Temptation Island

by Victoria Fox

  And then, she didn’t know how it happened, they were kissing each other, their bodies apart one second and together the next. His lips, his tongue, that scar she had noticed that felt, beneath her mouth, like danger. The smell of leather and the smell of him: his neck, his skin, the softness of his mouth and eyelashes. His hands held her face, one thumb on her chin where it was cut, the fingers behind her jaw, beneath her earlobes. She had never been kissed like that. She could kiss him for ever. She could kiss him till her mouth bled.

  Not once did his hands move lower, though she ached for them to. She wanted him to touch her in all the places she had refused her boyfriend: all the emotions she was meant to feel with Rico but hadn’t, imagining something must be the matter with her. His fingers reached round and pressed the very top of her spine, his touch so deft, electricity, the heat of his body and the soft insistency of his mouth, and she felt the blood rush like fever, trembling, to between her legs. For the first time in her life, Lori experienced desire. Prolonged, exquisite, concentrated desire that entered her like a knife and twisted her heart, sliding its smooth blade down her stomach, opening her up to that place whose existence she had always denied.

  The car stopped. The man pulled away, his expression closed, but angry, like an argument happening behind a shut door.

  The only sound was their breathing, painfully intimate in the silence.

  Lori sensed the certainty of their parting and grasped for more, abandoning restraint because that was what he had done to her.

  ‘I have to find a way to thank you—’

  Sunlight flooded in, hurting her eyes. They were back outside Tres Hermanas. His driver stood on the sidewalk.

  The man took her hand. ‘You’ll be all right,’ he told her, in that soft, strange accent. ‘I’ll make sure of it. I always will.’

  Lori was helped on to the street, the light blinding: a new world. She was shaking.

  His arm reached to close the door.

  ‘Wait! Will I see you again? What’s your name? You have to tell me. I have to know.’

  The man lifted his mouth slightly, the corners, not much, like a cat that wakes from a deep sleep and raises his head once to look around before settling again. It wasn’t a smile. It didn’t come close to the eyes, whose look of benevolence had hardened like a frozen lake.

  ‘It does not matter who I am.’

  And with a last, lingering stare, as quick as he’d come, he was gone.

  14

  Present Day

  Island of Cacatra, Indian Ocean

  Four hours to departure

  Reuben van der Meyde was a self-made industrial entrepreneur with tens of billions in the bank. He had come from nothing: orphaned as a baby, he had grown up with a lukewarm, uninterested foster family in the South African city of Johannesburg. At thirteen, after being expelled from school for bad behaviour, he had started his own trade on the streets, selling stolen cut-price jewellery to travelling businessmen. One such businessman, an unhappily married tycoon who had recently lost a son Reuben’s age, took him under his wing, trained him and served up a job in one of his fledgling telecommunications companies. With the Soweto sprawl in the seventies came massive investment in the suburbs—Reuben was in the thick of it and, as each year passed, his flair for business grew. Aged twenty, he launched VDM Communications. Soon he was rivalling the man who had taught him everything and, as his business swelled, so did his fortune, his reputation, and his ambition. Today, VDM was the most lucrative company in the world.

  Reuben van der Meyde was not a man prepared to be taken down.

  He paced the terrace, pausing occasionally to put his hands on the balustrade and glare darkly at the water. He checked his chunky silver watch, grimaced when the links caught the reddish hairs on his arms. Four hours. It wasn’t enough.

  ‘I’m telling you, JB, the damn thing’s got me in a sweat. I’m like a pig in shitting heat.’ He removed his cap and swiped at a persistent fly.

  Jean-Baptiste Moreau loosened the knot on his tie and didn’t respond. He was facing the ocean, concentrated on calmer waters. Emerald palms rustled in the salty breeze.

  ‘I hope to fuck you’re coming up with a solution,’ said Reuben. ‘Because it’s not just me being threatened, boy, it’s you as well.’

  JB remained where he was, on one of the high-backed wicker chairs that peppered the rugged veranda of his white-stone villa. Despite the sun, he did not perspire. His dark-blond hair was immaculate, neat at the neck, and his expression still. The only betrayal that he was deep in thought was the slight twitch to the scar across his top lip, a giveaway since he was a boy.

  ‘Shit!’ Reuben slammed down his fist. ‘After all the work I’ve put into this—’

  ‘It might not be what you think.’

  ‘What else could it be, hey? A fucking strip-o-gram birthday cake?’

  Finally JB turned. The strength of his gaze compelled an already struggling Reuben to sit down. His eyes really were extraordinary, an untarnished blue with flecks of silver, uncannily light.

  ‘Nothing in that message suggests this person knows anything about what we’re trying to protect,’ JB told him. ‘Keep it together.’

  Reuben laughed bitterly. ‘You don’t think I’m one of them has a certain ring to it?’ He ground his teeth. ‘I spent all night trying to look at it a different way. Bottom line is I’ve got a bad feeling. This person got into my private mail. When was the last time that happened?’ JB didn’t answer. Reuben sprang to his feet. ‘Let me tell you. Never.’

  The Frenchman’s gaze slid back to the ocean. ‘You worry too much. We’re in control.’

  ‘It’s OK for you, isn’t it?’ Reuben blasted. ‘Swanning around Hollywood, scouting for pretty girls, while one of us is trying to run a business!’ JB didn’t react. ‘Damn! It’s my reputation on the line here, not yours.’

  ‘Are you insinuating I don’t have my own problems to deal with?’

  Reuben caught the menace in his words. ‘It’s not my fault you’re hard up for the Spanish broad,’ he said. ‘I knew that girl was trouble from the start. Ones like her always are. Too wild for what we had in mind. Young, dumb and desperate—remember?’

  ‘You know nothing about her.’

  Reuben grimaced. ‘I know she was meant to be a job, for Crissakes. Try tying your dick in a knot next time—it helps.’

  JB stood. Instantly the shorter man, despite his wealth and power, took a step back. He’d regretted the words as soon as he’d said them. Moreau was not a man he wanted to piss off.

  ‘Keep your voice down,’ he said quietly. ‘Rebecca is inside. And stop cowering like a dog. Fear achieves nothing.’

  Reuben matched the younger man’s glare until eventually he was forced to look away. ‘I’ll assume you’re right.’

  ‘I’m always right.’

  One of JB’s assistants emerged from the villa. Reuben was about to explode at her for interrupting a private conversation but stopped when it became clear JB was expecting her.

  ‘The caterers have arrived, Mr Moreau,’ she said, smoothing her skirt down, chosen because she’d been told it made her ass look good. Ridiculous. One night was all it had been. She knew JB Moreau took women to bed like he ate hot meals, and didn’t know whether to curse herself for having allowed it or to thank everything good in the world for those hours.

  ‘Thank you, Sara.’

  ‘What do you want to know about the caterers for?’ Reuben frowned once she’d gone.

  ‘I’ve requested updates on all arrivals.’

  ‘Yeah, but I got people looking after that.’

  JB ran a hand across his jaw. ‘Let’s stick to business, shall we?’

  Reuben leaned in. ‘Fine,’ he said impatiently, ‘but I’ve got enough else to think about without this … inconvenience. The organisers are climbing up my arse and the captain hasn’t bloody showed up yet. It’s all very well decking the place out like a pair of frilly knickers but if the thing doesn’
t sail I might as well have a floating turd out there, hey! What am I going to do, give them a swimming lesson?’ He scowled. ‘Believe me: soon as I find out who sent that message I swear I’ll rip their fucking throat out.’

  JB had neither the time nor inclincation to watch Reuben fall spectacularly to pieces. He headed inside. ‘I have to make a phone call.’

  ‘Make it quick. We’ll rendezvous in an hour. This party’s going to be one hell of a stunt to pull, my friend.’

  The Frenchman turned at the open door. ‘As long as it’s the only stunt getting pulled, I’ll be happy.’

  Margaret Jensen did not like other people being in her kitchen. She worked in this place three hundred and sixty-five days a year, and yet, on these occasions, it counted for nothing. It was like allowing strangers into her home and letting them touch things, move them, put them back in the wrong places. She found it easier to stand apart and let the caterers get on with it. The company hired for tonight’s event ran with a military precision that rivalled even her own.

  Hovering at the threshold, she observed the food being prepared. The fastidious detail of the champagne caviar, the pink lobster mousse, the gold-leaf mint and basil tarts, the seven-tiered miniature cakes, belied the chaos: white-aproned staff running back and forth, wanting to get everything perfect. It would never be enough. Mr V would find something to complain about, whatever the standard.

  This afternoon, however, Margaret Jensen had more pressing things on her mind.

  She wiped her hands on her skirt. She could feel her pulse, fluid behind her clavicle.

  The plan she would execute in just a few hours’ time was years in the making. Eight, to be exact. Oh, she hadn’t settled on Mr V’s gruesome fate until more recently—not till she’d met the man who could make it happen—but a long time she had fantasised of a vengeance that fitted his cruelty exactly. His abhorrent scheme was one she had always been privy to. After all, she’d been one of the women who had allowed it to happen. She’d been stupid enough to believe his hollow pledge, his guarantees of money and security and a better future—in exchange for what? The most precious thing in the world. How could she even have considered it? But she’d been a different woman then, a wretched woman with no way out. As they all were.

  Only she’d been more than he bargained for. She’d stood up to Mr V. She’d refused to give him what he wanted and he’d been forced to offer her a compromise, a position as his lowly housekeeper, guardian to his son, pushing her to the shadows and pretending she didn’t exist.

  He should have known she wouldn’t stay there for ever.

  Margaret exited the van der Meyde mansion and stood at the top of the stone steps that led down to the beach. She raised a hand against the glare of the sun and squinted down the pale sandy stretch. Mr V’s yacht was moored a hundred yards away, dark spots milling round it like ants, everybody desperate to get involved in the big man’s day. Adoring minions, nothing more, blinded by his riches and his power, with no idea what he was truly capable of.

  It was ambitious. It was outrageous. It was wrong. But it was revenge, and revenge was usually all of those things.

  As far as Margaret was concerned, there was only one person to protect.

  ‘Ralph!’ She called for the boy, knew he’d been playing on the beach all morning.

  There was no reply, so she walked a little way down the steps and repeated his name. In moments she caught sight of the child’s small frame weaving haphazardly down the beach. As always, he brought a smile to her face and happiness to her heart. The years hadn’t all been in vain. He waved at her and she waved back.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ she asked as he ran, panting, up the steps, bursting with enthusiasm. He was carrying a red bucket and held it out for her to see. Inside was a hard, moving scrape of crabs’ legs, their burned-orange shells lifting and dragging over each other.

  ‘Shall we eat them?’ she asked.

  Ralph nodded happily. ‘Where’s JB?’ he said excitedly. ‘I want to show JB!’

  ‘He’s not here, darling.’

  He held out the crabs, his fingers small and sticky where they gripped the rim of the plastic lest anyone try to steal his loot. ‘Do you think Daddy will be pleased?’

  Margaret swallowed. Ralph idolised Mr V, more so because he believed him to be his only living parent. It was what he had always been told.

  If only.

  ‘Very,’ she said. ‘Come inside, my love, we’ve got to get you ready. Look at your fingers!’ He had grubby sandmarks under his nails.

  ‘Can I go to the party?’ he begged as he trailed her inside. ‘JB said the whole world’s coming! That means I have to come!’

  Briskly she shook her head. ‘Absolutely not. You heard what Mr V said.’

  ‘He said I’m not old enough.’

  ‘And he’s right.’

  Ralph was disappointed. ‘Please?’ he tried again, hoping Miss Jensen might be a softer touch. Usually she let him have his way.

  ‘I’ve said no and that’s the end of it.’ Outside the boy’s bedroom, she turned and crouched down to his level.

  ‘Besides, we’ll have fun here, won’t we?’ She smiled. ‘Just you and me. Safe on the island. Because, my darling, who knows what could happen at sea?’

  Book Two

  2009-10

  15

  Lori

  The taxi Lori took from Murcia San Javier airport was driven by a slight, middle-aged Spaniard with a hook nose and thick eyebrows. A rosary swung from his rear-view mirror and the upholstery smelled sweet, like lemons, or vanilla. Dusk had fallen. The gloomy shapes of mountains reared up on both sides as the car wound its way between, tyres throwing up dust.

  They drove through a sharp bend, then another, and she realised they were climbing. Each twist required the car to slow completely, almost to a stop, and she knew the ascent must be steep. She wound the window down and breathed the unfamiliar air. Crickets gave off their whistling nighttime rhythm; the sea was close because she could smell its salt.

  Lori had travelled an ocean. She had gone halfway across the world. And yet all she had thought about, incessantly and without reprieve, for the past forty-eight hours, was the man who had saved her. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw his face and his hands; the leather band around his wrist; the twist, almost cruel, of his top lip. That day felt like a dream, impossible—something out of a novel about which she’d half laugh, half swoon. The way he’d arrived from nowhere, strange as though he’d come from another world, far far away, and how he had kissed her, the urgency in his eyes as he’d tried to resist … Details became her addiction: a specific suddenly surfacing, shedding new light.

  Who was he? Why had he come?

  And then the soft comfort of her recollection would be punctured by shame. Guilt at having denied Rico the lie that would set him free; the way she had run from her commitment to him, into the arms of another man. She felt as if she had leapt from an aeroplane into wide blue sky, off the top of a mountain, over the rim of the earth, abandoning every principle that had guided her through seventeen years. Never had she endured a sensation so strong it eclipsed every other, stifling her conscience, making her selfish, reminding her that those same principles by which she’d lived so strictly had never made her happy or fulfilled, and in that way drawing her, tempting her, towards a new horizon.

  For what? A stranger she knew nothing of?

  Lori ran the bud of her thumb over the ring Rico had given her the day they had planned to escape. It felt like centuries ago, another life, another her.

  They passed a red and white church buried in the hillside, momentarily bathed in the gold of the headlamps before retreating to its shroud of darkness. By the side of the road was a box, lit by a lone, uncertainly flickering candle: a shrine for a child, tipped from a crumbling precipice. The motion of the car, winding and turning, rising ever higher, began to lull Lori to sleep.

  When she woke, the moon was high and bright in the sk
y. The car was rumbling along a bumpy track and Lori realised her head must have been resting against the window, for it was this motion that roused her. They were in the middle of nowhere. On either side what looked like orchards, clusters of trees whose fingers brushed questioningly as they passed. At the foot of the drive was the dark shape of her grandmother’s house, bordered by the shadowy outline of an olive grove, and a single lamp glowing in the porch.

  She thanked the driver in Spanish and heaved her bag from the trunk. She watched as his red taillights disappeared, listening to the silence of a depth and quality entirely new to her.

  There was no sound coming from inside and when Lori knocked it seemed to disturb the sleeping hills. She began to wonder if anyone was in when, eventually, a light came on. The slow patter of footsteps approached, accompanied by a wet snuffling.

  When the door opened, something quick and small rushed out and Lori felt a damp nose attacking her legs.

  ‘Pepe!’ the old woman chided. ‘Come back here. Tsk!’

  Lori petted the dog as it sniffed enthusiastically at her knees. Corazón watched her, the old woman’s ancient, pale face cracked by the lines of time and the losses she had known: she had dressed in black since her husband, Lori’s abuelo, passed fifteen years before. Even in the dim glow of the porch her eyes sparkled with happiness.

  ‘Loriana. Querida, my darling.’ She held her arms out, eyes brimming with emotion.

  They embraced, Lori clinging lightly because holding Corazón was like grasping a bundle of sticks and she didn’t want to break them. She told her hello and her grandmother touched her face, her mass of wild hair, and kissed her forehead.

  ‘Has crecido!’ she marvelled, taking her hands. ‘You have grown. Te heche de menos, Loriana; I have missed you.’

  Inside, Corazón boiled a pan of water and gave Lori a cup of sweet, hot liquid that smelled of herbs, and a bowl of vegetable stew that through her hunger and fatigue tasted incredible. Pepe the dog darted between her legs, begging for food and attention. They spoke about Lori’s journey and her memories of Spain (what Corazón called her ‘home country’), and why she had come back here. While Lori didn’t go into detail about her strained relationship with her father, she suspected Corazón knew more than she was letting on.