Secrets and Seductions (3 page)

Don’t let him charm you, Leah!

The kettle’s reedy whistle echoed across the silence, breaking her thoughts, which was just as well. Those sorts of thoughts weren’t a good idea, and she chastised herself for even noticing him.

She filled both cups and handed one to him, holding hers with both hands so he wouldn’t see them shaking. She walked right past him and back into her tiny lounge and stood beside the rough-hewn table. “I’m
not
letting you walk in here on a whim, so you can get that idea right out of your head, Mr. Grainger.”

He took a sip from his coffee, his expression unreadable. “Tough. Curtis asked me to look out for her.”

Leah’s heart constricted. “Why?”

“Because I’m his brother and Charlee’s uncle.”

Focusing on keeping her voice calm and controlled, she put her cup down on the table. “And I was his wife. As far as I’m aware, you’ve never been around, too busy for family. Curtis died weeks ago. Where were you then?”

Instead of answering her, he scanned the room, and Leah found herself bristling, knowing what he saw: the faded and peeled paintwork, a tired house in need of repair.

She challenged him with an upward flick of her chin. “It’s not much, but it’s mine.”

His gaze returned to her, his mouth severe. “Not quite.”

“Pardon?”

“Running this place must take a lot of time, energy and money.” He pointed toward her mail scattered on the table. The mail she didn’t want to read. Bills she couldn’t pay.

“I’m not complaining.”

“Borrowing money, spending it when you know you can’t pay it back.” He wagged a finger at her as if she were a spoilt child. “Tut, tut.”

A sting of heat curled across her skin. “That’s not true.”

“I’m no fool. You’re Curtis’s wife.”

“His widow,” she corrected.

“He said you never had enough money.”

Leah met Mac’s gaze full on. Big mistake. He stepped closer. Not so close that he touched her, but still too close, his expression unyielding and full of condemnation.

But it was her reaction to him that scared her the most. The awareness that fired up all over again. She shook her head, willing away thoughts that had no right being there, and backed up.

“I’ve seen the loan documents, Leah. Your signature is quite clear, and according to an interesting conversation I had with Curtis’s solicitor, your
big
problem runs into five digits.”

Leah’s shoulders slumped, and Mac bit out a harsh laugh, his tone as arrogant and brutal as the expression he wore. “Finally, I’ve got your attention.”

“You have no right to nose into something that doesn’t concern you.”

“You’re wrong. As Charlee’s uncle, I’ve made it my business. I promised Curtis to look out for his daughter.”

“His… Curtis barely registered her existence.”

Mac frowned, but even her uttering the truth didn’t swerve him from his self-proclaimed purpose. “I always keep my promises. Your husband insinuated certain…allegations.”

Her heartbeat skidded to a standstill. “Rubbish.” But she had to ask. “About what?”

“That you’re not a fit mother.”

Leah threw her hands up, then shoved back the hair that had fallen across her eyes. Her palms were sweaty, and a sticky sheen of nervous perspiration slicked across her pores. “That’s ridiculous. Curtis was sick and not in his right mind.”

“That’s your story, but don’t worry, I intend to find out the truth.”

“Charlee is
my
daughter,” she said glancing toward the closed bedroom door where she prayed her daughter would stay sleeping. Her heart ached for her little girl. “I would never harm her.”

He leaned toward her, his voice a threatening rumble, and Leah’s breath stalled in her chest. “You’d better not. I’m not prepared to watch my niece suffer because of your negligence.”

Negligence. She jerked back bodily, anger spiraling to every part of her. “How dare you! Charlee has never suffered. Never. She has security here.”

“Are you sure? You owe thousands you can’t repay. How secure is your home when the bank is on your tail?”

Money. Always about money. Leah shook her head, and her eyes shuttered for a moment, a brief chance to wish it all away. To be safe.

“The bank is about to foreclose, Leah. You need me.”

Her eyes flashed open. “Like hell. I’ll never need a Grainger again.”

“Such protest. But then what would you do to save Aroha Farm?”

Anything! She’d stayed, despite the years of Curtis’s abuse, his threats to take Charlee from her. Didn’t that prove it?

And now Curtis’s brother seemingly spoke the same language.

“Taking a moment to decide?” he berated her.

But Leah refused to rise to his bait. She didn’t know how he’d react. Curtis would have taunted her, and she’d learned early in their marriage that reaction brought brutal consequences. How could she know his brother wouldn’t react in the same way? She couldn’t take the chance. “The farm is all I have.”

“And if you lose that, how will you care for Charlee?”

Yes, how?
Leah had asked herself that question in the quiet hours of night when the worry wouldn’t go away. So far, she’d come up with no real solution.

“You need my money.”

She glanced through the french doors in the darkening of the summer evening, and her heart swelled with pride as she viewed row upon row of her olives. “What I need is to bring in my harvest. Then I can settle the debt.”
And she would be free at last. She turned back to face him, grim determination holding her steadfast. “I don’t want Grainger money.”

For a moment, Mac’s dark, almost obsidian gaze bored into her, but with the downward slice of lashes as jet black as his hair, every ounce of emotion evaporated. “Then you’ve a problem,” he said, pulling himself to his full height, “because you see, you’ve no choice. I’ve bought your debt from the bank. I’m your new business partner.”

Shock clamped around Leah’s heart. She couldn’t breathe, too scared to. She clutched at her throat as if that would release oxygen into her lungs. It didn’t. “You can’t do that,” she finally exhaled as his words slammed into her conscious.

“Says who?”

“But why? I’m nothing to you. We’ve never even met.”

“Call it taking precautions.”

“Against what?”

“Against you doing a disappearing act with my niece. Now all you have to worry about, sweetheart,” he said, his breath scalding a path over her icy skin as he leaned close, eyes glittering with the satisfaction of the hunt, “is me.”

The butterflies in Leah’s belly sank to the bottom. “Why? You’ve had no contact for years. You can’t be serious.” Her raised voice echoed the length of the compact lounge. “Is this some sort of familial revenge?”

“As I said, it’s a done deal.”

Leah reined in her fury, trying for reason. “Then undo it.”

“No can do. When I set my mind to something, I follow through. You might have been able to fool my brother, but not me. You used to owe the bank; now you owe me. You see, I don’t gamble unless it’s a sure thing.” His lips curled. “I’m not going anywhere, Leah. And since I own half the land
and
half the house, I intend to stick around and keep an eye on you
.
Oh, and just to make sure, I’m moving in.”

“What? That’s impossible.”

“No it’s not. This document” —he reached into the pocket of his jeans and withdrew a piece of paper, then waved it in front of her— “says exactly that.”

Leah snatched it from his fingers, scanning words that barely made sense. She tossed it to the table where it landed across her bills, an irony she didn’t miss despite her fractured nerves and the imprisoning disaster unfolding with each breath. “What do you know about olive growing?”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“When the harvest comes in, I can pay you back. You don’t have to move in.” Her voice cracked with incredulity while the roar in her head escalated. Aroha Farm was her solace against the world, against her past, for both her and Charlee. Having Mac Grainger in her house was unthinkable.

“Mummy, Mummy.”

Charlee!

The walls of Leah’s sanctuary came crashing down as the cry she had so desperately not wanted to hear reached from behind a closed door. She shoved past Mac, ran down the hallway, pushed open the door and turned on the light. She hunkered beside the pink-painted wrought-iron bed, gathering her daughter in her arms and breathing in her sweet innocence. “What is it, darling?”

Teardrops glistened on her daughter’s flushed cheeks. “Dreams, Mummy, angry dreams. It was the bad man.”

“Oh, sweetie, hush.” She brushed her daughter’s damp hair from her forehead. “You know what we say about bad dreams,” she reminded Charlee, gentling her tone. She reached for her daughter’s pillow and turned it over, patting it down. “Now it’s your turn.”

Charlee’s tiny hand bunched into a fist, and she punched the pillow several times. “Squash, squash, go away.”

“That’s right. Turn the pillow. Squash the bad dream and it will go away.”

Tentative eyes the image of her father’s, and Mac’s, searched Leah’s face for reassurance. “It is gone, isn’t it, Mummy?”

Leah kissed the top of her daughter’s blonde curls, inhaling the sweet fragrance she knew so well. It fired every protective bone in her body. No one would hurt her child ever again. She offered Charlee a reassuring smile. “Sure is. Now down you go, back to sleep. I’ll leave the side light on, and that bad dream won’t dare come back.”

“Are you sure?”

“Absolutely,” Mac’s strong voice reached from behind. “It wouldn’t dare come back with me here.”

Leah stiffened and instinctively shielded her daughter with her body. “Please keep your voice down.”

A wide-eyed Charlee stared at him. “You’re big.”

“So they tell me. Thought you might need some help. Bad dreams sometimes need a couple of warriors to vanquish them.” He offered Charlee a smile as he stepped into the room, and a tiny part of Leah melted. Why couldn’t Curtis have been more like him? Kind. Gentle. Fatherly. Charlee deserved that.

Then Leah remembered the real world.

With a soft sigh, Charlee settled, dark lashes shadowing her tiny face, her acceptance of another man in the house surprising Leah. “All gone now, Mummy.”

Leah’s heart swelled with love for her daughter. “Yes, sweetie, all gone. Back to sleep, but remember, I’m only in the kitchen if you need me.” Leah rose and walked to the doorway, bitter tension coiling inside when she thought of Mac’s unwelcome intrusion. Wasn’t that just like a Grainger? He walked in as if it was his automatic right to be there, and could be as charming as the devil when he wanted something. Just like Curtis. Leah wanted Mac gone. “Time to go,” she said to him with a soft plea.

“Sure, now that the demons are gone.”

She stepped into the hallway, making sure to leave the door slightly ajar and only the bedside lamp on. She flicked him a withering glare. “So how come you’re still here?”

“You know why.”

Even with Curtis, Leah had never felt so awkward. Mac loomed large and overpowering. She didn’t know what to do with him and certainly didn’t want him anywhere near Aroha Farm. Secrets had to be protected.

He talked about choices, but right now Leah knew she had none left. A heavy sigh slid from her chest as she turned toward the spare bedroom. “I’ll make up the spare bed.”

He didn’t say a word. Didn’t need to. He just offered a suggestive slight arch of one brow.

That was enough to set her off. Hands on her hips, she rounded on him. “Just because you want to fulfill some familial role, don’t go getting any ideas of making it permanent, Mr. Grainger.”

He held his hands up in surrender. “As if I would.”

And that was her problem—the man made her more than nervous. A little frisson of heat sparked through her every time he came near, a sexual awareness she didn’t want to acknowledge. The man was a Grainger, and Grainger men were not reliable as far as she was concerned. She wanted safety and security, not the erotic surge of excitement he generated.

She jabbed a finger toward the closed door to the spare bedroom. “In there.”

Mac pushed open the door, and if Leah hadn’t been so darned furious, she might have laughed as she witnessed his horrified expression.

“You expect me to sleep in here?”

“I do.”

He dragged a hand through his hair, looking to the bed, then to her and back again to the bed. “It’s…”

“Small,” she finished for him.

“Try minute,” he countered.

With delight, Leah envisioned his long legs dangling over the end of the single bed. She forced her lips into a stiff smile. “You wanted to play happy families. I, however, did not promise it would be comfortable.”

Chapter Three

Nightmares filled Leah’s sleep, fears escalating and countering all reasonable thought, and as morning edged over the horizon and shards of light filtered from behind the curtain, exhaustion racked every part of her. Her head ached, her muscles were stiff and uncoordinated, yet she couldn’t take the day off. She had a debt to repay, and the faster she paid Mac Grainger, the quicker he would disappear from her life.

She hauled herself from bed, walked through to the kitchen and spied the door to his bedroom wide open.

“Mac?” Her call echoed through the expanding silence, his name uncomfortable on her tongue. At the doorway to his bedroom, she switched on the light, only to see the bed made, corners tucked in hospital-style, but no Mac. She turned to face her small kitchen. “Mac?”

Still nothing.

And he’d talked about her doing a runner. Perhaps the thought of hours toiling under the hot sun had turned him off the idea of familial fun after all. She smiled. Good. Now she could carry on and relax.

With no sign of him, nerves that had been stretched to breaking point finally eased, and she busied herself with her normal morning routine.

An hour later, with breakfast out of the way, she readied Charlee for kindergarten. She locked up the house and was down the front steps before she realized what was different. Mac’s car wasn’t there.

She breathed deeply. He truly had gone.

“Mummy” —Charlee tugged at her hand— “where’s the big man?”