Town life had already disappeared, to be replaced by village life, and now that too was vanishing as wilderness took over. Trees and forest land rearing up on either side of the road were restrained from making a complete take-over by the bumpy strip of tarmac. Occasionally they passed a house or two, primitive, picturesque dwellings precariously balanced on patches of cleared land. Even less occasionally they passed people, and when they did they were stared at with silent curiosity.
She wished, she said, that she had brought some books with her so that she could identify more.
‘It’s all so tame at a garden centre,’ she explained, not wanting to take her eyes off the roadside in case she missed something. ‘All neatly laid out in tubs and boxes. Even the exotic plants like the orchids seem strange and lifeless compared to out here where they grow wild. Am I boring you?’ She shot him an anxious glance and he smiled, a real smile, warm and amused.
‘Shall I stop so that you can get out and have a closer look at everything?’
‘Would you mind very much?’
So she clambered out and had a look around and picked a few flowers growing wild at the side of the road then scrambled back into the car.
‘For me?’ he asked drily, eyeing the flowers when she was back inside the car, and he smiled again so that she went pink and felt a little flustered.
‘I thought they’d match your shirt,’ she joked.
‘I’ll stick one behind my ear, shall I?’ he asked.
‘I’m glad you’re in a better mood.’ She couldn’t imagine what prompted her into saying that. Relief, maybe, that he wasn’t scowling? She felt light-hearted and carefree. If she’d had anything of a voice, she might even have sung.
‘Was I in a bad mood? No,’ he continued, glancing at her sideways then concentrating on the road again, ‘don’t answer that.’
‘Was it something I did?’ She frowned, thinking back.
‘Why do you always blame yourself for everything?’
‘Habit, I guess,’ she answered, surprising herself again. ‘I grew up blaming myself for not being like my parents and I suppose I never really stopped.’ She laughed self-consciously and turned away.
They had reached the top of the island now. Everything gave way to the Grand Etang, an extinct volcanic crater, a great yawning mouth of flat, metallic blue water that gave you the creepy feeling of immeasurable depth.
They got out of the car to stretch their legs. Away from the crater, they could plunge into the rainforest and Lisa looked longingly at it, conjuring up the bamboo trees, the creeping vines, the dark silence broken only by the sounds of birds and wild animals.
For a fleeting second, and for the first time, she felt a vivid empathy with her parents and their constant quest for new things. Then she blinked and the feeling was gone.
There was no one else around. No tourists, no locals.
‘We are the first people to discover this,’ she announced with her arms outstretched. ‘Shall we fly our flag and name it after us?’ She laughed, delighted, and he grinned at her.
‘You’re like a child with a new toy,’ he said, amused.
‘Can you blame me?’ She walked towards him and looked up at him seriously. ‘I’ve never seen anything like this in my life before. My parents may have cultivated the art of travelling, but never outside England, and besides, when you’re being dragged along, it’s difficult after a while to appreciate new things without feeling a little jaundiced. When you’re eleven or twelve or thirteen, moving from one place to another is just disorienting, or at least it was for me. There’s no excitement, there’s just that horrible tearful feeling of saying goodbye to people whose faces you were just beginning to grow accustomed to.’
‘Some might have seen all that constant travel as a way of making hundreds of friends.’
‘True,’ Lisa said, walking back slowly towards the car, ‘but not me. I don’t think I was ever extrovert enough for that.’ She laughed and said brightly, ‘Why are we being so serious when the sun is shining and the birds are singing and it’s our last day on this wonderful island?’
‘Because,’ Angus said softly from beside her, ‘I want to get through to you.’
Lisa didn’t say anything. For the past hour or so he had been her companion; she had relaxed with him, she had laughed with him, she had forgotten her nerves. Now he was a man again and her nerves were back. The silky intent in his voice, the awareness of his blue eyes on her face were like the touch of something warm and inviting and dangerous.
She slipped into the passenger seat, slammed the door and waited, without looking, for him to get in. She expected him to continue his line of thought, and she could already feel the muscles in her stomach tensing in preparation, but he didn’t. He flicked on the engine and began driving away from the crater and out towards the coast on the windward side.
When he spoke, it was about normal things, things she could deal with; he asked her questions about work and whether she was looking forward to getting back, about her plans for the future, about her friends, about what she did in the evenings in Reading. Was there much of a night-life? he asked, and laughed when she told him that the only night-life she seriously considered was a cup of hot chocolate in front of the television, with her legs curled up underneath her and her book on her lap. On weekends she saw friends.
‘And no boyfriend,’ he stated conversationally, and she ignored him, which made him laugh again, although there was a hard edge to his laughter.
They reached Grand Anse, sticky and tired, and Angus turned to her and said in a dry voice, ‘There, back in one piece. Was it as much of an ordeal as you’d expected?’
‘Thank you,’ she said, looking down so that her hair fell across her eyes and she had to sweep it aside with her hand. ‘It was wonderful.’
And that, she thought later, over supper, should have been that. Except she found herself thinking about what he had said, that one sentence that had sprung out of nothing and led nowhere. He had said that he wanted to get through to her. What had he meant?
She heard herself answering Liz and Gerry’s questions, showing the right level of enthusiasm, which really wasn’t difficult because it had been a glorious day, but her mind was miles away.
For the first time she contemplated what it was going to be like returning to England and she had a clammy, suffocating feeling of despair. She doubted that she would ever see Angus Hamilton again. Oh, of course, there would be the usual polite parting words about keeping in touch and if she was ever up in London she’d drop by and they could go out for a meal, but she knew that the end of this holiday was the end of it.
Her heart began to beat faster and she stole a glance at him across the table, trying to recapture some of the relief she had felt earlier on at the thought that she would no longer have to be near him and have to cope with the disturbing rollercoaster of emotions which he provoked in her.
I can go back to my life, she told herself unconvincingly. I can get back to reality, because this isn’t reality. She wished she could persuade herself that it was a happy prospect, but now, when she thought about it, all she could see was an interminable series of days and weeks and months and years without him around, and she had to struggle to keep a smile on her face when something inside was collapsing. Idiotically.
It was a relief when the meal was finished and the small talk was done and she no longer had to avoid looking at Angus in case her face revealed too much.
She shut herself in her bedroom, lay on the bed, closed her eyes, opened them, abandoned all hope of sleep, and at a little after midnight slipped into her shorts and T-shirt and made her way to the now totally deserted beach.
She strolled along. There was peace here. The gentle sound of water against coastline, the black sea calm and unruffled. She stood looking out at it and Angus’s voice in her ear was such a shock that when she spun around she half expected that it might have been a hallucination.
It wasn’t.
�
�Couldn’t sleep either?’ he asked, standing next to her but not close.
She couldn’t look at him. If she looked at him, she would end up drowning, so she stared out to sea and said calmly, while her fingers curled into a ball at her sides and her head spun, ‘I must be nervous about the plane trip tomorrow. I was the same before I flew over.’
‘Is that it?’ he murmured. He took her arm and guided her away from the shoreline and up the beach. He sat down but she remained hovering. ‘Sit. I want to talk to you.’
‘Do you? What about?’ She sat down, but reluctantly, and he turned to face her.
‘Look at me.’ He held her chin so that she had to look at him and said, as though continuing a conversation which had already been started, ‘I was in a foul temper this morning because I didn’t want to take you anywhere but I had to.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Lisa whispered awkwardly, ‘but I’m afraid I don’t understand. I think we should go inside; it’s terribly late.’
‘That’s exactly what I mean.’
‘What?’
‘Hasn’t anyone ever told you that the faster you run, the harder you’ll be chased?’ His voice was curt and she stared up at him, wide-eyed and uncomprehending. ‘You act like a startled deer caught in someone’s headlights, posed to take flight.’
‘I’m sorry—’ she began, but he interrupted sharply,
‘Will you stop apologising? Can you understand what I’m trying to tell you here? I want you, dammit!’
There was a long silence. She continued to stare at him, and she could hear the sound of her heart beating, the sound of the blood in her veins, the sound of her brain trying to come to terms with what he had just said. She wondered whether she might have imagined it.
‘No,’ she said finally, in a nervous, placating voice, edging away.
Catching her wrist, he grated, ‘Stop running away from me.’
‘We’ve been through this,’ she murmured weakly, ‘We agreed—’
‘Nothing. We agreed nothing. Do you imagine that I like being controlled by something as uncontrollable as desire?’ He pulled her towards him so that she half fell, and ended up much closer to him than she wanted.
‘I don’t know what to say.’
‘Then don’t talk. Just finish what was started.’ He curled his fingers into her hair and kissed her without any pretence at gentleness, with a hunger that stirred the flame within her to fire.
Lisa whimpered and tried to turn away and he said huskily, ‘Stop trying to fight this thing.’ He made it sound as though ‘this thing’ was somehow monstrous and overwhelming. It was how she felt as well. She had the sensation of being caught in the grip of something that was too big for whatever small defences she had. Desire. Desire as fierce and as savage and as unrelenting as an animal bent on destruction. Desire was what he called it and he should know because he was so much more experienced than she was.
‘Tell me that you don’t want me,’ he groaned against her mouth, and in that instant the promise of what she might have washed away all the caution that existed in her body. She reached up and pulled him towards her, down to the sand, which was dry and powdery under her, kissing him with the same hunger as he had kissed her, a hunger that frightened and excited her in its intensity.
His mouth burnt against her skin and she knew now just how much she had longed for this. Ever since he had kissed her that first time and maybe even before, something inside her had been simmering, waiting for the match to be lit.
She moaned in abandonment as he kissed her face, her neck, turning her head this way and that so that he could caress every bit of exposed skin. He told her, unevenly, that he wanted to touch every part of her body with his mouth and she trembled.
She was not wearing a bra and her breasts ached under the cotton T-shirt. She held his wrist and guided his hand under it and shivered as his palm covered her breast.
He pulled the T-shirt over her head. The breeze on her skin felt good, cooling, and she lay back with her arms outstretched and her eyes half closed, like someone in a trance.
He bent his head and covered her nipple with his mouth, circling it wetly and hungrily, and she arched herself forward, wanting him to absorb more and more of her, until there was nothing left.
When, with her eyes still shut, she felt his hand unzip her shorts, she didn’t resist him. She struggled out of them, impatient to return to their lovemaking, hating any interruption, however slight.
This time there was no sharp awakening to reality. This was reality, the only reality that she needed—the here and now.
She parted her legs to accommodate his enquiring fingers and moved against them, barely able to contain herself. In a minute she would no longer be able to fight off the ultimate climax, but he seemed to sense this because he slowed his hand, and slowly licked and kissed her stomach, then her thighs. And she felt his tongue move delicately into the core of her womanhood.
With one hand he continued to stroke her breast, teasing her nipple which was already large and taut with arousal.
She felt her body flinch as he thrust into her.
‘I know,’ he murmured hoarsely. ‘I know. I won’t hurt you.’
When he moved inside her again, it was with infinite gentleness, and after a short while her muscles began to relax and she was no longer tense but moaning as his rhythm gathered momentum.
She watched the flat planes of his torso as he moved against her, propped up by one hand while the other massaged her breast, then she closed her eyes and felt waves of pleasure rushing through her, making her ears sing, making her cry out, a hoarse sound in the still, unbroken night. She felt the warm darkness wrap around them like a protective blanket, and she felt a tremendous sense of freedom, of being as light as air. She could have stayed like that for ever.
‘Not the most ideal spot for making love,’ he said softly into her ear, and she smiled at him.
I love you, she thought. The feeling was so immense that it seemed to take her over. I love you. When did this happen? She ran her fingers through his hair, liking the feel of it slipping through her fingers.
‘Absolutely ideal,’ she whispered drowsily. ‘All black and silver and empty, with nature around us everywhere.’
He laughed, as though the thought hadn’t occurred to him.
‘What do we do now?’ she asked, looking at him. He was all angles and shadows and his eyes glittered in his face.
‘We could go back to your room,’ he suggested, and she realised with the first stirrings of reality that they were talking at cross purposes. He leaned over her and stroked the side of her face. ‘Or we could stay out here surrounded by black and silver nature.’ He laughed softly.
She said in a shaky voice, ‘No, I mean, what do we do now? Where do we go from here? What happens to us?’ The magic and romance were beginning to fade, like mist dissipating, but she had to know.
‘What do you want to happen?’
‘I don’t know.’ She did know. She wanted to spend the rest of her life with him but she knew without having to be told that that was not a suggestion to be voiced.
‘I’m immensely attracted to you,’ he murmured, sounding a little surprised.
She watched his powerful arms. ‘And you can’t understand why.’
‘You’re not like any of the other women I’ve gone out with in the past.’
‘What sort of women have you gone out with in the past?’ She wanted to sit up now and get dressed. The bubble which had surrounded them in that euphoric moment of lovemaking, when she had whimsically imagined that her dreams were about to come true, had burst.
‘If I told you, you’d jump to all the wrong conclusions. You’d think that comparisons were being made.’
‘Tell me.’
He shrugged, still smiling, still stroking her hair away from her face. ‘Very glamorous, very brittle.’
‘Like Caroline?’
‘Older, but yes, same model, I suppose.’
She sat up a
nd tried not to appear as though she was about to run away. I get the picture, she wanted to say. You’re attracted to me, maybe because I’m a different model from the rest, but I do have one vital thing in common with your queue of glamorous, brittle blondes, haven’t I? I’m just passing through.
‘I want to see you when we get back to England,’ he said softly.
‘For how long?’ she enquired.
‘Who knows? We may get thoroughly sick of each other after a week.’ He was teasing her, but she wasn’t about to be teased. His words had a chilling element of truth behind them. What he wanted was sex, until she had been weaned out of his system. No talk of commitment, certainly no talk of love.
But I love you, she thought, and I don’t know if I can be with you for one week or two or a month or six months, never knowing when the end will come. It was like travelling with her parents all over again. The same insecurity, the same rootlessness. It wasn’t what she wanted.
‘London’s a long way from Reading,’ she told him.
‘I have a very fast car.’
She slipped on her T-shirt with shaking fingers, feeling the sand against her skin with sudden distaste, then she stood up and began putting on the rest of her clothes.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked sharply, also standing up and getting dressed, and she shrugged, ‘Are you going to tell me or am I going to have to play guessing games with you?’
‘Nothing’s the matter.’
‘You’ve switched off,’ he said, with an edge to his voice. ‘One minute you’re opening up to me and the next minute you’ve retreated behind those walls of yours again. Now, are you going to tell me what’s wrong or am I going to have to shake it out of you?’
She began walking off. She didn’t trust herself to speak. She didn’t want to do anything stupid like break down and she certainly wasn’t about to confess undying love and risk losing what little was left of her pride.
‘Answer me, dammit!’ His fingers curled round her wrist and he pulled her round to face him.
She looked at him mutely, which only seemed to sharpen the edge of his anger. Her hand lay limply in the grip of his fingers and she stabbed her toes into the sand, making a little mound like a molehill.
Accidental Mistress Page 8
