Trouble in Paradise

by Liz Fielding

  Griff was hunting through the kitchen cupboards and as her voice died away, he turned to her. ‘Where do you keep the tea?’ he asked.

  ‘Where is Zoë?’ she demanded.

  He produced a hand-held recorder from his pocket and pressed ‘play’. ‘Maddy? It’s me, Zoë. Can I come up?’

  ‘You—’ He raised a warning finger and she bit off the insult that sprang to her lips, standing back from the door to leave the way clear. ‘Go away. Get out of here, or I’ll call the police.’

  ‘Come on, Maddy, you’ve already pulled that one,’ he said, without rancour. ‘I’ve proved myself a pillar of society ten times over so it won’t work again.’ He turned back to the cupboard, opening a series of storage tins. ‘Oh, here it is. Why is it in a tin marked Tapioca’?’

  ‘They both begin with T,’ she said faintly.

  ‘There’s a somewhat baffling logic in that, I suppose—’

  ‘What did you mean, I’ve already pulled that one?’

  ‘Well, not the police. Customs. It was really very clever; I was impressed with your ingenuity.’ He concentrated on pouring the boiling water onto the tea. ‘They held me for twenty-four hours before I managed to convince them that I wasn’t a drug smuggler—’

  ‘What?’

  He turned to her. ‘It wasn’t you?’

  ‘I couldn’t have done that,’ she whispered, horrified.

  ‘But apparently you know a man who can.’ He shook his head. ‘Who would have thought Rupert Hartnoll had it in him?’

  ‘Who indeed?’

  ‘When I had finally extricated myself, you had bolted. To Paris, you said? With Hartnoll?’

  ‘I went to Paris with Dad. To see my mother. Why are you here, Griff?’

  ‘You know why I’m here. To marry the mother of my child. The Christmas holidays will slow things down, but we shouldn’t leave it too long. I have to get back—’

  ‘Go back now, Griff. I don’t need this. I don’t need you.’

  ‘And the baby? A child needs two parents — you know that.’

  ‘I know what it’s like to be deceived, deluded, lied to...’

  ‘Don’t be so hard on her, Maddy. Zoë did it for your own good. Okay, she got it wrong—’

  ‘Zoë? I wasn’t talking about Zoë. I was talking about you!’ Then she sank onto a kitchen chair. ‘Oh, Zoë, what have you done?’

  ‘She called in a favour. I once made her a promise that if I could ever do anything, if she needed anything…’

  ‘Promises to keep?’ For a moment she was back in the cool forest, surrounded by flowers, and the scent of the frangipani was almost real. ‘So, what did she ask you?’ she demanded, jerking herself back to the present.

  ‘To teach you a lesson. Make you think about other people.’

  ‘Having witnessed my rejection of poor Rupert, I can understand why you found it so easy to be unpleasant, rude, downright horrible to me.’ Tough, but she could have survived that. Making her fall in love with him — that was truly cruel. She swallowed. ‘You thought I was a really nasty piece of work and you were going to teach me the lesson of my life,’ she said, ‘but Zoë knows me.’

  ‘She was very convincing. You had been spoiled by money and now that your father had decided to put his fortune into a trust, you had become a monster. She knew you, Maddy. I didn’t. And, as you say, I had the evidence of my own eyes.’

  ‘But she knew what happened... With Andrew.’

  ‘Yes, she admitted as much when I spoke to her. But Zoë had a hidden agenda. She was certain that if we were thrown together, that if there was no escape... She was right, Maddy. When I walked into the clearing that first morning and you were standing there under the shower I thought my heart would burst.’

  ‘I would never have known.’

  ‘You’ll never know how hard it was to keep it up. I tried to tell you how I felt when we climbed to the top of the island.’

  How could she ever forget that moment, that kiss? ‘What about afterwards?’ she demanded.

  ‘I thought you had guessed. You said something about Zoë and I was convinced you had realised who I was and, having discovered that I was not just some penniless charter pilot but the dragon man, you threw yourself at me. Anything I wanted, you said, and I knew then that Zoë was right. I hated you for that and I hated her. I’m afraid I lost my head.’

  ‘I had no idea who you were. I thought you wanted money from Zoë, that you were going to hurt her. I’d been there, Griff. I wanted to save her from that.’

  His face creased in a puzzled frown. ‘But why on earth did you think that?’

  ‘When you came to Mustique with Zoë, Dad and I...’ She shook her head. It seemed ridiculous now, in retrospect. ‘We assumed that you were Zoë’s lover.’

  ‘Lover!’

  ‘Zoë was asking Dad about selling stocks and he was suspicious. Then I found the cheque.’

  ‘You have it?’ She nodded reluctantly and fetched her bag. The crumpled envelope was still where she had thrust it and she handed it to him. ‘I’m about to launch a scholarship fund for the island children. Zoë wanted to be a part of it.’

  ‘I see,’ she said very softly.

  He glanced sharply at her. ‘Do you?’

  ‘So no one else’s mother will have to work themselves to death.’ She couldn’t go on. ‘Well, that’s it. You kept your promise, Griff. It’s over now.’

  ‘It will never be over, Maddy,’ he said, and moved towards her.

  ‘No,’ she cried a little desperately as the warm scent of his body seemed to invade her spirit, weakening her resolve. She pushed him away, retreated to the sitting room. ‘I don’t want to hear this. I just want you to go away and never come back.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Why? Can’t you understand how betrayed I felt?’ She could hardly breathe with the pain of it. ‘I stood on the veranda of a house that you told me didn’t exist, listening to you talking to Zoë on a radio that could have had us off the island an hour after we landed. Except that was not part of your plan. After all, there was no emergency. There was nothing wrong with the plane; it had all been a clever little plot to teach Maddy Osborne to be a good girl. Well, you taught me, Griff.’ She raised her chin and lashed him with her eyes. ‘Tell me, how good was I?’

  ‘Maddy—’

  ‘Not that good, apparently. I heard you talking to Zoë and it was obvious you were done with me.’

  ‘For pity’s sake, Maddy, if that was the case why do you think I followed you? Why have I been kicking my heels around a cold, damp city when I could be in the sun?’

  ‘Guilt?’ she demanded.

  He raked long fingers through his hair. ‘Sit down, Maddy. Listen to me. Please.’ Maddy, beyond arguing, sat down, ready to repulse him if he came too close, but Griff sat on the chair opposite her, leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, and began to speak. ‘Have you any idea of the fright you gave me when you took off from the island?’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking about your feelings at the time,’ she said. ‘I can guarantee that what you were suffering was very much at the bottom of my list of priorities.’

  The muscles in his jaws tightened. ‘I suppose I deserve that. But I had no idea that you could fly — you never said a word — and my head was full of pictures of your body mangled in the wreckage. I couldn’t blot them out. I had no idea where you’d go, if you even knew where you were going. I put out a call and when I had word you had arrived in Mustique—’

  ‘I’m sorry about your plane, Griff. I know how much it meant to you.’ He didn’t answer. It almost seemed as if he couldn’t speak, and Maddy held out her hand halfway, but his eyes were closed and with a little gasp she snatched it back.

  ‘I was going to tell you that I could fly,’ she said crisply. ‘If you hadn’t been quite so rude I would have asked you if I could take the controls but you were so forbidding, so angry.’

  ‘That, my dear girl, was because I was already half in love with you
and yet I had to believe Zoë, do what she asked—’

  ‘Why? Just what is it between you two?’

  ‘I met Zoë when I flew her down to her villa ten years ago. All I had was that little seaplane and a dream.’ He looked down at his hands. ‘A dream,’ he repeated, very softly. ‘She encouraged me, helped me with contacts, introduced me to the right people — the people who could smooth the path — and when everything might have failed she stepped in to guarantee my loan with the bank. Without her, there would be no Dragonair, no dragon man.’

  ‘There is no dragon man,’ she said, accusingly. ‘This is a griffin.’ She held out her hand. ‘The head and wings of an eagle, the body of a lion. I’ve been living rather closely with it for the past few days.’

  ‘When we were deciding on a name for the company, Zoë suggested that a dragon sounded more exciting. Who has ever heard of a griffin?’

  Maddy nodded. ‘So, you believed her? About me?’

  ‘Only with my head. My heart went its own way... Come back with me, Maddy. Come back with me to Paradise.’ He knelt before her, his hands on her shoulders, forcing her to confront the pain in his eyes, the dark rings beneath them that were an echo of her own. It was unbearable. He could make those eyes tell lies as easily as his lips. When he’d wanted her body, now when he wanted her child. No matter what Zoë had told him, he should never have agreed to do what she’d asked. It showed an arrogance, a blatant disregard for her rights as a human being.

  ‘But you couldn’t wait to ship me out once you’d...’ Made love to me. She couldn’t even say it; it was too painful.

  ‘Zoë was going to come and fetch you on Sunday. That was the arrangement, but I couldn’t carry on with the deception. Won’t you try and understand?’

  She shook her head. ‘No, Griff. I will never understand. Not in a thousand years.’ She stood up, walked away so that he shouldn’t see her face. ‘I think you’d better leave now,’ she said stiffly.

  ‘I won’t let you go.’

  ‘You can’t force me to marry you simply because I’m expecting your child, Griff.’

  ‘Then it is true?’ His voice shook a little, but it took a moment for Maddy to realise what that meant. That it was hope rather than certainty.

  ‘It doesn’t make any difference, Griff. You can’t make me love you,’ she said, a little desperately.

  ‘You already love me. That’s why you’re finding it so hard to forgive me.’ She could feel the warmth of his body at her back, but he didn’t touch her. ‘I could show you that now, Maddy. I could make you beg me to stay, we both know that,’ he said as a convulsive tremor shivered her body. ‘But I won’t. We are one, you and I, for the rest of time. The moon was our witness.’ He turned her gently, took both her hands in his and raised them to his lips. ‘I love you, Maddy, and when you can find it in your heart to forgive me, I’ll be waiting for you. No time limit.’

  * * *

  ‘Maddy? It’s Zoë. Can I come up?’ Maddy hesitated before pushing die release. It had been a week since Griff had used a recording of Zoë’s voice to gain entrance to her flat. A week in which she had heard nothing from him. He had disappeared, as he’d promised, leaving her to make up her own mind, but she wasn’t taking any risks.

  ‘Prove it,’ she demanded suspiciously.

  ‘If you don’t let me in this minute, Maddy Rufus, I’ll call everyone I know and let them know that your nickname has nothing to do with your hair but an incident with a tin of red paint...’

  Maddy slumped against the wall. Lord, how she had wanted it to be him. Then, as the phone buzzed again, she realised that she still had not released the door. She pressed the button and a few moments later her godmother burst into the flat with a hug that said everything.

  ‘What are you doing here, Zoë? If Griff sent you—’

  Zoë held her finger to her lips in mock horror. ‘Darling, if he knew I was here, he would never speak to me again. He made me swear I wouldn’t try and influence you.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘I’ve come to grovel for your forgiveness on my own behalf. I know that it’s entirely my fault that you’re pregnant—’

  ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Zoë. I have a mind of my own.’

  ‘There’s no need to be kind,’ she replied, with a shiver. ‘In your shoes, I would be sulking too. Is there any chance of a brandy?’

  ‘I’m not sulking!’ Then, more gently, Maddy said, ‘You don’t understand—’

  ‘How could I? I wasn’t there. But I’m sure it was perfectly dreadful. It was meant to be dreadful. Washing under that freezing shower, camping on the beach. I wanted him to feel sorry for you, want to comfort you.’

  But Maddy hardly heard her. Mention of the pool sent her heart flying back there, to the touch of Griff’s hands as he had washed her hair under the shower, the dizzy plunge at dawn when they had swum there after making love.

  ‘Oh, Zoë, why did you do it?’

  ‘I saw the way he was looking at you the night we called on you in Mustique. The man’s a born romantic. But you would have run away.’

  A romantic?

  He had threaded flowers through her hair and kissed her and made love to her beneath the moon. He had felt sick when his imagination had tormented him with pictures of her mangled body in the wreck of the plane. He loved her. He was waiting for her. No time limit.

  ‘Good heavens, is that the time?’ Zoë said, leaping up. The sky had grown dark and as Maddy moved to close the curtains she saw the slender curve of a sickle moon behind the stark outline of the plane trees in the square. ‘I must be going, Maddy,’ Zoë said, touching her shoulder. ‘I’m going to the theatre this evening but I wanted a little chat. I hope I’ve cleared your mind a little.’

  ‘It’s a long way to come for a chat,’ Maddy said.

  But Zoë was searching in her bag. ‘I almost forgot this,’ She produced a package from her bag. ‘I bought you a little present. Nothing much. Happy Christmas, darling.’ She kissed her god-daughter and gave her a quick hug, then she was gone.

  Maddy held the beautifully gift-wrapped parcel. She carried it across to the sofa, sitting down before she pulled the ribbons and opened it. It was a small furry dragon, bright red with a brave tail and tiny eager wings. She lifted it up and then touched it against her cheek and when, a long time later, she held it away she couldn’t understand why it was wet.

  * * *

  The launch skimmed across the bright, sparkling sea. Maddy had set out at dawn from St. Vincent and now Paradise was coming towards her out of the horizon. Approaching from sea level, it seemed larger, the small, central peak higher than she remembered. But it was, if possible, even more beautiful than she remembered.

  As the launch neared the jetty, she could just make out the house, adjust to the scale of it, appreciate the ingenuity that had gone into the design and construction. There were no hard edges to jar against the forest; the only bright colours were supplied by the flowers that tumbled over the roof and the veranda rails and softened the gentle slope of the path that led down to the white curve of the beach.

  Griff was standing at the end of the jetty, feet planted wide, arms akimbo as the launch drifted into the little bay. Maddy’s heart caught in her throat at the sight of him, but he turned away to catch the rope thrown to him by the boatman, not meeting her eyes. He made the launch fast but as she moved to step up onto the jetty, he blocked her way.

  ‘Why have you come, Maddy?’ he demanded.

  Maddy had not known quite what reception to expect. Okay, maybe he wouldn’t be ready to sweep her into his arms, but this coldness? Shaken, she withdrew slightly from the eager movement that had carried her towards him.

  Because you were right, Griff. Because I love you. The words stuck fast in her throat. ‘It’s Christmas. I came to bring a present for Jack,’ she said.

  ‘Jack?’ At least she had managed to surprise him, buckle that unwavering self-assurance.

  She turned to the cage standing on
the floor of the cabin out of the sun. Griff jumped down into the boat to examine the small brown parrot hunched unhappily on her perch.

  ‘I’ve called her Jill. Not very original.’

  He grasped the cage in one hand and her elbow in the other. ‘Come on. Let’s

  introduce them.’

  A few minutes later, Griff set the cage very quietly on the veranda below Jack’s favourite perch up in the roof. ‘I think we’d better leave them to it for a while.’ He glanced at her. ‘Would you like a drink?’

  It was all so very stiff and formal. Despite his urgent declaration in her flat, it seemed that he had changed his mind.

  ‘A glass of water?’ she suggested. They retreated to the kitchen, where Griff opened an enormous refrigerator powered by the solar panels on the roof.

  ‘It’s odd being in the sun on Christmas Eve,’ she said, propping herself onto a high stool, attempting to achieve some normality in their conversation.

  He was leaning against the units, arms folded and, as she nervously sipped at her water, Maddy was aware that Griff’s eyes never left her. ‘Why did you come back?’ he asked again.

  ‘I told you—’

  ‘Don’t fudge it, Maddy. Don’t use borrowed wings.’ He saw her confusion. ‘You could have sent Jill by air freight with a Christmas card.’

  ‘Maybe I should have done.’ She slipped down from the stool. ‘I should go.’

  ‘Running away again?’

  ‘You’re not making it easy...’

  ‘This isn’t easy. It’s the most important thing either of us will ever do and I want you to be certain that this is what you want. To be certain that I want nothing from you but your heart, freely given. I want you to be sure in every cell of your being that staying here with me is the only thing that will make you whole.’

  ‘Griff—’

  ‘Because that’s how I feel about you, Maddy. I love this island but you have brought it to life, made it a place I want to share. If you choose to leave, I won’t stay. Despite everything I said, I don’t want you to stay just because you’re pregnant. I’ll support you and I’ll want to play a full part in my child’s life, but I don’t want you to have any illusions. Once I send the boat away there’ll be no more choices to make. It will be you and me for the rest of time.’ The lines that bit into his cheeks deepened. ‘You must want that with your whole heart. I won’t accept less.’