Meant To Marry

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, ‘Sailing the Pacific sounds terribly romantic.’

‘It can be.’

Something in his tone pulled the hairs on the back of her neck upright and then, too late, she remembered the reason his name had sounded vaguely familiar. ‘Oh, yes, of course. I remember,’ she said unevenly.

Lucas Tremaine had been an investigative journalist, a good one, working for a British newspaper when, in his early twenties, he’d been sent to cover an insurrection in San Rafael, a tiny Pacific nation. There he had met a young woman, married her and taken her to safety in England. But after his publication of several merciless articles on the abuse of power in her homeland, the house where he’d lived with his pregnant wife had been bombed. His wife had died in his arms.

After that he’d returned to San Rafael and disappeared into the jungle to join the freedom fighters in their bloody and merciless war. When at last they’d seized victory, he’d marched with them in triumph into the capital before disappearing into the solitudes of the Pacific Ocean on his yacht to write a book about the experience.

As though driven, he’d followed that one with others—books that dealt with dangerous and hidden facts. He had untangled the roots of piracy in the China Sea and had written about the sex trade in Thailand and the slavery that ensued from it.

Each book had caused a considerable scandal; each had been a bestseller. And each had made him powerful enemies.

Anet looked at the hard, inexorable face, and her blood ran cold.

‘It’s over,’ he said quietly.

But nothing like that was ever over. Oh, the grief faded, and eventually you learned to live with the memories, but they were always there. Eight years after her grandmother’s death, she still missed her.

‘So what are you doing on Fala’isi?’ she asked, aware that the change of subject was awkwardly abrupt but unable to think of another way of getting past the sticky patch. Jan, or their mother, would have known exactly how to deal with the situation her clumsiness had caused, without compounding the pain.

But then Jan would never have blundered like that.

‘I came to see you,’ he told her, measuring her reaction with a speculative gaze.

Anet’s eyes widened. The subtly mocking smile on his beautiful mouth was matched by a glimmer in the sea-blue eyes; both set warning bells ringing.

‘Why?’ she said briskly, curbing the unfounded excitement that tightened her nerves. Although he wasn’t intruding on her personal space, he seemed too close.

‘Olivia Arundell sent me,’ he said. ‘Apparently it’s your birthday today.’

Astonishment rippled through her voice. ‘Well—yes.’

‘Your twenty-fifth birthday.’

‘How did you know?’

‘Olivia told me. She also sent you a present.’

Years before, when Drake Arundell had married Olivia, Anet had thought her heart would break; only willpower and stubbornness had pulled her through. Yet it had been impossible to resist Olivia, who had become a close friend.

‘Did she?’ Anet said, thinking that it was just like Olivia to do something so unexpected. ‘Isn’t she a darling! Did you tell her you were coming here?’

‘No,’ he said calmly. ‘I was on my way to Hawaii when she asked me if I’d mind stopping off and giving it to you.’

Anet couldn’t help her incredulous laughter. Her eyes flew to his, found them cool and intent and alarmingly disturbing. Impossible to guess what he was thinking. ‘Olivia did?’

His mouth quirked. ‘Somehow it’s difficult to say no to Olivia Arundell,’ he drawled.

Well, yes, but still... A sideways glance convinced her that this man would say no to anyone if he felt like it. So why was he here? ‘You mean she asked you to break your journey just to deliver a gift?’

‘I gather it’s an important one.’

‘We only give each other tiny presents,’ she said.

‘This is no bigger than the palm of my hand.’

Intrigued, she responded, ‘It seems an odd thing for her to do, but I suppose she must have had a reason for it.’

‘I’m sure she did.’

A note in his voice drew her eyes swiftly upward. There was something intimidating about the gleam in his impenetrable eyes as they met hers, lingered for a moment, then drifted down her face to come to rest on her lips.

Instantly they felt hot, and twice as large as normal. With an acid distaste out of all proportion to the discovery, she realised that he was one of those men who flirted automatically with every woman, young or old, who came their way. She’d heard it referred to as ‘charm’, that intensity of interest—for as long as they talked to you they made you feel that you were the most fascinating person in the world.

Anet didn’t consider it charming, and had learned not to take anything such people said or did at face value. It was a trick—part of a cynical armoury.

So she forced a guarded smile and said, ‘Well, it was lovely of her, and thank you so much for bringing it to me.’

‘Your mother and sister—Jan, is it?—were there too,’ he said. ‘They sent messages to you.’

‘They fussed, you mean,’ she guessed, holding back a groan. Presents from her family had arrived a couple of days ago, complete with instructions from her mother on how to avoid sunstroke and food poisoning. It was a wonder Jan hadn’t added her bit—she usually found something to warn her about.

‘Somebody did say something about taking your vitamin pills,’ he agreed solemnly.

Although Anet was accustomed to her mother’s and her half-sister’s constant concern, it was embarrassing to be told of it by Lucas Tremaine. Hoping it didn’t sound artificial, she produced a laugh. ‘I’m twice the size of both of them,’ she said, ‘but they still don’t think I can be trusted to look after myself when I’m on holiday.’

He held her gaze for a few unsettling moments, but all he said was, ‘Holiday?’ Dark brows raised, he looked at the fifteen divers who were beginning to point and exclaim as they neared the coral gardens. ‘You call this a holiday?’

‘Compared to the last few months it is definitely a holiday. I hope this unscheduled stop-over isn’t making too much of a mess of your plans.’

‘Not at all,’ he said pleasantly. ‘I might even decide to stay here after all. I’ve always liked Fala’isi.’

So there was no one waiting for him in Hawaii.

Quelling an unruly anticipation deep inside her, she said repressively, ‘It’s a very small place. Wouldn’t you get bored?’

‘I don’t think so.’ His lashes hid everything but a narrow sliver of intense colour. ‘I could always settle down and grow cabbages.’

‘Taro, surely, here?’ The brittle note in her voice startled her.

‘Whatever.’

‘Wouldn’t that be difficult? Once a wanderer always a wanderer,’ she said, immediately irritated by the inane remark.

The chiselled line of his jaw hardened for a second, and the sculpted mouth thinned, but his eyes remained watchful and oddly enigmatic. ‘Sooner or later even the most inveterate wanderer decides to settle down,’ he said noncommittally.

‘Excuse me.’

The peremptory note in the feminine voice grated on Anet’s ear, but she turned instantly and smiled at Georgia Sanderson. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m thirsty,’ the other woman said, disguising. the sharp antagonism in her eyes with a flutter of lashes. ‘You do have drinks, as the brochure said?’

‘Yes, of course.’ Only a few steps away behind a small bar in the cabin was Sule, eager to dispense drinks and snacks—as Anet had informed everyone over the microphone a few minutes after they’d left the wharf. ‘I’ll get you something now. What would you like?’

Georgia pouted for just long enough to show off her provocative lips. ‘Something long and cold and wet—mineral water,’ she said. ‘I’m almost dehydrated in this heat.’

There was enough accusation in her tone to make Anet stiffen, but nothing showed in her expression as she said, ‘Right, I’ll be back in a moment.’

When she returned with a cold can Georgia thanked her prettily before, with a social ruthlessness that stunned Anet, dismissing her politely and firmly. Not that she’d have had a chance to continue talking to Lucas, for, as though the sight of the can had sharpened people’s thirst, everyone wanted one.

By the time they’d all been served it was time to lay down the rules for safe diving. Georgia listened intently, although with the charming air of an adult humouring a child, as Anet took them through hand signals, the length of time they were allowed to stay under and the maximum depth.

It would, Anet thought wryly, be a long time before Georgia forgave her for that rescue.

CHAPTER TWO

WHEN the anchor rattled down Anet had the tanks checked for the final time and the divers organised into pairs. As Scott jumped into the dinghy to drop off the flagged buoy that warned of divers in the vicinity, she said to the group, ‘I know you’ve already been asked this, but I have to tell you again that it is extremely dangerous to dive if you’re at all prone to asthma—even if you only get wheezy when you have bronchitis.’

Everyone shook their heads solemnly. Anet couldn’t stop herself from casting a swift glance at Georgia, and immediately felt ashamed. Irritating she might be, but it was clear from her familiarity with the gear that she had dived before.

‘Keep checking your depth,’ she continued. ‘All the pretty fish and corals are close to the surface, so there’s no reason to go below twenty metres. Once you do, the risk of narcosis increases significantly.’

Everyone nodded.

‘If this is your first dive for some time you’ll have got out of the habit of watching your gauges, so be vigilant.’

Everyone nodded again.

‘All right, then,’ she said cheerfully. ‘In you go—and remember, no teasing the moray eels. They don’t take kindly to it. And stay with your buddy. You are each other’s safeguard.’

She noted their entry into the sea with an experienced eye. Yes, they all seemed to know exactly what they were doing—even Georgia. Either she’d been putting on a show back there in the harbour or she was one of those divers who used the buoyancy compensator as a backup for their poor swimming skills.

Serena had warned her that occasionally you got some idiot who thought they didn’t need instruction or training. People were strange. Why expose yourself to danger?

The approaching dinghy summoned her to the side of the launch. ‘I’ll stay out,’ Scott called above the noise of the motor. ‘You keep Lucas company on board, Annie. Ask Sule if she wants to come with me, will you?’

But Sule, tidying up at the bar before checking the till, hid a yawn behind an elegant hand and said, ‘No, I’m going to have a sleep. My little sister was sick all night, so guess who didn’t get any rest!’

When Anet relayed the answer Scott saluted and spun the dinghy, heading back towards the flagged buoy.

Skin prickling, very much aware of the man who stood beside her, Anet watched her cousin go, feeling as though she’d been deserted.

‘You didn’t have to stay to keep me company—you could have dived.’ Lucas Tremaine’s voice, deep, cool, with an intriguingly abrasive undernote, intruded into her thoughts.

Keeping her eyes on the strings of bubbles breaking on the surface, she replied, ‘This lot are all competent in the water, so I don’t need to get in with them. Besides, the water’s so clear that if they stay close to the boat I can see them all from up on top. Which is where I’d better go right now.’

She turned and made her way to the top deck, both pleased and wary when he accompanied her.

‘I presume they have to be competent to go down,’ he said.

‘Not necessarily. I can take beginners on a resort dive.’

‘What’s that?’ He spoke absently, as though thinking of something else.

‘They follow me around like ducklings after their mother while I show them the more accessible parts of the coral garden,’ she told him, averting her eyes from the dark forearms on the guardrails. A panicky foreboding pressed down on her, drying her mouth, increasing her heart-rate as she fought to control it.

You’re overreacting, she thought disgustedly, taking three deep breaths to calm her pulse. This man was no physical threat, and it was stupid to get into a tizz at the sight of his arms!

After clearing her throat she said, ‘It’s not diving as experts know it, but at least that way untrained swimmers get to see the fish and the corals.’

Her voice sounded perfectly normal, the words deliberate as they usually were, so why did she feel that she was gabbling? Leaning down, she pulled at one of the fenders to straighten it.

‘Here, I’ll do that,’ Lucas said.

She turned her head, meeting his eyes with a tiny shock. ‘I can manage.’

His smile was ironic. ‘I’m sure you can manage almost anything you care to do,’ he said, ‘but give my shrivelled ego some consideration, please.’

She almost laughed aloud as he hauled the fender straight with a single smooth, effortless movement. Although some men took her height and strength to be a personal insult, she was prepared to bet a substantial amount that Lucas Tremaine wasn’t one of them.

He coiled a loose rope with the careless skill of someone who had done the same thing hundreds of times. She asked, ‘Are you working on a book now?’

‘No.’

Not exactly communicative!

However, he went on easily as he came back to stand beside her, ‘I’ve just posted a manuscript off.’

‘So you’re having a holiday?’

He flexed his hands on the guardrail, the long fingers curling around the warm wood, then relaxing. ‘I’m researching the next one.’

‘In Hawaii?’ she asked faintly, wondering what on earth was dangerous enough to interest him there.

‘Yes.’

‘Have you ever thought of writing fiction?’ She leaned out to follow the progress of a scarlet-bikinied diver.

He sent her a swift, speculative glance. ‘Like many journalists, I’ve occasionally tossed around the idea of producing the next big blockbuster.’

It would be much less risky than gambling with his life, finding wrongs to be righted.

‘I think you could do it,’ she said, wondering at the anxiety that chilled her heart. ‘You write very vividly. When will you know whether the one you’ve sent away has been accepted?’

‘It was accepted before it was written.’

Her brows shot up. ‘Is that normal?’

‘I’ve got a good agent.’

Anet probably knew as much about the publishing world as he did about physiotherapy, but she was certain that it hadn’t been his agent who had got his books accepted before they were written; his reputation must be excellent. And why not? She had read all of his books and found them utterly absorbing. Although he had glossed over the inherent perils of the research he’d done, each chilling, brilliantly written volume had read like a thriller—one with no happy ending.

He was easy to talk to, but then, she thought some time later, of course that would be part of his armoury of skills. As they kept a close eye on the divers in the coral garden he spoke freely of his life as a sail tramp. However, Anet noted, he mentioned neither his career as an investigative journalist nor his wife.

In return Anet told him about places she had been and the highs and lows and indignities of training to be a physiotherapist.

Later she would realise that she hadn’t referred to her time as an Olympic athlete.

When the divers began to drift back to the boat Anet had to hide a little niggle of resentment. Lucas Tremaine was a fascinating man—dry-witted, none too acceptant of stupidity, and he could tell a story so that it interested you on several levels. And a man who just happened to look like something straight out of a fantasy, she reminded herself, watching Georgia dry herself down with maximum effect.

Anet counted all the divers off, then made sure they reapplied sunscreen. While Scott started the engine and headed the boat towards the little motu where they’d be having lunch she listened to excited comments about the marine life the divers had seen in the coral garden.

This was the part of the day Anet liked least. Usually somebody wanted to hear about her experiences as one of New Zealand’s most visible sportswomen of a few years ago, and while she could understand their interest, it irritated her to be slotted into that mould for ever.

Well, there was one woman who wouldn’t be interested in her athletic prowess, she thought with a hidden smile as Georgia preened herself in the sunlight.

Donning a hat woven skilfully from pandanus leaves, Anet helped Scott ferry people onto the hot white sand of the motu, where a barbecue had already been set up beneath a clump of coconut palms.

The two young men who barbecued the fish and chicken for their meal were from the same family group as Sule. Their tribal council and headman had set up a trust which partnered Scott and Serena and provided workers for the venture. The fish cooking on the coals—and the others that had been made into the dish known by so many different names across the Pacific, their succulent raw flesh whitened by the juice of local limes—had been caught off the reef only hours before by other members of the extended family.

Women of the village had made the salads in a brand-new industrial kitchen on the mainland and ferried them across to the motu in big insulated boxes. They had also set the table, twining crimson and gold hibiscus flowers with glossy green leaves across the stylised, elegant black and cream of the tapa cloth made to their own traditional design.

The motu, pretty as an emerald set in kingfisher-blue enamel, looked like a bright poster from a travel agency. And all to provide tourists with an exotic experience—one, Anet had quickly realised, they enjoyed very much.