by Helen Conrad
He wasn’t really handsome, though, now that she had a chance to look at him calmly. Not the way Jerry was. His face was harder, a bit older, more aggressively masculine. And he had a scar that ran along the length of his right cheek and cut across the corner of his mouth, giving him the air of a Pacific pirate.
A pirate.
Yes, that was a good description for him. He had the look of a man who disdained rules and did things his own way—a man who went after what he wanted, no matter what the world thought. Had he gone after Eleanor Ashland that way?
Maybe not. Knowing Eleanor, it was probably the other way around.
“Then we have nothing to worry about,” he said, still watching her with an interest that made her very uneasy.
Carrie drew her arms in and gave herself a hug, as though she needed it for comfort, then sighed and dropped them. It was silly for her to feel this way—he was just a man, after all. But then she looked into those eyes, and something terrifying seemed to pull at her from deep within him.
What did he see when he looked at her? She didn’t know if he found her attractive. She only knew that a strange electricity sparked between them every time.
Suddenly she was short of breath.
“Do you have any idea of how we’re going to get out of here?” she asked, turning to avoid his gaze.
“Someone will be along before too long,” he said slowly. “In the meantime we might as well enjoy ourselves.”
She looked up sharply, her dark eyes wide, but he was moving toward the wine racks. She noticed again that he was limping. There was something very wrong with one of his legs.
She winced, thinking, despite how he disturbed her, that it was a shame. His body had looked so perfect. It was almost as though a piece of art had been damaged.
She thought again of his meeting with Eleanor Ashland, of the secretive way he’d blocked her gaze in the doorway. If they were having an affair, why hide it? Eleanor’s affairs had been the backbone of town gossip for years.
The age difference? Eleanor Ashland surely was well over forty, and this man couldn’t have been older than early to mid-thirties. But Eleanor was still a great beauty, and no one questioned that sort of—well, you couldn’t call it May-December exactly, more like July-September—arrangement any longer.
Maybe he was married? She sneaked a look at his hand but saw no rings of any kind. Of course, that didn’t necessarily mean anything.
Then she remembered that someone had told her that Eleanor had settled down at last, that she’d changed her wicked ways and was set to marry a retired admiral with strict principles. Either that rumor was very wrong or Eleanor was taking her act underground.
She gazed at the race-car driver speculatively, but he didn’t notice. He paced down the length of a row, studying the wine. He pulled a bottle from the hundreds stacked before them and perused the label.
“How does a Chateau Lafite Rothschild sound to you?”
She couldn’t hide her grin. She wouldn’t know a Rothschild from a Granny Boone special.
“That would depend upon the vintage, of course,” she said mockingly, pleased to see an answering flash of humor in his gaze.
“ ‘Vintage wine and vinegary women,’” he quoted, holding the bottle up to the light. “Who said that?”
She laughed. “You don’t know me well enough yet to know if I’m ‘vinegary’,” she said, protesting. “And for all we know, the wine is. Then you can change the saying to ‘vinegary wine and vintage . . .’ “
Her voice trailed off as she realized what she was saying, and that, of course, only made it worse. Did he think she was poking fun at his relationship with an older woman?
Her cheeks reddened, and she turned away. She’d never known a man who could make her feel so awkward!
“Sit down,” he said abruptly.
She looked back at him warily.
“Sit down.”
He gestured toward the only chair in the room, a hard little wooden bench set at the small desk where the wine cellar records were kept.
She glanced at his leg with professional concern. “Why don’t you take the chair?” she said quickly. “I’d much rather—“
Before she could complete her sentence he’d put down the bottle and moved to her side. Taking her arm, he steered her firmly toward the chair.
“Don’t patronize me because of my injury,” he advised coldly. “I’m learning to cope. And I don’t need any pity from you.”
He pushed her firmly down into the chair, took two glasses down from a rack, then reached for the bottle and a corkscrew.
She sat on the hard chair and watched him pour-out the shimmering wine. She didn’t seem capable of saying anything right—not in front of him—and she was beginning to resent it. He handed her a glass and raised his to her. She grudgingly raised hers to meet it.
“To chance encounters,” he said, his eyes making the statement provocative.
“To miraculous escapes,” she countered, her chin rising with the challenge.
There was a charged tension between them as their gazes locked, and then the low rumble of his laugh spilled out, the rich, textured sound of it rubbing against her in a way that did nothing to soothe her jangled nerves.
“What happened to your leg?” she blurted out.
Something flared in his eyes. For just a moment she thought he was going to lash out at her.
“I race cars for a living,” he said curtly. “Mistakes happen now and then. I made one.”
“Oh.” She licked her lips. “I hope you’re seeing a good physical therapist.”
His brows came together in amused curiosity. “And I hope you’ve got yourself a good dentist,” he countered sardonically.
“No, you don’t understand. You see, I am a physical therapist, and I’m sure something could be done to help you—“
“Drumming up business?” he asked in a tone that told her to drop the subject.
She sat back, lapsing into silence, wondering why he seemed so bitter.
“What brought you down to this little dungeon?” he asked at last.
“Nothing in particular.” She realized that she sounded defensive, so she cleared her throat, trying to lower her tone. “I was just exploring.”
He took a long sip of his wine, gazing at her over the rim of his glass. “In bare feet?”
She stuck her feet out in front of her, toes high. “Why not? Four-inch heels don’t agree with me.”
She looked up at him from under her thick lashes, knowing that he was thinking of her fall and wanting to get his mind off it. “And what brought you here?” she asked quickly.
He put down his glass, and a smile turned up the corners of his mouth. “I was following you,” he said simply. “I saw you come in here, and I thought I’d come, too, to see what you were up to.”
Suddenly she was sure that her guess had been accurate. He’d seen her in the hall when Eleanor had come to him, and he wanted to make sure that she wasn’t going to mention what she’d seen and jeopardize Eleanor’s marriage plans.
Well, she might be a lot of things, but she’d never been a snitch.
“You don’t need to worry,” she said softly, her eyes burning. “I won’t say a thing to anyone.”
He didn’t speak for a long moment and he stared at her as though a hard look might get her to explain herself. “Just what is it you’re planning not to reveal?” he asked at last.
“About you . . . you and . . .” She nodded her head toward the room where she’d seen them, unable to say the name aloud.
“I see.” She thought she saw the ghost of a smile hovering around his mouth again, but when she looked more closely, it was gone.
“Look, if you’re afraid that I’m going to run right out and spill the beans to the admiral—“
“The beans?” he interrupted, his tone sardonic. His cerulean gaze lazily swept over her.
She shrugged and moved restlessly on the little chair. She’d never been re
ticent. That had always been one of her problems. She said what she was thinking. And it was too late to change her ways now.
“That I saw you in a rendezvous with Eleanor Ashland.”
His eyes widened at that. He hadn’t expected her to come right out with it.
“You wouldn’t do that,” he said, his voice rough as he stared at her with arrogant assurance. “We both know you wouldn’t do a thing like that.”
“No, of course not,” she said quickly.
But how could he know that for sure? He didn’t know her at all. She stared back at him, feeling resentful, fascinated, and defensive, all at the same time. Finally she blurted out, “If you don’t want people to talk about you, you shouldn’t do things that give them cause.”
The slow grin was back in his eyes. “Do you give sermons too?” he asked softly.
She glared.
“That’s quite a list of accomplishments,” he went on. “Let’s see.” He began to tick them off on his fingers. “In just the short time I’ve known you I’ve seen you slide down a grassy hill on your bottom, make faces at other guests, run around barefoot, get yourself locked into a lonely wine cellar with a strange man, and sneak around eavesdropping, all in one afternoon.” His eyes narrowed. “And now you’re going to lecture me on how to behave.”
She opened her mouth and then closed it again. There didn’t seem to be any logical way to defend against his attack. “I wasn’t eavesdropping,” she claimed weakly.
“I don’t know what you thought you saw,” he said quietly. “But you ought to be careful of being too self-righteous. Or maybe you’re a saint your
self?”
“No. But—“
“But you think you’re pretty levelheaded, is that it? You think you have control,” he said, moving close to her.
It wasn’t that he was large, or domineering, or anything like that. What he had was a certain magic. She stared up at him and he seemed to take over her mind and her body. She couldn’t move, couldn’t think. He was there and that was all she knew for the moment.
“And yet none of us knows how he or she might react under certain circumstances,” he said softly, and suddenly his fingers were curling a lock of her hair into a ringlet. “Any of us might get caught up in events, get cut off from reality, and do things we never dreamed we were capable of. Don’t you think that’s true?”
She reached up to push his fingers away, but his free hand caught hers and brought it to his lips. Softly, oh so softly, he kissed the tender palm while she stared up at him, her mouth open in wonder,
A buzzing was tingling in her blood, tingling in her ears. Mist seemed to be clouding her eyes. She shook her head, trying to clear it. Her voice was choked when she tried to speak.
“Well ... what... what do you mean, exactly?”
She couldn’t even keep her thoughts straight. What was this man, a hypnotist?
He talked like one, slow and easy, his words drawled like those of a tired cowboy, touching her like a sensual caress.
“What I mean is this.” He kissed her palm again and brought it to his chest. “You and me—here—all alone. We’re cut off from the world. We could be shipwreck survivors on a desert island. Or the last two people left on earth.”
She hardly heard his words. She was drowning in the blue depths of his eyes.
“The circumstances,” he went on, “aren’t important. How you deal with them is what counts. Agreed?”
This was all crazy, and she knew it. And yet for some strange reason she couldn’t seem to break away. He held her spellbound.
“We’re going to get out of here in just a little while,” she murmured a
bit desperately.
He nodded slowly, still holding her locked in his blue gaze. “Sure. We’ll get out of here and go our separate ways. But in the meantime—here we are.”
His hands gripped her shoulders, and before she knew what was happening, she was up out of her chair, standing before him, and his fingers were plunging into her hair.
“Are you telling me there’s no chance that you could do something right now that you might regret later?” His voice was low and husky, a tantalizing tease. She felt her eyes begin to close. “Something you wouldn’t want someone else—Jerry Maxwell, perhaps—to find out about?”
She gasped softly. There was no way she could get a word out.
“Something like this,” he whispered, his breath hot on her parted lips. Then his mouth covered hers, his hard male body was pressed to her softness, and she was swirling in a whirlpool of silvery water, then caught up and sent flying through the rapids, losing her breath with the thrill of it, the danger of it, the ecstasy of it.
She’d been kissed before. She’d endured the usual teenage fumblings, the insolent insistence of boys, the smoother seduction techniques of more mature men. But she’d never been caught up in passion. Not even with Jerry.
She’d been accused of being cold. She’d been accused of having no heart. And she’d wondered sometimes herself. No man had ever seemed capable of reaching deep into her to awaken her sensuality.
Jerry hadn’t even tried. Jerry’s passion lay in his ambition and he didn’t have room for much more.
But for the first time in her life she was being kissed by a man who seemed to be part primitive, part magician. She blossomed in his arms. She opened and gave of herself as she’d never done. And though it lasted only seconds, she knew it had changed her life.
She was stunned when he drew back, stunned and breathless. She hardly heard the door being opened, dimly noticing that he’d had a key all along.
And then there were people everywhere. Once again she was in the midst of the party, surrounded by laughter and colors and movement.
And he was gone.
CHAPTER TWO:
A Casanova Complex
Grant Carrington—man or myth?
That seemed to be the main topic of conversation around Destiny Bay these days. It had replaced the major issues of making weekend tourists pay for beach parking and firing the high-school principal for moonlighting as a sexy lingerie salesman. The name Grant Carrington was on everyone’s lips.
Carrie found herself disturbed by all the talk. She wanted to forget the man, forget what he’d done to her.
Sometimes she thought she’d dreamed the entire episode. Maybe she’d been so bored, so out of place at the Maxwells’ party, that she’d seen that tall, exciting man and had imagined the whole encounter.
But dream or not, it hardly mattered. She’d been changed by it. There was no going back. She didn’t know what to think about what had happened in the wine cellar. She only knew that he’d unsettled her, turned her head around in ways she didn’t like at all.
So he was an exciting man, and she’d been momentarily swept off her feet. The next time she met him, she’d probably wonder what all the commotion was about. He wasn’t for her, and she knew that only too well.
Any man who would have an affair with Eleanor Ashland was not her type at all. That lady was trouble, and everyone knew it. Carrie shied away from trouble. She had goals in her life, and she was just beginning to see them being fulfilled. This was no time to go chasing sexy, dangerous men.
Carrie had grown up in Destiny Bay, feeling stifled by the insular atmosphere, by the stratified levels of society here. As Mack Harlow’s oldest daughter, she was the one who worked in the store on weekends, the one who spent most evenings babysitting at home so her mother could work in the store, the one who took prizes in school competitions but didn’t get invited to the senior prom.
And that wasn’t who she’d wanted to be. So she’d fled to live a big-city life in Chicago as soon as she could get away. Six years had been enough, she’d thought, to change her into an assured and modern young woman. She came back with a degree and a license in physical therapy, ready to show her hometown how the ugly duckling had turned into a swan.
At first, all had gone according to plan.
Her parents
were in awe of their lovely, confident daughter, old friends didn’t recognize her, and boys in low-slung cars whistled as they roared by. Prominent community leaders went out of their way to help provide her with an office for her practice. And Jerry Maxwell, one of the town’s most eligible bachelor, had taken one look and snapped her up for himself. Success beyond her wildest dreams.
Funny, it didn’t feel quite as wonderful as she’d always imagined it would.
Somehow Grant Carrington had put it all out of focus for her. She had what she’d always wanted—admiration, a wealthy and powerful man, the promise of success at her chosen career. How could she possibly be missing anything?
Then Grant Carrington had kissed her, and she’d suddenly become aware of exactly what she lacked. The only trouble was, she was very sure she didn’t want it from him.
A strange new longing had filled her. It was a weird, melancholy feeling, and she wanted it to go. If she could blot Grant out of her mind, she was sure that feeling would go too. But it was impossible to do that when everyone in town did nothing but tell tall tales about him—most of which she was pretty sure couldn’t be true.
“What I want to know,” Carrie said to her cousin Mickey Adams as she leaned across the green-tiled counter in Mickey’s ocean-side café, “is everything there is to know about the Carringtons.”
Mickey had been around forever, and now she was running Mickey’s On the Bay, so almost everyone in town stopped by at one time or another, and she pretty much seemed to have her finger on the pulse of Destiny Bay.
Mickey shook her head of bright red curls and laughed. “Have you got a month or two?” she responded.
“Just the highlights, then,” Carrie said, glancing around the room to make sure no one could overhear her. “And I’ve got about fifteen minutes.”
“Let me guess,” Mickey said, gazing at her with humor dancing in her green eyes. “You’ve seen Grant, the race car driver one. Am I right?”