by Kay Thorpe
Eve clasped her hands in her lap and bit on the words which sprang to her lips. It was her own fault. This was what she had told him she wanted. Whether he had genuinely lost interest in taking her anywhere else, or was deliberately putting her in a position where she had to climb down from her own professed lack of interest, she wasn't sure. All she did know was that the disappointment had run through her like a knife cut.
'I thought you said one had to see Teide before leaving,' she said at last.
'You're coming back,' he returned, and waited a brief moment before adding casually, 'Or there is always the following day, if you like.'
Eve gave herself no chance to think about it. 'All right, we'll go Wednesday. I'd really like to see the view from up there after all you've told me about it.'
His smile was enigmatic. 'That is what I thought.'
This time he drove straight back to the villa, not even glancing along the road he had taken that first night. They went indoors together. Apart from the single bracket lamp at the foot of the staircase the hall was in darkness. With her foot already on the bottom tread, Eve felt his hand close on her elbow,
turning her towards him. Heart thudding, she looked into the unreadable dark eyes and then at the faint curve of his lips. Her own mouth quivered, and she knew that he must have felt the tremor which ran right through her. She wanted to run. yet made no move at all as he put out his hand and drew the flower from her hair, cupping it in his palm.
'It wilts,' he said. and released her. 'Remember, tomorrow you rest. It's a strenuous climb from the cable car to the summit of the volcano, and we must not exhaust you for the journey home.'
He crossed the hall to take the corridor leading to the salon as Eve went numbly up the stairs. Safely in her room she dropped her stole on to the bed and stood there in the darkness biting hard on her lips. Ramon had known exactly how she felt down there. had known that if he'd kissed her then she would have put up no resistance, and he had deliberately refrained. What kind of man was it who could stand back and mock the emotions he himself had aroused? The answer stared her in the face. The kind of man she could love—did love, because she couldn't help herself. You couldn't docket love. she realised Nothing about it was neat and tidy. Back home there was Gavin, kind, dependable, honest, and trustworthy. a man who deserved to be loved and who loved her. while Ramon treated life itself as a game to be played to his own rules and couldn't care less who got hurt in the process. Yet it made no difference. Given the chance, she acknowledged to herself, she would trade in a thousand Gavins for
just one small part of Ramon's heart. And that was something she was going to have to learn to live with.
Despite her tiredness it was early when she woke. Finding it impossible to sleep again, she got up and put on a bathing suit and made her way down to the pool. As usual Juan was there before her. Sometimes she wondered if her future brother-in-law slept at all. He swum to the edge to rest his elbows along the overflow rim and grin up at her.
'Can you not persuade Lynn of the joys of early rising?' he said 'I have tried, but it has little effect.'
'You'll be in a better position to convince her after you're married,' she returned, smiling. 'Although I have a feeling you'll have to use force to do it. It's one of those things, isn't it? A matter of personal preference.'
He grimaced. 'Are you telling me that I should not expect Lynn to change her habits to suit mine?'
'I suppose I am, unless she wants to make the sacrifice.' Fastening her cap under her chin, she added a trifle too caustically, 'You Latins take this dominant male bit a little too far at times.'
Juan regarded her with eyes narrowed against the sun, seemed about to make some comment, then smiled suddenly and pushed himself off from the side with a backward thrust of his feet. Eve stiffened as a shadow fell across her.
`Do you call this resting?' asked Ramon.
From the corner of her eye Eve could see the edge of his blue trunks and one strongly muscled thigh, but for the life of her she couldn't have turned her
head to look at him directly. The light was too clear, and he already saw too well.
'Some call this relaxation,' she said. 'It depends how strenuous you want to be. I was just going to float around for a while before it gets too hot out here. Does that meet with your approval?'
He laughed. and moved forward to stand in front of her, tall, lean, and hard. A medallion gleamed among the hair covering his chest. Eve found herself studying it with a kind, of desperation, spelling out the letters in her mind with no idea at all of what they meant. 'Everything about you meets with my approval,' he said. 'Even when you snap at me like a puppy. Why are you avoiding my eyes?'
That made her look up, as he had certainly anticipated. 'I wasn't,' she denied. 'I was ... interested in your medallion.'
`You've seen it before.' He said it lazily. 'I always wear it. It protects me from my enemies.'
'Is one enough?'
His mouth curved. 'That's more like it ! I was beginning to think you were not feeling yourself this morning.' He waved a hand to his brother on the far side of the pool. 'Juan is exhaustingly energetic. I think I might simply float around with you instead this morning.'
Eve could hardly say she didn't want him, and anyway it would hardly have been true. She stayed in the water a bare ten minutes all the same before excusing herself on the plea of drying her hair, and left the two men together.
They were at breakfast before Ramon saw fit to
mention that as they were not making the trip to Teide he had decided instead to drive over to the plantations for the first time in weeks and discuss various matters with Tio Jose who ran that side of the family business. He did not ask Eve to accompany him. With Lynn learning to make a real Spanish paella in the kitchen, and Señora Perestrello busy with her household accounts, the day stretched endlessly ahead. Tired as she had genuinely felt last night, Eve was by now fully recovered, and in many ways regretting the postponement of the excursion. When Pedro came to tell her that she was wanted on the telephone she thought at first that it would be Ramon phoning to tell her that he had decided after all to return for her and make the trip. When the caller announced himself it was several seconds before she could even remember who Tony Randolph was.
'Look,' he said, 'I've been thinking about the other night and ... well, to put it bluntly, the more I think about it the sorrier I am that I didn't stay and sort things out there and then. You did say you weren't tied up with this Perestrello chap?'
'Yes,' Eve admitted, wondering what was coming. 'I did say that.'
'Then I think it's a bit off his dragging you off like that in the middle of a conversation. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I have a feeling you might have agreed to come out with me if he hadn't interrupted. Right?'
Eve hesitated, reluctant to deflate him with a flat denial, and not all that certain that she would have
refused under different circumstances. 'I might,' she agreed cautiously. 'But ...'
'Then how about making it tonight? You go back on Thursday, don't you?'
'Yes,' she said. 'I do. And I'm sorry, but I'm afraid I couldn't possibly meet you tonight. I shall be spending the next couple of evenings with my sister.'
'Then meet me today—this morning,' was the prompt response. 'I've got the day off, and I haven't seen all that much of the island yet. There's a place down in the southeast part of the coast where the bathing is supposed to be excellent. We can get a meal there too.' Obviously Tony Randolph was not used to being refused. 'I really would like to talk to you again and correct any wrong impressions you may have gathered,' he added persuasively. 'I'd have you back any time you say.'
On the point of refusing again, Eve paused suddenly. She was at a loose end, and where would be the harm? In some ways it might even be a bit of a relief to spend a little time in the company of one of her own countrymen. 'All right,' she agreed without stopping to think any further about it. 'But not as far as that. There are ple
nty of places nearer here that I'd like to see myself.'
'It's your choice.' He sounded agreeably pleased. 'What time shall I pick you up?'
'In an hour,' she told him, swiftly calculating how long it would take him to get out here. Impulsively she added, 'I'll walk down to the road and save you coming all the way up to the house.'
'Fair enough,' he agreed after a slight pause. 'An hour it is.'
Eve put down the receiver with mixed feelings. Having said that she would go she was more or less committed, and yet already she was more than half regretting the hasty decision. She had known Tony Randolph for less than fifteen minutes altogether, and here she was arranging to meet him in secretor as good as. She would have to tell Lynn where she was going, of course, but she shrank from the thought of Señora Perestrello knowing too. Not that it could be kept from her—or anyone else for that matter. She thought of Ramon's reactions, and her chin lifted. There was nothing wrong in what she was planning. She was going around in circles, making mountains out of molehills. She was going to spend two or three hours in the company of a rather attractive Englishman who was missing his own people. And that was all.
Nevertheless she found it difficult enough to face Lynn's surprise when she told her that she would be going out for lunch with the Englishman who had been at the party.
'I hadn't realised you'd actually met him,' said Lynn. She paused. 'Supposing Ramon gets back before you do. What shall I tell him?'
Eve conjured a look of surprise herself. 'The truth, of course. What else? It's no concern of his.'
Her sister smiled a little. 'I doubt if he'll agree with you.'
Eve doubted it too, but the reminder served only to strengthen her resolve. In fact, she acknowledged,
the realisation of Ramon's disapproval was more than half the reason for her acceptance of the invitation. He thought he had her just where he wanted her. It would do him good to realise that she was still very much her own mistress.
She reached the road just a couple of minutes before the open tourer came racing round the corner, and returned Tony's smiling greeting with a faint sense of anti-climax.
'I thought we'd go down into Candelaria,' he said when she was in the car. 'There's a short cut from just below here which will save us 'going all the way back to Laguna.' He glanced at her appraisingly. 'You know, you're even more attractive than I remembered. I hardly deserve to have you here with me after the way I retreated the other night.'
'There was no reason for you to have stayed and faced it out,' Eve rejoined quickly. 'After all, we had only just met.'
'But your escort failed to appreciate our casual manners,' on a dry note. 'Has he kept tabs on you like that the whole time you've been here?'
'More or less, I suppose. It's the way the men here are.' She changed the subject. 'I gather you're still finding things a bit dull when you're not working?'
'Not only then. A job is a job; I don't have to like what I'm doing. I'm an engineer because my father was one before me, and I was an easily led youth. It's no sinecure.'
'Is that what you want?'
'Doesn't everybody? Profit without undue effort, that's my motto.' His grin robbed the statement of any seriousness. 'Money does all the talking in this world.'
'Cynicism doesn't really suit you,' Eve returned, smiling back. 'You're not the type.'
'A clean-cut English boy, eh?'
'Hardly a boy,' on the same light note. 'How old are you, Tony? Thirty?'
'Thirty-two.' He looked at her quizzically. 'Too old?'
She laughed. 'Oh, one foot in the grave! Anyway, it hardly matters, does it, seeing that we shan't be meeting up again after this.'
'I don't see why not. I shall be back in England for the autumn. Nothing to stop us meeting to compare notes then, is there?'
'About what?' she hedged.
'Life, sweetheart. Seriously,' he tagged on, I'd like to have that to look forward to. Unless there's someone likely to object. Is there?'
'No.' There wouldn't be, she thought, by then.
'Then perhaps you'll let me have your address and phone number, and I can get in touch.'
Why not? thought Eve unemotionally. Tony appeared to be good light-hearted company, and she was going to need some of that in the future. 'All right,' she said.
Tony stayed light hearted company throughout the following hours. They laughed a lot, and talked about everything under the sun. Eve felt relaxed and at ease with him in a way she had never felt
with Ramon, and she refused to acknowledge that she missed the stimulation of that very lack. After a rather early lunch at Candelaria, Tony persuaded her to take the spectacular drive down the southeast coastline to El Medano, and up to Grenadilla to see the camels still used in those parts as beasts of burden, returning by way of the lesser roads through the foothills. It was a rather longer expedition than Eve had anticipated, and by the time they had once more gained the track which led up on to the mountain road it was already approaching five o'clock.
'What's the hurry?' Tony inquired when she expressed her concern over the lateness of the hour. 'They won't eat you if you're a bit later than they expected, will they?' He caught something in her expression, and his own changed a little. 'Am I wrong,' he said after a moment, 'or do I get the impression that you slipped out without telling anybody about this jaunt of ours?'
'Of course not,' she denied hastily. 'My sister knows where I am.'
'But your future brother-in-law doesn't,' shrewdly. 'Why not?'
'He wasn't there to tell.' Eve was beginning to feel like a schoolgirl caught playing hookey from class. 'I just seem to have been out rather a long time, that's all,' she finished lamely. 'Lynn might be wondering where we've got to.' She went on swiftly, 'It's been a lovely day, Tony. I've enjoyed it.'
'Me too. Pity you're going back so soon. It would
have been great to repeat it. Still .. .' he patted the breast pocket of his sports shirt comfortably . . . 'I've got your address, and we can do something about that when I get back home. I must say, I'm glad I made the effort to get in touch with you this morning. I didn't see any reason why that Perestrello chap should get away with keeping you under lock and key when you don't even belong here. Doesn't Lynn mind the thought of being kept in purdah for the rest of her days?'
'Wrong country,' Eve returned on a deliberately light note. 'And you're taking the whole thing too seriously.'
'Yes?' He sounded doubtful.
It was almost twenty minutes past the hour when they eventually reached the drive entrance. Eve was thankful that Tony didn't insist on coming to the door.
'Thanks again,' she said, getting out of the car. 'It made quite a change.'
'Yes,' he smiled. 'Well, don't forget we have a date in about four months from now. Goodbye, Eve.'
She stood and watched him out of sight around the bend in the road, turned to make her way along the drive and froze in her tracks as an engine started up somewhere ahead. Next moment the familiar white coupe shot round the corner and came hurtling towards her. Ramon drew to a skidding halt bare feet away, and got out of the car with a definite menacing look about the set of his shoulders. His eyes had lost all of their lazy good humour, Eve
noted in the endless moment it took him to reach her. They were blazing; furious; dangerous.
`Where have you been?' he demanded.
`Just along the coast,' she said, a belligerent note entering her voice involuntarily.
`And your English friend? He left you here?'
She looked back at him steadily. 'I don't think he'd have received a very warm welcome if he'd brought me any further.'
'No.' His lip curled. 'You are proud of yourself?'
Her chin tilted. 'Don't get it all out of perspective, Ramon. It was an innocent drive, that's all.'
'Then why did this man not come and make himself known to Madre first? Or why did you not tell her your plans instead of leaving Lynn to make your excuses?' His tone was caustic. 'Have you no
sense at all that you gladly accept an invitation to meet so casually a man you've met only once—and that briefly!' He was speaking swiftly, furiously, his accent more pronounced than she had hitherto known it. 'Or is it that you find you prefer the brief affair after all?'
Eve's hand swung up in an arc which ended on his cheek. It was a vicious slap, and it left its mark in the red weals which appeared as if by magic on the olive skin. Horrified, she watched them deepen and extend. What had come over her? She had never done anything like that in her life.
It seemed an age before Ramon spoke, and when he did he sounded strained, as though even then he was fighting to keep himself in check. 'You don't know how close you came to getting that back,' he
said. 'If you ever try it again I'll give you the thrashing you deserve. Now get in the car ! '
Eyes blazing, Eve opened her mouth to retort, then closed it again abruptly. He was more than capable. She slid wordlessly into her seat when he opened the door for her, sitting there with her pride choking her as he reversed up the drive at a speed which would normally have had her heart in her mouth. Lynn was standing on the steps when they got there. With the marks still standing out vividly on Ramon's cheekbone it was obviously no time to be asking any questions, but the younger girl looked at her sister as though she had never really seen her before. Only when Ramon had vanished indoors, tight-lipped and silent, did she venture to speak.
'Juan rang through a few minutes ago to suggest that the four of us ate out in town tonight. I don't suppose there's much use in thinking about it now.'
'I shouldn't imagine so for a moment,' Eve agreed heartily. `No reason why you two shouldn't go, though.'
'I don't think Juan will want to once he realises what's happened.' A bright curiosity in her eyes, Lynn added, 'Am I allowed to ask what did happen?'
'Nothing very much. It was just a misunderstanding.' They were in the hall now. Eve welcomed the dimness and coolness. 'How long has Ramon been back?'