by Liz Fielding
Not that he was entirely immune, but then it would have taken a block of wood not to respond to the way she had thrown herself at him, and his arousal had been palpable. Yet, he had still walked away.
Gone fishing.
His invitation to join him had clearly been withdrawn. Nevertheless, she was going to have to bite the bullet, face his contempt and, if nothing else, apologise for that stupid remark about taking him to court. It was clearly her week for eating humble pie.
‘Oh, Zoë,’ she murmured painfully. ‘Why on earth did you get involved with a man like that?’
Stupid question.
She stifled a moan and, tearing off her T-shirt, she threw it to one side and flung herself into the sea. She would have liked to have stripped away the swimsuit too and let the cool, sharp sea-water scrub her naked body clean as she swam the length of the lagoon and back in a fierce overarm. But she didn’t dare. She had already exposed far too much.
Griff had recognised her desire even before she’d known it herself and accused her of flirting with him. Even now, as she powered through the water trying to rid herself of the taste of him, the scent of his skin, the feel of his hands on her body, she didn’t understand why she did desire him.
She had been hurt — desperately hurt — by a man who’d wanted nothing but her money. Maybe she was flawed in some way, drawn to that cruel streak.
As she tired, she rolled onto her back and floated, drifting where the water would take her, staring up at a totally blue sky. Maybe it was simpler than that, more basic. Perhaps her young body longed for fulfilment and had recognised and reached out to the attractions of Griff’s untamed, almost barbaric masculinity. And, trapped in paradise, she had no escape from her feelings.
Maddy finally staggered back up the beach, collapsed in a heap by the dying remains of her fire and poked at it in a desultory fashion. She’d seen nothing to excite her interest other than a yacht on the horizon, too far away to notice them, and the only aircraft that had passed overhead had been high-flying intercontinental jets. Paradise Island seemed to be just off the well-beaten inter-island air and sea lanes.
She sighed, retrieved the panama from the sand where it had fallen and fanned herself with it. It was hot and it would be getting hotter. It was probably better to relax and wait for rescue like Griff. No doubt by tomorrow Zoë would have become concerned for both of them and got everyone running around in circles as she organised a search for her missing goddaughter.
Griff’s last radio contact had been at the approach to Paradise Island so the search would certainly begin there. She would just have to be patient. And very polite.
She shifted as the heat dried and tightened her skin. Despite her fiery colouring, Maddy had been blessed with the delicate olive skin of her French mother, but that still didn’t mean that she could sit all day in the fierce tropical sun. She gathered up her T-shirt and slipped it over her shoulders and applied more sunblock to her legs, arms and neck. Then she didn’t know what to do with herself.
She was feeling confused and angry and very stupid — totally alien emotions. Wrapping her arms about her knees and propping her chin on her hands, she looked uncertainly in the direction that Griff had taken. It would be difficult to face him, but she knew it was a mistake to let misunderstandings fester.
Maddy jammed her hat back on her damp, unruly hair and hid her eyes behind dark glasses, telling herself that it was the sun she was protecting herself from, not Griff’s scornful eyes. Nevertheless, she rose with extreme reluctance to her feet and began to follow the footprints he had impressed upon the sand.
Scrambling over the rocks at the far end of the beach, she found herself in another, much smaller cove, but it was as deserted as the one she had left, with only a few tell-tale footprints leading to the water’s edge.
Her heartbeat raised a fraction. She had been so certain that Griff would be propped lazily against a rock with a fishing line trailing out into the water that the total emptiness of the beach came as a shock
‘Griff?’ she called uncertainly, and was horrified by the little waver of doubt that had crept into her voice.
Impatient with herself, she lifted her hand to shade her eyes, slowly sweeping the surface of the bay in expectation that he had taken to the water. But only the gentle ruffling of the breeze disturbed the palest turquoise water near the shore. Further out the colour deepened patchily to jade, celadon, heart of emerald, and she anxiously searched the shadows, looking for him beneath the water.
Then she snapped her fingers at her own gullibility. He had almost certainly swum into the next bay and was probably at this moment laughing into his beard. And she had come crawling after him, intent on apologizing. Well, he could sit and stew for all she cared; she was perfectly happy with her own company.
She settled in the inviting shade of a huge rock and dabbled her feet in a pool left by the retreating tide. A small crab scuttled out of sight in a cloud of sand and Maddy leaned forward to examine the pool a little more closely, stirring the sandy bottom with her toe, watching the tiny tell-tale flurries with a thoughtful expression. He could keep his rotten fish, too. She would force him to acknowledge that she wasn’t the helpless bimbo he so obviously took her for.
Maddy returned to the aircraft. Her cosmetic bag yielded a small pair of scissors and she sacrificed a pair of black silk stockings to provide herself with a shrimping net. It took a while to fashion a plaited vine into a hoop to keep it open at the neck, but time was the one thing she wasn’t short of, she reminded herself as she cut a cane and bound the net to it with the leg of her stocking.
‘Move over, Tarzan,’ she said, with a soft laugh as she whipped the finished net back and forth and discovered to her considerable satisfaction that everything held together. ‘Jane is about to catch her own lunch.’
She wasted no time but with great concentration, began to trawl her makeshift net just beneath the surface of the sand and prod about under the rocks, scooping up the transparent, barely visible little shrimps as they scuttled for cover, shaking them carefully from her net into the shell of a coconut. There was something pleasurably atavistic in the process of hunting for her own food, she discovered, focusing on her task with the same earnestness that she would have applied to a new business proposition. It was the way she did everything — all or nothing.
‘Enjoying yourself?’
So intent had she been upon her labours that the unexpected sound of Griff’s voice above her made her whole body jump.
He was standing behind one of the larger rocks, his chin propped on his folded arms. She had the impression that he had been watching her for some time. The bronzed skin of his shoulders was already dry, his recent immersion in the sea betrayed only by the tiny drops of water that swooped along the dark, tangled mop of his hair, to fall and trickle in tiny rivulets down his strongly corded neck. She watched them, mesmerised, then she straightened abruptly, hoping he wouldn’t notice the warmth that flooded into her cheeks.
As it happened, he wasn’t looking at her at all but regarding her catch with considerable interest. ‘Tasty little things,’ he observed. ‘How are you going to cook them?’
‘Cook them?’ She had been so intent upon catching her potful of shrimps that she hadn’t given a thought to what came next. Her only experience of shrimps had been of the pink, cooked variety, on a restaurant plate but she wasn’t going to admit that. ‘I’ll think of something,’ she said.
‘You certainly seem to have a gift for improvisation,’ he agreed genially, reaching out one long arm and taking the net from her unresisting hand to examine it more closely. Then he raised those taunting eyes of his and she had the uncomfortable suspicion that somewhere, deep inside, he was laughing at her. ‘You really do wear black silk stockings?’
Maddy flushed as deeply as if she had been caught parading in them for his titillation. ‘Never on the beach,’ she replied stiffly, and snatched the betraying net out of his hand.
‘What
a pity,’ he said, lifting a couple of bright red fish threaded onto a line for her inspection. ‘You won’t be wanting one of these, I take it?’
‘I’m sure you can manage them both,’ she replied, investing her voice with all the chill she could muster. ‘Please don’t feel you have to wait for me.’
He inclined his head in the direction of her proposed meal. ‘Oh, I won’t,’ he said. ‘It’ll be nightfall before you’ve caught enough of those to fill a tooth.’
‘I’ve caught dozens of the things,’ she protested.
‘All shell and head, though. I’ll see you later.’ He finally gave in to the temptation to grin. ‘Much later.’
‘Damn,’ she muttered under her breath as he disappeared from sight, but she wasn’t absolutely certain why.
The delicious scent, a little while later, of fish grilling over an open fire reminded her that it was a considerable time since breakfast, and she eyed her catch doubtfully. The shrimps wriggling in the dark recesses of the coconut husk looked very much alive... and suddenly, very unappetising. But she had decided to make a point, prove she didn’t have to rely upon a mere male for her food, and she would have to go through with it. Abandoning her net by the pool, unwilling to parade her mutilated stockings for Griff’s further amusement, and holding the husk containing her reluctant lunch very carefully, she clambered back over the rocks to the larger beach.
Griff had speared his catch on a long cane which he had propped across two flat rocks placed on either side of the hot embers of the fire. He was laid back on the sand, relaxing while they cooked, his hands clasped behind his head, his eyes closed. He accomplished his objectives with such economy of effort, she thought a little enviously, removing her hat and using it as a fan.
‘You’ve finally caught enough for lunch?’ he asked without opening his eyes.
‘Yes, thank you,’ she said, giving him a wide berth as she walked to the far side of the fire and sank to her knees. She regarded the shrimps with foreboding. They were still very much alive and kicking in their temporary home.
Griff rolled up into a sitting position and offered her a sliver of cane. ‘I thought you might like to follow my example,’ he said, indicating his own lunch. ‘They shouldn’t take long to cook.’
Maddy looked up, a little surprised that he should bother to take so much trouble after the way she had threatened him. ‘Thank you,’ she said. The cane was long and sharp and the idea of using it to spear her helpless captives made her feel suddenly quite sick.
‘My pleasure, Miss Osborne.’ The brackets at the corners of his mouth deepened slightly. It wasn’t quite a smile -— she didn’t know precisely what it was — but it disturbed her and she wished he wouldn’t do it.
‘Whatever happened to Maddy Rufus?’ she asked, putting off the moment when she had to tackle the lunch.
‘It no longer annoys you,’ he said. ‘Besides, since I’ve been threatened with the law, a little more formality is called for.’ It was clear that the threat did not concern him greatly.
‘You—’ she flared, then stopped. It was not what Griff had done that had caused the problem but her own unexpectedly wanton response. Her pulse began to thump at the still vivid memory of the way he had kissed her, the way she had kissed him back. ‘I didn’t mean it,’ she said, quickly looking away from the steady regard of eyes masked behind tinted lenses that filtered out his expression and the colour that seemed to vibrate with his feelings. She knew it was the moment to apologise, but the words seemed to stick in her throat.
Embarrassed by her own shortcomings, Maddy dropped her gaze to the coconut husk and the wriggling shrimps that were destined to be her lunch and suddenly knew that she would never eat another shrimp in her entire life. But, aware of Griff’s mocking scrutiny, she felt unable to back down and admit defeat. With a small gulp’ she caught one of the creatures between her fingers and held it to the point of the cane. It was all legs and waving feelers and Maddy could see its tiny organs pulsating through its transparent body. A convulsive shiver ran through her body and suddenly Griff’s hand was clasped about her wrist, steadying the tell-tale shake.
‘Do you require assistance, Miss Osborne?’
‘No!’ She dropped the cane. ‘I’ve just decided that I’d prefer a banana for my lunch.’
She had expected him to gloat but he didn’t. ‘No need for that. The snapper’s just about done,’ he said, taking the shrimp from her trembling fingers and dropping it back into the husk with its companions and finally meeting her eyes. ‘But you’re beginning to get the hang of things. I’ll certainly give you ten for effort. Nil for execution.’
‘I don’t want anything from you.’
‘No?’
‘No! But what about...?’ She looked guiltily at her catch; it seemed even worse to deprive them of life and then not eat them out of squeamishness.
‘Come on,’ he said, taking her elbow and drawing her to her feet, his touch mercifully brief as he bent to pick up the shrimps and hand them to her. ‘You can put them back in the pool.’
‘Do you think they’ll survive?’ she asked, suddenly as anxious as if they were a tankful of pet goldfish.
‘They’ve a better chance there than on a skewer,’ he pointed out somewhat wryly, and she shuddered, lifting one hand to cover her mouth at the thought, swallowing hard.
‘I’m afraid I lack the killer instinct,’ Maddy said as she released her lunch to live another day, watching thankfully as the shrimps immediately buried themselves in a flurry of sand that clouded the water.
‘Oh, don’t underrate yourself,’ Griff said. ‘Like most women, I’m sure you’re more at home in the drawing room, stalking larger game.’
In the sheer relief of returning her captives to the freedom of the water, Maddy had momentarily forgotten his hostility. Now she turned on him, determined once and for all to clear up any misunderstanding, but, confronted with the expressionless stare of his dark glasses, the hard line of his mouth, she suddenly felt it safer to leave things as they were. Hostile.
‘I’m sorry to disappoint you, Griff, but I don’t have much time to waste swanning about drawing rooms.’ Maddy pushed past him, gritting her teeth as her shoulder brushed against his arm and sent a dangerous flutter of desire skittering down her spine, her body apparently determined on a perilous course of its own.
‘I’d better go and get some fresh water,’ she said as they returned in silence to the fire, anxious to put some distance between them and get a grip on herself.
‘It’s done.’ He scooped out a half-shell of fresh, clean water and handed it to her. She hesitated, unwilling to take it and risk the dangerous touch of his fingers. ‘Don’t you want this?’ he asked. Certain that he knew, understood her fear, she took the shell quickly, spilling a little, drinking it quickly so that she could retreat to a safer distance. He wasn’t done. ‘I thought you were going to man your signal fire day and night until you were rescued,’ he said, sinking back onto the sand. ‘Why did you abandon it?’
‘Simple logistics,’ she said, happy enough to change the subject.
He raised a brow. ‘Are logistics ever simple?’
‘In this case, indisputable. Not a single aircraft has passed overhead since we’ve been here, apart from high-flying jets. But then you undoubtedly already knew that we are off the inter-island air routes, and if the local fishermen simply think we’re having a barbecue, there isn’t a great deal of point in trying to attract their attention that way.’
He shrugged. ‘They’re used to seeing me here.’
‘Are they?’ She frowned. ‘Why?’
‘I like it here.’ She waited, but he didn’t elaborate.
‘In that case, why did you ask me to build a fire in the first place?’
‘It seemed a good idea to keep you occupied,’ he admitted. ‘Despite your somewhat—’ he paused to consider his words ‘—spirited manner, I was afraid you might fall apart at the seams when you realised the island was deserted. Me
rcifully, you didn’t.’
‘If that was meant to be a compliment, Griff, I have to tell you that your technique leaves something to be desired. Perhaps you should consider taking lessons.’
‘You wouldn’t want me to say something I didn’t mean, would you?’ His voice trailed a challenge.
‘There doesn’t appear to be any danger of that,’ she snapped back.
‘None whatever,’ he affirmed, leaning forward to take the fish from the fire, carefully transferring them to the waiting banana-leaf plates. Then he looked at her, ‘I never say anything I don’t mean, Maddy. Remember that.’
‘Very commendable,’ she said quickly as his direct gaze brought a fierce blush to her cheeks. ‘What a pity your honesty doesn’t extend in other directions.’ He glanced up, tilting his brow at a questioning angle, and Maddy wondered just how many hearts he had broken with that one look. Was Zoë merely the latest in a long line? ‘You’re obviously in the habit of taking advantage of the owner’s frequent absences to use this island as if it were your own,’ she said.
‘Am I?’ The lines at the corners of his mouth deepened suspiciously. ‘Well, I’m sure he doesn’t miss a few coconuts, or the odd pineapple.’
His amusement was even more infuriating than his rudeness and demonstrated his lack of scruples very adequately. ‘Whether he misses them or not is hardly the point, they aren’t yours to take.’
‘You didn’t object at breakfast,’ he pointed out, with some justification. ‘In fact, I would say you didn’t give the matter a moment’s thought.’
‘This is an emergency’, she blustered. ‘Altogether different. I’m not sneaking about taking advantage of his unwitting hospitality and I shall make a point of writing and thanking him as soon as we’re picked up.’
‘Don’t expect him to be overwhelmed by your finishing-school manners,’ he warned. ‘He’s not the type.’
‘Whilst I hate to disabuse you of one of your prejudices about me,’ she said carefully, ‘it might interest you to know that I cycled to the local comprehensive school every day, come rain or sun, until I was eighteen years old and my ‘finishing’ consisted of a course in Business Studies at the nearest technical college.’ She had refused to move away from her friends and go to the fancy boarding-school her father had favoured when he’d finally reached the point at which he stopped chasing banks and they started chasing him. ‘Furthermore, I’m fluent in French not because of some expensive tuition but because my mother came from France and had an aversion to everything English, particularly the language.’ Griff was regarding her with a puzzled, questioning look. ‘Don’t you believe me?’ she demanded.