Meant To Marry
Robyn Donald
THE MARRIAGE MAKERMeant to marry - divided by scandal Anet Carruthers had always kept her past firmly where it belonged, until she met Lucas Tremaine! Lucas Tremaine, a writer of considerable prowess, was in pursuit of Anet's past - for therein lay an unresolved scandal!He encountered a woman of Amazonian proportions to match his own, a woman he'd forgo anything to have. Anet wanted Lucas but believed she was being seduced for her story. He wanted her but couldn't get close. Even when two people are quite clearly meant for each other, distrust is a great divider. It will take more than magic to unite this pair!THE MARRIAGE MAKER - Can a picture from the past bring love to the present?
“I wonder what’s going through your mind,” Lucas said lazily (#u99af84f4-1573-502b-b749-6d09f03ca823)About the Author (#u476c0db1-0ea8-579c-b21b-98eb0d7cd389)Title Page (#u259c741a-b7be-59d9-ac37-1d44ce466c09)CHAPTER ONE (#ua6f620f6-884c-5abf-9d96-786146001093)CHAPTER TWO (#u8d9559fb-a075-50ec-b03a-6294e9059d99)CHAPTER THREE (#u1352b90b-e257-586a-bb0c-19817b568847)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“I wonder what’s going through your mind,” Lucas said lazily
Anet froze, then produced a smile. “I was thinking that willpower—determination—is an important quality.”
He watched her with brilliant, half-closed eyes. “Very. Of course, too much—or wrongly directed—and it can be dangerous.”
“So can anything,” she retorted.
Leaning back in his chair, he asked dryly, “Compassion?”
“If it becomes overprotective and debilitating.”
“You’re a hard woman.” A smile failed to take the sting from the words.
“Possibly.” She wasn’t going to let him get away with that. “Any emotion or attribute can become dangerous if it’s allowed free rein. Even too much common sense can deprive a life of excitement and joy.”
“So you don’t believe in allowing a grand passion free rein?”
She hesitated, conscious that beneath the amused tone and light mockery there was something else. “No,” she said cautiously.
Olivia Nicholls and the two half sisters Anet and Jan Carruthers are all born survivors—but, so far, unlucky in love. Things change, however, when an eighteenth-century miniature portrait of a beautiful and mysterious young woman passes into each of their hands. It may be coincidence, it may not! The portrait is meant to be a charm to bring love to the lives of those who possess it—but there is one condition:
I found Love as you’ll find yours,
and trust it will be true,
This Portrait is a fated charm
To speed your Love to you.
But if you be not Fortune’s Fool
Once your heart’s Desire is nigh,
Pass on my likeness as Cupid’s Tool
Or your Love will fade and die.
Meant to Marry is Anet’s story and the second title in Robyn Donald’s captivating new trilogy THE MARRIAGE MAKER. Look out next month for Jan’s story in The Final Proposal, which concludes the trilogy and solves the mystery of the haunting image in the portrait.
Meant To Marry
Robyn Donald
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CHAPTER ONE
‘AND who,’ Georgia Sanderson purred to her companion, ‘do you think this is?’
Anet Carruthers turned slightly. The newcomer was haloed by a dazzle of sunlight so that all she could see was his outline, but that was enough to sharpen the strange apprehension that troubled her as he strode along the dock towards them. Anet was accustomed to being the tallest person around, and her astonished glance told her that this man towered over her by at least four inches and, like her, was big-boned and strong.
Her gaze slid helplessly to an extremely handsome face, its autocratic framework revealing an authority and control she could only envy. Big as he was, he didn’t carry an ounce of excess weight. Wide shoulders narrowed to lean hips and long, heavily muscled legs. And in spite of his size there was nothing ponderous about him; he walked with the smooth, athletic grace of a supremely fit man.
Although Anet immediately turned back to the tourist group on the diving vessel, she was left with an impression of inborn mastery, of a dominance that was both uncompromising and dangerously compelling.
Trust Georgia to notice him first. Anet’s sister Jan, who moved in the same circles in Auckland as the beautiful redhead, said that Georgia’s antennae were always at the ready for a good-looking man. It was not a compliment. Jan and Georgia did not like each other. Now Anet noticed the woman’s green eyes darken with alert anticipation as the tip of her tongue flicked across her full mouth, moistening its already lustrous sheen.
Not just Georgia either! Every other woman on board watched the man on the wharf with the same intent, intrigued awareness, paying involuntary female homage to his unforced masculinity.
Lord, Anet thought with edgy exasperation, he must be sending off pheromones like nobody’s business. Thank heavens she didn’t go in for all that man-woman stuff!
Pitching her voice to be heard above the soft wash of the waves against the dock, the bustle of the wharf and the ever-present sigh of the trade winds that cooled the South Pacific island of Fala’isi, she went into her spiel.
‘Before we leave the dock,’ she said, smiling with what she hoped was a confident, professional charm, ‘do check to make sure every exposed inch of skin is slathered in waterproof sunscreen. Ears can get burnt very badly, and so can ankles and the insides of your knees—even the soles of your feet.’
Her gaze lingered a moment on Georgia. Scott, bless his generous heart, had responded to the other woman’s impudent use of Jan’s name with an offer of a free morning’s diving for her and her friend. Irritated, Anet had had to stand silently by and endure Georgia’s sly, satisfied smile.
‘I’m already wearing sunscreen,’ Georgia said, dragging her eyes away from the approaching man to reject Anet’s unspoken comment with a haughty stare.
There was no tell-tale gleam on that silken, pale skin.
Stifling her exasperation, Anet returned, ‘Not enough, I’m sorry. Fala’isi is well within the tropics. The sun here is even fiercer than it is in New Zealand. It can really fry your skin, so I’m going to insist that you all put extra on, and I’m afraid that every two hours I’ll act like a schoolteacher until you do it again.’
The curvy little redhead pouted, her bright eyes disparaging as she scanned Anet. ‘I’ll be careful,’ she protested. ‘I’ll stay under cover when I’m not diving.’
Anet had been well briefed. ‘The sun’s rays bounce off the surface of the sea,’ she said, trying to soften her answer with a smile. ‘In fact, even wearing clothes you’re not entirely safe. UV rays can penetrate cloth—especially pale material. We can’t take responsibility for you unless you apply sunscreen.’
‘I have—’
A darkly masculine voice interrupted, ‘She’s right, you know. The tropical sun is cruel to people who don’t take it seriously.’
Uttered with cool authority, in the sort of tone that commanded instant respect, those few words lifted the hairs on the back of Anet’s neck. Automatically she glanced over her shoulder.
The man from the wharf now stood a few feet behind her, his narrowed gaze fixed on Georgia. Beneath thick black lashes his eyes gleamed turquoise, almost pure blue with just enough green to issue a challenge. But then his whole face dared you not to respond to its lean, ruthless good looks.
A sudden chill in Anet’s stomach expanded to a wintry emptiness. Struck by an intense and frightening foreboding that this man was going to have an impact on her life, she turned away, swallowed and said woodenly, ‘You heard the man, folks. He’s right, so slather on the stuff—and be generous.’
At that moment Scott came bounding up from his devotions over the engine. ‘Hi, Lucas,’ he said, beaming, although clearly surprised. ‘What are you doing here? No, don’t tell me now; I haven’t got time. Do you want to come out this morning?’
‘If you’ll have me,’ the stranger said. His New Zealand accent was barely noticeable, lost in the voice that proclaimed an assurance so deep-rooted it was probably encoded in his genes.
Anet, who had had to work very hard for her confidence, subdued a prickle of animosity.
Sure enough, Scott laughed. ‘There’s always room for you, you know that.’ He turned to Anet. ‘Everyone here?’
Trying to ignore the man whose presence she could feel, watchful, unmoving, almost elemental behind her, Anet said neutrally, ‘As soon as they’ve all put on their sunscreen we’ll be ready to go.’
Resigning herself to the inevitable, Georgia gave a slight, elegant shrug that spurned the bottle Anet proffered, and fished her own expensive brand from her smart bag. When a covert glance revealed that it was over SPF 15, Anet relaxed. The last thing she wanted was a parboiled tourist. Scott’s wife Serena, whose place she was taking on the diving vessel, had warned her that some people just wouldn’t accept how severe sunburn could be until they’d experienced the heat and intensity of the tropical sun.
‘And it is not good for business to dry-fry the customers,’ she’d said wryly. ‘You have to be tough, Annie; some of them are total idiots and will do everything they can to avoid putting it on.’
Like the beautiful Georgia, who was now applying lotion with a sinuous languor that made an erotic exercise of the business—an exercise revealing the many and varied charms of her slender body. Her absorption, her refusal to look once at the man who stood just behind Anet, made it more than obvious at whom she was aiming the whole little production.
It should have been amusing, perhaps rather—pathetic? It was not; in fact, it took all of Anet’s control to quell the sudden, sickening resentment that assailed her. She found herself understanding why her sister found Georgia so irritating.
‘Right,’ she said briskly when at last every revealed inch of the redhead’s honey-smooth skin had had cream smoothed into it with slow, sensual strokes, ‘we’re ready.’
And that was when Georgia stretched, only to slip as the boat lurched in the wash of one of the bigger tourist launches which had just taken off.
With a gasping, choked yelp she went over—fortunately on the lagoon side, not against the heavy, unforgiving piles of the wharf.
‘Look out!’ someone yelled in panicky, high-pitched tones.
Anet fixed her eyes on the cloud of brilliant red hair that bobbed up once before sinking too far down. Slim, pale arms flailed above the surface then disappeared. Without further thought Anet dived overboard, hoping, as the warm waters of the harbour closed around her like a benediction, that the woman was a better swimmer than she appeared to be.
And that the large, laden tourist launch stayed well out of the way.
Several strokes of her powerful arms took her to the floundering tourist, once more on the surface. One look at her face, distorted with genuine fear, convinced Anet that she was going to have to use a release hold. As soon as she got close enough she lifted her arm into the air.
When Georgia grabbed desperately at it with both hands Anet wrenched it down, and used the other woman’s brief confusion to hook her under the chin and kick strongly back towards the boat.
They were almost there when Georgia spluttered furiously, ‘All right. You can let me go now.’
Well, Anet thought wryly, Jan had stated often enough that what few manners Georgia possessed were invariably used as weapons; even allowing for the shock of that sudden immersion, it seemed Jan was right.
Anet released her, but shepherded her back to the diving platform at the stern of the boat. It had happened so quickly that Scott hadn’t yet got there; waiting for them instead was the big man who had, Anet was sure, inadvertently caused Georgia to lose her balance.
Anet could feel frustration and anger emanate from the elegant redhead. No doubt she felt she’d made a fool of herself. Then, so quickly that Anet gave a startled look ahead, the other woman’s resentment evaporated, her frown replaced by a faint, smug smile. Lucas Whatever-his-name-was was crouching on the dive platform, and, although Scott had arrived by the time they reached the boat, it was Lucas’s outstretched hand that Georgia grasped.
A powerful heave brought her up and into his arms, where she clung, shivering artistically. Against his lithe leanness she looked very small and fragile. Scott hovered, talking very fast, ignored by the other two.
Anet pulled herself onto the platform and stood upright, feeling her eyes widen beneath lowered lashes as she watched Lucas soothe the woman.
Lord, she thought hollowly, no wonder Georgia had lost her footing. He was gorgeous—like something out of a virgin’s fevered dreams of romance. That perfectly proportioned body was balanced by a face that could sink a thousand hearts. Not that he projected the sullen sultriness of a male model, with an appeal owing more to fashion than to aesthetics; this man’s beauty was elemental, the result of commanding bone structure backed by a potent, hard-honed magnetism.
And she, Anet realised grimly, was no more immune to that overwhelming combination of dangerous good looks and virile male authority than the woman in his embrace.
At that moment his head came up as swiftly as a predator scenting prey. When her glance met enigmatic turquoise eyes her pulse quickened, and a shuddery little chill tightened her skin.
All sensible thoughts stumbled to a halt; running a hand through her short black hair, she gave him a weak smile. His brows straightened, but then Scott, who apparently belonged to the school which believed that to be effective an apology should be repeated a hundred times, started again, and Lucas looked down again at Georgia, breaking off that moment of silent, almost subliminal communication with a merciless lack of interest.
‘I’m terribly sorry,’ Scott babbled. ‘Terribly sorry. That should never have happened—’
‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Georgia interrupted graciously, smiling. ‘I’ll be fine as soon as I’m dry.’
Furious with herself, Anet jerked open a locker and got a towel, offering it to her. It was greeted with a dubious frown.
‘I have one of my own, thank you,’ Georgia said, looking past Lucas’s broad shoulder to her slightly less glamorous friend, who, with eyes fixed on Lucas’s face, held out a bag.
Reluctantly, the redhead stepped away from Lucas and drew out a hotel towel, saying to Scott, ‘It was my fault—I just slipped when that other boat went past us. So clumsy.’ Looking at Anet, she finished sweetly, ‘Don’t tell Jan, will you, or I’ll never hear the last of it. Thank you for coming for me—I’m really quite a good swimmer, but you were certainly quick off the mark.’
Clever, Anet thought judiciously. In two sentences she’d managed to imply both that Jan was a harridan and that any fool should have seen that she was capable of saving herself—and her last comment had hinted at a certain surprise that someone as big as Anet could move fast. Probably she had hoped that Lucas would rescue her!
She should, Anet thought sourly, have let her thrash around until she’d exhausted herself. Hoping that her guileless smile would at least prick the other woman’s armour of self-assurance, Anet ran the rejected towel over her own fine hair, pushing the soot-coloured salty strands back off her face.
‘All part of the service,’ she said lightly.
After an uneasy glance Scott interposed, ‘If you want to change there’s a cabin below that’s—’
Switching a thousand-watt smile onto him, Georgia said blithely, ‘Oh, I don’t think so, thanks.’ And with an arch look at Anet she finished, ‘I’ll dry myself down and put some more sunscreen on, though.’
Forbearing to point out that the stuff she’d applied was waterproof, Anet said with serene good humour, ‘An excellent idea.’
‘Oh, yes, you mustn’t get sunburned.’ Tenderly, Scott escorted the other woman into the shade cast by the canopy.
Anet stood back, but Lucas waited for her to go ahead of him, his cold, beautiful eyes narrowed and intent. The salt water stains made on his cotton shirt and trousers by Georgia’s body were already drying quickly in the sun.
As Anet made her way towards the bow she thought she felt that steady, strangely inimical gaze right through to her bones, and chided herself for her stupidity.
Scott caught up with her almost immediately, accompanied by the newcomer.
‘Annie, this is Lucas Tremaine,’ Scott said enthusiastically. ‘Lucas, this is my cousin, Annie Carruthers, who’s helping me out for a while. Lucas sailed his yacht down from Hawaii last year, Annie, then left it at the marina here when he had to go to New Zealand.’
‘How do you do?’ As she held out her hand Anet produced the right sort of smile—pleasantly impersonal. And was appalled at her swift, rapidly suppressed thought. Why am I not five foot three and curvy and redheaded, instead of six feet tall with more muscles than your average prizefighter? Why can’t I show off in a bikini that makes me look like a seductive bird of paradise?
Shamefully ridiculous questions! Long before she’d left high school she’d come to terms with her Amazonian build.
Lucas Tremaine’s hand was bigger than her long-fingered one, and certainly much stronger. Over the years Anet had been faced with quite a few men compelled by ego and insecurity to prove their power to a woman almost their size, but although this man’s grip was firm he made no attempt to wring her fingers off.
‘I thought your name was Anet,’ he said, his eyes lingering on her wet T-shirt.
She wondered whether she had seaweed in some strategic place and looked down, but it was still pristine white, with the logo of Scott’s company gleaming across her breasts. And beneath it her decent blue swimsuit prevented any sort of exposure. Withdrawing her hand, she shrugged. ‘My family call me Annie.’
‘A very mundane name for an unusual woman. I watched you win your gold medal at the Olympic Games,’ he said, those brilliant eyes strangely oblique. ‘I thought you looked like Atalanta.’
She had long ago forced herself grimly past that memory. ‘Atalanta was a sprinter,’ she said with a light lack of emphasis.
His mouth tilted into a smile. ‘Of course. Like an Amazon, then—or better still Hera in majesty.’
Surely he was taunting her? However, her startled glance discerned nothing in his expression but an aloof self-possession. She smiled. ‘I rather like that image,’ she said, ‘although the mind boggles at the thought of the queen of the gods in a tracksuit.’
‘I imagine she’d have found one very useful,’ he said gravely. ‘Why did you drop out of sight so quickly?’
Although there was no blatant curiosity in the deep, intriguing voice, Anet chose her words carefully. ‘All I ever wanted to do was win an Olympic gold. Once I’d accomplished that I had other things to do.’
‘Annie’s just finished training as a physiotherapist,’ Scott said proudly. ‘She’s damned good. She got my shoulder going really well.’ He flexed it experimentally. ‘Yep, just like new. What are you doing here, Lucas? Are you planning to sail off into the unknown again? Not in the hurricane season, surely?’
Before Lucas could answer either of his questions a flash of movement from one of the paying clients recalled Scott to his surroundings. ‘Hell—we’ll talk later, OK? I’d better get this show on the road before someone reminds me we’re supposed to be diving.’
He disappeared to the wheelhouse. Feeling obscurely tentative, Anet nodded at Lucas Tremaine and said, ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to let go forward...’
‘I’ll do the aft line,’ he said.
At her doubtful look his wide, hard mouth lifted in a fascinating crooked smile. ‘I’ve spent most of the last five years at sea,’ he said gently, and went through the crowd of tourists like—like a hot knife through butter, she thought, half amused, half bewildered.
Whatever charisma was, he possessed it—and the kind of self-assurance that came close to arrogance. It didn’t seem fair that as well as size and looks and presence he had, if the clothes and watch he wore indicated anything, a substantial bank balance. A darling of the gods, she thought ironically.
Hera in majesty! Really!
Scott’s voice broke into her thoughts. ‘Ready?’
Embarrassed, she hastened up to the bow, thankful that there was no one around to see the rush of colour to her skin.
Today, besides the well-being that came from fitness and health, something else ran through every cell in Anet’s body—a kind of primitive excitement she ascribed to the sheer delight of being alive in the sultry golden heat of a tropical morning, with the scent of coconut and frangipani and salt in her nostrils and the sunlight glittering and dancing over a sea as brightly coloured and much more transparent than Lucas Tremaine’s eyes.
And where, she wondered, grabbing the heavy loop of rope from the islander who slung it down into her hands, had she heard that name before? If he’d been an athlete she’d have remembered him. He wasn’t the sort of man you forgot. Not if you were a woman anyway.
She squinted down at the stern. Yes, he knew exactly what to do. The group of divers stayed respectfully away from him while he dropped the rope loop into its place and straightened to fend the boat off from the piles. Beneath the cotton shirt, muscles moved across his back and down his arms. Something tightened inside her; hastily she transferred her gaze across to the white line of the reef.
The engine increased its noise as they swung away from the wharf. Lucas stepped back into the cockpit and smiled down at one of the women. Anet reminded herself that she had to entertain this group until they reached the coral gardens where they’d anchor to dive.
Back in the cockpit, she picked up the microphone and began to expound on the sights as Scott headed the craft towards the gap in the reef formed by the flow of fresh water from the river.
Ahead was a busy day. They’d dive, then call in at one of the small motu—the Polynesian word for island—on the reef, where they’d eat a barbecue beneath the coconut palms. After that this group would be brought back to the town to be replaced by a load of snorkellers who didn’t want to venture beyond the silken aquamarine waters of the lagoon.
She was glad she’d been able to answer Scott’s call for help three weeks ago. Although she found some tourists rude, and others foolish, most were very pleasant. And she loved Fala’isi. The island, its green mountain spine and lush vegetation forming a beautiful backdrop to the sea and the blindingly white beaches, epitomised the South Sea paradise embedded so deeply into the fantasy life of those who lived in colder climates. Scott was her favourite cousin, and the social life was fun too—a vigorous mixture of expatriates, locals and tourists.
All in all, she thought, looking across the glinting waters of the lagoon, life probably couldn’t be more perfect.
The cool, challenging speculation in a man’s sea-blue gaze meant nothing.
Although she did her best to keep her eyes off Lucas Tremaine, she noticed when Georgia approached him and engaged him in conversation, her sparkling eyes and tempting little smiles making her interest only too obvious.
It should have been amusing to watch her hastily hidden pique as first one, then another woman drifted across, eager to join in the conversation, yet an ignoble pang of envy shot through Anet.
And that’s enough of that, she told herself sternly. You’ve accepted that you’re never going to know the easy, casual interest these women feel, or their confidence. Experience had taught her that her height, combined with the powerful build of an ex-javelin-thrower, was not alluring.
No man ever saw Anet Carruthers as sexy; likeable, certainly—almost one of the boys—but not feminine, not the sort of woman who could drive a man mad. Even the man she had been engaged to, the man who’d dumped her for a slim, small woman barely reaching her shoulder, had liked her.
Mark had worried about hurting her, but he hadn’t thought her capable of intense emotional distress. Of course, she thought aridly, turning her head to point out the position of a famous shipwreck, he’d been right.
Although she’d been hurt, she hadn’t been shattered. She must have missed out on the capacity to lose herself in love as other women seemed able to do. Even her unrequited love—and she had loved him—for Drake Arundell when she was eighteen hadn’t blighted her life.
She’d recovered with astonishing speed, although Drake was still her ideal of what a man should be like. Which might, she thought, eyeing Lucas Tremaine covertly, be the reason this man made strange things happen to the base of her spine. He and Drake were alike, both big men, but there was more to their similarity than the physical; both possessed an air of controlled power.
Anyway, she was now in full command of her life, looking forward to a happy and useful future.
‘Great view,’ an amiable masculine voice said.
It belonged to an amiable masculine face. Supporting herself against the side of the boat, Anet smiled at him. ‘Isn’t it just?’ she said. ‘What more could anyone want? Glorious weather and the prospect of a day spent diving and eating, then lolling the afternoon away on a coral beach-’
‘Heavily anointed with sunscreen,’ he interpolated, his brown eyes laughing.
Her eyes gleamed with answering amusement. ‘Of course,’ she said solemnly.
‘And you forgot something in your catalogue of pleasures.’
‘Oh, a hundred things. Fala’isi is full of delights.’ Sunlight soaked through her, drying out the material of her T-shirt and bathing suit, melting down to her bones.
‘Well, this is important. Good company.’
She looked around the boat, feeling a bit sorry for him. Lucas Tremaine seemed to have snaffled all the available women. As her gaze passed over the cluster of them about him her mouth curved sardonically. He looked up, and for a moment she had the giddy and entirely erroneous idea that they duelled across the distance.
‘Well,’ she said vaguely, looking unseeingly at the man beside her, ‘every pleasure is intensified by good company.’
A wave sloshed across the bow, sending a glittering, evanescent veil of spray into the air. Warned by the sprinkle of drops across her face, Anet flicked on the microphone again. ‘We’re approaching the gap in the reef and it looks as though it could be a bit bumpy today, so hang on everyone. If you don’t like getting damp, it might pay to take shelter.’
A few seconds later the first comber caught them. Although Scott knew the opening as well as any islander, and was ready for it, a gurgle of laughter whipped Anet’s head around. Her mouth compressed. Georgia was once more snuggled against Lucas Tremaine, her sleek, pale body a blatant contrast to his golden tan and corded muscles.
An odd little quiver wrenched Anet as Lucas set the woman on her feet, smiling down at her while he said something that brought a slow, sleepy smile in response.
Immediately he stepped back, made a further comment that tilted Georgia’s lushly blooming mouth into more laughter, and left her, heading towards Anet.
He was the most handsome man she had ever seen—as beautiful as a god. And as dangerous, instinct warned her; the magnificent combination of form and face was almost overshadowed by the aura of authority and power that he radiated.
As he came towards her the smile he’d bestowed on Georgia faded. Anet was accustomed to being sought out—many New Zealanders knew who she was, and quite a few people liked to talk to someone who had won a gold medal for New Zealand at the Olympics—so there was absolutely no reason for her stomach to clench and her palms to sweat.
‘Is he a friend of yours?’ the man beside her asked casually.
‘Of Scott’s,’ Anet responded absently, then, aware that she was being rude, smiled at him. ‘Scott owns the boat.’
He had good manners. When it became obvious that Lucas Tremaine intended to speak to her he said easily, ‘I’ll see you later, then.’
She gave him her best smile. ‘You will,’ she told him, and kept that smile pinned to her face as he moved off and Lucas arrived.
‘How long is it before we get there?’ he asked.
She looked along the reef. ‘About twenty minutes.’
‘Where’s Serena?’
‘In Australia. Melbourne, actually. Her mother’s in hospital for tests.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that. How is she?’
Anet bit her lip. ‘Not too good, unfortunately. Serena rang last night; Scott says she’s worried. The tests were positive, and her mother has to have an operation.’
‘That’s tough,’ he said, frowning. ‘Lucky for them both that Scott managed to find someone to take her place so quickly.’
Although his skin was glossed by sunscreen, he was tanned a deep gold that indicated long hours of exposure to the elements. When she looked more closely she could see tiny lines at the comers of his eyes.
‘I was the logical person to ask. I have a diving instructor’s certificate and I was at a loose end. The clinic I was to start work at burned down,’ she explained. ‘It will be a couple of months before it’s rebuilt, and in the meantime the owner’s working from home. He didn’t have room for me, so when Scott sent out his SOS I was able to come up.’
‘As I said, lucky man.’
Watching her cousin at the wheel, she said drily, ‘Oh, he’d have found someone, but he might have lost a few days’ work.’
‘I gather he isn’t qualified to take out divers?’
‘Not yet. He and several men from the local family he’s in partnership with are sitting for the instructor’s certificate now, but none of them have got it yet. They’re doing the boatmaster’s too. In Fala’isi you have to have certificated people on each boat before the local tourist board will let you take divers out. I can understand that, but when you think that the Polynesians have been sailing around the Pacific for the last three thousand years or so, making them take the boatmaster’s seems like overkill.’
‘Ah, but tourists need special treatment,’ he said a little mockingly.
He was right, of course. The subject seemed to have reached a dead end, so after a moment of searching for a new topic she ventured, ‘Scott said something about your yacht. Are you planning to sail somewhere?’
‘No,’ he said, adding with an edge to his voice, ‘only fools go wandering around the tropics in the hurricane season.’
Absurdly relieved, she asked, ‘Do you live on Fala’isi?’
‘I’ve been living on the Dawntreader for the last few years, but I’m based in New Zealand now. I haven’t had time to sail the Dawntreader there, so it’s still moored in the marina here. Scott keeps an eye on it for me.’
She said wistfully, ‘Sailing the Pacific sounds terribly romantic.’
‘It can be.’
Something in his tone pulled the hairs on the back of her neck upright and then, too late, she remembered the reason his name had sounded vaguely familiar. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I remember,’ she said unevenly.
Lucas Tremaine had been an investigative journalist, a good one, working for a British newspaper when, in his early twenties, he’d been sent to cover an insurrection in San Rafael, a tiny Pacific nation. There he had met a young woman, married her and taken her to safety in England. But after his publication of several merciless articles on the abuse of power in her homeland, the house where he’d lived with his pregnant wife had been bombed. His wife had died in his arms.
After that he’d returned to San Rafael and disappeared into the jungle to join the freedom fighters in their bloody and merciless war. When at last they’d seized victory, he’d marched with them in triumph into the capital before disappearing into the solitudes of the Pacific Ocean on his yacht to write a book about the experience.
As though driven, he’d followed that one with others—books that dealt with dangerous and hidden facts. He had untangled the roots of piracy in the China Sea and had written about the sex trade in Thailand and the slavery that ensued from it.
Each book had caused a considerable scandal; each had been a bestseller. And each had made him powerful enemies.
Anet looked at the hard, inexorable face, and her blood ran cold.
‘It’s over,’ he said quietly.
But nothing like that was ever over. Oh, the grief faded, and eventually you learned to live with the memories, but they were always there. Eight years after her grandmother’s death, she still missed her.
‘So what are you doing on Fala’isi?’ she asked, aware that the change of subject was awkwardly abrupt but unable to think of another way of getting past the sticky patch. Jan, or their mother, would have known exactly how to deal with the situation her clumsiness had caused, without compounding the pain.
But then Jan would never have blundered like that.
‘I came to see you,’ he told her, measuring her reaction with a speculative gaze.
Anet’s eyes widened. The subtly mocking smile on his beautiful mouth was matched by a glimmer in the sea-blue eyes; both set warning bells ringing.
‘Why?’ she said briskly, curbing the unfounded excitement that tightened her nerves. Although he wasn’t intruding on her personal space, he seemed too close.
‘Olivia Arundell sent me,’ he said. ‘Apparently it’s your birthday today.’
Astonishment rippled through her voice. ‘Well—yes.’
‘Your twenty-fifth birthday.’
‘How did you know?’
‘Olivia told me. She also sent you a present.’
Years before, when Drake Arundell had married Olivia, Anet had thought her heart would break; only willpower and stubbornness had pulled her through. Yet it had been impossible to resist Olivia, who had become a close friend.
‘Did she?’ Anet said, thinking that it was just like Olivia to do something so unexpected. ‘Isn’t she a darling! Did you tell her you were coming here?’
‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘I was on my way to Hawaii when she asked me if I’d mind stopping off and giving it to you.’
Anet couldn’t help her incredulous laughter. Her eyes flew to his, found them cool and intent and alarmingly disturbing. Impossible to guess what he was thinking. ‘Olivia did?’
His mouth quirked. ‘Somehow it’s difficult to say no to Olivia Arundell,’ he drawled.
Well, yes, but still... A sideways glance convinced her that this man would say no to anyone if he felt like it. So why was he here? ‘You mean she asked you to break your journey just to deliver a gift?’
‘I gather it’s an important one.’
‘We only give each other tiny presents,’ she said.
‘This is no bigger than the palm of my hand.’
Intrigued, she responded, ‘It seems an odd thing for her to do, but I suppose she must have had a reason for it.’
‘I’m sure she did.’
A note in his voice drew her eyes swiftly upward. There was something intimidating about the gleam in his impenetrable eyes as they met hers, lingered for a moment, then drifted down her face to come to rest on her lips.
Instantly they felt hot, and twice as large as normal. With an acid distaste out of all proportion to the discovery, she realised that he was one of those men who flirted automatically with every woman, young or old, who came their way. She’d heard it referred to as ‘charm’, that intensity of interest—for as long as they talked to you they made you feel that you were the most fascinating person in the world.
Anet didn’t consider it charming, and had learned not to take anything such people said or did at face value. It was a trick—part of a cynical armoury.
So she forced a guarded smile and said, ‘Well, it was lovely of her, and thank you so much for bringing it to me.’
‘Your mother and sister—Jan, is it?—were there too,’ he said. ‘They sent messages to you.’
‘They fussed, you mean,’ she guessed, holding back a groan. Presents from her family had arrived a couple of days ago, complete with instructions from her mother on how to avoid sunstroke and food poisoning. It was a wonder Jan hadn’t added her bit—she usually found something to warn her about.
‘Somebody did say something about taking your vitamin pills,’ he agreed solemnly.
Although Anet was accustomed to her mother’s and her half-sister’s constant concern, it was embarrassing to be told of it by Lucas Tremaine. Hoping it didn’t sound artificial, she produced a laugh. ‘I’m twice the size of both of them,’ she said, ‘but they still don’t think I can be trusted to look after myself when I’m on holiday.’
He held her gaze for a few unsettling moments, but all he said was, ‘Holiday?’ Dark brows raised, he looked at the fifteen divers who were beginning to point and exclaim as they neared the coral gardens. ‘You call this a holiday?’
‘Compared to the last few months it is definitely a holiday. I hope this unscheduled stop-over isn’t making too much of a mess of your plans.’
‘Not at all,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I might even decide to stay here after all. I’ve always liked Fala’isi.’
So there was no one waiting for him in Hawaii.
Quelling an unruly anticipation deep inside her, she said repressively, ‘It’s a very small place. Wouldn’t you get bored?’
‘I don’t think so.’ His lashes hid everything but a narrow sliver of intense colour. ‘I could always settle down and grow cabbages.’
‘Taro, surely, here?’ The brittle note in her voice startled her.
‘Whatever.’
‘Wouldn’t that be difficult? Once a wanderer always a wanderer,’ she said, immediately irritated by the inane remark.
The chiselled line of his jaw hardened for a second, and the sculpted mouth thinned, but his eyes remained watchful and oddly enigmatic. ‘Sooner or later even the most inveterate wanderer decides to settle down,’ he said noncommittally.
‘Excuse me.’
The peremptory note in the feminine voice grated on Anet’s ear, but she turned instantly and smiled at Georgia Sanderson. ‘Yes?’
‘I’m thirsty,’ the other woman said, disguising. the sharp antagonism in her eyes with a flutter of lashes. ‘You do have drinks, as the brochure said?’
‘Yes, of course.’ Only a few steps away behind a small bar in the cabin was Sule, eager to dispense drinks and snacks—as Anet had informed everyone over the microphone a few minutes after they’d left the wharf. ‘I’ll get you something now. What would you like?’
Georgia pouted for just long enough to show off her provocative lips. ‘Something long and cold and wet—mineral water,’ she said. ‘I’m almost dehydrated in this heat.’
There was enough accusation in her tone to make Anet stiffen, but nothing showed in her expression as she said, ‘Right, I’ll be back in a moment.’
When she returned with a cold can Georgia thanked her prettily before, with a social ruthlessness that stunned Anet, dismissing her politely and firmly. Not that she’d have had a chance to continue talking to Lucas, for, as though the sight of the can had sharpened people’s thirst, everyone wanted one.
By the time they’d all been served it was time to lay down the rules for safe diving. Georgia listened intently, although with the charming air of an adult humouring a child, as Anet took them through hand signals, the length of time they were allowed to stay under and the maximum depth.
It would, Anet thought wryly, be a long time before Georgia forgave her for that rescue.
CHAPTER TWO
WHEN the anchor rattled down Anet had the tanks checked for the final time and the divers organised into pairs. As Scott jumped into the dinghy to drop off the flagged buoy that warned of divers in the vicinity, she said to the group, ‘I know you’ve already been asked this, but I have to tell you again that it is extremely dangerous to dive if you’re at all prone to asthma—even if you only get wheezy when you have bronchitis.’
Everyone shook their heads solemnly. Anet couldn’t stop herself from casting a swift glance at Georgia, and immediately felt ashamed. Irritating she might be, but it was clear from her familiarity with the gear that she had dived before.
‘Keep checking your depth,’ she continued. ‘All the pretty fish and corals are close to the surface, so there’s no reason to go below twenty metres. Once you do, the risk of narcosis increases significantly.’
Everyone nodded.
‘If this is your first dive for some time you’ll have got out of the habit of watching your gauges, so be vigilant.’
Everyone nodded again.
‘All right, then,’ she said cheerfully. ‘In you go—and remember, no teasing the moray eels. They don’t take kindly to it. And stay with your buddy. You are each other’s safeguard.’
She noted their entry into the sea with an experienced eye. Yes, they all seemed to know exactly what they were doing—even Georgia. Either she’d been putting on a show back there in the harbour or she was one of those divers who used the buoyancy compensator as a backup for their poor swimming skills.
Serena had warned her that occasionally you got some idiot who thought they didn’t need instruction or training. People were strange. Why expose yourself to danger?
The approaching dinghy summoned her to the side of the launch. ‘I’ll stay out,’ Scott called above the noise of the motor. ‘You keep Lucas company on board, Annie. Ask Sule if she wants to come with me, will you?’
But Sule, tidying up at the bar before checking the till, hid a yawn behind an elegant hand and said, ‘No, I’m going to have a sleep. My little sister was sick all night, so guess who didn’t get any rest!’
When Anet relayed the answer Scott saluted and spun the dinghy, heading back towards the flagged buoy.
Skin prickling, very much aware of the man who stood beside her, Anet watched her cousin go, feeling as though she’d been deserted.
‘You didn’t have to stay to keep me company—you could have dived.’ Lucas Tremaine’s voice, deep, cool, with an intriguingly abrasive undernote, intruded into her thoughts.
Keeping her eyes on the strings of bubbles breaking on the surface, she replied, ‘This lot are all competent in the water, so I don’t need to get in with them. Besides, the water’s so clear that if they stay close to the boat I can see them all from up on top. Which is where I’d better go right now.’
She turned and made her way to the top deck, both pleased and wary when he accompanied her.
‘I presume they have to be competent to go down,’ he said.
‘Not necessarily. I can take beginners on a resort dive.’
‘What’s that?’ He spoke absently, as though thinking of something else.
‘They follow me around like ducklings after their mother while I show them the more accessible parts of the coral garden,’ she told him, averting her eyes from the dark forearms on the guardrails. A panicky foreboding pressed down on her, drying her mouth, increasing her heart-rate as she fought to control it.
You’re overreacting, she thought disgustedly, taking three deep breaths to calm her pulse. This man was no physical threat, and it was stupid to get into a tizz at the sight of his arms!
After clearing her throat she said, ‘It’s not diving as experts know it, but at least that way untrained swimmers get to see the fish and the corals.’
Her voice sounded perfectly normal, the words deliberate as they usually were, so why did she feel that she was gabbling? Leaning down, she pulled at one of the fenders to straighten it.
‘Here, I’ll do that,’ Lucas said.
She turned her head, meeting his eyes with a tiny shock. ‘I can manage.’
His smile was ironic. ‘I’m sure you can manage almost anything you care to do,’ he said, ‘but give my shrivelled ego some consideration, please.’
She almost laughed aloud as he hauled the fender straight with a single smooth, effortless movement. Although some men took her height and strength to be a personal insult, she was prepared to bet a substantial amount that Lucas Tremaine wasn’t one of them.
He coiled a loose rope with the careless skill of someone who had done the same thing hundreds of times. She asked, ‘Are you working on a book now?’
‘No.’
Not exactly communicative!
However, he went on easily as he came back to stand beside her, ‘I’ve just posted a manuscript off.’
‘So you’re having a holiday?’
He flexed his hands on the guardrail, the long fingers curling around the warm wood, then relaxing. ‘I’m researching the next one.’
‘In Hawaii?’ she asked faintly, wondering what on earth was dangerous enough to interest him there.
‘Yes.’
‘Have you ever thought of writing fiction?’ She leaned out to follow the progress of a scarlet-bikinied diver.
He sent her a swift, speculative glance. ‘Like many journalists, I’ve occasionally tossed around the idea of producing the next big blockbuster.’
It would be much less risky than gambling with his life, finding wrongs to be righted.
‘I think you could do it,’ she said, wondering at the anxiety that chilled her heart. ‘You write very vividly. When will you know whether the one you’ve sent away has been accepted?’
‘It was accepted before it was written.’
Her brows shot up. ‘Is that normal?’
‘I’ve got a good agent.’
Anet probably knew as much about the publishing world as he did about physiotherapy, but she was certain that it hadn’t been his agent who had got his books accepted before they were written; his reputation must be excellent. And why not? She had read all of his books and found them utterly absorbing. Although he had glossed over the inherent perils of the research he’d done, each chilling, brilliantly written volume had read like a thriller—one with no happy ending.
He was easy to talk to, but then, she thought some time later, of course that would be part of his armoury of skills. As they kept a close eye on the divers in the coral garden he spoke freely of his life as a sail tramp. However, Anet noted, he mentioned neither his career as an investigative journalist nor his wife.
In return Anet told him about places she had been and the highs and lows and indignities of training to be a physiotherapist.
Later she would realise that she hadn’t referred to her time as an Olympic athlete.
When the divers began to drift back to the boat Anet had to hide a little niggle of resentment. Lucas Tremaine was a fascinating man—dry-witted, none too acceptant of stupidity, and he could tell a story so that it interested you on several levels. And a man who just happened to look like something straight out of a fantasy, she reminded herself, watching Georgia dry herself down with maximum effect.
Anet counted all the divers off, then made sure they reapplied sunscreen. While Scott started the engine and headed the boat towards the little motu where they’d be having lunch she listened to excited comments about the marine life the divers had seen in the coral garden.
This was the part of the day Anet liked least. Usually somebody wanted to hear about her experiences as one of New Zealand’s most visible sportswomen of a few years ago, and while she could understand their interest, it irritated her to be slotted into that mould for ever.
Well, there was one woman who wouldn’t be interested in her athletic prowess, she thought with a hidden smile as Georgia preened herself in the sunlight.
Donning a hat woven skilfully from pandanus leaves, Anet helped Scott ferry people onto the hot white sand of the motu, where a barbecue had already been set up beneath a clump of coconut palms.
The two young men who barbecued the fish and chicken for their meal were from the same family group as Sule. Their tribal council and headman had set up a trust which partnered Scott and Serena and provided workers for the venture. The fish cooking on the coals—and the others that had been made into the dish known by so many different names across the Pacific, their succulent raw flesh whitened by the juice of local limes—had been caught off the reef only hours before by other members of the extended family.
Women of the village had made the salads in a brand-new industrial kitchen on the mainland and ferried them across to the motu in big insulated boxes. They had also set the table, twining crimson and gold hibiscus flowers with glossy green leaves across the stylised, elegant black and cream of the tapa cloth made to their own traditional design.
The motu, pretty as an emerald set in kingfisher-blue enamel, looked like a bright poster from a travel agency. And all to provide tourists with an exotic experience—one, Anet had quickly realised, they enjoyed very much.
‘It’s like paradise,’ a big Australian man said now, gazing around at the glittering lagoon, the abrupt peaks in the centre of the main island, the graceful grey trunks of the coconut palms. He tried some of the fish salad and laughed. ‘If my mother could see me now—she’d never believe that I ate raw fish and enjoyed it!’
‘The lime juice actually cooks the flesh,’ Anet said. ‘Sort of, anyway.’
He grinned. ‘I’m not going to tell her that. You’re Anet Carruthers, aren’t you?’
Schooling the resignation from her face, she nodded.
‘I saw you at the Olympics,’ he said. ‘You were brilliant.’
‘Thank you,’ she said. At his next words she thought the air froze around them. His voice went on, but she couldn’t hear what he was saying until she swallowed fiercely and cleared her ears.
‘Whatever happened, you deserved that medal,’ the man finished earnestly, the upward intonation of his voice at the end of the sentence revealing that, like so many others, he wondered whether perhaps she would tell him something no one else knew about the rumours that had shadowed her Olympic triumph.
The muscles in her face ached with the effort it took to keep them passive. Although it had happened years ago, the wound was still acutely tender—the only thing that would heal it would be Victoria Sutter’s confession that she had lied.
And Anet knew just how likely that was.
She said calmly, ‘Thank you.’
Lucas Tremaine’s voice broke into the prison of her thoughts. ‘Excuse me, Anet, but several people want to collect shells,’ he said. ‘Is it allowed?’
She met his assessing look with a feeble attempt at aplomb. Words stumbled from her tongue. ‘I—yes, of course. Although they can’t take any live shellfish.’
‘You’d better show them how to tell whether they’re alive or dead,’ he said. When she didn’t move he held out an imperative hand. ‘Coming?’
Obediently she got up, gave the man beside her a vague smile and went with Lucas, mesmerised by his size, she supposed, or by the unfaltering strength she sensed in him.
‘What’s the matter?’ he asked when they were out of earshot.
‘Nothing.’ The denial came automatically.
His brows rose. ‘You went as white as a sheet, and although the insensitive clod you were with didn’t seem to notice, you looked as though you’d been shown a glimpse into the pits of hell.’
Angered by his astuteness, she returned grittily, ‘You should do well with fiction if you ever give it a try.’
He turned his head and looked her way. An inner chill shivered through her body; she had to grit her teeth to stop herself from flinching. Her chin came up as she stared back unwaveringly, defying him to comment.
Instantly it was gone, that secret, hidden menace, the cold power that had slipped its leash and blazed from his unreadable eyes for a fleeting moment before he’d reimposed control.
‘Thank you,’ he said ironically, and for the rest of the time they were on the island stayed close to her—like, she thought foolishly, a huge guard dog, more intimidating than he was handsome.
Back at Fala‘isi he left them at the wharf, but before he went he found Anet and said, ‘Scott says you’re staying with him. How would it be if I drop the present around this evening just after seven?’
‘Fine, thank you,’ she said, fighting an odd mixture of anticipation and antagonism.
Time that afternoon seemed both to stretch to infinity and hurry past, so that when they arrived back at Scott and Serena’s bungalow—set in suburbia that was familiar yet exotic, with streets shaded by coconut palms and scented by frangipani bushes, their cream and gold and cerise flowers uncurling from spiral buds between rosettes of large, lushly green leaves—Anet wondered where the hours had gone.
‘I’m taking you out to dinner,’ Scott said firmly as he switched off the engine of his somewhat aged car. ‘And then we’ll go on to a nightclub.’
‘Dinner would be lovely, but I’m not a club person really, Scott,’ she said quickly. Although the business was doing well, he couldn’t afford to waste money.
‘Come on,’ he coaxed. ‘I won’t wear a T-shirt with “Paradise Diving” in big red letters all over it like I usually do, and I’ll behave very nicely—no haring off to drum up clients, I promise.’
She gave him a teasing smile. ‘You don’t have to take me out, you know, even if it is my birthday. I’m perfectly happy staying at home.’
‘I know,’ he said earnestly, ‘but bear with me, Annie. You’ve been a real brick, leaving everything to come up and help out, and I’d like to do something for you.’
‘Well, I didn’t get where I am today by refusing to go out with handsome men,’ she said, smiling as she gave in. ‘And you’d better wear that T-shirt—at least to the nightclub. Serena would never forgive me if you missed out on an opportunity to attract more customers. Where will we go for dinner?’
‘I thought you might like to try the local Chinese restaurant. It’s the best in the Pacific, and believe me, that means something, because there are some brilliant Chinese restaurants in the South Seas. Then we can go on to an island night in one of the hotels. It’s always a good do.’
‘What’ll I wear?’
‘Anything that isn’t hot,’ he said. ‘Casual but pretty—that’s what Serena calls the island look. Most of the women will probably be wearing sarongs.’
Anet regarded him with affectionate exasperation. Those sarongs would have been bought from hotel shops or the main street boutiques; they’d be expensive, the epitome of informal chic, and they didn’t suit her.
‘Casual but pretty I can manage, although it won’t be a sarong,’ she said, adding, ‘Oh, by the way, Lucas is coming over at seven. He’s bringing a present for me from Olivia and Drake Arundell.’
‘Do you know him?’ he asked. ‘You didn’t say.’
‘No, I’ve never met him before, but obviously we share some friends. How did you get to know him?’
‘I went to school with him,’ he said. ‘I was in his house when he was head prefect.’
Of course he’d been head prefect. ‘What was he like?’
‘Tough but fair,’ Scott told her. ‘Bloody clever. More respected than quite a few of the teachers.’
‘Did you ever meet his wife?’
He whistled between his teeth. ‘Yeah. Remember when Serena and I were in the Auckland-Suva yacht race? Well, he and Cara were in Fiji at the time. We saw quite a bit of them.’
I am not going to ask what she was like. To stop the impetuous words, she said remotely, ‘That was a tragedy.’
Scott nodded, his cheerful face for once bleak. ‘Yeah. She was—Oh, hell, every so often you meet a woman who really stands out, you know? Cara was beautiful, but she was open and easy, and funny with it, and somehow she made you feel that just to be alive was a wonderful thing. I couldn’t believe it when I saw in the paper that she’d been murdered.’
‘It must have been terrible for Lucas.’
‘I don’t know how he got over it. She doted on him, you could tell, and although he didn’t show it so much, he thought she was everything. Hell of a thing to happen. He’s never said anything about it, but I think that’s why he went bush after she died. He disappeared for nearly a year. Nobody knew where he was or what he was doing until he marched into the capital with the freedom fighters.’
‘I suppose he blamed himself for his wife’s death,’ she said.
Scott nodded. ‘Yeah. Years later in a bar in Greece I met a journalist who knew him quite well; he and I got talking one night over a bottle of whisky and he swore that Lucas had hunted down the men who’d planted the bomb.’
‘Killed them?’ she asked faintly.
‘Well, delivered them to justice.’
Anet shivered. Yes, she thought. Yes, I can imagine him doing that. He’d be utterly merciless. ‘Poor Lucas,’ she said, unfolding herself from the front seat of the car. Poor Lucas, and poor Cara, and the poor unborn child.
Could anyone ever get over such wholesale destruction of their family?
If anyone could, Lucas Tremaine looked as though he was the man; he exuded a concentrated, self-sufficient toughness that had been grafted onto an already strong character. But even he might find it hard to forgive himself for the death of his wife.
‘You have the shower first,’ Scott said generously as they went into the house. ‘I’ve got paperwork to do and people to telephone.’
Cool water washed away the sweat of the day, sleeking down her body, giving Anet an illusion of freshness as she shampooed. Once out, she dried herself off, sighed as the humid heat enveloped her once again and combed back her fine black hair, wondering just what Cara Tremaine had looked like.
Scott eyed her dubiously when she emerged from her bedroom. ‘You should go and have a shopping session,’ he said.
She knew what he meant. The linen shirt-dress, striped in off-white and a dusky pink, suited Auckland, not the vivid colours and heavy, sensuous atmosphere of Fala’isi. ‘Perhaps I will,’ she said airily.
He gave her a sharp look. ‘Have you got any money? And don’t frown—I know you. Too independent for your own good.’
She lifted haughty black brows at him. ‘This sounds a little strange coming from the man who turned his back on his family to make his own way in the world.’
Grinning, he aimed a punch at her upper arm, then reeled back dramatically and shook his knuckles, wincing and blowing on them. ‘God, will I never learn,’ he mourned, ‘that you’ve got muscles like a drain-digger?’
‘If you keep punching me you’ll learn it very soon.’ She looked at him sideways and said demurely, ‘Although you were never exactly noted for rapid understanding, were you?’
He opened his mouth to return her amiable insult with one of his own, then changed his mind. ‘Did you bring any money?’ he persisted.
She sighed. ‘We live in the era of the credit card, my dear.’
‘Oh, yes, I keep forgetting you’re an heiress.’
She said cheerfully, ‘I used the last of Gran’s money to buy into the practice.’
‘So you’ve got—?’
She shook her head at him. ‘Dad advanced me some money. I’m all right, Scott. I certainly don’t need anything from you, and if by any chance I do, I’ll let you know, don’t worry.’
Scott’s reply was forestalled by the sound of the doorbell. ‘See that you do,’ he said. ‘That’ll be Lucas,’ and went off to let him in.
Anet smoothed a hand over her hip. Resisting the sudden need to swallow, she picked up a birthday card from a Canadian woman she’d beaten years before, after a particularly tense competition in Rome, and turned it over in her hands. In spite of their torrid struggle they’d become firm friends.
‘Have a beer with us?’ Scott was asking as the two men came into the room. ‘Or better still, why don’t you come out to dinner? We’re going to The Jade Horse and then on to the Plaza’s island night.’
An involuntary protest trembled for a second on Anet’s tongue, before being swallowed unspoken.
‘I didn’t intend to butt in,’ Lucas said, his expression unreadable. He wore grey trousers and a shirt that was superbly cut across his wide shoulders. Hair the golden brown of dark honey gleamed in the light of the central lamp; in his long, tanned hands he held a small package.
‘You’re not,’ Scott told him. ‘Is he, Annie?’
‘No, of course not.’ Smiling stiffly, she added, ‘We’d like it very much if you came.’
He sent her a considering glance before saying with a politeness that came perilously close to parody, ‘Thank you. I’d like it too.’
‘OK, that’s settled.’ Scott grinned at them both and headed towards the door. ‘I’ll ring the restaurant.’
Anet put down the card and looked across at the man who stood watching her, his attitude oddly forbidding. Summoning a wry smile, she said, ‘He feels he has to entertain me on my birthday.’
‘You seem to be a close-knit family.’
‘Very,’ she said, thinking of her lovely, laughing mother and sister, and her reserved, drily humorous father, as well as his two sisters and three brothers—parents to a whole horde of cousins who had alternately delighted and plagued her childhood.
‘You don’t look much like your sister.’
‘We’re half-sisters, actually. Jan is five years older than I am.’
‘Ah, that explains it. Here,’ he said, proffering the parcel, ‘is my commission.’
Anet took it and turned it over, more curious about Olivia’s reasons for sending it with a courier than its contents. ‘I wonder what it is?’ she murmured.
He laughed softly. ‘If you open it you might find out.’
So she sat down and, feeling absurdly self-conscious under his enigmatic gaze, began to take off the wrapping. Beneath it she discovered a flat box. After wrestling with the fastenings, and more bubble plastic than seemed necessary, she managed to get it open and slide its contents out. In her hand lay a tiny portrait in a frame. Anet gasped as she stared down at the delicate little countenance some eighteenth-century artist had painted on ivory.
Luminous, glowing, a very young woman looked out at the world with solemn blue eyes set in a sweetly imperious face. The features were fine yet not weak, and a squareness to the jaw hinted at an interesting personality.
‘Intriguing presents you give one another.’ Lucas’s voice was noncommittal.
Her brows meeting, Anet looked at the back. A tiny clip held a flap in place. With extreme care she turned it over so that once more she could see the painted face. ‘It’s valuable, isn’t it?’
‘If it’s genuine—and although I’m no expert it certainly looks that way—then yes, it’s quite valuable. And very beautiful.’
It was obvious that he thought the second attribute more important than the first.
‘There must be some mistake,’ Anet said slowly. ‘Olivia wouldn’t give me anything like this. It looks like a family heirloom.’
‘She told me to look after it and said you’d probably protest but to ignore you. She means you to have it.’
The young woman gazed serenely back at Anet. ‘Her expression seems to change,’ she said, before she realised how stupid such a remark was.
‘May I have a look?’ Lucas asked, and came over to sit beside her.
Silently she handed the portrait to him, watching as the lean fingers deftly took the dainty thing. Her stomach jumped.
‘I wonder who painted it,’ he said. ‘He was a master, whoever he was.’
She said, ‘It could have been a woman.’
‘Do you think so?’ The tip of a lean forefinger almost touched the surface, moved a fraction of an inch above it to trace the small mouth. Thick black lashes almost hid the enigmatic blue-green of his eyes.
Once again Anet felt a swift wrench inside her, as though some fundamental force had altered her cellular structure, transforming her. She swallowed, held captive by the masculine strength of his finger against the soft pink and whiteness of the unknown woman’s face.
He said, ‘I think it was painted by her lover.’
Fortunately Scott strolled back into the room. ‘All OK,’ he said. ‘Hello, what’s this?’
‘Olivia sent it to me,’ Anet said woodenly.
Her nerves were tautly stretched. Yet nothing had happened. She had watched Lucas almost touch a painting, that was all. Her gaze fell on the portrait. Strange that she hadn’t noticed the sympathy in the painted smile, or the tinge of smugness.
Lord, she thought, I’m losing my mind!
It was essential that she regain command of the situation. Saying quickly, ‘I think I’d better ring Olivia and find out who this mysterious woman is!’ she held out her hand.
Lucas didn’t respond immediately; instead he looked at her with a hooded, elemental challenge that chilled her right through.
Then he smiled, irony and mockery nicely blended. Her outstretched hand shook slightly but she kept it extended. ‘I’ll take it with me,’ she said lightly.
‘If it’s valuable,’ Scott observed in a blessedly normal voice, ‘we really should put it in a safety deposit box at the bank. There’s no crime to speak of on Fala’isi, but just in case...’
Lucas put the portrait into her hand, his fingers brushing hers. Her skin seemed to have become thinner; she almost recoiled as sensation leapt from nerve-end to nerve-end through her body, setting it on fire.
‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘I won’t be long.’
Fala‘isi and New Zealand were in the same time zone, so she got Olivia as she was preparing for dinner. ‘I was just going to ring you!’ she said, her voice golden with affection. ‘Happy birthday!’
‘Thank you. It’s been a super one so far.’ And then she stopped, because how could she tell Olivia that she didn’t feel comfortable about accepting her gift?
But of course Olivia knew. With a little laugh she said, ‘You think the portrait is too much.’
Thankfully, Anet took a deep breath and said, ‘Olivia, it’s absolutely beautiful and I love it, but I can’t keep it. You must see that—even I can tell it’s valuable.’
Olivia said warmly, ‘I don’t know whether it’s genuine or not, but it’s yours.’
‘I can’t accept it,’ Anet protested. ‘Olivia, does Drake—?’
‘Agree? Of course he does. Truly, Anet, I haven’t lost my mind. She’s not a family heirloom. She’s a—a good luck charm, I suppose you could call her.’
‘Whatever, you must see that it’s impossible for me to even think of—’
On an odd wry note, Olivia said, ‘I don’t know that you’ve got any choice, my dear. I think she knows where she wants to be.’
Anet’s head came up. A shade brusquely she asked, ‘What on earth do you mean?’
‘Relax, relax. I’m not hinting at witchcraft or the occult. The lady is very determined, that’s all. Anet, why not just keep her while you’re in Fala’isi? If you really don’t want her you can return her to me when you come back. All right?’
It wasn’t all right, but Anet knew that she couldn’t say so. Trying to banish the reluctance from her tone, she said, ‘Yes, of course. And—thank you, Olivia.’
‘Think of her as a temporary visitor,’ Olivia said, laughter and a kind of understanding texturing her words. ‘What do you think of Lucas Tremaine?’
‘Overwhelming,’ Anet returned drily.
‘Isn’t he just!’
Anet said, ‘He’s coming out to dinner with Scott and me tonight.’
‘He’s an interesting man,’ Olivia said. ‘I like him. So does Drake. He met him in San Rafael—Drake spent some time working in the mines there. He was delighted to see him again.’
“‘Interesting” describes Lucas exactly,’ Anet said, hoping she didn’t sound as ambivalent as she felt. ‘Olivia—’
‘Have a wonderful night, Anet, and I hope this year is better than any other you’ve ever lived through. Yes, all right,’ she said to someone else in the room, turning back to confide, ‘I have to go now. Phillips has prepared a new dish and he’s rather worried about it. I had to promise that Drake and I would be at the table dead on time!’
‘Is Simon not at home?’ Simon was Olivia’s much younger half-brother, who lived with the Arundells.
‘He’s staying with a friend. Come and see us when you get back, Anet. All right, Phillips...’
The Arundells’ manservant, housekeeper, nanny and good friend combined, a middle-aged man called simply Phillips, was a domestic tyrant who ruled the house with a rod of iron—especially when Olivia was pregnant, as she was now for the third time. Olivia and Drake hoped for a daughter to round off their family—‘Although if it’s another boy,’ Olivia had said placidly the last time Anet had seen her, ‘I’ll be perfectly happy. I like my boys.’
Anet was smiling as she hung up, but the smile faded as her eyes fell on the miniature. Tranquilly the small, exquisitely painted face gazed back at her.
‘Young as you are, I think Olivia was right. You look to me,’ Anet said, rewrapping her carefully, ‘like someone to be reckoned with. I don’t think you’d like the tropics—you’re a Gainsborough lady, not a Gauguin. If Olivia’s baby is a girl, I’ll give you to her as a christening present.’
And she carried the parcel to her bedroom where, after some thought, she hid it in a drawer.
Compelled by an obscure impulse, she walked across her room to stand in front of the full-length mirror. ‘Sturdy,’ she told her reflection after several moment’s scrutiny, ‘describes you exactly. And solid.’
Everything about her was big—broad shoulders, wide hips, long, powerful legs. Since she’d given up field sports the heavy layers of muscle in her thighs and shoulders had sleeked down, but with her bone structure she’d never be anything but big.
‘Just like your father,’ her petite mother used to say, hugging her, unable to hide the note of regret in her voice.
Anet’s eyes moved to examine her face with dispassionate interest. She was certainly no beauty, although she had her mother’s pale, clear, fine skin. The best she could be called was striking, with her wide mouth and square jaw beneath cheekbones flaring away from a straight nose. Black short hair and barely arched brows contrasted shockingly with eyes of a light, limpid grey. If they’d been blue or brown their size would have been emphasised, but in spite of the curly dark lashes that surrounded them their transparency seemed to rob her of personality.
She and the woman in the miniature had nothing in common except their gender, she thought with a self-mocking smile. Not even in her cradle had she been called dainty. What on earth had made Olivia think she would like her gift?
Although perhaps Olivia knew her better than she did herself, because she did; she loved it.
Into her mind there popped Scott’s words about Cara Tremaine. ‘Beautiful...made you feel that just to be alive was a wonderful thing...’
Of course Lucas would marry an exceptional woman. Exceptional men did—it was the law of the jungle, or the survival of the fittest, or something. Alpha men married alpha women. She, as she had always known, was not an alpha woman. In fact, on occasion she had been the butt of remarks questioning her femininity; they had hurt when she was young, but she ignored them these days.
Which made the shivery inner feelings now assailing her ridiculous.
Perhaps some weakness in her made her fall passionately—futilely—in lust with tall, handsome men who possessed uncompromising authority and intense, bone-deep sexuality, men with charisma. And that, she thought derisively, was a much overrated word that meant nothing.
Anyway, Lucas was going to Hawaii, so she was safe.
Suddenly realising that she had been staring at her reflection with the still solemnity of a moonstruck owl—she, who never looked at herself except to comb her hair—she pulled a hideous face and walked out of the room.
Lucas and Scott were in the sitting room drinking beer. Both looked up as she came into the room, but it was Scott who demanded, ‘What did she say?’
‘If she weren’t Olivia,’ Anet answered thoughtfully, ‘I’d say she was being cagey.’
Scott brought a glass of lime juice across to her. She’d have preferred wine, but when she’d found how much it cost on the island she’d blenched and given it up for the duration.
‘That doesn’t sound like Olivia,’ Lucas commented, sounding amused and indulgent.
‘No, it doesn’t, but she wasn’t exactly forthcoming.’ She recounted Olivia’s words.
‘A whim,’ Scott decided. ‘She suddenly thought you’d like it.’
Anet suppressed her inchoate suspicion that there was more to the unexpected present than a mere feminine whim. Conjuring up a social smile copied from her mother, she turned to Lucas and said, ‘Thank you very much for breaking your journey to deliver it.’
‘It was nothing,’ he said with negligent courtesy.
‘You’re too kind,’ she said automatically, and felt heat run along her cheekbones and hairline at the subtly taunting smile he directed at her. Hurriedly she continued, ‘Do you have your flight booked for Hawaii?’
‘I had to cancel when I stopped off here, but it’ll be easy enough to get another one.’
Scott put his glass down. ‘How long do you think you’ll be there?’
‘Until I’ve finished my research. A week or so, I imagine, then I’ll head back to New Zealand to write.’ He drained his glass, throat muscles working. ‘I have a house on a hill overlooking a beach on the Coromandel,’ he said. ‘It’s primitive and isolated and gut-wrenchingly beautiful. Perfect for a writer.’
Scott nodded, then enquired after someone called Old Ropy, who’d been at school with them. Lucas didn’t know where this improbably named person was, but Scott wasn’t deterred. He mentioned other names, and they slipped into the sort of conversation that consisted mainly of, ‘Do you remember...?’ until Lucas said, ‘We must be boring Anet rigid.’
Scott gave her a fond smile. ‘Not Annie,’ he said. ‘She’s very restful, is Annie. Doesn’t drive a man crazy with her yattering all the time.’
‘Don’t talk about me as though I’m not here,’ she said, laughing in spite of herself. ‘And shouldn’t we be going?’
CHAPTER THREE
SCOTT had not overpraised the restaurant. Although the big room was packed, and noisy with local Chinese families, islanders and tourists, and the clicking ceiling fans barely disturbed the humid, spice-scented air, the food was divine.
‘Ambrosia,’ Anet sighed as she lifted her bowl of jasmine tea in a silent toast to her cousin. ‘One of the best meals I’ve ever tasted, anywhere.’
Scott looked pleased. ‘I thought you’d like it. Serena and I come here whenever we feel rich.’
‘I never stop being surprised at how extraordinarily well you can eat throughout the Pacific,’ Lucas commented.
‘You should write a book about it,’ Scott said, grinning. ‘Eating your way around the Pacific. You’d have every armchair traveller in the world buying it.’
Lucas laughed. ‘One day I might just do that.’
He’d been a good companion—witty, amusing and an excellent raconteur, and obviously enjoying the evening, yet Anet suspected that one part of him stood back and viewed the world with an unemotional, disinterested gaze, safe behind the barrier he’d constructed to keep the rest of humankind at a distance.
He didn’t reveal much of himself in his books either. Although exciting and topical and searingly written, the personal outrage that must fuel his need to track down perpetrators of crime was always kept under vigilant control.
‘Time to go,’ Scott told them, getting to his feet as the waiter brought back the tray and his credit card. When the bill had arrived he and Lucas had exchanged a few cryptic remarks, from which Anet had gathered that Lucas would reimburse him later for his share.
Outside, breathing in air scented with the myriad odours of growth and fecundity, Anet realised that Lucas was to accompany them to the nightclub. Stop jittering, she told her stomach firmly as she looked out of the car windows at the thin line of white where the combers met the reef. As her legs were marginally shorter than his she had insisted on sitting in the back—which position, unfortunately for her peace of mind, gave her an excellent view of an autocratic, angular profile every time Lucas turned his head to speak.
The nightclub was quite skilfully decorated with a ceiling of thatched pandanus leaves so that it looked like a very large fale—one of the island’s superbly simple traditional houses—and it hummed. Everyone under twenty-three on the island seemed to be there, dancing enthusiastically to a band that played a clever mixture of rock music and Hawaiian pop.
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