The Hawk and the Lamb

'You can put that one in your record book,' he grinned widely. 'You actually made an air hostess blush.'

/> 'I didn’t, you did!' she accused him viciously.

He lifted both his hands, palms out, still grinning. 'If you think you can do better, Miss Efficiency, go ahead. Do it yourself.'

She almost did. She was that furious. However, one glimpse of indecent silky white bikini briefs topped by a smothering of curling dark hair through the denim gap changed her mind.

She turned her head away and after a moment he re­sumed his measured movements without comment. It seemed to take an awful long time but Elizabeth didn’t trust herself to make an issue of it. He was surprisingly gentle as he manipulated her wrist and didn’t once brush her unwilling hand against himself as she half expected him to, given the relentlessness of his taunting. With a soft grunt of satisfaction he finally released her.

'I don’t think there's any damage, but you'd better check.'

For a moment she thought he was talking about himself, then she realised he meant her bracelet. She concentrated on it fiercely while he readjusted his clothing.

'OK?'

'Yes. Thank you.' She sounded sullen but she couldn’t help it. The man was a jinx. 'I hope I didn’t damage your jeans.'

'You obviously don’t watch the TV ads. It takes more than a lady in distress to wreck a pair of Levis,' he murmured.

At least he had called her a lady and not a klutz. Elizabeth felt her poker spine soften a little. 'I'm sorry, I wasn’t very polite—' she began tightly.

'I didn’t give you any reason to be.' He disconcerted her yet again by overriding her humiliated apology with a graceful confession of his own. He almost sounded— heaven forbid—gentle! 'My sense of humour is some­times incomprehensible, even to myself. I'm afraid I'm also liable to be crudely direct at times, especially when I'm taken by surprise—my old army instincts surfacing: shock tactics—react first, ask questions later.'

Elizabeth murmured something meaninglessly polite in exchange. Army? Hardly the sort of training she would expect for a wealthy businessman. Perhaps he had been liable for some kind of National Service. Did New Caledonia have an army? Her curiosity was becoming perilously close to personal. Resolutely determined not to indulge it, it was Elizabeth's turn this time to recline her seat and close her eyes.

She wouldn’t sleep a wink, of course, but she was bound and determined to pretend to be unconscious for the rest of this wretched journey!

A faint buzzing in her ears roused her. She shifted herself restlessly, nuzzling her cheek and mouth con­tentedly against the soft, warm fabric which pillowed her.

Soft? Warm?

Elizabeth's eyes flickered open. A few inches away another pair of eyes watched her struggle out of her fitful doze. The pillow that she was using was a masculine shoulder. The warmth moulded to her side from head to hip was pliant muscle. The buzzing was the faint elec­tronic beep of the watch on his wrist, which was anchored to his broad chest by Elizabeth's lax hand. The arm-rest which should have bolstered the division between their almost fully reclined seats had been folded out of the way, to all intents and purposes creating a double bed!

Elizabeth had wanted to keep J.J. Hawkwood under surveillance, but not this close!

She pushed herself upright, brushing her ruffled hair back from her hot face with a trembling hand, and looked down at the man lying beside her.

'I'm sorry, you should have pushed me away,' she said huskily, astounded to find that she had relaxed enough to fall asleep. She could have sworn that she had only closed her eyes a few seconds ago but, glancing at her watch, she saw that nearly an hour had passed since she had laid her head down. The tension and worry of the past few weeks had caught up with her at the most in­appropriate of times.

'I didn’t want to wake you up. You looked as if you needed the rest. The nap did you good—you've gained some healthy colour.' He reached up and touched her flushed cheek with a smoothing caress, as if he had every right to, as if he actually cared about the state of a stranger's health. Elizabeth froze and his hand fell back down on to his chest.

'I—I have naturally pale skin,' she muttered.

'You have very unusual colouring. I thought your hair was black at first but it's not, it's a very rich, dark ma­hogany.' He folded his arms behind his head, his body language suggesting frankness, a complete lack of self-consciousness, a direct contrast to Elizabeth's humming awareness that only a few moments ago she had been cuddled against his side.

She blinked at him slowly, her thoughts still in disarray.

He smiled, not his former taunting smile but one of rare warmth. 'Are you always this sluggish when you wake? Your eyes are as big and sleepy as an infant's. I'm sorry my alarm woke you, but we're due to land in a few minutes anyway. Once we get home you can get some proper rest in a bed...'

We? Home? Bed? A small shock quaked through Elizabeth's system at the disturbing juxtaposition of words.

Her eyes? Suddenly she realised the import of his other comment. She put a hand to her face and discovered that her sunglasses must have fallen off while she slept.

Or had been deliberately removed. She stopped searching and eyed J.J. Hawkwood suspiciously as he returned his seat to its upright position and produced her sunglasses from his left breast-pocket.

'You were so restless that I was worried you might damage the frames,' he said, handing them over.

Elizabeth debated whether to put them back on and decided that she might as well, although it was a bit like shutting the stable door after the horse had bolted. However, she still needed a defensive shield between herself and her quarry.