Deadly Rivals. CHARLOTTE LAMB

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      They ate their lunch on deck, the boat riding underneath them. The fish was better than anything Olivia had ever eaten—she had never realised how good sardines could taste. There was almost nothing left for the screaming gulls which had gathered around at the smell of cooking fish.

      After their white Greek cheese they turned their attention to the peaches Olivia had bought—big, yellow-fleshed, spurting with juice. Max made coffee in his battered old coffee-pot—not the usual Greek coffee, tiny cups of muddy black liquid syrup with sugar, but French coffee, served black, without sugar.

      Olivia drank hers, then leaned back against the cushions propping her up and closed her eyes in the shadow of a canvas canopy Max had run out to give them some protection from the fierce afternoon sun.

      ‘You aren’t going to sleep, are you?’ Max murmured, and she smiled lazily.

      ‘Sounds wonderful to me.’

      He laughed softly, his fingertip tracing the outline of her profile, his fleeting touch cool on her sun-flushed cheek.

      ‘We shall have to sail back in an hour or so, or we’ll find your father has raised an alarm for us. If you take a siesta, we won’t have time to land on Paki.’

      She yawned, hardly able to take in what he was saying. ‘What?’

      ‘I suppose we can always come back tomorrow,’ he murmured. ‘We could make an earlier start, get here by ten, land and eat ashore at one of the tavernas on Paki.’

      Her lashes gold against her cheeks, Olivia dreamily said, ‘That would be fun.’

      She drifted off into blissful sleep and woke up with a start at the cry of a gull to find herself lying with her head on Max’s shoulder, his arm around her.

      As she shifted he looked down at her, their eyes very close; she saw the dark glaze of his pupils, tiny, almost imperceptible flecks of gold around them.

      ‘Time to go back, I’m afraid,’ he said, and she couldn’t hold back a sigh of reluctance.

      ‘I suppose we have to…’

      ‘I don’t want this afternoon to end either,’ Max said softly and her heart turned over.

      He slowly bent his head and Olivia lifted her own to meet his; their mouths touched, clung, in a slow, sweet, gentle kiss that set off a chain reaction through her whole body. Then she felt Max’s hand slide up from her waist to her breast and gasped, quivering.

      His mouth lifted; he looked at her, smiled. ‘Am I going too fast for you? Don’t worry, we’ll take it at your pace, as slow as you like.’ He paused, then said in an odd, wry voice, ‘Olivia, am I crazy, or would I be…? No, not in this day and age, I don’t believe it…’

      Bewildered, she asked, ‘What?’ and he watched her in that strange, almost incredulous way.

      ‘You’re very lovely, you know that, Olivia—and I can’t be the first man to notice the way you look, yet I get the feeling you haven’t actually slept with anyone yet… Tell me I’m crazy! Not that it would make any difference, but you’re so different from most girls I meet… So, are you?’

      Very flushed now, she said, ‘Yes…No…I mean… I haven’t…’ She was so embarrassed that she jumped and started brushing down her hair, pulling down her top. ‘Shall we start back now?’

      He got to his feet and started clearing the deck, a push of an electronic button sending the canopy back inside the top of the wheelhouse, the cushions all put away below. The anchor lifted, they set sail again, the breeze even stiffer now and blowing inshore so that they made good time back to Corfu.

      While they sailed Olivia did the washing up and put things away in their accustomed places, relieved to be out of sight and out of his presence for a while. She was still getting over what he had said…the question he had asked. Had he really expected her to have slept with someone already? Admittedly, some girls she knew had already begun experimenting with boyfriends, but these days most people of her age were less likely to jump into bed at the first opportunity. AIDS had made that much of a difference.

      They moored at Corfu harbour again, with the Judas trees which grew alongside casting their black afternoon shadows on them as they walked underneath to collect the motorbike from a nearby garage where Max had left it to be serviced while they were sailing.

      They drove back to the villa as the heat of the day was dying down. Over his shoulder, Max shouted to her, ‘I’m afraid we’re quite late. I hope your father won’t be too annoyed.’

      Her arms holding on to him tightly because he was driving fast, Olivia said huskily, ‘I hope not too.’ Her father didn’t normally mind what she did during the days she spent here; she wasn’t thinking much about him and his reactions. She was more disturbed by the pleasure it gave her to feel Max’s thighs against her bare inner legs, to press against his slim back, feel the motion of his body with hers as they swerved and swooped round corners with all the grace of a swallow in flight.

      Ten minutes later they walked from the garage to the villa terrace, and met Gerald Faulton. Olivia’s nerves jumped at the icy expression on his face.

      ‘Where have you been?’ he bit out, looking at her wind-blown hair and flushed face with distaste.

      It was Max who replied. ‘We left a message with your housekeeper—didn’t you get it?’

      Gerald Faulton turned his bleak eyes on Max. ‘You’ve been gone since breakfast time. Do you know what time it is now?’

      ‘I told Anna we might take my boat out—didn’t she tell you that? We thought we would go over to Paki, fish, have lunch there. We’ve had a wonderful day.’

      Her father did not look any happier. He stared at Olivia again, frowning. ‘You have been on his boat with him all day?’ he asked with ice on every syllable.

      Max frowned too. ‘I’m a good sailor, Gerald, I know what I’m doing. She was perfectly safe with me.’

      ‘I sincerely hope she has been,’ her father said through tight lips. ‘I know some men find schoolgirls irresistible, but I didn’t think you were one of them.’

      Max stiffened, staring at him. ‘Schoolgirls?’ He repeated the word in a terse, hard intonation that made a shiver run down Olivia’s back. He slowly turned his head to look down at her. ‘What does he mean, schoolgirls? How old are you?’

      All the colour had left her face. She had thought he knew. It hadn’t occurred to her that he didn’t. She hadn’t pretended to be older than her age, she didn’t wear makeup, she hadn’t tried to fool him. Why was he looking at her like that? She couldn’t get a word out.

      ‘She was seventeen a couple of weeks ago,’ Gerald Faulton told him. ‘She has another year of school ahead of her, and I don’t want her distracted before her final exams. I want her to do well enough to go on to university. I deliberately sent her to a single-sex school—I don’t believe girls do as well if there are boys around. They are afraid to compete in case boys think they’re bluestockings.’

      Olivia turned and ran into the villa, straight up the stairs to her СКАЧАТЬ