‘She sounds interesting herself,’ he said.
Emma gave a mental shrug. ‘She is,’ she said sturdily. All men were intrigued by beautiful women; why be surprised—and, yes, disappointed—that he fitted the pattern?
He slowed, and turned into the gateway of Mrs Firth’s house. ‘I can hear the dogs barking from here,’ he said.
‘Babe never used to bark until Lucky arrived,’ Emma told him. ‘She taught him his manners, and he taught her that a dog is supposed to raise the roof whenever a stranger appears.’
‘And is she the leader of the pack?’
‘Well, she’s above him,’ she said, relaxing. ‘And I’m above them both, although I do have to keep reminding them that I’m top dog. Lucky is sure we females need protecting, and Babe thinks I’m a snippety young upstart who needs to be taught a few manners myself.’
Absurdly pleased at his laughter, she waited until he’d stopped to say, ‘I’ll get out here and then we won’t have to open and shut the gate.’
‘All right,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I’ll carry your parcels in.’
Emma sighed silently and got out. She needed fresh air to banish the sound of that low, amused laugh and calm her jittery heartbeat. ‘I’ll let the dogs out,’ she called, and walked smartly up the drive to the back door. Both dogs bounded out, although Babe stayed with Emma. Lucky, however, raced barking down towards the car and the open gate.
‘Sit,’ Kane said in a voice that held no fear and no apprehension of disobedience.
The dog skidded to a halt, then obeyed the repeated command and sat. Looking slightly bewildered, he stared up at Kane, who waited a moment to establish dominance, then held out his hand. Lucky made to rise, was bade sternly to sit again, and obeyed instantly. He sniffed Kane’s long fingers with interest and respect, then gazed up into his face. It was ridiculous, but Emma felt shut out from a purely masculine moment.
‘Stay away from my sheep,’ Kane said sternly.
Lucky’s tail, long because Mrs Firth didn’t approve of docking, swept the ground.
Kane said, ‘How do you release him?’
‘G-o-o-d b-o-y.’
He said the words and Lucky sprang up, eagerly sniffing around the car, getting ready to cock his leg until both Emma and Kane said ‘No’ sharply enough to make him look startled and back off.
‘Two nannies,’ Kane said with an ironic smile. ‘He’ll develop a complex.’
A sudden glow in Emma’s heart shocked her. Instinct warned her that Kane Talbot was not good medicine for inexperienced women. Although Emma enjoyed challenges, some, she knew, were not worth the exhilaration.
She and Kane had nothing in common. He was cosmopolitan, with a sophistication that was so essential a part of him he probably didn’t even realise he possessed it. Not for him the fake worldliness, the desperate effort to be cool of so many younger men. And he was almost engaged, whatever that meant.
Watching the broad shoulders flex as he hoisted the grocery bags from the boot, Emma thought that he’d know exactly how to make a woman so aware of him she’d begin to think of all sorts of disturbing things, like how good he’d be as a lover.
A disconcerting wrench of sensation in her stomach turned to heat. Fortunately he was so much older than her—ten years or so, she guessed—that he probably did think of her as barely grown up. He was just being a considerate neighbour; she was the one with the problem.
‘Here, I’ll take a bag,’ she said, when it was obvious he intended to carry all three in.
‘They’re not heavy.’
Setting her jaw, she followed him up the two steps to the brick porch at the back of the house. She didn’t realise that he’d stood back to let her go first until she cannoned into him.
‘Ouff,’ she muttered, leaping back with a memory of muscles like iron and a faint, sexy scent, not soap or shaving lotion, just Kane Talbot.
‘Sorry,’ he said calmly.
She gave him a brief glance, and muttered as she went in, ‘I didn’t see you.’
Leading the way into the kitchen, she took a couple of deep breaths to centre herself. ‘Just put them on the bench, please,’ she said, pointing to the smooth grey granite.
He did that, then glanced at her with amusement glinting beneath black lashes as straight as his brows.
Emma looked past him and said softly, ‘Oh, look outside—on the maple branch. A tui!’
The iridescent bird ducked and bowed along the branch, head held low as he sang a soft, seductive song. At his throat a tuft of white feathers bobbed like a stock in a lace collar when he fluffed his wings and repeated the sinuous movements and his song. Against the glowing red stems of the maple tree he looked superb.
‘What’s he doing?’ Emma asked quietly.
‘He’s courting.’ Kane’s voice was unexpectedly abrupt. ‘He knows how splendidly those branches set off his colours; he’s parading, looking for a mate, promising that he’ll give her ecstasy and young ones and keep all their bellies filled.’
A note in his words dragged her gaze from the bird strutting his stuff outside. Kane’s face had hardened into indifference, but there was a twist to his lips that gave his comment a satirical inflection.
Tentatively she asked, ‘Would you like a cup of tea or coffee?’
‘No, thank you, I have to keep going,’ he said, the words so quick and cool they were a rebuff.
Brows pleated, Emma watched the big car go down the road and turn into his drive. He’d been reasonably friendly, and then suddenly, as though she’d insulted his mother, he’d withdrawn behind an impervious armour.
‘Perhaps he thought I was flirting with him,’ she told the dogs, who were eyeing the packets of pet mince with anticipatory interest. ‘Well, he was wrong. Men with dangerous eyes and tough faces and volatile moods do nothing for me at all. Even when they’re not virtually engaged to Australian women of impeccable family. Whoa, hold your horses; I’ll make your dog biscuits this afternoon. I want to do some weeding first while it’s fine.’
Once outside, Babe found a warm place on the brick terrace and went to sleep, while Lucky investigated a score of fascinating scents around the garden before settling close to her. As Emma tugged at weeds encouraged into growth by the warm touch of spring, she decided that her unexpected holiday had altered direction. Kane’s arrival on the scene had sent her stumbling blindly into perilous, intriguing, unknown territory.
She yanked out a large sowthistle, patted back into place the three pansies its roots had dislodged, and tried to persuade herself that the slow excitement that licked through her whenever she thought of the man next door was uncomplicated attraction, a pragmatic indication from her genes that she was old enough to reproduce and that for the survival of her offspring it would be wise to choose a tough man who was a good provider, with enough prestige to protect her from other men as well as the strength to beat off cave bears and sabretooth tigers.
Basic stuff, an inheritance from the primitive past, still powerful even though it was outdated at the end of the twentieth century.
‘And don’t forget,’ she reminded herself, ‘the almost-fiancée.’
After an hour of solid work she stood to admire a bed of pansies and tall bluebells