful for those chilly early lessons in rejection—they had built up her emotional independence and equipped her to face scathing criticism and hurtful rebuffs with a calm resilience that frustrated her opponents.

If she had been relying on the world-famous author to play the gallant hero to her damsel-in-distress routine she had obviously chosen the wrong man, she thought wryly. As a storyteller, his speciality was constructing tough, gritty, anti-heroes who were rude, crude and lethal to know—literally so where female characters were concerned. His creations, much like the man himself, were usually loners, alienated from society by their cynical mistrust of their fellow human beings and stubborn refusal to play by the rules.

Now that he had mastered his initial shock, the gorgeous, dark brown eyes were smouldering at Kate with angry suspicion.

No one was supposed to know where Drake Daniels sequestered himself to write his hugely successful thrillers. He lived mostly out of hotel rooms when he wasn’t writing—partying up a storm, generating all the publicity his publisher could wish for on a merry-go-round of talk-shows, book-signings and festivals and special events—ostensibly enjoying his peripatetic lifestyle to the full. But sandwiched between the bouts of public hyperactivity were intervals of total anonymity. Every now and then he would drop out of sight for periods ranging from a few weeks to several months, and each year there would be a new novel on the shelves to delight his fans and confound his critics. To Kate’s frustration, a lot of the readily available information about him had turned out to be cleverly placed disinformation. Even his publisher and agent had claimed not to be privy to where in his native New Zealand his private bolt-hole was located. It had taken a great deal of determination, cunning and several strokes of unbelievable luck to finally track him down to the sleepy fishing and farming community of Oyster Beach, tucked away on the east coast of the upper Coromandel Peninsula.

Kate raised her delicately arched brows along with the proffered cup in a gentle hint that she was still waiting for his response, but just as he seemed about to break his stony silence her complacency was shattered by the sound of a throaty feminine voice floating out from the cavernous hall behind him.

‘Who is it, darling?’

Kate barely had time to glimpse the tall, voluptuous redhead in a short white towelling robe before the tall masculine figure turned away, blocking her view with his broad shoulders.

‘Nobody.’ As he spoke he kicked the door closed with his heel, leaving Kate blinking at the honey-gold panels of oiled timber.

For a moment she merely stood, stunned by his insulting dismissal, the blood thundering in her ears. Then she forced herself to walk away, her stomach churning like a washing machine.

Get over it. Move on.

She had done what she came to do. Fired the first shot in her personal little war. There was an old saying that a man surprised was half beaten, so by that measure she could consider herself well on the way to success. But now that she had sacrificed the element of surprise she needed to regroup her defences.

Her flimsy sandals crunched on the crushed-shell path as she retraced her steps along the side of the house with measured strides, resisting the urge to disappear in a cowardly short cut over the low hedge.

The few metres of sandy lawn between the sprawling rear deck of the house and the public beach seemed to take for ever to traverse, but Kate maintained her unhurried pace, acutely conscious of the burnished bank of tinted windows that angled around the back of the house on both upper and lower floors, affording the occupants a clear view of the three-kilometre beach as far as the mouth of the tidal estuary.

Were they watching her retreat, or had they already returned to whatever it was they had been doing before the unexpected interruption? The desire to look back over her shoulder was almost overwhelming, and it took an effort of will for Kate to cling to her feigned air of indifference.

As she reached the lip of the beach a slight, salty breeze riffled through her sun-streaked, caramel-brown hair, sending a few of the long, layered strands feathering across her slender throat. She paused to brush them back, tunnelling her hand under the rest of the silky-straight mass and flipping it free from the textured cotton bodice of her sundress to ripple down between her tense shoulder blades, welcoming the fan of air against the self-conscious burning at the nape of her neck. Her blue eyes narrowed against the splinters of late-afternoon sunlight reflecting off the shifting sea as she tried to gulp in some much-needed oxygen and ease the tightness in her chest. Boats rocked gently at their moorings out in the sheltered bay and, even though it was a glorious spring day and the tide was fully in, the narrow strip of beach was all but empty.

Oyster Beach was only just being discovered by the eager developers who had swallowed up large tracts of coastal land farther south and regurgitated them as fashionable beach resorts. With Auckland only a few hours’ drive away, the cove was being promoted as the latest ‘unspoiled’ getaway for jaded city dwellers. Expensive new holiday houses sporting double garages and en suite bathrooms were starting to muscle in on the simple beaches and old-style family homes on their large, flat water-front sections and up in the sheltering hills ‘lifestyle blocks’ were being shaved off the fringes of productive farmland.

At present the permanent local population was only a few hundred, but that number ballooned to thousands over Christmas and New Year when the schools were out for the long summer break and the pressure on holiday accommodation and facilities was intense. Kate knew that her timing had been serendipitous because November was exam-time at New Zealand high schools and universities. If she had been a few weeks later she would have had little chance of finding anywhere in Oyster Beach for rent, let alone right next door to her quarry. Even the local camping ground was booked out several months in advance for the height of the summer.

At any other time Kate might have been inclined to linger and drink in the tranquillity of the scene in front of her, but at the moment all she could think about was making it back to the sanctuary of her temporary home.

Half-buried boulders wrapped in plastic netting shored up the grass bank at the edge of the beach, protecting the valuable, low-lying land along the foreshore from being eaten away by storm surges. Kate stumbled as she made the short jump down onto the powdery white sand and discovered that her knees were seriously wobbly. Her hands and feet felt cold and heavy at the end of her limbs and her ears had started to ring. She was, she realised with grim awareness of the irony, suffering some of the classic effects of shock—although she had been the one supposedly delivering the jolt!

She stepped back up onto the coarse, springy grass on her side of the hedge and huffed a sigh of relief when her shaky legs proved equal to the task. Moving a little more quickly, she sought the shadow of the creaking verandah and slipped in through the sliding glass door that she had left open to the fresh air.

‘Gee, that went really well,’ she muttered to the empty house, her fingers whitening around the empty cup as she relived those awful moments of hot humiliation when the door had slammed shut in her face. She had been tempted to storm off vowing never to speak to him again, but she was a mature, twenty-seven-year-old woman, not a sulky, self-absorbed teenager. She had questions to ask and a responsibility to uphold and, as her mother was so fond of telling her, failure was not a viable option!

She put the cup down on the kitchen table and flexed her angry fingers. Realistically speaking, what else had she expected? Drake Daniels had a reputation for freezing off people who became importuning and she had just doorstepped him like a crazed fan, or member of the despised paparazzi. Given his reclusive work habits, she should consider herself lucky that he had opened the door at all.

On the bright side, at least she now had confirmation that she was in the right place at the right time. When she had put her money down for the holiday rental she had been acting as much on gut instinct as on the elusive facts, although her instincts had certainly led her astray in one important aspect: she had not expected to have to cope with a mystery redhead as well as an angry author. Naively, perhaps, she had believed the myth that he crafted his compelling stories in total seclusion.

But that was what she had come here for, wasn’t it? To separate the man from the myth? To explore his true character, not just the parts of him that he wanted people to see. Even if it was a truth she found hard to stomach.

She had to get a grip on herself, and not jump to hasty conclusions. Perhaps the woman was a visiting relative, although her research hadn’t turned up any mention of living family members.

The slippery coils of nervous tension that had been shifting in her belly all day suddenly tightened, and a rush of saliva into her dry mouth gave Kate just enough warning to make it into the roomy, old-fashioned bathroom before vomiting up the small salad roll that she had made herself eat at a roadside café on the drive down. So much for thinking that it would calm her uneasy digestion!

Kate rinsed the sourness out of her mouth at the basin and dabbed a little refreshing cold water onto her face, dewing her cheeks. Without make-up to emphasis her ghostly silver-blue eyes and narrow mouth she should have looked pallid and uninteresting, but the age-spotted mirror above the basin was reassuring. One of the few positive legacies she had inherited from her irresponsible, absentee father was a honey-gold complexion that only needed a slight touch of the sun to deepen to a tawny glow. New Zealand was experiencing an unseasonably hot spring, and the meteorologists were predicting more of the same warm, dry weather in the coming weeks, so, if this holiday proved a disastrous mistake in every other way, at least she could return home with a tan that would be the envy of her work-bound housemates, Kate thought wryly.

She flicked her layered fringe aside from its central parting, smoothing it down from her temples to rest alongside the high cheekbones that gave her pale eyes their faintly feline tilt. She accepted that she wasn’t beautiful, like her glacial blonde mother, but her sharply etched features were nicely symmetrical, and some men found her unusual eye colour attractive rather than off-putting. Her smile was her secret weapon; when genuine it bestowed a warmth that vanquished the natural aloofness of her expression. She practised it now, to give her wavering spirits a cheerful boost. If you look confident, you’ll act confident, was another of her mother’s bracing maxims, along with aggressive creed, Don’t get mad, get even!

Purged of her energy-sapping queasiness, Kate suddenly found herself feeling peckish. She fossicked amongst the fresh supplies she had unloaded into the fridge and ate a pottle of yoghurt and some hummus and rice crackers while she waited at the bench for the electric kettle to boil. As she tried to keep her mind from fretting over her next move her gaze swept around the clean but shabby, open-plan kitchen, a far cry from the upscale, central Auckland town house she shared with her friend Sara, and Sara’s cousin Josh. The appliances here were all basic models, functional rather than stylish, probably installed when the house was built. The green clocked wallpaper, faded Formica bench and patterned vinyl flooring looked original, too, but what would have seemed highly trendy three decades ago were now sadly dated. She had barely given herself time to unpack before she had trotted out on her abortive begging expedition, but her impression was that the whole place could do with a facelift. The three-bedroom weatherboard house was well-maintained but there was no sign of any attempt at expansion or renovation over the years, and Kate guessed that its present owner had inherited or bought it with the intention of keeping it as a landbank.

The kettle burbled and Kate occupied herself with the mundane task of making a cup of tea. She discarded the sodden tea bag in the sink and added a splash of milk, stirring it in with unnecessary force as her thoughts returned to the complicated tangle her life had become. Choices that had once seemed clear and simple were now fraught with danger, she thought, staring out the kitchen window at the gnarled pohutukawa tree whose grey-green leaves blocked out the concrete palace that was in the final stages of completion on the other side of the chain-link fence. She hoped that she wasn’t about to get strangled in the web of deceit she had been busily weaving.

She raised the steaming cup to her lips for her first sip when a sudden, intangible sizzle of tension in the air made her stiffen. She jerked around, her heart leaping up into her throat as she realised she was no longer alone.

Standing silently in the arched opening between the kitchen and the living room, looking no more friendly than he had a few minutes earlier, was Drake Daniels.

She hoped he put her little choke of dismay down to the hot tea that had spilled onto her fingers. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she demanded, switching hands to shake off the burning droplets, disgusted to hear that her voice was high and breathless rather than cool and clipped.

‘The door was open,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of the verandah. ‘I took it to mean that you were expecting me to follow you…’

‘It’s open because the house is hot and stuffy,’ she snapped. She knew she should play it cool, but the sarcastic words came spilling from her lips before she could stop them: ‘What the hell do you want?’

His dark eyes glinted. He placed a small plastic container down on the Formica table, centring it with a mocking precision. ‘I brought you the sugar you said you needed.’

‘Oh.’ Kate hugged her tea defensively to her chest as she wrestled with her conscience. ‘Thank you,’ she said begrudgingly, knowing full well that his meekness was a sham.

Sure enough, as soon as she had humbled herself, he unsheathed his sword.

‘So, tell me: are you going to leave when you find out you’re wasting your time here? Or is it going to take men in white coats and a restraining order to get rid of you?

‘Are you stalking me?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘STALKING you?’ Kate widened her eyes in amused disbelief. ‘You do fancy yourself, don’t you?’

Her teasing tone made Drake’s mouth thin. ‘Stop playing games, Katherine,’ he growled. ‘How did you find me?’

She sipped her tea and mused on the question. ‘I’ve always found you to be borderline paranoiac, and now it looks like you’ve inched over the line. Maybe the men in white coats should be coming for you…’

‘Very witty—and very evasive.’

She might have known that he’d notice. Words were his business, his strength and his talent…interpreting nuances and assigning subtle layers of meaning to every line of dialogue and paragraph of prose. He would tie her up in verbal knots if she let him. Her best chance was to make simple statements that could be neither proved nor disproved, and then just stick to her guns. Or better still, say nothing at all.

‘You’re surely not going to claim that it’s just pure coincidence that you turned up on my doorstep?’ he accused, taking an aggressive stance, legs astride, hands fisting on his hips, a poster-boy for one of his disaffected heroes. ‘What’s going on, Katherine?’

A tremor of weakness shimmered through her bones. Oh, if only you knew! She looked into his moody countenance and felt the familiar, powerfully seductive tug of physical attraction that was the source of all her current turmoil. She still found it amazing that such a bold, passionate and charismatic man had reacted with such intensity to her ordinary, unremarkable self. That it had also taken him by surprise was evident from his hypersensitivity to any hint of possessiveness, and his thinly veiled restlessness whenever they had been together for any length of time. Sophistication had been the name of the game, and for a while she had actually carried it off.

She caught herself up before she could begin to wallow in bittersweet memories, her determination hardening. Oh, no, she wasn’t going to let herself fall back into that trap! She was no longer that woman—willing to pander to his genius at the expense of her own needs and goals.

‘What’s going on is that I’m taking a long-overdue holiday,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve accrued so much extra leave over the past two years that my boss was forced to point out a clause in my contract that says I have until next month to use it or lose it—’

‘Marcus?’ he interrupted sharply, latching onto the notion that his New Zealand publisher was involved. His eyes kindled with fury at the treachery. ‘Enright sent you to find me?’

‘Nobody sent me to find you—Marcus has no idea where I am,’ she insisted with perfect truth. Her reputation as a dedicated employee who could always be relied upon to work above and beyond the call of duty to support good client liaisons had taken a knock with her abrupt decision to take all the accumulated weeks owing on such short notice, and it had dived even further when she had rejected Marcus’s belated offer of a compensatory bonus if she sacrificed the accrual. Enright Media was a very tightly run ship, and it had entailed a lot of fast juggling of favours to get others to take on her responsibilities as well as their own while she was away, but as a researcher she was in a good position to know where the bodies were buried, and how and on whom to apply pressure. A disgruntled Marcus had been forced to concede that he had no legal grounds for insisting she break up her holiday allowance into smaller units, particularly as it meant she would be on deck over Christmas, when staff with young families were clamouring to jump ship.

‘I told you, I’m on a holiday. That’s when normal people take a break from their workaday lives to rest, travel or zonk out on a beach somewhere.’

‘And you expect me to believe that of all the holiday homes in all the beach resorts in all the world, you walk into this one?’ he demanded, his deep, velvet-smooth voice steeped in sarcasm.

The paraphrase of the famous line from Casablanca struck a painful chord. It had been Kate’s ability to recognise quotes from old movies and obscure film noir classics that had captured his attention two years ago, when they had met at one of Marcus’ champagne-drenched book-launch parties. They had spent the early part of the evening trading one-liners, Drake’s fierce competitiveness challenged by her phenomenal memory for trivia and cool capacity to carry a bluff. Their feuding banter had become increasingly provocative as the night had worn on and Kate had shocked everyone, herself included, by leaving on his arm.

‘Coincidences do happen,’ she pointed out, relaxing deliberately back against the bench and taking another sip of her tea.

His handsome face rearranged itself into sharp angles of contempt. ‘If I tried to use that tired old cliché in a book it would be laughed off the shelves.’

‘Which is why they say that truth is stranger than fiction,’ she said lightly, regarding him over the rim of the chunky mug. For once she almost felt in control of the relationship as she watched him vibrate with frustration. She was aware of a repressed violence in his nature, but for all his physicality she had never felt threatened by his considerable strength. At thirty-three, he had the maturity and experience to handle his inner demons. Whenever he exploded, it was with clever words rather than crude muscle.

‘The strange truth being that less than four weeks after I leave Auckland you “just happen” to choose Oyster Beach for a sudden holiday and then you “just happen” to rent the place next door to mine?’

‘Well, gee, I don’t usually bother to check out the ownership of neighbouring properties wherever I go, to make sure I’m not inadvertently going to intrude on your precious privacy,’ she said, matching him for sarcasm.

His eyes narrowed as he pounced on the perceived slip. ‘Then how do you know I’m the owner?’

‘The rabid territorialism you’re displaying is a dead give away,’ she said drily. ‘Given your reclusive writing habits and erratic timetable, I doubt that you’d feel comfortable working anywhere but your own space. Someplace where you can come and go at will without attracting notice. And it’s not as if there’s a big choice of long-term rentals if you want something right on the beach…or so the travel agent told me,’ she added swiftly.

‘So how did you find out about this one?’ He jerked his beard-roughened jaw at their surroundings. ‘Internet? Newspaper ad?’

She almost agreed before she saw the potential trap. For all she knew the rental had never been actively advertised.

‘Serendipity?’ She smiled limpidly. ‘I read a magazine story about some people who camp at Oyster Beach every Christmas, and then asked around. I am a researcher, you know.’

His jaw tightened. ‘And something of an actress, too. You didn’t even show a blink of surprise when I opened my door; almost as if you were expecting to see me. Yet you appeared not to recognise me.’

‘I was shocked,’ she said truthfully. The little electric pulses that zipped through her veins every time she saw him had intensified rather than faded with time. Her hyper-awareness was simultaneously exciting and inhibiting.

‘So you just went ahead and trotted out your cheerful little spiel as blandly as if I was someone you’d never met before rather than the man you’ve been sleeping with for the past two years.’

Colour touched her haughty cheekbones. ‘We’ve never actually slept together,’ she corrected him with a crisp exactitude that would have made her mother proud. ‘And in the rather awkward circumstances, I thought you would prefer me not to presume on our relationship—’

‘Presume?’ he echoed incredulously, dropping his hands from his hips. ‘Am I really that much of a ogre?’

‘Quite frankly, yes,’ she punctured his scornful amusement. ‘You made it very clear from the very beginning that there are situations and subjects which are strictly off limits between us—’

‘I thought that was a mutual arrangement,’ he cut in roughly. ‘We’re two very independent people, and, as I remember it, you’re the one who’s uncomfortable with the idea of us sleeping together. You never want to stay in my hotel room and you’ve certainly never invited me to spend the night at your house…’

Behind her back, Kate’s hand gripped the sharp edge of the bench, using the small, cutting pain in her palm as a means of controlling the larger pain. Did he think that she hadn’t been aware of the conflicting signals he had given out in those first few weeks? The reckless rush of passion that had precipitated them into an unlikely affair had caught them both off guard. Drake had been between books at the time and making the most of his freedom, and Kate had thought that once he plunged back into his creative cycle his interest would inevitably wane. Not having his experience in the etiquette of conducting casual romantic liaisons, Kate had quietly taken her cues from him. She had seen the way he shied away from gushing, clingy women, had noticed that, although he had a large circle of acquaintances, he had few real friends. He was quick to charm but slow to trust, so she had been very careful never to step over the invisible boundaries that his own behaviour had marked out, or to demand more than she was certain he was prepared to give. The reward for her restraint had been to hold his interest far beyond the usual few months his well-publicised affairs generally lasted. The price of loving Drake Daniels, she had discovered, was not to love him.

She smothered the hot words of protest that tingled on her tongue.

‘We’re getting off the point—’

‘And what is the point?’ He cocked his head. ‘Oh, yes, that’s right—your ridiculous pretence not to know me just now.’

If that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black!

‘Maybe I was simply scared you might jump to the arrogant conclusion that I had followed you down here, and accuse me of stalking you! A normal person might shrug it off as just one of life’s little amusing quirks, but with you there’s no assumption of innocence; no, “Hi, Kate, great to see you—what on earth are you doing in this neck of the woods?” Your paranoid obsession has to build it into some big conspiracy theory centred solely around yourself.’

Temper kicked up a brooding storm in his eyes as he realised she had deftly outmanoeuvred him. ‘That was what you meant by “rather awkward circumstances”?’

She hesitated, and lightning comprehension flashed in the storm-dark eyes. ‘Ah…I suppose that was a reference to my being with Melissa…?’

Kate cursed herself for giving him the opportunity to torture her with more self-doubts. She was not going to betray the slightest interest in his half-naked companion.

She tilted her chin and gave him a coolly uncomprehending look. ‘I meant the fact that I know you hate any interruptions while you’re writing—’ Except by the mysterious Melissa, an evil voice whispered in her ear. ‘But if nobody knows where you are, I don’t see how they can be expected to know which places to avoid. Perhaps if you were less secretive you might find out that people actually want to avoid you.’

‘If you want to avoid me, Katherine, there’s an easy solution. Pack up and go elsewhere for your holiday. If the rent isn’t refundable I’ll reimburse you. Hell, I’ll even book you in at a five-star resort somewhere.’

Anywhere but here—he really was desperate to get rid of her! Kate smiled through a thin red veil of rage. ‘Thank you, but I’ve never accepted expensive gifts from you before, and I don’t intend to start now. I’ve already settled in and I’m quite happy with my choice,’ she said, safe in the knowledge her bulging suitcases and bags were hidden behind the closed door of the master bedroom, where she had flung them before hurrying next door. She strolled over to sit down at the table with her tea, letting him know that she was unworried by his looming presence. ‘I’m looking forward to being able to step out of the house straight onto the beach every day…’

‘That’s if it stays fine. You’re a city girl, you’ll get bored here by yourself. There’s nothing for you to do if the weather turns—no shops, no cafés or restaurants, no entertainment—’

‘Luckily I brought along my own brain,’ she said drily, ‘an essential accessory for the modern single woman. I’m sure I’ll be able to keep myself amused. And I doubt the rest of the local community will be as standoffish as you. Perhaps I’ll meet a handsome young fisherman who’ll offer to show me the sights,’ she added flippantly.

A muscle flickered alongside his compressed mouth. His restless eyes fell to her cup and his dark brows formed a straight line. He sniffed the air like a hound on a fresh scent. ‘Is that tea? I thought you said that you were making coffee.’

Her stomach gave a commemorative lurch as another lie come home to roost. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘I didn’t know you drank tea.’ He frowned.

‘There’s a lot you evidently don’t know about me,’ she pointed out.

‘So it would seem.’ His gaze shifted to her face and subjected her to a darkly probing look. ‘Well, since I brought you the sugar, perhaps you could offer me a cup?’

She barely stopped her mouth from falling open. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘But not tea—I’d rather have coffee.’ He began to prowl around the kitchen. ‘Where are your beans?’ He opened the fridge to inspect the shelves. ‘God, this all looks depressingly healthy—where’s all those lovely, full-fat soft cheeses you’re so addicted to…and there’s no wine, or stash of chocolate. Prunes? Who takes prunes on holiday? Don’t tell me you’re on one of those new faddy diets you said your mother is always suggesting you take. What is it this time—South Pacific Colon? Kidney-cleansing Vegan?’ He closed the fridge and headed for the pantry.

‘Do you mind?’ Kate got there first and whipped out the small jar of coffee, pushing it into his chest before he could see the full container of sugar that had been sitting behind it. She shut the cupboard and stood in front of it with folded arms.

‘Instant?’ He looked pained as he cupped the jar in his big hands. ‘What about fresh ground?’

‘It’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it,’ she said tartly. At home she had always made sure she had the blend of beans he liked and had taken pains to brew it to his personal taste.

‘What in the hell is this? “Decaffeinated?”’ he read off the label, as outraged as if he had discovered her keeping a dead body in the pantry.

‘It’s gentler on the stomach.’

‘That’s a contradiction in terms; coffee is supposed to kick you like a mule. Is this part of the new diet—some form of aversion therapy?’

‘Well, it certainly seems to be working so far,’ she muttered, glaring at him in dislike.

His dark head jerked up, eyebrows notching. How could a man who wrote such thrilling, emotionally dense prose be such a blind, insensitive swine? Kate could feel delayed reaction biting deep into her fragile self-control. Next thing he would be wanting her to invite his flame-haired companion over for a bonding drink!

‘So I take it you won’t be staying for that drink after all?’ she said smoothly, sitting back down to her steaming brew.

Still holding her gaze, he unscrewed the lid of the jar, broke the new seal and inhaled the aroma, wrinkling his patrician nose.

‘I suppose your tea is decaffeinated too?’

Her hands curled possessively around the mug, drawing it towards her. ‘No. But I didn’t make a pot, I just used an ordinary tea bag.’

His snobbish palate ignored the blatant discouragement. ‘Well, I suppose that’ll have to do, then.’ She watched in dismay while he snagged a mug from the row of hooks under the cupboards and dropped in one of the tea bags from the open cardboard box on the counter.

‘Make yourself at home,’ she commented sarcastically as he re-boiled the kettle.

‘Thanks. I am,’ he said, filling his cup, his quick grin of genuine amusement setting off alarm bells. What had made him so good-humoured all of a sudden?

Kate wished she hadn’t made it so obvious that she wanted him to leave, for now it seemed he was going to punish her by lingering.

‘Any biscuits?’ he asked, returning the milk to the fridge and scooping a teaspoon out of the cutlery drawer.

‘No. I thought you were anxious to get back to—’ She broke off as he dropped into the chair opposite, his long calves brushing her bare legs under the table, sending a shiver of goose-pimples scooting up her inner thighs. She quickly crossed her legs, swivelling her hips sideways so that she was well away from his unsettling touch, tucking the short, flared skirt neatly under her bottom.

‘Back to Melissa?’ he completed her question helpfully, heaping sugar into his tea.

Kate’s face ached with the strain of not reacting to his casual twist of the knife.

‘To your writing,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve got deadlines to meet.’ She was pleased to see that her hand was rock-steady as she raised her cup to her lips.

‘Is that what Marcus told you?’

‘Sorry, I don’t talk shop while I’m on holiday,’ she said coldly. Let him believe that she was here at someone else’s behest, if that was the way his mind was tracking. It would take some of the heat off her and, in reality, it was close enough to the truth not to cause her undue guilt.

He blew across his tea, wreathing his dark head in curls of steam: the devil in a domestic setting. ‘Then what shall we talk about?’ he invited in the deep voice that haunted her dreams.

Her stomach tightened and she lowered her lashes to hide a violent upsurge of emotion. ‘What do we usually talk about?’

‘Everything.’

And nothing…They never spoke about the disjointed nature of their affair—the weeks of passionate closeness interspersed by months apart, with little or no contact. In a mutual conspiracy of silence they could argue the state of the world, but never the state of their own feelings.

The only place their communications were truly uncensored was in bed, where actions spoke louder than words and their bodies were perfectly attuned to each other’s needs. Drake was a generous lover, and Kate found a fierce rapture in his arms that helped carry her through the long, lonely periods of empty yearning.

The things that she ached to say to him were suddenly dammed up behind a thick wall of resentment. He didn’t really want to talk, he simply wanted Kate to answer his questions…questions that she didn’t yet have answers for herself!

‘Nice weather we’re having for the time of year,’ she said.

‘It is indeed…and you’re obviously taking full advantage of it,’ he agreed, taking up the challenge, his eyes stroking across the honey-coloured skin of her shoulders exposed by the spaghetti straps of her sundress.

Kate was suddenly conscious of the pull of the cotton bodice where it was cut straight across the slope of her breasts, notched in the centre of her cleavage by a V-shaped slit. The flower-splashed, chain-store dress was a comfortable old favourite of hers, despised by her mother for its cheerfully déclassé origins. She had never worn overly casual styles in Drake’s company, knowing that it was her classic, understated elegance that appealed to his sophisticated tastes, and set her apart from the trend-setting flamboyance of more beautiful rivals for his attention.

She stopped breathing as Drake’s gaze drifted down to the sliver of pale skin revealed by the straining V. Nor did she usually go braless when she was with him, preferring the protection and provocation of a lacy bra to enhance her slender curves. She hadn’t worn this sundress since last summer, and was suddenly uncomfortably aware of a slight tugging at the side seams, a tightness pressing up under her arms that crowded her breasts forward against the strict cut of the fabric with an unaccustomed boldness. Thankfully the contrasting double-fold of colour that banded the top of the low bodice masked the crushed outline of her painfully sensitive nipples, and allowed her the semblance of indifference as he continued to rudely stare.

Was he making unflattering comparisons…or thinking that she had let herself go? Kate felt faint at the thought. Then she realised that she was still holding her breath and let it out in a little huff of relief, sucking in a fresh supply of oxygen to chase away the dizziness. The sudden reinflation of her lungs caused her breasts to further test their close confinement, and she was mortified to feel a stitch pop.

It wasn’t only the dress, it was her own skin she no longer felt comfortable in, she tormented herself. And if he dared to ask if she had gained weight since he had last seen her, he was going to get a faceful of hot tea!

Perhaps he sensed her violent impulse because he rocked back on the hind legs of his chair with a lazy, placating smile, taking a long, leisurely gulp from his mug before resting it on his chest.

‘Bright, splashy colours suit you rather well in this setting. That dress makes you look very much the part…’ he trailed off suggestively and she obligingly snapped at the bait.

‘What part?’

‘The young, frivolous holiday-maker out looking for trouble.’

‘I’ve never been frivolous in my life,’ said Kate, offended.

He compounded the offence with a mocking grin that creased the sunfolds at the outer corners of his eyes. ‘Sorry, perhaps I should have said “carefree”…’

A lot he knew! ‘And I’m not “looking for trouble”, either,’ she added, far less sincerely.

‘No? What about your handsome young fisherman?’

‘What?’ She took a moment to trace the origins of his non sequitur. ‘That was a joke.’

‘Was it?’

His cynical response make her hackles rise. ‘You know it was!’

‘Do I?’ He lowered his chair with a thud and leaned forward on the table, the amusement wiped from his face. ‘Because it’s not as if there’s anything to hold you back from experimenting. We never promised each other total fidelity, did we, Kate?’

Her heart stuttered. Experimenting? Was that what he was doing?

‘We never promised each other anything at all,’ she forced out evenly. ‘But I think at the very least we owe each other a certain degree of respect and consideration.’

‘You mean we should be discreet about our indiscretions?’ he commented drily, his dark eyes intent on her still face. ‘I thought I was…’ His shrug encompassed their surroundings. ‘A cosy little hideaway “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”…how much more careful can a man be?’

Trust Drake to frame a paralysing statement in a poetic quotation, but Kate was inured to his clever verbal games. She battled the crushing pain in her chest to try and work out what he was playing at, because there had to be an angle. He was brutally honest, but rarely deliberately cruel—and never towards Kate. However, she had never breached the unwritten rules of their relationship before…

It was almost as if he wanted her to be furious with him, to rant and rave like a jealous fishwife and insist on being the only woman in his life. Ah, yes…that would give him the perfect excuse to push her away, to end their affair before it threatened to become anything more complicated.

It struck her that a cosy little hideaway was the perfect place to commit a discreet murder!

‘Well, you could do your—experimenting—offshore,’ she advised, visualising him sinking to the bottom of the bay with an anchor slung around his neck. The satisfying mental picture brought a chill smile to her pale lips.

He shoved away his cup and got restlessly to his feet. She could see that her contrived calm was having the desired effect. ‘Aren’t you going to finish your tea?’

He looked down at her, his heavy-lidded eyes burning with frustration, his mouth smudged with sullen temper. ‘No, thanks. Melissa’s probably waiting for me.’

With or without the robe? Kate nodded understandingly. ‘Right. You’d better hurry home to reassure her, then. You wouldn’t want her to think you were over here firing up your Bunsen burner for an alternative study.’

His eyelids flickered.

‘Of course, I’m sure you’ve already made it clear to her that she’s not unique or in any way important in your life. It’s always best to be up front about these things, isn’t it, Drake?’

Tension pulled the skin tight over the bones of his face. ‘We agreed, right at the beginning, that we didn’t want any messy emotional scenes—’ he grated.

‘I’m not the one making a big scene,’ Kate cut him off before he said anything irrevocable. She got up and began rinsing out the mugs under the running tap, speaking to him over her cold shoulder. ‘I just asked for some sugar, remember? You were the one who came haring after me bristling with ridiculous suspicions and flinging out all sorts of dramatic allegations. You should chill out, Drake, and stop making such a big deal of it. Instead of wasting all that energy worrying about what I’m doing just go back to living your own life. We’ll be neighbours for a month, that’s all. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse…you’ll hardly even know I’m around…

‘And if you wouldn’t mind leaving the rest of that sugar—I think I feel like pancakes for dinner!’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.