Kissed by Moonlight (6 page)

Unpacking was another of last night's omissions. After a cool, invigorating shower, she dragged a cream dress from her suitcase, giving thanks for the uncrushable quality of the material. It was built on the skimpy lines of a sun dress, with shoelace shoulder straps. She confined her makeup to a dab of moisturizing lotion, brushed the tangles out of her hair, and joined David on the balcony, where he had chosen to wait for her.

Last night, in the total darkness, she had looked out at nothing, thrilling to the sound of the sea, supposing it was wearing itself out on the rocks beneath the balcony.

Actually, the sea was further away than she had thought, separated from the building not only by a narrow strip of sand but also by the hotel swimming pool, which was edged with brightly colored loungers under the shade of garish umbrellas or trees that looked artificial, as if they'd been uprooted from their natural setting, as indeed they had, and planted there for effect.

“You don't like it?” David said, observing her face.

“It's not to my taste,” she admitted.

“The general public disagrees with you,” he informed her gravely.

She shrugged her shoulders in disdain.

“What's that meant to imply?”

“Merely what I said before – that you are loyal to your employer.”

“My employer?” he said, frowning.

Replying to his tone of query and ignoring that prohibitive frown, she said, “The man you work for. The opportunist who took advantage of my father's misfortune to make his own fortune.”

“You're not being fair. There's no middle course, Petrina. It's either up or down. If he hadn't learned something from your father's mistakes, then he would have gone down too.”

“How can you defend him? He's nothing but an unscrupulous profiteer without taste or finer feelings.”

“I admit it does look as though he took advantage of the situation to make an exorbitant profit, but there's more to it than that. Someone had to step in with a salvaging plan. There would have been little to choose from, whoever had come in.”

She stubbornly refused to believe that. “If only he hadn't tried to reach too high,” she said bitterly. “Ambition is a virus. It kills.”

“It wasn't ambition that killed your father – failure did,” he pointed out somberly.

She awarded him a brief glance. She didn't want him to see the look on her face, to let him know by the flicker of intelligence that crossed her features that he was right. Ambition had been the breath of life to her father, his inspiration and mainstay – failure had been the executioner.

“I don't suppose this one hotel will make much difference,” she said haughtily.

He grabbed her by the shoulders and swung her around so he could look deep into her eyes, as though willing her to understand something she was unconsciously rejecting.

“You're hurting me,” she said, but her plea went unnoticed and his hands retained their hold.

“It's not one hotel. It had to be an extravagant plan of salvation or it wouldn't have worked. The Hotel León is the premier hotel in a hotel complex served by shops and bars and all the other vulgar amenities that pull in the tourists. The greedy opportunist, the profiteer you despise so much, has pandered to the ostentatious whims and predilections of the paying public. Forget your father's dream. That died three years ago. Three years, do you hear? It's taken three years of blood and sweat to achieve what's taken its place. Three years to build Chimera up to what it is now, and this is only the beginning.” One hand released itself from her shoulder and clamped on to her chin. He twisted her face around to make her look down at the colorful gaudiness of the swimming pool scene. “This is the reality of Chimera. Accept it.”

“I can't. You're asking too much.”

“I'm not, considering.”

“What?”

“Nothing.” His mouth snapped shut, as if he'd gone too deep into the subject, saying more than he'd intended. “I'm hungry;”

She found herself being roughly propelled in front of him and marched out of the suite.

Before they got to the elevator he had regained his composure, and with it his mocking tongue. “You could put on a smile. I wouldn't like it to be thought that I was losing my touch;”

She cast a warning glance in the direction of the elevator attendant. It wasn't Ignacio this morning, but a boy of similar height and age.

“It's all right – he doesn't understand a word of English. He'd be very dim not to understand your face though. The frostiness of a frown is the same in any language.”

“Is that better?” she said, lifting her mouth in a hard, brittle little grimace.

“If it's the best you can do. If we weren't in a public place I'd have a stab at improving it,” he said, mocking her scruples.

She wasn't meant to reply; she wasn't given time. His hand smoothed down her back and curved in to fit around her waist. Her chin lifted in an automatic gesture of surprise, to find his eyes were waiting to ambush hers. Cold, cruel, tormenting. She wrenched free of his hold. The elevator doors opened and she stepped out, not caring if they did look like a couple in the throes of a raging argument. Why should she care about appearances when he so obviously didn't?

He guided her across the dining room to a table with a reserved sign on it. It was already occupied by two people whose heads were close together in conversation – a girl in her mid-twenties and a man a year or two older. It would appear that these two were going to be their table companions and she was glad to leave the tangled torment of her thoughts for the moment.

Even sitting, it was apparent that the girl was above average height and as thin as a whip. She was a brown-eyed blond with a clever, fine-boned face that looked good at the angle it was presented to Petrina, and even better when her chin swiveled around and her mouth warmed in a smile of greeting.

David had started the introductions and so she delayed looking at the man.

“Pet,” he said, “this is my secretary, the cool and efficient Miss Virginia Lewis, who keeps me on my toes.”

“Good to know you, Mrs. Palmer. And it's actually the other way around; your husband keeps me on my toes.”

The man intervened. “For once she's right. You can see by the length of her that she's stretched to the limit.”

“The joker is Robert Dawson, my chief assistant,” David put in.

“Happy to meet you, Mrs. Palmer.” He had already stood up and now he extended his hand. He had a big warm handshake that matched his round, genial face and his huge physique.

“How do you do, Mr. Dawson?” Petrina acknowledged as her smile found itself without difficulty.

“Please call me Bob,” he said.

“And I'm Ginny,” the tall woman threw in.

All through the meal, Bob and Ginny sniped back and forth at each other, and Petrina wondered how on earth they ever managed to work together. At first she was totally bewildered by their behavior; she'd never met their likes before. But then a curious notion filtered into her mind. They were doing it on purpose to alleviate the tension they expected to exist between her and David. They knew about the disharmony.

Could they have been quick enough to tune in to the mood from the other side of the dining room? No, they'd been too absorbed in their own conversation to observe anything, and had even seemed surprised when they realized they were about to have company. And they'd gone into their double act straight away, before they'd had time to sniff out the strained atmosphere. It pointed to prior knowledge.

How much they knew was the teaser. Did they know that David hadn't spent the night with her? There was a shrewd suspicion in her mind that the answer to that was yes. Did they both know? Or was one of them taking the cue from the other? Could the news have traveled so fast or ...?

The natural conclusion to that thought raised an intriguing possibility. Perhaps David hadn't gone tearing into Justine's arms. Perhaps he hadn't alerted someone to find another room for him. Perhaps he'd doubled up with an old friend. But which old friend? Whose door had he knocked on – Bob's or Ginny's?

Her emotions were playing tug-of-war over this new concept. A short while ago she would have staked her life on the fact that if someone had provided her with a new theory to supplant the one that David had spent the night with Justine she would never have believed it. But that was before she met Ginny.

Ginny wasn't beautiful, but she was certainly attractive – even with her hair tied back with that piece of brown ribbon, though Petrina thought a softer frame would have suited her face better. She was very tall and very thin, but not unattractive at all. How could someone with such a sexless shape manage to look like such a very sexy lady?

The penetration of her glance drew Ginny's eyes, and the other woman grinned across at her. Oh, help, Petrina thought, she's nice. I like her.

After breakfast, David, Ginny, and Bob disappeared into the downstairs office that was tucked behind the reception desk. Left to her own devices, Petrina decided to take her thoughts for a walk.

The hotel guests were already claiming loungers by the pool for a day-long vigil of sun worship. As she threaded her way through the hotel grounds she felt conspicuously pale among so many mahogany-colored bodies.

When she reached the beach she took off her sandals, wishing she'd thought to put her swimsuit on beneath her sun dress. Following her natural inclination and the curve of the coastline, she left the hotel complex and the shops behind.

The sea was a dazzle of diamonds. The heat of the sun on the back of her head was overpowering. She would have to change her English money into the local currency and set about buying some necessities. Besides the already longed-for sun hat, she needed sunglasses and some screening cream for her very fair skin.

She walked beyond the lion's head and was halfway down the goat's body when she decided that, much as the serpent's tail beckoned her – the coastline swished sharply away in its serpent's tail shape and she couldn't see what was beyond – until she was better equipped and more acclimatized to the hot sun, it was foolish to go any further.

The sea looked very tempting. She didn't know about currents and things, but there were no red flags up, so presumably it was safe to bathe. The strapless bra she was wearing under her sun dress was the same color as her panties; no one would know she wasn't wearing a bikini. In any case, no one was close enough to see. The crowds apparently chose to stay within a tight radius of the hotel complex and she had this part of the beach to herself.

She flung off her sun dress, dropped it delicately onto the white sand, and plunged into the sea. It was heavenly. She floated and flipped and curved and played, a cross between a mermaid, with her hair streaming out around her face, and a porpoise, with her sense of fun.

She half expected to run into trouble of some sort. It would be just her luck for a stray dog to pop up from nowhere and run off with her dress. Her undies were more modest than the average bikini, but she didn't fancy returning to the hotel clad just in them. But no, in this the fates were on her side, and nothing unforeseen happened.

She waded out of the sea, feeling gloriously tingly and alive, dried off in the sun, put on her sun dress, and made her way back to the hotel. She felt slightly light-headed. She hoped she hadn't stayed out too long in the sun on her first day.

There was no sign of David when she got back so presumably he was still working. She washed the salt water out of her hair and unpacked her suitcase while it dried. She put on a fresh dress and went down to the dining room in search of lunch. She realized that she had hardly thought of her problems all morning – and that it had been wonderful.

Only Bob occupied the reserved corner table. He waved her over.

“David and Ginny still have their noses to the grindstone. There's a heck of a lot of work to be done. What do you think of Chimera? Does it live up to expectations?”

He was grinning like a self-satisfied little boy; it was so obvious he expected her to go into raptures over what they had achieved. She didn't know what to say. It wasn't that she didn't have the courage to stand up for her own beliefs, it was a case of not wanting to dampen his enthusiasm.

“It's ... very ... She gulped and started again. “Actually, I'm lost for words.”

He nodded in delight. “I know just what you mean, Mrs. Palmer,” he said, knowing no such thing. “You wouldn't believe the plans that are in the works to keep the guests happily entertained and the bookings rolling in all year round.”

“It sounds interesting,” she said.

She knew that David was standing behind her chair even before he spoke. She felt him the moment he entered the dining room; now she felt his breath on her cheek as he drawled silkily, “Interesting, did you say? That doesn't sound like you at all, Pet.” Over the top of her stiffly held head he informed Bob, “My wife thinks it's very lazy of people to rely on someone else to provide their entertainment. She is a very primitive lady. She prefers the natural pleasures, don't you, Pet?” The rubbing motion of the hand on the back of her neck was as sensuous as the voice in her ear.

The color ran up her skin. He must know he was embarrassing both her and Bob.

Bob said, affably enough despite his obvious discomfort, “There are lots of unspoiled places on the island, Mrs. Palmer. And I know you'll just love –”

David's amused voice cut in, “ ‘Mrs. Palmer' sounds much too formal. I'm sure my wife won't mind your using her given name or its diminutive.”

“I'd prefer it,” she said gratefully.

“Thanks, so would I,” Bob admitted. “So, as I was saying, Pet –”

Once again David cut him off. This time the rebuke was not gentle – it was sharp, with a skimming of unkind amusement. “Not Pet. You can take your choice between Petrina or Trina. She's nobody's Pet but mine.”