Wild Jasmine

by Yvonne Whittal

  Sarika awakened several hours later to the sensation that she was burning up inside, and her chest was so tight that she could scarcely breathe. She was aware of being dragged out into the blinding sunlight, then someone's head came between her and the sun, and she was looking up into Sean's grim, unshaven face. The fury in his eyes seemed to add to the fire in her body when he lifted her in his arms and carried her away from the cave, but in her delirium there was a brief moment of clarity. It was Craig who was lying so gravely ill in the cave, not Sean, and concern made her struggle feebly against the pressure of the hard arms holding her.

  'No, no!' she croaked hoarsely. 'I can't leave Craig! He needs me! I must—'

  'Shut up and be still!' that harsh, familiar voice instructed, and she mercifully sank into a state of semi-consciousness.

  She was aware of being placed on a stretcher and lifted into a helicopter. She was aware also of a second stretcher being lifted into the helicopter. She could hear Paul and Melissa talking almost simultaneously, but most of all she was aware of Sean's voice issuing harsh commands, and the blazing fury in his dark eyes whenever she surfaced sufficiently to find him leaning over her.

  If one could feel safe, but also threatened, then that was exactly how Sarika felt when they were being flown back to Bombay and safety.

  It was not until the early hours of the Monday morning that Sarika emerged from her state of feverish delirium to find Sean slumped in a chair beside her bed.

  'Where am I?' she asked weakly, her eyes taking in the high white walls surrounding her.

  'You're in hospital,' that deep, gravelly voice informed her, and she turned her head again to look at him. 'You've got pneumonia, and you're lucky you didn't crack a rib.'

  His eyes were bloodshot and heavy-lidded as if he had not slept for days, and his rugged features were grim and drawn. 'You look terrible,' she said candidly.

  'You don't look so good yourself,' he smiled twistedly, his strong fingers gripping hers, and it was then that the memory of the terrible ordeal she had suffered suddenly flooded her mind.

  'Craig?' she murmured, a hint of terror lurking in her eyes. 'How is he? Do you know?'

  'He's recovering, and he'll be out of hospital in a day or two.' Sean's features hardened, and the smile left his eyes to leave them cold. 'The other two were lucky enough to escape with nothing more than a slight cold.'

  The knowledge that everyone was safe acted like a sedative, and Sarika drifted into a dreamless sleep from which she did not awaken until several hours later, but this time it was to find Ayah sitting next to her bed.

  'Sarika, pyaari, we have been nearly out of our minds with worry, but I thank God that you are safe,' wept Ayah, clasping Sarika's hand between hers.

  'I'm sorry, Ayah,' Sarika murmured tiredly, then she cast a searching glance about her. 'Where's Sean?'

  'I persuaded him at last to go home,' Ayah explained his absence, releasing Sarika's hand to dab at her eyes with a lacy handkerchief. 'The poor man has not slept since we were notified of the distress signal coming from the Sea Nymph. The most terrible thing was that we could do nothing in the storm, and then it was too dark to start a search before morning.' Ayah's eyes clouded as she shook her head. 'I've never before seen a man so demented with concern.'

  Demented? Sean demented with concern for her? Impossible! 'Where's Elvira Duncan?' Sarika asked.

  'She left on Saturday morning.' Ayah's lips tightened with displeasure. 'Sean drove her to the airport after breakfast.'

  How ironic, Sarika thought, suppressing the desire to laugh hysterically. It was because of Elvira Duncan that she had accepted Melissa's invitation, but it had all been so unnecessary.

  Ayah did not stay long, but she left Sarika with something to think about. If Sean had been so demented with concern for her safety, then why had he been so angry when he had found her? A little spark of hope was lit inside her, but she doused it almost at once.

  Melissa came to see her that evening, but the nurse would not let her closer than the doorway because of her cold.

  'I'm relieved you're better,' said Melissa in a subdued, remorseful voice. 'Your Mr O'Connor was more than ordinarily annoyed, and he made it quite clear that he would blame me if anything happened to you.'

  'It's over, Melissa, and we're all safe.' Sarika's mind cynically rejected Melissa's statement. 'That's what really matters, isn't it?'

  'I suppose so,' Melissa nodded gravely. They talked a while longer, then she left to go and see Craig, and Sarika closed her eyes, glad to be alone again.

  During the days that followed Sarika had brief visits from Craig as well as Paul. Michael had heard about the accident and came twice to see her. Ayah called in every day, but Sean never came again. Why? If he had been so concerned about her, and if he had been so annoyed with Melissa because of what had happened, then why could he not spare the time to come and see her? She wanted to question Ayah about it, but she was afraid of what she might hear, so the subject was never mentioned.

  Sarika was allowed to go home the Saturday morning, and she sat in a chair studying herself in the hand mirror while she waited for Ayah. The nurses had washed her hair and it had regained some of its lustre, but her face was pale, and there were purple smudges like bruises beneath her eyes. Her hand went absently to her side. She had bruised herself badly, but it was now no more than a sensitive discoloration. She was lucky; they were all lucky to have got off so lightly!

  The door to her ward was pushed open, and she looked up expecting to see Ayah, but instead it was Sean who walked into the ward with her overnight bag in his hand. His eyes were dark and shuttered when they met hers, and her pulse rate climbed rapidly when he dumped her bag on the bed and walked towards her. He was dressed exactly as he had been dressed that very first time she had seen him at the airport. The blue open-necked shirt still stretched too tightly across the width of his shoulders, and the white slacks still hugged his lean hips and accentuated the long muscular legs.

  'How are you, Sarika?' he asked, his hands resting on his hips as he stood observing her intently.

  What do you care? The words had hovered on her lips, but she bit them back to say casually, 'I'm fine.'

  'You're looking much better,' he offered his opinion while he continued to study her with a strange glitter in his eyes.

  'I feel much better, thank you,' she answered stiffly, her fingers nervously gripping the handle of the mirror when she sensed that his polite conversation was a cover for something explosive.

  'I apologise for not seeing you during the week, but I had an urgent matter to attend to at the office in Australia, and I only arrived back late last night,' he explained the reason for his absence, and it was so far removed from what she had imagined that she wanted to burst into tears, but she managed to control herself.

  'I understand,' she nodded with a little more warmth in her voice than when he had arrived.

  Sarika met his probing glance, and for one crazy moment she thought she saw a flicker of something more than concern in his eyes, but it was gone the next instant. 'Get dressed so I can take you home,' he instructed in a clipped voice.

  He walked out and left her feeling as if she had grasped at something only to find it gone, but the nurse came in a second later, and then there was no time to dwell on the matter.

  Sean's silent, morose manner did not encourage conversation when he drove her home, and Sarika had the strangest feeling that yet another storm was brewing in which she would become involved. Ayah came hastily down the steps to welcome her when they arrived at the house, and her smiling embrace eased Sarika's nervousness. Sean came up beside Sarika when she was about to negotiate the steps, and she was lifted in his arms and carried into the house. She wanted to protest that she was capable of managing on her own, but the look on his stern face so close to hers forced her to remain silent as he carried her all the way up the stairs to her bedroom. Her heart bounced into her throat when he paused halfway across the room and tighten
ed his arms about her. He turned his head, his lips inches from hers so that she could feel his warm, tobacco-scented breath against her mouth, and for one frantic moment she thought he was going to kiss her, but he turned his head away abruptly and continued across the room to lower her into the chair beside the window.

  'You're to take it easy for the next few days,' he instructed when he stepped away from the chair. 'The doctor said you're not to do anything strenuous until you've fully regained your strength.'

  Before Sarika could say anything he had strode out of the room to leave Ayah crooning over her.

  'What can I bring you, Sarika?' Ayah wanted to know, draping a light blanket over Sarika's legs. 'A cup of tea, perhaps?'

  'That would be lovely,' Sarika agreed absently, and then she was alone with that terrible feeling that, for her, the storm was not yet over.

  Four days passed during which she was pampered like a baby by an attentive, adoring Ayah. Sarika had been in bed on the Saturday evening when Sean came up to her room for a brief moment, she saw him twice the Sunday, and after that he came only in the evening when he returned home from the office. Their conversation was limited to enquiring after her health and remarking upon the steamy weather, but with each meeting Sarika's tension increased until she felt like a sitar string which was about to snap under pressure. She almost wished Sean would shout at her, or something equally drastic. Anything, she decided, would be preferable to those chilly courtesy calls he paid her.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  It was after nine on the Wednesday evening before Sean arrived home from the office. Sarika was reading a book in bed when she heard his Land Rover coming up the drive, and five minutes later there was a sharp tap on her door before it was pushed open. Sean walked in, the jacket of his dark grey, lightweight suit hooked on a finger over his shoulder, and his tie loosened so that he could unbutton his shirt collar. Black, smouldering eyes fastened on to hers when he closed the door and walked towards her bed, and she swallowed convulsively when she realised that the storm she had waited for was finally going to erupt. He flung his jacket across the foot of the bed, and his tie followed it. Ignoring the chair, he sat down beside her on the bed so that the springs sagged beneath his weight, and he undid two more buttons down the front of his white shirt.

  Sarika stared at his deeply tanned, hair-roughened chest where that small silver medallion glinted in the bedside light. The desire to touch him was so incredibly strong at that moment that she had to close her book and curl her fingers tightly about it for fear she might succumb to her feelings only to be rejected.

  'For God's sake, Sarika!' Sean's voice exploded into the tense silence. 'Why did you go out on that yacht when you knew there was a storm on the way?'

  Sarika felt her insides twisting into a quivering knot. How could she tell him, 'I wanted to get away from you and Elvira, and I couldn't bear the thought of you being together'? She looked up to see impatience etched in every line of his rugged face, and gave him an answer which was only partly the truth. 'My judgment was clouded by my desire to get away from everything.'

  'Do you have any idea what I went through during those long hours before we found you the following day?' he snarled at her savagely, and she shrank mutely back against the pillows. 'No, I don't suppose you do! I suppose you think it didn't matter to me whether you were alive or dead!'

  There was something in what he was saying that was reaching out to her, but she was too afraid to grasp it, and instead she contradicted his statement. 'I have a vague recollection that you weren't very pleased to see me. You were furious, if I remember correctly.'

  'You're damn right I was furious!' he thundered at her. 'I'd spent hours thinking of everything I wanted to say to you if I was lucky enough to find you alive, and when I did find you you were locked in an embrace with what's-his-name as if he was the only thing that mattered to you.'

  'If we were locked in an embrace, then it was simply because—'

  'Go on!' he prompted harshly, but once again she shied away from the revealing truth.

  'You have no right to expect an explanation from me while you leave the days and nights you spent with Elvira Duncan unexplained.' Oh, lord, what was she saying? she asked herself furiously, and Sean's eyes glittered strangely.

  'Were you jealous?'

  'Don't be ridiculous!' She brushed aside the truth.

  'Elvira Duncan is an old friend. I took her to all the places I thought she'd like to see before I sent her packing the Saturday morning, and I don't imagine I'll see her again for another couple of years.' There was renewed fury in the eyes that held hers captive. 'Now you can tell me why I had to go out to that island to find you locked in an embrace with Craig Jenkins.'

  'I was not embracing him, I was—oh, God!'

  'Don't stop now, Sarika,' he goaded her savagely. 'Let me hear your version of what went on in that love-nest. Did you swop partners in the night? Is that why I found you clinging to Craig? Was he such a good lover Sarika, that you were actually terrified I might leave him there to die?'

  'Stop it! Stop it, do you hear me!' Her face was white, and her insides were shaking uncontrollably. 'It wasn't like that at all! Craig was burning up with fever, and Paul and I took turns caring for him. I was so ill eventually I didn't know what I was doing any more. I thought I was going to die, and all I could think of was you. I was cold and hot alternately because of the fever, and in my delirium I sought comfort from Craig's presence, but—' She broke off abruptly and buried her anguished face in her hands. 'God help me, Sean, but in my delirium I thought it was you!'

  An awful silence followed her revealing explanation. She had been pressured into saying things she would never have said under normal circumstances, and she could not bear to look at Sean while she waited for him to lash her with his mockery and his contempt.

  'Our relationship has been one big misunderstanding from the start, hasn't it?' She lowered her hands to stare at him in blank surprise. That was not what he was supposed to say. Where was his mockery, his disgust his rejection? He pushed his fingers uncharacteristically through his dark hair, and a new tension suddenly gripped her when his narrowed glance met hers. 'Sarika, listen to me! You've got to stop shutting me out because, God knows, I can't live with that! I want to know how interested you are in the Apex company. Do you intend to make a career of it to the exclusion of all else, or do you still have a secret desire to open up a boutique?'

  'I don't know.' Her fingers tightened about the book in her lap to stop their trembling. 'I've been thinking these past few days that perhaps I ought to sell my shares in Apex, but I'm not so keen on the boutique either. Why do you ask?'

  'I have a job to offer you which will involve a lot of travelling for the first year, but after that I intend to base myself more or less permanently in the United States while someone else does the travelling for me.'

  Sarika was not quite sure what she had expected, but his words somehow filled her with an aching disappointment which she had difficulty in adjusting to. 'Are you offering me a job as your personal assistant?'

  'What I'm offering you is a lifetime contract… a partnership.' His compelling glance held hers for several tense seconds, then he said: 'I want you to marry me.'

  'No!' Shock cascaded through her like a charge of electricity to leave her rigid with rejection, and white as the pillows she was leaning against. 'You don't know what you're saying!'

  There was an unfamiliar tremor in the hands that gripped her shoulders tightly and his features mirrored a torment she could not even begin to understand. 'I need you, and I don't want to have to live without you!'

  A singing joy exploded inside her, but still she held back. 'Please, Sean, you're saying things you don't mean, and that's the cruellest thing you could ever do to, me.'

  'I love you, honey, and you've got to believe me that this is something I've never wanted to say to any woman before,' he said in a voice that was vibrant with emotion, and when she continued to stare at him
in disbelief, he released her abruptly and pushed his fingers through his hair a second time as he got to his feet to pace the floor like a restless animal. 'Dammit, I've been so crazy with love for you that I actually wrote and told Maria about you, and she wrote back to tell me that she would never speak to me again if I let you slip through my fingers.'

  'Maria?' she asked, holding her breath, for some extraordinary reason as her wary eyes followed him back and forth across the room.

  'My sister,' he explained, ceasing his pacing to sit down beside her again. 'Her letter came from New York during my first trip to Australia.'

  'Oh, God!' groaned Sarika, burying her face in her hands as she recalled the anguish she had suffered because of that airmail letter from America.

  'Trust me, Sarika,' Sean pleaded throatily, his fingers gentle as he took her hands away from her face. 'Please trust me?'

  A bleak look entered her tawny eyes when they met his. 'The last time I—I trusted a man I—'

  'You can't classify me in the same category as Gary Rowan,' Sean objected harshly, and she stared at him incredulously.

  'You know about him?'

  'Ayah told me.' He saw the blood surge into her cheeks and recede again to leave her pale, and his glance held hers relentlessly while he spoke. 'Ayah and I had a long talk during those hours while we waited to begin the search, and she told me a great many things about you that I know you would never have told me even if I'd threatened you with something drastic. I also got a well-deserved lecture from Ayah which was more like a dire warning. I had to sort out the problems between us soon, or else!' His wide shoulders sagged tiredly, but his fingers tightened about hers. 'I owe you an apology, Sarika, for some of the things I've said to you, but that was my way of digging for the truth.'

  She felt a pulse jerking in her throat. 'Why was it so important to know the truth?'

  'I wanted to know why I could never get through to you on a personal level, and I wanted to know what had hurt you so badly that you erected mental barriers not even I could penetrate at times. God, honey,' he groaned, 'I've wanted you from the first moment I saw you, and I almost had you that night you came back from Poona with Michael. I was so damn jealous when I saw you kissing him that I swore I'd make you pay, but I didn't bargain with the fact that you're a virgin and… oh, honey, it scared me when I realised what I'd almost done.'