Accidental Mistress

He was wearing a pair of light olive-green trousers and a cream shirt and he was, thankfully, alone.

As he approached her, she noticed how the other females strolling through the foyer darted glances at him, as if they couldn’t help themselves. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you might back out at the last minute.’

He was taller than she remembered. From a supine position on a hospital bed, it had been difficult to get a good idea of his height, but now she could see that he was over six feet tall, and already bronzed from the sun, so that his eyes looked bluer and more striking than she remembered.

‘I take it that your leg has now fully recovered from the experience?’ One of the hotel staff hurried up to gather her luggage and she followed him as he checked her in.

‘Yes, it has,’ she said to his profile, watching as he smiled and then turned to look at her. ‘Thank you very much for...this.’ She spread her arms vaguely to encompass everything around her. ‘It was very kind of you.’

He was watching her as she said this, with a small smile on his mouth, and it was a relief when the porter interrupted them to show her to her room, which wasn’t a room at all, but in fact one of the stone cottages with a thatched roof and a marvellous view overlooking the sea. Blue, blue sea and white, white sand.

‘Was your trip all right?’

‘Oh, yes, thank you very much; it was fine.’

‘There’s no need to be quite so terrifyingly polite,’ he said, amused.

‘I’m sorry. Was I?’

‘You were.’ He folded his arms and looked at her. ‘You haven’t been invited along to be thrown to the sharks.’

‘No, I know that.’ She tried a smile.

‘That’s better.’ He smiled back at her. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourself. That’s why you came, isn’t it?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Her replies sounded stilted and she glanced around her for inspiration.

‘I’m surprised that you came at all, I don’t mind admitting. After what you had told me at the hospital about not accepting charity, I thought that you’d run a mile at the prospect of a holiday at my expense.’

She resisted the temptation to apologize once again, but his remark filled her with dismay. Had he been banking on her not coming? Was that it?

‘I...accepted on impulse,’ she admitted, looking down to where her fingers were twined around the handle of her bag.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Now,’ he continued briskly, ‘I expect you’re feeling rather tired. He leaned against the doorframe and stared down at her. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to emerge for dinner. They will happily bring you some food here if you’d rather just stay in and recover from the trip. Tomorrow morning we’re hoping to set sail.’

‘Yes, of course. Your secretary did list the itinerary. I have it here in my bag somewhere.’ She plunged nervously into the bowels of the tan bag and several bits of paper fluttered to the ground, accompanied by a half-empty packet of travel tissues, several sweets, her traveller’s cheques and her book, of which she had read very little on the plane.

They both bent to recover the dropped items at the same time and their heads bumped. Lisa pulled away in embarrassment, red-faced, cursing the bag, which was much too large really and had somehow managed to attract quite a bit of paraphernalia in a way that her normal tiny one never did.

‘S-sorry,’ she stammered, burning with confusion as he handed her the packet of tissues and the sweets, which she stuffed back into the bag.

‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ he told her gently, kneeling opposite her.

‘I’m not nervous!’ She was kneeling too, her hands resting lightly on her thighs, her face close to his in the twilight which seemed to have descended abruptly in the space of about ten minutes. She remembered reading that about the Tropics. There was no lingering dusk. Night succeeded day swiftly.

‘Of course you are,’ he said, as though surprised that she could deny the obvious. ‘You’re going on a fortnight’s vacation on a yacht with a group of people whom you’ve never seen in your life before. Of course you’re nervous.’

She sprang up as though burnt and looked at him in confusion.

‘Yacht? I thought it was a cruise.’

‘Yacht, cruise, where’s the difference?’ He stood up and frowned. ‘Are you all right? You look a bit peculiar.’

‘Look,’ she said steadily, even though she could feel herself shaking, ‘please could you clarify what exactly this holiday is? Are we or are we not going on a liner?’

‘Liner? What are you talking about?’

‘In your letter, you said that we would be cruising... I was under the impression...’

His face cleared and he laughed. ‘That we were going on a cruise ship? No. I think there’s been a misunderstanding. No cruise ship. As far as I’m concerned, there wouldn’t be much point in getting away from the madding crowd only to surround yourself by the same madding crowd, just with a change of faces. In fact, I can’t really think of anything worse; don’t you agree?’

No, she wanted to shout in frustrated panic, I most certainly do not agree! And I can think, offhand, of one thing that’s infinitely worse. It involves a group of friends, on a yacht, none of whom I know, and me!

‘I—I would never have come...’ she stammered in horror.

‘If you’d known? You coward.’

‘I really don’t think that I can... There’s been a mistake... It’s not your fault... I should have asked, but I didn’t think... I’m sorry, but...’

‘Don’t be foolish.’

‘I am not being foolish!’ Now she was beginning to feel angry as well as horrified.

‘Look at me.’

She did. Reluctantly.

‘Do I look like someone who is thoughtless enough to invite you out here, throw you into the deep end and watch you struggle with a smile on my face?’

Pretty much, she thought to herself.

‘No, no, I’m sure you’re not, but really...I don’t relish the thought of... I shall be an intrusion...’ Her voice was beginning to fail her under the sheer horror of the enormous misunderstanding that had landed her out here, a million miles away from home, like a stranded fish out of water. She tried to remind herself that she was capable of enormous self-control, a legacy of having spent much of her childhood living in her own world, but something about his commanding, powerful presence made it difficult.

‘Nonsense. An intrusion into what?’ He didn’t give her time to answer. ‘Let me have the key. It’s ludicrous to be standing out here having a lengthy discussion when we could be inside.’

She handed him the key and barely glanced around her as they entered.

‘An intrusion into your privacy,’ she explained in a high voice that bordered on the desperate. ‘You will be with your friends...’

‘What do you think of the cottage?’ He turned around from where he had been standing by one of the windows, looking out into the black velvet night, and faced her.

‘Super. Wonderful,’ she said miserably.

‘You’ve never had a holiday in your life before, Lisa.’ His voice was soothing and gentle, the voice of someone dealing with a child, a child whose wits were just a little scrambled, and who needed to be taken by the hand and pointed in the right direction. ‘You told me so yourself. When I booked this holiday, I thought about that. Why don’t you put aside your reservations for a moment and try and see the next two weeks for what they are? An eye-opener.’

‘You invited me along because you felt sorry for me.’ She spoke flatly, acknowledging the suspicion which had been there at the back of her mind from the beginning.

He shrugged and stuck his hands into his pockets.