Daphne Clair - Summer Seduction

Blythe hurried again into speech. ‘I live over there—’ she gestured in the direction of the cottage. ‘I just wanted to welcome you…your family…’

His expression totally closed down. ‘I don’t have a family.’

Blythe nodded jerkily. ‘I must have been away when you arrived.’ Yesterday she’d delivered some of her dried flowers to retailers in Auckland, visited her parents and then caught up with friends over dinner in a city café. ‘But I heard the music this morning—’

‘If it disturbed you—’

‘Oh, no!’ she assured him. ‘I rather liked it. Really. Anyway…welcome to Tahawai Gully.’ She smiled at him. Her mouth, she’d been told, was made for smiling, its generous contours subtly tucked upward at the ends. ‘You’ll like it here.’ Catching a lift of his eyebrow as if he doubted her capacity to foretell his feelings, she changed tack. ‘Um…are you on holiday?’ Maybe he wouldn’t stay long. She wasn’t sure she wanted him for a neighbour.

He said grudgingly, ‘I’ve leased the place for six months.’

‘Oh, that’s nice. I’m glad it’s being used again.’ She remembered it as a family home—noisy, untidy but clean and welcoming. She held out her hand. ‘My name’s Blythe. Blythe Summerfield.’

His mouth twitched at one corner. ‘Of course.’

‘What?’

Not answering that, he lifted his right hand and engulfed hers in a hard clasp. ‘Jas Tratherne.’

‘Jazz?’ She could hardly imagine a less likely name for this taciturn, held-in man.

‘Jas.’ He confirmed the pronunciation she’d given it. ‘J-a-s.’

‘Oh—short for something?’

‘My parents saddled me with Jasper,’ he said after a pause. ‘I didn’t care for it.’

Yes, she thought as he released her hand, leaving it tingling from his hold. He wasn’t a man who would put up with anything he didn’t care for. Including importunate neighbours. He stood in the doorway as if guarding the house from invasion, the hand he’d withdrawn from hers now gripping the jamb, broad shoulders and tapered body giving the impression of filling the space although he wasn’t at all overweight—if anything he was probably a bit under the ideal for the size of his frame, which was large but angular.

‘The place has been empty so long,’ she said. ‘If you’d like some help to clean it—’

‘I’ve done it.’

‘Oh—good. Um…I suppose you knew there was no phone connection here, but if you need—’

‘I have everything I need.’

Go away. He might as well have shouted it.

‘Right,’ Blythe said with a stirring of indignation. ‘Nice to have met you.’ Idiotic remark, and a lie too. Meeting him had been distinctly uncomfortable. Turning, she felt his gaze on her back as she went down the steps.

She was walking away when his voice stopped her. ‘Thanks,’ he said, making her turn again to face him. He had the flowers and the container of biscuits in his hands. ‘It was a nice thought.’

But he’d rather she hadn’t done it all the same, she guessed. ‘That’s okay,’ she told him, nervously flashing another smile. ‘Enjoy them.’

She didn’t look back again until she was halfway to her own place. Then her swift glance showed her he’d retreated and shut the door.

An unsettling man. He might be a dangerous man, perhaps even a criminal squatting unauthorised in the house. Quickly she dismissed the thought. If he’d been using the place illegally he would hardly have played his music so loudly, drawing attention to himself. And he hadn’t seemed furtive or threatening— just unwelcoming and somehow withdrawn.

And good-looking, she supposed—in a moody, Heathcliffish sort of way. She could imagine him striding across an English moor with a huge black dog at his heels. Wearing boots, she thought, grinning to herself as she passed the gardens and tunnel house sheltered by the lee of the hill. And breeches. Glowering at everyone in sight.

She climbed the rough, sandy steps to her little side porch, paused at the door to take off her sneakers, and padded inside barefoot. The old kauri dresser that served to divide the kitchen from the dining area had a mirror back. Her hair was as usual trying to fall in curls about her face—the dampness of the sea air made it perpetually unmanageable—and her cheeks were faintly flushed. Her dark eyes, framed by long, curved lashes, looked large and lustrous, and her soft mouth was still touched by a smile, the dimple she despised just discernible in her cheek.

She ought to be grateful for her looks. A heart-shaped face and natural curls, big brown eyes and an air of youthful innocence were just what many women craved. Sometimes, she knew, she’d got something she wanted or even been favoured unasked over others because she was conventionally pretty.

She hated the word. Being ‘pretty’ made people jump to conclusions—that she was a brainless bimbo, or that she’d welcome the advances of any halfway presentable male who wanted another notch in his belt.

Jas Tratherne wasn’t one of those, anyway. He’d looked at her and dismissed her as of no account. ‘Of course,’ he’d said when she introduced herself.

Of course, Blythe…

Her name meant carefree, happy. Well, so what? Didn’t Jas—she emphasised the hard final sound in her mind—Tratherne approve of happiness?

Or didn’t he believe in it?

She lifted her cellphone from where she’d left it on the kitchen bench and called her mother.

‘There’s someone in the old Delaney place at last,’ she said after the usual greetings. ‘A man.’

‘Oh—is he nice?’

‘He’s…polite.’

‘Is that all?’ Rose Summerfield laughed. ‘Well, at least you won’t be on your own there any more. Maybe we should come over this weekend and vet him.’

‘No!’ Blythe said instantly. ‘He’s very…private.’

‘A recluse? How old?’

‘Mm, maybe mid-thirties. He looks…’

‘What?’

Blythe struggled to explain. ‘He isn’t happy. And I don’t think he eats properly.’

‘Men don’t when they’re on their own,’ her mother said sweepingly. ‘Do you want to feed him up?’

‘He wouldn’t thank me for it.’ He had barely managed to say thank you for the biscuits. Maybe biscuits were another thing he didn’t care for.

‘He is all right, I suppose?’ Rose worried.

‘I don’t think he’s an axe murderer, Mum.’

‘Well, maybe we’ll come over anyway,’ Rose decided. ‘Just to let him know you’re not alone in the world.’

‘I’d love to see you, but really there’s no need—’

‘Sunday,’ Rose said firmly. ‘We’ll bring lunch.’

Early next morning Blythe caught a glimpse of her new neighbour loping at a steady pace past the cottage. He wore lightweight track pants and a navy T-shirt with running shoes, and looked like a serious jogger.

In the afternoon she went down to the beach to scavenge for pieces of driftwood and beach grasses.

Only four kilometres along the shoreline from Tahawai, although more than ten via the winding, unsealed and boneshaking road, was the popular holiday settlement, Apiata Beach. At low tide it was possible to walk—and clamber—from one to the other, but few people braved the several rock outcrops and stony little bays between the resort and Tahawai, even in the height of summer.

At this time of year, with winter barely giving way to a cool spring, Blythe rarely saw anyone but the occasional lone fisherman or family party of locals on the beach. Sometimes surfers turned up to try the waves, but most of them preferred Apiata.

Jas Tratherne was wearing white sneakers or maybe his running shoes—not boots anyway, she noted—and he didn’t have a dog at his heels. But he strode along the sand with a look of preoccupation, his head bent and one hand swinging a crooked driftwood stick, the other tucked into the pocket of a light parka.