‘OK, so I admit that, kissing-wise at least, we might be able to carry it off.’ A part of her noticed with interest that the tips of his ears had a faint pink tinge. Perhaps she had discovered the secret of reading his emotions—an ear-indicator as it were. Did it mean that he wasn’t as unmoved as he appeared to be? She continued, with a slight frown. ‘But what do you get out of it? I can’t believe you’re offering out of the goodness of your heart.’
‘I …’ he looked down, encountered the intriguing curves and tucks of three magenta triangles and flicked the grey eyes hurriedly up again, emptied of expression. ‘I need your help.’
‘Help? You?’ Delight and suspicion jostled for supremacy. ‘What for—kissing practice?’
He wavered only slightly. ‘I’m working to a strict schedule, delivering chapter by chapter to my publisher. I haven’t a hope of sticking to deadline unless I can find a typist.’ He raised his bandaged hand with a gesture of helplessness. ‘The other night you offered to help Michael if he needed the odd page re-done in a hurry. Would you consider typing for me, though it’s more than just the odd page. We could kill two birds with one stone.’
‘What do you mean?’ Julia felt very thick. The kiss had shattered some of her illusions about big men, about Hugh in particular, and now she felt all at sea with him.
‘I mean you come and type for me in the evenings. Let everyone draw their own conclusions about your visits.’
Left to herself Julia would have leapt at the idea, but she had to point out one very large stumbling block. ‘Isn’t it a bit out of character for you to fling your cap over the windmill with one of the hired helps? Highly unlikely, I would have thought. And might not Richard and Steve still …’
‘I think you can safely leave the twins to me, Julia. They won’t presume to trespass.’
When he spoke in that tone of voice Julia didn’t presume to doubt his success. But she hesitated, disconcerted by the surge of pleasure she had felt when he had said he needed her. Needed, not wanted. His eyes were steady and unreadable and some of her pleasure faded. Still, he had asked her, even if it did seem as if it was against his better judgment …
‘I’ll pay you of course,’ he added on, with casual cunning, as the silence lengthened, and Julia reared up, offended.
‘You will not! I’ll do it for free or not at all!’ She stopped when she saw his satisfaction, realising she had played straight into his hands. ‘You … you …’
Hugh undermined her indignation by getting up, drawing her attention to his injured hand in the process, reviving all her passionate guilt feelings.
‘Oh well, I suppose it’s worth a go,’ she sighed, following him out of the pool. ‘When do we start?’
‘As soon as possible. Tonight. I’ll take you out to dinner.’
‘Out!’ squeaked Julia, trotting, shivering, up the beach after him. ‘I can’t just go swanning off …’
‘You’re due an evening off—I checked with Connie. Don’t look so outraged, Julia, nobody’s going to starve—the girls are quite passable cooks when they try. Come on, you’re going blue with cold. Pick up your things and let’s get down to the changing sheds.’
‘Yes, sir, Mr Fix-it, sir,’ saluted Julia with a grin. He sounded so confident. But he needn’t think he could order her around so casually all the time. No. She, Julia, was a human being, a woman, and she wasn’t going to let him forget it. Especially now that she knew how exquisitely he kissed!
CHAPTER SEVEN
JULIA sighed as she screwed up and discarded another hand-written foolscap page. Her fingers ached from the intensive exercise. At first glance Hug
h’s IBM golfball self-correcting machine had seemed terrifying, a sleek, fearsome monster baring its keys like rows of gleaming teeth at her. Surprisingly, though, it had proved easy to use … so far.
Julia looked over to where Hugh sat in his brown leather wing-chair, grey head bent over his papers. The music of one of Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos ebbed and flowed around them, absorbing the silence with its beauty. The lovely room made Julia appreciate why Hugh spent so much time up here. Long and rectangular, in the past it had been divided up into servants’ quarters. When the renovations had been done, the timber from the walls had been re-cycled into a small bathroom and tiny kitchenette, and an extra dormer window added, bringing the number to three. Now it was a room to suit a large man and furnished in comfort, if not luxury. Travelling spotlights were attached to the heavily oiled kauri rafters, throwing warm pools of yellow on to the large desk where Julia sat, the leather suite which surrounded the large brick fireplace, and picking out the rich highlights in the beautiful Persian carpets which covered the polished floorboards.
At the far end of the room, in semi-darkness, was an enormous, ornately carved four-poster bed with feather mattress, down pillows and plain brown duvet. How Julia envied Hugh that bed! Whenever she took a break from the typewriter she would throw herself into the feather depths under Hugh’s faintly amused gaze and relax in blissful pleasure.
Julia smiled to herself as her eyes wandered back to Hugh in his chair. In a way the bed was rather like its owner—large, dominating everything around it, yet on further exploration unexpectedly soft and warm. Julia had been working for him for three nights now and was aware that slowly, slowly, he was lowering his guard. No longer was she being treated with wary distaste, as a small, potentially explosive package. She was being useful, and at the same time showing him a quieter, calmer side of her personality.
The night they had gone out to dinner (leaving a house full of mouths agape behind) their conversation had pointed up their differences. Julia was a rock fan, Hugh preferred the classics: Julia was comedy and corny old movies, Hugh was a realist; Julia read widely and indiscriminately, Hugh was strictly non-fiction; Julia was a free-thinking liberal, Hugh a conservative. Still, she had enjoyed his company immensely, finding their differences stimulating, admiring his sophistication and maturity. They had talked about anything and everything, Julia matching Hugh’s logical persuasiveness with her own fierce enthusiasm so that the conversational honours were more or less evenly divided.
Most importantly, their plan had been working. So understated were Hugh’s emotions usually that he had achieved a dramatic effect by merely appearing to notice Julia. A glance, a light touch, a slight smile … to his family these seemed the equivalent of passionate embraces. Julia was vaguely disappointed that her role was so minor … and that there didn’t seem the need for even an occasional kiss. She remembered the taste and feel of him that day on the beach, and how much she had liked it. She sighed heavily. Hugh hadn’t lowered his guard that far … yet.
‘Are you hinting that you’ve done enough for the evening?’ She found herself being observed under lowered brows.
‘Well, it is eleven, but I haven’t finished the rest of chapter six yet,’ she said, over a yawn.
The large grey head moved as he shrugged his shoulders with an unintelligible grunt.
‘I’m a cook, not a typist,’ grumbled Julia, interpreting his impatient rumble. She stood up and wandered over to the chair. When Hugh didn’t look up she subsided on to the rug at his feet, moving her tired neck muscles as the fierce, dry heat of the fire soaked into her back. ‘What are you doing?’
‘Revision.’ The gold pen continued to move smoothly across a typed page. Typed? Julia raised herself to peep over into his lap.