The Youngest Sister

In his bathroom, Nicolas had stripped off and was enjoying a shower. After a long time away, it was always good to come back to the creature comforts missing from most of his trips. When he had cleaned up and changed, he intended to make some enquiries about where an elderly lady would get the best medical care which wouldn’t involve her great-niece helping to nurse her.

In some Spanish hospitals, patients were fed, washed and watched over by their mothers, daughters or other close female relations. The hospital staff provided medical care only. But he had other plans for Cressy, as she’d said she was called.

Usually, Catalina being an excellent cook, he would dine at home on his first night back. Then, having already made some duty calls to his Mallorquín relations on the island, he would ring one of several numbers in the address book on his desk.

They were the telephone numbers of women who had come to the island as wives but had since been discarded in favour of younger models. It was something which happened quite frequently in the various groups of high-living foreigners who frequented the small resorts. As a result, the island was littered with ‘thirty-somethings’ and ’forty-somethings’ on the lookout for a man—either a replacement meal-ticket or a lover. It meant that anyone who had had to batten down his sex drive for weeks or months had no problem in finding someone to let off steam with if that was what was required.

This time, by a stroke of luck, it looked as if he wouldn’t even have to make a phone call. Someone far more alluring than any of his usual bed partners had turned up. Cressy was the most delectable creature he had seen in a long time. Far more attractive than any of the women in his address book.

Luckily she wasn’t as young as he had first thought. As far as he was concerned, girls with no previous experience were like wild flowers. Not for picking. But at twenty-three Cressy had to be a lot more savvy than she looked. The thought of her lying in the bath on the other side of the house was a turn-on. He wished he had her here with him now, that gorgeous Amazonian body sleek and slippery against his.

Taking Cressy to bed would be the perfect reward for four months’ celibacy, he thought with a growl of anticipation.

Cressy was drying herself on a fluffy white bath-sheet. Then, as there was plenty of time, she massaged her legs with an after-bath lotion scented with the same subtle fragrance as the bath oil.

She was humming to herself, her spirits unaccountably buoyant in spite of her concern about her great-aunt’s injuries, when she remembered something that instantly changed her mood.

Nicolas’s behaviour wasn’t prompted by disinterested kindness; she mustn’t forget that he had an ulterior motive. Aunt Kate, in her day, had been as famous as Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem. He was hoping the end product of being helpful to Cressy would be an exclusive interview with her, like the profile of Edward James which had been his first journalistic coup and the foundation of his career.

Still in her jeans, but wearing a clean white T-shirt, she went downstairs and outside onto the terrace, and found Catalina there before her. The housekeeper was transferring an earthenware jug and two tall glasses from a tray to a large low table surrounded by comfortable chairs.

‘Limonada, señorita.’

‘Muchas gracias, Señora.’

This, plus hello and goodbye, was the limit of Cressy’s Spanish.

The housekeeper filled a glass with the juice and then, using a ladle which hooked on the side of the jug, fished for a couple of ice cubes to drop in the glass. Then she left Cressy on her own.

The terrace was paved with clay tiles in the same mellow terracotta colours as the Roman tiles on the roof. Here and there a few had been removed to make a space for a lemon tree to grow. It must have been from one of these trees that Catalina had picked the fruit whose chilled juice now left its tangy freshness on Cressy’s tongue.

Above her, forming a canopy, grew an enormous vine dripping bunches of half-ripened green grapes from a tangle of leafy branches. In the blazing light of a Majorcan afternoon it was heaven to sit in the shade, sipping freshly made lemonade and gazing at the hazeveiled mountains.

Footsteps on the stone stairs announced the arrival of her host. But when he came into view he was not the long-haired, heavy-booted traveller whose back-view she had admired at Gatwick airport.

‘You’ve cut off your hair!’ she exclaimed.

He laughed, showing excellent teeth. ‘I don’t wear it long at home, only in places where there aren’t any barbers. Tomorrow I’ll have it cut properly, but this will do for tonight.’

Because it was naturally curly—with a looser curl than a perm gave—no one would have guessed he had cropped it himself. It was the kind of hair which, like animals’ fur and birds’ plumage, would always spring back into place after a vigorous shake. The silver climber on his ear had also disappeared, she saw. He was wearing a shirt of dark blue and white striped cotton and a pair of dark jeans. When he sat down and crossed his long legs, she noticed that his ankles were bare and that his trekking boots had given way to a pair of dark brown deck shoes.

He took a long swig from his glass. ‘Mmm ... Catalina makes great lemonade. Felió has some bee-hives in the hills, where the wild thyme grows. Lemonade sweetened with honey tastes better than stuff made with sugar.’

He looked her over, his eyes taking in, but not lingering on the curves defined by the T-shirt. ‘You look very cool and fresh. I’ve told Catalina to make up a bed for you.’

‘But I can’t stay here,’ she protested.

‘Yes, you can. You have no alternative. It’s not easy finding a room in the big hotels. They’re all full of package tourists. There are hostals in most of the towns but, though clean, they’re really intended for travelling salesmen. They can be very noisy in summertime, when street life goes on till the small hours. You’ll sleep far more soundly out here in the country.’

He made it difficult to refuse, and part of her didn’t want to. Yet, mindful of the awful warnings drummed into her during her teens, she also felt faintly uneasy.

He was a well-known writer and, judging by this house and the estate surrounding it, his forebears had been people of standing on the island. But that didn’t alter the fact that he was a stranger, and bad things had happened to girls who placed too much trust in strange men.

She didn’t really suspect him of being a psychopath who during the night might rape her and throw her down a well, his faithful retainers keeping their mouths shut about her unexplained disappearance out of misguided loyalty to his family. That was the kind of scenario only dear old Maggie would envisage!

But what if he just made a pass? Some men felt entitled to sex after taking a girl out to dinner, going to a lot less trouble than Nicolas had for her. If he made a pass, how would she handle it?

CHAPTER THREE

‘PERHAPS I can stay at the hospital,’ Cressy suggested. ‘Most hospitals have rooms where close relations can sleep when people are critically ill. A broken thigh isn’t critical, but it’s pretty serious when it happens to someone of Aunt Kate’s age. And she must have been in shock when they found her if she’d been lying there some time.’

Nicolas glanced at his watch. After draining his glass, he said, ‘Let’s go and find out exactly what the situation is, shall we?’

Cressy had repacked her rucksack, with the discarded shirt in a plastic bag to be washed at the first opportunity. She had left the rucksack at the bottom of the stairs. As she picked it up and slung it over one shoulder she noticed that near the terrace door was a large antique table piled with stacks of old and new books. A title which caught her eye was The Mayan Prophecies: Unlocking the Secrets of a Lost Civilisation. Another was The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture.