Читать книгу Substitute Engagement - Jayne Bauling - Страница 8

HER shirt dangling from her hand, Lucia stopped to select a shell from the softly gleaming scatter washed up by the high tide in the night. Then she continued on up the dazzling white beach, which she had to herself at present, stopping when she came to a palm, automatically checking it for the presence of coconuts likely to fall and then turning to look back at the ocean from which she had just emerged.

She was an excellent swimmer, but with no one around to expect an impressive demonstration she had merely splashed about in the shallow waves close to shore. Nevertheless, even such modest exercise had left her hungry and she was looking forward to breakfast.

So, being crossed in love hadn’t affected her appetite—unless she was about to turn into a comfort-eater, she reflected with wry humour.

She had also been ravenous after the storms of angry weeping the evening before, and had completely finished the meal she had ordered from room service. Then, exhausted by emotion and with her muscles all aching as a result of the tension which must have held her in its grip ever since Rob Ballard had told her about Thierry’s betrayal, she had fallen into a sound, dreamless sleep, sufficiently healthy to be awake early in consequence.

The Comorean hot season was just beginning now. Although a few clouds were racing overhead, the sun already blazed with a burning heat at this hour of the morning. Hence her retreat to the shade of the coconut palms fringing the beach, as she had neglected to apply any protection to her skin prior to coming out for her early swim.

‘Deepest black! Is that in mourning for your lost love?’

The soft, fine sand underfoot had prevented Lucia hearing Rob Ballard’s approach, and she spun round in shock as the mocking voice spoke from close by, finding his gaze travelling from the black Indian cotton shirt she held to the plain black one-piece she was wearing cut low at both back and front and high over her hips.

She felt a prick of resentment at his having caught her off guard, acutely conscious that he hadn’t been encountering her at her best the previous day either, when shock and fury over Thierry’s defection had been affecting her behaviour, causing her to talk wildly, to lash out at him as the bearer of the bad tidings.

‘All sympathy, aren’t you?’ she attacked sarcastically, aware that she would have hated it had he really been sympathetic, preferring his callous derision. ‘How did you know I’m not about to jump in the sea and drown myself?’

‘Would you bother to dress so alluringly for the occasion? Or I should say undress,’ he corrected himself amusedly, his glance skimming the slenderness of her limbs and the subtle curves to which the one-piece clung so faithfully, as he shook his head. ‘You’re too tough anyway. I can see you in a reckless mood setting out to drown your sorrows. But yourself—no!’

‘Is that meant to be a compliment? It just makes me sound thick-skinned, but perhaps you admire people like that, being so insensitive yourself.’

She offered the insult with a wide smile, secretly longing for the concealment of the sunglasses that had served her so well yesterday, but she hadn’t bothered to bring them out with her.

The way he was studying her was disconcerting, and she pulled the thin shirt on in an instinctive, defensive reaction, although it was actually only her heart-shaped face, sensitive mouth, and eyes almost the same colour as the sea over which his smoky gaze was roaming now.

The intense black probably did look funereal on her at present, when she was still afflicted by examination pallor—the dull, faded look that came from too much time spent indoors and the diet of coffee and carbo-hydrates that she had needed to keep going—but the colour suited her when she wasn’t so washed out. Right now, with her hair still darkened and flattened by sea-water, she probably looked even mousier than she had yesterday.

By contrast Rob looked superbly healthy, vibrantly alive, alert and fit. Lucia ran her eyes over his jeans and white sports shirt, her mind visualising what they hid. He wasn’t one of the those overtly muscular men whom she found such a turn-off, yet somehow he gave an impression of physical as well as mental power, of strength implicit in the long, lean lines of his body and limbs.

There was a collision of glances as she lifted her eyes to the idiosyncratic appeal of his dark face, and for several strangely mindless moments she was quite unable to look away. With her gaze locked to Rob’s like this, she was prey to an odd prickly heat that was more internal than outward.

Then Rob stirred, and she was free, capable of thought again, and putting that heat down to embarrassment. This man knew too much about her; he knew the worst—that another man had rejected her and that she hadn’t taken it as well as dignity demanded.

He was saying tauntingly, ‘Insensitive, if you like, but still capable of much more real feeling than you are, I suspect, which is another reason I doubt whether what Olivier has done has truly left you devasted.’

‘You’re so clever, aren’t you?’ Lucia mocked, discovering that she didn’t want Thierry to be a subject in this exchange—didn’t want to talk or think about him ever again. ‘Able to sum people up at a glance. Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all do that instead of having to work at understanding people and then usually getting it wrong and being disappointed?’

‘It didn’t even take a glance,’ he claimed with outrageous arrogance. ‘I knew that about you before I set eyes on you…What have you got there?’

He was looking at her hands, which she held in front of her, the tense fingers playing nervously with the humble black and white shell she had picked up. Reluctantly she uncurled them to show him.

‘It’s a kind of periwinkle,’ she vouchsafed.

‘I know.’ He sounded slightly surprised. ‘No cowries this morning? They are usually a lot—unbroken too.’

He indicated the wavy, shining line where the sea had strewn its haphazard bounty, and Lucia shrugged self-consciously.

‘Yes, I saw a few, but I used to call these luckies when I was small. I don’t know where the idea came from; my mother probably. She used to tease my father by refusing to call things by their correct names…’ Falling silent momentarily, she threw a defiant little smile up at him. ‘Well, I need some luck, don’t you think?’

Rob didn’t respond immediately, scrutinising her upturned face reflectively before laughing. ‘That’s not a very scientific attitude, considering what you are.’ The amusement receded. ‘But we’re both out of luck, Lucia. My sister wasn’t exactly happy about your arrival, especially as Olivier is still so defensively vague about you.

‘I did some deliberate misleading to the effect that by some impossible coincidence I’d met you in South Africa and we’d been attracted, so I don’t want her getting hold of any idea that you might be languishing after Olivier or planning to win him back…So you and I are going to have to be seen to spend some time in each other’s company while we’re both here. The occasional meal together should do it.’

‘Do you really expect me to care about your sister’s feelings?’ Lucia demanded indignantly. ‘Forget it, Rob! I wasn’t thinking properly yesterday, when I went along with that ridiculous fiction, but I want nothing more to do with it. I don’t need it!’

‘Are you sure of that?’ he returned smoothly. ‘You care about what people think of you or you wouldn’t have made use of the face-saver I offered you for as much as a minute. You didn’t want people knowing your pride was hurt. But this isn’t for you; it’s for Nadine—’

‘No way—’

‘Wait until I’ve finished, please,’ he cut in, hard-faced now. ‘I’m not wasting time using persuasion on someone as cussed as you, so here’s the deal: I’ve said I don’t interfere with the hiring and firing at my hotels, but in this case I’m willing to break my rule because I have a personal interest in doing so. Play this thing out, and properly—no giving the game away—or I will instruct Chester Watson to think again about the position he has for you.’

Lucia shot him a furiously resentful glance but remained silent, her fingers busy with the shell again. This was blackmail, and the thought of giving in to it made her blood boil, but did she have any choice? She needed a job, and urgently. Chester Watson thought that he had one for her here. Looking elsewhere might take time that she couldn’t afford. So she couldn’t afford pride either. She had to be practical.

‘Couldn’t you have thought of something that didn’t involve our having to spend time together?’ she asked resentfully, leaving her submission merely implied, since there was always the possibility that she might yet find a way of thwarting him.

‘Something involving less intimacy? I wish!’ he admitted feelingly. ‘But what? Anyway, it’s too late to change our story now.’

‘And the whole thing is full of pitfalls,’ she went on critically. ‘Think of all the traps waiting for us, especially as we don’t know a thing about each other-even if you do believe you’ve got me taped. I don’t even know when you were in Johannesburg.’