by Anne Mather
‘Not such a small establishment,’ he remarked now, as his long fingers curled briefly round hers, and for a moment she didn’t know what he was talking about. But then recollection dawned and, aware that the girl beside him was watching her with narrowed eyes, she made an effort to regain her composure.
Withdrawing her hand from his, she folded it inside her palm, ignoring the tingling sensation that had run up her arm at the contact. ‘Smaller than you’re used to,’ she countered, forcing a tight smile to her lips. ‘This—this must be your—daughter.’
The girl tucked her hand possessively through her father’s arm, regarding Jordan without liking. Evidently she was used to enjoying Rhys’s undivided attention, and her lower lip jutted petulantly as she said: ‘Can we get a drink, Daddy?’
Ignoring her plea, Rhys inclined his head. ‘Yes,’ he said smoothly. ‘This is Lucy. Lucy, this is an old—friend of mine: Jordan Lucas.’
‘Hi.’ Lucy’s reluctant acknowledgement was accompanied by a languid lifting of her hand, then she turned to her father again. ‘I’m thirsty, Daddy. Can I have a Bacardi and Coke?’
‘Shortly,’ said Rhys, with an edge to his tone, and Jordan was taken aback. She had expected him to tell her she was too young to drink alcohol, but after all, she reminded herself bitterly, Rhys Williams adhered to no one’s rules but his own.
‘I want to talk to you, Jordan,’ he said instead, glancing half impatiently about him, and her pulse palpitated wildly. ‘Is there some place Lucy can go while we have a few words?’
‘I——’
Jordan was desperately trying to think of some excuse for refusing when his daughter intervened. ‘Why can’t I stay with you, Daddy?’ she protested. ‘I won’t get in the way.’ She gave Jordan a sidelong glance that possessed the kind of maturity Jordan herself would find difficult to emulate even now, and lifted one tanned shoulder. ‘Whatever you have to say to—Miss Lucas, I don’t mind.’
‘No, Lucy.’ Rhys accompanied the terse denial with a taut smile. Then to Jordan: ‘Where’s Karen? She’s still here, isn’t she? Perhaps she’d look after Lucy while we talk.’
‘Oh, really, Rhys——’ Jordan glanced round unhappily, and as she did so, she saw Karen watching them, half concealed behind the climbing plants that covered a bamboo trellis. ‘I—here’s Karen now.’ She beckoned her sister forward with an imperative gesture. ‘Look, Karen will answer all your questions. I can’t stop and chat. I’ve got work to do.’
Karen came forward eagerly, and Jordan saw with some frustration that her sister was wearing one of her most attractive outfits. Her dress of dark blue taffeta had a strapless boned bodice, and with her red-gold curls framing her face like an aura, she looked almost beautiful. ‘Hello, Rhys,’ she said, the breathy quality of her voice not lost on his daughter. ‘How nice to see you again.’
Jordan’s eyes sought the roof in a momentary supplication, then she impaled her sister with a baleful stare. ‘You’ll show—Mr and Miss Williams to the bar, won’t you, Karen?’ she directed sharply, and the other girl’s nod of acquiescence did nothing to reassure her.
Rhys however was not so easily dismissed. ‘I’m sure you can spare me five minutes, Jordan,’ he declared, detaching himself from his daughter’s clinging hands and pushing her gently, but firmly, in Karen’s direction. ‘You’ll look after Lucy, won’t you, Karen? You know,’ he gave her an admiring look, ‘you’re not a bit like the pigtailed schoolgirl I remember.’
Karen coloured with pleasure, and only Lucy, apart from Jordan herself, seemed to find anything to object to in the arrangements. ‘But, Daddy——’ she began, evidently about to complain, and he pulled a roll of dollar bills out of his pocket.
‘Buy Karen a drink, sweetheart,’ he said, pushing them into her hand, and Lucy took the notes resignedly and made no further protest.
As the two girls walked away, Rhys swung his jacket off his shoulder and regarded Jordan questioningly. ‘The office is back there, isn’t it?’ he enquired tersely, gesturing towards the reception desk. ‘We can use that.’
‘For what?’ Jordan drew an unsteady breath. ‘Rhys, I think anything we have to say to one another can be said right here. I don’t know what game you think you’re playing, but I won’t be a party to it.’
‘Game? Who said anything about a game?’ responded Rhys, his hand at her elbow compelling her forward. ‘Now, you don’t want to cause a scene, do you?’
Jordan wrenched her arm out of his grasp, and realising that by giving in to her emotions she was playing into his hands, she quickened her step to put several paces between them. As luck would have it, Raoul had been called away from the reception desk at that moment, and her silent appeal that he might need her assistance was doomed to disappointment. It seemed she was obliged to face this interview after all, and her heart was beating rapidly as Rhys closed the door behind them.
For several seconds he didn’t speak; he simply took a note of his surroundings, then nodded his head as if they were exactly as he remembered them. Then, tossing the jerkin on to the metal filing cabinet by the door, he gave his attention to her.
‘What the hell have you got your hair screwed up like that for?’ he demanded, massaging the muscles at the back of his neck. ‘I liked it better the way you had it the other day, even if it was wet and sticking to you.’
Jordan stiffened. ‘Is that what you wanted to talk about? My hair?’
‘I imagine this—outfit—is for my benefit, is it?’ he remarked carelessly. ‘The no-nonsense skirt and the schoolmarmish blouse. What a pity you didn’t wear trousers—that would have completed the image.’
‘What do you mean?’ Jordan caught her breath.
‘I mean you’re trying to disguise your femininity, aren’t you?’ he retorted harshly, moving about the room. He flicked his thumb through the pile of invoices scattered over her desk, his lips twisting sardonically. ‘It’s a blind, isn’t it? The unsubtle image of the butch hotel proprietor!’
‘No!’ Jordan quivered with indignation. ‘Just because I don’t dress to satisfy your doubtful sensibilities, it doesn’t mean I’m trying to deny my sex! How dare you say so? You know nothing about me.’
‘Not now, perhaps,’ he agreed, with a careless shrug. ‘But you didn’t use to be so—severe.’
‘Do you mean ten years ago?’ Jordan’s voice had risen a little in spite of her resolve. ‘I was a child then, Rhys. Or had you forgotten that?’
‘I hadn’t forgotten.’ He had halted a few feet from her and was now standing regarding her with nerve-racking intensity. ‘Nevertheless, I can’t help associating your appearance with the fact that I rang and booked a table for dinner this evening.’
‘That’s your prerogative.’
‘Yes, it is.’ His hand ran almost absently down his throat, his fingers finding and lingering on the fine gold chain suspended there. ‘I could have arrived without warning, you know. I wonder how you’d have reacted then?’
Jordan held up her head. ‘What do you mean—how I’d have reacted? I haven’t—reacted—at all. I would just like to know what makes you think you have the right to come here and catechise me? You’re a guest in the hotel, and as such you have certain privileges. But they do not include forcing your way in here and insulting me!’
‘I’m not insulting you, dammit!’ he swore angrily. ‘Dear God, I’m just trying to get a little human response from you! You should know what’s happened to you, for heaven’s sake!’
‘Nothing’s happened to me——’
‘Hasn’t it, by God!’ Rhys pushed back his hair with frustrated fingers. ‘Oh, what the hell! Why should I care? I didn’t come here to get involved in an argument over semantics.’
‘Why did you come here?’ she demanded fiercely. ‘I should have thought after the way you behaved the other day this was the last place you’d want to visit.’
‘Why? Because I ordered you off my land?’ Rhys rolled his eyes heavenward. ‘I was angry then, sure.
But it wasn’t just because you were trespassing.’
‘No?’
‘No.’ He inhaled deeply. ‘Look, this isn’t getting us anywhere.’ He expelled his breath again heavily. ‘Let’s start again, shall we? And I’ll tell you why I really came.’
Jordan took a backward step and came up against Mary-Jo’s desk. He was too close. She didn’t feel she could breathe. And it wasn’t easy to continue with this when every nerve in her body was sensitised to the subtle sexuality he exuded.
‘I—is this necessary——’ she began, only to be overruled when Rhys countered harshly: ‘Yes, it is!’
He pushed his hands into the back hip pockets of his pants, tautening the cloth across his thighs with unconscious arrogance. ‘I wanted to apologise. Yes——’ this as she opened her mouth to protest—‘I came here to try and make peace between us, not to start another war. Okay, I know I was bloody savage the other day, but I felt savage, and finding you there, on my stretch of beach—well, I guess I just saw red.’
‘You saw red!’
‘Look, stop trying to score points, will you?’ He made an impatient gesture. ‘I know this may be difficult for you to believe, but when I saw you, I realised I didn’t hate you any more——’
‘You—hated—me?’
Jordan almost choked on the words, and she saw the perceptible thinning of his lips as he struggled to control his temper. ‘Yes,’ he said grimly. ‘Yes, I hated you. Did you expect my gratitude for walking out on me like that?’
‘And did you expect me to stay around and share you with your wife?’ spat Jordan scornfully. ‘My God! What do you take me for?’
Rhys closed his eyes for a moment and then opened them again. ‘This is getting us nowhere,’ he said, in a clipped, expressionless tone. ‘Can’t you stop bitching long enough to listen to what I have to say, or are you so eaten up with your own importance you don’t think anyone else has a right to a hearing?’
Jordan gasped. ‘I didn’t ask you to come here.’
‘No, you didn’t,’ he agreed wearily. ‘But I’m here now, and the least you can do is give me an audience.’
Jordan was trembling so much she could hardly stand still, and turning her back on him, she wrapped her arms closely about herself. ‘I want you to go,’ she said huskily. ‘I don’t want to listen to your excuses. I don’t even want to see you. Please—leave me alone!’
The word he used then was one Jordan hardly understood, but its meaning was clear. With a violent gesture, he snatched his jerkin off the filing cabinet and flung open the door, slamming it behind him with such force that the flimsy partition between the office and the lobby was shaken to its foundations.
Karen found her about ten minutes later.
‘They’ve gone!’ she announced blankly, closing the office door behind her so that Raoul, who was now at the desk, should not hear what she was saying. ‘Rhys just came across to the bar and yanked Lucy up out of her seat and said ‘We’ve leaving!’ She didn’t argue. Not that I’d have argued with him in that mood—hey! What happened?’
‘Nothing.’ Jordan had been sitting at her desk with her face buried in her hands, but now she turned her head aside, rubbing furiously at her cheeks with fingers that shook abominably. ‘It’s just—reaction, I suppose. I guess I’m not as tough as I thought I was.’
Karen shook her head. ‘But what did he say? And why aren’t they staying for dinner? Did you ask them to leave?’
‘No.’ Jordan pulled a tissue out of the box on her desk and blew her nose furiously. ‘At least, not directly.’ She sniffed. ‘I suppose Rhys decided this place wasn’t good enough for them, after all. Does it matter? I’m glad they’ve gone. We don’t want them here.’
Karen shook her head. ‘So why are you so upset? Was he very angry?’
‘Yes. No. Oh, it wasn’t that he was angry, Karen.’ Jordan got up from her seat, shredding the tissue between her fingers. ‘Look, I’d rather not talk about it. Do you mind? It’s over now. I’d like to forget Rhys Williams ever existed.’
Karen sighed. ‘Well, I don’t understand why he came in the first place,’ she declared. ‘I mean, if all he intended to do was blow you up, why didn’t he keep away?’
‘He didn’t intend to—to blow me up, as you put it,’ said Jordan reluctantly. ‘As a matter of fact—as a matter of fact, he came to—to apologise——’
‘To apologise!’ echoed Karen disbelievingly, and her sister nodded.
‘Yes.’
‘So why are you crying?’
‘I’m not crying.’
‘You have been. Your cheeks are all puffy, and your eyes are red.’
‘Oh, Karen!’ sighed Jordan.
‘Well, it’s true. Look at yourself.’ She extracted a mirror from the clutch bag she was carrying and thrust it into Jordan’s hand. ‘Now tell me he only apologised! Honestly, I wasn’t born yesterday.’
Jordan examined her reflection critically, touching the swollen hollows below her eyes with some impatience. Karen was right. She couldn’t disguise what had been happening. And why should she pretend when Karen had evidently guessed the truth?
‘Oh——’ she handed back the mirror rather defeatedly, ‘all right, he did upset me. But not over coming here for dinner.’
‘What, then?’
Jordan lifted her slim shoulders. ‘He thought I looked a fright and said so.’
‘Is that all?’ Karen grimaced. ‘I could have told you that.’
Jordan gave her a wounded look. ‘What wrong with what I’m wearing?’ she exclaimed defensively.
‘There’s nothing wrong with what you’re wearing,’ retorted Karen shortly. ‘Except that it doesn’t suit you, that’s all. And while we’re on the subject, what on earth have you done with your hair?’
Jordan reached for another tissue and wiped her nose before replying. ‘I don’t see what my appearance has to do with Rhys Williams!’ she declared painfully. ‘Anyway, he’s gone now, that’s what matters.’
‘And that’s all he said?’
Jordan hesitated, then she sighed. ‘No,’ she admitted slowly. ‘He—oh, he came here to tell me he didn’t hate me any more.’
‘He didn’t hate you?’ Karen gave a short laugh. ‘Why should he hate you?’
‘That’s what I said.’ Jordan moistened her lips. ‘I mean, what was I supposed to do? Ignore the fact that his wife was on the island? Still go on seeing him when his six-year-old daughter didn’t even recognise him?’
‘She didn’t?’ Karen was listening avidly. ‘You mean, he’d walked out on his wife while she was expecting his child?’
Realising that to her sister this was hot gossip, Jordan brought the conversation to an end. ‘I don’t know the details of their relationship,’ she replied briefly. ‘And I don’t want to know.’ She blew her nose for the last time and cleared her throat. ‘And now, I think it’s time we attended to our other guests, don’t you? I’ll just run upstairs and repair my make-up. Then I’ll join you.’
But once she reached the sanctuary of her apartments, Jordan was in no hurry to go back downstairs. Instead, she pushed open the louvred doors which led on to her balcony, and stepped out into the velvet darkness.
Her apartments were situated at the back of the hotel. All the guests’ rooms overlooked the beach, but Jordan’s view was confined to the verdant golf course, that angled away to her right, and the lush interior of the island, with its cultivated fields of banana plants and sugar cane. At night, of course, she could only see the floodlit forecourt of the hotel, but the scents of the garden remained, and they drifted up in sweet profusion.
Sighing now, Jordan seated herself in the fan-backed bamboo rocker which had once belonged to her grandmother, and allowed its gentle rhythm to soothe her ruffled senses. Even with the occasional sound of a strident voice to disturb her, she felt at peace here, and gradually the painful scene with Rhys receded into her subconscious.
For more than ten years she had dreaded the
thought that some day he might come back. Not consciously perhaps, but it had always been there in the back of her mind, and so long as the house at Planter’s Point hadn’t been sold, she had known there was a possibility.
And now he had, and the confrontation she had known would come was over. So why did she feel so drained suddenly? So empty of emotion that it was like a physical ache inside her? She had nothing to reproach herself for. Ten years of nurturing her hatred towards him could not be dispelled in one night.
Nevertheless, she was aware that things had not gone the way she could have wished, and her own contribution to the explosion of his anger was not to be admired. Did he now believe she was so embittered she couldn’t conduct a civil conversation with him? Had her resentful words revealed the depth of the hurt he had inflicted? She had wanted to appear polite, but indifferent, to meet his uncertain temper with coolness and detachment. She had wanted to convince him that she at least had not let him spoil her life. Instead, she had played right into his hands; she had allowed his arrogant words to get under her skin, and he had no doubt gone away with the picture of a shrewish, frustrated old maid.
She uttered a small groan, despising herself for giving way like that. Why couldn’t she have listened to what he had to say, and ignored it? She didn’t care what he thought of her, so why had she acted as if she did? She had had ten years to learn self-control, and in the space of a few minutes he had proved her incompetence. And the idea that right now he might be discussing her behaviour with his daughter—maybe even laughing about it—filled her with angry resentment.
