She braced herself for the pain that would fill her when he told her that he desired her but that, well, as far as love went, now that was a horse of a different colour.
When he did not say anything, she finally raised her eyes to his. He turned away and switched on the bedside light. All at once the room was suffused in an orange glow, and Emma blinked rapidly.
'I want us to see each other,' he said.
Emma didn't want that at all. The darkness at least provided some shield for her. To have her hurt exposed in the brightness of the room was not what she wanted at all.
She lowered her head, and her hair fell in a gold curtain across her face.
'Look at me,' he murmured, tilting her chin up.
Their eyes met, and he said unhurriedly, 'I love you.'
'What?'
'I love you, Emma. What I do for you is exactly what you do for me, and I adore you for it.'
The blood rushed to her head.
'You're joking!' she whispered incredulously.
Conrad shot her a disapproving glance. 'Now, now, my little witch, why do you insist on believing the worst of me? It's a habit you're going to break out of, you know. It doesn't do my confidence any good at all. Still, we've got a lifetime of trying to cure that particular'
'What?'
'Don't tell me you didn't hear. I said we've got a lifetime to'
'Is that a proposal?' she asked tremulously.
'Oh, haven't I said? Will you, Emma Belle, marry me?'
This time the silence was complete. She nodded.
'Yes! Yes, yes, yes!'
'I prayed you might say that.' With a stifled moan, he kissed her face, her eyes, her nose, her mouth.
She felt a wonderful release, as though she had spent the last few weeks balancing precariously on the edge of a cliff, and had now finally found solid ground.
And it felt wonderful.
She sighed with pleasure as he slowly stripped and then proceeded to do the same to her, removing each article of clothing with agonising leisure.
Her body was aching for him, and when they were freed of their clothing she pulled him towards her, delighting in the feel of his naked flesh against hers.
But he was not rushing things. His lips teased her nipples into arousal, and she felt the warmth of his mouth sucking them, nuzzling her breasts, while he stroked her thighs and stomach with his hand.
'I want,' he said huskily, 'to enjoy every inch of you. Making love on the floor of a rocking boat has taught me that I'm too old for that.'
'You seemed to manage all right to me,' she responded languidly.
'Just all right?'
Her laugh was low and throaty. 'Immodest beast. I knew it from the start.'
They made love slowly, as though they had all the time in the world. His mouth caressed the flat planes of her stomach and Emma parted her thighs, drowning in intoxicating need. His tongue delicately circled her navel, and she arched back in pleasure. It was unimaginable that anyone else could arouse her like this. AH the men she had been out with were boys in comparison, hollowed-out shells, incapable of exciting her.
When he slid into her, she groaned and moved agitatedly against him.
'God, I've waited for this,' he muttered into her hair.
Emma didn't respond. The waves of pleasure rolling over her had silenced her, had drowned out everything but the delicious fire burning in her.
Was it hours or days later when he lay next to her on the bed, his hand tracing the delicate planes of her face? Emma didn't know. She smiled at him.
'So, Miss Belle, what are you thinking?'
'I'm thinking that another woman might have had all this.' She looked at him from under her lashes, loving the way that his eyes seemed able to darken depending on his mood. They were a deep, drowsy blue now, and she felt her heart quicken.
'Sophia?'
'You were engaged to her! I hate even thinking about it.'
'You have yourself to blame for my breaking off the engagement.'
'You? You little liar!' she teased. 'Sophia told me that she broke it off. Some modelling contract.'
'Well, she simply beat me to it, that's all. Thanks to you, all my well-ordered plans were scattered to the four winds, hard as I tried to hold them together and pretend that nothing had changed. Sophia's modelling contract was a gift from above.'
His hand circled her waist, gently caressing her stomach, moving up to cup a breast.
She rolled to lie on top of him, sighing as his fingers pressed against the length of her spine. Her hair fell, forming a curtain around his face, and she kissed him hard, feeling the rough stubble on his chin where he hadn't yet shaved.
His body moved under her, and he gripped her from behind until they were moving together rhythmically, as one. For the first time, she understood how people could lock themselves behind closed doors, and spend days in bed. The idea, which she had used to find incomprehensible, now made sense.
She rolled off, holding him against her, feeling his long, lean legs warm against her own.
'Do you know,' he said, 'that I never imagined, when I was waiting for your plane to land, that the woman who got off would turn out to be a stubborn, outspoken she-devil like you who would open up my eyes to something I'd never experienced before?'
i could be insulted at that description!'
'But you're not.'
'No, because most of those adjectives happen to fit you as well. When I met you, I thought you were the most arrogant, pig-headed person I had ever laid eyes
on.'
Conrad threw her a loving glance of mock hurt.
'Now that's really wounding!'
'You're too immodest ever to be wounded!'
'Not true,' he said soberly, i would have been more than wounded if I had had to face the prospect of life without you. Just the thought of ever being apart from you makes me sick.'
They looked at each other in silence for a while, then Conrad murmured, i can't live without you, my darling.
Do you know that, that night when I came back here looking like something the cat brought in, I'd spent the whole time staring at the sea, trying to work out how I had managed to fall so utterly under your spell. When I got back here to find you and Lloyd like a couple of lovebirds on the sofa..
His voice hardened, and Emma giggled contentedly.
'We were not like a couple of lovebirds,' she protested. 'We were just chatting about cinema shows and his love-life, of all things.'
'Well, you may not have been cuddling up to him,' Conrad agreed, 'but there was no way that I was going to change anything happening by vanishing upstairs to bed. Which is what you asked me to do, if I recall.'
'So I gathered. Lloyd was very embarrassed. So far you've been in a foul mood every time you've seen him.'
'You mean the beach?' Conrad said wryly.
'The beach. When I saw you in such an evil temper, I thought that you had had a falling out with Sophia, and then later on she rang and told me that the engagement was off. I guessed that you had taken the news badly.'
'Were you jealous?'
'A bit,' Emma admitted, thinking that that was the understatement of the year.
'You needn't have been. Actually, like everything else since I met you, you were the cause of that.'
Emma looked at him mockingly, feeling his body stir under her.
'Don't play the wide-eyed innocent with me. You can guess why I was in a bad mood.'
'Tell me anyway,' she said lazily, moving closer to him.
'You and that damned Lloyd. That boy has a lot to answer for. When I saw the two of you frolicking together at the beach, I saw red. Never mind about the engagement. That was trifling next to the rage that came over me—he was all over you. I had half a mind to find some excuse to come and drag you forcibly out of the water and bring you back home where I could safely keep my eye on you.'
Emma tried to imagine the scene that would have occurred, and almost wished that he had done just
that, although she had no doubt that she would have protested as loudly as she could.
'Why did you ask Sophia to come over here?' Emma asked, suddenly remembering what Sophia had told her at the party.
'Oh, she told you, did she?'
'Not nastily. Just by way of conversation. She said that you insisted that she join you here, and that she came because it was so out of keeping with you.'
'And you put two and two together and came up with five.'
'I thought that you couldn't do without her, if that's what you mean.'
'Precisely what I mean.' He looked at her sideways and she blushed. 'As a matter of fact, I did ask her to come over. To protect me from you.'
Emma stared at him in disbelief. If there was one person in the world who looked less in need of protection, it was Conrad. She could well imagine other people needing protection from him, but not the other way round.
'I was already starting to realise the effect that you had on me,' he continued. 'I thought that it was just my imagination, but just in case I decided to get Sophia over to help put things into perspective. I never believed in love; I certainly never believed that it would hit me like the proverbial thunderbolt. I was wrong.'
'I'd never have guessed,' Emma commented. She remembered thinking how jealous she had been of Sophia. Just seeing them within a foot of each other had been
enough to spark off a depth of misery which she had not known herself capable of feeling. If he had not believed in love, then she certainly had likewise thought herself immune to it. When the virus had attacked her, she'd been knocked for six.
'You weren't supposed to,' Conrad remarked drily. 'Falling for you was something I couldn't handle. I could cope with the prospect of an arranged marriage, for all the convenient reasons, but you made me see fast enough that I would have to scrap that idea. Even then, I didn't want to let on to myself what was happening. I kept thinking that I ought to return to work, but somehow I carried on finding reasons to stay.'
Emma watched his dark, striking face and wondered what would have happened if he had called it a day and flown back to London. Would she have recovered? She shuddered at the mere thought of it.
'I did think that your short break for a bit of rest and relaxation was dragging on a bit,' she said pensively.
'So did Gregory Palin at Head Office. I remember him phoning not once but three times, and at last I could use the truthful excuse of telling him that Alistair was ill and I couldn't leave the island until he had recovered. Funny, but I've never suffered from nerves. I could face a hall of stockholders and talk to them without the slightest twinge.'
He looked at her accusingly before continuing, 'From as far back as I can remember, I've made decisions, tackled trade unions, and relished every moment of it. I thought that I was immune to anything remotely resembling uncertainty. I never dreamt that I would meet a woman who could make me a wreck all in a matter of a few weeks.'
He grimaced and Emma laughed softly.
'You might well laugh,' Conrad said drily, 'but I've never had to put myself out for any woman until you
waltzed into my life, and then all of a sudden I found myself acting totally out of character. I started being irritated by all kinds of doubts about marrying simply because it was a suitable arrangement, even if Sophia was quite prepared to do the same, and then, even worse, I discovered that I was shying away from the thought of having to leave the island.'
Emma looked at him with amusement, and saw from the flicker of expression on his face that he was still amazed at it.
i'm glad you stayed,' she whispered, thinking that that was the understatement of her life.
'You didn't give me much choice. You argued with me, gave me sleepless nights, laughed at me. I hope you're satisfied.'
i couldn't be more satisfied. And, if it's any consolation, you did the same.'
'Good.'
They laughed, and he kissed her gently and lingeringly.
i only hope that you're not too much of a distraction when we get married.'
'Who, me?' Emma looked at him innocently and grinned. 'This,' she said, 'should ensure that Alistair's back on form in no time at all. I was worried when I told him that the engagement had all been a sham, and that I had fallen in love with you but that it was one way.'
She tried to remember it, but it seemed like a million years away. 'I knew he would have to have found out eventually about us, about the fact that it was all a clever idea on your part to help him recuperate more quickly, but I still hated telling him. I felt like a traitor.'
Conrad shot her an amused glance.
'What's so funny?' Emma asked curiously.
'You are.'
'Me?'
'The situation. What did Alistair say to you when you told him?'
Emma thought back. 'He didn't seem as upset about it as I had thought he was going to be,' she said. 'In fact, he hardly seemed upset at all.'
'The wily old so-and-so.'
Emma looked at Conrad in surprise. 'Why do you say that?'
'Because, my beauty, we weren't the only ones playing the pretend game. Alistair was at it as well.'
Emma propped herself up on her elbow and stared at Conrad, trying to figure out what on earth he was talking about.
'What do you mean, he was at it as well?' she asked, rubbing her ankle against his leg.
Conrad pulled her down to him. 'Don't do that,' he said with a wicked smile.
'What?'
'Slide your foot against my leg. Not when I'm trying to tell you something serious. It throws me off course.'
Emma continued, liking the power of being able to throw Conrad off course. It gave her a satisfying tickle of delight.
'Where was I?' he asked.
'Alistair.'
'Oh, yes. He confessed all to me when I went to see him after I had stormed out of your bedroom. Apparently, he wasn't ill at all.'
'What?' Emma stared at Conrad's face in astonishment.
'The day we rushed back from the party, imagining the worst, it had all been a false alarm, only Alistair decided not to enlighten us.'
'You mean we worried in vain?'
Conrad nodded in amused resignation.
'Alistair was apologetic about the whole thing, but he said that he saw it as a golden opportunity to throw us together. He didn't imagine that we would get engaged, I think he saw that as a bonus from heaven, but he did think that it wouldn't have done any harm if we were united over our concern for him.'
'But what about the doctor?' Emma asked, beginning to see the humorous side of it all.
'Ah. Well, Alistair was ill when he called the doctor out, but it turned out to be only an acute attack of indigestion. Hence his insistence that the doctor not breathe a word to us about his condition.'
It was beginning to slot together. 'But he told us that the doctor said that he didn't know how much longer Alistair had got to live.'
'Poetic licence there. Alistair unconvincingly argued with me that he never told us that he only had a short while left. He said that he told us that the doctor didn't know how much longer, but that it could be decades. Who was to tell? Can anyone predict the length of life given to them? We, he pointed out, merely put the wrong interpretation on his sentence.'
'Well, I never...' Emma settled comfortably against Conrad, feeling the bristle of hair against her breasts.
She was glad that she had worried in vain, and in a way Alistair's ploy had worked. It had thrown them together, even if the method had been a little devious. She would have to have stern words to him about that. Maybe.
She smiled to herself and kissed Conrad's neck, her tongue tracing little patterns on it.
With a low moan, his hand slid around her waist, and he pulled her close to him.
'So all's well that ends well,' he said huskily.
'Are you going to spend the rest of the day talking,' Emma asked wickedly, 'when there's so much more we could be doing?'
'Like what?' Conrad
's blue eyes met hers and he raised his eyebrows questioningly.
'You're right. Let's carry on the conversation.'
'We will, you little vixen,' he murmured warmly, 'but later.'
Emma sighed happily. There would be a lot of later's from now on.
Caribbean Desire Page 17
