Paradise Found (11 page)

Back in her room, her simmering anger cooling as she took her morning shower and considered what to do, she told herself firmly, almost convincingly, that if she had wanted Matt to take her somewhere it was for his services as a guide and not for his infinitely disrupting presence. She supposed she could have bought this service by taking a conducted. tour. But although she was a born tourist,
delighting
in walking medieval ramparts, snapping her camera at Roman ruins, and generally reveling in antiquities, she didn't like to go in a crowd or to the fashionable places and tourist traps, preferring to wander off the beaten track on the whim of the moment.

Looking delectably cool in an easy-to-wear, lemon-ice shirtwaist dress and a large cartwheel sun hat, Zoe went to seek Tony out and let him know her intentions.

He was reclining in his usual lounger in the garden; it was positioned by a small, ornamental fountain, and she felt a rush of compassion for him, because even though he was lucky to have such a fantastic spot to rest up in, and he was getting more adept at getting around on his crutches, it was still sad that he couldn't swim off one of the incredibly lovely beaches or take advantage of the surrounding countryside.

‘If you don't want me to go for a walk, I'll stay with you,' she volunteered.

‘No, take your walk. You look . . . sort of restless. Is anything wrong, Zoe?'

‘No.'

‘There is,' he persisted.

‘Yes, there is,' she acknowledged. ‘Actually, that's why I want to get away for a while—to think.'

‘Not having second thoughts about us?' he asked with such anxiety in his eyes that it squeezed her heart.

‘No,
Tony. But when I tell you what I should have told you when we first started going out together, you might have second thoughts and want to break it off.'

He lifted a finger and placed it across her mouth. ‘I don't want to hear your guilty confession . . . presumably about the men in your life before you met me. You're not nineteen anymore. It would be downright stupid of me to think there hadn't been someone before, or . . . other things. I don't much care whether you have or you haven't, or who the man is, providing it's dead and in the past. I don't want your past, just your future. So you don't have to tell me a thing.'

‘That's very generous of you, Tony. Why did you choose the age of nineteen? Why didn't you say eighteen or twenty or twenty-one? Why nineteen?'

‘I don't know. It was just an age I picked on. Why the fuss about that?'

‘I'm not fussing. It's just that I was nineteen when I knew him.'

‘What have I just told you?' he chided gently.

‘You said you didn't want to know if it was dead and in the past. I want to be very honest about this, Tony. I owe you that. It's not in the past; it's turned up to haunt me.' She lowered her head to hide her eyes, which were filled with the painful truth. ‘If something can haunt you it isn't dead.'

‘I
see.'

‘How can you see?' she said, irritated by his placid acceptance and calm understanding. ‘You don't know who the man is! Do you?' she challenged.

It was odd the way he took his time in replying. He either knew or he didn't know. Perhaps he wasn't as unruffled as she thought; perhaps underneath his façade of calm he was seething and wanted to take her by the shoulders and give her a good shake and was fighting to control himself and his tone.

‘No, I don't know,' he said eventually.

‘It's Matt.' She looked him squarely in the eye. ‘I owe you an apology. I should have told you at the beginning. I didn't because I didn't think we would get serious, and then when we did, it was too late. And you didn't seem, all that friendly with Matt, despite working for him. So I foolishly let things ride.'

‘You said it isn't dead. What do you mean by that?'

‘Matt is a very physical man. When I saw him again, I felt the old pull. If you still want me, I'll need your understanding and your support to fight it.'

‘
If
I still want you!' Just for a moment there was a bright gleam of triumph in his eyes that sickened her. It was as if he was crowing over his victory, but then the look faded into one of incredulity. ‘You're saying that you'll stick with me in preference to Matt?'

‘Yes,
that's what I'm saying.'

‘You sound very sure.'

‘I am. And I'll tell you why. I want to get it all off my conscience. I was heartbroken when Matt left me five years ago.' She hated saying anything against Matt, but her first loyalty had to be to Tony if she was going to carry this through. ‘It was cruel the way he finished it between us. He had a big haulage job on the Continent. He promised to get in touch with me the moment he got back. He didn't. He left me in suspense, wondering, without a word.'

‘You didn't get a whiff of anything? No possible hint why?'

‘What makes you ask that?' Zoe questioned, puzzled. Perhaps there was a reason, after all, something that Tony knew about, and when he told her it would clear everything up, somehow making things right.

It was a fragile hope to pin her future on, and it splintered as Tony said in a funny, strained voice, ‘I just wondered, that's all. Why do you suppose he acted like that?'

She shrugged away her keen disappointment. ‘Who knows? Perhaps he met someone else. Or it just came to him that I bored him.'

‘His bad taste is my good fortune. I'll make you happy as he never could. You wouldn't be happy with someone you couldn't trust. You'd always wonder if he'd do the same thing again.'

‘That's
very true. I phoned the depot, you know.'

‘Did you? No, I didn't. How could I?' he said, a slight edge to his voice.

‘The woman who answered insisted on knowing my name before she'd answer my inquiry about Matt.' She laughed wryly. ‘I had this stupid notion that he might have been involved in an accident and couldn't contact me. But when I told her my name she said in a very icy voice, “I'm sorry, Miss Fortune, but I am instructed to say that Mr. Hunter is not available.”' She swallowed back her hurt and gripped Tony's hand. ‘I think you're being fantastic about this. I couldn't blame you if you booted me out at this very moment.'

‘I've no intention of doing that. I'm going to marry you. You don't know what that will mean to me. Now, go for your walk, darling. Why not ask Monique to pack you a picnic lunch, then you won't have to hurry back.' He indicated the lounger next to his. ‘I'll save your place for when you get back.'

Having a place saved for her sounded warm and reliable to Zoe. ‘M'm, I like the idea of a picnic lunch'. The response was light, despite the heaviness of her heart.

The hard, triumphant glimmer which Zoe had caught a brief glance of returned to Tony's eyes, belying the softness of his tone as he said, ‘Enjoy your walk, darling.' But having already turned to go back into the house, Zoe didn't
see
it. As she paused to turn and wave, the correct smile was back in place.

* * *

Zoe walked in a circle, arriving at the meandering old part of the town by way of a small promenade with a pebbly beach on one side and pavement cafés on the other. The cafés attracted more locals than tourists, the latter being more inclined to head for the livelier spots. An older Frenchman with a brown weathered face and the type of beret favored by the older generation of locals winked at her and surreptitiously followed her progress. A younger, quite attractive Frenchman ogled her openly. She had thought about stopping for a coffee but decided against it when she saw that she might have company. Two men in her life provided more than enough complications. Instead she sat for an enjoyable while on the low harbor wall, watching the softly breaking water wash across the white pebbles and the aquamarine ripples made by the rhythmic bobbing of the fishing boats. The whispering slap and splash was oddly soothing. The same kind of charm and serenity and timelessness was to be found in the old town with its winding, narrow streets and high, shuttered windows.

She climbed out of town and up a zigzag path through a resinous pine forest, punishing
her
legs with the effort as if to pay for any pain she might have caused Tony. She wouldn't have believed that anyone could be so kindly and understanding. Not one word of recrimination had crossed his lips. All that had seemed to concern him was the fact that she wasn't leaving him for Matt. He must love her very much, more than she'd thought, and it made her treatment of him seem shabby by comparison.

It was good to stamp her frustration out on the ground. She realized that she had taken an erratic course, but when she finally looked down from her vantage point above the treetops to a vista that varied from wild to cultivated to luxurious, and all of it beautiful, she knew that the experience far outweighed the odd blister and aching muscle. To get a wider view of the coastline, which was crammed with resorts and campgrounds wherever the smallest beach existed, she would need to attain considerably more height. Even if time had permitted that, her legs weren't up to it.

She found a shady spot to sit and eat her picnic lunch, which consisted of chicken, cheese, rolls, and fruit, and which she washed down with a bottle of mineral water. She remained there for quite some time, thinking, not about her decision, she'd made that, just wondering how she could cope. Matt was poison, yet she was drawn to him. How could
she
keep his hands off her when she yearned for his touch?

The sizzling gold of the sun was a softer shade of liquid honey that slanted obliquely over the countryside as she made her way back, her footsteps dragging with an odd reluctance.

As she proceeded up the drive to Les Charmettes she almost tripped over Matt, literally. Her view of him was at first limited to two denim clad legs protruding from beneath Hannah's car. She didn't want him to see her, she couldn't have borne another confrontation at that moment, so she moved with stealth. Her step was quieter than the leaves whispering in the trees with the wind that had risen and that plucked mischievously at the hem of her dress.

Whether he'd finished his task or just somehow sensed her presence, she had no way of knowing, but suddenly he came out from beneath the car, causing her heart to race with a peculiar rhythm at the sight of his muscled chest and brawny shoulders. A moment's contemplation would have told her that of course he would have removed his shirt to save it from getting greased up, but all that rippling vitality, coming so unexpectedly, was almost too much to take. She had known that he wasn't a sitting-behind-the-desk kind of boss and he needed to be powerfully built to handle the heavy juggernauts he drove, but knowing
and
seeing
were different matters entirely.

By the time she regained her breath he had wormed his way out and was sitting cross-legged, looking up at her. He looked hot and oily, but a happy smile of accomplishment was on his face as he said, ‘Hi!'

‘Hi!' The wind was having another go at her skirt, and she tried to anchor it without seeming to be doing so. She wished he'd get up. The level of his view was rather off-putting.

He remained complacently where he was. ‘That should do it. Had a good day?'

‘Yes.' Nodding her head toward the car, she said, ‘Seems apparent that you have, too.'

‘I'm satisfied. I've got some work to do tomorrow. But I just may have it licked.'

He scooped up a rag to wipe his face, which looked even dirtier than his hands, if that were possible, then finally levered himself to his feet.

He was still grinning like a Cheshire cat about something. Could it be because of the satisfaction of a job well done, or something else? She was betting heavily on the something else. And she didn't think the amount of leg he'd seen, or her embarrassment in showing it, merited such amusement.

She wasn't kept in suspense for long. No longer than it took to walk past Matt, through the arch and into the garden. She stopped. The place that Tony had said he would save
for
her was very decoratively occupied and that some of it wasn't because of a tiny stirring of jealousy. No, she was being too hard on herself. And yet . . . She had always thought that she had a reasonably nice figure, slender but quite curvy, but the full richness of this girl's breasts made hers look like nothing. The curve of her hips was only a mite less impressive than the length and lusciousness of her legs. It came to Zoe that she was looking at the girl as a man would, figure before face, and with a sinking feeling she knew that this was because she wanted to see her through Matt's and Tony's eyes.

Zoe's breath caught again on viewing the girl's face. Her loveliness was something impossible to describe without using hackneyed metaphors. Her face was angelic, her skin perfectly smooth, its color confirming what had already been deduced from her body, that she was a sunseeker. She had a full and deeply sensuous mouth, gray eyes, thickly and darkly lashed, and silky ebony hair, and she was exuding a heavy perfume that seemed to be an intrinsic part of her. In a way she seemed old for one so young, because Zoe gauged her to be younger than herself. Somewhere between nineteen and twenty-one. The rose—no, she was too exotic a being to be likened to a rose—the flower, whatever it was, had lost its dew.

Tony struggled up from his reclining
position.
It wasn't until he awkwardly moved his arm that it crossed Zoe's mind to wonder if he had been holding the girl's hand until she herself came into view. Or was the abashed look on his face because of the proximity of the two loungers—Zoe's, which the beauty had annexed, had been placed cozily close, and she hadn't bothered to push it away to create a distance between them.

Matt was still behind her, but she could feel his eyes boring into the back of her neck as he performed the necessary introduction.