In the beginning Chris had wanted to beat Luc just because Luc was a famous player; now she knew without needing to be told that Chris had other reasons for wanting to beat Luc. She was terrified of what might happen if, as she strongly suspected, Luc beat Chris hands down.

Chris smiled tightly at her. 'Run along, honey,' he said in a voice which left her no option.

She went slowly, feeling sick. The vivid sunlight, the gaudy flesh of the tropical flowers, seemed hateful to her for the first time. She had once loved this place. Now. she felt she could not bear the sight of it.

Why had Luc done it? Why had he deliberately dared Chris to a duel? He must know the dangers he ran. Lissa did not investigate too closely on what her own suspicions were based, but she knew Luc would be in danger if he won against Chris.

There was to be a dinner-dance that evening in the club and Lissa was due to sing for the guests, She rehearsed with Pierre for a while and then went down into the town. She wandered through the gay shopping centre without really noticing much. At a distance she saw Joanne Lucas in a flower-printed sun-dress which left her slim thighs bare. The woman was smiling to herself with a sensuality which made Lissa's teeth meet. The absent, amused expression on Joanne Lucas's face-sickened her.

Had Luc stayed in her room long? Had he gone to bed with the woman? What did she know about him, anyway? She had only met him a few days ago and she only knew about him what he had told her himself. She had known Chris all her life and loved him more than anyone she had ever met. Her mother had been a distant memory, her father always drinking. Chris had been brother, friend, lover to her. Why should she blindly accept what a stranger told her about him?

She went into the fort and wandered around there in the bat-haunted crumbling walls listening to the roar of the surf and the laughter and cries of swimmers and surfers.

In a few short days everything in her world had changed, including herself. She felt as though she had been half alive, a formless creature, half child half woman, but now Luc had somehow brought her fully to life, stiffened her dreamy contentment into something very different.

She felt fully mature for the first time in her life. Her mind was thinking harshly, certainly, and she was suffering the ravages which maturity can bring.

Now that Luc had opened her mind to it there were so many little things she had noticed but never thought about. The whole luxurious, soft-centred ambiance of the hotel, the island, had been part of her life for so long that it had never occurred to her to question any of it. She had heard snatches of talk, seen Chris and his men move in on someone who was causing trouble, without thinking about it. She had blithely accepted Chris's standards, his ready explanations.

If Luc was right, she could not marry Chris. She could not live this sort of life.

Joubeau Street lay at the back of the town. Lissa knew the place. She thought of Chris going there, spending time with some woman, and was forced to recognise that although the idea appalled her she was not jealous. She had felt a sharp stab of jealousy as she saw Luc smiling at Joanne Lucas, but she had only felt

horror and disbelief when she was told that Chris had a mistress.

The realisation that Chris had been lying to her, deceiving her, was what horrified her. It revealed an abyss between them. She did not know Chris; she never had. It was not merely that their whole relationship was false. The premise on which her life had been based was false, too. This whole island was riddled with corruption. Under the sleek gaudy beauty lay a poisoned root reaching down into darkness.

It was only as she walked back to the hotel that the realisation dawned on her.

How was she going to get away?

Chris was not going to let her leave the island; Lissa could be sure of that. He would keep her there by hook or by crook and he would make her marry him. He had disguised from her his nature for so long, but now she could see through the lazy goodhumoured charm to the avid cruelty beneath it.

Chris wanted her. Her blood ran cold at that idea. She remembered the hot metal of his eyes as he reached for her last night, the hoarse sensuality of his voice.

He had been waiting for two years and he wasn't going to be cheated of his prize now. If he had genuinely loved her she might have appealed to that love, but she saw now that it was physical hunger that governed Chris. He lusted for her. Her face burned, she felt sick. It was a vile word and she had never thought she would apply it to Chris, but it was the only one that covered the truth. Lust lay in his eyes, in his voice. She should have seen it before, but she hadn't. Watching him last night as she sang, shredding a red carnation jerkily between his fingers, she had been watching a man convulsed with lust, and she hadn't even known it until now. She had felt something ugly and frightening inside him, but she hadn't known what it was she felt until now.

Chris found the wide-eyed innocence she had always had deeply attractive, but for the worst of reasons. He ached for the day when he would destroy it. He had deliberately held her in it, waiting for his moment, and he would not forgo that pleasure now. He intended to have her.

When she went into the hotel she found Max and Uncle Joey talking to the desk clerk. She smiled cheerfully at them all, her eyes wide and bright. 'Hallo. Where's Chris? I bought a new bikini and I want to show it to him.'

Max gave her a sly sideways smile. 'Gone across the island to see someone,' he said, and Lissa shrugged, pouting.

As she reached her own room her face could relax from that sweet, childlike, artificial smile.

She was appalled by her own ability to lie, to pretend. She was sickened by the necessity, but she had to make them all think she was still the same. She had to maintain that little girl manner, smile as warmly, talk in the same light happy fashion.

Chris must not see, must not guess, the changes which had taken place in her. The moment he did he would move in to the kill.

Sitting down on her bed, she wondered why he had never made a serious attempt before. Looking back over the past two years she could sec that Chris had been' impatient for his final possession of her, but he had never gone beyond the line her own innocence had drawn between them.

Why?

Did he care more for her than mere lust? Or had he known that if once she saw through his charming mask she would run away? Had he been hoping that she would be too deeply in love with him to care any more? Had he been waiting because he sensed she was not yet physically awake?

Over the past couple of days she had felt the constant search of his eyes. He sensed a change in her, although he wasn't sure about it yet. If he once guessed that overnight she had become physically, mentally, emotionally, a woman, he would rush to claim her.

She looked into the mirror, face quite white now. She could not bear the idea of lying in Chris's arms any more.

She sheered away from any admission as to her reasons for such revulsion. It wasn't Chris who had pulled her across the line dividing child from woman, but Lissa refused to let herself dwell on that fact.

The rush of experience, feeling, was confusing her, but under it her mind was working with hard clarity. She had never known just how clearly she could think.

Her first reaction to Luc's unveiling of the sort of world she lived in had been one of distress and anxiety. She had felt a loyalty to Chris which the shock of the truth had battered but left intact. Today that loyalty had crumbled, and she wasn't sure why. She had been thinking all day and as her mind sifted through the various elements of the problem she had slowly come to realise that Chris and the island no longer meant anything to her.