Second Tomorrow (5 page)

‘As you wish,’ was his only comment before saying an abrupt goodbye.

She walked back to the hotel slowly, along the beach, the sand talcum-soft and warm from the sun. She went over in detail all that had happened to her during the relatively short time she had been Luke’s guest. That he had awakened latent emotions she could not very well deny, and she was realistic enough to admit that, should he again tempt her, her defences would be no stronger than they were today. The obvious solution was to make sure she avoided such a vulnerable and dangerous situation in the future.

Her mind-wanderings always came back to his threat about a beating. Why should he adopt such a masterful, proprietorial attitude towards her? Undoubtedly he had taken it upon himself to make a concerted effort to break down her persistence in cherishing a memory. Resentment flooded over her. He had no right to meddle in her affairs, and by the time she arrived back at the Rusty Pelican she was so angry that she sought out her brother and demanded to know why he had confided her affairs to a stranger.

‘Luke isn’t a stranger,’ corrected Phil. He was on the patio, attired in shorts and a crisp white cotton shirt. It was a quiet period for the hotel because the off-season was just beginning and so it was now possible for Phil to relax, something he rarely did. Clare, looking at him sitting on the lounger, wondered how she could ever be vexed with him. He was so kind and gentle, with ways very different from those of his friend.
Clare could never imagine his being as rough with a girl as Luke had been with her a few hours earlier. Frank had been like Phil—gentle and, at times, a little unsure of himself, even though he had secured the post of deputy-head of his school. ‘He’s a good friend, Clare, even though we haven’t known one another very long.’ Phil paused a moment, his attention arrested by splashes of colour from bikini-clad figures on the sun-terrace where the graceful fronds of a coconut palm danced against a background of sapphire blue sky. ‘You and he puzzle me, Clare. One moment you appear to be getting along all right and the next there’s a sort of hostile atmosphere between you which could almost be cut with a knife.’ He looked at her, his keen gaze all-examining. ‘Something’s happened. You’re back early from the party. I hope you haven’t quarrelled with him,’ he added anxiously.

‘Not exactly.’ Her voice was stiff, and he shook his head, frowning at her.

‘What happened, Clare?’

She had taken possession of a lounger opposite him but, filled with sudden restlessness, she rose again to pace the patio, wondering what Phil would have to say if she were to give him an account of what had occurred.

‘Luke seems to be extraordinarily interested in me,’ she said at length. ‘He appears to think he can make me forget the past.’ She spoke quietly and without emotion, marvelling at the swift
ness with which she had regained her calm. She knew she had been pale after leaving Luke’s house, for a glance in the mirror as she came into the lobby of the Rusty Pelican revealed an unusual pallor, but now there was a fresh bloom on her cheeks, and her brother’s eyes, she noticed, were appreciative.

‘It’s my fault, I’m afraid, Clare.’ The admission left Phil’s lips slowly, reluctantly. Clare glanced interrogatingly at him and moved towards the lounger again.

‘Your fault? How can that be? I know you’ve told him about Frank, and that I mean to keep his memory green, but—’

‘I also asked him if he would try to make you see the folly of it all,’ Phil confessed. ‘Mother wrote and begged me to do everything in my power to restore you to normal—’

‘Normal?’ she echoed indignantly.

‘Well,’ he pointed out, ‘it’s scarcely normal for anyone to pine for over five years, is it?’

‘I’m not pining!’

He shrugged, and leant forward to take up a packet of cigarettes from a small pinewood table by his feet.

‘Call it what you like,’ he said, ‘but it’s certainly been a blight on Mother’s life—and Dad’s, because if she suffers he does too. They’re so close, always have been.’

A sigh escaped Clare as she sat down, refusing Phil’s offer of a cigarette. Her eyes strayed momentarily to the classic beauty of islands
rising from the sea—summits of a huge massif, the underwater mountains of the Bahamas.

‘So that is the reason for Luke’s attitude towards me,’ she mused, wondering why she should be feeling so flat all at once. ‘His only interest in me stems merely from the request you made. . . .’ Her eyes strayed now to a less distant scene—a little building that was connected with the hotel but standing in its own delightful grounds where hibiscus, poinsettia, crotons and numerous other exotic plants mingled to create a tableau of colour against a backcloth of traveller’s palms. The Clipper Inn, whose quaint dormer windows were framed by pink bougainvillaea which climbed almost to the gabled roof, then dropped again to shower the trellised porch and low verandahs.

‘He promised to do whatever he could.’ Her brother’s voice brought her eyes back to his handsome, sun-bronzed face.

‘At first, though,’ Clare reflected thoughtfully, ‘he didn’t take much notice of me at all.’

‘I didn’t make the request right away. Mother’s letter came after you’d been here about three weeks, and I didn’t quite know how I was to do anything at all, then suddenly I hit on the idea that Luke might just be able to help. . . .’ He trailed off with a little self-deprecating sigh. ‘It wasn’t a good idea, evidently. You resent the way he goes about it?’

‘He’s so high-handed and—and—bossy.’

‘It’s his way. Luke’s one of those men who,
when dealing with women, adopts an attitude of—well—superiority, for the want of a better word.’

‘Why should he feel superior?’ she flashed. ‘Who does he think he is, I’d like to know!’

‘It’s just his way,’ repeated Phil gently. ‘Some men feel they’re the dominant sex, and they act accordingly.’

Clare’s hazel eyes glinted. ‘He’s old-fashioned. The days of masculine assertion are gone—’

‘Don’t you believe it. Man orders and woman obeys. Nature ordained it that way.’ The smoothly-spoken interruption came from the end of the patio, where Luke, tall, assured and with a mocking light in his eyes as they settled on Clare’s flushed face, had obviously been standing for a moment or two before breaking into what Clare was saying. Languidly he came forward and Phil invited him to sit down, glancing at Clare a little uncertainly as if in doubt as to whether or not he was doing the right thing in asking his friend to join them. Her expression was a mere mask, so Phil was unable to read anything from it, but Luke appeared to be vastly amused by her stolid mien. He had obviously got over his ill-humour, she thought, refusing to meet his gaze as he sat down opposite her.

‘Luke—I didn’t expect you at this time.’ Phil spoke into the silence, his anxious eyes sliding again in his sister’s direction. ‘Is the party over?’

‘My agent’s there. I came away a little early. Jeff’s more than capable of carrying on.’ Lean
ing back in the chair he stretched his long legs out in front of him. ‘I’ve bought an island,’ he remarked casually and Clare did glance at him then, repeating involuntarily, ‘An island? In the Bahamas?’

He nodded, his sidelong glance flicking her face.

‘Windward Cay; it’s a mile long and three quarters of a mile wide.’

‘You’ve bought a whole island?’ The very idea fascinated Clare and she forgot everything except her interest in what she had just heard. ‘It’s all yours?’

‘All mine,’ he replied, amused at her expression.

She stared, her thoughts sliding for the moment to what her brother had been telling her. She now knew the reason for Luke’s interest in her, but where had he got the idea of going about it in that particular way? She wondered again what her brother would think if she were to tell him the method Luke had adopted—that he had made love to her.

‘What do you intend doing with it?’ Phil dragged lightly on his cigarette and blew a smoke ring. ‘Is it inhabited?’

‘Surely the Bahamian Government doesn’t sell islands,’ put in Clare, now doubtful and half-believing that Luke was pulling their legs.

‘It was privately owned already,’ he explained. ‘Some of the small islands are. We have seven hundred islands in the group, remember.’

‘A good number are tiny, and uninhabited,’ said Phil.

‘Of course. You always get tiny, uninhabited islands in a large chain like the Bahamas.’

Clare sat listening to this interchange, her eyes pensive and wide as they scanned the immediate scene of tropical elegance in the hotel gardens. Smooth lawns and exotic borders, mango trees and avocados, and a splendid hedge of pink hibiscus bushes. A huge fountain played in the middle of a paved area where roses grew in the circles and squares cut out for them. All along one side of the extensive grounds dark palm fronds were silhouetted against a sapphire sky where a few wispy cirrus clouds floated like fragments of pearl-white chiffon in the vast vault of the heavens.

‘So you’re going to develop it?’ Phil’s voice drifted over to Clare and she turned to look at him. The cigarette was between his fingers; he was bronzed and healthy, his hair at the front bleached by the sun.

‘Yes, I intend to develop it.’

‘And spoil it in the process?’ The words were out before Clare could stop them and she received a scathing glance as Luke said curtly, ‘I’ve never spoiled anything in my life—not to my knowledge—and I’ve no intention of doing so now.’

Rebuked, she fell silent, her eyes focusing on a small group of guests from the hotel who were playing beach ball on the smooth, silken sand. Several white-sailed yachts rested languidly not
far from the shore, and farther out a water skier was having the time of his life.

‘A resort for Senior Citizens? I think it’s a wonderful idea!’ Phil’s enthusiastic comment brought Clare’s attention back to the men’s conversation. ‘It must be an entirely new concept in the field of travel?’

Luke nodded his head.

‘I had the idea some time ago but wasn’t quite sure how to put it into operation. Then I heard of this island coming up for sale and put in an offer for it. Until recently it was inhabited by two families, both with a common distant relative who died and left them a fortune. They’re Bahamians who’d been living on what they grew, mainly, and when this money came to them they decided to live in Nassau, and the island consequently came on the market. It seemed an ideal location for my experiment.’

‘Where does it lie in relation to Flamingo Cay?’ ‘

About twenty miles to the southeast.’

‘Funny; I’ve never even heard of it.’

Luke gave a low laugh.

‘There are dozens of islands and cays around here which I myself have never heard of. I often look at the map and find something new.’

Clare spoke at last, to ask about the project he had in mind.

‘You weren’t listening,’ he chided, then added after a small pause, ‘I’ll tell you all about it over dinner this evening.’

‘I’m not coming; I told you I wasn’t.’

‘I’m coming here. Any objection?’

She coloured up but before she had time to think of a suitable retort Phil was speaking. ‘What’s wrong with you two? It’s time you buried the hatchet—whatever it might be.’

‘We like our arguments, Phil. They add spice to life.’

Clare turned away, but Luke asked again if she had any objection to his coming to the Rusty Pelican to dine.

‘I don’t believe there are any restrictions on who shall or who shall not book a table here,’ she returned shortly. ‘Do you want the Tavern or the Steak Cellar?’

‘Which do
you
prefer?’

‘I’m dining with Phil in the Tavern Restaurant—where we always dine.’

‘The Tavern it shall be,’ he said affably. ‘I’ll see you both later.’ And with that he got up from the chair, bade them goodbye and left.

‘Does he have to be at our table?’ she said pettishly to her brother.

‘We can hardly give him a table on his own! I’d very much like to know what’s wrong with you two. Has he done something really serious?’

She could almost have laughed. And yet . . . was his behaviour ‘really serious’? She had reciprocated after a few initial protests and struggles, so what had she to complain about?

‘No,’ she murmured avoiding her brother’s searching eyes, ‘he’s not done anything really serious. It’s just that we rub one another up the wrong way.’

‘Well, please don’t quarrel with him,’ her
brother begged. ‘I enjoy his friendship and would be upset if anything happened to put an end to it.’

‘I’ll make sure that nothing does happen,’ she promised and, after a small pause, ‘Do you mind if I don’t have dinner with you this evening, Phil? I’d rather have it in my room.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ was his blunt reply. ‘Luke would take your absence as a snub. And by the way,’ he added as the thought came to him, ‘what did you mean by saying you weren’t coming?’

‘He’d invited me to have dinner at Silver Springs.’

‘And of course you refused,’ Phil eyed her impatiently. ‘I wish I knew what was going on!’

‘You do know what’s going on. You asked him to do something to make me forget the past, and he’s adopted this domineering attitude towards me.’

Phil regarded her curiously. ‘What has he said to you?’

She shrugged her shoulders. ‘It doesn’t matter. I can deal with him.’ She was far from sure but she tried to convince herself. The obvious thing to do, she had already decided, was to avoid being alone with him. That would effectively prevent any repetition of what had happened earlier this afternoon.

Although dress was casual Luke arrived in collar and tie, the white collar and cuffs of his
shirt accentuating the deep rich bronze of his skin. Clare saw him enter the lounge and order a drink; she was in an alcove behind the bar, and as always she felt the effect of his personality, the sheer magnetism of him, the superlative way he dressed and carried himself, with an air of confidence which surpassed by far that of any other man she had ever met. Tremors—pleasant and yet unwanted—affected her senses, and her heart was beating in unison with the increased rate of her pulse.

He glanced around and she stepped back, reappearing again at the other side of the bar, from which she approached his table.