LITMIR.BIZ

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away, but you never told me your name.’

      I made a pretence of considering this. ‘I’m afraid I don’t remember.’

      He reeled off some more names and places, while I fenced and parried. It meant nothing. He knew we hadn’t met before. This was just a traditional opening gambit.

      But then I struck lucky.

      Jack returned and sat down on my other side, greeting Raymond briefly.

      ‘Della and I have just been trying to remember where we first met,’ Raymond said.

      ‘Really?’ Jack said politely. ‘Have you come up with anything?’

      ‘I’m not sure. I sure don’t seem to have made much of an impression on her if we did. How about the theatre, Della? I go to a lot of opening nights. Maybe I saw you at the opening of Flowers in the Rain?’

      ‘Do you mean that dreadful evening when they had to stop the show because a woman in the front row was taken ill?’ I asked.

      ‘That’s right,’ he said, beaming.

      ‘The actor playing the lead was put right off his stride,’ I said, in the voice of someone remembering. ‘He never really recovered after that—kept stumbling over his lines.’

      ‘Fancy us both being there! Yes, you definitely smiled at me in the Circle Bar.’

      ‘It’s a small world,’ Jack observed.

      For some reason Raymond didn’t stick around now Jack was there, and when some of the other men dived into the pool he joined them.

      ‘What was all that about?’ Jack asked me. ‘Did you really see him at that first night?’

      ‘No, I wasn’t even there. I heard about it from someone who was. The point is, he’s now convinced he’s seen me around, and will vouch for me as one of his own circle. By the time he talks to Grace and Selina we’ll have been at school together.’

      Jack roared with laughter.

      ‘You’re a really tricky lady,’ he said.

      I’d only meant it as a joke, but I spoke truer than I knew—because suddenly Grace and Selina began to eye me more cautiously. They just weren’t sure any more, and that suited me fine. It suited Jack too. He was loving every moment.

      There was a bar at the side of the pool, with stools just below the water line. After a quick dip, I swam over to get a long orange juice, and while I was sitting there, sipping, Selina came and joined me.

      I have to admit she had a figure to be proud of. She was statuesque, and might run to fat later, but just now she was at her best—as her black bikini revealed.

      Her manner was almost friendly.

      ‘So you’re an old friend of Raymond’s,’ she said. ‘You should have told us.’

      ‘I didn’t get the chance,’ I said. ‘Since I arrived things have just happened, one on top of the other. No time to think, really.’

      I simpered, just in case she didn’t know what I meant by ‘no time to think’.

      She managed to maintain her smile.

      ‘And I don’t really know Raymond,’ I continued. ‘Just distantly.’

      ‘Jack must have been incredibly surprised by you turning up so suddenly?’

      ‘We-ell, between you and me, I don’t think he was as surprised as all that.’ I became confiding. ‘You know Jack. You can never really tell what he’s about to do next. Well, I’m exactly the same. Like calling to like, I guess.’

      ‘I wouldn’t have called Jack unpredictable,’ she said, in a slightly tense voice. ‘His firm has been built on steadiness and reliability.’

      I shrugged in a feather-headed sort of way. ‘Oh, business!’

      ‘Business is important,’ she said smugly. ‘Of course if you can’t share his interests—’

      ‘I do share his interests. Just not about business!’

      I said this with my most wide-eyed gaze, and threw in a titter for good measure.

      There was a time when I’d wanted be an actress. How I didn’t make it, I’ll never understand.

      ‘What are you two doing with your heads together?’ came Jack’s voice from the water behind us. ‘Are all the men being torn apart? Tell.’

      ‘Why do men always think we have nothing else to talk about but them?’ I asked. ‘We weren’t even thinking about you. Go away.’

      ‘Come in and swim with me,’ he said. ‘The water’s fantastic.’

      Selina immediately slipped off her stool and swam towards him, leaving him no choice but to look pleased and glide away with her.

      I wasn’t alone for long. Derek Lamming immediately took her place on one side, and Selina’s father popped up on the other. After a while they were joined by Raymond. Even Harry Oxton swam over and took a stool. He was Grace’s beau, according to Jack, and from the way her mouth tightened I guess she felt a bit proprietorial.

      So there I was, surrounded by men and flirting like mad—especially with Derek and Harry. I don’t know how long this went on, but it ended abruptly with me being yanked off my stool from behind. The next moment I was underwater, with Jack’s arm about my waist.

       ‘What are you playing at?’ he asked me as our heads broke water.

      ‘I’m trying to do a really good job for you,’ I said.

      ‘Giving Derek and poor old Harry the glad eye?’

      ‘Of course. It’ll warn Selina and Grace not to take them for granted. Look, Selina’s already reclaiming her property.’

      Sure enough, Selina had taken my vacated stool and was smiling at Derek.

      ‘You’re wicked,’ Jack told me.

      ‘No, just a good employee who thinks of everything.’

      ‘Hmm. You seem to have forgotten that you’re supposed to be mad about me. Now you’ve made eyes at the others, when is it my turn?’

      He still had his arms about me, holding me close in the water. I had one arm round his neck and was looking up at him.

      ‘But I am making eyes at you,’ I said.

      ‘And that’s all I get?’

      This was becoming dangerous. I could see us heading up the same cul-de-sac as before. But duty must come first, so I slipped a hand around the back of his head and drew it down to me.

      His mouth seemed to fit so naturally over mine, and everything was easy. I tried to remember that we were performing for spectators, but there was a thin line between that and burning up, and we’d crossed it the first evening.

      Even treading water, he knew just how to tease and incite, so that I found myself doing the same to him, using skills that I hadn’t known I possessed. Perhaps nobody had inspired me to use them before.

      I felt his tongue against my lips—not commanding, just suggesting, retreating, returning. He was clever. He didn’t give me time to make up my mind before he’d moved on to my neck, just below the ear. Some devil must have told him about that place, because it’s just where I like to be kissed.

      I ran my hands over the heavy muscles of his neck, his shoulders, then into his hair, and through the contact of our skin I could feel him almost losing control. But not quite.

      Then I forgot everything else, including treading water. The same must have happened to Jack, because gradually we slid under the surface.

      It didn’t make any difference, because by then we weren’t breathing anyway. We actually ran

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