Surrender To Seduction

They dutifully laughed, and some of the colour faded from the girl’s skin.

‘Don’t know what you women see in him,’ Cosmo said, giving Bryn a man-to-man look.

His wife said curtly, ‘He’s very talented, and you saw quite a lot in his girlfriend, whose talent wasn’t so obvious.’ She laughed a little spitefully. ‘He must like fat women.’

Fortunately the waiter returned with the drinks just then, pale gold and frosted, with moisture sliding down the softly rounded glasses.

Gerry had seen more than enough photographs of the woman Logan Hawkhurst had wooed all over the world and finally won; a tall, statuesque woman, with wide shoulders, glorious legs and substantial breasts, she’d looked as though she was more than capable of coping with a man of legendary temper.

Whatever, Gerry didn’t want to deal with undercurrents and sly backbiting. Blast Bryn Falconer. This was not the way she’d envisioned spending her first evening on the atoll.

Even more irritating, Narelle set out to establish territory and pecking order. Possibly Bryn noted the glitter in Gerry’s smile, for he steered the conversation in a different direction. Instead of determining who outranked whom, they talked of the latest comet, and the plays on Broadway, and whether cars would ever run on hydrogen. Lacey didn’t offer much, but what she did say was sharply perceptive.

Gerry admired the way Bryn handled the girl; he respected her intelligence and treated her as an interesting woman with a lot to offer. Lacey bloomed.

Which was more than Gerry did. Infuriatingly, the confidence she took for granted seemed to be draining away faster than the liquid in her glass. Every time Bryn’s hooded green gaze traversed her face her rapid pulse developed an uncomfortable skip, and she had to yank her mind ruthlessly off the question of just how that long, hard mouth would feel against hers…

How foolish of Narelle to try her silly tests of who outranked whom! Bryn was the dominant male, and not only because he was six inches taller than Cosmo; what marked him out was the innate authority blazing around him like a forceful aura, intimidating and omnipresent.

Dragging her attention back, she learned that Cosmo owned a chain of shops in Australia. Narelle turned out to be a demon shopper, detailing the best boutiques in London for clothes, and where to buy gold jewellery, and how wonderful Raffles Hotel in Singapore was now it had been refurbished.

Lacey relapsed into silence, turning her glass in her hand, drinking her fruit juice slowly, as Gerry drank hers, occasionally shooting sideways glances at Bryn. Another crush on the way, Gerry thought, feeling sorry for her.

Politeness insisted she listen to Narelle, nodding and putting in an odd comment, but the other woman was content to talk without too much input from anyone else. From the corner of her eye Gerry noted Bryn’s lean, well-shaped hands pick up his beer glass. So acutely, physically aware of him was she that she fancied her skin on that side of her body was tighter, more stretched, than on the other.

‘You’ve travelled quite a bit,’ Lacey said abruptly, breaking into her mother’s conversation.

‘It’s part of my job,’ Gerry said.

‘What do you do?’

She hesitated before saying, ‘I work in fashion.’

Lacey looked smug. ‘I thought you might be a model,’ she said, ‘but I knew you were something to do with fashion. You’ve got that look.’ She leaned forward. ‘Do models have to diet all the time to stay that slim?’

‘Thin,’ Gerry said calmly. ‘They have to be incredibly thin because the camera adds ten pounds to everyone. Some starve themselves, but most don’t They’re freaks.’

‘F-freaks?’ Lacey looked distinctly taken aback.

Bryn asked indolently, ‘How many women do you see walking down the street who are six feet tall, skinny as rakes, with small bones and beautiful faces?’

Although the caustic note in his voice stung, Gerry nodded agreement.

‘Well—not many, I suppose,’ Lacey said defensively.

‘It’s not normal for women to look like that,’ Bryn said with cold-blooded dispassion. ‘Gerry’s right—those who do are freaks.’

‘Designers like women with no curves,’ Gerry told her, ‘because they show off clothes better.’

Narelle laughed a little shrilly. ‘Oh, it’s more than that,’ she protested. ‘Men are revolted by fat women.’

‘Some men are,’ Bryn said, leaning back in his chair as though he conducted conversations like this every day, ‘but most men like women who are neither fat nor thin, just fit and pleasantly curvy.’

So she was not, Gerry realised, physically appealing to him. Although not model-thin, she was certainly on the lean side rather than voluptuous. His implied rejection bit uncomfortably deep; she had, she realised with a shock, taken it for granted that he found her as attractive as she found him.

Lacey asked, ‘Are you in fashion too, Mr Falconer?’

‘I have interests there,’ he said, his tone casual.

Did he mean the hats?

With a bark of laughter Cosmo said, ‘Amongst others.’

Bryn nodded. Smoothly, before anyone else could speak, he made some remark about a scandal in Melbourne, and Lacey listened to her parents discuss it eagerly.

Illness or anorexia? Gerry wondered, covertly taking in the stick-like arms and legs. Lacey had her father’s build; she should have been rounded. Or just a kid in a growing spurt? Sixteen could be a dangerous age.

Had Bryn discerned that? Why else would he have bothered to warn her off dieting? Because that was what he’d done, in the nicest possible way.

Gerry drained her glass and settled back in her chair, watching the night drift across the sea, sweep tenderly through the palms and envelop everything in a soft, scented darkness. The sound of waves caressing the reef acted as a backdrop; while they’d been talking several other people had come in and sat down, and now a porter was going around lighting flares.

If she were alone, Gerry thought, she’d be having a wonderful time, instead of sitting there with every cell alert and tense, waiting for something to happen.

What happened was that a waiter came across and bent over Bryn, saying cheerfully, ‘Your table is ready, sir.’

‘Then we’d better eat,’ he said, and got to his feet, towering over them. ‘Geraldine,’ he said, holding out his hand.

Irritated, but unable to reject him without making it too obvious, Gerry put hers in his and let him help her up, smiling at the others. He kept his grip until they were halfway across the room, when she tugged her fingers free and demanded, ‘What on earth is going on?’

‘I’d have thought you’d know the signs,’ he said caustically. ‘If she hasn’t got anorexia, she’s on the brink.’

‘I didn’t mean Lacey,’ she snapped. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘I discovered I had a few days, so I decided it would be easier for you if I came up and acted as intermediary.’

Impossible to tell from his expression or his voice whether he was lying, but he certainly wasn’t telling the whole story.

‘Just like that?’ she said, not trying to hide her disbelief. ‘You didn’t have this time yesterday.’

‘Things change,’ he told her blandly, pulling out a chair.

He was laughing at her and she resented it, but she wasn’t going to make a fool of herself by protesting. So when she’d sat down she seized on the comment he’d made. ‘What do you mean, you thought I’d have been able to recognise anorexia?’

‘You deal with it all the time, surely?’ he said.

She replied bluntly, ‘Tragically, anorexic young women who don’t get help die. They don’t have the stamina to be models.’

‘I know they die,’ he said, his face a mask of granite, cold and inflexible in the warm, flickering light of the torches. ‘How many do you think you’ve sent down that road?’