Charlotte Lamb

by Charlotte Lamb

  The sun was now too hot for her. She shifted her position, moved into deeper shadow under the umbrella. Her book fell to the sand. She yawned, eyelids heavy, and gradually drifted off to sleep, into dreams. Dreams of Sean, of his body against her, his mouth on hers, his hands silkily exploring, making her burn and twist hungrily closer.

  She woke up with a start, trembling; opened her eyes and found herself looking straight into Sean's watchful blue stare. He was lying on his side, his lounger so close that he was almost touching her. He had been watching her while she slept. Heat swept up Nadine's face. He couldn't know what she had been dreaming about, yet she blushed, as if he could, wondering anxiously if she had made any betraying movements, sounds, while she dreamt. She hadn't said anything, had she?

  His intense stare made her heart begin to beat thickly, suffocatingly. She couldn't bear it. She jumped up and began to run, down to the sea, across the hot sands. The water was cool and delicious on her sun-flushed skin as she began to swim. There was nobody on the raft any more so she made for that, and climbed up on to it to rest for a moment, only to realise as she heaved herself out of the water that Sean had followed her, was close behind her.

  He climbed up on to the raft too, in an effortless lunge, shaking the water from his black hair, his tanned skin glistening as he sat down beside her, his long legs dangling in the blue Caribbean, one brown, wet thigh almost touching her.

  She was far too aware of that contact and that made her violently angry. She turned on him, her eyes blazing.

  'Why won't you leave me alone? You're ruining my holiday, and it's the first I've had in ages. I really need this break, I'm tired after months of hard work, and when I go back I'll have to face all the stress of starting a new career, and an even more difficult one. The next year is going to be a tremendous strain. If I'm going to make a success on TV I'll need to give it everything I've got, which is why I need this holiday. I'm not asking for much—just a little peace and quiet! But I'm not getting it with you around. If you don't go, I'll have to leave! And you're wasting your time, anyway. Whatever it is you're after, you're not getting it. You and I are finished. Get that into your head!'

  He had listened at first with a lazy, mocking smile, but after her first few words his face changed, tightened, reflected an anger just as great as hers.

  'We aren't finished, Nadine!' he threw back at her, his voice harsh. 'Not until I say so!'

  'You did say so,' she bitterly reminded him. 'We got divorced, remember!'

  'Words,' he bit out. 'Just words on paper, a lot of legal babble. Whatever the law says, the truth is we're still connected, Nadine; there's a chain binding us and it hasn't broken.' He put his hand on her thigh and she jumped, stiffening tensely.

  'Don't!'

  Sean was watching her, his hard mouth curling in sardonic comment on her reaction. 'Yes. You feel it. I feel it. Whether I'm touching you or not, whether I'm even with you or not, we're still connected, still linked.' His voice dropped, deepened, murmuring huskily. 'We're one flesh, Nadine. I'm only just beginning to understand what that means...'

  'Stop it!' she cried out fiercely, shaking. 'I am not sleeping with you! Leave me alone!'

  She meant to dive back into the water but Sean moved faster. One minute she was sitting on the edge of the raft, poised to leap into the blue Caribbean, the next her shoulders were pinned to the wood; and she was looking up at Sean as he knelt above her, his knees clamping her waist.

  Nadine was speechless, her heart crashing against her ribs. His dark head blotted out the world, riveted her dazed eyes.

  'I want to try again, Nadine,' he said, and she couldn't breathe. 'We had something special. Didn't we? It went wrong, I'm not even sure why, and I don't think you are. It was perfect, yet it all fell apart without rhyme or reason; we kept having those terrible quarrels and they poisoned everything. You said just now that it's finished between us, but you know you were lying. It isn't over, far from it. There's still something very powerful between us, and I want a last chance to get it all back, whatever we had. OK, it may be too late to retrieve what we had in the beginning, but maybe we can build something new on the ruins.'

  He stopped, gave a short, wrenched sigh and looked down into her hazel eyes, his mouth shakily half smiling. 'Will you try again, Nadine?'

  Nadine stared back at him, trying to think; her body, her senses, her heart, clamouring hungrily for him, fighting on his side, as they always had from the moment she met him. Her mind was confused and uncertain. She couldn't deny that their sexual chemistry was as potent as ever, but sex was only one part of a relationship between a man and a woman. What about the rest? She couldn't bear to get locked into that bitter private war again.

  She looked away, biting her hp, stared into the shimmering, halcyon blue sky. What was she to do?

  CHAPTER FIVE

  'SAY something, Nadine!' Sean's voice grated with tension and she gave a long sigh.

  'I need time to think! You can't just come out with something like that out of the blue and expect me to give an off-the-cuff answer. Give me time to think about it!'

  'How much time do you need?'

  'I don't know! As long as it takes for me to work out what I want...'

  'You know what you want,' he said thickly, and her pulses went crazy at the way he was looking at her. 'We both want the same thing. I don't know about you, but I'm going out of my mind with frustration.'

  So was she, especially at this moment, with him kneeling over her, his thighs warm against her, his hands restlessly shifting on her arms as though they wanted to wander elsewhere. Sean had a dynamic sexuality: he was the most intensely male man she had ever known, his masculinity like the heat of the sun, the crash of the waves, a natural force of which you could never be unaware and which you couldn't fight.

  'Our marriage turned into a war!' she cried out in something approaching desperation. 'I don't know if I can stand the strain of trying again...'

  'I'm not asking you to marry me again,' Sean said quickly, and she looked at him in confusion, bewildered.

  'What? You just said...you wanted to try again...'

  He shrugged, his face wry. 'We've tried marriage and, as you say, it didn't work; we ended up at each other's throats. Why don't we just have an affair?'

  Nadine was dumbstruck. She stared at him, her mouth open, her hazel eyes huge.

  Sean began to laugh, wicked amusement in his voice. 'Your face, darling! You look quite shocked!'

  'Not shocked,' she muttered. 'Just...taken aback...'

  'Why? It won't be the first affair you've ever had, will it? Queen Victoria died a long time ago. We're both adults, and you can't tell me you've been sleeping alone since we split up!'

  Her eyes slid away; she flushed, and heard his sudden rough intake of breath.

  'Tell me the truth, Nadine,' he broke out, his voice harsh. 'Have you slept with anyone else? What about Colbert?'

  She flared up then, glaring at him. 'How many times do I have to tell you? Jamie and I never had an affair, either while I was married to you or after we split up! I told you that a hundred times—but you wouldn't believe me. I don't suppose there's any point in telling you again, but for the last time: Jamie's a friend, I'm fond of him, but that's all there is to it. Basically we're colleagues who work well together, and respect each other.'

  Sean was watching her narrowly, his face pale and set. 'He's mad about you, Nadine! I've seen the way he looks at you and..

  'Oh, stop it!' she yelled, close to breaking point. 'You say you want to try again, but even before we start you're harping on the same old theme—what's the point?' She gave him a violent push aad Sean went sprawling backwards, tumbled into the ocean with a loud splash and sank like a stone.

  Nadine knelt anxiously on the side of the raft for a second, watching until she saw his body rising up again through the sunlit blue water. He was thrashing his arms, coughing, his black hail slicked down, seal-like, on his head.

  Once she kne
w he wasn't in trouble, she dived in too, from the side of the raft closest to shore, and began to swim strongly towards the silvery sands, her chestnut hair streaming behind her on the surface.

  Sean would have heard the splash as she dived in but he was on the far side of the raft and it took him a moment or two to swim round the raft before he could follow her. He was a stronger swimmer than her, though; she soon heard him cleaving the water far too close behind her. She used up her last remaining energy in a burst of speed to make sure she reached the beach before he caught up with her.

  As she waded up the sands, wringing out her hair, which was so wet its colour had darkened almost to black, Luc Haines waved to her from the beach bar which had now opened at the edge of the beach closest to the hotel gardens.

  'Nadine! So there you are! We've been looking everywhere for you. You've had an urgent phone call from London.' There was something odd in his voice, in the way he was looking at her. 'He said he would ring back in fifteen minutes, so you'll have time to get out of that wet suit and take the call in your room.'

  Nadine frowned, taken aback. 'Oh. OK. Thanks.' Why was he looking at her in that quizzical fashion, though? And who on earth could be calling her here? Very few people knew where she was. Her agent, Jamie, Greg Erroll. Nobody else.

  'Did you take the name?' she hesitantly asked, half hoping he hadn't because she didn't want anyone here to know too much about her.

  'I asked,' Luc said drily. 'He said just to tell you it was Greg.'

  'Thank you.' Nadine's flush deepened as she heard Sean coming up out of the water, watching them intently as he shook the water off his hair. She wondered if Greg Erroll had said anything else, had somehow aroused Luc's curiosity. Or wasn't it the phone call that had altered Luc's manner towards her?

  'I'd better collect my things, then, and go back to the hotel,' she said, as Sean began to lope across the sand towards them, every movement he made observed eagerly by a group of girls in tiny bikinis sitting at the beach bar counter sipping iced drinks and whispering together. No doubt they had just heard that Sean was a film producer but that didn't entirely explain their fascination with him. It was

  Sean's sexual magnetism working again, and Nadine angrily turned away and began stuffing things back into her beach-bag.

  Sean strolled over to join her, his silky black briefs clinging wetly to his body, his lean, bronzed body gleaming in the sunlight, drops of salt water caught in the wiry black curls of hair on his chest. Nadine gave him one brief glance then looked away angrily.

  'What was Haines saying to you?' he demanded, picking up his towel and beginning to dry himself.

  'Greg Erroll has rung and is ringing again in a quarter of an hour,' she informed him, her voice clipped.

  'What does he want?' Sean began to frown blackly.

  'How do I know? No doubt he'll tell me when he rings back.' Nadine slung her beach-bag over her shoulder and turned away. As she walked past the beach-bar the girls sitting there stared at her, whispering together. She tried not to hear but scraps of words came to her through the hot, still air.

  'Nadine Carmichael... she was his wife... no, they're divorced...' Giggle, giggle. 'They're here together...no, really. I heard from my room-maid, they're sleeping together...' A wave of excited giggles followed that and Nadine's hps clamped together; she averted her flushed face angrily. She would have liked to run, to get out of hearing range, but that would have been undignified, would have been some sort of victory for the younger girls, who were enjoying talking about her while she was in earshot. 'No, she's not a film star, silly. She's just a model,' one of them said, raising her voice.

  Nadine quickened her step, she was almost out of range. A few scraps of words floated after her. 'Yes, you know her; that TV ad... TV... model... that girl...'

  Footsteps grated on the sandy path and she started, looking round. Luc Haines fell into step beside her and gave her a dry sideways look.

  'I knew there was something else you weren't telling us. So you're a famous model and appear on TV advertisements!'

  She grimly asked, 'How did you find out?'

  'A guest recognised you. It was bound to happen sooner or later, obviously, if you're that famous. You must have known that!'

  'It seemed so far from here to London, I thought...I hoped...nobody would recognise me.'

  He gave her a sudden, sweet smile. 'I'm sorry you were. Is it hell being recognised everywhere you go?'

  'I'm used to it in London, but it is tiring, always being on display; it's like living in a shop window. You can never relax or forget people are watching you.'

  He nodded. 'And so you wanted to get away from it all, just for a couple of weeks! I can understand that. I'm sorry you've been spotted!'

  They had reached the hotel lobby. Nadine gave him a rueful little smile. 'Oh, well, I'm used to it.'

  Abruptly Luc asked, 'Will you let me paint you?'

  She looked back at him steadily. 'I'm a very expensive model.'

  Luc laughed and so did she, but it was a faintly bitter amusement she felt and Luc watched her face as if reading her response, and frowned.

  'I wanted to paint you before I knew who you were,' he reminded her. 'The first time we met I asked if I could paint you. Remember?'

  She nodded slowly, remembering; and then thought that she rather liked the idea of being painted by such a good artist.

  'Just so long as you don't expect me to take my clothes off,' she half joked.

  He shook his head. 'It's your face I'm interested in, not your body.'

  'Well, that's a novel approach!' said a cold voice behind them, and Nadine stiffened, her hazel eyes widening in shock.

  She had been so absorbed in her conversation with Luc that she hadn't noticed Sean's arrival. He was standing right behind them, his brooding blue eyes fixed on her face in a ruthless dissection of her feelings which was only too bleakly familiar to her. Sean had always been a jealous, possessive man who resented seeing any other men with her, and he obviously didn't believe Luc's claim to be interested in her face rather than her body. What he was trying to guess was whether or not she was interested in Luc, and Nadine resented that probing stare.

  She turned on her heel and walked away from both men. If Sean wanted to pick a fight he could do it without her as an audience; she had had enough for one day.

  She carefully locked her door and closed the blinds at the windows before she stripped and took a rapid shower. Just as she was towelling her wet hair the phone rang and she ran to pick it up.

  'Nadine? It's Greg!'

  'Hello, Greg,' she said, curling up on her bed, wrapped in her towelling robe. 'Is anything wrong?'

  'Far from it!' he said in a warm, friendly voice. 'The media stuff you did before you left is all out now and we're very pleased with the impact you made. Congratulations. Are you having a good holiday?'

  She grimaced, glad he couldn't see her face. 'Yes, thanks.' Apart from the presence of my maddening ex-husband! she thought grimly, but she certainly wasn't confiding that news to Greg Erroll. The fewer people who knew that Sean had followed her out here the better. She was already having nightmares in case the Press got hold of the story. She could just imagine the headlines and she flinched at the thought of what they were likely to say.

  'Good,' Greg said briskly. 'Would it be a terrible bore to interrupt it?'

  'Interrupt it?' she repeated in disbelief. She might have known! No, come on—she had known! From the minute Luc told her that Greg had rung she had begun to suspect something. Greg Erroll wouldn't have rung her here just to ask if she was having a good time on holiday. He had to have a very serious reason for this call.

  'Just for a few days,' he quickly added.

  'To do what?'

  'I wouldn't ask you if it wasn't something very special,' he coaxed.

  'Come out with it, Greg, don't be devious,' Nadine groaned.

  He laughed. 'It's a TV appearance, in the States—in Miami, in fact. They picked up
on you from the British Press coverage, and they want you to do a chat show on Friday night. I wouldn't ask you to interrupt your holiday if it was anywhere else, but Miami isn't a difficult trip from where you are! I could have a private plane pick you up, fly you to Miami, to do the show, and afterwards you could spend the night at a hotel... there's a very good one right next to the airport, the Sheraton River House, or you could stay at the Grand Bay, which is in Coconut Grove; that's where I always stay when I'm in Miami. The hotel has the most amazing views over the bay, and I love the food they serve. You might like to spend a couple of days shopping in Miami before you go back. Have you been there? The shopping is terrific.'

  She was thinking hard. 'Friday? Would the plane pick me up on Friday?'

  'Yes, in the morning, preferably, to give you time to acclimatise, settle down before the show in the evening. Miami is probably a little more humid than where you are. I always find that area of the West Indies rather windy.'

  'It's gorgeous at the moment,' she said absently. 'But I gather that they do have some very strong winds and quite a bit of rain in early spring.'

  'I obviously pick the wrong time of year.' There was a little silence then Greg asked, 'Well? Will you do it?'

  'Yes, I'll do it.'

  The warmth in his voice increased. Greg liked people to do what he wanted them to do; it made him like them more.

  'Good girl. Now, will you want to fly straight back next day, or stay in Miami for a few days?'

  'I'll stay for a couple of days, I think,' she told him, and he laughed.

  'I guessed you wouldn't be able to resist the shopping idea! OK, I'll arrange everything for you and be in touch to let you know the details.'