Just Once
Susan Napier

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

‘WHAT the hell do you want?’

Kate Crawford kept the polite smile pinned to her lips as she confronted the man who had wrenched his front door open with an impatient snarl.

Framed in the doorway he appeared intimidatingly large, his broad shoulders and muscled chest straining the seams of a well-worn grey tee shirt, scruffy blue jeans encasing his long, power-packed legs. His short-cropped hair stood up in untidy spikes, as if he had been running his large, battered hands through the dark brown thicket, and his deeply tanned face was chiselled into tight angles of hostility.

In spite of his obvious bad temper he was devastatingly handsome, a potent combination of classic male beauty and simmering testosterone. In fact, he looked more like a professional athlete than a best-selling author who spent a good portion of his time sitting at a desk.

‘Sorry to disturb you, but I wondered if I could borrow some sugar?’ she said, lifting up her empty cup and watching the shock that had rippled across his sculpted features congeal into a shuttered wariness. She was suddenly glad that she was wearing a casual sundress rather than the tailored elegance that was her signature in the city. The last thing she wanted to do was look as if she had dressed to impress. She hadn’t even bothered with make-up. After all, she was now officially in holiday mode—the old-fashioned, do-for-yourself, bucket-and-spade, sand-in-the-sandwiches type of holiday, the kind that she had never had as a child.

‘I’ve just moved in next door,’ she explained pleasantly, affecting not to notice his stony silence as she waved her free hand towards the beach-front property on the other side of the low, neatly clipped boundary hedge—a small, ageing wooden bungalow, which was dwarfed by the modern, two-storeyed, architect-designed houses that had sprouted up on the two adjoining sections.

‘I’m renting the place for a month, and thought I’d brought everything I needed with me, but when I went to make myself a cup of coffee I realised I’d forgotten one of the basics,’ she continued with a rueful lift of her slender shoulders. ‘I know there’s a general store a few kilometres back but, well…I’ve just spent four hours driving down here from Auckland and I’d rather avoid having to get back in the car for a while. So, if you wouldn’t mind tiding me over until tomorrow, I’d appreciate it; and of course I’ll pay you back in kind…’

She kept her voice steady, confident that she looked a lot more composed than she felt. Although she was only a little taller than average, the willowy curves, elegant bone structure and haughty facial features that Kate had inherited from her undemonstrative mother helped project an air of cool sophistication and graceful poise, regardless of her inner turmoil. It had never mattered to her mother if the serenity on display was only skin deep. Strong emotions were ruinous to logical thought processes, and therefore to be discouraged. An ambitious criminal lawyer determined to be the youngest woman appointed to New Zealand’s judicial bench, Jane Crawford had wanted her daughter to follow in her footsteps, but Kate had proved a severe disappointment on all fronts. A gentle and imaginative child, she had worked hard at school for only average results and had acquired neither the academic credentials nor the desire to compete with her brilliant, perfectionist mother. In quiet rebellion she had chosen to follow a totally different career path, one that had proved unexpectedly successful and wholly satisfying.

However, at times like this she was thankful for those chilly early lessons in rejection—they had built up her emotional independence and equipped her to face scathing criticism and hurtful rebuffs with a calm resilience that frustrated her opponents.

If she had been relying on the world-famous author to play the gallant hero to her damsel-in-distress routine she had obviously chosen the wrong man, she thought wryly. As a storyteller, his speciality was constructing tough, gritty, anti-heroes who were rude, crude and lethal to know—literally so where female characters were concerned. His creations, much like the man himself, were usually loners, alienated from society by their cynical mistrust of their fellow human beings and stubborn refusal to play by the rules.

Now that he had mastered his initial shock, the gorgeous, dark brown eyes were smouldering at Kate with angry suspicion.

No one was supposed to know where Drake Daniels sequestered himself to write his hugely successful thrillers. He lived mostly out of hotel rooms when he wasn’t writing—partying up a storm, generating all the publicity his publisher could wish for on a merry-go-round of talk-shows, book-signings and festivals and special events—ostensibly enjoying his peripatetic lifestyle to the full. But sandwiched between the bouts of public hyperactivity were intervals of total anonymity. Every now and then he would drop out of sight for periods ranging from a few weeks to several months, and each year there would be a new novel on the shelves to delight his fans and confound his critics. To Kate’s frustration, a lot of the readily available information about him had turned out to be cleverly placed disinformation. Even his publisher and agent had claimed not to be privy to where in his native New Zealand his private bolt-hole was located. It had taken a great deal of determination, cunning and several strokes of unbelievable luck to finally track him down to the sleepy fishing and farming community of Oyster Beach, tucked away on the east coast of the upper Coromandel Peninsula.

Kate raised her delicately arched brows along with the proffered cup in a gentle hint that she was still waiting for his response, but just as he seemed about to break his stony silence her complacency was shattered by the sound of a throaty feminine voice floating out from the cavernous hall behind him.

‘Who is it, darling?’

Kate barely had time to glimpse the tall, voluptuous redhead in a short white towelling robe before the tall masculine figure turned away, blocking her view with his broad shoulders.

‘Nobody.’ As he spoke he kicked the door closed with his heel, leaving Kate blinking at the honey-gold panels of oiled timber.

For a moment she merely stood, stunned by his insulting dismissal, the blood thundering in her ears. Then she forced herself to walk away, her stomach churning like a washing machine.

Get over it. Move on.

She had done what she came to do. Fired the first shot in her personal little war. There was an old saying that a man surprised was half beaten, so by that measure she could consider herself well on the way to success. But now that she had sacrificed the element of surprise she needed to regroup her defences.

Her flimsy sandals crunched on the crushed-shell path as she retraced her steps along the side of the house with measured strides, resisting the urge to disappear in a cowardly short cut over the low hedge.

The few metres of sandy lawn between the sprawling rear deck of the house and the public beach seemed to take for ever to traverse, but Kate maintained her unhurried pace, acutely conscious of the burnished bank of tinted windows that angled around the back of the house on both upper and lower floors, affording the occupants a clear view of the three-kilometre beach as far as the mouth of the tidal estuary.

Were they watching her retreat, or had they already returned to whatever it was they had been doing before the unexpected interruption? The desire to look back over her shoulder was almost overwhelming, and it took an effort of will for Kate to cling to her feigned air of indifference.

As she reached the lip of the beach a slight, salty breeze riffled through her sun-streaked, caramel-brown hair, sending a few of the long, layered strands feathering across her slender throat. She paused to brush them back, tunnelling her hand under the rest of the silky-straight mass and flipping it free from the textured cotton bodice of her sundress to ripple down between her tense shoulder blades, welcoming the fan of air against the self-conscious burning at the nape of her neck. Her blue eyes narrowed against the splinters of late-afternoon sunlight reflecting off the shifting sea as she tried to gulp in some much-needed oxygen and ease the tightness in her chest. Boats rocked gently at their moorings out in the sheltered bay and, even though it was a glorious spring day and the tide was fully in, the narrow strip of beach was all but empty.

Oyster Beach was only just being discovered by the eager developers who had swallowed up large tracts of coastal land farther south and regurgitated them as fashionable beach resorts. With Auckland only a few hours’ drive away, the cove was being promoted as the latest ‘unspoiled’ getaway for jaded city dwellers. Expensive new holiday houses sporting double garages and en suite bathrooms were starting to muscle in on the simple beaches and old-style family homes on their large, flat water-front sections and up in the sheltering hills ‘lifestyle blocks’ were being shaved off the fringes of productive farmland.

At present the permanent local population was only a few hundred, but that number ballooned to thousands over Christmas and New Year when the schools were out for the long summer break and the pressure on holiday accommodation and facilities was intense. Kate knew that her timing had been serendipitous because November was exam-time at New Zealand high schools and universities. If she had been a few weeks later she would have had little chance of finding anywhere in Oyster Beach for rent, let alone right next door to her quarry. Even the local camping ground was booked out several months in advance for the height of the summer.

At any other time Kate might have been inclined to linger and drink in the tranquillity of the scene in front of her, but at the moment all she could think about was making it back to the sanctuary of her temporary home.

Half-buried boulders wrapped in plastic netting shored up the grass bank at the edge of the beach, protecting the valuable, low-lying land along the foreshore from being eaten away by storm surges. Kate stumbled as she made the short jump down onto the powdery white sand and discovered that her knees were seriously wobbly. Her hands and feet felt cold and heavy at the end of her limbs and her ears had started to ring. She was, she realised with grim awareness of the irony, suffering some of the classic effects of shock—although she had been the one supposedly delivering the jolt!

She stepped back up onto the coarse, springy grass on her side of the hedge and huffed a sigh of relief when her shaky legs proved equal to the task. Moving a little more quickly, she sought the shadow of the creaking verandah and slipped in through the sliding glass door that she had left open to the fresh air.

‘Gee, that went really well,’ she muttered to the empty house, her fingers whitening around the empty cup as she relived those awful moments of hot humiliation when the door had slammed shut in her face. She had been tempted to storm off vowing never to speak to him again, but she was a mature, twenty-seven-year-old woman, not a sulky, self-absorbed teenager. She had questions to ask and a responsibility to uphold and, as her mother was so fond of telling her, failure was not a viable option!

She put the cup down on the kitchen table and flexed her angry fingers. Realistically speaking, what else had she expected? Drake Daniels had a reputation for freezing off people who became importuning and she had just doorstepped him like a crazed fan, or member of the despised paparazzi. Given his reclusive work habits, she should consider herself lucky that he had opened the door at all.

On the bright side, at least she now had confirmation that she was in the right place at the right time. When she had put her money down for the holiday rental she had been acting as much on gut instinct as on the elusive facts, although her instincts had certainly led her astray in one important aspect: she had not expected to have to cope with a mystery redhead as well as an angry author. Naively, perhaps, she had believed the myth that he crafted his compelling stories in total seclusion.

But that was what she had come here for, wasn’t it? To separate the man from the myth? To explore his true character, not just the parts of him that he wanted people to see. Even if it was a truth she found hard to stomach.

She had to get a grip on herself, and not jump to hasty conclusions. Perhaps the woman was a visiting relative, although her research hadn’t turned up any mention of living family members.

The slippery coils of nervous tension that had been shifting in her belly all day suddenly tightened, and a rush of saliva into her dry mouth gave Kate just enough warning to make it into the roomy, old-fashioned bathroom before vomiting up the small salad roll that she had made herself eat at a roadside café on the drive down. So much for thinking that it would calm her uneasy digestion!

Kate rinsed the sourness out of her mouth at the basin and dabbed a little refreshing cold water onto her face, dewing her cheeks. Without make-up to emphasis her ghostly silver-blue eyes and narrow mouth she should have looked pallid and uninteresting, but the age-spotted mirror above the basin was reassuring. One of the few positive legacies she had inherited from her irresponsible, absentee father was a honey-gold complexion that only needed a slight touch of the sun to deepen to a tawny glow. New Zealand was experiencing an unseasonably hot spring, and the meteorologists were predicting more of the same warm, dry weather in the coming weeks, so, if this holiday proved a disastrous mistake in every other way, at least she could return home with a tan that would be the envy of her work-bound housemates, Kate thought wryly.

She flicked her layered fringe aside from its central parting, smoothing it down from her temples to rest alongside the high cheekbones that gave her pale eyes their faintly feline tilt. She accepted that she wasn’t beautiful, like her glacial blonde mother, but her sharply etched features were nicely symmetrical, and some men found her unusual eye colour attractive rather than off-putting. Her smile was her secret weapon; when genuine it bestowed a warmth that vanquished the natural aloofness of her expression. She practised it now, to give her wavering spirits a cheerful boost. If you look confident, you’ll act confident, was another of her mother’s bracing maxims, along with aggressive creed, Don’t get mad, get even!

Purged of her energy-sapping queasiness, Kate suddenly found herself feeling peckish. She fossicked amongst the fresh supplies she had unloaded into the fridge and ate a pottle of yoghurt and some hummus and rice crackers while she waited at the bench for the electric kettle to boil. As she tried to keep her mind from fretting over her next move her gaze swept around the clean but shabby, open-plan kitchen, a far cry from the upscale, central Auckland town house she shared with her friend Sara, and Sara’s cousin Josh. The appliances here were all basic models, functional rather than stylish, probably installed when the house was built. The green clocked wallpaper, faded Formica bench and patterned vinyl flooring looked original, too, but what would have seemed highly trendy three decades ago were now sadly dated. She had barely given herself time to unpack before she had trotted out on her abortive begging expedition, but her impression was that the whole place could do with a facelift. The three-bedroom weatherboard house was well-maintained but there was no sign of any attempt at expansion or renovation over the years, and Kate guessed that its present owner had inherited or bought it with the intention of keeping it as a landbank.

The kettle burbled and Kate occupied herself with the mundane task of making a cup of tea. She discarded the sodden tea bag in the sink and added a splash of milk, stirring it in with unnecessary force as her thoughts returned to the complicated tangle her life had become. Choices that had once seemed clear and simple were now fraught with danger, she thought, staring out the kitchen window at the gnarled pohutukawa tree whose grey-green leaves blocked out the concrete palace that was in the final stages of completion on the other side of the chain-link fence. She hoped that she wasn’t about to get strangled in the web of deceit she had been busily weaving.

She raised the steaming cup to her lips for her first sip when a sudden, intangible sizzle of tension in the air made her stiffen. She jerked around, her heart leaping up into her throat as she realised she was no longer alone.

Standing silently in the arched opening between the kitchen and the living room, looking no more friendly than he had a few minutes earlier, was Drake Daniels.

She hoped he put her little choke of dismay down to the hot tea that had spilled onto her fingers. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she demanded, switching hands to shake off the burning droplets, disgusted to hear that her voice was high and breathless rather than cool and clipped.

‘The door was open,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of the verandah. ‘I took it to mean that you were expecting me to follow you…’

‘It’s open because the house is hot and stuffy,’ she snapped. She knew she should play it cool, but the sarcastic words came spilling from her lips before she could stop them: ‘What the hell do you want?’

His dark eyes glinted. He placed a small plastic container down on the Formica table, centring it with a mocking precision. ‘I brought you the sugar you said you needed.’

‘Oh.’ Kate hugged her tea defensively to her chest as she wrestled with her conscience. ‘Thank you,’ she said begrudgingly, knowing full well that his meekness was a sham.

Sure enough, as soon as she had humbled herself, he unsheathed his sword.

‘So, tell me: are you going to leave when you find out you’re wasting your time here? Or is it going to take men in white coats and a restraining order to get rid of you?

‘Are you stalking me?’

CHAPTER TWO

‘STALKING you?’ Kate widened her eyes in amused disbelief. ‘You do fancy yourself, don’t you?’

Her teasing tone made Drake’s mouth thin. ‘Stop playing games, Katherine,’ he growled. ‘How did you find me?’

She sipped her tea and mused on the question. ‘I’ve always found you to be borderline paranoiac, and now it looks like you’ve inched over the line. Maybe the men in white coats should be coming for you…’

‘Very witty—and very evasive.’

She might have known that he’d notice. Words were his business, his strength and his talent…interpreting nuances and assigning subtle layers of meaning to every line of dialogue and paragraph of prose. He would tie her up in verbal knots if she let him. Her best chance was to make simple statements that could be neither proved nor disproved, and then just stick to her guns. Or better still, say nothing at all.

‘You’re surely not going to claim that it’s just pure coincidence that you turned up on my doorstep?’ he accused, taking an aggressive stance, legs astride, hands fisting on his hips, a poster-boy for one of his disaffected heroes. ‘What’s going on, Katherine?’

A tremor of weakness shimmered through her bones. Oh, if only you knew! She looked into his moody countenance and felt the familiar, powerfully seductive tug of physical attraction that was the source of all her current turmoil. She still found it amazing that such a bold, passionate and charismatic man had reacted with such intensity to her ordinary, unremarkable self. That it had also taken him by surprise was evident from his hypersensitivity to any hint of possessiveness, and his thinly veiled restlessness whenever they had been together for any length of time. Sophistication had been the name of the game, and for a while she had actually carried it off.

She caught herself up before she could begin to wallow in bittersweet memories, her determination hardening. Oh, no, she wasn’t going to let herself fall back into that trap! She was no longer that woman—willing to pander to his genius at the expense of her own needs and goals.

‘What’s going on is that I’m taking a long-overdue holiday,’ she said firmly. ‘I’ve accrued so much extra leave over the past two years that my boss was forced to point out a clause in my contract that says I have until next month to use it or lose it—’

‘Marcus?’ he interrupted sharply, latching onto the notion that his New Zealand publisher was involved. His eyes kindled with fury at the treachery. ‘Enright sent you to find me?’

‘Nobody sent me to find you—Marcus has no idea where I am,’ she insisted with perfect truth. Her reputation as a dedicated employee who could always be relied upon to work above and beyond the call of duty to support good client liaisons had taken a knock with her abrupt decision to take all the accumulated weeks owing on such short notice, and it had dived even further when she had rejected Marcus’s belated offer of a compensatory bonus if she sacrificed the accrual. Enright Media was a very tightly run ship, and it had entailed a lot of fast juggling of favours to get others to take on her responsibilities as well as their own while she was away, but as a researcher she was in a good position to know where the bodies were buried, and how and on whom to apply pressure. A disgruntled Marcus had been forced to concede that he had no legal grounds for insisting she break up her holiday allowance into smaller units, particularly as it meant she would be on deck over Christmas, when staff with young families were clamouring to jump ship.

‘I told you, I’m on a holiday. That’s when normal people take a break from their workaday lives to rest, travel or zonk out on a beach somewhere.’

‘And you expect me to believe that of all the holiday homes in all the beach resorts in all the world, you walk into this one?’ he demanded, his deep, velvet-smooth voice steeped in sarcasm.

The paraphrase of the famous line from Casablanca struck a painful chord. It had been Kate’s ability to recognise quotes from old movies and obscure film noir classics that had captured his attention two years ago, when they had met at one of Marcus’ champagne-drenched book-launch parties. They had spent the early part of the evening trading one-liners, Drake’s fierce competitiveness challenged by her phenomenal memory for trivia and cool capacity to carry a bluff. Their feuding banter had become increasingly provocative as the night had worn on and Kate had shocked everyone, herself included, by leaving on his arm.

‘Coincidences do happen,’ she pointed out, relaxing deliberately back against the bench and taking another sip of her tea.

His handsome face rearranged itself into sharp angles of contempt. ‘If I tried to use that tired old cliché in a book it would be laughed off the shelves.’

‘Which is why they say that truth is stranger than fiction,’ she said lightly, regarding him over the rim of the chunky mug. For once she almost felt in control of the relationship as she watched him vibrate with frustration. She was aware of a repressed violence in his nature, but for all his physicality she had never felt threatened by his considerable strength. At thirty-three, he had the maturity and experience to handle his inner demons. Whenever he exploded, it was with clever words rather than crude muscle.

‘The strange truth being that less than four weeks after I leave Auckland you “just happen” to choose Oyster Beach for a sudden holiday and then you “just happen” to rent the place next door to mine?’

‘Well, gee, I don’t usually bother to check out the ownership of neighbouring properties wherever I go, to make sure I’m not inadvertently going to intrude on your precious privacy,’ she said, matching him for sarcasm.

His eyes narrowed as he pounced on the perceived slip. ‘Then how do you know I’m the owner?’

‘The rabid territorialism you’re displaying is a dead give away,’ she said drily. ‘Given your reclusive writing habits and erratic timetable, I doubt that you’d feel comfortable working anywhere but your own space. Someplace where you can come and go at will without attracting notice. And it’s not as if there’s a big choice of long-term rentals if you want something right on the beach…or so the travel agent told me,’ she added swiftly.

‘So how did you find out about this one?’ He jerked his beard-roughened jaw at their surroundings. ‘Internet? Newspaper ad?’

She almost agreed before she saw the potential trap. For all she knew the rental had never been actively advertised.

‘Serendipity?’ She smiled limpidly. ‘I read a magazine story about some people who camp at Oyster Beach every Christmas, and then asked around. I am a researcher, you know.’

His jaw tightened. ‘And something of an actress, too. You didn’t even show a blink of surprise when I opened my door; almost as if you were expecting to see me. Yet you appeared not to recognise me.’

‘I was shocked,’ she said truthfully. The little electric pulses that zipped through her veins every time she saw him had intensified rather than faded with time. Her hyper-awareness was simultaneously exciting and inhibiting.

‘So you just went ahead and trotted out your cheerful little spiel as blandly as if I was someone you’d never met before rather than the man you’ve been sleeping with for the past two years.’

Colour touched her haughty cheekbones. ‘We’ve never actually slept together,’ she corrected him with a crisp exactitude that would have made her mother proud. ‘And in the rather awkward circumstances, I thought you would prefer me not to presume on our relationship—’

‘Presume?’ he echoed incredulously, dropping his hands from his hips. ‘Am I really that much of a ogre?’

‘Quite frankly, yes,’ she punctured his scornful amusement. ‘You made it very clear from the very beginning that there are situations and subjects which are strictly off limits between us—’

‘I thought that was a mutual arrangement,’ he cut in roughly. ‘We’re two very independent people, and, as I remember it, you’re the one who’s uncomfortable with the idea of us sleeping together. You never want to stay in my hotel room and you’ve certainly never invited me to spend the night at your house…’

Behind her back, Kate’s hand gripped the sharp edge of the bench, using the small, cutting pain in her palm as a means of controlling the larger pain. Did he think that she hadn’t been aware of the conflicting signals he had given out in those first few weeks? The reckless rush of passion that had precipitated them into an unlikely affair had caught them both off guard. Drake had been between books at the time and making the most of his freedom, and Kate had thought that once he plunged back into his creative cycle his interest would inevitably wane. Not having his experience in the etiquette of conducting casual romantic liaisons, Kate had quietly taken her cues from him. She had seen the way he shied away from gushing, clingy women, had noticed that, although he had a large circle of acquaintances, he had few real friends. He was quick to charm but slow to trust, so she had been very careful never to step over the invisible boundaries that his own behaviour had marked out, or to demand more than she was certain he was prepared to give. The reward for her restraint had been to hold his interest far beyond the usual few months his well-publicised affairs generally lasted. The price of loving Drake Daniels, she had discovered, was not to love him.

She smothered the hot words of protest that tingled on her tongue.

‘We’re getting off the point—’

‘And what is the point?’ He cocked his head. ‘Oh, yes, that’s right—your ridiculous pretence not to know me just now.’

If that wasn’t the pot calling the kettle black!

‘Maybe I was simply scared you might jump to the arrogant conclusion that I had followed you down here, and accuse me of stalking you! A normal person might shrug it off as just one of life’s little amusing quirks, but with you there’s no assumption of innocence; no, “Hi, Kate, great to see you—what on earth are you doing in this neck of the woods?” Your paranoid obsession has to build it into some big conspiracy theory centred solely around yourself.’

Temper kicked up a brooding storm in his eyes as he realised she had deftly outmanoeuvred him. ‘That was what you meant by “rather awkward circumstances”?’

She hesitated, and lightning comprehension flashed in the storm-dark eyes. ‘Ah…I suppose that was a reference to my being with Melissa…?’

Kate cursed herself for giving him the opportunity to torture her with more self-doubts. She was not going to betray the slightest interest in his half-naked companion.

She tilted her chin and gave him a coolly uncomprehending look. ‘I meant the fact that I know you hate any interruptions while you’re writing—’ Except by the mysterious Melissa, an evil voice whispered in her ear. ‘But if nobody knows where you are, I don’t see how they can be expected to know which places to avoid. Perhaps if you were less secretive you might find out that people actually want to avoid you.’

‘If you want to avoid me, Katherine, there’s an easy solution. Pack up and go elsewhere for your holiday. If the rent isn’t refundable I’ll reimburse you. Hell, I’ll even book you in at a five-star resort somewhere.’

Anywhere but here—he really was desperate to get rid of her! Kate smiled through a thin red veil of rage. ‘Thank you, but I’ve never accepted expensive gifts from you before, and I don’t intend to start now. I’ve already settled in and I’m quite happy with my choice,’ she said, safe in the knowledge her bulging suitcases and bags were hidden behind the closed door of the master bedroom, where she had flung them before hurrying next door. She strolled over to sit down at the table with her tea, letting him know that she was unworried by his looming presence. ‘I’m looking forward to being able to step out of the house straight onto the beach every day…’

‘That’s if it stays fine. You’re a city girl, you’ll get bored here by yourself. There’s nothing for you to do if the weather turns—no shops, no cafés or restaurants, no entertainment—’

‘Luckily I brought along my own brain,’ she said drily, ‘an essential accessory for the modern single woman. I’m sure I’ll be able to keep myself amused. And I doubt the rest of the local community will be as standoffish as you. Perhaps I’ll meet a handsome young fisherman who’ll offer to show me the sights,’ she added flippantly.

A muscle flickered alongside his compressed mouth. His restless eyes fell to her cup and his dark brows formed a straight line. He sniffed the air like a hound on a fresh scent. ‘Is that tea? I thought you said that you were making coffee.’

Her stomach gave a commemorative lurch as another lie come home to roost. ‘I changed my mind.’

‘I didn’t know you drank tea.’ He frowned.

‘There’s a lot you evidently don’t know about me,’ she pointed out.

‘So it would seem.’ His gaze shifted to her face and subjected her to a darkly probing look. ‘Well, since I brought you the sugar, perhaps you could offer me a cup?’

She barely stopped her mouth from falling open. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘But not tea—I’d rather have coffee.’ He began to prowl around the kitchen. ‘Where are your beans?’ He opened the fridge to inspect the shelves. ‘God, this all looks depressingly healthy—where’s all those lovely, full-fat soft cheeses you’re so addicted to…and there’s no wine, or stash of chocolate. Prunes? Who takes prunes on holiday? Don’t tell me you’re on one of those new faddy diets you said your mother is always suggesting you take. What is it this time—South Pacific Colon? Kidney-cleansing Vegan?’ He closed the fridge and headed for the pantry.

‘Do you mind?’ Kate got there first and whipped out the small jar of coffee, pushing it into his chest before he could see the full container of sugar that had been sitting behind it. She shut the cupboard and stood in front of it with folded arms.

‘Instant?’ He looked pained as he cupped the jar in his big hands. ‘What about fresh ground?’

‘It’s all I’ve got. Take it or leave it,’ she said tartly. At home she had always made sure she had the blend of beans he liked and had taken pains to brew it to his personal taste.

‘What in the hell is this? “Decaffeinated?”’ he read off the label, as outraged as if he had discovered her keeping a dead body in the pantry.

‘It’s gentler on the stomach.’

‘That’s a contradiction in terms; coffee is supposed to kick you like a mule. Is this part of the new diet—some form of aversion therapy?’

‘Well, it certainly seems to be working so far,’ she muttered, glaring at him in dislike.

His dark head jerked up, eyebrows notching. How could a man who wrote such thrilling, emotionally dense prose be such a blind, insensitive swine? Kate could feel delayed reaction biting deep into her fragile self-control. Next thing he would be wanting her to invite his flame-haired companion over for a bonding drink!

‘So I take it you won’t be staying for that drink after all?’ she said smoothly, sitting back down to her steaming brew.

Still holding her gaze, he unscrewed the lid of the jar, broke the new seal and inhaled the aroma, wrinkling his patrician nose.

‘I suppose your tea is decaffeinated too?’

Her hands curled possessively around the mug, drawing it towards her. ‘No. But I didn’t make a pot, I just used an ordinary tea bag.’

His snobbish palate ignored the blatant discouragement. ‘Well, I suppose that’ll have to do, then.’ She watched in dismay while he snagged a mug from the row of hooks under the cupboards and dropped in one of the tea bags from the open cardboard box on the counter.

‘Make yourself at home,’ she commented sarcastically as he re-boiled the kettle.

‘Thanks. I am,’ he said, filling his cup, his quick grin of genuine amusement setting off alarm bells. What had made him so good-humoured all of a sudden?

Kate wished she hadn’t made it so obvious that she wanted him to leave, for now it seemed he was going to punish her by lingering.

‘Any biscuits?’ he asked, returning the milk to the fridge and scooping a teaspoon out of the cutlery drawer.

‘No. I thought you were anxious to get back to—’ She broke off as he dropped into the chair opposite, his long calves brushing her bare legs under the table, sending a shiver of goose-pimples scooting up her inner thighs. She quickly crossed her legs, swivelling her hips sideways so that she was well away from his unsettling touch, tucking the short, flared skirt neatly under her bottom.

‘Back to Melissa?’ he completed her question helpfully, heaping sugar into his tea.

Kate’s face ached with the strain of not reacting to his casual twist of the knife.

‘To your writing,’ she said. ‘I know you’ve got deadlines to meet.’ She was pleased to see that her hand was rock-steady as she raised her cup to her lips.

‘Is that what Marcus told you?’

‘Sorry, I don’t talk shop while I’m on holiday,’ she said coldly. Let him believe that she was here at someone else’s behest, if that was the way his mind was tracking. It would take some of the heat off her and, in reality, it was close enough to the truth not to cause her undue guilt.

He blew across his tea, wreathing his dark head in curls of steam: the devil in a domestic setting. ‘Then what shall we talk about?’ he invited in the deep voice that haunted her dreams.

Her stomach tightened and she lowered her lashes to hide a violent upsurge of emotion. ‘What do we usually talk about?’

‘Everything.’

And nothing…They never spoke about the disjointed nature of their affair—the weeks of passionate closeness interspersed by months apart, with little or no contact. In a mutual conspiracy of silence they could argue the state of the world, but never the state of their own feelings.

The only place their communications were truly uncensored was in bed, where actions spoke louder than words and their bodies were perfectly attuned to each other’s needs. Drake was a generous lover, and Kate found a fierce rapture in his arms that helped carry her through the long, lonely periods of empty yearning.

The things that she ached to say to him were suddenly dammed up behind a thick wall of resentment. He didn’t really want to talk, he simply wanted Kate to answer his questions…questions that she didn’t yet have answers for herself!

‘Nice weather we’re having for the time of year,’ she said.

‘It is indeed…and you’re obviously taking full advantage of it,’ he agreed, taking up the challenge, his eyes stroking across the honey-coloured skin of her shoulders exposed by the spaghetti straps of her sundress.

Kate was suddenly conscious of the pull of the cotton bodice where it was cut straight across the slope of her breasts, notched in the centre of her cleavage by a V-shaped slit. The flower-splashed, chain-store dress was a comfortable old favourite of hers, despised by her mother for its cheerfully déclassé origins. She had never worn overly casual styles in Drake’s company, knowing that it was her classic, understated elegance that appealed to his sophisticated tastes, and set her apart from the trend-setting flamboyance of more beautiful rivals for his attention.

She stopped breathing as Drake’s gaze drifted down to the sliver of pale skin revealed by the straining V. Nor did she usually go braless when she was with him, preferring the protection and provocation of a lacy bra to enhance her slender curves. She hadn’t worn this sundress since last summer, and was suddenly uncomfortably aware of a slight tugging at the side seams, a tightness pressing up under her arms that crowded her breasts forward against the strict cut of the fabric with an unaccustomed boldness. Thankfully the contrasting double-fold of colour that banded the top of the low bodice masked the crushed outline of her painfully sensitive nipples, and allowed her the semblance of indifference as he continued to rudely stare.

Was he making unflattering comparisons…or thinking that she had let herself go? Kate felt faint at the thought. Then she realised that she was still holding her breath and let it out in a little huff of relief, sucking in a fresh supply of oxygen to chase away the dizziness. The sudden reinflation of her lungs caused her breasts to further test their close confinement, and she was mortified to feel a stitch pop.

It wasn’t only the dress, it was her own skin she no longer felt comfortable in, she tormented herself. And if he dared to ask if she had gained weight since he had last seen her, he was going to get a faceful of hot tea!

Perhaps he sensed her violent impulse because he rocked back on the hind legs of his chair with a lazy, placating smile, taking a long, leisurely gulp from his mug before resting it on his chest.

‘Bright, splashy colours suit you rather well in this setting. That dress makes you look very much the part…’ he trailed off suggestively and she obligingly snapped at the bait.

‘What part?’

‘The young, frivolous holiday-maker out looking for trouble.’

‘I’ve never been frivolous in my life,’ said Kate, offended.

He compounded the offence with a mocking grin that creased the sunfolds at the outer corners of his eyes. ‘Sorry, perhaps I should have said “carefree”…’

A lot he knew! ‘And I’m not “looking for trouble”, either,’ she added, far less sincerely.

‘No? What about your handsome young fisherman?’

‘What?’ She took a moment to trace the origins of his non sequitur. ‘That was a joke.’

‘Was it?’

His cynical response make her hackles rise. ‘You know it was!’

‘Do I?’ He lowered his chair with a thud and leaned forward on the table, the amusement wiped from his face. ‘Because it’s not as if there’s anything to hold you back from experimenting. We never promised each other total fidelity, did we, Kate?’

Her heart stuttered. Experimenting? Was that what he was doing?

‘We never promised each other anything at all,’ she forced out evenly. ‘But I think at the very least we owe each other a certain degree of respect and consideration.’

‘You mean we should be discreet about our indiscretions?’ he commented drily, his dark eyes intent on her still face. ‘I thought I was…’ His shrug encompassed their surroundings. ‘A cosy little hideaway “far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife”…how much more careful can a man be?’

Trust Drake to frame a paralysing statement in a poetic quotation, but Kate was inured to his clever verbal games. She battled the crushing pain in her chest to try and work out what he was playing at, because there had to be an angle. He was brutally honest, but rarely deliberately cruel—and never towards Kate. However, she had never breached the unwritten rules of their relationship before…

It was almost as if he wanted her to be furious with him, to rant and rave like a jealous fishwife and insist on being the only woman in his life. Ah, yes…that would give him the perfect excuse to push her away, to end their affair before it threatened to become anything more complicated.

It struck her that a cosy little hideaway was the perfect place to commit a discreet murder!

‘Well, you could do your—experimenting—offshore,’ she advised, visualising him sinking to the bottom of the bay with an anchor slung around his neck. The satisfying mental picture brought a chill smile to her pale lips.

He shoved away his cup and got restlessly to his feet. She could see that her contrived calm was having the desired effect. ‘Aren’t you going to finish your tea?’

He looked down at her, his heavy-lidded eyes burning with frustration, his mouth smudged with sullen temper. ‘No, thanks. Melissa’s probably waiting for me.’

With or without the robe? Kate nodded understandingly. ‘Right. You’d better hurry home to reassure her, then. You wouldn’t want her to think you were over here firing up your Bunsen burner for an alternative study.’

His eyelids flickered.

‘Of course, I’m sure you’ve already made it clear to her that she’s not unique or in any way important in your life. It’s always best to be up front about these things, isn’t it, Drake?’

Tension pulled the skin tight over the bones of his face. ‘We agreed, right at the beginning, that we didn’t want any messy emotional scenes—’ he grated.

‘I’m not the one making a big scene,’ Kate cut him off before he said anything irrevocable. She got up and began rinsing out the mugs under the running tap, speaking to him over her cold shoulder. ‘I just asked for some sugar, remember? You were the one who came haring after me bristling with ridiculous suspicions and flinging out all sorts of dramatic allegations. You should chill out, Drake, and stop making such a big deal of it. Instead of wasting all that energy worrying about what I’m doing just go back to living your own life. We’ll be neighbours for a month, that’s all. I’ll be as quiet as a mouse…you’ll hardly even know I’m around…

‘And if you wouldn’t mind leaving the rest of that sugar—I think I feel like pancakes for dinner!’

CHAPTER THREE

‘MUMMY, look at me!’

The chain on the swing squeaked as Kate swung higher, rocking her small body on the splintery wooden seat to get more speed, stamping her shoes against the hard-packed ground on the down-swing to propel herself up into the wild blue sky.

‘Look at me, Mummy!’ Her white dress fluttered, her hair spraying out around her head as she rushed through the air, her excited squeals mingling with the squeak and rattle of the chain as she went higher and higher towards the impossible goal—doing a complete loop over the steel support bar. What would happen when she was upside down, she wasn’t sure, she only knew that her mother would be proud of her for doing something that only the big boys dared to try.

‘Mummy!’ She looked for her mummy’s proud face but she couldn’t see her against the blur of scenery. She suddenly couldn’t see any of the other children or mummies and daddies, either—she was all alone in the big, empty park and it was getting dark. There was no one cheering or clapping her brave effort, only the rusty squeak of the chain to accompany her hysterical cry as she realised that she was going too fast and there was no one there to catch her if she fell, or to stop her from flying off into space and being lost for ever. ‘Mummy? Mummy!’

Kate jerked into wakefulness, her eyes flying open, her hands clutching for the dissolving chains and finding only wrinkled sheets. Morning sunlight filtered in around the dark curtains, painting bright stripes on the faded wallpaper. The breath rattled in her chest and the haunting squeak from the disturbing dream still echoed in her thick head.

She groaned. She didn’t need a psychiatrist to interpret the meaning of that little vignette. Her accidental conception hadn’t stopped her mother from ruthlessly applying herself to her studies and graduating from university with first class honours. Money had been very tight and, except for during term-time lectures, there had been none to spare for day-care. Childish demands for attention had often been greeted with impatient dismissal or an instruction to play extra quietly. Before she’d even known what exams were Kate had learned to dread their approach. Her earliest memory was of lying under the bed in their cramped, one-roomed apartment whispering stories to herself because Mummy had been studying for something more important than silly games.

Kate rolled her head on the pillow, trying to rid herself of that haunting squeak. Except it wasn’t coming from inside her head, she realised, but rising up from the skirting-board where it ran along behind the bed. And it wasn’t a hard, metallic kind of squeak, either; there was a certain warm furriness about it that suggested some form of rodent. She grimaced at the thought of mice scampering around the house while she slept. She listened for the tell-tale scuffling of tiny feet in the woodwork, but the squeaking was too loud. Far too loud. More like…

Rats!

Kate shot bolt upright in the bed, too late remembering that she should have moved with more care. She grabbed at the package of crackers she had left open on the bedside table and stuffed one into her mouth, but even as she chewed she knew what was coming and, showering a trail of crumbs, she fled into the bathroom.

For the second time in just over twelve hours she inspected the hazed porcelain of the toilet bowl at close quarters.

Kate was never sick. Never. Until a month ago her biological mechanisms had been in perfect sync with her busy lifestyle. Then she had bought that wretched little box in the chemist and her world had gone haywire.

‘Damn you, Drake Daniels,’ she moaned, in between retches that produced little but burning bile. ‘This is all your fault!’

If only it were, she might be able to work up a decent case for hating him. But the truth was that Drake had always been absolutely scrupulous about using birth control. Even though Kate had started on the pill the day after their first time together, he had insisted on using a condom every time they made love. ‘No contraception is one hundred per cent perfect,’ he had told her bluntly, ‘so if we use two methods with optimum effectiveness we lessen the chances of a malfunction.’

Well, Kate was certainly malfunctioning now!

She cleaned up and staggered back to bed.

At least she seemed to have frightened away the mystery squeaker, she thought, lying flat on her back and nibbling cautiously at another cracker, glad to be able to push aside at least one of the problems in her life.

She put a hand on her flat stomach. Here was a problem that wasn’t going to go away any time soon. In fact it was growing bigger by the day, although it was still only very tiny—less than half the length of her little finger, according to the books she had read.

How incredible, to have something so physically minuscule yet so all-encompassingly large invading her life! The shock, the dismay, and the sheer, blind panic that had first assailed her when she had stared at the plus sign on the home pregnancy test strip had long since changed to awe.

It was an awe that she could be fairly certain that Drake wouldn’t share. He didn’t want children. Not ever. He didn’t want any physical ties that would compromise his emotional independence. He needed to be alone to write, he had told Kate when they had first met, and nothing and no one took precedence over his writing. As a researcher at Enright Media, Kate was ideally placed to understand the demands of his particular genius. Caught up in the thrill and excitement of being desired by such a fascinating and complex man, she had walked into the affair with her eyes wide open. She had accepted that Drake was not the marrying kind. As their affair had matured into an ongoing relationship she had known that if she objected to his periodic disappearances or acted concerned by his restless comings and goings she would have been rapidly shunted out of his life. So even as she had fallen ever deeper in love with him she had persuaded herself that she was content with the status quo. She was a realist—a practical, self-sufficient, modern woman. She had a fabulous lover, a demanding job with a good salary, and plenty of friends to pal around with when Drake was out of town. No ties suited her just fine. And up until now she had been far too absorbed in her career to even think about having babies…

Dry flakes of cracker stuck in her throat, forming a lump that refused to budge.

Drake had been in Auckland for three whole months prior to taking off to work on his new book—the longest continuous period they had spent together. Kate had dared to hope it indicated that they were reaching a new level of trust. At first she had put down her persistent feeling of nausea after he had left to depression, then to the remnants of a late bout of winter flu combined with a rush-job involving a biographer who needed help reconstructing hand-copied notes that a drunken ex-wife had tried to flush down the toilet. But her weight gain and the tenderness in her breasts were less easy to dismiss and when she’d counted back and realised that she was ten days overdue she had rushed out and bought a test-kit from the pharmacy. Her hands had been shaking so hard when she’d used the dipstick that it had taken a while to confirm the earth-shattering truth.

She was pregnant with Drake Daniels’ baby!

She had stopped taking the pill immediately, but it had taken days for the reality of her situation to sink in, and when it had she had set about tackling it with her usual pragmatism. She’d worked out that she was unlikely to be more than a few weeks pregnant. Unlike her mother, who had married a fellow university student for the sole purpose of exploiting a loophole in the student allowance scheme, Kate had discovered her accidental pregnancy early enough to give her a full range of options.

She had made herself carefully consider them all, before choosing the only one that was ever going to be acceptable to her woman’s heart.

She was not going to have an unwanted child.

This baby was already an indivisible part of her, a symbol of her love, a triumph of hope over pessimism. Her baby had conquered almost impossible odds to be conceived; it was now up to Kate to take over the fight for the best of all possible futures.

She didn’t fool herself that Drake was good father material. But he was going to be a father, and she had to decide whether she wanted him in her baby’s life. She had suffered too much from her own parents’ selfishness to want to burden another child with the pain of constant emotional rejection. Until she had made that decision she vowed to tell no one of her condition, her confidence in her ability to be a good mother still too fragile to risk exposing it to the opinions of the wider world.

So she had tracked Drake down to his lair in a desperate attempt to try to establish a better understanding between them before her secret was exposed by her burgeoning body. She had to decide when and how to tell him about the pregnancy, and discover just how much involvement he might want—and she could bear—after the baby was born.

The morning was cool but with the promise of later heat, so Kate pulled on a gauzy skirt and loose tee shirt and caught her hair up into a jaunty pony-tail. She ate a dry piece of toast with a smear of honey and, when she was confident it was going to stay down, indulged the sharp onset of hunger by slicing up a banana and a kiwi fruit into a bowl and spooning over a generous dollop of low-fat vanilla yoghurt. Carrying the bowl in one hand and a cup of green tea in the other, she wandered out to the verandah and perched on the step to eat a leisurely breakfast. The water out in the bay was like shimmering glass, the only movement the gentle ripple of wavelets overturning at the edge of the beach and the swoop and splash of a pied shag arrowing into the water and re-emerging with a squirming fish, which it swallowed with a few flicks of its long neck before flapping off to dry its wings on a rocky outcropping. Licking the last of the yoghurt off her spoon, Kate left the bowl on the step and strolled down to the beach with her green tea. The sand was cool under her bare feet and the crystal-clear water shockingly cold as she paddled out to ankle depth.

As she turned to wade back to shore she saw a lone male figure standing on the upper deck of the house next door. He was shirtless, his dark mahogany chest smooth and glossy in the sunlight, his tapering torso cut off at the waist by the solid balcony wall, making her wonder if he was fully nude. Drake didn’t own any pyjamas and was totally unselfconscious about his body when he wasn’t intent on using it for pleasure. The first night they had made love she had been shocked by his lack of inhibitions, and very aware of her own hesitancy in flaunting her nakedness. She had tried to disguise her embarrassment, but to her amazement he had been powerfully aroused by her reticence.

If she hadn’t had a few more drinks than usual at the book launch, she probably wouldn’t have had the courage to accept Drake’s invitation back to his hotel room.

She felt an electrical tingle in her veins at the memory of the weight of his hand on the small of her back as he had unlocked the door to his room. Once inside she had drifted out of his reach, surveying the huge, split-level suite with assumed amusement that had hid a glittering rush of nervous excitement.

‘Rather over-the-top for one person, isn’t it?’ she commented, eyeing the polished black marble pillars, jewelled rugs and luxurious furnishings.

He grinned, tossing his black leather jacket over the back of an antique chair and snagging her evening purse to drop it on the seat. ‘Marcus works a great contra-deal for me with the international owner, who’s a big a fan of my books.’

‘You mention his hotels in your books in exchange for free rooms?’ asked Kate dubiously.

‘Bite your tongue, sweetheart; I don’t play the sap for no one,’ he sneered, in a passable Bogie imitation. Given his reputation for laughing criticism to scorn, she was surprised when he added: ‘Contrary to what the intellectuals say, I do have some artistic ethics. I don’t abuse my readers with subliminal advertisements buried in my text. It’s an up-front arrangement—I do all my press conferences and interviews in his hotels worldwide, and I autograph first editions for him. And the rooms aren’t free, I still pay something—but nothing like the rack-rates, so why not enjoy the best on offer? I happen to like the extravagant contrast to the austerity of my other life—my writing life,’ he added when she tilted her head quizzically. ‘The months when I shrink my world to the size of a keyboard and screen and live like an ascetic. That’s why I need to let off steam every time I emerge from my monastic cell—to reduce the risk of a creative meltdown.’

‘Writers have a much higher than average occurrence of mood disorders, especially depression,’ Kate murmured, wondering whether she was being naïve to hope she was more than just a convenient escape valve. Not that it mattered. In the space of a few hours the intense euphoria she felt when they had briefly shaken hands during their introduction had developed into a relentless craving; a single, stolen kiss in an empty corner of the crowed room merely confirming her addiction.

‘Do we really?’ he drawled.

She smiled sheepishly. ‘Sorry—occupational hazard for a researcher.’

‘You must have a great deal of interesting information squirreled away in odd corners of your brain, waiting to spring out of your subconscious,’ he said, his brown eyes narrowing in a fleeting moment of abstraction that made her feel totally invisible.

‘Yes, but it’s what you do with it that matters,’ she said with a wry shrug. ‘A lot of it is very esoteric or trivial. Don’t confuse memory with intelligence.’

His attention snapped back with uncomfortable intensity. ‘What makes you think you’re not intelligent?’

She thought of her endless struggles with hated school exams, and her mother’s coruscating lecture when Kate had secretly interviewed for a job instead of applying for university.

‘Not unintelligent…’ That was what had so infuriated her mother. She had viewed Kate’s abysmal marks as a wilful act of rebellion. ‘Just…um…intellectually unfocused.’ This was definitely not the time to be worrying about what her mother might think! ‘I suppose I tend to be a Jill of all trades and mistress of none,’ she finished lightly.

His smile took on a wickedly sexy smoulder. ‘Ah, an intellectual slut…my kind of woman!’ he growled.

Kate’s nerves skittered at the bizarre sexual imagery induced by his phrase. She didn’t know whether to be insulted or flattered.

‘I thought we were here to settle an argument about who played Velda in Kiss Me Deadly,’ she said, glancing at the wide, flat screen hanging on the wall above a sleek, electronic box. ‘You said we could watch it here on DVD.’

‘I have a better idea,’ he said, walking towards her.

‘Oh?’ Her tongue darted out to moisten her dry lips, heat beginning to flush through her belly and breasts at the fierce expression in his eyes. He hadn’t kissed her in the taxi coming over, but he had wanted to, and his restraint had made his desire all the more exciting.

‘We both know Maxine Cooper was Velda, so let’s forget the movie and I’ll show you the real reason I always stay in this particular penthouse…’ he purred, taking her hand and beginning to lead her towards the spiral staircase in the corner of the room.

Oh, God, what height of decadence was he about to reveal? A solid-gold bed with sheets of red silk? A black marble spa pool filled with champagne?

But they kept climbing up past the sprawling main bedroom and stepped out through folded shutters into a magical scene, shaded lights around the high walls illuminating a lush green jungle of plants and a riot of heavily perfumed spring flowers.

‘The roof garden…for my exclusive, and very private use…’he said softly, allowing her to walk ahead of him across the dense fan of green grass that divided into winding pathways of creeping groundcover curving around enclosed thickets of soft ferns and spiky palms.

‘It’s fantastic,’ she murmured, her high heels sinking into the turf as she paused by a shrub smothered in starry-white flowers and inhaling the heady night-perfume of Mexican orange blossom.

‘That’s what I think. Whenever I’m here in town and I start to feel like a victim of my own success, I skip out on the crowds and come up here to mellow out for a while. It’s the perfect cure for mood disorders…a little piece of Eden. And now it has its very own Eve…’ She heard a faint activating beep and turned to the sound of soft music rising from hidden speakers.

To her shock Drake had shed his footwear and his white silk shirt and was stripping the belt from his dove-grey trousers. At her gasp his hands stilled.

‘Have you changed your mind?’

It was on the tip of her tongue to claim that he was assuming way too much. But they would both know it for a lie.

‘No, but—I…should we? Out here?’

‘Why not? It’s warm, the grass is soft and the air is sweet, and we’re literally closer to heaven than anywhere else in town. But if you’re worried we might get buzzed by a police helicopter…’He picked up the remote control he had used to operate the sound system from the glass table beside him and pressed a button. With a low rumble a curved roof of tinted panels extended from the far end of the walled garden and eclipsed the distant stars, finally clicking home against the granite side of the building.

When Kate looked down from this fascinating piece of engineering Drake was stepping out of the last of his clothes, exposing himself without false modesty to her wide-eyed gaze, his large hands, curled into loose fists, hanging quietly at his sides, the angle of the lights painting intriguing shadows in the hollows of his sculpted perfection.

‘I want to make love to you now,’ he told her with arrogant confidence.

‘So I see,’ she said shakily, trying to look and sound blasé rather than panic-stricken by his impressive proportions, the thick nest of dark hair in his groin framing a magnificence that would put any one of his highly sexed heroes in the shade.

He shifted restlessly, the muscles bunching in his thighs. ‘Aren’t you going to reciprocate?’ he murmured, nodding at the classic, sleeveless ‘little black dress’ that she had dressed up for the evening function with cropped blue jacket of oriental design.

Not quite sure how to begin, Kate automatically did what she would normally do at home when preparing for bed, and reached up to pull the pins out of her smooth chignon and let her hair flow like warm caramel through her fingers, shaking her head to fan out the remaining kinks. Then she hesitated, biting her lip as she wondered where she was going to put the pins.

‘That’s it?’ he rasped tightly. ‘That’s all you’re going to do? You’re not even going to take off your shoes?’

She thought he was angry, impatient with her nervousness. ‘Uh, no, I—’ The pins fell from her fingers, spearing silently into the grass around her feet as she realised he wasn’t angry at all…far from it! If it was possible, he appeared to be even more aroused than before, prowling towards her stiff-legged, his eyes gleaming black in the muted light, the tension in his voice purely sexual.

‘You playing the tease, Katherine?’

‘No, of course not!’ she denied breathlessly, hypnotised by the fluid play of light and shadow across the shifting planes of his hard body as he continued his hunting prowl across the grass, masculinity personified. As she watched he unfurled a fist, and showed her a palm full of little foil packets. So many? She felt a thrill of exquisite apprehension tingle through her bones, her confidence overpowered by his physiological perfection, her own physical flaws suddenly magnifying themselves in her mind. She instinctively wrapped her jacket across her breasts as he came to a halt, his body crowding hers.

‘No? The blushing virgin, then?’ he said, tossing the handful of foil to join her scattered hairpins.

She blushed.

‘Hardly!’

‘You’ve been around, then?’ he said slyly, plucking at the lower edge of the jacket where it poked out below her folded arms.

She tilted her nose up at his deliberate crudity. ‘No, I have not “been around”,’ she sniffed. ‘But I have occasionally been in the vicinity,’ she admitted with a prim dignity that made his teeth flash white in the darkness.

‘Not my vicinity, sweetheart, or you wouldn’t be acting so cool.’

Cool? She was practically burning up!

‘It’s just—’ She felt something warm—something hard yet invitingly soft—kiss her belly button through her skirt, but she didn’t dare look down for fear of losing what little remained of her self-control.

‘Just what?’ he goaded. ‘Just that you’re getting cold feet?’

Damn it, if he backed off now she would kill him! She forced her arms to loosen. ‘No!’

‘No,’ he echoed with gritty satisfaction. ‘So it must be that you’re just too prim and proper to get naked on a first date,’ he taunted cockily, his heavy hands settling on her bony hips, his long thumbs massaging the slippery fabric over the smooth skin of her lower belly. ‘You’ve already decided on letting your hair down with me…’he leaned forward to brush his face through the shiny curtain veiling the side of her neck, and inhale the subtle scent of her shampoo mingled with the faintest trace of musky feminine arousal ‘…mmmm…but the lady obviously wants to be warmed up a little before the main action. You don’t want to take them off, ergo you want me to make love to you with your clothes on…’

Her silver eyes widened. ‘You can do that?’ she blurted foolishly.

Her scepticism made him purr like a sexy tiger.

‘Oh, baby, I can do anything you want…’

His big hands slid caressingly down her flanks and slipped under the knee-length hem of her dress, raking up the skirt with his forearms as his hands stroked slowly back up her legs to span her hips.

‘Hmm, stockings…that makes things easy…’ he discovered on the way up. ‘Oh, no…stay-ups,’ he corrected himself as his fingers found the delicate band that encircled the silky-fine skin of her upper thighs. ‘Even easier…’

He sighed when he found the narrow strip of lace drawn tight over her hip-bones. ‘Rippable?’ he murmured wistfully, winding one stretchy ribbon around a questing finger, drawing the whisper of satin passing between her legs ravishingly tight against her moistened core.

She squeaked and he laughed, pulling her flush against his scalding nakedness, letting her feel the urgent insistence of his arousal, the rough thicket in his groin catching against her smooth panties. He widened his stance, cupping her bottom as she trembled in a fever of eagerness. ‘Never mind, we’ll work around them,’ he promised in a throaty growl, gathering her tight between his hair-roughened thighs, tipping her off balance as he lifted one of her legs and draped it around his hip. ‘I love a challenge…’

He ducked his head and nuzzled aside the jacket to find the outline of her bra against the smooth fabric of the dress, navigating his skilful way to the press of her nipples.

Kate tilted her head back, closing her eyes as she felt the rake of his teeth through the cloth and the simultaneous hot slide of his hardness rocking against her creamy centre, unable to believe this was really happening…She was allowing herself to be ravished by a naked stranger on a rooftop—and she was loving every wicked moment of it!

In a night of glorious firsts she learned that Drake Daniels was very much a man of his word. He delivered on his sensual promise, making love the same way he wrote his books—with fierce concentration and meticulous attention to detail, and a dedication to delivering a climax worthy of his wildly thrilling build-up!

After they had made love several times under the stirring palms they moved inside to the palatial bedroom, and later down to the main part of the suite where they fuelled their sensual excesses from the lavishly stocked bar fridge, and resumed their sexy badinage through a much-interrupted viewing of Kiss Me Deadly.

Neither of them slept and in the morning Kate was staggering slightly as she fumbled into her crumpled clothing, aware that having to go home to change was going to make her horribly late for work.

Sitting in the middle of the bed, his lower body swathed in a white sheet, looking very much like a dissipated Greek god, Drake followed her preparations to flee with hooded eyes. His watchful silence made her even more self-conscious.

‘I’m never late,’ she muttered, stuffing her laddered stockings into her purse and sliding her feet into her grass-flecked heels, uncertain of how to stage-manage a graceful exit.

‘This was not a good idea…’ She meant lingering overlong in his bed, but to her dismay Drake took up her theme.

‘Neither of us was thinking—it was nothing to do with choice, it was pure sexual chemistry,’ he said abruptly, the dark growth of beard giving his face a saturnine look. He braced himself on one arm, the folds of the sheet pooling in his lap. ‘Don’t worry, it’s like fireworks—dazzling but essentially ephemeral. If we let it alone it’ll fizzle out.’ The melting brown eyes hardened with cynical resolve. ‘But you’re right—this can’t happen again. It would be a mistake to try and turn it into something that it’s not. As it happens, I’m off to LA the day after tomorrow, for an extended book tour across the States…’

Kate disguised her sudden pallor by turning to the full-length wardrobe mirror and raising her arms to fold her hair into a neat self-knot at the nape of her neck in the absence of most of her pins.

He was telling her not to make any plans that included him. They had no future together.

Out of the corner of her eye she could see Drake’s partial reflection past her bent elbows. He was rubbing the centre of his chest with the heel of his hand, as if massaging an ache. He wasn’t half as relaxed as he looked, she decided, noting the tension in the set of his head and the fist at the end of his braced arm. Perhaps he expected her to throw a tantrum at his frank rejection of any emotional connection between them, or, worse, to pout and insist on a long-drawn-out discussion of their feelings.

She wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of knowing that she had believed they had something special.

Lesson number two in dealing with the unpredictable Drake Daniels:

Never give him what he expects.

She brightened her expression and turned around. ‘Right. A mistake. Well…I’ll be off, then. See you around. No, don’t bother to get up and see me out.’ She waved a casually dismissive hand as he made a sharp movement under the sheets. ‘I’m quite happy to make my own way. I’ve been doing it for some years now,’ she pointed out with only the barest hint of sarcasm.

‘Oh, and if you find yourself in need of another chemistry lesson…feel free to give me a whistle.’

Before he could recognise that vague allusion she had reached the spiral staircase, where she paused to look provocatively back over her shoulder, and hit him square between the eyes with a husky rendition of classic exit-line.

‘“You know how to whistle, don’t you,” Drake?’

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