A very tall man with broad, sculpted features, dark grey eyes, and black hair that fell thickly almost to his shoulders.
Anneke swept him from head to foot in a swift encompassing appraisal, and didn’t like what she saw.
He was in need of a shave, and bore what looked like a full day’s growth of beard that, combined with his dark eyes and long loose hair, gave him a decidedly devilish look. Add well-washed tight-fitting jeans, a black sweatshirt, and he resembled a man who was the antithesis of ‘friend’.
‘Who the hell are you?’
Uncertainty, defensiveness, fear. He glimpsed each of them in the fleeting emotions chasing across her expressive features.
He should, he reflected with mild exasperation, have taken the time to shave. And, if he’d had a mind to, he could have bound his hair into its customary ponytail at his nape. Could, perhaps should have changed into casual trousers and a polo shirt.
Except the story had been running hot, and he’d lost track of time as he transposed the images in his head into words on the computer screen.
And he’d promised Vivienne that he’d pop over the minute her niece arrived and explain in person why the cottage was empty.
‘I’ve made some tea,’ he indicated in a faintly accented drawl. ‘Vivienne said you favour Earl Grey.’
Anneke’s eyes narrowed. Vivienne. So he knew her aunt. That meant he wasn’t an escapee, a felon, or someone of ill repute. Although, looking at him, she wasn’t too sure about amending the last description.
‘I locked the front door.’ Eyes flashed a fiery emerald, then deepened in wariness. ‘How did you get in?’
She was attractive, if you had a penchant for tall, slender, long-haired blondes, he mused. Natural, although these days it was hard to tell without getting intimate. Lovely green eyes, beautiful mouth. He felt something stir, then banked it down. Women could complicate a man’s life, and he didn’t need the aggravation.
Anneke. Pronounced Ann-eek. Scandinavian mother, English father, no siblings. Twenty-seven, para-legal secretary. Just walked out on a louse.
He took one long look at her, and just knew she’d hate it that Vivienne had confided in him.
‘Sebastian.’ He leant one hip against the servery, and attempted to keep the amusement out of his voice. He partly lowered his eyelids to diminish the gleaming depths. ‘And Vivienne gave me a key.’
For tonight? Or had he possessed a key for a while? Aunt Vivienne and a toyboy? The latter aroused an improbable scenario which she instantly dismissed.
Anneke drew herself up to her full height, unaware that the hem of her tee-shirt rose two inches up her thighs. Her voice rose a fraction. ‘Sebastian who? And you’d better explain real quick why Aunt Vivienne asked you to come into her house at this ungodly hour.’
Dammit, was she wearing anything beneath that thing? Definitely not a bra. Briefs? If she lifted her shoulders much higher he was sure going to find out.
And precisely what, he mused tolerantly, did she think she could do to defend herself against him that he couldn’t counteract and deal with before she’d even moved an inch? Kick-boxing, karate? He was trained and adept in each.
‘Lanier,’ he responded indolently.
So he was French. That explained the slight accent.
‘Friend and neighbour.’ One eyebrow slanted, and his mouth tilted fractionally. ‘Requested by Vivienne to tell you in person news she felt would be too stark if penned in a written note left for you to read in the early-morning hours.’
Anneke was trying hard to retain a hold on her composure. ‘So on the basis of good neighbourly relations you came over here at—’ she paused to check her watch ‘—one-thirty in the morning, made me a cup of tea, and waited to tell me-what?’
‘You’re a mite ungrateful.’
His slow drawl held a degree of cynical humour, and it made her want to throw something at him. Surely would have if the sudden sharpness in those dark eyes and the subtle reassemblage of facial muscle hadn’t warned her it would be infinitely wise not to follow thought with action.
‘I’ve been on the road for eleven hours.’ Her body stance changed, became more aggressive. ‘I let myself in to my aunt’s cottage and discover a strange, disreputable man calmly making himself at home in her kitchen, and I’m expected to smile and say, Hi, my name is Anneke, what’s yours? How nice, you’ve made some tea?’
‘And impolite,’ he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken at all.
‘What do you object to? The “disreputable” tag?’ Her eyes raked his lengthy frame, skimmed over broad shoulders, muscled chest, narrow hips, long, muscular legs, then slid back to his face. ‘Sorry, Sebastian.’ She gave his name faint emphasis. ‘From where I’m standing, you hardly represent a trustworthy image.’
The eyes lost their tinge of amusement and acquired a perceptive hardness that changed his persona into something dangerous.
He watched those splendid emerald depths dilate, and felt a moment’s satisfaction. ‘Vivienne is in Cairns.’ The unadulterated facts. He gave them to her without redress. ‘She had a call an hour after yours to say her daughter had gone into labour six weeks early. She caught the late-afternoon flight out of Coolangatta.’
Colour drained from her face. Elise was expecting a second set of twins. Six weeks premature. ‘How is she?’ The words whispered from her lips.
His eyes narrowed faintly. So she cared. Deeply. That was something. ‘Vivienne said she’ll ring early morning with an update.’
The exhaustion seemed more marked, the faint smudges beneath her eyes a little darker. She looked, he decided, as if she should sit down. He crossed to the small kitchen table and pulled out a chair, then transferred the cup and saucer from the buffet.
‘Tea. Hot, white, one sugar.’
Just the way she liked it. Anneke owed thanks to her aunt. And an apology to this large, faintly brooding stranger.
Neighbour? There was only one cottage in close proximity, and that was owned, according to Aunt Vivienne, by a lovely author who kept strange hours. He was also something of a handyman who had, Anneke recalled sketchily 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.