by Penny Jordan
In those days it had been Leigh and not Rorke who looked after their complicated business interests; including the stake the family held in a chain of luxury hotels dotted through the Caribbean.
On St Martins, though, there was no hotel, only the graceful colonnaded Great House built during the sugar-rich years of the eighteen-hundreds when the family had sent their sons and daughters to London and had thought nothing of commissioning every luxury under the sun to be shipped out to their own small empire.
Leigh’s family had been fortunate and wise enough to make good investments, and so, unlike many of their neighbours on the other islands, there was no need for them to sell out.
As she had done the moment she first set foot on the island at the age of six following her mother’s marriage to Leigh, Lisa had felt a surge of pleasure as she stepped out of the plane; a feeling of homecoming so intense that for a few seconds it completely obliterated the pain of losing her mother.
Mama Case, who ruled the household with a rod of iron and who had been Leigh’s nurse and Rorke’s after him, had opened her arms and Lisa had run straight into them. It had been an emotional homecoming. Her mother had been more popular with the native staff than Rorke’s French mother, who, so Lisa gathered from them, had never ceased pining for the sophistication of Paris.
It was only later, adult herself and a mother, that Lisa had wondered if Rorke had perhaps resented her mother taking the place of his. If so, he had never betrayed it. Too old to adopt her mother as his own when the marriage took place, he had nevertheless developed a warm and affectionate relationship with her, just as she had with Leigh.
Her own father had died when she was six months old—meningitis, her mother had told her, but Lisa suspected that her mother’s love for Leigh was far deeper than the emotion she had felt for her first husband.
In their mutual grief it was only natural that she and Leigh should draw even closer together, but she hadn’t realised how much until Mama Case told her gently one evening that they were shutting Rorke out.
‘Leigh his daddy too,’ she reminded Lisa, ‘and that boy sure thought a lot of yor ma, Miss Lisa.’
After that Lisa had made more effort to include Rorke in their conversations, even to the extent of slipping away from the dinner table earlier than usual to give Rorke a chance to talk to his father alone.
She hadn’t realised that Rorke had seen through her ploy until he found her on the verandah one evening, swinging in the hammock that her mother had always loved, her face wet with tears.
The day had been a particularly close one. Leigh had been irritable with Rorke over dinner. Lisa had gathered from the conversation that Rorke was keen to modernise several of the hotels and father and son had exchanged heated words.
‘You can’t live in the past for ever, Father,’ he said curtly. ‘Nor can you grieve for ever.’
Lisa had left then, sympathising with them both; Leigh whose feelings she understood so well, and Rorke who was so much of an enigma to her, but whose smile had the power to twist her insides with delicious pain, and whose bronzed body did strange things to her pulse rate.
Her very awareness of Rorke was something she was finding it hard to come to terms with. She had always worshipped him, adoring him from a distance, but before it had merely been the innocent admiration of a child. Now there was something different. At school the previous term many of the girls had held giggled conversations about their boy-friends; but Lisa had held slightly aloof, half shocked by their disclosures.
And yet since her return to St Martin’s she had found herself becoming aware of Rorke in a way she had not been before, noticing things about him such as the lean hard length of his body as he emerged from the swimming pool where he swam several lengths before breakfast every morning.
The brevity of trunks which previously had gone unnoticed now brought blushing confusion to her cheeks and a desire to avoid his too-seeing eyes.
One half of her was shocked by the wantonness of her thoughts, the other wondered what it would be like to touch the hard maleness of his body, to be kissed by him and touched…
‘Lisa?’
He moved very quietly for such a big man and she jumped, the swinging seat creaking wildly with the jerkiness of her movement as she turned towards the sound of her name and saw him coming towards her out of the dusk, his white shirt a blur in the darkness slashed by the brown vee of his exposed throat and upper chest.
‘Are you okay? Dad thought we might have upset you with our quarrelling.’
His sardonic expression, the way he leaned casually against the verandah, arms folded against his chest, made her ask, ‘But you didn’t?’
‘Not unless you’re a far more sensitive plant than the rest of your sex,’ he said wryly. ‘Besides, you’ve been coming out here after dinner every evening this last week.’
‘I know you like to talk over business matters with your father,’ Lisa told him, wishing she could see his expression as clearly as she was sure he could see hers.
This was the longest conversation they had had since her return, apart from the occasion when he had told her of his sorrow at the death of her mother.
‘You’re a tactful little scrap,’ he told her, his voice suddenly disconcertingly warm. ‘That’s your mother in you, I suppose. What do you plan to do with your life, Lisa?’
It was something she hadn’t really thought about, and as though he read her mind, he said hardly, ‘You won’t be sixteen going on seventeen for ever; there’s a whole wide world out there, and if you don’t sample at least some of it, you’re a fool.’
‘You seem quite happy to stay here on St Martins,’ Lisa pointed out, not liking the steel in his voice, the hint that she mustn’t plan on making her life on St Martins, and like a cold wind chilling her came the realisation that she was nothing really to him, nothing to Leigh who had never legally adopted her although she knew it had always been his intention.
‘I’m eleven years older than you and I’ve seen my share of the world. Besides, I have a purpose here, and my family…’
‘All right, you don’t need to remind me any more that I don’t belong here,’ Lisa bit out, interrupting him, more angry than she could ever remember being in her life. ‘Anyway,’ she told him childishly, ‘it isn’t up to you, it’s Leigh who says whether I can stay here or not, and…’
‘And he’s clinging to you because you remind him of your mother,’ he told her grimly. ‘Is that what you really want from life, Lisa? Out here the living’s easy, we all know that, but you’re too young for easy living; and if you’re not careful it can become degenerative.’
She looked up at him and his mouth twisted wryly. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me? Take a look around you; look at the native island girls, most of them mothers before they’re fifteen. Like I said, life out here is too easy.’ He turned and Lisa saw the almost brooding quality of his frown.
Why was Rorke so anxious for her to leave St Martins? Surely he wasn’t jealous of her relationship with his father?
‘Rorke,’ she said his name, huskily and uncertainly, trying to conceal the faint tremor.
‘Lisa—Rorke!’ Both of them turned at the sound of Leigh’s voice, and Lisa decided she must have imagined the look she had glimpsed in Rorke’s eyes before his father arrived, because just for an instant it had seemed hotly possessive and bitterly resentful of his father’s arrival.
* * *
Although she tried to forget them, Rorke’s words kept troubling her. She was thinking about them one morning as she walked along the beach dressed in frayed denim shorts, her sandals in her hand, the breeze flattening her thin tee-shirt against the burgeoning curves of her body as she walked across the sand of her favourite bay, just below the house.
‘Hello there!’ She came to an abrupt halt as a tall, lean-limbed young man suddenly bounded down the beach towards her, fair hair flopping into his eyes, an engaging grin splitting a face still pale enough for him to
be an obvious newcomer.
‘I’m looking for Mr Geraint—am I heading in the right direction?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Mike Peters at your service, by the way, newly arrived and newly qualified doctor of medicine, appointed to your local hospital. Curer of all ills known to man; and surgeon extraordinaire as well,’ he announced, sweeping a mock bow and making Lisa laugh with his friendly absurdity.
‘I’m just heading back to the house, we can walk there together,’ she told him. ‘Are you really? The new doctor, I mean. Leigh told me one was arriving, but somehow…’
‘You pictured an old greybeard, not the dashingly handsome young blade you now see before you,’ Mike Peters clowned, grinning. ‘Actually, don’t tell anyone, will you, but I still find it hard to believe myself. It’s been such a long slog to get qualified, I’m still half afraid, someone’s going to creep up behind me, filch my certificate and tell me it’s all a mistake—hence the flight to St Martins. Wow!’ he exclaimed, coming to a standstill as he saw the house for the first time. ‘That’s really something, Palladian, isn’t it?’
Warming to him more and more by the minute, Lisa agreed that it was, and explained a little of the island’s history.
They were just crossing the smooth greenness of the lawn, when Rorke suddenly emerged from the house, his forehead creasing in a frown as he looked from Lisa to her companion.
‘Rorke, this is Mike, our new doctor,’ Lisa introduced, wondering what had made him look so grim.
‘Peters,’ Rorke acknowledged, betraying that he already knew of Mike’s existence. ‘Lisa, Dad’s been asking for you.’
‘Phew—friendly soul, isn’t he?’ Mike grimaced as Rorke turned on his heel and left them, adding apologetically, ‘I’m sorry, I had no right to say that about your brother.’
‘Rorke is my stepbrother,’ Lisa told him absently, surprised to see comprehension dawning in Mike’s eyes and even further confused by his comprehensive: ‘So that’s the way the land lies! Look, if you can just direct me back to the village… I came out for a walk…’
‘Billy can run you back in the Moke,’ Lisa assured him. ‘In fact if Dad didn’t want to see me I’d come with you myself.’
‘No patients to look after, Peters?’ Neither of them had heard Rorke approach, and his clipped voice and hostile expression puzzled Lisa. What on earth was the matter with him?
Ten minutes later when Mike had left with Billy in the Moke she tackled him about it.
‘What on earth was wrong with you, Rorke?’ she demanded crossly, ‘Poor Mike was so embarrassed!’
‘So it’s Mike now, is it?’ Rorke responded savagely. ‘God, Lisa, what is it with you? Haven’t they warned you at that damned school of yours about being too forthcoming with strangers?’
‘You mean when they ask me to go for a ride in their car and offer me sweeties?’ Lisa demanded angrily. ‘Rorke, I’m sixteen, not six, and besides, it was obvious that Mike…’
‘What? Come on, Lisa,’ he jeered, ‘tell me that Peters is impervious to physical desire, if you dare—it was written all over his face that he wanted you—and no wonder! Dressed like that you’re offering an open invitation to rape!’
She wasn’t going to cry; she wasn’t going to give Rorke the satisfaction! There was nothing wrong with her tee-shirt and cut-off shorts; she had worn them for the last couple of holidays; they were clean and comfortable. What was the matter with Rorke?
‘That’s a horrid thing to say!’ she flung at him. ‘And Mike wouldn’t do a thing like that. All we were doing was talking; he didn’t even try to kiss me!’
‘He didn’t? Then perhaps it’s damned well time that someone did,’ Rorke muttered half under his breath, reaching for her, with hands that wouldn’t allow any escape, lean tanned fingers biting into her skin as she was hauled against the taut muscularity of his chest, the bronzed flesh rising and falling with the irregularity of his breathing.
‘Damn you, Lisa,’ he groaned against her hair. ‘Why the hell did my father have to go and complicate things by bringing you back here?’
Lisa wanted to protest, to demand that he release her, but a strange weakness was spreading through her veins, a pulsing excitement firing her blood; a wantonness she had never known she possessed urging her to reach up and touch the bronzed flesh exposed by the vee of Rorke’s shirt.
‘Lisa!’ Rorke bit out her name as though he hated her, the sudden pressure of his mouth on hers shockingly intimate, robbing her of breath. ‘Open your mouth,’ he muttered huskily against her skin, and as though she were completely lacking in any willpower, Lisa felt her lips parting moistly to the sensual intrusion of his. A fierce, painful urge to mould her body against Rorke’s rippled through her, shocking her with its mindless intensity. She pulled away, and Rorke released her immediately, allowing her to turn and run into the cool shadows of the verandah.
What on earth had possessed him? What had possessed her? Lisa asked herself fiercely. They were practically brother and sister; or were they?
Shivering despite the tropical heat, she allowed her fingers to touch the sensitive flesh Rorke’s mouth had just ravaged. For a moment in his arms she had been oblivious to everything but the strange pulsating need to lose herself in him, to be part of him to… With a small cry Lisa clapped her hands over her ears, not wanting to listen to the inner voice telling her that she had wanted Rorke to make love to her. Rorke, who had never shown her anything but careless affection; Rorke who she knew from her mother had a whole contingent of girl-friends; who was worldly and experienced and would surely break her heart if she was ever foolish enough to let him know how easily it had slipped into his possession.
CHAPTER TWO
‘THAT young Peters fellow’s been on the phone again.’ Leigh teased Lisa, several days later after dinner. ‘Something about wanting to take you sailing.’
‘Lisa isn’t going sailing with Peters or any other young fool who thinks because the Caribbean looks placid and blue that it’s easy to sail,’ Rorke snapped before Lisa could reply.
‘Rorke’s right,’ Leigh palliated, seeing the anger sparkling in her eyes. ‘These waters can be dangerous, Lisa. If you’re desperate to go sailing why don’t you let Rorke take you? You were talking about going over to St Lucia anyway, weren’t you?’
‘It wasn’t the kind of journey where I’d want company, though,’ Rorke announced grittily. ‘At least not Lisa’s. I’d planned to pick up Helen Dunbar.’
Helen Dunbar! A vicelike pain gripped Lisa’s heart. Helen Dunbar was one of Rorke’s more long-standing girl-friends. A passionate redhead who lived on St Lucia, she had visited St Martins several years previously. Her uncle was Leigh’s lawyer and she owned a very exclusive boutique on the other island. Lisa knew that there had been a time when Leigh had worried that their relationship might become more permanent. Leigh had never made any secret of the fact that he wanted to see his son married, preferably with children, but he was old-fashioned enough not to want to see Rorke married to a woman like Helen, to whom Rorke was one in a long line of lovers.
‘Who says I’d want to go with you anyway?’ Lisa threw back at him. ‘You’ve been like a bear with a sore head recently—ever since I came back, in fact!’
‘So you’ve noticed,’ Rorke mocked sardonically, ignoring his father’s frown and Lisa’s growing anger. ‘Full marks, little girl.’ He got up as he spoke, pushing away his chair. ‘I’ve got to go and ring the hotel on St. Lucia,’ he told his father.
‘Don’t take any notice of Rorke,’ Leigh told Lisa quietly when Rorke had gone. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him recently.’
‘He’s been really unkind to poor Mike,’ Lisa told him, trying not to remember the treacherous feelings she had experienced in Rorke’s arms—she couldn’t possibly be in love with him, she had told herself; she was too young to fall in love, and not with Rorke of all people!
‘Has he?’ Leigh frowned. ‘In what way?’
‘Oh, he told me off because I�
��d been walking on the beach with Mike. In fact he more or less accused him of being a potential rapist,’ Lisa told him indignantly. ‘I…’
Her cheeks coloured as memories of the hard pressure of Rorke’s mouth against hers surged over her, but fortunately Leigh wasn’t looking at her. In fact, he looked totally engrossed in his own thoughts.
‘Umm,’ he said at last. ‘Well, despite what Rorke says, I think it might be a good idea if you went to St Lucia with him. It’s time you had some new clothes, for one thing.’ He glanced at her shorts and tee-shirt, and Lisa grimaced.
‘Yes, I know these are indecent—Rorke’s already told me.’
‘Has he now! Indecent wasn’t exactly the word I had in my mind—but you’ll certainly need some extra lightweight things. Mama Case tells me you’re not a little girl any longer, Lisa, and looking at you now I know that’s true.’
‘It seems a waste to buy me summer things, when Rorke wants you to send me back to England,’ Lisa murmured, voicing the concern that had lain at the back of her mind ever since Rorke had taxed her with it.
‘My darling child!’ Leigh stood up, placing his hands on her shoulders, his face grave. ‘I’m still master on St Martins, and there’s simply no way I’m going to allow you to leave. Ignore Rorke, he has his own problems.’ A faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘You’ll go to St Lucia with him and buy yourself some pretty clothes—Rorke often has to visit our hotels, and when he does, I think it might be a good idea if you went with him. You’re growing up, Lisa, you’ll be seventeen shortly. It’s time you started taking your place in the adult world.’
An exciting prospect, but somehow Lisa couldn’t see Rorke agreeing with it. Ever since he had kissed her, things had been different between them. He had kissed her as some form of punishment, she knew that, but the punishment had been far more bitter than he could know, because it had opened her eyes to so much she had never known existed before when she had thought of ‘love’ as a rosy, uncomplicated dream. Now she knew better.