Indiscretions

“Neither do I.”

They smiled at each other.

Golf had at least been comparatively quiet, and the links were beautiful—if one excepted the occasional alligator lurking in the ponds. And they were quiet. In spite of the earmuffs they all wore, the rifle range was noisy. Riding, however, threatened to be painful. She was wondering cynically whether she could claim danger pay when Nicholas said, “Clay pigeons next.”

Starting, because he’d come up behind her, she met his mocking eyes directly. He couldn’t possibly have recognized her boredom because she was an expert at hiding it, so he was just taunting her, seeing how she’d react.

I’ll fix him, she thought, and gave him a dazzling, excited smile before obediently accompanying the group to yet more fusillades of noise.

When at last they stopped shooting and returned to the hotel, she had several discussion documents to translate and type while everyone else went to their rooms. Grateful for the reprieve from one particular man’s company, she made for the office.

“At least I have reasonable hours”, Elise said with commiseration, looking up from her work as Mariel got up and stretched her fingers and back.

“Oh, I get paid well for it. How’s Caitlin today?”

“All churned up. I honestly don’t know what I’m going to do with her.” The older woman put down the sheets of paper she was sorting and pressed her fingertips to her forehead, smoothing out the frown lines toward her temples. “She swears she’s going to run away to her father. Says he’s going to come and meet her.”

Mariel asked tentatively, “Could he be putting ideas in her head?”

“Not as far as I know,” Elise said. Looking away, she said bitterly, “She got so upset after he called her the first few times that I told him I wouldn’t let her talk on the phone to him anymore because she was unbearable afterwardtan trums and yelling and then crying fit to break her heart.”

Preventing any communication at all didn’t seem to Mariel to be a good idea, but after a glance at Elise’s bleak face she held her tongue. Elise knew her daughter.

The older woman said abruptly, “She still cries in the night and says she’s going to see him soon. She misses him, I guess.”

“Is she going to spend the holidays with him?”

Elise’s mouth clamped shut. “He can’t look after her. He’s getting a new business off the ground—he’s got no time to spend with her. He only sued for custody to teach me a lesson for daring to leave him. It’s so typical of him to just go bullheaded for what he wants and never give a thought to how his actions affect anyone else.”

“Is he fond of her?”

Elise shrugged. “Yeah, he’s fond of her. He even says he loves her, but if loving means you want the other person’s happiness above your own, Jimmy’s only ever loved himself. The counselor said Caitlin just doesn’t know how to deal with the fact that her daddy’s left her, so she blames me for it. She hates me working, but she’s quite happy staying after school with Saranne Beamish in the village. She likes Saranne’s kids. Sometimes I just don’t know what to do.” Her eyes filled with tears.

“A marriage breakup is always hard on the children, but they get over it,” Mariel said soothingly.

From behind came a man’s voice, deep and cool and curt. “Have you finished those documents, Mariel?”

She jumped, but not as high as Elise, whose audible gasp sounded loudly in the room.

“No,” Mariel said, turning swiftly to shield the older woman from Nicholas’s too-observant eyes.

“We need them now,” he said.

She nodded. “I’ll bring them up to Mr. McCabe when they’re done.”

“Thank you.”

After he’d left, Elise said, “God, he’s gorgeous, isn’t he? But his eyes send shivers down my spine. I wouldn’t like to get on the wrong side of him. Jimmy only bruised my heart. That guy could scar you for life.”

“I’m sure he’s not violent,” Mariel said, shocked.

“There are different sorts of violence,” Elise said wearily. “I don’t think Tall-dark-and-handsome’s cruel by nature, but I’ll bet he could be if he was provoked enough. You’d better get on with that work.”

The documents were broadly based, without specificsmere lists of suggestions. After translating them, Mariel took them up to the minister’s suite, where she read them through to him, Nicholas and a couple of other men. The older one she recognized with a clutch of foreboding to be a senior diplomat, now retired, whose speciality was Asian affairs. Although he would have known her parents, he showed no signs of identifying her.

That evening each mission was eating separately, no doubt discussing tactics, so her services weren’t required. After dinner and a swim in the pool, she spent a couple of hours or so in her room trying to relax, but the shadowy phantoms of her past pressed closer and closer, robbing her of any hope of rest, let alone sleep.

Finally she gave up the effort and crossed to her window and looked out. The moon hung half-blown in the sky, shedding a pale, hazy sheen over the grounds; lights blazed forth from the hotel, but although the paths were still lit by fairy lamps, no one trod between the trees.

She chose tan slacks and a cool cream T-shirt, slipped a soft cream-and-tan sweater over her shoulders and pulled espadrilles onto her feet, then walked outside, wondering just what restless compulsion drove her into the scented darkness.

Urged on by something primal and heartfelt, an unknown goad, she headed toward the beach, remembering other beaches she’d seen, other coasts, other seas far removed from this—seas that beat against rockbound coasts in Norway, seas that lapped blinding coral sands in turquoise lagoons off Fiji, the wild west coast of New Zealand where waves had half the world to gather and build before they fell savagely onto the cliff-bound rim of land.

Odd that New Zealand should come to mind when usually she avoided all thoughts of it.

Well, no, not odd; the image of a face, all aggressive angles, and a lean, disciplined body that moved with predatory grace had been hovering just behind her eyes ever since she’d first seen Nicholas Leigh.

Even as she shivered he appeared, coalescing out of the darkness on the edge of the woods, his head turned to watch her arrive. Not for a moment did she mistake him for anyone else; she had the unsettling feeling that he had brought her there, called her with a primitive, magical lure that had nothing to do with the mundane.

He didn’t make any of the usual greetings. As though he had expected her, he held out his hand, and as though he had the right, she gave him hers, this time braced for the jolt of pure awareness that raced through her at his touch.

“You can’t see the Southern Cross from here,” he said.

“So?”

She caught the quick flash of white as he smiled.

“I was born under the Southern Cross,” he said. “I hope to die under it one day.”

“Born under it literally?”

“Literally. My parents were sailing when I arrived, too suddenly for them to get back to land. My mother insisted on being on deck. My father said that I looked at the sky as I was born.”

Fascinated, she said, “Perhaps you were imprinted like a baby bird.”

He laughed softly. “Perhaps. Where were you born, Mariel?”

“In Kashmir,” she said, and gave a startled little laugh. “Oddly enough, on a houseboat. I was a month premature.”

She kept her eyes on the beach that spread out before them, white in the vaporous moonlight, but she felt his gaze, keen and piercing as a lance of crystal. It kindled an untamed exultation because his reaction was written in his features, and it was just as helpless, just as wild, as hers.

“So you were born on a boat, too.”

“Quite a coincidence.” Following his lead, she strove to sound matter-of-fact, repressing the astounded excitement that made her feel her whole world was tumbling, racing, shattering, and all she could call on to protect her were the small weapons of her character and willpower.

“A sign, do you think?”

Her attempt at a laugh was blocked somewhere in the region of her heart. “Of what?” she asked. “Careless parents?”