The Temptress Of Tarika Bay

‘Goodnight.’

He closed her in with smooth strength, judging the impact to a nicety so that the door didn’t slam.

Biting her lip, Morna set the car in motion. ‘Goodnight,’ she murmured, easing out of the hotel car park. ‘And goodbye.’

Of all the words in the English language, goodbye had to be the one most laden with emotion.

Back at the bach, she parked and got out, gripped by a strange yearning that had absolutely nothing to do with the man she’d left behind her. ‘Nothing at all,’ she asserted vigorously to the silent universe.

And if she told herself that often enough she might even come to believe it.

Instead of going inside she walked across the springy grass, halting in the darkness beneath the branches of the massive Norfolk Island pine. Tiny waves made no sound as they eased in and out, and no moreporks called to break the silence, no wind rustled the leaves above her.

She slipped off her shoes and walked down the beach, stopping when her feet reached firm, wet sand. Above her the stars burned tiny erratic signals into the black vault of the sky, diamonds in ebony, unimaginably far away.

The charmed circle Cathy and Nick had constructed would soon be complete. Morna’s mouth curved tenderly. A baby! Like a renewal, a gift to the future.

She was delighted for them both, yet even as she fixed her eyes on the small cluster of lights on the other side of the wide estuary and listened to the silence, she shivered with a harsh, wrenching loneliness.

‘So?’ she stated briskly, heading for the bach. ‘Apart from Nick, you’ve always been alone.’

Even during the years she’d spent with Glen she’d been on her own, although she hadn’t realised it; besotted with love, she’d let down her guard and surrendered everything, even her career, until his cruel dismissal shattered every foolish illusion.

In the narrow bathroom off the bedroom she creamed the cosmetics from her skin, examining herself in the mirror with clinical dispassion. Everything about her face was too strongly marked—nose, eyes, full mouth, square jawline. Pride demanded that she dress with chic sophistication, but it was brains and talent and gritty determination that had propelled her from life as a fatherless child in a poverty-stricken suburb of Auckland.

Sometimes though, when she looked in the mirror she saw that child looking back at her.

‘Wallowing in self-pity is not your style, so forget it,’ she said aloud, turning away to undress.

Hawke seemed to like what he saw…

Halfway through stripping off her silk shirt she stopped, remembering the heat of his lips against her wrist the previous day. And the way her hand had curled against the silken abrasion of his jaw, testing its contours, her fingertips so absurdly sensitive she thought she could feel that slight roughness even now, right down to her toes.

That was why she’d refused to dance with him. In conversation she could use words to keep the distance between them; dancing was too intimate, and she’d be unable to hide the tiny treacheries of body language that would tell him far too much. And perceptive as he was, he’d seen though her—she was a coward, afraid of revealing more than she already had.

When he’d kissed her wrist she’d lost control; she couldn’t afford to let that happen again, so the forbidden pleasure of dancing in his arms would remain on the ‘stupidly dangerous’ list.

Suddenly taken over by a yawn, she climbed into the bed she’d placed so that every morning she could pull back the curtains and start each day with the exquisite vista. She’d grown up in squalor, surrounded by the grey tragedy of crumbling dreams; now she lived with a view of beach and water backed by the smooth blue contours of the hills on the far side of the estuary.

She had a career and a future no one could take away from her. She had friends. And she was going to be an aunt! She had all she’d ever wanted.

One emotional entrapment was enough; never again would she follow her mother’s example and look for security in a man.

After a restless night she opened the curtains onto the blue and gold freshness of sun and sea and dew-wet grass, of champagne-coloured sand cooled by an overnight tide. A slight autumnal haze silvered the far end of the beach.

Her smile fading, Morna detected the sound of thudding hoof-beats; with a frown she watched a man and a horse coalesce out of the radiant mist. They came down from the hill like some image from the barbaric past, sand spurting from the animal’s hooves as the wind of its movement sent tail and mane streaming.

Morna shrank back. The horse was huge, its bronzed hide gleaming like satin. And the man was a brilliant rider, blending seamlessly with the animal so that together they seemed some composite being.

‘He can’t be…’ she breathed, squinting into the brightness outside as her mouth dried and her heart bolted out of control.

No, the rider wasn’t naked, although his black shorts barely qualified as clothing. Sunlight poured over him like a blessing, burnishing him bronze. Acutely responsive to the primal beauty of man and beast silhouetted against the dawn sky, Morna watched as they galloped towards the bach.

Just short of it the animal checked, began to ease off its headlong gallop into a more sedate gait. As they came level its rider looked towards the building, and Morna knew he’d seen her. Feverish anticipation shortened her breath.

‘Get a hold on yourself!’ she muttered.

Once horse and rider had disappeared she hurled back the bedclothes and scrambled into her jeans, adding a sleeveless funnel-necked top and low flat shoes. When the horse appeared again, this time walking sedately along the sand, she was as ready as she could be—hair severely pulled back, face washed, teeth cleaned, and a black enamelled cuff pushed up almost to the elbow of one arm.

In complete armour, she acknowledged with a tight smile, whereas Hawke was only in swimming shorts.

Nerves buzzing, she walked out onto the wide deck and watched as he brought the horse to a halt on the sand a few metres away.

He didn’t get down, or say anything, just surveyed her with unreadable eyes. Morna bristled. Talk about a cliché—the landowner out exercising his favourite stallion, looking from a position of dominance down on the trembling peasant girl…

But she was not a peasant girl, and neither was she trembling, although her pulse was erratic.

Angry, because all the cynicism in the world wasn’t going to divert the chaotic tide singing through her body, she said with ridiculous formality, ‘Good morning.’

‘Good morning.’ His voice was disturbingly objective. ‘How did you sleep?’

‘Very well,’ she lied. She’d dreamed long, languorous dreams of a silent, invisible man kissing her in the darkness—and the kisses hadn’t stopped at her wrists…