by Robyn Donald
She should have been happy. Especially here, in Australia’s tropical north, a place she’d always wanted to visit.
When the first day’s work was finished she relaxed for a moment in the coolness of the hotel foyer. She had just tilted her head against the white cane back of the chair when she heard his voice.
‘Thank you, that’s all.’
Of course she was hallucinating, if you could do that with voices. It wasn’t the first time this had happened; she had quite often ‘seen’ Flint, only to discover that the man bore no real resemblance beyond the most obvious aspects of height and build and colouring.
Fortunately for her sanity few men were as tall as Flint, or possessed his breadth of shoulder. Few had hair that exact shade of brown bordering on auburn; few moved with his lean ranginess and lethal power-packed grace, and even fewer had his unpressured, commanding air.
So she opened her eyes to prove herself wrong, and there he was, checking in at Reception. No other man had such a forceful profile, or a scar curling sinisterly down his tanned cheek. He towered over everyone else in the foyer, reducing them to nothingness, his hard-honed masculinity barely trammelled by the lightweight tropical suit he wore.
Aura’s heart stopped. She didn’t breathe, couldn’t move; he had come, he had found her!
When he turned and casually scanned the foyer Aura almost sagged with pain, because clearly he hadn’t known she was there. For a moment astonishment flared in the golden eyes, until he reimposed control and they turned to quartz, clear and depthless.
She was not going to fall apart, she was not going to make a fool of herself. It took all of her willpower, every tiny spark of it, to force herself to nod as he walked towards her, to stretch her lips in a smile.
‘Aura,’ he said with as little emotion in his tone as in his eyes.
The sound of her name on his lips gave her more pleasure than a hundred of the photographer’s easy compliments. She inclined a serene, composed face towards him. A couple of months assuming expressions in front of the camera had given her much more confidence in her ability to hide her thoughts.
‘Hello, Flint. What are you doing in Cairns?’
‘Business,’ he said briefly. He stood looking down at her with hooded eyes.
Several women passed in a laughing, chattering group, their glances flashing from one to the other, lingering on his impassive features. Aura had to fight the desire to send them on their way with a few scathing words.
‘Has something gone wrong in Robertsons’ operation here?’ she asked lightly, wondering whether he could hear the intensity behind her words.
‘Something did, but it’s all right now.’ He sat down opposite her. ‘What are you doing?’
She shrugged, and told him.
‘Modelling?’ He didn’t try to hide his surprise. ‘You have the face for it, but I thought you had to be six feet tall and built like a greyhound.’
‘I’m modelling for a range of cosmetics. All they need is a face and legs and skin,’ she told him casually.
His brows lifted. ‘Are you enjoying it?’
‘It’s a living.’
‘I imagine you’d be very good at it,’ he said, and it wasn’t a compliment.
Her answering smile was ironic. ‘Thank you,’ she said sweetly.
Nothing had changed. He still thought she was nothing but a money-grubbing little opportunist, out for what she could get. No doubt he considered modelling to be another way of selling herself.
‘How long are you here for?’
She said, ‘Another day. You?’
‘I’m leaving tomorrow morning.’ He smiled, and his eyes glinted as they slowly searched her face. ‘Have dinner with me tonight,’ he said.
Of course she should refuse, and of course she didn’t. She might not love him, not as she loved Paul, but instead of being weakened by absence the strange, physical enchantment that imprisoned them both in its unseen snare had strengthened into an unholy sorcery. She could taste her need on her tongue, feel it throb through every cell in her body.
‘I’ll meet you in the bar at seven,’ he said, getting to his feet in one smooth motion.
Although convinced that she might just have made the greatest mistake in her life, Aura nodded.
Back in her room she looked at herself, and sighed. Her eyes were brilliant and huge in her face, the pupils dilated into wildness. Even her lips seemed to have altered, grown soft and hungrily sultry.
She had learned ways of putting on cosmetics that dramatised her physical assets, and after she showered she used them, outlining her eyes with subtle precision, colouring her mouth carefully. Her hair she swept up to give her a bit more height; she picked a frangipani flower from the floating bowl in her bathroom and tucked it into the swirl on top of her head, pleased that the satiny petals with their golden throat contrasted effectively with its burgundy lights.
She chose a plain dress the exact colour of her eyes, letting its soft draping do all the emphasising necessary. When she was ready she surveyed her reflection in the mirror. She looked a different woman from the one who had been engaged to Paul; she looked—glamorous, she thought with a faint smile. Almost decadent.
The hotel was small, elegantly making the most of its location on a tropical lagoon, much of the public area open to the warm, fragrant air. Before she reached the lifts she stopped and looked out across the fairy lights in the exquisite, palm-haunted garden. Unknown, sensual perfumes floated on the sultry air. Excitement bubbled within her, keen and poignant.
She was not naive enough to believe in any future for them. He didn’t love her, just as she didn’t love him. But they were both free agents.
He was waiting for her in the bar, but so, unfortunately, were the rest of the photographic crew. They waved; Aura smiled and waved back, but headed steadily towards Flint.
Getting to his feet, he gave her a narrowed, unsmiling look. ‘Do you want to join your friends?’ he asked.
‘If you want to meet them it’s all right by me.’
‘Not particularly.’ His voice was indifferent to the point of rudeness. He waited until she had sat down before saying, ‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Dry white wine, please.’
‘You won’t get New Zealand whites here, but if you’ll trust me I should be able to find you one you’ll like.’
‘Yes, of course I trust you.’
It sounded oddly like a vow, a promise. He gave the order to the waiter who had appeared the instant Flint looked up—he had that effect on waiters—then sat back and looked her over.
‘You look different,’ he said, the rasp in his voice more blatant. ‘It’s amazing, but you’re even more beautiful than you were when I saw you last.’
The beginnings of a blush stained Aura’s cheeks. ‘Tricks of the trade,’ she said dismissively. ‘It’s amazing what you can do with cosmetics.’
‘Then I suppose I should be flattered that you took the time to use them, but I can remember seeing you with no make-up on at all, and you were just as stunningly beautiful.’
The blush heated into a full-blown wave of colour. He laughed quietly, and as the drinks arrived changed the subject, slipping with polished ease into an approximation of the pleasant chit-chat of old friends. Picking up her glass, Aura noted that he had ordered the same wine for himself, and sipped the delicately flavoured liquid with interest.
‘How long have you been here?’ she asked. He had been right about the wine—it was delicious; but then wine was clearly his hobby as well as his future.
‘I got here at the crack of dawn this morning.’
Aura lifted her lashes. ‘You keep long hours.’ Not a hint of desolation, of anger because he hadn’t contacted her, of the pain his defection had caused, disturbed the calmness of her voice.
Something of the forceful assurance of the man showed through for a moment. ‘It’s part of the job. In this case somebody panicked over nothing so I had very little to do. How l
ong have you been here?’
‘A day.’
‘Where do you go when you’ve finished with Cairns? Back to Auckland?’
‘Bali,’ she said. ‘I believe I have to pose draped over a water buffalo, and then wade through a rice paddy or two.’
‘Be careful of water buffaloes, they don’t like Westerners’ smell.’ He gave a white, ironic smile. ‘There are some truly impressive rice paddies there. Whole hills, mountains almost, terraced by heaven knows how many people over the centuries.’
Aura, who had travelled very little, envied him his experience, although, she thought fleetingly, she didn’t envy the cynicism that hardened his eyes, or the lines it had bracketed on either side of his mouth. Not that they detracted from his appeal; in a strange way they added to it.
He didn’t talk about his job at all, but they drifted from scenery into politics, and she realised that he had a grasp of the inner workings of many other countries that could only come from an insider’s understanding.
They had never sat like this, just talking, ignoring the blazing pull of the senses. She enjoyed it very much. Paul rarely discussed politics with her; he said that he spent all day thinking, he wanted to relax his brain when he came home. Aura had thought this entirely natural. Until that moment she hadn’t realised how much she had missed the ebb and flow of conversation, the exhilaration of sharpening her wits against others equally keen.
When at last the wine was finished, he said, ‘I thought you might like to go to a restaurant a few miles away in the rainforest. The food is superb, and the place itself is interesting.’
‘It sounds lovely.’
They went by taxi, drawing up outside a two storeyed building, the upper floor supported by massive wooden columns. Beside the steps great pots stood, some with plants burgeoning in them, most empty, their superb shapes and glazes harmonising with the building and the setting. Creepers festooned down, flaunting brilliant flowers in a variety of forms and hues. Plants with monstrous foliage, huge leaves cut and slashed into a myriad shapes, added to the tropical ambience, the air of other-wordliness. Around them the trees of the rainforest pressed closely.
‘It’s like a jungle hideaway,’ Aura exclaimed in delight.
‘I think that’s the impression the owners wanted to achieve.’
Until that moment Flint hadn’t touched her, but he took her elbow as they climbed the steps, and the touch of those lean fingers sent a feverish tremor up her arm and straight to her heart.
She sent him a swift sideways look. What would it be like to live with him, to share the mundane things of life, a bathroom, breakfast, weeding the garden, washing the dishes? Heaven, she thought hollowly. It would be heaven.
The restaurant was small, the tables rough-hewn wood; the chairs, however, were extremely comfortable, and the food, a marvellous combination of South-East Asian flavours with European, wonderful.
Over dinner they talked of everything, of books, of films, their likings in art. Yet although she was singingly happy, almost exalted, Aura hungered for more personal subjects; she wanted to know so much about him, things he had no intention of revealing.
Crashing the useless, wishful need, she set out to enjoy this evening, because this was all she would ever have of him: dinner in this restaurant, his conversation, and the hidden yet compelling tug of attraction that seemed to be binding her ever tighter, ever more helplessly, in its coils.
‘How did you get that scar?’ she asked over coffee, spinning out the time.
He gave her a sardonic look. ‘When I was fifteen I was carrying a coil of number eight fencing wire across a paddock. A hen pheasant flew up from under my feet. I tripped, and the wire-end caught my cheek.’
Aura grinned, her eyes glinting mischievously. He laughed, wryly amused.
‘It looks very piratical,’ she said. Perhaps it was the wine, or perhaps just the magic of the evening, but now she was bold enough to follow with her forefinger the thin line from his cheekbone to the sharper angle of his jaw. As her finger quested down it tingled at the slight abrasion of his beard and the heat of his skin.
Eyes gleaming, he waited until she had reached the end, then pressed his hand over hers and kissed her palm, his tongue tracing the slight indentation of her life line.
Silently he asked a question. Colour heated her cheeks. Silently she answered it. He put her hand down and looked across the room, summoning the waiter.
Without speaking she sat beside him as the taxi drove through the sweet darkness to the hotel. She waited while he paid the taxi off, went with him into the foyer of the hotel and across to the lifts. There were a couple of other people in their car, so they didn’t speak until they were in the corridor.
‘I have a suite. I think we’ll be more comfortable there,’ he said.
Aura froze. For a moment her brain balked, scraps of thoughts floating through it.
Oh, I want to—he’ll think me a slut—he already thinks I wanted to marry Paul for his money...
‘Yes, all right,’ she said composedly.
Nothing, she thought with a bleak humour that surprised her, could be as wonderful as she imagined making love with Flint to be, so it was bound to disappoint her. And then, perhaps, she’d be able to get on with her life and find a man she both loved and wanted.
His face impassive, Flint unlocked his door, then stood back to let her go through.
Already Aura was regretting her decision, but the reasons for making it still held. She was tired of being bound on the rack of her own desires. She wanted to sate them, and by exhausting them be free once more.
His room was bigger than hers. Neater, too. Apart from a briefcase set beside the desk there was no sign of his presence. A half open door on the far wall revealed a huge bed.
‘Would you like something to drink?’ he asked.
She shook her head. The frangipani blossom in her hair fell to the floor, and she stooped to pick it up, holding the warm thing in the palm of her hand. ‘I don’t really want a drink,’ she said under her breath.
‘What do you want?’ His voice was just as quiet.
Aura’s fingers contracted and the flower was crushed, although its fragrance lingered on her skin. Turning, she dropped it into a wastepaper basket.
‘Must I spell it out?’ she asked in a low voice.
‘No.’ He came up behind her, and took her shoulders in his hands, drawing her back against his chest. The curtains weren’t drawn so she could see their reflections in the glass, she small and pale in contrast to the wide shoulders of the man who held her, his darkly intent face turned, as was hers, to the window.
The slow movement of his thumbs over the slender bones of her shoulder, the soft warmth of his breath stirring the tendrils of hair, the heat and promise of strength that emanated from the lean graceful body behind her—all joined to set strange tides pulsing through her.
‘Why?’ he asked levelly.
Her shoulders lifted in the smallest of shrugs. ‘Why did you ask me? Does it matter?’
‘No, I suppose not. We both knew we had unfinished business together.’ He turned her and looked down into her face with unveiled appreciation, his eyes pure flame.
Aura felt that look burn through her, so that the old Aura, the woman who hadn’t understood that passion could be a living force, sloughed away like a paper skin, curling and twisting into the unique past. She had never before felt so much part of a moment, so vividly, hectically aware of this moment, this man, this room.
‘You are so beautiful,’ he said levelly. ‘You tear my heart out, do you know that? I look at you, and I’m unmanned, a supplicant at the gate of your beauty. Are you going to let me in, Aura?’
His words affected her so powerfully that she couldn’t speak. There was nothing personal in his desire, merely a detached male hunger for beauty, the need to make it his, to assume command over it and by doing so lessen its impact.
But that was what she wanted, too. That was why she was there. His
simple, stark statement of passion shook her as florid protestations could never do. Appalled and excited in equal parts by his honesty, she nodded. By satisfying his desire and hers she could at least give him something, although it wouldn’t be the one thing she wanted to give him. He wouldn’t take her love.
For of course this passionate attraction she had so despised was not just lust. It was love. She loved this man as she had never loved Paul. Paul had been the answer the lonely, forsaken child in her had sought, the man who would be loyal and never leave her, never let her be lonely and unsure again.
What she felt for Flint so far surpassed that need to be protected that the two desires had nothing in common.
‘Yes,’ she said, and reached up her arms and brought his face down to meet hers, his mouth to touch hers.
For a moment he stood still, long enough for her to wonder whether he was so dominant that he needed to take the lead at all times. Then his arms tightened around her and she knew that she had been wrong. He kissed her with elemental, white-hot hunger, immediately taking advantage of her silent gasp to thrust deep and sensually into the sweet depths he found.
Her knees gave way, and still with his mouth on hers he picked her up and carried her through to the bed, tearing his mouth free only to bury his face in her throat for a moment. His eyes caught and held hers as he slid her down his body, revealing as nothing else could his state of arousal.
Aura gasped again, and his hard mouth tilted crookedly. ‘You drive me insane,’ he said roughly. ‘No other woman has ever been able to make me hard just by looking at me. Do I do that to you, Aura, with your hair like a burgundy flame and your green, green eyes set like jewels in your black lashes?’ His fingers found the hidden zip of her dress and worked it down. ‘Does your body tighten, and your breath hurt your lungs, and your heart beat like a kettledrum in your ears?’
The dress came loose; he flipped it over her head and looked at the rich treasure revealed to him, smooth ivory curves of breast and waist and hips, the plane of her stomach with its seductive dimple, the narrow silk briefs that hindered further exploration.