'What makes you such a clever girl?' he drawled.
Her skin burned beneath his look, and she felt a twinge of panic at her isolation with him, here in Nun's Cove with its towering rocks like the pillars of a temple and its wild, bird-haunted sweep of cliffs, its seas where the shark lurked.
'A girl doesn't have to be clever to read your mind, Mr Ventura,' she said, frosting her words. 'My godmother told you to stay away from me, so you're out to do the reverse.'
'Out to teach you a little peril, eh? There must
be quite a bit of sweet terror to be wrung from the perils of chastity, and I guess a man like me is fascinated by the terrors a nice girl has to hide, not to mention the temptations.'
Do you imagine I'm tempted by you-?'
'Aren't you?' He placed a hand at the nape of her neck and tilted back her head until her eyes were filled with his taunting face ... when she had seen him in the sea and had run across the beach, fear knocking at her heart, she had flung off her sunglasses and they lay somewhere on the sand. She stared up at him and saw the beating pulse under the brown skin of his throat. There was a dark power in his face and body ... he was pagan, sensuous, fearless.
'Don't look at me—so!'
'I like to look at what pleases me. Has no other man ever looked at you and glimpsed the real Dina Caslyn? The young rebel curled inside the shell of cool reserve, longing to find out if love has any real, passionate meaning to it.'
'I don't imagine that you and I would put the same interpretation upon that word,' she said scornfully.
'It isn't a word, Dina, it's a state of body and mind. A longing far beyond a reaching out into the void, where there might be nothing to grasp—not even a dream.'
'What would a man like you want with dreams?' She made herself think of what Bella had told her; forced herself to forget that deadly sensation at the pit of her stomach when she had seen that shark fin cutting towards him in the water. 'You're talking about the sweet swindles of passion, and I wouldn't join that game at the point of a gun.
You'd have to pull the trigger, signore.'
'I don't carry a gun, signorina.'
'I rather thought you might—as your grandfather did, when he came from Italy and joined a certain notorious gang. Don't bother to deny it, Mr Ventura. My godmother felt it her duty to put me wise about you, especially when it reached her ears that you had bought Adam's Challenge and meant to make it habitable.'
This was Dina's coup de grace. She had been saving it for a moment such as this one, when it became too unbearable to have him touching her and saying things that got right under her skin.
'I see.' His eyes narrowed into slits of pure steel. 'It had to come out, didn't it, especially when a woman like Bella Rhinehart gets out her stiletto. Don Cicero, my grandfather, was a villain, a tzar of the tearing twenties. I don't deny it. But I only knew him as a small child, I rode high on his shoulders and was loved by him. He died, he paid for whatever sins he committed, but my own father was not his sort. We went hungry when he couldn't find work. He brought us up with honour, whether you believe it or not. I don't much care, Dina, what you believe.'
He let go of her then, turned away and watched as the sun caught the wings of a seabird and coated them with silver. Dina bit her lip and couldn't take her eyes from him. He stood tall and immobile, and she felt that he was on the verge of telling her to go to hell, and to take Bella with her.
But instead he gave a cynical laugh. 'Some people never let you forget, do they? My father is a sweet, gentle guy who asks nothing more than to potter about in his Italian garden, growing acan-
thus, with its silver leaves and crimson petals. And santolina, that he trains around the bases of stone pots. Also in his garderi there is lavender, lupins and artemisias. And apricot trees. Cristo santo, the scent of it all in the hot southern sun! Why don't I go there? Why do I stay and work here, to be called a gangster by an embittered woman for whom luxurious charity has to take the place of a more sumptuous feast? I think I'll go and dress. I left my clothes in that cave beyond those rocks. Addio.' 'Raf-'
He paused and looked at her with a sardonic lifting of his left eyebrow. 'You're a protegee for your godmother to be proud of. I congratulate her on a job well done. In a few more years the coatings of ice will be so thick on your flesh and feelings that you'll glitter like a diamond—a lovely frosty diamond with no fire at the heart of you. Keep your cove to yourself, little nun. I wouldn't intrude on you again if you invited me.'
Dina's hand clenched at her left side and she had never felt such a wrenching pain. He would go and it would all be over—but if he stayed it would be a bittersweet wine from a cup that had to be smashed in the end.
'Goodbye-'
The word was on her lips, but when he began to move away, lean and lithe and torn by her instead of that sea brute, she heard something else fly from her throat.
'I have sandwiches and coffee—we could share them. Y-you must feel like a cup of coffee?' 'I feel like I'm kicked,' he drawled. 'I didn't mean-'
'Oh, but you did, Dina. You're so scared to be
yourself that you'll do anything rather than let anyone get to know you. You're like one of those Medici dolls programmed to stab with a very fine needle, poison on its tip. No, I won't share your food, mille grazie.'
'Beefsteak sandwiches, and real coffee, not the instant sort out of a tin.'
'Put away your apple, Eve. My name is Ventura and my grandfather died on the island of Alcatraz. I'm untouchable, Dina Diamond.'
'Oh, Raf-' Suddenly she was running to him
and when his touch came she gasped as if his fingers were flames. His embrace was fierce, as if he had a need to hurt her because she owed loyalty to everyone but him. For those long moments she felt as if she became part of his vital body, as if they shared the same bloodstream and the same rush of emotions.
When she glanced up at him the audacity was back in his Italianate eyes, half shaded by those black lashes. 'So that's how it happened in Eden, eh? Adam tried to resist.'
'This is all so wrong, so bound for trouble. I—I hated to hurt you.'
'You'll learn in time, Dina. That woman means to make a star pupil of you.'
'Oh, don't let's think about it—let this hour be ours.' As if he opened a vein and let her share his reckless quality, she lifted a hand and touched his cheek. 'You have the kind of face that Dante wrote about—Italian faces are stdl very Renaissance, aren't they?'
'So are our emotions.'
'I can imagine you riding out with lean hounds and fierce-eyed hawks, across the moors.'
'Not across Chicago, with a couple of henchmen and a tommy-gun?' 'That's being unkind.'
'Oh come, Dina, don't tell me you didn't wonder if I was another Don Cicero. Maybe you still wonder, which makes it extra brave of vou to fling yourself into my arms. What if I invite you to take a Florida honeymoon?'
'A—what?' She looked at him with wide, uncertain eyes.
'A businessman's amorous trip with his favourite stenographer.'
'Oh—is it on your mind ?'
'You put many thoughts in my mind—some of them, whew!' He blew on his fingertips and the edge of his mouth quirked his moustache. 'Do you still want to give me some coffee?'
A nerve flickered in her lip. 'It can only be coffee and sandwiches—you do realise that?'
'No dessert, eh?'
She shook her head. 'I—I hated saying that about your grandfather, but being so scared made me say it. Wanting to talk in this way, and knowing all the time that I shouldn't.'
'The tempting taboo subject of physical attraction,' he said, almost curtly. 'Don't be coy, Dina, about the perils and pleasures that such an attraction can allow or deny.'
'They can't be allowed, Raf. They have to he-denied.'
'All right, don't look so desperate about it. Infatuation has a built-in safety release called disillusion.'
'Am I infatuated with you?'
'Sure. I've crossed over from t
he other side of the
fence and I've made you feel things, like when I was out there and came close to having my legs ripped off. Like when you had to dredge up mud from my past and throw it in my face. I make you come alive !'
Too much—oh, I'm ravenous! Let's eat!' She pulled free as far as she could, and then gasped as he jerked her back to him, to his body hard with muscle kept rigorously in trim. He drew his lips across her throat, pushing aside the thin shirt to lay bare the mole like a dot of velvet against the smooth skin over her collarbone. His lips were against her bare skin, like the jaguar, she thought crazily, nuzzling her with primitive intention. She edged her face away from his warmth and gazed blindly over his shoulder. The guilty thrill of his mouth touching her was still rippling down her spine, followed by the painful stabbing knowledge that she mustn't give in to this.
'Raf—please-'
'Are you asking for more, or less?'
'Less,' she said faintly.
'So the moon and the dawn can brush against each other but never come together, eh?'
Her silence was her answer, and for a moment everything was dangerously still and quiet between them, the sound of the birds and the sea on the edge of that stillness like a distant thunder.
'Do you trust the grandson of Don Cicero to behave like a gentleman?' he drawled. 'There wouldn't be a soul to witness anything I might do with you, in the Nun's Cove.'
It was true, he had the strength and the ruth-lessness, and she could be carried away by what he had called the perils of physical attraction. She felt
the tremor deep within her when his fingers slid across her throat, caressing the softness of her skin.
'Don't spoil something I'd like to remember,' she pleaded. 'Don't turn it into something I'd want to forget.'
'Only half an apple for you, Dina?' His tone of voice was quizzical, but his eyes were intent upon her face.
'Eden turned into a desert, Raf, and I wouldn't want that to happen to this place.'
'Our cove,' he drawled, 'and the sea is playing our music'
Suddenly his arm was strong and warm about her shoulders and he turned her to face the silvery waves breaking on the rocks, splattering spume across the sands to the high reddish cliffs with the sun running down their sides.
His fingers tightened against her and she felt a throb, a flame deep within her. A sweet, forking fire, the awareness of sand under her feet, the sun on her skin, the sea and sky blending together in a pure beauty. She was aware of things, alive to emotions, to joy and tragedy. Within herself she was alike to the sea, fathomless, impenetrable, elemental.
She felt his hand resting on her shoulder like the folded wing of a big bird. 'I'd like you to have this.' His hand lifted and took from his neck the chain and gold medallion. 'I've worn it a long time and it's like something which has been part of me. Have this at least, eh?'
'Oh, but I don't want to break your luck-'
'I make my own luck, Dina. Will you accept the medal? It's stamped with the image of Saint Jame^. .patron of the sea, and I'll have pleasure from
knowing you are wearing something of mine.'
'If you're sure.' She stood very still and let him pass the fine chain over her head and settle the medal in the V of her shirt. It gleamed against her pale skin and was warm from his body, and there was a kind of significance to the gift, as if he meant her to think of him each time she felt the movement of the medal against her own body.
'Thank you, Raf, but I have nothing to give you in return.'
'You have coffee and sandwiches, haven't you, lady?'
She smiled and they walked across the sands to where her lunch basket lay in the shade of the bush palm. He bent and picked up her sunglasses, and his fingers played with them as he lounged back on the sands with a lazy, tigerish grace of body, a dappling of sunlight across the taut power of his shoulders, catching glints from the sea bloom on his skin. Dina knelt and poured coffee from the flask, the compact food basket being supplied with two of everything so he had a cup, a plate and a fork. Apart from sandwiches there was a salad of tomatoes, crisp leaves of lettuce and sliced red pepper. She shared out the food, giving him the larger portion, and was not unaware of the quirk to his lip when she handed him his plate.
'Grazie. The Olympian rewarded for his efforts, eh?'
'Do you often take such fearful gambles?' she asked, sipping her coffee. 'In lots of ways you're a baffling man, aren't you?'
'Most gamblers are—mmm, excellent beefsteak. I believe the redoubtable Bella would have kittens if she could see me right now, sharing her victuals
with her goddaughter, who has never looked more attractive, may I say, with tousled hair and shirt, and long bare legs.'
As his glance ran the length of Dina's honey-coloured legs, she knew that it wasn't going to be easy to pull free of his magnetic attraction. Beware, cried her instincts. Beware, taunted his eyes, and she saw that the tiger wasn't tamed but only putting on a show of being a big cat made lazy by the warm sun.
'I don't think I've ever felt more gudty in my life,' Dina admitted quietly. 'If she ever found out about this picnic—she just wouldn't believe that you have a code of chivalry.'
'Do you believe it, Dina?' His eyes were faintly mocking. 'Don't attempt to disarm me by planting the hero's laurel wreath on my head. I'm just a man, neither saint nor swindler. I can hate like hell if I have to, but on the reverse of the coin— face it, Dina, I'd like nothing better than a dessert of slim silvery-blonde, with eyes the spicy amber of a southern wine. I'd like that so much that I'd advise you not to rely on my so-called chivalry.'
All the same I'm going to,' she said, with a touch of nervous intensity. 'I'm not a gauche fool, I know you're a man who has led his own life and faced his devils. But there's something—some fine thread of understanding between us that I'd like to weave into my memories.'
'Santo dio!' he exclaimed. 'You talk like a woman whose life is behind you instead of just beginning.'
'It begins a new phase when I marry Bay-'
'You don't love him!'
'I do,' she protested.
'Like a brother,' Raf said contemptuously
almost a spiritual incest !' 'Don't say such a thing!"
'Don't you care for the truth? What frail flame of excitement flares between you, tell me that? Cheer girl when he aims a chukka, or scores love-fifteen on the tennis court.'
'I'm not going to argue with you, Raf.'
'No, it's always difficult to argue against the truth, and a woman's idea of logic is as scrambled as a bowl of eggs.'
'Thanks. You obviously have a high opinion of the female mind.'
'I have a higher opinion of a female's sense of sacrifice. Is I'agneau your pet name at Satanita?'
'Oh—eat your pepper, if you need any!'
'Little fool,' he growled, 'why won't you admit that you're being thrown like a choice bone to that pup, in order to allow Bella Rhinehart to get her teeth into the political pie. She'd love nothing better. A passport into the courts of the senate via her ward's marriage to a Senator's son. What, a Brutus she'll make!'
'Oh, do stop it! You're spoiling my lunch.'
'Better to have your lunch spoiled than your life.'
'What nonsense!' She pressed a napkin against her lips in order to hide their trembling; too much of what he said hit too close to a nerve to be altogether bearable. He looked cruel, sitting there with the points of sun and shadow in the dark angles of his face. He didn't know the meaning of compromise, but she had to know it and accept it.
'Marriage to Bay Bigelow would be an impossibility if I compromised you, wouldn't it?'
She stared at Raf. 'You couldn't do that---'
'Want to bet on it?'
'Y-you're just being mean when I hoped you'd be nice—oh, that's a far from possible hope where you're concerned. You aren't a nice man, are you?'
'I never pretended to be, and you shouldn't let the sun get in your eyes so you see a nimbus where there isn't one
. Here,' he handed over her sunglasses with a sardonic smile. 'You'll maybe see the real me through a glass darkly.'
'Why,' her fingers clenched the rim of the glasses 'do you have to be so cynical?'
'Would you prefer me to be sinful? It would be a pleasure, with or without your co-operation.'
'What are you trying to do, Raf? Make me dislike you?' Dina looked at him steadily. 'Is it a defence you put up against people? Are you afraid to let anyone into your stronghold in case they find there a man who can be hurt like everyone else.'
'Honey, I learned a long time ago that the best safeguard is to attack first, and it's a rule I live by in business and pleasure. That's what makes the shark so formidable; he doesn't stop to wonder if it's going to be painful when he snaps his jaws and takes off a leg.'
'Please, don't remind me of that!' Dina flinched from the mental picture he evoked. 'So that's your philosophy—don't be afraid to be ruthless, and don't ask for pity if and when the tables are turned and you lose the game?'
'There you have it, as neat as a nut in its shell.' His lips moved in a brief, lopsided smile. 'Look at it from my angle. I find a house I like, so I go ahead and buy it, and I send in the builders to make repairs, and the decorators will follow to make things spruce. And what happens? Your godmother gets to hear that the house is sold and about to be occu-
pied, and that would he dandy, so long as the purchaser wasn't someone like me. A self-made Italian-American, who must be crooked because way back in his family there was an immigrant who arrived in the States at the time of the depression and was unable to find a steady job, so he joined a bootlegging gang. Unfortunately he was shrewd and a natural leader and one day he found himself in charge of things; the money was good and he'd never had any before—well, it's in the past and it should be forgotten, and maybe forgiven as he paid the ultimate price for his sins. But no! The word is out that Raffaello Ventura is the new owner of the Penrose mansion, and the rulers of the roost are going to try and put me to flight.
'Try is the operative word, and I don't doubt that Bella Rhinehart will use every trick in the book to try and prove that I'm an unsavoury character, playing St Georgia for all she's worth, and maybe getting hoist on her own poniard if she isn't careful. I can fight below the belt if I have to, and it wouldn't worry me to tilt that arrogant woman right on her nose, in a patch of front-yard dirt she has managed to sweep under the rose trees, until it's become part of their perfume.'
The Sun Tower Page 10