Tamarisk Bay

The long, feathery fronds of the tamarisks waved above Jenny's head as she sat where the Sumatran jungle met the sea. She was trying to take in all the implications of her plight. She looked at the black silhouettes of the palms, at the starlit sea, at the pale sand spreading back into the quiet of the forest. Until a ship came by - and who could say how many days or weeks that would be? - she was cut off here with an unpredictable stranger. He had said that in a crowd they might not even notice each other, but Jenny knew better. Almost certainly that arrogant gaze of his would pass over Jenny Manson, but there wasn't a woman anywhere who could come within a dozen yards of him and not be conscious of his magnetism. In any case, they weren't in a crowd. They were alone, quite alone on a tropic beach.