Spirit Of Atlantis

‘Oh, there you are, Brad. I’ve been looking for you.’ Her smile flashed briefly at Dan Prescott. ‘Come along, I want you to help me hang those lamps in the yard.’

‘Oh, Mom!’

Brad’s voice was eloquent with feeling, and after only a slight hesitation Dan said: ‘Perhaps I could help you, Mrs Galloway.’

Pam was obviously taken aback, but Julie’s hopes of reprieve were quickly squashed. ‘That won’t be necessary, Mr Prescott, thank you,’ her friend assured him warmly. ‘Brad will do it—he always does. He’s such a help around the place.’

‘I’m sure he is.’ Dan’s expression was amused as it rested on the boy’s mutinous face. ‘Sorry, old son, but there’ll be another time.’

‘Will there? Will there really?’

Brad gazed up at him eagerly, and with a fleeting glance in Julie’s direction Dan nodded. ‘You have my word on it,’ he nodded, pushing his hands into his jacket pockets, and Brad’s demeanour was swiftly transformed.

‘Oh—boy!’ he exclaimed, and grinned almost defiantly at Julie before his mother ushered him away.

But when Julie would have left too, lean brown fingers looped themselves loosely around her wrist. ‘Wait …’

The word was uttered somewhere near her temple, and the warmth of his breath ruffled the strands of silky hair that lay across her forehead. It was a husky injunction, a soft invocation to delay her while Pam and her son got out of earshot, yet when she tried to release herself his fingers reacted like a slip knot that tightened the more it was strained against. His command might have been mild, but it was a command nevertheless, she realised, and she was forced to stand there, supremely aware that if she moved her fingers they brushed his leg.

‘So,’ he said at last, when they were alone, the student receptionist having departed to take his dinner some time before, ‘why are you running out on me?’

Julie contemplated denying the allegation, but she had no desire to start an argument with him. Besides, he was experienced enough to know if she was lying, and opposition often provoked an interest that otherwise would not have been there.

‘Why do you think?’ she asked instead, assuming a bored expression, and the long thick lashes came to shade his eyes.

‘You tell me,’ he suggested, and with a sigh she said: ‘Because I don’t want to get involved with you, Mr Prescott.’

‘I see.’ His look was quizzical.

‘Now will you let me go?’

He frowned. ‘Why don’t you like me? What did I do to promote such a reaction?’

‘I neither like nor dislike you, Mr Prescott,’ she retorted twisting her wrist impotently. ‘Please let go of me.’

‘Is all this outraged modesty because I kissed you?’

‘I’d rather not discuss it.’ Julie held up her head. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Mr Prescott, but I’d prefer it if you’d forget we ever met before.’

‘Would you?’ The smoky grey eyes drooped briefly to her mouth, and it was an almost tangible incursion. ‘Would you really?’

‘Yes,’ but Julie had to grind her teeth together to say it. When he looked at her like that she found it incredibly difficult to keep a clear head, and almost desperately she sought for a means of diversion. ‘I—where is your cousin? Won’t he be wondering where you are?’

‘Drew?’ Dan Prescott’s look changed to one of mocking inquiry. ‘How did you know I came with Drew?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Of course not.’ Too late Julie realised she had made a mistake. ‘I—er—I saw the two of you come in, that’s all. And—and Pam said something about him being your cousin.’

‘Pam? Oh—Mrs Galloway, of course.’ With a shrug he released her, but as she moved to go past him he stepped into her path. ‘One more thing …’

‘What?’

‘I want you to come out with me tomorrow.’

The invitation was not entirely unexpected, but its delivery was, and Julie felt a sense of stunned indignation that he should think it would be that easy.

‘No,’ she said, without hesitation.

‘Why not?’

He was persistent, and she found it was impossible to get by him without his co-operation. ‘Because—because I don’t want to,’ she retorted shortly. ‘I’ve told you—’

‘—you don’t want to get involved with me, I know.’ He pulled his upper lip between his teeth. ‘But you don’t really believe that any more than I do.’

‘Mr Prescott—’

‘And stop calling me Mr Prescott. You know my name, just as I now know yours—Julie.’

Julie found she was trembling. This verbal fencing was more exhausting than she had thought, and she looked round helplessly, wishing for once that Pam would interfere. But apart from the Meades, who were leaving the dining room with their arms wrapped around each other, there was no one to appeal to, and she could not intrude on their evident self-absorption.

‘Why are you fighting me?’ Dan’s breath fanned her ear as she turned back to look at him, and an involuntary shiver swept over her. ‘Come and have a drink,’ he invited. ‘I’ll introduce you to my cousin, and then perhaps you might begin to believe my father wasn’t the devil incarnate!’

‘You—you’re—’

‘Disgusting? Yes, you told me. But I can be fun too, if you’ll let me.’

The grey eyes had darkened and Julie felt her heart slow and then quicken to a suffocating pace. Oh God, she thought weakly, he knows exactly how to get what he wants, and she didn’t know whether she had the strength to resist him.

‘I—I can’t,’ she got out through her dry throat. ‘I can’t.’

With a laconic shrug it was over. Almost before she was aware of it, he had moved past her, walking with lithe indolence towards the bar where his cousin was waiting, and she was free to go.

With her breath coming in tortured gasps, she practically ran across the hall, dropping down the two shallow steps that led to the swing doors, going through them with such force that they continued to swing long after she had left them. She didn’t stop until she was inside her cabin, but even then she did not feel the sense of security she had expected.

CHAPTER THREE

JULIE DID NOT go down to the lake to swim again for almost a week. It was foolish because she had no reason to suppose that Dan Prescott might be there, but a necessary interval seemed called for, and she contented herself with going out with Brad in his dinghy, or taking the controls of his father’s power boat so that he could water-ski. He was quite good at it, but although Julie tried, she persistently lost her balance and ended up choking for breath in the power-boat’s wake.

Eventually, however, common-sense overrode her nervousness, and she returned to her early morning pastime. Dan Prescott had not come back to the hotel, and although she had succeeded in evading Pam’s more personal questions about what had happened between them that night, her continued abstinence was provoking comment. So she began to make her regular morning trek to the cove, and after three days of solitude she began to believe she would never see him again.

Then, on the fourth morning, he appeared.

Julie was already in the water, swimming vigorously across the mouth of the inlet, when she saw the tall figure standing motionless on the rocks. As before, he was dressed in denim jeans and shirt, and even as she watched, he peeled off his shirt and tossed it on to the rocks. She turned quickly away before he unbuckled the belt of his pants. She had no desire to see him naked, and the awareness that he was coming into the water with her filled her with trembling anticipation.

There was no way she could get out without passing him. Around the mouth of the inlet there were currents she wasn’t familiar with, and besides, it was a good half mile round and into the next cove where David had built his marina. She was trapped, and he knew it. No doubt he had planned it this way deliberately. And she despised him for it.

She heard the splash as he entered the water and permitted herself a backward glance. He was nowhere in sight, probably swimming underwater, she thought apprehensively, and then almost lost her breath when he surfaced right beside her.

‘Hi!’

Julie drew a trembling breath. ‘Don’t you ever give up?’

‘It’s a free country, isn’t it?’ His eyes mocked her. ‘Or are you going to tell me the land is private?’

‘I know your uncle owns it, if that’s what you mean,’ Julie retorted, pushing back her hair with an unsteady hand. ‘Enjoy your swim. You’ll be happy to know you’ve spoilt mine!’

The word he said was not polite, and his hands reached for her before she could defend herself, pulling her down into the water until her nasal tubes were blocked and she thought her lungs were going to burst. Then he let her go, allowing her to float up to the surface, gulping desperately for breath as he came up behind her.

‘That—that was a rotten thing to do,’ she got out, when she could speak again, and he made no attempt to deny it. ‘I could have drowned!’

He seemed to consider her protest for a few seconds and then he shook his head. ‘I don’t think I could have allowed that,’ he remarked, in all seriousness. ‘Great though the temptation might be.’

Julie pursed her lips. ‘You enjoy making fun of me, don’t you?’

‘I enjoy—you,’ he said, slowly and deliberately so that her whole body seemed suffused with heat, in spite of the coldness of the water. ‘Or rather I would—if you’d let me.’

There was a brief pause while Julie’s green eyes stared in troubled fascination into his, and then with panic quickening her limbs she struck out blindly for the shore. It was useless, she told herself, she could not have an ordinary conversation with him. He persisted in turning every innocent remark into something personal, and her inexperience in these matters made her an easy target. She should have known he would not let her be. He was a predator, and right now she was his prey. And like all hunters, the harder the chase, the more satisfying the kill.

Her feet found the stony lake shore, and she waded up out of the water on slightly wobbly legs. The exertion had been all the more tiring because of her awareness of him behind her, and the fear that at any moment he might grab her flailing feet. However, she made it unscathed, though as she groped for her towel she heard him emerge from the water behind her.

Squeezing the excess moisture from her hair, she tried to ignore him, but he walked across the shingle and sprawled lazily on a flat rock. Almost compulsively, her eyes were drawn to him, and his lips curved in amusement at that involuntary appraisal. It was obvious from the apprehensiveness of her darting glance that she had expected the worst, but to her relief she saw he was wearing thin navy shorts, and although they left little to her imagination, he was decently covered.

‘You didn’t really think I’d do that, did you?’ he enquired, propping himself up on one elbow and regarding her bikini-clad figure quizzically.

‘Do what?’ Julie was evasive, towelling her hair with more effort than skill, wondering if she could wriggle into her shorts without making a spectacle of herself.

‘Swim in the raw,’ Dan answered bluntly, knowing full well she was not unaware of his meaning. ‘I wouldn’t want to embarrass you a second time.’

‘You didn’t embarrass me, Mr Prescott,’ Julie retorted, not altogether truthfully, deciding the shorts would have to wait until she had gained the privacy of the trees. ‘Goodbye!’

‘Julie …’ With a lithe movement, he sprang off the rocks and caught her arm as she bent to pick up her belongings. ‘Julie, don’t go. Look, I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, but for heaven’s sake, what’s a guy got to do to make it with you?’

Julie gathered her towel and shorts to her chest almost as if they were a shield, and avoided looking up at him. ‘Mr Prescott, I don’t know the kind of girls you are used to associating with, but men don’t—make it with me, as you so crudely put it. Just because you’re apparently accustomed to every girl you meet falling flat on her face when you show an interest in them, don’t—’

‘Why not flat on their backs?’ he interrupted her harshly. ‘That would facilitate matters, wouldn’t it?’ and her breathing quickened to a suffocating pace.

‘As I said, you’re—’

‘Forget it!’ he snapped. ‘I don’t know why I came here.’

‘Because you can’t bear to think you’re not irresistible!’ Julie retorted recklessly, and then quivered uncontrollably as he tore the towel and shorts from her fingers and jerked her towards him.

When he bent his head towards her, she had no hope of avoiding him and although she turned her head from side to side, he found her mouth with unerring accuracy, fastening his lips to hers and taking his fill of her honeyed softness. His damp body was an aggressive barrier to any escape she might attempt to make, and try as she might, she could not prevent the awareness of her breasts hardening against the forceful expanse of his chest.

It was impossible, too, to prevent him from parting her lips. Choking for breath, she gulped for air against his mouth, but the invasion of his lips robbed her of all opposition. He was devouring her, hungrily teaching her the meaning of the adult emotions he was arousing, and as her lips began to kiss him back, the pressure eased to a paralysing sweetness. His hands released her arms to slide across her back, and her legs trembled as he pressed her body into his. She could feel him with every nerve and sinew of her being, and the growing awareness of what was happening to him made her acutely aware of the fragile barrier between herself and his thrusting masculinity.

He released her mouth to seek the hollow behind her ear, kissing her earlobe and her neck, brushing her hair aside to stroke the sensitive curve of her nape with his tongue. Julie knew she ought to draw back, that this was her opportunity to get away from him, but she was consumed by the urgency of her own emotions, and too aroused to think sensibly about anything.

The bra of her bikini slackened as he released the clip, and a silent protest rose inside her as his fingers found the rose-tipped mounds that no man had ever seen before, let alone touched.

‘Don’t …’ he said, as her hands sought to obstruct him. ‘Don’t stop me. Oh, Julie, you’re beautiful!’

‘Am I?’

Her breath came in little gasps and his mouth curved in sensuous approval. ‘You know it,’ he groaned, his lips against her creamy flesh. ‘Oh, God, what am I going to do about you?’

‘Do about me?’ she echoed confusedly, but his mouth covered hers once again, silencing any further speculation. The urgency of his caress drove all coherent thought from her head, and soft arms wound around his neck in eager submission.

Her convent upbringing had not prepared her for this, or for the unexpected sensuality of her own nature, and her instinctive response was all the more unrestrained because of it. She was warm and soft and responsive, her silky body yielding to his with innocent fervour, and Dan almost lost his own grip on sanity as he continued to hold her. She was so completely desirable, so eminently responsive to his every overture, and the urge to lay her on the rocks and submerge himself in her honeyed softness was almost overpowering. He doubted she would oppose him. She was all melting passion in his arms. But if he had been overwhelmed by her artless submission, he was still rational enough to realise that she was not entirely aware of what she was inviting. He could imagine her reaction when she came to her senses, and she would resent him bitterly if he took advantage of her innocence.

For all that, it was incredibly difficult to resist her, and a groan was forced from him as he compelled her away. Then, avoiding her look of hurt bewilderment, he bent and picked up her towel, pressing it into her fingers with a rough insensitivity.

Julie was mortified, as much by the awareness of her own wanton behaviour as by the realisation that he had given her the towel to cover her nakedness. He had taken advantage of her, and she had encouraged him, and what was more humiliating, he had rejected her.

‘I’m sorry.’ His apology came strangely to her ears, and her averted gaze turned blindly from the shocked realisation that he was no less aroused than before. ‘But—well, I guess I lost my head,’ he muttered half reluctantly, ‘and I guess you did too.’

Julie licked her dry lips. ‘Lost your head?’ she echoed, as his meaning became clear to her. ‘But I wouldn’t—’

‘Yes, you would,’ he retorted harshly. ‘We’re not children, Julie, and you know I want you. However, aside from other considerations, I don’t honestly know what you want.’

Julie blinked, trying to make sense of what he was saying to her. It appeared she was wrong. He had not rejected her because of any inadequacy of her part. He had actually considered the possibility, but because he was more experienced, he had dismissed the idea. There was something horribly cold-blooded about the whole affair, and her head moved helplessly from side to side as she bent to retrieve her discarded bra.

‘Julie!’ He was speaking to her again, but she refused to answer him. She just wanted to get away, the farther away the better, and she struggled wildly when he endeavoured to detain her. ‘Julie!’ he said again, more forcefully this time. ‘Julie, listen to me! When am I going to see you again? Today? Tonight? When?’

‘Never, I hope,’ she choked, throwing back her head, her hair cascading damply about her shoulders. ‘Just let me go—’

‘No, I won’t.’ He thrust his impatient face close to hers. ‘You’re not being sensible, Julie, and I don’t intend to let you go until you are!’

‘I’ll scream—’

‘In that state?’ His mocking eyes flicked the slipping ends of the towel and her face suffused with colour. But all the humour had left his expression, and he was deadly serious as he said: ‘Okay, you want the truth, you got it. When I’m with you, I can’t think sanely.’ His eyes burned above her. ‘But unlike you, I accept that people have feelings, and I didn’t want to hurt you.’

Julie faltered. ‘To—hurt me?’

‘Yes, damn you,’ he muttered, unable to prevent himself from pulling her to him again. ‘There,’ he added hoarsely, ‘now tell me you don’t know what I’m feeling—you’re not that naïve. But I do know you’ve never been with a man before, even if you do learn fast.’

Julie’s tongue appeared in unknowing provocation. ‘I—I don’t understand …’

‘Don’t you?’ His hands slipped possessively around her waist, hard and warm against the cooler skin of her hips. ‘Could you have stopped me? Honestly?’ He bent his head to her shoulder, his teeth gently massaging the soft flesh. ‘But wouldn’t you have hated me if I had?’

Julie’s face burned. ‘You shouldn’t say such things!’

‘Why not?’ Dan lifted his head to gaze intently down at her. ‘It’s a fact.’

Julie drew an uneven breath. ‘Let me go, Dan.’

Her husky request brought a faint smile to his lips. ‘At last,’ he murmured. ‘I wondered what I’d have to do to get you to say my name.’

‘Dan, please …’

Julie pressed her hands determinedly against his chest, but the hair-roughened skin was absurdly sensuous against her palms, and she stood there helpless in the grip of emotions she scarcely knew or understood.

‘Tonight,’ he said, his breath fanning her cheek as he bent towards her. ‘Have dinner with me, on the yacht. We can serve ourselves—just the two of us.’

‘I can’t.’

The denial sprang automatically to her lips, and his mouth turned down at the comers. ‘Why not?’

‘Because I can’t.’ Julie freed herself from him without too much difficulty, and quickly slipped her arms into the bra, fastening the clip with trembling fingers. Then, gathering up her shorts and the towel, she turned back to him. ‘G-goodbye.’

If she had expected him to object as he had done before, she was disappointed. With a weary shrug of his shoulders he bent to pick up his own pants, and thrust his legs into them without giving her another glance. It was as if he had grown bored with the whole exchange, and as on that evening at the hotel, he had abandoned the struggle.

Conversely, Julie was left feeling strangely bereft, and stepping into her sandals she made her way across the shingle with a distinct sense of deprivation.

The feeling had not left her by the time she reached the hotel, but in the sanctuary of her cabin she faced the fact that she had probably had the most lucky escape ever. As her blood cooled, reaction set in, and she sank down on to the bed trembling at the realisation of how near she had come to losing all respect for herself and betraying Adam’s trust in her. She didn’t know what had come over her, and for someone who for so long had regarded herself as immune from the kind of behaviour gossiped about in the dormitory after lights-out, it was doubly humiliating. She would never have thought she might have reason to be grateful to Dan Prescott, but she was, albeit that gratitude was tinged with anxiety. How long could she trust a man like him, she wondered uneasily, and how long could she trust herself if he persisted in pursuing her?

It was lunchtime before she emerged from the cabin, and Pam intercepted her in the reception hall of the hotel. She had a letter with an airmail postmark in her hand, and Julie guessed it was from Adam before the other girl spoke.

‘Where have you been?’ she exclaimed, looking with some concern at Julie’s unusually pale features. ‘I thought you and Brad were going into Midland this morning. He was hanging about like a lost sheep until David went to collect the mail and took him along.’

‘Oh, Pam, I forgot all about it.’ Julie was dismayed. ‘I’m sorry. Where is he? I must apologise.’

‘He’s tackling a hamburger right now,’ Pam assured her lightly, pulling a wry face. ‘You know nothing affects his appetite. He did come to look for you earlier with this letter, but you weren’t in your cabin.’

‘I was.’ Ruefully Julie remembered the hammering at her door which she had taken to be the janitor. ‘I—well, I had a headache,’ she explained. ‘I didn’t feel like company.’

‘And are you all right now?’ Pam asked, handing her the letter addressed in Adam’s neat handwriting. ‘I must say you do look a little washed out. What say we have our lunch together on the terrace? A nice chef’s salad with French dressing, hmm?’

Julie nodded. It was easier than thinking up an excuse, but she knew better than to suppose Pam was that easily satisfied. She read her letter while Pam went to see about the meal, but when the salad and freshly baked rolls were set before them, the older girl returned to the attack.

‘You’ve seen Dan Prescott again, haven’t you?’ she remarked perceptively. ‘Did he make those bruises on your arms?’

Julie crossed her arms across her chest, selfconsciously covering the revealing marks just below her shoulders with her fingers. She had been going to pass them off as the result of a fall she had had in the woods, but when Pam made so forthright a statement, she found it impossible to lie with conviction.

‘He was down at the lake,’ she admitted, avoiding Pam’s indignant gaze. ‘And that’s all I’m going to say about it.’

Pam shook her head. ‘The brute!’ she exclaimed with feeling. ‘I only hope David doesn’t notice, or he’ll blame me for encouraging you.’

Julie sighed. ‘Pam—please, forget it. It’s not important—’

‘I disagree. If he thinks he can—’

‘Pam, it wasn’t like that.’ Julie could not in all honesty allow her friend to go on imagining the worst. ‘He wasn’t—violent.’ She paused, wishing she had never admitted anything. ‘I—I bruise easily, that’s all.’

‘So what happened?’

Pam was all ears, ignoring completely what the other girl had said earlier, but Julie refused to discuss it. ‘I’ll take Brad into Midland this afternoon,’ she said instead, deliberately changing the subject. ‘If he still wants to go, that is.’

Pam was silent for a few minutes, and then she conceded defeat. ‘Oh, he still wants to go,’ she agreed offhandedly. ‘He’s looking forward to you treating him to one of those enormous sundaes at the ice-cream parlour. He wouldn’t miss that!’