proves difficult there’s always the threat of revealing just how inadequate his darling daughter is, if he doesn’t play ball. I can just see it now, can’t you? “Oil magnate’s daughter unable to arouse her husband.” No, we won’t have any trouble getting rid of her when the time comes. I like a woman who’s all woman, who knows how to please a man. A taste I share with our friend Lorimer, unless I’m mistaken,’ Andrew added, jealousy edging under his voice, sending fresh waves of agony searing through her body.
She ought to leave before they realised that she was listening, Somer thought emptily, but the MacDonald pride would not let her, and her Celtic heritage urged her to stay and hear all that there was to hear, to endure everything there was to endure, and so she stayed where she was, opening herself to the torrent of pain sweeping over her, bowing her head beneath it with Celtic stoic acceptance of the inevitability of pain, only her fiery MacDonald pride keeping her from crying it out loud.
‘Jealous,’ Judith teased huskily. ‘He was just chatting to me…’
‘Chatting to you? Are you trying to tell me he didn’t ask you out?’
‘Not this time.’
‘And if he did?’ The jealousy in Andrew’s voice increased.
‘Of come on darling, you can’t expect me to spend all my spare time alone while you’re wining and dining Miss Oil Wells. Like you just said I’m all woman, and I have my…needs…’
Feeling physically sick Somer stepped back blindly searching for the door. She couldn’t endure any more. She wouldn’t endure any more and she would prove to them both that they were both wrong about her; that she could attract a man physically; that she was just as desirable as Judith, every bit as much a woman, and for starters…
Barely giving herself time to think she gathered up all her courage and walked into the room, tugging off the small diamond solitaire and tossing it bitterly on to the bed, standing in full view of both startled occupants. Judith didn’t look quite as glamorous in the dawn light as she did in her full make-up, and in another half-dozen years she would begin to look blowsy, Somer decided with savage satisfaction, but it wasn’t the future that concerned her now, it was the present.
‘Somer!’ Andrew’s voice was startled and urgent, but Somer ignored it.
‘Don’t say a word,’ she warned him bitterly, ‘I’ve already heard enough. If I were you I’d concentrate on satisfying your…’ her lip curled derisively, ‘friend’s “needs”, that is if she still wants you now that I’m not going to provide the pair of you with a meal ticket for life. You’d got it all planned, hadn’t you, but you made one vital miscalculation. I’m obviously not as frigid as you assumed, Andrew, although it’s just as well I discovered the truth the way I did. I imagine it would have been very embarrassing for us both if I’d found you alone this morning. I came here hoping you would make love to me.’ God how it hurt to drag out that admission, but she was going to make herself face up to just how pitiful and contemptible she had been. ‘But it seems you have other prefer-ences…’ She let her eyes slide dismissively over Judith’s naked shoulders, watching the rage simmer in the other woman’s eyes. ‘I just hope you don’t find them too expensive,’ she added softly with a final flourish as she turned towards the door.
Andrew had gone a sickly pale colour while she spoke, but Judith was on the point of exploding with barely concealed anger. No doubt she had looked forward to a lifetime of luxury at her expense, Somer decided. She herself must be growing up quickly because it was easy to see that knowing she was cheating Somer must have added a decided fillip to her affair with Andrew. Now that fillip was gone, Judith just might turn her eyes in other directions; she even found herself hoping that she might, and that Andrew, who was plainly besotted with her, would suffer as she was now suffering.
Somer thought she would die with the mortification of it. Was there something wrong with her? Some vital element lacking? something that made her less feminine than other women, some deep female core that was simply missing from her make up. ‘No!’ The denial was torn from her throat and prompted her headlong flight from the scene of her humiliation. All her fierce MacDonald pride rose up inside her, a look in her eyes that her father would have recognised, her wild untamed Highland blood crying out for vengeance, for balm to soothe her aching pride. She had loved and tasted the bitter dregs of betrayal, she would never touch either again. But first she had to make good her initial promise to herself.
Not stopping to analyse her reaction to the scene she had just experienced Somer hurried on, knowing only that to remain still was to open herself to the same pain which had overwhelmed her in Andrew’s bedroom. Her first instinct to flee, to simply leave the hotel and go home, was lost beneath the tidal swell of a need to prove Andrew and Judith’s cruel comments wrong. She would find a man who wanted her and she would find him before her holiday was over.
Down in the foyer she saw that Judith was just about to take over the reception desk. Another girl, a stranger to Somer, was talking to one of the hotel guests, his broad shoulders bent towards her. Somer felt her heartbeat accelerate as she recognised the male outline of him. A real man, Judith had called Chase Lorimer; a very sensual man Somer would have called him; a man who would not think twice about taking what he wanted from life, a man who would teach her in one lesson far more about the game of love than a thousand fumbling encounters with boys as inexperienced as she was herself. Half a dozen steps away from the desk Somer halted. She could hear him asking the way to a small little-known local cove. The girl behind the reception desk frowned.
‘I’m sorry, Mr Lorimer,’ Somer heard her apologise, ‘I’m afraid I don’t know where it is, but if you’ll just bear with me for a moment I’ll try to find out.’ She glanced round to Judith who was deep in conversation with Andrew and Somer reacted blindly, urged on by the same fierce MacDonald pride which had buoyed her up earlier.
A little to her own surprise she heard herself saying coolly, ‘I know where the cove is.’ She saw Andrew’s head jerk up in recognition of her voice. ‘In fact…’ Chase Lorimer had turned round and was surveying her with that same lazy scrutiny she recognised from the previous day. ‘In fact I was planning to go there myself today. Perhaps we could travel there together? Do you have a car?’
‘Yes, how long will it take us to get there?’
Somer breathed shakily, unaware of how tense she had been until she heard him speak. There was only the cool anonymity of his voice to go on, and that did not give her any clues as to his reaction to her invitation. ‘Half an hour,’ she responded nervously.
Of course in the world he inhabited it was probably quite normal for women to issue the invitations; certainly he didn’t seem shocked or surprised that she had done so, his lounging stance by the reception desk barely altered as he turned to glance at her.
‘Can you be ready in an hour?’ He glanced at his watch. ‘I normally have a swim before breakfast, and then we can meet down here when you’re ready.’
Out of the corner of her eye Somer could see Judith’s stunned, almost bitter expression, but she kept her own features unreadable as she acquiesced. So Chase Lorimer swam every morning; no doubt that explained what he was doing in the foyer so early, well before any of the other guests had put in an appearance.
Confirming their arrangements, Somer headed back to her own room to change her clothes and pack a bag to take with her, a fierce elation filling her. For once the fates seemed disposed to be on her side, and she derived a considerable amount of satisfaction from the looks she had seen on Andrew’s and Judith’s faces when Chase Lorimer accepted her invitation. She had just reached the lift when Judith slipped up behind her, tapping her contemptuously
