Her Man with Iceberg Eyes Read Online Free PDF Page B

McLeod,” she said as sharply as she dared.
    “Matthew,” he drawled lazily. “Mr. McLeod is
my father.”
    He was still standing far too close to her,
running a lazy hand up and down her arm. “I’m not short of a
dollar, Kate. For God’s sake let me have some fun with the money,”
he urged, finally letting her go.
    He shrugged his own jacket back on and turned
her toward the garage. She gritted her teeth with annoyance. How
dare he just take her over like this?
    As they drove out, she glanced around with
more attention. The huge house really was fantastically sited. It
looked as though it had squatted there forever, but surely it must
be only a couple of years old?
    It had been very cunningly landscaped. Kate
could now see the gravelled walkways and paved areas were
abundantly edged with plantings of native tussock grasses and low
sprawling shrubs. There was a big rock-edged pool, and a sloping
outcrop of jagged stones and vegetation—no doubt also rather
recently created. Maybe this was the rock garden where Lottie had
slipped?
    Matthew’s thoughts echoed her own. “She fell
just over there,” he said, pointing. “There was a hard frost this
morning. You’ll need to be careful what you wear on your feet
outside.”
    Kate nodded, thinking she’d need to be
careful of more than that. She vowed to keep her whole body well
concealed from his unsettling eyes. No more catching her in her
underwear! No further chances to touch her. Disturbing little
tremors shot right through her whenever he was near. And it seemed
he was always near. His sense of personal space was way
different from hers.
    At least while they were driving his seatbelt
kept him away. Even so, a charged silence stretched between them,
and an acute awareness.
    “Coronet Peak,” he said as they swung around
the last curve of the long driveway. Kate’s gaze followed the
direction of his pointing hand toward the nearest mountains. The
sun had slid lower, gilding the peaks a rosy gold.
    He wore no wedding ring—no other ornaments of
any kind. Not a jewellery man , she thought. A man with a
taste for understated classic design. No doubt his dark trousers
were beautifully cut and tailored, but she’d registered his long,
strong thighs rather than the garment covering them. His
fine-knitted wool jersey was unremarkable in its design, but
beautifully finished. His dark blue zip fronted jacket proclaimed
itself expensive by the symbol on the pocket, but the style was
little different from hundreds of others in Queenstown.
    He was very tall, and Kate always felt that
gave a man authority. Perversely she found her own height a
drawback.
    Big, arrogant ‘we’ll do things my way’
Matthew was a force to be reckoned with. His face was hard as a
gangster’s—until he flashed one of his engaging wide smiles. What
would a man with a face like that be capable of? Kate easily
imagined ruthless business deals just inside the law but skating
dangerously across thin ice. How had he made his money—or was it
all Lottie’s? She couldn’t see him as a kept man. And his office
had looked very businesslike.
    Plainly, he was used to getting his own way.
She was still astounded at how quickly he’d disposed of Diana,
bulldozed her own objections aside, and set out to take her
shopping.
    They drove in near silence the rest of the
way back into Queenstown. The hard blue light had softened to hazy
gold. It filtered down through the bare mid-winter trees, dusting
the houses and the lake with magic; gilding the tall conifers.
    Kate’s mind roamed free as the lovely scenery
floated by. Suddenly she remembered something her father had said
in happier days. He’d bought her mother a lacy black nightgown and
negligee, and teased that he therefore had the right to dress her
in them. Kate froze at the thought that Matthew might feel the
same.
    “What is it, Katie?”
    She flinched. Was she so transparent he could
read her mind? And wasn’t ‘Katie’ too familiar?