Tempting Taine (12 page)

One kiss from Taine, though, and her long suppressed desires were rising to the fore again.
 
She tamped them down ruthlessly.
 
“You just want me to talk to you?”

“I hate cooking alone.”

She perched herself on a high stool at the kitchen bench.
 
“You don’t like me.
 
Why do you want me to sit here and talk to you?”

“Politeness to a guest?”

“I doubt it.
 
It would’ve been perfectly polite to invite me to sit in the lounge watching TV until dinner was ready.”

Taine could not explain it even to himself, but he wanted her in his sight.
 
He liked knowing that he could reach out and touch her if he wanted to, just brush his fingers against hers, put an idle hand on her shoulder, or tuck a stray wisp of hair behind her ear.
 
“I couldn’t ogle your legs if you were sitting in the lounge."

“That’s what this is about?
 
Ogling my legs while you cook dinner?”

“I could think of worse things to look at.”

She crossed her legs in front of her and picked up out a
gourmet cooking
magazine from the rack.
 
“In that case, you won’t mind if I read.
 
Mind you watch what you’re doing enough at least so you don’t chop your fingers off.”

“See?
 
You really do care about me.
 
You want to reconsider your decision not to share my bed tonight?”

A couple of spots of color appeared high on her cheekbones.
 
“I don’t care about you in the least, but I’m hungry,” she snapped, not even raising her head from her magazine.
 
“I care about not getting your blood in my dinner.”

The simple meal was soon prepared.
 
Verity, after she had gotten over her sulk, was easily cajoled into making a salad while he boiled the pasta and put the
finishing touches
on to the
carbonara
sauce.
 

They worked together in the kitchen, surprisingly at ease with each other.
 
The glass of wine had been a good idea.
 
It seemed to have made her more relaxed in his company – she no longer flinched away from him when he accidentally brushed against her, or jumped ten feet in the air when he put a hand on her shoulder.
 
If he did not know what a heartless, self-centered woman Verity really was underneath, he could almost enjoy having her around.

The cooking was so pleasant he was almost sorry when it was time to eat.
 
His father, worn out from his physiotherapy session that afternoon, had already retired to bed, leaving the two of them to have dinner together.
 

He sat at the small dining table, feeling barely a glimmer of guilt for the outrageous lie he had told about the pine tree having fallen over the road.
 
Not when it had gotten him what he had wanted all along – Verity’s company for the entire evening, and the chance to show her that she belonged to him.
 
The weather had let him down – it had been up to him to create the opportunity he needed.
 
Now they had eaten, it was time to move on to the next phase of his plan.

He pushed his plate away and stood up from the table.
 
“Come for a walk with me tonight,” he offered, holding out his hand to her to help her to her feet.

She looked less than enthusiastic at the thought, and ignored his proffered hand.
 
“In the rain?”

“It’s not raining anymore.”

She scrunched down into her seat and gave a shiver.
 
“It’s cold though.”

He put one hand on her shoulder and felt an electric current spark through them both.
 
She jumped at his touch and he smiled to himself.
 
Despite the second glass of
wine
she had drunk, or maybe because of it, she was intensely aware of him – so aware that she shied at the slightest bit of physical contact they made.
 
“I’ll lend you a jacket and some fleecy pants.”

“I’ve only got my work shoes.”
 
She held out her leg to show him the high-heeled shoes she wore with her skirt.
 
“I can’t go walking in these.
 
They’ll be ruined.”

Her stockings glinted and sparkled in the light.
 
It was all he could do not to grab her luscious leg and run both hands up her calves and thighs.
 
“I’ve got a spare pair of gumboots.”

“A borrowed jacket, a borrowed pair of pants, and a borrowed pair of gumboots?
 
I’ll look ridiculous.”

He shook his head.
 
She could never look ridiculous.
 
Even in a clown suit with a bright red nose stuck on her face, she would still be the most sensual and exciting woman he had ever known.
 
Her beauty was enough to drown a man.
 
He should know.
 
It had nearly killed him once before.
 
“It’s just as well that it’s dark out and no-one will see you.”

Still she resisted.
 
“I can’t be bothered.”

Like he was going to give up that
easily?
 
“You just ate a huge meal, complete with dessert.
 
You need the exercise.”

That
got a reaction.
 
She glowered at him.
 
“Are you telling me I’m fat?”

He grinned and put his hands up in the air to ward her off.
 
“I’ve not got a death wish.
 
I don’t tell
any
woman she looks fat.”

“Just as well,” she muttered under her breath, just loud enough for him to hear.
 

“Everyone needs exercise though.
 
You should know that, being medically trained and all.”
 
He reached for her hand and pulled her to her feet.
 
“Come on.
 
Up you get.”

“Okay, okay, I’m coming,” she said, pulling her hand out of his.
 
“I’ll go for a blasted walk with you if only that will make you shut up about it.”
 
She yawned and stretched like a sleepy cat.
 
“Why do you always manage to persuade me into doing something that I don’t want to do?”

He hid a smile at her words.
 
A walk in the dark was the very least of what he intended to persuade her into tonight. “Because, even if you don’t want to do it, you know it’s the right thing to do?”

“Nah - I know that going for walk in the rain is a stupid thing to do, but I’ll do it anyway, just to get you off my case.”

“Then it must be because I’m more determined than you, and I won’t take no for an answer.
 
So, come on, put on those sexy gumboots.
 
There’s something I want to show you.”

Chapter 6

“Whatever it is had better be worth seeing,” Verity grumbled, as she slipped and slid over the rough and muddy path in a pair of gumboots that were at least three sizes too big for her.

His smile gleamed in yellow beam of his torch.
 
“It will be.”

She kicked at a loose stone with the toes of her gumboot.
 
“Are you going to give me a clue?”

“No.
 
It’s better if it’s a surprise.”

She was getting a bad feeling about
this
walk.
 
He was sure to have something up his sleeve – something that he knew would make her turn tail and run if he told her about it.
 
“I don’t like surprises.”

“I know.
 
You’ve
always had everything mapped out to the last detail.
 
It’s time you loosened up a bit and learned to take life the way it comes.”

She had learned the hard way that failing to plan and taking life the way it came could complicate matters.
 
Not that she would trade her surprise gift, Aroha, for anything in the world, but her young daughter had certainly complicated her life.
 
“Life’s easier if you plan for it.”

“Not all things can be planned for.”

Just
then
she slipped on a patch of mud and fell on her backside.
 
“You don’t say,” she said, as she struggled to her feet again, limping slightly from a minor twist of her ankle.
 
“But that’s what happens when you don’t plan ahead – you fall over in the mud and break your ankle.”

He helped her up and took hold of her hand.
 
It was warm in the coldness of the night air, and his palm still as work-roughened as she remembered it.
 
She tried to pull away, but his grip was firm.
 
“It’s just to steady you,” he said, his voice amused.
 
“I presume you don’t want to fall and break your ankle for real.”

“Not particularly.”
 
In fact, it was just what she did not need.
 
Apart from the fact that a broken ankle would leave her housebound and unable to get around, a physiotherapist with a broken ankle
was not calculated
to instill a sense of confidence in her patients.

“Then let me help you.
 
After all, I’m the one who insisted you come for a walk with me in those huge gumboots.”

She shrugged in the darkness.
 
“Whatever.”
 
If she were to be honest with herself, she liked the warmth that crept down her spine at the touch of his hand on hers.
 
In fact, if she closed her eyes, it was almost as if the past ten years
had been obliterated
, and the two of them were together, lovers and in love, just as they had been that long, hot summer when she had been seventeen.

With her eyes closed, she could forget about the hurt and anger that had since come between them.
 
She could forget that he despised her and thought her shallow and selfish.
 
She could forget that he no longer cared for her and that he only desired her body for a quick roll in the hay.
 
She could forget everything that had passed during the last ten long, lonely years…

She stumbled over a tree root and cursed volubly at
being rudely yanked
back to the present.
 
She had forgotten that with her eyes closed she could not see the reality that was staring her right in the face, tree-roots and all.
 
Taine did not like her – he only wanted to use her.
 
He wanted her body – not her mind.
 
He wanted to have sex with her and that was all.
 
She knew that in her heart, and the knowledge still cut her like a knife.
 

So why was she taking such a perverse pleasure in walking in the dark with him, holding his hand, acting like a teenager in love all over again?

Because she was a fool, she told herself firmly.
 
Because no other man had ever measured up to the teenage
fantasies
she had woven around him, and no man ever would.
 
No man could – to her love-struck mind, he had been little short of Spiderman and Batman rolled into one, with a little touch of Superman and Captain America thrown in for good measure.
 
He had been invincible, and she had loved him
like
she had never loved anyone since.

You could not turn off loving someone just like turning off a tap.
 
It did not work like that.
 
For the sake of her sanity, though, she had to ignore the feelings that he had roused from hibernation.
 
She could not afford
to even admit
they existed any more.

That
was easier said
than done, however, with his hand holding hers, and his thumb lazily stroking her palm as they walked along together.

A sense of relief washed over her when at last they stopped, in the bush in the middle of nowhere.
 
“Have you decided I’ve done enough exercise for one night?”

“Look around you.”

She did as he asked.
 
“Well?”

“What do you see?”

She peered up into the night sky, dark with only a hint of silver.
 
“Clouds.
 
The moon.
 
No
stars,
and I couldn't tell you what they were even if I
could
see them.”