Seduction Assignment: The Seduction Season / The Marriage Deal / The Husband Assignment

‘Sebastian.’ He leant one hip against the servery, and attempted to keep the amusement out of his voice. He partly lowered his eyelids to diminish the gleaming depths. ‘And Vivienne gave me a key.’

For tonight? Or had he possessed a key for a while? Aunt Vivienne and a toyboy? The latter aroused an improbable scenario which she instantly dismissed.

Anneke drew herself up to her full height, unaware that the hem of her tee-shirt rose two inches up her thighs. Her voice rose a fraction. ‘Sebastian who? And you’d better explain real quick why Aunt Vivienne asked you to come into her house at this ungodly hour.’

Dammit, was she wearing anything beneath that thing? Definitely not a bra. Briefs? If she lifted her shoulders much higher he was sure going to find out.

And precisely what, he mused tolerantly, did she think she could do to defend herself against him that he couldn’t counteract and deal with before she’d even moved an inch? Kick-boxing, karate? He was trained and adept in each.

‘Lanier,’ he responded indolently.

So he was French. That explained the slight accent.

‘Friend and neighbour.’ One eyebrow slanted, and his mouth tilted fractionally. ‘Requested by Vivienne to tell you in person news she felt would be too stark if penned in a written note left for you to read in the early-morning hours.’

Anneke was trying hard to retain a hold on her composure. ‘So on the basis of good neighbourly relations you came over here at—’ she paused to check her watch ‘—one-thirty in the morning, made me a cup of tea, and waited to tell me-what?’

‘You’re a mite ungrateful.’

His slow drawl held a degree of cynical humour, and it made her want to throw something at him. Surely would have if the sudden sharpness in those dark eyes and the subtle reassemblage of facial muscle hadn’t warned her it would be infinitely wise not to follow thought with action.

‘I’ve been on the road for eleven hours.’ Her body stance changed, became more aggressive. ‘I let myself in to my aunt’s cottage and discover a strange, disreputable man calmly making himself at home in her kitchen, and I’m expected to smile and say, Hi, my name is Anneke, what’s yours? How nice, you’ve made some tea?’

‘And impolite,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

‘What do you object to? The “disreputable” tag?’ Her eyes raked his lengthy frame, skimmed over broad shoulders, muscled chest, narrow hips, long, muscular legs, then slid back to his face. ‘Sorry, Sebastian.’ She gave his name faint emphasis. ‘From where I’m standing, you hardly represent a trustworthy image.’

The eyes lost their tinge of amusement and acquired a perceptive hardness that changed his persona into something dangerous.

He watched those splendid emerald depths dilate, and felt a moment’s satisfaction. ‘Vivienne is in Cairns.’ The unadulterated facts. He gave them to her without redress. ‘She had a call an hour after yours to say her daughter had gone into labour six weeks early. She caught the late-afternoon flight out of Coolangatta.’

Colour drained from her face. Elise was expecting a second set of twins. Six weeks premature. ‘How is she?’ The words whispered from her lips.

His eyes narrowed faintly. So she cared. Deeply. That was something. ‘Vivienne said she’ll ring early morning with an update.’

The exhaustion seemed more marked, the faint smudges beneath her eyes a little darker. She looked, he decided, as if she should sit down. He crossed to the small kitchen table and pulled out a chair, then transferred the cup and saucer from the buffet.

‘Tea. Hot, white, one sugar.’

Just the way she liked it. Anneke owed thanks to her aunt. And an apology to this large, faintly brooding stranger.

Neighbour? There was only one cottage in close proximity, and that was owned, according to Aunt Vivienne, by a lovely author who kept strange hours. He was also something of a handyman who had, Anneke recalled sketchily from her aunt’s correspondence, fixed her roof, replaced a blown fuse, lopped two overgrown trees, and undertaken some heavy garden landscaping.

Anneke regarded the man standing at the table with a faint frown. Not by any stretch of the imagination could she call him ‘lovely’.

Mid to late thirties. Ruggedly attractive in a dangerous sort of way, with the type of physical frame that seamlessly melded honed muscle and leashed power together to present a formidable whole.

Let loose, he’d present a ruthless force no man in his right mind would choose to oppose. The woman, she perceived, who willingly stepped into his space would never be sure whether she’d dice with the devil in hell, or soar to heaven with a tutelary saint.

‘Are you done?’

Anneke’s lashes swept high at his quizzical query, but there was no confusion apparent, no embarrassment. Just analytical regard.

OK, so men weren’t her favourite flavour of the month. Justifiable, according to Vivienne, whom he’d driven at speed to the airport that afternoon.’ Such adear girl.’

Familial beneficence tended to be biased, he mused. ‘Dear’she might be…as a niece, a cousin, a friend. But the woman who stood before him was cool, very cool. With fire beneath the icy façade. He had a very strong desire to stoke the fire and watch the ice melt.

‘It was kind of you to carry out my aunt’s wishes,’ Anneke said formally. It was the closest she intended to get to an apology.

Sebastian inclined his head in mocking acknowledgment. Given the circumstances, and the late hour, he should simply wish her goodnight and leave.

‘I’ll make fresh tea.’ Suiting words to action, he easily dispensed with the cup’s contents, flicked the kettle to reboil, and took another teabag from a glass container.

Damn him, did she have to spell it out? ‘I’m quite capable of making it myself.’ She crossed to the refrigerator and extracted milk, then took it to the servery.

Big mistake. For it brought her within a hair’s breadth of a hard male frame that seemed disinclined to move. Something that tripped the trigger on all her banked-up anger.

The silent rage she’d managed to contain all day burst free. ‘You’ve more than done your good deed for the day.’ Fine fury lent her eyes a fiery sparkle, and her knuckles shone white as she clenched her fists. ‘I owe you one.’

He looked at her carefully, noted the thinly veiled anger, the exhaustion. ‘So please leave?’

‘Yes.’ Succinct, with an edge of sarcasm.

‘Gladly,’ he intoned in a dangerously silky voice.

Something shifted in those dark eyes that she didn’t want to define, and there was nothing she could do to avoid the firm hands which cupped her face, or prevent the descent of his head as he fastened his mouth over hers.

It was a hard kiss, invasive, with erotic power and a sweet sorcery that took what she refused to give.

No other part of his body touched hers, and he fought against leaning in and gathering her close.

A spark ignited deep inside and flared sharply to brilliant flame. For both of them. He could feel her initial spontaneous response before she refuted it. Sense her surprise, along with his own.

He softened his mouth, took one last tantalising sweep with his tongue, then slowly raised his head.

She looked-shattered. Although she recovered quickly.

He smiled, a slow, wide curving of his mouth as he regarded her stormy features, and he dropped his hands from her face. ‘Now we’re even.’

Then he turned and walked from the kitchen, trod a path down the hall to the front door, then quietly closed it behind him.

It irked Anneke dreadfully that a few seconds of stunned surprise had rendered her immobile and robbed her of the opportunity to hurl something at him, preferably hard enough to do damage to any part of his anatomy.

Dulled reflex action, brought on by a degree of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion. Something that a good night’s rest would do much to rectify, she perceived as she set the kettle to boil again and made fresh tea.

Men, she brooded as she sipped the delicious brew, were arrogant, heartless, self-oriented, entirely governed by their libido, and not worth a minute of her time.

A thought which persisted as she finished her tea, then she crossed to the bedroom and slid in between crisp, clean white sheets.