A Forbidden Desire

by Robyn Donald

  They had reached the end of the beach; he stopped and looked at the low headland crowned with old, sprawling, comfortable pohutukawas. ‘That casual attitude would be a lot harder to maintain without the climate and the gulf. New Zealand’s other main cities simply don’t have the weather to be brash and casual.’

  One day, Jacinta told herself, she’d be as familiar with those cities as he so clearly was. Excitement, frothy as the waves, bubbling like champagne, filled her, threatening to reveal itself in her face. Beneath the headland, wave-smoothed rocks rose through the sand; on the pretext of examining one, she moved away.

  She could have walked beside him in the beguiling splendour of the moonlight for hours.

  Just talking. That would be enough.

  But because she understood that soon it wouldn’t be enough, she couldn’t allow herself to do this again.

  The weather, she told herself. Keep talking about the weather; its very banality would temper her emotions.

  ‘We do have a great climate,’ she said, ‘although some of the students from the south find the humidity unbearable in summer.’

  Yes, that was the right touch. Her voice sounded cool and uninvolved, the conversational tone implying that this was not important stuff.

  That he was not important.

  And how could he be? She didn’t know him

  ‘Ah, Auckland’s proverbial steam bath,’ he said, an ironic note underpinning the words so that she wondered whether he knew what she was doing. ‘You get used to it.’

  ‘You can get used to anything, they say.’ Jacinta fervently hoped that this was true.

  They walked back along the beach towards the silent house, the light from its windows gleaming through the swooping branches of the trees.

  They talked of art and music and their favourite rock bands and sport, only falling to silence as they came up the steps to the lawn. With noiseless footsteps they crossed the grass, dew-damp already, its scent mingling with the soft salt fragrance of the sea.

  All Jacinta’s responses—to the night-perfumed air, the dim shadows and blurred forms of flowers and foliage, the luminous, light-embossed sky—were heightened by the man who walked beside her. Unbidden anticipation lodged in the pit of her stomach, honed her senses to a keen, subliminal edge

  Four steps up, the verandah surrounded three sides of the house Beneath its roof lurked a pool of darkness, a still, breathless haven between garden and rooms. Because Jacinta wanted nothing more than to stay outside with Paul, where she wasn’t reminded that this man had everything and she had nothing, she took the steps too quickly

  And, of course, she tripped.

  Before she had time to fall, hard hands grabbed her by the hips, jerking her back. For fleeting seconds she was held against his strong body, and for the first time in her life she understood the meaning of hunger.

  ‘Thanks,’ she muttered, wrenching herself away as though his touch scalded her. Fighting back the urge to scuttle for the safety of her bedroom, she stopped halfway across the wooden boards, grateful for the darkness there.

  The words she’d intended to say died. Paul hadn’t moved, and beneath his lashes his narrowed eyes gleamed. With eyes attuned to the starlight Jacinta could even see the tiny flicker of a muscle along his jawline.

  Her bones deliquesced. She’d barely had time to think exultantly, He feels it too! when he reimposed control and the moment’s betrayal was wiped from features now masklike in their rigidity.

  In a voice that revealed only a studied aloofness, he said, ‘You’d better watch that step.’

  Watch your step, he meant.

  Swallowing to ease the dryness in her mouth and throat, Jacinta said, ‘I will. I did warn you,’ adding rapidly, ‘although I usually fall down steps, not up them.’

  She couldn’t bear it if he thought she’d done it deliberately, as a self-seeking, trashy little ploy to attract him.

  This was not simple sexual attraction. Whatever it was, it had the power to bring her to total meltdown. How long had she spent in his arms—a couple of seconds? Two seconds to change a life, she thought feverishly.

  Terrified by the wild, blind hunger that savaged her, she retreated a pace towards her bedroom. Her sandals made little scuffing noises, barely audible over the pounding discord of her senses.

  ‘There’s the phone,’ Paul said. ‘Excuse me.’

  Inwardly shaking, her eyes dilated and wary, she gazed after him. Breathe, she ordered; just breathe slowly and calmly, and this panic will go away. But before she could summon wits enough to walk into her room, he was back.

  ‘It’s Gerard,’ he said laconically, expression and voice giving nothing away. ‘He wants to say hello.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ she said, stumbling over each word as she skirted him with ridiculous care.

  When she picked up the receiver Paul walked out of the room, and she stared at his receding back, saying with an odd, unbidden nervousness, ‘Hello, Gerard.’

  ‘Paul said you’re staying at the homestead. With him,’ Gerard said, his voice unexpectedly close.

  ‘Yes.’ Dismayed caution iced her tone. She knew he meant nothing by it, but she refused to make excuses. Frowning, she said levelly, ‘Penguins are nesting under the bach.’

  There was a moment’s silence. Jacinta was about to ask, Are you there? when he said, ‘I see. A real nuisance. How are you getting on with the notes for your thesis?’

  ‘I haven’t done anything yet,’ she said, guiltily resentful of his well-meant interference.

  In his generous way, and certainly without realising it, he was trying to force her along the path he’d chosen, dismissing her occasional objections with a tolerant persistence as though she were a small child who needed guidance.

  Mark had been sure she needed guidance too.

  With a flash of sardonic humour she thought it was strange that although she’d been running her life for years now, in the short space of a year two men had decided she needed their instruction and direction. Perhaps she was giving off vibrations? If so, they were lying ones.

  She’d make all her own decisions.

  ‘I see.’ Gerard’s voice cooled. ‘I’d thought I might do some research for you while I’m here.’

  ‘Gerard, I haven’t even decided what subject I’m tackling, so it would be wasted effort,’ she said, knowing there was no tactful way of saying it. Hastily she added, ‘How are you finding Harvard?’

  ‘Cold,’ he said stiffly.

  ‘Poor thing. I won’t upset you by telling you it’s glorious here.’

  ‘No,’ he said abstractedly, ‘please don’t do that.’ Again there was a hesitation before he said, ‘I hope Paul’s being good to you.’

  ‘He’s very kind,’ she said, her voice flattening.

  ‘He’s a decent man, the best. I wish he’d get married, but I don’t think he’ll ever recover from Aura’s betrayal.’

  Jacinta’s heart clamped in her chest. ‘He doesn’t look like a modern equivalent of Miss Havisham,’ she offered. She didn’t want to hear this; with any luck the reference might divert the conversation.

  ‘Who? Oh, Dickens. Great Expectations. An overrated writer, in my opinion Well, Paul’s certainly not training up a small child to wreak revenge on all members of the opposite sex, but I think when Aura jilted him it killed something in him. Since then he’s had affairs, of course, but he doesn’t like women much.’

  Was that it? Was the reservation she’d sensed in Paul right from the start so impersonal, a simple mistrust of the whole female world?

  Crisply she said, ‘Well, that’s none of our—’

  ‘Aura was so beautiful,’ Gerard interrupted mournfully, refusing to detour. ‘The sort of woman you never forget. I don’t know how she could do it.’

  ‘It happens.’ Jacinta knew she sounded flippant, but she most emphatically didn’t want to hear how wonderful the woman who had jilted Paul was.

  ‘I suppose it does. Disloyalty is becoming more common
than it used to be, I’m afraid.’

  ‘Careful, Gerard,’ she said lightly, ‘your years are showing. I don’t suppose it was easy for her, either. Decisions like that take some courage. Oh, there was a little rattle in the back of your car on the way up. Do you want me to take it into the garage?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘I know what it is—nothing serious.’ His voice altered. ‘Well, I’d better go. Missing me?’

  ‘I—yes—yes, of course,’ she said, taken aback.

  ‘Take care of yourself, and don’t flirt with Paul. He might reciprocate, but he does with every woman he meets. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘Flirting never does,’ she said. ‘That’s the essence of the game, surely? To have fun and break no bones? Goodbye, Gerard. Do you want to speak to Paul again?’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Goodbye, Jacinta.’

  It was impossible to imagine Paul listening at the door, but as she hung up he came into the room. An eyebrow climbed and he said evenly, ‘That didn’t take long.’

  Perhaps because she’d been discussing him, colour surged upwards from her breasts. ‘He just wanted to see how things were going,’ she said, carefully banishing the defensive note from her voice.

  He nodded, his gaze very shrewd and hard as it rested on her face. ‘Would you like a nightcap?’

  ‘No, thanks; I’ll go to bed now.’

  He stepped aside to let her past. Almost stifled by his size and potent presence, Jacinta hurried through the door and down the hall to her bedroom, closing the door behind her with a shattering relief.

  And then, with the curtains safely drawn and the light turned off, she sat in the darkness and shivered while those moments when Paul had held her stormed back into her brain, refusing to cede to any other thoughts.

  It was nothing, she told herself. He supported you, that’s all, until you got your balance back.

  But her pulses were still throbbing through her body with a hypnotic rhythm, and when she closed her eyes she could see the arrogant, chiselled features outlined by the faint glow of the stars, and recall how his sheer, sexual power had consumed her.

  Helpless, snared by her primitive, involuntary response, she’d been unable to move.

  How could any woman leave him for another man? She simply couldn’t believe it. Aura Whoever-she-was must have been a fool.

  Jacinta drew a deep breath. It would pay her to remember that he’d retreated behind his armour of self-sufficiency with insulting speed. And it had been antagonism she’d glimpsed in his narrowed eyes.

  If she sat here in the dark like a lovelorn teenager, going over and over how his arms had tightened like iron around her, how the heat of his body had enveloped her, she’d be pushing herself deeper and deeper into the murky waters of infatuation.

  Setting her jaw, she got to her feet and switched on the light.

  As she got ready for bed Gerard’s words came back to haunt her. Did Paul dislike all women because one had let him down so spectacularly?

  It didn’t seem likely; surely he was too sane, too intelligent to generalise so brutally? But if he’d really loved that runaway fiancée the betrayal would have seemed hideous.

  Disillusionment did strange things to people.

  ‘Your problem,’ she informed her reflection softly as she brushed the long, curling silk of her hair, ‘is that you want whatever he feels for you—even if it’s only dislike and mistrust—to belong to you alone, not to some unknown woman with more looks than nous.’

  This fixation was becoming wretchedly inconvenient. Ah, well, she’d be able to talk some sense into hersel while he was away. Naturally she was a little off balance—she hadn’t been expecting to find herself living in the sam house as a man with such powerful, incendiary impact.

  But as she lay in bed listening to the quiet sound of th sea through the trees, she let her mind drift, and soon be came lost in a romantic daydream that merged impercep tibly with sleep, and turned erotic when the constraints o will and self-discipline blurred and vanished.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  JACINTA woke the next morning with heavy eyes, and a voluptuous exhaustion weighed her down. It was succeeded by a shocked scurry from the bed as memory replayed in vibrant colour the images she’d conjured up from some sensuous, uninhibited, completely unsuspected part of her psyche.

  ‘Oh, lord,’ she whispered, uncomfortable and tense as she turned the shower onto cold and stepped determinedly m, ‘I’ve never had that sort of dream before!’

  Flicking her hair out of the spray, she scrubbed herself with punishing vigour, and began stubbornly to plan the day’s writing. When she finally emerged from her bedroom she’d regained some fragile measure of composure.

  She was dressed for the morning in a thin white cotton shirt that hung loosely over her cinnamon three-quarter-length pants. For some inscrutable reason she’d succumbed to a feminine instinct and donned her one good pair of sandals, elderly though they were.

  Although for all the glamour they added she might just as well have worn her cheap rubber sandals; they wouldn’t have looked much more out of place against the muted opulence of the oriental runner that glowed on the wide, polished boards of the hall. The house was still cool, but it was going to be another unseasonably hot day.

  Her hard-won composure fled when she walked into the breakfast room, for there, cup of coffee in front of him, sat Paul, dominant and uncompromisingly masculine, sunlight dancing around him in a golden aura.

  ‘Good morning,’ Jacinta said, reining in her reactions with a ruthless hand. ‘No, don’t get up, please’

  But he did, setting a sheaf of papers down on the table. ‘Sleep well?’ he enquired.

  ‘Yes, thank you. I thought you’d be gone by now.’ And she could have bitten her tongue, for she’d sounded surly and far too aware of him.

  ‘In ten minutes,’ he said. ‘I gather you don’t wake up in the best of moods.’

  It was an excuse, but one she couldn’t accept. ‘Just this morning,’ she said, trying to sound casually offhand. ‘I think I must have slept too heavily.’

  ‘A headache?’ He seemed genuinely concerned.

  ‘No,’ she returned gruffly, ‘a thick head and a bad temper.’

  ‘Then help yourself to whatever you want,’ he said, a note of amusement warming his voice, ‘and I won’t talk to you.’

  His calm, confident good humour banished her surliness instantly With a rueful smile she turned away to ladle fruit and cereal into a bowl.

  If he stayed aloof she’d be all right. Times like this were going to be the problem; when he laughed he was altogether too likeable, the sort of man a woman could lose her heart to.

  While he studied his papers Jacinta chewed cereal that tasted like cardboard, and tamarillos with no more flavour. She buttered toast. She drank coffee Mentally she urged him to get up and leave.

  Even though she kept her eyes studiously averted, she felt him. His beautifully tailored clothes made her cheap, second-hand ones look shabby and sleazy, and his self-possession was a blow directed at hers.

  Finally he got to his feet and Jacinta was forced to look up. His eyes were so blue, she thought mindlessly.

  ‘Enjoy yourself,’ he said with laconic pleasantness. ‘I’ll see you tomorrow night, although I won’t be here for dinner.’

  Ah, thank God, he’d retreated once more behind the armour of his pleasantness. ‘Have a good day,’ Jacinta returned, deliberately banal.

  When he left it the room echoed with emptiness. She heard his car leave, and the house suddenly died. After forcing another cup of coffee down an unwilling throat, she cleared the table and helped Fran put the dishes away before walking down to the beach to watch the gulls slowly wheel overhead.

  At length, obscurely soothed by the never-ending, remorseless ebb and flow of the waves, she returned to her bedroom, tidied it and made the bed, and sat herself down in front of Gerard’s computer.

  She’d wondered if her sexual reaction to Pau
l might inhibit her writing, but it was as though someone had pressed a hidden button and released a barrier in her, the excitement of her writing somehow seeming to join with the languor and the febrile passion that lingered like a miasma from her dreams.

  For hours she wrote with complete concentration, ignoring the sounds of the farm around the house, until Fran tapped on her door and called, ‘Jacinta, do you want some lunch?’

  ‘Hang on,’ she answered, and finished the paragraph she was working on.

  ‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ the housekeeper said when she emerged, ‘but Paul said to make sure you had meals.’

  Jacinta came crashing back into real life. ‘Oh,’ she said. ‘Oh, I didn’t realise... I thought... Is it lunchtime already?’

  ‘Past one o’clock. Your work must be going well.’

  Jacinta nodded, realising that she was both hungry and a little stiff. ‘Very well,’ she said cheerfully. ‘But I thought we’d agreed that I’d make my own meals when there’s just us.’

  Fran’s look was dry and amused. ‘In this house what Paul says goes. He told me to see that you ate decent meals at the right times, so if you’re not out in the kitchen making your meals, I will be.’

  She should be angry; after all, she’d hated it when Mark had tried to manage her life, and she resented even Gerard’s well-meant suggestions. It was a measure of her infatuation that she felt a tiny warm glow at Paul’s thoughtfulness.

  Bad response, she thought gloomily, heading towards the kitchen with Fran.

  That day set the pattern for the one following—and the one after that, for Paul rang the housekeeper to say that he wouldn’t be home that night either, and possibly not for another couple.

  I am not disappointed, Jacinta told herself firmly when Fran relayed the news after putting a cup of peppermint tea on one of the verandah tables.

  The housekeeper and she had come to an agreement. If Jacinta was typing Fran didn’t interrupt, but left food and cups of various interesting drinks on the table outside the bedroom, which Jacinta ate and drank when she emerged.