AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Everything was beautiful, thought Rosalind an hour later as she stepped out onto her bedroom balcony and inhaled a heady brew of tropical scents. The hotel accommodation consisted of a sprawling arrangement of wooden chalets, each containing two-storeyed suites. The rooms themselves cleverly combined stark simplicity with exquisite luxury, so that the guests could pretend that they were roughing it without suffering any of the attendant inconveniences.
By leaning further over the sturdy balcony rail Rosalind could see past the thicket of towering coconut palms and weeping casuarina trees to the broad white smile of the beach with its scattering of wooden sun-loungers and huge, thatched umbrellas.
She turned her head at the sound of a slight scrape, and sighed as she saw a man leaning over the rail of the next-door balcony, which was screened from hers by a wooden lattice panel thickly covered with a glossy dark green creeper.
Instead of some exciting, sexy, fun-loving foreign millionaire, her neighbour was an accountant with an overdeveloped intellect and an underdeveloped social life.
Luke James had a lot to answer for!
CHAPTER FOUR
HIS luck certainly wasn’t improving, thought Rosalind in exasperation as she watched the slinkily clad woman sidle away from the man at the bar with an insincere smile pinned to her glossy lips.
She just couldn’t take it any more. She picked up her tall glass and sauntered over to plonk herself down on the next bar stool.
‘You really have to do something about that technique of yours,’ she announced.
Luke James stiffened, almost spilling his drink as he turned towards her, his dark eyes flicking over her shimmering green tube-top and flimsy wraparound skirt before darting past her to the crowded table of laid-back revellers which she had just abandoned.
The fiery sunset had provided a magnificent backdrop for diners at the hotel’s open-air terrace restaurant but the thick, velvety darkness had long since fallen and most people had drifted away to the disco or to watch the nightly ‘entertainment extravaganza’ provided by staff and local cultural groups. Others, pursuing quieter interests, were strolling the moonlit beach, or entertaining privately in their chalets.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Rosalind plucked a cherry from the bristling array of fruit decorating her Mai Tai, tossing it into her mouth and enjoying the lush burst of alcoholic flavour on her tongue as she studied his wary expression with faint amusement. She couldn’t blame him for being suspicious ; after all, she had been rather obviously ignoring him ever since they’d arrived.
But she had magnanimously decided to stop trying to avoid him. In a resort as small and exclusive as the Palms it was virtually impossible anyway. Instead of fading obligingly into the background in the past couple of days, eclipsed by the far more colourful company at the hotel, Luke James had managed to snag at her attention constantly. He was almost always alone, undoubtedly hampered by the shyness which those who didn’t know him might easily interpret as off-putting aloofness.
Rosalind felt sorry for him, aware of his frequent, surreptitious glances in her direction. While she had been merrily acquiring new friends and acquaintances with her usual speed he had remained uncomfortably out of place amidst the relaxed holidaymakers. At least tonight he had left his laptop in his room—this afternoon he had been using it under one of the umbrellas down on the beach, a solitary figure absorbed in his own little world, seemingly oblivious to the fun going on around him. The man obviously needed taking in hand!
‘Your technique for picking up women,’ she explained, licking her cherry-slick fingers. ‘Although I must admit you seem to have the picking-up part down pat. It’s what happens afterwards that seems to be your problem.’
‘Afterwards?’ His winged eyebrows whipped into a steeply defensive slant.
Rosalind’s eyes creased with amusement as she realised that he had placed a sexual connotation on her innocent words.
‘After you’ve delivered your opening lines,’ she said demurely. ‘You’re supposed to follow them up with some witty banter that fans the sparks of attraction into a mutual conflagration. You’re acting more like a wet blanket than a bellows. What made her suddenly change her mind?’
‘Who?’
‘Her.’ She jerked her head in the direction of the woman who had now zeroed in on another solitary male at the other end of the open-air bar. ‘The hot-looking lady who was chatting you up just now.’
‘She wasn’t chatting me up,’ he denied irritably. ‘We were merely having a polite conversation.’
Wow! Talk about being uptight! Rosalind rolled her eyes at his obtuseness. ‘She bought you a drink, for goodness’ sake; how much more of an invitation do you need?’ She tilted her bright head towards him, lowering her voice confidingly so that he had, perforce, to lean towards her. ‘She was coming on to you, Luke—I recognised the body language even if you didn’t. She was zinging you with those coy up-and-under looks, snuggling up to your side, making sure you got an eyeful of that impressive cleavage...and there you were, as stiff as a post—’
‘I beg your pardon?’
Rosalind collapsed into giggles at his outraged growl.
‘I meant your facial expression,’ she told him when she’d finally managed to stuff the laughter back down her throat. ‘The way you were holding yourself.’ She went off into another spate of giggles, almost falling off the stool, as she realised she had uttered another unintentional double entendre.
He looked as though he would like to throttle her, had he possessed the courage. ‘Really?’ he muttered sceptically through clenched white teeth.
‘Yes, really. I...er...kept my body-language observations strictly above the waist,’ she said, straight-faced, and then she couldn’t resist teasing him by looking down at his shoes and stroking her gaze slowly up the long masculine legs, encased in pale cotton trousers, which were wrapped around his bar stool.
All his casual clothing had an expensive kind of crumpled elegance that suited his lanky frame. He looked a far cry from the dithering nerd-in-a-suit she had met at the airport, but that was still the image of him that she carried foremost in her mind. However, she had noticed on the beach that his modest swimming boxers exposed some surprisingly well-defined leg muscles and her breath caught in her throat as her eyes reached his splayed thighs and the taut fabric across his hips revealed another unexpectedly well-defined aspect of his masculinity.
Her eyes skipped a survey of his short-sleeved white shirt and shot to his face, which, she discovered with a jolt, looked as heated as she felt. His slight flush gave her back the confidence to laugh huskily, as if she hadn’t almost been hoist by her own petard.
