nearest bar stool, planting her elbows on the granite and folding her arms to shield the front of her snugly fitting T-shirt.
Her apparent nonchalance was a dismal failure.
‘You’re starting to look overheated again, Nora,’ he murmured, a thread of open amusement in the deep voice. ‘Here, perhaps this will help.’ He poured her a tall glass of amber liquid from a jug tinkling with ice cubes. ‘I made it for you earlier.’
‘What is it?’ she asked suspiciously, curling her fingers around the frosted glass, keeping her gaze firmly above his neck as he resumed his former position.
‘Iced tea,’ he said.
She took a cautious sniff, then hesitated, with her lips touching the icy rim. ‘Why aren’t you having any?’
‘Because I’m drinking something else.’ He tilted his head towards a glass of red wine standing on the kitchen windowsill above the double sink.
Still she hesitated, and he made a rough sound of impatience. ‘What’s the matter? Afraid it’s spiked? Do you really think I brought you here with the sole purpose of keeping you drugged and helpless?’
Her eyes widened and he gave an exaggerated sigh.
‘I’ve already had ample time to have my wicked way with your unconscious self—remember? I try never to repeat myself!’
She felt foolish. But it was his fault for making her so jumpy. ‘You can’t blame me for being suspicious after the way you carried on this morning. How do I know what’s going on in your devious male mind?’
He shot her a cynical look from beneath drooping eyelids. ‘Oh, I think if you try very, very hard you could make an educated guess…’
She blushed. ‘I—you—’
‘Drink your drink and stop trying to pretend you’re not as curious as I am.’
‘About what?’ she said, fighting to keep her end up.
‘About what it would be like to finish what you started when you deliberately poured that glass of wine all over my jacket.’
Nora was tempted to bluff it out, but her conscience wouldn’t let her. While she tried to think of a clever answer she buried her pinkened face in her drink. It tasted innocuous. She swilled more of the icy beverage over her tongue; in fact, it tasted quite delicious!
‘You said you made this?’ She gulped greedily, her parched mouth and throat absorbing so much moisture that only a trickle seemed to make it as far as her stomach. ‘From scratch?’
‘Don’t sound so surprised,’ he murmured, topping up her empty glass. ‘I’m quite competent in the kitchen.’
He was much more than competent if he knew how to make iced tea. It wasn’t a common Kiwi beverage.
‘You just don’t seem the domesticated type,’ she said.
He turned to the bench by the sink where an assortment of partly sliced vegetables were strewn across the big chopping board. ‘What type am I?’
She eyed the flashing knife, wielded with lethal precision against a defenceless red pepper. ‘Rich single male—the type who eats out a lot and delegates all the grunt work to someone else.’
The knife turned expertly on an unwary onion. ‘You think I’m lazy?’
‘Quite the opposite. I think you’re probably far too busy to bother with the mundane details of life.’
‘Wrong. The devil is in the detail, Nora. It can make men’s fortunes—or break them. The fact that I’m rich and single makes it more, not less imperative that I maintain my basic survival skills. Actually, I like to cook; I find it relaxing.’
To Nora, who found it a chore, he sounded insufferably superior.
‘I suppose you’re going to claim you do all your own cleaning, too?’ she said sceptically.
‘I’m self-reliant, not stupid,’ he said, pausing to sample his wine. ‘My eldest sister runs a co-operative of domestic cleaners—she gives me a good deal on a contract for my home in town and this place gets done for free, since the whole family uses it…’
A chip of ice caught in Nora’s throat. ‘Your sister’s a cleaning lady?’
Her choking disbelief induced a grin that exploded the harsh angles of his face. ‘Don’t let Kate hear you call her a lady, she’ll be insulted—she’s a working woman. She started up a business which now supports her and her kids, not to mention giving other solo mums a chance to earn a decent wage without having to pay for childcare. I consider that a pretty admirable achievement, don’t you?’
‘Well, yes, of course it is…I just thought—’
‘What? That because I’m wealthy my family must live in the lap of luxury?’
‘It’s a reasonable assumption,’ she defended herself. ‘Most people like to share their good fortune with their loved ones—’
‘Not if the loved ones are pig-headed idealists who would throw the offer back in his condescending teeth,’ he said wryly. ‘You forget, the MacLeod roots are staunchly working class—I’m the renegade in a bunch of social reformers. Mum would take every cent I had for one of her causes, but for herself she doesn’t believe in soft living or idle hands. She’s a union activist who sees it as her duty to remind me that the average working Joe’s health and welfare depend on men like me sacrificing a few points from the bottom line.’
A belated recognition clicked in Nora’s brain. ‘Your mother’s the Pamela MacLeod who chained herself to an official limo during the Commonwealth trade talks in Wellington!’
‘Actually, it was my official limo, and, yes, she managed to get herself arrested on primetime news. Again. Much as she’s against the globalisation of industry she seems to have no problem using the information highway to globalise her fight against oppression. That artistic photo of her plastered against my grille was all over the Internet within minutes of it being taken.’
There was amused exasperation in his tone, a rueful respect that told her more about his feelings for his mother than any amount of words.
‘She doesn’t sound very oppressed.’ Nora chuckled.
He rolled his eyes. ‘I wish!’
She didn’t believe it for a moment. ‘Would you prefer to have the kind of mother who cooed and clucked over you and believed her darling boy could do no wrong?’
He shuddered—a very distracting ripple of that long, lean masculine back. Was he that same melted honey colour all over? she speculated helplessly. Her gaze slipped lower down his profile and she couldn’t help noticing that the finespun fabric of his drawstring pants clung patchily to his damp flanks in a way that suggested he wore little or nothing underneath.
He turned towards her and her eyes shot hastily up to his face.
‘Chicken.’
What
