A Haunting Obsession. Miranda Lee

than he’d displayed during his phone call this morning. There was no doubting his displeasure at having to deal with a woman. Any woman. Perhaps he considered doing business with such a young one the living end!

      That had to be it, she supposed, though a niggling little something kept telling her there was more to this situation than met the eye. But what?

      Shaking her head, she trailed after the man, thinking to herself that this was the worst Monday she had encountered in a long, long time. What else could go wrong?

      Mr Vine-Hall was stretched out in the passenger seat by the time she slid behind the wheel, her automatic sidewards glance meeting a wary, sour-puss expression. Those unnerving black eyes flicked over her once more, and what he saw still didn’t seem to meet with his approval.

      ‘So where are we off to first, Mrs Merrick?’ he asked, that dry note still in his voice.

      Bonnie suppressed a sigh and decided to give good manners and pleasantries one last try. ‘Perhaps you’d better call me Bonnie,’ she began with dogged optimism. ‘Not many people call me Mrs Merrick.’

      ‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I don’t imagine they do.’

      Once again, Bonnie was taken aback. What on earth was going on here?

      But then suddenly he smiled, and she was quite blown away. Not only by the change in his face—from churlish to charming in one second flat—but by the involuntary leap in her heart.

      ‘In that case you must call me Jordan,’ he returned smoothly. ‘Yes, I think first names are definitely called for, since I have a feeling we’re going to be spending quite some time together. I’m a very difficult man to please, you see, Bonnie. You’re going to have to earn every cent of your commission with me.’

      ‘I... I’ll do my best,’ she said, having to battle hard not to show how rattled she was feeling. Mr Vine-Hall’s about-face had been astonishing enough, but that was nothing to her own response to it.

      She hoped against hope that it was just shock, and not a sexual thing. After Keith, Bonnie had feared good-looking men for a long time, but her experience with Neil—and a couple of others—had begun to reassure her that she was not blindly susceptible to a handsome face.

      Now she wasn’t so sure. Maybe they’d just been the wrong type of handsome face.

      Her panic was instantaneous, fear making her stomach tighten and her heart thud. She found herself staring at that smiling mouth and wondering if its kiss would send her swirling into a sensuous mist, if the stroke of his tongue would ignite her blood, enslaving her senses, making her want whatever he wanted, making her weak as water in his arms.

      Heat began to gather in her face, a heat that was as telling as it was embarrassing.

      Wrenching her eyes away, she leant forward to fumble the key into the ignition. Totally flustered now, her reversing was disgracefully ragged, her forward acceleration down the driveway not much better, the car shuddering to a rough halt on the other side of the open gates. Bonnie’s hand shook as it reached for the door-handle.

      ‘I’ll lock the gates,’ her passenger offered abruptly.

      Mortified, she sat stiffly behind the wheel while he moved to accomplish what she probably would have fouled up as well. ‘Competent’, she had claimed to be. A groan escaped her lips at the incompetence she had just displayed.

      She watched in the rear-view mirror as he easily pulled the heavy gates shut and snapped the padlock in place. His actions were smooth and uncluttered, performed lithely with the agility of a young athlete. And yet, Bonnie judged, he must be at least thirty-five.

      As he turned back to walk towards the car, she tore her gaze away, not wanting to be caught in the act of looking at him again. She could just imagine what he was already thinking.

      Self-disgust had her getting a grip on her rampant emotions with a steely resolve. There would be no calling him by his first name. He would remain Mr Vine-Hall no matter how many hours they had to spend together. On top of that, if she found out that her reaction to his smile a moment ago was sexual, she would turn him over to Gary faster than one could say Jack Robinson.

      Because there was one thing Bonnie was sure of. She wasn’t ready yet to become involved with another man. The wounds of her relationship with Keith were too recent, too raw. And while logic told her all men were not like Keith, she couldn’t envisage trusting any man again with her body, or her life, for a long, long time. Which meant keeping any unwanted hormonal activity firmly under control!

      ‘Thank you,’ she said crisply once the instigator of her internal lecture was resettled, keeping her eyes staunchly on the road ahead. ‘One thing I forgot to ask you, Mr Vine-Hall,’ she continued as she eased the car into gear and moved slowly down the bumpy road. ‘Does this weekender have to be in Blackrock Beach? We do have several very nice properties listed at some of the other local beaches.’

      ‘I was thinking of only Blackrock Beach when I rang,’ he replied thoughtfully, ‘but I can see it’s changed a lot. I was picturing the sleepy little seaside spot I used to holiday in as a boy, but it’s hardly that any more.’

      ‘No, it’s boomed since the expressway was put in from Sydney up to the Central Coast. Hardly a block in view of the beach which hasn’t been built on.’

      ‘Yes, so I noticed. So no... I won’t hold you exclusively to Blackrock Beach. Show me whatever you think might suit. I do like my peace and quiet at the weekend. And a reasonable amount of privacy.’

      Bonnie had reached the end of the dirt road by now, and was feeling decidedly better with this businesslike conversation. If she didn’t have to look into his undeniably handsome face too much, and he didn’t smile at her too often, she should be able to get through this afternoon without any more awkward moments.

      ‘Oh, and Bonnie...’ His pregnant pause forced her to look over at him.

      ‘Yes?’

      ‘You agreed to call me Jordan, remember?’

      And he smiled at her again.

      CHAPTER FOUR

      GODDAMN it, she was blushing again!

      A guilty confusion wiped the smile off Jordan’s face. If there was one thing he knew about women of easy virtue it was that they didn’t blush when you started coming on to them. Neither did they keep breaking eye contact or become totally flustered.

      The truth of the matter quickly sank in. That bastard back at the real-estate office had lied about her. She wasn’t a tramp at all. She was a respectable married woman who was too damned sexy-looking for her own good.

      It certainly put a different interpretation on her reactions to him. Any hope that she’d been giving him the eye was obliterated. Clearly, her staring was because he must have seemed horribly rude. Hell, he had been horribly rude, right from the start!

      She wasn’t to know he’d been fighting urges which till today had been totally alien to his personality. Good lord, he hadn’t surrendered to any form of uncontrollable passion since he was an adolescent! On top of that, the last female on earth he would consider trying to seduce would be a married woman, albeit a supposedly amoral one. He’d seen the pain adultery caused.

      Yet that was exactly what he wanted to do. Seduce her.

      He’d staunchly resisted temptation at first, only to give in finally, deliberately misinterpreting her offer that he call her by her first name, thinking he only had to turn on a bit of charm to make her realise he was willing to go along with whatever was on offer.

      Shame was hard on the heels of guilt. Jordan knew he was no saint—what man was?—but his behaviour today had been appalling. So the woman was exquisite, with a voice like cool silk and a body men might kill for. So what? That was no excuse.

      Damn it all, he’d defended men in court who had done just that, committed crimes of passion