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‘Were you involved in an accident?’
‘No. Pelvic inflammatory disease.’
Her bluntness didn’t embarrass him into silence. He frowned. ‘It must have been serious for them to operate.’
‘It was. And no, before you ask, I didn’t get it by being promiscuous,’ she bit out. Many people associated PID with sexual profligacy, but until Justin had charmed his way into her heart Rosalind had been remarkably chaste. Ironically her innocence had probably been her downfall. If she had been more sexually experienced she might have been less submissive to Justin’s seductive wiles.
‘What made it so serious?’
‘There were complications...’
‘What kind of complications?’
She looked at him incredulously. He seemed utterly in earnest. For a shy man he was showing a hell of a nerve! She began to laugh. ‘Do you just want the highlights or should I get my doctor to send you a complete gynaecological history?’
He flushed, reverting to type, and she was reassured sufficiently to tease, ‘Don’t worry Luke, the only thing you’ve risked with me so far is foot-and-mouth disease.’
His flush deepened and she took advantage of his confusion to tell him that, since he had suddenly turned out to be such a hotshot windsurfer, he could sail the board back, while she strolled leisurely back to the hotel for some much needed R and R.
The School for Flirts was out for the day!
CHAPTER SEVEN
FROM her vantage point beside a pillar in the glass wall Rosalind watched the man in shorts and singlet sweating on one of the ferocious torture machines inside the air-conditioned hotel gym.
‘Crazy guy, huh?’
She jumped as someone came up beside her—a bouncy young Australian woman who had been taking an early-morning dip in the pool when Rosalind had passed it on her way to the reception desk to pick up some more of her money from her safety-deposit box.
‘He looks in pain,’ said Rosalind, wincing as Luke moved over to a free-weight bench-press and began another set of punishing exercises.
‘Nah, I don’t think those guys know what pain is—push a button and they just keep going and going. Most of them look as if you could knock them over with a feather...but their strength is in their incredible stamina—’
‘What guys?’ interrupted Rosalind, bewildered.
‘Triathletes.’
‘Did he tell you he was a triathlete?’ she asked, hiding her amusement. If Luke had been practising some creative self-aggrandisement she didn’t want to ruin it for him by blowing his cover.
‘No, but I was in Hawaii last year when my father was doing PR work for one of the sponsors of the Ironman... I remember him—’ she jerked her bleached-blonde head towards the gym ‘—because he was staying at the same hotel, scarfing up mountains of pasta and cake at the carbo-loading the day before the race. I actually saw him finish, too, quite well up in the field...’
Her words took a few moments to sink in properly. ‘Luke was in the Ironman?’ Rosalind repeated feebly.
Her Luke? The man she had privately voted the most likely to have sand kicked in his face...taking part in the most gruelling athletic event in the world?
Rosalind stormed through the glass doors into the gym and marched across to loom over Luke’s supine figure on the padded bench-press.
‘So this is why we have to have a late breakfast—so you can hang out with the rest of the jocks!’ she flung at him accusingly, ignoring the fact that except for Luke the gym was deserted.
His hands almost slipped on the bar he was holding at the full extension of his arms. ‘Roz! What are you doing here?’ He lowered the weights on straining arms until the bar rested across his chest, his expression glazing protectively as he took in her glittering fury. ‘Uh, you know the only reason I suggested breakfasting a bit later was to give you time to get over your nausea—’
‘Oh, really?’ She produced an exquisite sneer, unappeased. ‘Not because you wanted to sneak out and pump some iron on the sly?’
His hair had flopped sweatily over his eyebrows and Rosalind was infuriated by a strong urge to comb it back. Even lying there clutching a set of massive weights, he still managed to project an air of defencelessness. ‘Well, no, I—’
‘Not because you’re feeling deprived of your daily dose of self-flagellation?’ she said, reminding herself that he was a hardened athlete. Physically, he was about as defenceless as a tank!
‘Huh?’
