by Robyn Donald
When she made love with David her whole heart had been involved, yet in Nicholas’s arms she had encountered something that made the pleasure she’d found with David a pallid, lifeless thing, a mild response to a need she couldn’t even recall now.
What she had shared with Nicholas had been a true communion, a loss of boundaries so that he had become part of her and she of him.
And that, her cynical mind told her, was dangerously sentimental thinking. Such striving to give some mystical importance to what had simply been a very enjoyable experience was nothing but foolishness.
The romantic vision of one perfect partner was a delusion; she had seen many marriages begin with love and hope only to descend into disillusionment and divorce. Conversely, she knew people whose first happy marriage had been destroyed by death, and who had then gone on to forge another, equally satisfying relationship. The belief in and search for the ideal mate was simply a way of avoiding responsibility for working hard at a marriage.
After all, she had truly thought that in David she had found the one man who would make her happy. She had loved him with passion and respect and liking, and she had thought her life was over when he left her.
But she had recovered.
Now she was slowly coming to realize that there were other forms of bondage every bit as powerful as love, and perhaps even more difficult to break away from.
Nicholas interrupted her tumbling confusion. “Lime juice,” he said as he came through the door holding a glass. “It’s fresh.”
“Thank you,” she said, unable to hold back another yawn.
He laughed and sat on the edge of the bed while she drank it, then lay down with her and held her until they both slid into sleep, entwined bodies bonelessly sleek and contented as cats in the sun.
When she awoke again it was with the steady thud of his heart beneath her cheek. Slowly she lifted her head and watched him, marvelling at the way his dark lashes shadowed his skin.
After this week she would have to ruthlessly cut herself free from Nicholas. Instinct warned her that if she continued seeing him, it wouldn’t be long before she lost her heart completely.
And that would lead to far more pain than she’d experienced when David dumped her. Beside the man who was now her lover, David appeared weak and ineffectual, his gentleness revealed to be a sort of moral cowardice. She had survived his betrayal; if she fell in love with Nicholas she might well be permanently damaged.
His breathing changed. Smiling, she kissed his shoulder.
“Mmm,” he said intelligently, and yawned.
A slight noise made her lift her head. “What’s that?”
“The housekeeper preparing an evening meal.”
Of course. She said, “I could do that.”
“It won’t be much of a holiday for you if you have to cook.”
She cuddled closer, her body still lethargic and replete. “I quite like cooking and, anyway, you can help.”
Hard mouth softening in a smile, he ran a hand down her spine, causing a swift shiver of delight. “I make superb scrambled eggs,” he said, “but that’s the sum total of my cooking prowess.”
She nipped his skin with sharp white teeth. “It’s time you learned more, then. I’d rather we didn’t have to bother with staff.”
“All right. We’ll wait until she’s done whatever she needs to now and then I’ll tell her not to come back.”
“How much food is there in the pantry?”
“How do I know?” he said. “Don’t worry, we can get more. I won’t let you starve.”
She traced the hard swell of his muscle with her tongue. “It sounds like paradise,” she said throatily.
“Almost as close as humanity can come to it,” he said, and bent his head and kissed her breast.
CHAPTER SEVEN
“Why aren’t you married?” she asked three days later, smiling at him from a rug beneath the dappled shade of a tree. “I thought diplomats were encouraged to marry.”
“They are.” Bare-chested and bare-legged, wearing a pair of shorts that had seen better days, he was sitting in a deck chair, eyes shielded from the sun by dark glasses. “The pressure’s not overt, however, and I don’t take any notice of it.”
“Such arrogance.” She laughed.
It was the same arrogance—unintentional, she was learning, but very much there—that had led him to veto sitting out on the beach with the words “New Zealanders don’t travel for beaches. We have the best beaches in the world.”
If she was planning a future with him, she thought now, ignoring the odd little ache in her heart, she’d have to do something about that attitude. As it was, it wasn’t going to matter to her.
Besides, although the beach was deserted, she wouldn’t be comfortable lying as she was now, body bared entirely to the warm, salty air. Three days and nights of Nicholas’s love-making had freed her of all inhibitions with him, but she couldn’t imagine sunbathing nude on a public beach.
Yawning, she turned onto her side. “I read in a magazine article that men who don’t marry by the time they’re thirty often don’t marry at all.”
His brows lifting, he surveyed her sun-glazed body. “If you read a book occasionally, instead of magazines, you’d know that often the articles are wrong,” he said austerely.
She grinned. “I do read books. And don’t avoid the issue. Why aren’t you married?”
“Because I’ve never met anyone I wanted to live with for the rest of my life,” he said calmly.
And that, of course, included her. The past few days had been an idyll. Cut off from everything but themselves, they had revelled unashamedly in sensuality, taking carnal enjoyment in each other’s bodies, eating when they were hungry, spending much of their time either in bed or outside beside the pool, always with the unspoken understanding that they were there for only one thing—the heated desire that so far remained unsated.
“Nobody? Your standards must be incredibly high.”
He shrugged. “Perhaps. I was born of an adulterous liaison, so I learned from an early age that marriage isn’t necessary.”
She looked uncertainly at him. Until that moment he’d said nothing about his childhood. “Was it hard on you?” she asked.
“No. For years I just took everything for granted, and by the time I realized what the situation was, I was old enough to understand. My father was tied to a wife who couldn’t give him children and who wasn’t in love with him.”
Mariel waited for Nicholas to continue, but when it became evident that he wasn’t going to, she asked, “It seems strange that they didn’t divorce.”
“They belonged to a religion in which divorce was banned, and there were financial aspects, as well. I think he’d have liked to have lived with my mother, but she found her life eminently satisfying as it was. She was an artist, a very well-known one, and a full-time husband would probably have been a nuisance.”
“What about a full-time child?” Mariel asked dryly.
“The child had a full-time nanny,” he said, sounding both amused and surprised at her perception. “And was much happier than you were—I wasn’t sensitive, and my nanny loved me. My mother did, too, in her own way, and my father never made any bones about it.”
Although he always spoke of his parents with affection, there seemed to be an equivocal inflection to his words that said in some way he despised them both. Mariel wanted to know why, wanted to know all about him, but there were barriers she didn’t feel brave enough to tackle.
Besides, it was none of her business, she told herself, watching him from beneath her lashes.
He stretched luxuriously, muscles and bones popping, copper skin flexing over the lean strength that knew how to take her to ecstasy.
Something primitive and forbidden uncurled in Mariel’s gut. By now, she thought, looking back over the past days, she should be at least accustomed to him, the keen edge of her hunger blunted a little.
Instead, she had only to look at him to
feel that bone-deep desire, as though her need was fed by the joyous, unhampered power of their lovemaking. She couldn’t get enough of him, and it seemed her feelings were entirely reciprocated.
“Tell me about your childhood,” he said. “How did your parents die?”
She’d been expecting it, so she was as ready as she was ever likely to be. Trying to ignore the telltale trickle of ice down her spine, she said lightly, “There’s not a lot to tell. They were killed in an accident, and I went back to New Zealand to live with my aunt.”
“In the small town in the King Country.” Her startled look brought a smile to his beautifully chiselled mouth, an imperceptible softening of the green-gold gaze. “You told me that right at the start when I was busy trying to immunize myself against you.”
“Why did you want to do that?” It was sheer self-indulgence to ask, and she knew the moment she’d said the words that she’d made a mistake.
His smile was derisive, his tone caustic. “Oh, for some reason I’ve always been drawn to long-legged, sleek-skinned redheads with eyes that tilt very slightly at the corners, and I find it vaguely distasteful that my hormones should have such control over me.”
Mariel did, too. It reduced their lovemaking to a mechanical, sex-driven coupling that was ugly and sordid. With a snap of her voice she said, “So you did your best to warn me off.”
“Exactly,” he said.
Well, she already knew how important being in control was to him. Why should she feel so let down? After all, right from the start she had told herself that her feelings for him were solely physical.
But she was changing, and it hurt that he so obviously wasn’t. Oh, the sexual need was still terrifyingly powerful, but other, reluctant feelings had burgeoned—respect, and an admiration that was not sexual at all. Without realizing it, she had hoped the same thing was happening to him.
Rolling onto her back, she presented her profile to him for a second before covering her face with her hat.
“But of course I couldn’t banish you from my mind,” he said calmly. “Every time I turned around you were there. Worse than that, I found myself making opportunities to be with you. And then I saw you dealing so efficiently with the trade ministers and hotel staff and so very gently with that little girl, saw how you gritted your teeth and kept your head and refused to be intimidated when her father was waving his gun around, and I began to wonder whether the previous women had been merely preludes to you.”
“I’ll bet you say that to all the long-legged redheads,” she said in a muffled voice.
“I could tell you that this time it’s different, but you wouldn’t believe me, would you?”
“Probably not.” It took a real effort, but she thought she managed the right lazily dismissive tone, as though the subject bored her.
“You were very busy doing exactly the same with me. You did your best to ignore me completely.”
“I,” she said, forgetting to be cool about it, “do not make a habit of falling for every tall, athletic, green-eyed man who comes along.”
He laughed softly. “Perhaps not, but I could see the barricades crash into place every time you looked at me.”
“Did it pique your interest?” The question positively crackled.
“In other words, did I decide to seduce you to prove my power. What do you think, Mariel?”
Although he sounded no more than mildly interested, his voice self-possessed and deep and speculative, she didn’t make the mistake of thinking he wasn’t angry.
Ashamed because she’d been angling for another answer, one he wasn’t going to give, she said, “I know you didn’t.”
Apparently apropos of nothing, Nicholas said quietly, “My mother told me once that women invariably choose the most powerful men they can attract, because until very recently male power has been one of the attributes that would help their children survive. She read a book on the Middle Ages that gave a breakdown on infant deaths in the various classes—aristocracy, merchants and peasants—and there was no doubt that the aristocracy, and the upper echelons especially, had a disproportionate number of children survive the rigors of infancy.”
Intrigued, yet a little indignant, Mariel suggested, “Surely it was because they were better fed and better housed.”
“That,” he countered, “is what a secure, high-paying job promises, doesn’t it?”
She said, “Are you insinuating that I’m materialistic?”
“No, and I’m not insinuating that you want to marry me—after all, we know that’s not true, don’t we?—but according to my mother’s theory most women unconsciously find a good provider sexy and desirable as a mate.”
She opened her lips, then closed them again, glad that he couldn’t see beneath the straw hat.
However, he said evenly, “Yes, I know what you’re thinking. My mother would say that, wouldn’t she, when you consider her life and her relationship with my father. I’m not saying I believe her theory, either, although it does make some sense. I do think that your propensity for diplomats and mine for women of a certain type of colouring and form is merely a propensity. I don’t imagine that you see every diplomat you meet as a possible husband, and although I might feel a moment of attraction when I meet a woman, I promise you I don’t leap into bed with everyone who fits the pattern.’’
She said waspishly, “Only the ones you like?”
His amusement was tinged with irony. “No. In spite of the way I’ve behaved these last few days, I can usually control myself. It’s only that first moment, the physical impact that affects me. Normally I look past the hair and the eyes and the legs and see the woman behind, and that involuntary flicker of desire dies.”
She didn’t want to ask, but the words wouldn’t be leashed. “Did that happen with me?”
“Fishing, Mariel?” His voice was enigmatic; she’d have given anything to see his face, but dared not remove the hat. Beneath it, heat crawled across her skin, flooded from her breasts to her throat in a prickly, damning surge.
He said judicially, “For the first time ever I couldn’t control my reactions. In fact, for a while I thought I was losing my grip, going slightly mad. I wanted you so much I could taste it. You invaded my dreams, and thinking of you took up far too much of my waking time. That had never happened to me before.”
“You were as nasty as you could be.” Yes, her voice was fine—steady, slightly humorous, with no more than a hint of censure.
“I was not nasty,” he said firmly. “I was quietly racing into desperation. I tried to establish a respectable distance between us, only to discover to my chagrin that I couldn’t. I kept making excuses to see you, wondering what you were doing, looking around jealously to see who you were with.”
“So you decided you’d find a way to rid yourself of this inconvenient itch, and you organized this idyll. What would you have done if I’d said thanks, but no thanks?”
“It sounds conceited, but I was reasonably sure you wouldn’t.”
“Conceit has nothing to do with it,” she said. “You must have been certain of my answer. That last night here, a month ago, I offered myself to you on a plate. I thought I’d disgusted you. I certainly disgusted myself.”
He leaned over and pulled her up onto his lap, exerting his great strength with an ease that always awed her. Her hat and his glasses tumbled unnoticed to the ground as his hands slid around her throat, pushing her chin up with his thumbs so he could look into her shamed eyes.
“That night was...like something out of the Arabian Nights, like an exotic fantasy come true. I’ve never liked women who come on to men, even though I’ll admit there’s no reason they shouldn’t. I’ve always thought I valued subtlety. But that night you blew my mind. You were everything I’d ever wanted in a woman, and I didn’t know how to cope with it. I only knew that I couldn’t behave as though you were a simple one-night stand. To do that would be to devalue what we felt. And I thought, I don’t need this. I can’t handle it. I don’t wan
t to handle it.” His mouth tightened. “Besides, I was sure it would soon fade.”
That hurt, too.
“Great minds think alike,” she countered.
“But we were wrong, weren’t we. I think I knew, even when I was organizing this week, that a simple sating of honest lust wasn’t going to work,” he said softly. “I didn’t want to admit it, of course.” He paused, the glittering gold in his eyes suddenly blazing forth hypnotically. In words that seemed torn from him he said quickly, “Mariel, marry me.
Temptation dug its fingers into her heart, into her brain, whispering siren words that eroded her willpower like a flood over an earthen dam. “No,” she said rigidly. “Oh, no, don’t. Please.”
“Why not? We both know by now that, wonderful though the sex is, this is much more than that. Can you just turn your back on it and walk away?”
Unable to bear looking at him, she closed her eyes, shaking her head. “You don’t want to marry me. We agreed, remember, this was to get it out of our systems—”
“We were idiots. Look at me, Mariel.”
When she refused, squeezing her eyes shut so that tiny red dots sparked behind her lids and began to whirl, he said on a note of gritty amusement, “You can’t behave like a child told to do something she doesn’t want to. Refusing to open your eyes isn’t going to change anything.’’
There was an element of denial in her reaction, but mostly she wanted to be free of the wicked enchantment of his glance, the hard promise of his mouth. Reluctantly, her whole being shouting danger, she lifted her lashes and focused on him.
He smiled, although his eyes were now coolly, purely green. His hand lifted, came to rest on the lush curve of her breast. “See how dark my skin is against yours,” he said with quiet, heart-stopping insistence. “Dark and pale together. I could spend the rest of my life looking at that contrast, and I swear every time I do I’ll want you. Are you sated, Mariel?”
She couldn’t breathe, couldn’t move, locked in a stillness broken only by the throbbing of her nerve ends at the slow movement of his fingers. She whispered, “No, I’m not sated.”
