saw she was in a passage. ‘Which way?’
‘To the left, second door down.’
He walked beside her, close enough to intimidate, not close enough to touch. Just as well—she’d go up like a fireball if he laid so much as a finger on her. All right, so it was merely the physical passion he’d called it, but oh, God, it was overwhelming—like being branded by him so that her body registered him, recognised him, yearned to know him intimately.
Feared him.
Because the one time she’d tried to break past the arbitrary limits her body had set, it had frozen in fierce, unreasoning rejection.
He asked coolly, ‘Does that mean there have been no affairs—or just no petty, sordid ones?’
‘Mind your own business!’ she retorted fiercely.
‘You are the person who used the word sordid.’ Stone-faced, he pushed the door open and stood back to let her through. ‘And any affair between us would never be petty. I promise you that.’
CHAPTER THREE
THAT last comment didn’t just sound like a threat, Sanchia realised with an inner shiver as she glanced at Caid’s harshly beautiful face, it definitely was one.
The intriguing scent—faint, potent—of aroused male made her grit her teeth as she walked past him into a room set up as an office. Apprehension roiled her stomach as she stopped in the middle of the room and waited in silence while he bent to open the door of a safe.
She’d hoped counselling would free her of the suffocating fear of sexuality that had preyed on her for so long, but, in spite of the therapist’s insights, ugly terror still lurked behind the fireflash of desire.
Caid straightened and put a piece of paper on the desk. ‘You’d better read it first.’
‘I don’t sign anything without reading it,’ she said huskily, but she had to concentrate ferociously on the print dancing in front of her eyes.
It was quite straightforward. When she came to sell the land known as such and such on the district plan she would offer it to him first, the price to be negotiated then. If he refused it she was at liberty to do what she wanted with it.
Sanchia read it through twice before handing it back. ‘It seems fair enough.’
‘Did you know that all the land in this area has just been revalued?’
She gave a brief nod.
‘Waiora Bay’s blue water title adds quite considerably to the value of the place because it means no one can land on the beach.’ Caid paused, and added smoothly, ‘I believe the rate increase this year is somewhere in the vicinity of twenty-five per cent.’
Sanchia had just emptied her bank account to pay a quarterly instalment of the rates, and it would take stringent saving to manage the other three instalments.
She set her jaw. Once she began negotiating with the council she should be able to come to some agreement about any charges due.
‘I know,’ she said coldly. ‘Do you want witnesses to my signature?’
‘Not unless you do—it’s not a will.’ A long, lean-fingered hand offered a silver pen.
Accepting it, she ignored the jump in her heart-rate when their fingers touched. Caid waited until the pen had almost reached the paper to say, ‘And of course I trust you.’
Sanchia signed and dated the option with slashing writing that came close to expressing her chaotic emotions. ‘There,’ she said, dropping the pen on the desk, ‘although you bought it dearly, even for a dollar.’
‘I like to cover all bases,’ Caid told her with a flinty, level glance that set alarm bells jangling. He folded the paper and dropped it onto the dark polished surface of the desk. Unsmiling, his eyes too calculating, he ushered her towards the door. ‘Can I get you something to drink? You look a little hot.’
No doubt her face was scarlet. Resisting the urge to moisten lips still tender from his kisses, she said quietly, ‘No, thank you. I’ll head back home now.’
‘Of course.’ Now that he’d got his worthless option he’d retreated behind a mask of polite indifference.
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