Meant To Marry

‘Until I’ve finished my research. A week or so, I imagine, then I’ll head back to New Zealand to write.’ He drained his glass, throat muscles working. ‘I have a house on a hill overlooking a beach on the Coromandel,’ he said. ‘It’s primitive and isolated and gut-wrenchingly beautiful. Perfect for a writer.’

Scott nodded, then enquired after someone called Old Ropy, who’d been at school with them. Lucas didn’t know where this improbably named person was, but Scott wasn’t deterred. He mentioned other names, and they slipped into the sort of conversation that consisted mainly of, ‘Do you remember...?’ until Lucas said, ‘We must be boring Anet rigid.’

Scott gave her a fond smile. ‘Not Annie,’ he said. ‘She’s very restful, is Annie. Doesn’t drive a man crazy with her yattering all the time.’

‘Don’t talk about me as though I’m not here,’ she said, laughing in spite of herself. ‘And shouldn’t we be going?’

CHAPTER THREE

SCOTT had not overpraised the restaurant. Although the big room was packed, and noisy with local Chinese families, islanders and tourists, and the clicking ceiling fans barely disturbed the humid, spice-scented air, the food was divine.

‘Ambrosia,’ Anet sighed as she lifted her bowl of jasmine tea in a silent toast to her cousin. ‘One of the best meals I’ve ever tasted, anywhere.’

Scott looked pleased. ‘I thought you’d like it. Serena and I come here whenever we feel rich.’

‘I never stop being surprised at how extraordinarily well you can eat throughout the Pacific,’ Lucas commented.

‘You should write a book about it,’ Scott said, grinning. ‘Eating your way around the Pacific. You’d have every armchair traveller in the world buying it.’

Lucas laughed. ‘One day I might just do that.’

He’d been a good companion—witty, amusing and an excellent raconteur, and obviously enjoying the evening, yet Anet suspected that one part of him stood back and viewed the world with an unemotional, disinterested gaze, safe behind the barrier he’d constructed to keep the rest of humankind at a distance.

He didn’t reveal much of himself in his books either. Although exciting and topical and searingly written, the personal outrage that must fuel his need to track down perpetrators of crime was always kept under vigilant control.

‘Time to go,’ Scott told them, getting to his feet as the waiter brought back the tray and his credit card. When the bill had arrived he and Lucas had exchanged a few cryptic remarks, from which Anet had gathered that Lucas would reimburse him later for his share.

Outside, breathing in air scented with the myriad odours of growth and fecundity, Anet realised that Lucas was to accompany them to the nightclub. Stop jittering, she told her stomach firmly as she looked out of the car windows at the thin line of white where the combers met the reef. As her legs were marginally shorter than his she had insisted on sitting in the back—which position, unfortunately for her peace of mind, gave her an excellent view of an autocratic, angular profile every time Lucas turned his head to speak.

The nightclub was quite skilfully decorated with a ceiling of thatched pandanus leaves so that it looked like a very large fale—one of the island’s superbly simple traditional houses—and it hummed. Everyone under twenty-three on the island seemed to be there, dancing enthusiastically to a band that played a clever mixture of rock music and Hawaiian pop.

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.