Tiger, Tiger
Tiger, Tiger
Robyn Donald
Not only opposites attract! When Lecia first spotted Keane Paget, his presence burned like a shining beacon. He was handsome, certainly, and profoundly male, but the face that stared back at her was otherwise her own! Lecia was stunned… hypnotized… and it wasn't just his likeness - an unsettling, wild attraction immediately coursed between them.They say that the greater the resemblance, the happier the relationship. But Lecia's passions had only ever led to heartbreak - and guilt! No, Keane Paget was dangerous. Not only did he have her face, he seemed to see inside her soul! They were too alike for comfort. Resist, resist… .
“Why are you afraid of me?” (#uf1f37e71-c910-5eef-acd8-74f9bbd77b9a)About the Author (#u1fcffd22-40b1-528f-b7b9-26a5c1facf76)Title Page (#ua2132d4b-179b-5666-ae40-e328498847f1)CHAPTER ONE (#u0f006e49-13bb-5767-ac2b-24c819e955a2)CHAPTER TWO (#ubf2940ec-a81e-5f3d-8906-c84bb055c528)CHAPTER THREE (#ue49cb9b5-6c5c-55bc-918b-bfe869a57d7d)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Why are you afraid of me?”
“I’m not!”
“Afraid of yourself, then?” Keane’s swift sideways glance caught the truth. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? Why?”
“It’s got nothing to do with fear,” she said, grabbing desperately at some semblance of calmness. “It makes me feel strange to look at you and see my own face. I feel—invaded. No, cloned. Oh, I don’t know what I feel, but I don’t like it!”
“If we’d had brothers or sisters, we’d be accustomed to it,” he said imperturbably.
“Well, yes, but...” Again her voice faded. She certainly wasn’t going to explain that she couldn’t control her wildfire, unwanted attraction to him.
ROBYN DONALD has always lived in Northland in New Zealand, initially on her father’s stud dairy farm at Warkworth, then in the Bay of Islands, an area of great natural beauty where she lives today with her husband and an ebullient and mostly Labrador dog. She resigned her teaching position when she found she enjoyed writing romances more, and now spends any time not writing in reading, gardening, traveling and writing letters to keep up with her two adult children and her friends.
Tiger, Tiger
Robyn Donald
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘LECIA, look at that man! The tall one walking towards us with the very chic blonde beside him. He could be your twin!’
Lecia Spring’s clear green gaze followed her friend’s discreet nod towards the man coming up the marked path between the thousands of people who’d decided that watching opera in the Auckland Domain was the perfect way to spend this summer afternoon.
Broad-shouldered in a well-cut shirt, and with legs that seemed to stretch for miles, he strode through the press of people, apparently expecting them to part in front of him and his companion like the sea before Moses. Which was exactly what was happening.
That formidable confidence was something Lecia envied. He stood about six inches taller than her five feet eight inches, and except for a pronounced male toughness his face was the one that looked out from her mirror every morning.
Primitive, superstitious apprehension kicked her in the gut.
‘Same bone structure,’ Andrea was muttering excitedly. ‘Same straight, long nose with the tiniest bump on the bridge and—heavens, yes—the same cleft chin! I can’t believe it! You’re fairer, but you both have honey-coloured hair. Dark manuka honey in his case, closer to clover in yours! He must be related to you.’
‘He can’t be,’ Lecia returned, prickling all over with absurd diffidence. ‘I agree, he looks just like Dad, but Dad had no relatives except his parents.’
‘Cousins? Everyone has cousins.’
‘Not in Dad’s family. They were a most unproductive lot. Just one child each generation back as far as anyone remembers—and always a son until I turned up to break the pattern.’
Lecia’s glance travelled to the woman beside the unknown man. Slim, with a patrician face, she wore clothes that were exactly right. As befitted the occasion, they were casual, although she’d dressed the outfit up with a gold chain and supple Italian sandals. The floaty silk shirt and trousers, cool, expensive and elegant, suited her. And she knew it.
Repressing a sudden twist to her heart, Lecia concentrated on what she was about to say. ‘Anyway, Dad was an Australian and this is New Zealand.’
‘What a shame.’ Andrea sighed and murmured throatily, ‘If he was a relative you could introduce me. Talk about the it factor! That woman’s staring at him as though she’d eat him if she had the chance.’
Andrea was right. Although nothing but relaxed interest showed in that lovely face, the man’s companion couldn’t hide the awareness surrounding her like an aura.
Switching her gaze back to the strong bones and hard-honed masculinity that stamped the stranger’s face, Lecia observed, ‘He’d be a tough mouthful.’
‘Those calories I’d really enjoy,’ Andrea said suggestively. ‘I lo-o-ove the way he walks! As though he expects the whole world to scuttle out of his way. I’ll bet he’s a tiger in bed.’
Lecia forced a smile into her tone. ‘You can tell that by looking at him?’
‘And so can every other woman here. You’re just obstinately refusing to read the signals.’ Andrea put on her sunglasses and assumed what she thought was an English accent. ‘Note, my dear Watson, the way those muscles work together, so powerfully smooth and sure. He’s coming up the hill without even sweating, so he has stamina.’ She growled the final word with comical lasciviousness. ‘Terribly important is stamina. And because he’s wearing clothes that cost more than half my salary—and we know how rare inherited wealth is in New Zealand—we can deduce that he’s not only rich, he’s intelligent enough to hold down a very good job. Intelligence, dear Watson, is another vital attribute in a lover.’
Lecia’s amusement was diluted by another emotion, a kind of shocked bewilderment. Hypnotised, she gazed at the man, absorbing greedily the cool, commanding presence, the way the sun was imprisoned in the tawny amber hair, the golden hue of his skin.
Beside her, Andrea continued, ‘As for passion—well, just take a quick glance at that mouth! It’s kept very firmly under restraint, but it’s there.’ Shuddering enjoyably, she pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head and surveyed the approaching man with bright, intrigued eyes.
Lecia swallowed. ‘It’s uncanny,’ she mumbled, assailed by an odd feeling of connection, a bond forged only by their shared features. ‘And very unsettling.’
Reluctantly, Andrea dragged her gaze away to scan Lecia’s taut face. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said slowly. ‘Come to think of it, I wouldn’t like to meet my double, however gorgeous he was.’
By this time it was plain that the man and his companion were making for the corporate tents on the low hill behind the crowd. All his attention seemed to be on the woman at his side, but when a small child barrelled out in front of him and tripped, he stopped in mid-stride and picked the child up, setting her on her feet with a gentleness at variance with his autocratic air.
The toddler puckered up her face and let out a wail. Immediately the man swung her to his shoulder and turned so that the people in the crowd could see the child. A woman scrambled to her feet and began to shuffle through the blankets and picnics and umbrellas and seated people.
When she reached him the man handed the child over with a few unsmiling words before walking on. Cuddling the toddler, the woman stared with an offended expression after the tall, lean figure. Not until somebody bumped into her did she shrug and make her way back into the crowd.
‘I wonder what he said?’ Andrea hissed. ‘Judging by the frown on the mother’s face it wasn’t exactly a compliment.’
‘The child shouldn’t have been able to get that far without her noticing,’ Lecia said curtly. ‘It would be so easy for a little thing to get lost in all this crowd. Her mother should have kept a closer watch on her.’
Andrea laughed. ‘That’s probably exactly what he said. You see, you even think alive.’
The stranger was only a few metres away. For some reason Lecia wanted to hunch down, keep her head low in case he saw her. It was a ridiculous impulse, and one she refused to obey, although she did turn her face away and look across to the stage.
But at the sound of her name her head whipped around, and her gaze collided with that of the stranger.
Something dissolved in her stomach—no, she thought dazedly, in her bones. His dark blue eyes registered astonishment before they hardened into a polished, unreadable sheen.
‘Here you are, girls,’ came a male voice. ‘Eat them quickly because they’re already melting.’
Peter Farring looped an arm around Lecia’s shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of her head before she had time to move away. The stranger’s burnished gaze flicked over the man beside her. Without breaking stride, he switched it to the path ahead and walked on up the hill.
Shakily Lecia took the proffered ice-cream cone, took a deep breath and produced a smile. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘My pleasure,’ Peter said gallantly.
Between enthusiastic ticks, Andrea told him all about the man with Lecia’s face. ‘Lecia says he looks just like her father,’ she finished, ‘in spite of the fact that she doesn’t have any relatives on her father’s side.’
‘None?’ Peter asked, intrigued. ‘But there could have been—ah—well, not all families know exactly who all their relatives are.’ His flush made his meaning clear.
Lecia shrugged. ‘That’s the only possibility, but this man’s ancestor must have visited Australia, because I’ve never heard of a Spring travelling to New Zealand until my mother and I came back after my father died.’
‘If he’s not reasonably closely connected,’ Andrea pronounced, ‘I’ll give up champagne for a year.’
‘He must be beautiful.’ Peter’s tone made it obvious that the compliment was only directed at Lecia.
Andrea gave a little crow of laughter. ‘No, although he is gorgeous. He has the same features as Lecia but they’re completely, arrogantly and very sexily masculine. You know how brothers and sisters often look alike, yet there’s no mistaking which is the man and which the woman? Well, Lecia and this guy could be twins. Same physique too—he must be well over six feet. They even walk the same—that smooth, graceful gait with something slightly predatory in it.’
‘Oh, good Lord,’ Lecia sighed, unusually irritable. ‘What an imagination you have!’
‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’ Andrea said to Peter with the stunning lack of tact that occasionally made Lecia wonder why she was still her best friend. ‘There’s something not quite tamed about Lecia. That’s the way this guy looks; golden and lithe and dangerous. Monarch of all he surveys.’
And then, too late, Lecia saw her remember that, although Lecia liked Peter, only a week ago she’d decided not to encourage his pursuit of her.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Peter said with a slow, smiling glance that made Lecia squirm inside.
As Andrea’s current lover didn’t enjoy opera, she’d proposed that she and Lecia spend the afternoon together. Unfortunately, no sooner had they settled on their rug beneath the sun umbrella than Peter had seen them and suggested they join forces. There was no reason why they shouldn’t—except, Lecia thought with brutal honesty, that it was always disconcerting to meet someone who showed every sign of being in love with you when you couldn’t reciprocate.
Consciously unpleating her brows, Lecia said lightly, ‘Probably if you saw us side by side we’d only resemble each other very superficially.’
But the impact of that swift, shocking moment when her eyes had linked with the stranger’s had left her with a racing pulse and a body awash with adrenalin. She wanted to hide, to make sure he didn’t see her again.
Most emphatically she didn’t want to discuss him. Andrea, however, hadn’t finished with the subject. ‘It sounds as though the only possible link must be some sort of illicit liaison.’
Briskly Lecia conceded, ‘Almost certainly. According to my mother—one of the few bits of family history she knows—the first Spring came out to Australia from Britain, and apparently he always said he had no relatives.’
‘Of course nobody in those days would say anything about kids born on the wrong side of the blanket. He could be a long-lost second cousin several times removed,’ Andrea decided. ‘You should have made contact with that gorgeous beast, Lecia.’
Lecia shrugged. ‘Let sleeping beasts lie,’ she said curtly.
Within the space of a heartbeat the stranger had seen her, recognised their similarity, and rejected it. No way was she going to pursue him.
But she couldn’t get him out of her head. It had been so uncanny, that unexpected sight of her own features stamped in a more arrogant mould.
Once her mother had told her an old story of a girl who had looked into a well and seen beside her reflection the face of the man she would eventually marry.
In the hot sunlight Lecia’s skin chilled. Now she knew exactly how that girl felt.
‘...so Lecia told him that she wasn’t going to design a house for a woman she didn’t know,’ Andrea said, breaking into infectious laughter.
Scandalised, Peter said, ‘Lecia, how could you? What did he say?’
Amidst more gurgles, Andrea told him, ‘He said he liked a woman with spirit. And then—get this!—and then he asked her out to dinner to meet his wife!’
‘Hang on.’ Peter frowned. ‘You mean he’d commissioned you to design the house and his wife hadn’t been consulted?’
‘Exactly,’ Lecia said somewhat grimly. ‘I didn’t even realise there was a wife. Mind you, he turned out to be an old sweetie, and his wife actually knew how to manage him perfectly, but all the same it’s the first time I’ve been asked to design a house for a woman without even seeing her. I really thought I’d lost the commission and that he’d stamp out and find another architect.’
‘Nonsense,’ Andrea said, her tone tinged with mock resignation. ‘Like all your other clients, he fell in love with you.’
‘Hardly,’ Lecia said drily, wishing she could kick her, and skilfully turned the conversation.
After that the afternoon passed pleasantly, and Lecia told herself that the strange sensation between her shoulderblades was simply overreaction. There was no way the man with her face could see her amidst the three hundred and fifty thousand people who had poured into the low-sided crater of the Domain. In company with a third of Auckland’s population, she ate and talked and laughed and drank until eventually the sun went down and the concert began.
It was a confection of favourites delivered with verve and joie de vivre to the good-humoured crowd, the programme topped off by four songs from the golden throat of a world-famous soprano. Then came the part most of the children—and many of the adults, Lecia thought, looking at the excited faces around her—had been waiting for.
‘“The Ride of the Valkyries”!’ the presenter announced with a flourish. Orchestra and conductor swung into the music, followed almost immediately by green and red lasers creating an unearthly light show. Fireworks soared and burst dramatically into the warm, clear night sky, and from the low rim of the crater more fireworks surrounded the huge crowd with a smoky red glow.
Entranced by the eerie light, Lecia jumped when a battery from the army fired guns beside the stage, but the unleashed thunder satisfied something childlike and primitive in her. Tipping back her head, she admired more sunbursts of flame high in the sky, all to the sound of Wagner at his most dramatic.
And when it was all over she laughed as Andrea said irrepressibly, ‘Totally over the top! That’s what I call a climax!’
Still charmed by the spectacle, they collected together the rugs and sunshades, lifted the insulated boxes that had held their food, and waited a moment for a gap in the crowd making for the various roads around the Domain.
A sharp dig in her ribs made Lecia jump and look round indignantly.
‘I knew it,’ Andrea muttered. ‘Look, over there...’
Coming towards them was the stranger.
Lecia’s heart kicked into overdrive. For a second she tried to convince herself that he hadn’t seen her—that he was just going home as they were—but the purposefulness in his expression as he cut through the crowd convinced her she was wrong.
She only had time to gulp in a meagre breath before he stopped in front of her, and helplessly she looked up into eyes of a dark, brilliant steel-blue. Her mouth dried. Behind her she heard Peter speak, but the roaring in her ears prevented his words from registering.
She had no difficulty hearing the stranger, however.
‘I think,’ he said, in a deep, deliberate voice with an exciting rasp in it like gravel beneath water, ‘we must share a gene pool. I’m Keane Paget.’
Subliminally she felt a rearrangement of the atmosphere that meant either Peter or Andrea had recognised the name. It took all of the poise she’d acquired in her twenty-nine years to reply steadily, ‘I’m Lecia Spring.’
‘So—cousin?’ He held out his hand.
Although she put hers into it, she shook her head. ‘We can’t be. I look like my father, and he looked like his father, and there are no other Spring relatives.’
His handshake was firm, his eyes searching. ‘The resemblance is too marked to be coincidental,’ he said with aloof assurance. ‘Here’s my card.’
After a quick, fumbling grope in her bag Lecia found one of her own. Without looking at his she put it into her pocket and said, trying hard to sound brisk and casual, ‘It must be an amazing, accidental fluke. Isn’t everyone supposed to have a double?’
Unfortunately the words tumbled out with all the precision and confidence of water babbling from a hose. So much, she thought bitterly, for casual briskness.
‘So the old wives say,’ Keane Paget said with a brief smile. ‘I prefer science to folklore every time.’ His gaze sweeping the other two, he nodded and said, ‘Good evening.’
And headed back towards the corporate tents.
‘Oh, boy!’ Andrea sighed, fanning herself with her open hand as her eyes rolled upwards. ‘I might faint. That voice sent shivers up and down my spine. To say nothing of what his eyes did to me! Who is he? You recognised the name, Peter, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’ Peter was an investment adviser, and from the tone of his voice Keane Paget came within his area of expertise. ‘He owns a company that makes ozone generators.’
‘And exactly what,’ asked Andrea, who lectured in Art History at the university, ‘is an ozone generator?’
‘It’s a device that uses electricity and air to purify water. They’ve been around for ever, but the ones Paget’s marketing are much more refined than the basic device, as well as cheaper and safer. He’s an up-and-coming industrialist, astute and hard-hitting, with his head screwed on the right way.’
‘I take that to mean that as well as being tough and clever he’s already rich and getting richer,’ Andrea said thoughtfully.
Amused, Peter replied, ‘Yes. He owns that firm, and he’s not going public in the immediate future.’ When Andrea opened her mouth he forestalled her with, ‘He’s not married, although he’s been seen out and about with some very beautiful women. And no, I don’t know who the woman with him was. I don’t move in his circle—haven’t the background or the connections.’
Andrea turned to Lecia. ‘So you’re almost certainly related to a man who’s making lots and lots of very nice money,’ she said, her eyes gleaming with mock avarice. ‘Nice going.’
Shocked by the relief she’d felt when Peter pronounced Keane Paget single, Lecia shrugged. ‘If we’re related. It gives me the creeps to know that someone else is wandering around with my face.’
‘Paget’s not a wanderer,’ Peter said wryly. ‘He’s a man who knows where he’s heading, and he’s getting there in a hurry. He’s begun exporting to Asia—doing very nicely too—and for all the profits to be made there it’s not an easy market. It needs enormous patience, guts and integrity, as well as a good brain and a damned good product.’
A gap in the crowd opened out; they slid into it and made their way the mile or so to Lecia’s flat in an old building down by the waterfront. As Peter escorted them all the way, common courtesy forced her to invite him into her sanctuary for a cup of coffee.
Once inside, Andrea asked, ‘Why haven’t we heard about Keane Paget? I mean, apart from being utterly gorgeous, he sounds the sort of man who turns up as the subject of respectful articles in high-powered magazines and newspapers.’
Peter grinned. ‘He is and he does. However, he doesn’t seem to indulge in the social round that ends up as photographs in the glossies. I suppose he likes his privacy.’
‘What a waste,’ Andrea mourned. ‘He could be making the lives of all young women—and a good few older ones, I bet—so much brighter if he just smiled at the camera occasionally. We could all practise swooning.’
‘Coffee’s ready,’ Lecia said, cutting into her friend’s flight of fancy as she carried the tray across to the low table in front of the sofa.
She steered the conversation away from Keane Paget, away from anything personal, her nerves tightening when Peter admired her flat, congratulating her on her clever design for the conversion of the old factory into apartments. He was amusing and intelligent and often perceptive, but his open desire to know her better sawed across emotions already fretted by the stranger with her face.
With great relief she heard Andrea redeem her earlier tactlessness by jumping to her feet and saying, ‘Time to go! Come on, Peter, we’ll share a taxi, shall we?’
Reluctantly, after an appealing glance at Lecia, he nodded, trailing behind Andrea as she strode off towards the lift.
Peter, Lecia decided when she’d waved them goodbye and locked the door behind them, looked like becoming a bit of problem. Unfortunately he was really a nice man, and she just didn’t have it in her to be rude to nice men.
‘Although you should have learned that lesson well and truly...’ she muttered, remembering another nice man she hadn’t been able to turn down. Poor Barry.
Well, that had been seven years ago. She’d grown up a lot since then, and as soon as possible she’d make sure Peter understood that they had no future together.
After she’d showered off the sunscreen and sweat she pulled on a loose cotton wrap striped in her favourite peach and cream, colours that went so well with her hair and clear ivory skin.
Keane Paget would look good in them too.
Wry amusement softened the wide curves of her mouth as she imagined that very masculine face and form decked out in such gentle, pretty shades.
The amusement faded as she stared at herself in the mirror. He’d cope; he looked as though he could cope with anything! He knew what colours suited him too; he’d been wearing a cream shirt with trousers the same intense dark blue as his eyes.
At the memory of those eyes something hot and tight knotted in the pit of Lecia’s stomach. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she told her reflection, slathering on moisturiser before using the hairdrier.
Only then did she go into her bedroom and take his card from her bag.
It was severe, restrained and conventional—a personal one, not a business affair. Keane Paget lived across the harbour bridge in the marine suburb of Takapuna, and from the street name his house probably overlooked Rangitoto, the dormant volcanic island that gave Auckland its distinctive skyline.
Money, she thought, and put the card down.
She was horrified at her disappointment when he didn’t ring the next day. Her Christmas and New Year had been so hectically social she’d decided to keep just for herself the January weekend when Auckland celebrated its status as a province of New Zealand.
However, in spite of having looked forward to it for weeks, she found Sunday echoing emptily, with yet another holiday on Monday to live through. The usually busy streets were empty and simmering with heat; everyone who could get there had deserted Auckland for the country or the beach.
Lecia opened every window in the flat, watered her plants and went down into the communal garden in search of inspiration. She’d been asked to supply sketches for a house needed by a vigorous middle-aged woman who’d bought a cross-leased section in the heart of one of the more expensive suburbs.
For such a decisive person, the prospective client had few ideas on what she needed beyond two bedrooms and space close by for a potting shed. Lecia played around with sketches, fitting rough floor plans into the site, knowing that if the woman decided to commission her she’d choose the house that allowed her most scope for a splendid garden and time to spend in it.
Absorbed by the challenge, Lecia spent hours in the lounger beneath the jacaranda, doodling and scribbling.
When she wasn’t thinking with a pencil in her hand she cleaned out two cupboards, went to the gym, ate dinner with her godson—a twenty-month-old charmer called Hugh, who spent the night with her—and delivered him to his parents the next morning, brushing aside their thanks for the opportunity to have had a glorious evening on the town.
Keane Paget still didn’t contact her.
And she did not ring him.
By the end of the week, Lecia had given up hope of hearing from the man. Not that it was hope, she told herself firmly on the too-frequent occasions when she recalled that proud, angular face. No, she certainly wasn’t hopeful, just curious, because she’d never previously experienced anything like that moment of obstinate, elemental identification. For a second she’d been wrenched out of time and space, as though she and Keane Paget had fused together.
During the hot, humid days of late summer Lecia tried to persuade herself that the half-hidden, inchoate feeling was a simple sense of kinship—and that the primal recognition, the compulsion of affinity, had not been darkened by a shadowy foreboding that still imprisoned her in a nebulous enthrallment.
Each lazy, sultry evening she thought of Keane Paget as she drifted off to sleep; she woke, tense and aching after nights of restless, urgent dreams, with his name and arrogant face stamped so strongly on her mind that she couldn’t banish either.
And sometimes during the day the dreams she couldn’t recall resurfaced as fleeting images, clear and bright as miniatures, each erotic glimpse firing her skin and drying her mouth.
The telephone rang early one morning while she was halfway through toast and Earl Grey tea. After swallowing some toast in such a rush it scraped her throat, she said, ‘Hello.’
‘Lecia, it’s Keane Paget. I’d like to take you out to lunch today if that’s possible.’
‘I’ll see,’ she said, not even thinking of refusing as she scrabbled through her diary. ‘Yes, I can do lunch.’
‘Good. Can you manage the South Seas at twelve-thirty?’
She had an appointment at three, so that gave her plenty of time. ‘No problem,’ she said, and because she must have sounded curt, added, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
‘I’ll see you then,’ he said, and hung up.
Short and to the point, she thought, replacing the receiver.
A bubble of—what? Elation? Excitement? Apprehension? No, an unnerving mixture of all three—expanded in her stomach. Lecia looked down at her fingers. Long and tense and—seeking—they were curled across the plastic handpiece as though she couldn’t bear to break contact.
Only once before in her life had she been so intensely conscious of her physicalness, of the nerves and cells, the atoms and electrons that made up the body she took for granted. Only once before had she been seduced by an inner force that bewitched her with a compulsi ve siren song, propelling her towards disaster.
Lecia had learned in a hard school that life went much more smoothly if she faced the truth about her emotions. So now she forced herself to accept what the reckless dreams, the constant preoccupation, the sensuous intensity of her feelings all meant.
It was quite simple really. She wanted the man who looked so much like her they could be twins. Except that wanting didn’t begin to describe what she felt. She couldn’t label her emotions; they were so tangled that it was impossible to separate out the strands.
Was she indulging in a pathetic, slightly sinister narcissism? Or was she taking the first step down the twisted, ruinous road to obsession? Obsession she understood. Eight years ago, after freeing herself from a messy relationship with a man who’d turned out to be married, she’d vowed that she’d never again allow it to clutch her in its mindless, greedy, degrading embrace.
Not that she’d learned her lesson properly. As though that humiliating episode with Anthony hadn’t been shattering enough, only a year later she’d been too thick to realise that Barry loved her with the same abject adoration she’d given to Anthony.
She’d got over Anthony; once she’d realised he was married, disgust and willpower had transformed her passion into revulsion. But Barry—whose only mistake had been his inability to set limits on his emotions—Barry was still suffering from her stupidity.
So she’d have lunch with Keane Paget just to satisfy her curiosity. If he wanted to take the acquaintanceship further, she’d very politely, very subtly, but very definitely pull away. She wasn’t going to fall into that trap again.
As though released from some spell, she stepped back from the telephone and picked up her teacup.
However, that morning she needed all her determination to concentrate on calculating specifications, and she stopped at least an hour before she needed to. With her office at home it would have been easy for her to wear comfortable, casual clothes like shorts and T-shirts, but she was a professional and she dressed accordingly.
A swift glance in the mirror revealed that however professional it was, the neat cotton dress wasn’t suitable for lunch at the South Seas, which was both fashionable and noted for its food. After she’d showered, Lecia a opened the doors of her wardrobe and stared morosely at the clothes inside.
It annoyed her that she wanted to look her best for Keane Paget. Frightened her too. In fact, she almost put the dress she’d been wearing back on, only to realise that if she did that she’d really be establishing his importance in her mind.
‘What would I wear if I was going out to lunch with a client?’ she asked the unresponsive air.
Old faithful, of course. Resignedly she took down the silk shift, dressy enough to be elegant, casual enough to be comfortable, in exactly the same clear green as her eyes. She hesitated over her hair; during the day she usually wore it free, but this time, for some reason she wasn’t prepared to examine, she wound the straight, glossy hank into a knot high on her head.
With more than normal care she applied lipstick and the lightest touch of eyeshadow in a gold-brown so pale it was a mere emphasis of her natural skin tone, then sprayed herself with her favourite perfume, Joy.
And, avoiding her reflection in the mirror as though they shared a guilty secret, she went out into the brilliant sunlight.
CHAPTER TWO
SEPARATED from the harbour by a busy road and docks, the apartment block was only a kilometre along the waterfront from the Viaduct Basin, where the South Seas was. Invigorated by the salty air, Lecia set off.
In summer the central city and waterfront was mostly given over to tourists, bright and noisy as a flock of transient birds. Exchanging smiles with several, Lecia passed the refurbished ferry building, still serving its original function between the trendy shops and restaurants that had infiltrated its old galleries. She told herself stoutly that she was looking forward to seeing whether the South Seas was as good as its reputation.
And that was all.
Outside the restaurant, under canopies like sails, people sat talking and eyeing the passers-by, but Keane Paget was waiting in the bar, reading something that looked like business papers.
As Lecia walked through the door he looked up, and in his face she caught a glimpse of the complicated shock she felt whenever she saw him. It vanished as he got to his feet.
Made absurdly self-conscious by his hooded scrutiny, she tried to ignore the swift glances and subdued speculation that followed her across the room. At least they won’t assume we’re lovers! she thought with mordant amusement, holding her head high.
‘With your hair up like that,’ Keane said, seating her before resuming his chair, ‘the resemblance is even more marked.’
She met his eyes frankly. ‘It’s uncanny,’ she said. ‘Like meeting a doppelgänger.’
‘I know. All the old fairy tales come ominously to life. What do you normally drink?’
‘Lime and soda, thank you.’
One dark brow—exactly the same shape as hers—lifted. ‘Nothing alcoholic?’
‘No. If I drink in the middle of the day I spend the afternoon fighting off sleep.’
He looked across the room. A waiter hurried up and Keane ordered her soda and a light ale for himself. ‘It slows me down too,’ he said, with a smile that was oddly unsettling.
Lecia’s stomach flipped. Keep cool! she commanded. Stop overreacting. So what if alcohol in the middle of the day turns us both into zombies? That happens to plenty of people—it doesn’t signify some sort of cosmic link!
After the waiter left Keane looked at her and said, ‘Would you have rung me?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Made aware by his coolly measuring glance that she wasn’t going to get away with an evasion, she said slowly, ‘I thought it might be wiser if I didn’t.’
‘Why?’
She stopped herself from shrugging. Instead, she looked a little blindly around the room. Several people hastily averted their fascinated gazes.
‘No logical reason,’ she said at last. ‘As you said, there’s something vaguely ominous about meeting someone with your face.’
‘I did wonder whether we were actually half-brother and sister,’ he said, tackling the subject head-on, ‘but we both resemble our fathers so that isn’t an issue.’
‘How do you know that?’
He gave her a direct, unsmiling look. ‘I had you investigated, of course,’ he said, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do.
Lecia stiffened. ‘I see,’ she said grittily. ‘That explains the past week of silence.’ And immediately wished she’d bitten her unruly tongue.
‘Yes,’ he said, watching her with amused, not unsympathetic eyes.
Fortunately the drinks arrived, giving Lecia time to compose herself. The nerve of him! Unable to swallow, she only touched her lips to the cold, moist glass before putting it down.
‘I presume,’ she said rigidly, ‘that your investigations went back as far as my childhood.’
‘I know that you’re Lecia Spring, born twenty-nine years ago in Australia to an Australian father and New Zealand mother. A year after your parents’ marriage in Melbourne your father had a severe fall and never recovered; he died before you were born.’
‘Your investigator is good,’ she said through her teeth.
‘The best. Monica, your mother, moved to New Zealand to be close to her parents, remarried when you were four, and now lives in Gisborne with her second husband, the owner of a very successful food processing business. You’re a clever, well-respected architect, with a lucrative practice that you keep small by working alone from your home. Why, incidentally?’
‘Because I like to be my own boss,’ she snapped, repelled by his dispassionate recital of the facts of her life.
‘So,’ he said, watching her from half-closed eyes, ‘do I. But you could expand, set up your own firm, employ other architects, and still be the boss.’
‘I’m not ready for that yet. I need more experience.’ It was her standard reason, and before it had always seemed perfectly adequate. It didn’t now.
However, he didn’t pursue the subject. Scrutinising her with leisurely, infuriating thoroughness, he continued, ‘When you were twenty-two you became engaged to another architecture student, but broke it off three months later. What happened?’
‘Looking like my brother does not give you any right to pry into my personal life,’ Lecia said with bleak, barely controlled precision, cringing at the thought of Keane Paget reading about that tragedy.
‘Technically speaking, I think you look like me,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m six years older than you, which must give me a priority claim on the genes.’
She choked back a reluctant gasp of laughter. ‘We’re not brother and sister,’ she observed, ‘but we certainly sound like a bickering pair. Have you got any?’
‘Brothers and sisters? No. There’s just me.’
The heavy lids half hiding his eyes imbued his gaze with a disturbing sensuality that set her nerve-ends jangling. However, nothing could conceal the keen perception in the steel-blue depths.
Trying to shake off her debilitating response so that she could speak objectively, she said, ‘We must be related, either through an illegal liaison or a common ancestor back in England before either side emigrated. The Springs have been in Australia for almost a hundred years, which puts any shared ancestor a long way back. And I don’t think any of them crossed the Tasman to New Zealand.’
‘The Pagets have been here for six generations,’ Keane said in a neutral voice. ‘I don’t know about any cross-Tasman voyaging amongst them, but it’s not wholly unlikely. And as we both look like our fathers—and mine looked very like his father—’
‘Mine too,’ she interpolated. ‘I’ve seen old photographs of my grandfather and great-grandfather, and they all have a very strong family likeness.’
He shrugged. ‘There has to be a connection somewhere. I refuse to believe that this uncanny resemblance is just a coincidental arrangement of genes.’
The waiter came over to say smoothly, ‘Your table is ready, Mr Paget.’
After they both got to their feet Keane took Lecia’s arm in an automatic grip, as though he did this with every woman he escorted. Old-fashioned manners, she thought, but he carried them off.
He could carry anything off—inctuding most of the women in this room, if their sideways glances were any indication.
When they’d been seated, the menus scanned and their orders given, Keane said, ‘I already know quite a lot about you, so what do you want to know about me?’
Everything, she thought hollowly. Aloud she said, ‘Are both your parents still alive?’
‘No.’ His expression didn’t alter but she knew she’d hit a nerve. ‘They died just before I turned six.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He drank some water, then set the glass down and said in a coolly dismissive tone that didn’t ring quite true, ‘It happened nearly thirty years ago. I can barely remember them.’
‘That would be about the same time my father died.’
‘The same year. His accident and its aftermath must have been damned tough on your mother.’
‘She doesn’t talk about it much, but yes, I think she suffered as much as he did. Still, she managed.’ Lecia looked up and met his eyes, her unruly heart-rate accelerating as she admitted, ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing here.’
‘Curiosity,’ he told her, his narrow smile not free from self-derision. ‘For both of us. However hard reason tries to convince me that we’re strangers, we wear our shared pedigree in our faces. Architecture is an unusual profession for a woman, surely?’
She shook her head. ‘Not that unusual, although there aren’t many of us yet—I think about four per cent of architects are women. Lots more are coming through university now. I love it.’
‘Do you design houses or commercial buildings?’
With something close to a snap, she said, ‘Surely your dossier tells you all that?’
‘I’m asking you,’ he said coolly, those perceptive eyes noting her defensiveness.
I’d hate to lie to him, she thought, saying aloud, ‘I’ve worked on several commercial developments, but I do enjoy houses. And shopping centres.’ She gave him a set little smile. ‘All very feminine.’
‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘You sound,’ she said evenly, ‘like a psychologist.’
Although his brows rose, he said nothing, just sat there surveying her with cool self-assurance.
Lecia sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit sensitive, I suppose. Some men—and women too—think that designing domestic buildings is an easy option.’
‘I was in one of your houses yesterday,’ he said. ‘It is charming and serene, and the owner loves it, says she’s never going to move and won’t have a thing changed.’
Her eyes lit up and she smiled. ‘What a lovely compliment!’
‘Especially as the house wasn’t designed for her. My great-aunt has just moved into it.’ He told her the address.
‘I remember it.’ Her expression sobered, because the woman she’d designed the house for had died six months before. ‘I hope your aunt enjoys living there,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you could go and find out,’ he said levelly. ‘She likes visitors.’
Lecia froze. It seemed to her that the invitation was significant, as though he’d decided to accept her into his family, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. After all she had a perfectly good family of her own.
She looked up. Keane Paget was watching her with eyes the colour of the sea beneath a summer cloud. Very steady, those eyes, hard and dispassionate and enigmatic—as unreadable as the rest of his face.
Mesmerised, Lecia listened as he went on, ‘She’s also the family historian. If anyone can fathom out the connection between us, Aunt Sophie can. Furthermore, she’ll love doing it. She has the finer instincts of a bloodhound. I can’t begin to tell you the number of skeletons she’s dragged out into the full light of day and displayed with a relish that’s definitely mischievous. Her motto is: The only good secret is an exposed secret.’
Captivated, Lecia laughed. ‘She sounds like one of the blood-thirstier genealogists.’
‘She likes to do things well. When she first became interested in hunting down ancestors she researched every method of organising information before deciding that the only way to do it properly was on a computer. So she bought the latest laptop.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Almost ninety. The Pagets either die young or live forever.’
‘Is she enjoying her computer?’
‘She’s an expert.’
His wryly affectionate smile slipped through Lecia’ s defences, reaching some inner part of her that had never been touched before. Uncertainly, she said, ‘She sounds fascinating.’
‘She’s certainly an identity. I’ll organise a time for you to meet her.’ He spoke confidently, as though it didn’t occur to him that his aunt might not want a strange young woman introduced to her.
Lecia said, ‘Oh—but—’ then stopped, realising she’d been outmanoeuvred by an expert.
‘But?’
‘Nothing,’ she said lamely.
And was assailed by a sensation of having walked through a forbidden door, one that had closed smoothly yet inexorably behind her.
You weren’t going to do this, her conscience—backed by the big guns of common sense—wailed. Remember—no further steps down that slippery road to obsession? He’s dangerous, and you’re behaving like the idiot you were when you first met Anthony.
The waiter arrived with their lunch—scallops in white wine for her, rare beef salad for him—and over it Keane asked, ‘Where did you get your pretty name?’
‘I think it’s come down through the family. At least I didn’t get lumbered with the name in all its medieval glory—Laetitia! Or worse, Lettice.’
‘It’s from the Latin, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It means gladness.’
He picked up his water glass. Lecia’s gaze followed the lean, strong hand—long-fingered, tanned and confident. Sensation shivered the length of her spine.
‘And are you glad?’ he asked quietly.
No, terrified.
And even worse, excited.
She managed to produce a shrug. ‘I’m reasonably optimistic—quite even-tempered,’ she said. ‘It probably does describe me.’
‘No highs, no lows, just a pleasant state of wellbeing?’
‘Mostly.’
And she’d fought to achieve that state, had spent years struggling towards it. However intriguing this situation—and this man—she refused to risk her contentment.
Gripped by the uncomfortable feeling that she was admitting things, giving herself away, Lecia embarked on another round of silent warnings. Keane himself was no threat to her. What she had to fear was her helpless, headlong response to the forceful masculinity that prowled behind the bars of his will.
‘How about you?’ she asked, ignoring the secret messages from her body, trying desperately to sound relaxed and calm and only idly curious about this distant cousin. ‘Are you a typical tycoon, working all day and into the night?’ She glanced at the leather briefcase at his feet.
His smile should be banned, she thought; it was challenging and utterly compelling and a threat to womankind. Humour lurked in it, and danger spiced the hint of arrogance that illuminated his angular features with a special magnetism.
‘It sounds as though you’ve been doing a little research of your own,’ he said blandly.
Lecia ate another scallop, appreciating the rich, delicate flavour with less than her usual enjoyment. ‘The friend I was with at the opera in the park gave me an article about you from one of the business magazines.’ Andrea had tracked it down and faxed it through the day before. Lecia had no intention of telling him she’d read it then thrown it in the rubbish. ‘There was a photograph too. It gave me quite a jolt,’ she confessed.
‘How do you think I felt, seeing my face in the crowd? I wanted to drag you out and ask you what the hell you were doing with it!’
Lecia’s brows shot up. ‘You didn’t move a muscle. I’m sure your—the woman with you didn’t notice.’
‘No, she didn’t.’ An edge of mockery sharpened his tone.
She’d been beautiful, the woman in the park, with subtle, clever style when it came to clothes. Well, Lecia thought, she herself wasn’t bad-tooking—
Whoa, there! This was not a contest, with Keane the prize!
The way her mind was running shocked and bewildered her. All right, she was attracted to Keane Paget; she could cope with that. It wasn’t even so surprising. He exuded an innate air of disciplined authority, of uncompromising competence. Allied to his obvious intelligence and unfair, far too potent charm, it made him, she thought shrewdly, a walking, talking summons to most women.
What scared her was the hint of risky decadence that cast a dark shadow across her response. Was part of this unsettling, goaded attraction a prohibited thrill at their close resemblance, the way her features were manifested in his more chiselled, hard-edged face?
Damn it, she thought, pushing the last scallop around her plate, she’d been interested in men before and never felt as though she stood on the brink and one step could fire her into heaven—or drop her straight into hell.
Not even with Anthony, the man she’d once loved so violently, who’d made her feel that all control of her emotions. was being wrested from her by forces too strong for her to resist.
Because she’d hated that helplessness, she’d learned from the whole, horrible experience, developing both judgement and the prudence to pull away from danger before she got in too deep. Her eminently satisfactory life was not up for grabs.
Besides, Keane could be another woman’s lover. And Lecia never poached.
So she’d call a halt. Tactfully, she’d refuse any invitation to meet his aunt. It wouldn’t take long, she thought, avoiding those penetrating eyes, for Keane to get the message.
She found something else to talk about, hoping she’d managed the switch of subject smoothly enough to appear sophisticated, and was relieved when the meal ended. Logic—and pragmatic, boring old common sense—warned her that the more she saw of Keane the more difficult it would be to refuse his invitations, to stop thinking about him—dreaming of him...
Not that he wanted to linger. After she refused a cup of coffee he glanced across the room and almost immediately a waiter headed towards them.
This ability to summon waiters from the void fascinated Lecia. Perhaps it was because Keane was well-known in the restaurant and a good customer.
Perhaps, but she thought wryly that it probably happened whenever Keane Paget looked up. He had presence, the sort of aura that caught people’s attention.
Paying for the meal took little time, and when they rose Keane once more took Lecia’s arm. Scoffing that the tingle of electricity that leapt from nerve-end to nerve-end when he touched her was not only improbable but a cliché, she allowed herself to be steered across the Italian tiled floor towards the bright sunlight outside.
From somewhere close by a man said something and laughed.
Lecia felt the colour drain from her skin in a clammy rush. Blinking, she forced her gaze in the direction of the voice.
Of course it wasn’t Anthony. A perfectly strange man with a blond moustache leaned across a table and lifted a woman’s hand to his mouth. Anthony had been dark and sophisticated, and he’d no more have kissed her hand in public than he’d have taken his shoes off.
As she registered the sweet rush of deliverance Lecia realised that it wouldn’t have mattered if the stranger had been Anthony. She no longer loved him—had never loved the real Anthony, the married man whose mistress she’d been for a few short weeks until someone had told her about his wife.
Without missing a step, she walked on.
‘Are you all right?’ Keane asked, the sensuously rough timbre in his voice suddenly transmuted to harshness.
Remotely she said, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
But she wasn’t, because when he said, ‘I’ll drop you off,’ she nodded and thanked him and went into the parking building with him.
In the car, Keane asked, ‘What happened?’ He didn’t switch on the engine, so the words hung heavily in the dim quietness.
Lecia drew in a painful breath. ‘It was just—I was surprised.’
‘Is he the man you were engaged to?’
‘No!’ And before he could probe further she said aloofly. ‘I’m surprised your detective didn’t discover that Barry lives in Wellington now.’
Keane ignored that. ‘Then who was the man who laughed inside the restaurant?’
‘A total stranger. I’ve never seen him before in my life.’
‘But he reminded you of someone you’re afraid of.’
‘No!’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not afraid of anyone.’
Only of herself. Of this weakness that made her fall in lust with a certain sort of man.
‘Do you usually go white so dramatically whenever a man laughs?’ Keane touched her cheek. ‘You’re still cold,’ he added judicially, his sharp, perceptive eyes relentless.
His hand slid to the pulse beneath her ear, lingering there for a second. Lecia’s breath clogged her throat so that she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think above the fast chatter of her heartbeat in her ears.
Clenching her jaw, she froze. What prevented her from seeking comfort by turning her face into that warm, strong hand was not willpower; it was an understanding, based on intuition rather than reason, that Keane Paget would take swift advantage of any surrender, however symbolic.
When he pulled his hand away she felt bereft, cold, aching for something she couldn’t even name.
‘Clearly whoever you mistook him for was the last person you wanted to see,’ Keane said aloofly.
Rallying, Lecia told him, ‘He reminded me of somene I disliked.’
Keane must have decided that he didn’t want to get any further involved, for he didn’t press her.
However, after starting the vehicle and avoiding a car that had stalled in the middle of the road, he said thoughtfully, ‘I find it rather difficult to imagine any circumstances that would shock you to that extent. I thought you were going to faint.’
‘Hardly. And, like most other people, I have an occasional skeleton walled up in the past.’
‘Not entirely forgotten.’ Buried beneath the level voice, like hidden rocks in a stream, was anger.
Taken aback, Lecia deliberately stilled her nervous hands and stared out of the side window.
The harbour danced under the summer sun; sails flew above it, white and rainbow-coloured against the low peninsula that ended in the naval base at Devonport. Behind it, separated by a narrow channel, brooded the forest-covered slopes of Rangitoto, the last little volcano to emerge on the isthmus. That had happened only a few hundred years ago, and geologists expected more to thrust up from the hot spot that lurked a hundred kilometres or so beneath Auckland.
Not in her time, Lecia fervently hoped. She felt as though she was sitting over that hot spot right then.
Keane observed, ‘I suppose it was an affair.’
‘I’m sure that if you had a sister she’d tell you to mind your own business.’ She tried to make her voice amused rather than tense, but didn’t think she’d succeeded.
He’d come too close to the truth, and she couldn’t bear him to learn how stupid and utterly naïve she’d once been. Lecia’s mouth twisted in derision. She’d never thought she’d be glad of Anthony’s sordid discretion, but at least it meant there were no records for anyone to paw through.
‘I rather wish you were my sister,’ Keane said, halting the car outside the entrance to her block.
Of course—his private detective would have told him where she lived.
The hard angles of Keane’s face were much more pronounced, and there was an unsettling watchfulness in the compelling eyes—eyes the colour of the sheen on a gun barrel, Lecia thought suddenly, and shivered, because he’d admitted that she wasn’t the only one fighting the dark temptation of desire.
‘Yes, you’d be much more comfortable as a brother,’ she said quietly, formally. ‘Thank you for lunch; I enjoyed it very much.’
Dark brows pulled together. ‘I’ll come up with you,’ he said.
Shaking her head, Lecia opened the door. ‘There’s no need, I’m perfectly all right. Goodbye.’ And she got out, closed the door firmly behind her, and walked across to the entrance of the apartment block without once looking back.
Nevertheless, she knew that Keane waited until she got to the two shallow steps before he drove away.
Lecia headed straight across the foyer and out into the garden, collapsing on a seat beneath the jacaranda tree.
That had been a nasty moment. Odd that although she no longer cared for Anthony at all she couldn’t get over this sickening guilt.
Staring at the starry flowers of the summer jasmine that draped itself eagerly over a nearby pergola, inhaling the sweet scent drifting on the humid air, she tried to calm herself with the plant’s simple beauty. The flowers blurred and she pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, holding back a dull throbbing.
However tempting it was to stay there, she had to do something about this headache because she had clients to see in an hour. If she took an aspirin immediately she’d probably be all right.
By the time her clients arrived the headache had dwindled to a drained, dispirited lassitude that made her normal cheerful professionalism difficult to achieve. Fortunately the young couple loved the sketches and the concept, and were very enthusiastic over her cost-saving ideas; although they agreed to think it over and contact her the following day Lecia was almost sure it would be a formality.
She should be celebrating. Instead, she drank a glass of orange juice and gazed blindly at the street below. Because hers was one of the cheapest flats in the development she had no view of the harbour. She didn’t miss it. One end of the sitting room looked down onto the visitors’ parking area and the street, but from her bedroom and kitchen she could see the garden, and usually that was refreshment enough for her soul.
Not today, however.
She’d made the right decision to cut off any communication with Keane Paget—the only decision! The echo of the past that had seen her glimpse Anthony in the man at the restaurant had reinforced it for her. Keane was the same type as Anthony; both possessed enormous masculine charisma wrapped up in a gorgeously male body, both were powerful men, driven to achieve, clever and tough and more than a little ruthless.
Sourly hoping that Keane had more honour than Anthony, she sat down and began to check through yet another set of specifications.
Much later, the irritating summons of the telephone interrupted her concentration. Blinking, she realised that it was getting dark outside, which meant she’d missed dinner again.
Absently, her mind still full of stress loadings and other figures, she got to her feet, knocking a pile of papers to the floor. The answering machine was on, so she bent to pick up the scattered sheets, aware that it might be Peter.
It was not. Instead, Keane’s deep voice said, ‘My great-aunt would be delighted to meet you and thank you for her new house. I’ll pick you up tomorrow evening at seven.’
Click as he replaced the receiver.
Lecia scrambled to her feet, dumped the papers on the desk and muttered, ‘Why didn’t you wait, for heaven’s sake? I’d have got there.’
Damn. Damn, damn, damn! Now she’d have to ring him back and tell him she wasn’t going.
His card! Where had she put his card?
Five minutes later she knew it hadn’t gone into her daily file, and it wasn’t in her bag or her diary. Had she thrown it away? She couldn’t remember doing so, but she must have.
Quite sensible of her unconscious mind if she had! Sighing in disgust, she pulled out the telephone directory. There were quite a few Pagets, three of whom had the initial K. None of those lived on the North Shore. Setting her chin, she rang Directory Service, only to be told that Keane’s number was unlisted.
She couldn’t remember what the name of his business was, and it would be crass to ask Peter, who did know. But there was the article Andrea had given her—no, she’d thrown that away too.
Glowering balefully at the telephone, she said, ‘Bloody hell!’ and stamped out into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Unless she found that wretched card soon she was going to have to be ready at seven tomorrow evening.
When the telephone rang again she dropped the knife with which she was eviscerating an avocado, put the fruit on the bench and raced to answer it.
This time it was Peter.
‘Hello, Lecia,’ he said, cheerfully buoyant. ‘How nice to see you last week.’
Resigned, she said, ‘We had a super day, didn’t we? I especially enjoyed the fireworks.’
‘I enjoyed looking at you as you enjoyed them,’ he said somewhat ponderously. ‘I wondered whether you’d like to come to Don Giovanni with me next weekend. I hear it’s an excellent production.’
Gently, she said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I won’t be able to do that.’
His voice altered a fraction. ‘Then—dinner?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said.
Recovering quickly, he chatted for a few minutes and then hung up. She would not, she thought, be hearing from him again, and she hoped he hadn’t been building dreams because she hated having to hurt him. He was a nice man.
It was just unfortunate that she seemed attracted to men with an edge to them.
Dangerous men.
Men like Anthony—and like Keane, who was quite possibly having an affair with the lovely woman he’d escorted to the park.
Forbidden men.
Perhaps that was her hang-up. At least she’d learned to stay well away from such men. Never again was she going to endure that guilt and shame and degrading humiliation.
As Keane’s card remained obstinately lost, at seven the following evening Lecia was ready, wearing the shades of peach and gold that best flattered her skin and eyes. For some reason—one she didn’t plan to explore—she didn’t want him to see her apartment; she waited in the garden on a seat skilfully placed so she could see through the vestibule to the main entrance.
And, in spite of the stern talking-to she had given herself, an unwanted, unbidden knot of excitement twisted in her stomach, and she had to keep her hands open because sweat collected in tiny beads on the palms.
As soon as Keane’s tall form appeared at the front doors she got to her feet and walked into the vestibule. Silhouetted against the sunny street outside, he watched her without moving. He was, she realised with a subtle stirring of the senses, a very big man. Within her, tension tightened a notch into anticipation. Hoping that none of her inner turmoil showed, she smiled as she came up to him.
He said, ‘You look almost edible.’ A note of mockery in the deep, sensual voice robbed the compliment of sweetness.
‘Summer fruits. And I look like you,’ she retorted, reminding herself as well as him.
His eyes lingered for taut seconds on her face. ‘Had a bad day?’
Unwillingly her mouth eased into a wry smile. ‘I spent the morning at a building site, arguing with a man who apparently can’t read plans or specifications and is convinced no mere woman can either.’
‘How did you deal with that?’
‘I have this trick.’ She could feel some of her irritation fading as she spoke. ‘I pick up a nail and a hammer, put the nail into the wood and slam it in with one blow of the hammer. For some reason the fact that I can drive a nail straight and true and right in to its head persuades most men that I know what I’m talking about.’
He laughed. ‘How long did you have to practise?’
‘A week,’ she said, straight-faced.
‘There’s nothing like a dramatic gesture to get the picture across. What happened this afternoon?’
‘Ah, this afternoon I discussed costs with a possible client who thought he’d be able to get a mansion at cottage prices. He also thought that I’d be prepared to sleep with him for the honour of being his architect. He’s no longer a possible client.’
Oh, stupid, stupid! Why had she told him?
Keane said something under his breath that made her flinch before demanding with harsh distinctness, ‘Who is he?’
Lecia shrugged, her gaze never leaving the hard-hewn contours of his face as she said evenly, ‘It doesn’t—’
Very quietly he repeated, ‘Who is he?’
Lecia’s throat closed. She stared into eyes as cold and piercing as ice spears, saw his mouth set into a thin, straight line, and the tiny pulse that flicked against his jawbone.
‘Don’t try to be brotherly.’ Her voice sounded strained and unnaturally steady. ‘I’m not your sister and I can look after myself.’
‘Does it happen often?’ His tone was cool, almost impersonal, but she needed only to look at the stark, arrogant line of his jaw to know that he was still dangerously furious.
‘Not often,’ she said, ‘but it does happen. And not only to me—lots of women in business and professional life have to deal with harassment.’
‘I want to know who he is.’
She met the fierce glint in his eyes just as fiercely. ‘I’m not going to tell you.’
And she saw the leash of his will rein in the killing fury, watched it die down until his face reflected nothing but a flinty, unyielding detachment.
‘Very well.’ He took her arm and led her around the corner towards the narrow parking lot for guests’ cars. ‘Come on, we’d better be on our way or Aunt Sophie will think I’ve forgotten.’
Lecia had to remind herself to breathe. Although she’d sensed that uncompromising temper right from the start, she hadn’t understood just how formidable he could be. And yet, in spite of it, just to be with him caused a white-hot anticipation mixed with pleasure of such intensity that she’d already relegated the frustrations of the day to limbo.
And that’s how it started last time, she reminded herself grimly as he put her into the front of his large, opulent car. Anthony made you laugh and scrambled your brain until you couldn’t think straight.
Just remember how you dealt with that!
CHAPTER THREE
SOPHIE WARBURTON was tall, elegant and aristocratic, with the same blue eyes as her great-nephew and the nose, cleft chin and cheekbones Lecia shared with them both. She looked at least twenty years younger than her age.
‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed after one comprehensive glance at Lecia. ‘Oh, yes, you are definitely one of us!’
She was charming, thanking Lecia for the house, showing her around it with pride, and insisting Keane drink a glass of her favourite whisky with her when Lecia decided in favour of sherry.
Only then did she say, ‘My dear, since Keane told me about you yesterday I’ve had a quick look through the records and there’s no sign of any link across the Tasman. The logical assumption, of course, is that somebody’s illegitimate child is the connection, but I can’t see when it could have happened.’
‘Neither can I,’ Lecia said. ‘I don’t know much about my father’s family, but my mother has told me that as far back as anyone can remember they’ve only ever had one child a generation, and from photographs I know they all looked like each other. And like Keane,’ she said, adding with a half-smile, ‘except that they were all bald. Even my father had lost most of his hair when he died.’
‘Whereas all of the Pagets have excellent heads of hair,’ Aunt Sophie said, nodding.
A teasing smile softened Keane’s hard mouth. Hastily Lecia said, ‘I assume the pattern goes right back to when the first one emigrated.’
Keane’s aunt laughed. ‘In genealogy it never pays to assume,’ she said. ‘Our ancestors were a formidable and upright lot, but they committed all the sins we do and they lied a lot more about some of them. It’s quite possible that a Paget might have paid a visit to Australia—or a Spring to New Zealand—and been reckless. We’re going to have to track down all the documentation and read it with an astute and sceptical mind. And then see if there’s anything to be picked up between the lines.’
Clearly the idea filled her with the zeal of a true enthusiast. Lecia exchanged an involuntary glance with Keane, noting the amusement and affection in his eyes.
Oh, hell, she thought despairingly. It was much easier to keep behind her defences when he was being aloof and detached.
‘Of course,’ Mrs Warburton pursued, ‘it could well have been back in England.’
Lecia nodded. ‘Although—woutd the genes predominate through all those generations?’
‘They’re good, strong genes,’ the older woman said, smiling as she looked from Lecia’s face to her great-nephew’s and then back again. ‘What do you know about your forebears?’
Acutely conscious of Keane’s speculative, intent regard, Lecia told her what small amount of family history she’d heard, ending, ‘I think I can find out more from my mother, although she doesn’t know a lot about my father’s family.’
‘My dear, would you mind? Shall I write to her?’
‘No,’ Lecia said, making a spur-of-the-moment decision, ‘I’ll ask her.’
An eager, vital smile, the expression of a woman with a mission, lit up Mrs Warburton’s face. ‘How exciting to discover a fresh branch of the family! And such a talented one! My dear, you must call me Aunt Sophie.’
Lecia flushed, aware that by accepting the compliment she was making it more and more difficult to keep a sufficient distance between her and Keane. ‘Thank you,’ she said without looking his way, ‘I’d like that.’
She had cousins and uncles on her mother’s side, and a big, extended family belonging to her stepfather, but the knowledge that she might have relatives from the Spring line filled a vacuum she’d never acknowledged until then.
Aunt Sophie entertained them for another half-hour before Keane got to his feet and said, ‘We have to go, I’m afraid.’
His great-aunt smiled up at him, her expression making it clear that she loved him dearly.
‘Thank you for bringing Lecia,’ she said. ‘I now see whole new fields of endeavour opening out in front of me. I can’t wait!’
In the car, Keane asked casually, ‘Have you had dinner?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Lecia lied.
His mouth tightened as he put the vehicle in gear and directed it down the drive. ‘Coward,’ he said. ‘You can come and watch me eat mine.’
‘No, thank you, I have...’ Her voice trailed away. She was not good at lying, and he didn’t believe her anyway. Her hands moved, caught each other, clung.
‘Why are you afraid of me?’ he asked.
‘I’m not!’
‘Afraid of yourself, then?’ His swift sideways glance caught the truth. ‘Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? Why?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with fear,’ she said, grabbing desperately at some semblance of calmness. ‘It just makes me feel strange to look at you and see my own face. I feet—invaded. No, cloned. Oh, I don’t know what I feel, but I don’t like it!’
‘If we’d had brothers or sisters we’d be accustomed to it,’ he said imperturbably.
‘Well, yes, but...’ Again her voice faded. She certainly wasn’t going to explain that she couldn’t control her wildfire, unwanted attraction to him, and that she found it threatening.
Especially as she had no idea what he felt. Curiosity, of course; both he and his great-aunt were intrigued by the discovery of a new member of the family, and Lecia thought that they both liked to get to the bottom of things.
As she did.
Apart from that, his feelings were as suspect as hers. The ugly word ‘narcissism’ covered that sort of attraction—making her recall the sad legend of the Greek youth who fell in love with his own reflection and died because he couldn’t see anyone else more worthy of his love.
Or was this pull between them nothing more than an instinctive recognition of blood ties, a recognition she was mistaking for desire?
Anyway, there was the woman who’d been with him at the opera, who might be his lover. A network of nerves woke to instant heat. Hastily banishing the feverish images that ambushed her from some hidden part of her psyche, Lecia looked around, for a moment not realising where they were.
He was turning the vehicle into the car park of a restaurant perched halfway up one of Auckland’s little volcanic cones. ‘We’ll get used to seeing ourselves in each other’s face,’ he said, with a confidence that irritated her anew.
So he intended to keep in touch. In spite of her good intentions the prospect lifted her spirits, adding more fuel to the unruly bonfire of emotions that fed her responses.
‘I don’t think I ever will,’ she said neutrally.
As they were shown to their table—one overlooking the city and the sea, of course—he asked with an oblique smile, ‘What’s your decision?’
‘What?’ No, her heart wasn’t beating faster, nor were her eyes sparkling beneath her lashes. She wouldn’t allow herself to be overcome by sexual hunger.
‘You appeared to be weighing up two courses of action, neither of which appealed,’ Keane said smoothly.
The last of the daylight was fleeing, sinking into swift, sudden darkness. When it became too risky to hold his gaze, Lecia turned her head and concentrated on the view outside. She could just make out the saturated brilliance of bougainvillaea flowers tossed over a trellis; within moments the lights in the harbour leapt into prominence and all colour was smothered by the inexorable arrival of night.
She retorted, ‘I was mildly annoyed by your calm assumption that I’d go out to dinner with you. I like to be asked.’
A dark eyebrow lifted. ‘But as it’s in the family...?’
When she shook her head he looked at her with narrowed eyes and said deliberately, ‘No, I don’t feel related to you either.’ Before she could respond to this he went on, ‘Tell me, do you have to show every foreman on every building site that you can drive a straight nail?’
‘Only the most recalcitrant.’ Lecia’s gaze drifted down to the crystal vase of lime-green zinnias and gypsophila in the centre of the table, scanned the shining silverware, the white linen napkin in her lap, the way her hands were folded on top of it.
Keane said, ‘Obviously sexism is alive and well in the trade.’
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, as though they were under some kind of spell. A little too loudly she said, ‘There are still a lot of men—not only on construction sites—who believe that women just naturally don’t understand technology. Add to that many builders’ distrust of architects, and you get some real diehards.’
‘But you manage.’
Her smile was ironic. ‘I do a good job, and if they’ve got any intelligence at all—and most of them have—they realise that soon enough. The others I get heavy with.’
He laughed softly, and her heart clenched. ‘Horses for courses.’
‘Anything that gets the job done,’ she admitted. ‘What about your organisation? Do you employ women as executives?’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘All I’m interested in is whether a woman can do the work.’
Lecia nodded, holding his eyes. ‘But if one of her children is sick,’ she asked, ‘what happens then?’
He lifted his brows. ‘Some women arrange for work to be sent home, some use the company nurse. We have a set of systems that we use, adapting them to each case.’
‘Very advanced,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I run a profitable business, and that means dealing with life as it’s lived today, not as it was forty years ago. Women work, so business has to accommodate them and their needs. It applies to men too; the days are long gone when companies expected men to put their welfare before that of their wives and families. I don’t work long hours myself—I certainly don’t expect my employees to make such sacrifices.’
‘And you don’t notice any loss of efficiency?’
‘As far as I’m concerned, a man who has to work more than eight or nine hours a day is either overworked, in which case we hire someone else to take up the extra, or he’s not efficient. If he’s not efficient, he gets help. Of course, if he doesn’t improve then he doesn’t last long.’
Advanced ideas, certainly, but he was tough with them.
After they’d ordered they discussed business generally, and his business especially. He made her laugh with some of his stories, and he treated her as a professional equal. As they talked she kept catching glimpses of compassion and understanding beneath his sharply dynamic intelligence.
He wasn’t the sort of man anyone would try to exploit, she thought, but he was obviously a good employer, a man who respected his employees while expecting them to do their jobs properly.
She said something about the generators he made, adding when he raised his eyebrows, ‘I have a professional interest in filters, but I read about your company in an article a friend sent me.’
‘Was that the friend who gave you an ice cream as I came level with you at the Domain?’ Keane’s smile hardened swiftly into a challenge. ‘The man who kissed you.’
‘Did he?’ She met his gaze with a cool challenge of her own. ‘I don’t remember. And no, it wasn’t Peter. Andrea, the tall redhead who was also there, faxed me the article.’
‘I remember. Very attractive, with excellent bones. She’ll make a stunning octogenarian,’ he said, adding idly, ‘Is the ice-cream man your lover?’
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Robyn Donald
Not only opposites attract! When Lecia first spotted Keane Paget, his presence burned like a shining beacon. He was handsome, certainly, and profoundly male, but the face that stared back at her was otherwise her own! Lecia was stunned… hypnotized… and it wasn't just his likeness - an unsettling, wild attraction immediately coursed between them.They say that the greater the resemblance, the happier the relationship. But Lecia's passions had only ever led to heartbreak - and guilt! No, Keane Paget was dangerous. Not only did he have her face, he seemed to see inside her soul! They were too alike for comfort. Resist, resist… .
“Why are you afraid of me?” (#uf1f37e71-c910-5eef-acd8-74f9bbd77b9a)About the Author (#u1fcffd22-40b1-528f-b7b9-26a5c1facf76)Title Page (#ua2132d4b-179b-5666-ae40-e328498847f1)CHAPTER ONE (#u0f006e49-13bb-5767-ac2b-24c819e955a2)CHAPTER TWO (#ubf2940ec-a81e-5f3d-8906-c84bb055c528)CHAPTER THREE (#ue49cb9b5-6c5c-55bc-918b-bfe869a57d7d)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Why are you afraid of me?”
“I’m not!”
“Afraid of yourself, then?” Keane’s swift sideways glance caught the truth. “Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? Why?”
“It’s got nothing to do with fear,” she said, grabbing desperately at some semblance of calmness. “It makes me feel strange to look at you and see my own face. I feel—invaded. No, cloned. Oh, I don’t know what I feel, but I don’t like it!”
“If we’d had brothers or sisters, we’d be accustomed to it,” he said imperturbably.
“Well, yes, but...” Again her voice faded. She certainly wasn’t going to explain that she couldn’t control her wildfire, unwanted attraction to him.
ROBYN DONALD has always lived in Northland in New Zealand, initially on her father’s stud dairy farm at Warkworth, then in the Bay of Islands, an area of great natural beauty where she lives today with her husband and an ebullient and mostly Labrador dog. She resigned her teaching position when she found she enjoyed writing romances more, and now spends any time not writing in reading, gardening, traveling and writing letters to keep up with her two adult children and her friends.
Tiger, Tiger
Robyn Donald
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘LECIA, look at that man! The tall one walking towards us with the very chic blonde beside him. He could be your twin!’
Lecia Spring’s clear green gaze followed her friend’s discreet nod towards the man coming up the marked path between the thousands of people who’d decided that watching opera in the Auckland Domain was the perfect way to spend this summer afternoon.
Broad-shouldered in a well-cut shirt, and with legs that seemed to stretch for miles, he strode through the press of people, apparently expecting them to part in front of him and his companion like the sea before Moses. Which was exactly what was happening.
That formidable confidence was something Lecia envied. He stood about six inches taller than her five feet eight inches, and except for a pronounced male toughness his face was the one that looked out from her mirror every morning.
Primitive, superstitious apprehension kicked her in the gut.
‘Same bone structure,’ Andrea was muttering excitedly. ‘Same straight, long nose with the tiniest bump on the bridge and—heavens, yes—the same cleft chin! I can’t believe it! You’re fairer, but you both have honey-coloured hair. Dark manuka honey in his case, closer to clover in yours! He must be related to you.’
‘He can’t be,’ Lecia returned, prickling all over with absurd diffidence. ‘I agree, he looks just like Dad, but Dad had no relatives except his parents.’
‘Cousins? Everyone has cousins.’
‘Not in Dad’s family. They were a most unproductive lot. Just one child each generation back as far as anyone remembers—and always a son until I turned up to break the pattern.’
Lecia’s glance travelled to the woman beside the unknown man. Slim, with a patrician face, she wore clothes that were exactly right. As befitted the occasion, they were casual, although she’d dressed the outfit up with a gold chain and supple Italian sandals. The floaty silk shirt and trousers, cool, expensive and elegant, suited her. And she knew it.
Repressing a sudden twist to her heart, Lecia concentrated on what she was about to say. ‘Anyway, Dad was an Australian and this is New Zealand.’
‘What a shame.’ Andrea sighed and murmured throatily, ‘If he was a relative you could introduce me. Talk about the it factor! That woman’s staring at him as though she’d eat him if she had the chance.’
Andrea was right. Although nothing but relaxed interest showed in that lovely face, the man’s companion couldn’t hide the awareness surrounding her like an aura.
Switching her gaze back to the strong bones and hard-honed masculinity that stamped the stranger’s face, Lecia observed, ‘He’d be a tough mouthful.’
‘Those calories I’d really enjoy,’ Andrea said suggestively. ‘I lo-o-ove the way he walks! As though he expects the whole world to scuttle out of his way. I’ll bet he’s a tiger in bed.’
Lecia forced a smile into her tone. ‘You can tell that by looking at him?’
‘And so can every other woman here. You’re just obstinately refusing to read the signals.’ Andrea put on her sunglasses and assumed what she thought was an English accent. ‘Note, my dear Watson, the way those muscles work together, so powerfully smooth and sure. He’s coming up the hill without even sweating, so he has stamina.’ She growled the final word with comical lasciviousness. ‘Terribly important is stamina. And because he’s wearing clothes that cost more than half my salary—and we know how rare inherited wealth is in New Zealand—we can deduce that he’s not only rich, he’s intelligent enough to hold down a very good job. Intelligence, dear Watson, is another vital attribute in a lover.’
Lecia’s amusement was diluted by another emotion, a kind of shocked bewilderment. Hypnotised, she gazed at the man, absorbing greedily the cool, commanding presence, the way the sun was imprisoned in the tawny amber hair, the golden hue of his skin.
Beside her, Andrea continued, ‘As for passion—well, just take a quick glance at that mouth! It’s kept very firmly under restraint, but it’s there.’ Shuddering enjoyably, she pushed her sunglasses onto the top of her head and surveyed the approaching man with bright, intrigued eyes.
Lecia swallowed. ‘It’s uncanny,’ she mumbled, assailed by an odd feeling of connection, a bond forged only by their shared features. ‘And very unsettling.’
Reluctantly, Andrea dragged her gaze away to scan Lecia’s taut face. ‘I suppose it is,’ she said slowly. ‘Come to think of it, I wouldn’t like to meet my double, however gorgeous he was.’
By this time it was plain that the man and his companion were making for the corporate tents on the low hill behind the crowd. All his attention seemed to be on the woman at his side, but when a small child barrelled out in front of him and tripped, he stopped in mid-stride and picked the child up, setting her on her feet with a gentleness at variance with his autocratic air.
The toddler puckered up her face and let out a wail. Immediately the man swung her to his shoulder and turned so that the people in the crowd could see the child. A woman scrambled to her feet and began to shuffle through the blankets and picnics and umbrellas and seated people.
When she reached him the man handed the child over with a few unsmiling words before walking on. Cuddling the toddler, the woman stared with an offended expression after the tall, lean figure. Not until somebody bumped into her did she shrug and make her way back into the crowd.
‘I wonder what he said?’ Andrea hissed. ‘Judging by the frown on the mother’s face it wasn’t exactly a compliment.’
‘The child shouldn’t have been able to get that far without her noticing,’ Lecia said curtly. ‘It would be so easy for a little thing to get lost in all this crowd. Her mother should have kept a closer watch on her.’
Andrea laughed. ‘That’s probably exactly what he said. You see, you even think alive.’
The stranger was only a few metres away. For some reason Lecia wanted to hunch down, keep her head low in case he saw her. It was a ridiculous impulse, and one she refused to obey, although she did turn her face away and look across to the stage.
But at the sound of her name her head whipped around, and her gaze collided with that of the stranger.
Something dissolved in her stomach—no, she thought dazedly, in her bones. His dark blue eyes registered astonishment before they hardened into a polished, unreadable sheen.
‘Here you are, girls,’ came a male voice. ‘Eat them quickly because they’re already melting.’
Peter Farring looped an arm around Lecia’s shoulders and dropped a kiss on the top of her head before she had time to move away. The stranger’s burnished gaze flicked over the man beside her. Without breaking stride, he switched it to the path ahead and walked on up the hill.
Shakily Lecia took the proffered ice-cream cone, took a deep breath and produced a smile. ‘Thanks very much.’
‘My pleasure,’ Peter said gallantly.
Between enthusiastic ticks, Andrea told him all about the man with Lecia’s face. ‘Lecia says he looks just like her father,’ she finished, ‘in spite of the fact that she doesn’t have any relatives on her father’s side.’
‘None?’ Peter asked, intrigued. ‘But there could have been—ah—well, not all families know exactly who all their relatives are.’ His flush made his meaning clear.
Lecia shrugged. ‘That’s the only possibility, but this man’s ancestor must have visited Australia, because I’ve never heard of a Spring travelling to New Zealand until my mother and I came back after my father died.’
‘If he’s not reasonably closely connected,’ Andrea pronounced, ‘I’ll give up champagne for a year.’
‘He must be beautiful.’ Peter’s tone made it obvious that the compliment was only directed at Lecia.
Andrea gave a little crow of laughter. ‘No, although he is gorgeous. He has the same features as Lecia but they’re completely, arrogantly and very sexily masculine. You know how brothers and sisters often look alike, yet there’s no mistaking which is the man and which the woman? Well, Lecia and this guy could be twins. Same physique too—he must be well over six feet. They even walk the same—that smooth, graceful gait with something slightly predatory in it.’
‘Oh, good Lord,’ Lecia sighed, unusually irritable. ‘What an imagination you have!’
‘You know what I mean, don’t you?’ Andrea said to Peter with the stunning lack of tact that occasionally made Lecia wonder why she was still her best friend. ‘There’s something not quite tamed about Lecia. That’s the way this guy looks; golden and lithe and dangerous. Monarch of all he surveys.’
And then, too late, Lecia saw her remember that, although Lecia liked Peter, only a week ago she’d decided not to encourage his pursuit of her.
‘I know exactly what you mean,’ Peter said with a slow, smiling glance that made Lecia squirm inside.
As Andrea’s current lover didn’t enjoy opera, she’d proposed that she and Lecia spend the afternoon together. Unfortunately, no sooner had they settled on their rug beneath the sun umbrella than Peter had seen them and suggested they join forces. There was no reason why they shouldn’t—except, Lecia thought with brutal honesty, that it was always disconcerting to meet someone who showed every sign of being in love with you when you couldn’t reciprocate.
Consciously unpleating her brows, Lecia said lightly, ‘Probably if you saw us side by side we’d only resemble each other very superficially.’
But the impact of that swift, shocking moment when her eyes had linked with the stranger’s had left her with a racing pulse and a body awash with adrenalin. She wanted to hide, to make sure he didn’t see her again.
Most emphatically she didn’t want to discuss him. Andrea, however, hadn’t finished with the subject. ‘It sounds as though the only possible link must be some sort of illicit liaison.’
Briskly Lecia conceded, ‘Almost certainly. According to my mother—one of the few bits of family history she knows—the first Spring came out to Australia from Britain, and apparently he always said he had no relatives.’
‘Of course nobody in those days would say anything about kids born on the wrong side of the blanket. He could be a long-lost second cousin several times removed,’ Andrea decided. ‘You should have made contact with that gorgeous beast, Lecia.’
Lecia shrugged. ‘Let sleeping beasts lie,’ she said curtly.
Within the space of a heartbeat the stranger had seen her, recognised their similarity, and rejected it. No way was she going to pursue him.
But she couldn’t get him out of her head. It had been so uncanny, that unexpected sight of her own features stamped in a more arrogant mould.
Once her mother had told her an old story of a girl who had looked into a well and seen beside her reflection the face of the man she would eventually marry.
In the hot sunlight Lecia’s skin chilled. Now she knew exactly how that girl felt.
‘...so Lecia told him that she wasn’t going to design a house for a woman she didn’t know,’ Andrea said, breaking into infectious laughter.
Scandalised, Peter said, ‘Lecia, how could you? What did he say?’
Amidst more gurgles, Andrea told him, ‘He said he liked a woman with spirit. And then—get this!—and then he asked her out to dinner to meet his wife!’
‘Hang on.’ Peter frowned. ‘You mean he’d commissioned you to design the house and his wife hadn’t been consulted?’
‘Exactly,’ Lecia said somewhat grimly. ‘I didn’t even realise there was a wife. Mind you, he turned out to be an old sweetie, and his wife actually knew how to manage him perfectly, but all the same it’s the first time I’ve been asked to design a house for a woman without even seeing her. I really thought I’d lost the commission and that he’d stamp out and find another architect.’
‘Nonsense,’ Andrea said, her tone tinged with mock resignation. ‘Like all your other clients, he fell in love with you.’
‘Hardly,’ Lecia said drily, wishing she could kick her, and skilfully turned the conversation.
After that the afternoon passed pleasantly, and Lecia told herself that the strange sensation between her shoulderblades was simply overreaction. There was no way the man with her face could see her amidst the three hundred and fifty thousand people who had poured into the low-sided crater of the Domain. In company with a third of Auckland’s population, she ate and talked and laughed and drank until eventually the sun went down and the concert began.
It was a confection of favourites delivered with verve and joie de vivre to the good-humoured crowd, the programme topped off by four songs from the golden throat of a world-famous soprano. Then came the part most of the children—and many of the adults, Lecia thought, looking at the excited faces around her—had been waiting for.
‘“The Ride of the Valkyries”!’ the presenter announced with a flourish. Orchestra and conductor swung into the music, followed almost immediately by green and red lasers creating an unearthly light show. Fireworks soared and burst dramatically into the warm, clear night sky, and from the low rim of the crater more fireworks surrounded the huge crowd with a smoky red glow.
Entranced by the eerie light, Lecia jumped when a battery from the army fired guns beside the stage, but the unleashed thunder satisfied something childlike and primitive in her. Tipping back her head, she admired more sunbursts of flame high in the sky, all to the sound of Wagner at his most dramatic.
And when it was all over she laughed as Andrea said irrepressibly, ‘Totally over the top! That’s what I call a climax!’
Still charmed by the spectacle, they collected together the rugs and sunshades, lifted the insulated boxes that had held their food, and waited a moment for a gap in the crowd making for the various roads around the Domain.
A sharp dig in her ribs made Lecia jump and look round indignantly.
‘I knew it,’ Andrea muttered. ‘Look, over there...’
Coming towards them was the stranger.
Lecia’s heart kicked into overdrive. For a second she tried to convince herself that he hadn’t seen her—that he was just going home as they were—but the purposefulness in his expression as he cut through the crowd convinced her she was wrong.
She only had time to gulp in a meagre breath before he stopped in front of her, and helplessly she looked up into eyes of a dark, brilliant steel-blue. Her mouth dried. Behind her she heard Peter speak, but the roaring in her ears prevented his words from registering.
She had no difficulty hearing the stranger, however.
‘I think,’ he said, in a deep, deliberate voice with an exciting rasp in it like gravel beneath water, ‘we must share a gene pool. I’m Keane Paget.’
Subliminally she felt a rearrangement of the atmosphere that meant either Peter or Andrea had recognised the name. It took all of the poise she’d acquired in her twenty-nine years to reply steadily, ‘I’m Lecia Spring.’
‘So—cousin?’ He held out his hand.
Although she put hers into it, she shook her head. ‘We can’t be. I look like my father, and he looked like his father, and there are no other Spring relatives.’
His handshake was firm, his eyes searching. ‘The resemblance is too marked to be coincidental,’ he said with aloof assurance. ‘Here’s my card.’
After a quick, fumbling grope in her bag Lecia found one of her own. Without looking at his she put it into her pocket and said, trying hard to sound brisk and casual, ‘It must be an amazing, accidental fluke. Isn’t everyone supposed to have a double?’
Unfortunately the words tumbled out with all the precision and confidence of water babbling from a hose. So much, she thought bitterly, for casual briskness.
‘So the old wives say,’ Keane Paget said with a brief smile. ‘I prefer science to folklore every time.’ His gaze sweeping the other two, he nodded and said, ‘Good evening.’
And headed back towards the corporate tents.
‘Oh, boy!’ Andrea sighed, fanning herself with her open hand as her eyes rolled upwards. ‘I might faint. That voice sent shivers up and down my spine. To say nothing of what his eyes did to me! Who is he? You recognised the name, Peter, didn’t you?’
‘I did.’ Peter was an investment adviser, and from the tone of his voice Keane Paget came within his area of expertise. ‘He owns a company that makes ozone generators.’
‘And exactly what,’ asked Andrea, who lectured in Art History at the university, ‘is an ozone generator?’
‘It’s a device that uses electricity and air to purify water. They’ve been around for ever, but the ones Paget’s marketing are much more refined than the basic device, as well as cheaper and safer. He’s an up-and-coming industrialist, astute and hard-hitting, with his head screwed on the right way.’
‘I take that to mean that as well as being tough and clever he’s already rich and getting richer,’ Andrea said thoughtfully.
Amused, Peter replied, ‘Yes. He owns that firm, and he’s not going public in the immediate future.’ When Andrea opened her mouth he forestalled her with, ‘He’s not married, although he’s been seen out and about with some very beautiful women. And no, I don’t know who the woman with him was. I don’t move in his circle—haven’t the background or the connections.’
Andrea turned to Lecia. ‘So you’re almost certainly related to a man who’s making lots and lots of very nice money,’ she said, her eyes gleaming with mock avarice. ‘Nice going.’
Shocked by the relief she’d felt when Peter pronounced Keane Paget single, Lecia shrugged. ‘If we’re related. It gives me the creeps to know that someone else is wandering around with my face.’
‘Paget’s not a wanderer,’ Peter said wryly. ‘He’s a man who knows where he’s heading, and he’s getting there in a hurry. He’s begun exporting to Asia—doing very nicely too—and for all the profits to be made there it’s not an easy market. It needs enormous patience, guts and integrity, as well as a good brain and a damned good product.’
A gap in the crowd opened out; they slid into it and made their way the mile or so to Lecia’s flat in an old building down by the waterfront. As Peter escorted them all the way, common courtesy forced her to invite him into her sanctuary for a cup of coffee.
Once inside, Andrea asked, ‘Why haven’t we heard about Keane Paget? I mean, apart from being utterly gorgeous, he sounds the sort of man who turns up as the subject of respectful articles in high-powered magazines and newspapers.’
Peter grinned. ‘He is and he does. However, he doesn’t seem to indulge in the social round that ends up as photographs in the glossies. I suppose he likes his privacy.’
‘What a waste,’ Andrea mourned. ‘He could be making the lives of all young women—and a good few older ones, I bet—so much brighter if he just smiled at the camera occasionally. We could all practise swooning.’
‘Coffee’s ready,’ Lecia said, cutting into her friend’s flight of fancy as she carried the tray across to the low table in front of the sofa.
She steered the conversation away from Keane Paget, away from anything personal, her nerves tightening when Peter admired her flat, congratulating her on her clever design for the conversion of the old factory into apartments. He was amusing and intelligent and often perceptive, but his open desire to know her better sawed across emotions already fretted by the stranger with her face.
With great relief she heard Andrea redeem her earlier tactlessness by jumping to her feet and saying, ‘Time to go! Come on, Peter, we’ll share a taxi, shall we?’
Reluctantly, after an appealing glance at Lecia, he nodded, trailing behind Andrea as she strode off towards the lift.
Peter, Lecia decided when she’d waved them goodbye and locked the door behind them, looked like becoming a bit of problem. Unfortunately he was really a nice man, and she just didn’t have it in her to be rude to nice men.
‘Although you should have learned that lesson well and truly...’ she muttered, remembering another nice man she hadn’t been able to turn down. Poor Barry.
Well, that had been seven years ago. She’d grown up a lot since then, and as soon as possible she’d make sure Peter understood that they had no future together.
After she’d showered off the sunscreen and sweat she pulled on a loose cotton wrap striped in her favourite peach and cream, colours that went so well with her hair and clear ivory skin.
Keane Paget would look good in them too.
Wry amusement softened the wide curves of her mouth as she imagined that very masculine face and form decked out in such gentle, pretty shades.
The amusement faded as she stared at herself in the mirror. He’d cope; he looked as though he could cope with anything! He knew what colours suited him too; he’d been wearing a cream shirt with trousers the same intense dark blue as his eyes.
At the memory of those eyes something hot and tight knotted in the pit of Lecia’s stomach. ‘You’re an idiot,’ she told her reflection, slathering on moisturiser before using the hairdrier.
Only then did she go into her bedroom and take his card from her bag.
It was severe, restrained and conventional—a personal one, not a business affair. Keane Paget lived across the harbour bridge in the marine suburb of Takapuna, and from the street name his house probably overlooked Rangitoto, the dormant volcanic island that gave Auckland its distinctive skyline.
Money, she thought, and put the card down.
She was horrified at her disappointment when he didn’t ring the next day. Her Christmas and New Year had been so hectically social she’d decided to keep just for herself the January weekend when Auckland celebrated its status as a province of New Zealand.
However, in spite of having looked forward to it for weeks, she found Sunday echoing emptily, with yet another holiday on Monday to live through. The usually busy streets were empty and simmering with heat; everyone who could get there had deserted Auckland for the country or the beach.
Lecia opened every window in the flat, watered her plants and went down into the communal garden in search of inspiration. She’d been asked to supply sketches for a house needed by a vigorous middle-aged woman who’d bought a cross-leased section in the heart of one of the more expensive suburbs.
For such a decisive person, the prospective client had few ideas on what she needed beyond two bedrooms and space close by for a potting shed. Lecia played around with sketches, fitting rough floor plans into the site, knowing that if the woman decided to commission her she’d choose the house that allowed her most scope for a splendid garden and time to spend in it.
Absorbed by the challenge, Lecia spent hours in the lounger beneath the jacaranda, doodling and scribbling.
When she wasn’t thinking with a pencil in her hand she cleaned out two cupboards, went to the gym, ate dinner with her godson—a twenty-month-old charmer called Hugh, who spent the night with her—and delivered him to his parents the next morning, brushing aside their thanks for the opportunity to have had a glorious evening on the town.
Keane Paget still didn’t contact her.
And she did not ring him.
By the end of the week, Lecia had given up hope of hearing from the man. Not that it was hope, she told herself firmly on the too-frequent occasions when she recalled that proud, angular face. No, she certainly wasn’t hopeful, just curious, because she’d never previously experienced anything like that moment of obstinate, elemental identification. For a second she’d been wrenched out of time and space, as though she and Keane Paget had fused together.
During the hot, humid days of late summer Lecia tried to persuade herself that the half-hidden, inchoate feeling was a simple sense of kinship—and that the primal recognition, the compulsion of affinity, had not been darkened by a shadowy foreboding that still imprisoned her in a nebulous enthrallment.
Each lazy, sultry evening she thought of Keane Paget as she drifted off to sleep; she woke, tense and aching after nights of restless, urgent dreams, with his name and arrogant face stamped so strongly on her mind that she couldn’t banish either.
And sometimes during the day the dreams she couldn’t recall resurfaced as fleeting images, clear and bright as miniatures, each erotic glimpse firing her skin and drying her mouth.
The telephone rang early one morning while she was halfway through toast and Earl Grey tea. After swallowing some toast in such a rush it scraped her throat, she said, ‘Hello.’
‘Lecia, it’s Keane Paget. I’d like to take you out to lunch today if that’s possible.’
‘I’ll see,’ she said, not even thinking of refusing as she scrabbled through her diary. ‘Yes, I can do lunch.’
‘Good. Can you manage the South Seas at twelve-thirty?’
She had an appointment at three, so that gave her plenty of time. ‘No problem,’ she said, and because she must have sounded curt, added, ‘I’ll look forward to it.’
‘I’ll see you then,’ he said, and hung up.
Short and to the point, she thought, replacing the receiver.
A bubble of—what? Elation? Excitement? Apprehension? No, an unnerving mixture of all three—expanded in her stomach. Lecia looked down at her fingers. Long and tense and—seeking—they were curled across the plastic handpiece as though she couldn’t bear to break contact.
Only once before in her life had she been so intensely conscious of her physicalness, of the nerves and cells, the atoms and electrons that made up the body she took for granted. Only once before had she been seduced by an inner force that bewitched her with a compulsi ve siren song, propelling her towards disaster.
Lecia had learned in a hard school that life went much more smoothly if she faced the truth about her emotions. So now she forced herself to accept what the reckless dreams, the constant preoccupation, the sensuous intensity of her feelings all meant.
It was quite simple really. She wanted the man who looked so much like her they could be twins. Except that wanting didn’t begin to describe what she felt. She couldn’t label her emotions; they were so tangled that it was impossible to separate out the strands.
Was she indulging in a pathetic, slightly sinister narcissism? Or was she taking the first step down the twisted, ruinous road to obsession? Obsession she understood. Eight years ago, after freeing herself from a messy relationship with a man who’d turned out to be married, she’d vowed that she’d never again allow it to clutch her in its mindless, greedy, degrading embrace.
Not that she’d learned her lesson properly. As though that humiliating episode with Anthony hadn’t been shattering enough, only a year later she’d been too thick to realise that Barry loved her with the same abject adoration she’d given to Anthony.
She’d got over Anthony; once she’d realised he was married, disgust and willpower had transformed her passion into revulsion. But Barry—whose only mistake had been his inability to set limits on his emotions—Barry was still suffering from her stupidity.
So she’d have lunch with Keane Paget just to satisfy her curiosity. If he wanted to take the acquaintanceship further, she’d very politely, very subtly, but very definitely pull away. She wasn’t going to fall into that trap again.
As though released from some spell, she stepped back from the telephone and picked up her teacup.
However, that morning she needed all her determination to concentrate on calculating specifications, and she stopped at least an hour before she needed to. With her office at home it would have been easy for her to wear comfortable, casual clothes like shorts and T-shirts, but she was a professional and she dressed accordingly.
A swift glance in the mirror revealed that however professional it was, the neat cotton dress wasn’t suitable for lunch at the South Seas, which was both fashionable and noted for its food. After she’d showered, Lecia a opened the doors of her wardrobe and stared morosely at the clothes inside.
It annoyed her that she wanted to look her best for Keane Paget. Frightened her too. In fact, she almost put the dress she’d been wearing back on, only to realise that if she did that she’d really be establishing his importance in her mind.
‘What would I wear if I was going out to lunch with a client?’ she asked the unresponsive air.
Old faithful, of course. Resignedly she took down the silk shift, dressy enough to be elegant, casual enough to be comfortable, in exactly the same clear green as her eyes. She hesitated over her hair; during the day she usually wore it free, but this time, for some reason she wasn’t prepared to examine, she wound the straight, glossy hank into a knot high on her head.
With more than normal care she applied lipstick and the lightest touch of eyeshadow in a gold-brown so pale it was a mere emphasis of her natural skin tone, then sprayed herself with her favourite perfume, Joy.
And, avoiding her reflection in the mirror as though they shared a guilty secret, she went out into the brilliant sunlight.
CHAPTER TWO
SEPARATED from the harbour by a busy road and docks, the apartment block was only a kilometre along the waterfront from the Viaduct Basin, where the South Seas was. Invigorated by the salty air, Lecia set off.
In summer the central city and waterfront was mostly given over to tourists, bright and noisy as a flock of transient birds. Exchanging smiles with several, Lecia passed the refurbished ferry building, still serving its original function between the trendy shops and restaurants that had infiltrated its old galleries. She told herself stoutly that she was looking forward to seeing whether the South Seas was as good as its reputation.
And that was all.
Outside the restaurant, under canopies like sails, people sat talking and eyeing the passers-by, but Keane Paget was waiting in the bar, reading something that looked like business papers.
As Lecia walked through the door he looked up, and in his face she caught a glimpse of the complicated shock she felt whenever she saw him. It vanished as he got to his feet.
Made absurdly self-conscious by his hooded scrutiny, she tried to ignore the swift glances and subdued speculation that followed her across the room. At least they won’t assume we’re lovers! she thought with mordant amusement, holding her head high.
‘With your hair up like that,’ Keane said, seating her before resuming his chair, ‘the resemblance is even more marked.’
She met his eyes frankly. ‘It’s uncanny,’ she said. ‘Like meeting a doppelgänger.’
‘I know. All the old fairy tales come ominously to life. What do you normally drink?’
‘Lime and soda, thank you.’
One dark brow—exactly the same shape as hers—lifted. ‘Nothing alcoholic?’
‘No. If I drink in the middle of the day I spend the afternoon fighting off sleep.’
He looked across the room. A waiter hurried up and Keane ordered her soda and a light ale for himself. ‘It slows me down too,’ he said, with a smile that was oddly unsettling.
Lecia’s stomach flipped. Keep cool! she commanded. Stop overreacting. So what if alcohol in the middle of the day turns us both into zombies? That happens to plenty of people—it doesn’t signify some sort of cosmic link!
After the waiter left Keane looked at her and said, ‘Would you have rung me?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
Made aware by his coolly measuring glance that she wasn’t going to get away with an evasion, she said slowly, ‘I thought it might be wiser if I didn’t.’
‘Why?’
She stopped herself from shrugging. Instead, she looked a little blindly around the room. Several people hastily averted their fascinated gazes.
‘No logical reason,’ she said at last. ‘As you said, there’s something vaguely ominous about meeting someone with your face.’
‘I did wonder whether we were actually half-brother and sister,’ he said, tackling the subject head-on, ‘but we both resemble our fathers so that isn’t an issue.’
‘How do you know that?’
He gave her a direct, unsmiling look. ‘I had you investigated, of course,’ he said, as though it were the most normal thing in the world to do.
Lecia stiffened. ‘I see,’ she said grittily. ‘That explains the past week of silence.’ And immediately wished she’d bitten her unruly tongue.
‘Yes,’ he said, watching her with amused, not unsympathetic eyes.
Fortunately the drinks arrived, giving Lecia time to compose herself. The nerve of him! Unable to swallow, she only touched her lips to the cold, moist glass before putting it down.
‘I presume,’ she said rigidly, ‘that your investigations went back as far as my childhood.’
‘I know that you’re Lecia Spring, born twenty-nine years ago in Australia to an Australian father and New Zealand mother. A year after your parents’ marriage in Melbourne your father had a severe fall and never recovered; he died before you were born.’
‘Your investigator is good,’ she said through her teeth.
‘The best. Monica, your mother, moved to New Zealand to be close to her parents, remarried when you were four, and now lives in Gisborne with her second husband, the owner of a very successful food processing business. You’re a clever, well-respected architect, with a lucrative practice that you keep small by working alone from your home. Why, incidentally?’
‘Because I like to be my own boss,’ she snapped, repelled by his dispassionate recital of the facts of her life.
‘So,’ he said, watching her from half-closed eyes, ‘do I. But you could expand, set up your own firm, employ other architects, and still be the boss.’
‘I’m not ready for that yet. I need more experience.’ It was her standard reason, and before it had always seemed perfectly adequate. It didn’t now.
However, he didn’t pursue the subject. Scrutinising her with leisurely, infuriating thoroughness, he continued, ‘When you were twenty-two you became engaged to another architecture student, but broke it off three months later. What happened?’
‘Looking like my brother does not give you any right to pry into my personal life,’ Lecia said with bleak, barely controlled precision, cringing at the thought of Keane Paget reading about that tragedy.
‘Technically speaking, I think you look like me,’ he said calmly. ‘I’m six years older than you, which must give me a priority claim on the genes.’
She choked back a reluctant gasp of laughter. ‘We’re not brother and sister,’ she observed, ‘but we certainly sound like a bickering pair. Have you got any?’
‘Brothers and sisters? No. There’s just me.’
The heavy lids half hiding his eyes imbued his gaze with a disturbing sensuality that set her nerve-ends jangling. However, nothing could conceal the keen perception in the steel-blue depths.
Trying to shake off her debilitating response so that she could speak objectively, she said, ‘We must be related, either through an illegal liaison or a common ancestor back in England before either side emigrated. The Springs have been in Australia for almost a hundred years, which puts any shared ancestor a long way back. And I don’t think any of them crossed the Tasman to New Zealand.’
‘The Pagets have been here for six generations,’ Keane said in a neutral voice. ‘I don’t know about any cross-Tasman voyaging amongst them, but it’s not wholly unlikely. And as we both look like our fathers—and mine looked very like his father—’
‘Mine too,’ she interpolated. ‘I’ve seen old photographs of my grandfather and great-grandfather, and they all have a very strong family likeness.’
He shrugged. ‘There has to be a connection somewhere. I refuse to believe that this uncanny resemblance is just a coincidental arrangement of genes.’
The waiter came over to say smoothly, ‘Your table is ready, Mr Paget.’
After they both got to their feet Keane took Lecia’s arm in an automatic grip, as though he did this with every woman he escorted. Old-fashioned manners, she thought, but he carried them off.
He could carry anything off—inctuding most of the women in this room, if their sideways glances were any indication.
When they’d been seated, the menus scanned and their orders given, Keane said, ‘I already know quite a lot about you, so what do you want to know about me?’
Everything, she thought hollowly. Aloud she said, ‘Are both your parents still alive?’
‘No.’ His expression didn’t alter but she knew she’d hit a nerve. ‘They died just before I turned six.’
‘I’m sorry.’
He drank some water, then set the glass down and said in a coolly dismissive tone that didn’t ring quite true, ‘It happened nearly thirty years ago. I can barely remember them.’
‘That would be about the same time my father died.’
‘The same year. His accident and its aftermath must have been damned tough on your mother.’
‘She doesn’t talk about it much, but yes, I think she suffered as much as he did. Still, she managed.’ Lecia looked up and met his eyes, her unruly heart-rate accelerating as she admitted, ‘I don’t really know what I’m doing here.’
‘Curiosity,’ he told her, his narrow smile not free from self-derision. ‘For both of us. However hard reason tries to convince me that we’re strangers, we wear our shared pedigree in our faces. Architecture is an unusual profession for a woman, surely?’
She shook her head. ‘Not that unusual, although there aren’t many of us yet—I think about four per cent of architects are women. Lots more are coming through university now. I love it.’
‘Do you design houses or commercial buildings?’
With something close to a snap, she said, ‘Surely your dossier tells you all that?’
‘I’m asking you,’ he said coolly, those perceptive eyes noting her defensiveness.
I’d hate to lie to him, she thought, saying aloud, ‘I’ve worked on several commercial developments, but I do enjoy houses. And shopping centres.’ She gave him a set little smile. ‘All very feminine.’
‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘You sound,’ she said evenly, ‘like a psychologist.’
Although his brows rose, he said nothing, just sat there surveying her with cool self-assurance.
Lecia sighed. ‘Sorry. I’m a bit sensitive, I suppose. Some men—and women too—think that designing domestic buildings is an easy option.’
‘I was in one of your houses yesterday,’ he said. ‘It is charming and serene, and the owner loves it, says she’s never going to move and won’t have a thing changed.’
Her eyes lit up and she smiled. ‘What a lovely compliment!’
‘Especially as the house wasn’t designed for her. My great-aunt has just moved into it.’ He told her the address.
‘I remember it.’ Her expression sobered, because the woman she’d designed the house for had died six months before. ‘I hope your aunt enjoys living there,’ she said.
‘Perhaps you could go and find out,’ he said levelly. ‘She likes visitors.’
Lecia froze. It seemed to her that the invitation was significant, as though he’d decided to accept her into his family, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about that. After all she had a perfectly good family of her own.
She looked up. Keane Paget was watching her with eyes the colour of the sea beneath a summer cloud. Very steady, those eyes, hard and dispassionate and enigmatic—as unreadable as the rest of his face.
Mesmerised, Lecia listened as he went on, ‘She’s also the family historian. If anyone can fathom out the connection between us, Aunt Sophie can. Furthermore, she’ll love doing it. She has the finer instincts of a bloodhound. I can’t begin to tell you the number of skeletons she’s dragged out into the full light of day and displayed with a relish that’s definitely mischievous. Her motto is: The only good secret is an exposed secret.’
Captivated, Lecia laughed. ‘She sounds like one of the blood-thirstier genealogists.’
‘She likes to do things well. When she first became interested in hunting down ancestors she researched every method of organising information before deciding that the only way to do it properly was on a computer. So she bought the latest laptop.’
‘How old is she?’
‘Almost ninety. The Pagets either die young or live forever.’
‘Is she enjoying her computer?’
‘She’s an expert.’
His wryly affectionate smile slipped through Lecia’ s defences, reaching some inner part of her that had never been touched before. Uncertainly, she said, ‘She sounds fascinating.’
‘She’s certainly an identity. I’ll organise a time for you to meet her.’ He spoke confidently, as though it didn’t occur to him that his aunt might not want a strange young woman introduced to her.
Lecia said, ‘Oh—but—’ then stopped, realising she’d been outmanoeuvred by an expert.
‘But?’
‘Nothing,’ she said lamely.
And was assailed by a sensation of having walked through a forbidden door, one that had closed smoothly yet inexorably behind her.
You weren’t going to do this, her conscience—backed by the big guns of common sense—wailed. Remember—no further steps down that slippery road to obsession? He’s dangerous, and you’re behaving like the idiot you were when you first met Anthony.
The waiter arrived with their lunch—scallops in white wine for her, rare beef salad for him—and over it Keane asked, ‘Where did you get your pretty name?’
‘I think it’s come down through the family. At least I didn’t get lumbered with the name in all its medieval glory—Laetitia! Or worse, Lettice.’
‘It’s from the Latin, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. It means gladness.’
He picked up his water glass. Lecia’s gaze followed the lean, strong hand—long-fingered, tanned and confident. Sensation shivered the length of her spine.
‘And are you glad?’ he asked quietly.
No, terrified.
And even worse, excited.
She managed to produce a shrug. ‘I’m reasonably optimistic—quite even-tempered,’ she said. ‘It probably does describe me.’
‘No highs, no lows, just a pleasant state of wellbeing?’
‘Mostly.’
And she’d fought to achieve that state, had spent years struggling towards it. However intriguing this situation—and this man—she refused to risk her contentment.
Gripped by the uncomfortable feeling that she was admitting things, giving herself away, Lecia embarked on another round of silent warnings. Keane himself was no threat to her. What she had to fear was her helpless, headlong response to the forceful masculinity that prowled behind the bars of his will.
‘How about you?’ she asked, ignoring the secret messages from her body, trying desperately to sound relaxed and calm and only idly curious about this distant cousin. ‘Are you a typical tycoon, working all day and into the night?’ She glanced at the leather briefcase at his feet.
His smile should be banned, she thought; it was challenging and utterly compelling and a threat to womankind. Humour lurked in it, and danger spiced the hint of arrogance that illuminated his angular features with a special magnetism.
‘It sounds as though you’ve been doing a little research of your own,’ he said blandly.
Lecia ate another scallop, appreciating the rich, delicate flavour with less than her usual enjoyment. ‘The friend I was with at the opera in the park gave me an article about you from one of the business magazines.’ Andrea had tracked it down and faxed it through the day before. Lecia had no intention of telling him she’d read it then thrown it in the rubbish. ‘There was a photograph too. It gave me quite a jolt,’ she confessed.
‘How do you think I felt, seeing my face in the crowd? I wanted to drag you out and ask you what the hell you were doing with it!’
Lecia’s brows shot up. ‘You didn’t move a muscle. I’m sure your—the woman with you didn’t notice.’
‘No, she didn’t.’ An edge of mockery sharpened his tone.
She’d been beautiful, the woman in the park, with subtle, clever style when it came to clothes. Well, Lecia thought, she herself wasn’t bad-tooking—
Whoa, there! This was not a contest, with Keane the prize!
The way her mind was running shocked and bewildered her. All right, she was attracted to Keane Paget; she could cope with that. It wasn’t even so surprising. He exuded an innate air of disciplined authority, of uncompromising competence. Allied to his obvious intelligence and unfair, far too potent charm, it made him, she thought shrewdly, a walking, talking summons to most women.
What scared her was the hint of risky decadence that cast a dark shadow across her response. Was part of this unsettling, goaded attraction a prohibited thrill at their close resemblance, the way her features were manifested in his more chiselled, hard-edged face?
Damn it, she thought, pushing the last scallop around her plate, she’d been interested in men before and never felt as though she stood on the brink and one step could fire her into heaven—or drop her straight into hell.
Not even with Anthony, the man she’d once loved so violently, who’d made her feel that all control of her emotions. was being wrested from her by forces too strong for her to resist.
Because she’d hated that helplessness, she’d learned from the whole, horrible experience, developing both judgement and the prudence to pull away from danger before she got in too deep. Her eminently satisfactory life was not up for grabs.
Besides, Keane could be another woman’s lover. And Lecia never poached.
So she’d call a halt. Tactfully, she’d refuse any invitation to meet his aunt. It wouldn’t take long, she thought, avoiding those penetrating eyes, for Keane to get the message.
She found something else to talk about, hoping she’d managed the switch of subject smoothly enough to appear sophisticated, and was relieved when the meal ended. Logic—and pragmatic, boring old common sense—warned her that the more she saw of Keane the more difficult it would be to refuse his invitations, to stop thinking about him—dreaming of him...
Not that he wanted to linger. After she refused a cup of coffee he glanced across the room and almost immediately a waiter headed towards them.
This ability to summon waiters from the void fascinated Lecia. Perhaps it was because Keane was well-known in the restaurant and a good customer.
Perhaps, but she thought wryly that it probably happened whenever Keane Paget looked up. He had presence, the sort of aura that caught people’s attention.
Paying for the meal took little time, and when they rose Keane once more took Lecia’s arm. Scoffing that the tingle of electricity that leapt from nerve-end to nerve-end when he touched her was not only improbable but a cliché, she allowed herself to be steered across the Italian tiled floor towards the bright sunlight outside.
From somewhere close by a man said something and laughed.
Lecia felt the colour drain from her skin in a clammy rush. Blinking, she forced her gaze in the direction of the voice.
Of course it wasn’t Anthony. A perfectly strange man with a blond moustache leaned across a table and lifted a woman’s hand to his mouth. Anthony had been dark and sophisticated, and he’d no more have kissed her hand in public than he’d have taken his shoes off.
As she registered the sweet rush of deliverance Lecia realised that it wouldn’t have mattered if the stranger had been Anthony. She no longer loved him—had never loved the real Anthony, the married man whose mistress she’d been for a few short weeks until someone had told her about his wife.
Without missing a step, she walked on.
‘Are you all right?’ Keane asked, the sensuously rough timbre in his voice suddenly transmuted to harshness.
Remotely she said, ‘I’m fine, thank you.’
But she wasn’t, because when he said, ‘I’ll drop you off,’ she nodded and thanked him and went into the parking building with him.
In the car, Keane asked, ‘What happened?’ He didn’t switch on the engine, so the words hung heavily in the dim quietness.
Lecia drew in a painful breath. ‘It was just—I was surprised.’
‘Is he the man you were engaged to?’
‘No!’ And before he could probe further she said aloofly. ‘I’m surprised your detective didn’t discover that Barry lives in Wellington now.’
Keane ignored that. ‘Then who was the man who laughed inside the restaurant?’
‘A total stranger. I’ve never seen him before in my life.’
‘But he reminded you of someone you’re afraid of.’
‘No!’ She took a deep breath. ‘I’m not afraid of anyone.’
Only of herself. Of this weakness that made her fall in lust with a certain sort of man.
‘Do you usually go white so dramatically whenever a man laughs?’ Keane touched her cheek. ‘You’re still cold,’ he added judicially, his sharp, perceptive eyes relentless.
His hand slid to the pulse beneath her ear, lingering there for a second. Lecia’s breath clogged her throat so that she couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think above the fast chatter of her heartbeat in her ears.
Clenching her jaw, she froze. What prevented her from seeking comfort by turning her face into that warm, strong hand was not willpower; it was an understanding, based on intuition rather than reason, that Keane Paget would take swift advantage of any surrender, however symbolic.
When he pulled his hand away she felt bereft, cold, aching for something she couldn’t even name.
‘Clearly whoever you mistook him for was the last person you wanted to see,’ Keane said aloofly.
Rallying, Lecia told him, ‘He reminded me of somene I disliked.’
Keane must have decided that he didn’t want to get any further involved, for he didn’t press her.
However, after starting the vehicle and avoiding a car that had stalled in the middle of the road, he said thoughtfully, ‘I find it rather difficult to imagine any circumstances that would shock you to that extent. I thought you were going to faint.’
‘Hardly. And, like most other people, I have an occasional skeleton walled up in the past.’
‘Not entirely forgotten.’ Buried beneath the level voice, like hidden rocks in a stream, was anger.
Taken aback, Lecia deliberately stilled her nervous hands and stared out of the side window.
The harbour danced under the summer sun; sails flew above it, white and rainbow-coloured against the low peninsula that ended in the naval base at Devonport. Behind it, separated by a narrow channel, brooded the forest-covered slopes of Rangitoto, the last little volcano to emerge on the isthmus. That had happened only a few hundred years ago, and geologists expected more to thrust up from the hot spot that lurked a hundred kilometres or so beneath Auckland.
Not in her time, Lecia fervently hoped. She felt as though she was sitting over that hot spot right then.
Keane observed, ‘I suppose it was an affair.’
‘I’m sure that if you had a sister she’d tell you to mind your own business.’ She tried to make her voice amused rather than tense, but didn’t think she’d succeeded.
He’d come too close to the truth, and she couldn’t bear him to learn how stupid and utterly naïve she’d once been. Lecia’s mouth twisted in derision. She’d never thought she’d be glad of Anthony’s sordid discretion, but at least it meant there were no records for anyone to paw through.
‘I rather wish you were my sister,’ Keane said, halting the car outside the entrance to her block.
Of course—his private detective would have told him where she lived.
The hard angles of Keane’s face were much more pronounced, and there was an unsettling watchfulness in the compelling eyes—eyes the colour of the sheen on a gun barrel, Lecia thought suddenly, and shivered, because he’d admitted that she wasn’t the only one fighting the dark temptation of desire.
‘Yes, you’d be much more comfortable as a brother,’ she said quietly, formally. ‘Thank you for lunch; I enjoyed it very much.’
Dark brows pulled together. ‘I’ll come up with you,’ he said.
Shaking her head, Lecia opened the door. ‘There’s no need, I’m perfectly all right. Goodbye.’ And she got out, closed the door firmly behind her, and walked across to the entrance of the apartment block without once looking back.
Nevertheless, she knew that Keane waited until she got to the two shallow steps before he drove away.
Lecia headed straight across the foyer and out into the garden, collapsing on a seat beneath the jacaranda tree.
That had been a nasty moment. Odd that although she no longer cared for Anthony at all she couldn’t get over this sickening guilt.
Staring at the starry flowers of the summer jasmine that draped itself eagerly over a nearby pergola, inhaling the sweet scent drifting on the humid air, she tried to calm herself with the plant’s simple beauty. The flowers blurred and she pressed the heel of her hand to her forehead, holding back a dull throbbing.
However tempting it was to stay there, she had to do something about this headache because she had clients to see in an hour. If she took an aspirin immediately she’d probably be all right.
By the time her clients arrived the headache had dwindled to a drained, dispirited lassitude that made her normal cheerful professionalism difficult to achieve. Fortunately the young couple loved the sketches and the concept, and were very enthusiastic over her cost-saving ideas; although they agreed to think it over and contact her the following day Lecia was almost sure it would be a formality.
She should be celebrating. Instead, she drank a glass of orange juice and gazed blindly at the street below. Because hers was one of the cheapest flats in the development she had no view of the harbour. She didn’t miss it. One end of the sitting room looked down onto the visitors’ parking area and the street, but from her bedroom and kitchen she could see the garden, and usually that was refreshment enough for her soul.
Not today, however.
She’d made the right decision to cut off any communication with Keane Paget—the only decision! The echo of the past that had seen her glimpse Anthony in the man at the restaurant had reinforced it for her. Keane was the same type as Anthony; both possessed enormous masculine charisma wrapped up in a gorgeously male body, both were powerful men, driven to achieve, clever and tough and more than a little ruthless.
Sourly hoping that Keane had more honour than Anthony, she sat down and began to check through yet another set of specifications.
Much later, the irritating summons of the telephone interrupted her concentration. Blinking, she realised that it was getting dark outside, which meant she’d missed dinner again.
Absently, her mind still full of stress loadings and other figures, she got to her feet, knocking a pile of papers to the floor. The answering machine was on, so she bent to pick up the scattered sheets, aware that it might be Peter.
It was not. Instead, Keane’s deep voice said, ‘My great-aunt would be delighted to meet you and thank you for her new house. I’ll pick you up tomorrow evening at seven.’
Click as he replaced the receiver.
Lecia scrambled to her feet, dumped the papers on the desk and muttered, ‘Why didn’t you wait, for heaven’s sake? I’d have got there.’
Damn. Damn, damn, damn! Now she’d have to ring him back and tell him she wasn’t going.
His card! Where had she put his card?
Five minutes later she knew it hadn’t gone into her daily file, and it wasn’t in her bag or her diary. Had she thrown it away? She couldn’t remember doing so, but she must have.
Quite sensible of her unconscious mind if she had! Sighing in disgust, she pulled out the telephone directory. There were quite a few Pagets, three of whom had the initial K. None of those lived on the North Shore. Setting her chin, she rang Directory Service, only to be told that Keane’s number was unlisted.
She couldn’t remember what the name of his business was, and it would be crass to ask Peter, who did know. But there was the article Andrea had given her—no, she’d thrown that away too.
Glowering balefully at the telephone, she said, ‘Bloody hell!’ and stamped out into the kitchen to prepare dinner. Unless she found that wretched card soon she was going to have to be ready at seven tomorrow evening.
When the telephone rang again she dropped the knife with which she was eviscerating an avocado, put the fruit on the bench and raced to answer it.
This time it was Peter.
‘Hello, Lecia,’ he said, cheerfully buoyant. ‘How nice to see you last week.’
Resigned, she said, ‘We had a super day, didn’t we? I especially enjoyed the fireworks.’
‘I enjoyed looking at you as you enjoyed them,’ he said somewhat ponderously. ‘I wondered whether you’d like to come to Don Giovanni with me next weekend. I hear it’s an excellent production.’
Gently, she said, ‘No, I’m sorry, I won’t be able to do that.’
His voice altered a fraction. ‘Then—dinner?’
‘No, thank you,’ she said.
Recovering quickly, he chatted for a few minutes and then hung up. She would not, she thought, be hearing from him again, and she hoped he hadn’t been building dreams because she hated having to hurt him. He was a nice man.
It was just unfortunate that she seemed attracted to men with an edge to them.
Dangerous men.
Men like Anthony—and like Keane, who was quite possibly having an affair with the lovely woman he’d escorted to the park.
Forbidden men.
Perhaps that was her hang-up. At least she’d learned to stay well away from such men. Never again was she going to endure that guilt and shame and degrading humiliation.
As Keane’s card remained obstinately lost, at seven the following evening Lecia was ready, wearing the shades of peach and gold that best flattered her skin and eyes. For some reason—one she didn’t plan to explore—she didn’t want him to see her apartment; she waited in the garden on a seat skilfully placed so she could see through the vestibule to the main entrance.
And, in spite of the stern talking-to she had given herself, an unwanted, unbidden knot of excitement twisted in her stomach, and she had to keep her hands open because sweat collected in tiny beads on the palms.
As soon as Keane’s tall form appeared at the front doors she got to her feet and walked into the vestibule. Silhouetted against the sunny street outside, he watched her without moving. He was, she realised with a subtle stirring of the senses, a very big man. Within her, tension tightened a notch into anticipation. Hoping that none of her inner turmoil showed, she smiled as she came up to him.
He said, ‘You look almost edible.’ A note of mockery in the deep, sensual voice robbed the compliment of sweetness.
‘Summer fruits. And I look like you,’ she retorted, reminding herself as well as him.
His eyes lingered for taut seconds on her face. ‘Had a bad day?’
Unwillingly her mouth eased into a wry smile. ‘I spent the morning at a building site, arguing with a man who apparently can’t read plans or specifications and is convinced no mere woman can either.’
‘How did you deal with that?’
‘I have this trick.’ She could feel some of her irritation fading as she spoke. ‘I pick up a nail and a hammer, put the nail into the wood and slam it in with one blow of the hammer. For some reason the fact that I can drive a nail straight and true and right in to its head persuades most men that I know what I’m talking about.’
He laughed. ‘How long did you have to practise?’
‘A week,’ she said, straight-faced.
‘There’s nothing like a dramatic gesture to get the picture across. What happened this afternoon?’
‘Ah, this afternoon I discussed costs with a possible client who thought he’d be able to get a mansion at cottage prices. He also thought that I’d be prepared to sleep with him for the honour of being his architect. He’s no longer a possible client.’
Oh, stupid, stupid! Why had she told him?
Keane said something under his breath that made her flinch before demanding with harsh distinctness, ‘Who is he?’
Lecia shrugged, her gaze never leaving the hard-hewn contours of his face as she said evenly, ‘It doesn’t—’
Very quietly he repeated, ‘Who is he?’
Lecia’s throat closed. She stared into eyes as cold and piercing as ice spears, saw his mouth set into a thin, straight line, and the tiny pulse that flicked against his jawbone.
‘Don’t try to be brotherly.’ Her voice sounded strained and unnaturally steady. ‘I’m not your sister and I can look after myself.’
‘Does it happen often?’ His tone was cool, almost impersonal, but she needed only to look at the stark, arrogant line of his jaw to know that he was still dangerously furious.
‘Not often,’ she said, ‘but it does happen. And not only to me—lots of women in business and professional life have to deal with harassment.’
‘I want to know who he is.’
She met the fierce glint in his eyes just as fiercely. ‘I’m not going to tell you.’
And she saw the leash of his will rein in the killing fury, watched it die down until his face reflected nothing but a flinty, unyielding detachment.
‘Very well.’ He took her arm and led her around the corner towards the narrow parking lot for guests’ cars. ‘Come on, we’d better be on our way or Aunt Sophie will think I’ve forgotten.’
Lecia had to remind herself to breathe. Although she’d sensed that uncompromising temper right from the start, she hadn’t understood just how formidable he could be. And yet, in spite of it, just to be with him caused a white-hot anticipation mixed with pleasure of such intensity that she’d already relegated the frustrations of the day to limbo.
And that’s how it started last time, she reminded herself grimly as he put her into the front of his large, opulent car. Anthony made you laugh and scrambled your brain until you couldn’t think straight.
Just remember how you dealt with that!
CHAPTER THREE
SOPHIE WARBURTON was tall, elegant and aristocratic, with the same blue eyes as her great-nephew and the nose, cleft chin and cheekbones Lecia shared with them both. She looked at least twenty years younger than her age.
‘Good heavens!’ she exclaimed after one comprehensive glance at Lecia. ‘Oh, yes, you are definitely one of us!’
She was charming, thanking Lecia for the house, showing her around it with pride, and insisting Keane drink a glass of her favourite whisky with her when Lecia decided in favour of sherry.
Only then did she say, ‘My dear, since Keane told me about you yesterday I’ve had a quick look through the records and there’s no sign of any link across the Tasman. The logical assumption, of course, is that somebody’s illegitimate child is the connection, but I can’t see when it could have happened.’
‘Neither can I,’ Lecia said. ‘I don’t know much about my father’s family, but my mother has told me that as far back as anyone can remember they’ve only ever had one child a generation, and from photographs I know they all looked like each other. And like Keane,’ she said, adding with a half-smile, ‘except that they were all bald. Even my father had lost most of his hair when he died.’
‘Whereas all of the Pagets have excellent heads of hair,’ Aunt Sophie said, nodding.
A teasing smile softened Keane’s hard mouth. Hastily Lecia said, ‘I assume the pattern goes right back to when the first one emigrated.’
Keane’s aunt laughed. ‘In genealogy it never pays to assume,’ she said. ‘Our ancestors were a formidable and upright lot, but they committed all the sins we do and they lied a lot more about some of them. It’s quite possible that a Paget might have paid a visit to Australia—or a Spring to New Zealand—and been reckless. We’re going to have to track down all the documentation and read it with an astute and sceptical mind. And then see if there’s anything to be picked up between the lines.’
Clearly the idea filled her with the zeal of a true enthusiast. Lecia exchanged an involuntary glance with Keane, noting the amusement and affection in his eyes.
Oh, hell, she thought despairingly. It was much easier to keep behind her defences when he was being aloof and detached.
‘Of course,’ Mrs Warburton pursued, ‘it could well have been back in England.’
Lecia nodded. ‘Although—woutd the genes predominate through all those generations?’
‘They’re good, strong genes,’ the older woman said, smiling as she looked from Lecia’s face to her great-nephew’s and then back again. ‘What do you know about your forebears?’
Acutely conscious of Keane’s speculative, intent regard, Lecia told her what small amount of family history she’d heard, ending, ‘I think I can find out more from my mother, although she doesn’t know a lot about my father’s family.’
‘My dear, would you mind? Shall I write to her?’
‘No,’ Lecia said, making a spur-of-the-moment decision, ‘I’ll ask her.’
An eager, vital smile, the expression of a woman with a mission, lit up Mrs Warburton’s face. ‘How exciting to discover a fresh branch of the family! And such a talented one! My dear, you must call me Aunt Sophie.’
Lecia flushed, aware that by accepting the compliment she was making it more and more difficult to keep a sufficient distance between her and Keane. ‘Thank you,’ she said without looking his way, ‘I’d like that.’
She had cousins and uncles on her mother’s side, and a big, extended family belonging to her stepfather, but the knowledge that she might have relatives from the Spring line filled a vacuum she’d never acknowledged until then.
Aunt Sophie entertained them for another half-hour before Keane got to his feet and said, ‘We have to go, I’m afraid.’
His great-aunt smiled up at him, her expression making it clear that she loved him dearly.
‘Thank you for bringing Lecia,’ she said. ‘I now see whole new fields of endeavour opening out in front of me. I can’t wait!’
In the car, Keane asked casually, ‘Have you had dinner?’
‘I’m not hungry,’ Lecia lied.
His mouth tightened as he put the vehicle in gear and directed it down the drive. ‘Coward,’ he said. ‘You can come and watch me eat mine.’
‘No, thank you, I have...’ Her voice trailed away. She was not good at lying, and he didn’t believe her anyway. Her hands moved, caught each other, clung.
‘Why are you afraid of me?’ he asked.
‘I’m not!’
‘Afraid of yourself, then?’ His swift sideways glance caught the truth. ‘Yes, that’s it, isn’t it? Why?’
‘It’s got nothing to do with fear,’ she said, grabbing desperately at some semblance of calmness. ‘It just makes me feel strange to look at you and see my own face. I feet—invaded. No, cloned. Oh, I don’t know what I feel, but I don’t like it!’
‘If we’d had brothers or sisters we’d be accustomed to it,’ he said imperturbably.
‘Well, yes, but...’ Again her voice faded. She certainly wasn’t going to explain that she couldn’t control her wildfire, unwanted attraction to him, and that she found it threatening.
Especially as she had no idea what he felt. Curiosity, of course; both he and his great-aunt were intrigued by the discovery of a new member of the family, and Lecia thought that they both liked to get to the bottom of things.
As she did.
Apart from that, his feelings were as suspect as hers. The ugly word ‘narcissism’ covered that sort of attraction—making her recall the sad legend of the Greek youth who fell in love with his own reflection and died because he couldn’t see anyone else more worthy of his love.
Or was this pull between them nothing more than an instinctive recognition of blood ties, a recognition she was mistaking for desire?
Anyway, there was the woman who’d been with him at the opera, who might be his lover. A network of nerves woke to instant heat. Hastily banishing the feverish images that ambushed her from some hidden part of her psyche, Lecia looked around, for a moment not realising where they were.
He was turning the vehicle into the car park of a restaurant perched halfway up one of Auckland’s little volcanic cones. ‘We’ll get used to seeing ourselves in each other’s face,’ he said, with a confidence that irritated her anew.
So he intended to keep in touch. In spite of her good intentions the prospect lifted her spirits, adding more fuel to the unruly bonfire of emotions that fed her responses.
‘I don’t think I ever will,’ she said neutrally.
As they were shown to their table—one overlooking the city and the sea, of course—he asked with an oblique smile, ‘What’s your decision?’
‘What?’ No, her heart wasn’t beating faster, nor were her eyes sparkling beneath her lashes. She wouldn’t allow herself to be overcome by sexual hunger.
‘You appeared to be weighing up two courses of action, neither of which appealed,’ Keane said smoothly.
The last of the daylight was fleeing, sinking into swift, sudden darkness. When it became too risky to hold his gaze, Lecia turned her head and concentrated on the view outside. She could just make out the saturated brilliance of bougainvillaea flowers tossed over a trellis; within moments the lights in the harbour leapt into prominence and all colour was smothered by the inexorable arrival of night.
She retorted, ‘I was mildly annoyed by your calm assumption that I’d go out to dinner with you. I like to be asked.’
A dark eyebrow lifted. ‘But as it’s in the family...?’
When she shook her head he looked at her with narrowed eyes and said deliberately, ‘No, I don’t feel related to you either.’ Before she could respond to this he went on, ‘Tell me, do you have to show every foreman on every building site that you can drive a straight nail?’
‘Only the most recalcitrant.’ Lecia’s gaze drifted down to the crystal vase of lime-green zinnias and gypsophila in the centre of the table, scanned the shining silverware, the white linen napkin in her lap, the way her hands were folded on top of it.
Keane said, ‘Obviously sexism is alive and well in the trade.’
Everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, as though they were under some kind of spell. A little too loudly she said, ‘There are still a lot of men—not only on construction sites—who believe that women just naturally don’t understand technology. Add to that many builders’ distrust of architects, and you get some real diehards.’
‘But you manage.’
Her smile was ironic. ‘I do a good job, and if they’ve got any intelligence at all—and most of them have—they realise that soon enough. The others I get heavy with.’
He laughed softly, and her heart clenched. ‘Horses for courses.’
‘Anything that gets the job done,’ she admitted. ‘What about your organisation? Do you employ women as executives?’
‘I do,’ he said. ‘All I’m interested in is whether a woman can do the work.’
Lecia nodded, holding his eyes. ‘But if one of her children is sick,’ she asked, ‘what happens then?’
He lifted his brows. ‘Some women arrange for work to be sent home, some use the company nurse. We have a set of systems that we use, adapting them to each case.’
‘Very advanced,’ she said.
He shrugged. ‘I run a profitable business, and that means dealing with life as it’s lived today, not as it was forty years ago. Women work, so business has to accommodate them and their needs. It applies to men too; the days are long gone when companies expected men to put their welfare before that of their wives and families. I don’t work long hours myself—I certainly don’t expect my employees to make such sacrifices.’
‘And you don’t notice any loss of efficiency?’
‘As far as I’m concerned, a man who has to work more than eight or nine hours a day is either overworked, in which case we hire someone else to take up the extra, or he’s not efficient. If he’s not efficient, he gets help. Of course, if he doesn’t improve then he doesn’t last long.’
Advanced ideas, certainly, but he was tough with them.
After they’d ordered they discussed business generally, and his business especially. He made her laugh with some of his stories, and he treated her as a professional equal. As they talked she kept catching glimpses of compassion and understanding beneath his sharply dynamic intelligence.
He wasn’t the sort of man anyone would try to exploit, she thought, but he was obviously a good employer, a man who respected his employees while expecting them to do their jobs properly.
She said something about the generators he made, adding when he raised his eyebrows, ‘I have a professional interest in filters, but I read about your company in an article a friend sent me.’
‘Was that the friend who gave you an ice cream as I came level with you at the Domain?’ Keane’s smile hardened swiftly into a challenge. ‘The man who kissed you.’
‘Did he?’ She met his gaze with a cool challenge of her own. ‘I don’t remember. And no, it wasn’t Peter. Andrea, the tall redhead who was also there, faxed me the article.’
‘I remember. Very attractive, with excellent bones. She’ll make a stunning octogenarian,’ he said, adding idly, ‘Is the ice-cream man your lover?’
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Robyn Donald
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Not only opposites attract! When Lecia first spotted Keane Paget, his presence burned like a shining beacon. He was handsome, certainly, and profoundly male, but the face that stared back at her was otherwise her own! Lecia was stunned… hypnotized… and it wasn′t just his likeness – an unsettling, wild attraction immediately coursed between them.They say that the greater the resemblance, the happier the relationship. But Lecia′s passions had only ever led to heartbreak – and guilt! No, Keane Paget was dangerous. Not only did he have her face, he seemed to see inside her soul! They were too alike for comfort. Resist, resist… .