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‘Ouch! I—uh—’ She pulled her hand free and sucked on her stinging fingertips, flustered by Blake’s sudden reappearance in a tight black T-shirt that was but a small improvement on the distraction of his bare chest.
‘I was just wondering where the telephone was,’ she mumbled.
‘Why?’
‘I thought I’d ring home…’ she confessed, further unnerved by his looming intensity.
His eyes narrowed. ‘You want to call your flat? I thought you said your flatmate had gone to work. Who was it you expected to pick up?’
She nibbled at her lower lip, presenting an unwitting picture of guilt. ‘Nobody.’
The straight black bars of his eyebrows rose above eyes steely with suspicion and she sighed.
‘I just thought I’d better leave a message on my machine, saying where I was and when I’d be back, that’s all. You know—contact details in case of emergency.’ She tugged at her wrist and his fingers tightened.
‘You mean as insurance against any plans I might have to make you permanently disappear?’ He invested his words with a silken menace.
‘Yes—I mean, no! I’m sure you’re a very law-abiding citizen,’ she added hurriedly.
His eyelids drooped. ‘I’m flattered by your faith in my honour.’ His sarcasm was designed to intimidate.
‘The phone?’ she reminded him with dogged persistence.
‘There isn’t one.’
‘No phone?’ She was startled as much by what he said as his tone of grim satisfaction. ‘But…there are phone jacks all over the place—’
‘To be functional they have to be connected to a network,’ he pointed out, stalking back to the kitchen. ‘I come here to get away from all that—to have some uninterrupted down-time.’
Nora trailed after him. It sounded like an excellent theory, but…
‘I don’t believe it,’ she muttered. ‘I bet you didn’t get where you are today by working nine-to-five five days a week. It would be tantamount to professional suicide for you to totally cut yourself off here, especially when your boss happens to be in the middle of a hostile takeover bid—’
‘Which is why I regularly check for messages on my mobile,’ he said, abruptly curtailing her speculative musing.
‘Oh,’ She felt foolish for forgetting. ‘Of course. Then…may I borrow it for a minute?’
‘Unfortunately, the battery’s very low and I forgot to bring a charger down with me,’ he continued smoothly. ‘I’m sure you don’t expect me to risk professional suicide for the sake of giving your untrustworthy flatmate a heads-up on your whereabouts?’
Nora mistrusted his bland expression. ‘Then I suppose you’ll have to drive me out to the nearest public phone booth so I can make my call,’ she persisted.
His trademark scowl descended as he silently debated the extent of her stubbornness. Victory was sweet when he reluctantly fetched a slim state-of-the-art phone, bristling with all the latest software bells and whistles.
‘Gee, thanks,’ she said with a grin.
‘Make it short,’ he ordered, and flagrantly eavesdropped as she delivered her self-conscious little message to the answer-machine at the flat.
‘Satisfied that I didn’t pass on any state secrets?’ she said when she finally slapped the phone back into his outstretched palm.
‘You could have been speaking in code,’ he pointed out.
She sucked in a frustrated breath. ‘My God, you’re suspicious—’ she began furiously before noticing the provocative slant to his mouth. She lifted her chin and flounced past him to pick up her drink.
To her secret disappointment he meekly lapsed into bland amiability, delivering a smooth line in unthreatening patter as he expertly finished cooking the prepared food. He finally scooped the glistening contents of the wok into two white porcelain bowls and picked them up, along with his wineglass.
‘I usually dine al fresco, weather permitting, but I thought you’d prefer us to eat inside,’ he said, seating her at the polished slab of wood which dominated the dining alcove around the corner from the kitchen. Here the bifold doors were firmly closed, screened by wooden shutters slanted to obscure the view of the darkened terrace. Cutlery gleamed against the woven placemats grouped intimately at one end of the long table, burnished by the light from a row of tea candles in a tortured metal holder.
‘You needn’t have bothered to change your habit for my sake,’ she said stiffly. ‘I would have managed.’
