Books you will enjoy

by CHARLOTTE LAMB

STRANGER IN THE NIGHT

Ever since her terrifying and. shameful en­counter with Luke Murry when she was eighteen, Clare had avoided men—until she met Macey Janson and began to lose some of her fear. Why did Luke have to turn up again at that precise moment, making Macey suspect the worst of her?

MAN'S WORLD

After the bitterness and disillusion of her marriage, Kate had no intention of ever get­ting involved with a man again. And her opinion of them, if it needed confirming, was confirmed when Eliot Holman got the job that should have been hers. But was that the real reason she couldn't get him out of her thoughts?

OBSESSION

Lang Hyland was undeniably attractive; he was also, equally undeniably, a womaniser— three months was the average life of one of his ladies. Nicola was his secretary and that was all she intended to be; she had no inten­tion of being just another scalp on Lang's belt. But would she have the strength of mind to stick to her guns?

SAVAGE SURRENDER

Alex Lefkas was very handsome, charming, immensely rich—and accustomed to getting every woman he wanted. And he wanted Sophie. But Sophie wasn't like all those other women; she had no interest in Alex whatso­ever—for she was protected from him by her undying love for another man. Or—was she?

COMPULSION

BY CHARLOTTE LAMB

MILLS & BOON LIMITED

15-16 BROOK'S MEWS

LONDON W1A 1DR

All the characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the Author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the Author, and all the incidents are pure

invention.

The text of this publication or any part thereof may not be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, storage in an information retrieval system, or otherwise, with­out the written permission of the publisher. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be tent, resold, hired out or otherwise circulated without the prior consent of the publisher in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

First published 198o Australian copyright 1980

Philippine copyright 1980 This edition 1980

© Charlotte Lamb 1980

ISBN o 263 7340a 1

Set in Linotype Daskerville 10 on 12 pt.

Made and printed in Great Britain by Richard Clay (The Chaucer Press), Ltd., Bungay, Suffolk

CHAPTER ONE

The first pearly haze of mist which always hung along the skyline was beginning to clear as the sun rose out of the sea far out on the horizon. A level line divided sea and sky at the farthermost limit of the eye. The air was cool and Lissa breathed it with closed eyes. Her favourite moment of the day. Soon it would be languor­ously hot and even the voices of the birds would sound drowsy, reluctant. At the moment they were calling melodically as they flashed past the palms flanking the beach, their gaudy plumage exploding like fireworks against the blue sky, busily searching for food before the heat became too oppressive.

St Lerie was a small island, one of those which had for centuries lain in French hands and whose outward culture bore strong: French influence. Street signs, shops, had French names. The law was French in origin. Even the people's names were French, although few of them had ever been to France.

Lissa had lived there since she was four. It was the only home she could remember. Her memories of Eng­land were instilled by other people—myths, rather than memories. All her own past lay here, at St Lerie, and she loved the island for its beauty even if she feared it for the sudden, cruel violence which could erupt without warning, in howling wind or rain, or in an earth tremor which toppled buildings and took lives.

Luxuriant, hot, brilliant with tropical flowers in impossible colours, the island was comparatively un­changed by the modern advent of tourism and Western ideas. Thick wedges of forest still covered it, choked with tangled dangling creepers, alive with snakes and mosquitos and insects. Most of the people lived along the coasts in small towns and villages.

Among the palms behind Lissa as she wandered along the beach lay the white walls of the Casino Palace Hotel, shadowed here and there by scarlet flambeau trees which grew close to the building. This had been her home for nine years. She had spent most of those years in a convent boarding school on the far side of the island, coming home for an occasional weekend or the long school holidays.

She worked there now, singing island songs, accom­panying herself with a guitar. Lissa was under no illusions about her own voice. It was small and light, flute-like, a child's voice rather than that of a twenty-year-old. The guests seemed to like it, however. She had made her own translations of the songs, following the meaning rather than the actual words, and she en­joyed singing.

Ahead of her along the pale pink sands ran her dog, Fortune, his short white legs racing as he galloped in and out of the surf which thundered up on to the beach.

'He crazy, that dog!' Gaspard often said, shaking his grizzled head in amusement, as Fortune rushed into the sea to swim, barking, his white head bobbing up and down. Gaspard had been in charge of the gardens for years, his black face shining with perspiration as he methodically pruned or watered, singing the island songs in his deep, slow voice. Lissa had loved to follow him around, learning the old songs which had their own unique St Lerie flavour.

Glancing around, she saw a great wave rolling down on the dog's white head, which disappeared in the blue swell. Lissa stared in alarm, waiting for Fortune to reappear. When he didn't she kicked off her sandals, unzipped her dress and dropped it on the sand. In bra and panties she ran down the beach into the water. Fear dragged at her heart.

She was so distressed that she did not hear the second splash which followed the launching of her own body into the sea, but she did hear the movements of an­other swimmer as someone drew level with her.

Surprised, she turned her head, the wet strands flicking across her cheek. A man's blue eyes met her own. She had never seen him before. He must be a visitor, perhaps a guest at the hotel. His black head moved alongside her for a second while he said coolly: 'I'll get him.'

'I think I saw him,' she gasped, pointing. She had just caught sight of a blur of white in the rolling blue water.

'Go back!' The black head shot ahead of her. Lissa kept swimming, despite his autocratic command. It was her dog and she was responsible for him.

He had an edge on her, his long body streaking through the water at a speed she could not match.

He dived into the rush of water, only his brown feet visible. As Lissa watched, sick with anxiety, he sur­faced again with a limp white object. Lissa reached for her dog. The stranger gave her a wry look.

'Wait!' He struck out strongly for the shore again and she had no alternative but to try to keep up with him. It wasn't easy. Although she had been swimming since she could walk, this man was physically far stronger. The sun gleamed on his muscled brown arms and shoulders as his powerful strokes took him closer to land. The black hair was flattened all over his skull so that it looked like a sleek cap.

He waded up the beach and laid the dog down on the sand. Lissa tumbled out of the waves beside them, breathing heavily. The stranger was already kneeling beside Fortune, his hands deftly moving, his strong body swinging in a pulsing rhythm as he tried to pump the water from the dog's lungs. She knelt beside him, biting her lip, watching anxiously.

'Will he be all right?' she whispered.

The stranger shot her a sardonic look. 'Well, don't ask me to give him the kiss of life!'

At that moment Fortune came to life with an agonised yelp. He was promptly sick. The man released him and stood up, pulling Lissa with him, his hand coiled round her wet arm.

'Leave him,' he said. 'Even a dog needs privacy at these moments!'

Fortune continued to be sick, shuddering, and Lissa exclaimed tenderly, 'Oh, poor Fortune!'

'That will teach him to try to swallow half the ocean,’ the stranger said with a smile.

Lissa looked at him gratefully. 'Thank you. You saved his life. I might not have got there in time.'

'You swim very strongly,' he congratulated her. 'You probably would have managed it.'

'I'm not as good as you are,' she said, shaking her head. He was undoubtedly one of the most powerful swimmers she had ever seen.

'You're built rather differently,' he murmured, his eye wandering down her, a faint smile curving his mouth.

Lissa felt her skin heating, as she suddenly became aware of her almost naked state. Her wet bra and panties were completely transparent in the rising sun. Thin nylon and lace, they clung to her slender curves and left her totally visible to the interested blue eyes observing her with such close attention.

He looked up and grinned, unashamed of his leisurely scrutiny. 'Charming,' he drawled, openly mocking.

Lissa looked away. Her dress lay some way off on the sand where she had dropped it. As she ran with a stammered word to get it, she felt the dark-haired man staring after her and burned with embarrassment.

She was very glad to snatch up the dress, step into it and zip it up. Slipping into her sandals, she turned, feeling safer.

Fortune was on his feet again, shaking himself vigorously. She whistled and he galloped up to her, grinning widely, as though he had performed some magnificent feat.

'Bad dog!' she scolded.

He rolled an eye at her, licking her hand, and she lovingly tousled his wet head. His pink skin was visible beneath the short damp white hairs.

'He's pleased with himself, isn't he?' The stranger had slowly strolled over and was watching them, his long legs planted apart, his damp calves dusted with clinging sand.

Lissa knelt to hug her dog, shaking him, torn be­tween relief and a faint lingering shock at what might have happened. 'You dare go swimming again at high tide!' she told him. He licked her nose and she laughed.

She felt a strange shiver run down her back as the dark shadow of the stranger fell across her. She looked up, her eves enormous, and met his eyes

His were a fierce dark blue which was made deeper by the golden bronze of his skin. He was the same colour from head to foot, indicating that he spent a lot of time in the sun, although not as much as a native of the island would do, since his colour was lighter than theirs. Some of the local men had skin like mahogany from hours in the sun and surf, their bodies constantly exposed to wind and drying heat. This man had smooth, polished skin which rippled like liquid gold over sinews and muscles suggesting a great fitness and physical strength.

'Are you staying at the hotel?' Lissa asked, shifting her startled eyes from the compelling shaft of his stare with a sense of odd uneasiness.

'Yes. I arrived last night. Are you?'

'I live here.'

'On the island? Or do you mean at the hotel it­self?'

'At the hotel.' Lissa felt a deepening disturbance at the way he was watching her. She stood up, holding Fortune's collar. 'Thank you so much for saving his life. I can't tell you how grateful I am.'

'Yes, you can,' he told her drily.

She looked at him in surprise, her eyes widening.

'You can have dinner with me.' He gave her a smile which lit up his whole face, the lines around eye and mouth cutting deeply into that golden skin, his blue eyes very bright. 'I'm sorry.' she stammered, her flush growing, 'but I work in the evenings.' 'Work at what?'

'Singing,' Lissa told him.

His dark brows flew upwards. He skimmed her again in obvious disbelief, the dark blue eyes narrowed. 'Sing­ing?'

He sounded incredulous, and that wasn't surprising because at the moment, with her sand-stained dress clinging so closely to her wet body, her hair in saturated disarray, her small face innocent of make-up, she no doubt did not look like a professional singer. She prob­ably looked more like a schoolgirl, she thought wryly.

She wasn't a professional singer, anyway. She only sang at the Palace because she was engaged to Chris. He liked her soft little voice and he had taken a chance on customers liking it, too. So far, luckily, they seemed to do so.

'I sing twice nightly in the cabaret,' she told the stranger.

'Really?' He was looking amused as he watched her. 'I must catch your act. Maybe we could have a drink together afterwards.'

Lissa looked away. Fortune had wandered up the beach on his way back to the hotel. 'Maybe,' she said vaguely. 'Thank you. I must go now.'

He was obviously on the beach to swim. Looking across the sands she saw a rolled towel flung down, sun­glasses and a book.

'Well, enjoy your morning,' she said, retreating.

He stood there, his powerful body gleaming in the sunlight, the brief black swimming trunks emphasising the muscled thighs and flat stomach, his hands on his hips as he watched Lissa walk hurriedly away.

She did not look round, but she could feel the blue eyes watching her all the way into the shade of the clustering palm trees.

She felt strangely relieved to be out of range of those hard, narrowed eyes. The stranger made her feel very nervous, very aware both of herself and him. It was a sensation new to her and one she did not particularly enjoy.

As she walked back up to the hotel she found him occupying her thoughts. Lissa rarely noticed their visitors; she was too accustomed to the comings and goings of tourists. The black-haired man did not fit into the usual categories and she found it impossible to dismiss him easily from her mind.

She left Fortune sitting in the sun, scratching him­self vigorously, and went into the back entrance of the hotel. Joseph looked up from the meat he was placing in a marinade. 'What happen to you?' he asked in his rolling Carib accent. 'You look like you been swim­ming in your dress.'

She told him and he roared with laughter, his liquid dark eyes dancing. 'Crazy dog!'

'He nearly drowned,' she said.

'That dog too lucky to drown,' Joseph said seriously. He was deeply superstitious, imbued with the island traditions. Although the staff were not allowed to gamble in the casino they gambled in private, often losing a week's wages on one hand. Chris said they still held cockfights back in the forest, out of sight of the law, which forbade it, and large sums changed hands on the outcome of a fight. Lissa looked at Joseph's friendly, goodhumoured face and hoped he did not attend the cockfights. The thought of them made her feel sick.

She went to her own room in the staff quarters and showered before changing into a skimpy white top and brief shorts. When she looked at herself in the mirror before she left the room she found a faint flush still lingering in her tanned face. A slim girl of medium height, she had very long, blonde sun-bleached hair which she normally wore sleek and straight around her face. Her skin was a uniform gold and her green eyes slanted beneath the fine, thin brows she darkened artificially to give more depth to her eyes.

She was healthy, physically active and energetic, and it was revealed in her figure; the rounded curves slim­med with constant exercise and light meals.

As she thought, of the dark stranger her frown deepened. She had found his appraising gaze disturb­ing. Living at the hotel she was not unaccustomed to being admired by visitors, but she couldn't remem­ber any of them very clearly once they had gone.

Her years in the convent school had left her largely very innocent and untouched. Her feeling for Chris had obscured every other man from her. She had barely noticed any of them, but something about the stranger forced him on her consciousness.

He was unlike anyone she had ever seen before. Most of their guests came partly for the sun and partly for the gambling. They spent their days on the beach and their evenings at the tables. Their attention was not easily distracted from the ebb and flow of luck around the gambling rooms. Lissa had learnt to recog­nise the various faces, the predictable expressions, of the hardened gambler. Their fixed excitement, their restless boredom away from the tables,  betrayed them. She had felt none of that in the dark stranger.

He had had amused, self-aware eyes, a cynical sophi­stication in the lines of his face. Razor-edged profile, hard mouth, eyes which stripped and probed—Lissa was not impressed by him.

That he was handsome couldn't be denied. Men with shoulders as wide as that, bodies as superbly fit, were usually to be seen on the beach showing off their expertise in the water for the avid gaze of bored wives whose husbands spent all their time at the table. Looks like that, in Lissa's experience, often went with vanity and a slight stupidity. She had fended off grinning assaults from these beach lizards, before now, and been only too happy to leave them to the admiration of fe­male guests looking for a holiday romance while their husbands gambled.

The stranger she had met that morning did not come into that category, though. She struggled to place him, unable to imagine him at a desk or doing some routine job. He had an air of such cool self-assurance, the look of a man who has no doubts about himself or life, yet who can laugh at both, take neither very seriously.

He was unusual. Lissa hated admitting it, but she couldn't get him out of her mind.

She went down to the offices which lay behind the hotel foyer. As she walked past Rebecca's office she heard the typewriter going. She opened Chris's door and the men inside the room stopped talking and looked round. Their faces had been, hard and intent.

She caught a flash of something in the atmosphere which she had sometimes felt she saw before, but as always, it vanished before she had time to pin it down.

Chris grinned at her casually, milling back his lair hair with- a lazy hand. 'Hi, sweetheart. Come in— we've just finished talking.'

The other men shifted their feet.

'I'll talk to you later,' Chris informed them, Smiling.

They were smiling, too, as they filed past Lissa, greet­ing her one by one, while Chris leaned back in his chair, watching.

His father had been the owner of the Palace before it became a casino. Lissa's father had run the hotel for years and Chris had been as near to a big brother as Lissa had. Her mother had died when Lissa was six. Bitten by a snake in the garden, she had fainted before she could struggle to the house and by the time, a quarter of an hour later, she was found it had been too late to do anything to save her. Lissa's father had never recovered from the shock and he had never remarried. He drank far too much for years and it was a com­plaint of the liver that finally killed him while Lissa was still at school. Chris's father had generously taken over her education. When she left school it was only natural that she should come back to the Palace. It was her only home and, by then, Chris and his father were her only family. The many chains that bound her to Chris had been formed over a lifetime. She was fond of him as well as being in love with him. When his father, too, died of a heart attack, Chris had leaned heavily on her for comfort and support. He had been very attached to his father. Lissa knew that she was both sister and lover to him.

He laughed at her anxiety over his gambling, but he tried to reassure her, too, and although he was too deeply entangled with it he nevertheless tried to keep it under control for her sake.

Chris was a man with a lazy, casual nature. He loved the sun and the sea. He had bright, laughing blue eyes and a skin as bronzed as her own. His thick untidy fair hair was bleached as fiercely as Lissa's. They made a striking pair when they were together. Chris had boyish good looks which lacked the sharp edge of the man she had met on the beach that morning. Lissa loved the easy-going charm of his smile.

'Fortune almost drowned this morning,' she told him.

'What stopped him?' Chris asked, grinning. 'If he chews any more of my furniture I'll drown him myself!'

The telephone rang. He answered it and Lissa wan­dered to the window to stare out across the manicured green lawns. Sprinklers were fountaining across them, a rainbow flash of light in the cascade of water. In the flower beds which Gaspard kept so magnificently were hibiscus, bougainvillea, amaryllis and honeysuckle, the vivid gaudy colours of the fleshy petals too startling in the sunlight. Guests were beginning to stroll down to the beach. Some of the women carried the bright pat­terned paper parasols which the hotel sold—made by local women, they were very popular.

Chris had a whole fleet of women working for his shops. He sold a wide range of goods made very cheaply by local workers. Beach wear, from straw sandals to straw hats; gay metal or earthenware orna­ments, jewellery, local paintings, hand-painted pottery.

'Pierre wants you to come down and rehearse,' he told her putting down the phone. 'That new song—he's done a new arrangement for the band.'

'Oh, good,' she said, smiling and blowing him a kiss before she left.

Although they had been officially engaged for almost a year, they had not yet become lovers. Chris had oc­casionally advanced a step or two, but Lissa's convent education and their shared childhood had made a sort of barrier between them which she had not yet allowed him to cross. Chris wasn't the man to force that barrier; he was too lazy. He waited, smiling a little wryly, and Lissa liked him for his patience. The decisions had all been hers. Chris would have married at once, but Lissa felt at nineteen that she was not yet old enough for marriage. On her twentieth birthday Chris had brought the subject up again and she had hesitated before ask­ing him to wait a while longer. 'Give me time, darling,' she had pleaded, and he had grimaced and said broodily: 'That damned convent!' Lissa laughed, but she knew that he wasn't far wrong.

Girls who had been at school with her had tended to take one of two directions. Either they kicked over the traces violently on getting away from the convent atmo­sphere or they were shy and nervous with the men they met.

Lissa was not shy or nervous of Chris, but she was aware that her own attitude was bred by the careful disciplines of the sisters who had brought her up.

When Chris kissed her, she kissed him back lovingly but she felt no urge to hasten her marriage. She was half alarmed at the idea of it. It was such a vast step and she did not feel ready to take it yet.

That Chris was beginning to feel slightly impatient hadn't escaped her. When they kissed she could, feel his excitement and was wary of it, knowing she felt none of the physical pressure she could sense in him. He never pushed things too far; he had never actually frightened her. Chris still felt protective of her, thought of her in the old brotherly terms from time to time. It was this warm relationship which made Lissa unsure of her own feelings and, necessarily, of his—she was not certain how adult their feelings for each other were.

She went down to the nightclub which took up a large part of the basement of the hotel. The lights were low and Pierre was picking out a tune on the piano as she walked in to meet him. Thin, curly-headed, he was a native of St Lerie himself. Gaspard, the gardener, was one of his uncles. Pierre had eight, scattered through­out the island. The family sprawled from one side to the other, involved in most of the local activities. Pierre was musically untrained, like Lissa, and quite brilliant. He had taught himself all he knew and could play most of the instruments in the band better than the current musicians playing them.

'Come on, girl,' he said in his soft island drawl. 'Listen here.'

She listened and nodded, liking it. The band were all local people, too, and had played together for months.

'Now, let's get real tight,' Pierre told her. 'Ready?'

They went over it again and again until she and the band were, in Pierre's favourite phrase, 'real tight', playing and singing the arrangement as close to per­fection as Pierre would accept.

Lissa knew she owed her own musical education at the club to Pierre. He was tireless and merciless in his search for the best sound and he took no half-hearted work.

'You'll never be a world-stopper, but that shouldn't stop you working at it,' he told her.

He was faintly scathing about her little-girl voice. Pierre had a girlfriend with a magnificent, black-silk body and a voice that could break windows, but al­...