Island of escape (5 page)

growing urgency. Jan would have done admirably, but as things are, I'm quite willing to settle for you,' he finished, and his eyes looked straight into hers.

She felt a shock go through her and she drew a deep breath. This just couldn't be happening! She asked unevenly, 'Couldn't you—couldn't you find someone in Hobart while you're here?'

`I have,' he said unequivocally. 'You.' Through half-closed eyes that glittered green and oddly menacing in the artificial light, he regarded her intently. 'You gave yourself away last night, you know,' he said with soft irony. 'Aren't I the man on Flinders Island you're engaged to?'

She swallowed nervously. 'Of course not! I—I made that up. I didn't like the sort of thing you were thinking about me.'

`You mean you didn't like my hardly surprising scepticism about the old family friend?'

`Yes. Because Jake's not—he only wants to--'

He broke in abruptly. 'Don't tell me what he wants. I can guess. And my guess is more likely to approximate to the truth than anything you'll tell me. My experience of the female sex has taught me that cheating and double-dealing are as essential a part of a woman's make-up as seeds are part of the passion-fruit.'

`I'm not a cheat!' she exclaimed, infuriated.

`No? Then why the disguise tonight? Why the black scarf—the office-girl blouse buttoned so chastely over your charms? Of course you're a cheat.'

Ellis's blue eyes were angry, and through her anger she was aware that she had tried to make herself look —different. She got to her feet and said coldly, 'If you think that of me then there's no point in our going on with this discussion, is there? You don't want -me on your sheep farm.'

`Of course I want you on Warrianda,' he contradicted. He had risen too and stood, hands on his narrow hips, confronting her. 'You can take over, in fact, right where your cousin left off, and just as soon as you like.'

She looked at him suspiciously. 'What's that supposed to mean?'

His smile was cynical. 'You know Jan, you should be able to guess. But don't forget, I'm offering to make an honest woman of you.'

`You—you must be fooling,' she said after a moment. `You can't just decide like that to—to marry someone you don't even know. Not when you've been—not when your heart's been broken,' she finished uncertainly.

He smiled, but his eyes were hard, 'Not when I've been jilted ?' he said, and his voice was equally hard. `Let's not be afraid to say it. As for my heart, it's unbreakable. It's as hard as iron. My guess is you're thinking in terms of yourself. You've been jilted too, haven't you? You think your tender little heart's been broken. Are you by any chance cherishing a hope that your boy-friend will tire of Jan and want you back after all?'

`No,' she said stiffly, ignoring the pain his words caused her. 'I don't think that will happen. Jan's very attractive to men. She always has been. I'm the plain one,' she finished bitterly.

`That's a lot of eyewash and you know it,' he said dismissively. 'Plain girls don't get sapphire bracelets given them to celebrate non-existent engagements—not even by old family friends. They don't even get offers of marriage from strangers as a rule. In fact, if you were plain—a little nondescript—a frump— I wouldn't be interested in you. Unattractive looks are the result of an unattractive character, in my opinion ... So now

we're back to the purpose of this encounter. We've met, I've made my decision, and the job's yours if you want it. Do you want it?'

Ellis bit her lip. She felt totally confused, and she didn't even know what he was offering her. She wanted a job, but she certainly didn't want to marry this man, and she hated him for thinking she was the sort of girl who'd even contemplate it. She couldn't understand why he should be so willing to put her in Jan's place, either. What did he feel about Jan? He said his heart wasn't broken, but it would be pride that made him say that, and in fact, he might merely be intent on showing Jan how little he cared that she had left him.

She said helplessly, 'I need a job. I—I don't want to go back to live with my uncle and Jan. And—and I couldn't possibly live with Jake

`The old family friend,' he put in dryly. 'I told you last night he's too old for you, so I applaud that decision, if this is a sample of the kind of life he leads—you'd grow fat and lazy and uninteresting in no time at all if you settled down as his mistress.'

Ellis said on a breath, 'You're so insufferably insulting, Mr Gascoyne, I really don't know why I don't just walk out on you. I'm not any man's mistress and I don't want to be, and this is the—the craziest interview I've ever been involved in. I wish now I'd let Jake come with me to your suite—then you wouldn't have dared say half the things you have.'

He looked at her thoughtfully, his green eyes narrowed. 'Jake answered your phone, didn't he?'

She coloured hotly. 'Yes, but that doesn't mean—'

`Don't bother explaining what it doesn't mean,' he interrupted crisply. 'I don't claim the right to ask questions. As for the things I've said to you, this interview has been a surprise to me too, you know. I didn't think

I'd be in for anything one half so involved, when all I need, quite simply, is a woman.'

He broke off and she felt the silence, and she felt his eyes scorching her.

`I—don't need a—man,' she said indistinctly.

`Every woman does,' he said, and without warning he reached for her. In a second, her body was clamped against his with a closeness that shocked her. Holding her captive with an arm that was iron-hard, he used his free hand to pull the scarf from her head, and she saw it snake to the floor even as she felt the power of his long fingers raking through the uncovered silk of her hair.

`You're too much like a nun in that black thing,' he muttered. 'I can't touch you when you look like that.'

And then he was kissing her as Paul had never kissed her. Some part of her consciousness detached itself briefly to become involved with Paul and his pleasurable, temperate kisses, but such intense and sensual responses were clamouring for possession of her body that she was soon lost, and all control over her own mind vanished. Their bodies were so closely locked together she was inevitably conscious of the fact that his passion was aroused—in what she knew must be a purely animal way because certainly there was no tenderness between them. The intimacy of the contact was becoming unbearable to her, and she struggled futilely against his strength as his hand found its way inside her blouse to her breast. Despite herself, she quickened to his experienced touch, and sensations that were entirely new to her pulsed through her nerves excitingly.

For a long moment everything in the world seemed to fade into nothingness except her own sexuality, and then with a supreme effort she wrenched herself violently away from him.

She stood quivering, her eyes closed, swallowing on some emotion that rose in her throat. She felt bruised, violated, and she couldn't look at him. Dimly she wished she could run from the room, forget this man, obliterate him from her life. Go back to an innocence that, insanely, now seemed far away and unattainable.

They were incoherent, fragmentary thoughts, and she didn't move, but stayed helplessly where she was, her head bowed.

She still didn't move when a muscular arm came round her shoulders to steady her, and a male voice, warm against her loosened hair, said softly, 'So you're a virgin, are you? I wouldn't have believed it—not after watching you in action last night.'

Ellis didn't answer. She hadn't got control of herself yet, and she stood passively, not even pushing away that arm that lay lightly across her shoulders.

`I'd better let you go,' he said after a moment. 'Go down to your room and give your face a good splashing with cold water. You'll soon feel able to face up to your dinner date.'

Ellis started, thinking of Jake. With a feeling of inner panic she let Steve Gascoyne take her to the elevator—see her into it. It was empty, and the door slid shut, locking him out. Somehow or other she got back to her room, and there she shut the door and stood in the silence and emptiness with only her own reflection to witness the emotions that passed across her face.

Her job on Flinders Island had vanished. It was something she'd never think of again, once she'd told Jake.

`So that's that.' She said the matter-of-fact words aloud as she stared vacantly across at the mirror, at the white blur of her face, the dark gold cloud of her hair. Then with an effort, she moved. Jake would think she

was never coming if she didn't hurry..

With fingers that were unaccustomedly clumsy, she unbuttoned her blouse—though some of the buttons were already undone—then stepped out of her skirt and, going into the bathroom that opened off her room, splashed and splashed her face with cold water.

He had said that if she did that she'd soon feel able to face up to her dinner date, and it was funny, but it did help. Her cheeks were pink now, and the blue eyes that looked back at her from the mirror over the washbasin were bright, and a rather pale and wavering smile curved her lips. So she was alive after all, and nothing dreadful had happened to her, had it? She hadn't been raped, she had merely been brought to some sort of discovery about her sexual self—a discovery that somehow shocked her, and that she refused to think about just now.

Back in the bedroom, she pulled a long-skirted dress from the wardrobe and slipped into it. It was a floating thing of blue and violet silk with a soft round neckline, and long full sleeves caught in at the wrist. She knew it suited her colouring and she loved the feel of it and she began to feel fully recovered. She used mascara and eye-shadow and brushed out her hair, then on her way to the door she stood stock still. What was she going to do? Look in the Mercury again tomorrow? But Jake wouldn't leave her here. Oh, why couldn't that hateful man have turned out to be the pleasant farmer she had imagined? Then there'd have been no crazy interview—no humiliating climax to it. What kind of a man was he, for goodness' sake? And what sort of an affair had he had with Jan? She'd thought Jan was the cruel one, but he'd said his heart was hard as iron. Hadn't he even been in love with Jan? Had he simply needed a wife and decided that she would do? And

then Jan had broken it off. She didn't want a double-sided marriage any more than Ellis wanted a double-sided job. He was so hard, so cynical, she was almost convinced he had been as cold-blooded in his attitude towards her cousin as he was towards her.

Almost, but not quite. Because Jan was so lovely, so vivacious, she must have stirred something in him. Ellis didn't know how many men had fallen in love with Jan. They fell for her with no effort at all.

Her thoughts screeched to a halt. Paul had fallen in love with Jan with no effort at all.

She felt the old blackness engulf her mind as the pain of losing Paul came back. Once again she was reaching out helplessly in the dark, turning every way to find some means of escape, of forgetfulness. The pain of ended love was like that. You thought it had eased, you thought you'd found some way not to remember it, and then—a stray thought—and it was all back, as shatteringly destructive as ever, and the pitiful little bit of confidence you'd regained disappeared like a star behind the secretly gathered clouds of night.

Ellis looked down at her lovely gown, at the evening purse that glittered in her hand and felt herself absolutely nothing. She felt herself shrivel away to complete and utter insignificance—because Paul didn't love her.

But that man—that outrageous, insufferably rude man Steve Gascoyne—he had intimated so casually that he would make her his wife. And he had taught her in a few minutes something that Paul had never taught her—the reality of her own sexual nature. Suddenly she bit her lip so hard she tasted blood, and as she groped for a tissue and dabbed at it, someone knocked at her door. Jake—to see why she hadn't come down to the Birdcage Bar.

But it wasn't Jake, it was Steve Gascoyne, immaculate

in dark dinner suit and white shirt, her scarf in his hands. She felt a shiver run through the length of her body as their eyes met, and she almost snatched the scarf from him.

`You needn't have bothered about that,' she said ungraciously.

`I realise that. It was merely an excuse—if an excuse should be needed.' He looked over her shoulder into the room. 'You're alone?'

`Yes, of course,' she said sharply.

`May I come in for a moment?'

Her lashes flicked up in alarm, but before she could answer he was in the room and the door was shut and his back was against it.

`Jake's waiting for me,' she said edgily. She was unnerved by the way he looked at her. Somehow, instead of being conscious that she was no longer in her lamb's clothing, as he had put it, she could think only of the stroking touch of his fingers burning on her naked breast, rousing her She felt her breathing quicken, and barely managed to ask him, 'What do you want? To—to apologise?'

`I'm not a great believer in apologies. But we hadn't
finished
our discussion. Now you've composed yourself, I've a different proposition to put to you. You can have that job if you want it—'

`You told me that before,' she said swiftly. 'But no, thank you—I'm not interested in—in double-sided jobs.'