He was quick and efficient—he was back very quickly with a tray which he placed on the small plastic table beside her. She paid him and he went off whistling while she drank her juice and then ate her croissant and drank her black coffee, which was strong and very hot.
When she had finished she felt more alive. Lying down, she closed her eyes and let the sun permeate her pale English skin.
‘Good morning.’
The voice made her stiffen. She reluctantly opened her eyes and saw him standing over her, his body blocking out the sun.
Her pulses went crazy at the sight of him in those brief black swimming-trunks; the sunlight glinting on those smooth, tanned shoulders gave his skin a wonderful glow. Her eyes slid from them to the powerful muscled chest, lean hips, strong thighs and those long, long legs with their dusting of fine black hair.
She swallowed and managed a reply. ‘Good morning.’
‘How are you this morning? Got over last night’s shock?’ He coolly sat down on the empty mattress beside her, only a foot away, and she was overwhelmed by physical sensations that appalled her. They were on a beach full of other people, but she felt as if they were alone.
‘Yes, thank you.’ She was suffering another kind of shock now; she had the feeling that it would be a long time before she got over this one. She wished, urgently, that she hadn’t come down to the beach this morning, that she were somewhere else, anywhere but here. What if he picked up on the turmoil inside her? The very idea of it made her burn with angry self-disgust.
‘You still look nervous, though,’ he said, studying her with narrowed grey eyes.
‘I’m fine,’ she muttered.
He looked unconvinced. ‘You haven’t forgotten that you have an appointment at half-past eleven?’
Bianca stared at him blankly. ‘What?’
His brows rose. ‘You obviously have! The police asked you to go down and identify their suspects at noon.’
Agitated, she looked at her watch—it was a quarter to eleven. ‘How long will it take me to get to the police station?’
‘Oh, only ten minutes, but if traffic is heavy it could take longer. We ought to leave by a quarter to twelve to be on the safe side, so you have plenty of time for a swim first.’
‘We?’
He looked into her blue eyes, smiling crookedly, and her stomach sank as though she were in a lift which had suddenly dropped down at tremendous speed.
‘I’ll drive you there.’
‘There’s no need to... I can take a taxi.’
Coolly he said, ‘I promised the police I’d take you myself, to interpret. You don’t speak Spanish, do you?’
She had to admit that she only knew a few polite phrases. Her stomach tightened; it would be a nerve-racking experience, visiting a Spanish police station to identify the man who attacked her last night. She would rather never see the man again. But if she had to go she would be grateful for a little moral support and some help with the language. Only—why did it have to be him?
‘I’m—I’m sure you’re very busy, running the hotel,’ she stammered. ‘Couldn’t one of your staff take me?’
‘No, I said I’d do it and I will,’ he said coolly, watching her in a way that made her even more nervous. What was he thinking?
She picked up her bottle of suntan lotion and began smoothing it into her sun-warmed legs again, to steady herself, give her something to do which also provided a good excuse for not looking at him.
‘Well, thank you; it’s very kind of you to take so much trouble,’ she said stiltedly.
Behind their barrier of lowered black lashes her blue eyes were humiliated and angry. Once again she wished to God she had never gone out on the balcony yesterday while he was swimming in the pool, had never seen him climb out of the water, golden and beautiful, had never felt that incredible, helpless surge of attraction.
She still found it hard to believe that this was happening to her. She had loved Rob before she understood sensuality. Her first love had been innocent, as virginal as untrodden snow; at eighteen she had been dewy-eyed and romantic, full of dreams, quite unaware of the potential that her body held. But she wasn’t an unawakened eighteen-year-old any more. She was a woman who had learnt to enjoy physical passion, whose body clamoured for satisfaction it had not had for three years. Since Rob’s death she had been so full of grief that she had forgotten she had a body, had put her sensuality to sleep, in a sense. Now it had woken up and Bianca was alarmed by her body’s increasing insistence.
There’s a word for the way I feel but I don’t like it, she thought. Lust—that’s what this is... lust for a man I only met yesterday and who is married anyway—it’s disgusting. I must be out of my head. I can’t believe this is happening to me.
‘You hurried off last night without a word,’ he drawled. ‘I was going to walk you to your apartment, but you had gone before I could catch up with you.’
She looked up and found him staring at her, his gaze fixed on the rise of her breasts out of the tight cups of the swimsuit, the soft pale flesh glistening now with oil where she had applied the suntan lotion.
She looked away, her flush deepening, then said angrily with a pointed intonation, ‘I thought you were going to have a drink with your sister-in-law.’
There was a little silence, then he said softly, ‘Freddie told me she had met you. She liked you. If you hadn’t hurried off like that you could have had a drink with us.’
‘I was very tired,’ Bianca said, hoping she sounded convincing. ‘I liked her too—she’s very friendly, isn’t she?’ She took a breath, then asked deliberately. ‘Is she your wife’s sister?’
He showed no sign of embarrassment or reluctance to discuss his wife. ‘Yes, Mady is Freddie’s younger sister.’
‘Are they alike?’ She was making herself talk about his wife in the hope of reasoning herself out of this stupid feeling for him. He was a married man, unavailable— she had to stop this permanent drag of attraction somehow and facing the fact that he was married should do it.
‘They’re both blondes and built more or less the same, but they aren’t alike in character—Freddie is a darling and Mady is...’ He stopped and shrugged, his mouth twisting cynically. ‘Mady was the baby of the family, very spoilt; both her parents doted on her and gave her whatever she wanted. Freddie was the eldest, though, and grew up with a strong sense of duty and responsibility. Nobody could accuse Mady of that!’
Startled, she stared at him. It didn’t sound as if he liked his wife much—or was she reading too much into his words? That would be wishful thinking; she must stop doing it. ‘Do you have children?’ she forced herself to ask him, expecting an affirmative.
‘None, thank God.’
Even more taken aback by that response, she stared, frowned, and asked, ‘Do you both live here at the hotel?’
There was a silence, then he said drily, ‘Freddie didn’t tell you? I imagined she would have—Mady and I were divorced within a year of getting married. She left me and eloped with the man she’s now married to—they live in Germany; he’s older than her father but he is worth millions and Mady is even more spoilt now than she was as a child.’
A pulse began beating in the side of her throat; she hoped he couldn’t see it but he was watching her so closely that she was afraid he could. Increasingly she felt as if she was made of glass, and he could see everything that was going on inside her.
He put out his hand suddenly and took the bottle of suntan lotion from her. She tried to hold on to it but it was slippery with oil, and slid easily from her grasp.
‘Turn over,’ he ordered.
‘What?’ She was still so absorbed in the realisation that he was not married any more that she was too bemused to understand what he meant.
‘Lie down and I’ll do your back for you,’ he said drily. ‘You can’t do it for yourself, can you? And the sun is hot; you don’t want to ruin your holiday by getting sunburn—it could be painful, especially as you have such
lovely English skin, like strawberries and cream, all pink and white.’
She blushed at the compliment and laughed, but protested. ‘I’ve got to go and change, to go to the police station.’
‘There’s plenty of time yet. You particularly need to protect the back of your neck and your shoulders from the sun; you can get sunstroke just walking about here—you don’t even need to be sunbathing. Lie down on your stomach.’
He slid off the mattress he was sitting on and knelt by her side. She looked up into his eyes and the world tilted—sky and sea and yellow sands whirling. Dizzy, she obeyed him and lay down, closing her eyes, falling into soft, velvety darkness, the world’s wild spinning gradually slowing.
All her other senses began operating with amazing clarity, frightening intensity. Her ears were as sensitive as those of a bat in a cave, picking up the singing of the waves, the laughter of children, the cry of gulls overhead, but, even more sharply, hearing the sound of his quick breathing, the trickle of lotion into his palm as he tipped the bottle upside-down on his hand, the rustle of his hair against his face as he bent over her. She almost felt that she could hear the sound of his heart beating, the blood circulating through his body.
She felt her breathing catch as he pushed her dark hair up from her nape. Cool fingertips touched the delicate pale skin left exposed. Her pulses leapt. He slid his fingers down her neck, along her shoulder-blades; she shuddered with pleasure. He pushed down the thin straps of her demure, one-piece black swimsuit and smoothed lotion where they had lain. His touch was both soothing and hypnotic; she felt her pulses slowing, and around them the sounds of the beach seemed to fade into the distance. Eyes shut, she drifted into a state where the rhythmic movement of his hands dominated her.
And then she felt her tight-fitting swimsuit being pulled downwards. She woke up in a hurry and tried to stop the top peeling off, but too late—her breasts were already bared. Giving a cry of dismay, she put her hands over them, angrily glaring at him over her shoulder.
‘What do you think you’re doing?’
‘I haven’t done some parts of your back which are half covered, and I don’t want to get lotion on your swimsuit.’
‘That’s quite enough!’
‘There’s no sense in half doing a job.’
He began working lotion into her spine, into the soft cushions of flesh on either side of the indentation, his splayed hands kneading and moulding. She was tense for a moment and he felt it, murmured softly, ‘Relax!’
She ignored him, but what he was doing was so insidiously enjoyable that gradually she slackened, began to drift back into a sensuous trance. Pleasure broke in rainbows in her head—glittering and radiant, dazzling her. It was so long since a man had touched her intimately. She had slept cold and alone all this time, and the sensual contact was both exciting and disturbing. She was trembling in response, hardly able to breathe, deeply conscious of every lightest touch. He was kneeling very close to her, his sandy naked legs brushing hers, his hands strong and possessive, his body moving in a driving rhythm which was a reflection of the act of love and made her blood run faster, desire ache, hot and deep inside her.
Her eyes shut tight, she was helpless, lost. If they had been alone in a room instead of being here, on a crowded beach, he could have turned her over and taken her then, and she knew she would have surrendered without a struggle.
I want him! she thought, and that in itself was shattering, because her husband had been the only man in her life until now, the only man she had ever slept with, the only man she had ever loved.
She didn’t know how to deal with these new feelings. This deep clamouring in her body was entirely new to her. She had never before looked at a man and thought, I want him! She had loved Rob, had slept with him every night of their married lives and enjoyed sex with him— but this was very different.
She had been so young when she’d married Rob, and by the time she’d reached her sexual peak their love-making had been more of a ritual than an earth-shattering experience. Their love had become quiet and gentle; there had been no room in it for the sort of wild tremors shaking her now. It disturbed her to admit it, even to herself, but the truth was that Rob had never been a fiercely passionate man. He would have been shocked if she had shown him this side of herself.
I didn’t know it existed! she thought, still stunned by these discoveries about herself. I never knew I could feel this way. Forty years old and I never knew myself.
Gil moved his hands in a smooth, rippling motion and her mouth went dry with desire. Oh, God! she thought, eyes closed, swallowing. I want to feel his hands moving like that all over me. I wanted to—
She stopped the thought, appalled. What is happening to me? I must be going crazy. Maybe it’s because of the years alone since Rob died. Maybe the need for love has built up inside me day by day, without me realising it. She felt it then; it was all there under the surface, this terrible need, a feeling so hot that she was burning, so deep that it was as if she had been stabbed and was bleeding to death.
There they were, on a public beach, surrounded by other people—she could hear their voices, their feet scattering sand as they ran—people sunbathing, reading, sleeping, playing beach games, swimming, and she felt naked, exposed; she felt that anyone who looked at her must see what was going on inside her.
Her face was dark red, her heart beating twice as fast as was safe; she was terrified.
Don’t panic, don’t panic! she hurriedly reassured herself. Nobody will have looked twice. People on a beach take very little interest in each other.
To convince herself of that, she opened her eyes and focused on the people in her line of vision, and noticed that some of the women were topless—and there were lots of people rubbing suntan oil into themselves—their children, their lovers. Of course. It was perfectly normal behaviour. How else did anyone manage to get their backs oiled?
A child ran past calling loudly, ‘Maman! Maman, j’ai faim!’
Gil gave a sharp start, as though he too had been in a trance and had woken up. His hands lifted. He stood up, took a tissue from the box of them she had got out of her beach bag, and slowly wiped his hands clean.
Still lying on her stomach, Bianca hurriedly pulled her swimsuit up, slipping the straps back over her oiled shoulders with shaky fingers. She was very flushed, breathing rapidly; she felt as if she had come up too fast from the bottom of the ocean and had bubbles of air in her blood.
‘I’m going for a swim before we have to leave for the police station,’ Gil said huskily.
‘I’ll sunbathe for a while.’ She felt his brooding stare on her but stayed on her stomach, avoiding the need to meet his eyes.
‘Don’t stay out in the sun too much at first. English skin is meant for rain, not sunshine. Keep changing position.’
She heard him walking away and turned on to her back, sitting up to stare at the tall man making his way towards the sea.
There was a dazzle of light from the water, from the sky, which made the whole scene flicker, like a film shot through gauze; Gil’s figure moved through it as if he were walking into infinity. His skin gleamed golden in the sunlight the way it had the first time she’d seen him. His body had a powerful male beauty—wide shoulders, a long, lean back, with that deep indentation in the middle of it, roughened by small dark hairs, slim hips and firm buttocks, long, muscled, dark-haired legs which moved easily, with grace.
Hunger ate at her. She lay down again and closed her eyes. The trouble was, she was really quite inexperienced with men. That sounded ridiculous when she had been married for years, and she had known Rob inside out, as well as she knew herself. Marriage to one man for many years made the two of you grow together, if it was a good marriage, and hers had been.
But knowing one man so well did not make you an expert on all men. She had never got to know any other men; she had been so young when she’d met Rob, and there hadn’t been anyone else before she met him—and she had been totally f
aithful to him all through their life together; she was the faithful type, and had never felt the slightest temptation to look at anyone else. Rob’s death had devastated her. She had thought she would never get over it.
Until now she would have sworn there would never be another man for her. She had always believed that love did not come to you twice—not love as strong and sure as she had felt for Rob.
But this isn’t love! she thought angrily. She knew what the feeling was, and she was ashamed of it. Lust was an ugly word.
There were nicer words for it—desire, passion, infatuation. They were all basic instincts, physical responses—a matter of pure chemistry, of flesh, not spirit. They were illusions, in a sense, because she hardly knew the man; she had not even met him when she’d first felt this way. She had seen him almost naked and wanted him, wanted him with clamouring hunger.
Men were supposed to react that way, but not women—certainly not women like her. She was in many ways a conventional woman, with traditional responses and habits. She had followed a traditional path from girlhood—had married and had children, had stayed at home and looked after them and run the home, and had only gone into business when her husband died.
She was forty years old, a sensible, businesslike, down-to-earth woman—and Gil Marquez made her feel like a schoolgirl. Her body seemed unable to stop reacting to him. Her heart beating fast, Her breathing coming and going irregularly. Her nerves prickling, her skin burning.
I’ve got to stop it, she thought. I have to get over this. And to do that I must keep out of his way.
But how could she do that when she kept meeting him? Maybe she’d take a coach trip somewhere, she thought— it would be nice to go to Granada and see the Alhambra; that would be a fascinating trip; the Moorish architecture of the palace was so beautiful, and the gardens were said to be stunning. She would need a whole day there, would be out of the hotel for hours, and safe from meeting Gil—no doubt the hotel could make all the arrangements for her. That was part of their offered service—there were coach brochures on the reception desk in the hotel, she had noticed. Even if there was no trip to Granada tomorrow, there were lots of places to visit in this area. She was bound to find a coach trip to one of them.
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