Savage Courtship

‘Many happy returns for tomorrow, pal.’ There was the audible sound of a toast being drunk.

Benedict cleared his throat as understanding burst upon his sluggish brain. ‘This is your idea of a birthday present? For God’s sake, Dane—!’

‘Don’t worry, pal, it’s all pleasure and no responsibility,’ Dane gleefully misunderstood him. ‘You don’t have to look after her for keeps—she’s strictly on weekend loan. I promised you’d return her in perfect nick so make sure you treat her real lover-like—’

‘What—?’ Benedict moved jerkily back towards the bed, stunned by the revelation that the anonymous female body was there purely for his temporary delectation.

Another rolling laugh. ‘I keep telling you, all work and no play makes Ben a dull boy. And don’t tell me you’re not feeling jaded because I know you well enough to read the signs. You need to revitalise yourself with a little hell-raising and, believe me, this babe is guaranteed to loosen you up real fast. A few days with her and you’ll feel eighteen again...’

‘I wouldn’t wish a second time around as a teenager on my worst enemy,’ Benedict said sardonically, unconsciously lowering his voice as he leaned against the bedside cabinet, wondering what Dane would say if he knew that his outrageous birthday present had got tired of waiting to spring her surprise and was out cold. Benedict decided not to spoil his friend’s mirthful pleasure by telling him. ‘Let alone my best friend. I hesitate to inject a dose of unwelcome reality into your adolescent fantasies, Dane, but isn’t this kind of arrangement a bit unhealthy these days?’

Dane gave a whoop of delighted laughter. ‘Afraid you’ll have a heart-attack from the excitement? Come on, Ben—would I give you something that I thought would kill you? When was the last time you had some innocent, macho fun? A year? Eighteen months ago? Trust me, you have nothing to worry about. I had her thoroughly checked over inside and out and she’s in prime, A-1 condition—’

‘For God’s sake—!’ Benedict could feel the heat in his face, almost as if he was embarrassed on behalf of a woman who was obviously either a high-class call-girl or a free spirit who got her kicks out of having sex with total strangers. He knew it had been quite some time since his last relationship with a woman ended but he had been so absorbed in his work that he had never worried about his inactive libido. Not so Dane, it seemed, whose sex life was as active as his bizarre sense of humour.

‘Dane—’

‘No need to thank me, pal,’ his friend interrupted, ringing off with a breezy, ‘Just enjoy! And remember, it’s pumpkin time Monday morning...’

Benedict swayed slightly under another rolling wave of fatigue as he switched off the phone and placed it clumsily down on the bedside table. He struggled to keep his eyelids open as he wearily debated his options.

There were plenty of other beds in the house but his proprietary interest in this one was stubbornly acute.

Despite her apparent sprawl, his nameless birthday gift actually trespassed on little more than half of the bed, he noted, her left arm and hip neatly aligned with the far edge of the single mattress. He looked down at her outflung arm, at the long, slender fingers curled laxly over the edge of the bed. Her fingertips almost touched his hair-roughened knee. Gently he encircled her wrist and lifted the sleep-heavy arm, placing it neatly back against her side. There was now an inviting expanse of empty bed available. A man-sized portion, if the man was of greyhound-lean proportions...

Goldilocks slumbered on. She was amazingly still, except for that slow, sensuous ripple of breath down the long, beautiful spine. She made sleep seem like an enchantingly erotic experience and Benedict found himself wondering whether a woman who offered herself up so voluptuously to sleep would be equally hedonistic in her approach to lovemaking.

A lazy stirring of male curiosity piqued his jaded senses, his angry earlier resentment overwhelmed by the knowledge that if he cared to find out he only needed to wake her. She was his to command. He wondered if that fleecy gold hair was as soft as it looked, and whether the colour was natural. He wondered whether her front would live up to that matchless back. Even in the slackness of sleep he could see that her muscles were well-toned. Her waking movements would be strong and supple. He imagined watching that golden back arching and flexing in slow, indolent rhythm with the languid thrust of his hips. He’d take her slow and easy at first...and then...and then...

He looked down at his quiescent body in rueful self-derision. And then...nothing. His mind might be aroused but he was so exhausted he was physically incapable of doing his vivid imagination justice. If he got into bed with her tonight he would be sleeping with her in the strictly literal sense.

Waking up with her in the morning, though, was suddenly an enchanting prospect.

Oh, yes...after a good, solid sleep the birthday boy would be in far better condition to appreciate his very unexpected, and undoubtedly expensive present...

CHAPTER TWO

VANESSA FLYNN was sitting at the scrubbed kitchen table sipping her first cup of coffee of the day when her employer burst into the kitchen and came to an abrupt halt.

Her hands tightened around the cup but that was the only visible reaction that escaped her rigid self-control. Inside she was one huge, all-enveloping blush.

Mrs Riley looked up from the breakfast tray she had busied herself over on the kauri-slab bench in surprise.

‘Did you want your breakfast early this morning, Mr Savage?’ she asked, her middle-aged face creased with dismay at this departure from routine. ‘Only, your office never notified us that you were coming last night, you see, so nothing’s quite prepared. I didn’t even know that I’d be needed until Vanessa rang me a little while ago—’

‘No, no...’ Benedict Savage cut her off with a wave of his hand, frowning as he looked at the single setting she had laid on the tray. ‘You don’t have to rush.’

Vanessa braced herself as his gaze lifted, darted about the kitchen, and reluctantly settled on her.

She willed herself not to let her interior blush show, her dark brown eyes steady as they met his. She had dressed in her best wallpaper this morning—sensible, knee-length grey skirt and white short-sleeved blouse, her damp chestnut hair strictly confined to a neat French pleat, her face made up with the discreet foundation and barest touch of ginger lipstick that she habitually wore when on duty—too little to draw undue attention to her features but just enough to satisfy her feminine vanity.

Not that she had much reason to be vain. She was a shade under six feet but without the willowy slenderness that would have rendered her height fashionable. At least everything else was proportionate to her grand size, but that was little consolation. Her face was what might be politely termed strong-boned, her chin too square, her mouth too big and her wide, dark eyes deeply set and heavy-lidded, so that she was cursed with a perpetually sleepy air which was totally at odds with her practical efficiency.

She swallowed, the sweetened coffee turning bitter on her tongue as she withstood the silent stare of the man she had woken up in bed with that morning.

Behind the tortoiseshell frames she found his blue eyes unreadable. Not that Benedict Savage’s expression was ever easy to interpret. To her he had always appeared as precise and controlled as the architectural drawings which papered the walls of the studio next to his bedroom.

He was also a very private man, reserved to the point of coldness. In fact it was that very reserve that made him an ideal employer as far as Vanessa was concerned...that and the fact that his visits to his historic house on the east coast of the Coromandel Peninsula were few and far between, and never without advance notification.

Until now...

Vanessa’s fingers tightened further on her cup. She had an unwelcome premonition that this visit was going to alter the pleasant tenor of life at Whitefield House completely and forever. Already her perception of Benedict Savage had been unwillingly altered. He was no longer merely her employer, he was now regrettably entrenched in her brain as a man...

He was still looking at her, and she cringed at what he must be thinking.

If only she could remember what had happened!

Unfortunately, last night was a total blank, from the time she had fallen into bed after imbibing more than her share of champagne over an early dinner with Richard, until the moment she had become aware of the sounds of dawn filtering through a window that she knew she had firmly closed the previous evening.

When she had opened her eyes and found herself almost nose to nose with her naked employer, her arm draped over his hard waist, her thigh trapped intimately between his, she had thought at first that she was dreaming. Not that she had ever had erotic dreams about Benedict Savage before; she had always felt utterly safe in that regard. He was just not the sort of man she found attractive. He was too cerebral, too dispassionate, too much of a perfectionist for Vanessa, who much preferred comfort to sharp-edged perfection.

Luckily she had been too muddle-headed to scream when the rest of her senses had confirmed the shocking reality of the bare flesh pressed against hers. She had merely frozen, terrified that her consciousness might awaken his, unable to believe that the supple male hand possessively cupping her soft breast really belonged to Benedict Savage...not to mention the steely hardness that pressed into the hollow of her thigh where it was wedged snugly between his. He might not have roused from sleep but the man in her arms had definitely not been unaroused!

Shame and disbelief had warred for supremacy in the long moments it took for her to realise that she might still be able to extricate herself from the immediate consequences of her folly. The deep, even tenor of his breathing had indicated that Benedict—Mr Savage, she corrected herself grimly, clinging to the flimsy protection that the formality offered—was still deeply asleep, and Vanessa had prayed that he would continue to remain so as she extracted herself, inch by excruciatingly cautious inch, from their tangled embrace, her eyes fixed on his sleeping face.

All had gone well until the final few seconds when he’d shifted and growled an inarticulate protest at the withdrawal of warm, feminine flesh but, blessedly, he hadn’t woken...

When she’d finally slithered off the side of the bed, taking most of the upper sheet with her, he had merely rolled further over on to his face with a groan, slinging a long, sinewy arm around the pillow she had vacated and dragging it under his ribs, pinning it there with his drawn-up knee. She had primly flung the sheet back over him and fled hastily, her mortification ridiculously intensified by the knowledge that her presence in his bed was so easily replaced by a shapeless pillow!

It had taken her all of fifteen minutes’ hard scrubbing in the shower to feel that she had washed the masculine scent and feel of him off her skin and even now the memory of it returned to haunt her.

Once again, she damned Benedict Savage for taking advantage of an innocent mistake. Why hadn’t he woken her up? Or, worse, what if he had woken her and, in an alcohol-induced stupor, she had been recklessly wanton...?

She shuddered, looking warily up at him through the protective screen of her lashes. Why on earth was he just standing there like that? Why didn’t he say something—an accusation, a joke, a request for an explanation, a demand she pack her bags and never darken his door again—anything to break this unbearable tension?

Nervously she tried to assess his uncertain mood. He hadn’t shaved and his hair was ruffled—not a very good sign for a man who always presented a perfectly groomed image, even when relaxing in private. His saturnine face had a more than usually shuttered look, his thin mouth a tight slash across the unshaven lower half of his face that emphasised the general impression of indrawn tension. However, his crisp blue and white striped shirt and dark blue trousers were immaculately co-ordinated, so he hadn’t been in such haste to track her down that he’d just thrown on the first clothes to hand.

The silence stretched on just long enough for her nerve to break under the strain.

‘Did you want me, sir?’

Too late Vanessa realised the suggestive ambiguity of the question and she had to clench her teeth to stop herself gabbling a disclaimer into the ensuing silence. Her neatly buttoned collar suddenly felt chokingly tight.

‘I...’ He released her from the torture of his sole attention, looking around the kitchen again, as if hunting for his words. ‘Er... Am I the only one breakfasting...?’

Vanessa was aware of Mrs Riley’s sidelong glance but refused to share her silent puzzlement at their employer’s uncharacteristic vagueness. She was too busy worrying over whether he was deliberately prolonging her agony or merely unwilling to humiliate her in front of the housekeeper.

‘Why...yes. Vanessa didn’t mention that you’d brought any guests with you this time...’ Mrs Riley was saying, a faint look of bewilderment crossing her face as she watched her employer’s eyes drop as he studied his stylishly shod feet with apparent fascination.