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‘Do what? This?’ Her scalded hurt boiled to the surface and she continued to back away, boldly repeating the action, drawing her arm with taunting slowness across her throbbing mouth, her eyes glowing with electric-blue defiance. To make sure he got the message she mimed a spitting action with her tongue and almost choked as he made a sudden lunge and grabbed her shoulders, snatching her back against his chest.
‘I told you not to do that,’ he growled, sealing his mouth down over hers in another soul-stirring kiss, taking his time over the sensual punishment, not stopping until they were both panting.
His eyes were pure steel, burnished with brutal satisfaction as they shafted her with a knowing look. ‘I warned you! If you do it again, I’ll know exactly what it is you’re asking for…’ He paused, as if expecting another act of defiance, and when it didn’t come he scowled, reluctantly letting her go. ‘Don’t think because you can wind my uncle around your little finger that you have any chance of getting me to dance to your tune.’
She rallied to the ridiculous charge, lifting her chin.
‘You’re starting to mix your metaphors, Ethan. I thought you were supposed to be a civilised, well-educated man but it seems reports of your intelligence have been over-inflated—much like your puffed-up ego!’
Some day soon he was going to rue his reckless words, and she was going to make him grovel in the dirt before she accepted his apology. If she accepted it at all! she thought, revenge fantasies dancing in her head.
He gave a dark, scornful laugh. ‘Peter might have offered to set you up here in your own little studio, but don’t think that’ll give you free access to his cheque-book—most of his money’s tied up in a family trust.’
‘Oh, but he’s offered me much more than that!’ she took great pleasure in informing him. ‘Didn’t Mrs Cooper warn you that he’d asked me to live here with him as well? That’s why he was showing me this bedroom suite…my bedroom, now, apparently, so I think I’d be perfectly within my rights to ask you to leave…’
He stiffened. ‘When I arrived, Coop said that you’d turned him down, that you’d opted for staying with one of your girlfriends—’
‘What? Turn down a luxurious lifestyle at a sweet old codger’s expense for a lumpy couch in an overcrowded flat? No self-respecting gold-digging slut would be that stupid!’ she jeered, beginning to enjoy herself. ‘No, it’s the life of Riley for me from now on. I’ll be breakfasting on champagne and dining on caviar!’
His eyes had narrowed at her shameless gloating. ‘This is just a wind-up, isn’t it?’ She could see his engineer’s brain ticking over like a calculator. ‘For whatever reason, you did refuse. You’re not moving in at all—’
‘Watch me!’ she snapped at him, determined not to give him the satisfaction of being right. ‘I was just about to unload my stuff from the car when you came buzzing onto the scene.’ She turned on her heel and marched out into the hall.
‘Hadn’t you better come and drink your coffee before it gets cold?’ she bid, emphasising her point by assuming the snooty air of a polite hostess enduring an unwelcome guest in her home.
He followed, festering silently in her wake, but by the time she stepped onto the verandah he had regained her shoulder, and refocused his attack.
‘And what if I was to suggest to Peter that he bring in an independent appraiser to view Aunt Rose’s collection? Someone who could inspect and revalue it piece by piece, particularly in view of the ongoing restoration process of the last few years?’ he asked. ‘How would you react to the idea?’
Ah…so he had, after all, seen more than she had bargained for that fateful night!
She halted in her tracks and gave a sour laugh. ‘I’d tell you to join the queue.’
He was startled into his natural courtesy. ‘I beg your pardon?’
She turned, ticking off her fingers. ‘I’m being investigated by the insurance company, the fire department, the police, and probably the Inland Revenue Department once they discover my GST returns for the quarter have burnt to a crisp.
‘So bring on your appraiser—bring in all the experts you like. I won’t even pretend to be insulted, because I’d welcome the chance for vindication in at least one area of my life!’
CHAPTER FOUR
EMILY primly presided over the freshly laid tray on the verandah table, hoping that the shade thrown by the canvas patio umbrella would disguise the slight puffiness she could feel around her tender mouth.
On the other side of the table Ethan West lounged, toying with his coffee, and with Emily’s nerves. He, too, was lurking in the shadows rather than the full glare of the sun, but for a different reason. Mrs Cooper, when she had brought out his coffee with a fussiness that bespoke her strong partiality, had chivvied him to scoot his wooden chair under the protection of the umbrella.
‘He burns easily,’ she had told Emily chattily, handing her the slip-on shoes she had left outside the door, now scrupulously clean; obviously trying to make up for ratting her out.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Emily, stuffing her feet into the damp shoes, mentally striking a match and setting it to the cuff of his custom-tailored suit.
‘Everything around you seems to be dangerously inflammable,’ remarked Ethan, shrewdly picking up on her wayward thought as he reefed off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair. How could he be so perceptive in some respects and so wilfully blind in others? ‘Careful you don’t get your fingers burnt.’
‘They already are,’ she said, waggling the shiny pink fingertips she had acquired when she had unwisely put her hand to a brass door-knob on the night of the fire.
Instead of shooting back another mocking one-liner, he frowned, leaning forward for a closer look. ‘Do they hurt?’
‘Only when I laugh,’ she said flippantly. In truth she had been afraid that she might have permanently lost some of the fine sensitivity in the pads of her fingers, so critical to her work, but, instead, burning off the top few layers of skin had brought the nerves closer to the surface and seemed to have increased her tactile ability.
‘Then I hope you’ve learned your lesson,’ he said, settling back in his seat.
