“I don’t need you, Ryan. I’m willing to put up with you, that’s all!”

“Oh, I think there’s more to it than that, Nina. Much, much more…”

The trailing tip of thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, which parted in alarm.

When had he moved so close? “Don’t touch me!”

“Why not?” His voice dropped to a bittersweet tenderness. “What are you so afraid of? What will happen if I do?”

“Nothing will happen!”

“All right. I won’t—” he turned back to the house “—for now.” He gave her a smoldering smile over his shoulder. “But we both know that I don’t have to touch you for you to be touched by me, don’t we…Nina, darling?”

Amnesia

What the memory has lost, the body never forgets

An electric chemistry with a disturbingly familiar stranger…. A reawakening of passions long forgotten…. And a compulsive desire to get to know this stranger all over again!

A brand-new miniseries from Harlequin Presents® featuring top-selling authors: Penny Jordan, Susan Napier and Lynne Graham

In November don’t miss The Sicilian’s Mistress

by

Lynne Graham

#2139

Secret Seduction

Amnesia

Susan Napier

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ONE

ANOTHER salt-laden blast of wind funnelled past the low cliffs at the entrance of the bay and howled across the seething waves to dash itself against the ragged row of houses along the beachfront. In the back room of her rented cottage Nina Dowling flinched as the windows rattled violently in their sun-warped frames and the woodwork creaked and groaned in protest at the assault.

Hunching protectively over her desktop drawing board, she dipped her brush into the narrow-mouthed water jar at her elbow and meticulously reshaped the sable bristles, trying to block out her awareness of the growing tumult outside by concentrating on the intricate task at hand.

So what if she had just heard the radio weather bulletin issue an overnight gale warning for the Hauraki Gulf? Despite its ramshackle appearance, this sturdy bungalow had weathered more than fifty years of winter storms. And, anyway, Shearwater Island was in the southern reaches of the gulf, less exposed to the full force of the storms that regularly blew in from the Pacific Ocean than many of the other hundred or so islands that were scattered off the coast of Auckland.

A few minutes later, Nina gave up pretending that she was going to get any more work done. The ominous crack of approaching thunder was the last straw. Trying to etch the delicate path of a minute leaf vein with the moistened edge of her chisel-shaped brush tip was impossible when her nerves were braced against the next assault of nature. She pursed her ripe mouth as she surveyed what she had just done, her sea-green eyes narrowed with dissatisfaction, her silky dark brows drawn together in a rippling frown. Instead of abrading away the wash of green pigment to expose a hair-thin line of white paper, the nervous jerks of her clenched fingers were in danger of creating a major new vein at the margin of the leaf.

Such botanical incorrectness would give George palpitations! she thought ruefully as she set aside the unfinished illustration and replaced the labelled pot containing the original plant specimen on the crowded shelf by the window. While Nina freely employed a great deal of artistic licence in her own paintings, the bread-and-butter commissions she executed for the local botanist demanded strict biological accuracy. It was exacting work but Nina enjoyed the challenge, and the flat fee that George paid her for each completed watercolour was sufficient to support her in very modest style.

Fortunately, there were few temptations to frivolous spending on Shearwater Island. Most of the islanders were laid-back alternative lifestylers, eccentric loners, or descendants of original owners who either commuted to Auckland to work or merely used their properties during weekends and holidays.

Part of the island was a nature and marine reserve, and the locals jealously guarded their relatively unspoiled environment by enduring rudimentary public services and supporting by-laws that precluded commercial development. That meant there were no chic beach cafés or hotels, or well-serviced moorings for glitzy yachts on Shearwater Island, no flash millionaires’ mansions or noisy helipads.

The only store, at the wooden ferry jetty on the other side of the island from Puriri Bay, stocked little more than the basic necessities of life—except during the summer months, when the resident population of a few hundred was swollen by holiday-makers, visiting boaties who dropped anchor in the deepwater bays and daytrippers who made the hour-and-a-half ferry ride from Auckland.

In the nine months that she had lived on the island, Nina had been pleased to discover that there was nothing that she couldn’t buy, barter, mail-order or stoically go without.

Another shuddering gust of wind buffeted the house on its foundations as Nina cleaned her brushes with the speed and efficiency of long practise and covered her palette of watercolours with a damp cloth to prevent the shallow pans from drying out overnight. She carried the squat jars of stained water into the kitchen to rinse them out for the next day, flicking off the fluorescent lights in the cramped studio. Usually she preferred using the natural light from the sloping skylight and small, southerly facing window for her studio-based paintings, but the dense cloud cover had made artificial illumination necessary for most of the day.

Leaving her clean jars draining upside down on the bench, Nina hurried through the sprawling, three-bedroom cottage, making sure that all the external door and window latches were secure, and checking that there was nothing loose outside that high winds might turn into a potential missile.

In the last big storm, Ray Stewart, who lived in the sun-bleached weatherboard house next door, had almost been skewered in his rocking chair by an unsecured water-ski that had blown off someone’s deck and cartwheeled along the wide strip of interconnecting front yards to spear through his window. The grizzled old man, who also happened to be Nina’s landlord, had taken his near impalement in his stride, more angry at his neighbour’s carelessness than frightened by his brush with mortality, but to Nina it had been a graphic warning of the awesome power of nature.

Now, standing in her living room, looking out at the deserted, wind-scoured beach, she wrapped her arms around her waist in an unconsciously self-protective gesture. The sliding glass door, misted with salt and sand, framed a panoramic view of the tempest. Along the grassy public foreshore, the huge, gnarled puriri trees that gave the bay its name were writhing, their twisted limbs semaphoring the rising strength of the wind, the thick, evergreen foliage tossing in sympathy with the storm-whipped sea.

Spray was thick in the swirling air and even the hardiest of seabirds, the squalling gulls, had taken cover. The tide was nearly full in, the greedy waves chewing more than halfway up the wide curve of sloping sand towards the low bank on which the puriri trees perched, their venerable roots knitted deep into the sandy clay.

Farther out, the deep swells pushing in from the gulf boomed onto the rocks at the base of the cliffs, exploding upwards in sheets of ghostly white foam that instantly dissolved into the jagged cliff face. Within the semicircle of the bay itself, the murky sea was a frenzy of whitecaps, the few boats still anchored there pitching and rolling as they strained at their moorings. Clumps of dirty white foam broke away from the building crest at the high-water line and swirled up onto the back of the beach, rolling and tumbling over moisture-darkened soft sand still pockmarked from earlier showers.

Although sunset was officially still hours away, it was already almost dark outside, the dense black clouds continuing to sweep in from the north-east, bringing with them forked flashes of lightning and a thick band of rain that blurred the gap between turbulent sky and tumultuous sea until they were indistinguishable from each other in the intensifying gloom.

The artist in Nina revelled in the visual drama of the scene. It was beautiful, wild…dangerous….

A cool frisson shivered up her spine and Nina hugged herself more tightly, glad that she had earlier lit the fire in the big stone hearth that dominated the open-plan living area. The temperature had been dropping all day, and even in her red polar-fleece sweatshirt, black jeans and sheepskin boots, she had shivered at the penetrating chill in the damp air when she slipped out to fetch a few armfuls of dry driftwood from the stack under the broad eaves on the leeward side of the house. Now the comforting crackle and hum of the burning wood provided a cheerful contrast to the eerie wail of the wind.

Nina didn’t consider herself superstitious, but something about this storm was making her more than usually apprehensive. She didn’t think it was just that she had always hated thunderstorms, nor was it fear of being alone in the cottage. She preferred it that way. In choosing to settle in such an out-of-the-way place, not easily accessible to the rest of the world, she had eagerly accepted a largely solitary way of life that enabled her to devote herself entirely to her painting.

Nine months ago, she had arrived on the island rootless, drifting, searching…In Puriri Bay she had found what she believed she had been looking for: a quiet refuge where she could rediscover her passion to paint. Here she could work long hours with no interruptions, no petty distractions…

Well, almost none, she thought as she stooped to switch on a lamp and spotted the damp black nose cautiously parting the fringed hem of the ivory throw rug that draped the elderly couch.

‘You feel it, too, huh?’ she murmured, snapping her fingers invitingly. The only response was a swift withdrawal of the quivering nose back under the sagging couch. ‘It’s probably just the build-up of static electricity in the air,’ Nina reassured them both loudly, dismissing her vague premonition as the product of her overactive imagination.

As she straightened, she caught sight of her reflection in the glass door and pulled a wry face. She had pinned her hair up out of the way while she worked, but now she saw that the humidity had frizzed her wavy, dark chestnut locks into a mass of corkscrew curls that had sprung from her careless topknot.

Hands on hips, she studied her slightly pear-shaped outline in the darkened glass. In the relaxed island environment, Nina had quickly lost the knack of worrying about her appearance. Dressing for comfort rather than style saved her both time and money. Fortunately, the casual, fresh-scrubbed look seemed to suit her although she didn’t consider herself more than ordinarily pretty.

At twenty-six she was resigned to the fact that her five-foot-six-inch frame had a genetic predisposition to carrying a little extra weight around her hips and thighs. But at least she had the consolation of knowing that the layer of padding was muscle rather than flab, she thought, twisting sideways and slapping a taut, denim-covered buttock, smugly confirming the lack of wobble. She did a lot of walking and cycling around the hilly island, and the fact that there was no fast-food joint within twelve nautical miles was a major encouragement to maintaining a healthy diet!

Thinking about food made her suddenly realise that she was peckish, and she wondered what she could come up with for dinner. Nina usually cooked for Ray, as well, but since he was away visiting his married daughter for the weekend, she could eat on a whim. She didn’t feel like making a meal from scratch, but maybe cooking would cure her attack of the jitters. There might be some leftovers she could throw together to create something interesting.

She crossed to the kitchen to see what was left in the fridge. Perhaps she would have a light snack now and a hot supper later. It wouldn’t do to eat too early and then have the evening stretch endlessly ahead of her. At this rate she could be up all night. She might be able to read or listen to music if she turned the stereo up to full volume, but there was no point in going to bed while the storm was still blowing, not if she was going to just lie there in the dark, obsessing over every huff and puff that shook her house of sticks.

As soon as she opened the refrigerator door, there was a scrabble of claws on polished wood, and she glanced over her shoulder to see a speeding black-and-white bullet shoot out from beneath the couch and trace a curving trajectory around the bench that divided the kitchen from the rest of the room. Nina slammed the door again just in time to prevent the missile imbedding itself in the lower shelves of the fridge where she usually thawed frozen packs of meat and the occasional meaty bone.

‘No!’ she said sternly to the long-haired Jack Russell terrier, who was quivering with outrage at being deprived of his plunder. She pointed to the bowl on the floor by the back door that contained a few crumbs of rice-flecked dog biscuit and a forlorn fishbone. ‘You’ve already had plenty to eat today. You’ll get fat if you’re fed on demand.’

The wiry little dog looked supremely unimpressed. He plunked his hindquarters down on the cold, patterned-vinyl floor in front of the fridge, his beady black eyes fixed hungrily on her face.

‘It’s no use looking at me like that,’ she told him.

He raised one limp front paw and uttered a single, pitiful whine.

Nina rolled her eyes. ‘Hollywood!’ she scoffed.

He sank slowly down on his stomach, his muzzle settling on his crossed paws with what sounded suspiciously like a deep sigh. The jaunty white tail lay flaccid on the dark green floor as if too weak to wag.

Nina echoed his doggy sigh with one of her own. They both knew who was going to crack first. They had played this game many times before. Oh, well…she might as well throw him his tidbit now and stave off the reproachful looks and pathetic whines long enough for her to fill her own belly.

Before she could reopen the fridge, there was a particularly strong gust of wind and she heard the first flurry of raindrops tattoo against the corrugated-iron roof. The dog’s drooping tail and ears pricked up, and the listless waif suddenly turned into an energised ball of barks, hurtling himself at the back door and scratching at the panels.

‘Zorro!’

The little dog glanced back at Nina, the two oblong patches of black fur that surrounded his eyes looking uncannily like the mask of his dashing namesake as he ignored her compelling cry and continued to leap in front of the closed door, barking madly.

Nina almost preferred him cowering under the couch.

‘For goodness’ sake, Zorro, calm down. It’s only the rain.’ She pulled aside the kitchen curtain to peer outside as she spoke, then saw what the dog must have sensed—a shadowy figure coalescing out of the darkness.

Someone was stumbling down the narrow, dead-end road that provided the only vehicle access to the bay. It was a steep, zigzagging road that turned sharply at the bottom of the hill just behind Nina’s cottage and then ran along the flat to the public parking area at the far end of the beach.

Nina cupped her hand to the side of her face and squinted through the rain-smeared glass, her breath fogging the cold surface. Wrapped in a long, flapping coat and bent over against the wind, one hand lifted to protect against the rain that was driving in under the overhanging trees, the tall, bulky figure could have been either a man or a woman.

It obviously wasn’t one of Nina’s neighbours. A local would have been walking along the middle of the road, regardless of the risk of traffic, rather than on the unstable margin. Even in dry weather the ungraded road was inclined to be slippery along the edges where loose gravel collected in drifts. Nina only hoped that the visitor didn’t end up sliding into the open ditch that ran alongside the road.

‘Forget it, Zorro. No-one’s going to come visiting us in this kind of weather,’ she said to the cacophony of barks. ‘It’s just someone on their way to the Petersons or the Freemans—or maybe they just want to check on a boat.’

The barking stopped abruptly, and she was pleasantly surprised at this unprecedented act of instant obedience until she looked around and saw the flapping cat door. The round hinged panel had been installed by some past resident who owned an obviously hefty feline, and Zorro had been quick to appreciate its advantages.

‘Dammit, Zorro!’ Out the window she could see the little dog scampering past the letterbox and up onto the road, staggering sideways with each pummelling gust of wind. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Nina yanked open the door to call the dog back, and as she did so, two things happened simultaneously.

A sizzling bolt of blinding white light exploded out of the sky, striking the tallest roadside tree in a shower of sparks; and the rain flurries suddenly turned into a torrential deluge.

Momentarily dazzled by the lightning and disorientated by the ear-shattering thunder that followed barely a split second later, Nina didn’t at first register the danger. But then, through the dark blur of the sheeting rain, she saw the smoking top of the puriri tree begin to peel away from the main trunk, leaving a pale, jagged stump pointing accusingly at the sky. As it toppled, gravity took over and the heavy thicket sheered completely off, plummeting through the threshing branches towards the puny human on the road below.

Her scream of warning was ripped away from her lips, lost to the wind and rain and the echoing roll of thunder as another lethal lightning bolt ripped into the ground farther up the hill. The flash of incandescence momentarily illuminated the ghastly scene, and Nina was forced to watch helplessly as the treetop crashed to the ground, obliterating its victim from view. At the last moment, the rain-lashed figure became aware of what was about to happen but dodged too late to escape the crushing impact.

Nina’s feet unfroze and she dashed out into the maelstrom. She had barely gone a few steps before she was soaked to the skin, the rain drumming savagely down on her exposed head, the punishing drops beating into her eyes and mouth so that she could scarcely see or breathe as she splashed through the rivers of water, gravel and mud streaming down the road.

She could see Zorro, still barking fiercely, his scrawny flanks wet and heaving as he dashed up and down, making little darting forays at the fallen tree, clearly trying to get at the motionless bundle of clothes barely visible beneath.

Nina yelled at him to keep out from under her feet as she panted to a halt and began hauling on the tangled treetop, fighting against the wind and the sheer weight of the densely matted branches.

‘Hey—can you hear me? Are you all right?’ she shouted, tearing frantically at the barrier. ‘I’m going to get you free. Can you move?’ There was no reply, but she didn’t give up, screaming a barrage of questions as she worked, hoping that the sound of her voice would jolt the trapped figure into a fighting awareness of what she was trying to do.

The coarse central trunk was thicker than her thigh and she found it difficult to get a grip. The wet bark kept slipping through her clumsy fingers as she tried to wrestle it aside, spiky stumps rasping and cutting at her hands, leaving dark trails of blood against her white palms. Bent twigs jabbed and scratched at her exposed skin and clusters of leathery leaves slapped against her face as she squatted low and edged in under the dripping mass, wedging a shoulder into a V-shaped fork in the trunk in the hope of being able to lever up the lighter end and roll it away.

Through the foliage that was whipping dangerously close to her eyes, Nina was able to catch an occasional glimpse of a pale, oval blur, reassuring her that at least the victim wasn’t pinned facedown in the mud and in imminent danger of suffocation or drowning.

Spitting out mouthfuls of rainwater, Nina gritted her teeth and bent to her task with renewed urgency. Zorro skittered between her braced legs, squirming under the thicket of branches as soon as they began to lift off the ground, emerging backwards with the hem of a thick black coat gripped between his teeth. As he stretched the trapped fabric taut, Nina heard a harsh, masculine groan emerge from the depths of the tree. A burst of adrenalin gave her a moment of superhuman strength and she arched upright in a heaving twist, rolling the heavy trunk clear of the man sprawled on the gravel.

Nina fell to her knees beside him, catching his hand as it rose to waver in the air in front of his face as if groping for something that only he could see.

A sharp tingle shot up her arm and into her chest when their wet fingers touched, and she wondered whether his body had been harbouring some residual electricity from the lightning strike. She fought the desire to recoil, her hand tightening around his as she looked down into his square-jawed face, his features barely distinguishable in the rain-blurred darkness. There was nothing familiar about him. Nothing at all. The contraction in Nina’s chest increased, her breath squeezing painfully through her lungs as she was stricken by a nameless terror.

She tried to push it away. Whoever the man was, he was undoubtedly dazed and in pain, his eyes slitted against the rain, dark rivulets of either mud or blood, or a mixture of both, pouring down from his left temple to drip off his jaw into the upright collar of his thick coat.

Lightning bolted out of the sky again, providing Nina with a convenient justification for her mindless panic, and she threw herself across the man’s torso in an instinctive attempt to shield him from fresh harm.

His sharp groan of agony wrenched her back on her heels, her hands quickly searching over the front of his coat, the thickness of the dense weave frustrating her attempts to find the source of his pain. It was impossible to tell what his build was beneath the bulky coat, but he was certainly over six feet tall, and Nina knew that if he couldn’t get down the hill under his own steam, she was going to have to go for help.

She put her mouth close to his ear, the fat, wet tails of her hair briefly pasting themselves against his lean cheek. ‘Can you tell me where you’re hurt?’

His head whipped around towards her voice, his hard temple colliding painfully with her high cheekbone.

‘Ouch!’ She cupped her eye, involuntary tears mingling with the raindrops on her lashes. As if she wasn’t wet enough!

‘What happened?’ They were the first words he had uttered, and to her relief, his deep, harsh voice sounded thankfully lucid.

This time, Nina pulled back to where he would be able to see, as well as hear, the words on her lips. ‘You were hit by a tree. We really need to get out of this storm and take a look at your injuries,’ she told him. ‘Are you able to move? My house is just down the hill.’

Instead of answering her, he rolled over onto his side and began to struggle awkwardly to his feet, hampered by the long, wet coat flapping around his legs. Nina hovered nervously, hoping that his movements weren’t exacerbating a chest or back injury. He would be extremely lucky if he escaped with only minor cuts and bruises. As he straightened, he moaned and she slid her arm around the back of his waist, grateful that he appeared to be relatively steady on his feet. She prayed he would stay that way.

Man’s best friend, satisfied that he had fulfilled his doggy duty, was already skittering back to his domain, his jaunty flag of a tail proclaiming that he confidently expected to dine a hero. Nina urged her companion in the same direction by pointing out the rectangle of light projected by the back door, which she had left open.

‘Do you think you can make it that far?’ It had really been a rhetorical question and she was startled to hear a low, sardonic rumble float over her head.

‘Do I have a choice?’

If he could manage sarcasm under these conditions, then he couldn’t be that badly injured, she reasoned.

‘Well, yes, you could just stand here and wait for lightning to strike twice!’

Ten minutes later, Nina was perched on the edge of her couch, icy bare toes curling into the sheepskin hearthrug under her feet, her wet clothes steaming in the heat from the fire as she gently mopped at the blood that streaked one side of the injured man’s face. The continual washing of rain had obviously kept the blood from clotting, and she was worried that it was still seeping in a steady flow from the gash just above his dark hairline.

Fortunately, he had managed to remove his muddy shoes and shed his heavy black coat in a sodden puddle on the floor before he had gracefully keeled over onto the oversoft couch. The rest of his clothes appeared only mildly damp, except for the muddy lower half of his black trousers.

He had lain sprawled on his back, his eyes closed, his breath coming in a harsh rattle between tightly drawn lips, as Nina had raced for a bowl of hot water, disinfectant and towels—one of which she had tucked under his wet head. He hadn’t moved when she had gingerly checked him over for other obvious wounds and started to clean his face, and at the moment she wasn’t quite sure whether he was unconscious or merely limp with pain and exhaustion—but either way it gave her a chance to study him unobserved and soothe the nerves that had been jangling discordantly since she had first looked into his face up there on the hill.

There was nothing familiar about him to disturb her now. Nothing to make her heart quicken with uncomfortable anxiety. He was simply a stranger. A dangerously good-looking stranger, it was true—perhaps that was where the feeling of threat had sprung from.

Nina estimated him to be in his mid-thirties and even in repose his face had a kind of lean and hungry look to it. His fine-grained skin, which had merely been a pale glimmer out in the darkness, was actually a burnished gold beneath the surface chill, the olive undertones allied to the jet-black lashes and flared brows.

His hair fell back from a slight widow’s peak above the faintly lined forehead, the wet strands melting into the white towel under his head drying to a natural blue-black sheen that made her guess that his eyes would be similarly dark.

His classic bone structure was the kind that would age well, she thought, the blade-straight nose perfectly proportionate to the wide-set eye sockets, high forehead and sculpted jaw. His smooth-shaven cheeks were faintly concave, his upper lip a thin, barely shaped line while the lower was pulled into noticeable fullness by the slashing indentation in his chin, far too masculine to be called a dimple.

His dark colouring was accentuated by the fact that he was dressed all in black—a knitted rollneck sweater tucked into the flat waistband of his pleated trousers, both closefitting enough to reveal a body that was long and rangy, the lean, triangular torso tapering to narrow hips and long-boned thighs.

Here in the light, his colour of choice threw him into sharp relief against the ivory throw rug. Her artist’s imagination visualised him as a thin streak of black over a ripple of changing textures.

Shadow man…

To Nina, black was a symbol of complexity—a subtle, sensuous, secretive colour. She never bought it in a tube, preferring to mix it up herself on her palette, so she knew that there were many shades of black, rich with the potential to refract just a tiny portion of incidental light and thereby alter the viewers’ perception of what they were seeing from moment to moment. Black was an optical trick, an illusion.

But the man on her couch was no illusion. Nina shivered as she leaned forward to dab at a fresh welling of blood, her trembling fingers almost dropping the crimson-stained towel.

He winced, his head rolling to the side, knocking her hand away, his eyes flicking open. It gave her an odd shock to see they weren’t the dark brown suggested by his swarthy colouring, but an extremely light blue, like floes of ice packing in around his shrinking pupils, and her heart accelerated unevenly in her chest.

‘Oh, it’s you,’ he said thickly, his voice as surly as his frown.

‘Who did you expect it to be?’ Nina resumed her dabbing. ‘Your guardian angel?’

‘I don’t believe in angels.’

Somehow she wasn’t surprised by the flat pronouncement. The faint tracery of laughter lines at the outer corners of his eyes suggested that he was capable of good-natured whimsy, but the cynical brackets that had appeared around his compressed mouth revealed a more dominating trait.

‘Then you shouldn’t tempt fate when God is flinging thunderbolts about,’ she told him. ‘You could have been badly injured.’

‘Tempting fate is what I do best,’ he murmured.

She wasn’t impressed. ‘Well, miracle man, you certainly came off second-best this time, didn’t you?’ she pointed out, removing the towel and carefully parting the matted hair at his temple.

He moaned at the slight pull on the edges of the open wound. ‘What are you doing?’ His head winced away from her on the cushion and he put a hand up to his forehead.

‘That falling tree gashed your scalp,’ she explained, wondering how much of the accident he actually remembered. ‘I’m cleaning it up so I can see how deep the cut is.’

He lowered his hand and stared at his stained fingertips. ‘I’m bleeding like a stuck pig,’ he groaned.

‘Scalp wounds are like that,’ she said bracingly. Men were such babies when it came to their physical hurts. ‘From what I can see, the cut’s shallow but it’s quite long. You may need a few stitches to hold it together.’

His eyes had fluttered closed. ‘Bitch!’ he muttered.

‘I was only offering an opinion.’ Nina tried not to take the insult personally. If his mind was suffering the lingering effects of a blow to his head, she couldn’t expect him to obey the usual rules of polite conversation. Perhaps his comment had been aimed at some other female who had suddenly flitted into his hazed brain. ‘I wasn’t threatening to darn you up myself. How are you feeling…apart from the head, I mean?’

‘You were copping a free feel a few minutes ago. You tell me,’ he said without opening his eyes.

She flushed at his raw imagery. So he had been fully cognisant all along…thank goodness she hadn’t lingered over her task! In the circumstances, it had been the practical thing to do, but it had still seemed uncomfortably intimate. Moulding the stranger’s muscles through his chilled clothes, she had found it impossible to remain as detached as she would have liked.

‘I was just checking to see whether you had any obvious broken bones,’ she defended herself. Since his eyes had been closed then, too, he couldn’t have possibly known her eyes had strayed where her touch had dared not….

‘I’m never obvious. Discretion is my middle name.’ He made it sound like a sinful accomplishment.

‘What’s your first?’

‘Hmm?’ His thick lashes rose to half-mast, showing a sliver of blue bemusement. ‘My first what? First woman?’

Nina felt a surprising kick of fury. She flicked back her heavy mane of wet hair in a gesture of haughty disdain. She didn’t know why he thought she might be interested in his sexual peccadilloes.

‘No—your first name. Who are you? My name is Nina—Nina Dowling,’ she repeated emphatically, anxious to extract a response before he lost the thread of the conversation again. ‘What’s yours? What are you doing in Puriri Bay? Is there someone who’s going to be worried if you don’t turn up?’

‘Nina?’ He seemed confused by her string of questions, unable to concentrate sufficiently to answer any of them. She placed a flat hand against his hard cheek and moved her face closer to his, silently demanding he give her his full attention. He blinked up into her worried green eyes, his pupils visibly expanding, melting the circles of blue ice to a silvery rim of frost. ‘Nina…’ His gaze sank to the tiny mole just above the neat pink bow of her mouth. ‘It’s you,’ he said in a tone of deep satisfaction.

Except for his lack of surliness, they were right back where they had started, Nina realised in exasperation. He was looking at her as if he expected congratulations for his simple act of recognition. ‘Yes, that’s right, it’s me, Nina—I just told you that. But who—are—you?’

She separated each word to stress the vital importance of the question.

‘Who am I?’ he repeated equally slowly, a disturbing blankness beginning to steal across his face, wiping it clean of all expression.

Her fingers tensed against his hard cheek, keenly aware of the strength—and the terrifying fragility—of the skull beneath the skin.

‘Don’t you know?’ she asked, trying not to let her panic leak into her voice.

His silence was echoed in his empty eyes, and her hand flew up to cover her appalled mouth.

‘Oh, God, you have no idea, do you?’ she said in a shattered whisper. ‘You can’t tell me who you are because you don’t even remember your own name!’

CHAPTER TWO

THE stranger’s eyelids drooped and Nina’s stomach hollowed with fear. Wasn’t excessive drowsiness supposed to be a bad sign? What if he lapsed into a coma?

‘Hey!’ She shook him by the shoulder, trying not to jar his head. ‘Open your eyes—you can’t go to sleep now!’

‘Why not? You planning on turfing me back out into the storm?’ he roused himself to challenge, still wearing the alarmingly vacant expression that persuaded her it would do little good to keep pressing him about his identity. At this point, it might even be dangerous to get him overagitated about his condition.

‘Of course not, but you could have a bit of concussion,’ she told him. She had been far too ready to assume that because he was walking and talking after the accident his injuries were superficial. But what if she was wrong? She, of all people, should know how unpredictable a seemingly minor bump on the head could be….

Unfortunately, as far as getting help was concerned, her options were severely limited. Emergency services were out; there were none on the island—not even a practising GP—and for the duration of the storm they were effectively cut off from the mainland. Even the rescue helicopter would be grounded. Ray had left her his key so she could dash over there and use his telephone, but she didn’t like the idea of having to leave the injured stranger alone in unfamiliar surroundings. Besides, whom would she call?

Who amongst her other close neighbours was likely to be useful? It was no use running off to beg help from someone who was just as ignorant as herself. But at this time of year the candidates were pathetically few.

Almost all of the houses in Puriri Bay were weekenders, and when the weather forecast had been so wretched, most of the owners would have flagged away their weekly pilgrimage to the island. During the winter, the neighbourhood was frequently reduced to a few hardy old-timers and some casual renters with whom Nina had only a nodding acquaintance.

But the Freemans were here! Her back straightened as she recalled seeing their distinctive, shiny green four-wheel drive roll off the ferry the previous day when she had walked over to the jetty to wave Ray off and pick up a mail-order package from the post-box at the store.

Although Nina didn’t know Dave Freeman particularly well herself—he was only an intermittent visitor to his bach—he was a long-time fishing buddy of Ray’s and she knew that he freely gave the older man advice on his arthritis. He was actually a psychiatrist, but shrinks were medical doctors in the first instance, weren’t they? Just because she had been stand-offish to him in the past was no reason to be reluctant to approach him now. While Shearwater Islanders were fiercely respectful of each other’s right to privacy—that was why the island was such a haven for social misfits—in a crisis their community spirit was invariably staunch.

She jumped up and found herself tethered to the couch by a hand that had shot out with surprising speed to fist in the saturated denim bagging around her knee.

‘Where are you going?’

‘Nowhere,’ she soothed, easing the bunched fabric out of his grasp, taken aback by the raw suspicion in his voice. ‘But I’ve just thought of someone who can give me some advice about that gash on your head.’ She raised her voice. ‘Zorro, come here!’

The little dog came trotting out of the kitchen, dragging the discarded soup bone that Nina had used to distract him from chewing on the stranger’s muddy shoes.

A faint, choking sound floated up from the couch. ‘You’re going to ask a dog for a medical opinion!’

His incredulous outrage sent a buzz of amusement humming through her veins, easing the pressure of her intense anxiety.

‘Unfortunately, he’s not licensed to practise.’ Nina removed the bone from the dog’s mouth and picked up the gnawed handle of an expensive fishing rod from the bookcase, holding it out for Zorro to sniff.

‘You know where you got this, don’t you, boy?’ she said encouragingly. ‘Dr Freeman—Dave—gave it to you after you kept stealing it off his back porch at Christmas. You take it along with you when Dave takes you and Ray out fishing on his boat, and he throws this in the water for you, doesn’t he?’

Nina was scribbling a brief line on a scrap of paper and taping it to the stumpy rod as she spoke. ‘You like playing fetch with Dave, don’t you?’ She mimed a throwing action and the terrier began to prance energetically. Nina crouched down and looked into the beady masked eyes as she placed the piece of rod firmly between his jaws. ‘I want you take this along to Dave’s place now. I want you to fetch—Dave! Understand?’

Zorro pricked up his ears, his whine mingling with a sleepy snort from the patient.

‘Of course he can’t understand—he’s a dog!’

Nina bristled in defence of her companion. ‘Zorro is extremely intelligent. He knows what I’m saying, don’t you, boy? You’re going to play fetch with Dave.’

The Jack Russell barked excitedly around the edges of the rod and took off at his customary velocity.

As his claws clicked across the kitchen floor, Nina remembered to call out, ‘Uh, Zorro, just don’t forget that the rod may not—’ There came a sharp rap and a pained whine, followed by a furious rattling and growling. ‘—fit crossways through the cat door.’ The fight sounds rose to a crescendo of frustrated snarls and Nina was about to dive to the rescue when there was a scraping pop and a series of muffled, triumphant yips diminishing into the distance.

‘Extremely intelligent, huh?’

Nina ran her hands through her wringing-wet hair, scooping it off her clammy neck. ‘He tends to leap before he looks sometimes, but even intelligent humans do that,’ she pointed out.

‘You really expect him to do it?’ he wondered.

Rather than following the upward movement of her arms, the blue eyes had drifted in the opposite direction. Nina looked down to see her drenched sweatshirt plastered to her uplifted breasts, shaping their modest fullness and explicitly revealing her lack of a bra. She hastily plucked the wrinkled fabric away from her unpleasantly chilled skin. ‘I know he will. Zorro’s very dedicated when he thinks he’s on a mission,’ she said more confidently than she actually felt. She wouldn’t relish going back out into the storm herself. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to get into some dry clothes.’

‘Don’t bother on my account.’

His mocking drawl made her cold nipples tingle with embarrassment. She had taken her body for granted for so long that it was a shock to find it responsive to a casual male comment, particularly in such inappropriate circumstances.

‘Just keep that towel pressed against your head until I get back!’

She would have liked to have a shower, but the thought of standing naked under a steamy flow of water with the silver-eyed stranger just the other side of the wall made her insides turn over. Instead, she managed to change top and bottom without ever being completely nude, towelling herself roughly and pulling on dry underwear, including a sturdy white cotton bra, woollen stretch pants and a roomy checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She blotted her hair and rubbed it with a towel before fastening it high on her head in a loose ponytail that would enable it to dry naturally without getting totally out of control.

She needn’t have worried about her unexpected guest wandering in on her shower. When she returned to the lounge after dumping her wet clothes in the laundry tub, he was still lying on the couch in exactly the same position, eyes closed, towel obediently clamped to his temple.

She felt a brief tremor of uncertainty at his stillness but relaxed when she picked up the steady rise and fall of his chest. The battering gusts of wind and roaring barrage of rain on the iron roof masked her movements as she quietly picked up his bunched coat from the floor, surprised at its weight, the musty smell of wet wool clogging her nostrils as she carried it into the bathroom and draped it over the curtain rail of the shower.

Turning to leave, she hesitated, then, feeling guilty, explored each of the pockets in turn. She found no wallet, but in one of the deep side pockets she found a bunch of keys, and from the breast pocket in the grey silk lining she drew out an elegant silver cigarette lighter, sculpted in voluptuous lines that stressed art over pure functionality.

It was agreeably heavy, fitting perfectly in the hollow of her hand, the smooth metal cool to the touch as it rested on her open palm. Her fingers closed possessively around the curving shape and she battled an unexpectedly compelling urge to slip it into her own pocket.

Appalled by her unaccustomed craving, Nina hurried out to rid herself of the temptation, dropping the keys quietly onto the table by the couch and placing the cigarette lighter carefully beside it.

She glanced over at the recumbent figure as she did so and her heart jerked in her chest as she found him quietly watching her, his narrowed blue eyes moving between the articles on the table and the naked oval of her face.

She moistened her dry lips. ‘Uh, I emptied the pockets of your coat so I could hang it up to dry,’ she explained, inwardly squirming at the lie. ‘I found these….’

As her fingers reluctantly withdrew from the seductive contours of the lighter, her thumb smoothed over a slight roughness in the casing. It could have been the jeweller’s mark, but Nina knew with a hitch in her breathing that it wasn’t a silver stamp the sensitive pad of her thumb was identifying. Sure enough, when she tilted it to the light, she found herself looking down at a brief inscription in flowing letters, too small to read at arm’s length.

‘What’s the matter?’ In spite of his air of exhausted confusion, he was alert enough to notice her subtle change of expression.

‘There’s an engraving…’ she began, torn between her intense curiosity and the need to deny the powerful allure of the silver talisman.

‘Is there?’ No spark of enlightenment ignited his gaze. ‘Well—what does it say?’ he prompted, struggling up on one elbow as the seconds ticked by and she made no attempt to read the tiny inscription.

She bit her lip as she held it up, her dark lashes fanning down like sable brushes over her troubled green eyes, painting out his view of their expression.

“‘For Ryan, the bright foreigner in my life,’” she read, and frowned as she tried to make sense of the cryptic words, grappling with an elusive sense of familiarity. The inscription was put there by a woman, she was sure, but its meaning continued to lie stubbornly just beyond her comprehension.

‘What does it mean? Foreigner in what way? Do you think it means that you’re not a New Zealander?’

She was aware of him slumping back against the cushion. ‘I have no idea,’ he murmured, his voice so flat with disappointment that she knew he spoke the absolute truth.

But at least she now had one clue as to his identity. ‘Ryan…’ She tested it out on her tongue, hoping the sound of it might trigger his memory. ‘Ryan must be your first name—does it ring any bells?’

‘I…my head…’

‘Is it hurting more?’

She broke off, relieved by the thumping on the back door, which heralded the arrival of an oilskin-clad Dave Freeman with a rather subdued-looking dog tucked under one arm and a briefcase under the other.

‘Oh, God, Dr Freeman—what happened!’ she gasped.

‘I thought that was my line,’ he said, smiling wryly, handing Zorro over as the wind whisked the door out of Nina’s hand and slammed it shut with a violent bang behind them. ‘He’s okay. He just got bowled over by the wind when he jumped out of the Range Rover. It’s only his pride that’s hurt,’ he explained.

‘Good boy, Zorro!’ Nina praised him extravagantly as she put him down on his wobbly legs and patted his wet head. She was so grateful that he had fulfilled his urgent commission that she didn’t even chide him when he shook himself violently, splattering muddy water over her stretch pants. ‘I was a bit worried that with the racket going on outside you might not hear him barking,’ she admitted.

‘We didn’t at first, not until he jumped up onto the front deck and attacked the French doors. Persistent little beggar, isn’t he? I know he’s not too keen on storms, so I figured that it wasn’t his idea to play fetch in the middle of a gale!’

‘I’m sorry to drag you out on such a filthy night,’ Nina said anxiously as her visitor briskly shouldered out of his hooded coat and hung it on the back of the door, ‘but I couldn’t think of what else to do.’

She hastily explained what had happened while Dave Freeman washed his hands at the kitchen sink. He was not much taller than her, but broad and stocky, still physically vigorous in his mid-fifties. With his balding grey head, chubby round face and neat silver beard, he had the look of a kindly teddy bear, but Nina had always found his rock-steady brown gaze uncomfortably penetrating.

Now, she was grateful for their unwavering calmness as she recounted her tale.

‘His clothes are a bit damp, but I didn’t like to move him around too much while his head was bleeding. He seems to have no idea who he is and that made me worry that he might have some kind of skull fracture or something.’

He dried his hands on the clean towel she handed him from the airing cupboard.

‘Well, there’s not an awful lot we could do about that right now except keep him under observation until the weather clears enough to get him to a hospital,’ he said gravely. ‘But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. The worst-case scenario is often the least likely.’

He opened his briefcase and took out a stethoscope, his gravity lightening when he saw Nina’s expression of ill-disguised relief.

‘It’s not exactly the traditional black bag, but I always carry a very well-equipped first-aid kit around with me.’ He looped the stethoscope around his neck and patted it against his chest. ‘My badge of office—reassurance to the patient I’m not just any port in a storm—even though in this case it’s literally true. Do you think I look enough like a real doctor?’

‘But I thought…That is, you are one, aren’t you?’ Nina said, disconcerted by his flippancy.

‘Quite. So you can safely leave your injured stranger in my hands. I promise I’ll give him a thorough going-over.’

‘Oh, yes, of course.’ She was flustered as she realised he was gently suggesting that he preferred to conduct his examination alone. ‘He’s through here on the couch, Doctor—although you can use one of the spare bedrooms if you want to be more private.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Tell me what’s really bothering you.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, I mean this place?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No, leave the light on!’

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

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

‘I won’t be far away—’

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

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

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

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

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

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

Another coaxing tug on her wrist was accompanied by a persuasive whisper of pain. ‘Please, I don’t know what’s happening to me, but I can’t bear to be alone right now.’

The ache in his voice resonated in her empty heart, and without allowing herself to think any more about the wisdom of what she was doing, Nina sank onto the bed, sliding her strangely weighted legs down under the covers and resting her weary head on the cool pillow.

She lay on her side facing the room, as close to the edge of the bed as possible, but the dip in the soft mattress caused by the weight of the body behind her inevitably caused her to tip back towards the middle of the bed.

‘Thank you…’ he sighed, his warm breath tickling the back of her ear. His arm closed around her waist, drawing her back against his chest, the hot-water bottle trapped between them preserving the illusion of distance, its healing warmth melting the stiffness in Nina’s lower back.

His knees butted into the back of her thighs, pushing them up into a relaxed curl, one bare foot tucking casually between her ankles. She could feel the rise and fall of his chest against her curved spine, the thud of his heart kicking into her shoulder-blade. Already his shivers were dying away as his face nuzzled into the thick waves tumbling down her back.

‘Your hair is different,’ he muttered.

He had only seen her looking like a frizzy drowned rat; Nina wished that was something that he would forget.

‘I brushed it dry in front of the fire.’ She had deliberately spun out the soothing task as a way of distracting herself from nature’s destructive claws raking relentlessly at the house.

Now the raw fury of the storm didn’t sound quite so frightening. Although she was the one supposedly offering comfort, she had discovered an unrecognised need in herself. How long had it been since she had lingered in the security of a warm human embrace? Karl was too self-absorbed to offer much in the way of comforting hugs and Nina had been so busy proving her independence that she had forgotten what it felt like to share the burden of a fear. She even found that she could now admit it out loud.

‘I hate storms like this…especially when there’s thunder and lightning, as well—they just terrify me.’ She shuddered, the image of those death bolts slamming out of the boiling sky burned into her retina.

His arm tightened, his palm sliding farther under the curve of her ribs. ‘I know, but you came out to help me anyway. That was brave.’

It had been fear, not bravery, that had driven her out into the storm—fear for him. ‘How did you know I hate storms?’

There was no answer, and for a moment she wondered whether he had drifted back to sleep, but the quickening of his heartbeat suggested otherwise.

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