She shrugged. It was of no importance now. Aware that Jason was about to rejoin her on the sofa, she shifted slightly to make more space, quickly twitching the edges of her robe together.
‘So?’ he prompted, noting that her attempt at modesty did nothing to disguise the fact that she was naked beneath the wispy silk, noting his own body’s immediate reaction and quietly despairing of himself.
‘So she was left, literally, holding the baby. I think Gran would have disowned her if she’d got rid of me or put me up for adoption. She had rigid principles, of the “You’ve made your bed, now you must lie in it” sort. Money was tight, so from what I gathered Vivienne settled down to get the secretarial skills she needed to support us all while Gran looked after me.’
‘It’s not a unique story,’ he put in, unable to stop himself. It didn’t excuse subjecting an innocent child to a life without love. That posthumous letter, the olive branch, was making Georgia defend and excuse her mother.
Almost as if she hadn’t registered his comment, she said slowly, as if working it out for herself was something she had to do, ‘Then Gran got ill. My mother signed on at an agency, took temporary jobs so she could work around having to look after the two of us, me and Gran. She was still young, and very pretty, and she wanted what she couldn’t have—fun, nice clothes to wear when she wasn’t working, a life of her own. I once overheard her telling Gran, “I’m stuck with it—what kind of future can I expect? What man would want me, saddled with this wretched child?” But in the end it did work out, because she met Harold, and when he proposed she must have thought all her Christmases had come at once.’
But it hadn’t altered her attitude to her child, Jason reflected. Resentment and spite were all Vivienne had ever offered her daughter. He would never forget the malice in her voice when she’d informed him over the phone of Georgia’s abortion.
Why? Had she been viciously glad that her daughter would never have what she herself had lacked: not just a child—Vivienne had a child—but a child she could love and cherish? And the Georgia who had told him of her pregnancy, who had listened to the plans he’d laid out for their wedding, would have loved their child. He would stake his life on that.
So what had happened in such a short space of time to change her mind?
He gave her a fleeting glance. Now was the time to find out.
But she forestalled him. ‘I’ve been wondering why she left this place in such a hurry. It wasn’t like her to leave so many lovely things behind.’
‘Because she discovered Harold having a furtive fumble with a little waitress on San Antonio. She actually witnessed it, apparently, which meant she couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened,’ he clipped, deliberately crude. Her admission earlier today of her relationship with Harold—or yesterday, as it now was—had come back to him, igniting the sickening slow burn of anger inside him.
He got to his feet, unable to sit still a second longer. He needed to let her know what type of man she’d got involved with when she’d decided to play her stepfather for all she could get.
‘It was an addiction. Silly young girls. Just a bit of fun, nothing serious—that was his excuse.’ Bitterness broke into his voice. He let it stay there. ‘I’m damned sure, with hindsight, he broke my mother’s heart. And ultimately he drove Vivienne to her death. She left the island, fortuitously in time to hop on an airbus, got back to the UK, to Lytham, got in her car and simply drove away. One of the locals said she was driving like a maniac. The rest you know.’
He strode to the door, opened it, turned to face her. But he directed his gaze to a foot above her head. He couldn’t meet her eyes, afraid of the knowing indifference he might see there. Perhaps she had known what the man was like but had been too avaricious to care.
‘An illness in childhood meant Harold could never father a child, which is why, both times he married, he picked out a woman who already had a child of her own. It’s a pity Vivienne didn’t have a son, rather than a daughter. To give him his due, he wasn’t interested in teenage lads.’
Turning abruptly, he told her, ‘Better get back to bed for what’s left of the night.’
He’d promised himself he’d get to the truth about her reasons for aborting their child, but the opportunity had passed. He felt too sickeningly angry over her muddy relationship with Harold to handle the conversation with the tact and patience he knew would be called for.
Tomorrow, he thought, flinging himself face-down on the bed, he would have calmed down enough to talk to her rationally, get the truth and leave.
Georgia woke at midday, but only because Blossom came into the bedroom with a tray of fresh fruit and steaming hot coffee.
The housekeeper opened the shutters and let the bright light in, washing the cool lemon walls with gold. ‘Has that headache gone? Mr Jason said to leave you to sleep, but I thought you needed some food inside you; ’specially since you didn’t eat supper.’
Georgia blinked. Even Blossom’s most solicitous whisper was loud! ‘I’m fine, now, thank you.’ She pulled herself up against the pillows to accept the tray, aware that she’d fallen into bed still wearing the scarlet robe. The dose of whisky Jason had put into her hot milk must have been of knock-out proportions.
Thinking of him injected that familiar squirming, tightening sensation deep inside her. She wished her stupid body would grow some sense, stop responding so catastrophically to him. No other man could do that to her. And more than a few had tried.
Hoping her face hadn’t gone as red as she felt it had, she dug the spoon into the bowl of diced fruit. Inwardly deploring her need to know, and trying to sound off-hand, she asked, ‘What’s Jason doing?’
‘Gone fishin’ with Elijah. Let’s hope it improves his bad temper!’
‘Bad temper?’ What had brought that on? Last night—despite the strange madness that had overtaken them both in the afternoon, and to which, thankfully, he hadn’t referred—he had shown her nothing but consideration, offering her the release of talking about her early years with a mother who had never wanted her. Only when he’d spoken of Harold’s serial philandering had his voice grown harsh, and that was understandable, considering what his mother must have had to endure.
‘Bad mood, more like,’ Blossom amended. ‘Like a black crow sitting on his shoulders! Why want to be like that on such a lovely day?’
Why, indeed? Georgia thought as Blossom left her to finish her belated breakfast in peace. Pouring herself a second cup of coffee, she decided she wasn’t going to let it bother her. After last night there was too much to think about, so today, with Jason safely out of the way, she would just go with the flow, relax, enjoy all that this small slice of paradise could offer.
After her shower she got into her one-piece swimsuit. The amber colour matched her eyes—eyes which seemed oddly wide and innocent this morning.
Pushing her feet into canvas slip-ons, and cramming a floppy-brimmed straw hat on her head, she reflected that she seemed to have left her sharp, street-wise persona back in the coldness of the English winter.
It didn’t bother her. She’d get it all back, no question, as soon as she returned home and took up the threads of her real life again. Then, as she was stuffing her tube of sunblock, her sunglasses and a fat paperback into a flowery cotton shoulder bag, she wondered if this relaxed, go-with-the-flow mood was down to island magic or Jason’s presence.
The island, of course. She dismissed the other possibility out of hand as being utter nonsense. She was feeling good despite his presence, not because of it! And she needn’t give him a second thought, because he was out fishing, bad mood and all. He could keep his bad mood to himself!
The water was perfect. After a few lazily executed breaststrokes Georgia turned on her back and floated, allowing her mind to drift around the sensation of being naked in the gently moving, warm, crystal-clear salt water of the isolated cove.
It was, she decided, a very, very sensual experience. She’d heard that skinny-dipping was
something else, and so hadn’t quashed the sudden impulse to strip out of her swimsuit when she’d reached the water’s edge.
This was a private island and no one came here. Jason and Elijah were well out of the way, somewhere in the open seas, and if Blossom came down to the shoreline and hollered at her to, ‘Get right back here this minute, Miss Georgie, and make yourself respectable!’ she’d ignore her, pretend she hadn’t heard.
But all she could hear was the gentle lapping of the wavelets on the white, hot sand, birdsong from the forest that clothed the hills… And then, terrifyingly, the total disruption of the water beside her, the splash of dozens of cascading waterfalls.
She twisted frantically, her heart pumping, because surely to goodness some great fish was about to swallow her whole, and found herself staring into something far more dangerous.
Jason’s eyes.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THE fishing trip hadn’t worked. He’d hoped that going out in the boat, listening to the lazy, hypnotic slap of the water against the hull, to Elijah’s slow drawl as he recounted local gossip gleaned on the larger sister island, would have eased the black demon from his back.
If anything, the restricted confines of the small vessel had made him even edgier. And when Elijah had pulled in the rods and announced that they might as well go out beyond the headland, to more productive fishing grounds, he’d cried off, stripping down to his black swimming briefs and diving off the stern of the boat into the sheltered blue crystal waters.
He knew very well what was bugging him. That unfinished business with Georgia. Bobbing about in a boat on the Caribbean Sea, waiting for fish to bite, wasn’t going to give him the answers he needed.
And, dammit all, that was what he’d come for. Answers. Nothing else.
A fast crawl for the first few hundred metres had unknotted tense muscles, stretched them, soothed away some of the tension that had been a tight band inside his head since he’d woken at daybreak.
The shoreline of Blue Rock’s secluded cove well in sight, he’d eased off the punishing pace, settled into a leisurely side-stroke, and firmly reminded himself that what Georgia had done to earn her inheritance didn’t matter at all to him.
She hadn’t blinked so much as an eyelash when he’d spelled out exactly the type of man Harold had been. She obviously hadn’t cared, so long as the pickings were rich enough.
Well, she was more than welcome to the lot. He wasn’t and never had been, interested in his stepfather’s fortune. And he definitely didn’t care what she did in her private life. The guy who’d answered her number on his third or fourth attempt to contact her after she’d left Lytham was the same guy who’d answered when he’d phoned her that first time, to let her know the time of Harold’s funeral. He’d recognised the voice.
Obviously he was her current live-in lover. He’d certainly sounded pretty sour when he’d given Jason the information that Georgia had left that morning for her island in the sun. In a strop because they were a couple and he hadn’t been invited along?
Whatever. It wasn’t any of his business. The only thing he was interested in was her reason for aborting their child. For seven years he’d believed he’d managed to put the anger behind him, forget it, forget her. But meeting her again had brought it bubbling back to the surface, and he couldn’t get it out of his head.
He only missed colliding with her because he’d neared the shoreline and decided to wade back through the chest-high water.
She was floating on her back, the silky soft nakedness of her open to his eyes. With a ragged gasp that stopped his heartbeats he took in the sheer beauty of her body, the provocative sexiness of the pert breasts tilted towards the blue sky, hair streaming around her head like a fantastic species of seaweed, the tiny span of her waist and delicately curved tummy, the long and lovely legs slightly parted.
With another ragged gasp his heart thundered on, and he was floundering, struggling to get his footing, because the tempting loveliness of her had made him giddy with raw, primitive desire.
Another flurry of water, thrashing the satiny surface to a white-lace foam, and she was twisting around with the litheness of a mermaid, the evident fright in her wide golden eyes deepening and sharpening as they locked with his.
Tense expectancy danced between them, as sharp and as brilliant as the sunlight glittering on the sea. It locked the air in his lungs, his voice in his throat. His eyes were drawn to her; he wanted to feast on her beauty, ached to touch her, possess her. Touch and possess every bewitching inch of her.
Briefly closing his eyes, he hauled himself together. He would not be led down that road again, no matter how hard he was tempted.
‘Sorry if I startled you.’ He was the one to find his voice first. Was relieved to find it creditably normal. She was still looking as if a bomb had just exploded in her vicinity.
He found his footing on the sandy bottom, slicked wet hair back off his face and suggested evenly, ‘Time we both got out of the water, got covered up before we burn,’ and waded back towards the shore, wryly aware of the hollowness of his words.
He was already burning. Burning for that delectable body. And he had nothing to cover up with. Of necessity he’d left his denim cut-offs and T-shirt back in the boat.
Thankfully, though, his body’s automatic response to the unexpected, glorious nakedness of her was back under control. She was behind him, probably reluctantly following his advice, seeing the sense of protecting her skin from the sun. Regretting her naked state? Or did the little witch enjoy driving men mad? Did she revel in the power she had?
Too late for modesty now, though she probably wouldn’t see it that way. He found her abandoned swimsuit and turned briefly to toss it to her.
She caught it deftly, but before she clutched it to her body he saw the sunlight glitter on the myriad droplets of water that spangled her skin.
Battening down the driving urge to follow the tracks of each and every one of those droplets with his lips, his tongue, his hands, he turned his back to her and said, ‘I’ve got something to ask you, and it’s important.’ His voice sounded raw. ‘We’ll talk over there, in the shade.’
There was a gaily patterned umbrella erected near the low cliffs. He headed for it, collecting her beach bag and canvas slip-ons as he went. No towel. She wouldn’t have seen the need for one, so near to the house. Pity. He could have spread it over his lap.
But thinking of the abortion, keeping his mind exclusively on that, should put a dampener on any wayward designs his body might have.
The black swimming trunks he was wearing were disgracefully brief, Georgia thought with a tinge of annoyance as she padded over the hot sand behind him. No man had the right to look so sinfully sexy. The sun-kissed tan of his skin was sleek over hard muscle and bone: wide, rangy shoulders, broad, sinewy back tapering down to that hard, flat waist, mean and moody hips and long, long strong legs.
It was too much! She tried to keep her eyes pinned anywhere but on him, but they seemed to have taken on a will of their own and kept winging back to him.
Sighing, she followed to where he’d settled in the shade. She’d scrambled into her swimsuit, wondering how much of her nakedness the water had hidden from his eyes and deciding that she’d be better off not coming up with the answer to that.
‘What is it you want to ask?’ The swimsuit, which had seemed so ordinary when she’d put it on, now felt too high-cut on her hip bone, the neckline too low, the whole thing too revealing. She hovered, wanting to take flight. But he had said it was important. Probably something to do with her inheritance. ‘I think we’d be more comfortable back at the house, don’t you?’ she suggested hopefully. After she’d dressed, armoured herself against those steady, smoky, penetrating eyes.
‘And have Blossom order us to make ourselves respectable and sit down to lunch like good children? I don’t think so, do you?’
The apparent wry amusement was underpinned by a definite strand of steel. He looked and sound
ed like a man who would tell anyone who got in the way of what he wanted—and that included the redoubtable Blossom—to move! He’d obviously decided he was going to say whatever it was that had to be said right here, and if she didn’t want an argument on her hands she’d have to do as she was told.
She’d give him five minutes. She wouldn’t be able to stand being in his as-good-as-naked company for longer than that.
Not bothering to disguise her sigh of resignation as anything but just that, she sat, drawing her knees up to her chin and wrapping her arms around them. Hiding as much of herself as she could.
She would just have to try to pretend the sexual attraction wasn’t there.
But it was going to be very, very difficult.
Fixing her eyes on the horizon, she asked, ‘Well, what is it?’
She had no real reason to feel nervous, she reassured herself. Yesterday he’d got the message that she didn’t want him to touch her, and last night he’d been kind. If you discounted the long years of enmity then superficially, at least, they were almost back to being buddies…
‘Tell me what happened to our baby.’
The content of his question shocked her far more than that suddenly terse, unforgiving delivery. And then anger and loathing for his desertion of so long ago raged right through her. She twisted her head, scornful eyes raking his stony face.
‘Why the interest now?’ The pain of loss came flooding back. Her voice was harsh with it. She’d wanted that lost child so badly. ‘Seven years ago, when it mattered, you were invisible!’
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