‘And the whole thing is full of pitfalls,’ she went on critically. ‘Think of all the traps waiting for us, especially as we don’t know a thing about each other-even if you do believe you’ve got me taped. I don’t even know when you were in Johannesburg.’
‘Neither does anyone else, and who is going to be so crude as to interrogate us about our relationship?’ Rob was impatiently dismissive. ‘If anyone is so crass, you can imitate Olivier’s example and be vague—or coy if you think it’s more appropriate. I don’t go around discussing my affairs with people, and that includes Nadine, but we can exchange a few facts over dinner at one of the hotel restaurants tonight if you’re worried about it. Agreed?’
‘Your affairs,’ Lucia echoed slowly, unexpectedly disturbed by the thought that occurred to her as she looked at him standing there, so emphatically masculine. ‘Aren’t they usually rather physical?’
He laughed with real amusement. ‘Not necessarily immediately so. I usually take a little time to court my way into a woman’s bed.’
‘Really?’ she snapped, that inner disturbance only increasing in response to his words. ‘I wouldn’t have thought someone so insensitive had that much finesse—or is it to give yourself a chance to back out if you discover something you don’t like?’
Rob’s eyes had hardened and his lips curled contemptuously.
‘Why not? I don’t squander myself on just anyone, but I also happen to have enough respect and liking for real, warm-blooded women to play things their way, and to enjoy doing so.’
The clear implication being that he didn’t consider her a real, warm-blooded woman. Lucia’s chin lifted.
‘You—Oh, here we go!’
It was a typical island squall, with some clouds gathered overhead flinging down a soft scatter of warm tropical rain, although the sun still shone brilliantly, turning the drops a dazzling silver, the erratically gusting breeze alternatively swirling and slanting them.
Lucia moved out from under the coconut palm, not wanting any dust washed down onto her, and Rob did likewise but made no effort to head for proper cover, obviously as aware as she was that these showers frequently lasted no more than a few seconds.
‘You seem to have some sort of a problem. Were you hoping I’d take you to bed to lend colour to our story or to salve your ego, now that Olivier no longer wants you? Forget it, Lucia; I’m not interested,’ he stated bluntly, amusement indenting the corners of his mouth as he noted the glaze of anger in her eyes.
‘Although I suppose a simple kiss wouldn’t do any harm, especially now that we’ve got a potential audience. One or two people are beginning to appear, mostly out on their balconies, looking at the rain.’
‘That’s not necessary,’ she snapped, with a little surge of alarm, seeing that he was suddenly closer to her. ‘they’re hotel guests; they don’t know us, so what purpose can it serve?’
‘A fair percentage will know who I am.’ It wasn’t conceited, merely a statement of fact. ‘We establish ourselves as a couple, their acceptance of our relationship gets passed around in the course of casual conversation, and eventually it reaches the ears of those who count in this.’
‘Dear Nadine,’ Lucia supplied bitterly.
Rob didn’t deny it. ‘For Nadine to be convinced, the belief needs to be widespread.’
He was reaching for her. Her instinct was to back away, but she was not conscious of the figures up on the balconies of the sea-facing side of the hotel, which was situated on a slight rise of ground just above the beach, and, remembering his threat, she forced herself to stand still.
‘I don’t think I am going to like this,’ she muttered tensely as she felt his hands on her shoulders gathering her close.
‘I’m not doing it for pleasure either, darling, believe me,’ he countered emphatically.
Now his arms were around her. Looking up into the dark, quirkily attractive face, Lucia pressed her lips firmly together, and he laughed.
He was so tall that he seemed to loom and hover over her, like some raptor over its prey, and she was transfixed by a sense of being under threat, or in a trap from which there was no escape.
Resentment followed swiftly in the wake of those moments of vulnerability. She resented so much—his height, the strength in the arms that held her, the news that he had given her yesterday and the situation he had created because of it, the need to spend even a minute in his company and, most of all, his general attitude allied to the humiliating things he knew about her.
So much of the anger she had been feeling since yesterday afternoon seemed to have been provoked by this man, rather than by what Thierry had done. She was angry again now, taut and shaking with rage at the position in which she found herself.
Determinedly she continued to keep her lips together as Rob’s mouth covered hers, although the arrow of sensation that went shafting through her in the first few moments of contact caught her by surprise. Then she reminded herself that this was an act, essentially a display, and not intended for her benefit, let alone her enjoyment. Resolutely Lucia turned herself into a statue.
It was still raining slightly in soft, slanting drifts, and Rob’s shirt was as damp as hers. The shell had fallen from her hands just before they’d become trapped between their bodies, and now her palms were flattened against his chest.
With some idea of decreasing the intimacy of the embrace by holding him away, she slid her hands up to his strong shoulders. It proved to be a mistake. He simply gathered her closer, and now her breasts were pressed against the hardness of his chest and responding in their own special way to the tantalisation of his body-warmth.
That involuntary reaction persuaded her that it was time to end this. Rob’s mouth was still moving on hers in a leisurely, thoughtful way that was almost lazy, as if he was both unsurprised and unperturbed by the continuing stiffness of her lips.
Afterwards Lucia couldn’t be sure which had been responsible for defeating her resistance—that idly sensual mouth, the long fingers that strayed indolently up over her back to play lightly, teasingly about her shoulderblades and the nape of her neck, or simply the rain-dampened heat of his body.
Whatever it was, she was abruptly no longer proof against the pleasure of being in physical contact with such a magnificently made male. Her lips softened and parted, and the fingers that had been biting into his shoulders now unflexed and shaped themselves compliantly to their powerful curve.
Rob evinced no surprise at the change, merely accepting the invitation with facility and skill. A tiny sound of sheer unthinking relief escaped Lucia as she yielded to the slickly confident exploration he was making, her own lips and tongue beginning to stir in languorous co-operation with his caressingly probing tongue. It was as if every nerve-end in her mouth was suddenly acutely sensitised, making her physically aware of every minute sensation that accompanied this erotic, oddly searching kiss.
But as the rain ceased so did the kiss. When Rob released her she took a couple of steps back, slanting him a warily wondering look from beneath her eyelashes. Did he know that she had—felt something? She didn’t want him to, but he probably did as it was blatantly obvious that he was both very skilled and very experienced with women.
‘Not bad,’ he commented judicially, regarding her in a disconcertingly speculative way. ‘From a distance, it should have appeared suitably fervent.’
‘I’d like it if you were at a distance,’ she flared, determined not to let him know how shaken she was by those moments of weakness. ‘Preferably the distance between continents.’
He laughed. ‘What else, from someone as cold as you are? Although I have to say it goes somewhat strangely with all that red-hot rage you’re wasting so much energy on.’
So perhaps he hadn’t registered the fleeting pleasure she had taken from his mouth—although a certain glint in the smoky eyes warned her against being complacent. Nevertheless, Lucia knew a prick of chagrin at being called cold, because she knew she wasn’t.
&nb
sp; ‘Sorry if you’re disappointed, but don’t take it as a reflection on your expertise,’ she offered in mock-consolation. ‘I just don’t like blackmailers. Anyway, I’m through with pleasing men.’
‘“Pleasing men”?’ Rob repeated with amused scepticism. ‘Have you ever bothered much?’
‘Too much,’ she asserted feelingly.
Of course, he was probably talking in a purely sexual context, but it had just occurred to her that all her present troubles were the direct result of her desire to please those men she loved.
If her father hadn’t been so anxious for her to get her degree in marine biology, Thierry wouldn’t have been left alone to find someone new. And hadn’t she come back to the Comoros all set to please Thierry by staying at home on the estate once she was his wife, at the expense of her own inclination which was to go out to work in some job that involved meeting and dealing with people?
She had longed for a permanent home, but a home shouldn’t be a prison. She had even been prepared to give serious consideration to his wish to start a family within the first year of marriage because she’d wanted to make up for his having to wait so long for her, although she really considered herself a year or two too young for motherhood.
Well, all that was over. She was free. Then the blaze of emotion faded from her heart-shaped face. She was free, but alone; her father and Thierry were both gone from her, and she had loved them. But one thing was for sure: no other man was going to do what Thierry had done to her. She wasn’t giving him the opportunity.
‘Too much by your own ungenerous standards, perhaps,’ Rob was conceding, studying her face assessingly for a moment before letting his gaze sweep over her shirt, the gleam in his eyes becoming more pronounced. ‘That shirt isn’t serving much purpose.’
Soaked by the rain, it was now plastered to her, the thin black cotton semi-transparent where it clung to her body, shoulders and upper thighs.
‘Neither is yours,’ she retorted resentfully, removing hers and holding it out to dry in the brilliantly blazing sun.
Rob’s shirt was similarly soaked, and there was something disturbing to her senses about the evidence of dark body-hair filling in a V across his upper chest and arrowing down to his waist. It was a mercy—or a pity, depending on your point of view—that his tough jeans hadn’t also been rendered transparent.
With another man, under other circumstances, Lucia might have voiced the mischievous thought, but that it should pop into her mind so naughtily with regard to this man was infuriating, because she didn’t want to be aware of him as male—virile and sexy.
‘Why are you so angry about it?’ he asked in a tone that suggested he knew very well. ‘But then, everything makes you angry.’
‘You do,’ she emphasised incautiously.
‘Ah, yes, still wanting to kill the messenger.’ Rob shook his head in mock-disbelief. ‘It’s beyond me how Hassan Mohammed could have described you as sunny-natured. Unless he’s seeing only what he wants to see, he can’t know you very well.’
‘Better than you do, anyway,’ she asserted. ‘I’m off. I want to shower and find out when Chester Watson can see me before I have breakfast—Oh! You’ve still got my engagement ring.’
On the point of departing, she swung round to face Rob again as she remembered. The expression of enjoyment had disappeared, leaving his face hard, and there was something relentless about the mouth which such a short while ago she would reluctantly have had to describe as sensual.
‘As you’re no longer engaged, the adjective doesn’t apply, and whether it’s your ring or Olivier’s is debatable.’
‘Oh, let’s be precise by all means! Since neither Thierry nor I have actually broken off the engagement, it’s still an engagement ring,’ Lucia argued bitingly.
‘What do you suppose he was doing yesterday, getting engaged to Nadine?’ Rob enquired mildly, and shrugged. ‘The ring is quite safe, Lucia.’
‘I want it.’
‘You can get it when we have dinner tonight. I’ll have to let you know exactly when later, as I’m not only here to celebrate my sister’s engagement and I’m not sure yet how my time will be taken up by the business side of things.’
She hesitated before accepting grudgingly. ‘All right.’
As she turned and began to walk towards the hotel, the long, graceful curve of which copied the line of the beach, Rob fell into step beside her.
‘Still intent on selling it?’ he prompted.
‘I might,’ she said shortly; she knew that she would have to return it to Thierry, even if its cash value turned out to be the only thing between her and starvation, but she wasn’t about to admit anything to this man.
‘Because you’re broke, aren’t you, Lucia?’ he prompted lightly. ‘That’s why you’ve decided to co-operate with me, isn’t it? You really need that job.’
She stopped walking and flung him a furiously resentful look.
‘You must be the most incredibly unpopular man! I hate people who know everything, and so does everyone else I know. Yes, I’m broke, and yes, that’s the only reason I’m allowing you to blackmail me!’ she conceded defiantly as he, too, halted.
‘Why shouldn’t I be? My father was only famous, not rich. When he died there was just enough money to cover my university fees and for my mother to go home to England and set up house with her divorced sister—although I think that arrangement is about to end as they’re both seeing new men.
‘I just hope that my mother’s with someone settled this time, because she didn’t really enjoy being itinerant. She used up all her emotional energy pretending she didn’t mind and keeping my father happy. I suppose that’s why I don’t feel I know her. There was nothing left over for me.’
But rattling on like that failed to distract Rob from the relevant point. ‘How have you managed trips back to the Comoros, or did Olivier finance them?’
‘No. He couldn’t. Just about everything the ylang-ylang brings in goes back into the estate. I worked nights and weekends—restaurants and a chain store-but what I made only stretched to the long vacs, except once when the South Africans were going through one of their optimistic periods and started going out a lot and tipping generously for a few months.’
‘But this time you don’t have a return ticket?’
Lucia winced secretly, because the stark fact said everything about the unwarranted complacency with which she had returned, all untroubled by any inkling of what might be awaiting her.
‘So, you see, I’m really going to need that ring if Chester Watson doesn’t come up with a job for me and I have difficulty finding something else,’ she offered rebelliously. ‘Or if I decide not to let you blackmail me after all.’
Rob shrugged as they resumed walking, obviously confident that he had already won and therefore indifferent to the threat.
‘He seemed to think you were suitable for whatever he has in mind. I don’t know what it is. As I say, I don’t usually interfere with the human resources side of things unless it’s vital—as now. It would undermine the confidence of those I employ to recruit personnel…
‘It seems we have something in common. I too suffer from a parent who has found fame without much fortune. Jacynth Cole-Ballard,’ he elaborated as Lucia shot him a questioning glance. ‘And she’s only famous among those who are interested in her subject.’
‘The palaeoanthropologist!’ Lucia was excited, her antagonism forgotten for the moment. ‘I’ve read some of her books. She makes it all sound so fascinating, and I know she has done a lot to reconcile her discipline’s findings with those of the DNA theorists. She made one of the important Kenyan discoveries, didn’t she?’
The interest she felt made her light greeny-blue eyes very clear and shining, and there was something thoughtful about the slight smile Rob gave her.
‘Yes, she worked there a lot in the early years of her career. I think she’s in Java these days, when she’s not doing lecture tours.’
‘What’s she like
?’
‘You probably know as much as I do. I sometimes wonder if I’d recognise her if I encountered her unexpectedly.’ He laughed suddenly. ‘Thank you, Lucia, you’ve provided me with a novel experience. It doesn’t usually require mention of my mother for me to impress a woman.’
Lucia regarded him warily, perplexed by the contradictory way in which his words could seem to indicate either sheer arrogance or an engaging self-mockery.
She shrugged. ‘I’m not really impressed.’
But her curiosity was aroused, especially as she recalled that he had claimed to suffer from his famous parent.
‘Then it’s just as well I don’t feel any burning need to impress you, isn’t it?’ Rob returned easily as they reached one of the entrances to the hotel. ‘What I’d really like from you is your immediate departure from these islands, so you don’t have to submit to blackmail, Lucia. You can leave at my expense. We can make it a loan or a gift, just as you prefer.’
Outrage jerked her head up and her sensitive mouth tightened as she stared at him with blazing eyes.
‘You’re really desperate to get rid of me, aren’t you?’ she accused. ‘But you can forget it! I don’t need any help from you, Rob.’
‘What you mean is you’re not prepared to accept any financial help from me,’ he corrected her contemptuously, obviously unsurprised by her outburst. ‘A bit of face-saving was another matter, wasn’t it?’
‘You weren’t doing that for me.’
‘No, but it benefited you,’ Rob observed with cool derision. ‘All right, that’s why I resorted to blackmail before making this offer—I guessed someone as bloody-minded as you would refuse it, even if it meant doing yourself down by delaying the start of the career for which you’re trained. So just keep away from Thierry Olivier, Lucia. I warn you, I’ll be watching you. I must go. I’ll see you tonight’
He left her seething. He was insufferable, and if only she possessed the necessary funds she would be off this island like a shot!
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