Fugitive Wife

by Miranda Lee

  He did, and she hurried back to Alan and co.

  The boat had turned and was cruising back to their starting point by the time Gareth rejoined the rest of the party. Alan was regaling everyone with another of his horror stories of the old days, this time about a cyclone which had devastated the pearling fleet and practically flattened Broome. Leah had just emerged from the cabin with fresh drinks and was standing not far from Alan, shaking her head at his somewhat exaggerated story-telling.

  'But not to worry, folks,' he finished up. 'Whilst Broome still has its share of cyclones, we don't get any at this time of year. Except for madam, here,' he added teasingly, nodding towards Leah. 'She really kicked up a storm for a while there with you, Gareth, didn't she? Still, that brother of yours must be a right royal rotter if Leah here couldn't stomach him. She's a real sweetie, aren't you darlin'?' he said, and reached out to curl an arm round her waist, drawing her to his side.

  Leah tried not to look too startled, or spill the remaining drinks, because she had a good idea what was going on. Sandra had proved too much, even for Alan, and he wanted an out. It wasn't the first time he'd subtly—and this time not so subtly—used Leah to deflect a female. From the silky pout on Sandra's scarlet-glossed lips, his message was getting through.

  Leah slid her eyes in Gareth's direction to see what he thought of the situation.

  His expression was totally unreadable, but his knuckles showed white where his hand gripped the bulkhead.

  'Perhaps I should warn you,' came his dry remark, 'that my brother would not take too kindly to any man who dared put a hand on his wife.'

  Alan laughed. 'Really? Then it's just as well he's not here, isn't it?' he said, tightening his hold on Leah's waist, then bending to kiss her on the cheek.

  Leah decided enough was enough, wriggling out of Alan's embrace and throwing him a reproachful glance. 'I wouldn't make jokes about my husband, Alan. He's is a very rich, very powerful and very ruthless man.'

  'Not over here, he isn't,' Alan scoffed.

  'I wouldn't be too sure about that,' Leah muttered, unease returning at this discussion about Gerard. Money, she knew, had few boundaries and many leverages.

  'He's certainly not a man to be underestimated,' Gareth warned, his eyes on Leah, not Alan.

  Her chin shot up. 'I don't underestimate him, believe me. Why do you think I'm here, hiding?'

  Gareth frowned. 'Are you saying you're afraid of him?'

  'He's not a man to be crossed.'

  'Gerard might be many things, but he would never be violent. Never!'

  Although she agreed with him on that score, Leah was still irritated by Gareth's vehement defence of her brother. 'You sound very sure of that. Yet how many years is it since you've seen him, or spoken to him?'

  'We parted company when we were twenty-three. But I've followed his career closely ever since. Admittedly, he does have a ruthless streak with his business enemies, but he confines his attacks to the verbal, never the physical. And I gather he has done some good with his money over the years. Gives a lot of charities.'

  'Huh!' Leah scorned. 'Don't believe everything you read in the newspapers. Gerard is a clever manipulator of the media. Fact is, he's a clever manipulator all round,' she added bitterly. 'But I'm sure everyone here doesn't want their evening spoilt with talk of my clever conman of a husband. Now, does anyone else want another drink?'

  Leah busied herself with the hostessing part of her job for the next ten minutes before excusing herself and escaping down below. Once there, she started washing up, sighing repeatedly in an effort to relax the tension between her shoulders.

  Still, it was a relief to be away from Gareth's probing eyes. He really had no idea about the man Gerard was these days. She doubted he fully understood the extent of his brother's cold-blooded ways. Neither could he ever appreciate why she was so afraid of him.

  Leah didn't dare tell him the truth: that Gerard's sexual power over her was so strong it carried the risk of total corruption to his will, so strong that his identical twin could tap into that wicked power if he ever wanted to.

  Leah shuddered at the thought.

  'Alan said you'd point me to the bathroom.'

  Leah spun round from the sink to find Gareth less than a metre behind her. How long had he been standing there? Had he been watching her, listening to her moan and groan?

  His physical presence in the cramped galley unnerved her unbearably. Then there was that tantalising scent wafting from his skin again, plus an even more overpowering awareness of his very male body. She hated looking up into his handsome face and seeing Gerard looking back at her.

  'It's down there,' she said curtly, pointing towards some narrow ladder-like steps in the far corner. 'The second door on the left. Not the first one. That's Alan's cabin. You'll have to watch your head again. And your step.'

  'Right.' She watched him go, ducking his head and moving carefully.

  She contemplated fleeing before his return but decided that was silly, so she returned to the washing up and had actually finished it by the time he reappeared, looking pale and drawn. Leah was so used to boats that it rarely occurred to her that anyone might get seasick. She'd thought he simply wanted to use the toilet.

  'Goodness, you don't look at all well,' she said, moved to sympathy by his wretched expression. 'But not to worry. You'll be off the boat in a few minutes.'

  He stared hard at her as though he didn't know what she was talking about. But then he seemed to re-gather his wits. 'I'm all right,' he said brusquely, though he didn't look it. 'Look, if you don't want to meet me tomorrow then just say so.'

  She was taken aback by his abruptness, till she conceded it was probably because he wasn't feeling well.

  'It's not that I don't want to, Gareth,' she said. 'It's just that...that...'

  'That what, for pity's sake?' he snapped. 'You want to keep on hiding indefinitely, do you? Or is it that you've found yourself a new life on this boat with Alan and you don't want to even talk or think about the fact you have a husband back in Brisbane who's probably worried sick about you?'

  'The only thing Gerard would be worried about,' she snapped back, 'is his precious ego! And why are you defending him? You haven't had anything to do with him for ten years. A brother doesn't cut his twin out of his life like that without good cause. What did he do to you, Gareth? Cheat you out of an inheritance? Blame you for something he did? Sleep with your girlfriend?'

  Gareth stared at her for several tense seconds. And then his shoulders sagged.

  'I had no idea,' he said wearily.

  'No idea about what?'

  His eyes lifted and they were incredibly sad. 'That Gerard would hurt anyone as much as he obviously hurt you. I'm so sorry, Leah. Believe it or not, he was a pretty good bloke once. I rather admired him. We came to a parting of the ways after Dad died. He blamed our mother, you see. And it changed him dramatically.'

  'Don't keep defending him,' she groaned. 'There is no defence. I don't want to hear any defence. You have no idea what he did to me. He lied to me, told me he loved me and married me under false pretences. He played me for a fool, taking all the love I had to give and giving me nothing in return but lies. I was no more to him than another land acquisition, to be developed and made over to his requirements. I wasn't a human being with feelings. I was a possession, a...a project!'

  He nodded. 'You're right. There is no defence for such behaviour. But still, don't you think you would have been better off staying and telling him where he'd gone wrong, asking for a divorce then and there?'

  'I couldn't stay,' she rasped. 'You don't understand. I couldn't stay...' She hugged herself as she shuddered, her gaze dropping to the floor.

  His finger under her chin was gentle, yet very, very male. With excruciating slowness he tipped her face upwards till their eyes met.

  'You're right,' he said, bewilderment in his voice, 'I don't understand. If you weren't afraid of his hurting you in any way physically, then why run aw
ay? Why not face him with his shortcomings? That would seem the logical thing to do.'

  Logic! When had logic anything to do with her responses to Gerard? From the moment he'd swept into her life she'd been under his spell.

  Impossible to tell Gareth it had been herself she'd been afraid of, that pathetically weak creature who'd lain beneath her treacherous husband in mindless ecstasy even after finding out the awful truth about him, that pathetically weak creature who even now was so aroused by her husband's identical twin touching her that it was unbearable! Only a fingertip, yet it made her long for his arms to go around her, to pull her to him, kiss her, caress her, take her to that place where only Gerard could take her.

  Or so she'd once imagined. Perverse it might be, but she knew Gareth could take her there too, for her body didn't seem to know the difference between the two men. Gerard... Gareth... They were the same in her eyes, and in her sexual responses to them.

  She groaned with relief when Gareth's hand dropped away.

  'What exactly are you hiding from, Leah?' he demanded to know, clearly puzzled. 'It has to be something you fear about Gerard. Tell me what it is.'

  'I can't,' she said, hugging herself tightly in defence of her slowly disintegrating self.

  'Why not?'

  'You wouldn't understand. You don't know him like I do.'

  'No,' he admitted, 'that's true. But I know him better than you realise. He's my other half.'

  'He's wicked,' she whispered, and shut her eyes against the rush of memory. But in the darkness she could still feel his mouth covering hers, his hands caressing her breasts, his flesh fusing with hers.

  She shuddered violently.

  Her eyes flew open when Gareth started unpeeling her hands from where they were clasping her sides. 'No, don't!' she cried. 'Don't touch me. I don't want you to touch me.'

  For a moment he looked as if she'd struck him.

  'I'm sorry,' she said straight away. 'It's not you. Please understand that. When I react badly, it's not you.'

  'All right. I'll try to remember that.'

  'Look, I must go,' she told him abruptly. 'Alan will need me on deck to let down the sails.'

  'Very well. But we're going to talk a lot more about this, Leah. Tomorrow...'

  CHAPTER FIVE

  THE temperature at eleven-thirty hovered around thirty degrees, as it did most days in Broome in June. The sea breezes wouldn't spring up till later in the afternoon.

  Leah had been in a quandary all morning over what to wear for her lunch date with Gareth. Should she make an effort to look nice, or just throw on shorts and a T-shirt?

  She'd calmed down somewhat overnight, well aware she'd overreacted to Gareth's sudden appearance in her life, and his appearance in general.

  Of course she would find him physically attractive! He was the dead spit of the man she was mad about, who could reduce her to mush with a glance! But he wasn't Gerard and she just had to keep reminding herself of that. If she still felt twinges of desire when she looked at him today then that was only to be expected.

  Thankfully, Gareth had shown no signs whatsoever of being smitten in any way with her. He hadn't leered or ogled, hadn't done a single darned thing to create any unease in her in a sexual sense.

  In view of all these logical reasonings, Leah decided in the end not to dress too down for the occasion. Which meant she allowed herself a skirt and lipstick, instead of her usual baggy shorts and unpainted mouth.

  The skirt was a floral wrap-around number, with a black background, which reached to mid-calf, the lipstick a pink which matched most of the flowers.

  She did run into some trouble selecting a top to go with the skirt.

  In Broome, bras were out of the question most of the time. They were just too hot and too sticky. Leah had ended up with a heat rash when she'd persisted in wearing one during her first week there. Soon she'd joined the locals and thrown the darn things away. Her only underwear these days was a cotton G-string, which was considerably more than some girls wore.

  She rarely gave her braless breasts a thought any more. But she did that morning. Her breasts weren't big, but they were full and high, with pointy nipples. A black top would have been best. But she didn't have a black top. Black attracted the heat. No one wore black in Broome during the day.

  She finally settled for a pink ribbed midriff top, which had a squashing effect on her bust but left her middle bare. Leah glared at it for a while, then shrugged philosophically. You couldn't have everything, and she supposed a bare middle was less provocative than pokey-out nipples.

  As she wound her long hair on top of her head in a haphazard self-tied knot she thought of the rather severe and sleekly glamorous hairstyle Gerard had steered her into soon after her marriage. Shoulder-length and always perfectly blow-dried, it had shone and swung like a sensual blonde curtain around her face, curving over her left eye and reaching down to her shoulders. Gerard had claimed that whenever she'd glanced up at him through her hair, especially across a crowded room or from the other side of a dinner table, she'd given him an instant erection.

  She did not doubt it. He'd always been ready to make love to her at the end of an evening out, no matter how late they'd arrived home. He'd liked to undress her himself, slowly stripping her of the designer gowns he'd always chosen for her, gowns which sparkled and clung to her tall model-like figure.

  He'd always left her jewellery on, however, she recalled now.

  Had he gained some perverse pleasure in seeing her naked flesh decked in diamonds? In looking down at them while he reduced her to a moaning mindless creature, his own satisfaction increased by the mistaken belief that it was his wealth which had bought him the perfect puppet wife?

  Gerard didn't know it, but she would have lived with him in a hovel. And been happy.

  If only he'd loved her...

  Leah sighed, then shook herself. This wasn't achieving anything, this maudlin thinking.

  One day soon she'd be over Gerard, never to be tormented again by thoughts of 'what if or 'what might have been'. But not today, she accepted with a weary sense of resignation. Today she had to meet with Gareth a second time and be reminded of her husband all over again.

  Sighing, she slipped cheap silver hoops in her ears, purchased at the local markets for two dollars—a far cry from the, twenty-two-carat gold earrings which had once been a standard part of her everyday wear. Even so, her; wearing even such simple jewellery would have brought comments from her ever curious housemates. Fortunately, they had day jobs, so she didn't have to put up with their questions about where she was going 'all dolled up'.

  Finally, she was ready, a resurgence of nerves claiming her as she left the house and turned for the short walk down to the apartments where Gareth was staying. There was curiosity along with the nerves, however. Gareth might want to ask her about her marriage to Gerard, but she had questions of her own.

  The Roebuck Bay apartments were fairly new, overlooking the bay, a double-storeyed assortment of buildings, vaguely Mediterranean in style and colour. Stylish and spacious, they were frequented by tourists who liked comfort and room, plus the convenience of being able to cook themselves a meal.

  It crossed Leah's mind as she walked up the road which ran alongside Roebuck Bay that Gareth couldn't be short of a bob if he was staying there. Still, she couldn't imagine Gerard's brother not being successful at whatever he did for a living.

  Whatever that was...

  Leah decided one of her first questions would be to ask him, along with what he was doing here in Broome, a coincidence which still niggled her a little.

  A ten-minute stroll brought her to the circular driveway which led round to a door marked 'Reception'. There was an outdoor staircase to the left of this door which led up to the second-floor apartments. A long wooden seat rested against the wall to the right.

  Leah settled on this seat to await Gareth's arrival. She was five minutes early, as was her usual habit. This had amused Gerard during their m
arriage. He had always been late. In hindsight, she saw this as another sign of his heartless arrogance; his lack of real caring of other people's feelings.

  Gareth breezed down the outdoor staircase with two minutes to spare, looking coolly handsome in casual cream trousers and a brightly patterned short-sleeved shirt. Stylish sunglasses masked his eyes.

  A blessing, Leah thought, in view of his other attractions. The thought also appealed that she could not see him looking at her in any way, either at her body or into her eyes.

  She rose and smiled up at him.

  'You're very punctual,' she said.

  'So are you.'

  'I only live just down the road.'

  His forehead puckered into a frown. 'But I thought you lived on board the boat?'

  'I do stay on board sometimes,' she said, quite truthfully, 'when Alan asks me to.'

  'I see,' he said rather drily.

  But he didn't at all, Leah conceded. He thought she and Alan were lovers. She'd let him think that the previous evening, had used the misconception in much the same way Alan had. An unnecessary precaution, really. The attraction and tension had all been on her side not Gareth's. Now, Leah gave the situation some more thought and accepted she didn't want Gareth go on believing she had moved into another man's bed so soon .after her husband's, especially while she was still legally married to him. She'd condemned Gerard for his lies. She would not lie to his brother.

  'Alan is not my lover,' she said bluntly. 'That little scenario out there on the deck last night was for Sandra's benefit.'

  Gareth frowned his puzzlement. 'I don't understand.'

  'Alan has this thing for older women,' she explained. 'He flirts with pretty well any single female over forty during the cruise. If she's reasonably attractive, that is. Unfortunately he sometimes finds out after a while that she's not quite his cup of tea.'

  'So he uses you to put them off,' Gareth finished. 'That's not very above board, Leah,' he added, the beginnings of a smile on his mouth.

  Leah appreciated his not making a big deal out of her misleading him, and shrugged lightly. 'He's the skipper. And he's really quite harmless. The older ladies love him. When he does click with someone, and wants to spend the night ashore with her, I stay on board and mind the boat.'