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The comparison made Jennifer’s tastebuds tingle. He had certainly been hot and spicy earlier. ‘What a weird combination!’ she joked, to hide her chagrin.
‘Speaking of which, have you told him about the baby yet?’
When Jennifer hesitated, Paula sped happily on to her own answer. ‘No, of course not—you wouldn’t want to hit him over the head with the news while he was still groggy from jet lag. You want to savour it...set the mood. Maybe tonight, when you go upstairs together...’
Later, as early dusk set in and Jennifer was setting the table, Paula fretted.
‘Don’t you think you’ve let him sleep long enough? I know he’s travelled a long way but they say the best way to combat jet lag is to try to keep as closely as possible to your new destination’s time frame. Anyway, that leg of lamb will be ready soon, and I’m sure he’ll be hungry after all that plastic airline food. Why don’t you go and wake him up?’
Because Jennifer infinitely preferred him solidly unconscious. She wasn’t looking forward to the four of them sitting down to a cosy family dinner. And she especially didn’t want to go upstairs and see him lying like an arrogant lord in her bed. Probably nude. Oh, yes, he would love it if she went upstairs to wake him up—it would give him another chance to embarrass and humiliate her by flaunting his brazen sexuality.
‘Um, he said to let him sleep until he wakes,’ she said, adding another lie to the long list that had already imperilled her soul.
‘If he wake
s up too rested he won’t want to sleep tonight,’ her mother pointed out, then realised what she’d said. Her eyes crinkled. ‘Oh! Is that why you’re letting him sleep!’
‘He said he’d like to watch if the volcano goes up,’ said Jennifer severely.
‘Well, of course, dear, that’s what I meant,’ said Paula blandly, handing her the table napkins from the sideboard. ‘He’s very well travelled, isn’t he, your Rafe—all those other volcanic regions he’s been...I know you said that after he got the Amazon thing out of his system he wanted to settle down here in New Zealand, but sometimes once that sort of adventuring gets into the blood...well, just look at Dot—sixty-five and still backpacking her way to far-flung places!’
Another lie coming home to roost. But Jennifer saw a chance to turn it to her advantage.
‘Rafe knows that this is where I want to bring up my child.’ That much at least was true. ‘He knows that you and I run this place as a team, and that I would never leave you in the lurch...’ She owed her mother the reassurance that she would not be left alone in the twilight of her life. If not for Jennifer’s former fiancé. Paula would probably have had a daughter-in-law and other grandchildren by now.
‘The best time to travel with children is when they’re little, and you don’t have to worry about regular schooling,’ Paula said wistfully. ‘I would have liked to have been able to do that. I sometimes think it would have been nice if your father had been a missionary, rather than a parish minister. Not that I regretted marrying him for a moment—there’s no substitute for love.’
Jennifer only vaguely registered what her mother was saying as she timidly began to lay the groundwork for future disillusionment.
‘I sometimes wonder if—Rafe being so...so sophisticated and so much more exciting than me—if—well, he might end up finding me boring. I mean, when I look at us together I wonder what a fantastic guy like him sees in someone as ordinary as me...’
Paula clicked her tongue reprovingly. ‘Jenny! You’re not ordinary—you’re unique—the only you in the entire universe. You’re a warm, loving, loyal, compassionate and caring young woman, and any man would consider himself fortunate to have you in his life!’
‘Believe me, I do.’
Jenny’s heart leapt into her throat as she saw Rafe standing in the doorway, clad in the black clothes he had draped across the chair, the long sleeves of the V-necked sweater pushed up his strong forearms to bunch at his elbows.
‘I can’t tell you how fortunate I feel to have found Jenny,’ he said, moving into the room with an easy stride. He looked well rested, alert and dangerously determined as he rounded the table and homed in on his target. He reached for Jennifer, sliding firm hands around her narrow waist and pulling her towards him until their thighs clashed, bending his head so that his mouth slowly approached hers.
‘And before tonight is over I’ll make very sure that she knows exactly where she belongs in my life!’
CHAPTER FIVE
RAFE’S lips were only a breath away when a burst of activity in the hall rescued Jennifer from her mesmerised state. She quickly turned her head aside so that his mouth landed on her ear.
He nuzzled it softly, his fingers tightening on her waist as she stiffened.
While her mother manoeuvred her chair to investigate the raised voices, Rafe took shameless advantage of the chance to tease his ‘wife’.
‘Sophisticated, exciting, fantastic...?’ he whispered mockingly into the depths of her sensitised ear. ‘I had no idea you found me so impressive, darling. You can be sure I’ll do my best to live up to my billing!’
Jennifer jerked her head back, glaring at him through stony eyes, fighting her vivid awareness of the iron-hard thighs pushing against her lower body. But before she could utter the words that sizzled on her tongue the cause of the commotion trooped into the room.
It was Dave and Celia Wright, the young couple who were renting the front bedroom. They were freelance documentary-makers making a tourist film about New Zealand ski resorts, and had revelled in the profit to be made from grabbing dramatic news footage.
They were grimy but exhilarated, having come from the east of the mountain where, they reported, the Desert Road, the main arterial route south, had now been closed by the lethal combination of falling ash and black ice forming on the snow-banked road. They had stopped in for a quick shower and change, and to pick up some of their extra gear, before they headed on to tiny Whakapapa Village, the closest settlement to Ruapehu’s northwestern ski slopes, where they had heard rumoured a ‘lahar party’ was being held in the pub by some of the hundreds of ski workers who had been laid off their seasonal jobs as a result of the closure of the mountain.
When Paula expressed concern about their being on the road at all, let alone at night, Dave shook his shaggy ginger head and pointed out they had the same kind of big four-wheel drive equipped with chains and fog-lights that the rangers and emergency services were using.
