That Special Touch

by Anne Beaumont

  'I wanted to see the sea and Elisa gave me a ride. It was such fun.'

  'Was it, indeed?' he murmured non-committally, then he shut the door and came back to Elisa. 'Who gave you permission to put my daughter on that damned death-trap?' he asked.

  His voice was so quiet, she didn't realise immediately he was keeping his anger under control for Penny's sake, and she answered innocently, 'Nobody, actually, but --'

  'I thought not,' he broke in, and then she became aware of the menace beneath his careful control. 'I don't know what you're doing up here and I don't much care, but if I ever see my daughter on that bike again, I'll wrap it around a tree before you get a chance to. Do I make myself clear?'

  He didn't wait for an answer. He jumped into the Land Rover and drove on before she could get out a single word of explanation. The irony was that Penny turned round to smile and wave.

  For long seconds Elisa stayed where she was, stunned and furious. Then she started the engine and took off, not in her original direction, because that would mean turning to follow his car, but back the way she'd come.

  If there was one thing worse than having one's best intentions misinterpreted, it was being given no chance to defend oneself. The man was a bad-tempered, autocratic, petty dictator. She hadn't wanted to meet him again, anyway, and now she'd ride all around the island if necessary to avoid him.

  Suddenly the white heat of her rage turned into a cold sweat. He didn't—he couldn't possibly!—think she'd come up here in the hope of meeting him again. Certainly Penny had told her they lived in the hills, but there were hundreds of them. It was only the whim of the moment that had brought her this way.

  Was his ego such he thought she'd wangled specific directions out of Penny when she'd sketched her at the cafe? It didn't seem credible, but then neither did her clashes with the man himself.

  Humiliation flooded her cheeks with fresh colour, and when she found a narrow track leading off to the right she turned into it. Anything to get away from the road and any further possible contact with Sinclair.

  Elisa found herself doing the sort of rough riding Rich had deplored, round boulders, through pebbly streams, bouncing over lumps and bumps, skidding on sudden turns, and needing all her concentration to keep herself and the machine together.

  Occasionally she passed a humble farm dwelling, wandering goats with incredibly long silky white coats and once, amazingly, a Corfiot coming the other way on a scooter with a black and white collie sitting nonchalantly between his legs. The man raised a hand in a casual salute, which was more than Elisa dared do, although she managed a smile.

  Eventually, and much to her surprise, she emerged between sand dunes on to a beach of fine white sand that stretched' as far as she could see without a solitary soul or building in sight. She hadn't a clue where she was and she didn't much care.

  Her legs shaking after the tension of her wild ride, her emotions in a turmoil, she left the scooter and walked along the beach muttering things that would have put the curl back into Sinclair's cropped hair if he could have heard them. After a while she calmed down enough to sit down, and that was where she stayed for the rest of the afternoon.

  Which was why, when Sinclair drove back along the road looking for her, he couldn't find her.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Back in her room that evening, shampooed and showered and dressing to go out, Elisa was reflecting grimly on a wasted day. No ghosts had been exorcised, quite the reverse. The empty beach had offered precious little worth sketching, and she had doodled wistful images of Austyn.

  That was normal enough when she wasn't fully occupied, but it had come as a jolt to find Sinclair staring up at her from the page. His cold eyes seemed to be challenging her with questions she had no answers for, and so she'd closed the pad and sketched no more.

  The accuracy of the sketch still haunted her. No more than three brief encounters with the man, each of them charged with enough emotion to warp her judgement, yet she'd drawn his face as surely as if she'd known it for years. And she hadn't even known she was doing it.

  It was frightening, all the more so because she couldn't shrug it off. Little as she wanted to, she had to think it through and she didn't like the conclusion she came to. It was as though, subconsciously, she and Sinclair had recognised each other as enemies from the start. That accounted for the antagonism that crackled between them like static electricity.

  But it didn't account for the attraction that flared as fiercely as the antagonism, two opposing forces that only flowed together in a male-female confrontation. A confrontation she didn't want and neither, she was sure, did Sinclair. So where did that leave them?

  Out on a limb, Elisa reflected sourly, her least favourite position.

  She wasn't strong enough yet to face up to this kind of situation. Emotionally, she still classified herself as walking wounded. One more clout and she could very well go down for the count. Unless, of course, she clouted back, but she couldn't see Sinclair crumbling. He had his arrogance to protect him. And his ego. And his contempt.

  How dared he be contemptuous of her? Everything seemed to come back to that. Within her some reckless streak was raring to meet the challenge, gaining strength with each new provocation so that she was losing more and more control. She was within an ace of throwing out a challenge of her own, and to blazes with the consequences. The passive role had never suited her.

  Belatedly it occurred to her that Sinclair might have succeeded where she had failed, and dismissed their clashes from his mind. Somehow she didn't think so, and she would soon know if she was right. He would come looking for her. He wouldn't be able to help himself. What happened then would be entirely up to her.

  No wonder she was a bag of nerves.

  She was also, much to her surprise, ready to go out. Lost in thought, she had none the less dressed in her usual evening garb of faded, tapered jeans and loose black sweater. Travelling with a backpack limited her choice of clothes, just as it put a stop to impulse shopping. There was no point in accumulating things she couldn't carry.

  The tiny room, behind a taverna, which she rented for three pounds a night was dark, with the solitary window shuttered for privacy, and the light from the bare electric bulb suspended from the ceiling gleamed on her newly washed hair. She had parted it in the centre and it fell in thick, soft tresses about her face and shoulders.

  She added a touch of duty-free perfume to her throat, slung a denim jacket over her shoulder and looked at her watch. Seven-thirty. An hour until sunset. She meant to finish her day off by not working tonight, and decided to walk along the beach until she felt hungry.

  She didn't particularly want to be alone, but it seemed best'. Her thoughts were not the sort she could share with anybody. She switched off the light and opened the door. The last of the day's sunshine should have flooded into the room, but there was a large shape there, obstructing it.

  Sinclair.

  Elisa jumped and stepped back. Then she stood quite still, surveying him with an almost fatalistic calm. There was no sense in being twee or fluttery or deceitful any more. She'd known all along that they couldn't back off from each other, much as they might want to. And, since it was a moment of truth, she was ready to admit to herself that her apparently harmless trip into the hills had been a subconscious search for him.

  This revelation annoyed her so much that she felt a new surge of antagonism towards him. She didn't like to feel helpless. That wasn't the way she ran her life at all. Nor did she like the calm way he was surveying her, looking casually classy in dark brown trousers and loose-ribbed cream sweater, and in no hurry to explain how he had found her and why he should want to.

  His eyes were strictly neutral. No ice, no warmth, nothing but this almost clinical appraisal. What was he looking for, the jugular? And did he think she was going td stand here all night while he gave her the twice-over?

  He looked past her into the tiny room with its narrow bed, rickety chest of drawers and few inch
es of bare floor space between the two. Elisa's irritation increased and she said coldly, 'When you've quite finished...'

  'I didn't come to fight,' he replied evenly. 'I came to apologise.'

  That was the last thing she was expecting, and she cursed him silently. He'd taken her by surprise again. She said, as crisply as she could, 'For what? Looking at me as though I'm some form of low life, intimating I blackmail parents into paying for uncommissioned sketches, or assuming I wilfully endanger children's lives?'

  'You sound as if you have a persecution complex,'

  'I have,' Elisa agreed with false pleasantness. 'It developed the minute I met you. I'd call it justified, but naturally that's just my opinion.'

  She saw his eyebrows draw together and was grimly satisfied. She didn't need to be told he wasn't the type who apologised easily, if ever, and presumably she was supposed to be grateful for his condescension. Well, she wasn't, and now he knew it.

  'Actually we haven't met, not officially,' Sinclair pointed out.

  'Fancy me missing a blessing like that,' she marvelled, and moved to walk past him. 'Now, if you'll excuse me...'

  His arm shot across the doorway, barring her exit, and she walked straight into it. She felt the roughness of his sweater against her throat, but she was too angry to move back. She just turned her head and glared up at him. It was a mistake, because he was looking down and their faces were very close. She felt a betraying flutter of her senses as he said quietly, 'I really am sorry. On all three counts.'

  Elisa moved back then, knowing she'd lose any advantage she'd gained if she stayed so close to him. It was easier to loathe Sinclair from a distance. The slightest touch between them and the issue became confused. She said huffily, 'That's all very well, but why pick on me in the first place? Whatever have I done to you?'

  'Shall we discuss it over dinner? I really would like to make amends. I'm very grateful for you stopping Penny from straying too far today. When I knew what really happened I came back looking for you, but you'd vanished. That's why I'm here tonight.'

  Elisa thought of her wild ride when she'd left the road, trying to recapture all the antagonism she'd felt towards him then. It was slipping away fast, and she needed it to protect herself from him. Somehow she sensed he'd sought her out merely for form's sake. She'd helped his child and she had to be thanked because it was the proper thing to do, but beneath his present courtesy his antagonism towards her was undiminished.

  She couldn't voice these doubts without sounding paranoid, so she said, 'I only did what anyone would have done. There's no need for any "amends".'

  'I think I'm the best judge of that.'

  Elisa was no raving feminist, but his cool assumption flicked her to the raw. 'When you're not being thoroughly nasty,' she told him furiously, 'you're a pompous ass.'

  She struck his arm away and went to go past him. He caught her by the shoulders and swung her round so that she was facing him, and when she tried to pull away she found her back was pressed against the door-jamb. His hands were hurting her, but she knew she couldn't free herself without a degrading struggle she was bound to lose.

  She just had to stand there while he got himself under control, and that startled her, because he gave the impression of a man who never lost control. But he was bending towards her, their faces only an inch or so apart, and as she read his expression she knew she'd cut through the civilised layer to the primitive man beneath.

  She felt a thrill of fear shot through with a wild surge of elation, and knew she'd scored the equivalent of an own goal, because she was feeling pretty primitive herself. For a second she thought he was going to kiss her, waited for it with a thumping, hopeful heart.

  Then he was in control again and she realised to her shame that she was not. She watched his expression close down, saw the flame die from his eyes as they returned to neutral, and heard with disbelieving ears the calmness with which he said, 'I'm sorry. I never meant to get— physical.'

  He made the word sound like an affliction, but perhaps that was only where she was concerned. She felt humiliated, although that was nothing to the deeper humiliation of knowing he must have read the naked desire in her eyes as surely as she'd read it in his.

  The difference was that he'd fought and controlled himself, while she'd had no thought for anything but surrender. He mustn't guess that. She'd die of shame. To salvage what she could of her pride, she said, as soon as she could trust her voice, 'I know. We just seem to bring out the worst in each other. It happens sometimes.'

  It had never happened to her before, although there was no way he could know that. She wished he would go away so she could get herself together. At the same time, she wished he would never go away. She was shattered. Unlike him, she didn't have two skins. She couldn't step from one to the other with ease.

  'Did I hurt you?' he asked.

  She could feel the imprint of his fingers on her shoulders so positively it was hard to believe they weren't still there. Her sweater hid the marks, but it was up to her to hide the sensations he'd aroused. 'That's all right,' she replied as lightly as she could, 'I don't bruise easily.'

  'I can imagine,' he said drily.

  The implication took Elisa's breath away, and she gasped, 'You mean I look the type that's used to being pulled about by men? In fact --' and her anger grew as she followed the implication through '—that's been your attitude all along. You took me for a tramp from the start. You've got a colossal nerve! Just what is it about me that gets right up your nose? I've got a right to know.'

  He wasn't going to tell her. She knew that the moment he turned away and stared up at the hills behind the taverna. 'It's no good looking for inspiration up there,' she snapped. 'I'm down here and I'm only interested in the truth.'

  He turned back. 'Let's get back to the point. We've strayed enough from it.'

  'That's not my fault,' she broke in.

  She might just as well have held her breath, for he continued inexorably, 'When you picked up my daughter this morning she was on the point of taking a short cut through the olive groves to the sea. All she would have found was another hill, and another. Those paths wander all over the place. She would have been well and truly lost and I wouldn't have known where to start looking for her. You did me a good service, for which I'd like you to dine with me, and I'm not in the habit of dining with tramps. Does that satisfy you?'

  'No, it doesn't, and I'm not in the habit of dining with married men, either.'

  'I'm not married.'

  Her treacherous heart did a somersault and then fell flat. It wasn't better that he was free, it was worse. She was vulnerable rebound material. The crazy way her emotions reacted to him was proof of that, and she sensed that underneath this veneer of courtesy he still distrusted her as much as she distrusted him.

  That was no basis for a relationship, even if he was offering one, which she doubted. She wasn't interested in physical thrills. She wanted an enduring relationship—when she was ready—with an uncomplicated, loving man. Sinclair was neither, but there must be just such a man somewhere. The trick was not to get sidetracked before she found him.

  Then she found herself wondering whether he was in the same situation she was. He had a child but he wasn't married. There had to be a trauma somewhere. Death or divorce, she didn't know, but he was too physical a man to be happy living alone. She'd discovered that fast enough and she hadn't even been trying.

  So perhaps...just perhaps...Sinclair was looking for somebody, too, but this time that 'somebody' had to be exactly right. No more mistakes, no more being ground up in the emotional mill. Or that 'somebody' had to be as perfect as the wife she was meant to replace, if it, was that kind of tragedy.

  Either way she, Elisa, didn't fit the bill. That would account for his antagonism. If he was attracted to her against his will, then naturally she had to be choked off before she became a hazard. That was precisely the way she felt about him.

  They might be compatible physically, but th
ey were experienced enough to know that in every other way they were misfits. She wished she could tell him not to worry, they were both in the same boat and she had no intention of rocking it—always assuming she was right about him, of course.

  If she wasn't, she didn't think she was far out. In fact, she was so convinced she'd found the answer to his hostility that she felt a flash of fellow feeling for him. It killed her own hostility stone dead.

  She said quietly, 'It doesn't matter whether you're married or not. I'm afraid that was just my turn to be a pompous ass. Frankly, I lost my temper and my sense with it. I suppose that also makes it my turn to apologise.'

  She glanced up at him. He was looking at her intently, too intently for comfort, but not for the life of her could she read his expression. She cleared her throat, a sign of nervousness she could have done without, then went on firmly, 'You don't have to take me to dinner, but you do have to take this back.'

  She dug in her pocket for her money, counted off six one-hundred-drachma notes, and offered them to him. 'You made me feel pretty cheap when you thrust this on me. If your apologies were sincere, then you'll take it back.'

  He hesitated and glanced into her clean but spartan room. 'You look as if you could do with it.'

  'I'm doing very nicely, thank you, but that's not the issue. How I feel about myself is more important than how much I've got in my pocket. I'm not in the business of conning people.'

  If he doesn't take the money, Elisa thought, I'm going to blow up again and, the way we are, he'll blow up as well.

  He took the money. 'It's a clean slate then, Miss --?'

  'Marshall. Elisa Marshall.'

  'The Elisa part I know.' He held out his hand. 'Rafe Sinclair.'

  Rafe. A clipped, cool name. It suited him. She placed her slim, tanned hand in his and watched it all but disappear as his fingers curled around it. A firm, businesslike clasp, nothing personal about it. How civilised we're being, she thought. Now we've swept our emotions tidily under the carpet, we can behave as though nothing has happened or was ever likely to happen.