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Devil And The Deep Sea - Сара Крейвен - Читать любовный роман онлайн в женской библиотеке LadyLib.Net
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Крейвен Сара
Devil And The Deep Sea
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CHAPTER TWO
IF SAMMA thought her day could not possibly get any worse, she was wrong.
She’d grabbed her drawing materials and fled back to the hotel, evading the good-humouredly ribald teasing from Mindy and the others. And she was halfway home when she realised she’d still left that damned drawing pinned to the board. But wild horses wouldn’t have dragged her back there to retrieve it. Mindy would throw it away with the rest of her unsold sketches at the end of the day.
And she would have to keep away from the waterfront until she could be sure that Allegra had sailed, even though it would mean a reduction in her small income.
Clyde was waiting for her. ‘So there you are,’ he said in the grumbling tone which had become the norm in the past year. ‘That blasted Nina won’t be in tonight, so you’ll have to take her place.’
Samma was still quivering with reaction. Flatly, she said, ‘No.’
His sunburned face went a deeper shade of brick-red. ‘What do you mean—no?’
‘Exactly what I say.’ She glared back at him. ‘I hate being in the club, and I won’t sit with the customers and encourage them to buy expensive drinks they can’t afford. It’s degrading.’
‘When I want your moral judgements, I’ll ask for them,’ Clyde snapped. ‘You don’t pick and choose what you do round here, and tonight you’re standing in for Nina in the Grotto. It’s no big deal,’ he added disgustedly. ‘Just sit with the punters, and be nice to them. No one’s suggesting you sleep with them.’
Samma’s delicate mouth curled. ‘Meaning Nina doesn’t?’
‘That’s no concern of yours,’ Clyde blustered. ‘Now, be a good girl,’ he went on, a wheedling note entering his voice. ‘And do something about your hair,’ he added, giving its shining length a disparaging glance. ‘Nina’s left one of her cocktail dresses in the dressing-room, so you can wear that. You’re near enough the same size.’
‘It’s not a question of size,’ Samma said with irony. ‘It’s taste—something Nina’s not conspicuous for.’
Clyde shrugged. ‘Well, at least she doesn’t look as if she’s just stepped out of a kindergarten,’ he countered brutally. ‘Maybe you should ask her for a few lessons. Anyway, I haven’t time to argue the toss with you. I have a busy evening ahead of me.’
She said evenly, ‘Playing poker, I suppose. Clyde—couldn’t you give the game a miss for once?’
‘No, I couldn’t,’ he said sullenly. ‘Baxter’s here again, and he’s loaded. All I need is one good win. His luck can’t last for ever.’
‘Can’t it? Does it ever occur to you that he wins too often and too much for it to be purely luck?’
‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ he dismissed crossly. ‘Now, get on with some work, please. And chivvy up those girls who work on the bedrooms. Number Thirty-three claims his bed was made up with a torn sheet.’
Samma sighed. ‘A lot of the linen’s threadbare. We need to replace it,’ she began, but Clyde was already disappearing, as he invariably did when she tried to discuss anything about expenditure with him.
She sighed again, as she went into the hotel office at the back of the reception desk. In spite of her intentions, it seemed she had to put in an appearance at the club that night. And it occurred to her too that Clyde, who knew how much she hated being there, had never pressured her quite so much before. In the past, he’d been prepared, albeit sulkily, to accept her excuses. Now, it seemed, they had entered on a new phase in their uneasy working relationship, and Samma wasn’t sure how to deal with it. But it was beginning to seem even more imperative that she should get away from Cristoforo, and fast.
But without money, how can I? she thought despairingly. And I can’t even do my portraits for the next few days because of that damned Frenchman.
She bit her lip. Meeting an—animal like him was another incentive for her to get back to civilisation without delay.
She might have behaved badly—she was prepared to admit that, but his reaction had been unforgivable. Clearly he was the kind of man who was unable to overlook any slight to his self-esteem, which made him both macho and humourless, she thought—faults which far outweighed the overwhelming physical attraction which she’d been unable to deny, or even resist.
In the same way, she was unable to escape a lingering curiosity about him. He looked tough, and eminently capable, the typical roughneck who made a precarious living, crewing on charter hire boats for fair-weather sailors. But his voice had been educated, she thought frowning, so that didn’t add up.
Perhaps, like herself, he was trying to scrape together the fare back to Europe, she decided with a mental shrug. In the event, speculation was useless. She would never see him again. Fortunately, the Black Grotto kept away his sort of man, with its hefty cover charge and loaded drinks prices.
She could only wish it kept away Hugo Baxter’s kind of man, too.
But that, of course, was too much to hope for, she realised some hours later, watching his plump figure make its way across the crowded club to her side, a self-satisfied smile on his full lips.
‘Well, sweet Samantha.’ His eyes were all over her, missing nothing, from the casual blonde top-knot into which she’d twisted her hair, to the slender, strappy sandals on her bare feet. ‘You’re a sight for sore eyes.’ He leered at Nina’s horror of a dress—black, and almost transparent, with a sprinkling of sequins to veil the wearer’s breasts and form a coy band round the hips. It would take all her reserves of coolness to enable her to carry the tacky thing off with any degree of sang-froid she had thought wretchedly, viewing herself in the dressing-room mirror.
She said, ‘Good evening, Mr Baxter.’
‘Oh, come on, sweetheart. Why so formal? Surely you know me well enough by now to be—a little more friendly.’ He paused. ‘I looked for you on the quay this afternoon. Had a fancy to have my portrait drawn,’ he added, as if conferring an immense honour.
‘I have all the commissions I can handle,’ Samma told him untruthfully. The thought of committing his unprepossessing features to paper was totally unappealing, although she knew how she would do it, she thought, a little curl of malicious glee unwinding inside her.
His face fell. ‘That’s too bad. So—how about a little dance with me, then?’
The prospect of being held in his arms, his paunch pressing against her slenderness, made Samma feel as if a sudden outbreak of maggots was crawling over her skin. She stepped back instinctively, aware that he’d registered her hurried recoil.
‘I’m sorry—’ she began, but he interrupted.
‘You will be, sweetheart, if you start giving me the runaround. I’m a good customer of this club, and you’re a hostess—right? And if I want to buy some of your time tonight, there isn’t a damned thing you can do about it—right, too?’
‘Quite right, monsieur, except that the lady’s time this evening has already been bought—by me.’
The voice came from behind, but even without that betraying ‘monsieur’ she would have recognised it anywhere.
As she swung round, she stiffened, her eyes blanking out with shock as she saw him. He must be well paid on Allegra—either that or he’d raided his employer’s wardrobe. His lightweight suit was expensive, his open-necked shirt pure silk, and his shoes handmade. He looked like someone to be reckoned with in his own right, she thought, rather than simply another man’s deckhand.
Hugo Baxter was gaping indignantly at him. ‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’ he demanded aggressively.
‘Perhaps.’ The Frenchman shrugged faintly, indicating how little it mattered. He turned to Samma, the dark eyes sweeping over her in amused and ironic comprehension. ‘I am sorry I am late, chérie.’ He ran a finger lazily and intimately down the curve of her cheek. ‘It was good of you to wait for me.’
She was stranded, Samma thought hysterically, between the devil and the deep sea. She said, ‘What did you expect?’
‘Now that is something we could more profitably discuss over a drink.’ His hand grasped her elbow, urging her away from the bar and towards a vacant table at the edge of the small dance-floor. ‘But my expectations did not include this—metamorphosis,’ he added, a note of unholy amusement in his voice. ‘Are you sure, mademoiselle, you have no younger sister?’
She was sorely tempted to tell him she had, but her previous experience at his hands warned her it might be unwise to play any more games.
She said coolly, ‘I don’t know why or how you found your way here, but if you’ve come to score points, maybe I should warn you it’ll cost you a week’s wages, plus an arm and a leg. I should get back to the waterfront. You’ll find the bars cheaper there.’
‘Yes, I heard this was a clip-joint,’ he said, unruffled. ‘But it makes no difference. I came because poker is a favourite relaxation of mine, and I am told there is a game here tonight.’
There is.’ Samma raised her eyebrows. ‘But I think you’ll find the other players take it rather more seriously than that.’
‘They may need to.’ A faint smile twisted round the corners of the firm mouth. ‘So—how do you fit into this set-up?’
‘My stepfather owns the hotel, and the club,’ she said reluctantly. ‘I help out when necessary.’
‘I see.’ His glance rested briefly and intimately on the flimsy sequin flowers which cupped her breasts, and Samma choked back a little gasp, thankful the club’s dim lighting masked the colour rising hotly in her face.
She said tautly, ‘I doubt it. Anyway, I don’t have to explain myself to you, so perhaps you’ll go now and leave me in peace.’
His sardonic gaze took in the crowded, smoke-filled room, where a buzz of laughing, chattering voices vied for supremacy with the band.
‘This is your idea of peace, chérie?’ he drawled. ‘I had a different impression of you this morning.’
‘I remember it well,’ Samma flashed. ‘I still have the bruises.’
‘I think you exaggerate. Besides,’ he glanced towards the bar, where Hugo Baxter still glowered in their direction, ‘you surely do not wish to be left to the mercies of that wolf?’
‘You’re so much better?’ She sent him a muted glare. ‘But you really don’t have to bother about me. I can take care of myself. And he’s not a wolf,’ she added, reverting in her mind’s eye to the portrait she’d planned. ‘He’s a pig, all pink and smooth, with a snout, and nasty little eyes half buried in fat.’
His brows rose mockingly. ‘You take a scurrilous view of the rest of humanity, mignonne. I hope this time your picture remains in your imagination only. Mr Baxter would be even less amused than I was if he knew how you saw him.’
‘So, you know who he is.’ Samma remembered that brief confrontation at the bar.
‘Who does not?’ He lifted a shoulder. ‘Both he—and his boat—tend to be unforgettable.’
Samma recalled just in time that this man was an enemy, and managed to stifle a giggle.
‘Then perhaps you should know he’s also a member of this poker school you’re so keen to join,’ she said tartly. ‘And he can afford to lose a great deal more than a deckhand’s wages.’
‘So I believe.’ He smiled faintly. ‘But your concern is unnecessary.’
‘I’m not concerned in the slightest,’ Samma denied instantly. ‘It wouldn’t matter to me if you lost every cent you possessed, but you could turn out to be a sore loser,’ she added, with a dubious look at the dark, tough face, and the raw strength of his shoulders.
He said softly, ‘It is true I prefer to win,’ and once again Samma was aware of that swift, appraising glance. She saw with relief that a waiter was approaching.
‘Good evening, sir. What may I get you?’ The cover charge was already noted on his pad as he waited deferentially.
‘A straight Jack Daniels,’ the Frenchman said, looking enquiringly at Samma. But the waiter interposed smoothly.
‘And a champagne cocktail for the lady, sir?’
Her companion shrugged again, his mouth twisting derisively. ‘If that is the usual practice—then by all means.’
Samma would have preferred fruit juice, but she knew protest was useless. She sat in smouldering silence until the drinks arrived, waiting vengefully for him to pick up the bill. But his face was expressionless as he glanced at the total, and it was Samma who found herself gaping, as he produced a bulging billfold, and peeled off the necessary amount, adding, she noticed, a tip for the waiter.
God, it was galling to find that he had all that money to waste on alcohol and gambling, when she was struggling to raise the price of an airfare to the United Kingdom! She tasted her cocktail, repressing a slight shudder. She knew that, if this man had been one of her island friends, she would have swallowed her pride, and asked for a loan.
Oh, why do friends have to be poor, and enemies rich? she wondered bitterly.
‘Well, why don’t you ask me?’ he said, and she bit back a startled gasp, wondering whether he included thought-reading among his other unpleasant attributes.
‘Ask what?’ She took another sip of her drink.
‘How I make my money,’ he drawled. ‘Your face, ma belle, is most revealing. You’re wondering how a humble deckhand could posibly have amassed so much money—or, if your earliest assessment is correct, and it is—pirate’s loot.’
‘Nothing about you, monsieur, would surprise me. But it isn’t very wise to flaunt quite so openly the fact that you’re loaded. Aren’t you afraid of being ripped off?’
He said coolly, ‘No.’ And she had to believe him. If this man chose to keep a gold ingot as a pet, she couldn’t see anyone trying to take it away from him.
He went on, ‘But when I see something I want, I’m prepared to pay the full price for it.’ Across the table his eyes met hers, then with cool deliberation he counted off some more money and pushed the bills across to her.
It was only to be expected, working where she was, dressed as she was, and she knew it, but she was burning all over, rage and humiliation rendering her speechless.
When she could speak, she said thickly, ‘I am—not for sale.’
‘And I am not in the market.’ He leaned forward. ‘Didn’t you hear me say, chérie, that I’m here to play poker? No, this is payment for the sketch you did of me. I presume it is enough. Your artist friend on the quay told me your usual charges, and where I would find you.’
More than ever, she wished she’d ripped that particular sketch to pieces. ‘I don’t want your money.’
‘Then you’re no businesswoman.’ His voice gentled slightly. ‘Forget how much you loathe me, and take the money. You cannot afford such gestures, and you know it.’
Samma bit her lip savagely, wondering exactly how much Mindy had told him.
‘I make a perfectly good living,’ she said defiantly. She gestured around her. ‘As you see, business is booming.’
‘I see a great many things,’ he said slowly. ‘And I hear even more. So this is your life, Mademoiselle Samantha Briant, and you are content with it? To sketch in the sunlight by day, and at night lure the unwary to their doom in a net of smiles and blonde hair?’
No, she thought. It’s not like that at all.
Aloud, she said, ‘If that’s how you want to put it—yes.’
‘Did you never have any other ambitions?’
She was startled into candour. ‘I wanted originally to teach—art, I suppose. But I haven’t any qualifications.’
‘You could acquire some.’
Samma’s lips parted impulsively, then closed again. She’d been, she thought with concern, on the very brink of confessing her financial plight to this man.
She shrugged. ‘Why should I—when I’m having such a wonderful time?’ She pushed back her chair, and got to her feet. ‘And you’ve acquired an instant portrait—not exclusive rights to my company. I’m neglecting the other customers.’
As she made to move away, his hand captured her wrist, not hurting her, but at the same time making it impossible for her to free herself. The dark eyes were unsmiling as they studied her. ‘And what would a man have to pay for such rights, my little siren?’
She tried to free herself, and failed. ‘More than you could afford,’ she said bitingly, and he laughed.
‘You estimate yourself highly, mignonne. I am not speaking of a lifetime’s devotion, you understand, but perhaps a year out of your life. What price would you place on that?’
Something inside Samma snapped. Her free hand closed round the stem of her glass, and threw the remains of her cocktail straight at his darkly mocking face.
She could hear the sudden stillness all around them as her deed was registered at the adjoining tables, then the subdued, amused hum of interest which followed. And, out of the corner of her eye, she saw Clyde bearing down on her, bursting with righteous indignation.
‘Have you taken leave of your senses?’ he stormed at her, before turning deferentially to the Frenchman who was removing the worst of the moisture with an immaculate linen handkerchief.
‘I can’t apologise enough,’ he went on. ‘Naturally, we’ll be happy to arrange any cleaning of your clothes which is necessary, Mr—er …?’ He paused.
‘Delacroix,’ the Frenchman said. ‘Roche Delacroix.’
Clyde’s mouth dropped open. ‘From Grand Cay?’ he asked weakly, and at the affirmative nod he gave Samma an accusing glance. ‘You’d better get out of here, my girl. You’ve done enough damage for one evening.’
‘Don’t be too hard on your belle fille, monsieur,’ Roche Delacroix said. ‘She has been—provoked, I confess.’
‘I don’t need you to fight my battles for me,’ Samma flared hardily. ‘And nothing would prevail on me to stay in this place another moment.’
Her legs were shaking under her, but she managed to walk to the door, ignoring the murmured comments and speculative looks following her, then she dashed for the comparative refuge of the dressing-room.
Margot, one of the other hostesses, was in there, sharing a cigarette with Cicero the barman. They looked up in surprise as Samma came bursting in.
‘What’s the matter, honey?’ Cicero asked teasingly. ‘Devil chasing your tail?’
Samma sank down on the nearest chair. She said, ‘I’ve done an awful thing. I—I threw a drink over a customer.’
‘That old Baxter man?’ Margot laughed. ‘I wish I’d seen it.’
Samma gulped. ‘No, it was a stranger—or nearly. I—I had a run in with him this morning, as a matter of fact.’
‘That’s not like you.’ Margot gave her a sympathetic look. ‘What do they call this man?’
Samma frowned. ‘He said his name was Roche Delacroix and that he came from Grand Cay.’
There was an odd silence, and she looked up to see them both staring at her. ‘Why—what is it?’
‘I said the devil was chasing you,’ Cicero muttered. ‘It’s one of those Devil Delacroixes from Lucifer’s own island.’
‘You—know him?’ Samma asked rather dazedly.
‘Not in person, honey, but everyone round here knows the Delacroix name. Why, his ancestor was the greatest pirate who ever sailed these waters. Every time he left Grand Cay, a fleet of merchant ships went to the bottom, and he didn’t care whether they were English or Spanish, or even French like himself. He’d had to leave France because he’d quarrelled with the King, which was a mighty bad thing to do in those days, and he figured the whole world was his enemy. So they called him Le Diable, yessir.’ Cicero laughed softly. ‘And they called his hideout Lucifer’s Cay.’
‘Did they, indeed?’ Samma said grimly. ‘Well, I hope they caught him and hanged him from his own yardarm.’
‘Not on your life,’ said Cicero. ‘He turned respectable, got a free pardon, and took up sugar planting. But they say every now and then the breeding throws up another Devil—a chip off the old block, like that old pirate.’
He paused. ‘This Mr Roche Delacroix now, why, they reckon he’s made more money than old Devil Delacroix himself. He owns the casino, right there on Grand Cay, and he has a boat-chartering business as well. He’s one rich guy, all right.’
‘And he’s here in this club right now?’ Margot asked huskily, her full lips curving in a smile. ‘This I have to see. Maybe when he’s dried off, he’d like some company.’
‘Perhaps—but I think he’s more interested in playing poker.’ Samma forced a smile. ‘Maybe I should have found someone else to pour a drink over.’
‘You sure should,’ Cicero agreed sombrely. ‘Why, honey, you don’t ever want to cross anyone from Lucifer’s Cay—specially someone by the name of Delacroix. That was one bad mistake.’
Margot rose, pretty and sinuous as a cat. ‘Then I’ll have to try and make up for it,’ she said, her lips curving in an anticipatory smile. ‘Wish me luck, now.’
She drifted out, and Cicero followed a moment or two later, leaving Samma alone.
She tore off Nina’s dress and bundled it back on a hanger. Never, ever again would she work at the Black Grotto in any capacity, although Clyde was unlikely even to ask her again, after tonight’s performance, she reminded herself wryly.
She dragged on her T-shirt and jeans, and walked back through the grounds towards the small bungalow she shared with Clyde.
She felt restless—on edge, and it was all the fault of that foul man. In just a few hours, he’d turned the quiet backwater of her life into some kind of raging torrent, she thought resentfully.
And nothing Cicero had told her had done anything to put her mind at ease. It was no wonder Roche Delacroix had been annoyed at her sketch, she thought restively. He probably considered she knew who he was, and was taking a petty swipe at his family history.
Well, let him think what he wanted. He would be leaving soon and, anyway, his opinions were of no concern to her. Indeed, she didn’t know why she was wasting a second thought on the creature.
But, at this rate, she wasn’t going to sleep tonight. Some hard physical exercise was what she needed to calm her down, and tire her out. She turned down the path which led to the hotel’s small swimming pool. She rarely got the chance to use the pool during the day, but that wasn’t too much of a hardship when she could come down here at night, and have it all to herself. And there was the added bonus that she didn’t have to bother with a costume.
She collected a towel from one of the changing cabins, stripped and plunged into the water. But, as she struck out with her swift, practised crawl, she couldn’t seem to capture her usual sense of wellbeing.
Oh, it wasn’t fair, she thought with a kind of desperate impatience. Of all the men who’d passed through Cristoforo, there had never been one who’d come even close to touching her emotions. Yet, in the space of a few minutes, Roche Delacroix, of all people, had given her a swift, disturbing insight into what it might mean to be a woman—even though he’d treated her for most of the time like a child, she thought stormily, as she turned for another length.
And then—paradoxically—had come that cynical—that abominable offer.
‘A year out of your life.’ His words seemed to beat a tattoo in her brain. How dared he? she raged inwardly. Oh, how dared he? And it was no comfort to tell herself that he’d simply been amusing himself at her expense. After all, a man like that could have no real interest in an inexperienced nineteen-year-old. Margot, or even the absent Nina, would be far more his type.
But soon Allegra would be gone, she tried to console herself, and she would never have to see Roche Delacroix or think about him again.
She hauled herself out of the water, and began to blot the moisture from her arms and body, then paused suddenly, a strange prickle of awareness alerting her nerve-endings as if—as if someone was watching her.
She stopped towelling her hair, and glanced over her shoulder, searching for a betraying movement in the shadows, listening for some sound. But there was nothing.
She was being over-imaginative, she told herself, but she still felt disturbed, and she resolved to give nude swimming a miss for a while. If one of the waiters from the club, say, was taking a short-cut through the garden, there was no need to give him a field day.
She pulled her clothes on to her still-damp body, and set off back towards the bungalow, her head high, looking neither to right or left.
Probably there was no one there at all. But everything was off-key tonight because of Roche Delacroix, and she would be eternally grateful when he turned his back on Cristoforo for ever.
Because, to her shame, she knew she would always be left wondering just what that—that year out of her life might have been like—with him.
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