Table of Contents

Cover Page

Excerpt

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

“Are we so incompatible?

“There’s at least one area in which we’re wholly compatible,” Rob continued.

Lucia regarded him warily. “I believe it’s called lust,” she allowed sweetly.

“I believe it’s called sexual attraction. It happened to me, too, you know,” he added gently.

“That doesn’t mean we have to do anything about it!”

She had no intention of exploring any physical attraction with a man who didn’t respect her—and how could he when he was prepared to blackmail her?

JAYNE BAULING

was born in England and grew up in South Africa. She always wrote but was too shy to show anyone until the publication of some poems in her teens gave her the confidence to attempt the romances she wanted to concentrate on, the first published being written while she was attending business college. Her home is just outside Johannesburg, a town house ruled by a sealpoint called Ranee. Travel is a major passion; at home it’s family, friends, music, swimming, reading and patio gardening.

Substitute Engagement
Jayne Bauling

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

SHE had kept her promise to her father. Now it was time to keep another—that given to Thierry Olivier, too long ago for her liking.

Lucia’s sensitive mouth curved happily at the thought of the beautiful man she loved.

For the moment she couldn’t spot his bright red-gold head anywhere among the crowd thronging the attractive open-air functions area of Grande Comore’s newest hotel, one of the Ballard Group and the latest in a chain gracing most of the popular holiday islands of the Indian Ocean.

Thierry hadn’t been at Hahaya Airport to meet her, of course. As this was early in November, flights from South Africa were not fully booked and she had managed to get on to one a week earlier than she had originally anticipated.

Nor had he been at home when the taxi had delivered her to the Olivier estate, but the new housekeeper there had told her that he and his mother were at the hotel, so she had set out to find them, hailing the first of the local taxis to pass—one of the fourteen-seater Peugeot trucks, or ‘bakkies’, as she had learnt to call them during her three years in South Africa.

Lucia had wondered a little at Thierry’s absence from the estate at this hour on a Saturday afternoon, but when she’d failed to find him in the main bar the presence of several familiar faces among the gathering outdoors had seemed to suggest some local celebration for which this area had been hired.

But the face that distracted her gaze from its roving quest for Thierry was definitely unfamiliar. She supposed that he would stand out anywhere as he was so tall—a rangy six feet or more—but, whoever he was, he had a presence that was nothing to do with his height Somehow he appeared more sharply in focus than anyone else around him—at least to her subjective vision—as if the character so evident in the quirkily attractive dark face invested him with that sharp, clear outline.

Obeying some inner instinct that insisted on seeing the untinted reality, Lucia removed her sunglasses, but learned nothing further. He was dark, he was probably in his early thirties, and he was dead sexy.

With his attention being wholly given to a glamorous young woman with dark red hair, she was unable to discover the colour of his eyes from where she stood, here on the fringes of the throng, but she could see arrogance in the aquiline curve of his nose, while his mouth was many things—firm, controlled, sensual, and yet a little harsh, until he smiled at something the girl with him was saying and the harshness vanished.

With her own eyes no longer hidden by dark lenses, Lucia became aware of a rippling murmur of recognition in both English and French from several people close by.

‘The Flanders girl.’

‘Lucia…’

It amused her to know that it was her eyes by which she was recognised when she didn’t think much of them herself because they were neither blue nor green but something between the two. She would have preferred one or the other to such an indeterminate mixture.

An ensuing silence, so absolute as to be breathless startled her momentarily, but then she was distracted again, because the man who had caught her attention was now staring straight at her, as if alerted by the murmurs that had preceded this strangely avid hush.

She couldn’t think of a word that described his eyes—unless she settled for ‘smoke’. Their colour was as much an enigma as their expression, shadowed and secret, and yet something there made her instantly conscious of herself as a woman, automatically picturing the way she must look to him. Of course, the simple, sleeveless white dress, with its round neckline and softly gathered skirt, would flatter her more in a week or two, when she had got her light, honey-coloured tan back and her straight, fine, shoulder-length hair was fair again, instead of the light brown to which her recent lengthy stint of studying indoors had dulled it.

Lucia gave the man the tiniest of contained smiles and caused her gaze to move on casually. She had looked quite long enough for an engaged, soon-to-be-married woman.

A moment later she was forced to return her attention to him, warned by the stir of interest that she detected among those people nearest to her.

He was coming over to her, his long legs giving him a lithe, easy stride, and his face was lit with a smile that gave every indication of delight.

‘Lucia!’ the voice matched the smile. ‘You made it after all.’

Astonishment barely allowed her to register that the smoky eyes were sparkling with enjoyment as he reached her. Then amazement gave way to pure shock as he took her by the shoulders, turning her slightly so that her startled expression was concealed from the group of onlookers. She was five feet seven so he had to bend his head to brush a kiss across her cheek.

Lucia was aware of warmth both from his lips and the body so close to hers, its nearness an invasion when he was a total stranger, however welcoming.

‘What…’ she began faintly, her voice trailing away as she became conscious of something else—an urgency about the way his fingers were biting into her shoulders, their grasp somehow imperative.

‘Please excuse us a minute.’ He threw the perfunctory request at a small cluster of spectators, and then he was moving her out through one of the Moorish-style archways bordering the large courtyard with its tubs and hanging baskets of lush foliage and the covered bar at one end.

Caught off balance, Lucia couldn’t resist until they had rounded a corner and were alone, when she wrenched herself free of his hold and turned to face him indignantly, her heart’s rhythm still a speedy drumbeat of surprise.

‘What do you think you’re doing, accosting me like this? Abducting me?’ she demanded furiously.

‘Do you always exaggerate?’ he enquired amusedly.

‘No, only when absolute strangers give me an exaggeratedly warm welcome,’ she retorted.

‘The situation called for drastic measures,’ he asserted rather coolly.

‘Oh, I agree! Slapping your face wouldn’t be too drastic under the circumstances! Who are you, anyway?’ she asked tempestuously, noting that his smile had gone.

‘Rob Ballard,’ he supplied. ‘And it’s just as well you didn’t come out with that question back there at the party.’

The magnate himself, she realised, trying to remember what she knew about him. But the only thing she could recall was his Zimbabwean nationality and the fact that his hotels had a reputation for luxury and casual elegance.

‘And you, of course, are Lucia Flanders,’ he added, with a swift, raking assessment of her heart-shaped face, its delicate bone-structure creating gentle curves that cast soft shadows here and there.

‘Well, look, Mr Ballard-’

‘I think you’re going to have to call me Rob, you know,’ he cut in with soft significance, accompanying it with another smile, brilliantly slashing this time.

‘I’d forgotten about men,’ Lucia murmured obscurely. His tone had given her a clue as to what this was about, and she spent a moment reflecting that during the last couple of months she had forgotten about most of the things that pleased, amused or even infuriated her. ‘Sorry, Rob—but look! Engaged!’

With a piquant smile she held up her hand, displaying the flashing diamond on a plain gold band, and the smoke-coloured eyes narrowed briefly.

‘Are you sure of that?’ The smile had grown slightly cruel. ‘Take it off, Lucia.’

He was reaching for her hand so she dropped it hastily, a little disconcerted by his manner but still confident that she could handle this, even if he was using lines that were unfamiliar to her. She shook her head slowly.

‘I’ve worn it too long,’ she claimed happily.

‘Way too long when you haven’t placed a wedding band beside it,’ he agreed smoothly.

‘That’s due to happen shortly,’ she informed him easily, deciding abruptly that she didn’t need to make the rejection kind when he was so over-confident ‘So you’re out of luck, aren’t you?’

‘What? Do you think I’m making some kind of pass?’ he asked disbelievingly.

It rocked her, because that was exactly what she had thought, but pride came to her rescue and she managed to mask her embarrassment.

‘What was it, then?’ she demanded. ‘That warm welcome when we’ve never met before—what were you doing?’

‘Securing my sister’s happiness, or at least her peace of mind—and coincidentally saving your face, I suspect,’ Rob Ballard submitted expressionlessly, and paused. ‘Didn’t Beth Olivier at least give you some warning when she last visited South Africa?’

‘What are you talking about?’

Suddenly Lucia’s voice was sharp with anxiety. Thierry’s mother was a South African who visited her country several times a year, but she had never once contacted Lucia when she’d done so.

Lucia had always been aware of her future mother-in-law’s disapproval, and when all her most winning efforts had failed to achieve any softening in her she had accepted the situation, respectful of the breeding which caused Beth to ignore her when she could and be coldly polite when she couldn’t, because an open, ongoing quarrel would have been intolerable.

‘You’ve stayed away too long, Lucia. Thierry Olivier obviously got tired of waiting for you, because he and my young sister are on the point of announcing their engagement. That’s what this afternoon’s party is about, and partly why I’m here.’

He made no attempt to soften it—the brutal announcement was thrown at her with a trace of mockery but nothing else whatsoever.

‘I don’t believe you.’ The denial was automatic. ‘Thierry and I have been in love for years, and engaged all this last year.’

‘Too long, as I’ve said.’ He was taunting.

‘He knew there was no point in our getting married when I couldn’t be here living with him. I had to get my degree,’ Lucia explained, her tone growing almost blithe as confidence reasserted itself.

‘Of course, and you’ve just completed your third and final year at the University of Witwatersrand, I’m told. So perhaps he decided someone who would put his needs before her career suited him better,’ came the derisive suggestion.

‘I’d like to hear that from him,’ she retorted, beginning to move forward.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’

‘To find Thierry and ask him what’s going on,’ she snapped, but stopped and took a step backwards as she saw Rob Ballard’s hands raised to halt her departure, finding that she didn’t want him to touch her.

‘Oh, no, Lucia, you are not going to go through there and cause a scene,’ he advised her with silken authority. ‘But, in a minute or two, you are going to join the party with me and ease my sister’s mind by showing her and everyone else that you don’t care, that, if anything, this is the way out you’ve been looking for—ever since you met me, I think we’ll make it.’

‘And where would I have met you?’ Lucia enquired scornfully, but a gathering uneasiness was nudging at her confidence and a tiny crease had appeared between eyebrows which were a shade or two darker than her hair.

‘I spent a week in Johannesburg on business a couple of months ago, which is where you’ve been at university. And, for all anyone knows, I’m in and out of there quite regularly. I’ve hardly even had a chance to talk to my sister since I arrived here, so she won’t wonder why I haven’t mentioned you.’

Lucia stared at him with eyes that were beginning to blaze.

‘The thing is full of flaws—’

‘We’ll make it up as we go along.’

‘We won’t make anything up! You’re forgetting something.’ Abruptly her fury erupted. ‘Even if one word of what you say is true, I happen to be wearing the engagement ring Thierry gave me, and he has not asked me to remove it, or to release him in any way whatsoever.’

‘Yes, I had a suspicion that that was the way things were when one of the local people employed here blurted out that he felt so sorry for you. And Olivier was vague about his previous engagmenet when I questioned him about it. Unfortunately I did it in my sister’s presence as I couldn’t really credit that he’d be so stupid as to be engaged to two women at once. I could see her growing uneasy.

‘He didn’t even mention your name—I got that from Hassan Mohammed—so she won’t wonder at my failure to mention the coincidence when she realises who you are, and I know she’ll have questioned Olivier about you by now.’

‘Sorry for me!’ Lucia’s face had flamed at the phrase and she had barely absorbed the rest of his words. ‘No one has any need to feel sorry for me! If any of this is true, then this girl, your sister—what’s her name?’

‘Nadine.’

‘She has stolen Thierry from me and I’m going to get him back! Let me past, please!’

Past him was the only way she could go, she had discovered, because a semicircle of close-growing fran-gipanis blocked her way in all other directions.

‘You’d want him back when he has treated you like this?’ He was deeply contemptuous. ‘Everything else is understandable, but his failure to end one engagement before contracting another is mind-boggling. Presumably he couldn’t know how well you’d time your arrival—or how badly, depending on who is looking at it—and was intending to tell you when the new one was an acomplished fact.’

‘And you think this man is a suitable husband for your precious sister?’ Lucia flared, long acquaintance enabling her to understand Thierry’s behaviour—if any of this was true.

‘It’s complicated, and my absence is delaying the announcement,’ he returned impatiently. ‘It’s enough to say that he suits her, and I happen to think that she’ll suit him better than you would. It’s obvious to me that you’ve been a weakening influence there as it’s only in relation to you that he seems to become less than a man, whereas with regard to my sister I’m satisfied that he is what she needs—strong without being oppressive. Take off that ring, Lucia.’

His eyes had fallen to her hands in which she still held her sunglasses, her fingers twisting and turning tensely. Following his gaze, Lucia forced them to be still.

‘And because that’s your opinion I must simply give him up?’ she taunted. ‘If any of this is true.’

‘Why would I invent something like this?’

Yes, why? The simple question forced her to accept that he was probably telling the truth, and her face went still and closed as she looked away, staring unseeingly at one of the massive old baobabs that grew here on Grande Comore as they did on the African mainland to the west.

In a short while, when the sun’s reunion with the horizon began to streak the sky with lemon and amber, the giant bats of the Comoros, which hung motionless in such trees by day, would begin to emerge, but for now the sun was still a dazzling disc in the blue sky, as bright as the diamond on her finger, and the breeze that caressed her skin was tropically warm; the chill that she was beginning to feel was strictly an interior one and clashed oddly with the heat of rage.

If Thierry truly had done this to her…! The combination of pride and sensitivity that was such an intrinsic part of her nature made the humiliation unendurable, and she thought that she hated this man—this Rob Ballard—for having been the one to deal her the humiliation, knowing, as he had to, that she hadn’t seen it coming; and knowing too that a man had so little regard for her that he had left her to learn of his rejection from a stranger, which was how it would appear to Rob.

Assaulted by a sudden, panicky suspicion that she must be revealing all the anger and shame just beginning to manifest themselves, Lucia hastily put her sunglasses on before looking at him again.

Such a short while ago, before all this, Rob’s dark individuality had been appealing, even arresting—loving Thierry hadn’t diminished her healthy appreciation of personality and sex appeal—but she could no longer find anything attractive about him.

Viewing him now, from behind concealing dark lenses, all she could see was the enemy, tall and dark, the fit lines of his body relaxed beneath the casual but obviously good-quality shirt and trousers that he wore. And yet at the same time he gave the impression of being on the alert and in control, ready to deal with anything.

She hoped that she would never have to see him again. Lucia started to remove her ring, her shaking fingers a betrayal now that rage was a buffeting storm within her.

‘Don’t touch me!’ she ordered him furiously when she found her hand in his as he took over the operation.

‘I know!’ He was sardonically comprehending. ‘Right now you’re very busy hating me, aren’t you? I’m the messenger, and you want to kill me. Illogical but inevitable!’

His perspicacity infuriated her still further. ‘You enjoyed being the messenger!’

‘Someone had to be.’ He didn’t deny the accusation, but his expression had hardened. ‘I’ll keep this for you.’

He had slid the ring from her finger quite easily, and Lucia couldn’t honestly feel its removal as a loss since she wasn’t really accustomed to its light embrace, having preferred not to wear it on campus, especially as her course had entailed so much laboratory work.

‘Give it to me,’ she demanded, seeing him slip it into the breast-pocket of his dark green shirt.

‘I will when you’ve calmed down sufficiently not to make it a prop in a public performance.’ He ignored the hand that she stretched out to him while her other one was busily opening the small bag that hung on a strap from her shoulder. ‘Then you can give it back to Olivier some time when my sister isn’t around, or throw it back at him if that’s what you prefer. Unless you’d like me to do it for you?’

‘He’s not getting it back,’ Lucia stated tautly. ‘He gave it to me. It’s mine and I’ll do as I please with it.’

‘Ah! You’re going to be theatrical and hurl it into the sea,’ he guessed, a gleam of amusement appearing in his mysteriously coloured eyes.

‘I’m going to flog it and keep the money,’ she correct him impulsively. The reasoning behind her defiance was somewhat confused, except that if Thierry really had done this to her he didn’t merit any grand gestures.

Rob’s amusement had increased. ‘Very practical. Now, try to look as if we’ve just enjoyed a passionate reunion and we’ll join the party.’

Lucia hesitated, making a business of closing her bag to give herself time to think, although she already knew that she had no option. Intense pride was reminding her that several people who knew her had seen her arrival. If she failed to reappear they would guess why with some accuracy, and she could no morè bear the idea of being the subject of pitying gossip than she could have endured public ridicule.

Lifting her head, she looked at Rob Ballard and said tightly, ‘The act is unnecessary—I couldn’t enjoy a passionate anything with you—but all right, let’s go.’

‘Then smile,’ he adjured indifferently, and stood aside to allow her to precede him.

The only passion he aroused in her was passionate dislike, she reflected, with rather desperate humour. It occurred to her that she ought to be grateful to him for saving her from making a fool of herself by intercepting her search for Thierry. Lucia’s face burned as she entertained a picture of herself finding Thierry, innocently inviting his embrace and being publicly rejected, but the fact that she had something for which to thank Rob Ballard only exacerbated her resentment.

As they joined the crowd in the beautiful, big courtyard she felt his arm slide about her waist, and she stiffened.

‘I said there was no need for that,’ she reminded him stiltedly. ‘Let go.’

‘When I’m sure I can trust you to behave.’

‘Won’t your wife or girlfriend object?’ she asked tartly, chagrined to find herself curious about his personal situation. Her reaction was partly in response to the looks that he was drawing from just about every woman around—those who caught his attention offering smiles of unmistakable invitation and a favoured few winning themselves answering smiles that were undeniably charming.

‘I don’t have a wife, and my girlfriends are all very understanding,’ he murmured smoothly.

‘I suppose they have to be,’ she countered, thinking that his answer told her a lot, ‘or they rapidly become ex-girlfriends.’

‘I travel a lot,’ he offered dismissively, as if in explanation.

Lucia was having difficulty with her breathing. She knew that it was because she was on edge, dreading the moment when she saw Thierry and would know if he had really done this thing to her, but it was easier to blame Rob for the tight, breathless sensation afflicting her.

‘Don’t hold me so tight,’ she muttered angrily.

‘Don’t worry, Lucia, it’s not personal,’ he responded in a low voice for her ears only. ‘I’m not especially attracted to girls like you.’

‘And I don’t like men like you,’ she retaliated promptly.

‘Great.’ He gave her a sharply scintillating smile. ‘We should get on perfectly.’

‘Or not at all—’

She broke off as her eyes encountered a bright red-gold head some distance away, and a tiny sound of acute distress escaped her as she looked for and found the young woman clinging to Thierry Olivier’s arm. The nightmare was real.

The arm about her waist tightened, reminding her of the urgency with which Rob’s fingers had grasped her shoulders when he had first accosted her.

‘You’ll be all right,’ he asserted in a hard voice.

‘I know I will,’ she flared.

‘And your heart isn’t breaking.’ Rob was openly taunting now, as if he actually wanted her furious.

‘No!’

Inwardly she was coming apart, but she would never admit it, never show it to anyone, and least of all to this man who had already seen too much of her, who had seen her openly disbelieving when he had told her the truth, and who must now feel only pity or contempt—either of which were anathema to all that was proud and sensitive in her.

‘Because you didn’t really love him.’ His smile was savagely derisive this time.

‘Because I know I can get him back,’ she contradicted, in an absolute rage with him and the world, and saying just anything. ‘If I want him. I’m not sure that I do.’

Rob’s eyes had narrowed, and it was a moment before he spoke, observing idly, ‘You definitely don’t need him.’

‘I don’t need anyone!’

It was pride driving her to make these wild claims, because it was all she had now, and no one must guess at the humiliation that was scalding her.

‘That’s one thing I knew about you before I’d even set eyes on you,’ Rob commented in a tone of agreement.

Lucia ignored that, forcing her lips into the shape of a smile as she became aware that several people nearby were regarding them curiously, although Thierry was not yet aware of her presence.

‘So that’s her—your sister?’ she prompted in a low, taut voice, staring at the woman whose colouring was the only thing she appeared to have in common with her brother, and whose oval face was still and serene.

‘Nadine,’ he confirmed, ‘who does need Olivier. So you’re going to let her have him, aren’t you? Your hands, Lucia.’

Only then did she become aware that her hands were clasped in front of her, their tense fingers twisting and turning agitatedly again, and she flushed, forcing them free of each other and letting them drop to her sides.

She didn’t care; she wouldn’t care, she told herself frantically. She wouldn’t let these people destroy her—Thierry and that woman, and this man who saw too much and knew how devastated she really was.

‘How did they meet?’ she asked, managing a netural tone despite the unevenness of her breathing.

‘Nadine has been working here at the hotel.’

‘Nepotism,’ Lucia accused smartly, intent on keeping him the main focus of her anger because somehow it seemed safer that way under the present circumstances.

‘She knows the business. She did a course at the hotel school in Johannesburg.’ Rob made it sound as if he was being incredibly magnanimous, bothering to enlighten her that much, but then he gave her a hawkishly challenging look.

‘Strange! Hassan Mohammed didn’t mention gratuitously opinionated and critical. “Such a vivacious, sunny-natured, loving girl” were his exact words, but perhaps something is traditionally blinding him.’

Lucia knew Hassan well. He had clearly been exaggerating, but she supposed that the description could apply loosely. When she wasn’t wounded in pride and heart, she liked and got on with people.

She had felt a pang of envy when Rob had mentioned his sister’s training. Because it involved dealing with people, the hotel industry had always attracted her, and she had been looking for some unhurtful way to tell her father that she wanted to go to the hotel school rather than getting her degree when the unexpected, fatal heart attack had hit, and there had only been time for a loving urge to ease his final minutes with a promise to go for the degree that meant so much to him.

She had done it, confident that when the results came out she would have passed. And she had come back to the Comoros to fulfil her promise to Thierry, knowing that she was unlikely ever to have to use her qualifications for a number of reasons—including Thierry’s reactionary dislike of the idea of a wife who worked, unless it was to help him on the estate.

Nevertheless, she had come intent on requesting a few weeks in which to unwind after the mental pressures of the last year before they started planning their wedding, and she’d been hopeful that he would be agreeable to her at least taking a temporary job at one or other of the new hotels’ which had been erected on the island in proof of international faith in the Comoros’ burgeoning popularity as a holdiay destination.

However briefly, she yearned to experience more of the sort of contact for which she had acquired a taste in South Africa, earning her air fares between Johannesburg and Grande Comore by waitressing at a restaurant in the evenings and working on the tills of an up-market chain store on Saturdays and Sunday mornings.

Now it occurred to her that, without Thierry, a job was a dire necessity as she hadn’t bothered to save a full return fare this year. In effect, she was stranded here, and not even a national. She could only have become Comorean when they’d married, gaining a proper national identity at last, plus the sense of belonging that she imagined must come with being settled and part of a pair.

Lucia sent Rob Ballard an oblique look from behind her sunglasses.

‘She won’t be working once she marries Thierry,’ she ventured.

‘She has quit already.’ His glance was slightly curious.

‘Then—’ She hesitated, but the urge to phrase it antagonistically wouldn’t be suppressed. ‘She has got my man, so can I have her job? Or any job?’

‘You’ll have to apply to Personnel, or ask Chester Watson—the manager here,’ he elaborated, seeing her blank look. ‘They do the hiring and firing and I don’t interfere. I’ll introduce you to Chester in a minute as I’ll have to leave you to announce this engagement for the happy couple, and I don’t want you anywhere near them until you’ve got yourself under better control than you have now.

‘But why don’t you go back to South Africa and get a job? The Comoros aren’t really your home.’

‘They were going to be. Neither is South Africa, and I barely remember England because we moved around the Indian Ocean most of my life. My mother tried to persuade me to go back with her and study in England after my father died, but Johannesburg was nearer and cheaper, and by that time Thierry and I had fallen in…’ Her words faded as Lucia realised that what she was describing was an illusion. ‘My father was—’

‘Ernest Flanders, the marine biologist,’ Rob supplied, when she broke off again as she wondered why she was bothering to confide anything at all. ‘He made some impressive discoveries, and it seems that you’re set to continue his work eventually as it’s marine biology you’ve been studying, isn’t it? Johannesburg always strikes me as an incongruous place to do it, inland as it is, but, of course, Wits degrees are recognised worldwide.

‘Hotel work seems a bit of a waste for you. Why don’t you go back and find something that will utilise your specialised knowledge?’

She was surprised that he should know so much about her, but she didn’t dwell on it, riled by an awareness that his advice was far from being disinterested—proffered for his sister’s sake rather than hers. He wanted her off the island.

‘Why? Are you afraid I’ll embarrass Thierry and your sister if I hang around?’ she challenged defiantly. ‘That I’ll cause trouble—try to get Thierry back?’

‘And succeed? Haven’t you learnt anything this afternoon about the dangers of being over-confident?’ Rob derided with deliberate cruelty, and Lucia was very glad of her darkened lenses, because while she could keep her mouth in the shape of a smile she had no control over anything her eyes might be revealing.

‘Go back to South Africa or home to England, Lucia. There’s no suitable work for you here, and at this stage of your career, fresh out of university, no research organisation or publisher is going to give you the sort of funding your father must have had to be free to roam around the ocean for so many years.’

‘I’m staying,’ Lucia insisted, wishing that she could come up with some dignified reason for doing so, hating the idea of his knowing just how stupidly over-confident she had been in coming back to the island without giving any consideration to the possibility that Thierry might no longer want her and that she would be left trapped here, unable to afford to leave.

‘If I can’t get a job here, I’ll try somewhere else—one of the other hotels, probably.’

He studied her in silence for several seconds, his eyes very hard. Then he shrugged. ‘Do as you please, but I think you should bear in mind that if you make any attempt to sabotage my sister’s relationship with Thierry Olivier I will make you regret it.’

The arm round her waist took on the quality of steel, so she was perplexed by his sudden, flirtatiously caressing smile until he added authoritatively, ‘Don’t stop smiling, Lucia. Olivier has just seen you, and he and Nadine are both looking this way now.’

‘I don’t want to speak to them yet.’

She couldn’t keep a panicky note out of her voice. Even if no one else guessed what she was going through, Thierry should, and the thought was unbearable. She couldn’t even bring herself to look in his direction for the moment

‘Until you’ve planned your strategy?’ Rob mocked. ‘You won’t have to speak to them. I’ll take you over to meet Chester Watson now, and then I’ll go and make the great announcement for them, as that’s the way my sister wants it. But just remember what I’ve said. No trouble—no spoiling her day, please, Lucia.’

CHAPTER TWO

LUCIA’S face ached from smiling and smiling as she pretended that she didn’t care, but the glass of champagne that Rob had taken from a tray borne by a passing waiter and handed to her had a tendency to shake if she didn’t concentrate.

It was difficult to concentrate on anything at all when her inner turmoil was so distracting, but she was determined not to let anyone know how shaken she was so she kept on smiling, forcing herself to talk sociably when she was introduced to Chester Watson—an attractive, stocky Englishman whom Rob said the Ballard Group had poached from one of Kenya’s most famous hotels.

It was obvious that Chester held his employer in high esteem, and Lucia saw why. Their conversation touching briefly on hotel business at one point, Rob became very much the high-powered tycoon, decisive and commanding, but without being condescending, looking at Chester as he spoke, using his name and soliciting his opinion.

They were soon joined by the young woman in whose company she had first seen Rob. Madelon Brouard was a few years older than Lucia, glamorous and sufficiently sophisticated to be able to reveal her interest in Rob without being crass about it in any way, even when he had his arm round another woman’s waist.

‘Incidentally, Chester, Lucia thinks she’d like a job here,’ Rob mentioned after the introductions were completed.

‘You would love it, Lucia,’ Madelon immediately put in enthusiastically. ‘I work in the hotel shop. It is the best employment I have had, and I have done most sorts of work. I was infected so badly by the wanderlust that I could not go home to take up my place at university when the one year of travelling I promised to myself ended. So here I stand, unqualified for all but casual labour to this day. But I have learned several languages and had many wonderful experiences. Did I say, Rob? Chester talks of moving me into Nadine’s post.’

‘So you won’t be replacing Nadine, Lucia,’ Rob said significantly, with a mocking smile that added silently, Although Nadine has replaced you in another area.

‘In fact, I’ve an idea that we might have something unique for you, Lucia,’ Chester told her. ‘In view of who you are—Ernest Flanders’ daughter—and your own special interest and abilities. Oh, yes, I’ve heard a lot about you since I’ve been here. You have fans on the island, it seems, and, of course, your father is remembered with admiration.’

‘I’m sure I can be useful,’ Lucia submitted eagerly. ‘And, while I can’t match Madelon’s several languages, I am as fluent in French as in English, because when we weren’t living in the Comoros we’d often be in places like Mauritius, Réunion and the Seychelles, and I usually had to attend French schools.’

‘And you get on with people?’ Chester probed.

‘Very well,’ she claimed confidently, and was piqued by Rob’s sceptical smile.

Well, of course he was an exception. What else did he expect when he had been the bearer of bad news, delivering it with more sadistic enjoyment than compassion? Not that she wanted his sympathy, or anyone else’s either—

It was at this point in her angry thoughts that Rob removed his arm from around her waist, and Lucia was subject to a moment’s sheer, unreasoning panic in response to the loss of its warmth and, she realised belatedly, its support.

‘Will you excuse me, please? Nadine is sending out agitated signals so I’d better go and play my part. I won’t be long, angel,’ he added to Lucia, his tone indulgent. ‘Chester and Madelon will look after you.’

Furious, she would have told him that she didn’t need looking after if it hadn’t been for the inhibiting presence of the other two.

So it was shaming that his departure should leave her feeling so oddly bereft, but she would have died rather than show it. She watched him go, attracting as he always did much feminine attention and rewarding it with the occasional smile when eye contact was made, but she thought that she knew where his real interest lay, as it was with Madelon that she had first seen him.

Lucia turned to Chester Watson determinedly. The manager just had time to relieve her mind by assuring her that employment at the hotel included board and lodging if required, when someone interrupted, demanding his urgent attention.

‘Perhaps you’ll come and see me tomorrow morning and I’ll tell you what I’ve got in mind, Lucia?’ he suggested quickly. ‘I really must deal with this now, unfortunately.’

‘I like him, but it is Rob Ballard I find attractive.’ With both men gone, Madelon seized the opportunity to indulge in girl-talk. ‘You too? I heard something, that you were engaged to Thierry Olivier previously, but Rob is much more exciting. I am not criticising your former choice, you understand, and Thierry is beautiful, but Rob is more—more of a man! You have known him long?’

‘A while,’ Lucia responded ambiguously, liking Madelon and aware that at any other time she would probably have been quite happy to play the rating game, however pointless it really was when taste was such a subjective thing.

She hadn’t meant to make use of the fiction that Rob had established, her pride rebelling at the idea of needing anyone’s help or co-operation to get her through this ordeal, but she shrank from admitting that until a short while ago she had believed that she still was engaged to Thierry.

‘Not long enough to let him go?’ Madelon prompted mock-hopefully. ‘But perhaps he will come here more frequently and remain longer if you are here, and everything is fair, do you admit? We will have fun!’

Several people who remembered Lucia began to drift up and greet her, and once again she found herself tacitly participating in the charade that Rob had initiated, smiling determinedly as they made knowing comments about her having landed a bigger fish, apparently under the impression that they were using a wittily appropriate pun.

Lucia felt ashamed of herself, but knowing the truth would have made them as uncomfortable as she would have been in telling, if the relief and happiness they all evinced at seeing her apparently unperturbed by the occasion were anything to go by.

The fact that they had obviously been concerned for her produced further emotional conflict for Lucia. She was touched to know they cared, but that they had needed to care was humiliating.

Finally, when a hush had fallen and Rob was making a simple announcement of the engagement of his sister Nadine to Thierry Olivier, Lucia made herself look once more at the man who had let her in for all this.

It was a shock to find Thierry looking at her, but she kept right on smiling, and after a moment she saw his gaze drop, apparently to her hands, now tensely locked round the stem of her glass, and then an incomprehen-sible mixture of expressions flitted over his sensitive features, presumably in reaction to the absence of her ring.

Thierry! Lucia was rigid with rage and hurt, but she understood why he had done it this way. Thierry was a sensitive yet passive man, abhorring emotional conflict in particular and too much raw emotion generally.

Even in the first flush of their youthful love just over three years ago, he had been uncomfortable with her grief over her father’s sudden death, staying away from her until he could be sure that she had it under control. Now it occurred to her that these traits had become more pronounced over the years; he had come to rely on her for so much, touchingly confident in her ability to deal with any unpleasantness on his behalf.

Lucia remembered the day that seemed to symbolise that reliance, when his beloved dog had run in front of one of the island water-carrier vehicles, and he had been utterly unable even to look at the poor animal, begging her to take it away, to find help for it if it was still alive, throwing down his car-keys for her and retreating.

She supposed that some people would have called that weak, but she had seen it as a measure of his faith in her. She understood and loved him—and now she had lost him. There wasn’t going to be any wedding, or a home that wasn’t borrowed or rented, or the security of knowing that she could stay put and never have to think about moving on.

She was doing it again, Lucia realised—the thing that had begun to disturb her over the last year, thinking of marriage to Thierry in terms of having a home. Well, neither marriage nor a home was any longer on the agenda, so she wasn’t going to worry about it now.

Abruptly, accepting the reality, Lucia raised her glass along with everyone else and toasted the newly engaged couple, her gaze resting a moment on the girl whom Thierry had preferred to her and then straying to the man whom Madelon had called ‘more of a man’.

True enough, if you believed that manliness embraced insensitivity and an unwarranted sense of superiority. Right now Rob Ballard was probably congratulating himself on having saved the day for his sister.

‘You must be thirsty!’ Madelon laughed from beside her, and, looking down, Lucia realised that she had unthinkingly drained her glass. The champagne was available because hotels which catered for foreign visitors were exempt from the Koran-based laws of the archipelago. ‘I too. I will find a waiter.’

Madelon took her empty glass away and Lucia went on staring at Rob, hating him for being the only person to know how this had hit her.

‘Lucia.’

The coolly polite greeting had her turning to confront Thierry’s widowed mother, as trimly immaculate as ever.

Although a light, in-flight meal was the only thing that she had eaten all day, the champagne couldn’t have gone to her head this quickly, but Lucia felt her smile widening outrageously, and the words that emerged from her mouth carried more expression than she had ever before permitted herself in addressing this woman.

‘Beth! Congratulations! This must be an amazingly happy day for you.’

‘Oh, it is,’ Beth Olivier agreed smoothly. ‘Especially as I see you’re taking it so well. But then, judging by the company I saw you in earlier, you’ve found someone to distract you—and probably not for the first time over the years. So, all in all, Rob Ballard has been a force for good, although I still have to deplore these big, new hotels, spoiling the coastline and doing who knows what damage to the environment.’

‘The environmental impact studies were favourable to their erection,’ Lucia pointed out, finding a perverse relish in the realisation that she no longer had to be so careful not to disagree with Beth—at least Thierry had done her one favour!

‘And unless you want to return to the barter system, or cowries for currency, their presence benefits the local people and the economy in all sorts of ways, not least by providing employment, doesn’t it? I still remember the high incidence of kwashiorkor among the island children the first time my parents and I lived here, in the mid-eighties. Hopefully that’s becoming history.’

‘Darling.’ Rob had joined them in time to hear her words, putting a casual arm across Lucia’s shoulders and addressing Beth as he continued, ‘I’m discovering that Lucia is incredibly loyal—always ready to defend me.’

His tone and smile were so indulgent that Lucia was disconcerted, needing to remind herself that it was all an act.

‘Oh, I suppose I have to forgive you, Rob, since it has been the Ballard Group’s venture here that enabled my son to meet someone so ideally suited to him,’ Beth allowed rather coyly, preparing to move on.

‘Well, I don’t suppose I’ll be seeing much of you, Lucia. I think it would be better if you didn’t come round to the estate at all, don’t you? Misguided though it was, we can’t get away from the fact that Thierry and you were once an item, and we don’t want to distress dear Nadine, do we? She’s staying with us, of course. I’m sure Rob agrees with me.’

‘Lucia is going to be too busy to have much time for casual socialising anyway,’ Rob claimed, with so much caressing significance that Lucia stiffened resentfully, effectively distracted from the additional humiliation of hearing that she was unwelcome in the Olivier home.

Still further distraction was provided by the way his fingers were now stirring idly against the smooth skin of her upper arm, their warmth and the light movement producing an inner frisson of awareness, so she hardly noticed Beth’s departure.

‘Stop it,’ she finally managed in a sharp little voice, moving out of his reach.

‘I told you, it’s not personal, Lucia,’ he drawled, the taunting challenge sparkling in the smoky eyes making them as brilliant as gems, and as hard. ‘But there is one thing about you that has actually succeeded in arousing my interest, and that’s your defence of the sort of controversial progress that goes with the tourist industry. Biologists aren’t usually part of the backlash against green concerns.’

‘And I’m not! I just happen to think people are the most important living things on the planet,’ she snapped. ‘Will you excuse me, please, and apologise to Madelon for me? She was getting more champagne, but I see someone has detained her.’

‘Where are you going?’ Rob demanded, as arro-gantly as if he had the right to know.

‘To fetch my luggage from the Olivier estate, as that’s where I left it and since Beth Olivier has just made it crystal-clear that I am no longer welcome there.’

Lucia was horrified to hear her voice trembling with the rage that she felt against the things that had been done to her today. It should have been one of the happiest days of her life—her returning at last without the prospect of yet another departure and another year’s exile lurking a month or two ahead.

‘I’ll get a car and drive you there,’ Rob said.

‘Don’t bother,’ she returned rebelliously. ‘Presumably Thierry and dear Nadine will be here a while yet, so I can be in and out while this party is still going on.’

‘I’ll drive you,’ he repeated calmly.

‘Why?’ she asked defiantly. ‘If “dear” Nadine doesn’t know anything about it, she’s not in danger of being upset, and that’s why you interfered in the first place, isn’t it? You weren’t rescuing me.’

‘Not intentionally, but as you appear to have taken advantage of the impression I set out to create, at least to the extent of refraining from saying or doing anything to contradict it, it seems that I was in fact rescuing you,’ he observed mockingly. ‘But let’s leave and get your luggage before your current mood leads you to shatter the illusion and waste all the effort you’ve put in.’

‘Thereby upsetting “dear” Nadine,’ Lucia added tartly, her hostility leaping in response to the insight which enabled him to recognise the present fragility of her control.

‘Listen to yourself, Lucia,’ Rob advised her on an iron note of warning. ‘Come on, let’s go—What is it?’

She had made a small sound of exasperated realisation, and now she hesitated, trying to work out if the little money she still had available to her would stretch to the sort of prices that she guessed most of the new hotels would charge.

‘Chester Watson was called away before he could tell me what he has in mind for me, so I’m not actually employed here yet, when bed and board will be available to me. I’ll need to book a room for tonight if there’s a vacancy,’ she admitted, trying to sound casual about it.

‘We’ll organise something if there isn’t But it can wait until we get back from the Olivier place.’

‘This thing really is full of holes,’ Lucia accused resentfully a few minutes later, when she was seated beside him in the sort of up-market French car which would have been a rarity on the island not so many years ago. ‘The housekeeper could give everything away.’

Rob slanted her a calculating look. ‘D’you think she can be persuaded or bribed not to?’

Lucia shrugged. ‘It’s possible, if she thinks she’s doing Beth down in some way. Beth has never been exactly popular with any of her housekeepers. That’s why they change so often.’

At least she didn’t have to worry about sounding disloyal now that Beth was no longer destined to be her mother-in-law, she reflected drily.

‘I understand she’s planning to go and live in South Africa once she’s seen her son safely married to Nadine,’ Rob commented.

Her brief laugh had a brittle sound. ‘She wouldn’t even consider it when I was the one he was marrying.’

‘Because she saw the damage you were doing him, and she’s a devoted mother,’ he suggestesd brutally. ‘It’s obvious that she dislikes you, but Nadine really will suit him better than you.’

‘Nadine can hardly know him yet,’ she claimed furiously. ‘And how well does she understand him? He’s a passive man for a start—the kind who turns the other cheek, if you know what I mean.’

‘Yes, and that passivity was becoming a weakness when he had a character like you willing to run his life for him. I sensed both resentment and shame in his attitude while he was busy hedging about his relationship with you. With Nadine he’ll be able to feel like a man again. You were obviously emasculating him,’ Rob asserted contemptuously.

‘What do you know about any of it?’ Lucia demanded tempestuously. ‘You can barely know Thierry either, and you’ve only just met me.’

‘I know you haven’t put him first. You left him for most of three years, didn’t you?’ he prompted derisively.

‘I had to get my degree—’ she began.

‘Of course you did,’ he agreed sardonically. ‘Naturally that came first. You’re a career woman.’

‘I don’t believe this! Do you really have some kind of reactionary prejudice against women with careers?’ Lucia taunted, genuinely startled.

‘No prejudice at all, Lucia,’ he corrected her smoothly. ‘How can I when so many key positions within the Ballard Group are occupied by your sex? But Thierry Olivier doesn’t need a career-orientated woman for his personal partner anymore than I do.’

‘You? You’re the complete opposite of Thierry.’ Sheer astonishment provoked the spontaneous protest, but then she caught herself up. ‘For one thing, you’re utterly insensitive.’

‘And he’s so sensitive, leaving you to learn that you’ve been replaced from whoever might tell you? But add possessiveness to whatever other faults you’ve decided I have and you’ll know why I’d hate to be personally involved with someone who doesn’t put me first.’

‘I’d call that egotistical,’ she argued.

‘That too. Whatever, I like warm, generous, emotional women who give all of themselves to a relationship, not just the part that isn’t reserved for the pursuit of ambition.’

‘I’m really not very interested in knowing what sort of women you like,’ Lucia told him dismissively, although just for a moment she had found herself intrigued.

But the exchange had been too personal—an attack on her, in essence—and if he really thought that she was career-obsessed to the exclusion of love then it just showed how little he knew about the whole situation, and she ought to be indifferent to his opinion—as she was!

‘And I already know what sort of men you like—when you can be bothered with them at all,’ Rob returned amusedly.

‘The same kind dear Nadine likes, obviously—and isn’t she going to find it a little difficult to believe you’re interested in me?’ Lucia added curiously as the question occurred to her. ‘She’s your sister, so she must know what your tastes are.’

‘We’ll appear to drift apart in due course.’ He was unperturbed. ‘Yes, as you’ve said, the thing has holes in it, but it was the best I could come up with in the necessity of the moment.’

‘You’re going to find it inconvenient if I insist on maintaining this fiction you’ve devised,’ she ventured maliciously.

‘Unfortunately for you, fortunately for me, I won’t be around for very long.’

‘Then, believe me, I consider myself equally fortunate!’

Said feelingly, it made him laugh, but he didn’t take it up. Initially Lucia was relieved to be left to her thoughts, but she swiftly discovered that it had been the challenge he’d presented and the consequent need to keep arguing with him that had kept her strong. Allowed to dwell on what Thierry had done to her, her hold on herself loosened and she weakened rapidly, in danger of breaking down.

Behind the dark lenses, she blinked furiously, and it required an effort to make her lips stop trembling.

‘Wait here,’ Rob instructed her when they drew up outside the house on the estate that Thierry had inherited from his father. It was a typically French Colonial building, only to be expected as the islands had been French before three of the four had opted for independence in the form of a Federal Islamic Republic, and Thierry’s father had been French. ‘I’ll get your things and talk to the housekeeper. How many pieces of luggage are there?’

She told him jerkily, hating herself for letting him do this without her offering even a token protest; hating herself for having let him take charge in the first place and continue to control the situation, but terrified of all that she might betray if she attempted to speak now.

So she sat there in the car with the window open, a little soothed by the island scents carried on the tropical afternoon breeze, for these were the Perfumed Isles to those who lacked the sense of evolution that made another sobriquet, that of the Coelacanth Isles, equally romantic.

The estate produced ylang-ylang, the base for most perfumes, and from here she could see a small plantation of the trees with their strange, twisted shapes but exotic blooms. Precious woods, vanilla pods, which were an offshoot of the orchid, and the spices for which the islands were famous—cloves, coriander, saffron and more—all played their part in giving Grande Comore its uniquely characteristic fragrance.

From where she was she could also see part of the lower slopes of Mount Karthala, the volcano dominat-ing the island, its past eruptions responsible for the stretches of black rock which alternated with white sands at certain points along the coast and extended beneath the ocean to be visible through the clear turquoise water. The emissions periodically issuing from vents in the mountain’s sides were a reminder that it was still active.

Rob Ballard’s reappearance distracted her. Lucia watched him striding towards the car, carrying her luggage as effortlessly as if it were weightless. So tall and lithe, he had a loose, easy way of moving that was utterly self-confident, and she felt a surge of hostile emotion that was mostly resentment. It was galling to have to accept help from him, especially under circumstances as embarrassing as these.

She supposed it could be said that she was actually using him, since his assistance wasn’t really aimed at her at all, but she could take no comfort from the thought. Too much shame was attached to the mere fact that she should need to make use of him.

He was smiling sardonically as he got into the car after placing her luggage in the boot.

‘You were right; the housekeeper was amenable to forgetting you and your luggage had ever been here. She really entered into the spirit of things, especially after I hinted that you and Madame Olivier are mortal enemies. I gather she’s on the verge of seeking employment elsewhere.’

He paused, treating her to brief, raking assessment. ‘I also implied that it was me you’d really been looking for, but because we’re both Ballard you’d somehow got my whereabouts confused with my sister’s.’

‘Like a typical dumb blonde,’ Lucia supplemented caustically, disgusted with herself for feeling relieved on hearing him.

‘You’re not exactly blonde,’ he observed dismissively as he started the car.

‘Give me a few days! I’ve hardly seen the sun these last few weeks because of my exams.’

‘Scarcely the greatest of the sacrifices you’ve made to your future career,’ Rob mocked, the reminder unkind because just for a second or two she had forgotten Thierry, revelling in the awareness that she was at last free of the pressures attendant on keeping her promise to her father.

‘As it turns out! How old is this precious sister of yours?’ she demanded abruptly.

Catching the antagonistic note, he shot her a con-temptuous look.

‘Don’t blame Nadine. She couldn’t have stolen Olivier from you unless he wanted to be stolen. He’s not that weak. My sister is twenty-five,’ he added neutrally.

‘Twenty-five?’ Lucia repeated with heartfelt outrage. ‘And she still needs her big brother going around smoothing the way for her, shielding her from anything that might upset her? I’m only twenty-one and I haven’t had anyone looking out for me like that since I was a teenager.’

And she didn’t want or need anyone doing so either, did she? Her mother was a remote figure, so, essentially, she had been alone in the world since her father’s death—a condition which marriage to Thierry would have ended. Now it looked as if she was going to go on being alone, neither belonging to anyone nor with anyone who belonged to her.

‘And look at you now!’ he rejoined mercilessly. ‘It’s none of your business, but Nadine has had some miserable experiences in the past, so she deserves this chance of happiness.

‘She has the sort of quiet personality that can invite bullying in certain circumstances, but she won’t get that from a non-confrontational character like Olivier, and in return she’ll be able to use her particular strength—an instinctive knowledge of the subtle tricks of a very old-fashioned kind of femininity—to boost him. Strange as it seems, the relationship works.’

‘Oh, and because of all this—this marriage made in heaven—I really ought to sit back and let her have him?’ she challenged indignantly.

‘Why not? You don’t really want him.’ Rob sounded indifferent.

‘Perhaps not, but I could still get him back,’ she asserted, suddenly in a mood of wild perversity.

Of course she didn’t want Thierry back! Not now, when he had proved himself so undeserving of her love, she acknowledged in silent fury; but getting him back would prove to Rob that she was worth something as a woman—

Only why should she want to prove it, and to this man specifically? The only opinion of her that mattered was her own, and she knew her worth so she had nothing to prove—nothing at all!

‘Try it,’ Rob was inviting her softly.

‘I just might,’ she flung back at him defiantly.

‘You’ll regret it.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

‘Yes.’ It was silkily ruthless, and she met it with a brief, scornful laugh. ‘Warning you, anyway—and warning you too that you’ve got a way to go still before you’re free to give way to tears or a trantrum or whatever it is you do when you’re thwarted, so I suggest you try to control your pique for the time being.’

Pique! She really and truly hated him, Lucia decided tempestuously, although not entirely for the way he was trivialising her feelings, because her pride half-welcomed that as being preferable to having him know how badly this had hit her even while her sensitivity was outraged by his unfeeling attitude.

But how could he know just how precariously she was teetering on the edge of losing control of her emotions when he had known her so short a time? It was infuriating, the way he kept guessing what was going on in her heart and her head, and guessing so accurately.

‘What’s the tariff?’ she asked, carefully expressionless, when they reached the hotel, and when he told her she worked out that she could just afford a night here, plus, perhaps, a meal this evening, as breakfast was included. After that she would be broke, so she just hoped that she would be able to begin whatever job Chester Watson thought he had for her at once.

‘Of course, it would be more appropriate to the illusion we’re trying to establish if I simply installed you in the suite I use here—and there is a second bedroom,’ Rob went on, a gleam of mockery appearing in his eyes as she opened her mouth to protest ‘Relax, Lucia! There’s a limit to what I’m prepared to do in my sister’s interests. I’m not inflicting you on myself.’

‘I wouldn’t agree anyway. You can’t dislike me half as much as I dislike you,’ she flared, automatically removing her sunglasses as they entered the spacious, ultra-modern reception area, and then wishing she hadn’t but deciding that it would constitute too much of a betrayal to replace them. ‘Oh, hell!’

‘What now?’ he demanded irritably as she came to a halt.

Lucia had recognised the handsome face and soft dark eyes of one of a trio of young men on duty at the reception counter. She regarded Rob warily.

‘Was Hassan Mohammed the employee you said felt sorry for me?’ she asked stiffly.

‘Yes.’ The answer was devoid of sympathy, understanding or even amusement, yet he was looking at her expectantly. ‘A past or future interest, Lucia?’

‘A friend,’ she emphasised, wondering what had made him ask such a question, and in that particular tone. He couldn’t possibly see her as some sort of femme fatale, especially when Thierry had just rejected her!

Lucia drew her shoulders back. So there was to be one last call on her strength today. Her friendship with Hassan went back to the days when they had been childhood playmates, the first time she and her parents had lived on the island. He was one of the kindest people she knew, but she didn’t want his pity and he had to be convinced that it was superfluous.

She tilted her chin at an angle, fixed a smile to her face, willing her eyes to be clear and shining, and went forward, aware of Rob Ballard at her side.

Mercifully, Hassan made no reference to Thierry, being more interested in hearing whether she thought she had passed her exams and telling her how delighted he was to have secured a position here where he was being trained in all aspects of the hotel business.

Once again Lucia was aware of Rob as the dynamic magnate, as it was obvious that Hassan and the other two young men considered themselves honoured by his brief attention when he asked a question or two.

‘Lucia may be joining you on the staff temporarily if Chester Watson feels she has something to offer,’ Rob told Hassan when the formalities of registering were concluded.

Lucia absorbed the ‘temporarily’, and she was no longer smiling as they turned and moved away from the counter.

‘What are you hanging around for?’ she demanded aggressively in a low voice. ‘I hope you’re not expecting me to thank you?’

‘I’d be disappointed if I was, wouldn’t I?’ he retorted sardonically in an equally low voice. ‘Don’t worry, you’re free of my company as of now. I must get back to the party outside. But, much as we both wish this could be a permanent parting of the ways, I’ll need to see you some time tomorrow so we can discuss whether it’s necessary for us to continue with this act.’

‘It isn’t!’ she assured him in an intense, hostile whisper, which made his brilliant smile come as a surprise.

But it was only for the benefit of the men at the counter and the handful of other people around, as she realised when he raised his voice and said, ‘I’ll see you later, angel.’

Then he was striding easily away from her, attracting the usual amount of fascinated attention but ignoring it, presumably intent on taking up with Madelon Brouard where her own inconvenient arrival had forced him to leave off, Lucia decided acidly.

A few minutes later as the young man who had brought her luggage up to her room departed, closing the door quietly behind him, she was alone at long last, the need for pretence over.

The first thought to occur to her came in the form of the belated realisation that Rob still had her engagement ring in his pocket, and she slapped her hand down onto the dressing-table top in a fury of frustration, irrationally inclined to blame him for everything that had gone wrong and all the humiliations that had been inflicted on her this day.

Then, as her shoulders slumped and she collapsed onto a pretty wooden chair, Lucia burst into tears.

CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No way—’

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

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

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

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

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

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