from her aunt’s correspondence, fixed her roof, replaced a blown fuse, lopped two overgrown trees, and undertaken some heavy garden landscaping.
Anneke regarded the man standing at the table with a faint frown. Not by any stretch of the imagination could she call him ‘lovely’.
Mid to late thirties. Ruggedly attractive in a dangerous sort of way, with the type of physical frame that seamlessly melded honed muscle and leashed power together to present a formidable whole.
Let loose, he’d present a ruthless force no man in his right mind would choose to oppose. The woman, she perceived, who willingly stepped into his space would never be sure whether she’d dice with the devil in hell, or soar to heaven with a tutelary saint.
‘Are you done?’
Anneke’s lashes swept high at his quizzical query, but there was no confusion apparent, no embarrassment. Just analytical regard.
OK, so men weren’t her favourite flavour of the month. Justifiable, according to Vivienne, whom he’d driven at speed to the airport that afternoon.’ Such a dear girl.’
Familial beneficence tended to be biased, he mused. ‘Dear’she might be…as a niece, a cousin, a friend. But the woman who stood before him was cool, very cool. With fire beneath the icy façade. He had a very strong desire to stoke the fire and watch the ice melt.
‘It was kind of you to carry out my aunt’s wishes,’ Anneke said formally. It was the closest she intended to get to an apology.
Sebastian inclined his head in mocking acknowledgment. Given the circumstances, and the late hour, he should simply wish her goodnight and leave.
‘I’ll make fresh tea.’ Suiting words to action, he easily dispensed with the cup’s contents, flicked the kettle to reboil, and took another teabag from a glass container.
Damn him, did she have to spell it out? ‘I’m quite capable of making it myself.’ She crossed to the refrigerator and extracted milk, then took it to the servery.
Big mistake. For it brought her within a hair’s breadth of a hard male frame that seemed disinclined to move. Something that tripped the trigger on all her banked-up anger.
The silent rage she’d managed to contain all day burst free. ‘You’ve more than done your good deed for the day.’ Fine fury lent her eyes a fiery sparkle, and her knuckles shone white as she clenched her fists. ‘I owe you one.’
He looked at her carefully, noted the thinly veiled anger, the exhaustion. ‘So please leave?’
‘Yes.’ Succinct, with an edge of sarcasm.
‘Gladly,’ he intoned in a dangerously silky voice.
Something shifted in those dark eyes that she didn’t want to define, and there was nothing she could do to avoid the firm hands which cupped her face, or prevent the descent of his head as he fastened his mouth over hers.
It was a hard kiss, invasive, with erotic power and a sweet sorcery that took what she refused to give.
No other part of his body touched hers, and he fought against leaning in and gathering her close.
A spark ignited deep inside and flared sharply to brilliant flame. For both of them. He could feel her initial spontaneous response before she refuted it. Sense her surprise, along with his own.
He softened his mouth, took one last tantalising sweep with his tongue, then slowly raised his head.
She looked-shattered. Although she recovered quickly.
He smiled, a slow, wide curving of his mouth as he regarded her stormy features, and he dropped his hands from her face. ‘Now we’re even.’
Then he turned and walked from the kitchen, trod a path down the hall to the front door, then quietly closed it behind him.
It irked Anneke dreadfully that a few seconds of stunned surprise had rendered her immobile and robbed her of the opportunity to hurl something at him, preferably hard enough to do damage to any part of his anatomy.
Dulled reflex action, brought on by a degree of emotional, mental and physical exhaustion. Something that a good night’s rest would do much to rectify, she perceived as she set the kettle to boil again and made fresh tea.
Men, she brooded as she sipped the delicious brew, were arrogant, heartless, self-oriented, entirely governed by their libido, and not worth a minute of her time.
A thought which persisted as she finished her tea, then she crossed to the bedroom and slid in between crisp, clean white sheets.
On the edge of sleep, one image invaded her mind, and it wasn’t the sleekly groomed city lawyer in his three-piece business suit.
CHAPTER TWO
HAMMERING noises in close proximity were not conducive to restful slumber.
Anneke heard them in the depths of her subconscious mind and slowly drifted into wakefulness. Still the noise persisted.
What the hell…? She opened one eye and looked at the clock atop the bedside pedestal. Dammit, it was only seven. On Saturday.
Surely her aunt hadn’t arranged for a contractor to do some work and forgotten to mention the fact?
Maybe if she buried her head beneath the pillow she could go back to sleep, she decided, suiting thought to action, only to groan out loud minutes later as the sound still penetrated with no seeming loss of intensity.
Annoyance had her sliding out of bed and pulling on a pair of shorts, and she paused briefly to drag a brush through the length of her hair before storming into the hall to assess where the hammering seemed loudest.
Rear, she decided, and made for the back door.
Quite what she’d expected to see when she opened it she wasn’t sure. Certainly not Sebastian Lanier’s tall, broad-shouldered, lean-hipped, jean-clad frame perched partway up a ladder, wielding a hammer as he stroked in one nail after another.
‘Just what the hell do you think you’re doing?’
Well, now, there was a pretty sight to tempt a man’s eye at this early hour. Nice legs. He followed the slender calves, the well-shaped thighs. Good muscle tone, he noted approvingly.
Narrow hips, neat waist, and the slight swing of her breasts made him itch to slide his hands beneath the oversize tee-shirt and see how well they fit his palms.
Slowly he lifted his eyes and took his time examining her mouth, and remembered the feel of it beneath his own.
He moved up a few inches and looked straight into a pair of bright, furious eyes whose emerald depths threatened nothing less than murder.
Sebastian smiled. A long, slow, curving movement that lifted the edges of his mouth and showed the gleam of white teeth. ‘Good morning.’ He positioned another nail and hammered it in.
Clean-shaven, his hair bound neatly at his nape, he looked almost respectable. It was the ‘almost’ part she had trouble coming to terms with. None of
