edge of depression, yet somehow in ten days and nights of passion Luke took not just her body but a piece of her heart. Disgusted with herself, she’d fled Tahiti, determined to banish all memories of the time she’d spent there.
It hadn’t worked, and now here Luke was in New Zealand. Of all the wretched coincidences!
It should comfort her that once she got out of this penthouse they wouldn’t see each other again. Except that his appearance—so unexpected, so embarrassing—had lit fires she’d thought long smothered.
Iona rinsed out her bra, wrung it free of surplus water and put it back on again. Her body heat would soon have it dry. The smock still clung, and she was acutely aware of her breasts beneath it, of skin so sensitive the material seemed to drag against it, of heat burgeoning deep inside her. She took a deep breath before walking steadily out into the hall with her head held high and what felt like a herd of buffaloes rampaging through her stomach.
The hall was empty, but not for long. Silently, his handsome face grim, Luke came pacing through from the drawing room.
Luke watched Iona come towards him, the lights gilding the cool ash-blonde of her hair. Although it had been a year and half since he’d last seen her, everything about her was burnt into his brain—the warmth of her sleek body, the dark mystery of her changeable blue-green eyes, the lush promise of her mouth…
Her wild surrender.
And his searing feeling of betrayal when she’d walked out on him, the conflict that raged between his prized, iron-clad control and a primal awareness that his affair with Iona had been something rare, much more intense than mere holiday madness.
For the first time Luke admitted that one of the reasons he’d come to New Zealand was to see if he could contact her again. Just to make sure she was all right, of course.
He hadn’t expected to find her within a couple of hours of landing. His over-developed sense of responsibility should be satisfied because she was obviously fine.
And certainly not filled with delight to see him again.
But she was still very, very conscious of him.
Setting aside the potent, inconvenient pleasure of that realisation, he said abruptly, ‘It will be best if we talk out of earshot of the maid.’
Iona had resolved to treat him with cool detachment, and in a matching tone she managed, ‘Very well.’
As he escorted her out onto the terrace she realised anew just how lithe he was. Tall, broad-shouldered, he walked with the prowling, noiseless grace of some great beast of prey.
Not the sort of man anyone would ever overlook.
Once out on the terrace, blocked from the sounds of the city by lush plantings, without ceremony he demanded, ‘What are you doing here?’
‘I’m making sure that the apartment is ready for you and your party,’ she said with an attempt at cool detachment.
A black brow climbed. ‘Your employer appears to be a little too trusting. You left the door unlocked—anyone could have come in.’
Iona suspected he was waiting for a defensive response. Well, she wasn’t going to give it to him.
Crisply she replied, ‘The security here is excellent. The bell sounds when the elevator is stopping at this floor, and as you were supposed to arrive much later this afternoon I assumed it was my employer—Ms Makepeace—who’d been let in by the concierge.’
He dismissed her words with another hard-eyed stare. ‘I gather she is not the housekeeper.’
He couldn’t possibly be interested in domestic arrangements. This wasn’t even his apartment; one of Angie’s clients was lending it to Luke while he was in New Zealand. Was he getting some small-minded amusement from emphasising the distance between them?
After all, in Tahiti she’d walked out on him. It had probably never happened to him before.
Or since.
But the man she’d known had not been small-minded. Repressing a rush of too-poignant memories, she replied, ‘You’re right, she’s not the housekeeper. She owns and runs a business organising the lives of people too busy to do it themselves.’
‘In other words, a housekeeper and butler service,’ he observed on a note of irony.
Iona gave him her best, kindest, nursery-schoolteacher smile. ‘More like a manager,’ she corrected. ‘She’s extremely successful—hugely discreet, one hundred per cent dependable, and a perfectionist. Your host asked us to make sure the apartment was ready for you, so I called in this morning to check it out. Unfortunately there were a few minor problems, which are on the way to being fixed now. If you’d arrived at the time you said you would, everything would have been perfect.’
He gave a sudden crack of laughter, and for a moment he was the man she’d known, the man she’d fallen—well, not in love with. No, never that.
In lust with.
Amusement didn’t soften the autocratic lines and angles of Luke’s face, but it did make him more approachable when he said lazily, ‘It was convenient for me to arrive early. The rest of my party will be here at the given time.’
Going by the bedrooms she’d checked there were at least two other people to come. Was he planning to share that big bed with someone? A stupid pang of pain seared through Iona, as though the possibility was a kind of betrayal.
Startled and afraid, she said briskly, ‘All that needs to be done now is for the beds to be made. And if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go and help the maid and then you’ll have the apartment to yourself.’
‘It is not necessary,’ he said negligently, eyes intent. A slow smile curled his beautifully chiselled mouth. ‘I am in no hurry to see you go. Tell me how you’ve been since you left Tahiti so swiftly.’
This was exactly the sort of thing ex-lovers might say to each other when they were being civilised and sensible and sophisticated about a past affair.
Well, she was just as capable as Luke of being all those things—perhaps not quite so sophisticated…
Yet it took a considerable amount of control for Iona to say as casually, ‘I’ve been fine, thank you.’
‘You didn’t go back to teaching your little nursery school pupils?’
‘No. I was offered this position.’
She knew she sounded stiff, but she couldn’t be as relaxed as he was. Apart from Gavin he was the only man she’d ever made love to, but, more than that, his heated, generously sensual expertise had drawn her back into the world of the living, the world of emotions and joy and the ability to respond. He’d got too close to her during those passionate days and nights in Tahiti.
She flicked a glance up at him, noting the glimmer of amusement in the tawny eyes. A strange constriction of her heart took her by surprise, as though she’d spent the intervening months waiting for this moment.
It had to be his powerful physical presence. Luke was the best-looking man she’d ever seen, but that wasn’t
