Delivered calmly, it was a simple statement, not a threat. Emma knew perfectly well that any farmer in New Zealand had the right to shoot a dog that chased stock; nevertheless she had to block an unwise and impetuous response.
‘And don’t say he wouldn’t worry sheep,’ the man continued, not trying to soften the grimness in his voice. ‘From chasing to killing is only a step.’ He bent his head a little to examine the corgi, now sitting at Emma’s feet. His voice hardened as he said, ‘Usually it’s the work of at least two dogs, one a bitch.’
‘Babe is fourteen years old,’ Emma retorted crisply. ‘She can hardly stagger along the road.’
‘I’ve seen older dogs than that bale up lambs and rip their throats out. Keep them both off my land.’ Delivered in the same inexorable tone as everything else he’d said, there was no room for negotiation in the warning.
Emma nodded stiffly, grateful for once that she had long curling lashes, eminently suitable for hiding any resentful, mutinous expression in her grey eyes. She found herself staring at the exact place where a button fastened his checked shirt, revealing the tanned skin of his throat. Slow and steady, a pulse beat in the smooth hollow there.
A primal reaction—sharp and dangerous as a lightning spike to the ground—ripped through her. Lucky pressed against her from behind, and she put her hand down to his blunt head, stroking behind the ears while she tried to regain her composure.
Nothing, she thought dazedly, will ever be the same again. In some strange, terrifying way she’d been fundamentally changed—almost as though her basic cellular structure had been twisted and she’d been transformed into a different woman.
Oh, for heaven’s sake!
Had she said the words or just thought them? Whatever, she was behaving like a schoolgirl imprisoned in the agony and exhilaration of her first crush.
It was his size, common sense soothed. He was big enough to be intimidating—bigger than enough, actually.
Then he moved slightly, so that the sun wasn’t behind his head.
Told often enough that she was pretty, Emma had come to despise the word and its implications of softness and sweetness with all her heart, so she was normally unimpressed by outward appearances. Because she had big grey eyes and a soft red mouth, white skin with a delicate pink tinge, and because her black hair and lashes curled and shone, many people expected her to flirt and laugh and be light-hearted and docile and slightly stupid.
So she distrusted those who read character from the random mishmash of genetic inheritance that formed most faces. But this man’s personality as revealed in his countenance hit her with the full-blown impact of an earthquake.
He certainly wasn’t handsome. Beneath hair as black as sorrow the strong framework of his face added authority to his powerful presence, a presence emphasised by blazing, remote, tawny eyes, keen and fierce and impersonal as those of a raptor.
Striking, her stunned mind supplied, trying to be helpful by using words to distance her from that first, mind-blowing shock. Oh, yes, he was striking—and impressive, and disturbing, forceful and dynamic. And a whole lot of other adjectives she couldn’t think of just then because her brain had collapsed into curds.
In his thirties—old enough to set every one of her twenty-three years at naught—the stranger had a face defined by a blade of a nose and a jaw that took no prisoners.
And yet...
And yet, although his mouth was held straight by an uncompromising will, it was beautifully sculpted, and there was a probably deceptive fullness about the bottom lip. The man himself might make her think of a granite peak in a mountain range, bleak and stony and compelling, but in spite of the discipline he exerted on that chiselled mouth it hinted at caged emotions.
Interesting.
But not to her. Emma knew her limitations, and this man was so far beyond them she and he might as well inhabit different worlds.
He said, ‘Those are Mrs Firth’s dogs.’
‘Yes.’ It would serve him right, she thought, if she refused to answer his implied question, but one glance at the arrogant features and the cold fire of those eyes convinced her that discretion was the way to go. She added, ‘I’m looking after them while she’s in Canada.’
Straight dark brows drew together above the blade of his nose. ‘At her daughter’s?’ After Emma’s reluctant nod he pursued, ‘When did she go?’
‘Yesterday.’
‘When will she be back?’
With frigid politeness Emma said, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know.’
‘You must have some idea of how long you intend to stay here.’
Definitely not a subtle man. Emma’s tone chilled further as she replied, Three weeks.’
‘And you’re wondering what business it is of mine.’
He might be nosy and unsubtle, but he wasn’t stupid. She contented herself with a slight, dismissive smile.
‘It’s my business,’ he said, in a voice that had dropped to a dangerous, silky quietness, ‘because you can’t control that Rottweiler. I’m Kane Talbot and those are my sheep he was chasing.’
Resisting the urge to wipe suddenly clammy hands down the side seams of her jeans, Emma said, ‘I’m Emma Saunders, and from now on whenever we’re near your sheep I’ll keep Lucky on a leash.’
‘Will you be able to manage him?’ The fierce predator’s gaze assessed her from the top of her curly head to her gumboots. ‘You don’t look strong enough.’
Every hair on her skin pulled tight. Furious at the involuntary reaction, Emma said woodenly, ‘I’m stronger than I look, and Lucky walks well on a leash.’ He didn’t like it, but his sweet temper kept him obedient.
‘I hope so.’ After a taut, humming moment he ordered, ‘And shut both of them up at night.’
‘They are always locked up at night.’
Kane Talbot looked down his arrogant nose. ‘Good.’
Pushing her luck, she said sweetly, ‘Thank you. Come on, Lucky, Babe, we’ll head for home.’
Straight black brows rose as the man’s glance switched to the dogs at her feet. No doubt, she thought sarcastically, he called his sheepdogs names like Dig and Flo and Tip, good, practical names that could be heard over the noise of a flock of sheep and were easy to combine with swear words.
‘I’ll give you a lift,’ he said. He was driving a Land Rover, both dusty and mud-splashed, entirely suitable for dogs.
Formally, although not without a trace of relish in her tone, Emma replied, ‘That’s very kind of you, but the idea of the exercise is—well, exercise. We’ll walk back.’ She turned away, saying, ‘Home, Babe. Home, Lucky.’
As she and the reluctant dogs marched back up the road she could feel the cold burn of his gaze on the back of her neck. Her shoulders stiffened until the sound of the engine told her that he was safely back in his Land Rover.
She knew where he lived. Right opposite Mrs Firth’s house.
Oh, not in anything so ordinary as Mrs Firth’s charming bungalow set in its acre of garden and orchard, with a lazy little stream running over an ancient lava flow at the bottom of the garden. No, Kane Talbot, who owned large chunks of New Zealand’s northernmost peninsula, lived in a splendid house a mile or so from the road.
Kane Talbot, Mrs Firth had informed her, was old money and old influence; as well as holding a position of power on one of the big cooperative enterprises that ran the producer boards in New Zealand, he had varied business interests, moving easily between his life as one of New