his. It had been the briefest contact imaginable and yet she had shied away from it like a…like a terrified virgin, she castigated herself mentally. How on earth did she expect him to make love to her when she recoiled from even the slightest physical contact with him?
‘I’ve had the hotel pack us up some lunch. I take it you do plan to spend most of the day there? There’s no public transport there…’
And by inviting herself to join him as his guide, she had also invited herself to be his companion for the day, or as much of it as he chose to share with her, Somer acknowledged. ‘I’m in your hands completely,’ she responded daringly, holding her breath and looking away when she felt him move towards her, but he stretched past her, opening the passenger door, and she slid inside the car on shaky legs, wondering if there was ever going to come a time when she felt completely at ease in the company of men like Chase Lorimer, able to flirt and tease them in the way that seemed second nature to the Judiths and Claires of this world.
‘It all depends how long it takes me to take the photographs I need,’ Chase told her as he slid into his own seat and slipped on a pair of sunglasses. ‘I want to take some background shots to use in the studio, just in case any of the work I’ve already done doesn’t work out. Ready?’
Somer nodded, carefully giving him instructions as to their route as he turned out on to the road that led away from the hotel.
‘Left here, is it?’ he checked once they gained the main road. Somer nodded, her hand going up to secure her hair, already thoroughly tousled from their short drive. If she’d known he was driving an open-topped car she would have tied it back with a ribbon, but it was too late to do anything about it now, other than to try and keep it out of her eyes.
‘Leave it,’ Chase ordered softly when she made another bid to capture the errant strands. ‘With it loose and tousled like that you look the epitome of wanton innocence. Is it naturally that colour?’
‘Yes.’ Somer’s cheeks stung with bright colour.
‘No need to look so outraged, most models tint theirs, these days, and it isn’t often you see someone with true blue-black hair and such a pale skin. Coupled with your eyes, I’d say that was a Celtic heritage, Irish perhaps?’
‘Scots,’ she corrected him briefly. This man knew far too much about her sex, far, far too much, and she shivered slightly despite the growing heat of the sun. What had she committed herself to? Why had she allowed her fiendish MacDonald pride to hold sway the way she had? She had been warned on many occasions by her father to treat the MacDonald curse carefully, but she had ignored him, and now she was seated in this car with this stranger heading for a remote beach where she had planned that he would make love to her.
What was the matter with her? Was she really going to back out now? Coward, coward, an inner voice mocked her. You haven’t got the guts to go through with it. I have, Somer gritted mentally, I have got the guts and I shall, I shall.
‘You’re looking very serious, something on your mind? Second thoughts about spending the day with me perhaps?’
Somer glanced in shocked response into Chase’s shuttered face. His sunglasses hid his expression from her, her heart pounding in frightened reaction to his astute perception.
‘No…’
‘You don’t sound very sure. Don’t worry about it, whatever you might have heard to the contrary, I don’t go in for rape. I don’t need to,’ he told her wryly, ‘and now that we’ve got that out of the way how about telling me what you’re doing here on holiday alone.’
‘I…I was going to come with my boyfriend, but…but we had a row and…’
‘And now you’re looking for a substitute,’ he suggested drily. ‘Well why not? Strange, from the tragic look on your face earlier this morning, I thought the roof had fallen in on you at least. You looked like a tormented lost kitten whom someone had kicked once too often,’ he mocked, smiling into her pale, stunned face.
‘You felt sorry for me?’ Somer blurted out. ‘Is that why…’
‘I let you pick me up?’ he offered, smiling sardonically at her. ‘Not entirely, I’m no altruist. If you’d been forty and plain I dare say I wouldn’t have felt anything like as sympathetic. I suppose I should have guessed it was all down to some man. You’re just the right age for emotional hysterics, aren’t you? How old are you?’
‘Eighteen.’ She didn’t even consider lying, but flinched when his fingers tightened momentarily on the steering wheel and he murmured mock piously, ‘Dear God, as young as that. I’m twenty-eight—a whole generation older—or are you going to tell me you prefer older men?’
‘My tastes are pretty catholic,’ Somer retorted, her chin jutting defiantly under his mockery. ‘In everything.’
There was a moment’s silence, and when he glanced at her again there was no humour etched against the curling mouth, only a grim appreciation of her closing remark.
‘Is that so?’ he drawled. ‘Well then it looks like we’re going to have an enlightening day. I would have thought that eighteen wasn’t old enough to have tasted all the pleasures life has to offer, but it seems that I’m wrong, and a girl like you wouldn’t be short of tutors. That pseudo air of innocence must have deceived more than one member of my sex in the past. How many lovers have you had, just as a matter of interest, or don’t you bother to count any longer?’
Half appalled by the direction the conversation had taken, Somer reminded herself that to tell the truth at this stage would probably wreck all her plans. Her mouth opened and almost without her having to think about it, she was saying flippantly, ‘Why do you want to know? Are you hoping to become one of them?’ She had a moment in which to be horrified by the cheap provocation of her remark and then Chase was saying smoothly, ‘So that’s your game, is it? Well, time alone will tell, won’t it? You know the odds better than I do, and you’ve got all day to persuade me that it might be worth my while, haven’t you?’
‘Turn right here,’ Somer interrupted shakily. The conversation had taken a turn she had never envisaged, but surely the fates were playing into her hands once again in allowing her to deceive Chase Lorimer into believing that she was sexually experienced, and that by inviting herself to spend the day with him, she was inviting him to make love to her?
But for how long could she continue to deceive him? Cold reality intruded. Surely he would know the minute he touched her that she had been lying? Was she trying to give herself an excuse to back out again, the voice of her MacDonald pride demanded relentlessly. Didn’t she have the guts to go through with it?
They were driving down a narrow country lane, empty of traffic, a dazzling blue carpet melting into the horizon in the distance.
Directing Chase from memory, Somer heaved a faint sigh of relief when they turned into the small car park at the top of the cliff. The path she remembered was indicated by a small gate in the perimeter of the dusty clifftop.
‘Just how steep is this path?’ Chase asked when they were out of the car.
‘Very,’ Somer told him.
‘Umm, then I’d better make two journeys. I don’t want to risk damaging my camera, but at least we should have the place to ourselves, if it’s as inaccessible as all that. Not the spot to take the kids, I take it?’
‘Not
