The Princess and the Playboy. Valerie Parv

clustered around an arc of white sand where turtles came to lay their eggs between November and February. Behind the village was a forest of casuarina trees. Overhead the palm fronds waved and the rest of the world could have been on the moon.

      Sea-nomads, shell hunters and pearl divers had lived here for centuries. At night they strapped batteryoperated lamps to their foreheads and walked in the tidal shallows to where jutting rocks hissed and popped as they dried. Wielding hooks of bent iron, they pried up the rocks and tipped them over to expose slimy shells which, when cleaned, were breathtakingly beautiful.

      A thatch-roofed cottage served as a trading post for the shells. In their raw state they wore thick rubbery coats which washed away to reveal key scallops, nautilus shells, cowries, olives, cones and the delicate, spinetipped Venus’s combs.

      There were pearls, too, not the perfect farmed variety but the bizarre baroque shapes created by wild oysters in the open sea. Jase picked up a specimen which was amazingly heart-shaped. Its rainbow colours glistened in the sunlight spilling through the cottage door. ‘Ask the trader how much she wants for this pearl,’ he told Talay.

      The woman, having recognised Talay, wanted to press the gem on her as a gift, and it took a lot of gentle persuasion to convince her to name a price, which was still ridiculously low. Jase paid for the pearl with a large note and walked away before he could be given change. Too late Talay remembered that Jase came from Broome and was bound to know the pearl was a bargain.

      ‘Either these people are dangerously naïve or unusually generous,’ he commented outside the trader’s hut.

      ‘Is generosity a crime in Australia?’ She evaded the issue.

      He ignored it and his searching gaze swept the area. ‘No building rises higher than the palm trees.’

      She welcomed the change of subject. ‘It’s their idea of a planning code.’

      He glanced at the palm-leaf-wrapped package in his hand. ‘How do they live? Educate their children?’

      ‘There’s a snake farm nearby where they milk poisonous snakes of their venom to make snake-bite serum,’ she explained. ‘The women also make silk on traditional hand looms. In spite of the rustic appearance, this village is prosperous and its members happy and healthy in their isolation.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘In other words, hands off. Point taken. Where can we get lunch around here?’

      Her tension escalated rapidly. There were several thatch-roofed cafés where they could eat and her presence would be considered an honour. Which was the problem. She had managed to explain away the reaction to her so far, but over a meal it would become obvious that she was more than a respected charity-worker.

      ‘I thought you couldn’t wait to dump me back at home,’ she reminded him sharply, not liking to bring up his earlier suspicions of ‘Allie’, but seeing no other option.

      ‘Since I made my position clear you’ve been on your best behaviour. There’s no need to let you starve.’ His searching appraisal took in her slender waist and hips, their narrowness emphasised by the cut of the pants. ‘There’s nothing of you as it is. I’d hate to have you fainting from hunger on me.’

      ‘Sapphan women are naturally slender. We eat like horses,’ she snapped back, as his disturbingly slow appraisal sent waves of warmth flooding through her, try as she might to prevent it.

      ‘All the more reason to take you to lunch now. This one looks good.’ He indicated an unpretentious little restaurant on a bluff with a superb view of Crystal Bay.

      Talay’s heart sank. She had hoped he would ask for her recommendation. She would never have chosen this café, where she was well known. The restaurant was famous for its local lobsters, marinated duckling and seafood steamed in a crab shell, and was also a favourite of her uncle, the king, when he visited the province on his way to the royal retreat at Chalong.