‘Don’t worry, she’s not liable to appear on the scene and try to empty a champagne bottle all over me,’ he said with a wicked little grin.
Skye grimaced. ‘You were the one who told me she knew how to play the game—whatever that means. A relationship with no strings, no clinging? If so, I’m wondering whether you were quite wrong.’
He sat forward. ‘Yes, I was wrong. That’s why Wynn is on Hamilton Island, a couple of days early for a modelling assignment. I flew her there instead of Sydney.’
‘So…what…how—I don’t understand,’ Skye said a little helplessly.
He shrugged and looked at his beer meditatively. ‘Wynn is a friend of my sister. She and Pippa went to school together all their lives so I’ve known her for years and years. When I bumped into her after we broke up, she was in a similar situation—she’d been ditched in other words,’ he said dryly.
‘I didn’t ditch you,’ Skye protested.
‘No? It felt like it, strange to say; anyway—’
‘Look here, Nick,’ Skye broke in determinedly, ‘was Wynn passed over for another woman?’
He stared at her. ‘Yes, but—’
‘Then that is being ditched as I understand it. And it’s not what I did to you.’
‘Forgive me—’ he inclined his head towards her ‘—I’ll have to watch my semantics, but, whatever—when I suddenly found myself sans you, Skye, and not being in a very pleasant frame of mind, it seemed like a good idea for Wynn and I, seeing how long we’d known each other, to—console each other.’
‘I can imagine,’ Skye said darkly.
‘I’m not sure that you can—’
Skye waved a hand. ‘Don’t. I don’t want to hear and I don’t care.’
He paused, then said, ‘You did bring Wynn up.’
‘All right. And you’re trying to tell me she became not only possessive but clinging even, which is why she’s now cooling her heels on Hamilton Island—sans you, Nick? Well, I’ve got the picture; I just don’t see what it’s got to do with me.’
He got up and poured some more wine into her glass and paced around the room before stopping in front of her. ‘We’re going to fight this fear of crowds, you and I, Skye, and we need to be friends to do it. That’s all.’
CHAPTER FIVE
‘YOU must be mad, Nick,’ Skye said huskily, when she could speak.
He simply shrugged. ‘Finish your wine and we’ll go out to dinner.’
‘I’ve lost all desire to go out to dinner!’
He grinned. ‘You may think you have but I’m seriously starving—by the way, I only have dinner in mind. I wouldn’t dream of trying to—make you a slave to sex afterwards.’
Her eyes darkened. ‘That’s just as well because you wouldn’t succeed.’
‘They were your words, Skye,’ he pointed out. ‘However…’ he paused and something cool and determined glinted in his eyes ‘…I’m quite capable of keeping you here until you agree.’
She gasped. ‘You wouldn’t!’
‘Yes, I would,’ he drawled, ‘so take your pick—dinner here in the room with me or dinner out.’
Skye drained her glass and put it down with a snap as she stood up. ‘Just this once, Nick. I had no idea you could be such a bully!’
He looked amused but as she reached for her baseball cap and glasses it faded and he said quietly, ‘No, Skye.’
‘But I…’
He took them from her and put them back on the bed. ‘Just brush your hair,’ he advised.
She fought a tense little battle with herself and not only to do with going out in public undisguised. There was also a foolish element to do with trying to prove a point to Nick, only she wasn’t quite sure what the point was.
Whatever it was, it won, and she fumbled in her bag for a brush, muttering beneath her breath, and started to brush out her hair.
He waited patiently with his hands shoved into the pockets of his khaki trousers, and because she could see him in the dressing-table mirror Skye discovered she had something else to contend with on top of the sheer shock of this turn of events—an acute sense of déjà vu.
They’d often laughed at the battles she had with her hair, and her expressed wish for straight, smooth locks that did what they were told…
How many times had she brushed her hair in front of a mirror with him watching her? How often had she done it with no clothes on because she’d slipped out of bed with the first thing on her mind being the taming of her riotous curls? Only to find herself being returned to bed because, as he’d put it, there was something irresistible about her naked in front of a mirror with her arms raised and a serious expression on her face, not to mention the perfection of her hips.
She put the brush down abruptly then shoved it into her bag, along with her cap and glasses, and said briefly, ‘Let’s go.’
He didn’t move for a long moment but she refused to look at him, and they left in silence.
Skye sat back and patted her stomach with a contented sigh.
She’d just eaten the most delicious garlic prawns on a bed of rice with an Italian salad. They were in a restaurant on a boardwalk overlooking the Inlet; it was bright and noisy and the view of the boats in the marina and skimming along the dark water was fascinating.
‘I take it you approve of the food here, Miss Belmont?’ Nick said.
‘I do,’ Skye agreed, and rinsed her fingers. Slices of lemon and little white flowers floated in the finger bowl. She dried her hands on a large white linen napkin. ‘Not only that but the way they do things—no paper serviettes, for example.’
‘Nor has it been too difficult being here as yourself?’
She thought for a bit as she watched the view. She had been recognized and a few people had come to ask for her autograph. The chef had also come out to meet her and the proprietor had asked if he could take a photo to put on the wall. But Nick had been recognized as well and it was not hard to feel the flow of interest directed at their table. Something had given her the serenity to cope with it all, though.
That strange desire to prove a mysterious point to him? she asked herself. It had to be more than that, though, considering her state of mind when she’d left the hotel with him.
‘Skye?’
She looked back at him and wished acutely that he were not so devastatingly attractive as he leant his elbows on the table and watched her. Not only physically but there was no denying he could be incredibly nice when he put his mind to it. As he had been ever since they’d sat down. There’d been no sign, she thought ruefully, of the man who had virtually hijacked her. It could probably be truthfully said that he’d charmed her right out of her sulks.
‘Nick, two things,’ she murmured. ‘This is not a real test because you—well, you seem to have the authority to—make people behave reasonably. Somehow—’ she tipped a hand ‘—when you indicate that enough is enough they take notice. And secondly there’s going to be an awful lot of speculation about us now.’
‘Let them speculate,’ he said idly. ‘I’ve always found “no comment” is the best way to deal with it, incidentally.’
‘OK. But there’s another thing.’ She hesitated briefly and frowned. ‘I don’t think it’s so unnatural to want to dodge public attention at times—do you?’
‘Not at all.’ He sat back. ‘I do it frequently. When it comes to all the time, it could be different. In other words, it could be starting to be a phobia.’
She wrinkled her brow again. ‘I’ve never liked crowds so it may not have anything to do with being slightly famous.’
One dark eyebrow shot up. ‘Slightly?’
‘Well,’ she said, and paused. ‘Why are cooks so…so…?’
‘Powerfully interesting to the public?’ he suggested. ‘I guess because eating is one of the main pleasures of life. In your case, it’s also your personality and the fact that you’re very lovely, but, as two fat ladies could tell you, that’s not necessarily a prerequisite.’
She
smiled. ‘I love them!’
‘They’d probably love you. Feeling faint and dizzy, breathless and nauseous, though, Skye, is not natural,’ he said quietly.
‘So what do you suggest I do?’ she asked perplexedly, for two reasons. She didn’t remember telling him all the symptoms she suffered. And she couldn’t imagine what he was going to suggest. ’It’s no good going out and fainting, Nick; even you must see that.’
‘No. But there could be a hidden reason for it, something that you may well be able to conquer. Phobias are not unknown for having their roots in very strange places.’ His dark eyes were suddenly compelling.
‘You sound like your mother,’ Skye said, and stopped abruptly. ‘Have you…?’
‘Yes, I spoke to my mother about it. Also your mother, Skye—’
‘When?’ She stared at him incredulously.
‘Today.’
‘You’ve been very busy on the phone today,’ she said bitterly. ‘Look, I wish you hadn’t worried my mother; she’s worried enough about me as it is—’ She broke off, annoyed.
‘Because of me?’ he queried.
‘Because of me,’ she contradicted him.
‘In the context of me, then?’ The expression in his dark eyes was satirical.
Skye clicked her tongue exasperatedly. ‘It doesn’t matter.’
‘Well, it so happens that she wasn’t worried about you in a claustrophobic context because she didn’t know.’ He watched her with some irony.
Skye opened her mouth but nothing came out.
‘Oh,’ he said, ‘she knew that you sometimes wore a wig et cetera—’
‘Nick,’ Skye said wearily, ‘all right, I didn’t ever tell her that much about it. I’m an only child and now my father is dead she has nothing else to worry about.’
‘OK, point taken.’ He played with the salt-cellar for a moment. ‘But when, on my mother’s advice, I suggested to your mother that this just might go back to something in your childhood, and may never have surfaced the way it has if you hadn’t become famous, she agreed that indeed it could.’
‘How, what and why?’
He looked at her meditatively. ‘I think we might be better off going into that somewhere less public.’
Skye was too unwillingly fascinated to resist.
They found a dark corner of a bar in the Radisson Hotel, and ordered coffee and liqueurs.
‘Do you remember getting lost in a shopping centre when you were five?’ he asked as they sat next to each other on a curved banquette.
Skye shook her head.
‘It was close to Christmas, your mother says. It was extremely crowded. She turned away briefly and when she turned back you’d disappeared. It was twenty minutes before she found you and, to increase her panic-stricken state, you seemed to have gone into a trance. She couldn’t get you to talk—for about an hour afterwards.’
Skye stared at him, her eyes widening.
‘You were wearing a yellow dress,’ he said slowly, ‘with white sandals and a yellow ribbon in your hair. You had your own little purse, a plastic one with white daisies on a yellow background, and you were going to look for a Christmas present for your father. You couldn’t make up your mind whether you’d like to buy a tie or a book about golf. He was golf-mad, your father, according to your mother.’
He paused as Skye stared into the distance, blinking rapidly.
‘But before you got a chance to buy anything she lost you, and she finally found you wedged into a corner between a red mail box and a phone booth—’
‘Orange and blue,’ Skye said, and started to breathe erratically.
He put an arm around her and held her close until her breathing subsided.
‘Why didn’t I remember it?’ she whispered, her eyes still big and agitated.
‘As you said, you were an only child.’ He still spoke slowly and quietly. ‘A very precious little person who was never wittingly exposed to any danger, and you hadn’t even started school. That’s why you got such a fright. All those people milling around, tripping over you, perhaps, carrying you along, away from your mother.’ He stopped and stroked her hair as she shuddered.
‘That’s what the doctor said when your parents consulted him, although, by then, you seemed to be completely back to normal. What worried them all was that you didn’t even seem to remember it.’
‘I must have blocked it out! How—bizarre!’
‘Indeed, but not all that uncommon. Anyway, they watched you for years but all they could detect was a slight aversion to crowds.’ He shrugged. ‘A lot of people don’t like crowds. Your mother herself doesn’t.’
Skye closed her eyes and shuddered again. ‘I tried to open the door of the phone booth but I couldn’t, then I didn’t want to in case I got stuck inside. Why haven’t they triggered this memory—mail boxes and—? Hang on,’ she said huskily. ‘I will do almost anything in my power to avoid having to make a call from a phone booth because of a nameless kind of dread I have of them.’
He said nothing and she rested against him as her memory fled back down the years and presented her, with astonishing clarity, with something she’d been too frightened to ever think of again. The sandals she wore with a sundress and matching ribbons in her hair, the awful sensation of being absolutely alone amidst so many people, the cool painted metal of the mail box as she’d clung to it…
They must have sat like that for a good ten minutes while she haltingly talked about it, telling him everything. And gradually, as she talked, her remembered panic began to subside and she could think of it rationally without that awful shuddering fear.
‘Have some coffee,’ he suggested, and poured it from the pot then tipped her liqueur into it.
‘Thanks.’ She sniffed the aroma coming from the cup appreciatively and held it in both hands as if for warmth. ‘But do you think this will help? Not the coffee—’
He smiled down at her. ‘I’m sure it will. If you tell yourself you’re not five any more, you’re not lost and now you know what’s behind it, then I think you’ll probably be able to nip this phobia in the bud. And you’re right—fame is not that easy to handle even without an incident like that buried in your subconscious.’
Skye drank her coffee then leant back. He put his arm around her again. ‘You’ve gone to a lot of trouble, Nick. I don’t know how to thank you. Especially after I was so ungracious if not downright horrible earlier.’
‘You don’t have to thank me. By the way, my mother would be only too happy to help. There are ways—mental exercises, breathing and so on—that will help, she says. Promise me you’ll go and see her?’
‘I…yes, I will. But I already feel a bit liberated.’
He was silent. Skye wondered what he was thinking and was about to ask but she changed her mind, and they sat in silence for a while although her thoughts were busy, but it was a companionable silence.
Then she broke it herself. ‘Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Nick?’ She tilted her chin so she could see his eyes.
‘Tell me.’
‘I’m wondering how much this accounts for—well, you are the one person I’ve always felt safe with.’
‘Until yesterday,’ he commented. ‘Then even I let you down.’
She bit her lip. ‘Was it only yesterday? It feels light years away.’
‘Accounts for what, Skye?’
She hesitated. ‘Why I wanted more than you—maybe even most men—could give?’
He laid his head back and played with her curls. ‘Not most men. Most men would have read you better, Skye.’
‘Even when I didn’t know why I was the way I was?’
‘Even then. I’ll take you home.’
She was still suffering from this abrupt departure when they stood outside their respective hotel doors.
‘Goodnight,’ she said uncertainly, and for some ridiculous reason held out her hand for him to shake.
He took it. ‘Skye…’ He seemed curiously lost for words.
; ‘It’s OK, Nick. You’ve acted above and beyond the cause today. Like a true friend. I’ll never forget that.’
‘The one problem with all this,’ he said very quietly, ‘is that I can’t seem to let you go just yet.’
Her lips parted.
‘Therefore, I intend to fly you home in easy stages, island-hopping along the way, and we won’t go out of our way to avoid anyone.’
‘Nick, that’s…sweet of you,’ she said unsteadily, ‘but it’s not necessary—’
‘Come in for a moment.’ He opened his door. ‘I don’t have any intention of seducing you, Skye.’
She made a strange little sound and spread her hands.
He looked at her quizzically. ‘We can’t hold a discussion out here.’
‘Oh, all right, but you were the one who—’
‘I know—broke things off rather abruptly. I’ve been thinking as we walked home, though.’
She shook her head but walked into his room and dumped her bag on the bed. ‘So?’ She turned to face him with her arms folded, her expression stern.
He smiled slightly. ‘Would it matter if we took a few days off?’
‘Just the two of us? Nick, we may not make the ideal married couple but it would be incredibly easy to drift back into a relationship—look what happened to us only yesterday afternoon. And island-hopping, lovely as it sounds, would be most conducive to—well, I may not have to spell that out for you.’ She eyed him militantly.
‘So?’ he countered mildly.
‘Why are you suggesting we put ourselves under that kind of strain?’
‘That is talking from the hip, Skye.’ He glanced briefly but meaningfully down her figure. Then, as she stiffened and coloured, he murmured, ‘Would it be such a bad idea to rekindle our relationship in the light of a few revelations? We had so much else going for us, perhaps we could work out a better deal this time?’
She sat down on the bed because her legs simply buckled beneath her.
He looked amused and came to sit beside her on the end of the bed although not touching her.
The Bridegroom's Dilemma Page 9