That Special Touch

by Anne Beaumont

  She should have felt triumphant. Instead she felt strangely defeated.

  They should never have shaken hands. It was taking civility to the point of stupidity. Her hand felt safe in his, transmitting a feeling of belonging. The message didn't stop there, either. Her body picked it up and tried to sway towards his. Elisa had such a hard time resisting, she couldn't find the extra strength necessary to break the handclasp.

  In the end, he did it for her. He said, 'Goodbye, Elisa.' He stepped back, then walked round the side of the taverna to the road.

  She was left looking at the empty space where he had been. She couldn't see the higgledy-piggledy crates of empty bottles in the yard or the green of the hills beyond. She could only see him, only hear his voice.

  He had called her Elisa. Not a polite 'Miss Marshall', but Elisa. Strange, that, considering how formal they'd become. Was it an acknowledgement of how things might have been between them if they were a little less cautious, a little more trusting?

  Elisa sighed, a soft enough sound but it was heavy with regret. Then she locked her door and set out on her delayed pre-dinner walk. She wandered right along the beach until it curved and became even narrower, and inches of dried seaweed over scattered rocks made further progress hazardous in the fading light.

  She had no option but to turn back. The lights were coming on along the beach and in the hotels and tavernas up on the coast road. A pretty sight, a wonderland in miniature, but this evening she felt no part of it.

  She could have been dining with Rafe Sinclair now if she hadn't been so sensible. Or so foolish. She had done all this walking and she still wasn't sure which she had been. She only knew she felt inexpressibly sad, and that this time her sadness had nothing to do with Austyn.

  It was almost as though the cure was worse than the original sickness. 'The operation was a success, but the patient died,' she said aloud, mocking herself but not feeling much inclined to laugh.

  Well, she'd done one term of lovestruck mooning and she wasn't about to start another. It was time to take decisive action before any more subconscious urges led her astray again. After all, nobody knew quite as well as she did how to bite the bullet and smile as though she were enjoying it...

  'Leaving?' Sue exclaimed. She was flushed and panting after another round of leading the tourists in a vigorous burst of Greek dancing. A tape of western music was playing now, and she and Rich were taking a short breather at Elisa's table. 'It's a bit sudden, isn't it?'

  'That's the way I am,' Elisa said with a smile. 'As soon as I get myself comfortable some perverse streak in me gets the urge to move on. The boredom factor sets in, I suppose. No challenge.'

  It wasn't true, of course; and Rich suspected it. He said, 'A couple of days ago you were full of plans for exploring the island, using this as a base. You said yourself it would be much more practical than starting up all over again in different resorts. What happened?'

  Rafe Sinclair happened, Elisa thought, but she couldn't tell him that. Instead she said lamely, 'I'm restless. Maybe I'm turning into a real vagabond.'

  Somebody at another table raised a hand for service. Sue stood up. 'I'll get it.'

  When she'd gone, Rich murmured, 'You're running again. What from?'

  Elisa groaned. 'Oh, no, Rich, no more analysing for your thesis, please! It may be close to your heart, but it's driving me up the wall.'

  'You mean I'm a boring part of a boring scene?'

  She covered his hand with hers for a brief, affectionate second. 'I don't mean that, idiot! I have three months left of being a free spirit and I intend to make the most of it, that's all.'

  'Ah, yes, the remainder of your "year of freedom". I never really believed what you told me, but you already know that.'

  Elisa was silent. She'd told Rich that, after the steady slog of school, college and job experience, she felt she'd earned a year of freedom before settling down for a further slog of building a career or marrying and raising a family, if not both. It had sounded convincing enough to her, but Rich wasn't an easy man to fool. Too many brains and too much sensitivity.

  She wondered if, under his chilly exterior, Rafe Sinclair had any sensitivity. A man was a bit of a pain without it. Damn, she was thinking of him again. Perhaps moving to another resort wasn't enough. Perhaps she should get off the island altogether.

  Rich was going on, 'A lot of seasonal workers have given me more or less the same reason, yet somehow, with you, it never rang true. You're a beautiful, well-qualified woman. You could get a good job anywhere without travelling with a pack on your back.'

  'You're forgetting the allure of irresponsibility,' she told him lightly.

  'I don't think that's a factor with you. You haven't been truthful, so you have something to hide. That's a simple enough deduction. If you were looking for something—novelty, excitement, adventure, romance—you wouldn't have anything to hide, so the obvious conclusion is that you're running away from something you don't want to talk about. That's why I'm unhappy with your case history. It isn't honest.'

  'Thank you, Sherlock Kenwood,' Elisa said drily. 'If you don't like my case history, drop it.'

  'If I only used straightforward stuff, my thesis would be dull and inaccurate. It's the complexity of motive that makes it fascinating and human. You were happy in your little niche here. What jolted you out of it?'

  'Now you are becoming boring, Rich. Drop it, will you?'

  He looked at her a long time. There were a lot of things he wanted to say, but by a supreme effort of will he bit them back. Instead he said, 'All right, mystery lady, I'll let you off the hook. In return, come back and see me before you leave Corfu. Maybe we can talk some more then.'

  Elisa put her hand over his again and, this time, left it there. 'Rich, you're a smashing man.'

  'But not your man, eh? Shame about that.' Then he shrugged and smiled. 'What time are you leaving tomorrow?'

  'Around midday. I have a lot of people to say cheerio to first, and I won't leave the island without looking you up, Rich. Promise.'

  'Fair enough.' He stood up. 'We'll have a farewell drink later when most of the crowd's gone and we're down to the tail-enders. Is that all right, or do you want an early night?'

  'It's fine with me.' The last thing Elisa wanted was to go to bed until she was exhausted enough to be certain of sleeping. She didn't want to spend half the night haunted by Austyn and the other half haunted by Rafe. She checked her thoughts hurriedly. She was familiarising Sinclair, using his first name. She mustn't do that. He was nothing but a substitute for Austyn, and since when had she been interested in anything less than the real thing?

  Sue came back as Rich left, and sat down to finish her lemonade. She said hesitantly, 'Elisa, if you're going off just like that, does it mean there's nothing special between you and Rich?'

  'I like to think we're special friends. If you mean involved—no, there's nothing like that between us.'

  'Great,' Sue responded naively. 'I think he's terrific, only he's never really noticed me. Maybe I should make myself more interesting for his thesis, lead him up the garden path a bit.'

  'So long as you don't mind ending up in the potting shed... He's a man as well as an academic, remember.'

  'I'm not likely to forget.' Sue grinned, then went on, 'Elisa, is your going away anything to do with the man who was here asking for you earlier on this evening? He said his name was Sinclair and he wanted to thank you for looking after his daughter, or some such thing. I know I shouldn't have told him where you lived, but he was really terrific, too, the type any girl would be glad to have knocking on her door.'

  So that's how Rafe had found her. She should have guessed. 'It was a bit of a risk, Sue. He might have been a weirdo—and you'll have to stop falling for every good-looking fellow you see.'

  'I'm not interested in him. I thought you might be. It seemed a good idea to help things along a bit because, well, that would have left Rich in the clear, wouldn't it? It was only afterwards I real
ised I wasn't doing you any favours because he must be married. I'm sorry about that.'

  'He's not married,' Elisa replied evenly, 'not any more, and he only wanted to thank me for stopping his little girl from getting lost. That's all there was to it.' Was it? she wondered. Was that really all?

  'Then you're not leaving because of him. Great! I thought you might have been trying to disentangle yourself from a married man, and I'd put my foot in it. Er—don't tell Rich what I did, will you? I don't want him to think I'm a scheming bitch, even if I am.'

  'Are you kidding?' Elisa mocked. 'I'm the last one to put any false ideas in his head about me. I don't want any lectures. I've had enough hassle from him already over my wretched case history.'

  How fortunate, she thought, that Sue was so much easier to deceive than Rich. Already the merry brown eyes were gleaming as the little brunette repeated, 'Hassle. If that's that it takes to interest him, that's what he'll get from me.'

  'And may you both live happily ever after,' Elisa replied with a flippancy she was far from feeling. She envied Sue her ability to fall in and out of love without effort or heartbreak. Women like herself, who didn't fall easily, were so much more vulnerable when they did.

  Somebody once wrote that everyone had three loves— a first love, a last love and a lost love. With Austyn she'd thought she'd had all three in one. Now she'd met Sinclair she wasn't so sure, but there was never any reassurance in uncertainty. She wasn't running for nothing...

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Elisa didn't see the Land Rover, or Rafe watching her as he waited for the traffic snarl-up to sort itself out. She was standing by the roadside, waiting to flag down the next bus south. Her heavy backpack was propped against the low wall of a taverna and her face was cupped in Rich's hands.

  'You've got your list of contacts,' he said for the umpteenth time since insisting on taking a few minutes off from the cafe to carry her backpack up to the road.

  'In my pocket,' Elisa replied, also for the umpteenth time, and patting her jeans' pocket as though that would reassure him. 'Don't worry. If things don't work out I can always come back.'

  She thought she'd get that in before he did, and wished the bus would come along because she hated protracted farewells. The trouble was, on Corfu, timetables existed to be ignored. The bus might be on time, it might be ten minutes early or twenty minutes late. There was never any telling, and she didn't want Rich to get heavy...

  He kissed her forehead. 'Right, then, take care.'

  'I will.'

  Still he lingered, moving his hands to her shoulders and saying, 'I'd like to kiss you on the lips. Just once. To see what it's like.'

  Fond of him, she raised her face. He kissed her, then said, 'Hm. Friendly but not frantic.'

  'That's me in a nutshell. You'd better get back to work, Rich. I don't want you getting in a row over me. The bus might be ages yet.'

  He nodded and stepped back. 'Be seeing you, then.'

  'Be seeing you.' She watched him walk away and waved back when he raised a hand in half salute before turning down a narrow path between shops to take a short-cut to the beach.

  The sun was fierce and Elisa tipped her straw hat forward over her eyes. Funny, Rich was the sort of man she meant to marry some day, but never once had she felt in the slightest danger of falling in love with him. I must like making things hard for myself, she thought, slapping away a fly that settled on her cheek, and sitting down on the taverna wall for what might be a long wait.

  She looked not very hopefully for the bus, and noticed for the first time that the traffic wasn't moving. A battered Volkswagen, double-parked, had effectively blocked both lanes and the nearest vehicle on her side was a Land Rover. The next second she was looking into Rafe Sinclair's eyes. He beckoned.

  She hastily looked away. It was a silly, schoolgirlish reaction, made unthinkingly. She had to keep up the pretence or look even more foolish. As the traffic began to move she became absorbed in contemplating the different greens of the tree-studded hills rising sharply behind the hotels, waiting for the Land Rover to pass by.

  It stopped right in front of her. All the windows were open and Rafe sat there, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel. She had to look at him and he said, 'Put your luggage in the back and jump in.'

  No smile, no greeting, just the curt command. Elisa, ever a social creature, couldn't react the same way. She replied breezily, 'Thanks all the same, but no need to bother. The bus is just about due.'

  He didn't argue. He just got out, came round to open the rear door, and lifted her baggage in. Then he opened the front door and looked at her. She wondered wildly if he was going to lift her in, too. Presumably he wasn't working today, because he was wearing shorts and an open-necked shirt with the sleeves rolled up.

  He was roughly the same height and physique as Rich, but Rich didn't overpower her in such a physical, leg-weakening way. She looked at his tanned and muscular arms and legs, and clung to the wall as though it was her last defence. 'What are you waiting for?' he asked.

  Elisa opened her mouth to argue, but the drivers behind, having endured one hold-up patiently, reacted angrily to a second. There was a sudden blast of horns. She panicked, jumped off the wall and into the car. Rafe shut the door on her, got into the driver's seat and drove off.

  'I think I've been kidnapped.' Elisa meant to make it sound like a joke, but it came out more of a grumble. She wished she could treat him like any other man. This terrible awareness of him made her as fluttery as a thirteen-year-old with a first-ever crush.

  'What do you think I am? A white slaver?' he asked, weaving in and out of the traffic on this congested stretch of road.

  'You could be, for all I know.' It was another joke that fell flat. She tried to remind herself they'd parted amicably enough. There wasn't the slightest reason for her to be nervous—and yet she was more skittish than the proverbial cat on the hot tin roof.

  It was his closeness, his bare arms and legs, the overwhelming physical appeal of him. She was terrified of touching him, yet wanted to more than anything in the world. She sat rigidly, staring straight ahead through the windscreen, fearful her eyes or her hands would stray his way if she relaxed for a moment.

  It was like being with Austyn all over again, only Austyn had known and felt the same way. They had been simpatico. With Rafe there was the antagonism, the scarcely suppressed distrust, and only the mindless reaction of body chemicals to bind them together. If they permitted it—which they would not. Even the fervency with which she denied such a possibility had its frightening aspect.

  It suggested that it wasn't Rafe she distrusted, it was herself.

  'Where are you going?' he asked.

  'I don't know,' she replied distractedly, then explained. 'Not exactly, that is. I was going to ride the bus as far as Kavos if I didn't like the look of any place before then. I'm due to meet up with my travelling partner again in Athens in a fortnight, and I want to see as much of Corfu as I can in the meantime.'

  'Does your partner back there know about the one in Athens?' he asked drily.

  'What partner?' She was relaxing a little bit now and she turned to look at him.

  She saw his eyebrows rise as he asked, 'Are there so many?'

  She realised he must have seen Rich kissing her goodbye and said, 'Oh, you mean Rich. He's just a friend.' She couldn't really blame him for jumping to the wrong conclusion. The first time he'd seen her she'd been larking about on the beach with Rich. She cleared up any remaining misunderstanding by adding, 'My partner's a girl, another teacher like me. She's teaching English for a month at an international school in Athens.'

  Rafe's blue eyes met hers briefly before he looked back at the road. 'Your boyfriend didn't look happy to see you go, but I suppose he didn't have much choice.'

  'No, he didn't, because he's not my boyfriend. In any case, I'll look him up before I leave the island,' Elisa replied, beginning to feel resentful.

  'That will be something for him
to look forward to.'

  He sounded so sarcastic, her resentment edged towards anger. 'Whatever, it's no business of yours. Look, your turnoff's coming up. Drop me at this garage. I can wait for the bus there. I don't want to be left in the middle of nowhere like a hitch-hiker.'

  Her eyes widened when he drove straight past the garage and the turn-off. 'Kavos is right down south, miles out of your way. You don't have to take me there.'

  'I'm not,' he replied coolly.

  'Then where are we going?'

  'Eventually, home.'

  'Home? Whose home?'

  'Mine. You wanted to be kidnapped, didn't you?'

  'No, I didn't. Rafe, this isn't funny,' It was the first time she'd used his name, but she was too alarmed to notice it.

  He noticed it, though, and became just as personal. 'Relax, Elisa. You like excitement, don't you? Adventure, the unexpected, close encounters with strange men?' His hand came over and stroked her thigh.

  Elisa jumped like a startled hare and knocked his hand away. Then she dived for the door-handle and scrambled to get out. He leaned across her and grabbed the door as he slammed on the brakes. The Land Rover skidded on loose gravel, then steadied and came to a halt.

  His arm was still across her, holding her in and the door shut. She shrank away from him but he said calmly, 'Sorry about that. I had to be certain you were a decent girl before I hired you. Some of the summer workers are no better than alley cats.'

  'H-hired me?' she stuttered, only slowly coming out of her panic.

  He took his arm away, settled back in the driving seat and started up the engine. 'I'll explain everything over lunch. If you don't want to work for me, I'll take you to Kavos or anywhere else you want to go. Either way, you're safe with me. Am I forgiven?'

  Elisa didn't know what to say. Normally a fast thinker, he had a habit of paralysing her brain. Apparently he took her forgiveness for granted because he drove off with her. When she eventually found her voice, she concentrated on essentials, telling him flatly, 'I don't want to be hired.'