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She was nothing if not resilient, however. ‘And you may go to hell, Mr Leicester,’ she told him with all the hauteur she could muster.
A spark of interest lit Rob Leicester’s hazel eyes. ‘I see. A rebel without a cause as well.’
‘This is my first week on the job,’ she replied. ‘All I require is a little time to hone my skills.’
‘What you require is a qualified tour guide as an assistant, someone to co-ordinate your clients’ baggage, their dietary requirements and all the nuts and bolts of the job. So you can just be,’ he subjected her person and her long dark hair to a thorough inspection, ‘decorative and dazzle us with your French,’ he drawled.
‘I don’t like you,’ Caiti stated through her teeth.
A flicker of a grin revealed white teeth in Rob Leicester’s tanned face. ‘You don’t have to and I don’t have to like you, Ms Galloway. The fact remains we prepared twelve non-vegetarian dinners last night for twelve subjects of vive la France! who are all vegetarians because you ticked the wrong box.’
Caiti coloured.
‘Can you imagine, when the error was discovered, the kind of chaos it caused in the kitchen?’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said stiffly. ‘I was in a rush. May I say that your kitchen coped brilliantly? I’ve received nothing but compliments from the guests this morning.’
Rob Leicester folded his arms and regarded her impassively for a moment. Then his lips twisted. ‘Amazing what a pair of lavender eyes, hair like rough black silk and a very jaunty derriére can do.’
She opened her mouth on a cutting retort then decided to disengage with dignity—she walked away without a backward glance.
On her next encounter with Camp Ondine, she went out of her way to have everything under control but their four-wheel-drive bus broke down in the middle of the Daintree Forest in a tropical downpour. By the time she and the driver were able to organise a replacement vehicle, it was ten tired and very wet tourists she brought to Camp Ondine, four hours later than expected and two hours after the dining room was expecting them for dinner.
Rob Leicester was on hand to greet the party this time and the look he cast her spoke volumes. It was not until her tour was fed and bedded down for the night that Caiti was able to defend herself.
She was making her way wearily across the lounge to her cabin when she bumped into Rob.
‘You cannot blame me for a broken differential,’ she said, going immediately on the attack.
He shrugged. ‘There’s a theory that trouble attracts trouble.’ Khaki trousers and shirt had replaced the old jeans and sweatshirt tonight.
Caiti opened her mouth to refute his theories but he forestalled her by suggesting they have a drink.
She closed her mouth and said instead, ‘Why would I want a drink?’
‘Because you’re tired, you’ve had a tough day?’ he hazarded.
‘Let me rephrase.’ She regarded him coolly. ‘Why would I want to have a drink with you? We don’t like each other, remember?’
‘That could change. And I never said I didn’t like you.’
Caiti blinked and cast her mind back with an effort.
At the same time Rob reached behind a small bar and produced a chilled bottle of wine and a beer. ‘What I said,’ he opened the wine competently, ‘was that we didn’t have to like each other. Not quite the same thing.’
He poured the wine, popped the beer can and handed her the glass—he literally put it into her hand and closed her fingers around the stem at the same time as he invited her to sit down.
Caiti looked around. The lounge had a thatched roof held up by gnarled tree trunks. The floor was slate, dotted with thick, colourful rugs and there were comfortable settees with softly lit lamps on their end tables. Beyond the glass walls that looked out over the forest, rain dripped ceaselessly off the thatch but that only served to highlight how pleasant, comfortable and safe this safari lounge felt.
She sat down with a sigh. ‘How do you keep them out?’
He sprawled out opposite her. ‘Keep what out?’
‘The frogs.’ She shuddered. They were everywhere!
‘Ah. While you were broken down in the Daintree?’
‘Yes.’ She sipped her wine. ‘It’s just as well none of my tour speak much English.’
He grinned. ‘You were moved to express yourself colourfully?’
‘I was moved to use several words I have never used in my life in public,’ she said.
‘Some words are—universal.’
She glanced at him through her lashes. ‘I hope not,’ she said as his gaze drifted down her figure, now cleanly and drily dressed in slim aubergine trousers with a cream silk fitted blouse.
As it did so, it crossed Rob Leicester’s mind that although she was not technically beautiful, she was unusual and compelling. Her face was narrow and oval, her skin golden and her heavy hair, swept up into an elegant knot, was gorgeous, the perfect frame for her face and slender neck. Not only that, but her eyes were also stunning and her presentation was essentially chic.
‘How did you get this job?’ he enquired then, just as Caiti was starting to feel uneasy beneath his minute scrutiny.
‘Because I speak French.’
‘That all?’ He lifted an eyebrow.
‘I also spent three months in France once. And I’m not an idiot,’ she replied evenly.
He didn’t comment on that. ‘What’s the French connection?’
‘My mother is French, born in New Caledonia. But I was born in Port Douglas.’ Port Douglas was not that far from Camp Ondine. ‘Something else that made me suitable for this job,’ she added with a toss of her head. ‘I’m a local.’
‘So put that in your pipe and smoke it, Rob Leicester,’ he murmured.
Caiti tossed him a deadly little glance although she said smoothly enough, ‘What I would really like you to put in your pipe and smoke is this. Circumstance may have made me appear a trifle…silly and less than capable, Mr Leicester. You can go on believing that if you like but it’s far from the truth. Good night.’
She drained her glass and stood up.
He followed suit, crumpling his beer can around the middle in one strong hand. ‘Good night, Miss Galloway. By the way, we don’t always manage to keep the local wildlife out.’
Her eyes widened.
‘Would you like me to check your cabin before you retire?’
For a second she was terribly tempted. Then it occurred to her that, mysteriously, there was something more flowing between them. He was studying her assessingly again but this time he was concentrating on her figure.
And beneath that penetrating hazel gaze, her stomach lurched as the full masculine impact of the man hit her. It was a curiously devastating impact. It was as if he was paring things down between them to the fundamentals between a man and a woman. As if they were flesh on flesh, breathing each other’s essence, tantalising one another, withholding, granting, testing, fulfilling…
And so powerful was it, she glanced involuntarily down at his hands because she could almost feel them on her breasts, burning through the thin silk of her blouse.
But his expression changed and she was beset by another impression of Rob Leicester. Rugged, powerful, yes, but perhaps more complex than she’d given him credit for? The lines and angles of his face were interesting, and his eyes, as he looked down into hers, were definitely posing a worldly little question as he suddenly smiled a secret half-smile that was seriously sexy.
Her heart started to hammer, her pulses began to pound and such was her disarray, nothing in the world would have had the power at that moment to distract her from feeling undeniably stirred up by Rob Leicester.
Nor could she doubt that his presence in her cabin wouldn’t lead on to…
No, stop right there, Caiti Galloway! she commanded herself and made a desperate bid to take hold.
‘Uh, I think I’ll take my chances,’ she said with an effort. ‘Seems safer than…’ She closed her eyes and bit her lip.
‘Safer than…?’
What you have in mind for me, Rob Leicester, she longed to say, but as her lashes flew up she saw so much amused comprehension in his eyes she could have killed herself.
She tried to look nonchalant and added, as this line of reasoning, although plucked from thin air, nevertheless sounded quite sensible to her ears, ‘I’ll…manage.’ She tilted her chin.
‘So, if I hear any maidenly shrieks or unmaidenly language coming from your cabin, I should just ignore it?’ he questioned gravely.
‘Yes.’ This time her lavender gaze was dangerous.
‘So be it,’ he murmured. ‘I am right next door, however, should your…new-found bravery desert you. Good night, Miss Galloway.’ He turned away and left the lounge.
Which was fortunate as Caiti found herself rooted to the spot. The thought of Rob Leicester sleeping right next door to her, if he’d meant what she’d thought he meant, was infinitely disturbing. The cabin she’d been allotted this time was a duplex. Two en suite rooms with one dividing wall and a shared veranda…
She came alive a moment later, shook her head and posed a question to herself—was she going crazy? She’d only met the man twice and both times in difficult if not to say demoralising circumstances!
The militant mood of disbelief this conversation had fostered in her boded ill for any future meetings with Mr Leicester. She undressed, got into bed and arranged the mosquito net then composed herself for sleep.
There was no sound from the other cabin, no light, so she guessed her tormentor had not yet gone to bed, but there were a million frogs croaking away outside to reactivate her memories of being broken down in the Daintree.
I’ll never sleep, she thought despairingly, then stiffened as she heard footsteps outside and the lightest rap on her door at the same time as Rob Leicester said softly, ‘You all right there, Miss Galloway?’
Strangely, a little ripple of relief ran through her.
‘I’m fine, Mr Leicester. Quite fine, thank you so much!’ she replied.
‘Sleep well, then,’ he said and she heard his door open and close.
She did just that.
Any slight spirit of unity with Rob Leicester was gone the next morning.
He took the fast launch trip to the Hope Isles, which six of her party, all men, elected to go on. Caiti’s services were needed on the launch, as an interpreter. Rob was most professional both when they stopped to fish and when they went ashore—for the most part. He concentrated on the guests, and left Caiti nearly single-handedly to serve up the picnic lunch.
It was a glorious day. The rain had gone, the sea was calm, a pale, shimmering blue, they weren’t far off-shore so the dark green mountainous scenery of the mainland was magnificent, and the fish were biting.
Despite the language constraints, the camaraderie of seven men catching fish was soon evident. So was their enthusiasm. It crossed her mind to think once that they hadn’t really needed her, there was obviously a universal language amongst fishermen. It also crossed her mind to think that she was being unfairly exposed to Rob Leicester.
He drove the launch with consummate skill. He seemed to know all there was to know about the art of catching fish, where to find them and how to clean them. Once, she caught a quizzical little sideways glance from him as he gutted a red emperor with the minimum of fuss.
But her squeamishness did not extend to fish, dead or alive. Her parents had run a restaurant in Port Douglas for years and she’d been well-schooled by her mother and her father in all aspects of fish cookery, from catching and cleaning them through to buying them in the market and cooking them.
Got you there, she said to him in her mind as she picked up a headless fish, borrowed a knife and filleted it neatly before consigning the fillets to the ice chest.
This earned her a round of applause from her party but no particular approbation from Rob Leicester.
When they landed on the lovely islet called Hope, a circle of white sand with a crown of thick bush and trees, he explained briefly where and how to set up the picnic lunch, and took the rest of the party on a tour of the island, the coral and for a swim.
Blow you, Mr Leicester, she said to him in her mind again as she stripped to her amethyst bikini and had a quick swim in the crystal-clear water herself.
She dried herself and pulled on her white shorts but didn’t cover up her bikini top. She loosened her hair to allow it to dry, began to set out lunch and was waiting demurely beside it when the party returned. They all tucked in with gusto, full of enthusiasm for the Hope Isles and full of questions for her that they’d been unable to put to Rob.
Another feather in my cap, Mr Leicester—she beamed the thought at him while maintaining her severely demure demeanour—and this time got a response.
He squinted at her through his damp dark hair. ‘You look like the cat that’s got the cream, Miss Galloway,’ he observed, as she poured piping hot coffee from a flask.
‘Cream? Cat?’ one of her party enquired. ‘What means ziss, Mlle Caiti?’
She smiled delightfully at the middle-aged man. ‘He thinks I’m,’ she paused, ‘very competent,’ she said instead of trying to explain that Rob Leicester thought she was downright smug.
‘Bravo!’ And a stream of French followed indicating that they all thought so too.
‘Merci!’ Caiti turned back to Rob and said rapidly, ‘They don’t think I’m smug at all.’
‘So I gathered.’ He crossed his arms and looked at her moodily. ‘What exactly did you tell them?’
She glanced around but everyone had wandered off. She explained and added, ‘I didn’t try to lower you in the popularity stakes.’ Her smile, this time, was virtuous.
‘Thank you, but it doesn’t bother you to go around misrepresenting things?’
Caiti grimaced. ‘You could have had a riot on your hands otherwise,’ she said simply.
‘And it has been known for pride to come before a fall,’ he retorted swiftly.
‘Is it only me or are you always so full of these theories?’ she queried, still smiling delightfully. ‘If it’s only me, I wonder what I have to do to persuade you otherwise.’
‘One swallow doesn’t make a summer. I’ll reserve judgement.’ He got up and began to pack up the picnic.
She watched him for a moment. Another sweatshirt was moulded over his hard muscles above shorts that exposed long, powerful legs. Once again her stomach lurched…
To counter it, she said, ‘You can also go to hell again, Mr Leicester!’ And she waltzed down to the water’s edge.
But inside she was seething, and confused, she realised. The trials and tribulations of yesterday had not been her fault; they could have happened to anyone. So, the only thing he had to hold against her was one mistake from the previous tour. Did that warrant being so…disliked as she felt she was today? And what about last night?
She stopped rather suddenly and thought—was this all to do with her refusing to acknowledge the frisson that had undoubtedly existed between them?
Well, well, she mused, in that case it’s about time more women said no to you, Rob Leicester!
They didn’t stop to fish on the way back to the camp and got there at about four-thirty, which left her with an hour or so of free time before the fish barbecue, using the day’s catch.
