Sally Wentworth - Conflict In Paradise

by Sally Wentworth

  At length he raised his head and loosened his hold a little, but Tansy stood on tiptoe to throw her arms round his neck and cling to him.

  'Oh, dear God, Tansy,' he muttered huskily into her neck, 'don't ever walk out on me again. It's been hell….’

  'Blake, Oh, my darling, I won't. I promise I won't.' Tears ran down her cheeks and she put up a hand-to brush them away.

  He held her a little away from him and looked at her; at her thinness and the dark shadows round her eyes. 'What the hell have you been doing to yourself?' he said roughly.

  'Missing you,' she said softly. 'Oh, Blake, I missed you so much!'

  Sweeping her back into his arms, he held her close, just holding her, letting her feel the warmth and comfort of his body hard and firm against her own, until she had stopped shaking and could smile up at him as she blinked away the tears.

  'Dearest,' he murmured as he bent to kiss away a teardrop that still clung to her cheek. 'We'll go to Tahiti. We can be married in Papeete and have some time there for a honeymoon before I—before I take up my new posting. We'll have at least a…' he broke off as he saw that Tansy was looking at him in happy wonderment.

  'You—you mean we're going to get married?'

  Blake looked at her in some astonishment 'But surely you realised that…? Tansy, did you really think I would make you anything less than my wife?' he demanded incredulously.

  'I didn't know. You never said—just as you never said that you…' She stopped and looked away from him.

  'That I loved you?' There was a frown between his brows as he cupped her face in his hands. 'Darling, I've told you a hundred times; every time I looked at you, touched you, I was telling you how I felt about you. I want you, I need you, by God I do. If that isn't love..

  'Oh, Blake, if only you'd told me before! It would have made that letter so much easier to write. By then I was completely unsure of myself; afraid that you wouldn't want me any more, especially after you got back to England and saw all the girls there.'

  He laughed softly and pulled her head down into his shoulder. 'The girls in London don't walk around in those tantalising sarongs.' Then he added teasingly, 'Although there were one or two girls that I quite… Ouch!' He broke off with an exclamation as Tansy bit his ear. 'You little minx!' He made a grab for her, but she slipped agilely from his grasp and ran away from him across the beach. He let her cover a dozen yards before he caught her and bore her down beneath him on to the soft sand. Then it was a long, long time before either of them felt the need for any speech other than passionate endearments.

  It was only when Tansy lay quietly pillowed in his arms that she asked, almost idly, 'Where is your new posting? How soon do you have to go there?'

  Lazily Blake sat up and then turned to her with a rueful, somewhat boyish grin. 'I'm afraid I rather deceived you about that. You see, I wanted to make sure you were fully committed to me before I told you.'

  Tansy pushed herself up to kneel beside him, her hair dishevelled, her blouse undone, but her eyes shining with a new radiance. 'Told me? But I don't understand. Don't you have a new posting, after all?'

  'Yes.' He took her hand and raised it to his lips to kiss her fingers, his eyes, with a roguish glint in them, never leaving her face. 'You see, darling, I knew that I couldn't live without you, so I decided that if I couldn't have you without Aparoa, then I'd have to do something about it So I moved heaven and earth and finally convinced the powers that be into accepting that what these islands needed was a resident officer to get the place back on its feet. That part wasn't too difficult, but then I had to persuade them that I was the right man for the job.'

  He went to go on, but Tansy's fingers had closed compulsively over his. 'You—you mean that you're the new Commissioner?'

  'Well, I couldn't let some other chap come over here and let you doctor him, now could I?'

  'Oh, Blake! Blake!' With a cry of pure joy, Tansy flung herself upon him and knocked him off balance as she threw her arms round his neck to hug him. She kissed him exuberantly before raising her head to smile down at him as he lay with a smug, contented expression on his face.

  He opened one eye. 'I don't remember telling you to stop,' he complained.

  Tansy laughed at him, but then, her face serious, she said, 'You'll never know how much this means to me, Blake. Thank you. Thank you so much.'

  He smiled. 'Well, you see, there was one lesson that I neglected to teach you when we were waging that private war of ours; a good soldier always knows when to surrender.' And he drew her gently down beside him.