Spirit Of Atlantis

But when Julie would have left too, lean brown fingers looped themselves loosely around her wrist. ‘Wait …’

The word was uttered somewhere near her temple, and the warmth of his breath ruffled the strands of silky hair that lay across her forehead. It was a husky injunction, a soft invocation to delay her while Pam and her son got out of earshot, yet when she tried to release herself his fingers reacted like a slip knot that tightened the more it was strained against. His command might have been mild, but it was a command nevertheless, she realised, and she was forced to stand there, supremely aware that if she moved her fingers they brushed his leg.

‘So,’ he said at last, when they were alone, the student receptionist having departed to take his dinner some time before, ‘why are you running out on me?’

Julie contemplated denying the allegation, but she had no desire to start an argument with him. Besides, he was experienced enough to know if she was lying, and opposition often provoked an interest that otherwise would not have been there.

‘Why do you think?’ she asked instead, assuming a bored expression, and the long thick lashes came to shade his eyes.

‘You tell me,’ he suggested, and with a sigh she said: ‘Because I don’t want to get involved with you, Mr Prescott.’

‘I see.’ His look was quizzical.

‘Now will you let me go?’

He frowned. ‘Why don’t you like me? What did I do to promote such a reaction?’

‘I neither like nor dislike you, Mr Prescott,’ she retorted twisting her wrist impotently. ‘Please let go of me.’

‘Is all this outraged modesty because I kissed you?’

‘I’d rather not discuss it.’ Julie held up her head. ‘I don’t know why you’re here, Mr Prescott, but I’d prefer it if you’d forget we ever met before.’

‘Would you?’ The smoky grey eyes drooped briefly to her mouth, and it was an almost tangible incursion. ‘Would you really?’

‘Yes,’ but Julie had to grind her teeth together to say it. When he looked at her like that she found it incredibly difficult to keep a clear head, and almost desperately she sought for a means of diversion. ‘I—where is your cousin? Won’t he be wondering where you are?’

‘Drew?’ Dan Prescott’s look changed to one of mocking inquiry. ‘How did you know I came with Drew?’ His eyes narrowed. ‘Do you know him?’

‘Of course not.’ Too late Julie realised she had made a mistake. ‘I—er—I saw the two of you come in, that’s all. And—and Pam said something about him being your cousin.’

‘Pam? Oh—Mrs Galloway, of course.’ With a shrug he released her, but as she moved to go past him he stepped into her path. ‘One more thing …’

‘What?’

‘I want you to come out with me tomorrow.’

The invitation was not entirely unexpected, but its delivery was, and Julie felt a sense of stunned indignation that he should think it would be that easy.

‘No,’ she said, without hesitation.

‘Why not?’

He was persistent, and she found it was impossible to get by him without his co-operation. ‘Because—because I don’t want to,’ she retorted shortly. ‘I’ve told you—’

‘—you don’t want to get involved with me, I know.’ He pulled his upper lip between his teeth. ‘But you don’t really believe that any more than I do.’

‘Mr Prescott—’

‘And stop calling me Mr Prescott. You know my name, just as I now know yours—Julie.’

Julie found she was trembling. This verbal fencing was more exhausting than she had thought, and she looked round helplessly, wishing for once that Pam would interfere. But apart from the Meades, who were leaving the dining room with their arms wrapped around each other, there was no one to appeal to, and she could not intrude on their evident self-absorption.

‘Why are you fighting me?’ Dan’s breath fanned her ear as she turned back to look at him, and an involuntary shiver swept over her. ‘Come and have a drink,’ he invited. ‘I’ll introduce you to my cousin, and then perhaps you might begin to believe my father wasn’t the devil incarnate!’

‘You—you’re—’

‘Disgusting? Yes, you told me. But I can be fun too, if you’ll let me.’

The grey eyes had darkened and Julie felt her heart slow and then quicken to a suffocating pace. Oh God, she thought weakly, he knows exactly how to get what he wants, and she didn’t know whether she had the strength to resist him.

‘I—I can’t,’ she got out through her dry throat. ‘I can’t.’

With a laconic shrug it was over. Almost before she was aware of it, he had moved past her, walking with lithe indolence towards the bar where his cousin was waiting, and she was free to go.

With her breath coming in tortured gasps, she practically ran across the hall, dropping down the two shallow steps that led to the swing doors, going through them with such force that they continued to swing long after she had left them. She didn’t stop until she was inside her cabin, but even then she did not feel the sense of security she had expected.

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_f97e30d2-9637-525a-9167-fd9fafe9091b)

JULIE DID NOT go down to the lake to swim again for almost a week. It was foolish because she had no reason to suppose that Dan Prescott might be there, but a necessary interval seemed called for, and she contented herself with going out with Brad in his dinghy, or taking the controls of his father’s power boat so that he could water-ski. He was quite good at it, but although Julie tried, she persistently lost her balance and ended up choking for breath in the power-boat’s wake.

Eventually, however, common-sense overrode her nervousness, and she returned to her early morning pastime. Dan Prescott had not come back to the hotel, and although she had succeeded in evading Pam’s more personal questions about what had happened between them that night, her continued abstinence was provoking comment. So she began to make her regular morning trek to the cove, and after three days of solitude she began to believe she would never see him again.

Then, on the fourth morning, he appeared.

Julie was already in the water, swimming vigorously across the mouth of the inlet, when she saw the tall figure standing motionless on the rocks. As before, he was dressed in denim jeans and shirt, and even as she watched, he peeled off his shirt and tossed it on to the rocks. She turned quickly away before he unbuckled the belt of his pants. She had no desire to see him naked, and the awareness that he was coming into the water with her filled her with trembling anticipation.

There was no way she could get out without passing him. Around the mouth of the inlet there were currents she wasn’t familiar with, and besides, it was a good half mile round and into the next cove where David had built his marina. She was trapped, and he knew it. No doubt he had planned it this way deliberately. And she despised him for it.

She heard the splash as he entered the water and permitted herself a backward glance. He was nowhere in sight, probably swimming underwater, she thought apprehensively, and then almost lost her breath when he surfaced right beside her.

‘Hi!’

Julie drew a trembling breath. ‘Don’t you ever give up?’

‘It’s a free country, isn’t it?’ His eyes mocked her. ‘Or are you going to tell me the land is private?’

‘I know your uncle owns it, if that’s what you mean,’ Julie retorted, pushing back her hair with an unsteady hand. ‘Enjoy your swim. You’ll be happy to know you’ve spoilt mine!’

The word he said was not polite, and his hands reached for her before she could defend herself, pulling her down into the water until her nasal tubes were blocked and she thought her lungs were going to burst. Then he let her go, allowing her to float up to the surface, gulping desperately for breath as he came up behind her.

‘That—that was a rotten thing to do,’ she got out, when she could speak again, and he made no attempt to deny it. ‘I could have drowned!’

He seemed to consider her protest for a few seconds and then he shook his head. ‘I don’t think I could have allowed that,’ he remarked, in all seriousness. ‘Great though the temptation might be.’

Julie pursed her lips. ‘You enjoy making fun of me, don’t you?’

‘I enjoy—you,’ he said, slowly and deliberately so that her whole body seemed suffused with heat, in spite of the coldness of the water. ‘Or rather I would—if you’d let me.’