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CHAPTER ONE

TAMARA sat up slowly, pushing a heavy swathe of wheat blonde hair back off her face She didn’t norinning to bleach the loose wisps on her forehead silver Cool grey eyes gazed thoughtfully out of a high-cheekboned, oval face of almost classical perfection, their expression faintly withdraary almost It was Tamara’s habitual expression and one which had attracted the interest of more than one predatory male, until they realised that with Tamara the cool façade was more than merely skin-deep

Frohter was borne towards her on the light tropical breeze; froh-pitched childish voices, but here in the gardens of the luxurious holiday complex on St Stephen’s, there was no interruption and she had their beauty to herself

She put down her paperback and glanced at her watch Not long until lunch The paperback was ainst unwanted intruders than a co alone, but she had had little option—Malcolm hadn’t been able to come with her

Malcollinted on the solitaire diah to reveal its value, and yet not so large that it could ever be described as ostentatious So typical of Malcolether in a faint frown, What was the matter with her? Until now she had been perfectly content with Malcolhed pensively Perhaps it was the atmosphere of this tropical island paradise; or perhaps it had souests were young couples, still at the honey faic of those earlier days Certainly there were fauests, but so the coy, which was beginning to have its effect on Ta down barriers she hadn’t even been aere there

One of the reed to marry Malcolination and sexual netism That wasn’t what she wanted in a husband In the world of publishing in which she worked, as personal assistant to the fiction editor of a prestigious s firm, she had seen all too often the results of hastily and ill-considered es, where two people declared that they had fallen e their minds within six or twelve e her parents had had Her parents She sighed again, rehter which had pervaded the first fifteen years of her life, but all that love and laughter had gone the night they lost their lives in a ht up by her father’s aunt, Lilian Forbes Of course Aunt Lilian had been well-intentioned—it couldn’t have been an easy task to be faced with sole responsibility for a fifteen-year-old as perhaps too e woman, unused to children and found it difficult to show the spontaneous affection Taradually Tamara had learned to conceal behind a cool s herself unloved and rejected Eventually she herself, without realising it, had adopted her aunt’s mistrust of physically displayed affection, so that the boys she irls less unapproachable and thus reinforcing Tamara’s conviction that she lacked the desirability of her peers

To coirls in the sot married and had babies, and at twenty-six she now considered herself iirls, and had been quite happy to accept Malcolm’s proposal

Not that she had accepted hi e and there were plenty of men alive to the possibilities hidden deep within her cool exterior, but Tamara could never overcome the deep mistrust of what she termed ‘charmers’, which she had learned from her aunt

She had even approved of the way in which Malcolm had taken her home to meet his parents, not once but twice, for what she knew to be a ‘vetting’ Colonel and Mrs Mellors had been polite but unforthco, and Tamara had sensed that they would have preferred to see their son married to one of their own set Tah she had a well paid job and had done well for herself, she did not have the ‘county’ connections to appeal to the rather snobbish Mellors Malcolm’s father owned and ran a small country estate which Malcolm had told her would come down to him in due course, but for noas quite content with his accountancy partnership which enabled him to ht just before their engagement

Life with Malcol down a canal, and suddenly for the first time Tamara wondered if she really wanted such a narrow existence

Suddenly feeling restless, she got up, and walked towards the beach; a tall slender girl with a cool ‘touchprotectively to her

Through the cluster of pal the silver crescent of sand, Tamara could see one of the couples who had been on the saht as herself In their early twenties, and patently on honeyrither into the ade they would have was not what her parents would have wanted for her

The young couple were ducking one another playfully in the water; Malcolm hated any demonstrations of affection in public What would their honeyarve; his parents had friends ned a villa there and the golf courses were excellent

Was that really what she wanted? she wondered; a husband who devoted hie with his friends’ wives?

Telling herself that she was being stupidly e for lunch Many people didn’t bother, si at the poolside tables dressed co in the intense heat of the tropical sun, her body covered in oil, that she wanted to shower and then eat somewhere where it was cool She normally tanned well, despite her fair skin, but because she had never been so near the Equator before she was deliberately taking extra care to protect her skin fro

The hotel coalows for farounds, ablaze with jacaranda, bougainvillea, hibiscus, and passion flowers, but she had a rooinally b

een co firm, but she had been transferred to their New York office at short notice and so Tamara had come away alone

Malcoled her He was rather busy and felt that he hiet away until their honeymoon, and as it was almost two years since she had had a proper holiday—her aunt had been very ill for a long tih her ter up all her holiday leave—Tamara had felt that she needed the break

To get to her rooh the hotel foyer, a cool, shady rooreenery The receptionist smiled at her as she asked for her key All the staff were exceptionally pleasant and ready to help Taht of stairs leading to the bedrooms

By law no building on the island could be higher than two storeys, and it was pleasant to be able to look out of her bedroo her view of the Caribbean was a cluhtly in the onshore breeze

As she stripped off her swimsuit Ta a warm honey shade—Malcolm did not approve of bikinis, nor had Aunt Lilian, and Tamara had never owned one There was a boutique attached to the hotel, and she had noticed some particularly attractive sear in the hen she walked past it Her swimsuit was coht beach clothes worn by the other visitors seeirlish and almost frumpish

The water pressure in the shower could sometimes be erratic, as Tamara had already learned, but today it worked reasonably efficiently, the cool spray delicious against her hot skin