# Forbidden Pleasure

Robyn Donald

Beautiful, vulnerable and courageous Ianthe Brown might be, but she was out of bounds. Alex had to make a major life decision– not seduce the most wonderful woman he'd ever met.His future was such that she must remain forbidden to him; anything else would be dishonorable. As it was, what would Ianthe do when she discovered that he, Alex Considine, was the Crown Prince of Illyria?

## Transfixed, she waited while that splintering gaze traveled upward, touching off explosions of honeyed fire deep in the hidden places of her body.

Sexuality, bold and predatory, smoldered in the clear pale depths of his eyes.

Heat stole through Ianthe, coloring her skin. Her eyes widened, became heavy lidded, drowsy with desire and invitation. Alex was watching her with half-lowered eyelids, sending delicious shivers through her.

“You look like a sea nymph,” he said, the words rough and blunt. “I promised myself I wouldn’t touch you, wouldn’t let you get to me, but it was too late the first time I saw you.”

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

## Forbidden Pleasure. Robyn Donald

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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## AUTHOR’S NOTE

The Kai Iwi lakes of Northland exist, and are more beautiful than I can describe, but I’m afraid you won’t find this house beside one. There are no beaches, either, and although there is a motor camp, it doesn’t have a shop. But it’s a wonderful place to camp, and the water is an incredible color.

## CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

## CHAPTER ONE

THE view, Ianthe Brown decided as she glowered through the window, was picture pretty, everyone’s idea of the tropics—dazzling white sand, water so blue it throbbed against the hot air, gently waving trees. All that was missing was the sound of surf on the reef and the traditional happy-go-lucky attitude of the Polynesians who lived on those smiling, palm-tasselled islands. And the palms.

Not surprising, since they were two thousand kilometres to the north of this northern part of New Zealand.

Ianthe frowned at the fingermarks on her reddened wrist, then stooped to massage her aching leg. The man who’d jerked her out of that haven of tranquillity and escorted her into this house was as far removed from happy-go-lucky as anyone could be; his mission had been to get her inside so someone else could interview her, whether she wanted that or not. Normally she’d have torn verbal strips off him; a sleepless night and the drugged pleasure of having at last closed her eyes and drifted into unconsciousness had temporarily scrambled her brain.

It was back in full working order now, and she was furious.

Of course she could climb through the window and run away, but she had no taste for humiliation; in her present state she’d be ludicrously easy to catch.

She surveyed the room with critical eyes. Luxuriously spare, it oozed the kind of casual perfection that proclaimed both megabucks and a very good interior decorator. What little she’d noticed of the rest of the house revealed the same sophisticated simplicity.

A far cry, she thought ironically, from her spartan quarters of the past few years. The cabin on the schooner had been so small she’d been able to stand in the middle and touch all four sides without too much stretching.

Absently she transferred her weight to her good leg. Five minutes ago she’d been sound asleep in the shade of the pines, only to be hauled off her rug by an idiot with a manner cribbed from the more mindless and violent films, who’d ignored her vigorous objections and frogmarched her the hundred metres to a house she hadn’t noticed.

Had she, Ianthe wondered with a shiver of foreboding as she straightened, stumbled into one of those films?

No, this was New Zealand. Mafia godfathers didn’t exist here.

Awareness prickled across the back of her neck. Without moving—without breathing—she strained to see from the corner of her eyes. On the very edge of her vision waited the tall, lean shadow of a man, intimidating and silent. A mindless panic tightening her skin, she set her teeth and turned.

She’d expected the frogmarcher, but the man who watched her with narrowed, icy eyes—eyes so pale in his tanned face that her stomach jumped—was an infinitely more threatening proposition. Such eyes, Ianthe thought on a swift, involuntary breath, could indicate an Anglo-Saxon heritage, except that the strong, dark features were cast in a far more exotic mould—Italian, perhaps.

‘Who,’ she asked steadily, ‘are you, and what right do you have to kidnap me?’

Although something flickered in the brilliant gaze, his expression didn’t alter. Urbanely he asked, ‘Don’t you have laws against trespassing in New Zealand?’

He spoke like an Oxford-educated Englishman, each clipped, curt word at subtle variance with the deep, rich voice, textured by the maverick hint of an accent she couldn’t place.

About six feet tall, he was startlingly good-looking, the angular, autocratic face emphasised by a forceful jaw and a hard, deceptively beautiful mouth. Yet the ice-blue eyes—piercing as lasers, wholly without warmth—dominated his tanned features, and beneath that uncompromising exterior Ianthe sensed vitality, a fierce energy barely contained by his will-power.

Into her mind sprang the sudden glittering image of a hawk high in a summer sky, poised against the shimmering incandescence for a moment out of time before it plummeted lethally to earth and its prey.

Beautifully cut shirt and trousers fitted him with the casual elegance of excellent tailoring. Irritated, Ianthe realised that if he’d been clad in scruffy jeans and a shirt off the peg he’d be just as imperious and formidable and dangerously compelling.

In old shorts and a loose T-shirt that had faded into shabbiness, she must look downmarket and conspicuous. Her chin lifted a fraction of an inch. ‘Trespassing laws in New Zealand are lenient. Anyway, these lakes are reserves.’

‘Not this one. The land around it is privately owned—as you are well aware. You had to climb over a locked gate to get here.’

Ianthe had wondered, but her need for solitude had been greater than her curiosity. She drew in a deep breath. For the first time since she’d woken in hospital with over a hundred stitches in her leg she felt alive, every cell in her body alert and flooded with adrenalin.

‘Whatever,’ she countered, ‘it still doesn’t give your henchman the right to manhandle me. All he’s entitled to do is tell me to get off your property. If I’d refused to go after that you might have a case, although it’s probably only fair to warn you that you’d have to prove I’d done some damage before any court would take you seriously.’

‘It sounds as though you make a habit of trespassing.’

Ianthe stared at him.

‘You know so much about your rights,’ he elaborated, a lurking note of sarcasm biting into her composure.

Crisply she retorted, ‘I once worked for a summer with the Department of Conservation, where you soon learn all about the laws of trespassing. By dragging me here, your offsider has put himself well and truly in the wrong. The New Zealand police don’t take a kindly view of assault. As he knows, because he’s a New Zealander himself.’

She didn’t hold up her reddened wrist, or even look at it, but the man’s gaze fastened onto her skin and something explosive splintered its cold clarity before the long lashes, dark as jealousy, covered his eyes again. ‘Did he hurt you?’ he asked in a voice that pulled every tiny hair upright over her body.

‘No.’

He came across the room with silent speed. Ianthe watched with bewilderment as he picked up her hand and looked at her wrist. A chill tightened her skin, jerked with sickening impact in the depths of her stomach.

‘He’s bruised you,’ he said slowly.

Feeling strangely sorry for the frogmarcher, Ianthe said, ‘I bruise very easily, and he didn’t hurt me. In fact, he did this when I stumbled. He stopped me from falling into the water.’

Her voice faded. Looking down at the contrast of dark fingers locked around the delicate whiteness of her wrist, she swallowed and pulled away; he resisted a moment, then the long fingers loosened and she was free. Completely unnerved by his reaction, she took a stumbling step backwards and leaned heavily against the windowsill.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said with a frigid remoteness.

Quickly, her voice oddly gruff, she said with stubborn insistence, ‘Besides, I was on the Queen’s Chain.’

‘The Queen’s Chain?’ he asked silkily, pinning her with that laser glance.

Sensation slithered the length of Ianthe’s spine. Doing her best to ignore it, she replied didactically, ‘In New Zealand almost all waterways are surrounded by the Queen’s Chain. The land twenty metres back from the water’s edge, although used by the landowner, is actually owned by the Crown—specifically so that people have access.’

‘Your Queen is a landowner indeed,’ he said softly, not attempting to hide the mockery in his words. ‘And to get to that Queen’s Chain you had to cross private property.’

Your Queen, so he wasn’t English. Her confident tone belying her hollow stomach, Ianthe snapped, ‘Possibly, but I wasn’t trespassing when that idiot decided to prove what a big, tough man he is by dragging me here.’

Ianthe was of medium height, but a year in and out of hospital had stripped flesh from her bones so that she weighed less than she had for the last five years. She’d been no match at all for a frogmarcher built like a rugby forward.

His boss smiled at her. ‘He’ll apologise,’ he said.

How could a mere movement of muscles transform aloof arrogance into something so charismatic? He looked like a Renaissance princeling, at once blazingly attractive yet dangerous, cultured yet barbaric, his handsome features strengthened by the disciplined ruthlessness underpinning them.

‘You are,’ he went on, ‘quite right, and I apologise for Mark’s rather officious protection of my privacy. He had no right to touch you or haul you in here.’

Ianthe suspected that behind that spell-binding face was a keen brain that had rapidly chosen this response, knowing it would soothe her. In other words, she thought sturdily, she was being manipulated.

After returning his smile with one of her own—detached, she hoped, and coolly dismissive—she said, ‘New Zealanders love their country, and one reason is because they can go almost wherever they like in it.’

‘Subject, one assumes, to the laws of the countryside? Closing gates and so forth?’

‘Of course,’ she said, knowing that she’d left no gate undone behind her.

Dark lashes drooped, narrowing the pale gaze. ‘To make up a little for Mark’s unceremonious intrusion into your life, can I offer you a drink? Tea, perhaps, or something alcoholic if you’d prefer that? And then I’ll take you back to your car.’

Stiffly, nerves still jangling from the after-effects of that smile, Ianthe said, ‘No, thank you. I’m not thirsty.’

‘I can understand that you have no wish to stay in a house where you underwent such an unpleasant experience,’ he said smoothly, ‘but I’d like to show you that I’m not some Mafia don on holiday.’

Her glance flashed to his unreadable face. Could he read her mind? No, of course not. She’d barely articulated the thought.

Off balance, she said hastily, ‘I’m sure you’re not—’

‘Then let me make whatever amends I can.’

Charm was a rare gift, and an unfair one. When backed by pure steel it was almost unforgivable. Reluctant, angry because her leg was threatening imminent collapse, Ianthe said, ‘You don’t need to make amends, but—I’d like a cup of tea, thank you.’

‘It would be my pleasure.’

She eased herself away from the window and limped towards him, waiting for signs of shock. But the ice-blue gaze remained fixed on her face, although he took her elbow in an impersonal grip.

He’d probably blench when he saw the scar, she thought savagely, but she was used to that.

The long tanned fingers at her elbow lent confidence as well as support. They also sent a slow pulse of excitement through her. Of course she didn’t allow herself to lean on him as he escorted her through the door, across a hall floored with pale Italian ceramic tiles and into a breathtaking room where the light from the lake played across superb angles and planes and surfaces.

‘Oh!’ Ianthe said, abruptly stopping.

His fingers tightened a moment on her elbow, then relaxed. ‘What is it?’

‘Nothing.’ Feeling foolish, she explained lamely, ‘The lake looks wonderful from here.’

He urged her across to a comfortable seat. ‘It looks wonderful from any vantage point,’ he said. ‘I’ve travelled widely, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything like the colour of this water.’

Ianthe sat down, keeping her face averted. Glass doors had been pushed right back to reveal a wide terrace and the brilliant beach. ‘It’s because it’s a dune lake,’ she said. ‘The white sand reflects the sky more intensely.’

‘Whatever causes it, it’s beautiful,’ he said, sitting down in a chair close by. ‘But then, New Zealand is a glorious country. So varied a landscape, usually with mountains to back up each magnificent vista.’

‘Mountains are all very well in the background, but that’s where they should stay. Give me a nice warm beach any day.’ A year ago she’d have meant it.

His considering glance fomented a disturbing, forbidden pleasure deep within her. They were so distant, those eyes, so dispassionately at variance with his warm Mediterranean colouring. Bronze skin and blue-black hair sharpened the impact of their frosty intensity, until she felt their impact like an earthquake, inescapable, terrifying.

In an amused voice he said, ‘You don’t look as though anything much frightens you.’

‘I like to be warm,’ she said, thinking, If you only knew! ‘I was born in Northland, so I’m not used to snow.’

‘Yet water can be cold.’

He still hadn’t looked at her leg, but Ianthe wished fervently that she’d chosen to wear trousers rather than shorts. She had no illusions about the ugliness of the puckered, distorted skin that ran almost the full length of her leg. Although future plastic surgery would tidy it up, it would always be there, a jagged, unlovely reminder of past pain.

‘Only if you’re silly enough to keep swimming after you start to shiver,’ she said, adding drily, ‘And unless you’re swimming in the Arctic, it’s nowhere near as cold as snow. Of course, where you come from the mountains all have either a rack railway up the side or a hotel perched on top. Or both. It makes them hard to take seriously.’

Strong white teeth flashed for a second as he smiled. ‘So you didn’t enjoy the European Alps,’ he said blandly. ‘Although I was born in Europe, I spent much of my youth in Australia.’ His eyes glimmered. ‘No mountains there, nothing much but sky.’

‘I’ve never been to either place, but I’ve seen photos.’

‘Perhaps it’s a human characteristic to want to tame those things that threaten us.’ His gaze moved slowly over her face, rested a tingling fraction of a second on her soft mouth, then flicked to the tumbled bounty of her hair, its gentle, honey-coloured waves streaked with natural highlights the colour of untarnished copper. In a cool, speculative voice he continued, ‘I don’t think mountains in New Zealand have either railways or restaurants, do they?’

Her nerves jumping, she said huskily, ‘Not to the summit, no.’

The door opened. Ianthe watched warily as Mark the frogmarcher, fair and with the solid, blocky body of a surfer, carried in a tea-tray. Her host—whoever he was—must have given the order before he’d seen her, Ianthe thought, wondering why she let herself be irritated at such blatant damage control.

Mark set the tray down on the table close to her chair, then moved the table so that she didn’t have to reach. Both tea and coffee, she noticed. He’d left nothing to chance.

‘I hope you will pour,’ the owner said.

‘Yes, of course.’

Standing back, Mark said woodenly, ‘I’m sorry if I frightened you, but you were trespassing.’

With equal formality, Ianthe said, ‘Property rights don’t confer manhandling privileges, but I accept your apology.’

Summoning her most limpid smile, she directed it at him until colour rose in his skin. He sent a swift, frowning glance to his employer, who said, ‘Thank you, Mark.’ With an abrupt nod the younger man turned jerkily and left the room.

Her host laughed quietly. ‘You New Zealanders!’ he murmured. ‘I’d say the honours went to you that time.’

With an unwilling smile Ianthe poured tea with a strong, tarry smell. When she asked what sort it was, he answered, ‘Lapsang souchong—Chinese tea. Don’t you like it? Shall I get another—?’

‘No, no,’ she interrupted. ‘I just haven’t come across it before. I like trying new things.’

He waited while she sipped it, and smiled lazily when she said, ‘It’s different, but I like it.’

‘Good,’ he said, and picked up the cup he’d collected from her. ‘Are you a local, or holidaying like me?’

‘I’m on holiday.’

‘At the camping ground?’

‘No, I’m staying in a bach.’ His lifted brows led her to enlarge, ‘In New Zealand a bach is a small, rather scruffy beach house.’

His scrutiny shredded the fragile barrier of her confidence. Ianthe stopped herself from blinking defensively; whenever he looked at her something very strange happened in the pit of her stomach, a kind of drawing sensation that hardened into an ache.

Dourly she told herself that he probably had an equally powerful effect on any woman under a hundred. Those eyes were hypnotic. Perhaps he was conducting a subtle interrogation; if so, he’d mistaken his adversary. He hadn’t told her who he was, so she wouldn’t tell him anything about herself.

Childish, but she felt threatened, and defiance was as good a reaction as any.

He broke into her thoughts by saying, ‘Ah, those small houses near the camping ground.’

‘Yes.’

‘I heard that they’re under threat.’

Ianthe nodded. ‘They’re built on what’s now reserve land. The owners aren’t allowed to alter the buildings beyond any necessary repairs, and when they die the baches will be torn down and the land returned to the Crown.’

‘And is yours a family bach?’

She said warily, ‘It’s owned by friends.’

He changed the subject with smooth confidence. ‘I hope the weather stays as idyllic as it’s been for the past couple of weeks.’

‘It should, but Northland—all of New Zealand, in fact—is a forecaster’s nightmare. The country’s long and narrow, and because it’s where the tropics meet the cold air coming up from the Antarctic we get weather from every direction. Still, it’s high summer, so with any luck we’ll have glorious weather until the end of February.’ The pedantic note in her voice was her only defence against his speculative, probing gaze.

She added, ‘Unless another cyclone comes visiting from the north, of course. We’ve already had two this holiday season, although neither of them amounted to more than heavy rain.’

‘Let’s hope the tropics keep their cyclones to themselves,’ he said, giving no indication of how long he intended to stay.

After that they spoke more generalities—conversation that meant nothing, revealed nothing, was not intended to be taken seriously or recalled. Yet beneath the surface casualness and ease there were deeper, questionable currents, and whenever she looked up he was watching her.

Eventually Ianthe put down her empty cup and said, ‘That was lovely, thank you. I’d better be getting back.’

‘Certainly.’ He got to his feet with loose-limbed masculine grace. ‘I’ll drive you to your car.’

‘I can walk,’ she said automatically.

Without taking his eyes from her face he asked, ‘And make your leg even more painful?’

She grimaced, because it had now begun to throb, and she knew that the only way to keep it from getting worse was to lie down. ‘All right,’ she said reluctantly, adding, ‘Thank you very much.’

‘It’s very little recompense for Mark’s officiousness.’

He’d come to take her elbow again. Ianthe knew that his fingers didn’t burn her skin as he helped her up, but that was what it felt like. ‘Mark’s responsible for that,’ she said tersely, tightening her lips against the odd, shivery sensations running through her.

‘He’s employed by me,’ he said, ‘so I’m responsible.’

Ianthe took a few stiff steps, her limp becoming more pronounced as the ache in her leg suddenly intensified.

He said something under his breath, and with an economy of movement that shocked her, lifted her in his arms.

‘Hey!’ she exclaimed, unable to say anything more as a secret, feverish excitement swallowed her up.

‘Perhaps you’d rather Mark carried you,’ he said, locking her against his hard-muscled torso with casual strength as he strode with surprising ease towards the wide hall that led to a big front door.

The promise of masculine power hadn’t been an illusion. The self-control that gave authority to his spectacular, hawkish good looks had been transmuted into sheer, determined energy.

An alarming combination of flame and ice electrified Ianthe. Striving to sound level and prosaic, she said, ‘I don’t need to be carried.’

‘You’re as white as a sheet and sweat is standing out on your forehead. Please don’t try to make me feel worse than I already do.’

Because Ianthe hated being pitied she returned coldly, ‘I’m not. My leg hurts, but I’d get there.’

‘Even if you had to crawl,’ he said with caustic disapproval. ‘Cutting off your nose to spite your face not only wastes time, it turns perfectly legitimate sympathy into intense irritation.’

Which left her with nothing to say. Clearly he did feel responsible for his henchman’s behaviour, but Mark’s macho hijacking no longer concerned her.

Her heart jumped as she stole a glance at the splendid profile, outlined by an unexpected blaze of gold as they stepped out of the door beneath a skylight. Attraction, she told herself with contemptuous bravado. It’s just attraction—that common meeting point between male and female. It means nothing.

Bracing herself against it, she forced her attention away from him and onto her surroundings.

Whoever had designed the house had understood Northland’s climate. A porte-cochère extended from the door across the gravel drive, offering shelter from summer’s heat as well as from the downpours that could batter the peninsula at any season. In its shade waited a Range Rover, large and luxurious and dusty.

‘I’ll have to put you down,’ her host said, and did so with exquisite care.

She clutched at the handle of the vehicle, and for a second his arms tightened around her again. Her bones heated, slackened, melted in the swift warmth of his embrace and the faint, potently masculine tang she’d been carefully not registering. He waited until she let go of the door handle and straightened up, then stepped back.

‘Can you manage?’ he enquired evenly as he opened the door.

‘Yes.’ Refusing to acknowledge the ache in her leg, she climbed in, took a deep, steadying breath and reached down to clip on her seatbelt. She didn’t look at the man who walked around to his side and got in.

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

‘Yes. In the pull-off.’

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

‘Here,’ she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Soon she’d be able to swim again.

Surely.

She only needed determination.

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

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

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

‘I won’t.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alex Considine nodded. ‘But?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What time do you want dinner?’

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

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

Intriguing, he thought.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

All suspiciously appropriate.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

## CHAPTER TWO

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

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

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

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

Mark stood unsmiling. ‘I’m fine.’

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

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

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

‘No.’

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

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

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

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

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

Logical, when you thought it through.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ridiculous, she thought, panicking. Utterly ridiculous!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Come outside; it’s marginally cooler.’

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

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

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

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

His explanation was, Ianthe thought shrewdly, the truth, but not the whole truth. ‘Lime, thank you.’

Accepting the glass he handed her, she observed, ‘I bet before you go home you’ll have tripped over someone you know. New Zealand’s notorious for coincidences.’

Long black lashes hid his eyes for a second. ‘I hope not,’ he said neutrally. ‘But if it’s inevitable, I certainly hope I see them before they see me. Have you come here for peace and solitude too?’

Ianthe turned her head to stare at the lake. Even through the thin cotton of her trousers she could feel the canvas squabs radiate the heat they’d trapped from the sun.

‘Yes,’ she said simply, for some reason no longer unwilling to talk about it. ‘I got bitten by a shark, and when the whole media circus ended and I came out of hospital for the third time I just wanted to crawl away to heal by myself.’

If he’d shown any sign of pity she’d have set her glass down and made some excuse and left, but he said in a judicial voice, ‘That must be the most terrifying thing that can happen to anyone.’

‘Oddly enough, I don’t think it was. I was half out of the water when it happened, climbing the ladder into the boat. I can’t remember much, but I do recall thinking that I was in the shark’s hunting grounds. And being surprised that there was no pain, although when it grabbed my leg I was shocked enough to punch it on the nose! I was lucky. It wasn’t a big one, and apparently it didn’t like being hit fair and square on its most sensitive spot.’

‘What sort of shark?’ he asked.

Surprised into laughter, because that was what her professor at university had asked when he’d come to see her in hospital, she told him, ‘A Tiger Shark.’

‘And did they catch it?’

She shook her head. ‘No, they didn’t try. Why kill something that’s only doing what it was born to do? As far as we know—and in spite of Jaws—sharks don’t turn into man-eaters, the way leopards or lions can. They just eat whatever comes to hand, and that day I was it.’

‘You’re remarkably tolerant,’ he said, his tone oblique, almost cryptic. ‘I’d be inclined to kill something that tried to eat me.’

After flicking him a glance, she became absorbed in the pattern of leaves on the ground. She believed him.

‘They’re an endangered species,’ she said. ‘I was in its element, and whenever you swim you risk bumping into something large and carnivorous or small and poisonous.’

‘And you enjoy swimming.’

Ianthe drank some of the liquid, relishing the refreshing tartness. ‘I always have,’ she said at last.

His gaze sharpened, but after a moment he nodded. Feeling as a possum must when the spotlight swings away from its tree, Ianthe allowed herself to relax.

‘You spoke of a media circus,’ he said. ‘Was that because you’re a television celebrity?’

Mark, of course. It was unlikely he’d seen the documentary series—as far as she knew, it had only just sold to England and America. Wishing Mark had kept his mouth shut, Ianthe said lightly, ‘Shark attacks are always newsworthy. I was only a very minor celebrity.’ The scar on her leg itched. She ignored it, as she wished she could ignore Alex’s speculative glance.

‘And how did you get into such a career?’ he asked.

He didn’t sound avid, merely interested. Pleased at his restraint, Ianthe said, ‘I’m a marine biologist, and I was working with dolphins in the Bay of Islands when a film crew thought I’d make a nice little clip on a reel they were making for Air New Zealand. About six months later someone rang up and asked if I’d front a documentary series about New Zealand’s marine life.’

‘And, dazzled by the glamour, you agreed.’ His voice missed mockery by a whisker; although he was teasing her, there was understanding and amusement there.

She laughed. ‘If that was the reason I’d have been very disappointed! We lived in pretty spartan conditions on a glorious schooner that was built for freight, not passengers. No, I decided to do it because I’d just had the plug pulled on my research funding and the film company offered good money—enough to keep me from going cap in hand to sponsors for quite a while if I lived economically.’

‘And will you be going back to your dolphins?’

‘As soon as I can.’ She willed her face to reveal nothing, her eyes to remain cool and composed, willed him not to notice the guarded nature of her response.

She didn’t know whether she’d succeeded.

Alex Considine didn’t have a poker face, but she suspected he revealed only what he wanted to. At the moment he looked mildly interested.

‘Did you enjoy the film work?’

‘After a few initial hassles, yes.’

When he lifted his brows she explained drily, ‘I didn’t realise that all they expected was someone to look reasonable in a high-cut swimsuit, someone to frolic in the water. They wanted me to grow my hair so that I could flick it around for the camera, and they expected me to coo over lobsters and shells and pretty fish. After we’d sorted that out I liked it very much.’

‘And how did you sort it out?’ he asked, a smile tucking the corners of his controlled mouth.

‘Got stroppy and waved my contract around a lot,’ she said, ‘until they realised that I actually did know what I was talking about and wasn’t just some lightweight mermaid who was kinky enough to prefer dolphins to men.’

Enough bitterness seeped into her words for him to give another of those laser glances. A shiver ran the length of her spine but she met his hooded eyes squarely.

‘And do you prefer dolphins to men?’ he asked, a lazy smile robbing the question of impertinence.

Ianthe laughed. ‘You know where you are with dolphins,’ she said, ‘but, no, I don’t.’

‘Where are you with dolphins?’

‘You’re in their country, and you’re a curiosity,’ she said readily. She’d been talking far too much about herself, so she said, ‘You’ve spent some time in England, I imagine, from your accent.’

He looked amused. ‘My mother is the source of my accent. She has very strong opinions on the proper way to speak, and the ruthlessness to enforce them.’

‘Persuading your children not to sound like some refugee from a cartoon is a never-ending business, I’m told.’ Ianthe smiled as she thought of Tricia’s battles with her five-year-old.

‘I have no children,’ he told her, his voice smooth and impersonal, ‘but my friends certainly say so. I’m not married.’

He’d thought she was fishing. Fighting back her indignation, Ianthe tried to ignore the way her heart fluttered and soared.

He asked, ‘Will you go back to working in television?’

‘They don’t want a front-person with a scar down her leg. It doesn’t look good, and the limp is ungraceful.’ Because it didn’t matter, her voice was as pragmatic as her words.

She didn’t quite hear what he said under his breath, but judging from the glitter in his eyes the succinct phrase was probably rude. Astonished, she looked up into a hard face and scornful, searing eyes.

‘Did they tell you that?’ he asked, on a note that sent a shiver up her spine.

‘No, but it’s the truth. Viewers don’t like their programmes spoiled by ugly reminders that the real world has carnivores prowling it. People complain bitterly if they see insects eating each other on screen! Probably because most of us live in cities now we want to believe that the natural world is one of beauty and meaning and harmony.’

The harshness faded from his expression as he leaned back into his chair. ‘But you don’t believe that?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s extraordinarily beautiful, but it’s also unsentimental. Animals kill and eat to survive. They’re not pretty different-shaped humans with human attitudes. Even pack animals, which we can understand best, have a rigid hierarchy with crushing rules that would drive most of us insane.’

‘But we’re animals too.’

‘Of course we are.’ Made uneasy by the focused intentness of his gaze, Ianthe resisted the impulse to wriggle. ‘Our problem is that we know what we’re doing. Most animals live by instinct.’

‘So it’s not cruel for animals to drive an ill or wounded member from the pack, but humans shouldn’t?’

For a moment she didn’t realise what he meant. When she did she gave him a startled, angry glance. ‘Animals drive their sick away or abandon them because their presence attracts predators. If you’re using me as an instance, I’m not ill, but my wound could well have put an end to the series’ existence if people had stopped watching. Besides, I was in hospital while they were filming the last programmes so they had to get someone to take my place. I have no hard feelings.’

‘As I said before, you’re astonishingly tolerant,’ he said, his smile hard and humourless.

Oh, she could be enormously tolerant. The loss of her job was the least of her problems.

He said, ‘Will you always have that limp?’ He glanced at her trouser-clad leg.

For the first time Ianthe realised that most people when confronted with her scar did one of two things—the rude stared and commented while the polite kept their eyes fixed on her face. Both responses irritated her because they seemed to imply that she was less than perfect, less than human. Alex, however, looked at her leg without aversion.

‘Always,’ she said, steadying her voice so that her self-pity didn’t show.

‘You seem very relaxed about it.’

Although her unusual frankness had given him the opportunity to probe, she’d told him enough about herself. ‘I try not to worry about things I can’t control,’ she said coolly. ‘It doesn’t always work, but fretting over the past is just a waste of time.’

‘Fretting over anything is a waste of time.’

Nodding, she let the sun soak into her, acutely aware of the strumming of the cicadas, now reaching for a crescendo. However, balancing the shrill stridulation were other sounds—the soft rustling of reeds swaying against each other, the lazy cry of a gull that had drifted inland from the coast a few miles away, and the sound of a speedboat on the one lake that was open for powerboats, its intrusive roar muted by intervening hills to a pleasant hum.

And a fantail—the same one, perhaps?—black and cheeky as it darted around collecting insects from under the vine over the pergola.

Accepting her tacit refusal to discuss her leg any further, Alex Considine said, ‘Do you know anything about the way dune lakes are formed? Why are there lakes in this valley, but not in the valleys on either side?’

‘Because under this one there’s an impermeable ironstone pan. Rainwater collects above it and forms the lakes. The sand is silica, which is why it’s so white.’

‘So this is a rare formation?’

‘No, there are similar lakes wherever there are sand-hills—on this coast they go right up to North Cape.’

He asked, ‘Did you do geology at university also?’

‘I’m just an interested amateur,’ she said, getting up. ‘I must go now. Thank you so much for the drink, and I hope your Range Rover is driveable soon.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Alex said calmly, rising to tower over her. ‘Mark isn’t hurt and neither was anyone else; that’s the important thing.’

Ianthe wanted to convince herself she was grateful that he didn’t try to persuade her to stay. For all his exotic façade he was far too easy to talk to, and she’d revealed more about herself than she’d intended to. Much more than he’d told her about himself.

As they were going towards the front door Ianthe’s leg failed her again. It was only a slight stumble, but Alex’s hand shot out instantly, closing with hard strength onto her arm and supporting her. Ianthe had been stung by jellyfish; that was how she felt now—shock, and then a sensation like the thrust of a spear tempered on the edge of ice and fire.

Did he feel it too? She looked up, saw the beautiful mouth compress, harden.

‘All right?’ he asked abruptly, releasing her when he was sure she had regained her balance.

She managed to smile. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Do you need to rest?’

‘No,’ she said, adding with hasty firmness, ‘And I don’t need to be carried, either.’

He was frowning, the brilliant eyes resting on her leg. ‘Will it always be likely to let you down?’

‘No, they tell me it’s going to be a lot better as soon as the muscles strengthen.’

Her surgeon had suggested she walk to build up the muscles, but she hadn’t because she’d cringed at the idea of people pitying her as she limped by. Well, that very evening she’d begin exercising, and ignore the stares and whispered comments.

The decision buoyed her spirits. With erect back and shoulders she said goodbye and drove carefully down the drive, concentrating fiercely to stop the odd desolation that roiled inside her.

At the bach she pushed all the windows open before going out onto the verandah overlooking the lake and collapsing into one of the elderly chairs to read the newspaper.

After ten minutes or so, she dropped it on the floor, feeling oddly detached, as though somehow she’d slipped through a transparent door and into another world.

The two men shaking hands on the front page weren’t statesmen signing an important treaty; they were smirking actors chosen to fill empty space on the page. The people marching in the streets of the capital city in a tiny state somewhere on the Adriatic Sea were extras from an old movie, selected for their lined, worn faces and dressed by Wardrobe in thick, drab peasants’ clothing.

Only the photograph of children playing in the sea meant anything; yes, she thought, looking at them with her heart compressed into a painful knot, they were real, they were complete and oh, they were lucky.

To break the soggy spell of self-pity, she strode over the thick, springy kikuyu grass to the edge of the busy beach. Small children ran around happily, yelling and laughing, many swam in the milky band of water that denoted the shallows.

Ianthe closed her eyes but immediately forced her lashes back up. Beneath her breath she muttered, ‘I’m not going to stand here like a wimp,’ and walked across the blinding white sand.

Nausea clutched her before she’d gone halfway. Breathing shallowly, fighting back the panic that turned her clammy and shaking, she forced herself to stand there for long, chilling moments before turning and stumbling back.

A couple of youths were passing; through the roaring in her ears she heard one jeer, ‘Hey, blondie, need some help?’

Intent only on reaching sanctuary, she blundered past. His companion said something and followed it up by catching her arm.

A voice cracked out across the beach. ‘Let her go.’

They swivelled around, both assuming the swaggering, aggressive posture of a male whose territory has been violated. Heart thudding painfully in her throat, Ianthe froze.

Alex Considine was taller than they were, but they were stocky, tight-skinned and muscular, with necks wider than their heads, their macho strut a violent contrast to his athletic grace. Yet such was the dark power of Alex’s personality that after one glance the man who held Ianthe dropped her arm as though her skin burned his fingers, and the other said uneasily, ‘She’s OK, mate. We thought she was going to fall over,’ before stepping back and decamping.

Alex didn’t even watch them go. ‘Are you all right?’ he demanded as he closed the gap between them with a couple of long strides. His hands fastened onto her, holding her up by her shoulders, and for a paralysing moment she was exposed to the full intensity of his gaze.

Ianthe knew she had skin the colour of cottage cheese and dark blotches under her eyes. She swallowed to ease her dry mouth, but could only croak, ‘Yes.’

Alex’s quiet, ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ made her stomach leap.

She dragged in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said stupidly, trying to overcome the empty sickness of fear.

He said, ‘Come on,’ and turned her towards the bach. A steel-hard arm buttressed her, giving her the strength to climb the low bank. ‘We’ll go inside,’ he said, his voice oddly distant.

Numbly she obeyed the crisp command and crossed the wide back verandah, where chairs sat in shabby communion. As they passed the low table he picked up a plastic bag.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ianthe asked woodenly after he’d pushed the door open and let her go through.

‘You forgot your frozen goods.’ Without asking permission he put the bag into her small freezer compartment. ‘You need some stimulant. I’ll make coffee.’

She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. ‘I don’t want anything, thanks. I’m fine now.’

Ignoring her, he opened the door into the fridge and removed a jug of orange juice. ‘This will do,’ he said, pouring a glass and bringing it across to her. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered, his unwavering gaze commanding her obedience.

It was too much trouble to protest, so she collapsed ungracefully into a chair. He waited until she’d pushed the heavy, clinging hair back from her face, then offered the glass. Accepting it, Ianthe watched with outrage and dismay as it wobbled in her hand.

‘I’ll do it,’ Alex Considine said abruptly, and took it back, holding it to her mouth so that she could sip the sweetly tart liquid.

It helped. Soon she felt secure enough to take the glass and gulp down more of the juice.

He waited until she’d almost finished before asking evenly, ‘What happened? What did they say to you?’

‘It wasn’t them.’ She dismissed the two men.

‘Then what?’

His level voice didn’t fool her; she wasn’t going to be able to fob him off. Ianthe bent her head so that she couldn’t see the narrow masculine hips, the long muscular legs. The silence hummed, strident with the confusion in her head, in her heart.

Eventually she said, ‘I had a dizzy turn.’

Although he said nothing, his disbelief was patent.

Slowly she finished the juice. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her throat thick.

‘Look at me,’ he ordered.

Lifting her chin was a mistake, and staring him full in the eyes, daring him to take the issue any further, was an even bigger one. Alex’s pale gaze drilled through her meagre defences.

‘Have you got sunstroke?’ he asked.

It would have been a pat answer, but she shook her head. Lies didn’t come easily to her. ‘No. I just felt a bit—over-whelmed.’ She couldn’t breathe in the hot room and her skin was too sensitive, too tight. ‘I think I’d rather be outside,’ she said, forcing her voice into something like normality. ‘It’s cooler on the verandah.’

‘All right. Do you need help?’

‘No!’ She tried to soften the blunt refusal. ‘I feel much better now.’

But once outside she realised she needed activity to burn off the adrenalin that still pumped through her body. Looking towards the motor camp, she asked aggressively, ‘Would you like to go for a walk and see how the other half spend their holidays?’

With a keen look he answered crisply, ‘Why not?’

Nothing had changed. Children, hatted and slick with sunscreen, still laughed and called in clear, high voices, still splashed in the chalky water that stretched out to where the lake bed dropped away.

The edge was still as sharp and sudden against the fierce, glinting blue of the deeper water.

Ianthe averted her eyes and concentrated hard on walking through the holidaymakers without giving away how aware she was of the man who strode beside her. Sand crunched beneath their feet. Alex looked around, the fan of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes slightly indented. How old was he? Thirty-three or four, she guessed.

He said, ‘This place reminds me of the village I lived in until I was ten.’

Intrigued, Ianthe was stopped from asking questions by an indefinable reserve in his tone, in the angular, aristocratic line of his profile.

They walked around families, past groups of teenagers indulging in their noisy, unsophisticated courtship rituals, and as they went by Ianthe felt the eyes, some on her, some on Alex. She was accustomed to being watched; it interested her that Alex too had developed a way to deal with onlookers. He didn’t make eye contact, he walked steadily—not fast, not slow—and although he swivelled when a child shrieked behind them he turned away again immediately he realised it was under supervision.

Who was he? She recognised his name, so possibly he had turned up in a newspaper. However, she had a strongly visual memory; if she’d seen a photograph of him she’d have remembered his startling good looks and pale eyes instead of merely being haunted by a vague familiarity.

Yet would any photograph capture the magnetism of his personality, or the aura of uncompromising authority?

Probably not, and she wasn’t going to think about it any more. That way lay danger.

Although she’d snatched up a straw hat as they left the bach, the sun beat down on her shoulders and summoned a rare blue sheen from Alex’s bare head. She should tell him he needed some protection, but it seemed an oddly personal and intimate thing to talk about.

‘You obviously know this place very well,’ Alex commented.

Nodding, she kept her eyes on the low bushes—a mixture of sedges, rushes and sprawling teatree—that scrambled from the pine plantation to the water, effectively marking the limit of the beach. ‘For years I spent every school holiday here with my best friend. Her parents own the bach.’

Once she’d known every inch of the shoreline. In those long, golden, distant summers she and Tricia had spent every day on or in the lake. And now Tricia was a wife and mother, and Ianthe was trying to reassemble her life.

‘We’d better go back,’ she said evenly. ‘It’s swampy in there.’ She glanced down at his feet and added with a spark of malice, ‘You won’t want to get those shoes wet.’

He laughed softly. ‘I’d noticed that I was overdressed,’ he said, turning the tables neatly on her.

Biting her lip, she swivelled, and of course her wretched leg chose just that moment to let her down again. Gasping, she jerked back, but too late. Her sideways lurch had thrown her into the tangle of bushes, and her foot sank into the lake so that water rose halfway up her calf.

Panic, sickening and immediate, clawed at her. For a horrifying second she couldn’t move, until the clamouring terror forced her free of the water. Whimpering, she pushed past Alex, blundering across the hot sand in a desperate rush to reach the safety of solid ground.