Substitute Bride (12 page)

She was raising her hands to push him away when a huge wave swept over their lightly clad bodies, the suction of the receding water moulding them together. Her eyes widened and she gasped as she felt his natural response to her thin but very feminine figure. Yet when she tried to pull back the sand was drawn from under her feet, making her cling to him.

Her weight wasn't great, but the sand undermined his balance as wel, toppling them both on to the sea bed where the next wave engulfed them completely.

Half drowning in sea water and warm, sensuous feeling, Emma could do nothing as Rick took her mouth again, pinning her body with his to keep her under him on the fine, shifting sand. Wildly she clutched at him, aware only of her reeling senses, while some pagan-like emotion drew them fiercely together. Unconsciously she gasped as he went on kissing her, his mouth hardening with a desire which seemed reflected in the driving force of his limbs.

'Emma?' he muttered against her trembling mouth,

'Emma? Let me love you.'

If he hadn't spoken she couldn't have refused him anything. Why did he ask? she wondered, unable immediately to escape the deep yearning inside her. Why didn't he just take?

When instinctively she said no, without meaning to, he exclaimed harshly, 'You haven't refused other men.'

As the tide receded, he grasped a handful of her streaming hair, breaking the contact of their lips long enough to stare at her. His eyes, she saw dazedly, were full of raw flames. He was aroused and wanting her, but any woman might have done.

'Let me go, Rick.' The words were difficult to get out past the ones she realy wanted to utter. Knowing she loved him and was refusing a chance of belonging to him brought tears to her eyes. Helplessly she felt them streaming down her cheeks, as the weight of his body pressing down between her legs hurt.

He let her go at once, with the air of a man full of contempt. 'I've told you before, you're a little tease,' he rasped, puling her up beside him.

Unable to reply coherently,. Emma stood shaking her head. Noticing her distress, he enquired coldly.

'Did I hurt you?'

'No,' but her voice broke.

'Then why weep?'

'Why does any woman weep?' she did her best to avoid a straight answer.

'Why indeed?' he murmured dryly. 'Usualy to help them get their own way. Unfortunately men become hardened to that kind of blackmail, especialy with someone like you.'

'Oh, leave me alone,' she muttered, turning from him with a twist of her thin body, to run up the beach. As she got back into her clothes she felt she hated him because he clearly considered her too sophisticated to be genuinely upset. She hated herself, too, for crying over a man who disliked her.

Reminding herself of this, she felt oddly grateful that she had had the strength to say no when he had wanted to make love to her. While she loved Rick, she suspected the emotion which occasionaly drew them so violently together had little to do with actual loving. It frightened her even to think of it, the passion which could move through them so strongly, because she feared she might not be able to resist it for ever.

Rick would take and then discard, leaving her broken and despairing, without giving her another thought.

Lunch, taken in one of the many hotels that dotted the island, was a silent meal. It wasn't until they reached the coffee stage that Emma found the courage to ask Rick a few questions about Barbados, which she felt might be a safer topic than anything else.

Eventualy, however, she heard herself asking, 'Would you tell me about St Lusanda? Is your plantation there the same as at Coral Bay?'

'Who told you about St Lusanda?' he startled her by asking sharply. 'I certainly didn't.'

'No.' Emma realised she had almost made a stupid mistake. It had been Blanche who had told her, and that wouldn't please Rick. 'I—I can't remember,' she stammered uneasily. 'Someone must have done…'

'You aren't a good liar, are you?' he rejoined softly. 'At a guess it was Blanche.'

Unhappily, Emma nodded, without attempting to deviate again. 'She only said you spent a lot of time there.'

'And she didn't approve?'

'You probably know she didn't,' Emma replied shortly,

'but it was only because she didn't like the idea of you being away from her.'

'But she liked less the prospect of spending weeks there with me?'

Finding it impossible to deny this, Emma gazed at him uncertainly. 'Perhaps she thought it would be lonely.'

'I'm beginning to think I've had a lucky escape,' Rick retorted cynicaly. 'Of course,' he added, eyeing Emma dryly,

'it's obviously a case of out of the frying pan into the fire.

Would the thought of spending a honeymoon with me on a lonely island deter you, my dear Emma?'

While she knew he was deliberately trying to embarrass her, her heart suddenly leapt and the hand that held her cup of coffee shook. How dared he so calously torment her?

'Are you shaking with fear or anticipation?' he jeered cruely, watching her hot face.

'Why should I be shaking from either?' she glared at him defiantly. 'The question won't arise…'

'Won't it?' he merely grinned derisively.

'Rick,' suddenly discarding discretion completely, Emma leant over the table eagerly, 'can't we talk sensibly?

Honeymoons aside, I would like to see your island. When you go, would you take me?'

'No, I don't think so,' cooly his glance traveled over her again. 'Why should I? There's no entertainment on St Lusanda. We should have to amuse ourselves, and you've made it quite clear that you have no intention of amusing yourself with me.'

The implication of what he said couldn't have been plainer. The flush on Emma's cheeks deepened and in an effort to defend herself she exclaimed indiscreetly, 'Haven't you ever taken Veronica Ray there?'

'Yes,' he replied distantly, 'I have.'

No more—or less—but it was enough. Emma lapsed into a bitter silence, her face white. 'She's very beautiful,' she said at last.

'Yes.'

'Do you like her better than me?'

'I know her better than you.' He stood up with an impatient sigh. 'If you're quite finished, Emma, we can go. I have no intention of becoming the target for a ful-scale interrogation.'

Three days later he left for Canada where, he told her, he had business interests. This didn't altogether surprise her as already she had learnt that Canada had many links with the island, both business and otherwise. The association with Canada was a lengthy one. As long ago as the eighteenth century Barbados was importing timber from Halifax and Quebec while in return Canada bought molasses and rum.

There were Canadian research stations on the island and a lot of Canadians lived here, while many Barbadians went to Canadian universities and eventualy made their homes there.

Ben had gone to a Canadian university, but he told Emma if he settled anywhere it might be Australia.

When she asked Rick when he would be home again, he said briefly that he wasn't sure, and with that she had to be content. In a way she was relieved to see him go, as having to be near him each day, yet so distant, was becoming an intolerable strain. Since the day he had taken her swimming, she had barely seen him except at dinner, and this was a meal she had come to hate, as almost always he ignored her. One evening he had dined out, Gail had hinted not alone, which only added to Emma's misery. Was he with Veronica? It was more than likely as she knew Veronica had spoken to him on the telephone late that afternoon.

Trying to hide her despair wasn't easy. If she had known it was going to be like this she doubted if she would ever have married him. Not even Hilda or Blanche's worst behaviour had seemed as hard to endure as the way Rick treated her.

During the first few days after he had gone, Emma felt terribly restless. She missed him, missed, strangely enough, the arrogance of his commanding figure as he went about the daily affairs of the plantation. For all he seldom spoke to her more than was absolutely necessary, she felt completely safe when he was around, as no one ever dared question his authority. Even Rita knew she could only go so far. During the evenings, if she persisted in making Emma the target for her vicious digs, Rick usualy silenced his stepmother with a queling glance, although he seldom came to Emma's rescue verbaly. Without him Emma felt surprisingly exposed even as she welcomed the breathing space his absence gave her.

Rita and Gail, now that Emma seemed no longer to pose any great threat to the security they enjoyed at Coral Bay, tolerated her but were never very friendly. It was Ben, she thought, who might have saved her sanity after Rick left without so much as kissing her goodbye. Without Ben's warm, easygoing companionship, she was sure she would never have survived.

The effects of overwork over the past three years, combined with the tensions of the last few weeks, were impossible to throw off immediately, but gradualy Emma managed it. To some extent she learnt to relax again. With a surfeit of sea and sand around her, this wasn't too difficult, and being only nineteen might have helped.

Ben took her fishing—at least, he taught her how to handle the boat while he fished. Having always been fond of boats, she applied herself meticulously to learning all about them, and the activity involved bridged the gap between the non-stop work she had been used to and having nothing to do. Very quickly she became proficient, earning Ben's unstinted admiration.

Her swimming improved, too. She had- been good at school and under his expert guidance she soon regained all her old skil. As soon as he considered her good enough he took her snorkeling, fitting her out with a mask and flippers, introducing her to the entrancing underwater beauty of the reefs. Always, when she was in the sea, she was reminded of the last time Rick had kissed her. Sometimes she had to force her thoughts away from the memory of his hard sensuous mouth crushing down on hers while the sea pounded wildly over them.

In an attempt to keep such memories at bay and to subdue her treacherous longings, while Ben was busy on the estate she explored the island on her own, spending some time in Bridgetown. Here she found an excelent hairdresser and beautician who was more than wiling to carry on the good work begun by his counterpart in Paris. Soon Emma's skin lost every hint of roughness and glowed with a fine, clear radiance: Her hair, too, began to shine with professional care and her own fundamentaly good health. Even her figure improved almost beyond anything she might have hoped for.

It rounded out, becoming—she tried not to think of Ben's outrageously frank expression, 'amazingly seductive.'

'Rick won't recognise you,' he teased. 'The whole island's talking of the way you've improved.'

'The whole island?' she protested, her delicate brows raised in mild amusement.

'Wel, you know me—I tend to exaggerate,' Ben grinned unrepentantly, 'but I'm not laying it on this time, young Emma.

When you first came the women were full of catty remarks, prompted by pity. They're still full of bitchiness, but now it's envy. Secretly some of them would give everything they possessed to look as you do now, and to know how you've done it.'

Emma frowned, never having had any ambition to attract this kind of attention. 'I haven't done anything, Ben. I think I've just recovered…'

'Recovered from what, for heaven's sake?' Ben asked curiously, as she hesitated.

'Oh, just this and that,' she forced herself to laugh lightly, as though she didn't realy know what she was talking about.

She might have said, truthfuly, from years of hard work and neglect, but this she preferred to forget. Explanations wouldn't only involve herself and wouldn't be worth it.

Ben appeared to have lost the drift of their conversation anyway, as he renewed his obviously enjoyable study of her.

His eyes roamed from her gleaming, golden head to her slim waist, before returning to the now near-perfect curves above it. Suddenly, as she turned uneasily from his intent scrutiny, he drew a shaken breath. 'Emma,' he pleaded hoarsely, 'if you ever tire of Rick, marry me.' 'Just like that?' she laughed, refusing to take him seriously, as she puled her light jacket tightly around her.

'Why not?' he persisted stubbornly. 'You know I wouldn't neglect you as Rick does.'

As this was something she would be foolish to try and deny, she was silent, nursing her unhappiness. The silence went on and she saw the compassion on Ben's face, as well as something of her own hopelessness. 'Perhaps if I'd been as beautiful as Veronica Ray?' she murmured wistfuly.

'Veronica and you aren't in the same street,' Ben returned crypticaly.

Which, Emma thought wryly, must prove her appearance hadn't improved as much as she imagined.

When Rita told her after lunch, one day, that Veronica had asked them all to another of the small parties she was so fond of giving, Emma was surprised.

'Why me?' she frowned. 'Are you sure I'm included?'

Rita assured her she was. Veronica had said so.

'Perhaps she's heard how the opposition appears to be improving,' Gail put in carelessly, 'and wants to see for herself.'

Rita's critical eyes swept over Emma in faint surprise, but she wasn't given to admiring other women. When Emma had first arrived she had described her as nondescript, and she rarely reversed an opinion. 'Looks aren't everything,' she stated coldly, speaking to her daughter as though Emma wasn't there. 'A man needs someone able to help him socialy. I doubt if Rick will remain satisfied with Emma much longer.'

Emma was still smarting from Rita's frank remarks as she attended Veronica's party with Rick's family a few days later.

Ben, despite Rita's obvious disapproval, refused to leave Emma's side. He was so attentive she began to feel embarrassed. He might have been setting himself up as her protector. Nor did he seem to be the only man to fancy himself for this position.

Miles Ray, Veronica's younger brother, a very wealthy bachelor in his own right, having inherited a lot of money, seldom took his eyes from her lovely face. 'I can't think how I haven't noticed you before,' he exclaimed, as he managed, with an expertise which reminded Emma oddly of Rick, to inveigle her away from Ben. Ben had frowned when Miles asked her to dance, but without creating a scene there was no way he could refuse to let her go.