left the real-estate office so deep in thought that she almost bumped into someone examining the window of Kowhai Bay’s sole boutique.
‘Peta!’
‘Oh—Nadine!’ Laughing, they embraced. Peta stepped back and said admiringly, ‘Aren’t you the fine up-and-coming city lawyer! I guessed you’d be home for Granny Wai’s ninetieth birthday.’
‘Absolutely. She’s so looking forward to it, you can’t imagine!’
That night Peta saw for herself. The big hall at the local marae was crowded with people, many of them the matriarch’s descendants, mingling with neighbours, local dignitaries, and visitors from points around the world.
Surrounded by flowers and streamers and balloons, relishing the laughter and the gossip and the reunions, Granny held court in an elegant black dress, heirloom greenstone hei-tiki pendant gleaming on her breast.
Nadine pushed politely past a couple of elderly men to say with envy, ‘That honey-gold colour suits you superbly. Did you make your top?’
‘Yes.’ Peta enjoyed sewing, and the silky, sleeveless garment had only taken a couple of hours to finish.
‘Thought so.’ She turned and waved to her great-grandmother. ‘Isn’t she amazing? You watch—as soon as the band strikes up she’ll be on the floor. Pino’s threatened to jive with her, and Mum’s terrified she’ll break her hip, but if Granny wants to jive, Granny will! She’s as tough as old boots, bless her.’
A subdued stir by the door caught their attention.
‘Uh-oh,’ Nadine said beneath her breath. ‘Speaking of tough, the Tanekaha Station clan has just arrived.’
Peta opened her mouth then closed it again. Of course the Mathesons and Curt would have been invited.
Her friend sighed elaborately. ‘You know, Curt McIntosh is a magnificent, gorgeous man. Pity he’s got the soul of a shark.’
‘A shark?’ Jolted, Peta glanced across the room, in time to see Curt lift Granny’s hand to his mouth and kiss it.
The gesture should have looked stagy and incongruous, but he carried it off with a panache that sent heat shafting down her spine. Dragging her gaze back to Nadine’s face, she asked, ‘A shark as in being dishonest and sleazy?’
‘Oh, no, never that! He’s got a reputation for absolute fairness; deal well with him, and he’ll deal well with you. Just don’t expect any loving kindness,’ her friend said drily. ‘Of course, sharks can’t help being the most lethal predators in the sea. It’s inborn in them, like being cold-blooded and dangerous.’ She peered across the intervening crowd. ‘I thought he might bring along the latest very good friend, Anna Lee, but clearly no. This wouldn’t be her scene, anyway.’
‘Hmm, I deduce that you know her and don’t like her.’ Peta refused to wonder why discovering that Curt had a lover seared into her composure as painfully as an acid burn.
Her friend rolled her eyes. ‘I saw them together a couple of nights ago at her art exhibition. She is very chic. She is very artistic. She does installations. And she thinks lawyers—especially those who haven’t yet clawed their way off the bottom rung—are Philistine scum.’
Laughing, Peta shot another glance across the hall, something inside her twisting as her eyes were captured by an enigmatic grey-blue gaze. Curt McIntosh’s dark head inclined in a nod that had something regal to it.
Not to be outdone, she responded with an aloof smile before turning back to Nadine. ‘Don’t tell me you told her you didn’t like her installations?’
‘Of course not!’ Nadine primmed her mouth. ‘I have much better manners than that. My expression must have given me away. But when I buy an installation it will be more substantial than a collection of found objects depicting the primordial rhythm of creation.’
Peta grinned. ‘Urk!’
‘Just so,’ Nadine said smugly. ‘But she’s very beautiful, so I don’t blame the fabulous Curt for falling for her, even though I’d have expected more from him. He’s completely brilliant.’ She sighed and added with a smirk, ‘It’s a pity men are such superficial beings. Yet they’ve got the gall to claim that we’re driven by hormones!’
It was almost impossible to imagine Curt at the mercy of his hormones, Peta decided. He might behave like a shark, but he was fully in control.
On the other hand what did she know about the other sex? Nothing much, just enough to be certain that she was never going to marry a dominant man. Her father’s rigid insistence on being head of the family had been enough for her; when—if—she married, she’d choose a kind, decent man who understood that women had needs and brains and the right to have an opinion.
‘Evolution has a lot to answer for,’ she said brightly, and for the next half-hour or so managed to ignore Curt and the Mathesons.
Later, after several dances and an animated conversation with another school friend who’d come back from Australia for the occasion, she turned around, tossing a laughing remark over her shoulder as she headed off to pay her respects to Granny.
Only to discover a large male blocking her path; she pulled up in mid-stride, stopping far too close to a faultless white shirt and a magnificently tailored suit.
Before she had time to draw breath two strong hands gripped her upper arms. Heat radiated through her in a wild, impulsive flood as Curt murmured in a deep, sardonic voice for her ears only, ‘I seem to be making a habit of this.’
He released her, but didn’t move away. Around them people talked and laughed and called out, yet she was trapped with him in sizzling silence.
Peta thought headily that the air between them must be glittering in a frenzy of electrons and atoms, or whatever it was made of. She almost looked down to check whether tiny lightning flashes connected them in fierce, strange intimacy.
Pasting a smile onto trembling lips, she mustered her defences and said, ‘Be grateful—there’s no mud this time.’
Mockery gleamed between his dense black lashes. ‘A complete change of appearance,’ he agreed with a disturbing intonation that sent more hot little shivers down her spine.
He didn’t move; she couldn’t. His will and determination bored into her like some psychic energy.
And although she knew it was dangerous, that she should step back, make some light, stupid remark and get the hell out of there, she lifted her head and looked him in the face. He was smiling, yet something formidable about his expression reminded her sharply of Nadine’s words, although his eyes challenged her description of him as a shark, because sharks were inhumanly cold.
Whereas heat burned in Curt’s eyes and touched his smile with a tantalising promise of passionate satisfaction. It enveloped her—a potent, charged aura of sexual charisma hot enough to set sirens clamouring in every cell of her body. Shocked and bewildered, she felt her breasts expand and an odd, drawing sensation tighten their peaks, both disconcerting and intensely pleasurable.
If she didn’t get out of there he’d see what was happening. Panicking, she dragged air into her lungs, feeding enough oxygen to her starved brain to prod her instincts
