by Diana Palmer
He looked hunted for an instant, his eyes pained, his expression one of a man combating a host of conflicting emotions. “I’ll call you in the morning, then,” he said after a minute.
“That will be fine,” she assured him, forcing herself to be cheerful. She glanced around the room. “Why are you staying here in a regular suite?” she added, curious.
Both dark eyebrows went up. “Why not? I own it. I can find out more about its operation from one of the standard rooms than in the executive suite, can’t I?”
“Everybody knows who you are, anyway.” She laughed.
He shrugged. “It’s a well-run hotel,” he admitted. “I’ve known associates to send servants down here with bankrolls to see how efficient the service in their hotels was.”
“And...?” she asked. “Have you done that?”
“There’s never been a complaint,” Cal said with a ghost of a smile. “It isn’t the newest hotel on the island, but there’s been extensive renovation and remodeling, and the service is second to none.”
“I’ll agree with that wholeheartedly.” She nodded. “It’s well-run, all right. But why build another hotel...”
“Not here,” he said. “On one of the out islands,” he added. “But that’s privileged information right now, Georgia.”
She nodded. Her eyes flashed up to his and down again. “Well... I’ll see you in the morning. Or sometime,” she added with a smile and a careful carelessness. It wouldn’t do to have him think she was begging for his company. Especially now that they were in adjoining rooms. What more did she want?
He nodded, his eyes narrowed with an absentminded look in them. “Sure. Don’t go out at night by yourself,” he threw over his shoulder.
“Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it,” she said.
She went into her room and closed the door behind her. It was silly to cry, but she did.
A cool bath made her feel better. She dressed in white slacks and a sleeveless, V-necked white blouse before she went back out again, in search of the little church.
If only she had someone to talk to, someone she could ask for advice. It would be better if she got on a plane and went home right now, before she got in over her head with Callaway Steel. Apparently he was having second thoughts of his own, because he wasn’t all that anxious to spend any more time with her. He’d actually seemed relieved when she suggested parting company.
She sighed, walking along the crowded sidewalk, oblivious to her surroundings. She must have really gotten to him with that remark about what pushed him, and it had been a wholly innocent one. She hadn’t meant to dig at him, but perhaps he was used to people who dealt in that brand of sophisticated knife turning.
That kind of loss would be hard to take, those two tragedies so close together. Perhaps he blamed himself. He wasn’t a man at peace with himself, nor a man who enjoyed life to any great degree. She suspected that if it hadn’t been for his businesses, he wouldn’t have made it through until now. The pressure of daily decision-making had probably saved his sanity.
But what kind of life was it? He’d admitted that it had been a long time since he’d slowed down enough to notice his surroundings, since he’d been able to smile. She was glad she could do that much for the tycoon. But it was the man who interested her, despite the gaping difference in lifestyles that separated them. She’d wanted very much to get to know him, and she knew now that wasn’t going to be possible. Callaway Steel preferred people at arm’s length, and that was where he planned to put Nikki, despite the closeness they’d shared last night. It must have been the moon and the rum, she thought sadly. Because in broad daylight, Cal had eyes only for the Steel companies.
She stopped at the door of the Christ Church Cathedral, her eyes riveted to the worn stone building with its windows that opened from the bottom and swung out, the courtyard with a black wrought iron fence and hibiscus blooming profusely inside it. It was the most beautiful church she’d ever seen, its history ancient and fascinating.
The interior had a sweeping grace of design, with high ceilings and ceiling fans, mahogany pews and white columns. The walls were lined with marble plaques in memory of deceased persons dating back far into the 1800s. One sad one read:
SACRED TO THE MEMORY OF LOUISA, WHO DIED 6TH JUNE, 1856, IN THE 25TH YEAR OF HER AGE.
Another marked the deaths of the crew of a British ship: crewmen aged sixteen through twenty-nine who succumbed to yellow fever in 1862. Besides the plaques there was an RAF Book of Remembrance listing the officers and men of the RAF who died in performance of their duties while stationed in the Bahamas during World War II from 1939 to 1945.
The silence inside the church was reverent, made more so by the memorabilia of those who had lived and died in the islands so long ago. Nikki wandered down the aisles between the pews, reading the markers, reflecting on what the lives of those people had been like, whether they had been happy or sad, what accomplishments they’d left behind them.
It was a reminder of how fleeting life was, and she remembered Leda, whose twenty-five years had ended so suddenly and so tragically. No one ever expected to die. Death came like a winter storm, so silently, so suddenly.
She clutched her purse tightly in her fingers, staring blankly toward the altar as she remembered, graphically, every minute of the flood she’d covered, Leda’s body, the frantic efforts of the rescue people to work around the clutter of reporters and cameras and microphones. It was reminiscent of another flood Nikki’s uncle had covered in the mountains, when a dam burst in a heavy rain and shot over a waterfall, killing a number of people, mostly children. That graphic coverage, and the vivid details that had been too horrific to print, had haunted her. The flood that claimed Leda had been added to the other one in her mind, and the combined memories had caused her some serious problems with her emotions.
But now for the first time she felt at peace with herself. This little church was easing the pain in unexpected ways. Perhaps it was the realization that she wasn’t alone in grief as she read the wording of some of the plaques, which had been erected by grieving family members and friends so many years ago. Grief was like an heirloom passed down from one generation to the next, and there was no escaping it. One simply had to accept death as a fact of existence, and accept equally the certainty of something better past that invisible barrier that separated life from death. A wisp of verse from Nikki’s Presbyterian upbringing lightly touched her mind as she stared toward the altar. “...God cause His countenance to shine upon you, and grant you peace.”
Tears welled in her eyes and overflowed, and the tight knot of pain inside her seemed to melt away with the action. Now she could heal. Now at last she could live with it.
She turned, dabbing at her eyes with her hand. She never seemed to have a handkerchief or a tissue when she needed it most. She was almost even with the entrance when a shadowy form took shape just inside the door as she blinked her eyes to force the mist out of them.
“Cal!” she whispered in disbelief.
He shifted restlessly from one huge leg to the other. “I was halfway through a bid when I remembered those,” he said quietly, nodding toward the plaques on the walls. “I had a feeling they’d bother you.”
She remembered his own losses, his wife, his young daughter, and the tears burned down her cheeks.
He moved forward, pulling out a handkerchief to give her. She pressed it to her tear-filled eyes, catching the scent of expensive cologne in its white softness.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, looking up at him with wide crystal clear eyes. “You hurt, too, don’t you?” she whispered, almost afraid to say it.
His face hardened, darkened. He looked away from her, down the long aisle. “Yes,” he said harshly. “I hurt.”
And he’d thought about her. He’d cared enough to come and see about her, despite his business. She wanted to bawl over that concern, but she
forced her scattered emotions back together, sniffed, dabbed at the last of the tears and handed him back the handkerchief.
“I’m glad I came here,” she told him, moving past him toward the outside again. “I needed to.”
“What denomination are you?” he asked as they moved into the light, and Nikki blinked at the sudden brightness against her sensitive eyes.
“Presbyterian,” she murmured.
“Now that,” he said with a sideways glance, “is a true coincidence.”
She stopped and looked up at him. “You aren’t Presbyterian?”
He pulled a cigarette out of his blue-patterned shirt pocket and lit it. “My mother was Roman Catholic. My father was a staunch Calvinist. By some miracle they managed to live together long enough to be convinced that neither was going to convert the other. They became Presbyterians in an attempt to find a common ground.”
“That’s incredible.” She laughed.
“So were they,” he returned, his dark eyes soft with memory. “A happy couple.”
“Are they dead now?” she asked gently.
“My father is,” he replied. “My mother is still very much alive. She’s in a nursing home, a good one, and she plays a mean game of chess.”
“Do you look like her?”
“My father was blond and blue-eyed,” he remarked with a wry grin. “I get my size from him. But the rest is Mother.”
“Not quite all of it, surely,” she remarked dryly, and then flushed wildly when she realized what she’d said.
Laughter tumbled out of him like wine out of a carafe. “Sheltered little country girl...?” he murmured with a wicked glance.
“Why don’t you go back to your bids and your business?” she muttered.
“Hell, I tried. You got in the way.” He took a long draw from his cigarette as they walked. “Let’s go enjoy the sun for a while. All I’ve managed to do is give myself a headache.”
She smiled. Suddenly the day began to take on a new radiance.
They went to a casino over on Paradise Island that night, where Cal taught Nikki the art of gambling. She’d never even played poker before, and she didn’t have a high opinion of gambling in any form, but there was an aura of glamour that clung to this exclusive place.
While the roulette wheel spun and spun, her eyes darted restlessly around the room, finding every sort of apparel imaginable, from evening jackets to sport shirts and everything in between. It was the most fascinating place she’d ever been, despite the fact that she was wearing a long coral-patterned gown when most of the other women were in short dresses or elegant pantsuits. But Cal was wearing an evening jacket and a black tie with his white silk shirt, and Nikki had garnered enough courage over boiled lobster earlier that evening to tell him how devastating he looked.
He’d given her a strange look over that remark, one she couldn’t puzzle out. She had the feeling he never knew whether or not people were lying to him, because he was rich. And she was suddenly glad that she wasn’t.
“You won,” he said into her ear, distracting her from the people-watching habit reporting had ingrained in her.
“Oh, I did?” she murmured vaguely, and asked how much.
He told her, and grinned at the stunned expression on her face.
When they cashed in the chips, she handed half a year’s salary to him, which produced an expression that was a cross between incredulity and disbelief.
“What the hell are you handing it to me for?” he asked. “You won it. It’s yours.”
“Oh no, it’s not. You staked me. Here.” She caught his big hand and pressed the wad of notes into it.
He stared at it as if it was a dead fish, lying green and lifeless on his palm. His deep-set eyes stared down into hers searchingly. “I assume you aren’t independently wealthy, if you work for a newspaper?”
She smiled. “No. My uncle owns the paper, and I wouldn’t starve, but my parents didn’t leave me anything substantial.”
“Then why turn down a sum like this?”
She stared down at it and shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe because it came too easily. I like working for what I get.” She tilted her head up at him. “You know, I’ve seen men go to carnivals and spend a week’s salary tossing nickels and dimes for plates they could have bought for a dime apiece. The fever gets into them and they won’t quit, and maybe they’ve got two or three children and a wife at home who’ll have to suffer because of that gambling impulse. I may sound idealistic, but I’ve no use for gambling. Maybe here nobody goes hungry if a player loses two or three thousand dollars. But I’ve seen the other side of the coin, and it’s not pretty.”
“You might consider donating it to charity,” he suggested.
Her eyes twinkled. “I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we both donate it to that little church we visited?”
One corner of his hard mouth curled. “Now, that’s an idea I like.” He pushed it into his pocket. “I’ll send a check over in the morning.”
“You’re a nice man, Callaway Steel,” she said as they walked toward the door.
He glanced down at her with a wry smile. “That’s a new wrinkle. I don’t think I’ve ever been called nice.”
“Life is full of new adventures,” she told him in her best theatrical voice. “Just think, tomorrow you could be eaten by a shark, or haunted by the ghost of the Jolly Roger... I wonder if he was?”
He blinked. “Wonder if who was what?”
“If Roger was Jolly.” She frowned. “Hmm, I’ll have to give that one some thought.”
“You do that,” he murmured, hailing them a cab.
The ride back to the hotel was far too short, and Nikki found herself trying to slow her steps as they went past the desk to the elevator.
“You’re dragging, honey,” Cal remarked.
“Tired feet,” she murmured sheepishly.
“Sorry to see it end, Nicole?” he asked wisely, watching her as they entered the elevator and the door slid shut behind them.
She looked up at him, and pain flashed for an instant through her slender body, visible for the blink of an eye in her pale, soft eyes.
“Let’s not be serious,” she said gently.
He reached out and traced her short, pert nose. “We can’t go through life like a couple of clowns. Although you do, don’t you?” he added shrewdly. “You use laughter to cover up a lot of hurt.”
She looked away toward the neat row of floor buttons on the panel. “And you see too deeply,” she countered.
“It wasn’t just the flood, was it?” he asked. “Was there a man?”
The elevator door opened in time to spare her an answer, but he wasn’t going to let it lie. She knew that by the set of his jaw as he strolled straight and tall beside her toward her room. She’d opened it with her key, but he threw the door back, moved her gently inside the room and went with her, closing the door firmly behind him.
She stared up at him helplessly. She hadn’t meant to invite him in; she hadn’t wanted to be so alone with him. But it was going to be impossible to throw him out. And apparently he was determined to get an answer.
“Was there a man, Nikki?” he persisted gently, following her as she went into the room with its neatly made double bed, and onto the small balcony overlooking the bay and the beach.
“Yes,” she said with a heavy sigh, leaning on the wrought iron railing. “It seems like a hundred years ago now, but yes, there was. Ralley was my fiancé. We’d already sent out the wedding invitations and my friends had given me a shower for the household items when Ralley and Leda eloped and got married across the state line.” She smiled sadly. “I did so want them to get along. Leda was my best friend, and it was important to me that they liked each other. Well, they sure did.” She laughed, resorting to humor. “They just went a little overboard.”
He didn�
��t say anything, but she felt him behind her, felt the warmth of his big body against her back.
“Leda was the one who died in the flood?” he asked after a minute.
She nodded. The wrought iron felt cold and steely under her nervous hands. Being alone with him like this was devastatingly new. Always before there had been people around. But now there were no prying eyes at all.
“Where is the man now?” he asked, moving closer. She felt, with a shock of pleasure, his big hands clasping her waist to bring her back against him.
“He, uh, he lives in a town about fifty miles away from Ashton,” she stammered. She felt his warm breath touching her hair, breathed the clean scent of him mingling with the elusive fragrances of his expensive cologne and her light perfume.
His lips touched the side of her neck, running down it to her bare shoulder, where the tiny spaghetti straps held up the blouson bodice of the gown. His dark hair was cool where it touched her face, his mouth was warm and slow and its effect was unexpected.
She turned involuntarily to look up at him, the night sounds of surf and song and voices far away drifted nearby like something from a fantasy while she stared into his eyes and found the missing pieces of her own soul.
“You have the most extraordinary eyes,” he murmured absently, scowling. “Just when I think I’ve got the color figured out, they change. They were emerald, now they’re aquamarine.”
She smiled softly. “Yours don’t change. They’re very dark.” The smile faded. “Sometimes they’re haunted.”
“I know.” He drew in a deep breath. “I carry my ghosts around with me.” His hands moved up to cup her face, warming it, caressing it. “Are you a sorceress, Nikki? Can you exorcise them?”
Her nervous fingers reached up to touch, hesitantly, that hard, square jaw, the shadow where the corner of his chiseled mouth began, the imposing line of his nose. He let her touch him, standing quietly, rigidly, as if she were some small animal creeping up to him, and he was doing his best not to frighten it away. Her fingertips found his high cheekbones, his broad forehead, the silky, heavy brows above his deep-set eyes. Then they drew down the rigid muscles of his cheeks and drew across his warm, firm lips with a slow, whispering touch.