It Happened In Paradise

CHAPTER TWO

MANDA had no way of knowing what time it was, or how long she had been lying on cold stone. She was just grateful that the earth had stopped shaking.

After a while, though, she lifted her head, gingerly feeling for damage. Her fingers were stiff, sore as she tried to move them and there was a tender spot at the back of her head. A dull throbbing ache. Nothing that she couldn’t, for the moment, live with, she decided. And she seemed lucid enough.

Lucid enough to know that she had lived through an earthquake and be grateful to have survived.

Lucid enough to know that living through the initial catastrophe might not be enough. She had been alone, separated from her party…

She let her head fall back against the stone and lay still for a moment while she gathered her wits, her strength, knowing that she should move, shout, do something to make herself heard, alert searchers to her presence.

In a moment.

She would do all that in a moment.

It was dark. Pitch-dark. There were no stars, no moon, which suggested dense cloud cover. Was that normal after earthquakes? Tropical rain would be the absolute limit, she thought, as she tried to piece together exactly what had happened.

The earth shaking. The path splitting. Her fingers clawing at the earth as she had begun to fall.

She went cold as she relived that moment of terror as she’d been carried down on a torrent of earth and stones. As she realised just what that meant. Why there was no sky.

It wasn’t cloud that was blocking it out. She’d fallen into some cavity. Into one of the temples? Maybe even one that hadn’t been excavated. Or even discovered…

She was beneath the ground. Buried. Entombed. Locked in…

Panic sucked the breath from her. Her cry was wordless and, while every instinct was urging her to fling herself at the walls, claw her way out, she was unable to move.

She knew this feeling. The claustrophobia. The desperation to escape. Her body and mind too numb to do anything about it.

She’d been here before.

She swallowed hard, forced herself to concentrate on breathing…

In. One, two, three…

Told herself that it wasn’t the same.

Hold. One, two, three…

That had been a mental lockdown. She’d been confined by the darkness in her mind.

Out. One, two, three…

This was physical.

She could do something about this, dig herself out with her bare hands if need be, she told herself, even as she strained desperately for the comfort of voices, the clink of stones being turned. A promise that there was someone there. A hand in the darkness.

There was nothing. Only a blanketing silence. Only the rapid beating of her pulse in her ears.

For a moment she lost the rhythm of her breathing, gasping for air as fear began to overwhelm her.

She couldn’t afford to panic. It would be a waste of energy, a waste of time, and if there was one thing she’d learned, it was how to take control of her body, her emotions.

Breathe in to the count of three…

She had to shut down everything but the core need to concentrate.

Hold to the count of three…

After that she could make a careful assessment of her situation. Decide what action to take. If ever there was a time to use everything she’d learned—to block out emotion by fixing on what had to be done, making a plan and carrying it through, this was it. If she once succumbed to mind-numbing, will-sapping terror…

Easier said than done.

Control was easy when you were calling all the shots, when you were the one directing events. But it was a long time since she’d been thrown entirely on her own resources.

In the metaphorical dark.

At least this dark was physical. Not that it was much comfort. She was miles from anywhere and even if any of her party was capable of making it to the nearest village it would take time for help to arrive.

She blotted that out.

She mustn’t think about that.

Breathe, breathe… The air, at least, was fresh. For now.

She tried to swallow but her throat was dry. There was water in her bag. She had to find her bag. Concentrate on what she could do to keep herself alive because it was far too soon for any serious attempt at rescue.

If she was ever going to get out of here, the important thing was to keep calm. Conserve her strength.

She listened for the smallest sound.

The silence was so dense that it was like a suffocating weight against her eardrums, her chest and once again it almost overwhelmed her and she had to force herself to focus on normal, everyday things. Good things.

Ivo and Belle.

Daisy.

The precious new babies…

At least they didn’t know where she was. Wouldn’t be glued to news reports, worrying themselves sick. Ivo wouldn’t be flying here to take charge…

No. On second thoughts that didn’t help. She needed someone out there moving heaven and earth to find her. Lots of earth and stone.

But it wasn’t going to happen.

She’d cut loose, broken the ties, had wanted to prove that she was capable of standing of her own feet.

Great timing, Manda…

Maybe she should see if she could stand up, try exploring her surroundings. Maybe she could find her own way out.

‘See’ being the operative word.

Alone in the dark, it was as if she had suddenly been struck blind and deaf. She lifted a hand but couldn’t see it until it was right in front of her face and even then she wasn’t sure if she could actually see it, or whether her brain was providing a picture of what she knew was there.

She’d never been in such absolute darkness, the kind of darkness that made an overcast night in the depths of Norfolk seem bright as day.

Maybe, she thought, with a rising tide of panic, she really was blind. Or deaf. Or both. Maybe she’d banged her head harder than she’d imagined and lost those precious vital senses. Maybe she’d been unconscious for hours.

In a sudden desperate need to remind herself that this wasn’t so, she shouted, ‘Help!’

Trapped in the confined space, her voice echoed and reverberated back at her, again and again until she covered her ears.

There was nothing wrong with her hearing.

She was just alone and in the dark. It might be her worst nightmare, but she wasn’t about to wake up and find Ivo waiting to pick up the pieces and put her back together again. Not this time.

There would be no Belle to reach wordlessly for her hand.

No Daisy to grin at her, say something utterly outrageous.

A groan escaped her and suddenly her precious lucidity did not seem such a prize.

Muddle-headed, her memory would not be quite so painfully sharp. Confused, she wouldn’t be quite so aware of the danger of her position.

Fear, real icy-cold fear, began to seep into every pore as she realised that, separated from her companions, no one would even know where to begin looking for her…

‘Shut up, Manda,’ she said. Then tried to decide whether talking to herself was a good sign or a bad one.

Rubbing briskly at her arms, she made a determined effort to exclude the building terror by thinking of something else.

Working out exactly where she was.

Okay.

She’d been standing on a forest path, so logic suggested that she should now be buried beneath tons of earth and vegetation. But she wasn’t. Which was a good thing.

Instead, she was in a dark, echoing space, which presumably meant she had fallen into one of the temples.

Which was not…

The path had twisted and turned as they had climbed up the side of the hill and she tried to remember the temple they had visited before she had rebelled against so much enforced culture. Tried to remember which way the path had turned, but the darkness was confusing, blocking her thoughts.

If only she could see!

‘Stop it, Miranda Grenville,’ she told herself sternly. So she couldn’t see. Tough. For her it was just a temporary inconvenience. There were millions of people who were forced to live with it every day of their lives. They coped and so would she.

Her eyes would adapt to the darkness in a few minutes.

She’d get herself out of there…

She stopped the thought before it reached the inevitable…if it was the last thing she did.

There was no point in tempting fate. Fate, it was clear, was already on her case in a big way. She had to treat this as if it were some organisational problem. The kind she’d handled for Ivo every day of her working life until she’d made the move to set up her own television production company with Belle and Daisy. Proving to herself, to everyone, that she no longer needed her brother as a prop.

Except that so far it had been a one-show wonder and without Belle…

No! Belle was brilliant in front of the camera, but she was the one who’d made it happen. That was what she did. Give her a goal, a project to bring in on time and she’d deliver the goods and she’d get herself out of here, too.

Breathe!

One, two, three…

Get up!

Rubble rattled off her as she finally managed to sit up; small pieces of stone, along with what felt like half a ton of fine cloying dust that rose up to choke her.

Coughing as the dust filled her nose, her throat, filtered down into her sensitive bronchial passages, Manda groped around for her bag. She’d been holding on to it as she’d taken off after the rest of the party and it must have fallen through the gap in the earth with her, although obviously not conveniently at her side.

Her left arm buckled a little as she eased herself forward to spread her arc of search, her elbow giving way when she put weight on it. Prompted by this, all her other joints decided to join in. Her left knee began to throb. Her shoulder. Her fingers were already stinging…

She stopped making a mental inventory when she realised that she hurt pretty much everywhere and instead congratulated herself that nothing seemed to be broken, although she hadn’t actually tried to stand up yet. She flexed her toes but nothing too bad happened.

She had, it seemed, been lucky.

The last thing she remembered was the ground heaving upwards, shifting sideways, tipping her through into the earth’s basement like so much garbage, but at least she was in one piece and able to move about.

Check out her surroundings…

She spread her hands and began to feel around for her bag. That had to be her first priority. She had water in her bag.

No luck.

She carefully eased herself to her knees, then cautiously to her feet, feeling above her for the roof, blinking rapidly as if that would somehow clear her vision.

Her hands met no resistance, but maybe her eyes had adjusted a little because the darkness didn’t seem quite so dense now. Or were those shapes no more than her brain playing tricks?

She swallowed, inched forward, hands outstretched, letting out a tiny shriek as her palms touched something. For a moment her heart went into overdrive, even while her head processed the information.

Cold, flat. It was a wall.

Once she’d regained her breath, she began to edge her way carefully around the boundary of her underground prison.

She was certain now that she was in one of the temples. They had passed a truly impressive entrance that had been more thoroughly cleared than the rest, but the guide had hurried them past, nervously warning that it was ‘not safe’ when one of the businessmen had stopped, wanting to go inside.

At the time she hadn’t questioned it; she’d just been grateful to be spared yet more of the same. But, before they’d been hurried on, she had glimpsed tools of some kind, a work table.

The tools would be very welcome right now. And if someone was working there, presumably there’d be a lamp, water…

She tried not to think about what would happen if she didn’t find her bag with her water bottle. She’d find it…

Every now and then her fingers encountered sharply cut images carved into the walls. Protected from the elements within the temple walls, they were as clean-edged as the day they had been chiselled into the stone.

She had seen enough of them before she’d abandoned the tour and her brain, deprived of light, eagerly supplied pictures of those strange stylised creatures to fill the void.

In the powerful beam of the guide’s torch they had seemed slightly sinister.

In the blackness her imagination amplified the threat and she began to shiver.

Stupid, stupid…

Concentrate. Breathe…

She counted the steps around the edge of her cell. Two, three, four… Her mind refused to cooperate but took itself off on a diversion to wonder about her companions. Had they survived? Were they, even now, being picked up by some rescue team? Would they realise that she wasn’t with them?

One of the businessmen had been eyeing her with a great deal more interest than the ruins. Maybe he would alert the rescuers to her absence. Assuming there were any rescuers.

Assuming any of them had survived.

That thought brought the fear seeping back and for a moment she leaned against the wall as a great shuddering sigh swept through her and she covered her ears as if to block it out.

There was no point in dwelling on such negative thoughts. She had to keep strong, in control, to survive. But, even as she clung to that thought, the wall began to shake.

‘No!’ She didn’t know whether she screamed it out loud or whether the agonised word was a whisper in her mind as an aftershock flung her away from its illusory protection.

She used her hands to protect herself, landing painfully on palms and knees.

Dust showered down on to her, filling her eyes and, as she gasped for air, her mouth. For a moment she was certain she was about to suffocate and in sheer terror she let rip with a scream.

That was when, out of the darkness, fingers clamped tightly about her arm and a gravelly voice said, ‘For pity’s sake, woman, give it a rest…’

CHAPTER THREE

JAGO appeared to have the hangover from hell, which was odd. Getting drunk would have been an understandable reaction to the discovery that Fliss had been using him and he’d certainly had the means, thanks to Rob. But he was fairly certain that, on reflection, he’d decided he’d taken enough punishment for one day.

Or maybe that was simply wishful thinking because there was no doubt that right now he was lying with his face pressed against the cold stone of the floor. Not a good sign. And he was hurting pretty much everywhere but mostly inside his head, where an incompetent but unbelievably enthusiastic drummer was using his skull for practice.

He would have told him to stop, but it was too much trouble.

That was the problem with drinking to forget. While it might seem like a great idea when you were swallowing the hot local liquor that offered instant oblivion, unfortunately it was a temporary state unless you kept on drinking.

He remembered thinking that as the first mouthful had burned its way down his throat and then…

And then nothing.

Dumber than he’d thought, then, and come morning he’d be sorry he hadn’t made the effort to make it as far as the camp-bed, but what was one more regret? He’d scarcely notice it amongst the pile already waiting to be sifted through.

Right now, what he needed was water and he groped around him, hoping to find a bottle within reach. Aspirin would be good too, but that was going to have to wait until he’d recovered a little.

His fingers encountered rubble.

Rubble?

Where on earth was he?

His forehead creased in a frown which he instantly regretted, swearing silently as the pain drilled through his skull. It didn’t take a genius to work out that if a simple frown caused that kind of grief, anything louder than a thought would be unwise.

He closed his eyes and, for the moment, the pain in his head receded a little. But only for a moment. The ground, it seemed, had other ideas, refusing to leave him in peace, shaking him like a dog at a bone. And, if that wasn’t bad enough, there was some woman having hysterics practically in his ear.

Oblivion was a lot harder to come by than you’d think.

He turned over, reached out and, as his palm connected with smooth, firm flesh he wondered, without too much interest, who she was. Before growling at her to shut up.

There was a startled yelp and then blissful silence. And the earth had finally stopped making a fuss too.

A result.

He let his head fall back against the floor.

It was too good to last.

‘Hello?’ The woman’s voice, now she’d stopped screaming, was low, a little bit husky, with the kind of catch in it that would undoubtedly ensnare any poor sap who hadn’t already learned the hard way that no woman was ever that vulnerable.

It wasn’t that he was immune. Far from it.

He might be feeling awful, but his body still automatically tightened in hopeful response to the enticing warmth of a woman’s voice up close in the dark.

It was over-optimistic.

A grunt was, for the moment, the limit of his ambition but he forced open unwilling eyelids and lifted his head an inch or two to take a look.

Opening his eyes didn’t make much difference, he discovered, but since light would have only added to his pain he decided to be grateful for small mercies. But not that grateful. Women were definitely off the agenda and he said, ‘Clear off.’

Having got that off his chest, he closed his eyes and let his head drop back to the floor.

‘Wh-who are you?’ She might be nervous but she was irritatingly persistent. ‘Are you hurt?’

‘Terminally,’ he assured her. ‘Body and soul. Totally beyond saving, so do me a favour. Go away and leave me to die in peace.’

No chance. She was a woman so she did the opposite, moving closer, finding his shoulder, feeling for his neck. She was checking his pulse, he realised. The stupid female had taken him seriously…

Apparently satisfied that he wasn’t, despite his protestations, about to expire on her, she slid her hand up to his cheek, laying long cool fingers against it, soothing his pounding head which, if he were honest, he had to admit felt pretty good.

‘Who are you?’ she persisted, her voice stronger now that she’d satisfied herself that he was in one piece. In fact, she had the crisp enunciation of a woman who expected an answer. Without delay.

Her touch wasn’t that good.

Delete vulnerable and caring, replace with bossy, interfering, typical of a particular type of organising female with whom he was very familiar. The ones he knew all had moustaches and chaired committees that allocated research funding…

He didn’t bother to answer. She didn’t give up but leaned over him so that he was assailed by the musky scent of warm skin before, after a pause, she wiped something damp over his face.

‘Is that better?’ she asked.

He was getting very mixed messages here, but provided she kept the volume down she could carry on with her Florence Nightingale act.

‘Were you on the bus?’ she asked.

Jago sighed.

That was the trouble with women; they couldn’t be content with just doing the ministering angel stuff. They had to talk. Worse, they insisted you answer them.

‘Don’t you understand simple English?’ he growled, swatting away her hand. The price of comfort came too high.

She didn’t take the hint, but laid it over his forehead in a way that suggested she thought he might not be entirely right in it. The head, that was. Definitely one of the moustache brigade, he thought, although her hand had the soft, pampered feel of someone who took rather more care of her appearance. Soft and pampered and her long, caressing fingers were giving his body ideas whether his head was coming along for the ride or not.

Definitely not yet another archaeology student looking for postgrad experience, then. At least that was something in her favour. Not even Fliss, who had lavished cream on every part of her body—generously inviting him to lend a hand—had been able to keep her hands entirely callus-free.

But she was female, so that cancelled out all the plus points. Including that warm female scent that a man, if he was dumb enough, could very easily lose himself in…

‘Read my lips,’ he said, snapping back from temptation. ‘Go away.’

‘I can’t see your damn lips,’ she replied sharply. The mild expletive sounded unexpectedly shocking when spoken in that expensive finishing school accent.

And she didn’t move.

On the contrary, she dropped her head so that her hair brushed against his cheek. He recognised the scent now. Rosemary.

It was rosemary.

His mother had planted a bush by the garden gate. Some superstitious nonsense was involved, he seemed to remember. It had grown over the path so that he’d brushed against it when he wheeled out his bike…

This woman used rosemary-scented shampoo and it took him right back to memories he thought he’d buried too deep to ever be dredged up again and he told her, this time in the most basic of terms, to go away.

‘Can you move?’ she asked, ignoring him. ‘Where does it hurt?’

Woman, thy name is persistence…

‘What I’ve got is a headache,’ he said. ‘You.’ He thought about sitting up but not very seriously. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve come across a bottle around here by any chance?’

Since she insisted on staying, she might as well make herself useful.

‘Bottle?’ She sniffed. Then the soft hand was snatched back from his forehead. ‘You’re drunk!’ she exclaimed.

Unlikely. Headache notwithstanding, he was, unhappily, thinking far too clearly for it to be alcohol-related, but he didn’t argue. If Dame Disapproval thought he was a drunk she might leave him alone.

‘Not nearly drunk enough,’ he replied, casting around him with a broad sweep of his hand until he connected with what he was thinking clearly enough to recognise as a woman’s breast. It was on the small side but it was firm, encased in lace and fitted his palm perfectly.

Alone and in the dark, Manda had thought things couldn’t get any worse until cold fingers had fastened around her arm. That had been the realisation of every childhood nightmare, every creepy movie she had watched from behind half-closed fingers and for a blind second her bogeyman-in-the-dark terror had gone right off the scale.

Then he’d spoken.

The words, admittedly, had not been encouraging, his voice little more than a growl. But the growl had been in English and the knowledge that by some miracle she was not alone, that there was another person in that awful darkness, someone to share the nightmare, dispel the terrible silence, had been so overwhelming that she had almost blubbed with sheer relief.

Thankfully, she had managed to restrain herself, since the overwhelming relief appeared to have been a touch premature.

It was about par for the day that, instead of being incarcerated with a purposeful and valiant knight errant, she had stumbled on some fool who’d been hell-bent on drinking himself to death when the forces of nature had decided to help him out.

‘I think you’ve had quite enough to drink already,’ she said a touch acidly.

‘Wrong answer. At a time like this there isn’t enough alcohol in the world, lady. Unless, of course, you’re prepared to divert me with some more interesting alternative?’

And, in case she hadn’t got the point, he rubbed a thumb, with shocking intimacy, over her nipple. And then, presumably because she didn’t instantly protest, he did it again.

Her lack of protest was not meant as encouragement but, already prominent from the chill of the underground temple, his touch had reverberated through her body, throwing switches, lighting up dark, long undisturbed places, momentarily robbing her of breath.

By the time she’d gasped in sufficient air to make her feelings felt, they had become confused. In the darkness, the intimacy, heat, beating life force of another body had not felt like an intrusion. Far from it. It had felt like a promise of life.

It was no more than instinct, she told herself; the standard human response in the face of death was to cling to someone, anyone. That thought was enough to bring her back to her senses.

‘I don’t think so,’ she said, belatedly slapping his hand away.

‘Please yourself. Let me know if you change your mind.’ He rolled away from her and, despite the fact that it was no more than a grope from a drunk, she still missed the human warmth of his touch.

She wanted his hand on her breast. Wanted a whole lot more.

Nothing had changed, it seemed. Beneath the hard protective shell she’d built around her, she was as weak and needy as ever.

She’d quickly slipped the buttons on her shirt so that she could lift up the still damp hem to wipe his face. Now she used it to wipe her own throat. Cool her overheated senses.

‘It would please me,’ she said, ‘if you’d give some thought to getting us out of here.’

She snapped out the words, but it was herself she was angry with.

‘Why would I do that?’ he replied, as she struggled with sore fingers to refasten the small buttons. ‘I like it here.’ Then, ‘But I like it here best when I’m alone.’

‘In that case I suggest you stay exactly where you are and wait for the next shock to bring the rest of the temple down on top of you. Then you’ll be alone until some archaeologist uncovers your bones in another two or three thousand years.’

Jago laughed at the irony of that. A short harsh sound that, even to his own ears, sounded distinctly unpleasant. ‘That’s an interesting idea, lady, but since I’m not the butler you’ll have to see yourself out.’ Then, as an afterthought, ‘Although if you see that bottle it would be an act of charity…’

‘Forget the damn bottle,’ she retorted angrily. ‘It may have escaped your notice, but you can’t see your hand in front of you in here.’

‘It’s night,’ he muttered, finally making an effort to sit up, ignoring the pains shooting through every cramped joint as he explored the floor about him. ‘And now I really do need a drink.’

‘Only a drunk needs a drink. Is that what you are?’

‘Not yet. That takes practice, but give me time…’

He stopped his fruitless search for a bottle of water and stared in the direction of the voice. She was right; it was dark. On moonless nights the stars silvered the temple with a faint light and even here, in the lower level, they shone down the shaft cut through the hillside that was aligned so that the full moon, at its highest arc in the sky, lit up the altar.

He blinked, rapidly. It made no difference. And as his mind cleared, it began to dawn on him that something was seriously wrong. The dust. The rubble…

He put his hand to his head in an attempt to still the drummer. ‘What day is this?’

‘Monday.’

‘It’s still Monday?’

‘I think so. I don’t know how long I was out and it’s too dark to see my watch, but I don’t think it could have been long.’

He propped himself against the nearest wall and tried to remember.

Something about Rob…

‘Out?’ he asked, leaving the jumble to sort itself out. Definitely not alcohol in Miss Bossy’s case. ‘What happened to you?’

‘Work it out for yourself,’ she snapped.

She was halfway to her feet when his hand, sweeping the air in the direction of her voice, connected with her leg and grabbed it. She let out a shriek of alarm.

‘Shut up,’ he said tightly. ‘I’ve got a headache and I can’t think with all that noise.’

‘Poor baby,’ she crooned with crushing insincerity. Then lashed out with her free leg, her toe connecting with his thigh.

He jerked her other leg from beneath her, which was a mistake since she landed on top of him.

He said one word, but since she’d knocked the breath out of him, only he knew for certain what it was.

Manda considered kicking him again but thought better of it. They needed to stop bickering and start working together and, whoever he was, he had an impressively broad shoulder. The kind built for leaning on.

His shirt, beneath her cheek, had the soft feel that heavy-duty cotton got when it had been worn and washed times without number and the bare skin of his neck smelled of soap.

Maybe he wasn’t going to be such a total loss after all…

‘Make yourself at home, why don’t you,’ he said, taking her by the waist and shifting her a little to the right before settling his hands on her backside, at which point she realised that it wasn’t only his shoulders that were impressive and…

And what the heck was she thinking?

She rolled off him, biting back a yelp as she landed on what felt like the Rock of Gibraltar. If he knew, he’d laugh.

‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded.

‘Who the hell are you?’ he retaliated, definitely not amused. On the contrary, he sounded decidedly irritable. ‘And what are you doing here?’

‘I asked first.’

There was an ominous silence and it occurred to Manda that, no matter what the provocation, further aggravating a man already in a seriously bad mood was not a particularly bright idea.

It wasn’t that she cared what he thought of her, but those broad shoulders of his were going to be an asset since it was obvious that their chances of survival would double if they worked together.

Tricky enough under the best of circumstances.

Team-building was not one of her more developed skills; she tended to work best as top dog. Issuing orders. It worked well with the TV production team she’d put together. Belle, in front of camera, was undoubtedly the star, but she was a professional, used to taking direction.

Daisy… Well, Daisy was learning.

Sensing that on this occasion she was going to need a different approach, she began again by introducing herself.

‘Look, we seem to have got off on the wrong foot. My name is Miranda Grenville,’ she said, striving, with difficulty, for politeness. ‘I’m here taking a short break…’