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Exorcism
PENNY JORDAN


Penny Jordan needs no introduction as arguably the most recognisable name writing for Mills & Boon. We have celebrated her wonderful writing with a special collection, many of which for the first time in eBook format and all available right now.Could she exorcise her dreams of love?Looking back, Christy realised that Simon hadn't wanted to fall in love six years ago – while she'd had no other choice. Still, she shouldn't have assumed he'd want to marry her.She'd naively planned their future together until the day Simon accused her of trying to trap him into marriage. Apparently, unlike her, he hadn't needed to be in love to experience desire.Now he was determined to have her accompany him to the Caribbean to research his new book. Did he really expect her to put the past behind her?












Exorcism

Penny Jordan







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




Table of Contents


Cover (#ub52c5997-01cb-55d9-85c7-41a927b8b11a)

Title Page (#u1a888bdd-7810-5e2e-bef7-957626c868ef)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_f03d27ad-c0c4-5607-9313-af5afb54cf1d)

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_d5db70ba-c6ec-5793-96b2-0621a20d71ee)

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_7e67c65a-2458-5de5-aedf-95d8c62eca84)

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)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_02a4fc7c-2592-521d-a6b6-07022e429cae)


IT had been a perfect spring, the bright, rain-washed April days giving way to a totally unexpected lazy May heat that made the Dorset hedgerows bloom, and old Harry Carver, who came twice a month to do their garden, proclaim pessimistically that nothing good would come of it, but now May was sliding languorously into June with no sign of a break in the weather. Christy was lying on her back in the small orchard, squinting at the sky occasionally and wondering if she dare be lazy for another half an hour or whether she ought to return to the house and do some work. That was one of the pleasant aspects of working for one’s mother, and having endured the rigours of a nine-to-five routine in the early days when she had just left secretarial school, Christy appreciated her present freedom all the more.

Not that her job was in any way a sinecure. Working for a compulsive writer brought its own share of crises. Her mother loathed using a dictaphone and had a habit of scribbling down her thoughts in the most unlikely places on the smallest scraps of paper she could find, and then there was always the inevitable panic when one of these ‘treasures’ couldn’t be found.

Not many young women of twenty-four would want to work for their mothers, especially not such a successful mother as hers, Christy acknowledged, but then the images the words ‘successful’ in conjunction with the word ‘woman’ conjured up were so totally at variance with her petite, vague, sometimes infuriating, often enchanting mother.

Christy had lost count of the number of people over the years who had been lulled into a false sense of security by her mother’s apparent vagueness. As a young widow with a small baby to rear and no visible means of support, other than a small pension from the Armed Services, she had somehow managed to withstand the strong pressure brought to bear by both her own and her husband’s parents that she make her home with them. At twenty she was young enough to marry again they had both told her, and it was foolish to burden herself with the responsibility of a small baby when both sets of parents were willing to take over for her. Somehow she had withstood that pressure … somehow she had carved a niche for herself in the jungle of the publishing world persevering with her children’s stories until she found a publisher willing to take them.

Now, under her pen-name, she was famous, but Christy did not envy her that fame. Any artistic talents she had inherited from her mother found expression in the illustrations she did for her mother’s books. And not only her mother’s. Christy had a rare talent that other writers had seized on eagerly, and the royalty cheques she received for this work could have made her pleasantly independent of her mother had she had any desire to live alone.

Perhaps she was unusual at twenty-four in still living at home. But when ‘home’ was a rambling Victorian vicarage with close on two acres of delightful garden, set in a small Dorset village complete with thatched cottages; a small village store and a local pub whose food drew visitors from miles around, it seemed hard to visualise any merit in moving. She and her mother got on well and were close without stifling one another. Georgina Lawrence had always had the knack of preserving her own privacy and it was a gift she had passed on to Christy. While it would have been a fallacy to say they were as close as sisters, they were, as well as mother and daughter, friends, with some interests they shared and some they did not. Her mother was wise, Christy acknowledged, in the way that people who had suffered great emotional pain often were. She was also capable of standing back from a situation and assessing it from the outside; although she had explained to Christy that both sets of parents had been bitterly opposed to her living alone when she was widowed, she had also gone on to say that their opposition was simply a sign of their caring. All in all her mother was a very remarkable woman, and yet Christy felt no envy of her. She herself was not professionally ambitious … perhaps that was what was wrong with her … her lack of ambition. Her mother had told her that she took after her father; the young army captain who had been killed in Northern Ireland by a bomb blast.

Christy had once asked her mother why she had never married again. She knew it hadn’t been for lack of offers. Even now at forty-five her mother was an extremely attractive woman; small and slim with a thick head of naturally curly dark red hair and animated feminine features.

‘Perhaps because I’ve grown beyond it,’ she had responded openly. ‘I loved your father as one does at eighteen—blindly … passionately … our relationship was one of love formed between equals … both of us young and united against our parents. They thought we were too young to marry, and probably they were right. The danger of marrying young and then losing one’s partner is that one sees the deterioration of one’s peers’ marriages while one’s own remains perfect and inviolate. Who knows, had your father lived he might have become entrenched in the same male role I see so often in the husbands of my friends … he might not have wanted me to write … I’m a very selfish woman, Christy … women have to be selfish to do what they want because there are so many other pressures on them, both emotional and social. If I have not married again perhaps it is because I relish my right to make my own decisions, to do as I please. As a man’s lover I retain that right and he respects me for it, as his wife, a subtle re-arrangement of priorities takes place and most men, whether they are prepared to admit it or not, want their wives to conform to a certain image. Perhaps with your generation it will be different, I don’t know, but I should hate to commit myself to a relationship and then find it soured by habit and familiarity.’

Christy had understood what her mother had meant. She had looked long and hard at the marriages of her mother’s friends, and realised why her mother might prefer a lover to a husband. And undoubtedly there must have been lovers, although her mother had always been discreet. There had been no procession of ‘uncles’ through Christy’s life, and although her mother had been a loving, caring parent, she had also instilled in Christy an independence which she herself shared; a subtle reminder that both of them had rights as individuals which they must respect in themselves as well as in one another.

Earlier on in the week her mother had gone to London to see her publisher, and had decided to stay there a few days in order to do some shopping and catch up on old friends. Christy could have gone with her but had elected to remain at home. The city in the May heat was not something that appealed to her. She stretched out luxuriously and yawned. Her skin, after so many hours spent in the garden, was tanning a warm gold. In looks she was completely unlike her mother. Her gypsy dark skin and hair had been inherited from her father, her long, heavily lashed grey eyes from her maternal grandmother; her height and slenderness, like her colouring, from her father. At twenty-four, without a scrap of make-up on and her shoulder-length hair curling wildly round her face she looked more like eighteen, although those with the experience to see it would know that pain had at some time touched her and left its indelible mark, and that having once touched her, would not be allowed to do so again.

If she had one thing in common with her mother it was a shared strength of will that both cloaked skilfully. Georgina with her vagueness, and Christy with her relaxed almost lazy approach to life. Those who didn’t know her well marvelled at her lack of ambition and said pityingly that no doubt it sprang from being overshadowed by her mother, but the real explanation lay simply in the fact that there was nothing in life that Christy found worth competing for. An only child, she had a deeply romantic vein to her personality and had grown up daydreaming of fairy tales; stories of valour and heroics and later, tales of bitter-sweet and indestructible love. Her mother had gently tried to warn her that life was vastly different, but she had chosen to ignore that warning—and had paid a price for it. In one brief summer she had tasted all the pleasure life could hold, but the sweetness of it had turned to acid in her mouth when she realised she had simply been living a daydream. She had been eighteen then, now she was twenty-four. She had long ago come to terms with her disillusionment and her memories of the man who had caused it. Now she was content to accept life for what it was … now she did not daydream. One day perhaps she would find a pleasant man whose company she enjoyed enough to marry … they would have children, and a placid life, but for now she was content with her life the way it was.

The sound of a car coming down the narrow lane that led to the vicarage made her get up. From the noise it was making it sounded as though it was their one and only local taxi, which meant that her mother was back.

Brushing the grass from her shorts she walked lazily towards the house. Her trips away always fired her mother into frantic bouts of work, although before she left Georgina had said that she didn’t intend to start work on her next children’s collection until the autumn. She had even talked about going away on holiday—something almost unheard of for her mother. Smiling to herself, Christy walked into the kitchen and filled the electric kettle.

‘Marvellous—you heard Sam’s car. I’m dying for a cup of tea … London was stifling … you were wise not to come.’

There was a note in her mother’s voice that Christy picked up on but didn’t respond to, concentrating instead on making the tea.

‘Outside, or in the conservatory?’ she asked her when she had set a small tray with cups and her mother’s favourite biscuits. Neither of them had a weight problem, but both of them were sparse eaters.

‘The conservatory,’ Georgina replied, grimacing faintly as she added. ‘You don’t know how lucky you are not to have inherited my wretched Celtic skin.’

‘Being pale and interesting is coming back into fashion,’ Christy responded. Her mother burned at the slightest touch of the sun, the pallor of her skin emphasising the warm golden brown of her own.

‘I should have called you gypsy …’ Georgina responded wryly, taking the tray from her and leading the way to the house’s old-fashioned and delightfully overgrown conservatory. It boasted a vine that ran wild much to Harry’s disgust, but which both women loved, and a profusion of other plants that Georgina spent part of each morning crooning to. It helped her to collect her thoughts, she claimed.

Following her mother barefoot, her long legs slender and brown Christy sank down into one of the comfortable, ancient chairs. Georgina raised her eyebrows slightly as she observed her daughter’s bare feet. They could represent no greater contrast, Christy reflected, studying her mother’s immaculate slate grey skirt and toning blouse; her silk stockings and elegant high-heeled shoes.

‘No shoes?’ Georgina commented. ‘You could cut your feet.’

‘It’s healthier for them,’ Christy responded with a lazy smile, ‘and you know how big they are. Put them in delicate shoes like yours and I’d look like an elephant.’

It wasn’t true and they both knew it. Christy could, when she wanted to, look supremely elegant; she wasn’t her mother’s daughter for nothing, but she preferred not to copy, instead developing her own style; her clothes casual and comfortable.

Sipping her tea Georgina studied her daughter covertly. Had she done the fight thing in teaching her to be independent and self-reliant …? Christy had a vulnerability she herself had never possessed; underneath her indolent exterior she hid emotions and uncertainties that tortured only those who possessed natures that were both romantic and idealistic. Never a joiner, Christy’s individuality had become more marked over the years. A distinctly attractive young woman she seemed to prefer to be alone rather than out dating. Georgina sighed. How inconvenient the mothering instinct was; and after all the time she had put in teaching Christy to respect her own privacy and that of others, she herself could scarcely now intrude, and question. She put her cup down quickly, unaware that her daughter’s quick eye had picked up on the betraying uncertainty of her movements.

‘Okay, spill it out,’ Christy commanded laconically. ‘You’ve got to produce three new books by autumn, is that it?’

When her mother didn’t respond, Christy frowned. ‘There is something, I know. Please tell me …’

Putting down her cup, Georgina said quietly, ‘Darling, Simon’s back.’

Christy was proud of her lack of reaction. Not even her expressive grey eyes were allowed to mirror any feelings.

‘Returning in triumph no doubt after the success of his American tour. Mum, I’m not eighteen any more,’ she added gently, ‘Simon Jardine means nothing to me now other than a bad memory. I’m glad for his sake that he’s found success at last—he wanted it so badly, he’d never have been satisfied with anything less.’ Restless, energetic Simon whom she had met six years ago, and who had stolen her unwary, foolish heart. He had told her then that nothing was more important to him than his writing and she, foolishly, had not believed him. He had just had his first book accepted by her mother’s publishers; a blend of fact and fiction that made compulsive reading. Now he was a world-renowned author with three books to his name, all of them bestsellers. He had been out of the country for the last four years, either writing, or doing promotional tours, with only brief visits to the UK, mainly to see his publishers. Now, according to her mother, he was back. So what was she expected to do? Disintegrate into a thousand broken pieces?

‘Don’t look at me like that,’ she chided her mother, pouring each of them a cup of tea. Her own senses relayed to her the disturbing information that her pulse was racing, her stomach muscles knotting in remembered tension. ‘Okay, so I had a childish crush on Simon when I was eighteen—everyone’s entitled to one mistake.’ She managed to produce a wry smile. ‘Cheer up Mum, it’s not the end of the world.’

She hadn’t always thought that. At eighteen, her daydreams and folly cruelly exposed by Simon’s sophisticated mockery of her, she had thought her world had ended; she had wanted it to end, unable to endure the pain of his cruelty … and he had been cruel … encouraging her to believe he returned her feelings only to turn on her with ill-concealed contempt … taunting her for her inexperience. It had been a hard lesson for her to learn, especially as she had made no attempt to hide her feelings for him.

‘Well then, I’m afraid there’s something else I must tell you.’

Her heart seemed to seize up, her body freezing and yet burning at the same time. Dear God don’t let her mother tell her he was married … in love with someone else … ‘Jeremy wants you to spend the summer working for him.’

It was several minutes before she could take in the meaning of her mother’s words, so great was the shock to her system of her overwhelming reaction. For years she had barely given Simon a thought. She had put him behind her, and yet the very mention of his name; the very thought of him being involved with someone else … Just reaction, she assured herself shakily … Of course she was over him … what she had felt for him had been an adolescent crush, nothing more.

‘Jeremy wants me to work for him?’ she repeated, trying to force her brain to work as she fought for control of her rioting emotions.

‘No, darling, not for him,’ her mother corrected patiently, ‘He wants you to work for Simon. Apparently, his latest book is going to be set in the Carribean. It’s about an Elizabethan adventurer who sailed with Drake and then turned pirate. Simon discovered a vague story about him when he was on holiday there last year. Apparently there’s a local legend about this man, and the dynasty he founded. He died in a shipwreck, apparently caused deliberately … the local legend is that it happened because a rival pirate gang had raided his home. Simon has worked out where such a wreck would be, if indeed the story is true, and he needs an experienced secretary, cum illustrator, cum diver to work with him during the summer while he tries to piece the story together.’

‘Why me?’

Her eyes were guarded, cool almost as she studied her mother.

‘I promise you it wasn’t my idea. Jeremy mentioned you first. He told Simon what an excellent job you did for Miles in India last year.’

Christy sighed. Last year she had spent four months in India with Miles Trent, another writer involved with the same publishing house as her mother. Miles had been writing a novel about the British Raj and had persuaded Christy to go to India with him as his assistant. A mild-mannered, chronically disorganised man, he had claimed that the speed with which his novel had been completed was due solely to Christy’s help. It was Christy’s personal view that the reason Miles had been so pleased with her had little to do with her professional ability, but a good deal to do with the fact that she was completely immune to his rather film-starish brand of blond good looks. Poor Miles; no one could be less equipped to deal with the feminine interest he aroused then he was. He looked every inch the blond macho hero, but in reality was an extremely serious writer, dedicated to his work—a bachelor still at thirty-odd, he had leaned heavily on Christy for protection from the many women who had tried to get involved with him. He was very fond of Christy but Georgina had been very frank in the opinion she gave to Christy which was that Miles was a man with little enjoyment of his effect on the opposite sex, and therefore unlikely to be very rewarding as a lover. Christy was inclined to think that her mother was right, and it had amused her when she came home to see the headlines in the gossip press, linking her name with his, and suggesting coyly that there was more than a working relationship between them. Two more unlikely lovers it would be harder to find, she had reflected at the time.

‘Well, there’s no need to worry about it,’ she told her mother calmly now. ‘Simon is hardly likely to want me as his research assistant. Why settle for a person who can combine all three roles in one, when he can have the variety of three separate females to choose from. You know Simon; he always did prefer variety.’

‘I’m afraid on this occasion it seems that he doesn’t,’ Georgina replied quietly. ‘He wants you to work for him, Christy. In fact he made a point of telling me so. Apparently, the timing of the diving is very important … the weather will only be suitable for a very short span of time.’

‘Tell him I can’t swim,’ Christy retorted curtly, ‘I don’t want the job Mum … I’m looking forward to my summer off.’

‘Christy …’ Georgina looked at her daughter helplessly. How could she trespass into her daughter’s privacy when she was the one who had taught her to respect it in herself and others? ‘My dear, I’m afraid he’s determined to have you …’

It was an unfortunate choice of words, and one that made Christy’s grey eyes glitter.

‘He intends to come down here to see you. I simply could not put him off … If you refuse to see him he’ll …’

‘Assume that I’m still suffering from a massive adolescent crush,’ Christy supplied bitterly. ‘Well, I can’t see why I should allow myself to be pressurised into accepting a job I don’t want, simply to prove something I don’t care about to someone I’m not interested in.’

‘Well if that’s how you feel …’

Georgina sounded so helpless and vague that Christy stared at her suspiciously. She knew her mother when she used that tone of voice, it meant she was concealing something.

‘Obviously you don’t agree with my decision.’

‘My dear, it isn’t a matter of not agreeing,’ Georgina said gently, ‘it’s more a matter of why you’re so determined not to agree. If you really do feel nothing towards Simon I can’t see why you’re refusing to accept the job. Only the other month you were saying you’d love to go to the Caribbean, but you couldn’t see how you could afford it.’

‘That was for a holiday—not to work, and you’re right, I’m not indifferent to Simon,’ she said crisply. ‘I dislike him. We wouldn’t work in harmony together.’

‘Well, you know your own mind, but I suspect that Simon will try to change it for you. This book means a lot to him, Christy. He’s done all the ground work and all he needs to do now is to make this trip out to the Caribbean.’

‘And of course nothing must stand in the way of what the great Simon Jardine wants,’ Christie said bitterly. ‘I’ve been used as a sacrifice on the altar of his ambition once Mum, I’m not letting it happen again.’

After that the subject was allowed to drop. Her mother went upstairs to unpack and Christy wandered back into the garden to enjoy the last of the afternoon sun, but found that she could not settle or relax. Of course she had made the right decision, Simon Jardine had hurt her badly once, so badly that the scars still had the power to ache, but she wasn’t vulnerable to him any longer. So why was she refusing? Forcing herself to be honest with herself, she acknowledged that if the job had meant working with someone else, Miles for instance, she would have jumped at it. Was she indifferent to Simon? Of course not; how could she be? He had hurt her deeply and of course she was wary, but that didn’t mean she still had a crush on him—far from it. She mulled the matter over in her mind, convinced that she had made the right decision. In that summer she was eighteen she had lived on the edge of her emotions all the time. She didn’t want that again. She was safe now and she enjoyed her safety, she didn’t want to have to be constantly on edge, constantly reinforcing her immunity to him. And Simon himself would never accept her indifference; he was the sort of man who demanded by right the interest of every woman who crossed his path, no matter whether he was prepared to return that interest or not.

Forget about him, she scolded herself, put him out of your mind … concentrate instead on the summer ahead. She closed her eyes, letting her thoughts drift, but annoyingly they drifted back in time not forward. At last unable to fight the crushing pressure of her memories any longer she gave up the battle. Oh very well … perhaps she ought to remember … perhaps she ought to relive those days again, if only mentally … a sort of mental spring-cleaning in effect.

She had been just eighteen and attending secretarial college, looking much as she did now, although then her movements had been coltish and uncertain, her face eager, mobile, all her emotions visible in her eyes.

Her mother had been in London for over a week and she had telephoned to say she was bringing guests back with her—her publisher and a new writer who was joining the firm. Christy hadn’t been particularly concerned. She had known Jeremy Thomas since she was five years old and this wasn’t the first time Georgina had brought visitors down to the vicarage.

She had been in the orchard when they arrived, deeply engrossed in a book. She hadn’t bothered to get up, knowing that Mrs Carver, who came in from the village once a week to clean, was there, on hand to offer the arrivals a welcome and sustenance. She would go in later when the bustle was over. She would have had to change to meet them anyway, and she wasn’t in the mood. Her shorts were grubby with grass stains, white and brief, a sign that at eighteen she was still growing; her T-shirt clinging to her taut breasts. At eighteen she was vaguely embarrassed by her body; so alien to her after years spent looking at the petite femininity of her mother. Voluptuous and sexy was how her mother described her, slightly teasingly, and at eighteen she was too young to feel entirely at home with a body that drew admiring male eyes of all ages. She squirmed a little in the long grass remembering the overt stares of the few boys she knew. Always slightly shy she had made few friends at college; most of the other girls were slightly withdrawn, as unable to cope with her open sexuality as she was herself.

She was lying on her stomach, too deeply engrossed in her book to be aware of anything else, when someone bent over her to read the printed page, his voice husky, and entirely male, infusing the words she was reading with a sexuality that her own unawakened mind had not entirely absorbed. Her immediate reaction had been to snap the book closed and roll over to glare angrily at the intruder. She hated anyone coming between her and her involvement with whatever she was reading. She was still at an age where it was easy to cast aside her own person a and slip into that of the heroine and by reading as he had done the intruder had taken on the role of hero, and his voice had stroked her skin as dexterously as the hand of any lover, causing a reaction inside her that made her tense and coil, like a wary cat.

‘At your age you should be experiencing romance, not reading about it,’ he had mocked, his clever, masculine mouth curling faintly. Tall, taller by far than most of the men she knew, he seemed to blot out the sun with shoulders so powerfully broad that she automatically flinched away from the sheer sexuality of him. Dressed in faded jeans and a checked shirt, he was so intensely masculine that Christy, unused to such maleness, automatically recoiled from it.

His eyes had gone from her face to her body, studying her in a way that brought a wave of hot colour to her skin. Where his glance lingered, it seemed almost physically to touch. She could almost feel the explorative drift of his fingers against her skin, and she had shivered violently, hearing his soft laugh.

‘So you are Georgina’s “gypsy”,’ he had said slowly, ‘a wild and passionate little savage indeed … I wonder how long it would take to tame you.’

She had stood up almost violently; angry at his intrusion and yet strangely excited by him. His hair was even darker than hers, blue black with a silky sheen, his skin faintly olive. His eyes which she had expected to be dark were a strange metallic gold; amber almost and she had stared curiously into them, forgetting her anger as she registered their slow appraisal.

‘Definitely not your mother’s daughter,’ he had said at last. And for some curious reason she had felt intensely hurt; as though in some way she did not measure up to a standard he had set her. It was the first time she had ever wished she was like Georgina. Was this man her mother’s lover?

He was younger than Georgina, perhaps somewhere in his mid-twenties, although it was hard to tell, and yet even her innocence could not protect her from being aware of his intense sexuality. It wasn’t that he was outstandingly good looking; his features were almost too hard for that, his jaw and chin stubbornly unyielding; his cheekbones high, thrusting against his tanned skin, his nose faintly crooked as though it might have once been broken; but there was something about him that made her want to stare and go on staring. He stretched his hand out to her, grasping her wrist with lean fingers. Their touch was cool and yet where they circled her skin it seemed to burn like fire.

‘Georgina sent me to get you … It seems you and I are to play together like good children while she and Jeremy discuss work. Do you think we can do that, Christy?’ he had asked her mockingly, ‘Do you think we can play nicely together?’

She had known instinctively then that he and her mother were not lovers, and in her pitiable innocence had not realised the danger the joy that knowledge brought, represented. She had looked into his amber eyes and had felt suddenly as though for the first time in her life she was truly alive. He had smiled down at her, a curious smile tinged with a knowledge she could only guess at. And that was how it had started.

‘Christy?’

Hearing her mother call her name brought her out of the past, so abruptly that she still carried its residue of pain with her as she made her way back to the house. She had thought reliving what had happened might have a cathartic effect, but perhaps for that she needed to relive every event … every moment of that brief summer.




CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_56469105-4dca-5aa4-8e25-ba61079f99b3)


‘I’M going up now, how about you?’

Christy shook her head lightly, ‘I’m not tired enough yet.’

She wasn’t relaxed enough to sleep; that was the truth of the matter. Although it had not been mentioned during dinner, she knew her mother still felt she should accept the job with Simon. Sighing, Christy went over to the record cabinet and selected a recording of some Handel. His music, always so relaxing, would surely help to unravel her knotted muscles and induce a desire to sleep.

Curling up in an armchair, she closed her eyes and let the sounds wash over her. Her mother’s room wasn’t directly above the sitting room and so it wouldn’t disturb her.

Simon had been faintly mocking about her love of classical music. ‘You want everything to be so romantic, don’t you?’ he had taunted her … ‘but life isn’t like that, gypsy.’ He had bought her other records; some pop, some classical … all of them containing the message that life comprised pain as well as pleasure. Her mother and Jeremy had been deeply involved in working out the details of her schedule for the coming autumn; there was an American tour to be fitted in as well as two new books, and there were also several other matters they had to discuss, so that Simon and Christy were thrown very much into one another’s company. She had finished at college for the summer, and in the early days she and Simon had made good use of the Vicarage’s rather ancient tennis court.

He was a demanding opponent, who never willingly let her win, and sometimes his driving desire to win angered her. She herself cared little about winning or losing and somehow he made her feel that this was a lack in her.

‘So unambitious,’ he had taunted her one day. ‘What do you plan to do with your life, Christy? Fall in love, get married and live happily ever after?’

He had laughed at her scarlet cheeks but his laughter had not held any amusement, rather it had had the hard edge of a man made bitter by contempt.

‘What a trap for my sex, Mother Nature has designed in you. Your looks and your body promise so much … offer so much enticement, and yet they cannot be had without the payment of a price can they, my gypsy? And that price is marriage.’

She hadn’t understood his anger; not then. She had simply thought he was mocking her and had not understood why. The frustration which someone with more experience might have recognised, was hidden from her by her own innocence.

She could vividly remember the first time he kissed her. He had taken her out for the day in his car—a small sports model; brightly scarlet. When she had admired it, he had laughed, faintly disparagingly.

‘It’s a young man’s car, something he buys before he commits himself to marriage and a family, and the inevitable saloon, but that’s not for me, Christy,’ he had told her, ‘my choice of car will always only have room for the one passenger.’

He had taken her down to the coast, and with her directions had found the sheltered, almost secret little beach she often went to with her mother. She had been wearing her swimsuit under her jeans but had felt shiveringly self-conscious about taking them off, sitting tense and curiously breathless as he removed his shirt and his own jeans. Her lack of father or brothers had not left her with any particular curiosity about the male form. There had been all the usual girlish giggled confidences at school, and her mother had matter-of-factly outlined the intimacies shared by male and female when she was old enough to understand them. There had never been any undue embarrassment between mother and daughter, and Georgina had been frank and explicit with her in their discussions about sex. Even so there was something vastly different about knowing what went to make up the male anatomy and then seeing the reality of it, barely concealed by brief black swimming shorts. Simon’s soft laugh when he realised she was looking at him had reduced her to a mass of guilty blushes, quickly turning her head aside, but not quickly enough apparently. He had turned it back, holding her face between his hands, his palms hard and warm against her skin.

‘There’s nothing wrong in wanting to look at me, Christy,’ he told her then. ‘I enjoy looking at you you know … I do it all the time … in fact, I want to do more than look at you. Much more,’ Christy had thought she heard him mutter thickly under his breath as his head descended, blotting out the sun, his mouth moving slowly over hers until her lips lost their stiffness and clung softly to his with shy eagerness.

He had groaned slightly as he ended the kiss, still holding her face as he asked in a rasping voice, ‘I suppose you’re still a virgin?’

Christy had nodded her head, worried because her confirmation did not seem to please him. Surely all men wanted the girl they fell in love with to be virginal … untouched … and Simon must love her, even though he hadn’t said so … otherwise why would he have kissed her? Made suddenly brave by the heady pleasure of knowing he cared about her, she had reached out and traced the line of his mouth with her fingers, and had said softly, ‘Don’t let it worry you … it isn’t important.’

What she had meant was that it wasn’t important to her … She didn’t mind being virginal; in fact there was no one she would rather have to initiate her into the mysteries of love than Simon. Strange, how she had known the moment he kissed her that she loved him and that he returned her love; and how knowing that had made everything else drop into place … Now she could understand why her pulses thudded every time she saw him; why her stomach tensed and her skin coloured hotly.

She hadn’t said anything else, simply smiling shyly at Simon, but his topaz eyes had glittered over her face and then her body and she had felt the tension in his fingers, threatening to crush the fragile bones of her face before he released her to say huskily, ‘Come on, race you into the water.’

Christy was a strong swimmer. It was her favourite sport and she had learned to dive very young. During her final two years at school she had taken advantage of living near the coast to join a sea-diving school, quickly learning to love exploring the underwater environment.

Simon, too, was a strong swimmer, and when she realised that she was not going to be able to beat him she dived quickly, swimming underwater, holding her breath. She was almost at the limit of her lung power when Simon dived down alongside her, grasping her roughly and hauling her to the surface. They broke the water together, mischief darkening her eyes, fury darkening his, as he grasped her, treading water as he shook her roughly.

‘Just what the hell were you playing at?’ he demanded thickly, ‘when I looked round and couldn’t see you …’ One hand was curled through her wet hair, imprisoning her, the other round her waist and she could feel the hectic thud of his heart. He was angry because he loved her, she marvelled, almost giddy with the sudden sensation of joy. It made her brave—and foolish. Pressing herself against him, she kissed his wet throat. ‘I’m sorry …’

His skin pulsed beneath her mouth, a fierce tension emanating from him, his voice unexpectedly rough as he said thickly, ‘So you damned well ought to be. I’m not a man who likes to be teased, Christy,’ he warned her, disengaging himself from her. Tawny lights flickered in his eyes, inciting a fierce heat in her veins, as she sensed that he wasn’t simply talking about her dive.

‘You’re the one who teases me.’ She made a small mou, touching her tongue to her salt-encrusted lips. ‘I wouldn’t know how to tease you even if I wanted to.’

She knew that she was lying, and the delicious, heady feeling of power racing through her body ensured that she didn’t care.

‘You’re a woman, aren’t you?’ Simon’s voice was still thick, but now it was underlined with a vague derision that chilled her. As they swam back to shore she pushed it aside. Simon loved her; she knew that … It could only be a matter of time before he asked her to marry him. As she walked across the hot sand she remembered that she had heard him say on more than one occasion that he had no intention of tying himself down, but that was before he had fallen in love with her, she had assured herself comfortably. Of course he would want to marry her. They could find somewhere to live locally; Simon would write, and she would be his devoted wife. She preened herself mentally, seeing herself in three or four years to come … a baby … perhaps even two … Simon … and a placid, happy existence …

Dear God, Christy thought, groaning to herself as the music stopped. What a naïve idiot she had been. Anyone less cut out for domestic bliss than Simon would have been impossible to find. But all the guilt wasn’t hers. Yes, she had been foolish to delude herself into believing that Simon wanted to marry her, but he had had the experience, even then, to know what was happening to her. He could surely have gently but firmly nipped her feelings in the bud then, instead of letting them flower … instead of encouraging them to flower, and then savagely destroying her? She saw with hindsight that it was almost as though he had hated her, and yet why? All she had been guilty of was falling in love with him. She had not chased him; she hadn’t had the experience for that, and if he had not kissed her … touched her … she would surely never have realised how she felt about him. But he had kissed her … and touched her …

After their swim they had sunbathed. Christy, already healthily tanned, had not bothered to cover herself with any cream. She didn’t need it, but Simon had insisted that he did—a ploy which she should have recognised immediately for what it was.

Willingly she had taken the plastic bottle he gave her, pouring a little of the oil into her palm while he lay on his stomach his head lying on his forearms. She had kneeled beside him, spreading the oil carefully across his shoulders, stroking it in with fingertips that soon became blissfully addicted to the sensation of warm male skin beneath them. Her whole body seemed to tingle as she worked her way over his back, and then at his insistence, his legs. The sensation of the fine dark hairs beneath her fingers was an unfamiliar one, and yet strangely exciting, her pulses reacting as violently as a fairground dipper ride. The pressure of Simon’s hand on her thigh as he raised himself up on his side made her insides melt in a curious surge of heat.

‘Now my chest,’ he commanded softly, and although she had begun to tell him that it was pointless oiling his chest since she had just done his back, the words died unspoken, as he cupped her hands together, and poured the oil into them, guiding her palms against his skin.

The boys she had seen on the beach did not have bodies like Simon’s. It was hard and entirely masculine shadowed by dark body hair which she had always mentally thought distasteful when seen on men on television or films, but which now when touched unleashed a deep-seated excitement that made her insides churn. She had reached his waist before Simon stopped her, pulling her down into his arms, covering her mouth with his own, while it was still parted in a rounded ‘oh’ of surprise.

‘No, don’t close it,’ he muttered to her, stroking her lips with his tongue, and biting gently at her lower one until her senses were inflamed completely beyond her ability to control.

Her mind registered the husky timbre of his voice when he said softly, ‘I don’t think you need this do you?’ his hands sliding down the straps of her swimsuit, but until she felt the harsh rasp of his body hair against her breasts she wasn’t aware of their import, and by then it was too late to protest—she no longer wanted to do so. Her breasts, so full and firm; and always secretly slightly resented in her own heart of hearts, because they were so blatantly curvaceous, seemed to have been designed especially to fill Simon’s hands. Under his skilled caress she felt them swell slightly, her nipples so tight and hard that they almost hurt. It was a totally unexpected sensation, something she had read about but never realised could be completely devastating. She made a small sound at the back of her throat, and as though he understood what she was feeling, Simon had gentled her with soft murmurs, stretching his body so that she was pressed along the length of it. ‘I know … I know …’ he whispered huskily, ‘Feel what you’re doing to me, too.’

The fiercely aroused throb of his body against hers was exciting and yet frightening too. Wild emotions clutched at the pit of her stomach making her ache to move closer to him, to explore the pleasures she had read about and not as yet experienced for herself.

But when Simon made a harsh sound in his throat and bent his head to tug fiercely on her nipple with a mouth that seemed to burn into her skin, fear overcame desire and Christy flinched back from him, unable to cope with the emotions threatening to overwhelm her. She wanted him to make love to her, but the suppressed violence she sensed in him frightened her. When she visualised him making love to her, it was in some romantic setting … on their honeymoon, when he would be a tender, considerate lover … not this driven, almost angry man, who was pushing her swimsuit straps back, and glowering at her darkly, his eyes burning as fierce a gold as the dying sun. She reached out to touch him and he jerked away saying harshly, ‘For God’s sake don’t make it worse than it is … Let’s get back before I really do something I’ll regret.’

His words had made her unhappy, but only for a little while. It was natural that he should be angry, she reasoned with herself. Obviously he regretted his lack of self-control. Loving her, he must respect her … and of course, he wouldn’t want to make love to her until they were married.

Opening her eyes, Christy groaned. How naive and smug she had been. In reality Simon had been very far from loving her and had in fact, merely desired her. His anger had sprung from nothing more than simple frustration but she had not had the wit to see it, and so she had gone on building her ridiculous fairy castles in the air, sublimely unaware of the fragility of their foundations.

If her mother had not been so busy she might have realised sooner what was happening, but even if she had, Christy doubted that she would have realised her daughter’s foolish dreams. Christy had never been encouraged by her own mother to believe that marriage, a family and home should automatically be a woman’s goal in life; no, it was her own unrealistically romantic nature that had led her down that particular garden path. For all that she had known of the physical aspects of sex, she had known nothing of its sheer power … of its intensity, or that a man and woman could simply be drawn together by it in a relationship which had nothing to do with love.

Simon had made some attempt to warn her, she supposed, looking at it from his point of view. Before they left the beach he had turned to her and demanded sombrely, ‘You do know what it is that I want from you don’t you, Christy?’

And she, believing he meant that he wanted her love, replied dreamily, ‘Yes, and I want it too …’ Not realising that in his eyes she had committed herself to a sexual relationship with him that he had no intention of making anything more than extremely fleeting. All the evidence had been there; she had simply blinded herself to it, seeing only what she wanted to see, deceiving herself until it was impossible to deceive herself any longer; until Simon had simply been forced to tell her the truth; that he did not love her; never had loved her and had not the slightest intention of marrying her. Far from it!

Sighing, she roused herself and switched off the record player, making her way to bed.

It was ironic to think that sexually she was very little more experienced now than she had been then, although of course now she was much more aware of her body’s reactions and capabilities. There had been times when she had almost wished she could meet a man she simply desired physically. Someone who could release her body from its virginal bondage but thus far that had not happened, and as the years slipped by her virginity itself became something of a problem. She felt it was slightly ridiculous to be sexually unawakened at twenty-four, and often wondered wryly why nature had been unkind enough to burden the female race with a barrier that proclaimed its own truths and untruths. As she went up to bed she reassured herself that she had made the right decision in refusing to work for Simon. She wasn’t eighteen any more, ready to drop everything to run at his bidding. Let him look elsewhere for his assistance; if the gossip columns she read were only half right, it shouldn’t prove too strenuous a task.

She woke up early, watching the sun stretch lazy golden fingers through her window and knew it was going to be another fine day. She lay in bed, closing her eyes, basking in the heat coming through the glass—a deceptive heat; as deceptive as Simon’s feelings for her.

She could recognise now with maturity that the tense moods that had gripped him during that long ago summer had sprung from sexual frustration. Then she had been alternatively frightened and thrilled by them, skittish as a young foal, shying away from his touch while she entreated it. Images of Simon as he had been then danced behind her closed eyelids; Simon in tennis shorts and T-shirt, his skin bronzed and male; Simon in jeans, powerful and lithe as he worked in the garden and then most potent of all, Simon the night after they had had their quarrel.

She couldn’t remember how it had started; it had sprung up quickly like a summer thunder storm. Her mother had gone away to see a friend who had suddenly been taken into hospital and Jeremy had gone with her. She and Simon were alone in the house. His moods had grown worse and uncertain of him, wanting confirmation that he still loved her, she had used her mother’s absence to confront him that evening, going up to him and twining her arms round his neck, silently begging for his kiss. He had jerked away from her she remembered and had then come back to her, kissing her with an angry hunger that half-shocked her, releasing her to demand thickly, ‘What is it you want from me, Christy? This?’ He had kissed her again, forcing her mouth to part, infusing her with an intense heat as his hands moved seductively over her body. She was trembling when he released her she remembered. ‘Or is there a price attached to your love? Is it me you want … really me …’

‘You know I love you,’ she had cried out. She had seen the change in his expression when she mentioned the word ‘love’ but had not understood it—then!

‘Then come to bed with me now,’ he had responded thickly. ‘Come and show me how much you love me.’

She had hesitated, tense and unsure of him all of a sudden. ‘What’s the matter?’ he had demanded harshly, his eyes derisive. ‘Are you sure it’s me you’re in love with or simply the idea of being in love …? Is it me you want, Christy, or simply marriage, because I’m telling you now that marriage simply does not figure in my plans. I’ve got far too much living to do to tie myself down to one woman,’ he had told her brutally. ‘If you want to be part of that living then fine, but I can’t offer you permanency …’

She hadn’t been able to believe her ears. ‘You don’t want me,’ she had cried out childishly in pain.

‘Oh I want you all right.’ Simon’s voice had been curt, hard; his topaz eyes glittering hotly over her skin.

‘But I love you.’

He had laughed then, a harsh bitter sound. ‘What you feel isn’t love,’ he had told her with cruel astringency. ‘It’s physical desire, pure and simple. You haven’t the experience to love anyone, you’re still little more than a baby. Too frightened to live life alone … wanting marriage as a security blanket.’

She had cried out in anguish, hating him for what he was saying to her; for what he was doing to her fragile daydreams. She hadn’t been aware of him walking away, only of her pain.

The next day she had gone out of her way to avoid him, but that night, driven by the tension inside herself, she had gone to his room after he had gone to bed. He had been lying on his side, his skin exposed where he had kicked the bedclothes aside. She had caught her breath at the sight of him, tears stinging her eyes. She did love him … she did. She had crept nearer to the bed, stiffening when his eyes opened. For a moment they had simply looked at one another and then he had sat up, careless of the fact that he was naked. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he had demanded softly.

‘I want you to make love to me.’ She had said it as calmly as she could, her eyes defying him to reject her. If that was the sacrifice demanded of her to prove her love then she was prepared to make it. No doubt she had looked the complete tragic heroine, Christy reflected sardonically now, and that was doubtless the reason for the alien twist of emotion she had seen blaze momentarily in his eyes.

‘Do you now.’ He had pulled her down on to the bed alongside him, his hard, experienced hands dealing efficiently with her nightclothes, his eyes hooded and mysterious as he studied her trembling, naked body in the light through the open windows.

‘Be still my little sacrificial lamb,’ he had murmured to her as he bent towards her. ‘You wanted this—remember?’

His mouth was hot and forceful on her own, his touch drugging her senses, everything else forgotten as he brought her body burningly alive. A wild elation sang in her veins; an overwhelming compulsion urging her forward.

‘I hope you’re remembering that this is only lust,’ he had muttered the words against her mouth and instantly her blood had chilled, her eyes enormous, frozen pools of pain in her pale face.

‘You really don’t love me?’ She had stammered the words, colour stinging her skin as he mocked.

‘No, I really don’t. If I take you now it will be because my body craves yours, that’s all, Christy, and if you’re honest, you’ll admit that it’s the same for you …’

‘No!’ The denial had burst past her lips as she sprang off the bed, all her desire suddenly gone, and a deep sense of humiliation taking its place. She couldn’t remember finding her nightclothes or going back to her own room, but she must have done so. She had cried long into the night, muffling the sound against her pillow, not sure whom she hated the most Simon, or herself. He didn’t love her at all … he had never love her …

It was only pride that enabled her to face him the following morning. She refused his invitation to play tennis, marvelling at his ability to put aside what had happened, ignoring it almost. She could not do so. For the remainder of the duration of his stay she had treated him with a frozen politeness, breaking down only when he had gone, pouring out her pain to her mother.

Georgina had sighed and berated herself for not realising what was happening. ‘Simon is a loner, darling,’ she had told her. ‘He’s also, unfortunately for you, an extremely sexy man. You’ll get over it,’ she had promised, but Christy hadn’t believed her. Not then.

She had of course, but the pain of her humiliation at his hands had left a legacy that still stung. He could have let her down more easily. Realising that she was not going to go back to sleep she got up and showered.

Downstairs the house drowsed in the early morning sun. She went into the kitchen and started to prepare her mother’s breakfast tray. Georgina was normally a late night person, and preferred to have breakfast in bed.

Christy was just pouring water on to the tea when she heard the squeak of the back door. Harry didn’t come on a Thursday and it wasn’t Mrs Carver’s day either. She turned round slowly, her nerve endings prickling warningly as her eyes met those of the man leaning against the kitchen door.

Six years had barely changed him. He was a little thinner perhaps, but his hair was still just as dark, his skin just as tanned, his eyes impossibly golden.

‘Hello, Simon.’

She was pleased that her voice was so even.

‘Still the devoted handmaiden I see.’

‘My mother likes to have breakfast in bed, I like to get up early.’ She kept her voice deliberately neutral. ‘Have you come to see her?’

‘No, I’ve come to see you, as you damn well know. Why won’t you come and work for me?’

‘Why should I?’ She shrugged slim shoulders.

‘Still not forgiven me?’ His mouth twisted derisively, and anger quickened inside her. Her eyebrows arched, her eyes coolly meeting his.

‘What for? Inviting me to share your bed? My dear Simon, I’m old enough now to realise what an accolade that was, especially in view of my own pathetic lack of experience.’

‘Are you?’ His voice was infused with mild irony. ‘What are you trying to tell me, Christy? That given the choice now, you’d choose differently—lust in preference to virtue?’

‘I wasn’t aware that I did make the choice,’ she replied evenly, but he confounded her by saying.

‘You were scared to death of me making love to you, you simply thought that if I did I’d have no option but to marry you.’

‘That’s not true.’ The denial was a cry of pain, her face white under her tan.

‘What does it matter? It’s all water under the bridge now anyway. Why won’t you come to the Caribbean with me? What are you so afraid of? That I’ll try to make love to you?’

‘Hardly.’ Her voice was extremely dry. ‘In point of fact, I’m not afraid at all, Simon, simply uninterested.’

He came towards her, taking her chin between his fingers, before she could avoid him, his expression mocking as he drawled, ‘Well, well, you have grown up, haven’t you? And what have you been doing with yourself for the last six years?’

His voice suggested that whatever it was it couldn’t have been anything of any merit and where once his cynicism would have unnerved her now it simply made her angry.

‘Living well,’ she told him sweetly, shaking herself free. ‘Didn’t you know—it is the best revenge.’

His mouth twisted. ‘All grown up with a vengeance, aren’t we? I wonder how far that sophisticated veneer goes? It might be interesting to find out.’

‘Far enough to deal with men like you, Simon,’ she told him coolly. ‘Please stop baiting me and go and find someone else to work for you?’

‘Sure you’re indifferent to me?’ he mocked, grasping her wrist, his thumb on her racing pulse. ‘If so, prove it and come and work for me.’

‘I don’t have to prove it.’ She gave him a tight smile.

‘Come with me, and I promise I won’t put your indifference to the test.’

His arrogance infuriated her. It flashed darkly in her eyes, her mouth tightening with temper. ‘Why me?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘God, you could have your pick.’

His mouth twisted. ‘Very flattering, but I’m not prepared to pay the price. You, on the other hand, I know I’m safe with.’

‘Get a male assistant if you’re that scared.’

‘A man probably wouldn’t be prepared to cook and clean,’ he told her arrogantly. ‘I want to keep what I’m doing as secret as possible. I can manage the boat we’ll be using single-handed, and I want as few people as possible involved. You fit the bill on every count.’

‘Right down to not wanting to share your bed,’ Christy seethed.

‘Oh, it’s not sharing my bed that worries me, it’s the price I might be expected to pay for the privilege of enjoying my female companion’s favours,’ he returned cynically.

‘Still the same old Simon.’

‘But of course. Now will you come with me?’

‘If I refuse?’

‘Then perhaps I’ll just stay around and see just how deep your indifference goes, gipsy.’ He laughed at her expression. ‘Come with me, you know in your heart-of-hearts you want to. How can staying here compare with a summer spent in the Caribbean?’

‘Extremely favourably,’ Christy flung at him tartly, ‘especially when the Caribbean includes you.’

‘But you’ll come?’

His thumb was caressing her wrist and it was taking all her willpower not to respond to his insidious caress. She didn’t love him; she didn’t even like him very much, but her body was aware of him. He had been right, she realised with a certain wry amusement. Lust was all it had ever been. Why shouldn’t she go? It would be good to show him just how much she had changed.

She shrugged carelessly, ‘Why not…? On the strict understanding, of course, that I am simply your assistant.’

It was his turn to shrug. ‘If that’s the way you want it. Was that all you were to Miles? Simply an assistant?’

His question caught her off-guard. On the point of replying truthfully she checked, and then said smoothly. ‘Really Simon, I don’t think my relationship with Miles is any concern of yours.’

‘Not in the ordinary sense,’ he agreed calmly, ‘but he’s in the Bahamas at the moment and it’s quite conceivable that we might run into him. I ought to warn you that at the moment he’s heavily involved with someone else.’

‘Petra Finnegan,’ Christy responded coolly. ‘Yes, I do read the papers, Simon.’

‘Umm. You’re obviously not jealous.’ His eyes searched hers with cool intent, ‘but then I don’t suppose he was your first lover.’

His analytical regard angered her, her voice tense as she bit out. ‘What’s the matter, Simon, regretting that you weren’t?’

He laughed and released her. ‘Hell, no. Timid little virgins weren’t, and still aren’t, my style, Christy. You should know that.’

She almost recoiled from the cruelty of it, but then her sense of humour came to her rescue. ‘Oh I do,’ she agreed softly. ‘Luckily for me it’s not an aversion all men share.’

There was a tense little silence that made her stomach curl in instinctive and unexpected alarm, and then Simon drawled mockingly, ‘Okay, Christy, game, set and match. Now can we get down to business? I don’t have much time.’

‘In that case you took rather a chance, didn’t you?’ she responded coolly. ‘What if I had refused to come with you?’

‘I could have found someone else, it wouldn’t have been an impossibility, but you’re the assistant I want.’

‘And you always get what you want, is that it?’

‘I try to,’ he agreed suavely. ‘Now are you going to take that tray up to Georgina and break the glad tidings?’

Her mother was awake when Christy went up.

‘Simon’s here,’ she told her crisply as she walked in. ‘You did tell him I wouldn’t want the job, didn’t you?’

‘Of course I did, darling.’ Her mother looked away.

‘You told me that Jeremy had suggested me for the job,’ Christy pressed. ‘Simon on the other hand intimated that it was his idea.’

‘He must have already discussed it with Jeremy,’ Georgina suggested. ‘I promise you I told Jeremy you wouldn’t be keen. I couldn’t say too much though, darling, not without reminding him what happened six years ago, and I didn’t think you’d want that.’

No, her mother was right in that. Jeremy was something of a gossip and she didn’t want it put around that she was still suffering from a teenage crush on Simon.

‘Well I’ve agreed to go.’ Christy’s full mouth compressed when she saw her mother’s expression. ‘Let’s just say he made me an offer I couldn’t refuse,’ she said with grim humour in answer to her unspoken question. ‘A case of rather unsubtle bribery … besides I’ve nothing else on.’

Anxiety shadowed her mother’s blue eyes. ‘Darling are you sure? You aren’t doing this simply through bravado are you?’

‘Bravely concealing my broken heart you mean?’ Christy mocked. ‘No Mum, I got over Simon years ago. It’s just that my pride still smarts from time to time. As he told me himself at the time all I was really suffering from was infatuation plus lust … he was, as you aptly said, an extremely sexy man.’

‘And still is,’ her mother warned her shrewdly, ‘possibly more so.’

‘Forget it. I’m immune … innoculated for life. I’d better go down and find out if he intends to stay for lunch. From what he was saying it seems there’s some degree of urgency,’

‘Umm, he mentioned to Jeremy that his yacht is moored in St Lucia, I expect he’ll want to fly out there as soon as he can. Darling, before you go down,’ Georgina murmured suddenly, ‘can you see if you can find my notes. I suddenly got this idea last night…’

They had fallen off the bedside table and it took Christy five minutes to uncover them. Leaving her mother to mull over her new ‘idea’ she went back downstairs, wondering a little wryly just what she had committed herself to. There was no going back now. Simon had played cleverly on her emotions, she had to grant him that, but she wasn’t eighteen any longer. She shrugged mentally. All right, she was annoyed at the way he had manoeuvred her, but it had happened and now her best course was simply to treat him as she might Miles or her mother. He was simply another writer for whom she was going to work; someone who was giving her an opportunity to see a part of the world she had always longed to see. He no longer had the power to hurt or humiliate her. That was over and done with.




CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_62fb3c63-06ac-51b3-bd05-b710f5c364a3)


THEY flew out to St Lucia three days later. His ketch, Stormsurf was moored there in Castries harbour, Simon informed Christy laconically and they would sail from there to the tiny island of St Paul’s on which he was based.

Mentally blessing the fact that she had kept the clothes she had used for India the summer before, Christy spent a hectic morning going through them, packing those she thought might be useful.

‘Swimsuits, shorts, jeans, that sort of thing,’ Simon had told her in reply to her query as to what she would need. ‘Don’t bother about any diving gear, we’ll get you fixed up with that there—saves air-freighting it out and waiting for it.’

Now they were West Indies bound, Simon immersed in some papers he had brought on board with him, and she still did not have a much clearer idea of exactly what they were going to be doing. He wanted to find a sunken wreck he had told her, giving her some brief background details about the man he intended to make the main character of his new book. There hadn’t been time for her to do any reading up herself, and wishing she had had the forethought to buy some magazines at the airport, she lay back in her seat and tried to relax. Flying had never been something she enjoyed, although it was the take-offs and landings she really loathed.

‘Sorry about this …’ Simon raised his head from the papers he was studying to smile at her. Christy had already noticed the covert glances their stewardess had given him; hardly surprising really. He must easily be the most attractive man on board. The tawny eyes narrowed suddenly, and Christy wondered if he had picked up on her thoughts. Hardly, she derided herself, he was a man, not a mind-reader. The trouble was, although she was loathe to admit it, she hadn’t shaken off entirely the old teenage worshipful awe of him. Oh, consciously she had, of course she had, but her old emotions occasionally sneaked up on her, surprising her, shaking the foundations of self-confidence she had built up so painstakingly. All the more reason to be on her guard, she told herself, acknowledging his apology with a cool smile.

‘Jeremy dumped these on me at the last minute.’ He picked up the folder and grimaced faintly. ‘Tour details from Dee Harland … Jeremy knows I prefer to go through them myself. Oh, Dee is the publicity agent Jeremy uses in the States …’ he added by way of explanation.

His laconic assumption of her ignorance infuriated Christy. ‘You don’t need to explain who Dee is to me, Simon,’ she told him sweetly. ‘Actually Dee and I have met.’

She watched the faint narrowing of his eyes, and thought sardonically that she doubted that the relationship he had had with the glamorous American P.R. woman, had been anything like as cool as hers. ‘I haven’t spent the last six years pining away in the country, Simon,’ she added. ‘Dee and I met the last time my mother was in the States. I went with her.’

It had been one of his more cruel taunts that she was nothing but a child who had seen and done nothing, and she felt a brief stab of satisfaction in underlining the fact that she was no longer that child. In point of fact although she had enjoyed the experience of her mother’s American publicity tour, she did prefer the calm of the English countryside, but there were other ways of broadening one’s mind apart from travel. Reading for instance … All second-hand knowledge, she taunted herself. What had she really discovered or learned by her own experience?

What she had learned from Simon had been enough, she defended herself mentally. Was it really a crime to be without any ambition other than to live peaceably and content? Hers was a spirit that desired quietude; she found no pleasure in adrenalin-pumping excitement, in confrontation or competition; she never had. Perhaps it was arrogant to feel satisfied with the standards and goals she set for herself, instead of being concerned with meeting those set by others … perhaps after her experience with Simon she had deliberately opted out.

‘What deep thoughts are you thinking, I wonder?’ Simon’s voice checked her.

‘I was just wondering what we’d get for lunch,’ she returned blandly, meeting his eyes.

‘Never.’ She could see a hint of laughter in them, and something else; a sharp alertness that warned her that he suspected her of deception and would enjoy accusing her of it, simply for the challenge. ‘Your eyes never glow such a deep amethyst for anything as mundane as food.’

He was too astute; saw and knew too much. She must not forget that he was a writer, his mind attuned to the emotional nuances of others.

‘Perhaps not at eighteen,’ she agreed lightly.

‘You’re very anxious to persuade me how much you’ve changed.’

Christy held her breath for a few seconds. This was getting dangerous. ‘Am I?’ She made a pretence of studying his jibe and then said judiciously, ‘I don’t think so. You’re the one who keeps making comparisons.’

He said nothing but his smile made prickles of alarm race across her skin, and she was glad when he changed the subject, talking about India and asking her for her impressions of it.

For the next hour they talked amicably. Simon was a skilled conversationalist, neither hogging the conversation nor letting it drag. Christy had absorbed a good deal during her weeks in India. Working alongside Miles and helping with his research had been something of a challenge initially, but she had loved every minute of it. History had always been one of her favourite subjects, and at one time she had considered taking her degree in it, but the fields open to students with history degrees were very limited and she had concentrated instead on her art.

Listening to him she had to suppress the temptation to sketch Simon. His features were so strong; his bone structure so positive that drawing him was always a visual pleasure. She had sketched him in the past, of course—but all those sketches, drawn with adoration and love, had been destroyed after he had left her. Now her trained eye detected the small differences in him she had noticed on their first meeting, and she studied him covertly.

He seemed to have lost a little of the restlessness which had once been such an integral part of him. She remembered that that summer there had not been a day when he had not taken her somewhere; wanted to do something. He had rarely been content to simply sit and watch. Unlike her he had always been a keen participator in life, never an onlooker. His face had hardened slightly, too; the cynicism in his eyes more noticeable. He was a man it would always be easy for her sex to love, Christy thought perceptively, and yet very hard to know. She knew very little about his background. Six years ago she had been content simply to adore … she asked for nothing … questioned nothing.




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