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  But still Samantha couldn't repress the fleeting thought: how had Josh been spending the day—and with whom ...?

  CHAPTER SIX

  The night after the Princess Marguerita steamed out of Mykonos harbour, it was hit by a tropical storm. The warning had come during dinner, with the captain announcing that the storm would arrive but that it would be quite minor and no one was to panic. He did suggest that passengers stay in their rooms and not wander around the deck as there would be high winds and rain. The storm, he had added, was expected to blow over by morning.

  Samantha went to sleep that night without once thinking about the impending gale. For one thing, it had been a beautiful clear evening with the stars out in full force and the moon beaming down. For another thing, she had enough on her mind to worry about without being concerned about the elements. She was, she knew, supposed to be finding her Greek cruise relaxing, exciting and romantic, but things were not turning out the way her grandmother had planned them. The fact was that she felt as if she were having a shipboard romance shoved down her throat, and she didn't like it all!

  The problem was that the singles on the cruise had paired off almost immediately. It was as if no one had dared to remain unattached for too long for fear of being branded as a hopeless dead-loss. Marybeth and Reuben were a couple, and Marvin and Betty too seemed to have joined forces.

  Josh, of course, was constantly in the company of his redhead. Samantha had seen them dancing, swimming, sightseeing, drinking and eating together. To all intents and purposes, it was a relationship that looked as solid as the rock of Gibraltar. It was funny how much the realisation of that had hurt. Seeing Josh dancing with the woman had given Samantha such a feeling of actual physical pain that, for a second, she had quite literally been bereft of breath. But of course, one doesn't die from pain like that, and she had merely shrugged it off and talked vivaciously with David and her friends. Later she had chastised herself severely for being so sentimental. Just because a man likes to dance in the moonlight and bestow fleeting kisses in the dark it does not mean that he has any permanent intentions. She had been well aware of that and really had been quite relieved that he hadn't. She didn't like him—remember? But it would appear that, in her secret heart of hearts, she had cherished some tiny, silly, romantic hope.

  Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.

  No, Josh wasn't her problem. David was. Dear, sweet David. What on earth was she going to do about him? Samantha turned over, pulled the sheets up over her shoulders and sighed. She couldn't blame him, really she couldn't. He'd come on this trip, seeking relaxation, fun and a woman. And he was a perfectly decent, eligible man whom most women would find attractive and appealing. Except, it seemed, for Samantha. She liked him; she enjoyed dancing with him; she had a great time talking politics with him. The trouble was that she absolutely abhorred kissing him. And he wasn't going to be content with kisses for much longer. David was thirty-five, a swinging bachelor and knowledgeable about women. Most women, that was. He simply had no idea that Samantha wasn't being bowled over by his expertise in lovemaking. Take that evening, for example.

  After dinner Samantha had found herself walking with him on the deck, when he had stopped her, pulled her into a corner and started to kiss her.

  Samantha tried to respond, but she couldn't. There simply wasn't anything there. And she couldn't help shivering when his hand ran over the bodice of her dress, coming to rest lightly on her breast.

  His head bent to kiss her again, and Samantha had put two hands on his shoulders. 'David, let's not.'

  'You know, Samantha,' he had said, giving her a small, knowing smile, 'you're really different. Most of the women I know are more aggressive than men— they can't wait to hop into bed. But you're a little shy, aren't you? A little prim and old-fashioned.'

  'David, it's not just a matter of being shy. You see, the chemistry can be wrong and two people just don't...'she couldn't quite come out and say it, so she reverted to past history,'... I had an unfortunate experience with a man that I...'

  'Samantha,' David said soothingly, 'you don't have to explain it to me. We've all been burnt at one time or another, and if that's made you a little wary, 1 can understand it. But you'll see, 1 won't rush you, and it'll be great. Really great.'

  Really great. Really disastrous. Just what was she going to do? David wasn't getting the subtle message, and Samantha shrank from the idea of blatantly coming out and telling him what she felt. The words would be ugly and painful, and she hated the idea of hurting him. He was so nice and kind and trusting. And so completely off base where she was concerned. Shy? For her whole life, no. one had ever thought that Samantha was shy. Opinionated, yes. Stubborn, definitely. But shy? Never. Not even a courtroom full of judge, jury, witnesses and audience could faze her. And as for prim and old-fashioned... well, she was hardly that. She could be as lustful as the next woman and, if she ever met the right man, she would be just as capable of swooning with passion. She knew she could, because her dreams. told her so. She sometimes had the most extraordinarily sensual dreams.

  It was the memory of those dreams that finally allowed her to fall asleep, and she was caught up in one when, hours later, the impending storm broke over the Princess Marguerita. It came, like many semi-tropical storms, with great speed and a steadily growing ferocity. Lightning cracked open the sky with jagged bolts, followed by great threatening rolls of thunder. Winds whipped and whirled, first driving the clouds into a roiling turbulence and then sweeping the water before it so that the calm of the Mediterranean gave way to white-capped waves that crashed against the sides of the ship.

  Samantha was quite oblivious to the winds, the rocking or the rain that battered against the small porthole by her head. She was sleeping deeply, caught up in the entangling fascination of a dream. It was an odd dream: in it, she was naked and wrapped up in a cocoon with a naked man. His body against hers was warm and hot; he had dark, wavy hair, wide-set dark eyes and he looked like...

  'Josh!'

  The scream was almost simultaneous with the huge crack of thunder that made her sit up straight in bed, eyes wide open, her heart beating madly in her chest.

  her hands pressed trembling to the bodice of her nightgown. Her sheets had fallen to the floor, and her bed was moving, sliding this way and that. In fact, the room itself seemed to be moving as the ship rose and then fell, twisted and then slid to one side.

  There was a sudden flash of lightning as the bedroom door banged open and, for a milli-second, Samantha had a glimpse of Josh in the doorway. The light, eerie and white, revealed a man who was hastily tying a bathrobe around his waist, dark hair tousled, dark eyes seeking her as blackness closed around them once again.

  'Samantha! Samantha, are you okay?'

  She called out to him, but there was a heavy roll of thunder, a crashing boom that drowned out her voice. And beneath the ferocity of the storm were other sounds, ones that made her freeze. There was a crash against the far wall of the room, a muttered curse, another crash closer to her and then a cry of pain. Then, as the thunder died away, there was a frightening silence.

  'Oh, my God,' Samantha whispered to herself. She scrambled off the bed, groped past her bedside-table and then had to grab on to a chair to keep herself upright as the Princess Marguerita slid sideways again.

  'Josh!' she called out. 'Josh, where are you?'

  There was no answer except the banging of her bedroom door as it swayed back and forth with the motion of the boat. Samantha crawled on her hands and knees towards the door, thinking that perhaps he had been hit by it, perhaps... her hand touched warm, hard flesh. Experimentally, she ran her fingers along the flesh, feeling the crisp hair, the curve of muscle, the bone of a... kneecap.

  'Josh? Josh, are you all right?' she whispered as her hands quickly moved up his prone body, nervously touching here and there, over the hem of his terry-cloth robe, its knotted tie, a lapel. She tried hard to ignore the other messages her hands were receiving: messages
about the hardness and softness of a man, about the planes and angles that made a man's body so different from a woman's. Instead she concentrated on getting to his head. He was twisted on his side with one arm flung upwards, the other lying palm down to the ground. She found a shoulder, his neck, the curve of his jaw and an ear.

  'Josh,' she whispered urgently. 'Can you hear me?'

  But his silence was ominous, and she grew even more frightened than she already was.

  'Oh, Josh,' she said desperately. 'Please, please wake up!'

  She turned him over, slowly, gently, allowing the heavy weight of him to fall on her bent legs. Then she leaned over him once again, her hands touching his face. 'Wake up, come on now, wake up!' The words repeated themselves over and over again, a whispered litany of pleading and prayer. She wrapped her arms around him, lay across him, unaware of the softness of her breasts flattening against his arm or the way her leg entwined around his. 'Please, please. Wake up! Come on, wake up!' And all around her, the storm raged unabated, the ship rocking, rain driving hard and fast against the porthole's glass window.

  Then Samantha felt Josh shaking beneath her, his shoulders moving, the muscles of his stomach clenching and unclenching. She sat up quickly and grabbed his shoulders. 'Josh?' she said tentatively. 'Are you all right?' He was making an odd, horrible sound—like someone who was trying to breathe— no, like someone who could breathe but was choking or strangling or... was he crying? Samantha's heart did a peculiar flip-flop in her chest. 'Josh?'

  Lightning flared again, a huge, jagged spear that rent the sky in two, angling from one corner of the firmament to another, piercing the clouds, striking deep into the sea. It lit up the whole world, revealing the black depths of the clouds, the arcing waves, the water-washed deck of the Princess Marguerita. Finally there was a silence, not a complete silence as the rain still beat against the window and the boat still shuddered and the bedroom door still smacked against the wall, but the sort of silence that occurs when a man and a woman are in the process of confrontation.

  Samantha broke it. 'You louse!' she hissed. 'You lousy cad! You bastard!'

  And her hands were now clenched together, not out of fear for her safety or his life, but because she was afraid that if she let them go, they would wrap themselves around Josh's neck and squeeze hard.

  'Samantha,' he said.

  She would have liked to sink below the ground, disappear into some forgiving oblivion, be obliterated by some obliging nuclear blast. Anything was better than sitting there, cringing with the knowledge of how she had acted, of what she must have sounded like, of the sentimental idiot she had been. She had pleaded with him to be alive, throwing herself over him, practically kissing him in her desperation to bring him back to consciousness. And all the while... She rocked back on her heels and brought her clenched fists up to her burning cheeks...all the while, he'd been wide awake and trying hard not to laugh. Because that was what she had seen, when the lightning had illuminated the room. His grin. His damned lazy grin!

  'I hate you,' she added flatly.

  'Come here,' he said.

  'You must be joking!'

  'I want to talk to you,' he insisted.

  'Talk to me! Why didn't you talk to me five minutes ago when I was begging you to? Well, I suppose it was more fun to let me think you were dying. I'll bet you got a hell of a good charge out of that!'

  'Samantha.'

  '... and I just love being made a fool of. It's so... so...'

  'Hush, Sam.' And suddenly she was being pulled down to the floor and brought into his arms. She struggled against him, but he was far stronger than she was. Besides, it was obvious that the boat itself was against her. Each time she did manage to push herself away, a sudden lurch of the Princess Marguerita sent her right back into Josh's embrace. Finally, she gave up and lay rigid in his arms. He brought her head on to his shoulder and stroked the hair that curled at her temple. 'Don't be angry,' he said softly.

  'I am not angry,' Samantha said hotly. 'I'm furious!'

  'And I do appreciate what you were doing.'

  'Well, who wouldn't? What man wouldn't appreciate having a half-naked woman slobbering all over him?'

  'You weren't slobbering.'

  'Oh, what's the difference?' Samantha snapped in disgust. She refused to soften; she didn't care one bit about the effort he was taking to make her feel better. She didn't care about the gentle fingers at her temple or the strong arm around her shoulders.

  'I did manage to knock myself out, you know. Hit my head against something.' His hand left her hair and went to touch his own head. 'Ouch—it's starting to swell.'

  'I'm sure the nurse will be delighted to look at it,' Samantha said coldly. Frankly, she hoped he'd have the world's largest goose egg and mankind's worst headache.

  His fingers went back to tangling themselves in her hair. 'But then I came to and you were on top of me and... well, hell's bells, I never wanted it to come to an end.'

  'Just don't get any fancy ideas,' Samantha said coldly. 'Now that I know you're alive, I couldn't care less.'

  'You don't mean that, Sam.'

  'Samantha—and yes, I do. Now look, if you're finished having this little talk why don't you just let me go and we can get some sleep.'

  'Sleep?' he asked. 'In this storm? You're the one who woke up—remember?'

  Another crash of thunder broke over them. 'I can't imagine what woke me up,' she said untruthfully, 'and frankly, I'm exhausted and would like to...'

  'Besides, I like calling you Sam. Samantha is too... mm, abstract.'

  'Abstract? What are you talking about?'

  'Sam sounds cuddly.'

  'You've got the wrong woman, then,' she said firmly. 'I am not the cuddly type.'

  'That's funny,' he said. 'You sure feel like one.'

  Samantha discovered that she'd relaxed in his arms. Her body had moved closer to his, her head was resting against his arm, her leg touched his at thigh, knee and ankle. Quickly, she made herself rigid again and tried to push herself away from him. 'Let me go!'

  'I'd like to conduct a little test.'

  She despairingly wondered why every conversation that she had with Josh always took such odd directions.

  'What sort of a test?' she said with resignation.

  It was quite possible that Josh was once again grinning into the darkness, but his voice didn't give it away. 'A small test that won't take but a moment of your time. Nothing dramatic.'

  'What does it involve?' she asked suspiciously.

  'Just you and me. Look,' he said, 'here's how it goes. I turn slightly this way.' He moved his body so that her head was off his shoulder and lying on his upper arm, his torso was turned to her, and the hand that had been stroking her hair had now moved down to her waist. 'And you move slightly that way.' That hand pulled her closer to him. 'And then I go like this.'

  Of course, Samantha was no fool. She'd known perfectly well what Josh was up to, and she now knew perfectly well what she would do—slap him across the face, get out of his arms, tell him where to get off and never to come back. But she didn't do any of those perfectly logical things. The moment seemed to conspire against all her sane and logical conclusions. The carpet was thick and plush beneath her, the room was so dark that she couldn't have seen her hand in front of her face, and the storm raged futilely outside the window. It was warm and safe and cosy in Josh's arms, and she discovered that she really didn't want to get up and go back to her bed. What she really wanted was a return to her dream: the dream of the silk cocoon. It was the memory of that dream that made her body curve against his, her face to tilt up to his, her lips to meet his.

  She responded in a way she had not responded with any other man of her intimate acquaintance. A warmth flooded through her; her body seemed to melt against his, every nerve in her skin aching for the touch of his skin. Her fingers tangled in his hair; her breasts filled and swelled beneath the pressure of his chest. For several wild and uninhibited moments, she complete
ly forgot whom—she was kissing, whose body lay entwined with hers, whose mouth played havoc with her emotions. Her hand moved from his hair to his bathrobe and slipped beneath it to stroke the sleek warmth of his shoulder. His hand left her waist, moving to her hip below the rucked-up hem of her nightgown, and she moaned when his fingers travelled, slowly, teasingly, erotically, to the soft curve between her legs.

  It was quite possible that they would have actually made love that night, lying on the carpeted floor of that darkened room, rocked by the movement of the boat. They had, somehow, become one with the storm, their passions rising, their motions frantic as they sought to come together, Josh's bathrobe slipped off, her nightgown pulled up over her head. There was a Tightness to the feel of their bodies together that neither of them had expected, but that neither of them could deny. It was elemental, primal, overwhelming. It ripped apart logic, rationality and common sense. It reduced Samantha to nothing more than a woman responding to a man, to an urgent need to be filled, to an aching desire for satiation. Everything else in her had fled before the driving heat of that passion.

  They came so close to actual union that it was only the shock of ice-cold water that made them stop. The porthole catch had broken, the window sprang open and rain sprayed over them. Samantha gasped, broke out of Josh's embrace and then shivered as the cold air hit her heated, bare skin. Realising how truly naked she was, she quickly pulled down her nightgown. There was a banging of the window as Josh got up and closed it, a cessation of wind and rain and then the faint rumble of thunder off in the distance. The Princess Marguerita, Samantha realised, was no longer rocking about so wildly and her room had stabilised so that she could now stand up, move about, find the light switch that turned on the wall lamp by her bed.

  The intensity of illumination startled both of them, and Samantha quickly turned around so that she could no longer see Josh's aroused nudity. 'Please go,' she said, her voice husky as if she had not used it for hours.