that you’re Lecia Spring, born twenty-nine years ago in Australia to an Australian father and New Zealand mother. A year after your parents’ marriage in Melbourne your father had a severe fall and never recovered; he died before you were born.’
‘Your investigator is good,’ she said through her teeth.
‘The best. Monica, your mother, moved to New Zealand to be close to her parents, remarried when you were four, and now lives in Gisborne with her second husband, the owner of a very successful food processing business. You’re a clever, well-respected architect, with a lucrative practice that you keep small by working alone from your home. Why, incidentally?’
‘Because I like to be my own boss,’ she snapped, repelled by his dispassionate recital of the facts of her life.
‘So,’ he said, watching her from half-closed eyes, ‘do I. But you could expand, set up your own firm, employ other architects, and still be the boss.’
‘I’m not ready for that yet. I need more experience.’ It was her standard reason, and before it had always seemed perfectly adequate. It didn’t now.
However, he didn’t pursue the subject. Scrutinising her with leisurely, infuriating thoroughness, he continued, ‘When you were twenty-two you became engaged to another architecture student, but broke it off three months later. What happened?’
‘Looking like my brother does not give you any right to pry into my personal life,’ Lecia said with bleak, barely controlled precision, cringing at the thought of Keane Paget reading about that tragedy.
‘Technically speaking, I think you look like me,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m six years older than you, which must give me a priority claim on the genes.’
She choked back a reluctant gasp of laughter. ‘We’re not brother and sister,’ she observed, ‘but we certainly sound like a bickering pair. Have you got any?’
‘Brothers and sisters? No. There’s just me.’
The heavy lids half hiding his eyes imbued his gaze with a disturbing sensuality that set her nerve-ends jangling. However, nothing could conceal the keen perception in the steel-blue depths.
Trying to shake off her debilitating response so that she could speak objectively, she said, ‘We must be related, either through an illegal liaison or a common ancestor back in England before either side emigrated. The Springs have been in Australia for almost a hundred years, which puts any shared ancestor a long way back. And I don’t think any of them crossed the Tasman to New Zealand.’
‘The Pagets have been here for six generations,’ Keane said in a neutral voice. ‘I don’t know about any cross-Tasman voyaging amongst them, but it’s not wholly unlikely. And as we both look like our fathers—and mine looked very like his father—’
‘Mine too,’ she interpolated. ‘I’ve seen old photographs of my grandfather and great-grandfather, and they all have a very strong family likeness.’
He shrugged. ‘There has to be a connection somewhere. I refuse to believe that this uncanny resemblance is just a coincidental arrangement of genes.’
The waiter came over to say smoothly, ‘Your table is ready, Mr Paget.’
After they both got to their feet Keane took Lecia’s arm in an automatic grip, as though he did this with every woman he escorted. Old-fashioned manners, she thought, but he carried them off.
He could carry anything off—inctuding most of the women in this room, if their sideways glances were any indication.
When they’d been seated, the menus scanned and their orders given, Keane said, ‘I already know quite a lot about you, so what do you want to know about me?’
Everything, she thought hollowly. Aloud she said, ‘Are both your parents still alive?’
‘No.’ His expression didn’t alter but she knew she’d hit a nerve. ‘They died just before I turned six.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He drank some water, then set the glass down and said in a coolly dismissive tone that didn’t ring quite true, ‘It happened nearly thirty years ago. I can barely remember them.’
‘That would be about the same time my father died.’
‘The same year. His accident and its aftermath must have been damned tough on your mother.’
‘She doesn’t talk about it much, but yes, I think she suffered as much as he did. Still, she managed.’ Lecia looked up and met his eyes, her unruly heart-rate accelerating as she admitted, ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing here.’
‘Curiosity,’ he told her, his narrow smile not free from self-derision. ‘For both of us. However hard reason tries to convince me that we’re strangers, we wear our shared pedigree in our faces. Architecture is an unusual profession for a woman, surely?’
She shook her head. ‘Not that unusual, although there aren’t many of us yet—I think about four per cent of architects are women. Lots more are coming through university now. I love it.’
‘Do you design houses or commercial buildings?’
With something close to a snap, she said, ‘Surely your dossier tells you all that?’
‘I’m asking you,’ he said coolly, those perceptive eyes noting her defensiveness.
I’d hate to lie to him, she thought, saying aloud, ‘I’ve worked on several commercial developments, but I do enjoy houses. And shopping centres.’ She gave him a set little smile. ‘All very feminine.’
‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘You sound,’ she said evenly, ‘like a psychologist.’
Although his brows rose, he said nothing, just sat there surveying her with cool self-assurance.
Lecia sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit sensitive, I suppose. Some men—and women too—think that designing domestic buildings is an easy option.’
‘I was in one of your houses yesterday,’ he said. ‘It is charming and serene, and the owner loves it, says she’s never going to move and won’t have a thing changed.’
Her eyes lit up and she smiled. ‘What a lovely compliment!’
‘Especially as the house wasn’t designed for her. My great-aunt has just moved into it.’ He told her the address.
‘I remember it.’ Her expression sobered, because the woman she’d designed the house for had died six months before. ‘I hope your aunt enjoys living there,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you could go and find out,’ he said levelly. ‘She likes visitors.’
Lecia froze. It seemed to her that the invitation was significant, as though he’d decided to accept her into his family, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. After all she had a perfectly good family of her own.
She looked up. Keane Paget was watching her with eyes the colour of the sea beneath a summer cloud.
