Sanchia's Secret

Sanchia walked beside him down the wide, airy hall and out onto the terrace that ran across the entire sea-front of the house. Bordered by a stone balustrade with wrought-iron infills, the charming terrace was a clever salute to Mrs Hunter’s European heritage. Yet both house and terrace fitted into the splendid, entirely New Zealand surroundings.

‘I’ll go back by the beach,’ Sanchia said, heading towards the cliff path. ‘Don’t come with me; I know the way.’

But he insisted on walking her down the twisting, narrow path beneath the trees, and along the beach to the boundary fence that ran back from the sand.

Stopping there, he tilted Sanchia’s unwilling, defiantly composed face with a deft, strong hand beneath her chin. ‘An affair between us wouldn’t be sordid, either. Cosmic sounds much more like it.’

And he kissed her again, holding her still with not ungentle hands in her hair.

This kiss had all the flash and fire of the other, but added to it was something else even more dangerous—a seducing sweetness that stole Sanchia’s wits and checked her instinctive fear for long, betraying moments.

Yet when it was over she growled, ‘I meant every word I said about selling.’

‘So,’ he returned pleasantly—if she discounted the fine underpinning of steel to every word, ‘did I.’ He dropped his hands and stood back.

Routed and temporarily without an answer, Sanchia kept her face turned away while she walked away from him along the brazen beach, the sensitive hollow between her shoulderblades informing her that Caid watched her until she disappeared into the welcome shade of the pohutukawa trees.

Thrumming with adrenalin, she poured a glass of water from the jug in the refrigerator, but only drank half of it before she plonked the glass down and strode through the living room of the bach onto the deck, ferociously creating cutting, witty answers she could have flung at him.

You’re making too much of the whole thing! she finally told herself sternly. He tried to soften you up, that’s all. And even if he does want you, that means nothing. Men can want women they hate. So stop being an idiot! She dropped into an elderly wicker chair, only to leap out of it immediately. ‘Ouch!’

She sprang out again and peered at the ragged hole in the seat before twisting to examine the scratches on her leg where the broken wickerwork had attacked her.

Her aunt’s favourite chair; it had sat too long out in the weather. Swallowing hard, Sanchia went inside to dab the thin line of blood with antiseptic.

‘All he did was kiss you,’ she muttered, turning on the tap over the sink to make a cup of tea. Watching several drops sputter out, she said loudly, ‘Just a kiss. Well, two kisses. Nothing important. You’ve been kissed before and liked it and this was no different.’

She lied. Cosmic, Caid had said. Trust him to choose exactly the right word. That first kiss had rocketed her out of her settled, placid existence and spun her into unknown realms of sensation.

And the second one had simply reinforced her complete inability to deal with him. Caid had kissed her with a fierce, potent sexuality that had scared her witless, yet she’d kissed him back with all the subtlety of a lioness in heat.

Impatiently she wrenched the uncooperative tap off and on again. ‘Come on, water!’

But no stream of rainwater emerged, and the pump whined and spluttered before settling into a monotonous moan from its cupboard in the laundry.

‘Oh, no!’ The pump was notorious for misbehaving, and it would be difficult and horribly expensive to get a tradesman out during the holiday season.

Thumping the kettle down, she raced into the laundry and opened the cupboard to peer suspiciously inside. Apart from its irritating whine the pump seemed perfectly normal, without any signs of haemorrhaging oil or water.

Sanchia tried every other tap in the bach, a fruitless exercise. Unable to get up to pressure, the pump continued to labour with ominous persistence until she turned it off at the switch.

The only reason she could think of for the pump’s failure to deliver water was so scary she had to force herself out to the large, circular concrete tank behind the bach. Armed with the long-handled broom, she tapped from the top of the tank to the bottom, the same hollow clunk, clunk, clunk all the way down confirming her worst fears.

No water.

And, once she looked for it, the reason was obvious. The guttering around the far side of the bach had rusted away, diverting all the precious rain of spring onto the ground. Last time Sanchia had stayed she’d been using water that couldn’t be replenished.

‘Let’s not panic here,’ she said out loud. ‘It’s a nuisance, but it isn’t the end of the world. The electricity’s still on and the gas bottle’s more than half full. Buy some water.’

But she’d had the telephone disconnected. And she’d have to find out how much water cost; her bank account was too anorexic to be able to deal with more than a few dollars.

Of course, there was always her credit card.

‘So find out how much a tanker-load of water costs, Sanchia,’ she said aloud into the humid, unresponsive air.

Normally she’d have gone to the caretaker’s flat behind the big house and asked to use their telephone, but the prospect of meeting Caid again set her skin prickling.

All right then, she’d walk to the farm manager’s cottage.

After replenishing her sunscreen, she clapped on a wide-brimmed straw hat and set off for the Henleys’ house, a beautifully renovated old farmhouse a couple of bays along.

It took her half an hour—thirty minutes of watching nervously for Caid Hunter to gallop over a hill on a gleaming black stallion like something from a fairy story. Except that in fairy stories the prince always arrived on a white horse, she thought with a wry smile.

But then Caid was no prince, no romantic stereotype. In the world of fairy tales he might even be the villain—devious, impossibly handsome, a little brutal.

And determined.

‘Of course you can use the phone,’ Pat’s wife told her when Sanchia got there, hot and sticky and puffing slightly. ‘I’ll make some coffee while you’re doing it.’

She even gave Sanchia the number of the tanker owner, whose wife wasn’t nearly so welcoming. ‘Do you know how many people have used up all their water already?’ she asked wearily. ‘Brett’s working fifteen hours a day trying to keep up with the demand. Where did you say you are? Oh, Waiora Bay. Well, there’s no way we could get our tanker down that hill. The corners are too sharp.’

Sanchia felt sick. Without water she’d have to go back to Auckland. Until then she hadn’t realised how much she’d banked on this final holiday to give her some sort of closure. Compulsively rolling a pen back and forth, back and forth, she asked, ‘What about a small tanker?’

‘We haven’t got one,’ the woman said, marginally more sympathetic. ‘You could try Kerikeri—or even Kaitaia—but I don’t think either of them have one either, and they’re busy too. It’s been a dry spring and summer all over the north.’

‘I see,’ Sanchia said woodenly. ‘Thanks very much.’

‘Look, I’ll take your number—’

‘I’m sorry, I don’t have a phone.’

From the kitchen Molly Henley called, ‘Give her our number, Sanchia.’

Gratefully Sanchia did so, and the other woman took it down, but warned, ‘I can’t promise anything.’

‘I know. Thanks very much.’

‘Bummer,’ Molly commiserated when she’d hung up. ‘Come and have your coffee while we work out what to do next.’

Things didn’t seem quite so bad when Sanchia was sitting out on the verandah with a mug of coffee in her hand, feet propped up on the balustrade, the sun pouring onto a sea as blue and tender as a Madonna’s robe.

Her hostess said practically, ‘Caid had a bore put in for us so we’ve got plenty of water. Wait until Pat comes back—he’ll work out some way of transporting it to the bach. Now, tell me what you’ve been doing since we saw you last.’

‘Just the usual,’ Sanchia said lightly. ‘What have you been up to?’

Molly embarked on a funny, racy overview of district gossip, then asked, ‘Have you seen Caid yet? He got in yesterday.’

‘Yes.’ Sanchia fiddled with the handle of her mug. ‘Is his mother coming?’