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  ‘Ah, you’ve guessed my secret,’ Paul retorted, his blue eyes warmly caressing as they rested on Aura’s face.

  Without reason, Aura was hit by a wave of profound disquiet. Her gaze clung a moment to Paul’s, then slid sideways as the wine waiter appeared.

  When the small business of handing the drinks out was over, Paul began talking of a political scandal that had erupted a couple of weeks before. Hiding an absurd relief, Aura listened to the deep male voices, sipping her wine a little faster than usual because something was keeping her on edge.

  No, not something; someone, and he was sitting next to her. If she lowered her eyes she could see Flint’s long fingers on the round tabletop, his bronze skin a shocking contrast to the white, starched damask cloth. He had a beautiful hand, lean and masculine and strong.

  He had to spend a lot of time in hot sunlight to acquire a tan like that, she thought vaguely. Of course, he had just returned from the tropics, but, even so, he was far darker skinned than either her or Paul. It was one of the reasons those glittering golden eyes were so spectacular, set as they were in black lashes beneath straight black brows.

  The hum of conversation receded, became overlaid by the sudden throbbing of her heart in her eardrums. From beneath her lashes Aura’s gaze followed his hand as he lifted his wine glass and sipped some of the pale straw-coloured liquid. When he’d greeted her the rough hardness of calluses against her softer palm had made her catch her breath, and set up a strange, hot melting at the base of her spine. It had receded somewhat, but now it was starting all over again.

  She didn’t know what was happening to her, although instinct warned her it was dangerous. With a determined attempt to ignore it, she joined in the conversation.

  To share a meal with someone who disapproved profoundly of her was nothing new; hatred she could deal with.

  But Flint Jansen despised her. He had taken one look at her, and for a frightening second contempt had flickered like cold flames in the depths of his eyes. The moment her eyes had focused on that harshly commanding face, an intuition as old as her first female ancestor had warned her that he was no friend of hers, that he never would be. For some reason they were fated to be enemies. And Paul hadn’t noticed.

  She looked up at him, half listening as he expounded some interesting point of law to the other man. Apart from her cousin Alick, Paul was the most intelligent man she had ever known, yet he thought they were getting along well.

  Flint’s textured voice dragged her glance sideways. He was smiling, and even as she tried to jerk her eyes free his gaze snared hers.

  For the length of a heartbeat green eyes and gold clashed. His mouth curved in the smiling snarl of a tiger playing with something small and not worthy of it.

  A question from Paul shattered the tension, his beloved tones both an intrusion and a shield. As Flint answered, Aura breathed deeply.

  Stop it, her brain screamed. But she had no idea what it was. Her reaction was totally new to her; it seemed that a new person had moved in to inhabit her body, a bewildering renegade, a woman she didn’t know.

  She had to calm down, reimpose some sort of control over her wayward responses.

  Something Paul said brought a smile to Flint’s face, revealing strong white teeth that did more uncomfortable things to the pit of Aura’s stomach. Snatching at her slipping self-possession, she concentrated fiercely on the words, not the man; on the occasion, not her reactions.

  He had excellent manners. He was entertaining in a dry, wittily cynical fashion. When Aura spoke he listened attentively with nothing more obvious than lazy appreciation in his hooded eyes, yet she felt the track of his eyes like little whips across the clear ivory of her skin. And she sensed his contempt.

  Oh, he was clever, he hid it well; he was a man whose feelings were caged by a ferocious will. But Aura had spent too many years noting hidden, subliminal signals to be fooled. This was not the casual disdain of a man faced by a woman out to feather her nest. Flint Jansen’s anger burned with a white-hot intensity that made him more than dangerous. And all that savage emotion was directed at her.

  It bewildered her and upset her, but the most astonishing thing was that in some obscure way it was exciting. She looked across the table to the shadowed, clever face slashed by the scar, a countenance almost primitive in its force and power, and a feral shudder ran down her spine, set off warning signals all through her, flashpoints of heat and light leaping from cell to cell.

  Shaken, at the mercy of forbidden and equivocal sensations, she managed to disguise her response with a sparkling glow of laughter and bright conversation, while Paul watched her with pride and the tiniest hint of possessive smugness. Amazingly, the secret, seething undercurrent of ambiguous emotions appeared to swirl around him without touching him.

  She didn’t begrudge him his pride; all men, she knew, wanted to stand well in the eyes of their fellows. It was at once one of their strengths, and rather endearingly childish.

  ‘Paul tells me we’re having a party tomorrow night,’ Flint said coolly while they waited for dessert.

  Natalie had insisted that as mother of the bride she owed friends and relatives a drinks party. Behind Aura’s back she had wheedled Aura’s cousin, Alick Forsythe, into paying for it, and because she refused to entertain in the small unit she and Aura lived in now it was being held at Paul’s apartment.

  Aura nodded, hoping her irritation didn’t show. ‘Yes.’ She sent Flint a sideways glance.

  His eyes darkened into tawny slits, and for one pulsing second he watched her as though she’d started to strip for him. Then his lashes concealed eyes cold and brilliant as the fire in the heart of a diamond.

  Aura’s mouth dried. ‘You’ll meet my mother and my bridesmaid, and an assortment of other people. It should be fun.’

  ‘I’m sure it will be.’

  Aura resented his bland tone, but more the sardonic quirk of his lips that accompanied it. Although she had fought against the whole idea of this wretched party, now that it was inevitable she was prepared to do what she could to make it a success.

  By the time the evening wound towards its close Aura was heartily glad. Every nerve in her body was chafed into painful sensitivity, her head ached dully and bed had never seemed so desirable.

  By then she knew she would never like Flint Jansen, and found herself hoping savagely that his job kept him well away from them. The less she saw of the beastly man, the better. Fortunately the feeling was mutual, so she wasn’t likely to be plagued with too much of his presence after she and Paul were married.

  She expected to be taken straight home, but as Flint held open the car door for her with an aloof, studied smile Paul asked, ‘Do you mind if we go back to the apartment first, darling? I’m expecting a call from London, and I’d like to be there when it comes.’

  ‘Yes, of course.’

  Halfway there she yawned. Instantly Paul said, ‘Poor sweet, you’re exhausted, and no wonder. Look, why don’t I get off at home, then Flint can drive you the rest of the way? That way you’ll be tucked up in bed at a reasonable hour.’

  ‘Oh, no, there’s—’

  Aura’s swift, horrified, thoughtless answer was interrupted by Flint’s amused voice from the back seat. ‘Sounds like a good idea to me,’ he said lazily. ‘Where does Aura live?’

  Bristling, but recognising that protests would only make her antagonism more obvious, Aura gave him her address.

  ‘Really?’

  The hardly hidden speculation in his tone made her prickle. ‘Yes,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘I know how to get there.’

  The hidden insolence in his words scorched her skin with a sudden betraying flush. Aura’s tense fingers clasped the beaded work of her fringed Victorian bag. She most emphatically did not want to be cooped up with Flint for the twenty minutes or so it would take to get her home. However, as there was no alternative she was going to have to cope as well as she could.

  ‘Goodnight, sweetheart
. Try not to push yourself too hard tomorrow,’ Paul said when the transfer of drivers had been effected. He bent down and kissed her gently. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night.’

  She watched him walk across the footpath and in through the door of the elegant block of apartments where they were going to live until they had children.

  Aura bit her lip. She had always thought Paul big, but beside Flint Jansen he was somehow diminished.

  With a suddenness that took her by surprise Flint set the car in motion. Aura turned her head to look straight ahead, battered by a ridiculous sense of bereavement, almost of panic.

  She searched for some light, innocuous, sophisticated comment. Her mind remained obstinately blank.

  The man beside her, driving with skill and control if slightly too much speed, didn’t speak either. Aura kept her glance away from his hands on the wheel, but even the thought of them turned her insides to unstable quicksilver. A shattering corollary was the image that flashed into her mind, of those lean tanned hands against the pale translucence of her skin.

  Aura stared very hard at the houses on the side of the road. Lights gleamed in windows, on gateposts, highlighted gardens that bore the signs of expensive, skilful attention. Although it was winter, flowers lifted innocent blooms to the shining disc of the moon, early jonquils, daisies, the aristocratic cornucopias of arum lilies. To the left a wall of volcanic stones fenced off a park where the delicate pointed leaves of olive trees moved slightly, their silver reverses shimmering in a swift, soon-dead breeze. Beyond them rose the sharp outlines of a hill. Aura said sharply, ‘This isn’t the way.’

  ‘I thought we’d go up One Tree Hill and look at the city lights,’ Flint said in his cool, imperturbable voice.

  Aura’s head whipped around. Against the glow of the street-lights his profile was a rigorously autocratic silhouette of high forehead and dominating nose, the clear statement of his mouth, a chin and jaw chiselled into lines of power and force.

  Speaking evenly, she said, ‘Thanks very much, but I’d rather go straight home.’

  A blaze of lights from the showgrounds disclosed his half smile, revealed for a stark moment the narrow, deadly line of the scar. He looked calculating and unreachable. ‘That’s a pity,’ he said calmly. ‘I won’t keep you long.’

  Aura felt the first inchoate stirrings of fear. ‘I’m actually rather tired,’ she confessed, keeping up the pretence of reluctantly refusing a small treat, trying to smooth a gloss of civilisation over a situation that frightened her needlessly, to hide her uncalled-for alarm and anger with poise and control. ‘Organising a wedding is far more exhausting than I’d expected it to be.’

  His unamused smile held a distinctly carnivorous gleam.

  Oh, lord, she thought frantically, keep things in perspective, Aura, and don’t let your imagination run away with you. The man is a barbarian, but he won’t hurt you. After all, he’s Paul’s best friend.

  ‘I’m sure it is,’ he said, ‘especially at such short notice, but a few minutes spent looking down on the most beautiful city in the world won’t hurt you. Who knows, it could even recharge your batteries.’

  ‘It might be dangerous up there,’ she said quickly, although she had never heard of anything unpleasant happening on top of One Tree Hill.

  His laughter was brief and unamused. ‘I don’t think so.’

  She didn’t think so, either. For other people, possibly, but not the ruthlessly competent Flint Jansen.

  Opening her mouth to object further, she cast a fulminating glance at that inexorable profile then closed it again. He was a man who made up his mind and didn’t let anyone change it.

  The exact reverse of her mother, Aura thought acidly, trying to fight back the fear that curled with sinister menace through her. Natalie’s mind was like a straw caught in a summer wind, whirled this way and that by each small eddy, held only on one course, that of her own self-interest.

  Flint Jansen was bedrock, immovable, dominating, impervious, a threat to any woman’s peace of mind. Even a woman in love with another man.

  Aura pretended to look about her as they wound up the sides of the terraced volcano and along the narrow ridges. For centuries the Maori settlers of New Zealand had grown kumara in the fertile volcanic soil of the little craters below, but the rows of sweet potato were long gone and now sheep cropped English grasses there.

  At the top the car park was empty. Nobody looked down over the spangled carpet of city lights, no one gazed up at the obelisk past the lone pine tree, past the statue of the Maori warrior, past the grave of the pioneer who had given this green oasis to the people of Auckland, nobody gazed with her into the black infinity that ached in Aura’s heart, the unimaginable reaches of space.

  Switching off the engine, Flint turned to look at her. The consuming heat of his scrutiny seared her skin, yet banished immediately the haunted isolation, the insignificance she felt whenever she looked at the night sky. Tension crawled between her shoulder-blades, tightened every sinew in her body, clogged her breath and her pulse, made her eyes dilate and her skin creep. When he spoke she recoiled in nervous shock.

  ‘I assume,’ he drawled, ‘that you know what you’re doing.’

  She ran the tip of her tongue along dry lips. ‘I assume so, too. In what particular thing?’

  ‘Marrying Paul.’

  It had to be that, of course. So why did she feel as though they were talking about two different subjects? She was letting him get to her. Calmly, and with a confidence that sounded genuine, she said, ‘Oh, yes, I know exactly what I’m doing.’

  ‘I do hope so, pretty lady. For everyone’s sake. Because if you do to him what you’ve done to two others and jilt him, you’re in trouble. Paul may be too besotted to deal with you properly, but I’m not.’

  For a moment Aura couldn’t speak. Then she returned haughtily, ‘I presume you’ve been snooping through my life.’

  ‘Yes.’ He sounded as though her naiveté amused him. Aura felt sick, but she managed to keep her voice steady, almost objective. ‘Mr Jansen—’

  His smile was cold and mirthless. ‘You’ve been calling me Flint all evening. Reverting to my surname now is not going to put any distance between us.’

  She said aridly, ‘Flint then. I won’t hurt Paul in any way, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I’m going to make him very happy. This time it’s real.’

  ‘I suppose each of the other poor fools you were engaged to thought it was real, too.’ He paused, and when she didn’t reply, added, ‘And presumably that you’d make them very happy.’

  The obvious sexual innuendo made her feel sick. She stared sightlessly ahead. ‘Paul knows about them,’ she said.

  ‘So it’s none of my business?’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘Not even when he finds out—as he’s bound to do— that you’re not in love with him?’

  Aura said angrily, ‘I love him very much.’

  He laughed softly, an immense cynicism colouring his tone. ‘Oh, I have to admire the languishing glances, the smiles and the gentle touches. But they didn’t look like love to me, and if Paul wasn’t so enamoured that he can’t think straight he’d know that what you feel for him is not the sort of love that leads to a happy marriage.’

  ‘You’d know all about it, I suppose.’ Struggling for control, she caught her breath. ‘I love him,’ she repeated at last, but the conviction in her voice was eaten away by a sense of futility. One quick glance at Flint’s unyielding profile and she knew that whatever she said, she couldn’t convince this man.

  ‘Just as you’d love your older brother, with respect and admiration and even a bit of gratitude,’ he agreed dispassionately. ‘But that’s not what marrige is all about, beautiful, seductive, sexy Aura. It’s also about lying in a bed with him, making love, giving yourself to him, accepting his body, his sexuality with complete trust and enthusiasm.’

  Her small gasp echoed in the darkened car. She searched for some reply, but her mind was held
prisoner by the bleak and studied impersonality of his tone.

  After a moment he continued, ‘When Paul looks at you it’s with love, but I don’t see much more in you than satisfaction at having got what you want: a complacent and easygoing husband.’

  Stonily, Aura said, ‘I want to go home.’

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ He sounded amused, almost lazily so, and satisfied, as though her reaction was just what he had expected. ‘But you’re going to stay here until I’ve finished.’

  ‘What gives you the right to talk like this to me?’

  The words tumbled out, hot with feeling, shamingly defiant, giving away far more than was wise. Aura tried desperately to curb the wild temper that used to get her into so much trouble before she found ways to restrain it.

  ‘Paul is my friend,’ Flint said coolly. ‘I care about him and his happiness. And I’d hate to see him tied to a calculating little tramp when a few words could save him. That’s what friends are for, surely?’ The last question was drawled with mockery.

  Shedidn’t intend to hit him. In fact, she didn’t even realise she had until the high sweep of his cheekbone stopped her hand with such implacable suddenness that every bone in her arm ached with the impact.

  Gulping with shock and pain, she snatched her hand back, cradled it to her stomach and said in a voice she had hoped never to hear again, ‘Don’t you call me a tramp. Don’t ever call me a tramp.’

  He hadn’t moved. For long, taut seconds the imprint of her hand, white in the darkness, stood out with stark, disgraceful precision.

  So coldly that it congealed even her righteous indignation, he said, ‘Why not? You’re selling yourself to him. That’s what tramps do. Money for sexual services.’

  ‘I am not selling myself to him.’ Her voice cracked, but she rushed on, hurling the words at him, ‘And it’s not just sex, damn you, you ignorant swine, there’s more—’

  ‘Not much more. For you it’s security, for him love. You need his money, he wants to spend the rest of your life making you happy. And, not so incidentally, sleeping with you. If that’s the bargain it’s fair enough, I suppose. Just don’t renege on it, Aura, when he’s so far under your spell that the poor sod can’t crawl out.’