Roarke's Kingdom

by Sandra Marton

  ROARKE’S KINGDOM

  Sandra Marton

  ROARKE’S KINGDOM

  Copyright © 2016 Sandra Marton

  Originally published 1991

  Completely Revised and Rewritten 2016

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Dedication

  This book is dedicated to all my wonderful fans and readers—and especially to my Scouts. You know who you are. I love you all.

  Roarke Campbell’s story was one of my first best-sellers. I loved the plot, the setting and the characters, and when I had the chance to rewrite the book completely, to make the story and characters fresh and relevant in today’s world, I jumped at it! I think I succeeded—I hope you’ll agree!

  Welcome to ROARKE’S KINGDOM.

  http://www.sandramarton.com

  https://www.facebook.com/SandraMartonAuthor

  Prologue

  He rose from the aquamarine sea in a burst of shimmering radiance. Water streamed from his body, drops glittering like tiny stars in the dark hair that thatched his muscled chest and arrowed down his flat belly.

  The tropical sun was hot on his skin, as warm as a woman’s caress. Slowly, deliberately, he lifted his face to it, eyes closed against the white-hot glare, willing himself to let go the accumulated tensions of the week.

  After a while he felt his muscles begin to loosen and relax. The combination of sea and sun was an irresistible panacea, but it was not the reason he came to this isolated place time and time again.

  He came because there were no intrusions, no harsh reminders of the world that he commanded. Here, no one scurried to do his bidding, no hypocrites smiled at his every joke or hung on his words with an almost laughable obsequiousness.

  The silence of this timeless place was a potent luxury. Only the boom and hiss of the surf as it beat against the white sand crescent that marked the seaward perimeter of his island reached his ears. There were no other sounds. No growling powerboats, no blaring music, no flickering television screens. Necessity dictated the presence of his iPhone, but the few people entrusted with its number knew better than to use it except in matters of grave urgency.

  This place, this tiny outcropping of rock, sand, and palms that rose from the Caribbean just off the coast of Puerto Rico, was Roarke Campbell’s private domain. It was his and his alone, and it had no rules but those he wished.

  Making the island his had not been easy, but he had not expected it to be.

  “Si, señor, we understand that you wish to buy Isla de la Pantera,” each successive government official had said patiently. “But it is not for sale.”

  Of course, in the end, it had been. Things always were—for a price. If there had been one great lesson in Roarke’s life, it was that.

  You could buy anything, if you had enough money.

  “Señor Campbell?”

  Roarke blinked and turned toward the shore. For a moment the light dazzled him and he shaded his eyes with his hands. A slow smile angled across his lips when he saw the woman standing on the sand, a squirming child in her arms.

  “Your daughter is awake,” she said in Spanish. “I told her that her Papa was here, but she wanted to be certain.”

  His smile broadened, softening the harsh planes and angles of his face, and he trotted quickly to the beach. The child laughed with joy as she went eagerly into his open arms.

  “Daddy here,” she said, and Roarke’s arms tightened around her.

  “Always,” he said, and for an instant the dark intensity was back in his eyes. “Always, sweetheart.”

  The little girl squealed happily as he hoisted her onto to his shoulders. A bittersweet joy rose within him as her hands clutched at his dark, wet hair.

  How could he have forgotten? There was something money couldn’t buy…

  The love of this child.

  His daughter.

  Roarke’s smile fled. Any other kind of love was as much for sale as Isla de la Pantera He knew that first hand. It was a lesson he had learned well.

  Chapter One

  Jennifer’s flight lifted into the Chicago sky just as a midwinter storm swept in from Canada. She had a last glimpse of a world turned white by snow and then thick clouds rolled across her window. Everything turned gray, as if a giant hand had suddenly wrapped the 737 in cotton batting.

  A woman in the seat across from hers laughed nervously as the plane was swallowed up in the weather. “What a day for flying,” she said to nobody in particular.

  Jennifer knotted her hands together in her lap. And what a day for your first ever flight, she thought. But at least the plane had gotten away. There’d been delay after delay while the weather built up until finally the only thing that had seemed more frightening than the lowering sky was the possibility that the flight to San Juan might be canceled.

  “It’s really rotten out there, isn’t it?”

  The pleasant male voice startled her. Jennifer looked up as a man eased into the empty aisle seat beside her. He was young, good-looking, and the smile he flashed was filled with equal parts strong white teeth, male assurance, and charm.

  She looked at the seatbelt sign, which was still on, and his smile took on a boyish dazzle.

  “I know, I know. I should have stayed put until it went off.” He settled beside her and bent his head toward hers. “But I saw this vacancy and I thought, here I am and there you are, with thousands of miles ahead of us…”

  “I know exactly what you thought.” Jennifer’s blue eyes were as cool as her voice. “And I’m afraid you’re wasting your time.”

  The man’s smile faltered a little. “Look, I’m not trying to—it’s just that it’s a long flight, and—”

  He fell silent as Jennifer opened her paperback and bent over the first page, her dark hair falling forward like a shield around her face. The letters tumbled before her eyes—she might as well have been reading Sanskrit. But she stared at them as if they made sense and finally her unwelcome visitor muttered something under his breath. She felt the seat shift. When she dared look up, he was gone.

  She closed the book and folded her hands over it. Her hands were trembling, which was ridiculous. Her heart was racing, too, and that was even crazier. This was a public place, packed with people, and the man had only been trying for an easy pickup.

  She knew all that. But when he’d said she looked lonely, sitting all by herself, she’d suddenly been tumbled back in time and instead of being on an airplane, she was sitting inside a Cadillac, parked under the trees at Boulder Hill with Craig Stevens at her side.

  A shudder raced through her. No, not at her side. He’d been all over her, his hands everywhere on her body, his mouth slippery on hers…

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is your Captain speaking. You’ll be happy to hear the weather in San Juan is warm and sunny, with the temperature at eighty-three degrees.” A faint cheer echoed through the cabin. “We’ve a strong tail wind, which means we should be landing twenty minutes ahead of time, and—”

  “Twenty minutes!” Someone laughed in the seat behind Jennifer’s. “Well, I suppose that’s something. You can’t sneer at an extra quarter of an hour in the sun, can you?”

  An extra quarter of an hour. Jennifer took a deep breath, put her head back, and closed her eyes. No, you couldn’t sneer at that. Not when you had only one hundred and twenty hours to make your life mean something.

  One hundred and twenty hou
rs. Only five days in which to find the child you’d given birth to and never seen again.

  When that was facing you, every minute counted.

  * * *

  Four hours later, Jennifer stood under the warmth of the tropical sun, blinking against the glare. It was as if she had stepped from one world into another, and it took a little getting used to.

  The travel agent had told her there’d be nothing to adapt to, but she’d been talking about the one-hour time difference and the fact that most islanders spoke English. She hadn’t been referring to the languorous heat or to the scent of flowers that seemed to drift on the air despite the taxis and buses fighting their way past the arrivals terminal at Isla Verde.

  “You’ll love Puerto Rico,” the woman had said as she handed over Jennifer’s airline tickets and hotel voucher. “The beaches, the hotels, the shopping—it’s a nonstop party, my dear. I just know you’ll have a lovely time.”

  Jennifer had smiled and said yes, she was sure she would. It had been simpler than telling the woman the truth, which was that the last thing she expected of the five days she could afford to spend in Puerto Rico was a lovely time.

  She was here to find L.R. Campbell, and she only had a business address and a fuzzy photo to go on. All she could really tell from the photo was that Campbell was middle-aged, with wire-rimmed glasses and thinning hair. He looked as she expected he would: like a respectable, responsible example of fatherhood.

  She had no photo of his wife, nor did she have his home address. The man guarded his privacy zealously; as it was, it had taken the private investigator she’d hired three days—three incredibly expensive days—to learn the little he had about L.R. Campbell.

  The cost had taken an alarmingly large bite out of Jennifer’s inheritance. Her mother’s medical bills had been staggering, the funeral costs high despite the simplicity of the casket. Settling those accounts had put an enormous dent in what little money she’d got from the life insurance policy and sale of the ramshackle house in which she’d grown up.

  And now she was here, in San Juan, with the situation still unresolved. Jennifer sighed as she shifted her suitcase from one hand to the other. The private investigator had been more than willing to get all the answers for her.

  “Listen, Miss Winters, you need to know where this guy lives? It’s no problem. I can be in San Juan Friday, bright and early, and be back in Chicago Sunday with the info.”

  “You mean, you have to go there yourself? Don’t you have friends? Contacts?”

  The man had grinned at her through a cloud of cigarette smoke. “I think maybe you’ve seen too many movies, Miss Winters. Who would I know in the Caribbean? Besides, you’d only end up paying the guy down there and maybe he’d string it out and give you nothin’. Believe me, it’s cheaper if I fly down myself. I’ll have everything you need in two, three days at the most. Okay?”

  Jennifer had done some rapid figuring. The trip would cost a small fortune, when you added up the cost of the investigator’s air fare, hotel, and meals. He’d probably need a rental car, too, and, of course, she’d still be paying his per diem. When he finally flew back with Campbell’s home address, she’d have to set out on the very same journey herself, with all the same costs, air fare and hotel and all the rest.

  “Thank you,” she’d said, “but I’ll handle it myself.”

  “Get the guy’s address?” The detective had laughed. “Sure. You go ahead. Do that, lady.”

  The airport bus pulled to the curb and the doors hissed open. Jennifer climbed the steps, found a seat, and hoisted her suitcase onto the rack. The man’s words had been condescending, but they hadn’t put her off. She knew where Campbell Enterprises was located, she knew what Campbell looked like. How hard would it be to seek out his office, wait until he left at the end of the day, and follow him home?

  She stared blindly out of the window as the bus belched a cloud of black exhaust fumes and shouldered its way into traffic.

  With a little luck her journey would come to its end soon. She would see, with her own eyes, the man and woman who had adopted her baby, she would see the house they lived in, and assure herself that Dr. Ronald’s promises that her daughter would be well-cared for and grow up loved and wanted were true.

  She wanted to believe it. But, deep in her heart, she never really had. That was why she was here now, to cast out the doubts that haunted her dreams, to see for herself that she had made the right choice.

  And if, by some small miracle, she caught a glimpse of her child along the way, she would cherish the moment for the rest of her life.

  * * *

  By the following day, Jennifer was desperate. She had misjudged everything, and the hands of the clock were racing away.

  She had envisaged Campbell’s company as housed in a narrow, pastel-colored building on a winding, palm-lined street. There would be a burnished brass plaque on the door and a long black limousine at the curb and, at the end of the day, L.R. Campbell, with his thinning hair and wire-rimmed spectacles, would step inside the car and be whisked away, with Jennifer following discreetly in a taxi.

  Reality shattered that illusion. There were sleepy little streets in San Juan, but not in Hato Rey, its modern commercial heart—and that was where she found the glass and concrete high-rise building with the address the investigator had given her. The only thing that bore any resemblance to what she’d imagined was the brass plaque on the door. Campbell’s, it said, in raised letters, and with a sinking heart Jennifer realized that the whole building—all fifteen stories of it—belonged to the one company.

  She took a deep breath. It would make finding one office—that of L.R. Campbell himself—more difficult, but hardly impossible. A glimpse of the man, just enough to imprint his face on her memory, and then she’d hurry back to the street and wait for closing time.

  Electronic doors hissed open automatically and she stepped into a pink marble lobby. There was an information desk opposite the elevator bank, and a polite but implacable security guard. You couldn’t get past the lobby floor unless you had an appointment, he told her. There were no exceptions.

  Jennifer said the first thing that came into her head. “Well, then, how do you apply for a job?”

  The guard smiled. “Ah, that is different, señorita. In that case, you must fill out this form.”

  “And then?”

  “And then you take it to the fourth floor, and hand it to the woman at the desk.”

  Jennifer scratched in quick answers to the employment questionnaire, then waved it in the air.

  “All done,” she said.

  The guard’s brows rose, but he shrugged and pointed to the elevator. Her heart pounded as she stepped inside and stared at the numbers on the control panel. Which one? she thought. Which one?

  The guard leaned toward her. “El cuarto piso,” he called. “The fourth floor, sí?”

  Jennifer swallowed. “Sí. Yes. I remember.”

  She hit the button, trying not to look as nervous as she felt. The doors slid shut, and the elevator began to rise.

  She knew instinctively that L.R. Campbell’s office would not be on the same floor as the personnel office, but she got out at the fourth floor anyway, just in case the guard was watching the lighted elevator panel. There was a desk ahead of her, but the woman seated at it was engrossed in the letter she was typing. Jennifer took a deep breath and began striding purposefully down the corridor toward the fire stairs. She was almost there when a voice called after her.

  “Señorita. Señorita? A dónde vás?”

  She turned slowly. The woman at the reception desk had risen; she was staring at her.

  “I—” Jennifer hesitated, then held out the employment application. “I was looking for Personnel. The guard said…”

  The woman motioned impatiently. “Have you filled everything in? Give it here, then.”

  There was no choice but to do as she’d been told. Jennifer retraced her steps slowly and handed the form to the w
oman.

  “What kind of job were you looking for? Not that it matters—Jose should have told you, we’re not hiring.” The woman frowned as she glanced at the application. “You haven’t answered most of the questions, señorita. She looked up, her eyes dark with suspicion. “Not even here, where it asks for your name.”

  Jennifer smiled nervously as she backed toward the elevator. “Haven’t I? Well, it doesn’t matter, does it? I mean, if there aren’t any openings—”

  “Just one moment, señorita. I think I would like to ask you some questions.”

  Jennifer’s shoulder blades hit the wall. She turned quickly, stepped into the elevator, and pressed the lobby button.

  “Señorita, wait—”

  The doors slid closed. Jennifer sagged back against the wall. What a masterful performance that had been! Another moment, and who knew what would have happened? The woman might have called the guard, or even the police. For all she knew, the woman had done just that; they might be waiting for her even now, as the doors hissed open.

  “What the hell’s going on?”

  The man filled the open elevator doorway. That was her first impression; that, and the fact that he was glaring at her as if she had just committed a crime. His voice was cold and harsh, but not as harsh as the taut, angled lines of his face.

  “Well? I’m waiting. What kind of game are you trying to pull?”

  Jennifer drew a breath. “Would you please step aside?”

  The bluff didn’t work. He put his hands on his hips and glowered at her.

  “I asked you a question, lady. And I still haven’t got an answer.”

  He wasn’t a policeman, she thought frantically—not unless the police here dropped out of nowhere, not unless they wore suits of dark silk that had been tailored to fit such wide shoulders, or such a lean, powerful body. Security, then. That was his job, corporate security. L.R. Campbell, with his penchant for privacy, would have someone like this at his beck and call.