Accidental Mistress. CATHY WILLIAMS

whether the captain would turn back and let her off at Heathrow if she asked nicely. Failing that, she could hop it back to England when they landed at Barbados and Angus Hamilton, with his far-fetched notions of applying a balm to his guilty conscience, would be none the wiser. He would shrug those powerful shoulders of his and get on with his holiday knowing that he had tried to make amends and she had rudely refused.

      He probably would not even miss the money he had spent on her airline ticket.

      But since she knew, deep down, that she would obey the instructions kindly laid out for her in the letter from his secretary she didn’t feel much better.

      She arrived at Barbados feeling rather ragged and, as the unknown secretary had helpfully advised in the letter which had accompanied the airline ticket, made her way to the transit desk and eventually onto the connecting flight to St Vincent.

      This time the scenery through the window was rather more spectacular. She left Barbados looking down at glittering blue sea and strips of white sand and landed in St Vincent to the same staggering view.

      The taxi driver was waiting outside the airport for her—just as the secretary had said he would be—when she emerged with her suitcase and her holdall.

      She had worn a loose, flowery skirt and a shortsleeved shirt, but nothing had prepared her for the heat that hit her the minute she was in the open. It was the sort of all-enveloping heat which she had never before experienced in England, not even when it got very hot during the best of the summer days.

      There was a great deal of activity outside the airport, taxi drivers waiting hopefully by their cars to take tourists to their destinations, but there was nothing frenetic about any of it. No one seemed to be in any kind of rush to get anywhere.

      ‘Where are you taking me?’ she asked the driver as he cruised off at one mile per hour.

      ‘Not far.’ He looked at her in the rear-view mirror, showing two rows of gleaming white teeth. ‘The hotel, it just along the south coast. Very nice place.’

      Lisa lapsed into silence to contemplate the scenery, leaning forward slightly in her seat with her hands nervously clutching her bag.

      Outside, the marvellous vista unfolded itself. Everything was so lush and green, heavy with the scent of the Tropics. She half wished that it would go on for ever, partly because it was so beautiful and partly because she was beginning to feel sick and nervous all over again.

      What on earth was she going to say to him? She wasn’t accustomed to mixing in sophisticated circles. She would be completely at a loss for witty, interesting topics of discussion. After one hour, she would no longer be the novelty which had amused him months ago in a hospital ward. She would revert to being just an ordinary young woman without much of a talent for being in the limelight.

      The taxi driver pulled up outside the hotel, which appeared to comprise a collection of stone cottages strewn with well thought out randomness amongst the lush vegetation.

      He helped her with her luggage and she was almost sorry to see him depart into the distance, driving away as slowly as he had arrived.

      She looked around her helplessly, noticing with a sinking heart the other visitors at the hotel who seemed to waft past her, laughing in their elegant attire. Would they all be on the liner? she wondered. Was this hotel one of the stops between ports? She had no idea. She glanced down at her clothes self-consciously, and when she raised her eyes to the reception desk there he was, standing there, just as she remembered him.

      He was wearing a pair of light olive-green trousers and a cream shirt and he was, thankfully, alone.

      As he approached her, she noticed how the other females strolling through the foyer darted glances at him, as if they couldn’t help themselves. ‘I thought,’ he said, ‘that you might back out at the last minute.’

      He was taller than she remembered. From a supine position on a hospital bed, it had been difficult to get a good idea of his height, but now she could see that he was over six feet tall, and already bronzed from the sun, so that his eyes looked bluer and more striking than she remembered.

      ‘I take it that your leg has now fully recovered from the experience?’ One of the hotel staff hurried up to gather her luggage and she followed him as he checked her in.

      ‘Yes, it has,’ she said to his profile, watching as he smiled and then turned to look at her. ‘Thank you very much for...this.’ She spread her arms vaguely to encompass everything around her. ‘It was very kind of you.’

      He was watching her as she said this, with a small smile on his mouth, and it was a relief when the porter interrupted them to show her to her room, which wasn’t a room at all, but in fact one of the stone cottages with a thatched roof and a marvellous view overlooking the sea. Blue, blue sea and white, white sand.

      ‘Was your trip all right?’

      ‘Oh, yes, thank you very much; it was fine.’

      ‘There’s no need to be quite so terrifyingly polite,’ he said, amused.

      ‘I’m sorry. Was I?’

      ‘You were.’ He folded his arms and looked at her. ‘You haven’t been invited along to be thrown to the sharks.’

      ‘No, I know that.’ She tried a smile.

      ‘That’s better.’ He smiled back at her. ‘You’re here to enjoy yourself. That’s why you came, isn’t it?’

      ‘Yes, of course.’ Her replies sounded stilted and she glanced around her for inspiration.

      ‘I’m surprised that you came at all, I don’t mind admitting. After what you had told me at the hospital about not accepting charity, I thought that you’d run a mile at the prospect of a holiday at my expense.’

      She resisted the temptation to apologize once again, but his remark filled her with dismay. Had he been banking on her not coming? Was that it?

      ‘I...accepted on impulse,’ she admitted, looking down to where her fingers were twined around the handle of her bag.

      ‘I’m glad to hear it. Now,’ he continued briskly, ‘I expect you’re feeling rather tired. He leaned against the doorframe and stared down at her. ‘There’s absolutely no need for you to emerge for dinner. They will happily bring you some food here if you’d rather just stay in and recover from the trip. Tomorrow morning we’re hoping to set sail.’

      ‘Yes, of course. Your secretary did list the itinerary. I have it here in my bag somewhere.’ She plunged nervously into the bowels of the tan bag and several bits of paper fluttered to the ground, accompanied by a half-empty packet of travel tissues, several sweets, her traveller’s cheques and her book, of which she had read very little on the plane.

      They both bent to recover the dropped items at the same time and their heads bumped. Lisa pulled away in embarrassment, red-faced, cursing the bag, which was much too large really and had somehow managed to attract quite a bit of paraphernalia in a way that her normal tiny one never did.

      ‘S-sorry,’ she stammered, burning with confusion as he handed her the packet of tissues and the sweets, which she stuffed back into the bag.

      ‘There’s no need to be nervous,’ he told her gently, kneeling opposite her.

      ‘I’m not nervous!’ She was kneeling too, her hands resting lightly on her thighs, her face close to his in the twilight which seemed to have descended abruptly in the space of about ten minutes. She remembered reading that about the Tropics. There was no lingering dusk. Night succeeded day swiftly.

      ‘Of course you are,’ he said, as though surprised that she could deny the obvious. ‘You’re going on a fortnight’s vacation on a yacht with a group of people whom you’ve never seen in your life before. Of course you’re nervous.’

      She sprang up as though burnt and looked at him in confusion.

      ‘Yacht? I thought it was a cruise.’