Meant To Marry. Robyn Donald

obvious.

      It should have been amusing to watch her hastily hidden pique as first one, then another woman drifted across, eager to join in the conversation, yet an ignoble pang of envy shot through Anet.

      And that’s enough of that, she told herself sternly. You’ve accepted that you’re never going to know the easy, casual interest these women feel, or their confidence. Experience had taught her that her height, combined with the powerful build of an ex-javelin-thrower, was not alluring.

      No man ever saw Anet Carruthers as sexy; likeable, certainly—almost one of the boys—but not feminine, not the sort of woman who could drive a man mad. Even the man she had been engaged to, the man who’d dumped her for a slim, small woman barely reaching her shoulder, had liked her.

      Mark had worried about hurting her, but he hadn’t thought her capable of intense emotional distress. Of course, she thought aridly, turning her head to point out the position of a famous shipwreck, he’d been right.

      Although she’d been hurt, she hadn’t been shattered. She must have missed out on the capacity to lose herself in love as other women seemed able to do. Even her unrequited love—and she had loved him—for Drake Arundell when she was eighteen hadn’t blighted her life.

      She’d recovered with astonishing speed, although Drake was still her ideal of what a man should be like. Which might, she thought, eyeing Lucas Tremaine covertly, be the reason this man made strange things happen to the base of her spine. He and Drake were alike, both big men, but there was more to their similarity than the physical; both possessed an air of controlled power.

      Anyway, she was now in full command of her life, looking forward to a happy and useful future.

      ‘Great view,’ an amiable masculine voice said.

      It belonged to an amiable masculine face. Supporting herself against the side of the boat, Anet smiled at him. ‘Isn’t it just?’ she said. ‘What more could anyone want? Glorious weather and the prospect of a day spent diving and eating, then lolling the afternoon away on a coral beach-’

      ‘Heavily anointed with sunscreen,’ he interpolated, his brown eyes laughing.

      Her eyes gleamed with answering amusement. ‘Of course,’ she said solemnly.

      ‘And you forgot something in your catalogue of pleasures.’

      ‘Oh, a hundred things. Fala’isi is full of delights.’ Sunlight soaked through her, drying out the material of her T-shirt and bathing suit, melting down to her bones.

      ‘Well, this is important. Good company.’

      She looked around the boat, feeling a bit sorry for him. Lucas Tremaine seemed to have snaffled all the available women. As her gaze passed over the cluster of them about him her mouth curved sardonically. He looked up, and for a moment she had the giddy and entirely erroneous idea that they duelled across the distance.

      ‘Well,’ she said vaguely, looking unseeingly at the man beside her, ‘every pleasure is intensified by good company.’

      A wave sloshed across the bow, sending a glittering, evanescent veil of spray into the air. Warned by the sprinkle of drops across her face, Anet flicked on the microphone again. ‘We’re approaching the gap in the reef and it looks as though it could be a bit bumpy today, so hang on everyone. If you don’t like getting damp, it might pay to take shelter.’

      A few seconds later the first comber caught them. Although Scott knew the opening as well as any islander, and was ready for it, a gurgle of laughter whipped Anet’s head around. Her mouth compressed. Georgia was once more snuggled against Lucas Tremaine, her sleek, pale body a blatant contrast to his golden tan and corded muscles.

      An odd little quiver wrenched Anet as Lucas set the woman on her feet, smiling down at her while he said something that brought a slow, sleepy smile in response.

      Immediately he stepped back, made a further comment that tilted Georgia’s lushly blooming mouth into more laughter, and left her, heading towards Anet.

      He was the most handsome man she had ever seen—as beautiful as a god. And as dangerous, instinct warned her; the magnificent combination of form and face was almost overshadowed by the aura of authority and power that he radiated.

      As he came towards her the smile he’d bestowed on Georgia faded. Anet was accustomed to being sought out—many New Zealanders knew who she was, and quite a few people liked to talk to someone who had won a gold medal for New Zealand at the Olympics—so there was absolutely no reason for her stomach to clench and her palms to sweat.

      ‘Is he a friend of yours?’ the man beside her asked casually.

      ‘Of Scott’s,’ Anet responded absently, then, aware that she was being rude, smiled at him. ‘Scott owns the boat.’

      He had good manners. When it became obvious that Lucas Tremaine intended to speak to her he said easily, ‘I’ll see you later, then.’

      She gave him her best smile. ‘You will,’ she told him, and kept that smile pinned to her face as he moved off and Lucas arrived.

      ‘How long is it before we get there?’ he asked.

      She looked along the reef. ‘About twenty minutes.’

      ‘Where’s Serena?’

      ‘In Australia. Melbourne, actually. Her mother’s in hospital for tests.’

      ‘I’m sorry to hear that. How is she?’

      Anet bit her lip. ‘Not too good, unfortunately. Serena rang last night; Scott says she’s worried. The tests were positive, and her mother has to have an operation.’

      ‘That’s tough,’ he said, frowning. ‘Lucky for them both that Scott managed to find someone to take her place so quickly.’

      Although his skin was glossed by sunscreen, he was tanned a deep gold that indicated long hours of exposure to the elements. When she looked more closely she could see tiny lines at the comers of his eyes.

      ‘I was the logical person to ask. I have a diving instructor’s certificate and I was at a loose end. The clinic I was to start work at burned down,’ she explained. ‘It will be a couple of months before it’s rebuilt, and in the meantime the owner’s working from home. He didn’t have room for me, so when Scott sent out his SOS I was able to come up.’

      ‘As I said, lucky man.’

      Watching her cousin at the wheel, she said drily, ‘Oh, he’d have found someone, but he might have lost a few days’ work.’

      ‘I gather he isn’t qualified to take out divers?’

      ‘Not yet. He and several men from the local family he’s in partnership with are sitting for the instructor’s certificate now, but none of them have got it yet. They’re doing the boatmaster’s too. In Fala’isi you have to have certificated people on each boat before the local tourist board will let you take divers out. I can understand that, but when you think that the Polynesians have been sailing around the Pacific for the last three thousand years or so, making them take the boatmaster’s seems like overkill.’

      ‘Ah, but tourists need special treatment,’ he said a little mockingly.

      He was right, of course. The subject seemed to have reached a dead end, so after a moment of searching for a new topic she ventured, ‘Scott said something about your yacht. Are you planning to sail somewhere?’

      ‘No,’ he said, adding with an edge to his voice, ‘only fools go wandering around the tropics in the hurricane season.’

      Absurdly relieved, she asked, ‘Do you live on Fala’isi?’

      ‘I’ve been living on the Dawntreader for the last few years, but I’m based in New Zealand now. I haven’t had time to sail the Dawntreader there, so it’s still moored in the marina here. Scott keeps an eye on it for me.’

      She said wistfully,