Spirit Of Atlantis. Anne Mather

grinned. ‘You have a point.’

      Julie sighed. ‘Will you go away now?’

      ‘Aren’t you afraid I might steal your clothes?’

      ‘I don’t swim without them,’ she returned sweetly.

      ‘You should.’ His lazy gaze dropped down the length of her body. ‘Try it some time. There’s nothing like it.’

      ‘You’re insulting!’ she exclaimed.

      ‘And you’re over-reacting,’ he retorted. ‘Where have you been these last ten years? In a convent?’

      Julie turned away, and began to scramble up the slope towards the trees. He could not know how accurate his guess had been, but it hurt all the same. Besides, it was obvious she was not going to be allowed to enjoy her swim this morning, and his particular kind of verbal fencing was alien to her.

      ‘Wait …’

      She heard his feet crunching the shingle behind her, but she didn’t turn, and when his hands suddenly caught her she panicked. No one, not even Adam, had gripped her thighs, and those hard hands encircling the flesh at the tops of her legs seemed disturbingly familiar.

      ‘Let me go!’ she cried, struggling so hard that she overbalanced both of them, his feet sliding away on the loosely packed surface, and pulling her down on top of him.

      ‘Crazy!’ he muttered, as they slid the few feet down the slope to the rocks, and Julie, trapped by the encircling pressure of his arm, was inclined to agree with him.

      ‘If you hadn’t grabbed me—!’ she declared frustratedly, supremely aware of the hard muscles of his chest beneath her shoulder blades, and felt the helpless intake of breath that heralded his laughter.

      ‘Okay, okay,’ he said, as she scrambled to her feet, lying there looking up at her. ‘It was a crazy thing to do. But—hell, what did I do to make you so mad at me?’

      Julie pursed her lips. ‘I’m not mad at you, Mr Prescott. I—I have no feelings in the matter whatsoever. I wish you’d go.’

      ‘All right.’

      With an indifferent shrug he came up beside her, and she smelt the clean male odour of his body, still damp and faintly musky. His nearness disturbed her, not least because he was barely half dressed, his shirt hanging open, his jeans low on his hips, and she could remember how he had looked in the water. He was certainly attractive, she thought, unwillingly wondering who he was. He didn’t look like the guests at the hotel, who on the whole had that look of comfortable affluence, and to be riding a motorcycle in a country where everyone drove cars … She frowned, feeling an unfamiliar tightness in her stomach, and to combat this awareness she said:

      ‘Goodbye, then.’

      He nodded, pushing the ends of his shirt into the belt of his pants, and she waited apprehensively for him to finish. But when he did, he didn’t immediately move away from her. Instead he looked down at her, at the nervous twitching of her lips and lower to the unknowingly provocative rise and fall of her breasts.

      ‘Goodbye,’ he said, and before she could prevent him, he slipped one hand around her nape and bent his mouth to hers.

      Her hand came out instinctively, but encountering the taut muscles of his stomach was quickly withdrawn. She made a protesting sound deep in her throat, but he ignored it, increasing the pressure and forcing her lips apart. She felt almost giddy as her senses swam beneath his experienced caress, and then to her horror she found herself responding.

      ‘No!’

      With a cry of dismay she tore herself away from him, turning aside and scrubbing her lips with the back of her hand. She felt cheap and degraded, and appalled that just for a moment she had wanted him to go on.

      ‘See you,’ he remarked, behind her, but she didn’t turn, and presently she heard his footsteps crunching up the slope to where he said he had left his motorbike.

      She waited until she heard the sound of a powerful engine before venturing to look round, and then expelled her breath on a shaky sigh as she saw she was alone. He had gone, the receding roar of the motorcycle’s engine indicating that he had taken the route around the lake.

      Feeling slightly unsteady, Julie flopped down on to a smooth rock nearby, stretching her bare legs out to the sun. Not surprisingly, she no longer felt like going for a swim, and she wondered if she would ever come here again without remembering what had happened.

      Shading her eyes, she tried to calm herself by surveying the outline of an island some distance away across the water. Everything was just the same, she told herself severely. Just because a strange man had erupted into her life and briefly disorganised it, it did not mean that she need feel any sense of guilt because of it. He had taken advantage of the situation—he was that kind of man. He was probably camping in the woods with a crowd of similarly-minded youths, all with motorcycles, and egos the size of their helmets.

      With a sigh she got to her feet, picked up her towel, and scrambled back up the slope. She would swim later, she decided. Maybe she would persuade Pam’s twelve-year-old son to join her. At least that way she could be reasonably sure of not being bothered.

      The hotel was set on a ridge overlooking the sweep of the bay. It was a collection of log cabins, each with its own bedroom and bathroom, private suites, with meals taken in the main building close by. Backing on to the forest, with a variety of wildlife on its doorstep, it was a popular haunt for summer visitors, who moored their craft in the small marina below and climbed the stone steps to the front of the hotel. The only other approach was through the forest, but the trails were not easily defined unless one knew the way, and only occasionally did they attract visitors this way.

      Pam Galloway’s mother had been a friend of Mrs Osbourne, Julie’s mother, and the two girls had known one another since they were children. But Pam was eight years older than Julie, and in 1969, when Julie was only ten years old, she had married a Canadian she had met on holiday in Germany, and come to live in this most beautiful part of Ontario.

      Julie had missed her, but they had maintained a warm if infrequent correspondence, and when tragedy struck three months ago Pam had been first to offer her a chance to get away for a while. Canada in early summer was an enchanting place, and its distance had seemed remote from all the horrors of those weeks after her father’s death. Her friends in England, her real friends, that was, had urged her to go, and with Adam’s willing, if melancholy, approval, she had accepted. That had been almost a month ago now, and she knew that soon she would have to think about going back. But she didn’t want to. Somehow, living here had widened her perspective, and she could no longer delude herself that everything her father had done had been for her. Returning to England would mean returning to the emptiness she had discovered her life to be, and not even Adam could make up for all those years she had lived in ignorance. She had thought her mother’s death when she was twelve had unhinged him. Now she knew that only Adam’s money had kept the firm together, and her father’s whole existence had been a sham.

      Pam and her husband, David, had their apartments in the main building. It was easier that way. It meant they were available at all hours of the day and night, and an intercommunication system connected all the cabins to the small exchange behind the desk. The reception area was already a hive of activity when Julie came in, and Pam herself hailed her from the doorway leading to the spacious dining room.

      ‘Hi,’ she exclaimed. It was the usual mode of greeting on this side of the Atlantic, and Julie was getting used to using it herself.

      ‘Hi,’ she responded, swinging her towel in her hand. ‘Is that coffee I can smell brewing?’

      ‘It sure is.’ Pam wrinkled her brow as the younger girl approached her. ‘You’re back early. No swim?’

      ‘No swim,’ agreed Julie, not really wanting to go into details, but Pam was too inquisitive to let that go.

      ‘Why?’ she asked. ‘You’re not feeling