‘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.’