Mistress of Deception

Alan had been very quiet on the trip up. More than quiet. Almost morose. She'd thought he was concentrating on the wheel, but perhaps there was another, darker explanation. Maybe he was feeling guilty at having deceived her. Or maybe he wasn't...

'You'd better go round the back of the boat, Ebony,' he ordered brusquely. 'You almost gave me a heart attack just then. You're usually more surefooted than that.'

Ebony made her way carefully round to the back of the boat where the sunken decking was a lot safer, but she could not dispel the disquiet in her heart. She tried telling herself she was being neurotic, even paranoid. Of course Alan loved her. Men did not marry these days just for sex.

But he hasn't married you yet, came the insidious thought. He doesn't even want an engagement party. Maybe he'll never marry you...

Ebony turned to frown at Alan, whose back was to her now. He'd been behaving strangely from the moment he'd picked her up, hadn't he?

Suddenly, his head jerked round to find her frowning at him.

'You all right back there?' he asked.

'I.. .1 suppose so.'

'Not seasick, are you? You look a bit off.'

'Maybe a little.'

'You'll be OK in a minute. The sea's behind us now. Only still water ahead.'

When she looked back at the water Ebony saw they were well into the mouth of the Hawkesbury river and the water was indeed calm. Not so her insides.

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she let it out slowly, finally convincing herself she was imagining things. Life had been rotten for so long that she'd lost the knack of being happy, of accepting that dreams could come true. She clung to the fact that Alan was basically a good man who would never deliberately deceive anyone. Their affair had been twisted by unusual circumstances, but now that everything was all out in the open there was no reason to feel this insane fear. No reason at all.

Ebony sighed again, forced a smile to her lips, and determined to be happy.

The river, she noted, was quite crowded with a plethora of pleasure craft, all out for a day on the water. The lack of wind plus an unseasonable warmth made for very pleasant conditions for fishing or cruising or just lying in the sun, enjoying being alive. Ebony was finally relaxing, watching the water and the other boats go by, when Alan suddenly veered right and headed up a narrow and rather out-of-the way branch of the river.

An immediate tension gripped which showed she hadn't totally dispelled her earlier irrational unease.

For why should she worry if Alan was looking for a private spot where they could be together without being observed? It wasn't beyond the realms of possibility that they might like to move around the boat au naturel. Ebony was not shy about her body and she knew Alan liked to see her that way.

Now stop being ridiculous, she told herself impatiently. This was getting beyond a joke.

They dropped anchor shortly after noon in a small, almost hidden cove.

'What an isolated spot,' Ebony remarked, trying to sound relaxed as she glanced around the secluded area.

But she wasn't relaxed. The lack of other boats around, plus the unearthly silence, was unnerving her. Neither did she like the look of the thick virgin bush that came right down to the water's edge, or the dark jagged rocks that lined the shore. Even the water looked forbidding, cold and deep and ominous-looking. One could easily imagine monsters lurking in those dark green depths, waiting to entwine their tentacles around the legs of anyone foolish enough to challenge their territory.

A dark shiver reverberated all the way down her spine.

'You can't possibly be cold.'

Ebony was startled by Alan's sudden appearance behind her, his hands on her shoulders firm and almost imprisoning.

'Feeling better now?' he went on, his voice husky in her ear, his hands undoing the buttons of the thigh-length black and white striped beach-coat. In no time the garment was being parted by Alan's nimble fingers, and Ebony's pulse-rate was starting to escalate. But so was an accompanying underlying feeling of panic.

Surely he didn't mean to have her right here and now? She'd envisaged a romantic picnic lunch, a bottle of wine, a long and tender foreplay.

The coat had been discarded and already his hands were roving hotly over her body. Already it was responding. Dear God, it knew nothing else, after all, nothing but a wild succession of harsh and impassioned possessions. Never for her a tender or loving union  . Never...