by Robyn Donald
His brief touch had altered some subtle balance or perception of power, leaving her confused and upset. Every sense was on full alert, avidly soaking in the subtle signs of his masculinity, the vivid, bottomless blue of his eyes, the way the sun gleamed over the burnished slide of wet, golden skin, the masculine pattern of hair scrolled across his chest then arrowing down his flat stomach to disappear beneath the black material of his trunks...
And through the sensory overload came the coldness on her shoulder where his hand had rested.
‘I hope,’ he said, a bite to his words, ‘you don’t swim like that when I’m not here.’
‘I’m not stupid. I do know my own limitations.’
Thank heavens she was wearing her tee-shirt and her towel! His gaze was intent and utterly disturbing; if she’d had nothing on but her bikini she’d have been enormously embarrassed.
As it was she knew that her nipples were stiffly peaked by a combination of cold and the drag of bra and shirt. Automatically she folded her arms across them and stepped back.
‘I hope you do,’ he said, and suddenly there was that undercurrent, the note of warning she’d heard when she first arrived at the homestead. ‘You’re cold. Come on.’
To her astonishment he took her hand and set off for the back door.
Once Jacinta had woken from her dazed grief after her mother’s death she’d objected very much to Mark’s dominating tactics, but for several moments she went meekly enough with Paul, her pulse jumping under the grip of his long fingers until—almost too late—her instincts shouted a warning. Reflexively she jerked her hand back. His fingers tightened for a second, then he released her.
‘Have a warm shower,’ he said. ‘You still look cold.’
‘I’ll wash the sand off my feet first.’
Keeping her eyes well averted, she tried to turn the outdoor tap on, but after a moment of her fumbling with it he said, ‘Here, let me,’ and moved her hand off.
As the water gushed out he straightened up, looked her over with a narrowed, metallic glance, and said, ‘Don’t stay in the water for so long next time.’
Safely in the bathroom she stared at herself, seeing a woman she didn’t know, a woman whose eyes gleamed pure gold beneath sultry lashes, whose mouth was soft and cushioned as though it had just been kissed, whose normally sallow skin was warmed by the lingering delight of those seconds when his hand had closed around hers, strong and warm and safe
A woman whose breasts strained against the clinging material of the tee-shirt, the nipples prominent and completely at the mercy of the powerful sensations that rushed through her, white-hot and quite unmistakable.
‘What am I going to do?’ Jacinta asked that unknown woman. ‘What on earth am I going to do?’
Angrily she turned the shower to cold and got in under the spray, flinching as needles of water washed away the salt and the heat.
Unfortunately, cold though it was, the water was unable to quench the rising desire that ate into her composure.
For desire was what it was, not the innocent, unformed intensity of a crush; she wanted Paul McAlpine, wanted him so badly she ached with it, and she was perilously close to surrendering to that feverish desperation.
It was just as well he didn’t show any signs of reciprocating, because if he did she could well make a complete and utter fool of herself.
Paul could have any woman he wanted; he wasn’t likely to want a tall, thin woman entirely lacking in that mystenous quality called allure, because of course the woman who’d gazed with such lazy sensuousness from the mirror was a momentary aberration
Jacinta wished she’d had more social life when she’d first gone to university eleven years before. Although several men had asked her out, she’d refused them because she’d needed to spend every spare moment working in a local takeaway bar.
But if she’d gone out with some of them she’d have gained some much-needed experience. She might have realised much sooner that Mark was developing an unhealthy attitude towards her, and, more importantly, she might now have some idea of how to deal with her own responses and emotions to a man so different from Mark.
However, she thought mordantly as she towelled herself dry with rather too much vigour, none of the nice men who’d asked her out then would have been able to teach her how to cope with this sudden, inexplicable hunger for a man she could never have.
At dinner that night she was very cool, very restrained, determined to stay aloof, but after half an hour of his pleasant, unthreatening conversation she relaxed, eventually feeling secure enough to watch a television programme with him—an excellent drama with a premise based on the overwhelming passion for each other of two violently disparate people
When it was over she said, ‘Romeo and Juliet I can understand—they were so young. But love at first sight is a hoary old chestnut.’
‘One you don’t believe in?’ he asked, smiling faintly, his hooded gaze resting on her face.
‘I certainly don’t. Love needs time to grow. The two people in that play were obsessed with each other, but although it was dramatic and overwhelming it’s not what I call love.’
Paul leaned back into the big chair that was clearly his. ‘You don’t believe in soul mates, then?’ he said thoughtfully, still watching her.
She shook her head. ‘No. It sounds wonderful, doesn’t it, someone magically, spiritually linked to you down through the centuries, the one person you can be deliriously happy with, who fulfils every need? But no one can do that; it puts far too heavy a responsibility on the other person in the relationship. I think that anybody can probably fall in love with a whole lot of people—it’s just luck as to which one they meet first.’
‘So what is love at first sight, then?’
A dangerous delusion, she thought tartly. Aloud she said, ‘Attraction. A physical thing.’
Physical definitely, but it had the power to ruin lives. Her mother had never really managed to forget the married man who had seduced her and then abandoned her when he’d got her pregnant.
Paul said, ‘You believe that two people can look at each other and want each other—a coup de foudre, as my grandmother used to say?’
She restrained the instinct to move uneasily. ‘I don’t know what that means,’ she equivocated.
Irony edged his voice. ‘A thunderclap.’
‘Oh.’ Heat crept through her skin, because that was exactly how she’d felt when she’d seen him that first time in Fiji—as though a thunderclap had robbed her of her wits.
She said swiftly, ‘Yes, that happens, but it’s dangerous to think it’s love.’
‘But without it there can be no love. Not the sort of love that leads to marriage, anyway.’
He’d turned the screen off as soon as the drama had finished, so there was no sound but the soft, almost unheard sighing of the waves on the beach.
Hastily, because she wasn’t accustomed to discussing desire and passion with men—especially not men like Paul—she said, ‘I agree, but most psychologists seem to feel that there’s a lot more to a happy marriage than s-sex.’
God, she was stuttering like an adolescent; the word seared itself into her brain.
‘Or love,’ Paul said blandly.
She shot him a quick, puzzled look.
He went on, ‘People are more likely to form stable, happy relationships if they have the same values, even the same upbringing and social standing.’
‘That sounds a bit cold-blooded,’ she said. ‘I think people can learn to love each other across class and cultural barriers.’
His brows lifted and a mocking smile tilted his mouth. ‘Of course you do,’ he said, the lightest flick of sarcasm underlining the words.
Greatly daring, Jacinta asked, ‘Don’t you?’
‘I believe that nature does what’s necessary to ensure the perpetuation of the species,’ he said, his voice as indolent as his smile as he adroitly headed the conversation off into the discovery of a meteorite that suggested
there could once have been life on Mars.
Later that night, Jacinta stood in her darkened bedroom and watched the stars wheel with monumental patience across the black sky, their steely light lending an air of mystery and glamour to the gardens.
How long had she known the owner of all this beauty? Not quite a week, because you couldn’t count those few days in Fiji.
So according to her own firmly held beliefs she couldn’t be falling in love. This complicated, overmastering blend of emotions that assailed her had to be nothing more than straight, unromantic physical attraction, whether you termed it sex, desire, or a hungry concupiscence.
Paul’s cynical view of love was probably the correct one; her inner delight, that unfulfilled yearning, was merely the romantic glow Mother Nature flung over the driving need for humankind to reproduce.
If she wasn’t careful she could become as obsessed with him as the doomed lovers in the television programme had been with each other.
And that would be stupid.
She should leave Waitapu.
Her heart clenched in her chest, but she knew she was right. It was too dangerous to stay.
Tomorrow she’d scan the ads in the newspaper and see if she could find a place to stay. Many of the flats let during term to university students would be empty now; perhaps she could rent one until the beginning of the new academic year.
She’d have to get a job and think of an excuse to leave.
Running away would complicate things, but if she stayed here she might end up very badly hurt.
She woke with a new and exciting plot twist burning in her brain, and without doing more than washing and dressing sat down in front of the computer, glad that she had an excuse not to go out to breakfast. However, she hadn’t been typing for more than a few minutes when someone knocked sharply on her door.
‘It’s all right, Fran,’ she called.
‘It’s not Fran, and it’s not all right.’
She bit her lip, trying to control the sudden racing of her pulse. Reluctantly she got up from the desk.
Paul was dressed for work in a superbly tailored suit that reminded her he lived in an entirely different world from hers.
‘What is it?’ she said, not attempting to conceal the curtness in her query.
He looked at her with intent, measuring eyes. Then he smiled and her heart turned over. ‘Come and have some breakfast,’ he commanded pleasantly.
‘I’m not really hungry,’ she said, masking her uncertainty and exasperation with a crisp briskness. ‘And I’ve just had a brilliant idea—I want to get it down before I forget it.’
His brows drew together. ‘How long will it take?’
‘Paul, I don’t know.’
She’d said his name for the first time. It was like the finest wine on her tongue, complex and tangy and seductive, profoundly fascinating.
He laughed softly. ‘All right, I’m sorry. But make sure you have something to eat when the inspiration’s waned,’ he said, and to her astonishment he picked up the hand clenched at her side and straightened out the tense fingers, running his thumb lightly across the terrified pulse in her narrow wrist.
White-faced, she jerked her hand free.
‘I’ll see you tonight,’ he said evenly.
Jacinta didn’t try to write until she heard the car go half an hour later. And only then, it seemed, was she able to breathe again.
‘Oh, lord,’ she said weakly.
Why had he done that? She cradled the hand he’d touched, looking at the fingers, her brain so utterly bemused she had to shake her head to force herself to move.
Paul’s response startled her. If she’d refused to do anything Mark had suggested, he’d have tried to coax her, and if that hadn’t worked he’d have insisted, and then sulked and made life uncomfortable for everyone. Paul had simply accepted her decision.
Of course, a cynical part of her brain reminded her, whether or not she ate breakfast with Paul made no real difference to his day. He might be a naturally dominant man, but he wasn’t driven by Mark’s lust to control.
She drifted into the kitchen and made herself a piece of toast and a cup of coffee, then, ignoring Fran’s dark look, wandered back to the bedroom and stood in the French window, eating the toast and drinking the coffee and gazing dreamily at the garden and the sea.
Eventually she forced herself free of the enchanted thraldom of Paul’s touch and back into the world she’d created, but the magic stayed with her all day, at once appalling and transporting her, but also reinforcing her decision to leave Waitapu.
When she surfaced again around two, and arrived hungry and thirsty in the kitchen, Fran was coming in through the back door, carrying three large grocery bags.
‘Haven’t you had any lunch yet?’ she asked, easing them down onto the bench. ‘You’ll get into bad habits if you don’t train yourself better.’
‘It’s not exactly a matter of training,’ Jacinta objected mildly, gathering ingredients together for a ham sandwich. ‘Ideas come when they’re ready.’
‘I don’t believe that. I think ideas come when you’re ready. And erratic meals will ruin your digestion.’
Jacinta grinned. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘and perhaps you’re right. I’ll try to train my ideas. Have you brought everything in? I’ll go out—’
‘No, no, that’s all.’ Fran opened the largest of the bags and hauled out a bag labelled ‘couscous’.
‘Here, I’ll put that away.’ Jacinta went to take it from her.
The housekeeper said serenely, ‘Jacinta, make that sandwich. It’s far quicker for me to stow everything away myself than it is to tell you where it goes.’
Jacinta sighed. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said. ‘You keep all the exciting jobs for yourself.’
She sat down at the table, assembled a large sandwich, and began to demolish it while Fran stored an interesting selection of items in the pantry.
‘Paul told me this morning,’ Fran said, frowning at a bottle with green detergent in it, ‘that he’s having a party here this Saturday As there’ll be a couple of guests staying I had to do some preliminary buying.’
The ham and crisp greens from the herb garden turned tasteless as dry rice in Jacinta’s mouth. Swallowing, she said, ‘That’s short notice.’
‘Very,’ Fran said dryly. ‘Still, it’s not his fault. Something went wrong with his arrangements, I imagine, because although he does most of his personal entertainment here, Paul’s not one for bringing business home.’
‘Will you be able to manage? I’m a reasonable plain cook—’
Fran gave her a swift smile. ‘Oh, we always use a caterer.’
Naturally. Jacinta laughed and resumed eating, although more slowly. ‘So this is the film party,’ she said, trying to sound as though she wasn’t fishing.
‘Yes. Paul had something to do with organising the finances for the joint venture.’ She sighed dramatically, rolling her eyes. ‘Harry Moore’s coming. Fancy having him here! Do you like his acting?’
‘He’s very good,’ said Jacinta, who’d seen him in one film.
‘Well, you’ll be able to find out if the real man lives up to the man on the screen.’
Jacinta looked up. ‘I won’t be here,’ she said, adding as Fran’s eyebrows rose, ‘unless I can help with the waiting. I used to be quite good at that.’
The housekeeper shrugged, then said comfortably, ‘Oh, well, we’ll see. But no, we won’t need any extra waitresses.’
Which sent Jacinta into the conservatory to check out the vacancy ads in the day’s paper. Most were of the ‘Flatmate Wanted’ variety, and there weren’t many of those, either. After her experience with Mark, who’d persuaded her to join him in a mixed flat—only mixed, she discovered, after she’d arrived to join Mark and another man— she wanted all-female flatmates. And doing it that way she wouldn’t have to pay out a month’s rent for a deposit.
After taking down the numbers of a couple of the most likely looking, sh
e went out onto the terrace and sat for a long time watching the slow, smooth glide of the fish in the pond.
She should go and ring those numbers.
She wasn’t going to.
For once in her life, she thought, dipping her hand into the cool water so that the fish could nibble her fingers, she wasn’t going to listen to common sense.
The pond was big enough to take one splendid waterlily, a tropical hybrid that held huge, spiky violet flowers above the still surface. There was nothing sensible about that flower, she thought now, looking at it. It bloomed with defiant, sensuous immediacy.
For years she had put her life on hold. She’d willingly made that sacrifice for her mother, and she didn’t regret it at all, but coming to Waitapu had shown her that she’d spent that time deliberately damping down her emotions because it hurt too much to give them free rein. She’d channelled all her energy, all her vitality, into helping her mother.
And because there was nothing she could do about it, she’d ignored that sense of life running past her with little to show for it but inevitable death.
Even finishing her degree had been fulfilling her mother’s plan.
Now she wanted to live, to feel with all that was in her, to experience the sharp tang of life, to fall in love...
As she watched the goldfish cruise calmly, serenely, bloodlessly back and forth she accepted that she would be hurt. But before that she would learn to live again.
Oh, she wouldn’t embarrass Paul with her emotions; she had too much pride to make herself ridiculous. But she’d enjoy them for what they were, and when the time came to go she’d do it with dignity.
She was lying on the lounger outside her room when the sound of an engine warned her that Paul was home. Delight and a desperate eagerness warred with discretion; in the end she stayed on the lounger, pretending to read the sheets she’d printed that day.
The small sounds of the homestead became suddenly heavy with significance. Listening to the tui singing from its perch on the grevillea and a door that slammed somewhere in the house, Jacinta had to consciously discipline her breathing. Nothing, however, could calm the racing chatter of her heartbeat, or dampen the slow curl of excitement at the base of her spine.