it, Fleur.’ And he’d walked out.
She’d gritted her teeth and restrained herself from throwing something at him. But she’d reminded herself that she’d almost always known this would be a challenge and now was not the time to get faint-hearted. By that evening, with Eric’s help—he’d provided her with some boxes she could use as file boxes and rustled up another table—she’d been more or less up and running, even able to play computer games with Tom.
It was Tom who’d, at the same time, told her that Bryn had a laptop computer in their bungalow but never seemed to have the time to play computer games with him.
‘So—what does he do on it?’ she’d asked, taken by surprise because she’d formed the impression her boss was computer illiterate.
‘He just writes things, that’s all. Oh, wow! We’ve got that new computer game, Fleur. Let’s play that!’
But, she reflected, coming back to the present as she looked around her ‘office’, three and a half weeks of utter professionalism and making the best of things without one murmur of discontent had obviously not changed Bryn Wallis’s view, whatever it was, of her.
She pulled her chair out and sat down but, for perhaps a good five minutes, stared unseeingly at the wall with a frown in her eyes. Then she shrugged and switched on the computer.
At five o’clock that same evening the day was starting to assume catastrophic proportions. Julene took to her bed with a migraine. Lobster, a great favourite on the Clam Cove menu, had to be struck off because the outboard motor on the dinghy, the only dinghy used to catch the lobster fresh every day from the waters around the island, seized up and required a part to be sent from the mainland, something that could take a day. Tom came home from school feeling feverish and uncomfortable, and with the news that his best friend had chickenpox.
Fortunately the reservation list for dinner was small; on the other hand only one waitress from Bryn’s list of casual local staff had been rostered on and she called in late afternoon to report that she’d just sprained her ankle. Frantic telephoning around had not produced a replacement for her although Bryn had enlisted the aid of the community nurse to sit with Tom.
It was when he’d exhausted all possibilities of getting anyone to replace Julene or the waitress that Bryn slammed the phone down and said savagely to Fleur, ‘Let’s see how you cope with this, Miss Competence Personified!’
‘Just you and me?’ she hazarded.
‘Eric can help wait tables,’ he said shortly and eyed her sardonically. ‘Are you on?’
‘Of course,’ she replied calmly.
Five hours later, the last guests had departed, the candles were guttering in their glasses and the cooking area was a scene of colourful chaos.
Fleur looked around at the tables that needed to be cleared, at the huge, decorative bowl of fruit on the counter. Her gaze drifted on over the dirty sauce pots in which fragrant, pastel and delicious sauces had been prepared, the lined-up empty bottles of wine, and paused as she spotted one that was not empty—a half-full bottle of Chianti in fact.
Whereupon she ceremoniously removed her apron, reached for a glass and poured some of the wine, then turned to her boss, who was looking at her quizzically, and threw the Chianti into his face.
‘Take that,’ she spat at him. ‘I have never in my life witnessed such an exhibition of boorish behaviour or been treated so shockingly when all I was trying to do was help! Not only trying, incidentally, but it’s only thanks to me that they didn’t all get up and walk out!’
Bryn blinked several times and wiped his eyes. ‘I was under a bit of pressure,’ he started to say, ‘which I’m the first to admit can affect me adversely—’
‘Rubbish!’ she yelled at him. ‘You deliberately set out to make this evening as difficult as possible for me with your cutting little remarks, your dreadful impatience, your insolent looks and all the rest. You deliberately set out to get me as flustered as possible—just as you have been ever since we set eyes on one another. Well, here’s what I think of you, Bryn Wallis!’ This time it was a bowl of unwhipped cream she poured over him.
And when he started to laugh, she upended another bowl down the front of his clothes—a bowl of raspberries. But as she turned to find something else to pour over him, he simply picked her up and carried her, kicking and fighting, down the stairs to the beach, where he walked straight into the sea with her.
CHAPTER TWO
‘PUT me down!’ Fleur ordered and pummelled Bryn ineffectually.
He did so, up to her knees in water, but kept his hands around her waist.
‘Now let me go!’ she gasped, unable to believe what was happening to her as her skirt billowed wetly around her legs. ‘I don’t know who you think you are or what you think you’re doing, but this is crazy.’
She looked around wildly but Clam Cove was serene with its curve of white beach fringed by shadowy palm trees. There were no lights on in any of the cottages, although the restaurant was still lit, there was no sign of Eric, and beneath the surface of the water her shoes sank into the sand.
‘Fleur,’ he said mildly, ‘you’re almost as messy as I am.’
She glanced down at herself then up to the heavens in furious exasperation because she was also now liberally coated with cream and raspberries.
‘Therefore,’ he continued reasonably, ‘I thought we both might avail ourselves of the sea’s cleansing properties.’ And, so saying, he lifted her off her feet and moved to deeper water so that when he put her down again, it lapped around her shoulders and was about mid-chest height for him, but still he didn’t release her waist.
And he actually smiled down at her as he said, ‘Now, that’s not so bad, is it? A bit cool but then we were both overheated—emotionally at least.’
But Fleur was not ready to be placated in any way. ‘Cool?’ she retorted with her teeth chattering. ‘I’m freezing and you’re mad, Bryn Wallis! Not only mad but horrible and…and…’
As her voice broke he released her waist but took her hand. ‘Can you float on your back, Fleur?’
‘Of course I can float on my back but it’s not something I usually do fully clothed and with my shoes on in the middle of the night!’ she replied witheringly.
‘Take them off and give it a try,’ he suggested. ‘The Southern Cross is up there bright and clear—it’s a marvellous way to do a bit of star-gazing.’ He let her hand go and pulled off his bandanna then his shirt and tossed them away from him.
‘If you’re suggesting,’ she said arctically, ‘that I—’
‘Just down to your undies,’ he reassured her and, not without some difficulty, pulled his trousers off under the water and threw them away too. ‘Feels wonderful!’ Two shoes and a pair of socks bobbed away from them. ‘And I’m still quite decent, believe me.’ He lay back to reveal a pair of boxer shorts and, with his ankles crossed, floated gently and with little effort. ‘The more you’re in it, the warmer it gets incidentally,’ he told her seriously. ‘Wow, just saw a falling star!’
Fleur muttered something and, with no real idea why she was doing it other than that she felt awful with her voluminous dress clinging to her and weighing her down, struggled out of it and threw it away from her. To her surprise, she was immediately conscious of a sense of liberation mental as well as physical. So she reached for her shoes and consigned them to sink or swim, and dived beneath the water. When she surfaced she dragged her hair out of her eyes and flipped onto her back to float as effortlessly as did her tormentor.
There was a sheen of starlight on the dark surface of the water, and the soft, rhythmic sound of waves breaking on the reef that protected Clam Cove. The Milky Way looked like silver tinsel pasted to a midnight-blue heaven,