Authors: Sara Wood
I
T MUST
have been hours before Mandy woke, because she felt almost refreshed. It was warm, deliriously warm, and the air on her body caressed it like a lover's breath.
'Mmm...' she sighed, and stretched slowly and thoroughly with her eyes tightly shut like an indulged cat, her back arching from the bed while her hands drifted upwards over the surface of her silken skin in pure hedonistic pleasure.
In private if nowhere else she could indulge in her love of sensuality—rare but much adored treats of perfumed baths, satin wines, dark, dark chocolates. For a while the ache in her heart could be alleviated. Her senses could be placated. It wasn't the same as being loved, but preferable to sensual starvation.
Languidly her arms lifted above her head to scoop the heavy weight of hair from her neck before allowing it to fan out across the pillows like the waves of a dark sea.
Lost in the world of uninhibited eroticism that lay between sleeping and waking, she inhaled the perfumes in her nostrils; strange scents—steamy soil, exotic flowers, the pure Caribbean air drifting in through the open doors which led to the deck.
And, feeling extraordinarily relaxed and serene, she let her ribcage rise and fall with each long, slow intake of breath, and listened in delight to the deafening sound of torrential rain battering the huge leaves of the banana trees which draped over her balcony.
The rain stopped suddenly as if it had been turned off at the mains, leaving another sound to dominate. Her eyes snapped open and, to her surprise, it was still dark— a thick, velvet darkness like a warm cloak. The unusual sound intensified and she eased herself up onto her elbows, tilting her head to listen more clearly to the noises in the jungle outside, like—
'Tree frogs,' supplied a soft male voice.
Mandy screamed in shock. She dived for the top sheet, which lay tangled in a heap at her feet, while simultaneously darting nervous glances through her heavily tumbled hair at the shadowy figure in a chair by the bed.
'Who—who are you?' she husked nervously. 'What... are you doing here?'
'Waiting.'
Waiting! She trembled. All she could make out was a pair of gleaming eyes, flashing white teeth and a white dinner jacket. But the strongly accented voice had been Pascal's. The shoulders were his. The sheer
nerve
was his.
And she was naked. It was dark, she told herself, tugging at the stubbornly muddled sheet. He couldn't see her properly. But already her eyes were getting accustomed to the murk and she could see every one of her toenails with alarming clarity.
She gulped, getting redder and redder as she fought the stubborn tangle of material and tried to keep strategic parts of herself adequately covered at the same time.
'Oh, drat the wretched thing!' she fumed in panic.
'Shall I help?' he offered politely.
'No!' she yelled as he half rose from the chair. 'Stay away! Don't come near me! How the devil did you get in?' she demanded angrily. An end. She'd found the end! Now where...?
'The door. I left the key in it,' he admitted absently, as though his mind was on something else.
It was: the spilling flesh of her breasts, billowing from her totally inadequate hand and arm. She doubled over and shot him a filthy look which he missed entirely be-cause his gaze was raking over her slender back and the long curve of her hip and thigh, and she groaned because heat was skimming the surface of her skin where his eyes lingered. It was like being licked by fire.
'Wretched sheet!' she muttered, taking her temper out on it.
'I suggest a technique similar to the fan dance,' he said, watching her struggle for dignity with open amusement. 'The skill lies in releasing one fan while covering yourself with—'
'Turn away!' she demanded furiously, trying the method. If she folded herself forwards, she could ease the sheet up without revealing anything vital...
'Not much point,' said Pascal in a low, liquid drawl. And she could
feel
the interest in his voice as she clumsily completed the manoeuvre, every bone in her spine tingling from his fascinated gaze. 'I've been here for hours.'
Mandy choked and jerked her head around in horror. 'You... you sat there and...
watched?'
'Not much else to do. I couldn't read,' he said reasonably. 'It was dark.'
'You—you voyeur!' she spat.
'Oh, no,' he assured her disarmingly. 'Not my style at all. I prefer to take an active part.'
'Active!' she breathed, hastily hauling yards of linen around her as a defence against 'active'.
'Uh-huh.'
She felt the breath clog up in her tubes. The tree frogs whirred on, oblivious to her dilemma; the perfumes of the night drifted in, filling her senses. If she hadn't been wrapped up like an Egyptian mummy—with a carefully tucked-in mosquito net to contend with too—she would have legged it.
Mandy licked her lips nervously. The darkness was too intimate, the setting too romantic. She'd felt like a fairy-tale princess when she'd gone to sleep, a sensual woman when she'd woken, but now was a vulnerable innocent on the point of disenchantment.
'Put the light on!' she ordered sharply.
He rose from the chair, stretching his legs with a quick frown at their stiffness, and went over to the light switch, giving it a cursory flick. Nothing happened. 'Storm's affected the electrics,' he said, unruffled. 'It happens every now and then. I'll light the candles.'
'Candles!' she groaned.
She'd noticed them when she'd gone to bed and had thought then, How romantic. Romantic she didn't want. From under her gauze tent Mandy watched Pascal light the first one, his absorbed face flickering with shadows as he slipped the glass shield over the flame. Warily she watched him walk around the bed and strike a match for the second.
Transfixed by the set of his sensual mouth, she gave an involuntary quiver. Any woman would be quivering if she had been woken by Pascal, she thought in excuse. He was very handsome. Especially in a dinner jacket. Now that both candles were alight, the floor-to-ceiling mirrors behind the bed reflected the soft light—and the magnificent cut of Pascal's jacket. Or perhaps it was the magnificent chest that filled it.
And to her eyes he looked more rakish than ever, partly because his black bow-tie had been undone and was hanging loosely around his neck while the collar of his dress shirt exposed his bare throat, and partly because his jaw and upper lip bore the dark shadow of a burgeoning beard and moustache. Designer stubble, she decided scathingly, though she had to admit that it was wickedly attractive. She imagined he knew that and wished she didn't. Something dreadful had happened to her inhibitions.
'Now you can go,' she said coldly, flicking her tumbling hair back decisively.
'Not yet.' He sat down again, crossing his elegantly clad legs.
Mandy shrank warily back against the pillows, her naked shoulders golden in the soft light. 'So you think you're going to seduce me?' she challenged bluntly, saying it before he did.
'As if!' he protested, with the air of a shocked monk.
'Oh! Then.. .why—why come here? Why...?' She licked her lips in embarrassment. Why watch me? was a stupid question. The answer was perfectly obvious.
'You think that the only reason I might be here is for sex?' he enquired with an air of faint reproof.
Mandy glared through the curtain of silky dark hair that had flopped over one eye again. Yes! she wanted to snap, sensitive to the hot, humming space between them. 'You could be sleepwalking, I suppose,' she said tartly. 'Or lost. Or—'
'Concerned,' he suggested with a bland smile.
'Judging by your previous performance, that's unlikely!' she scathed.
He lifted a golden eyebrow in disagreement. 'I got you back here, didn't I? I stopped you from reeling drunk- enly across the beach.'
She glared. 'Yes! But you got me tipsy in the first place!'
'I might have encouraged you to have a drink but I didn't pour the stuff down your throat,' he pointed out. 'You did. And I was worried. You didn't order room service—I checked. You hadn't changed your mind and come down for dinner, because I was in the restaurant and would have seen you.' He leaned forward, nothing but friendly enquiry on his face. 'I came to see if you were all right.'
That seemed out of character. She gave him a disbelieving look. 'I'm fine. And I don't believe a word of your story. You were all for feeding me rat poison earlier,' she reminded him. 'If you only came because you were worried, why didn't you go at once, when you saw that I was breathing?'
'Yes,' he said admiringly, pinning his blue gaze to her shrouded breasts. 'You have quite a rhythmic action there.'
'Oh!' she croaked. He knew every intimate detail of her sleeping body! Not only her breasts, but... Thinking of Pascal's fascinated eyes on her casually sprawled legs and the sinfully languid way she'd stretched when she woke made her vocal cords freeze.
Her body was private! she thought angrily. Only for Dave and no other man. And now Pascal had violated her privacy and taken away something she'd shared with her husband alone.
'You rat!' she whispered, tormented by shame.
He leaned closer still, his head slightly angled as if he was puzzled by her reaction. 'Is this modesty? I didn't think it would worry you that much,' he mused, a frown dipping his brows.
Utterly lost for words, she stared back at him and tried to comprehend the kind of life he must lead if he thought women would be so blase about their bodies—especially if viewed by virtual strangers when asleep.
'Get out!' she rasped. And then she screamed it like a banshee. 'Get out! Get out!' she yelled, every inch of her quivering with helpless rage.
'Please!' He winced. 'Stop screaming for England and listen to me. Other than checking to see if you were all right, I did have another reason for coming into your room—'
'I knew it!' she spat, angrily scraping her hair back again because it had fallen forward in a misleadingly sensual way and right now she wanted to be as sexually attractive as a bowl of porridge. 'You are a lecherous brute—' she began haughtily.
'For bringing you supper?' he asked, apparently pained by her accusations. 'I thought you'd be hungry.'
She was, she discovered to her surprise. Ravenous. But far too suspicious to be taken in by that excuse. 'I don't believe you! Where is it? I can't see it!' she snapped.
'On the deck. With my compliments.'
Peering out, she could see the shape of a tray on a low table, and her stomach rolled at the thought of food. 'So it is,' she said grudgingly. But how could she be sure that it hadn't been an excuse? 'Why didn't you leave it there, check that I wasn't gasping my last breath,' she said waspishly, 'and make a discreet exit? You
didn't
have to sit and watch while I slept!' she accused, feeling the flow of blood staining her skin as she pictured him taking a leisurely look at her intimate secrets. Her eyes closed as if that would wipe the image out of her mind.
'I thought you ought to be watched,' he said levelly. 'You could have been ill from the effects of sun and alcohol.'
'You seem very clued up about it,' she muttered. 'Is that from personal experience?'
'Yes. My father drinks a lot.'
Her brow furrowed as she wondered apprehensively if that was true. But it didn't alter the fact that Pascal had been arrogant in the extreme. 'I don't believe a word of your explanations,' she declared stubbornly. 'But I'm fine and I'm awake so you've no excuse to stay any longer,' she added, refusing to be grateful to him. Food! She felt her mouth water. 'It's late. Almost...' she lifted her wrist and stared at her watch in surprise, then brought it to her ear to see if it was ticking. 'Three o'clock in the morning?' she cried in astonishment.
'That's about right. However, it's about your breakfast-time in England,' he murmured. 'I knew you'd wake hungry after the time-change, and—'
Her eyes narrowed. 'When did you turn up?' she demanded.
'Just before midnight.' He drew a rueful hand over his jaw and she heard the rasp of stubble. 'Don't worry,' he soothed. 'I used the time profitably. I had some thinking to do. And now I'd like to apologise.'
'What?' Her mouth dropped open in amazement. 'You are apologising—after everything you said? What are you up to, Pascal?'
'Roughly halfway through my rehearsed speech of contrition,' he answered drily. 'Let me explain.' He beamed broadly so that the dimples appeared, and she hardened her heart to his suspicious charm.
'Do,' she said coldly. 'But go easy on the treacly smile.'
He laughed softly. 'You have a right to be angry,' he admitted. 'I've harassed you unfairly. I realised that when I swam back to my boat after leaving you. It must have been a very different welcome from the one you'd expected.' He kept the smile going, even when she snorted in scornful agreement. .'I returned to the main hotel complex and waited in the dining room because I hoped you'd change your mind about room service and turn up for dinner. I wanted to buy you some champagne and make amends. I felt rather bad when you didn't appear.'
'Good,' she muttered unsympathetically.
Pascal's eyes twinkled. 'I'd be mad at me too,' he said disarmingly. 'If it's any consolation, I was awash with guilty feelings and didn't enjoy my meal at all. I pictured you alone up here, feeling ill, far from home, knowing you'd have to struggle to stay here—'
'All that,' agreed Mandy coldly, glad of a chance to make him crawl. And she was still suspicious of his motives. The U-turn seemed a bit too abrupt to be true.
'I know. You must have been worried,' he sympathised.
His whole manner was one of penitence, and it sat incongruously on someone so deeply cynical. 'Don't overdo the gush,' she said drily.
'How can I convince you?' he said earnestly. 'I felt so bad that I knew I'd never get a moment's sleep unless I made you feel better. You know how it is when you have something on your mind and it goes round and round your head,' he said, fixing Mandy with his startling blue eyes.
'Yes,' she acknowledged warily. He was very persuasive. The charm just oozed out of him like juice from a mango.