Tempting Taine

Chapter 1

Verity Samuels was knee-deep in her filing when a loud knock sounded on her office door.
 
“Come in,” she called cheerfully as she straightened up again, grateful for the excuse to abandon her most hated task.

The door opened.
 
A man stood motionless in the doorway.
 
He was dressed in heavy boots, faded jeans and a black leather jacket - and the sight of him hit her in the guts with all the force of a sucker punch.

She stood still, gasping for air, her heart pounding as if she had seen a ghost.
 
In a way, she thought numbly, as she hung on to the handle of her filing cabinet for grim death and struggled to breathe through the shock, she just had.
 
“Taine,” she whispered.
 
Her voice dried up on the word and she had to clear her throat before she could begin again.
 
“Taine Hunter.”

For a fleeting moment, his eyes claimed hers, until the shutters came down leaving nothing but a bone-deep coldness that made her shiver.
 
He strode past her into her office and flung himself down in a chair opposite her desk as if he owned the place.
 
“Verity Samuels.”
 
A statement of fact rather than a greeting.

She nodded, trying not to wince at his tone.
 
His eyes had been cold enough, but they were nothing on the flat wasteland of his voice.

She walked over to the door, pushed it shut behind him and retreated to her desk, forcing her unwilling legs to move forward.
 
All her efforts were concentrated on not allowing them to shake.
 
The ice in his eyes had thrown her more than she cared to show.
 
He had no business knowing that, with just one look; he could turn her back into the shy teenage girl with a crippling lack of self-confidence she had been when he first met her.

 
“What do you want?” she asked baldly, once the desk
was established
as a firm barrier between them.
 
She could not manage a polite lie and tell him how nice it was to see him again.
 
The words would choke her.
 
She was
glad
that she had not seen him for nine years.
 
She only wished he could have stayed away from her for nine more.
 
Besides, he would not believe her anyway if she put on a polite show of being pleased to see him.
 
He always
had
been far too smart for his own good.

“I trust it
is
still Samuels?”

Less than two minutes and he was already prying into her private life with an insulting lack of tact, as if she were not worth even his politeness.
 
Why did he imagine he had a right to any answers from her?
 
“Does it matter?” she asked with some asperity.

The tightening of the lines around his mouth was the only giveaway of his irritation.
 
“Not at all.
 
Just curious.”

There was little point in making a fight of it, she decided.
 
And
even less point in taking offence at his questioning.
 
She just wanted him to go.
 
The sooner she answered him and got him out of her office, the better she would like it.
 
“Verity Samuels it is.”

“Not married, then?”

Marriage?
 
She almost laughed out aloud at the idea.
 
He had spoiled her for that.
 
“No.”

He shrugged, as if it was just what he had expected.
 
“No, I suppose not.
 
Summer flings are more your style than marriage.”

She winced at the barb in his voice.
 
“Is there anything else I can do for you?
 
Or did you just happen to drop by to satisfy your curiosity?”
 

He continued to examine her with those cold, dark eyes of his, but said nothing.

His silent gaze unsettled her.
 
She had known that,
sooner or later
, meeting Taine Hunter was inevitable.
 
The small town of Taupo in the central North Island of New Zealand was not big enough to keep two people apart from each other for long, especially during the winter months when all the tourists had returned home and only the locals
were left
to haunt the shores of the huge lake after which the town was named.
 
Still, even knowing they were bound to run into each other, she had not been prepared for the jolt of pure pain that lanced through her at the sight of him.

She was suddenly impatient with his silence.
 
“If you have nothing to say to me, I will have to ask you to leave.
 
I’m
busy.
 
I’ve got patients all afternoon.”

He made no move to get up and leave her office.
 
“You’re a physiotherapist now.”

She glanced pointedly at her watch.
 
“So you see.”

“A good physiotherapist.”
 
His words were a statement rather than a question.
 

“I hope so.”
 
She certainly worked hard at being a good one, and was reasonably confident in her abilities.
 
Quite a few of the local doctors referred their more difficult cases to her now.

“The best in Taupo.”

She would have been pleased at the praise if it had come from anyone else.
 
His voice, however, contained just enough scepticism and disbelief to make the words sound more like an insult.
 
“One of the best, yes,” she replied evenly.
 
She refused to let his rudeness rattle her.
 
Whatever he thought of her modest success, she was justifiably proud of what she had accomplished.
 
Not everyone could be a big-shot tycoon
like
he was, or a self-made millionaire and darling of the agricultural business world before he’d hardly turned thirty.

He made an impatient noise.
 
“Dr. Evans says you’re the best.”

“Dr. Evans?” she blurted, before she thought the better of it.
 
Now that
did
surprise her.
 
Dr. Evans was
Taupo’s
oldest practicing doctor probably by a good ten years or more, and referred most of his patients to the hospital’s other older and more experienced therapists rather than to her.
 
It was gratifying that he did so more out of habit than because of any doubt in her ability.

He dismissed her look of surprise with an impatient flick of his hand.
 
“If Dr. Evans was young and
impressionable,
I would’ve doubted his recommendation.
 
But not only is he old enough to be your grandfather, he’s also too smart and takes his profession too seriously to be taken in by a young woman, however charming she is to him.”
 
He fairly
sneered
the last few words.

“Dr. Evans is seventy if he’s a day,” she protested, dismayed at the implications of what Taine was implying.
 
The old doctor always treated her with unflagging politeness and an old world courtesy, which she had responded to in kind.
 
She liked him very well, but the idea of her working any kind of wile on the old man was simply ludicrous.

“My point exactly.
 
Which is why I have come to you.
 
I need your services this afternoon.”
 
He finally got up from his chair and strode past her to the door, evidently expecting her to follow.
 
“Come on, let’s go.”

She did not move, except to follow him with her eyes.
 
“
You
need my services?”
 
She hardly thought so.
 
She had scarcely ever seen a specimen of manhood in better physical shape than he was.
 
Nothing in his manner or his way of walking suggested that he was suffering from any kind of physical pain – and she was more adept than most at reading the signs of a hidden source of irritation or discomfort.

He looked at her with evident distaste, as if she were a nasty-tasting medicine that he was obliged to take.
 
“Not for me.
 
For my father.”
 
His words
were laced
with an ill-concealed irritation, as if she were being deliberately obtuse.

So
, Taine wanted her for his father rather than for himself.
 
That made rather more sense to her.
 
Mr. Hunter, she knew from the hospital gossip mill, had suffered a sudden stroke a month ago, shortly after his wife had died.
 
Although his life was out of danger and he was now recuperating at home after
having been discharged
from hospital, he must still be suffering from the after effects and needing a therapist to help him to regain as much strength as he could.
 

She would not be that therapist, though.
 
She just
could not
be.
 
She was not strong enough to face up to that particular demon yet.
 
She did not know if she would
ever
be strong enough.

However much Mr. Hunter needed help, the thought of entering the Hunter house again made her skin crawl with remembered embarrassment and humiliation.
 
Nine years
ago
she had sworn she would never set foot inside it ever again.
 
She saw no reason to change her mind now.
 

She shook her head.
 
Nothing could induce her to step into the Hunter domain again.
 
He and his family had burned her once, and she had learned the hard way that the safest course was to avoid them altogether.
 
She would tell him that she was too busy.
 
He could not argue with that.
 
“Sorry, I can’t,” she said, without taking the trouble to fake any tone of apology.
 
“I’m sure one of my colleagues would be happy to help you out, but I have patients I need to see.
 
I shall be sure to thank Dr. Evans for the recommendation when I next see him, though.”

He crossed his arms in front of him as he stood in the doorway, that look of superior disdain still spread all over his face.
 
“No you don’t.”

Her fingers were itching to slam the door in his face, but that would only confirm the low opinion he held of her.
 
Instead, she forced herself to stay seated at her desk.
 
“I beg your pardon?”
 
She was pleased that her voice sounded almost normal, rather than spitting with anger.

“You don’t have any patients to see.
 
I checked your schedule already, so I’m quite well aware that you’re lying to me.”

She felt herself blushing.
 
So much for not confirming the low
opinion
he held of her.
 
“A small white lie to spare your feelings,” she said loftily, to hide her embarrassment at
being caught out
in a falsehood.
 
“If you would prefer it in plain, unadorned English, then thanks, but no thanks.
 
I do not choose to accept your father as my patient.”

He heaved a weary sigh and took out his wallet from his jacket pocket.
 
“I suppose I’ll just have to speak to you in the only kind of language that you understand,” he said with some bitterness as he riffled through the contents.
 
He extracted a couple of bills – hundred dollar bills by the
pinky
-red
color
of them – and tossed them on the desk in front of her.
 
“I’ll pay you well to come and attend to my father this afternoon, and every afternoon for as long as he needs you.
 
Double your usual rate.”

So, he thought he could buy her cooperation, did he?
 
Trust a Hunter to think he could buy his way out of every difficulty.
 
She shook her head, trying not to let her anger at his offer show too plainly.
 
“I don’t want your money.”

“It’s not my money – it’s my father’s.
 
He was very clear with his instructions that he would pay for his care himself.
 
Stubborn old beggar.”
 
A brief smile flitted across his face, and for just a
moment
she thought she could see a trace of the boy he had once been, the boy she had once loved with a desperation that had nearly killed her.