By Royal Command

‘The last flight to Atu will have just left, but someone should still be at the airfield. I’ll book you a seat on the first plane out.’

Oddly piqued that he was so eager to get rid of her, she said lightly, ‘Thank you so much.’

Someone was at the airfield, someone called Josef, with whom Guy conducted a conversation in the local language. When he hung up Lauren lifted her brows enquiringly.

‘You’ve a seat reserved on tomorrow afternoon’s flight,’ he told her.

Formally, her smile set, she murmured, ‘You’ve been very kind.’

His white teeth flashed in a grin. ‘My pleasure,’ he returned easily. ‘Now, as the Chinese restaurant seems to be closed, we can go back to the resort and have dinner or I can take you home and feed you.’

‘The resort,’ Lauren said instantly, stopping when she realised that he’d tricked her. She met his amused eyes and thought with an entirely uncharacteristic rashness, Well, why not?

She was leaving tomorrow, so why shouldn’t she share dinner with the most intriguing man she’d met for a long time? Utterly infuriating, of course—far too macho and high-handed and dominating—but since she’d seen him that dragging tiredness had been replaced by a swift, intoxicating excitement.

They had absolutely nothing in common, and when she was back home she’d wonder what it was about him that arced through her like an electrical charge, but for one night—one evening, she corrected herself hastily—she’d veer slightly towards the wild side. Every woman probably deserved a buccaneer experience once in her life.

But to make sure he didn’t think he could lure her into his bed, she said, ‘It won’t be a late night, though—I’ve had two hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four, and I’m running on empty.’

He understood the implication. Irony tinged his smile as he held open the door. ‘I’ll deliver you to your door within two minutes of the first yawn. Watch where you put your feet.’

The single bulb over the stairs flickered ominously as a huge moth came to rest on it. To the sound of their footsteps echoing on the bare concrete, Lauren gripped the pipe handrail and negotiated the stairs.

‘Now that it’s dark the air is fresher, even though it hasn’t cooled down much,’ she remarked sedately as they walked towards the Land Rover. ‘I can smell the scent of the flowers without any underlying taint of decay.’

‘That’s the tropics—ravishing beauty and rotting vegetation,’ Guy said unromantically, opening the vehicle door.

Lauren slid in, watching him walk around the front of the vehicle, tall and powerful in the weak light of the only street lamp. She felt exposed and tingling, as though meeting him had stripped away several skins to reveal a world of unsuspected excitement and anticipation.

Calm down, she warned herself. Heady recklessness is so not your thing.

She’d built a successful and satisfying life on discretion and discipline; she wasn’t going to allow the tropics to cast any magic spell on her!

Halfway back to the resort, Guy said, ‘It seems a pity to leave the South Coast without seeing our main claim to fame.’

‘Which is?’ she asked cautiously.

‘A waterfall.’

Lauren paused. Maybe it was the soft radiance in the sky that proclaimed the imminent arrival of a full moon, but another rash impulse overrode common sense.

‘All right,’ she said, regretting the words the moment they left her mouth.

Guy swung the vehicle between two dark walls of trees; within seconds the unmarked road deteriorated into teeth-jolting ruts. Nevertheless, he skirted potholes with a nonchalant skill she envied. Clinging to the seat, she looked around uneasily; nightfall had transformed the lush vegetation into an alien, menacing entity that edged onto the track.

Watching large leaves whip by, she decided she’d been crazy to accept Guy’s challenge—because challenge it had definitely been.

He pulled up beneath a huge tree, its heavy foliage drooping to the ground to make a kind of tent around the Land Rover. As he switched off the engine, Lauren groped for the handle and jumped out.

‘This way,’ he said crisply.

After a few yards the oppressive growth pulled back to reveal a swathe of coarse grass. Lauren’s eyes grew accustomed to the darkness as they walked towards a steady soft murmur, infinitely refreshing, that whispered through the sticky air.

‘Look,’ Guy said, stopping.

Water fell from on high, a shimmering veil under the stars. Down the rock face clustered palms, their fronds edged with the promise of moonlight.

‘It’s beautiful,’ she said softly. ‘Oh— I didn’t realise we were so close to the coast.’

The wide pool emptied over another lip of rock into a small stream that wound its way a few hundred yards to the sea. Through the feathery tops of the coconut palms she could see the white crescent of a beach and the oily stillness of a wide bay.

‘I’m surprised there’s no coral reef around the island,’ she said, uncomfortably moved by the exquisite allure of the scene. It roused a wild longing she’d never experienced before—an urge to shuck off the trappings of civilisation and surrender to the potent seduction of the Pacific.

Guy told her, ‘Not all South Sea islands have them. Right, it’s just about time for the show. Look at the waterfall.’

The moon soared above the horizon, its light transforming the fall of water into a shimmering gold radiance.

‘Oh!’ she breathed. ‘Oh, that is exquisite—like a fall of firelit silk! Thank you for bringing me here.’

When he didn’t answer she looked up.

He was watching her, the bold structure of his face picked out by the moonlight. His mouth was compressed, and his high, faintly Slavic cheekbones gave him a half-wild, exotic air. He looked, she thought feverishly, like the buccaneer she’d likened him to before—merciless and utterly compelling. Tension flamed through her, driven by a rush of adrenaline that took her breath away.

Dry-mouthed and desperate, she swivelled away to fix her gaze on the quietly falling water, glowing with an iridescent mingling of gold and silver and copper, and tried to defuse the situation with words. ‘It’s such a familiar glory, isn’t it, moonrise, and yet I get carried away by it each time. But I’ve never seen anything like this—it looks like cloth of gold, almost as though the light is coming through the water from the back.’

‘As you say, a familiar miracle.’ He took her arm and walked her across to the bank. The moonlight hadn’t yet reached the pool; it gleamed before them, a shimmering circle of obsidian.

His touch cut through her defences, bypassing will-power, smashing her hard-won control to kindle fires in her flesh.

Dark magic, she thought despairingly. She ached to surrender to its terrifying temptation so much she could taste the craving, sweet and potent and desperate.

Staring into the smooth black water, she clenched her muscles against desire, forcing herself to freeze, not to turn into his arms and lift her face in mute invitation. He said nothing, but she heard his breathing alter, and tension spiralled between them, glittering and seductive. All it would take was one movement from her, and she’d know the power of his kiss and shiver at the warmth of his hands on her breasts…

‘The stream comes from springs in the mountains, so the water is cold.’ His voice was steady, yet a raw note grated beneath the matter-of-fact tone.

Heat spread from the pit of her stomach, a sweet, piercing flame that took no prisoners.

Cold water, she thought feverishly, just might do the trick, because this instant arousal had never happened to her before, and one-night stands were not her style. Stooping, she dipped her hand in, whipping it back with shock as it numbed her fingers. ‘It’s freezing!’

Something in his stillness alerted her; he seemed to loom over her, almost threatening. She scrambled up again and took a couple of hasty steps away, turning to watch the transient radiance of the waterfall fade as the moon leapt higher in the sky. Her blood pulsed heavily, filling her with this strange, exotic madness.

The tropics, she thought feverishly, were notorious for this sort of thing. Get over it.

‘That is utterly beautiful,’ she said, striving for a briskly practical tone. ‘Thank you for bringing me here.’

‘My pleasure,’ he told her without expression. ‘Shall we go?’

She nodded and they started back towards the tree that hid the Land Rover. A few steps beneath the overhanging branches, Guy stopped and listened, an intimidating shadow in the darkness of the canopy. Startled and uneasy, Lauren opened her mouth to ask what was going on, but the hard impact of his hand across her mouth stopped the words.