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‘If it was five years ago then you must have bought it from a close relative of mine,’ Anya told Scott Tyler eagerly, delighted at the prospect of a common point of interest that might help individualise her in his eyes during the next hour of question-and-answer. ‘Kate Carlyle. She was over here from London to accept an offer on the house. I’m sure you’d remember if you had met her. She’s an extremely striking woman—rather famous in America and Europe as a concert pianist…’
He had stiffened slightly. Did he suspect her of being a shameless name-dropper? Well, perhaps so on this occasion—but she was also genuinely proud of Kate’s brilliant achievements.
‘Oh, yes, I remember Kate Carlyle,’ he said, his deep, harsh voice banked with unidentifiable emotion. No doubt, then, that the meeting had been memorable. Even when she wasn’t trying, Kate always had a big impact on men. ‘Exactly how closely are you related?’
‘She’s my cousin on my mother’s side,’ she said happily, tilting her small face to meet his demanding gaze.
His expression tightened in what she took to be suppressed scepticism. ‘And how much—or how little—do you have in common with your famous cousin?’
Her rueful smile forgave him for having doubts. He was obviously too polite to wonder out loud how such a beautiful, glamorous and talented creature as Kate could be related to plain, unremarkable Anya Adams, who didn’t have an artistic bone in her body—much to her parents’ enduring disappointment!
‘Well, since we’re both living on opposite sides of the world we very rarely see each other any more,’ she admitted, ‘and Kate does a lot of travelling, but we’re still family so we naturally try to keep in touch.’ At least Anya did. She supposed the occasional rushed few lines of e-mail from Kate in belated response to a long, newsy, handwritten letter from herself could be considered an effort, however feeble, to keep in touch.
‘That doesn’t really answer my question, does it?’ he drawled, with a sardonic twist of his mouth. ‘Perhaps I should have phrased it differently…asked if you share similar character traits, and perhaps her personal philosophy of life…?’
Anya was bewildered. She wasn’t sure quite where his question was supposed to be leading, and it was obvious from his mocking expression that he was ready to pounce on any response.
What on earth did he want her to say? As far as she was aware Kate wasn’t of any particular philosophical bent—unless you counted her dictum of ‘music first’. Whatever else Kate might be, she was a consummate professional.
‘Well, considering our shared background I guess a certain similarity is inevitable,’ she ventured cautiously. ‘When Kate was orphaned she came to live with my parents and me. For a while we were brought up together, just like sisters.’ With Kate being the senior by four years, and very much the dominant one, already obsessed by music and not at all patient with the childish preoccupations of her eight-year-old cousin.
‘So, you’re sisters under the skin?’ he confirmed with a hint of contempt, paraphrasing her words in a way that gave them a whole different meaning.
For some reason, the closer the kinship she claimed with Kate, the less Scott Tyler seemed to be impressed. Did he think she was exaggerating her own importance in order to curry favour? Did he perceive it as an indication of a sense of personal inadequacy on her part—one that might affect her authority of her students?
Disconcerted by his rising antipathy, Anya let her nerves run away with her tongue.
‘I suppose you were told when you bought it that the original part of your house is over eighty years old…and that it was built by John Carlyle—Uncle Fred’s father.’ History being her professional forte and personal interest, it was a natural subject for Anya to fall back on in moments of uncertainty. ‘Did Kate mention that she inherited The Pines after her parents were killed when she was only twelve? Of course, it was a working farm back then and it was leased as a share-milking operation by the estate until Kate was old enough to decide what she wanted to do with it. She sold off most of the grazing land when she turned eighteen, but she held onto the house and the surrounding few hectares as a piece of family history, even though she was already planning to live and work permanently in Europe or the States…In fact the last time she was in New Zealand was when she had finally decided it was time to sell The Pines. What a coincidence that you should turn out to be the buyer, Mr Tyler!’
Oh, God, she was babbling. She never babbled! She could see the glazed look of boredom on Heather Morgan’s face and her father’s impatient glance at his wristwatch. Meanwhile, the object of her gushing lecture stood like a towering totem pole…rigid, aloof and aggressively unyielding, his rough-hewn face carved into blunt lines of cynical rejection.
It had been more or less from that point on that she had given up expecting any positive support from Scott Tyler. The best she had hoped for was that his professionalism would compel him to at least give her a fair hearing. The trouble was that she had found herself picking up his tension like a tuning fork. He only had to be in the same room and she could feel herself vibrate with awareness, and even when she wasn’t looking directly at him he loomed larger than life in her mind, confusing her and making her say or do foolish things. But that didn’t mean she was going to lie down and let him walk all over her. It only made her more determined to fight back.
Anya slid down into the bath until the fragrant waves lapped the point of her chin, soaking the tendrils of hair that had steamed free of the knot on the top of her head.
Scott Tyler was a menace. Now he had even followed her into the sanctuary of sanctuaries, her bath. Looking down through the misty water, she could see her small bobbing breasts and boyish hips, so different from the statuesque curves that Heather Morgan flaunted around society on the arm of her rugged consort. Of course, Tank Tyler would probably need a well-built, boldly aggressive man-eater to slake his vile lust upon, she brooded darkly, for he would squash any woman of a more delicate and petite construction.
How had he put it last night?
I’m…considerably more demanding than your average randy teenager.
She could just imagine what kind of demands he had been talking about…
A tiny shiver rippled across the surface of the water and she sank a little deeper, letting it creep as far as her lower lip.
He was probably an arrogant, clumsy oaf in bed, she ordered herself to believe, with no appreciation of the finer nuances of making love. Quantity rather than quality. Dominating and selfish. Impatient.
She closed her eyes, trying to mine her imagination for more scathing criticisms, but instead her treacherous mind presented her with a vivid picture of Scott Tyler in the process of proving his oafishness, his glossy olive skin glistening with a bloom of moisture, his hard muscles flexing and rippling as he moved over the woman pinned beneath his pistoning hips, his blue eyes burning down into hers with reckless desire. He had dark hair on his wrists and a heavy beard growth so her inspired imagination painted a thick pelt of soft hair on his sleek and shining chest, that teased at her breasts with each thrust of his—
Aaaarghh! Anya sat up choking and spluttering, groping for the towel at the side of the bath, coughing up the water that had rushed up her nose as her boneless body had slipped beneath the sensuously rocking surface.
Anya scrubbed at her blotchy face, horrified at the dangerous byway down which her thoughts had drifted. The last thing she wanted to do was start having hot and heavy fantasies about Scott Tyler. As if she wasn’t self-conscious enough around him already! She looked down in dismay at her peaked breasts, knowing that this time she didn’t have the excuse of a cold draught to explain her body’s aching arousal.
Dammit!
She snatched up her loofah and soap and began scrubbing mercilessly at her skin, trying to scour away her sins. So much for her nice, soothing, revitalising bath. She was revitalized, all right, but in a most unwelcome way.
She ducked back under the water to rinse off the soap, d
