Fantasy Unlimited

by Claire Harrison

  'Sam.'

  'No.' She shrugged away the hand he had put on her shoulder.

  'Sam, I'm sorry.'

  'I'll bet you are!'

  'I didn't intend for things to go that far.'

  'Get out!'

  He turned her slowly around, and she stood there with her eyes closed, her face pink and flushed beneath the tumble of her dark hair, her mouth swollen and tremulous. 'It was a mistake,' he said. 'Just a mistake. Sam, look at me.'

  'No!'

  'I'm decent now—you don't have to be afraid to look.'

  'Go away!'

  His hands tightened on her shoulders and she could feel his frustration in them, but she wasn't going to give in this time or be sweet-talked into something she didn't want to do. Besides, another thought had come to her, one that made her stiffen even further and kept her eyes clamped shut. No, she said to herself, no, it can't be true.

  He sighed. 'Would it make you feel any better if I told you that I don't understand how it happened either?'

  But Samantha was barely listening to him. Instead her brain was reeling with the thought of it. Impossible. Impossible! Margaret had said she would cancel the Fantasy Unlimited contract. Cassie had promised that she would see it was done. But suppose she hadn't? Suppose Josh were the hired man? No, it simply couldn't be true.

  'Will you let me apologise?'

  Suppose Margaret had arranged for Samantha to share a room with Josh? But he hadn't liked the arrangement any more than she had. But he hadn't been quite as upset by it, had he? Besides, her grandmother knew her very well. Just suppose she'd given Josh instructions not to be too forward, too romantic all at once. That would have aroused Samantha's suspicions, so Josh had basically ignored her, taken up with another woman and had just bided his time until... until what? A storm came along? Come on, Samantha, don't be ridiculous. Margaret may he a bit crazy, but she isn't capable of creating a storm over the Mediterranean.

  'Samantha, I'm going to go now.' Josh's fingers tightened convulsively on her shoulders. 'Damn it, are you listening?'

  Her eyes opened and she stared straight at him. There was no amusement at all in his dark eyes. There was anger present, but also something else that she couldn't decipher. A remnant of passion, perhaps? A macho satisfaction that he hadn't wanted to admit to? Samantha had no way of reading Josh's mood. His face was devoid of expression, and the tone of his voice was cool.

  'Yes,' she said. 'You're going.'

  His hands dropped from her shoulders. 'You'll be able to sleep now?'

  'Yes, I'm... I'm sorry about calling you before. I shouldn't have.'

  'It was a bad storm.'

  They were both so polite that a stranger would never have guessed that ten minutes before they'd been entangled in an erotic, intimate embrace.

  'Yes, it was.'

  'Goodnight, then.'

  'Goodnight,' said Samantha, her voice equally non-committal, distant and cool as she watched Josh walk out of the bedroom door.

  It wasn't until the door was firmly closed behind him, and she was absolutely positive that he wouldn't come back, that Samantha finally allowed her rigidity to give way to despair and exhaustion. With a moan of misery, she slumped down on the edge of the bed and put her head into her hands, covering her face, her eyes, trying hard to obliterate the images in her mind. But certain pictures would not go away; a vision of her lying across Josh's body, of her enfolded in his arms, of their legs twisted together. And she shuddered slightly as his touch came back to her, the warmth of his mouth, the feel of his hard body beneath her hands.

  Samantha reached up, switched off the light and crawled back into bed, pulling up the sheets that had fallen to one side. She'd try to sleep now, she thought as she closed her eyes and let her head fall on the pillow. She'd sleep, and when she woke up tomorrow, the whole night would feel as if it were a dream, a wisp, an illusion. Like all her dreams, it would fade in the bright light of day, its power waning, its colours shading off into sepia tones as it disappeared into the air. And then, in the way of dreams, it would remain as a shadow, just out of sight, elusive as a will-o'-the-wisp, its events forgotten for all time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next morning, before the ship docked at the island of Rhodes, ninety-nine per cent of all the conversations on board the Princess Marguerita was about the storm the night before.

  But there was one conversation that was taking place on the deck of the ship that had nothing to do with the storm. Marybeth and David were sitting in deck chairs, morosely watching the reflection of the sun glitter on the now tranquil Mediterranean.

  'I can't seem to get past first base with Samantha,' David was confessing.

  Marybeth sat up in her chair. If there was one thing she liked almost as much as flirting, it was giving advice to the lovelorn. 'Are you going about it the right way?' she asked him.

  'I thought I was. I thought she liked me.'

  'Why, David, she does. You're probably just coming on too strong for her!'

  'And what about that guy she shares a room with?'

  'Oh, him,' said Marybeth. 'You don't have to worry about him.'

  'You're sure?'

  'Absolutely. She can't stand the sight of him, that's what she told me. No, all you have to do, David, is sweep her off her feet. Sincerity is the thing, honest-to-goodness romantic sincerity.'

  'Like flowers?'

  'Well,' mused Marybeth, 'flowers sure don't hurt. Right, here's what I think you should do.'

  Within seconds, they were far too deep into a whispering, conspiratorial discussion to notice when a tall, dark figure rose up from a deck chair that had been placed behind them. As their heads bent closer together, they missed the appraising glance that he gave them. And finally, when they were finished talking and had decided it was time to go, they left without the slightest inkling that anyone had overheard their conversation, or that their words had triggered an unexpected line of thought, or that what they had said would alter the course of events to the point that nothing would be as it seemed. Left would be right, up would be down, black would be white and love, unmeasurable and elusive, would play the masquerade, a harlequin, a jester, its features and motives hidden until that moment when it would reveal itself as the holder of hearts, hearts dangling from glowing red and blue ribbons, tangled together, knotted and bow-tied, caught for ever in that sweet and richly-coloured web.

  Samantha had seen every tourist attraction that Rhodes had to offer in the space of one action-packed morning. Her group, led by a knowledgeable tour guide, went into the walled Old Town and saw Greek ruins, Roman statues, medieval monuments and Turkish mosques, the evidence of hundreds of years of domination by many different masters. They absorbed the history of the island, a history primarily made up, as far as Samantha could tell, by one battle after another in which the ancient Rhodians were forced to take sides, not always the right one. She tried so hard to imagine the island as it must have once been with invaders strutting across the landscape, but it was hard to envisage a para-military state when confronted with modern Rhodes, a tourist town far larger than Mykonos with bustling, tree-lined streets lined with shops and restaurants.

  'And, of course, what made Rhodes so famous in antiquity was the Colossus, a thirty-two-metre-high sculpture of a man who stood astride the harbour so that ships could sail between his legs. He was considered one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.' The tour guide paused, glanced at the circle of people in front of her to make sure they had all got the import of her statement, and then she went on, 'But in 225 BC there was an earthquake that caused it to crumble.'

  A woman standing near Samantha looked alarmed. 'Does Greece have a lot of earthquakes?' she asked.

  As the tour guide went on to reassure her flock that no, there were very few earthquakes in Greece, Samantha decided that she'd had enough. She slipped away from the group, hailed a taxi whose driver spoke pidgin English and went back to the area around Mandraki Harbour where the larg
e hotels were situated and where the Princess Marguerita was docked. It was another beautiful day. The storm had cleared away whatever clouds had hung over the horizon and the sky was incredibly blue. Even though it was still mid-morning, sun-worshippers were already lying prone on the beach, and amorous couples strolled hand in hand along the water's edge.

  Samantha determinedly looked away from them and hurried back to the boat. She had no intention of thinking about anything that had to do with love or lovemaking. She had managed to keep her mind off the subject ever since leaving the ship that morning, and the measure of her success was that she hadn't thought about Josh for at least an hour. Of course, it hadn't been easy to ignore him when she had woken up. For the first time since the cruise began, they had actually been in the stateroom together before breakfast. Prior to that Josh had always been gone before she had got up.

  Politeness had been the order of the morning. Considering the size of the stateroom and the fact that they had to share one bathroom, the way they had managed to avoid one another had been nothing short of miraculous. They had tiptoed around, not made eye contact and had exchanged short, courteous sentences.

  Samantha winced as she remembered it all. There couldn't have been two people more embarrassed or more uncomfortable with one another than her and Joshua Sinclair. Of course, she was glad that Josh hadn't wanted to bring up the subject of their lovemaking any more than she had. His actions just went to prove what she had thought all along—that the episode had been purely accidental and that he'd regretted it just as much as she had. And, if she had had even the slightest shred of suspicion left that Josh was part of Margaret's Fantasy Unlimited scheme, it was swept away by his behaviour that morning. A hired escort, Samantha thought, would have acted differently. He would have had flowers delivered to her that morning while she was still in bed. No, not a large bunch of ostentatious chrysanthemums or marigolds, but one flower—a single, subtle rose. Samantha could see it: the long-stemmed red rose, lying on a tray, accompanied by a small envelope. She would have opened the envelope and taken out the small white card with its message in a decisive script. He would, of course, be begging for her forgiveness. 'Samantha darling...' No, perhaps the rose would come without any message at all, its mere presence letting her know...

  As she hurried up the gangplank of the Princess Marguerita, Samantha wondered if she weren't going just a little bit crazy. Imagine falling for such a misty, romantic cliché!

  She decided to take herself off for a sunbathing session, with a good book to take her mind off its wandering. But it was not to be.

  'Excuse me,' a soft voice said as she reached the sun-deck. 'Could I speak to you for a moment?'

  She turned to face a woman who was taller than she was, elegant in a silky blue lounging outfit, whose nails were manicured to a high scarlet sheen, whose eyes were an emerald green and whose coiled hair held all the colours of firelight. She was the kind of woman who made other women, Samantha included, feel awkward, plain and undesirable.

  'We haven't been introduced,' the soft voice went on, 'but I know who you are, so I hope you don't mind this intrusion.'

  Samantha knew who she was, too. She'd seen her often enough, leaning towards Josh, talking to him, smiling at him, dancing with him. Samantha had also developed an irrational and intense dislike of her. There was no reason on earth, she had told herself with a lawyerlike logic, that she should care one way or the other about a woman she didn't know. But for some reason the antagonism had remained and, despite all her efforts to root it out of her system, it was intact, healthy and thriving with a real vengeance.

  Now it made her voice cool and polite. 'No,' she said, 'not at all.'

  The other woman waved her scarlet-tipped hand at a couple of sun-loungers in a quiet corner. 'We could sit over here.'

  'Certainly.'

  They sat down, and the other woman cleared her throat. 'My name is Helen, by the way. Helen Moore.'

  'Samantha Lorimer.'

  'Yes, Josh told me. You're sharing a room with him, by mistake, he said. A computer error.'

  Did she doubt it? Samantha wondered. There was something in her voice that suggested that Helen Moore wasn't quite sure that Josh had been telling her the truth. 'Yes,' she said, and wondered whether it was relief or not that she saw flashing in those green eyes.

  'It's really quite ridiculous, isn't it?'

  'Yes,' said Samantha.

  'You didn't know one another before the cruise, did you?'

  Interesting and even more interesting. Samantha was definitely beginning to wonder why Helen Moore was so intent on nailing down the facts.

  'No,' she said, 'we didn't.'

  Helen's laugh was silvery, graceful and quite careless. 'You know, Josh and I have got quite close.'

  Close. What exactly did she mean by—close? Did it have a definition that went beyond what one would find in a dictionary?

  'How nice—for you.'

  'And I hadn't really expected to meet anyone like him on this cruise. In fact, I wasn't going to come, but my family insisted.' Helen gave Samantha a brave smile, 'I was widowed, you see, last year.'

  'Oh, I'm sorry to hear that.'

  'Of course, my husband was much older than I was. It was a heart attack—not unexpected, he'd been having troubles.' Samantha could see it all; the doting older husband, the young glamorous redhead who was now the rich and not-so-grieving widow. 'But life does go on, doesn't it?'

  'Oh, yes,' Samantha agreed. 'It does.'

  'And one can't mourn for ever.'

  'No, I can see that.' But what she couldn't quite see was where this peculiar conversation was going or what Helen Moore wanted out of her.

  'So, having Josh show up in my life, at this point, is very important to me. You can understand that, can't you?'

  Samantha was mystified. 'Yes.'

  'And it's important to Josh as well. He's just coming out of a very intense love affair.'

  Samantha blinked. 'He is?'

  'Oh, yes. It's been a very difficult time for him. He's very vulnerable right now.'

  Samantha blinked again.

  'He hasn't mentioned that to you?'

  Samantha cleared her throat. 'Josh and I don't confide in one another. We're just room-mates.'

  'Well, you know, I wondered if you felt differently about him.'

  'Differently?' Samantha echoed sharply, 'In what way?'

  'He's a very attractive man.'

  Well, here it was. Out in the open. Samantha suddenly understood what this conversation was all about. Helen had first verified her facts, then she had presented her claim to Josh, defined her territory and was now in the process of keeping any invaders at bay. The fact that she had done all this in a roundabout fashion that would have done credit to the most wily legal mind almost commanded Samantha's grudging admiration. And Helen had also managed to discover, in a very short time, that she had no real competition in Samantha. She had done this very simply—by making Samantha admit that she hadn't known about Josh's past love affair.

  Samantha had an almost overwhelming urge to deflate the other woman's smug belief that she had Josh sewed up tight. 'Actually,' she would have liked to say, 'he is very attractive—so attractive that we almost made love last night.' But she didn't say it, because the lovemaking, as she well knew, meant absolutely nothing.

  'No,' she said, 'I don't feel differently about him. As I told you, we're just accidental room-mates.'

  Helen stood up in a graceful, lithe gesture. 'I thought it best to be frank,' she said. 'I didn't want any misunderstandings or complications. It's nice when everything is kept simple, don't you think?'

  Samantha stood up, too. 'Absolutely,' she agreed.

  'And of course, you seem to have your own escort anyway.'

  'My own escort?'

  'The young man with the brown hair.'

  Samantha opened her mouth to deny it, but there; seemed no point in belabouring the issue to someone as inconsequential as Helen Moore
, and all she said was, 'Oh, yes. David.'

  But Helen didn't seem to notice Samantha's lack of enthusiasm. She merely smiled her glittering, beautiful smile and said, 'See you, then.'

  'See you,' Samantha echoed as the other woman left.

  As she walked down from the sun-deck and headed towards her stateroom, she tried hard not to let a pervasive depression settle over her. It wasn't pleasant being warned off a man by a woman as calculating and as aggressive as Helen Moore. Samantha couldn't help wondering why Helen had bothered to approach her in the first place. It was, she supposed, quite possible that Helen had developed suspicions all on her own. She was certainly the jealous type. But it was also quite possible that Josh had said something or inadvertently dropped a hint that had led Helen to the belief that there was more to the room-mate situation than met the eye.

  Well, Samantha thought with a supreme attempt at shrugging off the feeling of depression, this would all be very fascinating and certainly fodder for a love advice column if she had any designs on Josh herself. But, since she didn't, it was strictly trivia.

  'Miss Lorimer! Miss Lorimer!' It was the purser, hurrying after her. 'I'm so glad I found you.'

  'I'm sorry,' said Samantha, stopping in the narrow corridor, 'I didn't know you were looking for me.'

  He came to a breathless stop. 'We had a passenger disembark this morning, leaving a stateroom free.'

  'Oh,' said Samantha, 'does that mean...?'

  The purser was now beaming at her. 'So you and Mr Sinclair no longer have to share a room. I can't tell you how pleased I am that it's all turned out so well. As I was saying to Mr Sinclair, these things do happen, but it's such a pleasure when people can be accommodated.'

  'Oh, then Mr Sinclair knows about it?'

  'Mr Sinclair moved out this morning, Miss Lorimer. Isn't that nice?'

  'Very.'

  'And I have the extra key for you in my office.'

  'Fine.'

  'And I hope you enjoy the rest of the cruise.'

  'Yes, I'm sure I will.'