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made a cape of her hair, loosened from its knot after her swim so it could dry in the sun. As she did this the tall stranger narrowed his eyes until they were like slits of ebony.
    'One of the maids, I presume?' His voice crackled with sarcasm. 'Does the lady of the house know that you lie down here without a stitch of clothing on?'
    A wave of confusion and indignation swept over Debra. 'I'm Mr Jack Salvador's secretary—' And there she broke off with a gasp. It couldn't be, could it. . . the employer she had hoped to meet and impress with her efficiency in dealing with his book? If it was he, then how was she going to live down that he had found her shamelessly stretched out on his beach, with her clothes in a little mound beyond his firmly planted feet.
    Damn, it looked as if her pleasant job was at an end!
    'The secretary, eh?' Again he looked her over. 'The last time I was at Abbeywitch there was a fat little woman of fifty doing the typing, and I never caught her in your present predicament.'
    'I thought for the moment—' Debra bit her lip. 'Who are you—are you a friend of Zandra Salvador's?'
    'Do you think I look like an actor?'
    The irony in his voice informed Debra that he had nothing to do with Zandra's theatrical friends, and she wondered if he might be the divorced husband whom Zandra had spoken of so contemptuously. But even as the thought occurred to her, she rejected it ... he didn't strike her as the kind of man who would fail to live up to a woman's exciting expectations.
    On the contrary . . . from the moment Debra opened her eyes and saw him towering above her, she had been picking up from him the most unsettling vibrations.
    'Who are you?' she repeated.
    'I assure you I have every right to be here. I happen to be the owner of Abbeywitch,' he announced. 'You may have heard my stepmother speak of me—I'm Rodare Salvador.'
    Debra caught her breath. She had assumed that Jack Salvador was the master of Abbeywitch and it came as quite a shock to hear this stranger announce that he was the master . . . and there was no denying the fact that he had a masterful air. He struck her speechless and all she could do for several seconds was stare up at him, a figure of confusion at his feet.
    Her mouth worked, then the words came rather faintly. 'May I have my clothes, Mr Salvador, so I can get dressed?'
    'By all means.' He picked up the bundle and dropped it down beside her and in a mocking way he turned his back and gazed out to sea while she hurriedly dressed. When he turned to face her, she was rewinding her hair into its coil.
    He was copper-skinned and the Spanish ebony of his eyes were intent upon Debra, hitting the very centre of her nervous system and inducing two distinct feelings in her. She wanted to retreat hastily from him, and. she also wanted to stay and defend herself against what he was probably thinking, that she was a shameless hussy and what the devil was she doing in the employment of his brother Jack. Secretaries who came to Abbeywitch should be comfortable bodies in their fifties who ate currant buns on the beach and knitted sweaters!
    Debra agonised in silence, for she didn't want to lose her job and he had the power to dismiss her right now. Also he was partly Spanish and she had heard that Spaniards who saw foreign girls bathing in bikinis on their beaches had only one opinion of them . . . that they were there for the picking and weren't moral like Latin girls.
    Oh lord, and he had come upon her without even a bikini to hide the more intimate parts of her figure!
    He carried his cigarillo to his lips and drew on it, tall in a silky dark shirt worn with black doeskin trousers that hugged his long legs. There was strength and authority in every line of him; a kind of pantherish grace allied to the power and poise of a man accustomed to taking charge of a situation.
    His face, Debra thought, was the kind which Yeats had written about: Hollow of cheek as though it drank the wind. And took a