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She gave him a brittle smile. ‘That you were fantastic in bed, but since I knew that already the conversation sort of stalled out.’
A trace of discomfort shifted in the dark eyes. ‘Kate—’
She didn’t want his pity, or his remorse. ‘Oh, don’t ruin the callous, two-timing image she sketched out so vividly. Just be grateful that I know you don’t really believe I’m a bunny-boiling psychotic, or you wouldn’t have let your trash-talking girlfriend come within a mile of me. My own father is mooching his life away on a dot in the Pacific because he couldn’t handle the responsibility of a relationship with me. You needn’t worry that I’m the type to slit my wrists just because a man I respected turns out to be a self-absorbed idiot and coward to boot—’
His face paled, eyes burning in their sockets. ‘Don’t even say it!’ he said harshly, grabbing her arm and jerking her into silence. ‘Look, if Melissa went too far, I’m sorry—she thought she was helping…’
‘Helping herself to you,’ she joked warily, easing her arm out of his painful grip as he seemed to go into physical lockdown.
He looked sick as he watched her massage the blood back into the pale streaks his strong fingers had left on her forearm. She had hormones to blame for her disruptive urges; what made his behaviour so strangely contradictory? For a moment she had had a brief awareness of his potential emotional depths, and realised for the first time that perhaps this journey was going to be more painful for him than it was for her.
In the midst of her own turmoil she felt an irresistible urge to make him smile, to banish that disquieting bleakness from his eyes.
‘Gee, and to think Oyster Beach came across as such a pleasant little backwater when I was planning this holiday,’ she mused. ‘Who knew it would be such a hotbed of passion and intrigue? Inspiration must bite you at every turn—lucky you have your best writing-boots on.’
His mouth twitched, his eyes falling automatically to his feet, which unfortunately brought the book she had been reading into his purview. Face up on the grass, the cover blared its author’s first mega-seller in its third reprint. With seven books published in the last six years, in a multitude of languages, each successive blockbuster had guaranteed a surge in new sales for his backlist.
His mouth relaxed into a knowing grin. ‘Been reduced to finding your thrills vicariously these days, have you, Kate?’ He bent to pick it up, and frowned when he turned it to read the classification code on the spine. ‘You got this from a library?’
‘Don’t say it as if it’s a dirty word, libraries are wonderful. They’re one of the foundations of civilisation—’
‘I thought you said you had all my books,’ he interrupted her, staring broodingly at his younger image on the back cover. ‘You work for the publisher, for God’s sake. Bloody hell, you could have asked me if you wanted a copy! What happened to the one you had?’
He looked so annoyed that she wasn’t going to tell him that her own Drake Danielses were far too precious to her to risk taking to the beach. Better to lose or damage a library book than one of her own first editions, all of which had his slashing signature on the title page, thanks to Marcus’ practice of asking every one of his authors for a dozen signed copies to distribute around the office.
‘First novels often aren’t worth keeping. They’re too disappointing when comparing them with an author’s later, more refined techniques at work,’ she murmured glibly.
For a glorious moment she thought he was going to fall for it. At least the healthy colour had returned to his face, she thought as he teetered on the edge of an explosion. Then he caught himself.
‘Why, Kate, you never complained about my lack of refinement before,’ he said, arranging the placement of the book back in her hands so that she had two pairs of identical brown eyes drilling her with their sexy mockery. ‘In fact, I thought you liked it. I certainly don’t ever recall you saying you found my technical skills disappointing.’
‘I know how sensitive you artists are to criticism,’ she said acidly, and this time he did laugh out loud.
They both knew his professional ego was bulletproof. He made no secret of the fact his formal schooling had been spotty and at eighteen he had been working as a labourer to save enough money to begin years of travelling. He had worked his passage from port to port around the world on short-haul cargo ships, stopping off to do unskilled labour wherever he could pick up a job, living and working in dangerous environments because they always paid the best money. Curious and observant, he had kept journals throughout his travels, using them as the basis of his first novel. After it had been snapped up for publication he had continued to write because he had stumbled on the purpose of his life. He’d discovered that he had a natural talent for tapping into the popular imagination of millions of people from all cultures and all walks of life, an instinctive gift for words that could make grown men weep and ladies brawl.
‘If this is a library book, you must be expecting to be back in Auckland fairly soon?’ His eyes ran up and over her, but to her chagrin he didn’t seem to notice the knockout bikini, partly because she was hugging his book against her chest, but mostly because he was too busy running through his mental checklist.
‘Knowing how much your mother’s daughter you are when it comes to the letter of the law, I can’t see you deliberately flouting the rules and running up a fine, even if it’s only a library fine, so maybe you never planned on staying the whole month here after all,’ he worked out, with the convoluted logic of a highly creative mind. ‘Maybe you expected to be able to do whatever you came here to do fairly quickly, and be back in town in time to return the book.’
Kate could have told him she had far more pressing concerns weighing on her conscience than late library books. ‘That’s a bit of a stretch, isn’t it, even for you? The loan is for three weeks and you can renew at least twice by phone or online—’
He brushed aside her argument, too intrigued by his paranoid fantasy. ‘You don’t even have a phone connection in the house, let alone wireless coverage, and the cellular signal is erratic at best. Your mind is far too tidy to leave things like that to chance…no, there’s got to be something—’
‘For goodness’ sake, this isn’t the middle of the Gobi Desert, Drake,’ she cut in with exasperation, not sure whether he was serious, or simply winding her up. With Drake’s sardonic sense of humour it was sometimes difficult to tell. ‘I could just stroll next door and ask to use your internet connection. And don’t tell me you don’t have one, because you email your manuscripts and revisions.’
He folded his arms over his chest, his smooth jaw set at a stubborn angle as he moodily toyed with the suggestion. ‘So you could. Maybe that’s the whole idea—access to my computer. I told Marcus there was a good reason the first few chapters are late. He knows I’ll deliver the goods. Is he throwing the panic switch already just because I’m not answering his emails? Did he put the squeeze on you to do him a personal favour?’ He snorted. ‘Threaten your job if you didn’t use your leverage with me to find out what’s going on with the new synopsis, and why I haven’t sent the partial? Because if he did any of that, you can tell him that he’s violated our confidentiality agreement and he can kiss goodbye to any more books from me.’
‘What a shame, and you two have been such loyal friends through all these years, and had such a wonderfully successful run together—you’ve stuck with Enright Media, even though you must have been wooed by every big publisher in the business,’ said Kate, her voice dripping with false compassion at his outrageous threat. ‘It seems you just can’t trust anyone these days, can you?’ Then she clapped her hand to her cheek. ‘Oh, that’s right, I forgot—you never do trust anyone, anyway. How nice it must be to have proof that your lack of faith in your friends has been justified.’
He cooled off instantly. ‘I haven’t proved anything,’ he growled defensively.
She gave him an oozing smile, destined to trigger every warning instinct in his wary nature. ‘Just out of interest, why haven’t you sent him the partial?’
He momentarily froze, and then let out a shuddering breath, ru
nning his hand over his head, raking his hair into disturbed peaks. ‘Hell, Katherine, rub it in, why don’t you?’
‘Thank you, I will.’ She relished the chance to take her revenge. ‘If you really believed that farrago of nonsense it’s a short step to thinking that Marcus might have introduced me to you at that party two years ago as part of his long-term strategy of betrayal. I could be a mole.’
