‘I think I’ll go up and change,’ she told the Partingtons. ‘I want to try and do a bit more sunbathing, especially if there won’t be time tomorrow.’
‘Wear your new bikini,’ Dot urged her. ‘We might see you later on the beach.’
When she went up to her room Tamara had no intention of changing into the cyclamen bikini, but she couldn’t resist taking it out of the bag, still amazed that she had actually bought it, knowing she would never wear it, and then, governed by some impulse she could not understand, she hurried into the bathroom and quickly changed into it, before she could change her mind, and not daring to visualise Malcolm’s reaction to her scantily clad body.
Picking up a white towelling robe and shrugging it on, she collected her book and the bag containing her suntan lotion and glasses before hurrying back outside.
The sun beat down with an intensity that burned right through her protective robe, and Tamara decided to forgo the beach in favour of the privacy of the gardens. She found a secluded spot protected by a low-growing hedge of tropical shrubs, their huge trumpet-shaped scarlet flowers almost too perfect to be real. The huge beach towel she had brought with her gave her something to lie on, and having smoothed as much of her body as she could reach with suntan cream she donned her glasses and picked up her book.
Half an hour slid by, before the book began to fail to hold her attention, which she found wandering to the antics of a tiny humming-bird darting in and out of the creeper adorning the walls of a nearby block of self-contained suites, and Tamara marvelled at the way the tiny creature delved so energetically in search of food.
She turned over, easing her stiff shoulders, tensing instinctively as she saw the black jean-clad legs in front of her, before her eyes moved slowly upwards over taut masculine thighs and a muscular chest before coming to rest on the saturnine face bent towards her.
Her skin went hot, burning with embarrassment as he glanced cynically over her body, so intimately revealed in her brief bikini.
‘Very provocative, but wasted here,’ he taunted softly. ‘Why aren’t you on the beach?’
Tamara suddenly found her voice, which to her chagrin was shaking with the pent-up force of her anger.
‘Why should I be?’ she demanded. ‘If you must know, I came here because I wanted …’
‘To be alone,’ he finished mockingly. ‘Snap! So what do we do now? Makes ourselves an interesting item of gossip or …’
Tamara scrambled to her feet, feeling at a distinct disadvantage lying at his feet like … like a sacrificial offering.
‘If you want to be alone, Mr Fletcher,’ she replied, stressing the formality of the ‘Mr’, ‘then I suggest you find somewhere else …’
‘I like it here,’ he told her calmly. ‘It’s quiet and it’s private.’ His teeth glinted in a white smile, the grooves either side of his mouth deepening, giving Tamara a glimpse of the man he might possibly be when he wasn’t either bored or indifferent. ‘Be a good girl,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure you’ll find plenty of young men to admire you on the beach, and attractive though you are, I’m really well past the age where I’m incited to lust by the sight of a pretty girl with very little on.’
Throughout this speech Tamara’s eyes had gradually widened, as her body stiffened until she was staring at him in frozen outrage, scarcely able to speak for the anger building up inside her.
‘I don’t know what you’re trying to imply,’ she gritted out at last, hands clenched furiously at her sides, ‘but if you’re suggesting that I came here deliberately because you … because I knew you come here, you couldn’t be more wrong. You see,’ she told him sweetly, releasing the fingers of her left hand and raising it a little, ‘I don’t happen to need to run after other men—I’ve already managed to catch mine!’
She knew it was a vulgar little speech, but she really didn’t care; she didn’t care about anything but banishing from those green eyes the expression which said, quite plainly, that he thought she had deliberately come to this part of the gardens dressed as she was because she hoped to attract his attention.
‘I had no idea that you came here,’ she finished with a flourish. ‘If I had I would have made a point of avoiding it.’
‘Would you indeed?’ His eyes were on her left hand, narrowed and faintly assessing. ‘Are you sure about that? Girls have been known to do strange things when they’ve been … deprived of their fiancés’ presence.’
‘You’re an expert on brief affairs with other people’s girl-friends, are you, Mr Fletcher?’ she asked scornfully. ‘Well, you can relax—I’ll never be deprived, or depraved enough to trouble you.’
‘Oh, it wouldn’t be any trouble,’ she was assured with a smoothness which caught her off guard. ‘Not normally, that is.’
His glance seemed to stroke over her heated body, drawing from her a brilliant look of hatred, and her fingers curled in on themselves again.
‘It’s just that I prefer to do my own hunting,’ he added, further enraging her. ‘Now be a good little girl and run away and play with someone else, mm?’
When Tamara eventually reached her room she gave vent to her fury, removing the garments which she was sure had caused Zachary Fletcher’s preposterous insults and hurling them on to the floor. How dared he suggest … How dared he look at her like that … How dared he imply that …
Cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling angrily under their fine brows, she turned on the shower, subjecting her body to a vigorous scrubbing as though by doing so she could punish it for encouraging Zachary Fletcher to believe she was the sort of girl who behaved in the way he had implied. And even if she was a man-chaser, she would never, ever in a million years, chase after someone like him, she decided through gritted teeth as she dried herself. Never!
IT was shortly before ten forty-five when Tamara walked into the hotel foyer to join the small group of people waiting there for the guide for the rain forest walk.
She saw Zachary Fletcher straightaway, but ignored him, deliberately going to join Dot and George Partington, who were chatting to the foursome they had mentioned the previous day.
‘Are you looking forward to it?’ Dot asked her, and when Tamara said that she was she added curiously, ‘By the way, what happened to you last night? I looked for you at dinner time, but I couldn’t see you.’
‘I ate in my room. I had a headache—probably too much sun,’ Tamara lied, knowing full well that the reason she hadn’t dined in the restaurant was that she wanted to avoid any further contact with Zachary Fletcher. It would have been just her luck to run into him in the dining-room and for him to accuse her of deliberately arranging it that way. Not even the brief evening telephone call she received from Malcolm had soothed her, and she was still burning with a resentment which refused to fade.
‘You’re looking very attractive, anyway,’ Dot told her, admiring the olive cotton jeans Tamara was wearing with a white tee-shirt with toning stripes in olive and rust. Over her shoulder Tamara had slung a large canvas beach bag with a slightly thicker long-sleeved sweat-shirt, sunscreen, and some other bits and pieces in it, the canvas almost exactly matching the dull olive of her jeans. The outfit had been bought especially for her holiday—Malcolm didn’t care for women in jeans, and Tamara had had to buy a pair of jodhpurs especially for her visit to his parents, who kept a couple of hunters for Malcolm’s and his father’s use.
Malcolm