by Liz Fielding
Griff looked away. ‘She won’t worry him unnecessarily. How was the fish?’ he asked, changing the subject.
She looked at the heap of bones on the banana leaf. ‘It was delicious. Thank you for saving me from the shrimps.’
‘I was thinking of myself,’ he said briskly, as if regretting that moment when they had come close to something unimaginable. ‘You looked as if you were about to be sick.’
‘Oh.’ Well, that was that.
‘Would you like some coconut milk?’ he offered politely.
‘Only if it means you have to climb a palm tree to get a nut.’
His mouth twisted into a lopsided grin that did something crazy to her insides. ‘I’m afraid not.’
‘In that case, water will do just fine’, She picked up a coconut husk, but he overturned the bucket before she could dip it in.
‘Warm. Very nasty. It’s better straight from the stream. He stood up and held out his hand. Maddy hesitated, remembering their earlier encounter at the waterfall certain that it would be foolhardy to venture there again in his company. There was something drawing her to him — a recognition that she had at last met a man strong enough to take her, if he chose. Despite his attempts to cover his feelings, resist them, Griff felt it too, she was sure.
‘I’m not that thirsty,’ she said abruptly. ‘Besides, someone might come by.’
‘No one is going to come by, Maddy, and it’s time to get out of the sun for a while.’ He didn’t sound as if he was about to take no for an answer. ‘I’m sure Jack would be pleased to see you.’
‘Well, that will make a nice change,’ she said crisply, and was rewarded with the ironical lift of a dark brow and the lure of the cool green forest was very enticing. Ignoring his hand, she got to her feet, brushed the sand from her legs then bent to pick up the bucket.
‘Leave that.’
‘But water-carrying is women’s work, remember?’
He grinned broadly, revealing strong white teeth. ‘You can fetch some later,’ he promised, and Maddy only just managed to bite back the angry retort that flew to her lips. Griff always seemed to be able to top her, no matter what she said. It was time she put her mind to the problem, because no one treated her the way that he did and got away with it. Not for ever.
‘How do you know he’s called Jack?’ she asked as she followed him up the narrow path. Griff halted suddenly, turning his head to stare over his shoulder at her, and Maddy only just managed to prevent herself from bumping into him. ‘The parrot,’ she explained a little breathlessly. ‘How do you know his name?’
His eyes narrowed momentarily, then he gave the smallest shrug and the deepening clefts in his cheeks betrayed just the hint of a smile. ‘He told me, of course. That’s the advantage of a talking bird.’
She tapped her forehead with the flat of her palm. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’
‘There are clearly some glaring gaps in your education,’ he replied with perfect seriousness.
Maddy didn’t know whether to hit him or laugh. Her sense of the ridiculous won hands down and, unable to help herself, she giggled. It must have been infectious because Griff’s smile deepened until there was no doubt that he too found the idea quite ridiculous.
‘You should try and find him a mate,’ she suggested. ‘It doesn’t seem right that he’s on his own in paradise.’
‘You’re an unlikely romantic, Maddy.’
‘Am I?’ She lifted her shoulders a fraction. Not romantic, not sentimental — just how did he see her? She didn’t care, she told herself, but she wasn’t entirely convinced. ‘Life’s full of surprises.’
‘Isn’t it, though? In fact, you’re quite right. The St. Vincent parrot is an endangered species. Maybe I should catch him and send him to the breeding programme on St. Vincent.’
‘You? Wouldn’t the Dragon Man object?’
‘I...’ She thought he was going to say something but he just threw his arm about her shoulders, drawing her into his side so that they could squeeze up the path together. ‘I’ll ask him. Come on, Maddy. I believe it’s time you saw a little more of Paradise Island than the beach.’
There was a delicious warmth that had nothing to do with the ambient temperature, Maddy discovered, tucked against his firm body as they walked up the path to the pool. Griff stopped to point out a flurry of tiny hummingbirds drinking nectar from huge scarlet hibiscus flowers, their plumage copper-green in the filtered sunlight. While she watched, he plucked a stem of creamy orchids and, removing her hat, threaded it through her hair.
‘Now you look more like a dusky island maiden,’ he said. ‘The hair’s something of a give-away, though.’ He pushed a wayward tendril from her brow and tucked it behind her ear.
‘It’s the humidity,’ Maddy said, not quite in control of her voice. ‘I’ve gone rusty.’ Then, to cover her blushing confusion, she quickly went on, ‘It’s almost as if this was once a garden that’s gone to seed,’ she said, looking about her. Looking anywhere but at Griff.
He followed her gaze. ‘Nature’s own. Seeds have been brought by the sea and by birds, or on the feet of travellers. They’ve found a niche. Everything fits.’
‘Except Jack?’
He glanced down at her. ‘He’s survived. He’s made a place for himself. If the wind or chance brings him a mate, then he and his kind will become a part of the island.’
‘Even if they push out something else?’
‘That’s how it’s always been.’
‘The strong preying on the weak?’ she asked pointedly, pulling away from the dangerously seductive circle of his arm.
His brows closed in a frown. ‘Yes, Maddy. Since the dawn of time.’
But not if she could help it. She had to get hold of that cheque somehow and send it back to Zoë. Not now. He’d miss it. But when someone came to take them off the island. She’d find a way. They stopped at the pool to drink from water that splashed over the waterfall into their cupped hands. Then Griff climbed onto the rocks and extended his hand to pull her up after him into the cascade of water. ‘Come on.’
She hesitated. ‘I know it’s ridiculous, but I feel as if I’m trespassing,’ she objected.
‘This was once a bare volcanic outcrop, Maddy. Everything on it was a trespasser once.’
‘But I haven’t found my niche.’
‘You will.’
‘And if I change something?’ There was a hint of challenge in her voice. ‘Irrevocably?’
‘It’s a risk we take by being alive. We change places, places change us.
‘Do they?’ But she knew the answer. She had already changed. She didn’t quite know how or in what way. She just felt different. ‘You’re quite the philosopher, Griff.’
‘No. Just your average man wondering what’s over the rainbow.’ Griff turned to where a single ray of sunlight angling through the canopy high above them caught and split in the spray and a miniature rainbow arched tantalisingly across the cascade, calling her, inviting her to step beyond it and discover some glorious secret. Then he turned back to stare down at her. ‘Come with me, Maddy.’
They remained, poised between earth and sky. Then Maddy reached up to clasp his hand, gasping as he pulled her up through the spray. It showered her face and throat and soaked her T-shirt so that it clung to her, deliciously cooling, outlining her body as she clutched at him unsteadily before finding her footing.
She propped her panama on an overhanging branch, pushed her sunglasses up into her hair and in a gesture of sheer pleasure tilted her head back so that her face caught the sun and her hair hung in the shaft of sunlight, vying with the rainbow. For just a moment Griff held her there, his arm looped about her waist as they balanced on the edge of the waterfall, their bodies almost, not quite, touching. It was primitive and glorious and she saw from Griff’s darkening eyes that it was dangerous too. But then, what was paradise without forbidden fruit?
She was dragged back from the brink of some madness by a piercing wolf-whistl
e, the flash of orange and yellow banding a pair of brown wings, then Jack settled on the branch above them. She stepped free of the almost drugging pleasure of Griff’s touch and looked up, anywhere but at his eyes.
‘Hello, Jack,’ she said a little breathlessly.
‘Hello, Jack,’ the bird repeated, and put his head on one side in a conspiratorial little movement that brought a smile to her lips.
‘We’re exploring; care to show us the sights?’ she invited with a careless little gesture as she tried desperately to cover the palpitating confusion of her own thoughts. The bird flew down onto a nearby tree and then hopped away to the right, as if leading the way. ‘I do believe he is,’ Maddy laughed, making a move to follow him, but Griff caught her arm.
‘Not that way, Maddy, the ground falls away rather steeply.’
‘But there’s a path,’ she objected. ‘It looks quite well-worn.’
‘Appearances can be deceptive. If you slip and hurt yourself—’
‘I won’t be much use to you as a drawer of water and hewer of wood? I remember.’
‘I’m glad you do,’ he said, steering her firmly over the stream via a series of well-placed rocks. ‘This way takes us to the top of the island. The view is well worth the effort.’
‘Perhaps we should have lit our fire up there,’ Maddy said a little scratchily as she glanced back at the beckoning path and caught the faint but unmistakable scent of frangipani blossom.
‘No, nothing to spoil the perfection...’ His hand upon her arm stopped her. ‘But I should warn you that there is a risk involved.’
‘A risk?’
‘Once you’ve been to the summit of paradise, you may never want to come down.’
Startled by the intensity of his voice, she turned and looked up into his face. ‘You really love this place, don’t you, Griff?’
In the space of a heartbeat, she saw something in his eyes, an intensity too fleeting to capture, to interpret. Then, as if he realised that he was in danger of exposing some deep personal feeling, he looked away.
‘The fishing’s great,’ he agreed, with a careless gesture that quite definitely put an end to the subject, but Maddy knew that for him, it was a great deal more than just a handy place to catch fish. She wondered how he felt about someone else owning it, but his face betrayed no secrets as he held back a branch that dipped across the path. ‘This way, Miss Osborne,’ he invited, sketching a bow with mock formality.
She took a tentative step forward and he extended his hand to her. It was square and darkly tanned, with long, strong fingers that bore the scars of a hard life. It didn’t look like the hand of a man who spent his life robbing gullible women of their money when there were worlds to conquer. On the contrary, it looked like the hand of a man you could trust with your life. And she had already done just that, she thought, and shivered a little at the recollection of the way he had landed the seaplane.
She had trusted him and he had not let her down. She met his eyes and, in that moment, knew without a doubt that he would never let her down.
Maddy wondered idly if perhaps she had had rather too much sun; she certainly didn’t appear to be behaving quite rationally. But then, this wasn’t a very rational situation. The poised, efficient Miss Osborne had been cast away on a desert island with the kind of man most girls dreamed about. Not her, of course. She was far too sensible to fall for such foolish dreams twice in one lifetime.
Maddy pushed back a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead and her hand touched the spray of orchids that Griff had tucked behind her ear... Oh sensible, Miss Osborne… Maddy’s subconscious rose to mock her wickedly. With a tiny catch of her breath, as if she was taking some great, irretrievable step, Maddy consigned her subconscious to the dustbin, reached out and placed her hand in his. It looked so fragile, small and pale against his broad palm. Then he closed his hand over hers and she had the clearest feeling that she would never get it back, that Griff had claimed it as his own.
‘Shall we go?’
‘“The woods are lovely, dark and deep...”’ she quoted huskily.
‘“But I have promises to keep,”’ he continued slowly, then his eyes shaded as if he had remembered something, and an odd little shiver rippled down Maddy’s spine. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked as the tremor transmitted itself to him.
‘Nothing.’ She snapped her hand back to her side. ‘I’m just a little wet from the waterfall, that’s all. Shall we try and find the sun?’
He turned without a word and led the way up the path. Maddy stayed where she was, and knew that she was a fool for wishing her hand was still safely tucked up in his.
Definitely too much sun.
Jack gave a loud squawk from his perch some way above her and then fluttered from tree to tree, retracing the way they had come. She watched him for a moment and, as if aware of her scrutiny, he settled on a bush on the other side of the stream near the path, his head on one side. Despite Griff’s warning, she was certain that the bird wanted her to follow him and she took a step towards him, then another.
‘Maddy?’ She started guiltily and spun round. ‘Where are you going?’
‘Nowhere,’ she said, too quickly. ‘Just daydreaming. Sorry.’
He stood back, indicating the path she should take, and she didn’t linger, hurrying through the forest, no longer lulled by the incessant, hypnotic hum of insects, hardly even aware of the more strident calls of the mockingbirds. She was lost somewhere inside her head, a place where Griff’s soft, insistent voice was repeating over and over, “Places change us...”
It was true. She was being changed irretrievably by the island. By him.
Then abruptly, she burst through the thickly forested slopes and was on top of the world, surrounded on all sides by an ocean sparkling in the sunlight, the broken necklace of the Grenadines disappearing into the afternoon haze, the peaks of Union tantalisingly close, yet as far out of reach as if they were a thousand miles away.
The white wake of motor boats trailed teasingly in the distance and the snowy sails of a dozen yachts dipped under the breeze, one seeming almost close enough to hail. But it was an illusion, she knew. The wind would whip her voice away, and if anyone was looking in her direction and she was seen waving, who would suppose she could desire rescue? They would do just what Griff’s passing fisherman had done and wave back.
It seemed impossible to be stranded so close to so many people and Maddy knew that twenty-four hours ago she would have raged at her impotence. Now she settled on a smooth, sun-warmed rock, startling a tiny, basking lizard which disappeared in the flash of green.
She leaned back on her hands, closed her eyes and lifted her face to drink in the fresh, cooling scent of the trade winds. Rescue would come when it came. There was no point in raging against anything. Right now, she had nothing more important in the world to do than sit here.
Griff settled very quietly beside her on the stone. She could sense the warmth of his body, the sharp, musky, male scent of him.
‘You’re right. Griff,’ she said, acknowledging his presence without opening her eyes. ‘It’s beautiful up here.’
‘Do you still want to summon some gallant to your rescue?’ She turned to him to deny it, but he was offering her a conch shell. ‘Put it to your lips and blow,’ he suggested. ‘Someone might hear you.’
She took the shell between her hands. It was heavy, rough on the outside, but the inside shone with a beautiful peachy-pink lustre. She put it to her ear and listened to the sea. It was lulling, seductive.
‘Not yet,’ she said, with a sigh so small that she was hardly aware of it. And she put the shell down on the rock beside her. ‘There isn’t any rush.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘MADDY?’ Griff said her name softly — so softly that for a second, she wasn’t certain she had really heard his voice. ‘Maddy,’ he repeated, as if he could not help himself, and under the soft, hypnotic sound of her name she raised her lids and turned to face him.
It seemed almost as if he was moving in slow motion as he raised his hands to capture her face and draw her into his body.
She did not resist, could not — the moment was too perfect, too right. Her lips parted slightly as she waited, her face cradled in his hands, his long fingers threaded in her hair — waited for him to kiss her.
This time he did not crush her soft mouth beneath his, nor did he tease her with a taunting butterfly touch of his lips that left her longing pitifully for more. He bent his head to hers slowly — so slowly that she could see the thick dark fringe of lashes normally hidden behind dark glasses, the tiny flecks of blue in the sea-green of his eyes as he paused, his lips a bare inch from hers. Then his heavy lids closed as his mouth touched hers, and a strange longing, entirely new and yet, instantly recognisable, sparked through her.
His lips began to move over hers in gentle exploration, greeting her lips, her teeth, the tip of her tongue with his own, as if committing the taste of her to his memory.
Maddy remained very still, containing her fervent longing to respond to his caress. The kiss was a gift, from Griff to her, and although her heart was almost bursting with the aching need it stirred deep within her, some elemental instinct warned her to be patient, to let him take the lead.
When he lifted his head a few moments later, with a shudder that betrayed the intensity with which he had held himself in check, she knew she had been right to hold back. The kiss had been heartrendingly sweet. A promise? Or, as if he knew that rescue must come soon, that they must leave the island, was it simply goodbye? .
Griff said nothing and she was content enough to lean her head against his shoulder, enjoy the clear, fresh scent of the sea carried on the breeze and overlaid with the elusive sweetness of frangipani. Content to enjoy the rattle of wind through bamboo, a vivid splash of red poinsettia in the lush vegetation that spread below them — a reminder that, despite the heat, Christmas was nearly upon them — wih Griff was beside her, his dark hair tousled by the breeze, the hard edge of his profile shadowed against the sun.