Wolfe's Temptress Read online

  For the first time in his life Wolfe understood the potent allure of the forbidden.

  He found himself thinking of silken skin and a vast bed and fiery, urgent passion.

  Grimly he cleared his mind and disciplined his reacting body. He’d expected a temptress, set apart from other beautiful women by exactly that smoldering assurance of carnality.

  But those eyes! A smoky meld of gold and topaz and tawny fire, with heavy lids outlined by thick, black lashes beneath winged brows. Eyes to turn a man’s head, to heat his blood beyond fever and make him forget every other woman. Eyes to drown in, to kill for.

  To die for…

  ROBYN DONALD has always lived in Northland in New Zealand, initially on her father’s stud dairy farm at Warkworth, then in the Bay of Islands, an area of great natural beauty, where she lives today with her husband and her dogs. She resigned her teaching position when she found she enjoyed writing romances more, and now spends any time not writing in reading, gardening, traveling and writing letters to keep up with her two adult children and her friends.

  Robyn Donald

  WOLFE’S TEMPTRESS

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  ‘SO THIS is Anne Corbett,’ Wolfe Talamantes observed, looking down at the photograph. Damn, he said soundlessly, allowing himself only that small recognition of tension. She was more beautiful than any woman he’d ever met, and that included the film star who’d once shared his bed for some months.

  ‘Rowan Corbett,’ the man on the other side of the desk corrected him.

  Frowning, Wolfe said bluntly, ‘I asked you to investigate Anne Corbett.’

  ‘Her legal name’s Rowan Anne Corbett—apparently she was known as Anne until she grew up. She calls herself Rowan Corbett now.’

  Carefully monitoring his expression, Wolfe scrutinised Rowan Corbett’s countenance, not surprised that she possessed a rare, astonishing beauty. Tony had always had great taste in women—when it came to looks.

  Supporting a grave face, her neck rose from a white collar like the stem of a flower. Light summoned a betraying red gleam from the black hair, severely tied back. A soft, stern mouth bloomed against creamy skin. Exotic cheekbones reinforced the sensual promise of that mouth, although the way it was set above a square chin hinted at enough force of character to save her from self-indulgence.

  In spite of the guarded wariness in her eyes and the impression of tight, fierce control, for the first time in his life Wolfe understood the potent allure of the forbidden. He found himself thinking of silken skin and a vast bed and fiery, urgent passion.

  Grimly he cleared his mind and disciplined his reacting body. He’d expected a temptress, set apart from other beautiful women by exactly that smouldering assurance of carnality.

  But those eyes! A smoky meld of gold and topaz and tawny fire, with heavy lids outlined by thick black lashes beneath winged brows. Eyes to turn a man’s head, to heat his blood beyond fever and make him forget every other woman. Eyes to drown in, to kill for.

  To die for…

  Not a fanciful man, Wolfe endured a primeval moment when he thought those eyes had laid claim to him.

  Dragging his gaze away from the photograph, he looked at his head of security. ‘And she’s working in a café in a place called Kura Bay in Northland?’

  ‘Seven in the morning until two in the afternoon, Monday to Saturday.’

  Wolfe’s brows lifted. If his instinct wasn’t playing him false his battle-hardened head of security was as aware of Rowan Corbett’s sexual fascination as he was. Reining in an unwanted territorial impulse, he asked casually, ‘Liked her, did you?’

  The older man eyed him with amusement. ‘She seems a nice enough young woman,’ he said. ‘And looking at her is no problem at all. But she’s too young for me, and my wife would cut my throat if I went beyond looking—as you well know.’

  Wolfe nodded, accepting the unspoken reassurance. ‘Ms Corbett doesn’t know that you took this photo?’

  ‘I’m pretty sure she doesn’t,’ the other man told him.

  ‘But—?’

  After a moment the other man admitted, ‘She was pleasant enough, but so distant I did wonder if she was suspicious—until I found out she has a reputation for being aloof.’ He added, ‘She pots as well.’

  Wolfe sent him a disbelieving glance, sharp as an arrow. ‘What?’

  ‘Pots. Makes mugs and jugs and bowls from clay on a potter’s wheel and—’

  ‘I know how they’re made.’ Wolfe’s tone revealed a rare display of irritation.

  His employee smiled. ‘They think she’s pretty good up there.’

  ‘Any boyfriends?’ Wolfe asked in an idle voice at complete variance with his interest in the answer.

  ‘Not a sign of one.’ The older man shrugged. ‘No girlfriends, either. Keeps herself to herself.’

  ‘Do the locals know about her past?’

  ‘They know, but they won’t talk about it. She’s the last of an old pioneer family there. Apparently her mother died having her, and her father—a policeman—used to bring her up every holiday to stay with her grandparents, so the locals have known her since she was a kid. These little isolated places are all the same—hot-beds of gossip, but they present a blank face to any outsider. I did learn that she’s a martial arts expert.’ With a cynical smile, the security expert said on a dismissive note, ‘Possibly a handy woman to have around in an emergency.’

  ‘I prefer dirty street-fighting myself,’ his boss returned curtly.

  His employee, who’d helped him beat off three thugs armed with knives in a stinking South American back alley, grinned. ‘That’s because you’re bloody lethal at it,’ he said, reaching for the photograph.

  A long-fingered hand flicked it away before he could touch it. ‘I’ll keep this,’ Wolfe said before he’d had a chance to think.

  ‘OK.’ The older man got up. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘No. Thank you for that.’

  Alone once more, Wolfe unleashed his six-foot four inches from behind the big desk and prowled across to the window. It looked down onto an ordinary street in an ordinary city—a vibrant, noisy mixture of pedestrians, cars and death-defying couriers on their noisy motorbikes. His gaze fell on a group of people dressed in bright Pacific cottons.

  Ordinary? No, it could be no other place than Auckland.

  Usually it was good to be back in New Zealand, but since the telephone call from his mother he’d felt edgy and aggressive. For six years he’d put Rowan Anne Corbett out of his mind, shutting her away in a box marked, ‘Do Not Even Think About Going Here’. But he couldn’t ignore his mother.

  ‘Wolfe, I’ve found the Corbett girl,’ she’d said in the quiet, exhausted voice that still made him rage in futile anger.

  Within a year of her younger son’s death Laura Simpson had succumbed to a condition that robbed her of energy and enthusiasm and the will to live. The best doctors in the world had been unable to give it a name until one bluntly told Wolfe that she was suffering a broken heart.

  It was as good a reason as any, Wolfe had thought savagely as he’d demanded, ‘How?’

  ‘Just one of those funny coincidences that life seems to specialise in.’ She made a soft sound that passed for laughter. ‘My friend Moira saw her waitressing in a café in Kura Bay and asked who she was.’

  Infuriated by the tremor in her voice, Wolfe asked uncompromisingly, ‘Why?’

  ‘Moira was—came to the
inquest with me, so she recognised her. She told me when she got back to Auckland, so I wrote to the Corbett girl.’ A spark of anger undercut her usual lassitude. ‘She did answer—a trite little letter saying that six years ago she’d told the coroner everything she knew about Tony’s death. I tried to ring her, but her number’s unlisted. I left a message for her at the café, but she hasn’t contacted me, so I’m going up to see her next week.’

  ‘You’ll do no such thing,’ Wolfe said evenly, furious with Rowan Anne Corbett for refusing to satisfy a sick woman’s need to talk about her son’s wasted death. Even travelling in the helicopter would exhaust his mother. ‘I’ll see her myself.’

  His mother’s breath hissed into the receiver. ‘Thank you,’ she said bleakly. ‘And when you do—when you see her—tell her I don’t blame her now. I used her as a scapegoat, and I’m sorry about that. She was only twenty-one. But I need to know what really happened that afternoon.’

  His mother might have forgiven Rowan Corbett, who had called herself Anne before she became notorious, but Wolfe hadn’t. With her red-black hair and her siren’s face and body, she’d been directly responsible for his half-brother’s miserable death.

  Laura hesitated, then asked, ‘Wolfe, did you notice any change in Tony after the accident?’

  ‘What sort of change?’

  After a short silence she said vaguely, ‘I thought he was more serious. More—intense?’

  Wolfe frowned. ‘I put that down to barely surviving a motorway crash,’ he said curtly. ‘Experiences like that do tend to make you think more seriously about the important things. It seemed a gratifying step.’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ she’d said, and hung up after extracting a promise from him to come to lunch that week.

  Now, he looked down at the photograph and smiled, a cold, hard threat that mixed anticipation and aggression. This time Rowan wouldn’t get away with lies and subterfuge.

  Six years ago a bout of pneumonia had imprisoned him in hospital on the other side of the world, compelling his mother to endure the anguish of his brother’s inquest without his support. A man with an ingrained protective instinct where women were concerned, his inability to shield her had cut deep, especially as by the time he got back to New Zealand Rowan Corbett had gone to ground, disappearing without trace.

  His protective instincts didn’t extend to the woman who’d caused his mother such pain. If he had to force—or seduce—the truth from her, he’d do whatever it took. And enjoy it.

  Anne—Rowan Corbett had driven Tony to madness, but Wolfe knew he was made of much tougher stuff than his laughing, lightweight, charmingly spoiled brother. Picking up the photograph, he dumped it into his desk drawer and slammed it shut with contemptuous strength.

  Half an hour later, his mind haunted by that grave, erotically intriguing face, he swore under his breath and quitted the file he was working on. Without thinking he brought the local newspaper onto his computer screen. And there his eye caught the word, ‘Rowan’.

  Incredulous, his pulses picking up speed, he leaned forward and clicked on the article, skimming it rapidly before settling down to read it again. A gallery in town was opening a show that night, a mixed collection of pots and paintings and glassware. According to the reviewer, who’d been to a special preview, it was all good stuff, but he kept his most ecstatic comments for the potter, whose name was Rowan.

  Nothing else—just Rowan.

  And the journalist really was ecstatic; phrases like magnificent glaze, superb form and inherent plasticity jostled off his keyboard. A brilliant potter, he trumpeted at the end; a shining new star in the constellation of New Zealand ceramics, and she can only get better.

  Wolfe examined a photograph of one of the bowls. Elegantly shaped, even on the screen its spare, startling beauty satisfied some inner yearning for beauty.

  He stared at it with narrow, hooded eyes, massaging the back of his neck with a lean hand. It was too much of a coincidence—yet Wolfe was a man who often let hunches tip the balance of a decision. So far, that mysterious instinct hadn’t ever let him down. His gut feeling had taken his stepfather’s small electronic firm to international status in the information technology industry.

  Formidable intelligence and an uncanny accuracy in picking trends had also helped that meteoric rise to power, along with a certain ruthlessness. Yet his adversaries respected him, and his staff stayed with him; Wolfe expected the utmost from them, but he made sure they had the best conditions.

  He touched a button and said into the communication system, ‘Mrs Forrest, get me a ticket to the exhibition opening at the Working Life Gallery tonight, please.’

  Rowan fought back a nervous attack that came too close to humiliating panic. ‘I don’t want to go,’ she said thinly, staring at her reflection in the mirror. An almost total stranger glowered back at her. Amazing what cosmetics applied by a skilful hand could do!

  Bobo Link, her agent, retorted, ‘It will do you good! You can’t spend the rest of your life hiding.’

  Rowan flashed her a glittering glance. ‘I’m not hiding.’

  ‘Skulking like a hermit in Northland, slaving your heart out in that depressing little café, refusing to go anywhere and see anyone?’ Bobo’s voice dripped with sarcasm. ‘That’s not hiding?’

  ‘I’m busy working! You want pots to sell…’

  ‘So get busy and sell,’ said Bobo the ever-practical, who’d tracked Rowan down a year previously and insisted on representing her. Bright, brash, brutally honest, and an agent only because she didn’t have a creative bone in her body, she’d become a friend.

  Patting Rowan on the shoulder, she went on, ‘You look gorgeous—I did a good job with your eyes and mouth even if I say so myself. Fantastic material to work with, of course.’

  ‘You’re brilliant,’ Rowan told her, relaxing enough to smile. ‘I don’t recognise myself. But I’m hopeless at selling—that’s your strong point! Perhaps I should just stay home and let you do it.’

  ‘Rubbish! People always want to meet the artist, and you’re a gift from the heavens because you look so good and photograph so well.’

  Rowan said austerely, ‘I’m not a pin-up.’

  Bobo sighed, but persisted, ‘Don’t worry, your work stands on its own, but darling old Frank gave you such a brilliant write-up in the paper it would be sinful not to exploit—use it. You’re a genius, but you can’t eat pots, and if you don’t want to go on working in that pathetic café for the rest of your life you’d better turn up at your own first gallery opening.’

  ‘You have such a way with words,’ Rowan retorted crisply, examining her reflection more closely. The sheer black and gold silk shirt, courtesy of Bobo, and her own narrow black ankle-length skirt looked good, but her eyes narrowed and she leaned forward. ‘All right, I’ll come. But I can’t wear this shirt—you can see right through it. My breasts aren’t for sale!’

  Rolling her eyes, Bobo said, ‘That father of yours has got a lot to answer for. Honestly, you can’t—oh, well, yes, if anyone looks really hard they might be able to see your nipples through the camisole.’

  ‘A bra?’ Rowan said hopefully.

  ‘It would spoil the line. Honestly, Ro, it’s almost modest nowadays. I wear it like that.’

  Rowan grinned. ‘You could carry off body paint, but I haven’t got the nerve.’

  Sighing, Bobo carefully disinterred a black silk garment from her drawer. ‘The sacrifices I make! This is brand-new, bought with seduction very definitely in mind, but I’ll sacrifice it for you and my ten per cent of everything you sell. No, you won’t be able to wear a bra, but you’re just big enough to be sexy and small enough to get away without wearing one.’

  Rowan eyed it distrustfully. ‘What is it?’

  ‘I know you don’t live under a tree, so don’t pretend you do,’ Bobo said grumpily. ‘It’s a bustier, and all it will show is your lovely shoulders.’

  ‘I don’t deserve you,’ Rowan said simply, and shrugged out of
the shirt and into the strapless garment. It clung to her breasts and her slim waist, but at least she was covered. Gratefully she dropped the shirt over her head and looked at herself again.

  Bobo snorted. ‘You’re absolutely right, you don’t deserve me, but you look fabulous. Stop whimpering.’

  ‘Whimpering!’ Rowan narrowed her eyes and said menacingly, ‘Smile when you say that.’

  ‘And that, darling, is your problem,’ Bobo told her kindly. ‘Your father must have been a wonderful man, but he brought you up to be like the girls he grew up with. No, don’t fire up—I’m sure he did his best for his motherless daughter, but he was hopelessly old-fashioned. You might look sexy and wicked and knowing, but underneath that exotic veneer lurks an innocent Little Red Riding Hood.’

  Rowan’s mouth dropped. ‘Red Riding Hood?’ she asked faintly.

  Bobo grinned and gave her a hug. ‘I know you could dismantle any wolf who came your way, but how on earth would you recognise one?’

  How indeed? Rowan thought acidly. She’d taken Tony at face value, and her experience since then hadn’t expanded much. Terrified by the havoc emotions could wreak, she’d concentrated on mastering her chosen medium, channelling her strength and intensity into her craft.

  ‘Tonight,’ Bobo stated, picking up a bag quilted like a butterfly, ‘you’re not Rowan Corbett, hermit potter, you’re Rowan, a sophisticated, mysterious genius.’ Laughing, she added, ‘Whose ceramics are soon going to command such huge prices that any sensible collector will buy now while they’re affordable. So let’s go out and sell!’

  Half an hour later, a glass of good New Zealand méthode traditionelle sparkling in her hand, Rowan surveyed the room and visualised everyone there in their underwear.

  It didn’t help. Even when she scattered the underwear with cartoon characters, she couldn’t banish the bubble of panic underneath her ribs. She should never have let Bobo persuade her into this. All these people dressed in black, all talking at top speed and all seething with worldliness, totally unnerved her.