Chain Lightning (9 page)

A veil of hair had fallen across Mandy’s cheek. Without stopping to think, Sutter reached out and smoothed the hair back from her face. With a sigh, Mandy turned toward the caress, her hands reaching. Sutter froze, then let out a long breath when she tucked one hand beneath her chin and let the other open limply on the sheet. He saw that her fingernails were very short.

Bitten off to the quick, I suppose. Damned little rabbit.

The partially sympathetic, mostly exasperated thought made Sutter’s mouth turn down. Then he realized that her nails were broken off, not chewed, and his mouth became a grim line. Gently he picked up the hand that lay motionless on the sheet. A dark line of blood on two of the fingernails gave silent testimony to the force with which she had clenched her hands on her purse during the flight to the island. She had bent and broken off her nails below the quick, making them bleed.

She had been terrified, but she hadn’t been without courage. The realization shook him. After his mother, Sutter expected very little from women in the way of fortitude. Yet everything he had seen of Mandy hinted that she fought to master her fears rather than to have them master her. And she fought with an intensity that transcended pain.

“Golden eyes,“ Sutter whispered as he very gently kissed Mandy’s fingertips one by one. “I’m so sorry. If I had only known….“

There was no answer. Sutter hadn’t expected one. His fingers had a fine trembling as he gently replaced Mandy’s hand on the cool sheet. The back of his hand accidentally brushed the resilience of her breasts as he withdrew. The feminine softness made his gut wrench with desire.

An instant later Sutter was across the tent and stretched out full-length on top of his own mattress, carefully thinking of nothing at all, most particularly not of the silken allure of Mandy’s breasts. Normally he would have been asleep as soon as his head met the pillow, but not tonight. He lay awake, restless, but it wasn’t merely hunger that kept sleep at bay. The disturbance Sutter felt went beyond simple desire. He had undressed women before, but never had one been so defenseless. He couldn’t forget how he had ignored her protests and stuffed her into the little plane, and how she had sat in a state of sustained terror throughout the flight. Yet she hadn’t given in to fear. That kind of self-control was totally unexpected, especially for a woman like Mandy, who seemed to see life as a series of one-line jokes delivered on any and every subject that occurred to her.

How could the same woman who crooked her finger at me with a saucy, sexy smile in front of hundreds of people be in a state of stark terror over a half-hour flight in a small plane?

Sutter rolled over and looked at Mandy sleeping within arm’s reach on the other side of the tent. In the cloth-filtered illumination of the flashlight, her body was all golden curves and black velvet shadows. The sight was so disturbing that he reached to turn off the flashlight. Before he touched the pillowcase his fingers hesitated and finally withdrew. If a nightmare awakened Mandy, she would need the comfort of light to orient herself.

With strong, impatient hands Sutter pushed his pillow into a more comfortable shape. As he lifted his fingers from the cloth he realized that they retained the faintest scent of Mandy’s perfume. He rolled over abruptly, turning his back on the golden woman who slept in velvet shadows. For a long time he lay without moving, listening to the silky rush of air through the she-oak needles. Finally he fell into a deep sleep permeated by scented, elusive dreams.

Wind gently rocked the tent, making the enclosure expand and shrink as though breathing. Sun poured in a thick triangle of brilliant yellow light through the half-open front flap. Mandy stirred, stretched and smiled before she was fully awake. The soft sounds of wind and sea were a lullaby she hadn’t heard for two years, soothing and renewing at the same time. Her stomach growled, disturbing her contentment. An instant later memories came – a long flight in a big plane, a shorter flight in a smaller plane and a timeless period of hell trapped in a tiny plane suspended over an endless sea.

Mandy sat upright, her heart pounding. The prosaic canvas ceiling assured her that she was no longer flying. Floor, walls, sheets, mattress. A tent. But where? Vaguely she remembered the auctioneer saying something about Sutter’s Australian vacation not being a tour of luxury resorts.

You will be sleeping in a tent.

Well, that explained it. She had finally arrived at her destination, whatever and wherever that might be. Now, was she supposed to cook and eat the tent as well as sleep in it? A single look at the faded canvas floor checked that particular flight of fancy. Perhaps the mattress….

As Mandy looked down to measure the mattress’s potential edibility, she realized that she was wearing almost nothing. She couldn’t remember undressing the previous night. In fact, now that she thought about it, she couldn’t remember the previous night at all. Frowning, she tried to calculate how many hours she might have lost. The angle of the sunlight streaming into the tent suggested either midmorning or midafternoon. She looked at her wristwatch before she remembered it was set for California, not Australia. She had no idea how many time zones she had crossed. She did know that she had crossed the international date line, which meant she had flown into tomorrow. Or was it yesterday?

Sighing, Mandy decided that it didn’t matter. She was on vacation, so she must be having a hell of a good time, if only she could remember it.

Think.

The last thing she remembered was gratefully getting off the plane at a place called Bundaberg, whose location in the greater Australian geographic scheme of things was still a mystery to her. She knew the town was close to the ocean, because the little plane had turned immediately on takeoff and had been out over the water very quickly.

Sudden sweat bathed Mandy’s body as memories returned. A little white plane waiting. Sutter’s eyes green and narrow and furious, totally indifferent to her terror. His shocking strength as he boosted her into the plane and strapped her down with the seat belt. A rush of ground, a sickening leap into air, pure cold terror exploding. Waiting to crash. Praying to die in the crash this time. Waiting. Praying. And then a low, comforting voice, an encouraging touch, Sutter’s strong hands lifting her out of terror. Safe. Finally safe, gentle strength and blessed darkness descending.

Comforting voice? Encouraging touch? Gentle strength? Sutter? Lord, I must have been hallucinating!

And then the rest of the memories came. She had embarrassed herself in front of Sutter, revealing her weaknesses and carefully hidden fear of small planes, the sea, boats. Humiliation swept through Mandy in a red tide that went from her toenails to her scalp. Had she really told Sutter to go to hell? And had he really said that she was the one who would be comfortable there?

It’s dry and there’s not a pair of wings in sight.

Oh, yes. It definitely had happened.

Mandy put her flaming face in her hands. She wanted to crawl beneath the sheet and hide forever. It was bad enough to know that she was a coward; to have others know it was unbearable. And to have Sutter know it was unspeakable.

Her stomach growled again, insistently, informing her that embarrassment was no reason to starve to death. People never died of humiliation – they just wished they had. Lack of food, however, could definitely be lethal.

Too bad starving takes so long,
Mandy thought wryly.
No matter how much my stomach growls, I’ll still be alive and kicking wretchedly when Sutter comes back here to sleep.

The thought of Sutter sleeping within reach of her mattress made Mandy’s stomach do an odd little flip. How would she manage it in the small tent? How would she be able to fall asleep listening to him breathe? How would she undress without bumping into him?

As a matter of fact, how had she managed to undress last night?

No matter how hard Mandy tried, she couldn’t remember anything after an angry, disgusted Sutter had left her and strode off to who knows where. She had fallen asleep within moments, and she had been fully clothed at the time. She was sure of it. She couldn’t remember awakening to undress herself, either. No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember awakening at all except for this morning.

If it was morning.

Mandy went over every instant that she remembered since being manhandled into the tiny plane. Gradually she was forced to acknowledge that Sutter must have undressed her after she had fallen asleep. The evidence of it was everywhere. Skirt and blouse set aside haphazardly, panty hose in a tangle on the floor, shoes kicked down to the end of the mattress. She wasn’t the most tidy creature on earth, but she wasn’t in the habit of shedding clothes at random and leaving them where they dropped.

With a sinking feeling Mandy looked down at the two bands of blue lace that were all that stood between her and complete nakedness. Staunchly she told herself there was no reason to be embarrassed; women all over the world went swimming in public with suits that covered less flesh than her underwear. Besides, it wasn’t as though Sutter would have taken any pleasure in undressing her. His contempt for her couldn’t have been clearer.

Locked up in a tent for three weeks with an amateur comedian who’s afraid of her own shadow.
And then, even worse,
With luck, you’ll be safe in your little burrow at home before the last of the pills wear off.

Her mouth turned down in a wry curve as she acknowledged the aptness of Sutter’s description; she was a silly little rabbit afraid of its own shadow. It had been two years since the accident, yet all she could do was take shallow baths and fly on 747s. Well, not quite all. The second plane she had flown on had been about a quarter the size of the big jumbo jets, and she hadn’t disgraced herself on that one. She hadn’t panicked or screamed or wept or thrown up, and she had been fully capable of walking off the plane under her own power at the end of the flight.

When you got right down to it, she hadn’t disgraced herself on the little plane, either; at least, not right away. She had shut down rather than come apart in hysterics, and if the effort of keeping herself together had exhausted her so much that she had fainted at Sutter’s feet at the end of the flight, well, that could be endured. The bottom line was that she had flown in a small plane.

And she had survived it.

Mandy’s breath came out in a long sigh. Despite all the fears and humiliations she had endured since she had left California on her totally unexpected vacation, she felt more at peace with herself than she had since the instant she had walked into a tent halfway around the world and had seen her husband topping off a sand bunny.

Smiling wryly, Mandy reached for the garish backpack, hoping Anthea had managed to pack some cool clothing for her most recent project. The first handful Mandy pulled out was promising – underwear of an extraordinary silky lace. Black, deep rose, cream, the underwear was as thin as a whisper and twice as soft. The second handful yielded two pairs of khaki shorts and several pairs of thick cotton socks. The third handful looked more like a pile of colored string than anything to wear. After a few moments, Mandy sorted everything into three bikini bottoms and six bikini tops. That answered the question of what she was expected to wear with the khaki shorts.

Further rummaging yielded several plain white blouses, a slinky sarong skirt and wrap top that would serve for covering up at the beach or for dressing up anywhere else, a pair of slip-on beach thongs and a pair of delicate leather sandals. Then there were various cosmetics, a hairbrush, toothbrush, comb, soap, heavy-duty sunscreen, feminine items and a small box of…

“Ohmygod.“

For a moment of stark disbelief, Mandy stared at the trade name and happy couple that covered one side of the box. She opened it quickly, still unable to believe that the contents were as advertised. As small, neatly wrapped packets fell into her palm, she laughed helplessly. Anthea hadn’t been joking when she had urged an affair with an Australian, and she had included just the thing to make sure Mandy would have an affair to remember rather than one to regret Almost afraid to continue, Mandy went back to emptying out the backpack. Nothing else unexpected turned up until the very bottom. There was an envelope with her name written across it in Anthea’s clear, distinctive handwriting. Inside was six hundred dollars Australian, plus a note.

Mandy,

I sent your scuba gear ahead so you wouldn’t have to worry about it. If something is missing or doesn’t fit, buy a replacement with the enclosed. Otherwise, spend it all on something that makes you smile.

Diving gear?

For an instant Mandy was utterly motionless, torn in opposite directions, helpless. Part of her ached to know again the beauty and freedom of diving in the blue infinity of the sea. And part of her froze in terror at the thought. With hands that weren’t quite steady, she began repacking the backpack, putting the damning little box in first. She could just imagine what Sutter would think of her if he saw it.

Mandy dressed quickly, stuffed a few of the Australian bills in the pocket of her khaki shorts, grabbed the backpack and a frayed white towel that had been folded neatly at the end of her mattress and headed out of the tent. No matter how rudimentary the accommodations, she was certain they included some kind of bathroom.

Fifty yards away there was a scattering of tents. A hundred yards distant were several small cottages. Two larger buildings were somewhat closer. Mandy headed for them. A few minutes later she was enjoying a freshwater shower, soaping the residue of her trip from hair and skin, loving every instant of it. Feeling as though she had been reborn, she dried off, combed her hair, stepped into her new clothes and set off to find something that would end the rumbling complaints of her stomach.

Her luck held. The first building she tried contained the small bar. Ray was sitting there, flirting with the sun-streaked blonde who was handing him a beer.