it would help to have some make-up to shelter behind; sunscreen and a film of coloured lip gloss were flimsy shields against the hard intimidation of his gaze.
The man beside her walked as silently and easily as a panther, his controlled grace hinting subtly of menace. Lauren resented the way he towered above her, especially as each inch of powerful, honed male exuded a potent sensuality.
So his name was Mr Someone Guy. Or Mr Guy Someone. And she wasn’t going to tell him who she was; if he didn’t have the manners to properly introduce himself, she certainly wasn’t going to make the effort.
As though he felt her survey, he shafted a glance her way. A high-voltage charge sizzled between them, part antagonism, part heady chemistry. Tension jolted her heart into overcompensation.
Turning her face resolutely towards the small bar, she decided wildly that he was wasted here. A man who gave off enough electricity to melt half the world’s ice caps should head for some place where his talents could be really appreciated.
The North Pole, for instance.
Who was he? The local layabout, angling for a wild holiday fling? Or perhaps looking out for a rich, lonely woman to rescue him from all this tropical heat?
No. Disturbingly sexy he might be, but instinct warned her he was more buccaneer than gigolo.
In the voice her half-brother, for whom she worked, referred to as Patient but Friendly Executive, she asked, ‘Do you own the resort, Mr Guy?’
Winged black brows lifted. ‘No,’ he said briefly. ‘It belongs to the local tribe.’ Without touching her, he steered her across to a table beneath a large thatched umbrella. ‘This is probably the coolest spot around, and it’s got a good view of the lagoon.’
Grateful for the shade, she lowered herself into a chair and persevered, ‘But you live here? In this particular area of Sant’Rosa?’ she amended, when his brows lifted in saturnine enquiry.
‘Off and on.’ He nodded to a waiter. ‘What would you like to drink?’
‘Papaya and pineapple juice, thank you.’
He ordered it for her, and a beer for himself. A tiny gecko scuttled across the table; smiling, Lauren watched it disappear over the edge. When she looked up, Guy was watching her.
‘You’re not afraid of them?’ he asked.
A subtle intonation convinced her that he wasn’t English. ‘Not the little ones, although some of the big ones have a nasty predatory gleam in their eyes.’
He laughed outright at that—another slow, sexy laugh that brushed her taut nerves with velvety insinuation.
‘They won’t bite, not even in self-defence,’ he said, stressing the first word just enough for Lauren to immediately wonder if he bit—and when…
He finished, ‘But you’d be surprised at the number of women who are terrified of even the tiny ones.’
‘Men too, I’ll bet. It makes you wonder why some people come to the tropics.’ Was the stubble soft to touch—or bristly? She’d never kissed a man with that much—
Whoa!
He leaned back in the chair, his pose utterly relaxed, but his level, cool gaze held her prisoner. ‘So why are you here? More specifically, why are you determined to find your way to one of the more untamed spots on Sant’Rosa?’
She parried, ‘Is that untamed as in dangerous?’
‘As in without conveniences,’ he told her, his keen gaze steady and intimidating. ‘But it’s in the border area, and the border between Sant’Rosa and the Republic has always been tense.’
‘I thought the treaty after the civil war stopped the threat of an invasion by the Republic.’
Wide shoulders lifted in a slight shrug. ‘A new player—a charismatic preacher—seems to have got together a ragtag following on both sides of the border. He’s preaching part religious revival, part cargo cult. Which is—’
‘I know what a cargo cult is,’ she said crisply. ‘Its followers expect a saviour to bring them the benefits of western civilisation. I’d not realised they could be violent.’
‘So far they’re not, but over the past couple of days there have been rumours that someone is supplying them with weapons.’
Not that anyone had actually seen the rifles and explosives that were being talked about. Guy suspected they didn’t exist. However, every islander was taught to use a machete from a very early age, and he’d seen the damage the long blades could inflict. If—and it was a big if—any hyped-up converts decided to go on the rampage, they could kill.
He watched her slender black brows draw together. What the hell was she doing here? And why was she so evasive? Women like her—sleekly elegant from the shiny top of her black head to the polished nails on her toes—demanded more from their holidays than a tiny resort with little social life and a heavy emphasis on family groups.
She looked up sharply, the eyes that had been ice-clear now silvery and impossible to read. ‘Only rumours?’
‘Almost certainly. Rumours—most of them false—run hot through Sant’Rosa. The people are barely coping with the aftermath of a bloody ten years of civil war, and in spite of the peace treaty they still don’t trust the Republic over the border.’ He paused. ‘The receptionist comes from the village you want to visit, and she’s just told me that the preacher has disappeared.’
‘And that’s bad?’
‘Almost certainly not,’ he said, hoping he was right.
Because it was too easy to watch her face, he switched his gaze to a family, parents shepherding two small children. Armed with beach toys and a couple of inflatable rings, the children dashed into the improbably turquoise lagoon, yelling and laughing as they splashed each other and their parents.
That itch at the back of his neck sharpened his senses to primitive alertness, a fierce, feral reaction to stimuli his rational brain couldn’t process.
Which was why he was resisting the compulsion to bundle up these helpless family groups—and the woman opposite with her cool touch-me-not air—and get them out of here on the next plane.
He didn’t dare follow his impulse because the local tribe had sunk every bit of cash they had into the resort; a false alarm, with the resultant bad publicity, could see them lose it all.
The woman opposite was watching the group too, her mouth curving as one of the children shrieked with delight. Grimly, he cursed his unruly loins for responding to that smile with piercing hunger.
Lauren Porter frowned. ‘So are this preacher’s followers likely to turn violent when no saviour turns up with all the blessings of western civilisation free for the taking?’
‘I doubt it. They’ve seen what fighting does, so they’ll almost certainly drift off through the bush to their native villages.’
But they were edgy and frustrated. Peace hadn’t brought the people the benefits they’d longed for, and many
