Dark Fire
Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

COVER

TITLE PAGE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

EPILOGUE

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER ONE

WHEN Paul came to pick her up, Aura Forsythe’s heart swelled with pride.

He looked so good, the black and white of his evening clothes setting off his fair hair and skin. But she didn’t love him for his blond handsomeness. Aura knew, none better, that good looks and regular features had little to do with the person beneath the fleshy veneer.

It had been his smile that first caught her attention, and his air of calm, confident good humour. However, very soon after meeting Paul McAlpine she had realised that he was utterly, completely reliable. It made him irresistible.

Over the past three months she’d come to understand him very well, this man she was to marry in a fortnight’s time. Bathed in the warmth of his love, her turbulent search for some measure of peace in her life was transformed into serenity. She had never been so happy.

‘We’re meeting Flint at the restaurant,’ he said as he opened the door of his expensive car for her. ‘He wants to shower and change, but he’ll probably be at Quaglino’s before we are.’ Flint Jansen was to be best man at their wedding in two weeks’ time.

‘Where does he live?’

‘In Remuera, but he’s staying with me.’

‘Oh. Why?’

‘His place is being redecorated. Wet paint everywhere, so he’s going to stay with me for at least a week, and possibly until the wedding.’

He lifted her hand to kiss the slender fingers. Aura’s full mouth curved into a smile.

‘You look very pretty tonight,’ Paul murmured as he released her.

‘Thank you. I like this dress.’

Although compliments still made her uneasy, experience had trained her to handle them with poise. And compliments from Paul were no threat.

The dress was one she had had for some years, but the rich, muted green silk played up hair the colour of good burgundy wine and ivory skin, darkened and emphasised her huge green eyes.

‘So the fabled Flint Jansen is here. It seems odd that I haven’t met your best friend yet,’ she said, deliberately steadying her voice as she changed the subject with automatic skill.

Paul laughed softly. ‘He was saying the same thing. I told him that if he insists on staying in Indonesia for months at a time he must expect things to happen while he’s gone.’

Suddenly a car roared across the intersection in front of them. Paul reacted swiftly and without alarm, but Aura was flung forward on to the seatbelt.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked sharply.

She flashed him a reassuring smile. The way he looked after her, as though she were a precious piece of porcelain, made her feel safe and cherished.

‘Yes, I’m fine. You’ve got very fast reactions.’

His mouth turned up at the corner. ‘Not so fast as Flint’s. He’s like greased lightning. We went hunting in the Uraweras once and he stopped me from going over a cliff.’ He paused, then finished enviously, ‘Man, did he move! Faster than a king cobra and stronger than a horse. I’m no lightweight, but he hauled me back out of the air as though I were made of balsa wood.’

‘He sounds very macho.’ Her voice was cool and non-committal.

Paul laughed. ‘It’s not the way I’d describe him. Macho has a ring of fundamental insecurity to it, whereas Flint is honest right through. And completely self-sufficient.’

‘Honesty,’ Aura said cynically, ‘can be a much overrated quality.’

Paul’s smile was tender and tolerant. ‘Don’t try to shock me, darling, I know your little tricks. Although I must admit Flint’s complete self-assurance does antagonise people—mostly people who envy it!’

‘Well, we all envy the things we haven’t got,’ Aura agreed, thinking of the many qualities she yearned for.

‘How would you know? You’ve got everything.’

Aura’s snort was followed by a smile. ‘I’m glad you think so. You and he don’t seem to have much in common.’

‘We don’t, but Flint’s the best friend I’ve ever had. He doesn’t suffer fools gladly—if at all—he’s about as yielding as granite bedrock, and he has the sort of ominous patience that makes a cat hunting a mouse look testy. But I like him, and I think you will too. He’ll certainly be impressed by you. He has an eye for a beautiful woman.’

I’ll just bet he has, Aura thought wearily. A cold foreboding sandpapered her nerves. She didn’t want to meet Flint Jansen; she already knew she wasn’t going to like him.

‘He hasn’t had much sleep these last few days,’ Paul went on. ‘He’s been tidying up a very hush-hush situation in Indonesia and he strode off the plane looking like something piratical and fierce from the South China Sea.’

‘He must be exhausted! Perhaps we should have skipped tonight, and just met at the party tomorrow night.’

‘He’s tough enough to cope.’ Paul smiled indulgently. ‘It’s inborn. I remember when he first arrived in primary school he was given a rugged time—kids can be little heathens, can’t they?—and we’ve been friends ever since.’

Aura already knew that Flint Jansen and Paul had gone to the same expensive boarding school. She was surprised to hear the rest, however. From the few allusions that Paul had made to his best friend, she’d visualised him as being born able to deal with anything the world threw at him, an iron baby who’d progressed inexorably into an iron child, then hardened more as he grew into an iron man.

‘Why did he have such a bad time at school?’

Paul’s shoulders lifted. ‘Family scandal. His father decamped with a vast amount of other people’s money—turned out he’d been spending it on a rather notorious woman who was his mistress. There was a luridly salacious fuss in the newspapers, ending in a court case and even more gaudy revelations. Some of the people his father had defrauded had kids at school. The whole thing got out of hand a bit. Mind you, Flint gave as good as he got, but it was an unhappy couple of years for him.’

‘How old was he?’

‘Only eight. Old enough to know what was going on, too young to be able to protect himself from older boys who tormented him. Although he tried.’ He laughed reminiscently. ‘Lord, he must have fought every kid in the school who even looked sideways at him. He didn’t care what size they were, and a fair few of them he beat, too.’

Only too well Aura knew what it was like to find no haven from a tormenter. Unwillingly, a pang of fellow feeling softened her attitude. She, too, had been eight when her father had deserted his wife and child to go as a missionary doctor to Africa. Even now, fifteen years later, she felt a shadow of that old grief and bewilderment.

Sighing silently, she told herself that a friend of Paul’s had to have a gentler side. At least she and Flint would have something in common: their mutual affection for the man who was to be her husband.

But her first sight of the formidable Flint Jansen changed her mind completely. There was not a hint of softness in him. At least three inches taller than Paul, he had to be six foot four, and, with a thin scar curling in a sinister fashion from his left cheekbone to the arrogant jut of his jaw, his image seared into her brain, leaving a dark, indelible imprint.

A discord of emotions jostled her, confusing her into silence; only gradually did she realise that the most predominant was a turbulent, piercing recognition.

Which was ridiculous, because she had never seen this man before, not even in a grainy photograph in a newspaper. If she had, she’d have known him; he was not a man easily forgotten. Beneath the black material of his dinner jacket his shoulders were broad and powerful. A crisp white shirt contrasted with skin the bronze of an ancient artefact. Those wide shoulders and long, heavily muscled legs beneath smoothly tailored trousers combined with a lithe grace of movement to make him instantly, lethally impressive.

Dark brown hair, conventionally cut, waved sleekly beneath lights that spun a dangerous red halo around his head. He had a starkly featured buccaneer’s face, hard and unhandsome, yet it was Flint everyone was watching from beneath their lashes, not her good-looking Paul.

The man was awesomely conspicuous, the power of his personality underlined by a barely curbed, impatient energy that crackled like lightning across the richly furnished room.

Whatever he might have been like at the age of eight, Aura thought dazedly as Paul, beaming and endearingly pompous with pride, introduced them, Flint Jansen certainly didn’t need sympathy now; he was more than capable of dealing with anything life threw at him. Except that this man didn’t deal with anything; he conquered. Flint Jansen made his own terms, and forced the world to accept them.

Smiling stiffly, Aura extended her hand, felt it enveloped by long, strong fingers. It took an effort of will to persuade her unwilling lashes up, and when she did her gaze was captured by golden eyes as clear and startling as a tiger’s, with a predator’s uncompromising assumption of power and authority, eyes fixed on her face in a gaze that stripped away the superficial mask of her beauty to spotlight the woman who hid behind it. A premonition ran with swift, icy steps through her body and mind.

‘Aura,’ Flint said in a deep, subtly raw voice that played across her nerve ends with sensual precision. ‘Paul’s told me several times that you are beautiful, but I thought it was just the maunderings of a man in love. Now I know he understated the case.’

Long past the age when praise for her beauty gave her more than a mild pleasure, Aura winced under a stab of stupid disappointment.

It seemed, she thought ironically, that in spite of that unrestrained magnetism, the fierce, lawless penetration of his glance, Flint Jansen was no more perceptive than other men. The physical accident of her features, the legacy of her ancestors, fooled him as it did most others into believing that her beauty was all she was.

Hoping her maverick chagrin didn’t show, she smiled. ‘Thank you,’ she said aloofly.

His hand was firm and warm and hard, and for a moment the conventional grip felt like some kind of claim, a staking of ownership, a challenge. It took all her self-command not to flinch and pull away.

And then it was over. Their hands relaxed, dropped; Flint turned with a comment that made Paul laugh, and Aura was left wondering whether the shivers that tightened her skin were simply attributable to a cold winter’s night and the fact that she, with typical vanity, was wearing no more than the barest essentials beneath her green silk dress.

Of course they were.

Yet as they walked towards the table she felt Flint’s probing regard, and once again that eerie sense of dislocation cut her adrift from her usual composure.

Casting a quick upward glance at Paul’s pleasant, handsome face, she wondered what on earth her kind, reliable, trustworthy fiancé had in common with this arrogant, intolerant man; it must be one of the mysterious masculine friendships that women couldn’t fathom.

Apart from their schooldays, the only attributes they seemed to share were intelligence and ambition. Perhaps they were enough to sustain a friendship.

Paul was rapidly heading for the top of his profession, and people spoke of Flint Jansen as being right in line for position as the next chief executive officer of Robertson’s, the big conglomerate he worked for. Paul, a partner in a big City law office, knew a lot about the City, and had told her that the present CEO trusted him implicitly.

Aura understood why. Her first look had convinced her that Flint possessed enough concentrated, effortless authority to take over any organisation, even one as big as Robertson’s, and run it with the decision and uncompromising strength that such an enterprise needed.

By the time they arrived at their table tension was jagging through her, snarling up her thought processes, pulling her skin taut. She retained enough presence of mind to smile at various acquaintances, but her whole attention was focused on the man who walked behind her. Although she couldn’t see him, she knew when he nodded a couple of times at people who greeted him with transparent interest.

Smiling her thanks at the waiter, Aura allowed him to seat her. As the two men sat down, the little buzz of conversation that had greeted their progress across the room died back to the normal low hum.

Aura drew in a deep breath, purposefully commanding her thudding pulses to slow down, using her considerable willpower to control her wildly unsuitable reactions. Unfortunately, she wasn’t given much time to re-erect the barriers of her self-possession.

The formalities of ordering their meals barely over, Flint asked her with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, ‘What do you do, Aura? For a living, I mean?’

Talk about throwing down the gauntlet! Clearly, like most of Paul’s friends, like his mother, Flint believed that Aura looked at the man she was going to marry with greed rather than love in her heart.

For a fleeting second she wished she had a high-powered, important job to throw in his teeth.

But she hadn’t, and it was no use playing for sympathy. Flint Jansen was too hard, too dynamic, too much master of his own destiny to understand the clinging bonds that entangled her.

It wasn’t her fault she had no job. In spite of opposition and ridicule she had worked damned hard for her double degree, and if circumstances had been kinder she would already be on the first rungs of her chosen career. Nevertheless, Flint’s expression revealed that she wouldn’t get anywhere by pleading for understanding.

So with nothing but limpid innocence in her face and voice she looked directly into eyes as clear and sharp as golden crystals, and said, ‘Nothing.’

He lifted uncompromising black brows. ‘Not a career woman, then.’

There was no scorn in his words, nothing more apparent than mild interest, but the invisible hairs on Aura’s skin were pulled upright by a sudden tension.

Cheerfully, yet with a hint of warning in his tone, Paul interposed, ‘I know dynamic, forceful, professional women are your cup of tea, Flint, but Aura was brought up the old-fashioned way, so don’t you get that note in your voice when you’re talking to her. Until the end of last year she was at university. Unfortunately, she also has—responsibilities.’

He and Aura exchanged a glance. Paul not only understood her situation with her mother, he approved of her handling of it.

‘Resposibilities?’ Flint was smiling, but thick, straight lashes covered the tiger eyes so that it was impossible to see what emotions hid behind that rugged façade.

‘A mother,’ Aura said lightly, ‘and if you think I’ve been brought up the old-fashioned way, wait till you meet Natalie. She’s straight out of the ark.’ She primmed her mouth. ‘She had a very sheltered upbringing. Her father believed that women were constitutionally incapable of understanding matters more complicated than the set of a sleeve, so he didn’t bother to have her taught anything beyond womanly accomplishments like playing the piano and running a dinner party with flair and poise. Consequently she’s as sweetly unconcerned about practicalities as a babe in arms.’

‘It sounds a considerable responsibility,’ Flint agreed in his slightly grating voice. ‘Will she be living with you after you—after the wedding?’

At the look of sheer horror that spread over Paul’s face, Aura bubbled into laughter. ‘No,’ she said demurely.

Recovering his equanimity, Paul told him, ‘She’ll be living quite close to us, so we’ll be able to keep an eye on her.’

‘I see.’ Flint sounded remote and more than a little bored.

Aura asked, ‘What are you doing in Indonesia, Mr Jansen?’

‘Flint,’ he said, smiling with an assured, disturbing magnetism that made every other man in the big, luxurious room fade into the wallpaper. ‘I was tidying up a mess.’

‘Oh?’

‘Don’t ask,’ Paul advised kindly, directing a purely masculine look at the man opposite. ‘He won’t tell you anyway. Flint’s work is highly confidential.’

Thoroughly irritated by the unspoken male conspiracy, Aura fluttered her lashes and cooed, ‘How fascinating. Is it dangerous, too?’

‘Sometimes,’ Flint said, the intriguing, gravelly texture in his voice intensifying. ‘Does danger excite you, Aura?’

From beneath half-closed eyelids he was watching the way the light shimmered across her hair. Uneasily she shook her head; an unknown sensation stirred in the pit of her stomach. Perhaps, instead of letting her hair float around her shoudlers in a gleaming burgundy cloud, she should have confined it into a formal pleat.

‘No, far from it,’ she said, trying to make her tone easy and inconsequential. ‘I’m a complete coward.’

‘Aura,’ Paul said, touching her hand for a second, ‘is not into risk.’

As she turned her head to give him a quick, tender smile, she caught in the corner of her eye the ironic movement of Flint’s lips.

‘Yet you’re getting married,’ he said speculatively. ‘I’ve always thought that to be the greatest risk in the world, giving another person such power in your life. Unless, of course, the other person is too besotted to be any threat.’

‘Ah, you’ve guessed my secret,’ Paul retorted, his blue eyes warmly caressing as they rested on Aura’s face.

Without reason, Aura was hit by a wave of profound disquiet. Her gaze clung a moment to Paul’s, then slid sideways as the wine waiter appeared.

When the small business of handing the drinks out was over, Paul began talking of a political scandal that had erupted a couple of weeks before. Hiding an absurd relief, Aura listened to the deep male voices, sipping her wine a little faster than usual because something was keeping her on edge.

No, not something; someone, and he was sitting next to her. If she lowered her eyes she could see Flint’s long fingers on the round tabletop, his bronze skin a shocking contrast to the white, starched damask cloth. He had a beautiful hand, lean and masculine and strong.

He had to spend a lot of time in hot sunlight to acquire a tan like that, she thought vaguely. Of course, he had just returned from the tropics, but, even so, he was far darker skinned than either her or Paul. It was one of the reasons those glittering golden eyes were so spectacular, set as they were in black lashes beneath straight black brows.

The hum of conversation receded, became overlaid by the sudden throbbing of her heart in her eardrums. From beneath her lashes Aura’s gaze followed his hand as he lifted his wine glass and sipped some of the pale straw-coloured liquid. When he’d greeted her the rough hardness of calluses against her softer palm had made her catch her breath, and set up a strange, hot melting at the base of her spine. It had receded somewhat, but now it was starting all over again.

She didn’t know what was happening to her, although instinct warned her it was dangerous. With a determined attempt to ignore it, she joined in the conversation.

To share a meal with someone who disapproved profoundly of her was nothing new; hatred she could deal with.

But Flint Jansen despised her. He had taken one look at her, and for a frightening second contempt had flickered like cold flames in the depths of his eyes. The moment her eyes had focused on that harshly commanding face, an intuition as old as her first female ancestor had warned her that he was no friend of hers, that he never would be. For some reason they were fated to be enemies.

And Paul hadn’t noticed.

She looked up at him, half listening as he expounded some interesting point of law to the other man. Apart from her cousin Alick, Paul was the most intelligent man she had ever known, yet he thought they were getting along well.

Flint’s textured voice dragged her glance sideways. He was smiling, and even as she tried to jerk her eyes free his gaze snared hers.

For the length of a heartbeat green eyes and gold clashed. His mouth curved in the smiling snarl of a tiger playing with something small and not worthy of it.

A question from Paul shattered the tension, his beloved tones both an intrusion and a shield. As Flint answered, Aura breathed deeply.

Stop it, her brain screamed. But she had no idea what it was. Her reaction was totally new to her; it seemed that a new person had moved in to inhabit her body, a bewildering renegade, a woman she didn’t know.

She had to calm down, reimpose some sort of control over her wayward responses.

Something Paul said brought a smile to Flint’s face, revealing strong white teeth that did more uncomfortable things to the pit of Aura’s stomach. Snatching at her slipping self-possession, she concentrated fiercely on the words, not the man; on the occasion, not her reactions.

He had excellent manners. He was entertaining in a dry, wittily cynical fashion. When Aura spoke he listened attentively with nothing more obvious than lazy appreciation in his hooded eyes, yet she felt the track of his eyes like little whips across the clear ivory of her skin. And she sensed his contempt.

Oh, he was clever, he hid it well; he was a man whose feelings were caged by a ferocious will. But Aura had spent too many years noting hidden, subliminal signals to be fooled. This was not the casual disdain of a man faced by a woman out to feather her nest. Flint Jansen’s anger burned with a white-hot intensity that made him more than dangerous. And all that savage emotion was directed at her.

It bewildered her and upset her, but the most astonishing thing was that in some obscure way it was exciting. She looked across the table to the shadowed, clever face slashed by the scar, a countenance almost primitive in its force and power, and a feral shudder ran down her spine, set off warning signals all through her, flashpoints of heat and light leaping from cell to cell.

Shaken, at the mercy of forbidden and equivocal sensations, she managed to disguise her response with a sparkling glow of laughter and bright conversation, while Paul watched her with pride and the tiniest hint of possessive smugness. Amazingly, the secret, seething undercurrent of ambiguous emotions appeared to swirl around him without touching him.

She didn’t begrudge him his pride; all men, she knew, wanted to stand well in the eyes of their fellows. It was at once one of their strengths, and rather endearingly childish.

‘Paul tells me we’re having a party tomorrow night,’ Flint said coolly while they waited for dessert.

Natalie had insisted that as mother of the bride she owed friends and relatives a drinks party. Behind Aura’s back she had wheedled Aura’s cousin, Alick Forsythe, into paying for it, and because she refused to entertain in the small unit she and Aura lived in now it was being held at Paul’s apartment.

Aura nodded, hoping her irritation didn’t show. ‘Yes.’ She sent Flint a sideways glance.

His eyes darkened into tawny slits, and for one pulsing second he watched her as though she’d started to strip for him. Then his lashes concealed eyes cold and brilliant as the fire in the heart of a diamond.

Aura’s mouth dried. ‘You’ll meet my mother and my bridesmaid, and an assortment of other people. It should be fun.’

‘I’m sure it will be.’

Aura resented his bland tone, but more the sardonic quirk of his lips that accompanied it. Although she had fought against the whole idea of this wretched party, now that it was inevitable she was prepared to do what she could to make it a success.

By the time the evening wound towards its close Aura was heartily glad. Every nerve in her body was chafed into painful sensitivity, her head ached dully and bed had never seemed so desirable.

By then she knew she would never like Flint Jansen, and found herself hoping savagely that his job kept him well away from them. The less she saw of the beastly man, the better. Fortunately the feeling was mutual, so she wasn’t likely to be plagued with too much of his presence after she and Paul were married.

She expected to be taken straight home, but as Flint held open the car door for her with an aloof, studied smile Paul asked, ‘Do you mind if we go back to the apartment first, darling? I’m expecting a call from London, and I’d like to be there when it comes.’

‘Yes, of course.’

Halfway there she yawned. Instantly Paul said, ‘Poor sweet, you’re exhausted, and no wonder. Look, why don’t I get off at home, then Flint can drive you the rest of the way? That way you’ll be tucked up in bed at a reasonable hour.’

‘Oh, no, there’s—’

Aura’s swift, horrified, thoughtless answer was interrupted by Flint’s amused voice from the back seat. ‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ he said lazily. ‘Where does Aura live?’

Bristling, but recognising that protests would only make her antagonism more obvious, Aura gave him her address.

‘Really?’

The hardly hidden speculation in his tone made her prickle. ‘Yes,’ she said stiffly.

‘I know how to get there.’

The hidden insolence in his words scorched her skin with a sudden betraying flush. Aura’s tense fingers clasped the beaded work of her fringed Victorian bag. She most emphatically did not want to be cooped up with Flint for the twenty minutes or so it would take to get her home. However, as there was no alternative she was going to have to cope as well as she could.

‘Goodnight, sweetheart. Try not to push yourself too hard tomorrow,’ Paul said when the transfer of drivers had been effected. He bent down and kissed her gently. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night.’

She watched him walk across the footpath and in through the door of the elegant block of apartments where they were going to live until they had children.

Aura bit her lip. She had always thought Paul big, but beside Flint Jansen he was somehow diminished.

With a suddenness that took her by surprise Flint set the car in motion. Aura turned her head to look straight ahead, battered by a ridiculous sense of bereavement, almost of panic.

She searched for some light, innocuous, sophisticated comment. Her mind remained obstinately blank.

The man beside her, driving with skill and control if slightly too much speed, didn’t speak either. Aura kept her glance away from his hands on the wheel, but even the thought of them turned her insides to unstable quicksilver. A shattering corollary was the image that flashed into her mind, of those lean tanned hands against the pale translucence of her skin.

Aura stared very hard at the houses on the side of the road. Lights gleamed in windows, on gateposts, highlighted gardens that bore the signs of expensive, skilful attention. Although it was winter, flowers lifted innocent blooms to the shining disc of the moon, early jonquils, daisies, the aristocratic cornucopias of arum lilies. To the left a wall of volcanic stones fenced off a park where the delicate pointed leaves of olive trees moved slightly, their silver reverses shimmering in a swift, soon-dead breeze. Beyond them rose the sharp outlines of a hill.

Aura said sharply, ‘This isn’t the way.’

‘I thought we’d go up One Tree Hill and look at the city lights,’ Flint said in his cool, imperturable voice.

Aura’s head whipped around. Against the glow of the street-lights his profile was a rigorously autocratic silhouette of high forehead and dominating nose, the clear statement of his mouth, a chin and jaw chiselled into lines of power and force.

Speaking evenly, she said, ‘Thanks very much, but I’d rather go straight home.’

A blaze of lights from the showgrounds disclosed his half smile, revealed for a stark moment the narrow, deadly line of the scar. He looked calculating and unreachable. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said calmly. ‘I won’t keep you long.’

Aura felt the first inchoate stirrings of fear. ‘I’m actually rather tired,’ she confessed, keeping up the pretence of reluctantly refusing a small treat, trying to smooth a gloss of civilisation over a situation that frightened her needlessly, to hide her uncalled-for alarm and anger with poise and control. ‘Organising a wedding is far more exhausting than I’d expected it to be.’

His unamused smile held a distinctly carnivorous gleam.

Oh, lord, she thought frantically, keep things in perspective, Aura, and don’t let your imagination run away with you. The man is a barbarian, but he won’t hurt you. After all, he’s Paul’s best friend.

‘I’m sure it is,’ he said, ‘especially at such short notice, but a few minutes spent looking down on the most beautiful city in the world won’t hurt you. Who knows, it could even recharge your batteries.’

‘It might be dangerous up there,’ she said quickly, although she had never heard of anything unpleasant happening on top of One Tree Hill.

His laughter was brief and unamused. ‘I don’t think so.’

She didn’t think so, either. For other people, possibly, but not the ruthlessly competent Flint Jansen.

Opening her mouth to object further, she cast a fulminating glance at that inexorable profile then closed it again. He was a man who made up his mind and didn’t let anyone change it.

The exact reverse of her mother, Aura thought acidly, trying to fight back the fear that curled with sinister menace through her. Natalie’s mind was like a straw caught in a summer wind, whirled this way and that by each small eddy, held only on one course, that of her own self-interest.

Flint Jansen was bedrock, immovable, dominating, impervious, a threat to any woman’s peace of mind. Even a woman in love with another man.

Aura pretended to look about her as they wound up the sides of the terraced volcano and along the narrow ridges. For centuries the Maori settlers of New Zealand had grown kumara in the fertile volcanic soil of the little craters below, but the rows of sweet potato were long gone and now sheep cropped English grasses there.

At the top the car park was empty. Nobody looked down over the spangled carpet of city lights, no one gazed up at the obelisk past the lone pine tree, past the statue of the Maori warrior, past the grave of the pioneer who had given this green oasis to the people of Auckland, nobody gazed with her into the black infinity that ached in Aura’s heart, the unimaginable reaches of space.

Switching off the engine, Flint turned to look at her. The consuming heat of his scrutiny seared her skin, yet banished immediately the haunted isolation, the insignificance she felt whenever she looked at the night sky.

Tension crawled between her shoulder-blades, tightened every sinew in her body, clogged her breath and her pulse, made her eyes dilate and her skin creep. When he spoke she recoiled in nervous shock.

‘I assume,’ he drawled, ‘that you know what you’re doing.’

She ran the tip of her tongue along dry lips. ‘I assume so, too. In what particular thing?’

‘Marrying Paul.’

It had to be that, of course. So why did she feel as though they were talking about two different subjects? She was letting him get to her. Calmly, and with a confidence that sounded genuine, she said, ‘Oh, yes, I know exactly what I’m doing.’

‘I do hope so, pretty lady. For everyone’s sake. Because if you do to him what you’ve done to two others and jilt him, you’re in trouble. Paul may be too besotted to deal with you properly, but I’m not.’

For a moment Aura couldn’t speak. Then she returned haughtily, ‘I presume you’ve been snooping through my life.’

‘Yes.’ He sounded as though her naïvete amused him.

Aura felt sick, but she managed to keep her voice steady, almost objective. ‘Mr Jansen—’

His smile was cold and mirthless. ‘You’ve been calling me Flint all evening. Reverting to my surname now is not going to put any distance between us.’

She said aridly, ‘Flint then. I won’t hurt Paul in any way, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I’m going to make him very happy. This time it’s real.’

‘I suppose each of the other poor fools you were engaged to thought it was real, too.’ He paused, and when she didn’t reply, added, ‘And presumably that you’d make them very happy.’

The obvious sexual innuendo made her feel sick. She stared sightlessly ahead. ‘Paul knows about them,’ she said.

‘So it’s none of my business?’

‘Exactly.’

‘Not even when he finds out—as he’s bound to do—that you’re not in love with him?’

Aura said angrily, ‘I love him very much.’

He laughed softly, an immense cynicism colouring his tone. ‘Oh, I have to admire the languishing glances, the smiles and the gentle touches. But they didn’t look like love to me, and if Paul wasn’t so enamoured that he can’t think straight he’d know that what you feel for him is not the sort of love that leads to a happy marriage.’

‘You’d know all about it, I suppose.’ Struggling for control, she caught her breath. ‘I love him,’ she repeated at last, but the conviction in her voice was eaten away by a sense of futility. One quick glance at Flint’s unyielding profile and she knew that whatever she said, she couldn’t convince this man.

‘Just as you’d love your older brother, with respect and admiration and even a bit of gratitude,’ he agreed dispassionately. ‘But that’s not what marrige is all about, beautiful, seductive, sexy Aura. It’s also about lying in a bed with him, making love, giving yourself to him, accepting his body, his sexuality with complete trust and enthusiasm.’

Her small gasp echoed in the darkened car. She searched for some reply, but her mind was held prisoner by the bleak and studied impersonality of his tone.

After a moment he continued, ‘When Paul looks at you it’s with love, but I don’t see much more in you than satisfaction at having got what you want: a complacent and easygoing husband.’

Stonily, Aura said, ‘I want to go home.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ He sounded amused, almost lazily so, and satisfied, as though her reaction was just what he had expected. ‘But you’re going to stay here until I’ve finished.’

‘What gives you the right to talk like this to me?’

The words tumbled out, hot with feeling, shamingly defiant, giving away far more than was wise. Aura tried desperately to curb the wild temper that used to get her into so much trouble before she found ways to restrain it.

‘Paul is my friend,’ Flint said coolly. ‘I care about him and his happiness. And I’d hate to see him tied to a calculating little tramp when a few words could save him. That’s what friends are for, surely?’ The last question was drawled with mockery.

She didn’t intend to hit him. In fact, she didn’t even realise she had until the high sweep of his cheekbone stopped her hand with such implacable suddenness that every bone in her arm ached with the impact.

Gulping with shock and pain, she snatched her hand back, cradled it to her stomach and said in a voice she had hoped never to hear again, ‘Don’t you call me a tramp. Don’t ever call me a tramp.’

He hadn’t moved. For long, taut seconds the imprint of her hand, white in the darkness, stood out with stark, disgraceful precision.

So coldly that it congealed even her righteous indignation, he said, ‘Why not? You’re selling yourself to him. That’s what tramps do. Money for sexual services.’

‘I am not selling myself to him.’ Her voice cracked, but she rushed on, hurling the words at him, ‘And it’s not just sex, damn you, you ignorant swine, there’s more—’

‘Not much more. For you it’s security, for him love. You need his money, he wants to spend the rest of your life making you happy. And, not so incidentally, sleeping with you. If that’s the bargain it’s fair enough, I suppose. Just don’t renege on it, Aura, when he’s so far under your spell that the poor sod can’t crawl out.’

It took a vast effort to moderate her tone, to summon the cadences of bored sophistication, but Aura hoped she managed it. ‘Paul is thirty-two—old enough, don’t you think, to fall in love without needing someone to vet his choice?’

‘Paul is a romantic,’ he returned unemotionally. ‘And God knows, you’re enough to turn even the most level-headed man’s brain into mush. However, I’m not in the least romantic. I’ve seen enough women who looked like angels and behaved like the scourings of the streets to be able to ignore huge green eyes scattered with gold dust and a mouth that’s full and sulkily cushioned with promises of unattainable erotic delights. Even so, I took one look at you and found myself wondering.’

‘Wondering what?’ The moment the words trembled from her lips she knew she’d made a mistake. ‘It doesn’t m—’

But he interrupted with blasé precision. ‘Wondering whether in bed you live up to the promises you make.’

Aura froze as nausea climbed her throat. Sexy talk, the kind of sensual, seductive words that men used when they wanted to coax a woman into bed, made her shiver with an unremitting fear.

She had been barely fourteen when the husband of one of her mother’s friends had told her of his fantasies, all of them starring her, as he drove her home from the house where he lived with his wife and three children. He had seemed to think that her beauty gave him the right to tell her specifically just what he wanted to do to her, in bed and out. His words had been detailed and obscene, summoning scenarios that chilled her right through to her soul.

He had made no attempt to touch her, then or ever, but his perverted pleasure in seeing the shock and fear in her face had destroyed her innocence.

Sickened and disgusted, she had spent the next three years avoiding him, until eventually she had found the courage to threaten him with disclosure of his sexual harassment.

Since then other men had accused her of teasing, of being provocative, believing that her face was the mirror of her character, that the intensity of their desire put her under an obligation to respond.

Oh, she had learned to deal with them; she knew when a light touch was needed, when indignation and threats were necessary. But she had been scarred, her inner soul as much mutilated as whatever had slashed through Flint’s skin. And she still felt that sick helplessness when a man looked at her with that knowing speculation, when a certain thickness appeared in his voice. She hated being fodder for fantasy.

Strangely enough, in spite of Flint’s words, she didn’t feel that sinking nausea now.

One of the things she liked so much about Paul was his light touch, his wry, self-deprecating amusement. He never made her feel that he wanted too much from her, and when he looked at her it was without greed, with tenderness. She felt safe with Paul.

Since that first experience she had viewed compliments on her looks as preliminaries to demands she had no intention of satisyfing, but listening to Flint Jansen’s gravelly voice as he passionlessly catalogued her physical assets brought heat bursting through her in a drenching flood of sensation.

Appalled, mortified, she said huskily, ‘Mr—Flint, I know you’re Paul’s oldest friend, and I know you and he are very fond of each other, but you shouldn’t be talking to me like this. I’m going to make Paul very happy. Please take me home.’

‘I hope you mean that,’ he said, every menacing syllable clear and silky above the pounding of her heart, ‘because if you don’t, beautiful Aura, if you find a richer man than Paul one day and decide to shuck him off like an old coat, I’ll come looking for you. And when I find you, I’ll make you sorrier than you’ve ever thought you could be.’

CHAPTER TWO

WITHOUT waiting for a reply he switched on the engine and backed the car around, then set off down the hill while Aura fought the hardest battle of her life. Never before, not even in childhood when she had been notorious for tantrums, had she been so furiously incandescent with rage, a rage all the more difficult to deal with because it was stretched like a fragile cloak over debilitating fear.

What an arrogant, brutal, cocksure, conceited bastard! Oh, she would like to ruin Flint Jansen’s life, she’d love to have him come begging to her so she could spurn him with a haughty smile. She’d turn sharply on her heel and walk away, she’d make him grovel—

Shaking with frustration and fury, horrified by her thoughts, she dragged air into painful lungs, then set her mind to looking coolly and rationally at the situation.

Eventually, after a huge expenditure of willpower, she succeeded.

In one way Flint’s attitude was rather touching. So often the only feelings men allowed themselves to express were connected with anger. Flint’s suspicions at least showed he had Paul’s interests at heart.

And, viewed objectively, someone who had been engaged twice before had to be a risk in the matrimonial stakes. If you didn’t know the circumstances, such a history did seem to show a certain lack of staying power.

Unfortunately, her eminently rational thoughts did nothing to ease the fury that simmered beneath her imposed and artificial restraint. Flint didn’t know the circumstances; he had just jumped to conclusions, so how dared he accuse her of being a tramp, of not loving Paul, of marrying him for his money?

Nothing would give her greater pleasure than to rub every word in his face, force him to acknowledge that he was wrong…

After another calming breath she tried to convince herself that all she had to do was make Paul happy. If she did that, Flint would be compelled to admit how very wrong he was. Staring blindly through the windscreen, she conjured up a vivid and highly satisfactory scenario of her and Paul’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary, when Flint, proud head lowered, would have to grovel. She could see his face so clearly, see the gracious smile with which she received his abject apology…

Much later, she realised that Paul had not appeared at all in this immensely gratifying dream. The scene that sprang fullblown from the depths of her brain had only two players—her and Flint Jansen.

Neither spoke until they reached the unit. Aura made to open the door, but Flint said crisply as he turned the engine off, ‘I’ll see you inside.’

‘You don’t need to,’ she said, curt words spilling into the cold silence like little pebbles thrown into sand.

Taking no notice, he got out and came around the front of the car. For those moments, as the street-lights edged his silhouette in gold, he looked like some dark huntsman straight out of myth, lean and lithe and supernaturally big, an ominous, threatening, purposeful presence in the quiet, seedy suburban street.

Holding herself rigidly aloof, Aura slid her long legs out of the car and stood up, then preceded him down the path. A light inside revealed that her mother hadn’t gone to bed.

The last thing Aura wanted just then was for them to meet. Her emotions were too raw and antagonistic to be properly controlled, so at the door she turned and said with what she hoped was aplomb, ‘Thank you for the ride home. Goodnight.’

Unfortunately, before he had a chance to answer, the door opened.

‘Paul,’ Natalie cooed in the voice she reserved for him alone, ‘dear boy, do come in! I want to talk to you about the new flat—I was thinking that what it really needs is a new—’

‘Paul didn’t bring me home,’ Aura interrupted swiftly.

Her mother peered past her, her eyes widening. ‘Neither he did,’ she said.

Aura watched her regroup as she surveyed Flint. Over her mother’s face flashed the famous smile that had reduced so many men to abject submission.

‘Darling,’ she purred languidly, ‘don’t just stand there letting me make a fool of myself, introduce us.’

With angry resignation Aura complied, heard her mother invite Flint inside, and his immediate acceptance. It was useless glaring at Natalie, who was invulnerable to suggestion, but Aura sent a contemptuous glance at the man smiling with cynically amused admiration down at her mother.

As though it impacted physically on him he lifted his head, returning Aura’s fulminating glower with a long, considering look from narrowed eyes that challenged her to object.

To her fury and despair, Aura couldn’t meet his gaze. Turning away, she dumped her bag on the table with a short, abrupt movement.

‘How kind of you to bring Aura home, Flint. You must have a nightcap before you go,’ Natalie said sweetly, making expert play with her lashes as she ushered him into the cluttered little sitting-room. ‘Whisky, surely? You look like a whisky man. I think we’ve got some somewhere.’

His expression reminded Aura of the smile on the face of the tiger. ‘Not for me, thank you.’

Aura bit her lip. She should have been pleased at this unusual interest. Following Lionel’s death and the subsequent revelations of his shady, secret life, her mother had sunk into a dangerous apathy that developed into a fullblown nervous breakdown when she’d realised that the only assets she had left were a small annuity Lionel hadn’t been able to get his hands on. It provided barely enough money to keep her.

For the first time in her life, Aura had found herself needed by her mother. At first she hadn’t understood how ill Natalie was, but when she’d come home from a much-wanted job interview to find her unconscious from an overdose of sleeping pills and tranquillisers, she had realised that for the time being she was going to have to give up her ambitions to make a career in marketing.

Even then, she had hoped that she would have time to finish designing a market research programme she had begun at university. Unfortunately, Natalie had needed her constant attention, and as the tap of the computer’s keys seemed to drive her to a frenzy, Aura had given up on it for the time being.

It had been a miserable six months. The only thing that had sustained Aura was meeting Paul. It had helped Natalie, too. She was slowly returning to her normal spirits.

Witness, Aura thought grimly, her swift reaction to Flint Jansen.

It was difficult to see what was going on behind the clear, hard glitter of Flint’s eyes, but Aura was prepared to bet that it was appreciation. The clear skin and sultry green eyes Natalie had bequeathed to her daughter were almost unmarred by the years. Tiny lines of petulance and self-indulgence were beginning to etch into the ivory skin, drag the full, lush mouth down at the corners. Even so, Natalie was exquisitely beautiful.

‘No?’ she said now, with a knowing, flirtatious smile. ‘Well, then, a cup of coffee, and while it’s being made you must sit down and tell me how you come to be driving Aura home.’

‘Paul had to wait for a phone call from Britain,’ Aura interposed curtly, not caring whether he thought her rude, ‘so Flint very kindly offered to take his place.’

‘Only for the drive back,’ Flint said in a voice as smooth and bland as cream.

Flakes of colour heated Aura’s cheeks. ‘Naturally,’ she retorted too quickly.

‘I’m staying with Paul until the wedding,’ Flint told Natalie, ‘so if you want me to take a message to him, I’ll do it gladly.’

Aura’s brows drew together as she stared significantly at her mother, willing her to be silent. But Natalie had learned that the best way to get what she wanted was to use a mixture of cajolery and sexuality on the most powerful man within sight, and it was too late for her to study new tactics.

‘No, no,’ she said, smiling at Flint as though he was the most fascinating man she had ever met, ‘it’s just the new flat. I couldn’t work out what I didn’t like about it, and only a few minutes ago when I was sitting looking at this hideous affair here I realised that it was the carpet. Too middle class and tacky. We’ll have to get it changed, but don’t you worry about it, I’ll discuss it with Paul when I see him next. Now, do sit down and tell me all about yourself. Aura, aren’t you going to make us some coffee, darling?’

Sure that Flint was too astute to be taken in by her mother’s calculated seductiveness, she watched with astonishment when he gave her mother a slow, tantalising smile and sat down.

Natalie, who adored flirtations and knew just how to conduct one, eyed his hard, unhandsome face with an interest that had something of avidity in it, and proceeded to show how skilled she was in such sport.

Flint responded to her sophisticated coquettishness with a lazy, dangerous charm that had Natalie eating out of his hand in no time. Fuming, Aura had to make coffee and listen to her mother being questioned by an expert. Within five minutes Natalie had artlessly divulged that dear, kind, thoughtful Paul had not only bought a flat for his mother-in-law to be, but had also offered a car.

‘Only to have Aura throw it back in his face,’ Natalie sighed. ‘So middle class and boring and prissy of her! It would make life infinitely less stressful, especially now. As it is, unless friends are generous enough to put themselves out for us, we have to use public transport.’

Her voice registered the kind of horror most people reserved for crawling over oyster shells. Flint’s brows shot up.

Much encouraged by this, Natalie went on, ‘And what difference is there between moving before the wedding and moving after it? I’m not complaining, but it would have made life so much easier for us all if we’d had the new flat, which is four times the size of this dreary little place, to entertain. But no, Aura had some idea that it wasn’t the done thing. As though I’m no judge! Not that it really matters, it just means that I’ll be stuck here until they come home from their honeymoon. I’ve been ill, so I can’t cope with moving by myself.’

Whenever it seemed she might run down, Flint asked another seemingly innocuous question, and away she went again, spilling out things Aura would much rather he didn’t know. Cosseted and adored all her life, Natalie had been valued only for her looks, for her pleasing ways. She naturally gravitated towards men who looked as though they could protect her. Flint filled the bill perfectly.

If you liked that sort of overt, brash male forcefulness. Aura’s fingers trembled as she set the tray. She knew she was being unfair; Flint’s air of competence, of authority, that inbuilt assurance that here was a man who was master of himself and his world, was not assumed. It was as natural a part of him as his smile and the complex hints of danger that crackled around him.

Aura knew better than to display her anger and resentment, but when she appeared with the tray she very firmly took command of the conversation, steering it away from personal things to focus on the man who sat opposite, his lean, clever, formidable face hiding every thought but those he wanted them to see.

Fortunately, Natalie knew that men adored talking about themselves. She demanded the details of his life, so they learned that he was some kind of troubleshooter for his firm, that he travelled a lot overseas, that he had been born in the Wairarapa and still went back as often as he could, and that he was thirty-one, a year younger than Paul.

Which, Aura thought as she sipped her coffee, probably explained Paul’s protective attitude to him at school. He certainly didn’t need protecting now. A more confident, invulnerable man than Flint Jansen it would be hard to imagine. She could see him troubleshooting right across the globe, keen intelligence fortified by disciplined energy and confident control, the hard-edged masculine charisma warning all who came up against him that here was a man who had to be taken very seriously indeed.

He could tell a good story, too. In a very short time he had them both laughing, yet although he seemed perfectly open Aura realised that he was revealing very little of either his work or himself. What they were being treated to was a skilfully edited version of his life, one he’d clearly used before.

A quick, unremarked glance at her watch informed her that he had only been there thirty minutes. It seemed hours. Restlessly, she thought she’d never be able to look around the small, slightly squalid room, rendered even smaller by the furniture that her mother had managed to salvage from the wreck of her life, without remembering Flint in it. Somehow he had managed to stamp the dark fire of his personality on it as Paul never had.

At least he hadn’t paid much attention to her; his whole concentration had been almost entirely on her mother.

Which worried Aura. She knew skilful pumping when she heard it, and thanks to Natalie he now knew that they had no money beyond her pathetic little annuity. Natalie even told him all about Alick’s generosity over the years, thereby reinforcing, Aura thought savagely, his estimation of both Forsythe women as greedy and out for what they could get.

Still, it didn’t really matter. Paul knew she wasn’t like that, and Paul’s opinion was the only one she cared about.

Perhaps he had noticed that surreptitious glance at her watch, for almost immediately he rose. Aura overrode her mother’s protests by telling her crisply that Flint had been flying most of the day and must be exhausted.

‘You don’t look tired,’ Natalie murmured. ‘You look—very vigorous.’

Aura stirred uneasily. She was accustomed to her mother’s innuendoes, but her coyness grated unbearably.

Flint’s smile hid a taunt as he responded, ‘Aura’s right, I need some sleep.’

‘Ah, well, we’ll see you tomorrow,’ Natalie said sweetly, looking up at him from beneath her lashes. She held out her hand. It was engulfed by his, but instead of shaking it he kissed her pampered fingers with an air.

Natalie laughed and bridled and, amazingly, blushed.

Austerely, Aura said, ‘Goodnight.’ She did not hold out her hand.

His smile was measured, more than a little cold-blooded. ‘I’ll be seeing you,’ he said, and somehow the words, spoken softly in that sensuously roughened voice, sent shivers down her spine.

When at last he was gone, and Aura was able to breathe again, she said drily, ‘Well, there’s no need for him to ask any more questions. You’ve told him all he ever needs to know about us.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Aura, try not to be too drearily bourgeois.’ Into the weary flatness of her mother’s tone there crept a note that could have been spite as she added, ‘You’re not the tiniest bit jealous because he wasn’t interested in you, are you?’

For some obscure reason that hurt. Aura’s lips parted on a swift retort, then closed firmly before the hot words had a chance to burst out. Over the years she had learned how to deal with her mother, and an angry response was the worst way. The nasty incident on One Tree Hill must have shaken her usual restraint.

Smiling wryly she said, ‘No, not in the least. You can have the dishy Flint; your friends might laugh at the difference in ages, but they’ll probably envy you. However, I wouldn’t bore him with any more details of our personal affairs, or you’ll see him rush off to more exciting conversation.’

From her mother’s expression she saw that her shaft had struck home. If Flint Jansen pumped her mother again he’d probably get what he wanted easily enough—he was that sort of man—but with any luck, from now on Natalie wouldn’t spill out unasked-for details.

It had been a strange day. As Aura curled up in her cramped room and closed her eyes against the glare of the streetlight that managed to find her face every night through the gap between the blind and the window-frame, she tried to woo sleep with an incantation that never failed.

In two weeks’ time she would be married to Paul, darling, gentle, kind, understanding Paul, and she would be able to relax and live the serene, happy life she had always longed for.

Of course there would be troubles, but they’d be able to overcome them together. Her mother, for one. Natalie would always demand the constant attention she considered her due. But when they were married, Aura’s first loyalty would be to Paul. Dearest Paul. She intended to make him so happy, as happy as he would make her.

Two weeks. A fortnight. Only fourteen more days.

Firmly banishing Flint Jansen’s fiercely chiselled face from her mind, she turned her head and drifted off to sleep.

She woke the next morning slightly headachey and as edgy as a cat whose fur had been stroked the wrong way. The clear sky of the night before had been transmuted into a dank, overhanging pall of heavy cloud; rain hushed persistently against the window panes.

Listening to the early traffic swish by on the road outside, she wondered why she felt as though she had spent all night in a smoky room. It couldn’t be the weather. It had rained for most of the autumn, so she was quite reconciled to a wet wedding day.

And everything was under control. Mentally she went through the list. The caterer knew to ignore any instructions her mother gave; her wedding-dress was made in the simple, flowing lines that suited both her figure and the informal occasion, not the elaborate and unsuitable costume Natalie had suggested. And the florist had no illusions about the sort of flowers she wanted.

A wedding, even one as small as theirs, was like a juggernaut, caught up in its own momentum, rolling serenely on towards an inevitable conclusion. The simile made her smile, and stretch languidly. This wedding was going to be perfect, from the hymns to the best man—

Flint Jansen.

Like the outburst of a nova the memory of the previous evening lit up her mind, and with a shame that sickened her she recalled the dream that had woken her halfway through the night. Explicit, sensual, only too vivid, they had lain tangled together in a bed swathed with white netting. Through the wide windows came the soft sounds of the sea. Scents that hinted at the tropics floated on the heated, drowsy air.

She tried to convince herself that the other man in that wide bed had been Paul, but it was Flint’s bronzed, harsh-featured face that had been above hers, Flint’s hard mouth that had kissed her with such passion and such bold eroticism, Flint who had touched her in ways Paul never had.

‘Oh, God,’ she whispered, burying her face into her hot pillow.

Somehow Flint Jansen had slid right through her defences and taken over that most unmanageable part of her mind, the hidden area that manufactured dreams and symbols, the secret source of the imagination. Such a betrayal had never happened to her before.

Perhaps that vengeful little daydream on the way home from One Tree Hill had given her inner self permission to fantasise? Had the strength of her anger carried over into her unconscious and been transmuted for some reason into the passion she hadn’t yet known?

In the end, after mulling over the whole wretched business for far too long, she was forced to accept that for some reason she was physically attracted to Flint.

Of course it had nothing to do with love, it was a mere matter of chemicals. Aura might be relatively unsophisticated, but she knew that such an explosion of the senses usually died as quickly as it flamed into being. She had seen what happened to those of her friends who believed it to be love. They had found that within a horrifyingly short time, when desire was sated, they were left with nothing but the dross of a failed affair.

Jessica Stratton, her best friend and bridesmaid, had tripped into such a pit only a year ago. Recalling the subsequent disillusionment, Aura sat up, shivering in the cold dampness of her room, and reached for her dressing-gown.

‘I don’t even like him,’ Jessica had wailed. ‘I thought it was the greatest romance since Romeo and Juliet, I thought he was wonderful, and then I woke up beside him one morning and saw a boorish, sports-mad yob with hairy toes and a bad case of egotism. He wasn’t even a good lover; he did it by numbers! What on earth did I see in him?’

‘Chemistry,’ Aura had told her pertly, secretly rather proud that she had never fallen prey to it.

Clearly pride went before a fall. Because when she looked at Flint Jansen funny things happened to her legs and her spine, and her insides melted into a strangeness that was shot through with exhilaration and eagerness.

Paul’s touch was warmth, and love, and happiness. What she felt when Flint looked at her was a heated sexual excitement, the basic lust of a woman for the most potent man around.

Her soft, full mouth firmed in distaste as she shrugged into her robe and tied it. Appetite, that was all it was, a primeval pull at the senses, a straight biological urge that had nothing to do with love or trust. She-animals felt its force, and mated with the strongest male because of it.

In spite of his striking, unhandsome face and unyielding expression, Flint was a very sexy man, edged with an aura of danger that some women found smoulderingly sensual. However, she was immune to what he offered.

Uncomfortable and disturbing although her reaction to Flint was, she could deal with it. All she had to do was remember that it would pass. She would not exchange the pure gold of her feeling for Paul, the affection and companionship, the fact that she respected and admired and loved him, for all the enticing tinsel and gloss of sexual desire, however it blazed in the moonlight.

Braced by common sense, Aura showered and cleaned her teeth in the tiny, dingy bathroom, then made coffee and took her mother the glass of mineral water and slice of lemon that was her first meal of the day. When that was done she sat down to her toast in the dining end of the sitting-room.

Almost immediately the telephone rang. ‘Hello, sweetheart,’ Paul said. ‘Everything all right for tonight?’

‘So far, so good.’ Aura smiled at the gloomy day outside. ‘I’ve no doubt there’ll be more crises today, but at the moment I’m on top of everything.’

She could hear his smile. ‘Good. How did you get on with Flint last night?’

So unnerved was Aura by her dreams that she immediately wondered whether somehow he knew…

No, of course he couldn’t!

‘Fine,’ she said automatically. ‘It was rather touching, really. He took me to the top of One Tree Hill and tried to satisfy himself that I have your best interests at heart.’

There was a moment of silence before Paul said in an amused voice, ‘Did he, indeed? And do you think you convinced him? Or did you tell him to mind his own business?’

Aura laughed softly. ‘You know me too well. To be honest, I don’t really care what he thinks. If I convince you, that’s all I worry about. And I’ve got a long time to do that; at least sixty years.’

With immense tenderness he said, ‘Darling, I love you.’

‘I love you, too.’

‘Not as much as you’re going to,’ he said quietly, almost as though he was making a vow. Before she could answer he said, ‘Enough of this! I can’t spend all morning dallying with you, I’ve got work to do. It’s this afternoon you’re going to do the flowers, isn’t it, so you’ll be here when the caterers come at three?’

‘Yes. It shouldn’t take me more than an hour to arrange the flowers, and all I’ve got to do for the caterers is show them where things are in the kitchen. I’ll have plenty of time to come home and get changed before you pick me up.’

‘Good. Although it would take a lot less time if you’d just get off your high horse and accept a car. All right, we’ve been through it all, but you must be the most stubborn, exasperating woman I’ve ever met. I have to go, darling, I can hear Flint surfacing, and if I’m not to be late I have to leave within three minutes.’

Aura hung up, wondering whether Flint would be in the flat that afternoon.

Of course not, she scoffed as she finished her toast and drank a cup of coffee. He had this important, slightly sinister-sounding job; he’d be at work giving the women there a thrill.

After the final fitting of the wedding-dress, she had lunch with an old friend of her grandmother’s before catching the bus to Paul’s apartment, walking the last hundred metres through the downpour that had been threatening all day. Her umbrella saved her head and shoulders, but she grimaced at the cold wetness of the rain on her legs and shoes. Much of this, and she’d have to think of getting a coat.

No, she thought as the last of the autumn leaves fluttered like dank brown parachutes to land in a soggy layer on the footpath, after they were married she’d have a car and life would be more convenient. But she still didn’t regret not having accepted Paul’s offer.

At least Flint couldn’t accuse her of unseemly greed.

Even the perfect, radiant flowers of the camellias were turning brown under the rain’s relentless attack, while pink and white and yellow daisies were being beaten into the dirt. In one garden dahlia plants in a wide bed were still green and leafy at the base; only the stalks that had held the brilliant flowers towards the sun were blackened and stiff.

Aura was overcome by a sudden, stringent melancholy, a weariness of the spirit that gripped her heart. It was the weather, she thought, shaking off her umbrella before she tapped out the code that opened the street door of the apartment complex. June was often fine, but this year it had decided to go straight into winter.

In two weeks’ time she’d be married to the nicest man she had ever met, and they would be flying to a luxurious little island of the coast of Fiji for their honeymoon, where she would have nothing to do but soak up the heat and the soft tropical ambience, and learn how to please Paul.

As though summoned by an evil angel, Flint’s voice echoed mockingly through her mind. ‘It’s about lying in a bed with him, making love, giving yourself to him, accepting his body, his sexuality with complete trust and enthusiasm…’

The door opened to her suddenly unsteady hand. She walked quickly across the foyer, nodding to the porter, her heels tapping coldly on the smooth, shiny marble. In the lift she pressed the button for the third floor.

Oh, she was a fool, letting him get to her like that. Of course she wanted to make love with Paul; she enjoyed his kisses, his caresses, they made her feel warm and loved and secure. That was why she had broken the other two engagements. Although she had liked both men very much, she had been unable to let them touch her beyond the mildest of caresses.

Paul was different. He had understood her wariness, the tentative fear she had never really overcome, and he hadn’t tried to rush her into a sexual relationship before they were married.

Of course Flint didn’t have the faintest idea that she was still a virgin! Forcing her mind away from his relentless tone as he accused her of being no better than a whore, she opened the door into Paul’s apartment.

The flowers had already arrived. Great sheaves of roses and carnations and Peruvian lilies stood in buckets in the kitchen, with sprays of little Singapore orchids and exquisitely bold cymbidiums, all in shades of pink and bronze and creamy-green. After hanging up her coat, Aura tried to banish her odd weariness by walking slowly around the big rooms of the flat, working out where to put vases.

An hour later she was arranging the roses in a huge vase on the hall table when, against the sounds of Kiri Te Kanawa’s magnificent voice singing Gershwin, she heard the front door open. A quick glance over her shoulder revealed the lean form of Flint Jansen strolling in through the door, completely at home, a perfectly detestable smile not softening his arrogant face.

Aura’s eyes evaded his and flew to the cheek she had slapped. Little sign of the blow remained, except for a slight reddening of the skin about the thin scar. Remorse and self-disgust roiled unpleasantly inside her.

‘Hello,’ she said, nervously banishing the fragmented images of last night’s dream that threatened to surge up from wherever she had marooned them.

The smile widened as he conducted a leisurely survey. Aura had slid her wet shoes off and was standing barefoot in a narrow tan skirt topped by a jersey the exact gold at the heart of the big cream chrysanthemums; her bronze and dark brown scarf was twisted a little sideways. Beneath Flint’s narrowed scrutiny she felt like an urchin.

‘The spirit of autumm,’ he said blandly, closing the door behind him and advancing into the hall. ‘Don’t let me interrupt you.’

‘I won’t.’ It was a short answer and far too revealing, but she felt as though someone had tilted the stable world on which she stood. An odd breathlessness made it difficult for her to speak. Turning back to the flowers, she pushed a splendid bronze-pink candelabrum of cymbidiums home.

‘I’m sorry I slapped you last night,’ she said abruptly.

Silence stretched tautly between them. She kept her eyes on the flowers in the vase.

‘Are you? I didn’t leave you with much option.’ There was no measurable emotion in his tone, nothing to tell her what he was thinking.

Her shoulders moved. ‘Nevertheless,’ she said gruffly, thrusting another large sprig of black matipo into the back of the arrangement, ‘I don’t normally go around hitting people.’

‘Your apology is accepted.’ Clearly he didn’t care a bit.

From the corner of her eye she watched him pick up one of the long-stemmed rosebuds. Hastily Aura averted her gaze, strangely affected by the sight of the fragile flower held so carefully in his lean strong hand as he raised it to his face.

‘It has no scent,’ he said on a detached note.

‘No. Most flowers cultivated for the markets have lost their scent. Even the carnations have very little.’ She was babbling, so she drew in a deep breath. Much more of his presence, she thought with slight hysteria, and she’d end up hyperventilating.

‘A pity. I’d rather have scent and fewer inches in the stem.’

‘Not all roses have scent.’

‘I prefer the ones that do.’

She nodded. ‘So do I.’

He held out the stem. Carefully avoiding his fingers, she took it.

‘Will they open?’ he asked.

She shrugged, and put the rose into the vase. ‘I don’t know. Sometimes they do, sometimes they die like that.’

‘Poor things. No scent, no blossoming, no seeding. Hardly flowers at all. I wonder what gave anyone the idea that these were preferable to the real thing.’ He walked into the sitting-room, saying off-handedly, ‘I’ll get you a drink.’

‘No, thanks, I don’t need one.’

But when he reappeared it was with a wine glass in one hand, and a glass of whisky well qualified with water in the other.

‘You might not,’ he said, ‘but I do, and as I never drink alone, you can accompany me. You look as though you could do with something. It’s only white wine, dry, with a hint of floral bouquet and a disconcerting note of passion. Heavy day?’

‘Not really,’ she said, reluctantly accepting the glass. He had made the description of the wine too intimate, too personal, his abrasive voice lingering over the words as though he was applying them to her, not the wine.

‘What shall we drink to?’ he asked, not trying to hide the note of mockery in his voice.

Eyes the colour and clarity of a topaz searched her face; he seemed to be trying to probe through the skin to the thoughts in her brain, the emotions in her heart.

Determined not to let him see how uncomfortable she was, she said lightly, ‘The future is always a good toast. It covers a lot of ground.’

‘So it does. Well, Aura Forsythe, here’s to the future. May it be all that you need.’

Made gauche by the unexpected wording, she said, ‘And yours, too,’ and swallowed some of the wine before setting the glass down.

‘Do you intend leaving yours to fate?’ he asked with apparent disinterest, tilting his glass so that the light refracted in the liquid like a thousand glinting cyrstals, exactly the same shade as his eyes.

‘What else can I do?’ Picking up a marbled swordleaf of flax, she positioned it carefully, as carefully as she kept her face turned away.

He laughed softly. ‘Oh, I believe in making my own future. Somehow I thought you would too.’

‘I don’t believe one can,’ she said, stung by the inference that she was a manipulator.

‘Of course you can. There is always the unexpected, but we lay the ground rules.’

‘We plan,’ she returned crisply. ‘But quite often our plans go awry.’

‘Not mine,’ he said with such assurance that she believed him. ‘Not when you know what you’re doing. And I make sure I do.’

Aura had always been quick to read signals. The circumstances of her upbringing had honed a natural skill to razor sharpness. His voice was even, without inflection, his eyes hooded in an immobile face, his words laconic, yet the threat was naked and open between them.

‘But of course,’ he finished almost indifferently, ‘you have to understand what you’re doing. And gathering information can take a little time.’

Aura moved a chyrsanthemum flower a few centimetres to the right. She had nothing to fear from Flint because there was nothing he could do to hurt her. She loved Paul, and Paul loved her, and because of that, she was safe.

Turning her head, she gave Flint a mocking smile. ‘I’m afraid you won’t find very much more about me. Apart from my previous two engagements I’ve lived a fairly dull life. Earnestly middle class, according to my mother.’

His lashes drooped, hiding the dazzling shimmer of his gaze. ‘If there’s anything to be discovered, I’ll find it.’

It was stupid to be so alarmed by a simple statement. But in spite of her confidence, Aura’s skin prickled, its tiny hairs pulled upright by an atavistic fear that had no base in logic.

Carefully not looking his way, holding her shoulders straight and high, she stepped back to survey her work. Perhaps the vase needed another chrysanthemum? She sorted through the flowers.

‘Leave it,’ Flint commanded smoothly, ‘it’s perfect. A skilful, disciplined piece of work, with just enough surprises to stop it from being boring.’

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