The smile hadn’t made any impression; maybe he could disarm her with frankness. Okay, so he wasn’t being totally frank. He was very interested in getting the Claibournes out and the Farradays in with the minimum amount of fuss. Legally.
‘At least this way I’ll be wasting my time in the sun.’
She glanced at him again without raising her head, just a sideways look—a lift of lashes untroubled by mascara but long and dark enough without it. In any other woman he’d have taken it as the opening move in a game of flirtation, but Flora appeared to be totally oblivious of the effect such a look might provoke. Or maybe she was cleverer than he’d given her credit for. She must have learned something from her mother, even if she’d only absorbed it by osmosis.
‘Have you packed walking boots?’ she asked.
No, she was oblivious, he decided.
‘Should I have?’
She shrugged, as if it was of no particular concern to her whether he had or not. ‘I anticipate taking a trip into the interior. It might be rough going. Of course you don’t have to come with me.’ She reached up and pushed a comb more firmly into the bird’s nest. ‘I’m sure you’d be much happier staying at the beach.’
Roughly translated, that meant, I’d be much happier if you stayed on the beach, he thought. She’d probably be a lot happier if he stayed at home. Well, it wasn’t his role in life to make her happy.
‘On the contrary, Miss Claibourne, I’m along for the ride. Wherever it goes. I’ll be most interested in everything you do.’
She looked doubtful, but didn’t argue, returning to the handwritten notes in the file she was holding, suggesting without words that they were far more interesting that anything he might have to say.
Again, in any other woman he would have assumed it was all part of the game and been amused, but it was clear that Flora Claibourne didn’t play games. She really didn’t care.
Round one to her, then.
His presence ignored, he opened his briefcase and extracted a brand-new hard-back book. Ashanti Gold, by Flora Claibourne.
He, too, began to read.
Flora didn’t miss his attempt to flatter, although why he would bother at all surprised her. Not that it mattered, because she wasn’t impressed. She’d seen all the moves before.
He pushed long, elegant fingers through his shaggy mane of sun-streaked hair, taking it back from his forehead in an unconsciously graceful gesture.
That one was a classic, she thought. And beautifully done, with not a hint of the self-conscious. He made it look like a gesture he’d used all his life—not one he’d practised in front of a mirror.
She still wasn’t impressed. Bram Gifford might consider himself a world-class charmer, but it would take more than the purchase of her book, a faux interest in her subject, to turn her head. But she didn’t say anything.
While he was pretending fascination with the history and uses of gold in West Africa he wasn’t attempting to engage her in conversation, which was just fine with her.
With any luck he’d read all the way to Saraminda.
Saraminda. The name had an exotic ring to it and the island didn’t disappoint, Flora decided, as the small inter-island plane banked steeply to line up with the floor of a tropical valley, offering them a breathtaking view of the mountainous landscape.
The lower slopes were farmed on terraces painstakingly cut into the hills, but above the farms the foothills rose in wave after wave, until they soared into peaks densely thicketed with the dark green vegetation of a rainforest that until recently had hidden the ruins of a temple where a young woman had been buried with all the ceremony of a queen.
Allegedly.
She’d met Tipi Myan briefly at a reception given by the travel department at the store more than a year ago. He hadn’t been Minister of Antiquities then. He’d been running the country’s tourist authority.
Call her cynical, but if she’d been in his shoes she might have been tempted to use that very tenuous acquaintance to ask the author of Ashanti Gold to write about his “lost princess”. It would provoke a lot more interest in his island than an article by some jobbing photo-journalist looking for a story to sell.
It had been his good fortune that she’d been looking for an escape route at the time. One that had backfired on her. As Bram Gifford leaned across her to get a better look, his thick corn-coloured hair catching the sun, the small inner voice that warned her she was being used, grew louder.
She was being used by everyone. All that had changed was her ability to see the game for what it was and ensure that she wasn’t hurt in the process.
‘We’re going up there?’ Bram asked, looking up at mountain peaks gold-misted in the dawn light before turning to her. He was, she thought, heart-meltingly handsome, with warm, toffee-brown eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. ‘You aren’t bothered about snakes and spiders and creepy-crawlies?’
For pity’s sake! Did she look like a bird-witted fool? Patronising cancelled out toffee-brown eyes—however crinkly their corners—every time.
‘In my experience they have more reason to be scared of me than I have of them,’ she replied matter-of-factly. She’d witnessed the most practised flirts at work, but she’d only been caught once. She was a quick learner, and it would take a lot more than ‘Me Tarzan, you Jane’ to impress her. ‘There are far more unpleasant things in this world than arthropoda,’ she added.
Bram, who’d expected the usual shiver of horror, gave a mental nod in her direction. Not too many women of his acquaintance would have resisted the opportunity to squeal a little, just to boost his ‘big strong man’ quotient. Or used arthropoda in a sentence. But then he was the first to admit that he wasn’t interested in their IQ.
Having neatly put him down, she wasn’t waiting for him to compliment her on her backbone either. He was getting the message, loud and clear, that she didn’t care what he thought.
Instead she began gathering her personal possessions without any fuss, not taking the slightest bit of notice of him.
In his experience this was usually a calculated ploy. Not noticing men had been raised to an art form by a certain type of woman. The kind who wanted to be noticed.
He had to concede that she didn’t appear to be one of them, but he’d reserve judgement.
Right now the early-morning sun, pouring in through the window, was lighting up her tortured hair and glinting off a dozen hairpins. Someone should do her a favour and throw them away, he thought. And those damned combs that she was forever replacing without seeming to notice what she was doing. As if reading his mind, she raised her hands to capture a loose strand of hair and anchor it in place.
Then, as if sensing him watching her, she let her hands drop to her lap. ‘I’m so sorry, I wasn’t thinking. That’s so remiss of me. Are you concerned for your own safety, Mr Gifford?’
This was the nearest they’d come to a conversation in the endless hours of flying. She was still sticking to his surname though, despite his request that she call him Bram. But at least it was a question: a mocking one, to be sure, but one that required an answer. A decided advance on the monosyllabic responses she’d stuck to throughout the long flight.
Clearly a seasoned traveller, she’d eaten little, refused anything but water to drink and slept without fuss when she wasn’t working—although that hadn’t been often. And while they’d waited for their transfer to the Saraminda flight at Singapore she’d toured the shops, looking at everything but buying nothing. And saying even less.
He’d used the time when