Passionate Choice

Chapter 9.2

   "I still don't understand," Selena murmured, "why you insisted on me coming with you to Nassau. It would have been so easy for you to put me ashore at Puerto Plata and I could have gone home from there."

   "Home?" he queried. "Are you going back to England?"

   "Yes."

   "To get that doctorate? Won't it be difficult studying under a professor after jilting him?" His voice was spiced with mockery.

   "I'm not going back to that university," she admitted. "I'm going to resign from my position as an assistant lecturer. I... I'll find somewhere else to take a doctorate. I might even try an American university."

   "Why didn't you stay to help bring up the treasure?" he asked casually. Behind the wheel, he sat relaxed, sun-hat tilted forward over his eyes to shade them from glare instead of the disguising sunglasses. She had told him what had happened on Sanada after he had left. He knew all about the convincing of Heather to declare the treasure to the island's government.

   This was it, she thought. This was her chance to plunge into the depths.

   "After you had left, I didn't want to stay," she said quietly. "You said I had a choice. I made that choice. Now I'm free again."

   "You didn't have to follow me to tell me you'd made it," he pointed out drily.

   "I know. But I... I wanted you to know." Oh, God, how difficult it was to break down her own pride and admit to him that his opinion of her was important. "I didn't want you to go on thinking badly of me," she added in a low voice. "You called me a cheat. You made love to me as if... as if I were a... a..." She cast around for some word that he would understand and remembered Heather describing her to Ben. "As if I were a tramp," she finished, her voice shaking suddenly with anger at the memory of the way he had walked off and left her on the beach near the reef the day they had been deserted by the crew of the five-ship.

   He glanced at her sharply, blue eyes glinting brightly within the shadow of the hat brim.

   "I made love to you because I couldn't help it even though it was against my own core of behaviour," he retorted. "I don't like to share a woman with another man," he added, his voice grating. "Any woman who wants me has to be mine entirely." He paused, then said while she stared at him in surprised silence, "It I seemed more violent than usual and possibly casual in my behaviour afterwards, it was because I was angry with myself, angry because I could be so easily seduced by you from keeping to my own principle." He gave her another under-brim glance, a slow, sultry glance which made her nerves quiver. "You're the only woman who has been able to do that to me, Selena."

   "You... you behaved as if you hated me," she whispered.

   "I did. But I hated myself more because I wasn't able to resist either you or my own desires. It was a difficult situation and one which I found myself regretting is landed hitched to Hunt. It was my own fault too. My own damn fool fault. I went to Sanada because I knew you would be there. God knows what I hoped for." Again, his voice grated bitterly. "Here, take the wheel. Looks like we're running out of wind. I'll start the engine and check that we're on the right course for Porgee Rock light at the entrance to the harbour."

   He sprang down the companionway and Selena took over the wheel. All around, the water was blue and limpid, rippled only slightly by small waved. Ahead, there were smudges of Islands on the horizon and the triangular sails of yachts glimmered faintly in the heat gaze which had built up during the afternoon.

   Was she any further along the way to resolving her problem? A little. At least she knew now why Keith had behaved the way he had. He had gone to Sanada because he had known she would be there. He had wanted to meet her again and had found the situation bedevilled by her engagement to Ben. What had he hoped for? To renew their affair? Probably. And now that she knew how it had been with him, didn't she regret that everything had been fouled up by her own behaviour to him when they had met again?

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