A Little Corner Of Paradise. Catherine Spencer

you?’ she returned, and added with disarming diffidence, ‘So have I.’

      ‘Then let’s forget about work and concentrate on recreation. I’ve got everything ready down on the beach, except for this stuff here. If you can carry the blanket and radio, I can manage the rest.’

      ‘You’ve gone to so much trouble,’ she said, staring around her when they arrived at his pre-selected hollow in the dunes. ‘I hadn’t expected anything quite so…elegant.’

      ‘Why not?’ He spread the blanket for her to sit on, placed a couple of cushions in the small of her back, then put a match to the kindling. ‘You’re an elegant lady and deserve nothing less.’

      She smiled at him and said, ‘And you’re very gallant.’

      He smiled back, and hoped that the deceit didn’t show in his eyes.

       CHAPTER THREE

      ‘A SIMPLE dinner,’ he’d said when he’d issued the invitation. ‘Remember, I’m living out of a camper.’

      But it was a camper that ran to mohair blankets and quilted cushions, and his idea of simplicity included champagne cooling in an ice-bucket. Madeleine was glad she’d worn her apricot cashmere sweater and silk-lined woollen trousers instead of the fleecy jacket and jeans she’d originally considered. Glad, too, that vanity had compelled her to sprite her throat with a little Alfred Sung cologne and to add a touch of mascara to her already dark lashes.

      ‘I got steaks,’ he said, poking at the flames and arranging the bed of coals so that he could prop a metal grill over it. ‘And potatoes and mushrooms. How does that sound?’

      ‘Perfect.’

      All the time he spoke he was busy unloading from the picnic hamper. Little foil-wrapped packages emerged that she assumed were the potatoes and mushrooms, followed by plates made of rather good china, and fluted glasses that, though plain, were definitely crystal.

      ‘Thought we’d start with champagne,’ he said, tackling the corked bottle with casual familiarity. ‘And smoked salmon. It’s going to take a while before the potatoes are ready.’

      The champagne foamed and sparkled in the firelight; the smoked salmon bites glowed like uncut jewels. The air was completely still, allowing the smoke to spiral straight up into the night. Beyond the shelter of the dunes the surf mumbled and complained, but the hollow Nick had found seemed charmed, a place removed from the everyday world. Madeleine sank back against the cushions, that sense of rightness she’d experienced from the first with him flourishing more strongly than ever.

      ‘A little music, and we’re all set,’ he said, fiddling with the radio dials until he found a station playing light classics. He cocked a dark eyebrow her way, inquiringly. ‘This OK with you, Madeleine?’

      ‘Perfect,’ she said again, intoxicated by something more potent than the champagne.

      The firelight danced over his face, blurring his features with shadows and masking him with a mystery tinged with a delicious edge of danger.

      Dropping down beside her, he sprawled on one elbow and tapped the rim of his glass against hers. ‘Here’s hoping that dinner is edible.’

      ‘I’m not worried.’

      He smiled engagingly. ‘Perhaps you should be. I’m not renowned for my cooking, but restaurants are a dime a dozen and I thought something like this—’ he gestured at the scene around them ‘—would be a change. Come to think of it, though, I don’t suppose it’s all that novel an experience for you, living so close to the shore. You probably average a beach picnic a week.’

      ‘When I was in junior high school, yes,’ she admitted. ‘My girlfriends would come out on the weekends during the summer months and we’d have wiener roasts and beach parties. But it wasn’t the beach that was the big attraction so much as the place next door.’

      ‘I can understand why,’ he said. ‘I find myself quite obsessed by the poor old relic, too.’

      ‘But it wasn’t always the way it is today.’ She shook her head, remembering how awed she and her crowd had been by the Tyler Resort. ‘Back then, it seemed the epitome of sophisticated elegance to us, a sort of for-bidden Shangri-La that never lost its fascination. I remember one time a whole gang of us went sneaking over there and swam in the outdoor pool.’

      ‘Did you get caught?’

      ‘No. There was some sort of costume ball being held and people were too busy having a good time inside to notice what was happening out.’

      He laughed. ‘I bet you all had a pretty good time, too.’

      ‘Not really,’ she said, smiling at the memory. ‘We were too terrified by our own daring, tiptoeing through the bushes and slipping into the water without making a splash, and always looking over our shoulders to make sure no one saw us. The thrills came the next day when we regaled everyone else at school with what we’d done. I suppose if anyone had asked what we all wanted most from life at that time we’d probably have said, to be part of that glamorous segment of society that used to gather on the fringes of our very ordinary lives.’

      ‘They were probably very ordinary people, too.’

      ‘Not all of them. When my mother first came here, as a bride, some very well-known names and faces used to be seen at the lodge. Movie-stars, politicians, even minor royalty.’ She paused, recalling winter evenings when she’d been a little girl and the wind had screamed like a banshee around the farmhouse. She had used to cuddle up on the long sofa that flanked the living-room fireplace, and listen entranced as her mother talked about those grand old days. The resort might have sunk into dilapidation, but the tales of its former grandeur endured, untouched by time.

      ‘You’re looking very pensive all of a sudden,’ Nick said. ‘Does talking about the place stir up unhappy memories?’

      ‘It’s not the past that’s bothering me; it’s the future— at least, as far as the resort is concerned.’

      ‘How so?’

      She shook her head. ‘Don’t get me started! You came here looking for peace and quiet, not to listen to me rambling on about my pet peeves and boring you to tears.’

      ‘I cannot imagine ever finding you boring, Madeleine,’ he said quietly.

      She laughed. “Then you don’t have a very vivid imagination.’

      ‘On the contrary, at the moment it’s running wild.’ His voice was low and intimate, his gaze on her mouth so irresistibly sensual that her amusement withered and left her throat arid as a desert. ‘More to the point, though, is that I’m a good listener if you’ll give me half a chance.’ He emptied the last of the champagne into their glasses. ‘So, instead of worrying about boring me, why don’t you just tell me what it is that’s troubling you about the place next door?’

      He could charm apples off trees with that voice, she decided, aware that she was falling more helplessly under his spell with each passing moment. ‘It’s nothing very exciting,’ she said lamely.

      ‘It doesn’t have to be,’ he assured her, his words stroking warmly over her skin. I’ve got all the excitement I can handle right now, just being with you and looking at you.’

      A blush sprang to life in the pit of her stomach and spread to points south with embarrassing effect. ‘Um…thank you…I think…’ she managed, drawing her knees primly together and clasping her hands around them to keep them in place.

      ‘I’m waiting, Madeleine.’

      And she was practically trembling! ‘The man who owns it doesn’t care about it,’ she babbled, rushing headlong into an explanation that she prayed made more sense to Nick than