‘I don’t break my promises.’
It wasn’t an answer. It was also an oblique reminder of the promise he’d made to Rupert. As if that were something she was likely to forget.
‘But wouldn’t you like a long-term relationship some day? Can’t you ever see a time when you’d give up extreme sports?’
His eyes suddenly gleamed. ‘Those are altogether separate questions. I believe I’ve answered your original one.’
Dammit! He had to know that only whetted her appetite for more.
None of your business.
It really wasn’t, but then wasn’t that the beauty, the temptation, of this game of ‘truth or dare’ questions—the danger?
* * *
Finn wanted to laugh at the quickened curiosity, the look of pique, in Audra’s face. He shouldn’t play this game. He should leave it all well enough alone, but...
He leaned towards her. ‘I’ll make a tit-for-tat deal with you.’
Ice-blue eyes shouldn’t leave a path of fire on his skin, but beneath her gaze he started to burn. She cocked her head to one side. ‘You mean a question-for-question, quid pro quo bargain?’
‘Yep.’
She leaned in and searched his face as if trying to decipher his agenda. He did his best to keep his face clear. Finally she eased back and he could breathe again.
‘You must be really bored.’
He wasn’t bored. Her company didn’t bore him. It never had. He didn’t want to examine that thought too closely, though. He didn’t want to admit it out loud either. ‘Life has been...quieter of late than usual.’
‘And you’re finding that a challenge?’
He had in Nice, but now...not really. Which didn’t make sense.
Can you inherit a risk-taking gene? He shied away from that question, from the deeper implications that lay beneath its surface. So what if some of his former pursuits had lost their glitter? That didn’t mean anything.
He set his jaw. ‘Let’s call it a new experience.’
Her lips pressed together into a prim line he wanted to mess up. He’d like to kiss those lips until they were plump and swollen and—Hell!
‘Are you up for my question challenge?’ He made his voice deliberately mocking in a way he knew would gall her.
‘I don’t know. I’ll think about it.’
He kinked an eyebrow, deliberately trying to inflame her competitive spirit. ‘What are you afraid of?’
She pushed her sunglasses further up her nose and readjusted her sunhat. ‘Funny, isn’t it, how every question now seems to take on a double edge?’
He didn’t pursue it. In all honesty letting sleeping dogs lie would probably be for the best.
Really?
He thrust out his jaw. And if not, then there was more than one way to find out what was troubling her. He just needed to turn his mind to it. Find another way.
* * *
Finn laughed when Audra pulled the two trays of croissants from the oven. Those tiny hard-looking lumps were supposed to be croissants? Her face, comical in its indignation, made him laugh harder.
‘How can you laugh about this? We spent hours on these and...and this is our reward?’
‘French pastry has a reputation for being notoriously difficult, hasn’t it?’ He poked a finger at the nearest hard lump and it disintegrated to ash beneath his touch. ‘Wow, I think we just took French cooking to a new all-time low.’
‘But...but you’re half French! That should’ve given us a head start.’
‘And you’re half Australian but I don’t see any particular evidence of that making you handy with either a cricket bat or a barbecue.’
Like Finn’s father, Audra’s mother had been Australian. Audra merely glowered at him, slammed the cookbook back to the bench top and studied its instructions once again. He hoped she wasn’t going to put him through the torture of working so closely beside her in the kitchen again. There’d been too much accidental brushing of arms, too much...heat. Try as he might, he couldn’t blame it all on the oven. Even over the smell of flour, yeast and milk, the scent of peaches and coconut had pounded at him, making him hungry.
But not for food.
He opened a cupboard and took out a plate, unwrapped the bakery bag he’d stowed in the pantry earlier and placed half a dozen croissants onto it. He slid the plate towards Audra.
She took a croissant without looking, bit into it and then pointed at the cookbook. ‘Here’s where we went wrong. We—’
She broke off to stare at the croissant in her hand, and then at the plate. ‘If you dare tell me here are some croissants you prepared earlier, I’ll—’
‘Here are some croissants I bought at the village bakery earlier.’