Price of Passion Read Free

present owner had inherited or bought it with the intention of keeping it as a landbank.
    The kettle burbled and Kate occupied herself with the mundane task of making a cup of tea. She discarded the sodden tea bag in the sink and added a splash of milk, stirring it in with unnecessary force as her thoughts returned to the complicated tangle her life had become. Choices that had once seemed clear and simple were now fraught with danger, she thought, staring out the kitchen window at the gnarled pohutukawa tree whose grey-green leaves blocked out the concrete palace that was in the final stages of completion on the other side of the chain-link fence. She hoped that she wasn’t about to get strangled in the web of deceit she had been busily weaving.
    She raised the steaming cup to her lips for her first sip when a sudden, intangible sizzle of tension in the air made her stiffen. She jerked around, her heart leaping up into her throat as she realised she was no longer alone.
    Standing silently in the arched opening between the kitchen and the living room, looking no more friendly than he had a few minutes earlier, was Drake Daniels.
    She hoped he put her little choke of dismay down to the hot tea that had spilled onto her fingers. ‘What are you doing in here?’ she demanded, switching hands to shake off the burning droplets, disgusted to hear that her voice was high and breathless rather than cool and clipped.
    ‘The door was open,’ he said, jerking his head in the direction of the verandah. ‘I took it to mean that you were expecting me to follow you…’
    ‘It’s open because the house is hot and stuffy,’ she snapped. She knew she should play it cool, but the sarcastic words came spilling from her lips before she could stop them: ‘What the hell do you want?’
    His dark eyes glinted. He placed a small plastic container down on the Formica table, centring it with a mocking precision. ‘I brought you the sugar you said you needed.’
    ‘Oh.’ Kate hugged her tea defensively to her chest as she wrestled with her conscience. ‘Thank you,’ she said begrudgingly, knowing full well that his meekness was a sham.
    Sure enough, as soon as she had humbled herself, he unsheathed his sword.
    ‘So, tell me: are you going to leave when you find out you’re wasting your time here? Or is it going to take men in white coats and a restraining order to get rid of you?
    ‘Are you stalking me?’

CHAPTER TWO
    ‘S TALKING you?’ Kate widened her eyes in amused disbelief. ‘You do fancy yourself, don’t you?’
    Her teasing tone made Drake’s mouth thin. ‘Stop playing games, Katherine,’ he growled. ‘How did you find me?’
    She sipped her tea and mused on the question. ‘I’ve always found you to be borderline paranoiac, and now it looks like you’ve inched over the line. Maybe the men in white coats should be coming for you…’
    ‘Very witty—and very evasive.’
    She might have known that he’d notice. Words were his business, his strength and his talent…interpreting nuances and assigning subtle layers of meaning to every line of dialogue and paragraph of prose. He would tie her up in verbal knots if she let him. Her best chance was to make simple statements that could be neither proved nor disproved, and then just stick to her guns. Or better still, say nothing at all.
    ‘You’re surely not going to claim that it’s just pure coincidence that you turned up on my doorstep?’ he accused, taking an aggressive stance, legs astride, hands fisting on his hips, a poster-boy for one of his disaffected heroes. ‘What’s going on, Katherine?’
    A tremor of weakness shimmered through her bones. Oh, if only you knew! She looked into his moody countenance and felt the familiar, powerfully seductive tug of physical attraction that was the source of all her current turmoil. She still found it amazing that such a bold, passionate and charismatic man had reacted with such intensity to her ordinary, unremarkable