Tempting Taine (4 page)

So she worked extra hard, knowing that she would need all that she had saved over this summer and more to help her survive in the year ahead.

Then Taine Hunter had walked into the market where she was stacking crates of vegetables in a daydream, and every other thought she had in her head flew out of the window on the instant.

She knew who he was as soon as he walked in, of course.
 
They’d
gone to the same high school, after all, though he'd been three years ahead of her.
 
Like nearly every other girl in the school,
she’d
had a minor crush on him for years, but he’d never shown any sign of noticing her.
 
He’d
never seemed to pay much heed to any of the girls who flocked around him, eager for his attention.
 
She’d
never seen him be rude or unfeeling to them in any way – it was just that he hadn’t
noticed
them the way than a girl wants a boy to notice her.

She’d
carried on stacking the shelves, surreptitiously watching him through her lashes as he unloaded the truck of crate after crate, hauling the heavy boxes into the warehouse with little apparent effort.
 

He was a Hunter – the only son of old Mr. Hunter, by far the wealthiest farmer in the district and the closest thing that Taupo had to royalty.
 
But
it was not his wealth or status that drew her eyes to him so irresistibly.

His dark eyes
were always crinkled
in laughter, his body was lean and fit, his arms and shoulders tanned golden bronze by the sun.
 
The tattered tank top and shorts he was wearing only showed off how beautiful the body underneath them was.
 

But
even more than the perfection of his body, she admired his self-confidence, the way he swaggered in and out perfectly at his ease, joking with the men in the warehouse and flirting shamelessly with the two middle-aged women who served the customers.
 

She always felt on the outside.
 
Acutely sensitive to her family’s grinding poverty, she had held herself aloof from her classmates rather than risk
being despised
, or worse, pitied.
 
She envied him for
belonging
as she never had.

And then
, as she watched him, the unimaginable happened.
 
He sauntered over to her, his arms swinging at his side.
 
“Can I help you with those crates?
 
They look heavy.”

She nodded mutely, too taken aback to speak.
 

He worked beside her in silence for a few moments before finally saying with a warm smile.
 
“I’m Taine.”

“Verity,” she said, giving him a tentative smile in return.

That was the exact moment when he noticed her.
 
Really noticed her.
 
His eyes widened as he took her in, and his breathing sounded loud and harsh in the sudden silence that enveloped them.
 
She could feel his reaction to her in the
air,
she could feel the electricity that sparked around them when he accidentally brushed against her.

She had been lost right from the start.
 
Before he had finished helping her with her task and had walked off into the blazing summer sun with a meaningful wink and a cheery whistle, her long-forgotten crush on him had resurfaced
with a vengeance
.
 
All she could think about for the rest of that day and all the next morning was when she would see him again.

He came to the market every day that week.
 
If there were no deliveries to
be made
, she would find him loitering outside the market when it closed, ready to save her the walk by dropping her off home in his truck before he headed home himself.

Before the week was out, before
he’d
summoned up the courage to ask her out that Friday night, she was well on her way to falling helplessly and hopelessly in love with him.

She shook her head to dispel her bitter memories as she crossed the gravel path and walked up the steps to the grand entrance of the Hunter house.
 
The Taine she had to deal with now was
a far cry
from the youth who had once helped her to stack crates of vegetables.
 
He was older now, and harder.
 
She knew he was.
 
She had helped to make him so.

Old Mr. Hunter
didn’t
look too pleased to see her when Taine ushered her into the sitting room.
 
“You the therapist?” he barked from his wheelchair.

She took a deep breath as she looked around the room – the painting of an old New Zealand settlement on the wall, the dark polished wood of the floor, the red and blue patterned Persian rug.
 
It
hadn’t
changed an iota in the last nine years – and her memory of the last time she had been there was as bitterly fresh as if she had been there yesterday.
 

She squared her shoulders to dispel her memories, put her bag down on the polished wood floor and took a seat opposite him.
 
“Yes, Mr. Hunter, I’m the therapist.”
 

He grunted.
 
“You don’t look like a therapist to me.
 
Too young by half.”

“Why, thank you.”

“I didn’t mean it as a compliment.”

She smiled at him.
 
If he was anything like his son, she knew a sunny smile would get under his skin worse than anything
else
.
 
“I know.
 
I choose to take it as one, though.”

Taine was still standing in the doorway.
 
“Do you need any help?” he asked her grudgingly, making it clear that he would rather be anywhere than here.

She waved him away with one hand, taking a perverse pleasure in dismissing him in his own house.
 
“No.
 
I’m fine.”

Instead of leaving right away, he turned his attention to his father.
 
“Do you want anything?”

The old man shook his head.
 
“No.
 
Be off with you.
 
I’ll get the girl to call you if I do.”

Much to Verity’s relief, Taine finally left the room, freeing her mind to concentrate on the job at hand.
 
She had a fair inkling that she would need all her skill to deal with this cantankerous patient.

She sat there for some time, just looking at him.
 
She could do nothing without his cooperation, and she knew from experience that the first move had to come from him.

“You just going to sit there and stare at me all afternoon?” the old man finally demanded.

So
, the fish was taking the bait.
 
She suppressed a smile.
 
“That depends,” she said calmly.

“Depends on what?
 
When I was a young man, no one expected to be paid for sitting down and twiddling
their
thumbs all afternoon.
 
At least you should
look
like you’re doing something, even if it’s all a bloody waste of time anyway.”

“Money won’t get you very far if that's your attitude,” she said bluntly.
 
“Not now.”

“It’s done all right for me so far,” he grumbled.
 
“It got me a fine looking house and a fine looking wife.
 
For all the good she did me.”
 
He muttered the last bit under his breath.

“It won’t buy you a new set of legs.”

“Do you think I don’t know that?”
 
There was suddenly a note of anguish in his voice.
 
“All it can do is
buy
me a damn fool therapist who sits and talks at me instead of trying to exercise my useless legs or whatever damn fool useless thing you’ve come here to do.”

Still she
didn’t
move.
 
“You’ll never be the same man you were before the stroke,” she cautioned him.
 
“The stroke has taken away some of your movement forever.
 
But there’s no reason why you can’t get back the rest of it if you’re prepared to work hard.”

“Don’t see the point of it all,” he mumbled, the fight gone out of him.
 
“I just want to keep the boy happy while I die in peace.
 
Just massage my legs or whatever you’ve come here to do and bugger off again.”

“That won’t help.”

“Well, what did you bother coming here for at all, then?”

“Nothing I can do to you will make the slightest bit of difference if you don’t make an effort for yourself.
 
If you want to get your movement back,
I’ll
help you in every way I can.
 
If you just want to sit there feeling sorry for yourself,
that’s
fine by me, but I won’t waste my time coming back again.
 
I have too many other patients to see, patients who
have
got the courage to try.”

Her words jolted him out of his self-pity and he looked at her with a new measure of respect in his eyes.
 
“You’re the Samuels girl, aren’t you?”

She nodded.
 
“Verity Samuels.”

He gave a dry cough.
 
“I should’ve known.
 
You look too damn much like your mother for comfort.”

"So I've been told," she said dryly.

"And that young daughter of yours?
 
How is she?
 
Is she doing well?
 
I bet she's a pretty young thing, like all the Samuels girls."

She ignored his blatant attempt to change the subject.
 
What would old Mr. Hunter know of her mother or her daughter anyway?
 
“You tell me right now.
 
Do you want to get out of that wheelchair or not?
 
Are you going to make an effort, or am I going to walk out of here right now and not come back?”

“Is making an effort going to make a difference?”
 
He smacked the wheelchair with a frustrated fist.
 
“Tell me straight - what are my chances of getting out of this thing?”

"Honestly, I can't tell you.
 
They depend on how badly you want to.
 
Are you prepared to try?"

He hesitated for long moment, agony and hope written in equal parts on his face.
 
“
Taine’d
kick up a ruckus if I didn’t co-operate,” he said at length, his voice uncertain.
 
“I guess I’d better try."
 

His decision once made, he bravely squared his thin shoulders and kicked aside the blanket on his lap with his one good leg.
 
"Go on, girlie, do your worst, and I’ll do what I can to help.”

He did make an effort, too.
 
With her encouragement, after an hour’s worth of effort he finally managed to wriggle the fingers of his
paralyzed
left hand.
 
It was only a faint movement, but it was definitely an improvement over his previous total immobility.
 

By the time the session was over, she was exhausted with the strain, while old Mr. Hunter looked comparatively chipper, and said goodbye to her with far more warmth and enthusiasm than he had greeted her
with
.

Taine, waiting to take her back to the office, listened to their last exchange with some incredulity.
 
“The old man warmed up to you fast,” he said, as they drove back to town.
 
“How’d you get around him?”

She shrugged.
 
She’d
been surprised by it herself, considering what a low opinion he had always had of her before today.
 
“He just needed a reason to keep going.
 
A few mind games did the trick.”

He slanted a derisive look at her.
 
“I might have known.
 
They always were your forte.”

She bit her tongue at his insult but said nothing, and the rest of the trip passed in heavy silence.

It was getting dark and the rain was coming down heavily when they finally got back to the hospital.
 
Taine pulled into the hospital car park and looked around at the scattering of cars parked around the perimeter.
 
“Which one is yours?”