Substitute Engagement

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Try it,’ Rob was inviting her softly.

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

‘You’ll regret it.’

‘Are you threatening me?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_ca1df93e-54c6-51bd-8280-38b8ec5ce532)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No way—’

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

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

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

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

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