by Liz Fielding
CHAPTER FOUR
PARADISE. She was in paradise and Griff’s smoothly muscled arm was about her waist, holding her fast against the warm, comforting frame of his body. She had asked him not to leave her and he had taken her at her word.
Shining in at her was the moon, huge and white, lighting a white path across the inlet as it sank slowly into the sea. Maddy watched entranced, the curve of her back nestled against his chest, her long legs tangled with his, which were longer still and shockingly hair-roughened.
She lay there, surprised by the rush of warmth, the unexpected pleasure of lying tucked within the protective curve of his body. Then his hand moved gently over her stomach to cradle the soft swell of her breast and Maddy froze. He had assumed her mute acceptance of his presence meant something else. In a moment of weakness last night, she had wanted comfort, needed comfort, but not that kind.
She erupted from his grasp, leaping up without a thought as to the consequences.
‘What on earth... ?’ He swore volubly as palm fronds showered down on him, the lean-to disintegrating about his ears. ‘What the hell are you playing at?’ he demanded, leaping to his feet and turning on her.
‘Nothing. I have no desire to play.’
‘You think I have? Don’t flatter yourself, woman,’ he retorted, flinging off a palm leaf that clung stubbornly to his back. ‘You were the one who begged me to stay with you; I was just—’
‘Just what? Helping yourself?’
‘If I had any intentions of helping myself, do you think you’d be talking about it right now? I don’t help myself—’
‘Oh, really? Well, I suggest you remind your roving hands,’ she threw at him. ‘They’re not quite so restrained.’
He stilled, his gaze drilling into her. ‘My roving hands?’ He said the words slowly, deliberately and took a step towards her. Maddy took a nervous step back. ‘Where did they rove, Maddy?’ She took another step back from eyes blazing darkly in the moonlight.
‘I... I don’t want to talk about it,’ she snapped.
‘Oh, but I insist. I want to know what fantasy has been conjured up by that overheated imagination of yours.’
‘No fantasy,’ she declared hotly, and this time as she stepped back she felt the sand wet beneath her feet.
‘You don’t imagine I was going to take advantage of you, do you?’
Maddy was beginning to regret her somewhat precipitate reaction. No doubt Griff had simply taken what had seemed to him the obvious and sensible decision to sleep alongside her, and if she didn’t object to taking it further — well, she was certain that, despite his protestations, he would be more than happy to oblige.
Or maybe he thought that she would willingly accept the situation in return for his protection. He seemed to have a pretty low opinion of her generally.
’Well?’ he demanded. He was in front of her now, stripped to the waist, his powerful shoulders and broad chest far too close.
‘You were half-asleep,’ she said placatingly, retreating again into the water. ‘It doesn’t matter. Leave it. Just... oh, just go away,’ she said helplessly, putting out a hand to fend him off.
‘I’m going nowhere, and neither are you, Maddy Osborne. I think it’s about time you learned a few manners.’ The water was well up around her calves now.
‘There’s nothing wrong with my manners. You’re the one who should learn to—’ He didn’t wait to discover what she thought he should learn. Instead he plunged forward and grabbed her arms and she let out a startled little scream.
He grinned. She saw the white gleam of his teeth and wondered how anyone quite so objectionable had managed to keep them for so long.
‘Come on,’ he taunted. ‘You can do better than that. Or are you waiting for me to give you something to really scream about?’
‘You already have,’ she replied, perhaps unwisely, because he stepped a little closer and without warning shifted his grip to her waist.
‘Oh, no, Maddy Rufus. You really can’t expect to get off that lightly. I’m not one of your pet playboys to be twisted around your little finger then humiliated for your amusement.’
‘I didn’t—’ But as he jerked her body close to his there was no time to explain. ‘What are you going to do?’ she gasped.
‘I wonder what it would really take to make you scream as if you meant it,’ he drawled, with a voice like velvet being shredded very slowly. ‘Just a kiss, perhaps?’ Maddy stood very still, steeling herself for the ordeal, her mind flashing a warning to her treacherous body that even now, as the cooling sea swirled around her thighs, was beginning to pound with an overactive heartbeat.
‘No — ‘
Her protest was cut off as his lips brushed hers as delicately as if he had touched them with the curved petals of a hibiscus. It sent a tiny tremor winging through her body like a thousand panicking butterflies. His hands were no longer hard upon her waist. They still held her, but lightly, drawing her traitorously willing body closer until her thighs were pressed against his legs. She was wearing only a pair of the most delicate silk panties, a T-shirt that clung revealingly to betray the hard tips of her breasts, but she made no move to pull away.
‘Griff,’ she pleaded, but had no idea what it was she wanted.
‘No scream that time, Maddy Rufus,’ he said, his breath as soft as down against her cheek. ‘I’ll have to try harder.’
The muscles in her stomach contracted as she sensed a more demanding edge to his voice. ‘No!’
This time her protest was more urgent as she came to her senses and began to struggle. This wasn’t her. She didn’t... But as she flung a fist at his shoulder he bent and caught her behind the knees, swinging her up into his arms.
‘Sure?’
‘Let me go! You can’t... you mustn’t...’ For a long moment he looked down at her, his dark eyes challenging her to prove that she meant what she said. Too long. She suddenly realised that she had ceased to struggle and was lying back in his arms, no longer sure of anything. ‘Let me go!’ she repeated, in pure panic.
His mouth curved into the most sensuous of smiles. ‘Now?’ he asked, very softly, and without waiting for her reply he did as she asked.
It was as if she fell in slow motion, hitting the sea with a splash that sent streams of phosphorescent water rising high above her in a bright arc. It almost seemed to Maddy that she could count every drop as it fell back to the sea before everything went momentarily black then white as she was submerged in the maelstrom of water churned up by her struggle to right herself.
After a moment she found her feet and burst from the surface, waist-deep, gasping with shock, blazing with indignation, and this time there was no mistake about the scream.
Uncontainable fury, all the repressed emotion of a terrible day, sheer outrage at the cavalier way she was being treated by this arrogant monster of a man rent the air and found a sympathetic echo in a flock of startled birds who flapped and shrieked at being disturbed so early from their roost.
Griff was standing, arms akimbo head thrown back, laughing with undisguised delight at the mayhem he had caused. ‘Now, that scream,’ he said, shaking his head, ‘was very convincing. I suggest you remember it for future use.’ Then he flipped the button on his shorts and Maddy backed rapidly away.
‘What — what are you doing?’ she spluttered.
‘I’m going for a swim. You can join me if you like.’
She blushed fiercely as her tossed his shorts onto the beach and the pre-dawn light glistened on the hard planes of his magnificent naked body.
‘Not if you were the last man on earth,’ she retorted indignantly.
He grinned at her. ‘Better hope you’re rescued soon, then.’
‘I’ll make certain of it!’
But despite her angry words she couldn’t stop herself from turning back to watch him as he powered away across the water in a powerful overarm crawl. The pre-dawn light was enough for her to have determined that his glistening body was all
one colour, confirming her suspicion that he was a stranger to a swimsuit. Besides, alone in paradise, who needed one?
Except that right now he wasn’t alone.
He really was the most infuriating man she had ever met but as she raised her fingers to her lips she discovered that despite everything she was smiling.
Infuriating he might be, but it could not be denied that he was a great deal more invigorating than the likes of poor Rupert Hartnoll. She caught herself. A great deal more dangerous.
If she wasn’t careful she would still be standing there when he returned to the beach. That thought alone was enough to make her move. Fast.
Maddy rescued her trousers from the wreckage of Griff’s hut, shook out the sand and folded them neatly. She did the same for the towel. It was blue — a very large and expensively thick American plush towel. The kind that Zoë loved. She dropped it quickly and stepped back. Then she turned and ran.
Her bag was in the hold of the aircraft and she wasted no time in sorting out some fresh clothes for what would undoubtedly be another difficult day. She pulled out a tiny white bikini, then hurriedly replaced it with a more decorous one-piece bathing suit in her favourite dark mossy-green. She was doing nothing to be unnecessarily provocative.
She added a baggy white T-shirt, picked up her sponge bag and towel and as the sky turned pink with the rising sun, headed up the path to the pool for the bathe she had promised herself.
It was strange climbing up the empty path with only the chattering of birds and insects to disturb the silence. She might have been the first person in the world. Even as the thought entered her head, she turned nervously. There was no sign of Griff, but she wasn’t alone and the thought that he wouldn’t swim forever spurred her on.
The pool was, if possible, even more beautiful in the early-morning light. A delicate mist was drifting off the water and curling over the lush vegetation, wrapping itself around the trailing orchids and morning glory vines already beginning to unravel their vivid blue flowers to the first early rays of the sun.
Maddy made her way to the side of the pool where the flying spray had been diverted to miss the pool and fly off onto a flat slab of rock, providing a natural shower — the work of the absent owner presumably. But whoever had done it, she was grateful. She stripped off and stepped beneath it, gasping at the sudden chill on her warm skin. But after a few moments she quickly became used to the temperature and turned to a nearby rock to reach for her shampoo. As she did so, a particularly piercing wolf-whistle rent the air.
Furiously, Maddy grabbed for her towel. Holding it in front of her and sweeping her streaming hair from her face, she turned to confront her tormentor and tell him exactly what she thought of him. But Griff wasn’t to be seen. She frowned. Griff was no voyeur, she thought edgily. He was far more likely to have stripped off and joined her under the shower. And this thought made the fine hairs on the back of her neck rise and her skin prickle nervously. If Griff wasn’t whistling at her, then who was?
‘Griff?’ Maddy called uncertainly.
‘Griff?’ The word was echoed mockingly back at her, perfectly catching the hesitant inflection of her voice.
‘Griff! Stop it! she said abruptly, and took a step forward. ‘It’s not funny.’
‘What isn’t funny?’ Griff asked as he appeared on the path below her. Seawater glistened on hard shoulders and the sculpted muscles of a chest scattered with dark hairs that curled lazily down his taut belly and disappeared beneath the towel tied carelessly about his loins. She jerked her eyes away, certain that he was wearing nothing else.
‘You aren’t,’ she snapped, clutching her own towel tightly before her, glad of the dim light to cover her blushes. Anyone would think that she had never seen a man before — and in the briefest of swimsuits that were far more revealing than his towel. But not, she was forced to admit, a man like this. She shook herself angrily. A beautiful body meant nothing if the spirit was corrupt — she knew that. No one better.
Griff raked his fingers through the tousled, sun-kissed warmth of his dark brown hair turned momentarily black by the deep shadows. ‘You’ve lost me, lady,’ he said. ‘But if you’ve finished with the shower?’
‘No, I haven’t as well you know.’ She made a grab for the shampoo bottle but it slipped through her wet fingers and fell with a splash into the pool. Unable to reach for it without exposing her naked rear for his amused inspection, she watched helplessly as, driven by the spray from the falls, it bobbed out of reach. ‘Could you pass that to me?’ she asked stiffly, aware, despite his perfectly straight face that he was deriving considerable amusement from her predicament.
‘I could,’ he said, but made no move to help.
‘Please,’ she added, a little belatedly.
‘You’re learning, Maddy Rufus,’ he said, with an insolent little smile that sent shivers dancing along her spine, before reaching out to fish the plastic bottle from the water. But he didn’t immediately surrender it. Instead, he opened it and poured a little into the palm of his hand. ‘Smells expensive.’
‘It’s just ordinary shampoo.’ She held out her hand.
‘Turn around; I’ll wash your hair for you.’
‘No,’ she said, spotting the quizzical glint in his eyes too late. She took a deep breath. ‘I can manage. If you will just pass me the bottle.’
‘It’s no bother at all,’ he assured her, moving easily towards her. She backed nervously under the shower. ‘While I’m doing it, you can tell me what didn’t make you laugh.’ In Griff’s distracting presence, she had forgotten about the wolf-whistle, but he didn’t give her an opportunity to remonstrate with him; instead he put a hand on her shoulder and turned her round to face the water before whipping the towel away. ‘You don’t want it to get wet, do you?’ he asked with all seriousness as she made a frantic grab in an attempt to keep it, and he tossed it out of reach so that she was left with no means to cover herself, apart from her arms.
She employed them swiftly and strategically and keeping her back turned firmly towards him, spat fiercely, ‘Go away!’
He took no notice and she fumed, trapped and helpless, as he stroked the shampoo down the length of her hair. ‘Your hair is a beautiful colour, Maddy,’ he said. ‘Like a skein of copper silk. Have you ever been to New England in the fall?’ he asked conversationally, apparently unaffected by the fact that the hairs on his chest were brushing against her shoulder-blades, raising goose-flesh in a way that the chilly water had failed to do.
Maddy tried to speak but found that she had to clear her throat and concentrate very hard before she could answer. ‘No,’ she said, a little hoarsely.
‘The trees have just this tint. Are you cold?’ he asked with every appearance of concern. She was shaking, but not with the cold, and she was convinced that he knew that it was the touch of his fingers working slowly over her scalp, the pads of his thumbs pressed lightly against her temples, that was sending the shivery sensation to every nerve ending. She wasn’t about to make a complete fool of herself and admit it.
‘Yes,’ she said, crossing her fingers hard. ‘The water’s freezing.’
‘You’ll get used to it. Cold showers are good for the soul.’
‘Have you rinsed out all the soap?’ she asked.
‘Not quite.’ He seemed in no hurry to end her torment, no matter what the cause. Instead, he lifted her hair through his hands, offering it to the spray. ‘Quite beautiful.’
‘I thought you didn’t like redheads,’ she said, not wishing to hear his smooth compliments.
‘Really? Just because I haven’t joined the army of admirers willing to fall in homage at your feet? Are you conceited as well as unkind?’
‘Unkind?’ She half turned, then, remembering, quickly turned back to the shower. ‘If you’re referring to that idiotic scene with Rupert, I apologised to him.’
‘I would have thought that took a bit of doing.’ As Maddy jerked angrily away from him, she found herself hauled back by he
r hair, which had somehow become entangled in his fingers. ‘The colour is immaterial,’ he continued, apparently oblivious to her outburst. ‘I just like hair to be long and shiny.’ A long, raucous wolf-whistle echoed that sentiment and Maddy swung her head round to stare at Griff.
‘It wasn’t you!’ she exclaimed.
‘What?’
‘The wolf-whistle.’
‘Was that why you were all steamed up?’ he asked.
‘I thought you were playing a rather nasty joke,’ she said indignantly. ‘Trying to frighten me.’
‘Not my style, lady.’ He turned and looked up into the trees and then gave a lazy whistle. A small brown parrot, with pale blue head-feathers and a bold flash of yellow and orange on his wing, flapped down from the canopy and alighted on a nearby rock. The bird put his head on one side and peered at her with bright, beady eyes. ‘Maddy,’ Griff said, ‘meet Jack. Jack, say, How d’you do?’
‘How d’you do?’ the parrot obediently repeated.
Maddy gave an uncertain little laugh. ‘He’s tame.’
‘No. He was once, but he must have escaped from a passing yacht, or a nearby island. He’s a St. Vincent, so someone local probably owned him. He comes when he’s whistled; he enjoys human company.’
‘He’s lovely. But he must be lonely, or does he have a mate?’
‘No, he’s quite alone. Freedom always has a price. He’s no lonelier than he was fastened to someone else’s perch.’
‘The perch has certain advantages.’
‘An endless supply of sunflower seeds? A life of ease? Well, you should know. You live in a gilded cage. Jack and I have other ideas.’ She was going to protest, tell him indignantly that he didn’t know what he was talking about, but he had already turned away to retrieve her towel. He wrapped it around her, tucking it in firmly at the back, and as his knuckles grazed her shoulder-blades her tongue seemed to have momentarily turned to wood.
She turned and looked up at him as he met her gaze head-on, his eyes, ocean-deep, daring her to challenge him and take the consequences, and for a moment she confronted him, taking on the razor-edged scorn. She’d done it countless times. She had no trouble facing down men who thought a woman in business was an easy target. Men who refused to accept that she had no desire to indulge in a little meaningless sex.