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She was lying in bed, the sheet pulled up over her naked body, just drifting off to sleep, when she heard the crunching of sand underfoot. The footsteps moved from the back to the front of the cabin, and Hazel stared fearfully at the door.
Who was out there? Hardly anyone knew of this place. It had to be a prowler. She was here all alone, and no one knew she was here! Rafe had warned her about coming down here on her own, and it looked as if now was the time he was going to be proved right. And what a time, with her sitting here naked!
She pulled the sheet around her, searching on the side-table for the matches to light the candles- It was so dark in here that it made the situation more frightening than it was. At least, she hoped it did!
A match was in her hand ready to strike as the door flew open and a man stood silhouetted in the doorway. Hazel struck the match with a new desperation and turned to look at the man. 'Rafe!' she breathed his name with relief. 'Oh God, Rafe! You scared the life out of me!'
His face was livid with anger in the dim light. 'You deserve to be scared! You're a damned little fool who deserves to be raped!'
CHAPTER FIVE
'Rafe!' she pouted at him reproachfully. He slammed the door behind him, still dressed in the elegant white suit and navy blue shirt he had been wearing at the dance this evening. That meant he had just returned from Janine Clarke's, and it was one o'clock in the morning. She didn't need a vivid imagination to know what had gone on in the two and a half hours since he had left the dance.
'Don't you "Rafe" me!' he said fiercely. 'Do you realise the trouble you've caused?'
Her brown eyes opened wide. 'Trouble?' she frowned. 'What sort of trouble?'
'The sort of trouble only you could cause,' he snapped coldly, coming to stand beside the bed. 'Look at you now, you're stark naked under that sheet. And for all the good it's doing you might as well not even bother with that!'
She clutched the sheet even further to her, her face flushed with embarrassment. 'Well, if you would just step outside I'll get dressed.'
He shook his head. 'I'm not going anywhere.'
'Oh, but I—I can't get dressed with you here.'
He shrugged. 'Why not? I've seen you naked before, and not so long ago.'
She turned away. 'Don't remind me!'
'All right, I won't.' He looked around the cabin. 'I see you've cleaned the pjace up.'
'It didn't need much doing to it. I was surprised at the good condition it was in. Now, why were you looking for me?'
Rafe raised one dark eyebrow. 'Not going to get dressed?'
'No!'
He gave a mocking smile. 'Shame!'
'Rafe!'
'Okay, okay. I was looking for you because I didn't know if you'd been hurt or not.'
'Why should I be hurt?'
'Because there was a fight at the club about eleven-thirty and several people were taken to hospital. I went to your bedroom, and when you weren't there I went to the hospital to see if you were one of the people who'd been injured. You weren't, but no one else seemed to know what had happened to you. I've been looking all over the place for you. I should have known you were here.'
'But I—I didn't know. I didn't realise.'
Rafe sat down on the bed, shaking her roughly. 'You never do. You always rush headlong into trouble without thought for anyone but yourself. I've been frantic looking for you!'
There was an electric stillness between them, his hands burning her skin. 'Why—why did you go to my bedroom?' she asked.
'I told you, to look for you,' he said impatiently.
'But why?'
'Why should you care? You weren't there, so it doesn't matter.'
'Was—was anyone seriously hurt in the fight?' She felt mesmerised by his closeness, drugged by the male smell of his body and the aftershave he always wore.
'No,' he murmured huskily. 'Celia was involved, that's how I knew about it.'
Hazel looked concerned. 'Is she all right?'
'Yes. Apparently one of her crowd was being slightly insulting, too much drink, I should think, and your
Carl took exception to it and rushed to Celia's defence.' His mouth twisted. 'Celia thought it was all very amusing.'
'He isn't my Carl, Rafe,' she told him softly.
'So I gathered. Celia's been up to her tricks again.'
'It wasn't Celia's fault. Carl was smitten from the beginning.’
'With a little encouragement from her. That's why you were acting so much out of character this evening, wasn't it?' he guessed shrewdly… 'Letting all those boys touch and caress you.'
'They didn't touch me, Rafe,’ she denied. 'I just danced with them.'
'And I didn't like it'
'You—you didn't?'
'No,' his voice had lowered huskily again. 'You said earlier that you wanted to talk about things. I decided we should talk about it too, that's why I went to your room. There seemed only one way to settle this thing between us—talk it out.'
She licked her dry lips. 'What do you want to say?'
His gaze slid slowly over her bare shoulders, smoothing the creamy skin with his thumbs. 'Now that I've found you I don't want to say anything. Oh God, Hazel, why did you come back!'
'I had to, Rafe. I had to!' she cried. And she knew it was true. It hadn't been Celia's telegram that had brought her home, she would have come back eventually without that.
'I know,' he groaned. 'And in a way I'm glad that you did. But I'm finding it so difficult keeping my hands off you.'
But his hands were on her, sending electric thrills up and down her spine. 'Then don't try, Rafe. Don't try!' Her eyes pleaded with him.
His dark head bent and he took savage possession of her mouth, forcing her hack on the bed and leaning heavily on her body
This was what she had been waiting for, what caused the tense atmosphere between them until it was at exploding point. She curved sinuously into his arms, her hands at the nape of his neck as she caressed the dark hair that grew there.
Her mouth opened like a flower beneath his, his lips working a familiar magic that was hard to deny. His hands moved over her body with avid intensity, curving over her breast to caress and arouse her to such a pitch of excitement that she cried out his name.
His lips moved to her throat as she gasped her heated pleasure. 'This is what you wanted all along, isn't it?' he moaned throatily. 'This and the knowledge that you can still arouse me. Well, you can.' He gave a bitter laugh. 'Hell, you know that.'
She didn't want to talk, she just wanted him to love her. She showered featherlight kisses on his face and throat, ever conscious of her own nakedness as he touched her. She turned towards the candle, their only illumination, and blew it out.
She could instantly feel Rafe moving away from her, his withdrawal complete as he towered above her in the darkness. 'Why did you do that?' he rasped angrily.
Her eyes were wide and bewildered. 'It was so light. I—I felt shy.'
'You felt shy!' he mimicked cruelly, picking up the box of matches to relight the candle. 'You didn't feel shy the last time we were together.'
'Don't be cruel, Rafe,' she choked. 'I didn't know what I was doing then.'
'No, because you were drunk. But you weren't drunk enough to stop me knowing every inch of you.' His mouth turned with a sneer. 'That's what you wanted, isn't it, everything as it was the last time.'
'No, I------'
'Don't deny it, Hazel. But you see it can't be the same; erasing the light in here won't make my scars any less a fact. And it won't alter the fact that we shouldn't have been here alone together again. Why do you think I sent you away? Certainly not so that you could come back here and continue things where they left off.'
'You—you sent me away?' she repeated disbelievingly.
His mouth twisted into a smile. 'Well, you certainly couldn't stay here, not after what had happened between us.'
'So you got rid of me,' she said bitterly.
'It wasn't a question of getting rid of you, it was a question of it might happen again—as it just did,' he added grimly.
She blushed painfully. 'Not quite.'
'No,' he admitted, his fingertips running ruefully over his scarred cheek. 'But only because of these.'
Hazel looked at him sharply. 'What do you mean?'
'I mean we aren't in the bed together right now because you couldn't stand the sight of me,' Rafe explained harshly.
She gasped. 'That isn't true!'
'No?' he quirked one dark eyebrow. 'Then maybe the feeling between us just wasn't there any more. Whatever reason you choose to tell yourself, we both know the real reason. I'll remove myself from your sight now, but I want you back at the house within the hour.'
'Oh, but—'
'Within the hour, Hazel,' he repeated sternly, slamming the door after him.
As soon as the door closed Hazel fell back against the pillows, tears streaming down her face. She had known it had to happen, that complete explosion of feeling between them, but she hadn't expected it to end so disastrously. And Rafe had said he sent her away three years ago!
She had always thought it had been her own decision to leave, but it seemed she had been wrong. Now that she thought about it perhaps her departure had been arranged with a certain amount of haste, and with the minimum of effort on her part. And there was the added fact that Rafe knew Jonathan. It all added up to convince her that what he had said was the truth.
Not that she could wholly blame him; things had been very tense between them before she had left. And the reason for that had happened on a night very similar to this one, except that it had had a very different ending.
It had been the night of her eighteenth birthday, a night when she had drunk too much, flirted too much, and tempted Rafe just once too often. She had been practising her womanly wiles on him for several months prior to this, and on her birthday she had behaved outrageously, dancing and flirting with so many boys they had all fused into one. Rafe had become angrier and angrier, finally dragging her away from the party and sending her to her room.
