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‘My proposition?’ It sounded just as indecent as ever.
‘Your offer of a job,’ she clarified tightly. ‘If it even exists, and wasn’t just invented as a kind of trick—’
His eyes were suddenly as cool and assured as his tone. ‘The job is very real, I assure you. If the police want you to stay here for a few days, why shouldn’t we seek an advantage from the situation? I can arrange for your computer and files to be brought over and you can set up temporary office in one of the spare rooms. If you need a better reason to accept, why not consider doing some extra freelance work for me a fair exchange for a few days’ room and board?’
Honor planted her fists on her hips. ‘Fair? Don’t think I’m going to barter away my services for virtually nothing! If I do your newsletter you’re going to get billed in the usual way, at the usual rates. I was invited into this house as a guest, remember, and guests don’t have to pay for room and board!’ she informed him with relish, too busy enjoying scoring a point off him to realise the trap she had fallen into.
His eyes lowered so that she could not see their triumphant gleam. ‘I can see that you don’t need any advice from me about playing the advantage.’
‘No, I don’t. I’m not a babe in the woods. I’ve been looking after myself for a long time,’ she told him stoutly.
‘Is that because you don’t get on with your family...with your sister?’
Helen again! ‘Of course I do,’ she snapped, ‘but Mum and Helen love living in New York and I don’t. Five years was enough for me. It was too big, too impersonal. So after I graduated from high school I persuaded Mum to let me come back here to live with Dad.’
‘Your parents are divorced?’
‘My father died a few years ago but no, they weren’t. They just happened to want to live in two different countries. Mum chaperoned Helen and another teenage model when they won their first New York contracts and since I was only twelve and Dad was working erratic hours she took me with her. We just sort of stayed on when Helen’s career took off but Dad was adamant he’d never leave New Zealand. He was the editor of the paper I work for...’
She braced herself for a mocking accusation of nepotism but it didn’t come. Which was fortunate, for her father had created a job for her when she had first arrived back, an eager seventeen-year-old who hadn’t quite known what she wanted to do with her life, except that somehow it would involve writing.
Luckily she had found her niche quite quickly, her high-school interest in computers and graphic art proving unexpectedly useful when the newspaper’s owner had decided to switch to the new computerised technology. When her father died and the owner’s son had rationalised the string of Auckland papers he owned she had been happy to accept the suggestion that she work directly from her home, since by then she was already doing quite a bit of freelance work via her home computer.
‘So ink is in your blood. Didn’t you ever want to be a model like Helen?’
Honor closed her eyes with a small shudder of genuine horror. ‘God, no! Even if I’d had the build for it I didn’t have the nerve. Models may look as if they’ve got delicate skins but really they need a hide like a rhinoceros to survive the criticism that’s heaped on them day in, day out.’
‘So you’re the thin-skinned one in your family?’
For a big man he moved quietly. His finger sliding down the soft ridge of her collarbone made her eyes fly open.
‘I was just wondering whether your scratches were still tender,’ he said innocently, removing his finger from the anxious leap of her pulse in the hollow of her throat as he towered over her. ‘You’re lucky they don’t show so you don’t have to answer awkward questions.’
She clamped a hand to the soft-knit bodice of her dress, spreading it defensively across her breasts even though his eyes hadn’t moved from her face. ‘They’re fine,’ she said sternly, to banish the sly image of that lightly calloused fingertip dipping into her cleavage.
‘I wasn’t going to look,’ he soothed, not moving away. ‘I was merely showing friendly concern for a colleague.’
‘I haven’t said I’ll take the job yet,’ she denied skittishly.
He looked at her steadily for a moment, then sighed, his face hardening.
‘I might have known it would come to this. I suppose you want exclusive rights to the inside story on the extortion when it breaks. Since you’re already in possession of potentially damaging information you must know I’m hardly in a position to refuse.’
She blinked at him, her heart pattering uncomfortably fast under her splayed fingers as she contemplated an idea that hadn’t even occurred to her. Still, it wouldn’t do to let him know that...
‘That would be blackmail,’ she said slowly.
‘I don’t suppose that’ll stop you using it to get what you want,’ he said grimly. ‘You know you have me over the proverbial barrel.’
Did she? Honor’s eyes brightened from murky sea-green to emerald at this refreshing new perspective on the situation. Suddenly Adam’s height and breadth and bullish determination didn’t seem so intimidating. She lowered her protective hand, a slow smile breaking across her face, illuminating it with a soft glow of delighted discovery.
‘So I do.’ Her tone was redolent w
ith smug satisfaction.
A muscle flexed along his hard jaw as he watched her former nervous unease smothered by a jaunty self-confidence.
‘So?’ The sullen challenge quivered slightly, no doubt with suppressed rage at his helplessness, thought Honor naïvely. The novelty of power rushed recklessly to her head.
