Maddie's Love-Child. Miranda Lee

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      CHAPTER THREE

      MILES clung to the seat belt for added support as the car swung round another sharp curve at far too fast a speed. Lord, the woman drove like a maniac. On top of that, her car was a bomb, an old black thing with a big silver grille in front, which she’d proudly said was one of the original F.J. Holdens, whatever they were.

      He wished to God he’d insisted on using his hire car. At least it had air-conditioning. He was beginning to feel rather hot under the collar, not to mention totally frazzled inside.

      She was coming on to him again the same as before, with all the subtlety of a steamroller, and he still didn’t know how to handle her. It was one thing to think about the sexually charged Miss Madeline Powers from the safety of England, quite another to be faced with the woman in the flesh. Especially when that flesh was poured into black leather.

      ‘Runs like a dream, doesn’t it?’ she enthused as another curve was successfully negotiated on two wheels.

      The road they were traversing generally followed the coastline. It had started out going through sedate village-like streets but had left. civilisation behind and was winding a narrow path round the edge of cliff faces. Dangerous drops greeted one to the right, raw mountainside covered in virgin bush rose steeply to the left. The place looked as wild and untamed as the woman next to him.

      ‘Mmm,’ was all he could manage.

      ‘Am I driving too fast for you?’ she asked in an innocent-sounding voice. ‘Just say so if I am.’

      He resisted telling her she did everything too fast for his liking. But maybe his pale face gave her the message, for her foot lifted off the accelerator. She laughed as she slowed.

      ‘Vaughan’s always telling me I drive too fast. Not that he can talk, the bad man. He has this old red MG with the top down, which he tears around Wollongong in. Though he might have to sell it now the baby’s come.’

      ‘You and Slater seem very, er, close,’ Miles ventured.

      ‘Oh, we are. Very. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for Vaughan.’

      ‘Nothing?’ Miles echoed in a dryly derisive voice.

      Maddie slanted him a look of mock horror, then smiled a devilishly attractive smile. God, but the woman was more than wicked. She was downright irresistible.

      ‘If you’re suggesting what I think you’re suggesting, Mr. MacMillan,’ she said, ‘then shame on you. Vaughan is a married man. Not only that, his wife is my very best friend. Even if I chose to overlook my hard-and-fast rule never to sleep with married men, I could never betray Carolyn. You’ve met her, haven’t you?’

      ‘Briefly.’

      ‘Then you must know anyone who betrayed such a sweetie should have a millstone put around her neck and be cast into the depths of the Pacific Ocean. Anyway, Vaughan’s besotted with her. He wouldn’t look twice at another woman, and especially not me.’

      ‘Why not you?’ he said.

      ‘Because he doesn’t fancy me. Never did. We’re good friends, nothing more.’

      ‘And you don’t fancy him?’

      ‘Heaven’s, no. He’s not my type at all.’

      ‘And what’s your type?’

      She gave him a look that made him grateful he wasn’t driving. As it was, his heart and loins leapt uncontrollably.

      Maddie silently berated herself as she returned her eyes to the road. You call that subtle, you idiot? You have to play this fellow like a fish. Slowly and very, very carefully.

      But damn it all, she did find him so delicious. She dearly wished to take his startled face and kiss the shock from his mouth and from his eyes. She wanted to whisper wickedly seductive things into his ears and make him squirm with desire, wanted to strip him of those wonderfully stuffy clothes and caress him till he was trembling with need and longing.

      An almost alien heat suffused Maddie’s whole body at the thought of his flesh fusing with hers. My God, if she didn’t know better, she might think she actually wanted this man. In a physical sense, that is.

      Impatiently, she dismissed the idea. Impossible! She’d never really wanted a man like that! And probably never would.

      This foreign excitement had to have something to do with choosing him as the father of her baby. Knowing that she might conceive made even thinking about sleeping with the man so much more marvellously meaningful.

      ‘Is it much farther to the house?’ Miles asked abruptly.

      ‘Nope. Fact is, we’re here!’

      Miles glanced up as the car suddenly zoomed off the road and up a steep driveway, his eyes rounding at the sight of the impressive concrete-and-glass construction looming high over them.

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