‘I only ever considered it to be a loan.’ Morna’s voice was cold and sharp, brittle as an icicle.
‘You’re too stiff-necked and principled for your own good,’ Cathy returned doggedly. ‘Nick would have been proud to stake you—’
‘I know.’ Morna’s voice gentled. ‘Cathy, I’m not going to sacrifice my independence to another man ever again—not even Nick. Using Glen’s legacy got the shop off the ground, but if I didn’t treat it as a loan I’d always feel—I’d feel that the five years I lived with him were a sort of prostitution. It wasn’t like that—not for me.’
Cathy’s face softened. ‘Of course it wasn’t,’ she agreed. ‘I do understand. It’s just—well, it seems such a waste—to scrimp and save when you don’t have to.’
‘What happened to his bequest to you?’
Cathy flushed. ‘I use it to support the hospital in Romit,’ she admitted.
‘So you use it for a hospital in the Coral Sea, and I use it for deprived children here.’ Morna’s voice gentled. ‘Don’t worry, and don’t let Nick worry. I’m managing.’
‘Oh, yes—buying your clothes from second-hand shops, driving around in a car that gives Nick a heart attack whenever he thinks about it, ploughing everything back into the shop—!’ Dismayed, Cathy caught herself up. ‘I’m sorry. I admire your determination to do what you think is right, but you can overdo independence.’
‘Don’t be sorry. I know you’d do anything to save Nick a moment’s worry.’
‘Of course I would,’ Cathy said briskly, ‘but I’m concerned for your sake too!’
‘At least admit I buy my clothes from exclusive charity shops,’ Morna said lightly.
Cathy smiled, but her blue eyes revealed a lingering anxiety. ‘OK, I’ll admit that. Not that it matters—you’d look good in a flour sack.’
‘I doubt it.’ A grin widened Morna’s mouth, but she sobered quickly. ‘It’s time we all forgot the past and concentrated on the present.’
‘That,’ Cathy murmured thoughtfully, looking past her, ‘would involve concentrating on Hawke Challenger. He’s headed this way.’
Morna swung around. He stopped beside her and smiled down, translucent jade-green eyes scanning Morna’s face.
Thank heavens for sunglasses!
‘Good to see you here, Cathy,’ he said, with a smile that sent zings of lightning through Morna’s body. Deep, controlled, his intriguing voice was textured by a lazy, untamed note.
Anticipation punched her in the solar plexus and bolted down her spine. It took every shred of will-power to summon a guarded smile as Cathy introduced them. Only good manners drove her to take off her sunglasses and smile briefly at him before retiring behind them again. And no way was she going to shake his hand.
CHAPTER TWO
MORNA VAUSE wasn’t traditionally beautiful.
Hawke decided that it didn’t matter—skin like warm ivory, eyes the colour of malt whisky and a silky black bob highlighted in dangerous red glints by the sun did enough for her.
And that didn’t include her lush, sulky mouth—a sensual incitement he’d watched transform from repose to gamine wickedness in a heady flash.
An interesting situation, Hawke thought; although these women appeared the best of friends, Cathy had once supplanted Morna in Glen Spencer’s affections. Hawke didn’t gossip, but he’d have had to live in a Trappist monastery to miss knowing that Spencer had flaunted his young trophy mistress until he’d dumped her for an even younger trophy wife.
And he hadn’t been close-lipped about the amount that exchange had cost him; Morna Vause had been handsomely rewarded for her years in his bed by the best tuition the world could offer in her chosen field, and a considerable legacy.
Clearly she knew how to manipulate the men in her life to her best advantage.
‘How do you do, Mr Challenger?’ Each word rang like silver, crisp and impersonal.
‘Hawke.’
Morna hesitated before repeating in a flat tone that didn’t hide the husky note beneath it, ‘Hawke.’
Whisky-coloured eyes, and a voice as rich and complex as the best single malt. ‘Morna,’ he said laconically. ‘A pretty name—Celtic, isn’t it? What does it mean?’
Morna forced her lips into a stiff, unnatural smile. Still in that level, unemotional tone, she said, ‘Beloved, or so my mother always told me. But then, she got a lot of things wrong.’
Stop behaving like a shrinking violet, she commanded. She was no sweet, shy virgin—in fact she’d never been sweet or shy in her life! Fighting for survival soon demolished any softness in a child.
‘Yours is unusual too,’ she said. ‘Were you born in Hawke’s Bay?’ She’d only visited that sun-baked province once, but she’d fallen in love with its Art Deco cities and superb vineyards.
Green eyes mocked her. ‘No, and although my mother was a Hawke she didn’t belong to the family Hawke’s Bay was named after,’ he told her calmly. ‘However, she’s the last of her line, and she wanted the name to continue.’
The confident reference to breeding and background scraped across Morna’s already sensitised nerves. She’d grown up in poverty and hopelessness without knowing the name of her father.
Hawke watched her. She might think she’d camouflaged her emotions behind those sunglasses, but her square chin, angled with a hint of defiance, told him more than she realised.
As did that tantalising mouth. His hormones growled softly in unexpected need. She had the mouth of a born sensualist—and that was a total contradiction of the little he knew about her.
A second glance revealed the discipline that tucked in the corners of her lips, keeping them under control. Sensualist, certainly, but he suspected her appetites were firmly leashed, an asset to be used rather than a tendency to be indulged.
He wanted her.
So? He’d wanted other women. But not, he thought with the cold logic he used even on his own reactions, with this fierce intensity. And none of them had ever looked at him with such aloof indifference. He smiled, ruthlessly summoning the charm he knew gave him an advantage over most other men.
Her sultry mouth parted for a second before colour swept along her high cheekbones and she compressed her lips into a straight line.
Yes, she too felt that elemental, fiery tug of the senses; controlled she might be, but she was giving off signals like a sunstorm.
In a judicial way he admired her composure when Cathy Harding bridged the tense atmosphere with conversation. Instinctively courteous, he followed Cathy’s lead, realising with an elemental satisfaction that Morna Vause wasn’t normally as quiet as she was now.
A few minutes later the sound of his name thrust its way through the air.
‘Hawke Challenger,’ the loudspeaker asked, ‘can you come up here and present the prizes now, please? Come on, Hawke, I can see you—’
‘I have to go,’ he said abruptly. Ignoring the silent woman beside her, he smiled at Cathy. ‘I hope we’ll be seeing you and your husband at the dinner after the show?’
‘Yes, we’re going.’
He transferred his gaze to Morna, imprinting the lines of her half-shadowed face on his memory. ‘And of course you must come too,’ he said politely.
Without waiting for an answer he swung off through the crowd—a