and leave.
‘I’ll make fresh tea.’ Suiting words to action, he easily dispensed with the cup’s contents, flicked the kettle to reboil, and took another teabag from a glass container.
Damn him, did she have to spell it out? ‘I’m quite capable of making it myself.’ She crossed to the refrigerator and extracted milk, then took it to the servery.
Big mistake. For it brought her within a hair’s breadth of a hard male frame that seemed disinclined to move. Something that tripped the trigger on all her banked-up anger.
The silent rage she’d managed to contain all day burst free. ‘You’ve more than done your good deed for the day.’ Fine fury lent her eyes a fiery sparkle, and her knuckles shone white as she clenched her fists. ‘I owe you one.’
He looked at her carefully, noted the thinly veiled anger, the exhaustion. ‘So please leave?’
‘Yes.’ Succinct, with an edge of sarcasm.
‘Gladly,’ he intoned in a dangerously silky voice.
Something shifted in those dark eyes that she didn’t want to define, and there was nothing she could do to avoid the firm hands which cupped her face, or prevent the descent of his head as he fastened his mouth over hers.
It was a hard kiss, invasive, with erotic power and a sweet sorcery that took what she refused to give.
No other part of his body touched hers, and he fought against leaning in and gathering her close.
A spark ignited deep inside and flared sharply to brilliant flame. For both of them. He could feel her initial spontaneous response before she refuted it. Sense her surprise, along with his own.
He softened his mouth, took one last tantalising sweep with his tongue, then slowly raised his head.
She looked-shattered. Although she recovered quickly.
He smiled, a slow, wide curving of his mouth as he regarded her stormy features, and he dropped his hands from her face. ‘Now we’re even.’
Then he turned and walked from the kitchen, trod a path down the hall to the front door, then quietly closed it behind him.
It irked Anneke dreadfully that a few seconds of stunned surprise had rendered her immobile and robbed her of the opportunity to hurl something at him, preferably hard enough to do damage to any part of his anatomy.
Dulled reflex action, brought on by a degree of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion. Something that a good night’s rest would do much to rectify, she perceived as she set the kettle to boil again and made fresh tea.
Men, she brooded as she sipped the delicious brew, were arrogant, heartless, self-oriented, entirely governed by their libido, and not worth a minute of her time.
A thought which persisted as she finished her tea, then she crossed to the bedroom and slid in between crisp, clean white sheets.
On the edge of sleep, one image invaded her mind, and it wasn’t the sleekly groomed city lawyer in his three-piece business suit.
CHAPTER TWO
HAMMERING noises in close proximity were not conducive to restful slumber.
Anneke heard them in the depths of her subconscious mind and slowly drifted into wakefulness. Still the noise persisted.
What the hell…? She opened one eye and looked at the clock atop the bedside pedestal. Dammit, it was only seven. On Saturday.
Surely her aunt hadn’t arranged for a contractor to do some work and forgotten to mention the fact?
Maybe if she buried her head beneath the pillow she could go back to sleep, she decided, suiting thought to action, only to groan out loud minutes later as the sound still penetrated with no seeming loss of intensity.
Annoyance had her sliding out of bed and pulling on a pair of shorts, and she paused briefly to drag a brush through the length of her hair before storming into the hall to assess where the hammering seemed loudest.
Rear, she decided, and made for the back door.
Quite what she’d expected to see when she opened it she wasn’t sure. Certainly not Sebastian Lanier’s tall, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, jean-clad frame perched partway up a ladder, wielding a hammer as he stroked in one nail after another.
‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Well, now, there was a pretty sight to tempt a man’s eye at this early hour. Nice legs. He followed the slender calves, the well-shaped thighs. Good muscle tone, he noted approvingly.
Narrow hips, neat waist, and the slight swing of her breasts made him itch to slide his hands beneath the oversize tee-shirt and see how well they fit his palms.
Slowly he lifted his eyes and took his time examining her mouth, and remembered the feel of it beneath his own.
He moved up a few inches and looked straight into a pair of bright, furious eyes whose emerald depths threatened nothing less than murder.
Sebastian smiled. A long, slow, curving movement that lifted the edges of his mouth and showed the gleam of white teeth. ‘Good morning.’ He positioned another nail and hammered it in.
Clean-shaven, his hair bound neatly at his nape, he looked almost respectable. It was the ‘almost’ part she had trouble coming to terms with. None of the men in the circles in which she moved resembled anything like this man.
Calm, she must remain calm. ‘Do you know what time it is?’
Of course he knew what time it was. He’d been up since six, had orange juice, gone through his daily exercise routine, then assembled a high-protein drink in the blender and sipped it while he scrolled through his e-mail.
‘Am I disturbing you?’
Oh, he was disturbing her, all right. Just how much, he was about to discover. A last attempt at civility, then she’d let him have it with both barrels blazing. ‘Perhaps you’d care to explain what exactly it is that you’re doing?’
She possessed a fine temper. He could see it in her eyes, the tilt of her chin, the way she stood.
‘Yesterday I removed a section of worn guttering. Today I’m putting up new.’ He held another nail in position and nailed it in. Then he turned his head to look at her. ‘I arranged it with Vivienne.’
There was that faint smile again. Anneke gritted her teeth.
He moved down the ladder and shifted it, checked its stability, then stepped up again. And hammered in another nail.
‘I suppose you’re one of those irritating people who manage to get by on an indecently few hours of sleep?’
‘Five or six.’ He lined up another nail and rammed it home.
Anger coursed through her body, heating her veins, and erupted in voluble speech. ‘You’re doing this deliberately, aren’t you?’
He cast her a long, measured glance, noted the twin flags of colour high on each cheek, the firm set of her mouth. ‘Is that an accusation?’
‘Damned right it is,’ she bit out furiously.
Sebastian hooked the hammer into his toolbelt and descended down to the ground. ‘Let’s get one thing clear. I boot up my computer at one in the afternoon. Vivienne needs something fixed; I fix it for her. In the morning.’
His voice was quiet, almost too quiet. And silky, she decided. ‘You have to start at seven?’
‘I’m due in town at ten,’ he explained reasonably. ‘I won’t have time to do anything when I get back from town except grab some lunch, and—”’
‘Go boot up the computer,’ Anneke finished for him. ‘And you just had to finish this section before you left.’
‘Yes.’