is fine, but really, I’m not very hungry—’
‘You will be,’ he said, cutting through her defensive babble. ‘By my estimation, you haven’t eaten in over twenty-four hours. You’ll run out of steam very quickly if you don’t put something solid in your stomach.’
At the moment the inner heat she was generating was enough to power a small city! Nora fumbled to pour herself another drink, her damp hand slipping against the handle of the jug, almost shattering the lip of the glass. ‘Sorry,’ she muttered, leaping to her feet as iced tea spilled on the counter. ‘Let me get that.’ She snatched up a handy cloth and mopped up the pooling liquid.
‘Thanks,’ he murmured. ‘May I have my shirt back now?’
She looked down at the crumpled white cloth in her hand and noticed a button poking out between her thumb and forefinger. A tiny embroidered polo player, now stained with brown, stared accusingly up at her. ‘Oh, God! I’m sorry—it was just lying there—I thought it was a dishcloth!’
‘So much for my taste in clothes,’ he said wryly. ‘You really are hell on a man’s wardrobe, aren’t you, Nora?’
‘I don’t suppose it’s a cheap knock-off rather than the genuine article?’ she said with a sigh.
His trademark scowl wiped the amusement from his expression. ‘Now you’re adding insult to injury. Do I seem like the kind of cheapskate who would buy fakes when I can afford the real thing? Or do you think I’m just too undiscriminating to be able to tell the difference?’
‘I think your inferiority complex is showing again,’ she told him. ‘I’m the one who can’t tell the difference. What do I know about designer labels? I used to sew all my own clothes before I came to Auckland, and I still get most of my stuff from chainstores.’
He cocked his head. ‘Is money a problem for you?’
She wasn’t fooled by the casual way he tossed out the question. Her soft mouth tensed. ‘Why bother to ask? I’m sure your snoop ran a full credit check on me.’
‘And you came up clean as a whistle. But, as Doug pointed out, some debts don’t show up on official files—’
‘I’m not being blackmailed, I don’t have a drug or gambling habit or any other form of secret addiction,’ she declared, her voice rising above the smoky jazz. ‘With me, what you see is exactly what you get!’
His mouth kinked, his gaze flicking over her slight figure. ‘That’s very generous of you, Nora, but I think we should eat first…’
She spluttered, as he’d known she would. ‘That’s not what I meant!’ She glared in frustration as he carried the board of chopped vegetables across to the hob, watching him line up bottles of cooking oil, soy and sweet chilli sauce within easy reach of the wok.
‘You’re not going to cook like that, are you?’ she felt compelled to say. ‘What if the oil spits when you add the food? Here, maybe you should put this back on.’
He turned just in time to catch the balled shirt—thrown with a little more force than was necessary—as it hit his bare chest. ‘Thanks, but I think I’ll go and get myself something less clammy,’ he said with a grimace.
She averted her eyes from temptation as he strolled past her, and while he was gone she decided to make the most of her opportunity to poke and prowl. She was rifling the telephone table at the top of the stairs when a voice sounded in her ear.
‘Are you looking for something in particular?’
Nora jumped, her knee knocking against the open drawer, trapping her groping fingers inside.
‘Ouch! I—uh—’ She pulled her hand free and sucked on her stinging fingertips, flustered by Blake’s sudden reappearance in a tight black T-shirt that was but a small improvement on the distraction of his bare chest.
‘I was just wondering where the telephone was,’ she mumbled.
‘Why?’
‘I thought I’d ring home…’ she confessed, further unnerved by his looming intensity.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You want to call your flat? I thought you said your flatmate had gone to work. Who was it you expected to pick up?’
She nibbled at her lower lip, presenting an unwitting picture of guilt. ‘Nobody.’
The straight black bars of his eyebrows rose above eyes steely with suspicion and she sighed.
‘I just thought I’d better leave a message on my machine, saying where I was and when I’d be back, that’s all. You know—contact details in case of emergency.’ She tugged at her wrist and his fingers tightened.
‘You mean as insurance against any plans I might have to make you permanently disappear?’ He invested his words with a silken menace.
‘Yes—I mean, no! I’m sure you’re a very law-abiding citizen,’ she added hurriedly.
His eyelids drooped. ‘I’m flattered by your faith in my honour.’ His sarcasm was designed to intimidate.
‘The phone?’ she reminded him with dogged persistence.
‘There isn’t one.’
‘No phone?’ She was startled as much by what he said as his tone of grim satisfaction. ‘But…there are phone jacks all over the place—’
‘To be functional they have to be connected to a network,’ he pointed out, stalking back to the kitchen. ‘I come here to get away from all that—to have some uninterrupted down-time.’
Nora trailed after him. It sounded like an excellent theory, but…
‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered. ‘I bet you didn’t get where you are today by working nine-to-five five days a week. It would be tantamount to professional suicide for you to totally cut yourself off here, especially when your boss happens to be in the middle of a hostile takeover bid—’
‘Which is why I regularly check for messages on my mobile,’ he said, abruptly curtailing her speculative musing.
‘Oh,’ She felt foolish for forgetting. ‘Of course. Then…may I borrow it for a minute?’
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