Not normally a cowardly person, Phoebe felt completely out of her element. She loved watching the creatures of southwestern Florida...even at night, as long as it was from the safety of her own screened-in lanai. Her years of exploring the Glades had been confined to group activities and daylight hours, when she’d been able to recognize the dangers around her.
All that had changed in a heartbeat, she realized.
Alligators...
Poisonous snakes...
Someone who’d tried to kill them...
All were out there waiting.
Phoebe hugged herself, wishing she could urge her mind to a kinder, gentler, safer path...
UNENCUMBERED BY PHOEBE, Simon became one with the Glades, a ghost.
Silent, invisible, invincible, he circled back.
Aware of every croak, every footfall, every hiss...
His hearing was as sharp as that of any swamp creature.
He was one of them, always had been.
As his twin had been, until Boone had chosen a different path...
Growing up in backwater country, he and Boone had been able to lose themselves in their wilderness so completely that even their father, himself a lifelong swamper, had been unable to track them if they hadn’t wanted to be found. Their father had taught them well.
Perhaps too well.
A memory of the last time they’d all been out here together crystallized...
Realizing what was happening, Simon tore his mind away from the memories and aimed his thoughts back where they belonged.
He’d been wrong and Phoebe had been right all along. He knew it now. If Boone had been guilty, no one would have followed them.
No one would have tried to kill them.
For surely that was the reality of the situation. No one would try running over two people with a four-by-four vehicle as a prank. The slashed tires hadn’t been a prank, either, he decided, not even a nasty one.
Someone had wanted them on foot.
Vulnerable.
Dead.
Because they were asking too many questions?
Or because they were getting too close to the truth?
He could take care of himself. But what about Phoebe? Her instincts weren’t honed. Her nature wasn’t base. She had no chance against someone with a sick, twisted mind.
The very someone who’d murdered their siblings?
A series of splashes followed by a frustrated thunk—a kicked log?—alerted him that danger had crept closer than he’d thought.
Simon froze. Waited. Ears attuned.
More splashes...a sigh of metal on metal...an engine purring to life.
Suddenly the area ahead pulsed with light, sending night creatures fleeing in every direction.
Simon himself squinted against the unnatural brightness, damning the fact that he wasn’t close enough to get a good look at the vehicle. When it edged back and veered off in the opposing direction, he let go a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding.
His first thought was that Phoebe was safe.
For now.
Danger—real danger—put an edge to the moment that’s difficult to describe.
We were being followed. Even Boone couldn’t deny it any longer. My heart hammered when his moment of realization gelled and he jammed the accelerator to the floor. We did some pretty fancy maneuvering around the handful of moving vehicles that stood between us and total privacy.
I stared out the back window and watched the one trying to follow. The distance between us widened....
Boone finally lost our tail down some godforsaken road in the middle of the Glades. Brought me to a place that was at once scary and seductive.
Wild, like our lovemaking.
Even in the midst of a swamp I felt as if prying eyes were on us. My imagination? Perhaps. The sensation added fuel to my desire.
So hot...so humid....
Boone couldn’t wait to get inside the house. Right there on the dock, he licked the trails of salty sweat from the hollow of my throat...from the valley between my breasts...from the dip of my navel....
He used his teeth to untie my shorts and tugged the waistband to my hips...would have exposed me and tasted me right there for all his swamp creatures to see....
But who else?
Something stopped me from letting him have his way this time. Impossible to sort out what exactly troubled me.
Instinct?
Awareness?
Imagination?
Unable to shake the distraction, I resisted until after I seduced him inside....
An ominous splash to her left jerked Phoebe out of the reverie. Seeking a safe place, her mind had wandered to equally treacherous territory—an entry in Audra’s diary that she’d read earlier that evening.
Was that really a long, large body she heard moving low through the water?
Another splash followed. And another.
Gators on the hunt?
“Breathe easy.” The words made her start.
“Simon!” How had he got there? Phoebe wondered if he could really move in utter silence or whether she hadn’t heard his approach because she’d been too focused on those scary sounds.
“Whoever it was gave up.”
“For now.”
“Good enough to get us out of here.”
“How?”
“We cut across there,” he said, pointing in the direction of the menacing splashes. “And I can borrow an airboat that’ll get us to my camp in another five minutes.”
“That way is gator territory.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I heard them.”
“And your point is? You want to stay here, married to that tree until daybreak?”
“I just don’t want to trade one danger for another.”
“You’re with me now.”
And that was another danger...
“Stick close,” Simon told her. “There are some tricky areas around here.”
“Tricky how?”
“False bottom.”
Alarmed, she murmured, “Quicksand?”
“Same principle,” he said.
Making Phoebe envision taking a wrong step and being swallowed whole.
As they picked their way carefully through more wetlands, Simon kept away from the water and clear land areas and led her across clumps of growth that assured them of solid footing. Staying close to his side, Phoebe felt simultaneously safe and edgy at his very proximity.
Once more she was reminded of the diary entry.
The circumstances of what she’d read were so similar to what they had just experienced, with some unknown person after them, and so similar to what they were experiencing now—taking refuge in unfamiliar territory—that she was finding it more and more difficult to be at ease.
And Simon was like Boone, more than she’d first believed, making her wonder what had closed him off and kept the brothers apart.
Yet, although she and Audra had remained close through thick and thin, she wasn’t a bit like her sister, Phoebe assured herself. She’d always prided herself on being more evolved. Even if she was attracted to Simon, she could control her own emotions, and keep whatever might happen between them strictly physical. Not get all caught up in living for another person, who in the end would be sure to disappoint her.
A hissing followed by the snap of large jaws jolted her out of her thoughts and into grabbing Simon’s arm. “You did hear that, right?”
“Yeah.” He was so matter-of-fact that she imagined the sound must be commonplace to him.
“So you’re not afraid of alligators?”
“No reason to be.”
“I hope you’re right,” she muttered, edgy despite his confidence. “They have been known to snack on human flesh before.”
“When they’ve been provoked,” he agreed. “If they feel threatened they’re bound to strike out. But I have a healthy respect for them. And I doubt that human beings are pleasing to their palate.”
&n
bsp; “What about that toddler last winter?”
“Tragic, but also highly unusual. Without witnesses, we don’t know the true circumstances around the attack. The mother didn’t go looking for the kid until after he’d vanished.” He added, “Besides, a three-year-old is prey-size, while you’d make more than a delectable mouthful...even when that mouth is a foot or so long.”
Annoyed by his obvious amusement over the creeping paranoia she couldn’t control, Phoebe asked, “Isn’t there anything you are afraid of?”
For a moment she didn’t think he was going to answer.
“More than I like to admit even to myself,” he said, any touch of good humor gone.
His seriousness sobered her, reminded her of their first meeting.
Though curious, Phoebe kept her questions to herself. She didn’t know how, but she’d gotten to Simon on a deeper level than she chose to explore.
The opportunity was soon lost.
They arrived at Simon’s intended destination—a building little bigger or fancier than a shack and a small dock in the middle of nowhere, it seemed. There were no lights except the moonlight. No sign of people.
And no airboat, she noted with dismay.
Obviously, whoever Simon had intended to borrow the craft from had gone off somewhere with the hoped-for transportation. Her spirits sank lower.
“So what do we do now?” she asked, facing her own exhaustion. “Wait or walk?”
“Wait?”
“For the owner to return.”
“You’d be waiting forever, then.”
A sense of déjà vu jolted Phoebe into making a more thorough examination of their surroundings. The ramshackle place reminded her of...what? She concentrated. Stared harder. Then it came to her. The photograph!
“This was Boone’s place?”
“And our mother’s before that.”
Boone holding Audra here on the landing.
Phoebe could visualize the photo. And something more. The diary passage...
Boone seducing her sister here, on this very spot.
Goose bumps rose along her flesh and Phoebe couldn’t rub them away. Weird.
Too weird?
And then it struck her. Surely Simon had recognized the setting of the photo he’d shown her. Why hadn’t he said anything about it?
Intending to find out, she said, “Simon...” before realizing the man had wandered off somewhere and had disappeared from her view. Her heart tripped a beat. “Simon!” she called, louder this time.
“Stay there,” he returned from some distance.
Still she couldn’t see him.
She stared at the shadowed building that had belonged to Simon’s brother and to their mother before him. How long before? The place was quite old. Could it have been home to the twins while growing up?
An engine suddenly roared to life, sending night creatures, and Phoebe’s pulse, scurrying. She whirled toward the blast as an airboat slid from behind a thicket, but to her relief, it was Simon in the driver’s seat. He edged the small craft around a curve, took his foot off the accelerator and cut the power to the battery. The huge caged propeller behind him slowed and he jumped down from his perch to catch onto a rickety post which enabled him to stop the boat.
She’d never piloted one of the shallow-hulled airboats herself, but Phoebe had done enough traveling in them around the Glades, both in water and over the saw grass, enough to know that they were simple-operation vehicles powered by airplane engines. Equipped with battery, accelerator, and rudder, they had no braking mechanism. Guides in the Everglades loved to thrill—and soak—tourists by yanking on the rudder, thereby spinning them to a careening and watery stop.
“Take my hand,” Simon said, reaching for her.
Phoebe did so and scrambled into the hull and onto the bench seat that was barely large enough to hold two people.
“Why didn’t you tell me about the photo?” she asked before noting he was wearing what looked like thickly padded rubber earmuffs.
Simon’s ear-coverings would combat the noise of the engine...and deafen him to her question. It could wait. He handed her a second set and climbed onto the high driver’s seat behind her. She barely had the protection in place before the engine thundered to life once more.
They zoomed across open water and then approached a densely overgrown area of mangrove thickets.
And in the water itself, moonlight licked the long, dark backs of creatures that on first glance appeared to be nothing more dangerous than floating logs. A snap of jaws and a foamy splash proved otherwise. One of the gators had caught himself a late-night snack.
Phoebe took a deep breath and looked toward an opening in the tangle of mangrove ahead. Simon headed the airboat straight for the narrow channel.
She’d been in these constricted mazes before, but never at night. The twisted growth closed around and above her like a tapering tunnel. They turned from one channel to another, which was even more confining. Just when she started feeling claustrophobic, Simon angled them out into a wider waterway, then into open water.
A moment later, he torqued the boat to the right and cut the engine. The craft slid sideways with a moderate spray of water before slowing and sliding into a pier. They stopped neatly behind a pair of similar craft.
Phoebe was removing her headset when he jumped down and secured a line. She stepped out of the boat, gaze fixed on the attractive if modest building before them.
The traditional Florida home had been built on stilts. Moon-silvered crushed shell gleamed out at her from the flat surface below the building. No doubt where Simon parked his truck.
When he had a truck to park, she added ruefully.
The house itself was rectangular, constructed of well-weathered wood and a tin roof, and surrounded by natural subtropical growth. The second floor was fronted by a screened-in porch along the entire width of the living quarters. Cultivated vines and flowers dripped from boxes secured along a ledge.
“It’s home...the best I could do.”
Which made her wonder if he’d built the house himself.
“It’s very nice,” she said in all honesty.
“Go on in.” He indicated the steps on the other side of the building rather than the stairs closer to them and the water. “It’s open. Light switch to your left. I’ll be right up.”
Glad for the opportunity of a few moments alone, Phoebe took him up on the invitation.
She wanted to pull herself together, to decide what direction the rest of the night would take. Sleeping in the same house with Simon....
Or maybe in the same bed.
Chapter Nine
Phoebe charged up the back stairs.
A racing pulse for one reason or another seemed to have become natural to her since she’d met Simon, she thought ruefully.
Danger and desire...different and yet the same in effect.
Could it be that one prompted the other? That, under normal circumstances, she wouldn’t have been attracted to Simon at all?
Opening the door, Phoebe switched on the light that illuminated the kitchen area. The interior was simple, with a main room taking up the center half, doors leading to a narrower room on either side, so all three faced the porch and the view beyond.
The practical ceramic tile flooring in a pale shade that reminded her of a blush was scattered with colorful area rugs. The furniture was sparse, of heavy wood and equally colorful cushions. Strategically placed plants natural to the Glades, including several bromeliads and orchids, brought the outdoors inside. She inhaled the natural fragrance and was stirred anew.
Simple and yet sensual.
Unexpected and yet not.
Simon Calderon...who would have thought?... certainly not she.
How long ago had they met? Forty-eight hours? Two days, and he filled her thoughts...affected her in ways she hadn’t before experienced.
The double doors to the screened porch stood open, so she stepped out to take a breath. And to see what wa
s taking Simon so long. Her entrance prompted a clanking and fluttering to her left.
Startled by the bizarre ruckus, she called out, “Simon?”
“Simon says no! Simon says no! Awwwk!”
A parrot!
Her eyes readjusting to the dark, she could see that one full third of the porch had been further screened in to make a huge birdcage. Several perches of natural log had been set at different levels among more plants. Squinting, she made out two similar shadows inside. Macaws.
She drew closer. “Hey, there—”
“Simon says no!” the bird repeated.
Grinning, Phoebe murmured, “Don’t I know it. What’s your name?”
“That’s Mouthy Minerva,” came a more familiar voice from directly behind. Simon had caught up to her. “The other one is Shy Serena.”
Pulse speeding up, she glanced back at him. “You’ve managed to give them a splendid home.”
“A splendid cage,” he countered flatly. “Not that they belong in one.”
“If you feel that way, then why did you buy them?”
“I didn’t. Got them from a rescue organization. Their original owners were neglecting them to the point of abuse. They couldn’t survive on their own,” he said, opening a human-sized screen door and stepping inside the cage. “And they’re very dependent on human companionship.”
As if to prove his words, both macaws ruffled their feathers and moved closer for attention.
“Bedtime, girls.”
“Simon says no!” Minerva protested. “Awwwk!”
“Simon says yes,” he countered.
A fascinated Phoebe watched as he gave both birds treats from his jeans pockets, then gently stroked their heads and necks. Serena boldly perched on his shoulder and picked at his hair as he moved around the room-sized cage. The bizarre sight brought an unexpected grin to her lips. He was lowering the bamboo roll-up shades, giving the birds the extra incentive they needed to sleep. Minerva followed, hopping from one perch to another, squawking at him and appearing every bit the protesting little kid.
“Yes, it’s bedtime,” Simon said more firmly, setting Serena on a perch and running his fingers along her neck, then did the same with Minerva. “Good night, girls.”
“Awwk, Simon says good night!”
Feeling a new respect for the man, Phoebe said, “You’re terrific with them.”
A Lover Awaits Page 11
