The Seduction of Suzanne Read online

  She knew, absolutely knew, it wasn’t safe to get entangled with a visitor. Her gut churned with an uneasy warning to steer clear. He made her nervous and uncertain. Even more so because of his persistence. Any other man would have given up by now. Every other man had, in the face of her stonewalling.

  And yet he made her tingle. It was something beyond his physical beauty. Something which she could see behind his eyes. It drew her irresistibly.

  Dammit! How can I feel like this about a man I barely know? He’s so confident, so smooth and charming. I shouldn’t trust him an inch. And yet…those eyes.

  He sat waiting for her to go on, his hand now lying flat on the sand between them. She looked at that large hand, with its blunt fingers. It lay across the furrows he had created earlier, a light sprinkling of golden hair running across its back and up his forearm.

  “So what is it – exactly – you do want from me? Because all I want is to be left alone.” Her defiant truthfulness held a hint of desperation, at least to her own ears. She hoped he missed it.

  “That doesn’t sound like much fun.” His tone was light and teasing.

  “Not everything is about fun.”

  “On a beautiful sunny day, on holiday, in a place like this? I think fun is what it’s all about.”

  “Thank you so much for your guidance but I’m not taking lessons on how to live from some drop-out of life. I’m just fine, thank you.”

  At this he threw back his head and laughed out loud. Infuriating man!

  “What’s so funny?” she demanded.

  “No, nothing. Sorry. A private joke. But really you should lighten up. You’ll give yourself stomach ulcers if you rein yourself in so tightly.”

  “Oh, and I suppose I should let you decide my holiday itinerary to maximise my quotient of fun?”

  “I might do a better job of it.”

  “For your information this book is a regular laugh riot, that swim was hilarious and when I go home alone in ten minutes I will have the most intense delight imaginable all by myself.”

  “The most intense delight? All by yourself?” He purred the words back at her and the look he gave her was both speculative and hot enough to scorch her down to her toes. She replayed her own words and felt her heart trip faster. She raised her chin and narrowed her eyes, looking coolly down her nose at him.

  “You better believe it, sunshine.”

  “I do. Yet a gentleman always offers to lend a lady a hand if he thinks he might be of use to her.”

  She was a little startled by the innuendo, but she was absolutely shocked by her own response to it. Her brain instantly conjured images of him lending a hand to touch her intimately, stroke the most delicate tender heat of her body, serve her with fingers and with mouth.

  Underneath her bikini top her nipples drew taut, sending a bolt of sensation deep down inside her.

  She imagined his hot masculine body wrapped around her, those impressive muscles hard and alive under her fingertips. How would those muscles feel underneath her, over her? She had no idea, no basis for comparison. Her hand twitched at the thought, wanting to reach out and touch him. She caught herself and thanked the powers that be for her sunglasses hiding her wandering eyes. She closed those eyes to plunge herself for an instant into comforting darkness.

  What was she thinking? Maybe Anita knew what she was talking about when she referred to Suzanne’s starving libido. She counted slowly to ten, trying to find a calm centre. Everything was under control. She could handle this.

  She didn’t know what made the difference but where a man coming on to her usually made her skin crawl, with him it. . .pleased her. She could pick at least that emotion out of the morass of confusion with which his sultry words had filled her.

  She swallowed once, twice, took a deep breath:

  “Very self-sacrificing,” she said in the driest tone she could manage.

  “Not at all,” he murmured.

  “But I don’t need a hand.”

  “Perhaps need is the wrong word. Perhaps want is better. You want something and you’re telling yourself you can’t have it. When we both know you can. You can have exactly what you want, exactly as hard and fast or slow and easy as you want.”

  “That is quite enough!”

  He paused, looked at her for a moment with such close attention she almost quailed. Almost. Then she returned him stare for stare. He wore no glasses so his blue eyes were perfectly visible, as clear as the sky. Not that she felt it helped her read him at all.

  The moment stretched out, then eased as a certain tension went from him, he banked the fires in his gaze and relaxed into a new direction.

  “Do you surf at all? With an athletic figure like yours you must do something very active.”

  He reclined back on both elbows, bunching up the muscles of his shoulders into a riveting collection of bumps and hollows. Quite magnificent.

  Her heart was beating faster. She could feel it thumping against the inside of her chest. She thought she could smell the faint, clean masculine scent of him on the air. She was really longing to touch him.

  The idea filled her with confusion. She had no frame of reference for this desire, this, yes, hunger to be close to a man, skin to skin. She was frozen, suspended in the moment, torn between the habits of many years to move away, reject, hide from or simply fail to connect with men her age, and this new urge.

  So she did nothing. Of course. As always taking the safest route. Found a courteous social smile and pasted it on.

  “I do a little bit of everything,” she finally replied.

  “Everything?”

  “Oh you know. Water sports, cycling, tramping. The usual round here.”

  “Hey Suzanne! Howzit?” came a loud voice to her left. She swivelled her head to the sound.

  “Hi Kyle,” she called back to the slender island man whose six-year-old daughter was in the class she taught at Okiwi School. “Missed you at the school board meeting.”

  “Yeah, sorry ’bout that. I fell asleep on the couch after dinner and no one woke me up until eight. I reckon it was probably too late by then.”

  “Marieka working you too hard? Keeping you up at nights?”

  “Yeah, no rest for the wicked, eh? Hey Justin, if you wanted that dive I’m heading out about now with the boys.”

  “Do you two know each other?” asked Suzanne, surprised.

  “I met Kyle at the bar a couple nights ago,” answered Justin. “He was telling me about his boat. Bragging about the size of his catch.”

  “No bragging, mate. Pure fact. You can come too if you like, Suzanne,” said Kyle. “We’ve got space if you bring your gear.”

  “Where are you going diving?” she stalled, caught off guard by the whole situation.

  “Out of Fitzroy. The cuzzies have had the boat round there. Looking for crays and whatever else.”

  She hesitated a moment. Should she refuse? Would Justin think she was choosing to spend her afternoon with him if she said yes?

  Damn him! If he wasn’t here she would say ‘yes’ in a heartbeat. An afternoon of diving and a dinner of magnificent fresh seafood? She never turned that down. And she wouldn’t let him put her off her usual pursuits. She often went diving with Kyle and his family. They were careful and conscientious divers, minding their safety precautions and only taking as much as they needed to feed themselves, and never more than quota.

  “Hmmm. Crayfish huh? Don’t know if I can say no to that offer.”

  “So I’ll see yous guys at Fitzroy? At about one? Or you wanna meet here and I’ll give you a lift?” Suzanne considered his question with a little doubt. Kyle’s car was tiny, and she doubted it would fit more than Kyle, his two teenage boys and their diving gear. She had better take her own car.

  “I’ll drive us both to Fitzroy, meet you there at what time?” said Justin before she could reply. Her brows snapped together as she opened her mouth to contradict him.

  “Sweet as bro, see you at one, eh? That’ll
give us time to get a feed at the burger place. See ya.” With a hand uplifted in a casual farewell Kyle walked away, picking his way carefully up the sliding sands on the face of the dune.

  “Thanks for the offer, but I can drive myself over,” she said to Justin.

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” he said. “Why go in separate cars when we’re going the same way?”

  Suzanne clenched her teeth. He was quite right of course. The only reason not to carpool was if she was anxious to avoid him. Which felt like a cowardly reaction, not quite appropriate to the confident and assertive woman she was trying to portray even as she felt so uncertain.

  The confident and assertive woman she really was under normal circumstances. But this felt far from normal. And she didn’t want to come straight out and admit that was her reason for running off to a separate car: he knocked her so off kilter she couldn’t even manage to be herself. Instead she was this wild woman intent on mentally stripping him and putting his masculine assets to good use to-

  Oh God, she was doing it again.

  “What?” he asked her with that charismatic grin which invited one to smile along with him, and she realised she was glaring grimly at him with her mouth pursed.

  “I’d better get my diving gear.” She turned away to scoop her few belongings into her tote.

  “I need mine too. Is your place on the way to Fitzroy? We can drop in and then just keep on going from there.”

  “Great. Lovely.”

  With a fluid motion that spoke of competent muscles, he came to his feet then reached out to snag her beach umbrella. He collapsed it with ease and slung it loosely into the crook of one arm, holding out his other hand to take her bag.

  “No thanks. I can manage,” she said, following Kyle’s footsteps up the dune. Almost immediately she wished she had let Justin go first as she realised he was following closely behind her bikini-clad bottom and bare legs. She imagined him checking her out as she had just looked him over several minutes before, and felt hot and self-conscious.

  At least she knew she looked great in this streamlined bikini swimsuit, long and lean and well-muscled. Not that she was trying to impress him, or anything. But it was nice to know.

  Once they reached the carpark she stopped, expecting him to point her to one of the dusty old rattle-traps there. Her ute fit right into the crowd, battered and a bit rusty.

  “Actually I’m just a little further along here,” he said, taking the lead down the dirt footpath that ran past the houses on the beach, along the side of the road between the small pohutakawa trees.

  As she fell in behind him her gaze dropped immediately, irresistibly to the firm cheeks of his gorgeous backside, pressing against the thin material of his ragged board shorts. Again she surprised herself with her desire to touch him, feel that tight, sweeping curve under her fingertips.

  Was this just because he was so good-looking? Surely she had met other handsome men in the past several years? The sort of men who strutted down the beach or into the pub on a Saturday, drawing female stares and appreciative whispers and giggles, knowing themselves for the fine physical specimens they were. But then she never connected with any of them, not meeting their gaze, fading into the background. They weren’t even really people to her. Just representations of her own foolish susceptibility. Something to be ignored and avoided. But Justin was not so accommodating.

  She looked down at the ground instead of at that enticing behind, watching her own jauntily painted toenails under their coating of sand, putting the dusty grass and red pohutukawa needles behind her.

  A few houses along he stopped in front of a large, modern house that was tall enough to command a view in both directions. It was obviously architecturally designed to make a subtle statement of affluence, but tastefully. Although she personally preferred something with a bit more history for a home, this one was quite impressive.

  When he turned she raised her eyebrows and flicked her eyes sideways at the house in enquiry.

  “So close?” she asked in surprise, trotting a couple of steps to catch up.

  “Yeah,” he said casually. “This is where I’m staying with friends. Andrew and Nina. You can see what I mean about being right on the beach. I looked out of the upstairs window and saw you down there just now. I guess it was fate. Mind you,” he added, “I would have found you eventually.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked.

  “Just what I said. If you look for something long enough, you’re sure to find it,” he replied calmly.

  “So you were looking for me?” An undeniable thrill ran through her at the thought.

  “Yes.”

  “But why? I was quite clear I wasn’t interested. I’m not interested.”

  “Yes, you said. I heard you. Difficult as it is to concentrate when looking at something so delectable. That one’s my car,” he gestured, then stepped towards it to open the trunk and put in her beach umbrella. “I’ll just grab my gear.” His whirlwind-quick changes of subject kept her off balance. Had he really just called her delectable? That wasn’t how she thought of herself. Bemused, she turned to the car. She was surprised to see that under its inevitable layer of road dust it was a very sleek, modern four-wheel-drive.

  “Did you say this was yours?” she asked, eyebrows rising even further. How could an impecunious traveller from overseas, who was only on the island for a season, and was for that matter living off the generosity of his friends, possibly afford a car like this?

  “Oh, it belongs to my friends too,” he said. “I’m just borrowing it from Andrew.”

  “What did you have to promise him?” she asked in astonishment, trying the door. It was unlocked. Which was typical on the island, but she couldn’t imagine leaving a car like this unlocked anywhere. “An arm, a leg and a kidney? I don’t think I’d ever let anyone else drive my car on the island roads. Especially not a visitor. It would be too easy to have an accident in an unfamiliar vehicle.” She raised her voice as she got into the car and settled into one of the big, well-padded seats.

  “Arms, legs, firstborn son,” he said. “I won’t be long.”

  True to his word he was only in the house long enough to raise the triple garage door, revealing an impressive array of recreational toys. Speedboat, jet skis, kayaks, and a rack full of water skis and diving gear. He collected a chilli bin and filled it with a bag of ice from the freezer, chose a pair of tanks, and bundled flippers, mask and a short wetsuit into a backpack he slung onto his back. Then he hit a button and ducked under the closing door, coming towards her. He carried the whole awkward load like it weighed nothing. She would have to make two trips to move so much gear.

  Meanwhile Suzanne pulled her shorts and T-shirt out of her bag and scrambled into them. She didn’t want to dress with him watching. It felt far too intimate. Her clothes were scratchy with the thin layer of salt and sand clinging to her, and she was probably leaving more in the car, but she wasn’t about to climb out to brush it off onto the ground.

  “Andrew must really trust you,” she said as he climbed into the car, having packed the dive gear into the trunk and closed it. One of her elbows was propped on the lintel of the window, fingers stroking absently at the fine finish of the interior.

  “Don’t worry, I’ve driven it quite a bit, so you’re perfectly safe.”

  “If you say so,” she replied, and fastened her own seatbelt as they turned onto the road.

  After a moment of self-conscious silence as she wondered where she should go from here, after her earlier rudeness, she decided she should be polite and act indifferent to him. Maybe that would deflate his outrageous flirting where stroppy rejection had not. So she made small talk as he drove, only giving directions when necessary.

  He controlled the car with easy competency, putting it in exactly the right place on the narrow, sometimes metalled roads, and she soon relaxed about his competency behind the wheel.

  Before long she’d discovered that he had been on the island for ne
arly a month, and had an open-ended ticket out of New Zealand and back to California.

  “So I’m planning to stay for another five months or so, until my visitor’s entry into New Zealand expires.”

  “Will you be on the Barrier all that time?”

  “I had given some thought to travelling around the country. I like skiing, so I was considering going down to the South Island in May and June for the winter season.”

  “And you’re not considering it anymore?”

  “Now I’m thinking that I’d like to see what winter looks like here on Great Barrier,” he said, his eyes on the road.

  “Wet. And muddy.” she said discouragingly.

  “Well I’m sure the locals find plenty to do inside when the weather’s foul.”

  “The mainland’s much more fun than the Barrier in winter. Here it’s cold and rainy, and there are sometimes storms so that they cancel the planes and ferries, and one is trapped on the island. The walking tracks turn to mud, it’s too rough for good fishing or kayaking, and snorkelling or swimming are practically out of the question. It’s grey, and gloomy, and dull.”

  “That sounds grim. Trying to talk me out of staying?” he asked, his brow a little furrowed.

  “I’m not. It’s just . . .” she didn’t know what to say. She was trying to talk him out of it, but she didn’t know why.

  “Just that it’s best not to plan too far ahead,” she replied lightly. “When the bad weather rolls around, you may find that you prefer to be elsewhere, so it’s better not to tie yourself down so soon.”

  She stole a glance at him and saw he was still frowning slightly, as if trying to see the meaning behind her words.

  “Here we are,” she exclaimed with relief, having absolutely no desire to explain her thoughts to him. “It’s this turning on the left. By the red mailbox.”

  He turned in where she pointed, following the driveway – two bare earth grooves over a stretch of grass with regrowing scrub on either side – for a hundred metres before it widened out into the clearing containing her home.