Devil in Paradise

by Joanna Mansell

  Rafe headed back towards her with long, powerful strokes, dived down and hauled her back to the surface. Then he began to head towards the shore, his hands hooked firmly under her arms as he towed her along.

  As they neared the beach, the bodyguard strode towards the water's edge. 'This is private property,' he shouted at them. 'Stay away from here.'

  Rafe simply ignored him. Instead, he hauled Kate out of the water, and she made a great show of holding her leg and groaning with great authenticity.

  'My cousin's got cramp,' Rafe called out to the bodyguard. Then he dumped Kate on the sand, and briskly began to rub her leg.

  The bodyguard came closer. As he loomed over them, Kate felt a small shiver cross her skin. He certainly was big!

  'This is private property,' repeated the bodyguard. 'You'll have to leave.'

  Rafe gave a slightly impatient shrug. 'We can't go yet. My cousin's got to rest for a few minutes. If she goes back into the water straight away, she'll drown.'

  For the first time, the bodyguard looked rather uncertain. Then he walked away a few steps, took out a small walkie-talkie that was clipped to his belt, and spoke into it in a low voice.

  'What's he doing?' whispered Kate.

  'Probably asking for instructions,' replied Rafe, under his breath. 'It doesn't look as if the gorilla is very good at making decisions for himself.'

  For the first time, Kate allowed herself to look at the boy. He was standing to one side, and staring at them. Kate saw that he was rather small for his age, which made him look slightly frail. She swallowed hard. He looked lost and horribly lonely. She wanted to give him a big hug and tell him that everything was going to be all right. Only she couldn't do that, because she had no idea how this was all going to turn out.

  Rafe also glanced over at Harry, who was beginning to show just a little more interest in the two people who had unexpectedly turned up on his beach. 'We haven't got long,' he murmured to Kate, in a low undertone. 'Can you distract the guard for a few minutes?'

  Kate wrinkled her nose. 'I suppose so. It isn't going to be much fun, though.'

  'Just do your best. Remember, he can't get up to anything while I'm just a few yards away.'

  'I hope you're right!' Then she got to her feet and made a great show of testing the leg in which she had pretended to have cramp. She took a few limping steps, and then turned in the direction of the guard. 'Sorry to be such a nuisance,' she said, smiling at him brightly. 'This cramp just hit me out of the blue.' She hobbled towards him, well aware that the flimsy top of her bikini was clinging wetly to her breasts, and hiding very little. She could feel the bodyguard's eyes fixed on her, and suppressed a small shiver. You're doing this for Rafe, she reminded herself. And for Harry.

  Out of the corner of her eyes, she could see that Rafe had begun to move closer to Harry. The bodyguard started to turn his head towards them, and Kate hurriedly let out a small squeak. At the same time, she let her leg buckle; then she made a great show of clutching the bodyguard's arm to stop herself from falling.

  As her fingers closed round his thick, hairy forearm, she felt slightly sick. She took a deep breath, and somehow managed to flash another brilliant smile at him. 'Good job you were there,' she said. 'My leg just gave way again. Do you mind if I hang on to you for a few moments?'

  From the look on the bodyguard's face, it was clear that he didn't mind at all. Kate briefly closed her eyes, and hoped she had the stomach to keep this up for a while longer.

  She could heard the faint murmur of voices behind her, and guessed that Rafe was now talking to Harry. Unfortunately, the bodyguard suddenly became aware of it, too. He quickly shook himself free of Kate, and began to lumber towards Rafe.

  'Leave the boy alone,' he instructed. 'You're not to talk to him.'

  Rafe looked faintly surprised. 'I only asked his name.'

  'Just leave him be.'

  The first signs of annoyance began to show on Rafe's face. 'You certainly like to throw your weight around, don't you?'

  'Just do as I say!' instructed the bodyguard.

  'And if I don't want to do that?' Rafe challenged him.

  Kate looked at Rafe uncertainly. What on earth was he up to? She couldn't tell if he was still acting, or if this was for real. She certainly hoped that he was acting. It would be sheer madness to take on that bodyguard!

  The bodyguard's eyes were now gleaming, as if he relished the thought of being challenged. Kate recognised the look, and her heart sank. This was a man who enjoyed violence. Rafe had better back off pretty quickly if he didn't want to be pulverised!

  But Rafe showed no sign of wanting to do any such thing. Instead, he walked a little nearer to the bodyguard; then he stared at him very coolly. 'I don't think I like your attitude,' he told him.

  Kate groaned. This was suicide!

  The bodyguard took a swaggering step forward. 'You and your cousin are trespassing,' he growled at Rafe. 'I ought to throw the two of you right off this property.'

  'Want to try it?' invited Rafe softly.

  Kate closed her eyes. She couldn't bear to look as the bodyguard's great hands began to flex. He was obviously looking forward to taking Rafe apart! She quickly opened them again, though, when she heard an odd grunting sound. To her amazement, she found that the bodyguard was now lying on the ground, with one arm twisted hard behind his back. And Rafe was holding very firmly on to the other end of that arm, keeping the bodyguard locked in a very uncomfortable position.

  She remembered when Rafe had pulled that little trick on her. It must be one of his favourite party pieces! The bodyguard certainly looked very surprised. He shifted his huge weight around, and kept grunting under his breath, but it wasn't getting him anywhere. With just a little pressure, Rafe could keep him exactly where he was for as long as he liked.

  'Perhaps you'd like to apologise to me and my cousin?' Rafe suggested. 'You certainly haven't been very helpful or polite.'

  The bodyguard was becoming quite purple in the face, and his eyes glowed ferociously. It was probably a very long time since he had been humiliated like this.

  'You want to take your time?' Rafe went on. 'That's fine by me. I can stay here all day, if necessary.'

  Until now, the confrontation between the two men had occupied the whole of Kate's attention. Quite suddenly, though, she realised that she was missing a marvellous opportunity to talk to Harry without any interference from the bodyguard.

  She turned round to look for the boy, but couldn't see him. At first, she thought he must have run back to the villa. Perhaps he had been frightened by the sight of the two men fighting, she thought with a flash of guilt. She should have thought of the boy straight away, instead of being horribly fascinated by the struggle.

  Then she glanced towards the water, and her entire nervous system abruptly went cold.

  'Rafe!' she yelled. 'The boy—he's swimming out to sea!'

  The small blond head was already a surprising distance from the shore. Harry must have slipped into the water almost as soon as the two men had begun their confrontation.

  Rafe released his grip on the bodyguard, who immediately grabbed hold of Rafe's leg with his huge hands.

  'Let go of me, you damned fool!' Rafe roared furiously. 'Do you want the boy to drown?'

  The sense of what he was saying must have finally filtered through to the bodyguard, because he slowly released his grip. Rafe growled something fiercely under his breath. Then he raced down to the water's edge, plunged in, and began to swim powerfully after the small boy, who was still heading doggedly out to sea.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Kate could hardly bear to watch. 'Please, don't let the boy go under,' she prayed frantically beneath her breath. 'Let Rafe get there in time.'

  The distance between the dark and the fair head began to steadily close. She could see that Harry was slowing down now, while Rafe was still forging ahead at the same fast speed.

  She let out an audible sigh of relief as Rafe at last caught up
with the boy. The two of them seemed to tread water for quite a long time; then Rafe began to head back to the beach, with the boy in tow.

  'What the hell's going on here?' demanded an unfamiliar voice from just behind Kate.

  She spun round, and found herself looking at a tall, middle-aged man, with powerful features that were tensed into a dark frown. Then his brows drew even closer together. 'Is that my son out there?' he asked incredulously.

  Rafe and Harry had reached the shallower water now. Rafe scooped the clearly exhausted boy up into his arms, and carried him the rest of the way.

  'Is he all right?' asked the tall man roughly as Rafe came towards him.

  'He's fine,' replied Rafe. 'Just tired.'

  'What on earth happened?'

  'He swam too far out, that's all,' came Rafe's easy response. 'It's hard to judge distances when you're his age.'

  The tall man visibly relaxed. 'I'm Martin Foster,' he introduced himself. 'And this is my son, Harry.' Then he turned and glared at the bodyguard. 'I pay you to make sure that nothing like this ever happens,' he said curtly.

  The bodyguard started to mutter something, but Rafe cut in smoothly. 'It's so hard to get reliable staff nowadays, isn't it?' he said, in a sympathetic tone.

  The bodyguard let out a strangled splutter, and Kate couldn't really blame him. After all, he couldn't have done much to stop Harry's sudden bolt for freedom. Rafe had had him in a very painful armlock at the time!

  'I expect you're wondering what the two of us are doing here,' Rafe went on in the same polite tone. 'I realise that this is private property, but I'm afraid we didn't have much choice except to come ashore. My cousin and I were out for a swim, and she suddenly got hit by cramp. We had to head for the nearest beach, and it happened to be yours.' He paused for a moment. 'We did have a little trouble with your bodyguard here,' he said, in a brilliant understatement, 'but we were just getting things settled when my cousin noticed that your boy had swum right out of his depth.'

  Kate had to admire Rafe's choice of words. It wasn't exactly the truth, and yet it wasn't a complete lie.

  The bodyguard was still trying to cut in, obviously bursting to tell his side of the story, but Martin Foster silenced him with one peremptory wave of his hand.

  'I'm extremely grateful to you,' he said, turning to address Rafe again. 'And I'm sorry that a member of my staff should have been so obstructive and incompetent. You probably saved my son's life. That puts me completely in your debt. If there's some way I can show my gratitude—'

  Kate very nearly blurted out that he could show his gratitude by returning Harry to his mother, but just managed to stop herself in time. Instead, she gave a slightly choked cough, and Martin Foster turned to look at her closely for the first time.

  From the slight darkening of his eyes, she could tell that he liked what he saw. It certainly wasn't mutual, though. There was something about the coldness of his eyes, the inflexible line of his mouth, that faintly repelled her.

  'Have you recovered from your attack of cramp?' he asked her courteously.

  'Yes, I'm fine now,' Kate assured him.

  'Obviously, you shouldn't go back into the water for a while. You must allow my chauffeur to take you home.'

  Kate was about to protest that that wasn't necessary, when she caught Rafe's eye and saw him give an almost imperceptible nod.

  'Thank you. That's very kind of you,' she said.

  'Are you staying locally?'

  'We're staying near Nice for the next couple of days,' Rafe answered casually. 'But if your chauffeur could just take us back to our car—it's parked a short distance along the coast.'

  'Of course,' Martin Foster agreed at once. 'And since you're going to be in the area for the next day or two, perhaps you could have dinner with me tomorrow evening? It's the least I can do, to thank you for saving my son.' His gaze slid over to Kate. 'I do hope you will accept,' he added softly.

  Kate was dying to refuse. Despite his politeness and his good looks, she didn't like Martin Foster one little bit. Quite apart from the way in which he had begun to look at her, which gave her the creeps, she couldn't believe his attitude towards Harry. Apart from his initial outburst of anger towards the bodyguard and a very brief show of concern, he had shown incredibly little emotion. Harry could have drowned, and yet he just didn't seem to be reacting at all. He hadn't even spoken to the boy directly.

  'We'd be delighted to come to dinner,' Rafe confirmed. 'Would seven o'clock be a good time?'

  'That would be fine,' replied Martin Foster. Then he turned and signalled to the bodyguard. 'Take my son up to the villa,' he ordered. 'He's to rest for a while, and then have a light meal.'

  He still didn't talk to the boy directly, though, or even look at him and Harry returned the compliment by ignoring his father. Kate didn't know if Martin Foster had an incredible lack of feeling, or if he just suffered from a complete inability to communicate with his son. Whichever it was, it must make Harry's life pretty bleak. No wonder he had wanted to stay with his mother after the divorce!

  She and Rafe walked up to the villa with Martin Foster. Close to, it was as impressive as Kate had expected it to be, and she guessed that he was a man who set great store by material possessions.

  A couple of minutes after he had given a brief signal, a huge, shiny limousine purred its way over to them. Martin Foster opened the door for them himself, and as Kate slid inside his eyes briefly lingered on the flimsy bikini that only just covered her.

  'I look forward to seeing you again tomorrow,' he said. His gaze moved over both of them, but his words were rather obviously intended for Kate.

  She somehow forced herself to smile back at him. 'I'm looking forward to it, as well,' she managed to get out, in a voice that she had to strain hard to keep pleasant.

  Neither she nor Rafe said a word during the short drive back to their car. She scrambled out of the limousine fairly hurriedly; then she gave a huge sigh of relief as it drove off.

  'This has been one of the weirdest—and scariest!— days of my life,' she said a little shakily. 'I kept wondering if we were going to get out of there in one piece, or if Martin Foster was going to guess what we were up to, and turn nasty.' She gave a grimace. 'And my guess is that he could be very nasty indeed, if he put his mind to it.'

  'He certainly can,' replied Rafe grimly. 'Do you know what he's told Harry?'

  Kate shook her head.

  'That his mother's dead,' Rafe said flatly, his tone dark with disgust.

  'What?' gasped Kate in disbelief. 'But—how do you know?'

  'After I swam out to Harry, we had quite a long talk before I finally brought him back to the beach.'

  'I thought you seemed to be an awfully long time rescuing him.'

  'I wanted to find out what had made Harry swim off like that. It turned out that it was just a spur-of-the-moment thing. Harry saw that everyone was looking the other way, and he decided to make a bolt for it.'

  'Where was he going to make for?'

  'He didn't even think about that,' Rafe said tersely. 'He just wanted to get away from the villa. Since I didn't have much time, I simply asked him straight out if he had been trying to get home to his mummy. His face sort of crumpled, and he said he didn't have a mummy any more. She was dead, and had gone to heaven. I asked him how he knew that, and he said his daddy had told him.' Rafe's face twisted. 'How the hell could any man do that to a six-year-old boy?' he added bitterly.

  'I don't know,' Kate said, very unsteadily. 'It isn't hard to figure out why he did it, though. He must have thought that if Harry believed that his mother was dead, he'd be quite happy to stay with his father.'

  'But Harry certainly isn't happy,' Rafe said abruptly. 'He's as miserable as hell.'

  Kate swallowed hard. It still felt as if there was a giant lump in her throat, though.

  'Did you—did you tell Harry that his mother is alive?' she asked. 'That she loves him, and she's trying desperately hard to get him back?'

/>   Rafe's eyes became shadowed. 'How could I? If I'd done that, Harry would have confronted his father with the truth, and then Martin Foster would know why we're really here.' He ran his fingers restlessly through his hair. 'It's just about the hardest thing I've ever done,' he admitted. 'Keeping the truth from that boy for a while longer. Heaven knows, I wanted to tell him, but I just didn't dare risk it.'

  'You can tell him as soon as you've got him out of there,' Kate said quietly.

  Rafe looked at her sharply. 'Then you're agreed that we've got to try and snatch him back?'

  She shrugged helplessly. 'What else can we do? I know it's not legal. I don't even know if it's moral. When a child's that unhappy, though, you can't simply walk away and pretend it's nothing to do with you.'

  'It won't be easy,' Rafe warned.

  'I know that.' She somehow managed a faint smile. 'You're meant to be an expert in these things, though, aren't you?'

  Rafe raised one eyebrow. 'I've never done anything quite like this before.'

  'You'll pull it off,' she said with confidence. Then her expression changed. 'Do we really have to have dinner with Martin Foster tomorrow? I don't know that I could swallow a single mouthful, having to sit near him and knowing what he's done.'

  'It'll be useful if we know the layout of the interior of the villa,' Rafe replied. 'But you don't have to come, if you don't want to. I can easily go on my own.'

  Kate slowly shook her head. 'No, that wouldn't be any good,' she said, with some reluctance. 'You need me to distract Martin Foster's attention. That'll give you a much better chance to have a look around.'

  Rafe didn't bother to deny it. 'You certainly made an impression on him. I think the main reason he invited us was that he wanted to see you again.'

  'Just don't leave us on our own together,' begged Kate, with a small shiver. 'I really don't like that man.'

  'I won't leave you,' promised Rafe. He bent his head and gave her a quick, hard kiss. 'Not for a single second.'