style="font-size:15px;"> 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.’
