To her shock he slid an arm behind her shoulder blades and one under her knees and stood up in one fluid movement, tipping her high against his chest to readjust his grip under her thighs before he turned and began to retrace his steps, Samantha and the other girl trailing behind him, whispering to each other.
She pushed at his shoulder with a gritty hand, leaving a smudge on the front of his pale blue shirt. ‘Put me down…you can’t carry me—’
‘Why? Don’t you think I’m strong enough to handle a fairy-weight like you?’
She could feel the play of muscles across his chest and abdomen and the tensile pull of sinews and tendons in his arms as he moved effortlessly over the ground. He wasn’t even breathing hard as he mounted the steps to the open front door. There was no doubting his strength; it was the handling part that Anya was worried about…
‘I’m perfectly able to walk—’
‘But evidently not without falling over.’
He stepped into the hall and there was a muffled giggle behind him. ‘You just carried her over the threshold, Uncle Scott,’ Samantha Monroe informed him, her bubbly voice pregnant with meaning.
‘I doubt Miss Adams is feeling in the least bit bride-like at the moment,’ he answered repressively. ‘Go and get a bowl of hot water with disinfectant, and some cotton wool swabs would you, Sam?’ He raised his voice above the sound of her chunky sandals clattering off across the polished hardwood floor. ‘And while you’re in the kitchen getting the bowl, ask Mrs Lee to make some tea.’
‘That girl has marriage on the brain.’ He sounded sorely harassed. ‘Her sole aim in life seems to be how to snag herself a boy.’
‘Actually, from what I’ve seen at school, it’s the boys who want to snag her,’ Anya told him. ‘Samantha’s interest in marriage is probably partly self-defensive. Even fifteen-year-old boys realise that pretty girls who are misty-eyed about marriage are going to be the type to want commitment, and not likely to put out for whoever happens to be that night’s date.’
‘And people call me a cynical manipulator,’ he murmured, glancing down at the woman in his arms as if surprised by the rawness of her perception.
She tilted her chin. ‘No, do they really?’ she marvelled, widening eyes the colour of the sky on a rainy day.
‘Cat!’ he said, carrying her down the wide hall towards the living rooms. The interior walls and high, moulded plaster ceilings were the colour of whipped cream, and in daylight the impression of lightness and space was markedly different from the effect of the dark-stained panelling and densely-patterned wallpaper that Anya remembered from her childhood, or the garish coloured lights from Saturday night. The rooms off the hallway were carpeted in wheat-coloured wool which from the pristine look of it had been professionally cleaned since the party. She hoped Scott Tyler was making his nephew work off the cost.
‘I thought I was a buttercup,’ she countered.
‘A buttercup doesn’t have claws. I trust that this simple act of human kindness isn’t making you feel bridal?’ he enquired mockingly.
‘Homicidal, more like,’ she said, remembering the purpose of her visit. She kicked with her legs to signal her displeasure. ‘You can put me down now.’
‘All in good time.’
As they passed the former dining room she saw it was fitted out as an office and next door she caught a glimpse of something that genuinely widened her eyes. ‘You have a piano!’ she blurted.
His mockery turned sour. ‘Why so surprised? Did you think me too great a Philistine to own such an icon of highbrow culture?’ He turning into the living room opposite, reading the answer in her all-too-revealing flush. ‘Ah, I see…you’ve been listening to your loose-lipped cousin. Well, of course, it’s only there for pretentious show—or thumping out pub songs—whichever you think is the most offensive to good taste.’
Anya stiffened at the implication that she was a cultural snob. ‘As a matter of fact, Kate’s hardly mentioned you to me at all,’ she snapped. And then only in answer to direct questions.
His eyes gleamed as if he read her mind. ‘How frustrating for you,’ he said with a silky smile, lowering her onto a deep couch upholstered in cream-coloured linen.
She sank back into the plush cushions as he picked up her ankles one by one and calmly unzipped her boots, his hand cupping the backs of her calves as he slid them off her stockinged feet, ignoring her protest that there was no need for her to lie down.
‘Humour me,’ he said, allowing her to wriggle up so that her back was propped against the arm of the couch. ‘I don’t want to leave you any excuses to sue.’ He turned to accept the steaming bowl that Samantha had carefully carried into the room, along with a plastic box adorned with a red cross.
There was a high-pitched burble and Samantha snatched up the cordless telephone from the coffee table before it could ring a second time, her flawless complexion pinkening as she responded to the voice at the other end, twirling at one lock of golden-blonde hair around a manicured finger as she answered.
‘Oh, hi, Bevan…Yes, it’s me…Oh, nothing much, just hanging around here…Well, I don’t know—Angie and Sara want to go to the beach later…’ She wandered out of the room, the little domestic drama eclipsed in her mind by the pressing demands of a teenage social life.
Anya suffered a closer inspection of her minor bumps and grazes and clenched her teeth as they were meticulously bathed clean and the stinging patch on her arm was treated and a small dressing taped into place over the raw skin. She never would have thought that Scott Tyler could be so gentle, she thought, keeping her eyes fixed on his fingers so she didn’t have to look at the face so uncomfortably close to her own. Strangely, his deft gentleness made her feel more, rather than less vulnerable to his aggressive personality.
‘I’m using hypoallergenic sticking-plaster because I’m guessing that you have very sensitive skin,’ he said, pressing down the final piece of tape and running his thumb down the tender, velvety-smooth inside of her arm to linger over the blue veins in her fine-boned wrist.
‘Mr Tyler—’
‘Miss Adams?’ The prim way he said her name made her feel foolish for her attempt to reassert a formal distance between them. ‘You’d better call me Scott. A woman should be on first-name terms with the man who carries her over the threshold.’
The threshold of what? she thought darkly and was chagrined when she realised that she had muttered it out loud.