Sanchia's Secret

She made herself breathe. ‘Yes. Sorry. I hate spider-webs on my face.’ It was all she could trust herself to say because her voice sounded as though it was going to descend into an incoherent, humiliating babble.

‘You’ve experienced them often?’

‘When I ran away in Auckland, before Great-Aunt Kate found me, I slept in a park and one morning I woke with a web over my face.’ She shuddered. ‘I’d dreamed I was dead, and for some reason the web convinced me that it had really happened.’

He took his time about scanning her face. Dazed, she thought she could feel his survey like a laser across her skin.

‘That must have been an appalling experience,’ he said evenly, and smoothed the sweep of one cheekbone with a tantalising thumb.

Fire and ice combined in that touch—at once smooth and abrasive, light yet sinking down into the very centre of her bones.

Summoning every ounce of will, Sanchia stepped back and muttered, ‘As you saw, I still get a bit spooked by them,’ and turned to blunder down the path.

From behind he asked, ‘Don’t you want your sunglasses?’

‘Oh.’ She stopped and held out her hand. ‘Thank you.’

His smile as he handed them over told her that he expected her to stuff them back on. It was exactly what she wanted to do, hide behind them. Why on earth had she blurted out that grisly little experience in the park?

Gritting her teeth, she clutched the sunglasses in hand as she set off again. She was going to have to watch her disconcerting tendency to confide in him.

Caid rejoined her silently, a little too closely because the path was narrow. His bare arm brushed hers, and a bolt of electricity sizzled through her.

‘What have you been doing these past few years?’ he asked. He spoke in a calm, unhurried voice, as though nothing had happened.

Because nothing had. ‘I’ve got a job at one of the technical colleges in Auckland—in a faculty office.’

He frowned. ‘Why didn’t you use your degree? I know you didn’t want to teach, but people with Asian languages are in high demand all around the Pacific Rim.’

He’d taken two degrees at the same time, a high-powered commerce one and law. Sanchia shrugged. ‘I discovered I had nothing much to offer an employer so I took a computer skills course and was lucky enough to find a clerk’s job.’

‘And is that what you are now?’

‘No,’ she said calmly. ‘I’ve advanced a couple of steps.’ And planned on advancing a lot more.

His keen look indicated that he’d picked up the ambition that fired her. ‘Are you enjoying it?’

‘Very much. Students from all over Asia study there so I’m picking up a good grounding in several other languages. And as I get free tuition I’m working my way through management qualifications.’

The path led to a small gate behind the Hunter house. The thinning trees allowed light to blaze down in golden medallions through the leaves. Caid reached past her and opened the gate, standing back to let her go through first.

Relieved, Sanchia donned her sunglasses as they walked out into the sun’s full power and crossed the closely mown lawn. It looked, she thought, trying hard to be dispassionate, like a picture in an expensive magazine. Shaved green lawn, gardens in full summer array, the house shaded by pergolas, and on two sides the glamour of the sea.

And the man beside her, as handsome as any model she’d ever seen in a magazine and infinitely more formidable. She said clumsily, ‘I should have worn a hat.’

‘You should. That milky skin must burn like tinder.’ Intolerable as the heat from a furnace, his glance touched her bare arms, her face.

‘Everybody burns in this sun,’ she returned swiftly.

Although he probably didn’t—he had his mother’s built-in golden tan along with her black, black hair. Sometimes when he spoke Sanchia could hear Mrs Hunter in a certain intonation, an un-English arrangement of words.

Quickly, before he could give her another of those intimidating looks, Sanchia added, ‘I slather myself with sunscreen every time I go out.’

‘Good. Skin like yours should be cherished.’ Again that cynical, caressing note in his voice mocked the compliment.

Irritated by her heated, mindless response, she said shortly, ‘All skin should be cherished.’

‘No doubt, but yours is a work of art.’

‘Thank you,’ Sanchia replied tautly.

Did he hope that a meaningless flirtation would persuade her to sell Waiora Bay? No, that instant physical response was real enough, and she wasn’t the only one feeling it.

But he could well intend to use it as a weapon.

Side by side they walked into the welcome coolness of a creeper-shaded terrace. Sanchia’s sandals clicked on the ceramic tiles as she followed him between loungers and chairs towards a wall of pushed-back glass doors.

‘Come in,’ Caid told her, standing back so she could go before him into the big sitting room beyond.

Sanchia had never forgotten the atmosphere of casual elegance, of European glamour and comfort that permeated Caid’s house. Reluctantly, feeling she was yielding an advantage, she removed the sunglasses and, without giving herself time to harness the clutch of bumblebees in her stomach, said, ‘I’m not open to persuasion on the future of the Bay.’ Fixing her gaze on a blur of flowers in a magnificent vase, she underlined her statement as delicately as she could. ‘It will probably save a lot of time and useless manoeuvring if I tell you that you won’t coax Great-Aunt Kate’s estate from me.’

He said in a voice so cold it froze her every cell, ‘I don’t do business that way, Sanchia.’

‘I wasn’t meaning—’

‘Then what were you meaning?’

Sanchia faced him, her chin angling up as she grabbed for her scattered wits. ‘I’m not going to be won over by an appeal to greed, either. Why offer me a couple of thousand for an option to buy the Bay when I’d made it obvious I didn’t want to sell? You know perfectly well that an option is usually sealed by a coin.’

For a racing moment she thought she saw a hint of respect in the vivid eyes.

‘There’s no set legal fee,’ he said drily. ‘An option to buy is a business decision, and the amount offered to cover it is decided on by the two people concerned.’

‘But it’s usually no more than a token—a dollar. You were testing me.’ She held his gaze a second longer. ‘You can pay me a dollar for the option, but I’m not going to change my mind about selling.’ And because his smile flicked her on the raw, she finished with a foolish bravado, ‘However much you try to intimidate me, or however charmingly you flirt with me.’

His smile vanished, but before she had time to exult he advanced on her, his silent grace a threat. Although Sanchia’s stomach lurched, she refused to back away.

‘This,’ he said, resting his thumb on the jumping pulse in her throat, ‘has nothing to do with the document you made the decision to sign.’

Gently, without pressure, his hand curved around her throat, the fingertips moving slightly against the sensitive nape of her neck, producing a tiny friction as purposeful as it was erotic. ‘Neither has the fact that your eyes are a smokier, more sultry green than I remember, and that your mouth is a miracle…’

Sanchia looked up into metallic eyes and saw the effort he had to put into relaxing his fingers. Inside her a latent hunger uncoiled, began to move through her veins like the tide of life greeting an arctic spring, long-awaited, unrestrainable.

‘Nothing to do with business at all,’ Caid repeated dispassionately, his voice deep and hard. ‘I find you very attractive, very appealing—I have ever since you turned sixteen. But I do not intimidate women, nor force them into my bed, and I don’t use lies to seduce them into making decisions either. Am I forcing you now?’

‘No.’ The word splintered with repressed emotion—terrifying emotion—a passionate, wild desire that warned of sensual meltdown.

Slowly, whispering across the surface, his fingertips tantalised her skin as his thumb noted the increased thudding of her pulse. Sanchia shivered.