Sara Craven - Devil And The Deep Sea

Clyde seemed to win so seldom, Samma thought broodingly, and when Hugo Baxter was in the game his losses worsened to a frightening extent.

She motioned her next customer to the folding chair in front of her, and began to sketch in the preliminary shape of her head and shoulders with rapid, confident strokes.

Clyde’s only remaining asset was the hotel. And if we lose that, she thought despondently, I’m never going to get off this island.

Probably the woman she was sketching would have thrown up her hands in horror at the thought of anyone wanting to leave Cristoforo. ‘Isn’t this paradise?’ was the usual tourist cry.

Well, it was and it wasn’t, Samma thought cynically. During the years when she’d spent her school holidays here, she’d taken the romantic view, too. She’d been in the middle of her A-level course when her mother had collapsed and died from a heart attack. She’d flown to Cristoforo for the funeral, only to discover when it was over that the trust which was paying her school fees had ceased with her mother’s death, and that Clyde had no intention of paying out for her to complete her education.

‘It’s time you started working to keep yourself,’ he told her aggressively. ‘Besides, I need you here to take your mother’s place.’

Sick at heart, confused by her grief for her mother, Samma had agreed to stay. But it had been a serious mistake. When Clyde had spoken of her working for her keep, he meant just that, she’d found. She received no wage for her work at the hotel. The only money she earned was through her sketches, and although she saved as much as she could towards her airfare back to the United Kingdom, it was a wretchedly slow process.

But even if she’d been reasonably affluent, she would still have been disenchanted with Cristoforo. It was a small island, socially and culturally limited, with a hideously high cost of living. And, when the holiday season ended, it was dull.

And working at the hotel, and more particularly in the small nightclub Clyde had opened in the grounds, Samma had been shocked when she’d experienced the leering attentions of many of the male guests. Coming from the comparative shelter of boarding-school, almost overnight she’d discovered that to most of the male visitors to the island she was an object, rather than a person, and she’d been revolted by the blatant sexism of their attitude to her. She’d soon learned to hide herself in a shell of aloof reserve which chilled the ardour of the most determined predator. But she was aware that, by doing so, she was also cutting herself off from the chance of perhaps forming a real and lasting relationship. However, this was a risk she had to take, although she was forced to admit she’d never been even mildly attracted by any of the men who stayed at the hotel, or hung round the bar at the Black Grotto club.

One day, she thought, one day, when she got back to England and found herself a decent job, and a life of her own, she would meet someone she could be happy with. Until then, she’d stay insulated in her cocoon of indifference.

Except when Hugo Baxter was around, she reminded herself uneasily. He seemed impervious to any rebuff, seeking her out, taking any opportunity to touch her, Samma’s skin crawled at the thought. One thing was certain, she was keeping well away from the Black Grotto tonight.

She handed over her completed portrait, and glanced at her watch. It was nearly noon, and people were drifting away in search of lunch and shade. Time for a break, Samma thought, getting to her feet and stretching vigorously. As she lifted her arms above her head, she was suddenly aware she was being watched, and she looked round.

Startled, her eyes met another gaze, dark, faintly amused and totally male in its assessment of the thrust of her rounded breasts against her brief cotton top, Samma realised in the embarrassed moment before she looked away with icy disdain.

But she was left with a disturbing impression of height and strength, and sun-bronzed skin revealed by a brief pair of cut-off denims. As well as an absurd feeling of self-consciousness, she thought resentfully.

She should be used to being looked at. In a community where most people were dark-haired and dark-skinned, her pale skin and blonde hair, as straight and shining as rain water, naturally attracted attention, and usually she could cope with this.

But there had been something so provocatively and deliberately—masculine about this stranger’s regard that it had flicked her on the raw.

And her antennae told her that he was still looking. She picked up her sketch-block, and began drawing at random—the neighbouring stall, where Mindy, its owner, was selling a view of the marina to a tourist couple who were trying and failing to beat him down over the price. But her fingers, inexplicably, were all thumbs, fudging the lines, and she tore the sheet off, crumpling it irritably.

She stole a sideways glance under her lashes, making an assessment of her own. He was leaning on the rail of one of the sleekest and glossiest of the many craft in the marina, and looking totally out of place, she decided critically, although she supposed he was good-looking, in a disreputable way—that was, if you liked over-long and untidy black hair, and a great beak of a nose which looked as if it had been broken at least once in its career.

He was the image, she thought contemptuously, of some old-time pirate chief, surveying the captive maiden from his quarter-deck. He only needed a cutlass and a parrot—and she would give them to him!

Her mouth curving, she drew the preliminary outline, emphasising the stranger’s nose almost to the point of caricature, adding extra rakishness with earrings, and a bandanna swathed round that shock of dark hair. She transformed his expression of faint amusement into an evil leer, gave the parrot on his shoulder a squint, then pinned the sketch up on the display board behind her with a flourish.

He would never see it, of course. The boat’s owner had clearly left him on watch, and probably with good reason. Only a thief bent on suicide would want to tangle with a physique that tough, and shoulders that broad.

She had a quick, retentive eye for detail, but it annoyed her just the same to find how deeply his image had impressed itself on her consciousness. One eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation and a quick sideways glance, and she’d been able to draw him at once, whereas she normally allowed herself a much more searching scrutiny before she began. Yet this sketch had worked, even if it was a shade vindictive.

And, in its way, it turned out to be a good advertisement. People strolling past stopped to laugh, and stayed to be drawn themselves. They seemed to like the element of cartoon she’d incorporated, although Mindy, loping across with a slice of water melon for her, raised his brows when he saw it, and murmured, ‘Friend of yours, gal?’

‘Figment of my imagination,’ she retorted cheerfully.

Another swift glance had revealed, to her relief, that the rail of the boat was now deserted. Doubtless he’d remembered the owner didn’t pay him for standing about, eyeing up the local talent, she thought, scooping a handful of hair back from her face with a slim, suntanned hand.

She was putting the finishing touches to the portrait of a pretty redhead with amazing dimples, undoubtedly on honeymoon with the young man who watched her so adoringly, when a shadow fell across her pad.

Samma glanced up in irritation, the words ‘Excuse me’ freezing unspoken on her lips.

Close to, he was even more formidable. Distance had cloaked the determination of that chin, and the firm, uncompromising lines of his mouth. There was a distinct glitter, too, in those midnight-dark eyes which Samma found distinctly unnerving.