A Forbidden Desire

by Robyn Donald

  Paul asked impersonally, ‘What are your plans?’

  ‘I’ve found a job and a place to stay, so neither you nor Gerard need to concern yourselves about me.’ She couldn’t hold back a savage corollary. ‘I’ve had it up to my teeth with men trying to manipulate me.’

  ‘I’m not trying to manipulate you,’ he returned with silky quietness. ‘However, I can’t help worrying about you.’

  ‘Because I’ve been so naive about men?’ Infuriatingly, her voice cracked halfway through the sentence. Steadying it, she went on, ‘I learn quickly. I’ll be all right.’

  ‘And if you’re pregnant?’ he demanded.

  She shook her head. ‘It’s not likely, is it? We used protection.’

  ‘It has been known to fail,’ he said roughly. ‘In ten percent of cases, I understand.’

  Her shoulders lifted slightly. Staring ahead with eyes that saw nothing, she said, ‘I’ll face that if it happens.’

  ‘We’ll face it,’ he said, a hard note warning her that he wouldn’t give way.

  ‘All right,’ she said quickly.

  She lied, of course. If she had his child he would want to look after her, but she could think of nothing more painful than to be forced to endure constant contact with him. However, she’d deal with that if and when it happened.

  The conversation had exhausted her small store of composure; she said, ‘I’ll go back now. I’ll eat in my room.’

  Something predatory and coldly reckless splintered in the crystalline eyes. ‘Don’t hide away because of me,’ he said caustically, standing aside to let her past. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

  How foolish to hope that he’d come back because of her!

  He stayed on the beach while she walked away from him into the house, leaving her heart and her innocence behind

  They met at breakfast the next morning. Exhausted after a sleepless night, Jacinta knew that her eyes had dark rings around them, and after a keen glance from Paul wished that she used cosmetics. Good armour, she thought wretchedly. It would have been much better to stick to her guns and leave on the bus; this long-drawn-out farewell was an endurance test, as was eating. Jacinta had to force the food down a throat almost blocked by a knot of grief.

  They set off through another brilliant morning, radiant with the promise of heat and humidity. After taping the envelope containing Gerard’s cheque to the computer, Jacinta thanked Fran and in spite of Paul’s presence asked her to say goodbye to Dean for her.

  ‘Oh,’ she said, after Fran had promised to do that, ‘I’ve left a pile of library books beside the bed Can you take them back?’

  ‘Yes, of course.’ Fran looked from Paul’s impassive face to Jacinta’s, then commanded, ‘Take care now, and look after yourself Make sure you eat your meals on tune!’

  Jacinta gave her a swift hug and went out to the car. In silence Paul drove towards Auckland; she looked out of the side window until her stomach began to feel queasy, and then she sat staring at the road ahead, noticing nothing.

  ‘What’s the address?’ he asked halfway across the harbour bridge.

  ‘Drop me in town and I’ll get a bus.’

  ‘With two suitcases and those boxes of books? What’s the address?’

  It would have been a lot easier if he’d let her go, but she hadn’t really expected him to. ‘Don’t you have to be at your office at nine?’

  ‘They can wait.’

  It wouldn’t be much out of his way because Grey Lynn was one of the inner city suburbs. When the car slid to a stop outside the run-down house Paul asked harshly, ‘Is this the best you can do?’

  ‘Students live like this,’ she returned with an acid under-note to the words. ‘It’s quite comfortable inside.’

  He got out of the car and opened the boot. Grim-faced, he lifted out her two suitcases and the boxes of books. Jacinta snatched up both suitcases and, panting but determined, carried them through the gate and deposited them at the bottom of the steps before going up the three steps onto the verandah.

  She didn’t need to knock. The door opened to reveal a tall, thin young man clad only in a villainous overnight shadow and a pair of shorts, who yawned and said, ‘Oh, hi, Jacinta.’ His gaze went past her to where Paul was bringing the boxes up the path and he straightened up. ‘Leave your gear here,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring it inside.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Jacinta said again, donning an armour forged of desperation as she swivelled to meet Paul’s eyes. ‘Goodbye.’

  Frowning, he set the boxes down. From the car came the insistent summons of his telephone, and he said brusquely, ‘I’ll be in contact.’

  She watched him go, then turned to the curious gaze of the man in the doorway.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said again.

  ‘Think nothing of it, although why you should want to lose a dude like that, heaven knows,’ he said, grinning. ‘Get a load of that car, will you? He didn’t find that in his breakfast cereal.’

  From behind her, Jacinta heard the car engine start. Paul acknowledged her wave with a toot, and then the car moved quietly away from the kerb and down the narrow street.

  When it was out of sight she gave the man at the door a pale smile and said, ‘Nadia said it would be all right if I stayed here until I found board, but with any luck I’ll be out of here by tonight.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You can stay as long as you like.’

  ‘And I don’t want him to find out where I go.’

  ‘Don’t tell me, then,’ he said promptly. ‘He looks as though he’d know how to get information, that guy—not a good man to cross. But, hey, if I don’t know I can’t tell him, can I?’

  ‘And don’t tell him where Nadia is, either.’ It was unlikely, but if Paul really wanted to find out where she was he’d turn on the charm and Nadia, notoriously susceptible, would tell him everything.

  He shrugged. ‘Don’t know that, either. Yesterday when I rang for you she was talking about going to Sydney to work.’

  He helped her take the cases and boxes inside and stack them in the hallway. She’d done her best to cover her tracks, because it was just Paul’s sense of responsibility that would make him want her address.

  And she had no intention of telling Carl, he of the shorts and unshaven chin, where she was going. She didn’t know herself yet.

  ‘Can I use your phone? And have you got a bus timetable?’ she asked.

  At four-thirty that afternoon she was unpacking in a room on the other side of town. Of the same vintage as Nadia’s, the house was charming and sunny, surrounded by a somewhat overgrown cottage garden in which the white trumpet flowers of a datura hung dramatically against a hedge, their heavy scent almost banishing the persistent petrol fumes.

  A cheerful woman about her own age owned the place. ‘There’s another woman living here—it’s a flat situation, although you’re both helping me pay the mortgage,’ she’d said, when they’d met in her lunch hour. ‘Shall we say a month to see if we all get on well?’

  ‘Sounds fine to me,’ Jacinta had agreed.

  She sat down on the single bed. It would help, she thought wearily, if she could cry, but although she was locked into an aching, desolate grief, no tears came.

  Just as well, because the next day she had to find a job.

  It took her a week, but by the end of it she was behind the counter in a bookshop, a small, busy affair in the next suburb which sold mostly paperbacks. Although she was on a month’s trial, at least it removed her immediate financial worry. At the end of the first day she rested her aching feet and legs in her room and made a list of goals.

  She would work two hours a day on the manuscript, because now that was the only promise she could keep to her mother. Writing by hand was going to be slow, but she’d get there.

  She would not think of Paul more than five times a day.

  This one she couldn’t keep, but she became adept at turning her mind away from him.

  She would think serious
ly about her future—a future empty of Paul.

  That became less frightening when she realised that she enjoyed working in the bookshop, and that she had a talent for helping people find what they wanted to read. Although the money wasn’t too good she managed to survive on it, and when, just before Christmas, the owner of the store asked her if she’d like to work there permanently she was delighted.

  So now she had two goals. She’d finish the manuscript and one day she’d own her own bookshop.

  Three goals. One day she’d say the word ‘Paul’ and feel no more than a mildly regretful reminiscence.

  It surprised her that her grief was so different from that she’d endured after her mother’s death, which had been tempered by relief that Cynthia no longer suffered. This was bone-deep and bitter, with the added edge of physical loss. During the hot nights she’d dream of Paul, then wake, eager and expectant, her body singing with anticipation and memories.

  That was bad, but what was worse was the small things she remembered—the way his mouth had quirked when she’d said something he considered funny, the gilt of his hair beneath the sun, the tanned strength of his hands, his elusive male scent, faint yet so powerful that it still clung to the recesses of her brain.

  And the way he walked, lithe, unconsciously predatory, with the smooth power of perfect health and strong, masculine grace.

  This must have been how her mother felt. But Jacinta was not to have a permanent reminder of the man she loved; there would be no baby. It was a profound relief, yet the arrival of her period added another layer to the burden of her days.

  Striving to deal with the memories, she got on with her life. As the summer days heated and the humidity intensified she discovered that she had passed all of her examinations, so was now able to put the letters BA after her name. With the knowledge came a sense of closure, of finality.

  Christmas was every bit as agonising as she’d imagined it would be. Both of her flatmates invited her to spend the day itself with them and their families, but for some reason—masochism, she decided—she wanted to be alone. So she stayed in the house and wrote.

  Afterwards she thought, Nothing is ever going to be as bad as that again. Next year will be better.

  One weekend at the beginning of a hot and sticky January she opened the door to an insistent ring. Oddly enough she wasn’t surprised when her eyes met hard, bright blue ones. Deep inside she’d known that Paul would find her.

  She was alone, so she said, ‘Come on in,’ and fell back as he came through the door like a force of nature, silently, his bearing proclaiming an implacable purposefulness that should have intimidated her.

  Instead she felt rejuvenated.

  ‘How are you?’ she asked, leading him into the sitting room.

  ‘Do you care?’

  Taking a deep breath, she steadied her voice and lifted her chin. ‘Of course I care.’

  ‘So much so that you deliberately lied to me. And don’t tell me you didn’t say a word—you didn’t have to. Losing me was a clever piece of work.’

  The cold condemnation in his tone cut her composure to shreds, but she managed to say, ‘Sit down. How did you find me?’

  ‘I put a private detective onto you,’ he told her, watching her as though even then he expected her to try and run. ‘He targeted libraries. But you didn’t join any library until three days ago.’

  Because she’d been reading her way through the stock in the shop. The owner felt it was important she know what her customers were buying.

  ‘It seems an awful lot of trouble,’ she said carefully.

  ‘I went to see Gerard,’ he astounded her by saying, his hooded gaze fixed onto her face.

  ‘Why? No, don’t tell me. I don’t want to hear anything about it.’

  ‘Tough,’ he said. ‘Sit down.’

  She defied him a moment with jutted chin, then sank into a chair. His eyes were polished brighter than lapis lazuli—completely opaque—and she could see he wasn’t going until she’d heard him out.

  Before he could say anything she said, ‘I’m not in love with him. I’ve never been in love with him; it’s utterly incredible that he claimed to be in love with me.’ Her voice was level and emotionless; her heart was shattering.

  ‘Oh, he wanted you,’ Paul said between his teeth.

  ‘I feel now as though he was stalking me.’

  ‘I don’t blame you.’ He frowned, and she knew that the interview with Gerard hadn’t been easy for him, or pleasant.

  After a moment he said evenly, ‘He was afraid to try his luck.’

  ‘I don’t understand,’ she said, fighting the feeling of helplessness that still assailed her when she thought of Gerard’s stealthy pursuit. ‘Why didn’t he come out into the open?’

  ‘It’s no excuse, but he lacks confidence. His mother is one of those people who are experts at snide put-downs. His father didn’t even bother to be snide. He wanted a big, strong, athletic son who’d make the All Blacks and follow him into the family business. Instead Gerard became an academic. I suspect he found the idea of actually opening himself up to rejection terrifying.’

  ‘Even so,’ Jacinta said stonily, ‘he must have known that what he was doing was—’

  ‘Sinister? He doesn’t see it that way. He wanted to help you but he knew you’d never take money from him, so he did what he could for you.’ He paused, then said, ‘He said you were desperate to get away from the flat you were living in.’

  ‘I—’ Jacinta drew in a deep breath. ‘Yes,’ she said, looking down at her hands. ‘Yes, I was. But I had organised a place to go to—the house in Grey Lynn where you dropped me off. I knew I’d be able to doss down with Nadia for as long as it took me to find somewhere else to stay. Unfortunately she was away on a field trip, and I had to wait a week before she came back.’

  ‘Did he—the man you were living with—beat you?’ He spoke with a chilling lack of emotion that pulled the hairs on the back of her neck upright.

  ‘No! Not so long ago I read a book about psychological abusers, and Mark fits all the signs. I met him just after my mother died, when I was moving out of the house we rented; he was staying with the family who owned it. He was Mrs Atkinson’s nephew; anyway, I suppose I trusted him because they could vouch for him. He was very kind and sympathetic, and I was—’

  ‘Vulnerable.’

  She closed her eyes for a second. ‘Oh, yes, very vulnerable,’ she admitted. ‘And swept away. He organised the flat for me—until I moved in I didn’t know that he lived there too. I wasn’t able to even conceive of any sort of romantic relationship then. I was just too tired.’

  ‘So you weren’t lovers?’ He spoke austerely.

  ‘No.’ She frowned, trying to recall those miserable months. ‘I thought he was wonderful because he could make me laugh,’ she said at length. ‘But when I moved in he changed. At first I didn’t see it; he did everything for me—ran errands, made it so that I had no responsibilities, took me to the campus and picked me up—cosseted me in every way. I couldn’t work out why, instead of wallowing in it after all those years when I’d had to be strong, I was so—so uneasy. And he manipulated me by putting on a sad face if I did anything he didn’t want so that I felt I was hurting him. He didn’t exactly sulk—although that’s what it was, really. It all came to a head when I went to a party with Nadia—’

  She stopped and he said curtly, ‘Go on.’

  ‘Mark didn’t want me to go, and when I did he made me feel that I’d done something terrible—wounded him to the quick After that I noticed that he resented anything I did that he hadn’t organised. And then I found out that he’d been reading my mail and monitoring my phone calls, deciding who should talk to me and who shouldn’t. That was when I realised I had to get out.’

  ‘And Gerard offered you board.’ He spoke without expression.

  ‘I wasn’t going to jump from the frying pan into the fire, so I turned him down. Then he mentioned the flat.’ Jacinta sent him a swi
ft glance, then let her gaze fall. ‘The night before Gerard found me asleep in the library I’d told Mark I was leaving. He horrified me and astounded me by insisting that I couldn’t go, that he was in love with me and he was nothing without me. I—I didn’t know what to say. He kept me up all night pleading with me. That was why I was exhausted. But I didn’t tell Gerard anything about Mark,’ she finished. ‘I was ashamed that I’d let myself get into such a situation.’

  ‘He knew, nevertheless.’

  ‘Apparently.’ Her hands lay tense in her lap, still dusted with gold by Waitapu sun. She said slowly, ‘But nothing gave Gerard the right to think that he had—bought me. Why did he tell you we were engaged?’

  A thin wash of colour appeared over Paul’s angular cheekbones. ‘He’s always been envious of me. In spite of my break-up with Aura he pretends to believe that I have no difficulty with women,’ he said unsparingly.

  Jacinta narrowed her eyes. ‘Possibly,’ she said dulcetly, ‘because you don’t.’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, and you, of all women, should know it. Gerard understands how important loyalty is to me, so he was reasonably sure I wouldn’t try to seduce the woman he was engaged to. And whether he believed it or not—I think he did—he told me you were looking for security. I assumed you were using him, which is why I was so rude to you when you arrived.’

  She said bleakly, ‘You were distant, but not rude.’

  ‘I wanted you the minute I saw you in Fiji,’ he said with a savage smile. ‘And when I danced with you I thought you weren’t indifferent to me. But I could see that the last thing you needed was any emotional involvement—you were wrapped up with your mother. I wanted to help you both, but you and Cynthia were so linked that in some odd way I felt I’d be intruding. However, I had your address. I rang about six weeks after you’d come back, and the wife of the man who owned the house you rented told me that your mother had died and you’d moved into a flat with a man in Auckland.’