‘You’re the type to have problems with authority.’
‘And what type is that?’
She wrinkled her freckled nose, the only part of her that didn’t actively ache. ‘Arrogant.’
To her chagrin he seemed flattered rather than annoyed by her insult. ‘Is it arrogance to have faith in one’s abilities?’
‘If it gives you an exaggerated opinion of your own importance, then, yes. Conceit like that could be your downfall.’
‘Now you sound like my father. He didn’t have any faith in my personal vision of the future either. He hated it when Prescott offered me a job.’
‘Did he think you should have stayed in school?’
He gave up waiting for her to move and brushed past her through the doorway. ‘No, he just didn’t like the idea of his son betraying his origins by becoming an errand boy to The Bosses.’
Lured by the skilfully dangled bait, Nora automatically followed, hovering by a potted palm in the tiled entrance way as he re-engaged the deadlock, brooding over his words.
‘Didn’t he want you working for Sir Prescott?’ she asked, recalling the woman at the party who had mentioned the rumour about Blake’s paternity.
‘Let’s just say that Dad disapproved of my capitalistic yearnings,’ he said, with an irony that suggested a radical understatement. ‘He thought that multi-national corporate executives were the corrupt robber-barons of the modern age. He would have preferred to see me pursue a career in honest crime than assist in the legalised oppression of the working masses.’ He put his free hand under her elbow and guided her up a wide flight of stairs, their feet sinking soundlessly into thick wool carpet the colour of bleached sand. ‘We fought like hell about it every time we saw each other.’
‘That must have been tough on your mother,’ she murmured, her bleary eye caught by the paintings which enlivened the lime-washed plaster walls—an eclectic mix of signed prints and originals.
Irony turned into open amusement. ‘She wouldn’t thank you for saying so. Mum loves a good fight. She and Dad scrapped like cat and dog all their married life. Being a MacLeod meant you learnt from the cradle to stand your ground and fight tooth and nail to defend your beliefs. We were all extremely vocal.’
‘Except in the classroom,’ she said drily.
He shrugged. ‘I wasn’t interested enough to make myself heard there, and since I worked before and after school I had to catch up on my rest somehow. Thanks to large classes and inattentive teachers I perfected the art of dozing at my desk—and it didn’t cost me a cent in lost wages.’
‘It couldn’t have done much for your school grades.’
His mouth held shades of the cocky kid. ‘It wasn’t my academic record that caught Scotty’s attention; it was my willingness to hustle, to tackle anything that was thrown at me, to persist until a job was done…’
His fascinating frankness, Nora realised, had been a deliberate ploy to take her mind off their surroundings, but now that they had reached the top of the stairs she was hit by the full impact of his private eyrie.
The open-plan living area was centred around a square fire-box enclosed in glass, capped by a stainless steel flue and flanked on three sides by long couches in vibrant dark blue, deep-cushioned and luxurious. Bifolding glass doors and windows ran the length of the house, opening out to a wide sun-drenched terrace flanked by roughcast walls smothered in a dark creeper, the outer edge of which fell away with heart-stopping suddenness into a zigzag shaped swimming pool. An aptly named infinity pool, for beyond the shimmering sheet of captive water was…nothing…striations of blue sea and sky dissolving into an indistinguishable horizon.
Nora’s scalp tightened over her throbbing skull, her whole body going rigid with alarm. ‘There’s n-no guard rail out there—’ she stuttered.
‘Yes, there is. You just can’t see it from here. There’s a strip of garden a metre and a half below the far edge of the pool, closed in by a solid balcony wall…’ Which provided safety, but no security against Nora’s soaring imagination.
Her lips parted on a soundless mew of protest but Blake had already turned her smartly in the opposite direction.
‘Don’t worry, I’ve given you one of the guest rooms at the back of the house,’ he said, his hand flat between her shoulderblades as he propelled her through an archway on the other side of the stairs and down a wide windowless hallway into a high-ceilinged room with walls of palest coffee and Persian rugs splashed across the bleached carpet.
‘See—’ he said, crossing to the bay windows and whisking back the filmy curtains to reveal the dense native bush which formed a natural screen on the other side of the glass. ‘No view whatsoever. You’re tucked right up against the slope of the hill here. If you don’t want to use the air conditioning you can switch on the ceiling fans, and there’s a home entertainment centre in that lattice-wood cabinet. Your en suite bathroom—which is minus a bathtub, by the way—is through that archway. I’m sure you’ll find everything very suitable to your needs.’
Suitable wasn’t the word which sprang immediately to mind as Nora’s jittery gaze fell on the queen-sized platform bed draped in white mosquito netting which dominated the room. Flanked by huge glazed pots sprouting luxuriant palms, the bed seemed to float above the floor on its polished wood pedestal, and behind the folds of the gauzy hangings textured silk cushions in jewelled colours and dense patterns were piled on the white bedspread, adding to the aura of exotic luxury.
Talk about Arabian Nights! Nora visualised herself languishing in sensuous abandon amidst the mounding of pillows, the silk cool against her hot skin, a temptress worthy of a sultan’s favour…a tall dark grey-eyed sultan with a hawkish face and a black frown that made everyone tremble before him—everyone, that was, but the woman who could bring him to his knees…
‘Well, what do you think?’
She blushed, tearing her mind from her silken fantasies, seeking refuge in cool flippancy.
‘What—no bars on the window?’
He let the curtains drift back into place. ‘Why should there be? I thought we’d agreed that you’re a guest here, not a prisoner.’
His innocent expression fooled neither of them. ‘You and I obviously have different definitions of the word “guest”,’ she sniffed. ‘Which reminds me—you were going to tell me why you brought me here.’
‘Of course. But why don’t I let you get settled in first?’ His grey-eyed gaze slid over her crumpled figure. ‘You might feel more disposed to relax if you change into something more casual…’
He placed the small bag he had been carrying on top of the squat wooden chest at the end of the bed—and for the first time Nora noticed the distinctive home-made tags.
‘Hey, where did you get that? That looks like mine!’
He gave a wry shrug and suspicion turned to fresh outrage as she elbowed him out of the way to unzip the lid and throw it open. A very familiar pattern of cartoon rabbits stared back up at her.
She flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘You stole my laundry!’
He shrugged, unrepentant. ‘I was being a good host. I doubt you would have wanted to spend the entire weekend in the same set of underwear.’
She was ransacking the contents, recognising several things that hadn’t been in the plundered laundry basket. ‘You went through my chest of drawers, too!’ she accused.
‘I thought you’d want a reasonable selection of your own things to wear. I know how women are about their clothes—’
‘I bet you do,’ she muttered darkly.
‘Growing