of the kitchen, dragging the discarded soup bone that Nina had used to distract him from chewing on the stranger’s muddy shoes.
A faint, choking sound floated up from the couch. ‘You’re going to ask a dog for a medical opinion!’
His incredulous outrage sent a buzz of amusement humming through her veins, easing the pressure of her intense anxiety.
‘Unfortunately, he’s not licensed to practise.’ Nina removed the bone from the dog’s mouth and picked up the gnawed handle of an expensive fishing rod from the bookcase, holding it out for Zorro to sniff.
‘You know where you got this, don’t you, boy?’ she said encouragingly. ‘Dr Freeman—Dave—gave it to you after you kept stealing it off his back porch at Christmas. You take it along with you when Dave takes you and Ray out fishing on his boat, and he throws this in the water for you, doesn’t he?’
Nina was scribbling a brief line on a scrap of paper and taping it to the stumpy rod as she spoke. ‘You like playing fetch with Dave, don’t you?’ She mimed a throwing action and the terrier began to prance energetically. Nina crouched down and looked into the beady masked eyes as she placed the piece of rod firmly between his jaws. ‘I want you take this along to Dave’s place now. I want you to fetch—Dave! Understand?’
Zorro pricked up his ears, his whine mingling with a sleepy snort from the patient.
‘Of course he can’t understand—he’s a dog!’
Nina bristled in defence of her companion. ‘Zorro is extremely intelligent. He knows what I’m saying, don’t you, boy? You’re going to play fetch with Dave.’
The Jack Russell barked excitedly around the edges of the rod and took off at his customary velocity.
As his claws clicked across the kitchen floor, Nina remembered to call out, ‘Uh, Zorro, just don’t forget that the rod may not—’ There came a sharp rap and a pained whine, followed by a furious rattling and growling. ‘—fit crossways through the cat door.’ The fight sounds rose to a crescendo of frustrated snarls and Nina was about to dive to the rescue when there was a scraping pop and a series of muffled, triumphant yips diminishing into the distance.
‘Extremely intelligent, huh?’
Nina ran her hands through her wringing-wet hair, scooping it off her clammy neck. ‘He tends to leap before he looks sometimes, but even intelligent humans do that,’ she pointed out.
‘You really expect him to do it?’ he wondered.
Rather than following the upward movement of her arms, the blue eyes had drifted in the opposite direction. Nina looked down to see her drenched sweatshirt plastered to her uplifted breasts, shaping their modest fullness and explicitly revealing her lack of a bra. She hastily plucked the wrinkled fabric away from her unpleasantly chilled skin. ‘I know he will. Zorro’s very dedicated when he thinks he’s on a mission,’ she said more confidently than she actually felt. She wouldn’t relish going back out into the storm herself. ‘In the meantime, I’m going to get into some dry clothes.’
‘Don’t bother on my account.’
His mocking drawl made her cold nipples tingle with embarrassment. She had taken her body for granted for so long that it was a shock to find it responsive to a casual male comment, particularly in such inappropriate circumstances.
‘Just keep that towel pressed against your head until I get back!’
She would have liked to have a shower, but the thought of standing naked under a steamy flow of water with the silver-eyed stranger just the other side of the wall made her insides turn over. Instead, she managed to change top and bottom without ever being completely nude, towelling herself roughly and pulling on dry underwear, including a sturdy white cotton bra, woollen stretch pants and a roomy checked shirt with the sleeves rolled up. She blotted her hair and rubbed it with a towel before fastening it high on her head in a loose ponytail that would enable it to dry naturally without getting totally out of control.
She needn’t have worried about her unexpected guest wandering in on her shower. When she returned to the lounge after dumping her wet clothes in the laundry tub, he was still lying on the couch in exactly the same position, eyes closed, towel obediently clamped to his temple.
She felt a brief tremor of uncertainty at his stillness but relaxed when she picked up the steady rise and fall of his chest. The battering gusts of wind and roaring barrage of rain on the iron roof masked her movements as she quietly picked up his bunched coat from the floor, surprised at its weight, the musty smell of wet wool clogging her nostrils as she carried it into the bathroom and draped it over the curtain rail of the shower.
Turning to leave, she hesitated, then, feeling guilty, explored each of the pockets in turn. She found no wallet, but in one of the deep side pockets she found a bunch of keys, and from the breast pocket in the grey silk lining she drew out an elegant silver cigarette lighter, sculpted in voluptuous lines that stressed art over pure functionality.
It was agreeably heavy, fitting perfectly in the hollow of her hand, the smooth metal cool to the touch as it rested on her open palm. Her fingers closed possessively around the curving shape and she battled an unexpectedly compelling urge to slip it into her own pocket.
Appalled by her unaccustomed craving, Nina hurried out to rid herself of the temptation, dropping the keys quietly onto the table by the couch and placing the cigarette lighter carefully beside it.
She glanced over at the recumbent figure as she did so and her heart jerked in her chest as she found him quietly watching her, his narrowed blue eyes moving between the articles on the table and the naked oval of her face.
She moistened her dry lips. ‘Uh, I emptied the pockets of your coat so I could hang it up to dry,’ she explained, inwardly squirming at the lie. ‘I found these….’
As her fingers reluctantly withdrew from the seductive contours of the lighter, her thumb smoothed over a slight roughness in the casing. It could have been the jeweller’s mark, but Nina knew with a hitch in her breathing that it wasn’t a silver stamp the sensitive pad of her thumb was identifying. Sure enough, when she tilted it to the light, she found herself looking down at a brief inscription in flowing letters, too small to read at arm’s length.
‘What’s the matter?’ In spite of his air of exhausted confusion, he was alert enough to notice her subtle change of expression.
‘There’s an engraving…’ she began, torn between her intense curiosity and the need to deny the powerful allure of the silver talisman.
‘Is there?’ No spark of enlightenment ignited his gaze. ‘Well—what does it say?’ he prompted, struggling up on one elbow as the seconds ticked by and she made no attempt to read the tiny inscription.
She bit her lip as she held it up, her dark lashes fanning down like sable brushes over her troubled green eyes, painting out his view of their expression.
“‘For Ryan, the bright foreigner in my life,’” she read, and frowned as she tried to make sense of the cryptic words, grappling with an elusive sense of familiarity. The inscription was put there by a woman, she was sure, but its meaning continued to lie stubbornly just beyond her comprehension.
‘What does it mean? Foreigner in what way? Do you think it means that you’re not a New Zealander?’
She
