Unknown Read Online Free PDF Page A

are all easily recognisable as being out of the same stable, if you’ll forgive the expression.’
    James had swum to Davina's side in time to overhear this comment and he said with mock anger, ‘Thanks for nothing I Are you trying to say this little Welsh filly and I really look alike?’
    Catrin's rippling laugh rang out as Davina tried ineffectually to duck their cousin. She was so out of practice James had no difficulty in evading her, and since she had found little time during the summer to indulge in sport, Davina soon gave up the unequal struggle.
    When she swam to the side she was surprised to find Rex there ready to give her a helping hand before he dived in to join James. She rubbed at her hair with a towel as reclining on one of the comfortable loungers she watched the two men cutting swiftly through the water. Rex Fitzpaine had a deceptively lazy crawl and he had soon outstripped James, so that Davina found herself comparing his magnificent physique with her cousin’s more compact build.
    Almost shocked as she recognised where her thoughts were straying, Davina turned with something like relief as Catrin came back with a loaded tea tray. As she poured out and handed the cup and saucer to her sister Catrin remarked, ‘I must say that sleep did me good.’ She sipped her own tea for a couple of minutes in silence before adding in a low voice, ‘So that’s the prospective boss you wrote to tell me about? He’s not a bit as I imagined him in the description in your letter.’
    Davina was spared the embarrassment of thinking up a reply to this frank, sisterly remark as the two men hoisted themselves over the side of the pool and came over to where Catrin and Davina were sitting. ‘Any tea for us?’ James asked as he pushed the hair back from his face.
    Catrin indicated the two spare cups and asked how they liked it. James took milk, but Rex, with obvious reservations about Swiss-made tea, asked, ‘Is it strong?’
    ‘Don’t worry, I made it myself,’ Catrin laughed, and a reluctant smile tugged at the corners of Rex’s straight mouth.
    ‘Then I’ll take it black. No milk or sugar,’ he instructed, and drank it standing before pulling up a chair at Catrin’s side and sitting down.
    Davina was conscious first of surprise, then of a sense of pique at his obvious preference for Catrin’s company. The mortification which so unexpectedly gripped her was made no easier when, turning to answer a chance remark from James, Davina was inclined to think he was well aware of the feelings passing through her.
    As he lowered himself to lean against her chair, James’s next words confirmed that he had made an educated guess as to her thoughts. ‘You’ll have to get used to it, Dav. The kid sister has grown up with a vengeance!’
    Faint colour stained Davina’s honey-coloured complexion, for James with acute perception had hit the nail on the head. She wasn’t used to competition, at least not from Catrin. In the usual course of events men gravitated as if drawn by a magnet to her side, perhaps first interested in her black-haired, brown-eyed colouring, but staying to be further captivated by her normally frank, uncomplicated approach towards her opposite sex. At no time had Davina had to resort to the more common feminine wiles, but in any case it wasn’t in her nature to be devious. And so far, busy with her studies, her involvements had been of the happy-go-lucky, no strings attached variety.
    But as she continued to watch Catrin and Rex from the corner of her eye, Davina awoke to the fact that the tall Australian interested her in a way no man had done before. She was actually feeling a twinge of jealousy that Catrin had his entire, undivided attention, and James was right; Catrin had blossomed almost overnight into an extremely beautiful girl. Davina was small, but Catrin was ‘pocket’ size, and no one looking at the black hair curling on to bare brown shoulders or the slender figure would have guessed