“Nice talk. Very persuasive,” he said evenly.
“Wasted on you.”
“I didn’t come to be recruited,” he denied. “You know my philosophy—charity begins at home.”
“Then why are you here?” she demanded.
In the confined space, his body brushed hers and she felt her pulses leap in instant response. When they were together, his hard body hadn’t always been encased in expensive tailoring. More often, it had been encased in nothing at all and the image sent shards of desire spearing through her.
Chemistry, that’s all it was, she told herself desperately. Zeke had never had to do much to send her into orbit. Sometimes merely touching her was enough. This time she owed it to herself to keep her feet firmly on the ground.
“I want to learn about your work,” he insisted, his deep voice close to her ear.
The warmth of his breath curling around her nape made the room seem to recede.
“Isn’t it a bit late?” she managed to whisper around a throat as arid as the Australian Outback. They both knew she wasn’t referring to her work.
“According to our speaker, it’s never too late to do your bit,” he murmured. He shot a deliberate look at the reporter taking notes at the back of the room. “Unless you don’t practise what you preach.”
Of all people, Zeke should know she did, she thought with a sinking heart. “I suppose you hope to make a fool of me in front of the magazine people.”
He looked mildly insulted. “I don’t need Australian Life as a mouthpiece. My column has as many readers a week as they do in a month.”
Her spirits sank even further. “You’re writing about the foundation in your column?”
His smile twisted her insides in an instant, an unwelcome response but she forced it away as he said, “It’s possible.”
“For your series on charities that help themselves more than others.”
It wasn’t a question. The leaden feeling in her stomach told her she was right even before his smile became wolfish. “Since starting that series, I’ve visited charities whose headquarters would make the Taj Mahal look modest. Debunking them has been a pleasure.”
“Model Children isn’t a publicity stunt,” she denied, keeping her voice low although it was an effort. “We’ve saved whole families by helping the children.”
“Too bad our family wasn’t one of them.”
Stopped in her tracks, she stared at him. “You can’t blame me for what happened. You were the one who went to America, then moved in with someone else.” His eyebrows lifted and she added, “Gossip travels fast in the media. How is Lucy, by the way?”
“You’ll have to ask her new husband,” Zeke said flatly.
For the first time she saw genuine pain cloud his startling pewter eyes. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know.”
A cynical smile tilted his full lips. “If you’d come with me to the States you would have known. Of course, if you’d been with me in the States, I wouldn’t have turned to Lucy.”
She felt anger flash into her gaze and didn’t care if he saw it. “You’re saying it was my fault?”
“Wasn’t it?”
“I couldn’t go with you.” She was well aware that the desire to keep this between them wasn’t the only reason her voice came out as a strangled whisper.
“You never did say why.”
“I told you—”
He cut across her savagely. “You gave me excuses but no real reason.”
“I had my work.”
He glanced around the room, part of a technical college by day. There was little of glamor about it and she saw his gaze absorb the fact. “Nineteen months later you’re not modeling at all. You’re stumping around the country talking business people into parting with their cash. Yet you couldn’t take the time to come with me where your career could have really taken off. Were you afraid of failing or succeeding?”
“Neither,” she insisted, feeling her heart gather speed. She hadn’t been able to share her reasons with him then, and there was no point now. “I had other priorities.”
His mouth twisted into a sneer. “Evidently I wasn’t among them.”
“Must we always bring this back to you?”
His finger stabbed the air. “This time it’s to you. You were the one holding the reins. You could have come with me but you refused.”
“So you drowned your sorrows in Lucy. It took what? Just over a year to love her and leave her. You didn’t pine for very long.” Not nearly as long as Tara herself had.
At his startled look she wondered what she had said wrong. “I didn’t leave her, she left me,” he stated, astonishing her. “It seems I wasn’t sufficiently in touch with my feelings.”
The cynical way he said it turned it into a denial. Bitterness threatened to swamp Tara. “You actually care what a woman thinks? This is certainly new behavior.” Her opinion never carried much weight with him, she recalled.
“I make a point of learning from my mistakes.”
Tara felt her breath rush out. What did he consider a mistake—his behavior toward the other woman, or—she could hardly bear to think it—leaving Tara?
Signs of the coffee break winding up caught her attention. “We can’t talk now. What about after the meeting?”
His slow smile, alight with masculine interest, instantly made her regret the suggestion but it was too late to retract it now. “Going to make a personal appeal to me, Tara? I could get to like this foundation of yours.”
“You don’t have to like it. You only have to give it a fair appraisal,” she snapped, and stood up purposefully to move to the podium again. It was just as well she had already given this talk many times before, because her concentration was well below par. She was too aware of Zeke Blaxland leaning back with his arms folded across his broad chest, his expression daring her to put a foot wrong.
Potent with memories, the scent of her perfume lingered in the space around Zeke and he inhaled slowly, cursing himself for a fool, but unable to stop himself. Poême, he thought, automatically putting a name to the heady fragrance with its reminders of the foolish satin and lace scraps she called lingerie. Did she still wear that stuff?
From where he sat, the new Tara McNiven looked all business. She had never been skeletal, like some models, but her new curves were a definite improvement. The glimpse of satin skin and hint of décolletage her businesslike jacket afforded him set his pulses hammering. His imagination began to work overtime on the rest.
Her hair was shorter, too, brushing her shoulders in a waterfall of gold he knew from experience would feel like silk. His fingers twitched with the need to touch her. He turned it into a drumming gesture on his knee, saw her notice and frown, and stilled his hand.
What had possessed him to gate-crash the meeting? His lack of faith in charities was no secret, but he didn’t really believe Tara’s foundation belonged in his series. He’d researched them, and had no doubt that they were on the level. It didn’t mean he believed in what she was doing, but neither did he think she was in it for her own benefit.
So why was he here?
If he was honest, the answer was pacing up and down in front of him as she urged the group to put themselves in the children’s places. “It’s easy to say that one person can’t make a difference, but all it takes is the willingness to try.”