expected to be disappointed,’ he said, his magnetic gaze raking her face.
She forced her dazed eyes to gaze levelly at him, forced her unwilling mouth into a taunting smile. ‘And do you like what you see, now the mask is gone?’
‘You lovely witch,’ he said, his voice deep and smoky. ‘We’ve a long way to go before all the masks are off. But it’s going to happen. Sleep as badly as I’m going to.’
He turned his back on her and walked away. Swallowing to ease an arid throat, Natalie stared after him. He had the ideal male form—triangular torso, long, strong-muscled legs, and that steady pace, lazily menacing as a panther’s predatory prowl. At the gate he turned and lifted his hand in a wave that was probably an exercise in sarcasm.
Nerves jumping, she waited until she heard the car start, then slammed the door and stood with her hands clenched until the sound of the engine had died into a silence unlike anything she’d ever experienced.
Shouting meaty, satisfying oaths at the Hereford steer as it ambled carelessly through the teatree and gorse, Natalia dragged black, sticky strands of hair back from her hot face.
‘And stay off my property, or I’ll kill you for dog tucker,’ she finished with vindictive venom, mopping her forehead on the sleeve of her faded T-shirt.
‘If you kept your fences in better repair it wouldn’t be able to wander.’
The crisp male voice had her whirling around to see Clay Beauchamp dismounting from a horse in one swift, easy movement. Why ride a horse nowadays when farm bikes were a much more efficient way of getting around rural New Zealand? Tall, so big he almost blotted out a couple of tree ferns and a gorse bush, he strode towards her, his angular, autocratic face amused as he looked down his nose at her.
His amusement set tinder to her already explosive temper. Unwisely, she returned, ‘Why should I look after your fence? My livestock don’t wander.’ Fairness compelled her to add, ‘And neither do yours, except for this blasted wretch. It keeps breaking in and eating the capsicums. It’s smashed through my electric fences more times than I can count.’
The aristocratic amusement vanished; Clay said abruptly, ‘A new fence will be up shortly.’
‘Good. Until then, keep that damn steer off my land or I’ll shoot it,’ Natalia snapped.
Furious with herself for losing control, she turned to make her way across the small swamp that marked the boundary between Xanadu and Pukekahu. Sweat blinded her, sweat and anger and frustration. The steer had pushed its way into a tunnel-house and that long pink tongue had ruined too many plants.
But, however angry she’d been, she shouldn’t have shouted at Clay. It wasn’t his fault that one steer had damaged the tunnel-house—and she certainly couldn’t blame him for the state of the boundary fence, because it was Dean Jamieson who’d systematically stripped Pukekahu of every asset and refused to spend a cent on the station.
She’d made an idiot of herself.
An insect came barrelling at her, a tiny, threatening missile in the sunshine. Dread kicked in her stomach; she leaped sideways, landed in muddy water with one ankle twisted beneath her, and fell on to her knees with a yelp as pain pierced the skin of her bare arm.
‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ Hands wrenched her to her feet, jerked her out of the water and hauled her across to dry land. Setting her on her feet, Clay demanded harshly, ‘What is it?’
‘Only a bee-sting,’ she gasped, looking at the poison sac left in her arm. He moved, she thought dazedly, very fast for such a big man.
‘You’re allergic to them?’
‘No.’ She dragged in a deep breath and squared her shoulders, forced herself to meet frowning tawny-gold eyes. ‘I’m allergic to wasps,’ she said succinctly. ‘That’s what I thought the bee was—and when it stung me I realised I’d come without my pills.’
Before she’d finished speaking Clay had taken a pocket knife from his hip pocket and opened it. She barely had time to register the cold steel sliding along her heated skin before he’d flicked the poison sac free. Another movement, and she watched, shivering, as the blade was folded back, the knife returned to its place.
‘Careless of you, wasn’t it?’ Clay said pleasantly, black brows lifting.
Natalia had as little liking as anyone for being called foolish, but he was right. In early winter most wasps were slow and easily seen, but the newly mated queens could be aggressive. She’d been lucky this time; normally she wouldn’t have set foot outside the house without her pills.
‘Very,’ she said coolly. ‘But I was too busy getting rid of the steer trashing the tunnel-house to think about wasps.’
Eyes the golden-brown of topaz examined her, travelling from her tangle of curls to her wide, green eyes, and then on to her mouth. His smile acknowledged ivory skin and soft red lips, the female desirability of a body honed by hard work.
It was a purely sexual appraisal, and it was done with every intention to intimidate. Natalia’s skin tightened as more adrenaline surged through her bloodstream, quickening her breath. I don’t need this, she thought savagely, stepping away.
‘Thank you for picking me up,’ she said in aloof dismissal. ‘I’ll be all right now.’
‘You don’t want a ride home?’
Natalia glanced at the patiently waiting horse. Mellow sunlight washed over its black hide. Had Clay chosen the horse to go with his hair?
‘No, thank you,’ she said, and turned her back on man and horse. Stiff-spined, she walked up the hill, bristling under that golden predatory scrutiny until she reached sanctuary in the native bush cloaking the hillside.
Only then did she relax, her breath whistling out between dry lips. If he’d slept as badly as she had, he’d have been sluggish too. Instead, he’d shown her up as a clumsy, forgetful idiot. Why did he have to buy the place next door? It infuriated her that she was totally unable to deal with a man who exuded sex and authority from every pore of that big, lithe, graceful body.
OK, so she’d responded to it. And, yes, her nostrils still quivered at the faint male scent she’d registered when he’d carried her across the swamp, and her skin felt oddly tender where he’d grabbed her.
However, she knew how little it meant. A mixture of attractive packaging and pheromones—abetted by some elemental treachery in the female psyche—had stirred her hormones, but she wasn’t going to surrender to them again. Dean Jamieson had taught her a lesson she wouldn’t forget—she was no more immune to masculine charisma than any other woman of twenty-three.
However, she had more pressing things to do than worry about Clay Beauchamp. Fixing the gap in the electric fence, for one.
It turned out to be one of those days. While the steer had been satisfying its appetite for capsicums it had smashed a vital piece of the hydroponic watering system. Not only that—until she could afford to replace the broken piece, Natalia would have to get up every two hours during the night to check the tunnel-house.
She toyed with the idea of billing Clay Beauchamp; the only thing that stopped her was that he would be entirely
