by Helen Conrad
“You’re a goner already,” he said scathingly. “You’re crazy about the guy, aren’t you?”
The accusation stung and she lashed out defensively. “I am not!” Her frown darkened with her resentment of Karl’s proprietary attitude. “I’m not a child, Karl. I can take care of myself.” Seeing his hurt look, she relented.
“Oh, listen. I came here to find you because I was in need of a friend. From what you said in Dallas, from your letters ... I kind of thought we might just make a twosome, you and I.” She smiled at his surprise. “But I know now that it would never have worked. We just aren’t suited, and you know it as well as I do.”
It was strange how the driving determination that had brought her to Samoa had faded. When she thought now about the conditions of her father’s will, about the need to find someone to marry before the time was up, it was only as though thinking of an annoying chore that had to be done. She was the one who needed a wedding, not Jack. What would Karl say if he knew the truth? If he knew how close he had come to being incorporated into her plans? The poor man didn’t realize his good fortune.
A shadow whispered across her feelings.
“Besides, you’re going to marry Valima.” And take care of Jack’s child, she thought. Though she didn’t say it out loud, they both heard it in the air between them.
He looked so crushed. She reached out and took his hands in hers. “Don’t worry, darling,” she said soothingly. “I won’t get taken advantage of.” Not like you let yourself be, she added silently.
“No, Karl.” Jack’s voice was an icy shock that made them both jump. “You don’t have to worry about Summer. She knows how to play all the angles.”
Neither of them had heard Jack’s approach and Summer cursed the guilty looks on both their faces.
“Why did you come back so soon?” she asked in her confusion, then wished she’d held her tongue.
“Why, indeed?” Jack was smiling but she knew him well enough by now to see the fury buried in his casual manner. “It’s obvious you weren’t expecting me.”
He raised a dark eyebrow at Karl. “You told me you were going to handle the rot situation in Tau’u Valley today. But on my way back, I ran into your crew going out to the reef for an afternoon of fishing.” He stared steadily at his plantation manager, his face like granite, expressionless and waiting.
Karl glanced at Summer, then back to his employer. “I had some other things to take care of,” he mumbled. “I’ll get on it, don’t worry.”
Jack’s smile was glacial. “Oh, I’m not worried,” he assured Karl, his voice as menacing as a deadly snake. “I know exactly what I can expect of you.”
Karl looked startled, then began his retreat. “I just wanted to talk to Summer,” he said defensively. “There’s no harm in that.”
But he left quickly, as though he knew there were some who might disagree.
Once the sound of his departure faded, Jack turned slowly to face Summer.
“I guess I didn’t make myself clear,” he said in a deceptively soft voice. “You’re not to have any contact with Karl at all.”
Summer had been dreading what he might have to say, but when she heard his authoritarian words, she was riled.
“Just a minute,” she answered, shocked. “I’m a free woman. I’ll do what I want to do, talk to whom I want to. You can’t take control like some petty dictator.”
His grin was malevolent. “Oh, yes I can,” he answered. “You forget that this is my island.”
She glared at him daringly. “This may be your island,” she said, “but I am not your slave.” She tossed back her silver curls. “You may be able to cow the rest of these people, though lord knows they should be shown the light. But you can’t do the same to me.”
He came toward her, smiling grimly. “You still don’t get it, do you Summer?” His hard hand shot out, capturing her chin in a steel grip. “I guess I’m just going to have to give you a demonstration.”
She could see his intention and she moved quickly to block it. “I won’t be coerced, Jack,” she warned. “And I won’t be forced into doing something against my will. Not without one hell of a fight.”
His free hand reached to take a handful of petals from the lei about her neck. With one quick movement, he crushed them, his dark eyes never wavering. “Fight then, Summer,” he said hoarsely. “You just try to fight this.”
His lips on hers were hard, but his kiss was more persuasive than brutal, moving sensuously to evoke the response she knew he’d sensed in her before. When she tried to twist away, the hand on her chin tightened painfully and his other arm slid around to entrap her shoulders.
She told herself that she should put up more of a struggle. He couldn’t be allowed to think he could control her this way. But she began to realize that she didn’t want to stop him. The warm, moist movement of his lips caressing her mouth, the flicker of his tongue searching out hers in a silly love dance that sent her pulse reeling, became all to her very quickly. She didn’t want him to stop. She wanted more.
Time blurred, and so did the setting. She was a blossom torn from the stem, tossed high in the blinding heat of a sunstorm wind, living for the moment. Every touch of his throbbing body sent a shock of desire through her. Every movement of his hand on her back, of his lips against hers. She was one with him and it was beyond her power to resist.
When she next roused enough to notice, she found her beach coat was gone and that Jack had taken her down onto the mossy bank. He lay beside her, propped on one elbow, exploring the silky softness of her flesh with his sensitive lips. She reached to slide her fingers into his hair, gripping gently but firmly, feeling the vitality of the length of him against her.
His ebony eyes met hers. The smile that filled them was spiked with triumph, but at this point, she didn’t care. It was her triumph too, and she reveled in it.
His hands stirred fire as they stroked across her, and in one deft movement he had removed the bra to her swimming suit, leaving her naked as she had been on his boat the day before.
She watched the hungry glitter in his eyes as he took in the picture she made, her golden hair fanned out on the emerald green moss, the alabaster skin of her breasts gleaming in the sunlight, the dusky peaks teased erect by the capricious breeze. Aroused by the desire she sensed in him, she smiled drowsily.
“So you got your instant replay,” she whispered. “Are you satisfied?”
His hand cupped her breast, his thumb touching the pink tip as lightly as the brush of a falling leaf. “Something tells me I’m never going to be satisfied,” he growled, easing his body partly over hers. “No matter how much of you I get, I’m always going to want more.”
His large, hard hands caressed the contours of her body, stroking patterns of fire on her tingling skin. She arched against him in unconscious seduction, reaching for his naked chest with her fingertips, twisting with a low moan as she felt her need quicken.
She would take him to her and she would love him as she had never loved any other man. This was something she had never dreamed would happen to her. Without this man, she was sure it never would have. He alone claimed the magic that could rouse her sleeping ardor. She was flooded with a feeling she didn’t dare identify, but it was a feeling she knew would last.
“Summer,” he breathed fiercely against her ear, “you’ll be mine now. No more talk about anything else.” His body was pinning her down, his hips grinding against hers, and her breathing was ragged with the need for him. As she fumbled with the belt of his slacks, she heard his next word as though in a dream.
“You’re going to marry me, Summer,” he was saying as he helped guide her hands. “You’re going to be completely mine.”
It was as though one drop of ice had slithered into her heart. The coldness started slowly, but it spread as surely as a glacial freeze. He wanted to marry her. Everything was just as Karl had said it would be. He wanted to marry her. Did that mean he also wanted her money?
; He could feel her withdrawal, and he pulled back, rising on one elbow, and gazed at her in bewilderment.
“What is it?” His voice was husky. “What’s the matter?”
She searched in the dark shadows of his eyes. “What are you saying about marrying me?” she asked evenly. “What is all this nonsense?”
He frowned impatiently. “Forget I said anything,” he muttered, reaching for her again, but she held him off.
“No. I want an explanation. Just what is this marriage business?”
He managed a half grin. “I thought women always wanted to get married,” he said gruffly. “I thought it might make you happier.”
Slowly, she shook her head. “No,” she told him. “I was much happier before you brought it up.”
His eyes hardened. He was finally getting the picture. She wasn’t going to make love with him after all. There was something really wrong.
“What’s the matter?” he repeated. “You were set to marry Karl.” His obsidian gaze glittered. “You can’t have Karl. But you can have me.” His hand touched the curve of her cheek. “And you can’t tell me that you respond to Karl like you do to me,” he stated fiercely. “I won’t believe it.”
She was slowly edging out from under him. She had to get away. If she stayed here, she would let him take her, she would probably let him do anything he wanted. She might even go so far as to say that she would marry him.
The folly of such an action was only too clear. Just two days ago she’d heard him scorn marriage. “Husbands are prisoners of war,” he’d said. What had caused this sudden about face? Only one thing could be at the root of it.
No, she wouldn’t stay, and she wouldn’t have to face that problem. She would go back to the house and pack her bags. Karl had been right. This was no place for her.
Chapter Eight
Summer sat on the edge of her bed, looking around the lovely room she’d inhabited for such a short time. Funny, but she knew she was going to miss it. The furnishings were so simple, yet they seemed to suit her as her own more elaborate rooms in Dallas never had.
She would be back in Dallas soon, but she wouldn’t be returning in triumph as she had imagined. Wayne would have the last laugh after all. Summer Davis would return with no husband, no claim to the majority share of Davis Oil.
What a naive fool she’d been only yesterday. She’d thought to come and buy herself a husband. She’d thought to manufacture love. Now she knew that such a thing was a fool’s sham. Love was something that came of its own accord. She couldn’t force it where it didn’t belong. And she couldn’t avoid it where it did, either.
She sighed. Jack Masters. No other man had ever brought her alive as he could. She knew he was the only man she ever could have loved, ever have married. And she also knew that it was an impossible dream.
Getting up from the bed, she walked to the closet and pulled out her heavy suitcase. It came open easily and she began to pull her clothes from the dresser drawer and throw them haphazardly into the bag.
“Need some help?”
Lia’s friendly broad face appeared in her doorway. She flashed Summer a smile, then looked horrified.
“You’re not leaving? Where are you going?”
Summer smiled at her distress, touched. “I’ve got to go, Lia. Things have sort of . . . fallen apart here. I think it would be better if I stayed in Pago Pago until I can get a flight out to the mainland.”
Lia nodded knowingly. “He can be a hard man sometimes,” she agreed solemnly. “But he’s got more problems than all the rest of us put together. You should remember that when you get angry at his high-handed ways.”
Summer gazed at the dark girl, thoroughly amused. “You really do think of him as some sort of feudal lord, don’t you?” she murmured. Then she caught herself up in her purpose. “Listen, Karl told me that Jeeter, the boat man in Pago Pago, will send something out to pick me up. But how do I contact him?”
Lia shrugged. “I’ll do that for you.” She looked sadly into Summer’s face. “If you’re really sure you want to go.”
“Yes.” Summer threw a negligee into the suitcase with vicious strength. “I’m very sure.”
Lia hesitated. “I thought you were going to be collecting shells for your father’s book.”
Summer looked up, surprised. News did travel so quickly on a small island. “I picked up quite a few today,” she told the girl. “And I’ll visit the curator of the museum on the main island while I’m there. That ought to give me enough material to wrap it up.” She reached for her collecting bag and pulled out a handful of shells. “Come and see what I’ve found.”
Spilling the shells out onto her white bedspread, she gasped in dismay. “Oh, no! What happened?”
With very few exceptions, her shells, so beautiful by the water, had dried to a flat, dull, unattractive white with only faint traces of the earlier markings visible. She pulled out the rest of her catch and found that the story was the same.
Summer stared at her worthless collection, then reached out a trembling pink-tipped finger to touch the sad little shells. Such bright promise only hours before, and such heartbreaking disappointment now. How like her relationship with the man who helped her collect them.
To her annoyance, she found that Lia was chuckling. “Did Mr. Masters help you find these?” she chortled. “These are no good at all. Men don’t know about shells. You should ask a Samoan woman to help you. They’re the ones who do the shelling.”
“Thanks so much,” Summer moaned in despair. “I’ll keep that in mind next time the situation arises.”
She looked back down at her powdery white mess. “Oh, Lia! What happened? How could they all lose their color like that?”
Lia smiled. “You found dead shells. You got to hunt for live animals to get color that stays.” Suddenly, a thought lit her friendly face. “Come on,” she cried, catching at Summer’s hand. “I know a great place to shell. I’ll take you right now.”
Summer stared at her. “I can’t go,” she said dully. “I’ve got to pack and get out of here.”
Lia shrugged it off. “I’ll help you when we get back. But if you leave now, you’ll never have the right shells. And I could show you where to find them so quick.”
Tempted, Summer looked down at her messy suitcase. What did she really have to lose? “Okay,” she said, laughing at Lia’s happiness. “Let’s go.”
She followed the girl along a dusty trail, marveling at how quickly Lia moved on bare feet that seemed oblivious to rocks and sharp objects in her path, admiring the grace of movement possible in the short, brightly colored lava lava she wore wrapped about her rounded body.
“Here we are.”
They came out of the jungle into a protected cove, well guarded by a dark reef. Breakers roared in the distance but the water inside lay as still as glass, reflecting the afternoon sun in an orange slick of surface. There was hardly a ripple, hardly a sound.
“This is where they hide,” Lia told her. “They like the quiet water.”
She led Summer out into the lagoon until they stood thigh deep in the warm liquid.
“The bottom feels gooey,” Summer complained. “The place where Jack took me was covered with clean sand.”
Lia nodded knowingly. “The little animals that live in the shells like the goo. They find their own food in it. They can’t find a thing to eat in that bright, clean sand you like to walk on.”
Acknowledging the logic behind that, Summer swallowed her misgivings and followed Lia, bending to run her hands through the muddy lagoon floor where she was directed to. To her delight, she came up with a lovely find right away.
“Look!” she cried to her companion, holding aloft a conch shell as big as her fist and heavy with the animal still inside.
Lia laughed with pleasure. “You learn fast,” she complimented Summer. “Those are not so easy to find. Usually, you have to dive off the reef to get ones that large.”
It turned out that her first disco
very was to be her most spectacular, but the hour or so that she and Lia spent digging through the mud paid off in quite a handsome pile of cowries and spirals.
Lia helped her sort through her treasures. “These white ones we call pippipi, these yellow ones, piccaci. They make very pretty ulasisis.”
Summer remembered that those were the beautiful shell leis she had seen on some women in Pago Pago.
“Some of the best shells will be the ones that look the worst now,” Lia went on, pointing out a few that were covered with moss and encrustations. “When we get these back to the house, we’ll kill the animals with boiling water, then clean the shells with bleach and a strong brush.” She grinned as Summer made a face. “Then rub in a bit of baby oil, and you’ll see how beautiful they’ll be.”
Summer nodded. “Have you ever found a conus, Lia?” she asked the girl absently.
Lia threw her a dark look. “No. But some do sometimes. They are very bad. Their sting can kill.”
Summer looked at her. “Jack told me that his father collected them.”
Lia gave an exaggerated shudder. “I know,” she said ominously. “I’ve seen them.”
Before Summer could ask her more about these notorious coni, a voice hailed them.
“Talofa!”
Two women were paddling into their area in a dugout canoe—apaopao, Lia called it—and greeted Lia and her friend. Though they didn’t come close, Lia laughingly introduced them to Summer, then explained that they were gathering sea urchins.
“Very good eating,” Lia insisted, and one of the women, sensing what the conversation was about, picked up one of the spiny creatures, smashed it against the side of the canoe and scooped the meat out of the shell and into her mouth.
“See?” Lia told her. “It’s great.”
Summer felt slightly sick, but she managed to smile and wave at the women.
An eerie, hollow sound came echoing from deep in the jungle.