She didn’t pretend not to know who he was. Had there been a glimmer of some other emotion in the sultry green depths of her eyes, almost immediately hidden by those dark lashes?
If so, he could hear no sign of it in her voice when she went on, “Would you rather look around by yourself, or can I help you in any way?”
She hadn’t granted him permission to use her first name. Intrigued, and wryly amused at his reaction to her unspoken refusal, Rafe said, “My sister is having a birthday soon, and from the way she spoke of your shop I gathered she’d seen something here she liked. Do you know Gina Smythe?”
“Everyone in Tewaka knows Gina.” Smiling, she turned towards one of the side walls. “And, yes, I can tell you what she liked.”
“Gina isn’t noted for subtlety,” he said drily, appreciating the gentle feminine sway of slender hips, the graceful smoothness of her gait. His body stirred in a swift, sensually charged response that was purely masculine.
She stopped in front of an abstract oil. “This is the one.”
Rafe dragged his mind back to his reason for being there. Odd that Gina, so practical and matter-of-fact, couldn’t resist art that appealed directly to the darker, more stormy emotions.
“Who’s the artist?” he asked after a silent moment.
The woman beside him gave a soft laugh. “I am,” she admitted.
The hot tug of lust in Rafe’s gut intensified, startling him. Was she as passionate as the painting before him? Perhaps he’d find out some day …
“I’ll take it,” he said briskly. “Can you gift-wrap it for me? I’ll call back in half an hour.”
“Yes, of course.”
“Thanks.”
Out of the shop, away from temptation, he reminded himself curtly that he’d long ago got over the adolescent desire to bed every desirable woman he met. Yet primitive hunger still quickened his blood.
Soon he’d invite Marisa Somerville to dinner.
If she was unattached, which seemed unlikely in spite of her ringless fingers. Women who looked like her—especially ones who exuded that subtle sexuality—usually had a man in the not-very-distant background.
Probably, he thought cynically, stopping to speak to a middle-aged woman he’d known from childhood, he’d responded to her so swiftly because it was several months since he’d made love.
From behind the flimsy barrier of the sales counter Marisa watched him, her pulse still hammering so loudly in her ears she hardly heard the rising shriek of the siren at the local fire-brigade headquarters.
She resisted the impulse to go and wash Rafe Peveril’s grip from her skin. A handshake was meant to be impersonal, an unthreatening gesture …
Yet when he’d taken her outstretched hand in his strong, tempered fingers an erotic shiver had sizzled through every cell. Rafe Peveril’s touch had been unbearably stimulating, as dangerous as a siren’s song.
If a simple, unemotional handshake could do that, what would happen if he kissed her—?
Whoa! Outraged, she ordered her wayward mind to shut down that train of thought.
For two months she’d been bracing herself for this—ever since she’d been appalled to discover Rafe Peveril lived not far from Tewaka. Yet when she’d looked up to see him pace into the shop, more than six foot of intimidating authority and leashed male force, she’d had to stop herself from bolting out the back door.
Of all the rotten coincidences … It hadn’t occurred to her to check the names of the local bigwigs before signing the contract that locked her into a year’s lease of the shop.
She should have followed her first impulse after her father’s death and crossed the Tasman Sea to take refuge in Australia.
At least her luck had held—Rafe hadn’t recognised her. It was difficult to read the brilliant mind behind his arrogantly autocratic features, but she’d be prepared to bet that after a jolt of what might have been recognition he’d completely accepted her new persona and identity.
She swallowed hard as the fire engine raced past, siren screaming. Please God it was just a grass fire, not a motor accident, or someone’s house.
Her gaze fell to the picture she’d just sold. Forcing herself to breathe carefully and steadily, she took it off the wall and carried it across to the counter.
Gina Smythe was the sort of woman Marisa aspired to be—self-assured, decisive, charming. But of course Rafe Peveril’s sister would have been born with the same effortless, almost ruthless self-confidence that made him so intimidating.
Whereas it had taken her years—and much effort—to manufacture the façade she now hid behind. Only she knew that deep inside her lurked the naive, foolish kid filled with simple-minded hope and fairytale fantasies who’d married David Brown and gone with him to Mariposa, expecting an exotic tropical paradise and the romance of a lifetime.
Her mouth curved in a cynical, unamused line as she expertly cut a length of gift-wrapping paper.
How wrong she’d been.
However, that was behind her now. And as she couldn’t get out of her lease agreement, she’d just have to make sure everyone—especially Rafe Peveril—saw her as the woman who owned the best gift shop in Northland.
She had to make a success of this venture and squirrel away every cent she could. Once the year was up she’d leave Tewaka for somewhere safer—a place where her past didn’t intrude and she could live without fear, a place where she could at last settle.
The sort of place she thought she’d found in Tewaka …
Half an hour later she was keeping a wary eye on the entrance while dealing with a diffident middle-aged woman who couldn’t make up her mind. Every suggestion was met with a vague comment that implied rejection.
Once, Marisa thought compassionately, she’d been like that. Perhaps this woman too was stuck in a situation with no escape. Curbing her tension, she walked her around the shop, discussing the recipient of the proposed gift, a fourteen-year-old girl who seemed to terrify her grandmother.
A movement from the door made her suck in an involuntary breath as Rafe Peveril strode in, his size and air of cool authority reducing the shop and its contents to insignificance.
Black-haired, tanned and arrogantly handsome, his broad-shouldered, narrow-hipped body moving in a lithe predator’s gait on long, heavily muscled legs, he was a man who commanded instant attention.
Naked, he was even more magnificent …
Appalled by the swift memory from a past she’d tried very hard to forget, she murmured, “If you don’t mind, I’ll give Mr Peveril his parcel.”
“Oh, yes—do.” The customer looked across the shop, turning faintly pink when she received a smile that sizzled with male charisma.
Deliberately
