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Fala’isi was an island in the Pacific, set like a green jewelin a sea so blue it hurt the eyes. The crew was booked in for the usual hectic week, and on the last evening just before dinner Aura was disturbed by a telephone call from New Zealand.

  ‘Aura?’ It was Jessica, her voice tinny and far away.

  ‘Jess? What’s the matter?’ The telephone seemed to have waves on the line, a positive sea of them, and behind the crackle and hiss Jessica’s voice ebbed and flowed, so that all she could hear were disconnected words.

  ‘—asked where—didn’t, of course—but—so I wanted to make sure—’

  ‘Jess, I can’t hear more than a word you’re saying! There must be sunspots, or something. Look, fax would be better.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Fax it. F-A-X.’

  ‘Oh, all right. No, wait—’ Inexorably her voice faded into static.

  Aura sighed, fossicked through the information the hotel had packaged for visitors, found the fax number and read it out, slowly and clearly, three times.

  ‘OK,’ Jessica said clearly before another wave of electronic interference broke over the line.

  Aura put the telephone down and rubbed gently between her brows, telling herself very firmly not to frown. It hadn’t worried her before, she had felt free to do what she wanted with her face, but modelling tended to make you conscious of such things. In many ways it was a narcissistic way to earn a living. She admired the creativity that went into it and the models for their sheer stamina, and she would always be grateful for the money she earned, but she would be glad to give it up.

  Picking up a towel, she went off down to the beach.

  She expected to find a fax waiting for her when she came back, but enquiries revealed that nothing had arrived. Probably Jessica had decided it wasn’t worth worrying about, she thought with resignation. After all, she’d be in Auckland in thirty-six hours.

  She ate dinner with the rest of the crew, turned down an invitation to an island night, and went up to bed. It had been three months now, and she shouldn’t still be missing Flint with every breath of her body, every heart beat, as though someone had torn a necessary part of her away.

  Perhaps it was just because she was back in the tropics. Not that Fala’isi was much like Australia, beyond the superficial resemblance of heat and palms and a warm sea. The sound of this sea resounded in her ears, its great smooth rollers crashing on to the reef that protected the white beaches, and the air smelt faintly of the tang of the tropics, coconut and sweetly scented flowers and salt, the rich, moist scent of fertility and life.

  She switched off her light and lay on her side, looking at the window. If only Flint hadn’t been so remote that last morning. She had known then that it was over. If they had quarrelled she could have used the emotion to connect with him, but she had no weapons against that calm, impersonal kindness, that armour of self-possession.

  A tear gathered in the comer of her eye, trickled on to her pillow. But she would not cry. There must be an end to this pain sooner or later.

  The rest of the crew left on the early morning plane, but, as she’d decided to stay on a day, she planned to lie late in bed. However, dawn found her awake, so she got up and put on shorts and a top and went down through the quiet hotel, exchanging greetings with the few people who were about, then walked along the gleaming sand, looking at the small island on the reef where she had been photographed the day before.

  A tall figure at the far end of the beach made her grimace; she didn’t want to have to smile at anyone else. She would turn before he did, and head off along the other way. In the meantime she ordered herself to enjoy the freshness of the air, already warm, yet tangy with the scent of the forest on the high inland mountains, and the soft sound of the waves as they touched languidly on to the coarse white coral sand. The sun caught spray as a particularly large comber hit the reef, and for a second rainbows hung suspended in the crystal air.

  Sudden tears prolonged the rainbow. Aura sniffed. Here it was always summer. At home, in spite of the show of freesias with their exquisite lemon scent, and daphne, spicy and pink, it was still spring, and the year was just gearing up for the magical slow slide into summer.

  Homesickness washed over her. It had been a mistake to stay the extra day. If she had left with the crew she would have been in Auckland by now. She turned abruptly and walked as quickly as she could down the beach and into the hotel.

  A touch on her shoulder made her jump and whirl around.

  ‘Why are you crying?’ Flint asked curtly as she stared at him in something very close to horror.

  ‘Was that you on the beach?’ she said stupidly.

  He nodded. He looked the same, impregnable as ever, and she hated him for it. She’d been slowly dying inside, and he’d just gone on his way without feeling anything. No doubt when he thought of her it was with a faint contempt. Or did he think she was a good one-night stand?

  Because whatever other opinion he had of her, he couldn’t deny that. It had been as good for him as it was for her.

  It was ironically amusing, when you thought of it. She had given her virginity to a man who thought she was little better than a whore.

  And she had the feeling that she was never going to be able to find another man to live up to him.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Aura asked jerkily, averting her face. ‘Or is this just a coincidence, like the last time you found me in a hotel?’

  ‘No.’ Flint spoke with a clipped intonation that made her withdraw even further. ‘This time I came looking for you.’

  ‘How did you know where I was?’ she croaked, voicing the first foolish question that came to mind because she couldn’t ask the more important ones.

  ‘I rang Jessica. She told me.’

  ‘No. She wouldn’t tell anyone where I was.’ Of course, that’s what last night’s call had been about. Jessica had been trying to warn her.

  He smiled unpleasantly. ‘Oh, when I told her why I wanted to see you she gave me your address.’

  ‘Why?’ she asked warily,

  ‘Why did I hunt you down?’ He put his hand into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out a river of green fire. ‘To return these.’

  Aura’s eyes widened, but she made no attempt to take themfrom him. ‘Where did you find those?’ she demanded. The day after she had signed the contract she had gone to the jeweller’s to buy them back, but they had already been resold.

  ‘I bought them.’

  She swallowed. ‘Why?’

  His smile was self-derisory. ‘Oh, put it down to sentimentality.’

  Frowning, she asked, ‘How did you know I’d sold them?’

  ‘I met your cousin Alick one day in Auckland. He’d just come empty-handed out of the jeweller’s. Apparently Natalie had gone weeping to him to ask him if he could buy them back.’

  Her face lit up. ‘Dear Alick,’ she said tenderly.

  He slid the chain of green fire through his fingers, watching them with narrowed eyes. ‘Unfortunately, dear Alick was unsuccessful, and he had to leave for Frankfurt the next day. The jeweller couldn’t tell him who had bought them—they’d been through a couple of hands since he sold them, gaining value as they went—but he did say he’d heard a rumour that they were going to America.’

  ‘So how did they get here?’ Aura asked tentatively.

  He looked into her face. ‘I offered to track them down, which I did. Then I made the buyer an offer he couldn’t refuse.’

  ‘For Alick?’

  ‘No,’ he said, smiling unpleasantly, ‘for me.’

  ‘But why?’ she asked numbly.

  He laughed softly. ‘I said it was for sentimental reasons. You wore them the night I first kissed you, remember? The night at the opera. I’ve always hoped that one night I’ll make love to you when you’re wearing nothing but your lovely skin and these.’

  He tossed the necklace towards her. It sparkled and flashed in the drowsy air. Aura caught it
, feeling the weight and the interplay of colours, the cool smoothness of the gold warmed by his body heat.

  ‘Why did you bring them here?’ she whispered.

  He hesitated, then said, ‘Because you came up to Matakana.’

  She closed her eyes. Had he been there, watching her? Humiliation clogged her throat, cast a clammy pall over her skin. ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Jean-Pierre told me.’

  ‘He doesn’t know me.’

  Flint’s mouth moved in a cold smile. ‘No, but when he raved about a woman with hair the colour of the best burgundy, and great green eyes that were sad enough to kill oneself for, and a mouth that was made to speak French, not clumsy English, I knew who he’d seen.’

  Aura said nothing; she was too busy cursing herself for giving in to that compelling need to see the vineyard.

  Flint said, ‘We can’t talk here. Come up to my suite.’

  He spoke so matter-of-factly that she couldn’t find the words to object, and within minutes she found herself in an opulent sitting-room, so many questions fighting for supremacy that she couldn’t ask any of them.

  She stood irresolutely, watching his reflection in the mirror as he picked up a telephone and ordered breakfast from room-service. Broad shoulders and lean hips, an effortless animal grace that sent shivers of response down her body; the arrogant epitome of force and power.

  When he had replaced the receiver he turned to where she hovered beside a leather sofa and commanded, ‘Sit down. I’m not going to eat you.’

  Not yet, anyway, his smile and glance, swift and predatory, promised.

  Aura sat down, and this time she was able to ask, ‘Why did you go to so much trouble?’

  ‘Can’t you guess, Aura?’

  Slowly she shook her head. ‘No.’

  ‘What have you been doing since I saw you last?’

  ‘Working.’

  ‘Still modelling?’

  Her hackles rose at the distaste in his voice, but she said firmly and without emotion, ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why did you take it up?’ He spoke idly, but she knew him too well. There was nothing idle in his interest.

  She shrugged. ‘You know why. For the same reason I sold the garnets. I needed the money.’

  ‘Your mother’s just married an extremely rich man. By all accounts he’s as generous as he is rich, and he’s certainly besotted by Natalie. You don’t have to work. You could have an idyllic life with them.’

  Still not looking at him she said coolly, ‘No.’ She would never take money from a man.

  His dark brows lifted, but he pursued, ‘You’re doing fairly well, I gather. Do you plan to make it your career?’

  ‘No. At the beginning of next year I’m looking for a job.’

  For some reason this amused him. ‘Really? What?’

  ‘I did a double major in information systems and marketing,’ she said acidly. ‘I don’t expect to have much difficulty finding work.’

  This time she surprised him. His brows shot up further and he looked more than a little taken aback. ‘I see.’

  Something compelled her to add, ‘Didn’t Paul tell you?’

  ‘Paul and I didn’t discuss you at all,’ he said shortly.

  She raised delicately mocking brows. ‘How about this dossier you had compiled?’

  His smile was ironic. ‘It was sketchy, little more than gossip. I told you about it to gauge your reaction. I’m afraid I imagined your degree to be the usual fashionable BA. Paul may have tried to tell me, but I cut him off whenever he started to talk about you. Where did you do this degree?’

  It couldn’t do any harm to tell him. ‘At a polytech in West Auckland.’

  ‘What decided you to graduate in those subjects?’ he asked absently.

  She shot him a suspicious look, but there was nothing to be discerned in the harsh features but mild interest. ‘Originally I decided to be an accountant.’ Her mouth twisted wryly. ‘It seemed a good idea, and maths and accounting were two of my best subjects at school.’

  A quiet knock on the door heralded a waiter with a breakfast trolley. When he had finished setting the table and was gone, Flint said, ‘Would you like to pour the coffee?’

  He didn’t tell her how he had it and she didn’t ask. She had forgotten nothing about him. Although the food smelt divine as only coffee and bacon could, he didn’t sit down. Nor did he ask her more about her education.

  Instead he said distantly, ‘Have you seen Paul lately?’

  Aura flinched. ‘No.’

  ‘Neither have I, but I hear he’s recovering.’

  ‘Good. I’m glad.’

  He walked across to a window, stopping to stare moodily out at the sunny beach. Someone was sweeping the sand, singing in a deep bass one of the cheerful songs that seemed to grow in the very air here.

  Aura sipped a little coffee, then put the cup back. She looked at the food, but her hunger had died.

  ‘That’s not why I wanted to see you,’ he said at last. ‘Why did you go up to Matakana?’

  Aura’s heart began to beat heavily in her breast, in the hollow at the base of her throat, echoing in her ears. She looked down at her coffee, noting the way the steam wisped across the rich liquid in the bone-china cup.

  ‘I read an article in a magazine,’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘I just wanted to see the place.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  ‘Oh, yes. It was beautiful.’

  Another silence.

  Then, ‘I tracked you down,’ he said deliberately, ‘because I’ve discovered that I can’t live without you.’

  Coffee cascaded into her saucer. Aura managed to straighten it before any overflowed further, but her hands were trembling too much to hold it safely, so she had to set cup and saucer down on the table with a little chink that sounded far too loud in the quiet room. She sat with her head bowed, unable to look away, her whole attention bent on the words that had just rasped past her ear.

  ‘Did you hear me?’ he demanded.

  ‘Yes, I heard you.’ Her voice was cool and steady.

  ‘And,’ he said deliberately, ‘because it seemed that if you’d taken the trouble to come up to Matakana you were at least getting over Paul.’

  ‘It’s a matter of having to,’ she said stonily.

  ‘Do you still dream about him?’

  She shook her head. Still not looking at him she said, ‘It was only that once. Flint, it won’t work.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I don’t—’

  ‘I know that I’ve done everything possible to make you hate me, but there were times when you liked me, Aura. When we aren’t fighting we get on well. And now there’s no reason to fight.’ His urgent interruption caught her attention as nothing else could.

  She looked up. He had turned his head and was watching her. The autocratic pirate’s face was set in lines of rigid control.

  ‘Flint...’ she began, exhausted.

  With the speed of a cornered animal, he came away from the window. Before Aura had a chance to continue he pulled her up from the sofa and into his arms, holding her tightly against the disciplined male hardness of his body.

  ‘If there’s no other way,’ he said in a voice that ached through her, a voice where cynicism and a black desire were blended, ‘I can reach you like this.’

  His mouth crushed her protests, reduced them to ciphers in her brain, to shadows, and then to oblivion. The kiss had something of desperation in it, as though he had been starved for this, had lain awake for long nights eaten by need for her.

  For a second Aura resisted, until a reciprocal fire and passion overwhelmed her self-control. Her endless yearning and the sudden masculine assault swept away her defences. She sank into mindlessness, glorying in capitulation, dimly aware in some distant region of her brain that her surrender was composed of intricate strands of conquest and yielding woven together to form a pattern of equality.

  Eventually he lifted his mouth to mutter, ‘
If this is all there is for you, it will do for the time being. You drive me mad, you’ve taken up residence in my heart, in my mind, in my soul, and nothing I can do will get rid of you. I’ve never needed a woman before, never wanted one that I couldn’t do without, but you stormed into my heart, demolished all the walls and took it over, and since the first time I saw you I’ve been only half a person.’

  Aura said with difficulty, ‘It’s not—’

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Don’t say no, not yet. Let me dream a little longer.’

  ‘Flint—’ The rest of the sentence was obliterated by another kiss. Sighing, Aura gave herself up to rapture, returning it with all the passion that was in her.

  ‘You do want me,’ he said at last when she was breathless and trembling, looking at her with such naked passion blazing in his golden eyes that her resistance leached away.

  She smiled sadly. ‘Of course I want you.’

  His smile was a mixture of triumph and pain. ‘I don’t know how to deal with this. I thought it would be easy, that I’d use this violent attraction between us to get you into my bed, and then infiltrate your defences so cunningly that before you knew it you’d love me. But I’m greedy; I want it all, and I want it now.’

  ‘What do you want?’ He didn’t answer, merely watched her with intent, half-closed eyes. ‘What do you want?’ she insisted.

  He looked away, his face hard and taut and hungry. ‘I suppose you deserve your pound of flesh.’

  Releasing her, he stepped back. After a momentary hesitation he said through his teeth, ‘I want you to love me as much as I love you.’

  Aura’s heart went into overdrive. ‘Do you love me?’ she asked, dry-mouthed.

  ‘Of course I bloody well love you!’ He stared furiously at her, and then laughed, a harsh, mirthless sound. ‘If you knew how many times I’ve tried to work out how I’d approach you. I thought, she deserves tenderness, she’s had precious little of it, so I’ll be tender. But I can’t do it, not without knowing how you feel.’

  ‘All you had to say,’ she said quietly, ‘was that you loved me. Because I’ve loved you since the second time we met.’

  He went white, then as the dark colour flooded back into his skin he grabbed her in a swift, clumsily desperate movement that was a far cry from his usual grace. He didn’t kiss her again; for long seconds he stood staring over her head, with his arms so tight around her that she could barely breathe, his heart beating like a trip-hammer against her.