“I am not going to be your mistress.” About the Author Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN Copyright

“I am not going to be your mistress.”

“Why not?” he asked in a low, furious tone. “What do you want? Marriage?” And when she didn’t answer, he carried on relentlessly. “Marriage is not for me.”

“And children?” Lisa flung at him.

“...are for other people, and good luck to them. I am offering you as much commitment as I’ve ever offered any woman. Take it!”

She could feel his eyes burning into her, but she refused to meet them. Did he expect her to abandon everything so she could spend an indefinite length of time living on a knife’s edge...?

FROM HERE TO PATERNITY—romances that feature fantastic men who eventually make fabulous fathers. Some seek paternity, some have it thrust upon them, all will make it—whether they like it or not!

CATHY WILLIAMS

is Trinidadian and was brought up on the twin islands of Trinidad and Tobago. She was awarded a scholarship to study in Britain, and went to Exeter University in 1975 to continue her studies into the great loves of her life: languages and literature. It was there that Cathy met her husband, Richard. Since they married, Cathy has lived in England, originally in the Thames Valley but now in the Midlands. Cathy and Richard have three small daughters.

Accidental Mistress

Cathy Williams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

IT WAS raining very hard. Lisa Freeman pulled her coat tightly around her, wishing that she had had the sense to wear something waterproof instead of her thick navy blue coat which now seemed to be soaking up every wretched drop of water and growing heavier by the minute.

She also wished that she had had the sense to take a taxi to the airport instead of foolishly counting her pennies and deciding in favour of the bus, because the bus had been running late, so that she had spent the entire journey agonisingly looking at her watch every five minutes to make sure that she wouldn’t miss the plane. It had also deposited her further away from the terminal than she had expected, which had meant braving the rain with no hat, no raincoat, one suitcase and her hand luggage.

She dumped the suitcase on the pavement so that she could consult her watch for the millionth time and also give her arm a rest, and comforted herself with the thought that soon she would be flying away from all this appalling weather. Flying to sunny climes—or at least it would be sunny if the newspaper weather listings were anything to go by. Spain, she had read the day before, was warm. Not hot, because it was, after all, January, but warmer than wretched England with its never-ending clouds and wind and sleet and rain and depressing promises of more to come.

Through the driving rain, the airport terminal loomed in front of her, and she began to feel a little panicky. It was the first time she had ever been overseas. It was difficult to try and think back to exactly when she had started contemplating a holiday abroad. Certainly, as a child, she never had. Her time had been spent on the road, traipsing behind her parents as her father went from one job to another, settling down in cheap rented accommodation, only to be uprooted just when their lives appeared to be taking shape.

It wasn’t something that she had resented—at least not until she was old enough to realise that friends would never be a permanent fixture and that the only company she could rely on was her own.

Both her parents were now dead, but the legacy of the nomadic childhood they had subjected her to must have been more tenacious than she would ever have believed possible, because only within the last three years had that ferocious desire to be in one place, to be safe and secure, eased up sufficiently to allow daydreams of other countries to enter her head.

And until now, at the ripe old age of twenty-four, and in an era of cheap foreign travel, she had still never managed to get around to going anywhere out of the country because there had always seemed to be something better to spend her hard-earned money on.

Every year, for the past three years, she’d told herself that she would treat herself, every year she’d religiously collected a mouth-watering pile of brochures on places ranging from the Mediterranean to the Seychelles, every year she’d given herself a long, persuasive lecture on how much she would dearly love a break abroad, and every year she’d worked out the costs.

It had never been feasible. Anywhere like the Seychelles was out of the question. She’d only got the brochures because the pictures were so alluring. And the Mediterranean, while within the scope of her finances—just—had always been so carefully considered, each pro and con meticulously worked out, that in the end she’d always abandoned the idea. The spot of decorating in the living room surely needed doing before a two-week fling on the Costa del Sol. Then there was her car.

Her car, for the past three years, had always seemed to need some expensive repair work just when her savings had reached their optimum in the building society. She had begun to suspect that the heap of slowly disintegrating machinery had a mind of its own and the mind was telling it to make sure that its driver did not vacation abroad and leave it unused for two weeks.

But this time things had worked out for her.

She heaved the suitcase off the pavement, realising that it felt even heavier now that she had rested her arm for a few minutes, and thought about that envelope that had slipped into her letterbox three months before.

Never having won anything in her life before, and then suddenly winning a trip abroad had made it doubly exciting.

She smiled at the memory of it, stepped off the pavement with her eyes firmly focused on the terminal building ahead of her, which, through the driving rain, was only a blurred outline, and then what happened next became a somewhat confused sequence of events.

Had she slipped on the wet road? Had she stupidly not looked where she was going? Or had the driver of the car been as blinded by the rain as she had?

She just knew that she saw the car bearing down on her, moving quite slowly, although from where she was standing it seemed like a hundred miles an hour, at precisely the same time as the driver saw her step in front of it. There was a horrendous squeal of brakes and she felt a sharp burst of pain as the car swerved, but not enough to stop it from glancing against her leg.

She lay on the ground, unable to move, and all she could think was that she was going to miss her holiday. She had spent every waking hour looking forward to it and now she was going to miss it. She didn’t even stop to think that she was lucky—that things could have been worse.

Her leg was hurting badly, with a red-hot pain that made her grit her teeth, and in between the pain she had images of the plane taking off and merrily winging its way to sunny climes without her, and depositing all of its passengers onto the tarmac at the other end, less one, because here she was, lying on the ground, with what felt very much like a broken leg. Or at any rate a leg that wasn’t going to do much walking for a little while yet.

She moaned heavily, noticing that quite a crowd appeared to have gathered around her and also that her suitcase had thoughtfully split open and was revealing its cargo of sodden clothes to whoever cared to look.

‘I’ve called an ambulance from my car phone,’ a voice said from next to her and she turned her head slowly towards it. ‘It will be here any minute.’

The onlookers were crowding in to hear what was said, and the man, whoever he was, made a swift, authoritative movement with his hand. They shuffled back and within a few minutes most of them had dispersed.

Lisa looked at him. He had black hair, plastered against his face because of the rain, although that didn’t appear to bother him unduly, and the lines of his face were harsh and aggressive. Aggressive enough to have sent the circle of bystanders skittering away.

He looked down at her and the fuzzy, fleeting impression of someone quite good-looking crystallised into the most amazingly masculine face she had ever seen in her life. His features were hard, his eyes startingly blue, the face of a man born to give orders.

‘Are you an airport official?’ she asked faintly, and a glimmer of a smile curved his mouth.

‘Do I resemble an airport official?’ he asked. He had a nice voice, she thought, deep, lazy, with an undertone of amusement running through it that lent it a certain indefinable charm.

She heard the wail of the ambulance pelting towards them.

‘I hope it stops in time,’ she said with weak humour, no longer thinking of the missed holiday, simply relieved that she would soon be able to have some wonderful, numbing injection to take the pain away, ‘or else there will be a few more broken bodies lying around than they’d bargained for.’

The man, who was still bending over her and was not an airport official—stupid question really since she could see his expensive grey suit underneath the flaps of his overcoat and since when did airport officials wear expensive grey suits?—laughed. He had, she thought, closing her eyes and feeling rather light-headed and faint, a rather nice laugh as well. Warm and rich and vaguely unsettling. Or maybe the pain was just making her hallucinate slightly.

Then, through the swimming haze, she heard voices and the sounds of things happening and she felt someone carefully examining her, feeling her leg—but so skilfully that it didn’t hurt—and then everything moved quickly. Painkillers were administered, she was carried by stretcher into the back of the ambulance, still with her eyes closed, and that was all she remembered.

The next time she opened her eyes she was on a small bed, in a small room, with a doctor bending over her and a thermometer sticking sideways out of her mouth.

‘I’m Dr Sullivan,’ the man said, smiling, while the nurse who was standing next to the bed whipped the thermometer out of her mouth, looked at it, and then shook it so vigorously that Lisa, staring, felt quite faint. ‘Do you remember how you got here?’

She dragged her attention away from the nurse, now writing up some notes. ‘Hit by a car,’ she said with a faint smile. While clutching my battered suitcase, she could have added, and feeling terribly thrilled at the prospect of a holiday abroad.

‘You’ve suffered a fracture to your leg,’ the doctor said, ‘and quite a few bruises which will look far worse than they feel. I need not tell you that you were very lucky indeed.’

‘I would feel luckier if it hadn’t happened in the first place,’ Lisa said seriously, and the young doctor threw her a bemused look before smiling politely.

‘Of course you would, my dear,’ he said kindly, straightening up and consulting his watch. ‘But unfortunately these things happen. It does mean, however, that you’ll be with us for a couple of weeks, while everything knits back together. Nurse will show you where everything is, and I shall be back to have a look at you later on today.’

Nurse was smiling efficiently and as soon as the doctor had left she fussed around the bed, pointing out where the alarm call was, the light switch, the television switch, and then she said, as she was leaving, ‘You have a visitor, by the way.’

‘A visitor? What visitor?’

The nurse smiled coyly, which only served to deepen Lisa’s bewilderment.

‘I thought he was your young man, actually. He travelled behind the ambulance to the hospital and he’s been waiting here ever since.’

Lisa would have liked to ask a few more questions, including what had happened to her suitcase, last seen baring its contents to all and sundry, but the nurse was already leaving and in her place walked the man who had been bending over her on the road. Her visitor. The man with no name who had taken control of everything until the ambulance had arrived.

She looked at him as he shut the door quietly behind him and felt a quiver of pleasure surge through her. She also felt quite surprisingly shy and tongue-tied and she had to make a huge effort to tell herself that she was being silly.

She was a grown woman now. No longer the child trailing behind her parents, no longer the gauche adolescent with no experience of the opposite sex, no longer the young girl deprived of that network of giggling contemporaries who dropped her eyes and pulled away the minute a boy started taking an interest in her. Those years were behind her now. She told herself that quite firmly and felt better.

She furtively eyed her visitor as he pulled the one and only chair over to her bed, sat down, and proceeded to give her the full benefit of his attention.

‘I believe the last time we spoke no introductions were made,’ he said, and his voice was precisely as she remembered. Dark and somehow inviting you to give all your attention back to him. Willing it, in fact. ‘How are you feeling?’

He had dried out. His hair, she saw now, was thick and black, as were his eyelashes, and he had removed his coat and jacket and rolled the sleeves of his white shirt up to the elbows, so that she could see his forearms, with their sprinkling of fine dark hair.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘A bit restricted, but I suppose I’ll get used to that in due course.’

‘I’m Angus Hamilton, by the way,’ he said with a smile, stretching out his hand to her and then grasping hers so that she felt her skin tingle, and she hurriedly shoved it away under the starched sheet as soon as she could.

‘Lisa Freeman,’ she said, blushing slightly. ‘Nurse said that you came here after the accident. There was no need, really.’

‘Oh, but there was every need.’ He sat back in the chair, which seemed far too small to accommodate him. ‘You see, it was my driver who knocked you over. I’m afraid he didn’t see you soon enough. You stepped out in front of the car and he tried to brake in time. The rest is history.’ He was looking at her intently as he said all this, his blue eyes fixed on her face.

‘Oh.’ She paused. ‘I should have used the pedestrian crossing,’ she said frankly. ‘I was in a dreadful rush, though.’ She thought about the wonderful holiday and her frantic preparations and felt a lump of regret swell in her throat. ‘What happened to my suitcase?’

‘I collected the lot and gave it to the nurse. Were you on your way to catch a plane?’

‘Lanzarote.’ She was normally quite a self-contained person but right now she felt emotional, with tears brimming up behind her eyes.

‘I’m really very sorry,’ he said, and to her embarrassment he reached into his pocket and extracted a fresh white handkerchief which he handed to her. ‘I have no idea what happens in a situation like this, but I’m sure that some compensation can be reached. I’ve sorted out this room for you and naturally I shall make sure that whatever money has been lost on your holiday is forwarded to you.’

‘Y-you sorted out this room?’ Lisa repeated, stammering.

‘Your stay here will be private.’

‘There was no need.’ She looked at him, aghast. It had crossed her mind that being the sole occupant in a room in a very busy hospital was a bit peculiar, but it had never occurred to her that someone else might have paid for it.

‘It was the least I could do,’ he said, frowning.

‘Well, it’s enough.’ She looked at him firmly. ‘I can’t possibly ask you for any kind of financial compensation for an accident that was partly my fault and partly the fault of the heavens opening up.’ In fact, thinking about it, it was probably more her fault than the fault of the weather because she hadn’t been looking where she was going. She had stepped out from between two parked cars, intent on getting to that terminal before her arms gave out completely.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he told her, but sounded more perplexed and irritated than angry.

‘I’m not. I don’t want any money from you.’

‘And what about your holiday?’

Lisa shrugged and pictured herself lying by a pool somewhere with a tinge of regret. ‘It was too good to be true anyway,’ she said on a sigh. ‘I won it, you see. I entered a competition in a magazine and won it, so it’s not really as though I’ve lost any money or anything.’

‘You won it?’ He made it sound as though having to enter competitions to get holidays was something utterly unheard of and she said, defensively,

‘I can’t afford one otherwise!’

She looked at him properly, not at his physical appearance, but at his clothes, his shoes, his watch, and she realised that, although she had no idea what he did for a living, whatever it was paid well because he exuded that air of confidence and power that came to people who had a great deal of wealth. Not the sort of man that she would ever have met under normal circumstances, nor the sort that she would have wanted to meet. A man destined to lead women up garden paths. From the pinnacle of inexperience, she felt sure that she had summed him up correctly.

‘Which is all the more reason...’

‘On no condition will I accept money from you! I was in the wrong and I would have a guilty conscience if I felt that I had swindled you out of money.’

‘I can afford it, for heaven’s sake!’ He was beginning to look as though she had taken leave of her senses. ‘You’re not swindling me out of anything!’

‘No.’

‘Are you always so stubborn?’ he asked, with a faintly mystified look. ‘I must say it’s a new experience to want to give money away only to find it flung back in my face.’

He gave her a long, slow smile that was so full of unintentional charm that she felt her head begin to swim a little. Had she ever met a man as potent as this one was? she wondered. Was that why he was having this heady effect on her? Maybe the fact that she was stuffed full of painkillers had something to do with it. All that medication would have thrown her system out of focus, might be making her responses go awry. She blinked and looked at him and still felt as though something tight was gripping her chest.

‘Do you work?’ he asked at last, curiously. ‘Does it not pay enough for you to have a holiday now and again? When was the last time you had a holiday?’

‘I might be stubborn,’ Lisa said tartly, ‘but at least I’m not nosy.’

‘Everyone’s nosy,’ Angus said, looking at her with a mixture of curiosity and amusement.

‘Oh, are they? What a strange world you must live in, where everyone’s nosy and willing to accept money wherever it comes from and whatever the circumstances.’

He looked even more vastly amused by that and she felt the colour crawl up into her face, making her hot and addled. For a second she was the fourteen-year-old girl in her party frock again, anxiously waiting at the front door for her first date to arrive, hoping that he wouldn’t notice the packing cases, still only halfunpacked in the small living room, assured by her parents that she looked lovely, but knowing deep down that she just looked plain and unexciting. She was only ever exciting in her mind. In reality, she knew that she was shy and reserved and that any self-confidence she had acquired over the years was really only a thin veneer.

‘I hope you’re not laughing at me,’ she said now.

‘Laughing at you?’ His dark eyebrows shot up. ‘Someone with such admirable principles?’

He was laughing at her. He was thinking that she was gauche and ingenuous and naïve and heaven only knew what else besides.

‘Well,’ she said, trying to sound composed, ‘in answer to your questions, yes, I have got a job, yes, I suppose I could just afford to go abroad now and again—well, once a year, anyway—but something would suffer, and as a matter of fact I have never been on a holiday.’

‘You have never been on a holiday?’ He sounded incredulous and she glared at him defensively.

‘That’s right,’ she snapped. ‘Is it so unheard of?’

‘Largely speaking, yes,’ he answered bluntly. He was looking at her as though he had come across a strange species of creature, believed extinct, which, against her better judgement, made her stammer out an explanation of sorts.

’M-my parents travelled around the country a lot... My father didn’t...didn’t like to be in one place for too long... nor Mum... They—they liked the feeling of being on the move, you see...’

‘How thoughtful of them, considering they had a child. Are you an only child? Have you any sisters? Brothers?’

‘No. And my parents were wonderful!’ she said hotly. True enough, they had been thoughtless—a conclusion she had arrived at for herself a long time ago—but in a vague, generous way. Was it their fault that she had come along? Out of the blue when her parents were already in their early forties?

‘And now your one opportunity lands you up in hospital.’ He shook his head ruefully, swerving off the subject with such expertise that she was almost taken aback.

‘I think fate is trying to tell me something,’ she conceded with a little laugh.

Outside, night had fallen, black, cold, starless. The bright, fluorescent overhead bulb threw his face into startling contrast, accentuating his perfectly chiselled features. She wondered how she looked. The doctor had said that she had a few bruises, which probably meant that her face was every colour of the rainbow, and her hair, which had dried, would look straggly and unkempt.

For a moment she felt a burning sense of embarrassment. It was a bit like bouncing into your favourite film star on the one day of the year when you hadn’t put on any make-up and were suffering from a bad cold.

She couldn’t remember the last time she had been bothered by her looks—or rather her lack of them. She had stopped looking into mirrors and wistfully longing to see a tall, big-busted blonde looking back at her. She had come through that awkward, insecure adolescence and had emerged a sensible, down-to-earth woman who could handle most situations.

Now, though, lying here on the hospital bed, Lisa felt plain. Too pale, too fine-featured ever to be labelled earthy or voluptuous, hair too brown, without any interesting highlights, breasts too small.

‘Where exactly do you work?’ he asked.

‘Are you really interested? You mustn’t feel that you’ve got to be kind or that you’ve got to stay here with me for an appropriate length of time.’

‘Stubborn,’ he drawled, leaning back in the chair and folding his hands behind his head, ‘and argumentative.’

Argumentative? Her? When was the last time she had argued with anyone? Not for years. She had always been quite happy to leave the arguing to the rest of the world.

‘I am neither stubborn nor argumentative,’ she defended heatedly, then smiled a little sheepishly because her tone belied the statement. ‘I just wouldn’t like you to feel that you should stay here and chat to me simply because your driver knocked me over.’

‘I never do anything unless I want to,’ he said matter-of-factly. ‘I certainly do not profess interest in people unless I am genuinely interested in them.’

‘In that case, I work at a nursery.’

‘Lots of screaming children?’ He didn’t look as though the idea of that was in the slightest appealing and she wondered again about his lifestyle. She had never even thought to ask herself whether he was married or not. Somehow, he didn’t give the impression of being a married man. Too hard, perhaps, too single-minded. Certainly, if his expression was anything to go by, he didn’t have much to do with children and he liked it that way.

‘Not all children scream,’ Lisa pointed out reasonably. ‘And when they do there’s usually a cause. Anyway, I work at a garden centre—Arden Nurseries, if you must know.’

She would have to ring Paul and tell him what had happened. He would be as disappointed as she was. He had been thrilled when she had won the holiday. He was always telling her that she worked too hard, but in fact she enjoyed it. She loved plants and flowers. If she hadn’t left school at seventeen to enter the workforce, she would perhaps have stayed on and studied botany at university.

‘And where do you work?’ she asked.

‘An advertising firm,’ he said. ‘Hamilton Scott.’

‘How interesting.’ She smiled politely. ‘And what do you do there?’

‘Are you really interested?’ he asked, mimicking her. ‘You needn’t feel that you’ve got to ask.’ He laughed and then said, watching her for her reaction, ‘You look charming when you blush.’

His vivid blue eyes skimmed over her face and she didn’t quite know what to say in response to his observation. This type of lazy, sophisticated flirting—if that was what it was—was beyond her. But then he worked in advertising, the glamour industry, and she worked in a garden centre, spending half her time with her hands covered in soil and compost, wearing dungarees, and with her shoulder-length hair carelessly tied up.

‘I own the company,’ he said casually. ‘My father founded it, ran it down with a handful of spectacularly bad decisions, and since then I have rebuilt it.’ He was still smiling, and underneath the smile she could see the glint of ruthlessness, the mark of a man to be feared and respected and courted.

‘How nice,’ she said, for want of anything better to say, and he laughed aloud at that.

‘Isn’t it? It doesn’t impress you a great deal, though, does it?’

‘What doesn’t?’

‘Me.’

Lisa went bright red and then felt annoyed because there was something deliberately wicked about his teasing, as though she intrigued him, and not because she was sexy, or stimulating, but because she was novel, a type that perhaps he had never encountered before, or at least never to speak to. In short, in his world of twentieth-century glamour and sophistication, she was a dinosaur.

‘I am always impressed when people do well,’ she said coolly. ‘My boss, Paul, started the nursery with a loan from the bank and a desire to work hard, and he made a success of it, and that impresses me as well. But mostly I’m impressed with people for what they are and not what they achieve. A person might have a nice car and live in a grand house and travel in great style, but if he isn’t a good person, caring and thoughtful and honest, then what’s the point of all the rest?’ She meant it, too, although, hearing herself, she realised that she sounded, ever so slightly, as though she was preaching.

‘And money means nothing to you?’ He lifted his eyebrows fractionally and again she had the impression of being observed with curiosity and interest rather than the magnetic pull of attraction.

‘Only in so far as I have enough to get by.’

‘And you don’t yearn for more?’

‘No. I presume, though, that you do?’

‘Not more money, no,’ he said slowly, as though the question had never been put to him before. ‘I have more than enough of that. What I find stimulating is to scale the heights I have imposed on myself.’ He paused and then asked, changing the subject, which was a bit of a shame, because she had found herself hanging onto his every word, spellbound by his personality even if the feeling wasn’t mutual, ‘How long will you be in here?’

‘About two weeks,’ she answered. ‘With any luck, less. I would prefer to convalesce at home.’

‘And you have someone there to look after you? A boyfriend perhaps?’ The half-closed blue eyes watched her in a way that made her want to fidget.

‘Oh, no,’ she said airily, ‘not at the moment.’ Implying that she was sort of resting in between bouts of heavy romance, which was so far from the truth that it was almost laughable.

Robert, her last boyfriend, had worked in a car firm and had wanted marriage, a terraced house, two point four children and steak every Friday. She had been appalled at the prospect and had broken it off, but since stability was what he had been offering and stability was what she had always desperately wanted she had been puzzled at her immediate response when it had been offered. A break, she had thought then, will do me good. That had been two years ago and the break now seemed to be of a more permanent nature than she had originally intended.

‘My friend lives just around the corner, but I can manage on my own anyway.’

‘Can you?’

‘Of course I can,’ she said, surprised. ‘I always have.’

‘Yes.’ He looked at her thoughtfully. ‘I expect you have.’ He stood up and began rolling down his sleeves, before slipping on his jacket and thrusting his hands in the pockets. ‘I find that rather sad, though.’

‘Don’t feel sorry for me,’ Lisa said rather more acidly than she had intended. She shrugged. ‘It’s a fact of life. It’s important to know how to stand on your own two feet.’

‘Do you really believe that or is that the consolation prize for a life spent on the road?’

She flushed and looked away.

‘Not that that’s any of my business.’ His voice was gentler as he smiled and said, again, how sorry he was about what had happened. He handed her his card, plain white with his name printed on it, and the name of his company, and his fax number as well as three more work numbers, and an intricate abstract design at the bottom which she thought probably meant something, though what she couldn’t think.

‘Call me if you change your mind about the compensation I’m more than willing to give you,’ he said, and stopped her before she could open her mouth and inform him that she wasn’t about to change her mind. ‘Money might well mean nothing to you, but after this you could do with a good holiday somewhere and I would be happy to pay for it.’

‘All right,’ she said, propping the card against the glass of water on the table next to her.

‘But you have no intention of availing yourself of the offer...’

‘None whatsoever,’ Lisa agreed, and he shook his head wryly.

He walked over to the door and then paused.

‘I’m away for the next ten days,’ he said, ‘or else I would come and look in, and please don’t tell me that there’s no need or I’ll wring your neck.’

‘I don’t think I could cope with a sore neck and a fractured leg as well,’ she said, smiling. He had only been with her half an hour, if that, but seeing him standing there, with his hand on the doorknob, his body already half turned to leave, she felt a sudden, inexplicable pang which surprised and disoriented her.

She couldn’t possibly want him to stay, could she? she wondered. Wouldn’t that be altogether pathetic when he had come on what was, essentially, a courtesy visit? She should never have told him all that stuff about her parents. She seldom shared confidences, least of all with a stranger, and now she felt as though he was walking off with a little bit of her tucked away with him, and she didn’t like the feeling.

‘Goodbye, Lisa Freeman,’ he said. ‘You’re really rather a remarkable girl.’

‘Goodbye, Angus Hamilton,’ she replied, and when she tried to add a witty comment to that, as he had, nothing came out. She just continued smiling as he closed the door behind him, and then she pictured him striding along the hospital corridor, gathering admiring glances from all the nurses and female patients, walking purposefully towards his car, ready to be chauffeured back to his apartment or house or mansion or wherever it was he lived, because she hadn’t the faintest idea.

The mental scenario so overtook the thought of lying by a non-existent pool in the sunshine that, after a while, she shook herself and wondered whether perhaps she was missing the company of a man in her life rather more than she had consciously thought.

She had her little flat, a modern, one-bedroom place on a nicely kept estate a few miles from the nursery, so that travelling to and from work wasn’t too hazardous a prospect in her unreliable Mini. She had her friends, most of whom lived locally, and she carefully tended those relationships because in a world with no family friends became your only standby. She especially treasured them because friendships had been so hard to form as she’d roamed with her parents.

She hadn’t felt the absence of a boyfriend in her life. Why, then, had she been so stupidly invigorated by this man—someone whom she had never met in her life before, a man who lived in an orbit as far removed from hers as Mars was from the planet Earth?

She hadn’t thought that she was lonely, but—who knew?—perhaps she was.

Paul, her boss, had been trying for ages to arrange a blind date between her and his cousin, whose credentials seemed to be that he was a nice chap and supported the same football team as Paul did. Maybe, she thought, buzzing the nurse for some more painkillers because her leg, which had been feeling fine, was now throbbing madly, she would give him a go.

That settled in her mind, she eyed Angus Hamilton’s business card and then shoved it inside the drawer of the beside cabinet, where it was safely out of sight and safely out of mind.

Then she got down to the overdue business of ringing her closest friends, who sympathised with her bad luck and promised to visit with magazines and flowers and grapes—what else? She also phoned Paul, who soothed and clucked like a mother hen and told her that there was no need to rush back to work until she was ready, but could she tell him where that number for the delivery firm who were supposed to have delivered some shrubs that morning was, because they hadn’t and he intended to give them an earful?

Then she settled down, closed her eyes and spent the night dreaming of Angus Hamilton.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS two months before her leg was more or less back in working order. She was confined, by Paul, to doing what he called sitting duties, by which he meant tackling all the paperwork.

‘All very restful,’ he assured her, then proceeded to produce several box files of papers which were in a rampant state of disorder and left her to it.

But she was busy, and for that she was grateful. Only occasionally did she think about the missed holiday, wondering what it would have been like and promising herself that she would get there. Some time. Possibly even during the summer, although Paul didn’t like any of his staff, least of all her because he depended on her, to take their holidays during the busiest months of the year.

Rather too often for comfort, she thought about Angus. She must, she thought, have absorbed a lot of detail about him because he still hadn’t conveniently faded into a blurry image. She could still recall quite clearly everything about him, even little nuances which she must have unconsciously observed as he had sat there on the hospital chair talking to her, and stored away at the back of her mind.

She hadn’t told a soul about him. Not her friends, not Paul. He was a secret, her secret. Instinct told her that to talk about him would give even more substance to his memory.

He wasn’t about to reappear in her life, was he? What was the point of inviting curiosity about someone who had appeared and vanished as quickly as a dream?

She was so utterly convinced of this that when, nearly three months after she had last seen him and weeks after she had joyfully relegated her waking stick to the broom cupboard under the stairs of her flat, she found his letter lying on her doormat she was so shocked that she felt her breathing become heavy and her hands begin to perspire.

She knew who the letter was from even before she ripped open the envelope. The writing was firm, in black ink, and the postmark was London. Apart from Angus Hamilton, she knew no one else in London who would send her a letter.

The message was short and to the point. He was going on a cruise with a few friends and would she like to accompany them. ‘Of course,’ she read, sitting down on the small sofa in her lounge and tucking her feet underneath her, ‘you will not even think of refusing this invitation. Consider it an act of charity on your part to ease my guilty conscience over the accident.’ As a postscript, he had added, ‘I trust you are now back on both feet.’

Of course, she had no intention of accepting, never mind his guilty conscience. She kept the letter in her bag and pulled it out whenever there was no one around, and then told herself why she had no intention of accepting his invitation.

For a start, it just wasn’t her to rush off and do something like that. Spontaneity was all well and good, but she had spent so many years being swept along on the tide of her parents’ spontaneity, like a leaf constantly caught up in a wind storm, that she had come to realise that thinking things through was a much better alternative. Thinking things through gave coherence to the whole disordered business of living.

When her parents had died, she had been just seventeen and craving for what most girls her age would have hated: somewhere to call a home, somewhere safe where she could gaze out through the window and watch the seasons change and the years pass, without any plans for moving on. She never wanted impulsiveness to dictate her actions. Never, never, never. It was dangerous.

Then, reluctantly, she remembered his face. She remembered the pity she had glimpsed there when she had told him that she was used to standing on her own two feet. Pity at what he saw as a sad little thing.

Her parents had felt a little sorry for her as well. How could they have produced such a quiet, timid version of themselves, when they were so exuberant? They had never understood that spending a year or eighteen months in one place before moving on to a different place with different faces and different landmarks was something that she had found increasingly disorienting.

So she found herself accepting his invitation. It was as easy as that. Something stronger than common sense, some powerful emotional urge, tipped the scales, almost when she hadn’t been looking.

She called the number on the letter, spoke to an efficient-sounding woman who informed her that she was Mr Hamilton’s personal assistant, and threw caution to the winds before she could work out all the pros and cons and ifs and buts.

And here I am now, she thought three weeks later, paying the price for a few moments of recklessness. Feeling nervous and sick and apprehensive and knowing that I’m not going to enjoy a minute of this. It will be an ordeal.

The only saving grace was that there would be lots of people around on the liner so if she found the company of Angus and his friends too uncomfortable she could always lose herself in the crowd. No one would think her odd. Cruise liners were always full of solitary women.

She closed her eyes when the plane took off and for an instant she stopped thinking about what lay ahead of her and thought instead about the dynamics of something as heavy as this being able to travel in the air. She hoped that all the nuts and bolts were firmly screwed together and risked a quick look through the window, openmouthed at the sight of land fast disappearing beneath her, to be replaced by an infinity of sky and clouds.

She hadn’t felt nearly so nervous about Lanzarote. She wondered whether the captain would turn back and let her off at Heathrow if she asked nicely. Failing that, she could hop it back to England when they landed at Barbados and Angus Hamilton, with his far-fetched notions of applying a balm to his guilty conscience, would be none the wiser. He would shrug those powerful shoulders of his and get on with his holiday knowing that he had tried to make amends and she had rudely refused.

He probably would not even miss the money he had spent on her airline ticket.

But since she knew, deep down, that she would obey the instructions kindly laid out for her in the letter from his secretary she didn’t feel much better.

She arrived at Barbados feeling rather ragged and, as the unknown secretary had helpfully advised in the letter which had accompanied the airline ticket, made her way to the transit desk and eventually onto the connecting flight to St Vincent.

This time the scenery through the window was rather more spectacular. She left Barbados looking down at glittering blue sea and strips of white sand and landed in St Vincent to the same staggering view.

The taxi driver was waiting outside the airport for her—just as the secretary had said he would be—when she emerged with her suitcase and her holdall.

She had worn a loose, flowery skirt and a shortsleeved shirt, but nothing had prepared her for the heat that hit her the minute she was in the open. It was the sort of all-enveloping heat which she had never before experienced in England, not even when it got very hot during the best of the summer days.

There was a great deal of activity outside the airport, taxi drivers waiting hopefully by their cars to take tourists to their destinations, but there was nothing frenetic about any of it. No one seemed to be in any kind of rush to get anywhere.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked the driver as he cruised off at one mile per hour.

‘Not far.’ He looked at her in the rear-view mirror, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth. ‘The hotel, it just along the south coast. Very nice place.’

Lisa lapsed into silence to contemplate the scenery, leaning forward slightly in her seat with her hands nervously clutching her bag.

Outside, the marvellous vista unfolded itself. Everything was so lush and green, heavy with the scent of the Tropics. She half wished that it would go on for ever, partly because it was so beautiful and partly because she was beginning to feel sick and nervous all over again.

What on earth was she going to say to him? She wasn’t accustomed to mixing in sophisticated circles. She would be completely at a loss for witty, interesting topics of discussion. After one hour, she would no longer be the novelty which had amused him months ago in a hospital ward. She would revert to being just an ordinary young woman without much of a talent for being in the limelight.

The taxi driver pulled up outside the hotel, which appeared to comprise a collection of stone cottages strewn with well thought out randomness amongst the lush vegetation.

He helped her with her luggage and she was almost sorry to see him depart into the distance, driving away as slowly as he had arrived.

She looked around her helplessly, noticing with a sinking heart the other visitors at the hotel who seemed to waft past her, laughing in their elegant attire. Would they all be on the liner? she wondered. Was this hotel one of the stops between ports? She had no idea. She glanced down at her clothes self-consciously, and when she raised her eyes to the reception desk there he was, standing there, just as she remembered him.

He was wearing a pair of light olive-green trousers and a cream shirt and he was, thankfully, alone.

As he approached her, she noticed how the other females strolling through the foyer darted glances at him, as if they couldn’t help themselves. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you might back out at the last minute.’

He was taller than she remembered. From a supine position on a hospital bed, it had been difficult to get a good idea of his height, but now she could see that he was over six feet tall, and already bronzed from the sun, so that his eyes looked bluer and more striking than she remembered.

‘I take it that your leg has now fully recovered from the experience?’ One of the hotel staff hurried up to gather her luggage and she followed him as he checked her in.

‘Yes, it has,’ she said to his profile, watching as he smiled and then turned to look at her. ‘Thank you very much for...this.’ She spread her arms vaguely to encompass everything around her. ‘It was very kind of you.’

He was watching her as she said this, with a small smile on his mouth, and it was a relief when the porter interrupted them to show her to her room, which wasn’t a room at all, but in fact one of the stone cottages with a thatched roof and a marvellous view overlooking the sea. Blue, blue sea and white, white sand.

‘Was your trip all right?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you very much; it was fine.’

‘There’s no need to be quite so terrifyingly polite,’ he said, amused.

‘I’m sorry. Was I?’

‘You were.’ He folded his arms and looked at her. ‘You haven’t been invited along to be thrown to the sharks.’

‘No, I know that.’ She tried a smile.

‘That’s better.’ He smiled back at her. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourself. That’s why you came, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Her replies sounded stilted and she glanced around her for inspiration.

‘I’m surprised that you came at all, I don’t mind admitting. After what you had told me at the hospital about not accepting charity, I thought that you’d run a mile at the prospect of a holiday at my expense.’

She resisted the temptation to apologize once again, but his remark filled her with dismay. Had he been banking on her not coming? Was that it?

‘I...accepted on impulse,’ she admitted, looking down to where her fingers were twined around the handle of her bag.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Now,’ he continued briskly, ‘I expect you’re feeling rather tired. He leaned against the doorframe and stared down at her. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to emerge for dinner. They will happily bring you some food here if you’d rather just stay in and recover from the trip. Tomorrow morning we’re hoping to set sail.’

‘Yes, of course. Your secretary did list the itinerary. I have it here in my bag somewhere.’ She plunged nervously into the bowels of the tan bag and several bits of paper fluttered to the ground, accompanied by a half-empty packet of travel tissues, several sweets, her traveller’s cheques and her book, of which she had read very little on the plane.

They both bent to recover the dropped items at the same time and their heads bumped. Lisa pulled away in embarrassment, red-faced, cursing the bag, which was much too large really and had somehow managed to attract quite a bit of paraphernalia in a way that her normal tiny one never did.

‘S-sorry,’ she stammered, burning with confusion as he handed her the packet of tissues and the sweets, which she stuffed back into the bag.

‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ he told her gently, kneeling opposite her.

‘I’m not nervous!’ She was kneeling too, her hands resting lightly on her thighs, her face close to his in the twilight which seemed to have descended abruptly in the space of about ten minutes. She remembered reading that about the Tropics. There was no lingering dusk. Night succeeded day swiftly.

‘Of course you are,’ he said, as though surprised that she could deny the obvious. ‘You’re going on a fortnight’s vacation on a yacht with a group of people whom you’ve never seen in your life before. Of course you’re nervous.’

She sprang up as though burnt and looked at him in confusion.

‘Yacht? I thought it was a cruise.’

‘Yacht, cruise, where’s the difference?’ He stood up and frowned. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit peculiar.’

‘Look,’ she said steadily, even though she could feel herself shaking, ‘please could you clarify what exactly this holiday is? Are we or are we not going on a liner?’

‘Liner? What are you talking about?’

‘In your letter, you said that we would be cruising... I was under the impression...’

His face cleared and he laughed. ‘That we were going on a cruise ship? No. I think there’s been a misunderstanding. No cruise ship. As far as I’m concerned, there wouldn’t be much point in getting away from the madding crowd only to surround yourself by the same madding crowd, just with a change of faces. In fact, I can’t really think of anything worse; don’t you agree?’

No, she wanted to shout in frustrated panic, I most certainly do not agree! And I can think, offhand, of one thing that’s infinitely worse. It involves a group of friends, on a yacht, none of whom I know, and me!

‘I—I would never have come...’ she stammered in horror.

‘If you’d known? You coward.’

‘I really don’t think that I can... There’s been a mistake... It’s not your fault... I should have asked, but I didn’t think... I’m sorry, but...’

‘Don’t be foolish.’

‘I am not being foolish!’ Now she was beginning to feel angry as well as horrified.

‘Look at me.’

She did. Reluctantly.

‘Do I look like someone who is thoughtless enough to invite you out here, throw you into the deep end and watch you struggle with a smile on my face?’

Pretty much, she thought to herself.

‘No, no, I’m sure you’re not, but really...I don’t relish the thought of... I shall be an intrusion...’ Her voice was beginning to fail her under the sheer horror of the enormous misunderstanding that had landed her out here, a million miles away from home, like a stranded fish out of water. She tried to remind herself that she was capable of enormous self-control, a legacy of having spent much of her childhood living in her own world, but something about his commanding, powerful presence made it difficult.

‘Nonsense. An intrusion into what?’ He didn’t give her time to answer. ‘Let me have the key. It’s ludicrous to be standing out here having a lengthy discussion when we could be inside.’

She handed him the key and barely glanced around her as they entered.

‘An intrusion into your privacy,’ she explained in a high voice that bordered on the desperate. ‘You will be with your friends...’

‘What do you think of the cottage?’ He turned around from where he had been standing by one of the windows, looking out into the black velvet night, and faced her.

‘Super. Wonderful,’ she said miserably.

‘You’ve never had a holiday in your life before, Lisa.’ His voice was soothing and gentle, the voice of someone dealing with a child, a child whose wits were just a little scrambled, and who needed to be taken by the hand and pointed in the right direction. ‘You told me so yourself. When I booked this holiday, I thought about that. Why don’t you put aside your reservations for a moment and try and see the next two weeks for what they are? An eye-opener.’

‘You invited me along because you felt sorry for me.’ She spoke flatly, acknowledging the suspicion which had been there at the back of her mind from the beginning.

He shrugged and stuck his hands into his pockets.

‘That’s putting it a little strongly.’

‘But basically that’s it, isn’t it?’ She could feel tears of anger and humiliation springing to her eyes and she tightened her mouth.

‘I felt that I owed you something for having deprived you of a holiday abroad. I wouldn’t call that a crime, would you?’

He had a seductive way of talking. Great intelligence and great charm could be a persuasive combination. She sighed and suddenly felt overwhelmingly tired.

‘Not a crime, no. But you must understand that...’

‘You’re apprehensive.’

‘I wish you’d stop finishing my sentences for me,’ she said crossly. ‘I’m quite capable of finishing them myself.’

He smiled, not taking his eyes off her. ‘You’re scared stiff at the thought of mixing with a group of people you’ve never met in your life before.’

‘Wouldn’t you be?’ she flung at him.

‘No.’

‘Well, excuse me while I just fetch out my medal for bravery from my bag!’ she snapped, and he moved towards her, which she found, inexplicably, so alarming that she had to make an effort not to retreat to the furthest corner of the room.

‘That’s much better,’ he drawled, standing in front of her.

‘What’s much better?’

‘A bit of fire instead of passively assuming the worst before you’ve even tested the water. Now, tomorrow,’ he continued, before she could think that out. ‘We normally breakfast in our rooms. Less effort than trying to arrange a time to meet in the restaurant area. We’re going to meet at the yacht at twelve-thirty. Shall we come and collect you or would you rather have a look around here and make your way to the boat yourself?’

‘How many will there be?’ she asked, frowning.

‘Just six of us. One of my clients who also happens to be a close personal friend, his wife and their daughter, and a cousin of sorts.’

‘A cousin of sorts?’

‘We’re related somewhere along the line but so distantly that it would take for ever trying to work the link out.’

‘Oh.’

‘And you still haven’t answered my question.’

‘Question? What question?’

He grinned with amusement and shook his head slightly. ‘My God, woman, will you take me there some time?’

‘Take you where?’

‘To the world you live in. It certainly isn’t Planet Earth.’

‘Thank you very much,’ Lisa said stiffly, her face burning.

‘And that’s not meant to be an insult,’ he told her, still grinning. ‘I do wonder how you ever manage to stand on your own two feet, though.’

Had he, she thought, remembered every word she had told him all those months ago?

‘I’ll meet you at the yacht,’ she said, ignoring the grin which was now getting on her nerves as much as his fatherly, soothing manner had earlier on.

‘Fine.’ He gave her directions, told her how to get there, asked her again whether she wouldn’t be happier if he came to collect her, so that she wondered whether he thought that she would abscond the minute his back was turned for too long, and then gave her a reassuring smile before strolling out of the cottage.

She sat heavily on the bed and contemplated the suitcase on the ground. Why had she come here? What had possessed her? She had wanted to put to rest, once and for all, the gnawing suspicion she had always had that she was dull, unexciting, too willing to settle for the safe path in life. Her parents, her vibrant, roaming parents who’d somehow landed themselves with a daughter who had never shared their wanderlust, would have smiled at her decision. Was that why she had done it? Yes, she thought wearily, of course it was. Except that a few vital things hadn’t been taken into the equation.

Now she was here, the guest of a man whose ability to reduce her to a nervous, self-conscious wreck she had forgotten, a man who felt sorry for her, who saw her, even though he had not said so in so many words, as someone who needed a little excitement, someone whose eyes needed opening. From the fast lane in which he had been travelling, he had seen her standing on the lay-by and had reached out and yanked her towards him.

It was a gesture her parents would have appreciated, but, sitting here, she realised that the fast lane was not for her. Yes, he had been right; she was afraid. It was something which he could never in a million years understand because she sensed that fear of the unknown was not something that ever guided his actions. He was one of those people who saw the unknown as a challenge.

Whereas for her, she thought, running a shower and letting the water race over her skin, the unknown was always equated with anxiousness. The anxiousness of leaving one school for another, of meeting new people, of tentatively forging new bonds only for the whole process to be repeated all over again. And every time it had seemed worse.

How could an accident of fate have thrown her into a situation like this?

The following morning, after she had had her breakfast, which, as he had advised her, had been brought to her in her room, she removed herself in her modest black bikini to the beach, selected a deserted patch and lay in the sun, covered with oil.

She would just have to make the best of things. She had decided that as soon as she had opened her eyes and seen the brilliant blue skies outside.

It was impossible to have too many black thoughts when everything around you was visually so beautiful. The sea was crystal-clear and very calm, the sand was white and dusty and there was a peaceful noiselessness about it all that made you wonder whether the hurried life back in England really existed.

She stretched out on her towel, closed her eyes, and was beginning to drift pleasurably off, safe in the knowledge that she wasn’t due to meet the yacht for another four hours, when she heard Angus say drily, ‘I thought I’d find you here. You’ll have to be careful, though; the sun out here is a killer, especially for someone as fairskinned as you are.’

Lisa sat up as though an electric charge had suddenly shot through her body and met his eyes glinting down at her seemingly from a very great height.

He was half-naked, wearing only his bathing trunks, and a towel was slung over his shoulder.

Reddening, she looked away from the powerfully built, bronzed torso and said in as normal a voice as she could muster, ‘I know. I’ve slapped lots of suncream on.’

‘Very sensible.’

He stretched out the towel and lowered himself onto it, then turned on his side so that he was looking at her.

‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, keeping her face averted and her eyes closed behind her sunglasses. He was so close to her that she could feel his breath warm on her cheek when he spoke. It was as heady as breathing in a lungful of incense and she hated the sensation.

‘I came to your room and you weren’t there. I assumed that you’d be out here. Beautiful, isn’t it?’ He reached out and removed her sunglasses. ‘There. That’s better. I like to see people when I’m talking to them.’

‘May I have my sunglasses back?’

She looked at him and found that he was grinning at her.

‘Don’t put them on.’

‘Is that an order?’ she asked primly, and he laughed.

‘Would you obey me if it was?’

‘No.’

‘I didn’t think so,’ he commented lazily. ‘Which is why I’ll hang onto them for the moment, if you don’t mind.’

She glared at him and he laughed again, this time a little louder.

‘What a range of expressions you have,’ he said, with the laughter still in his voice. ‘From nervousness to fear, to stubbornness, to anger. How old are you?’

She debated informing him that it was none of his business, reluctantly reminded herself that he was her host and was owed some show of good manners, even if he constantly managed to antagonize her, and said coolly, ‘Twenty-four.’

‘Caroline is nineteen but she seems decades older than you.’

‘I’m sorry, I have no idea who you’re talking about.’ And frankly, her voice implied, I’m not in the least interested, believe it or not.

‘The distant cousin.’

Lisa didn’t say anything, but her heart sank. The picture in her head was beginning to take shape. The powerful client with his pretentious wife and their precocious child, Caroline, with her well-bred sophistication, Angus, and herself.

‘Why are you here?’ she asked politely. ‘Don’t you need to see to your boat? Make sure that all the sails or ropes or whatever are all in the right place?’

‘I do hope that there’s no implied snub in that question?’ he queried with lazy amusement.

‘Nothing could be further from my mind.’

‘What a relief.’ His voice was exaggeratedly serious and she wondered whether the real reason he made her so nervous was that she loathed him. Intensely.

‘Actually,’ he said, sitting up with his legs crossed and staring down at her, ‘I wanted to find you to make sure that you were all right.’

‘Why shouldn’t I be?’ Lying flat on the towel with only her bikini for protection against those gleaming, brilliant eyes made her feel so vulnerable that she sat up as well and drew her knees up, clasping her arms around them.

‘You seemed shaken by the prospect of enforced captivity with the man-eating cannibals I’ve invited along as guests on this trip.’

‘Very funny.’

‘No, not terribly,’ he said, very seriously now. ‘I wanted to find you so that I could reassure you that they’re all very nice, perfectly likeable people before you had to confront them.’

‘Thank you,’ she replied awkwardly. She kept her eyes firmly fixed on his face, stupidly aware of his animal sex appeal. ‘I’m sorry I was so garbled last night; it’s just that I was taken aback.’

‘I realised,’ he said drily. ‘And I wish you’d stop apologising.’

‘Sorry,’ she said automatically, and then she smiled shyly, dipping her eyes and gazing out towards the horizon, where the sharp blue line of the sea met the clear blue sky. It was easy to understand why some people believed that to venture beyond that thin blue strip would be to fall off the edge of the earth.

‘Did you tell your boss that you were coming on this holiday?’ he asked idly, and she could tell that he was staring at her even though she wasn’t looking at him. She couldn’t tell, though, what he was thinking. Could anyone do that?

‘Not exactly,’ Lisa admitted. ‘I told him that I needed to have a break, that I was tired. Well,’ she continued defensively, ‘it was more or less the truth.’

‘Rather less than more,’ he said blandly. ‘Did you think that he wouldn’t understand?’

‘Something like that.’ He would have fallen down in shock, she thought with amusement. He knew how much she liked the safe regularity of her job, of her life; she had told him as much when he had first interviewed her years ago for the position.

‘I don’t want to take on someone who’s going to stick around for six months, get bored, and look for more glamorous horizons,’ he had said.

‘Not me,’ Lisa had replied. ‘There will be no urge to hurry away from this job to look for another one. I have my flat, my roots are here and my job will be for as long as you want me.’

Over the years he had come to know her well enough to realise that her most prized possession was her security. She had bought her small flat with the money which had been left to her on her parents’ death, from insurance policies which had secured her future, and there she had been happy to stay, content in her cocoon.

‘Because you’re not given to taking risks?’ Angus prompted now, casually, and she threw him a sharp glance before returning her gaze to the infinitely safer horizon.

‘I guess,’ she said in a guarded voice.

‘Have I invaded personal territory here?’ His tone was still light and casual, but she knew that he was probing. Probing to find out about her. It was probably second nature to him, and in her case his curiosity was most likely genuine, the curiosity of someone whose life was so far removed from her own that it really was as though she came from another planet.

‘Why are you so secretive?’ he asked. He reached out and tilted her face towards his and the brief brush of his fingers on her chin was like the sensation of sudden heat against ice. It was a feeling that was so unexpected that she wiped his touch away with the back of her hand.

‘I’m not.’

‘You should try listening to yourself some time,’ he remarked wryly. ‘You might change your mind.’

He stood up abruptly, shook the sand out of his towel and slung it back over his shoulder. Mission accomplished, she thought, except there was a vaguely unsettling taste in her mouth, the taste of something begun and not quite finished.

‘Sure you know how to get to the yacht?’ he asked, and she nodded.

‘So, I shall see you around twelve-thirty.’

‘Yes,’ she murmured obediently, collecting a handful of sand in the palm of her hand and then watching it trail through her fingers.

‘And you won’t take flight in the interim?’ He raised one eyebrow questioningly and then nodded to himself, as though she had answered his question without having spoken. ‘No, of course you won’t, because, whatever you say, you’re as curious now as you are reluctant, aren’t you, Lisa?’ He stared right down at her and she felt his eyes blazing a way to the core of her. ‘This is a new experience for you. You won’t regret it. Trust me.’

Then he was gone. She watched him walking slowly away, his lithe body unhurried, and she thought, Are you so sure? Because I’m not.

CHAPTER THREE

WOULD she have been different if she had led a normal kind of life? It was a question Lisa had asked herself over the years and she had never come up with a satisfactory answer.

She was very self-contained, she knew that, just as she knew that most people found her aloof and far too composed for the sort of superficial small talk that made the world go round. Very few had glimpsed the lack of self-confidence behind the composure.

Looking back now, she was old enough and mature enough to realise that this was the real disservice which her parents had unwittingly done her. They had given her variety but her only point of stability had been them, when in fact, at the age of eight or twelve or fourteen, she had needed much more than that. She had needed the stability of a circle of friends, people with whom she could try out her developing personality, learn to laugh without the ridiculous fear of somehow getting it wrong, discover trust without the limits of time cutting it short before it had had time to take root.

When she found herself thinking like that, she never blamed her parents. She accepted it as a fait accompli. She had never lacked love; it had not been their fault that she had not been able to fall in with their never-ending travels from one place to another with the same thrill of possible adventure lurking just around the corner.

Her father, a biologist, had been consumed with a seemingly never-ending supply of curiosity. Nature, in all its shapes and guises, had fascinated him. He would take on a job as gamekeeper to acres of wilderness simply for the satisfaction of exploring the minutiae of the forest life.

Once, for eighteen months, he had worked on the bleak Scottish coastline and had indulged in a brief fling with marine biology, a love which had lived with him until he had died.

That, she thought now, had been the worst time. She could remember having to catch the bus to school in weather that never seemed to brighten. She could remember the smallness of the class, the suspicion of the other children who had treated her with the unconscious cruelty of long-standing village occupants towards the outsider. It had been hard then keeping her chin up but in the end she had made some friends.

Now she could see that it had done nothing for her social self-confidence.

She walked towards the yacht and she could feel the muscles in her stomach tighten just as they had done all those years ago, every time she had walked through the doors of yet another school building.

Everyone else had arrived. She could glimpse the shapes on the boat, the movement, and she hurried a bit more. Someone must have called out something to Angus, because he appeared from nowhere, half-naked, and came down to the jetty to greet her.

The air of restless vitality that seemed to cling to him swept over her and she licked her lips nervously.

‘I hope I’m not late,’ she began, and he reached out and took the suitcase from her, smiling with that mixture of dry irony and knowing amusement that made her feel so gauche and awkward because it always seemed to imply that he was somehow; somewhere, laughing at her.

‘We have a timetable of sorts,’ he drawled, ‘but we’re under no obligation to stick to it. One of the great advantages of a holiday like this. We would have waited for you.’

He turned towards the yacht and she followed him as he threw polite remarks over his shoulder and she made obliging noises in return.

Her legs were feeling heavy and uncooperative, but she took a deep breath and clambered aboard the yacht behind him, allowing him to help her up but then withdrawing her hand as soon as she was there.

From behind the relative protection of her sunglasses, she saw the small circle of people—his guests.

The whole situation inspired the same churning, sinking feeling she had had as a child when she had had to stand up in class, the newcomer, and introduce herself. She made a show of smiling and was swept along on a tide of introductions.

Liz, Gerry, their nine-year-old daughter Sarah, Caroline. They were relaxed, stretched out on loungers on the deck of the yacht, wearing their swimsuits and sipping drinks.

‘Now,’ Angus said, in that slightly amused, very assured voice of his, ‘I shall show Lisa to her cabin.’ He turned to her. ‘What would you like to drink? We thought we’d have a few drinks here and some lunch before we leave.’

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