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He sank into the chair to her right ‘It was no trouble.’
She bristled. ‘Then why mention it?’
‘Why, to make you feel indebted to me, of course,’ he said, playing blatantly to her suspicions. He picked up his fork. ‘And for the purpose of hearing you express your gratitude so prettily….’
Her freckles glowed, mini-beacons of mutinous embarrassment, as she shook out the paper table napkin and draped it across her lap. ‘You’re not exactly the most gracious of hosts,’ she muttered.
‘Shall we duel over our manners later?’ he suggested. ‘We may as well eat our food while it’s still hot.’
The fragrant chicken was scrumptious, and after only a few bites Nora felt her spiky hostility melt away.
‘This is really delicious,’ she said, her voice an unwitting purr of sensual appreciation.
‘I’m glad you like it,’ he res
ponded, watching her golden eyes haze with pleasure as she licked an enticing drop of spicy red sauce from the corner of her wide mouth. She ate with a delicate gluttony that sparked his own baser appetite.
‘You missed a bit,’ he said.
‘Where?’ she asked innocently, and he mirrored her actions with his tongue against his own cheek to demonstrate the spot. To his banked amusement, her gaze fixated on his mouth while a forgotten load of vegetables slid off her fork and landed with a splat on the table.
‘Oh, dear!’ She tore her gaze from his lips and jerked back, dabbing at the sticky pile with her napkin. ‘Oh! Oh, no!’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, snuffing out the flaming edge of her napkin where it had drifted into one of the tea candles and ignited with a soft ‘whuff’.
‘I’m so sorry—’ She frantically chased an elusive wisp of blackened paper as it broke away and floated in the air between them.
‘It’s only paper, Nora,’ he said, capturing the ash as it settled into his drink. ‘The napkins are designed to be disposable.’
‘Not by incineration at the table,’ she said, rubbing at the burnished surface, searching for scorch marks.
‘Nora—’
‘I don’t think there’s any permanent damage,’ she discovered, thumbing up a tiny pile of soot.
‘Nora!’
Her mortified eyes skittered up to meet Blake’s winter-grey look of amused exasperation.
‘Relax!’ He pressed a folded replacement into her restless hand. ‘Everything’s fine. Just be thankful the smoke alarm didn’t go off and bring the local volunteer fire brigade battering down the door. They’re always eager to get some practice in.’
Her face registered a brief flare of horror before she realised he was teasing. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know why these things keep happening to me.’ She sighed, turning her attention back to her food.
‘Chemistry. You’re a natural catalyst,’ he added when she looked puzzled.
‘Should I take that as a compliment or an insult?’ she asked wryly.
‘Well, it means that life around you would rarely be boring.’
She pulled a face. ‘That’s not what Ryan said.’
‘A catalyst is wasted on an inert substance. From what I overheard at the party, I would guess that he was the one with the boringly conventional mind. And the bathroom high jinks certainly suggest a sad lack of imaginative flair. A shower stall is so much more versatile than a narrow cramped bathtub—as you would have discovered last night if you hadn’t been in such a hurry to run off….’
Nora almost choked on a slice of red pepper and hastily gulped at her fresh glass of iced tea. ‘Which reminds me, you still haven’t told me the real reason you’re so keen for me to hide out here for the weekend,’ she said to cover her blushes. ‘I wonder what it is you think I know that would make me a danger to you if I went back to Auckland?’
The seductive amusement was wiped off his face as he studied her brightly innocent expression from under lowered brows.
His long fingers toyed restlessly with the stem of his empty wineglass.
