Substitute Engagement

by Jayne Bauling

  Shortly before eight she showered and put on one of the plain dresses which she knew suited her—short, straight and sleeveless, with a simple, round neckline, in a blue-green colour several shades deeper than her eyes. Her hair was due for a trim as soon as she could afford it, she reminded herself, feeling it swing against her shoulders after she had brushed it.

  Lucia regarded her mirrored self with dislike, hating her mouth for the sensitivity it seemed to betray. Makeup might alter the impression but it would be a weakness, telling Rob Ballard and everyone else that she had something to hide, or that she cared.

  He met her at the entrance to the restaurant he had chosen.

  ‘Darling!’

  Before she could read his intention and dodge him, he had placed his long, lean hands lightly on her shoulders and was dipping his head to place a kiss at the corner of her mouth.

  ‘No need to overdo it,’ she snapped, stepping back smartly, and he gave her a challenging smile.

  ‘Such a tame little kiss is hardly excessive to the impression we want to create. Don’t rub it off,’ he added sharply, catching hold of her wrist as she lifted her hand to do just that. ‘What a baby! If you don’t like it, it’s your own fault, Lucia. If you’d agreed to let me fetch you from your room, people would just have had to assume a kiss of greeting, but meeting here necessitates the real thing.’

  ‘What sacrifices you’re ready to make for your sister,’ she taunted, tugging her wrist free.

  Her skin burned where his lips had rested, and her wrist still seemed to feel the circle of his fingers, her flesh strangely sensitised.

  Sheer rage enabled her to smile brilliantly as the restaurant’s deferential head waiter approached to show them to their table out on the balcony at the open end of the restaurant.

  Lucia noticed the interest Rob attracted from most of the diners they passed, and she was aware of a fluttering alertness among the staff on duty, suggesting that his arrival had put them on their mettle. She wondered what it felt like to possess such powerful influence.

  ‘Not such a sacrifice,’ Rob contradicted her lazily when they were left alone, subjecting her to a leisurely but thorough appraisal. ‘Physically you’re a very attractive girl—which just makes all the other things you are even more of a pity.’

  Lucia glared back at him. In his casual but classy clothes he really was devastatingly attractive in a unique, idiosyncratic way, and she recalled how sexy she had thought him for a few minutes the previous day, before he had grabbed her and told her what Thierry had done.

  But it was something other than the outward appearance that disconcerted her. His personality was responsible, she supposed. It seemed to leap forward to meet her, filling the atmosphere with complex, silent vibrations, threatening to overwhelm.

  ‘You don’t know what I am.’ Accepting a menu from another waiter, she gave it the briefest of glances before handing it back, saying decisively, ‘I’ll have prawns with a salad, no starter and nothing to drink first.’

  ‘Wine with them?’ Rob prompted as the wine-waiter arrived.

  Lucia hesitated. ‘All right, but I must limit myself to one glass. I’m diving tomorrow.’

  ‘Chester Watson was telling me what you’ll be doing,’ Rob commented when they had finished ordering.

  ‘Taking groups of guests out on a boat for part of a day, diving with them, instructing them if they haven’t done it before. We’re also offering snorkelling. The boatman wanted to include fishing, but I told him I’d rather he kept those trips separate from mine because I can’t stand seeing the gaffing, and I’m sure some of the guests will feel the same.’

  ‘And you’re competent to undertake this sort of thing?’ he asked inscrutably.

  Lucia’s chin rose. ‘Yes.’

  ‘I gather you have something of a local reputation…the island mermaid. What’s wrong?’ he added as she grimaced slightly and, seeing his gaze drop briefly to her hands which were playing nervously with her butter-knife, forced them to be still.

  ‘Nothing, I was just thinking of the creature that must have given rise to the mermaid myths. The lamantin,’ she prevaricated and, unsure if he knew French, translated, ‘You know, the dugong or mantee.’

  ‘Sirenians. I know they’re occasionally seen in these waters.’

  ‘I’ve seen one. The poor thing was so ugly.’ Sympathy made her voice tender. ‘But they really do have breasts and hold their young in the forelimbs when they’re suckling, just like a human mother.’

  ‘Or any primate, according to an ex-girlfriend of mine who worked with chimpanzees and gorillas.’ The laughter that lit Rob’s dark face added a new dimension to his appeal. ‘I suppose after the long months sailors used to have to spend at sea without sight of a woman anything remotely resembling one looked ravishing, hence the legends.’

  ‘Men being what they are,’ she agreed laughingly, hostility fleetingly forgotten in the moment of shared humour.

  ‘But you don’t like being called a mermaid?’

  The personal note restored resentment and she was glad of it. She didn’t want to like him—didn’t want to be charmed. She shrugged.

  ‘I don’t care. It’s meant as a compliment. I’m good in the water.’

  ‘You’d better be,’ he cautioned her. ‘The Ballard Group isn’t a charity.’

  ‘And I’m not a charity case,’ she asserted stiffly.

  ‘Just desperately in need of a job. You’ll need a permit.’

  ‘Chester Watson is seeing to it.’

  ‘He said. He didn’t seem to think there’d be any trouble, especially if he told the authorities whose daughter you are.’ Seeing her head jerk up and the colour that touched her cheeks, Rob smiled mockingly. ‘Don’t be so touchy about it. You can’t afford pride when you’re so in need.’

  ‘I’ve got the job because of things I can do, not because of who my father was,’ she snapped, although, as always, she was ruefully aware that she could only do those things because of her father. ‘And I’m not touchy. I’m proud of my dad. I don’t go around saying I suffer from a famous parent, like you did this morning.’

  She had hoped to turn the tables by eliciting a defensive reaction from him, but he merely looked indolently amused.

  ‘I was exaggerating. I don’t think I’ve really suffered, but I have had to assume responsibilities that shouldn’t have been mine—such as bringing Nadine up, as our father died when she was still a child and our mother was permanently away working.’

  Rob shrugged. ‘She’s brilliant at what she does, and very dedicated—to the exclusion of having time for family life. It’s just remarkable that she ever got married and had two kids, but the eight-year age-gap between Nadine and me says a lot about how rarely she feels able to take time off.’

  Lucia was reluctantly intrigued, wondering if Jacynth Cole-Ballard’s obsessions with her work was responsible for his stated disinclination to get personally involved with career women.

  ‘Is it in reaction to her absences that neither you nor your sister have followed her into palaeoanthropology, then?’ she asked directly.

  ‘From my point of view, humankind’s past is academically interesting but it’s the future and the living that really grab me, and you could say that the hotel industry is in our blood, as our father had a small hotel in Zimbabwe. He was from settler stock. He met our mother when she came down to Harare from Kenya and stayed there.’

  Rob’s face hardened. ‘But yes, I would have to say that I suspect she’s the reason for Nadine’s determination to be a wife and mother first and foremost.’

  ‘And now she’s going to be,’ Lucia taunted, riled by the need to acknowledge, albeit only in the secrecy of her mind, that if those were Nadine’s primary aims in life then she would suit Thierry perfectly.

  But she had suited him too!

  ‘As long as you do nothing to stop it,’ Rob agreed sardonically, and it was as if he had read her thoughts, because he went on mockingly, ‘She’ll s
uit Olivier perfectly, won’t she, Lucia?’

  Her eyes blazed. ‘I’ve suited him very well for the last three years.’

  ‘When you were around.’

  ‘If you want me to go on playing this game for dear Nadine’s sake, then you’ll have to leave Thierry out of the conversation,’ Lucia flared. ‘You don’t know anything about the relationship I had with him.’

  ‘I know enough. But all right—I don’t think I want to know more,’ he conceded enigmatically, glancing once more at her hands which were betraying her again, twisting and turning, toying with the cutlery.

  This was so difficult! Lucia expelled an angry sigh and gazed away out into the darkness, which was intermittently lit here and there with small, random swirls and streaks of light marking the haphazard, darting flights of fireflies.

  Here she was in a perfumed tropical paradise, seated opposite an attractive, dynamic, intelligent and sexy man, with a feast of prawns about to be set before her, and all she could feel was rage.

  ‘I’ve missed these,’ she offered in an attempt at neutral conversation when the prawns arrived.

  ‘I’ve always been able to order them in Johannesburg,’ Rob said questioningly. ‘Mozambiquean, usually, and not beyond the means of impoverished students.’

  ‘They were the speciality of the last restaurant I worked at, but they’re different here.’

  He laughed. ‘When Mozambique is just across the water? We’re in the Mozambique Channel.’

  ‘Comorean are different,’ she insisted, and he laughed again. ‘The best I’ve ever had were cooked over a wood fire.’

  ‘Then we must attend one of the barbecue nights they have here.’

  They were both adults after all, Lucia accepted, playing her part in keeping the impersonal conversation going as they ate. Forced into each other’s alien company by both his concern for his sister and her fear of losing the job she had been lucky to get, they ought to have been able to refrain from letting their mutual dislike dominate the situation.

  Nevertheless, she remained inwardly tense, needing her anger to keep on smiling and talking. Aware that she was on show, and that word could get back to Thierry, his mother and her various local acquaintances, she knew that she had to sustain the act or face humiliation.

  The thought forced her to admit that this pretence benefited her too, but she didn’t want Rob knowing that.

  During the meal a few people came over to introduce themselves to Rob—the sort of over-bold celebrity collectors to whom it never occurred that public figures were not necessarily also public property. Lucia had to acknowledge that he dealt with them impressively, getting rid of even the most thick-skinned with a minimum of effort and yet with absolute charm, so that they all went away without taking offence and most probably feeling flattered.

  ‘How do you stand it?’ she asked.

  ‘I don’t have a choice. It goes with the territory. What about some mango ice cream?’ he added, seeing that she had finished her prawns and was rinsing her fingers in the bowl provided, refusing to be tempted by a sumptuous selection of sweets. ‘It would be appropriate to you—sweet and cold.’

  ‘You don’t know if I’m sweet or not!’ For some obscure reason Lucia felt indignant.

  ‘Oh, I think you can be,’ he stated confidently. ‘I’ve learnt a few more things about you this evening.’

  ‘Like what?’ she demanded, on the defensive now.

  ‘For instance, there’s the fact that you’re kind enough to feel sympathy for dumb creatures, such as fish being gaffed and unprepossessing dugongs,’ he offered lazily, and she wondered if he saw it as a weakness. ‘Then, it’s obvious that you know your own mind, or know what you want and won’t be swayed—although whether what you want is always right for you is debatable, remembering your engagement to Olivier.’

  ‘I’ve told you, I won’t discuss him with you,’ she snapped. ‘And you can’t know if I’m cold either.’

  ‘I know.’ He spoke with lazy arrogance.

  ‘How, when you’ve only known me a little over twenty-four hours? No one who really knows me will have told you that. Not Hassan Mohammed—’

  ‘Definitely not him. I’ve already commented on a certain blindness there, haven’t I?’

  ‘And not Thierry, because they know I’m not, and, anyway, it’s rather obvious that you and Thierry haven’t exactly got one of those close, buddy-buddy relationships, although I know how most men carry on, discussing women among themselves, rating them.’

  ‘Don’t women?’ Rob retorted. ‘And I thought you didn’t want Olivier in the conversation? But at least men don’t bitch about each other to the opposite sex. Women have been their own worst enemies in the sex war.’

  ‘I’m not interested in sexual politics, but men only stick together so loyally because they’re so insecure,’ Lucia accused. ‘And where did you get this idea that I’m cold? Just because I didn’t kiss you back with the greatest enthusiasm this morning? Because, of course, it can’t be you who failed there, so it must be me. I did tell you not to take it personally.’

  She wasn’t really sure if she wanted him to go on believing that she was cold or not

  ‘Because you’re done with pleasing men?’ he mocked, eyes beginning to sparkle with relish. ‘But, in case you failed to notice this morning, I wasn’t exactly putting much into it either. It was for show, remember. But I knew you were cold before I met you, Lucia.’

  ‘Right!’ She made up her mind. ‘I’m cold and I didn’t really love Thierry.’

  ‘So wanting to get him back is pure pride,’ Rob derided, ‘and pride is a cold thing.’

  ‘I don’t want him back,’ she claimed savagely.

  ‘No, you don’t want him, you want him back,’ he said bitingly. ‘For your pride’s sake, not because you love him. Anger is the only real, warm emotion you’re capable of feeling, isn’t it? And it can be a destructive one.’

  ‘I think I’m entitled to be angry right now, having to sit here listening to you claiming to know all about me when you don’t really know the first thing,’ she countered furiously, just managing an insouciant smile as a waiter arrived with their coffee.

  ‘That’s not all that’s making you angry, though, is it?’ Rob challenged softly.

  ‘Can I have my ring, please?’ she requested tautly, refusing to react directly.

  ‘It’s in the safe. We’ll fetch it as soon as we’ve finished. But why is it so urgent? You haven’t arranged to meet Olivier again tonight, have you?’

  Lucia widened her eyes in response to the smoothly taunting tone. ‘Does Nadine let him out on his own at night?’

  ‘She’d be a fool if she did.’

  ‘Now that I’m around?’ she prompted caustically.

  ‘You said it.’ His tone was grim.

  ‘Isn’t she sure of him either?’ she enquired sweetly. ‘You seem to think I’m a danger—that I could get him back.’

  The idea was something of a balm to her ego.

  ‘You’re strong-willed, and Olivier becomes weak where you are concerned,’ Rob responded flatly, but then his voice hardened as he added, ‘Though I ought to warn you that if you’re intent on fighting my sister for him you’re likely to find that she has her own arsenal, and the weapons in it may well prove more subtly effective than yours, Lucia.’

  So, it was what he saw as Thierry’s reaction to her rather than any qualities she might possess that he regarded as a threat to his sister. Resolutely Lucia assumed a wooden expression.

  Suddenly she felt drained, wanting the evening to be over, her ordeal at an end, but there was this man, and all those people seated at the other tables, to prevent her shoulders slumping.

  It seemed an age before her coffee was cool enough to drink, and not for the first time she cursed the high boiling point found at sea level, having frequently scalded her mouth on her return trips from the high altitude of Johannesburg over the years.

  Finally, though, they were leaving the
restaurant.

  ‘My ring,’ Lucia reminded Rob tightly.

  ‘Not the hotel safe; I’ve got a private one in my suite,’ he said, seeing the direction in which she was turning and slanting her a smile of mock-sympathy as she regarded him questioningly. ‘It does fit in well with our charade, as naturally we’d want some privacy. This way people can just assume any lovemaking.’

  She shrugged. ‘All right, but I’m not staying long enough for them to be able to assume any proper lovemaking.’

  ‘They can assume this thing is still in its earliest, unconsummated stages,’ he agreed calmly.

  ‘“The sweet, early stage of not really knowing”,’ Lucia quoted, and explained, ‘Madelon Brouard said that to me earlier.’

  ‘She’s an intelligent woman,’ Rob commented appreciatively. ‘Rushing headlong into an affair means you miss out on several highly enjoyable phases.’

  She looked at him curiously. ‘I suppose, if I hadn’t arrived and you hadn’t decided to go in for this stupid pretence, you’d be—courting her?’

  ‘It’s possible,’ he allowed very coolly. ‘She has an appealing personality and she’s very lovely.’

  ‘Don’t make it sound as if I’m putting you out! You were the one who decided on all this, not me, so I’m not doing any apologising.’ Lucia flung him a blister-ingly defiant smile. ‘But I don’t know how you expect this charade to stand up if you’re going to go around flirting with Madelon half the time—which is how she interpreted whatever you said to her this afternoon. I’m playing my part, but you’re not.’

  Rob was looking amused. ‘We’re not pretending to be married, just courting, so there’s nothing contradictory about my behaviour.’

  ‘Oh, yes, I’m sure it’s absolutely characteristic of you to be keeping your options open,’ she condemned.

  ‘Exactly!’ He was smiling knowledgeably.

  ‘Well, if you’re interested in Madelon, why don’t we decide we’re incompatible right now, tonight? Then you’ll be free.’

  ‘And so will you—to go running after Thierry Olivier?’ he guessed contemptuously. ‘Sorry, Lucia, it’s too soon yet, and I don’t trust you.’