He didn’t wait for an answer but went to the door and bellowed for ‘Frank’.
The man in the dark suit came in. He gave Vivian a single, hostile, sharply assessing look, then took the proffered pen and co-signed the document with a tight-lipped frown.
‘Satisfied?’ he asked gratingly as he straightened up, throwing the pen down on to the desk.
‘Thank you, Frank.’
Frank grunted.
‘Lunch ready?’ Nicholas Rose asked, seemingly undismayed by his employee’s surly air of disapproval.
‘In the kitchen. Just as you ordered, sir. Just don’t expect me to serve it!’
‘We’ll serve ourselves.’ He turned to Vivian, who was watching the by-play with slightly dazed green eyes, still stunned by the inexplicable reprieve. Could she have been wrong about him, after all? ‘Frank heats up a mean soup. Frank is my right-hand man, by the way. Frank, this is Vivian.’
Another grunt and a bare acknowledgement.
‘I think Vivian has something to give you before you go, Frank.’
‘I do?’ She looked at them both blankly.
‘The money, Vivian,’ Nicholas reminded her helpfully. ‘If you haven’t brought the cash and the bank-cheque, then this contract of sale isn’t worth the paper it’s written on.’
‘Oh!’ She blushed. How unprofessional. She was surprised he hadn’t asked to see the money earlier. ‘Oh, yes, of course. It’s right here.’
She unfastened a locked compartment of her satchel, drawing out the thousand-dollar bundle of notes from a cloth bank-bag, and the crisp slip of paper that made up the balance. She was about to put them down on the desk when she hesitated, eyeing the settlement papers still splayed out in front of him, her fears blossoming anew. Her colour drained away as she nibbled her lip.
With a sardonic look, Nicholas Rose silently gathered up the papers and handed them to her. She tucked them hastily into the satchel before she gave him the bundles. She couldn’t quite hide her relief at getting rid of the oppressive responsibility and was chagrined when he tossed the money casually to Frank, who stuffed it in his suit pockets and stumped out, muttering something about the pilot.
‘This is all very unorthodox,’ she said disapprovingly.
‘I’m a very unorthodox man.’ If that was a warning, it had come far too late to be of any protection. ‘Did it make you nervous travelling with such a large sum of cash?’
She thought of her sweaty drive and the almost sleepless night in the motel with a chair propped under the doorknob. ‘Very.’
‘Poor Vivian, no wonder you look so pale and tense.’ He casually brushed her cheek with his thumb and she nearly went through the roof at the bolt of electricity that sizzled her senses.
They looked at each other, startled. His gaze dropped to her soft naked mouth, open in shock, then to the sliver of thickly freckled skin revealed by the modest cleavage of her blouse and the faint suggestion of lace hinted at by the trembling rise and fall of her lush breasts against the cream silk. In that single, brief glance he stripped her naked and possessed her.
‘Come into the kitchen,’ he said quietly. ‘I know just what to give you to relax.’
He ushered her before him and she moved awkwardly, shaken by the most profoundly erotic experience of her life. And yet he had scarcely touched her! She felt confused, fearful and yet achingly alive, aware as never before of the feminine sway of her full hips and the brush of her thighs beneath her skirt. Her spine tingled in delicious terror. Was he stroking her again with that spiky look of hunger? Imagining how she would look moving in front of him without her clothes? She blushed in the dimness of the hall and chastised herself for her dangerous fantasies. Either it was all in her own mind, or Nicholas Rose had decided to set her up for a very personal form of humiliation. He couldn’t possibly be genuinely attracted to her, not a man who, despite his physical flaws, possessed a raw magnetism that probably gave him his pick of beautiful women, not a man who showed every sign of being bent on vengeance.
The kitchen was small and compact and clearly the preserve of someone who enjoyed cooking. The bench-top was wooden, slicked with the patina of age, in contrast to the microwave and modern appliances, and in the small dining-alcove was a well-scrubbed kauri table and three chairs. Evidently Nowhere Island was not normally used for business entertaining.
The table was set with rush place-mats and solid silver cutlery, and the steaming bowl of thick, creamy, fragrant soup that was set before her made Vivian’s tense stomach-muscles uncoil. There were bread rolls, too, which Nicholas got from the microwave, cursing as he burnt his fingers on the hot crusts.
The relaxant turned out to be a glass of champagne. And not just any old bubbly, but Dom Perignon. Vivian watched as he deftly opened the wickedly expensive bottle over her murmured protests that wine in the middle of the day made her sleepy, and turned his back to pour it into two narrow, cut-crystal flutes he had set on the bench.
Vivian drank some more soup, and when she was handed the chilled flute with a charming flourish accepted it fatalistically.
‘Have you ever tasted Dom Perignon before?’ he asked, seating himself again, and this time applying himself to his soup with an appetite that definitely wasn’t feigned.
‘Why, yes, I have it every morning for breakfast, poured on my cornflakes,’ she said drily.
‘You must be a lively breakfast companion…albeit a more expensive one than most men could hope to afford,’ he said, with a provocative smile that was calculated to distract.
But not you. It was on the tip of her tongue to say it, but she manfully refrained. ‘I pay my own way.’