Charade of the Heart

by Cathy Williams

  She sincerely hoped that Roger would not prove to be the persistent type. She abhorred the idea of leading men on—not that there had exactly been a series of them cluttering up her life anyway.

  Craig had been the only one in as long as she could remember who had managed to break through the glaring hands-off signals she gave off.

  She had watched Laura’s constant entourage of men with amusement, but that sort of thing was not for her, she had decided a long time ago. But Craig had persisted, growing first piqued, then bored, then angry at her refusal to sleep with him. He had eventually left, leaving her to wonder whether it had all been worth it.

  Could a man never enjoy a relationship without assuming that sex would be the inevitable outcome?

  Marcos was frowning slightly at her, but Roger either did not notice or else saw nothing sinister in it. He sidled across to her and whispered, ‘Tonight? How about a drink? I’m staying at one of the other hotels and the bigwigs will be having their meeting. So say I pick you up here around nine o’clock?’

  The question hung in the air, and out of the corner of her eye she could see Marcos looking at her, his face grim.

  ‘Why not?’ she replied on impulse. If Marcos thought the worse of her, then that was his affair. She surely wouldn’t be required to do any work on her first evening in St Lucia?

  As soon as Roger had left, Jane approached her and said in a voice loud enough for Marcos to hear, ‘My, you do establish your…contacts quickly.’

  Beth bit back the retort. ‘You’re quite welcome to join us.’

  ‘I wouldn’t dream of it,’ Jane said loudly. ‘You know what they say about two’s company. Anyway, I have some homework to catch up on later. I do envy you just being a secretary. Personally speaking, I don’t think I’ll have the time to enjoy this lovely island.’

  Shame, Beth thought to herself, you must be very stupid to pass up the opportunity of seeing this wonderful place simply in an effort to impress Marcos Adrino.

  She watched as Jane left for her room with an airy wave, preceded by the porter carrying her luggage, and was about to do the same when she felt Marcos’s hand close around her arm.

  ‘Not so fast,’ he drawled.

  Beth stopped in her tracks and turned to face him, staring pointedly down at where he was gripping her arm. It was lost on him. He continued to grasp her, leading her across to one of the bars.

  ‘Care for a drink?’ he asked.

  ‘No. Thank you.’

  ‘What will it be? Something long and cold?’

  Beth shrugged and tried to ignore the sensation of his fingers on her bare flesh. His hand was warm on her skin and sent a little frisson of awareness through her body.

  ‘I’ll have a grapefruit juice,’ she said finally, realising that any attempt to get to her room was futile. This man was not accustomed to having his implicit orders countermanded, and he wasn’t about to change now.

  ‘Fine.’ He ordered drinks for them both, and ushered her across to a chair.

  ‘What do you think of St Lucia so far?’ he asked, his dark eyes meeting hers directly.

  Beth’s gaze shifted away from him. Whenever he looked at her so intently, she immediately began to feel nervous and self-conscious.

  ‘It’s beautiful.’

  ‘I hope it doesn’t go to your head.’

  ‘Meaning?’

  ‘Meaning that you seem to have forgotten my little warning to you.’

  ‘I haven’t.’ Why pretend that she didn’t know what he was talking about?

  ‘And it still didn’t stop you from making arrangements to see Roger Drew tonight?’ he asked softly.

  Beth’s eyes flashed. ‘I didn’t think that all my time here was answerable to you!’

  ‘It is if I tell you so.’

  ‘Don’t you think that that’s a little autocratic?’ she asked sweetly, stifling her anger at his attitude. She had never met someone so arrogant in her life before. Was it really any wonder that she disliked him so much?

  ‘You’re not here on a goddammed holiday.’

  ‘I realise that. And I wouldn’t have made arrangements to see anyone if I knew that there was work to be done. But, unlike Jane,’ she couldn’t resist adding, even though she could hear the childish edge in her voice, ‘I don’t have a workload to take to bed.’

  ‘So you’ve decided to replace it with something else? Or, should I say, someone else?’

  ‘How dare you?’

  ‘I dare because you work for me. A little detail that you seem to have conveniently put to the back of your mind.’ He sipped from his drink, and continued to stare at her from under his long lashes.

  Beth wanted to tell him that it was none of his business what she did with Roger Drew, but sensed instinctively that such a remark would be akin to playing dangerously close to a fire.

  She had already come close to losing her sister’s job for her. There was no point in pushing her luck.

  If only, she thought. If only it were my job, then I’d tell him exactly what he could do with it. She tried to think of the bliss of never having to set eyes on that devilishly handsome face in her life again, but her mind refused to co-operate. Had he got so much under her skin? she wondered uneasily.

  ‘Something about you doesn’t add up,’ he said lazily, not taking his eyes off her. ‘I don’t know if it’s the impression you’re trying to make, but with that new hairdo you seem to be trying to give off different signals. Now, though, I can see that it was just my mind playing tricks on me. I mean, you seem to have forgotten Ryan with the greatest of ease, don’t you?’

  Beth fidgeted in her chair, her face burning. She hated mention of David Ryan’s name. He was the man who had betrayed her sister, and anyway, she was hardly qualified to talk about him.

  But Marcos obviously expected some kind of answer.

  ‘I haven’t forgotten him,’ she said, lowering her eyes.

  ‘Trying to, then?’ he prompted, his eyes hard. ‘Trying to drown your lovesick blues in another man?’

  ‘No! I’m not trying to do any such thing!’

  ‘Then what? Don’t tell me that you still feel anything for him.’

  ‘Yes, I do!’ She remembered her sister’s words, her pathetic expressions of love. ‘I still love him!’ It was out before she could help herself, and she saw an icy shutter clamp down over his eyes.

  ‘Love?’ he scorned. ‘Is that how you express your love? By leading on Drew?’ He sat forward and, his action too quick to be avoidable, took her face between his hands, forcing her to look at him.

  Beth had the buckling sensation of going under.

  ‘I won’t allow it!’ he asserted.

  ‘It’s none of your business,’ she exploded, her anger partly aimed at herself for having expressed an opinion that she was really not qualified to speak on. How could she have let this stupid charade overcome her natural sense of discretion? How could she have let slip anything about David, when, whether Marcos knew it or not, it had nothing to do with her personally?

  She hated this deceit. Not for the first time, she wished desperately that she had stuck to her guns and refused to give in to her sister.

  ‘It damned well is! Have you forgotten that he’s a member of my company? Have you forgotten that I don’t need my secretary to shout her indiscretions from the roof-tops?’

  ‘I’m doing nothing of the sort!’ she protested feebly. But she could see all too clearly how she must appear in his eyes. A woman who had slept with one man, in fact still professed to love him, yet was not against making a rendezvous with another the minute the opportunity arose.

  There was blatant scorn on his face. It was this contempt that made her burst out vehemently, ‘I don’t lecture to you on how you conduct your personal life!’ She held her breath, waiting for the inevitable fury, but none came.

  Instead, he relaxed back in his chair. ‘Would you like to?’ he asked with lazy interest.

  ‘Would I like to what?’ She s
till felt dazed at this abrupt departure from what she had expected.

  ‘Lecture to me on my personal life. I know you’ve got a bagful of opinions on it, even though it’s clear to the both of us that you have no right. So come on, tell me what you think. No one ever has before. It might make an amusing change.’

  There was silence. Was this yet another game he was playing with her? she wondered. He seemed to be waiting for her answer, mildly curious, his long fingers stroking the side of his glass absent-mindedly.

  ‘I really don’t think that we ought to be having this conversation,’ she ventured awkwardly. ‘I am only your secretary, after all.’

  ‘You mean if we had slept together, you might have had more of a right to tell me what you thought?’

  His voice was tantalisingly soft and it sent an excited shiver through her.

  Unbidden, a thousand thoughts sprang into her head. Slept with him. If she had slept with him. What would it be like?

  She suddenly felt so strong a yearning to find out that she gasped in shock.

  Those long, clever fingers, what would it be like to feel them exploring her body, to feel his mouth moving restlessly against hers?

  My God, she thought with a flood of panic, get a grip on yourself! You’ve been disillusioned once before, remember? He’s not your type, remember?

  ‘It’s not my place to volunteer any information like that,’ she whispered huskily, not daring to look at him fully in the face, concentrating on the potted plant just to the right of him. A magnificent dwarf palm that would never have survived in England.

  ‘It’s not stopped you before. In fact, until recently, I assumed that you didn’t have any opinions on my private life one way or another, but now—well, tell me. It’s an order.’

  ‘If you really want to know,’ Beth began hesitatingly, her body rigid with tension, ‘from what I’ve seen, you don’t mind using women for your own ends. You take them and, as soon as they stop amusing you, you have no qualms in dropping them. Like a child that suddenly loses interest in a plaything. Don’t you care that they might be more involved with you than you are with them?’

  She thought of Angela Fordyce, desperate enough to accost him in his office even though he had finished with her. She looked like a woman who had always pulled the strings, except with Marcos.

  ‘Why do you object to that? Aren’t you the same?’

  Beth’s automatic response was to deny the accusation, but how could she?

  ‘Besides,’ he continued when she remained silent, ‘I never give promises I can’t keep. True enough, I wine, dine and bed them, but I play fairly. I never let them think that the relationship stretches beyond those parameters.’

  ‘You make sure that they don’t get their feet into the front door.’

  ‘That’s right,’ he drawled. ‘I never was interested in playing house—not as a little boy, and not now. Marriage is one institution I don’t intend to succumb to. From what I’ve seen, the attractions are invariably short-lived.’

  Beth swallowed some of the fruit juice. She felt as though they were entirely alone, swept up into some terribly intimate vortex.

  ‘I see,’ she said.

  ‘I’m sure you do.’ The knowing critism behind his words snapped her back to reality.

  For a second she had an insane desire to confess everything to him, but of course it was insane. She was in too deep now to fall victim to any such impulse.

  All she could do was ride with the tide and hope that it brought her to safe shores eventually.

  ‘What time do we start work tomorrow?’ she asked, her voice still unsteady. She had to bring this conversation back to a manageable level. At all costs.

  Marcos shot her a lazy, assessing look. ‘Nine. I have a meeting with some planners. I’ll want you there to take notes and you can type up the necessary report in the afternoon. I’ve instructed the hotel to have a typewriter installed in your bedroom. Not as advanced as the computer, but it’ll have to do.’

  ‘Certainly.’ Her voice was definitely more controlled now. She risked a glance at him and felt another strange quiver shoot through her.

  ‘I think I’ll leave now,’ she muttered, standing up, eager to escape his company. ‘I need a bath, and I have unpacking to do…’ Her voice tapered out.

  ‘Have a nice night out. With Roger. And take this as a warning: keep your hands off him. You can bed-hop with anyone else, just so long as he doesn’t work for me.’

  He meant it too. Every word. The threat lay there in those black eyes and in the grim lines of his mouth.

  Beth walked away quickly, her heart beating so loudly that it hurt. She barely noticed her surroundings as she followed the porter to her bedroom, anxious for him to leave so that she could release her body from its heightened tension in privacy.

  As soon as he had gone, she felt herself go limp. She ran a bath, settling comfortably into it and wished that her thoughts were as comfortable.

  But they weren’t. They were chaotic, mad, teasing little shadows that fluttered away the minute she tried to control them.

  If only she could stand back from Marcos, but something inside her refused to oblige. She felt like a moth, lured by a bright light, but bright lights, she reminded herself, could be fatal to unsuspecting moths.

  She had a light supper in her room, excusing herself to Jane on the weak grounds that she wanted to get some rest before she went out that evening.

  ‘Fine,’ Jane agreed coolly, ‘as I told you, I have a lot of reading to do anyway. Where are you and Roger going?’ There was a tinge of envy in her voice which Beth ignored. She felt sorry for Jane. The other woman was obviously lonely and loneliness often bred spite.

  ‘I don’t know,’ Beth said pleasantly. ‘We’ll probably just stay here for a drink. I want an early night.’

  ‘Really?’ She said that in a tone that implied disbelief. ‘Well, have a good time.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Beth replied politely.

  Actually the last thing she needed was an evening of stilted conversation with someone she didn’t know from Adam, but it would have been churlish to have now given him some excuse, having promised earlier to meet him.

  She had a quick nap, and then dressed hurriedly in a pair of lilac culottes and a matching flowered blouse.

  Roger was waiting downstairs for her. He ran his eyes approvingly over her slim body and ushered her out to where the car was waiting.

  ‘But I thought we could stay here,’ Beth protested.

  ‘I know a nice little place. Much cosier than here.’ He smiled warmly at her. ‘Don’t worry about my keeping you out too late. I have orders to collect the master at a specific time.’

  ‘The master?’ She giggled, relaxing. ‘Is that how you refer to Marcos?’

  Roger grinned at her, opening the car door for her to enter. ‘Don’t you think that it’s an apt description?’

  ‘It has a ring about it,’ she agreed, staring out of the window as the car pulled out of the confines of the hotel.

  She had rolled the window down, and the sultry breeze blew lazily over her, whipping her hair around her face.

  The darkness around them was alive with night sounds, the peaceful calling of insects. It filled the air, a constant reminder that there, in the shadows, life on a different level was throbbing and alive.

  They drove to a charming bar, all verandas and gables, and Beth happily allowed Roger to lead the conversation for the evening, relishing the warmth and enjoying his amusing anecdotes.

  She liked Roger. He was relaxing. Nothing about him taxed her, or set her on edge. In face, he was as diametrically opposed to Marcos as anyone could be.

  She had two piña coladas, and found that she was laughing a lot and really rather enjoying herself.

  ‘Can we do this again?’ Roger asked when they were back at the hotel.

  ‘Who knows?’ Beth replied evasively, ‘It was fun, but I have an awful lot of work to get through while I’m here.’ And besi
des, she added to herself, Marcos is watching me, and for some ridiculous reason I care what he thinks.

  ‘Is that a polite brush-off?’ His voice was light-heartedly resigned rather than mortally offended, and for that she was glad.

  ‘I don’t want involvement,’ she said truthfully.

  ‘Does that just apply to me, or is the rest of the male species included?’

  ‘Oh, the latter.’ She laughed, and had another, unexpectedly vivid image of Marcos’s cynical face, then she blinked and the vision vanished.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I like my life the way it is at the moment,’ she responded, hearing a shade of doubt in her voice. She always had liked the simplicity of her life, its untroubled predictability. Craig had temporarily ruffled the calm surface, but afterwards the ripples had gradually smoothed over and things had returned to what they had been. She had seen it as a salutary experience. So why was she beginning to feel dissatisfied now?

  ‘So we part as platonic friends?’ Roger asked lightly, and she nodded. ‘Platonic friends can still have drinks together, you know. Or do you have a rule against that as well?’

  ‘No rule.’

  ‘Then if the opportunity arises?’

  ‘Sure. A platonic drink would be very enjoyable.’ They smiled at one another, and then he bent forwards, brushing his lips against hers, deepening his kiss until she pulled away.

  ‘That,’ he informed her ruefully, ‘was just my way of saying goodbye to what might have been. And now I’ll leave you in peace. The Prince of Darkness summons.’ They laughed, and Beth made her way back to the bedroom. The two piña coladas had made her feel pleasantly fuzzy, and Roger’s company had been a welcome change from the confused tension which she always felt in Marcos’s presence.

  Not, she thought the following morning, that there was an opportunity to feel anything except exhausted. The meeting was hard, and she sat alongside Marcos, barely finding the time to look up, her hand flying over her pad as she took notes of everything that was being said. Jane made sure that she contributed her fair share to what was being discussed, glancing across every so often at Beth, reminding her of their different responsibilities.