"Trying anything?" She was puzzled.
"You're not so depressed over your dad's death that you'd strike out swimming toward the Bahamas and hope you never came back, are you?
She stared at him for an uncomprehending moment before his meaning became clear. She shook her head in vigorous denial. "No, absolutely not. I'm grieving, that's all."
Alec appeared relieved, but something in his keen manner compelled her to continue. She swallowed, hoping this would make her throat stop hurting, but it didn't.
"I, um, well, I was looking forward to seeing the Atlantic Ocean for the first time. I was like a little kid about it, really. But as soon as Dad and I arrived, well, he passed away, and what with dealing with that, I never got to the beach. If I was going to dip my toes in the Atlantic, it would have to be today. So, I did." She felt rueful but unapologetic.
"You dipped a lot more than your toes." His tone was gentler now.
"We've already covered that topic. I'm grateful that you pulled me out before the ocean pulled me in."
"All right. Enough said." He cocked his head and studied her with equal parts of interest and speculation.
She was sure she wasn't a pretty sight. Salt rime had dried on her face and body, and her hair was matted to her scalp. After a couple of minutes, Alec wheeled and strode into a dressing room. In seconds she could hear the unmistakable hiss of a shower.
He marched through the doorway, his face grimly amused, a thick towel slung around his neck. "Come with me," he said.
She looked at him askance, wary of what he might have in mind.
"I'm treating you to a nice warm shower. I had one while you were asleep."
"No way," she said.
"Calm down. You'll feel better for it."
"You've hauled me into your home practically unconscious, and the next thing I know you want me to take my clothes off?"
"Usually it's not that easy," he conceded with a glint of humor. "Usually I have to take off their clothes for them."
She countered this with a blank stare.
"I have no ulterior motives. I'm offering the hospitality of my home. Your choice."
There wasn't really anything threatening about him, unless you counted his good looks. He was well-built, the curve of his bicep swelling in the middle without looking as if he worked at it, a sprinkling of light hair on his chest disappearing into the open neck of his polo shirt.
"So far you've proven yourself to be kind, thoughtful, and caring, though a little bit testy. Somehow this has resulted in my wish to use your shower." Reluctantly she let him take her arm and guide her to the bathroom.
"I brought your beach bag up from the beach. It's over there." He indicated a rattan corner shelf. "Help yourself to any of the toiletries, and happy showering."
After he left, Cara waited for a cautious moment before undressing and stepping into the shower. She immediately felt soothed and refreshed by the warm water, holding her head under the stream and letting the water run through her hair. She found shampoo and lathered up but was startled when Alec opened the door.
"Don't worry, I can't see through the shower curtain. I'm hanging something for you to wear on the hook inside the door." After the door closed, she peeked around the curtain, and sure enough, he'd hung clothes there.
The garments turned out to be a full-length silk nightgown and a robe, definitely female attire. Cara didn't take time to speculate why Alec might have such things in his possession but commenced drying herself with a large bath towel and slipping into the gown. It was of excellent quality with hand stitching at the neckline, and the robe bore the label of a European fashion house. At least the person they belonged to had good taste, she thought.
She paused to rub a clear circle in the foggy mirror. Except for the scrape on her chin, she looked none the worse for her harrowing experience. She was fortunate to have escaped with such a minor injury.
When she emerged from the bathroom, Alec was kneeling on the hearth and feeding a growing blaze in the fireplace. He turned, threw her a critical glance, and nodded gruffly. "You look better. Feeling all right?"
Cara sank into the softness of a down-filled couch. "Yes," she answered, and then, suddenly, remembering her manners, "Thank you for the shower. I apologize for giving you such a hard time."
Gratitude seemed to put Alec on the defensive, and he made a disparaging motion with his hand.
"You can take the bed." He indicated a room that Cara presumed to be the bedroom. "Or you can sleep on the couch. Which do you prefer?"
There was something comforting about the crackling fire, so she chose the couch. Alec found blankets and a pillow in the closet.
"See you in the morning," he said, and he disappeared into the bedroom and closed the door. She heard him rustling about behind it, and then the noises ceased.
Well, Cara thought as she rearranged the pillows in preparation for sleep. This situation was far from what she'd expected when she and Dad set out for Florida.
"It'll be a real holiday," her father had declared. "Once our work is done, we'll take a long vacation in the Florida Keys. We'll swim with the dolphins like you've always wanted, do some snorkeling as we did when your mom was alive. I want to introduce you to deep sea fishing. There's nothing like feeling the tug of a big fish on the line. You'll love it, Cara. We'll have fun, the two of us." Her father had doted on her, and she'd had no doubt that it would be their best vacation ever.
Cara was awake for a long time, reflecting that sometimes circumstances fell short of expectations. Often we didn't know, when we started on an adventure, how it would turn out. Or what help we might need along the way.
At last she slept, taking comfort in the help and hospitality of a complete stranger. Things could have been much worse.
Well into the night, she awoke in terror with a scream in her throat. In her dream, she'd been walking along the beach with her father and skipping a succession of stones across the reflective surface of a strangely calm sea.
As she shaded her eyes against the glare of the ocean's surface she saw a slight movement where the sky met the sea and strained to see what it was. Gradually she perceived a wave gaining momentum as it swept toward them. It was a huge tower of water with a white crest and built upon itself as it rolled. She and her father turned to run up the beach away from it, but with a deafening crash it fell upon them, and she could taste the sharp sting of sea water.
Her father's hand twisted from her grasp, and once again she knew the deadly pull of the riptide. She was down, down in the depths of the ocean, struggling to breathe, her lungs filling with water. When she finally pushed to the surface, the ocean was smooth and calm again with no sign of the treacherous wave. Her father had disappeared. She called him frantically, crying, and she couldn't tell if the taste in her mouth was tears or salt water.
Her cries brought Alec out of his room. His hair stood out around his head, an eerie silhouette against the embers of the dying fire. His face registered concern as he assessed the situation, and in an instant he was kneeling beside the couch, holding her in his arms and smoothing her hair with strange, reflective tenderness.
Cara clung to him, wanting, after her terrifying dream, nothing so much as physical contact with another human being. The nightmare had been terrifying, but the return of reality and the realization that she was alone in the world was no less disturbing.
"Okay now?" His voice was close beside her ear.
She managed to mumble something.
"Want a drink? Water? Some wine?
"I'm okay now." She was embarrassed. "Let's try to get some sleep."
"I'm for that," he said.
He looked good, she thought past her mortification at having awakened him. Hair mussed, pajama bottoms hanging loosely on his hips, eyes heavy with sleep. All of which she probably shouldn't have noticed but did.
Alec brought her another blanket.
"This will keep the chill of the night air away. If you need anything e
lse, call me."
"I'll be all right," she said.
Alec nodded. "I hope so. But like I said, I'm here if you need me." He turned and went back into the bedroom.
Cara burrowed under the covers and closed her eyes. She thought, this is the stuff of dreams. Or romance novels. She was still smiling when she fell asleep.
* * *
The early-morning sun rising over the ocean shone through the unshuttered window and woke Cara. The fire was a pile of ashes, and Alec was nowhere in sight. Carefully Cara stood. Strength had returned to her legs, and she walked to the window to look out at the shore.
The sun had kissed the sand golden. High overhead, gulls wheeled and dipped, looking for their morning meal, and little sandpipers skittered in and out between the gently curling waves. The scent of dried seaweed hung in the air.
She should have taken heart from the beauty of the scene, but underlying her pleasure was certain knowledge of unpleasant difficulties to come. Her first priority was to find another job. Yesterday before heading to the beach, she'd submitted her resignation to the appraisal company because now that her father was gone, the company president had reassigned her to an office job that would have bored her to tears.
Maybe she shouldn't have been so hasty in resigning, she admitted now. Resigning had seemed right at the time, but in retrospect, she could have tried negotiating a better deal and severance pay. On the other hand, maybe this was a good time to strike out on her own. Maybe it was time, at age 25, to test her own mettle and prove herself in the process.
Cara turned expectantly when the door opened. It was Alec, who favored her with a cursory glance before depositing an armful of driftwood beside the fireplace.
"Feeling better?" he asked.
"Mmm."
"That nightmare must have been a doozy." The soft side of Alec's character had again been buried under a brusque manner. He rummaged in a closet and found a pair of jeans and a pullover. "Try these on for size," he said, tossing them in her direction.
Wordlessly Cara departed for the bathroom, where she shed gown and robe and pulled on the jeans. They were big around the waist, but she dug a safety pin out of a drawer and pinned them closed. The sweater was large, too, hanging loosely over her hips.
Her hair had returned to its normal silky state, and she brushed it until it shone. She inspected herself in the mirror. The muddy half-moons that had appeared under her eyes after her father's death were gone, and the raw place on her chin had already begun to heal. Not so bad, she thought. Her next mission was to collect her luggage from the hotel and get to the airport.
Alec was in the studio when she came out of the bathroom. He looked around when he heard the slap of her sandals on the floor.
She stopped at the archway, curious about what the room revealed about her host. "Is this your work?" she asked with interest. The room was bright and airy and smelled of paints and turpentine. The canvases were of all sizes and moods, and there were a lot of them. Alec had flung the shutters wide, admitting lots of light.
"Yup. This is my passion." But Alec didn't sound passionate. More like ho-hum, but Cara sensed that he'd adopted that attitude to deflect further questions. He seemed like a very private person who didn't welcome excursions into his world and resented those who tried to enter it.
"Come on," he said abruptly. "Let's go to breakfast." He strode out of the room, clearly expecting her to follow.
She bundled her hair into an elastic band as she tagged behind. "I'm heading back to my hotel. I have a plane to catch today."
"You'll need to eat something. Anyway, don't you want to see the house?"
Cara shrugged. "What house?"
Alec narrowed his eyes. "You don't know?"
"Should I?"
"This cabana is part of the famous home of the late renowned socialite Mrs. John Fitzhugh Martyn. Does that give you a clue?"
"Xanadu? I had no idea! But how—why—" She looked around the cabana with new eyes before turning back to Alec.
"I'm Valoria Martyn's son."
Cara stared at him, her mind running in circles. What a quirk of fate! Xanadu was the estate where she and her father had planned to work.
"Of course I'd like to see it," Cara said, recovering her composure.
Alec opened a small door at the rear of the house, revealing lighted steps and a dimly lit passage. "After you," he said with a sweeping motion of his arm.
At her questioning look, he explained, "It's the passage to the main grounds. My great-great-grandfather built it so his guests wouldn't have to cross the road to go to the ocean. It tunnels under South Ocean Boulevard."
Cara descended the steps carefully. The tunnel had a musty odor, as though it wasn't used often. She knew that no guests had stayed at the house during the three years since Mrs. Martyn's death. The upkeep of the mansion had become so expensive that the Martyns had given up entertaining in the grand fashion of the past.
At the end of the tunnel, stairs led them into the orange grove of Xanadu, and Cara faltered and waited for her eyes, accustomed to the dark tunnel, to adjust to the brilliant sunlight. High above the glossy leaves, the rising sun gilded the imposing minarets of Xanadu. The towers stood out against the brilliant blue of the cloudless tropical sky.
Alec's voice broke the silence, sounding rich and impossibly romantic in this fairy-tale setting. "'In Xanadu did Kubla Khan/A stately pleasure-dome decree...'" he quoted.
Cara recognized the lines from Coleridge and turned to catch a fleeting melancholy expression cross Alec's face.
"This was Conn Grandolf's pleasure dome," Alec went on. "He modeled the exterior after an ancient monastery in Russia."
Cara knew the legend of the building of Xanadu. Textile magnate Conn Grandolf, Mrs. John Fitzhugh Martyn's great-grandfather, had worked all his life to amass a fortune large enough to build a magnificent home for his priceless art and antique collections.
For several years Conn Grandolf traveled the world, returning with a sheaf of drawings of the most beautiful architecture he had seen. His idea was to borrow the most attractive features from other buildings and incorporate them into a fabulous pleasure palace, a retreat to which he could invite international society figures, foreign dignitaries, and royalty. All these and more had graced Xanadu, earning it a reputation as one of the most opulent estates in the world.
"Come on," Alec said. "We have a lot of ground to cover."
Cara followed him through the dew-drenched grass past a meticulously clipped ficus hedge. An ornamental fountain dominated the circular driveway. It stood in a shallow round basin and consisted of a large decorative urn reached by an ascending stairway on each of four sides, covered over with an ornate vault decorated in bas-relief. Several peacocks, their proud tails flashing in the sunlight, strutted and preened nearby.
"Did you hear the peacocks last night?" Alec asked.
"All I heard was wind and surf."
"Yeah, usually they stay away from the beach. It might have alarmed you to hear their call. They sound like a small child crying, 'help, help.'"
"That would have creeped me out," Cara said. "I mean it."
Alec grinned, the morning sun glinting off his hair. Last night, she hadn't appreciated the lean line of his jaw or the way his eyes crinkled when he smiled. "Back in the day when we hosted world leaders here, the Spanish ambassador woke everyone on his hall in the middle of the night. He claimed that he heard the ghosts of ancient shipwrecks calling for help. I understand that he left precipitously the next morning. In his pajamas."
Cara smiled as Alec led her to a side door where they entered a vast kitchen. A round, smiling woman with a ruddy complexion and gray hair cut in a short, face-hugging cap turned to greet them.
"Alec!" she exclaimed. "You're late again. Never mind. I'll fix you an egg. Or waffles, if you prefer."
Alec ruffled her clipped bangs playfully and plucked an orange from a basket on the counter. "Save your ministrations for my guest. Cara Demores
t, this is Ingrid, our housekeeper."
The housekeeper's round eyes focused on Cara for the first time. Ingrid advanced to take Cara's hand. "Come, let me get you something to eat."
"Perhaps some fruit," Cara suggested.
"No," said Alec peremptorily. "Eggs and bacon and toast, Ingrid. Cara almost washed out to sea yesterday, and she needs nourishment." He took Cara's arm and steered her past the huge ovens and ranges. "We'll eat on the loggia."
When they were alone Cara shook away Alec's proprietary hand. "I don't need a big breakfast."
"I won't have you fainting from hunger, at least not while I'm in charge."
She followed Alec to an arcaded gallery at the rear of the immense mansion. Thick bougainvillea climbed the stone arches, framing the view of the courtyard in a border of bright magenta. The air hung heavy with the scent of gardenias. Urns of lemon-colored marigolds stood at spaced intervals down a wide flight of steps. The stairs ended near a shallow reflecting pool that mirrored the graceful minarets of the house above.
"It's exquisite," Cara breathed, overcome by the grandeur. "Photos don't do it justice."
"Or paintings." Alec seemed to be growing moody, and though Cara tried to engage him in conversation, his replies became increasingly short. Something about the mansion seemed to irk him. His sensitivity about its beauty was obvious, and she didn't understand. Surely as an artist, Alec should be more sensitive to Xanadu's magnificence more than anyone.
Or was Alec merely growing tired of her and wishing she'd leave? For a moment Cara considered curtailing her visit, but before she'd given the idea due thought, Ingrid proceeded to set a wrought-iron table with white place mats and napkins. Almost immediately she brought a tray with slivers of fruit arranged on individual crystal plates.
Immune to her efforts at small talk, Alec wolfed down his eggs and bacon, which was annoying because Cara still had many questions about the house. At least she would like to see Conn Grandolf's famous collections before she left.
Breaking into her thoughts, Alec said, "Are you still interested in that tour?"
"Oh, yes," Cara assured him.
The Beach Bachelors Boxset (Three Complete Contemporary Romance Novels in One) (The Beach Bachelors Series) Page 34