The Pregnancy Discovery. Barbara Hannay
swing angrily out of her arms. ‘Get lost!’ he cried and began to prowl towards someone in the darkness.
Shaking, Meg followed the direction of his gaze and saw what he’d seen—a man skulking behind a casuarina on the edge of the sand and clutching a camera.
‘Let’s just get out of here,’ Meg called, running after him and grabbing his hand.
For a moment, Sam hesitated, but he shook her hand away and continued to stride towards the darkness in the direction the photographer had taken. There was the sound of a car taking off at speed. ‘Who was he?’ he demanded, turning back to her. ‘I have enough trouble at home with the press.’
‘Do you really think it was someone from a newspaper?’
‘That’s my guess.’
Meg cringed as she thought of all her workmates seeing evidence in tomorrow’s paper of her lapse. So much for her personal code of ethics regarding tourists! ‘I can’t believe I let this happen again,’ she whispered to herself.
She supposed she should be grateful to the photographer. He’d broken the spell that had been dragging her towards making a foolish mistake. Heaven knew what might have happened if they hadn’t been rudely interrupted.
‘Are you worried about your golden rule about kissing guests?’ Sam’s knuckle grazed her cheek. ‘For my part, I’m very glad you broke it. I wouldn’t object at all if you wanted to break a few more rules.’
Embarrassed, Meg drew back. ‘You know I wasn’t going to let you do anything but kiss me.’
‘But you did let me kiss you,’ he challenged. ‘And I had the distinct impression that you were kissing me back.’
‘I just got carried away with—with the atmosphere and the moonlight.’
‘Is that what happened?’ His voice suggested that he didn’t believe her in the slightest.
‘That’s all,’ she said as convincingly as she could manage. ‘And I must go home now.’ She had to get out of there before the moonlight or whatever it was started making her reckless again. Turning to head back to her car, she asked, ‘Do you need a lift?’
‘No. Don’t worry about me.’ Sam shoved his hands into his pockets and he turned to stare back out to sea.
When she reached her car, Meg looked back at him, but he hadn’t moved. And that was good. Maybe it was sinking into Sam’s thick skull that they must never take the risk of kissing a third time.
When Sam opened his door the next morning and found Meg standing there, he was mildly surprised. She was wearing a soft, floaty kind of dress that dipped in a low curve from shoulder to shoulder. In her hand was a folded newspaper.
‘Good morning,’ she greeted him primly, without smiling.
He returned her greeting carefully. ‘Morning.’
There was no beating around the bush. Looking somewhere around the centre of his chest, she said, ‘Have you seen this morning’s paper?’
‘Fred phoned and told me about it.’
With an impatient shake of her head, she thrust the paper at him. ‘The publicity shot of us with the bottle on the front page is OK, I guess. But take a look at page three. The close-up shot of you and me—’
‘On the beach?’ Sam supplied as he took the paper and flicked to page three. He looked at the photo and felt his throat tighten. ‘That’s—er—some clinch, isn’t it?’
Meg was blushing. ‘What are we going to do about it? Fred wants to make more publicity mileage out of it. He wants us to go to a big function tonight for the handover of the letter—as a couple.’
‘Yeah. He explained that when he rang.’
‘Don’t tell me you agreed?’ she asked sharply.
‘Sure. Why not?’ Sam hoped Meg didn’t quiz him too hard about why he’d agreed. He wasn’t too sure himself that his motives would stand up to close scrutiny. ‘But I take it you’re not happy?’
‘Of course not!’ Meg exclaimed with a haughty lift of her chin that made her look especially stubborn. And gorgeous.
He looked again at the photo. Seeing that image of Meg’s arms wrapped around him and her mouth meshed with his was interfering with his search for a rational argument. He tapped the page with a finger and replied in his most nonchalant manner, ‘There’s not much point in trying to pretend there’s nothing between us. Why don’t we attend this event together and brazen it out just for this one night?’
Meg stared at him. She looked ready to argue. Her arms were crossed belligerently across her chest and her eyes glistened as she tapped a tattoo with her foot.
Sam waited patiently in silence, unwilling to take the lid off this particular volcano.
Eventually she sighed. ‘I’ll go to this function on one condition.’
‘Yes?’
‘We only have the minimum contact necessary to keep the press happy.’
He had been leaning against the door frame, trying to look more casual than he felt. This situation was becoming more ridiculous by the minute, but sharing that opinion with Meg wasn’t going to help matters.
Stepping back, he gestured towards the small sitting area in his resort bungalow. ‘Why don’t you come in? I find this a little difficult to discuss on a doorstep.’
She followed him in silence and assumed a stiff-backed, prudish pose at one end of his couch. Under other circumstances, he might have found it comic.
Selecting a single cane chair, Sam lounged back into the deep cushions. In a deliberately casual movement, he stretched his long legs in front of him, crossing them at the ankles. ‘Now, tell me about these conditions of yours.’
She sat straight with her knees together, just as she might have been taught at deportment school, and made a little throat clearing sound. ‘What I mean is, there’ll be no flirting—no unnecessary touching. We’ll just pretend we’re—a couple who are—um—interested in romance.’
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