CHARLOTTE LAMB - Deadly Rivals

Bewildered, she asked, ‘What?’ and he watched her in that strange, almost incredulous way.

‘You’re very lovely, you know that, Olivia—and I can’t be the first man to notice the way you look, yet I get the feeling you haven’t actually slept with anyone yet… Tell me I’m crazy! Not that it would make any difference, but you’re so different from most girls I meet… So, are you?’

Very flushed now, she said, ‘Yes…No…I mean… I haven’t…’ She was so embarrassed that she jumped and started brushing down her hair, pulling down her top. ‘Shall we start back now?’

He got to his feet and started clearing the deck, a push of an electronic button sending the canopy back inside the top of the wheelhouse, the cushions all put away below. The anchor lifted, they set sail again, the breeze even stiffer now and blowing inshore so that they made good time back to Corfu.

While they sailed Olivia did the washing up and put things away in their accustomed places, relieved to be out of sight and out of his presence for a while. She was still getting over what he had said…the question he had asked. Had he really expected her to have slept with someone already? Admittedly, some girls she knew had already begun experimenting with boyfriends, but these days most people of her age were less likely to jump into bed at the first opportunity. AIDS had made that much of a difference.

They moored at Corfu harbour again, with the Judas trees which grew alongside casting their black afternoon shadows on them as they walked underneath to collect the motorbike from a nearby garage where Max had left it to be serviced while they were sailing.

They drove back to the villa as the heat of the day was dying down. Over his shoulder, Max shouted to her, ‘I’m afraid we’re quite late. I hope your father won’t be too annoyed.’

Her arms holding on to him tightly because he was driving fast, Olivia said huskily, ‘I hope not too.’ Her father didn’t normally mind what she did during the days she spent here; she wasn’t thinking much about him and his reactions. She was more disturbed by the pleasure it gave her to feel Max’s thighs against her bare inner legs, to press against his slim back, feel the motion of his body with hers as they swerved and swooped round corners with all the grace of a swallow in flight.

Ten minutes later they walked from the garage to the villa terrace, and met Gerald Faulton. Olivia’s nerves jumped at the icy expression on his face.

‘Where have you been?’ he bit out, looking at her wind-blown hair and flushed face with distaste.

It was Max who replied. ‘We left a message with your housekeeper—didn’t you get it?’

Gerald Faulton turned his bleak eyes on Max. ‘You’ve been gone since breakfast time. Do you know what time it is now?’

‘I told Anna we might take my boat out—didn’t she tell you that? We thought we would go over to Paki, fish, have lunch there. We’ve had a wonderful day.’

Her father did not look any happier. He stared at Olivia again, frowning. ‘You have been on his boat with him all day?’ he asked with ice on every syllable.

Max frowned too. ‘I’m a good sailor, Gerald, I know what I’m doing. She was perfectly safe with me.’

‘I sincerely hope she has been,’ her father said through tight lips. ‘I know some men find schoolgirls irresistible, but I didn’t think you were one of them.’

Max stiffened, staring at him. ‘Schoolgirls?’ He repeated the word in a terse, hard intonation that made a shiver run down Olivia’s back. He slowly turned his head to look down at her. ‘What does he mean, schoolgirls? How old are you?’

All the colour had left her face. She had thought he knew. It hadn’t occurred to her that he didn’t. She hadn’t pretended to be older than her age, she didn’t wear makeup, she hadn’t tried to fool him. Why was he looking at her like that? She couldn’t get a word out.

‘She was seventeen a couple of weeks ago,’ Gerald Faulton told him. ‘She has another year of school ahead of her, and I don’t want her distracted before her final exams. I want her to do well enough to go on to university. I deliberately sent her to a single-sex school—I don’t believe girls do as well if there are boys around. They are afraid to compete in case boys think they’re bluestockings.’

Olivia turned and ran into the villa, straight up the stairs to her bedroom. She knew there would be no trip to Paki tomorrow, no more rides on the back of Max’s bike.

She didn’t go down to dinner; Anna without comment brought her a crab salad on a tray an hour later, but she didn’t eat any of it. She went to bed early and didn’t sleep much.

She got up at dawn and went down to the beach as usual in the first primrose light of day, half hoping that Max might be there, half nervous in case he came. If they could talk, surely he would see—realise—that the years between them didn’t matter that much. He had thought she was older, hadn’t he? The essential person she was hadn’t changed just because he now knew she was only seventeen. How old was he? she wondered, as she had wondered all night, during her waking hours of darkness. Late twenties? Thirty? Not much more than that.

OK, it was a big gap, but when she was twenty-five he would still be in his thirties, so it wasn’t so terrible, was it? Men often married girls who were much younger than themselves. A lot of the businessmen who visited her father here brought much younger wives along with them.

If she could only talk to Max—but time passed, and he didn’t show up; the beach was as empty as usual. She sunbathed and swam, sat staring out to sea feeling depressed. It would have been such fun to sail that beautiful white bird of a boat again today, to feel the sea swell under their feet and the wind in their hair, the maquis scent drifting out to meet them from Paki, to go diving maybe, when they arrived, and investigate the underwater caves. Olivia was a trained diver; she loved to explore the depths of the lake she lived beside, or the clear blue seas around Corfu.

She sighed, remembering the feel of Max’s waist in her arms, the feel of his thighs pressing against hers as they rode along on the bike.

She should have known it couldn’t be real—that exciting feeling in the pit of her stomach, the quiver of awareness every time he looked at her. She had been kidding herself. She was crazy.

Or was she?

Hadn’t Max felt something too? He wouldn’t have been so angry otherwise, would he, if he hadn’t been attracted to her? She thought of the way his eyes had smiled at her, the way he had watched her on the beach early that morning, the way he had kissed her, his hands lingering as they touched her cheek, her throat, that soft brush of his fingers over her breast.

Colour crept up her face at the mere memory. She had been so deeply aware of him as a man, how could he not have been aware of her in the same way? Maybe she had imagined it. After all, she had never had a real boyfriend—only danced with boys at discos and had the odd kiss in a dark corner at a party. But could she have imagined everything that happened? The looks, the smiles, the tone of his deep, inviting voice?

Oh, what was the use of fooling herself? He had probably been nice to her for her father’s sake! And now he knew that, far from pleasing her father, he had annoyed him, he would probably be distantly polite to her for the rest of his stay.

She walked back up to the villa and showered and changed for breakfast. As she was coming downstairs again she met her father, who gave her a hard, frowning glance.

‘I want a word with you. Come into my study.’

Like a schoolgirl in front of the headmaster she stood while her father leaned against his desk, his arms folded. His gaze flicked down over her in that cold distaste he had shown when she returned with Max the previous day.