‘It’ll be super, thank you.’ Outside, the verandah had been furnished with a lounger and several chairs. Below the wooden balustrade flowers frothed and rioted. The room was pleasantly cool, with a daybed in one corner and an elegant Victorian dressing table, less ornamented than most of its kind. ‘It looks lovely,’ Jacinta finished sincerely. ‘Thank you.’
‘It’s nothing.’
The negligent disclaimer was delivered in a deep voice, its obscurely equivocal intonation setting her teeth on edge.
She was being paranoid.
Well, it was probably normal. Although earlier that year she’d endured an unpleasant experience with a man, eventually her suspicions regarding masculine intentions must fade. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be a speedy process. Even with Gerard, who couldn’t have been nicer, she’d found herself searching for sinister motives.
And now she was doing it again. Possibly because Paul McAlpine was so—so—well, so gorgeous. Her nervousness didn’t mean she sensed anything ulterior; it arose from her physical awareness of him, which was her problem, not his. Behind Paul McAlpine’s air of calm, confident good humour was simply that—calm, confident good humour.
Any ordinary woman would be jittery and a bit overwhelmed when confronted by one of the favoured few, a golden man with everything, including a presence that automatically made him a man to be noticed.
Exhausted, and therefore easily influenced, she simply needed time and peace to catch up with herself again. And here, in this beautiful, peaceful place, she’d get them.
Especially if her host was going to be away a lot.
They were halfway down the hall on the way to the kitchen when he said, ‘Gerard tells me he’s doing research for another book. I thought he’d just finished one.’
‘Yes, but he found out that an old rival of his is intending to move in on his territory so he thought he’d better get going on this one and pre-empt him. Even in the academic world things can get rough when it comes to ego and staking claims.’
‘I see. Is he planning to spend all his leave in the archives?’
‘I think so. It was organised in such a rush that I’m not too sure of his plans.’
One eyebrow arched in a manner that showed only too clearly what Paul McAlpine thought of that, but he said nothing more. As she accompanied him Jacinta thought acidly that it was impossible to imagine this man ever doing anything on impulse.
In the spacious, very modern kitchen he introduced her to his housekeeper, a large-boned, blue-jeaned woman in her late thirties called Fran Borthwick, who smiled at her and said, ‘Welcome to Waitapu. The tea’s ready. Where do you want it?’
‘I’ll take it into the conservatory,’ Paul said serenely, lifting the tray.
Jacinta returned the housekeeper’s smile and went with him.
The conservatory, a delicious Victorian folly, was equipped with rattan furniture upholstered in muted stripes. Jungly tropical growth sprouted from splendid pots; in one a huge frangipani held up white and gold flowers, their sweet scent reminding Jacinta forcibly of the week she’d spent in Fiji.
‘Would you like to pour?’ Paul McAlpine invited, setting the tray on a table.
Jacinta’s gaze lingered too long on his elegant, long-fingered hands—hands that promised great strength as well as sureness. Resenting the mindless response that shivered across her nerve-ends, she said, ‘Yes, of course,’ sat down and lifted the teapot.
He liked his tea without milk and unsugared. Spartan tastes, Jacinta thought as she poured, then set down his cup and saucer.
It was an oddly intimate little rite, one that seemed right for the old-fashioned house and teaset. Ruthlessly ignoring the niggling edge of tension that sawed at her composure, she drank her tea and made polite conversation, wondering as she listened to his even, regulated voice whether authority and imperturbable good humour was all there was to Paul McAlpine.
No, he wouldn’t have reached the top of his profession without intelligence and, she suspected, ruthlessness.
No doubt with women, too. The lover Gerard had pointed out that day in Ponsonby was a woman so beautiful she’d dazzled. However she was not the woman who had been with Paul in Fiji.
Perhaps he was promiscuous. Was that what Gerard had been hinting at with his reference to broken hearts?
Her quick revulsion at the idea was a warning, as was her conviction that he was too fastidious for crude promiscuity. All she knew about him was that he’d been kind to her mother, he’d been jilted—and he’d had two lovers in ten months.
And he danced well.
When his cool voice broke into her memories she jumped guiltily, and had to pull herself together to answer his question about her degree.
‘I majored in history,’ she said.
‘Yes, of course. Gerard’s speciality. That’s where you met him, I suppose?’
It was impossible to accuse him of prying. He must, she thought—surely irrelevantly—be hell in a courtroom. Any witness would be lulled into a sense of security by that lazy, calm voice that expressed nothing more than interest.
But he must have heard the reservation in her voice when she replied, ‘I—yes.’
Dark lashes almost hid his eyes. ‘I believe he offered you bed and board in his apartment. That must have been very convenient.’
Tautly she responded, ‘He realised that things were—difficult—where I was living, and very kindly told me about a flat a friend of his wanted looked after while she took up a scholarship in England.’
For a moment the classically shaped mouth straightened, but when she looked again it was relaxed, even curved in a slight smile. ‘Flatmates can be trying, can’t they.’
It was not a question. Trying to lift the flatness of her tone, she agreed, ‘Oh, they certainly can.’
‘It sounds as though you had the ones from hell’
‘He—one was not—not congenial.’ She put her cup and saucer down, relieved when they arrived on the table without any betraying chinks.
Paul said nothing, and after an awkward moment she went on, ‘Gerard found me in the university library one night and realised that I was having a bad time.’
‘Ah,’ Paul said smoothly, ‘he’s always found it difficult to cope with tears.’
She fastened down her indignation. ‘I wasn’t crying,’ she told him firmly, and added, ‘He’s very kind.’
‘I’m sure he is,’ Paul said, his voice soothing, almost mesmeric. ‘Why can’t you stay in your flat over the holidays?’
‘A friend of the woman who owns it has moved in.’
When Gerard came back in February he’d go into his new house, a house with a flat joined to it, and she’d have a home once more. There was no reason she shouldn’t tell Paul McAlpine that, but she fenced the words behind her teeth.
‘And now you’re waiting for the results of your final exams. Getting your BA has been a long haul. I believe there was a gap between the first two years and the last?’
Had her mother told him that her arthritis had become so bad after her daughter’s second year at university that Jacinta had to give up her studies and come home to take care of her? No, she’d been a very private woman, so it had to have been Gerard. Hoping he hadn’t coaxed Paul to lend her the bach by implying that she was a deserving case, she said evenly, ‘Yes, nine years.’
‘What do you intend to do when you’ve