Sophie Weston - The Innocent And The Playboy

She had not said that to her father, of course. And what she had said had only caused him to persuade harder.

‘Judy needs a holiday as much as you do. It’s been a tough year, with the takeover and everything. She needs to get away from it all. Sun, sea and a bit of exotic night-life.’ He laughed. ‘Do you both good.’

Rachel said, ‘Exotic night-life doesn’t sound like me, Dad.’

But he was not to be deflected. ‘Nonsense. All girls of your age want to spread their wings a bit.’

Presumably Judy had told him that. Presumably she had also convinced him that she and Rachel were virtual contemporaries and could not be better friends. None of Rachel’s protests had any effect.

‘It’s very good of Judy to suggest it,’ her father said in the end.

His tone had stopped being hearty. Rachel recognised an order when she heard it. He might just as well have said she did not have a choice.

‘She’s been invited to stay with some very old friends. They have taken a house in the Caribbean. Film-star luxury, I’m told. Judy needn’t take you along, you know. Since she’s offered, you owe it to all of us to accept gracefully.’

So she went. Later it occurred to her to wonder whether her father was already suspecting his young wife’s restlessness. Maybe he’d sent Rachel along to act as some sort of chaperon. Or even as a substitute for conscience. If he had, he had been singularly out of luck, she thought now.

She had not suspected any such thing at the time, of course. To be honest, Rachel had not seen much of her father or Judy, particularly over the last year when her father’s company had got into difficulties. Rachel herself had been working furiously hard to get into university. She and her father had met occasionally over the coffeepot in the small hours. They’d exchanged tired quips. But they had not really talked since he’d married Judy.

So, if there were strains in the marriage, at that time Rachel had not known it. She’d just known she did not like Judy, and she had not been able to imagine why her stepmother would want to take her on holiday.

It had been some time before she’d found out why, but she had. By that time she’d no longer cared. She’d had her own hurt and her own guilt by then. By that time she’d no longer cared about anything except getting away and never seeing any of the inhabitants of the Villa Azul ever again.

Rachel opened her eyes and stared blindly at the London rain. In all the three weeks she had spent at the Villa Azul, it had never rained once, she remembered. She would wake up in the huge colonial bed to a sound like rain, but when she’d rushed to the window it had been to find that the sound was only the wind through the palm trees. She had been so homesick. So hungry for familiar sights and sounds. So alone.

Open-eyed, she stared out at the rain. Alone! She gave a harsh laugh that contained no amusement at all. Oh, she had been alone all right. Until that last night, when she had learned, briefly and unforgettably, that there were worse things than being alone—and that the worst loneliness of all was when you could not reach the person you were with. She felt sick, remembering.

But there was nothing else for it. Now she had started, the whole thing was coming back in cruel Technicolor.

The first time she’d met Riccardo di Stefano she had almost run away He had been like an alien from another galaxy. Well, they all had been, at the Villa Azul. By that time Rachel had learned to expect every new acquaintance to possess a degree of sophistication she knew she could not deal with. By the time he arrived, Riccardo di Stefano was exactly what she was expecting.

Tall and slim, he arrived in the Caribbean with an all-year-round tan and the inscrutable dark glasses to go with it. His hair was so dark that it looked blue in the glare of the midday sun. He was wearing piratical cutoffs that could have belonged to the ragged urchins in the town, had it not been for the indiscreet designer label at the back of the belt.

He was not bothering with a shirt that day and even to Rachel’s jaundiced eye its absence revealed muscles that could only be called impressive. He moved lazily, gracefully, as if he knew every eye was on him and did not give a damn. Rachel loathed him on sight.

The Villa Azul loved him. It was only to be expected.

But by that time she was loathing the Villa Azul and all its inhabitants with a ferocity that she would never have thought possible. It could not have been further away from the relaxing holiday her father had fondly described. There was no possibility of relaxing. Rachel had never felt more on edge in all her eighteen years.

One thing her father had been right about was the luxury, though. Rachel had never seen anything like it. The house party seemed to drink champagne at all hours, change their designer outfits three times a day and have personal trainers and hairdressers in constant attendance.

In fact, at first she thought Riccardo di Stefano was a new fitness expert. Only, then he took off the arrogant shades to reveal even more arrogant eyes. Rachel revised her opinion rapidly.

Slowly he surveyed the company scattered round the pool and the exotic gardens. His expression announced that he was supremely bored. None of the tennis professionals and expert scuba-divers would have allowed themselves to look like that. It would have cost them their job. It did not make Rachel like him any better.

And then their eyes met.

It was oddly shocking. Even on edge as she was, Rachel felt her inner tension go up a couple of notches. She stepped back as if she had walked too close to a fire.

The stranger in the designer rags looked her up and down. Rachel had just come up from the beach to collect some fruit for her lunch. She had not bothered with a wrap because she did not intend to stay. She was going to go back to the beach and carry on reading in the shade of a coconut palm. Indeed, she was still marking the place in her book with one finger.

So all she was wearing was a dark one-piece bathing suit. By the standards of the Villa Azul it was modest to the point of puritanism. But, under that cool inspection, Rachel felt that she might as well have been naked. Her face flamed.

Even across the width of the flamboyant garden, the pirate recognised her reaction. His eyebrows rose. He was clearly amused. Rachel blushed harder, and hated him for it.

Nobody else paid any attention at all. At least, not to her. That was nothing unusual. The sophisticated house party had been bewildered by her arrival. Since then, they had done their best to ignore her. Because, of course, Judy had dumped her the moment they’d got to the estate.

‘This is Bill’s daughter,’ she had said, waving a hand in Rachel’s general direction.

After that she’d stripped off and dived into the pool. She had not exchanged more than a dozen words with Rachel since. She had not even bothered to introduce their host.

He was, Rachel discovered, Anders Lemarck and said to be something in oil. The other guests were vague on his profession but very precise on his wealth, which was described as serious. On their arrival, he’d considered Rachel appraisingly, decided she was not worth getting up for and raised a casual hand in her direction.

‘Hi, Bill’s daughter.’

After that he’d ignored her too. If it had not been for the friendly islanders who ran the Villa Azul, Rachel would not even have had anywhere to sleep.

‘Part of my education,’ the eighteen-year-old Rachel had told herself. ‘Nobody said education had to be pleasant.’

She’d established a routine of swimming and reading, keeping out of the way of the main party as much as she could. Until now it had worked fine. But the piratical stranger was something else.