Forbidden Pleasure

His explanation was, Ianthe thought shrewdly, the truth, but not the whole truth. ‘Lime, thank you.’

Accepting the glass he handed her, she observed, ‘I bet before you go home you’ll have tripped over someone you know. New Zealand’s notorious for coincidences.’

Long black lashes hid his eyes for a second. ‘I hope not,’ he said neutrally. ‘But if it’s inevitable, I certainly hope I see them before they see me. Have you come here for peace and solitude too?’

Ianthe turned her head to stare at the lake. Even through the thin cotton of her trousers she could feel the canvas squabs radiate the heat they’d trapped from the sun.

‘Yes,’ she said simply, for some reason no longer unwilling to talk about it. ‘I got bitten by a shark, and when the whole media circus ended and I came out of hospital for the third time I just wanted to crawl away to heal by myself.’

If he’d shown any sign of pity she’d have set her glass down and made some excuse and left, but he said in a judicial voice, ‘That must be the most terrifying thing that can happen to anyone.’

‘Oddly enough, I don’t think it was. I was half out of the water when it happened, climbing the ladder into the boat. I can’t remember much, but I do recall thinking that I was in the shark’s hunting grounds. And being surprised that there was no pain, although when it grabbed my leg I was shocked enough to punch it on the nose! I was lucky. It wasn’t a big one, and apparently it didn’t like being hit fair and square on its most sensitive spot.’

‘What sort of shark?’ he asked.

Surprised into laughter, because that was what her professor at university had asked when he’d come to see her in hospital, she told him, ‘A Tiger Shark.’

‘And did they catch it?’

She shook her head. ‘No, they didn’t try. Why kill something that’s only doing what it was born to do? As far as we know—and in spite of Jaws—sharks don’t turn into man-eaters, the way leopards or lions can. They just eat whatever comes to hand, and that day I was it.’

‘You’re remarkably tolerant,’ he said, his tone oblique, almost cryptic. ‘I’d be inclined to kill something that tried to eat me.’

After flicking him a glance, she became absorbed in the pattern of leaves on the ground. She believed him.

‘They’re an endangered species,’ she said. ‘I was in its element, and whenever you swim you risk bumping into something large and carnivorous or small and poisonous.’

‘And you enjoy swimming.’

Ianthe drank some of the liquid, relishing the refreshing tartness. ‘I always have,’ she said at last.

His gaze sharpened, but after a moment he nodded. Feeling as a possum must when the spotlight swings away from its tree, Ianthe allowed herself to relax.

‘You spoke of a media circus,’ he said. ‘Was that because you’re a television celebrity?’

Mark, of course. It was unlikely he’d seen the documentary series—as far as she knew, it had only just sold to England and America. Wishing Mark had kept his mouth shut, Ianthe said lightly, ‘Shark attacks are always newsworthy. I was only a very minor celebrity.’ The scar on her leg itched. She ignored it, as she wished she could ignore Alex’s speculative glance.

‘And how did you get into such a career?’ he asked.

He didn’t sound avid, merely interested. Pleased at his restraint, Ianthe said, ‘I’m a marine biologist, and I was working with dolphins in the Bay of Islands when a film crew thought I’d make a nice little clip on a reel they were making for Air New Zealand. About six months later someone rang up and asked if I’d front a documentary series about New Zealand’s marine life.’

‘And, dazzled by the glamour, you agreed.’ His voice missed mockery by a whisker; although he was teasing her, there was understanding and amusement there.

She laughed. ‘If that was the reason I’d have been very disappointed! We lived in pretty spartan conditions on a glorious schooner that was built for freight, not passengers. No, I decided to do it because I’d just had the plug pulled on my research funding and the film company offered good money—enough to keep me from going cap in hand to sponsors for quite a while if I lived economically.’

‘And will you be going back to your dolphins?’

‘As soon as I can.’ She willed her face to reveal nothing, her eyes to remain cool and composed, willed him not to notice the guarded nature of her response.

She didn’t know whether she’d succeeded.

Alex Considine didn’t have a poker face, but she suspected he revealed only what he wanted to. At the moment he looked mildly interested.

‘Did you enjoy the film work?’

‘After a few initial hassles, yes.’

When he lifted his brows she explained drily, ‘I didn’t realise that all they expected was someone to look reasonable in a high-cut swimsuit, someone to frolic in the water. They wanted me to grow my hair so that I could flick it around for the camera, and they expected me to coo over lobsters and shells and pretty fish. After we’d sorted that out I liked it very much.’

‘And how did you sort it out?’ he asked, a smile tucking the corners of his controlled mouth.

‘Got stroppy and waved my contract around a lot,’ she said, ‘until they realised that I actually did know what I was talking about and wasn’t just some lightweight mermaid who was kinky enough to prefer dolphins to men.’

Enough bitterness seeped into her words for him to give another of those laser glances. A shiver ran the length of her spine but she met his hooded eyes squarely.

‘And do you prefer dolphins to men?’ he asked, a lazy smile robbing the question of impertinence.

Ianthe laughed. ‘You know where you are with dolphins,’ she said, ‘but, no, I don’t.’

‘Where are you with dolphins?’

‘You’re in their country, and you’re a curiosity,’ she said readily. She’d been talking far too much about herself, so she said, ‘You’ve spent some time in England, I imagine, from your accent.’

He looked amused. ‘My mother is the source of my accent. She has very strong opinions on the proper way to speak, and the ruthlessness to enforce them.’

‘Persuading your children not to sound like some refugee from a cartoon is a never-ending business, I’m told.’ Ianthe smiled as she thought of Tricia’s battles with her five-year-old.

‘I have no children,’ he told her, his voice smooth and impersonal, ‘but my friends certainly say so. I’m not married.’

He’d thought she was fishing. Fighting back her indignation, Ianthe tried to ignore the way her heart fluttered and soared.

He asked, ‘Will you go back to working in television?’

‘They don’t want a front-person with a scar down her leg. It doesn’t look good, and the limp is ungraceful.’ Because it didn’t matter, her voice was as pragmatic as her words.

She didn’t quite hear what he said under his breath, but judging from the glitter in his eyes the succinct phrase was probably rude. Astonished, she looked up into a hard face and scornful, searing eyes.

‘Did they tell you that?’ he asked, on a note that sent a shiver up her spine.

‘No, but it’s the truth. Viewers don’t like their programmes spoiled by ugly reminders that the real world has carnivores prowling it. People complain bitterly if they see insects eating each other on screen! Probably because most of us live in cities now we want to believe that the natural world is one of beauty and meaning and harmony.’

The harshness faded from his expression as he leaned back into his chair. ‘But you don’t believe that?’

She shrugged. ‘It’s extraordinarily beautiful, but it’s also unsentimental. Animals kill and eat to survive. They’re not pretty different-shaped humans with human attitudes. Even pack animals, which we can understand best, have a rigid hierarchy with crushing rules that would drive most of us insane.’

‘But we’re animals too.’

‘Of course we are.’ Made uneasy by the focused intentness of his gaze, Ianthe resisted the impulse to wriggle. ‘Our problem is that we know what we’re doing. Most animals live by instinct.’

‘So it’s not cruel for animals to drive an ill or wounded member from the pack, but humans shouldn’t?’

For a moment she didn’t realise what he meant. When she did she gave him a startled, angry glance. ‘Animals drive their sick away or abandon them because their presence attracts predators. If you’re using me as an instance, I’m not ill, but my wound could well have put an end to the series’ existence if people had stopped watching. Besides, I was in hospital while they were filming the last programmes so they had to get someone to take my place. I have no hard feelings.’

‘As I said before, you’re astonishingly tolerant,’ he said, his smile hard and humourless.

Oh, she could be enormously tolerant. The loss of her job was the least of her problems.

He said, ‘Will you always have that limp?’ He glanced at her trouser-clad leg.

For the first time Ianthe realised that most people when confronted with her scar did one of two things—the rude stared and commented while the polite kept their eyes fixed on her face. Both responses irritated her because they seemed to imply that she was less than perfect, less than human. Alex, however, looked at her leg without aversion.

‘Always,’ she said, steadying her voice so that her self-pity didn’t show.

‘You seem very relaxed about it.’

Although her unusual frankness had given him the opportunity to probe, she’d told him enough about herself. ‘I try not to worry about things I can’t control,’ she said coolly. ‘It doesn’t always work, but fretting over the past is just a waste of time.’

‘Fretting over anything is a waste of time.’

Nodding, she let the sun soak into her, acutely aware of the strumming of the cicadas, now reaching for a crescendo. However, balancing the shrill stridulation were other sounds—the soft rustling of reeds swaying against each other, the lazy cry of a gull that had drifted inland from the coast a few miles away, and the sound of a speedboat on the one lake that was open for powerboats, its intrusive roar muted by intervening hills to a pleasant hum.

And a fantail—the same one, perhaps?—black and cheeky as it darted around collecting insects from under the vine over the pergola.

Accepting her tacit refusal to discuss her leg any further, Alex Considine said, ‘Do you know anything about the way dune lakes are formed? Why are there lakes in this valley, but not in the valleys on either side?’

‘Because under this one there’s an impermeable ironstone pan. Rainwater collects above it and forms the lakes. The sand is silica, which is why it’s so white.’

‘So this is a rare formation?’

‘No, there are similar lakes wherever there are sand-hills—on this coast they go right up to North Cape.’

He asked, ‘Did you do geology at university also?’

‘I’m just an interested amateur,’ she said, getting up. ‘I must go now. Thank you so much for the drink, and I hope your Range Rover is driveable soon.’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ Alex said calmly, rising to tower over her. ‘Mark isn’t hurt and neither was anyone else; that’s the important thing.’

Ianthe wanted to convince herself she was grateful that he didn’t try to persuade her to stay. For all his exotic façade he was far too easy to talk to, and she’d revealed more about herself than she’d intended to. Much more than he’d told her about himself.

As they were going towards the front door Ianthe’s leg failed her again. It was only a slight stumble, but Alex’s hand shot out instantly, closing with hard strength onto her arm and supporting her. Ianthe had been stung by jellyfish; that was how she felt now—shock, and then a sensation like the thrust of a spear tempered on the edge of ice and fire.

Did he feel it too? She looked up, saw the beautiful mouth compress, harden.

‘All right?’ he asked abruptly, releasing her when he was sure she had regained her balance.

She managed to smile. ‘Yes, thank you.’

‘Do you need to rest?’

‘No,’ she said, adding with hasty firmness, ‘And I don’t need to be carried, either.’

He was frowning, the brilliant eyes resting on her leg. ‘Will it always be likely to let you down?’

‘No, they tell me it’s going to be a lot better as soon as the muscles strengthen.’

Her surgeon had suggested she walk to build up the muscles, but she hadn’t because she’d cringed at the idea of people pitying her as she limped by. Well, that very evening she’d begin exercising, and ignore the stares and whispered comments.

The decision buoyed her spirits. With erect back and shoulders she said goodbye and drove carefully down the drive, concentrating fiercely to stop the odd desolation that roiled inside her.

At the bach she pushed all the windows open before going out onto the verandah overlooking the lake and collapsing into one of the elderly chairs to read the newspaper.

After ten minutes or so, she dropped it on the floor, feeling oddly detached, as though somehow she’d slipped through a transparent door and into another world.

The two men shaking hands on the front page weren’t statesmen signing an important treaty; they were smirking actors chosen to fill empty space on the page. The people marching in the streets of the capital city in a tiny state somewhere on the Adriatic Sea were extras from an old movie, selected for their lined, worn faces and dressed by Wardrobe in thick, drab peasants’ clothing.

Only the photograph of children playing in the sea meant anything; yes, she thought, looking at them with her heart compressed into a painful knot, they were real, they were complete and oh, they were lucky.

To break the soggy spell of self-pity, she strode over the thick, springy kikuyu grass to the edge of the busy beach. Small children ran around happily, yelling and laughing, many swam in the milky band of water that denoted the shallows.

Ianthe closed her eyes but immediately forced her lashes back up. Beneath her breath she muttered, ‘I’m not going to stand here like a wimp,’ and walked across the blinding white sand.

Nausea clutched her before she’d gone halfway. Breathing shallowly, fighting back the panic that turned her clammy and shaking, she forced herself to stand there for long, chilling moments before turning and stumbling back.

A couple of youths were passing; through the roaring in her ears she heard one jeer, ‘Hey, blondie, need some help?’

Intent only on reaching sanctuary, she blundered past. His companion said something and followed it up by catching her arm.

A voice cracked out across the beach. ‘Let her go.’

They swivelled around, both assuming the swaggering, aggressive posture of a male whose territory has been violated. Heart thudding painfully in her throat, Ianthe froze.

Alex Considine was taller than they were, but they were stocky, tight-skinned and muscular, with necks wider than their heads, their macho strut a violent contrast to his athletic grace. Yet such was the dark power of Alex’s personality that after one glance the man who held Ianthe dropped her arm as though her skin burned his fingers, and the other said uneasily, ‘She’s OK, mate. We thought she was going to fall over,’ before stepping back and decamping.

Alex didn’t even watch them go. ‘Are you all right?’ he demanded as he closed the gap between them with a couple of long strides. His hands fastened onto her, holding her up by her shoulders, and for a paralysing moment she was exposed to the full intensity of his gaze.

Ianthe knew she had skin the colour of cottage cheese and dark blotches under her eyes. She swallowed to ease her dry mouth, but could only croak, ‘Yes.’

Alex’s quiet, ‘What the hell is the matter with you?’ made her stomach leap.

She dragged in a deep, shuddering breath. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said stupidly, trying to overcome the empty sickness of fear.

He said, ‘Come on,’ and turned her towards the bach. A steel-hard arm buttressed her, giving her the strength to climb the low bank. ‘We’ll go inside,’ he said, his voice oddly distant.

Numbly she obeyed the crisp command and crossed the wide back verandah, where chairs sat in shabby communion. As they passed the low table he picked up a plastic bag.

‘What are you doing here?’ Ianthe asked woodenly after he’d pushed the door open and let her go through.

‘You forgot your frozen goods.’ Without asking permission he put the bag into her small freezer compartment. ‘You need some stimulant. I’ll make coffee.’

She clenched her jaw to keep her teeth from chattering. ‘I don’t want anything, thanks. I’m fine now.’

Ignoring her, he opened the door into the fridge and removed a jug of orange juice. ‘This will do,’ he said, pouring a glass and bringing it across to her. ‘Sit down,’ he ordered, his unwavering gaze commanding her obedience.

It was too much trouble to protest, so she collapsed ungracefully into a chair. He waited until she’d pushed the heavy, clinging hair back from her face, then offered the glass. Accepting it, Ianthe watched with outrage and dismay as it wobbled in her hand.

‘I’ll do it,’ Alex Considine said abruptly, and took it back, holding it to her mouth so that she could sip the sweetly tart liquid.

It helped. Soon she felt secure enough to take the glass and gulp down more of the juice.

He waited until she’d almost finished before asking evenly, ‘What happened? What did they say to you?’

‘It wasn’t them.’ She dismissed the two men.

‘Then what?’

His level voice didn’t fool her; she wasn’t going to be able to fob him off. Ianthe bent her head so that she couldn’t see the narrow masculine hips, the long muscular legs. The silence hummed, strident with the confusion in her head, in her heart.

Eventually she said, ‘I had a dizzy turn.’

Although he said nothing, his disbelief was patent.

Slowly she finished the juice. ‘Thank you,’ she said, her throat thick.

‘Look at me,’ he ordered.

Lifting her chin was a mistake, and staring him full in the eyes, daring him to take the issue any further, was an even bigger one. Alex’s pale gaze drilled through her meagre defences.

‘Have you got sunstroke?’ he asked.

It would have been a pat answer, but she shook her head. Lies didn’t come easily to her. ‘No. I just felt a bit—over-whelmed.’ She couldn’t breathe in the hot room and her skin was too sensitive, too tight. ‘I think I’d rather be outside,’ she said, forcing her voice into something like normality. ‘It’s cooler on the verandah.’

‘All right. Do you need help?’

‘No!’ She tried to soften the blunt refusal. ‘I feel much better now.’

But once outside she realised she needed activity to burn off the adrenalin that still pumped through her body. Looking towards the motor camp, she asked aggressively, ‘Would you like to go for a walk and see how the other half spend their holidays?’

With a keen look he answered crisply, ‘Why not?’

Nothing had changed. Children, hatted and slick with sunscreen, still laughed and called in clear, high voices, still splashed in the chalky water that stretched out to where the lake bed dropped away.

The edge was still as sharp and sudden against the fierce, glinting blue of the deeper water.

Ianthe averted her eyes and concentrated hard on walking through the holidaymakers without giving away how aware she was of the man who strode beside her. Sand crunched beneath their feet. Alex looked around, the fan of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes slightly indented. How old was he? Thirty-three or four, she guessed.

He said, ‘This place reminds me of the village I lived in until I was ten.’

Intrigued, Ianthe was stopped from asking questions by an indefinable reserve in his tone, in the angular, aristocratic line of his profile.

They walked around families, past groups of teenagers indulging in their noisy, unsophisticated courtship rituals, and as they went by Ianthe felt the eyes, some on her, some on Alex. She was accustomed to being watched; it interested her that Alex too had developed a way to deal with onlookers. He didn’t make eye contact, he walked steadily—not fast, not slow—and although he swivelled when a child shrieked behind them he turned away again immediately he realised it was under supervision.

Who was he? She recognised his name, so possibly he had turned up in a newspaper. However, she had a strongly visual memory; if she’d seen a photograph of him she’d have remembered his startling good looks and pale eyes instead of merely being haunted by a vague familiarity.

Yet would any photograph capture the magnetism of his personality, or the aura of uncompromising authority?

Probably not, and she wasn’t going to think about it any more. That way lay danger.

Although she’d snatched up a straw hat as they left the bach, the sun beat down on her shoulders and summoned a rare blue sheen from Alex’s bare head. She should tell him he needed some protection, but it seemed an oddly personal and intimate thing to talk about.

‘You obviously know this place very well,’ Alex commented.

Nodding, she kept her eyes on the low bushes—a mixture of sedges, rushes and sprawling teatree—that scrambled from the pine plantation to the water, effectively marking the limit of the beach. ‘For years I spent every school holiday here with my best friend. Her parents own the bach.’

Once she’d known every inch of the shoreline. In those long, golden, distant summers she and Tricia had spent every day on or in the lake. And now Tricia was a wife and mother, and Ianthe was trying to reassemble her life.

‘We’d better go back,’ she said evenly. ‘It’s swampy in there.’ She glanced down at his feet and added with a spark of malice, ‘You won’t want to get those shoes wet.’

He laughed softly. ‘I’d noticed that I was overdressed,’ he said, turning the tables neatly on her.

Biting her lip, she swivelled, and of course her wretched leg chose just that moment to let her down again. Gasping, she jerked back, but too late. Her sideways lurch had thrown her into the tangle of bushes, and her foot sank into the lake so that water rose halfway up her calf.

Panic, sickening and immediate, clawed at her. For a horrifying second she couldn’t move, until the clamouring terror forced her free of the water. Whimpering, she pushed past Alex, blundering across the hot sand in a desperate rush to reach the safety of solid ground.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE was almost there when hard hands caught her, gripping her cruelly until she stopped fighting and went limp against him, panic giving way to a shamed exhaustion.

‘All right,’ Alex said quietly. ‘It’s all right, Ianthe. You’re safe.’

‘I know,’ she choked, trying to pull away, because it was too easy to surrender mindlessly to his disciplined toughness.

A simple offer of comfort, she told her hammering heart, that was all it was. He’d given her the only things she could take any consolation from—the tempered support of his body, the knowledge that she wasn’t alone.

Swiftly he turned, forcing her around so that his broad shoulders sheltered her from any curious stares, then let her go. A quick glance informed her that no one had noticed, and some of the tight knot of humiliation eased.

But when she looked back at Alex she couldn’t escape those enigmatic eyes, eyes that goaded her into muttering, ‘Don’t you pity me.’

Something predatory prowled through the icy depths. ‘Pity you?’ His smile was taut and compelling. ‘I don’t pity you, Ianthe Brown. Far from it.’ Strong fingers bit into her arm, turned her, tucked her hand in the crook of his elbow. ‘All right, we’ll walk back in the shade of the trees. What birds do you usually see on the lakes?’

Ianthe forced herself to respond. ‘Dotterels nest in scrapes in the sand, and in spring and autumn the lakes are a staging point for migratory birds.’ As she answered his questions her voice sounded flat and dull, but by the time they got back to the bach the black panic had withdrawn into its lurking limbo on the borders of her mind.