Sinful Pleasures

‘Well, you did abandon the woman who loved you for a man without any perceptible emotions that I could see,’ he continued, with some heat. ‘Your mother loved you, Megan. Or have you conveniently forgotten that? How can you talk about love when you broke her heart?’

CHAPTER TWO (#ue2b1c46a-44f6-5586-ba48-3a19988ebf11)

NOW why had he said that?

Remy’s hands clenched on the wheel, and he couldn’t bear to look her in the face. It wasn’t as if what had happened was anything to do with him, after all. He had no right to criticise her when she’d been too young to understand what was going on either.

She seemed to be speechless, and he was uneasily aware that the colour had now drained from her cheeks. For a moment there he’d forgotten how seriously ill she had been, and he felt as guilty as hell for upsetting her this way.

‘Look—I’m sorry,’ he began harshly, wishing they were still on the wide airport road where he might have been able to stop and apologise properly, instead of on the narrow road to El Serrat. He dared not stop here, not on one of these bends, where he’d be taking their lives into his hands. He’d done enough without risking an accident as well.

‘My—my father loved me,’ she said, almost as if she hadn’t heard him. ‘He loved me, and he’d done nothing wrong. How do you think he felt when he found out my mother had been cheating on him with your grandfather? My God! He’d made a friend of the man! How would you feel if it happened to you?’

Remy’s mouth compressed. ‘Like I said—’

‘You’re sorry?’ Megan appeared to be trembling now, and he hoped he hadn’t ruined everything by speaking his mind. ‘Well, I’m sorry, but that’s not good enough. And if your mother feels the same way I suggest you turn around and take me back to the airport.’

‘She doesn’t.’ Remy swore. ‘Ah, hell, she’d be furious with me if she knew what I’d said. Okay, you have your memories of what happened, and I accept that. But I lived with your mother for almost six years. Believe me, she was devastated when you wouldn’t come to see her. You were the only child she had.’

Megan slanted a cool look in his direction. She looked like the Megan he remembered, even if the plump, pretty features she’d had as a child were now refined into a pale beauty, but she wasn’t the same. The softness had gone, replaced by a brittle defensiveness, and he wondered if he had been naïve in thinking he might be able to change her mind.

‘Was I?’ she asked pointedly, and he had to concentrate for a moment to remember what he’d said.

He blew out a breath. ‘You’re talking about the miscarriage,’ he intimated at last. ‘She was devastated when she lost the baby. And it didn’t help when your father wrote and told her she deserved it, too.’

Megan gasped. ‘He didn’t do that.’

‘No.’ Remy conceded the point. ‘His actual words were, “God moves in mysterious ways.” He didn’t say that he was sorry for what had happened. That he understood how she must be feeling or anything like that."

‘He was hurt—’

‘So was she.’

Megan’s hands were clenched together in her lap, he noticed, but her voice was dispassionate as she spoke. ‘Well, I don’t know why she bothered to let Daddy know what had happened. It wasn’t as if—as if it mattered to him.’

‘Perhaps she hoped for some words of comfort,’ said Remy flatly. ‘Your father was supposed to be a man of God, after all.’

‘He was also human,’ retorted Megan tightly. ‘Would she have expected him to congratulate her if the baby had lived?’

Remy silenced the angry retort that rose inside him. It wasn’t fair to blame her for her father’s sins. And who knew what he might have done if he’d been in the same position? It was easy to see both sides when you weren’t involved.

‘I believe your work is in the fashion industry,’ he forced himself to say at last, in an attempt to change the subject. ‘Mom said something about a catalogue. Do you sell mail-order or what?’

‘Do you really want to know?’

Megan was terse, and he couldn’t altogether blame her. His mother was hoping to heal old wounds, but all he’d done was exacerbate them.

‘Look.’ he said, feeling obliged to try and mend fences before they got to the hotel, ‘forget what I said, okay? What do I know anyway? Like you said, I was only a kid. Kids see things in black and white. I guess you did, too.’

Megan glanced at him again, her eyes shadowed beneath lowered lids. She had beautiful eyes, he noticed; they shaded from indigo to violet within the feathery curl of her lashes, and glinted as if with unshed tears. He knew a totally unexpected urge to rub his thumb across her lids, to feel their salty moisture against his skin. Her face was porcelain-smooth, and so pale he could see the veins in her temple, see the pulse beating under the skin. He knew a sudden urge to skim his tongue over that pulse, to feel its rhythmic fluttering against his lips. To taste it, to taste her—He fought back the thought. Megan hadn’t come to San Felipe because of him.

He dragged his eyes back to the road, stunned by the sudden heat of his arousal. For God’s sake, he thought, was he completely out of his mind? What the hell was he doing even thinking such things? This woman wouldn’t touch him with a bosun’s hook.

‘You didn’t want me to come here, did you, Remy?’

Her question, coming totally out of the blue, startled him. In his present state of mind, that was the last thing he’d have said. But then, she didn’t know how he was feeling. thank God! She couldn’t feel the tight constriction of his jeans.

‘That’s not true,’ he got out at last, feeling his palms sliding sweatily on the wheel. It irritated him beyond belief that he’d betrayed any bias to her, but it irritated him still more that he couldn’t control himself.

‘So why are you giving me such a hard time?’ she asked, and he was aware of her watching him with a wary gaze.

‘I’m not,’ he said tensely, giving in to his frustration. ‘I just don’t think you’re entirely even-handed when it comes to your parents. Your father was a vindictive bastard.’ He paused. ‘I should know.’

Megan had been given the penthouse suite, which, in island terms, meant that her rooms were on the sixth floor of the hotel. None of the hotels that bad sprung up along the coast was allowed to build beyond six floors and these days, she had noticed, there were quite a number of new ones.

Which meant, Megan assumed somewhat uneasily, that the Robards were sacrificing quite a large slice of their income by accommodating her in such luxurious surroundings. This was, after all, their most lucrative time of year, when the island was flooded with visitors from North America and Northern Europe escaping the cold weather back home.

Yet, despite her anxieties—and the fact that by the time they’d reached the hotel she and Remy had barely been on speaking terms—Anita had made her feel welcome. The other woman had behaved as if it were sixteen weeks—not sixteen years—since she had last come here. She had greeted her stepsister with affection, and dispelled the apprehension Remy had aroused.

Anita had been waiting on the verandah of the hotel when the estate ear had swept down the drive. Megan had barely had time to admire the hedges of scarlet hibiscus that hid the building from the road before her stepsister was jerking the door open and pulling Megan out into her arms. There had been tears then, tears that Megan couldn’t hide even from Remy. She was still so weak, she’d defended herself silently. Any kind of emotion just broke her up.

Blinking rapidly, she’d been grateful for the cooling breeze that swept in off the ocean. Apart from the immediate area surrounding the hotel, where artificially watered lawns and palm trees provided the guests with oases of greenness, the milk-white sands stretched as far as the eye could see. But she hadn’t been able to ignore the fact of the car door opening behind her, or Remy getting out and walking around to the back of the vehicle to unload her bags.

‘Oh, Megan,’ Anita was saying as she hugged her in her protective embrace, ‘it’s been far too long. It’s a sad thing if you have to be at death’s door before you’ll accept our invitation.’

Our invitation?

Megan wondered who Anita included in that statement. Not Remy, surely. But she could only shake her head, unaccountably moved by her stepsister’s welcome. After the way Remy had behaved, she’d been dreading this moment.

And Anita had hardly changed at all. She’d been pleasantly plump as a teenager, and she was plump still, with round dimpled features that could never disguise her feelings to anyone. As before, she was wearing one of the loose-fitting tee shirts and the baggy shorts she had always favoured, her curly dark hair scooped up in a ponytail.

Yet, despite her welcome, Megan sensed that Anita wasn’t quite as carefree as she’d like her to think. She noticed as the other woman drew back that there were dark lines around her eyes, and a trace of more than wistfulness in her tears.

But perhaps she was being over-sensitive, Megan considered, and, avoiding Remy’s eyes, she allowed Anita to lead her into the hotel. She found some relief in admiring the changes that had been made and consoled herself with the thought that this was the most difficult time for all of them. No matter how accommodating they might try to be, they couldn’t ignore the past.

A fountain now formed a centre-piece in the newly designed foyer, with the lounges and reception area moved to the floor above. ‘I suggest I show you your room and let you freshen up before dinner,’ Anita declared, leading the way across to the bank of lifts. ‘I imagine you could do with a rest. Did you have a pleasant journey?’

The lifts were new, too, much different from the grilled cage that Megan remembered. Would her mother have become so enamoured with the place if it had always been as impersonal as this? she wondered. Laura had always said it was the informality of Robards Reach that made it so unique...

‘There’s so much I want to tell you,’ Anita continued as they went up in the lift—not with Remy and the luggage, Megan was relieved to find. ‘So much time we have to make up. I want to know all about what’s been happening in your life. Your boyfriend—partner—’ She coloured. ‘Simon, isn’t it? He sounds really nice. I’m glad you’ve found a decent man to care for you.’

‘He doesn’t—that is—’ Megan pressed her lips together and didn’t go on. As with Remy, she was loath to deny that she and Simon were an item. She didn’t know when it might be useful to have that excuse to turn to, and, hoping Anita would put the colour in her face down to the heat, she finished, ‘It was good of you to—to invite me here.’

‘Well, it’s not as if it was the first time,’ declared Anita, with a trace of censure, but with none of the aggression her son had shown. ‘Anyway, it’s so good to see you.’ She took a breath. ‘You’re so like—so like Laura when I first knew her.’ She touched Megan’s face. ‘It’s going to be hard for—for my father.’ Her lips tightened. ‘But you’re so pale. We’ll have to try and put some colour into those cheeks before you leave.’

Anita left her alone in the luxurious suite then, ostensibly to allow her to relax for a while before dinner. Megan was grateful for the respite, grateful that she was going to have a breathing space before meeting Ryan Robards, but she doubted she’d relax in her present mood.

A bellboy brought her luggage. When the polite tap sounded at her door, she was apprehensive for a moment, expecting Remy to bring her suitcases in. But she should have known better. As he had told her, he was a lawyer, not a hotel employee.