not because he’d done something to deserve them but because of who he was.
What other six-year-old boy would be given an elephant for his birthday, simply because he’d happened to mention in passing that the elephant he’d seen in a travelling show shouldn’t have to live with a chain around its foot?
That thought made him smile!
Imagine bringing Rajah here, to this tropical paradise in the South Pacific! He’d love the rainforest, but would decimate the villagers’ gardens in a week.
Maybe less.
Besides which he was getting too old to travel.
He sighed, a sure sign he was brooding, and as brooding was a totally pointless occupation and achieved precisely nothing, a man who was into achievement—or had been—should do something about it.
He stood up and paced the bure he’d had built for himself as part of his exclusive resort on Wildfire Island, his eyes barely registering the beauty of the natural stone, the polished, ecologically sourced timber, the intricately woven local mats. From outside it might look like a typical island home, but inside …
In truth, he might be driven to achieve recognition for his work, but he didn’t mind a few trappings of luxury.
Work!
There was that word again.
No matter how hard he tried to convince himself the work he was doing now was important and worthwhile, which it was, there was always a but.
His drive to be himself apart from his background had begun as a child sent to England at ten to a top boarding school. On arrival he’d introduced himself as Harry so his more exotic name didn’t mark him out.
And as Harry, he’d been driven to succeed, to be the best, and his rise through school and university had been marked with success. But he’d found his true passion to be for surgery—general at first then specialising in paediatric surgery, helping save the lives of the most vulnerable small humans.
But one could hardly operate on a newborn with a right hand that trembled, legacy of a touch-and-go brush with encephalitis. His initial reaction to the loss of the work he loved had been fury—fury with the weakness of his body in doing this to him.
Eventually he’d realised the pointlessness of his anger, so he’d sought and found a new focus—to provide facilities for scientists working on a variety of vaccines for the disease, as well as developing mosquito eradication programmes in the worst affected areas.
It was worthwhile work, and it had him roaming the world almost continually, checking up on the services he’d set up. Which left him tired. But it didn’t become the passion his surgical work had been, and he felt a lesser man because of it.
He sighed and went back to brooding, but on the woman this time—better, surely, than brooding on the past and the loss of the work he’d loved.
What was done was done!
The woman!
Sarah Watson …
He had met her before, he was certain of that.
But having come close to death from the encephalitis virus had obviously killed some brain cells and though his memory of her was vivid in his mind, he couldn’t place it in context anywhere.
He’d asked her at the cocktail party, caught up with her in the crush at the opening of the refurbished research station and resort, reminded her they’d met.
And she’d denied it—brushed away from him—telltale colour in her cheeks suggesting it was a lie.
But why?
And why in damnation did he care?
Worse, care enough to have returned to the island in order to see her again when he could have been in Africa, or, if he really needed a woman, in New York, where there were beautiful, fun, sophisticated women who wanted nothing more than a brief sexual relationship with no strings attached?
It was her hair!
How many women had hair the colour of rich, polished mahogany?
And the scent of it—tangy—like vinegar mixed with the rose perfume his mother always wore, and the rose-scented water that splashed in the fountains at home.
But vinegar?
Could he really have picked up vinegar in the scent—and been drawn to it?
Who was drawn to vinegar?
Whatever!
The fact remained he had to have brushed against her some time in the past, for the scent to have been so evocative as they’d passed in the crush of people at the cocktail party! He’d asked his friend Luke about the woman and had learnt nothing more than that she was the general surgeon who flew into the island for a week every six weeks, and that she was English.
Big help!
Although her being English did make it possible he’d met her before, as he’d been based in London all his working life.
It was now six weeks since the cocktail party to celebrate the opening of the luxury resort and the reopening of the research station funded by him in the same small piece of paradise.
Six weeks, and here he was back on Wildfire when he should be at another research facility he’d set up in West Africa, or in Malaysia, organising the mosquito eradication programme. Should have been anywhere but here.
Brooding!
Enough!
He picked up his phone and got through to the island’s small hospital.
‘Is Dr Watson there?’ he asked the woman who answered.
‘Finished for the day, probably down on Sunset Beach,’ was the succinct reply.
Sunset Beach—just around the corner, a short walk to the rock fall that separated his resort beach from the next small curve of sand. Walk around that and there was Sunset Beach.
He’d meet her there, as if by accident, and work out where they’d met—ask her again if necessary.
Action was better than brooding.
He dropped the phone and left the bure, not giving himself time to consider what he was doing in case he decided it wasn’t a good idea.
He’d see her, ask her again where they’d met, perhaps smell her hair …
Was he mad?
Wasn’t he in enough trouble with women at the moment, with his mother, three sisters, seven aunts, and Yasmina, the woman he was supposed to be marrying —for the good of the country, of course—insisting he come home and prepare to take over his role as ruler when his aging father died?
They all knew, as did his father, that his younger brother would be a far better ruler than he, and the very thought of
