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‘Oh, no!’
They both watched the broken yolks bleed into the slimy whites and drip down Hunter’s tie. It was silk, by the look of it, pale blue with no pattern to hide the critical damage. His shirt had been cream.
‘Why am I not surprised?’ he rasped wearily.
‘Well, I guess that’s the price you pay for helping the environment,’ Anne said weakly, raising her eyes to meet his smouldering gaze. ‘The supermarket uses recycled paper bags rather than plastic—kinder to the environment but not as rainproof!’
‘Which environment? It’s obviously not mine,’ he bit out. ‘That makes it four shirts, I believe.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said hurriedly, envisaging her budget for the whole term going into his wardrobe. ‘That one will be right as rain if it’s washed straight away. It’s only egg!’
‘And the tie?’
‘I suppose I could pay to have it dry-cleaned,’ she said with a sigh, hoping he would gallantly refuse.
‘I’d like it back by Friday.’
She scowled at his black head as he bent down to pick up the fallen groceries. ‘If you’ll open your door I’ll put these in your kitchen.’
He wanted to go into her flat? Her eyes widened in dismay. ‘No! I mean, you just collect the things up. I’ll nip in and get a carton to put them in.’
She didn’t given him a chance to reply. She delivered his orders and turned tail, dropping several more packets in her wake as she scrambled up the last few stairs and jiggled her key in the lock. She shut and bolted the door behind her before dumping her burden on the kitchen counter. The nappy pack was virtually the only thing that hadn’t fallen out.
She grabbed one of the empty boxes left over from her move, making a quick, soothing sound to Ivan as she shot by him, and went through the same routine with the front door in reverse, making sure it was securely fastened before she joined Hunter Lewis on his haunches beside the neat stack of her goods.
‘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!
ANNE took a big breath before knocking on the door, her nervousness making her fist land a little harder than she had intended. She took another deep, unsteady breath as the door began to open and then nearly fell over at the sight of Hunter Lewis in a towel.
Much as she hated to admit it, he was very impressive, the bulky, well-defined muscles flowing over his shoulders into a deep chest, the sculpted power of which was evident even through the masking of dense, dark hair. He was certainly every inch a man, she thought as her eyes helplessly traced the inverted triangle of hair that tapered from a broad hand span between his masculine nipples to an enticing narrow line that dipped beneath the white towel insecurely hitched around lean hips. His belly was as taut and tanned as the rest of him and his long legs were strong and sinewy, smothered with the same silky-rough black hair that covered his chest. Patches of water glistened on his bare skin and glinted in his body hair, as if he had been interrupted in the process of drying himself.
‘Seen enough?’
She wondered wickedly what he would do if she said no. Hurriedly she tore her gaze away from the taut pull of towelling across his flanks and summoned all her meagre acting powers. She edged closer.
‘Uh, I made some pasta sauce and I thought you might like some…as a kind of thank-you—for