Scarlet Lady

by Sara Wood

  Leo was lying out in the sun beside a thatched beach shelter. His eyes were closed and he looked completely at ease. Several paperbacks were piled on the shelf beneath the shelter and Ginny felt their lure immediately. As a teenager she'd read avidly while waiting for photographers and agents at 'go-sees'—the auditions for aspiring models. And she'd enjoyed diving into books during the last few days she'd spent at the hotel. It had been ages since she'd had time to enjoy anything more than brief magazine articles.

  Carefully sitting herself in the shade a foot away from Leo, she leaned back in the comfortable lounger and stretched out with a soft sigh of pleasure. 'Tell me about Vincente,' she prompted.

  'Didn't you ask Agnes on your way down?' he murmured drowsily.

  Ginny looked over at him sharply. He knew her too well! 'Agnes is off duty,' she said drily.

  His mouth quirked but his eyes remained annoyingly shut. 'So, it'll have to be me!'

  'Yes.' She waited for a while then saw that he was going to make her crawl. 'Get on with it!' she muttered. 'Vincente. Tell me what you know.'

  'Got a problem there,' he drawled.

  She sat up. 'Why?' she asked suspiciously.

  'Looks like you might have to wait a while before he can see you. Agnes says he's in hospital.'

  Her face fell in disappointment. 'Oh. That explains why he hasn't come to see me.'

  'She said she thought he'd be out soon. We'd better wait till he contacts you, I suppose. I expect word will get back to him that you've been enquiring,' he said idly. 'It usually does in places like this. Incidentally, I made sure Agnes knew that I was your husband and deeply suspicious of anyone and everything. Vincente will think twice before doing anything untoward to you.' He lifted one eyelid, squinted at her and smiled. 'Thought you were going to wear that green dress affair?' he murmured.

  'That was... I got that out ready in case Vincente could see me immediately,' she said defensively. No way was she going to admit that Leo had persuaded her to change her mind about taking a taxi to Castries and to lounge on the beach instead!

  He chuckled as if he'd already worked that fact out and Ginny scowled. But Leo's eyes were closed again, his face bathed in sunshine. His body was still well honed. How, she didn't know. He played squash and tennis, rode, and was ever active on the estate, but he didn't spend hours in the gym. Her gaze dawdled over the achingly familiar contours and when she met his eyes again she started, because they were fixed steadily on her.

  'Don't be so defensive,' he murmured lazily. 'I'm not going to leap on you, remember? Grab a paperback, read, sleep, do nothing, Ginny. You might discover that you like it.' And he closed his eyes, settling down firmly for a long bask in the sun.

  By the end of the day she'd added to her earlier joy of slowing her life down to a crawl after running ragged for too many years. The novel was entertaining and amusing, lying down in the warm air was wonderful, and swimming in the deep blue Caribbean was out of this world.

  She got even better at relaxing after three further days of complete idleness. Leo didn't make any overtures to her at night, and merely bade her a polite goodnight, wandering off to his bedroom as though they were old friends instead of ex-lovers. Sometimes he'd put his arm around her shoulder or her waist in public, and he always acted like an affectionate husband whenever they chatted to fellow guests. But he never once stepped out of line.

  And the trouble was that she wished he would. Sometimes when she lay in bed, wide awake and restless, she thought that it would be nice to have a reason to slap him down, tell him that he was wasting his time. Sometimes she was more honest and admitted to herself that if she had the choice—without any strings attached— she'd climb into his bed and curl up beside him.

  She knew that she was behaving like a fool; that she should ice him out and stop enjoying herself so much. They swam, sunbathed and had taken up snorkelling. There was a lot of laughter between them, a lot of casual, no-big-issue talking. For the first time in years she felt carefree and happy.

  And it hurt. Because she had to keep up the appearance of being happily married and seemed to be doing a pretty good job of it. Without sex between them and the pressures from outside, it was obvious that they could have been good friends.

  'Tennis at eight in the morning?' Leo called, on his way to his room on the third night.

  'Lovely,' she replied, and meant it.

  'Dinner was fun.' He'd turned and was smiling at her.

  She smiled back. They'd been part of a large and friendly group—some local people as well as guests— and she'd had a ball. 'Hysterical! Was it the daiquiris or were everyone's stories really side-splitting?'

  Leo moved back into the darkness of his room. All she could see were his gleaming eyes and the paleness of his blue shirt-front, lit by the flickering candles dotted around the living area. 'Both,' he said huskily. 'And we're less stressed out than we've been for a long time. I'm enjoying this break, Ginny.'

  For a moment she hesitated, then said, 'Me too. Goodnight, Leo.' Her voice was wistful. Hastily she turned away and busied herself unnecessarily with plumping up cushions.

  'Goodnight. Look forward to our tennis in the morning.'

  She could only manage a muttered acknowledgement. His door closed and she sank down on the sofa, staring into space, her emotions choking her. It didn't seem to matter how often she tried to talk sense into her stupid brain, she seemed determined to rush headlong towards her own destruction like a mesmerised lemming.

  She was in love with Leo and always would be. And as soon as Vincente no longer posed a threat to his wretched family Leo would desert her and she'd be heading for hell.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  'YOU'RE staring at me!' she said a little self-consciously the next morning at breakfast. To hide her discomfort, she lifted the napkin from the bread-basket and threw bits of warm croissant to the black grackles, the glossy black birds which spent a happy couple of hours each morning scavenging from soft-hearted guests.

  'I was thinking how quickly your glow has come back,' Leo said casually, checking over her face and where her skin had been bared by her crimson halter-neck top.

  She beamed, her eyes alight with pleasure. 'Really?' And she covered her delight by saying lightly, 'Thank heavens! I'm fit for the cameras again!'

  'That's your fourth croissant,' he observed drily. 'Not eating for two, are you?'

  Her heart somersaulted with the pain. Chance would be a fine thing. 'No. Hungry, that's all. Four?' she squawked in horror, recovering her equilibrium fast. 'I'll need two workouts, that game of tennis and a two-hour jog to get rid of them!'

  'Such discipline! Bit of a drag, isn't it?' he murmured.

  It was. She'd rather spend the time with Leo, lounging around doing nothing. Fortunately she didn't have to answer. One of the guests was approaching them— someone she would normally have been a little wary of because' he was something of a flirt. Needing the diversion, she waved her fingers at him in welcome.

  'Hello, Lionel! Doing anything exciting today?'

  He came up close and put his hand on her bare shoulder, a leer on his slack mouth. 'You're the most exciting thing I'd like to do, Virginia!' he breathed.

  Leo's chair crashed back. He was around the table and lifting Lionel off his feet before Ginny could blink. 'I'm a jealous man, Lionel,' he said in a low, menacing whisper. 'And very possessive. I protect my wife from any unpleasantness.'

  'Leo! Please!' hissed Ginny, embarrassed.

  Slowly he lowered the startled Lionel to the ground but kept his fists wrapped around handfuls of the man's Bagshaw shirt while startled guests and waitresses looked on in fascination. 'I think your remark went a little beyond the pale, don't you?' he suggested quietly. 'More in keeping with bar talk to a whore than breakfast conversation with a lady. I'm sure you'd like to apologise.'

  Leo was smiling pleasantly now, but his mouth was thin-lipped and there was a malevolent glitter in his darkened eyes. Ginny drew in her breath.
His stance, his taut muscles—even the jerking of the pulse in his hard jaw-line—were all giving the right message: a man offended by an insult to a lady. His lady.

  The irony didn't escape her as Lionel apologised and she murmured rather sympathetic words of acknowledgement. Because Leo had been acting out a farce for everyone else's benefit and she was the last person he'd categorise as having an honour worth defending.

  After a decent interval she left to sit on the bar terrace while Leo went to change. She'd insisted that she wanted a few moments to herself, because she didn't want to talk about the incident. It had been a strain chatting intimately with him and putting her hand on his in gentle appeasement whenever his smouldering eyes had flicked over to Lionel's table in the far corner.

  Leo's chivalrous defence had been like a sword in her side. He'd behaved like that when they were first married, and her self-esteem had soared as a result. For once, she hadn't been a nuisance, clumsy, skinny or ugly. Nor had she been a slightly unreal, manufactured beauty, to be stared at and criticised, tugged this way and that by designers, photographers and the public alike.

  She had been a wife. Someone precious and worthy of a man's protection. If only! A spasm distorted her face and she frowned in annoyance at her useless whining. He didn't respect her now and never would. And he'd cheated on her, hadn't he?

  That had been something she'd never come to terms with, had never understood. It had seemed so unlike him and his sense of honour.

  Leo wandered past in his tennis whites. Her turn to change. Quickly she ran up the hill to the villa. And there, slipping a twisted scarf around her hair to draw it off her face, she reflected ruefully that she'd need a tougher skin if she was to survive the next few days of being 'married' to the supposedly jealous Leo. There would be other moments when his actions would wound her because they were only for show.

  Her tawny eyes grew sad. Introducing him to Vincente would be a bad moment. The man was presumably hopeful that he'd found his long-lost daughter. However wicked he was, he must have some good feelings—sentiment; family love—if he'd been prepared to fork out for the plane tickets and accommodation in St Lucia for that hope.

  So if he did turn out to be her father she'd then be faced with telling him some time that virtually her first words to him had been i lie and Leo wasn't her husband at all. What would he think of her then? Ginny sighed.

  It wasn't a good basis on which to begin building what must inevitably be a difficult relationship.

  If only her marriage could be resurrected from the dead!

  'Oh-h-h!' she growled in exasperation, grabbing her racket. 'Life gets so complicated!'

  In a simple sleeveless tennis shirt and skirt, her face devoid of all make-up, she joined Leo on the tennis courts. Seeing him there, leaning against a jacaranda tree, achingly handsome in the white, white shorts and shirt, she wished that she could go back to their first meeting and start again.

  There must be a way. Excitement lit her eyes. There was an answer—somewhere! She truly believed that there was an answer to every problem. The trouble came when you wanted to find it!

  'You seem eager to start,' Leo murmured silkily when she came to stand by him.

  Ginny stopped swishing her racket and jiggling up and down. 'Warming up,' she said succinctly.

  'I'll warm you up.'

  The words had been husked slowly, quietly, and they'd driven right through any defences she might have had snuggling down in all the empty corners of her body. Tense and expectant, she waited for his pass, ready to deflect it. It never came.

  'When you've played the first set,' he promised, his ardent eyes fixed on hers, 'you'll be as warm as you could desire.'

  'Huh!' she scorned, sweeping a too real hot desire from those treacherous corners. 'You'll be the one in a sweat. I've been having professional lessons.'

  'Sweetheart,' he said languidly, easing his long frame from the jacaranda and picking up his racket, 'I don't need lessons. I go on instinct and reaction.' He smiled obliquely at her. 'I think you get more depth of stroke that way.' His smile broadened when she slanted him a suspicious look. 'Shall I toss for the game?'

  'Heads,' she muttered.

  'I win. A good omen. My serve. I do hope you're ready for this.'

  Wondering if the smooth tones really did contain the hidden nuances she thought she detected, she looked at him harder. Pure innocence shone on his face. That was so unlikely a condition where he was concerned that she felt wary immediately.

  'I'm ready to return anything that comes my way,' she said calmly, and walked to the far end, anything but calm.

  He won the set. Her agitation, the powerful confrontation of his male athleticism worked against her skill.

  Several times she thought that she was winning and had a chance. It seemed not. Weakening her knees with his elation, Leo played subtle shots—underhand, tricky stuff which had her racing up and down the court after maverick balls and just failing to reach them.

  They'd gathered quite a crowd and she played harder. So did he, teasing her with better lobs than hers, infuriating her with delicate drop-shots and blasting her occasionally with fiercely driven forehands that came close to knocking the racket out of her hand.

  'Game, set, et cetera!' he called, slamming a brutal backhand into the far corner.

  A ripple of applause came from the sidelines and several of their new-found friends shouted out congratulations to them both, because she'd put up a fight she could be proud of, faced with such a devastating opponent.

  Leo leapt showily over the net, threw down his racket, whipped hers from her hand and laughed exultantly. He picked her up, his hands on her waist, like an adoring lover, and whirled her around till she was dizzy and laughing too. And trembling so much that she thought he'd know that every bone in her body had surrendered game and match to him a long time ago.

  Then she felt herself being lowered to the ground and he had taken her hot, sweating face in his.

  'Happily married, sweetheart,' he said in warning, when she made to pull back in alarm. 'Arms around my neck, big clinch. Ready?'

  'Beast!' she whispered, seduced against her will by his warm chuckle.

  And, beaten as she was, a devil entered her mind and told her not to be beaten twice in the same morning. He wanted to play with fire? He'd get an inferno!

  So she sighed, 'Darling, you were wonderful!' then smiled alluringly and wrapped her arms obediently around his neck, pulling his head down till his mouth met hers.

  A few people cheered and laughed. Ginny concentrated all her heart, all her love in the kiss, murmuring into his mouth, opening his lips with her tongue. Her hand idly rested against his heaving chest. As her kiss intensified, so did the heaving, and so did her hopes.

  Her lashes fluttered and she stole a surreptitious glance from beneath them. He was watching her carefully and she froze.

  'Don't stop, Delilah,' he murmured sardonically, infuriatingly in control of himself. 'You're making a very good job of being a besotted wife.'

  Reluctantly she wriggled away, annoyed that her best effort hadn't been good enough to weaken his brain.

  Laughing at her cross face, he lifted her off her feet again. It was a trick he'd often used when she'd argued with him in the past and it always irritated her like mad.

  'Put me down!' she demanded sullenly.

  'I'm very tempted to drop you among the screwpines, or straight in the sea,' he mused. 'You have a wicked habit of trying to lure me into your clutches.'

  'You started it!' she accused, feeling stupid hanging in mid-air. 'You told me to pretend—'

  'You weren't serious?' he queried, his eyes silvering. 'I could have sworn.'

  There were beads of sweat on his forehead and in the creases of his nose. She wanted to lick them, to taste the salt. Her tongue slipped out a little and she hastily retracted it.

  'Are you crazy?' she cried defensively. But a little late.

  Leo gave her a rueful smile and slid her do
wn his body, then turned abruptly away. 'Probably,' came his muffled voice. 'What now? Shower? Swim? Arsenic sandwich?'

  Ginny went for the first two and declined the third.

  The swim kept them apart for a while. It seemed as if neither of them wanted to be alone with the other and they spent a pleasant if slightly uncomfortable time chatting to a group of fellow guests on the beach.

  Later that morning Leo joined a small group on the hotel launch for a spot of scuba-diving off the impressive underwater cliffs formed by the slopes of the Pitori mountains which ran straight into the sea.

  When he'd gone, Ginny mooched about on the beach unable to settle. The people they'd been talking to earlier noticed her solitary wanderings up and down the shoreline and took pity on her, drawing her into their group and insisting that she join them for lunch in the beach bar.

  Their gentle ribbing when she kept looking towards the headland where the hotel launch would first appear made her blush in confusion. But she joined in the laughter and enjoyed being with everyone—though their company only took the edge off Leo's absence. To her dismay, she missed him dreadfully.

  Her heart leapt with joy when she saw him again and it was all she could do to keep herself on the beach lounger. Hastily she buried her head in her book, waiting while he disappeared into the diving shop to return the tanks and weights and to strip off his wetsuit.

  'He's taking an awful long time,' she complained. She shifted, sat up and glanced up the beach. 'Not a sign of him!' People nearby were giggling and she flopped back with a rueful grin. 'OK, OK! So I've been like a dog waiting for its master,' she protested, good-naturedly poking fun at herself.

  'It's been very sweet,' defended one of the older women. 'You really miss your husband's company!'

  'Yes, I do,' confessed Ginny. 'I really do. Just don't tell him I can't survive without him when he comes back, will you? He'd be a bit unnerved to think I'm a lovesick idiot who can't manage a few hours without him!'

  Gales of laughter floated across to her from all sides. It wasn't that funny. Puzzled, she looked about her and saw several pairs of eyes dart to... She stiffened. To someone evidently standing behind her.