Groom By Arrangement

To her left was the supper room, where there was often a cabaret or dancing. One of the mirrors cast her a fleeting glimpse of her own reflection as she cut across the corner of the dance floor towards the bar to have a brief word with Ricardo, the bar manager, before he left for his holidays.

With her tall, slender figure and delicately carved features, her fine silver-blonde hair swept up into a neat coil at the back of her head, her elegant dress skimming her curves without too much cling, she knew that she looked every inch the ice Maiden.

That was what they called her, all the handsome young men who were so eager for her attention. She treated them all with the same blend of friendliness and reserve, keeping them safely at arm’s length with that cool, professional smile. She had no intention of getting involved with any of them. Her grandmother had warned her long ago that if she was ever going to let any man reach her heart, to make sure that he wasn’t a gambler.

She was close to the far side of the dance floor when she suddenly found herself confronted by Lord Neville’s enigmatic friend.

‘Ah, Miss Cole,’ he greeted her, completely blocking her way and smiling down at her with a glint of mocking humour. ‘So you’ve changed your mind about dancing?’

‘No, I haven’t,’ she protested indignantly—but those strong arms were already around her as he drew her smoothly into the middle of the dance floor. ‘Please let me go.’

His hold tightened almost imperceptibly, warning her that she wouldn’t escape unless she was willing to cause a scene. ‘Ah, but it’s such a romantic song,’ he urged, his foolish pleading markedly at odds with the raw masculine power that was holding her prisoner. ‘And I lost so much money at your table, too. Won’t you spare me just one dance to cheer me up?’

‘Somehow you don’t seem particularly downcast,’ she rapped back with a touch of asperity.

‘I’ve learned to hide it.’

‘Oh, really?’ She returned him a glance of glittering suspicion. ‘You’ve had plenty of experience, I suppose?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ He sighed, over-acting so ludicrously that she was almost forced to laugh. ‘You’d think I’d have learned to play a little better by now.’

‘If you’re a regular card-player, I’m surprised I’ve never seen you here before,’ she remarked, sure now that she was right—he had been losing deliberately. But why?

‘I don’t know how I can have missed it,’ he countered blandly, giving nothing away. ‘Have you worked here long?’

‘I don’t work here,’ she responded coolly. She really didn’t need this—the incident with Lester had left her already on edge. ‘I own Spaniard’s Cove.’

‘Oh?’ One brown eyebrow arched in interested question. ‘I thought Lester Jackson owned it?’

She shook her head. ‘He’s my stepfather, and one of my trustees; he manages it for me until I come of age under the terms of my grandmother’s will.’

‘I see…’ He seemed to be storing the information away in some kind of mental filing cabinet. ‘What is this place?’ He glanced up at the high ceiling, beamed with dark local mahogany. ‘It looks like it was some kind of warehouse.’

‘It was,’ she confirmed. ‘Spaniard’s Cove used to be a sugar plantation.’

‘Oh? What happened to it?’

‘Market forces happened to it,’ she explained, with a quirk of wry humour. ‘Sugar-beet largely took over from cane, and most of the big plantations went bankrupt. My grandparents tried turning the old plantation house into a hotel, but it was never really very successful—most of the visitors to the island preferred to stay on their own yachts in those days. Then they hit on the idea of converting this place into a casino, to lure in the customers, and…well, that was it.’

He nodded with what seemed like genuine interest. ‘What happened to the house?’

‘It was blown down by a hurricane before I was born. They never bothered to rebuild it—they used up the wood instead to build the cottages along the beach.’

‘And the land?’ he enquired. ‘I suppose it’s all been sold off?’

‘No.’ She couldn’t help wondering why he was asking so many questions. ‘Some of it’s used to grow bananas, and some of it’s rented off as smallholdings, but the rest is just lying fallow at the moment. I have some plans for the future, but they will have to wait until I’m twenty-five.’

He smiled, a smile that seemed to have a very odd effect on her pulse-rate. ‘So in the meantime you content yourself with dealing blackjack?’

‘Yes.’ For some reason it was difficult to keep her voice steady. Being held so close to him, she could breathe the subtle musky scent of his skin, like some kind of drug. ‘And sometimes I work one of the roulette tables.’

‘Ah, roulette.’ He sighed, once again the amiable loser. ‘I’m no luckier at that than I am at blackjack, I’m afraid.’

‘So why keep playing?’ she demanded, stung into irritation by the conviction that he was somehow mocking her.

He shrugged those wide shoulders in a gesture of casual dismissal. ‘Oh, just for a little excitement,’ he responded. ‘Will you be on the roulette tables tonight?’

‘No. I shall be dealing blackjack again when I’ve had my break.’

‘And what time do you finish?’

‘Not until we close.’

‘And then?’

‘I shall be checking the takings,’ she returned crisply.

Again that questioning arched eyebrow. ‘Oh? But I thought Lester managed the casino? Doesn’t he take care of all that?’

Natasha slanted him a searching glance from beneath her lashes, a little surprised at the question. Beneath that casual mien, he seemed to be trying to find out an awful lot about the way the casino was run. ‘We…take it in turns,’ she responded stiffly.

He laughed, seeming to know somehow that she was lying—though how could he know, after being here only two days, that she generally checked the takings herself? ‘You mean you don’t trust him to count your money?’ he queried, those disturbing shark-grey eyes glinting in sardonic amusement.

‘Of course I do,’ she insisted, injecting her voice with several degrees of frost. ‘I trust him totally.’ The lie came out easily—there was no way she was going to discuss her private affairs with this disturbing stranger. She twisted her wrist to glance pointedly at her watch. ‘Well, I’m afraid my break is nearly over,’ she announced coolly. ‘If you’ll excuse me, Mr…?’

‘The name’s Hugh.’ There was a note of mocking reproof in his voice. ‘I’ve told you twice already.’

‘I’m sorry. The casino has a great many customers— I’m afraid I really can’t remember every single name.’ She was lying—she had remembered his name. Hugh Garratt. Though why it had fixed itself in her mind, she wasn’t quite sure.

‘I thought it was a croupier’s job, to remember names?’ he taunted.

‘No—to remember the cards,’ she corrected him with a hint of lofty disdain.

‘And you can do that?’

‘Extremely well.’

‘Ah!’ He grinned, playing the big, amiable fool again. ‘No wonder I kept losing.’

She didn’t want to laugh, but she couldn’t help it. ‘So, will you be staying another night?’ she asked, struggling to maintain her usual air of untouchability.

He smiled, that dangerous smile that made her heart kick against her ribs again. ‘Do you want me to?’ he countered, his voice a little huskier, his breath warm against her cheek.

She drew back, her eyes flashing him an instant frost warning. ‘I was merely being polite,’ she snapped.

That smile lingered, taunting her. ‘Maybe I will,’ he mused softly. ‘I haven’t made up my mind yet. It depends.’

‘On what?’

‘On whether I think it may be worth my while.’

She stiffened, her hackles rising. He appeared to have mistaken her for Darlene. ‘If you mean what I think you mean, you might as well leave right now,’ she retorted in a voice that would strip paint.

He merely laughed, feigning an innocence that would have fooled no one. ‘Now, what could you possibly think I mean?’ he taunted.

For one tense moment she felt an uncharacteristic urge to slap that arrogant face. She knew he had been deliberately needling her, but she was almost too angry to care if she made a scene. Instead she swept down and outwards with her elbows, to break his hold on her, and without another word turned him an aloof shoulder and stalked away.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHO was that you were dancing with last night?’

‘No one,’ Natasha responded coolly, reaching for a second croissant. It was rare for Lester to appear at the breakfast table—he didn’t usually get up until the afternoon—and it didn’t augur a good start to the day. After the scene last night in the garage, she would have preferred to have had as little contact with him as possible.

Lester laughed unpleasantly. ‘It wasn’t “no one”,’ he insisted. ‘You never dance with the customers—what makes that one so special?’

‘He caught me as I was walking back to the bar,’ she conceded stiffly. ‘I couldn’t very well avoid him.’

‘It was the guy that’s been losing heavily on the blackjack tables.’ Lester’s pale eyes glinted with greed. ‘That’s the sort of punter I like. You be nice to him, girl. Schmooze him a little. Play him along. The guy’s a sucker—if he thinks he’s in with a chance of making it with you he’ll stick around until his pockets are empty.’

Natasha returned him a look of cold dislike, spreading her croissant with apricot jam and biting into it delicately. The table was their usual one, set in the sunny bay window of the empty supper room. None of the other tables was laid—the casino wouldn’t be open for another couple of hours.

Only the cleaners were in—she could hear one of them singing tunelessly as she worked, the quiet hum of a vacuum cleaner replacing the usual clamour of the slot machines in the foyer. In the gaming room the curtains at the long windows had been drawn back and the windows opened to air the room, letting the bright, unfamiliar sunshine stream in.

‘You’re suggesting I should let him think I might go to bed with him so that he’ll stay and go on losing money at the tables?’ she clarified with icy disdain.

‘So what’s wrong with that?’ Lester demanded, sneering. ‘You don’t have to deliver. Come on—you know how the game works.’

‘I might know how it works, but that doesn’t mean I have to like how it works,’ she countered. ‘Not the way you play it, anyway.’

Her stepfather slammed down his coffee cup, his face as red as a tomato. ‘Damned toffee-nosed bitch!’ he snarled. ‘This place’d be losing money hand over fist if it wasn’t for me. And what thanks do I get? You can’t even bring yourself to be civil to my friends.’

‘If by “friends” you mean that creep you brought over here last month, and if by “civil” you mean not objecting to his hands wandering all over me when I was talking to him, then forget it,’ she returned crisply. ‘His sort don’t warrant civility—in fact he’s damned lucky he didn’t get my knee in his groin. And you can warn him that if he tries that sort of thing on with me again, that’s exactly what he will get.’

Lester leaned forward, prodding a finger at her across the table. ‘You’d better watch your tongue, my girl. Nobody speaks to Tony de Santo like that,’ he warned menacingly. ‘He’s got connections.’

Natasha merely laughed. Her stepfather was always boasting of his friends and their ‘connections’, but she wasn’t impressed. ‘I’ll speak to him how I like,’ she retorted. ‘The man’s a snake—and that’s probably being unfair to snakes.’ Her appetite gone, she drained her coffee and got up from the table without bothering to finish her breakfast.

The family’s private apartment was on the upper floor of the casino, in the old warehouse manager’s quarters. Natasha still shared it with Lester—somehow neither of them had got around to moving out. But, since neither of them spent very much time there, even taking their meals downstairs in the supper room, sharing it had never really been a problem.

But now, as she climbed the narrow staircase, she pulled a wry face. Maybe it was time to start talking about one of them living elsewhere.

What she needed was a swim to burn the edge off her tension, she decided briskly. She changed into a swimsuit and pulled her T-shirt and shorts back on over top, and then, pausing only to pick up some sunscreen and a towel, a broad-brimmed hat and a good book, she slipped down the back stairs, past the kitchens and out into the clear morning sunshine.

The beach would be crowded, but she knew of another one, hidden away, just ten minutes’ walk through the trees. It was quite small, so few people ever found it, and she could usually be guaranteed almost total privacy. Swinging her straw bag across her shoulder, she set off along the path which led past the beach cottages and up over a spur of dark volcanic rock, and then down to the tree-sheltered cove, with its deserted patch of white sand lapped by the turquoise-blue Caribbean Sea.

At this time of the morning the water had already been pleasantly warmed by the sun. She swam for a while with a smooth, powerful stroke, diving down beneath the sparkling surface to visit the rock pools and pockets of coral where shoals of tiny bright fish darted about, until she felt the coiled springs inside her begin to unwind and a pleasant ache of tiredness in her muscles.

The tiny beach was still empty as she climbed up out of the water. Scrubbing her hair roughly dry with the towel, she tucked it beneath her sunhat and then spread the towel out beneath a convenient rock, smoothed a generous dollop of suncream into her skin, perched her sunglasses on her nose and sat down with her back against the rock to enjoy the sheer bliss of solitude and a good book.

For about a minute. She had barely read half a page when the peace of the morning was abruptly shattered by a banging and thumping, and she glanced up to see a tall, familiar figure emerging from beneath the trees, a wind-surf board clutched clumsily under his arm. Uttering a most unladylike expletive under her breath, she bent her head over her book, shielding her face with the brim of her hat.

Dammit! Any intrusion on her quiet retreat would have been unwelcome—but if it had to be invaded, why on earth did it have to be by Hugh Garratt…?

‘Hello, there,’ he greeted her with amiable good humour. ‘What a pleasant surprise.’

‘Indeed.’ Her tone would have dampened most men’s attempts to engage her attention.

‘I hope I’m not disturbing you?’ he queried politely—though the unmistakable lilt of amusement in his voice confirmed that he actually knew perfectly well that he was disturbing her. In fact, she wouldn’t be at all surprised if he had come down here with that deliberate intention.

‘Not in the least,’ she rapped in answer, not bothering to look up from her book.

‘I came down to try out this windsurfing lark,’ he confided disarmingly. ‘Only I didn’t want anyone to see me making a fool of myself until I can get the hang of it.’

She tilted up her head, slanting him a suspicious glance from behind her sunglasses. ‘You’ve never tried it before?’

He shook his head. ‘I’m afraid not. I’ve often promised myself I’d have a go, though, so I thought I might as well take this chance, while I’m here.’

‘Well, don’t let me stop you.’ She returned her attention to her book, doing her best to ignore him as he stripped off his faded T-shirt to reveal a remarkably well-made torso, all smooth, hard muscle beneath lightly bronzed skin, with a smattering of rough dark hair across the width of his chest, arrowing down to…

Swiftly she snatched her eyes back to the jumbled words on the page, angry at her own awareness of him. He was just another punter—and one who couldn’t tell the difference between a brush-off and a come-on, apparently. Hadn’t she known more than enough of those? Her mouth compressed in irritation, she turned the page of her book—and then realised that she hadn’t read any of the previous three paragraphs.

‘Excuse me…?’

His shadow fell across her, a few grains of sand sprinkling onto her feet. She drew in a long, slow breath to indicate her annoyance, and then looked up at him. ‘Yes?’

‘I’m sorry to bother you, but I wondered if I could borrow a little of your suncream?’ he queried with a hint of diffidence, as if afraid she would bite his head off. ‘I forgot to bring any, and I don’t want to get burned.’

She was tempted to remark that he already seemed to have a pretty good tan, but she knew that wasn’t necessarily enough protection from the damaging rays of the hot Caribbean sun. ‘Of course.’ She nodded curtly, dipping her hand into her bag and pulling it out. ‘Here.’

‘Thank you.’

Even without looking up, she was still aware of him standing so close to her—and to judge from the sounds of the gloops and slurps he was using up half the tube of cream. Then there was another moment of hesitation.

‘I don’t like to bother you again…’ His voice was all innocent apology, his smile one of ingratiating charm. ‘But would you mind putting some on my back for me? I can’t reach.’

With a sigh of weary exasperation, she laid down her hat and her book, and, rising to her feet, almost snatched the tube from him. ‘Turn around, then,’ she ordered grudgingly, squeezing out a pool of cream into the palm of her hand.

She began at the nape of his neck, working out along his wide shoulders, smoothing the cream briskly into his warm skin. Beneath her hand, those well-defined muscles were firm and resilient over the steel hardness of bone. She had been right about how fit he was, she mused absently—this was all prime male, not a trace of softness in him.

Slicking the cream across his back, she continued to rub it in, circling slowly, over and over, all her attention focused on her task as she worked her way over the smooth ridges of muscle and down the long cleft of his spine. Last night, even with the three-inch heels of her evening sandals, she had been aware of how tall he was, but now, barefoot in the sand, his six-foot plus seemed to tower over her.

Her mouth felt suddenly dry, and the sun seemed to have grown hotter, making her feel a little light-headed. And some kind of strange magnetic force was drawing her closer, closer, until she could have slid her arms around his waist, leaned herself against him, felt the raw power in that hard male body next to hers…

Abruptly she drew back, startled. She had been within an inch of actually doing it, of making a complete fool of herself.

‘There you are.’ Her voice was stiff from the effort of suppressing the slight tremor in her throat. ‘That’s enough.’

‘Thank you.’ He turned, smiling slowly—and she was quite sure that he knew exactly what effect he was having on her. At least she still had her sunglasses on—he couldn’t see her eyes. But he must be aware of how ragged her breathing was, the way her hand was trembling as she tried to put the lid back on the cream. He was much too close—and that wide chest, hard-muscled and hair-roughened, was much too male. She just had to touch…

‘There’s a bit there you haven’t rubbed in properly,’ she excused herself awkwardly, putting up her fingertips to a melting streak of white just above his heart, where that fascinating smattering of rough hair curled over the sculpted curve of a well-defined pectoral muscle.

‘Thank you.’ His voice had taken on a huskier timbre, and with an odd little frisson of excitement she realised that he too was aware of that strange sizzle of electricity between them…

But he had deliberately engineered this, the warming voice inside her brain reminded her sharply—it hadn’t happened by chance. He was sly, devious, manipulative—in short, a man. She drew back, retreating behind her usual façade of icy disdain. ‘There. You shouldn’t get sunburned now, so long as you don’t stay out too long.’

He laughed that lazily mocking laugh. ‘I’m very obliged to you. You can go back to your book now.’

‘Thank you!’ she retorted snappily, sitting down again and slapping her hat on her head, snatching up her book and focusing all her attention on the page.

But she could no more forget his presence than fly to the moon. A few minutes later, she glanced up to see him floundering around on the sailboard, lurching from one side to the other. She watched with growing impatience, until finally she sighed, and shook her head. ‘Don’t over-compensate,’ she called to him. ‘You’re gripping the bar too tight.’

He glanced over his shoulder, wobbled, but by some miracle didn’t fall in.

‘Stand up straight. Hold your head up,’ she instructed. ‘You don’t need to watch your feet.’

He wobbled again, righted it, and wobbled the other way. ‘The darned thing just seems to go all over the place!’ he protested wryly.

‘Don’t think about it too hard. Bend your knees a little, and let the board ride.’ She put the book down and walked to the water’s edge. ‘Don’t watch the front of the board—keep your eyes on where you’re going.’

He sped along nicely for a moment, but then seemed to hit a lump in the water and lost it again. ‘Damn—I just can’t get the hang of it,’ he complained. ‘I seem to have rotten balance.’

Her eyes narrowed suspiciously—he didn’t look the sort who would be poor at sports. He turned clumsily, letting the board run in towards the shore.

‘It might be better if you showed me,’ he suggested hopefully.

The look she slanted him warned him that she was pretty sure he was playing games, but she received only the most innocent smile in response. With nothing else to say, she took the board from him. ‘The first thing is to balance the board and up-haul the sail,’ she explained. ‘Don’t bother about sinking—snap it up and sheet it in as quickly as you can.’

She felt the familiar tug as the wind caught in the sail, felt the bounce of the waves beneath her feet, and instinctively turned the rig to gybe around and skim out across the water. ‘See? You keep your shoulders forward, lift onto your toes…’

‘What…?’ he called from the shore. ‘I can’t hear you.’

‘Lift onto your toes…’ Impatiently she realised that it was no good—the wind was carrying her words away. Reluctantly she swung the board around again, and headed back to the beach. ‘Get up behind me, and I’ll show you.’

He accepted the invitation with an alacrity which confirmed her suspicion that he had planned for just such an outcome, stepping up behind her and reaching around to grasp the bar, listening attentively as she instructed him how to hold it. With two of them on it the board was a little less stable, but as soon as the breeze caught the sail it began to scud out across the water, as graceful as a bird.

Natasha had always thought that this swimsuit was perfectly respectable—soft shades of blue and green, with a satiny sheen, and not cut particularly low. But now, with Hugh Garratt’s bare chest against her bare back, his bare thighs brushing against hers, she was rather too conscious that all he had to do was glance down over her shoulder and he would have an unhindered view into the soft shadow between her breasts. And she was heatedly aware of their ripe swell, and the way the tender peaks had puckered into taut buds, their contours clearly visible beneath the damp, clinging Lycra.

As she stiffened in tension, the board snatched and started to topple. Instantly Hugh righted it, the small movement not the sort of instinctive reaction she would have expected of a beginner.

‘You suddenly seem to be getting very good at this,’ she remarked, a sardonic inflection in her voice.

‘I am, aren’t I?’ he responded with simple pride, his breath warm against her hair. ‘You must be a good teacher.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with me,’ she retorted. ‘You’ve been on a sail board before.’

‘A few times,’ he conceded, his laughter soft and husky. ‘But with you sitting there so frosty, frowning at me over your sunglasses, I couldn’t think of any other way of getting close to you.’

And close he was, much closer than was necessary to keep the sail board afloat—folded around her, every inch of his body seeming to touch hers somewhere. ‘You’re…nothing but a fraud!’ she protested, the tremor in her voice betraying the confusing responses she didn’t know how to control.