Unknown by Unknown

wearing short pink robes supplied by Nicole, who had chosen this for lunch, ‘but I didn’t feel like it.’ She watched him as he pulled a chair from the table and sat down opposite her.
    ‘Why are you eating here, in any case,’ he asked, ‘and not in the main section of the hotel? You are not a client.’
    ‘I will take my breakfast here, and my lunch.’ She wondered what he was doing here.
    ‘I was looking for you.’ He spoke with characteristic authority.
    ‘Oh?’ She tried to keep her voice polite, nothing more, and turned away from that strange green gaze of his to look at people splashing about in the pool. The French instructor was calling out instructions to a tall girl with flaming red hair and piped music was being carried away on the sea-breezes. The fronds of palm trees rattled and the sigh of filao trees could be heard.
    Laurent’s eyes went to jade’s legs which she had crossed to one side of the table, as she intended to sit back now and sip her pineapple juice. When she moved them slightly he said, ‘No, don’t move them. I was admiring your smooth gold tan.’
    ‘From the Australian sun,’ she told him. ‘I’m off to a good start. At least I didn’t arrive on your heavenly island looking like a pale ghost.’
    ‘It is a logical conclusion,’ he said, his eyes on her face again, ‘that you are completely rested and settled in.’
    ‘As you can see....' she bowed her head, and kept her voice light. Then she watched his tanned fingers go to the hibiscus which was arranged on the table. He touched the blooms without knowing that he was doing it.
    ‘Do you see what is written on the card?’ jade asked, mainly to make conversation.
    ‘I know about that,’ he said, barely glancing at the ornate gold lettering which read: Please do not eat the hibiscus. ‘What I am interested in is—what time do you finish here?’
    ‘Finish here?’ She sounded frankly amused. ‘I finish here late this afternoon—fiveish, I believe.’
    ‘After which time you are free to do as you wish.’ It was a statement, more than anything else.
    ‘Well, yes. As I wish.' She placed emphasis on the word, in an endeavour to make it clear that her wish was not that she be the victim of his ‘feeling his way’ with her.
    ‘I am having a few people to my chalet for drinks,’ he told her. ‘I want you to be there.’
    Although her reaction was one of swift excitement it was followed by anger. ‘You make it sound like an order,’ she commented.
    ‘I have learned one thing,’ his smile was faintly mocking, ‘that when a woman shows anger, it is because she is tempted. I will come for you before anyone else arrives.’
    ‘That’s nonsense,’ she retorted. She watched him lift the card and study it. ‘And did you,’ he asked, ‘eat any of the hibiscus?’
    ‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘I’m very switched off by hibiscus. I don’t eat them. I get high on yellow roses, though.’
    ‘In that case, I will see to it that you are supplied with yellow roses every day. You, of course, are an English rose, although you are tanned by the Australian sun. At the moment you do not look very English.’
    ‘No?’ She shook her dark hair from her cheeks.
    ‘No. You look very much a part of our island in the sun.’ He stood up. ‘I will call for you, Jade.’
    ‘How do you know I’ll come?’ She looked up at him.
    ‘Because the idea of having drinks at my pink chalet enchants you ... among other things.’
    ‘You don’t have to call for me,’ she said, ‘I can walk there. After all, it’s not far ... merely a walk beneath the palms and through the hibiscus with paving stones to guide me, all the way.’
    ‘So?’ He smiled down at her. ‘You have already found this out for yourself?’
    ‘You pointed it out to me,’ she said quickly, and felt her cheeks flush, because she had, in fact, found this out for herself ... before lunch.
    He went on looking down at her, green-eyed and considering, and she