During the flight to Sant’Rosa’s capital and then on to Fiji, she fought a savage, unrelenting emptiness, refusing food and anything to drink except water and fruit juice. Once aboard the big jet for New Zealand, she watched the jewel that was Fiji’s main island drop away from beneath the plane’s wings and forced herself to eat something that tasted like a mixture of plastic and sawdust in her mouth.
Afterwards she saw the sun go down in a splendour of blood-red and scarlet, and blamed the sight for eyes that felt heavy and dry, as though if she relaxed they might sting with tears.
Stop that right now, she told herself roundly. You knew right from the start that once you left you’d never see Guy again. You knew, and you accepted it—you can’t renege on the deal now.
She was not in love with Guy Bagaton.
But halfway to New Zealand she finally accepted something she’d been refusing to acknowledge. She had done the exact same thing as her mother—without considering anything other than her own desires, she’d embarked on a wild, defiant, unrestrained affair with a man she didn’t know.
At least, she thought tiredly, she wasn’t married, as her mother had been. And there would be no pregnancy—Guy had seen to that. A hollow sadness took her by surprise, and was hastily banished.
But Isabel Porter had known more about her lover than Lauren knew about hers. The genetic father Lauren shared with Marc Corbett had been a businessman of note, a lover of beautiful women and a rampantly unfaithful husband notorious for his affairs. Although her mother had known he was married—and been married herself—she’d been unable to resist his powerful magnetism.
Just like me, Lauren thought, hands tensely locking together in her lap. I am truly my mother’s daughter.
And my father’s!
Well, her genetic father’s. Her true father was Hugh Porter, who discovered that the daughter he had considered his own was the result of his wife’s adultery only when Lauren was in her early twenties. As he was already fighting heart disease, the shock had almost killed him, but he had forgiven Isabel and reassured Lauren of a love that had never faltered.
Her mouth setting into a straight line, she steered her thoughts away from that period. Guy could be a planter of some sort; rice, or indigo or copra—whatever planters produced on tropical islands. He could be a scout for one of the forestry companies that were buying tropical hardwoods; he’d been scathing enough about the sali nut scheme to make this possible.
Half-pirate, half-warrior, he lived on an island marooned in the endless blue waves of the Pacific Ocean. Apart from sharing a blazing sexual attraction, they had nothing in common. She lived and worked in London. She loved her career, and her favourite city was Paris—about as different from the steamy heat of Sant’Rosa as any place could be.
Her lips formed the words nothing in common as they echoed in her mind with cold resonance. A giant fist squeezed her heart into a painful knot.
Of course she had to repay the money he’d lent her, but that wouldn’t need personal contact. She didn’t have his address, but she’d soon find one; everyone was traceable on the Internet. And even if he wasn’t, any letter addressed to him in Sant’Rosa would find its way to him. Everyone there seemed to know him.
And he had her address…
For the rest of the journey to New Zealand she stared unseeingly ahead while her treacherous mind replayed images of the time she’d spent in Guy’s arms.
Once she got to Marc’s house in New Zealand she’d be fine. She’d recover from this inconvenient and heady rush of blood to the loins, and be her normal self again.
Well, she thought drearily, I now know what happens when you hit the tropics—madness.
Lauren stroked the elderly golden retriever’s insistent head.
‘No, Fancy,’ she said patiently, ‘I don’t want to go for a walk along the beach, and no, I don’t want to row you around to Cabbage Tree Bay, and no, I don’t want to climb the hill either. Nor do I want to throw your ball or feed you treats.’
All I want to do, she finished silently, is lie here in the sun and mourn a man I won’t see again.
Tail wagging, Fancy sighed, gave her a forgiving lick on the fingers, and flopped down in the sun beside the lounger. Lauren’s eyes narrowed against the glare as she gazed out across the bay; although this was a distant reach of the huge Pacific Ocean, it was much cooler and more green than the warm tropical seas surrounding Valanu and Sant’Rosa.
‘But just as beautiful,’ she said sternly.
Fancy’s tail thumped agreement. Now and forever, Lauren knew, she’d measure every island against Valanu, where Guy had taught her the exquisite pleasures of sex.
For long forbidden minutes she lay still and remembered—as she’d been remembering for the past two days. Two days and four hours, actually. At least, she thought drearily, she wasn’t counting the minutes…
Fancy sat up, ears pricked and alert as she stared into the sky.
‘What is it, girl?’ But Lauren too had heard it by now—a helicopter, coming fast and low.
Her half-brother, Marc? No, he and Paige were still enjoying a second honeymoon in the Seychelles, having left their adorable twin daughters with Marc’s doting mother in Paris.
Some secret instinct shortened Lauren’s breath. Telling herself not to be an idiot, she sprinted inside to change her brief shorts and top for linen trousers and a silk shirt.
‘Just in case,’ she murmured, and gave a dreary little laugh. Of course it wouldn’t be Guy.
And if by some miracle it was Guy, she’d send him away. Even if he wanted her to, she couldn’t see herself spending the rest of her life on a tropical island.
‘Oh, you idiot,’ she muttered, hastily masking her face with a discreet film of cosmetics. ‘When did you start thinking in terms of the rest of your life? He certainly wasn’t considering permanence.’
Combing her hair into place, she wondered what on earth had happened to her normally disciplined brain.
‘You let yourself be ambushed by temptation. You blatantly let him know you were available, and you didn’t put up even a minor objection when he carried you off for days of hot sex and wild passion,’ she muttered.
OK, so other people did things like that all the time, but she’d been utterly irresponsible. She should have fled to New Zealand the minute he handed over her passport on Valanu.
Even then, it was too late. That hasty fake marriage conducted under gunfire was just the sort of human-interest story a journalist would love. To save her mother humiliation and her father the stress that worsened his precarious health, she and Marc had always been careful not to attract attention to their relationship.
Frowning, she slid on small gold earrings as the chopper eased down towards the pad behind the house.
She’d been lucky because it didn’t seem that her recklessness had compromised the old, hidden scandal of her conception. Surely, if any journalist had got a sniff of her time with Guy—or of that fake marriage—it would have turned up in the papers by now. They’d been having a great time with the heroic, unknown ‘Englishman’ who’d fought side by side with the Sant’Rosan forces.
A knock on the door announced the housekeeper. ‘Lauren, it’s a Mr Bagaton,’ she said, looking both intrigued and slightly put out. ‘He insists on seeing you.’
Lauren’s stomach clenched, a chaotic surge of joy wiping everything but anticipation from her mind. Trying hard not to beam, she said, ‘Thanks, Mrs Oliver. I know him.’
He