Acutely conscious that if she fell into the trap of arguing with him she would only compromise herself even more, Elizabeth put her nose in the air and bustled off the plane with the rest of the first-class passengers, ignoring the softly mocking laughter that chased her angry ears.
The open-air staircase which had been rolled over to the door of the plane gave Elizabeth her first experience of foreign climes. It was midday and the sky which she had half expected to be the same azure-blue that had appeared on all the travel brochures was almost as grey and overcast as the Auckland skies she had left behind. But instead of being chilly and damp the air was deliciously warm, the breeze that ruffled her hair was balmy and pleasant, fragrant with a cluster of scents that she couldn’t identify.
It was only after she had gone through the immigration check and was dragging her suitcase off the luggage carousel in the small arrivals hall that she suddenly remembered her blouse. In her hurry to get off the plane she had forgotten to seek out the air hostess who had promised to return it to her.
As she turned anxiously to look for a member of the airline staff she caught sight of J.J. Hawkwood. He was speaking to one of the customs officials over by the doors to the street, zipping up the soft brown leather bag which he had opened on the counter between them and hefting it in his left hand. Elizabeth knew that she didn’t have any time to waste. Her nerves were already in a sufficiently bad state. If she wasted time trying to find her blouse now she might be forced to walk through the 'No Declarations' channel of the customs check alone instead of surrounded by a comfortable number of the hundred or so other passengers. If a customs officer so much as murmured a polite welcome to his country Elizabeth was afraid she might crack.
The air hostess knew her destination, knew who J.J. Hawkwood was—Elizabeth would wait until she was safely on the Ile des Faucons to try to retrieve her property and return his. The resort was providing coach transport to Nouméa and then a boat out to the island, so in spite of her intention to avoid direct confrontations with her quarry from now on Elizabeth decided that she would casually mention it to him in passing, so that he didn’t think she was trying to steal his shirt.
She might be an accessory after the fact to theft but she was not a thief!
Unfortunately, safely out on the pavement, Elizabeth saw the powerful dark-haired figure of J.J. Hawkwood striding not towards the cluster of courtesy coaches provided by the various hotels and resorts, but in the opposite direction, towards a car park. For a moment Elizabeth was disconcerted, then she realised that it was unrealistic to expect that a corporate head would travel by coach, no matter how well appointed. Of course he would be met, possibly by a chauffeured limousine.
But what if it was Serena Corvell he was being met by? What if he and his mistress were going to spend their holiday together somewhere other than the Isle of Hawks? What if the booking at the resort was just a blind and they were going to disappear to some secret love-nest?
Elizabeth dithered for precious seconds before she decided she had no choice but to grab a taxi and follow him. Even if she found out nothing more than the bare fact of their destination at least she could go home and truthfully say that she had done her best.
No one had to know that she was fervently hoping that her best would not be good enough!
CHAPTER FOUR
'MISSED the boat, Miss Lamb?'
Elizabeth closed her eyes briefly. She would recognise that whisky-and-honey voice anywhere, the dark resonances of tone overlaid with a mocking precision that she had encountered for the first time only a few hours ago.
She pivoted slowly on the wooden pier, away from the dark-haired young man on the boat tied alongside.
J.J. Hawkwood, for all the mockery in his voice, wasn’t smiling. Although he was still wearing his jeans, his blue shirt was now replaced by a white ‘I-shirt which emphasised the tanned face and heavily muscled arms.
Sweat trickled down between her shoulder-blades under her shirt—his shirt. In the time that she had lurked around the marina waiting for the reappearance of her quarry the thickly overcast skies had cleared to the crisp blue of the tourist brochures and the temperature had steadily risen.
'Yes,' she admitted reluctantly, resenting the necessity of making herself sound like a fool in front of him. 'I was just finding out if there was some other way of getting over to the island.'
Her English was as clipped as his. The fact that he was wearing white boat shoes rather than the polished brown leather he had been wearing earlier explained why she hadn’t heard him approaching. She hoped he hadn’t been behind her long enough to hear her bargaining with the boat-owner in his own language.
His head tilted towards her suitcase at her feet, and the dark brows shifted into a frown.
'Your luggage, too? Didn’t the staff on the bus check you all on board the boat?'
The censure in his voice warned her that someone's job might be in jeopardy if she didn’t at least come partially clean.
'I... I wasn’t on the bus. I took a taxi.'
This time his eyebrows rose and he shifted so that she got a good look at the narrowed grey eyes.
'Did you not realise that your reservation included airport transfers?'
'Yes, of course. But I wanted to see a bit of Nouméa before I... I left for the island...'
In truth, in the hour's trip from the airport she had hardly noticed the scenery, except to note that none of it seemed wildly exotic. The only features that impinged on her nervous anxiety were the deep redness of the earth where it was scraped bare by agriculture and erosion, and the towering flax-like palms with neatly interwoven leaves that reminded her of French plaiting.
Most of her attention had been focused on the fast-moving red Pantera that they were following and which the taxi driver, not surprisingly in view of the importance of the man and the distinctiveness of his car, had immediately identified. Rather than being suspicious of her reasons for following the famous—or notorious—J.J. Hawkwood, the driver had been amused and faintly pitying.
It had soon become irritatingly obvious that he had pegged Elizabeth as the victim of a jealous passion and he had even gone so far as to suggest a short-cut to her quarry's most likely destination—Monsieur Hawkwood's pied-a-terre at Port Plaisance. Elizabeth had refused, and when, sure enough, they had skirted the Baie de L'Orphelinat to pull up outside a small but exclusive-looking shopping centre next to a marina she had paid the driver off with less than good grace, after extracting the information that the regular launch service to Ile des Faucons left from the other side of the marina.
The Pantera had disappeared between some tall salmon-coloured buildings perched on the very edge of the dock and the taxi driver, with a sly smirk, had pointed out the to
p balcony of one of the buildings as the 'Hawk's Nest'.