Panic made her glance up, and her shift in weight almost undid her. She threw herself back at the rock-face, closing her eyes to shut out the dizzy spinning, and for the first time felt real fear cold-feather her spine. She clung on, wondering just how long she could stay there before the pain in her arms and the trembling weakness in her legs became too much and she simply fell.
‘Can I offer you a hand, Sophie Nash?’
Her whole body lurched with shock at the harsh invitation. Taking great care not to overbalance, she glanced up once more, to find herself being regarded by a pair of fathomless eyes. He had flattened himself against the ground and stretched a hand down towards her. So close? She had been that close? She felt like weeping with frustration. But pride kept the tears at bay. Instead she glared at the strong, square hand and quite deliberately ignored the proferred lifeline. ‘I can manage,’ she ground out, and, as if to demonstrate this, grabbed the nearest rocky protrusion to ease herself up another few inches.
‘I really think you should take my hand,’ he advised coldly. ‘I won’t drop you, despite the undoubted provocation.’
But this small triumph had given her new heart. Adrenalin surging through her veins, she made another foot of height before she was forced once more to stop. She pressed her cheek against the rapidly cooling rock and tried to ease the strain on her limbs and drag air into her lungs through her parched throat. She hadn’t known it was possible to hurt so much.
‘Don’t be stubborn, Sophie.’ His voice was urgent now. ‘You’re not going to make it without help.’
His hawkish face was nearer, the lines carved deep into his cheeks, and he reached for her. ‘Leave me alone,’ she gasped, but the words were little more than a croak.
‘Fine words. Remember them,’ he ordered, ‘if you live long enough.’
‘I can manage!’ she repeated, the words turning into a scream when her foot slipped and her forehead collided sharply against the rock as she scrabbled with her toe for a hold to halt the sickening slip. She was jerked to an agonised halt as Chay Buchanan’s hands grasped her wrist and he hauled her over the edge, grabbing her in a vice-like grip as he rolled away from the yawning chasm.
‘You’ve dislocated my arm!’ she complained bitterly, as the pain of torn muscles brought tears swimming to her eyes.
‘You would rather have fallen?’ She didn’t answer, couldn’t answer through pain and tears. ‘And I haven’t dislocated anything.’ He moved her arm, none too gently, and she groaned involuntarily and let her head fall forward on to his naked chest. ‘See? Still in working order. No thanks to you.’
No wonder he had been so quick to reach her, she thought. He hadn’t bothered to dry himself or put on more than a pair of shorts. But she was too weak with pain and exhaustion to move. Instead she lay very still, her cheek pressed against the dark hair that stippled his chest, listening to the steady thud of his heartbeat, while she tried to recover her strength. But he wasn’t finished with her yet.
‘You have dangerous hobbies, Sophie Nash.’ He grasped her plait and yanked up her head, forcing her to confront him. ‘But then, it isn’t a hobby, is it?’ She yelped and fresh tears started to her eyes, but he didn’t care. His grasp only tightened, so that it was impossible to move without pain. ‘Nevertheless, climbing alone, without a safety line, is just about the most stupid, reckless...’ He stopped, clearly too angry to continue. Really angry. Those pirate’s eyes were fierce enough to kill. ‘Does anyone know where you are? If you’d fallen would anyone ever have known what had happened to you?’
How could he be so utterly heartless? Surely he must see that she was in agony? ‘Someone would have found my car,’ she gasped out.
‘Someone would have found your car?’ he repeated, in utter disbelief. “‘Here lie some bits and pieces of Sophie Nash. We know it was her because we found her car.” Some epitaph.’ Then the fact that silent tears were by now pouring down her face and on to his chest apparently penetrated, because he loosened his grasp of her hair and she almost whimpered with relief. But he hadn’t finished. ‘Let me tell you, girl, that you don’t have much of a career as a paparazzo ahead of you if you ignore the simplest safety precautions.’
‘I’m not a paparazzo,’ she protested.
‘You’re giving a very good impression of one. For God’s sake, is a photograph of me so valuable that it’s worth risking your life? Whoever commissioned you must have promised to pay you a very great deal of money.’ He frowned, then rolled over, pinning her against the rock-hard ground, crushing her breasts against his naked chest until she could hardly breathe. ‘Who was it, Sophie?’
Pay? He thought she would do this for money? Days trailing around holiday resorts at the crack of dawn when they were deserted, making the best of hotels so that they should look exotic and desirable holiday destinations, that was what she was paid for.
Her attempt to get a photograph of the great Chay Buchanan while she was on the island had not been for the vast sums paid to professional paparazzi. It had been for something infinitely more precious. For a moment she was tempted to tell him. Ask him... She met his eyes and hope died. Chay Buchanan hadn’t just turned her down when she had wanted to take his photograph. He had been...contemptuous. Anger, determination, sheer bloody-mindedness, had blinded her to the folly, the very real risk, of what she was doing.
She lay, too weak to move, her head thudding with pain from his maltreatment of her scalp. More likely the bang on your forehead, that know-it-all inner voice immediately contradicted her. She would have liked to touch the tender spot, check it out to assess the damage, but his weight fixed her to the spot and she lay quite helpless. She opened her lids to meet the angry onslaught of his eyes.
‘Well?’ he demanded.
She had been stupid. She knew it, was prepared to admit it. To herself. But she certainly wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of telling him so. And she wasn’t going to tell him about Nigel. She had the feeling that Nigel wouldn’t like that at all.
‘I wanted a photograph of you to hang on my bedroom wall,’ she managed to snap out. ‘I’m a fan.’
For a moment he seemed taken aback. Then his lips curved in a parody of a smile. ‘I don’t think so, Miss Nash. I believe it would take a great deal more than that to send you down that cliff.’
‘You’re too modest, Mr Buchanan. Besides, it was easy enough,’ she gasped, but the pain in her shoulder, her head, and torn and bleeding hands made a liar of her. Easy enough getting down.
‘Easy?’ he sneered. ‘If it had been easy you wouldn’t be lying here, you would be racing to Luqa airport now with your ill-gotten gains.’
She lay back against the hard rock. He was right, of course, and now he would take the films and she would have to tell Nigel she had failed, appeal to his sense of honour. A hollow little voice suggested that Nigel was not overburdened with the stuff. But Chay Buchanan mustn’t know how much it mattered.
‘I wasn’t in a hurry,’ she said, as if strolling up a rockface was an everyday occurrence. ‘I was...admiring the view,’ she added, with a slightly wobbly attempt at airiness.
‘You won’t admit it, will you?’ he replied, clearly infuriated by this unrepentant display of bravado. Then he eased himself away from her, letting his eyes trail insolently from a pair of clear grey eyes, by way of a very ordinary nose and a full, over-large mouth, to linger on a bosom that rose and fell far too rapidly. ‘But you’re right about one thing. There’s absolutely nothing wrong with the view.’
Sophie felt the colour flood to her face as she realised