Secret Seduction

‘You may as well call me Dave,’ he said, grinning. ‘No point in us being formal when Zorro and I are already on first-name terms.’

Leaving the two men together, Nina hastily made herself scarce, bundling Zorro along to the bathroom where she cleaned his paws and gave his ecstatic body a hot bath of air with her hair dryer, running her fingers through the soft fur until it was silky dry again, shedding a lot of sand and grit on the floor in the process.

Thanks to the sound of the hair dryer allied with the wind and the rain, Nina was protected from the ignominy of eavesdropping on the proceedings in the living room, but she was quick to appear the instant that Dave called her name.

She was unaware that she was clenching her hands at her sides until he greeted her with his affable smile, spreading his big hands in their white latex gloves. ‘Well, he seems to have escaped with just a few bumps and bruises, but you were right about his cut needing a couple of stitches. Would you mind acting as my nurse for a few minutes?’

Her white knuckles relaxed and she flexed her fingers, the fierce tingling a signal that the blood was returning to her cramped muscles.

‘No, of course not.’ She transferred her gaze to the patient and found his eyes on her betraying hands. His face looked a little greyer than it had been when she left the room, and a lot more shuttered. ‘That is, if you don’t mind…’

His head lifted and a ghost of a smile drifted across his pale lips. ‘Why should I? You’ve played nurse pretty convincingly so far. I doubt you’re going to see anything you haven’t seen already.’

That wasn’t quite true. Although he now had the thick mohair snuggle rug that had been folded on the arm of her chair tucked over his long body, his shoulders were bare above it, and the trousers lying on top of his sweater on the floor told Nina that the examination had been every bit as thorough as promised.

She couldn’t help noticing that the black hair that swirled on his deep chest looked as soft and luxuriant as the strokeable mohair or that his lean shoulders and upper arms, lying exposed on top of the blanket, were smoothly contoured with well-defined muscle even when relaxed.

Her gaze sweeping down the bronzed forearms covered with superfine black hair to the slender hands clasped loosely on his flat abdomen, she saw for the first time that he was wearing a black digital watch and a discreet gold signet ring, inset with jade, on the little finger of his right hand.

Tearing her eyes away from the unexpected impact of his masculinity, Nina busied herself getting the supplies Dave requested as he ripped open a sterile pack from his bag. She felt a little tug of protest when he borrowed her razor to shave a thin strip from the edge of his patient’s dark hairline, but he chuckled that it would soon grow back.

‘No sign of male-pattern baldness yet, you lucky dog,’ he said. ‘I was thinning before I hit thirty-five. I would guess you’re somewhere around that yourself.’

He didn’t wait for an answer but swabbed the patch with a topical anaesthetic, apologising for the lack of anything stronger to block the pain.

‘We don’t want to take a chance of numbing any of your other responses for the next few hours.’

Nina winced unconsciously as he poised the needle and surgical thread at the edge of the wound, the bowl of cottonwool balls and pair of sterilised scissors she was holding, sagging in her grasp.

Dave paused, raising grey eyebrows at her. ‘Okay?’

She braced her shoulders. ‘I am,’ she said, glancing down at the stranger’s set face, his eyes fixed blankly on some distant point in the room.

‘Ryan will be, too. He’s in pretty good physical shape for someone who’s just been beaten up by a tree, so I’d say he’s tough enough to weather a few little pinpricks.’

‘You’re calling him Ryan—did he remember that was his name?’ she blurted, leaning forward eagerly.

‘He’s still hazy on personal details, but he told me about the lighter,’ he replied, disappointing her, his brown eyes delivering a silent caution. ‘So we’ve decided Ryan is more likely than John Doe and less melodramatic than Mr X.’

Nina bit her lip and forced herself to stand back. The man suffering the suturing didn’t even twitch a muscle. He seemed to have retreated somewhere deep inside himself where pain could not reach. But that would require a mental control that he didn’t seem to possess right now, so perhaps his state of confusion had deepened to the point that the pain receptors in his brain simply weren’t accepting any more messages from his abused body.

‘Very neat,’ she said shakily as she watched Dave cut the final thread and carefully sealed the bloody needle and soiled swabs into a thick waste packet.

The unflattering surprise must have shown in her voice for he cut her his wry grin.

‘Actually, I do needlepoint as a hobby—not very macho, but it helps me relax. The only trouble is that I’m so good at it my wife makes me do all our darning!’

Since Ray had told her that the Freemans were loaded, Nina took his last comment with a pinch of salt.

‘How are you feeling now, Ryan?’ Dave shone his pen light into the blue eyes.

‘Like some sadist just used me for needlepoint practice!’ came the grim reply.

Dave laughed. ‘Well, you can relax now and have a good rest—the sadist is leaving. Nina here will look after you. We’ll see how you are in the morning. My bet is that by then you’ll be a different man.’

Ryan’s grim expression flattened into serene calm. ‘I have no doubt you’re right.’

Nina was not so sanguine and she followed Dave back into the kitchen with her doubts. ‘So you definitely don’t think he’s got a fracture?’ she said in a low voice.

‘Without an X-ray I can’t totally rule it out,’ he began cautiously, ‘but, no, I’m pretty sure he doesn’t. Although he’s displaying a disordered state of consciousness that suggests concussion, there’s nothing to indicate any serious underlying brain injury. He’s dizzy but not nauseous, and while his verbal responses are mixed, his motor responses are all good. The deep bruising on his forearms looks like a defence injury, so I suspect he must have deflected a great part of the impact along his arms. The cut is just minor stuff and should heal with no trouble. I definitely couldn’t find any suspicious bumps or depressions anywhere else on his skull.’

‘But you do think he might have some minor concussion?’ Nina pressed as he repacked his briefcase.

‘I think you should keep an eye on him for the next twenty-four hours, just to be on the safe side. He can go to sleep if he wants to, but you should wake him every couple of hours. Turn on the light and make him open his eyes, see if he can talk lucidly and obey a few simple commands.’

‘Don’t you think you should stay?’ she asked nervously.

‘Look, I know you don’t have a phone here—so take my cell phone.’ He handed it to her with succinct instructions on how to work it. ‘And here’s my number at the bach,’ he said, scribbling it on the back of one of his business cards. ‘If you have any problems or questions—whatever time it is—call me. Okay? And if any calls come through for me—just advise whoever it is to take two aspirin and call me in the morning!’

She didn’t respond to his bracing good humour and he sobered.

‘Tell me what’s really bothering you.’

She turned the palm-sized phone over and over in her hands as she finally got to the crux of her concern. ‘Surely you must be worried about the extent of his memory loss. He’s going to completely freak out when the realisation hits him that his whole life is a void.’

Dave paused in doing up the latch of his briefcase, his eyes faintly compassionate. ‘Is that what happened to you?’

She felt the tension build up along her spine, tightening all the connnective muscles along the way. This was why she had always avoided him in the past. She hadn’t wanted to be the object of any professional curiosity. Word of mouth had inevitably made the bare bones of her story fairly common knowledge on the island, but in general people didn’t poke their noses into your background unless you raised the subject with them yourself. There were too many Shearwater Islanders whose pasts wouldn’t bear too close examination.

‘It was totally different for me. I always knew exactly who I was. When I woke up from that bump on the head, I was still me. I didn’t lose my entire identity…just a couple of unimportant years out of my life that I’ve shown I can perfectly well do without.’

She tossed her head carelessly, setting her damp ponytail swinging, but he didn’t ask the question for which she was unconsciously braced: how did she know they were unimportant if she couldn’t remember them?

‘And they’re still lost?’ His bushy eyebrows arched up. ‘Since you’ve been living here you haven’t experienced any flashes of recall for the previous two years?’

The back of her neck itched. ‘Nope. The only drawback is that I sometimes have to remind myself that I’m two years older than I feel,’ she added flippantly, to show him how little the whole thing bothered her.

Which was true. Nina didn’t like to talk about the circumstances of her arrival on Shearwater Island, but that was only because she was too busy with the exciting challenges of the present to waste time looking back over her shoulder. She certainly didn’t need to consult a psychiatrist!

‘Most women would envy your being able to honestly deny remembering a couple of birthdays,’ Dave agreed in the same joking vein, reflecting her own attitude back at her in a way that eased the fine tension from her body as he continued. ‘But you’re right—Ryan’s global amnesia is different, although I’m sure it’s only a temporary trauma. He’s a bit shocky, and that compounded with the concussion has probably scrambled the links between his memory systems. It’s a pretty classic pattern. After he has a good rest and his system settles down, his ability to concentrate should return, along with his memory.’

Nina felt she was learning more than she really wanted to know about the mysteries of the brain. She had never been one for clinical details, which was probably why she tried to rule doctors and hospitals out of her life.

‘Were you able to find out anything else about him?’ she asked, determined to keep the focus firmly back where it belonged.

He plucked his beard thoughtfully. ‘Well, he has a few old scars—’ he tilted his head roguishly ‘—but I think they come under doctor-patient privilege. He couldn’t say where he’d come from or where he was going and we couldn’t find any wallet in his clothing—maybe he lost it out there on the road. You’re more familiar with who’s living around here than I am at the moment. Are you certain you haven’t seen him before, even casually?’

‘I’m positive. He’s a total stranger,’ she said firmly. ‘That was the first thing that struck me about him. Believe me, if I knew who this Ryan was, I’d leap at the chance to hand him over to whoever invited him to visit. I don’t mind helping out in an emergency, but I’m really not prepared for a house guest right now.’ She was aware that sounded selfish, but already the stranger had caused a disruption to her peaceful existence.

‘Speaking of which—have you got something else he can wear, or should I bring some of my clothing over? He needs to keep warm to counteract the effects of shock.’

‘I think I have a few things lying around that should fit him.’ Karl had been the last person she had had to stay, and he was notoriously untidy with his possessions.

She half turned and her breathing shortened as she suddenly saw the man leaning against the corner where the living-room wall abutted the kitchen. How long had he been standing there listening? And how much of the conversation had he actually taken in? There was a guarded watchfulness in the blue eyes, a kind of baffled fury that made her think of a trapped animal.

And, without the mohair rug, there was nothing to disguise the animal-like sleekness of his body, streamlined with lithe and sinewy muscle, the thick tangle of hair on his chest tapering down to a narrow line where the broad band of elastic dipped low across his slim hips, the thin, stretchy, grey boxers softly clinging to contours of his masculinity.

Nina could feel her cheeks warm. She cleared her throat. ‘I was just saying goodbye to the doctor.’

His intent stare didn’t shift from her face. ‘I need to use the bathroom,’ he said bluntly.

‘Oh…’ Her blush deepened. ‘It’s straight down the hall, first on the right,’ she said, pointing, and as he pushed himself away from the wall and shambled stiffly off in the right direction, she looked anxiously over her shoulder at Dave.

He grinned. ‘His kidneys are working—that’s definitely a very good sign.’

She decided that the psychiatrist was an incurable optimist by nature. ‘Will he be all right by himself?’ she worried.

He pursed his lips. ‘Would you like me to check before I leave?’

‘Yes, please. And then could you show him across the hall to the spare room? I’ll make up the bed in there. It’ll be much more comfortable than the couch.’ If the storm was going to keep her awake, she didn’t want to have to spend all night watching her uninvited guest sleep. Briefly looking in on him once every two hours would be much less taxing on the nerves!

CHAPTER THREE

A REVERBERATING crash wrenched Nina upright in her chair, her hand flattened against her pounding chest, a scream hovering in the back of her dry throat.

She blinked around the dimly lit room, half expecting to see that the roof had fallen in, but everything looked reassuringly normal. The fire had been reduced to glowing embers, and shifting her cramped legs under the mohair rug, she was surprised to realise that she must have nodded off despite the gale still rocking the house on its foundations.

At least the thunder and lightning at the leading edge of the storm had passed over. But the rain had barely eased, driving horizontally against the front of the house and drum-rolling across the roof to overflow the gutters in a noisy tattoo on the wooden decking below.

Perhaps the noise that had woken her had been a loose branch smashing against the creaking weatherboards. Zorro wasn’t in his usual sprawl in front of the fire, and for a moment she was concerned until she remembered that he had surprisingly chosen to sacrifice his comfort to keep vigil over the stranger, curled up on the floor on the worn piece of sheepskin he used as a portable bed.

It was still pitch-black outside the rain-streaked window, and Nina turned her wrist, squinting down at her bare arm before she remembered that she wasn’t wearing a watch. She hadn’t made that slip in a very long time. She had broken her watch in her companionway fall on the ferry that had first brought her to Shearwater and in the months that followed had never taken the ferry company up on their offer to replace it. Only people who had to live to a schedule needed to carry around a constant reminder of their next appointment. Time was relative, and Nina preferred the more flexible version: island time. ‘She’ll be right, mate,’ an islander would chuckle if someone missed the late-afternoon ferry sailing. ‘There’ll be another one along tomorrow!’

Nina looked over at the small driftwood clock on the stone mantelpiece above the sluggish fire. Barely 4:00 a.m.—still a little too soon to wake Ryan up again, she decided conscientiously. She picked up the book that had slipped off her lap and fallen face down on the floor. So far he had passed all the little tests that Dave had suggested with flying colours, and as the hours crept by, she had begun to rationalise her previous worries as absurdly excessive. Of course he would be all right. And in the clear light of day, they would establish exactly who he was and he would be happily, if not entirely healthily, on his way!

Suddenly, there was another crash and the unmistakable sound of shattering glass from along the hall, and she realised that the noise that had startled her out of her sleep had come from the same direction. The accompanying hoarse cry of her name galvanised her into action and she dashed down to the spare bedroom, her heart in her mouth.

Her hand scrabbled for the light-switch, and as the overhead light blazed into life, her gaze cut to the figure standing by the narrow single bed pushed against the far wall.

‘Ryan, are you all right?’ She didn’t need to ask what had happened. The rudimentary lamp, made of a sand-filled chianti bottle topped off with a bare light bulb, was lying on the wooden floor, along with the upended pot plant that had sat next to it on the bedside cabinet, concealing the electric flex. Nearer to the edge of the bed lay the remains of a tall glass, the broken shards glinting wickedly in the widening pool of water seeping across the waxed floorboards. Zorro was warily skirting the debris, sniffing at the encroaching water.

‘Nina?’ Ryan lifted his hand to shade his eyes, narrowed against the sudden glare. ‘It was dark…I couldn’t find the lamp…I was thirsty.’ His body swayed in her direction. ‘Where were you?’

‘Don’t move!’ Nina yelled as his bare foot left the ground and Ryan instantly froze in place, his eyes widening on her alarmed face, his pupils shrinking visibly to accommodate the light. ‘Sorry,’ she said, tempering her voice though still keeping it firm. ‘But you might cut yourself. I don’t want you to move until I clean up this broken glass.’

Well, he was certainly able to obey simple commands, she thought with grim amusement as he stood like a statue while she bustled around him with a dustpan and brush, pushing Zorro firmly away and sweeping up the glass and soil, mopping up the remains of the water with an old towel.

‘I didn’t know where you were,’ he murmured as if it explained the mayhem, and perhaps it did. His mind had obviously fixed on Nina as the one constant in a dismayingly unfamiliar world. He must have woken in the dark and reached out for the reassurance of her presence, only to find that it wasn’t there. She guessed from the husk of resentment in his voice that he didn’t like being reliant on a stranger.

‘I was only out in the living room,’ Nina said as she put a fresh glass of water into his hand. ‘Do you know where you are?’

‘With you,’ he said, giving her a look that was simultaneously sly and triumphant.

‘No, I mean this place?’

He rubbed his head. ‘That doctor with the needle—he told me about a bird—no, an island—a little island near Auckland. But the bird was important, too….’ He trailed off, and Nina supplied the detail that had eluded him.

‘Shearwater Island.’ At least he still vaguely remembered Dave amongst the jumble of half-finished thoughts.

‘Shearwater Island,’ he repeated in a dutiful monotone that gave her no confidence that it would stick in his mind.

He raised the glass to his dry lips and drank greedily, the strong column of his throat rippling, drawing Nina’s fascinated gaze down to the hollow just above his collarbone where she could see the steady beat of his pulse.

Karl’s faded, V-necked Auckland University sweatshirt was loose on Ryan’s spare frame, sliding off one shoulder, and the soft, tan corduroy trousers were baggy in the legs and a few inches too short, but instead of making him look comical, the sloppy clothes seemed only to accentuate his air of natural arrogance. He was a man who was comfortable in his own skin, whatever he wore over it.

At first, however, he had baulked at putting on someone else’s clothes.

‘Whose are they?’ he had demanded, glaring at them in suspicion when she had produced the shirt and pants from the chest of drawers in the corner of the room.

Granted, they were a bit shabby and no match for the designer labels on his own clothes, which had raised her eyebrows when she had inspected the washing instructions prior to throwing them into her machine, but there was no need for him to look as if he thought they might be crawling with vermin.

‘They’re perfectly clean,’ she told him, shaking them out to prove it. ‘And the man they belong to won’t mind your borrowing them.’

‘Who is he? Your boyfriend?’ His emphasis made it sound like a sneer. ‘You expect me to wear your lover’s cast-offs?’

Nina tossed the clothes onto the bedspread and put her hands on her hips, annoyed that he seemed to take it for granted that she didn’t have a husband. Although, she supposed, he could have noticed her lack of a wedding ring….

‘He’s not my boyfriend. He’s my foster-brother. And I’m only offering them to you because Dr Freeman said you needed to keep warm—’

‘Your brother?’ he interrupted in tones of harsh incredulity. His olive skin darkened, the flush of colour in his cheeks a startling contrast to their previous pallor.

The angry disbelief in his expression made Nina flush in turn. Now she was really getting annoyed. Did he think she was lying in order to hide the fact she had a lover? Was that why he flashed her that searing look of shocked fury? She never would have guessed him for a prude. No, it was more likely that he had mixed her up in his confused mind with somebody else.

She sighed. It would be best to keep her explanations simple and to the point.

‘My foster-brother, Karl. He and I were brought up by my maternal grandparents. He works for a surfboard manufacturer in North Auckland now, but every so often he comes over to spend the weekend. And these are not cast-offs. He simply forgot to take them with him the last time he stayed. I happen to have bought that sweatshirt for him when he was at university—unfortunately, he majored in surfing rather than graduating with a degree!’

The feeble joke hadn’t raised a smile, but Ryan’s hostility had vanished as quickly as it appeared, and he had grudgingly accepted the proffered clothes.

Now, having drained the glass, he held it out to her, and as she took it, their fingertips brushed. ‘My God, you’re freezing!’ she exclaimed in dismay, putting the glass down and cupping his chilled hands with hers. ‘Look, why don’t you get back into bed and I’ll get you a hot-water bottle.’

She fetched him two, one for his cold feet and one to clutch to his chest, but they didn’t seem to be of any immediate benefit. He lay hunched and shivering under the covers as she piled on more blankets from the other spare room until she was afraid he would be smothered under the weight.

Zorro had padded back to his uneven square of sheepskin and, after a ritual few turns, settled down with a snuffling sigh of contentment. Nina envied him his easy slide into canine oblivion. She had replaced the fused bulb in the bedside light, but when she bent to switch it off, Ryan jerked his head urgently off the pillow.

‘No, leave the light on!’

‘Oh, okay…’ she acquiesced with an understanding smile. She turned back towards the door and he stiffened again.

‘What are you doing—don’t go!’ He half rose on one elbow, pushing back the heap of blankets.

‘I won’t be far away—’

‘Nina, no!’ He was getting out of bed again, and when she hastily pushed him back, he captured her wrist in his cold fingers. ‘Stay here with me!’

His pale eyes burned with such a desperate intensity that she quickly sought to ease his mind. ‘All right, all right—calm down. I’ll stay…I promise.’

He seemed to find her solemn vow anything but reassuring. ‘You promise?’ he echoed with an ironic twist to his mouth that hinted at a deeply cynical mistrust of human nature.

She wished she knew what was going through his head. ‘Yes.’ She looked around the sparsely furnished room. ‘Just let me get something to sit on—’

‘There’s plenty of room here….’ He used his free hand to pull back the bedclothes as he scooted back in the bed, tugging her forward until her knees hit the edge of the mattress.

Nina stared wide-eyed at the inviting stretch of sheet, aware that she wasn’t as shocked as she should be at the idea of sharing a bed with him. She had donned some socks, but she could still feel the chill striking up from the floorboards. Suddenly, she was hit by a wave of exhaustion. She had been up since seven the previous morning and the short nap in the chair only seemed to have increased the heavy lethargy dragging at her limbs. She half-heartedly tried to tuck the blankets back over his shivering body. ‘Oh, I don’t think so….’