So now, when thoughts of the Toyota troubled her, Petra switched into another mental gear. She cheerfully contemplated the road ahead and the warm welcome she'd get from Joe and Sunny. She conjured up images of the cottage and enjoyed thinking about how simple her life was going to be for a month. There were no telephone wires into the lake to bring in the intrusion of the outside world, no newspapers delivered with tales of tragedy and disaster, no social events that required dressing up or the application of cosmetics. And she let pleasant memories of the warm blue waters of Indian Lake, the shadows of overhanging trees, and the sounds of birds and squirrels drift through her head. She did not think about Geoffrey Hamilton at all. She had quite firmly put him out of her mind after that breakfast. She had no real hope that he'd give up the assignment and knew that she'd have to put up with his presence at the cottage. But she didn't bother to speculate about him, ponder about him or venture any hypotheses about what he would do or what he would say. She mentally ignored any thought of him, and that was very satisfactory.
The road, a narrow canyon between tightly gathered trees, ended with an abruptness that was always startling, opening out into a cleared area that held the cottage, a small boathouse and a shed where Joe kept all his tools and equipment. Like many cottages in northern Ontario, the McGinnis abode had the rambling look that comes with additions and annexes. Joe and Sunny had bought the cottage many years before when it was a one-room cabin and had added on to it in bits and pieces. It now had four bedrooms, a porch that wrapped around the front and one side and a summer kitchen that overlooked the lake. It wasn't luxurious but it was comfortable, furnished with sturdy beds and tables, rocking-chairs and cushioned seats under every window.
The sound of Petra's car in the driveway brought Sunny out of the side door along with Rembrandt, her large black Labrador and Renoir, a silver and black tabby cat of no particular origin. Petra climbed out of the car and was practically assaulted by the animals. Rembrandt liked to greet arrivals with a lick on the face, while Renoir cultivated an intense curiosity about the insides of automobiles. Petra almost tripped over her as she scooted underneath the car door and leaped on to the back of the front seat.
'Down, Remmie, you crazy fool of a dog.' Sunny grabbed the Labrador by his collar and pulled him off Petra.
'I'd be more flattered,' Petra said with a laugh, 'if I didn't know how undiscriminating Remmie is.'
The other woman gave her a resounding kiss on the cheek and a huge hug, enveloping Petra's slight figure in her larger one. Sunny was a big woman, several inches taller than Joe, big-boned and big-hearted. She had bright blue eyes, a freckled complexion and a mouth that seemed to have been made for smiling. Her hair, which had once been a bright red, was now sandy and streaked with grey. She wore it piled on top of her head in an untidy chignon. And, as usual, she was dressed in a T-shirt, overalls and sneakers.
They hugged for a moment and then, with an exclamation of surprise, Sunny pushed Petra away and held her at arm's length. 'Bones!' she said. 'My God, you're all bones. What have you been doing, starving yourself to death? And you're pale, too. Heavens, but you look terrible.'
Petra grinned. A lot of people might have been offended by the way Sunny assumed that she could pass judgment, but Petra wasn't one of them. She loved having Sunny fuss over her, scold her and take care of her. It was the sort of mothering that Sheila had been incapable of providing, and Petra had spent her childhood starving for any tiny morsel of affection that happened to be thrown her way. Even now that she was grown up, the hunger had remained, a seemingly insatiable desire to be pampered. Not that she let many people close enough to sense that need in her. Sunny was one of the very few that Petra allowed to slip past the high wall of defence she had erected around herself.
'Sunny, you're always full of compliments.'
But Sunny didn't seem to be listening. 'Potatoes,' she was murmuring, 'and lots of buttered biscuits. Vegetables, too. Spinach has iron; you look like you need that. Vitamins, calcium, and protein. You're going to have some colour in your cheeks and fat on your bones before I let you swim Lake Ontario.'
'Aye, aye, sir,' Petra said meekly.
'Did you travel light or heavy?'
'Light.' Petra opened up the back door of the car, shooed Renoir off the seat where she was perched and indicated her suitcase. 'Bathing suits and sweats.'
'I am,' Sunny said, 'putting you in the Emerald Room.'
Sunny had once, in a fit of mock-grandeur, given pretentious names to all the tiny, cramped bedrooms in the cottage. The Emerald Room was a cubby-hole off the main porch with a bed that had a green spread.
'I thought that one was for visiting royalty,' Petra said.
'Nope. The Queen now gets the Blue Room.'
'The Blue Room?'
'The back one with the turquoise garbage pail.'
'Real luxury,' Petra said.
'That's what she said in her thank-you note.'
Petra gave Sunny a quizzical look. 'The Queen?'
'Of course, who else?'
'Right,' Petra said, pulling out her suitcase. 'You know, Sunny, you're still as batty as you used to be.'
'Hah!' said Sunny. 'You're always full of compliments.'
Petra was still smiling when she reached the porch, and she almost failed to notice the figure sitting on a wicker chair in one corner. She stopped short when she saw him, sought for some properly polite remark and ended up saying the first thing that came into her mind. 'So you're here.'
Geoff leaned back in his chair and gave her a long glance, his eyes taking in her tousled hair, T-shirt, torn jean snorts, dusty bare legs and sandalled feet. 'I said I would be, didn't I?'
Sunny, bewildered by this exchange, stepped in brightly. 'You've met, of course,' she said, 'so I don't have to bother with useless introductions. Geoff arrived yesterday, Petra, and made us biscuits last night. Very good they were, too.'
Geoff was dressed more casually than he'd been for that breakfast. He was wearing a blue tank top and navy shorts, an outfit that revealed a body that was hard and muscular. His bad leg was propped up on a stool and Petra briefly glanced at the scar that ran down the inside of his thigh, its whiteness cutting through the golden hairs. For a second, she wondered where he had got it and then inwardly shrugged, thinking, why should I care?
'Yes,' she said coldly, answering Geoff's question, 'you did.' Then she tugged her suitcase higher, threw open the screen door and walked into the cottage.
Sunny threw a puzzled look at Geoff who merely gave her a nonchalant shrug, and followed Petra inside.
When they reached the small bedroom, she watched as Petra put her suitcase on the bed and then said, 'What was that all about?'
'What?'
'That interchange on the porch.'
'Oh, that.' Petra opened the suitcase.
Sunny sat down on the bed and firmly closed the suitcase again. 'No unpacking until you give me some idea what's wrong.'
Petra sighed and rubbed her hair. 'He's a reporter.'
'So?'
'And I've met him and we don't get on.'
'He seems quite pleasant to me,' Sunny said. 'He arrived yesterday, and he has already endeared himself to my heart.'
'You've always been a sucker for a man who makes biscuits.'
'And I say a man who likes to cook can't be all bad.'
Petra flopped down on the bed and pulled off her sandals. 'I came here to swim, Sunny, not to be pestered by the press.'
'Hmmm. Joe thinks the coverage is a good thing.'
'Joe isn't going to be under scrutiny the way I am.'
'Now, Petra, don't go all huffy and prickly. A few questions never hurt anyone, and you've nothing to hide.'
'I just don't like…'
Sunny put her hand on Petra's arm. 'I know how you feel, dear, but he seems to be a nice enough fellow and God knows he's easy on the eyes. Now, we all have to be here together for a month. A little civility would help.'
Petra imme
diately felt guilty for being a rotten guest. No matter how much the McGinnises made it seem otherwise, she was no more a part of their family than Geoff was. And she had no right to abuse their hospitality and ruin their month at the cottage. 'I'm sorry,' she said. 'Of course, I'll be nice to him. It's just that…' she gave Sunny a shy smile, 'I had wanted it to be just us. You know, relaxed and easy. No complications.'
Sunny gave her a hug. 'Of course you did and so did I. But you know how Joe is. He loves to invite people to the cottage, and he's miserable if he isn't training half a dozen swimmers at once. Take Jennifer, for instance. He dropped her into my lap last minute.'
'Jennifer?'
'The next great Canadian hope for the freestyle.'
Petra struggled with that for a moment, trying to remember past conversations with Joe and mentions of a teenager that he was grooming for the Olympics. 'I thought Joe was training a boy for that.'
'Oh, good heavens, no,' Sunny said, shaking her head with a sigh. 'Not Jennifer. There's nothing boyish about that child in the least. She's one hundred and fifty percent female. Wait until you see her.'
Petra had her chance to get a taste of what the month was going to be like that night at dinner, and she considered herself lucky that she didn't walk away from the table in a state of complete indigestion.
Joe, of course, was pleased as punch at the whole entourage. He spent most of the meal talking enthusiastically about the ins and outs of training, while Geoff responded with questions and interest. (Put on as far as Petra was concerned, but then no one would have cared to hear her opinion.)
Sunny might have known how Petra felt, but she was clearly impressed with Geoff's background, his charm and his second set of biscuits. (Petra tasted one, acknowledged sourly that it was light and fluffy and refused to finish it despite Sunny's severe look.)
And then there was Jennifer. Petra could have truly done without Jennifer. She was just about as fluffy as Geoff's biscuits. She smiled and giggled and simpered and blushed. She wore her blonde hair in bouncy pigtails tied with blue bows and was dressed in a one-piece playsuit whose brevity revealed a sexual development at thirteen that far exceeded Petra's at twenty-five. And she was oh, so helpful. Jennifer couldn't wait to be of use to anyone. She jumped up to help Sunny serve dinner and she passed the salt to Geoff with such a batting of her long, dark eyelashes that Petra almost gagged over her green beans. And everything, according to Jennifer, was 'neat'. The food was 'neat', the lake was 'neat', the cottage was 'neat', the swimming was 'neat', the trees were…
Petra's level of tolerance had hit such a low by the time dessert was served that she had to excuse herself from the table, saying she'd developed a terrible headache. That caused Sunny's mothering instincts to go into overdrive, and Petra was provided with anxious sympathy, aspirins, a cool cloth, a cup of tea and an extra blanket. She curled under the blanket, listened to the laughter and murmur of voices from the kitchen and decided that the month at Indian Lake was going to be far worse than she had even imagined.
Far, far worse.
CHAPTER THREE
Geoff limped down the steps to the beach below the cottage, spread out the towel he had brought with him and sat down on it. He was wearing a brief bathing suit, a slip of dark silk, that exposed most of him to the caress of a breeze that played off the lake. He tucked the knee of his good leg under his chin, wrapped his arms around it and became motionless, letting himself absorb the warmth of the sun on his shoulders, the sound of water lapping against the shore, the light filtering through the branches of a nearby poplar to play with golden fingers on the blue surface of the lake. There was something extremely seductive about the beauty and serenity of his surroundings, and despite his angry words to Rick, Geoff was discovering that he wasn't really unhappy to be here. For the first time in months he felt himself relaxing; his chafing need to move, to hustle, to find the action evaporating into the very air around him.
It had been a long time since he'd felt so at peace. There had been the push to get through college, the urge to get a job and then the desire to get the plum of reporting jobs. After that, he'd spent time rushing from one place to another, from one interview to another, from one woman to another. Even when he'd been in the hospital, he'd spent so much time fighting the pain, he'd never truly rested. And he'd been so miserable during his convalescence that he'd never taken a moment just to sit, just to take a deep breath, just to let the world flow over him. It was different now to find himself in a place without telephones, newspapers, televisions and radios. It placed him in an enforced isolation that he had thought he would hate with a vengeance. Instead, surprisingly, he had the sensation that he was being held in a gentle cocoon, nourished by the silence and an utter lack of urgency.
Geoff hadn't had any chance to talk to Petra yet. She reminded him of a deer, shying away at any motion or overture that he made. So he'd ignored her and concentrated on other things like talking to Joe about marathon swimming and helping Sunny cook. Geoff knew he made a mean biscuit but that's about as far as his culinary talents went. Under Sunny's tutelage he might even attain such heights as yeast buns and coffee cake. And there was, of course, Jennifer who had a crush on him so intense that Geoff practically shuddered when she came within reaching distance. God, but he'd forgotten what teenage girls could be like. Those yearning brown eyes, that awe-struck expression. Geoff was almost afraid to speak because he could feel Jennifer collecting his every word as if it were a precious gem and tucking it away in her memory to taste and savour later. And he had to walk a tightrope in his treatment of her. He didn't want to hurt her feelings but, on the other hand, he didn't want to encourage her either. That was the other thing he'd forgotten about teenage girls. They were sweet and pretty and deliciously wholesome but, Christ, when they opened their mouths… Geoff had heard Jennifer talking to Sunny about him and had winced to hear himself described as 'really, really neat'.
Now, why couldn't Petra feel that way, he wondered. That would sure make life easier for him. A little adoration could go a long way in getting a reporting job done. But he wasn't so lucky. Petra was turning into one of the world's most elusive creatures. The only times he could really watch her was when she was swimming, and she seemed to do that for most of the day. The rest of her time was filled up with meals, walking Rembrandt, reading on the porch or sleeping. She was civil to him, but only barely and, whenever he was in the same room with her, he could practically feel her urgent wish to leave. He'd tried casual conversation, idle flirting, an easy smile. Heck, he'd even paraded his bathing-suit-clad body in front of her to see if she'd show a flicker of interest. No luck there either. It seemed that Petra Morgan was unmoved by a body that had inspired rhapsodies from other, far more attractive women.
Geoff grinned to himself. Well, so much for male egotism. Not that he was upset about her lack of interest. He still considered Petra as one of the least seductive women he'd ever met. What had Sunny said about her? All bones, that's what she was. Although… and he had to admit this… after watching her swim, Geoff had found himself with the urge to touch her, to test muscles that must be as hard as rock beneath the sleekness of her skin. And, if there was one thing that was truly beautiful about Petra, it was her skin. He hadn't noticed it at the pool where the fluorescent lighting made everyone look sallow, but here at the lake with the sun bathing her in a glow, he had noticed the colour of her; an amber that reminded him of honey. It was an odd combination with her dark hair and grey eyes, but it was pleasing, and he couldn't help wondering if she was like that all over.
A rustle of leaves behind him caused Geoff to turn, and he caught sight of Petra standing uncertainly in the trees behind him, a towel slung over her shoulder. He knew that she didn't want to come down to the beach because he was there, and she was already turning to go away when he said, 'Come on. I don't bite or, at least, I don't think that I bite. And I promise not to ask any questions.'
Petra turned back, stared at him for a second as if
she were trying to decide just how impolite she could be and then capitulated with a small nod of her head. She walked out on to the sand and put her towel as far from Geoff as possible. This left them only sitting about three feet apart since Joe had never bothered to clear enough brush to make the beach anything more than a narrow strip of sand with a wooden jetty off it that pointed out to the middle of the lake.
Geoff watched as she neatly straightened her towel out and lay down on it, her arms at her sides, her face angled towards the sun, her eyes closed. Instead of . wearing her usual one-piece stretch suit, she was dressed in a red string bikini, and Geoff quite enjoyed the discovery that… yes, Petra was a warm honey-amber from beneath her breasts, down the curve of her waist and across the flat expanse of her abdomen. That left only…
He shook his head and said, 'Aren't you training today?'
She didn't bother to open her eyes. 'That's a question.'
'Sorry, I'll rephrase it. You aren't training today.'
'I usually take one day off a week to give my joints and muscles a chance to rest.'
'Gotcha.' He was also quite entranced with the discovery that Petra did have breasts. Small, admittedly, but they were overflowing the top of her bikini in a very pleasing fashion. 'Hey, why don't you ask me questions? That would be a change of pace.'
There was a long silence while Petra seemed to make up her mind. Then she turned over on to her side, causing those very same breasts to make an enticing shift to the left and said, 'What happened to your leg?'
Geoff looked away from her watchful grey eyes and back at the sparkling water of the lake. A fish leaped in the distance, a cascade of diamonds swirling into the air. Nearer to shore, water spiders skated on the lake's surface making tiny circular ripples, and a dragonfly hovered past, its wings a gleaming iridescent blue. It was a scene that was idyllic and peaceful, a far cry from that day of screaming and pain and devastation.
Love is a Distant Shore Page 4