half turned to survey the harbor that thrust deep into New Zealand’s North Island, its myriad inlets and tributaries snaking through bush and farmland.
The sun was slowly bringing it to life, glinting on lazy ripples chasing each other across the surface as the mist melted away and crept up the hillsides, lingering on the bush-covered curves.
“It’s very pretty,” he agreed politely, and turned his attention to the immediate environs.
Around the cottage the grass was kept short by sheep that had fled at the sound of the approaching boat. A stand of dark-leaved trees, relieved by nikau palms and lacy tree-ferns, protectively embraced the small clearing.
His deep-blue gaze came back to her, and a lean, strong hand reached out to touch a tiny curled feather adhering to one of the eggs. “Very earth mother.”
Shahna stiffened, something uncomfortably like fear cooling her heated skin, and he said, “Are you going to invite me in?”
Panic nearly sent her running into the cottage, to slam the door behind her. Childish, and almost certainly futile.
She didn’t really have a choice. “All right. Come on in.”
Reluctantly Shahna led him inside.
Kier dropped the backpack on the old hinged-seat settle near the door and followed her across the polished kauri boards and colorful scatter rugs.
The kitchen, separated from the cosy main room only by cupboards beneath a waist-high wooden counter, was small and narrow. Shahna had placed the round dining table and four wooden chairs on the living room side of the counter after her landlord knocked out the partition between the rooms.
Ignoring the chairs, Kier propped himself against the wall between the two areas and resumed his study of her, his relentless gaze intensifying the jittering of her nerves.
He seemed alien here, out of his normal city environment. Even away from his own country. Shahna could almost believe she was dreaming, had conjured him from her subconscious as she too often did in sleep. Except that he was too real, too solid, too altogether male—dangerously so. There was nothing dreamlike about this.
She put the eggs down without looking at him. If she did, she might not be able to prevent herself from staring back, drinking in the sight of him, absorbed in the sheer seductive pleasure of his sudden appearance from the blue.
Trying for normality, she asked in a voice that seemed unreal, “Do you want some tea, or coffee?”
“Coffee would be good.” Watching her fill an electric kettle, he remarked, “You do have electricity, then.”
A wood-burner warmed the cottage in the winter and heated her water, but it was too hot for that now. “All mod cons.” She gave him a straight look, deliberately tamping down her wayward emotions—the fluttery fear, the guilty excitement, the sheer wonder at his presence. “All those I need, anyway.”
His eyes lit on the telephone sitting on the counter. “Your number’s not listed.”
“It’s under the landlord’s name. I lease this place from the farmer next door—it was the original homestead in the days when the main transport was by water.”
“The sheep aren’t yours?”
Shahna laughed. “The McKenzies run a few sheep on their farm along with dairy cattle.”
She took sugar and pottery mugs from a cupboard, busying herself to keep in check a foolish desire to fling herself into his arms and seize the moment that, with a sick dread in her heart, she knew couldn’t possibly last.
Glancing at him while she fixed the coffee, she saw that Kier was looking around now with assessing, perhaps disparaging eyes.
The furniture wasn’t new, not because she couldn’t afford it but because it would have seemed inappropriate in the mellow old building.
She’d chosen mellow colors too for walls and upholstery and the grooved decorative frames around the uncovered windows. Soft blues melded into grays and greens, with touches of old-rose and lavender and an occasional splash of deep crimson.
Colors that echoed the hazy bloom that blurred the distant hills, the ever-changing mirror of the harbor, the dark green leaves of the native trees with their paler undersides, and the starry bursts of pohutukawa flowers at Christmas.
Kier’s coolly critical appraisal helped to steady her unruly emotions.
He had given her no clue that this was anything more than a casual visit. With a bit of luck and a lot of self-control, she’d survive it with her hard-won serenity intact, her self-respect preserved and her secrets safe. “You’re out early,” she said, her hand on the coffee plunger. It was barely eight o’clock.
Kier returned his gaze to her. “Timoti had to catch the tide. He was going to pick up his wife’s sister and I caught a ride.”
“Have you had breakfast?”
“Timoti’s wife gave me bacon, sausages and eggs.” The couple ran a bed-and-breakfast in the waterside village of Rawene and took tourists on fishing or sightseeing trips. “What about you?” he queried.
“I’m okay.” She put a plate of coconut cookies on the table, poured the coffee and sat down. “Help yourself.”
She lifted her mug, using both hands because they were shaking a little and she was afraid of spilling her coffee. The bitter liquid scorched her tongue.
Questions raced through her mind but caution urged her not to ask them.
Kier looked around again at the old kauri dresser holding plates and cups, the pots of herbs on the kitchen windowsill, the sparse furniture. “Doesn’t seem like you, Shahna.”
Shahna shrugged, a good stab at seeming indifference. “Maybe you didn’t know me as well as you thought.”
His voice turned brusque. “What does that mean?”
She lifted her head from her contemplation of the coffee in her mug, making her eyes blank, her face expressionless. “Just what I said.” He had never known how deeply she had allowed her emotions to become engaged in their relationship. Thank heaven.
He had never cared enough to find out, she reminded herself acridly. But, to be fair, she had guarded her secret well.
Kier kept looking at her, as though expecting more. But she certainly wasn’t going to divulge to him here what she had kept hidden for so long and at such cost. Even if he’d had an unlikely change of heart, too much lay between them now. There was no going back.
When she didn’t offer anything further he said, “After three years, I’d have said you owed me more than three lines of farewell.”
Shahna’s hands tightened about the warmed curve of the mug. “I don’t owe you anything, Kier. That was part of our…arrangement. No strings, remember? The way you wanted it.”
A faint flicker of straight black lashes was the only sign that she’d disconcerted him. “What you wanted too, as I recall.”
Oh,
