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Too bad it had been an all-girls school, she reflected sourly. A little more exposure to men and she might have been better prepared for Adam when he had arrived on the island. At the very least she might have had a more accurate perception of her own weaknesses and inexperience.
Well, it was all in the past now, and though Justin Carlyle had disappeared over four years ago, she still had Jem Walker with her, and Jem was great. He was as close as a brother could be, her best friend, her partner in all things.
Her life and the island were damn near perfect.
Except that now Adam was back.
She stared at the house, inwardly swearing and breathing deeply to calm herself. She heard voices, guests returning to their rooms. She closed her eyes, hoping she was concealed by the healthy tangle of orchids. The voices faded.
Only two or three. Had Adam’s been among them?
She slipped out of the gazebo, looking toward the dock.
The entire group was now gone. Amazing what his damned appearance had done to her. She’d rushed away, imagined she’d seen blood on her walk, then walked around like an idiot while everyone who’d left the docks after her was probably already relaxing in a hot tub.
Even Jem had finished up with the business of rinsing down the equipment and was no doubt comfortably submerged in heat and bubbles in his cottage.
Everyone had disappeared.
Disappeared. God, how she hated that word!
Don’t start thinking about disappearances now! she warned herself.
This was customarily a quiet time on the island, after the daily dive trip and any of the other activities and lessons, and before the traditional cocktail hour—unless you were Jerry and liked to start cocktail hour early. Though the island was a casual vacation destination, people always had a tendency to dress up for cocktail hour and dinner, at least a little bit. Her guests napped, bathed and indulged themselves—and one another—during this quiet time, as she thought of it after talking with one guest, a kindergarten teacher.
Quiet time. She needed a little quiet time of her own, with an early start on the cocktail hour thrown in.
She turned away from the empty dock and hurried along the path, anxious to reach the calm refuge of her own abode. Once her house had been a kitchen for the lodge, but with the installation of smoke detectors and a sprinkler system, the one-time kitchen had been adapted into a charming cottage. There was a central living area, a sunken office off to one side, a small kitchenette, and then her bedroom and bath, the latter huge, with a separate shower stall that offered a dozen jets and a huge Jacuzzi set high atop elegant, tiled steps. It was surrounded by glass, with privacy shutters built along the outside wall. From the bath, she looked out onto a garden area with purple bougainvillea twining over the shutters and a small fountain with a graceful Venus pouring water onto concrete flowers.
Sam carefully locked her door. She didn’t want to assume that Adam’s being on the island meant he intended to come anywhere near her, but then, she knew the man, and if he wanted something, he would come after it.
She checked the lock, then leaned against the door, studying her living room walls.
They were laden with paintings and prints. A few were period pieces and very valuable. Galleons, warships, privateers, all lined her walls, along with some beautiful charts and maps.
There was a map of Seafire Isle with its surrounding coral reefs and shelves. Once upon a time, the small island had been a dangerous place, teeming with pirates. It had been passed between the Spanish and the British a dozen times. Because of the coral reefs surrounding it, the island was accessible only by smaller ships, and in days gone by, many a poor vessel had been wrecked on her reefs. This map had been sketched in pen and ink during her great-grandfather’s day. It showed the more modern pleasures of the island, the lodge, the scattering of cottages, the docks, the beach, the tennis courts and the golf course. It was quite charmingly drawn, and little had really changed since it had been done.
But Sam’s eyes were drawn from the Seafire Isle map, and she moved across the room, looking at her father’s favorite. It was a treasure map, drawn in the early eighteen hundreds, encompassing Florida with all its islands, the Gulf Coast and the Caribbean. There were stars and notes attached to every possible “treasure” trove—or sunken ship—location in fine, minuscule handwriting. “Here lyeth the Santa Margarita, the Ghost Galleon, sunk in the Year of Our Lord 1622, in the Eyes of a Storm, may she rest in peace.” The treasure recovered from the Santa Margarita had an estimated worth of about twenty million. She had sunk at nearly the same time as the more recently discovered Atocha, a ship that had yielded its own trove of treasure, both fiscal and historical.
Closer to Seafire Isle, west of the south Florida mainland, was the mark for the Beldona, her father’s love, his great passion—the mistress of his life.
The Beldona had, in the end, claimed him, or so it seemed. And without giving up a single one of her secrets. She’d gone down in 1722, also in “the Eyes of a Storm,” and she’d carried her crew, her prisoners and her treasure to a watery grave from which there had been no reprieve. She’d been something of a mystery ship from the very beginning, a British ship carrying secret documents as well as a doomed crew of Spanish privateers. No one had ever been able to tell a pirate tale like Justin Carlyle. No one. No one had ever been able to weave such a spell of magic, adventure and chills. And no one, perhaps, had ever been so caught up in the spell of his own lore.
Justin had also been an excellent diver, strict regarding the rules of safety.
But Justin had followed the Beldona. And he had never returned.
Strange, for all his hard, contemporary tactics and cool determination, Adam had been as seduced by her father’s tales as any other man. He had sat up hour after hour with Justin, while they had drunk cheap whiskey together, laughing, imagining, weaving tales of what had happened the night of the storm. And they had speculated as to where the ship might have gone down. Yes, Adam and her father had been great together.
She inhaled raggedly again, backing away from the map. Great. Just great. She had gone from wondering about Adam to agonizing over her father, and now she couldn’t stop remembering them both.
No, she would never waste time on such a rotten bastard again, and that was that. She turned toward the kitchen, walking slowly at first. Then more quickly.
Her walk became a run. She reached into the refrigerator and, more desperately than she wanted to, dragged out a bottle of zinfandel. She poured herself a glass, her hands shaking. She gulped down the wine.
She shuddered, her entire face puckering. Wine was not meant to be guzzled. She poured herself a second glass, determined not to think about Adam. She decided, as she made her way into the bathroom to start hot water running into the massive Jacuzzi, that he had one hell of a lot of nerve, thinking that he could just walk in here and expect her not to betray him.
Maybe she’d misread him and he really didn’t care if she betrayed him or not. Maybe he was really on vacation.
No. Never.
By the time the Jacuzzi had been filled, she had her third glass of wine at her side. She crawled into the tub and leaned back, determined to relax, to unwind. Impossible. She laid her head back, feeling the water pulse against her back, her neck.
Damn him. What was he doing here now? Where had he been when things had gone badly for her, when her father had disappeared, when Hank had followed the exact same way? She’d been desperate enough then to write to him, to beg him for help, and he hadn’t shown up. Where the hell had he been, and what possible right did he have to come now?
She sipped her wine, feeling its effects at last, soothing her body if not her soul. Great. She was guzzling zinfandel. Trying to get sloshed on wine. She hadn’t done anything so stupid since she and Jem and Yancy had been sixteen and downed a bottle of cheap burgundy they had gotten hold of in Freeport. Think how sick she’d been….
No, she wasn’t going to make that mistake again.
Right, she taunted herself. Her wine wasn’t cheap anymore.
She shook her head, warning herself to slow down. She had a business to run. She didn’t want to get sloshed at all—couldn’t afford to—but his presence on the island was really getting to her. And she was usually so moderate. She hadn’t overimbibed in wine or anything else since she had gotten so carried away that night when they had first…
She heard a noise behind her and tensed, sitting up straight, her fingers curling over the rim of the tub, listening.
She had imagined it, she told herself. She sat very still, barely breathing, listening once more.
Nothing….
Had she imagined it?
No, no…a few seconds later, it came again. Like a whisper through the air. Movement.
She gritted her teeth furiously.
Adam.
He’d been like the sun coming into her life, all powerful, blazing, the center of her universe.
She’d been like a stick of gum to him. Easily spat out and forgotten, exchanged for another.
And now he thought he could saunter in again, and she would be the same obliging innocent she had been before.
The noise was coming closer.
How had he gotten in? she wondered. The bastard. She spoke at last, controlling her contemptuous tone to the very best of her ability. “You son of a bitch, I don’t know how the hell you got in here, but you can get out of my private quarters right this second!” she snapped.
He didn’t reply. Not a word. Not a whisper of laughter, not a breath of mockery.
“Damn you!”
Furious, she twisted around. To her absolute amazement, it wasn’t Adam.
At least, she didn’t think it was Adam.
It was a figure in black. Completely in black—down to a black ski mask.
Sam was so stunned that she didn’t even think to be frightened at first, just curious.
A ski mask? Nights on the island could be cool, but never cold enough for…
Oh, God. She was an idiot.
“What on earth…” she began to murmur. Then she realized that the figure was coming toward her, carrying some kind of a black cloth in its black gloved hand.
She stood up, drawing in breath she could expel in a shriek as she tried to leap from the tub and escape. But she was cut off from the doorway by the figure, left standing there naked, dripping.
She made an attempt to sidestep the figure and leap for the door. No luck. She stared at it hard. Male, she thought instinctively. Tall—no chest. But that was it. There was nothing else she could tell about her silent attacker.
For seconds they just stood, staring at one another.
Then she realized her situation. She was naked, unarmed, and an intruder was in her bathroom, completely camouflaged and staring at her.
“Help!” she screamed. Her cottage wasn’t that far from the main house. And there were other cottages near hers. Someone might be walking on the beach. Someone…
This was ludicrous. A black-clad figure in a ski mask on a Caribbean island—attempting to attack her!
“Help!” she shrieked again.
The figure lunged for her.
“No!” she cried, beating her fists against his chest, kicking him. He grunted as one well-aimed kick connected, then seemed to find his own spurt of fury. He grasped one of her arms, and she was drawn, still kicking and screaming, against his body. He struggled to force the cloth over her face. She kept struggling to keep it away. She tried not to breathe. She could already smell the sickly sweet scent of the drug that soaked the cloth.
“Help!” she shrieked again, still kicking. The cry cost her what little breath she had left. She had to breathe. Had to inhale….
The scent was awful. Filling her nose, her lungs, seeping into her blood, deadening her limbs. She couldn’t keep fighting, couldn’t force her arms to move the way she wanted them to. She tried to claw, to scratch his eyes with her fingers.
Oh, God, she was losing her strength. She was being attacked…assaulted….
Murdered?
She still couldn’t believe that an intruder had come here for her. This was her damned island!
Blackness…stars…weakness…
That awful, sickly sweet smell, closing in around her, filling her…
She was starting to go limp in the fierce hold of her attacker.
Suddenly the arms that held her were wrenched away. She was dimly aware of a thudding, crunching sound as a blow was thrown and connected with flesh and bone. She heard a groan, footsteps taking flight….
All in a matter of seconds.
“Sit!” someone snapped at her. “I’ll be back.”
She reached out blindly. “Ca—can’t!”
She lacked the strength to stand, yet she couldn’t manage to tell her limbs to set her into a sitting position. She was going to fall against the unforgiving tile.
“Damn it!” she heard someone say. “He’s going to get away.”
She didn’t fall, she was swept up. She blinked furiously against the effects of the drug, trying to fight again.
“Damn it, Sam, I’m trying to keep you from killing yourself!”
Her vision started clearing. It was Adam. Right in front of her. No, holding her. She was still so dizzy. The room was spinning. No, he was walking. Carrying her. Laying her down on her bed.
He left her for a minute and the darkness began to recede. She drank in the fresh, salt-tinged night air that whispered over the island. She tried her fingers. They moved. Her toes. They wiggled.
There was a sensation of weight as he sat down at her side. Cold, as he pressed a washcloth rinsed in cool water over her face.
She inhaled through the cloth and felt her temper reviving the rest of her.
Adam was in her room—and she was stark naked.
He lifted the cloth from her face. His eyes were burning and sharp, his features tense, yet his lips seemed to curve in a mocking smile.
She struck out wildly, her palm swinging toward his cheek.
“Stop it, Sam! It’s me. Adam!”
The Ray-Bans were gone. She could see his face clearly, if she could only focus. She blinked, making the attempt. She saw the silver glitter of his eyes against the striking, angled lines of his profile and tried to strike out again. He caught her hands, leaning over her, his weight bearing her down, preventing her from attacking him.
“Sam, damn it, it’s me!”
“I know perfectly well who it is!” she cried out. Still struggling furiously, she managed to free a hand and tried again to strike him.
Once again, before her blow could land, her wrist was captured.
And she realized that she was lying naked and completely vulnerable…with Adam O’Connor not just back on her island, but lying on top of her in her bed.
3
“Fine! Next time a stranger is trying to drug you, kidnap you, maybe even kill you, I’ll remember to keep my distance,” Adam said evenly. His tone was husky. Angry.
His eyes were directly on hers, gleaming. A knife-like silver. Not giving away an iota of emotion.
Only his voice hinted of his feelings.
