With her ears assailed by a barrage of fast-paced business deals which broke the gentle, monastic peace of the magical garden, she trudged silently towards the house she loved, aching to think that not only would she be leaving the island and all her friends, but that a Philistine and his wife would be ignorant of its joys.
She had to try to persuade him that there were benefits in having someone around to keep an eye on things. But in her heart she knew that she didn’t stand a chance.
Oh, Edith! she sighed. If you only knew who was about to desecrate your lovely island!
CHAPTER FOUR
‘ALL these keys!’ Grumbling, Zach was turning the huge bunch in his hand, trying to find the one that opened the main door.
‘It’s like this one,’ Catherine said with commendable patience.
Tiredly she lifted the rope line at her waist and selected Edith’s key from the others for comparison.
Zach stiffened. ‘You have a key?’ he barked in staccato consternation, as if she’d committed a crime. Or was about to.
‘I often came to see the previous owner,’ she explained, her spirits at an all-time low. ‘She gave me one to let myself in.’
Zach’s eyes narrowed and fixed on her like heat-seeking missiles.
‘Have you been in the house since she died?’ he shot out suspiciously.
Bristling, she regarded him with the level and reproving gaze of a Victorian schoolmistress confiscating jelly beans from a naughty child.
‘You mean have I nipped in to steal anything?’ she flung back haughtily. ‘Brass fittings? A marble fireplace or two? A staircase, maybe?’
‘It happens.’ He didn’t seem embarrassed by her bluntness. ‘Though I suppose you’re not likely to admit to theft.’
His audacity was breathtaking. Catherine inhaled deeply. It was that or hit him and she didn’t believe in violence.
‘I haven’t stolen anything. In fact, I haven’t set foot in the house since I found Edith in her bed,’ she informed him, the faint tremor in her voice betraying how painful that discovery had been.
‘You found her?’ He seemed to be on the verge of saying something—his sympathies, perhaps—but, thought Catherine darkly, he managed to stop himself in time from doing anything so remotely human. Instead, he grunted. ‘Hmm. I’ll have to take your word for it, then,’ he muttered, but his eyes lingered on her tremulous mouth thoughtfully.
‘Or you could ask around,’ she said, tightening her lips in a rare display of anger, ‘and then you’d learn that I don’t have a dishonest bone in my body!’
To her discomfort, he examined her with clinical detail, as if to check how honest her bones might be. His intense scrutiny brought a flush to her face and she lowered her startled nut-brown eyes to avoid his road-driller stare.
‘Don’t think I won’t do that,’ he snapped.
Her mutinous gaze flashed up to his again. ‘Can’t you read faces? Don’t you realise the kind of person I am?’
He seemed to flinch and withdraw into himself. The hard and impenetrable coldness he was projecting made her shiver, as if she’d stepped into cold storage.
‘I make it a habit never to trust anyone until I have overwhelming proof of their integrity.’
‘You must find it hard to make friends,’ she observed drily.
His gaze burned angrily into her. ‘I’d like that key,’ he growled.
With her own dark eyes conveying her scorn, she eased it off the cork float that had twice saved her boat keys from sinking to the bottom of the river.
OK. She’d blown it. But she wouldn’t be bullied. If standing up to this monster meant that she’d have to leave, then that would have to be her fate.
She had never disliked anyone before, always finding good in everyone she met. But this guy was without any decent characteristics at all.
And he owned Edith’s island! Conquering her misery, she tipped up her small chin in a direct challenge.
‘Take it.’ She thrust the key at him. ‘I won’t be needing it any more,’ she bit out, stiff with indignation.
‘Darn right you won’t,’ he muttered, taking it from her.
Tossing back her tumbling hair and with protesting cherry blossom falling from the ivy tie, she took an angry intake of breath. She felt close to breathing out fire and brimstone and melting Zach Talent where he stood!
‘No. You’re no Edith, breathing sweetness and light. So I doubt that I’ll be popping in to play gin rummy with you,’ she snapped, ‘or to help you patch your sheets or paint rainbows in the bathroom!’
Clearly astonished by her outburst, he hooked up an eyebrow and stared deeply into her defiant eyes—which rounded in confusion when she felt something go bump somewhere in the region of her heart. Shocked, she pressed a fluttering hand to her breast in bewilderment.
An expression of liquid warmth eased the tautness of his face and then was gone. But in that brief flash, when vibrant life lit smoky fires in his grey eyes and the corners of his firm mouth lifted with hungry desire, she felt as though she’d been felled by a thunderbolt.
After a breathless second, while something hot and visceral seemed to link them both in its fatal flames, he spun furiously on his heel to plunge the key into the keyhole with brute force.
Quivering, she stood gazing in horror at his broad and powerful back while he struggled irritably with the tricky lock. What had all that been about?
Sex, she thought—the answer nipping with alarming boldness into her head. She cringed with mortification. Quite unexpectedly, she had discovered that fierce passions lurked beneath Zach Talent’s granite exterior.
And, more shocking, within her, too. He was married! How could she?
The surging fizz of her blood, and the sense of danger and excitement which had electrified the air between them, was something she’d never known before. She had never believed such a force could exist—or that it might one day seek her out.
Love, she’d fondly imagined, would be a gentle, warm sensation. Like sinking into a deep bath. With love, would come the joy of eventually uniting with the person you trusted and adored above all other people. The union would be sweet and beautiful, a meeting of mind and body and soul. Two people expressing the totality of their love.
But she had been taken unawares by the effect of Zach’s raw, sexual attraction. Never had she expected to feel this harsh, primeval urge of nature that owed nothing to love and everything to pure, animal instinct. It was humiliating that she should. And, given the fact that she knew his marital state, it demeaned her.
It only showed her innocence, she thought wryly, that she could be so easily zapped into a quivering mess by a rogue City trader—who was also her unwitting landlord!
How silly to be affected. He certainly hadn’t known what he’d been doing, or that one unguarded and casual look from him could turn her insides out!
Men were supposed to think about sex every six seconds, she’d read. She supposed that she’d been in his eyeline at the time.
She made a face. How she pitied his wife! He’d be a terrible lover. He’d probably fit in his embraces between calls to New York and the London Stock Exchange!
Would he take his mobile to bed? she wondered, warming to her theme. Very likely, she conceded and her face relaxed into a broad grin at the thought of his wife’s fury at being interrupted by a discussion on High Fidelity bonds at a crucial moment.
Stifling