Kissed by Moonlight, page 15
“Thank you.” As she accepted it she anxiously searched his face for something in his expression to give her comfort. Nothing. His icy politeness amounted to indifference.
“Another beautiful day,” he said in a tone better reserved for a casual acquaintance he didn’t particularly wish to encourage. “You’ve missed the best part of it. I’ve been for a swim.”
His attitude jarred. How she hated this smooth manner that could shake off last night’s bitterness as if it had made no more impact than water on a seal’s back. How dare he look so unruffled while she was quivering with fury and hurt? She set her cup and saucer down quickly before its rattle gave her away.
What good would having yesterday back do for her? She had blamed her own deficiencies, her blind loyalty to her father and her intolerance of any plans David had for Chimera that did not exactly follow the original format. She had forgotten how exasperating he could be when he set his mind to it. There was also the matter of the scarf, which hadn’t been sorted out yet. Given yesterday back, she would behave in just the same way.
“Hungry?” he inquired.
“Starving,” she said. She would beat him at his own game by not admitting to her loss of appetite in case he remembered – and he would – her inability to eat well when she was unhappy or in a temper. She would eat with gusto even if it choked her. She would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that even for a moment she had regretted her part in what had happened between them last night.
“By a strange coincidence, I anticipated you would be –” Blast his sneering mouth and his shrewd, knowing eyes! “– so I took the things out of the fridge for a full English breakfast. I’ve done my share, now it’s your turn. I like my bacon crispy.”
He folded his arms and tipped his chair back on two legs, in line with the angle of his head. Was he going to sit there and watch her?
“Is there a clean tea cloth or something I could wrap around me to protect my dress, please?”
“I’m pretty certain that Carmen keeps a spare apron somewhere. But as any apron that accommodates her splendid hips will wrap around you three times, perhaps you’d better settle for the tea cloth. There’s one on the rail.”
“Carmen?” she queried, reaching for the linen cloth and fastening it around her waist before taking up her station by the stove.
“The woman who keeps an eye on the house for me. Cleans, stocks up the fridge – all that.”
Ah, yes! The señora she’d talked to on discovering the bay.
“She was here bright and early this morning with our daily bread, and she’s coming back later in time to cook our supper. I told her to leave the cleaning and that we’d forage lunch for ourselves.”
She had spotted the selection of crusty and soft rolls and the loaf of bread and wondered where they’d come from. “Sounds fine to me,” she said in an offhand voice, layering strips of bacon across the frying pan.
Had things been right between them it would have been more than fine. It would have been idyllic to be alone here with her husband, cooking for him, cleaning. In kinder circumstances she would have been tempted to ask him to send Carmen away so she could cook the evening meal as well. But ...
His hard voice crushed into her thoughts. “You don’t have to look so dismayed. I’m not condemning you to a day of domestic chores. The house won’t fall down if it misses getting the flick of a duster and fruit and rolls will suffice for lunch.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” she said, transferring the bacon onto a plate and cracking the eggs into the frying pan.
“I can see why,” he said drily.
She looked down into the frying pan and saw that out of the three eggs, two of the yolks were broken. He’d put her off by sitting there in high and mighty anticipation of a ruined breakfast. Knowing that while she was useless in lots of things, cooking was a natural asset – something she loved doing and did well – added to her frustration.
“There,” she said slamming the plate down on the table in front of him. Her expression clearly said, “I hope it chokes you.” She set the basket of rolls on the table and went back for her own plate.
They lay side by side on the warm sand, close, yet apart. Since breakfast, they had hardly spoken.
He emerged from a deep, pensive silence to say, “It can’t go on like this.”
“No,” she agreed. “What do you intend to do about it? It’s obvious you’ve given it some thought.”
“Yes, I have.” He was lying on his front, wearing the black swimming trunks he’d discarded before going for his swim last night. He levered himself up on his elbows and looked at her. The burning sun that was baking her skin a deeper shade of golden brown was not as fierce as the torrid torture of the all-over exploration his eyes were making of her body. His scrutiny made her perspire; moisture beaded her upper lip and the hollow between her breasts left exposed by the cut of her swimsuit. “I’m sending you home,” he said starkly.
How could he look at her in that ravishing, hungry way and placidly announce that he was sending her home? Her mouth rounded on a small, hysterical laugh. “Home? You mean home to England?”
“My timing was off, Pet,” he said in dry self-derision. “I came back for you too soon. You were only a woman on the outside. Inside, you were still an adolescent with your head full of dreams.”
Last night she would have given anything to be home. Now she didn’t want to go. She closed her eyes against the expression on his face and the vivid blue, sheet-of-glass look of the sky. The dazzle remained under her eyelids as tears she must not let him see.
“I’m not an adolescent,” she said. “You’ll have to come up with a better explanation than that.”
“I don’t have to explain anything,” he said in quiet menace, “but I will. I’ve a job to do. I can’t give it my best while you’re around. I’ve tried to be patient with you, but I’ve finally had to admit that it’s not going to work. Your prejudices go too deep and I just can’t deal with the situation. It will be better for both of us if you go home.”
His work – that’s all he cared about. He wasn’t a man running on normal feelings; he was a robot powered on ambition. That hard streak of ruthless dedication hadn’t taken long in coming through.
“Look,” he said swiftly, “I know it sounds as if I’m putting the onus on you, but I’m not. I’m to blame. I should have known my workload was too heavy to accommodate a bride. Brides should be spoiled a little, be given time and attention. It’s their right. I should have known you’d be too much of a distracting influence to have around.”
“I don’t know how you have the nerve! I haven’t managed to distract you from Justine. When you both disappeared from the barbecue I know you came here,” she blurted out hotly, “because I found the scarf you’d been wearing and it didn’t walk here by itself.”
“No. It’s true that I left the barbecue to come here. The storm was about to break. I wondered if Carmen had remembered to make sure the shutters were secure. I decided to check for myself rather than risk bringing you here and finding the place half wrecked.”
“Oh! But Justine came with you?” she persisted.
“I see now what last night’s lockout was about,” he said, a mocking smile on his mouth. “If you’ve made up your inexorable little mind that I brought Justine here, nothing I say will convince you to the contrary.”
“How can I believe there’s nothing going on between you and Justine when you won’t give me a straight answer? You despise Geoffrey Hyland as much as I do. You wouldn’t have anything to do with him if Justine weren’t involved. You tolerate him to be near her.”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you there might be another consideration? I could be tolerating his money. If he hadn’t come in with me, I couldn’t have taken up the option on Chimera. You didn’t think I had access to that much ready cash myself, did you?”
“I never gave that side of it a thought.” She wasn’t too forgiving. He hadn’t denied involvement with Justine, only admitted to another consideration. She kept the thought that it couldn’t have been easy for him to include a man like that in the deal sealed behind her lips.
“I had it written into the contract that I could buy him out.”
“That’s something, anyway.”
“He had the foresight to insert a time clause.”
Which explained why he had been working himself into the ground. “Can you beat it?”
“I must.” His mouth hardened. “I won’t let anything, or anyone, stop me.”
Meaning me, she thought. “David, this is going to sound terribly repetitive. I’m tired of saying ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ But why didn’t you tell me about the time clause?” She couldn’t bear the thought that her presence, her behavior, might stop him from beating Geoffrey Hyland. If she’d known she wouldn’t have been so obstructive.
“Perhaps I thought it was in my own best interest not to tell you. If you’d known that, you might have been even more demanding of my time. Anything to prevent my getting sole control of your precious Chimera.”
She bit her lip, disturbed and shaken. Then anger came to cancel out all other emotions. Anger against herself for softening toward him. If he could think that of her, let him. “How well you know me,” she said haughtily.
She placed her hands on the beach towel she was lying on, swinging her feet around and under her. His hand came out and held her in this half-rising position. “Where do you think you’re going?”
“In the house to shower and dress. Then you can take me back to the hotel. If your mind is made up, I see no point in delaying. We might as well get back so that you can arrange my flight home as soon as possible.”
“No. We came here for two weeks. That’s how long we’re staying.”
She tried to find a reason for his decision not to send her home straight away. She had a horrible suspicion that she was going to regret this in a moment, but could it be that he wasn’t going to send her home? Was it a bluff? Had he said he was sending her home with no serious intention of carrying out this threat – to shock her into seeing reason? Or had he meant it then but regretted it now, and was he playing for time in the hope that two weeks on their own would work its own magic and the situation would come right between them?
His derisive, scorn-flecked eyes held hers. “You don’t think I’m going to let you make a laughing stock of me by returning to the hotel after only one day of our official honeymoon, do you?”
She should have known better. “You’d make me stay here against my will to save your face?” she said contemptuously.
“Against your will?” The hand that had stopped her from getting up slid into the deep cutaway side of her swimsuit, seeking its own answer.
He angered and irritated her to the point of screaming frustration. His mocking tongue violated her sensitivity and pride. What pride? Her pride was useless when compared with the effect his strong fingers had on her senses.
His hand moved around to her front, teased over her already tautened stomach muscles, hesitated deliberately so that her body didn’t know which part of it was going to delight to his touch. He kept her there, suspended on intolerable expectation, his fingers moving tormentingly backward and forward across her stomach.
“The sun is very hot. Your skin is burning. Shall we go in? If you stay out much longer you’ll pay the consequences,” he said.
The better part of the day lay ahead of them, with no fear of interruption until Carmen came to start the evening meal. If she went inside with him she would pay another kind of consequence.
His fingers applied themselves to a more penetrating exploration. His hand moved slowly under her suit top to cup her breast, teasing the nipple until it tautened to his touch. She knew he was testing her. Afterward she would remind herself of this and console herself with the fact that she had tried to act upon the knowledge by endeavoring to cool her emotions. Now his mouth as well as his hands was pursuing her. She turned agonizingly away from his lips, but he anticipated she would do this and his chin swerved faster than hers, cutting off escape and deflecting her mouth into the kiss.
It was too much. Suddenly she was pouring all the sweet selflessness of her love into the kiss she gave him back. He paused in what he was doing, even his lips held still in surprise. Then his mouth took the initiative once more, closing against hers in a kiss of brutal passion; at the same time his hands no longer delicately pampered but took bitter delight in revenging themselves on her body. It was as if he was punishing her for some misdeed she was not aware of committing.
Her brain went into shock at the unexpectedness of it, though the blockage to her mind wasn’t total because she still had a thread of reasoning faculty. She knew he was hurting her deliberately. Why? And yet still he was giving her pleasure. How could she enjoy his cruel passion?
Her mind objected strongly, but her body was on a different level and it shamed her with its fevered response. She could not understand the twisted state of her emotions that made her react this way.
The abuse stopped. His hands no longer pursued her and her body stopped burning to the abrasive roughness of his caresses, leaving her feeling strangely bereft.
Perhaps she had become acquiescent because she sensed something out of the ordinary, a reason she was slow to comprehend. Her gentle lover hadn’t turned into her tormentor without just cause.
She looked at him through her lashes and saw his suffering, the pain and torment of barely controlled passion. She raised up her body, touched his cheek in a gesture of understanding and compassion, and knew she was looking into the face of self-denial. Why?
A muscle jumped under her fingertips before her hand was dragged savagely away. She couldn’t understand the dark anger in his eyes. “So that’s how it is. You’d do anything to tie my hands so I can’t do any more harm to your precious Chimera. I can violate your body, but my hands must be kept off Chimera. It’s too late. Progress won’t stop if I don’t regain full control. The plans are too far advanced. But perhaps that no longer matters. What is important to you is that I don’t gain control.”
“David, I honestly don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You she-devil. You’ve never been like this before ... all sweetness and fire. I can do what I like with you and you won’t stop me. You’ll even encourage me to do more.”
“I’m your wife. Please – you’re not making sense.”
“Don’t lie to me. One thing I’ve always admired in you is the honest way you defend your ideals. Your unbending attitude to the changed face of the island has always angered me, but never before have you hidden behind pretense. I’ve argued with you about it, but I’ve admired the way you’ve upheld your viewpoint with honesty and courage. I don’t like this turnabout. I don’t admire you for what you’d be willing to do to thwart me. I made a big mistake in telling you I can’t do my job properly when you’re around because I find you too much distraction. You’re using it as a weapon against me. You think if I make love to you for two weeks, I won’t be able to send you away – and you’re right. If. you stayed, I could never beat the time clause. So I cannot allow you to stay.”
She shook her head in stunned disbelief. Did he really think she was vindictive enough to do that to him? Why was she so surprised at his opinion? She’d tried to block him all the way, scornful of what he’d achieved, making dreadful accusations. He didn’t even know that he’d won her around to his way of thinking because she’d been too stubborn to tell him.
She tried to tell him now. “I’ve been wrong, David. I want you to beat the time clause. I can’t bear the thought of your being bound to a man like Geoffrey Hyland. I’ll do anything. I won’t distract you. I’ll keep out of the way.”
He listened to her in silence, a mirthless smile on his lips, and then he said harshly, “No, Petrina. We must endure one another’s company. I can see no way around that because I will not humiliate myself by returning to the hotel until a decent interval has elapsed, although it doesn’t have to be dragged out for the full fortnight. Meanwhile, you won’t distract me for the simple reason that I won’t let you. I intend to keep out of your way as much as possible.”
She realized wearily that he thought this was another trick to make him lose his head. Some hope of that. She looked deep into his eyes, glinting at her in anger, and saw no affection, no tenderness on his face. Her heart lurched in despair as she acknowledged to herself the futility of trying to make him see.
The roles were reversed. How ironic that just when she had come to believe in him, to trust him, he was suspicious and distrustful of her.
The days weren’t so bad. She could stretch out on her solitary towel on the white sand and let the sun dull her senses. The nights, spent alone in the vast double bed, were more difficult to bear.
The situation could not be hidden from Carmen, who came in daily to bring supplies and to clean and cook for them. She knew they slept in separate bedrooms and was clearly puzzled by it. Her beloved sehor, who had brought such happiness and prosperity to the island, could do no wrong in her eyes and so it was Petrina who was subjected to her reproachful glances.
After ten days of strained disharmony, David said they could return to the hotel. She heard him with a surge of relief. She couldn’t have borne much more of this persecution, yet she dreaded the prospect of returning to the hotel with him, of being forced to return to England.
“David?” she asked in sudden inspiration, “do I have to come with you? Couldn’t I stay here until you’ve arranged my flight home?”
“I can see no objection to that,” he said, much to her surprise. “I’m sure Carmen will agree to remain at night instead of returning to her own home.”
“That won’t be necessary. I shall be perfectly all right on my own.”
“I disagree. In fact I must make it a stipulation. Until it’s connected by telephone, this place is far too remote for me to consider leaving you here on your own. You would be too out of reach of help if, for example, you fell ill.”
Did he realize what he’d said? “Until it’s connected by telephone” – implying that when it was he would allow her to stay here by herself. The situation had a less finite sound to it and she couldn’t keep the sudden hope out of her eyes.
