Escape from Desire
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

TAMARA sat up slowly, pushing a heavy swathe of wheat blonde hair back off her face. She didn’t normally wear it down, and already the hot Caribbean sun was beginning to bleach the loose wisps on her forehead silver. Cool grey eyes gazed thoughtfully out of a high-cheekboned, oval face of almost classical perfection, their expression faintly withdrawn, wary almost. It was Tamara’s habitual expression and one which had attracted the interest of more than one predatory male, until they realised that with Tamara the cool façade was more than merely skin-deep.

From the beach the sound of merrymaking and laughter was borne towards her on the light tropical breeze; from the swimming pool she could hear splashes and high-pitched childish voices, but here in the gardens of the luxurious holiday complex on St Stephen’s, there was no interruption and she had their beauty to herself.

She put down her paperback and glanced at her watch. Not long until lunch. The paperback was more of a safeguard against unwanted intruders than a compelling read; that was one of the problems about holidaying alone, but she had had little option—Malcolm hadn’t been able to come with her.

Malcolm! Sunlight glinted on the solitaire diamond on her left hand, the stone large enough to reveal its value, and yet not so large that it could ever be described as ostentatious. So typical of Malcolm. Eyebrows several shades darker than her hair drew together in a faint frown, What was the matter with her? Until now she had been perfectly content with Malcolm and their engagement. She sighed pensively. Perhaps it was the atmosphere of this tropical island paradise; or perhaps it had something to do with the fact that the majority of the other guests were young couples, still at the honeymoon stage, or older couples free of growing families for the first time, bent on recapturing the magic of those earlier days. Certainly there were families among the hotel’s many guests, but somehow the atmosphere pervading the complex was essentially one of a sensuous lethargy, which was beginning to have its effect on Tamara’s thoughts, releasing doubts and breaking down barriers she hadn’t even been aware were there.

One of the main reasons she had agreed to marry Malcolm was because of his solid dependability, his lack of imagination and sexual magnetism. That wasn’t what she wanted in a husband. In the world of publishing in which she worked, as personal assistant to the fiction editor of a prestigious small publishing firm, she had seen all too often the results of hastily and ill-considered marriages, where two people declared that they had fallen madly in love only to change their minds within six or twelve months. That wasn’t for her. She wanted the sort of marriage her parents had had. Her parents. She sighed again, remembering the love and laughter which had pervaded the first fifteen years of her life, but all that love and laughter had gone the night they lost their lives in a motorway pile-up, leaving Tamara to be brought up by her father’s aunt, Lilian Forbes. Of course Aunt Lilian had been well-intentioned—it couldn’t have been an easy task to be faced with sole responsibility for a fifteen-year-old who was perhaps too emotional for her own good, but she was a distant, unbending woman, unused to children and found it difficult to show the spontaneous affection Tamara had been used to sharing with her parents, so gradually Tamara had learned to conceal behind a cool smile the turmoil of growing up feeling herself unloved and rejected. Eventually she herself, without realising it, had adopted her aunt’s mistrust of physically displayed affection, so that the boys she met found her cool and standoffish, turning to other girls less unapproachable and thus reinforcing Tamara’s conviction that she lacked the desirability of her peers.

To compensate for this she had pursued a career while other girls in the small village in which she lived got married and had babies, and at twenty-six she now considered herself immune from the emotions which seemed to possess other girls, and had been quite happy to accept Malcolm’s proposal.

Not that she had accepted him only for the sake of being married. London was no small village and there were plenty of men alive to the possibilities hidden deep within her cool exterior, but Tamara could never overcome the deep mistrust of what she termed ‘charmers’, which she had learned from her aunt.

She had even approved of the way in which Malcolm had taken her home to meet his parents, not once but twice, for what she knew to be a ‘vetting’. Colonel and Mrs Mellors had been polite but unforthcoming, and Tamara had sensed that they would have preferred to see their son married to one of their own set. Tamara could understand why. Although she had a well paid job and had done well for herself, she did not have the ‘county’ connections to appeal to the rather snobbish Mellors. Malcolm’s father owned and ran a small country estate which Malcolm had told her would come down to him in due course, but for now he was quite content with his accountancy partnership which enabled him to maintain an expensive London flat, and the BMW car he had bought just before their engagement.

Life with Malcolm would be as calm and orderly as drifting down a canal, and suddenly for the first time Tamara wondered if she really wanted such a narrow existence.

Suddenly feeling restless, she got up, and walked towards the beach; a tall slender girl with a cool ‘touch me not’ air which clung protectively to her.

Through the cluster of palms fringing the silver crescent of sand, Tamara could see one of the couples who had been on the same flight as herself. In their early twenties, and patently on honeymoon, their pleasure in one another was like a tiny piece of grit marring the placid surface of her life, and irritating her into the admission that Malcolm and the marriage they would have was not what her parents would have wanted for her.

The young couple were ducking one another playfully in the water; Malcolm hated any demonstrations of affection in public. What would their honeymoon be like? He had suggested they spent it in the Algarve; his parents had friends who owned a villa there and the golf courses were excellent.

Was that really what she wanted? she wondered; a husband who devoted himself to golf while she played bridge with his friends’ wives?

Telling herself that she was being stupidly emotional, Tamara gathered up her belongings prior to changing for lunch. Many people didn’t bother, simply eating at the poolside tables dressed completely informally, but Tamara felt after a morning in the intense heat of the tropical sun, her body covered in oil, that she wanted to shower and then eat somewhere where it was cool. She normally tanned well, despite her fair skin, but because she had never been so near the Equator before she was deliberately taking extra care to protect her skin from burning.

The hotel complex was attractive—bungalows for family occupation dotted the grounds, ablaze with jacaranda, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and passion flowers, but she had a room in the hotel itself—a double one, since she had originally been coming away on holiday with another girl from the publishing firm, but she had been transferred to their New York office at short notice and so Tamara had come away alone.

Malcolm had encouraged her. He was rather busy and felt that he himself would be unable to get away until their honeymoon, and as it was almost two years since she had had a proper holiday—her aunt had been very ill for a long time and Tamara had helped to nurse her through her terminal illness, using up all her holiday leave—Tamara had felt that she needed the break.

To get to her room she had to walk through the hotel foyer, a cool, shady room with a terrazzo-tiled floor, cane furniture and plenty of greenery. The receptionist smiled at her as she asked for her key. All the staff were exceptionally pleasant and ready to help. Tamara smiled back, and ran quickly up the flight of stairs leading to the bedrooms.

By law no building on the island could be higher than two storeys, and it was pleasant to be able to look out of her bedroom window, and to find that the only thing obstructing her view of the Caribbean was a clump of palm trees, waving slightly in the onshore breeze.

As she stripped off her swimsuit Tamara was pleased to see that already her skin was turning a warm honey shade—Malcolm did not approve of bikinis, nor had Aunt Lilian, and Tamara had never owned one. There was a boutique attached to the hotel, and she had noticed some particularly attractive swimwear in the window when she walked past it. Her swimsuit was completely plain—a dull navy, which when compared with the bright beach clothes worn by the other visitors seemed very schoolgirlish and almost frumpish.

The water pressure in the shower could sometimes be erratic, as Tamara had already learned, but today it worked reasonably efficiently, the cool spray delicious against her hot skin.

As she stepped out she caught sight of her naked body in the mirror, her breasts warmly full, but firm, the nipples a delicate pink against the pale flesh. She tried to visualise Malcolm as her husband, the two of them sharing the intimacies of the bedroom, but her imagination refused to conjure up the image. Cross with herself, she pulled a slender cotton dress from the wardrobe, brushing her hair vigorously, and constraining it into a neat knot at the back, before slipping on loose espadrilles.

The dining room was busier than she had anticipated. She had brought her book with her as protection and had hoped to secure one of the smaller tables furthest away from the huge windows overlooking the sea, so that she could eat there unnoticed by the other guests.

This hope was forestalled the moment she entered the restaurant because she was hailed by a plump, dark-haired woman with a friendly smile.

‘Tamara! Come and join us.’

She indicated one of the two spare chairs at the table she was sharing with her husband, and Tamara had no option but to slide into one of them, and accept the menu George Partington was handing her.

George and Dot had been on the same flight from Heathrow as Tamara and had introduced themselves to her at the airport. They were an outward-going couple, obviously quick to make friends, and Tamara suspected that, unlike her, they already knew most of their fellow guests.

The hotel was a relatively new one, and had not previously been used by package holiday firms, and consequently only half a dozen or so people on board their flight from Heathrow had had as their final destination, this particular hotel.

Among them had been the honeymooners Tamara had seen on the beach; a foursome, comprising two young couples who tended to stick together; George and Dot; two young girls, Tamara herself and a man who seemed to have come on his own and whom Tamara had glimpsed momentarily at the airport.

‘Try the shrimp and avocado salad,’ Dot encouraged her. ‘It’s delicious. Even now after several days I still can’t get used to the sight of avocados actually growing!’ Her eyes went to Tamara’s engagement ring. ‘You’re here on your own, aren’t you?’ she asked curiously.

‘Yes.’

Tamara felt reluctant to answer any questions about herself and was glad when Dot’s attention was transferred from her to the man just entering the restaurant.

Dressed in black jeans and a thin black cotton shirt, he looked sombrely out of place in a room where most of the men were wearing brightly patterned beach shirts and light-coloured trousers. He was different in other ways, too, she reflected, unable to pinpoint exactly why the man standing by the door should look so unlike any of the other holidaymakers. A shock of thick dark hair brushed the collar of his shirt, thick dark lashes concealing his eyes from her quick scrutiny.

‘There’s Zachary Fletcher,’ Dot murmured to George. ‘Ask him if he wants to join us. Isn’t he devastatingly sexy?’ she appealed to Tamara while George redoubled his efforts to catch the other man’s eye. ‘We were talking to him in the bar last night. Oh, he hasn’t seen us!’ she exclaimed in disappointment as the other man turned and walked towards one of the small tables almost hidden away in a corner of the room.

Even the way he walked was different from other people. Tamara reflected, aware of a tense watching quality in the way he moved, quickly and incredibly quietly for so tall and muscular a man. As he moved muscles rippled under the thin black shirt, the fabric of his jeans moving against the taut pressure of his thighs. Tamara found that she was holding her breath, studying the harshly chiselled features of a face that gave absolutely nothing away; a hard, too cynical face for a man who at most could only be in his mid-thirties.

‘Devastatingly sexy’, Dot had called him, and on a wave of revulsion Tamara acknowledged that the older woman was right. The man exuded a sensuality which was quite unmistakable. There wasn’t a woman in the room who had not watched him covertly as he walked across it, and Tamara felt almost sickened by their, and her own, avid interest in a man so patently uninterested in them.

He barely raised his eyes from the table except to order his meal, and Tamara noticed that his right arm hung a little awkwardly.

‘He’s here to recuperate from an accident,’ Dot told her excitedly, adding in a confiding tone, ‘He’s in the Army—oh, he didn’t tell us that, but I couldn’t help noticing it on his passport as we came through Customs.’

Tamara glanced at him again, convinced that Dot must have made a mistake. He didn’t strike her as the type of man who would accept the tight discipline of the Army—unlike Colonel Mellor, Malcolm’s father, whose considered opinion it was that Modern Youth badly needed a spell of ‘square bashing’—he looked like a loner, a man who deliberately withdrew himself from the pack. And that thick long hair didn’t suggest the Army either. He lifted his head, catching her off guard, cool green eyes surveying her with devastating intensity, before she was released, trembling inwardly, from the laser beam of his searching glance.

After they had finished their lunch Tamara accompanied the Partingtons back through the hotel foyer, lingering with Dot over the window display in the boutique.

‘Won’t you just look at that bikini!’ Dot sighed, pointing out the briefest scraps of cyclamen pink cotton Tamara had ever seen in her life. ‘If only I had a figure like yours! Why don’t you go in and try it on?’ she urged, her eyes twinkling as she added, ‘Treat yourself and your fiancé.’

‘Oh, I couldn’t!’

‘Of course you could. I’ll come with you, George can wait outside.’

Like it or not, Tamara was propelled inside the boutique, Dot telling the attractive dark-skinned girl who stepped forward to serve them that they wanted to see the bikini in the window.

‘It’s French,’ the girl explained in a soft voice. ‘And the colour will look stunning with your hair. I think you’ll find it’s your size. There’s a changing cubicle just behind the curtain.’ She indicated to the rear of the boutique and Tamara went reluctantly towards it, wishing she had had the strength of will to refuse to enter the shop in the first place, but there was no overruling Dot without actually being rude, and Tamara liked the older woman too much to want to do that.

While she stripped and changed into the brief triangles of cotton she could hear Dot explaining to the salesgirl that she and George were enjoying a silver wedding anniversary present to themselves.

‘With both our children married and their own lives to lead we decided it was now or never—before the grandchildren start to arrive,’ Tamara heard her say as she fastened the strings of the minute briefs and stared at herself in the mirror.

Her skin gleamed silkily in the half-light of the changing cubicle, almost translucent where the sun hadn’t touched it. The bikini top cupped the soft swell of her breasts, the clever stitching shaping them so that her body seemed to have a voluptuousness she didn’t recognise.

‘Are you ready in there?’

She stepped reluctantly out of the cubicle, feeling selfconscious and awkward, wishing for the first time since she had left her teens behind that she wasn’t quite so tall. She felt as though she were exposing an almost indecent length of leg, and longed for a wrap or something similar to provide her with a little more protection than that afforded by the minute scraps of cotton.

‘Oh, Tamara, you look fantastic!’ Dot exclaimed admiringly. ‘You must buy it. You’ll really stun them on the beach in that!’

‘Don’t you think it’s a little bit …’ Tamara searched for the words to describe her doubts, but Dot waved them aside.

‘It’s lovely,’ she declared stoutly. ‘You should be proud of your attractive body, my dear, not ashamed of it. Wait until that fiancé of yours sees you in it!’

‘I don’t think Malcolm would approve,’ Tamara told her faintly, surprised to see the frown suddenly creasing Dot’s forehead.

When the salesgirl moved away to answer the telephone Dot said firmly to Tamara, ‘You can tell me that it’s no business of mine if you like—after all, we have only just met, but I believe in always speaking my mind—it saves a deal of worry and trouble in the end. This engagement of yours—are your family happy about it?’

Tamara was taken aback. She wasn’t used to people questioning her so frankly, and was annoyed with herself for hesitating slightly before replying coolly,

‘I have no “family"—my parents are both dead, but I can assure you that there’s nothing to disapprove of in Malcolm. In fact,’ she added dryly, ‘there are those who consider him something of a catch.’

‘I wasn’t talking in the material sense,’ Dot explained, ignoring Tamara’s withdrawal. ‘I was talking about the fact that you’re going to marry a man who, it seems, sees your body as something to be ashamed of rather than delighted in. I thought that attitude to sex had disappeared long ago.’

‘Just because Malcolm isn’t a sex maniac, it doesn’t mean that we won’t be happy together,’ Tamara retorted stiffly.

Dot shook her head in bemusement, as though she couldn’t believe what she was hearing.

‘Oh, my dear,’ she said sadly, ‘I hope you know what you’re doing. You’re throwing away one of life’s greatest pleasures, you know. Things were different when I met George, there wasn’t the freedom there is now, but from that very first moment I knew beyond any doubt that I wanted him physically very much indeed. I did have girl friends like you, though, many of whom found out too late that without sexual desire marriage can be a very arid state indeed. Forgive me for speaking so frankly—I can see I’ve offended you, but you remind me very much of my own daughter …’

‘It’s perfectly all right,’ Tamara told her, relenting in the face of the other woman’s patent distress. ‘I suppose I am being a bit touchy, but I know Malcolm and I will be happy. For one thing …’ She hesitated and then plunged on bravely, ‘Well, to be honest, Dot, I just don’t think I have a particularly high sex drive. In fact …’ She hesitated, wishing she hadn’t begun the conversation, realising that for the first time in her life she was revealing things about herself she had never ever revealed before—and to a stranger.

‘Don’t say any more,’ Dot insisted sympathetically. ‘I think I know what’s on your mind, Tamara, but believe me, I don’t think you’re right—you just haven’t met the right man. When you do you’ll discover a side of yourself you never dreamed existed, and he, if he’s got any sense, will delight in helping you to discover your real sensuality.’

For some reason Tamara shivered, suddenly conscious that she was standing in the shop still wearing the brief bikini.

‘Buy it,’ Dot urged her. ‘Take the first step on the road to discovering yourself.’

She wanted to refuse and had fully intended to do so, but somehow she found herself leaving the boutique half an hour later clutching a glossy black carrier with the boutique’s name scrawled in gold across it, still wondering what on earth had possessed her.

George was waiting for them by the noticeboard on which the hotel pinned details of trips and activities they organised.

‘This sounds interesting,’ he told them, indicating a handwritten notice headed ‘Rain Forest Walk.’

Tamara read the details quickly and discovered that the hotel had organised a walk through the tropical rain forest which began on the slopes of the island’s volcanic mountains and which would take the better part of a full day.

‘We set off from here about eleven, drive to the rain forest, and then have lunch prior to starting the walk,’ George told them. ‘The manager here tells me that it’s well worth going. I hadn’t realised it, but apparently the rain forest covers a good two-thirds of the island; because the volcanic mountains are so steep they’ve never been cultivated, and the forest never cleared. It extends for several hundred square miles, and the paths are only known to a handful of local guides. I’m told that we stand a good chance of seeing some rare butterflies; and the parrots, of course.’

‘I don’t know if I fancy it,’ Dot told him frankly. ‘Won’t there be creepy-crawlies and snakes?’

‘Apparently not—there aren’t any snakes on the island.’

Tamara was tempted to put her name down for the walk. It sounded interesting, and after two days of simply lying soaking up the sun she was ready for something a little more physically demanding. As St Stephen’s was comparatively undeveloped there were very few organised tours apart from those involving cruising round the island and stopping off at various secluded bays for swimming and beach parties.

‘I think I’ll go,’ she announced impulsively. ‘I rather like the idea. When is it?’

‘Tomorrow,’ George told her. ‘How about it?’ he asked Dot. ‘Shall I put our names down?’

‘I suppose you might as well. It will be something to tell the kids about.’

‘Yes, I must remember to take my camera, they’ll enjoy seeing a shot of Mum “exploring the jungle”,’ George teased her.

In the end all three of them added their names to the short list.

‘The Somerfields—those are the young honeymooners, aren’t they?’ Dot asked her husband, scrutinising the list. ‘The Brownes and the Chalfonts—that’s the foursome who came together. They’re all in the fashion business,’ she explained to Tamara. ‘Alex Browne is a designer, apparently. Oh,’ she added, ‘Zachary Fletcher’s put his name down. In fact he was first on the list.’

‘If he’s been involved in an accident perhaps he needs the exercise,’ George suggested. ‘I noticed when we got off the plane with him that he was limping slightly.’

Zachary Fletcher! Tamara wished she had not decided to go. For some reason the dark-haired man disturbed her. Telling herself that it would look odd if she backed out now, she contented herself with the conviction that Zachary Fletcher was hardly likely to notice her; and then wondered why she should find the knowledge faintly depressing.

‘I think I’ll go up and change,’ she told the Partingtons. ‘I want to try and do a bit more sunbathing, especially if there won’t be time tomorrow.’

‘Wear your new bikini,’ Dot urged her. ‘We might see you later on the beach.’

When she went up to her room Tamara had no intention of changing into the cyclamen bikini, but she couldn’t resist taking it out of the bag, still amazed that she had actually bought it, knowing she would never wear it, and then, governed by some impulse she could not understand, she hurried into the bathroom and quickly changed into it, before she could change her mind, and not daring to visualise Malcolm’s reaction to her scantily clad body.

Picking up a white towelling robe and shrugging it on, she collected her book and the bag containing her suntan lotion and glasses before hurrying back outside.

The sun beat down with an intensity that burned right through her protective robe, and Tamara decided to forgo the beach in favour of the privacy of the gardens. She found a secluded spot protected by a low-growing hedge of tropical shrubs, their huge trumpet-shaped scarlet flowers almost too perfect to be real. The huge beach towel she had brought with her gave her something to lie on, and having smoothed as much of her body as she could reach with suntan cream she donned her glasses and picked up her book.

Half an hour slid by, before the book began to fail to hold her attention, which she found wandering to the antics of a tiny humming-bird darting in and out of the creeper adorning the walls of a nearby block of self-contained suites, and Tamara marvelled at the way the tiny creature delved so energetically in search of food.

She turned over, easing her stiff shoulders, tensing instinctively as she saw the black jean-clad legs in front of her, before her eyes moved slowly upwards over taut masculine thighs and a muscular chest before coming to rest on the saturnine face bent towards her.

Her skin went hot, burning with embarrassment as he glanced cynically over her body, so intimately revealed in her brief bikini.

‘Very provocative, but wasted here,’ he taunted softly. ‘Why aren’t you on the beach?’

Tamara suddenly found her voice, which to her chagrin was shaking with the pent-up force of her anger.

‘Why should I be?’ she demanded. ‘If you must know, I came here because I wanted …’

‘To be alone,’ he finished mockingly. ‘Snap! So what do we do now? Makes ourselves an interesting item of gossip or …’

Tamara scrambled to her feet, feeling at a distinct disadvantage lying at his feet like … like a sacrificial offering.

‘If you want to be alone, Mr Fletcher,’ she replied, stressing the formality of the ‘Mr’, ‘then I suggest you find somewhere else …’

‘I like it here,’ he told her calmly. ‘It’s quiet and it’s private.’ His teeth glinted in a white smile, the grooves either side of his mouth deepening, giving Tamara a glimpse of the man he might possibly be when he wasn’t either bored or indifferent. ‘Be a good girl,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure you’ll find plenty of young men to admire you on the beach, and attractive though you are, I’m really well past the age where I’m incited to lust by the sight of a pretty girl with very little on.’

Throughout this speech Tamara’s eyes had gradually widened, as her body stiffened until she was staring at him in frozen outrage, scarcely able to speak for the anger building up inside her.

‘I don’t know what you’re trying to imply,’ she gritted out at last, hands clenched furiously at her sides, ‘but if you’re suggesting that I came here deliberately because you … because I knew you come here, you couldn’t be more wrong. You see,’ she told him sweetly, releasing the fingers of her left hand and raising it a little, ‘I don’t happen to need to run after other men—I’ve already managed to catch mine!’

She knew it was a vulgar little speech, but she really didn’t care; she didn’t care about anything but banishing from those green eyes the expression which said, quite plainly, that he thought she had deliberately come to this part of the gardens dressed as she was because she hoped to attract his attention.

‘I had no idea that you came here,’ she finished with a flourish. ‘If I had I would have made a point of avoiding it.’

‘Would you indeed?’ His eyes were on her left hand, narrowed and faintly assessing. ‘Are you sure about that? Girls have been known to do strange things when they’ve been … deprived of their fiancés’ presence.’

‘You’re an expert on brief affairs with other people’s girl-friends, are you, Mr Fletcher?’ she asked scornfully. ‘Well, you can relax—I’ll never be deprived, or depraved enough to trouble you.’

‘Oh, it wouldn’t be any trouble,’ she was assured with a smoothness which caught her off guard. ‘Not normally, that is.’

His glance seemed to stroke over her heated body, drawing from her a brilliant look of hatred, and her fingers curled in on themselves again.

‘It’s just that I prefer to do my own hunting,’ he added, further enraging her. ‘Now be a good little girl and run away and play with someone else, mm?’

When Tamara eventually reached her room she gave vent to her fury, removing the garments which she was sure had caused Zachary Fletcher’s preposterous insults and hurling them on to the floor. How dared he suggest … How dared he look at her like that … How dared he imply that …

Cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling angrily under their fine brows, she turned on the shower, subjecting her body to a vigorous scrubbing as though by doing so she could punish it for encouraging Zachary Fletcher to believe she was the sort of girl who behaved in the way he had implied. And even if she was a man-chaser, she would never, ever in a million years, chase after someone like him, she decided through gritted teeth as she dried herself. Never!

CHAPTER TWO

IT was shortly before ten forty-five when Tamara walked into the hotel foyer to join the small group of people waiting there for the guide for the rain forest walk.

She saw Zachary Fletcher straightaway, but ignored him, deliberately going to join Dot and George Partington, who were chatting to the foursome they had mentioned the previous day.

‘Are you looking forward to it?’ Dot asked her, and when Tamara said that she was she added curiously, ‘By the way, what happened to you last night? I looked for you at dinner time, but I couldn’t see you.’

‘I ate in my room. I had a headache—probably too much sun,’ Tamara lied, knowing full well that the reason she hadn’t dined in the restaurant was that she wanted to avoid any further contact with Zachary Fletcher. It would have been just her luck to run into him in the dining-room and for him to accuse her of deliberately arranging it that way. Not even the brief evening telephone call she received from Malcolm had soothed her, and she was still burning with a resentment which refused to fade.

‘You’re looking very attractive, anyway,’ Dot told her, admiring the olive cotton jeans Tamara was wearing with a white tee-shirt with toning stripes in olive and rust. Over her shoulder Tamara had slung a large canvas beach bag with a slightly thicker long-sleeved sweat-shirt, sunscreen, and some other bits and pieces in it, the canvas almost exactly matching the dull olive of her jeans. The outfit had been bought especially for her holiday—Malcolm didn’t care for women in jeans, and Tamara had had to buy a pair of jodhpurs especially for her visit to his parents, who kept a couple of hunters for Malcolm’s and his father’s use.

Malcolm had insisted on Tamara learning to ride—it was expected that she should, he had told her when she protested that she was not likely to get much opportunity to use her newly gained skill in London.

She had drawn the line at hunting, though. Much as she enjoyed the stirring sight of the huntsman with his hounds and the riders in their pink coats she had no wish to emulate them.

Dot introduced her to the cheerful quartet she and George had been talking to. Alex, the fashion designer, was slim and fair-haired, his wife Sue dressed in a pair of high-fashion baggy trousers cleverly linked to the top and the man’s shirt she was wearing belted with gold suede.

Their friends, Heather and Rick Chalfont, were Alex’s business partners, although more on the financial side than the fashion, Rick explained.

‘Don’t you find it lonely being here on your own?’ Sue asked her.

‘Not really. I came away for a rest …’ Dot had turned away to talk to Zachary Fletcher and Tamara was unbearably aware of his lean, sardonic face, the mocking expression in his eyes as they rested momentarily on her flushed skin.

‘Yes, the build-up to a wedding can be wearing,’ Heather agreed sympathetically. ‘When is the big day, by the way?’

‘We haven’t decided finally yet. Malcolm—my fiancé—has to go to New York soon, and he isn’t quite sure how long he’ll need to be there. Once he gets back we’ll fix a firm date.’

‘Hardly an eager bridegroom, then?’ Zachary Fletcher drawled, joining in the conversation. ‘Haven’t you warned him what happens to laggards in love?’

Despite his reference to the old Border ballad Tamara knew that he was implying that she was the one urging Malcolm into a marriage he wasn’t too keen on, and she longed to be able to tell him that he was quite wrong and that Malcolm simply wasn’t the type of man to rush anything.

‘Oh, we all have trouble getting our men to the altar these days,’ Sue laughed. ‘That’s what comes of sexual equality. There isn’t the same need to rush that there used to be—It’s much better too, don’t you think?’ she appealed to Tamara. ‘Just imagine marrying a man and not knowing the slightest thing about him sexually. It’s almost as archaic as an arranged marriage to a stranger.’

‘Yes,’ Tamara agreed blankly, hoping that her expression wouldn’t betray her, but how could she admit in front of Zachary Fletcher that her sexual experience of any man, let alone Malcolm, was practically nil?

Oh, there had been a few tentative caresses when she was in her teens, but shyness and Aunt Lilian’s stern lectures had withered any natural desire to experiment, and as the years had gone by she had grown more and more ashamed of having to admit the truth. Not even Malcolm knew that she was a virgin. The subject had never come up, and for the first time she began to wonder how Malcolm would react. There had been a time in her late teens when she had begun to think that the truth must be written all over her face, and it had made her awkward and shy when she was approached by boys, but it was something she had eventually overcome.

It had been obvious that Zachary Fletcher hadn’t guessed the truth, and she had to fight down her rising anger as she remembered the previous afternoon.

When Sue claimed Dot’s attention to her horror Tamara found her běte noire at her elbow, looking hard and intensely masculine in the same black jeans, this time with a cotton shirt, which again had long sleeves and was unbuttoned only at the throat, where she could just see the first crisp tangle of body hair shadowing his chest.

‘I hope you aren’t going to accuse me of joining the walk simply to force an acquaintance with you,’ she managed to say in an undertone.

‘Hardly.’ The creases in his face deepened as he smiled. ‘I’d have to be paranoic to do so, wouldn’t I, seeing that I put my name down first. Do you enjoy walking?’

He didn’t really sound as though he cared whether she did or not, but Tamara forced herself to answer politely.

‘Yes, I do. I was brought up in the country …’

‘Well, today’s jaunt won’t be any country stroll. These mountains are pretty steep and I believe the jungle is extremely dense …’

‘Are you trying to put us off?’ George joked, suddenly joining in the conversation.

‘Not at all. I probably gave the wrong impression. To tell the truth, had I thought the walk would be too arduous I wouldn’t be attempting it myself.’ Zachary Fletcher touched his left leg as he spoke, and Tamara remembered George saying that he had seen him limping.

‘I was involved in an … accident,’ he added tersely, obviously reading the question in George’s eyes. ‘I’m here to recuperate, and take enough gentle exercise to get myself fit to resume normal work.’

‘You’re in the Army. I believe?’ George prodded.

‘Yes.’

The word was completely devoid of expression, but Tamara had been looking at his face as he spoke, and she caught her breath as she saw it change visibly, closing and hardening, a shutter coming down over his eyes. What on earth had there been in that innocent question to provoke a reaction like that? Unless of course he had been cashiered or some such thing. She had heard of such happenings from Malcolm’s father, and knew they were a terrible disgrace … What did it matter why he had reacted the way he did? she asked herself. She couldn’t care less about the man.

‘Looks as if our transport has just arrived,’ George commented. Outside the hotel were two Land Rovers, equipped with extra seats, and open to the fresh air.

‘Everyone ready?’

Everyone was. The quartet were first at the Land Rovers, followed by the young honeymoon couple. Tamara was about to sit beside them when the guide prevented her.

‘You sit in next one,’ he told her. ‘I sit here,’ and she had perforce to join Dot and George in the rear Land Rover, her heart thumping uncomfortably when Zachary Fletcher slid his long length in beside her.

There wasn’t a lot of room in the vehicle; Dot and George were both inclined to plumpness, and Tamara could feel the heat of Zachary Fletcher’s thigh burning through the thin fabric of her jeans. She tried to move away surreptitiously, but it was impossible to do so without squashing up to George.

The guide climbed into the foremost Land Rover and shouted something to the driver and they were off.

The road leading from the hotel complex was smooth and well tarmacked, but the moment they turned off it they were on a road which by the looks of it had been neglected for years. As the wheels of the Land Rover plunged into a huge pothole Tamara was flung bodily against Zachary Fletcher. It was like running full tilt into a stone wall, she thought breathlessly as his arm came out to save her and she was held against the hard, muscled wall of his chest and the taut flatness of his belly. It could only have been seconds before he released her, but they were the longest seconds of Tamara’s life. The heat of him seemed to burn right through her thin clothes, imprinting itself against her body. Scarlet colour ran up under her skin as she realised that just as she had been aware of the male contours of his body so he must have felt the soft fullness of her breasts.

‘Tamara, are you all right?’

Dot’s anxious query intruded on her thoughts. ‘I’m fine,’ she assured her, adding formally, ‘Thank you, Mr Fletcher. I was caught off guard.’

There was something distinctly enigmatical about the look he gave her. ‘It happens to us all,’ she was assured, ‘and please … call me Zach, Tamara.’

‘Oh, just look at that view!’ Dot exclaimed, drawing attention away from Tamara’s faintly flushed cheeks. ‘Have you ever been to the Caribbean before, Zach?’

‘No.’

All of them looked to their right, where the ground fell away to the sea, a vivid and impossible blue melting into lilac mists on the horizon.

‘It’s so beautiful!’ Dot sighed.

‘But very poor,’ George reminded her. ‘I can’t get over the poverty in which a lot of the islanders still live. When you’re here you begin to understand the pull Communism has for some of these people.’

‘You’re right,’ Zach agreed. ‘Already there are strong left-wing groups in all the Caribbean islands. They get their education and training in Cuba, and unless the West starts sitting up and taking notice we’re going to wake up one day and find we’ve lost the Caribbean to Castro.’

‘Oh, no politics, please!’ Dot protested. ‘Let’s not spoil our holiday! Tamara, just look at that building perched down there on the hillside. It looks as though it’s amost ready to fall into the sea!’

It was quite a long drive to the beginning of the rain forest, made worse by the appalling condition of the roads. Although St Stephen’s was one of the largest of the Caribbean islands, it had been very badly neglected; however, the hotel manager had told Tamara that they were hoping that the revenue from tourists would help to improve the facilities of the island.

The plain which stretched from the coast to the rain forest was dotted with banana plantations, the island’s main crop, and after a while the novelty of seeing the fruit protected from the insects by bright blue plastic bags began to wear off. The closer they got to their destination the more aware Tamara became of a certain tension in the man seated on her left. There was nothing in the relaxed manner in which he lounged in his seat to betray any emotion. His face was slightly averted as though he were studying the countryside, so that all Tamara could see was the taut line of his jaw and the dark hair growing low in his nape, but the aura of tension emanating from him was unmistakable; she could feel her own nerve endings shivering in primeval response, and she wondered what was wrong.

‘Oh, that must be the restaurant,’ Dot commented when a solitary building appeared on the edge of the plain just where the volcanic mountains rose steeply to the sky, their sides clothed in thick tropical vegetation.

The plain itself seemed to be completely bereft of dwellings of any sort, although one or two dusty cart tracks looked as though they must lead to either villages or houses.

‘Most of the plantation owners built their homes on the Atlantic side of the island,’ Zach explained when Tamara commented on the uninhabited landscape. ‘It was considered to be healthier and less likely to be attacked by pirates.’

His face seemed to relax a little as he spoke to her, the bones softening a little from their previous fixed rigidity, and then the Land Rovers started to climb up towards the restaurant.

Made of wood, its original green paint had long ago faded to a dull olive, and inside, despite the overhead fans, the air was thick and clammy. Tamara had never felt less like food, and while the other members of the party settled themselves at the long trestle tables she went back outside, finding it both cooler and fresher.

‘Not hungry?’

She hadn’t realised that Zach Fletcher had followed her, but shook her head mutely, unwilling to admit to the momentary weakness which had overcome her inside the restaurant.

‘Me neither.’

The admission surprised her and her expression betrayed the fact. ‘What’s the matter?’ he asked grimly. ‘Aren’t insensitive brutes like me allowed to have normal feelings?’

‘I never said …’ Tamara began defensively, but he cut her short, and mocked, ‘You never said, no. You didn’t need to, those eyes of yours say it all. Quite a contradiction, aren’t you? On the one hand we have the modern, liberated young woman, holidaying apart from her … fiancé, and yet those eyes could belong to a sheltered novice, with no more idea of modern mores than a babe in arms.’

‘If you’ll excuse me, I’ve decided that I’ll have something to eat after all,’ Tamara said pointedly, brushing past him, but once inside the restaurant she could do no more than drink a glass of lemonade and toy with the salad she had ordered.

It was after two o’clock when their guide preceded them along one of the paths leading from the restaurant up into the mountains.

Within half an hour Tamara was perspiring heavily, glad of her cotton tee-shirt, and she wasn’t the only one. Everyone seemed to be feeling the effects of the intense humidity, even, to her surprise, Zach Fletcher, whose shirt front was dark as his perspiration soaked into it, and yet unlike the other men he made no move to either roll up the long sleeves or discard the shirt altogether. Perhaps it was because he knew how darkly attractive he looked in the black shirt and pants, Tamara thought acidly, instantly dismissing the thought as stupid; he wasn’t the sort of man who needed to attract female attention by dressing dramatically; even in the same type of floral bermudas and shirts favoured by some of the more flamboyant guests, any woman worthy of the name would give him a second look.

The deeper they progressed into the forest, the more closely entwined were the trees; mahogany predominant among them; vines twining chokingly around them, dead and decaying vegetation lining the forest floor, the sweet rotting smell making Tamara long for a breath of clean, fresh air. Once or twice their guide stopped to point out to them an orchid, growing among the rampant greenery, and occasionally the laboured sound of their breathing was broken by the shrill screech of a parrot, although they never actually glimpsed the birds. On several occasions they could hear the sound of water, but they never came in sight of any of the streams which the guide told them ran through the forest, with apparently spectacular waterfalls in places.

Tamara regretted her decision to join the walk; there was something oppressive and unwholesome about the forest and its environs, something that made her flinch and long to be out in the open once more.

At her side Zach seemed to be having no problem in keeping up with the others, despite his claim that he was recuperating from an accident, but at one point when the guide called a halt and Sue shrieked out suddenly when she caught sight of a small lizard, Tamara, who had been looking in Zach’s direction, saw him pale suddenly beneath his tan, perspiration beading his skin, his fingers curling into his thigh.

‘Are you all right?’ Her low, impulsive question seemed to free him from whatever had held him in its grip, because his face suddenly seemed to relax.

‘Fine,’ he assured her hardily. ‘Come on, I think our guide’s ready.’

They tramped through the forest for over two hours, Tamara steadily growing more and more oppressed by the entwining branches blotting out so much of the sunlight, and the heavy, unreal atmosphere around them. It was almost as though she had stepped into one of the enchanted forests of her childhood, and now, as then, fear mingled with the feeling of unreality.

They had climbed quite steeply, the path sometimes so narrow that they had to walk in single file. At one point, as promised, the rain suddenly started to fall, in saturating sheets which penetrated even the thickness of the vegetation, and the guide, who had come prepared, handed out umbrellas, large enough for two people to shelter under together.

Tamara shared hers with Zach, marvelling at the abruptness with which the rain came and went.

‘It’s something you get used to,’ Zach told her laconically, causing her to comment in surprise, ‘You said you hadn’t been to the Caribbean before.’

‘I haven’t, but one jungle’s very much like another.’

He didn’t say anything more and Tamara had the conviction that subject was not one he wished to take any further. For some reason they seemed to have been teamed together for the walk possibly because everyone else was already with somebody, and she wished passionately that she had never decided to participate in the walk. She didn’t like the atmosphere pervading the forest and she didn’t like the prickles of awareness she experienced every time some inadvertent movement brought her into physical contact with Zach Fletcher.

He glanced at his watch and frowned.

‘We ought to be heading back. There’s no dusk as we know it at home here. Another couple of hours and it will be fully dark.’

He walked forward, catching hold of the guide’s arm, and spoke to him. The guide shook his head vehemently.

‘No turn back yet,’ he told Zach. ‘Soon, but not yet. Not much further now,’ he added with the air of a commander urging his flagging troops to greater effort.

‘How much further can “not much” be?’ Sue groaned when they had walked for another fifteen minutes. ‘I’m bushed!’

Tamara could only agree. She felt hot and sticky and was longing for a cooling shower. Perspiration had darkened the front of her hair, and her mouth felt dry. She was also beginning to regret the lunch she had refused, distinct pangs of hunger assailing her. She had some biscuits in her bag, but it was too much effort to put it down and search for them. Everyone else seemed tired too; everyone, that was, apart from Zach, who despite the sweat stains marring his shirt, still seemed able to keep up with their guide without flagging.

Ahead of her Tamara saw the guide stop. They had reached a small clearing where a fallen tree had created a tiny space.

With groans of relief the small party came to a standstill, with the exception of the guide, who for some reason appeared to be slightly nervous. Tamara watched him as his eyes darted round the clearing as though looking for something. Zach wandered over to her side.

‘Something wrong?’

He too was watching the guide, and although he hid it well Tamara thought she glimpsed a certain disquiet in his eyes, before he veiled them and said smoothly, ‘Ready for the return journey? I—’

He broke off suddenly as the clearing was invaded by half a dozen men carrying machine guns and dressed in camouflage fatigues.

At her side Tamara heard Zach swear under his breath, and then they were being herded together like so many cattle, the muzzle of one gun pressing icily against Tamara’s throat as she stumbled over an exposed tree root.

‘Just what the hell is all this about?’ Zach addressed the question to the man who was obviously in charge of the small group, and it seemed the most natural thing in the world for him to take command; none of the other men challenged his right to do so, and Tamara suspected they were all, like her, too dazed, to think of asking the question ‘why’.

Motioning to them to keep still with his gun, the man came forward while two of his men menaced them with raised guns.

‘You are to be held hostage until our Government releases the men it wrongly imprisoned six months ago,’ they were told in excellent English. ‘It is time the rest of the world knew what is happening here in the Caribbean. We are tired of incompetent capitalism, governments who allow us to starve, who refused to educate children above the age of fourteen, who condemn their own people to a life of poverty and degradation.’

‘Holding us hostage would not alter anything,’ Zach told him. ‘But if you release us without harm now, I promise you that we will make sure that you are allowed to put your view to your Government.’

None of them moved a muscle. They were all looking to Zach to provide a lead they could follow. Tamara couldn’t believe it was actually happening. She looked round for their guide, but he was nowhere to be seen. Dot was clutching George’s arm, her face pale and strained. The two honeymooners were in each other’s arms, while Sue and Heather moved a little closer to their husbands. Only she had no one to turn to.

‘Yes, and then they would throw us in prison with our comrades,’ the guerrilla sneered. ‘No, my friend, we need you too much to release you. Without you our Government will never set our comrades free; they will be shot. Come …’ he ordered roughly, ‘we have four hours’ march ahead of us. It will be at least that time before your hotel raises the alert, and by then they will have no chance of finding you. Very few people know this forest as well as Kennedy here does,’ he told them, with a jerk of his gun in the direction of a grim-faced islander, one of the two who was standing over them with a gun.

Out of the corner of her eye Tamara saw Heather sway towards Chris, her face paper-white.

‘Oh, God help us, Chris,’ she moaned softly. ‘What are we going to do?’

Her words seemed to release a wave of panic over all of them. Tamara herself shivered uncontrollably despite the clammy heat; only Zach remaining cool and controlled in the face of their predicament.

‘Come,’ the leader of the guerrillas commanded. ‘It is time to leave.’

‘You can’t get away with this!’ Alex Browne protested in a tight voice. ‘The English Government …’

‘Is many thousands of miles away, my friend,’ the guerrilla mocked him, ‘and the time when nations were prepared to risk any confrontation for the sake of their subjects is long past. Your Government will do nothing for you …’

‘And neither will yours for you!’ George burst out. His skin had an unhealthy purplish tinge and Tamara saw Dot reach out towards him, shaking her head warningly.

‘It’s his blood pressure,’ she murmured to Tamara, adding in terror, ‘Oh, my God, what’s going to happen to us?’

‘You cannot expect us to walk as fast as your men,’ Zach pointed out to the guerrilla. ‘If you intend to take us all hostage you will have to keep us alive—your Government will never hand over your comrades in return for lifeless bodies, and if you want to keep us alive you will have to make allowances …’

The islander frowned, appearing to consider Zach’s statement, and then turned and said something in a rapid patois to one of his companions, who shrugged and grimaced.

‘We cannot afford to waste time,’ he told Zach.

‘And neither can you afford to take risks with our lives,’ Zach reiterated smoothly. ‘Wouldn’t it be simpler to just take one of us hostage, while allowing the rest to go free? Especially if we were to guarantee that your story was printed in the British newspapers; that way your cause would receive far greater publicity than it would simply by holding us to ransom. Your own Government is hardly likely to make public the knowledge that people cannot holiday safely on St Stephen’s.’

Tamara held her breath while the guerrilla leader consulted with his companions. Would he accept Zach’s suggestion? She had no doubt that if he did, Zach intended to be the one to volunteer to remain behind, and she wondered if she had been mistaken after all, and he was in some way connected with the Army. It wasn’t a question she could ask.

The sun was dropping swiftly towards the horizon, fear an almost tangible emotion in the small clearing as they waited for the guerrillas’ decision.

‘You,’ their leader commanded roughly, turning back to Zach, ‘do you give your word that what we want will receive publicity?’

‘Whoever said that the pen is mightier than the sword knew what life was all about,’ Zach muttered sardonically under his breath to Tamara, as he inclined his head, and then looked across at George.

‘Mr Partington will inform the British Consul of what has happened and of our bargain—the freedom of my companions in return for publicising your cause.’

‘Our Government has no wish to quarrel with Britain and is sure to release our comrades once it is known that we hold a British hostage.’

Tamara wasn’t so sure. There had been several cases in the Press recently where lone Britons had been kidnapped and held for many months without the Government doing anything to negotiate their freedom. Or at least that was the way it seemed on the surface.

‘Very well then,’ the guerrilla leader pronounced. ‘Your companions may go free.’ He shouted a command to one of his men, who came forward, machine gun at the ready, and indicated that they were to follow him.

Tamara went last, unable to resist one backward glance at Zach. He was standing with his back to them. What was he thinking? she wondered. Was he afraid? Surely he must be.

‘Wait!’

The curt command halted her, as the guerrilla leader stepped forward and grasped her arm. She had been walking alone at the rear of the small column and she shivered under the cold assessment of eyes that seemed to strip her clothes from her body.

‘You will stay.’ Turning to Zach, he added grimly, ‘Alone you might just be foolish enough to try to escape—you have the look of that sort of man about you, my friend, but now that we have your woman you will stay. And if you try to leave we will kill her.’

From a distance Tamara heard Dot’s brief protest, before George silenced her, unaware of the look of helpless appeal in her eyes as they clung to Zach’s rigid back.

It seemed an aeon before he turned, pivoting round slowly, no expression at all in his eyes.

‘Do not argue with me,’ the guerrilla leader told him, ‘otherwise they shall all stay.’

‘You’re wrong,’ Tamara wanted to protest. ‘I’m not his woman,’ but the words stuck in her throat. She couldn’t bear to look at the others as they stumbled out of the clearing, her last hope that the guerrillas might relent and allow her to leave fading as she heard their footsteps die away.

‘Come,’ the guerrilla leader ordered. ‘It is time we left. You were right,’ he told Zach, ‘the others would have held us up. If you try to delay us by falling deliberately behind I shall give your woman to my men. It is many weeks since they have had a woman. Our camp is remote, and our life there too spartan to attract women like yours.’

Tamara, who had gone ice-cold when she heard his threat, refused to look at Zach, too mortified by the guerrilla’s assumption to meet his eyes. Why didn’t he tell the other man the truth? That they were little more than strangers.

She knew the answer several seconds later, when, under the pretext of helping her up a steep incline, Zach muttered softly to her, ‘I know what you’re thinking. This isn’t the time for petty conventions. If I told them the truth I’d be condemning you to gang-rape. As long as they think you’re my woman they won’t touch you. Even among mercenaries there’s a certain code of ethics, and besides, they probably think that if any of them tried to touch you I’d react in the same way that they would in similar circumstances—kill with my bare hands,’ he elucidated grimly, ‘and none of them would want to be the one I took with me before they cut me in half with those neat little Russian toys they’re carrying!’

CHAPTER THREE

DARKNESS fell with the swiftness of a cloak, enveloping the forest in a heavy blackness that threatened to stifle Tamara. Its only mercy was that it obliterated the sight of the men guarding them, their guns never moving a fraction from their threatening positions.

With the fall of night came the rain; not rain such as she was used to at home, but an actual curtain of water which started without warning, and ceased fifteen minutes later, leaving them with their clothes plastered to their backs, and the track beneath their feet slimy with thick mud.

Tamara lost count of the number of times she stumbled; she had long ago lost track of time. At first she had tried to keep her spirits up by telling herself that soon the others would be back at the hotel; the alarm would be raised and they would be rescued, but she knew she was living in a fantasy world. It would take the others at least four hours to get back to the hotel, by which time they could be anywhere. The jungle seemed to press down upon her, tautening her nerves until she was ready to scream and run, heedless of what might happen.

As though he sensed how close she was to losing control, Zach grasped her arm. An hour or so before she would have bitterly resented the familiarity, but now she was helplessly grateful for it and its reminder that she was not completely alone.

‘Faster!’

The gun was cold against her flesh and she shuddered, almost losing her footing as she tried to hurry. At her side Zach increased his pace, the grip of his fingers biting into her arm, and she remembered that he was recovering from an accident and that George had told her that he limped slightly. The pace the guerrillas were setting was gruelling; Tamara ached in every muscle, even a simple activity like breathing was excruciatingly painful, but at her side Zach seemed to be completely unaffected—he wasn’t even breathing faster—unlike her.

She stumbled again as the path started to rise, sprawling almost full length, despite Zach’s attempts to save her. Above her she heard the unkind laughter of their captors, and weak tears flooded her eyes.

‘Get up!’

It was Zach speaking, his voice iron-hard and inflexible, cutting through her self-pity.

‘I can’t go any further,’ she protested wearily.

‘Oh yes, you can,’ he replied grimly, ‘and will—unless you want to be left here to die. These guys aren’t playing games, and they don’t make allowances. Now get up. I value my life even if you don’t value yours.’

He had spoken so quietly that Tamara had had difficulty in hearing him, his voice deliberately flattened to prevent the words from carrying, and once again she remembered his profession.

‘It’s all right for you,’ she protested bitterly. ‘I suppose you’re used to this. You …’ Her breath was cut off savagely as she was hauled to her feet and held against him, while his mouth came down on hers, almost depriving her of breath. Again she heard the men laughing, but this time in a different way.

It was only seconds before Zach released her from what hadn’t been a kiss at all really, more a harsh punishment, her lips bruised from the abrasive pressure of his, her nostrils full of the musky male scent of him. Just before he stepped away from her, he gritted furiously, ‘You little fool! Any more cracks like that and we’ll both be dead, understand?’

Too late, she did, all too well, and as she walked on on shaky legs, couldn’t stop herself from visualising what might have happened had any of the guerrillas guessed what she was going to say. The information that Zach was connected with the British Army, in no matter how nebulous a fashion, was bound to provoke an unpleasant reaction.

Half blinded by tears, sick and shaking, Tamara forced herself to go on, not knowing who she hated the most, Zachary Fletcher or the guerrillas.

How long they walked along that narrow winding track which she felt sure must be circling the mountains instead of climbing them Tamara didn’t know; she only knew that the physical effort of simply putting one foot in front of the other was a greater ordeal than anything she had experienced in her life; there was no room for thought, or even fear, only the sheer physical necessity of keeping going.

The sporadic downpours of rain were something she had become accustomed to, like the soaking clothes plastered to her skin and the discomfort of walking in wet shoes. As they brushed past trees and through dense undergrowth, so thick in places that it almost obscured the trail, Tamara felt as though she had strayed into a horrendous nightmare of the sort where, during her childhood, she had been forced into headlong flight, pursued through the gnarled and tangled blackness of a forest by some nameless but terrifying oppressor.

A damp tangle of leaves brushed her skin and she felt a momentary sharp pain, but her brain was too weary, too involved in the process of simply walking, to register more than faint surprise. It was only later when yet another of the huge moths which seemed to infest the forest flew in front of her face and Tamara raised her arm that she realised what had happened, her whole body stiffening in primeval fear and horror so that Zach, who had been walking behind her, cannoned straight into her.

His ‘What’s the matter?’ turned into a small sound of understanding as his fingers circled her wrist with hard warmth and found the alien body of the huge leech which had attached itself to Tamara’s soft flesh.

Her scream was suppressed instinctively, her eyes closing in childish reaction to blot out the sight of the pulsing body of the leech as it clung to her arm.

‘Move!’

This time Zach ignored the harsh command, forcing the guerrilla leader to drop back to see why they had stopped.

‘Your flesh is tender and more to their liking than ours,’ he commented when he saw what had happened. ‘Here.’ He tossed Zach a box of matches and asked laconically, ‘Do you know what to do?’

‘I think so.’ Calmly Zach struck one of the matches and applied the flame to the body of the leech. Tamara watched in dazed horror as the bloodsucker shrivelled and dropped to the ground. Her body was trembling so much she could barely stand, shock waves of reaction flooding over her, drowning out everything but her revulsion for what had just happened.

‘Walk!’

The gun thrust into her side reminded her of her surroundings, and obediently she started to move slowly along the trail. They must have come miles. What time was it? She wasn’t wearing a watch and found it impossible to calculate the length of time that had passed since their capture.

The higher they climbed the less dense the vegetation became; although it was still thick enough to provide a thick scree to cover the steep slope they were ascending. Tamara could remember reading in her holiday brochure that because of the climate even the tops of the mountains were covered in heavy foliage, and the more time went on the more she came to realise the implausibility of them being rescued quickly.

At last the guerrilla leader called a halt, although Tamara could see nothing in their surroundings to distinguish it from anywhere else on their trek.

‘That way,’ he instructed, motioning them towards a sheer-sided mass of shiny black rock. ‘Hurry!’

It was only when they drew nearer that Tamara realised that what she had mistaken for a narrow cleft in the volcanic rock face was, in actual fact, the entrance to a much deeper fissure.

‘I discovered this place when I was a boy,’ the guerrilla leader told them, adding boastfully, ‘I doubt there are half a dozen people on St Stephen’s who know of its existence, and certainly no one who would be able to lead anyone here.’

Tamara could well believe him. She shrank back instinctively from the almost Stygian darkness that seemed to reach out greedily for her as they approached the fissure, and this time it was Zachary Fletcher who urged her on, his face unreadable and remote, as though his thoughts were elsewhere.

The fissure was so narrow that they could only walk through it in single file, and Tamara, who had always had a horror of being underground, felt her skin crawling with a terror remembered from a childhood visit to the caves at Inglewhite, many years before. But this time there were no understanding parents to hurry her out to the welcome fresh air, and she bit down so hard on her lower lip to prevent herself from protesting that she could taste the blood.

At last, when she felt she could not stand another second trapped in that narrow passage, it opened out into what was obviously a series of caves. The first one was empty, and despite the number of openings leading off from it, the guerrillas seemed to have no difficulty in selecting one of them, and herding their prisoners into it.

This time the tunnel was mercifully short and it opened into a large cavern, well lit by Calor gas lamps which threw eerily reflected shadows over the shiny rock face. Furniture of the type used on camping holidays—folding canvas chairs, a table, a cooker next to a container of gaz with a fridge on the other side of it was scattered incongruously inside the cavern, and as though he sensed her surprise, the guerrilla leader laughed at Tamara.

‘Even men such as we need our “home comforts”, but do not be deceived, we are quite capable of living off the jungle if need be.

‘Kennedy,’ he addressed one of the men over his shoulder, ‘make us some food, while I show our guests to their quarters. You will be very comfortable,’ he threw over his shoulder to Tamara. ‘I shall give you the honeymoon suite.’

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