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Carlota. No one ever called her Carlota. Not even her mother whose fault it was that she was named that!
Her only consolation was that he sounded as if he’d had the air knocked out of him. He braced a hand against one of the pillars of the veranda and she noticed that his knuckles were white.
‘You remember me, I see.’
He snorted. ‘What in the hell are you doing here?’
‘I gather Des didn’t tell you?’
‘Des?’ He frowned. ‘What about Des?’
‘He sent me. Got my boss to insist, as a matter of fact.’
What? What are you talking about? Why the hell would he send you? Where’d he find you?’ The questions came fast and furious, but no more furious, obviously, than Piran himself. ‘What are you talking about? Where is Des?’
‘On his way to Fiji?’ She meant it to sound like a statement and was mortified when it came out tentative enough to be a question.
‘What!’ There was no question in that exclamation, just pure disbelief. And even more fury.
Carly would have quailed before it nine years ago. Now she drew herself up to her full five feet six, determined not to let him intimidate her. ‘Jim Taylor—you remember, your father’s old cap—’
‘I know who Jim Taylor is,’ Piran snapped.
‘Well, he bought a new boat and—’
‘I don’t give a damn about Jim Taylor’s boat. Where’s Des?’
‘I’m trying to tell you,’ Carly snapped back, ‘if you’ll kindly shut up and let me finish!’
Piran’s mouth opened, then snapped shut again. He glowered at her, then finally he shrugged and stuffed his fists into the pockets of his shorts. ‘By all means enlighten me, Carlota,’ he drawled.
Carly took a careful breath, ran her tongue over parched lips and began again. ‘Jim bought a new boat. He’s sailing it out of Fiji, and he invited Des to go along and—’
‘He went?’ The drawl was gone. The fury was back.
‘He said you’d understand that it was too good an opportunity to miss.’
‘The hell I would! We have a commitment! A contract! Does he think the book is going to write itself?’ Piran stalked from one side of the veranda to the other.
‘No, actually he thinks I’m going to help you write it.’
He spun around and looked at her, poleaxed. ‘You? You help me write it?’
Carly heard a soft chuckle and was suddenly aware that Ben was still there listening. No doubt the whole island would be hearing about this before nightfall.
‘Let’s not discuss this out here,’ she said in a low tone. ‘Let me get my bag and we can discuss it in the house’
‘You’re not coming in the house.’
‘Piran—’
‘You’re not! I don’t know what kind of stunt Des is pulling, but you’re getting in the van and going right back where you came from.’
Carly heard Ben choke on his laughter.
Her cheeks burned. ‘Don’t be ridiculous,’ she said fiercely to Piran. ‘I didn’t come all this way to have you send me back.’ She turned and reached back into the van and grabbed her duffel bag. ‘How much do I owe you?’ she asked Ben.
‘Eight dollar.’ He was still grinning all over his face.
Carly ignored the grin. She took a ten out of her wallet and handed it to him. He tucked it in his shirt pocket. ‘Thank you, missy.’ He slid back into the driver’s seat.
‘What are you doing?’ Piran demanded. ‘Stay where you are.’
‘Mr St Just gettin’ pretty mad,’ Ben said as he leaned out the window. ‘You sure ‘bout this?’
Carly wasn’t sure at all, but she didn’t see that she had any option. Diana had made herself perfectly clear: when Carly next appeared in the office, she was going to be carrying Piran and Desmond St Just’s next bestselling true-life archaeological adventure. Or else.
But she wasn’t going to be doing that unless she helped Piran finish it. There was certainly no way she could find Des now and make him take her place.
Besides, she thought irritably, how dared Piran make her seem like some sort of unwanted interloper?
‘I’m sure,’ she said.
Ben shrugged. ‘It be your neck, missy.’
Undoubtedly it would. Carly took a deep breath. ‘I’ll be fine.’
Ben gave a quick salute and put the van in reverse.
Piran started down the steps. ‘Ben! Where the hell are you going? Get back here! Ben! Ben!’
But Ben apparently knew that absence was the better part of valor—at the moment at least. The van putted away down the gravel and disappeared around the bend.
It was a full minute before Piran turned from staring after it to fix his gaze on Carly.
‘Well, some things never change, do they, Carlota?’ he drawled at last, looking her up and down.
Carly met his gaze levelly. ‘What does that mean?’
‘You’re still a conniving little bitch.’
So the battle lines were drawn. It certainly hadn’t taken long. If he’d slapped her face with a glove, he could not have challenged her more clearly. Nor could he have found a better means of making Carly dig her heels in.
For a single instant, before he called her that…that-she couldn’t even let herself think about what he’d called her!—she’d almost felt sorry for Piran St Just. She’d almost regretted that his brother had deserted him, regretted that he’d have to make do with her help, not Des’s.
But when he threw those words at her she thought, Serves him right, damned judgmental jerk.
She supposed she was a bit of a jerk, too, for having thought even for one moment that they could manage this without problems, that he might have changed his opinion of her.
Once—in the very beginning—he’d defended her. It had been the first time they met and she hadn’t even known who he was.
It had happened a month after Carly’s mother had married Piran’s father in Santa Barbara. She’d met Des at the wedding, but she’d never met Arthur’s much heralded elder son. Piran hadn’t come to the ceremony, Arthur had said, because he went to university in the east.
But he was coming for spring vacation. Carly was going to meet him that very night. In fact, if she didn’t hurry, she was going to be late.
She’d waited to leave the beach until the last possible moment, hoping that the small group of inebriated college students standing by the steps up the cliff would disperse. They hadn’t. Instead they’d stood watching her approach, whistling and making lewd suggestions that made her cheeks burn.
She’d tried to ignore them, then she’d tried brushing past them and going up the steps quickly. But she’d stumbled and one of them had grabbed her and hauled her hard against him.
‘Please,’ she babbled. ‘Let me go.’
He rubbed against her. ‘Let’s go together, baby,’ he rasped in her ear.
Carly struggled. ‘Stop it! Leave me alone!’
He shook his head. ‘You want it. You know you do,’ he said as she tried to pull away.
A couple of the other men hooted and whistled. ‘I like ‘em feisty,’ one of them called.
‘Please!’ Carly tried twisting away from him, but he held her fast until all at once, out of nowhere, a savior appeared.
The most handsome young man she’d ever seen jerked the drunken man away from her. ‘Can’t you hear?’ he snarled. ‘The lady said she wants to be left alone.’
‘Lady? Who says she’s a lady?’
Carly’s black-haired savior stepped between her and the drunken student. ‘I say so,’ he said, his voice low and deadly.
The student gave a nervous, half-belligerent laugh. ‘An’ who are you? The Lone Ranger?’ He shoved Piran hard, so hard that he wobbled himself.
The next thing Carly knew the man was flat on his rear in the sand with her savior standing over him, rubbing his right fist.
‘It doesn’t matter who I am,’ he said. ‘Apologize to the lady. Now.’
The man’s jaw worked. He spat blood on to the sand and glanced around at his friends. They fidgeted and muttered, but they apparently didn’t see much point in fighting over Carly. Some of them backed up the steps. A few moved away down the beach. At last it was just Carly and the two of them left.
Finally the student struggled to his feet and glowered at the lean, tanned man still standing there, his fists clenched.
He didn’t move an inch. ‘Say it.’
The drunken student’s gaze flicked briefly to Carly. He scowled. ‘Sorry,’ he muttered in a surly tone. Then he fled.
Carly stared after him, shaking, still feeling the disgusting feel of his sweaty, sandy body pressed against hers.
‘Hey, you OK?’ The young man tilted his head to look into her eyes. He gave her a gentle smile. He had the most beautiful blue eyes and the most wonderful smile she’d ever seen.
‘F-fine,’ she’d mumbled.
‘It’s over,’ he said, and put his arm around her, drawing her close, holding her gently until she’d stopped shaking.
It should have frightened her. He was as much a stranger as the drunken student. But she wasn’t frightened. She felt safe. Cared for.
She remembered looking up into his face right at that moment and thinking she’d found the man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with—the man her mother had always told her was out there waiting.
She stammered, ‘Th—thanks.’
He smiled at her and ran his knuckles lightly down her cheek. ‘My pleasure. Always ready to help out a damsel in distress.’ He gave her a wink, then asked if he could see her home.
And that was when he found out whose daughter she was.
‘You live where?’ he asked her when she pointed out the house on the hillside.
‘The pink house. The great big one. Isn’t it lovely? We just moved in, my mother and I. She married a professor—’
‘Arthur St Just.’ His voice was suddenly clipped and short.
‘Yes. You know him?’
‘I thought I did,’ her savior said gruffly. ‘He’s my father. I’m Piran St Just.’
Her new stepbrother. The one she’d never met. The one, she quickly learned, who hadn’t come to the wedding not simply because he went to school in the east but because he objected so strongly to his father’s remarriage.
He thought Carly’s unsophisticated dancer mother far beneath Arthur St Just’s touch and he made no bones about it. In Piran’s eyes, she was no more than the gold-digging hussy who had trapped his unsuspecting father into matrimony.
While Des accepted his stepmother with equanimity, at the same time acknowledging that she wasn’t quite what one would have expected Arthur St Just to pick for a wife, the same was not true of Piran.
And once he found out that Carly was the gold-digging hussy’s daughter his solicitous behavior and gentle concern vanished at once.
Sue, always optimistic, encouraged her daughter to be patient.
‘He doesn’t understand,’ she said softly to Carly more than once. ‘Piran is young, idealistic, and his parents’ divorce hurt him. He hasn’t known love himself. He doesn’t understand how it can happen. Give him time.’
Over the months to come Carly gave him that—and more. Even though, once he knew who she was, he treated her with cool indifference, she couldn’t help remembering the first Piran—the gentle, caring Piran who was really there inside.
She told herself that Sue was right. She saw his dislike as a blind spot, one that time and proximity—and her love—would cure.
Until the night of her eighteenth birthday…when she understood finally just how determinedly blind Piran St Just really was…
She lifted her chin now and faced him once more. ‘Think what you like, Piran. I’m sure you will anyway. I’m not going to argue with you.’
‘Because you haven’t got a leg to stand on.’
‘Try not to insult me too much,’ she suggested mildly, ‘or you’ll be doing this book on your own.’
‘That’s another thing. What’s all this nonsense about you helping with the book?’
‘I’m Sloan Bascombe’s assistant editor.’
‘The hell you say!’ He didn’t seem to believe for a minute that she did in fact work for his editor.
