CHAPTER SIX

JANE bent down to pick up a small pebble from the firm black sand. She brushed away the clumps of clinging grains and rubbed the flat, round stone between her finger and thumb in tactile appreciation of the smoothly polished surface. She curled her forefinger around the outside edge and looked out at the wide expanse of sea. There was a stiff wind and the turn of the tide had made the early-morning surf wild, the breakers thundering to shore in broken lines, salt spray hanging like white mist over the long, flat beach.

Jane waded into the foam at the edge of the water and paused, judging her moment, then splashed sideways in a series of little hops to skim the stone into the shallows over the top of a disintegrating wave. It skipped three times on the swirling water before smashing into the next curling breaker. Not bad considering that conditions were so poor and she was using her right arm!

She backed out of the water, brushing at the splashes on her white cotton shorts. Five was still her best score. When she got the proper use of her left hand back, in a few more weeks, she hoped to be able to double it.

The wind stung her wet legs and she tucked her taped hand into the pocket of her thin wind-cheater and turned back, deciding it was time for breakfast. Trudging into the soft sand above the high-tide mark, she glanced to her left where the huge, crouching hulk of Lion Rock which separated the broad iron-sands of North Piha from the main Piha beach was obscured in low cloud and spray. By mid-morning the cloud would probably burn off and it would be another brilliant west coast summer day.

Yesterday had been a scorcher, and the usual rash of weekend day-trippers had created havoc for the dedicated surf lifesavers who patrolled the crowded main beach, but early on a weekday morning, during school term, it was only the locals, and the serious surfers and body-boarders who braved the notorious Piha rips.

She lifted her eyes from the fine black sand sifting through her bare toes to the steep, bush-clad hills above the beach. They were the western fringe of the Waitakere Ranges, which protected the fiercely independent coastal community of Piha from the brash encroachments of the sprawling suburbs of Auckland, forty kilometres to the east. There was only one dead-end road winding through the ranges into Piha, and the locals liked it that way.

There were no commercial developments in the small, isolated settlement, no shops other than a single general store, a dairy and a takeaway bar on the beachfront, and no hotels, bars or restaurants—only private residences and holiday homes, most of them owned by the same families for generations, and a council-run camping ground offering basic facilities to those wanting to pitch tents and park caravans. The core population of permanent residents was small enough to be friendly, large enough to blend into, and eccentric enough to be tolerant of a range of alternative lifestyles.

It was the perfect bolt-hole.

Jane scrambled up the tussock-seeded dunes which crested the narrow tar-sealed road that ran along the back of the North Piha beach and came into sight of her own, private bolt-hole.

It wasn’t a very pretty sight. Like many of the old-fashioned holiday baches at Piha, it was a box-like rectangle of painted fibrolight panels, with extensions randomly tacked on over the years to cope with the ebb and flow of family numbers. This one was a particularly ugly faded yellow, with a red corrugated iron roof urgently in need of patching.

The paint on both roof and walls was cracked and peeling, sandblasted completely bare in places by decades of savage Piha winter westerlies. Several windows were cracked in their badly warped frames and the front door listed drunkenly on its hinges. The detached wooden garage was in even worse condition, rotten timbers proof of years of neglect, and the chain-link fence sagging around the perimeter completed the general picture of sad dilapidation.

But at least it was a roof over her head, albeit a rather leaky one, thought Jane ruefully as she pushed open the rusty gate. It was also rent-free and, most important of all, it was well out of Ryan Blair’s dangerous orbit!

Her enemy.

Her lover.

She didn’t know which one she feared more.

She still couldn’t quite believe that she had managed to escape him. After all her previous struggles it had seemed almost too easy. Or was she only free because Ryan had decided to let her go?

The question tormented her, as did her distressingly vivid memories of the scandalous night as his sexual play-thing. She could conveniently blame the pills and alcohol for initiating her outrageous behaviour, but she had a sneaking suspicion that they were the tools with which she had subconsciously sought to lower her inhibitions to the point where she could act on her desires without feeling guilty afterwards.

If so, it hadn’t worked!

The first thing she had been aware of when she had woken the next morning had been the pulsating throb of her left hand. The pain had been as bad as in the first few days after the injury. Had she rolled on it in the night? Why hadn’t her fingers been safely taped up?

Her heavy eyelids had fluttered open and she’d frowned for an instant of total bewilderment at the morning sunlight streaking across an unfamiliar ceiling. Her mouth had tasted dry and cottony, her head had felt oddly achy, and so had...

Oh, God! Through the pain it hit her: where she was, what she was doing there...

Her heart jerked in fright as she turned her head, but she was alone in the wide disordered bed, her long black hair streaming across the indentation in the pillow beside hers. Alone and naked under the white cotton sheet, her body feeling bruised and tender in all sorts of incredibly intimate places.

And no wonder! She snatched the sheet to her throat, a burning blush enveloping her as splintered images of wild, passionate excess danced in her head. What had begun as a primitive act of possession had very quickly become a prolonged orgy of mutual self-indulgence, shorn of any pretence of reluctance on either side. Ryan had seemed possessed of a superhuman stamina and an infinite capacity for invention that had shocked Jane to the core, even as she had boldly responded to the irresistible challenge of proving that she was more than a match for his devastating expertise. She had done things for him, to him and with him that she had never dreamed of doing with any man, let alone with Ryan Blair!

She was suddenly conscious of the open curtains flooding bright, white light across a tangle of male and female clothes on the floor, and the sound of running water shutting off behind the closed bathroom door. Panic surged to a peak. Oh, God, maybe she could sneak out of the room while he was in the bathroom? She rose on her elbows, but even that slight movement made her hand throb sickeningly and she sank down on the pillows again, groaning at the sight of her freshly swollen fingers.

She let the back of her fiery hand rest very gently down on the cool sheet beside her pillow. The painkillers had worn off with a vengeance and she realised how foolish and downright dangerous it had been to take double the prescribed amount. Not only had she risked an overdose, but she had masked the warning signs that might have told her she was doing more damage to her hand.

Oh, yes, she had been a complete and utter fool all round! Jane flung her other arm over her eyes to block out the harsh light of day. In the condition that she was in it would take an age for her to dress herself again. Unless she wanted to scuttle out of the hotel wrapped in a sheet there was no avoiding the impending confrontation. She groaned again, furious with herself for being so weak and pathetic.

‘If you’re feeling stiff and sore I suggest you try a hot shower,’ came a darkly mocking drawl from the bathroom doorway. ‘It’s worked wonders for me...’

Jane tensed, instantly defensive, and fought a fresh stirring of pain that wasn’t entirely physical. She didn’t want to look at him but she couldn’t resist a peek from under the shadow of her arm.

Thankfully Ryan had knotted a white hotel towel around his hips, although it rode low enough for her to see the black, curling hair thickening at the base of his hard belly. His tanned skin was glossed by beads of water, indicating that he hadn’t bothered to dry himself before leaving the bathroom. His wet hair was spikily uncombed and without a razor his chin was blue-black with heavy regrowth.

He looked thoroughly tough and disreputable as he sauntered towards the bed, and Jane stifled another groan of mingled pain and self-disgust, her arm clamping back down over her eyes.

The bed depressed heavily beside her and she felt the heat of his hard thigh settle against her sheet-covered hip. ‘You may as well come out from hiding, Jane,’ he said drily. ‘I’m not going to conveniently fade away just because you refuse to look at me.’

She bit her lip, clinging to the illusion of privacy as she felt him pick up a lock of her long, wavy hair and begin to play with it. God, when she thought of the way she had reacted to him during the night! After that first, frenzied explosion Ryan had turned out the light, and in the fevered darkness it had been all too easy to relinquish what remained of her inhibitions. No wonder he wanted to gloat!

‘Jane?’ He tugged on her hair and his impatience became tinged with malice as she continued to shelter under her concealing arm. ‘I can’t believe a woman who brazenly sells her sexual favours is shy, so perhaps this provocative pose is supposed to tempt me into doing this...’

She felt a light twitch at the top of the sheet and whipped her elbow down to anchor it in place, exposing herself to the penetrating blue gaze that she had been trying so hard to avoid.

His hard mouth curved with satisfaction. ‘Good morning,’ he murmured, with a pointed politeness. Her hair was a gypsy tumble and most of her make-up had worn off, the smudged remains of her eyeshadow and mascara giving her eyes a sunken look of sleepy sensuality that was much sexier than the artificial gloss of the night before.

His eyebrows rose as she failed to respond and he bent over to brush his lips teasingly against her sealed mouth, bracing his hands on the pillow on either side of her head. He was almost leaning on her swollen hand, half concealed by the overhang of the pillowcase, and Jane’s whole body clenched in terror at the idea of more pain. His expression darkened as he took in her tight-lipped pallor and an angry pulse created a tic at his temple.

‘Regrets, Jane?’ His eyes skimmed down her tented body and back up to her frozen face. ‘I’m afraid it’s too late for those. I told you there would be no going back. You made your bed last night and now you’re lying in it.’ He staked another claim with his mouth, an insolent kiss of ownership.

‘And you can take that martyred expression off your face, because we both know it’s a damned lie—a woman doesn’t have screaming multiple orgasms unless she’s enjoying herself. At least you can stop worrying whether I’m going to ask for a refund. You were the consummate professional, darling—worth every cent!’ He sat back, flicking his hands off the pillow with a careless motion that knocked against her hidden wrist.

Jane’s eyes dilated in their smudged sockets and the blood seemed to rush away from the surface of her skin, leaving it icy cold...except for her hand, which felt as if it were being pierced by white-hot needles. Physical pain became indistinguishable from mental anguish, and a choking moan slipped past her clenched teeth. But not the tears; she would fight the tears until her last breath!

‘Dammit, Jane, don’t think you can soften me up by—’ Ryan broke off, frowning as he saw the glitter at the corner of her eyes. His eyes shifted and he blanched, leaning forward to draw the edge of the pillow back from her crabbed hand. He swallowed. ‘My, God, Jane—did I do that?’ he said in a devastated whisper. ‘Your finger—it looks as if it’s dislocated...’

He tentatively touched the shiny, swollen skin and Jane let out another explosive whimper. He snatched his finger back as she drew her hand to her chest and hunched around it like a wounded animal.

‘I know I was rough with you last night but I know my own strength—I didn’t think I was actually hurting you,’ he said shakenly, his face twisting into a rictus of self-disgust. ‘For God’s sake, why didn’t you tell me? I can’t believe I could hurt you that much without realising it—’

Considering how mercilessly he had tried to hurt her in every other conceivable way it was strange that he should react with such intense revulsion at the idea of causing her physical harm, Jane thought miserably, but there was no mistaking that his horror was genuine. His peculiar sense of honour at work...

It was tempting—very, very tempting—to torture him with a lie but, unfortunately, she was in too much pain to spare the energy to torment anyone else.

‘You didn’t,’ she gritted.

‘I didn’t?’ The thin white line around his mouth relaxed as he took another look. ‘No, of course not—the bruising is too advanced for this to have happened in the last few hours. But if it was like this last night—I might have overlooked it because the lighting in here bruised everything with shadows, but I certainly would have noticed at the dinner table—’

He stopped, his eyes jerking to her bloodless face. ‘Except that you were wearing gloves...’ he said slowly. ‘I thought it was odd, but then your whole outfit was bizarrely out of character and it threw me off. Was that the plan, Jane? Did you hide this from me because you were afraid to let me see that you were weak and wounded?’

He saw too much. He always had. ‘I’m not weak.’ she mumbled hopelessly, in no fit state for another bout of verbal fencing.

‘No, you’re stupidly self-willed and too stubborn for your own good.’ He picked up the cordless telephone by the bed.

‘What are you doing?’

‘I don’t know when it happened or how, but that hand obviously needs medical attention,’ he said grimly, punching in a set of numbers.

‘It’s had medical attention,’ she cried. ‘I’m not stupid—’ Her father had called her that, whenever she’d proposed an idea that went against his wishes.

He ignored her. ‘Carl? Ryan—I need your help.’ He rose to his feet and paced across the room to scoop up his clothes.

Jane rolled carefully onto her side, fulminating against the pain as she strained to hear his low-voiced conversation. ‘What are you doing? I told you, I don’t need a doctor—’ Her mouth snapped shut as Ryan casually shed his towel, tucking the phone into his neck so that he could continue to talk as he stepped into a pair of thin white bikini briefs. His buttocks were as hard and muscular as the rest of him, flexing as he bent, revealing the fine dusting of hair that disappeared into the intriguing crease between his legs. He turned to face her as he pulled up his trousers, affording her a brief glimpse of the silky pouch cupping his bulging manhood.

He punched off the phone and dropped it back onto the table, shouldering into his blue shirt.

‘I have a doctor. I’m not going to see another one—’

‘You don’t have to go anywhere. He’s coming to see you.’

‘The hotel doctor?’ She was horrified. The management would slap on a surcharge. And weren’t large hotels hotbeds of gossip? If it became known she had spent a night at a hotel with Ryan Blair her life would become even more of a scandal than it was already. Jane gingerly put a foot to the floor, trying to cradle her hand and still maintain a grip on her modesty.

‘No. Mine. Dr Graham Frey. You’ll find he’s extremely competent...and discreet.’

‘You called your own doctor?’ Her agitation increased as she watched him bundle up her clothes and place them on the chair behind him, out of reach. ‘I won’t see him!’

Ten minutes later her blustering had weakened to a sullen whine and she was still crouched on the edge of the bed clutching the sheet around her. And he’d called her stubborn!

‘At least let me put on my clothes—’

‘For goodness’ sake, he’s a doctor. He’s used to seeing naked women—’

For some reason that made her blush. ‘If he comes in and sees me like this with you here, he’ll think...he’ll think—’

‘That we’ve just spent a night of hot and heavy sex?’

She closed her eyes to shut out his mocking truth.

‘If he sees you in that trashy little evening number at seven o’clock in the morning he’s going to come to the same conclusion anyway,’ he pointed out in an aggravatingly reasonable voice. ‘There’s a hotel bathrobe in the wardrobe; how about you put that on for now?’

She wearily accepted the grudging concession, and when he brought it over she was forced to let him help her slide her arms into the long sleeves. Surprisingly, he made no sarcastic comments as she scrabbled to keep the sheet between them until she was completely covered by the robe. With the towelling safely belted around her, Jane decided she badly needed a shower, which led to another battle, interrupted by a knock on the door that made Jane stiffen in alarm. Surely it was too soon for the doctor? She caught Ryan’s solid forearm as he swung away.

‘If it’s Dan, I don’t want to see him—’

‘Are you pleading for my protection, Jane?’

She let go of his arm like a hot coal and scowled at him. To her shock he grinned, a sheet-lightning flicker of pure humour that illuminated his rakish features, making them look unbelievably boyish and innocent as he strolled to the door, buttoning up his shirt. There was a murmured conversation just out of her sight, and when he came back he was carrying a tray of covered silver dishes.

‘What’s that?’

‘Breakfast. I ordered it earlier.’ He set the tray down on the small desk on the other side of the bed and lifted off the silver covers, revealing bowls of cereal and fresh fruit, a rack of wholewheat toast and a cafetière of coffee.

‘I’m not hungry,’ she said truculently.

‘No, but I am,’ he said, sitting at the desk and draping a starched napkin across his knee. ‘I have a full day’s work ahead of me.’

And she didn’t. Trust him to rub it in! Jane drew in her lower lip, feeling the hot pressure build up behind her eyes as he ate in silence. She could feel him watching her and tried to arrange her face into the familiar pattern of haughty indifference, but somehow the old tricks just wouldn’t work any more. She was sick of being brave. She was sick of pretending she was something she wasn’t. Who was she fooling but herself, anyway?

The arrival of Dr Frey in an elegant grey suit was as embarrassing as Jane had expected it to be, not least because he didn’t arrive alone. He was preceded by a familiar lithe fair-haired man who prowled into the room with a panther-like grace, making a quick survey of the exits as he handed Ryan a small black suitcase. It was the same silver-eyed man who had been at Ryan’s side when she had thrown her punch—the one who had opened the restaurant door for her afterwards.

His eyes widened when he saw Jane sitting in the bed and she lifted her chin as Ryan casually introduced his personal advisor. He didn’t say what sort of advice Carl Trevor specialised in, and she quailed inwardly as the astute silver-grey eyes moved thoughtfully from her swollen hand to his employer’s solid chin.

‘Mr Trevor,’ she acknowledged repressively, hoping to nip any open speculation in the bud.

‘Call me Carl,’ he said easily, undiscouraged by her formality. He came closer and nodded towards her hand with a charming smile of sympathy. ‘That looks like a pretty painful injury, Miss Sherwood, no wonder Ryan was concerned.’ The smile became more personal as he added in a soft murmur, ‘Metacarpal, is it?’

Jane flushed, but before she could summon a reply Ryan cut in and shunted his advisor towards the door with an impatient frown. ‘Thanks, Carl, but I think the doctor and I can handle things from here...’

‘Shall I wait for you outside?’

The bland enquiry earned him another darkling look. ‘I have my own car here so there’s no need for you to hang around unnecessarily. I don’t know how long this might take, so why don’t you go on to the office and let Irene know I might be late in this morning. Get her to rearrange the early part of my schedule.’

He tossed several more pithy instructions into his advisor’s increasingly amused face before firmly shutting him out and striding back to hover over the grey-haired doctor, who had drawn up a chair beside the bed and had begun his gentle examination.

Jane fought back the waves of pain, answering his quiet questions about her previous medical treatment with a reluctance which was justified when Ryan exploded, ‘Broken! Then why aren’t you wearing a damned cast? What in the hell kind of witch-doctor did you go to? Dammit, Graham, she shouldn’t be in this much pain, should she? Why don’t you do something about it?’

Dr Frey was obviously a friend as well as a physician, for he ignored the arrogant outburst, focusing his beetle-browed attention on Jane as he meticulously went over the treatment she had received and sternly chided her for removing the strapping before the bones had begun to knit. It was apparent that he assumed that vanity had been the reason for her actions and Jane was happy to let his misapprehension stand.

‘And the accident occurred...how?’ he enquired delicately, when he had elicited the date of her injury and subsequent visit to the clinic. From his tone she could tell that he had drawn the same conclusion as the doctor in the clinic. She wasn’t going to be able to get away with claiming she had got it caught in a door.

‘It wasn’t exactly an accident,’ she muttered warily, having seen Ryan stiffen into alertness when she had mentioned his birthday. He was now fingering the scar on his lip, and she decided that it was pointless to prevaricate any longer. ‘I—I hit someone,’ she sighed.

‘Oh?’

‘Yes. Me!’ Ryan announced tightly. He looked furious at being made to feel guilty. ‘She underestimated my hard-headedness, didn’t you, Jane? A big failing of yours—underestimating your opponents...’

‘I still knocked you flat on your back,’ she flared.

‘Yes, but at what cost?’

‘It was worth it!’

The doctor cleared his throat and opened his cavernous black leather bag. Jane blinked rapidly, telling herself that the tears in her eyes were because of the pain. Ryan swore under his breath and moodily poured himself another coffee.

‘I’ll retape your hand but I want you to strictly follow orders this time, or you’re going to end up needing that surgery your doctor warned you about,’ Dr Frey instructed Jane gravely. ‘As it is, this renewed inflammation is going to set back your recovery. So from now on, Miss Sherwood, please leave the doctoring to the experts.’

In spite of Dr Frey’s ultra-gentle touch, by the time her hand had been rewrapped Jane was in real tears, and Ryan was ominously controlled as the doctor took his leave.

‘Don’t worry, Graham, I’ll make sure she doesn’t behave so irresponsibly in future...’

Jane just had time to surreptiously scrub at her eyes with the corner of the sheet before he swooped back, planting himself down on the bed and caging her against the pillows with his strong arms.

‘You shouldn’t have implied you have any control over my behaviour,’ she began, with a pathetic attempt at her former haughtiness. ‘I’m perfectly capable of looking after myself—’

‘You can say that? After last night?’ Ryan said, piercing her with a look that made her flush and clutch the gaping neck of the oversized robe. ‘Why? Why go to such lengths to hide it from me?’ He laughed grimly. ‘No, don’t bother to answer, I think I know. Did you hear what Graham said? You could have caused permanent nerve damage—and all because of your damned inflexible Sherwood pride! Your father never taught you to recognise your own limitations, did he, Jane? You’d rather cripple yourself than admit to a simple case of human weakness!’

He ran a hand through his damp spiky hair and down over the back of his skull, shaking his head incredulously. ‘I still can’t believe you took such a risk. What in God’s name possessed you?’

‘Obviously you did!’ Her acid retort was flung at him without thinking, and they both froze as the literal truth of her heedless statement sank in.

‘I—I didn’t mean—’ Jane began to inch backwards against the pillows as Ryan lowering his arm, studying her with eyes that transmuted from angry blue to a sensuous blue-black.

She was breathing in light, quick gasps, high colour back in her pale cheeks, her thick black eyebrows clashing in defiance of the secret excitement glimmering in her wide-eyed gaze. The throbbing in her left hand had dimmed to an extent that she was reawakened to the numerous other, more pleasurable aches in her body, the subtle reminders of how thoroughly she had enjoyed his possession.

‘So I did,’ he murmured softly, towering over her. ‘And what’s done is done, isn’t it, Jane? I can’t very well unpossess you...’

He cupped her chin and brushed a thumb over the dampness in the shadowed hollow under her eye.

‘And nor, I think, would you want me to,’ he added huskily. Although there was a masculine smugness to his certainty, it wasn’t the offensive, gloating triumph of an enemy over a vanquished foe, and Jane’s heart fluttered in her chest.

‘I—’

His thumb flirted over her patrician cheekbone to slant across her trembling mouth. ‘Don’t! Don’t lie, Jane. Let there at least be honesty between us about this...’

He bent and replaced his thumb with his mouth. He kissed her, not voraciously, devouringly, as he had kissed her all through the night, but softly, sweetly, seductively... almost forgivingly. A morning kiss, full of such delicate promise that Jane was bewitched with a bewildered yearning. She felt his hand slide under the lapel of her robe and shape her warm breast, gently exploring the stiffening peak. She might have found the strength to defy his passion, but against his tenderness she had no defences. No man had ever considered her worthy of tenderness.

‘Oh, yes, it was good for both of us, wasn’t it, sweetheart?’ he whispered, sipping at her lips. ‘Spectacularly good. So why should we fight it? Maybe it’s time to stop looking back and start looking forward...’

‘To what?’ she asked, her mind blurred by the addictive sweetness of kisses that were far more potent than any drug.

‘To what we can do for each other.’ His voice lightened to a sexy, teasing drawl. ‘After all, I did promise the doctor I’d look after you...’

Years of self-denial prompted her instinctive reaction. ‘I don’t need—’

‘Of course you do—we all do at some time in our lives,’ he told her, lifting his hand from her breast to comb the tumbled waves off her smooth brow, arranging them in a dark frame around her serious face. ‘And you’re more needy than most, sweetheart...or you wouldn’t have been so quick to sell yourself last night.’

A scalding sense of shame swept over her. She wanted to tell him that he had paid a great deal too dear for what had been given freely, but that would give far too much away. ‘It wasn’t like that—I was angry—’

‘I know, so was I,’ he soothed her, with a honeyed understanding that was even more seductive than his kisses. ‘Because all the time we were mouthing insults at each other I was imagining what it would be like to have you beneath me in bed.’ He stilled her restless movement by weaving his fingers into her hair, trapping her head on the pillow.

‘Do you think I haven’t realised that you only took the money for spite? You’ve got far too much pride to play the whore for me or any other man. You went off with Dan because I’d pushed you too far and you wanted to twist a knife in my guts, and things got out of hand...’ His mouth twisted into a cynical line. ‘But that’s OK. I know how these things can happen. I’m intimately acquainted with the subtle ways that revenge can suborn the soul...’

His cobalt eyes seemed to blaze with an inward fire as he gently manoeuvred her forearm so that her injured hand lay across his large, flat palm.

‘I have a serviced apartment on the beach at Mission Bay,’ he said quietly. ‘Small but with all the built-in luxuries you could ask for, and very private...no one need know where you are, if you want to handle it that way. If you like you could move in today.’

It took her a moment to work out what he was saying. ‘Are you asking me to live with you?’ she croaked.

‘I don’t live there; I have a house of my own. The apartment would be yours,’ he corrected her scrupulously, ‘for the duration.’

For the duration?

‘But I’d visit as often as was agreeable to both of us, and probably stay overnight fairly regularly, so naturally I’d take care of all your living expenses,’ he clarified.

But Jane was still grappling with his original statement.

For the duration? He was talking about the duration of an affair!

Her pulse went wild. ‘You want me to be your mistress?’ she gasped.

He shot her a reproving look through thick, dark lashes. ‘That’s a very old-fashioned term. I have in mind a more modern partnership, one of mutual pleasure and mutual independence.’

‘More modern, maybe, but no more equal,’ she said shakily, while inside elation soared above her shock. So he didn’t just want a torrid sexual fling—he was laying down the parameters of a relationship. And, typically for a dominant male, he expected it to be all on his own terms. She strove to feel insulted by his offer. ‘I wouldn’t exactly be as independent as you, would I? Not if I’m living in your flat on your money...’

His eyes glinted. As an experienced negotiator he was a skilled interpreter of the nuances of language and behaviour. Alert for the slightest hint of complicity, he noted that Jane’s use of the present tense altered her answer from rejection to mere objection. Neither had he missed the tiny flare of her nostrils, nor the uneven rise and fall of her magnificent breasts. The lady was definitely intrigued by the bait. It only remained to reel her in.

His fingers curled lightly round her bandaged hand, caging it without pressure. ‘If you still want to get a job after your hand heals, that’s up to you—I’m sure you’ll no longer have trouble finding one. I just want you to know that there’s no need to worry about how you’re going to survive in the meantime, or to fear any reprisals, whatever happens between us.’

‘What are you saying?’ she whispered, afraid to believe the message implicit in his words.

He shrugged with quiet resignation. ‘I’m calling off the dogs, Jane.’

Instead of relief she felt a gush of pure, unadulterated terror. To believe she would have to trust him without reservation...

‘Why?’ She pushed him away, scrambling off the bed in a flurry of towelling, and this time he made no effort to stop her. ‘Why now? If this is another one of your mind games...’ she faltered to a halt, wrapping her arms around her waist to stop them reaching out to temptation.

He spread his hands in a gesture of surrender as he slowly rose to his feet. ‘No games. Just the truth—that we make good enemies but even better lovers. And one night of hot-blooded passion hasn’t doused the flames, has it, Jane? Until this thing burns itself out neither of us is going to get any peace.’

She could tell him that it was never going to burn itself out—not for her. ‘And then what? Then we become enemies again?’

His face was sombre, moody. ‘No, that’s over. You won’t get Sherwood’s back, but I won’t pursue the debts any further.’

He crossed to the black case that Carl Trevor had left and opened it, taking out a cordless electric razor and a clean shirt. Looking at his broad, unrevealing back, Jane was struck with a sudden burst of insight.

‘I could never quite work out why you came after me the way you did. Even considering what I’d done, it seemed like overkill... You didn’t just want to ruin me, you seemed to want to obliterate my identity.’

She moved until she could see his tense profile. ‘But it was never just me, was it?’ she said, slowly feeling her way with every word. ‘There was something else, something to do with my being a Sherwood. You always made my surname sound like an insult. It was my father, wasn’t it...?’ She wondered why she hadn’t made the connection before—perhaps she hadn’t wanted to compete yet again with the memory of her parent. ‘You knew my father—’

‘And to know him was to hate him?’ he interrupted, with a cool amusement that only strengthened her suspicions.

‘Did you hate him? Why? What did he do?’

He crossed to the mirror over the dressing table and switched on the razor. ‘Leave it, Jane.’

‘No, I won’t.’ She followed him and stayed his hand before it reached his chin, meeting his gaze steadily in the mirror. ‘You asked for honesty from me, Ryan...don’t I get any in return? Are you going to make me find out for myself?’

His eyelids drooped and his voice took on a husky intonation. ‘Do you know, that’s the first time you’ve used my name this morning? Last night you couldn’t seem to stop yourself saying it...’

She almost wavered. ‘Don’t change the subject.’

His mouth thinned. ‘He’s dead. It’s nothing to do with us anymore. Whatever he did, it’s over and done with—’

‘He was dead yesterday, too, but it still mattered to you then,’ she persisted over the burr of the razor. ‘Why won’t you tell me? Do you think I’d be shocked? I wouldn’t. I know what kind of man my father was...’

‘He was like a Rottweiler when he scented blood. He sank his teeth in and never let go.’ Ryan sighed and clicked off the razor as he turned around. ‘Rather like you.’

The comparison cut her to the quick, and Jane lifted an imperious chin in a characteristic attempt to hide the hurt, but before she could dredge up a defensive reply he touched her cheek in a tacit apology.

‘I suppose his tenacity was the one thing I admired about him,’ he said ruefully. ‘All right, Jane, I suppose I owe it to you to tell you what you want to know—after you’ve dressed.’

He tunnelled his fingers under her hair and guided her into a kiss that warmed the chill of loneliness from her soul. His mouth was aggressive, but contained none of the repressed anger of the previous night, just a hunger he made no attempt to conceal. ‘I have to leave for the office soon and I need to make some phone calls first, so let me shave and make my calls and then we’ll talk...’

 

Jane stood on the porch of her dilapidated little beach house and watched the wind-tossed seagulls ride the swirling air currents in the sky above Lion Rock. If she hadn’t been so greedy for the poisonous fruit of knowledge maybe she would still be in Auckland, living in the hope that Ryan’s caring would one day become much more than casual...

But that was purely wishful thinking. The twenty-year-old scar that she had ripped open when she had sabotaged Ryan’s wedding could never be fully healed. To Ryan, she would always be the daughter of the man who had murdered his father.

Oh, Mark Sherwood hadn’t wielded a knife or a gun, but the impact of his actions on his victim had been ultimately just as fatal as a killing blow.

True to her word, Jane hadn’t been shocked by the tale of a crooked home-building deal which Mark Sherwood had set up two decades before; she knew all too well that her father had had little respect for the law where it interfered with his own interests and protected ‘fools and losers’.

By his definition Charles Blair would have been a loser, even though as a carpenter and builder he had built up a respectable business, because Ryan’s father had been too honest to take his profits and run when the deal had inevitably collapsed. Instead he had tried to honour the promises he had made. As a result he had been bankrupted, and his reputation and means of livelihood destroyed when rumours that he had been using substandard building materials began to circulate. In desperation he had naïvely confronted Mark Sherwood, pleading for help, and Jane’s father had laughed in his face, threatening to produce documentary evidence that it was Charles’s embezzling that had caused the scheme to fail.

Charles Blair had died not long afterwards, electrocuted in his home workshop, and rumours of suicide had thrown further shadows over his blackened reputation. His pregnant wife and thirteen-year-old son had been left homeless and destitute after the debts that he had assumed responsibility for had been paid.

While Mark Sherwood had gone on to build a financial empire on his ill-gotten gains, Charles’s widow had been trapped in a cycle of poverty, supporting her son and new baby daughter in a hand-to-mouth existence, taking menial positions because of her lack of qualifications and often working two jobs to make ends meet. She was now remarried, but for fourteen years she had struggled alone, haunted by her husband’s undeserved legacy of shame, watching her son grow from a secure little boy into an angry young man who had sworn that one day he would be rich and powerful enough to destroy the company that had been built on the ruins of his father’s honour.

But by the time Ryan had amassed a sufficient fortune and manoeuvred himself into a position to put his vengeful plan into action Mark Sherwood had been a dying man, no longer at the helm of Sherwood Properties. Unwilling to cause the innocent to suffer for someone else’s crimes, as he and his family had unjustly suffered, Ryan had reluctantly curbed his lust for revenge...until Jane had proved herself as treacherous, deceitful and lacking in moral conscience as her father.

Jane shivered as the breeze whipped across the porch and she turned to enter the shabby kitchen.

She had never had a chance. As soon as Ryan had been once more in a position to attack he had done so without hesitation and without mercy—and who could blame him?

Not Jane.

That was why she couldn’t believe that Ryan really wanted her in his life, except as the crowning achievement of his search for natural justice. Maybe it wasn’t even conscious. Maybe he genuinely thought that the attraction that had flared between them was worth burying his resentment to explore. But Jane didn’t flatter herself that she was so special that he could be persuaded to permanently relinquish the jealously guarded bitterness that had shaped his ambition.

No, it was more likely that by making her his mistress he would be completing his revenge. He couldn’t make Mark Sherwood suffer, but he could spit on his grave by stamping both his company and his daughter as his own personal possessions.

Jane had spent too much of her girlhood loving a man who had been incapable of appreciating the preciousness of her gift. She had no intention of wasting her adulthood in the same way.

So, like the coward that she was, she had let Ryan leave the hotel that morning confident of his impression that she would fall in with his arrangements. Then, sitting on the unmade hotel bed in her tacky green dress, she had picked up the telephone and reluctantly called Ava.

And, to her surprise, found her secret bolt-hole.