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“How long has it been?”
“Six months. David disappeared after the funeral. I’ve been searching for him ever since.”
Celia reeled with shock. Darren had entered her life only five months ago, just a short time after her parents’ death. She had thought his willingness to help settle her parents’ affairs had been kindness, but in looking back, she recognized his intense interest in their estate.
And her inheritance.
The newspaper clipping was testament to his untruthfulness. Why hadn’t he told her of his previous marriage? What else hadn’t he told her?
The woman stepped forward and tipped Celia’s chin until their eyes met. “I know your mother’s gone, so I’m begging you in her name, don’t go through with this wedding. Take time to investigate what I’ve told you.”
She smoothed a strand of hair from Celia’s face in a gesture that reminded her so much of her own mother, she had to fight back tears. The stranger then pivoted on her expensive high heels and left the room.
In the solitude, Celia’s doubts swelled and multiplied. Snippets of formerly harmless conversations with Darren replayed in her memory, laden now with sinister implications. He had no family, he’d told her. And he’d been vague about his work. Investments, he’d called it. Nothing exciting. Nothing she’d want to hear about. He’d traveled in his work, never really settling down, so there was no place he called home. And most of his close friends and business associates were traveling out of the country and would be unable to attend the wedding. She had swallowed his explanations and excuses whole, never dreaming they might not be the truth.
Suddenly, she felt as if she couldn’t breathe. She hurried to the parlor door and into the corridor. Running as if the devil himself were after her, bridal gown lifted to her knees and her veil trailing in the wind, she raced from the church, sprinted through the filled parking lot, and dodged traffic as she crossed the main road that bisected the beach community. Avoiding the clubhouse at the yacht club, she followed the pathway to the marina at its rear and thundered down the dock toward the farthest slip.
Her father’s sailboat, a classic 32-foot Morgan, was moored in its usual spot. With shaking hands, Celia disengaged the lines, tossed them onboard, and leaped onto the deck. Within minutes, she had the auxiliary engines started and was moving the boat into the channel.
Suddenly the voice of the harbormaster, a man she’d known since she was a child, sounded over the public address system. “Celia, return to port. There’s a storm brewing.”
She’d weathered storms in the Morgan before. Returning to port meant facing Darren, a man with possible homicidal tendencies, and over fifty curious wedding guests. Returning also meant dealing with the ominous accusations of the strange woman, Mrs. Seffner. And worst of all, returning meant admitting to herself that she’d almost married a man she didn’t love.
A storm, the harbormaster had warned. Maybe that was just what she needed. A big wind to blow all her troubles away.
As soon as Celia reached the channel, she raised the sails and headed west into the Gulf of Mexico and the gathering storm.
Chapter One
“Is she dead?”
The deep drawling voice invaded Celia’s consciousness, and dead ricocheted in her mind like a frightened bird in a too-small cage. She couldn’t be dead. A dead person felt nothing. Her ribs ached. Her head pounded. Her arms and legs throbbed. Her skin burned from the scorching sun, but she shivered in the cool breeze.
The coolness of a shadow fell across her, blocking the sun’s assault, and strong, gentle fingers probing her neck for a pulse pressed her cheek deeper into hot sand. She winced as breaking waves of saltwater stung her lacerated ankles.
All around her a peculiar blackness vibrated with shifting lights, shapeless moats of brightness and color that ebbed and flowed like the water at her feet. Weariness seeped through her, making her eyelids too heavy to open. She wanted to cover her ears to block the relentless roar of the surf, but her hands refused to respond. Exhausted, she settled deeper into the soft, hot sand and drifted back into darkness.
“You gonna have to pry her hands off that board.” The voice roused her once more, and awe tinged the words, uttered in a thick and lazy Southern drawl. “Hanging on to it’s probably the only thing saved her.”
“Dear God, why did you send her here?” A second deep, rich voice, this one with a cultured British accent, rang with torment, and gentle fingers traced the curve of her jaw and cupped her face. “Careful with her hands, Noah.”
Someone loosened her fingers from an object she hadn’t known they clasped, and she cried out in pain. The second man wrapped her in a garment—his shirt?—and her shivering eased. Strong arms lifted her from the sand and cradled her against a warm, hard body. The heat from his skin warmed her, and her shivering ceased.
“Rest easy, miss. We’ll take good care of you.”
The tenderness in the masculine British voice soothed her more than his words. The comforting rhythm of his heartbeats thudded where her cheek rested on his bare chest, and she relaxed in his embrace and opened her eyes. She focused slowly on a strong, tanned jaw, generous mouth, classic nose and wide amber eyes combined in a face so handsome it took her breath away.
Her sudden intake of air drew his attention, and her rescuer glanced down at her. His remarkable tawny eyes filled with tenderness.
Before she could ask his name, he called to the other man, the one he’d called Noah.
“I’m taking her to Mrs. Givens,” the Englishman stated. “She’ll care for her, but I want this woman kept out of my sight. Lock her in her room if she has to.”
Celia struggled to reconcile the strangeness of his words with the tenderness she had seen in his expression. Maybe a blow to the head had addled her brains. Why would he want her locked away? She was in no shape to be a threat to anyone.
“You gonna be fine, miss.” A wide smile broke across the ebony face of the man who walked beside them. Cool currents of air wafted across her sunburned skin, and the gently rocking motion of the Englishman’s gait as he carried her from the beach lulled her back into unconsciousness.
CELIA SURFACED SLOWLY from the depths of darkness and glanced around her. She lay in a soft bed, alone in a strange room. Her fingers skimmed smooth, fresh sheets that smelled of lemons and sunshine. Above arched a high ceiling with open beams, and beyond the foot of the bed, French doors opened onto a covered veranda.
A warm breeze laden with the pungent tang of saltwater wafted through the sparsely furnished room and rippled white muslin curtains tied back from the doors. Another fragrance moved on the air, the heavy scent of oleander from the branches in a cloisonné vase on the dresser. The uneasy quiet, like a palpable presence, gathered in the room, hovering and threatening in the dim twilight.
What had her impulsiveness landed her in this time? She’d run away from her marriage, wrecked her boat in a storm, and ended up in a place she couldn’t identify. Couldn’t she do anything right?
The sounds of footsteps and swishing skirts broke the eerie stillness, the feeling of an intangible threat retreated, and the door beside her bed opened. A short, stout woman with gray curls, wearing a lavender cotton dress covered by a white apron, bustled into the room with a tray of food. She smiled, and lights danced in her deep green eyes.
“Ah, feeling better, are we? I’m Mrs. Givens, the housekeeper. Let me help you up.”
Mrs. Givens slipped a plump arm beneath Celia’s shoulders and braced extra pillows behind her.
“Where am I?” Celia asked in confusion.
“On an island, m’dear, off the southwest Florida coast.”
“My boat?”
“You’ve been shipwrecked. We found you only half alive on the beach among the wreckage.”
Dark, savage recollections of a terrible storm converged upon Celia, filling her with an unfamiliar dread. She closed her mind against the memories, too frightened to confront them. “What day is this?”
“Out here away from everything, I lose track of time.” Mrs. Givens scrunched her pleasant features into a thoughtful grimace and counted on her fingers. “Today’s Monday.”
Monday.
Two days since the violent storm had broken her sailboat into pieces, pitching her into a horrifying maelstrom of green water and sickly swirling clouds. She tossed the bedcovers back and swung her legs over the side. Someone had removed her clothes and dressed her in a white granny gown. Had it been the handsome Englishman or Mrs. Givens? Celia felt strangely vulnerable without her own garments. “Where are my clothes?”
“The storm ripped them to shreds.” Mrs. Givens tapped a plump finger against her lips. “From what little was left, it looked like a wedding gown.”
Celia ignored the curiosity in the woman’s voice. After coming so close to dying, she wanted to appreciate being alive. She didn’t want to think about weddings or Darren Walker. Not yet. “I’m Celia Stevens.”
She had survived the shipwreck, and now she was alone, God knew where, among strangers. She had to get home. Her friends would be worried about her, especially after she’d run away from her wedding at the eleventh hour. But she couldn’t travel in a granny gown.
“Could you lend me some clothes? Then maybe one of the men who found me could take me to the mainland.”
Mrs. Givens sputtered in her haste to reply. “Good heavens, no! The nearest town is Key West.”
Key West.
The words left her breathless. Somehow the storm had flung her hundreds of miles south in the Gulf. Now she faced a long drive home in a rental car. At least the trip would give her time to think of how to deal with the catastrophe she’d left behind her. “Key West will do fine.”
“Mr. Alexander—”
“The Englishman?” The handsome but enigmatic man who’d ordered her locked in her room?
Mrs. Givens nodded. “Cameron Alexander hasn’t been to Key West in over six years. He’ll not be going there now.”
“Why not?”
The housekeeper turned away, staring out through the veranda doors toward the Gulf of Mexico where the last rays of the setting sun shone. When she finally spoke, her voice sounded flat, emotionless. “You might say he’s ill.”
Strange. He hadn’t looked ill—virile, attractive, and uncomfortable at the sight of an unexpected visitor, but not ill. He’d seemed extraordinarily kind—until his comment about locking her in her room. “What about the other man—the African-American? Can he take me?”
“Noah? Impossible.”
“Why?” Impatience welled within her. She had to get home. She’d made her decision not to marry Darren, but in the process, she’d also made a mess of things. She had presents to return, letters of apology to write, and an inquiry to the police about the true identity of Darren Walker.
“Time enough to worry about such things later,” Mrs. Givens said. “You just finish your supper. You have everything here you require, so there’s no need for you to leave this room. I’ll bring your breakfast in the morning.”
Mrs. Givens’s reluctance to discuss her plight not only annoyed Celia, it alarmed her. The little woman seemed to be hiding something. Even so, Celia wished the woman would stay. Her company might keep the shadows and loneliness at bay.
“Mr. Alexander’s room,” the housekeeper said, “is next to yours, but he prefers not to be disturbed. Rest well, and don’t worry. You’re perfectly safe here.”
Her instructions to remain in the room had been so pointed, Celia expected to be locked in, but when she tried the door to the hall after Mrs. Givens left, it opened freely.
Frustration had robbed her of her appetite, and she ignored the supper tray the housekeeper had left on the dresser. She would wait until everyone was asleep, then search for a telephone.
The darkness gathered with irritating slowness. Feeling hemmed in, almost a prisoner, she crossed the room onto the veranda, where broad fronds of cabbage palms crackled like stiff paper against the weathered, second-story balustrade. Beyond the house, a narrow path wound through a sea grape hedge toward dunes fringed with sea oats. Moonlight cut a silver swath across calm gulf waters. Directly below, a rectangle of light from a downstairs window fell on the ground. Abruptly the light disappeared. Mrs. Givens must have gone to bed.
The silence of the room oppressed Celia. The oil lamp on the dresser indicated the house lacked electricity. She could do without power. What she needed was a telephone. Or maybe a generator and a short-wave radio. She’d search the house for a way to contact the mainland, to rent a boat, if necessary. A charter would be the quickest way to return to home and to work. And attending to her bookstore and its clients would be the best way to put her disastrous engagement behind her.
She doused the light on the dresser, crossed to the door, and laid her ear against the smooth pine panel. When she heard nothing, she opened the door and eased herself into the hallway.
Her bare feet made no sound on the stairs that descended to the lower hallway. Her head still throbbed, and vertigo made her unsteady, but she was determined to find a way to call for help.
In the dimness of the moonlight, the first room on the right appeared to be a study where the faint odor of leather, saddle soap and pipe tobacco hung in the air. In the darkness, she fumbled across the surface of the large desk, then searched the bookshelves, but she found nothing except books, papers and a humidor.
Celia returned to the hallway. Behind the door to the next room, Mrs. Givens’s loud snores rattled. Celia tiptoed through the outer doors across a dogtrot to the kitchen. A massive woodstove, where embers lay banked for the night, dominated the room. Celia shook her head in sympathy. Without electricity and the convenience of modern appliances, the housekeeper had her work cut out for her.
Celia sneaked back into the main house and peered into the dining room, filled with the wicker and rattan furniture she’d expected in a Florida island house. But so far, no sign of a phone or any other means of communication.
Only one room remained, and her hopes of finding a means to call for help dwindled. She was treading softly toward the front room when dizziness engulfed her. She steadied herself against the paneling of the hallway, but her legs weakened, and for a moment, she feared she would faint. Her head throbbed from the blow she’d received when she capsized. Common sense told her to return to bed, but the need to find a radio or a phone kept her searching.
The door of the front room stood slightly ajar, and inside, a lamp burned low on the mantelpiece, illuminating a life-sized portrait of a woman and boy. The woman, elegantly beautiful in a long formal gown, stood with her hand on the shoulder of a small boy with plump, rosy cheeks and a mischievous smile. The warm light and friendly expression of the child beckoned, and Celia entered the room.
A camel-backed sofa, flanked by deep chairs, faced the fireplace, whose black, gaping maw devoured a profusion of potted ferns and bromeliads. She shuddered at the image and stepped around the sofa for a better look at the portrait, wondering if the pair were related to the present occupants.
Someone muttered incoherently behind her. Startled, she jumped and clasped her chest to prevent her heart from pounding through her breastbone. Whirling around, she discovered a man stretched out asleep upon the sofa. Her fear turned to surprise when she recognized Cameron Alexander, and surprise dissolved into a surge of relief. She would shake him awake and beg him to take her to the mainland.
But her vision blurred, her head throbbed, and the pain and dizziness returned. She slid weakly onto a chair beside the sofa. When the vertigo passed, she focused slowly on the man before her. With sun-burnished hair the color of a lion’s mane, he lay on his back. His unbuttoned shirt fell open, revealing the tanned muscles of a powerful chest, rising and falling in a hypnotic rhythm.
The strong lines of his sun-bronzed face, handsome, square-jawed and high-cheekboned, were softened by a lock of hair that fell over his forehead. A frown drew down the corners of his wide mouth, and a deep vertical line creased his forehead between his eyebrows, as if he dreamed unpleasant dreams.
His fitted pants accentuated muscular thighs, and his boots seemed more suitable for riding than boating. He had flung one arm over his head, and the other hung to the floor, where an empty brandy snifter rested in his curled fingers.
He didn’t dress like a boater, no jeans or shorts or T-shirt, but, living on the island, he had to have a boat.
She rose, gripped the firm muscles of his shoulder, and shook him gently.
Instantly, his hand flew up and seized her wrist. In the same moment, his lids sprang open, and his eyes gleamed golden and wild. The dreaming frown intensified, and he stared at her so fiercely, she shivered in the warm air.
“What are you doing here?” His voice rumbled like distant thunder.
She pried his fingers from her wrist, realizing she couldn’t have freed herself if he hadn’t allowed it, and took a step back. “Looking for a way to contact the mainland to charter a boat. Do you have a radio?”
“No.” In contrast to his harsh tone, his eyes flickered with sympathy.
“Can you take me to the mainland?”
“The closest town is Key West.” He snarled the words, but his hands clenched and unclenched as if he fought some inner battle.
Instinctively, she retreated a few steps. “Will you take me there?”
He shook his head, as if to clear the sympathetic look from his eyes. “I haven’t been to Key West in six years.”
“But you said Key West is the closest town—”
“It is.”
His gaze shifted past her to the portrait above the mantel, and when he spoke again, he seemed to be speaking to himself. “I haven’t set foot there in six years and I have no intention of returning now.”
Giddiness struck her once more, and she comprehended his words with difficulty.
“I have to go home—” The pain in her head stabbed and swelled, the room spun wildly, her knees buckled, and the floor came up to meet her.
CAMERON ALEXANDER scooped the slender figure into his arms for the second time that day and placed her on the sofa. He had sworn to avoid her, to closet himself away until she left the island, but she’d found him.
He should awaken Mrs. Givens and leave the girl to her, but his resolve to keep away weakened as he feasted on the sight of her. His hands tingled with longing to bury themselves in the halo of her auburn hair with its highlights bleached by the sun. Golden lashes brushed her cheeks, hiding her sea-blue eyes, but the wide-eyed stare she had bestowed on him when he first gathered her off the beach remained etched in his mind.
He had seen no woman other than Mrs. Givens in over six years, but if he saw hundreds a day, the one before him would still captivate him. Fleetingly, he wished he’d met her years ago in the drawing room of a respectable London home, before his marriage, before his trouble. He’d believed he’d lost everything before he came to the island, but he hadn’t calculated losing someone he had yet to meet. He’d had no way to predict a storm would wash such a woman onto his beach.
Poised and elegant, even in distress, yet poignantly vulnerable, Celia Stevens called forth all his protective instincts. A groan escaped his lips. He yearned to safeguard her, yet the most prudent thing he could do was place as much distance between himself and the woman before him as possible.
Had the Devil sent this vision to torment him? Worse yet, had God Almighty sent her as punishment for his grievous sins, a sight to conjure up memories of the horror he had spent so many years trying to forget?
He could not break his exile to take her away. He must avoid her, so there would never be another disaster.
Another death.
But even as he pledged to stay away, he could not refrain from staring at his gift from the sea.
