Substitute Engagement

by Jayne Bauling

  She curbed an impulse to hit out at him physically, determinedly maintaining her smile.

  ‘Oh, I suppose I might be doing Madelon a favour by letting you blackmail me, as I don’t think she knows what you’re really like,’ she mocked.

  ‘Neither do you yet, lady.’

  ‘Why shouldn’t I, when you claim to know all about me on the strength of such a short acquaintance?’ she countered tartly, but he merely laughed.

  Usually Lucia would have given a great deal more careful consideration to the issue before agreeing to accompany a virtual stranger to his suite, but, as it was so obvious that Rob Ballard felt absolutely no sexual curiosity whatsoever about her, to have demurred would have been to make herself look and feel silly.

  Thus she went with him, intent on taking her engagement ring and departing at once.

  His suite was luxuriously comfortable but clearly used for work, one end of the spacious living area occupied by a large, angled desk specially designed for the computer and sophisticated accessories it accommodated.

  Lucia heard Rob close the door and then went rigid with shock as she felt his hands on her shoulders, turning her to face him.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  ‘OH, YOU were dead right after all!’ Lucia blazed at Rob, in an absolute rage with herself for having been so unsuspecting. ‘I didn’t know what you were like, or I wouldn’t have come here with you, but I’m finding out now, aren’t I? Get your hands off me.’

  ‘Calm down; this isn’t a pass.’ Rob’s voice carried an undercurrent of amusement. ‘But I do want you to relax, Lucia—’

  ‘How can I when you’re—?’

  ‘You’re such a very angry young woman.’ He cut into her furious protest as she twitched angrily beneath his hands, endeavouring to shrug them off. ‘But you’ve been angry long enough. Drop it, give yourself a break, if only for now. You don’t need all that rage here; you don’t need it to keep going, keep up the act. We’re alone. There’s no one to see so you can let go.’

  And she had nothing to hide from him.

  ‘Because you already know it all, don’t you?’ she accused bitterly, thinking that she hated him most for the way he really did seem to know so much about her.

  ‘All of it—the worst and the best,’ Rob confirmed in a light murmur, his hands moving on her shoulders now, his long fingers investigating them with slow, gently massaging rhythm. ‘So you don’t need the anger here. Hell, it must exhaust you, keeping it up all the time. You’re so tense…Relax, or you’re not going to be fit to dive and take responsibility for amateurs diving tomorrow.’

  ‘I’ll relax when I’m shot of you,’ she declared tightly, and clenched her teeth so that even her jaw was rigid as she steeled herself to withstand whatever it was his leisurely fingers were doing to her.

  Why did he have to be right so often? She did feel exhausted, every muscle aching from the tension that had gripped her while she had been on view to the public.

  And she was still on show now, to this man.

  But why let it matter? As he had said, Rob really did know the worst of her, so there was no need to go on pretending. The acceptance brought an odd sensation of relief, although at some hypercritical level of her mind she suspected herself of weakness.

  But he was responsible for the weakness. That was what those fingers were doing—working the weakness into her. And she was suddenly too tired to fight it, already drained of most of her resilience by all the emotional demands that she had been forced to meet since her arrival the previous day.

  Rob’s hands were at her back now, occasionally returning to her shoulders or straying up to her taut, slender neck beneath the straight, satin-smooth fall of her hair. Constantly on the move, gently kneading at sore, knotted muscles or massaging her stiff spine, his fingers engendered some kind of trance.

  Lucia simply stood there, no longer thinking at all, unseeing eyes staring straight ahead at his throat, and she was unaware that her hands involuntarily lifted to his sides, remaining otherwise passive, the fingers loosely curled.

  She had a sense of being eased, or soothed and comforted, and she wanted to close her eyes and go to sleep, or perhaps weep, but even those actions required too much effort so she went on standing there, letting him do what he would.

  ‘Better,’ Rob was observing in an hypnotic murmur. ‘Much better, Lucia.’

  Now, as if triggered by his voice, came a sensation of letting go—mentally, emotionally and physically. Lucia went as limp as a puppet abandoned by the puppet-master, and Rob’s strong, confident arms were there to catch her as she collapsed helplessly against him.

  Their magic performed, his hands were still now as he held her, virtually supporting her, and her head found a secure resting place against the solid strength of his shoulder. Still mindless, and with her eyes closed at last, Lucia breathed in the subtle male scent of him and accepted his warmth, letting it seep into her to add a feeling of lethargic well-being to the soothing work his hands had done.

  In drifting, dislocated fashion, she felt that perfection or perfect peace would be if Rob were seated, she cradled in his lap, only she didn’t really want to have to move from where she was right now, even for a moment

  But after a while the quality of the embrace began to undergo a gradual, subtle alteration. Calmness was lost to awareness. Lucia experienced it first as an inner stirring putting slow flight to the emotional void that had been so briefly healing.

  The stirring became a tingle, bringing an end to her surrender to the relief of absolute blankness.

  ‘I…’ Her voice sounded both muffled and faraway, and she let it go, unsure of what she wanted to say anyway.

  ‘And who would have thought you could ever be so yielding when you’ve been so ultra-defensive until now?’

  Rob’s voice contained a note of amused incredulity, and she lifted her head to catch a glimpse of something similar in the smoky eyes—interest touched with amusement.

  His face was so close—too close—so very dark and yet lit with a complicated enjoyment that served as a warning to her suddenly alert senses.

  Rob gave her no opportunity to act on it, his mouth capturing the softness of her lips with devastatingly skilled assurance.

  She knew a moment of shock, which gave way to sizzling rage at the way he was taking advantage of her weakness, but in the ensuing second that too was giving way—to a wholly different type of weakness, and incipient pleasure.

  Lucia’s hands flew to Rob’s shoulders and clung as his lips brushed back and forth across hers, sensitising them incredibly, making her acutely aware of every slight sensation, though the pressure of his mouth remained light, its questing movement almost idly experimental.

  Warmth swiftly became heat. She could feel it coursing through her body and burning her face as her mouth took fire from his—an intense, sparking conflagration. Of their own accord, her arms went round his powerful neck and her mouth was signalling its willingness to draw him in—an invitation he accepted with confident ease.

  The sheer physical pleasure to be had from being in contact with such a beautifully constructed man made Lucia stir convulsively. In response Rob gathered her in still closer, and her leaping senses thrilled to the taut male strength of his body.

  She made a sharp sound of involuntary protest as his mouth left hers, but in the next instant her feverishly seeking lips had found his again, and their mouths became a single, moist cavern of heated, swirling demand and response once more.

  Now his hands were moving about her body again, only their task was no longer to soothe but to arouse with erotic, exploratory caresses, and Lucia moaned helplessly under the overwhelming force of the stinging delight they created.

  She was tense and shaking with the passion he had ignited, wanting more, to be closer still with nothing between them, to tear his clothes off and—

  Perhaps it was the vision of herself doing just that which restored the capacity to think, and with it an awareness of
reality: where she was, what she was doing, and who he and she were.

  Then the heat flooding her face no longer had desire as its source. Rage and shame were responsible, because she knew that she had no one but herself to blame for her predicament. She had let this begin, had let him kiss her, and had responded to him.

  With a tiny sound of acute distress she attempted to free her mouth, and for the briefest of moments Rob reacted by subjecting her to the full weight of an almost aching sensuality, deepening the kiss with a surging, thrusting movement, literally possessing her mouth, commanding it, while his body seemed to vibrate subtly against hers, exerting an intimate pressure.

  But then the real desperation with which she tried to move her face to one side must have reached him through whatever it was that drove him, and he was freeing her.

  Face flaming, eyes blazing, Lucia couldn’t speak, too conscious of her own culpability—considering the positive role she had played in what had just occurred—to know quite how to attack him, although every angry instinct she owned was urging attack.

  ‘That was—’

  ‘You!’ Fury made her incoherent when finally she found her voice. ‘Taking advantage of me!’

  Anger darkened Rob’s face fleetingly, but it was banished by a subsequent expression of amusement flitting across his features and putting a gleam in the smoke-coloured eyes.

  ‘Hardly, when I haven’t taken you off to bed and have no intention of doing so,’ he drawled. ‘A couple of kisses, Lucia? For which I had your fullest cooperation, I might add.’

  ‘And I’m ashamed!’ she flared, unable to deny it.

  ‘Why should you be ashamed of something as healthy and natural as frustration? Because let’s assume that’s what was behind your rather enthusiastic participation. You’ve been separated from Olivier a long time and now come back to find he’s no longer yours.’ Rob paused before asking abruptly, ‘Were you faithful to him the whole time you were away at varsity?’

  ‘Yes!’ Fiercely, but with bitterness surfacing, she continued, ‘Although I suppose you’re like his mother! From something she said to me yesterday it’s obvious that she thinks I’ve found all sorts of distractions for myself over the years.’

  She had looked often, of course—as she had looked at him yesterday—and had enjoyed long, speculative discussions about various males with her friends, but she had never been even remotely tempted to find a temporary substitute for Thierry.

  Rob was regarding her thoughtfully. ‘No,’ he eventually offered slowly. ‘That intense pride of yours wouldn’t allow you to be unfaithful You’d have had too hard a time living with yourself afterwards; and you’d never let yourself in for the discomfort of despising yourself.’

  ‘I’m doing it right now!’ Lucia snapped, and his expression hardened.

  ‘Why? Because you now feel as if you finally have been unfaithful to Olivier? But he doesn’t want you any more, Lucia,’ he reminded her brutally. ‘So instead of all this self-disgust you should be directing your anger at him, as he’s at least partly responsible for your frustration.’

  ‘I am not frustrated!’ Lucia’s voice took an upward swoop.

  Belatedly it occurred to her that it might be preferable to have Rob believe that frustration really had occasioned her response to him, but it was too late to retract the declaration now, and anyway she knew that frustration had nothing to do with what she had felt—although what had been responsible remained a mystery.

  ‘Then what was going on, and why this excess of shame?’ Rob’s eyes had narrowed, and although he spoke softly there was something implacable colouring his tone, causing Lucia a frisson of unease. ‘Because you ended up actually enjoying yourself when you’d simply set out to try and prove you can still pull a man? I’m not an ego-therapist, Lucia.’

  ‘I don’t need to prove anything to anyone!’

  But she did—she did! Only how could she ever prove anything worthwhile to this man? That was what was causing this crushing shame. He had kissed her, presumably with some pleasure, or he would have stopped what was happening much sooner, but how could he ever respect her when he knew that a man had rejected her and believed that she had brought it on herself by her commitment to getting her degree? The idea of having shared part of herself—if only her kisses—with someone who must hold her in contempt was anathema.

  ‘But, for anything it’s worth,’ Rob was going on musingly, ‘you are very attractive—very lovely and quite seductively responsive. All of which, as I’ve said before, makes the other things you are a great pity. I could wish you weren’t…what you are.

  ‘But it’s just as well I’m not interested in entangling my life with yours, because I suppose I’d have to wonder if I’d caught you on the rebound when you’ve been so delightfully responsive this soon after learning you’ve lost Olivier.’

  He frowned suddenly as he came to a halt, as if arrested by some troublesome thought, and Lucia saw that his mouth had tightened.

  ‘I’m not on the rebound,’ she asserted stiffly. ‘I don’t care about Thierry.’

  ‘And never really did.’ His expression had cleared and laughter lurked in his voice. ‘All right, Lucia, I’ve now offered you several excuses for your behaviour and you’ve rejected the lot of them, so you figure it out.’

  That was just what she couldn’t do. When she disliked and resented him so much, how could he have incited that swamping welter of passionate desire?

  ‘My ring,’ she reminded him tautly, ‘and then I’m out of here.’

  With a brief inclination of his head Rob moved away.

  ‘Going to return it to Olivier?’ he enquired casually as he dropped it into her palm a minute later.

  ‘Probably,’ she conceded reluctantly, and was incensed by his knowing smile. ‘Why do you have to keep on calling him “Olivier” in that stupid, macho way? His name is Thierry and he is going to be your brother-in-law, after all.’

  His laughter rang with genuine amusement at that. ‘Ah, Lucia, anything for an argument. You really are the most quarrelsome person I’ve ever met. Come, I’ll see you to your room; and don’t bother trying to make a quarrel of that as well. We still have a show to present remember?’

  ‘Why can’t we have discovered we’re incompatible?’ she demanded resentfully as he held open the door for her. ‘We are.’

  ‘You’re so right!’ he replied emphatically. ‘But I don’t trust you yet, angel, especially now that you’re in a rage again. It’s almost perpetual, isn’t it?’

  In fact, she had experienced more rage between the previous afternoon and tonight than she had done in the rest of her life. Belatedly on her dignity, Lucia declined to respond.

  When they reached the door to her room, he gave her a taunting smile.

  ‘Luckily for us both, there’s no one around, so it can finally be a real case of an assumed kiss. I’ll see you tomorrow.’

  ‘Not if I see you first,’ Lucia muttered childishly, and was enraged all over again when he went away laughing.

  She felt angry and confused, her bewilderment aggravated by her continuing inability to direct her anger properly at those primarily responsible for the intolerable situation in which she found herself—Thierry and Nadine Ballard. Rob remained the focus of most of it, save for a substantial portion reserved for herself.

  For a while in bed she burned with embarrassment over the way she had responded to him tonight, before defiantly deciding that he really had taken advantage of her, because, of course, she hadn’t been her usual self when he had first worked that trick with his hands, getting her to relax so completely, to let go of all the turbulent anger and pride which would normally have ensured her absolute resistance.

  Then, a little surprisingly, she fell asleep, and slept well, and awoke looking forward to starting her job—or at least to the more enjoyable aspects of it, she acknowledged honestly.

  One definite bonus of it lay in the fact that she would be free of Rob’s infuriating presence
for the bulk of the day—and she could guess how he would be spending it, she reflected tartly a little later, catching a glimpse of him standing talking to Madelon as she opened the hotel shop.

  Instead of resenting the double standard which allowed him to make only a token contribution to the pretence he had decided was necessary, maybe she should be hoping that he would find Madelon so irresistible that he would decide he had no time to spare for a fake romance.

  The party Lucia was to take out numbered six, she learnt from Hassan Mohammed, who had taken the bookings.

  ‘That’s not bad, considering the notices only went up yesterday. The boatman and I make eight, so we’re only two short of the maximum the boat can comfortably take.’

  Two staff members carried the refrigerated box containing lunch, and the diving and snorkelling equipment down to the arranged meeting place, and she could see Basile, the boatman, bringing his craft in to pick them up as she introduced herself to the three couples—from France, the Ivory Coast and South Africa—who made up the party.

  She was answering some of their questions, telling them what they could expect from the day, and asking some of her own about their swimming abilities and diving experience when she saw Rob Ballard strolling down the beach towards them, clad in swimming trunks and a loose shirt.

  ‘The name Comoros or Comores means the islands of the moon, but it’s the sun we’ve got to worry about today, so I hope you’ve all got plenty of sunblock,’ she told them, then repeated it in French, and added with a smile. ‘Will you excuse me for a minute, please?’

  She moved swiftly up the beach to intercept Rob, grateful for her concealing sunglasses in case her eyes betrayed how vividly she was suddenly recalling what had happened last night.

  ‘You look the part, anyway,’ he commented easily, observing the pareo she wore wound about her slim body, its soft white cotton printed with pale green sea-horses.

  ‘You really are overdoing the act if you’re pretending to be so crazy about me that you have to come and see me off to my day’s work,’ Lucia snapped, finding the sight of his long, deeply tanned legs disturbing.