Do Not Disturb

by Anna Cleary

  It had been quite confronting, after all. And it had been a long day. Suddenly the unwonted vision of the shock he’d encountered that afternoon popped back into his head and he felt his blood pressure leap to a higher bracket.

  His mind shied away from Amelie Sinclair. He’d think about her later. The one thing he was dead set certain about was this. Of all the women he’d ever known in his life Mirandi Summers was the one, the only one, he’d never expected to have to doubt.

  She really had some explaining to do. When he got his hands on her…

  He searched the place, striding grimly from room to room, scanning for that splash of red, often forced to check his stride to avoid a whirling crowd. He was swept into one salon that was grand indeed, its panelled wall space dominated by an enormous and sensuous painting of three lovely nudes. Beneath the incredible rococo ceilings were giant windows festooned with hundreds of metres of satin.

  The magnificence was lost on him. There was only one beauty he wanted to lay eyes on, and she wasn’t there. He couldn’t see her anywhere.

  From somewhere close by he heard a lush-stringed tango playing and felt a surge of hope. Something about the music suggested a live orchestra. He turned from the crowded salon and followed the strains until he found himself back in the atrium. The reception was well under way, almost the entire room given over to couples dancing.

  And she was there. With a lightening in his chest he saw her across the room, her face pale and wan, clinging to the wall, looking about her for someone. With a violent pang in his gut he thought, Who? The American?

  He stifled the feeling, and, desperate to talk with her, reason with her, wove a path through the crowd of dancers. He was beside her before she had a chance to notice his approach.

  He touched her shoulder. ‘What the bloody hell do you think you’re doing?’

  She turned with a start, and he saw her momentary look of relief change as she registered his tone. Had he actually shouted?

  She stiffened a little. ‘I was looking for the entrance.’

  ‘You were planning to leave? By yourself?’

  ‘Why not? I’m free and over twenty-one.’ She folded her arms and angled away from him.

  He compressed his lips, knowing he’d provoked that haughty reaction by his damned impatience. Hell, he really needed to tone himself down. Trouble was, the noise and activity in the room was not conducive to the quiet heart-to-heart he needed with her.

  He glanced about for some peaceful corner to take her and noticed that the doors to the terrace had been opened. ‘Look, let’s get away from this racket.’

  She scanned him with a small appraising frown, hesitating, then accompanied him outside into the balmy Mediterranean night without any more trouble. A few couples were strolling the terrace, and he could hear giggles coming from the extensive gardens. His gaze was drawn down a never-ending vista of ponds and fountains.

  It was atmospheric down there, he supposed, with all the fountains playing in the moonlight. Shadowy pathways led off to either side, lit by glimmering lights, and here and there classical statues peeped from among the shrubbery, coyly covering their private parts. Some sweet summery scent like honeysuckle flavoured the air.

  If only things were different and he could have established some bottom line with Mirandi, a stroll in the moonlit garden with her would not have been a bad thing. Or mightn’t have been. If only she hadn’t…

  He felt something raw in his chest, but his life’s practice had been to ignore pain, and he carried on with his usual aplomb. Trouble was, his voice came out sounding strangely hoarse.

  ‘We really need to talk,’ he rasped.

  ‘Yes, I think we do.’ Though she was still rather proud and stiff, out here in the night air her voice had a sweet silvery quality, as if she were made of magic. He had that feeling of being a huge hulking angry brute while she was a fragile, elusive creature, but the situation had to be faced.

  She still had the power to gut him.

  But could he just let it happen? Sure she’d grown up a lot, he could see that now, but a guy needed to make his expectations clear. As always he would be civilised about it and employ subtle tactics, though this was one time he felt the need to let her see just where she’d gone wrong and what she was doing to him.

  He cleared his throat. ‘Look, I’ve got to tell you I felt—disappointed about you flirting with that guy.’

  She looked indignantly at him. ‘I wasn’t flirting.’ She sounded so firm and unequivocal, he had to admit it had the ring of truth.

  ‘I saw how he was looking at you.’

  ‘But did you see how I was looking at him?’

  Always so sassy. Always quick with an answer, he could give her that. She was clever, so bright. No wonder she’d always kept him interested. He felt a wave of intense regret at how much he’d miss that.

  ‘He bought you that drink,’ he accused.

  ‘He ordered it before I could stop him. After I told him to get lost.’ Her mouth trembled. ‘He forced it on me and I just… You’re not listening to me, are you? You never listen. You haven’t listened to a word I’ve said all day. You just went ahead and risked your—your life…’

  His guts were churning. ‘Is that why you did it? You were angry. You wanted to punish me?’

  ‘I wasn’t angry. I was—scared. Anyway…’ her voice wobbled, with all the emotion running high ‘…since when do you care who I talk to?’

  ‘Since always.’ The truth of that statement tightened around his chest like a garotte.

  He thought of that awful day when she was just a kid and he’d had to tell her it was over.

  She was twisting her hands in front of her, her graceful white arms satin in the moonlight. ‘Oh, that’s just not true, Joe. You didn’t care about me back then, not the littlest bit, even though I told you… I all but told you, how I—I… You wanted to live free and easy. That’s what you said. You didn’t want to clutter your life with responsibilities.’

  He closed his eyes. ‘I had to say that. It couldn’t go anywhere with us, could it?’ Something had a stranglehold on his larynx and was putting his voice through a strainer. ‘Look, it was ten years ago. We both knew you were too young. Your father said… Even I could see he was right. You needed to go to uni. How great a life would it have been with no money coming in?’

  Her eyes glistened with tears. ‘As if it was ever about money. It never even occurred to you that day, did it, that I might be…? What I’d come to tell you. No, of course it didn’t,’ she muttered. ‘You couldn’t have known. And even if you had you’d have run twice as fast.’ She made a hopeless little gesture. ‘Oh, I’m such a fool. I don’t know why I agreed to come. I let myself get sucked in all over again in Zurich, and here we are. So over, how could I even have…?’ Her voice choked and she turned sharply away from him.

  A gentle breeze messed a few strands of her hair and when she lifted her hand to smooth it he could see that her fingers were trembling. He cast about for something to say but his speech was paralysed. Suddenly an almighty black catastrophe was bearing down on him and he felt helpless to avert it.

  ‘This was such a mistake,’ she said, her voice nearly as hoarse as his. She turned for the stairs that led down to the garden. ‘I’m going home.’

  He watched her step down onto the garden walk, the impassioned phrases they’d hurled at each other rolling around in his head in meaningless clusters, his whole being churned up in a way he scarcely recognised.

  She was walking quickly away with her head high, but even from behind he could tell she was crying. He stood there like a clumsy thunderstruck oaf while she rounded a bend in the path, then disappeared from his view, hidden by the shrubbery and the walls of a small folly that had been built to resemble some Roman temple.

  All at once the cold reality that she was seriously walking away from him for all eternity slammed into him and a bolt of pure panic galvanised him to action.

  He bounded down the s
teps after her and sprinted to catch her up. ‘Wait, Mirandi… Wait.’ She didn’t pause, instead her step quickened and he had a suffocating sense of déjà vu, as if he were back in the dream. At least this was real life and his legs could work, and he swiftly covered the ground between them and came up alongside her.

  ‘What couldn’t I have known? What? What did you mean?’ Panting, urgent, he grabbed her arms and forced her to stand still. ‘What would I have run from?’

  She trembled in his hands, her arms cool in the night air. In the dim light she was whiter than he’d ever seen, her lovely face strained and streaked with tears. ‘Are you sure you want to know? It’s something sad, Joe.’

  He said roughly, his voice as hoarse as a foghorn, ‘Don’t you think I might have already known sad things once or twice?’

  She lowered her wet lashes. ‘Oh, I know. You have, of course.’ She moistened her lips. ‘All right, then.’ She glanced around, making sure no one was nearby to overhear. Then she said in a low voice, ‘What I meant to tell you that day, and would have if you’d been more welcoming, was that I was—expecting.’

  He felt the blood drain from his heart. ‘What?’

  She nodded. ‘I’d only just found out.’ She broke away from him and made a helpless gesture. ‘I was in such a spin I didn’t know what to do. I thought if I told you, but—well, you know how things went.’

  He reeled away from her, flooded by the most appalling guilt and remorse. ‘Oh. Oh, my God.’ He clutched his forehead, ran his hand through his hair while his wits tried to assemble the facts.

  A pregnant girl came to see him, to inform she was with child, his child, and he was intent on rejecting her. For her own good.

  ‘Oh, no,’ he ground out. ‘My poor girl. Mirandi, I—I don’t know what to say. I’m so very sorry. If only I’d known. I—I wish I hadn’t had to…’ He closed his eyes. ‘I wish it hadn’t been like that.’ A jolting thought struck him. ‘So where is your—your child?’

  His child.

  ‘There isn’t one,’ she said baldly, dashing sudden tears away with the back of her hand. ‘I only managed to keep him inside a couple of months and…something went wrong, I guess. I lost him.’

  His guts clenched as though held in a vice. He imagined her rounded and vulnerable, and a groan escaped him as the implications of what she must have gone through lacerated his guilty conscience.

  He had to ask, though he hardly dared for fear of what her answer might be. ‘Sweetheart, did you—did your father know you were pregnant that day you came to see me?’

  She shook her head and he could feel that measure of relief, at least. At least the captain hadn’t begged him to cut his daughter loose knowing she was with child.

  With a womanly dignity that impressed him, he saw her make a visible effort to control her emotions.

  She said in a low voice, ‘I was in Brisbane when it happened. When I—when I lost the baby. That was why I chose Brisbane, so I could put some distance between my family and—everyone before I broke the news. I was scared of telling Dad. As it turned out, I never needed to. It was—quite a—a painful time.’ Her voice croaked on the word and he felt his heartstrings twist savagely.

  ‘Oh, sweetheart.’ He put his arms around her, drew her against his chest and laid his cheek against her hair. He could feel her soft breasts, her heart beating against his own. He pressed her to him and stroked her, struggling with the old dilemma. Tell her the whole truth and risk turning her against her dad? Hurt her even more?

  She angled her face into his neck and even in the exigency of emotion the scent of her rose in his nostrils like an aphrodisiac.

  ‘I should’ve been there,’ he said painfully. ‘I should’ve been with you…’

  ‘Oh, Joe.’ She sighed and her breath fanned his neck. ‘What would have been the use? You were already tired of me. You’re tired of me now.’

  ‘I wasn’t tired of you. I’m not—I could never be tired of you.’ He felt some hard inner shell give inside his chest and suddenly he was awash with raw, hot emotion and truth could no longer be contained. ‘It killed me to break it off,’ he said, his voice as rough as if it were being strained through gravel. ‘Afterwards I missed you… All those nights I ached for you… A hundred times I nearly gave in and texted you.’

  ‘Then why…?

  ‘Because I knew he was right, your father. It didn’t matter how angry I felt, how—rebellious, I s’pose—I knew it was true. You were too young and I had nothing to give you. I wasn’t even sure of what direction I wanted to go in. I’m still not sure.’

  ‘Oh, Joe, Dad doesn’t think like that.’

  He held her a little away from him and ruefully scanned her face. How well did she understand her father?

  Moisture glistened on her lashes. Her sensuous mouth was so soft and luscious his blood quickened with desire, and whatever else he should have said the time for talking was over. Unable to resist, with a groan he took her sweet lips, tenderly at first, then as her soft curves sank against him and he had the taste of her, God help him, he was overtaken with lust and kissed her deeply and hungrily.

  The sound of approaching voices made an annoying distraction. But he was as hard as a log, and, trembling with urgency, he drew her off the path and into a shadowy niche between some dense, fragrant shrubs and the stone balustrade of the folly.

  As he hid with her there in the secluded shadowy place, all at once the moonlit night seemed to ping with a taut expectation, as if reckless spirits were winging on the vibrant air. Bending to taste her white satin throat, he heard her quickened breath, felt her breasts rise and fall under his hands, and his passion to have her intensified.

  For an instant he paused, and it was like the lull before the storm. He sensed her answering excitement as she panted in his arms, aroused by their forbidden location, infected by the honeysuckle-scented magic of the night.

  The electric moment intensified, then he took her mouth, kissing her back against the wall while he unzipped his trousers and allowed his straining shaft its grateful freedom. Her fragrance, part perfumed sweetness, part primitive, aroused woman, stormed his senses in an irresistible erotic invasion. With lustful haste he dragged up the red dress. Already her undies were excitingly moist, and he tore them away with hands that shook, inflamed by the exposure of the delicious curls. Positioning her carefully, he supported her bottom with his hands while she clung to his neck and wrapped her legs around his waist, then he thrust into her, evoking a guttural cry from deep in her throat.

  He drove and drove again, deeper and harder, while she gripped him with her thighs and met him thrust for thrust, her hot, slick walls blissfully tight around his length. The sweet, painful pressure mounted, but he held himself back from the ultimate ecstasy until he felt her first honeyed spasm grip him like a heavenly vice, then his orgasm broke in a hot, wild release of rushing seed.

  As her last rapturous cries melted into silence he held her panting in his arms, tasting the sweet, slightly salt sweat on her neck.

  She was his, was all he was capable of thinking. He couldn’t let her go again. He couldn’t.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  SOMETHING crept into Mirandi’s awareness, strange bird calls, followed some time later by occasional muffled bumps and thuds. Then much later sudden flurries of voices, surprisingly close, and sounds of gushing water that might have come from outside.

  Sensing the morning, she swam closer to consciousness. She had an awareness then of a feeling of warmth down the length of her back, a solid, comfortable presence she’d relied on through the night.

  She opened her eyes. As she blinked at the light issuing through chinks in the curtains she had the sensation the morning was well advanced. Gradually the mists of sleep dispersed and everything came crowding back.

  The casino and her quarrel with Joe. She’d come so close to throwing in the towel again, but somehow the situation had turned about and… Had that really happened? Love in the casino gardens, just
like their wild old days? She smiled, remembering it all with that intoxicated, laughing, rapturous walk home.

  As she turned Joe’s words over in her mind about their ancient break-up she almost felt like pinching herself. After all the anguish she’d suffered back then, to discover that he’d broken her heart with the best of intentions evoked some mixed feelings. Had he somehow found out about her family’s concerns? She must have let it leak out. She wrinkled her brow in the effort to recall. It was all so long ago the sequence of events had blurred in her mind, except of course for her secret grief. She had no doubt that would stay with her for ever, sharp and clear.

  But she was so glad she’d told him the truth at last. It was as though her confession had unlocked a door between them. There were still questions she needed to ask, though. Perhaps, when the time was ripe…

  The time. Oh, damn. The conference. Her pleasant glow doused, she lifted her head to squint at the bedside clock and saw it had already reached ten-thirty. Too late, surely, though if they hurried up she supposed they could make the middle sessions.

  If only Joe weren’t such a stickler for work.

  Easing around, she saw that he was still deeply asleep. Gingerly she lifted his protective arm from across her body and slid out of the bed. He barely stirred.

  She hesitated a moment, then gently replaced the covers over him. In sleep the deep lines around his eyes and mouth had smoothed, and he looked younger, less careworn. This must have been his first real sleep since they left Sydney. Waking him would be such a pity.

  She tiptoed to the bathroom. With hunger gnawing at her insides she spent no more than twenty minutes in the shower, restraining a bubbling desire to warble at the top of her voice, then, when she’d dried herself in the big fluffy Metropole towel, she wrapped the robe around her and padded out to rummage through her suitcase for something to wear.