Forbidden Pleasure

‘I presume you left your car at the gate,’ he said as he started the engine.

‘Yes. In the pull-off.’

He handled the big machine with skill on the narrow gravel road. Ianthe sat silently until she saw her car huddled against a pine plantation, shielded from the dusty road by a thick growth of teatree and scrub.

‘Here,’ she said.

‘I see it.’ He drove in behind her car and stopped.

As she got quickly down and limped across to her elderly Japanese import, Ianthe repressed an ironic smile. The only things her car shared with the opulent Rover were the basic equipment and a coat of dust.

The sun had sailed far enough across the sky to bypass the dark shade of the trees and heat up the car’s interior. With a last uncharitable thought for Mark, Ianthe wound down windows and held the door open, wishing desperately that her unwilling host would just get back into his big vehicle and leave her alone. She felt balanced on a knife-edge, her past hidden by shadow, her future almost echoing with emptiness.

‘There, that’s cool enough,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘Thank you.’

‘I should be thanking you for not prosecuting me,’ he said, amusement glimmering for a second in the frigid depths of his eyes. ‘The only recompense I can make is to offer the beach to you whenever you wish to swim.’

‘That’s very kind of you—thank you.’ The words were clumsy and she couldn’t keep the surprise from her voice, so she nodded and retreated to her car, thinking, Not likely.

Pity had produced that offer, and she loathed pity. Since the accident she’d endured more than a lifetime’s quota, defended from its enfeebling effects only by a stubborn, mute pride.

With a savage twist she switched on the engine, furious when it grumbled and stuttered before coughing into silence. Thin-lipped, she tried it again, and this time it caught and purred into life. Smiling politely, she waved.

Before she let the brake off he leaned forward. ‘I’ll follow you home, just to make sure you’re all right.’

‘There’s no need,’ she began, but he’d already stepped back and headed towards the Rover.

Unease crept across her skin on sinister cat’s paws. For a moment she even toyed with the idea of going to someone else’s bach, until common sense scoffed that a few questions would soon tell him where she lived.

She wasn’t scared—she had no reason to fear him.

So she drove sedately down the road until she came to the third bach by the second lake, and turned through the shade of the huge macrocarpa cypress on the front lawn, then into the garage. The Range Rover drew to a halt on the road outside, its engine purring while she got out of the car, locked it, and went towards the door of the bach.

He waited until she’d actually unlocked it before tooting once and turning around.

The last Ianthe saw of him was an arrogant, angular profile against the swirling white dust from the road and the negligent wave of one long hand. Her breath hissed out. For a moment she stared at the faded paint on the door, then jerkily opened it and went inside.

Heat hit her like a blow. Pushing wide the windows, she thought briefly of the wall of glass, open to the lake and the air, then shrugged. When this bach had been built bi-fold windows that turned rooms into pavilions had not been a part of the ordinary house, let alone a holiday place like this.

Who was he? And why did he feel the need for someone like Mark in a place like New Zealand? Perhaps, she thought, curling her lip, he had a fragile ego that demanded the reassurance of a bodyguard.

It didn’t seem likely, but then what did she know of the very rich? Or the very beautiful? If the camera liked his face as much as her eyes had, he might well be a film star. As it was, his face had seemed vaguely familiar, like a half-remembered image from a stranger’s photograph album.

From now on she was going to have to confine herself to the shore of this lake, which meant curious looks and often audible comments about her leg. She looked down at the scar. Purple-red, jagged and uneven, it stretched from her thigh to her ankle. She’d damned near died from shock and loss of blood. Sometimes she even wished she had.

Her capacity for self-pity sickened her. It was new to her, this enormous waste of sullen desperation that so often lay in wait like quicksand.

Determinedly cheerful, she said out loud into the stifling air, ‘Well, Ianthe Brown, you’ve had an experience. Whoever he is, he’s not your common or garden tourist.’

Lifting heavy waves of hair from her hot scalp, she headed for the bathroom.

Tricia Upham, the friend whose parents owned the bach and had lent it to Ianthe for as long as she needed it, had said as she handed over the key, ‘Now that your hair’s grown past your shoulders, for heaven’s sake leave it alone. Chopping it off and hiding it behind goggles and flippers was just wicked ingratitude.’

‘Long hair’s a nuisance when you spend a lot of time underwater in a wetsuit,’ Ianthe had replied.

Now it didn’t seem as though she’d ever get back into a wetsuit.

In fact, she’d be glad if she could just get into the water. Setting her jaw, she washed her face and towelled it dry. ‘Self-pity is a refuge for wimps,’ she told her reflection, challenging the weakness inside her.

Soon she’d be able to swim again.

Surely.

She only needed determination.

The man behind the desk called out, ‘Come in.’

Mark appeared. ‘Before you tell me how big a fool I am,’ he said stiffly, ‘I’m sorry.’

The frown that had been gathering behind Alex Considine’s eyes vanished. He smiled with irony. ‘Just don’t let your enthusiasm override your common sense again.’

‘I won’t.’

‘If you see anything suspicious, report to me.’ His smile broadened. ‘I gather my mother got to you.’

Mark grinned and relaxed. ‘Several times,’ he said, adding, ‘She said you were in danger and emphasised that I should treat everyone with suspicion.’

So why bring a trespasser into the house? Alex wondered drily. Still, his mother was very persuasive, and Mark was a caretaker, not a bodyguard. ‘She’s spent her life worrying about me. I’m not in danger, especially not from slight young women of about twenty-five with a limp. Don’t take any notice of my mother.’

He hadn’t been able to convince her that, although there were people who’d rejoice at the news of his death, nothing was likely to happen to him in New Zealand. It had its problems, this little South Pacific country, and was fighting the worldwide increase in crime like every other country, but a man was probably as safe here as he would be anywhere.

He looked down at the pile of faxes on his desk and asked, ‘Who is the trespasser?’

Mark gave him a startled look. ‘How did you know I recognised her?’

‘If she’d been the usual tourist you’d have escorted her to the gate and sent her on her way.’

‘Yeah, well, I knew I’d seen her somewhere, and I knew it was on television, so I thought she was a reporter. That’s why I brought her back here. I thought you might want to interrogate her.’

Alex Considine nodded. ‘But?’

‘When I came in with the tea-tray I remembered who she was. She fronted a series of wildlife documentaries a year or so ago, until she got bitten by a shark somewhere up in the Pacific.’

So that was what had given her the limp and that hideous scar. Alex’s blood chilled. ‘What’s her name?’

‘Ianthe Brown. For a while she turned up on all the covers of the women’s magazines. She lost her job after she got bitten, of course.’ He shrugged. ‘The girl they got to replace her looks just as good in a bikini, but she’s not as good in her job. You could tell Ianthe Brown really liked what she was doing.’

Alex nodded, and Mark said, ‘By the way, I didn’t mean to hurt her wrist. She almost fell into the water and then she just lost it—started to shake and went as white as a sheet. Scared the hell out of me, so I hauled her out a bit too roughly. But I didn’t mean to hurt her,’ he repeated bluntly.

‘She’s probably nervous in the water,’ Alex said. ‘After an attack like that, anyone would be.’

‘Well, yeah, she might be, although we don’t have any sharks in the lakes.’

Alex laughed. ‘It’s not quite so easy as that,’ he said drily. ‘All right, on your way.’

‘What time do you want dinner?’

‘Eight.’ He was already looking at the first paper, and barely heard the door close behind the other man.

An hour later he lifted his head and got up, walking out onto the deck. The lake danced before him, ripely blue as the sheen on a kingfisher’s wings, and he summoned the face of the woman.

Intriguing, he thought.

But he’d known women who were more than intriguing, who exuded sexual promise with every smile, every movement of their bodies. This one wasn’t like that. Oh, she had a good figure and skin, and her golden eyes were miraculous, but she limped badly, and although she had regular, neat features she wasn’t beautiful in the modern sense.

He frowned. At first those hot amber eyes had glittered with anger, the long dark lashes almost hiding the wariness. And that hair! Hair to tangle around a man’s heart, he thought sardonically, knowing his was safe. This was a more primitive reaction; he wanted to see her hair spread out on his pillow, that delicately sensuous mouth blurred by his kisses, those eyes heavy and slumbrous with passion.

When their eyes had met, his stomach had contracted as though he’d been punched in the solar plexus. A savage, unmanageable physical desire had bypassed defences set up and reinforced since early adolescence.

Using the cold, analytical brain that served him so well, he recalled her face, her defiant stance, the square chin, the gentle, womanly curves—and watched his hands clench in front of him as his body responded helplessly.

What quality in her summoned such a response? She’d had no tricks, no artifice. The soft mouth had been naked of lipstick, and the glinting eyes hadn’t been emphasised by mascara and eyeshadow. Yet beneath her delicate, slightly old-fashioned prettiness he’d sensed a smouldering intensity, a primitive carnal power that threatened while it beckoned.

What had those amazing eyes seen when she’d looked at him the first time?

Grimacing, he forced his hands to relax. She’d seen what he saw in the mirror every morning—the face that proclaimed his pedigree and announced his heritage, features that could be traced back a thousand years.

Those great eyes had viewed him with nothing but suspicion, he thought, trying to find something amusing in that, a thread of irony that would quench the fever curling through his loins.

Her cool composure had challenged the primitive, fundamental male in him, as had her burning, golden eyes and her pale skin and that hair. And, he thought ironically, the body beneath those appalling clothes. Oh, yes, he’d responded fiercely to the slim legs and the sleek, lithe curves of breast and hip, the oddly fragile line of her throat and the thin wrists and ankles.

Different, but just as fierce, had been his reaction to that abomination of a scar, to her limp, to the pain in her eyes and the pallor of her face when her leg hurt. That unwilling, highly suspect need to protect her shocked him.

He was a man of strong passions and even stronger control. Celibacy was no stranger to him. And he was, he admitted, cynical about women, and regrettably bored with professional beauties.

Yet when he’d opened the door and seen her staring out of the window, her long legs and neat little backside revealed by her shorts, somewhere at a deep, cellular level he’d responded with a white-hot leap of recognition.

Damned inconvenient, he thought caustically, walking back into the room to straighten the pile of papers beside the laptop computer. He might crave the physical release of sex, but now, of all times, he needed to keep his mind clear.

For a moment he summoned the face and gorgeously voluptuous body of a woman who would have been furious to hear herself described as a call girl, but who would, he knew, be on the next flight if he asked her. His mouth tightened. He had no illusions; apart from his power and his money, Isabel wanted him because he had never succumbed to her lush expertise. He’d never used women, and his irritating desire for the interesting intruder wasn’t going to drive him in that direction.

There were other, far more important things to think about. That was why he’d come to New Zealand—to think. The decision he had to make would affect not only his life, but those of millions.

And for the only time since he’d grown up he couldn’t weigh the facts and measure the results of any given decision. His self-contained mind—razor-sharp and cold-blooded he’d been called often enough to make the terms clichés—didn’t even want to face the prospect.

The finely etched features of Ianthe Brown coalesced in the recesses of his brain. The contrast between her elaborate first name and her prosaic surname amused him. Ianthe meant violet flower, although the first Ianthe, his classical education reminded him, had been a Greek nymph, the daughter of Oceanus and Tethys.

All suspiciously appropriate.

Those delicately etched features were the sort adored by the camera. He caught himself wondering if the camera also revealed that latent wildness in her. Had she ever indulged it? Or was she a passionate puritan, afraid to give rein to her emotions?

Frowning, he looked out of the window and across the impossibly blue water of the lake. Once Mark had told him who she was it had been easy to find out more about her. The investigator in Auckland had worked fast and the pages had come through on the fax a few minutes ago.

Nothing, however, about her personal life. Apparently when featured by the women’s magazines she’d spoken only about her work, which had seemed to consist of swimming decoratively with whales and dolphins.

And sharks. No doubt the tense line of her succulent mouth and the frequent opacity of her eyes were other, more subtle results of that attack.

Once again gripped by a ferocious instinct to protect her, he pressed the buzzer beside the desk, then put the detective’s findings into a drawer.

When Mark appeared he said, ‘You’re going into Dargaville tomorrow morning, aren’t you? Go to the video shop and get me any that have Ianthe Brown in them.’

When he was alone again he picked up the papers on his desk and began to read, banishing memories of a passionately sculpted mouth, and hair the mixed colours of gold and new-minted copper, and skin translucent and delicate as silk.

And huge golden eyes that reflected the sheen of firelight and hinted at passions he’d never waken.

CHAPTER TWO

AFTER a restless, dream-hounded night, Ianthe drank two cups of tea and forced herself to eat a slice of toast before driving down to the nearest town, the sleepy little port of Dargaville on the wide reaches of the Northern Wairoa River.

When she’d stocked up on the groceries that weren’t available in the small shop at the motor camp, she bought a couple of magazines and tried hard to resist several new paperbacks. Succumbing, she appeased her conscience by buying another four from the reject rack at the library.

About halfway home she saw a Range Rover pushed sideways into the ditch. A familiar figure stood beside it, surveying the damage.

She almost put her foot down and accelerated past Mark the frogmarcher, but in some odd way his behaviour had formed a tenuous bond between them, so she drew in behind and got out. ‘Hello,’ she said coolly. ‘Are you all right?’

Mark stood unsmiling. ‘I’m fine.’

Wondering why she’d bothered, Ianthe persevered, ‘Do you want me to call in at the Kaihu garage for you?’

‘Everything’s under control,’ he told her, ‘but you could do me a favour—I’ve got frozen goods, and although they’re well-wrapped they aren’t going to last. Would you drop them off at the house?’

He must have decided she was relatively harmless. Fighting down an odd sense of darkening destiny, Ianthe said crisply, ‘Yes, I’ll do that. Will you need a ride back after the Rover’s been towed to the garage?’

‘No.’

‘All right,’ she said, still feeling that she was burning unknown bridges behind her. ‘Hand over the frozen stuff and I’ll deliver it.’

Five minutes later she was on her way, with a large plastic bag in the boot of her car and a frown pulling at the smooth skin above her brows. If she’d had any common sense at all she’d have driven on past, but she was too imbued with the New Zealand instinct to help.

And now she had to beard the lion in his den—no, the hawk in his nest.

Perhaps hawks had eyries, like eagles, she thought with a faint smile, flicking down the visor as the sun shimmered like a mirage on the tarseal in front of her. A hawk in a summer sky, proud and fierce and lethal…

And handsome. That disturbing familiarity tugging at her mind was probably instinctive female homage to an ideal of masculine beauty. The arrangement of his features pleased some integral pattern set up by the human brain so she recognised him as good-looking.

Logical, when you thought it through.

A too-fast swerve around the next corner banished the enigma of her unwilling host of the previous day. From then on she concentrated, driving past the other three lakes and the locked gate that separated the reserve from the fourth lake in its nest of pines, along a road with farms on one side and the sombre green of the plantation on the other, until she made a right-angle turn over a cattlestop onto a very ordinary drive. It didn’t look as though a man of mystery lived at the end of it.

As she drew up under that splendid porte-cochère every cell in Ianthe’s body thrummed with a hidden excitement, heating her skin and sharpening her senses.

She got out and rang the doorbell to the accompaniment of the busy, high-pitched chattering of a fantail fluttering amongst the gold-spotted aurelia leaves. Instead of the rich golden brown of the common variety, this one was sooty, with a breast of dark chocolate, the comical white brow and collar missing. Ianthe wasn’t a bird person, but she knew enough about the small, cheerful birds to be aware that black fantails were unusual in the North Island.

Its complete lack of fear and its sombre colouring shouldn’t have lifted the hair on the back of her neck. Although she was aware of the bird’s Maori reputation as a harbinger of death, she was a scientist, for heaven’s sake. Yet, as she stood before the big wooden door, the fantail seemed like a magic messenger, the emissary from another world who summons the hero to a quest.

How’s that for logical, professional thinking? she mocked. Darwin would be proud of you.

With a shrug she turned to ring the bell again, but before her finger touched it the door opened silently and the man who had haunted her sleep looked at her.

Something flared in the light eyes, a response she couldn’t read; it was instantly replaced by an aloof withdrawal.

Stung, she summoned a glib professional smile. ‘I have some frozen groceries that your—chauffeur asked me to deliver.’

The frown remained, albeit reduced to a pleat of the black brows. His eyes revealed nothing but shimmering silver depths, cold and lucent. ‘Thank you.’

He walked beside her to the car. ‘Which are the frozen goods? I’ll get them.’ Straightening with the plastic bag, he told her, ‘Mark got pushed into the ditch by a truck that was avoiding a dog. Thank you for being a good samaritan.’

So he’d known she was on her way. She said lightly, ‘You can’t compare delivering a parcel of frozen peas to rescuing a man who fell among thieves. I’d better be off. I hope all goes well with the Rover.’

Ianthe couldn’t read any emotion in his expression or his tone. Silence stretched between them, taut, obscurely equivocal.

Evenly, without emphasis, he said, ‘Come and have something to drink. You look hot and tired and thirsty.’

A flicker of movement from the little fantail caught Ianthe’s eye. Perched on the topmost twig of the leafy plant, the bird spread its tail feathers, black plumage a startling contrast to green and gold leaves. Round, bright eyes seemed to fix onto Ianthe, insistent, commanding.

It was stupid to give any significance to such a tiny creature, seen almost every day in New Zealand. It would be even more stupid to accept this invitation.

Yet some impulse, a heartbeat away from refusal, changed her mind. Slowly she said, ‘That sounds wonderful. I am hot and tired and thirsty.’

He smiled, and her heart flipped. ‘But perhaps we should be introduced first,’ he said, and held out his free hand. ‘I’m Alex Considine.’

She knew that name! She just couldn’t place it. On a subtly exhaled breath she said, ‘I’m Ianthe Brown,’ and with a kind of resignation put her hand into his.

The moment it closed over hers a wildfire response stormed through her, drowning out common sense and caution. Dizzily she thought that the handshake was a claiming, a symbolic gesture of possession taken and granted.

Ridiculous, she thought, panicking. Utterly ridiculous!

Possibly she jerked her hand away, but he let it go as though women who shivered when he touched them weren’t uncommon in his life.

It probably happened all the time, she thought, and said inanely, ‘How do you do?’

‘How do you do, Miss Brown?’ he said, amusement deepening his voice. ‘Come in. Is there anything you want to bring with you? Some frozen goods, perhaps, to add to mine in the freezer?’

Damn! She should have dropped her meat off on the way here. But, no, she’d been so excited at the prospect of seeing him again she’d driven mindlessly past the turn-off. ‘Actually, yes, there is,’ she admitted, grateful to be able to stoop and lift her parcel from the car.

Adding it to his, he motioned her to go ahead. Chin tilted, she obeyed, saying with a casual smile, ‘Miss Brown sounds incredibly formal. I answer better to Ianthe.’

His lashes drooped for a micro-second. ‘Then you must call me Alex,’ he said, and showed her into the sitting room with its wonderful view of the beach and the lake. ‘If you don’t mind waiting, I’ll put these in the freezer.’

He was not, Ianthe thought as she walked across to the open doors and squinted at the violent contrast of white sand against the bold blue of the water, the sort of man you offered to help.

Cicadas played their tiny penetrating zithers in the branches of the trees behind the house. The familiar noise set Ianthe’s nerves jumping; trying to centre herself, she took a few deep breaths, but her skin tightened. She turned a little clumsily, and there was Alex coming in through the door with a tray that held bottles of various sorts.

‘I can make tea or coffee if you’d prefer either,’ he said when she glanced at the tray.

Ianthe shook her head. ‘No, something cold would be wonderful,’ she said gratefully.

‘Come outside; it’s marginally cooler.’

A terrace stretched along the front of the house, and there, shaded by the roof, was a sitting-out area—comfortable white squabs and cushions on long benches. Above, a pergola draped with vines shaded eyes from the vibrating intensity of the sun. It was completely private. You could, Ianthe thought enviously, lie naked on those squabs and let the sun soak bone deep.

Unfortunately she couldn’t risk it with skin as pale as hers. Not so Alex Considine, whose darker skin would only deepen in colour under the sun’s caress. However, his aura of leashed energy made it difficult to imagine him lying around with no aim but to polish up his tan.

Her stomach contracting at the images that flashed across her far too co-operative brain, she asked swiftly, ‘Why did you decide to come here for your holidays, Alex?’

He answered readily enough. ‘I wanted somewhere peaceful where I wouldn’t run into anyone I knew. What would you like—orange juice, lime, or something else?’