by Helen Conrad
“I’ll just call it rude,” she said instead. There was something about this man that was not sitting well with her. He was a little too knowing, a little too arrogant--as if he knew what she was thinking and thought it deserved a sneer. “You’re not exactly tactful, are you?”
He shrugged, the light glinting in his eyes. “Why so touchy? Did I come too close to the truth with my analysis?”
She took a deep breath and held back the insults that came to mind—even though he deserved them.
“Karl is a wonderful man—sweet, gentle, kind.” She’d been telling herself this repeatedly for the last twenty-four hours, ever since she’d decided she was going to marry him.
“Yes, he is all those things.” His grin was back. “He’s also no match for you.”
So much the better, a small voice inside whispered, but she shrugged it away. “You don’t even know me.”
“That,” he said, almost under his breath, “is where you’re wrong.”
She thought she caught those words, but they didn’t make sense, so she ignored them. “Karl and I get along just fine.”
“How nice for both of you,” was his skeptical answer. For some reason, his cynicism infuriated her. She wanted desperately to do something to wipe that smug look off his handsome face.
“We’re getting married.”
Now, why had she said that? She regretted it before the words had stopped rolling off her tongue. Even though he’d been suggesting that they marry for years, Karl didn’t know about her current plans. What if he should first hear about them from this arrogant man? What would he think? She only hoped Jack was heading for an island very far from Lelei after he dropped her off.
Concerned as she was with her own regrets, she didn’t notice the hard look that had come over Jack’s face. He turned away from her, looking far out over the blue-gray sea.
At least her wild statement had served to quiet the questions. Summer stretched out and leaned over the water, letting her fingers skim in the cool, silver waves.
“Be careful you don’t lose your rings,” his gruff voice commented, but she paid no heed. Rings were no big deal. It was shares in Davis Oil, and how to hang on to her controlling interest that consumed all her thoughts, all her plans. And marriage to Karl was going to help her keep what was hers.
“What’s the name of your boat?” she asked idly, not having paid any attention when they’d boarded.
“Windskimmer,” he replied.
She smiled down into the deep green sea. That was a name she liked. It fit the way they were racing along, even if it wasn’t the wind that was propelling them.
“Windskimmer,” she whispered to herself, then suddenly thought of the name her boat had carried. “Pandora’s Box,” she’d called it. And her father had teasingly called her Pandora from then on, whenever she had shown her impatience to get out into the world. A ride in her sloop had always seemed to open a sphere of clean sensation, a sort of heavenly space above the world, away from the mundane, the baser things of life.
“Windskimmer,” she whispered again, and closed her eyes, throwing back her head to catch the breeze on her face. Then leaning back, breasts thrust forward, she let her hair flash out like a silky sail behind her.
She knew he was watching her. Men always did. But she wasn’t going to let it inhibit the pleasure she took in stretching this way before the wind. If she had a shred of modesty about her, she would have flushed at least, knowing how his gaze was examining every inch of her displayed body. But she didn’t flush. Her action was almost defiant.
“Frigid!” Wayne had stabbed her with the day before. The funny thing was, he was probably right. Today should have been their wedding day. She fumbled in her mind for the Dallas time, wondering if the wedding would have been over by now. The happy couple, racing off on their honeymoon. Racing off to hell.
A shudder convulsed her, and she straightened, eyes still closed. She felt his nearness before his hand gripped her shoulder, so she was ready to pull away, almost in revulsion.
“Don’t touch me,” she snapped out, like a cornered jungle cat, her brilliant eyes glaring into his flat black gaze.
“Are you cold?” he asked quietly, though he knew she couldn’t possibly be. Even here, out on the ocean, the temperature was high, the humidity heavy.
She shook her head, but hugged her arms close in against her chest. His touch had startled her but she wished she hadn’t let him see how much.
“How long does it take to get to Lelei?” she asked warily.
“We’ll make it in about half an hour,” he answered. “I’ll get a blanket from below if you’re cold.”
He believed she was sick or something, she thought, amused. She could see it in his mocking eyes. Well, maybe he was right. Heartsick. No, that wouldn’t do. There were many who said she had no heart. It must be something else that was ailing.
She looked out over the choppy sea, not answering him, refusing to meet his eyes. She would be with Karl soon. Karl, so sweet, so loving. She knew he would be prepared to bind her wounds.
Wayne had been cruel, but she was lucky the argument had broken out before the wedding. If it had waited until after, things would have been much worse.
Wayne Bullock was tall, reed thin, and almost as old as her father. Marriage to him should have been the perfect solution to her problems. As a senior vice-president of Davis Oil, the company her father had worked his heart out to develop, he understood the oil business. He’d have made such a good partner.
The trouble was, he wanted to be more than a partner. She had thought he, of all people, understood the way it had to be. When she brought the subject up, he’d always shrug it off, as though sure that there would be no problem. But when she’d finally gone up to his office in the steel and glass skyscraper in downtown Dallas with the agreement, all legal and ready for him to sign, he’d balked.
“Why, honey,” he’d said, “this gives me no right to any say at all. I can’t sign this. What’s yours is soon going to be ours.”
He thought he had her in a corner. He knew about the will, about the deadline. And he knew she hadn’t been dating anyone in months but him. So he thought he could dictate the terms. And then the man had the gall to try to win her over with a clumsy embrace. When she’d pulled angrily away he’d yelled at her.
“You frigid bitch,” he had accused, his face contorted with hurt rage. “You’ve got a deep freeze where your heart oughta’ be.” He’d grabbed her in a painful grip. “But I’m going to tame you yet, girl,” he’d sneered, and then his mouth had smashed down upon hers.
Distaste rose in her throat at the memory. She pressed her long fingers against her lips, trying to erase his image from her mind.
A sideways glance told her that Jack was still watching her, but when she turned her gaze fully on him, expecting to find melting admiration, she was surprised.
His eyes were like two chips of obsidian, flat and hard and gleaming with something very close to malice. She paused, lips parted, startled by the intensity of his glare, but he turned away before she could read its meaning.
A sudden thought came to her. “You never did make your telephone call,” she said lightly, and it was his turn to look startled.
“Telephone call?” he asked warily. “What telephone call?” His eyes were fixed upon her.
“The one you told the clerk at the dock you’d stopped to make.”
He seemed to relax before her eyes. “Oh.” The hard line of his mouth actually broke into a half smile. “That call. It doesn’t matter.” His eyes skittered over her face. “You must have been eavesdropping.”
To her own surprise, she grinned spontaneously. “A bad habit of mine,” she agreed. “One of many.” She threw him a glance that was almost impish. “I also learned all about what you think of marriage.”
When he smiled, his eyes were creased with laugh lines, and she was reminded of his rich, rumbling laugh. “Guilty, I’m afraid,” he said. “Marriage is one institution
I have managed to avoid. Though my mother’s been fighting the good fight for years.”
“Isn’t it maddening how they do that?” she agreed, warmed by this common thread between the two of them. “My father was the same way. Why, he even ...” Her voice trailed off, and she looked away in annoyance.
She was doing it again. Here she had almost blurted out the conditions of her father’s will to a perfect stranger. What was the matter with her? It had to be the heat—the dull, heavy heat. It was rotting her mind.
“So you even avoid going to other people’s weddings,” she said instead. “What I don’t understand about this wonderful wedding everyone is supposed to be attending today is, why is it used to explain the fact that there are no boats for hire?”
He leaned back, his white shirt open at the neck, and she found her gaze slipping down to examine the dark hair that curled up around the opening. Looking at it gave her a little frisson of pleasure, like bubbles in champagne, that surprised her. She didn’t usually react to a man that way. She was going to have to be careful around this one.
“On the surface that would seem a puzzle,” he was saying, though he’d noticed her eyes widen as she’d looked at his open shirt, and a slight smile was his reaction. “But you see, this is a very special wedding. It marks the coupling of the most handsome young scion of the old trading class with the most beautiful and charming native Samoan girl on the island. Such a special wedding deserves a special ceremony. So the young couple hit upon a real blockbuster—a wedding at sea.”
“At sea,” Summer mused. “Sounds romantic.”
“Utterly.” Was there a faint vein of sarcasm in his reply? “All the eager participants are drifting out into the harbor in boats laden with perfumed flowers to witness the rites of cleaving. The blossom-laden boats are circling around the happy couple on their barge, even as we speak.”
The picture that his words conjured up charmed Summer. “It sounds wonderful,” she breathed, her eyes wide with delight.
“I’m sure it is,” he answered dryly.
“Is it an old island custom?” she asked.
“Hardly.” His voice grated. “It’s very modern and chic. All the young, ‘with-it’ swingers of the islands are attending. The festivities are going on for three days.”
“Then why didn’t you go?” She was sure she wouldn’t have missed it for the world.
But his short laugh scorned her enthusiasm. “In the first place, I’m not one of the ‘young set’ anymore. And I’ve never been able to submerge my individuality enough to be considered truly ‘with-it.’ The whole thing is a waste of time.”
Her eyes narrowed as she pictured the scene. “It sounds lovely. I would have gone.”
“I’m sure you would have. But then, you’ll be having a wedding of your own soon, won’t you?”
Summer bit her reddened lips as her blonde hair blew across her face. Why had she ever said anything? She had better try to clear it up.
“Listen,” she said hesitantly. “I was a little hasty telling you that. Actually—“
He stared at her, waiting, and she knew he wasn’t going to be the least bit helpful. She was going to have to do it all on her own.
“Actually, we aren’t officially engaged at the moment.” There was no change in his face, and she found herself talking faster and faster, trying to force a response.
“You see, Karl asked me to marry him long ago. I couldn’t at the time, and I put him off. In fact, I was engaged to another man for awhile. But now…now I’m ready.”
“How do you know he still is?” was the quiet question.
“Oh!” She laughed, waving the query away. Every letter had told her so. And when they’d last been together, Karl had been so crazy about her, he’d been ready to throw himself in front of a stampeding herd of longhorns if she asked him to.
He’d been a roommate of her cousin Skip in college, a good friend who’d spent many holidays with her family. When the time came for him to leave Dallas, he’d been unable to face not seeing Summer again. He was something of a pest at the time, but now he looked like a safe haven.
She’d always liked him. He was certainly kinder than any other man she knew. He was always a gentleman with her, never trying to force things she didn’t feel prepared to share. And now she was prepared to marry him.
It had crossed her mind that Karl probably deserved better than a woman who would never be able to consider herself head over heels in love with him. But he knew how she was, and he still wanted her.
Besides, she had to get married within the next six months. If she didn’t, she would lose control of her father’s company. And that company was the only thing that had mattered to her since her father’s death.
Yes, if Karl still wanted her, she would marry him.
“Not that I’m going to tell him that’s why I’m here right off the bat,” she assured the dark man. “I do have another reason.”
Under his cynical gaze, she rummaged in her huge shoulder bag and pulled out the loose leaves of a thick manuscript, complete with photo illustrations.
“You see, my Daddy was an oil man, one of the old fashioned kind who did everything. He started out as a wildcatter, drilling wells, and built it all into a good, solid little company. But all his life he had a hobby.” She waved the manuscript under his nose. “Seashells. Can you believe it?” She couldn’t herself. Her father’s love of the tiny, delicate things had always been a family joke.
“Well, a few years ago, he started traveling everywhere, to all sorts of Pacific Islands, collecting shells and doing research for this book he wanted to write. He went to Hawaii, Tahiti, Micronesia. But one place he never visited was Samoa. He had that section all outlined, ready to go, too.” He’d been planning to come out and visit Karl in order to finish things up. “It’s just so sad that he didn’t have a chance to complete it.”
Jack had taken the pile of paper from her and was leafing through it.
“He died two years ago. A sudden heart attack.”
Her voice broke and she looked away, fighting back tears. Darn it all. She was usually so good at hiding her emotions, but when it came to the loss of her father, they poured out all over the place. He was the only man she’d ever truly loved and losing him had broken her heart to pieces. Somehow, she had to get that gaping hole in her soul fixed up. She couldn’t spend her whole life walking around like a wounded waif. Taking a deep breath, she turned back, clear-eyed and ready again.
“So I thought I would just fill in his Samoan portion for him and get it all tidied up for publication.”
He was studying the photographs, a cold, critical slant to his gaze. As he flipped from one page to another, she watched impatiently, wondering if he bought her story, anxious for one little sign.
“You can see the love on every page,” he said suddenly, raising his dark head to stare piercingly into her turquoise eyes. “What makes you think you can do patch work on this?”
She shrugged, stung and defensive. “It’s just silly old shells, after all,” she said quickly, then winced, because she didn’t mean it and shouldn’t have said it. What was it about this man that made her feel like she was stumbling around in the dark?
He continued to stare, stripping her of her protective covering, going for the bare bones in a way that sent a shudder squirming down her back. Just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore and had decided to say something biting to change the mood, he spoke, his voice so soft she could hardly make out the words.
“It’s a strange coincidence, but my father was interested in a similar thing.”
She waited, somehow knowing she was not expected to respond.
“Have you ever heard of the Conus?” he asked, his eyes deadly, but his lips curled in a contemptuous smile.
She shook her head.
“The Conus has one of the loveliest shells in the Pacific, but it also harbors a sting that will quickly paralyze and kill.” He smiled again. “That was my father�
��s specialty. Live Conuses, or more correctly, Coni.”
Despite the heat, Summer’s skin was crawling. There was something cold as death about the way he said that, about the look in his eyes. But before she could pursue it, he turned and gestured ahead.
“Lelei,” he announced. “We have arrived.”
Chapter Two
Once the island was sighted, they came upon it quickly. It rose like a gift from the sea—a steep, dark-walled mountain that reached for the clouds, surrounded by golden sand beaches and blue-green lagoons protected by white-water reefs.
Summer watched it as they approached, unable to look away from the lovely sight. High along the side of the peak, she thought she spotted a streak of cascading silver.
“A waterfall?” she asked excitedly, laughing into Jack’s dark face. He nodded and she ignored his lack of a smile.
“It’s so beautiful!” she cried, unable to suppress her joy in the island. “Can anything really be that beautiful?”
She looked at him again and found him staring down at her as though taking her spontaneous exclamation to mean more than she’d meant it to.
He cut the engine and they cruised slowly in through a gap in the reef.
“Where is everybody?” she asked as she scanned the seashore. Coconut palms were everywhere, but there was no evidence of the thatched huts she’d expected to see.
“We came in on the back side of the island,” he answered quietly. “Most people live in the village on the other side. This is the swimming beach, where the Sunday picnics are held. There’s no one anywhere near right now.”
“They’re all at the wedding!” she cried happily. “And we are the only ones here.” She looked down into the silvery green water, feeling her heavy hair lying damp with heat against her neck and she longed for a swim. “That water looks so good I could jump in, clothes and all,” she said carelessly.
He switched off the engine and the little yacht slowly glided to a stop, water still slapping the sides.
“Why not?” he said softly.
Something pricked at the back of her neck. “Oh, I don’t really want to ruin this dress.”
