The Beach Bachelors Boxset (Three Complete Contemporary Romance Novels in One) (The Beach Bachelors Series)

by Pamela Browning

  Speaking of Chad, he would be arriving soon to paint. It seemed like a perfect time to take the Mule and ride to the north end of St. Albans to explore the now abandoned fishermen's village and look for those tabby ruins of the early settlers' cabins.

  She made a detour to her room to for her sketchbook and a hasty pass through the kitchen to collect enough miscellaneous items for lunch. A basket to put it all in, and then down the path to the lean-to that housed the Mule.

  The golf cart was a splendid way to get about on the island, Paige thought as it hummed along the path. It was quiet and didn't disturb wildlife. She was hoping she would spot a deer today as she drove deeper into the woods. As a child she had often surprised them feeding near the path, surprisingly tame animals that looked up with a mildly startled expression before going back to their grazing.

  The path widened into a sandy road that led between two rows of cabins that had formerly served as homes for the fishermen. Massive willow oaks sheltered the road from the sun. The little village's deserted air seemed an odd contrast to the picture of the place in Paige's memory. In days past, the cabins had always overflowed with lively, cheerful people. She pulled the Mule up beside a chinquapin tree in one of the yards and got out to look around.

  Glass had blown out of some of the windows, and here and there a door swung lopsided on a hinge. Weeds sprouted around front steps, fallen leaves settled in heaps in the corners of porches. The look of the place might have been depressing if the village were not so picturesque.

  Paige returned to the Mule for her sketching materials before appraising the scene with an artist's eyes. Perhaps she could draw that dilapidated cabin with the morning glory trailing along the porch rail. Or that old dinghy, rotting now, on the sunny side of the biggest cabin, where a scarlet locust's showy flowers drooped beguilingly over the gunwales. She tried to imagine how the scarlet locust would look in a needlepoint design.

  She sat down and began to draw. It was a challenge to shade the dinghy just so, making the sunlight as much a part of the picture as the cabin or the dinghy or the red blossoms. Her task absorbed her, and she paused only briefly to wolf down a sandwich. When she finished her drawing, she stood and stretched. To her surprise, the sun lay low in the sky. It was much later than she'd thought, and she still hadn't looked for those old tabby ruins.

  Perhaps she had time after all, she thought, with a dubious glance upward. The sky was darkening much faster now, and she could hear the crash of breakers on the ocean side of the island, meaning that the sea was rougher than usual. She'd drive the Mule down the side path where she thought the ruins were, and if she didn't see any trace of them, she'd come back another day.

  The foxtail grass beside the path was bending in the wind by the time she started out. Paige steered carefully, but not at top speed. If she drove too fast, she might miss the ruins. When she spied a pile of gray in the middle of a clearing, she stopped, but it turned out to be only a heap of oyster shells. Before she started up the Mule again, she thought she heard someone calling her name. She listened but heard only the rattle of palmetto fronds in the wind.

  As she rounded a bend in the path, she came upon a low wall, crumbling on top and almost covered by creeper vines. She stopped the Mule and picked her way carefully through the weeds. Yes, this was it—the walls made a square, and there was an opening where the door must have been. Not far away she saw another such ruin, and excitedly she made her way to it.

  This had been a bigger building, very large, perhaps some sort of public house. She ran her hand along the top of the wall. Oyster shells protruded from the strong cement-like bonding material. The tabby had withstood the years well.

  Paige stepped over the wall where it was no more than a foot high and nudged an oyster shell with her sandaled foot. After her foot struck something solid, she picked up a sturdy stick and dug at it.

  She pried loose from the earth some sort of pottery, perhaps a bowl. It was cracked and a big piece was missing from the edge, but it was a bowl nonetheless. This might have belonged to the first settlers in this area, people who had lived on St. Albans almost two hundred and fifty years ago.

  She barely noticed how her hair was beginning to blow in the wind that was whipping inland from the ocean side of the island. A carved design on a second piece of pottery at the bottom of a short flight of stairs claimed her attention as an item to add to the still-lifes she was sketching.

  She descended the stairs carefully, but she didn't hear the ominous buzz of rattles until it was too late. The snake, a small ground rattler and lightning swift, lashed at her sandaled foot.

  At first she only felt surprise and a detached feeling that it couldn't be happening. Then the pain struck, and she heard herself scream. The bowl slipped out of her hands, shattering into several pieces.

  She would have fallen, but strong arms encircled and supported her. She would have fainted and welcomed the oblivion, but such was her amazement that someone was there to help that she fought to maintain consciousness.

  "I'll carry you," said Chad, assessing the situation immediately and taking in the two fang marks on her big toe.

  "The snake," she said, gritting her teeth against the intense pain that was shooting up her leg. She remembered about snakes from Uncle John's lectures on the subject years ago when her aunts and her mother worried about her roaming the island. She knew that the snake should be killed or captured in order to determine what treatment was necessary for the bite. Different species of snakes, different treatment, Uncle John had always cautioned.

  "Gone," said Chad. He looked around, still supporting her. "You didn't see what kind it was, did you?"

  "A ground rattler," she gasped. "I'm positive."

  He swung her into his arms, strode through the undergrowth, and set her down on the Mule's seat. By this time tears of pain were rolling down her cheeks. Chad slid his belt off and fastened it around the calf of her leg in a makeshift tourniquet. Already her toe was swelling and beginning to discolor.

  "We're going back to the Sea House," said Chad, jumping into the Mule. He drove fast, almost recklessly, steering the Mule around curves without heed for obstacles such as pine cones, tree roots, or fallen branches. He kept one arm around Paige's shoulders to keep her from lurching out of the Mule.

  They reached the Sea House faster than Paige would have believed possible. Chad carried her inside, nudging the door open with his shoulder. He laid her carefully on the wool serape that covered his bed.

  "Do you—do you know what to do?" she asked faintly. She felt suddenly very weak and nauseated. "Shouldn't you get me to a hospital?" A frightening sense of their isolation on St. Albans swept over her.

  "I should, but it wouldn't be safe." Paige saw the bleakness behind his eyes. "There's a tropical storm out to sea, and it's heading this way. The seas are already so high that we'd be swamped before we got halfway to Brunswick. I'm sorry."

  Paige closed her eyes against the waves of nausea that made it impossible to think. She could never have conceived of herself being in such a position, dependent on Chad Smith for her very life.

  First Chad gently washed the wound with soap and water. "The bite doesn't look too deep. It's more like a glancing blow. Try not to move because that will only spread the venom. We'll keep your foot lower than the rest of your body." He brought a low stool over to the bed and cushioned it with pillows, then rested Paige's foot there.

  He loosened the belt around her ankle and replaced it with an elastic bandage. "We don't want to impede circulation enough to cut off blood flow," he explained.

  She raised herself on her elbows. "Good job," she managed to say. "I suppose now you want to suck my toe."

  He gaped at her.

  "Isn't that what I learned in scouts? Apply suction? To remove the venom?"

  "You're in luck. The last I heard, it's not recommended. For snake bites, anyway. On the other hand," and he quirked his eyebrows in that endearing way of his, "we could apply suction s
omewhere else. When you're agreeable, that is."

  She groaned and fell back on the pillows. "That needs to wait until I stop wanting to throw up."

  "Good point." Chad knelt, his hand on her wrist. "Your pulse rate is rising," he said. He found a thermometer, slid it into her mouth. When he looked at it, he frowned. She closed her eyes and tried to zone out.

  Cold, then hot. She was walking over a bed of steaming coals, she was tending a blast furnace. She was lost on a desolate Arctic tundra, until she turned her head and found herself in a desert. She tossed and cried out against the rapid images that kept flashing across her brain. A strong, cool hand, steady against her fevered brow. A damp cloth touched to her parched lips. She awoke to find Chad's face only inches from hers.

  She collided with reality and remembered what had happened to her. She felt fully conscious. Her foot still dangled off the edge of the bed and rested on the stool. Her leg felt cold. Chad had removed the scratchy wood serape from the bed, and she lay beneath a smooth white sheet and a lightweight blanket.

  Her clothes hung over the back of the chair beside the long table. He'd undressed her, although she had no memory of it, and now she was nude beneath the covers.

  "My clothes," she said, surprised at how feeble her voice sounded. "You shouldn't have—"

  "I had to," he said without a trace of apology. "I had to sponge you with ice water to bring your fever down. It was dangerously high." He was matter-of-fact, and she realized that now, to him, she was simply a human being who needed help. Desire and thoughts of sexual excitement had been suspended for the time being.

  She closed her eyes, gathering strength for words. But the strength wasn't there. It was an effort just to breathe.

  Deep dark circles rimmed Chad's eyes, and his hair was appealingly rumpled. She had vague memories of his moving through her fevered dreams as he hovered anxiously over the bed. Her love for him rose in her throat, constricting it and bringing sudden tears to her eyes.

  Quickly she blinked them away, hoping that he hadn't noticed.

  The wind howled around the walls of the Sea House, rattling the glass in the windows. She licked her lips to moisten them. "What about the storm?" she asked after a few minutes.

  "It's been lashing us for a while."

  "It's not a hurricane, is it?"

  "No, but a tropical storm can deliver extremely high winds."

  It was dark outside, and rain whipped at the windows. Here on the promontory, they were exposed on three sides to water. Suddenly she was concerned for their safety in a location that was so vulnerable to the sea.

  "Shouldn't we go to the Manse? We'd be safer there."

  "I don't want to move you. You need to remain immobile." Chad knelt beside her and took one of her limp hands in his stronger one. "How do you feel?"

  Paige no longer felt nauseated, and that was perhaps a good sign. The pain was less. "I feel better," she said cautiously. "Am I going to be all right?" Her eyes pleaded for reassurance.

  Chad's face softened. "You'll make it," he said unsteadily. Then, as though he couldn't bear to talk about it, he rose quickly to his feet and went to stand in front of the fireplace, where Paige noticed for the first time that a fire had been lit. He stood with his back to her, his body silhouetted against the bright orange flames. She thought drowsily that he was really very handsome before she drifted off into oblivion again.

  Her dream was of a tall man who stood on a high-masted sailing ship, the sea rising and falling beneath it. She had dreamed of him before, of his broad shoulders, his light hair falling across his forehead, and the face that remained in shadows until all at once he turned to her, smiled, held out his hand, and she knew it was Chad. Somehow it seemed right, this time, that she walk forward and place her hand trustingly in his.

  She awoke later. It was dark outside. She still heard the wind and the breakers on the beach. She wasn't sure where she was. The first thing that penetrated her confusion was the fire in the fireplace. It had died to embers, but the glow was enough to softly light the small cottage. After she oriented herself, she became aware of something else—Chad's head beside hers on the pillow.

  He had fallen into an exhausted sleep, punctuated by the deep breathing of one who is totally spent. He lay on his side on top of the covers, fully clothed, his head resting on one arm, his other arm lying across her stomach and his fingers lightly touching her hand. He looked as though he needed his sleep.

  She turned her head slightly so that she could observe him better. His hair against the pillow looked like cloth spun of gold in the gleam of the firelight, which also touched his light brows and lashes with gilt. His mouth as he slept looked tender and almost vulnerable, and it bespoke a sensitivity underlying the sensuality. Watching him like this, she could almost imagine him as a child. But he wasn't a child, she reminded herself drowsily, he was a man with all the accompanying desires and urges. He shifted, sighed, rolled over on his back. He reminded her of a sleeping prince.

  She spent the night alternately sleeping and opening her eyes to see Chad's head beside hers on the pillow. Sometimes she woke up to find him checking the swelling of her foot or applying antibiotic ointment to the bite marks. It was consoling, she thought sleepily, to have him near. Neither of her aunts could have been any more concerned.

  Rain still curtained the windows in the morning. Chad slept beside her in the transparent gray half-light that filled the cottage. The fire had long ago died out.

  Chad opened his eyes soon after Paige opened hers. He half sat up, supporting himself on one elbow. She winced in pain as the mattress moved slightly.

  "Paige?" Chad sounded concerned.

  "I'm all right," she said softly. Really, he looked so worried. His eyes were red-rimmed and anxious.

  He sat up, felt her forehead, saw that she was better. His relief flitted across his face. "I hope you don't mind my sleeping beside you last night, but I wanted to be close to you in case there was any sudden change. You were very sick."

  She nodded solemnly. "I know."

  He leaned over and kissed her lightly on the forehead. She was all too aware of her nudity beneath the bedclothes, and she knew he was, too. He ran a finger along the side of her face, kissed her chin, and then, quickly, he stood up.

  "Are you hungry?"

  "A little."

  "I'll heat a can of broth in the microwave," he told her. "It might be a good idea to stick to light food today."

  "When do you think this weather will clear up?"

  Chad cast a doubtful look out the window as he walked toward the kitchen. "It looks as though the storm front has stalled," he said. "I wish it would pass over today. You need to see a doctor."

  "And if we can't get off the island?"

  "You'll still recover."

  "You think?" She couldn't help but worry.

  "I know you will. Even though I didn't suck your toe. It would be reassuring to have a doctor's official pronouncement, that's all." He smiled.

  Paige hesitated before she spoke. "You've been very kind to me," she said haltingly.

  Chad set the cup of broth in the microwave. "Kind? Why, what else was I to do? I'd finally found you after an hour's search, and then you collapsed in my arms. I had to do something about you—how could I face Aunt Sophie and Aunt Biz if I let something happen to their favorite niece?"

  "Their only niece," corrected Paige.

  "Right, their only niece. Therefore, also their favorite." The microwave dinged.

  Chad's remark about the aunts reminded her of their letter. "I have news from my aunts," she told him. "They'll be home in less than two weeks."

  "Good," said Chad, sounding glad. He brought the broth to her on a tray and set it on the table beside the bed.

  "I'll have to sit up if I'm going to drink that," she pointed out. "And I don't have any clothes on."

  "I know," Chad said speculatively.

  Paige felt her face redden. "Do you have a robe or something?" she asked, embarr
assed. "Maybe your old T-shirt that says Wish You Were Beer?"

  He shot her a sharp look. "Seriously?"

  "Uh-huh."

  With a perplexed shake of his head, he went to rummage in a dresser drawer. He turned his back while she slipped on the T-shirt. It felt cool to her skin and smelled faintly of Chad's lime-scented aftershave.

  He brought a pillow and slid it behind her back, and she was dizzy for a moment from the change in posture. When the dizziness had passed, he handed her the cup, and she sipped tentatively. The broth tasted delicious and felt good in her empty stomach.

  "Aren't you going to eat?" she asked.

  "I'll have something after you've gone back to sleep. I'm not really hungry."

  She finished the broth, gave him the empty cup, watched as he washed and put it away. She was weak, but she didn't feel like sleeping. When he returned to the bed, he sat down beside her and took her hand in his. His touch transmitted an overwhelming sense of safety and security.

  "You know," she said after a time, "I was lucky that you happened to be nearby when the snake struck. What were you doing down at that end of the island?"

  "I was looking for you."

  "Why?"

  "A storm was brewing, and you'd taken off in the morning. Worst of all, I knew you'd probably left the Manse to avoid me, and I would have felt responsible if you'd been caught in the storm. As a matter of fact, I even feel responsible for your having been bitten by the rattlesnake." His eyes held a haunted look for a moment before he masked it.

  "It's not your fault that a snake and I crossed paths."

  "I made you run away because of what you think I am. And if anything happened to you..." Chad shook his head, sighed, and looked away from her abruptly. Neither of them spoke, each too wary of the emotion that, with any encouragement, would rise to the surface.