Hud felt as if he ought to avert his gaze. As if he was too old, too cynical, too jaded to be allowed such a vision. But those same qualities only meant that his curiosity far outweighed his humility, and his eyes remained riveted to the back of the exquisite stranger.

Once she was land bound her hair sprang into heavy waves that reached all the way to the small of her back, covering the expanse of skin left visible by her simple swimsuit. It was functional. Black. One piece. But, with its low-cut back and high-cut leg, the whole thing was just sexy enough that Hud’s pulse beat so loudly in his ears he feared she might hear it too.

Her feet made soft slapping sounds as she padded over to grab a soft peach-coloured Paisley-patterned towel draped over the far marble bench, revealing a bundle of clothes beneath.

She then lifted a foot and bent over to run the soft towel down one leg. One long lean leg. A drip of sweat slithered slowly down Hud’s cheek.

When she repeated the action with the other leg, her movements relaxed and unhurried, he closed his eyes and swallowed to ease his suddenly dry throat.

She lifted the towel and ran it slowly over her hair, wringing out the bulk of the moisture, kicking out her right hip as she did so. Several golden beams of light slicing through the windows above picked up the rich colour of her dark red hair. Dappled sunshine played across her milky skin like a caress. And all Hud could think was that if this wasn’t a moment that needed to be captured on film for all eternity, then he didn’t know what was.

He was so taken by the aesthetics, mentally calculating focal length and film speed, that he didn’t actually notice her begin to spin to face him until it was too late.

She turned. She saw him. And she screamed.

And he didn’t half blame her. He hadn’t shaved in a fortnight. He was wearing clothes better suited to a London winter than to the thirty degree Melbourne heat.

And she was trespassing on his land and, by the looks of the place, had been for some time.

Kendall yanked her towel to cover her bare legs in a movement that was pure instinct as her scream echoed around the lofty room, bouncing off the glass and back again before sighing to an embarrassing memory.

Unfortunately it hadn’t sent the intruder running for his life. He simply continued staring back at her. Tall, swarthy, fully dressed and all male.

As his eyes glanced from one end of her body to the other, she realised that clutching her towel like some maiden wasn’t going to help at all. She turned her left side away from him and swirled the towel around her body. Naturally it fought against her, wanting to ebb when she wanted it to flow, but eventually she managed to cover the bits that needed covering.

She then took a deep shaky breath before calmly informing the man to, ‘Get the hell out of here and right now, or I’ll scream again, this time so loud the whole town will come running.’

His dark eyes lifted to hers. Connected across fifteen metres of cool dark water. Every inch of skin his gaze touched vibrated as though he’d made actual physical contact. She decided it was a side effect of the shock of being half naked before a complete stranger. Nothing more.

‘Don’t scream again, please,’ he said, his mouth kicking into a pleasant kind of smile. He didn’t raise his voice, but he didn’t need to. The deep rumble carried easily across the wide space. ‘One perforated eardrum is quite enough excitement for one day.’

‘So leave, now, and you can save the other one.’ She spat a clump of wet hair from her mouth. ‘If you’re lost I can point you the way back to the main road or through the pine forest back into town.’ She glanced over her shoulder in that direction and when she looked back she could have sworn he’d moved closer.

‘I’m not lost,’ he said.

‘Well, you’re sure not where you’re meant to be. Everything within one hundred metres in each direction of this place is part of a private estate.’

He simply smiled some more, making her wonder if he knew that already. Everybody in Saffron knew. Claudel was owned by the descendants of Lady Fay Bennington, who hadn’t bothered with upkeep on the beautiful place since Fay had died a decade earlier. But everybody in Saffron also knew everybody else from Saffron, and she’d never seen this guy before. He was the kind of man one wouldn’t easily forget.

Tall and broad, with the kind of physique that could block out the sun. And dark. Dark clothes. Dark eyes. Dark curling hair in need of a cut. Dark stubble on his face that had gone past a shadow but had not quite been tamed into anything resembling a civilised beard. She would have thought him homeless in his battered coat, tattered jeans and scuffed boots but there was something in his bearing that made that seem a non sequitur. A kind of shoulders back, elegant stance, glint in the eye thing he had going on that negated every other potent signal bombarding her senses.

She tugged her towel tighter.

He sunk his hands into the pockets of an unseasonably heavy brown coat and definitely moved closer. ‘I’m thinking you’re the one who ought not to be in here, Miss…’

‘My name is none of your damn business, buddy.’

She’d taken self-defence classes since she’d come to town and moved in with Taffy. Two single girls living together, she’d figured better safe than sorry. So she knew it was better to run than to try to make an assailant see reason.

She dropped the towel in order to grab her clothes and then realised she was naked bar a sliver of Lycra covering not all that much skin. So she grabbed the towel again, then used it as a makeshift screen as she hurriedly pulled her long red sundress on over her swimsuit.

It wasn’t until her head popped through the neck hole and the dress dragged and twisted uncomfortably against her wet bathing suit that she realised it was inside out and back to front. Too bad. Too late. He was getting nearer.

She grabbed her wet hair and tossed it over her back and it instantly soaked right through to her skin, making her feel clammy as well as anxious and embarrassed and just a little bit intimidated.

‘Now, don’t come any closer,’ she insisted, grabbing her Doc Marten boots and holding them in front of her as if they were some kind of lethal weapon.

For whatever reason that seemed to work. The guy stopped. He held out his hands in front of him. Long-fingered hands. Clean hands. The hands of a gentleman, not a drifter.

‘There’s no need for any of that,’ he said. ‘Before you do anything foolish like knock me out with a flying shoe, you should know something.’

She wondered if perhaps he couldn’t swim and was worried about falling unconscious into the pool. She didn’t want him to come any closer, she didn’t want him to tell on her, but she also didn’t want to kill the guy. He was far too good-looking to die.

Feeling ridiculous for even thinking such a thing, she lifted her boots an inch higher. ‘And what’s that?’

‘This,’ he said, waving his arm to his left and taking another couple of slow steps her way, ‘is all mine.’

Her shoes dropped an inch. ‘Yours?’

He nodded. And came nearer. He was close enough now for her to notice a thin scar slicing through his stubble from the edge of his nose to his top lip. She knew about scars and the fact that it was still pink meant it was fairly recent.

Apart from that one flaw, it turned out he had a lovely straight nose and a strong jaw, like one of the statues to be found hidden beneath the dense foliage in Claudel’s grounds. Up close his dark hair curled with a delectable just-out-of-bed look. Like some sort of modern day Lord Byron.

But all that was swept aside when she glanced back into his eyes. They were hazel. Deep, dark, enigmatic hazel clashing against the whitest of whites she’d ever seen, framed by long dark lashes. And all that’s best of dark and bright meet in his aspect and his eyes, she thought.