by Penny Jordan
‘I have no “family"—my parents are both dead, but I can assure you that there’s nothing to disapprove of in Malcolm. In fact,’ she added dryly, ‘there are those who consider him something of a catch.’
‘I wasn’t talking in the material sense,’ Dot explained, ignoring Tamara’s withdrawal. ‘I was talking about the fact that you’re going to marry a man who, it seems, sees your body as something to be ashamed of rather than delighted in. I thought that attitude to sex had disappeared long ago.’
‘Just because Malcolm isn’t a sex maniac, it doesn’t mean that we won’t be happy together,’ Tamara retorted stiffly.
Dot shook her head in bemusement, as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.
‘Oh, my dear,’ she said sadly, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re throwing away one of life’s greatest pleasures, you know. Things were different when I met George, there wasn’t the freedom there is now, but from that very first moment I knew beyond any doubt that I wanted him physically very much indeed. I did have girl friends like you, though, many of whom found out too late that without sexual desire marriage can be a very arid state indeed. Forgive me for speaking so frankly—I can see I’ve offended you, but you remind me very much of my own daughter …’
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Tamara told her, relenting in the face of the other woman’s patent distress. ‘I suppose I am being a bit touchy, but I know Malcolm and I will be happy. For one thing …’ She hesitated and then plunged on bravely, ‘Well, to be honest, Dot, I just don’t think I have a particularly high sex drive. In fact …’ She hesitated, wishing she hadn’t begun the conversation, realising that for the first time in her life she was revealing things about herself she had never ever revealed before—and to a stranger.
‘Don’t say any more,’ Dot insisted sympathetically. ‘I think I know what’s on your mind, Tamara, but believe me, I don’t think you’re right—you just haven’t met the right man. When you do you’ll discover a side of yourself you never dreamed existed, and he, if he’s got any sense, will delight in helping you to discover your real sensuality.’
For some reason Tamara shivered, suddenly conscious that she was standing in the shop still wearing the brief bikini.
‘Buy it,’ Dot urged her. ‘Take the first step on the road to discovering yourself.’
She wanted to refuse and had fully intended to do so, but somehow she found herself leaving the boutique half an hour later clutching a glossy black carrier with the boutique’s name scrawled in gold across it, still wondering what on earth had possessed her.
George was waiting for them by the noticeboard on which the hotel pinned details of trips and activities they organised.
‘This sounds interesting,’ he told them, indicating a handwritten notice headed ‘Rain Forest Walk.’
Tamara read the details quickly and discovered that the hotel had organised a walk through the tropical rain forest which began on the slopes of the island’s volcanic mountains and which would take the better part of a full day.
‘We set off from here about eleven, drive to the rain forest, and then have lunch prior to starting the walk,’ George told them. ‘The manager here tells me that it’s well worth going. I hadn’t realised it, but apparently the rain forest covers a good two-thirds of the island; because the volcanic mountains are so steep they’ve never been cultivated, and the forest never cleared. It extends for several hundred square miles, and the paths are only known to a handful of local guides. I’m told that we stand a good chance of seeing some rare butterflies; and the parrots, of course.’
‘I don’t know if I fancy it,’ Dot told him frankly. ‘Won’t there be creepy-crawlies and snakes?’
‘Apparently not—there aren’t any snakes on the island.’
Tamara was tempted to put her name down for the walk. It sounded interesting, and after two days of simply lying soaking up the sun she was ready for something a little more physically demanding. As St Stephen’s was comparatively undeveloped there were very few organised tours apart from those involving cruising round the island and stopping off at various secluded bays for swimming and beach parties.
‘I think I’ll go,’ she announced impulsively. ‘I rather like the idea. When is it?’
‘Tomorrow,’ George told her. ‘How about it?’ he asked Dot. ‘Shall I put our names down?’
‘I suppose you might as well. It will be something to tell the kids about.’
‘Yes, I must remember to take my camera, they’ll enjoy seeing a shot of Mum “exploring the jungle”,’ George teased her.
In the end all three of them added their names to the short list.
‘The Somerfields—those are the young honeymooners, aren’t they?’ Dot asked her husband, scrutinising the list. ‘The Brownes and the Chalfonts—that’s the foursome who came together. They’re all in the fashion business,’ she explained to Tamara. ‘Alex Browne is a designer, apparently. Oh,’ she added, ‘Zachary Fletcher’s put his name down. In fact he was first on the list.’
‘If he’s been involved in an accident perhaps he needs the exercise,’ George suggested. ‘I noticed when we got off the plane with him that he was limping slightly.’
Zachary Fletcher! Tamara wished she had not decided to go. For some reason the dark-haired man disturbed her. Telling herself that it would look odd if she backed out now, she contented herself with the conviction that Zachary Fletcher was hardly likely to notice her; and then wondered why she should find the knowledge faintly depressing.
‘I think I’ll go up and change,’ she told the Partingtons. ‘I want to try and do a bit more sunbathing, especially if there won’t be time tomorrow.’
‘Wear your new bikini,’ Dot urged her. ‘We might see you later on the beach.’
When she went up to her room Tamara had no intention of changing into the cyclamen bikini, but she couldn’t resist taking it out of the bag, still amazed that she had actually bought it, knowing she would never wear it, and then, governed by some impulse she could not understand, she hurried into the bathroom and quickly changed into it, before she could change her mind, and not daring to visualise Malcolm’s reaction to her scantily clad body.
Picking up a white towelling robe and shrugging it on, she collected her book and the bag containing her suntan lotion and glasses before hurrying back outside.
The sun beat down with an intensity that burned right through her protective robe, and Tamara decided to forgo the beach in favour of the privacy of the gardens. She found a secluded spot protected by a low-growing hedge of tropical shrubs, their huge trumpet-shaped scarlet flowers almost too perfect to be real. The huge beach towel she had brought with her gave her something to lie on, and having smoothed as much of her body as she could reach with suntan cream she donned her glasses and picked up her book.
Half an hour slid by, before the book began to fail to hold her attention, which she found wandering to the antics of a tiny humming-bird darting in and out of the creeper adorning the walls of a nearby block of self-contained suites, and Tamara marvelled at the way the tiny creature delved so energetically in search of food.
She turned over, easing her stiff shoulders, tensing instinctively as she saw the black jean-clad legs in front of her, before her eyes moved slowly upwards over taut masculine thighs and a muscular chest before coming to rest on the saturnine face bent towards her.
Her skin went hot, burning with embarrassment as he glanced cynically over her body, so intimately revealed in her brief bikini.
‘Very provocative, but wasted here,’ he taunted softly. ‘Why aren’t you on the beach?’
Tamara suddenly found her voice, which to her chagrin was shaking with the pent-up force of her anger.
‘Why should I be?’ she demanded. ‘If you must know, I came here because I wanted …’
‘To be alone,’ he finished mockingly. ‘Snap! So what do we do now? Makes ourselves an interesting item of gossip or …’
&nb
sp; Tamara scrambled to her feet, feeling at a distinct disadvantage lying at his feet like … like a sacrificial offering.
‘If you want to be alone, Mr Fletcher,’ she replied, stressing the formality of the ‘Mr’, ‘then I suggest you find somewhere else …’
‘I like it here,’ he told her calmly. ‘It’s quiet and it’s private.’ His teeth glinted in a white smile, the grooves either side of his mouth deepening, giving Tamara a glimpse of the man he might possibly be when he wasn’t either bored or indifferent. ‘Be a good girl,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure you’ll find plenty of young men to admire you on the beach, and attractive though you are, I’m really well past the age where I’m incited to lust by the sight of a pretty girl with very little on.’
Throughout this speech Tamara’s eyes had gradually widened, as her body stiffened until she was staring at him in frozen outrage, scarcely able to speak for the anger building up inside her.
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to imply,’ she gritted out at last, hands clenched furiously at her sides, ‘but if you’re suggesting that I came here deliberately because you … because I knew you come here, you couldn’t be more wrong. You see,’ she told him sweetly, releasing the fingers of her left hand and raising it a little, ‘I don’t happen to need to run after other men—I’ve already managed to catch mine!’
She knew it was a vulgar little speech, but she really didn’t care; she didn’t care about anything but banishing from those green eyes the expression which said, quite plainly, that he thought she had deliberately come to this part of the gardens dressed as she was because she hoped to attract his attention.
‘I had no idea that you came here,’ she finished with a flourish. ‘If I had I would have made a point of avoiding it.’
‘Would you indeed?’ His eyes were on her left hand, narrowed and faintly assessing. ‘Are you sure about that? Girls have been known to do strange things when they’ve been … deprived of their fiancés’ presence.’
‘You’re an expert on brief affairs with other people’s girl-friends, are you, Mr Fletcher?’ she asked scornfully. ‘Well, you can relax—I’ll never be deprived, or depraved enough to trouble you.’
‘Oh, it wouldn’t be any trouble,’ she was assured with a smoothness which caught her off guard. ‘Not normally, that is.’
His glance seemed to stroke over her heated body, drawing from her a brilliant look of hatred, and her fingers curled in on themselves again.
‘It’s just that I prefer to do my own hunting,’ he added, further enraging her. ‘Now be a good little girl and run away and play with someone else, mm?’
When Tamara eventually reached her room she gave vent to her fury, removing the garments which she was sure had caused Zachary Fletcher’s preposterous insults and hurling them on to the floor. How dared he suggest … How dared he look at her like that … How dared he imply that …
Cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling angrily under their fine brows, she turned on the shower, subjecting her body to a vigorous scrubbing as though by doing so she could punish it for encouraging Zachary Fletcher to believe she was the sort of girl who behaved in the way he had implied. And even if she was a man-chaser, she would never, ever in a million years, chase after someone like him, she decided through gritted teeth as she dried herself. Never!
CHAPTER TWO
IT was shortly before ten forty-five when Tamara walked into the hotel foyer to join the small group of people waiting there for the guide for the rain forest walk.
She saw Zachary Fletcher straightaway, but ignored him, deliberately going to join Dot and George Partington, who were chatting to the foursome they had mentioned the previous day.
‘Are you looking forward to it?’ Dot asked her, and when Tamara said that she was she added curiously, ‘By the way, what happened to you last night? I looked for you at dinner time, but I couldn’t see you.’
‘I ate in my room. I had a headache—probably too much sun,’ Tamara lied, knowing full well that the reason she hadn’t dined in the restaurant was that she wanted to avoid any further contact with Zachary Fletcher. It would have been just her luck to run into him in the dining-room and for him to accuse her of deliberately arranging it that way. Not even the brief evening telephone call she received from Malcolm had soothed her, and she was still burning with a resentment which refused to fade.
‘You’re looking very attractive, anyway,’ Dot told her, admiring the olive cotton jeans Tamara was wearing with a white tee-shirt with toning stripes in olive and rust. Over her shoulder Tamara had slung a large canvas beach bag with a slightly thicker long-sleeved sweat-shirt, sunscreen, and some other bits and pieces in it, the canvas almost exactly matching the dull olive of her jeans. The outfit had been bought especially for her holiday—Malcolm didn’t care for women in jeans, and Tamara had had to buy a pair of jodhpurs especially for her visit to his parents, who kept a couple of hunters for Malcolm’s and his father’s use.
Malcolm had insisted on Tamara learning to ride—it was expected that she should, he had told her when she protested that she was not likely to get much opportunity to use her newly gained skill in London.
She had drawn the line at hunting, though. Much as she enjoyed the stirring sight of the huntsman with his hounds and the riders in their pink coats she had no wish to emulate them.
Dot introduced her to the cheerful quartet she and George had been talking to. Alex, the fashion designer, was slim and fair-haired, his wife Sue dressed in a pair of high-fashion baggy trousers cleverly linked to the top and the man’s shirt she was wearing belted with gold suede.
Their friends, Heather and Rick Chalfont, were Alex’s business partners, although more on the financial side than the fashion, Rick explained.
‘Don’t you find it lonely being here on your own?’ Sue asked her.
‘Not really. I came away for a rest …’ Dot had turned away to talk to Zachary Fletcher and Tamara was unbearably aware of his lean, sardonic face, the mocking expression in his eyes as they rested momentarily on her flushed skin.
‘Yes, the build-up to a wedding can be wearing,’ Heather agreed sympathetically. ‘When is the big day, by the way?’
‘We haven’t decided finally yet. Malcolm—my fiancé—has to go to New York soon, and he isn’t quite sure how long he’ll need to be there. Once he gets back we’ll fix a firm date.’
‘Hardly an eager bridegroom, then?’ Zachary Fletcher drawled, joining in the conversation. ‘Haven’t you warned him what happens to laggards in love?’
Despite his reference to the old Border ballad Tamara knew that he was implying that she was the one urging Malcolm into a marriage he wasn’t too keen on, and she longed to be able to tell him that he was quite wrong and that Malcolm simply wasn’t the type of man to rush anything.
‘Oh, we all have trouble getting our men to the altar these days,’ Sue laughed. ‘That’s what comes of sexual equality. There isn’t the same need to rush that there used to be—It’s much better too, don’t you think?’ she appealed to Tamara. ‘Just imagine marrying a man and not knowing the slightest thing about him sexually. It’s almost as archaic as an arranged marriage to a stranger.’
‘Yes,’ Tamara agreed blankly, hoping that her expression wouldn’t betray her, but how could she admit in front of Zachary Fletcher that her sexual experience of any man, let alone Malcolm, was practically nil?
Oh, there had been a few tentative caresses when she was in her teens, but shyness and Aunt Lilian’s stern lectures had withered any natural desire to experiment, and as the years had gone by she had grown more and more ashamed of having to admit the truth. Not even Malcolm knew that she was a virgin. The subject had never come up, and for the first time she began to wonder how Malcolm would react. There had been a time in her late teens when she had begun to think that the truth must be written all over her face, and it had made her awkward and shy when she was approached by boys, but it was something she had eventually overcome.
It had been obvious that Zachary Fletcher hadn’t guessed the truth, and she had to fight down her rising anger as she remembered the previous afternoon.
When Sue claimed Dot’s attention to her horror Tamara found her běte noire at her elbow, looking hard and intensely masculine in the same black jeans, this time with a cotton shirt, which again had long sleeves and was unbuttoned only at the throat, where she could just see the first crisp tangle of body hair shadowing his chest.
‘I hope you aren’t going to accuse me of joining the walk simply to force an acquaintance with you,’ she managed to say in an undertone.
‘Hardly.’ The creases in his face deepened as he smiled. ‘I’d have to be paranoic to do so, wouldn’t I, seeing that I put my name down first. Do you enjoy walking?’
He didn’t really sound as though he cared whether she did or not, but Tamara forced herself to answer politely.
‘Yes, I do. I was brought up in the country …’
‘Well, today’s jaunt won’t be any country stroll. These mountains are pretty steep and I believe the jungle is extremely dense …’
‘Are you trying to put us off?’ George joked, suddenly joining in the conversation.
‘Not at all. I probably gave the wrong impression. To tell the truth, had I thought the walk would be too arduous I wouldn’t be attempting it myself.’ Zachary Fletcher touched his left leg as he spoke, and Tamara remembered George saying that he had seen him limping.
‘I was involved in an … accident,’ he added tersely, obviously reading the question in George’s eyes. ‘I’m here to recuperate, and take enough gentle exercise to get myself fit to resume normal work.’
‘You’re in the Army. I believe?’ George prodded.
‘Yes.’
The word was completely devoid of expression, but Tamara had been looking at his face as he spoke, and she caught her breath as she saw it change visibly, closing and hardening, a shutter coming down over his eyes. What on earth had there been in that innocent question to provoke a reaction like that? Unless of course he had been cashiered or some such thing. She had heard of such happenings from Malcolm’s father, and knew they were a terrible disgrace … What did it matter why he had reacted the way he did? she asked herself. She couldn’t care less about the man.