Читать книгу Spirit Of Atlantis - Anne Mather, Anne Mather - Страница 7

JULIE’S CABIN was just the same as all the other cabins, except that in the month she had been there she had added a few touches of her own. There was the string of Indian beads she had draped over the lampshade, so that when the lamp was on, the light picked out the vivid colours of the vegetable dye; the Eskimo doll who sat on the table by her bed, snug and warm in his sealskin coat and fur cap; and the motley assortment of paperweights and key-rings and ashtrays—chunky glass baubles, with scenes of Ontario imprisoned within their transparent exteriors.

The cabins were simply but comfortably furnished. The well-sprung divans had rough wood headboards, and the rest of the bedroom furniture was utilitarian. There was a closet, a chest of drawers with a mirror above, a table and chairs, and one easy chair. The bathroom was fitted with a shower unit above the bath, and there was always plenty of hot water. Julie had discovered that Canadians expected this facility and remembering the lukewarm baths she had taken in English hotels, she thought they could well learn something from them. Everything was spotlessly clean, both in the cabins and in the main building, and the staff were always ready and willing to accommodate her every need. She would miss their cheerful friendliness when she returned to England, she thought, still unable to contemplate that eventuality without emotion.

Changing for dinner that evening, Julie viewed the becoming tan she was acquiring with some pleasure. She had looked so pale and drained of all colour when she had arrived, but now her cheeks were filling out a little with all the rich food Pam was pressing on her, and she no longer had that waif-like appearance.

Regarding her reflection as she applied a dark mascara to her lashes, she decided Adam would see a definite change in her. She had grown accustomed to seeing a magnolia-pale face in the mirror, with sharply-defined features and honey-coloured hair. Now she had a different image, the thin features rounded out, the hair bleached by the sun and streaked with gold. She had not had it cut for months, and instead of her usual ear-length bob it had lengthened and thickened, and it presently swung about her shoulders, curling back from her face in a style that was distinctly becoming.

She had not troubled much about clothes either since she left England. Most of the time she wore shorts or jeans, adding an embroidered smock or tunic at night instead of the cotton vests she wore during the day. Adam, who had always complimented her on her dress sense at home, would be appalled if he could see her now, she thought ruefully, putting down the mascara brush and studying herself critically. He did not approve of the negligent morals of the younger generation, and in his opinion the casual attitude towards appearance was equally contemptible. Still, Julie consoled herself wryly, she had paid little heed to what she had thrown into her suitcases before she left London, and because what she had brought was unsuitable to her surroundings, she had bought the cheapest and most serviceable substitutes available.

Now she turned away from the mirror, and checked that she had her keys. They were in the pocket of her jeans, and she adjusted the cords that looped the bottom of her cheesecloth shirt before leaving the cabin.

It was a mild night, the air delightfully soft and redolent with the scents of the forest close by. She crossed the square to the main building with deliberate slowness, anticipating what she would have for dinner with real enthusiasm, and climbed the shallow stairs to the swing doors with growing confidence. These weeks had done wonders for her, she acknowledged, and she felt an immense debt of gratitude towards Pam and her husband.

The reception hall was brightly illuminated, even though it was not yet dark outside. Already there were sounds of activity from the dining room, and the small bar adjoining was doing a good trade. Julie acknowledged the greeting of the young receptionist, a biology student working his vacation, and then was almost laid flat by an energetic young body bursting out of the door that led to the Galloways’ private apartments. It was Brad Galloway, Pam’s twelve-year-old son, and already he was almost as broad as his father.

‘Hey …’

Julie protested, and Brad pulled an apologetic face. ‘I’m sorry,’ he gasped. ‘But there’s a terrific yacht coming into the marina! D’you want to come and see?’

‘I don’t think so, thank you.’ Julie’s refusal was dry. ‘And you won’t make it if you go headlong down the steps.’

‘I won’t.’ Brad exhibited the self-assurance that all Canadian children seemed to have and charged away towards the doors. ‘See you, Julie!’ he called and was gone, leaving Julie to exchange a rueful grimace with the young man behind the desk.

‘I know—kids!’ he grinned, not averse to flirting with an attractive girl, so far without any success. ‘Did he hurt you? Can I do anything for you?’

‘I don’t think so, thank you.’ Julie’s lips twitched. ‘I think a long cool drink is in order, and Pietro can supply me with that.’

Pietro, the bartender, was an Italian who had emigrated to Canada more than twenty years ago, yet he still retained his distinctive accent. He had been quite a Lothario in his time, but at fifty-three his talents were limited, and Julie enjoyed his amusing chatter. His wife, Rosa, worked in the kitchens, and their various offspring were often to be seen about the hotel.

‘So, little Julie,’ he said, as she squeezed on to a stool at the bar. ‘What have you been doing with yourself today?’

Julie smiled. ‘What do I usually do?’ she countered, hedging her shoulder against the press of George Fairley’s broad back. He and his wife were always in the bar at this hour, and invariably hogged the counter. ‘Yes, the same as ever,’ she nodded, as Pietro held up a bottle of Coke. ‘With plenty of ice, please.’

‘Wouldn’t you like me to put you something a little sharper in here?’ Pietro suggested, pulling a very expressive face. ‘A little rum perhaps, or—’

‘No, thanks.’ Julie shook her head, her smile a little tight now. ‘I—er—I’m not fond of alcohol. I don’t like what it can do to people.’ She gave a faint apologetic smile, circling the glass he pushed towards her with her fingers. ‘It’s been another lovely day, hasn’t it?’

Pietro shrugged, a typically continental gesture, and accepted her change of topic without comment. ‘A lovely day,’ he echoed. ‘A lovely day for a lovely girl,’ he added teasingly. ‘You know, Julie, if I were ten years younger …’

‘And not married,’ she murmured obediently, and he laughed. They had played this game before. But, as always, she saw the gleam of speculation in his eyes, and picking up her glass she made her exit, carrying it with her into the dining room.

She chose a shrimp cocktail to start with. These shellfish were enormous, huge juicy morsels served with a barbecue sauce that added a piquant flavour all its own. When Julie first came to Kawana Point, she had found herself satisfied after only one course, but now she could order a sirloin steak and salad without feeling unduly greedy.

She was dipping a luscious shrimp into the barbecue sauce when she looked up and saw two men crossing the reception hall towards the bar. Her table was situated by the window, but it was in line with double doors that opened into the hall, and she had an unobstructed view of anyone coming or going. The fact that she averted her eyes immediately did not prevent her identification of one of the men, and her hand trembled uncontrollably, causing the shrimp to drop completely into the strongly-flavoured sauce.

Putting down her fork, she wiped her lips with her napkin, trying desperately to retain her self-composure. What was Dan Prescott doing here? she wondered anxiously. People like the Prescotts did not visit hotels like the Kawana Point. They stayed at their own summer residences, and when they needed entertainment they went into Orillia or Barrie, or to any one of a dozen private clubs situated along the lake shore road.

Her taste for the shrimps dwindling, she picked up her glass and swallowed a mouthful of Coke. It was coolly refreshing, and as she put down her glass again she felt a growing impatience with herself. What was she? Some kind of cipher or something? Just because a man she had never expected to see again had turned up at the hotel it did not mean he had come in search of her. That was the most appalling conceit, and totally unlike her. Was it unreasonable that having discovered the whereabouts of the hotel he should come and take a look at it, but how had he got here this time? She had not heard any motorcycle, a sound which would carry on the evening air, and although he was not wearing evening clothes he had been wearing an expensive-looking jacket, hardly the attire for two wheels.

Appalled anew that she should remember so distinctly what he had been wearing after such a fleeting appraisal, Julie determinedly picked up her fork again. Then she remembered the yacht, the yacht which had aroused such excitement from the normally-laconic Brad. Was that how they had made the trip across to the hotel?

The appearance of Pam in her working gear of cotton shirt and denims, her plump face flushed and excited, did nothing to improve her digestion. Her friend came bustling towards her, and it was obvious from her manner that she knew exactly who was in the bar.

‘Did you see him?’ she hissed, bending over Julie’s table, and the younger girl deliberately bit the tail from a shrimp before replying.

‘See who?’ she asked then, playing for time, but Pam was not deceived.

‘You must have seen them cross the hall,’ she whispered impatiently, casting an apologetic glance at her other residents. ‘They’re in the bar. What are you going to do?’

Julie looked bland. ‘What am I going to do?’ she echoed.

‘Yes.’ Pam sighed. ‘Well, I mean it’s obvious, isn’t it? He didn’t come here just to taste the beer. His cousin’s with him—at least, I think it’s his cousin. He calls him Drew, and I know Anthea Leyton has a son called Andrew—’

‘Pam, their being here has nothing to do with me,’ declared Julie firmly. ‘If they choose to come—to come slumming, that’s their affair. I have no intention of speaking to Dan Prescott, so don’t go getting any ideas.’

‘But, Julie, you can’t just ignore him!’

‘Why not?’ Julie hid her trembling hands beneath the napkin in her lap. ‘Honestly, Pam, I don’t even like the man!’

‘You said yourself, you hardly know him.’

‘All the more reason for keeping out of his way.’

‘Well, I think you’re crazy!’

‘Oh, do you?’ Julie stared up at her, half irritated by her insistence.

‘Yes.’ Pam dismissed the younger girl’s objections with an inconsequent wave of her hand. ‘Julie, you may never get another chance to meet him socially—’

‘I don’t want that chance, Pam.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m not interested.’

Pam gazed at her disbelievingly. ‘You mean you’re afraid.’

‘Afraid?’ Julie gasped.

‘Yes, afraid.’ Pam straightened, resting her hands on her broad hips. ‘You’ve had your life organised for you for so long, you’ve forgotten what it’s like to take a risk—’

‘So you admit it is a risk?’

Julie tilted her head, and Pam pulled a wry face. ‘All right. So he does have a reputation. What of it? You’re an adult, aren’t you. You can handle it.’

Julie sighed. ‘I don’t want to handle anything, Pam. I just want to sit here and eat my dinner, and afterwards I’m going to watch some television and then go to bed.’

Pam made a defeated gesture. ‘I give up.’

‘Good.’

Julie determinedly returned to her shrimp cocktail and Pam had no alternative but to leave her to it. But she shook her head rather frustratedly as she crossed to the door, and Julie, watching her, doubted she had heard the last of it.

By the time she had eaten half a dozen mouthfuls of her steak, she knew she was fighting a losing battle. The awareness of the man in the bar, of the possibility that he might choose to come into the dining room and order a meal, filled her with unease, and she knew she would not feel secure until she was safely locked behind her cabin door.

Declining a dessert, she left her table, walking swiftly through the open doors into the reception area. It was usually deserted at this hour of the evening, most of the guests either occupying the dining room or the bar, and she expected to make her escape unobserved. What she had not anticipated was Brad Galloway, deep in conversation with the man she most wanted to avoid, or to be involved in that discussion by the boy’s artless invitation.

‘Julie!’ he exclaimed, when he saw her. ‘Do you remember that yacht I told you about? Well, this is Mr Prescott who owns it.’

‘I didn’t say that, Brad.’ Dan Prescott’s voice was just as disturbing as she remembered. ‘I said it belonged to my family. It does. I just have the use of it now and then.’

His grin was apologetic, both to the boy and to Julie, but she refused to respond to it. In fact, she refused to look at Dan Prescott at all after that first dismaying appraisal. Yet, for all that, she knew the exact colour of the bluish-grey corded jacket he was wearing, and the way the dark blue jeans hugged the contours of his thighs. His clothes were casual, but they fitted him well, and she realised something she had not realised before. Men like Dan Prescott did not need to exhibit their wealth. They accepted it. It was a fact. And that extreme self-confidence was all the proof they needed.

‘What do you say, Julie?’

Brad was looking at her a little querulously now, and she forced herself to show the enthusiasm he was expecting. ‘That’s great,’ she murmured, realising her words sounded artificial even to her ears. ‘You must tell me all about it tomorrow.’

‘Why not right now?’

The words could have been Brad’s, but they weren’t, and Julie was obliged to acknowledge Dan Prescott’s presence for the first time. Even so, it was almost a physical shock meeting that penetrating stare. The lapse of time had been too brief for her to forget a second of their last encounter, and it was only too easy to remember how she had had to tear herself away from him, breaking the intimate contact he had initiated. Nevertheless, she had broken the contact, she told herself firmly, and he had no right to do this to her. But as his eyes moved lower, over the firm outline of her breasts and the rounded swell of her hips, she felt a wave of heat flooding over her, and nothing could alter the fact that if she were as indifferent to him as she liked to think, it wouldn’t matter what he did.

With a feeling of mortification she felt his eyes come back to her face, and then the heavy lids drooped. ‘Why not right now?’ he repeated, as aware of her confusion as she was herself, and conscious of Brad’s puzzled stare Julie tried to pull herself together.

‘I—why, I don’t have time just now, Brad,’ she offered, addressing her apology to the boy. ‘Some other time perhaps …’

‘Okay.’

Brad shrugged, obviously disappointed, and she was sorry, but then, to add to her humiliation, Pam appeared. It only took her a couple of seconds to sum up the situation, and acting purely on instinct Julie was sure, she exclaimed:

‘Oh, there you are, Brad. I’ve been looking for you.’ Her smile flashed briefly at Dan Prescott. ‘Come along, I want you to help me hang those lamps in the yard.’

‘Oh, Mom!’

Brad’s voice was eloquent with feeling, and after only a slight hesitation Dan said: ‘Perhaps I could help you, Mrs Galloway.’

Pam was obviously taken aback, but Julie’s hopes of reprieve were quickly squashed. ‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Prescott, thank you,’ her friend assured him warmly. ‘Brad will do it—he always does. He’s such a help around the place.’

‘I’m sure he is.’ Dan’s expression was amused as it rested on the boy’s mutinous face. ‘Sorry, old son, but there’ll be another time.’

‘Will there? Will there really?’

Brad gazed up at him eagerly, and with a fleeting glance in Julie’s direction Dan nodded. ‘You have my word on it,’ he nodded, pushing his hands into his jacket pockets, and Brad’s demeanour was swiftly transformed.

‘Oh—boy!’ he exclaimed, and grinned almost defiantly at Julie before his mother ushered him away.

But when Julie would have left too, lean brown fingers looped themselves loosely around her wrist. ‘Wait …’

The word was uttered somewhere near her temple, and the warmth of his breath ruffled the strands of silky hair that lay across her forehead. It was a husky injunction, a soft invocation to delay her while Pam and her son got out of earshot, yet when she tried to release herself his fingers reacted like a slip knot that tightened the more it was strained against. His command might have been mild, but it was a command nevertheless, she realised, and she was forced to stand there, supremely aware that if she moved her fingers they brushed his leg.

‘So,’ he said at last, when they were alone, the student receptionist having departed to take his dinner some time before, ‘why are you running out on me?’

Julie contemplated denying the allegation, but she had no desire to start an argument with him. Besides, he was experienced enough to know if she was lying, and opposition often provoked an interest that otherwise would not have been there.

‘Why do you think?’ she asked instead, assuming a bored expression, and the long thick lashes came to shade his eyes.

‘You tell me,’ he suggested, and with a sigh she said: ‘Because I don’t want to get involved with you, Mr Prescott.’

‘I see.’ His look was quizzical.

‘Now will you let me go?’

He frowned. ‘Why don’t you like me? What did I do to promote such a reaction?’

‘I neither like nor dislike you, Mr Prescott,’ she retorted twisting her wrist impotently. ‘Please let go of me.’

‘Is all this outraged modesty because I kissed you?’

‘I’d rather not discuss it.’ Julie held up her head. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Mr Prescott, but I’d prefer it if you’d forget we ever met before.’

‘Would you?’ The smoky grey eyes drooped briefly to her mouth, and it was an almost tangible incursion. ‘Would you really?’

‘Yes,’ but Julie had to grind her teeth together to say it. When he looked at her like that she found it incredibly difficult to keep a clear head, and almost desperately she sought for a means of diversion. ‘I—where is your cousin? Won’t he be wondering where you are?’

‘Drew?’ Dan Prescott’s look changed to one of mocking inquiry. ‘How did you know I came with Drew?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Of course not.’ Too late Julie realised she had made a mistake. ‘I—er—I saw the two of you come in, that’s all. And—and Pam said something about him being your cousin.’

‘Pam? Oh—Mrs Galloway, of course.’ With a shrug he released her, but as she moved to go past him he stepped into her path. ‘One more thing …’

‘What?’

‘I want you to come out with me tomorrow.’

The invitation was not entirely unexpected, but its delivery was, and Julie felt a sense of stunned indignation that he should think it would be that easy.

‘No,’ she said, without hesitation.

‘Why not?’

He was persistent, and she found it was impossible to get by him without his co-operation. ‘Because—because I don’t want to,’ she retorted shortly. ‘I’ve told you—’

‘—you don’t want to get involved with me, I know.’ He pulled his upper lip between his teeth. ‘But you don’t really believe that any more than I do.’

‘Mr Prescott—’

‘And stop calling me Mr Prescott. You know my name, just as I now know yours—Julie.’

Julie found she was trembling. This verbal fencing was more exhausting than she had thought, and she looked round helplessly, wishing for once that Pam would interfere. But apart from the Meades, who were leaving the dining room with their arms wrapped around each other, there was no one to appeal to, and she could not intrude on their evident self-absorption.

‘Why are you fighting me?’ Dan’s breath fanned her ear as she turned back to look at him, and an involuntary shiver swept over her. ‘Come and have a drink,’ he invited. ‘I’ll introduce you to my cousin, and then perhaps you might begin to believe my father wasn’t the devil incarnate!’

‘You—you’re—’

‘Disgusting? Yes, you told me. But I can be fun too, if you’ll let me.’

The grey eyes had darkened and Julie felt her heart slow and then quicken to a suffocating pace. Oh God, she thought weakly, he knows exactly how to get what he wants, and she didn’t know whether she had the strength to resist him.

‘I—I can’t,’ she got out through her dry throat. ‘I can’t.’

With a laconic shrug it was over. Almost before she was aware of it, he had moved past her, walking with lithe indolence towards the bar where his cousin was waiting, and she was free to go.

With her breath coming in tortured gasps, she practically ran across the hall, dropping down the two shallow steps that led to the swing doors, going through them with such force that they continued to swing long after she had left them. She didn’t stop until she was inside her cabin, but even then she did not feel the sense of security she had expected.