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CHAPTER THREE

‘WHAT?’ When he didn’t answer she demanded, ‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m taking you straight to the airport,’ he said above the snarl of the engine.

Lauren peered up at an angular jaw harshly outlined against the radiant moonlight. She pitched her voice louder. ‘But we have to warn them.’

‘They’ll have been warned. The jungle might look empty, but there are eyes everywhere, which is why you’re sitting on the floor now.’ He shot a swift glance at her shocked face. ‘Worrying about them isn’t going to achieve anything; I’m not going back to the resort.’

Appalled, she demanded, ‘But—what about the children?’

‘Leave it,’ he bit back, his voice coldly adamant. ‘The resort’s in direct contact with the police—the staff will have evacuated the tourists as soon as they got the word.’

‘And if it isn’t just a ragtag and bobtail group of cargo cultists who want European-style beds and television sets?’ she almost shouted. ‘If they’re armed and they mean mayhem, what then?’

He concentrated on steering at heart-shocking speed around a tight corner. ‘Once we’ve got you all out of the way, we’ll deal with whatever happens.’

Lauren huddled uncomfortably against the seat, wondering if people were crouching in ambush with rifles and machetes. She was, she realised, afraid, but not terrified; somehow Guy exuded an aura of such authority that she trusted him to get them out of whatever situation they were in.

Something he’d said clicked. She blurted, ‘You’re planning to stay and fight, aren’t you?’ When he didn’t answer she persisted, ‘Why? Are you Sant’Rosan?’

‘No,’ he said curtly, a total lack of compromise in his tone. ‘But I know the people and I’ve got a lot invested in Sant’Rosa— Get right down!’

Before she could react, he swore and thrust her forcefully beneath the dash as he applied the brakes. The vehicle slammed to a stop.

Crouched in a heap, her heart jumping so noisily she was sure it could be heard above the noise of the engine, Lauren heard rough, angry male voices. In spite of the thick heat, she shivered and tried to slow down the quick, shallow pants of her breathing.

Calmly Guy answered, his voice level and without fear. When someone laughed Lauren relaxed slightly, glancing up as Guy asked a question. Harsh yellow light—a spotlight?—traced the sweep of his cheekbones; she recalled the Slavic horsemen who had ridden into Europe over a millennium ago, and wondered just what his ancestry was.

Someone said something that made him frown and fire another question. He looked so confident and completely in charge of the situation that she was startled when she saw his lean fingers tighten on the steering wheel. His next remark produced much more laughter; he grinned and added a few words that brought a babble of comment.

Oh, how she wished she understood the language! Fluency in French and German amounted to nothing in this turbulent part of the world.

Although her body soon began to complain, she didn’t dare move a muscle, not even when the vehicle started and they drove off to a chorus of deep farewells.

‘All right,’ Guy said a few minutes later, ‘we’re out of sight. You can sit up, but keep your head down.’

Stiffly she uncurled, stretching her arms. ‘Who were they?’

‘A police patrol, but they warned that there are roving bands of possible looters in the bush so we won’t take any chances. The resort’s been cleared—the guests are at the airport.’

Well, at least they’d be safe there, and she’d be able to resume her journey to New Zealand.

She said, ‘I’m so glad they’re all right.’ And then remembered something. ‘But you said there are no flights until tomorrow morning.’

‘Josef, the manager, has managed to radio a pilot who’s doing a chartered freight trip to Valanu from the Republic,’ Guy said briefly. ‘He’s prepared to take everyone. You’ll be sitting in the aisles, but you’ll get there.’ The note of the engine deepened as the vehicle picked up speed. ‘The only problem is, he wants to leave as soon as possible, so brace yourself. I’ve got twenty minutes to get you to the airport.’

Valanu? She frowned, then remembered what he’d called the place. A scatter of islands…

Her breath hissed out. ‘But why Valanu? Can’t he fly us to the capital?’

‘Communication with the rest of Sant’Rosa has been cut.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know, but it’s almost certainly nothing to do with this business.’ His voice was reassuring. ‘Communications here are erratic at the best of times—it’s probably a coincidence.’

Lauren digested this. ‘Will the mine be safe?’

‘Against anything smaller than an army, yes. They have their own security, but they’re too far away to help us.’

He swung the vehicle around a corner, and after that there was no further chance to talk. Lauren was unclenching her jaw muscles for about the fifth time when above the sound of the engine she heard something else—a sudden outbreak of loud pops.

Guy said something under his breath in the language she didn’t recognise.

‘What was that?’ she asked, afraid she knew the answer.

‘Gunfire,’ he said laconically. ‘And that means serious trouble.’

Lauren’s stomach dropped endlessly.

He glanced briefly down. ‘Relax, I’ll keep you safe.’

Lauren didn’t doubt that; what frightened her was the possibility of him being hurt. And that was strange, because she barely knew the man. OK, so he had a bewildering effect on her, but she didn’t even like him much, although he’d been kind in his arrogant way. Apart from common humanity, why should she care about his safety?

‘Here we are,’ he said at last. He killed the engine and looked around with the curiously still intentness of a predator sensing prey, before ordering curtly, ‘Stay there.’

A swift, silent rush took him out of the Land Rover and around to her door. When it opened Lauren pulled herself onto the seat, groaning beneath her breath when her cramped legs protested painfully.

Strong hands caught her by the waist; as he lifted her out and set her down, Guy said, ‘You did well. I’m sorry you got caught up in this.’

Her legs refused to carry her; when she staggered, he lifted her and strode off towards the dim figure waiting outside the small terminal building.

From here the gunfire seemed harmless, more like fireworks. Locked in Guy’s safe, strong arms with the moon silvering his bare shoulders, Lauren hoped fervently that no one was dying out there—and desperately that the raiders would be repelled by the time Guy left the airport.

The waiting man gestured, saying something urgently. Lauren felt Guy tense, before he rattled out a question.

The answer didn’t please him. He replied in a quiet, deadly voice and put Lauren down, supporting her with an arm around her shoulders. The man stepped back swiftly to usher them both into the reception area.

Tiny, it was almost filled with the resort guests, several carrying children who cried or stared around with bewildered eyes. Suitcases were being shuffled onto an elderly cart, and everyone looked strained and serious.

The man who had met them glanced at Lauren and switched to English. ‘Passport, please, ma’am.’

Lauren said shakily, ‘It’s back at the resort. In the safe with my ID—with all my papers.’

The solid, middle-aged man whose glossy dark hair was greying at the temples looked shocked. ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, but—’

‘Josef, this is no time for formalities,’ Guy interrupted, his deep voice harsh. ‘You know she can’t stay here.’

A uniformed man—the pilot, Lauren realised—strode swiftly in from the other side of the building. ‘Guy!’ he said, grinning largely, ‘I might have guessed you’d be here! No show without Punch, eh?’ He examined Lauren with interest.

Guy acknowledged the greeting and concisely told him what had happened.

The pilot frowned. ‘Man, I can’t take her to Valanu without papers! You know they won’t let her in—they’ve been paranoid ever since that drug syndicate tried to infiltrate.’

‘You’ll take her,’ Guy said curtly. ‘There’s no alternative.’

Frowning, his voice tight with concern, Josef interposed, ‘She cannot travel to Valanu without papers.’

In a voice that could have splintered granite, Guy said, ‘She’ll leave Sant’Rosa if I have to hijack Brian’s plane.’

The pilot looked at Lauren’s startled face and away again. ‘You know what they’ll do with her, Guy. They’ll chuck her in prison with the prostitutes and the addicts, and she won’t get out until someone vouches for her or she gets new papers. In Valanu that could take weeks—everything goes through Fiji. Now, if it was you, Guy, it would be OK. They know you—they’d let you in without a passport.’

Lauren said, ‘Look, it’s all right. Don’t worry about me.’

All three men stared at her with identical expressions, and then at each other.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Guy said brusquely.

Naked from the waist up, with light gleaming gold on his broad, tanned shoulders and strongly muscled arms, he looked like a barbaric warrior, his unshaven face only emphasising his formidable presence.

Between his teeth he said, ‘Josef, you’re a pastor in your church, aren’t you?’

Josef glanced at him with astonishment. ‘I am,’ he agreed.

‘Very well, then. You can marry us and I’ll vouch for her.’

The pilot gave a crack of laughter. ‘Yep, that’d do it. Trust you, Guy, to come up with the goods.’ He glanced at his watch. ‘But you’d better tie that knot as soon as you can. I’m leaving in ten minutes. That gunfire’s getting closer.’

Stunned, Lauren gasped, ‘That’s utterly impossible. I don’t even know your name.’

‘Guy Bagaton,’ Guy said indifferently, adding with brutal candour, ‘And you don’t have a choice.’ He nodded at the airport manager. ‘All right, Josef, let’s get it over and done with.’

A ragged salvo of popping noises silenced everyone in the terminus. It faded away, to be followed by a heavy whoomph that seemed to lift the ground beneath their feet. One of the women stifled a scream and a child started to whimper. With a muffled oath, the pilot raced out of the building.

The harassed Sant’Rosan marshalling the passengers had jumped along with everyone else, but recovered himself quickly. ‘Please, board in a line. Women and children first, please.’

The small crowd clumped into a disorderly file and began to follow the pilot across the grass airstrip.

Guy said shortly, ‘Josef, get going! We don’t have time to waste.’ He took Lauren’s elbow in a grip that meant business and urged her after the manager, already heading into a small office.

Once there, Josef said, ‘I am a minister in my church here, but perhaps such a marriage will not be legal anywhere but on Sant’Rosa. However, ma’am, it will mean that you will get out of here and they will not put you in prison in Valanu.’

Lauren protested, ‘No! Look, prison can’t be that bad—and it shouldn’t take long to get another passport from Britain. Anyway, how do you know they’ll let me in even if I do go ahead with this?’

‘Trust me,’ Guy answered, his expression grimly determined, ‘they will. And trust me again—tropical prisons are more than unhygienic, and it could take weeks to replace your papers—always assuming the Valanuan authorities let you contact the British representative in Fiji.’ The hard authority in his tone and the granite cast of his features silenced her objection. ‘Just say yes in all the right places, otherwise you’ll be caught in a war zone. If that happens, you’ll endanger anyone who has to look after you.’

It was that final truth that convinced her. White-lipped, she said, ‘What are you going to do?’

‘Don’t worry about me.’

Nightmarish images from television screens clouded her mind so that she couldn’t think beyond a silent, urgent plea that he stay safe.

‘Don’t worry,’ he said, a cynical edge to the words. ‘The marriage will satisfy the bureaucracy on Valanu that you’re not a beachcomber intent on drinking and drugging the rest of your life away at their expense.’ He drew the gold signet ring from his little finger and turned her to face Josef.

Numbly, Lauren went through with the brief ceremony, backed by the sound of the plane’s engines and punctuated by the ominous sound of gunfire and a couple more of those heavy explosions.

She responded like an automaton, shivering when Guy slid the ring onto her finger, holding it there because it was too big. Warm from his body heat, it felt like a shackle, but she relaxed a little as he gripped her hand in his strong one.

At last Josef said, ‘You may kiss the bride,’ and tactfully busied himself with the papers.

A marauder’s smile played across Guy’s sensual mouth. Eyes gleaming, he murmured, ‘If I’d known I was going to get married today, I’d have shaved.’

Then he kissed her—not a swift, parting kiss, nor a clumsy, unsubtle expression of lust. His mouth took hers in complete mastery, replacing every fear with poignant delight and a swift, fierce longing that lodged in her heart.

And because she didn’t know whether he’d survive, whether she’d ever see him again, she kissed him back with everything she had to give.

Too soon, he released her with an odd half-smile to scribble a name on a piece of paper. ‘My agent on Valanu,’ he said, handing it to her. ‘Get in touch with him straight away and show him the papers Josef’s making out now—he’ll find you a place to stay. You have no money?’

‘No,’ she said wretchedly, feeling empty and oddly weepy.

He wrenched a wallet from his pocket and took out the notes in it. ‘This will cover your costs for tonight.’ He handed them over, adding with wry humour, ‘And there’s enough there to buy you another sarong from the market.’

‘Your shirt!’

One hand clenched around the notes and his ring, she began to jerk his T-shirt upwards, but he said, ‘Keep it on. It gives you that authentic refugee look.’

She hesitated, then let the material fall. ‘What will you wear?’

‘I will lend him one of mine,’ Josef said sombrely.

Guy’s intent, uncompromising scrutiny drowned her in tawny fire. ‘I’ll contact you as soon as I can.’

‘P-promises,’ she said, sudden tears blinding her.

He laughed and picked up her free hand, kissing the back and then the palm, folding her fingers over to keep the kiss there. ‘I always keep my promises.’ It sounded like a vow.

‘Come, ma’am,’ Josef said earnestly. ‘The plane is ready.’

‘Go now,’ Guy said, and strode out into the darkness without a backward glance.

An hour later, as the engines droned above the dark, empty ocean, Lauren twisted the gold signet ring on her finger, and wondered what was happening back on Sant’Rosa.

‘Keep him safe,’ she whispered.

And with the stars swallowed up by the moon’s light, and the white circle of Valanu’s biggest atoll on the horizon, she tried to forget that somewhere behind her a stranger, a man she had only met that day, might be fighting for his life.

And tried very hard to convince herself that she hadn’t fallen in love in three short hours.

The ceiling fan whirred, wafting a sluggish wave of clammy air over Lauren’s head. Gathering her dignity, she said, ‘So I can’t leave Valanu yet.’

Regretfully the immigration official shook his head. ‘I am afraid not,’ he agreed. ‘It is complicated, you see. You came here without papers; we let you in as a favour because you are married to a man who has a good name in this place.’ He tapped the file on his desk. ‘But it is taking longer than we expected to get replacement papers from Britain, and until then you cannot leave Valanu because our only air link to the outside world is Sant’Rosa, and they say they will not allow you to land there without a passport.’

‘My parents said my passport had been sent by courier two days ago.’

They had had variations on the same conversation for the past six afternoons. Tension plucked Lauren’s nerves, but screaming wouldn’t achieve anything. Everyone had been utterly polite, very helpful—and determined to stick to the rules.

Guy had been right. With no British consulate, all official matters had to go through the distant island nation that ruled Valanu, so she was stuck on this lovely, isolated atoll until proof of her identity and citizenship arrived.

Guy’s agent might have been able to speed things up, but he’d flown to Singapore the day before she’d arrived on Valanu and wasn’t expected back for several more days.

Fortunately the clerk at Valanu’s airport who’d converted Guy’s notes to the local currency had asked her where she was staying. When she’d admitted she had nowhere, he’d recommended his cousin’s place, and half an hour later she’d rented a one-room bungalow standing on a coral platform in a tangle of foliage and sweet-smelling flowers.

She pasted a smile to her face and got to her feet. ‘Thank you very much for all your help.’

‘I’m sorry I can’t make things happen more quickly for you, but I hope you are enjoying our little island.’ He paused, before saying carefully, ‘It is a possibility that if you spoke to one of the journalists trying to get to Sant’Rosa, they might be able to help you contact your family in England.’

God, no! Lauren had been carefully avoiding them for the past few days. Not that she was interesting to the media, except for the fact that she was Marc Corbett’s half-sister, and Marc was a player on the world stage. She didn’t want anyone poking around in the past and discovering the secret of her mother’s long-ago affair with Marc’s father. Apart from humiliating her mother, any publication of that indiscretion would stress her father, whose health was precarious.

She held out her hand. ‘I’m enjoying my time on Valanu, and you’ve been most kind,’ she told the official truthfully. ‘I’m just worried about what’s happening on Sant’Rosa.’

Sombre-faced, he shook her hand. ‘Yes,’ he said heavily. ‘War is a terrible thing, and it is so sad to see the Sant’Rosans suffering again. However, if what we are hearing is correct, the invaders are already being pushed back beyond the border and their ringleader is dead.’

Rumour or truth? ‘I hope so,’ she said in a flat voice.

Slowly, because the late-afternoon sun beat down with unmitigated ferocity, she walked to her bungalow. Once in its blessed coolness, she poured a glass of water from the jug in the tiny refrigerator and stood slowly sipping it in the minuscule kitchen.

Beneath the high, thatched roof, a huge bed draped in mosquito netting dominated the room; although Lauren slept with only a sheet over her, the coverlet was a work of art, brilliantly quilted in a pattern of hibiscus flowers. With a table and chairs, the only other furniture was a wardrobe that held Guy’s shirt—washed and pressed and awaiting his arrival—and the spare sarong she’d bought the morning after she’d been decanted from the plane.

During the day the woven mats that made the walls were rolled up so that sea breezes cooled the building; at night, they provided privacy.

Spartan, she thought, draining the glass with relief, but clean and comfortable; more importantly, it was cheap. The call she’d made to her parents in England had used so much of Guy’s money that she’d had to watch every penny, haggling for fish and fruit in the market. With funds from home apparently wending their way via outer space, she’d soon be forced to borrow from Guy’s agent when he returned from Singapore.

Apart from her daily trek to report to the immigration officer, she swam, prepared meals and chatted to her landlady’s teenage daughters, trying to satisfy their curiosity about life outside their idyllic island. Unfortunately, such a lazy life gave her too much time to imagine Guy Bagaton dead…

Even though death was no respecter of persons, it was impossible to imagine all that vibrant power cut down by a bullet—or worse.

‘He’ll be fine,’ she said aloud. She had the oddest feeling that if he died she’d know.

‘You don’t even know him,’ she scoffed, and went down to the lagoon to swim off the dust and the sweat of the walk home.

The water lapped against her like liquid silk, soothing and lukewarm, but a blood-red sky to the west heralded the sunset, turning her white skin copper as she strolled back along the beach. It seemed ominous, a bad omen.

‘Grow up,’ she chided, slipping off her sandals at the door. ‘You are not superstitious.’

Once inside she showered and washed her salt-laden hair before changing into her other sarong, a splashy print of gorgeous, improbably coloured frangipani blooms. Thanks to the landlady’s daughters, she now knew three ways of tying the garment. This time she settled for a simple knot above her breasts before sitting on the side of the bed to comb her hair. As the teeth smoothed through each strand, a feather of awareness stroked along her skin.

Several times she looked around, but the tangle of growth that surrounded the bungalow was empty of prying eyes. Anyway, it wasn’t the sort of sensation that whispered of danger. More a feeling of languorous expectancy, as though something good was going to happen…

‘Perhaps your new passport will arrive tomorrow,’ she murmured, looking down at her clenched hand; because she wasn’t married, she’d taken to wearing Guy’s signet ring on her middle finger. It was still too big, but it didn’t slip off.

It was made of heavy gold, and the engraving almost worn away; not for the first time, she turned her hand in the red light of the dying sun, trying to make out its form. Some sort of crest, she thought—a bird? Were those wings? The outline danced in the smoky light and she blinked hard to clear her sight, but had to give up again.

Whatever, he clearly valued it, so when she finally got off Valanu she’d leave it with the agent.

Driven by restlessness, she let down the woven sides of the room and loosened the knot on her sarong, walking out onto the coral platform to enjoy the cooler air of evening on her bare shoulders and arms. A yawn took her by surprise.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ a familiar voice enquired from behind.