The tickling sensation of his finger went back and forward. He stared at her, brows sharply lifted.

'What's wrong, Lissa?' His tone had changed. The amused warmth had gone out of it and he was no longer smiling. 'What happened when you got back this afternoon? What did Brandon say to you?'

'Do you care?' She shot the words out like a dagger and saw his features tighten, his eyes narrow.

'What happened?'

'He told me never to see you again,' Lissa said icily. 'So please go back to the hotel, Mr Ferrier.'

His frown deepened. He took her slender shoulders in his hands and bent towards her, speaking curtly. 'Tell me! He was angry? What did he do? Did he threaten you?'

'Threaten me? Chris?' Her astonishment was in her face, but even as she threw back the words incredulously her mind was recalling the brutal violence in Chris's handsome face and she was shaken by the memory.

'He's no angel,' Luc Ferrier said harshly. 'His reputation on the island is far from pretty.'

Her eyes flew wide, her heart hurt inside her breast. 'What?'

Luc Ferrier's skin was taut, the hard bone structure beneath it clenched. He looked as tough as Chris had claimed he was-he looked dangerous, ruthless, a man with eyes that bofed into her own and made her deeply nervous.

'He runs this place with a private army, doesn't he? Those men in the gaming rooms would carve you up sooner than look at you. He has the island nicely organised. Makes money hand over list, keeps a whole horde of women busy making the swag he sells in his shops, and pays them in peanuts to do it.' 'That's a lie,' Lissa said angrily, trembling. 'Is it? Do you know how much he pays them?' 'Do you?' she asked furiously, glaring up at him.

'Oh, yes,' he returned, taking her breath away. 'On average, I understand, he pays them one percent of what he makes from the finished product.'

'One per cent?' Lissa's lips stiffened, dried. 'Who told you that? It's a lie!' It must be, she thought. Chris wouldn't, surely? Make money like that out of the local people? Cheat and manipulate them? Chris wasn't that sort of man. He was warm and friendly and kind. He wouldn't.

'It's the truth,' Luc Ferrier bit out, staring at her. 'Ask around. You know them all, you've known them all your life. Surely you must have realised how he ran this place?'

She ran her tongue tip over her dry lips and he watched the movement with an impassive face. 'Chris has to be firm with difficult customers. That's why he has so many men around the gaming rooms. Trouble can flare up if someone loses. Gamblers have volatile tempers.'

'That's what he told you?' Luc Ferrier said drily.

'Well, of course, it's true-up to a point. One or two tough boys are always around a place like this-but he has squads of them on tap. He doesn't just run the hotel, he runs the whole town. He's into everything from the tourist shops to the restaurants. He takes a percentage of that place we were eating at today.'

Her eyes wide and shocked, Lissa shook her head. 'No,' she muttered. 'I don't believe you.'

'Why should I lie?'

She looked at him fixedly and tried to decipher the hard strong face. 'You're making Chris sound like a gangster,' she protested.

Luc grinned humourlessly. 'He may use different words. He probably calls himself a businessman, but that's what he is, Lissa-a thug.'

'Don't!' she shivered, her brows drawn. 'Not Chris!'

He looked probingly into her anxious green eyes. 'Do you love him?'

'Of course I do,' she came back in a husky tone, but her eyes slid away from him. A week ago she would have been astonished by the question, given a firm and unthinking 'yes'. Now although she still made that positive reply she felt a strange tremor running through her, an uneasy flicker of uncertainty. Her love for Chris had been part of the backcloth of her life. She did not know what had changed- Herself, perhaps. She wasn't the same girl she had been a week ago. Odd things had happened to her, and all of them connected with this man.

She was half afraid Luc would press her, make her look at him. She knew instinctively that he was aware of the way her eyes had moved away as she spoke, but he didn't say anything. He just watched the smooth flushed oval of her face with a hard, intent observation of which she was very conscious.

'You owe it to yourself to look at him very carefully before you think of marrying him,' he said flatly. 'You're the type to whom marriage means a lifetime. Before you sign up for life I'd take a good, hard look at what you're getting, if I were you.' He paused, then said slowly, 'Especially his women.'

The shock of that took her breath away. For a moment she didn't move, then she looked up and asked him in a voice which shook: 'Women?' He was lying; he had to be. He wasn't talking about Chris, her Chris. She had never seen Chris giving interest to any girl but herself.

Luc stared down at her, his eyes glinting silver in the moonlight which was streaming down the sky. 'You didn't know about them, either?'

'You're lying,' she denied furiously, scarlet sweeping up her face. 'Lying, lying! I don't believe you!'

'Jealous?' asked Luc in a harsh curt voice.

'I don't believe you. Why should I be jealous? Chris wouldn't.' She glared at him. 'I've known him all my life, practically. Do you think I wouldn't have noticed if there was anyone but me around him?'

'He keeps the current woman in Joubeau Street,' Luc said calmly.

She swallowed. ' Joubeau Street?'

'So I'm told. She's one of Pierre 's cousins.'

Lissa swayed, feeling faint and sick. All the colour went out of her face. She shook her head over and over again, refusing to believe it, but she found it hard to shut out the hard certainty of Luc's face. Her eyes clung to him, pleading with him to say he was lying.

Luc slid his arms round her, supporting her. 'You'd better sit down,' he said curtly, 'You look as if you're going to pass out.'

She was too dazed to argue. She let him take off the white jacket he was wearing and spread it on the sand. He helped her to sit down on the jacket and sank down beside her. She was shivering as though, she were icy cold, her head bent.

'Who told you all this?' she demanded.

'A little bird,' Luc drawled. 'An expensive little bird.'

'Expensive?' she stared, bewildered, then her breath caught in a long sigh. 'You paid someone? But they might have lied to you if you offered them money. You don't know these people. They're cheerful about making up stories to amuse visitors. They don't see it as telling lies, it's just a game to them.'

'This was no game,' Luc insisted. 'I got the truth.'

'You don't know Chris,' said Lissa, shaking her head.

'No, Lissa,' Luc denied, 'it's you who doesn't know him. The man you grew up with isn't the man you think he is.'

'People can't hide things like that, not for years,' she protested shakily.

'When someone like you is so damned innocent, they can,' Luc said with a grim smile. 'It wouldn't have entered your head to suspect any of this-to notice any of it. You've been drifting around with your eves closed for the past couple of years and Brandon has seen to it that your eyes were kept shut as far as he could. All his people have strict orders to treat you with kid gloves,’

Lissa knew that. She wasn't so innocent that she hadn't been aware of the smiling, protective kindness surrounding her. Looking at Luc with disturbed anxiety, she asked: 'Is Chris in trouble? He isn't doing something illegal?'

Luc laughed brusquely. 'Hell, I doubt it. The law is as much in his pocket as everything else around here. He's got the place sewn up. His only danger is going to come when a bigger shark moves in and decides to take over from him. Once St Lerie is on the tourist map it will attract the attention of speculators elsewhere, then Brandon may have a fight on his hands. The kid gloves will come off then, Lissa. You'll see how tough he is if that happens,'