“Excuse me, I’d like to go back to the house.”

For a long second or two, she thought he wasn’t going to move. In a dire need to get away, she pushed through the narrow space he’d left her, miscalculated and felt her breasts brush against his shirt as she tried to pass him.

Steve straightened a little too late. Triss stumbled over his foot, and his hands closed about her upper arms.

For a moment they stood together in the stone doorway, bodies touching, Steve’s chin only an inch from her temple. She could hear—even feel—the harsh intake of his breath, smell clean clothing and soap and a faint, frightening seductive male skin-scent.

In irrational panic she clenched her fists and raised them, thumping his chest. “Let me go!”

He swung her to the outside of the doorway with easy strength, then released her, saying, “Glad to, but are you sure that’s what you want?”

Dear Reader,

We’ve been busy here at Silhouette Romance cooking up the next batch of tender, emotion-filled romances to add extra sizzle to your day.

First on the menu is Laurey Bright’s modern-day Sleeping Beauty story, With His Kiss (#1660). Next, Melissa McClone whips up a sensuous, Survivor-like tale when total opposites must survive two weeks on an island, in The Wedding Adventure (#1661). Then bite into the next juicy SOULMATES series addition, The Knight’s Kiss (#1663) by Nicole Burnham, about a cursed knight and the modern-day princess who has the power to unlock his hardened heart.

We hope you have room for more, because we have three other treats in store for you. First, popular Silhouette Romance author Susan Meier turns on the heat in The Nanny Solution (#1662), the third in her DAYCARE DADS miniseries about single fathers who learn the ABCs of love. Then, in Jill Limber’s Captivating a Cowboy (#1664), are a city girl and a dyed-in-the-wool cowboy a recipe for disaster…or romance? Finally, Lissa Manley dishes out the laughs with The Bachelor Chronicles (#1665), in which a sassy journalist is assigned to get the city’s most eligible—and stubborn—bachelor to go on a blind date!

I guarantee these heartwarming stories will keep you satisfied until next month when we serve up our list of great summer reads.

Happy reading!

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor

With His Kiss
Laurey Bright

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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Books by Laurey Bright

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LAUREY BRIGHT

has held a number of different jobs, but has never wanted to be anything but a writer. She lives in New Zealand, where she creates the stories of contemporary people in love that have won her a following all over the world. Visit her at her Web site, http://www.laureybright.com.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter One

Steve knew the moment Triss Allardyce saw him, across her husband’s grave as the coffin was lowered into the earth.

The glazed look disappeared from her clear blue eyes that held no hint of tears, and they widened with shock.

Steve felt a savage kick of satisfaction. One black brow rose a fraction in involuntary acknowledgment, and a muscle in his tightly clenched jaw twitched a corner of his mouth into a grim semblance of a half smile.

Triss made a tiny movement, as though she would have recoiled but for the somber-faced, very young men standing close on either side of her, and the crowd of people pressing about them. Then she wrenched her gaze from Steve and turned to take a single white rose from another teenager proffering a basket of flowers.

Shining, pale-honey hair fell forward and hid her face when she stepped up to cast the flower into the grave. Other mourners filed past while she stood nearby, accepting their kisses and handshakes and murmurs of sympathy.

Steve stooped for a handful of earth. Prettifying the ceremony with flowers didn’t make Magnus’s death any easier for those who had loved and respected him. Those like Steve and the boys—for they weren’t much more—now gathered protectively about the supposedly grieving widow.

She’d sat in the front row of the church straight-backed and perfectly still while a hulking adolescent beside her sobbed into his hands. Following the coffin out afterward, she had remained pale and composed and apparently unmoved even when one of the youngsters accompanying her burst into a Maori karakia, the lament sending a shiver up Steve’s spine with its haunting passion and forcing him to swallow hard on a suddenly obstructed throat.

At the graveside she’d appeared more bored than stricken with sorrow, a faraway look in her eyes as though her mind was otherwise occupied.

Steve was tempted to skip the drinks and food offered after the funeral but Magnus’s lawyer who had phoned him in Los Angeles to give him the news, had seemed anxious to ensure Steve’s presence, saying they needed a private meeting.

“At the funeral?” Steve had queried.

“Mrs. Allardyce has agreed we can use one of the rooms at Kurakaha House. She’d like to get the business out of the way.”

She’d like to get him out of the way, Steve figured. Magnus must have mentioned him in his will.

He hoped Magnus had protected the House and its work from his wife’s—widow’s—money-grubbing hands.

Beautiful hands, he had to admit when she extended one to him as he entered the big, carpeted double room, already filled with mourners engaged in muted chatter. As beautiful as the rest of her, which had changed little during the six years since he’d seen her last. She’d cut her hair shorter, just below chin level, and maybe lost a little weight, or possibly the clinging black sheath that she wore without adornment falsely lent that impression.

“I’m glad you came, Steve.” Her voice was as cool as the smooth fingers he held briefly in his.

Liar, he thought, biting back a sardonic laugh. She’d have been happy never to have laid eyes on him again.

Her gaze didn’t quite meet his, focusing instead on the knot of his maroon tie. “Magnus would appreciate your being here. Nigel told you he needs to talk?”

“He told me. I believe you’ve made a room available.”

“Yes.” She was distracted by someone at his elbow leaning across to touch her arm. “Excuse me.”

Steve was sure it was with relief that she turned to the newcomer. Dismissed, he helped himself to a drink from a nearby table and looked about for the lawyer.

Half a dozen teenagers circulated with trays of finger foods. Residents at the house, no doubt, whom Triss had pressed into service rather than paying caterers.

Cheap. Presumably the food had been prepared in the Kurakaha kitchen, too. The cook had outdone himself. Or perhaps these days it was a her. Not a young and attractive her, though. Triss wouldn’t stand the competition.

“Steve?” A burly dark man of about his own age grasped his arm with a large brown hand. “Steve, you sonofa— You come all the way over from America?”

“I flew in last night,” Steve said. “Late. How are you, Zed?”

“Blooming,” the big man beamed. “Still working the gardens here, doing a bit of carpentry and stuff. Got a wife and kids now. Two of ’em. Kids, I mean. How ’bout you? Never heard much after you left.”

“No wife, no kids.”

“Yeah, that’s the way.” The man punched his arm. “Fancy-free, eh? Got yourself some big house and car in Los Angeles, eh?”

“An apartment,” Steve said. “And yeah, I own a car. Don’t you?”

“Ford Falcon.” Zed grinned. “Beat-up old bomb. Bet yours is better.” But his envy wasn’t real, and when his wife joined them with one child in her arms and another clinging shyly to her skirt, Zed glowed with pride as he introduced them, swinging the older one into his arms and planting a smacking kiss on her cheek.

“This is a bugger though,” he added, sobering as he looked about them. “Old Magnus going like that.”

Steve could only agree. “I suppose you don’t know what’s going to happen to the House?”

“I guess Triss will carry on.”

“You think so?”

“She’s been holding the place together since Magnus got sick.”

Protecting her investment?

Maybe she’d changed. Give the woman the benefit of the doubt, Steve admonished himself. You could be wrong about her being the Wicked Witch of the West. Maybe. He said, “I didn’t know Magnus was ill.”

“He didn’t want people to know.”

People? Steve felt a strange, angry pain in his chest. I’m not “people.” Someone should have told me.

She should have told him. The pain became a burning resentment. He looked across the room at Triss. She was talking to a handsome gray-haired man who looked vaguely familiar. After a moment Steve placed him—a seasoned and prominent politician, a cabinet minister when Steve had left the country. He was holding one of Triss’s elegant pale hands in both of his, and she was smiling at him, making no attempt to draw away, listening intently to what he had to say.

Steve’s narrowed stare shifted when a former resident of Kurakaha clapped his shoulder and shook his hand, demanding to know what he’d been doing since he’d left New Zealand. Others followed, and half an hour or more passed in social chat.

Mourners had overflowed into the garden. Steve walked through the French doors thrown open to the long tiled terrace, keeping an eye out for the lawyer.

Old oaks and an ancient, spreading puriri shaded the terrace. Looking across the lawn and the native evergreens edging it, he glimpsed the curved, poplar-lined drive, and remembered the first time he’d seen the two-storied, sprawling white building from the gateway. Magnus had stopped the car there, letting the engine idle, and turned to the sullen teenager that Steve was then, saying, “This is your new home.”

In spite of himself Steve had been impressed by the size of the place and its air of well-preserved colonial gentility. Magnus, in his way, was impressive, too. Tall, erect and already gray-haired and perilously close to unkempt, he had been an odd mixture of artist, idealist and pragmatist.

The young Steve remained suspicious and surly for months. Until it dawned on him that Magnus wasn’t really interested in reforming him. All he cared about was rescuing the raw talent that he’d somehow discerned in this unpromising fifteen-year-old.

Fourteen years ago. And now Magnus was gone.

Steve turned to survey the room behind him, and caught sight of Nigel Fairbrother, the lawyer, just inside the French doors.

“Wait a while,” Nigel said when Steve accosted him. “Triss wants to make sure she’s spoken to everyone first.”

“I thought it was just you and me.”

“Best if you’re both there together,” Nigel said. “No hurry, though.”

After the crowd thinned, Nigel caught up with him again and twitched at his sleeve. “We’re down here.”

Triss was waiting for them in what used to be called the bookroom toward the rear of the house. Besides shelves of books there were rows of video tapes and CDs, and a large TV screen and video player occupied one corner.

She was standing before the window with her hands loosely clasped, the low afternoon sun shimmering on her hair. As Nigel shut the door she sat down on one of the chairs grouped about a heavy, round kauri table, her back rigid.

The lawyer gestured to Steve to sit near her and placed himself opposite, taking charge. Steve left one chair empty between him and Triss.

Nigel dug inside his jacket and pulled out a long envelope. “This isn’t exactly a reading of the will,” he said, “but—” he glanced from Steve to Triss “—I don’t know if either of you know how Magnus…um…disposed of his affairs.”

Triss seemed to pale. She must be anxious about her inheritance.

Steve gave a faint shrug. “No idea.”

“I’ve made two copies so you can both peruse it at your leisure, but essentially, the bulk of his personal estate has been left to his wife, with—ah—conditions attached to some of it.” Nigel nodded toward her. “A portfolio of stocks and shares and investment monies is reserved to maintain Kurakaha in its present form as an educative facility for disadvantaged young men, to be administered as a trust—”

Steve gave a silent sigh of relief, relaxing against his chair back, only to straighten abruptly as the lawyer continued “—by the two of you jointly.”

“What?” Steve snapped.

“The two of…us?” Triss had definitely whitened, her eyes darkening as the pupils enlarged. For a second Steve thought she might be going to faint. Then two smudges of color scorched her cheekbones. “When did Magnus make that will? There must be another one!”

“I’m afraid not.” Nigel looked down at the pages as if checking the date. “He never lodged another with us.”

“But…he had plenty of time.” Triss leaned forward, frowning. “Let me see that.”

Nigel handed it over and passed another copy to Steve, who scanned his quickly before looking up.

Triss looked up, too, the tight set of her mouth failing to disguise its lush femininity. “You drew this up?” she asked Nigel.

“At his request, of course. If you have questions…”

“No questions. It’s very clear. Insultingly clear. And watertight, I suppose.”

Nigel looked unhappy. “I pointed out to Magnus that if he made the whole of his bequest to you dependent on your continuing to live at Kurakaha—because that was his first thought—you might have grounds for contesting. As it stands now he has adequately provided for his widow, although if you leave the House there will be considerably less than if you stay. The actual monetary value of the bequest may have altered over the years, but his accountant will fill you in on that.”

“I know exactly what my husband was worth, thank you.” There was a brittle note in her voice.

I’ll just bet you do, Steve thought. And she hadn’t expected that he’d attach strings to her enjoying what he’d left her.

She held the papers so tightly the edges were crushed. Steve realized that her hand was trembling. Perhaps coming to the same realization, she placed the papers on the table, smoothing them out. She hadn’t looked at Steve. “We’ll have to come to some arrangement.” Her voice was unsteady, too, he noted. She paused, and said more strongly, “I don’t suppose Steve will be moving back to New Zealand, so I hope he won’t feel the need to interfere with—”

“Interfere?” Steve cut across her.

She opened her mouth, then paused again, apparently aware of a tactical error. “There’s no need for you to become involved,” she said carefully, still not looking at him directly, “just because Magnus never got around to updating his will.”

“I am involved. This—” Steve lifted his copy of the document “—makes us joint trustees. I can’t say I was expecting it, but I won’t let Magnus down.”

With a flare of temper Triss said, “Do you think I will?”

Their eyes met, and he wondered how a woman who looked all peaches and cream could have such a steely blue stare. Not that his iron-gray one was probably much different.

Nigel intervened. “I think Magnus believed the two of you had complementary talents and strengths. That’s why he wanted both of you—”

“He didn’t want it!” Triss argued, returning her attention to him. “He just never got around to changing his will. He was always so busy, but he must have meant to. And you—” she rounded on Steve “—you know that!”

“As you said,” Steve pointed out, “he had plenty of time. And he’s not here to explain. I intend to take my responsibility seriously.”

“An absentee trustee?” she scorned.

“Don’t jump to conclusions,” Steve advised her curtly. He hadn’t had time yet to give thought to the implications of this. “And don’t think you can get away with anything just because I’m not breathing down your neck every minute of the day.”

He knew he’d scored a hit when her eyes flashed blue fire at him for an instant before she let her lids briefly fall. Then she looked up again, her face once more a composed, icily perfect mask. “Naturally I’ll consult you over any really important decisions—and I would hope that you’ll be reasonable and not veto my suggestions out of hand.”

“Now why,” Steve asked her, hiding his own anger under a deceptive gentleness, “would I want to do that?”

Her look told him she wasn’t fooled, but Nigel took the question at face value. “I’m sure both of you have the best interests of the House and its aims at heart.”

“Are you?” Succumbing to temptation, Steve knew that Triss hadn’t missed the mockery in his voice.

Rather than responding, she picked up the papers she’d placed on the table and rose gracefully to her feet. “I must get back to my guests,” she said. “Thank you, Nigel.” Reluctantly turning to Steve, she added, “I suppose we should talk before you leave again for the States. Give me a call in a day or two.”

Without allowing him time to reply she made for the door. Steve got there just before her and paused for a moment with his hand on the knob while she waited, stiff with impatience.

He wasn’t a man who usually gave women a bad time, but this one had always got under his skin, and her brusque order to call her nettled him. Yielding to a desire to bring her down a peg, he swept a measuring glance over her, scouting the enemy, silently inspecting the admittedly stunning feminine outline of her figure while making it clear he wasn’t impressed.

His reward was an infinitesimal lifting of her chin, even as her answering glance told him he was despicable.

The trouble was, after he’d pulled open the door and allowed her to sweep past him, he was inclined to share her opinion.

Not that it made any difference to his opinion of her, he reflected hours later, nursing his third whiskey in the bar of his Auckland hotel, almost an hour’s drive north from Kurakaha. Triss had been furious at having to share the trusteeship. There must be a lot of money tied up in the trust and he was damned sure she’d been hoping to milk it for all it was worth, if she couldn’t break it.

Maybe Magnus hadn’t been dazzled clean out of his mind after all. He seemed to have retained a grain of common sense—enough to not quite trust his wife to carry on his work without someone to keep an eye on her.

Steve was that someone and, although it had certainly surprised him, he didn’t mean to take the old man’s wishes lightly.

A smile touched Steve’s firmly etched mouth. Always larger than life, with the charisma of true genius, Magnus had been a brilliant, world-respected conductor until the early onset of arthritis curtailed his career. As the crippling condition progressed he’d devoted increasing amounts of his time to giving talented but socially disadvantaged young musicians the chance to excel, while filling in other gaps in their education. Taking no more than thirty-five students at a time, for periods of up to four years, Magnus had spared no expense.

Until Triss had come along with her penny-pinching attitude to the House and its work. Steve recalled her apparently gentle nagging about budgets and cost overruns. And Magnus’s quiet teasing at her unnecessary concern. Born to a privileged background, his father descended from successful early settlers, Magnus had inherited wealth and had earned large sums from a short but dazzling international career, and as he said, he had no family to spend it on, only Kurakaha and its inhabitants.

Steve had been the first to arrive. Despite clashes between him and his mentor over Steve’s plan to make a fortune manufacturing specialized keyboards and sound equipment rather than pursue a musical career of his own, the younger man appreciated the tremendous influence Magnus had exercised on his life.

Steve phoned Triss two days later. She suggested he might come to Kurakaha at ten-thirty. “If that suits you?” she added.

An afterthought.

“Perfectly,” he replied, deciding not to be difficult for the sake of it.

“I’ll be expecting you, then,” she said, crisp as a newly ironed shirt collar. She had put down the receiver before he could reply.

Damn the woman. No one else could tempt him to petty revenge. Firmly he put aside the thought of being half an hour late.

It was a minute before ten-thirty when he rang the bell at the main entry, and Triss herself opened the door to him. This time he kept his gaze firmly fixed on her face, but even so he was aware that the open lapels of her cream blouse revealed a faint shadow between her breasts, and that the silk fabric was tucked into a narrow navy-blue skirt that hugged her hips.

As she led him along a corridor to Magnus’s office he couldn’t help noticing also that she had lost some weight, but there was still a very womanly body under that figure-revealing skirt.

He’d always known she was a superficially attractive woman. Hell, he might as well admit it—physically he had always reacted to her. A male biological reflex that no doubt he shared with at least half of his gender group. Even Magnus hadn’t been immune. And Magnus, in his peculiar innocence, had married her, probably not knowing how else to handle it when for the first time in his life, Steve suspected, he fell in love. With a woman half his age.

She went behind the desk that was unnaturally clear and tidy and sat down.

The high-backed leather chair looked too big for her. Steve supposed she was making a point. Magnus’s office, Magnus’s chair. The message was plain: I’m in charge now. She’d taken over.

Yet as he seated himself he had the feeling she was using the wide, solid desk as a shield. He supposed she might find his height and his rugby-broadened shoulders intimidating. He’d given up the game when he left New Zealand for America, but kept himself physically fit with running and weights, still influenced by Magnus’s creed that a sluggish body led to a sluggish mind.

The boys were encouraged to develop their bodies as well as their minds, and Magnus expected them to put maximum effort into everything they did. He’d had no patience with laziness or incompetence.

It had been a tough regime but challenging, and those who survived were grateful. Witness the genuine sorrow at the funeral, grown men who had passed through Kurakaha as students breaking down in tears.

But not the widow.

She didn’t look as though she’d shed a single tear since her husband’s death, the blue, blue eyes as clear and chilly as mountain water.

“There doesn’t seem to be any way out of this,” Triss said with no preamble. “I’ve obtained a second opinion from a different legal firm.”

The day after her husband’s funeral? She hadn’t lost any time.

Briskly she continued, “Unless Magnus did make a later will after you left—and Nigel seems sure he didn’t—we’re stuck with this one. I appreciate your…willingness to do your part, and I’ll keep in touch. Do you have an e-mail address where I can contact you? It would be more convenient than phoning when it may be the middle of the night where you are.”

“Back up, there. It seems to me, reading that will, that Magnus expected me to live here.”

She looked as if she’d smelled something bad. “You know he drew it up when you were living here. I’m sure he wouldn’t expect you drop a lucrative career in America to fulfill an outdated whim.”

“Magnus didn’t operate on whims.” Except once, maybe. When he’d brought home his much younger bride. “He was a stubborn old—” Steve checked himself. “He was stubborn and quixotic and he never liked to admit he was wrong—”

“Where do you get off criticizing him?” Triss flared. “After—”

“After all he did for me?” Steve said impatiently. “I have the greatest respect for Magnus and you know it, but that doesn’t mean I never saw any fault in him.”

Magnus had been temperamental and sometimes wrongheaded. He held a grudge with the fervor of a starving man clutching his last crust. And yet he could be extraordinarily generous. And he had devoted considerable resources of time, money and energy to nurturing natural brilliance found in the most unlikely places.

“So what’s your point?”

Okay, let her have it straight. “Magnus had his reasons and I have to respect them. I’m coming back here to live,” he told her.

From the way she stared, her deceptively lovely mouth parted in shock, he knew she couldn’t think of anything to say.

“It’s what Magnus wanted,” he said. “I’ll fly back to L.A. in the next day or two to pack and organize things over there, then I’ll be moving in.”

“You can’t do that!” She’d found her voice, and it sounded almost panic stricken.

“Why not?” His eyes narrowed. “What have you got to hide?”

“Nothing! But…there’s no place for you here!”

Deliberately he stared her down, not caring now if he was intimidating, even hoping that he might be. Although, he conceded reluctantly, she didn’t scare easily. Letting the silence speak, he looked past her, out the window, and then back at her defiant eyes, which held a hint of cornered rabbit in their astonished depths.

“Then you’d better make one,” he said. They both knew this place was way big enough to accommodate an extra person, the rooms reserved for tutors seldom fully occupied. There was always a spare space somewhere.

He pushed back his chair, ensuring this time he was the one to terminate the discussion. “I’ll let you know when I’ve settled things over in L.A. Meantime—” he leaned forward so that he was towering over her in her chair “—you won’t, of course, think of making any major decisions without me, will you?”

Straightening without hurry, he took a card from his breast pocket and flipped it onto the desk in front of her. “My e-mail address and phone number are on there.”

It was very satisfying turning his back on her and strolling to the door. He didn’t look at her again before closing it behind him.

Chapter Two

Triss found that her fingers had curled about a heavy diamond-cut glass paperweight on the desk.

It would have felt good to throw it at Steve’s dark, arrogant head, but that would have given him the pleasure of knowing he could make her lose control, and anyway it was too late. She’d only damage the door and chip the paperweight.

Releasing it, she flexed her fingers, seeing with mild surprise the red marks on her palm left by the sharp angles of the glass.

She had cleared the desk just the day before, leaving only the paperweight, a desk set and a handsome leather blotter holder, all gifts from past students to Magnus.

It was a task she’d have had to tackle some time, and there’d been no point in putting it off.

Besides, she’d had a half-formed hope that among the long-term clutter that had piled even higher in the last weeks of her husband’s illness might be something that would negate the unchanged will.

Before Steve arrived she hadn’t given particular thought to which room to use for their meeting, but perhaps by leading him in here she had subconsciously been hoping for some sense of Magnus’s presence to give her a much needed feeling of confidence.

Steve—real name Gunther Stevens, according to the formal language in Magnus’s will—had been her enemy from the moment they met. She had tried to get on with him for Magnus’s sake, but Steve had been determined not to help her bridge the gap. In the end the gulf had been so wide and so deep it was clear one of them would have to go. Even Magnus had to see that.

So why had he not seen that the will he had drawn up soon after his marriage could only lead to disaster?

“Magnus, Magnus…” Triss dropped her forehead into a supporting hand, leaning on the desk that had once been his. “My dear man, what were you thinking of?”

She was assailed by blinding panic—a sensation hauntingly familiar from the days after she had lost both her parents with brutal suddenness halfway through her teens. Magnus’s death had not been unexpected, but the sense of abandonment and fear, of being adrift in a hostile, or at best indifferent world, was almost as strong.

Salt stung her eyes, but at a tentative knock on the door she straightened, fiercely blinking the tears away. She had held up thus far, and too many people depended on her for her to give way now. She would have liked to crawl into some quiet corner and cry for hours. Instead, her voice strong and steady, she called, “Come in.”

A husky youth sauntered into the room, hands thrust into the pockets of baggy pants worn with a camouflage jacket.

“Yes, Piripi?”

“Me and the guys’re just wondrin’ if it’s okay to have a game.”

“A game?”

“Touch football.”

“You’re asking for permission?” Triss said, puzzled. “You know in free time you can play whatever you like.”

Piripi looked down at his shabby, thick-soled trainers. “Well, y’know, with Magnus, ah—” he swallowed “—you might think…” He looked up manfully. “It’s not like we don’t care, Triss…”

“I know you care,” Triss said gently. “Of course you do.”

Under their tough exteriors the boys had almost worshipped the man who had rescued them from various kinds of privation. And they treated Triss with a touching mixture of respect for her as Magnus’s wife and a sometimes bantering, sometimes confiding familiarity that they might have accorded to an older sister.

“Sitting around moping can’t help Magnus,” she told Piripi, “and he’d expect you all to get on with working hard and playing hard.”

That had been his philosophy for the school, although for himself the playing part had never come easily. “It’s been too quiet around here the last couple of days.”

Relieved, Piripi grinned, then wiped the grin away, evidently thinking it was unsuitable. He backed to the doorway and hesitated there. “You okay, Triss?”

His large brown eyes were concerned, so different from the barely concealed hostility in Steve’s inflexible gray stare. She only hoped he hadn’t known what an effort it had taken to give him back an unblinking stare of her own, concealing all sign of emotion—or weakness.

Tears threatened again at the boy’s delicacy and regard for her feelings, but she made herself smile reassuringly. “I’ll be fine, Piripi. Thank you for asking.”

The smile faded as he closed the door, but a small warming glow remained, easing a little the bleak sorrow that enveloped her. Not having any brothers or sisters of her own, at Kurakaha she’d found the closest thing to a family that she’d known since she was Piripi’s age, when her parents had been cruelly snatched from her. As she had been then, he and the others were bereft and bewildered, and probably scared. So was Triss, but she couldn’t let anyone know it.

Minutes later a whoop and a yell told her the boys were enjoying their game. It would do them good. They’d been unnaturally sober since she’d broken the news to them, and in the midst of her own sorrow her heart went out to them. Poised on the brink of manhood, in many ways they were still children.

Losing Magnus would leave a huge gap in their lives, but it was up to her to help them carry on as Magnus would have wished. Maybe his death would even strengthen their desire to live up to the standards he’d set.

As it should hers. Triss squared her shoulders and forced herself out of the chair. She didn’t have time for self-pity. There was still a lot to be done.

Three weeks later she received a short e-mail from Steve giving her a date for his return. Apparently a little over a month was enough time for him to sort out his affairs in America. Later he sent another note with his flight arrival time, adding that he should reach Kurakaha within an hour or two of touchdown.

Triss replied with an equally curt message saying she’d send Zed with the Kurakaha van to fetch him from the airport.

She had to hand it to him, he’d wasted no time taking up his new responsibilities. But her heart sank at the prospect of working with Steve, of having him in the same house. Huge though it was, they would inevitably see each other every day.

Maybe he’d get bored quickly and return to the high life he must have become accustomed to. With any luck he would soon see that he could leave the place in her care with a clear conscience. She had every intention of demonstrating just how much she and Kurakaha didn’t need him.

So it was a pity that he arrived in the middle of a crisis.

The boys had been released from their classes for the day and Triss was in what she still thought of as Magnus’s office, writing by hand necessary letters to people who had sent condolences and ignoring with a practiced ear the sounds of a rowdy game of some kind outside.

When the quality of the shouts and catcalls changed, it took a few seconds to register, but as soon as she recognized the difference she shoved her chair back and left the room at a run.

By the time she reached the grassy playing field at the rear of the house a tutor was sprinting toward the bunch of boys in the center of the field who appeared to be randomly attacking each other with fists and feet. The tutor tried to pull one from the mob and was felled by a punch to his nose. Bleeding, he crawled away from the kicking feet that threatened to trample him and sat up, fishing for a handkerchief.

Infusing her voice with as much authority as she could muster, Triss yelled at the combatants, “Stop it!”

They didn’t. The brawny seventeen-year-old Piripi had one of his slighter fellows in a headlock, and the victim’s face was going blue.

Triss grabbed at Piripi’s arm and shouted his name.

His grip eased when he recognized her, allowing the other boy to slip from his grasp. The boy rounded, wildly swinging a fist that missed its target, and Triss felt his knuckles connect with her cheekbone, sending her sprawling.

The sky seemed to revolve above her, her face had gone numb and for a moment she wasn’t sure what had happened.

Groggily she got to her knees. The tutor was on his feet, holding a bloodied handkerchief to his nose, and now offered her his other hand. “Are you all right?”

Triss shook him off impatiently. “The fire hose,” she gasped. “Piripi’s going to kill that kid!”

Piripi, in the midst of the melee, had his opponent on the ground and seemed intent on beating him to a pulp.

While the tutor ran for the hose, Triss threw herself at Piripi’s back, getting her arms around his throat from behind and screaming in his ear. “That’s enough! Stop it now!”

She felt the bunching of his shoulder muscles against her breasts, and wondered if he’d turn on her, but instead he went suddenly slack, breathing hard. Then she heard over all the grunts and yells a deep, definitely adult masculine voice demanding, “What the hell are you doing?” And strong hands grasped and pulled her away just before a hard, cold, drenching spray descended, instantly soaking her blue faux-silk blouse and linen skirt.

Piripi shot upright, squinting and raising an arm against the force of the water.

The hand about Triss’s arm jerked her aside and dragged her several yards from the still-struggling mob, leaving her there.

Wiping her eyes clear, through the spray she saw Steve haul up two wrestling boys from the ground and drive them apart, while Zed dealt with a couple of others, roaring at them to get their effing a’s out of there before he gave those same a’s the kicking their owners deserved.

Under the combined effect of two big, commanding men and the fire hose wielded by the tutor, the miniriot was quickly quelled. The tutor turned off the hose, and Zed, his brown eyes shooting fire, ordered the culprits off to their rooms to change into dry clothes and warned them they needn’t think this was the end of it.

Dragging wet hair off her face, Triss stood trying not to shiver, and when Steve approached her, his casual shirt and slacks also soaked, his hair darker than ever and sleeked to his head, she folded her arms about herself so that he wouldn’t notice how unsteady she felt.

The movement drew his eyes, and the flicker of his long lashes made her look down, flushing as she saw how the water had plastered the thin fabric to her breasts, outlining not only her low-cut lace bra but what was only too clearly underneath it.

“Sorry you walked into that,” she said, bringing his gaze back to her face.

“God knows what would have happened if we hadn’t,” Steve said. “What the hell did you think you were doing,” he reiterated, “jumping into the thick of it?”

“Preventing a possible murder,” Triss retorted. “Or manslaughter at the least. We were getting the situation under control.”

“It didn’t look under control to me.”

“I’m sure we’d have managed, but thanks for your help.”

“Managed how? By getting yourself beaten up?”

“They wouldn’t hurt me.”

One dark brow lifted slightly. “Then what’s this?” His voice had roughened, and he raised a hand, the pad of his thumb barely brushing her cheek just below her left eye before he dropped his hand and his eyes narrowed to metallic slits. “Who hit you?”

Maybe the injury was worse than she’d realized, because despite the lightness of his fleeting touch she felt her skin tingle. “An accident. It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters.”

“Thank you for your concern. Although I can’t imagine why you’re bothered.” It wasn’t as though he’d ever cared about her.

“I guess,” he drawled, “I picked up Magnus’s passion for perfection. I don’t like to see a beautiful thing damaged.”

The first time she’d ever heard anything like a compliment from him, although it hadn’t sounded like one. “Thank you,” she said, lacing her tone with irony to match his. “But I might remind you that I’m not a thing.”

Maybe the inclination of his head was an acknowledgment, certainly not an apology. His gaze returned to her sodden blouse. “You’d better change,” he said abruptly, “or when the boys see you again you might have another riot on your hands. Is that what started them off?”

Taken aback, Triss said, “I got wet when we turned the hose on them to stop the fight!”

“You don’t need to be wet to set adolescent hormones in motion. But then,” Steve added with a deadly mockery in his tone, “you’d know that, wouldn’t you?”

Not sure what he was getting at, except that he was baiting her, Triss opened her mouth to ask him just what he meant, but before she got the chance Zed joined them, wringing out the wet shirt he’d taken off. “What was that all about?” he asked Triss.

“I’ve no idea. I was in the office when I heard it start. Is Arthur all right?” She’d seen Zed take the tutor’s arm as he shuffled back to the house.

“He’ll live. Nothing broken.”

“Has this happened before?” Steve asked.

Zed shrugged. “There’s been the odd fight, you know how they are. They don’t usually all get into it at once.”

Triss said, “They’ve been through a trauma, and all of them have been trying to be on their best behavior for too long. They’re emotionally off balance.”

Steve looked at her sharply. “You can’t let them get away with it.”

Wearily she wiped a trickle of water from her forehead before it reached her eyes. The last couple of months had been no picnic for her either. “I’ll talk to them after dinner.”

“I’ll do it.”

Her head lifted. “No.” Did he think he could just walk in and take over? “They don’t know you.”

“They’re going to. I might as well introduce myself, and make it clear that from now on we don’t tolerate any violence.”

“We never have! I’m sure this won’t happen again.”

“I wouldn’t count on it. Young men are pack animals. They’ve lost their alpha male, and they need to know there’s someone around to take his place. Until they accept there’s a new chief there’s going to be a lot of testing going on.”

“And you’re telling me you’re going to be the new chief?” She didn’t even attempt to hide the sarcasm in her voice.

Steve leveled an iron-gray gaze at her. “I don’t say it’s a good thing, but it’s the way young males operate, especially in groups. Remember, I used to be one.”

“They’ve been perfectly fine with me!” In fact most of them had been rather sweetly protective. Although a couple of tutors had complained about a lack of attentiveness and decreased motivation, with the occasional outburst of defiance and foul language.

“You’re a woman,” Steve said, as though that explained everything.

“So?”

“The first phase is over. They won’t challenge you directly, but they’re getting restive, and the next step will be to see how far they can go.”

“Then I’ll deal with it.”

“We will deal with it,” Steve said. “We’re in this together, Triss.” In his tone she heard the rider, And I don’t like it any more than you do. “If they’re not given the message about who’s in charge here now, one of them will emerge as kingpin and we’ll have a hell of a job on our hands. They’re barely out of childhood and some of them are only half civilized.”

“You’ve been reading Lord of the Flies,” she accused, surprising a half smile out him.

“Not lately,” he said. “But we don’t want someone’s head stuck on a stake around here, and I’d certainly prefer it not to be mine—or yours. We have to make this work, Triss.”

He was right about that, she supposed. Zed gave an approving nod, and Triss sighed. The men were closing ranks. Magnus himself had believed that boys needed strong male role models. Perhaps that was why he had inexplicably failed to alter his will, despite the long estrangement between him and his protégé. “Do you think it’s a good idea,” she queried Steve, “to start your…tenure by giving them a telling off?”

“If I stand by while you do it, they’ll think I’m a wuss. Then we’ll both be in deep trouble.”

Unwillingly she capitulated with a small shrug, knowing that however unpalatable she found it, he was probably right. “I’m not the only one who needs a change of clothes,” she observed. Casting a glance over his own wet shirt and trousers, she couldn’t help noticing he looked as fit and leanly muscular as ever despite his presumably easy lifestyle. “We’ve put you in the annex.” It was a self-contained one-bedroom unit adjoining the main house. “I’ll take you—”

“I know where it is.”

Of course he did. “We’ll see you at dinner, then,” she said. “Six-thirty in the dining room.”

Triss and Magnus had always eaten together with the students and any tutors who chose to live in. Most of the current tutors preferred to commute from the city, and Arthur had taken his swollen nose home for his wife’s ministrations. Zed would be giving his children their evening meal in their own cottage while his wife fixed dinner at the house, helped by two of the boys rostered for kitchen duty.

One of the helpers looked the worse for wear, and all the boys were subdued. Triss saw that an extra hand in the kitchen was needed, and was ladling soup into bowls at the pass-through counter when Steve entered and took his place in the small queue.

“Thanks,” he said when she handed him a steaming bowl. “Anywhere?”

“Anywhere,” she confirmed. The tables were round, and as Magnus had made a point of sitting at a different place each evening, Triss had been relieved of any awkwardness over a special chair after his death.

She still missed his presence though, and was sure the boys did, too.

Steve chose a table and she assumed he was introducing himself, but before she sat down with her own bowl of soup at another table she rapped a spoon on the glass and waited for the subdued hum of talk to stop.

Some of the faces turned toward her were apprehensive, a few belligerent, and several showed swellings and bruises. She’d held an ice pack to her own cheekbone until it stung and then numbed, and used a cover-up makeup, but the spot was tender and slightly swollen.

“Some of you will have met Mr. Stevens,” she said, nodding toward Steve. At least a few had “met” him under less than friendly circumstances. “He’s a trustee of the House now, and he’ll be living here and helping out for a while.” She didn’t look to see what Steve made of that last bit. “I’m sure you’ll all make him welcome. After dinner he’d like to speak to you in the common room. So be there. Thanks.” They knew it was an order, not a matter of choice.

Triss didn’t have much appetite. The day had been stressful, and she discovered that her cheek throbbed when she chewed. She left the crusty bread on her plate and, after the soup, settled for potatoes, mashed carrots and gravy.

Whatever the boys were expecting, it didn’t seem to affect their need for food. Afterward they trooped into the room next door, where they lounged on chairs and a sofa or sprawled on the floor, with or without the cushions and bean bags provided.

Steve took a stance where they could all see him and simply waited in silence for them to stop shoving and joshing each other and fall quiet.

“When I arrived this afternoon,” he began, “I thought I’d entered a war zone.”

Uncertain laughter came from some of the boys. But Steve’s face was stern, his voice uncompromising. “Magnus would never have stood for that kind of thing and you all know it. If it happens again, anyone who takes part will be asked to leave. Is that clear?”

Shuffles and muttered acknowledgments.

“At least one of you owes Triss an apology,” Steve added grimly. “In fact it might not be a bad idea if you all apologized to her for your behavior this afternoon before you leave. But don’t go yet.”

He paused. One boy, arms folded, was tipping his chair dangerously far back, apparently ignoring Steve. After a few seconds the boy looked up, locked gazes with the man for a long moment, then let the chair thud into place.

Steve’s glance swept the room. “Magnus made both me and his wife trustees under his will,” he said. “That’s why I’m here, to carry out his work. You guys are lucky—you won’t know how lucky until after you leave. A lot of you haven’t had it easy up until now. We don’t promise you ever will, but we’ll do our damnedest to make sure you have the skills to make the most of what you have.”

Magnus’s creed, Triss thought, watching Steve catch each boy’s eyes in turn.

“I’m an old boy of Kurakaha myself, so don’t think I can’t understand your problems—and don’t think you can get away with anything either. I know all the tricks because I’ve pulled most of them myself.”

That drew another reluctant laugh and some assessing looks.

“I’m not going to bore you with long speeches. Anyone wants to talk to me, I’ll be around. I’m going to be around for a long time.”

Triss guessed that last was aimed at her.

Steve had impressed the boys, not so much by what he said as the way he said it, with unmistakable authority, his manner firm but approachable. Even the easy way he stood as he talked to them, neither parade-ground straight nor slouching, proclaimed confidence in his control of any situation. They’d reserve judgment but he’d made a good start.

The students began filing out, each one stopping to mutter an apology to her. “You’d better apologize to Mr. Gill,” she told the one who had punched the tutor. “If he comes back after what happened to him this afternoon.”

“Yeah, awright. Didden know it was him.” The boy slouched off.

When they had all left, Steve looked across the room at Triss. “How did I do?”

Surprised that he’d asked, and trying hard not to sound grudging, she said, “Very well. You don’t think we might have asked what started them off?”

“A disputed goal, the guys at my table told me. Any excuse to let off steam.” He grinned faintly. “Tears are shameful, but a good brawl can have a cathartic effect.”

Triss wondered if the forceful way he’d helped Zed break up the fight had been cathartic for him, too. She recalled the way he’d looked when he approached her afterward, his hair sleeked to his scalp and the wet shirt molding powerful shoulders and a broad chest. His face had been taut and energized, his eyes glinting like new metal, even before they’d taken in the revealing nature of her own wet clothes. When the glint had altered to a very specific and personal appraisal.

She swallowed, shaking off a ripple of disturbing sensation.

“Thanks for the intro at dinner,” Steve was saying.

“We always introduce guests…or new staff.” She paused. “You might have consulted me before threatening to throw them out.”

“Only if the same thing happened again. However,” he added, “point taken.”

And no sense in laboring it. Politely she asked, “I hope the annex is okay? If there’s anything you need let me know.”

“It’s fine. When can we go over the books?”

“The books?”

“Annual reports and balance sheets. I’d like to know what’s been happening over the past few years, and what exactly our financial situation is.”

“I can tell you that.” He knew she had been keeping the accounts ever since arriving at Kurakaha. She was just about to graciously concede that of course he could see the records if he wished, when he added, his voice unmistakably hardening, “I’d like to see them, all the same. And I’ll be bringing in an independent auditor.”

Triss went cold, then hot. The skin over her cheekbones burned, the bruised one throbbing painfully in time with the thudding of her heart that seemed to be hurting, too. “You don’t trust me.”

“I didn’t say that.” But he wasn’t saying he did, either.

“The books are audited every year.”

“I’m sure. Who chose the auditor?”

She wouldn’t dignify that with an answer. “You’re welcome to go through them,” she said stiffly. “You and your auditor.”

She felt like flying at him, starting a small private brawl of her own. Instead she wheeled and left him, not trusting herself to stay any longer in the same room.

After checking that the boys on kitchen duty were clearing up and laying the tables for breakfast, she made sure the cook didn’t need any other help, and marched out into the gardens. Already a couple of pale stars hung in the sky, and a gleaming sickle moon had risen over the trees.

Moving away from the house and avoiding Zed’s cottage, she took a path under the trees. It was darker here but she knew every inch of the grounds, and her stride didn’t slacken as she followed a winding course up a slope, until the path ended at a tiny stone building covered in climbing vines and holding a wooden seat just big enough for two.

Once, she supposed, it had been a spot for lovers, before Magnus bought the house and grounds from the descendants of the man who had built it at the beginning of the twentieth century.

She came here when she needed a break from the constant demands on her time and energy. The boys were interesting, always stimulating, sometimes riotous, sometimes poignant and often exhausting. A few moments to herself were rare and precious. Sometimes lately she’d felt it was all too much—the house too big, its inhabitants too volatile, and everyone expecting too much of her.

In daylight the arched doorway of the grotto allowed a glimpse through trees of the farmlands beyond, and cars streaming to and from Auckland along the motorway in the distance. There were moments when she longed to join them, escape from the tyranny of responsibility that had fallen on her shoulders. Steve was here now to share it, but his hostile presence only imposed more stress.

It was getting dark, the cars intermittent flashes of light, far away, and she closed her eyes, leaning her head against the cool stone and trying to think of nothing.

Which was difficult, because Steve’s strong, handsome features and condemning, metallic scrutiny kept getting in the way.

After a while she opened her eyes, and immediately sat up straight with a gasp that was almost a scream.

A tall, broad-shouldered figure loomed in the narrow arched doorway, blocking what remained of the fading light.

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