by Susan Napier
But it was Rosalind who was first to make that discovery a short time later as she prowled restlessly around Luke’s chalet while she waited for him to change into his swimsuit and collect his beach gear. They were only going to have a short wait for their jet-skis and she didn’t want to waste a minute of their allocated time. Since she was wearing a matching bikini under her sunflower-printed cotton Lycra swing-dress she had only needed to slip next door and fetch her beach bag, give her teeth a quick clean and slap on some sunscreen. Typically, Luke was obviously being more meticulous ... or merely reinforcing his mistrust of her interpretation of fun.
Impatient with the wait and incurably nosy, Rosalind couldn’t resist poking around his tidily arranged possessions to see what they revealed about his personality... other than the fact that he was a relentless neatnik. She was investigating his reading matter, noting the depressing lack of holiday trash amongst the pile on the small teak table, when she came across the torn-out pages of a magazine. It was the article about her that she had read on the flight from New Zealand, the story that rehashed the worst excesses of her ‘wild child’ exploits, carefully undated so that an uninformed reader might assume they had occurred weeks rather than years ago.
Luke must have torn it out of his copy of the magazine on the plane. Her heart began to thump as she realised the implications.
Rosalind was still staring at the crumpled pages when Luke came down the stairs, dressed as he had been before, except for the dark shadow of his swim-shorts showing under the white trousers and the sunglasses hanging out of his shirt pocket.
He halted abruptly when he saw what she had in her hand, his mouth closing over what he had been going to say, and Rosalind was stung by a sense of betrayal.
‘You knew!’ she attacked him, snapping her fist closed and balling up the offending paper with vicious, jerky movements of her fingers. ‘Damn it—you read this and you knew who I was even before I sat down beside you on that first flight, didn’t you? Didn’t you?’
He shrugged, his eyes faintly hooded under the etched brows, his narrow face revealing nothing of what was going through his mind. And she had thought that he was so wonderfully transparent...had convinced herself that his air of bumbling helplessness was cute as well as harmless!
‘Well, answer me, damn it!’ she hissed at him, goaded by his silence, golden sunflowers flaring out around her slender hips as she stormed closer to impale him with the emerald fury of her eyes. God forbid that he should turn out to be a journalist after all.
‘Why didn’t you say you’d recognised me?’ she demanded, spoiling for a reply that would allow her temper full rein.
But instead of looking guilty Luke casually bent over and picked up a-white panama hat from a rattan chair, holding it loosely alongside his thigh as he answered. ‘Because I received the very strong impression that you were travelling incognito, wanting to avoid drawing any attention to yourself or your identity,’ he said, with the calmness of sincerity. ‘Was I so wrong?’
‘Well, no,’ she admitted, unwilling to let go of her anger, or face the underlying emotion which had prompted her to lash out. ‘But you still could have given me some indication—’
‘How—without intruding on the privacy which was obviously so vital that you went to the trouble of disguising yourself?’ he asked, with devastating logic.
She brooded on that one. He had managed to turn the tables very neatly, but that didn’t mean that he was exonerated.
‘What about later, when I told you I was an actress and you said you didn’t go to the theatre? You could have mentioned the article; you didn’t have to still pretend you didn’t know anything about me,’ she insisted sharply, the strong sense of pique she had felt at the time still mockingly clear in her memory.
‘Ah...well, perhaps I couldn’t help teasing you a little bit there—’
‘Hah!’
He ignored the accusing sound. ‘But by then it would have been awkward to admit otherwise without causing embarrassment,’ he continued evenly. ‘I thought it more diplomatic to behave as if we were strangers, which to all intents and purposes we still are...’
Rosalind’s chin went up in a familiar gesture of dramatic defiance. ‘I wouldn’t have been embarrassed!’ she declared, her eyes blazing with the refusal to apologise for the way that she had lived. She had made mistakes, but she had paid the price for them too, and in one case would go on paying, for the rest of her life...
‘Maybe not, but I would.’ He made a self-deprecating gesture with his hands. ‘I thought you might think I had done it with malice aforethought—pretending not to recognise you in order to scrape an acquaintance, so that I could boost my ego by boasting about our conversation later...selling my story, that kind of thing. I know there are some people like that...’
He looked down at the hat in his hand, sliding the brim between his fingers with his other hand. ‘And I didn’t think that particular story was something you would want to discuss, particularly with a stranger. Unless you brought up the subject yourself, I didn’t see a way to mention it...’
‘Hmm.’ Rosalind summoned up her worst-case scenario to attack his aura of guilty innocence. ‘So you’re not in some kind of security intelligence service?’
His head jerked up. ‘No!’
‘Or a detective?’
He shook his head, the movement blurring the expression in the dark eyes.
‘A reporter?’
‘God forbid!’ he blurted out.
He was either being honest or he was a spectacularly good liar. Rosalind only had her instincts to go on.
‘Hmm.’ She tapped her foot, reluctant to let him entirely off the hook as she tried to think whether there were any other unwelcome possibilities she hadn’t covered.
‘You needn’t worry about your privacy being compromised,’ he said, as if reading her scurrying thoughts. ‘Accountants are, by the very nature of their work, trustworthy and discreet. We’re often privy to extremely sensitive, private information about people’s lives and we’d soon find ourselves out of work if we boasted about our inside knowledge. Not that I’m one for boasting anyway...’
Rosalind immediately felt like a paranoid witch. Of course he wasn’t, and that was part of the reason why he couldn’t hold a woman’s interest beyond the first ten minutes!
‘There’s nothing very private about my life at the moment!’ She threw the ball of magazine pages at his chest, amazed at the speed of his reflexes when his hand snapped out and caught it before it hit him. ‘I hope you don’t believe everything you read in that kind of publication!’
‘I prefer to form my own opinions.’
‘So? Aren’t you even going to ask me how much of that trash is true?’ she taunted. ‘Don’t you want to know all the gory little details that the story left out?’
‘Only if you want to tell me,’ he said, with just the right touch of open-minded disinterest.
She wondered whether he expected his diffidence to result in a burst of confidence. She tossed her head. ‘I don’t!’
He passed the test with flying colours.
‘In that case shall we go and try out those damned noise-making machines you booked?’ he said, settling his hat on his head and indicating the door.
‘Why on earth did you tear out the damned article anyway?’ she brooded moments later as they skirted a fallen coconut on the path.
‘Impulse...I suppose as a kind of souvenir of our meeting.’
‘You don’t ask for much class in your souvenirs, do you?’
‘You mean like toothpicks and coffee-sachets have class?’ he shot back smoothly, making her laugh.
They cut down to the beach and strolled along the satiny sand towards the jetty, skirting the early sunbathers and the odd child with a bucket and spade. Families with teenagers rather than young children or babies seemed to be predominant at the Palms, for which Rosalind was quietly thankful.
After they had picked up a couple of towels from
the hotel’s beach kiosk Rosalind veered towards the water’s edge, hopping along as she removed her canvas slip-ons so that she could swish through the gently lapping waves. Without a word Luke took possession of her drawstring bag, paralleling her on the firm sand just above the waterline, keeping his beach sandals meticulously dry. The tide was fully in, the water so clear that Rosalind could see the rocks and pieces of dead coral dotting the sandy seabed as it sloped gently away from the wide beach.
The sun was already hot, beating down on her wide-brimmed straw sunhat, making her glad of its shade mantling her shoulders, which were left bare by her halter-necked dress and bikini. There was a slight breeze—just enough to stir the palm leaves fringing the beach and gently billow out the sail of a windsurfer sketching a lazy progress across the glittering plane of the water. They would do that next, Rosalind decided, admiring the skill of the briefly clad male as he deftly changed the direction of his board.
A sea-bird wheeled overhead and further out towards the line of yachts moored across the bay a pair of snorkels broke the surface. It was a picture-perfect moment and Rosalind took a deep breath, happy to be alive.
She placed a hand on the top of her hat and gave a small skip, enjoying the feel of the silky water creaming around her ankles and the spray of lukewarm droplets smattering up over her thighs and the flirty hem of her mini-dress. She was aware of Luke’s easy, loose-limbed stride matching her brief burst of speed and glanced over to catch his eyes on her shaded face.
The white hat suited his olive complexion, she mused, and, tilted as it was on a slight angle, managed to give his face a rakish look that most women would find intriguing. In fact, each time she saw him Rosalind was obliged to reassess her opinion of his potential.
‘No more ill effects from this morning?’ he said quickly, as if to forestall any comment on his watchfulness.
But Rosalind was used to being stared at and she merely shook her head with a rueful grin. ‘Not me. Poor Olivia is probably still hung over a bowl, though. Even anti-nausea medication doesn’t work; at least, not in the recommended doses. If Jordan could buy her way out of morning sickness I think he’d be prepared to spend the entire Pendragon family fortune!’
He removed his aviator sunglasses from his pocket and slipped them on, hiding his eyes. ‘I hope not, since my livelihood depends on it.’
Rosalind was deceived by the casualness of his revelation. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I happen to work for his cousin, William.’
Rosalind nearly fell on her face in the water in midskip. ‘You work for Will—?’ she screeched inelegantly. Rosalind had dated Jordan’s cousin a couple of times but purely on a friendly welcome-to-the-family basis, for he was a businessman to his fingertips, far too conservative for her taste, and she had been too outré for his.
Luke’s stride didn’t falter. ‘For the Pendragon Corporation, yes.’
Rosalind was blown away by the coincidence. She splashed out of the water to trot after him on sandy feet. ‘Where?’
‘In Wellington.’
She shrugged off a frisson of unpleasant memory at the mention of the city. ‘I didn’t mean geographically. I meant—doing what?’
‘I coordinate the preparation of various company accounts for taxation purposes.’
Taxes. She might have known!
‘I can’t get over what an incredible coincidence this is—my sister is married to your boss’s cousin!’ she said as she waved to the young Malaysian up at the marine centre from whom she had hired the jet-skis and followed his pointing finger to the gleaming red and white machines being held in knee-deep water by another employee. ‘Why, that makes us practically family!’ She laughed, halting beneath a tall coconut palm that slanted out over the beach.
Luke spread out his towel in the shade of the fronds, carefully placing her bag on top of it. ‘I wouldn’t go quite that far.’
‘Well, kissing cousins at the very least.’ She gave him a sultry smile of sly mischief and tossed her hat down beside her bag. She tugged up the hem of her stretchy cotton Lycra dress and whipped it over her head. ‘You should have mentioned the connection sooner, then I wouldn’t have been so suspicious of you,’ she said, amused by his half-step backwards at her sudden strip.
For a moment it seemed as if he wouldn’t answer. In the black lenses of his sunglasses she could see twin images of herself reflected—slim, laughing figures in yellow floral bikinis that covered only the bare essentials.
Luke found his voice. ‘I thought it might sound encroaching,’ he murmured.
She planted one hand on the delicate arch of her hip and shook an exasperated finger at him. ‘Luke James, you are the least encroaching man I have ever met! Stop worrying about what people might think and start taking a few chances. Now, get your gear off and let me show you how to give a woman a good time!’
He flushed, his jaw clenching, but he did what he was bid. His naked torso had perfect triangular proportions—strongly defined shoulders and compact, hairless chest tapering to a washboard abdomen and narrow waist. His hips and legs were as whipcord-lean as the rest of him.
She whistled at him to show that she was impressed, then chuckled as she led him down to the water, wading in to say to the man holding the jet-skis, ‘We just want one for the first ten minutes or so.’ She jerked her thumb over her shoulder. ‘Luke’s never ridden one before, so I’ll take him out on the back of mine so he can see how it’s done.’
‘O.K. Did you read the rules at the centre?’
Rosalind nodded and he quickly reiterated the main ones and gave her a brief tour of the controls as she pulled herself up to straddle the red padded seat.
Luke hung back when Rosalind indicated for him to mount up behind her.
‘Come on; time is money, as you accountants would say. This is a two-seater, see?’ she said, scooting forward to show him there was ample room.
He still hesitated. ‘If you drive as recklessly as you seem to do everything else I hope the hotel has adequate insurance.’
Her green eyes flared at the insult but she held onto her temper, telling herself he was merely being his usual cautious self. ‘I promise you won’t get hurt... the worst that can happen is that we’ll both get wet. And this guy will come out in his Zodiac if the engine conks out.’
Her condescending tone and the glance of amused tolerance she exchanged with the hotel employee was impetus enough. With a grim smile Luke swung up into the seat.
‘You can hang onto the handholds at the side or me—whichever feels more secure,’ Rosalind yelled as she turned the key in the ignition and the engine roared to life. The front of the craft lifted as she gunned the throttle and they leapt forward to crest the swell of the incoming waves.
She could hear Luke’s faint groans as they plunged from wave to wave; then they were out in the calm of deeper waters and after a few fancy turns and sharp, sweeping swathes she felt his hands snap around her waist. She laughed. She had known he wouldn’t be able to keep his distance for long. For one thing hunching down to the handholds was uncomfortable for any length of time if you were above average height.
‘If that’s your idea of fun, I think I can do without it,’ he said acidly when Rosalind finally sped back in and throttled down beside the other jet-ski.
‘It’s always uncomfortable riding pillion because you know you don’t have any control over what’s happening. Once you have the handlebars to grip onto you’ll find it’s quite a different feeling.’ She grinned as he dropped into the waist-deep water. ‘Did you see how I worked the throttle, or do you want it explained again?’
He placed a hand on the seat of the other jet-ski and vaulted onto it in a single, fluid movement. ‘It seems to be not much different from riding a motorcycle.’
‘You’ve ridden a motorcycle?’ Rosalind blinked tangled wet lashes at a brief, shocking image of that lean, hard body encased in sexy black leathers insolently unzipped from throat to groin.
He seemed
unreasonably irritated by her surprise. ‘I owned one as a teenager,’ he flung at her. ‘A Harley, as a matter of fact. You don’t have to be born to be wild like you to enjoy the occasional walk on the wild side, Roz!’
And with that he took off in a shower of spray, handling the powerful machine with only a slight clumsiness which vanished as soon as he hit the first wave, rising to his feet to absorb the impact of landing and leaning straight into a superbly flashy turn. Rosalind’s gaping mouth closed as her ready sense of humour rescued her from the uncomfortable physical awareness of a few moments ago and she roared after him with a rebel yell of delight. Talk about being a fast learner! At this rate she was going to have trouble keeping pace with her protegé!
CHAPTER SIX
LUKE provided her with delightful sport for the next hour as they raced back and forth across the bay, circling the buoys and pontoons, taking it in turns to ride each other’s wake and duelling with other jet-skis who dared challenge for supremacy of the waves.
It was the first time Rosalind had seen him completely uninhibited and she was startled by the streak of fierce competitiveness he revealed in their games. He liked to win, and when he did made no bones about enjoying his victory, punching a fist to the sky, his triumphant laugh ringing out over the water. She couldn’t quite believe that it was the same man who would hardly say boo to a goose on dry land!
Even more surprisingly, Rosalind was the one to flag first. When their time was finally up she was glad to hand over her jet-ski to someone else and stagger up the beach, cheerfully admitting as she flopped down on her towel that her arms and legs felt like jelly from the constant strain of controlling all that horsepower.
‘Not to mention another part of my anatomy that’s taken a pounding,’ she groaned as she wriggled on her back to make a nice contoured hollow in the sand for the tender region and propped her hat against the top of her head so that it shaded her face. ‘I must have lost more condition than I thought on that wretched island!’