Pale Orchid. Anne Mather

that your sister is in some way involved with Mike Kazantis?’ he inquired tautly, and Laura nodded.

      ‘But you know,’ she said bitterly. ‘You know you do. Else why did you agree to see me? Unless you thought you could gloat over our misfortunes!’

      Jason’s dark features lost all expression, and the lines that bracketed his nose and mouth looked that much more pronounced. ‘Is that the opinion you have of me?’ he said sombrely. ‘Well, well! You really thought I would do a thing like that?’

      Laura was not a little confused by now, and in spite of her determination not to let him get the better of her, his quiet words had more than an element of truth in them. But why—if he hadn’t known about his brother-in-law—why had he said he knew why she was here?

      ‘Wheth—whether you knew or not, you do now,’ she said, forcing herself to go on. ‘Pamela is in the hospital in San Francisco. She took an overdose of sleeping tablets. She’ll live, but I don’t know for how long.’

      Jason’s nostrils flared, and with a curious inclination of his head, he moved away towards the bar. Then, swinging round, he poured himself a second glass of scotch, tipping his head back to drink it before turning again to face her.

      ‘It … it’s barely eleven o’clock,’ Laura exclaimed abruptly, unable to prevent the words from spilling from her lips. ‘Is it wise to—to drink so much?’

      Jason’s lips twisted. ‘Not wise at all,’ he conceded sardonically. ‘But that’s my problem, not yours. So. Go on about your sister. Why don’t you think she’ll survive?’

      ‘Because she’s pregnant!’ Laura pressed the palms of her hands together. ‘And Kazantis has deserted her.’

      ‘Deserted her?’ Jason considered the phrase. ‘What an old-fashioned expression! You mean, I suppose, that as soon as he discovered your sister had a problem, he took off.’

      Laura blinked. ‘He doesn’t know about the baby.’ She frowned. ‘At least, I think he doesn’t.’ It was something she had not thought to ask her sister.

      ‘I’d guess he does,’ retorted Jason drily. ‘If indeed it is Mike’s.’

      ‘What do you mean?’ Laura was indignant. ‘Pamela wouldn’t lie about something like that!’

      ‘And she says it’s his?’

      ‘Yes.’ Laura drew a trembling breath. ‘Do you know where he is?’

      ‘Kazantis? Right now?’ Jason shrugged. ‘I’d say—Europe.’

      ‘Europe!’ Laura blanched. ‘Where in Europe?’

      ‘Italy.’ Jason dropped his empty glass back on to the bar. ‘At least that’s where Irene is, so …’

      ‘Italy!’ Laura’s shoulders sagged. ‘Oh, God! Why did he have to be there?’

      ‘I’m not saying I know it for a fact,’ said Jason evenly. ‘But, like I said, Irene is there right now, visiting my grandparents. And, knowing my father’s ideas about his women, I’d say he’d insist she didn’t go unescorted.’

      Laura sank down weakly on to the banquette behind her. ‘For how long?’ she asked helplessly. ‘When will they be coming back?’

      ‘One month, maybe two. Who knows?’ Jason lifted his shoulders in a dismissing gesture. ‘I’m not my sister’s keeper.’

      Laura shook her head, resting her elbows on her knees and cupping her cheeks in her hot palms. ‘Oh, God!’ she said again, feeling the emptiness of despair gripping her insides. ‘What am I going to do?’

      It was only partly a rhetorical question, but the sudden breeze through the open door alerted her to the fact that Jason had left her. She was alone in the green and gold beauty of the saloon, alone with her unwilling memories, and with the terrifying realisation that there was nothing she could do.

      She supposed she should leave. After all, Jason had done what he could. He had told her where Kazantis was, and he had not disbelieved her story. The anger he might have displayed at the news that Pamela had evidently been having an affair with his sister’s husband had not materialised, and she was simply wasting her time, and his, by pursuing the matter further. Somehow, she was going to have to find a way to tell Pamela that Mike Kazantis was married; that there was no point in her threatening to kill herself again, because he could not marry her. Not unless he got a divorce from Irene, of course, and if Jason was right and he was with his wife, in Italy, that did not seem at all likely. Besides which, Laura had met Irene, and she knew her to be a very beautiful young woman. It had been an outside chance at best that her marriage to Kazantis had floundered. Remembering what she knew of him, Laura doubted anything would prise him away from the wealth and influence that came from being Marco Montefiore’s son-in-law, and contacting Jason had been her last resort.

      Which brought her back to that other puzzling development: why had Jason assumed he knew why she was in Hawaii? Was there something she had overlooked? Did he know something she didn’t know? And why had he kissed her? She had been prepared to face his anger, not his passion.

      With trembling fingers, she traced the bare contours of her lips. She wore little in the way of cosmetics, just eyeliner and mascara, and occasionally a shiny lip-gloss to frame her mouth. But what little make-up she had been wearing had been erased by his caress, and she couldn’t deny the unwilling awareness that his touch still had the power to melt her bones. If only …

      His reappearance with an enamelled beaker which he held out to her arrested her guilty thoughts. ‘Here,’ he said, pushing it into her hand. ‘You look as though you could use it.’

      ‘What is it?’ she asked foolishly, while the aromatic odour of ground beans floated to her nostrils, and Jason’s mouth pulled down.

      ‘Just coffee,’ he replied drily, taking off his jacket and pulling off his tie. ‘Laced with heroin, of course!’ He grimaced. ‘Drink it, for God’s sake! I’m not reduced to drugging my women yet!’

      Laura obediently sipped the fragrant beverage, recovering a little of her composure in the time it took her to drink it. Jason, she noticed, tossed his jacket and tie aside and flung himself on to the wide velvet cushions at the broad forward end of the cabin, crossing his legs as he had done before and staring broodingly out on to the sunlit dock.

      ‘So, tell me what happened,’ he said at length, when he had given her time to compose herself. ‘How did your sister meet Kazantis?’

      ‘I don’t know.’ Laura caught her lower lip between her teeth before continuing: ‘She works—worked—in Sausalito, but she has an apartment in San Francisco.’

      ‘Since when?’

      ‘Oh eighteen months, I suppose. She qualified as a physiotherapist in London, but she wanted to travel. I tried to dissuade her from coming to the United States, but …’

      ‘… she wouldn’t listen?’

      ‘Right.’ Laura looked down into her cup. ‘She always seemed so much younger than me. It’s only two years, I know, but—well, I’ve always felt much older.’

      ‘And you didn’t want her to venture out into the bold bad world!’ remarked Jason wryly, running his hand inside the opened neckline of his shirt and in so doing loosening several more buttons. ‘So—she met Kazantis. Why didn’t you warn her?’

      ‘Warn her?’ Laura looked across the cabin at him, uncomfortably aware of the sensuality of his exploring hand. The skin of his chest exposed by his careless movements was as brown and smooth as she remembered, his nipples taut, an arrowing of fine hair only lightly roughening his flesh. ‘I didn’t know.’

      ‘She didn’t write to you?’

      ‘Well, yes. Yes, of course, she wrote.’ Laura dragged her eyes away, and tried to keep her mind on what she was saying. ‘She just