Kissed by Moonlight (16 page)

She faltered at the scathing accusation. “You're referring to yourself, of course?”

“Actually, I wasn't,” he retorted, regarding her thoughtfully and rewarding her perplexity with a milder tone. “I'm sorry that it was necessary to inflict tonight on you. Business colleagues are rarely chosen on a personal basis. My opinion of Geoff Hyland is much the same as yours, but I have to put up with him.”

Why? her brain shouted furiously. To be near Justine? “Well, I don't,” she said angrily.

She should have known that he would not let that go unchallenged. He stopped walking. Much as she longed to stride on ahead, his hand on her wrist prevented it.

“I'm sorry to correct you, Pet,” he said in an insidiously quiet voice, “but you'll have to put up with it if I say so. You're my wife. You have to accept the people I'm involved with.”

Did he mean Justine? She was choking on hurt and temper. “Would you accept it if it were the other way around?”

He replied disparagingly, “Speculation has got to have a sound footing. The question of whether I could accept your doubtful acquaintances is unlikely to arise.”

“What do you mean by that?” she asked, immediately on the defensive.

“Don't be so prickly. I merely meant that it would be inconceivable to find such a character in your little world.”

She was not appeased. On the contrary, his satirical tone heightened her suspicions. “Are you sniping at my father? I know he wasn't always respectable in his business dealings.”

“I was not. Your father was more foolish than dishonest. I didn't think you had a complex about that.”

“I haven't. It's just – Her slender shoulders lifted in a gesture that spelled out the futility of trying to explain what she didn't properly understand herself.

She didn't know how lost or desolate she looked, so she didn't know why his face settled into such grim lines or the reason for the tone of his voice. It was so tense it seemed in danger of snapping off midsentence. “Let's get out of here. I left instructions for our cases to be brought down and put in the car. Have you anything to go up for?”

“I'd like to change, please, if there's time. Is there? I don't fancy boarding a plane dressed like this.”

“You have time to do anything you may desire,” he said with scantily veiled implication. “But did I say anything about boarding a plane?”

“No, you didn't.”

Ruling out the slight possibility that they were going somewhere by boat, because she was just as unsuitably dressed for that, it meant their honeymoon destination was somewhere on the island. Curiosity was a minor thing and barely registered in her thoughts. It was unimportant where they went.

A quiver of passionate urgency leaped between them. Every pulse in her body was beating out her awareness of him. Her nerve ends were jumping, stimulated to respond by the torrid dominance of his eyes.

Drawing a ragged breath, she said, “I've still got to go up, I want to take my other handbag with me.”

His mouth closed on a small teasing smile that was, curiously, mocking and tender at the same time, and he seemed to make a tentative exploration into thought. “I suppose I could fetch it for you.”

“Thank you. That's considerate of you.”

“Perhaps you should come with me. It may be more considerate of me than you think.” His hand slid under her chin. “If I got you up to the privacy of our suite, we wouldn't be venturing out again too soon.”

Wasn't he aware that she knew that? Just as she knew he wanted her to go up with him. That was what
she
wanted, too. She wasn't happy to be in constant discord with him; it was much more pleasant to tangle with him in passion. Her body was submissive to this thought – it had dismissed all differences and was ready to yield. Not so her mind. It was still too full of the recent encounter with Justine and her husband. Her body had forgiven, but her mind was still angry with David for causing her the humiliation of making her accept his mistress and that vile man. He'd been brutal in his insistence. She was his wife. She must do as she was told, and he had told her to accept the situation. She'd jumped to his inclination then; she would not be a puppet to his pleasure now.

“I'll keep you to your offer to fetch it for me.” She tried to keep it cool, but was partially defeated by the bright patches of color in her cheeks. She could not include Justine and Geoffrey Hyland in her thoughts and keep all traces of revulsion from her expression.

“I see.” His eyes turned to blue ice again, fixing on her with compelling, hypnotic brilliance.

“While you're gone, I'll try to find Ginny and Bob. I want to say goodbye to them.”

“I'll go along with that, but watch it,” he cautioned darkly.

“What do you mean?”

“Don't be obtuse. Bob's taken a tumble for you. He's not as hardy as I am, so don't try to wrap him around your finger.”

Was he inferring that she'd
tried
to wrap him around her finger? The idea was so preposterous that she couldn't summon up the words to refute his statement about Bob.

“You can't deny that he's carrying a torch for you, can you?” he demanded abruptly.

Was it possible? Could he be jealous? She didn't know which surprised her the most – the fact that David might be jealous of the friendship and affection she and Bob shared or the reply that came startlingly to her lips. “I deny it most emphatically. The truth is, even if Bob has been slow to realize it, he's really crazy about Ginny.”

The cold contempt in his laugh flicked over her.

“Don't be ridiculous! They fight all the time.”

“People in love do,” she said quietly.

“Really?” he drawled. “By that piece of absurd reasoning, we must be very much in love.”

He walked away, leaving her clenching her fingers on that bitter taunt.

Going through to the bar in search of Ginny and Bob, she was wryly amused to find them occupying adjacent bar stools. They weren't fighting now. Bob's arm was slung carelessly around Ginny's shoulders and Ginny's lively features had acquired a fascinating glow.

“Hello, Trina,” Bob greeted on spotting her. “Honestly, I meant to come and see you off, but” – he grinned sheepishly – “I got waylaid.”

“Don't believe him. I mean, who'd want to lay a trap for this big oaf?” Ginny chipped in predictably, while the smile on her face proudly proclaimed that the situation was firmly in hand.

“I'm glad, Ginny,” Petrina said simply.

“Thanks,
amiga
,” Ginny said.

Goodbyes were exchanged, and then she went back to wait for David. He didn't keep her waiting long.

“Let's go,” he said, taking her arm and making her run to keep up with his long stride. “It's best to make a speedy exit. There's always an emergency waiting to happen. If I'm not around someone else will have to deal with it.” He was not apologizing – merely showing his awareness that he was rushing her. .

“You do too much,” she said. It was a soft protest, overshadowed by the happy prospect of getting away without further delay.

His car had been brought around to the front of the hotel. He waved away the man standing in attendance and opened the passenger door himself so she could get in. His zest for work – his ambition – was something she knew all about. But the importance he'd achieved was something that was going to take some getting used to. He opened his own door and slid behind the wheel.

She kept her eyes fixed on the windshield, her thoughts still very much in chaos. Despite his big pretense of urgency, David made no attempt to start the car, and eventually the uneasy silence that followed made her look at him. His eyes were directed to the front, but his thoughts, in keeping with hers, were turned inward. There was something reproachful about the forbidding hardness of his profile that stirred up an unpleasant torment in her.

Without warning his head turned around. Pinned under his dark gaze, her sensations of uneasiness grew. His hand touched her cheek, and lit a fire there that even the harshness of his laugh couldn't totally quench. No sound on earth could sound as cynical as his dry, weary, sarcastic “Mm.”

His eyes continued to hold her on the knife edge of pain and remorse, feelings she tried to shake off by telling herself she had nothing to feel penitent about. “We communicate well enough physically, don't we, Pet?” he said, rotating his finger in the hollow of her cheek in a gesture that was pure sensuality. “But on all other levels we might as well be on different planets.”

“We don't talk – is that what you mean?” Her voice seemed as tight and uncomfortable as she felt.

“That's precisely what I mean.”

“That's not my fault, David.”

“I'm not suggesting it is,” he growled, but his tone belied his words and laid heavy censure on her heart.

He slammed the car door shut, mercifully putting out the interior light. The key, which had been left in the ignition, received a more vicious twist than usual.

It was unfair of him to blame her. Wasn't she the injured party? She would never forgive him for putting her through tonight's ordeal. It had taken her to the depths of degradation to be commanded to dine with Geoffrey Hyland and his beautiful but venomous wife, who had made it abundantly clear that she had no intention of relinquishing her claim on David. Petrina's whole body shuddered with mortified outrage. She didn't know which had filled her with the most revulsion – Geoffrey Hyland's greasy attentions to her or the explicit invitation in Justine's eyes as she had repeatedly caught and held David's glance. She'd heard about wife swapping. She supposed that started casually enough in light cross-flirtation in public places, but inevitably reached its end in more intimate surroundings.

For her the evening had possessed the unreality of a nightmare, yet she had been alone in holding herself cold and aloof from the proceedings. They had enjoyed what they seemed to regard as innocent fun. Innocent? Geoffrey Hyland had propositioned her right under David's nose. That brought her sharply up against another painful reminder – the short but very much to the point conversation she'd had with David immediately after leaving the Hylands. She had told him she would not put up with it. The cold menace of his reply would live forever in her mind: “I'm sorry to correct you, Pet, but you'll have to put up with it if I say so. You're my wife. You have to accept the people I'm involved with.”

That had been his attitude, one he obviously intended to maintain, when he forced her to make up the foursome. Geoffrey Hyland had desired it. David had fallen in with his wishes. In his own words it would be discourteous of him to refuse to arrange the meeting. Just how far was David prepared to go to keep Geoffrey Hyland satisfied?

Geoffrey Hyland had made it very plain what else he desired. Her fresh young appeal had given potency to his jaded inclinations. He had probably tried everything, and had grown blasé. She had read in his hotly gleaming eyes that he wanted to go back to the beginning and capture, through her, the sweetness he had never known. Would David give in to him in this? Would he command her obedience in this matter against her will? Would he arrange
this
for Geoffrey Hyland?

She was so entrenched in the hurt of her thoughts that it was a while before she took note of the direction in which they were traveling. Surely this was the way she had come this morning when she discovered the secluded house in the cove, the paradisiacal secret of the serpent's tail.

An intriguing possibility came into her mind. She sat well back in her seat, not daring to hope. It would be too wonderful ... too incredible. Even when they approached the turning-off point she expected him to keep his speed and continue straight ahead. But no, he was slowing ... turning down the road where she had encountered the Spanish cleaning woman, and to her delight the car bumped its way down into the serpent's tail bay.

This morning she had blinked at the astonishing solitude and beauty of the bay in the fierce golden grip of the sun. Under the moon's domination it looked even more serenely enchanting than it had then.

The moon that had seemingly ensnared the. sea in a shimmering net of stars held her in a dreamy, captive trance as she tried to puzzle out why, out of all the spots on the map David could have chosen, he'd brought her here. She hadn't told him of her feelings about this place, the enchanted hold it had on her, the strange, inexplicable aura of intrigue it possessed for her and her compulsion to discover the secret hidden from casual view by the curious twist of the coastline, the flick of the serpent's tail.

If only she could believe that David had brought her here to please her, because he knew there was no place on earth she would rather spend her honeymoon. It would not totally lift her depression – the feeling of being used and the humiliation she had been made to endure were not that quickly erased – but it would have eased it considerably if she could have thought that.

It was more feasible to believe there was a more mundane reason for his choice. Geoffrey Hyland was content to stay at the hotel. It would benefit the house to be opened up, no matter how diligently the cleaning woman took care of it, so he had granted the honeymooners temporary tenancy.

Her mouth was having trouble in deciding whether it wanted to curve up or down. The car engine had been quiet for much of the time she had been doing battle with her thoughts. It suddenly came to her how keenly David was studying her expression.

He said abruptly, unnecessarily, “We've arrived.” He got out of his side of the car and came around to assist her out. He shut the car door after her, but his hand stayed on her arm. She had the good sense not to pull away. In a struggle, he would always win, and she didn't mean entirely because of his greater strength. Sometimes it's the gentle touch that brings a woman down.