‘Look, there’s obviously been some mistake—’ If Ava was desperate to warn her that Ryan had discovered her whereabouts she might have ordered a phone, but no way would she have bothered with a fax, let alone such an extravagant model. ‘Have you got a worksheet with you?’ she demanded. ‘I want to know who ordered these things—’
‘I did.’
For the second time that day Jane nearly suffered a heart attack at the sudden appearance of Ryan, striding into the room carrying a large suitcase and a laptop computer. He glanced into the largest and sunniest of the bedrooms, which she had commandeered as her own, and walked into the next one. He set his things down on the faded carpet square next to the heavy oak bed.
‘I need the phone and a separate fax line if I’m to keep in touch with my office. Fortunately, these days I don’t need to be there in person to run things. I can access Spectrum’s mainframe from my laptop and I’ve got plenty of highly competent deputies willing to handle the meetings in my absence. With fax and e-mail I can have their reports sooner than I would have had the hard copy delivered to my desk.’
He made it sound as if he was moving in! ‘Wh-what are you talking about?’
Jane followed, still spluttering, as Ryan calmly skirted the worker in the hall and went back outside to a vehicle parked out of sight on the other side of the panel van—not the sleek Mercedes that he had departed in earlier, but a rugged four-wheel drive that looked well-used but well-cared-for. He placed a hand-tooled boot on the lower rung of the rear bull bars and reached in to haul out another case. Standing behind him Jane was treated to a close-up of faded denim whitening across taut masculine buttocks. He turned and caught her looking, and gave her a smile that made her scalp tingle.
‘Did you think I’d run away with my tail between my legs, Jane?’ She flushed at the sexual connotation of his words and he uttered a gravelly laugh that suggested he had noticed her pink eyelids. ‘Serves you right. But actions speak louder than words, especially to a bullheaded woman like you. Like it or not, you need help right now, and if the mountain won’t come to Mohammed...’
She was still arguing with him when the two greatly intrigued telephone workers tested their state-of-the-art communications system and reluctantly left.
‘You can’t just move in on me like this.’
‘I already have,’ said Ryan. Having ordered his possessions to his liking, he stretched out on the bed he had chosen for his own, grimacing at the dust that rose and the sag in the middle of the creaking old wire weave that barely supported the mattress. ‘Is yours any better than this?’
She refused to answer so he went and investigated for himself, lying out full length on her large divan bed and bouncing his hips a few times. ‘Ah, that’s better. Not much, but better.’ He folded his arms behind his head and looked at Jane, who was glaring at him from the end of the bed. ‘I don’t suppose you’d like to swap?’
‘No!’
He looked at her from under dark lashes. ‘Or share?’
/> She jerked her eyes away from that hypnotic glitter.
‘What’s the matter, Jane? Does it disturb you to have me in your bed? Mmm...’ He turned his head and rubbed his cheek against the pillow, sniffing, reminding her vividly of how erotic he had found the scent of their lovemaking.
‘You can’t stay here!’ she said raggedly. ‘I won’t let you—’
‘What are you going to do, call the police and have me thrown out?’ His eyes were bright blue with curiosity. ‘Because that’s the only way you’re going to get rid of me.’
She was searching for a suitably devastating put-down when the phone rang. He groaned and got up to answer it. It was his secretary and he was immediately all business, sitting down at the desk, switching on his laptop and talking as he called up a series of files.
She went out into the kitchen, wishing she could slam things around to express her frustration but prevented by her injured hands. She had to be content with muttering to herself under her breath. By his confident behaviour he was implying that she had expected him to chase after her, whereas nothing was further from the truth. She wasn’t going to take the blame for his predatory sexual instincts!
‘Where’s your vacuum cleaner?’
She jumped. ‘What?’
‘I thought I’d vacuum my room...bed included. Where do you keep the vacuum cleaner?’
‘I don’t,’ she told him with malicious satisfaction. ‘There’s only an old-fashioned carpet sweeper.’ He opened his mouth. ‘And don’t you dare have one delivered or I’ll chuck it in the tide.’
‘Like doing things the hard way just for the sake of it, do you, Jane?’
She looked as haughty as it was possible to do in a slightly grubby T-shirt and shorts. ‘What’s the matter, Ryan, too used to soft living to expend a bit of honest domestic elbow-grease? I don’t think I’m going to need the police to get rid of you; the petty inconveniences of living down here will do it for me!’
He shrugged and turned away and she yelled after him with relish, ‘Just remember you’re supposed to be conserving water and electricity. And you can get your own meals, too. I’m not going to pay the price of your extravagance!’
A growl rolled back down the hall, and a short time later she heard the thumping rattle of the old carpet sweeper. She watched him haul his mattress out into the yard, as she had done with her own two weeks ago, and attack it with the side of a broom, releasing clouds of dust that frosted his dark hair and made her bite her lip to stop herself laughing. She stopped laughing when he efficiently remade his bed with fresh sheets he found for himself in a crammed linen closet and started poking about, investigating the building’s structural deficiencies.
To avoid his disruptive presence Jane snatched up a towel and a book on self-sufficiency and went down to the beach, only to have Ryan settle down on the sand less than a metre away, wearing electric blue swimming briefs that left nothing to the imagination.
Without even asking her, he dug a faded beach umbrella—which she recognised as coming from a jumble of beach furniture in the garage—into the sand and angled it so that she was fully protected from the sun. Then he lay down on his towel and slowly massaged sunscreen over his thickly muscled body. If she had been wearing sunglasses Jane might have been able to safely ogle him in secret, but she had only the brim of Great-Aunt Gertrude’s moth-eaten straw hat to hide behind, and consequently had to pretend not to notice his actions.
Since she couldn’t go in the water, except to paddle, Jane hadn’t bothered to struggle into a swimsuit, but now she felt a desperate need to cool off, especially when a passing bikini-clad blonde detoured from her path to laughingly offer to do Ryan’s back.