Substitute Bride

by Margaret Pargeter

  She lay on the beach, but felt too listless to swim. After lunch she went upstairs and sat on the bed, but that led her to wonder what Rick would think if he was to return unexpectedly and find her there. Did she really want to look like a slave girl waiting for her master? Flushing at her own stupidity, she went down to the beach again and because of her aching head lay down under one of the numerous palm trees, where she eventually fell asleep.

  Later she stirred herself and went back to the house to change for dinner. She wore a pale silky dress in which she looked beautiful, although she hurried more than usual so as to be downstairs before Rick arrived. If he did come. Perhaps he had gone with Belasco and she would be none the wiser until he sent a message from Barbados?

  When he walked in, half an hour later, she was leafing through the same magazine for the umpteenth time and beginning to feel sick with worry. She tried to smile, but her face felt stiff. Her must have entered the house the back way, as she often did herself, and had obviously showered and changed. Emma didn't allow her glance to linger more than seconds on the well-fitting black pants, tightly belted to lean, powerful hips. Her breath catching, she remembered how they had felt moving against her and hastily raised her eyes higher, to his cool, open-necked shirt.

  'Have you had a good day?' she managed, rather acidly, as he nodded in brief acknowledgement to her travesty of a smile and went to pour himself a drink.

  'Not really,' he replied, tautly she thought, as if Belasco's dry observation had been correct and he was definitely in a bad mood. As she frowned over this, she heard him say, 'And you?'

  'Belasco left,' she replied dully, 'and I went down to the beach.' Flushing painfully, because even now she could scarcely bring herself to look at him calmly, she added, 'There seemed nothing else to do.'

  Glancing at her quickly, Rick threw back his whisky in one go, pouring himself another. 'You sound bored?'

  When she didn't reply, he glanced at her sharply again and appeared to remember he hadn't offered her anything. When she declined a dry sherry he didn't persist, but his mouth tightened as she shook her head.

  Emma knew it must seem as if she was acting childishly, but she feared a drink might give her the kind of courage she could well do without. Whatever happened, she mustn't risk a repetition of last night, not when Rick obviously despised her. Why should he think she was bored? Was he offering her an excuse to leave the island? Well, he could go and jump in the lagoon! she thought rebelliously. She liked St Lusanda and she was staying!

  Her small face mutinously set, she assured him she was never bored. 'I told you I like it here,' she said, doing her best to meet his dark, watchful eyes, so he would know she meant it.

  To her surprise he drew a deep breath and offered, almost lightly, 'Tomorrow, if you like, I'll take you sailing. We can take our lunch and relax, I believe it might do us both good.'

  What was he playing at, or who with? Emma had no wish to be mouse to his cat. She distrusted the almost eager glint in his eyes. It confused her as much as the hint of anxiety when she hesitated. 'Won't you be too busy to spare the time?' she asked stiffly.

  He frowned, his face paling, a muscle twitching at the side of his mouth. 'Maybe I deserved that,' he muttered grimly, 'but I had a lot to think about today. It—it hasn't been easy.'

  As she had never heard his decisive voice falter before, Emma's eyes widened. For no reason she could think of, hot colour flooded her cheeks, and because it embarrassed her, she found herself persisting irrationally, 'Should you be wasting time going sailing?'

  'Do you know,' he teased, some of the brief tension leaving his face, 'you're beginning to sound like a nagging wife already!'

  Her eyes puzzled, she gazed back at him. He was suddenly smiling and talking quite naturally, if with a hint of forced determination which she couldn't quite fathom. He was like a man who had set himself a course and was doing his best to stick to it, regardless of his deeper inclinations. Yet when intuitively she sensed he was begging her to meet him halfway, she dismissed it as nonsense. Hadn't that been her trouble all along? Wasn't she forever imagining he was changing towards her? Men like Rick Conway were too arrogant to beg. In her case, probably all he was after was a kind of unarmed truce until they parted. Knowing this, Emma felt a great reluctance to spend the next day with him. He was a man who never missed a thing, and she might so easily betray her love.

  It seemed less than sensible, after working this all out, to find herself agreeing to go with him, without further argument. Her only consolation lay in the fact that she managed to speak coolly.

  She also managed to listen coolly, when he spent the next hour discussing where they might go and what they might do. For the rest of the evening he bewildered her greatly, for while he made no attempt to touch her he rarely removed his eyes from her strained young face. After making every decision possible about the proposed trip, he took her in to dinner, during which he told her twice she looked beautiful—and in such a way that she found it difficult to believe he wasn't sincere. Afterwards he surprised her even more by playing her favourite records and talking to her at length about Canada.

  It might have been a perfect evening if he had come up to bed with her. This Emma admitted to herself with burning cheeks. But at eleven he merely noted that if they were to make an early start it was time girls of her age retired. He said he had work to do and would be up later, but although she lay for a long time in the bed they shared, waiting and wondering, he never came. When she woke in the morning there was no imprint of his head on the other pillows, and she wondered if he had slept downstairs or if he had continued working throughout the night.

  If Rick had worked all night he looked remarkably fit when she met him downstairs for breakfast. For a moment she panicked at the sight of him. He was clad only in a faded blue denim shirt and matching shorts, and she felt herself responding almost helplessly to a sense of shared sensuality. For a bewildering moment she knew a practically irresistible longing to be in his arms and had to turn away before he guessed at the emotions which threatened to tear her apart. It didn't help, somehow, that when she regained control and turned back to him, his eyes, when they met hers, appeared to be smouldering.

  As they set off across the bay, Emma wondered why she had worried so much about the trip. They were not alone. The young man who had been Belasco's assistant was with them and although he kept at a discreet distance she was always conscious of his presence.

  'Why did you bring him?' she asked Rick impulsively.

  'For the ride,' he replied tightly, but as she shrank from him he controlled his anger. 'I'm sorry, Emma.'

  Not at all enlightened, she glanced at him, frowning, noting suddenly the lines of strain around his mouth and eyes. 'Didn't you get any sleep at all last night? I listened, but I never heard you come upstairs.'

  Flushing hotly, she regretted her impulsive tongue when she saw his eyes darken with a renewed flicker of the flame which had unnerved her earlier. But he merely said, 'There was too much to do.'

  'Doesn't your overseer do most of it?' Thoughtfully Emma studied the blue horizon. 'He called at the house a few days ago and had coffee with me. He seems a very nice and efficient young man.'

  'You didn't mention that,' Rick said curtly.

  'I must have forgotten,' she replied uncertainly.

  His voice hardened. 'Well… next time he calls you aren't at home. Not that he will be calling again!' he added, with cold emphasis.

  Unhappily Emma bit her full bottom lip to stop it trembling, but was unable to do anything about the sudden tears in her eyes. 'You'll never learn to trust me, will you, Rick?'

  'Oh, hell!' he muttered, half under his breath, his jaw tight with a kind of self-derision. Then, making a visible effort to check a further release of his feelings, he spoke more rationally. 'It's not you I wouldn't trust, Emma.'

  While her colour deepened again, his eyes went closely over the full curves of her slender young figure, as if he never wante
d to look elsewhere. Savagely, although his voice was low, he exclaimed, 'My memory will take me back as far as two nights ago, you know. I can remember the feel and taste of you. I can understand how any man might find you irresistible. And you have to believe that once he's tasted the honey a man might become maddened for more.'

  As his voice roughened, Emma began trembling, as a strange heat invaded her limbs. Rick looked as though he would liked to have carried on where he'd left off and, as if she had no will of her own to resist him, she took an involuntary step towards him.

  The tenseness of her face, the shaken way in which she uttered his name, appeared to bring him to his senses. It was obvious he thought he had frightened her and he placed a reassuring hand on her arm. 'I'm sorry, Emma,' the chiselled planes of his face relaxed slightly, into wry cynicism, 'I seem to be letting myself get carried away. Why don't we concentrate on learning to be friends for a change? We might even find we like each other.'

  Shaking her head blindly, Emma turned and stumbled away from him to the other side of the launch. Didn't he realise she loved him? Learning to like him didn't come into it. Already, although she couldn't be sure exactly when it had happened, she was hopelessly committed. Now, if she had to learn to do anything, it would have to be how to do without him, when he sent her away.

  Rick didn't follow her unsteady flight, but a few minutes later he called that coffee was ready. Grateful for his tact, that he had given her time to pull herself together, she managed to return to his side with a relatively easy smile. After this the day passed without incident, the only other slight crack in the even tenor of it occurring when Rick came to help her remove her snorkel after they had been exploring the reefs.

  They had anchored in a bay off the shore of a deserted island where the beaches were pink and white and around the exotic coral reefs the water went down, crystal clear to a depth of over a hundred feet. About an hour after lunch they left Dan in charge of the boat while Rick had shown her an underwater world of such beauty it had left her dazed. Perhaps this was why, after leaving the water, she fumbled so much with her equipment that he was forced to come to her assistance.

  Clearly having no wish to touch her if he could avoid it, he sighed impatiently. 'Come here and let me see what you're doing. I never knew such a child for getting in trouble!'

  Emma submitted with ill grace as he completed in a few seconds what she hadn't been able to accomplish in as many minutes. 'Do you always have to be so superior, Rick?'

  'I am superior,' he tapped the tip of her delightful nose lightly, 'and don't you forget it!'

  'Women are equal,' she dared protest.

  'Not my women,' he taunted. 'Certainly not my wife.'

  Briefly, as her eyes dropped from the intentness of his, she let her glance roam over him, allowing herself the luxury that wouldn't be hers much longer. He was so tall and broad and so virile. She supposed he wasn't strictly handsome, but his features were so rugged and dominating he could make most other men seem effeminate by comparison.

  'Rick,' she breathed, suddenly forgetting everything but that they were alone together, her voice suddenly husky.

  He in turn was also doing some slow surveying. Emma's bikini was brief, but he had no obvious compunction in letting his gaze strip what there was of it so that he might explore the creamy fullness of the rose-tipped curves which lay under the two wet triangles of thin cotton. Suddenly she found herself in his arms, his breath warm on her face, while his bare muscled thigh pressed against hers making her aware of the way she was arousing him.

  His hand slid in circles to caress her sunwarmed shoulder as he bent with a thick exclamation to find her mouth. Her protective instincts did react feebly, but these he overwhelmed easily merely by increasing the pressure of his demanding lips. She felt her blood race, her senses spin as he drew her so close she felt she must be welded to every muscle and sinew of his hard body. Her lips parted under the insistence of his, and while her mind reeled she knew intuitively that he wanted her. Wanted her so badly that she suspected if Dan hadn't been near he would have taken her there and then.

  Burying his face in the warm curve of her neck, he thrust her bikini top aside with skilled fingers. Then, as his mouth dropped lower to explore the thrusting softness of her breasts, her nails dug wantingly into the sweat-damp skin of his broad back. Pushing his hands through her long, loose hair, he held her fiercely, so that she felt the drag of his teeth on her throbbing skin.

  Then, as she shuddered convulsively, he gave a muffled groan and she was free. It happened so quickly she was unable immediately to do anything but force open heavy lashes to stare at him. Because there seemed no reason for his sudden rejection, she whispered beseechingly, 'Why, Rick?'

  For a moment he hesitated, his eyes on her unsteady mouth. 'There are reasons,' he replied bleakly, his jaw taut.

  One of those reasons could be Veronica? And whatever else it had been, Emma felt she should be grateful that something had prompted him to let her go. How could she have been about to surrender herself to him again so easily when he had never come near her since making love to her the other night? Her cheeks cold with a painful humiliation, she glanced blindly towards the boat.

  'I think I see Dan waving,' she improvised, not caring whether Rick believed her or not. He might be just as glad as she was of an excuse to leave.

  He appeared to be. 'We'd better get back,' he agreed tightly, on a note of anger that made Emma flinch.

  Oddly hurt by it, she began hurrying towards the rubber dinghy in which Rick had brought them ashore.

  'Hadn't you better get dressed?' he called after her curtly. And, as she spun around on a gasp, '.Not that your shorts are much of an improvement on what you're wearing, but they might at least deter Dan from attempting to push me overboard and having his way with you.'

  Feeling he was making a visible effort to lighten the atmosphere, rather than being dog in the mangerish, Emma tried to meet him halfway but failed. The careless rejoinder she sought failed to materialise. Bitterly she heard herself saying instead, 'Would any man want a girl like me?'

  His face hardened, but almost as if he welcomed her antagonism. 'I think we have some evidence of that.'

  'Evidence!' she laughed, her eyes suddenly wild as she didn't pretend to misunderstand him. 'Ben, who vowed he loved me yet went off without even saying goodbye, and Miles Ray, who also swore he loved me but hasn't made any attempt that I can see to rescue me.'

  'Did you give him an excuse to? Didn't you ever pretend you loved him?'

  Emma went white and this time didn't answer. What was the use of denying it? Hadn't she done so, without success, again and again?'

  'Forget it, Emma.' Staring at her closely, Rick sighed heavily, his face almost as pale as her own. 'That's not a question I should have asked as I already know the answer. I seem to have made, and am still making, one hell of a mess of things.'

  Dan looked as though the approaching dinghy had just woken him up. He was surprised that they wanted to leave so early. Grumbling goodnaturedly, he stirred himself reluctantly.

  'We can always come back,' Rick said carefully, watching Emma's wistful face as they set off.

  'How long will we be staying on St Lusanda?' she shrugged, trying to pretend she didn't care whether they came back or not.

  'That depends,' he frowned.

  'On what, for heaven's sake?' Deliberately she made her voice querulous. 'If we're going to be divorced, wouldn't it be wiser if we separated as soon as possible?'

  In savage undertones, so Dan wouldn't hear, Rick retorted tightly, 'Separate rooms—separate lives. Is that what you really want?'

  'You insisted on that from the beginning,' she stammered angrily, refusing to let herself imagine he suddenly didn't want these things himself.

  His eyes flashed. 'And when I dragged you into my room, did you like what I did to you?' The question seemed torn out of him and there was a white ring around his mouth.

  How could a girl a
nswer that, when the very air was cold with hostility? On the night he mentioned Emma had been in both heaven and hell. The other way round, she corrected herself numbly. It was torture, the subsequent longing she was swamped with to repeat the experience. Her only comfort was that Rick didn't know. Nor must he guess! 'I can't remember,' she lied.

  'Am I supposed to be flattered?' he grated. 'I know exactly how you feel. You don't have to spell it out. You can return to your old room tonight and I promise never to enter it again.'

  If this reduced Emma to silent misery for the rest of the journey, a fresh shock awaited her as they approached St Lusanda. There on the jetty stood Gail and Veronica. Gail was waving, but Veronica was not.

  Emma went cold all over and swayed. Veronica hadn't wasted much time, she thought bitterly. Rick was staring at the two girls almost as hard as she was, but she couldn't tell what he was thinking.

  As Dan, showing off before his glamorous audience, circled widely, Emma murmured foolishly, 'Veronica and Gail…'

  'Yes,' Rick snapped tersely, cautioning Dan. Rick frowned. He looked impatient, a slight flush lying over his high cheekbones. Suddenly he turned to Emma, meeting her anxious eyes. 'We have to talk,' he said urgently, 'very soon.'

  Because of Veronica. Dully Emma gazed at him, painfully reluctant to ask in so many words. He must be desperately worried for fear Veronica should discover what had happened between him and his wife. Didn't he know she would never betray him? She might be a fool, but she could never do that.

  'Soon,' he insisted, apparently not sure if she had heard him.

  'I suppose so.' She averted her eyes quickly so he shouldn't see her tears. 'Will—will they be staying long?'

  'I shouldn't think so,' he replied indifferently.

  Emma, wishing he hadn't left her with the impression that as far as he was concerned they were welcome to stay as long as they liked, bent her head and said nothing more.