by Daphne Clair
Annys stood up, unable to bear her memories any longer, needing to move about. In any case, it was quite cold now in the dead of night, the sea cooling rapidly after the sun was gone.
For one thing, she answered herself as she stood at the rail, staring at the dark bulk of the land where they had anchored off the coast of the Coromandel Peninsula, he knew that he’d been the first for her. If she’d waited for him, she was unlikely to betray him with someone else. But one thing she did know about Reid was that he’d had other lovers. Perhaps had never stopped having them...
No use going over old ground—the gnawing jealousy that she had never again put into words, her determination to be a success, fuelled by an obscure need to show him what she could do, what she could be, and Reid’s silent, tight-lipped cynicism as he watched her overworking until she became thin and hollow-eyed, her irritability when he suggested she slow down, and his increasing exasperation. The blazing row they’d had when he’d told her finally that she had to stop driving herself so hard, and she’d said he could tell her how to run her business when she took it on herself to manage his career.
After a while they had seemed to row more often than they made love. Until finally...
Annys called a halt to her thoughts. That door was firmly closed, something she didn’t intend to think about, ever again.
Again she thought she heard a faint sound on the deck, in the shadow of the wheelhouse. She turned towards it, more for something to do than because she thought there was any cause for alarm. Something to keep the crowding, unwelcome tide of memory at bay.
A dark shape rose to confront her, and she gasped, startled.
‘Annys!’ Reid said, sounding almost as surprised as she.
She closed her eyes, giving her head a little shake to clear it. Her mind was so full of him that she almost wondered if she’d conjured him up. ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked him.
‘Getting some air. Couldn’t sleep. What about you?’
‘I’m on anchor watch.’
‘I see. I didn’t recognise you when I came up.’
Wrapped in bulky clothes and absorbed by the past, she’d been looking out to sea with her back to the companionway. ‘I didn’t hear you,’ she said. ‘You must have moved very quietly.’
‘I tried not to disturb anyone.’
‘Considerate of you.’
‘I’m a considerate guy,’ he said, solemnly. ‘Don’t you remember that?’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I were you.’
He laughed. ‘You have a different opinion?’
‘Very.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘have you considered the possibility that I might have changed?’
Annys moved restlessly. ‘This conversation is getting us nowhere.’
She was walking away when he caught up with her and took her arm. ‘Where would you like it to get us?’
She turned to stare at him in the darkness, unable to see the expression on his face. ‘If this is some kind of game—’
‘No game, Annys. One thing about a sea voyage-even one as action-packed as the organisers have tried to make this one—it allows plenty of time to think.’
With her recent ruminations in mind, Annys felt herself stiffen, almost afraid that he’d been reading her thoughts.
Reid said, ‘We never talked through our problems, did we, Annys? Every discussion somehow turned into a fight. And we only had one way of making up. A terrific way, but maybe we relied on it too much.’
That was true. In the end, it seemed they’d been totally unable to conduct a civilised conversation. Sometimes after they’d separated, she’d lain awake at night, feeling a piercing loneliness that he would never again lie beside her, and wondering what had happened to them, how they had managed to shatter the dream.
‘Is there any point,’ she said, ‘in going over it at this stage?’
‘Maybe. It’s unfinished business, Annys. Don’t you feel a need to understand what happened to us, to prevent the same thing happening again with a new partner?’
A new partner. The words brought an unexpected, piercing pain.
‘Do you have a new partner in mind?’ she asked him. She’d told him no one was waiting in the wings for her. She had as much right to ask as he did.
‘No,’ he said after a moment. ‘No one specific.’
‘Still playing the field, Reid?’
She had the impression he was frowning, but it was too dark to be sure. ‘Something wrong with that?’ he asked.
She moved away from him. ‘Of course not. You’re a free man now.’
‘Irretrievable breakdown,’ Reid said flatly. ‘It sounds like a mechanical problem in a bit of machinery, rather than a marriage.’
Annys swallowed on a hard lump in her throat. She didn’t feel like joking about it. ‘I just want to be shot of the whole thing!’ she said with repressed violence.
‘I see.’ His tone was clipped. ‘No second thoughts, Annys?’ he asked on a lighter note.
Her eyes lifted, trying to see him. ‘Have you?’ she asked incredulously.
There was a heartbeat’s silence. Then he said, ‘Some. I’m still powerfully attracted to you. And it isn’t all onesided, either.’
She made an impatient gesture of dismissal, and he said, ‘Don’t belittle it. Sex has made the world go round since the beginning of time. It’s what marriage is based on, after all.’
‘Maybe for you—’
His voice suddenly hard, he said, ‘It wasn’t any different for you. You hardly knew me when you agreed to marry me. You wanted me, and you didn’t give a thought to the other things marriage involved—’
‘That’s not true!’ Annys disputed hotly. ‘You have no right to say it!’
‘I’ll say what I damn well please,’ he said tensely. ‘And you have no right to stop me!’
‘I don’t have to listen!’ Annys swung on her heel, only to be brought up short by a hand on her arm.
She turned, blazing with temper, trying to prise it off, but his grip through the wool was implacable.
‘You’ll listen,’ he said. ‘For once, you will.’
She swung a fist, but he caught her wrist and wrested it behind her. He dodged her upraised knee and said sharply, ‘Quit that, Annys. You won’t get away with it.’
‘You damn well let me go!’ she said through her teeth, boiling with anger. ‘Don’t you dare hold me!’ She made a furious effort to gain her freedom, but he wasn’t letting go.
‘I’ll scream!’ she warned him.
Reid gave a short laugh. ‘No, you won’t. You’re too damned independent to yell for help.’
He would have been right, but just to prove him wrong she flung back her head and opened her mouth to do it.
Except that Reid didn’t give her the chance. He didn’t have a hand free but he stopped her with his mouth on hers, muffling the sound and sending a sudden white heat through her veins.
It was not so much a kiss as an assault, she thought, struggling to escape that merciless onslaught. Rage and desire created a potent mix, and she wasn’t even sure when or how the battle became an embrace. She only knew that at some stage the turbulence of anger changed to equally turbulent passion, and the kiss grew in intensity until she could hardly bear the excitement building inside her.
She tore her mouth away, gulping in salty night air, hearing Reid breathing heavily in her ear. He still held her taut against him, and she bit her lip, to steady herself, and turned slowly to look at him. He was staring back at her, his jaw clenched.
Annys swallowed, and said, ‘What the hell was that all about?’
The fiercely controlled expression on his face cracked only fractionally in a tight smile. His lips scarcely moving, he said, ‘Shutting you up.’
Annys said huskily, ‘It seems to have worked. I’m speechless.’
‘That’s a change.’ Experimentally, he relaxed his hold very slightly. ‘I still want you, Annys. As I’ve never wanted any other woman.’
‘How many?’
He shook his head impatiently. ‘Does it matter?’
She might have been top of the list—if she could believe that—but she hadn’t been the only one he wanted.
‘No, it doesn’t matter now,’ she said, suddenly weary and depressed. ‘It’s all water under the bridge.’
He said, his hands loosening at last, ‘You surely don’t think—’
He stopped there as they heard a footfall and Annys wrenched herself out of his arms. Another figure appeared round the bulk of the deck housing.
‘There you are!’ the newcomer hailed them. ‘I thought for a minute the anchor watch had gone to sleep! I’m relieving you, Annys.’
‘Thanks, Wendy,’ Annys said, keeping her voice casual. ‘Everything’s been fine so far.’
As she turned to walk to the companionway, Reid joined her. His voice low, he said, ‘I want to talk to you again.’
‘It’s no use,’ Annys said. ‘All we do is fight and—’
‘And kiss?’
Annys didn’t reply, wishing she had been able to hide her instant, bewildering reaction when he’d kissed her.
Reid laughed a little. ‘At least on that level we don’t have a lot of trouble communicating.’
‘At that level,’ Annys said bitterly, ‘animals don’t have any trouble.’
‘We’re not animals.’
‘Exactly. That’s the point.’
They had reached the dimly lit doorway. As she made to enter, Reid shifted in front of her, blocking access. ‘I resent what you’re saying,’ he told her. ‘That’s a cheap crack.’
‘I happen to think it’s true.’
‘I don’t believe you!’
‘Believe what you like. And let me pass, please. I’m tired.’
Reid took a deep, exasperated breath. ‘When can we talk?’ he insisted stubbornly.
‘Well, not here!’ she hissed at him. Sounds carried at night, and she certainly didn’t want Wendy to be a witness to whatever Reid wanted to say.
‘Next time we go ashore,’ Reid suggested. ‘We ought to be able to find somewhere reasonably private.’
‘We might miss out on some of the activities.’
‘Damn the activities!’
‘I paid for a holiday,’ Annys told him. ‘Including all those things. According to my doctor’s orders—’
‘What doctor?’ Reid enquired sharply. ‘You’ve been ill?’
‘No, I’m not ill! I was advised to take a break from work. Prevention rather than cure. I’m supposed to be avoiding stress.’
‘I see.’ A moment later he said, ‘I haven’t been helping, have I?’
‘Not much. It was certainly unexpected finding you on board. And all this—between us, it’s hardly relaxing.’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘I can see that.’ He was silent for a moment. ‘Annys, can I ask you to make a pact with me?’
Warily, Annys said, ‘What kind of pact?’
‘I’ll back off, leave you alone for the rest of the voyage. No more confrontations. I won’t insist that we talk. You finish your holiday in peace. And later—when we’re back on dry land and you feel up to it, can we make a time to talk? Just once. We’ll find some suitable place and sort ourselves out. Quietly, without recriminations.’
‘Sort ourselves out? I’m not sure what you mean by that.’
He sighed. ‘The truth is, I’m not sure either. I have the feeling that there’s a lot between us that’s never been said, that needs saying.’
‘So that we can each start with a clean slate?’
He hesitated. Then, ‘Something like that, I guess,’ he agreed. ‘Look, I promise I won’t hassle you about it, if you’ll just promise me in return that some time—within, say, two months of ending this voyage—you’ll get in touch with me and let me arrange to meet you. Will you do that?’
It sounded totally reasonable, the way he put it. Why did she have this totally unreasonable sense of being backed into a corner?
‘Are you sure,’ she asked him, in a last-ditch effort to avoid the unavoidable, ‘that this is a good idea?’
‘Actually,’ he said, ‘I’m not sure of anything.’
Annys looked at him quickly. It was unusual for Reid, who’d always been so decisive, to admit to being unsure of himself in any way.
‘I just have a strong feeling,’ he said soberly, ‘that I can’t leave things as they are. We had so much, Annys.’ And suddenly his voice was full of pain that found an aching echo in her heart. ‘How did it all slip away from us?’
‘I don’t know,’ she whispered. ‘But we can’t resurrect the past, Reid. We’d only hurt each other again.’
He made a movement towards her as though he would take her in his arms again. But Annys stiffened and shied away, unwilling to risk another earth-shattering physical encounter like the last.
Reid passed a hand over his hair and bowed his head. Then he stepped formally aside and said, ‘I wasn’t going to attack you.’
‘I know.’ His anger, and hers, had burnt itself out in that bewildering explosion of passion. She had nothing to fear from him. ‘Goodnight, Reid,’ she said quite gently.
She didn’t hear his reply until she was halfway down the narrow stair. And then it sent a warm little shiver over her skin.
He said very quietly, ‘Goodnight, my darling.’
CHAPTER NINE
Annys was glad that the next scheduled shore visit was one of the most demanding in terms of physical activity. She had tried river running once on a visit to the South Island and had thoroughly enjoyed it, but there were few interesting rivers in the north, and she’d not had time to pursue her interest in the sport.
Only some of the guest crew elected to join the rafting party, the others preferring a day on a beach with the opportunity of leisurely bush walks or fishing from the rocks.
The rafters were picked up by four-wheel-drive vehicles and taken along a rough private road for a distance of some twenty miles. Sitting beside Annys, Xianthe began to look pale after the first ten miles of snarling and bumping over pot-holes and ribbed slopes and around hairpin bends. Overhanging ponga fronds brushed the roof of the vehicle, and green and crimson ladder ferns toed the edges of the road.
‘Are you all right?’ Annys asked, watching Xianthe clutch her hard vinyl seat as they swayed around another bend.
Xianthe gave her a determined smile. ‘I’ll be fine.’ But when they stopped outside an old wooden homestead she staggered thankfully into the fresh air, and Annys steadied her with an arm about her waist.
Reid came over from one of the other vehicles. ‘Feeling seedy, Xianthe?’ He took her arm. ‘Here, let’s find you somewhere comfortable to sit.’
They helped her to a reclining chair in the shade of the broad veranda, and Xianthe sank back into it gratefully, clinging to Reid’s hand. He went down on his haunches and stroked a curl of dark hair back from her forehead. ‘Can I get you something?’
Annys said crisply, ‘I’ll get it.’
When she came back with a dry bread roll and a glass of soda, Xianthe was already looking better, talking languidly with Reid. She sipped at the drink, ate some of the roll, and laughed ruefully. ‘Sorry about that. Maybe I’m not cut out for a life of adventure.’
‘You don’t have to do this raft trip,’ Reid said.
‘Maybe you shouldn’t attempt it,’ Annys agreed.
‘Oh, but I want to! I feel much better now, and I won’t get sick on the river, I’m sure I won’t. I’ll be as right as rain when we’ve had lunch.’
They were served with lunch sitting at a long table set on a wide veranda, and then, carrying packs containing the inflatables and their gear, taken along a narrow bush track to the river where the rafts were inflated and put in the water, and everyone issued safety helmets and life-jackets to put on over the warm clothing or wetsuits they had been told to bring.
Tony gave them some brief basic instructions, including, ‘If
you go overboard, try to float on your back, feet first, so you can see where you’re going. We’ll throw you a rope. If you have to swim, use a backstroke to work across the current. Roll over only in clear water without obstacles. And don’t go in after anyone who falls overboard. It’s harder to pull out two people.’
There were three rafts, each carrying six people. Tony had Annys, Miko, Tancred and two other men, one a regular crew member, on his raft, and Reid and Xianthe climbed into another with two crew members and two other men. The third boat had only one of the Toroa’s regular crew, but Annys saw that the paddlers included Jane and the other Japanese girl, who had proved herself capable of pretty much anything in spite of her size.
The first part was easy, the river flowing over shoals of smooth-worn shingle between banks lined with trees and ferns that dipped and dragged in the eddying water. They had been given some practice at paddling in the sea, but manoeuvring around boulders and avoiding being grounded in the shallows gave them some moments of laughter and chagrin.
After a while the water was flowing faster, and the banks became steeper and closed in on them.
Tony, seated at the stern where he could keep an eye on all the paddlers and look out for trouble ahead, gave a list of clear instructions. Their boat was last in the line as they proceeded singly down the gorge.
Sitting behind the bow paddler, Annys could see Reid’s dark head in the raft in front of them, and watch the powerful thrust of his arms as the current threatened to force them into a large rock in their path which the first raft had adroitly avoided.
She saw the other raft steer around it and then it was their turn, and she pushed with her own paddle according to Tony’s terse orders, shooting through the gap and on into white water.
A little later they were resting their paddles and clutching at the side-ropes, leaving the two experts to steer while they enjoyed the sensation of riding the rapids, racing down the gorge and flying over a small waterfall to land safely at the bottom and go right on.
