Kitabı oku: «The Bride's Rescuer», sayfa 3

“Selfish?” His coolness irritated her. “I’m offering to house, clothe and feed you for several months. I call that hospitality, not selfishness.”

“Call it what you like, but you’re not doing me any favors.” Tears of anger welled in her eyes, and she dashed them away with the back of her hand, furious she’d allowed him to witness her distress, and even more furious when it failed to move him.

His expression remained unchanged. “That’s all I have to say. Now stand aside and let me pass.”

When she stepped quickly from his path, a splinter from the rough wood of the pier drove deep into the instep of her right foot. “Ow!”

Her yell reverberated across the water, frightening an anhinga from his mangrove perch. When she lifted her foot and extracted the offending sliver, the movement overbalanced her, and she tumbled backward into the bay and plunged underwater. Panic surged within her, fueled by memories of her shipwreck that she longed to forget, but her terror was short-lived. Her feet struck bottom, and she gained a footing in the chest-high water. Muck squished between her toes as she coughed, sputtered, and pushed her streaming hair back from her face.

Cameron peered over the dockside with a fleeting expression that might have been a smile. He reached out his hands to her, and she grabbed them. Knotting the powerful muscles of his arms, he lifted her easily out of the water onto the pier. The soles of her feet were slippery with muck, and she slid against him. His arms closed around her like a vice, driving the breath from her lungs.

A shock like an electric current raced the length of her body where she molded against him, and when she tried to pull away, his embrace tightened. She pressed her hands against the broad expanse of his bare chest and pushed. The heated look in his eyes disoriented her.

What was wrong with her? Just because he had given her the shirt off his back, just because he’d rescued her with such gentleness didn’t give her a reason to respond to him—especially when he refused to take her home.

She shook her head to dispel the giddiness, spraying droplets like a wet dog. When Cameron released her, water dripped from her clothing and pooled around her on the dock.

Like a man enchanted, he stared, as if looking at her was somehow painful. For a moment, time stopped as she faced him on the dock, drinking in the sight of him while his gaze swept over her. Then he turned and marched off the pier, abruptly breaking the spell.

A moment later, a door slammed and her host disappeared into the house. Now more than ever she wanted to flee Solitaire, before he—or her response to him—drew her into a situation she couldn’t control.

THAT NIGHT, CLAD ONCE again in one of Mrs. Givens’s voluminous nightgowns, Celia leaned against the veranda railing outside her room, watching the rain move in torrents across the dark beach. Mrs. Givens had taken away her drenched clothes to wash the bay water from them, but they wouldn’t dry soon in this rain. Thunderclouds obscured the waning moon, and water beat upon the tin roof above her, drowning out the rumble of the surf.

A blinding bolt of lightning split the sky, striking so close to the house that flash and thunder occurred simultaneously. She jumped back from the railing, throwing her arms over her face in a useless gesture of protection. With the boom reverberating in her ears, her throat tightened and her heart pounded. The storm that had demolished her boat flashed back at her. Images of murky water and towering waves crowded against her consciousness, and her breath came in tortured, painful gasps.

Post-traumatic stress syndrome.

That had to be it. Every time the thunder boomed, she relived the horror of her boat breaking up beneath her and the whirlpool pulling her under. She’d encountered storms before, had even capsized in them, but nothing had ever approached the pulsing terror that had grabbed her from the deck and dragged her down into the gray-green depths, charged with the lightning that had crackled all around her.

She closed her eyes, pushed the memories away, and grasped the balustrade so tightly her nails dug crescents into the wood. Thunder crashed again, and the house shuddered from the force of its concussion.

To ward off the panic attack that threatened to engulf her, she imagined herself in Sand Castles, her bookstore with its wide, sunny windows overlooking the traffic-thronged street and flooding the broad aisles with light. She could almost smell the inky tang of new books, the fragrance of freshly brewed tea, and the spicy, chocolate aroma rising from the basket of homemade cookies she kept beside the teapot for her customers. The soft murmur of customers’ voices, the rustle of turning pages, the clunk of books returned to the shelves, and the click of keys on the cash register echoed in her memory.

The familiar images calmed her. Slowly her breathing eased, and the rhythm of her heart steadied. The panic had gone, but at her own beckoning, she’d called up a homesickness as sharp as an injury.

Gradually the force of the storm passed over the island and out to sea, leaving a silence broken only by the irregular beat of water, dripping like tears from the eaves onto the papery surface of palm fronds. The air, cooled and washed by the rain, caught the folds of her gown, puffing it out like a spinnaker.

She peered down the beach where rain obscured the piles of debris. Even if a boat were to pass the island, the driftwood and palm branches would be too wet tonight to burn as signal beacons. She’d hidden beneath her mattress the matches she’d taken from the kitchen when Mrs. Givens’s back was turned. The debris would eventually dry, and she’d have her chance.

She tensed at the sound of movements in the room next to hers. A pool of light spread across the veranda, and the French doors of the room next to hers swung open. For a moment, she feared Cameron himself would step onto the porch beside her.

Then his shadow fell across the veranda floor as he removed his clothes. The lamplight projected an undistorted image of his powerful shoulders, narrow waist and lean hips upon the weathered boards, faithful even to the bulges of his muscled torso when he removed his shirt. The shadow bent to blow out the lamp, and bedsprings creaked as he climbed into bed. Her pulse quickened at the intimacy of the sound.

She shivered when the rain-laden breeze struck her. Had the cool air or the memory of his body against hers caused the tremor? She hadn’t reacted that way to Darren, who had professed to love her. Why did her rebellious body respond only to a man whose mind was surely disturbed?

At her first chance, she’d light her signal fire, and if that didn’t bring help, she’d steal the sloop and sail to Key West by herself. One thing was certain. She couldn’t remain much longer on this small island with Cameron Alexander, or she might succumb to the growing excitement that quivered in the depths of her whenever she thought of him—a peril worse than shipwreck.

She pulled the rocking chair from her room onto the veranda and, hugging her knees to her chest, she rocked herself to sleep.

DAYLIGHT WAS GATHERING, and the rising sun tinged the gulf’s soft swells an iridescent pink and gold, like the inside of a conch shell she’d found on the beach the day before. Seabirds searched for their breakfast, and their shrill cries and the gentle beat of their wings filled the cool morning air.

She stood and stretched, easing muscles cramped from a night spent curled in the rocker in the open air. The doors to Cameron’s room remained open, but no sound came from inside. As she turned toward her own room, a flash of movement on the beach drew her attention.

Bathed in the delicate glow of the sun’s first rays, Cameron, his muscles etched like Italian marble against the blue of the morning sky, strode naked across the beach toward the breakers. He moved with grace and power, and once he reached the combers crashing onto the shore, dived like a gilded arrow into the waves, slicing through them with powerful strokes of his well-muscled arms. His tawny hair fanned around him like seaweed as he swam toward the distant horizon.

Fascinated by the work of art in the flesh before her, she stood awestruck, hypnotized, watching him cut his way through the water, farther and farther from shore.

A glimpse of white on the horizon beyond him caught her eye. Moving slowly northward, so far away it looked like a child’s toy, sailed a cruise ship.

Rescuers!

She didn’t understand her strong reactions to her mysterious host and felt the need to get away from him as strongly as she wanted to go home.

She darted back into her room and rummaged under the mattress for the stolen matches. With the precious sticks clutched in her fist, she dashed headlong down the stairs, through the wide front doors, and out toward the beach.

She raced between the dunes and headed north along the shoreline. She had to ignite the signal fire before the ship passed from view, but deep sand sucked at her feet, slowing her progress.

When she reached the stack of debris, she cast about for a hard surface on which to strike a match. Shaking with excitement until she could barely grasp the matchstick, she grabbed a large shell with a corrugated surface and dragged the match across it.

Nothing happened.

In a panic, she drew the match again and again across the shell’s rough surface, but it didn’t flare.

Dear God, make it burn, so I can go home.

She threw the match down in disgust and tried another. The second flared instantly, and she touched it to the dried palm fronds stacked with the flotsam and jetsam. Still slightly damp from the earlier rain, they smoldered slowly, producing little heat or smoke. She pulled one of the fronds from the pile and fanned, coaxing the smoldering leaves into flames.

With an explosive burst, the dry palm branches on the bottom of the pile caught fire, and flames licked along the driftwood and other debris. She peered toward the horizon, tracking the cruise liner, and fanned harder, encouraging the flames to burn brighter.

Out of nowhere, strong hands tugged her aside. She stumbled and fell to her knees on the beach. Sand flew like dust devils, obscuring her view.

She scrambled to her feet and wiped sand from her eyes. Cameron, barefoot and clad only in jeans unbuttoned at the waist, stood where she had been, using a board as a shovel to douse the last embers of the fire with sand.

“No!” The word tore from her throat, and she grabbed his arm. “Let it burn. That boat must see it.”

He pushed her aside once again and continued heaping sand on the debris.

She thrust herself between him and the fire, trying to block the sand from her precious flames. “You have no right to stop me!”

“Stay out of the way!”

She ignored his warning and dug at the sand he had heaped upon the debris, but her efforts were useless against the power of the man. For every handful of sand she uncovered, he shoveled piles more onto the fire and her as well.

When he’d smothered every spark, he dropped the board and dusted his hands. Water glistened in his tawny hair, and anger gleamed in his eyes.

When he turned to her, he did not meet her gaze, but cast his glance at a point behind her. “You must impress this fact into that very pretty head of yours, Miss Stevens. You will leave this island when I say, and not before.”

He snatched the remaining matches from her clenched fist. She grabbed instinctively to retrieve them, but his dark expression stopped her. He turned and tramped back toward the house, leaving her shivering with disappointment and the first rumblings of fear as she stood on the beach with her nightgown billowing in the wind.

She was no longer a guest on Solitaire, but a prisoner.

Chapter Three

Celia stood like a sentinel, staring toward the northwest until the last sight of the cruise liner disappeared over the horizon. Her hope vanished with it, and she headed back toward the house. Deep sand pulled at her feet, as if the earth itself tried to chain her to the island.

When she reached the path through the dunes, she met Noah loping toward the shore with a shovel across his shoulder.

“Morning, miss.” He smiled, but his deep, dark eyes held their usual sadness, and she wondered if he was as much a prisoner in this place as she was.

“You’re out early,” she said. “Digging for coquina?”

“No, ma’am, though some good coquina stew would taste mighty fine. Mr. Alex wants me to bury that pile of trash on the north beach. Don’t want it calling attention to the place, he says.”

“Right.” Her smile froze as Noah passed her on the path.

When she reached the house, Cameron lounged on his elbows on the wide stairs that led to the veranda. He had pulled on a shirt, but his chest and feet remained bare, and his hair had begun to dry into a wild, disarrayed mass. On another man, the effect would have been scruffiness. On Cameron, Celia thought with a sigh, his disheveled appearance made him all the more attractive, like a sexy male model in a Calvin Klein ad.

He sprang to his feet at her approach, but she’d had her fill of rudeness for one morning. She attempted to climb the stairs past him.

“Miss Stevens, please.” The desperation in his eyes stopped her.

“What is it now? Want to search me for more matches?” Ignoring how attractive he looked, she centered all her fury and frustration in her voice.

Standing above him on the steps with her eyes level with his, she could read the silent appeal in them, as well as the pleading gesture of his hands spread wide.

“Forgive me, please. I meant you no harm, but I had to extinguish the fire as quickly as possible.”

Her anger dissolved into smothering depression, and her voice lost its snap and turned thick and heavy. “What harm would it have done for that ship to see the flames and come take me away from here?”

She sank onto the stairs with her elbows on her knees and her chin tucked in her hands. The dragging weight of her body mirrored the heaviness of her spirit. She dredged up the energy to speak again. “I have a home, friends, a business I want to return to.”

She had made the plea so many times, it sounded like a litany. She tried to will her tears away, but they slid down her cheeks, and she tasted their saltiness.

Cameron settled onto the step beside her, placed his arm around her shoulders, and drew her toward him. The gentle man beside her had no correlation to the angry being who had pushed her away from the fire only moments before. Was the illness Mrs. Givens had referred to a split personality?

“Please don’t cry.” His voice caressed her with its warmth.

“I’m not crying.” She swiped her tears with the back of her hand and pulled away from him.

“Tell me,” he said, “are you anxious to return because of the man you were to marry?”

His question stunned her. The last person she wanted to see was Darren Walker, but if Cameron could keep his secrets, so could she. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

An engaging smile tugged at the corners of his mouth. “My situation here is strange, I admit. However, no stranger than yours. How many women go sailing alone dressed in a wedding gown?”

Embarrassed, she gazed silently past him toward the gulf.

“Did you sail before or after the wedding?”

“Why should you care?” she asked hotly.

He shrugged with infuriating nonchalance.

“If I answer,” she said, “will you let me leave?”

His smile vanished. “You may leave when Captain Biggins comes to take you home.”

“But Captain Biggins won’t be here for weeks! And why is it okay for him to take me off the island, but no one else? What are you trying to hide?”

Cameron stared at her as if he hadn’t heard. He spoke in a strangely detached voice, as if talking to himself. “Your eyes are the color of the gulf on a sunny day, and when you’re angry, they flash like sunlight on the water.”

Her anger turned to alarm. The man was crazy. “You’re avoiding my question. Why is it that Biggins—”

“You asked what I’m trying to hide. The answer is obvious.”

“Not to me—”

“I am hiding myself.”

“Why?”

His face shifted into hard lines. “That’s none of your affair. More to the point, I’ve spent years guarding the location of my hideaway. Biggins is the only person on earth who knows where I am.”

“You must trust him a great deal.”

“As long as he keeps my secret, Biggins is a very wealthy man. If he divulges my presence here, his money stops. It is as simple as that.”

She started to ask again why he was hiding but bit back the words. Knowing too much might be dangerous. He’d just indirectly informed her that when she left Solitaire, the number of people who knew his whereabouts would double. If he allowed her to leave. Her doubts on that score were multiplying by the minute.

She had no intention of waiting for Captain Biggins. She had promised earlier she would reach the mainland if she had to swim, and she meant it. She refused to spend another night on Solitaire.

Everything about her mysterious host was odd, and at the same time, somehow compelling, drawing her to him. She’d just escaped one disastrous relationship and didn’t need—or want—another. The more distance she could place between her and Solitaire’s enigmatic owner, the better off she’d be.

She jumped to her feet and started up the stairs, but Cameron grasped her hand, holding her fast. His expression softened again, and his lip curved in a rueful smile. “Don’t go.”

“I must dress.”

“But you haven’t forgiven me for treating you so roughly on the beach. I am sorry.”

Did Cameron think he could behave like a jerk, then make everything all right by apologizing? “I’ll forgive you, but only when you free me from this island prison you’ve built for yourself.”

She wrenched her hand from his grasp, lifted her gown to her knees, raced into the house and up the stairs to her room.

Still warm from Mrs. Givens’s iron, the skirt and blouse she’d worn the day before when she’d plunged into the bay lay across the bed. She considered them with a sigh. She had to get off the island, if for no other reason than to find clothes that fit and a decent pair of shoes.

“Excuse me.”

She turned at Cameron’s voice and saw him standing at the open door. “What do you want?”

“Noah found a backpack washed onto the beach yesterday. These were in it, and I believe they’re from the wreckage of your boat. Mrs. Givens took the liberty of laundering them.”

Cameron offered her the bundle in his arms. Folded neatly were the extra set of clothes she’d kept on board the boat. Denim shorts, a T-shirt, bra and panties, and a pair of sneakers.

She took the clothes from him. “Thank you.”

“If there’s anything else you need, we’ll do our best to provide it for you.”

“What is this, a four-star prison?” She couldn’t keep the sarcasm from her voice.

His expression hardened, and he turned and left. She was instantly sorry she had insulted him when he was only trying to be kind. However, she couldn’t allow herself to be taken in by his seductive charm. Whatever else the attractive Cameron Alexander was, he was also her jailer.

She washed the sand from her body and dressed in the skirt and blouse. She brushed the grit from her hair, smoothing her tangled curls, and stepped out onto the veranda as she braided her hair.

Down the beach, Noah scooped great shovels of sand onto a mound beside the gaping hole in which he stood, looking like a gravedigger as he bent to his task.

The sight sobered her and strengthened her resolve to leave that day. She began to form her plan.

WHEN CELIA ENTERED THE kitchen for breakfast, Mrs. Givens was examining a length of leaf-green fabric.

“We must make you some clothes, m’dear. Can’t have you wearing my castoffs forever.”

“Forever?” Celia stopped pouring coffee and looked at the woman.

“It’s just a figure of speech,” the housekeeper replied a bit too quickly, “although I suppose at your young age several weeks seem like a lifetime.”

Her explanation sounded sensible enough, but Celia couldn’t shake her uneasy feeling about the island and its inhabitants. For all their protestations of wanting to be left alone, their concerted refusal to let her leave frightened her.

More resolved to escape than ever, she finished filling her cup and helped herself to a generous serving of thick oatmeal and toast. She’d need nourishment to carry out her plan.

“Mrs. Givens, would you have time to pack me a lunch? I think I’ll wander the beach and collect shells today.” She spooned marmalade onto the toast, trying to act unruffled while her heart pounded at her lies.

“Happy to, m’dear. Captain Biggins brought a nice salted ham on his last visit, and I have some biscuits I made for Mr. Alexander’s breakfast.”

“Could you put a bottle of water in with that, and some tea? The heat makes me thirsty.”

“Whatever you want, you just let me know. I’m happy to oblige.”

Mrs. Givens beamed at her, and she wondered if the woman’s happiness came from Celia’s apparent reconciliation to her fate.

“You’re a sweetheart.” Celia smiled at the woman, who unknowingly was preparing food for her escape.

Her smile disappeared when Cameron entered the room. He looked past her as if she wasn’t there. He had combed his tousled hair, shaved the stubble from his face, and put on fresh clothes. As he stood in the doorway, dressed in fitted pants tucked into gleaming boots and a soft white shirt open at the collar, he reminded her of a cover model for the paperback historical romances she had trouble keeping in stock on her bookstore shelves. Regret that she hadn’t met him under different circumstances washed through her.

“Please bring my breakfast to the study,” he ordered the housekeeper, “and see that I’m not disturbed this morning. I want to bring my journals up to date.”

Before Mrs. Givens could reply, he was gone. Celia took a last bite of toast, then cleared her dishes from the table.

“I’ll have your basket packed in two shakes of a lamb’s tail,” the housekeeper promised.

Celia descended the veranda stairs from the kitchen and headed toward the outbuildings where the privy stood.

Get me out of here she prayed, and I will never take hot running water and flushing toilets for granted ever again.

Before entering, she carefully checked the small structure for spiders and snakes.

When she exited the outbuilding, she glanced beyond the garden. Cameron’s sailboat lay tied to the pier.

So far, so good.

She returned to the kitchen, collected the basket Mrs. Givens had filled with enough food for two, and crept past the study and up the stairs to her room. There she removed Mrs. Givens’s skirt and blouse, pulled on her shorts and T-shirt, and tied her sneakers. From the veranda, she could see Noah, still excavating sand on the beach.

She retrieved her basket and hurried downstairs, past the closed doors that sheltered Cameron, and out the front door.

Mrs. Givens was belting out a hymn in the kitchen as she worked. Celia darted through the garden and onto the pier. The tide was in, the boat rode high in the water, and she climbed easily on board and cast off the lines.

She shoved the sailboat away from the dock, raised the mainsail, and guided the boat north. The sails captured the wind, and the boat skimmed along the water between Solitaire and a key to the east, out of sight of the house and of Noah on the beach. When another key blocked Solitaire from view, she sailed west into the open waters of the gulf.

Both Cameron and Mrs. Givens had said Key West was the closest town, but she couldn’t be certain. Without instruments or a radio, she feared that if she headed south, she’d steer too far west and end up in Cuba or head across the gulf toward the Yucatán peninsula.

Even if Solitaire was at the southernmost tip of the state, a day’s sailing north along the coast should bring her at least as far as Everglades City, where she could hire a fishing guide to return Cameron’s boat, and, more important, rent a car to drive home.

She panicked for a moment when she realized she had no money or credit cards, then breathed easier as she remembered her bank had branches all over the state, and with her memorized account number, she could withdraw the funds she’d need. She threw back her head, drinking in the sunshine, salt air, and the taste of freedom. After a harrowing few days, everything was going to work out all right.

If Cameron should attempt to come after her in the skiff she had noticed along the shore, he’d probably head south, thinking she’d struck out for Key West. By the time he realized she’d traveled in the opposite direction, she’d be on Interstate 75, halfway home to Clearwater.

She continued north, maintaining a course parallel to the shoreline that marked the western edge of the Everglades, but keeping far enough out to avoid sandbars. After raising the jib, she settled back in the stern, guiding the tiller with one hand, while she raided Mrs. Givens’s picnic basket with the other for a ripe, sweet mango. Running before the wind, the sloop sliced through the aquamarine waters. If the breeze held, she should reach civilization near sundown.

Her only companions were the gulls that swooped to land on the deck, hoping for a crumb from her basket, the frigate birds circling on the air currents high above and a trio of porpoises that played in the boat’s wake. The sky seemed bluer, the water clearer, and the fish and birds more bountiful than she had ever seen them. She attributed her increased awareness of the beauty of nature to her earlier brush with death and today’s heady taste of freedom.

Surrounded by glorious peacefulness, she thought back to the reason she’d sailed off into the gulf a few days before. She’d needed time and space to decide what to do about Darren.

As soon as she returned home, she would contact the police and tell them of Mrs. Seffner’s accusations. In the meantime, she could only pray Darren wouldn’t be waiting on her doorstep, demanding an explanation.

Or, worse yet, prepared to exact revenge for his embarrassment and his loss of her inheritance. She could recall now flashes of temper that he’d managed to keep under control during their engagement. Would her run from the church have pushed him over the edge to violence?

Suddenly the joy vanished from the day. She was sailing from one problem straight into the arms of another.

Thinking of arms, she recalled Cameron Alexander and the excitement his touch had sent coursing through her when she’d stumbled against him on the dock yesterday. Darren had never affected her that way. She’d been attracted to Darren because he’d seemed safe and predictable.

Cameron Alexander was neither.

No matter. Both men would be history soon enough, with Cameron hidden away on Solitaire, and Darren, she hoped, out of her life for good. With her rotten track record with men, maybe she should become an old maid, devoting her life to her bookstore, wearing long black dresses, her hair in a bun and gold-rimmed reading glasses. She’d adopt an aloof, overweight cat to complete her image.

The wind changed, snatching the sail and threatening to capsize the boat. Maybe she should just pay attention to her sailing.

The sun dropped closer to the horizon. She had finished the food in the basket and drunk the tea and water, but she had yet to see any signs of civilization. What she did see filled her with apprehension. The sky had turned a sickly green and filled with ominous cumulus thunderheads. A storm was brewing. October was part of the peak hurricane season in Florida. Celia hadn’t heard a weather forecast in days, and for all she knew, the clouds bearing down on her now could be a tropical storm.

Or a hurricane.

She cut her course closer to shore, hoping to catch a glimpse of a fishing camp where she could take shelter.

“Damn you, Cameron Alexander,” she yelled into the growing wind, “if you’d taken me to Key West as I asked you, I’d be in a car on my way home now instead of stranded in a storm.”

The longer she searched for a place to ride out the storm, the greater her anger grew.

“You needn’t have stayed in Key West,” she shouted above the snap of the sails. “You could’ve just dropped me off and gone on your way. How much trouble would that have been, you golden-eyed, muscle-bound—”

A ferocious downdraft of wind caught the sails, heeled the boat to its side, and jerked the words from her mouth as she pitched into the turbulent water.

CAMERON STRUGGLED TO concentrate on his journals. He hadn’t brought them up to date since before the storm that had washed Celia Stevens onto his beach. He couldn’t erase her lovely face from his mind or deny his admiration for her pluck and courage. Women he had known in London would have taken to their beds for months after experiencing what she’d been through. But she had raised her chin and stiffened her back and refused to admit defeat. Would she resign herself to circumstances before Captain Biggins arrived or continue to fight him every step of the way?

The door to his study flew open and banged against the wall. Mrs. Givens stood on the threshold as if the hounds of hell were at her heels.

“What is it?” he said. “Have I been discovered? Are the authorities here?”

“It’s the girl.” Her face glowed red above her apron, and he feared for her health.

“Sit down and catch your breath.” He went to her, took her arm, and led her to the leather armchair by the window. “Now, what about the girl?”