‘Hello, Karen,’ she said. ‘It’s lovely to meet you.’
For the rest of the evening Jane did her best to join in the party atmosphere. She bounced around to the music of banjos and tin whistles; she went around from group to group, making sure that she had a chat with everyone; she pressed food and soft drinks on people and she made up impromptu beds in the house for three or four children who had come along with their parents for the harvest and were now drooping with exhaustion. Yet all the time that she was moving around, acting the part of hostess, her eyes kept straying to Marc and there was a curious, tight, aching feeling in her chest.
It was not until the last guest had departed and the caterers had cleaned up and gone away that she realised just what she was feeling. Although she had a flight to catch the following day, Simone had stayed up late and was staying close to Marc, with the alert, watchful look of a fierce guard-dog. Seeing them together, Jane felt a wave of desolation sweep over her. I know what’s wrong with me, she thought bitterly. I’m in love with him. What a fool I am! I’m in love with him…
When Jane awoke late the following morning, Marc and Simone had already left for the airport. It was a relief to be able to wander around the house, alone with her own turbulent thoughts and feelings. All the same, she could not help feeling anxious about what would happen on Marc’s return. Would she be able to hide the embarrassing secret of her true feelings for him? Or would he take one look at her face and know everything?
As it happened, the ordeal proved much easier than she had feared. When Marc returned he had nothing on his mind other than work. There was no thought of kisses or highly-charged emotional scenes, no room for anything except long, painstaking hours of work in the winery.
‘Ready to start winemaking?’ he asked, the moment he was inside the door.
‘Yes!’ agreed Jane fervently. ‘I can’t wait.’
‘I drive myself hard when I’m working,’ he warned. ‘And I expect to do the same to you. Can you take the pace?’
‘Just watch me!’ challenged Jane.
Marc was as good as his word. For the next twenty-eight days they both breathed, ate, slept and dreamed winemaking. First the grapes had to be crushed, then the red wines fermented ‘on their skins’ while the white grapes were placed in the press before fermentation. Sulphur dioxide, ascorbic acid and tartaric acid had to be added and they were kept constantly busy.
At last, after a month of ceaseless work, all the wine was safely in barrels and ready to be left for the next year to mature. To celebrate the successful conclusion of the first stage of their enterprise, Marc took Jane out to dinner at a local restaurant and ordered a bottle of the finest French champagne.
‘I think we deserve a holiday after this,’ he said. ‘Well, a working holiday. What do you say to the idea of leaving Charlie Kendall in charge here and going on a tour of the other Tasmanian vineyards together?’
CHAPTER FIVE
JANE’S eyes dilated in surprise as she gradually took in the implications of what Marc was suggesting. Being in each other’s company night and day, cooped up in a car or staying in motels, thrust into a highly-charged intimacy even worse than what they had experienced here.
‘But…that would take several days,’ she pointed out.
Marc seemed to enjoy her discomfiture. An unholy amusement gleamed in his brown eyes as she let his gaze travel slowly down over the low-cut neck of her best evening frock.
‘So it would,’ he marvelled. ‘Why didn’t I think of that? Could it be because this is the late twentieth century or because we’re both grown-ups and have already been sharing a house for the last seven weeks with no ill-effects?’
Jane flushed to the roots of her hair at his mocking tone. With no ill-effects! she thought bleakly. Speak for yourself, Marc Le Rossignol. I’ve never been more tormented in my life than I have over the last seven weeks! She ignored the small voice deep inside her that told her she had never been more breathtakingly happy, either…
‘Stop making fun of me!’ she cried in exasperation. ‘It’s not easy travelling with other people, especially if you don’t know them well. You can get under each other’s skin over the slightest things.’
‘Ah, yes,’ agreed Marc, sipping his champagne reflectively. ‘You, for instance, get under my skin a good deal of the time.’
Jane’s heart lurched and then began to beat violently as she saw his narrowed eyes appraising her in the soft glow of the lamplight. Did he mean…? Could he possibly mean…? His whole body seemed to emanate a burning current of attraction that drew her insistently towards him. She leaned forward, her lips parted, her breath coming in a shallow, uneven rhythm, aware only that he was looking at her with a primitive, naked hunger in his eyes. He wants me! she thought exultantly. He wants me just as badly as I want him! And she did want him; there was no doubt of that. A deep, hot tide of wanting was throbbing through every inch of her body. The very air around them seemed to blaze and crackle with their mutual need. Then suddenly Marc dropped his eyelids and, when he looked up again, his entire expression had changed. His face wore its usual air of weary amusement.
‘There are so many things you do that get under my skin,’ he continued blandly. ‘You leave wet towels on the bathroom floor, you never wash up after you use the kitchen, you play atrocious pop music late at night. But still there is a certain something about you…Yes, there is a certain something. I think I could bear your company for a week or so while we go around the wineries. If you’re worried about protecting your modesty then naturally there will be separate bedrooms.’
Jane began to seethe quietly.
‘I wish you’d stop going on about my modesty!’ she flared. ‘You make me sound like some virgin heroine in a Victorian melodrama and, let me tell you, that’s a long way from the truth! Naturally I’ll insist on separate bedrooms if we go, but not because I’m going to blush and swoon if you catch a glimpse of my ankle. It just so happens, while we’re on the subject of my wet towels and things, that you have some rather awful habits too! Like the way you keep tidying up the study so I can never find anything any more. And the way you have to set the table with everything in perfect order and the knives and forks absolutely symmetrical before you can even sit down to eat. It drives me mad!’
Too late, she saw the twitch of amusement at the corners of his mouth and realised that he was deliberately baiting her.
‘You wretch! You do it deliberately, don’t you?’ she protested. ‘You set traps for me and wait for me to fall in!’
Marc acknowledged the truth of this with a sly wink that made Jane catch her breath. Why did he have to look so heartbreakingly gorgeous? With those long creases that formed in his cheeks when he smiled and the tough mouth with its ironic twist, he was practically irresistible! No woman could live in the house of a man so blatantly virile and sensual without feeling a heightened sense of her own power and femininity and mystery! She was beginning to think that the only way to save her sanity was to put a vast physical distance between them. No doubt it would be much wiser if she didn’t go along on this trip, although she couldn’t help feeling a sense of mingled pleasure and apprehension at the thought of exploring the island with him.
No. No! She must be hard-headed about it and stay out of his reach. Her life was difficult enough at the moment, with the uncertainty of the vineyard’s future hanging over her, and she certainly didn’t need the kind of dangerous complications that a week’s touring with Marc might produce. A stormy expression came into her green eyes and she reached for the bottle in the ice-bucket and poured herself a second glass of champagne.
‘Why don’t you go on your own?’ she asked bluntly.
Marc’s eyebrows rose.
‘That’s not very friendly,’ he chided her. ‘I thought you could show me around. After all, I’ll be leaving pretty soon and we may not see much more of each other.’
Jane’s spirits took a sickening plunge, as though a trapdoor had just opened abruptly u
nder her feet.
‘Y-you’re leaving?’ she stammered. ‘But why are you going so soon? There’s another month or more until your option to purchase ends.’
Marc too reached for the champagne, poured some into his glass and sipped reflectively before he answered.
‘Simone and I stayed up late talking the night before she left,’ he said. ‘She convinced me that there were urgent financial matters I needed to attend to in France. I promised her I’d return and sort everything out there once the winemaking was over.’
‘Oh,’ said Jane in a stricken voice.
She lowered her eyes to hide her despair. So Simone had won! Obviously she had been determined to remove Marc from Jane’s influence, and the ease with which he had given way showed how strong the Frenchwoman’s hold was over him. Her shock and disappointment were so great that for a moment she made no attempt to hide them.
‘Will you be coming back?’ she blurted out.
‘Maybe.’
‘Well, what’s the point of going on a tour of the Tasmanian wineries if you’re only going to put a manager in the vineyard here? Or not even buy it at all?’ she blazed. ‘I thought you said you liked this place.’
‘I do,’ agreed Marc mildly. ‘I think it’s a charming island, full of charming people. And the most charming inhabitant of all is a little spitfire of a strawberry blonde with amazing green eyes and a terrible temper. Of course she has her virtues too. She works eighteen hours a day without complaining, and I think she deserves a little holiday now that the worst of the work is over. So won’t you come with me, chérie?’
As he said this he reached forward and wound one of Jane’s curls around his finger. She jerked herself free and tossed her head angrily, so that her hair rippled and crackled around her shoulders. Did he think she’d come down in the last rainshower? Obviously all that he had in mind was a little sexual frolic before he returned to France to the woman he really intended to marry. Well, knowing this made it easier to make up her mind. There was no way Jane was going to be fool enough to go to bed with Marc when he was planning to leave the country in a few days’ time. She paused, struck by a sudden thought. If Marc genuinely was leaving so soon, then there was really no reason why she should deny herself the chance to go on this tour of the vineyards in his company. It wasn’t as if anything dramatic would happen between them. Besides, it would give her the chance to show him that she wasn’t panting with eagerness to jump into his bed, that she saw him only as a fellow wine-maker. A dangerous smile curved her lips.
‘That’s very kind of you,’ she said demurely.
Marc frowned.
‘I never trust you when you’re being meek,’ he complained. ‘But tell me, what’s your answer? Are you coming?’
Jane picked up her champagne glass and tossed off the wine in a a single gulp so that a heady surge of bubbles seemed to race like wildfire through her veins. Then she gave Marc a long, slow, challenging stare.
‘Yes,’ she said.
Five days later, Jane sat watching Marc thoughtfully as he sent the Saab gliding effortlessly round the curves of the highway that led down the east coast of Tasmania. He was a good driver, but that didn’t surprise her. He seemed to be good at so many things. It had filled her with a growing sense of despair over the last five days to realise just how effortlessly Marc Le Rossignol excelled in everything he did. In the course of their trip around the island Jane had discovered that he was a superb dancer, a skilful horseman and powerful swimmer, as well as a connoisseur of wine and a brilliant linguist.
They had gone trail-riding through the scented, sunlit forests of the Huon Valley, eaten breakfast in the revolving restaurant at the Wrest Point casino while they watched the sun rise dramatically over the Hobart harbour, and spent a memorable afternoon tasting wines at the Pipers Brook vineyard with a group of Japanese tourists before going on to a dinner dance at the Launceston Country Club. Yet the memory which remained most vividly with Jane was the image of Marc carrying a little girl with a cut foot two hundred metres along the beach at Coles Bay to her mother.
The adoring look on the tearful child’s face as she had clung to him had made Jane wonder if she had seriously misjudged him. Even if he was a ruthless flirt and a hard-headed businessman, she was beginning to suspect that underneath he was something more than that. A man who liked children, who really cared about them, who could be relied upon to be protective and tender when the circumstances demanded it. Stop it! Jane told herself. You’re making him out to be some kind of saint and he isn’t that. It’s dangerous to start idealising him.
Deliberately she tore her gaze away from Marc, and looked out of the window at the jade-green sea and the dazzling white beaches flashing past them. It was warm in the car, too warm. She wound down the window and was immediately assaulted by the roar of pounding surf and the clean, aromatic scent of eucalyptus trees. Marc glanced across at her and smiled.
‘This place is amazing,’ he said. ‘Miles and miles of white sandy beaches and hardly a person in sight.’
‘It’s nearly winter time,’ Jane pointed out.
‘But not very cold,’ Marc replied. ‘Even if the water’s too chilly for swimming, the weather’s very mild and sunny. You’d think people would be out in droves, but instead the place is practically deserted. It makes me feel as if we were the only man and woman on earth.’
I wish we were, thought Jane, with an odd, fluttering sensation in the pit of her stomach. Then I wouldn’t have to worry about somebody else taking you away from me. You’d be all mine. It perturbed her to realise that, in spite of all her good intentions, she was more attracted to Marc than ever. I’ll miss him so much when he goes, she thought. I don’t know how I can bear it. Yet outwardly she gave no sign of her feelings.
‘Don’t count on the good weather holding,’ she warned. ‘Five days in a row must already be close to a record.’
Marc gave a low growl of laughter.
‘Well, let’s just hope it lasts long enough for us to see Maria Island,’ he said. ‘Didn’t you say an Italian tried to establish a vineyard there nearly a century ago?’
‘That’s right,’ agreed Jane. ‘Although there are only ruins there now. Diego Bernacchi settled there at the beginning of this century and tried to grow vines. Unfortunately most Australians weren’t interested in drinking wine then, but luckily things have changed today.’
‘Obviously a man before his time,’ commented Marc. ‘Well, I hope you and I can make it together where he failed.’
I hope you and I can make it together—the words stung Jane with their poignancy. It was the sort of thing Marc might have said to her if they had been contemplating a future life together, or even marriage. But if he married anyone it would be Simone Cabanou, not Jane West. Still, she couldn’t just sit here looking stricken and preoccupied. With an effort she found her voice.
‘I hope so too,’ she said.
‘I think we’ll get settled in Orford first,’ continued Marc. ‘Then drive back to Triabunna and catch the ferry to the island.’
‘Where are we staying tonight?’ asked Jane listlessly.
‘I’ve booked into a colonial cottage. I know the big hotels are fun, but I prefer something more homely, don’t you?’
‘I suppose so,’ muttered Jane in a troubled voice. The last thing she wanted at the moment was a cosy little place with log fires and chintz armchairs and absolutely no other people to provide a diversion. At least there was safety in numbers. In a big hotel, surrounded by hordes of other people, she did not have to fear that she would lose her head and reveal her true feelings!
He frowned at the lack of enthusiasm in her tone, but said nothing.
When they reached the cottage just outside Orford Jane saw that it had exactly the kind of ambience that she feared. There was a garden where winter jasmine hung in fragrant willows on a white picket fence; the veranda had a trim of iron lace and there was a polished copper nameplate in the mellow sandstone next to the fro
nt door, while the interior featured brass beds, patchwork quilts, fresh flowers on the dining-table, handmade chocolates in a basket in the kitchen and a collection of Gershwin musicals by the cassette deck. If they had been genuine lovers Jane would have been in raptures at the place. As it was, she found the atmosphere extremely threatening. Of course, Marc would like it! It was just the sort of intimate little love-nest where he could turn up the heat and try to seduce her before he went away forever. In fact, he had probably chosen the place for that very purpose. But Jane saw it only as a scented trap which made her skin prickle with alarm.
‘What’s wrong? Don’t you like it?’ asked Marc, seeing her suspicious expression as she prowled from room to room.
‘It’s OK,’ she said indifferently. ‘Personally I prefer a water-bed, rock music and some junk sculpture.’
Marc winced.
‘Do you really like that sort of stuff?’ he asked incredulously.
‘Sure. Why not?’ lied Jane, whose true tastes ran to white lace pillowcases, intimate firelit dinners and dancing the tango.
‘I don’t understand heavy metal music,’ groaned Marc. ‘Or modern art, for that matter.’
‘Well, you wouldn’t, would you?’ asked Jane sweetly. ‘You’ve got to remember the generation gap.’
‘Generation gap!’ he echoed. ‘Seven years’ age difference is hardly a generation gap! And, if it is, there are ways of closing it.’
As he said this his voice dropped a semitone and a smoky, sensual look came into his eyes. Reaching out one hard brown hand, he traced a whorl on Jane’s cheek with his thumb. A quiver went through her and she closed her eyes for an instant, but then remembered her resolve to keep him at arm’s length.
‘We’ll miss the ferry,’ she reminded him.
Before long they were out on the water, with the wake of the ferry vanishing behind them. Seagulls glided overhead, there was a smell of salt air, and the throb of the boat’s engines made it vibrate like a live thing as it skimmed across the dazzling blue water of the channel. A profound hush seemed to settle on them when they came ashore.
Unwelcome Invader (Harlequin Treasury 1990's) Page 8