Forgotten Passion

‘Leigh his daddy too,’ she reminded Lisa, ‘and that boy sure thought a lot of yor ma, Miss Lisa.’

After that Lisa had made more effort to include Rorke in their conversations, even to the extent of slipping away from the dinner table earlier than usual to give Rorke a chance to talk to his father alone.

She hadn’t realised that Rorke had seen through her ploy until he found her on the verandah one evening, swinging in the hammock that her mother had always loved, her face wet with tears.

The day had been a particularly close one. Leigh had been irritable with Rorke over dinner. Lisa had gathered from the conversation that Rorke was keen to modernise several of the hotels and father and son had exchanged heated words.

‘You can’t live in the past for ever, Father,’ he said curtly. ‘Nor can you grieve for ever.’

Lisa had left then, sympathising with them both; Leigh whose feelings she understood so well, and Rorke who was so much of an enigma to her, but whose smile had the power to twist her insides with delicious pain, and whose bronzed body did strange things to her pulse rate.

Her very awareness of Rorke was something she was finding it hard to come to terms with. She had always worshipped him, adoring him from a distance, but before it had merely been the innocent admiration of a child. Now there was something different. At school the previous term many of the girls had held giggled conversations about their boy-friends; but Lisa had held slightly aloof, half shocked by their disclosures.

And yet since her return to St Martin’s she had found herself becoming aware of Rorke in a way she had not been before, noticing things about him such as the lean hard length of his body as he emerged from the swimming pool where he swam several lengths before breakfast every morning.

The brevity of trunks which previously had gone unnoticed now brought blushing confusion to her cheeks and a desire to avoid his too-seeing eyes.

One half of her was shocked by the wantonness of her thoughts, the other wondered what it would be like to touch the hard maleness of his body, to be kissed by him and touched…

‘Lisa?’

He moved very quietly for such a big man and she jumped, the swinging seat creaking wildly with the jerkiness of her movement as she turned towards the sound of her name and saw him coming towards her out of the dusk, his white shirt a blur in the darkness slashed by the brown vee of his exposed throat and upper chest.

‘Are you okay? Dad thought we might have upset you with our quarrelling.’

His sardonic expression, the way he leaned casually against the verandah, arms folded against his chest, made her ask, ‘But you didn’t?’

‘Not unless you’re a far more sensitive plant than the rest of your sex,’ he said wryly. ‘Besides, you’ve been coming out here after dinner every evening this last week.’

‘I know you like to talk over business matters with your father,’ Lisa told him, wishing she could see his expression as clearly as she was sure he could see hers.

This was the longest conversation they had had since her return, apart from the occasion when he had told her of his sorrow at the death of her mother.

‘You’re a tactful little scrap,’ he told her, his voice suddenly disconcertingly warm. ‘That’s your mother in you, I suppose. What do you plan to do with your life, Lisa?’

It was something she hadn’t really thought about, and as though he read her mind, he said hardly, ‘You won’t be sixteen going on seventeen for ever; there’s a whole wide world out there, and if you don’t sample at least some of it, you’re a fool.’

‘You seem quite happy to stay here on St Martins,’ Lisa pointed out, not liking the steel in his voice, the hint that she mustn’t plan on making her life on St Martins, and like a cold wind chilling her came the realisation that she was nothing really to him, nothing to Leigh who had never legally adopted her although she knew it had always been his intention.

‘I’m eleven years older than you and I’ve seen my share of the world. Besides, I have a purpose here, and my family…’

‘All right, you don’t need to remind me any more that I don’t belong here,’ Lisa bit out, interrupting him, more angry than she could ever remember being in her life. ‘Anyway,’ she told him childishly, ‘it isn’t up to you, it’s Leigh who says whether I can stay here or not, and…’

‘And he’s clinging to you because you remind him of your mother,’ he told her grimly. ‘Is that what you really want from life, Lisa? Out here the living’s easy, we all know that, but you’re too young for easy living; and if you’re not careful it can become degenerative.’

She looked up at him and his mouth twisted wryly. ‘What’s the matter? Don’t you believe me? Take a look around you; look at the native island girls, most of them mothers before they’re fifteen. Like I said, life out here is too easy.’ He turned and Lisa saw the almost brooding quality of his frown.

Why was Rorke so anxious for her to leave St Martins? Surely he wasn’t jealous of her relationship with his father?

‘Rorke,’ she said his name, huskily and uncertainly, trying to conceal the faint tremor.

‘Lisa—Rorke!’ Both of them turned at the sound of Leigh’s voice, and Lisa decided she must have imagined the look she had glimpsed in Rorke’s eyes before his father arrived, because just for an instant it had seemed hotly possessive and bitterly resentful of his father’s arrival.

Although she tried to forget them, Rorke’s words kept troubling her. She was thinking about them one morning as she walked along the beach dressed in frayed denim shorts, her sandals in her hand, the breeze flattening her thin tee-shirt against the burgeoning curves of her body as she walked across the sand of her favourite bay, just below the house.

‘Hello there!’ She came to an abrupt halt as a tall, lean-limbed young man suddenly bounded down the beach towards her, fair hair flopping into his eyes, an engaging grin splitting a face still pale enough for him to be an obvious newcomer.

‘I’m looking for Mr Geraint—am I heading in the right direction?’ he asked cheerfully. ‘Mike Peters at your service, by the way, newly arrived and newly qualified doctor of medicine, appointed to your local hospital. Curer of all ills known to man; and surgeon extraordinaire as well,’ he announced, sweeping a mock bow and making Lisa laugh with his friendly absurdity.

‘I’m just heading back to the house, we can walk there together,’ she told him. ‘Are you really? The new doctor, I mean. Leigh told me one was arriving, but somehow…’

‘You pictured an old greybeard, not the dashingly handsome young blade you now see before you,’ Mike Peters clowned, grinning. ‘Actually, don’t tell anyone, will you, but I still find it hard to believe myself. It’s been such a long slog to get qualified, I’m still half afraid, someone’s going to creep up behind me, filch my certificate and tell me it’s all a mistake—hence the flight to St Martins. Wow!’ he exclaimed, coming to a standstill as he saw the house for the first time. ‘That’s really something, Palladian, isn’t it?’

Warming to him more and more by the minute, Lisa agreed that it was, and explained a little of the island’s history.

They were just crossing the smooth greenness of the lawn, when Rorke suddenly emerged from the house, his forehead creasing in a frown as he looked from Lisa to her companion.

‘Rorke, this is Mike, our new doctor,’ Lisa introduced, wondering what had made him look so grim.

‘Peters,’ Rorke acknowledged, betraying that he already knew of Mike’s existence. ‘Lisa, Dad’s been asking for you.’

‘Phew—friendly soul, isn’t he?’ Mike grimaced as Rorke turned on his heel and left them, adding apologetically, ‘I’m sorry, I had no right to say that about your brother.’

‘Rorke is my stepbrother,’ Lisa told him absently, surprised to see comprehension dawning in Mike’s eyes and even further confused by his comprehensive: ‘So that’s the way the land lies! Look, if you can just direct me back to the village… I came out for a walk…’

‘Billy can run you back in the Moke,’ Lisa assured him. ‘In fact if Dad didn’t want to see me I’d come with you myself.’

‘No patients to look after, Peters?’ Neither of them had heard Rorke approach, and his clipped voice and hostile expression puzzled Lisa. What on earth was the matter with him?

Ten minutes later when Mike had left with Billy in the Moke she tackled him about it.

‘What on earth was wrong with you, Rorke?’ she demanded crossly, ‘Poor Mike was so embarrassed!’

‘So it’s Mike now, is it?’ Rorke responded savagely. ‘God, Lisa, what is it with you? Haven’t they warned you at that damned school of yours about being too forthcoming with strangers?’

‘You mean when they ask me to go for a ride in their car and offer me sweeties?’ Lisa demanded angrily. ‘Rorke, I’m sixteen, not six, and besides, it was obvious that Mike…’

‘What? Come on, Lisa,’ he jeered, ‘tell me that Peters is impervious to physical desire, if you dare—it was written all over his face that he wanted you—and no wonder! Dressed like that you’re offering an open invitation to rape!’

She wasn’t going to cry; she wasn’t going to give Rorke the satisfaction! There was nothing wrong with her tee-shirt and cut-off shorts; she had worn them for the last couple of holidays; they were clean and comfortable. What was the matter with Rorke?

‘That’s a horrid thing to say!’ she flung at him. ‘And Mike wouldn’t do a thing like that. All we were doing was talking; he didn’t even try to kiss me!’

‘He didn’t? Then perhaps it’s damned well time that someone did,’ Rorke muttered half under his breath, reaching for her, with hands that wouldn’t allow any escape, lean tanned fingers biting into her skin as she was hauled against the taut muscularity of his chest, the bronzed flesh rising and falling with the irregularity of his breathing.

‘Damn you, Lisa,’ he groaned against her hair. ‘Why the hell did my father have to go and complicate things by bringing you back here?’

Lisa wanted to protest, to demand that he release her, but a strange weakness was spreading through her veins, a pulsing excitement firing her blood; a wantonness she had never known she possessed urging her to reach up and touch the bronzed flesh exposed by the vee of Rorke’s shirt.