Dominic's Child

by Catherine Spencer

  “You can’t go down the aisle empty-handed and alone!”

  About the Author

  Books by Catherine Spencer

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  EPILOGUE

  Copyright

  “You can’t go down the aisle empty-handed and alone!”

  “I know,” Sophie said, holding out her arms for her son and pressing a kiss on his downy head.

  If the guests at the Casson-Winter wedding happened to notice that the mother of the bride carried the bouquet intended for her daughter, they appeared not to care. They were too delighted by the sight of the bride carrying her infant son down the aisle to meet his father at the altar.

  “It seemed the right thing to do,” Sophie whispered when she reached Dominic’s side. “Ryan should be part of this, not just an onlooker. We’re a family, after all.”

  FROM HERE TO PATERNITY—romance novels that feature fantastic men who eventually make fabulous fathers. Some seek paternity, some have it thrust upon them, all will make it—whether they like it or not!

  CATHERINE SPENCER, once an English teacher, fell into writing through eavesdropping on a conversation about Harlequin romances. Within two months she changed careers and sold her first book to Harlequin Mills & Boon in 1984. She moved to Canada from England thirty years ago and lives in Vancouver. She is married to a Canadian and has four grown children—two daughters and two sons—plus three dogs and a cat. In her spare time she plays the piano, collects antiques and grows tropical shrubs.

  Books by Catherine Spencer

  HARLEQUIN PRESENTS

  1406—THE LOVING TOUCH

  1587—NATURALLY LOVING

  1682—ELEGANT BARBARIAN

  1812—THAT MAN CALLAHANI

  HARLEQUIN ROMANCE

  3138—WINTER ROSES

  3348—LADY BE MINE

  3365—SIMPLY THE BEST

  Don’t miss any of our special offers. Write to us at the following address for information on our newest releases.

  Harlequin Reader Service

  U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

  Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont L2A 5X3

  CATHERINE SPENCER

  Dominic’s Child

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

  MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  For Grace Green with love and gratitude for her loyalty and support.

  CHAPTER ONE

  SOPHIE knew at once who it was rapping on her hotel room door in that imperious “Don’t keep me waiting” manner, partly, of course, because the chief of police had forewarned her that Dominic Winter was en route to St. Julian, but also because there was in the summons nothing of the islanders’ discreet tap tap that begged the favor of admittance.

  Instead, this was the peremptory crack of bone on wood—the command of a superior being to one of lesser stature. If he’d bellowed, “Open the door, woman, and let me in!” his message could not have been clearer.

  For all that she’d been expecting him, the proof of Dominic Winter’s arrival had Sophie starting up out of the chair in a flurry of agitation. The sound of his knock seemed indecently loud somehow, and not at all fitting to the somber gravity of the occasion.

  On her way to answer him, she made an unplanned stop before the mirror, though why she bothered escaped her. She knew her hair was perfectly in place, her attire as suitably subdued as could be achieved, given the sort of clothes she’d brought with her.

  Perhaps it was because she needed to be sure that nothing in her face gave her away. Of course she was upset, saddened; under the circumstances, that was to be expected. But there was more. There’d always been something more where Dominic Winter was concerned, and that was what he must never suspect.

  He strode into the room and, without the slightest concession to civil good manners, said in a tone as forbiddingly cold as his name, “Well, I hope you’re happy with what you’ve done, Ms. Casson. My fiancée is dead and her parents are shattered.”

  “It was an accident,” she heard herself reply defensively, and wondered why she didn’t just set him straight and have done with it. Whatever other guilty secrets she harbored, culpability in Barbara’s death was not among them. But one didn’t launch into a diatribe about a dead woman’s shortcomings, not to the man who’d hoped to marry her in another few months and certainly not within seconds of his arriving at the scene of her untimely demise. There would be opportunity enough for him to learn the details leading up to the accident later, when he’d recovered a little from the shock and from the draining exhaustion of travel.

  If Sophie was prepared to show a little sensitivity, however, Dominic Winter was not. “You might call it an accident,” he declared flatly, “but I’ve yet to be convinced that you aren’t guilty of criminal negligence—in which case ‘manslaughter’ would be a more accurate term, or perhaps even ‘murder’.”

  Sophie prided herself on being a capable, independent sort of woman. Going weak at the knees when someone tried to intimidate her simply wasn’t her style. But she felt the blood drain from her face at his intimation. “Mr. Winter,” she said, backing away from him unsteadily, “I was nowhere near Barbara when she died. In fact, I was completely unaware of her plans on Wednesday, and if you don’t believe me then I suggest you check my alibi with Chief Inspector Montand, who is perfectly satisfied that I am in no way to blame for what happened to her.”

  “But I am not Chief Inspector Montand, Ms. Casson, and I do hold you to blame. You encouraged Barbara to come away with you. If you had not, she would be alive today.”

  What could she say that didn’t sound like an excuse? Sophie bit her lip and turned toward the louvered doors that led to the balcony. Outside, the entire world seemed bent on the celebration of life. Everything, from the surf rolling rhythmically up the pale gold crescent of beach to the sultry sway of the coconut palms fringing the hotel grounds, seemed to echo the calypso beat of the everpresent steel band.

  A scarlet hibiscus, shot full of burgundy fire from the sun, flamed next to an overpoweringly sweet-scented frangipani. Macaws perched on the backs of unoccupied sun chaises, brazenly flaunting their plumage.

  But what she had found breathtakingly lovely only two days before struck Sophie now as obscene. How could there be death in the midst of such vibrant life? Tragedy did not marry easily with the carnival atmosphere that was St. Julian’s stock-in-trade.

  Closing her eyes, she struggled to find the words to ease Dominic Winter’s pain. Because she knew he must be hurting, even though she’d noticed that he hadn’t included himself among those shattered by Barbara’s death. Or was that wishful thinking on her part? Would she have preferred him not to care?

  Ashamed, she shut out the question just as, over the past ten weeks, she’d learned to shut out other inappropriate thoughts concerning this man. “I did not coerce Barbara into accompanying me, Mr. Winter,” she said at last. “It was entirely her idea. In fact, she was so insistent she needed a change of scene to get her through the coming winter that if she hadn’t come here with me, she’d undoubtedly have run off somewhere else.”

  “And you never thought to question the logic of that?”

  “Why should I?” she cried, stung by his unremitting air of condemnation. “She was an adult, capable of making up her own mind, and I har
dly knew her. If anyone should have recognized that she was... highly strung and wildly impetuous, it should have been you.”

  At that, the antagonism in his eyes faded somewhat and it occurred to Sophie that, for the only time in their acquaintance, he allowed her to see past the glower to the man inside. It also occurred to her how seldom she’d seen him smile, even in the early days of her association with Barbara when he’d presumably had every reason to be happy.

  Sophie had met him in mid-September when she first began working at the Wexler estate, although perhaps “met” wasn’t quite the word to describe his remote nod of acknowledgment when she had been introduced to him. Her first impression had been that he was a snob, the kind of man who found it beneath his dignity to treat an employee, whether his or someone else’s, with the same respect he accorded to his own kind—even when, as in her case, the employee was a professional whose framed credentials attested to her expertise.

  It was only later that she wondered if he made a particular point of maintaining a safe distance from her, a notion based more on feminine instinct than hard fact. Because, despite his apparent uninterest in her comings and goings, she’d several times caught him spying on her, even when she was at the far end of the property and about as far away from him as she could get. She’d look up and there he’d be at one of the long windows, or standing in the shade of the pergola that connected the Wexlers’ handsome Georgian-style mansion to the rose gardens below the terrace.

  Tall and authoritative, with astonishingly beautiful eyes that, depending on his mood, changed from rich deep jade to brilliant emerald ice, he was a man of presence and impossible to ignore. She found him disturbingly attractive yet formidably remote. She’d had no more idea what went on in that head of his than she could have unraveled the mystery of the sphinx. He had remained an enigma, despite her clandestine fascination with him—until now, when tragedy fractured his reserve and rendered him marginally more human.

  “Barbara was like a child,” he said, pacing back and forth across the tiled floor, “incapable of recognizing her own mortality. If she had told me ahead of time that she planned to sneak off with you, I’d have done my level best to stop her. And if I had not been able to succeed, I would have warned you to keep an eye on her. What I don’t understand is why, if, as you claim, you hardly knew her, you decided to share a holiday with her.”

  “It was a last-minute thing,” Sophie explained. “Usually, I travel with my friend, Elaine, but she came down with the chicken pox three days before we were due to fly down here. I happened to mention it to Barbara and she immediately offered to buy Elaine’s ticket. I saw no reason to quarrel with that, especially since Elaine hadn’t bothered to take out cancellation insurance and stood to lose rather a lot of money. But I did make it clear to Barbara that, once we arrived here, we’d go our separate ways for most of the time.”

  In less than a blink of his remarkable eyes, Dominic Winter’s antagonism rolled back into place again, swathed in biting sarcasm. “In other words, Barbara became an inconvenience once she’d served the purpose of averting a financial loss for your friend. Allow me to say, Ms. Casson, that I am overwhelmed by so commendable an attitude. You’re obviously all heart!”

  “This is a working vacation for me, Mr. Winter. I couldn’t afford the luxury of whiling away the time the way Barbara did. She understood that. If you choose to put the worst possible interpretation on my actions, there’s little I can do about it.”

  “And even less that you care.”

  Oh, she cared, more than he could begin to guess! But she’d be damned if she’d let it show.

  “Exactly,” she retorted, then made matters worse by compounding the lie with an even greater untruth. “Your opinion of me matters not one iota and if that offends you, Mr. Winter, perhaps the knowledge that I’m singularly unimpressed by you, too, will even the score between us. I don’t know quite how I expected you to behave today but if you’d shown a glimmer of compassion, I might have felt more kindly disposed to tolerate your insults. As it is, I can’t quite shake the feeling that perhaps it was the thought of spending the rest of her life with you that drove Barbara to behave so rashly last Wednesday.”

  He had the kind of skin that glowed with sun-kissed radiance regardless of the season, but at her words his face grew bleached with shock. Equally appalled, Sophie stared at him, her gaze fused with his. The man was clearly in pain. What was it about him that compelled her to add to his misery?

  She knew. She’d always known, right from the start: she was afraid of him.

  She’d never dared explore the reasons. It was enough that, from the first moment she’d set eyes on him, she’d felt a stirring of hunger for something—someone—who wasn’t hers to have. And so, out of self-defense, she’d manufactured a dislike of him, and it had worked well enough until now when his chilly reserve slipped.

  Perhaps it was as well that, at that moment, the phone rang and provided them both with a distraction. Certainly she was glad of the excuse to turn away from him and busy herself picking up the receiver.

  She listened a moment, murmured assent, then hung up. “That was Chief Inspector Montand,” she told Dominic. “He’s downstairs in the hotel foyer and would like to speak to us.”

  “Why us and not just me? If you’re as blamelessly detached from this tragedy as you claim to be, what more can he possibly have to say to you?”

  She shrugged, calling up that old, contrived antipathy to arm herself against him. It was easy enough to do, given his miserable attitude. “Ask him. I don’t make the rules around here.”

  Yet she hated the way she sounded, so hard and uncaring, as though the fact that a young woman had died didn’t matter as long as that person wasn’t Sophie Casson.

  It was almost comforting to hark back to Wednesday evening when the wreckage of the Laser had been found and the awful truth of Barbara’s fate had begun to take shape. Sophie hadn’t been flippant then. Her initial reaction of paralyzed disbelief had given way to near hysteria. It had taken a sedative prescribed by the hotel doctor to calm her down. Not even Dominic Winter could have doubted the sincerity of her distress that night.

  Today, however, was a different matter. Contempt curling his incredibly sexy mouth, he flung wide the door and with an extravagantly courteous flourish ushered her into the hall outside. “Well, let’s not keep the good inspector waiting, Ms. Casson. I’m sure you have more interesting things planned for this afternoon than rehashing the tedious minutiae of Barbara’s death.”

  He is suffering, Sophie intoned silently. Remember that and refuse to enter into hurtful mind games with him, no matter how much he goads you.

  Spine straight, head high, she swept ahead of him. Her navy-and-white-striped skirt fluttered around her calves in concealing folds but her low-backed white blouse with its halter neckline left her feeling woefully underdressed. She could almost feel Dominic’s glare branding her bare shoulders with the stigmata of his disapproval.

  She had reached the top of the sweeping staircase before he caught up with her. His hand cupped her elbow, a cool, impersonal touch that stemmed less from concern for her safe descent than from the habit of inbred good manners. She was tall, almost five feet eight inches, but beside him she felt small. Small and defiant, like a child trying to match wits with a punitive uncle. But she would not give him the satisfaction of knowing that. There would be no more snide, insulting remarks, no insinuations of blame—at least not from her and not for the next several days.

  And after that? Well, he’d no longer be even remotely involved in her life and she would be free to forget him—if she could.

  At the far end of the foyer, St. Julian’s chief of police, immaculate in white Bermudas and short-sleeved white shirt, tucked his pith helmet under one arm and snapped to attention at their approach. “Inspector Montand at your service, monsieur. I am sorry to welcome you to our island under such unhappy circumstances.”

  Dominic nodded and came straig
ht to the point. “Have you found my fiancée’s body yet, Montand?”

  If the inspector was offended by so blunt an approach, he didn’t allow it to show. Ebony features impassive, he replied in the melodious island accent that Sophie found enchanting, “Sadly, we have not. The ocean currents beyond the reef, you understand, and the sharks...” His shrug, half Gallic, half native Caribbean, would have been comical at any other time. “We do not expect to find her, monsieur.”

  “Her parents will find that very difficult to accept.”

  “I understand. S’il vous plaît...” He extended a pale palm in the direction of a trio of rattan chairs grouped beneath one of the many whirling ceiling fans. “Perhaps we could talk where it is cooler and more private?”

  “How is it,” Dominic asked when they were seated, “that no one thought to question my fiancée’s ability to handle one of the hotel sailboats alone? It strikes me that the staff must bear some responsibility for her death.”

  Inspector Montand’s gaze flickered beseechingly in Sophie’s direction. She looked away and stared at an arrangement of tropical fruit on a side table, unwilling to help him out of what she knew to be a difficult spot.

  The plain fact of the matter was that, practically from the moment she’d set foot on St. Julian, there had been any number of warnings leveled Barbara’s way, and from more than one source, too.

  It is not customary for unescorted ladies to behave so freely with employees, mademoiselle...

  Barbara, you can’t appear in public in that bikini! You’ll offend the locals...

  Mademoiselle, it is unwise to venture alone at night into the old section of town...

  But Barbara had willfully ignored them all and instead seemed driven to excess in everything she’d done. She’d flirted outrageously with every male in sight; she’d partied with a frenzy that bordered on desperation. And, most recently, she’d taken to staying out all night, slinking back to the room she shared with Sophie just as the sun was rising. Her behavior had been downright embarrassing—not to mention downright odd for a woman supposedly in love and soon to be married.