A Reluctant Mistress

‘You’re allergic to them?’

‘No.’ She dragged in a deep breath and squared her shoulders, forced herself to meet frowning tawny-gold eyes. ‘I’m allergic to wasps,’ she said succinctly. ‘That’s what I thought the bee was—and when it stung me I realised I’d come without my pills.’

Before she’d finished speaking Clay had taken a pocket knife from his hip pocket and opened it. She barely had time to register the cold steel sliding along her heated skin before he’d flicked the poison sac free. Another movement, and she watched, shivering, as the blade was folded back, the knife returned to its place.

‘Careless of you, wasn’t it?’ Clay said pleasantly, black brows lifting.

Natalia had as little liking as anyone for being called foolish, but he was right. In early winter most wasps were slow and easily seen, but the newly mated queens could be aggressive. She’d been lucky this time; normally she wouldn’t have set foot outside the house without her pills.

‘Very,’ she said coolly. ‘But I was too busy getting rid of the steer trashing the tunnel-house to think about wasps.’

Eyes the golden-brown of topaz examined her, travelling from her tangle of curls to her wide, green eyes, and then on to her mouth. His smile acknowledged ivory skin and soft red lips, the female desirability of a body honed by hard work.

It was a purely sexual appraisal, and it was done with every intention to intimidate. Natalia’s skin tightened as more adrenaline surged through her bloodstream, quickening her breath. I don’t need this, she thought savagely, stepping away.

‘Thank you for picking me up,’ she said in aloof dismissal. ‘I’ll be all right now.’

‘You don’t want a ride home?’

Natalia glanced at the patiently waiting horse. Mellow sunlight washed over its black hide. Had Clay chosen the horse to go with his hair?

‘No, thank you,’ she said, and turned her back on man and horse. Stiff-spined, she walked up the hill, bristling under that golden predatory scrutiny until she reached sanctuary in the native bush cloaking the hillside.

Only then did she relax, her breath whistling out between dry lips. If he’d slept as badly as she had, he’d have been sluggish too. Instead, he’d shown her up as a clumsy, forgetful idiot. Why did he have to buy the place next door? It infuriated her that she was totally unable to deal with a man who exuded sex and authority from every pore of that big, lithe, graceful body.

OK, so she’d responded to it. And, yes, her nostrils still quivered at the faint male scent she’d registered when he’d carried her across the swamp, and her skin felt oddly tender where he’d grabbed her.

However, she knew how little it meant. A mixture of attractive packaging and pheromones—abetted by some elemental treachery in the female psyche—had stirred her hormones, but she wasn’t going to surrender to them again. Dean Jamieson had taught her a lesson she wouldn’t forget—she was no more immune to masculine charisma than any other woman of twenty-three.

However, she had more pressing things to do than worry about Clay Beauchamp. Fixing the gap in the electric fence, for one.

It turned out to be one of those days. While the steer had been satisfying its appetite for capsicums it had smashed a vital piece of the hydroponic watering system. Not only that—until she could afford to replace the broken piece, Natalia would have to get up every two hours during the night to check the tunnel-house.

She toyed with the idea of billing Clay Beauchamp; the only thing that stopped her was that he would be entirely within his rights to demand that she pay half the cost of fixing the boundary fence.

Her afternoon was cheered by a phone call from the local supermarket, asking for a couple of boxes of peppers. Whistling, she went out to pick and pack them, then headed off down the road in the truck.

Before she’d got off the gravel road an explosion like a rifle-shot and a sudden vicious yank on the steering wheel sent adrenaline pumping through her. Battling with the wheel, she managed to wrestle the runaway vehicle on to the grass verge and kill the engine.

‘What else?’ she muttered as she got out, hiding her desperation with a ferocious frown.

Everything had been going so well until—until Clay Beauchamp arrived on the scene. He was turning out to be a bad luck charm. It figured, she thought sourly. Clay—what a ridiculous name! It was probably short for Clayton, only he didn’t look like a Clayton. He fitted Clay—or it fitted him; in spite of that worldly gloss he was elemental, earthy, primally male.

She knelt by the offending tyre, wincing at the strips of rubber shredded from it. Beyond prayer. Gravel bit into her knee; she got to her feet and brushed down her threadbare jeans.

Of course the spare wheel didn’t want to come out, and it was filthy. Pressing her lips together, Natalia tugged it free, coughing in the cloud of clinging road dust that accompanied it.

The sound of an engine coming fast made her start; infuriatingly, because normally she wasn’t clumsy, the wheel escaped through her hands and bounced on to the road too close to her feet. After an involuntary leap backwards she snatched at it, but had to watch helplessly as it rolled across the road towards the big burgundy car swinging around the corner.

CHAPTER THREE

CLAY applied the brakes, skilfully controlled the subsequent skid as the car fishtailed, then brought the vehicle to a halt just as the spare wheel hurtled into the driver’s door with jarring, bone-chilling noise. Watching it bounce off, Natalia felt sick.

The burgundy door opened and Clay emerged in a lethal, silent rush. As the wheel spun across the road and eventually fell, he demanded in a deep, raw voice, ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘I’m sorry—I dropped my spare wheel,’ Natalia told him crisply. Or as crisply as she could when her stomach was jumping like a just-caught marlin.

Clay’s mouth curved. ‘Really? Or did you throw it?’ he asked, his slow drawl a contrast to the swift assessment in his glance.

Stung, she said, ‘No. I don’t destroy things.’

He turned back to eye the dented and scratched paintwork of his indecently opulent BMW. Its value would probably wipe off her mortgage and leave some left over, she thought with a hard, rebellious defiance.

Envy was a lousy emotion, especially when it was mixed with self-pity, so she banished it.

‘My door doesn’t exactly look whole,’ he observed.

Natalia bit her lip. ‘It was an accident. I really am sorry. As you can see, I had a blow-out.’

‘I heard it, and thought some fool was shooting.’ He looked past her. ‘We’d better see whether your spare wheel came off better than my door.’

It hadn’t. Natalia stared down at what had been a reasonably good—if filthy—wheel, and the panic that had been building inside her surged to full, shattering fruition.

Clay indicated several dents and a split in the tyre. ‘You need a new one.’

She couldn’t afford a new one. Angling her chin, she lifted her eyes, only to feel something unnerving slither the length of her spine. He was looking at her with coolly acquisitive pleasure. Although his eyes were the same colour as topaz, they lacked the glitter of gems; instead the gleaming gold was speculative, almost lazy with the knowledge of strength and mastery. As her skin tightened, Natalia thought of lions, relaxed, indolent, deadly.

He said, ‘I’ll move my car off the road.’

A breeze swooped down from the hills, tossing a curl on to Natalia’s cheek. Her skin burned as she pushed the hair back with a shaking hand and watched him stride across the road.

Clay Beauchamp was just too much. The way he moved, the compelling aura around him, his very size—all reinforced the autocratic, controlled authority of his handsome face. How could she dislike him, yet be held captive by such a blind, unwilling fascination?

Seething at whatever malignant fate had tossed this series of disasters her way, she walked back to her truck and glowered at the burst tyre while Clay moved his car on to the grass. She didn’t turn as he came up behind her, and he made no noise, but she felt his presence like a shadow on her soul.

‘We’d better put those peppers into my boot,’ he said, ‘and I’ll take you wherever you want to deliver them.’

How she wished she could say loftily, Don’t bother, I can cope. But she couldn’t. The supermarket sourced most of its fruit and vegetables from the markets in Auckland; they used her because she was absolutely reliable and cheap. Glancing at her watch, she said unevenly, ‘I’m going to the supermarket, thank you.’

‘Do you want to take the wheel off the truck? The garage might have a tyre that will fit it.’

‘No, I’ll do that later—the supermarket wants the peppers now.’

‘All right. Lock up if you think it’s necessary. I’ll take the peppers across.’

She was behaving badly. It wasn’t Clay’s fault her tyre had burst, and he had offered her a lift. He had every right to be angry about the ding on his door, yet he hadn’t said anything.

Only what to him was a nuisance was for her a major setback. Not only did she have to buy an irrigation valve, but two new tyres and replace the buckled spare wheel. And the rates were due soon, not to mention the power and the phone bill…