It was like an earthquake.

Shattered by the violence of her response to Caid’s seeking, demanding mouth, Sanchia gave up trying to think and surrendered to the astonishing pleasure his kiss summoned.

Some time later she surfaced, locked in his arms. Appalled, she tried to pull away, but he lifted his head and said harshly, “It’s too late for that.”

“Oh, no, it’s not,” she muttered, beating back the first icy trickle of fear. “I must be mad. Caid, let me go!”

“So nothing has changed,” he said coldly, releasing her immediately. “Kissing is all right, but I must go no further. Why, Sanchia?”

“I won’t let this happen again!”

“Hell, isn’t it?” he agreed sardonically. His eyes glinted. “Perhaps you have such a powerful effect on me because I spent several frustrating summers watching you grow up. And one infinitely frustrating holiday when I tried to get past the ironclad barriers that slammed in my face whenever I touched you. What’s your excuse?”

ROBYN DONALD has always lived in Northland in New Zealand, initially on her father’s stud dairy farm at Warkworth, then in the Bay of Islands, an area of great natural beauty, where she lives today with her husband and an ebullient and mostly Labrador dog. She resigned her teaching position when she found she enjoyed writing romances more, and now spends any time not writing in reading, gardening, traveling and writing letters to keep up with her two adult children and her friends.

Sanchia’s Secret
Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

‘SHE won’t sell? Why not?’ Caid Hunter barked into the telephone. Eyes narrowing into intense slivers of blue, he propped a muscular thigh against his desk and stared unseeingly through the window at the twin towers that dominated the business district of Kuala Lumpur.

‘I don’t know. Her letter simply said Waiora Bay wasn’t for sale.’ His manager in New Zealand sounded startled—his boss didn’t normally overreact to setbacks.

Summoning the cool intelligence that made him respected and feared throughout the Pacific Rim countries, Caid leashed his anger and leaned over to punch a couple of computer keys. His electronic diary opened out on the screen of the laptop. ‘It’s what—two months?—since her aunt died?’

‘I went to Miss Tregear’s funeral on the twenty-eighth of September, so it’s just over two months.’ The manager spoke crisply. ‘Ms Smith was quite adamant that Waiora Bay wasn’t for sale. I can fax you her answer if you want to see it.’

A hot urgency stirred Caid’s senses as he visualised Sanchia Smith—a stubborn chin, hair the colour of midnight shimmering over pale shoulders, and a body that had changed from lanky slenderness to elegant, innocent seduction between one Christmas and the next.

A girl who kissed like a sinful angel, then froze in his arms.

It took most of his will-power to thrust the memories into the past where they belonged. ‘No, I’ll deal with it when I get back.’

He put the receiver down and stood gazing out over the humid, congested city. Presumably Sanchia was hanging out for a better offer. Caid’s smile hardened. When she discovered she couldn’t screw him for one cent more than her inheritance was worth, would her greenstone eyes blaze, that passionate, sultry mouth tighten into anger?

Squinting against the ferocious January sun, Sanchia eased her foot onto the brake, skilfully negotiating potholes and drifts of gravel as she turned onto the Waiora Bay Road.

Half a kilometre later, on the boundary of the highway system and Caid Hunter’s land, gravel and potholes gave way to well-kept tarseal. Everything on Caid’s big cattle station breathed good husbandry backed by a vast amount of money.

Of course, the principal of a large, international corporation could afford to seal his farm roads!

Deliberately Sanchia persuaded her tense joints to relax. Since Great-Aunt Kate’s funeral she’d made the four-hour drive from Auckland to Waiora Bay several times so the loneliness was nothing new, and the slow curl of apprehension that flooded her body with fight-or-flight hormones was completely familiar; she was always afraid that Caid Hunter would be there.

Which was mild paranoia; after the fiasco of three years before he’d probably made sure their paths hadn’t crossed, and there was no reason to expect him to be in residence now.

And once she’d had this last holiday at the Bay, she’d never return.

Perhaps she should have followed her first instinct and come back for Christmas, toughed it out instead of giving in to friends who’d persuaded her to stay in Auckland for the festivities.

‘Although I can so see why you want to go,’ one had crooned, gazing sultry-eyed at the television screen as the credits rolled up on a documentary on high-flying businessmen. ‘I’d be up there like a shot myself if I had a neighbour like Caid Hunter.’ With a low growl she fanned herself vigorously with a newspaper. ‘Talk about a splendid beast! When he smiled at the interviewer I swear her contact lenses fogged up. I bet he goes through women like a harvester at haymaking. Doesn’t the camera love him? Is he really as sexy as that?’

Sanchia managed a laugh. It sounded a bit cracked, but neither of the other two women seemed to notice. ‘Sexier.’

‘I bet women fall at his feet in droves.’

‘Oh, they do.’

Every summer girls had fluttered around Caid—glorious, self-assured creatures with pretty laughs and beautiful faces and bodies. Before she could stop herself Sanchia glanced surreptitiously down at the slight mounds beneath her thin shirt. How she’d envied those girls, their voluptuous, brazen breasts! And their confident sexuality.

Her flatmate sighed. ‘Yeah, you could see the testosterone pounding through his veins. It’s not fair that one man should have so much—an indecent amount of money, a face that’s handsome enough to make your mouth water, and a brilliant business brain too!’ She undulated sexily across the room, shaking her head so that her hair swung around her like a shampoo commercial. ‘As well as being tough enough to grab a huge conglomerate like Hunter’s by the neck when he wasn’t much more than a kid, shake it out and strip it down into the leaner, more efficient, infinitely more profitable business that’s taking on the world today. Where does this gorgeous man live? I might go looking for him.’

Rose, the owner of the house, laughed. ‘Didn’t they say he’s based in Australia?’

Sanchia shrugged. ‘He has houses all over the world.’ Yes, she’d achieved the right casual, mildly amused tone.

‘I could cope with a man who has houses all over the world,’ Jane decided generously. ‘And because I’m always suspicious of pampered heirs, I thoroughly approve of the fact that Caid Hunter had to fight to get his father’s company back on its feet. I do love a powerful, masterful, dynamic man!’

‘I don’t think he was ever pampered,’ Sanchia told her, smiling with irony.

‘He must have a thumping great character flaw,’ Jane said, frowning. ‘There has to be a catch. Does he cheat at Monopoly?’

‘I’ve never played Monopoly with him.’ They’d played for much more dangerous stakes. ‘We said hello whenever we met on the beach, and his mother used to ask us up to dinner every holiday, but the Hunters were well out of our league.’

Until the summer she’d finished university…

Rose asked, ‘Is he likely to be at the Bay?’

Sanchia’s stomach muscles knotted again. ‘Possibly.’

‘If he’s not, will you mind being alone there without a phone?’

‘I won’t be alone.’ Two questioning glances persuaded her to expand, ‘The farm manager and the caretaker both live nearby. For heaven’s sake, both of you, I’ll be fine—I want one last holiday there, that’s all.’

Rose asked, ‘A kind of pilgrimage?’

‘Exactly,’ Sanchia said gratefully. A pilgrimage to say a private, final farewell to Great-Aunt Kate, the only person who’d ever loved her unconditionally, and to the only place she’d ever called home.

And a pilgrimage that would achieve some sort of closure on the love affair she’d never really had.

So now her elderly car was leaving the smooth road across Caid’s land to rattle down the hill through a remnant of coastal bush where tree-ferns cast starkly primeval shadows on the rutted track. Narrowing her eyes behind her sunglasses, Sanchia drove across the iron bars of the cattle-stop and over the grassy flat towards the small cottage.

On a short sigh of relief she braked and came to a stop. Small, rugged, wearing its eighty years with a jaunty, unashamed air, the cottage—never renovated and so called a bach—contrasted blatantly with the opulent mansion on the low headland to the west. To Sanchia’s fury, her heart skipped a beat.

‘You had a crush on him, but you grew out of it. It’s dead, done and gone,’ she pronounced firmly, dragging her gaze away from the trees that surrounded the Hunter mansion.

Her flatmates might admire a man who’d survived and won after being thrust into the cut-throat world of big business—but men like that were dangerous. And Caid Hunter wanted Waiora Bay. He had both power and the resources to fight her great-aunt’s plans for it.

Trying to ignore the cold emptiness beneath her midriff, Sanchia switched off the engine and sat for a moment, letting her tired eyes feast on the scene before her.

Huge, crimson-tasselled pohutukawa trees sprawled between a newly mown lawn—for which she’d have to thank Will Spence, the Hunters’ caretaker—and a glittering, sultry sea. Beneath the violent sun, sand blazed incandescently white. The tension behind her eyes began to wind more tightly as her gaze travelled to the leonine bulk of the island that sheltered the beach from northerly winds. A scattering of sails hinted at destinations beyond the horizon.

Tears aching in her throat, she pushed open the door of the car. Eventually she’d be able to remember the good times without grief, but she suspected it wasn’t going to happen easily or quickly.

With an inelegant sniff, she manoeuvred her long legs out of the car and stood up.

Heat hit her like a blow, sucking the air from her lungs and pasting her thin cotton T-shirt to her back and breasts. After a swift tug at the clammy material, she accepted the sun’s prodigal radiance on her shoulders and head, almost swaying with a poignant mixture of pain and mute relief.

With the soft hiss of the sluggish waves filling her ears, she bent to open the back door. As she touched the hot metal she yelped and leapt back, shaking her tingling hand.

‘What the hell—?’ A male voice, forceful and harsh and sexy.

Strong hands jerked her away from the car and Caid Hunter interposed his big, rangy body between her and the vehicle in a movement as unexpected as it was protective. ‘What happened?’ he demanded, lifting her hand and scrutinising it.

The foreboding that had lodged itself under Sanchia’s ribs over the past weeks—ever since she’d received the offer for her great-aunt’s property—expanded into an iceberg. Words clogging her tongue, she stared mindlessly up into eyes the intense blue of industrial strength cobalt.

Caid frowned. ‘Did you burn yourself?’

She shook her head.

Handsome as the gods his mother’s ancestors had summoned to rule the olive-silvered heights of Greece, Caid had inherited their fiercely compelling authority and self-assurance, their dark aura of power. During her adolescence she’d watched him with curious, fascinated eyes, secretly fantasising about him because he’d been unattainable and therefore safe.

Three years previously she’d crashed and burned against the difference between romantic fantasies and reality. Since then she hadn’t seen him except in photographs and on television, usually with a glamorous woman clinging to his arm.

Although he still stole her breath away she lifted her chin and met his gaze squarely. Caid Hunter might have beauty and power, status and brains and money, but to her he was nothing more than an obstacle.

No, not an obstacle—the obstacle, the only person who stood between her and her great-aunt’s dearest wish.

He persisted, ‘If nothing happened why did you yelp?’

Forcing herself to sound briskly practical, she answered, ‘I’m fine—you can let me go.’

Five foot ten tall herself, Sanchia didn’t have to crane her neck to look into that spectacular face, although her eyes lifted six inches or so. Yet, broad-shouldered and narrow-hipped, with long, heavily-muscled legs, Caid swamped her. Already she could feel her stomach knotting, the stress from taut muscles.

Frowning, he dropped her hand and stepped back with a lithe grace that revealed effortless physical dominance. ‘I’ve let you go,’ he said laconically. ‘You can relax.’

Across the short distance that separated them she saw his pulse beat strongly in the brown column of his throat, the slight sheen of moisture on his tanned skin.

Sanchia’s heart gave a frantic shudder. In some distant region of her mind she thanked whoever had invented sunglasses for their minor protection. Her low-pitched voice sinking into huskiness, she explained, ‘The car gave me a shock.’

He switched his gaze to the car. ‘What’s wrong with it?’

‘Not it, me,’ she said. ‘Cars often shock me when I touch them after I get out. It’s something to do with my body’s electricity, I think.’

Oh, God! It sounded ominously close to a flirtatious come-on. She set her teeth in a smile that probably made her face look like a death-mask. ‘I’m on a different wavelength from cars, and they let me know it.’

He was too sophisticated to openly eye her up and down, but the curve of his beautiful mouth—a trap for impressionable women—was tinged with satire. ‘It must make life interesting.’

That smile smashed what was left of her composure with the energy of a well-aimed stone crashing through a bubble. ‘Shocking, actually,’ she said, despising herself for her total lack of cool. ‘I didn’t expect to see you here. How are you…’ She hesitated a mini-second before ending, ‘…now?’

‘I’m fine, Sanchia.’ A lazy mockery simmered just below the words. ‘And you?’ This time the blue eyes skimmed her from head to feet.

Although his glance didn’t linger enough to be impertinent or threatening, intent male interest smouldered like a shuttered flame behind it.

Terrified and exhilarated, she wished she’d worn jeans instead of exposing her long legs in shorts. Using a deliberately formal tone to distance herself, she said crisply, ‘I’m very well, thank you.’

‘I was sorry to hear that your great-aunt had died.’

The deep, almost harsh voice with its sensual undertone even sounded sorry. The Hunters had been very kind; his mother had sent flowers with a sympathetic note that had made Sanchia cry, Caid had written a brief but genuine letter of condolence, and a representative from the Auckland office of his firm had attended the funeral.

‘It’s the way she’d have chosen to go,’ Sanchia returned gruffly.

‘Dying peacefully in your sleep the night after your eightieth birthday party is the way we’d all choose to go,’ Caid Hunter observed, ‘but it’s hard on the ones left behind.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said, as though saying it often enough could make it true.

‘Grief takes time, but eventually it becomes bearable.’ There was an odd pause, a kind of hesitation in the atmosphere, before he resumed blandly, ‘So here you are, Sanchia, all grown up and more lovely than ever.’

And again he let his gaze wander, if such a leisurely survey could be likened to anything as indecisive as wandering. Heat and ice chased each other across her skin when his blue eyes narrowed and turned molten.

Apart from good skin and long legs, and her eyes, big and darkly green in their fringe of black lashes, Sanchia knew she had no claim to beauty, so the interest and speculation in his scrutiny were false. Although he couldn’t guess at the darts of excitement arrowing through her, he understood the effect he had on the opposite sex. It was there in his stance—formidable, self-confident—in the smile that tucked up the corners of his mouth, in the amusement glinting in the dense blue depths of his eyes.

‘So,’ she said sweetly, ‘have you. Grown up, I mean. And very nicely. Your mother must be proud of you.’

‘Mothers are noted for their pride in their offspring.’ The half-closed eyes darkened. ‘What did I say?’

He saw far too much. Sanchia let her lashes droop and infused her voice with mock innocence. ‘Simply that mothers are noted for pride in their children. I agree.’

His expression hardened. A glint in his eyes sent an unmistakable warning as he said silkily, ‘Mockery gives your mouth an entirely too seductive pout, did you know? So why did you flinch? Wasn’t your mother proud of you?’

In a reflex action as automatic as the emotion that caused it, Sanchia stiffened her spine. ‘She died before I was interested in anything except her love.’

His mouth straightened but he left the subject, although she’d bet he’d filed her response somewhere in that formidable brain. Under ‘To be Revisited’ probably.

Glancing at the back seat of her car, piled high with three weeks’ necessities, he asked smoothly, ‘Can I help you carry that inside?’

A smile pasted onto her lips, Sanchia said, ‘It’s no use, Caid; I’m not going to sell Waiora Bay to you.’

There was a moment’s silence. His thick black lashes focused the glance that cut through her defences like the blue blade of a sword, lethally probing. Any show of weakness might awaken an instinct for conquest. A chilly trickle of sweat inched down Sanchia’s spine. Caid hadn’t made a success of a huge international business without being a very keen predator indeed, and it was in the nature of the beast to hunt down anything that ran.

Crisply, her face still and proud, she added, ‘Not now, not ever.’

‘Why not?’

Sanchia bit off the words hesitating on the tip of her tongue. Summoning her flattest, most uncompromising tone, she said, ‘Because it’s not for sale.’

His cobalt eyes grew even keener. ‘I’ve made you a fair offer. I don’t plan to raise it.’ His voice stood the hairs across the nape of her neck to attention.

‘Whether you raise it or not is irrelevant,’ she stated, snatching back her composure as it took to its heels. A heady sexual attraction warred with prudence; she ignored both to say recklessly, ‘I hate the thought of the Bay being carved up so rich people can build ostentatious beach houses that are only used a couple of weeks each year.’

‘My mother and I spend more than two weeks a year here.’

Heat stung her skin. ‘I know. I didn’t mean you—’

He interrupted, ‘It doesn’t matter. I don’t intend to develop the Bay.’

‘You won’t develop it because I’m not selling it.’

‘Are you planning to live here?’ He flicked a razor-sharp glance at the cartons in the back of the car.

Gently, each word clear enough to shatter crystal, Sanchia said, ‘I work in Auckland. I’m up here on holiday.’

‘Sanchia, why don’t we forget that three years ago I wanted to make love with you and you ran away as though you’d found yourself wanting to go to bed with a werewolf?’ he said, his deep voice rasping across her nerves with shaming erotic effect. ‘The letter you left made it quite clear that you didn’t want to go down that road. It’s over, and I don’t bear you any ill will. Let’s move on from there.’ He held out a strong, long-fingered hand.

Even though Sanchia had always known she’d been merely a summer diversion, his acceptance of her abrupt decision to leave had shattered some vulnerable part of her. For a couple of months—oh, why not admit it? For at least a year!—she’d hoped that he might care enough to follow her. But he hadn’t.

This, however, was different; this was business, and he wanted more than her untried body.

Great-Aunt Kate had always said that a gentleman waited until a woman indicated she wanted to shake hands. If the slow, heart-shaking smile Caid gave her was any indication, his mother had taught him the same thing, but his hand remained steadily out-thrust until Sanchia reluctantly put hers into it.

He didn’t mash her bones together as some men did, and neither did his clasp linger, yet the touch of those lean, powerful fingers reached all the way to secret places inside her body, sent a mysterious knowledge shivering through her.

Damn, she thought frantically. Oh, damn! It was happening again, and even though she knew her response was a pathway to disillusionment, she couldn’t control it.

When he released the swift, sure pressure, it felt like deliverance and abandonment at the same time.

Sanchia’s weighted lashes lifted. He wasn’t smiling; his blue gaze was fixed on her mouth. Beads of sweat sprang out at her temples, dampened her palms.

Lazily, almost noiselessly, he murmured, ‘I have an odd desire to see my name on your lips, to hear your throaty, summery voice say it again.’

Caid wondered how she’d respond to the open provocation in his tone, his words, even as he wondered what the hell had got into him.

No, he knew what had got into him. From the moment he’d watched her long, long, superb legs unfold from the car he’d been ridden by a need so brutal he’d barely been able to control his own mind.

Not that his mind had much to do with this elemental aberration prowling his body with all the deadly determination of a tiger on the hunt. Why didn’t she take off her sunglasses? By hiding those exotic green eyes, the dark lenses concentrated his attention on her luscious mouth.

What would it taste like now? What would she taste like? Incredulously he realised that his skin was tightening in a primitive warning, his muscles flexing in readiness. Fighting to subdue the hunger that threatened to drown his intelligence in a flood of lust, he waited for her reply.

It came with an infuriating dignity that should have quenched the heat gathering in his groin. With a return of the baffled frustration only she aroused, he remembered anew the way she’d taken refuge behind a distant, self-contained remoteness.

‘Caid,’ she said coolly. ‘Satisfied?’

‘No, but I’ll settle for your signature on an option form,’ he said, watching her intently.

That enticing mouth compressed as she hesitated.

Cynically aware that he’d left himself open to an attempt at extortion, he waited. It would be interesting to see what she’d do if he offered her a good lump sum of money right now.

His eyes skimmed her clothes, read chainstore. Such an exquisite body should be draped in silk. And there had to be something wrong with that elderly car. Was she a woman to be seduced by instant money?

No; if she was, she’d have slept with him three years previously.

Even as he wondered about the rush of altruism to his brain, he drawled, ‘I would, of course, pay for that assurance.’

She paused, her square chin lifting a fraction. ‘What’s the going rate for an option?’

A dollar.

Negligently, his tone casual and off-hand, he mentioned a sum of money—enough, he guessed, to give her a considerable jolt.

She took her time to answer, turning her head to survey the beach. A neat profile, but not exactly beautiful, not even pretty, although her features were fine and regular. Caid had always liked cool, restrained women, but what stirred his hormones when he looked at Sanchia Smith was the repressed passion he knew existed beneath that reserve.

With her black hair shimmering around her shoulders, pale, translucent skin and a mouth that had summoned forbidden fantasies, she’d always looked fey, enchanted—like a perilously exotic woman from the ancient fairy stories. Now, in old shorts, and a damp T-shirt moulded to small, high, tantalising breasts, that potent, sensuous bloom had turned into something that caught his breath.

Caid found himself wondering if she was still a virgin. It didn’t seem likely, and why should he care? He’d never demanded virginity from his lovers.

God, what the hell was he thinking? This was business, not sex! Get your mind, he commanded grimly, above your belt.

It was impossible to tell what was going on inside her head until in a crisp, no-nonsense voice, she said, ‘That’s a lot of money for nothing.’

Something in her tone, in her square shoulders and tilted chin, reminded Caid of the teenager who’d looked past him and through him, over him and around him—anywhere but at him. Need burning in his gut, he heard her say, ‘I’ll sign an option if it will make you happy, but I’m still not selling.’

An X-rated fantasy of her making him happy, in full colour and with sound and kinaesthetic effects, blocked Caid’s thought processes. Angry at the effort it took to reimpose control, he said curtly, ‘Think it over before you make a decision.’

‘I don’t need to think anything over because I’ve already made the decision.’

At last she turned towards him, face shuttered against him as she waited for him to go. For a split second he toyed with the idea of helping her unpack, but much more of this and his clamouring body would betray him.

‘I’ll bring the papers down this evening,’ he said.

No doubt, Sanchia thought, you didn’t get to be a big-time tycoon unless you were prepared for everything. ‘You travel with option forms?’ she asked ironically. ‘It’s the holidays, if you remember, and every solicitor in New Zealand is at the beach until at least halfway through January.’

‘I always have options,’ he said. Some underlying note in his voice caught her attention as he finished crisply, ‘So I’ll see you tonight.’

CHAPTER TWO

SANCHIA stood motionless until Caid’s imperious presence had disappeared into the green gloom of the pohutukawa trees. Expelling her breath with a whoosh that spun her brain, she muttered, ‘Oh, hell!’

It had been too much to hope fate would make sure their visits to the Bay didn’t coincide.

With jerky, abrupt movements she bent to haul the nearest carton out of the car, fighting a powerful, irresistible tug at her senses. One look at Caid and it had all come pouring back—the heady, dangerous compound of desire and longing and abject, hidden terror.

As she walked across the grass to the bach and dumped the groceries down on the lid of the gumboot box she thought stoutly that she was better able to deal with it now than three years ago.

She unlocked the door, stepping back as a wave of hot, stale air fell out of the building. Did he still want her? Her mouth twisted sardonically. Why should he, when he could have his pick of the most beautiful, sophisticated, suitable women in the world? He’d certainly taken his time about looking her over, but that meant nothing.

Was he paying me back? she wondered, picking up the carton. I don’t suppose many women have said no to Caid Hunter. Perhaps he was trying for a little revenge?

After setting the box onto the kitchen bench she opened up the bach, turning on the power, switching on the gas so that she’d have hot water, fiercely quelling a fresh surge of grief when she pushed back the bifold doors. A fresh, salt-scented breeze curled up from the beach, brushing away the mustiness.

Her breasts lifted as she breathed in and out several times; she stared straight ahead, but after a few moments realised that her gaze had wandered stealthily to the roof of the Hunter house above its sheltering trees. If she craned her neck she could see the edge of the wide terrace overlooking the sea.

Nothing had changed; she still responded to Caid’s powerful physical presence with all the poise and control of a kid in an ice cream shop. ‘So why stand here mooning over him?’ she asked the unresponsive air before stalking inside.

When the car had been emptied and her bed made up, when she’d revived the bach again with the small domestic sound of the refrigerator, when the last trace of dust had been scoured away and she’d showered herself clean of sweat and grime, she drank two glasses of water and made a salad sandwich, following its green and gold crispness with coffee.

Only then did she feel able to walk out onto the wide wooden deck, cross the lawn and stop in the dense shade of the pohutukawa trees.

Because a late, cool spring had delayed their flowering, crimson bunches of silk floss still burst from furry, silver buds to smother the leathery leaves.

Caid had kissed her for the first time under this one.

Pain twisted inside her. Leaning her hot forehead against the rough bark, she imagined that she could feel an old, old life-force slowly, inexorably, sweeping through the wood. How many times had she seen her great-aunt stand like that, drawing strength from a tree?

There was no comfort for Sanchia; nevertheless she faced the future with a bleak, driven determination. Great-Aunt Kate had trusted her to carry out a mission.

A heat haze shimmered over the sand, the dancing air lending an oddly eerie atmosphere to the classic New Zealand holiday scene—white beach, a cobalt sea intensifying to brilliant kingfisher-blue on the horizon, and a summer coast of bays and headlands, cliffs and harbours, swathed in carmine and scarlet and crimson.

Setting her jaw, Sanchia turned and walked across the springy grass towards the steep hill behind the bay, following a hint of a path beneath the trees. To the fading sound of the waves, she stepped lightly, cautiously, like an intruder.

Another ancient pohutukawa hugged a grassy knoll on the boundary between her aunt’s land and the Hunter property, and each winter thousands of monarch butterflies found their way back to the tree to doze in the Northland sun along its sheltering branches, drinking from the tiny stream in the gully. Drowsy, almost immobile, they dreamed the winter away.

A few were still there, gorgeous, graceful things in their livery of orange and black. She stood for long moments watching, remembering.

The year she’d turned sixteen she’d noticed the pitiable flapping of a butterfly drowning in the creek. Still unsure of her suddenly longer legs, she’d raced down the hill to its rescue, landed awkwardly on a stone and wrenched her ankle.

Caid had found her sitting on the bank with the butterfly drying on her finger. Carefully, gently, he’d coaxed the bold orange and black insect from her hand to his, and transported it to a branch. Once he was sure it was going to be all right, he’d ignored her protests, scooped her up and carried her back to the bach.

She couldn’t recall breathing or talking until he’d deposited her in a deckchair. Now she wondered whether it had been his complete lack of reaction to her, his lazy amusement and casual friendliness that had persuaded her to trust him five years later.

Or perhaps it had been the feel of his arms, the steady, amazing strength that had seemed so effortless…

‘Interesting how much more wary these butterflies are than the ones that over-winter,’ a voice drawled from the other side of the fence.

Flinching, Sanchia whirled to face Caid. ‘Next time make a noise,’ she retorted curtly, then bit her tongue, aware of her rudeness—and the susceptibility it didn’t hide.

His black brows lifted. ‘Certainly,’ he said, a note of mockery underlining his words. Casual shorts and a T-shirt as black as his hair failed to strip him of that cool, powerful authority.

Glad she’d replaced her sunglasses, she muttered, ‘I’m sorry, but you gave me a start. It’s uncanny the way you sneak around.’

‘Sneak?’ His sculpted mouth twisted in irony. ‘I resent that. If my presence disturbs you so much I’ll whistle whenever I think you might be in the vicinity. You don’t want to hear me sing.’

‘Why not?’ He had a marvellous speaking voice, deep and exciting, a voice that reached right inside and…

Sanchia stifled that train of thought.

‘I can’t carry a tune,’ he told her cheerfully.

‘Oh.’ Her doubtful glance caught his smile. Because it stirred up emotions she’d tried very hard to forget, she said hastily, ‘I wonder why these butterflies stay here?’

‘They’re foolish and frivolous. Any prudent, farsighted monarch is in a garden somewhere, mating, and laying eggs to continue the species; these ones are wasting the summer heat.’

There was no suggestiveness in his words, yet her spine tingled.

‘Perhaps they sense there’s still time,’ she parried. Disturbed by his narrow-eyed focus on the hair around her shoulders, she pushed the dark cloud back, holding it behind her head with one hand.

Caid said, ‘A wise butterfly takes its chances quickly. You never know when a cyclone might hurtle down from the tropics.’ He spoke lightly, as though the words meant nothing, but his glance settled on her mouth.

Sanchia felt the resonance of a hidden meaning. A forbidden sensation exploded in the pit of her stomach. Taking three quick steps into the sombre shade of the tree, she said, ‘Cyclones are very occasional events here. The butterflies have plenty of time to enjoy themselves and still fulfil their evolutionary duty. Besides, it might be a ploy on nature’s part to fill a gap. If they do their egg-laying late in the season the eggs mightn’t be eaten by wasps.’

‘There are always predators.’

Sanchia’s skin contracted as though some of the chilling certainty in his tone had been translated into physical existence. They seemed to be conducting another conversation beneath the words, one depending on feelings and a ferocious physical awareness for its subtext.

Lightly she said, ‘So your advice to the young butterfly is to grab every chance? Could be dangerous.’

‘Life’s dangerous. And butterflies could die at any time.’

Sanchia bit her lip, heard a soft oath and the sudden creak of the boundary fence as Caid swung over it. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said abruptly, his hand coming to rest on her shoulder. ‘That was clumsy and obtuse of me.’

His touch exploded through her like wildfire, dangerous, beautiful, filled with a hazardous lure.

‘It’s all right,’ she mumbled. ‘It wasn’t you—or what you said. It just comes over in waves.’

‘I know.’ Strange that the textures of warmth and harshness were mingled in his voice. He lifted a hand to trace the trickle of a tear just below her sunglasses.

Sanchia’s jerk was instinctive but the imprint of his long, lean fingers, tanned and graceful, burned into her skin as his hand fell to his side. She looked up and saw his beautiful mouth harden as he stepped back, giving her space to breathe.

‘Great-Aunt Kate used to love summer,’ she said, knowing it sounded like a peace offering.

He nodded. ‘I remember her swimming every day, and striding along the beach in the morning looking like some ancient, vital nature spirit. She had such guts, such zest.’

‘She didn’t take any nonsense,’ Sanchia said, her heart clenching, ‘and she was brusque and sensible and plain-spoken, but she was infinitely kind.’

‘You’ve never told me how you came to live with her,’ he said neutrally.

‘It’s a long story.’

‘And one you don’t want to talk about.’ Gleaming blue eyes examined her from beneath thick, straight black lashes.

His words challenged her into revealing more than she intended. ‘My parents died when I was twelve and I had to live with my mother’s sister. She was younger than my mother, and she didn’t like spoilt kids—’ and oh, was that ever an understatement! ‘—so after—after a while I ran away. Great-Aunt Kate found me and brought me here, and we worked out a system of living together.’

It had taken a lot of patience and love from a woman already elderly, a lot of effort on both their parts, and almost a year for Sanchia to learn to trust again.

‘I remember when she brought you here,’ Caid said unexpectedly. ‘You were a tall, skinny kid, all arms and legs with hair that floated like spun silk behind you when you ran. That first summer I don’t think I heard you speak, let alone laugh. My mother worried about you.’

Startled, Sanchia said, ‘Did she? That was kind of her.’

‘Mmm. She’s a very kind woman.’ He ran a forefinger down Sanchia’s arm. Fire followed the light, swift touch.

He knew it too. In a voice that hovered on the border of amusement, he said, ‘You’re hot. I’ll walk you home.’

She didn’t want him back at the bach; struck by inspiration, she countered, ‘Why don’t we go via your place and I’ll sign that option? Then you won’t have to bring it down tonight.’

His mouth curved. ‘Why not? Can I help you over the fence?’

She flashed him a look. ‘No, thanks. I haven’t forgotten how to climb a fence.’

Although under his eye she fumbled it, landing too heavily on the other side.

‘My mother worried about you,’ Caid explained, swinging over with a sure male grace, ‘because she has a strong maternal streak. It’s wasted with only me to lavish it on—she should have had ten kids. You reassured her the following summer when you’d grown a few inches, and we heard you laughing and saw that you were very fond of your great-aunt.’

‘I didn’t think you noticed us much,’ Sanchia said, starting jerkily down the mown track.

Black brows shot up. ‘I noticed you.’ Watchful eyes beneath lowered lashes should have given him a sleepy air. They did nothing of the sort; the half-closed lids intensified both the colour and the speculation in his gaze.

Sanchia lifted her brows in return. With a composed, polite smile she replied, ‘You were busy with your friends, and we hardly ever saw you except when you were sailing or water-skiing or windsurfing, or having a party on the beach.’

She’d seen him enough to fuel some heated fantasies, however! Innocent daydreams—a kid’s crush without the heavy, hard beat of dangerous sexuality that pulsed through her now. That had come later.

The path dived in under the trees, releasing them into welcome shade. Apart from an early cicada strumming his strident little guitar, the foliage muffled and deadened sounds, cocooning them in a heavy, pressing silence.

Caid’s lashes drooped even further. His mouth, an intoxicating combination of power and classical lines, curved. ‘So you ignored us. How unflattering—especially as I was very aware of you,’ he said softly. ‘The first thing I used to do each summer was to impress on my friends that you were absolutely, totally out of bounds, and that if anybody made even a token gesture towards you I’d personally dismember him.’

Sanchia’s mouth dropped open; his tone rearranged the cells in her spine, turning them into jelly.

‘How kind,’ she said, resisting the desire to lick suddenly dry lips. Humiliatingly, the thought of Caid warning off his friends appalled her yet sent shivery, sneaky frissons of excitement through her.

Rallying, she went on, ‘The best sort of big brother—an unknown one.’

‘Yes,’ Caid said easily. ‘It wasn’t so bad until you turned sixteen and developed a figure like a supermodel—the year you hurt your ankle rescuing a butterfly, if you remember. Then I had to get very heavy. So did my mother.’

‘I’m so grateful,’ Sanchia said, striving for a brisk, matter-of-fact tone. Unfortunately she couldn’t stop herself from continuing with the faintest snap, ‘It sounds as though you kept a close eye on me.’

From the corners of her eyes she caught the flash of white teeth in a satirical smile. Infuriated, she stared stonily ahead.

‘Only at the beginning of each summer,’ he said, and added outrageously, ‘To check up on progress, you understand.’

Sanchia snorted.

With infuriating amusement he went on, ‘And then, three years ago, when you came back after university, I discovered you’d more than fulfilled all that coltish promise.’

He was using his voice as an instrument of seduction; its deep timbre and intriguing hint of an accent stroked along her nerves with the sensuous nap of velvet, at once caressing and stimulating.

How many women had lost their heads when he spoke to them like that? Dozens!

‘I—remember,’ she said foolishly, unnerved enough to miss seeing a large spider-web hanging from a manuka branch until it clung to her face, its panicked occupant racing towards the branch in a tangle of black legs.

Sanchia hurled herself sideways, her foot twisting over a root as she cannoned into the man beside her. ‘Sorry!’ she gasped, clutching instinctively at solid muscle.

Caid moved with lethal speed, his strong hands clamping onto her arms, wrenching her away from him as he hauled her upright. When he saw she wasn’t going to fall, he wiped the remnants of the web from her cheek with a sure, gentle touch.

Her breath turned into lead in her chest; her gaze clung to the prominent framework of his face, the potent mouth. Although her hands were empty she could still feel his hot, fine-grained skin searing her palms.

‘Is the spider all right?’ she asked breathlessly.

His hand stilled; she looked up to meet incredulous eyes. Some small part of her brain realised dimly that they were standing a few centimetres apart, his blue gaze fencing with hers through the protective mask of her sunglasses. Pinned by those molten eyes, by his grip, she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, and her body sang an irrational song of feverish, primal need.

‘The spider?’ he asked harshly.

When she nodded he gave a hard, humourless laugh. ‘Why don’t you look for yourself?’

Sanchia froze as he whipped off her sunglasses, stepped back and released her, his face impassive.

She forced her glance past him and said, ‘Oh, the spider’s fine. P-probably cursing clumsy p-passers-by.’

With any luck Caid would think it was the close encounter with the spider that pitched her voice too high and caused that betraying hesitation.

‘Are you all right?’ he asked curtly.

She made herself breathe. ‘Yes. Sorry. I hate spider-webs on my face.’ It was all she could trust herself to say because her voice sounded as though it was going to descend into an incoherent, humiliating babble.

‘You’ve experienced them often?’

‘When I ran away in Auckland, before Great-Aunt Kate found me, I slept in a park and one morning I woke with a web over my face.’ She shuddered. ‘I’d dreamed I was dead, and for some reason the web convinced me that it had really happened.’

He took his time about scanning her face. Dazed, she thought she could feel his survey like a laser across her skin.

‘That must have been an appalling experience,’ he said evenly, and smoothed the sweep of one cheekbone with a tantalising thumb.

Fire and ice combined in that touch—at once smooth and abrasive, light yet sinking down into the very centre of her bones.

Summoning every ounce of will, Sanchia stepped back and muttered, ‘As you saw, I still get a bit spooked by them,’ and turned to blunder down the path.

From behind he asked, ‘Don’t you want your sunglasses?’

‘Oh.’ She stopped and held out her hand. ‘Thank you.’

His smile as he handed them over told her that he expected her to stuff them back on. It was exactly what she wanted to do, hide behind them. Why on earth had she blurted out that grisly little experience in the park?

Gritting her teeth, she clutched the sunglasses in hand as she set off again. She was going to have to watch her disconcerting tendency to confide in him.

Caid rejoined her silently, a little too closely because the path was narrow. His bare arm brushed hers, and a bolt of electricity sizzled through her.

‘What have you been doing these past few years?’ he asked. He spoke in a calm, unhurried voice, as though nothing had happened.

Because nothing had. ‘I’ve got a job at one of the technical colleges in Auckland—in a faculty office.’

He frowned. ‘Why didn’t you use your degree? I know you didn’t want to teach, but people with Asian languages are in high demand all around the Pacific Rim.’

He’d taken two degrees at the same time, a high-powered commerce one and law. Sanchia shrugged. ‘I discovered I had nothing much to offer an employer so I took a computer skills course and was lucky enough to find a clerk’s job.’

‘And is that what you are now?’

‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve advanced a couple of steps.’ And planned on advancing a lot more.

His keen look indicated that he’d picked up the ambition that fired her. ‘Are you enjoying it?’

‘Very much. Students from all over Asia study there so I’m picking up a good grounding in several other languages. And as I get free tuition I’m working my way through management qualifications.’

The path led to a small gate behind the Hunter house. The thinning trees allowed light to blaze down in golden medallions through the leaves. Caid reached past her and opened the gate, standing back to let her go through first.

Relieved, Sanchia donned her sunglasses as they walked out into the sun’s full power and crossed the closely mown lawn. It looked, she thought, trying hard to be dispassionate, like a picture in an expensive magazine. Shaved green lawn, gardens in full summer array, the house shaded by pergolas, and on two sides the glamour of the sea.

And the man beside her, as handsome as any model she’d ever seen in a magazine and infinitely more formidable. She said clumsily, ‘I should have worn a hat.’

‘You should. That milky skin must burn like tinder.’ Intolerable as the heat from a furnace, his glance touched her bare arms, her face.

‘Everybody burns in this sun,’ she returned swiftly.

Although he probably didn’t—he had his mother’s built-in golden tan along with her black, black hair. Sometimes when he spoke Sanchia could hear Mrs Hunter in a certain intonation, an un-English arrangement of words.

Quickly, before he could give her another of those intimidating looks, Sanchia added, ‘I slather myself with sunscreen every time I go out.’

‘Good. Skin like yours should be cherished.’ Again that cynical, caressing note in his voice mocked the compliment.

Irritated by her heated, mindless response, she said shortly, ‘All skin should be cherished.’

‘No doubt, but yours is a work of art.’

‘Thank you,’ Sanchia replied tautly.

Did he hope that a meaningless flirtation would persuade her to sell Waiora Bay? No, that instant physical response was real enough, and she wasn’t the only one feeling it.

But he could well intend to use it as a weapon.

Side by side they walked into the welcome coolness of a creeper-shaded terrace. Sanchia’s sandals clicked on the ceramic tiles as she followed him between loungers and chairs towards a wall of pushed-back glass doors.

‘Come in,’ Caid told her, standing back so she could go before him into the big sitting room beyond.

Sanchia had never forgotten the atmosphere of casual elegance, of European glamour and comfort that permeated Caid’s house. Reluctantly, feeling she was yielding an advantage, she removed the sunglasses and, without giving herself time to harness the clutch of bumblebees in her stomach, said, ‘I’m not open to persuasion on the future of the Bay.’ Fixing her gaze on a blur of flowers in a magnificent vase, she underlined her statement as delicately as she could. ‘It will probably save a lot of time and useless manoeuvring if I tell you that you won’t coax Great-Aunt Kate’s estate from me.’

He said in a voice so cold it froze her every cell, ‘I don’t do business that way, Sanchia.’

‘I wasn’t meaning—’

‘Then what were you meaning?’

Sanchia faced him, her chin angling up as she grabbed for her scattered wits. ‘I’m not going to be won over by an appeal to greed, either. Why offer me a couple of thousand for an option to buy the Bay when I’d made it obvious I didn’t want to sell? You know perfectly well that an option is usually sealed by a coin.’

For a racing moment she thought she saw a hint of respect in the vivid eyes.

‘There’s no set legal fee,’ he said drily. ‘An option to buy is a business decision, and the amount offered to cover it is decided on by the two people concerned.’

‘But it’s usually no more than a token—a dollar. You were testing me.’ She held his gaze a second longer. ‘You can pay me a dollar for the option, but I’m not going to change my mind about selling.’ And because his smile flicked her on the raw, she finished with a foolish bravado, ‘However much you try to intimidate me, or however charmingly you flirt with me.’

His smile vanished, but before she had time to exult he advanced on her, his silent grace a threat. Although Sanchia’s stomach lurched, she refused to back away.

‘This,’ he said, resting his thumb on the jumping pulse in her throat, ‘has nothing to do with the document you made the decision to sign.’

Gently, without pressure, his hand curved around her throat, the fingertips moving slightly against the sensitive nape of her neck, producing a tiny friction as purposeful as it was erotic. ‘Neither has the fact that your eyes are a smokier, more sultry green than I remember, and that your mouth is a miracle…’

Sanchia looked up into metallic eyes and saw the effort he had to put into relaxing his fingers. Inside her a latent hunger uncoiled, began to move through her veins like the tide of life greeting an arctic spring, long-awaited, unrestrainable.

‘Nothing to do with business at all,’ Caid repeated dispassionately, his voice deep and hard. ‘I find you very attractive, very appealing—I have ever since you turned sixteen. But I do not intimidate women, nor force them into my bed, and I don’t use lies to seduce them into making decisions either. Am I forcing you now?’

‘No.’ The word splintered with repressed emotion—terrifying emotion—a passionate, wild desire that warned of sensual meltdown.

Slowly, whispering across the surface, his fingertips tantalised her skin as his thumb noted the increased thudding of her pulse. Sanchia shivered.

Bending his head, he said fiercely, ‘You can walk away if you want to.’

She lifted heavy eyelids. ‘I don’t want to.’

Triumph flashed in the blue eyes. ‘Good,’ he said, and kissed her.

It was like an earthquake: the foundations of her world shifted and she no longer had any reference points for normality as sensation stormed through her. Shattered by the violence of her response to Caid’s seeking, demanding mouth, Sanchia gave up trying to think and surrendered to the astonishing pleasure his kiss summoned.

Some time later she surfaced; locked in his arms, she was pressed against him from shoulder to thigh so that his arousal was more than obvious.

Appalled, she tried to pull away, but he lifted his head and said harshly, ‘It’s too late for that.’

‘Oh, no, it’s not,’ she muttered, beating back the first icy trickle of fear. ‘I must be mad. Caid, let me go!’

‘So nothing has changed,’ he said coldly, releasing her immediately. ‘Kissing is all right but I must go no further. Why, Sanchia?’

Twisting away, Sanchia ran a shaking hand through her hair and whispered, ‘I won’t let this happen again!’

He showed his teeth. ‘Hell, isn’t it?’ he agreed sardonically. ‘Just one of those mad attractions that shatter kingdoms and ruin lives.’ His eyes glinted. ‘Perhaps you have such a powerful effect on me because I spent several summers watching you grow up. And one infinitely frustrating holiday trying to get past the iron-clad barriers that slammed in my face whenever I touched you. What’s your excuse?’

Weighed down by reaction to the adrenalin overdose, Sanchia blinked and gathered the tattered remnants of her wits about her. ‘Look, produce this piece of paper, I’ll sign it and say goodbye, and we can forget that the—that this ever happened.’

‘Coward,’ he taunted.

‘Absolutely,’ she agreed fervently, thrumming with thwarted desire now that he’d let her go. ‘I like a peaceful life and you’re very definitely not peaceful. We’ve got nothing in common.’ She dragged her gaze from his enigmatic face to stare around the room. ‘Where is this option?’

‘In the office.’ But even as he nodded towards a door he said caustically, ‘We have one thing in common, Sanchia—a consuming physical passion that’s going to drive both of us crazy unless we do something about it. Why does it scare you so much? I won’t hurt you.’

Sanchia swallowed to ease her arid throat. For a second panic clutched her, and with it a soul-destroying shame. Had he guessed? No, she decided with a swift spurt of relief, not yet. She strode across the room in front of him, flinging over her shoulder, ‘I don’t want an affair with you!’

‘So you said three years ago. Why, Sanchia? Does passion terrify you so much?’

If only he knew…

She said jerkily, ‘I’m not cut out for being a diversion, a pretty toy to be used and then discarded. You forget that while you were checking the length of my legs and whether I laughed or not, I was watching girls chase you. You didn’t run very far, they didn’t last very long—just long enough to break their hearts. I noticed the pattern early and it’s not one that fits me. I need independence—to lead my own life, for myself.’

‘And does your wonderful independence,’ he queried in a dangerously silky voice, ‘keep you sated and warm at night?’

‘There are more important things in life than sex.’

He said something swift and angry in Greek, the language she had stubbornly refused to even consider learning. Switching to English, he said, ‘Or perhaps you work off that violent physical appetite of yours with strangers, with casual affairs?’

She’d kept so much from him she was tempted to add a whopping lie, but she said stiffly, ‘I don’t approve of petty, sordid affairs.’

So unnerved that she barely understood her own words, she yanked the door open and walked through, frowning when she saw she was in a passage. ‘Which way?’

‘To the left, second door down.’

He walked beside her, close enough to intimidate, not close enough to touch. Just as well—she’d go up like a fireball if he laid so much as a finger on her. All right, so it was merely the physical passion he’d called it, but oh, God, it was overwhelming—like being branded by him so that her body registered him, recognised him, yearned to know him intimately.

Feared him.

Because the one time she’d tried to break past the arbitrary limits her body had set, it had frozen in fierce, unreasoning rejection.

He asked coolly, ‘Does that mean there have been no affairs—or just no petty, sordid ones?’

‘Mind your own business!’ she retorted fiercely.

‘You are the person who used the word sordid.’ Stone-faced, he pushed the door open and stood back to let her through. ‘And any affair between us would never be petty. I promise you that.’

CHAPTER THREE

THAT last comment didn’t just sound like a threat, Sanchia realised with an inner shiver as she glanced at Caid’s harshly beautiful face, it definitely was one.

The intriguing scent—faint, potent—of aroused male made her grit her teeth as she walked past him into a room set up as an office. Apprehension roiled her stomach as she stopped in the middle of the room and waited in silence while he bent to open the door of a safe.

She’d hoped counselling would free her of the suffocating fear of sexuality that had preyed on her for so long, but, in spite of the therapist’s insights, ugly terror still lurked behind the fireflash of desire.

Caid straightened and put a piece of paper on the desk. ‘You’d better read it first.’

‘I don’t sign anything without reading it,’ she said huskily, but she had to concentrate ferociously on the print dancing in front of her eyes.

It was quite straightforward. When she came to sell the land known as such and such on the district plan she would offer it to him first, the price to be negotiated then. If he refused it she was at liberty to do what she wanted with it.

Sanchia read it through twice before handing it back. ‘It seems fair enough.’

‘Did you know that all the land in this area has just been revalued?’

She gave a brief nod.

‘Waiora Bay’s blue water title adds quite considerably to the value of the place because it means no one can land on the beach.’ Caid paused, and added smoothly, ‘I believe the rate increase this year is somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five per cent.’

Sanchia had just emptied her bank account to pay a quarterly instalment of the rates, and it would take stringent saving to manage the other three instalments.

She set her jaw. Once she began negotiating with the council she should be able to come to some agreement about any charges due.

‘I know,’ she said coldly. ‘Do you want witnesses to my signature?’

‘Not unless you do—it’s not a will.’ A long, lean-fingered hand offered a silver pen.

Accepting it, she ignored the jump in her heart-rate when their fingers touched. Caid waited until the pen had almost reached the paper to say, ‘And of course I trust you.’

Sanchia signed and dated the option with slashing writing that came close to expressing her chaotic emotions. ‘There,’ she said, dropping the pen on the desk, ‘although you bought it dearly, even for a dollar.’

‘I like to cover all bases,’ Caid told her with a flinty, level glance that set alarm bells jangling. He folded the paper and dropped it onto the dark polished surface of the desk. Unsmiling, his eyes too calculating, he ushered her towards the door. ‘Can I get you something to drink? You look a little hot.’

No doubt her face was scarlet. Resisting the urge to moisten lips still tender from his kisses, she said quietly, ‘No, thank you. I’ll head back home now.’

‘Of course.’ Now that he’d got his worthless option he’d retreated behind a mask of polite indifference.

Sanchia walked beside him down the wide, airy hall and out onto the terrace that ran across the entire sea-front of the house. Bordered by a stone balustrade with wrought-iron infills, the charming terrace was a clever salute to Mrs Hunter’s European heritage. Yet both house and terrace fitted into the splendid, entirely New Zealand surroundings.

‘I’ll go back by the beach,’ Sanchia said, heading towards the cliff path. ‘Don’t come with me; I know the way.’

But he insisted on walking her down the twisting, narrow path beneath the trees, and along the beach to the boundary fence that ran back from the sand.

Stopping there, he tilted Sanchia’s unwilling, defiantly composed face with a deft, strong hand beneath her chin. ‘An affair between us wouldn’t be sordid, either. Cosmic sounds much more like it.’

And he kissed her again, holding her still with not ungentle hands in her hair.

This kiss had all the flash and fire of the other, but added to it was something else even more dangerous—a seducing sweetness that stole Sanchia’s wits and checked her instinctive fear for long, betraying moments.

Yet when it was over she growled, ‘I meant every word I said about selling.’

‘So,’ he returned pleasantly—if she discounted the fine underpinning of steel to every word, ‘did I.’ He dropped his hands and stood back.

Routed and temporarily without an answer, Sanchia kept her face turned away while she walked away from him along the brazen beach, the sensitive hollow between her shoulderblades informing her that Caid watched her until she disappeared into the welcome shade of the pohutukawa trees.

Thrumming with adrenalin, she poured a glass of water from the jug in the refrigerator, but only drank half of it before she plonked the glass down and strode through the living room of the bach onto the deck, ferociously creating cutting, witty answers she could have flung at him.

You’re making too much of the whole thing! she finally told herself sternly. He tried to soften you up, that’s all. And even if he does want you, that means nothing. Men can want women they hate. So stop being an idiot! She dropped into an elderly wicker chair, only to leap out of it immediately. ‘Ouch!’

She sprang out again and peered at the ragged hole in the seat before twisting to examine the scratches on her leg where the broken wickerwork had attacked her.

Her aunt’s favourite chair; it had sat too long out in the weather. Swallowing hard, Sanchia went inside to dab the thin line of blood with antiseptic.

‘All he did was kiss you,’ she muttered, turning on the tap over the sink to make a cup of tea. Watching several drops sputter out, she said loudly, ‘Just a kiss. Well, two kisses. Nothing important. You’ve been kissed before and liked it and this was no different.’

She lied. Cosmic, Caid had said. Trust him to choose exactly the right word. That first kiss had rocketed her out of her settled, placid existence and spun her into unknown realms of sensation.

And the second one had simply reinforced her complete inability to deal with him. Caid had kissed her with a fierce, potent sexuality that had scared her witless, yet she’d kissed him back with all the subtlety of a lioness in heat.

Impatiently she wrenched the uncooperative tap off and on again. ‘Come on, water!’

But no stream of rainwater emerged, and the pump whined and spluttered before settling into a monotonous moan from its cupboard in the laundry.

‘Oh, no!’ The pump was notorious for misbehaving, and it would be difficult and horribly expensive to get a tradesman out during the holiday season.

Thumping the kettle down, she raced into the laundry and opened the cupboard to peer suspiciously inside. Apart from its irritating whine the pump seemed perfectly normal, without any signs of haemorrhaging oil or water.

Sanchia tried every other tap in the bach, a fruitless exercise. Unable to get up to pressure, the pump continued to labour with ominous persistence until she turned it off at the switch.

The only reason she could think of for the pump’s failure to deliver water was so scary she had to force herself out to the large, circular concrete tank behind the bach. Armed with the long-handled broom, she tapped from the top of the tank to the bottom, the same hollow clunk, clunk, clunk all the way down confirming her worst fears.

No water.

And, once she looked for it, the reason was obvious. The guttering around the far side of the bach had rusted away, diverting all the precious rain of spring onto the ground. Last time Sanchia had stayed she’d been using water that couldn’t be replenished.

‘Let’s not panic here,’ she said out loud. ‘It’s a nuisance, but it isn’t the end of the world. The electricity’s still on and the gas bottle’s more than half full. Buy some water.’

But she’d had the telephone disconnected. And she’d have to find out how much water cost; her bank account was too anorexic to be able to deal with more than a few dollars.

Of course, there was always her credit card.

‘So find out how much a tanker-load of water costs, Sanchia,’ she said aloud into the humid, unresponsive air.

Normally she’d have gone to the caretaker’s flat behind the big house and asked to use their telephone, but the prospect of meeting Caid again set her skin prickling.

All right then, she’d walk to the farm manager’s cottage.

After replenishing her sunscreen, she clapped on a wide-brimmed straw hat and set off for the Henleys’ house, a beautifully renovated old farmhouse a couple of bays along.

It took her half an hour—thirty minutes of watching nervously for Caid Hunter to gallop over a hill on a gleaming black stallion like something from a fairy story. Except that in fairy stories the prince always arrived on a white horse, she thought with a wry smile.

But then Caid was no prince, no romantic stereotype. In the world of fairy tales he might even be the villain—devious, impossibly handsome, a little brutal.

And determined.

‘Of course you can use the phone,’ Pat’s wife told her when Sanchia got there, hot and sticky and puffing slightly. ‘I’ll make some coffee while you’re doing it.’

She even gave Sanchia the number of the tanker owner, whose wife wasn’t nearly so welcoming. ‘Do you know how many people have used up all their water already?’ she asked wearily. ‘Brett’s working fifteen hours a day trying to keep up with the demand. Where did you say you are? Oh, Waiora Bay. Well, there’s no way we could get our tanker down that hill. The corners are too sharp.’

Sanchia felt sick. Without water she’d have to go back to Auckland. Until then she hadn’t realised how much she’d banked on this final holiday to give her some sort of closure. Compulsively rolling a pen back and forth, back and forth, she asked, ‘What about a small tanker?’

‘We haven’t got one,’ the woman said, marginally more sympathetic. ‘You could try Kerikeri—or even Kaitaia—but I don’t think either of them have one either, and they’re busy too. It’s been a dry spring and summer all over the north.’

‘I see,’ Sanchia said woodenly. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Look, I’ll take your number—’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a phone.’

From the kitchen Molly Henley called, ‘Give her our number, Sanchia.’

Gratefully Sanchia did so, and the other woman took it down, but warned, ‘I can’t promise anything.’

‘I know. Thanks very much.’

‘Bummer,’ Molly commiserated when she’d hung up. ‘Come and have your coffee while we work out what to do next.’

Things didn’t seem quite so bad when Sanchia was sitting out on the verandah with a mug of coffee in her hand, feet propped up on the balustrade, the sun pouring onto a sea as blue and tender as a Madonna’s robe.

Her hostess said practically, ‘Caid had a bore put in for us so we’ve got plenty of water. Wait until Pat comes back—he’ll work out some way of transporting it to the bach. Now, tell me what you’ve been doing since we saw you last.’

‘Just the usual,’ Sanchia said lightly. ‘What have you been up to?’

Molly embarked on a funny, racy overview of district gossip, then asked, ‘Have you seen Caid yet? He got in yesterday.’

‘Yes.’ Sanchia fiddled with the handle of her mug. ‘Is his mother coming?’

‘Haven’t heard. I hope so; I like her. She’s a bit stately—I think she finds us Kiwis really casual—but she’s lovely. And she always brings presents for the children; nothing expensive, just thoughtfully chosen. I suspect she wants grandchildren.’ Molly gave a comfortable laugh. ‘She might have a wait on her hands because Caid doesn’t seem ready to settle down yet. I know he doesn’t turn up much in the newspapers, but I did read a snip about him and a high-powered magazine editor last year, and did you see the photo of him with that film star? Leila Sherif? She looked besotted. I wonder if she’ll be here this summer.’

Repressing a snake-slither of jealousy, Sanchia said, ‘Perhaps.’ She had no right to be jealous.

‘She won’t if Mrs Hunter’s coming,’ Molly decided. ‘He doesn’t usually bring his girlfriends when his mother’s in residence. Rather old-fashioned and nice of him, when you think of it.’

‘He might be scared of her,’ Sanchia suggested frivolously.

‘Oh, for sure,’ Molly scoffed, laughing. ‘I can just see him shivering in his handmade shoes when she frowns at him. He’s no mummy’s boy. You didn’t know his father, did you?’

‘No.’

‘Well, Caid’s a real chip off the old block—tough as they come but fair with it. A good boss, although he gets his money’s worth. I suppose he’ll get married one day, but I doubt if it will be to please his mother.’

‘Not many men do that,’ Sanchia said drily, and steered the conversation to her hostess’s children, a topic Molly indulged to the full with a willing listener.

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