Her Man with Iceberg Eyes (4 page)

He sat—and her eyes immediately flew to the
fabric of his dark trousers. Legs that might have been thin proved
to have powerfully muscular thighs. “Are you a climber?” she
blurted.

He glanced across and began to pour the
coffee. “I enjoy tramping, but I don’t feel the need to scale
mountain peaks.” He passed her a steaming cup. “It would be a shame
not to go out and enjoy spectacular countryside like this. I’ll buy
you some decent walking boots if you get to stay.”

It was probably the oddest offer she’d ever
had. But it spurred Diana into sudden conversation. “Oh—you’re the
helper for Lottie,” she exclaimed. “I thought you were one of
Matthew’s friends.”

He gave a sardonic smile. “She’s from the big
smoke,” he said. “Might find it a total bore around here.” Kate
knew he was watching for her reaction.

“Oh, surely not,” Diana chuckled. “You and
Lottie are enough to entertain half the country.”

“Nothing’s settled yet, Di.”

Kate sensed a warning in the words. Maybe
he’d decided she wasn’t suitable?

“It was time I did something different,” she
replied to Diana. “This seemed like an interesting change.”

“I can’t imagine there’s another job like it
in the whole of New Zealand. You’d need to make it up as you go
along, I should think.”

“If I get offered the job. And if I decide to
take it.”

She caught the slight flicker of surprise on
Matthew’s face as he handed Diana her coffee.

He stood. “Talk amongst yourselves, ladies,”
he said. “I’m going to try the hospital again.”

He fingered his mobile, but then crossed the
big room to the landline, needing to get away from her. The trickle
of sexual awareness had spread through his body again—advancing
until it was a positive tide of sensation.

Damn, but he only had to be close to her to
react like a teenager. How delicious it would be to have a couple
more days with her, here in the privacy of the house. No rushing,
no pressure—just letting things take their natural course. Surely
he’d be able to keep her under close surveillance for so short a
time?

He rubbed a finger unthinkingly backward and
forward along his bottom lip while he waited for the hospital to
answer. The nerve endings in the sensitive pad of flesh set up a
desperate clamour to have soft lips sucking and sliding over his
skin. With a silent curse, he tore his finger away but the
sensation tingled on.

Diana smiled at Kate. “I’m sure you’d find
this an invigorating atmosphere.”

“Maybe too much so?” Kate inquired, flicking
a glance toward Matthew as he stood by the phone.

“Ahhhh...” Diana murmured. And said no more
on that subject. Kate would very much have liked to quiz her
further, but it was difficult to find suitable words. In any case,
Matthew concluded his call very quickly. She presumed the small
hospital was easier to communicate with than the giant one at home
in Auckland.

He returned to his chair and stood for a
moment, staring out toward the mountains, body tense, legs braced
back. Kate watched him, fascinated. His eyes glittered like mercury
in the low sun.

Suddenly he turned further toward her.
“Kate—can you stay for a few more days? They want to keep Lottie
overnight, but we can have her back tomorrow. I’d appreciate you
being here for a bit, if you can arrange it?”

She found him impossible to refuse, and
nodded. “Yes—that’s okay.” She had nothing urgent to return to
Auckland for, and staying and being helpful might count in her
favour job-wise. At least she’d get to meet Lottie, even if no
permanent offer of employment followed. And it would give her more
time to size up the situation. To see how difficult it might be
living close to Matthew...

“Good—let’s go shopping, then. I’ll get you
some warm clothes and decent boots and things.”

“I won’t need boots,” she protested.

“Going to spend the whole time in those
pretty little heels?” he suggested, running appreciative eyes down
her legs. He turned to Diana. “This could be fun. Where shall we
go?”

Kate shook her head as his words sank in and
Matthew and Diana discussed shops. She didn’t want to be treated
like a paper doll, to be dressed up as some sort of game to amuse
him while Lottie was out of the house. “I’ll buy a few things for
myself tomorrow,” she said firmly.

Matthew glanced at his watch. “There’s plenty
of time,” he said, clattering the coffee cups back onto the
tray.

“No, it truly doesn’t matter today,” she
insisted.

“We’re off now,” he insisted. “There are
other things that need doing tomorrow.”

Diana shrugged and gave Kate a conspiratorial
smile. She seemed not to mind being dismissed so ungraciously.
“Nice to meet you, Kate,” she said. “We’ll see you about eight
tonight, Matthew,” she called as she departed.

Kate closed her eyes with annoyance and
sighed gustily. She rose with resignation. What had she just got
herself into?

How easily the chance had presented itself!
Matthew smiled, unseen, as he led her along the main hallway again.
Now he had several days to enjoy the company of the delectable Miss
Pleasance. Not to mention dig around and find out what she was
really here for. With Lottie so conveniently injured, he could
devote most of his time to Kate. It would certainly be no
hardship.

Her CV had listed a business degree and
indicated she had a marketing background. Business degrees seemed
to be a dime a dozen these days. And ‘marketing’ covered everything
from serious strategic planning to supermarket shelf stacking as
far as he could see.

He thought wryly back to bouncy Penny Carew
who’d made a play for him after he’d parted from Martine. Penny’s
‘marketing’ job had proved to be running a demo stand at the
deli—frying and handing out bacon samples. He wondered what Kate’s
marketing job had entailed, and if it had even existed. There was
every chance it was a fake. He’d get her checked out.

But there was nothing fake about her body,
that was for sure. He knew he should have knocked when he turned
back to her room earlier, but her door hadn’t been closed, and only
seconds had passed. She’d certainly moved swiftly to get her jacket
off and her jersey half on in that short time. Half on. His gut
gave another pleasant kick at the thought.

Her tailored business suit and elegant shoes
had not led him to expect such sexy lingerie. What a turn on. High
breasts only barely confined in a disturbingly low-cut bra. The
startling contrast of black and red lace against ivory skin. And
her hair tumbling free in glorious confusion.

There was no way he could have kept his hands
off her. And in the guise of helpfulness he’d been able to draw
close, touch her, smell her soft female scent, tease her and
un-nerve her for the battle of wits ahead. Even better, her hair
had been left entirely loose once she’d re-appeared. It fell down
her back in a riot of shining dark waves, bouncing and floating as
she moved. He couldn’t wait to thread his fingers back through it
and pull her into his arms.

Kate followed him through the house, and he
switched on the light in the storeroom before they entered the
garage. An enormous amount of wine lay in racks against one wall,
and several jackets hung waiting on hangers. He rummaged amongst
them, unhooked a plump, down-filled white one, and held it out to
her.

“You’ll look like the abominable snowman in
that, but it’ll keep you warm.” When he reached across to help her
into the jacket, Kate stepped swiftly aside. So much for hoping to
get close to her in the doorway...

“Not
so
abominable,” he amended, as
she slid the zip up.

“I’ll get my bag,” she said, trying to turn
away.

“Not for the clothes, you won’t,” he
retorted, restraining her with a hand on her arm. “My shout
entirely. I asked you to stay, so I’ll provide anything you
need
.”

And if that makes you feel beholden to me, so
much the better.

“I’d rather buy my own clothes, thank
you.”

“Nonsense, Kate. Let me have a little
spend-up.”

She shrivelled at the thought. Wife out of
the way in hospital... husband offering to buy goodies for the
hired help? She didn’t like the feel of that at all. And they were
apparently to sleep in the big house together with no-one else
present. Hundreds of yards from the nearest neighbours. “No thank
you, Mr. McLeod,” she said as sharply as she dared.

“Matthew,” he drawled lazily. “Mr. McLeod is
my father.”

He was still standing far too close to her,
running a lazy hand up and down her arm. “I’m not short of a
dollar, Kate. For God’s sake let me have some fun with the money,”
he urged, finally letting her go.

He shrugged his own jacket back on and turned
her toward the garage. She gritted her teeth with annoyance. How
dare he just take her over like this?

As they drove out, she glanced around with
more attention. The huge house really was fantastically sited. It
looked as though it had squatted there forever, but surely it must
be only a couple of years old?

It had been very cunningly landscaped. Kate
could now see the gravelled walkways and paved areas were
abundantly edged with plantings of native tussock grasses and low
sprawling shrubs. There was a big rock-edged pool, and a sloping
outcrop of jagged stones and vegetation—no doubt also rather
recently created. Maybe this was the rock garden where Lottie had
slipped?

Matthew’s thoughts echoed her own. “She fell
just over there,” he said, pointing. “There was a hard frost this
morning. You’ll need to be careful what you wear on your feet
outside.”

Kate nodded, thinking she’d need to be
careful of more than that. She vowed to keep her whole body well
concealed from his unsettling eyes. No more catching her in her
underwear! No further chances to touch her. Disturbing little
tremors shot right through her whenever he was near. And it seemed
he was
always
near. His sense of personal space was way
different from hers.

At least while they were driving his seatbelt
kept him away. Even so, a charged silence stretched between them,
and an acute awareness.

“Coronet Peak,” he said as they swung around
the last curve of the long driveway. Kate’s gaze followed the
direction of his pointing hand toward the nearest mountains. The
sun had slid lower, gilding the peaks a rosy gold.

He wore no wedding ring—no other ornaments of
any kind.
Not a jewellery man
, she thought. A man with a
taste for understated classic design. No doubt his dark trousers
were beautifully cut and tailored, but she’d registered his long,
strong thighs rather than the garment covering them. His
fine-knitted wool jersey was unremarkable in its design, but
beautifully finished. His dark blue zip fronted jacket proclaimed
itself expensive by the symbol on the pocket, but the style was
little different from hundreds of others in Queenstown.

He was very tall, and Kate always felt that
gave a man authority. Perversely she found her own height a
drawback.

Big, arrogant ‘we’ll do things my way’
Matthew was a force to be reckoned with. His face was hard as a
gangster’s—until he flashed one of his engaging wide smiles. What
would a man with a face like that be capable of? Kate easily
imagined ruthless business deals just inside the law but skating
dangerously across thin ice. How had he made his money—or was it
all Lottie’s? She couldn’t see him as a kept man. And his office
had looked very businesslike.

Plainly, he was used to getting his own way.
She was still astounded at how quickly he’d disposed of Diana,
bulldozed her own objections aside, and set out to take her
shopping.

They drove in near silence the rest of the
way back into Queenstown. The hard blue light had softened to hazy
gold. It filtered down through the bare mid-winter trees, dusting
the houses and the lake with magic; gilding the tall conifers.

Kate’s mind roamed free as the lovely scenery
floated by. Suddenly she remembered something her father had said
in happier days. He’d bought her mother a lacy black nightgown and
negligee, and teased that he therefore had the right to dress her
in them. Kate froze at the thought that Matthew might feel the
same.

“What is it, Katie?”

She flinched. Was she so transparent he could
read her mind? And wasn’t ‘Katie’ too familiar? “Nothing much,” she
replied. “But I’m not happy about you paying for anything. I was
thinking of something my father once said—about a man feeling he
had the right to dress a woman up if he’d provided the
clothes.”

Matthew gave a sudden surprised laugh. “I’ll
show you how to lace your walking boots up properly, but you can
put your own panties on.”

Kate caught her breath and stayed speechless
for a second. He was being far too familiar. She was really on her
guard now.

“I won’t need any panties, thank-you,” she
insisted, trying to sound cool and sophisticated and in
control.

“How many pairs did you bring?”

“
What!?”

“One spare pair, I imagine. You thought you
were only stopping overnight.”

“I’ll wash today’s out and they’ll be dry in
good time,” she said in a voice that brooked no argument. She
looked sideways and caught the corner of his mouth quirking with
amusement. Right—if he wanted snappish behaviour she could
oblige...

“Sorry, sorry,” he soothed, just before she
exploded. “But it’s so nice to have someone to spar with.”

“What about Lottie?”

“God, she’s too Dutch. No sense of the
ridiculous.”

“And my panties are ridiculous?” Kate asked,
softening despite herself.

“I don’t know Katie—are they? Black and red
to match the rest, I hope...”