His tone was still neutral, but her skin tightened at the implication of exploitation, and she had to draw breath before saying, ‘It’s a joint venture.’
‘Who provided the start-up money?’
It appeared to be nothing more than an idle question, yet swift antagonism forced her to bite back an astringent comment. Subduing it, she said politely, ‘I don’t know that that’s any of your business.’
And kept her eyes fixed on the road ahead. Tension—thick and throbbing—grated across her nerves.
Until he drawled, ‘If it was Tom’s money I’m interested.’
‘Of course,’ she retorted, before closing her mouth on any more impetuous words. Silence filled the cab until she elaborated reluctantly, ‘It was my money.’
Let him take that how he wanted. If Luc MacAllister had any right to know, he’d find out about Tom’s subsequent loan to her from the solicitor—the man arriving tomorrow.
Was that why Luc had come to Rotumea? To be told the contents of Tom’s will?
Immediately she dismissed the idea. Luc was Tom’s heir, his chosen successor as well as his stepson, so he’d already know.
Possibly Tom had mentioned her in his will; he might even have cancelled her debt to him. That would have been a kind gesture. And if he hadn’t—if Luc MacAllister inherited the debt—she’d pay it off as quickly as she could.
A coolly decisive voice broke into her thoughts. ‘And are you making money on this project?’
For brief moments her fingers clenched around the steering wheel. For a second she toyed with the idea of telling him again to mind his own business, but it was a logical question, and if he did inherit the debt he had a right to know.
However, he might not have.
‘Yes,’ she said, and turned off the tarseal onto a narrow rutted road that led up into the jungle-clad mountains in the centre of the island.
A quick glance revealed Luc was examining a pawpaw plantation on his side. He didn’t seem fazed by the state of the road, the precipice to one side or the large pig that only slowly got up and made room for them.
‘This is the area we’re taking the material from now,’ she said. ‘Each sub-tribe sells me the rights to harvest from the plants on their land for three months every year. It works well; the plants have time to recover and even seem to flourish under the pruning.’
‘How many people do you employ to do the harvesting?’
‘It depends. The chiefs organise that.’
She stopped on the level patch of land where the road ended. ‘There’s a great view of this side of the island from here,’ she said, and got out.
Luc followed suit, and again she was acutely aware of his height, and that intangible, potent authority that seemed to come from some power inside him. The sun-streaks in his hair gleamed a dusky gold; his colouring must have come from that Scottish father. The only inheritance from his French mother was the olive sheen to his skin.
Did that cold grey gaze ever warm and soften? It didn’t seem likely, although she could imagine his eyes kindling in passion …
Firmly squelching an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach, she decided that from what she knew of him and the very little she’d seen of him, softness wasn’t—and never would be—part of his emotional repertoire. It was difficult to imagine him showing tenderness, and any compassion would probably be intellectual, not from the heart.
So, after an hour or so you’re an expert on him? she jeered mentally, aware of another embarrassing internal flutter. Remember you’re totally off good-looking men!
Although good-looking was far too weak a word for Luc MacAllister’s strong features and formidable air of authority. Composing herself, she began to point out the sights, showing him the breach in the reef that sheltered the lagoon from the ever-present pounding of the ocean waves.
‘The only river on the island reaches the coast below us, and the fresh water stops the coral from forming across its exit,’ she said in her best guidebook manner. ‘The gap in the reef and the lagoon make a sort of harbour, the first landing place of the original settlers.’
Luc’s downward glance set her heart racing, yet his voice was almost casual. ‘Where did they come from, and when was that?’
Doggedly, she switched her attention back to the view below. ‘Almost certainly they arrived from what’s now French Polynesia, and the general opinion seems to be it was about fifteen hundred years ago.’
‘They were magnificent seamen,’ he observed, looking out to sea. ‘They had to be, to set off into the unknown with only the stars and the clouds to guide them.’
The comment surprised her. Like all New Zealanders, she’d grown up with tales of those ancient sailors and their remarkable feats, but she remembered that Luc had been educated in England and France. She wouldn’t have thought he had a romantic bone in his big, lithe body, and it was unlikely he’d been taught about the great outrigger canoes that had island-hopped across the Pacific, even travelling the vast distance to South America to return with the sweet potato the Maori from her homeland called kumara.
‘Tough too,’ he said, his eyes still fixed on the lagoon beneath them—a symphony of turquoise and intense blue bordered by glittering white beaches and the robust barrier of the reef. Immense and dangerous, the Pacific Ocean stretched far beyond the horizon.
‘Very tough,’ she agreed. ‘And probably with a good reason for moving on each time.’
‘They must have had guts and stamina and tenacious determination, as well as the skill and knowledge to know where they were going.’
Yes, that sounded uncompromising and forceful—attributes as useful in the modern, high-powered world Luc moved in as they would have been for those ancient Polynesian voyagers.
‘I’m sure they did,’ she said. ‘Over a period of about four thousand years they discovered almost every inhabitable island in the Pacific from Hawaii to New Zealand.’
She pointed out the coral motu—small white-ringed islets covered in coconut palms, green beads in the lacy fichu of foam that the breaking combers formed along the reef.
‘When the first settlers landed there,’ she told him, hoping her voice was more steady than her pulse, ‘they didn’t know whether there were any other people on Rotumea so they anchored the canoe in the lagoon, ready to take off if a hostile group approached.’
‘But no one did.’
‘No. It was uninhabited. Virgin territory.’
And for some humiliating reason her cheeks pinked. Hastily she kept her gaze out to sea and added, ‘It must have been a huge relief. They’d have carried coconuts with them to plant, and kumara and taro, and the paper mulberry tree to make cloth. And of course they brought dogs and rats too.’
‘You’ve obviously studied the history,’ Luc said sardonically.
I don’t like you, Jo thought sturdily. Not one tiny bit. Not ever.
Buoyed up by the thought, she turned and gave him a swift challenging smile. ‘Of course,’ she said in her sweetest tone. ‘I find them fascinating, and it’s only polite to know something of the history of the place, after all. And of the people. Don’t you think so?’
‘Oh, I agree entirely. Information is the lifeblood of modern business.’
Her heightened senses warned her that his words and the hard smile that accompanied them held something close to a threat.
Stop dramatising, she told herself decisively. He was just being sarcastic again.
Yet it was