by Robyn Donald
And exactly what was the relationship between Susan and Nicholas now?
“It turned out to be a fake,” Susan said regretfully, “so Nicholas made them take it back.”
Peter Sanderson’s laugh had an artificial note in it. “I thought you liked it.”
“I did, but I have an objection to being sold something as genuine when it’s not,” Nicholas said.
Mariel looked down into the pale golden liquid in her glass. In the back of her brain she knew that the bubbles kept on rising, that there was noise and laughter in the bar, that the conversation around her continued, but all she could think of was that Susan Waterhouse and Nicholas had been lovers who had shared a flat and bought pictures together and decided where to hang them.
It hurt damnably. She felt as though he’d betrayed her, and telling herself that she was reacting with utter stupidity didn’t help.
She meant to excuse herself, but somehow found herself having dinner in the restaurant with Mr. McCabe, Susan and Nicholas, as well as the two older women in the delegation. No one peered strangely at her or asked her if she felt all right, so she supposed she behaved normally.
What both unsettled and pained her was Susan’s air of calm possessiveness where Nicholas was concerned. Not that the other woman was making a point; she merely treated him with the intimate friendliness of those who know each other extremely well. In spite of her severest admonitions, Mariel felt herself prickling like an angry cat. It didn’t help that Nicholas showed no signs of reciprocating. He didn’t differentiate between Susan and the others of the party or— and this was the rub—between Susan and Mariel.
Profoundly grateful when the dinner finally finished, Mariel still had more torment to endure. The trade minister decided he wanted her to check over just one last paper, so she and Nicholas went up to his suite six doors down from Nicholas’s, and she spent two hours drafting the translation of a working document. Officially, of course, she was off duty, but it didn’t occur to her to refuse.
When at last it was over and she was able to go, Nicholas walked down the corridor with her.
“How is the child?” he asked. “Caitlin?”
She sighed. “She seems to be all right. Elise has found a therapist who specializes in children. She hopes they’ll be able to straighten out any residual problems.”
“What’s she decided to do about the husband?”
“He’s agreed to give her a much bigger share of the assets he’d squirreled away before going bankrupt, so things will be easier financially for her. In return, Elise has agreed to let him have supervised access to Caitlin. She doesn’t think he’ll ever realize what he was doing to the child, but she did admit that her stubbornness made things worse. Anyway, they have some hope of working things out so Caitlin isn’t being torn apart. Elise is very grateful for all your help. Caitlin calls you the nice man who talks funny.”
He smiled. It would have been foolish to say his face softened, but for a moment Mariel thought she could see how he’d look when he gazed at his own children. “I like children. Most children, anyway.”
“You certainly handled her well. Do you have any of your own?”
He sent her an ironic sideways glance. “No, I’ve never been married.”
“They don’t necessarily go together,” she said in her driest tone.
He said directly, “For me they do. I’m conventional in my outlook. I don’t intend to have children until I marry.”
She didn’t mean to say it—she didn’t stand on such terms with him—yet the words came too swiftly to call them back. “Perhaps Susan?”
“We lived together for a few months,” he said, his voice deep and emotionless and hard. “It’s been over for a year now.”
Mariel found such cool dispassion repellent. Very crisply she demanded, “What happened?”
“I don’t feel it’s any of your business,” he returned caustically, firing her own words back at her.
Embarrassed more by her own boldness than his snub, she flushed and muttered, “No, of course not.”
She hadn’t really been prying. Somehow she had the strange feeling that she could discuss anything with Nicholas; it hurt and shamed her that he should find her interest prurient.
Perhaps that was how he’d felt when he’d asked her about David.
They had been walking slowly and were almost abreast of his door. He said savagely, “Oh, damn, I didn’t mean that the—”
Footsteps sounded along the corridor. Someone laughed. It had all the hallmarks of an old bedroom farce, especially when Nicholas muttered a short, succinct curse under his breath, opened the door into his room, took her by the wrist and pulled her in with him, slamming the door behind her.
“Bloody Sanderson,” he said with barely leashed anger as he released her.
For some reason she shivered.
“What’s the matter?”
Relapsing into schoolgirl vernacular she said, “He gives me the creeps.”
“Why?” he demanded sharply. “What’s he done?”
“Nothing.” Shocked by the darkness in his tone, his expression, she shook her head. “Nothing at all—I’ve barely exchanged words with him. He just seems very intense, even a bit unbalanced. Especially,” she added deliberately, “where you’re concerned.”
Nicholas crossed to the tray on the sideboard and said, “You look as though you need a drink.”
“No, thanks.” She hesitated, then went on rapidly before she could change her mind, “I didn’t mean to pry about your relationship with Susan. No, that’s not right, I did, but... I’m sorry, it’s absolutely no business of mine.”
“And I,” he said on a jagged note of self-derision, “understand your curiosity. After all, I share it. That’s why I asked those impertinent questions about St. Clair. I assume it’s another manifestation of this highly inconvenient attraction.” He bent and peered into the refrigerator, standing up to say, “There’s lemonade here.”
She said, “Well, in that case, thanks.”
He brought her some, and for a moment she sat holding the rapidly frosting glass. She shouldn’t be here, she thought.
“We were thinking of marriage,” he said, “but in the end we decided not.”
Why? A glance at his face told Mariel she wasn’t going to find that out, and she didn’t want to hear any more. The thought of Nicholas planning to marry anyone sent a wave of panicky outrage through her.
You’re getting in too deep, she told herself, and asked the first thing that came to mind. “Why does Peter Sanderson hate you so much?”
“Because I was born rich and he was born poor.”
“Oh, come on, now,” she protested. “In New Zealand that doesn’t matter. I mean, he’s in the diplomatic service and so are you!”
“Money matters everywhere in the world,” he said cynically. “However, he has a little more than that to base his dislike on. I got a posting he wanted, and because he can’t believe it was any deficiency of his that lost it for him, he prefers to think I called on the old school-tie network to ease my path.”
“I see.” Lemonade trickled cold and sweet over her tongue. She swallowed and said, “I think he could be dangerous. He sounded almost driven.”
Nicholas’s glance, keen and sudden as a falcon’s heart-dropping swoop from the sky, chilled her. “Possibly. However, I’m not afraid of him.”
No, he wouldn’t be. Tartly she snapped, “I don’t suppose you’re afraid of anything!”
He certainly hadn’t been afraid of Jimmy, gun or no gun. He had used his astute, diplomatic brain to unsettle the other man, kept him neatly off balance, and then, when force was needed, used it with cool, ruthless efficiency.
“Then you’re wrong,” he said calmly. “Only an idiot doesn’t have fears.”
She took another tiny sip of lemonade and asked with what she hoped sounded like idle curiosity, “What frightens you?”
He gave her an enigmatic, not unamused, smile. “Losing
control,” he admitted.
“So you’re a control freak. Somehow I’m not surprised.” Her voice was light, all traces of speculation hidden.
“What are you afraid of?”
“Fair trades?” Turning her mouth down at the corners in a grimace, she started to return a flippant answer. And then she thought, no, he told you the truth.
“Rejection,” she said quickly, surprising herself.
Until the moment the word fell into the silence between them, she hadn’t known exactly what she feared, and now that she had said it she felt the power of it right through to her marrow.
“Because your parents died, I suppose,” Nicholas said, astounding her. “To a child that must seem like the ultimate rejection.”
Afraid she had revealed far too much, she sent him a brittle, resentful glance. “Pop psychology?” she asked tauntingly.
“More like common sense to me.” He sounded relaxed, almost sympathetic, as though he understood her fierce denial of his insight.
She put down the glass of lemonade. The one glass of champagne she’d drunk before dinner couldn’t be the cause of the bewitching, treacherous siren’s song singing through her veins. The big room with its elegant furnishings was alien, unnerving. Her eyes slid over the end posts of the bed, picking out carved ears of rice. A sudden heat coursed through her body.
“I’d better go,” she said carefully, getting to her feet.
His green-gold gaze mocked her, but he stood, too, and said, “Yes, I suppose you should.”
He opened the door, walking down the corridor beside her. This time they had it completely to themselves, although muted noise from the bar indicated that plenty was happening there. A long night for Desmond, she thought.
Silently they walked down the brick pathway beneath the majestic live oaks and ancient crepe myrtles and huge, flowering camellias that looked to be as old as the hotel building itself, breathing in cool air scented with the faint perfume of azaleas.
This would be the last time she saw him, Mariel thought, oppressed by a nameless, painful emotion.
“I’m going to walk on the beach,” Nicholas said. “Coming?”
Mariel knew she should say no. “All right,” she said.
He turned and struck across the grass, skirting the trees and unerringly leading them to the beach.
“Do you navigate by the stars?” she asked flippantly.
“Like migrating birds, all the way from Cape Reinga to Siberia, then back again in six months’ time?” He sounded amused. “I have an excellent sense of direction.”
Was there anything he couldn’t do well? Images flashed into her brain: Nicholas on the golf course, shooting, moving with feral, athletic grace as he dispatched Jimmy, Nicholas turning her heart over with the potent consuming intensity of his kiss.
Sand scrunched beneath her feet. She stopped and took off her shoes, holding them while she looked about for a safe hiding place. Not that anyone would steal them; the beach was completely deserted.
“Here,” Nicholas said, taking them from her and putting them beside his on the edge of the beach. “Under the third palmetto from the end. Don’t forget.”
“Look away,” she said.
Obediently he turned his back and she pulled her nylon stockings down and stuffed them into one of her shoes. “All right,” she said gruffly.
Casually he scooped her hand into his and walked away from the boardwalk that protected the fragile dunes, over the soft sand, not stopping until they reached the firm, tide-packed surface.
“Why don’t you go back to New Zealand?” he asked, his tone as casual as the light clasp on her fingers.
She had to swallow before she could say, “I’ve never wanted to.”
“Never?”
“No.”
He was silent for a hundred yards or so. Then he said, “You must really hate the place.”
For some reason she couldn’t come out and say it. “I just never felt it was home,” she murmured.
“Was your aunt unkind to you?”
Biting her lip, she sent him a swift sideways glance. Aqueous, silvery light outlined the autocratic lines of his angular profile, emphasized the strong planes of his cheeks and forehead.
“She didn’t want me,” she surprised herself by telling him, “and I can’t blame her for that. It was difficult for us both.”
“Is she still there?”
“She died while I was in Japan.” Before he could ask any more questions she said, “How about you? Have you a big extended family?”
“A few cousins,” he said. “Nobody close.”
“So it seems we’re both adrift in the world.”
“Adrift?” His voice was cool and considering. “Is that how you think of yourself? Lost and alone?”
“No, of course not.” She spoke hurriedly, aware that something seemed to be missing from her answer. Pretending to see a shell in the hard-packed sand, she bent so that he couldn’t see her face. “Far from it,” she said as she stood up, forcing a brisk, cheerful note into her tone. “I have friends, a career I really enjoy, a future and a home. It was just a term, a word.”
“A Freudian slip,” he observed obliquely.
“Freud’s being discredited, didn’t you know?”
He smiled. “So I understand. I think I’ll reserve my judgment.”
She was seized with an urge to find out as much as she could about him before he left the island and they never saw each other again. “What do you like most about your career?” she asked.
His broad shoulders moved slightly as though he found the question irksome, but he answered without hesitation. “I enjoy feeling that in some small way I’m making a difference in the world. And I must admit I like pitting my wits against what sometimes seem like impossible odds. I relish finding ways through problems.”
“Has it lived up to your expectations?” she asked.
“I’m a little less idealistic than when I started,” he said dryly.
“Where have you been posted?”
“Australia first, and then London.”
Mariel thought she might never enjoy anything more in her life than breathing in the crisp salt air as she listened to Nicholas tell her about his time in Canberra, the capital territory of Australia. Through his eyes she saw the huge, sunburned country as he had experienced it—its size, its awe-inspiring beauty and variety, the laconic, tough determination of its citizens in the face of sometimes almost unbeatable odds.
By a natural progression the conversation moved to London. To her secret delight, Mariel discovered that they admired many of the same things about the grimy old city. After a vigorous discussion on the state of the theatre there, they moved on to art. When Mariel stated that modern art left her cold, confessing that her spiritual home in New York was the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Nicholas laughed, but began to discuss the subject with references to the pictures she had gazed at with affronted bewilderment in the Tate Gallery in London and the Guggenheim Museum. He made them come alive for her, and as they walked down the wide, white beach empty of everything but their two figures beneath a nebulous moon, she thought dreamily that she didn’t ever want this to end.
Of course it had to, and in the most foolish manner. Too busy looking at him to notice where she was going, she tripped and he caught her, his arms taut and corded as he set her back on her feet.
The breath was sucked from her lungs. As she felt the imprint of his lean, lithe body, an answering need fogged her brain with slow, sensuous magnetism.
She saw exactly when he realized what was happening to her; his eyes narrowed, glinting beneath the dark lashes, and somehow his body sprang to life, a male pulse running through it in answer to the feminine summons of hers. She smiled, and he said harshly, “Damn,” and bent his head and kissed her.
If he hadn’t done that she might have been able to keep her dignity and self-esteem intact, but the moment his mouth touched hers something buried in her burst into flames, hot
ter than fire, more intense than the savage blast of the storm, and she was lost, giving herself up to him and to the sensations only he seemed able to arouse.
The kiss was long and unhurried and deep. Under its en-sorcellment she forgot that she couldn’t afford such an indulgence, forgot that Nicholas spelled danger to her, forgot everything except the soaring delight caused by his mouth on hers, the swift, overwhelming response of her body.
But eventually he lifted his head and said in a thick, impeded voice, “No, this is impossible.”
He didn’t know how impossible it was. Yet she couldn’t stop; she turned her head into his throat and with leisurely, delicate greed touched her tongue to the pulse throbbing there. He tasted of salt and musk and man, of Nicholas. And he stiffened, his body hardening beneath the tiny caress.
“I know,” she said languidly. “Absolutely impossible.”
He laughed beneath his breath, ragged, uneven laughter, and caught her face by the chin and said roughly, “So stop it, you provoking witch.”
“Why?” Her lashes flickered, hiding her eyes, keeping at bay logic and common sense, the practical, pragmatic, responsible part of her that was screaming warnings somewhere in her brain. “You said it was impossible and I agreed with you...”
Even to herself the words sounded slurred, as though she wasn’t really saying them, as though another woman, someone she’d never met, was speaking through her. It should have been frightening; Mariel realized that far from being afraid, she was exhilarated, because in spite of his words he was just as strongly affected as she was.
His eyes were gleaming with barely suppressed desire, and the straight mouth was fuller; oh, he was still in control, but she could see his struggle to stay that way.
Lifting her hand, she cupped his jaw, her palm sensitive to the rough silk texture of his skin, the pulse that jerked beneath it.
“It doesn’t matter,” she said softly. “We’re never going to see each other after tonight.”
“Is that what you’re offering? A one-night stand?”
His quiet, almost conversational tone didn’t hide the brutal reality of his words. Mariel realized just what she was doing, the inevitable end of such an exchange.