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‘Not you…’ She reacted crushingly to the hint of masculine satisfaction in his tone. ‘…Ray. I trust his opinion. I simply decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.’ She turned her head, her green eyes cutting up at him. ‘That’s what every person deserves, don’t you think…the chance to prove themselves?’
They had come to a halt by the open sliding door and Ryan rubbed his knuckles thoughtfully along his lower cheek—the same cheek, she was uneasily aware, that she had slapped on the night he had made the insulting suggestion that they work out their mutual differences in bed.
‘Are you saying that’s why you suddenly needed me to stay?’ he asked quietly. ‘You want me here purely as a matter of principle?’
Talk of principles, and the thread of disbelief in his voice made her flare defensively. ‘I don’t need you—I never even said I wanted you to stay! I’m willing to put up with you if I have to, that’s all!’
His eyes were as hazy as a sea mist, moving in, enveloping her, reducing her visibility to a bare few centimetres.
‘Oh, I think there’s more to it than that, Nina.’ He transferred his knuckles to her own satiny cheek, measuring the heat streaking beneath the skin. ‘Much, much more…’
The trailing tip of his thumb brushed the corner of her mouth, which parted in alarm.
‘Don’t!’ Her startled breath stirred the fine hairs on the back of his hand.
‘Don’t what?’
When had he moved so close? Why wasn’t she pushing him away? What was it that rooted her to the spot and left her with only flimsy words with which to defend herself. She was supposed to be the one in control!
‘Don’t touch me!’
‘Why not?’ His voice dropped to a bittersweet tenderness, a mere scrape along her nerves. ‘What are you so afraid of? What will happen if I do?’
She blinked in terror, breaking the hypnotic spell. ‘Nothing!’ She stiffened her sagging spine. ‘Nothing will happen!’
Because she wouldn’t let it!
‘All right.’ To her ineffable relief, his hand dropped away. ‘I won’t—’ he turned into the house ‘—for now.’ He gave her a smouldering smile over his shoulder. ‘But we both know that I don’t have to touch you for you to be touched by me, don’t we…Nina, darling?’
And he strolled into the house, whistling…for all the world as if he were the one relishing revenge!
CHAPTER SIX
‘I THINK you missed one!’ Nina called out, lazily pointing up to the spot where a sun-blistered piece of weatherboard had sprung out from behind the trim at the top corner of the house.
Ryan, who had just set one foot on the grass after backing all the way down the tall extension ladder carrying his box of nails and a chisel and hammer, looked up, then down over his shoulder at Nina, standing next to Ray on his sandy front lawn, a folding canvas beach chair tucked under her arm, a plate of biscuits in her hand.
‘Couldn’t you have told me that while I was still up there?’ he grunted.
‘I didn’t see it until just now,’ Nina said innocently.
She watched him toil back up to the roof line, the faded denim of his dusty jeans straining at the seams as he braced rigid knees against the wooden rails of the ladder and hammered the board back into place. It was a sunny afternoon and he had taken off his shirt, his long, rangy back gleaming with a light coating of sweat, the lean muscles rippling as he worked.
‘The boy makes a pretty picture, doesn’t he?’ Ray commented, shifting the splinter of wood he had been chewing to the side of his mouth. ‘Thinking of painting him?’
Nina whipped her head around, scowling when she saw his lively expression. She handed him the biscuits she had baked for his afternoon tea. ‘He’s not a boy, and you know I don’t do portraits.’
‘I thought you might be making an exception in his case…seeing as how much you seem to like watching him work,’ he said slyly.
‘He’s so out of place he’s rather difficult to ignore,’ Nina defended herself.
‘I thought he was fitting in quite well. He’s certainly not a whiner. Does everything I ask and more. Got a good eye for detail. Doesn’t even seem to get his back up when you come over to carp and criticise.’
