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His eyes gleamed in answering appreciation. ‘This I’ve got to see,’ he murmured wickedly, hauling her up and roughly towelling them both before hustling her across the hall into his bedroom. ‘The doctor is ready for you now, my dear,’ he intoned with a leer, then tumbled her face down onto the bed.
Her irrepressible giggles were stifled in his pillow. ‘What do you think, Doctor?’ she said when he seemed to be taking an inordinate amount of time to make his diagnosis.
‘Hmmm…’ She felt his finger trace a teasing circle on her flushed cheek. ‘Definitely treatable. I think Dr Flint has the perfect remedy for this, to be applied regularly and often….’ Suddenly, a warm, wet tongue was anointing the spot.
‘Ryan…’ Her feeble chuckle of protest turned huskily eager as his tongue wandered farther afield. ‘Ryan…’
They made love again, this time languorously, lingering over each soft touch and slow kiss, and when it was over they lay contentedly in each other’s arms.
‘Bring back any memories?’ he murmured, and Nina kissed the hard shoulder that pillowed her head.
‘Some…’
His lips drifted over her hair. ‘Good memories?’
‘Oh, yes…all good.’ She smiled against his skin, absently stroked the jagged scar that streaked like a lightning bolt up the side of his thigh.
‘I was in an accident,’ he said suddenly, and her fingers faltered, then moved up to rest on his unblemished chest as she shifted her head to look up at him.
‘Before I met you?’ she asked nervously. Her memories of him had not included a scar on his leg.
‘No, after.’
‘You mean after I left?’
‘No, it was while we were together.’
The careful neutrality of his voice made her afraid to delve further. She was happy and relaxed. She didn’t want anything to spoil this precious idyll. She suspected that it was only the eye of the storm, but she wanted to enjoy it while she could. ‘Well, I still think you’re sexy, battle scars and all,’ she said lightly.
‘I think you’re sexy, too.’ He stroked her stomach, looking down, his finger tracking a long, curving line towards her hip. ‘Even with your battle scars.’
She looked down at the faint tracery of thin silver lines on her belly. ‘They’re not scars,’ she automatically denied.
‘Then what are they?’ he persisted softly.
She pushed his hand away and squirmed her hips towards him so that her stomach was pressed against his, concealing the sight of the inexplicable flaws. ‘Can’t you leave a woman her vanity?’
“‘Vanity, thy name is woman!’” he quoted, not pressing the point.
‘Hamlet said “frailty”, not “vanity”,’ she corrected. ‘And I’m not frail—I’m a lusty young lass!’
She had made him laugh and the shadowed moment passed, and as the long hours of the night slipped away, they slept and woke and whispered and made love, and in the morning they breakfasted together as lovers do, and the only time they touched on anything remotely serious was when Nina said, ‘I had nothing to do with your money going missing, Ryan. There has to be some other explanation. Whatever else I may be, I know I’m not a thief!’
He merely nodded thoughtfully and changed the subject, but she didn’t allow herself to believe the matter was laid finally to rest. Ryan hadn’t become an extremely wealthy man by forgiving his debts.
Later that day when she took Ray’s lunch over to him and had to run the gauntlet of his shrewd comments and knowing chuckles, she took the opportunity to phone Karl, disappointed to discover that he was out on a sales call and not answering his cell phone. She had to content herself with leaving a stilted message on his answerphone, not sure who else might listen to the recording.
‘Karl, it’s Nina. I just wanted you to know that Ryan Flint has turned up here at Puriri Bay. I—he’s staying with me—we need to talk—please call me.’
She had expected that sometime in the next few days Ray would call her over to the phone, so it was a shock to see Karl coming through the door from the deck the very next afternoon.
