Summer Seduction
Summer Seduction
Daphne Clair
In the heat of the summer… Sunny, sensitive and full of life, Blythe Summerfield was adored by everyone - except her mysterious new neighbor. Jas Tratherne was the antithesis of Blythe's spirit and he seemed determined to keep her at arm's length. But Blythe was equally determined to free the warmth and passion she sensed behind Jas's aloof exterior.She succeeded - more than a little - but despite her pursuit and their blossoming relationship Blythe still felt that Jas held secrets he refused to share, and that if she pushed him too far what she'd unleash might be more than she could handle… .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u7379ad16-be0d-5373-9483-b1acc5ce2006)
Excerpt (#uab6b57a4-af59-5d52-92ee-36e230d92b21)
About the Author (#u30ea417c-a879-5d94-942a-42834d0bfe9e)
Title Page (#u9449cc06-5096-5168-b56a-82884a56f574)
Dedication (#u9b6f83a8-0120-5110-ab8d-502d02fdfcc6)
CHAPTER ONE (#u72d3e4ec-1aa5-55f8-b7de-d9eda6f3872b)
CHAPTER TWO (#u3fe31a7e-98ef-5538-8b01-6e5af50c09bd)
CHAPTER THREE (#uf865d71c-61ac-57bf-837a-81538a8b3bf7)
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)
“I never thought it would go this far. I had no right to let you love me.”
“No, you didn’t!” she cried. “Not if you can’t love me back!”
He looked up again and shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“So make me understand! You owe me that much, at least!”
He looked startled, and then gave a slow nod and said fumblingly, “I never meant to…act on my feelings for you. I knew it wouldn’t be fair. I tried my damnedest to keep away. Only…when you reached out to me, I felt as though I’d been living in darkness and suddenly the sun had appeared and filled my world with light. Only one other person made me feel like that.”
“Your wife.” She had always known deep down that he still grieved his loss. How could she have thought to replace his first and only love?
“No.” He took a breath, paused, and said as if the words were dragged from him, “My daughter.”
“Your…daughter?” He had a child?
DAPHNE CLAIR lives in subtropical New Zealand with her Dutch-born husband. They have five children. At eight years old she embarked on her first novel, about taming a tiger. This epic never reached a publisher, but metamorphosed male tigers still prowl the pages of her romances, of which she has written over thirty for Harlequin
and over fifty all told. Her other writing includes nonfiction, poetry and short stories, and she has won literary prizes in New Zealand and America.
Summer Seduction
Daphne Clair
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Reference to the work of Mr. Barry Mazur as published
in Barry Mazur, “Number Theory as Gadfly,”
American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 98, 1991, p.593, as made on page 45 of this novel, is made with the kind permission of Mr. Barry Mazur.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8588ff21-eb44-5102-8d0e-9ba3603958de)
IT WAS the music that first told Blythe the other house in the gully was occupied again.
When she opened her side door just after sunrise, haunting organ notes reached into the fresh saltiness of the morning, drawing her gaze down and along the gully to the old house, its empty windows burnished to flax-flower orange by the morning sun.
A classic of New Zealand architectural style, the house was a no-nonsense weather-board square, the wide front veranda sheltered by a curve of corrugated iron in need of a coat of paint. The builders had placed it at the narrow end of the pear-shaped gully near the foot of a gentle rise, facing the scrubby hills along the shoreline where they dipped to frame a tiny corner of the limitless Pacific Ocean.
The melody swelled and soared above the windbent manuka bushes and tall, broadleaved flax, set the creamy plumes of the toe-toe shivering, and rose to Blythe’s white-painted cottage, stubbornly perched on a slope overlooking the gully to one side, the sea to the other.
She was tending seedlings in the plastic-shrouded tunnel house when the music stopped. Its sudden cessation in the middle of a bar made her pause and lift her head, curbing a loose corkscrew of soft russet hair that had escaped from her carelessly fastened ponytail. When the lovely sounds didn’t resume, she felt vaguely, irrationally troubled.
Silly. Whoever had been listening to the recording was tired of it and had switched it off.
But in the afternoon she made a batch of biscuits, wrapped a small bunch of dried strawflowers and grasses in a square of dark burgundy tissue and tied it with a bow of yellow-dyed flax fibre. Then she walked to the old house, along the sparse, tough grass growing between the wheel ruts that formed a rough road along the gully and beyond.
The silvery wood of the veranda steps was smooth under her sneakers. The uncurtained up-and-down windows were freshly cleaned and shining. Blythe kept her eyes from them despite her curiosity about the new occupants, and tapped on the door.
No response, even when she knocked again, and yet she sensed that the house was occupied.
She waited a little longer, then laid the bouquet and the plastic ice-cream container full of biscuits on the doorstep.
She was straightening when the door opened.
Flustered, she pushed back the stubborn curl falling across her eyes. ‘I didn’t hear you coming!’
The man who faced her was tall enough to make her feel even smaller than her slightly-below-average height, and he hadn’t shaved that morning. His hair, dark but not quite black, looked as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Under emphatic brows his eyes were an intriguing deep, deep green with amber flecks about the irises, and an imperious nose jutted above a firm, masculine mouth and inflexible chin. His loose T-shirt echoed the green of his eyes.
‘You were listening at the keyhole?’ he asked with cool enquiry.
‘No, of course not!’ Blythe denied, blinking at him. ‘I brought you some biscuits and…’
Flowers seemed somehow inappropriate. She dropped her gaze to the pathetic offerings on the step. The reason she hadn’t heard his approach on the uncarpeted boards of the wide hallway was that he was wearing socks but no shoes with the jeans that encased his long legs.
He looked down but didn’t move to pick the things up. His head lifted slowly, his eyes taking in her wellworn sneakers, the bare legs emerging from crumpled khaki shorts, and the checked cotton shirt that skimmed her breasts and lay open at her throat.
When he returned his attention to her face he didn’t look impressed.
Blythe hurried again into speech. ‘I live over there—’ she gestured in the direction of the cottage. ‘I just wanted to welcome you…your family…’
His expression totally closed down. ‘I don’t have a family.’
Blythe nodded jerkily. ‘I must have been away when you arrived.’ Yesterday she’d delivered some of her dried flowers to retailers in Auckland, visited her parents and then caught up with friends over dinner in a city café. ‘But I heard the music this morning—’
‘If it disturbed you—’
‘Oh, no!’ she assured him. ‘I rather liked it. Really. Anyway…welcome to Tahawai Gully.’ She smiled at him. Her mouth, she’d been told, was made for smiling, its generous contours subtly tucked upward at the ends. ‘You’ll like it here.’ Catching a lift of his eyebrow as if he doubted her capacity to foretell his feelings, she changed tack. ‘Um…are you on holiday?’ Maybe he wouldn’t stay long. She wasn’t sure she wanted him for a neighbour.
He said grudgingly, ‘I’ve leased the place for six months.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. I’m glad it’s being used again.’ She remembered it as a family home—noisy, untidy but clean and welcoming. She held out her hand. ‘My name’s Blythe. Blythe Summerfield.’
His mouth twitched at one corner. ‘Of course.’
‘What?’
Not answering that, he lifted his right hand and engulfed hers in a hard clasp. ‘Jas Tratherne.’
‘Jazz?’ She could hardly imagine a less likely name for this taciturn, held-in man.
‘Jas.’ He confirmed the pronunciation she’d given it. ‘J-a-s.’
‘Oh—short for something?’
‘My parents saddled me with Jasper,’ he said after a pause. ‘I didn’t care for it.’
Yes, she thought as he released her hand, leaving it tingling from his hold. He wasn’t a man who would put up with anything he didn’t care for. Including importunate neighbours. He stood in the doorway as if guarding the house from invasion, the hand he’d withdrawn from hers now gripping the jamb, broad shoulders and tapered body giving the impression of filling the space although he wasn’t at all overweight—if anything he was probably a bit under the ideal for the size of his frame, which was large but angular.
‘The place has been empty so long,’ she said. ‘If you’d like some help to clean it—’
‘I’ve done it.’
‘Oh—good. Um…I suppose you knew there was no phone connection here, but if you need—’
‘I have everything I need.’
Go away. He might as well have shouted it.
‘Right,’ Blythe said with a stirring of indignation. ‘Nice to have met you.’ Idiotic remark, and a lie too. Meeting him had been distinctly uncomfortable. Turning, she felt his gaze on her back as she went down the steps.
She was walking away when his voice stopped her. ‘Thanks,’ he said, making her turn again to face him. He had the flowers and the container of biscuits in his hands. ‘It was a nice thought.’
But he’d rather she hadn’t done it all the same, she guessed. ‘That’s okay,’ she told him, nervously flashing another smile. ‘Enjoy them.’
She didn’t look back again until she was halfway to her own place. Then her swift glance showed her he’d retreated and shut the door.
An unsettling man. He might be a dangerous man, perhaps even a criminal squatting unauthorised in the house. Quickly she dismissed the thought. If he’d been using the place illegally he would hardly have played his music so loudly, drawing attention to himself. And he hadn’t seemed furtive or threatening— just unwelcoming and somehow withdrawn.
And good-looking, she supposed—in a moody, Heathcliffish sort of way. She could imagine him striding across an English moor with a huge black dog at his heels. Wearing boots, she thought, grinning to herself as she passed the gardens and tunnel house sheltered by the lee of the hill. And breeches. Glowering at everyone in sight.
She climbed the rough, sandy steps to her little side porch, paused at the door to take off her sneakers, and padded inside barefoot. The old kauri dresser that served to divide the kitchen from the dining area had a mirror back. Her hair was as usual trying to fall in curls about her face—the dampness of the sea air made it perpetually unmanageable—and her cheeks were faintly flushed. Her dark eyes, framed by long, curved lashes, looked large and lustrous, and her soft mouth was still touched by a smile, the dimple she despised just discernible in her cheek.
She ought to be grateful for her looks. A heart-shaped face and natural curls, big brown eyes and an air of youthful innocence were just what many women craved. Sometimes, she knew, she’d got something she wanted or even been favoured unasked over others because she was conventionally pretty.
She hated the word. Being ‘pretty’ made people jump to conclusions—that she was a brainless bimbo, or that she’d welcome the advances of any halfway presentable male who wanted another notch in his belt.
Jas Tratherne wasn’t one of those, anyway. He’d looked at her and dismissed her as of no account. ‘Of course,’ he’d said when she introduced herself.
Of course, Blythe…
Her name meant carefree, happy. Well, so what? Didn’t Jas—she emphasised the hard final sound in her mind—Tratherne approve of happiness?
Or didn’t he believe in it?
She lifted her cellphone from where she’d left it on the kitchen bench and called her mother.
‘There’s someone in the old Delaney place at last,’ she said after the usual greetings. ‘A man.’
‘Oh—is he nice?’
‘He’s…polite.’
‘Is that all?’ Rose Summerfield laughed. ‘Well, at least you won’t be on your own there any more. Maybe we should come over this weekend and vet him.’
‘No!’ Blythe said instantly. ‘He’s very…private.’
‘A recluse? How old?’
‘Mm, maybe mid-thirties. He looks…’
‘What?’
Blythe struggled to explain. ‘He isn’t happy. And I don’t think he eats properly.’
‘Men don’t when they’re on their own,’ her mother said sweepingly. ‘Do you want to feed him up?’
‘He wouldn’t thank me for it.’ He had barely managed to say thank you for the biscuits. Maybe biscuits were another thing he didn’t care for.
‘He is all right, I suppose?’ Rose worried.
‘I don’t think he’s an axe murderer, Mum.’
‘Well, maybe we’ll come over anyway,’ Rose decided. ‘Just to let him know you’re not alone in the world.’
‘I’d love to see you, but really there’s no need—’
‘Sunday,’ Rose said firmly. ‘We’ll bring lunch.’
Early next morning Blythe caught a glimpse of her new neighbour loping at a steady pace past the cottage. He wore lightweight track pants and a navy T-shirt with running shoes, and looked like a serious jogger.
In the afternoon she went down to the beach to scavenge for pieces of driftwood and beach grasses.
Only four kilometres along the shoreline from Tahawai, although more than ten via the winding, unsealed and boneshaking road, was the popular holiday settlement, Apiata Beach. At low tide it was possible to walk—and clamber—from one to the other, but few people braved the several rock outcrops and stony little bays between the resort and Tahawai, even in the height of summer.
At this time of year, with winter barely giving way to a cool spring, Blythe rarely saw anyone but the occasional lone fisherman or family party of locals on the beach. Sometimes surfers turned up to try the waves, but most of them preferred Apiata.
Jas Tratherne was wearing white sneakers or maybe his running shoes—not boots anyway, she noted—and he didn’t have a dog at his heels. But he strode along the sand with a look of preoccupation, his head bent and one hand swinging a crooked driftwood stick, the other tucked into the pocket of a light parka.
He was walking near the water’s edge, skirting the white-flecked waves thumping onto the sand in a flurry of foam. As Blythe descended the sandy slope he looked up.
Blythe raised a hand in a half-hearted wave.
He returned the gesture, then resumed his walk.
Okay, she thought. He didn’t want company and that was fine. She headed off in the other direction.
That night music drifted in through her barely open bedroom window with the night breeze. As she hovered on the edge of sleep the poignant notes entered into her dreams, and the next morning she had the feeling that the music had gone on for a long time. Hours.
When she drove past the house to the store at Apiata, the detached wooden garage was open, what looked like a station wagon parked inside.
On her return she parked the van in her garage next to the tunnel house and took her paper, mail and milk up the steps and inside.
Sitting with a sandwich and coffee at the long table under the corner windows, she opened the newspaper. It wasn’t warm enough today to use the lounger on the high, enclosed deck outside.
After two cups of coffee she folded the paper and fetched her kete. She had woven the traditional-style Maori carrier bag herself. Mrs Delaney, matriarch of the large, boisterous family who had grown up in the house now occupied by the solitary and anti-social Jas Tratherne, had taught Blythe along with her own daughters the ancient art of flax-weaving.
She pulled on a hooded red sweatshirt as she left the porch, awkwardly transferring the plaited handles of the kete from one hand to the other and starting down the steps before she had fully donned the sweatshirt.
When she looked up she saw Jas Tratherne approaching, his hair stirred by the wind. He wore lightcoloured cotton trousers, sneakers and the nylon parka.
Fixing a smile on her face, Blythe paused as she reached the foot of the steps. ‘Hi.’
He didn’t smile, but nodded. ‘Good afternoon—’ and with a glance at the kete ‘—Red Riding Hood.’
‘Hardly.’ She parted the handles. ‘No goodies, see?’ She saw he’d shaved today, and the planes of his face were more sharply defined, adding to the impression that he’d recently lost weight.
He seemed to be debating whether to continue the conversation. After a moment he said, ‘So why are you carrying an empty basket?’
‘I’m gathering stuff from the beach.’
‘Stuff?’
As they were obviously headed in the same direction they really had no choice but to walk together. ‘Leaves, stalks, seedheads, driftwood—’
‘Shells?’
‘Mm, maybe. It’s not a great beach for shells. The surf’s too rough, and most of them get pounded to bits. Sometimes I pick up a nice piece of beach glass or some interesting stones.’
They walked on a few steps before he asked, ‘So what are you going to do with all this stuff?’
She suspected he wasn’t really interested but that he felt obliged to be polite. ‘I make notions.’
‘Notions?’
‘Arrangements of driftwood or flotsam and my own dried flowers. For some of them I weave flax containers or wall hangers.’
‘I’d have thought it would be too sandy here for flower-growing.’
‘The gully’s sheltered from the sea wind, and the soil on the bottom is quite peaty. And,’ she added, ‘there’s plenty of seaweed for mulch and fertiliser. The right flowers do very well.’
‘Like…?’
‘Strawflowers, statice, lavender—I use some and the rest go directly to florists.’
They went up the little rise between the hills, and the breeze blew strands of hair across Blythe’s eyes.
‘You’re running a business—on your own?’
‘Yes.’ Half closing her eyes against the wind, she shook back her hair. ‘It’s all mine.’
‘Yours?’
‘Why not?’
He studied her smooth skin and wide, questioning eyes. ‘You’re far too young!’
Blythe laughed and started down the slope. ‘I’m twenty-one,’ she said. Her lack of height, and the winsome prettiness that nothing she did with her hair or clothes or even make-up could efface, was deceptive.
He frowned, and a tinge of colour entered his cheeks. ‘You live alone up there?’ He glanced at the cottage behind them.
‘Since my grandmother died last year.’ A shadow crossed her face. ‘I moved in with her after Grandad’s death, because she was getting a bit frail and we didn’t like her being on her own. I’d been working at a nursery and taking night classes in horticulture, so it was an ideal opportunity to try setting up for myself, and at the same time it helped Gran.’ She lifted a hand to peel wind-blown hair away from her mouth. ‘Everyone thought I was crazy, trying to grow things here.’
‘Really.’ He was looking down at the uneven ground, his hands thrust into the pockets of his parka.
‘Too far from the city, they said, and too close to the sea. But it’s just over an hour from Auckland, and it’s turned out to be ideal. Only…the market for dried flowers is being taken over by the artificial sort. So I’m trying a new crop this year—sunflowers.’
‘Sunflowers.’ He looked at her and laughed. It was a brief laugh and sounded unpractised.
‘Is there something funny about sunflowers?’ she demanded, angling her head so that the wind pulled her hair away from her forehead.
‘No.’ His eyes looked suddenly glazed. ‘No—they’re very…interesting.’
She’d been going on about her family history and her work, and he was either being gently sarcastic or trying hard to pretend he wasn’t bored. ‘Well,’ she said awkwardly, backing from him, ‘I’ll…um…see you later.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Uh…good hunting.’ And he swung away and strode off along the sand.
Scavenging the tide-line, Blythe kept her eyes on the sea-wrack delivered by the bountiful waves, refusing to allow herself to peek at her unsettling new neighbour.
When she made her way back to the cottage the wind had grown wilder and carried fine, stinging rain with it, and Jas Tratherne had gone.
The rain intensified, thrown against the windows. Blythe lit a fire in the wood stove in a corner of the kitchen-cum-living room, and sat down to sort her new treasures, and wire some of the flowers that she had drying in nets strung from the ceilings of every room.
When the light started to fade she got up from the table. Through the rain-blurred window a glimmer at the other end of the gully drew her eye. She could make out a distant square of light, and a shadow that flickered across it, then returned and stayed.
She lifted a hand, but could discern no answering gesture from the still, obscure figure.
She turned to put on a light and make herself something to eat. While a slice of ham steak and a round of pineapple were grilling she washed a few leaves of lettuce, added fresh herbs and a squeeze of lemon juice, and wondered what her neighbour was having for dinner.
Maybe she should invite him for a meal. It would be a neighbourly thing to do; her grandmother would have done it, first thing.
But he wasn’t interested in socialising. No doubt he’d chosen to lease the house because of its relative isolation. He liked his own company, did Jas Tratherne.
That probably wasn’t quite true. He didn’t relish the company of other people, but he didn’t seem particularly comfortable with himself either.
The store at Apiata doubled as service station and postal centre. On Friday, as well as groceries Blythe bought diesel for the generator that provided her electricity. The storekeeper handed over her mail and said, ‘There’s a parcel here for Mr Tratherne. In the old Delaney place, isn’t he? Came in and said he might be getting mail here.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Doesn’t seem to have a phone. I don’t s’pose you’d like to deliver it to him? It’s sat here a couple of days already, and the weekend’s coming up.’
Blythe hesitated, although if it had been for anyone else along her route home she’d have agreed instantly. ‘Yes, all right.’
When the storekeeper lugged it out for her and slid it into the back of the van she saw why he was anxious to get rid of the parcel. It was a large carton and obviously not light.
She drove back to Tahawai and stopped in front of the Delaney house. Long ago there had been a fence, but now only a couple of weathered grey corner posts indicated the boundary of the section, and another bearing a single rusted hinge was all that was left of the gateway.
Through the bare window on the left of the door, she saw a big table with a row of books and a neat stack of papers on it, and what looked like a portable computer. The office-type chair behind it was empty.
The front door was ajar, and music poured out of the narrow space, surrounding her as she lifted her hand to knock.
She paused and dropped her hand, hypnotised by the rich, mellow sounds.
But if Jas Tratherne found her loitering on his doorstep he’d have cause to wonder if he’d been right about her listening at keyholes.
She rapped quite hard with her knuckles, and the door swung open onto the broad passageway. To her left the room with the desk looked otherwise empty except for a shelving unit along one wall, filled with folders and more books, and to her right, through another open door, she saw Jas Tratherne seated with his back to her at an electronic keyboard.
He lifted his hands from the keys and twisted round, his eyes meeting hers before he stood up, his face darkly flushing—with anger? she wondered. Or embarrassment?
He strode towards her across the bare floorboards into the passageway.
Blythe said the first thing that came into her head. ‘It wasn’t a recording.’
‘No.’ He stood facing her, his hand on the door as if he contemplated shutting it in her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not sure what she was apologising for. ‘You play wonderfully,’ she told him, driven by her surprise and genuine admiration. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt.’
He didn’t bother to deny it. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘It’s what I can do for you,’ she said, stung by this unfriendly reception. ‘I have a parcel for you.’
His brows drew together. ‘More biscuits?’
‘I brought you a postal parcel from Apiata.’
‘Do you moonlight as a postal employee?’
‘I happened to be collecting my mail and Doug asked if I’d drop it off on my way home.’
‘Surely that’s against regulations.’
‘Very likely, but the locals have a habit of ignoring city-made regulations that don’t fit country circumstances. If you don’t want it, of course I could always take it back, but I’m probably not going there again until some time next week.’
Her voice had a decided edge, and her eyes no doubt were sparkling with a rare flash of temper. She was doing the man a favour, for heaven’s sake, and he wasn’t showing much appreciation.
He must have realised it too. ‘I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I guess I’m not used to “country circumstances”. Where is the parcel?’
‘In the van. I’ll help you get it out.’
He looked down at her, making her conscious that her head was barely level with his shoulder. A faint twitch urged the corner of his mouth upward. ‘It’s that big?’
‘That heavy.’
She led the way and opened the back of the van. But when she put a hand on the box he said, ‘Leave it to me,’ and lifted it into his arms.
She closed the door, and by the time she’d gone to the driver’s side he had reached the steps and bent to put the box on the veranda, giving it a shove across the boards before turning to her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll be glad to have them.’
‘Them?’
‘Books.’ A movement of his head indicated the box.
‘Oh…books!’ Blythe knew how heavy books could be. She put a hand on the open door of the van.
‘I never thanked you properly for the biscuits,’ he said. Maybe he felt the need to proffer an olive branch after his suspicious reception. ‘Home-made.’
It wasn’t a question really, but she said, ‘Yes. I hope you liked them.’
‘They were delicious.’
Signs of a thaw, Blythe noted with relief. ‘My parents are coming for lunch on Sunday,’ she said impulsively. ‘You could join us if you like.’
As she’d expected, he shook his head. ‘Thanks, I won’t intrude on a family lunch…’
She couldn’t help a small grin. ‘Actually you’re the reason they decided to come—or my mother did.’
‘I am?’
‘I mentioned you’d moved in and…well, you know, it’s pretty isolated here. They worry about me.’
‘Understandably.’
He flicked another glance over her and she fought an urge to draw herself up to her full but hardly substantial height. ‘I told them there’s no need.’
‘But they want to inspect your new neighbour?’
‘It’s all right,’ Blythe said. ‘I’ll say you’re too busy to make lunch, and if they suggest a friendly welcoming visit I promise to head them off at the pass.’
He seemed to be thinking that over. ‘If they’re concerned about their daughter’s safety I’d better meet them,’ he said astonishingly, ‘and put their minds at rest. I’ll come to lunch.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_44a4bb88-8e7c-5a17-a2a4-04df79aef934)
‘I’VE invited the neighbour,’ Blythe told her parents when they arrived. ‘He’s coming over.’
‘Not such a recluse, then.’ Rose, a petite woman who had passed on her dark eyes and soft feminine mouth to her daughter, was unpacking a bacon and egg pie and fresh bread, cheese muffins and a chocolate cake.
‘He’s a very private person,’ Blythe said anxiously. ‘Don’t give him the third degree, okay?’
Her parents exchanged a glance. Who, us? And then they both focused reprovingly on her. Blythe laughed and gave up. She suspected Jas Tratherne was quite capable of handling unwanted questions anyway.
When he arrived and she opened the door to him, he seemed less aloof, even giving her a smile as he handed over the bottle of wine he carried. She thanked him nicely, smiling back, and he blinked and she saw his eyes darken, become softer. Surprised at the unmistakable tug of attraction, she stared for a moment before stepping back, breaking the tenuous thread as she invited him in. ‘Come and meet my parents.’
He asked them to call him Jas, and shared a beer with her father while he enquired how the traffic had been from Auckland, commented on the weather, and showed interest in the headlines of the Sunday paper the Summerfields had bought. He even admired some of Blythe’s floral arrangements that she’d removed from the table and laid into open boxes ready for sale, studied samples of her work hanging on the walls and, raising his eyes, noted without comment the drying nets with their delicate, rainbow-coloured burden of flowers.
After they were seated around the table Rose asked what he did for a living.
‘Teaching,’ he said. ‘What about you and Brian?’
‘We’re farming,’ Brian Summerfield told him. ‘Out the other side of Auckland, near Wiri. But the land all around is being swallowed up in lifestyle blocks bought by Queen Street farmers—lawyers and accountants farming in their spare time. We’re thinking of selling…’
Rose slipped in a remark about the children not being interested in carrying on the farm after Brian retired, and added, ‘What do your parents do, Jas?’
‘My mother died when I was a teenager. My father’s living in a retirement home now.’
Rose managed to elicit the fact that Jas had come from Wellington before he deftly changed the subject again. He helped with the dishes and even accepted another cup of coffee, on the deck built to take advantage of the afternoon sun and the ocean view. And after a while he took his leave with a gracious thank-you for Blythe and handshakes for her parents.
‘Seems a decent sort of bloke,’ her father said.
‘I’m sure we needn’t worry about him,’ Rose agreed, ‘although he isn’t very forthcoming about himself.’ Looking slyly at Blythe, she added, ‘You didn’t mention he was dishy.’
Blythe laughed. ‘Dad—did you hear that?’
Rose refused to be diverted. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Personality is more important than looks.’
‘What’s wrong with his personality? He was very pleasant, I thought.’
‘He was trying to impress you today.’ And that was probably not quite fair. He had simply demonstrated ordinary courtesy.
‘Do you think so? Why?’
‘I told him you worry. That’s the only reason he agreed to come to lunch. To…set your minds at rest.’
Brian said, ‘Well, that was good of him.’
‘Sensitive.’ Rose eyed her daughter consideringly.
Blythe cast her a laughing glance, guessing the direction of her mother’s thoughts. Of course Blythe had noticed that her new neighbour was quite a handsome man. And today…
If she was totally honest she found Jas Tratherne surprisingly attractive, and for a moment she’d seen a spark of warmth, of desire, in his eyes, despite his seeming determination to repel boarders.
On Monday she took a load of flowers and notions into Auckland, and looked up an old schoolfriend who after a year overseas had just moved into a mixed flat.
Gina’s flatmates, a pleasant, casually welcoming crew, invited Blythe to eat with them. She stayed late, drank a few glasses of cheap wine and ended up spending the night on the sofa. While everyone was snatching some kind of breakfast-on-the-run next morning, she issued a general invitation to them to visit her.
On Wednesday morning Blythe donned her red sweatshirt over shorts and shirt, piled sacks into the van, and drove down the short distance to the landward side of the saddle. A stormy night and spring tide had left an abundance of seaweed on the high-water line.
Down on the beach she filled a bag with rapidly drying hanks of brown kelp, tied it with rope, and dragged her harvest back over the sand, ignoring the sand flurries that stung her bare legs.
At the slope the bag snagged on a bit of driftwood almost buried in the sand, and she turned backwards to pull it free, tripped on a tuft of pingao grass and sat down hard, letting out an exasperated swear word.
‘What are you doing?’
Jas’s voice came from behind her, and then he was at her side, looking down at her.
She lifted her head and squinted up at him against the capricious wind that worried her hair. He was wearing his track pants and running shoes.
‘Getting fertiliser.’ She tugged again at the bag.
‘Give me that.’ A lean hand took the rope-end from her, and Jas bent and swung the bag to his shoulder.
Blythe said, ‘I can manage—’ Already beginning to dry, the seaweed wasn’t heavy.
‘Sure,’ he said, and went on up the slope.
Given no choice, Blythe followed him.
He stowed the bag in the van and looked at the pile of empty sacks. ‘You’re planning to fill all those?’
‘It’s not hard. Just time-consuming.’
‘Right.’ He picked up the pile. ‘Let’s go.’
She gaped for a moment and then followed him up the slope. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘If you really don’t want my help you can say so.’
Blythe shook her head. She was actually dangerously delighted. Not only because it would take half the time to gather the seaweed, but because she liked the way the wind whipped Jas’s hair over his forehead and then smoothed it back, making him look younger. ‘This is nice of you.’
‘I can do with the exercise,’ he told her as they reached the beach again. ‘Besides, I owe you.’
‘Owe me?’
‘For a very nice meal? And biscuits.’
‘You don’t owe me anything,’ she protested. He’d only come to lunch as some sort of favour to her—or to her then unknown parents.
They didn’t talk much. He just filled a bag, working a few yards away from her, and then carried two bags back to the van while she started another.
‘Thank you,’ she said, closing the door on the last of them. ‘I appreciate this.’
‘I’ll come along and help you unload.’
She didn’t argue, allowing him to climb into the passenger seat as she started the engine. He slammed the door and briefly his shoulder touched hers before he raised a hand to smooth back his wind-tousled hair, and stretched his long legs as far as they’d go in the confined cab. He smelled of salt and seaweed, and so, she supposed, must she.
He helped her stack the bulging bags near the compost bins and eyed the petrol-driven machine standing nearby. ‘What’s that?’
‘A mulcher. I’ll put the seaweed through it later and add it to the compost.’
He studied the toolshed, and the huge stainless-steel tank on the rise between the garden area and the cottage, half hidden by leggy kanuka towering above a tangle of smaller native plants. ‘Your water supply?’
‘A holding tank. I’ve got three rain-collecting tanks behind that trellis at the back of the house, and the extra water’s piped down.’
‘That must hold about seven thousand gallons?’
‘Mm-hm. It came from a dairy factory that was closing. I had to get a bank loan to buy it.’
He looked at her with what might have been dawning respect. ‘You must have invested quite a bit of money…all that fencing, the shade house…’
‘My family and some friends helped put up the fences and tunnel house and install the watering system.’
‘This is quite an operation for a one-woman band.’
‘I’ll show you round if you’re interested.’
She thought he was going to say no. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, because he said yes, he was interested, and followed her along the rows of growing plants, the ‘everlastings’ first, then the sunflower bed, where even the most recently planted row of tiny blind shoots yearned towards the sun climbing up the sky. At noon they would stand straight as soldiers on parade, and by evening would uniformly be leaning westward.
‘You must have planted some of these very early?’ Jas touched one of the taller plants. ‘It’s barely spring.’
‘I started the first batch in individual peat pots inside and planted the pots out when the soil warmed up.’
‘Why individual pots?’
‘Traumatising an immature root system can ruin a good plant,’ Blythe explained. ‘Sunflowers are hardy but if they’re to grow up straight and strong they need tender loving care, just like human children.’ She grinned at him and found him still staring at the sturdy young plants.
Then he turned to her and smiled back. ‘You’d be good at that.’
She felt herself grow warm at the unexpected gentleness in his voice. Trying not to sound breathless, she answered lightly, ‘I certainly hope so. It’s my livelihood.’
In the tunnel house she showed him her earlyblooming sunflowers in plastic pots, the buds tight in fat green pods but one or two showing tips of yellow.
‘How long before they grow to full size?’ he asked.
‘These are a dwarf variety, meant for pots. I’ll take my first trial batch to Auckland tomorrow.’
‘Well, good luck.’ He moved, preparing to leave.
‘I suppose I’ve been boring you,’ Blythe apologised. Not everyone felt about plants the way she did.
‘Not at all. I’ve rather enjoyed myself.’
The faint surprise in his voice assured her he was sincere, and a rush of gladness made her bold. ‘After all that exertion the least I can do is offer you a cup of coffee—or a beer. I wouldn’t mind one myself.’
‘Beer—you?’
‘Why not? I’m a big girl.’ She grinned at him.
‘No, you’re not.’ He gave her another of those looks that made her conscious of the few centimetres she lacked. His mouth hardly moved, but his eyes smiled at her. She saw the dark centres enlarge, and realised how close she was standing to him. Close enough to see the fine lines by his eyes, and the way his nostrils widened almost imperceptibly as he took a breath.
Then he stepped back and the humour disappeared from his eyes, leaving them bleak again. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but you must have work to do. Maybe another time.’
She didn’t press him, but turned and picked up one of the plastic pots. ‘Here,’ she said quickly, holding it out to him. ‘It’s called Music Box. All you need to do is give it water when the soil starts drying out, and cut off the spent flowers.’
He took the plant, holding it in both hands. If he couldn’t be bothered watering it, she told herself, it was no great tragedy.
‘If you want anything from Auckland,’ she offered, ‘the van will be empty on the return trip.’
‘There’s nothing, thanks.’
‘I could collect your mail with mine if the store’s open when I get back. Unless you plan to go yourself.’
He paused. ‘If there’s mail you could pick it up.’
‘Okay.’ She smiled at him, relieved that he hadn’t snubbed her again.
He nodded, hefted the pot-plant in his hand and said, ‘Thank you. I’ll take care of it.’
Next morning Blythe saw no sign of Jas as she passed his house. But at the end of the day, when the sun was already touching the seaward hills, she drew up outside and jumped out, a bundle of large envelopes in her hands.
Jas was seated at the desk in the front room, but as she approached he got up to open the door.
She held out the envelopes. ‘Your mail.’
‘Thanks.’ He took them, paused and asked, ‘How did the sales trip go?’
Her relief and excitement bubbled over. ‘The potted sunflowers sold well. I’ve got orders for more, and a lot of interest in cut blooms when they’re ready.’
‘You made a wise decision, moving into sun-flowers.’
‘I hope so. Now I know I can sell them, I should buy more seed, later varieties. There’s one called Autumn Beauty that sounds promising. On the other hand,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘I guess I shouldn’t get too hung up on one crop. I’ve been striking some lavender cuttings…maybe I could market them directly to retail shops, like the sunflowers.’
She looked at him eagerly, then flushed. He seemed very aloof today, his expression a politely interested mask. She stepped back. ‘Sorry, you’re busy…’
As she made to turn away, he said, ‘No, wait.’
Blythe reluctantly faced him again. ‘I was thinking,’ he went on slowly, almost as if he’d thought better of it already, ‘a walk would be a good idea before it gets dark. I suppose you’re too tired to join me?’
Surprised, Blythe gave him a wide smile. ‘I’m not tired. I’ll put the van away and meet you.’
She parked the van in the garage and waited on the track until Jas came along. There was no wind, and he wore a white T-shirt with jeans and sneakers.
She’d worn jeans today too instead of her usual shorts, with an ochre and rusty-red shirt that she’d thought smart enough for a business trip.
The sound of an engine made them turn. Jas’s hand closed about her arm and drew her aside.
A utility truck was lurching along to the beach. Blythe waved and the vehicle drew to a halt, the engine still throbbing as the middle-aged driver rested a brawny brown forearm on the window opening and grinned at her. ‘Kia-ora, Blythe,’ he greeted her.
Beside him a boy in his mid-teens leaned forward. ‘Hi, Blythe.’
She stepped forward. ‘How are you, Tau—and Shawn?’
‘Good, good.’ The man looked behind her to where Jas still stood at the roadside. ‘You’ll be the new fella in the Delaney place?’
Blythe introduced them, and Jas came to her side to shake the big, callused hand that Tau offered. ‘Tau runs a garage at Apiata,’ she explained.
‘Fishing’s good here,’ Tau said. ‘You tried it?’
‘I’m not a fisherman, I’m afraid.’
‘Come along and have a go,’ the man suggested.
‘How about you, Blythe?’ Shawn asked eagerly.
She glanced at Jas. ‘We’re just going for a walk.’
The boy looked disappointed, and she added, ‘We might come and watch for a while.’
‘We’ll give you some fish,’ he promised. ‘Eh, Dad?’
‘Sure, if we catch any.’ Tau had his foot on the accelerator. Winking at Blythe, he murmured, ‘Kid’s got a crush on you. See you, then,’ he added more loudly, including Jas in his glance, and released the handbrake.
As the vehicle continued along the track, Jas said, ‘Don’t let me stop you joining your friends.’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I thought we might climb to the headland. But maybe another time…’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘It’s a great view, from there.’
There was a path of sorts between the scrub and scraggly seaside trees, slippery in parts and uneven. Blythe led the way, sure-footed and unflagging on the steep, uneven slope. At the top the vegetation was wind-sheared, and a track led to the very tip of the headland above a thrust of wave-burnished rocks.
The sun shimmered over the trembling water. In the distance Apiata sat washed in soft yellow light.
The two fishermen had reached the rock outcrop at the foot of the headland and were preparing their lines. Shawn looked up and waved. Blythe waved back.
‘You’d know everyone around here?’ Jas guessed.
‘Just about.’ Blythe sat on the wiry dry grass at their feet, drawing up her legs and hugging them. ‘My brothers and sister and I spent lots of holidays here with my grandparents. Everyone was great to Gran and me after my grandfather died—and since she went the locals have all looked out for me.’
Jas sat with a forearm draped across a raised knee. Below, the fishermen threw out their lines and within ten minutes Tau reeled in a struggling silver fish.
‘That didn’t take long,’ Jas murmured.
They watched Tau and his son bring in more fish, and admired the changing play of the gradually fading sunlight on the ocean, until the dazzling disc had settled on the horizon. Then Blythe stirred. ‘We’d better go down before it gets dark.’
Jas offered her his hand, and although she didn’t need help she took it, oddly disappointed when he dropped hers immediately afterwards. She wondered if her eyes, like his, reflected the fire of the setting sun.
‘Let’s go this way,’ she suggested.
‘Down the cliff face?’
‘It’s quite safe if you know what you’re doing.’
She showed him the almost invisible steps in the cliff, and the handholds she’d known since childhood. Near the foot of the climb she grasped at the branch of an old pohutukawa, and the wood gave way. She heard Jas give a sharp exclamation, felt herself slide, and came to an ignominious landing on her behind in a rock pool.
Jas was beside her before she’d struggled to her feet, his hands lifting her. ‘Are you all right?’
Blythe laughed, despite the sure knowledge that she’d have a thumping bruise by tomorrow. ‘I’m okay. Lucky I was nearly down, anyway. Thanks for picking me up.’ She pushed a loosened curl from her eyes.
‘Nothing bothers you, does it?’
He sounded oddly tense, and she cast him a wary look of surprise. ‘A bit of water and a sore behind isn’t worth making a fuss about.’
Shawn came bounding towards them across the uneven rock shelf. ‘Blythe? You okay?’
‘I’m fine! Really.’ Shawn’s father was holding two rods and looking anxiously towards her, and she lifted a hand in reassurance. ‘Just wet.’
Shawn followed her rueful gaze down at her jeans, soaked from waist to knees, and said cheekily, ‘Suits you.’ His admiring dark gaze returned to her face, and she gave him a primly reproving look, then spoiled it by laughing when he looked instantly abashed.
‘We got some fish for you,’ he said.
They picked their way across the rocks, and Tau turned to greet them again. He offered his rod to Jas, and when Jas shook his head, saying he’d no experience of fishing, Shawn cast him a look of teenage scorn, but Tau insisted on teaching him, while Shawn tied a couple of fish together and handed them to Blythe.
Blythe watched Jas’s efforts with amused interest, and teased him with exaggerated admiration when he reeled in a respectable schnapper.
Jas grinned rather narrowly at her as he handed back the rod and thanked his tutor.
‘Know how to gut it?’ Tau asked him.
Jas shook his head. Blythe said, ‘I’ll do it,’ and expertly cleaned and gutted the catch and attached a loop of twine while Jas watched with interest. She handed it to him and rinsed her hands in one of the rock pools, shivering in a gust of wind coming off the sea.
Tau said, ‘You’re cold. Want to borrow my jacket?’ He indicated it, lying on the rocks.
‘Mine’d fit better,’ Shawn offered eagerly.
‘No, we’re on our way,’ Blythe told them, ‘but thanks. And thanks a lot for the fish.’
‘No problem,’ Tau assured her. ‘We’ll have to be packing it in soon too.’
Carrying his fish and hers, Jas walked beside her to where they could climb down from the rocks, and she paused to remove her shoes, ready to walk on the soft sand. Jas jumped down and turned to offer his hand. Blythe paused and stared at his palm, marred by a dark, bloody scrape. ‘You’re hurt!’
‘It’s nothing.’ He transferred the fish to that hand and reached up with the other, gripping her hand.
She climbed down and grabbed his wrist as he swapped the fish back to his uninjured hand. ‘That must sting.’
‘I said it’s nothing.’ He pulled away from her.
‘You did that coming after me when I fell?’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘You really didn’t need to worry.’
‘I wasn’t the only one. Your young friend’s a bit precocious, isn’t he?’
‘Shawn?’ Blythe smiled. ‘I’ve known him since he was knee-high. He’s just being a teenager… practising. I’m sure his parents don’t need to worry.’
‘Are they worried?’
‘He’s been running round with an older crowd, boys who’ve left school. Tau and his wife think they’re a bit rough. He’s got a great family—he’ll come right.’
‘You think that will stop him going off the rails?’
‘I’m sure it helps. Don’t you agree?’
‘Oh, yes.’ His voice sounded flat. ‘A caring family with decent values can make all the difference in the world.’ As she glanced at him, he added smoothly, ‘Isn’t that what all the psychology books say?’
‘I haven’t read a lot of psychology,’ Blythe confessed. ‘But it seems plain common sense to me.’
He smiled suddenly, almost indulgently, his eyes warming in a way that made her heart skip a beat. ‘And you have a lot of that.’
Blythe hoped it was a compliment.
When they reached the sandy flight of steps to the cottage Jas made to hand over Blythe’s fish.
‘Come in,’ she said, ‘and let me see to your hand.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it—’
‘Yes, there is. And I feel responsible.’ She gripped his wrist. ‘Come on.’
He could have pulled away, but instead he followed her up to the cottage, depositing the fish on the porch, and let Blythe lead him to the bathroom and switch on the light. She inspected his hand. ‘That needs cleaning.’
She ran warm water into the basin and poured in a little disinfectant. But when she made to clean the wound, Jas firmly removed the cloth from her hand and did the job himself.
Blythe found a clean towel and gently blotted the water from his palm, then placed a piece of gauze over it. As she leaned forward to tape it with sticking plaster she felt his breath stir the tendrils of hair at her temples. But there was a resistance emanating from him, as though he hated her touching him.
Not a touchy-feely person, she thought, concentrating on her task.
As soon as she’d finished he stepped back, although there wasn’t much room. ‘I hope your conscience feels better now,’ he said, a touch of irony in his voice.
‘You’re going to have trouble making a meal. Why don’t I cook some of the fish, and we can eat together?’
‘Here? You’ve had a busy day—’
‘I have to have dinner anyway.’
After a moment he said, ‘All right. Use my fish, and you can put yours in the freezer.’
She let him get the table ready, and while she prepared the meal he sat on the sofa and looked through a pile of library books she’d left on the coffee table—a book on contemporary Maori art, a romantic novel, a thriller and a biography of the painter Raphael.
‘You have an eclectic taste,’ he commented.
‘I like variety.’
‘Mm. So I see.’
In a very short time she’d served them fillets dribbled with lemon-and-parsley butter and accompanied by new potatoes and a fresh salad.
‘That was very good.’ Jas pushed away his plate.
‘There’s nothing like fish straight from the sea. Do you want a pudding? I can open a can of peaches—’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Coffee, then.’ Blythe got up to clear the plates.
When she put the cups on the coffee table he moved to the sofa beside her. The cup she’d given him was a hexagon, in alternating bands of green china and shining gold. He turned it interestedly, examining the pattern.
‘That was my grandmother’s,’ she said.
‘Tell me about her.’
She looked at him sceptically.
‘I never knew my grandparents,’ he said. ‘Was she like you? Do you take after her?’
‘Well…she was very independent…’
‘A family trait. And…?’
Beginning hesitantly, she soon launched into family memories, watching his face for signs of boredom. He slipped in occasional questions, and listened with an expression of alert curiosity, like a tourist in a foreign land, curious about the local way of life.
At last she said, ‘It’s a shame you didn’t know your grandparents. They must have died early?’
‘My mother’s parents did, and I think my father just lost touch with his.’
‘That’s sad. Do you have brothers and sisters?’
He put down his cup. ‘I had two half-brothers,’ he said rather curtly. ‘I haven’t seen them in years.’
‘Why?’ Her eyes rounded with sympathy.
‘We didn’t like each other much.’ He picked up the Raphael biography and started leafing through it. ‘You’re interested in Raphael’s work?’
Reluctantly, Blythe dropped the subject of his family. ‘Art history was my best subject at school.’
‘Why didn’t you go to university?’
‘I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and I was offered a job at the nursery where I’d worked in the school holidays. I’d enjoyed that, so I took it.’
Jas paused at a page, and Blythe leaned forward a little to see what had captured his attention. The illustration was a round design divided symmetrically into panels painted with different designs. She read the caption aloud. ‘“The Cupola of the Chigi chapel.”’
‘It’s an intriguing pattern.’
Blythe shifted closer to see, her shoulder brushing against his. ‘It must have taken ages,’ she murmured. ‘And think what a crick in the neck he’d have had!’
Jas’s laughter stirred her hair, and she turned to smile at him.
His face was only inches from hers, the laughter in his eyes making them softer, darker, and his mouth curved, creasing his cheeks. For once he looked relaxed and happy, but almost immediately his head went back, his eyes leaving hers and returning to the book in his hands.
He closed it with a snap, and replaced it carefully on the table. Then he stood up. ‘Time I left,’ he said, although it was still quite early. ‘Many thanks for the dinner and coffee. Can I help with the dishes?’ He glanced down at the dressing on his hand. ‘I could dry.’
Blythe shook her head. ‘There’s not much. Don’t worry about it.’ If he wanted to go she wasn’t going to make excuses to hold him. She followed him to the door, and watched him descend the steps to the road, and then he lifted a hand and walked away.
* * *
Blythe couldn’t have said Jas was an intrusive neighbour. In turn she tried to respect his preference for privacy. Sometimes over the next few weeks they found themselves on the beach together and ended up strolling side by side. He watched her pick hare’s-tails and dry grasses and gather up the spiny heads of spinifex blowing along the sand, and helped her sift through the sea-wrack left by the tide, hunting for its hidden treasures. Occasionally he arrived at her door with a piece of driftwood or a bit of sea-worn glass that he thought she might like for her notions.
She had less time for them now. The bigger sunflowers in the open ground were ready for picking, and she had to watch for the right moment, just before the flowers burst from their buds, to harvest them and get them to her markets in Auckland.
One overcast and rain-misted day, Jas knocked on her door.
He held a bundle of envelopes and a large parcel. The clouds had parted on a sliver of blue behind him, but his hair was hazed with tiny droplets of moisture. ‘Your mail,’ he said. ‘Doug said you might want the parcel.’
‘Oh, thanks!’ A paintbrush in one hand, Blythe took the envelopes from him and stepped back. ‘That’ll be some craft books I ordered. Come in.’
She thought he was going to refuse, but he looked at the paintbrush she held and stepped inside.
‘Where do you want this?’
‘On the table,’ she said, hastily clearing a space among paints and flowerpots.
He put down the carton and straightened, glancing at the pots she’d decorated with brightly hued patterns—dots, stripes and wavy lines, even bows.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him.
‘Very colourful.’
‘I thought plain green pots were a bit boring. The next batch of dwarfs I’m going to slip into these. D’you think they’ll sell?’
‘I’m not qualified to say.’
‘Well, put it this way—would you buy one? With a sunflower in it?’
He picked up one of the pots by the rim, away from the wet paint. She had painted a bright yellow floppy bow on it, with red polka dots. ‘I might have…once. Yes.’ His voice had deepened, and the skin over his cheekbones seemed to tauten as he swallowed. ‘I’m sure they’ll sell.’
Blythe put her paintbrush down, reaching across beside him to place it in a jar of water, giving him a little time.
When he replaced the pot and lifted his head she looked at him searchingly but his face gave nothing away.
Then he smiled, a tiny movement of his firm lips. ‘You’ve got a bit of paint on your cheek.’
‘Damn, where?’ She picked up a paint-stained cloth.
Jas took it from her and gently rubbed at her skin.
Their eyes met and she gazed at him curiously, seeing her own trustingly upturned face reflected in the dark centres as he looked back at her. His hand had stilled and she was conscious of his thumb resting against her cheekbone.
His eyelids lowered, his narrowed gaze lingering on the soft, involuntary parting of her lips before he stepped back. ‘There.’ He put the cloth down.
Blythe stood for a moment, savouring a strange, bubbling delight. ‘Stay for coffee?’
‘You’re working.’
He hadn’t turned her down flat. ‘Time I took a break.’ She moved to put on the kettle. ‘Want a biscuit?’
‘Have you made some?’
‘I’m afraid these are out of a packet.’ She shook out a circle of ginger biscuits onto a plate.
He watched while she prepared the two coffees and added sugar into his, a splash of milk to her own. She had the feeling he was keeping his mind off something.
‘The sun’s come out!’ she said, turning to the sliding glass doors. ‘We could sit on the deck.’
Jas followed her gaze, then looked back at her. ‘So it has.’
‘Can you put a couple of folding chairs out for us? They’re hidden behind the curtain.’
Jas set up the canvas chairs and took his cup from her, and she placed the biscuits on the low wooden table, still damp from the rain.
The sea was deep blue, stippled with white; a few clouds hung raggedly above it. The wet leaves of the nearby trees were glossily shining in the sun.
Blythe breathed in the metallic after-rain smell, stole a look at Jas’s hard profile, then sipped at her coffee, cradling the cup in both hands. ‘I’m investigating other uses for sunflowers and lavender. Did you know you can make paper from sunflower stalks and dyes from the petals?’
‘Are you planning on making paper?’
‘Maybe. What do you think of handmade swing tags with my name on, attached to every pot or notion?’
‘Sounds good. What do you call yourself?’
‘Just B. Summerfield.’
‘Shouldn’t you use a catchy trade name like…Blythe Blooms or…Summers Fields?’
‘You could be right,’ Blythe said. ‘It didn’t seem to matter when my main business was selling dried flowers to florists. But since the notions took off, and now the potted sunflowers…Blythe Blooms.’ She gave him a delighted look. ‘I like it. I wonder if I should advertise for mail orders and sell direct to the public?’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ll have fun trying it out, anyway.’
‘I’ve no doubt you will.’
Blythe bit her lip. She’d been sounding as if life were a game.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jas asked.
‘You think I’m a lightweight person, don’t you? With no…depth.’
Jas’s brows lifted. ‘I think you’re a lucky person,’ he said slowly, ‘who’s been loved and cherished all her life. Also a hardworking one, and probably too kind-hearted for your own good.’
It wasn’t an unflattering assessment, but it didn’t contradict her original assertion, either. ‘Weren’t you ever loved and cherished?’
Jas didn’t react for a moment. ‘You’re getting into deep waters. I wouldn’t advise you to go any further.’
Blythe flushed. ‘I had no right to say that. But you started it…’
‘You asked.’
So she had. ‘I’m sorry.’
He seemed to be thinking, staring at the limitless view before them. ‘I appreciate your concern, Blythe,’ he said at last. ‘Only I can’t…satisfy your need to nurture. Keep that for your plants.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_54e888ef-5042-5a0b-80d0-ff15211788b1)
HE WAS letting her down lightly. But at the same time leaving her in no doubt that he didn’t want her prying into his life.
With a small flash of temper, she said, ‘You needn’t patronise me!’
‘I wasn’t. Not intentionally.’ He glanced at the cup in his hand. ‘Have I outstayed my welcome?’
‘No, of course not. Finish your coffee.’ She pushed the plate of gingernuts towards him.
He inclined his head, and reached for a biscuit.
Blythe too picked up a biscuit and nibbled it in silence. A breeze dipped over the hill and ruffled the tops of the trees. The clouds were drifting away, leaving more blue sky in their wake. The silvery, moving mass of the sea, breaking into long, uneven rollers near the shore, seemed to absorb all of Jas’s attention.
‘You have a wider view than I do,’ he commented at last. ‘But you must be pretty exposed.’
‘It depends on which way the wind is blowing. If it’s coming straight off the sea it can get pretty fierce. But I enjoy storms.’
He looked at her again. ‘They can be destructive.’
‘Well, you can’t stop a storm from coming.’
‘So you might as well get some pleasure from it?’
‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘Nothing at all.’ For a few seconds longer he studied her, his gaze a little amused, a little speculative. Then abruptly he turned away. ‘Don’t you worry about your plants?’
‘Of course. I give them good supports and protect them as best I can.’
Jas nodded, as though he was thinking of something else. He finished his coffee and refused another cup. ‘I’ve kept you from your work long enough.’ He stood up.
‘And you have work to do too,’ she guessed, thinking of the computer and the room set up as a study with books, folders and papers. She rose too, looking at him curiously as they moved inside. ‘But you’re not teaching at the moment, are you?’
‘My students study by correspondence.’
She hadn’t thought of that. ‘Music?’ Could people study music by mail?
‘Not music.’ He seemed to be debating whether to expand on that, but as she continued to gaze at him enquiringly he finally said, ‘Mathematics.’
Blythe grimaced. ‘Maths!’
‘Pure mathematics,’ he expanded, and added dryly, ‘It tends to be a conversation-stopper.’
Yes, it would be. Was that why he hadn’t volunteered the information before? ‘Maths was my worst subject at school,’ she confessed.
‘You’re not alone, but you probably mean arithmetic. Pure mathematics deals with puzzles and patterns and universal forms. It’s full of mystery and magic.’
Blythe blinked disbelievingly. ‘Magic?’
‘Throughout the ages numbers have been recognised as mystical. Pythagoras founded a secret society dedicated to their study and worship.’
‘They worshipped numbers?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you?’ She slanted him a questioning smile.
‘They fascinate me.’ His eyes were alight and very green. He glanced at the nets above them, laden with colour. ‘You might appreciate a comparison made by a mathematician called Barry Mazur, who says that number theory effortlessly produces innumerable problems which have a sweet, innocent air about them—like tempting flowers.’
‘Flowers?’
‘Mm-hmm.’ The smile in Jas’s eyes deepened, and she felt her heart give an odd little skip. ‘He also says that it swarms with bugs waiting to bite the flowerlovers who, once bitten, are inspired to excesses of effort.’
‘Flowers,’ Blythe repeated. ‘I suppose,’ she said doubtfully, ‘bugs do inspire extra effort in getting rid of them to preserve the flowers.’
‘And now you know what a party-pooper a mathematician can be! I really am leaving.’
Halfway to Apiata the following Monday, Blythe came upon Jas’s car, the hood raised while he inspected the engine. She drew up beside him. ‘Can I help?’
Jas straightened. ‘Only if you have spare parts for this thing. I think there’s a crack in the carburettor.’
‘I could give you a lift to Tau’s garage at Apiata.’
‘Thanks, that would be very helpful. Just a minute.’ He opened the door of the station wagon and brought out his laptop computer and a portable printer, then climbed into the van beside her.
‘Do you go everywhere with those?’ Blythe enquired curiously. He was wise to remove them from the car before he left it, but she didn’t think he’d need to worry about his house being burgled.
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Daphne Clair
In the heat of the summer… Sunny, sensitive and full of life, Blythe Summerfield was adored by everyone - except her mysterious new neighbor. Jas Tratherne was the antithesis of Blythe's spirit and he seemed determined to keep her at arm's length. But Blythe was equally determined to free the warmth and passion she sensed behind Jas's aloof exterior.She succeeded - more than a little - but despite her pursuit and their blossoming relationship Blythe still felt that Jas held secrets he refused to share, and that if she pushed him too far what she'd unleash might be more than she could handle… .
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#u7379ad16-be0d-5373-9483-b1acc5ce2006)
Excerpt (#uab6b57a4-af59-5d52-92ee-36e230d92b21)
About the Author (#u30ea417c-a879-5d94-942a-42834d0bfe9e)
Title Page (#u9449cc06-5096-5168-b56a-82884a56f574)
Dedication (#u9b6f83a8-0120-5110-ab8d-502d02fdfcc6)
CHAPTER ONE (#u72d3e4ec-1aa5-55f8-b7de-d9eda6f3872b)
CHAPTER TWO (#u3fe31a7e-98ef-5538-8b01-6e5af50c09bd)
CHAPTER THREE (#uf865d71c-61ac-57bf-837a-81538a8b3bf7)
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)
“I never thought it would go this far. I had no right to let you love me.”
“No, you didn’t!” she cried. “Not if you can’t love me back!”
He looked up again and shook his head. “You don’t understand.”
“So make me understand! You owe me that much, at least!”
He looked startled, and then gave a slow nod and said fumblingly, “I never meant to…act on my feelings for you. I knew it wouldn’t be fair. I tried my damnedest to keep away. Only…when you reached out to me, I felt as though I’d been living in darkness and suddenly the sun had appeared and filled my world with light. Only one other person made me feel like that.”
“Your wife.” She had always known deep down that he still grieved his loss. How could she have thought to replace his first and only love?
“No.” He took a breath, paused, and said as if the words were dragged from him, “My daughter.”
“Your…daughter?” He had a child?
DAPHNE CLAIR lives in subtropical New Zealand with her Dutch-born husband. They have five children. At eight years old she embarked on her first novel, about taming a tiger. This epic never reached a publisher, but metamorphosed male tigers still prowl the pages of her romances, of which she has written over thirty for Harlequin
and over fifty all told. Her other writing includes nonfiction, poetry and short stories, and she has won literary prizes in New Zealand and America.
Summer Seduction
Daphne Clair
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Reference to the work of Mr. Barry Mazur as published
in Barry Mazur, “Number Theory as Gadfly,”
American Mathematical Monthly, Vol. 98, 1991, p.593, as made on page 45 of this novel, is made with the kind permission of Mr. Barry Mazur.
CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_8588ff21-eb44-5102-8d0e-9ba3603958de)
IT WAS the music that first told Blythe the other house in the gully was occupied again.
When she opened her side door just after sunrise, haunting organ notes reached into the fresh saltiness of the morning, drawing her gaze down and along the gully to the old house, its empty windows burnished to flax-flower orange by the morning sun.
A classic of New Zealand architectural style, the house was a no-nonsense weather-board square, the wide front veranda sheltered by a curve of corrugated iron in need of a coat of paint. The builders had placed it at the narrow end of the pear-shaped gully near the foot of a gentle rise, facing the scrubby hills along the shoreline where they dipped to frame a tiny corner of the limitless Pacific Ocean.
The melody swelled and soared above the windbent manuka bushes and tall, broadleaved flax, set the creamy plumes of the toe-toe shivering, and rose to Blythe’s white-painted cottage, stubbornly perched on a slope overlooking the gully to one side, the sea to the other.
She was tending seedlings in the plastic-shrouded tunnel house when the music stopped. Its sudden cessation in the middle of a bar made her pause and lift her head, curbing a loose corkscrew of soft russet hair that had escaped from her carelessly fastened ponytail. When the lovely sounds didn’t resume, she felt vaguely, irrationally troubled.
Silly. Whoever had been listening to the recording was tired of it and had switched it off.
But in the afternoon she made a batch of biscuits, wrapped a small bunch of dried strawflowers and grasses in a square of dark burgundy tissue and tied it with a bow of yellow-dyed flax fibre. Then she walked to the old house, along the sparse, tough grass growing between the wheel ruts that formed a rough road along the gully and beyond.
The silvery wood of the veranda steps was smooth under her sneakers. The uncurtained up-and-down windows were freshly cleaned and shining. Blythe kept her eyes from them despite her curiosity about the new occupants, and tapped on the door.
No response, even when she knocked again, and yet she sensed that the house was occupied.
She waited a little longer, then laid the bouquet and the plastic ice-cream container full of biscuits on the doorstep.
She was straightening when the door opened.
Flustered, she pushed back the stubborn curl falling across her eyes. ‘I didn’t hear you coming!’
The man who faced her was tall enough to make her feel even smaller than her slightly-below-average height, and he hadn’t shaved that morning. His hair, dark but not quite black, looked as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Under emphatic brows his eyes were an intriguing deep, deep green with amber flecks about the irises, and an imperious nose jutted above a firm, masculine mouth and inflexible chin. His loose T-shirt echoed the green of his eyes.
‘You were listening at the keyhole?’ he asked with cool enquiry.
‘No, of course not!’ Blythe denied, blinking at him. ‘I brought you some biscuits and…’
Flowers seemed somehow inappropriate. She dropped her gaze to the pathetic offerings on the step. The reason she hadn’t heard his approach on the uncarpeted boards of the wide hallway was that he was wearing socks but no shoes with the jeans that encased his long legs.
He looked down but didn’t move to pick the things up. His head lifted slowly, his eyes taking in her wellworn sneakers, the bare legs emerging from crumpled khaki shorts, and the checked cotton shirt that skimmed her breasts and lay open at her throat.
When he returned his attention to her face he didn’t look impressed.
Blythe hurried again into speech. ‘I live over there—’ she gestured in the direction of the cottage. ‘I just wanted to welcome you…your family…’
His expression totally closed down. ‘I don’t have a family.’
Blythe nodded jerkily. ‘I must have been away when you arrived.’ Yesterday she’d delivered some of her dried flowers to retailers in Auckland, visited her parents and then caught up with friends over dinner in a city café. ‘But I heard the music this morning—’
‘If it disturbed you—’
‘Oh, no!’ she assured him. ‘I rather liked it. Really. Anyway…welcome to Tahawai Gully.’ She smiled at him. Her mouth, she’d been told, was made for smiling, its generous contours subtly tucked upward at the ends. ‘You’ll like it here.’ Catching a lift of his eyebrow as if he doubted her capacity to foretell his feelings, she changed tack. ‘Um…are you on holiday?’ Maybe he wouldn’t stay long. She wasn’t sure she wanted him for a neighbour.
He said grudgingly, ‘I’ve leased the place for six months.’
‘Oh, that’s nice. I’m glad it’s being used again.’ She remembered it as a family home—noisy, untidy but clean and welcoming. She held out her hand. ‘My name’s Blythe. Blythe Summerfield.’
His mouth twitched at one corner. ‘Of course.’
‘What?’
Not answering that, he lifted his right hand and engulfed hers in a hard clasp. ‘Jas Tratherne.’
‘Jazz?’ She could hardly imagine a less likely name for this taciturn, held-in man.
‘Jas.’ He confirmed the pronunciation she’d given it. ‘J-a-s.’
‘Oh—short for something?’
‘My parents saddled me with Jasper,’ he said after a pause. ‘I didn’t care for it.’
Yes, she thought as he released her hand, leaving it tingling from his hold. He wasn’t a man who would put up with anything he didn’t care for. Including importunate neighbours. He stood in the doorway as if guarding the house from invasion, the hand he’d withdrawn from hers now gripping the jamb, broad shoulders and tapered body giving the impression of filling the space although he wasn’t at all overweight—if anything he was probably a bit under the ideal for the size of his frame, which was large but angular.
‘The place has been empty so long,’ she said. ‘If you’d like some help to clean it—’
‘I’ve done it.’
‘Oh—good. Um…I suppose you knew there was no phone connection here, but if you need—’
‘I have everything I need.’
Go away. He might as well have shouted it.
‘Right,’ Blythe said with a stirring of indignation. ‘Nice to have met you.’ Idiotic remark, and a lie too. Meeting him had been distinctly uncomfortable. Turning, she felt his gaze on her back as she went down the steps.
She was walking away when his voice stopped her. ‘Thanks,’ he said, making her turn again to face him. He had the flowers and the container of biscuits in his hands. ‘It was a nice thought.’
But he’d rather she hadn’t done it all the same, she guessed. ‘That’s okay,’ she told him, nervously flashing another smile. ‘Enjoy them.’
She didn’t look back again until she was halfway to her own place. Then her swift glance showed her he’d retreated and shut the door.
An unsettling man. He might be a dangerous man, perhaps even a criminal squatting unauthorised in the house. Quickly she dismissed the thought. If he’d been using the place illegally he would hardly have played his music so loudly, drawing attention to himself. And he hadn’t seemed furtive or threatening— just unwelcoming and somehow withdrawn.
And good-looking, she supposed—in a moody, Heathcliffish sort of way. She could imagine him striding across an English moor with a huge black dog at his heels. Wearing boots, she thought, grinning to herself as she passed the gardens and tunnel house sheltered by the lee of the hill. And breeches. Glowering at everyone in sight.
She climbed the rough, sandy steps to her little side porch, paused at the door to take off her sneakers, and padded inside barefoot. The old kauri dresser that served to divide the kitchen from the dining area had a mirror back. Her hair was as usual trying to fall in curls about her face—the dampness of the sea air made it perpetually unmanageable—and her cheeks were faintly flushed. Her dark eyes, framed by long, curved lashes, looked large and lustrous, and her soft mouth was still touched by a smile, the dimple she despised just discernible in her cheek.
She ought to be grateful for her looks. A heart-shaped face and natural curls, big brown eyes and an air of youthful innocence were just what many women craved. Sometimes, she knew, she’d got something she wanted or even been favoured unasked over others because she was conventionally pretty.
She hated the word. Being ‘pretty’ made people jump to conclusions—that she was a brainless bimbo, or that she’d welcome the advances of any halfway presentable male who wanted another notch in his belt.
Jas Tratherne wasn’t one of those, anyway. He’d looked at her and dismissed her as of no account. ‘Of course,’ he’d said when she introduced herself.
Of course, Blythe…
Her name meant carefree, happy. Well, so what? Didn’t Jas—she emphasised the hard final sound in her mind—Tratherne approve of happiness?
Or didn’t he believe in it?
She lifted her cellphone from where she’d left it on the kitchen bench and called her mother.
‘There’s someone in the old Delaney place at last,’ she said after the usual greetings. ‘A man.’
‘Oh—is he nice?’
‘He’s…polite.’
‘Is that all?’ Rose Summerfield laughed. ‘Well, at least you won’t be on your own there any more. Maybe we should come over this weekend and vet him.’
‘No!’ Blythe said instantly. ‘He’s very…private.’
‘A recluse? How old?’
‘Mm, maybe mid-thirties. He looks…’
‘What?’
Blythe struggled to explain. ‘He isn’t happy. And I don’t think he eats properly.’
‘Men don’t when they’re on their own,’ her mother said sweepingly. ‘Do you want to feed him up?’
‘He wouldn’t thank me for it.’ He had barely managed to say thank you for the biscuits. Maybe biscuits were another thing he didn’t care for.
‘He is all right, I suppose?’ Rose worried.
‘I don’t think he’s an axe murderer, Mum.’
‘Well, maybe we’ll come over anyway,’ Rose decided. ‘Just to let him know you’re not alone in the world.’
‘I’d love to see you, but really there’s no need—’
‘Sunday,’ Rose said firmly. ‘We’ll bring lunch.’
Early next morning Blythe caught a glimpse of her new neighbour loping at a steady pace past the cottage. He wore lightweight track pants and a navy T-shirt with running shoes, and looked like a serious jogger.
In the afternoon she went down to the beach to scavenge for pieces of driftwood and beach grasses.
Only four kilometres along the shoreline from Tahawai, although more than ten via the winding, unsealed and boneshaking road, was the popular holiday settlement, Apiata Beach. At low tide it was possible to walk—and clamber—from one to the other, but few people braved the several rock outcrops and stony little bays between the resort and Tahawai, even in the height of summer.
At this time of year, with winter barely giving way to a cool spring, Blythe rarely saw anyone but the occasional lone fisherman or family party of locals on the beach. Sometimes surfers turned up to try the waves, but most of them preferred Apiata.
Jas Tratherne was wearing white sneakers or maybe his running shoes—not boots anyway, she noted—and he didn’t have a dog at his heels. But he strode along the sand with a look of preoccupation, his head bent and one hand swinging a crooked driftwood stick, the other tucked into the pocket of a light parka.
He was walking near the water’s edge, skirting the white-flecked waves thumping onto the sand in a flurry of foam. As Blythe descended the sandy slope he looked up.
Blythe raised a hand in a half-hearted wave.
He returned the gesture, then resumed his walk.
Okay, she thought. He didn’t want company and that was fine. She headed off in the other direction.
That night music drifted in through her barely open bedroom window with the night breeze. As she hovered on the edge of sleep the poignant notes entered into her dreams, and the next morning she had the feeling that the music had gone on for a long time. Hours.
When she drove past the house to the store at Apiata, the detached wooden garage was open, what looked like a station wagon parked inside.
On her return she parked the van in her garage next to the tunnel house and took her paper, mail and milk up the steps and inside.
Sitting with a sandwich and coffee at the long table under the corner windows, she opened the newspaper. It wasn’t warm enough today to use the lounger on the high, enclosed deck outside.
After two cups of coffee she folded the paper and fetched her kete. She had woven the traditional-style Maori carrier bag herself. Mrs Delaney, matriarch of the large, boisterous family who had grown up in the house now occupied by the solitary and anti-social Jas Tratherne, had taught Blythe along with her own daughters the ancient art of flax-weaving.
She pulled on a hooded red sweatshirt as she left the porch, awkwardly transferring the plaited handles of the kete from one hand to the other and starting down the steps before she had fully donned the sweatshirt.
When she looked up she saw Jas Tratherne approaching, his hair stirred by the wind. He wore lightcoloured cotton trousers, sneakers and the nylon parka.
Fixing a smile on her face, Blythe paused as she reached the foot of the steps. ‘Hi.’
He didn’t smile, but nodded. ‘Good afternoon—’ and with a glance at the kete ‘—Red Riding Hood.’
‘Hardly.’ She parted the handles. ‘No goodies, see?’ She saw he’d shaved today, and the planes of his face were more sharply defined, adding to the impression that he’d recently lost weight.
He seemed to be debating whether to continue the conversation. After a moment he said, ‘So why are you carrying an empty basket?’
‘I’m gathering stuff from the beach.’
‘Stuff?’
As they were obviously headed in the same direction they really had no choice but to walk together. ‘Leaves, stalks, seedheads, driftwood—’
‘Shells?’
‘Mm, maybe. It’s not a great beach for shells. The surf’s too rough, and most of them get pounded to bits. Sometimes I pick up a nice piece of beach glass or some interesting stones.’
They walked on a few steps before he asked, ‘So what are you going to do with all this stuff?’
She suspected he wasn’t really interested but that he felt obliged to be polite. ‘I make notions.’
‘Notions?’
‘Arrangements of driftwood or flotsam and my own dried flowers. For some of them I weave flax containers or wall hangers.’
‘I’d have thought it would be too sandy here for flower-growing.’
‘The gully’s sheltered from the sea wind, and the soil on the bottom is quite peaty. And,’ she added, ‘there’s plenty of seaweed for mulch and fertiliser. The right flowers do very well.’
‘Like…?’
‘Strawflowers, statice, lavender—I use some and the rest go directly to florists.’
They went up the little rise between the hills, and the breeze blew strands of hair across Blythe’s eyes.
‘You’re running a business—on your own?’
‘Yes.’ Half closing her eyes against the wind, she shook back her hair. ‘It’s all mine.’
‘Yours?’
‘Why not?’
He studied her smooth skin and wide, questioning eyes. ‘You’re far too young!’
Blythe laughed and started down the slope. ‘I’m twenty-one,’ she said. Her lack of height, and the winsome prettiness that nothing she did with her hair or clothes or even make-up could efface, was deceptive.
He frowned, and a tinge of colour entered his cheeks. ‘You live alone up there?’ He glanced at the cottage behind them.
‘Since my grandmother died last year.’ A shadow crossed her face. ‘I moved in with her after Grandad’s death, because she was getting a bit frail and we didn’t like her being on her own. I’d been working at a nursery and taking night classes in horticulture, so it was an ideal opportunity to try setting up for myself, and at the same time it helped Gran.’ She lifted a hand to peel wind-blown hair away from her mouth. ‘Everyone thought I was crazy, trying to grow things here.’
‘Really.’ He was looking down at the uneven ground, his hands thrust into the pockets of his parka.
‘Too far from the city, they said, and too close to the sea. But it’s just over an hour from Auckland, and it’s turned out to be ideal. Only…the market for dried flowers is being taken over by the artificial sort. So I’m trying a new crop this year—sunflowers.’
‘Sunflowers.’ He looked at her and laughed. It was a brief laugh and sounded unpractised.
‘Is there something funny about sunflowers?’ she demanded, angling her head so that the wind pulled her hair away from her forehead.
‘No.’ His eyes looked suddenly glazed. ‘No—they’re very…interesting.’
She’d been going on about her family history and her work, and he was either being gently sarcastic or trying hard to pretend he wasn’t bored. ‘Well,’ she said awkwardly, backing from him, ‘I’ll…um…see you later.’
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘Uh…good hunting.’ And he swung away and strode off along the sand.
Scavenging the tide-line, Blythe kept her eyes on the sea-wrack delivered by the bountiful waves, refusing to allow herself to peek at her unsettling new neighbour.
When she made her way back to the cottage the wind had grown wilder and carried fine, stinging rain with it, and Jas Tratherne had gone.
The rain intensified, thrown against the windows. Blythe lit a fire in the wood stove in a corner of the kitchen-cum-living room, and sat down to sort her new treasures, and wire some of the flowers that she had drying in nets strung from the ceilings of every room.
When the light started to fade she got up from the table. Through the rain-blurred window a glimmer at the other end of the gully drew her eye. She could make out a distant square of light, and a shadow that flickered across it, then returned and stayed.
She lifted a hand, but could discern no answering gesture from the still, obscure figure.
She turned to put on a light and make herself something to eat. While a slice of ham steak and a round of pineapple were grilling she washed a few leaves of lettuce, added fresh herbs and a squeeze of lemon juice, and wondered what her neighbour was having for dinner.
Maybe she should invite him for a meal. It would be a neighbourly thing to do; her grandmother would have done it, first thing.
But he wasn’t interested in socialising. No doubt he’d chosen to lease the house because of its relative isolation. He liked his own company, did Jas Tratherne.
That probably wasn’t quite true. He didn’t relish the company of other people, but he didn’t seem particularly comfortable with himself either.
The store at Apiata doubled as service station and postal centre. On Friday, as well as groceries Blythe bought diesel for the generator that provided her electricity. The storekeeper handed over her mail and said, ‘There’s a parcel here for Mr Tratherne. In the old Delaney place, isn’t he? Came in and said he might be getting mail here.’
‘Yes, he is.’
‘Doesn’t seem to have a phone. I don’t s’pose you’d like to deliver it to him? It’s sat here a couple of days already, and the weekend’s coming up.’
Blythe hesitated, although if it had been for anyone else along her route home she’d have agreed instantly. ‘Yes, all right.’
When the storekeeper lugged it out for her and slid it into the back of the van she saw why he was anxious to get rid of the parcel. It was a large carton and obviously not light.
She drove back to Tahawai and stopped in front of the Delaney house. Long ago there had been a fence, but now only a couple of weathered grey corner posts indicated the boundary of the section, and another bearing a single rusted hinge was all that was left of the gateway.
Through the bare window on the left of the door, she saw a big table with a row of books and a neat stack of papers on it, and what looked like a portable computer. The office-type chair behind it was empty.
The front door was ajar, and music poured out of the narrow space, surrounding her as she lifted her hand to knock.
She paused and dropped her hand, hypnotised by the rich, mellow sounds.
But if Jas Tratherne found her loitering on his doorstep he’d have cause to wonder if he’d been right about her listening at keyholes.
She rapped quite hard with her knuckles, and the door swung open onto the broad passageway. To her left the room with the desk looked otherwise empty except for a shelving unit along one wall, filled with folders and more books, and to her right, through another open door, she saw Jas Tratherne seated with his back to her at an electronic keyboard.
He lifted his hands from the keys and twisted round, his eyes meeting hers before he stood up, his face darkly flushing—with anger? she wondered. Or embarrassment?
He strode towards her across the bare floorboards into the passageway.
Blythe said the first thing that came into her head. ‘It wasn’t a recording.’
‘No.’ He stood facing her, his hand on the door as if he contemplated shutting it in her face.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, not sure what she was apologising for. ‘You play wonderfully,’ she told him, driven by her surprise and genuine admiration. ‘I don’t mean to interrupt.’
He didn’t bother to deny it. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘It’s what I can do for you,’ she said, stung by this unfriendly reception. ‘I have a parcel for you.’
His brows drew together. ‘More biscuits?’
‘I brought you a postal parcel from Apiata.’
‘Do you moonlight as a postal employee?’
‘I happened to be collecting my mail and Doug asked if I’d drop it off on my way home.’
‘Surely that’s against regulations.’
‘Very likely, but the locals have a habit of ignoring city-made regulations that don’t fit country circumstances. If you don’t want it, of course I could always take it back, but I’m probably not going there again until some time next week.’
Her voice had a decided edge, and her eyes no doubt were sparkling with a rare flash of temper. She was doing the man a favour, for heaven’s sake, and he wasn’t showing much appreciation.
He must have realised it too. ‘I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful. I guess I’m not used to “country circumstances”. Where is the parcel?’
‘In the van. I’ll help you get it out.’
He looked down at her, making her conscious that her head was barely level with his shoulder. A faint twitch urged the corner of his mouth upward. ‘It’s that big?’
‘That heavy.’
She led the way and opened the back of the van. But when she put a hand on the box he said, ‘Leave it to me,’ and lifted it into his arms.
She closed the door, and by the time she’d gone to the driver’s side he had reached the steps and bent to put the box on the veranda, giving it a shove across the boards before turning to her. ‘Thanks,’ he said. ‘I’ll be glad to have them.’
‘Them?’
‘Books.’ A movement of his head indicated the box.
‘Oh…books!’ Blythe knew how heavy books could be. She put a hand on the open door of the van.
‘I never thanked you properly for the biscuits,’ he said. Maybe he felt the need to proffer an olive branch after his suspicious reception. ‘Home-made.’
It wasn’t a question really, but she said, ‘Yes. I hope you liked them.’
‘They were delicious.’
Signs of a thaw, Blythe noted with relief. ‘My parents are coming for lunch on Sunday,’ she said impulsively. ‘You could join us if you like.’
As she’d expected, he shook his head. ‘Thanks, I won’t intrude on a family lunch…’
She couldn’t help a small grin. ‘Actually you’re the reason they decided to come—or my mother did.’
‘I am?’
‘I mentioned you’d moved in and…well, you know, it’s pretty isolated here. They worry about me.’
‘Understandably.’
He flicked another glance over her and she fought an urge to draw herself up to her full but hardly substantial height. ‘I told them there’s no need.’
‘But they want to inspect your new neighbour?’
‘It’s all right,’ Blythe said. ‘I’ll say you’re too busy to make lunch, and if they suggest a friendly welcoming visit I promise to head them off at the pass.’
He seemed to be thinking that over. ‘If they’re concerned about their daughter’s safety I’d better meet them,’ he said astonishingly, ‘and put their minds at rest. I’ll come to lunch.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_44a4bb88-8e7c-5a17-a2a4-04df79aef934)
‘I’VE invited the neighbour,’ Blythe told her parents when they arrived. ‘He’s coming over.’
‘Not such a recluse, then.’ Rose, a petite woman who had passed on her dark eyes and soft feminine mouth to her daughter, was unpacking a bacon and egg pie and fresh bread, cheese muffins and a chocolate cake.
‘He’s a very private person,’ Blythe said anxiously. ‘Don’t give him the third degree, okay?’
Her parents exchanged a glance. Who, us? And then they both focused reprovingly on her. Blythe laughed and gave up. She suspected Jas Tratherne was quite capable of handling unwanted questions anyway.
When he arrived and she opened the door to him, he seemed less aloof, even giving her a smile as he handed over the bottle of wine he carried. She thanked him nicely, smiling back, and he blinked and she saw his eyes darken, become softer. Surprised at the unmistakable tug of attraction, she stared for a moment before stepping back, breaking the tenuous thread as she invited him in. ‘Come and meet my parents.’
He asked them to call him Jas, and shared a beer with her father while he enquired how the traffic had been from Auckland, commented on the weather, and showed interest in the headlines of the Sunday paper the Summerfields had bought. He even admired some of Blythe’s floral arrangements that she’d removed from the table and laid into open boxes ready for sale, studied samples of her work hanging on the walls and, raising his eyes, noted without comment the drying nets with their delicate, rainbow-coloured burden of flowers.
After they were seated around the table Rose asked what he did for a living.
‘Teaching,’ he said. ‘What about you and Brian?’
‘We’re farming,’ Brian Summerfield told him. ‘Out the other side of Auckland, near Wiri. But the land all around is being swallowed up in lifestyle blocks bought by Queen Street farmers—lawyers and accountants farming in their spare time. We’re thinking of selling…’
Rose slipped in a remark about the children not being interested in carrying on the farm after Brian retired, and added, ‘What do your parents do, Jas?’
‘My mother died when I was a teenager. My father’s living in a retirement home now.’
Rose managed to elicit the fact that Jas had come from Wellington before he deftly changed the subject again. He helped with the dishes and even accepted another cup of coffee, on the deck built to take advantage of the afternoon sun and the ocean view. And after a while he took his leave with a gracious thank-you for Blythe and handshakes for her parents.
‘Seems a decent sort of bloke,’ her father said.
‘I’m sure we needn’t worry about him,’ Rose agreed, ‘although he isn’t very forthcoming about himself.’ Looking slyly at Blythe, she added, ‘You didn’t mention he was dishy.’
Blythe laughed. ‘Dad—did you hear that?’
Rose refused to be diverted. ‘Don’t you think so?’
‘Personality is more important than looks.’
‘What’s wrong with his personality? He was very pleasant, I thought.’
‘He was trying to impress you today.’ And that was probably not quite fair. He had simply demonstrated ordinary courtesy.
‘Do you think so? Why?’
‘I told him you worry. That’s the only reason he agreed to come to lunch. To…set your minds at rest.’
Brian said, ‘Well, that was good of him.’
‘Sensitive.’ Rose eyed her daughter consideringly.
Blythe cast her a laughing glance, guessing the direction of her mother’s thoughts. Of course Blythe had noticed that her new neighbour was quite a handsome man. And today…
If she was totally honest she found Jas Tratherne surprisingly attractive, and for a moment she’d seen a spark of warmth, of desire, in his eyes, despite his seeming determination to repel boarders.
On Monday she took a load of flowers and notions into Auckland, and looked up an old schoolfriend who after a year overseas had just moved into a mixed flat.
Gina’s flatmates, a pleasant, casually welcoming crew, invited Blythe to eat with them. She stayed late, drank a few glasses of cheap wine and ended up spending the night on the sofa. While everyone was snatching some kind of breakfast-on-the-run next morning, she issued a general invitation to them to visit her.
On Wednesday morning Blythe donned her red sweatshirt over shorts and shirt, piled sacks into the van, and drove down the short distance to the landward side of the saddle. A stormy night and spring tide had left an abundance of seaweed on the high-water line.
Down on the beach she filled a bag with rapidly drying hanks of brown kelp, tied it with rope, and dragged her harvest back over the sand, ignoring the sand flurries that stung her bare legs.
At the slope the bag snagged on a bit of driftwood almost buried in the sand, and she turned backwards to pull it free, tripped on a tuft of pingao grass and sat down hard, letting out an exasperated swear word.
‘What are you doing?’
Jas’s voice came from behind her, and then he was at her side, looking down at her.
She lifted her head and squinted up at him against the capricious wind that worried her hair. He was wearing his track pants and running shoes.
‘Getting fertiliser.’ She tugged again at the bag.
‘Give me that.’ A lean hand took the rope-end from her, and Jas bent and swung the bag to his shoulder.
Blythe said, ‘I can manage—’ Already beginning to dry, the seaweed wasn’t heavy.
‘Sure,’ he said, and went on up the slope.
Given no choice, Blythe followed him.
He stowed the bag in the van and looked at the pile of empty sacks. ‘You’re planning to fill all those?’
‘It’s not hard. Just time-consuming.’
‘Right.’ He picked up the pile. ‘Let’s go.’
She gaped for a moment and then followed him up the slope. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘If you really don’t want my help you can say so.’
Blythe shook her head. She was actually dangerously delighted. Not only because it would take half the time to gather the seaweed, but because she liked the way the wind whipped Jas’s hair over his forehead and then smoothed it back, making him look younger. ‘This is nice of you.’
‘I can do with the exercise,’ he told her as they reached the beach again. ‘Besides, I owe you.’
‘Owe me?’
‘For a very nice meal? And biscuits.’
‘You don’t owe me anything,’ she protested. He’d only come to lunch as some sort of favour to her—or to her then unknown parents.
They didn’t talk much. He just filled a bag, working a few yards away from her, and then carried two bags back to the van while she started another.
‘Thank you,’ she said, closing the door on the last of them. ‘I appreciate this.’
‘I’ll come along and help you unload.’
She didn’t argue, allowing him to climb into the passenger seat as she started the engine. He slammed the door and briefly his shoulder touched hers before he raised a hand to smooth back his wind-tousled hair, and stretched his long legs as far as they’d go in the confined cab. He smelled of salt and seaweed, and so, she supposed, must she.
He helped her stack the bulging bags near the compost bins and eyed the petrol-driven machine standing nearby. ‘What’s that?’
‘A mulcher. I’ll put the seaweed through it later and add it to the compost.’
He studied the toolshed, and the huge stainless-steel tank on the rise between the garden area and the cottage, half hidden by leggy kanuka towering above a tangle of smaller native plants. ‘Your water supply?’
‘A holding tank. I’ve got three rain-collecting tanks behind that trellis at the back of the house, and the extra water’s piped down.’
‘That must hold about seven thousand gallons?’
‘Mm-hm. It came from a dairy factory that was closing. I had to get a bank loan to buy it.’
He looked at her with what might have been dawning respect. ‘You must have invested quite a bit of money…all that fencing, the shade house…’
‘My family and some friends helped put up the fences and tunnel house and install the watering system.’
‘This is quite an operation for a one-woman band.’
‘I’ll show you round if you’re interested.’
She thought he was going to say no. Maybe he didn’t want to hurt her feelings, because he said yes, he was interested, and followed her along the rows of growing plants, the ‘everlastings’ first, then the sunflower bed, where even the most recently planted row of tiny blind shoots yearned towards the sun climbing up the sky. At noon they would stand straight as soldiers on parade, and by evening would uniformly be leaning westward.
‘You must have planted some of these very early?’ Jas touched one of the taller plants. ‘It’s barely spring.’
‘I started the first batch in individual peat pots inside and planted the pots out when the soil warmed up.’
‘Why individual pots?’
‘Traumatising an immature root system can ruin a good plant,’ Blythe explained. ‘Sunflowers are hardy but if they’re to grow up straight and strong they need tender loving care, just like human children.’ She grinned at him and found him still staring at the sturdy young plants.
Then he turned to her and smiled back. ‘You’d be good at that.’
She felt herself grow warm at the unexpected gentleness in his voice. Trying not to sound breathless, she answered lightly, ‘I certainly hope so. It’s my livelihood.’
In the tunnel house she showed him her earlyblooming sunflowers in plastic pots, the buds tight in fat green pods but one or two showing tips of yellow.
‘How long before they grow to full size?’ he asked.
‘These are a dwarf variety, meant for pots. I’ll take my first trial batch to Auckland tomorrow.’
‘Well, good luck.’ He moved, preparing to leave.
‘I suppose I’ve been boring you,’ Blythe apologised. Not everyone felt about plants the way she did.
‘Not at all. I’ve rather enjoyed myself.’
The faint surprise in his voice assured her he was sincere, and a rush of gladness made her bold. ‘After all that exertion the least I can do is offer you a cup of coffee—or a beer. I wouldn’t mind one myself.’
‘Beer—you?’
‘Why not? I’m a big girl.’ She grinned at him.
‘No, you’re not.’ He gave her another of those looks that made her conscious of the few centimetres she lacked. His mouth hardly moved, but his eyes smiled at her. She saw the dark centres enlarge, and realised how close she was standing to him. Close enough to see the fine lines by his eyes, and the way his nostrils widened almost imperceptibly as he took a breath.
Then he stepped back and the humour disappeared from his eyes, leaving them bleak again. ‘Thanks,’ he said, ‘but you must have work to do. Maybe another time.’
She didn’t press him, but turned and picked up one of the plastic pots. ‘Here,’ she said quickly, holding it out to him. ‘It’s called Music Box. All you need to do is give it water when the soil starts drying out, and cut off the spent flowers.’
He took the plant, holding it in both hands. If he couldn’t be bothered watering it, she told herself, it was no great tragedy.
‘If you want anything from Auckland,’ she offered, ‘the van will be empty on the return trip.’
‘There’s nothing, thanks.’
‘I could collect your mail with mine if the store’s open when I get back. Unless you plan to go yourself.’
He paused. ‘If there’s mail you could pick it up.’
‘Okay.’ She smiled at him, relieved that he hadn’t snubbed her again.
He nodded, hefted the pot-plant in his hand and said, ‘Thank you. I’ll take care of it.’
Next morning Blythe saw no sign of Jas as she passed his house. But at the end of the day, when the sun was already touching the seaward hills, she drew up outside and jumped out, a bundle of large envelopes in her hands.
Jas was seated at the desk in the front room, but as she approached he got up to open the door.
She held out the envelopes. ‘Your mail.’
‘Thanks.’ He took them, paused and asked, ‘How did the sales trip go?’
Her relief and excitement bubbled over. ‘The potted sunflowers sold well. I’ve got orders for more, and a lot of interest in cut blooms when they’re ready.’
‘You made a wise decision, moving into sun-flowers.’
‘I hope so. Now I know I can sell them, I should buy more seed, later varieties. There’s one called Autumn Beauty that sounds promising. On the other hand,’ she added thoughtfully, ‘I guess I shouldn’t get too hung up on one crop. I’ve been striking some lavender cuttings…maybe I could market them directly to retail shops, like the sunflowers.’
She looked at him eagerly, then flushed. He seemed very aloof today, his expression a politely interested mask. She stepped back. ‘Sorry, you’re busy…’
As she made to turn away, he said, ‘No, wait.’
Blythe reluctantly faced him again. ‘I was thinking,’ he went on slowly, almost as if he’d thought better of it already, ‘a walk would be a good idea before it gets dark. I suppose you’re too tired to join me?’
Surprised, Blythe gave him a wide smile. ‘I’m not tired. I’ll put the van away and meet you.’
She parked the van in the garage and waited on the track until Jas came along. There was no wind, and he wore a white T-shirt with jeans and sneakers.
She’d worn jeans today too instead of her usual shorts, with an ochre and rusty-red shirt that she’d thought smart enough for a business trip.
The sound of an engine made them turn. Jas’s hand closed about her arm and drew her aside.
A utility truck was lurching along to the beach. Blythe waved and the vehicle drew to a halt, the engine still throbbing as the middle-aged driver rested a brawny brown forearm on the window opening and grinned at her. ‘Kia-ora, Blythe,’ he greeted her.
Beside him a boy in his mid-teens leaned forward. ‘Hi, Blythe.’
She stepped forward. ‘How are you, Tau—and Shawn?’
‘Good, good.’ The man looked behind her to where Jas still stood at the roadside. ‘You’ll be the new fella in the Delaney place?’
Blythe introduced them, and Jas came to her side to shake the big, callused hand that Tau offered. ‘Tau runs a garage at Apiata,’ she explained.
‘Fishing’s good here,’ Tau said. ‘You tried it?’
‘I’m not a fisherman, I’m afraid.’
‘Come along and have a go,’ the man suggested.
‘How about you, Blythe?’ Shawn asked eagerly.
She glanced at Jas. ‘We’re just going for a walk.’
The boy looked disappointed, and she added, ‘We might come and watch for a while.’
‘We’ll give you some fish,’ he promised. ‘Eh, Dad?’
‘Sure, if we catch any.’ Tau had his foot on the accelerator. Winking at Blythe, he murmured, ‘Kid’s got a crush on you. See you, then,’ he added more loudly, including Jas in his glance, and released the handbrake.
As the vehicle continued along the track, Jas said, ‘Don’t let me stop you joining your friends.’
‘Not if you don’t want to.’
‘I thought we might climb to the headland. But maybe another time…’
‘Fine,’ she said. ‘It’s a great view, from there.’
There was a path of sorts between the scrub and scraggly seaside trees, slippery in parts and uneven. Blythe led the way, sure-footed and unflagging on the steep, uneven slope. At the top the vegetation was wind-sheared, and a track led to the very tip of the headland above a thrust of wave-burnished rocks.
The sun shimmered over the trembling water. In the distance Apiata sat washed in soft yellow light.
The two fishermen had reached the rock outcrop at the foot of the headland and were preparing their lines. Shawn looked up and waved. Blythe waved back.
‘You’d know everyone around here?’ Jas guessed.
‘Just about.’ Blythe sat on the wiry dry grass at their feet, drawing up her legs and hugging them. ‘My brothers and sister and I spent lots of holidays here with my grandparents. Everyone was great to Gran and me after my grandfather died—and since she went the locals have all looked out for me.’
Jas sat with a forearm draped across a raised knee. Below, the fishermen threw out their lines and within ten minutes Tau reeled in a struggling silver fish.
‘That didn’t take long,’ Jas murmured.
They watched Tau and his son bring in more fish, and admired the changing play of the gradually fading sunlight on the ocean, until the dazzling disc had settled on the horizon. Then Blythe stirred. ‘We’d better go down before it gets dark.’
Jas offered her his hand, and although she didn’t need help she took it, oddly disappointed when he dropped hers immediately afterwards. She wondered if her eyes, like his, reflected the fire of the setting sun.
‘Let’s go this way,’ she suggested.
‘Down the cliff face?’
‘It’s quite safe if you know what you’re doing.’
She showed him the almost invisible steps in the cliff, and the handholds she’d known since childhood. Near the foot of the climb she grasped at the branch of an old pohutukawa, and the wood gave way. She heard Jas give a sharp exclamation, felt herself slide, and came to an ignominious landing on her behind in a rock pool.
Jas was beside her before she’d struggled to her feet, his hands lifting her. ‘Are you all right?’
Blythe laughed, despite the sure knowledge that she’d have a thumping bruise by tomorrow. ‘I’m okay. Lucky I was nearly down, anyway. Thanks for picking me up.’ She pushed a loosened curl from her eyes.
‘Nothing bothers you, does it?’
He sounded oddly tense, and she cast him a wary look of surprise. ‘A bit of water and a sore behind isn’t worth making a fuss about.’
Shawn came bounding towards them across the uneven rock shelf. ‘Blythe? You okay?’
‘I’m fine! Really.’ Shawn’s father was holding two rods and looking anxiously towards her, and she lifted a hand in reassurance. ‘Just wet.’
Shawn followed her rueful gaze down at her jeans, soaked from waist to knees, and said cheekily, ‘Suits you.’ His admiring dark gaze returned to her face, and she gave him a primly reproving look, then spoiled it by laughing when he looked instantly abashed.
‘We got some fish for you,’ he said.
They picked their way across the rocks, and Tau turned to greet them again. He offered his rod to Jas, and when Jas shook his head, saying he’d no experience of fishing, Shawn cast him a look of teenage scorn, but Tau insisted on teaching him, while Shawn tied a couple of fish together and handed them to Blythe.
Blythe watched Jas’s efforts with amused interest, and teased him with exaggerated admiration when he reeled in a respectable schnapper.
Jas grinned rather narrowly at her as he handed back the rod and thanked his tutor.
‘Know how to gut it?’ Tau asked him.
Jas shook his head. Blythe said, ‘I’ll do it,’ and expertly cleaned and gutted the catch and attached a loop of twine while Jas watched with interest. She handed it to him and rinsed her hands in one of the rock pools, shivering in a gust of wind coming off the sea.
Tau said, ‘You’re cold. Want to borrow my jacket?’ He indicated it, lying on the rocks.
‘Mine’d fit better,’ Shawn offered eagerly.
‘No, we’re on our way,’ Blythe told them, ‘but thanks. And thanks a lot for the fish.’
‘No problem,’ Tau assured her. ‘We’ll have to be packing it in soon too.’
Carrying his fish and hers, Jas walked beside her to where they could climb down from the rocks, and she paused to remove her shoes, ready to walk on the soft sand. Jas jumped down and turned to offer his hand. Blythe paused and stared at his palm, marred by a dark, bloody scrape. ‘You’re hurt!’
‘It’s nothing.’ He transferred the fish to that hand and reached up with the other, gripping her hand.
She climbed down and grabbed his wrist as he swapped the fish back to his uninjured hand. ‘That must sting.’
‘I said it’s nothing.’ He pulled away from her.
‘You did that coming after me when I fell?’
‘It’s not your fault.’
‘You really didn’t need to worry.’
‘I wasn’t the only one. Your young friend’s a bit precocious, isn’t he?’
‘Shawn?’ Blythe smiled. ‘I’ve known him since he was knee-high. He’s just being a teenager… practising. I’m sure his parents don’t need to worry.’
‘Are they worried?’
‘He’s been running round with an older crowd, boys who’ve left school. Tau and his wife think they’re a bit rough. He’s got a great family—he’ll come right.’
‘You think that will stop him going off the rails?’
‘I’m sure it helps. Don’t you agree?’
‘Oh, yes.’ His voice sounded flat. ‘A caring family with decent values can make all the difference in the world.’ As she glanced at him, he added smoothly, ‘Isn’t that what all the psychology books say?’
‘I haven’t read a lot of psychology,’ Blythe confessed. ‘But it seems plain common sense to me.’
He smiled suddenly, almost indulgently, his eyes warming in a way that made her heart skip a beat. ‘And you have a lot of that.’
Blythe hoped it was a compliment.
When they reached the sandy flight of steps to the cottage Jas made to hand over Blythe’s fish.
‘Come in,’ she said, ‘and let me see to your hand.’
‘There’s nothing wrong with it—’
‘Yes, there is. And I feel responsible.’ She gripped his wrist. ‘Come on.’
He could have pulled away, but instead he followed her up to the cottage, depositing the fish on the porch, and let Blythe lead him to the bathroom and switch on the light. She inspected his hand. ‘That needs cleaning.’
She ran warm water into the basin and poured in a little disinfectant. But when she made to clean the wound, Jas firmly removed the cloth from her hand and did the job himself.
Blythe found a clean towel and gently blotted the water from his palm, then placed a piece of gauze over it. As she leaned forward to tape it with sticking plaster she felt his breath stir the tendrils of hair at her temples. But there was a resistance emanating from him, as though he hated her touching him.
Not a touchy-feely person, she thought, concentrating on her task.
As soon as she’d finished he stepped back, although there wasn’t much room. ‘I hope your conscience feels better now,’ he said, a touch of irony in his voice.
‘You’re going to have trouble making a meal. Why don’t I cook some of the fish, and we can eat together?’
‘Here? You’ve had a busy day—’
‘I have to have dinner anyway.’
After a moment he said, ‘All right. Use my fish, and you can put yours in the freezer.’
She let him get the table ready, and while she prepared the meal he sat on the sofa and looked through a pile of library books she’d left on the coffee table—a book on contemporary Maori art, a romantic novel, a thriller and a biography of the painter Raphael.
‘You have an eclectic taste,’ he commented.
‘I like variety.’
‘Mm. So I see.’
In a very short time she’d served them fillets dribbled with lemon-and-parsley butter and accompanied by new potatoes and a fresh salad.
‘That was very good.’ Jas pushed away his plate.
‘There’s nothing like fish straight from the sea. Do you want a pudding? I can open a can of peaches—’
‘No. Thank you.’
‘Coffee, then.’ Blythe got up to clear the plates.
When she put the cups on the coffee table he moved to the sofa beside her. The cup she’d given him was a hexagon, in alternating bands of green china and shining gold. He turned it interestedly, examining the pattern.
‘That was my grandmother’s,’ she said.
‘Tell me about her.’
She looked at him sceptically.
‘I never knew my grandparents,’ he said. ‘Was she like you? Do you take after her?’
‘Well…she was very independent…’
‘A family trait. And…?’
Beginning hesitantly, she soon launched into family memories, watching his face for signs of boredom. He slipped in occasional questions, and listened with an expression of alert curiosity, like a tourist in a foreign land, curious about the local way of life.
At last she said, ‘It’s a shame you didn’t know your grandparents. They must have died early?’
‘My mother’s parents did, and I think my father just lost touch with his.’
‘That’s sad. Do you have brothers and sisters?’
He put down his cup. ‘I had two half-brothers,’ he said rather curtly. ‘I haven’t seen them in years.’
‘Why?’ Her eyes rounded with sympathy.
‘We didn’t like each other much.’ He picked up the Raphael biography and started leafing through it. ‘You’re interested in Raphael’s work?’
Reluctantly, Blythe dropped the subject of his family. ‘Art history was my best subject at school.’
‘Why didn’t you go to university?’
‘I wasn’t sure what I wanted to do, and I was offered a job at the nursery where I’d worked in the school holidays. I’d enjoyed that, so I took it.’
Jas paused at a page, and Blythe leaned forward a little to see what had captured his attention. The illustration was a round design divided symmetrically into panels painted with different designs. She read the caption aloud. ‘“The Cupola of the Chigi chapel.”’
‘It’s an intriguing pattern.’
Blythe shifted closer to see, her shoulder brushing against his. ‘It must have taken ages,’ she murmured. ‘And think what a crick in the neck he’d have had!’
Jas’s laughter stirred her hair, and she turned to smile at him.
His face was only inches from hers, the laughter in his eyes making them softer, darker, and his mouth curved, creasing his cheeks. For once he looked relaxed and happy, but almost immediately his head went back, his eyes leaving hers and returning to the book in his hands.
He closed it with a snap, and replaced it carefully on the table. Then he stood up. ‘Time I left,’ he said, although it was still quite early. ‘Many thanks for the dinner and coffee. Can I help with the dishes?’ He glanced down at the dressing on his hand. ‘I could dry.’
Blythe shook her head. ‘There’s not much. Don’t worry about it.’ If he wanted to go she wasn’t going to make excuses to hold him. She followed him to the door, and watched him descend the steps to the road, and then he lifted a hand and walked away.
* * *
Blythe couldn’t have said Jas was an intrusive neighbour. In turn she tried to respect his preference for privacy. Sometimes over the next few weeks they found themselves on the beach together and ended up strolling side by side. He watched her pick hare’s-tails and dry grasses and gather up the spiny heads of spinifex blowing along the sand, and helped her sift through the sea-wrack left by the tide, hunting for its hidden treasures. Occasionally he arrived at her door with a piece of driftwood or a bit of sea-worn glass that he thought she might like for her notions.
She had less time for them now. The bigger sunflowers in the open ground were ready for picking, and she had to watch for the right moment, just before the flowers burst from their buds, to harvest them and get them to her markets in Auckland.
One overcast and rain-misted day, Jas knocked on her door.
He held a bundle of envelopes and a large parcel. The clouds had parted on a sliver of blue behind him, but his hair was hazed with tiny droplets of moisture. ‘Your mail,’ he said. ‘Doug said you might want the parcel.’
‘Oh, thanks!’ A paintbrush in one hand, Blythe took the envelopes from him and stepped back. ‘That’ll be some craft books I ordered. Come in.’
She thought he was going to refuse, but he looked at the paintbrush she held and stepped inside.
‘Where do you want this?’
‘On the table,’ she said, hastily clearing a space among paints and flowerpots.
He put down the carton and straightened, glancing at the pots she’d decorated with brightly hued patterns—dots, stripes and wavy lines, even bows.
‘What do you think?’ she asked him.
‘Very colourful.’
‘I thought plain green pots were a bit boring. The next batch of dwarfs I’m going to slip into these. D’you think they’ll sell?’
‘I’m not qualified to say.’
‘Well, put it this way—would you buy one? With a sunflower in it?’
He picked up one of the pots by the rim, away from the wet paint. She had painted a bright yellow floppy bow on it, with red polka dots. ‘I might have…once. Yes.’ His voice had deepened, and the skin over his cheekbones seemed to tauten as he swallowed. ‘I’m sure they’ll sell.’
Blythe put her paintbrush down, reaching across beside him to place it in a jar of water, giving him a little time.
When he replaced the pot and lifted his head she looked at him searchingly but his face gave nothing away.
Then he smiled, a tiny movement of his firm lips. ‘You’ve got a bit of paint on your cheek.’
‘Damn, where?’ She picked up a paint-stained cloth.
Jas took it from her and gently rubbed at her skin.
Their eyes met and she gazed at him curiously, seeing her own trustingly upturned face reflected in the dark centres as he looked back at her. His hand had stilled and she was conscious of his thumb resting against her cheekbone.
His eyelids lowered, his narrowed gaze lingering on the soft, involuntary parting of her lips before he stepped back. ‘There.’ He put the cloth down.
Blythe stood for a moment, savouring a strange, bubbling delight. ‘Stay for coffee?’
‘You’re working.’
He hadn’t turned her down flat. ‘Time I took a break.’ She moved to put on the kettle. ‘Want a biscuit?’
‘Have you made some?’
‘I’m afraid these are out of a packet.’ She shook out a circle of ginger biscuits onto a plate.
He watched while she prepared the two coffees and added sugar into his, a splash of milk to her own. She had the feeling he was keeping his mind off something.
‘The sun’s come out!’ she said, turning to the sliding glass doors. ‘We could sit on the deck.’
Jas followed her gaze, then looked back at her. ‘So it has.’
‘Can you put a couple of folding chairs out for us? They’re hidden behind the curtain.’
Jas set up the canvas chairs and took his cup from her, and she placed the biscuits on the low wooden table, still damp from the rain.
The sea was deep blue, stippled with white; a few clouds hung raggedly above it. The wet leaves of the nearby trees were glossily shining in the sun.
Blythe breathed in the metallic after-rain smell, stole a look at Jas’s hard profile, then sipped at her coffee, cradling the cup in both hands. ‘I’m investigating other uses for sunflowers and lavender. Did you know you can make paper from sunflower stalks and dyes from the petals?’
‘Are you planning on making paper?’
‘Maybe. What do you think of handmade swing tags with my name on, attached to every pot or notion?’
‘Sounds good. What do you call yourself?’
‘Just B. Summerfield.’
‘Shouldn’t you use a catchy trade name like…Blythe Blooms or…Summers Fields?’
‘You could be right,’ Blythe said. ‘It didn’t seem to matter when my main business was selling dried flowers to florists. But since the notions took off, and now the potted sunflowers…Blythe Blooms.’ She gave him a delighted look. ‘I like it. I wonder if I should advertise for mail orders and sell direct to the public?’
‘Why not?’
‘I’ll have fun trying it out, anyway.’
‘I’ve no doubt you will.’
Blythe bit her lip. She’d been sounding as if life were a game.
‘What’s the matter?’ Jas asked.
‘You think I’m a lightweight person, don’t you? With no…depth.’
Jas’s brows lifted. ‘I think you’re a lucky person,’ he said slowly, ‘who’s been loved and cherished all her life. Also a hardworking one, and probably too kind-hearted for your own good.’
It wasn’t an unflattering assessment, but it didn’t contradict her original assertion, either. ‘Weren’t you ever loved and cherished?’
Jas didn’t react for a moment. ‘You’re getting into deep waters. I wouldn’t advise you to go any further.’
Blythe flushed. ‘I had no right to say that. But you started it…’
‘You asked.’
So she had. ‘I’m sorry.’
He seemed to be thinking, staring at the limitless view before them. ‘I appreciate your concern, Blythe,’ he said at last. ‘Only I can’t…satisfy your need to nurture. Keep that for your plants.’
CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_54e888ef-5042-5a0b-80d0-ff15211788b1)
HE WAS letting her down lightly. But at the same time leaving her in no doubt that he didn’t want her prying into his life.
With a small flash of temper, she said, ‘You needn’t patronise me!’
‘I wasn’t. Not intentionally.’ He glanced at the cup in his hand. ‘Have I outstayed my welcome?’
‘No, of course not. Finish your coffee.’ She pushed the plate of gingernuts towards him.
He inclined his head, and reached for a biscuit.
Blythe too picked up a biscuit and nibbled it in silence. A breeze dipped over the hill and ruffled the tops of the trees. The clouds were drifting away, leaving more blue sky in their wake. The silvery, moving mass of the sea, breaking into long, uneven rollers near the shore, seemed to absorb all of Jas’s attention.
‘You have a wider view than I do,’ he commented at last. ‘But you must be pretty exposed.’
‘It depends on which way the wind is blowing. If it’s coming straight off the sea it can get pretty fierce. But I enjoy storms.’
He looked at her again. ‘They can be destructive.’
‘Well, you can’t stop a storm from coming.’
‘So you might as well get some pleasure from it?’
‘Is there anything wrong with that?’
‘Nothing at all.’ For a few seconds longer he studied her, his gaze a little amused, a little speculative. Then abruptly he turned away. ‘Don’t you worry about your plants?’
‘Of course. I give them good supports and protect them as best I can.’
Jas nodded, as though he was thinking of something else. He finished his coffee and refused another cup. ‘I’ve kept you from your work long enough.’ He stood up.
‘And you have work to do too,’ she guessed, thinking of the computer and the room set up as a study with books, folders and papers. She rose too, looking at him curiously as they moved inside. ‘But you’re not teaching at the moment, are you?’
‘My students study by correspondence.’
She hadn’t thought of that. ‘Music?’ Could people study music by mail?
‘Not music.’ He seemed to be debating whether to expand on that, but as she continued to gaze at him enquiringly he finally said, ‘Mathematics.’
Blythe grimaced. ‘Maths!’
‘Pure mathematics,’ he expanded, and added dryly, ‘It tends to be a conversation-stopper.’
Yes, it would be. Was that why he hadn’t volunteered the information before? ‘Maths was my worst subject at school,’ she confessed.
‘You’re not alone, but you probably mean arithmetic. Pure mathematics deals with puzzles and patterns and universal forms. It’s full of mystery and magic.’
Blythe blinked disbelievingly. ‘Magic?’
‘Throughout the ages numbers have been recognised as mystical. Pythagoras founded a secret society dedicated to their study and worship.’
‘They worshipped numbers?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Do you?’ She slanted him a questioning smile.
‘They fascinate me.’ His eyes were alight and very green. He glanced at the nets above them, laden with colour. ‘You might appreciate a comparison made by a mathematician called Barry Mazur, who says that number theory effortlessly produces innumerable problems which have a sweet, innocent air about them—like tempting flowers.’
‘Flowers?’
‘Mm-hmm.’ The smile in Jas’s eyes deepened, and she felt her heart give an odd little skip. ‘He also says that it swarms with bugs waiting to bite the flowerlovers who, once bitten, are inspired to excesses of effort.’
‘Flowers,’ Blythe repeated. ‘I suppose,’ she said doubtfully, ‘bugs do inspire extra effort in getting rid of them to preserve the flowers.’
‘And now you know what a party-pooper a mathematician can be! I really am leaving.’
Halfway to Apiata the following Monday, Blythe came upon Jas’s car, the hood raised while he inspected the engine. She drew up beside him. ‘Can I help?’
Jas straightened. ‘Only if you have spare parts for this thing. I think there’s a crack in the carburettor.’
‘I could give you a lift to Tau’s garage at Apiata.’
‘Thanks, that would be very helpful. Just a minute.’ He opened the door of the station wagon and brought out his laptop computer and a portable printer, then climbed into the van beside her.
‘Do you go everywhere with those?’ Blythe enquired curiously. He was wise to remove them from the car before he left it, but she didn’t think he’d need to worry about his house being burgled.
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Daphne Clair
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: In the heat of the summer… Sunny, sensitive and full of life, Blythe Summerfield was adored by everyone – except her mysterious new neighbor. Jas Tratherne was the antithesis of Blythe′s spirit and he seemed determined to keep her at arm′s length. But Blythe was equally determined to free the warmth and passion she sensed behind Jas′s aloof exterior.She succeeded – more than a little – but despite her pursuit and their blossoming relationship Blythe still felt that Jas held secrets he refused to share, and that if she pushed him too far what she′d unleash might be more than she could handle… .