Forgotten Passion
Penny Jordan

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.

‘I’m eleven years older than you and I’ve seen my share of the world. Besides, I have a purpose here, and my family…’

‘All right, you don’t need to remind me any more that I don’t belong here,’ Lisa bit out, interrupting him, more angry than she could ever remember being in her life. ‘Anyway,’ she told him childishly, ‘it isn’t up to you, it’s Leigh who says whether I can stay here or not, and…’

‘And he’s clinging to you because you remind him of your mother,’ he told her grimly. ‘Is that what you really want from life, Lisa? Out here the living’s easy, we all know that, but you’re too young for easy living; and if you’re not careful it can become degenerative.’

She looked up at him and his mouth twisted wryly. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me? Take a look around you; look at the native island girls, most of them mothers before they’re fifteen. Like I said, life out here is too easy.’ He turned and Lisa saw the almost brooding quality of his frown.

Why was Rorke so anxious for her to leave St Martins? Surely he wasn’t jealous of her relationship with his father?

‘Rorke,’ she said his name, huskily and uncertainly, trying to conceal the faint tremor.

‘Lisa—Rorke!’ Both of them turned at the sound of Leigh’s voice, and Lisa decided she must have imagined the look she had glimpsed in Rorke’s eyes before his father arrived, because just for an instant it had seemed hotly possessive and bitterly resentful of his father’s arrival.

Although she tried to forget them, Rorke’s words kept troubling her. She was thinking about them one morning as she walked along the beach dressed in frayed denim shorts, her sandals in her hand, the breeze flattening her thin tee-shirt against the burgeoning curves of her body as she walked across the sand of her favourite bay, just below the house.

‘Hello there!’ She came to an abrupt halt as a tall, lean-limbed young man suddenly bounded down the beach towards her, fair hair flopping into his eyes, an engaging grin splitting a face still pale enough for him to be an obvious newcomer.

‘I’m looking for Mr Geraint—am I heading in the right direction?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Mike Peters at your service, by the way, newly arrived and newly qualified doctor of medicine, appointed to your local hospital. Curer of all ills known to man; and surgeon extraordinaire as well,’ he announced, sweeping a mock bow and making Lisa laugh with his friendly absurdity.

‘I’m just heading back to the house, we can walk there together,’ she told him. ‘Are you really? The new doctor, I mean. Leigh told me one was arriving, but somehow…’

‘You pictured an old greybeard, not the dashingly handsome young blade you now see before you,’ Mike Peters clowned, grinning. ‘Actually, don’t tell anyone, will you, but I still find it hard to believe myself. It’s been such a long slog to get qualified, I’m still half afraid, someone’s going to creep up behind me, filch my certificate and tell me it’s all a mistake—hence the flight to St Martins. Wow!’ he exclaimed, coming to a standstill as he saw the house for the first time. ‘That’s really something, Palladian, isn’t it?’

Warming to him more and more by the minute, Lisa agreed that it was, and explained a little of the island’s history.

They were just crossing the smooth greenness of the lawn, when Rorke suddenly emerged from the house, his forehead creasing in a frown as he looked from Lisa to her companion.

‘Rorke, this is Mike, our new doctor,’ Lisa introduced, wondering what had made him look so grim.

‘Peters,’ Rorke acknowledged, betraying that he already knew of Mike’s existence. ‘Lisa, Dad’s been asking for you.’

‘Phew—friendly soul, isn’t he?’ Mike grimaced as Rorke turned on his heel and left them, adding apologetically, ‘I’m sorry, I had no right to say that about your brother.’

‘Rorke is my stepbrother,’ Lisa told him absently, surprised to see comprehension dawning in Mike’s eyes and even further confused by his comprehensive: ‘So that’s the way the land lies! Look, if you can just direct me back to the village… I came out for a walk…’

‘Billy can run you back in the Moke,’ Lisa assured him. ‘In fact if Dad didn’t want to see me I’d come with you myself.’

‘No patients to look after, Peters?’ Neither of them had heard Rorke approach, and his clipped voice and hostile expression puzzled Lisa. What on earth was the matter with him?

Ten minutes later when Mike had left with Billy in the Moke she tackled him about it.

‘What on earth was wrong with you, Rorke?’ she demanded crossly, ‘Poor Mike was so embarrassed!’

‘So it’s Mike now, is it?’ Rorke responded savagely. ‘God, Lisa, what is it with you? Haven’t they warned you at that damned school of yours about being too forthcoming with strangers?’

‘You mean when they ask me to go for a ride in their car and offer me sweeties?’ Lisa demanded angrily. ‘Rorke, I’m sixteen, not six, and besides, it was obvious that Mike…’

‘What? Come on, Lisa,’ he jeered, ‘tell me that Peters is impervious to physical desire, if you dare—it was written all over his face that he wanted you—and no wonder! Dressed like that you’re offering an open invitation to rape!’

She wasn’t going to cry; she wasn’t going to give Rorke the satisfaction! There was nothing wrong with her tee-shirt and cut-off shorts; she had worn them for the last couple of holidays; they were clean and comfortable. What was the matter with Rorke?

‘That’s a horrid thing to say!’ she flung at him. ‘And Mike wouldn’t do a thing like that. All we were doing was talking; he didn’t even try to kiss me!’

‘He didn’t? Then perhaps it’s damned well time that someone did,’ Rorke muttered half under his breath, reaching for her, with hands that wouldn’t allow any escape, lean tanned fingers biting into her skin as she was hauled against the taut muscularity of his chest, the bronzed flesh rising and falling with the irregularity of his breathing.

‘Damn you, Lisa,’ he groaned against her hair. ‘Why the hell did my father have to go and complicate things by bringing you back here?’

Lisa wanted to protest, to demand that he release her, but a strange weakness was spreading through her veins, a pulsing excitement firing her blood; a wantonness she had never known she possessed urging her to reach up and touch the bronzed flesh exposed by the vee of Rorke’s shirt.

‘Lisa!’ Rorke bit out her name as though he hated her, the sudden pressure of his mouth on hers shockingly intimate, robbing her of breath. ‘Open your mouth,’ he muttered huskily against her skin, and as though she were completely lacking in any willpower, Lisa felt her lips parting moistly to the sensual intrusion of his. A fierce, painful urge to mould her body against Rorke’s rippled through her, shocking her with its mindless intensity. She pulled away, and Rorke released her immediately, allowing her to turn and run into the cool shadows of the verandah.

What on earth had possessed him? What had possessed her? Lisa asked herself fiercely. They were practically brother and sister; or were they?

Shivering despite the tropical heat, she allowed her fingers to touch the sensitive flesh Rorke’s mouth had just ravaged. For a moment in his arms she had been oblivious to everything but the strange pulsating need to lose herself in him, to be part of him to… With a small cry Lisa clapped her hands over her ears, not wanting to listen to the inner voice telling her that she had wanted Rorke to make love to her. Rorke, who had never shown her anything but careless affection; Rorke who she knew from her mother had a whole contingent of girl-friends; who was worldly and experienced and would surely break her heart if she was ever foolish enough to let him know how easily it had slipped into his possession.

CHAPTER TWO

‘THAT young Peters fellow’s been on the phone again.’ Leigh teased Lisa, several days later after dinner. ‘Something about wanting to take you sailing.’

‘Lisa isn’t going sailing with Peters or any other young fool who thinks because the Caribbean looks placid and blue that it’s easy to sail,’ Rorke snapped before Lisa could reply.

‘Rorke’s right,’ Leigh palliated, seeing the anger sparkling in her eyes. ‘These waters can be dangerous, Lisa. If you’re desperate to go sailing why don’t you let Rorke take you? You were talking about going over to St Lucia anyway, weren’t you?’

‘It wasn’t the kind of journey where I’d want company, though,’ Rorke announced grittily. ‘At least not Lisa’s. I’d planned to pick up Helen Dunbar.’

Helen Dunbar! A vicelike pain gripped Lisa’s heart. Helen Dunbar was one of Rorke’s more long-standing girl-friends. A passionate redhead who lived on St Lucia, she had visited St Martins several years previously. Her uncle was Leigh’s lawyer and she owned a very exclusive boutique on the other island. Lisa knew that there had been a time when Leigh had worried that their relationship might become more permanent. Leigh had never made any secret of the fact that he wanted to see his son married, preferably with children, but he was old-fashioned enough not to want to see Rorke married to a woman like Helen, to whom Rorke was one in a long line of lovers.

‘Who says I’d want to go with you anyway?’ Lisa threw back at him. ‘You’ve been like a bear with a sore head recently—ever since I came back, in fact!’

‘So you’ve noticed,’ Rorke mocked sardonically, ignoring his father’s frown and Lisa’s growing anger. ‘Full marks, little girl.’ He got up as he spoke, pushing away his chair. ‘I’ve got to go and ring the hotel on St. Lucia,’ he told his father.

‘Don’t take any notice of Rorke,’ Leigh told Lisa quietly when Rorke had gone. ‘I don’t know what’s got into him recently.’

‘He’s been really unkind to poor Mike,’ Lisa told him, trying not to remember the treacherous feelings she had experienced in Rorke’s arms—she couldn’t possibly be in love with him, she had told herself; she was too young to fall in love, and not with Rorke of all people!

‘Has he?’ Leigh frowned. ‘In what way?’

‘Oh, he told me off because I’d been walking on the beach with Mike. In fact he more or less accused him of being a potential rapist,’ Lisa told him indignantly. ‘I…’

Her cheeks coloured as memories of the hard pressure of Rorke’s mouth against hers surged over her, but fortunately Leigh wasn’t looking at her. In fact, he looked totally engrossed in his own thoughts.

‘Umm,’ he said at last. ‘Well, despite what Rorke says, I think it might be a good idea if you went to St Lucia with him. It’s time you had some new clothes, for one thing.’ He glanced at her shorts and tee-shirt, and Lisa grimaced.

‘Yes, I know these are indecent—Rorke’s already told me.’

‘Has he now! Indecent wasn’t exactly the word I had in my mind—but you’ll certainly need some extra lightweight things. Mama Case tells me you’re not a little girl any longer, Lisa, and looking at you now I know that’s true.’

‘It seems a waste to buy me summer things, when Rorke wants you to send me back to England,’ Lisa murmured, voicing the concern that had lain at the back of her mind ever since Rorke had taxed her with it.

‘My darling child!’ Leigh stood up, placing his hands on her shoulders, his face grave. ‘I’m still master on St Martins, and there’s simply no way I’m going to allow you to leave. Ignore Rorke, he has his own problems.’ A faint smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. ‘You’ll go to St Lucia with him and buy yourself some pretty clothes—Rorke often has to visit our hotels, and when he does, I think it might be a good idea if you went with him. You’re growing up, Lisa, you’ll be seventeen shortly. It’s time you started taking your place in the adult world.’

An exciting prospect, but somehow Lisa couldn’t see Rorke agreeing with it. Ever since he had kissed her, things had been different between them. He had kissed her as some form of punishment, she knew that, but the punishment had been far more bitter than he could know, because it had opened her eyes to so much she had never known existed before when she had thought of ‘love’ as a rosy, uncomplicated dream. Now she knew better.

Lisa had been playing tennis with Mike—a hot energetic game which they had drawn. It had been Mike’s morning off and now he had returned to the small cottage hospital, and Lisa was going upstairs to shower and rest in her room until dinner.

Leigh was visiting a friend—the family lawyer, who lived on the other side of the island. The two men enjoyed playing chess, and as she revelled in the cool hiss of the shower over her heated skin, Lisa reflected on Leigh’s announcement the previous evening that Rorke had agreed to take her with him to St Lucia. Exactly what pressure he had brought to bear on his son to effect his capitulation Lisa couldn’t guess, but that Rorke wasn’t pleased about the idea had been evident.

Rorke. Her eyes became dreamy, the brisk rubbing she had been giving her skin with her sponge suddenly forgotten as the movement of her hand stilled, quickfire excitement running through her veins. Rorke! His name escaped her lips on a soft sigh, and she had rinsed the suds off her skin before she realised that she had left her towelling robe on her bed. Her feet left damp footprints on the cool tiles of the bedroom floor as she padded across it. Her hand was on the robe when she heard the rattle of someone opening her bedroom door.

‘Lisa!’ She froze as she heard Rorke’s curt voice, too shocked to cry out a warning to him, and then he was in the room with her, his eyes moving in darkening comprehension over the lithe curves of her body still beaded with moisture. Just for a moment time seemed to stand still, as Rorke’s gaze skimmed the firm upthrust of her breasts, moving downwards over her slender waist and long coltish legs.

And then, as suddenly as he had come in, he was gone, leaving her to breathe more easily, shivers suddenly coursing over her heated flesh, her fingers numb with a panic that came much, much too late as she pulled on the protective covering of her robe. Her hand brushed the curve of her breast, her heart pounding unsteadily. What was happening to her? She felt as though suddenly she had a fever, her pulses racing, her body shivery and aching. Was this what love felt like?

She was very subdued over dinner, hardly able to bring herself to look at Rorke. Were those brief seconds imprinted as vividly on his mind as they were on hers? Of course not, she mocked herself. She was far from being the first naked woman he had seen; to him she was simply a schoolgirl still.

‘Have you told Lisa you’re leaving in the morning?’ Leigh asked Rorke during dinner.

‘Not yet. Can you be ready by then?’ Rorke asked her, without looking at her, and as though he had said the words out loud Lisa knew that he didn’t want to look at her.

‘Of course she can,’ Leigh announced genially before she could speak. ‘And don’t forget, Lisa,’ he added, giving her a warm smile, ‘get yourself plenty of pretty things while you’re in St Lucia.

‘How long are you planning on staying?’ he asked his son, and again Lisa was aware of Rorke’s deliberate exclusion of her as he shrugged powerfully.

‘A couple of days—no longer. It depends on how quickly Helen is ready to leave.’

Helen! A pain like red-hot knives bit into her skin, and it was all she could do not to cry out loud. So this was jealousy; this searing, tearing agony destroying her.

Once again Rorke excused himself the moment the meal was over. Some of Lisa’s dismay must have shown in her face, because she realised that Leigh was watching her with some concern.

‘Don’t worry about Rorke,’ he told her gruffly. ‘He’s going through a difficult time at the moment. I remember when I first met your mother…’

Lisa stared at him. What did he mean? Surely Rorke wasn’t planning to marry Helen? She reminded herself that it was no business of hers if he was, and then wondered why she was weak enough to allow herself to be persuaded into going with Rorke when all the trip to St Lucia was likely to bring her was the pain of seeing him with Helen.

But of course, she couldn’t disappoint Leigh, and she knew he would be disappointed and hurt if she refused to go. She glanced down at her skimpy cotton dress and suppressed a grimace. Her clothes were getting shabby. Strange how all at once she had become aware of it, mentally comparing herself to Helen, seeing herself with the sophisticated eyes of a man used to elegance and sensuality in a woman.

Mama Case fussed round her at breakfast, complaining under her breath until Rorke said sardonically, ‘She’ll be safe enough, Mama Case—we’re leaving Dr Peters behind!’

Lisa’s cheeks stung at the implied suggestion, but somehow she managed to repress the hot words clamouring for utterance. Why should Rorke disapprove of Mike so much? She enjoyed his company. They were on the same wavelength, he was kind and friendly, his manner very evocative of that of her friends’ brothers towards her. It came to her with a sudden sense of shock that Mike was more like a brother to her than Rorke. Her feelings for Rorke had never been sisterly, she acknowledged on a sudden wave of self-awareness; there had always been beneath the surface a fine thread of tension making it impossible for her to relax in his company the way she could with Mike.

‘Daydreaming about Peters?’

She came to with a start, realising that Rorke was propped up against the wall watching her, and her face coloured again as she worried about what he might have read in her expression.

‘And if I was?’ she challenged, tilting her chin, determined not to allow him to guess that he had been the subject of her thoughts.

‘Forget it,’ Rorke warned her grimly. ‘He might be a young girl’s dream, Lisa, but you won’t be a young girl for ever. One day you’re going to be a woman, and when you are,’ he said softly, ‘you’re going to want a man, not a boy.’

He was gone before she could retort; before she could demand that he explain what he meant.

Half an hour later, she was waiting for Leon to row her out to where Rorke’s schooner lay anchored in the bay below the house. He had bought it three years earlier, and Lisa had watched adoringly while he lovingly restored what had originally been no more than a shell. Now the graceful vessel swung lazily at anchor, sails furled, paintwork gleaming. Lisa had been aboard her several times during her visits home, and was completely at home on the elegant craft. Leigh himself had taught her to sail, and on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion Rorke had actually allowed her to crew for him when he raced the schooner in a local regatta.

‘You can take the for’ard bunk,’ Rorke told her grittily, bending to grip her wrist and help her on board. ‘Leon’s already stowed your stuff. Not that there was much.’

For a moment the brilliance of the sun on the white paintwork dazzled Lisa, and then her vision cleared and she became aware of Rorke standing barefoot on the deck, his denim shorts almost as disreputable as her own, the rest of his body burned a warm teak by the sun and salt.

‘Leigh wants me to get some new clothes while we’re in St Lucia,’ Lisa reminded him, frowning a little as she glanced down at her bare legs and frayed shorts.

‘So he told me,’ Rorke agreed. ‘He seems to think Helen might take you in hand. Quite a challenge, I should think,’ he said insultingly, adding, ‘I’m going on deck to cast off.’

‘Want any help?’ Lisa called after him, trying to swallow her hurt, but he barely paused in the narrow doorway to her cabin.

‘No, thanks,’ he told her curtly. ‘I can handle Lady on my own—in fact sometimes it’s easier that way.’

‘Meaning you want me to stay in my cabin until we reach St Lucia?’ Lisa demanded, disappointment and pain suddenly overwhelming caution. ‘Is that what you’re trying to say, Rorke?’

‘It might make things easier all round,’ he agreed, apparently unaware of the pain he was causing her.

The morning passed slowly for Lisa, cooped up in the small cabin, watching the waves through the porthole and mentally chafing at her imprisonment.

By lunchtime she decided that nothing, but nothing was going to keep her in her cabin any longer. She had originally decided that Rorke would have to get down on his knees and beg her before she would so much as put one foot on the deck, but boredom and hunger had overcome her resolution. Even Rorke had to eat, she reminded herself, and he could hardly do that and sail the schooner as well.

Her rubber-soled sneakers made no sound on the seasoned timbers of the deck as she went in search of Rorke to ask him what he wanted for lunch, but there was no sign of him, and she realised that the schooner was rocking gently at anchor. Where was he?

Tiny shivers of apprehension shuddered down her spine. Surely it was stupid to imagine that an experienced sailor like Rorke could fall overboard in a calm sea? Of course it was. He was probably resting himself! She was just on the point of going down to his cabin to check and had turned away from the deck when a shadow fell across her path.

‘Rorke!’ She swung round, relief in her voice, and saw Rorke straightening up on the deck, his skin sleek and damp, his hair plastered to his skull, and shock coursed through her, rooting her to the spot as she realised that he was naked, his body glistening tautly brown under the salt water spray.

‘Lisa!’ She saw his teeth snap together in anger. ‘I thought you were going to stay in your cabin?’

‘I came to see if you wanted any lunch.’

She had to drag her eyes away from the male perfection of his body, shocking in its masculinity and yet, at the same time, undoubtedly exciting. Tremors of reaction were pulsing through her own skin, a cramping delirium in the pit of her stomach.

‘Later, when I’ve showered and changed. What’s the matter?’ he demanded tautly when she didn’t move, adding impatiently, ‘For God’s sake, Lisa, get below, before I do something that will really shock you!’

They made St Lucia earlier than Lisa had anticipated, and she had a shrewd suspicion that Rorke had deliberately cut the journey short.

Castries, the main harbour, was busy. A cruise ship had come into port and the town’s narrow streets were thronged with trippers. Lisa was forced to fall behind as Rorke’s long legs propelled him swiftly through the crowd. At one busy intersection he waited for her to catch up with him, grimacing as he took her arm. His fingers were rough against her skin, and she could see the faint salt bloom on his chest and throat. A wave of faintness came over her as she remembered seeing him step on to the deck after his swim. That it wasn’t the first time he had swum nude had been very evident in the depth and extent of his tan, and the faintness increased tormentingly as she wondered if, on those occasions, he had always swum alone, or if, perhaps, someone had joined him—Helen, for instance.

Just for a moment she allowed herself to imagine what it would be like to float motionless beside him in the blue-green depths of the Caribbean, the silky water her only covering.

‘Lisa!’

The harshness of his voice jerked her out of her pleasurable daydream and back into the present. They were standing outside Helen’s exclusive boutique. Inside both Helen and her assistant were busy serving the cruise liner’s passengers, but Helen had obviously seen them.

‘We’ll go on to the hotel and come back later,’ Rorke announced. ‘I’ve warned them to expect us.’

A taxi took them from Castries to the Paradise Cove hotel, in which the family had shares. The hotel was a modern one; a complex rather than a hotel, with chalets spread out through luxuriant grounds and a central hotel block comprising restaurants, bars, half a dozen shops, and a large games room.

They were greeted enthusiastically by the manager, who was obviously anxious to impress Rorke with the smooth running of the hotel, and certainly there was no fault to be found with the speed with which their baggage was taken care of, and complimentary drinks brought to them in the foyer-cum-lounge. While the two men talked, Lisa got up and strolled over to glance at the small parade of shops. One window had an exquisite display of beach and resort wear, another expensive and exclusive casuals. Lisa glanced over her shoulder. Rorke was still deep in conversation with the hotel manager. On a small spurt of rebellion she opened the door to the boutique. She knew Rorke had intended to hand her over to Helen and leave it to the older woman to choose her new clothes, but during her time in England Lisa had often visited the homes of her friends, and had gone with them on shopping expeditions. She had a natural sense of taste and flair, her mother had always said, and her initial qualms were quickly stifled as a charming and pleasant girl stepped forward to help her.

Quickly explaining what she wanted, Lisa watched the girl riffle through the packed racks of clothes, unerringly selecting half a dozen or so outfits which she piled on to a chair.

‘You’re lucky,’ she told Lisa, as she handed them to her. ‘We’ve only this week received this lot—Jane, my partner, ordered them the last time she went to America—I promise you they’re the very latest thing—and quite exclusive.’

They were lovely, Lisa admitted, alone in the cubicle, running her fingers over the fine silks and cottons. A Benny Ong two-piece in vibrant blue and emerald silk caught her eye, and she quickly pulled off her own clothes and slipped the slender sheath of a dress over her shoulders. The colours brought out the deep blue-green depths of her eyes, and the soft golden glints of her hair. The dress was supported by tiny shoestring straps and over it there was a thin matching silk jacket that tied softly in a knot. Looking at her reflection in the mirror, Lisa was astounded at the transformation. The outfit might have been made for her—a verdict fully endorsed by the salesgirl as she came to see how she was getting on.

‘It’s definitely you,’ she pronounced. ‘But don’t commit yourself until you’ve tried the others.’

Taking her advice, Lisa tried on everything she brought, and when she eventually emerged from the boutique she had bought the Benny Ong outfit plus an attractive range of cotton separates that she could mix and match for maximum effect; some brilliant magenta cut-off jeans, and a French bikini so brief that she had blushed to see herself in it, until the salesgirl had assured her that it was absolutely stunning.

There had still been quite a lot left from the money Leigh had given her, so on the salesgirl’s advice she had purchased some new underwear—feminine Italian satin and lace that she was sure she would never wear, but which felt so pleasurable against her skin that she hadn’t been able to resist it.

Rorke was waiting outside as she opened the boutique door, glowering at his watch.

‘What the hell do you think you’re doing?’ he pounced when he saw her.

‘Shopping,’ she told him, proud of her calm voice. ‘Leigh told me to.’

‘I was going to take you to see Helen.’

‘I’m perfectly capable of buying clothes for myself without the advice of your mistress,’ Lisa told him rashly.

‘I hope you’re right,’ Rorke threatened, ‘because we’re dining here tonight with Helen and some friends of ours. Helen and Sandra are both very elegant women.’

‘In that case I’d better make an appointment to have my hair done,’ Lisa told him with commendable aplomb. ‘I don’t want to let you down.’

‘I’ll get someone to take you up to your room,’ Rorke told her without responding. ‘I’m going to see Helen.’

If only her hand wasn’t shaking so much, Lisa thought, tongue protruding slightly between her lips as she applied the eyeshadow she had bought on the advice of the girl in the beauty salon. Her hair lay softly sleek against her shoulders, the unruly curls tamed; the herbal rinse the hairdresser used gave off a delicate fragrance that perfumed the air. If Rorke thought she wouldn’t compare favourably with Helen and her friend he was going to be proved wrong!

In addition to having her hair done and getting the advice of the girl in the beauty salon Lisa had found time to buy a pair of sandals, striped in emerald and blue leather to tone with her dress.

At last she was ready. She peered anxiously at her reflection. Had she blended the eyeshadow enough? She didn’t want to look like a clown! A glimpse in the mirror reassured her. Her own face stared back at her, familiar but subtly different. Her eyes looked larger and darker, the careful blending of blue and green eyeshadow adding a hint of depth and mystery. A coat of mascara added thickness to the luxuriance of her dark lashes, and the coral lipstick she had carefully painted on emphasised the full lower curve of her mouth and the honey translucence of healthy young skin.

She was ready when Rorke tapped on her door, strangely unfamiliar in formal evening clothes, and her heart thumped unevenly as she stared up at him, wondering how on earth she had managed in the past to miss the overt sexuality he exuded.

‘Ready?’

His glance swept her dismissively, and Lisa felt anger burn up inside her at his indifference. Surely he must see how different she looked? Why, she even felt different, but he was still treating her as the same little girl who had tagged after him in the past.

Helen and her friends were already in the bar waiting for them, Helen elegant and sophisticated in a white sheath dress that privately Lisa thought a shade too revealing, her elongated cat-like eyes skimming with barely suppressed hostility over Lisa’s silk clad figure as she cooed, ‘Poor Rorke has to babysit this trip. Leigh insisted that he bring Lisa with him. Never mind, darling,’ she comforted Rorke, ‘there’s always later.’

‘You mustn’t mind Helen,’ Sandra Wilkes murmured understandingly to Lisa as Rorke signalled a waiter. ‘She’s always been a mite possessive where Rorke’s concerned.’

‘You certainly don’t look much like a baby to me!’ Peter Wilkes added with heavy gallantry, giving her an admiring glance. The Wilkes were in their early thirties and seemed a pleasant enough couple. They had two children, Sandra told Lisa over dinner, both at school in England.

‘I miss them dreadfully,’ she confided, ‘but needs must, I’m afraid. Still, Peter’s hoping to get a London posting soon, so we should all be reunited. Tell me about the island,’ she encouraged. ‘According to Helen it’s virtually the back of beyond, although I must say it sounds so exciting—one’s own island!’

‘It’s been in Rorke’s family for generations,’ Lisa told her, ‘and I can’t see him ever parting with it.’

‘He will if Helen has anything to do with it,’ Sandra laughed. ‘She’s told me she’s aching to get back to London.’

‘I don’t think Rorke would agree to that. He’d want his children to grow up on the island as he did,’ Lisa told her, surprised when Sandra’s eyes widened. ‘Have I said something wrong?’ she asked uncertainly.

‘Not exactly—it’s just that Helen can’t have children—can’t, and wouldn’t anyway—she loathes them.’

‘But Rorke…’

‘Will want a son to come after him?’ Sandra supplied. ‘Yes, I got that impression too. Still, it’s their business, not ours. Personally I’ve always thought of Helen more as a mistress than a wife. Perhaps Rorke will come to think so too. He could find a dutiful little wife to bear his sons, and still have his fun with Helen.’

‘Oh no, surely not!’ Lisa protested, thoroughly revolted by the picture Sandra was drawing.

The older woman laughed. ‘You’re such a baby,’ she teased, ‘but then how old are you?’

‘Seventeen—almost,’ Lisa told her.

‘Is that all? I thought you were nineteen at least.’

Lisa found her words wonderfully uplifting after Rorke’s apparent unawareness of the change in her appearance, but it was hard not to notice how Helen constantly touched Rorke’s arm when she spoke to him; their low-voiced murmurs wafting across the table, making Lisa long to get up from the table and run as far and as fast as she could to escape the evidence of their intimacy.

After dinner Helen insisted that she wanted to dance. She knew of a nightclub, she told Rorke. They could all go on there. All except Lisa, she suggested, glancing pointedly at the younger girl.

‘Oh, of course she can come with us,’ Sandra protested. ‘If she wants to, and I’m sure she does. A pretty girl wearing a new dress always wants to show it off.’

Helen looked far from pleased, and Lisa held her breath, half expecting Rorke to tell her that she was to go to her room, but to her surprise he said nothing, merely looking grimly unforthcoming as Peter took her arm and escorted her from the table.

The nightclub was hot and cramped, and although she wasn’t going to admit it, Lisa would have much preferred to be walking along the beach at St Martin’s, the soft evening breeze cooling her overheated skin and blowing freely in her hair.

‘Lisa?’

She came out of her reverie to find Rorke towering over her while Helen glowered furiously, and Sandra and Peter exchanged comprehensive glances.

‘Lisa, I’m asking you to dance,’ Rorke reminded her.

‘To dance?’ She looked up at him wildly, heady excitement racing through her veins. Like someone in a dream she followed him on to the small crowded floor. The steel band were playing a tune with a powerfully sensual beat, and Lisa found her body seemed to have its own rhythm, as Rorke took her in his arms, his palms flat against the bare skin of her shoulders.

‘I don’t think Helen likes you dancing with me,’ Lisa murmured as she glanced towards their table and saw Helen watching them, fury in the catlike eyes.

‘Damn Helen,’ Rorke muttered ruthlessly, stunning her with the fierce intensity of his words, his fingers tightening on her shoulders as he drew her closer towards him. ‘And damn you, Lisa,’ he muttered thickly, ‘for making me feel like this. God, you’re a child… or so I keep telling myself, but seeing you tonight, holding you in my arms…’

A tremor ripped through him, and Lisa could see the sheen of perspiration on his face. Rorke—Rorke whom she had always thought of as invincible, was trembling because he was holding her in his arms. She could hardly believe it, but it was true!

‘Lisa!’ He groaned her name against her hair, holding her even closer, close enough for her to feel the fixed rigidity of his body, the pulsating heat it radiated. His mouth left her hair, seeking the tender curve of her throat. A maelstrom of emotion gripped her. Her body shivered delicately as his mouth plundered the soft sweetness of her skin. His hands shaped her to him, her breasts crushed against his chest, the hardness of his body compelling hers to yield and mould itself to him.

Distantly she was aware of Helen, glaring furiously at her, knowing that she was warning Lisa that she would make her pay for the pleasure of being in Rorke’s arms, but she felt too deliriously happy to care. Even so, it wasn’t pleasant, feeling Helen’s eyes boring into the back of her neck, and as though he sensed her distress Rorke questioned frowningly, ‘Is something wrong?’

‘It’s just that it’s so hot in here,’ Lisa told him, not wanting to admit that Helen made her feel uncomfortable. What was between them was too new and precious for her to talk freely. She had no idea what had brought about the transformation in Rorke, but she wasn’t going to jeopardise it by criticising Helen to him.

‘Feel like a walk, then, to cool off?’

There was a disturbing glint in his eyes, a curve to his mouth that made Lisa’s heart race.

‘That would be very nice,’ she managed sedately, hoping he wouldn’t guess how understated her comment was.

CHAPTER THREE

‘I DIDN’T want to bring you to St Lucia with me.’

‘I know.’

They were walking hand in hand along the soft white sand, the moon and the stars their only witnesses. The soft breeze Lisa had longed for in the stifling heat of the nightclub wafted balmily over them. Rorke paused, slipping off his jacket, which he dropped on to the sand. ‘Sit down for a moment,’ he suggested, adding huskily, ‘God, Lisa, have you any idea what you do to me? Any idea of the jealousy I’ve endured watching you with young Peters?’

‘You jealous?’ Her voice sounded breathless.

‘I’m only human, Lisa,’ Rorke reminded her drily. ‘All too human where you’re concerned.’

‘But you’ve been so unkind to me…’

‘Not half as unkind as I’ve been to myself. You’re seventeen,’ he told her softly, cupping her face. ‘A little girl still in so many ways, and yet already a very desirable young woman. I tried reminding myself that you were my stepsister, but it made no difference. The last time you came home I wanted you, Lisa,’ he told her bluntly. ‘That was six months ago, and nothing has changed, except that I now want you twice as much,’ he told her hoarsely. ‘So much…’

Her whole body quivered in mute response, eager fingers trembling against his skin as she reached towards him.

‘Lisa,’ Rorke groaned grasping her fingers, and pressing a kiss against her palm. ‘I shouldn’t be doing this; shouldn’t be giving way to what I feel, but God help me, I can’t stop myself…’

‘And I don’t want you to,’ Lisa told him shyly. ‘I love you, Rorke.’

‘I thought you loved young Peters,’ he mocked sardonically. ‘How can you love me when every time I look at you you run away? What do you know of love, Lisa? Until you saw me today I don’t believe you’d ever seen a naked man before, never mind…’

Hot colour stained her cheeks, but she still found the courage to say hesitantly, ‘Does it matter so much, Rorke—that I’m not experienced, I mean? Can’t you teach me?’

‘Lisa!’

Her name was torn from his throat on an aching protest, and then she was in his arms, his mouth against her skin, tasting, exploring, his lips moving sensuously against hers, parting their soft innocence and probing the sweetness beyond until she was aware of nothing apart from the taste and feel of him as he lowered her to the sand, his hands exploring the contours of her body, his muffled gasp when he suddenly drew away from her confusing her as much as his abrupt withdrawal.

‘Leigh at least will be pleased,’ he murmured as he pulled her to her feet. ‘Surely you’ve realised how keen he’s been to throw us together?’ he prodded when Lisa made no response. ‘Dear God, you are an innocent, aren’t you,’ he muttered, and despite the warmth of his arm round her body, Lisa felt a strangely apprehensive chill strike through her body. It was almost as though Rorke resented wanting her, resented loving her.

‘Rorke?’

As though he sensed her uncertainty his arm tightened.

‘Rorke, do you love me?’ she murmured softly.

For a moment she sensed his withdrawal and then he was saying smoothly, ‘Of course I love you, Lisa, who wouldn’t—but right now I think it’s time you were back in your virginal bed, don’t you?

She wanted to tell him that she would far rather spend the night in his arms, in his bed, but somehow she couldn’t find the words. Indeed she was surprised that he hadn’t suggested it himself, If she had been Helen! But she wasn’t Helen, she reminded herself. She was herself, and Rorke loved her, and surely once they returned to St Martin’s and he had told his father, they would be married?

They started the return journey to St Martin’s, earlier than had been planned. There was a storm warning, Rorke explained to Lisa when she joined him for breakfast, feeling shyly selfconscious in some of her new separates, and he wanted to get under way as quickly as possible.

‘You’re not sorry—about what happened last night, are you?’ she asked hesitantly.

‘Not half as sorry as I am about what didn’t,’ Rorke responded sardonically. ‘Lisa, do you have the faintest idea of what you’re letting yourself in for? You’re barely seventeen—you haven’t even begun to taste life.’

‘Rorke, I love you!’

‘So you keep telling me, and I’m selfish enough to want to believe it. I ought to send you away, for two years at least, but I can’t risk losing you. I love you too much.’

‘What do you think Leigh will say?’

‘Well, let’s put it this way,’ Rorke retorted wryly. ‘I don’t think it’s going to come as a complete surprise. Something tells me he’s already guessed how I feel about you. In fact I wouldn’t put it past him to have engineered this trip with a view to flinging us together. He’s been at great pains to point out to me how quickly you’re growing up—Growing up! Dear God, and to think I once thought it was only old men in their dotage who found pubescent children physically desirable!’

‘I’m not a child,’ Lisa protested, hating the cynicism in his eyes and voice. ‘In another month I’ll be seventeen—another year and…’

‘And you’ll be eighteen—I can count, Lisa. Come on,’ he said abruptly. ‘Get your things together and I’ll check us out. If we leave now we should make it back to St Martins before the weather breaks.’

They left Castries harbour an hour later. The sky was completely free of cloud, but there was a certain dull brassiness about the sun that made Lisa conscious that the storm forecast could not be lightly ignored.

This time there was no question of her staying below. Like Rorke she had changed into her frayed denim shorts, and her body pulsated with excitement as his eyes narrowed over the curves of her breasts, outlined by the stretchy fabric of her tee shirt, as he helped her aboard.

‘We’d better use full sail and the auxiliary engine,’ Rorke announced laconically once they were both on board. ‘I don’t like the colour of that sky.’

They had completed just over a quarter of their journey, and Rorke was busy checking their progress in the wheelhouse when he suddenly called to Lisa.

‘Damn, we’re getting so much interference I can’t do a thing with the radio. These electric storms play havoc with the equipment.’ The wind had started to pick up and Lisa was relieved when he came back to join her, checking on the sails, frowning occasionally as the schooner started to pick up speed.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.