by Margaret Way
Then the plunge into the tunnel!
It wasn’t as dark as he’d expected. Although no ray of blazing sunshine pierced the cave, it still managed to cast a luminescence. He was able to judge the moment to stand erect. He saw her kneeling on the ground near one wall of the great tunnel, then there was suddenly light. Golden light that lit the cave and danced over the sandstone walls.
Varo stood mesmerised, his eyes tracking the images of the primitive art gallery. Even Ava, who had been inside the cave many times, stood rapt. More than anything she wanted their guest to be stirred and fascinated by what he saw. Varo moved closer to inspect one smooth, clean wall of the great cavern. It was dominated by a highly stylised drawing of a great serpent—a python—executed in chalky white with dark bands encircling the body and a black neck and head. The powerful reptile wound its sinuous body around two sides of the cave, its head high on the rock ceiling.
Evidently the great serpent was an important, even sacred creature from the aboriginal Dreamtime. Human figures with white circled eyes were represented only in stick-like form. The female forms with pendulous breasts. There were animals—kangaroos, emus—trees, and flocks of birds radiating over the walls, but what was most incredible, just as Ava had told him, was an outstanding drawing of a crocodile. It was surrounded by what could only be tropical palms. Fish too were represented, and what appeared to be turtles. Human handprints acted like a giant frame.
He turned back to Ava, who was watching his expression and trying to gauge his reaction. “This has to be a significant site!” he exclaimed. “Quite extraordinary.”
“It is,” she confirmed, “but very few people get to see it. It’s not a sacred site, but it has to be protected. That’s our job.”
“Then I’m honoured. Thank you for bringing me here.” He resumed his tour of the gallery, taking his time. As he walked he talked about the Inca civilisation of Peru, and the culture that had been shattered by the cruel and bloody Spanish Conquest. “Ancient temples and tombs were pillaged by the Conquisadors. Gold and silver booty to enrich the coffers of the Spanish Crown. In return Catholicism was forced on them.”
“Your family is Catholic?”
He shrugged without answering.
“I’ve often wanted to visit South America,” she said. “Especially since Dev came home filled with the marvels of your world. You were the one who took him to Machu Picchu?”
“Ah, yes—the secret cloud-shrouded ceremonial city of ancient Peru. That vast empire included the north-west of Argentina. Machu Picchu is one of the must-see places one should visit before one dies, Ava. Anyway, when you come to Argentina it will be my privilege to show you all we can offer.” He turned suddenly, bending his dark head so he could whisper softly in her ear. “I’ll even teach you how to dance the tango.”
“Of which you are a master?” She felt the flush rise to her face.
“Of course.”
It was so quiet inside the cave it was almost as though they were in some ancient cathedral, cut off from the rest of the world.
Varo was looking at the tunnel that led off the main cavern and went as far as anyone knew back deep into the eroded hills. It appeared as if he were debating whether it was wise to explore it.
“No, Varo!” she found herself exclaiming. “No one has ever mapped any of the passageways. No one even knows if there are exits. You’re not Indiana Jones.”
He turned back. The brilliant dark glance that swept over her was amused. “Maybe not. But I have been in some very scary places—including the South Pole. You’re frightened I might want to explore in there?”
“I’m frightened I might lose you,” she said.
“That won’t ever happen.”
It was said so gently, yet Ava thought she would remember his expression for as long as she lived. “We must go,” she implored. “Back into the sunlight.”
“We’ve only just arrived. You realise this would probably lead to a whole cave system?”
“The hill country is honeycombed with them,” she admitted. “But even Dev backed off after he had gone a good distance. In some places there’s only crawling space. I have to tell you I’m a bit claustrophobic.” She wrapped her arms around herself as though she were cold.
He remained quite still, not making any move towards her. “There’s no reason to be frightened, Ava,” he assured her, his voice pitched low.
“I’m not frightened. I’m more worried.”
He gave her a slight and dangerous smile. “That you’ll find yourself lost?” Now he made a move towards her, extending his hand to lift her face to him. “You fight the attraction?”
It was so strangely quiet she could hear her blood whooshing through her veins. “What attraction?” Unnerved, she tried to deny the obvious.
“Our attraction,” he said. “You think it inevitable I might want to kiss you?”
“Don’t, Varo,” she whispered, shaking her head. This man could mesmerise her.
“One moment in time,” he coaxed. “It occurs to me you are suffering in some way.”
“I’ve had years of it.” She hadn’t intended to say it, but she had.
“Then you need a new start.”
Just like that.
The note in his voice sent her head spinning. She felt herself sway towards him even before he gathered her into his arms in a way no man had gathered her to him before. She couldn’t move away. She didn’t want to move away. Why she was allowing this she didn’t want to understand. She should feel daunted. Their instant connection was near incomprehensible. Yet every last little thing about him was proving an intoxicant. Even the cool air inside the cave was aromatic with the scents of the wild bush.
“I love that mouth of yours,” he muttered, his handsome head poised over hers. “A man might only dream of kissing it.” He touched her lower lip with the pad of one finger, effectively opening up her mouth to him.
That ignited such a response inside her she feared her heart might stop. She was desperate for this, but all the while she felt deeply perturbed. From here on she was in his power. Yet she didn’t push away, or ask him to stop. She knew he would if she did. Only right at that moment she knew this was what she wanted. She had to have it before she let go.
He was kissing her, tasting her, cupping her face with strong but exquisitely gentle hands. He kissed her not once but over and over, each time more fully, more deeply. A thousand brilliant stars were bursting behind her closed eyelids. Her hands had come up to clutch at his shirt, bunching it, her long nails maybe even hurting him if they pierced the fine cotton. This was longing, desire, on a grand scale, and the sensation was worth anything. She was far, far more vulnerable than she could ever have imagined. A near stranger had taken her captive when her husband had never succeeded in even pushing her to a climax.
He didn’t stop. Perhaps he couldn’t. If so, neither could she. She was utterly bewitched. He would have already identified that. He understood the power of the flesh would be too great. Ava felt as though her bones were dissolving, her flesh melting, yet the delta of her body felt oddly heavy. One of his hands was hard at her arched back. The other swept over her breast. Her nipples were standing erect with the height of arousal that was in her. His every action, so masterful, demolished all coherent thought. She felt in another moment they would sink onto their knees before falling back on the sand. Neither of them stopping. Neither of them prepared to try.
You’ve got to fight out of this delirium.
Her inner voice was crying out to her, desperate for her to listen. This could turn out to be a bitter, very traumatic mistake.
Make yourself care. No matter what you feel, this could come back to haunt you.
Her eyes flew open, coming slowly into focus, though she still felt bound to him.
* * *
For an instant Varo felt profoundly disorientated. Then he realised it was her soft moan that had forced him back to reality, back to control. He hadn’t been able to get enough of her. The pressure on him had been unrelenting. Never in his life had he wanted a woman more. Locked in his arms, she’d seemed to him to be the very image of man’s one great desire. But it was all so very complicated. This beautiful woman was still married—however unhappily. She was the much loved sister of his friend. He was a guest on Kooraki.
He told himself all this as he fought down the tumult inside him. Without thinking he raised a hand to brush her tumbling cascade of golden hair away from her face and over her shoulders. “There’s no point in denying attraction, Ava,” he said quietly. “Your life is complicated at the moment, but I can’t think kissing you was a mistake.”
“A woman is to be enjoyed?” she asked, brittle-voiced. Her tone was far sharper and more cynical than she’d intended.
There was a hush before he answered. “Do not demean the moment, Ava. Come, let’s go back into the light.”
She caught his arm as he started to turn away. “Forgive me, Varo. I didn’t mean that the way it came out. I’d given up feeling—” She broke off.
“Did you love your husband at all?” He stared down into her eyes.
“If you had asked me back then I would have claimed I did.”
“But he loved you? He continues to love you?”
The air around them seemed to be trembling. “Leave it there, Varo,” she advised. “You know nothing about it.”
His dark, handsome features tautened. “I know you want an escape.”
“What else should I do?” she burst out with too much emotion. “Come on, tell me. Stay in a loveless marriage?”
“On your side,” he pointed out.
“So judgemental?” Now there was an immeasurable distance between them. She might have known. “With your strict moral code I’m shocked you resorted to kissing me. Me—a married woman!”
He shrugged a wide shoulder. “Maybe I’ve been possessed, enchanted, bewitched…whatever. Temptation clings to you like a diaphanous veil. You’re a very beautiful woman, Ava. Surely there have been other men in your life?”
“Irrelevant!” she said, with a downward chop of her hand. “Let’s think of this as a summer storm. Over as quickly as it began.”
Except it wasn’t over. They both knew that.
CHAPTER FOUR
AVA spent a sleepless night. Never for a moment could she get Juan-Varo de Montalvo out of her mind. He might have been sleeping alongside her, so palpable was his aura. The power he had over her had arisen on its own. She hadn’t invited it. Her conscience was clear on that point. Neither had she planned it.
It was some comfort to realise he too had surrendered to the massive force that had reached out for them and held them fast. The electrical charge that flowed between them was mutual. What had happened—and really were stolen kisses so illicit?—had caught him up too. He had not persisted when he heard her involuntary little moans. He had swiftly drawn back, only to brush back the wild mane of hair that had tumbled all around her face, with golden skeins clinging to the skin of his face and his neck.
But, oh! She had never known a kiss could make one’s heart rise like a lark. It had been so unbelievable to take wing. She thought she would always be able to recall that weightless feeling, the shooting stars behind her eyes. Why hadn’t Luke kissed her like that?
He didn’t know how. He simply wasn’t capable.
Yet she had been faithful to him. She wasn’t the sort of woman who indulged in meaningless flings. Until now. If one could call rapturous kisses infidelity. For the first time all thoughts of Luke blurred. It was the past. Luke would move on.
Or so she believed.
* * *
Dev flew in around noon, with his bride-to-be Amelia and their parents, Erik and Elizabeth, for so long estranged, now back together again, and looking happy and wonderfully fit after a trip to beautiful Tasmania. There were three other passengers, all Devereaux relatives, including her cousin Karen.
Karen’s parents were supremely self-assured people, partners in a blue chip law firm, and Karen too was a very confident, good-looking young woman, but remarkably exacting—almost driven, to Ava’s mind. Two years older than Ava, she had always adopted a patronising attitude towards her younger Langdon cousin. There was plenty of money in the family. Like her, Karen had no need to work, but Karen was in fact a successful interior designer of the minimalist style. Whenever she stayed at Kooraki she had a habit of mooching around the handsomely decorated rooms—so many collectors in the family—as though she’d like to clear the lot out and start again.
Surely that would be like obliterating the past? In any case Kooraki was the Langdon stronghold. She remembered her grandfather referring to Karen as “that very unpleasant girl.”
Thank God for Amelia, Ava thought as she hugged her. Amelia was a kindred spirit—the sister she’d never had and now would.
Karen locked on to Juan-Varo de Montalvo the instant her startled dark eyes fell on him. If expressions were anything to go on their Argentine guest had come as an enormous surprise. Indeed, her mouth fell half open as if in shock. Ava even thought she heard a gasp.
How fantastic was this!
They were all assembled in the Great Hall, with Dev making introductions.
Varo had no difficulty in recognising what qualities his friend Dev saw in his bride-to-be. Not only was Amelia beautiful in the Italianate fashion—large, lustrous dark eyes, lovely olive skin and wonderful thick dark hair—her manner would always draw people to her. As far as he was concerned she suited Dev perfectly. The Devereaux relatives, however, were quite different from the warm and friendly Langdons. They acted as though they owned the earth, their manner, to Varo’s mind, almost ridiculously regal. Same with the daughter, Karen.
She was much too thin for her height, but graceful, with a long elegant neck, good bones, long almond-shaped brown eyes, and glossy dark hair cut in a bob with a deep fringe to draw attention to her unusual eyes. She was dressed from head to toe in black. Skin-tight black jeans, black T-shirt with a white logo, black high-heeled boots. She stood staring at him with such intensity she might have been testing to see if he were real.
All three Devereauxes, he thought, were surprisingly arrogant. He had to use that word—but on the basis of what? Having money and a position in society appeared to be an end in itself. Dev, his beautiful Amelia and of course Ava displayed no such characteristic, and they were the ones with the real money and a fantastic ancestral home.
* * *
Ava had the job of escorting her relatives upstairs. Her mother and father headed off to their old suite of rooms. Natalie Devereaux nodded her approval of the guest room with its adjoining en suite bathroom. Mercifully it would do. Karen stalked ahead to her room, just down the hallway, turning on Ava the minute they were inside the door.
“Why on earth didn’t you tell me that man was going to be here?” she demanded, her brown gaze snapping so sharply it could drill holes.
Ava took her time to answer. “That man?” she queried gently.
“De Montalvo,” Karen said with a frown. “Oh, for God’s sake, Ava, don’t play silly games. He’s gorgeous!”
“Much too masculine for gorgeous, don’t you think?”
Karen ignored her cousin as though her opinions were of little importance. “I’ve never seen such a stunning-looking man. And that voice! God, it nearly melted my bones. He is no doubt rich?” She shot Ava another piercing look. “Any Argentine of that class means rich.”
“Varo’s parents are rich,” Ava offered mildly. She didn’t add that Varo’s mother was an American heiress.
“How long has he been here?�
�� Karen continued her interrogation in an accusatory voice.
“Why do you ask?” Ava took a moment to push a beautifully scented pale apricot rose further into its copper bowl. Pal Joey, she recognised.
“Well, you will have been alone here, wouldn’t you? With Dev in Sydney?” Karen opened her narrow eyes wide.
Ava’s smile was amused. “I promise you, Karen, we didn’t indulge in wild sex.”
“As though you could!” said Karen, and threw her a pitying look. “You still have that virginal look, Ava. You must know that. How’s the divorce going, by the way?”
Ava allowed herself a sigh. Karen never had been a sympathetic person. In fact Karen had given her rather a bad time of it when they were both at boarding school. It was Amelia who had always come to her rescue—like a protective big sister.
“Luke has been…difficult,” she confessed. She didn’t mention the threatening letters and e-mails. “He believes it’s my clear duty to go back to him.”
“Well, he’s a lovely man!” Karen said, on a wave of disapproval.
That hurt. Was Karen deliberately trying to hurt her? “What would you know about it?” Ava countered. “All he ever did was butter you up.” The more over the top the compliment, the more Karen had swallowed it.
“He never did!” Karen protested, clearly outraged.
“The compliments were so thick you could eat them,” Ava said. It suddenly struck her that Karen would have made a far more suitable bride for Luke than ever she had. “Maybe it’s better if we don’t talk about Luke.”
“Especially as he’s not here to defend himself,” Karen huffed. “No, let’s talk about Juan-Varo de Montalvo.” Karen took a seat on the antique chest at the end of the four-poster bed. “He’s not married? If he were his wife would have been invited.”
“Of course. No, he’s not married—but I would think he has legions of adoring admirers.”
“South American women are very beautiful,” Karen said, nibbling hard on her lower lip. “Where have you got him?” She fastened her eyes on her cousin.