On the eighth day she was sitting in the coral-coloured sitting room when the familiar sounds of helicopter blades heralded his return.
Her heart skipped a couple of beats, but other than that she didn’t move, did not lift her eyes from the paperback that she was supposed to be reading. For the space of thirty long, taut seconds she showed no visible sign at all that his return interested her in the slightest…
Then smoothly, coolly, calmly she got up, walked out of the room and up the stairs to her bedroom.
She was methodically folding clothes into her suitcase when he appeared in the doorway. She felt his arrival, felt his sudden stillness when he saw what she was doing, felt his eyes home sharply in on her—and didn’t even grace him with a glance.
‘What are you doing?’ he demanded finally.
She didn’t bother to answer the obvious either, her hands remaining steady as they settled soft, silky underwear in the suitcase lying open on the stand by the bathroom door.
‘I’ll be ready to leave in a few minutes,’ she informed him instead.
Silence. A silence so taut that it made her ears begin to tingle and her chest grow tight. Then, ‘Don’t be foolish!’ he said roughly, striding further into the room to throw something onto the nearby tabletop. ‘You are not going anywhere. OK, so you are angry with me,’ he allowed magnanimously. ‘I acknowledge it.’
Big of you, she thought, and continued back to the dressing table to begin emptying the next drawer.
His eyes followed her in pulsing frustration. ‘Angelica…’ he sighed, reaching out with a hand to stop her as she went to walk past him.
She turned on him like a rattlesnake. Then wished to God that she hadn’t when she felt herself hit by the full, stinging blast of his grim, dark attraction.
Why do you do this to me? she screamed out in silent anguish as her senses caught alight and began crackling like a flash-fire through her blood.
He was standing there in the immaculate clothes of a businessman. Plain grey tie worn over a crisp white shirt. Plain grey twill trousers sitting perfectly on the top of polished black shoes. The epitome of convention in fact. While that hair of his, so arrogantly contained in is slender black ribbon, shrieked ‘Rogue’ at her! ‘Scoundrel! For God’s sake watch out!’
‘Don’t you touch me!’ she spat at him in sheer reaction. ‘Don’t you—’ disgustedly she wiped his hand from her arm ‘—dare touch me!’
His chin went up, his eyes alight with the green, green glow of affronted pride, his chiselled mouth pulling into a straight, flat line that did nothing—nothing to spoil its innate sex appeal! While she just stood here, breasts heaving, eyes defying him, waiting with her senses on full alert to see how he was going to react to that little bit of ego-squashing.
‘Look…’ he muttered after another tense pause. ‘This is crazy.’
Her word, Annie thought possessively. Crazy. Her whole existence had been crazy from the moment she’d first set eyes on him!
‘What do you want me to say, Angelica? That I am sorry? That I should not have left here the way that I did? I know it,’ he accepted. ‘You know it! But I had to leave. I did not like what we were doing to each other. I needed to be alone—to think—to try to find a—’
‘Well, at least you had the choice whether to go or stay!’
There was another short silence while he took on board the full import of that last remark. Then he gave another heavy sigh, and the muscles in her chest began to throb. She wasn’t sure why. They just did, holding her tense and still and so utterly miserable that she wanted to weep.
‘I just want to leave here,’ she repeated thickly. ‘Now—as soon as it can be arranged.’
‘We have to talk.’
She shook her head. ‘What is there left to talk about?’ she asked. ‘The Cliché launch?’ Her mouth took on a bitter twist that mocked the whole subject. ‘I’m no longer interested in discussing that with you,’ she announced. ‘Not any of it.’
‘And why not?’ he asked grimly. ‘It meant all the world to you a week ago.’
‘A week ago I was still living in cloud-cuckoo-land,’ she derided. ‘Since then, and while you’ve been off having your lonely think, I’ve been having mine. And I want out. Out of this house and this island, out of any commitment I may have to you so I can go and deal with my own commitments myself.’
Take that, you arrogant devil, she thought, and turned stiffly away.
‘You said you’d wait until we knew if there was a child or not.’
She paused half a stride back to her sui
tcase, her eyes closing on a moment’s frozen stillness. When they opened again the blue was empty—as empty as she was feeling inside right now.
‘There isn’t going to be a child,’ she told him huskily, and continued jerkily on her way. ‘So that’s it,’ she went on in a tone that said she didn’t care, when really she had cared. It had come as yet another devastating blow to find out how much she had cared about carrying his baby. ‘All promises to you fulfilled,’ she stated. ‘Now I want you to fulfil your promise to me and let me go.’