The Bride's Rescuer

by Charlotte Douglas

  “And what do you think about?” he asked.

  A rosy blush suffused her skin above the lace-trimmed collar of her gown, and a delicate blue vein pulsed at her throat. “Problem-solving, mostly.”

  Like a sneak attack, a desire to protect her from all dilemmas surged through him. “What kind of problems?”

  She lifted her chin and narrowed her eyes in a determined squint. “Nothing that can’t be solved by returning home immediately.”

  An illogical stab of jealousy pierced him. “Is there someone waiting for you?”

  Her blush deepened. “My parents are dead, and I have no other family.”

  “No one who misses you?”

  Celia bit back her reply. Would she endanger herself by admitting no one would miss her if she didn’t return immediately? Her friends would think she was hiding out, ashamed to show her face until the scandal of running away from her wedding had died down. At first, her clients would believe she was on her honeymoon, as scheduled.

  “There are those who’ll search for me if I don’t return home soon,” she lied.

  “Where do you live?” Cameron’s golden gaze seemed to penetrate her deception.

  She hesitated, but could think of no reason why her residence should be a secret. “Clearwater Beach.”

  “Clearwater Beach?”

  “It’s in the center of the state on the Gulf Coast.”

  His eyebrows arched in surprise. “You’re a long way from home.”

  “Judging from your accent, so are you.”

  His eyes glittered with irony. Or was it madness? He was like no one she had ever met.

  Marooned with a madman jumped unbidden into her mind.

  It sounded like the title of a B-horror flick. She giggled as hysteria closed in. To calm herself, she chugged the remaining brandy in her glass.

  He must have seen her distress, because he set down his glass. “You must be exhausted. You should be in bed.”

  That statement seemed reasonable enough. Except for his refusal to take her to the mainland, he didn’t act crazy. If she hadn’t drunk so much brandy, she could think straight. God, what was happening to her? And why hadn’t she kept a clear head to deal with it?

  Before she could protest, Cameron swept her off the sofa and into his arms. The hard warmth of his body pressed through the thin fabric of her gown, and involuntarily her arms reached up to twine around his neck.

  Who was crazy now?

  Her dizziness returned, probably a combination of the knock on her head with too much brandy. She didn’t resist when he tucked her head into the hollow of his throat where his pulse pounded and carried her into the hallway and up the stairs.

  Brandy coursed like fire through her veins. In a state close to dreaming, nearer to drunkenness, she nestled deeper into Cameron’s embrace. Before she drifted into unconsciousness, a scene from Gone with the Wind flashed through her mind of Rhett carrying Scarlett up a wide stairway.

  Home, she reminded herself, she had to get home.

  “I’ll worry about that tomorrow.” Her voice slurred, and the last thing she remembered was giggling at her own cleverness.

  AS HE CARRIED HER UP THE stairs, Cameron sensed her breath against his throat and the softness of her body in his arms. She smelled of Mrs. Givens’s frangipani soap and sunshine and an intoxicating fragrance uniquely her own. He brushed his face against her hair, clasping her to him with one arm and opening her door with the other.

  Before placing her on the bed, he folded the coverlet at the foot, reluctant to draw it over her and hide the sight before him. He knelt beside the bed, drank in the details of her unconscious figure, and resisted the urge to trace a finger over her high cheekbone, down the slender column of her throat, and across her delicate shoulder.

  She would stay until the supply boat arrived. Even if friends or family came searching for her, they’d not find her among the Ten Thousand Islands of Florida’s southeast coast. He’d barely found the place himself the first time, even with detailed maps and the competent guidance of Captain Biggins.

  Twelve weeks would give him time to convince her to keep his secrets. And for him to learn if he could trust her.

  She moaned slightly in her sleep, and he drew back, fearful of waking her.

  When he gazed at her again, her image wavered before him, the flawless contours of her face dissolved into Clarissa’s features, and blood ran in rivers across the bed.

  He buried his face in his hands, forcing the waking nightmare away, and when he looked once more, she slept peacefully, whole and unharmed. He drew the covers over her, then straightened and left.

  In his own room, the imagined sound of her breathing tortured him as he paced like a caged animal. The horns of a cruel dilemma impaled him. He could not take her off the island and risk discovery, yet for her own sake, he dared not let her stay.

  Dawn light illuminated the veranda outside his door before he closed his eyes to sleep.

  WHEN CELIA AWOKE, sunlight streamed through the French doors of the upstairs bedroom. The pain in her head had receded to a dull ache, throbbing both from her injury and her host’s generosity with his brandy. Her encounter with Cameron Alexander the night before seemed like a dream. She’d been sound asleep when he tucked her into bed, so she remembered nothing after he’d carried her up the stairs.

  The problem of getting off the island still faced her.

  Using the basin and pitcher of water on the dresser, she washed her face, then inspected the garments Mrs. Givens must have left for her. The clothes were not only too big, which she expected, considering the plumpness of their owner, but lacked any sense of style. In addition to the skirt and blouse, she found a shapeless chemise, a slip and a pair of ruffled drawers.

  She shrugged off the nightgown, stepped into the strange panties and pulled the drawstring on the voluminous drawers taut, noting the tiny, even hand-stitching. Mrs. Givens apparently made all her clothes since Cameron Alexander probably wouldn’t let his housekeeper leave the island to shop. How did one order underwear from a charter boat captain?

  Celia shook her head at her dilemma. The sooner she returned to the mainland, the sooner she could end this crazy nightmare.

  She rejected the too large chemise and heavy slip—the Florida climate was too hot for either—and slipped on the gathered skirt, which hung just above her ankles. She pulled on the blouse, roomy enough for two, tied the shirttail into a knot at her waist, and rolled the long sleeves above her elbows.

  After plaiting her hair into a loose French braid, she hurried down to the kitchen, determined to find Cameron and force or cajole him—whichever it took—to take her to Key West.

  Chapter Two

  The house looked bigger in the morning light. Double doors at each end of the hallways and in every room opened to the cooling winds, and the broad, encircling roof of the veranda shaded every window. From the dogtrot, Celia noted the house was built on stilts to allow breezes and high water to circulate beneath, just like many of the homes on her own Clearwater Beach.

  When she entered the kitchen, Mrs. Givens looked up from her baking. The housekeeper’s mouth dropped as her gaze traveled upward from Celia’s bare feet and ankles, exposed by the skirt, to the strip of midriff where she’d tied the blouse above her waistline, to her cleavage where she’d folded back the high-necked blouse for coolness.

  The older woman’s cheeks glowed pink, probably from the heat of the open hearth, and her tongue tripped on her words. “Very pretty you are, m’dear, and looking less like flotsam every day.”

  “Thanks for lending me these clothes.”

  “Well, now, you couldn’t have worn that wedding gown, even if it was still in one piece, could you? Not in this heat.”

  Curiosity glimmered in the older woman’s eyes, but Celia wasn’t ready to discuss her hasty flight from the church. Mrs. Seffner’s visit and her accusations against Darren seemed like a distant nightmare, one Celia wished she could forget. She wondere
d how Darren had taken being jilted at the altar. Had he slunk away in disgrace? Expressed concern and organized a search? Or, if he was really the murderer Mrs. Seffner believed him to be, would he attempt to track Celia down for vengeance? The possibility made her shiver in the warm air.

  “Sit yourself down,” Mrs. Givens said. “Your breakfast is ready.”

  Celia settled at one end of a large wooden table whose battered, well-scrubbed surface smelled of lemons. Mrs. Givens poured steaming coffee from an enamel pot, filled Celia’s plate with scrambled eggs, grits and sliced mangoes, and moved a basket of hot rolls and a pot of honey within her reach.

  Celia discovered her appetite had returned. Besides, she’d need her strength to find a way off the island. While she ate, she gazed through the open doorway of the kitchen. The island apparently was a narrow key with the Gulf of Mexico beyond the dunes to the west, and to the south and east, a bay, dotted with islands, stretched off toward the dark green mass of the mainland.

  The house would have only a tenuous anchorage on the slender strip of land during a violent storm like the one that had wrecked the Morgan. Her hands trembled at the memory, and a suffocating sense of panic squeezed the air from her throat. She gulped coffee, and the scalding liquid doused the terrifying recollections of the storm and eased her breathing.

  “What’s this island called?” she asked, anxious to push her memories of the storm aside.

  “It isn’t named on any map, but Mr. Alexander calls it Solitaire.”

  Celia shuddered. The name evoked haunting images of a place withdrawn from society, forgotten by the world, almost as if suspended in time, like a place of legend. Its disquieting stillness made the name an apt one.

  “I’d hoped after six years of Solitaire, he’d be ready to return to England.” Sadness clouded Mrs. Givens’s green eyes as she added eggs and butter to a bowl and began mixing with a wooden spoon. “But the longer he’s here, the more determined he is to stay. I’m afraid his exile might last forever.”

  Celia pictured the golden stranger with the classically handsome face and a body like a Greek god. Who was this Cameron Alexander? She needed to know more about him if she was to persuade him to help end her own exile.

  “What did he do in England?”

  Mrs. Givens’s head snapped up, and her green eyes narrowed. “Do? What do you mean?”

  “What kind of work did he do?” Whatever it was, Celia mused, he must have been successful to have purchased his own island worth millions in the Florida real estate market.

  Mrs. Givens laughed with a nervous twittering sound. “He was a gentleman landowner with farms, mines and such.”

  His work didn’t sound ominous enough to make him run away to a deserted island. Maybe the illness Mrs. Givens had mentioned had caused his early retirement. “Why did he leave all that behind?”

  The housekeeper ceased her stirring and set the mixing bowl down with a heavy thud. Pain contorted her face. “I am never to speak a word about that. And you mustn’t ask. Mr. Alexander has sworn me not to speak of it.”

  “You hinted yesterday that he’s ill.” The night before Cameron had appeared strong and healthy, suffering only from the effects of too much brandy and his peculiar insistence that she remain on the island.

  “Aye, so I did. Suffice it to say his illness is one of the heart, and let it go at that. I’ve said too much already.”

  An illness of the heart? Of the head, more likely, if he believed he could hold her hostage for three months. Celia gauged the set of the housekeeper’s mouth and decided further questions would be futile.

  An illness of the heart. Had an ill-fated love affair broken his grasp on reality? It must have been a grand passion to keep him on his island called Solitaire, isolated from the world and its conveniences and pleasures.

  She finished her breakfast and left Mrs. Givens to her baking. She would find Cameron Alexander and demand he take her to the mainland, even if she had to bribe him with more money than she could afford.

  She stepped off the veranda and headed toward the beach. Cabbage palms provided the house’s only shade, and the tropical sun beat mercilessly on the tin roof. In the dazzling white heat of late morning, not even a condensation trail from a Miami-bound jet marred the perfection of the bright sky. The name Solitaire fit the isolated place.

  As she walked north, she discovered a huge pile of driftwood, palm fronds and flotsam someone had cleared from the beach and stacked to be burned. She recalled seeing a box of matches on a kitchen shelf. If Cameron refused to take her to Key West, she’d watch for a passing boat and light a bonfire to signal it. Pleasure boats and fishing crafts filled the Florida waters. Surely one of them would respond to the blaze and pluck her off the island.

  A hand touched her shoulder, and she jumped. She’d heard no one approach, but the dark figure of Noah stood beside her, outlined by the sun.

  “Howdy, miss. I saw you standing all by yourself. This place seems powerful lonesome when you first come here. I remember.”

  For a moment she could see her own unhappiness reflected in the man’s soft brown eyes.

  “Thought you might like somebody to talk to, and I’d be mighty proud to show you my garden.”

  “You’re right. I was feeling lonesome.”

  Glad for his company, she walked down the beach beside him. When they reached the path leading back to the house, Cameron was nowhere in sight, but Mrs. Givens was hanging linens out to dry on a line stretched between two palms behind the kitchen.

  Abruptly the house appeared to waver and fade, blending into the surrounding foliage until it seemed to disappear. Celia blinked in disbelief, then squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head to dispel what must have been another touch of vertigo. When she looked again, the house stood solidly before her, its cypress clapboards bleached the pale gray of driftwood by the sun. Lush vines of magenta bougainvillea twined around its stilts and along the balustrades, softening its strong lines. It seemed such a natural part of the island, the illusion that it had disappeared must have been a trick of sunlight and heat, like a mirage in the desert.

  Cameron Alexander had chosen his exile well. From a distant boat, the house would be indistinguishable among the lush vegetation of the key.

  She followed Noah around the house to the island’s eastern side, where he pointed with pride to his garden, heavy with vegetables, pineapples and papayas. Orange trees with dark, shining leaves and golden globes of fruit and mango and avocado trees formed a wind break along the garden’s northern border. On the south side, a small outbuilding provided shelter for a cow and nesting hens.

  A sea breeze rustled the palms, gulls cried overhead, and bay water lapped against a labyrinth of mangrove roots that ringed the eastern shore. Under other circumstances, Solitaire could be paradise.

  “Noah, would you take me to Key West? It can’t be that long a trip, and I’d pay you well for your trouble.”

  Fear gleamed in the man’s eyes. “Not me. I don’t dare go near the place.”

  “Why?”

  “I just can’t, that’s all.”

  He avoided looking her in the eye, and she realized, like Cameron, Noah had secrets of his own. He was a huge, powerful man. She wouldn’t risk angering him by asking personal questions. “I must return to my business as soon as possible. Do you think I can talk Mr. Alexander into taking me?”

  Noah shook his head. “Uh-uh. Won’t nothing make Mr. Alex go where they’s people.”

  Frustration engulfed her. Her shop stood closed and empty on a street thronged with tourists, but no one would miss her. Her customers would think she was on her honeymoon. With her parents dead, she had no other close relatives, no one to alert the Coast Guard to search for her when she didn’t return home. Tracey knew Celia had often taken the sailboat out for days at a time. Her friend wouldn’t be worried yet, especially since she knew Celia would be embarrassed about skipping out on her own wedding. Tracey would probably guess she was lying low until
the brouhaha blew over.

  “Won’t do much good,” Noah said, “but you can try asking Mr. Alex.”

  “But I can’t find him! Where can he hide on an island?”

  Noah pointed to a break in the mangroves where a dock stretched out into the bay. Beyond it, a white sail flashed on the water as a boat tacked toward the island. Celia squared her shoulders and headed toward the dock for a showdown with her mysterious host.

  CAMERON TURNED HIS sailboat north toward the island, where his thoughts had been drawn all morning, no matter how hard he had tried to escape them. Always before, his excursions among the hundreds of small islands helped scour away the painful memories of his past, renewing his spirit and his strength. But everything had changed with the storm that brought Celia Stevens to his beach. What little peace he had wrested from his exile seemed lost to him forever.

  She haunted him everywhere he looked. The gulf waters sparkled and shone like her eyes. Her melodic voice murmured in the breeze. The swaying of tall palms mimicked her movements, and the sea oats fringing the dunes glistened as bright as her hair. His conversation with her had been brief, but long enough to recognize the intelligence behind her beautiful face. Damn her! The woman had no obvious faults, gave him no ammunition to resist her.

  And resist he must—for twelve long weeks until Captain Biggins and the supply boat arrived to take her away. And then only after he’d sworn her to secrecy about his whereabouts, not only for his own safety but for hers.

  He toyed briefly with the idea of sending Noah to take her to Key West, but he could not place the man who had served him so faithfully in such peril. If Noah was arrested, his spirit would wither and die. God knew, Cameron would take her there himself, if he dared, but the risk of discovery was too great.

  And what about the risk to her?

  He grappled with his conscience as he adjusted the lines of the sail. Celia Stevens was much safer on the island with Mrs. Givens and Noah to protect her than alone on the open sea with him.