you won’t,’ he said quite gently, and smiled.
God! That smile was as uncompromisingly explosive as Semtex. Jacinta had to draw in a deep, shaken breath before she could even think. Fortunately the printer whirred and chirruped, letting her know it was ready for work. Turning, she stared blindly at it, swallowed, and said, ‘Thank you.’
‘That looks very like Gerard’s set-up,’ Paul observed, his voice almost bland.
‘It was,’ she said shortly. ‘When he got a new one he gave me this. They’re obsolete as soon as you buy them, unfortunately. Not worth anything.’ And she stopped because she’d started to babble, to explain, and she’d made a solemn vow that she was never going to do that again. The experience with Mark Stevens had cured her of ever justifying her actions to any man.
No man was ever again going to believe that he had the right to question what she did or what she thought.
Ever!
One brow drifted upwards. ‘Aren’t they? Not even as trade-ins?’ Paul suggested evenly, and went out across the verandah into the sunlight.
Jacinta glowered after him. Did he think she was sponging off Gerard? Well, she didn’t care! Not even if he did look like something chivalrous from a medieval tapestry, she thought sardonically, opening the wardrobe door and surveying the cavernous depths.
First of all she’d unpack, and then she’d go for a short walk—no, first she’d go and see the housekeeper and establish some ground rules.
She was almost in the hall when she realised that Paul was on his way back again, this time carrying a cardboard carton.
‘From the weight of this I assume it’s books,’ he said.
Nodding, Jacinta firmly directed her gaze away as he set the box down on the floor. ‘Thank you,’ she said.
‘I’ll get the others.’
She knew how heavy those boxes were; Gerard had helped her carry each one out to the car. Yet the weight didn’t seem to affect Paul at all.
Jacinta looked with respect at his shoulders and said again, ‘Thank you.’
‘It was nothing,’ he said, and left her, to reappear before she’d opened the first carton.
Once all the boxes were inside, he showed her the door to the bathroom and said, ‘Make yourself at home,’ before opening a door that presumably led into his bedroom.
Jacinta stood for a moment staring after him, her stomach gripped by some strong sensation. Hunger, she thought. You didn’t have any lunch.
On the floor of the front passenger seat there should have been another carton, packed full of food. She’d brought everything in her pantry, supplementing it with groceries and perishables in the small town twenty minutes away, the town where she’d also taken out a temporary membership in the local library.
It wasn’t there.
So Paul must have delivered it to the kitchen. Sure enough, when she’d made her way there, she saw the carton on the bench.
‘Oh, he did bring it in here,’ she said.
Busy kneading bread, Fran Borthwick smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘Tell me where to put everything.’
After the housekeeper had done that, and the food was stacked away in a well-stocked pantry, Jacinta explained that she wanted to contribute something to the housekeeping exchequer.
‘Have you talked this over with Paul?’ Fran asked, sounding surprised.
‘Yes.’ Jacinta repeated what he’d said.
Pulling off a chunk of dough, the older woman kneaded it expertly into a loaf and placed it into a baking tin. She said, ‘Well, you pay whatever you feel is right. As far as meals go, breakfast’s at seven. If that’s too early—’
‘No, no, that’s fine,’ Jacinta told her hastily.
‘OK. Lunch at midday, afternoon tea at four, and dinner at seven-thirty.’
‘When P—Mr McAlpine isn’t here I’ll get my own meals,’ Jacinta said.
Fran gave her an approving glance. ‘Good. There’s always salads and stuff like that in the fridge.’
Back in the bedroom, fortified by a salad sandwich and a banana, Jacinta unpacked her suitcases and set out her books along the back of the desk. Then, obscurely comforted by her familiar things, she changed into shorts and a light shirt and slathered herself in sunscreen. With a wide-brimmed straw hat crammed over her ginger curls, she set off to explore.
About three acres of garden dreamed around the house, sheltered by the hedge on all sides except the seaward one. Even the salt winds couldn’t get directly at it; pohutukawa trees leaned over both lawn and sand, forming a wide, informal barrier that would save Paul McAlpine from the indignity of having stray yachties peer into his house.
Seen between the swooping branches and dark, silver-backed leaves, the bay glittered, as blue as his eyes and as compellingly beautiful.
Jacinta wandered across the lawn and found a flight of steps that led out onto the sand, already sizzling under the hot November sun. Some people, she thought, remembering with a shudder the grim little house in which she’d spent most of the past nine years, had all the luck.
She didn’t regret giving up her studies to care for her mother. In spite of everything there had been laughter and joy in that farm cottage. Still, she couldn’t help thinking wistfully that her mother’s long, pain-racked purgatory would have been more bearable in a place like this.
Fishing a handkerchief from her pocket, she blew her nose. The last thing she wanted was for Cynthia Lyttelton to be still enduring that monstrous, unbearable agony and complete loss of autonomy, but her death had left an enormous gap.
For years Jacinta had made all the decisions, done all the worrying. Grief, and relief that it was all over, and guilt about that relief, and exhaustion, had formed a particularly potent cocktail, one that had rendered her too lethargic to realise that Mark Stevens had begun a campaign to control her life.
Picking up a stone, she straightened and skipped it across the water.
Looking back, her slowness to understand the situation still astonished her It had taken her three months to realise what was happening and leave the flat.
Another stone followed the first across the water.
With Gerard’s help she’d got through that with very little trauma, and doing his housework three days a week had helped her save enough money to see her through the summer holidays without working.
All in all it had been a hard year; she was probably still not wholly recovered from her mother’s death, but the crying jags were over, and the stress of trying to find some sort of balance, some firm place to stand, had gone. She’d come a long way in the last six months.
Oh, there were still problems, still decisions to be made. She had to work out what sort of life she wanted, and of course there was always money...
But for the moment she didn’t have to worry about any of that. She had another promise to her mother to fulfil, and three months in this perfect place to do it.
Lifting her face and half closing her eyes, she smiled into the sun. Light danced off her lashes, the film of moisture there separating the rays so that they gleamed like diamonds.
Living in the bach would have been perfect. She’d probably only have seen Paul once or twice in the three months, instead of finding herself practically cheek by jowl with him.
Still, she’d manage. She was much stronger than she’d been before, much better able to look after herself. And it didn’t really matter that she lusted a bit after Paul McAlpine. So, no doubt, did plenty of women. At least she recognised what she felt