Valerie Parv – The Monarch's Son (страница 2)

The sarcasm in the man’s voice wasn’t lost on her. She struggled to sit up and found herself lying on thick woven matting under a white canopy that reminded her of a sheik’s tent. She blinked hard, realizing uncomfortably that she must have washed up on one of the many private beaches around the island kingdom. Its owner, as his behavior suggested he was, sounded annoyed by the intrusion.

Her vision had nearly cleared, and almost against her will she was intrigued by the man meeting her curious gaze. In spite of his disapproving expression he had the most arresting features she had ever seen, strongly carved as if from stone. Only the working of a muscle at his jawline belied this impression.

His obsidian eyes glared at her from under hair of almost the same color. Gold flecks glittered in the dark pools of his gaze. Something familiar about him tugged at her, although she was so tired she could barely think straight. Another question occurred to her. “How did you know I’m Australian?”

He frowned, censure in every line of his face. “If your accent hadn’t betrayed you, your beauty and your boldness would have done so.”

She seized on his last points. “Are you telling me that Australian women have a look you can recognize?”

He nodded. “Your particular robustness is quite different from the delicacy of Carramer women, even when you’re as slender and shapely as you are, Miss…”

He tailed off, clearly expecting her to supply a name. “Alison Carter,” she said, pleased to hear her voice sounding less husky already. “Allie to my friends.”

“Alison.” The curt way he said her name immediately removed him from the friend category. “I am Lorne de Marigny.”

“Pleased to meet you, Monsieur de Marigny.” She matched his formal tone and granted him the locally preferred French appellation almost unconsciously. In Australia she would have called him Lorne without a second thought, but his upright bearing and stern manner suggested that it wouldn’t be wise, for some reason. Oh well, when in Rome or Carramer, she thought. Summoning her limited reserve of strength, she struggled to her feet. “Thank you for your help, but I’d better go.”

A wave of dizziness caught her and she swayed. Instantly his arm came around her shoulder, supporting her. “You are in no condition to go anywhere until you have been cleared by a doctor.”

His supportive arm felt so good that she was tempted to lean into his embrace and let him continue making decisions for her. He sounded accustomed to it, and she was very, very tired, but she couldn’t impose on him any longer when he clearly resented her presence. “No, thanks. You’ve done more than enough. I’m sorry I intruded on your privacy, but I’ll leave now.”

The black gaze bored into her, his closeness emphasizing the intensity in his expression. “Precisely how do you plan on leaving?”

She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I guess I’ll walk back to Allora. I’m staying at a hostel there.”

He dismissed the notion with a curt gesture. “In the first place, you’re in no condition to walk anywhere, far less a couple of miles back to the town.”

She started in surprise. “The current took me that far?”

“It has been known to.” He sounded dryly amused.

She could hardly wait for the second place. “And?”

“You’re seeing a doctor before you go anywhere. Come, my villa is over the rise.”

He clearly took her compliance for granted, and she lifted her head in automatic defiance. “Next thing you’ll tell me you keep a doctor on call.”

Lorne merely looked at her. “As it happens I do.”

“And a chauffeur and a helicopter complete with pilot, too, I suppose?”

He inclined his head slightly. “Among other staff, yes.”

She couldn’t restrain her outrush of breath, feeling more like a fish out of water than ever. A nearly drowned fish at that. Either this prepossessing stranger had delusions of grandeur or he was a man of some importance. She squared her shoulders. No matter who Lorne de Marigny was, where she came from, one person was as good as another. “I don’t see any staff around here right now,” she said with a pointed glance around them.

His black look impaled her. “Are you questioning my word?”

He sounded as if it was a rare event. Maybe it was time somebody did. “In Australia we call things as we see them,” she stated, her gesture encompassing the empty beach.

He dragged in a deep breath and she could practically feel him restraining his temper. “Make no mistake, we are under observation from several quarters even now. This beach is well known to be off-limits to the public, and my staff is trained to be discreet, giving me at least the illusion of privacy.”

Unlike certain foreigners, came the unspoken criticism. “Look, I didn’t plan on washing up on your private beach,” she protested, tiring of his imperious attitude and his insulting suggestion that she required watching. What harm could one bikini-clad tourist possibly do to a man of his impressive physique? “If one of your…staff…will give me a lift back to Allora, I’ll get out of your hair. I promise I’ll see a doctor as soon as I get back,” she added before Lorne could say any more on the subject.

His dark brows drew together. “Are you always so annoyingly persistent?”

“Only when half-drowned,” she assured him tiredly. Her every muscle ached from fighting the current, and her legs weren’t doing too well at holding her up. She was in no state to deal with Mr. Arrogance even if it turned out that he owned half of Carramer.

He regarded her in obvious disbelief. “Why do I doubt that it takes a bout with the serpent to bring out this tendency in you?”

On the other hand he had saved her life, she conceded to herself. “When I was four, my mother called me Miss One-Note because she said I was so single-minded,” she confessed, not entirely sure why. “I guess I haven’t changed.”

“I imagine you have changed considerably since you were four,” he commented, appraising her so frankly that she was left in no doubt as to the changes he was referring to.

His blatantly masculine scrutiny reminded her of how much her white bikini revealed. Having forgotten to pack her own swimsuit, she had purchased the bikini locally yesterday, allowing the saleswoman’s enthusiasm to override Allie’s misgivings about its brevity. She hadn’t allowed for the way the twin bands of stretch material molded themselves to her body when wet, revealing even more of her shapely figure than they had when dry.

Well, so what if they did, she told herself defiantly. It wasn’t as if she had anything to be ashamed of. She was no supermodel, but a careful diet and exercise routine had given her curves in all the right places. All the same, Lorne’s slow inspection provoked a tingling sensation in the pit of her stomach that had nothing to do with nearly drowning. It came to her that she felt more out of her depth beside Lorne on the sand than she had in the grip of the undertow.

“You’d better take the lead,” she suggested in an unsteady voice.

He inclined his head, his expression darkly amused. “I invariably do.”

As he took her arm and steered her toward a narrow path skirting a dune, the heat of his hand seared her skin as if a naked flame had touched it. She glanced in surprise at the strong fingers cupping her elbow. No flames, only ordinary flesh and blood. Her exhausted state must be the reason why his touch sent shivers dancing along her spine. Maybe he was right and she would be wise to consult a doctor after all.

“What brings you to Carramer? Are you on vacation?” he asked as she tried vainly to match his long-legged strides. He noticed and moderated them a little.

His disinterested tone suggested that he was only making polite conversation. “It’s a working holiday,” she supplied. “I came here to paint.”

“You are an artist?”

Again she caught the disapproval in his tone and wondered at its source. Her sigh was more betraying than she intended. “That’s what I want to find out. Back home in Brisbane I teach art at a girl’s school, but I’ve always wanted to paint professionally. I decided to spend some accumulated leave exploring what I can achieve.”

“Why Carramer specifically? Surely you can paint in Australia?”

She nodded. “I could, but there are too many distractions.”

His eyebrow lifted. “Distractions as in a man?”

Distractions as in a family for whom she had always been on call, she thought, automatically suppressing a flash of resentment. Between a constantly ailing mother who expected Allie to parent her, and a spoiled younger sister who thought her needs should always come first, there had never been much time or money for anything Allie herself wanted.

Her father had left them when Allie was sixteen, and since then her mother had looked to her daughter for support, swearing that she couldn’t manage alone. Her many ailments could never be specifically diagnosed but prevented her from working full-time and ensured that Allie was always there for her, doing all she could to make her mother’s life easier. She had even abandoned her dream of attending art school in favor of teacher training so she could bring in enough money to help put her sister through university.