Not exactly an answer. ‘It must have been bad,’ she ventured.
He lifted the can and took another deep swallow of its contents. ‘Bad enough,’ he said flatly. ‘About eighty people died—mostly villagers who got in the way. Crops destroyed and villages burned down, the bodies of dead children—the usual aftermath of war.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said inadequately, her heart contracting.
‘Why? It wasn’t your fault.’
After a short silence she drawled, ‘Are you looking for someone to blame?’
His quiet, mirthless laugh chilled her. He drained the rest of his beer, then stood up. ‘Probably,’ he said roughly. ‘I’d better go; I’m in no fit state to discuss life and its unfairness with a gently brought-up Englishwoman.’
‘Have you a place to go to?’ She was teetering on the brink of something that would change her life, but she couldn’t let him take his memories back to an impersonal hotel room.
‘I’ll get a room at the resort,’ he said indifferently.
‘And face a pack of ravening journalists who haven’t been able to get anywhere near the fighting?’ she returned, keeping her tone light. ‘Although if the fighting’s over, I suppose they’ve all left for Sant’Rosa. When did you eat last?’
He didn’t answer straight away, and she suspected that her question had startled him. It had startled her too.
His broad shoulders lifted. ‘God knows.’
‘I’ll get you something.’ She got to her feet, strangely unsurprised to realise she’d made a decision—one, she thought with a flare of panic, that was totally unlike her. But her voice remained steady when she added, ‘And while I’m doing that, why don’t you have a shower?’
He didn’t move. Although her eyes were attuned to the night, she couldn’t see enough of his face to discern any expression, but his stance and his silence were intimidating.
Not so intimidating as his voice. Deep and raw, almost menacing, it sent a cold sliver of sensation down her spine. ‘Not a good idea, Lauren.’
The darkness wasn’t a barrier to him. When she flinched in humiliation, he cupped a lean hand around her chin. Applying the slightest pressure, he said without apology, ‘I’m not fit company. I probably need to get drunk.’
His hand was warm, the long fingers rough as though he’d been working hard, the strength of it palpable against her skin. She said crisply, ‘Then you’d regret it less tomorrow if you start out clean, and with some food in your stomach.’
‘Indeed, a woman out of every man’s fantasy,’ he said in a voice like rough velvet.
His thumb stroked across her lips in a caress that melted her bones so that when he dropped his hand she had to grab the back of her chair.
But there was nothing caressing in the gaze that held hers. It was hot and dark and devouring; it reached into the hidden depths of thoughts and emotions she’d never recognised, never experienced before, and made her face them. ‘But I’m not staying unless you’re sure.’
Sure that she wanted to be with him? Utterly. Sure that she was ready for what might happen? No, but certain that if she sent him to the resort she’d regret it. ‘I’m sure.’
He nodded and stepped back, letting her go first into the bungalow. Lauren switched on the light at the door, and opened the wardrobe door to hand him the shirt he’d lent her so many days ago. Tawny eyes quizzical, he took it.
But when she drew the ring from her finger, his gaze darkened. Her finger felt cold, abandoned, but her hand didn’t shake as she held out the gold trinket. ‘Thank you.’
‘Is that what your offer is? Gratitude for getting your passport? Or for getting you out of Sant’Rosa?’ His tone was softly aggressive, and he watched her so narrowly she felt that her every thought was being catalogued by that keen mind.
‘No,’ she said.
Guy slid the ring onto his little finger and went into the bathroom.
He stayed for so long that Lauren, preparing a meal of fish and salad in the kitchen, wondered whether he was indulging in a ritual of cleaning war’s filthy detritus from his body.
It wouldn’t be so easy or so quick to rid his mind of the horrendous images.
She listened to the soft swish of the tiny waves brushing the sand a few feet away and tried to sort out her emotions. Send him off to the resort, common sense urged. Now—before it’s too late.
But it was too late. He’d issued a challenge and she’d accepted it. Beneath Guy’s tight control she sensed a darkly primitive hunger; remember the traditional recreation of the warrior, she thought—banishing unbearable memories in the pleasure of a woman’s body.
But she didn’t fear him; instinct told her that he wouldn’t hurt her. And she wanted him with a heated desperation that fogged her mind, turning the unthinkable into the inevitable.
Oh, she could blame the heat and danger of the tropics—the perfume floating on the moist air, a sultry, sinful fragrance breathed out from the hearts of the crimson flowers on the vine wreathing the terrace. But the tropics hadn’t produced the smouldering intensity that sent the blood singing through her veins.
Her teeth gnawed her lip as she went on with the dinner preparations. She wanted Guy, but even more important than that, she suspected that tonight he needed her.
When he emerged, clad in the clean shirt and his trousers, she was sitting on the terrace with the second can of beer and a plate of sliced fruit. She didn’t hear him come up behind her, but some instinct switched her gaze from the geckos creeping ever closer to the lamp, intent on picking off the moths that danced in dazzled swirls around the dangerous, alluring light.
Her heart blocked her throat. He’d shaved, and in the soft light he was beautiful, the boldly carved framework of his face a miraculous, exotic blend of Mediterranean machismo and the northern-European angularity that nagged at her memory.
‘That food looks good.’ His voice was cool and noncommittal.
He didn’t fall on it like a starving man, but by the time he’d told her of the situation in Sant’Rosa he’d almost cleared the platter.
When he finished she observed, ‘So the Republic was behind it. Are they likely to try again?’
‘I don’t think so. They lost too many men.’
She said quietly, ‘And if they don’t know by now that they can’t ignore world opinion, they will once the Press gets there.’
‘I’m surprised that a local fracas, however bloody and determined, was interesting enough to attract the attention of foreign correspondents.’ His tone was satiric. ‘There can’t be much happening in the rest of the world.’
‘A meeting of heads of state has just finished in Australia.’ She looked up as a plane flew overhead.
‘Ah, so that’s it,’ Guy said sardonically. ‘And Sant’Rosa is an interesting detour on the way home. As for waking the world up to what’s happening here—it’ll be relegated to obscurity once the next flashpoint explodes.’
Unfortunately he was right. She said, ‘I’d like to be sure that the hotel staff on Sant’Rosa survived. And how did the village in the mountains fare? It was right in the thick of things, surely?’
‘No. As far as I know they didn’t come off any worse than any other village. You’re not going back,’ Guy responded in a flat, lethal tone.
A cold shiver scudded down her spine. ‘But—’
‘No