‘Sharp reflexes, old man,’ said Rafe, crouching to give the dog a pat and a lazy scratch on his tubby belly. Bonzer whined and squirmed with delight, his tail thumping against the rug.
‘How long have you had him?’ Rafe asked Jennifer.
She had almost recovered her equilibrium. ‘Three years. I found him out on the road in a ditch. He’d been hit by a car and had a broken hip, and for a while the vet thought he might have to put him down. But he got better and nobody claimed him, so I brought him home. I think he was about four when we got him, and obviously nobody had ever tried to train him so he didn’t take to discipline too well. He’s still a bit boisterous and dopey, but he’s very friendly and he loves children...’
She had said the words without thinking, but when Rafe looked up at her she had a vision of a little green-eyed, golden-skinned, tow-headed boy, shouting with laughter as he had his face licked by his doggy friend. Her lips curved dreamily, unconsciously inviting him to share in her fantasy, and Rafe’s pupils expanded, darkening his eyes to a moody jade as he stared with a peculiar kind of hunger at her tender expression of delight. The delicate silence lasted until Rafe looked away and caught sight of Maxie, sharpening his claws against the logs in the basket.
‘And what about your cats, are they former strays too?’
‘How did you guess?’ grinned Paula. ‘And Fergus.’ She pointed at the cage in the corner where an overly plump budgie listed drunkenly on a perch. With an incredulous look at Jennifer, Rafe scrambled up to take a closer look.
‘Good God, that’s why it’s on a slant.’ Rafe peered into the cage. ‘It’s only got one leg!’
‘But, as Jenny pointed out to the vet, it’s a very sturdy leg,’ laughed Dot.
Jenny braced herself for more jokes about her rescued menagerie, but Ruapehu had a more dramatic subject in mind.
A low roar and a series of deep sonic booms had them rushing for the verandah, standing spellbound in the freezing night air at the sight of the incandescent fireworks spitting arcing streamers of molten fire hundreds of metres above the mountain crater. Even knowing that they were at a safe distance, Jennifer shuddered at the awe-inspiring, raw power unleashed by the volcano. She felt like a small, lonely, insignificant dot in a vast universe, and welcomed the strong arms that closed about her, pulling her back against the warm, solid body of another human being.
‘Now I know why Dante calls nature “the art of God”,’ said Rafe quietly over the top of her head, his words forming as steam in the icy air, his arms tightening around her waist. ‘Magnificent and terrifying, and powerful beyond our comprehension.’
It was hypnotically fascinating watching the fiery jets of super-heated liquid rock, propelled by the violent eruption of gases, fountain continuously over the rocky outline of the cone. Huge, flaming orange ‘bombs’ were flung out amongst the cascading rivulets of white-hot fire, and through Dot’s binoculars some could be seen tumbling and melting down the snowy west face of the mountain like giant fluorescent tears. Dark ash blotted out more of the stars as it streamed up into the atmosphere, creating a huge black void above the brilliant pyrotechnic display.
Eventually it was the cold that drove them back inside, and while Dot and her mother elected to stay in the living room, wrapped in blankets with hot toddies on their knees, to watch the continuing fireworks as long as they could manage to stay awake, a few yawns and coy hints from Rafe had led to Jennifer being shooed upstairs to bed for the sake of her ostensibly tired ‘husband’.
As she’d suspected, when they got up to her room Rafe’s tiredness miraculously fell away, as did the cloak of relatively civilised restraint he had worn in company. He was back to the restless, hostile, suspicious and openly aggressive enemy he had been on his arrival. Only now there was an added element, a primitive possessiveness in his insulting gaze that made her spine crawl with apprehensive excitement.
He watched calmly, arms folded across his black chest, as she busily folded spare double blankets from the glory box at the foot of the bed to form a narrow mattress on the floor and covered it with a thick quilt, tucking a fat pillow at the head.
Then, just as calmly, he stalked over and tore her work apart, tossing the blankets and quilt in opposite directions and kicking the pillow under the bed.
‘You’re not doing me out of my f
eather bed,’ he told her, his body language spoiling for a fight—legs astride, hands on hips, shoulders tense, stubborn jaw thrust slightly forward.
Laboriously, silently, Jennifer collected all the discarded pieces and constructed the makeshift bed all over again.
‘This is for me, not for you,’ she announced haughtily, completing her statement by ramming the pillow back into position. It galled her, but she knew she didn’t have a hope in hell of keeping him out of the big bed, if that was where he wanted to be.
He grunted and pulled off his shoes, not the laced walking boots this time, she noticed, but elegant, black, hand-made Italian jobs. Any moment now he would start the strip, and Jennifer was not going to be put through that humiliation again!
She hurried over to her nightwear drawer and blindly grabbed a handful of garments. Then she slammed into the bathroom and locked the door. Maybe if she took an age to shower and clean her teeth and brush her hair and—and...hell, and give herself a manicure, pedicure, perm, the whole works!—maybe by then he would be harmlessly asleep.
He’d better be asleep, she groaned silently as she looked at her choice of sleepwear. Of course there was no prim flannel nightdress or practical passion-killing pyjamas. She didn’t own any. Although Jennifer plumped for comfort over fashion in her clothes, her underwear was a different matter. There she felt free to indulge her private fantasies, and sexy bits of nothing featured large in her lingerie drawers. As for the slinky, sensuous things she slept in—they were intended to inspire the kind of wicked dreams that swept her to fresh heights of passionate creativity!
With Raphael Jordan in her bed, she needed a soporific, not an aphrodisiac!
CHAPTER SIX
MUFFLED up in the old pink towelling bathrobe that she never used, Jennifer crept past the sunken lump in the bed. Rafe had turned off the overhead lights and only the lamp beside the bed shone, throwing a rich glow over the golden head on the pillow. He was lying on his stomach, face half buried to one side in the pillow, one smooth-muscled naked arm thrown up around his head as if to shield himself from the intrusive light.
Jennifer glided across the cool floorboards, the shivery thrills goosing over her skin having nothing to do with the temperature. In fact the room, well-insulated in walls and ceiling, was quite toasty warm, thanks to the thermostatically controlled convection heater in the corner.
The hush of the night was disturbed by the muffled crump of faraway explosion, and she was irresistibly drawn to the balcony doors for another look at the fireworks display. After nearly two hours the powerful forces were showing no sign of diminishing, and now lightning bolts were crackling around the summit, threading zig-zag patterns of brilliant white through the black ash-clouds roaring into the night sky.
‘You’re blocking the view.’
She turned quickly, almost tripping over the drooping hem of her robe. The first thing she saw was Rafe propped up on his elbow, the cream duvet sliding away from his bare chest to settle at his waist.