by Lynne Graham
Perhaps pride hadn’t let her admit even to herself how completely she had become a victim of Dane’s powerful attraction. Once, she had congratulated herself on her immunity. In retrospect she couldn’t begin to excuse her own wilful blindness. Of course she couldn’t bear other women to look at him, another woman to touch him. Of course she had treasured and revelled in every moment of his exclusive company. She loved him, she loved him as she had never loved Max.
Something inside her had died when she saw them, mercifully numbing her because she couldn’t stand that amount of pain all at once. But there was nothing deathlike about the agonising bite of bitter jealousy that now brought her closer to screaming point.
And Dane didn’t want her love. She was sure of that. He had never intended this sojourn abroad to be anything more than a convalescent holiday.
She had been drifting along in a sort of fool’s paradise, convincing herself that she only wanted his friendship. She couldn’t drift any longer. At any time she might betray herself and she couldn’t take that risk. Dane would pity her. He would find another guilt trip to carry and all along she’d seen that remorse in him and obstinately shut her eyes to the evidence. The gifts, the unasked-for and unexpected attention … Dane’s way of saying sorry, and that was all he had to give her. The give-poor-Claire-a-good-time syndrome, the treat for the deprived child … it was so humiliating, and yet she had let him do it because subconsciously she hadn’t been able to face the time when they would have to part.
But she couldn’t let it continue. It was already clear that Dane was pining for more exciting company … and resenting the lonely nights he spent here on Dominica. Now was the time for her to talk cheerfully of leaving, for there was no future for her with Dane. The first move would have to come from her and it would have to be soon, very soon. With Mei Ling already on the scene, her own graceful bowing out was imperative.
She returned to Grant trailing a shawl. At the bar she fixed herself a rum cocktail and drank, still seeing Mei Ling welded to Dane, two bodies in perfect sychronisation. ‘Would you like a refill?’ she asked Grant steadily.
‘Don’t mind if I do.’ He was too self-absorbed to notice the twin spots of feverish colour over her cheekbones.
When the players strolled back in, she had recovered sufficiently to talk again, a haze of defiant, bone-deep pride pushing her into stubbornly bright smiles while she held her head high.
Had he yet or hadn’t he? She was preoccupied with masochistic and obsessive thoughts on whether Dane was at the outset or in the middle of his affair with the beautiful model. How uncool of him to be making love out on the terrace as if some great intrigue was afoot when really there was no intrigue at all. They had never had a marriage. He didn’t owe her loyalty. He had told her in so many ways of his indifference to her as a woman. It wrenched her with literally physical pain to accept the end of the evening when it came and calmly head upstairs for bed.
CHAPTER SEVEN
WHAT time it was when she finally gave up the ghost of sleep Claire had no idea. The old house was silent as the grave. Shedding her damp nightdress, she tugged on a silky beach skirt and stuffed her feet into mules. A cotton knit sweater completed the outfit. She left the house by the terrace, heading down the slope to the path that twisted through the trees to the beach. The night air was still warm and balmy, and she crouched down on the sand where the surf whispered almost to her toes.
Dane was with Mei Ling. Of course he was. Normally he called in to say goodnight and tonight he hadn’t bothered. She bowed her head.
‘I saw you crossing the lawn from my room.’ Oblivious to the fact that his stealthy approach had frightened the life out of her, Dane dropped down beside her, his thigh muscles straining against the worn fabric of a pair of disreputable jeans. ‘What are you thinking about?’
Her breath rattled in her throat. ‘Going home,’ she said abruptly.
‘That’s weeks away. Don’t tell me you’re homesick.’
She started to rise but his hand on her wrist prevented her. ‘I suppose I am a bit,’ she lied, for the last trappings of her life in Yorkshire had fallen away. Looking back, she saw lost and wasted years when she might have been out in the world finding the self Dane had somehow found for her. Tell me if you want me. The temptation to do so was incredibly strong when she glanced at his hard, handsome profile and appreciated that she had few such occasions left to her. For with Mei Ling around, she was decidedly superfluous.
‘You’ve changed.’ He threaded a casual hand through her tumbled hair and pushed the vibrant strands back behind her ear. ‘I used to be able to read you like a book.’
She went rigid. ‘Really?’
‘Not any more. You haven’t forgiven me, have you?’ he murmured, holding her eyes with cool challenge, a half-smile shadowing his chiselled mouth. ‘If I hadn’t been so furious I would have realised that you just weren’t capable of that size of a deception. Money’s not that important to you.’
‘It was a misunderstanding.’
‘A farce,’ he contradicted coolly.
‘What changed your mind? You thought I was lying,’ she reminded him ruefully.
‘It started changing the day your bag was turned in. Once I realised Max was fact, my suspicions started to seem quite ridiculous. You were as taken aback as I was when the Press appeared on our wedding day. I’d still like to get my hands on whoever’s responsible for that,’ he grated.
Claire sighed. ‘I thought it might be Sandra or Carter. I dare say we’ll never know. Carter, I think really,’ she reflected. ‘He’s the spiteful one. Still, it hardly matters now.’
‘It mattered one hell of a lot at the time,’ he argued grimly. ‘Have you been in touch with Max? You never mention him.’
And that was worrying him now? Did he really think she could breeze back to another man after living with him? Let him think that she still loved Max. It was what he wanted to think. Indeed, considering how she felt about him, she supposed she was very fortunate that he did think that. She could still look him in the face as long as he believed her impervious to his attractions. That charismatic charm he could unleash at a moment’s notice was basically meaningless. He had used it on her quite unashamedly throughout her stay here to ensure that she relaxed. Or maybe he wasn’t even aware that he did it.
‘I wrote before we left London.’ She gave the lie stiffly. It was suitably fuzzy.
He cast her a derisive glance. ‘Very proper. Perhaps you’d like to see this. The last piece of the puzzle.’ He laid an envelope on her lap. ‘Carter sent it to me in Jamaica. Coverdale had it in his keeping to be delivered as soon as the estate was settled. It confirmed what I’d already worked out for myself.’
She stilled. ‘It’s from …?’
‘Yes, Adam’s last words, calculated to have driven Carter up the wall, had he done what was expected of him,’ Dane completed drily.
Her grandfather’s spidery scrawl was hard to decipher. The gist of his message was one of sanctimonious superiority and her lips compressed bloodlessly as she read.
‘His precious family milked him of his money over the past thirty years. They borrowed constantly off him. He got very bitter about their greed when his remaining investment failed to prosper,’ Dane explained. ‘And in an uncharacteristic spurt of daring he plunged what was left into a silver mine in the Transvaal and lost every penny.’
Her eyes were damp. ‘It’s sad when he was always so careful. What does he mean … “Dane was right"?’ She squinted suddenly at the foot of the page and hastily went on to the next. ‘He’s talking about me and that row you had with him … Good lord, how could it have involved me?’
Dane searched her bemused features wryly. ‘Why not? No one else up there gave a damn about you being used when it took the heat off them,’ he derided. ‘He took you out of school and shut you up to rot with him in that house as a bloody servant. He’d never have treated you that way if you’d been born a Fletcher. He was too m
uch of a snob.’
‘But what did you argue about?’ she persisted.
‘I found out he wasn’t planning to leave you anything in his will. Despite everything you’d done for him, he was still acting as if you weren’t family.’
Restively she sprang up. ‘He gave me a home.’
‘Big deal!’ Dane followed her more gracefully and walked down the beach with her. ‘I suggested he let me take you down to London and get you fixed up with some sort of job. He blew a fuse and accused me of having sexual designs on you. Hell, I was so disgusted I just walked out. I decided I’d extend the hand of help if you needed it when he was gone.’
Her skin was hot as a furnace. She was sick and tired of being an object of pity to Dane. It seemed she had never been anything else. From childhood to adulthood. At least he hadn’t made love to her out of pity, too.
‘That was kind of you,’ she allowed curtly.
‘Well, just how were you going to live when he died?’ Dane demanded. ‘You were turning into a real hidebound old maid. Still, I must have planted some seed of guilt in him that day. He did change his will in your favour. Then when he lost his money he decided Carter would be very well served if he still married you under the belief that you would be an heiress. If you had taken Carter it would have been months, not days, before Coverdale discovered that there was no inheritance to hand over.’
She was bitterly hurt by the adage of old maid flung so casually, and by the creeping suspicion that Dane’s apparent liking for her over the years had been purely based on compassion for someone in a less fortunate position than himself, someone without the freedom of choice that counted so very highly in Dane’s view of life. So he had arrogantly come to the funeral prepared to play Santa Claus and Pygmalion! Just for once he had bitten off more than he could chew.
‘Can you imagine the life I would have led with Carter once he learnt that there wasn’t going to be any money?’ she muttered sickly.
Dane retrieved the letter from her clenched hand and dug it into the rear pocket of his jeans. ‘I don’t know. He might have been kinder than I was,’ he mused harshly, reinforcing her conviction that his every gesture since had been guilt-orientated. ‘Forget it now, Claire. It’s over.’
No, for her at least it was far from over. Tragically, she had married Dane. Dane had been the one to suffer from Adam’s manipulations, and that letter had come too late to save her and Dane from the shockwaves.
‘I ought to go back to bed.’ Her eyes lingered on him, then swerved away. ‘I thought you were with Mei Ling.’
‘Would it have bothered you if I had been?’ he countered cynically.
‘Yes!’ Angered, she stood her ground. ‘I don’t have to be jealous to find promiscuity offensive,’ she flared.
He caught her to him with powerful hands. ‘Is that a dog-in-the-manger attitude, or something more?’ Hard amusement brimmed in his bright chilling gaze.
‘It’s a very awkward situation.’
‘Awkward?’ Her control appeared to antagonise him. Then he laughed softly and took her tender mouth fiercely, and she went under as if she was drowning, trading him kiss for kiss, guided only by raw hunger. His hand thrust up her jersey and closed over the pointed swell of her breast and she gasped, her knees threatening to buckle under her as her body surged wantonly against the lean, masculine lure of his.
He pushed her away suddenly and she fell off balance, down on to the grey, volcanic sand, sobbing for breath. Her love for him was struggling for utterance and she wrestled with it in the aftermath of his rejection, flinching from an outside image of herself confessing her thraldom on her knees at his feet. Did she want his pity again?
‘I can get sex anywhere,’ Dane slated roughly, cruelly. ‘I don’t need it from you, Claire.’
He swung away and strode up the beach. He left her there in a state between rage and anguish. She almost shouted after him. But she saw the futility of fight. He didn’t want her. He had never really wanted her. That they had briefly burned together in a conflagration of desire was one of life’s more inexplicable mysteries. Dane would not use her again. Damn you, Dane, for being a gentleman too late! Her clenched fist punched into the sand in an agony of despair, for she would have taken anything he would have given her now as a last memory, a last resort when pride was sunk beneath a tide of apprehension of what life would be like without him.
In the morning she was dull-eyed when she went down for breakfast, and Dane was alone at the table. ‘Grant and Mei Ling won’t surface for hours yet,’ he forecast. ‘They only flew back from South America yesterday. I’m sorry about last night.’
She downed the glass of fruit juice poured for her. ‘It’s true about tropical nights,’ she joked determinedly. ‘And it is time I went home. I know we haven’t discussed that openly before but …’
‘You’re damned right we haven’t.’
She swallowed. ‘We both knew I couldn’t stay for ever and … and I’d like to see Max,’ she threw in for good measure.
‘Tough!’ Dane answered softly. ‘You know most girls learn at their mother’s knee that men don’t like to be chased. Leave it. Don’t make a fool of yourself.’
Claire went white and then red, meeting that cool, unapologetic scrutiny. If he was waiting for Max to appear here, she was never going to get away, and she was terrified of staying in case he guessed how she really felt. Nor could she tolerate to stand on the sidelines closing her eyes politely to the affair he was obviously planning with Mei Ling.
‘We’ll head into the National Park,’ Dane continued smoothly. ‘Come on, Claire, eat your breakfast.’
In half an hour he had her tucked willy-nilly into the jeep, ignoring her visible lack of enthusiasm. The rain forest was lush and damp, the well laid trails sprinkled by pools of sunlight, but Claire was unable to appreciate sights that usually kept her chattering. After a brief walk they came to the Emerald Pool, a grotto fed by a waterfall and possessed of quite unearthly beauty. Overhanging giant feathery ferns and wild orchids supplied a profusion of colour that stole her breath away, however.
‘It’s fantastic,’ she agreed in the silence. ‘I’m never going to forget this island.’
Dane regarded her narrowly. ‘I came to a decision last night,’ he drawled. ‘You don’t want the house turned into a hotel. I’m going to have it done up and I’ll give it to you. You won’t have to forget Dominica. You’ll own a corner of it.’
She couldn’t quite believe her ears, and she whirled round to face him. ‘But I don’t want you to give me the house!’ she said in horror.
‘You’re getting it.’ His strong jawline had an aggressive thrust. ‘I just wanted you to know before we leave on the yacht. It’s something you really want and you’d never have told me on your own. You don’t like jewellery much, do you?’
She flushed unhappily. Dane had not once come back from Jamaica empty-handed. A diamond bracelet, a necklace and a ring languished in the box on her dressing-table. Jewels worth a king’s ransom that she shrank from. It was as though Dane felt that he had to buy himself out of their short-lived relationship. One more symptom of the feelings he didn’t have for her, and his own clear conviction that he had to somehow compensate her for sharing his bed, however briefly. And now he planned to hurl a house at her, too. ‘They’re lovely …’ She hesitated, reluctant to offend.
‘If Max had given them to you, you’d have been delighted,’ he interposed drily. ‘But not me.’
She was curiously cold, in spite of the heat. ‘You don’t owe me anything, Dane.’
‘I just want you to be happy.’
She flung him a bitter smile. ‘It can’t be bought.’
‘You’re still having the house,’ he delivered squarely. ‘It’ll be put in your name.’
‘Damn you, I don’t want it!’ she repeated angrily.
He looked at her coldly, so coldly that she shuddered. ‘Max might. I take it you haven’t heard from him yet?’
&nbs
p; The insinuation was so unbelievably insulting, she almost choked on her bitterness. He was gift-wrapping her for Max. It was incredible. Only Dane would have been capable of such a gesture. He would rest easy only when she was restored to Max and his conscience was sated. Unutterably humiliated now, Claire could feel hysteria closing over her like a suffocating blanket.
‘Not yet,’ she answered shakily.
Dane, misinterpreting her evident emotiom, folded his arms round her in a move that was so disgustingly big brotherly and asexual that she felt violent. ‘I’m sure you will,’ he soothed. ‘If you don’t, I’ll get in touch with him.’
In disbelief, her palms lodged against his chest to push him firmly away. ‘Don’t bother!’ she snapped.
‘When I said I could contact him, I only meant that I could explain,’ Dane replied aggressively.
‘Explain what?’ Her green eyes blazed her outrage. ‘What would you tell him? How would you describe me now? One owner, well maintained, complete new body? Maybe you’d like to run an ad in the paper to flog me to the highest bidder? My God, I despise you for this!’ Biting back a tearing sob she turned her back on him, the sound of footsteps crunching from the mouth of the trail behind them.
‘I think it’s time we got back,’ Dane said without expression. But he was pale beneath his golden tan, doubtless angered by her uncontrolled outburst and her lack of gratitude. As she realised how perilously close she had come to revealing her real feelings, she suppressed a stark quiver of relief. ‘I don’t think I ought to join you on the yacht. I could go home from here.’
‘You’re still my responsibility, Claire.’
She cringed from such brutal candour. ‘No, I’m my own. You’re really not much more liberated than Adam, are you?’
‘You’re different from the kind of women I’m used to. More vulnerable,’ he replied grimly.
She had not required the information. He would not have been wet nursing Mei Ling in the aftermath of an affair. But he would not have been landed with a memory of her as a child—a child, a teenager and a young woman who had inspired a protective instinct that was not easily overcome.