Bargaining with the Billionaire

Peta opened it with trembling fingers. It was the first time she’d seen Curt’s writing, and for some reason the occasion assumed ridiculous importance.

Like him, his writing breathed bold, aggressive power. He wasn’t able to meet her in Auckland; his personal assistant would pick her up.

He signed it simply, ‘C’.

Curt by name and curt by nature, she thought, chilled. He was probably making sure he didn’t sign any documentation she might be able to use against him.

Well, he didn’t need to worry. She knew exactly why she was there. She’d keep her side of the bargain.

The pilot was right; the trip down was fantastic. Peta exclaimed with pleasure as Northland’s long peninsula, barely a hundred miles across at its widest part, unrolled beneath them in a glory of gold and green, hemmed by the blue of the Pacific Ocean on the left and the dangerous green waters of the Tasman Sea on the right; estuaries gleamed in the opalescent blues and greens of a paua shell.

‘We need rain,’ she said, looking down at toast-coloured countryside as they neared Auckland.

‘Rain? Have a heart, it’s summer,’ the pilot expostulated. ‘Nobody wants rain in summer.’

And there in a nutshell was the difference between city people and those from the country. She thought of the bag she’d packed so carefully that morning, choosing and discarding clothes, getting more and more stressed until she’d realised that no matter what she took, she couldn’t match the exquisite simplicity of the clothes worn by Gillian and Lucia Radcliffe.

With as little taste for humiliation as anyone, she hoped Curt had remembered his promise to hire clothes.

He’d remember. She relaxed as the helicopter began its descent. Overbearing blackmailer he might be, but she’d put down good money on nothing escaping that formidable mind.

Besides, he had an image to sustain, one that home-sewn clothes would wreck. An ironic smile tilted her lips; try as she did, she just couldn’t see Curt worrying about his image!

His personal assistant turned out to be a middle-aged woman, elegant and somewhat distant, who nevertheless greeted Peta with a smile and a ready fund of conversation as she drove her to a large house overlooking the harbour in Herne Bay, one of Auckland’s marine suburbs.

‘Mr McIntosh will be here as soon as he can,’ she said, turning into a gateway. ‘He’s really sorry—an important colleague arrived in Auckland unexpectedly this morning.’

‘It’s all right,’ Peta said easily, trying to convince herself that she wasn’t gripped by aching disappointment.

Perhaps some of her feelings showed in her tone, for his assistant gave her a sideways glance. When the engine had died she said, ‘In the meantime, he told me that you need additions to your wardrobe. I’ve organised a woman who dresses people to come along to see you; I think you’ll like her.’ Her smile relaxed. ‘Of course, that might be because she’s my daughter.’

Peta tensed, torn between relief and hurt pride. ‘I see,’ she said woodenly.

‘She’ll make it as painless as she can. I know how you feel; I hate shopping with a passion and so does my husband. Liz always says that because someone had to do the shopping in our household she was forced to develop a taste for it! Shall we go in?’

Far from resembling the Tanekaha homestead, Curt’s house was a gracious relic from the early twentieth century. On the path to the front door, Peta’s nostrils quivered at a familiar perfume—a gardenia bush spread its white velvety flowers across the path, their scent filling the air.

Another woman opened the door. How the heck many people did Curt employ?

‘Mrs Stable, the housekeeper,’ his personal assistant told her quietly.

The housekeeper, a wiry woman in her mid-forties with improbably red hair, showed her to a room that overlooked the harbour. Peta eyed the huge bed, the exquisite furnishings, and the magnificent painting on one wall—and wished herself back home. Damn Curt. How dared he go ahead and organise a shopping spree when she’d specifically told him she wouldn’t accept any money from him?

Well, why was she surprised? That was what men like him did—ploughed their way through life, trampling anyone who got in their way.

But she was nothing like her mother. Although she found Curt dangerously desirable, she certainly wasn’t in love with him. And even if she had been, pride wouldn’t let her follow like a dog at his heel.

And to be fair, the assistant’s daughter might have selected clothes from a hire firm…

Peta washed her face, and had just finished storing her pathetically few clothes in the huge wardrobe when someone knocked on the door.

Curt?

Consuming eagerness drove her across the room; she had to take several steadying breaths before she opened the door to a woman whose discreet chicness and resemblance to Curt’s PA gave away her identity.

‘You must be Liz,’ Peta said, masking searing disappointment with a fixed smile.

‘I am, indeed. Can I come in?’

‘Of course.’ She stood back, somewhat startled when the other woman surveyed her with impersonal intensity. ‘No offence, but I’m not too happy about this shopping idea,’ Peta said, hiding her awkwardness with a brisk overtone.

‘It’s Curt McIntosh’s idea, so we do it.’ Liz seemed to come to some decision. ‘OK, I can see which designers will be on your wavelength, but can I check the clothes you’ve brought? Curt said you’d be going to the opening night at a gallery and a dinner party, and spending a day on a yacht. He also said that although the clothes need to be good, they should be useful too, so no wildly impractical stuff. And he said that you’ve got great colour sense, which is perfectly obvious now I’ve seen you.’

Pleasure tingled through Peta, temporarily shutting down her indecision.

Liz glanced around, spied clothes through the open door of the walk-in wardrobe, and set off towards them like an elegant bulldozer. Peta opened her mouth.

And then closed it. Feeling alien and abandoned, she stood irresolute.

Liz took down a shirt. ‘Did you make this?’

‘I—yes.’

‘Good finishing.’ She directed a quizzical glance at Peta. ‘Curt warned me you’d probably object.’

‘Did he?’ Peta said through gritted teeth. Liz was probably wondering why on earth Curt had allied himself to a country hick. ‘Then you can tell him that I didn’t, can’t you?’

Liz gave a swift, sympathetic grin. ‘I’ve known Curt since Mum went to work for him, and one thing I’ve learned—well, me and the rest of the world!—is that if you’re stupid enough to go hand to hand with him, you’ll lose. He fights fair, but he’s ruthless and he’s utterly determined. How do you think he turned his father’s bankrupt business into a worldwide success?’

‘I believe he had to dump his father to do it,’ Peta said with cutting accusation.

‘True, because his father was the problem.’ Liz looked at her and seemed to come to some decision. ‘I’m not telling you anything everyone doesn’t know, so I can say that Mr McIntosh treated the firm like his own personal cash cow. When Curt took it over he turned it on its head and paid off the creditors in an astonishingly short time; he saved the firm and most of the employees’ jobs.’

Presumably her mother was one of those employees. ‘But to shaft your own father…’

Liz nodded. ‘I know. As I said, he’s ruthless.’

Peta walked across to the window and stared down past a green lawn, a swimming pool and a fringe of ancient pohutukawa trees. Between their branches the water of the harbour sparkled like gemstone chips.

From behind her Liz said, ‘But you know, I’d trust Curt with my life.’

A sound at the door made them both swing around. ‘Thank you for that tribute, Liz,’ Curt said smoothly. ‘Would you like to wait downstairs?’

She’d clapped one hand over her mouth, but she removed it to grin at him. ‘Certainly.’

Peta watched with tense awareness as he closed the door. Her heart had kicked into double time and the sensation running riot through her body was undiluted excitement. Three days had only served to hone her involuntary response to his potent male magnetism.

‘We made a bargain, you and I,’ Curt said pleasantly, but his eyes were grey and cold.

Her jaw angled in defiance. ‘I told you I wouldn’t let you pay for my clothes. You agreed to hire them.’

‘It’s not possible.’ He lifted his brows when she made an impatient gesture. ‘But if it means so much to you, you can pay for them.’

‘I can’t afford—’

She stopped because he came towards her, and something about his lithe, remorseless advance dried her mouth and stopped her heart.

‘If you mean what I think you mean,’ she said hoarsely, ‘that’s disgusting.’

‘Disgusting?’ He smiled and her blood ran cold. ‘What’s disgusting about this?’ he murmured, and bent his head.

Peta froze as his mouth drifted across one cheekbone. The elusive male scent that was his alone acted like an aphrodisiac on her, switching off her brain to leave her with no protection from the clamouring demands of desire except a basic instinct of self-preservation.

‘I am not a prostitute,’ she said thickly.

The ugly word hung between them. He laughed softly and said against her ear, ‘If you were I wouldn’t be doing this…’ His mouth moved to the lobe of her ear and he bit gently.

An erotic charge zinged through her, firing every cell into urgent craving.

‘…or this,’ he finished, and his mouth reached the frantic pulse in the hollow of her throat. He kissed it, and then lifted his mouth a fraction so that his breath blew warm on her sensitised skin. ‘And your heart wouldn’t be jumping so wildly.’

Tormented delight clamoured through her like a storm. Peta couldn’t speak, couldn’t tell him to stop using mock tenderness in his subtle, knowledgeable seduction.

She quivered, lost in a rush of desire that burned away the last coherent thought in her brain. Sighing against his lips, she opened her mouth to his.

The other kisses they’d exchanged faded into insignificance; she sensed a difference in him, a darker, deeper hunger beyond the simple desire of man for woman. It fuelled her anticipation into a raging inferno. She shuddered when his hand smoothed up from her waist, coming to rest over the soft mound of her breast. Hot, primeval pleasure burst into life inside her, aching through her body, softening internal pathways, melting her bones…

His touch felt so right, she thought recklessly, linking her arms around his neck and offering him her mouth. She’d been born for this dangerous magic, spent the empty years of her adult life waiting for it.

Eagerly expectant, she held her breath while tension spun between them in the taut, humming silence. Ravished by the pressure of his big, hard body against hers, the powerful strength of his arms, she at last surrendered to her own needs.

His heart thudded against hers, his chest rose and fell, and his arms were hard and demanding around her. Yet he didn’t move.

With immense reluctance she forced her heavy lids upwards.

Curt’s face was clamped into an expression she didn’t recognise; his eyes glittered and a streak of colour outlined the high, sweeping cheekbones.

Her stomach dropped in endless freefall, and she knew what he was going to say. Humiliated, she tried to turn her face away.

He said something under his breath and his mouth took hers again, hard and fierce and angry, only breaking the kiss to say harshly, ‘Not now. Not while Liz is waiting.’

Oh, God, no! She whispered, ‘Then what was that about?’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said, understanding the real question behind the words. He released her and stood with a face like stone, withdrawn to some inner place she could never reach.

She took a jagged indrawn breath, but before she could say anything he spoke again, the raw note banished from his voice.

With a remote deliberation that slammed up impassable barriers, he said, ‘I have no excuse; I lost my head. It won’t happen again.’

It took all her willpower to step back, to look straight at him. ‘Do I have your word on that?’

‘Yes.’

Her skin tightened; a heavy weight of loss overwhelmed her. She had to search for a response, and in the end all she could find was a banal, ‘Good.’

Curt looked around the bedroom and said with formidable composure, ‘An essential part of this masquerade is wearing the right clothes. I’m prepared to pay for them. If you don’t agree to that our bargain is over.’

He didn’t threaten; he didn’t need to. That cold, ruthless tone, his implacable face told her that if she reneged on their deal she’d find herself with no farm, no way of earning her living—nothing.

‘Very well,’ she said stonily. ‘But when I leave here the clothes will stay.’

He shrugged. ‘That’s entirely up to you. I’ll go and tell Liz you’ll be ready in ten minutes.’

In the sanctuary of the bathroom, all marble and mirrors and glimmering glass, Peta eyed her reflection. Completely out of place in this cool, sleek sophistication, the woman in the glass blazed with a sensuous earthiness, her mouth kissed red and sultry eyes shooting gold sparks.

Even her hair was wild—she looked as though she’d been plugged into an electric socket.

After fumbling with the taps she ran cold water over her wrists and washed her face, then dragged a comb through her hair and with a vicious twist tightened the tie that dragged it off her face.

Another survey of her reflection convinced her that she’d managed to tone down the telltale sensuality and hunger. Now she just looked…charged, energised, as though she was hurrying eagerly forward to the future.

As though she was in control of her life, she thought hollowly.

At the top of the stairs she heard voices floating up from below; they fell silent when she started down. She swallowed and held her head high, taking each step carefully as Curt watched her with an expression that gave nothing away. Liz followed his gaze, her mobile face registering a moment of comprehension before it too went blank.

Acutely self-conscious, Peta reached the bottom and came towards them.

‘You’re ready?’ Liz said, then gave a short laugh. ‘Stupid question. So let’s roll.’

‘Be back here at five,’ Curt said, walking beside Peta towards the open front door. ‘Don’t let them hack into her hair.’

Shocked, Peta glanced over her shoulder. He was looking at the woman beside her.

‘Of course not,’ Liz said with a frown. ‘It would be a wicked sin. Don’t worry, I know what I’m doing.’

Curt transferred his gaze to Peta. ‘Have fun.’

Peta’s eyes focused somewhere beyond and above his broad shoulder. ‘Thank you,’ she said on a note of irony, and she and the other woman went out into the summer sunlight.

‘Tell me about yourself,’ Liz invited as she drove through Auckland’s crazy traffic.

‘I’m twenty-three,’ Peta said, wondering why she needed to do this. ‘I work my own farm and I lead a pure and wholesome life.’

Liz laughed. ‘Not if you stick with Curt for long,’ she warned. ‘He’s a course in sophistication all on his own. Who’s your favourite author?’

‘Only one?’

‘Run through them, then.’

Peta began with Jane Austen and finished with her latest discovery from the library, adding, ‘And I love reading whodunnits and romances.’

‘Who doesn’t?’ Liz said cheerfully. ‘OK, so you’re a romantic. What do you do for a hobby? What flowers do you have in your garden? Or is it only vegetables?’

The vegetable garden had been her father’s domain, one she kept up for economy’s sake. Flower gardens, he’d said, were a waste of precious time. ‘I have three hibiscus bushes and a gardenia in a pot by the front door. As for hobbies, I sew. Every so often I knit.’ When she’d saved enough money to buy the wool.

Liz’s brows shot up. ‘Interesting. You could be a casual or a romantic, but my guess is that you’re one of the rare people who can wear several looks. We’ll see.’

Expertly negotiating a crowded, narrow street, she pulled up outside a shop that had one outrageous dress in the window. ‘Let’s go,’ she said cheerfully.

CHAPTER SIX

WHAT followed was one of the most exhausting afternoons Peta had ever endured. ‘And that includes haymaking,’ she said wearily over a restorative cup of tea in a small, unfashionable café that made, Liz assured her, the best latte south of the equator. The tea was excellent too.

Liz laughed. ‘Admit that you thought all Aucklanders—especially shopaholics—were effete weaklings.’

‘I’m not that much of a hayseed,’ Peta told her loftily, ‘but I had no idea you were going to drag me around a couple of hundred stores and boutiques.’

‘Seven,’ her companion corrected. ‘And now that you’ve stocked up on caffeine and tannin again, let’s get your hair done.’

The stylist took them into a private room. Watching him in the mirror, Peta felt he spent an inordinately long time just letting her hair ripple through his fingers while he frowned at her reflection.

‘Good bone structure,’ he finally pronounced. ‘And I’m not going to mess about with colour—it’s perfect as it is. I’ll cut it a little shorter and show you a couple of ways to put it up.’ He glanced at her hands and shuddered. ‘One of the girls will give you a manicure.’

He was a genius with the scissors, but the manicure turned out to be an exercise in sensuous pleasure. On the way home Peta was very aware of the soft gloss of sheen on her nails, and wondered if Curt would like the way they seemed to make her fingers even longer.

No, she thought desperately, what the hell are you thinking?

It couldn’t be allowed to matter. Unfortunately, it did, and the next few days stretched out before her like an ordeal, one with an infinite possibility of consequences.

All of them bad.

Remember what happened to your mother, she ordered. Unless you’re a princess, loving a dominant man leads to misery. The intense, reluctant attraction she felt for Curt was only the first step on the perilous road that had led to her mother sacrificing her individuality, her talent and her freedom to the jealous god of love.

But her mother’s tragedy seemed thin and insubstantial, as though Curt’s vitality drained life from her memories.

Halfway home, her eye caught the parcels and boxes in the back of Liz’s hatchback. While Peta’s hair and hands were being groomed, the other woman had collected a range of accessories.

Assailed by an empty feeling of disconnection, Peta stared out at the busy streets.

I don’t belong here, she thought sombrely.

Like a girl in a fairytale, carried off across some perilous border between reality and fantasy, she was lost in a world she didn’t understand and prey to dangers she barely recognised.

The greatest of which, she thought with a flare of worrying anticipation, was waiting for her in that gracious old house.

Curt had snapped his fingers and people had obeyed, whisking her out of her familiar world and transporting her wherever he ordered them to. She’d obeyed too, because she was afraid of what he could do to her life if she didn’t.

And because you don’t want Ian to fall in love with you, she reminded herself.

It was too easy to forget that.

‘A good afternoon,’ Liz said with satisfaction. She drew up on the gravel drive and switched off the engine.

Curt wasn’t at home. Peta knew as soon as she walked through the front door; some invisible, intangible force had vanished. Repressing a sinister disappointment, she went with Liz up to her bedroom.

The next hour was spent trying on the carefully chosen clothes, matching them to the accessories Liz had collected. Peta meant to stay aloof and let Liz choose for her, but somehow she found herself offering opinions, falling in love with various garments, wrinkling her nose at others.

‘OK, that’s fine,’ Liz said when the final choices had been packed away in the wardrobe. ‘And if I say so myself, we’ve done a good job. Those clothes not only highlight your good points, they’ll take you from breakfast to midnight. It’s a pity I can’t tell everyone I dressed you—you look stunning. But in my job I have to be the soul of discretion; Curt wouldn’t have contacted me if I hadn’t been.’

‘I know that,’ Peta said drily.

Liz nodded. ‘You made it a lot easier for me—you’ve got excellent taste and an inherent understanding of what suits you and doesn’t. Now, forget about all this, and just have fun!’

The faintest hint of envy in her tone made Peta wonder just how well she knew Curt, and whether there was perhaps a past attachment between them.

Smiling hard to cover a pang—no, not jealousy—Peta waved goodbye, then turned back to the house, feeling more alone than she ever had in her life. After her parents had died she’d at least been in familiar surroundings. Here she knew no one; even Nadine had left her firm of inner-city solicitors for a holiday in Fiji.

After refusing an offer of afternoon tea from the housekeeper, Peta made her way outside and looked around her with wonder and a growing appreciation. For some reason it seemed rude to explore, so she sat in an elegant and extremely comfortable chair on the wide veranda and tried to empty her mind of everything but the way the sun glinted on the harbour.

When the skin tightened between her shoulder blades, she glanced up, and saw Curt walking towards her.

Awkwardly she got up, angry because she’d weakly followed Liz’s suggestion to leave on the lion-coloured cotton trousers and the sleeveless T-shirt—made interesting, so Liz had announced, by the mesh overlay.

‘They show off those splendid shoulders,’ she’d said, slipping a choker of wooden beads in the same golden tones around Peta’s throat.

She’d agreed because she felt good in the outfit, but now she could only think that the top exposed far too much skin to Curt’s narrowed eyes.

And that’s why you left it on, she thought in self-disgust.

She thought of his mouth on her skin, and to her horror her breasts burned and their centres budded in immediate response. He had to notice.

He had noticed; his gaze heated and his mouth curved in the mirthless smile of a hunter sighting prey.

A combustible mixture of satisfaction, distrust and humiliation drove her to ask harshly, ‘I hope it’s worth the expense.’

His lashes drooped and he stopped and surveyed her at his leisure—for all the world, she thought indignantly, like some pasha checking out the latest slave girl in the harem.

It was her own fault; she’d given him the opportunity to ram home just how much at his disposal she was.

‘Absolutely,’ he said smoothly. ‘Would you like a drink?’

She nodded. ‘Something long and cool would be lovely.’

‘Wine?’ Curt suggested, walking up the steps to the veranda.

She said jerkily, ‘Yes, please, but I’d better have some water first. I’m thirsty and I don’t want to drink too fast.’

‘Wise woman.’ He poured a long glass of water from a jug with lemon slices floating on the surface, and handed it over. Surprisingly, he poured another for himself before indicating a recliner. ‘Sit down; you look tired. Did Liz wear you out?’

Somehow lying back on the recliner seemed too intimate, as though she was displaying her body for his scrutiny. She chose a nearby chair instead. ‘I had no idea trying on clothes could be so exhausting.’

Curt smiled and sat down in another chair. He’d changed from the formal business suit into a pair of light trousers that hugged his narrow hips and muscular thighs. His short-sleeved cotton shirt was open at the neck.

So much untrammelled masculine magnetism took her breath away. Peta took refuge behind her glass and fixed her gaze on the view.

‘Liz is a perfectionist,’ he observed, ‘and like her mother, she’s ruthlessly efficient. We’re not going out tonight, so you can go to bed early if you want to.’