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‘If you give me your shirt I’ll wash it for you and get it back to you tomorrow,’ she offered awkwardly.
‘Thank you, but my wardrobe is depleted enough already. I’ll wash it myself by hand,’ he said, his hand pointedly brushing aside the thick braid that was leaking rainwater on to the contents of the open carton.
‘Suit yourself!’ Anne snapped, flicking the wet braid over her back.
‘I usually do.’
‘Why am I not surprised?’ she murmured, parodying his ironic first comment.
He didn’t answer, studying the side of a box of baby-rice with raised eyebrows. Uh-oh.
‘I happen to like it, OK?’ Anne snatched it out of his hand and stuffed it into the carton. ‘Do you have a problem with that?’
‘No. But I think you might. You must be even younger than you look,’ he said drily.
‘Just because I’m not impossibly cynical and trying to make everyone around me miserable, it doesn’t mean I’m a babe in arms!’ she said hotly.
‘So I see,’ he murmured, eyeing the formerly demure white shirt that was plastered by rain to her generous breasts. ‘Is that little homily supposed to be a jab at me?’
‘If the shoe fits!’
‘For a promising writer you have a very hackneyed turn of phrase.’
‘That’s because I save all the good stuff for my books,’ she told him tartly.
‘The good stuff?’ he echoed, his hard mouth kinking in mocking amusement. ‘Inelegant but succinct.’
‘Thank you for that critique, Professor,’ Anne said sarcastically as she straightened, grateful to have the heavy carton to hug to her chest. The way he had looked at her breasts had made her tingle uncomfortably.
‘Let me carry that for you.’
‘Thank you, but I’m quite capable,’ she said, starting up the few remaining steps.
‘At least give me your key so that you don’t have to put that down to open your door.’
‘I can manage,’ she told him, stopping at the top and waiting for him to move on.
He studied her stubborn expression. A muscle moved in his bluntly square jaw as he said through his teeth, ‘You really are the most incredibly…irritating woman…’
At least she had finally graduated to adulthood in his eyes! She grinned.
‘Oh, I can be a lot more irritating than this,’ she told him cheerfully. ‘See you later, Professor!’
‘Not if I see you first,’ he delighted her by growling with childish petulance as he stumped off in the direction of his own door. ‘And stop calling me Professor.’
‘Why? Does it make you feel your age?’ She wasn’t going to let him have the last word.
‘I’m only thirty-seven,’ he shot back, ramming his key into the deadlock that adorned the battered entrance to his flat.
‘Really?’ she said wickedly, squinting at him along the length of the hall. ‘You look much older. Maybe it’s just because you’re so surly—’
‘I am not surly!’
He was yelling. Anne beamed at him. ‘Don’t burst a boiler, Prof. I’m sure you’re utterly charming when you’re with people of your own generation…’
She was giggling as she bolted him out. It was rather risky of her to taunt him but she just couldn’t seem to help it. Something about him just seemed to beg her for a provoking response. She had never known a man whose emotions simmered so close to the surface. Her father and brothers were real men of the land who had an earthy sense of humour and were stoically good-natured. Anne could tease and provoke them and they would only laugh and brush her off like a pesky fly.
Hunter Lewis was definitely outside her experience and, as Anne wistfully informed Ivan over his puréed vegetables, experience was one of the things she had come to Auckland to obtain!
