A Summer Storm by Robyn Donald

Author:Robyn Donald
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin Enterprises
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Something primitive and anticipatory moved in the pit of Oriel’s stomach. She stood with closed face, willing herself not to betray the fact that she wanted him.

‘Don’t attempt those steps,’ he commanded as he came up to her. ‘I’ll look after Sarah while she’s up there.’

She nodded and turned away, but almost immediately her name whipped her head around. He was looking at her with something of the same hunger that gnawed at her, his face oddly bleak, the stark bone structure revealed in the uncompromising strength of the sun. In that moment she realised that he could wound her for life, that what she felt was so much more than simple lust.

She was perilously close to falling in love with him. If he knew, would he send her away-or would he take advantage of the fact? Was he brutal enough to use her hopeless attraction to keep her as Sarah’s substitute mother until Sarah no longer needed her?

Most desperately she wanted to believe that he was too honourable, but cold logic forced her to accept that he was a complex man, one she didn’t really understand. What she did know was that he loved his niece. And he was hard enough to hold her to a contract when he knew that she wanted to go.

She would have to strive to overcome her infatuation before she fell so fathoms deep that she became addicted to him, the sight and sound of him, pathetically grateful for any little crumbs of attention he might give her.

Fixing a bright, meaningless smile on her face, she said, ‘Yes?’

‘Don’t look so tragic,’ he said, watching her with eyes as opaque as burnished metal. ‘Things will work out. They always do.’

Nodding, she turned away; she knew when he left her by the way the hairs on the back of her neck eased down.

The wind tugged at her, teasing her locks into tendrils of tightly wound black silk around her face. She licked lips suddenly dry, tasting the faint film of salt. Out here on the water it was cooler, a little less humid than on shore, and she was grateful for the refuge from the prickly, enervating weather of the past few days.

It must be Saturday, she thought tiredly, watching a fleet of yachts racing, their jujube-coloured sails graceful and fragile on the brilliant blue water. Odd how she had lost count of the days and the weeks, content to live in a timeless enchantment. At least, that was how it had seemed until yesterday. Wincing, she dragged her mind away from the one subject it seemed unable to avoid, like a tongue exploring a broken tooth.

Rain had worked its familiar magic on the summer coast. Hills, usually toast-coloured by now, were a dozen shades of green blending into the elusive blue-violet of the bush-covered range in the distance. Towards Kerikeri a sombre forest of pine trees, living expression of faith in the future, marched over the last tiny volcano to erupt and wheeled above the boat, glittering silver in a moment of glory in the sun's rays.

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