by Penny Jordan
‘I thought it would appeal to you,’ was all he said.
‘You mean all that virgin white?’ Christy asked tartly, wishing she hadn’t when she saw the look on his face.
‘Hardly applicable now, surely Christy? Actually when I chose it for you I was thinking of the view,’ he added with mild irony, ‘nothing else.
‘If you feel up to it when you’ve had your tea, I’d like you to come to my study—it’s across the hall. I want to show you my filing system and go through the way I do my notes.’
He didn’t stay, leaving her alone to drink her tea, her eyes drawn to his tall, jean-clad body as he walked out of the room.
Christy didn’t rush her tea, and it was a good fifteen minutes before she followed him. She found him sitting behind a desk, sorting through some papers. It didn’t take long for him to explain to her his systems; they were quite straightforward, his method of collating his notes far more organised than that used by either Miles or her mother.
‘Come over here for a minute,’ he commanded her when he had finished. He walked over to the window and Christy followed him, noticing as she did so the telescope standing in front of it.
‘Stand here and look through this,’ he instructed her.
He was standing right behind her, leaning over her, and she could feel the heat coming off his body, the weight of his hand on her shoulder. ‘Now if you look straight ahead you should be able to see the reef…just to the left of it is the spot where I think Kit’s ship went down…Got it?’
She had found the reef, sharp, dragon’s teeth of dangerous coral ready to tear out the bottom of any unwary craft. ‘Yes…yes…I think I’ve got it,’ she told him, watching the boil of angry water surging against the channel that must lead into the lagoon. Despite the intense blue of the sea there was something quite definitely menacing and dangerous about the reef and the boiling sea and she shivered a little, tensing as Simon’s hand moved, examining the exposed flesh of her shoulder.
‘Cold?’ he queried sharply
‘No, just good old-fashioned fear,’ Christy told him. ‘That reef looks dangerous.’
‘Not just looks. It is. Tomorrow, if you’re feeling up to it, we’ll take a boat out to it—not the ketch, but a motor boat we use inside the lagoon and you can get a closer look. By the way another warning, if you fancy going swimming. Watch out for sharks. They come inside the reef sometimes.’
Sharks. Christy shivered. Of course there would be sharks in these waters.
‘Don’t worry, they won’t bother you if you keep well away,’ Simon reassured her, sensing her tension. He was still standing behind her, his hand resting on her nape and she could feel a dangerous temptation to lean back against him. They both moved at the same time, Christy shuddering as she felt the warm persuasion of his mouth moving against the side of her throat, his fingers pushing aside the straps of her top and bra, to stroke her smooth flesh.
‘Simon, don’t…’
He was just about to turn her in his arms when Helen walked in, and instead he released her. Moving away from him on legs that were decidedly shaky, Christy waited until Helen had asked him what time he wanted her to serve their evening meal, and left them, to say tensely, ‘Simon, let’s get one thing straight. I came here to work for you—nothing more, and work is all I want to do.’
‘Meaning that although you might have been prepared to share Miles’ bed, you don’t have a similar desire to share mine.’ He smiled at her and despite his relaxed pose, she had the distinct impression that in reality he was both tense and angry. ‘Very well, but if you should change your mind.’
‘I won’t.’ She snapped the words out at him; angry that he should think her capable of sharing a man’s bed so lightly. ‘If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go up and have a shower.’ She stepped past him warily, not looking at him as she hurried towards the door. She was beginning to wonder if after all she had done the right thing in coming here with him. When she had agreed, she had not realised that sexually he found her desirable. That knowledge disturbed her—not because she found it offensive—on the contrary she found it dangerously exciting and it was that that disturbed her.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘ARE you okay?’
They were in a small motor boat heading out over the lagoon to the spot Simon had shown her through the telescope the previous day.
‘Fine.’ Christy managed to make herself heard above the raucous sound of the small engine, gazing appreciatively at her surroundings. Even close to, the sea was impossibly turquoise and so clear here that she could see to the bottom. Inside the lagoon the water was relatively calm, a constant temptation to any swimmer. Twisting round she looked back in the direction they had come. Steep stone steps led down the cliff from the house to an almost perfect crescent-shaped beach covered in soft pale sand. They were right at the end of the promontory, and beyond the lagoon she could see where the opposing currents of the Atlantic and the Caribbean fought for supremacy. The day was so clear she could see the distant blur of other islands much further away than they seemed, so Simon had told her. Already she could feel the heat of the sun burning through her thin cotton shirt, and was thankful that she had taken the time to put some sunblock on her face. Normally she didn’t burn but she had no wish to end up looking like a dried prune. She had woken up this morning totally disorientated for several minutes, unused to sleeping so deeply. When she had remembered where she was she had been appalled to discover that it was gone ten o’clock, and to find that there was a cold cup of tea beside her bed. Simon had brought her to work—not to sleep. Even so, despite her rush to get downstairs and apologise for her tardiness she had lingered long enough to stare out of her window and wonder if perhaps it had been on this spot that Isabella had stood to watch for her adventuring husband.
Simon had soon reassured her that her lateness had not interfered with his plans. ‘I thought it best to let you catch up on your sleep,’ he told her lazily, coming out from behind his desk, where he had been studying some papers. ‘You were absolutely dead to the world when I came in with your tea.’
So it had been Simon and not Helen who had brought the tea. The thought of Simon standing over her, perhaps watching her, brought her out in a rash of goosebumps.
Unwilling to analyse her reactions too deeply Christy dragged her thoughts forward. Like her, Simon was dressed casually in faded denim shorts and a thin shirt, but unlike her he had his shirt unfastened almost to the waist, revealing the hard muscles of his chest and the dark feathering of body hair that disappeared beneath the waistband of his shorts. Both of them were wearing shoes—a necessary precaution Simon had told her, just in case for any reason they had to get out and walk over the coral, but unlike her Simon did not seem to need sunglasses, his eyes screwing up slightly as he steered the boat towards the reef.
Through the telescope Christy had felt something of its menace but not all of it. Close to, it threw shadows that chilled the water of the lagoon, sharp, ragged spears breaking through the foam to warn of what lurked below.
The channel Simon had pointed out to her was fairly wide; and it was at this point that the lagoon was deepest he told her, something which would have been in its favour for Kit Masterson’s purposes. ‘He would have needed a reasonable draft for his ship, but if, as I suspect the coral walls form a sharply v-shaped channel, it would have needed a considerable amount of skill to negotiate them.’
They had not brought their diving suits but now that she had seen the site where Simon proposed they begin looking she could understand why he had stipulated dives of no longer than an hour at a time. It was easy to lose all sense of time underwater; and these waters would be particularly dangerous. The Caribbean was a graveyard of ships and many divers had lost their lives searching for the wreckage of them.
Out beyond the reef some activity caught her eye and she froze as she saw the sharp fins cutting through the waves.
‘Don’t worry. They shouldn’t bother us too much when we start diving
,’ Simon told her. ‘The water’s too rough for them to want to bask in it. I’ve been checking through the weather reports this morning, and with a bit of luck we should be able to start diving the day after tomorrow.’
Christy had seen the reports on his desk, and he had shown her the radio he used to monitor all the local weather broadcasts. This information together with all the data he had collected of the weather patterns during previous summers had enabled him to pinpoint a time when the currents were least likely to be affected by the winds.
‘We’ll go back now,’ he told her, turning the boat neatly. ‘Now that you’ve seen the reef close to you’ll realise what we’re up against. It isn’t going to be like diving off the side of the local swimming baths,’ he added warningly. ‘In fact I intend to do most of the diving myself with you acting as a back up. If we weren’t so short of time I’d do it all.’
It didn’t take too long to get back to the beach, but to Christy’s surprise once they did, instead of heading back to the house, Simon suggested that they stay on the beach for a while.
‘I’m still suffering a little from the effects of jet lag myself,’ he told her with a brief smile. ‘Once we start working we won’t get many opportunities to relax. Georges should have brought our lunch down, I asked Helen if he would before we left.’
He had done. It was in a huge wicker picnic basket under the shade of a beach umbrella that he must have brought down as well, and there were also a couple of large beach towels.
‘Fancy a swim?’ Simon asked her. ‘Or would you prefer to eat?’
‘After that huge breakfast,’ Christy laughed protestingly, ‘I’d love a swim.’
Luckily she had put her bikini on under her shorts and top, and it didn’t take her more than a minute to strip them off. She had expected Simon to go into the water ahead of her, but when she emerged from her shirt, she found he was standing a bare metre away, studying her with an entirely male appreciation that sent flickers of awareness darting over her body. Stop it, she warned herself. You’ve been down that road once and you don’t like where it leads. By telling her that he still desired her, Simon had put the onus of keeping their relationship platonic and businesslike on her shoulders, and she was determined to show him that she was completely impervious to him, and treat him as she would any other male she barely knew who had made the same statement. The trouble was that Simon wasn’t merely any other male; he was a devastatingly sexy one whose mere presence played havoc with her pulse rate and who exerted a magnetic pull over her senses that she wanted to respond to with an alarming intensity every time she saw him. Of course she didn’t still love him; how could she, but she couldn’t deny that she did still find him attractive. He had been the first man to awaken her after all; the first man she had loved. The only man she had loved, she reminded herself grimly. She had already made one bad mistake in thinking herself completely immune to him; it would be madness to make another in underestimating the danger of his sexual attraction by telling herself she was safe because she no longer loved him.
Strangely enough the one emotion she did not feel towards him was hatred. She had expected to but that particular emotion had just not been there. In a matter of a couple of days she had learned far more about him than she had in a whole summer, but of course now they met as equal adults and not adolescent and adult and although as a writer she admired him, she was no longer a worshipping acolyte content merely to be allowed to adore.
‘Well, are we going to swim?’
She had been so engrossed in her thoughts that for a second she looked at him blankly. He had taken off his shirt, but retained his faded denims, and unknowingly she must have been studying them because he said softly, ‘Normally I wouldn’t bother, but something tells me that all grown up and adult though you are, you might.’
He was telling her that normally he swam in the nude; well why not, this part of the lagoon was, after all, completely private. Strangely enough his comment brought not shock, but a wave of intense excitement. In her mind’s eye she could see him, his body strong but supple; man completely at one with the elements. Pushing aside her mental image of his body tanned and sleek, she ran into the lagoon, not waiting to see if Simon was following before launching into a speedy crawl. She had always been a good swimmer, but she had forgotten the special pleasure of feeling her body move through the water. She dived, briefly touching the bottom, watching the scatter of small gaily coloured fish and then coming up slowly testing her breath control, and treading water. Simon was nowhere in sight. Some sixth sense made her glance down, the dark shadow of his body as he swam swiftly underwater towards her almost menacing in its speed. She waited until the last minute to avoid him, diving down and then surfacing quickly and for half an hour they indulged in an energetic game of chase. In speed and strength Simon could easily outstrip her but Christy thought her deftness and agility gave her an edge over him until he out-manoeuvred her, gripping her firmly with his legs and forcing her to sink down to the sea bed with him, his arms imprisoning her before he let them float slowly to the surface. Once there, Christy broke free and headed for the beach. There had been something so openly sensual about the way he had held her, that her instincts warned her that if she stayed their game would no longer be an innocent one. To that foolish, feminine part of her that had wanted to stay and damn the consequences, she muttered a fierce warning. Although Simon might not be aware of it, she knew quite well that she was not his sexual equal; that she was not accustomed in indulging in the sensual play of people who became lovers for no better reason than that it suited the mood of the moment. Another woman, more experienced than she was herself, would no doubt have stayed and thereby implicitly invited more intimate lovemaking, knowing it for what it was—simply a different stage in a different game with no emotional meaning to it—a simple but sophisticated satisfying of an appetite that was purely sexual, but she did not have that experience and for her to invite Simon’s lovemaking was eventually to betray to him the fact that she was still a virgin.
There were conclusions to be drawn from that which she had no wish for him to draw. They had established a good working rapport—professionally she found him stimulating and she was already so involved in Kit Masterson’s story that not to see it through would cause her acute disappointment. For Simon to discover she was still a virgin would alter the axis of their relationship completely. He had said that once he believed she had been ready to barter her virginity for a wedding ring; he might suspect her of trying to trap him again.
She could acknowledge now, with a fierce pang of anguish, that she still wanted him as her lover. There was such a powerful air of male sensuality about him that she doubted many women would not. If things were different; if she were not a virgin, it would be easy to give rein to that desire. She was no longer naive enough to confuse desire with love and was perfectly able to see that the one could exist independently of the other. Not so very long ago her mother had remarked frankly that it was a pity that the men one normally desired were not the same ones who deserved to be loved; and it was true. But since she could hardly go to Simon and say, ‘Look, I’m still a virgin, and I want you to make love to me but that doesn’t mean I love you,’ she would simply have to ignore or control her sexual response to him. Without the past between them her virginity need not have been a barrier. She smiled wryly to herself, spreading out one of the towels to lie on, thinking of all the men she had known since Simon and who would have jumped at the chance of being her lover. Up until now she had thought herself wise in denying them. Mere attraction had never seemed a strong enough motive to make love with them, but had she not done so, she would be free now…It must be something to do with the sun, she decided drowsily, lying on her stomach, her head pillowed on her arms; it must be bringing out a latent vein of sensuality in her.
She was aware of Simon coming to stand beside her, although she didn’t turn over. He took the other towel and spread it out next to hers, lying down beside her
.
‘Still not hungry?’
She shook her head without looking at him.
‘I’d say I was more inclined to be sleepy. Disgraceful, isn’t it?’
‘Well if you’re going to sleep, you’d better have some oil on your skin first.’
She could sense that Simon had moved, but a lazy inertia seemed to possess her, and although she lifted her head to watch him removing a bottle of sun oil from the basket she made no attempt to move or to protest when he kneeled over her, pouring some of the fluid on to her back, slowly smoothing it over her skin.
‘Why don’t you take this off?’ His fingers touched the fastening of her bikini. ‘If you don’t you’ll only end up with strap marks. The beach is completely private. No one’s going to see,’ he added, almost as though he could feel the tension suddenly gripping her.
He was going to see…And yet Christy knew that to protest would be ridiculous. She often sunbathed topless in the privacy of the garden at home, discreetly perhaps, but topless nevertheless, and to object simply because she was not alone was hardly likely to convince Simon of her supposed sophistication. The continental beaches were full of girls who wouldn’t care less who looked at them, and yet it was because Simon wasn’t a stranger that she felt this inner coiling of apprehension mixed with excitement. She wanted to do as he suggested, she acknowledged inwardly, and more, she wanted the slow stroke of his hands on her body smoothing away all the barriers until there was only the silken touch of skin against skin.
He’s simply talking about sunbathing, she reminded herself, calling a halt to her rioting thoughts; simply making a suggestion that he considered practical and if she lingered too long in replying to him she would be the one who was being provocative.
Glad that he wasn’t able to see her face, she murmured. ‘Mm. I think I will,’ and made to sit up, keeping her back to him, but his hand on her back kept her where she was. ‘I’ll do it for you.’