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His voice deepened into a dark drawl that wrapped around her like black velvet. ‘Then why did you invite yourself to my hotel room? Why did you lead me on the way you did…let me undress you, touch you, taste you…?’
She shivered at his evocative words, her skin prickling from her scalp to her toes at the erotic memory of his sensuous skill, her limbs weighted with a strange heaviness that had nothing to do with fatigue.
‘Look, you’ve got your disk back and I’ve apologised; what more do you expect?’ she said raggedly. ‘Can’t we just forget about last night?’
‘No, I’m afraid we can’t,’ he said, with an implacable gentleness that seemed more threatening than his former raging temper. ‘Because we both know that you opened and read those files—didn’t you, Nora?’
His soft words made it more of a statement than a question and her gaze dropped to the item in question, her thick brown lashes screening the guilty expression in her eyes as she watched him pocket it with its twin. ‘It was security protected.’
A sceptical sound rumbled in his chest at her evasive answer. ‘R-i-g-h-t. And you’re a hacker from way back. You’re one of Maitlands’ resident computer whizkids, constantly manipulating the interface between man and the sharp end of technology.’ He flaunted his newly acquired knowledge of her background with ruthless intent: ‘You took papers at Otago University while you were employed there, but you never bothered doing a full degree course—you’d already proven yourself in the market-place, hawking your software skills since you were in high school. Coming up against a good security block like the one on this disk would be a challenge rather than a deterrent to someone like you.’ His cool contempt was not unmixed with admiration. ‘Given the time, opportunity and Internet access, bypassing it would be well within your capabilities. So don’t insult my intelligence by pretending to be an innocent fluff-head.’
She winced at the accuracy of his insight, his accusing words pounding into her tender skull like hot nails. ‘OK, OK—so I peeked at your boring reports,’ she admitted sulkily. ‘I know I shouldn’t have—but, well—it was a choice of that or the porno channel.’
‘What in the hell are you talking about?’
His abrupt scowl made her regret her loose tongue. ‘I—I stayed the night in a motel a couple of blocks from here.’ The words dragged themselves reluctantly out of her mouth. ‘I couldn’t sleep, the TV reception was dreadful and the in-house video channel was playing adult movies, so I decided to pass the time with my laptop.’
Finding that her computer was still in the car had been the saviour of her sanity through the long lonely hours. She had welcomed the company of a trusted old friend, one who was endlessly entertaining and who had never let her down. And t
he mystery disk had been a convenient distraction from her personal problems. With a complex puzzle to focus on, Nora had been able to shove her own misery to the back of her mind, her steady ingestion of vodka muffling any whispers of conscience.
‘A motel? What were you doing at a motel?’ Blake’s face had tightened with renewed suspicion, his nostrils flaring with distaste.
Nora squirmed inwardly under his accusatory gaze.
‘It’s a long story.’ she muttered. ‘A very long, very boring story,’ she hastened to emphasise as she saw his eyes flare with curiosity. ‘And it really has nothing to do with any of this…’
He put his hands on his hips, his sleek dark suit cloaking a lean frame that bespoke both immovable object and irresistible force. ‘Why don’t you let me be the judge of that?’
She felt too fragile to keep battling his bull-headed stubbornness.
‘If you’ll just get me a couple of aspirin from the bathroom, I’ll tell you,’ she stalled, directing him with a limp wave of her hand. ‘They’re in the mirrored cabinet above the basin.’
She groaned as he remained welded to the spot. ‘Oh, for goodness’ sake—I’m not going to run away as soon as your back is turned. I have a thumping great headache and I don’t want to go in there right now, OK?’
‘Why? Is there a body in the bath?’
His sarcasm conjured up the images she was trying so hard to scrape out of her skull. ‘In a manner of speaking,’ she said, rubbing at her bloodshot eyes.
‘Explain.’
She automatically baulked at the rapped-out order. ‘Can’t you get the aspirin first?’
‘Stop whining and start talking.’
Nora had never whined in her life. Infuriated by his intransigence, she exploded and gave him an earful of her stored resentment, drawing a graphic picture of the sordid events of the previous day and taking a masochistic delight in painting all the gory details of her humiliating failure to satisfy the man she had honoured with her long-time affections.
‘Is it any wonder that I didn’t want to come home last night? I’d be happy never to see either of them ever again, but we all work for Maitlands so I’m stuck with having my nose rubbed in my stupidity five days a week.’
There was a crackling silence. ‘So what was I supposed to be?’ he asked with a distinct edge. ‘Your revenge on the straying boyfriend?’
‘No!’ The instinctive denial came from the depths of her femininity, but was tempered by her innate honesty. ‘Yes—no—maybe—I really don’t know.’ Nora slumped down on to the edge of the bed, closing her eyes and propping her elbows on her knees, resting her heavy head in her hands. ‘Maybe it started out that way, but I don’t know what I was thinking by the time I—we…It all seems so surreal now, like a bad dream….’
She heard him move away and was conscious of him using his cell-phone, but was too tired to strain to hear the low-voiced conversation and when next she opened her eyes it was to see him crouched in front of her, holding out two flat white pills and a half-filled glass of water. Disorientated, she blinked, wondering whether in her state of extreme tiredness she had dozed off.
‘Thanks,’ she said, and downed them quickly, puckering her mouth at the chalky taste. ‘That wasn’t arsenic, was it?’ she joked weakly.
He eyed her pale face as he put aside the empty glass. ‘Have you given me reason to want to murder you?’
