Best of Virgins Bundle

by Cathy Williams

  Sherry nodded, and, being a loyal daughter of the dry province of Hawke Bay, said, ‘It rains a lot up there, I hear.’

  ‘Not all the time,’ Marc said with another dizzying smile. He stowed his wallet back in his pocket and looked across at Paige, a silent spectator. ‘We should be going. The plane’s waiting.’

  He meant that quite literally. Half an hour later they were heading north in a chartered plane big enough to take ten or so people. Normally Paige would have enjoyed admiring New Zealand’s wild central plateau, with its three snow-covered volcanoes marching southwards from Lake Taupo—its serene blue-grey waters the biggest crater of all—but there was nothing normal about the luxurious little plane or the trip.

  She picked up a fashion magazine from the several the steward had presented to her after she’d refused his offer of champagne. The cover featured in loving and explicit detail a stunning red-headed woman clad in a swathe of silk and ostrich feathers; she appeared to be making love to a classical pillar.

  Paige put the magazine down.

  From the corner of her eye she could see Marc’s hands across the aisle as he sorted papers. They were beautiful—long-fingered and strong, competently shuffling the documents. What would they feel like—?

  Don’t go there! Now that she was actually on her way to his island she wondered how on earth she’d made such a decision. He must have bewitched her.

  No, she’d let herself be overborne by his stronger will, and by a need to give Juliette whatever she had wanted with this odd request.

  Why had she made it? And why ask that Marc wait so long after her death before contacting Paige? It didn’t make sense.

  She glanced sideways again, this time lifting her eyes to his face. He was now absorbed in reading one of the documents, his profile an autocratic harmony of lines and angles, but beneath the veneer of smoothly civilised power pulsed a dark arrogance, an uncompromising force of will that made her shiver inside.

  He’d be a formidable enemy.

  Dragging her eyes free, Paige leaned back and watched cloud shadows chase themselves over the green, green countryside beneath, Sherry’s last words echoing in her mind.

  As Marc had carried Paige’s bag out to his car, her flatmate had muttered, ‘Standing directly between you is like walking into a furnace.’ She watched Marc close the boot of the car. ‘I bet he’s good,’ she said, and smiled reminiscently. ‘Be careful, Paige. But why don’t you have some fun for once?’

  Fun?

  Paige stole another glance at the man reading papers with efficient speed. Her stomach clamped on a spasm of roiling sensation, sweet and strong and potent.

  It wouldn’t be fun. He might make love like a dark angel, but she stood to lose her heart if she—

  Her mind closed down. She was not falling in love with him. Glaring at the hands in her lap, she forcibly reminded herself that he’d married Juliette for convenience, and the equally convenient Lauren Porter was still in the picture.

  OK, so she felt something for him, but it certainly wasn’t love. Lust, Marc had called it, and quoted Shakespeare with such contempt that she still felt cold when she thought of his voice, detached and brutally uncompromising, as he’d let her know exactly what he thought of this disruptive chemistry between them.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  SHE woke to hands at her waist and a darkly masculine voice forcing its way through compelling, X-rated dreams.

  When she forced her lashes up Marc’s tanned face swam into vision—too close, the hard features intent and purposeful. Her heart slammed into her throat as her dazed eyes met the burning blue of his. He was crouched in front of her, broad shoulders blocking out the aircraft cabin.

  ‘What—?’ she stammered, still fighting sleep and the corroding pleasure of his nearness. ‘What is it? Are we there?’

  ‘Not quite.’

  His voice sounded guttural even to his own ears, and he took in a deep breath, watching her pupils dilate and darkness swamp the green-gold fire in an involuntary signal—one his body recognised and responded to with helpless, instant hunger that consigned caution to the rubbish bin. Every cell reacted with violent appreciation to her provocative, heavy-lidded gaze and the soft lips slightly parted in unconscious seduction.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Although the words emerged with a crisp bite he noted their husky, sensuous undertone.

  ‘We’ll be landing soon,’ he said roughly. ‘The seatbelt warning is on. I tried to fasten yours without waking you.’

  Yet his hands refused to move, curving almost possessively against her midriff, just below her soft breasts. A feral, sensual heat set fire to his will power.

  He knew love was a heartless cardsharp of an emotion, something he neither offered nor promised. Nevertheless he’d always made sure that his lovers—and his wife—understood that he liked and respected them.

  And then the night before his wedding he’d looked into Paige’s gold-green eyes and wanted her with a merciless craving. He despised men who used women; it had struck at some hidden vulnerability when he’d discovered that one glance from a girl he’d just met—a girl still at high school!—stripped back his controlled assurance to expose raw arousal.

  It was like being taken over by an alien. Resentment couldn’t kill it—didn’t even dampen it. And neither had long years of denial.

  When she moved her hands to cover his, and said in a lazy, throaty voice, ‘I’ll do it,’ an odd sideways sensation, as though the world had shifted beneath his feet, catapulted him into unknown territory.

  Her eyes trapped him in a smouldering snare and the touch of her hands sent forbidden messages straight to his brain and his loins. He’d never experienced hunger like this before, so intense it rolled over him like lava—dangerous, beautiful, lethally destructive.

  In one lethal movement he snapped the ends of her seat belt together and stood up, towering over her in deliberate intimidation.

  ‘All right?’ he asked, unable to drag his unwilling gaze from the pulse that jumped in her slender throat.

  ‘Yes.’ She flushed and looked away, straightening her shoulders with obvious effort. ‘Sorry, it always takes me a while to wake up.’

  Disgusted by his lack of control, Marc sat down quickly, before his body could betray him further. Fiercely disciplining his hands, he latched his own seatbelt across his flat stomach and fixed his eyes on the scene through the window, watching the panorama of sea and sky tilt below them.

  It was no use; the loveliness outside faded as his mind supplied images of how Paige would look in his bed after a night spent making love, and how sensually, exquisitely magical it would be to wake her slowly…

  God! If merely touching her could summon erotic fantasies, he should have stayed overseas and let his office organise this trip to Arohanui.

  So why hadn’t he?

  The embarrassing answer sat beside him, her head turned away so that a dark honey-coloured swathe of hair hid her face. Although they weren’t touching he could feel her closeness, smell the faint natural perfume of her skin, and see her hands from the corner of his eye. They lay loosely clasped in her lap, yet he sensed a tension to match his own.

  She had long, competent fingers, and his treacherous mind supplied another sizzling picture of those hands on his skin, pale gold against bronze…

  Perhaps, he thought coldly, he should follow this through and see where it took them both. It was nothing more than sexual chemistry, but when he was with her he felt—he felt like a lesser man, he warned himself with merciless honesty. Paige had power over him, power he refused to yield to her, because once she knew she possessed it she might be able to possess him.

  In spite of that he wanted her, and he was experienced enough to read desire in a woman. So, why not accept what she unconsciously offered?

  Because it was unconscious, and he didn’t take advantage of innocents.

  Yet how many women of her age were as inexperienced as she seemed to be? Perhaps it was a ruse�
�

  Dressed properly, pampered and groomed, she’d make a stunning mistress. It would be a partnership of equals—she’d see the world, have some fun, learn a lot, and when he’d got her out of his system he’d make sure she never had to work again if she didn’t want to.

  Surely that would be better than the life she was leading now?

  ‘Where do we land?’ she asked, her voice tight and remote, as composed as the face she turned towards him.

  He raked her with a hard gaze, noted the colour rising through her silky golden skin. She swallowed and her tongue stole out to moisten her parted lips. Yes, she wanted him.

  Temptation riding him hard, he said, ‘Kerikeri. It’s the nearest commercial airport to the Bay.’

  Paige turned back to watching the sea spin beneath the plane, and dragged a juddering breath into painful lungs. Every instinct shrieked a warning—too late. Because in the mindless, temporary no-man’s land between sleep and awakening she’d betrayed herself.

  Marc had recognised her response as sexual excitement. She’d seen disgust ice his eyes and freeze his face.

  Juliette had told her about the women who chased him, the open lures they’d tossed in his way, the subterfuges they’d used to try and coax him into their beds. And she’d told her about his contempt for them.

  Pride stiffened Paige’s shoulders, clenched her jaw. So he assumed she was just like them—sexually available, light-heartedly promiscuous. Her soft lips tightened. He’d probably laugh if he knew she had never made love. Not that he’d ever find out.

  From now on she’d be as aloof as he was.

  Jaw jutting, she stared blindly through the window, her self-possession evaporating when his voice—too close—sounded above the roar of the engines.

  A subtly abrasive note threading each word, he said, ‘We’re turning over the Bay of Islands. You should be able to see Arohanui Island.’ He leaned forward and pointed across her. ‘There.’

  Tensely aware that he took great care not to touch her, Paige followed his finger.

  Heart-shaped, mysterious, his island lay in a glinting, swirling sea the colour of a blue-green opal. Around it more scraps of land dotted a huge bay, some sombre with native bush, others a bright, sharp green. She blinked at beaches so bright they made her think of diamond dust, and others an elusive shade that reminded her of the champagne she’d drunk at his wedding—pale and soft with a tawny glow.

  ‘Is it called Arohanui because of its shape? The name means great love, doesn’t it?’ she asked.

  Shocked by the sultry, too intimate tone of her voice, she discreetly cleared her throat and kept her eyes fixed on the island.

  ‘Yes. But its name refers to an old Maori legend about doomed lovers, not its shape,’ he said drily. ‘It was called that long before the first Corbett settled here.’

  ‘It’s very beautiful.’ She cast around for something else to say, falling back on a banal comment. ‘I’ve seen photographs, of course, but I didn’t realise how many islands there are in the Bay.’

  ‘Over a hundred and fifty, I’m told. It depends on exactly what you call an island. Haven’t you been here before?’

  ‘Not that I know of. When I was a kid we used to go to Fiji and the Gold Coast in Australia.’ Her reminiscent smile faded. ‘And when I was eleven my mother took me to Disneyland in California.’

  It had been an almost perfect holiday, spoiled only because her father hadn’t gone with them. He hadn’t been at home when they’d arrived back, either; while they’d been away he’d moved in with his secretary, taking holidays and colour and laughter with him.

  ‘My father was born on the island,’ Marc told her. ‘He loved it. My mother thinks it a little unsophisticated. She prefers her scenic beauty well tamed and controlled.’

  Paige remembered his mother well—a worldly woman with the effortless, casual elegance of a daughter of France. She and Juliette had got on well.

  His face hardened into cold, bleak bronze. ‘She says she always knew that the island would claim him. He went out to see if he could rescue a boatload of idiots who took off for a day’s fishing without checking the forecast or bothering about life-jackets, radio or flares. They all died.’

  Paige made a shocked noise. ‘I’m so sorry.’

  He shrugged. ‘He enjoyed risky enterprises. He’d rather have gone down like that than dwindle into old age.’

  Chilled, Paige looked into cold, crystalline eyes. Marc, she realised, didn’t think like that; he was too responsible to indulge in grand gestures for the adrenaline rush.

  For some obscure reason this insight comforted her. She turned back and stared resolutely down. Trees crowned the intricate tucks and folds of Arohanui, but from the air she could see the red-brown shape of a roof surrounded by large gardens. It must have rained recently, because the island gleamed like polished greenstone.

  ‘It looks mysterious, enchanted,’ she said softly. ‘A place removed from time and space where everyday rules might be suspended.’

  ‘That’s the lure of islands. They offer a hint of the forbidden, the exotic, a dangerous beauty.’

  His almost indifferent words echoed in her mind like a challenge.

  Don’t even consider it! Paige commanded, quashing a piercing excitement to fix her attention solely on the island that slipped away beneath the aircraft wing, swift and inevitable as the remnants of a lovely dream.

  ‘I thought you preferred Paris,’ she said.

  ‘I love Paris. I like London and New York too. But Arohanui has always been my home.’

  She had to stop herself from turning to look at him. Juliette had complained of boredom and the lack of sophisticated entertainment on Arohanui, and after the first year of their marriage Marc had visited it alone.

  Paige fixed her eyes on the view and concentrated on reminding herself that, like her father, Marc had been unfaithful to his wife.

  It didn’t work. She couldn’t think of anything else but the man beside her. Barely discernible, how did his natural scent make such an impact, kicking her heart into a gallop and drying her mouth?

  Sex, she told herself robustly. Think pheromones and moths dying dramatically in candle flames. If you give in to it, you’ll be betraying your friendship with Juliette.

  And you might fall in love with him…

  Not likely, she scoffed. Oh, there must be some men who could love selflessly, but she’d seen precious few of them. Betrayed love had driven her mother into the acute depression that had ruined her life; Sherry’s husband had promised her a love for all eternity, then robbed her and abandoned her when she’d told him of her pregnancy. Even Marc’s mother had been left alone and forlorn after her husband’s gallant, foolhardy death.

  Paige jutted her jaw and watched a couple of small seaside towns race beneath the wings; as long as she stayed independent, no one could hurt her.

  ‘The villages are Paihia and Russell,’ Marc said in a manner that hinted at mockery—and not the pleasantly teasing kind, either. ‘Holiday towns, both of them, although Russell has some interesting old buildings. We’ll be coming in over Kerikeri any minute—you’ll see orchards and vineyards.’

  Almost immediately a formal chequerboard landscape divided by hedges began to slip by; kicked by swift panic, Paige closed her eyes and gulped, wondering what the hell she was doing here.

  Warmth enclosed her hand as Marc took it. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, his voice deep and calm. ‘Relax, we’re just coming in to land.’

  Feeling unutterably stupid, she let her hand lie in the warmth of his, wondering how so comforting a grip could also send charges of excitement up her arm to shut down her brain. She forced her eyes open as the plane levelled off over farmlands.

  ‘Kerikeri Airport,’ Marc said calmly, nodding towards a small cluster of buildings. ‘We transfer to the helicopter here.’ He dropped her hand to indicate a machine parked off the runway.

  Paige swallowed. Marc was rich; she’d always known that. The locke
t he’d given her had been valued at an extraordinary price because of its workmanship and the quality of the diamond. He had houses scattered over the globe and, because he liked his privacy, he’d bought several islands.

  Even his clothes, casual though they were, breathed an aura of wealth.

  But this offhand use of chartered planes brought home to her just how much money—and power—he had.

  Her mind raced, chanting, You shouldn’t have come, you shouldn’t have come.

  She looked down at her faded jeans. He was a different species, she told herself with a hard practicality that somehow didn’t ring true. You’re only here to pick up Juliette’s legacy. Tomorrow he’s going back to his world and after a pleasant, uneventful week in beautiful surroundings you’ll go back to yours, back to real life.

  And you’ll never see him again.

  The sombre words emptied out her heart and rang through the furthest reach of her brain.

  As the engines changed in pitch and the plane slowed she asked something that had been niggling in the back of her mind since she’d looked up to see him come towards her and the dogs. ‘How did you know where I was this morning? Sherry said she could only give you general directions; I don’t always go to the same place with the dogs.’

  He paused, before telling her calmly, ‘I had you checked out. My private detective told me you walked the dogs every week day and that you kept to a regular routine between parks and the beach.’

  Her temper flashed. Staring straight ahead, she said rigidly, ‘That is completely outrageous.’

  ‘Just another perk of being obscenely rich,’ he said blandly. ‘It wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d been a bit more forthcoming instead of clamming up and hissing every time I tried to find out anything.’ He sounded cool, even mildly amused.

  The plane touched down with a slight bump and taxied towards the buildings. As Paige sat fuming he ended with a caustic note, ‘And I’m sure nothing would have persuaded you to tell me that you’d been sacked because you wouldn’t sleep with your boss.’

  ‘How did you find—?’ Bright coins of colour standing out on her cheeks, she grated, ‘Don’t you dare say I’ve just told you.’