‘Chester said a Fiat,’ she protested distractedly to Rob, her breathing erratic and her heart still drumming painfully with shock—just because she hadn’t been expecting to see him.
‘That was when he thought you were going on your own. I’m going with you,’ he announced smoothly.
‘Oh…but why?’ Lucia was still disconcerted.
‘Why wouldn’t I want to spend the morning with a girlfriend—of sorts—when my schedule has left me a few hours free?’
‘I’m not a girlfriend of any sort,’ she snapped, beginning to recover her fighting spirit
‘Let’s say a female companion, then.’ Rob was clearly in an easygoing mood, smiling lazily. ‘My favourite way of relaxing.’
‘Did Madelon turn you down?’
‘I didn’t ask her.’
‘I suppose you felt you couldn’t when you haven’t had a chance to do anything about her because that stupid act of ours has taken up your time,’ she derided. ‘You can’t think it’s still necessary?’
‘Because you don’t want Olivier back? I know it’s not,’ he drawled.
Lucia shrugged and smiled, moving towards the car with him. Warmth was stealing into her heart and softening it as she accepted that he at least found her company preferable to none at all.
‘Let’s go, then, Rob. I suppose I owe you, as it’s partly due to me that you haven’t had the opportunity to get acquainted with a more appropriate woman,’ she quipped as he opened the door for her, and he was still laughing when he came round to the driver’s side and got into the car.
From behind dark lenses she watched his lean fingers insert the ignition key and turn it, and observed his denim-encased legs flex slightly as he tested the pedals. Then she transferred her gaze to his nearest arm, taut and brown below the sleeve of a casual oatmeal-coloured shirt, his muscles rippling subtly beneath the burnished skin as he put the car into gear.
She swallowed emotionally, resisting a compulsion to reach out and touch, or lean forward and press her lips to that firm, tanned flesh.
Why had she needed to sound as if she was making some grudging concession in agreeing to go to Moroni with him? She would do anything for him.
She loved him so much.
CHAPTER NINE
HOW had it happened?
Lucia was shaking violently under the impact of the disaster that had befallen her. She had never been so grateful for her sunglasses, and Rob’s silence as he concentrated on easing the car towards the main road was the only other mercy granted to her.
Her lips were trembling uncontrollably and her hands had made frantic contact with each other in front of her, fingers lacing tensely then beginning to writhe agitatedly.
Inevitably, Rob noticed.
‘What’s wrong?’
‘I’ve just—Nothing!’ Face flaming, she stopped herself blurting it out just in time.
‘Something you need? Shall we turn back?’ he offered considerately.
The sensitivity of that almost made her weep, and it was a moment or two before she could find her voice.
‘No! I’m fine. Just don’t…don’t talk to me for a bit, please,’ she requested thickly.
He moved his head briefly in acknowledgement and put out his hand, touching her thigh in reassurance.
‘Or touch you either,’ he accepted sardonically, taking his hand away as he felt the clenching increase of her tension.
For the first time Lucia was afraid of him. He knew her so well. How could he not know this? Or, knowing, did he feel even more contempt or pity than he already had?
She stole a quick glance at Rob. She had never dreamed that she could feel so much pain, and this whole thing was loaded with yet more potential pain. If he realised, he might even find it funny, when less than a week ago she had still believed that she was in love with Thierry.
Lucia had no problem with that aspect herself, now that she understood that the boy-and-girl affair with Thierry must have run its sweet course long ago. Her mistake had been to be tempted by the prospect of having somewhere to belong at last, to be prepared to offer succour and protection, letting him depend on her in return for that.
But her apparent fickleness could easily prove to be a source of amusement to Rob. She didn’t know which she would hate most from him—pity, derision or contempt.
Lucia’s fingers continued their desperate wrestling with each other. Everyone she had ever loved before, in whatever way—Thierry, parents, friends—had loved her in return, to a greater or lesser degree—if only temporarily in Thierry’s case. She just didn’t know what to do with this unreciprocated love, especially when it was so much greater than any other she had known. This was a love for a lifetime. She recognised it with unshakeable, bone-deep certainty, and yet there was so little that Rob might want of her, and nothing at all that he needed.
Anger, resentment and even much of her pride were obliterated now, because love was stronger than them all. Typically, she ached to express it by securing his happiness for him. She would do, be and give anything he asked of her, and the real agony lay in knowing how pitifully little he would ever ask.
Some pride remained, because she didn’t think that she wanted him knowing she loved him, although she was forced to accept the possibility that he would do so sooner or later, just because he understood her so perfectly.
But maybe she could go about the business of loving him in secret for a while. Her hands dropped passively into her lap as she made the commitment, and she sighed, accepting her fate together with the longing and anguish it dictated.
‘All right?’ Rob enquired, obviously sensitive to her altered mood.
‘Fine!’
Lucia gave him her sunniest smile, the love-hunger in her eyes hidden by her dark glasses, and set about loving him.
Her sole desire was to please, her voluntary task to study and indulge his mood, his every whim. There could be no self-abnegation or hypocrisy in doing so, because his pleasure was now hers.
She responded enthusiastically to every topic he chose to introduce, and, loving him, found herself at last understanding him and consequently loving him even more, because this was no man to demand either a docilely admiring audience or mindless agreement. She was free to argue if she disagreed, and she did so with a grace and humour that she had not shown him before.
In Moroni, the Comorean archipelago’s tiny capital, with its mosques giving it an intrinsically Islamic atmosphere, reminiscent of Zanzibar and other such historical centres of commerce in the trade-winds zone, she fell in happily with his suggestion that they stroll around the white-walled harbour before going up to the market-place.
‘When you’re in a good mood, you really sparkle, don’t you?’ Rob commented teasingly when they paused and she removed her hat as she leaned against the wall, face ostensibly lifted to the sun, although in reality she was adoring him with her concealed eyes.
‘This is the real me,’ she quipped, her sensitive mouth breaking into a scintillating smile of delight because he was pleased with her.
He produced a slow smile of his own.
‘And it charms—especially your mind, like a star…or a magnum, full of champagne thoughts to go with the champagne smiles.’ He paused before adding in a slightly harder voice, ‘But I think I’m glad I can’t see what you’re hiding behind those shades. Put your hat on again too, Lu, or you’ll burn.’
He was close to knowing, she guessed, and found herself wishing—praying—that she might be granted today simply to love him before she had to be embarrassed by his knowing and before pride’s need to find some dignified way of dealing with it perhaps made her prickly and self-conscious in his company.
When she had spent most of the money with which Chester Watson had instructed his assistant to provide her in the colourful, essentially Third-World marketplace, Rob ascertained how much time she had before she had to be back on duty and then drove her to lunch at an elegant hotel just outside Moroni.
They ate
inside, so Lucia was forced to remove her sunglasses, but she thought it could do no harm now that she knew it was for his sake that she needed to hide what she was feeling. Anything that was in Rob’s interests was easy, and it had occurred to her that he wouldn’t want to know that she loved him any more than she wanted him to.
Over their meal she witnessed the professional side of Rob, aware of his clever eyes noting everything—layout, decor, service and more—and she knew that he was comparing this hotel, part of a famous chain, with those in the Ballard Group.
‘Our hotel is much better,’ she volunteered sincerely, and he laughed with a real appreciation that lit his entire face, bringing a tender smile of satisfaction to her lips.
‘Of course it is.’
‘Because it’s a Ballard one,’ she responded lyrically, and his smile became complicated.
‘At last I’m getting to see the sunny-natured girl Hassan Mohammed described to me.’ The smile faded and he sounded curiously intense as he asked, ‘Have you simply found a new brand of courage, or are you really so happy all of a sudden, Lucia?’
‘Oh, yes,’ she assured him, ambiguously, and he looked slightly sceptical.
She was as happy as she was ever going to be, she reflected, hiding the seeping sadness the thought occasioned—and that was half-happy, and only if Rob was happy. For her to be wholly happy, he would have to love her.
‘And free?’ His voice still had that imperative tone, almost urgent now. ‘Or just accepting?’
‘Free too,’ she managed composedly.
She supposed she was—free to love him. She didn’t want any other freedom. She wanted him to imprison her in his love. He had confessed to being demanding and possessive in his relationships. She wanted to be the one chosen to meet his demands and submit to the possessiveness. There would be no shame in such a surrender, nothing to bruise her pride, because if he loved her it would automatically mean that he respected her.
But how could he?
‘I just hope you mean it,’ Rob was responding, with an odd inflexion in his voice, and she saw an expression of reserve take hold of his face, hardening it until the skin seemed to be stretched over unyielding steel.
Don’t let him know yet.
The wish was so fervent that it wrenched at her heart, and Lucia threw herself into the business of pleasing once more, a little sigh of relief rushing from her lungs as he co-operatively gauged her mood and responded to it.
Impersonal subjects were the rule for the remainder of the meal, and as they drove back along the coast afterwards.
‘Thank you, Rob,’ Lucia said when she was out of the car, keeping her hands curled into fists at her sides in resistance to an impulse to reach out and pull him towards her.
‘It was an absolute pleasure, Lucia,’ he returned amusedly, handing her her purchases. ‘Don’t forget we’re having dinner tomorrow night Tonight is out, unfortunately. I’ve got a formal working dinner with some members of the government. They’re far from being fundamentalists, but it’s a strictly male affair, nevertheless.
‘I’m going to have to spend most of tomorrow with Chester Watson and the senior admin staff, but I’ll find time to let you know where and when. All right?’
If he was going to be that busy, at least she wouldn’t have to torture herself by imagining him with Madelon when he wasn’t around!
Rob came into the hotel shop early the following evening, giving her a quick smile and waiting patiently while she concluded a transaction.
‘Rob?’ she greeted him questioningly when the couple departed after she had confirmed that they had made the right choice of sunscreen for their toddler’s peachy skin.
‘Tonight? Will you come up to my suite around eight-thirty and we’ll have dinner there?’ He waited a moment, to see if she raised any objections and, observing her beginning to nod and smile, continued, ‘I’ll see you then. Right now I’m supposed to be hosting a session at the pool bar with Chester and the others who’ve worked with us today. Don’t worry, I won’t get drunk—although they’re entitled to if that’s their inclination after all their input.’
He departed, but before he had gone very far she saw Madelon approach him, and he stopped to talk to her for a few seconds, the sound of their mingled laughter intensifying the ache in Lucia’s heart.
‘She didn’t know if he understood Madelon as well as he did her or not, but, even if he did, he would like and respect her. Madelon wasn’t a mixed-up mess of a person as she was; she didn’t take love or sex too seriously, and she didn’t make stupid mistakes in her personal life.
Lucia knew better than to believe that there was any significance at all in his decision that they should have dinner in his suite. After working hard all day, he probably simply didn’t feel like having to make himself charming to the sort of strangers who couldn’t be satisfied with just recognising a public figure but had to approach and attempt to engage him in conversation.
Yet she couldn’t help remembering the phrases that he had used on the beach the other night: ‘not yet’ had been his reply when she had asked if he wanted to make love, and he had talked of their not being ready…
Oh, she was being stupid to think that he had been doing anything more than letting her down gently. He was attracted to Madelon, and he loved Shelagh.
Anyway, from Rob’s point of view nothing had changed since that night, except that he was now confident that she wasn’t going to try and win Thierry back. That was hardly enough to persuade him that she was now ready, always supposing that he had given any subsequent thought at all to the feeling that had flared between them out there on the beach.
But he might want to take things further. Lucia’s heart raced as she contemplated the possibility. It had to be Rob’s decision. She knew that she couldn’t set out to seduce him, or even make her desire for him too obvious. To do so might be to impose, and perhaps sway him towards something he might not otherwise choose.
Nevertheless, she showered and dressed herself with all the care of the bride on her wedding day when the time came to start readying herself to go to Rob’s suite.
The dress she chose—straight and simple—was a deep, subtle shade of dark green which lent depth to the colour of her eyes, while her dangling earrings were in several shades of brighter green; they were the tiny, exquisitely wrought birds which had suddenly appeared and become fashionable in several southern African countries in recent years. Her straight hair shone and the lipstick she kept for special occasions—a soft, tawny red—imparted a satiny sheen to her sensitive lips.
She wished that she had some scent, but the need to save for her returning trips to the Comoros had precluded such luxuries, and Madelon wasn’t around to borrow from, so she went up to Rob’s suite unperfumed save for the faint fragrance of her newly washed hair.
‘You look gorgeous,’ he complimented her, with a quick flashing smile, when she arrived, but there was such a strange, hard light in his eyes that she was dismayed.
His choice of neutral topics of conversation while they had a drink and then ate was similarly a rejection, but her amicable compliance came easily enough, simply because it was what he wanted.
The invitation to come up here had meant nothing, then, and it had been unreasonable of her to hope that it might. What could he possibly see in her when she had been so stupidly confused and so angry for most of their short acquaintance? He couldn’t think that she was of much interest at all, and even his desire for her had to have been a transitory, intermittent thing, unwanted and probably only occasioned by actual physical contact with her.
And she had promised herself not to be the one to attempt to initiate anything, lest it prove an imposition, and it was becoming very clear that he had no wish for anything more intimate than a sociable evening.
Even when the waiter on special duty had come and cleared away for them after their meal and Lucia had deliberately seated herself on the couch with space for Rob beside her, just in case a miracle
should happen and he wanted to get closer to her, he chose to occupy a single chair.
She swallowed as she looked at him, shocked by a pang of longing so intense that it came as a surprise to realise that she hadn’t actually cried out with the force of it. With his trousers he was wearing a beautifully made casual shirt, the chalk colour dramatically emphasising the darkness of his skin and hair, and she wanted him very badly.
But there was a certain physical tension about him, to which she had been sensitive all evening, and it seemed as much a denial of her desires as the hardness of his eyes and the taut, almost angry curve of his mouth. He must have sensed something of what she was feeling, and, without bringing it out into the open, this was his way of rejecting her, keeping a distance between them both emotionally and physically.
They continued to talk of netural things, the only remotely personal topic they touched on being the other hotels to which he was planning to give some future attention. One was in the Maldives, and Lucia’s face lit up.
‘Oh! I lived there too once.’ She gave a quick smile at the memory. ‘Dugongs are sometimes seen in those waters as well. Maybe you’ll meet a mermaid.’
‘I don’t want a mermaid.’ Their eyes collided. ‘I want you.’
For several moments Lucia half believed that her imagination had supplied the words, just because she had been longing so intensely for something of the kind.
‘Rob…?’ she faltered uncertainly. ‘Really me?’
A slight laugh came from him. ‘I didn’t mean to say that. I’ve been trying not to all evening, but the fact that you now accept the situation with Olivier makes the temptation irresistible.’
‘What about Madelon?’ Lucia asked breathlessly.
‘What about her? She’s charming, and, like any man, I get a buzz out of being pursued. As she’s not the sort of woman who is going to be crushed by failure, I haven’t bothered actively discouraging her. But nor have I encouraged her—although I’m sure she’ll have led you to believe otherwise, as part of her tactics in what she obviously sees as your friendly rivalry. It’s you I want, Lucia.’
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