A Forbidden Desire

This would be her first Christmas alone. Through the lump in her throat she said raggedly, ‘Yes. My mother died only a week after we came back from Fiji.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he said quietly. ‘That was hard for you.’

Looking away, she nodded, swallowed and went on, ‘I never had the chance to thank you for your kindness to her in Fiji. You left the day before us, and I—’

‘I wasn’t kind,’ he interrupted. ‘I liked her very much, and admired her gallantry.’

‘She liked you, too.’ Jacinta paused to steady her wobbly voice. ‘She really enjoyed talking to you. It made her holiday. She was so determined I shouldn’t miss anything...’

Cynthia Lyttelton had insisted Jacinta use the facilities at the resort, pleading with her to swim, to sail, to go snorkelling. ‘Then you can tell me all about it,’ she’d said.

Because the resort staff had been kind and attentive to her mother, Jacinta had given in. When she’d returned, salt-slicked and excited, after her first snorkelling expedition, Cynthia had told her about this man who had joined her beneath her sun-umbrella—handsome as Adonis, she’d said, and funny, with a good, sharp brain.

Gently, he said now, ‘She told me she didn’t have long to live. I gather she’d been ill for a long time, yet she was completely without self-pity.’

‘She had arthritis, but she died of cancer.’ I will not cry, she averred silently, clenching her jaw against the onset of gnef.

‘I’m so sorry,’ he repeated, and she knew he was.

So many people—considerate, well-meaning people—had told her that her mother’s death must have been a blessed relief to them both She’d understood that they were giving her what sympathy they could, but although often in great pain Cynthia had enjoyed life, and she hadn’t wanted to die.

And Jacinta still mourned her loss.

She nodded, and they sat without speaking for some moments while she regained control of her emotions.

Eventually she looked up, to meet a gaze that rested on her face with unsettling penetration. Instantly his lashes covered his eyes, and when they swept up again there was nothing but that vivid, unrevealing intensity of colour, hiding all emotion, all speculation. His sculptured mouth had thinned to a straight, forceful line.

A firebrand plummeted to the pit of her stomach. Instinct, so deeply buried in her unconscious she’d never known of its existence, stirred, flexed, and muttered a warning.

What am I getting into? she thought.

Common sense, brisk and practical, told her she wasn’t getting into anything, because she wouldn’t allow herself to. Paul McAlpine might look like every woman’s idea of a dream hero, with his golden hair and athlete’s body and disturbing mouth, but she didn’t have to worship at his shrine if she didn’t want to.

‘I usually have a quiet Christmas,’ he told her. ‘Anyway, it’s almost two months before we have to think of that. Our tea’s probably ready, but if you’d like to come with me now I’ll show you where the bedrooms are and you can choose one.’

Stiffly she got to her feet and went with him in and out of five superbly furnished bedrooms, all with both double-hung and French windows leading onto the encircling verandah. Just like something from a glossy magazine.

Jacinta refused to be impressed. In the end she chose one with a view of the sea solely because it had a long, businesslike desk on one wall.

‘This one doesn’t have its own bathroom,’ Paul told her, ‘but there’s one right next door.’

‘It’ll be super, thank you.’ Outside, the verandah had been furnished with a lounger and several chairs. Below the wooden balustrade flowers frothed and rioted. The room was pleasantly cool, with a daybed in one corner and an elegant Victorian dressing table, less ornamented than most of its kind. ‘It looks lovely,’ Jacinta finished sincerely. ‘Thank you.’

‘It’s nothing.’

The negligent disclaimer was delivered in a deep voice, its obscurely equivocal intonation setting her teeth on edge.

She was being paranoid.

Well, it was probably normal. Although earlier that year she’d endured an unpleasant experience with a man, eventually her suspicions regarding masculine intentions must fade. Unfortunately it wasn’t going to be a speedy process. Even with Gerard, who couldn’t have been nicer, she’d found herself searching for sinister motives.

And now she was doing it again. Possibly because Paul McAlpine was so—so—well, so gorgeous. Her nervousness didn’t mean she sensed anything ulterior; it arose from her physical awareness of him, which was her problem, not his. Behind Paul McAlpine’s air of calm, confident good humour was simply that—calm, confident good humour.

Any ordinary woman would be jittery and a bit overwhelmed when confronted by one of the favoured few, a golden man with everything, including a presence that automatically made him a man to be noticed.

Exhausted, and therefore easily influenced, she simply needed time and peace to catch up with herself again. And here, in this beautiful, peaceful place, she’d get them.

Especially if her host was going to be away a lot.

They were halfway down the hall on the way to the kitchen when he said, ‘Gerard tells me he’s doing research for another book. I thought he’d just finished one.’

‘Yes, but he found out that an old rival of his is intending to move in on his territory so he thought he’d better get going on this one and pre-empt him. Even in the academic world things can get rough when it comes to ego and staking claims.’

‘I see. Is he planning to spend all his leave in the archives?’

‘I think so. It was organised in such a rush that I’m not too sure of his plans.’

One eyebrow arched in a manner that showed only too clearly what Paul McAlpine thought of that, but he said nothing more. As she accompanied him Jacinta thought acidly that it was impossible to imagine this man ever doing anything on impulse.

In the spacious, very modern kitchen he introduced her to his housekeeper, a large-boned, blue-jeaned woman in her late thirties called Fran Borthwick, who smiled at her and said, ‘Welcome to Waitapu. The tea’s ready. Where do you want it?’

‘I’ll take it into the conservatory,’ Paul said serenely, lifting the tray.

Jacinta returned the housekeeper’s smile and went with him.

The conservatory, a delicious Victorian folly, was equipped with rattan furniture upholstered in muted stripes. Jungly tropical growth sprouted from splendid pots; in one a huge frangipani held up white and gold flowers, their sweet scent reminding Jacinta forcibly of the week she’d spent in Fiji.

‘Would you like to pour?’ Paul McAlpine invited, setting the tray on a table.

Jacinta’s gaze lingered too long on his elegant, long-fingered hands—hands that promised great strength as well as sureness. Resenting the mindless response that shivered across her nerve-ends, she said, ‘Yes, of course,’ sat down and lifted the teapot.

He liked his tea without milk and unsugared. Spartan tastes, Jacinta thought as she poured, then set down his cup and saucer.

It was an oddly intimate little rite, one that seemed right for the old-fashioned house and teaset. Ruthlessly ignoring the niggling edge of tension that sawed at her composure, she drank her tea and made polite conversation, wondering as she listened to his even, regulated voice whether authority and imperturbable good humour was all there was to Paul McAlpine.

No, he wouldn’t have reached the top of his profession without intelligence and, she suspected, ruthlessness.

No doubt with women, too. The lover Gerard had pointed out that day in Ponsonby was a woman so beautiful she’d dazzled. However she was not the woman who had been with Paul in Fiji.

Perhaps he was promiscuous. Was that what Gerard had been hinting at with his reference to broken hearts?

Her quick revulsion at the idea was a warning, as was her conviction that he was too fastidious for crude promiscuity. All she knew about him was that he’d been kind to her mother, he’d been jilted—and he’d had two lovers in ten months.

And he danced well.

When his cool voice broke into her memories she jumped guiltily, and had to pull herself together to answer his question about her degree.

‘I majored in history,’ she said.