believe he had to dump his father to do it,’ Peta said with cutting accusation.
‘True, because his father was the problem.’ Liz looked at her and seemed to come to some decision. ‘I’m not telling you anything everyone doesn’t know, so I can say that Mr McIntosh treated the firm like his own personal cash cow. When Curt took it over he turned it on its head and paid off the creditors in an astonishingly short time; he saved the firm and most of the employees’ jobs.’
Presumably her mother was one of those employees. ‘But to shaft your own father…’
Liz nodded. ‘I know. As I said, he’s ruthless.’
Peta walked across to the window and stared down past a green lawn, a swimming pool and a fringe of ancient pohutukawa trees. Between their branches the water of the harbour sparkled like gemstone chips.
From behind her Liz said, ‘But you know, I’d trust Curt with my life.’
A sound at the door made them both swing around. ‘Thank you for that tribute, Liz,’ Curt said smoothly. ‘Would you like to wait downstairs?’
She’d clapped one hand over her mouth, but she removed it to grin at him. ‘Certainly.’
Peta watched with tense awareness as he closed the door. Her heart had kicked into double time and the sensation running riot through her body was undiluted excitement. Three days had only served to hone her involuntary response to his potent male magnetism.
‘We made a bargain, you and I,’ Curt said pleasantly, but his eyes were grey and cold.
Her jaw angled in defiance. ‘I told you I wouldn’t let you pay for my clothes. You agreed to hire them.’
‘It’s not possible.’ He lifted his brows when she made an impatient gesture. ‘But if it means so much to you, you can pay for them.’
‘I can’t afford—’
She stopped because he came towards her, and something about his lithe, remorseless advance dried her mouth and stopped her heart.
‘If you mean what I think you mean,’ she said hoarsely, ‘that’s disgusting.’
‘Disgusting?’ He smiled and her blood ran cold. ‘What’s disgusting about this?’ he murmured, and bent his head.
Peta froze as his mouth drifted across one cheekbone. The elusive male scent that was his alone acted like an aphrodisiac on her, switching off her brain to leave her with no protection from the clamouring demands of desire except a basic instinct of self-preservation.
‘I am not a prostitute,’ she said thickly.
The ugly word hung between them. He laughed softly and said against her ear, ‘If you were I wouldn’t be doing this…’ His mouth moved to the lobe of her ear and he bit gently.
An erotic charge zinged through her, firing every cell into urgent craving.
‘…or this,’ he finished, and his mouth reached the frantic pulse in the hollow of her throat. He kissed it, and then lifted his mouth a fraction so that his breath blew warm on her sensitised skin. ‘And your heart wouldn’t be jumping so wildly.’
Tormented delight clamoured through her like a storm. Peta couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him to stop using mock tenderness in his subtle, knowledgeable seduction.
She quivered, lost in a rush of desire that burned away the last coherent thought in her brain. Sighing against his lips, she opened her mouth to his.
The other kisses they’d exchanged faded into insignificance; she sensed a difference in him, a darker, deeper hunger beyond the simple desire of man for woman. It fuelled her anticipation into a raging inferno. She shuddered when his hand smoothed up from her waist, coming to rest over the soft mound of her breast. Hot, primeval pleasure burst into life inside her, aching through her body, softening internal pathways, melting her bones…
His touch felt so right, she thought recklessly, linking her arms around his neck and offering him her mouth. She’d been born for this dangerous magic, spent the empty years of her adult life waiting for it.
Eagerly expectant, she held her breath while tension spun between them in the taut, humming silence. Ravished by the pressure of his big, hard body against hers, the powerful strength of his arms, she at last surrendered to her own needs.
His heart thudded against hers, his chest rose and fell, and his arms were hard and demanding around her. Yet he didn’t move.
With immense reluctance she forced her heavy lids upwards.
Curt’s face was clamped into an expression she didn’t recognise; his eyes glittered and a streak of colour outlined the high, sweeping cheekbones.
Her stomach dropped in endless freefall, and she knew what he was going to say. Humiliated, she tried to turn her face away.
He said something under his breath and his mouth took hers again, hard and fierce and angry, only breaking the kiss to say harshly, ‘Not now. Not while Liz is waiting.’
Oh, God, no! She whispered, ‘Then what was that about?’
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, understanding the real question behind the words. He released her and stood with a face like stone, withdrawn to some inner place she could never reach.
She took a jagged indrawn breath, but before she could say anything he spoke again, the raw note banished from his voice.
With a remote deliberation that slammed up impassable barriers, he said, ‘I have no excuse; I lost my head. It won’t happen again.’
It took all her willpower to step back, to look straight at him. ‘Do I have your word on that?’
‘Yes.’
Her skin tightened; a heavy weight of loss overwhelmed her. She had to search for a response, and in the end all she could find was a banal, ‘Good.’
Curt looked around the bedroom and said with formidable composure, ‘An essential part of this masquerade is wearing the right clothes. I’m prepared to pay for them. If you don’t agree to that our bargain is over.’
He didn’t threaten; he didn’t need to. That cold, ruthless tone, his implacable face told her that if she reneged on their deal she’d find herself with no farm, no way of earning her living—nothing.
‘Very well,’ she said stonily. ‘But when I leave here the clothes will stay.’
He shrugged. ‘That’s entirely up to you. I’ll go and tell Liz you’ll be ready in ten minutes.’
In the sanctuary of the bathroom, all marble and mirrors and glimmering glass, Peta eyed her reflection. Completely out of place in this cool, sleek sophistication, the woman in the glass blazed with a sensuous earthiness, her mouth kissed red and sultry eyes shooting gold sparks.
Even her hair was wild—she looked as though she’d been plugged into an electric socket.
After fumbling with the taps she ran cold water over her wrists and washed
