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After his preceding mildness the harsh interruption was like a dash of acid in Jennifer’s face. Before she could summon an equally searing reply he had turned away, as if uninterested in her response, moving over to sit testingly on the edge of the bed.
‘Well, well...feather mattress?’ he asked as he sank down into the deep softness that lay atop the slatted wooden frame. His laced suede walking boots planted firmly on the floor, he let himself fall back, spread-eagled, onto the smooth, cream duvet, staring up at the rimu ceiling.
‘The last time I lay on one of these was in Switzerland, at a tiny little country inn. Best night’s sleep I ever had in my life,’ he gloated.
The bed had puffed up around him, almost swallowing him from sight, so Jennifer’s view of him was reduced to a pair of spread thighs angling to a V at the centre of his body, where the denim ridged over a firm bulge. It was a disturbingly erotic image of anonymous male sexuality.
Did he have to flaunt himself like that? she thought furiously. Did he think she didn’t already have enough proof of his fabulous virility?
‘Well, don’t get too excited about it because you’re sleeping on the floor,’ she informed him.
He pushed up onto his hands, catching the direction of her offended glare. His green eyes mocked her flustered expression as he casually hooked one foot behind his other knee, widening his thighs in an even more blatant display of his undisputed manhood.
‘Maybe I won’t feel like sleeping at all tonight,’ he murmured with an insinuating smile.
She stiffened. She knew she shouldn’t but she had to ask. ‘What do you mean?’ she burst out aggressively.
His spiky blond hair provided a ruffled halo to his exaggerated expression of innocence. ‘Only that if the mountain blows its top I’d like to see it happen. We’ll be able to keep watch all night from up here, won’t we? From where I am now, the summit is in a perfect frame.’ He nodded towards the glass doors parallel to the bed. Having positioned the bed in precisely that place so that she could lie there in the mornings, dreamily contemplating the sheer majesty of nature, Jennifer didn’t even have to look to check that he was right.
Rafe had already turned his attention to something else. He was sliding open the drawer of her small bedside table and peering interestedly at the jumbled contents. She hurried over but she was too late. One eyebrow quirked and he lifted out a wood-framed photograph, shaking off a sprinkle of elastic hairbands and clips that had littered its surface.
‘So this is where you keep me. I’m sure your mother implied I was prominently on display...’
‘She hardly ever comes up here—the stairs are too difficult for her,’ snapped Jennifer. ‘Anyway, she respects my privacy too much to pry.’
?
??So I was relegated to out of sight, out of mind, hmm?’
If only it had been so easy! Jennifer watched in frustration as he dusted the glass with the edge of his sleeve and propped the photo on the table, between the small shaded lamp and the cream telephone.
‘I don’t remember seeing you wear spectacles when you were in England,’ he mused, glancing from the photograph to her annoyed face.
‘I usually wear contact lenses, but with all the volcanic dust in the air right now...’ She shrugged, her average looks never having given her much cause for vanity.
‘They make you appear quite bookish...but then you are, aren’t you? I can’t figure you out. Your wardrobe here is full of home-made clothes, but in London you wore smart labels—abandoned along with your husband. Over there you were always demure and polite, no matter what the provocation; here you lash out. In London you only admitted to being an unqualified nurse; in New Zealand you’re an experienced inn-keeper. Which is the real Jennifer, I wonder?’
‘Everyone has different facets to their personality that are revealed in different situations,’ she said stiffly, thinking that even she wasn’t sure who the real Jennifer was any more.
‘So they do. I look forward to exploring more of your...revealing facets.’ Her watched her mouth prim, her eyes flash, and flicked a finger at her blushing cheek in the photograph.
‘Amazing how deceptive appearances can be, isn’t it?’ he said drily. ‘How it must have bruised Sebastian’s ego to see himself edited out of his own wedding picture...or didn’t he know about this little game of musical husbands you played for your mother?’
‘Of course he did; it was his I—’ She stopped and Rafe’s eyes narrowed.
‘Idea,’ he finished slowly, when she showed no signs of going on. ‘My father suggested you use me as a substitute?’ By the end of the sentence his incredulity had risen to sharp suspicion.
Alarmed, she tried to step back, but he caught her narrow wrist, bending it back until she was forced to sink to her knees in front of him to relieve the uncomfortable pressure on her arm.
‘He—He thought that it would be easier to borrow an identity than to invent a completely new one and then have to make up a whole lot more lies to remember,’ she stammered, as he eased the pressure just enough to act as a leash. ‘He said that if I used you I wouldn’t have to lie about my new surname. A-and he said that it would reassure Mum to know that I hadn’t been swept off my feet by a complete stranger, but someone whose background she was aware of...’
It had seemed such a good idea at the time, and one that Sebastian had claimed had very little risk of discovery. Part of their infamous bargain had included Jennifer’s mother being kept strictly in the dark. They had both known that Paula would have been deeply worried by her daughter’s marriage to Sebastian, and equally appalled if she had ever learned the reasons behind it.
‘Since I’d always planned to come straight back here after Sebastian died, there was no reason why you and Mum should ever have had any contact,’ she finished weakly.
‘And then a fictitious divorce from your fictitious husband and everybody’s happy!’ he grunted. ‘I take it your mother has more liberal views on divorce than she does on marriage and procreation?’
‘Well, even the church recognises irretrievable breakdown,’ she muttered. Her mother would have been disappointed but, with a long, gentle tapering off, hardly devastated.
