by Robyn Donald
Heat scorched along her cheekbones. She kept her hand against his skin for a moment, then removed it slowly, pride refusing to allow her to reveal the shame that ate with stark precision through her heated emotions.
“No,” she said on a sigh. “No, but I must admit I’m sorely tempted.”
He gave a thin smile. “So am I,” he said harshly. “You make me forget to be sensible. Come on, we’d better go back.”
The sooner she got away from him the less likely he’d recognize the chill that seeped through her, an ugly devastation of humiliation.
Hastily turning, she saw with some dismay just how far they’d walked down the beach. It was going to take them at least half an hour before they got back to their shoes.
“Heavens, we’re almost at the cottages,” she said, trying hard to keep her voice cool and level.
To her intense relief he followed her change of subject, turning with her, walking a little distance away. “What cottages?”
“Oh, they belong to the hotel, but they’re for people who want real privacy. The road we crossed to get to the beach follows the coast.” She gestured to the wooded margins of land behind the low dunes. “It’s about three hundred yards behind those trees. It goes right down to the tip of the island and ends up at an old lighthouse. The cottages are between the road and the beach before you get to the lighthouse.” Her voice sounded fine; she fractionally increased the speed of her walk, hoping to get it over with as quickly as possible.
“Is the lighthouse no longer in service?” he asked. Apparently he, too, wanted to hasten their progress; his long legs matched her pace without hesitation.
“It’s been retired for years. Nobody lives there now, and it’s sad and rather desolate.”
Lonely, too, although Liz Jermain, who lived in the guest cottage farthest from the hotel, seemed to enjoy the silent stretches of beach and woods. Wise woman, Mariel thought bleakly, wishing that a similar emptiness stretched between her and Nicholas.
“Hardly anyone walks along here,” she said, stubbornly filling the uncomfortable silence. “The hotel subtly discourages anyone from going farther than the beach spa. Most people find enough area between the hotel and the beach spa to satisfy their craving for sand.”
He asked idly, “What are they like, these cottages?”
“I believe they’re very luxurious—old Mrs. Jermain, the hotel owner and Liz’s grandmother, got a brilliant architect in to design them. With the beach in front and a thick strip of woodland between them and the road they’re the most secluded accommodations on the island.”
He smiled. “They sound a bit like a New Zealand bach.”
“Not very,” she said dryly. “Once I went for a holiday with our neighbour and her husband to the west coast, and I remember their bach vividly—camp stretchers, washing up in a bowl, tatty, ragged old sofas and deck chairs that fell to bits every five minutes. I loved it, but these cottages are for people who can afford to pay for security and privacy and luxury.”
“Sometimes I hope nothing ever changes in New Zealand,” he said quietly. “I suppose there must be other places in the world where if you go to the beach and see someone else, you go away and find another beach, and where the most dangerous wildlife is a crab, but I haven’t found any yet.”
It was vital to keep talking; while they talked she didn’t have to face the hard ball of misery that lay like a lump in her chest, blocking her throat, aching in every cell. “New Zealand’s not paradise,” she retorted crisply. “Oh, I don’t imagine I’ll ever see a more beautiful country, but there are ugly people there, just as there are in any other country.”
“To a sensitive child from a cosmopolitan family, a small farming community in the King Country would have come as a distinct shock,” he said. “But did it ever occur to you that they simply didn’t know how to deal with you? You must have seemed as exotic as a rare gazelle, and you said yourself that children the world over are notorious for picking on those who are different.”
She wondered whether this was his personal experience, whether he had been made to feel different because of his parents.
But that was something she’d never know, because she’d come too close to him now and been singed by the fire of his masculinity. It was safer to keep her distance. So she said remotely, “Yes, of course,” and for the rest of the long walk down the beach kept the conversation firmly on innocuous things.
CHAPTER SIX
“Do you mind giving this week up?” Carole’s voice was urgent. “Yeah, yeah, I know you’re planning to paint your apartment, but you’re wanted back in South Carolina. That must be a very up-market little hotel—you were only there a month ago for some high-powered conference, weren’t you? Well, this sounds like another one.”
Mariel’s first instinct was to refuse, but common sense, the hard practicality that had kept her going over the past four weeks, stopped her. One of the reasons she did so well in her career was that she wasn’t picky; apart from avoiding work with diplomats where she could, she was prepared to go anywhere at any time. She couldn’t jeopardize her good reputation by refusing to go back to Bride’s Bay Resort.
Nevertheless, she swallowed before saying to her agent in as casual a voice as she could produce, “Don’t tell me more politicians want to spend more taxpayers’ money amongst the alligators on the world-famous golf course.”
“I don’t know who they are,” Carole said calmly. “All I know is the hotel contacted us yesterday and asked for you by name. You’ll be there a week.”
The mixture of paranoia and hope was vanquished by logic. Of course this job would have nothing to do with Nicholas. “All right.”
“It’s all organized. Pick up the tickets at the airport—you leave at seven tomorrow morning.”
As the hotel launch surged across to the low bulk of the island, Mariel kept her expression carefully blank. Five weeks ago she’d been placidly contented; her life had been pleasant. Oh, there hadn’t been any great highs, but there’d been no deep, deathly lows, either, until Nicholas had blazed into it like a meteor, destructive and brilliant and overwhelming. She knew now that nothing was ever going to be the same again.
Of course she’d get over this corrosive anguish. Tangible though her grief and loneliness might be, the feeling that half her soul had been wrenched away was just a romantic illusion. David’s rejection had taught her that no one suffered like this forever; in time she’d be happy again.
That was not what worried her. More dangerously, Nicholas had released another woman in her, a wild, hungrily sexual woman who’d made a total fool of herself, offering her body for a one-night stand!
Previous experience had taught her that she was not the most sensual of women. David had been a gentle lover, carefully making sure she reached her greatest peak, and she had responded with affection and a warm delight that bore absolutely no resemblance to the wild storm of desire Nicholas evoked with the mere touch of his hand on her skin. Mariel didn’t know—didn’t want to know—the woman who had stepped so far over the boundaries of her prior existence that she’d been temporarily out of her mind.
The only thing that comforted her was that for long moments Nicholas had been as caught up in the power of the moment as she had. Knowing that she was able to batter his unwavering control and wreck his composure so utterly satisfied some bewildering inner compulsion.
So it was all the more humiliating that he’d been able to reimpose the curb of his willpower on his passion while she’d lost prudence and caution, lost every tenet by which she’d lived her life until then.
Stop it, she ordered her restless brain, turning her head away from the other passengers so that nobody could see her face. Stop it this instant.
The launch docked, but when she went up to the hotel minivan, the driver consulted his list and said, “Ms. Browning? Oh, yes, here you are. No, ma’am, your party is at one of the guest cottages. The cart will be along— Ah, here it comes.”
As th
e golf cart moved her and her luggage along the road past the hotel, past the dunes and the gardens and the beach spa, Mariel began to relax. On the beach people faded and dwindled, until soon it was a wide expanse of white sand, smooth as confectioner’s sugar, empty of everything but the stately procession of big brown pelicans searching for food just offshore. The woods moved toward the road, enveloping it, the soft growth of young pines on the borders as feathery as ferns and the stiffer, more formal patterns of palmetto fronds giving the scene a subtropical air.
Subtropical climate, too; it was amazing how much difference a month made to the temperature. She loosened the button at the throat of her shirt and wondered hopefully whether she’d be able to work without having to wear panty hose. It was a relief when the trees gathered closely enough around the road to shade it.
At home we’d call this bush, she thought, then frowned. Home? New Zealand had never been home to her. That was another thing Nicholas had done—reminded her too vividly of the country she’d turned her back on. For years she’d managed very nicely without ever thinking of the place and the pain it represented; now repressed memories kept popping up all the time, bringing back the emotions of those bewildering years.
Fate, she thought wryly, had certainly had it in for her when it decided to send her down here back in April, dragging up old confusion and shock, old recollections, until she was as raw and unsure as a child on her first day of school.
She didn’t feel anything like love for Nicholas, and yet she ached for him, wove more of those explicit, hungry fantasies into her dreams and missed him unbearably. He’d bewitched her; the physical attraction that had enmeshed them both was too potent to last, but meanwhile it enveloped her in a miasma of desire that coloured her days and nights with all the hues of passion.
And thinking about him was the easiest way to keep the obsession alive, she told herself crossly, turning her head to stare about her.
At intervals, narrow tracks, barely wide enough for a car, disappeared into the woods on the seaward side, although the houses they served weren’t visible. Each cottage had been designed as a totally secluded hideaway for people whose most precious luxury was privacy.
At least she wouldn’t be continually tripped up by memories as she would’ve been at the hotel. She presumed she’d be staying with the ultradiscreet married couple who looked after the cottages and their inhabitants.
The golf cart turned down another barely discernible track and plunged into the undergrowth. Almost immediately they came to a large, spiked iron gate in a high wall. The driver brought the cart to a halt and got out to say something into a speaker set into the wall beside the gate. He was back at the wheel when the gates swung open.
Looking behind, Mariel saw that they closed immediately. No doubt there were cameras around. She shivered, glad she didn’t live such a life. She would hate to be so endangered that security cameras were a necessity.
The cottage itself was not large. A low affair of white-painted weatherboard with a tiled roof, it was backed by pines and live oaks. The garden appeared to be entirely natural, a beautiful and spontaneous arrangement of trees and shrubs, grassy areas and small hillocks. The magical susurration of a tiny stream formed a soothing counterpoint to the slow movement of the breeze in the pines that separated the grounds from the beach. Not for here the glorious explosion of azaleas and camellias that surrounded the hotel; whoever had designed the garden had insisted on a landscape as close to the natural as possible, and the unknown designer had been right.
“Go on in, ma’am,” the driver said. “I’ll bring your bags.”
Mariel walked up the steps and through the open front door into the hall. The house seemed empty, but she heard music coming from behind a door; after standing irresolutely for a moment, she went over to it and knocked. No one answered.
“Hello,” she called out. “Anybody home?”
And held her breath as she waited for an answer. It didn’t come, so feeling oddly like Goldilocks, she opened the door and went through. She entered a big room furnished with the casual elegance of a summer cottage; glass doors folded back onto a deck. The music seemed to come from there. Cautiously she walked out into the sunlight.
The view took her breath away. In front of her was the garden and a pool, treated with such skill that for a moment she wondered whether it was a natural feature of the landscape. Beyond it a boardwalk led through pines and coastal scrub and palmettos to low dunes that formed a barrier between the house and the beach. The sea beckoned in an arc of soft blue under a hazy, cerulean sky.
The impact of such beauty ached in her heart, yet suddenly in her mind’s eye she glimpsed an image of a golden sun set in a brilliant sky and breathed air so clear it tasted crystalline on the tongue. New Zealand, get out of my brain, she commanded, walking out into the sun.
A glorious soprano voice, smooth and perfect, sang words in a language Mariel thought she’d forgotten, left behind long years ago. It took only a spellbound moment before the significance of the music struck her with the force of a blow. The soprano was a New Zealand opera singer, and the song was a Maori one, loved and learned by generations of New Zealanders, a song of unrequited love.
She understood then, the image and the song, understood what she was doing there and why. But even as she turned to blunder back through the house, Nicholas said, “Mariel,” and his hand caught her wrist, and she was looking up into eyes that gleamed with brilliant, blazing promise, at once a heart-stopping threat and a seduction.
“You’re as white as a sheet,” he said deeply, raising her hand to kiss first the fine bones of her wrist where the veins throbbed blue, and then the warm palm, his mouth a charm that robbed her both of strength and the travesty of peace she had worked so desperately to attain.
“You swine,” she breathed above the thudding of her heart.
“For setting this up?” He laughed beneath his breath, his eyes hard yet satisfied as they scanned her face. “Would you have come if I’d asked you?”
“No. God, no!”
“I know.”
Yanking her hand away, she clenched it to the overheated flurry of her heart as she glanced around the idyllic scene. Her brain felt as though someone had drowned her in wet concrete. She shook her head, trying to clear it, but when at last she managed to speak, the words came out as though she was afraid, instead of blindingly, savagely furious. “What’s this all about?”
“It’s the closest I could come to paradise on this side of the world.” The straight line of his mouth twisted in self-derision. “For the first time in my life I’m being sentimental. It’s embarrassing, but I find I can’t be sensible where you’re concerned.”
Sensible! It seemed such an extraordinary word to use that she broke into laughter and had to physically quench it by clamping a hand over her mouth.
He said wryly, “I like it when you laugh. It reminds me that when the world looks like it’s going to hell in a big way, there are still people who can be happy.”
If only you knew, she thought, dragging her gaze from his face to stare around because she was too vulnerable to his potent male charisma. Although she thought she knew why he’d summoned her, she asked, “What am I doing here, Nicholas?”
“Having a holiday,” he said promptly.
“I can’t afford a holiday.”
“You told me you were going to take this week off to paint your apartment. And I’ve covered it financially with your agency—they’ll get their fee.”
Somehow that made it seem as though he was paying for her time. Her swift, scorching look clashed with eyes that were altogether too perceptive.
“You know that’s not it,” he said crisply. “I thought you’d enjoy a holiday, Mariel, and because I organized this, I need to be sure you won’t lose financially.”
It made sense. The agency would certainly expect its cut of her supposed wages for the week. Wavering, fighting a strange little sense of disillusion, she asked, “For how l
ong?”
“I have to leave for London eight days from now. The cottage is ours until then.”
“No strings?” she asked.
“Not a one.”
What she saw in his expression made her heart thunder. How easy, she thought, wondering why she had protested. You don’t even have to make a decision, Mariel. Or only one, and you know what that’s going to be. You knew the moment you saw him again.
His eyes followed the slow curving of her lips as she touched them with the tip of her tongue. Strange emotions coursed through her, as though this place and this man had combined to banish the transparent veils of inhibitions she hadn’t even known she possessed. An eerie inevitability gripped her.
“Liar,” she said softly.
He held out his hands in an odd gesture that might, had he been any other man, have represented surrender. “See what you do to me? I’ve never wanted a woman so much that I shook with it. Compulsion has no place in this,” he told her, the angular face both primitively possessive and sharpened by hunger. “There are two bedrooms. You can choose to sleep alone if you want to, although I should tell you I’ll do my best to persuade you into my bed. You can go back to the mainland—I won’t try to stop you. But I want you to stay, Mariel, sweet witch.”
“All right,” she said huskily, not looking at him.
It was at once capitulation and approval, the gracious granting of a boon and a fierce affirmation of need, a giving and a taking—two words with all the force of a vow. She knew that Nicholas understood them, and understood her.
His arms closed tightly around her. He didn’t kiss her; instead, while sensation electrified every cell in her body, he rested his cheek on her head and held her for long, silent moments. The fear and astonishment faded until she felt at peace and yet vitally renewed, acceptant of a situation made infinitely more dangerous by the swift exhilaration racing through her.
