‘It’s lovely,’ she murmured, walking across to a row of windows at the end. Startled, she looked straight into the harbour, as though they were on the bow of an ocean liner.
From behind Caelan said, ‘The hotel is built on one of the wharves.’
A fat ferry bumbled purposefully towards the North Shore; it reminded Abby of a beetle and she smiled involuntarily.
‘The kitchen is through that door,’ he said crisply. ‘Do you want a drink? No? Then I’ll show you your rooms.’
Michael’s was the first. Abby had expected an exercise in sleek minimalism, but this was a young boy’s dream, a circus fantasy with a tasselled tent top and a frieze of prancing animals.
Oh, Caelan had been utterly and completely confident that he’d be bringing Michael back with him! And why not? He held all the cards.
‘Your room is next door, you share a bathroom,’ he told Abby, indicating a door. He glanced at his watch and frowned. ‘I have to check out a few things, so I’ll leave you to explore by yourselves for ten minutes or so. Your luggage has arrived, so you’ll be able to change into your togs, Michael.’
Left alone with a silent, fascinated Michael, Abby admired a magnificently prancing rocking-horse. At the back of her mind she wondered how many women had come to this penthouse and been swept off their feet by their host’s potent sexuality.
Droves, she thought savagely. A small voice insisting on being taken to the bathroom put a welcome end to her thoughts. She gave Michael a swift hug and showed him where it was.
Then they explored the room next door, furnished in restful, sophisticated shades of sand with a throw rug of deep rust lending richness to the neutral scheme. A chair and a desk against one wall were set out for writing; a daybed in the window suggested long afternoons of reading. Abby’s gaze lingered on a vase of orchids, exquisite fly-away things in shades of caramel, rust and golden-green.
Had Caelan chosen them? Highly unlikely, she decided. No doubt a florist kept each of the rooms in this luxurious place filled with blooms that matched the décor as perfectly as those orchids did.
Well, she’d far rather have a handful of dandelions picked from the paddock and given to her in a chubby little hand.
‘Where does Uncle Caelan sleep?’ Michael asked, looking around.
‘I don’t know,’ Abby said crisply. Not at this end of the penthouse, anyway. Possibly he had a suite well away from his guest rooms. ‘Come on, we’d better find your swimming togs.’
Ten minutes later, Caelan knocked on the door. Made exuberant by excitement, Michael rushed across to open it.
Abby’s stomach lurched and that treacherous flow of anticipation turned into sharp, painful awareness. In swimming shorts, a large towel draped over one copper-bronze, sleekly muscled shoulder, Caelan’s compelling physicality cut through centuries of civilised conditioning. In spite of every barrier she’d constructed, the primitive instinct to mate with the most alpha male flamed into life within her.
‘Do you have a towel?’ he asked, smiling as his nephew jumped around him like a puppy.
Michael grabbed it up from the bed and went off without a backwards glance, chattering and animated. Feeling resentfully like an unwanted extra, Abby followed them out onto a wide terrace overlooking the harbour and the North Shore.
She sat down in a lounger beneath a sail that kept the hot northern sun from her head, and watched intently as the two men now in her life stopped by the gate into the pool enclosure. The light in this sub-tropical part of New Zealand was softer, more humid than in the south, smoothing over Caelan’s torso to delineate every coiled muscle as he stooped to speak to his nephew. Broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped and with the innate grace of a leopard, he looked dangerous and dynamic and fascinating.
Furious at the slow burn of desire in the pit of her stomach, she thought acidly that Mediterranean heritage had a lot to answer for. No doubt the splash of Celtic blood that had given him his name and his ice-blue eyes had provided the long, powerful legs, but his formidable confidence and authority were his own.
She must never allow herself to forget that Caelan used his tough tenacity and ruthless intelligence—and his charisma—like weapons. He was a warrior, gathering the fruits of war.
In which quest it probably helped that he didn’t have a heart. In fact, it surprised her that he had enough glimmerings of conscience to feel responsible for Gemma’s son.
No, that was unfair; even Gemma had admitted that her half-brother was meticulous in fulfilling his obligations. In fact, it had been one of the reasons she’d demanded Abby’s promise.
‘I don’t want Michael to be a duty like I was,’ she’d said flatly. ‘He’d be just another project to see through to completion. Oh, Caelan would do his best for him, but it’s not enough to know you’re no more than a responsibility.’
The early death of his father had pitched Caelan into the cut-throat arena of international business in his mid-twenties, and, to most people’s astonishment, he’d succeeded wildly. At the same time he’d taken charge of his impulsive, wilful sister.
His best hadn’t been good enough for Gemma; she’d make sure he dealt better with Michael, Abby decided, her gaze following them into the pool enclosure. Excitement raised Michael’s voice higher than usual against his uncle’s deeper tones. The elusive resemblance between them tugged at her heartstrings.
Oh, Gemma, she thought forlornly, I’ll look after him whatever happens, but I feel very outgunned right now!
And then she stiffened her spine in a determination that masked a deep, abiding dread. There was much more than her happiness at stake; weigh her wary, reluctant attraction against a child’s future, and that feverish tug at her senses meant very little.
And as she clearly wasn’t necessary here, she should really go and unpack Michael’s clothes.
Instead, she leaned back into the sleek, luxuriously comfortable lounger to watch. Against the shimmer of the water in the bright spring sun, Caelan crouched by his nephew and began to talk. Abby watched Michael’s face, solemn and intent as he nodded.
Straining her ears, she heard Caelan say, ‘And no jumping in.’
‘No jumping,’ Michael repeated, a little disappointed but resigned.
‘Only if I’m there to catch you. Wait until I’m in the water, and I’ll tell you when to jump.’
After another serious nod Michael gave a great beaming smile, twisting Abby’s heart. Both were feeling their way; Michael was prepared to like the man who’d appeared out of the darkness, and so far Caelan had settled for treating his nephew like a small adult.
An attitude that made Michael blossom, she noted with another despicable stab of jealousy.
Glass panels sheltered both pool and terrace from the cool breeze that trailed in off the harbour. When the two swimmers got into the water her heart—foolish organ!—contracted even more tightly as Michael imitated everything the prince did. She kept a close eye on them, only relaxing when she saw that Caelan was always near enough to rescue his nephew from any risky exploits.
Their
