by Penny Jordan
‘Postal HNC courses seem to come closest to what you have in mind,’ she had told Luke the previous evening, and now, briefly, her excitement was subdued by a twinge of apprehension. What if she found the task Luke had given her was beyond her capabilities? What if …
Luke touched her arm. ‘Come on, they’ve just called our flight for the second time.’
Nervously Gemma picked up her hand luggage and followed him towards the flight departure gate.
On Luke’s advice she had kept separate from the rest of her luggage a change of clothes in lightweight cotton, plus her toilet things, so that she could freshen up and change in flight if she wanted to. She had elected to travel in a cool white cotton tracksuit, that was both attractive and comfortable. The top would be pleasantly warm in the air-conditioned cabin, and the trousers were in a modern style, cut off half-way past her knees.
Fortunately she already had the beginnings of a pretty tan from the week of good weather she had enjoyed at home. White canvas casual shoes with a blocked heel showed off the bright red polish she had applied to her toenails in a mood of bravado, and she had deliberately kept her make-up to a minimum.
Her casual taupe canvas bag was roomy enough to hold her change of clothes, plus her toilet requirements, and a couple of paperback books, and the wallet containing her passport, money and other documents. The flight was going to be a long one, at least seven hours, and Luke would expect her to keep herself entertained.
They were travelling first-class, and she was aware of the smiling looks the stewardesses gave Luke as they were shown aboard. Gemma had no preference for a window seat but, seeing that the aisle seat would give Luke a little more room to move his legs, when he offered her a choice, she slid into the seat by the window.
It had been several years since she had last flown and she was amazed by the speed with which they became airborne. After a very few minutes the stewardesses came round with menus for breakfast and, since she had only managed to eat half a slice of toast and drink a cup of coffee at the hotel, Gemma found that she was surprisingly hungry.
Like her, Luke was dressed casually, and, as she waited for the stewardess to bring their breakfast, Gemma cast a surreptitious look at him. He was wearing a pair of much-washed and faded denim jeans that hugged the lean contours of his body. The blouson cotton jacket he had been wearing when they came on board was now folded in the coat store above their heads, and through the fine checked cotton of his shirt Gemma could see the dark shadowing of hair on his chest.
Heat prickled through her quite unexpectedly and she withdrew her attention in some disarray, feeling her face suddenly start to burn. It was a most disconcerting reaction and one that wasn’t in the slightest degree merited. Confused and rather dismayed, she glanced down at the floor.
‘Are you all right?’
The light pressure of fingers on her arm, the controlled concern in his voice as Luke bent his head discreetly towards her, reminded Gemma of just how dangerously observant he could be.
‘Yes … yes, I’m fine.’
‘I thought for a moment you were feeling sick.’
Forcing a smile, Gemma looked up and across at him. Had he really thought that, or had he been aware of the way she had been watching him? He hadn’t seemed to notice—but he had been quick to ask her if she was all right.
Fortunately he didn’t seem disposed to press the point, which was just as well. She wasn’t sure how she would have been able to explain to him that her tension had sprung from the fact that she had, quite devastatingly, realised what a physically compelling man he was.
At least, that wasn’t entirely true. She had always realised it, but previously her knowledge had been tempered by a very large degree of detachment—until he had kissed her at the wedding, she reminded herself wryly. She had known that Luke was extraordinarily sexually attractive, but in the past had been relatively immune to that attraction, whereas now …
Her heart suddenly seemed to seize up in her chest; for a moment she actually thought she might stop breathing. So intense was her fit of panic that her heart started to pound; she dragged in a deep lungful of air, and her panic receded.
It must be something to do with the altitude, she told herself desperately. It couldn’t possibly be Luke who was having this incredible effect on her. After all, she knew Luke. She knew that he wasn’t a man who was interested in any form of permanent commitment.
Permanent commitment? What on earth was she thinking? she asked herself in self-disgust. All this heart-searching just because of a kiss and a tantalisingly shadowed glimpse of a male chest. What was she? Some sort of Victorian heroine?
Luckily the arrival of her breakfast precluded her from following this depressing avenue of reasoning.
To her chagrin, she found she could only toy with the breakfast she had ordered with such childishly greedy anticipation, while to her left Luke tucked into his with every evidence of enjoyment. Trying to give her thoughts a new direction, she made herself go over the events of the previous days. They had been so rushed that she still had the feeling that she had been picked up by an express train.
True to his word, Luke had had a contract of employment ready for her when she visited his Chester head office. She had telephoned the headmaster explaining the situation to him, and, as she had suspected he would be, he had been so delighted to hear that she was going to be amenable to his plans that he had readily agreed to waive the normal period of notice. He had met her at the school one afternoon, when she went to collect her things.
It hadn’t taken her long, and despite its grimness she had started to walk away from it with a feeling of inner dissatisfaction for a job not finished. During holiday time the school grounds were made available, under supervision, for the pupils’ use, and on her way to her car she had come across a group of her own form.
One of them had addressed her with a cheeky grin, and she had stopped to talk to them. She had asked them how they intended to spend the holidays, and had been overwhelmed with a feeling of helpless anger and compassion as she listened to their bored young voices.
What was there for them to do, living as they did on the outskirts of the city? There was no park for them to play in, no cheap means of transport to take them out into the country where they might have been able to run off some of their surplus energy.
As she listened to them she had sensed within them their own feeling of hopelessness, a feeling they tried unsuccessfully to put into words.
Tommy Johnson came closest to describing their feelings when he had complained angrily that there was nothing for them to do. He had looked at her with resentment and misery in his eyes, Gemma remembered, and there had been nothing she could say or do, no consolation she could honestly offer them.
When they went back to school after the summer break and found her gone, they would write her off as yet another adult who had deserted them, not knowing or understanding that she, like them, did not have free choice.
She had ached with pity for them and anger for herself. It was all so wrong, but what could she do? She had stayed with them for half an hour or so, chatting to them, but despite the rapport she had established with them in class, she sensed that they were anxious for her to be gone. She was not of their world, she realised, sighing for all her own impossible plans and for the grimness of their future.
That last final glimpse of them huddled together against the dark backdrop of the school was one she would carry with her for a long time.
Her father and mother were still none too pleased by her decision of course, especially her father, and since he would not quarrel with Luke, he was taking his ire out on Gemma herself.
She felt guilty about how pleased she had been to get away from home, but she mustn’t forget that this job was merely a brief respite, she warned herself now, as the stewardess removed her half-eaten breakfast and poured her a fresh cup of coffee. When if was over, she would still be faced with the task of finding herself a new job. T
ime to worry about that when this job was over, Gemma told herself firmly, drinking the reviving brew, and trying to banish the sullen, hopeless expressions of her late pupils from her mind.
‘If you’re at all inclined to do so, I suggest that you try to have a nap,’ Luke suggested at her side. ‘It’s the best way of passing the time on these tediously long flights.’
She had been right in thinking that Luke wouldn’t want to be bothered with entertaining her, Gemma thought wryly, correctly interpreting his hint as he bent down to retrieve the folder of papers he had placed beneath his seat.
‘I’ve brought a book with me,’ Gemma told him, taking it out of her bag, ‘so I won’t disturb you if you want to work.’
She was as good as her word. The book was by one of her favourite writers, Catherine Gaskin, and she soon found herself so deeply involved in its story that not even Luke could break through its spell.
In the end he was the one who broke their companionable silence, grimacing faintly as he asked her, ‘Do you want any lunch? They’ll be coming round soon with the menus.’
Gemma could hardly believe so much time had passed. She closed her book with a faint sigh of regret, and turned to face him.
Surely that wasn’t pique she saw in his eyes? What had he expected? she wondered, as she decided that it was. Had he thought that despite her promise she would try to engage him in conversation? A mischievious smile twinkled in her eyes. She suspected that it wasn’t very often that anyone got the better of Luke O’Rourke, and the fact that she had done so in all innocence made it seem even funnier.
‘Something amusing you?’
Gemma didn’t quite like the glint in his eyes.
‘No, nothing at all,’ she fibbed smoothly. ‘Did you get much work done?’
‘Enough. I just wanted to recap on the reports from the construction site. You know, I’d forgotten how totally you can get absorbed in a book; for a time there I suspect you’d forgotten everything but what was happening here.’ He tapped the book as he spoke, and Gemma smiled her agreement, unable to resist adding teasingly, ‘But at least it kept me quiet, didn’t it?’
His own expression ruefully acknowledged her point, and she added chidingly, ‘Not all women chatter away like magpies, you know, Luke.’
‘Maybe not, but they all have their own ways of attracting attention.’
Did that mean that he had expected her to try and distract him? The same faint unease she had experienced before touched her in a light frisson. Why should Luke expect her to want to distract him? Theirs was a business relationship, nothing more. Had she been male, he would not have expected her to demand that he give his attention to her and not to his work. Did he fear that she might try to trade on their old friendship? But if that was the case, why had he offered her the job in the first place? Through a mistaken sense of pity? She hoped not.
‘Luke …’ she began uncertainly, but he cut her off as the stewardess came up with the menus, and by the time they had chosen their lunch, Luke was discussing certain aspects of his plans for the complex with her, and she had lost both the opportunity and the impetus to question him more closely on his motives for bringing her to the Caribbean.
It was dusk when they eventually landed, the tropical moist dusk of the Equator, the sun a dying ball of fire in a sea of molten copper.
Gemma held her breath at the panoramic beauty spread out below her as the plane swept in a controlled arc out over the sea and then down towards the landing strip.
The heat muffled her like a warm damp blanket, and even though she thought she had been prepared for it, its intensity still almost smothered her. She could feel herself almost visibly wilting as she stood in the concrete arrivals hall, lulled into a state half-way between sleeping and waking by the rhythmic sound of the huge ceiling fans.
‘Here, you’d better let me hold that.’
Before she could stop him, Luke had relieved her of both her passport and her hand luggage. She made a token protest, but felt too sleepy to do any more. The heat was so enervating. How on earth could she ever work in it?
‘You’ll soon get acclimatised, don’t worry about it,’ Luke murmured in her ear as they went through customs and she realised that she had voiced her doubts out loud.
A grinning porter—he couldn’t be more than twelve years old, Gemma reflected, smiling a little at the boy’s toughened bare feet and straw-hat-shaded face—wheeled their luggage triumphantly out to the waiting vehicle.
Luke had already mentioned that transport on the island was limited, and that on the construction site they used either Land Rovers or, in an emergency, hired some of the island’s many beach buggies.
This was saffron yellow outside and in, a colour that couldn’t have been better chosen to complement the colouring of the girl sitting in the driver’s seat, one long leg dangling negligently over her door as she leaned back, listening to the reggae music pounding out of the cassette system. Her long dark hair was caught back in a yellow band the same colour as the buggy. Like the porter’s, her feet were bare, but they weren’t dusty as his had been, and her toenails were painted a vivid burnt orange to complement her stunning tan.
As Luke tapped her on the shoulder, she climbed languidly out of the car and threw herself into his arms.
She was tall, tall and very slim, and wearing the briefest pair of shorts Gemma had ever seen in her life. Like the band in her hair they were saffron yellow, matching the T-shirt she was wearing underneath a soft denim blue oversized sweatshirt that hung off one tanned shoulder and somehow emphasised the femininity of her slender body.
Gemma felt exceedingly de trop as she watched the other girl enthusiastically kissing Luke. She obviously didn’t need any lessons, was her first, rather acid thought, and Luke certainly didn’t seem to have any objections to the mode of greeting—but then, what man with red blood in his veins would?
At last he managed to disentangle himself and, holding her at arm’s length, he drawled, ‘Surprise, surprise!’
‘Oh, when Boyd told me you were coming in on this flight, I told him I’d come and pick you up. If we hurry we can just make it in time for dinner.’
‘Sorry.’ Luke’s voice was decisively firm as he shook his head. ‘Not tonight, I’m afraid, Josephine.’ With one long arm he reached behind him to draw Gemma forward, making her suddenly acutely conscious of the fact that he had known exactly where she was, because he hadn’t even had to turn round.
‘Samantha—Gemma. Samantha’s uncle is Larry Freman—the man I was telling you about. The man who sold me the land for the complex.’
‘Darling, you didn’t say you were bringing anyone back with you.’
Cold and rather hard brown eyes surveyed Gemma with icy disdain. Samantha was quite plainly not at all pleased at her presence.
‘Gemma is here to work for me,’ Luke responded, and Gemma could see from the narrowed speculation in Samantha’s eyes that she was being warned off.
‘Oh, I see,’ she murmured indifferently, ignoring Gemma to smile ravishingly at Luke. ‘She’s one of your employees.’
‘And a very old friend.’
Now why on earth had he said that? Gemma wondered in bewildered vexation. It must surely be obvious to him that it was the very last thing Samantha wanted to hear. It was patently obvious that the pair of them had been and possibly still were lovers, and, by claiming Gemma as an old friend, he had quite deliberately stirred up the other woman’s jealousy.
Of course it could be that he wanted to make her jealous, but she wasn’t going to be used as a pawn in that sort of game, Gemma thought angrily, trying to ignore the sharp sensation of pain clawing at her insides. Samantha wasn’t the only one who was jealous, regrettably. All at once all her anticipation and excitement vanished, leaving her feeling tired and irritated. She wanted to get out of this muggy heat, to have a bath and lie down. She wanted … She wanted to be at home, she realised wryly. She wanted the security of the known, rather than the unfamil
iarity of this alien island and this equally alien young woman.
‘Really?’ It wasn’t a smile that Samantha gave her, more a baring of her perfect white teeth, Gemma thought, responding in kind.
‘I’m afraid you’re going to be rather squashed up in the back with all the luggage,’ Samantha tossed carelessly over her shoulder in Gemma’s direction as she slid her arm through Luke’s and drew him slightly away, ‘but then Luke never told us he was bringing … an old friend back with him.’
Us? That sounded very cosy and proprietorial, but what exactly did it mean?
‘Uncle Larry’s been missing his games of chess while you’ve been away, darling,’ she cooed at Luke, completely ignoring Gemma.
Luke, it seemed, was equally oblivious to her presence, and a sudden surge of anger rocketed through her, taking her off guard, as she glared at his back. How dared he let this … this woman behave like this! How dared he bring her here and then leave her standing out in this appalling heat while he flirted with his girlfriend. She opened her mouth to tell him that she had changed her mind and that she wanted to go home, when suddenly he disengaged himself from Samantha and turned round.
‘I think on this occasion you can sit in the back, Samantha. I’ll drive and Gemma can sit beside me. That way I’ll be able to make sure that she stays awake.’
Gemma wasn’t sure which of them was the more stunned. Samantha certainly recovered first, shooting Gemma a look of bitter venom, but not arguing with Luke as she clambered lithely into the back of the small vehicle.
During the drive Samantha kept up a flow of conversation with Luke which totally and deliberately excluded Gemma, and from which she discerned that Samantha was a very important part of the social life of the island and that she and her uncle lived in an extremely luxurious villa just outside the main town of Georgetown.