The Final Proposal

Sleeping with rats—and oh, how she prayed there weren’t any around!—would be less stressful than accepting his hospitality.

His dark brows drew together above hard eyes. ‘I’ve seen you in your native habitat,’ he said, ‘and you are not going to like it here, believe me.’

She didn’t have to prove herself—she wasn’t in the least worried about what he thought of her—and she wasn’t going to cave in like a wimp under the relentless assault of his masculine dominance.

Tilting her chin, she said, ‘I’ll be perfectly all right.’ Wickedly, she added, ‘I have been camping several times.’

And she enjoyed a fierce satisfaction when his mouth curved into a slow smile that was both sinister and sexy as hell.

‘Don’t play games with me,’ he said softly. ‘There’s a difference between camping with the latest equipment and this. You’ll find the homestead much more comfortable.’

It would be perilously easy to give in to that deep, assured voice, to his smooth assumption of mastery—especially as that smile sent a hot pulse of sensation washing through her. Ignoring the quick, uneven flurry of her heartbeats, Jan said crisply, ‘I’m sure I would, but I’m quite capable of looking after myself.’

He gave her another intent, measuring glance, then said, ‘If you’re determined to stay here I’ll leave you my mobile phone.’

Lightly, wishing he’d go, Jan told him, ‘I have one in the car. Look, if it worries you, give me your number and I’ll call each night to let you know I’m all right.’

He didn’t like being crossed. Not that he showed it—she was beginning to think that his control over his expression was almost unnatural—but she could feel the irritation coming off him in waves. His disapproval stiffened her backbone—not ousting the intense awareness that played havoc with her heartbeat, but making it easier to ignore.

He seemed to realise that she meant it, because he said indifferently, ‘Very well, if that’s what you want.’ And he gave her his number, waiting while she wrote it down in her Filofax.

‘Ring tonight at seven,’ he said. ‘Have you got food?’

‘Yes, plenty, thanks.’

‘I’ll see you around.’ And he turned and went back to the Land Rover, the warm autumn sun striking fire from his head.

She watched him turn the vehicle with an economy of movement she envied; a hand waved, the dog braced itself and the Land Rover took the rutted track easily and without fuss to disappear beneath the kanuka trees.

Perhaps she should have asked him how to get the range going. Ah, well, it was too late now, and she was intelligent enough to work it out on her own. Waiting until the sound of the engine had died away, she drove the scarlet MG into the shed, where it would be sheltered from any rain. Looking around at the logs neatly stacked against the walls, she decided that the range had to be fuelled by wood.

Somehow, from there the bach looked even more suspicious and surly. ‘It’s only because you could have gone to stay with the local laird,’ she said out loud, forcing herself to walk back across the coarse grass.

Once inside she explored properly. There was no kitchen, just a rickety set of cupboards—empty, she was thankful to discover. An old enamel bowl, probably used for washing-up as there was no sink, rested upside down on a bench, hiding three dead spiders and the faded pattern of a vinyl covering. A small window revealed a galvanised tank on a dilapidated wooden stand just a few feet away; from it one pipe led to a tap, another to the lean-to bathroom at the back of the bach.

In which, she was grateful to see, there was a proper toilet. No chilly morning trips to an outdoor privy.

First things first. She tried the tap over the bath and only realised how tense she’d been when water spurted into the bottom and she felt overwhelming relief. Even then, she didn’t draw a breath until the year’s accumulation of debris in the pipe drained away and the water ran clear. Although it looked as though the only method of heating it was the range, at least she wasn’t going to have to carry water to the bach in buckets.

She turned the tap off and went to check out the bedroom.

It was lined with matchboarding, and an old double bed with wirewove and kapok mattress that smelt sourly of dampness took up most of the room. Gingerly, Jan opened the door of a kauri wardrobe to find that someone had cleared everything away there too.

Wondering just what Fergus Morrison had hoped to achieve with the conditional clause in his will, she went back to the main room. A rocking chair in front of the range and an unpainted wooden table and chair pushed against the wall beneath the window were its sole items of furniture.

But the view from the window stopped the breath in her throat. Long, mellow rays from the afternoon sun illuminated the panorama with an artist’s skilful hand, glinted across the beach, turned the still waters to a sheet of softly glowing pearl-blue. In the light’s fugitive glamour even the mangroves looked a little less sinister.

‘Yes,’ she said aloud, imagining buildings on the flat land and the voices of children and adolescents—young lives given hope and confidence, ‘it could be perfect.’

She’d brought detergents and rags, and after changing into jeans and T-shirt she wasted a good half-hour fiddling around with kindling and paper in the firebox of the range, juggling levers and knobs only to have each promising fire die down into raw-smelling ashes. Eventually she gave up in disgust, and, thanking the twentieth century for detergents, scrubbed the porcelain bath with cold water before tackling the other fittings. They were not as old as the bath or the building, so presumably her grandfather had had them installed fifteen years ago, when he’d come to live here.