Page 19 of Reasons Of the Heart

'You pig!' she attacked his peaceful indifference. 'I could have fallen back there!'

A lazy hand lifted the shirt from his face, the muscles in his arms flexing under a light sheen of sweat as he propped himself up on an elbow, eyes slitted against the sun. 'I knew you wouldn't let yourself fall, Princess. You were too anxious to give me the sharp edge of your tongue to worry about mundane things like falling.'

'Well, you had more confidence in me than I did.' She suddenly felt weak and wobbly, and didn't know whether it was from delayed fright or the sight of that crisp pelt of red-brown hair catching the sunlight and playing it over his well developed chest. His jeans, as usual, rode low on the lean hips.

'I think that's your problem, Princess. Your self-confidence has gaping holes in it... it makes you prickly and defensive.'

'I don't need any of your rockside psychiatry, thank you, Dr Tarrant,' she said sarcastically, but he only chuckled indulgently.

'Admit it, Princess, you got a big thrill out of besting me and that damned crevasse.'

'I hate you, Ross Tarrant—' she began heatedly, wondering why, considering the lengths he had driven her to over the past week, she was still on speaking terms with him.

'No, you don't, you just hate it when I'm right,' he said with lazy perception, lying down again. 'Take off your sweater and get some sun. You could do with some extra Vitamin D, and you're far too pale.'

'Fear tends to do that to me,' she muttered blackly, but she did what he suggested, lying beside him on the rock after first making sure there was ample space be­tween them. The hard warmth at her back, and the soft caress of sun on her exposed skin soon melted away her ill-temper. Perhaps she did need to be prodded out of her native caution once in a while... but not too far and not too often! As if he sensed her softening, Ross began to talk about some of the places he had travelled to during his apparently peripatetic life... places that Fran had only dreamed of seeing. He didn't satisfy her curi­osity as to how he had afforded his travels, and she didn't ask.

'It sounds as if you've been just about everywhere,' she said wistfully, not opening her eyes. 'I've barely travelled around this country.'

'You have to take your chances when they come... or make your own. Nurses are always in demand overseas. Or why don't you use some of your inheritance and take a trip?'

'I already have plans for that.'

'Oh, what?' She heard his head turn, felt his gaze on her sun-warmed face, and took pleasure in denying the curiosity she heard in his voice.

'None of your business.' She smiled, the movement making jagged red patterns on the inside of her eyelids. To the man who had propped himself up beside her that secretive smile was an alluring challenge. He had a sudden desire to burrow inside that mysterious content­ment of hers and lay her bare to his senses. To strip away the defensive barriers of her mind, as well as her clothes, and satisfy both curiosity and libido at the same time.

When there was no comeback to her provocative remark Fran opened her eyes. Ross's long, half-naked body was suffocatingly close, the expression on his face as unidentifiable as it was disturbing. She sat up, tucking her legs protectively against her chest and clasping her arms around her blue corduroy-covered knees.

'I suppose, on these great travels of yours, you pursued your usual obsession for danger. Did you conquer the world's natural wonders? Ski the Alps, swim the Rhine, climb the Eiger... ?'

His face relaxed into teasing lines. 'Dave is the moun­taineer of the family, not me... he's planning a Hima­layas trip next year... and most of the Rhine is too polluted to swim, but I definitely skied. Nearly got caught in an avalanche once, as a matter of fact.'

'You would,' Fran grumbled. If he wasn't looking for danger it was obviously seeking him. 'What is so attract­ive about dangerous sports?'

'It's not the danger per se, although as you just dis­covered that does generate a certain exhilaration in the bloodstream. It's the challenge of testing oneself, of dis­covering just how far one can push one's limitations.'

'But...to risk life so casually—' She struggled to under-stand.

'I'm far from casual,' he said, sitting fully upright so that his hip brushed hers. She edged away from the scalding contact. 'I use all the necessary safety pre­cautions and I never tackle impossible odds.'

'Is it your courage you're trying to prove? Your fearlessness?'

'I don't believe that courage is fearlessness,' he said, tilting his proud head to the sun. 'I think that courage is far more than just an absence of fear, or a reaction to danger. I think courage is resisting fear, acknowl­edging and mastering it instead of letting it master you.'

His philosophy was unsettling to Fran, who thought fears were far better tucked away out of sight and, if possible, forgotten altogether. The man himself was a challenge to everything she thought and felt. More than a challenge—a threat. He seemed to have the ability to persuade her to do things that she really didn't want to do, undermining her initial refusals with a mixture of logic and teasing that never failed to ignite her normally controlled temperament. In fact, she realised with horror as she trailed him back to the cabin, he had her seeking his approval, acting like a lovestruck child instead of a mature woman who needed no one's approval but her own!

Francesca looked about her with fresh eyes when they got back to the cabin at last, and she was aghast at the evidence of Ross's influence over her better nature. The clutter was verging on mess... and she had even allowed herself to fall into his habit of leaving the dinner dishes until the following morning, and even then to merely wash and leave them draining on the bench!

Alarmed at how quickly her natural discipline had been undermined, Francesca punished herself with an orgy of cleaning that, over the next twenty-four hours, sent Ross into spasms of mocking abuse which culminated, the next afternoon, in a trivial but fiercely escalating row that sent him storming out of the cabin, declaring her to be a neurotically obsessed personality with delusions of sainthood.

'Better than having delusions of godhead!' she flung after him, pleased at having pierced his easy-going skin. 'Only gods are invulnerable, Ross Tarrant, but you'd rather kill yourself than admit it!'

When the cabin was aggressively sparkling Fran stomped out of it herself, finding the pleasure in his ab­sence was short-lived. She had thought of some magnifi­cent put-downs to his insults and he wasn't there to hear them. He was always going on and on to her about ac­cepting people the way they were and not imposing her expectations on them. What about him? Wasn't he trying to change her, imposing expectations of his own?

She glared at the sight of Ross in the dinghy, rowing vigorously across the bay. He could row to China for all she cared! She tried skipping a few stones, failing miserably. Another lesson of Ross's that hadn't taken.

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