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.

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