Island of Darkness Read Online Free Page B

contact and strangely disturbing too, so that she hastily looked away and concentrated instead on Scottie’s nice, uncomplicated character again.
    “I don’t want to know him any better,” she said, although part of her was already denying that assertion. “And I doubt if I’ll be given the chance anyway - Mr. Connor doesn’t like my type any more than I like his.” This time she yielded to impulse and tiptoed to plant a light kiss on his cheek. “Good-bye, Scottie, it’s been lovely knowing you!”
    CHAPTER TWO
    Clive, ever sensitive to her changing moods, was looking at her rather oddly and Leonora guessed that he was reading more into her hurried and rather angry departure from Isola de Marta than she cared for. “So you didn’t like Jason Connor?” he asked, taking another helping of the delicious contorno that Maria had made before her hasty departure. He ate meat only seldom but thrived on vegetable dishes and the inevitable pasta, and for all her shortcomings, Maria was an excellent cook.
    “I didn’t have much encouragement to like him,” Leonora retorted, sensing a hint of blame coming her way. “Not that I really expected to - he’s just as rude and conceited as I expected from the things I’ve read about him.”
    “I’ve never seen anything about him being rude and conceited,” Clive mused, and Leonora made a sound very like a snort as she looked at him.
    “I read between the lines,” she told him. “The heart-throb of the race-track! The idol of a million women! No wonder he’s so conceited - he thinks he’s irresistible!”
    “And is he?” Clive asked softly.
    “Not in the least!” She felt the colour in her cheeks and sought to conceal it by reaching for more contorno.
    “Still,” she added a little wistfully, “I shall miss seeing Scottie.”
    “You mean it then, about not going over again?” her uncle said, watching her curiously, and she shrugged.
    “Not in the foreseeable future,” she told him. “I don’t want to bump into Mr. Connor again!”
    “It seems a bit hard on your Scottie, though,” Clive said tactlessly. “He’ll miss you, I expect, if he liked talking to you about his home.”
    “He did.” Leonora said shortly. “And once and for all, Clive, he’s not my Scottie!”
    “Sorry!” He got on with his meal, but his eyes watched her surreptitiously from time to time and Leonora suspected he was still curious to hear more about their celebrated neighbour, although he did not say so.
    She got on with her own meal in silence for a while, then looked across at him and smiled ruefully. “I suppose you think I’m being unreasonable?” she guessed, and he shrugged.
    “It’s your business, honey,” he told her quietly. “But I know you’re prone to blow your top at times, like Maria -well, perhaps not quite so spectacularly. But that poor devil’s been through a lot lately, you know, and your - and Scottie’s right, you have to make allowances for him.”
    “You think I’m heartless?” she asked, not looking at him.
    “Not quite as strong as that,” Clive demurred. “But you more or less admitted that you’d made up your mind about him before you even met him.”
    “And I’ve had no reason to change my views since!” she retorted, resenting his attitude. “You’ve not met him, Clive!”
    “Granted I haven’t,” her uncle allowed quietly. “But you did have a preconceived idea of the man, honey, and by what you’ve told me, you let fly as soon as you saw him.”
    “I did no such thing,” Leonora denied indignantly. “I - I had to put up with that - that—” She said no more but got on with her meal for a few moments in silence. Her first encounter with Jason Connor had been far more disturbing than anything she could possibly have imagined. Even now, when she thought of that bronzed body and the arrogant blond head, the light, sensual touch of those long brown hands, she felt her heart beat a little faster. She hated deserting