hurricane!

by Mary Lyons

  'It's very. . . it's not at all. . .'

  'What you expected?' She gave a low, wry laugh. 'Out of sheer interest—what did you expect? Some tacky little shop selling secondhand clothes?'

  'No, not exactly,' he drawled with sardonic amusement. 'But I have to confess that I certainly didn't believe it would prove to be quite so glamorous. Are all your other shops like this?'

  'Yes—all five of them.'

  'Hmm. . .' He gazed down at the thick carpet, clearly deep in thought.

  'Don't bother trying to do the sums, Luke,' she told him sharply. 'I know exactly what you're thinking! Yes, I've built up a nice little capital investment—but I've had to work extremely hard, and have no intention of selling out and going back to the States with you!' She glared at him defiantly. 'And just in case you're won­dering, I can tell you that I hold all the shares in this small company—so you can just keep your sticky fingers well away from my business!'

  He laughed, taking her arm as he led her out into the street. 'You're a clever girl,' he said, opening the passen­ger door of his sister's car. 'In fact,' he added, as he came around and settled himself into the driving seat, 'I'm very proud of both you and what you've achieved in such a relatively short space of time.'

  'Wow! Be still, my beating heart!' she muttered caus­tically, although she couldn't help feeling a deep glow of satisfaction. Coming from that successful business tycoon, Luke Brandon, such words were praise indeed. However, she had a far more pressing matter on her mind, and one that she ought to get sorted out as soon as possible.

  'I want to see Barbara, and catch up on all her news,' Samantha said as he drove out of the town. 'But when I took off this morning, I wasn't expecting to go any­where smart and, as you can see, there's no way I'm dressed for a lunch party.' She gestured helplessly at her white cotton slacks and tight-fitting, navy blue T-shirt.

  Luke gave her a sideways grin. 'Relax. I'm crazy about your T-shirt,' he murmured, gazing appreciatively at her full breasts.

  'Ha, ha,' she muttered sarcastically, cross with herself for not being able to control the flush spreading over her cheeks. 'It's all very well for you,' she grumbled, glancing at his tan coloured trousers and cream silk shirt, a thin brown leather belt and gold buckle emphasising his slim waist. It was absolutely sickening that, whatever the circumstances, he always looked immaculate and—very unfortunately, as far as she was concerned—sen­sationally attractive.

  'There's no need for you to panic,' he said reassur­ingly. 'We're going to join the others at Les Castelets for lunch, and then go back to Edmond's old family home at La Pointe Milou for a swim and. . .'

  'Les Castelets. . .?' she shrieked in alarm. 'Oh, my God—that's absolutely the smartest restaurant, and always full of the Parisian jet set! Oh, no. . . no way. . .'

  Samantha had been so preoccupied with impressing upon Luke that, dressed as she was, she couldn't poss­ibly turn up at such a chic establishment, she hadn't no­ticed that he had pulled into the side of the road. He swiftly cut the engine, releasing their seat-belts, and before she knew what was happening, she suddenly found herself clasped in his arms. Grasping her chin and tilting her face up towards him, he lowered his dark head until his mouth was poised over hers.

  'When will you stop fighting—and learn to trust me?' he murmured.

  'No,' she begged desperately. 'No, don't. . .'

  'Kiss you. . .?' he drawled softly, brushing his mouth across her trembling lips. 'Oh, but I shall—wherever and whenever I wish to do so!'

  Samantha knew that she ought to struggle, to try and evade the firm, hard grip of his embrace. But it was as if she had become mentally paralysed, staring mes­merised up into his gleaming blue eyes, excitement scorching through her body and her lips parting in a soft invitation as his warm mouth claimed hers.

  There was a controlled hunger in the hard body pressed so closely to hers, a fierce possession in the hand that slipped beneath her T-shirt to cup the swollen fullness of her breasts. The touch of his fingers brushing tantalisingly over her taut nipples caused the blood to sing in her ears, and she gave a helpless moan of capitu­lation, winding her arms up around his neck as his kiss deepened and she surrendered to the erotic pleasure of his lovemaking.

  It seemed an age before he slowly raised his head, re­leasing her from his embrace as he gently trailed a fore­finger down her pale cheek, and over her quivering lips. 'So, we are agreed? We will join Barbara and Edmond for lunch, hmm?'

  For the life of her, there was nothing she could poss­ibly say. Leaning back in her seat, Samantha closed her eyes. She was feeling far too emotionally exhausted to do more than turn her head away in a vain, hopeless attempt to hide the hectic flush spreading over her face. / hate him . . .I hate him, she chanted desperately to herself. But, of course—and that was the real problem, wasn't it?—she didn't. Almost fainting with dizziness as she at last began to comprehend the quite appalling, dis­astrous truth, it was all she could do not to moan out loud with dismay.

  Sitting in a ridiculously small car, half-way up a mountain in St Barts, was hardly the best place to dis­cover that, despite all the unhappiness and misery of the past—and after all these years, for heaven's sake!—she was still head over heels in love with her husband!

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The red mini-moke suddenly turned right, the small ve­hicle moving on down a narrow, unsignposted road which soon disintegrated into a rough, bumpy track.

  'Hey! This isn't the way to Les Castelets.' Samantha turned to look accusingly at Luke. 'Where on earth do you think you're going?'

  'I'm not entirely sure. However, if I followed the directions correctly, this road should lead us to Gouverneur Beach.'

  'But. . .but that's a good two or three kilometres away from the restaurant!'

  'You're quite right, so it is,' Luke agreed with a bland smile.

  'Why you—ah? Samantha gasped as they suddenly hit a large pothole. For the next few minutes she was forced to remain silent, clinging on to her seat for dear life as the small car bounced up and down over boulders littering the rough track.

  What a fool she was! Samantha fumed, grinding her teeth with angry frustration. She ought to have guessed, when he had insisted on picking her up from the shop, that Luke would have some sneaky, devious plan in mind. After all, she'd always known that when it came to low cunning and guile—Luke could make Machiavelli look like a mere amateur!

  'We'll be lucky if we don't get the bottom torn out of this boneshaker!' she grated, continuing to mutter angrily under her breath as they lurched on down the track. Just when she was contemplating taking her life in her hands and jumping out of the car—anything had to be better than suffering this purgatory!—they turned a corner, and Luke brought the vehicle to a halt.

  ' Voila! as Barbara would say,' he laughed, getting out and stretching his long legs, before coming around to open her door. 'I think this was worth the journey, don't you?' he said, gesturing at the beautiful long stretch of fine, golden sand edged by sparkling blue sea, which appeared to be completely deserted.

  'Humph. . . it's all right, I suppose,' Samantha grumbled, still feeling shaken to bits by her rough jolting, and also struggling to come to terms with the alarming fact that, despite all her efforts, she was still in love with the man standing beside her.

  'Don't be so grouchy!'

  'I'm not,' she protested.

  'Yes, you are—and you can cut it out, right now,' he said firmly, before bending down to remove his shoes and socks.

  'But what about Edmond and Barbara? They're expecting us to join them for lunch and. . .'

  'We'll join them later,' Luke assured her. 'There's at least an hour to go before we're expected at the restaurant.'

  'But why. . .'

  'For goodness' sake—stop moaning!' he retorted. 'I've brought you here because ever since I arrived in St Pauls, we've never really had the opportunity to be alone together. First your drunken chef, and then your boy­friend—it's been one dam
n thing after another! Besides, I've got a hankering to explore an old pirate's cave, and look for buried treasure,' he grinned.

  Samantha had been just about to give him a piece of her mind—he'd got a nerve talking about her 'boy­friend', because as far as she was concerned, there was still a very large question mark over his relationship with his lady architect—but she found herself staring at him in open-mouthed astonishment instead.

  'You? Looking for buried treasure?' she queried in amazement. 'Do you mean a pirate's hoard of gold doubloons and pieces of eight? Like in all those old "yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum" stories?'

  Luke gave her a broad smile. 'Sure, why not? Edmond was telling me that some fierce old French pirate—a guy known as Monbars the Exterminator—buried his secret hoard of gold in a cave on this beach. I thought it might be fun to have a look and see what we can find.'

  'Yes, well. . .' She blinked in confusion. Ye Gods! What on earth had come over the normally suave, sophisti­cated Luke Brandon?

  'Come on,' he said, taking a firm hold of her hand. 'Let's forget we're grown-up, responsible adults—and go treasure-hunting!'

  Samantha hesitated for a moment. The very last thing she wanted at this juncture was to find herself alone with Luke. On the other hand, it might be fun to explore an old pirate's cave. . . 'OK—I'll give it a whirl, but I warn you that I draw the line at having to walk the plank,' she added, grinning at her own childish folly as they began to walk over the warm sand.

  Unfortunately, when they reached it, the pirate's cave appeared to be disappointingly bare of all treasure.

  'I don't know where old Monbars kept his loot, but he'd have had a hard time burying it in there.' Samantha, sitting on a wide, flat rock outside the cave, nodded towards the large dark opening behind her. 'I reckon the only way of finding out for sure would be to dynamite the stone floor of the cave. . . and I don't think that treasure-hunting aficionados would regard that as quite playing the game!'

  'No—I guess not,' Luke muttered absently, staring down into a small rock pool, which was filled with sea water from the receding tide.

  Gazing at her husband as he knelt over the pool, a heavy lock of dark hair falling over his eyes, Samantha had a sudden insight of how he must have looked as a young boy. It was only a fleeting vision, but it left her with confused feelings of love and tenderness—some­thing she found acutely disquieting when applied to a man she had always seen as hard, tough and implacable.

  'Ah—gotcha!' he suddenly exclaimed, plunging in his hand and laughing as he held up a large crab.

  'Watch out! He'll nip your fingers if you're not careful!' she cried anxiously, relieved when Luke smiled and tossed the crab back into the pool.

  'It's a shame I can't stay longer on this island,' he said, coming over to sit down beside her. 'Barbara tells me that there's great scuba-diving off the rocks near their house.'

  Samantha looked at him in surprise. 'I didn't know you liked diving.'

  'I am rapidly coming to the conclusion that there is very little you do know about me,' he said quietly, and she flushed as she recalled her disturbing thoughts of a few moments before. 'Before you finally throw in the towel on our marriage,' he continued in the same quiet tone, 'don't you think it might be worth giving it another chance, and maybe discovering that I'm not the black ogre you seem to think I am?'

  'No, Luke, I. . . it would never work—not in a million years,' she muttered, staring down at her nervously twisting hands. 'I guess. . . well, in fact, I know that I want a great deal more out of life now than I did when I was only eighteen.'

  'Such as. . .'.

  'Just about everything, I guess.' She shrugged. 'I'd like to have a husband whom I saw more than just once or twice a week. In fact, I'd like him to be home every night, if possible. And I want children. . . and ani­mals . . . and maybe a house in the country. What I don't want is to return to that huge, gloomy apartment of yours—I'd die rather than have to live there again!'

  Luke gave an exasperated sigh. 'I wish I knew why on earth you appear to have such a fixation about my old apartment. However, the question is now a purely academic one, since I sold it soon after you left.'

  'Really?' She looked at him in surprise. 'So, where are you living now?'

  'I've got a penthouse suite with a large roof garden, on Fifth Avenue overlooking Central Park. . .'

  'Goodness! That must have cost you a fortune!' she exclaimed.

  He shrugged. 'If you don't like it, I can easily find somewhere else. It's people—not places—that are im­portant, Samantha. Surely you know that by now?'

  'Yes, of course I do,' she agreed quickly. 'But my dislike of your apartment, however stupid it may seem to you, was all part and parcel of my active dislike of our life-style.' She frowned and brushed a shaking hand through her curly hair. 'I. . .I wish I knew how to ex­plain it to you, Luke, but while I'm sure that I've changed in the last few years, I don't see any evidence that you have. In fact, as far as I can tell, you're still the same ruthless businessman that you always were. I know . . .I know,' she said quickly as he opened his mouth to protest. 'As businessmen go, you're terrifically suc­cessful—absolutely the greatest!—and I really admire you for what you've done in building up your company until it's now world-famous. But, strange as it may seem, I don't want to be married to Brandon-Phillips International,' she added, with a helpless shrug of her shoulders. 'I don't want to sit alone, night after night. I don't want to have to learn to be grateful for a few minutes of your valuable time. What I want is an or­dinary, everyday husband—not a business tycoon who's so wrapped up in his work that he has no time for anyone or anything, other than what he reads in the Wall Street Journal?

  'But I have made considerable changes to my life over the last few years,' he argued, getting to his feet and pacing up and down over the sand. 'I now delegate a great deal of work to my executives; there's the large estate I've bought in East Hampton, and. . .'

  'OK, OK. So you've made a few technical adjust­ments to your life-style.' She shrugged her shoulders. 'But just as a leopard can't change his spots, I don't see you being able to change what you are: a man who's committed, one hundred per cent, to his business. And let's be honest with one another,' she pleaded. 'It would be unreasonable of me to expect you to turn yourself inside out; to become something you're not. Just as un­reasonable, in fact, as the way you expected my share of your life to be limited to occasional entertaining on your behalf, and a few hours alone in bed together,' she added bitterly.

  'That's not true—I did no such thing!' he exploded, before taking a deep breath and walking over to stare blindly down into the rock pool. 'Look, I know I wasn't exactly the most brilliant of husbands,' he said at last in a calmer tone of voice. 'In fact, as it turned out, it seems as if I made a thorough mess of the job, right?'

  'Well. . .' Samantha paused. 'If I'm honest, I'd have to say that it takes two to make a mess of things. I was only eighteen, Luke. I'd hardly even begun to stand on my own two feet, and I guess those twelve years between us were just too large a gap for either of us to handle. I simply didn't have the sophistication to cope with your relationship with Adele, for instance.'

  'Adele!' Luke swore savagely. 'I might have known you'd bring that damned woman into the discussion!' He walked back to stand staring down at her. 'Why couldn't you have trusted me? Why—when our love-making was the only part of our marriage that clearly did work—why on earth should I have wanted to take a mistress?'

  'You mean. . .'

  'I mean that it's about time you grew up!' he thun­dered angrily. 'You've spent the last few days telling me that you've changed, that you're now so much older and wiser than you were when we were first married. But I have to tell you that I can see very little evidence of that fact!'

  'You always were blind as a bat—especially if there was anything you didn't want to see!' she retorted furi­ously. 'Let me tell you. . .'

  'Oh, no—that's my line!' he snarled. 'Let me tell you a few
harsh facts of life. Such as: it's time you woke up, and realised that you can't spend the rest of your life existing in some sort of cloud-cuckoo land, hiding away on a small Caribbean island because you're afraid of life in the outside world.'

  Samantha jumped to her feet. 'I'm not "hiding from life"!' she shouted, almost dancing with rage.

  'Oh, yes, you are,' he remarked flatly. 'You own and run five successful shops on the various islands out here, right?'

  'Right!' she ground out through clenched teeth.

  'You've kept that ramshackle hotel of your aunt's running—God knows how!—and the constant ups and downs with the staff, not to mention the problems of cash-flow for their wages, which must have made it a nightmare to cope with. . .?'

  'Right again!'

  'So—maybe you can explain why such a smart, clever lady should be so absolutely and totally convinced that she can't perform the simple task of managing her husband?'

  She gave a scornful laugh. 'There's nothing "simple" about you. You're the most complicated person I've ever come across.'

  'Nonsense!' he retorted curtly. 'Any woman worth her salt knows how to manage a man—in fact, most of them could do it with one hand tied behind their back! I'll admit that I can be difficult to live with. . .'

  'Impossible, you mean!'

  '. . .But if you had any spunk or gumption, you'd have regarded life with me as a challenge,' he continued, ig­noring her caustic interjection. 'Instead of which, you ran away and have kept your head firmly buried in the sand ever since. And it's no use trying to convince me that the failure of our marriage lies with Adele Francis,' he added coldly. 'If you really believed she was coming between us, then the answer lay in your own hands. You've always had the key to our relationship—I've never understood why you didn't use it to unlock the door.'