LITMIR.BIZ

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carefully, one in front of the other, like a child learning how to walk.

      Still, he watched her. No, no ghost she—far too vivid to be lacking in substance. The black hair was scraped back and barely visible beneath her hat, emphasising the delicate structure of her face, the wariness in the huge emerald eyes.

      The swimsuit she wore was a shade darker than those eyes, and it clothed a body which was more magnificent than he had been expecting. The lush breasts looked deliciously cuppable, and the curve of her hips was just crying out for the lingering caress of a man’s palm.

      Realising that his heart was thundering like a boy’s on the brink of sexual discovery, and aware that he must just be staring at her as if he’d never seen a woman before, Finn forced his mouth to relax into a smile as she grew closer.

      ‘Hi,’ he said again.

      She felt strangely shy—but what woman wouldn’t, alone with such a man on a deserted beach? ‘Hi.’ She managed a bright smile. She wasn’t a gauche young thing but a sophisticated and successful woman who was slowly recovering from a broken romance. And as soon as the opportunity arose she would tell him that she was interested in nothing more than a pleasant and companionable last day on Pondiki.

      Finn smiled, so that those big green eyes would lose some of their wariness. ‘Sleep well?’

      She shook her head. ‘Not really. Too hot. Even with the air-conditioning I felt as though I was a piece of dough which had been left in a low oven all night!’

      He laughed. ‘Don’t you have one of those big old-fashioned fans in your room?’

      ‘You mean the ones which sound as though a small plane has just landed beside the bed?’

      ‘Yeah.’ He wanted something to occupy himself, something which would stop him from feasting his eyes on her delicious breasts, afraid that the stirring in his body would begin to make itself shown. ‘What would you like to do?’

      The words swam vaguely into the haze of her thoughts. In swimming trunks, he looked like a pinup come to life, with his bright blue eyes and dark, untidy hair.

      Broad shoulders, lean hips and long, muscled legs. Men like Finn Delaney should be forbidden from wearing swimming trunks! More to distract herself than because she really cared what they did, she shrugged and smiled. ‘What’s on offer?’

      Finn bit back the crazy response that he’d like to peel the swimsuit from her body and get close to her in the most elemental way possible. Instead, he waved a hand towards the rocks. ‘I’ve made a camp,’ he said conspiratorially.

      ‘What kind of camp?’

      ‘The usual kind. We’ve got shelter. Provisions. Come and see.’

      In the distance, she could see a sun-umbrella, two loungers and a cool-box. An oasis of comfort against the barren rocks which edged the sand, with the umbrella providing the cool promise of relief from the beating sun. ‘Okay.’

      ‘Follow me,’ he said, his voice sounding husky, and for a moment he felt like a man from earlier, primitive times, leading a woman off to his lair.

      Catherine walked next to him, the hot sand spraying up and burning her toes through her sandals.

      The sound of the sea was rhythmical and soothing, and she caught the faint scent of pine on the air, for Pondiki was crammed full of pine trees. Through the protective covering of her sun-hat she could feel the merciless penetration of the sun, and, trying to ignore the fact that all her senses felt acutely honed, she stared down instead at the sizeable amount of equipment which lay before her.

      ‘How the hell did you get all this stuff down here?’ she asked in wonder.

      ‘I carried it.’ He flexed an arm jokingly. ‘Nothing more than brute strength!’

      Memory assailed her. She thought of him carrying his wounded friend, his white shirt wet with the blood of life. Wet and red. She swallowed. ‘It looks…it looks very inviting.’

      ‘Sit down,’ he said, and gestured to one of the loungers. ‘Have you eaten breakfast?’

      She sank into the cushions. She never ate breakfast, but, most peculiarly, she had an appetite now. Or rather, other pervasive appetites were threatening to upset her equilibrium, so she decided to sublimate them by opting for food.

      ‘Not yet.’

      ‘Good. Me neither.’

      She watched as he opened the cool-box and pulled out rough bread and chilled grapes, and local cheese wrapped in vine leaves, laying them down on a chequered cloth. With what looked like a Swiss Army knife he began tearing and cutting her off portions of this and that.

      ‘Here. Eat.’ He narrowed his eyes critically. ‘You look like you could do with a little feeding up.’

      She sat up and grabbed the crude sandwich and accepted a handful of grapes, preferring to look at the chilled claret-coloured fruit than meet that disturbing blue stare. ‘You make me sound like a waif and stray!’

      He thought she was perfect, but that now was neither the time nor the place to tell her. ‘You look like you haven’t eaten much lately,’ he observed.

      ‘I’ve eaten well on Pondiki,’ she protested.

      ‘For how long—two weeks, maybe?’

      She nodded.

      ‘But not before that, I guess,’ he mused.

      Well, of course she hadn’t! What woman on the planet ate food when she had been dumped by a man? ‘How can you tell?’

      It gave him just the excuse he needed to study her face. ‘Your cheeks have the slightly angular look of a woman who’s been skipping meals.’

      ‘Pre-holiday diet,’ she lied.

      ‘No need for it,’ he responded quietly, his eyes glittering as he sank his teeth into the bread.

      He made eating look like an art-form. In fact, he made eating look like the most sensual act she had ever seen—with his white teeth biting into the unresisting flesh of the grapes, licking their juice away with the tip of his tongue—and Catherine was horrified by the progression of her thoughts.

      When she’d been with Peter she hadn’t been interested in other men, and yet now she found herself wondering whether that had been because there had been no man like Finn Delaney around.

      ‘This is very good,’ she murmured.

      ‘Mmm.’ He gave her a lazy smile and relaxed back, the sun beating down like a caress on his skin. There was silence for a moment, broken only by the lapping of the waves on the sand. ‘Will you be sorry to leave?’ he asked, at last.

      ‘Isn’t everyone, at the end of a holiday?’

      ‘Everyone’s different.’

      ‘I guess in a way I wish I could stay.’ But that was the coward’s way out—not wanting to face up to the new-found emptiness of her life back home. The sooner she got back, the sooner she could get on with the process of living. Yet this moment seemed like living. Real, simple and unfettered living, more vital than living had ever been.

      Finn raised his head slightly and narrowed his eyes at her. ‘Something you don’t want to go back to?’ he questioned perceptively. ‘Or someone?’

      ‘Neither,’ she answered, because the truth was far more complex than that, and she was not the type of person to unburden herself to someone she barely knew. She had seen too much in her job of confidences made and then later regretted.

      And she didn’t want to think about her new role in life—as a single girl out on the town, having to reinvent herself and start all over again. With Peter away on assignments so much, she had felt comfortable staying in and slouching around in tracksuits while watching a movie and ploughing her way through a box of popcorn. She guessed that now those evenings

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