At the gate he turned and waved. Smiling, she waved back, waiting until he’d disappeared before turning to go down the escalator to the car park.
An hour and a half later she opened the car door just a hundred metres from a glorious beach, and unfurled her long, thin body and legs.
Sun-warmed, salt-tanged, the air slid into her lungs—smooth as wine and just as heady. The big grey roof of a house loomed above the dark barrier of a high, clipped hedge—Cape honeysuckle, she noted, eyeing the orange flowers—and the lazy mew of a gull smoothed across the mellow sky.
New Zealand in summer; for the first time in years, anticipation coiled indolently through her. Not that it was officially summer—November was the last month of spring—but it had been a weary, wet, grinding winter and she was eager for the sun.
A half-smile lifted the corners of her controlled mouth as she unlatched the gate and walked up the white shell path, amused at how pale her narrow feet looked. Ah, well, a few walks along that sweep of sand she’d seen from the hill would soon give them some colour. Although she turned sallow in winter her skin loved summer, gilding slowly under layers of sunscreen.
The house was huge, a white Victorian villa superbly settled in a bower of lawns and flowery borders, sheltered from the small breeze off the sea. The scents of the garden and newly mown lawns were concentrated into an erotic, drugging perfume.
She hoped that the man who owned all this appreciated it.
‘My cousin Paul,’ Gerard had told her when he’d suggested she spend the summer at Waitapu, ‘was born into old money, and because he’s both hard-headed and very intelligent he’s added considerably to the paternal legacy.’
Obviously. The house and the gardens bore the unmistakable sheen of affluence.
A bead of sweat gathered on each of Jacinta’s temples. Before leaving town she’d clipped back the hair that reached halfway down her back, but during the drive the curly, slippery tresses had oozed free. Tucking a bright ginger strand behind one ear, she walked up three steps onto a wide, grey-painted wooden verandah and knocked at the door before turning to admire the gardens more closely.
She must look madly out of place here, Jacinta thought wryly, dressed in clothes without a vestige of style. And although she was tall enough to be a model she hadn’t been granted a model’s grace.
Her green-gold gaze roamed across the felicitous mixture of trees and shrubs, lingering on the slim grey trunks of a giant cabbage tree, each smooth branch topped by a sunburst of thin leaves. At its feet nasturtiums and Californian poppies struck sparks off each other.
The soft wind of the door opening dragged her smiling attention away from a gaudy orange and black monarch butterfly. With the smile still lingering, she turned. ‘Hello, I’m Jacinta Lyttelton...’
The words dried on her tongue. She knew that handsome face—the strong jaw and arrogant cheekbones—as well as her own. The intervening months hadn’t dimmed the brilliance of those eyes, a blue so intense they blazed with the colour and fire of sapphires. Yet in spite of that clarity they were oddly difficult to read.
Suddenly aware that the trousers she wore were five years old and had been cheap to start with, and that her tee-shirt had faded to a washed-out blue that did nothing for her, Jacinta realised she was standing with her jaw dangling. Clamping it shut, she swallowed, and tried to repulse a sudden, insistent warning of fate advancing inexorably, mercilessly on its way, crushing everything in its path.
‘Welcome to Waitapu, Jacinta.’ His deep, flexible voice wove magic, conjured darkly enchanted dreams that had dazzled her nights for months.
Fortunately her numbed brain jolted into action long enough to provide her with the location of their previous meeting.
Fiji.
The lazy, glorious week she and her mother had spent on a tiny, palm-shadowed resort island. One night he’d asked her to dance, and she’d been horrified by her fierce, runaway response to the nearness of his lean, big body. When the music had stopped he’d thanked her gravely and taken her to the room she had shared with her mother before, no doubt, rejoining the seriously glamorous woman he was on holiday with.
And for too many weeks afterwards Jacinta had let herself drift off to sleep on the memory of how it had felt to be held in those strong arms, and the faint, evocative fragrance that had owed nothing to aftershave—the essence of masculinity...
An embarrassing flash of colour stained her high cheekbones.
Damn, she thought helplessly. How unfair that this man was Paul McAlpine, her landlord for the next three months.
Hoping desperately that her weak smile showed nothing of her chagrin, she said, ‘I didn’t know you were Gerard’s cousin.’ She tried to sound mildly amused, but each word emerged tinged with her discomfiture.
‘Whereas I,’ he said, ‘had a pretty good idea that the Jacinta I met in Fiji and Gerard’s Jacinta had to be the same person. He mentioned your height and was rather poetic about your hair. It didn’t seem likely there’d be two of you about.’
He was the most handsome man she’d ever seen in her life, the impact of his strong, regular features emphasised by his startling colouring. Not many men of his age had hair the warm ash blond of childhood, so close to gold, and blue eyes without a trace of green or grey, and those who did were usually afflicted with pale brows and lashes that made them look pallid and juiceless. Paul McAlpine’s were a brown so dark they were almost black.
On that hot, enchanted Fijian atoll he’d smiled—a smile both utterly compelling and completely trustworthy. It had been almost too good to be true, that smile.
No sign of it now. The chiselled mouth was straight and the narrowed eyes aloof.
Jacinta’s face set. Gerard’s Jacinta? He’d merely repeated her sentence construction; of course he wasn’t implying that she and Gerard had some sort of relationship. Nevertheless she felt she should make it very clear that Gerard was simply a good friend.
Before she could do that, Gerard’s cousin said smoothly, ‘Unfortunately there’s been a hitch in plans. You can’t stay in the bach because penguins have moved in.’
Wondering whether she’d heard correctly, she stared at him. ‘Sorry,’ she said inanely, wishing her brain hadn’t fogged up. ‘Penguins?’
‘Little blue penguins are quite common around the coast. Normally they nest in caves, but sometimes they find a convenient building and nest under the floors.’
Surely he couldn’t be serious? One glance at those eyes—so cool they were almost cold, limpid and unshadowed—told her he was.
‘I see,’ she said numbly. Until that moment she hadn’t realised how much she wanted to get away from Auckland. A kind of desperation sharpened her voice. ‘Can’t they be removed?’
‘They have young.’
Something about his glance bothered her, and she stopped chewing her bottom lip.
He added, ‘And they’re protected.’
‘Oh, then I suppose... No, they can’t be disturbed.’
‘They make gruesome noises when they return to their den at night—like a demented donkey being slaughtered. They also smell of decaying fish.’ He met her suspicious glance with unwavering self-possession. ‘Would you like to go and smell them?’ he asked.
Unable to think of a sensible reply, Jacinta shook her head.
‘You’d better come inside,’ Paul McAlpine said.
Within seconds Jacinta found herself walking down a wide hall and into a beautifully decorated sitting