Tempting Taine (10 page)

“I spent this summer working at Trey’s
Vege
Barn.
 
I met him there.”
 

Mrs. Hunter looked blank.
 

“It was one of the places Taine delivered to,” Verity elaborated.

Mrs. Hunter was looking increasingly unhappy with the results of her interrogation.
 
“And what did you say your last name was?”

“Samuels.
 
Verity Samuels.”

Did she imagine it, or did a spark of pure hatred shoot through Mrs. Hunter’s eyes at the mention of her name?

Lunch was excruciating.
 
Though the place settings were elegant, the food was mediocre at best, and the atmosphere in the room was positively toxic.

Verity’s appetite had deserted her anyway.
 
Though Taine and Mr. Hunter did their best to include Verity in the conversation, Mrs. Hunter was far more determined to exclude her, pointedly steering the talk around to people Verity did not know, places she had not been and things she knew nothing about.
 
Without resorting to outright rudeness, the older woman successfully made her feel uneducated, uncultured, and
utterly inferior
.
 
Before lunch was even half over, she wanted only to escape.

Taine and his father ate quickly, but Mrs. Hunter
wouldn’t
be hurried.
 
She toyed with her food, and, when she had finally finished eating, sipped her coffee with exaggerated slowness.

Just as Verity
thought
she could not bear another second of the woman’s snide remarks and patronizing comments, Mrs. Hunter pushed away her coffee cup and placed her linen napkin on the tablecloth with a sigh.

The instant his mother signalled that she had finished, Taine shot to his feet and grabbed Verity’s hand.
 
“Thanks for lunch, Mum,” he said, looking as if
he’d
rather bop her on the head with a blunt instrument.
 
“Verity and I have to shoot now.”

“Thank you for bringing her to meet us, Taine,” she replied, her voice full of insincere sweetness.
 
“Now before you run off with your wee friend, be a dear and fetch me my reading glasses.
 
I think I left them upstairs, beside my bed.”

Taine made an apologetic face at Verity.
 
“I’ll be right back.”

As soon as Taine was out of the room, Mrs. Hunter turned to Verity.
 
Her face
was twisted
with intense dislike.
 
“You are not good enough for Taine,” she spat
out
.
 
“I know it, and you know it, and sooner or later, he’ll realize it, too.”

Mr. Hunter gripped his wife’s arm, his knuckles white with tension.
 
“Celeste!” he hissed under his breath.
 
“That’s quite enough.”
 

He turned to Verity, his face blotched a
purply
red.
 
“Please excuse us.
 
My wife didn’t mean---”

“Stay out of this, Jacob,” she interrupted, shaking off his restraining hand with glare of fury in her eyes.
 
“You have no right to interfere.”
 
Her voice was lethally sharp.
 
“I meant every word I said.”

At her display of temper, Mr. Hunter shrugged unhappily and fell silent.

Mrs. Hunter turned back to Verity, the hatred on her face more pronounced than ever.
 
“You have no style, no breeding, nothing that will keep Taine’s interest except what’s between your legs.”
 
She paused for a moment and skewered her with a look of utter disdain.
 
“You’re not welcome here.
 
You
don't
belong.
 
Do us all a
favor
and don’t come back.”

Chapter 5

The Jeep pulled up outside the Hunter’s front door and Verity gave herself a shake to bring herself back to the present.
 
There was no point in obsessing over the past.
 
The whole Hunter clan had lost their power to hurt her long ago, when she gave up caring what they thought of her.

She strode into the house after Taine and hung her dripping coat on to the coat rack, her mind on the heavy rain outside.
 
She hesitated at the door to the living room, still nervous about the weather.
 
“Can you take me home early if the weather gets worse?”

Taine gave a casual shrug.
 
“Maybe.
 
It depends on why you want to get home so badly.
 
Have you got a hot date tonight you don’t want to miss?”

She glared at him, wishing she did have something planned just so she could boast about it to annoy him.
 
“That’s none of your business.”

He reached out and flicked a damp curl of hair away from her face.
 
“I have made it very much my business.
 
I want you, Verity.
 
I’m not going to take you home early so you can make yourself ready for another man.”

“It was a simple question and it deserves a simple answer.”
 
She crossed her arms in front of her to protect herself from his intrusive questioning.
 
“Can you take me home early if I need to leave?”

“Will you be going to another man?” he countered.

“I’ve not got a date,” she ground out between clenched teeth.
 
“I just want to be home tonight.”

“Then, yes, I’ll take you home when you’re ready to leave.”
 
He grinned at her and sauntered off, whistling.
 
“I’ll be out the back.
 
Give me a call when you’re ready.”

What was it about him that got under her skin so badly?
 
His arrogance, maybe?
 
His caveman-like assumption that he had some kind of rights over her simply because he was an alpha male?
 
Or
his supreme confidence that she would fall in with whatever plans he had for her?
 
Whatever it was, she had had quite enough of it for one day.
 
She stalked into the living room, feeling uncomfortably as if he had already outmaneuvered her.

Mr. Hunter was sitting in his wheelchair in front of the fire.
 
His face cracked into an almost smile when she walked in.
 
“Come back to torture me again today, have you?” he grumbled at her, as he shook the rug off his knee with his good hand.
 
“I know your type.
 
Can’t
let an old man die in peace.
 
Always got to try and fix things that can’t be mended.”
 
But all
the same, there was the hint of a twinkle in his eye that had not been there the previous day, and he took to the exercises she showed him with alacrity.

Immersed as she was in her work with the old man, the time went by faster than she realized.
 
By the time she noticed the darkness outside the windows and glanced down at her watch, her scheduled hour with him was well and truly up.

“Keep working on the leg lifts over the weekend, Mr. Hunter,” she said, as she shook the blanket back over his knees, now tired and shaking from the effort
he’d
been putting in to them.
 
“If you work those muscles as hard as you can, you’ll notice a small improvement in your strength every day.”

Now that his exercises
were done
, he seemed to lose his sparkle.
 
“It’ll take more than a small improvement to get me back on my feet again.”

“I warned you yesterday that there’s no silver bullet for people in your situation,” she said, feeling a sudden rush of pity for the proud old man brought so low by illness and old age.
 
“Those small improvements will soon turn into a big improvement, so the tougher you work them the better.”

“That’s all very well for you to say,” he muttered under his breath, smoothing out the wrinkles in his rug with a shaky hand.
 
“You’re not the one who has to do the work.”

Perhaps she
had
been driving him a bit hard.
 
He
did
look tired.
 
She hid her concern behind a cheery smile.
 
“Keep up the good work, and I’ll be back to see you on Monday.”

She shut the living room door behind her and stood in the hallway by the front door, wondering where Taine was.
 
The rain had eased off, and the wind was no longer gusting quite so fiercely through the trees, but it was not exactly the weather for a pleasant stroll in the gardens to look for him.
 
‘Out the back’,
he’d
said.
 
Heaven only knew where that was.
 

She put down her bag in the hall and was about to set off to find him when the front door banged open and he came striding in, his oilskin flapping damply around his knees.

“Nasty out there,” he said, as he shook the rain out of his hair, scattering droplets of water in all directions.

She shrugged.
 
She’d
seen worse.
 
“I’ve finished with your father.”

“How is he?”

“He’s cheered up a bit and is giving his rehab a good shot.
 
That’s the first battle won.”
 

“More mind games?”

She ignored his jibe.
 
“Are you ready to take me back to town now?”

He shrugged out of his oilskin and tossed it in a heap on the mudroom floor.
 
“I can’t take you back tonight.”

She gave an exasperated snort.
 
What game was he playing at now?
 
“What do you mean you can’t take me home tonight,” she protested.
 
“You said you---”

His gumboots landed on the oilskin with a dull thud.
 
“The situation’s changed.”

“I know.
 
The rain’s stopped, so the river won’t flood, so there’s no reason you can’t take me home.”

He
itched
his nose with the back of his hand.
 
“One of the big pines has blown over.
 
Nothing can get through.
 
You're stuck here tonight.”

“You’re joking.”

“No.
 
I’m not,” he said, and he wiped the sleeve of his sweater over his forehead to wipe off the moisture.
 
“I wish I was, but I’ve just been to check it out and there’s no way the men can move it before morning.”

She
was hit
with the sudden realization of what that meant to her.
 
If the road was truly blocked, she was stuck on the wrong side of it and she would have to stay in the Hunter household for the night.
 
She
would be forced
to share a house with Taine – with the man who despised her, but who still wanted her in his bed.
 
A sudden fit of terror struck her at the prospect and she jumped at the only glimmer of rescue she could think of.
 
“Can’t they chainsaw it up tonight?”

“In the dark?”
 
He shook his head, looking disgusted that she had even made the suggestion.
 
“You may be used dealing with the kind of man you can wind around your little finger and who will let you get your own way all the time,” he sneered, “but there are definite limits to my tolerance.
 
Even if there were a real emergency,
I’d
think pretty hard about asking the farmhands to help chainsaw it up in the dark in weather like this.
 
It’s too dangerous.”

She bowed her head, ashamed that her desire to get home had
momentarily
made her so selfish and thoughtless.
 
She did not want anyone put to such trouble or, heaven help her, injured, just because of her impatience to get away from Taine.
 
“So, where does that leave me,” she asked, as brightly as she could, when she lifted her head again.
 
She was afraid that she already knew the answer.
 

“You’ll have to stay here tonight.”

She could hardly argue the necessity even though it was the last thing she wanted to do.
 
Well, not quite the last thing – sleeping in the house, even with Taine in it, was preferable to
being tossed
outside to sleep in the cowshed.
 
“Do you have a spare bed?
 
Or will it have to be the sofa?”