CHAPTER SIX
LUKE provided her with delightful sport for the next hour as they raced back and forth across the bay, circling the buoys and pontoons, taking it in turns to ride each other’s wake and duelling with other jet-skis who dared challenge for supremacy of the waves.
It was the first time Rosalind had seen him completely uninhibited and she was startled by the streak of fierce competitiveness he revealed in their games. He liked to win, and when he did made no bones about enjoying his victory, punching a fist to the sky, his triumphant laugh ringing out over the water. She couldn’t quite believe that it was the same man who would hardly say boo to a goose on dry land!
Even more surprisingly, Rosalind was the one to flag first. When their time was finally up she was glad to hand over her jet-ski to someone else and stagger up the beach, cheerfully admitting as she flopped down on her towel that her arms and legs felt like jelly from the constant strain of controlling all that horsepower.
‘Not to mention another part of my anatomy that’s taken a pounding,’ she groaned as she wriggled on her back to make a nice contoured hollow in the sand for the tender region and propped her hat against the top of her head so that it shaded her face. ‘I must have lost more condition than I thought on that wretched island!’
Luke, who seemed if anything to be more energised by the experience, shook his towel before settling down beside her, leaning back on braced arms, his knees drawn up in front of him, flicking his wet hair back with a sharp toss of his head.
‘Are you talking about the film you’ve just finished?’ His curiosity was no longer constrained by having to pretend ignorance of her background.
Rosalind pulled a wry face. ‘You mean which almost finished me.’
She embarked on her humorously harrowing tale of woman-eating sharks, broken bones and mosquitoes the size of vampire bats. ‘It was the sheer incompetency of the whole thing that I found so infuriating,’ she finished, with an angry twist to her mobile mouth. ‘I wouldn’t have minded the deprivations so much if it had been a cracking script, but by the time the director had done a million rewrites the characters were practically incomprehensible. As a break into films it was not a good career move...’
‘I thought you preferred the stage anyway,’ he said, confirming that he had read the small print of the article, not just the trashy bits. ‘What made you want to do this film?’
She sighed. He had an instinct for innocently framing awkward questions.
‘Impulse. I was looking to expand my horizons. The original script was actually quite good...and the director begged me to!’ She opened her eyes and found him regarding her thoughtfully. She moved her expressive hands restlessly. ‘Trina was a friend of mine. Hell, I didn’t know that since we left drama school she’d only done commercials and music videos!’
‘You didn’t think to check out her credentials before you committed yourself?’ It was the accountant not the jet-ski speed pirate talking, and his incredulous tone put her on the defensive.
‘I told you, she was an old friend. I liked her. It was a loyalty thing.’
‘Misplaced loyalty as it turned out.’
Rosalind bristled at the hint of contempt. ‘Yes, well, that’s the whole point of loyalty, isn’t it—sticking with people through the bad as well as the good? Erina did her best; her ambition simply overreached her abilities. At least she was willing to take the risk and try, and I respect her for that.’
His raised eyebrow was a taunt in itself and she thought that if he had been a calculating man she would have suspected him of playing the devil’s advocate purely to provoke her impulsive retort. ‘Maybe it was the element of risk that attracted you to the project in the first place.’
‘Maybe it was,’ she prevaricated. ‘But at least I came out of it with a minimum wage. The investors must have taken a bath!’
As she’d suspected, the financial red herring was too tempting for him to resist, and they discussed the intricacies of film financing before Rosalind managed gradually to edge the conversation around to a subject of potentially greater interest—Luke’s Harley-Davidson-owning days. However, they turned out to be disappointingly tame... a case of riding the motorcycle back and forth to university and to his part-time job. He had never even belonged to a motorcycle club, let alone a gang. As far as he was concerned, his grunt-machine had been merely a convenient and economical form of transport, with the added advantage of being a classic which would appreciate in value and therefore could be viewed in the light of an investment.
‘A conformist without a cause!’ Rosalind murmured, wistfully relinquishing the illicit vision of a leather-clad Luke lounging astride a sexy hunk of chrome and black, a cigarette and a sneer dangling from his lips.
She delved to find a replacement image but it was tough going trying to get Luke to open up about himself. On general subjects he was capable of being provoked into something bordering on eloquence but when it came to the personal stuff he retreated into his awkward shell.
She did manage to patch together the picture of an orphaned only child who became an adopted only child, then a conscientious student who had set himself a series of goals towards which he had worked with relentless dedication. Not for him the usual wild student frivolities. He had lived at home and, while his adoptive parents had been comfortably well off and prepared to pay generously for his education, they’d believed strongly in the work ethic, so that Luke had had to work at a variety of jobs while he was studying, to help ease the burden of his keep. Rosalind lazily admitted that since she was old enough to do walk-ons she had only ever worked in the theatre.
‘And loved every minute of it,’ she sighed. ‘Up until now, anyway.’
She bit her lip as the self-pitying words slipped out, and Luke rolled onto his side, propping his temple on a loose fist. ‘What’s so different now?’
Rosalind looked straight up at the cloudless sky. Her mouth went dry at the thought of saying it...as dry as it had felt the last few times she’d been on stage, in those awful moments when her mind had gone totally blank, so that she hadn’t even been able to remember what play she was in, let alone what her next lines were. All she had been conscious of was those eyes trained on her from the darkened auditorium—the eyes of friends, fans, strangers—and one stranger in particular who might be out there, watching, waiting for a word or gesture or a look which his psychosis could interpret as an invitation to fulfil his frightening fantasies...
‘Oh, just a slight crisis of confidence. I’ll get over it,’ she forced herself to say lightly, with mote optimism than she felt.
‘Did you say confidence or conscience?’
She turned her head sharply. In spite of the increasing heat he hadn’t replaced his hat or sunglasses, but the palm fronds stirring overhead dappled his sun-burnished face with fluttering shadows that made his expression difficult to read.
‘Confidence,’ she articulated, deciding to give him the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps he still had water in his ears. ‘I was talking about my stage confidence. When you’re out there in front of an audience you have to be able to submerge yourself in the role. Once you start letting other things intrude you’re in trouble. And worrying about whether you’re going to have a panic attack in the middle of a performance can become a self-fulfilling prophecy—’
She broke off. She hadn’t meant to reveal so much. She hadn’t even spoken of her career concerns to her twin. She was tough, determined, a seasoned professional. She had expected to bounce back from adversity with her customary swift resilience. But what if she didn’t?
She rolled over onto her stomach, burying her face in her folded arms to conceal the fleeting self-doubt which might be evident on her expressive features. She forced herself back into the role of carefree companion, her voice muffled as she said lightly, ‘Speaking of confidence, you seemed to have plenty out there on the water. Now you’ve got to build on that image.
‘The time-honoured ploy of the beach flirt is offering to rub sunscreen onto a woman’s back. It gives you the chance to sound sexy and caring, and if she accepts then you can practically guarantee she’s interested. But don’t make the mistake of groping. The first time should be sensuous yet brisk. Your aim is to show her you’re a man she can trust...’
There was a silence, several heartbeats long.
‘Are you asking me to apply your sunscreen for you?’ he said, in a distinctly edgy tone.
Rosalind grinned into her towel, her spirits revived. ‘Well, I’m sure you need the practice and I’m prepared to sacrifice myself for the greater good of womankind,’ she mocked. ‘I’ll even give you a critique when you’re done! For a start you could show some enthusiasm. Try and sound eager to get your hands on my body...’
‘Does your throat count?’ he delighted her by muttering.
She turned her head to the side and, sure enough, found his eyes on the tender sweep of her neck, exposed in all its delicate vulnerability by her pixie haircut. ‘Why, Luke, do you harbour erotic fantasies about being a vampire?’
His colour had darkened, although it could have been the heat of the sun on his bare head that was making him look flushed. ‘I was thinking of strangling rather than biting!’ he growled, reluctantly picking up the tube of sunscreen that was poking out of the top of her beach bag.
‘Pity. Vampires are much sexier than common-or-garden stranglers!’
His subsequent wordless application of the sunscreen was far more brisk than sensuous but Rosalind didn’t take him to task because she discovered the sensation of those firm hands massaging across her sun-warmed skin too disturbing for comfort. This time there was nothing to blame for the faint buzz that vibrated through her nerve-ends but her own bio-electrical system. Wherever Luke touched her it was as if a static discharge occurred—one that seemed to grow rather than to fade with continued contact. Rosalind was literally live to his touch!
Her amusement was mixed with chagrin at the unexpected physical attraction, especially as Luke gave no sign of being similarly affected. He was supposed to be an entertaining holiday distraction, not an added complication to her life. Still, as long as she kept that firmly in the forefront of her mind there could be no danger of her behaving like a real-life Pygmalion and falling in love with her own creation. She had made a promise to Luke, and she couldn’t let him down. She would shake him up and turn him loose and in the meantime rely on her strong self-discipline to control any inconvenient pangs of lust!
So from then on Rosalind threw herself wholeheartedly into the task of making Luke seem irresistible to members of the opposite sex while quietly maintaining a discreet physical distance herself. She deliberately gave him no rest, filling every moment with activities which she hoped would so focus his concentration that he would forget the awkward self-consciousness that seemed to afflict him around other people.
Following their jet-skiing success, Rosalind took him snorkelling later the same afternoon and was relieved to find that he was as sleek as a seal in the water, though he regrettably seemed more interested in the teeming marine life on the reef than in the occasional eligible human female who drifted in his direction. They joined a dozen or so others in one of Tioman’s distinctive, long wooden bumboats which plied for hire around the coast, to travel to a tiny, rocky off-shore island a scant few minutes from the hotel jetty.
Rosalind marvelled at the vivid fans of waving coral, and the iridescent colours of some of the fish that darted in and out of the rocks. There were gliding mantas and creeping crustaceans, flowing sea anemones and rocking sea urchins with jewel-like blue spots glowing between their long spines.
As they floated face down in the shallows around the island Rosalind was tempted by the idea of booking a scuba-dive and exploring the deeper riches of the sea, until Luke drew closer to her side and motioned towards the seabed, pointing out a young shark sleeking between the rocks. She decided then that perhaps she wasn’t ready yet for another close encounter with any denizens of the deep!
The next day they took a three-hour guided walk through the forested valleys to the village of Juara, on the other side of the island. It was hot and still in the depths of the interior, the trunks of massive trees bearing such evocative names as sandalwood and camphor soaring skywards from the forest floor, their distant green canopy almost obscured by the lacy foliage of the palms and shrubs of the undergrowth through which they walked, and Rosalind was grateful to their guide for his frequent pauses on the banks of cool, boulder-strewn streams.
The steamy heat seemed to have little effect on Luke, who chafed at Rosalind’s tendency to fall back amongst the stragglers and linger over every new orchid spite, every small lizard or exotic butterfly she spied.
In the afternoon they caught a bumboat back around the south coast, stopping off at Mukut village, from which they trekked up to the famous waterfall. Luke had never seen South Pacific and had been slightly contemptuous of the reason for Rosalind’s eager pilgrimage, but he couldn’t deny that the scenery itself was spectacular and Rosalind had her revenge for his sarcastic remarks about cultural imperialism in general and the silliness of musicals in particular by singing him every song from the show that she could remember, much to the amusement of others they passed on the walk.
Washing men out of her hair seemed particularly appealing, and she sang that one several times with special emphasis on their way back down to the boat, accompanying it with jaunty dance steps that criss-crossed in front of Luke’s stride until he was goaded into begging her to stop.
Lake got his own back the next day, however, when Rosalind offered to teach him to windsurf. When he appeared ready to protest she overrode him with her usual bossy enthusiasm, stressing that everyone was clumsy at first but it was just a matter of persistence. She very kindly didn’t say that she expected him to be a more clumsy beginner than most, but the message was subtly delivered by her condescending grin. And so it proved.
She made Luke walk parallel to her on the sand while she sailed the board along to the secluded end of the long beach to show him how it was done. The breeze was gentle but steady and the sea glass-like in its smoothness, so the conditions were as perfect as they could be for a beginner.
Given Luke’s seal-like grace in the water, Rosalind was confident that once he got over his nervous fear of making a fool of himself he would soon pick up the basics, but to her frustration he proved so fumblingly inept that it took her ages merely to get him standing upright on the board. In the process she became his waterlogged sea anchor, her arms and hands aching from holding the board steady while he tried to find his elusive sense of balance.
When, finally, after more than an hour of careful coaching, he progressed to actually pulling the sail upright, he would invariably lose his stability before the wind had time to fill it and topple off again, usually in her direction, smacking down in a tangle of splayed limbs, sending yet another shock blast of salt water shooting up into her eyes, nose and mouth.
She couldn’t lose her temper because each time it happened Luke was so very apologetic, so desperate to master the simple skill, so insistent that if she would just bear with him he would eventually succeed. She didn’t have the heart to tell him that he might as well give it up as a lost cause, not after she had stressed the importance of persistence.
Even worse, his body seemed to be constantly bumping and rubbing up against hers as they struggled with the board and the wet sail. She had to help boost him up onto the deck and guide his legs into position and reach around him to show him the handholds. Every time she moved, his cool flesh somehow got in her way. Her hands slipped and slid against his smooth, wet skin, sometimes skidding off into dangerous territory, and the water proved a wonderful conductor for the zinging electrical awareness that intensified each time their bodies made contact.
Oh, for the temperate waters of New Zealand where most windsurfers wore demure wetsuits! Rosalind inwardly wailed as Luke took another tumble, one slick thigh fleetingly thrust between hers, its slight roughness rasping the highly sensitive skin and catching on the silky fabric of her bikini, giving it an intimate little nudge that, for Rosalind, was the last straw.
She faked, very professionally, standing on something sharp and painful. Just painful enough to necessitate her limping ashore to check the wound, not painful enough to require his assistance.
‘It’s not as if there’s any blood. I’ll be fine...you carry on with what you’re doing,’ she said, hastily wading beyond his long reach. ‘Maybe you just need a bit of time fooling about on your own to get the hang of it, anyway...’
She limped up the beach to their towels in a masterful piece of underplaying, conscious of Luke’s eyes boring into her back. She sat down and made a show of inspecting the sole of her foot before giving him a reassuring wave and relaxing back on her elbows with a grateful sigh. She watched him broodingly. This was ridiculous. Why was she running away? He was a perfectly nice man. Why on earth shouldn’t she conduct this phony flirtation for real?
Her eyes drifted closed as she contemplated the idea. Although Luke might be inexperienced with women he was intellectually mature, a full-grown, well-educated adult holding down a highly responsible job. It wouldn’t be as if she were seducing an innocent boy for her own amusement. And there would be no question of exploring the attraction if it didn’t prove to be mutual...
She must have dozed off because when next she opened her eyes Luke was nowhere in sight. She sat up in alarm, her anxious gaze sweeping the bay, visions of finding him floating face down in the water dancing in her head. And it would be all her fault for pushing him beyond his physical capabilities!
Her jaw dropped when she finally spotted the distinctive green sail emblazoned with the hotel’s palm logo breezing out towards the open sea. As she watched, Luke shifted his weight, swinging the sail around and moving back towards the shore, tacking to take best advantage of the light off-shore wind.
Hmm!
By the time he beached the board and strolled up the sand her suspicions were simmering.
‘That was a pretty good run for an absolute beginner.’
He picked up his towel and mopped down his body with distracting thoroughness. ‘Actually you were right-it was a lot easier without you there pointing out every mistake and making me nervous.’ His face disappeared into the towel as he rubbed his hair.
‘Oh, really?’ she drawled, relaxing back on her elbows, dipping her head so that the straw brim of her hat concealed her study of the way the concave plane of his stomach flexed with his movements.
‘Yes, once you figure out how to stay upright the rest just seems to fall into place!’
Her suspicions were unappeased by his muffled words. ‘Luke James, is that the first time you’ve been windsurfing?’
His face emerged from the folds of the towel. ‘Surely you should have asked me that question before we started? How’s the foot?’
‘Fine,’ she said absently, trying to figure out whether his answer constituted a confession of exaggerated ineptitude.
‘Is it? May I see?’
Before she realised what he was doing he had dropped to his knees in front of her feet, his buttocks resting on his heels, his fingers gripping her ankle.
‘No!’
She tried to jerk away but his fingers tightened around the bone as he lifted her foot for inspection.
‘Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,’ he murmured, brushing the grains of sand gently off her sole with the thumb of his free hand.
‘I told you, it was nothing,’ she said breathlessly as he frowned, bending closer to the site, his damp hair fanning forward around the widow’s peak, his thumb moving in another probing caress. His nail scraped lightly across her skin and her toes curled involuntarily towards the ball of her foot, a husky sound of protest issuing from her throat. He paused, his lids flicking up in instant enquiry.
‘I’m ticklish.’ Unbelievably she could feel her face pinken at the husky lie. She, the mistress of the mask, whose whole professional training had been aimed at the weaving of believable lies. She never blushed...except when it was written in the stage directions!
‘I’ll be careful.’ His lids sank down again and Rosalind braced herself to have her silly deception exposed. ‘I don’t see—Ah, wait a moment, what’s this...?’ His short thumbnail dug into the soft, resilient pad of flesh. ‘It looks like...it could be a shell splinter, or some sort of spine...’
‘Could it?’ Rosalind hadn’t really looked closely at her foot, knowing there was nothing there to see. ‘Uh...it’s not hurting now—’
‘Did you feel a stinging or burning sensation when it happened?’
‘Neither,’ she said truthfully. But she could certainly feel something now! She wished he would stop rubbing his thumb back and forth like that; it was sending tingles of sensation shooting up the insides of her calves and thighs.
A heat that had nothing to do with the sun pooled in her stomach. Her fingers dug into the sand at her sides and her free leg shifted restlessly, drawing up slightly to hide the vulnerable triangle at the apex of her thighs. She could feel her nipples begin to firm and knew they would soon be evident through the thin, shiny fabric of her hot-pink bikini.
‘Whatever it is I don’t think we should leave it in there, do you?’ he said gravely. ‘In this climate infections can set in very quickly if you ignore a wound...’
‘Unfortunately I don’t happen to have a needle on me,’ joked Rosalind weakly, patting her bare sides. She regretted her mistake immediately as his eyes accepted the licence to rove. A quick glance down confirmed that he couldn’t fail to notice the explicit outline of her breasts, the smooth swells, gathered and lifted by the halter-neck of her bikini, projecting the stiff little crowns forward into stark prominence. And she couldn’t even blame it on the chill of the water!
His gaze took on a familiar blank, unfocused intensity as it rose to her face, his fingers tightening on her ankle as she instinctively tried again to twist it free.
‘We’ll just have to improvise, then...’ he murmured. And, still holding her gaze, he bent his head, shifting his grip to cup her heel, tilting her foot delicately aslant with his other hand as he placed it against his open mouth. Rosalind gasped as she felt his teeth sink deep into the tender pad of her sole and a hot, wet suction begin a rhythmic tugging at her flesh.
‘Luke!’ Her exclamation of shocked protest was undermined by the insidious weakness that flooded through her body. Her elbows collapsed and her shoulderblades hit the sand, her hat rolling off her bright head, leaving her dazzled by the sun. The second protest was even feebler than the first. ‘Luke...’
He sucked more strongly, his teeth grating against her skin, creating tiny needles of pain that were instantly soothed by the moist movements of his mouth. And she lay there and submitted, watching him watching her over the top of her toes. His gaze was intense with a dark concentration. She had never thought of her feet as erogenous zones before, but the delicious sensation of bone-melting pleasure she was experiencing made her reevaluate her thinking. No wonder people developed foot fetishes!
Suddenly she felt his tongue join the suckling, swirling and rasping against her wet skin. One of his hands slid lightly down the top of her foot and around behind her ankle, to drift up the back of her supple calf, his spreading fingers offering caressing support to the tautly extended muscle. The long, slow French kissing continued until Rosalind squirmed, a brief groan escaping her lips.
He lifted his mouth fractionally. ‘Am I hurting you? Do you want me to stop?’ His lips brushed against her sole as they formed the gruff words and she gave another little shivery moan. He was kneeling like a supplicant yet his eyes seemed to smoulder with the triumphant recognition of his own power. He knew exactly what he was doing to her...
Alarm bells started to ring in her distracted senses. The audacity of his action had been so out of character that it had caught her completely off guard, but she mustn’t allow him to think that he could control and manipulate her through her passions.
‘You’re not hurting me...but I still think you’d better stop,’ she asserted regretfully.
He lowered her foot onto his knee, holding her heel against the sun-warmed hardness of bone and muscle.
‘I think whatever it was has come out anyway,’ he said. His tongue appeared between his lips and he dabbed at it and then inspected his fingertip. ‘Ah, yes, I’m sure it did...’
Rosalind suddenly remembered that her injury had supposedly been imaginary. ‘Can I see?’ She propped herself up on her hands but even as she spoke he was casually flicking whatever was on his fingertip into the breeze.
‘Sorry, but it was hardly worth looking at. Such a tiny thing to cause you so much discomfort,’ he said, so blandly that Rosalind’s suspicions were reawakened.
But no, that was silly! Luke would never have summoned the nerve to make such an outrageously seductive move on purpose.
Would he?
‘What made you want to try to get it out like that anyway?’ she asked, thinking that tax avoidance was actually a fairly devious field requiring a certain amount of risk-taking by its practitioners. And Luke was a self-declared specialist.
‘I saw it once...in a Bond movie,’ he admitted.
Rosalind recalled the scene...and the way the woman’s gratitude had been expressed afterwards, in typical Bond-girl fashion. She delivered him a tart warning. ‘You should know that things you see done in the movies don’t always work out the same in real life!’
‘No, only sometimes,’ he agreed meekly, his gaze briefly brushing her treacherously firm breasts. Rosalind shifted her foot hastily back onto the sand and as she did so the slight bristliness of his leg struck a familiar chord.
Her green eyes narrowed, squinting for a better look as she blurted out, ‘For goodness’ sake, Luke, do you shave your legs?’
‘As a matter of fact, I do,’ he said coolly, moving around beside her. ‘I cycle, and shaving your legs makes treating the scrapes much less painful if you fall on the tarmac, not to mention reducing drag and chafing of the Lycra kit...’
‘Oh.’ Rosalind had discovered something else equally intriguing. ‘You shave your chest too, don’t you?’
She couldn’t resist reaching over and touching it. His skin was like hot satin, slipping against her fingers, smooth but with a faint catch in a broad area from collar-to breast-bone. She guessed that in his natural state he would be quite furry.
His voice also had a slight, uneven catch. ‘We wear Lycra body-shirts as well.’
Rosalind drew back, her fingers drifting absently to her parted lips, and the clean, salty tang of him suddenly filled her nostrils, creating an unexpected hunger. Her tongue crept out to touch her fingertips and now the taste of him was inside her too, lush and tempting...
Through a veil of lashes she watched Luke’s eyes glaze at her action and then sink down her half-reclining body, drifting into intimate territory before faltering and returning to find the flaw in the otherwise pearly perfection of her skin.
His lips parted, his brows darting upwards in a slight frown. He bent over to trace the faint silvery line low down on her abdomen with his finger.
‘What’s this? Appendix?’
It was like being delicately brushed with a live wire. Rosalind’s skin quivered and she could feel the downy-fine hair on her belly spring erect. His finger jerked away, only to return almost immediately to explore the tiny ridge. He was getting bolder by the minute.
‘No!’
She had thought she had herself under control but suddenly she was fighting a fierce, almost overwhelming urge to plunge her fingers into the fine, silky hair that had slid across his temples, twine them amongst the sun-warmed strands and force his mouth slowly, slowly down to her body...to feel him move his open lips against that small, inoffensive, earth-shattering scar. And then, and then...
She put a flat hand just below his shoulder, hesitating when she felt his heart pumping as violently as hers, then she pushed him away—a hard shove that sent him sprawling on the sand.
He blinked up at her. ‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing. I just think it’s time we made a move!’ she said, leaping up, her jerky movements revealing her inner agitation.
‘I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to dredge up bad memories for you,’ he said, rolling lithely to his feet beside her, brushing the sand off his side.
‘You didn’t. It’s just an operation scar—from years ago...when I was living in London.’
She could probably tell him the exact day if she wanted to dwell on it. But she had long ago decided that she wouldn’t because that would mean dwelling on Justin—wonderful, laughing, handsome Justin—the first and last great love of her life, the shining knight of her dreams who had turned out to be utterly without honour or conscience.
Rosalind—young, passionately in love and blinded by her own romantic idealism—had been a willing victim of his forceful charm. Because her trust had been as absolute as her love she had ignored the most elementary precautions with the man she had expected to marry, only to find out that he had been unfaithful with a string of one-night stands.
She had been lucky. She could have faced a death sentence for her naivety. As it was, the consequences of her liaison with Justin had sent her recklessly off the rails for a while, but she had quickly realised the self-destructive futility of her actions. Yes, something precious had been taken away from her, but she had since found other things, other blessings to put in its place...
‘Were you involved in an accident?’
‘No. Pelvic inflammatory disease.’
Her bluntness didn’t embarrass him into silence. He frowned. ‘It must have been serious for them to operate.’
‘It was. And no, before you ask, I didn’t get it by being promiscuous,’ she bit out. Many people associated PID with sexual profligacy, but until Justin had charmed his way into her heart Rosalind had been remarkably chaste. Ironically her innocence had probably been her downfall. If she had been more sexually experienced she might have been less submissive to Justin’s seductive wiles.
‘What made it so serious?’
‘There were complications...’
‘What kind of complications?’
She looked at him incredulously. He seemed utterly in earnest. For a shy man he was showing a hell of a nerve! She began to laugh. ‘Do you just want the highlights or should I get my doctor to send you a complete gynaecological history?’
He flushed, reverting to type, and she was reassured sufficiently to tease, ‘Don’t worry Luke, the only thing you’ve risked with me so far is foot-and-mouth disease.’
His flush deepened and she took advantage of his confusion to tell him that, since he had suddenly turned out to be such a hotshot windsurfer, he could sail the board back, while she strolled leisurely back to the hotel for some much needed R and R.
The School for Flirts was out for the day!