directed a narrow smile at her. He lifted his hand to her chin and commanded, ‘Another smile, Peta.’
The sensual force of his masculinity hit her like a shock wave. She met his half-closed, intent stare with eyes grown dark and her breath barely coming through her lips.
‘On second thoughts, that’s even better,’ he said after a pause, his voice suddenly rough.
You’re giving too much away, some distant, despairing remnant of prudence warned. It took a real effort to blink and turn her head.
Across a group of people she met Ian’s eyes again, and felt her heart twist at the flash of pain in them. But sorry though she was for him, he had no right to fall in love with her, she thought raggedly.
‘I hate this,’ she said.
His expression didn’t change. ‘Then you shouldn’t have got yourself into this situation,’ he said smoothly, and smiled at her, a slow, sexy movement of his hard, beautiful mouth.
Stifled by his closeness, she glanced up to see him watching the muscles move in her throat as she swallowed. Butterflies tumbled about inside her in dazed confusion; her lips parted and she had to wrench her gaze away.
‘Dinner’s ready, everyone,’ someone—Ian?—called above the heavy thudding of her heart.
‘We’d better go and help serve.’ Curt took her elbow and steered her towards the table by the pool.
Ordinarily the delectably savoury scents would have coaxed Peta into hunger, but her stomach clenched as she gazed at succulent meat from the spit, fish wrapped in leaves and baked in the coals, and salads that were pictures in green and gold and scarlet.
And Gillian shooed them away. ‘Ian and Mrs Harkness and I know what we’re doing,’ she said, her gaze skimming Peta as she directed a smile at her brother. ‘Get something to eat then sit down and enjoy yourselves.’
After filling her plate, Peta allowed Curt to guide her to a table under an immense jacaranda tree. Four other people were already there; they looked up, a little startled when Curt first pulled out a chair for Peta then sat down himself.
Acutely aware of their interest—tomorrow the whole district would be buzzing with gossip, Peta thought mordantly— she tried to appear serenely confident while Curt charmed everyone’s initial reserve into open laughter and eager conversation.
A lilac-blue flower drifted down to land on her plate.
‘Messy things, jacarandas,’ one of the men, the machinery guru on the station, said cheerfully. ‘If they’re not dripping flowers, it’s seedpods or leaves. Don’t know why anyone would plant them.’
He grinned unrepentantly at the outcry from the women. His wife accused him of not seeing beauty in anything other than a well-tuned engine, laughing when he admitted it without a jot of shame.
‘As for wearing a flower in your buttonhole like Curt,’ she said teasingly, ‘you’d rather die.’
‘I’ll bet he didn’t pick it,’ her husband retorted, winking at his boss.
Curt gave a pirate’s grin. ‘Mind your own business.’
Without a lie he’d confirmed their suspicions that Peta had picked the gardenia and given it to him, thus clinching their relationship. To these men and their wives, only a man in the throes of desire would have worn it.
It was interesting to see how a master of innuendo worked, Peta thought with raw cynicism.
He leaned towards her. ‘Pudding? Gillian’s made her special chocolate mousse.’
His eyes were slightly hooded, and although his voice was quiet enough to indicate intimacy, there was a clear warning in his gaze.
Suddenly angry, Peta obeyed an instinct she’d never owned up to before. With slow, subtle deliberation, she held his gaze and let her tongue run the length of her lips. ‘I love her mousse,’ she said huskily.
His eyes darkened and his lashes drooped further. ‘Then you must have some.’
Serves you right, she thought furiously, only to flinch when he took her hand and drew her to her feet.
His fingers locking around hers like manacles, Curt said, ‘Who else wants chocolate mousse?’
In a flurry of feminine complaints that they didn’t dare eat such wicked indulgences so they’d have to stick to fruit salad, the group rose and went to collect their puddings.
On the way home, Peta broke into a charged silence by saying, ‘In the end they all had some of your sister’s mousse.’
‘It’s addictive,’ he agreed. He’d just informed her that tomorrow they’d go for a picnic at the beach.
Beneath the vehicle the bars of the cattle stop rattled and headlight beams blazed full onto the house, mercilessly highlighting the need for a new paint job. Laddie sat up and barked, subsiding into silence when Peta got out.
Curt escorted her to the door. Tension spiralled through her and the scent of the gardenia flowers tantalised her nostrils. Each blossom gleamed with a silvery sheen in the soft darkness. In spite of everything, she thought wearily, she’d enjoyed—well, no, that wasn’t the right word. Regret ached through her; if only they’d met like ordinary human beings, and this was the end of an ordinary date…
Common sense asserted itself briskly and brutally. He’d never have looked at you, it stated.
At the door when she turned to say good night, Curt said levelly, ‘I’ll come in.’
Anticipation simmered through her veins. ‘What?’
Did he sense it? If he did, his edged smile was calculated to deflate it. ‘No one is going to believe that I’ll come straight back.’
She clamped down on her instinctive rejection. Compared to the homestead her house was a shack. And if he once walked into it, she might never get rid of his presence.
‘No,’ he said pleasantly, ‘I’m not going to sit in the car. You can make me a cup of coffee and we’ll talk like ordinary neighbours over it.’
Ordinary neighbours? He had to be joking. ‘I only have instant,’ she said inanely.
He shrugged. ‘So?’ When she still hesitated he said on a note of derision, ‘It’s all right, Peta, you’ll be quite safe.’
‘Oh, come in if you must,’ she snapped, because she didn’t want to be safe.
The Peta who hadn’t kissed Curt was a different woman from the one who had; this new Peta had developed a reckless streak a mile wide.
Switching on the lights, she said, ‘Sit down, and I’ll put on the kettle,’ and escaped into the kitchen.
When she brought the coffee in, Curt was standing by the bookshelf examining a volume. She plonked the tray onto a coffee table. ‘Black or white?’
Other men almost as tall as he—stock agents, the occasional
