by Penny Jordan
‘Robbie—out,’ Rorke commanded curtly, while Lisa looked at him in surprise. He had never spoken so firmly to the little boy before, and even more surprisingly Robbie responded to him, sliding sulkily out of the bed and running across to Mama Case.
‘That Rorke, he think there is only room for one male in your bed,’ she chuckled to Lisa, ‘and that one him!’
‘Too damned right,’ Rorke agreed easily, apparently not in the slightest put out by her comment. He came round to Lisa’s side of the bed and leaned over her, kissing her lightly on the mouth.
‘Take Robbie downstairs and give him some breakfast,’ he murmured, without lifting his eyes from her dazed face. ‘And don’t bring him back for at least an hour.’
Lisa’s face was still hot when Mama Case closed the door behind her.
‘How could you say that?’ she accused bitterly. ‘You know what she’s going to think!’
‘That I want to make long, leisurely love to you,’ Rorke agreed calmly, ‘and why not? She’ll tell my father that we threw Robbie out so that we could be alone. He’ll think everything’s wonderful and start planning for the arrival of his granddaughter, and I can start making plans for his operation…’
‘And what if there isn’t a granddaughter?’ Lisa pressed bitterly, too furious to take him up on any of the other points. ‘What if…’
‘If that’s a roundabout way of saying you want me to make love to you, all you have to do is go right ahead and say it,’ Rorke murmured softly, never taking his eyes from her lips. ‘I don’t know how or where you’ve learned to make a man feel the way you do, Lisa—and part of me hates you because you can—but there’s no denying that I want you, even knowing how many others have wanted you—and possessed you—before me.’
‘Thanks a bunch!’ she spat out bitterly. ‘I suppose I’m expected to be thrilled by that admission. Well, I’m not, Rorke,’ she told him bitterly, ‘and as for providing Leigh with a granddaughter…’
‘You’re not going to co-operate? Never mind.’ Rorke was actually laughing at her. ‘Perhaps the damage is already done. I certainly wasn’t holding anything back last night, and neither were you—were you, Lisa?’
Another minute and he would be forcing her to admit again how much she still wanted him. Already she could feel her breasts swelling, but fortunately the bedclothes concealed their betrayal from Rorke.
‘You’re a very sensual lover,’ she told him. ‘Naturally I…’
‘Responded to me? Is that what you’re going to say?’ His mouth curled in a bitter sneer. ‘But then any water is nectar to a thirsty man, isn’t it, Lisa? And it must be hard for you to have to snatch the odd embrace here and there while keeping your needs a secret from Robbie. ‘What’s that?’ he demanded, as he caught her muttered, ‘Go to hell!’
‘One thing’s for sure,’ he drawled as he leaned over her, murmuring the words against her lips. ‘If I do, I’m going to take you with me, and we both know how I can do that, don’t we? Oh no, Lisa,’ he murmured softly as she flinched away from him, ‘I’m not playing games this time. Last night served its purpose, but there won’t be a repetition—at least, I’m not going to initiate one.’
He got up and walked away from her, pausing by the bathroom door, to toss over his shoulder coolly,
‘By the way, this room—we’re sharing it, Lisa. Understand?’
She had to wait until he had gone before she could give in to the luxury of tears, shed alone in the privacy of the bathroom and haunted by the memory of how he had kissed away the ones she had cried the previous night. But last night was something she had to forget—if she was going to keep her sanity!
CHAPTER NINE
RORKE disappeared shortly after breakfast. He was flying to St Lucia, he told Lisa, but would be back after lunch.
Lisa took Robbie up to the hospital for his injections as she had promised Doctor James. Visiting the small island hospital reminded her of Mike Peters, and Rorke. She glanced down at Robbie’s tousled head as Doctor James talked reassuringly to him, but Robbie wasn’t afraid. He was very much his father in that respect, Lisa thought wryly, noticing how Robbie ignored the comforting hand she held out for him.
He hadn’t forgiven her for allowing him to be banished from the bedroom this morning. She sighed. Her life seemed so fraught with problems she couldn’t envisage ever being solved.
‘Just a wee drop of blood now,’ Doctor James, was saying comfortably to a white-faced but determined Robbie. ‘Just to make sure there’s plenty there.
‘Do you know what blood group he is?’ he asked Lisa. ‘You’ll know that his father’s is extremely rare.’
‘Robbie’s too,’ Lisa admitted. She had always worried a little that Robbie should inherit Rorke’s rare blood group. She had only found out just after he was born, and she wondered what Rorke would say if she confronted him with it. She wasn’t likely to find out, she decided grimly. She was tired of trying to persuade Rorke to accept the truth—she no longer cared what he believed; if denying meant so much to his male pride then let him. It wasn’t the truth, but it went some way to bolstering her pride—something which had suffered considerably over the last few days. The truth was that, weakly, she didn’t want to hurt him—which was ridiculous when she remembered how much he had hurt her.
An old-fashioned boiled sweet did much to restore Robbie to his normal good spirits, and then they were free to leave.
Lisa drove back carefully. The island roads could be treacherous in places. They were narrow and winding, and she had always hated driving along them.
Rorke returned just as she was about to take Robbie upstairs for his nap.
Her mouth went dry and she longed to run away. Coward, she mocked herself. What was she afraid of? That Rorke would throw last night’s victory over her in her face?
‘Lisa…’ He walked towards her, lean and bronzed, and her stomach muscles quivered in agonised response. Why was she so weak?
‘Lisa, I want to talk to you.’
‘Not now, Rorke. I promised to go and see your father. He has to rest in the afternoon and he gets bored.’
A little to her surprise, Rorke didn’t argue. In fact Lisa noticed that he seemed almost tense. What could he want to speak to her about?
‘Tonight, then?’ he suggested briefly. ‘After dinner?’
‘In our room,’ Lisa suggested.
‘No! No,’ Rorke said less sharply. ‘We’ll talk in the library. We can be quite private in there.’
No more private than they could be in their room, Lisa reflected. Why had he sounded so angry when she suggested they talk there? She shrugged aside the thought. If she started worrying about whatever it was he wanted to talk to her about now, she’d be a nervous wreck by tonight.
* * *
Leigh as always was pleased to see her. He looked a little better today, she decided, watching him carefully.
‘Robbie tells me you took him to see Doctor James this morning,’ he smiled, as Lisa closed the door of his pleasant sitting room.
She laughed. ‘Yes. He needed to have some injections. We left England in such a hurry that there wasn’t time for all of them.’
‘He’s a fine boy, Lisa.’ He looked tired all of a sudden. ‘I can’t tell you what it means to me to have you both back here—to have you reunited with Rorke. I should never have agreed to let him marry you when you were so young. I told him as much at the time, but I think, like me, he was frightened if he didn’t we’d lose you. Have you forgiven me?’
‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ Lisa assured him, kissing the papery skin of his cheek. ‘I wanted to marry Rorke—very, very much.
‘And now,’ she added, taking advantage of the situation, ‘I want you to get well enough to have your operation—not just for our sakes, Leigh, but for Robbie’s as well. He needs you. I can vividly remember how I longed to have a larger family, and I very much want Robbie to have the chance to get to know and love you.’
She could te
ll her words affected him. For a moment he said nothing, and then, shakily, ‘I’ll do my best—I’m not promising anything, mind, Lisa… but I’ll certainly do my best.’
‘That’s all we ask.’
Ten minutes later she left him, having persuaded him to rest. If he could just get well enough to have his operation… She sighed, wondering if Robbie was awake. When they first arrived he had protested that sleeping in the afternoon was for babies, but now he went quite willingly to rest. After all, he was still adjusting to the heat, Lisa reflected, as she pushed open his bedroom door, her heart somersaulting as she looked for the tousled dark head and saw only the empty, rumpled bed. Mama Case walked into the room behind her, grinning when she saw Lisa.
‘Mama, where’s Robbie?’
‘His daddy done take him down to the beach for a while, Miss Lisa,’ Mama Case explained. ‘Miss Helen, she came wanting Master Rorke to take her scuba-diving.’ Mama Case’s smile turned to a frown. ‘She can’t take no for an answer, that one.’
So Rorke had gone scuba-diving with Helen and they had taken Robbie with them! They were bound to have gone down to the cove, Lisa decided, stilling the maternal fears leaping to life inside her. It would do no harm to go down and keep an eye on things. Robbie loved the water, fortunately, and she knew Rorke well enough to be sure that he would take good care of the little boy. Even so…
It only took her fifteen minutes to walk down to the beach. She could see Rorke’s discarded jeans and Robbie’s shorts and shoes, and she shaded her eyes, looking out to sea. The cove was protected by a coral reef all round the bay; the water inside it as calm and unruffled as the surface of a pond, the surf moving softly against the silver sand.
On the sea side of the reef the surf pounded unceasingly, throwing up spray and spume, and Lisa wondered how far out Rorke had taken Robbie. She remembered that when she was barely a couple of years older than Robbie, Rorke had taken her right out to the reef and how thrilled she had been when he taught her how to scuba. The underwater world was one that had always fascinated her. Narrowing her eyes against the sun, she searched the sea again, frowning as she thought she glimpsed movement over by the reef. Surely Rorke hadn’t taken Robbie out as far as that? Fear began to pound inside her. Robbie was too young to go out so far; such a very little boy.
Chiding herself, she tried to calm down. Were all mothers like this with their children? Was she becoming too possessive, too cautious, perhaps smothering all Robbie’s natural love of adventure?
As she watched she suddenly saw Helen emerge from the sea and stand on the coral reef that jutted dangerously out of the water. Coral was razor-sharp, and cuts could be dangerous because they became easily infected. Lisa vividly remembered the lecture Rorke had once given her as a child when she had fooled about on the coral. The horrendous mental pictures he had drawn for her of the consequences of her ‘showing off’ had lingered in her mind for a long, long time.
Helen obviously thought she knew better, but Lisa’s heart was in her mouth when she saw Robbie suddenly scramble up beside her. She longed to call to the little boy to warn him that what he was doing was dangerous, but she knew her voice wouldn’t reach him. Where was Rorke? Why wasn’t he watching him? In a fever of impatience, Lisa willed Rorke to appear, and then, before her horrified eyes, Robbie seemed to slip. Quite how it happened Lisa didn’t know. One moment Helen was reaching down to help him up, the next the little boy was toppling back into the sea. In an agony of fear Lisa watched the water. Where was Rorke? She saw the sea, previously blue, suddenly turn an ominous dark red, and acting purely on instinct she ran into the water, swimming frantically to where she had last seen Robbie.
She had barely gone half a dozen lengths when she saw that Rorke was swimming strongly towards her, only he was swimming on his back, his body supporting Robbie’s, and as they swam the red stain followed them.
Lisa reached the beach only seconds before Rorke. He didn’t waste time speaking to her, simply pushing her aside as he laid Robbie on the sand and reached for his shirt.
‘He cut himself on the coral. I think he got a vein.’ All the time he was talking he was fashioning a tourniquet out of his shirt and a piece of stick he had picked up from the beach, working so quickly that Lisa’s dazed mind could scarcely take it all in. Robbie looked so still and pale, lashes fluttering over the paper-white cheeks. Helen emerged from the sea, looking more bored than worried.
‘God, Rorke,’ she explained pettishly, ‘why all the fuss? I told you we should have left the kid behind.’
‘Leave it, Helen,’ Rorke advised without bothering to look at her, saying instead to Lisa, ‘Run up to the house, will you, Lisa, and warn Dr James we’re on our way. I’m not sure, but he may need a transfusion. Either way the cut will certainly have to be looked at.’
At that moment Robbie’s lashes fluttered open. He stared first at Lisa, and she made a small, incoherent moan, longing to take him in her arms, but knowing that Rorke was far better equipped physically to carry him than she was, and she was already on her feet when Robbie turned to Helen and said quite clearly and very accusingly, ‘You pushed me! You pushed me and I cut myself.’
Lisa didn’t wait to hear what response Helen made to his accusation, she was far too anxious about Robbie’s safety. In her own heart she was sure that Robbie was right and that Helen had pushed him, but she was equally sure that Helen would deny it and that Rorke would back her up. Why on earth had they taken Robbie with them, when all too obviously they had wanted to be alone?
By the time Lisa had phoned the hospital Rorke had arrived at the house. Lisa was on her way downstairs with a blanket to wrap Robbie in when she heard them arrive.
In no time at all they were in the Range Rover, Lisa sitting in the back with Robbie lying on the seat. His body felt cold and slight in her arms, and as Rorke eased the tourniquet slightly, sickness washed over her. This frail, quiet child was Robbie; her son, the child she had given birth to. Did all parents feel this helpless anguish when their child was seriously ill? She supposed they must, she thought vaguely, wondering a little at the numbing mist that seemed to have enveloped her. She knew that Robbie had cut himself badly, that he had lost a great deal of blood, and all that that implied, but she couldn’t seem to think beyond getting him to the hospital; about fussing over small trifles that were really unimportant, as though by filling her mind with these trivia she could keep her real fear at bay.
Neither of them talked during the drive, although once when Rorke glanced in the driving mirror at her and saw the silent, anguished tears pouring down her face, he muttered, ‘His father would have been flattered to see how much his child means to you. Would my child have meant as much, I wonder, Lisa?’
She couldn’t even be bothered to respond. Robbie was his child, but she was tired of stating that fact and not being believed. All she wanted now was for Robbie to be safely installed at the hospital under Dr James’s care.
Alerted to their arrival, nurses were ready to take Robbie from her as they pulled up outside. Pain tugged at her heart as she saw his tiny little frame being wheeled away.
‘Try not to worry.’
She refused to look at Rorke. It was all right for him to say that. As far as he was concerned Robbie wasn’t his child, and he couldn’t really care less what harm his girl-friend might have done to him.
‘There’s a waiting area round here, let’s go and sit down,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll get us both a cup of coffee.’
‘Don’t bother, I’m perfectly happy to wait on my own. You might as well go back to Helen—I don’t want to spoil your afternoon together.’
She had her back to Rorke and just caught the explosive mutter of fury, before he swung her round, his eyes bleak and grim.
‘Look, it may suit you to cast me as the cold, unfeeling villain of the piece, but it so happens that I do care about Robbie, and I am going to stay here.’
‘You should never have taken him out there!’
&nbs
p; There, she had said it, and had the satisfaction of seeing Rorke pale beneath his tan.
‘Lisa, I…’ he began, but Dr James was coming towards them, and Lisa no longer cared what excuses Rorke was about to make, her whole attention was concentrated on the doctor.
‘Robbie—is he…’
‘He’s fine,’ he interrupted her gently. ‘Or at least he will be once we give him a transfusion. He’s lost quite a lot of blood—it’s lucky that you weren’t away when this happened, Rorke,’ he was saying to the other man, while Lisa’s face tightened in bitterness. If Rorke had been away the accident wouldn’t have happened in the first place. ‘If you’ll just go with Nurse, she’ll do the necessary and…’
Rorke was frowning, and Lisa’s heart skipped a beat as she heard him say curtly, ‘I don’t think I understand—are you suggesting that…’
‘Dr James knows that you and Robbie share the same blood group, Rorke,’ Lisa interrupted quickly, too concerned for Robbie now to spare Rorke’s feelings. What on earth was Dr James going to think if Rorke started denying that Robbie was his son, when he had irrefutable evidence that he was?
‘That’s right,’ Dr James agreed with a smile. ‘In fact I was only remarking on it this morning to Lisa. Of course it’s by no means unusual for a child to inherit a blood group from its father, but yours is such a rare one that it’s fortunate for Robbie that you’re here—I noticed this morning that we don’t have any in reserve. When Mike Peters was here he started up a blood bank, and got most of the islanders to give blood—by first donating a pint of his own, I remember him telling me. Like most doctors he doesn’t particularly like sticking needles in himself, and as he told me at the time, giving a pint of his own blood was purely symbolic, as he belongs to a very common blood group. However, it seemed to do the trick, but I seem to remember that you needed a transfusion a couple of years ago when you had that accident down by the harbour, and we never got you in to give any more.’
