Brooding on that sadly faded dream, she didn’t notice him moving until a large hand was suddenly in front of her face. For an awful moment she thought his repressed hostility had finally erupted, but instead of the impact of his palm against her cheek, she felt him pull off her spectacles so that his image immediately dissolved into an indistinct blur.
‘Oh, please…’ She snatched vaguely, but he was too quick for her.
‘Salt build-up from all that sea-spray on the boat trip,’ he said blandly, retreating out of her reach. She squinted to see him produce a white square from his pocket and carefully rub the lenses with it. ‘They need a good clean.’
He held them up to the light and inspected them before breathing on the glass and polishing some more. ‘Pretty strong lenses. You must be extremely short-sighted.’
‘I am,’ she admitted truculently. She could have pointed out with brutal honesty that he had a few glaring imperfections of his own, but she was too soft-hearted for her own good—everyone said so. Even Peter who was supposed to be madly in love with her, had always been exasperated by her ability to empathise with the opposing point of view in an argument.
‘You must be rather helpless without them.’
Was that a hint of gloating in his voice? She squinted harder. ‘Not helpless, just short-sighted,’ she said flatly.
Unexpectedly he laughed. It was a disturbingly rich sound, unflavoured by bitterness. ‘How long have you worn them?’
‘Since I was thirteen.’
And never had she been more grateful, for once there were spectacles firmly perched on her nose she found the boys less inclined to stare endlessly at her ever-burgeoning breasts. From a potential sex-pot she had become an egghead, and even though her marks had been barely average she had managed to cling to the image until the other girls in her class had also started acquiring ogle-worthy figures.
‘May I have them back, please?’ she asked the blurry male outline, holding out her hand.
There was a pause. All he had to do was clench those strong fingers and the fragile frames would be crushed, leaving her more vulnerable than ever.
‘Of course.’
Instead of handing them to her, he replaced them himself, taking his time as he set them straight across the bridge of her nose, his face jumping back into disturbingly sharp focus, a close-up study in concentration as he tucked the ear-pieces carefully into place, his rough finger-pads sliding around on the ultra-sensitive skin behind her ears for long enough to make her shiver.
‘Th-thank you,’ she said reluctantly, edging back.
He followed her, his fingers still cradling the sides of her skull. ‘You have very speaking eyes.’ God, she hoped not! She blinked to clear her gaze of all expression and shuddered again at the intensity of his inspection. What was he searching for?
‘Are you cold?’
‘No.’ To her dismay it came out as a breathy squeak.
His hands dropped to her taut shoulders, then lightly drifted down the outsides of her arms to her tense fists.
‘You must be, after being out in that draughty old boat,’ he contradicted. ‘Your hands are as cold as ice and you’re trembling. You need some food inside you to warm you up.’
She cleared her throat. ‘I assure you, I’m perfectly warm,’ she said, pulling her hands away. ‘And I’m not hungry.’
‘Your stomach still feeling the effects of the trip?’ he murmured with annoying perception, his dark brown eyebrows lifted, the one above the eye-patch made raggedly uneven by the indent of the scar. ‘It’s a mistake to think the ride back will be easier on an empty stomach. You’ll feel much better with something inside you.’
Like you? The wayward thought popped into her head and Vivian went scarlet.
He stilled, looking curiously at her bright face and the horrified green eyes that danced away from his in guilty confusion. What in the world was the matter with her?
His eyebrows settled back down and his eyelid drooped disguising his expression as he took her silence as assent. ‘Good, then you’ll join me for lunch…’
‘Thank you, but the boat leaves again in—’ Vivian looked at her watch ‘—twenty minutes, and I still have to get back down to the wharf—’
‘The captain won’t leave until he’s checked with me first.’ He effortlessly cut the ground from under her feet.
‘I’m really not hungry—’
‘And if I said that I hadn’t eaten since lunch yesterday and was far too ravenous to concentrate on anything but feeding my appetite?’
Your appetite for what? thought Vivian as she silently weighed up her options…which proved to be extremely limited.