Forgotten Passion

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

LISA was half-way up a pair of step-ladders, trying to disentangle herself from a piece of wallpaper that seemed to think its purpose in life was not so much to decorate the wall but rather to cling lovingly to her, when she heard the doorbell ring.

Extricating herself with difficulty from its clinging stickiness, she descended the ladder. She had worked on too long, she acknowledged, surveying the almost finished room, and now she was overtired. Wiping sticky hands on the jeans she kept on one side for decorating jobs, and grimacing rather ruefully at their tight shabbiness, she headed for the door.

She had a good idea that her unexpected caller would be her new next-door neighbour. When she had bought her small terraced house in East London several years ago the area had been unfashionable and consequently cheap enough to be within her price range. Fashions changed, and now the area had been invaded by the new ‘with-it’ set, and although their arrival had added a very healthy sum to the value of her house, Lisa was beginning to find her new neighbours a little tedious.

They were both in fashion; Paul seemed to be away a good deal, and Janice, obviously at something of a loose end, tended to call round most evenings on the pretext of wanting to borrow something, only to stay most of the evening. And evening was her most productive time of day, Lisa thought wryly. As an illustrator for magazine articles and children’s books she found it increasingly difficult to work with the concentration required during the day, mainly because even though Robbie now attended play-school for several hours most days, he was such a lively, intelligent child that Lisa sometimes found it hard going keeping pace with him. Since she needed to work, she had taken to using the evening hours when he was in bed, finding it easier to concentrate when half of her mind was not worrying about the ominous silence which, when combined with an active four-year-old, spelled trouble.

The doorbell pealed again; almost imperiously so, and with another sigh, Lisa closed her bedroom door behind her and headed downstairs.

As she opened the front door on the November darkness and saw the tall, broad-shouldered man standing there with his back to her, her first thought was one of stifled impatience, her automatic reaction to close the door before he could begin whatever sales pitch had brought him to her door. But he moved fast, faster than her, lean brown fingers grasping the door and wrenching it from her. The hall light revealed his face to her and Lisa gasped, stepping backwards instinctively on legs suddenly made of rubber.

‘Rorke!’ she stammered, eyes widening in shocked disbelief.

‘That’s right,’ he agreed laconically. But there was nothing laconic in the way he was looking at her; in the searing path of his eyes—eyes that were still the same rich turquoise of the seas off St Martins—as they moved with an insolence she didn’t remember over the length of her legs in her too tight jeans, and then upwards, resting blatantly on the curves of her breasts.

Her breath constricted in her throat, the old familiar tension sweeping over her, only now it was more intense; now she had so much more reason to feel tense and afraid in this man’s presence.

She pushed a hand into the silky tangle of blonde curls lying on her shoulders, a deeply painful colour suffusing her entire body as he caught the tiny betraying gesture and watched her with eyes as cold and distant as ice.

‘Save the coy little tricks for those who appreciate them, Lisa,’ he told her brutally. ‘I know exactly what it feels like to run my hands through that tempting golden mass, so there’s absolutely no need to draw my attention to it.’

It was useless to protest that drawing his attention to her had been the last thing on her mind and that the action had simply been a nervous reflex, something she had done since childhood, as he ought to know.

‘What do you want, Rorke?’

The resignation in her voice seemed to please him.

‘That’s better,’ he approved mockingly, ‘I want to talk to you, Lisa, and I don’t have a lot of time, I’ve wasted too much already trying to find you.’

‘I’m surprised you bothered.’ She muttered it under her voice, but it was obvious that he had heard. That was something else she should have remembered, Lisa thought despairingly, wondering bitterly why it was that one glance at this man had been enough to undo five careful years of not thinking about him; of damming up the past and living a life that had started the day her plane touched down at Heathrow and she had left St Martins behind her for ever.

‘It wasn’t by choice,’ Rorke assured her, adding suavely, ‘Aren’t you going to invite me in? Or do you prefer an audience?’

He glanced to where her neighbour was standing in her bay window, openly appraising him, and suppressing the tiny thread of fear his appearance had reawakened, Lisa turned on her heel, throwing open the living room door.

Like the rest of the house, she had decorated it herself, in soft peaches and coffees; an inexpensive cord carpet covered the floor, and the rest of the furniture could best be described as cheap and cheerful, she knew, but did Rorke have to look at his surroundings so obviously contemptuously?

‘Quite a change,’ he drawled at last. ‘Why, Lisa? Or are you enjoying the sackcloth and ashes bit; the noble penitent paying for her sins?’

Compressing her lips, Lisa refused to be baited. She had lost too many battles to him in the past to be trapped in another one now.

‘What do you want, Rorke?’ she repeated.

‘Not even going to offer me a drink, when I’ve flown all this way to see you—and tramped halfway round London? I got your address from the bank—at least I thought I had, but you’d moved and they had no forwarding address. And you haven’t drawn your allowance once in five years. Why, Lisa?’

‘I didn’t need it,’ she told him, marvelling at the calmness of her voice, the cool composure of her features as she happened to glimpse them in the mirror.

‘No, of course, you wouldn’t, would you?’ he gibed sardonically. ‘You’ve got a lover to support you. Well, he’s going to have to do without you for a while, Lisa.’

‘What do you mean?’ Her heart was thudding painfully against her chest wall, and she recognised the tactical error even as she made it. She should have kept quiet. But now it was too late and Rorke was smiling at her with cruel satisfaction. God, he was really enjoying this; really taking pleasure in seeing her fear and anxiety.

‘Oh, don’t worry,’ he told her softly, watching her with a cold intensity that made her forget everything else, tiny frissons of an awareness she couldn’t deny sensitising her body to his proximity. ‘You won’t be away long. Just as long as it takes Leigh to die!’

Through the swirling darkness, Lisa heard her own shocked ‘No!’ as she fought off feelings of sickness and pain. Leigh Hayward, who from the very first moment he had married her mother had treated her like his own daughter; who had spoiled and petted her, until she cculdn’t remember living anywhere but St Martins and anything but Leigh’s protective love. Even when her mother died her loss had been softened by Leigh’s love. He had flown from the Caribbean to be with her—she had been at school then, sixteen, and anxious to leave, especially after her mother’s death. Sensing her loneliness he had given in to her pleas to be allowed to go home with him. England was cold and damp, she had told him, ignoring the fact that she had spent the first six years of her life there. She was pining for the Caribbean; for the sun, and for his love.

Always indulgent, he had agreed. Now from the vantage point of twenty-two Lisa sighed, closing her eyes against the pain. Dear God—Leigh! She hadn’t thought about him in five years, hadn’t allowed herself to do so, and now he was dying… She glanced up into the shuttered impassive face of the man opposite her. Didn’t he feel anything? He had to. After all, Leigh was his father.

‘Cut the hysterics,’ he told her cruelly. ‘Leigh isn’t here to see them, and anyway, emotionalism isn’t what he needs right now, but it seems he does need you, Lisa. What is it about you?’ he mused, his lips curling faintly, the contempt in his eyes unmistakable.

He stood up suddenly, towering above Lisa for all her five foot eight, his skin darkly tanned from the Caribbean sun; his hair sleek and dark. There was Moorish blood somewhere in his ancestry, Leigh had once told her. The family had owned St Martin’s since the sixteenth century. It had been given to them by Elizabeth the First, and rumour had it that one of their buccaneering ancestors had taken prisoner the daughter of a rich Moorish trader and had kept her as his own prize.

Certainly Rorke’s taut bone structure hinted that the rumour could be right, and Lisa remembered how as a child she had been fascinated by his family history—fascinated by him, so dark and forbiddingly mysterious, at twenty-four to her thirteen so much more adult…

‘Leigh,’ she asked painfully, dragging her mind away from the past, ‘what…’

‘He developed a critical heart condition shortly after you left,’ Rorke told her grimly. ‘It’s gradually grown worse and worse—there’s an operation with a fifty-fifty chance of success, but he refused to consider it unless you come back.’

Lisa moistened her lips. Go back? But that was impossible. There was no going back!

‘I’m telling you, not asking you, Lisa,’ Rorke warned her softly. ‘You’re coming with me, even if I have to kidnap you.’

‘I can’t!’ Her eyes betrayed her, lifting to the ceiling. Above them was Robbie’s room. Robbie who was the reason she could never go back to St Martins. Robbie, who meant the world to her, but whose birth had barred her for ever from her home.

‘Can’t, or won’t? Whichever it is, you’re wrong. You’re coming back with me.’

Lisa glanced across the room at him, forcing herself to meet the icy scrutiny of his eyes. There was still one card she could play, one knife she could turn, and hurt her though it did not to be able to go to Leigh, she had to protect Robbie.

‘If I did come back, Rorke, what would it be as? Your stepsister, or your wife?’ For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to speak, and then he moved, and she could tell from the snarling curl of his mouth that he was furiously angry.

‘My wife! But you were never that, were you, Lisa? Oh, we went through the ceremony all right, but you already belonged to someone else, and marriage to me was just a shield to hide behind, wasn’t it?’

‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ Lisa managed shakily, ‘and if you don’t mind, Rorke, I’d like you to leave. I’d like to be with Leigh, but it really isn’t possible.’

‘What are you frightened of?’ He was really angry now. ‘Losing your lover? If that’s all that’s bothering you I’ll make it worth your while… financially, of course. Physically, I wouldn’t touch you if you were the only woman left on earth!’

She lifted her hand instinctively and bit back a gasping protest of pain as Rork’s finger curled round her wrist, threatening to crack her bones with the ferocity of his grip.

‘Oh no, you don’t!’ she heard him grate harshly above her. ‘Your lover might let you get away with behaviour like that, but I won’t!’

She read his intention in his eyes and backed away like a terrified animal, but the wall was behind her, and there was no escape from the bitter hatred in his eyes, or the hard pressure of his arms as they tightened round her, his breath fanning her hair as he fought to control his rage. There was no way he was going to let her go, Lisa knew that, but rather than plead and betray her fear, she lifted her head proudly, her eyes defying him to do his worst.

Her courage only served to increase his anger; Lisa could feel it in the fierce beat of his heart and the tension that emanated from him.

She felt as though her nerves were stretched like steel wire, her breath locking painfully in her throat.

Get it over with, damn you! she screamed silently inwards, knowing that he was deliberately drawing out her punishment. Did he know what it did to her to be so close to him, to be reminded of how innocently she had looked forward to their marriage; had wanted his possession; and how shattered she had been when…

His mouth was a mere breath away from hers. Faintness crept through her as she remembered against her will the subtle mastery of those lips. Without her knowing it her own softened and parted, her thick, long eyelashes quivering against her skin—so pale in contrast to his. He made her look ill and anaemic. A curious weightlessness seemed to seize her; she felt her body relaxing, moulding itself to him, sensations she had kept tightly under control for so long stirring hesitantly.

He was looking at her; and Lisa’s eyelashes lifted in obedience to that look, heedless of the consequences of what he might read in her eyes.

Rorke looked at her mouth, and Lisa felt herself quiver intensely. Then suddenly she was released and he was stepping away from her, cynicism carved deeply into the tanned features.

‘Oh no,’ he said slowly, ‘I’m not playing substitute for any man. You’ll have to do something about controlling your appetites while we’re on St Martin’s, Lisa, there’s no Mike Peters now to appease them with.’

‘For the last time, I’m not coming with you,’ Lisa said bitterly, her eyes widening betrayingly as she caught the sound she had been dreading ever since his arrival.

‘What’s that?’ Rorke frowned, as Robbie cried for a second time, his face darkening as he obviously recognised the sound. ‘You had the child, then?’

‘Did you really expect me not to?’ demanded Lisa, suddenly courageous now that the moment was upon her. ‘I wanted him even if you didn’t! And that’s why I can’t come back with you, Rorke.’ She stared provokingly at him. ‘Much as I love your father, Robbie’s needs come first. I can’t leave him here alone.’

He had his back to her, but Lisa saw him stiffen and tensed herself, dreading the outburst of contempt she was sure would follow her disclosure.

‘Then you’ll just have to bring him with you, won’t you,’ Rorke said evenly.

Lisa couldn’t hide her shock. ‘But you said… you said you’d never….’

‘My father needs you, Lisa,’ he interrupted curtly. ‘I seem to remember a time when you needed him when your mother died. You owe it to him to be there, Lisa!’

‘I can’t just leave like that. I need time,’ she pleaded.

‘I’ll give you twenty-four hours,’ Rorke announced tautly, preparing to leave. ‘And your answer had better be yes! You’ve a week to get yourselves fixed up with inoculations, etc., and then we’ll fly out to St Martin’s together.’

Lisa followed him out into the hall, too bemused to question his assumption of authority.

‘Oh, and by the way, Lisa,’ he paused and turned, the dim light in the hall concealing his expression from her. ‘In answer to your earlier question, as my WIFE. You return to St Martins as my wife.’

‘And Robbie,’ Lisa protested. ‘What…’

‘You are my wife, so it follows that Robbie could be my child, and we’ll leave it at that, Lisa. It will please my father if nothing else.’

‘But…’

‘But we both know that can’t be so; that you could never have had a child of mine, don’t we?’ he asked savagely. ‘But no one else knows that, do they, Lisa? Even Mike assumed that I had enjoyed my matrimonial rights.’ His mouth twisted bitterly. ‘I could never understand what spell you’d worked on him. He was your lover and yet he seemed to accept that you’d married me; he even accepted that he didn’t have exclusive rights to your favours. How old is… is the child?’ he demanded suddenly.

‘Five, Robbie is nearly five.’ Her mouth had gone dry, and she saw from his expression that he had made his own valuation. ‘Mike’s child, the child you were carrying when you married me!’ he said softly, adding savagely, ‘God damn you to hell, Lisa,’ as he opened the door and walked through it.

Only when he had gone did Lisa move, going automatically upstairs to where Robbie slept in his bed. His little-boy face in sleep had an innocence and purity that tugged at her heartstrings. Mike’s child, Rorke had said, and he had flung the words at her like an accusation, but Robbie wasn’t Mike’s child, he was Rorke’s son, although Rorke himself would never believe it, would never even believe that they had been lovers! It was only after he had gone that Lisa realised that Rorke had left his gloves behind. She recoiled from their touch as she picked them up, wishing he had never come back into her life, as she prepared for bed.

She had first realised she loved him when she was sixteen; the year her mother had died and Leigh had brought her home from England.

She still had a vivid memory of her arrival at St Martin’s. They had flown British Airways to St Lucia and from there BIWA to the island, the small inter-island plane dipping low over the azure silk of the Caribbean before landing on what was virtually a levelled-out piece of ground close to the main house.

In those days it had been Leigh and not Rorke who looked after their complicated business interests; including the stake the family held in a chain of luxury hotels dotted through the Caribbean.

On St Martins, though, there was no hotel, only the graceful colonnaded Great House built during the sugar-rich years of the eighteen-hundreds when the family had sent their sons and daughters to London and had thought nothing of commissioning every luxury under the sun to be shipped out to their own small empire.

Leigh’s family had been fortunate and wise enough to make good investments, and so, unlike many of their neighbours on the other islands, there was no need for them to sell out.

As she had done the moment she first set foot on the island at the age of six following her mother’s marriage to Leigh, Lisa had felt a surge of pleasure as she stepped out of the plane; a feeling of homecoming so intense that for a few seconds it completely obliterated the pain of losing her mother.

Mama Case, who ruled the household with a rod of iron and who had been Leigh’s nurse and Rorke’s after him, had opened her arms and Lisa had run straight into them. It had been an emotional homecoming. Her mother had been more popular with the native staff than Rorke’s French mother, who, so Lisa gathered from them, had never ceased pining for the sophistication of Paris.

It was only later, adult herself and a mother, that Lisa had wondered if Rorke had perhaps resented her mother taking the place of his. If so, he had never betrayed it. Too old to adopt her mother as his own when the marriage took place, he had nevertheless developed a warm and affectionate relationship with her, just as she had with Leigh.

Her own father had died when she was six months old—meningitis, her mother had told her, but Lisa suspected that her mother’s love for Leigh was far deeper than the emotion she had felt for her first husband.

In their mutual grief it was only natural that she and Leigh should draw even closer together, but she hadn’t realised how much until Mama Case told her gently one evening that they were shutting Rorke out.

‘Leigh his daddy too,’ she reminded Lisa, ‘and that boy sure thought a lot of yor ma, Miss Lisa.’

After that Lisa had made more effort to include Rorke in their conversations, even to the extent of slipping away from the dinner table earlier than usual to give Rorke a chance to talk to his father alone.

She hadn’t realised that Rorke had seen through her ploy until he found her on the verandah one evening, swinging in the hammock that her mother had always loved, her face wet with tears.

The day had been a particularly close one. Leigh had been irritable with Rorke over dinner. Lisa had gathered from the conversation that Rorke was keen to modernise several of the hotels and father and son had exchanged heated words.

‘You can’t live in the past for ever, Father,’ he said curtly. ‘Nor can you grieve for ever.’

Lisa had left then, sympathising with them both; Leigh whose feelings she understood so well, and Rorke who was so much of an enigma to her, but whose smile had the power to twist her insides with delicious pain, and whose bronzed body did strange things to her pulse rate.

Her very awareness of Rorke was something she was finding it hard to come to terms with. She had always worshipped him, adoring him from a distance, but before it had merely been the innocent admiration of a child. Now there was something different. At school the previous term many of the girls had held giggled conversations about their boy-friends; but Lisa had held slightly aloof, half shocked by their disclosures.

And yet since her return to St Martin’s she had found herself becoming aware of Rorke in a way she had not been before, noticing things about him such as the lean hard length of his body as he emerged from the swimming pool where he swam several lengths before breakfast every morning.

The brevity of trunks which previously had gone unnoticed now brought blushing confusion to her cheeks and a desire to avoid his too-seeing eyes.

One half of her was shocked by the wantonness of her thoughts, the other wondered what it would be like to touch the hard maleness of his body, to be kissed by him and touched…

‘Lisa?’

He moved very quietly for such a big man and she jumped, the swinging seat creaking wildly with the jerkiness of her movement as she turned towards the sound of her name and saw him coming towards her out of the dusk, his white shirt a blur in the darkness slashed by the brown vee of his exposed throat and upper chest.

‘Are you okay? Dad thought we might have upset you with our quarrelling.’

His sardonic expression, the way he leaned casually against the verandah, arms folded against his chest, made her ask, ‘But you didn’t?’

‘Not unless you’re a far more sensitive plant than the rest of your sex,’ he said wryly. ‘Besides, you’ve been coming out here after dinner every evening this last week.’

‘I know you like to talk over business matters with your father,’ Lisa told him, wishing she could see his expression as clearly as she was sure he could see hers.

This was the longest conversation they had had since her return, apart from the occasion when he had told her of his sorrow at the death of her mother.

‘You’re a tactful little scrap,’ he told her, his voice suddenly disconcertingly warm. ‘That’s your mother in you, I suppose. What do you plan to do with your life, Lisa?’

It was something she hadn’t really thought about, and as though he read her mind, he said hardly, ‘You won’t be sixteen going on seventeen for ever; there’s a whole wide world out there, and if you don’t sample at least some of it, you’re a fool.’

‘You seem quite happy to stay here on St Martins,’ Lisa pointed out, not liking the steel in his voice, the hint that she mustn’t plan on making her life on St Martins, and like a cold wind chilling her came the realisation that she was nothing really to him, nothing to Leigh who had never legally adopted her although she knew it had always been his intention.