Bittersweet Passion

Restively she sprang up. ‘He gave me a home.’

‘Big deal!’ Dane followed her more gracefully and walked down the beach with her. ‘I suggested he let me take you down to London and get you fixed up with some sort of job. He blew a fuse and accused me of having sexual designs on you. Hell, I was so disgusted I just walked out. I decided I’d extend the hand of help if you needed it when he was gone.’

Her skin was hot as a furnace. She was sick and tired of being an object of pity to Dane. It seemed she had never been anything else. From childhood to adulthood. At least he hadn’t made love to her out of pity, too.

‘That was kind of you,’ she allowed curtly.

‘Well, just how were you going to live when he died?’ Dane demanded. ‘You were turning into a real hidebound old maid. Still, I must have planted some seed of guilt in him that day. He did change his will in your favour. Then when he lost his money he decided Carter would be very well served if he still married you under the belief that you would be an heiress. If you had taken Carter it would have been months, not days, before Coverdale discovered that there was no inheritance to hand over.’

She was bitterly hurt by the adage of old maid flung so casually, and by the creeping suspicion that Dane’s apparent liking for her over the years had been purely based on compassion for someone in a less fortunate position than himself, someone without the freedom of choice that counted so very highly in Dane’s view of life. So he had arrogantly come to the funeral prepared to play Santa Claus and Pygmalion! Just for once he had bitten off more than he could chew.

‘Can you imagine the life I would have led with Carter once he learnt that there wasn’t going to be any money?’ she muttered sickly.

Dane retrieved the letter from her clenched hand and dug it into the rear pocket of his jeans. ‘I don’t know. He might have been kinder than I was,’ he mused harshly, reinforcing her conviction that his every gesture since had been guilt-orientated. ‘Forget it now, Claire. It’s over.’

No, for her at least it was far from over. Tragically, she had married Dane. Dane had been the one to suffer from Adam’s manipulations, and that letter had come too late to save her and Dane from the shockwaves.

‘I ought to go back to bed.’ Her eyes lingered on him, then swerved away. ‘I thought you were with Mei Ling.’

‘Would it have bothered you if I had been?’ he countered cynically.

‘Yes!’ Angered, she stood her ground. ‘I don’t have to be jealous to find promiscuity offensive,’ she flared.

He caught her to him with powerful hands. ‘Is that a dog-in-the-manger attitude, or something more?’ Hard amusement brimmed in his bright chilling gaze.

‘It’s a very awkward situation.’

‘Awkward?’ Her control appeared to antagonise him. Then he laughed softly and took her tender mouth fiercely, and she went under as if she was drowning, trading him kiss for kiss, guided only by raw hunger. His hand thrust up her jersey and closed over the pointed swell of her breast and she gasped, her knees threatening to buckle under her as her body surged wantonly against the lean, masculine lure of his.

He pushed her away suddenly and she fell off balance, down on to the grey, volcanic sand, sobbing for breath. Her love for him was struggling for utterance and she wrestled with it in the aftermath of his rejection, flinching from an outside image of herself confessing her thraldom on her knees at his feet. Did she want his pity again?

‘I can get sex anywhere,’ Dane slated roughly, cruelly. ‘I don’t need it from you, Claire.’

He swung away and strode up the beach. He left her there in a state between rage and anguish. She almost shouted after him. But she saw the futility of fight. He didn’t want her. He had never really wanted her. That they had briefly burned together in a conflagration of desire was one of life’s more inexplicable mysteries. Dane would not use her again. Damn you, Dane, for being a gentleman too late! Her clenched fist punched into the sand in an agony of despair, for she would have taken anything he would have given her now as a last memory, a last resort when pride was sunk beneath a tide of apprehension of what life would be like without him.

In the morning she was dull-eyed when she went down for breakfast, and Dane was alone at the table. ‘Grant and Mei Ling won’t surface for hours yet,’ he forecast. ‘They only flew back from South America yesterday. I’m sorry about last night.’

She downed the glass of fruit juice poured for her. ‘It’s true about tropical nights,’ she joked determinedly. ‘And it is time I went home. I know we haven’t discussed that openly before but …’

‘You’re damned right we haven’t.’

She swallowed. ‘We both knew I couldn’t stay for ever and … and I’d like to see Max,’ she threw in for good measure.

‘Tough!’ Dane answered softly. ‘You know most girls learn at their mother’s knee that men don’t like to be chased. Leave it. Don’t make a fool of yourself.’

Claire went white and then red, meeting that cool, unapologetic scrutiny. If he was waiting for Max to appear here, she was never going to get away, and she was terrified of staying in case he guessed how she really felt. Nor could she tolerate to stand on the sidelines closing her eyes politely to the affair he was obviously planning with Mei Ling.

‘We’ll head into the National Park,’ Dane continued smoothly. ‘Come on, Claire, eat your breakfast.’

In half an hour he had her tucked willy-nilly into the jeep, ignoring her visible lack of enthusiasm. The rain forest was lush and damp, the well laid trails sprinkled by pools of sunlight, but Claire was unable to appreciate sights that usually kept her chattering. After a brief walk they came to the Emerald Pool, a grotto fed by a waterfall and possessed of quite unearthly beauty. Overhanging giant feathery ferns and wild orchids supplied a profusion of colour that stole her breath away, however.

‘It’s fantastic,’ she agreed in the silence. ‘I’m never going to forget this island.’

Dane regarded her narrowly. ‘I came to a decision last night,’ he drawled. ‘You don’t want the house turned into a hotel. I’m going to have it done up and I’ll give it to you. You won’t have to forget Dominica. You’ll own a corner of it.’

She couldn’t quite believe her ears, and she whirled round to face him. ‘But I don’t want you to give me the house!’ she said in horror.

‘You’re getting it.’ His strong jawline had an aggressive thrust. ‘I just wanted you to know before we leave on the yacht. It’s something you really want and you’d never have told me on your own. You don’t like jewellery much, do you?’