Firth didn’t approve of docking, swept the ground.
Kane said, ‘How do you release him?’
‘G-o-o-d b-o-y.’
He said the words and Lucky sprang up, eagerly sniffing around the car, getting ready to cock his leg until both Emma and Kane said ‘No’ sharply enough to make him look startled and back off.
‘Two nannies,’ Kane said with an ironic smile. ‘He’ll develop a complex.’
A sudden glow in Emma’s heart shocked her. Instinct warned her that Kane Talbot was not good medicine for inexperienced women. Although Emma enjoyed challenges, some, she knew, were not worth the exhilaration.
She and Kane had nothing in common. He was cosmopolitan, with a sophistication that was so essential a part of him he probably didn’t even realise he possessed it. Not for him the fake worldliness, the desperate effort to be cool of so many younger men. And he was almost engaged, whatever that meant.
Watching the broad shoulders flex as he hoisted the grocery bags from the boot, Emma thought that he’d know exactly how to make a woman so aware of him she’d begin to think of all sorts of disturbing things, like how good he’d be as a lover.
A disconcerting wrench of sensation in her stomach turned to heat. Fortunately he was so much older than her—ten years or so, she guessed—that he probably did think of her as barely grown up. He was just being a considerate neighbour; she was the one with the problem.
‘Here, I’ll take a bag,’ she said, when it was obvious he intended to carry all three in.
‘They’re not heavy.’
Setting her jaw, she followed him up the two steps to the brick porch at the back of the house. She didn’t realise that he’d stood back to let her go first until she cannoned into him.
‘Ouff,’ she muttered, leaping back with a memory of muscles like iron and a faint, sexy scent, not soap or shaving lotion, just Kane Talbot.
‘Sorry,’ he said calmly.
She gave him a brief glance, and muttered as she went in, ‘I didn’t see you.’
Leading the way into the kitchen, she took a couple of deep breaths to centre herself. ‘Just put them on the bench, please,’ she said, pointing to the smooth grey granite.
He did that, then glanced at her with amusement glinting beneath black lashes as straight as his brows.
Emma looked past him and said softly, ‘Oh, look outside—on the maple branch. A tui!’
The iridescent bird ducked and bowed along the branch, head held low as he sang a soft, seductive song. At his throat a tuft of white feathers bobbed like a stock in a lace collar when he fluffed his wings and repeated the sinuous movements and his song. Against the glowing red stems of the maple tree he looked superb.
‘What’s he doing?’ Emma asked quietly.
‘He’s courting.’ Kane’s voice was unexpectedly abrupt. ‘He knows how splendidly those branches set off his colours; he’s parading, looking for a mate, promising that he’ll give her ecstasy and young ones and keep all their bellies filled.’
A note in his words dragged her gaze from the bird strutting his stuff outside. Kane’s face had hardened into indifference, but there was a twist to his lips that gave his comment a satirical inflection.
Tentatively she asked, ‘Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?’
‘No, thank you, I have to keep going,’ he said, the words so quick and cool they were a rebuff.
Brows pleated, Emma watched the big car go down the road and turn into his drive. He’d been reasonably friendly, and then suddenly, as though she’d insulted his mother, he’d withdrawn behind an impervious armour.
‘Perhaps he thought I was flirting with him,’ she told the dogs, who were eyeing the packets of pet mince with anticipatory interest. ‘Well, he was wrong. Men with dangerous eyes and tough faces and volatile moods do nothing for me at all. Even when they’re not virtually engaged to Australian women of impeccable family. Whoa, hold your horses; I’ll make your dog biscuits this afternoon. I want to do some weeding first while it’s fine.’
Once outside, Babe found a warm place on the brick terrace and went to sleep, while Lucky investigated a score of fascinating scents around the garden before settling close to her. As Emma tugged at weeds encouraged into growth by the warm touch of spring, she decided that her unexpected holiday had altered direction. Kane’s arrival on the scene had sent her stumbling blindly into perilous, intriguing, unknown territory.
She yanked out a large sowthistle, patted back into place the three pansies its roots had dislodged, and tried to persuade herself that the slow excitement that licked through her whenever she thought of the man next door was uncomplicated attraction, a pragmatic indication from her genes that she was old enough to reproduce and that for the survival of her offspring it would be wise to choose a tough man who was a good provider, with enough prestige to protect her from other men as well as the strength to beat off cave bears and sabretooth tigers.
Basic stuff, an inheritance from the primitive past, still powerful even though it was outdated at the end of the twentieth century.
‘And don’t forget,’ she reminded herself, ‘the almost-fiancée.’
After an hour of solid work she stood to admire a bed of pansies and tall bluebells unmarred by weeds. But as she scrubbed the dirt from her fingernails she admitted that her next door neighbour had been constantly on her mind, disturbing her usually serene thoughts and refusing to go away.
The telephone rang. She scrabbled to dry her hands on the towel and ran into the kitchen. ‘Yes?’ she asked breathlessly.
‘Were you outside?’
Divorced from the actual physical presence of the man, Kane Talbot’s voice made its own impression. Deep and level, with an intriguing rasp in the middle register, it brushed across her skin like velvet.
‘I was washing my hands,’ she said, trying to sound cheerful and bright and ordinary. ‘I’ve been weeding.’
‘I thought Mrs Firth had Fran Partridge to help in the garden.’
‘She does, but Ms Partridge went away this morning, and anyway, I like weeding.’ Fran Partridge was a single mother and the probable source, Emma had decided on meeting her, of Mrs Firth’s information about the locals.
How did she know Kane was frowning when he said, ‘Where’s Fran gone?’
A subtle undernote in his voice betrayed his expression. Before she’d realised it was none of his business, Emma told him, ‘It’s the school holidays and she’s on a trip somewhere with her son.’
‘Of course. I’d forgotten.’ He was silent, possibly thinking of Davy Partridge, who lived at the end of the road and rode his bike up and down on fine days, singing at the top of his voice. ‘It’s unusual for someone of your age to be interested in gardening.’
Emma bristled. ‘Is it?’
‘Most
