The Marriage Trap Page 9

  ‘How long have you been down here?’ Courtney asked politely.

  ‘Six months.’

  ‘And do you like it?’

  ‘Oh, yes.’ His eyes lit up at last. ‘It’s my life’s work. It’s what I’ve always wanted… bringing enlightenment to…’

  He went on at length, but she stopped listening after enlightenment. Robert was her father reincarnate. The same zeal, the same intensity, the same single-minded fervour that saw the rest of life as second in importance. She plastered an attentive smile on her face, pretending to be listening. But in fact she could have been a million miles away. And she knew she would never have married him in a million years.

  She didn’t think anyone noticed her inattention really—not until later that evening after dinner when her parents finally gave her a break, allowing her to escape down to the river where she sat on a log on the bankand stared off towards where it disappeared around a bend.

  She had vanished without a word, needing space, and was sitting quietly, trying to get a perspective on the events of the day, trying to sort out what to do next, when she heard a twig break behind her. She started, turning abruptly.

  ‘Oh, it’s you.’

  Aidan came out of the shadows and stood looking down at her, unnerving her. She cracked her knuckles and tried to ignore him. ‘Not a very enthusiastic welcome for your new fiancé.’ He was grinning at her.

  Her lips pressed together in a thin line. ‘My sham fiancé,’ she reminded him stiffly.

  He squatted down next to her. Her eyes dropped, but she could still see the way the faded denim fabric pulled tautly over the muscles of his thighs. He was scant inches from her, and she felt an almost overwhelming desire to reach out and touch the soft cloth, to run her finger over the top of his knee, up the seam of his jeans. She swallowed, licking her suddenly dry lips. Her heart pounded.

  ‘Sham fiancé,’ he concurred, his mouth twisting slightly as he said it.

  She scowled at him. ‘What are you doing here, anyway? What do you want?’

  ‘I came looking for you.’

  Her scowl deepened. ‘Why?’

  One eyebrow lifted derisively. ‘Because I’m your fiancé?’

  She grimaced. ‘You didn’t have to come looking for me.’

  He shoved a hand through his hair in an irritated way. ‘I damned well did.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Don’t be obtuse. Because I’m your fiancé,’ he said tightly, ‘and your parents expect me to. For God’s sake, you wander off into the jungle by yourself, leaving the man you’re supposed to be marrying behind! What the hell was I supposed to do?’

  ‘Stay there!’

  He shook his head adamantly. ‘No, thanks. Besides, if I hadn’t come, your father would have sent Robert.’

  ‘He wouldn’t.’

  ‘He sure as hell would. You might be out of sight, out of mind when you’re a few thousand miles away. But when you’re in his neighbourhood, he’s concerned about you. You’re his daughter, for heaven’s sake. And I don’t like the way he looks at me,’ Aidan grumbled.

  ‘How does he look at you?’ Courtney was curious.

  ‘Like I’m some sort of lecher.’ Aidan’s voice was a growl.

  ‘Perhaps he’s clairvoyant.’

  It was Aidan’s turn to scowl. ‘Fat lot of leching I’ve done.’

  ‘Not for want of trying.’

  He shifted uncomfortably. Had she embarrassed him, God forbid? Courtney grinned. Aidan glanced over his shoulder, frowned a moment, then changed his position, kneeling instead of simply squatting, moving in on her. And before she knew what he was about, he was sliding his arms around her and drawing her into his arms.

  ‘Wh—’ But the rest of the word was smothered by his mouth covering hers, his lips tasting hers, persuading her, melting her. Heavens!

  He had caught her off balance and she began to slip sideways off the log. His arms tightened around her, pulling her back, drawing her off the log and on to his lap. For a moment, her legs scrambled frantically, her arms flailed, and then her hormones took over.

  The kiss changed, too, softening, deepening. For such a hard man, his mouth seemed unbelievably soft, his tongue gentle as it skated lightly along the inner edge of her lips, teasing them, touching her teeth, seeking entry.

  Shivering, Courtney let him in.

  She couldn’t do otherwise. For if she tried to recall the man who mocked her, the man who teased her, the man who had literally knocked her off her feet and right into the river, she also remembered the man who had saved her from being attacked, the man who had allowed himself to be blackmailed into helping her find her parents, who had listened to her miseries last night and had shared miseries of his own.

  Her hands smoothed over the muscles of his back, then crept up to tangle in the dark thickness of his hair. He groaned softly when he felt her respond. Then all at once he was setting her aside and wiping his hand across the back of his mouth.

  Courtney, having been abruptly deposited back on the log where she had started, stared at him, heart hammering, lips tingling, mind spinning. ‘Wh—’ she began again.

  ‘Staking my claim,’ Aidan said roughly. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction of the village. ‘Robert was back there.’

  ‘Robert?’ She could scarcely get a hold on the word. ‘You did that because of Robert?’ Humiliation was fast overtaking passion. She pressed her fist against her mouth.

  Aidan shrugged. ‘Why not?’ His mouth twisted into a wry grimace. ‘It’s only what he’d expect.’

  Courtney averted her eyes. Only what he’d expect. Damn it all anyway. She gritted her teeth. And she, stupid fool that she was, had responded! Oh, you idiot! she chastised herself. She got jerkily to her feet and glared down at him. ‘Well, thank you very much for your prompt assistance, Mr. Sawyer. Just don’t think it’s going to get you any more than that.’

  And without waiting to see if he answered her or not, she plunged down the narrow path that led back to the village. She brushed past her parents and flung herself into her hammock without even saying goodnight. She couldn’t. She couldn’t face anyone. At least not until morning.

  * * *

  In the morning her mother tried one last-ditch effort to get her to reconsider.

  ‘How much do you know about your Mr. Sawyer, darling?’ she asked Courtney as they scrubbed clothes together on the side of the river.

  Courtney bent her head over the shirt she was rubbing on the rocks. ‘Enough.’ And that was the truth and nothing but. The memory of his kiss had kept her awake for hours. Long after she had heard him say goodnight to her parents and go off to whatever hut they had put him in, long after everyone else had turned in, she had lain there and stared at the thatched roof above her head and had tried to make sense of what she had felt.

  The kiss had jolted her. She had never experienced one like it before. Oh, Clarke had kissed her. He had done plenty of pawing and petting, if the truth were known. But whatever he had done, Courtney had remained detached. She had felt almost as if she were an outside observer, watching the proceedings, curious but not intimately involved.

  She had been intimately involved this time. There wasn’t any doubt about that. And Aidan had played her for a fool. Just putting on a show for Robert! Her cheeks had burned for hours.

  They were burning now when she remembered it, though she was fairly certain her mother would only think it was from the exertion with which she was scrubbing the shirt.

  ‘He seems… well… scruffy…’ Marguerite ventured.

  ‘We’ve been travelling, Mom.’

  ‘Yes, but… he’s… he’s… so… tough.’

  And that was putting it mildly, Courtney thought. She could well imagine that Aidan Sawyer wasn’t the sort to please her mother. Her mother would like the heart-on-the-sleeve sort that her father was. The mild, tolerant-to-the-point-of-condescending sort of man that undoubtedly Robert was. She doubted that Robert would ever have knocke
d anyone unconscious the way Aidan had when he had rescued her. She also doubted that Robert would have knocked her in the river.

  ‘He’s lived in a tough world,’ she said.

  ‘So have we, but we aren’t so…’

  ‘Hard?’

  ‘Well, yes,’ Marguerite admitted. ‘Are you sure, dear? It seems to me that Robert—or someone like him—’ she amended quickly so that it wouldn’t seem as blatant as it really was ‘—would be so much more suitable. For everything.’

  ‘Not,’ Courtney said firmly, ‘for me.’

  But regardless of how unsuitable Robert was for her, she still didn’t like having to lie to her parents. It bothered her. Made her irritable. It didn’t help that right after she had that conversation with her mother, she had an almost identical and far less satisfactory one with her father.

  ‘What do you know about him?’ Endicott demanded when she sought shelter from the midday sun in one of the huts and found him in there writing his sermon.

  ‘I know I love him,’ Courtney said, crossing her fingers behind her back.

  ‘And you think that’s enough?’

  ‘Yes.’

  Her father sighed. ‘But what good is he? What good does he do?’

  A powerful lot of good, Courtney thought to herself. He saved me from being raped. He got me to you so you won’t lose your blasted inheritance. ‘He helps people, Dad,’ she said, not wanting to be more specific than that.

  Her father looked sceptical. ‘How?’

  She told him about Joao’s hut that Aidan had rebuilt time and again. She mentioned his willingness to help her find her parents. She didn’t mention the coercion involved. And she definitely didn’t mention his saving her from disaster two nights earlier. But she said enough to quell that argument. At least for the time being.

  ‘I don’t know what you see in him, though,’ her father lamented.

  Neither do I, Courtney thought. But there was something, whether she liked it or not. Not that it would do her any good, of course. And thinking that, her irritation grew all over again.

  It got worse actually whenever she was around Aidan for any length of time. It made her testy and short with him, and she saw her parents giving her curious looks.

  ‘You’re going to have a hard time convincing them you really love me,’ Aidan told her finally the next afternoon, ‘if you keep giving me those dirty looks.’

  ‘Sorry.’ Her voice was purposely cool. ‘I didn’t know it was that obvious.’

  ‘Only if you have eyes.’

  Courtney’s eyes narrowed.

  He grinned. ‘You’re doing it again.’

  She made a truly awful face and he laughed at her. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘Walk with me.’

  She looked at him suspiciously. ‘Where?’

  ‘Down to the river.’

  ‘What if Robert follows us?’

  ‘You mean, will I kiss you again?’

  She might have known he would be that blunt. ‘I just want you to know it isn’t necessary,’ she told him gruffly.

  ‘A matter of opinion.’

  ‘Well, my opinion is that it’s absolutely not necessary.’

  ‘I thought it was fun.’

  Fun was not the word she would have used. But she had no desire to correct him. ‘I’ll only go if you… if you… behave.’

  That made him laugh. ‘I’ll be a regular Jane Austen hero, sweetheart. Come on.’

  She didn’t have much choice actually. Her father was heading her way, Robert in tow, and she knew as sure as anything that he had something up his sleeve. Her father never did anything without a purpose. And while her mother had seemed almost reconciled to her marriage, she didn’t think her father had entirely given up making the world in his own image. Probably by now he had thought of some more reasons that she and Robert were suited for each other despite her engagement to Aidan.

  She allowed Aidan to take her by the arm and lead her away. He didn’t speak until they had left her father and Robert far behind them. Nor, unfortunately, did he let go of her arm. Even when they reached the river-bank, he kept his fingers firmly around her wrist, and she felt as if all the nerve-endings in her whole arm were centered in the few inches where his callused fingers gripped her smooth skin.

  She tripped over a root and stumbled. Aidan’s arm went around her, hauling her upright against the hard wall of his ribs at the same time.

  ‘I’m all right,’ she said hastily, pulling away.

  ‘Are you?’ He allowed her a few inches breathing space—not enough. Never enough. And she looked at him suspiciously, trying to discern mockery in his tone. Oddly enough, there didn’t seem to be any. He was looking at her with something akin to concern. She found it totally unnerving.

  ‘Well, of course, I am,’ she said briskly, ‘what did you think? I only tripped.’

  ‘I didn’t mean about that. I meant, are things all right with your parents and you?’

  ‘Of course they are.’

  He looked unconvinced. ‘You mean they’re like this all the time?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Managing. Bossy. Father knows best.’

  She shrugged unhappily. ‘I’m afraid so.’

  ‘Are they making things hard for you?’

  ‘About what?’

  He gave her a pained look. ‘Don’t be coy. You know damned well what. Robert. And you. And me.’

  Courtney sighed and leaned back against a tree trunk. ‘I think they’re coming to terms with it. I mean, my mother has… uh, questioned my sanity about getting involved with you, but…’ She smiled and shook her head.

  Aidan scowled. ‘What’s wrong with me?’

  Courtney rolled her eyes. ‘How can I tell thee? Let me count the ways.’

  ‘I’m saving your hide, sweetheart,’ he reminded her without qualms.

  ‘I keep telling myself that,’ she said gruffly.

  He gave her an offended look. ‘So much for gratitude.’ And without another word, he spun on his heel and stalked off into the forest.

  Courtney stared after him, baffled. What was eating him? One minute he was propositioning her, the next he was oh-so-sincere and almost avuncular, then he was teasing, then serious, then offended, then… Men! Would she never figure them out?

  She considered going after Aidan, then thought about walking back to the village, and finally decided to stay right where she was. A little peace and quiet might be just what she needed right now.

  It didn’t last long. As she was sitting quietly in the crook of a tree, watching a family of capybaras on the opposite bank, she heard a great rustling and thumping close at hand. Aidan never made that much noise, nor did any Indian she had ever met. Only tapirs—she felt a stab of panic—and her father.

  ‘Ah, there you are!’ He peered up into the tree at her, a satisfied smile on his face. ‘Hoped I’d find you.’ He came closer and said confidentially, ‘Hoped I’d find you without what’s-his-name.’

  ‘Aidan,’ Courtney said stiffly.

  ‘Yes, yes. Just so.’ He settled down on a log just below her and patted the spot beside him. ‘Plenty of room for two down here.’

  Courtney warily looked at the spot he indicated. She remembered other logs, other spots. Other father-daughter chats. She remembered when she was not more than five and her father had sat her down and explained how he was going to let her be the leader in a follow-my-leader game. How he was going to let her be the leader and go into the next village first. She remembered how she had thought it was a great honour. She remembered another chat when she was twelve, when he had told her how lucky she was going to be to go to the convent school in Belem. And another when she was fifteen and he had told her how she would love California at that time of year. She wondered what he thought she would love this time. Robert probably.

  She wasn’t far wrong.

  When she finally did lower herself from the branch and came to sit on the log with him, albeit a couple of feet away, her father
stared out over the river and began to tell her about the work he had been doing since she had been gone. It was a long, roundabout dissertation of his accomplishments—and they were many and impressive—and Courtney was almost lulled into thinking that his comments would have nothing to do with her. And then, all of a sudden, they came home to roost.

  ‘But I’m getting old,’ he said now, running his hands through his thinning grey hair, ‘and tired. I need to start thinking about the future.’

  ‘I quite agree,’ Courtney said, glad that he understood why she was so upset at Uncle Leander’s scheming. ‘That’s what I thought. That’s why I was so worried when Uncle Leander started…’

  ‘Oh, bother Leander,’ her father said brusquely. ‘Leander is in league with the devil, always has been, always will be. I want nothing to do with him.’

  ‘No, of course not. But the money from the trust…’

  ‘The money from the trust isn’t relevant either,’ Endicott said firmly. ‘What I need is peace of mind.’

  Courtney looked at him carefully. ‘Peace of mind?’

  ‘To know that my work is being carried on in the best fashion possible.’

  ‘Well, I’m sure it will be,’ she said confidently. ‘I mean, I hear Robert is everything you could ask for.’

  ‘Everything,’ her father agreed. He fixed her with a benign blue stare. ‘There’s only one thing that would make it perfect.’

  Courtney didn’t need to ask what it was. Her fingers clenched into fists. She glared at the ground between her feet.

  ‘I do so hate to see all the Lord’s work go to waste because Robert doesn’t have the respect of the people the way I have.’

  ‘I think everyone respects him a lot,’ Courtney countered.

  ‘But not the way they would if he were married. Married to the right woman.’

  She didn’t say a word. That was one line he couldn’t expect her to feed him, could he?

  ‘You.’

  Subtle he was not. Courtney knew she shouldn’t even be surprised. It was only to be expected. Had she really thought her father would have changed, would have considered her happiness, her needs, her desires, for once in his life? Well, if she had, however fleetingly, she was wrong.