Bay of Rainbows

by Dana James

  The night they parted after that last dreadful row, he had sworn he would get even. This deliberate and cruel humiliation was his revenge.

  Her throat stiff with tears of rage, Polly bit the inside of her lip so hard that she tasted the warm saltiness of blood. She would not cry. She would not give him the satisfaction.

  But only stubborn pride and the knowledge that Giles’s monstrous accusations were totally unfounded prevented her from fleeing to the Ladies’.

  Trying desperately to ignore the rustle of whispers around her, Polly focused her gaze on Nathan Bryce. But though he resumed his speech as though the interruption had never happened, his gaze, holding hers for a moment longer, had turned cold and cynical.

  It was as though he had slapped her. It didn’t make sense. He was a complete stranger, of no importance to her whatever. Yet that brief derisive stare pierced her to her soul. He had accused, judged, and branded her all in the space of a few seconds. The monstrous injustice of it took her breath away.

  The instant he finished, Polly slipped through the applauding crowd, grabbed her coat from the cloakroom, and took a taxi home.

  The memory faded and her eyes refocused on the nicotine-yellowed wall of the Customs office. She glanced up at him, swallowing. ‘I attended a party at which you were the guest of honour.’

  ‘Ah, yes, I remember now.’ He eyed her coolly. ‘Didn’t running away afterwards rather defeat the object?’

  Polly stared at him, totally confused. ‘What object? What do you mean?’

  ‘Such innocence.’ Though a mocking smile played at the corners of his chiselled mouth, his voice had a caustic bite. ‘Still, as a means of attracting my attention that scene had a certain novelty.’

  Her eyes widened. ‘Surely you don’t think—you can’t believe I—’ She broke off, incoherent with anger. ‘How dare you?’ she choked. ‘That scene was not of my making. It was horrible. I—’ She bent her head, shaking it quickly as she fought off tears.

  Then fury at his assumption overwhelmed her again. ‘I didn’t even want to be at the presentation. That’s no reflection on your professional achievements,’ she added quickly. ‘You deserved the award.’ As his brows climbed sardonically she cursed her sense of fairness. He would only see it as a weakness to be used against her, or worse, as an attempt to ingratiate herself.

  ‘But if you think I’d make a public exhibition of myself to catch any man’s attention, you don’t know me at all.’ Her face burned with indignation. Handsome, talented, and wealthy he might be, but he was also rude and abrasive, and she had done nothing to deserve such treatment.

  Yearning for a drink to ease her parched throat, Polly moistened her lips with the tip of her tongue. ‘Mr Bryce, I don’t know you. I don’t particularly want to know you.’

  Not now she didn’t. But when their eyes had met across the packed ballroom, for a fleeting instant the crowd had ceased to exist. There had been only him, only her, and she had wondered. But it had been just a momentary longing for something she seemed destined never to have. She must have been mad to consider the possibility, especially after the emotional battering she had received from Giles.

  In any case, she was completely different from the generously curved blondes Nathan Bryce was usually seen with. Like the one he was with that night. His apparent interest could not possibly have been more than passing curiosity. And that had swiftly turned to censure and contempt.

  Polly stiffened her spine. ‘We have absolutely nothing in common, Mr Bryce. And I can’t even begin to imagine why you’re here.’

  He had been watching her without a flicker of expression. The glitter in his hooded eyes made it impossible for her to hazard even the wildest guess at what he was thinking. So why did she have this totally irrational feeling that she had surprised him?

  She wished he wouldn’t look at her like that. It was making her heartbeat erratic, and her whole body had broken out in a fine dew of perspiration.

  ‘As the boat you were using for your ridiculous smuggling attempt belongs to me I should have thought it was obvious.’

  Polly stiffened. ‘What are you talking about? Seawitch isn’t yours.’

  ‘She most certainly is,’ he retorted icily. ‘I designed her, I built her, and she’s registered in my name.’ He raised the sheaf of papers. ‘And as, thanks to you and Mr Kemp, she is presently under guard in the marina, naturally I’ve brought all the relevant documents to prove that.’ His dark brows rose. ‘Surely even you couldn’t imagine I’d claim ownership without the proof to back it up?’

  ‘But I thought—’ She broke off abruptly. This was something else Clive had been less than truthful about. To be fair, she couldn’t recall actually hearing him say the boat was his, but he certainly hadn’t corrected her when she had assumed him to be the owner.

  Belatedly the insinuation beneath his cutting sarcasm registered. Her chin came up. ‘What do you mean, even me?’ she demanded.

  ‘Someone of your obviously limited intelligence,’ he said coldly.

  Polly flinched. The chill of fear and loneliness that had penetrated her very bones was suddenly consumed by the fury that engulfed her like a wave. Her entire body flamed with a rage that banished her nervousness and freed her tongue from all restraint.

  ‘I see. Without giving me a chance to explain you’ve decided that not only am I guilty, but I’m a moron as well.’ She looked him up and down in open disgust. ‘So much for good old British justice! Whatever happened to the concept that a person is innocent until proved guilty?’

  ‘Innocent?’ His expression was contemptuous. ‘Miss Levington, you were caught on my boat with enough heroin to—’

  ‘Stop right there!’ Polly cried. ‘I was not caught with anything. I told the Customs officers and now I’m telling you—I knew nothing about the heroin.’

  His face darkened with anger. ‘Don’t insult my intelligence!’

  ‘Why not?’ She threw the words at him. ‘You’re insulting mine.’ She flung her hands up in a gesture that combined defiance and despair. ‘I didn’t know Clive had stolen your wretched boat. And I didn’t know about the drugs until the Customs launch stopped us in the bay. But as you can’t or won’t recognise the truth even when it’s told you, there’s really no point in continuing this conversation.’

  She turned her back on him and stared blindly out of the window. ‘Perhaps on your way out you’d ask about the coffee I was promised.’ Her voice trembled, but she steadied it quickly. ‘I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and that was in London.’

  ‘If that’s a bid for sympathy,’ Nathan Bryce said grimly, ‘you’re wasting your time.’

  Polly whirled to face him, flinching at the derision that had hardened his features. How dared he look at her like that? She hadn’t done anything.

  She drew herself up. ‘It’s a statement of fact,’ she said, adding with quiet dignity, ‘I don’t want sympathy, Mr Bryce. I want justice. Is that too much to ask?’

  The change in his expression was barely perceptible. But it was as if, for the first time, he was seeing beyond the image his assumptions had created.

  His gaze met and held hers. The drab cheerless office, the charges she was facing, Clive’s betrayal, all faded into oblivion.

  An invisible lightning leaped between them. Nathan Bryce’s mask of disdain cracked and Polly glimpsed shock. He turned away, deliberately breaking the contact.

  She felt breathless and shaky and terrified. No. Not him.

  ‘How old are you?’ he demanded. There was a slight hoarseness in his voice which she hadn’t noticed before.

  She winced, smarting beneath memories of Giles’s disbelief and the greedy delight that had turned to frustrated irritation. Virginity at her age was a positive handicap, he had insisted. A condition to be rectified as quickly as possible if she didn’t want to be labelled a freak, or worse.

  Polly bit her lip. Her time with Giles had cost her the equivalent of a layer of skin. Emotional bruises did
n’t show, but they left a painful vulnerability which she hated.

  ‘My age is irrelevant, and none of your business.’

  His brows rose at this flash of spirit. ‘I disagree,’ he said softly. ‘A headstrong and impressionable eighteen-year-old looking for adventure might possibly win some sympathy from a judge with daughters of his own. On the other hand,’ the flat menace in his voice silenced her indignant denial before it could be voiced, ‘a woman in her twenties might reasonably be expected to show more intelligence. But you’re not obliged to answer. I can always check your passport.’

  Flushed and furious, Polly gasped, ‘You have no right—’

  ‘Don’t you dare quote rights at me, young woman,’ he snarled. ‘It was my boat you were caught on, remember? How do you suppose that reflects on me?’ His eyes burned like cold blue flames and Polly wondered if that moment of soul-searing contact had simply been a cruel trick of her imagination.

  ‘My heart bleeds for you,’ she blazed back. Never in her whole life had she met anyone so self-centred. ‘It’s terrible to be accused of something you haven’t done. How will it affect your family? What will your friends and colleagues say? How do you prove you had nothing to do with it, especially when certain people are determined to believe you did?’ She paused for breath, her heart thudding painfully against her ribs.

  ‘I know exactly how you feel, because I’m as innocent in this as you are. I didn’t know about the drugs.’

  He was her only link with the outside world, the key to her freedom. She had to convince him.

  There was a knock on the door and the senior Customs officer leaned in.

  Turning their backs on her, the two men talked in whispers. Nathan seemed to be asking questions. Then the officer withdrew once more.

  Fear wrapped icy tentacles around Polly’s heart. ‘What is it? What does he want?’

  ‘You,’ came the succinct reply. ‘Get your things together.’

  Hope flared wildly. ‘Are they letting me go?’

  Nathan shook his head, his mouth twisting in a humourless smile. ‘Hardly.’ Gathering up the papers, he replaced them in his briefcase.

  Polly swallowed. ‘Then what—?’

  His face expressionless, Nathan glanced across at her. ‘You’re going to be charged.’

  CHAPTER TWO

  Polly felt the blood drain from her face. She tried to speak, but her lips were numb. The room rocked slowly around her.

  ‘Sit down,’ Nathan ordered.

  She stared at him. She knew he had spoken, she had watched his mouth move. But she hadn’t been able to hear what he said for the roaring in her ears.

  Striding quickly round the desk, he grasped her arm. His touch on her bare skin seared like a brand. ‘Sit down,’ he repeated, guiding her to a chair. The moment she was seated he let her go, but she could still feel the imprint of his grip like iron wrapped in velvet. ‘You look pale, and I don’t want you passing out on me before I’ve heard the rest of this story.’

  ‘How kind,’ she muttered. But the spark of rebellion was quickly extinguished by relief. Her legs felt like foam rubber. Had she not taken her weight off them they would simply have given way.

  Sprawling at his feet would not have done much for her dignity. And doubtless his reaction would have been to enquire coolly whether this was another bid for sympathy.

  Nathan returned to his own side of the desk and sat down. Leaning forward, he rested his bronzed forearms on the scarred surface and toyed with a pen. ‘Now,’ he demanded softly, ‘what were you doing on board Seawitch?’

  Polly took a deep breath and passed a shaking hand across her clammy forehead. Once the fog cleared from her brain she’d be fine.

  ‘Clive told me he was taking his boat—’

  ‘His boat?’ Nathan interrupted. ‘He said Seawitch was his?’

  Polly’s face puckered as she tried to remember. ‘Yes—no—’ Her gesture of hopelessness mirrored her confusion. ‘I’m not sure. But he certainly gave me the impression the boat belonged to him.’

  ‘How did you meet him?’ The words sprayed at her like bullets.

  ‘You missed your vocation, Mr Bryce.’ Polly licked paper-dry lips. ‘Being chief interrogator in some tinpot little dictatorship would have suited you perfectly.’

  ‘Kindly answer the question, Miss Levington,’ he replied. Though his features looked as if they’d been carved from stone, in the depths of his gaze something stirred. Amusement? Respect? But it was quickly gone.

  She swallowed. ‘I’m a temporary secretary. My last job was at Mediterranean Charters. Clive works for them as a delivery skipper. He takes yachts from wherever they’ve been laid up for the winter to their summer cruising grounds.’

  ‘I know what a delivery skipper does, Miss Levington,’ Nathan Bryce said curtly. ‘What I still don’t know is what you were doing on board my boat.’

  ‘Maybe I could tell you if you didn’t keep interrupting,’ Polly cried, feeling her stomach clench as his mouth tightened and he turned the full power of his steely gaze on her. ‘Clive told me he was sailing to the Greek islands and invited me to go with him.’

  One corner of Nathan’s mouth lifted in derision. ‘And you accepted. Just like that.’ His smile was oddly bitter.

  The implication was all too plain, and Polly felt herself flush. ‘It wasn’t like that at all,’ she protested hotly. ‘I was to work my passage.’ Hot colour flamed her cheeks as his brows rose in sardonic query. ‘As a cook,’ she added tersely, making no attempt to hide her disgust at his silent insinuation. ‘And I paid my own flight out.’

  ‘That was very independent of you,’ he remarked. ‘So your relationship with Mr Kemp—’

  ‘There was—is—no relationship between Clive and me,’ Polly said fiercely. ‘I didn’t even know him all that well.’

  ‘Really?’ Nathan’s scepticism flicked across her raw nerves like a whiplash. ‘Yet you were prepared to sail almost two thousand miles to the Greek islands with him.’

  ‘Why not?’ she demanded. ‘My interest in him was confined to his seamanship. As a yacht delivery skipper he had to be a damn good sailor. He was offering me the trip of a lifetime, and all I had to do was take care of the meals. It seemed like a fair deal.’

  She tilted her small chin defiantly. ‘I think it’s high time you stopped making snap judgements, Mr Bryce, especially as the conclusions you leap to are invariably the wrong ones.’

  ‘Tell me, Miss Levington,’ he enquired with silky smoothness, ‘as you’re such an expert on human nature, why did Giles Denton make a point of publicly embarrassing you at the Grand Hotel?’

  Polly gulped. ‘You know Giles?’

  ‘I know his reputation,’ he corrected coldly.

  ‘I, unfortunately, did not,’ she murmured, her wounded smile a brief spasm mocking her own gullibility.

  Memories of that evening were still painfully vivid. Not just Giles’s spite-filled revenge, but the expression in Nathan Bryce’s eyes as he had gazed down from the dais. It was that cold contempt, the same icy disdain with which he was observing her now, which had prompted her to try and set the record straight.

  ‘Yet you were with him at the presentation.’

  ‘I was not with him,’ Polly responded angrily.

  ‘Really?’ His tone was cutting and his lips twisted in a cynical sneer. ‘Yet of all the women present it was you whose shoulder Denton put his arm around, and your ear he was whispering in.’

  ‘I didn’t invite that,’ Polly cried. ‘He’d been drinking.’

  ‘For Dutch courage? Or was he drowning his sorrows?’

  She clenched her fists. But even as she drew breath to hurl a furious retort at him, something clicked in her brain.

  He was trying to provoke her, deliberately goading her into saying more than she intended.

  She saw his eyes change and knew he had witnessed her realisation. Beneath her anger she was afraid. Something was happening between her and this man that
she didn’t understand.

  Her tongue flicked out to moisten her lips. ‘I don’t think my private life is any of your business, Mr Bryce.’

  ‘You don’t?’ His voice was as soft and rich as black velvet and his hooded gaze held her captive. ‘First you’re involved in a fracas with a man at a party held in my honour. Then you turn up, with a different man, accused of smuggling drugs on my boat.’

  His smile was terrifying. ‘I’d say your private life is very much my business. And you’ve made it so.’

  ‘But—’

  ‘How odd that you didn’t immediately see through a phony like Giles Denton,’ he grated, totally ignoring her interruption, ‘and after agreeing to take a cruise with a man you admit you hardly know, you end up in custody accused of drug-smuggling. What an amazing sense of judgement that shows.’

  She shrivelled in the icy blast of his scorn.

  ‘You, Miss Levington,’ his mouth curled, ‘are a mobile disaster area, an accident looking for a place to happen.’

  Polly swallowed. She must have been mad to try to appeal to his better nature. He didn’t have one.

  Turning her back on him, she stared out of the window. The sun trembled for an instant on the edge of the distant hills, then started to sink behind them. The wind had dropped and everything was still, poised in that limbo between day and evening.

  ‘I don’t deserve this,’ she whispered. She wanted desperately to make him understand that she wasn’t the kind of girl Giles had labelled her. Just for an instant she wondered why it mattered to her what Nathan Bryce thought. Because I’m innocent, she told herself fiercely. But underneath there was another reason, one she didn’t dare look at too closely.

  ‘Life isn’t necessarily fair, Miss Levington,’ he rapped. ‘The fact that my boat was used in this smuggling attempt is going to take some living down.’

  ‘It hasn’t done my reputation a whole lot of good either,’ Polly blazed at him. Tears of fury and frustration blurred her vision, and she blinked them away. ‘It’s not a pleasant feeling to find out you’ve been taken for a ride by someone you trusted.’