Island Flame

by ROBARDS, KAREN

  “I know.” Sir Thomas sounded very tired suddenly. “I was almost out of my mind when she disappeared. I’d just been informed that you had managed to escape, and I knew you had her. I thought … God, what I thought! But you didn’t harm her, and I thank God for it.”

  “You should. It was touch and go. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. But …”

  “For goodness’ sake, will one of you please tell me what this is all about? Papa? Jon?” Cathy looked from one to the other of them. Their cryptic conversation could have been in Greek for all the sense it made to her.

  Both men looked at her, small and fragile-seeming in the dim lamplight, long golden hair swirling about her blue silk-clad form, a frown marring her lovely brow. Jon’s eyes softened, glowed. Cathy smiled at him, a small intimate smile that she was barely conscious of. Sir Thomas watched them both, his eyes deeply troubled.

  “I’ve done you a wrong, daughter.” Sir Thomas said heavily. “But please believe that at the time I thought I was acting in your best interests.”

  He paused, seeming to search for the necessary words. Cathy stared at him, faint suspicion crystallizing into a certainty. Jon crossed the room to stand behind her, his arms sliding around her waist as he pressed her back against him. Cathy’s eyes never left her father as she leaned back against the hard wall of her husband’s chest.

  “Jon didn’t escape on the Lady Chester, did he, Papa? You lied to me.” She knew it was true even as she said it. The slight inclination of her father’s head was unnecessary confirmation.

  “Tell me, Papa.” The words were quiet. Cathy could feel tears pricking at the backs of her eyes as Sir Thomas described in a halting voice how he had had Jon imprisoned in England, arranged for his trial and his subsequent death sentence. When he came to the part about the beatings he had ordered and paid for while telling Jon that they were Cathy’s doing, she let out a little shocked cry. Jon’s arms tightened around her waist, and she could feel his lips in her hair. Sir Thomas looked wretched.

  “And then, when I finally traced you to Charleston, I found my daughter looking physically well, although she was emotionally upset,” Sir Thomas concluded, addressing his remarks to Jon over Cathy’s head. “I managed to glean enough information from her to conclude that she felt herself to be unloved. After seeing how well you had treated her under the circumstances, I knew that that wasn’t the case at all, so I agreed to help her leave you while intending to get in touch with you and tell you the truth. I thought that you would take it from there. But from what I’ve seen tonight, you’ve already managed to get things straightened out without me. I deeply regret any pain I may have caused either of you, and I hope that you’ll find it in your hearts to forgive me.”

  His tired blue eyes rested on Cathy sorrowfully as he finished, and she could not bring herself to ignore their silent appeal. She pulled away from Jon’s hold and crossed the room to her father, putting a gentle hand on his arm and reaching up to press a soft kiss to his cheek.

  “Of course we forgive you, Papa. I know you only did it for me.” She slanted a pleading look over her shoulder at Jon, who stiffened, then sighed and very slowly crossed the room to extend a hand to Sir Thomas. The older man grasped it eagerly, and Cathy nearly cried herself when she saw the suspicious moisture glistening in his eyes.

  “I suppose we’ll have to learn to tolerate each other,” Jon said dryly, extricating his hand finally from Sir Thomas’s rather frenzied hold. “You’re the father of my wife, the grandfather of my son. And as I intend keeping them both, and even adding to the fold, we’ll likely be seeing quite a bit of each other. If you can stomach a reformed pirate for a son-in-law, I guess I can live with a devious earl for a father-in-law.”

  Jon smiled as he spoke, and Sir Thomas fairly beamed in return.

  “I’m proud to have you in the family,” said Sir Thomas. He hugged his daughter, shook hands with Jon again, and took himself off. As the door closed behind him Jon leaned against it, looking at Cathy with glowing eyes.

  “Well, my love?” he asked softly. She flew across the room to him, burying her face against his shirtfront. His arms went around her, holding her close.

  “You must have hated me, Jon,” she murmured. He smiled a little, pressing his face into her bright hair, savoring its softness, the sweet smell he always associated with it.

  “I did—but only because I loved you so much I couldn’t bear to think that you would do such a thing to me. I was just beginning to think you cared for me, you see, when everything blew up in my face.”

  “Cared for you?” Cathy laughed with a slight catch in her voice. “By that time I’d been head over heels in love with you for weeks. I would have told you, but I was so afraid that you didn’t love me. I thought you just wanted me for … for …” She broke off, her face blushing rosily. Jon held her a little away from him so that he could see her expression. He grinned at her heightened color.

  “You were right,” he told her wickedly. “I did want you for … for … I still do. But I also love you more than I ever thought I could love anything or anyone in my life. And if you let me I’ll spend the rest of my life proving it.”

  These last words were said very quietly, and Cathy practically melted at their tenderness. She smiled at him lovingly, going up on her toes to touch her mouth to his. Jon’s arms tightened gently around her, his mouth parting over hers. He kissed her hotly, but with a new reverence that thrilled Cathy to her toes. When she finally pulled back from him to catch her breath, she was trembling, her cheeks rosy and her eyes languorous with love. He continued to press kisses over the silken flesh of her throat, his mouth trailing down the deep plunge neckline of her wrapper to burn in the valley between her breasts. Cathy held him to her, tenderly stroking his black head. He loved her, and she loved him. Nothing could ever go wrong between them again.

  “Darling, what you said to my father about adding to the fold—did you mean it? I—I know you weren’t too happy when I told you about Cray …” she broke off as he raised his head to look at her.

  “Sweetheart, you can’t think I didn’t want Cray, can you? I love you. I’ll love any children you give me. I was just so afraid of losing you. … I was afraid you would die. I couldn’t stand the thought. That’s why I said what I did, when you told me about the baby.”

  “Oh, Jon,” she sighed, pressing herself against his rapidly hardening muscles and running her hands caressingly across his broad shoulders. “Will we have many children?”

  “Dozens,” he breathed, swinging her up in his arms to hold her cradled against his chest, his eyes burning hotly as they met hers. “At least two score. I’m making a project of it. And I suggest that we’d better begin work right away if we hope to meet our goal.”

  “Here?” Cathy asked faintly even as she melted against him. “But, darling, shouldn’t we go home first? I …”

  “Right now all I can think of is how much I want to make love to you,” he said against her ear, his mouth doing funny things to her insides as it nibbled and nuzzled. “We can go home tomorrow.”

  And they did.

  Read on for a sneak peek at

  the next thrilling novel by

  KAREN ROBARDS

  SLEEPWALKER

  Coming soon in hardcover from

  Gallery Books

  chapter one

  Sometimes terrible things happen in the middle of the night. Sometimes the monster under the bed is real. Sometimes there truly is a boogeyman hiding in the closet.

  Sometimes people die.

  “Do you think they saw us?” Jenny Lange gasped as she fled across the overgrown vacant lot in Detroit’s rough 8 Mile area. Moonlight silvered the bright banner of the fifteen-year-old’s long blond hair, turned her face into a pale beacon as she glanced back over her shoulder. Dressed in a ski jacket, jeans, and boots, she was little more than a slim shadow in the darkness. The night was black and cold. A biting wind whistled through the canyon made by the surrounding apartment b
uildings, whipping sparkling whirlwinds of snow from the crusty layer on the ground.

  “Don’t know.” Lori Penski snorted with laughter. Also fifteen, she ran a couple of steps behind her best friend, Jenny, her flight slowed by an intermittent attack of the giggles. “Did you see what they were doing?”

  “What? What were they doing?” Micayla Lange’s heart pounded so hard she could hear it thudding in her ears even over the rapid-fire crunch of their feet punching through the snow. Slip-sliding along behind, she almost begged for an answer, knowing even as the words left her mouth that she was probably going to be ignored just like always. Only eleven and undersized, she was having trouble keeping up. Hurrying so as not to be left behind when her big sister and her sister’s friend had sneaked out of the apartment where they’d been babysitting her and she’d supposedly been asleep, she’d grabbed her coat and stuck her bare feet in the sneakers she’d worn to basketball practice earlier. The sneakers were proving no match for ten inches of snow: icy wet, they kept threatening to slide off with every step she took. Her feet and ankles burned from churning as fast as they could through the frozen slush, and her pajamas were wet almost to the knees. Even with her coat zipped clear to her throat, she was so cold her skin stung.

  And scared. She was so, so scared. She and Jenny were never, ever supposed to leave the apartment at night while their mother was at work. They weren’t even supposed to answer the door. This run-down section of Detroit was dangerous, riddled with crime even in broad daylight. They’d only lived there for four months, since their parents had split up, and already they’d gotten used to the sound of gunfire at night and learned to rush straight in from the school bus so that they would spend as little time as possible on the street.

  “Here they come!” Jenny’s eyes went wide as she looked past the other girls, back toward the sixteen-story brick tenement that backed up to the vacant lot. With much shushing and giggling, Jenny and Lori had peeped in the windows of the basement apartment where a bunch of boys the older girls knew had been. … what? Micayla had no clue. She hadn’t made it all the way to the building before Lori had slipped and banged a knee into a window with a loud clank and the girls, choking with laughter, had bolted for home.

  “No way,” Lori gasped as she and Micayla glanced back, too. Sure enough, Micayla saw, three or four boys were tearing around the corner of the building, shouting and pointing as they spotted the girls. But they weren’t the only ones in the vacant lot in the middle of this frigid night. Off to the right, in the shadow of another of the boxlike apartment buildings, a lone figure stood watching. A man, Micayla thought, too big and bulky to be a teenager. Unlike the boys, who were loudly and enthusiastically giving chase, he melted into the darkness even as Micayla caught sight of him. A stray beam of moonlight slid over him to catch on something he was carrying: A pole? An aluminum baseball bat? Whatever it was was black, but had a shiny metallic gleam that showed up as a quick, glittery flash as he stepped into the light spilling from an apartment window above him then just as quickly moved into the dark again. Micayla didn’t know why, but something about the man made the hair stand up on the back of her neck.

  There’s somebody else here, she wanted to tell her sister. But she was too winded to say it out loud. Plus Jenny was too far ahead. And Jenny never paid attention to her, anyway.

  “Jenny! Micayla!”

  At the sound of the familiar voice, sharp now with angry surprise, Micayla’s attention riveted on the source. Wendy Lange, blond and slender like Jenny, stood wrapped in her shabby blue coat on the sidewalk in front of their apartment building, which was directly across the street from the vacant lot. The car she’d just gotten out of pulled off down the street, engine rattling, taillights reflecting red off the knee-high piles of snow that lined the curb.

  “Oh, no, it’s Mom!” Sounding horrified, Jenny slowed down, glancing around at her friend and her little sister in dismay, while Lori made a face and muttered “busted” out of the side of her mouth.

  “Mom! Mom!” Micayla shrieked, waving. Unlike Jenny, she was so glad to see their mother; the gladness felt warm as a little ball of sunshine forming inside her. Mom meant safety, and she hadn’t felt safe from the moment she’d left the apartment. Now, suddenly, with their mother’s eyes on them, she did. Stepping off the curb, Wendy waved back specifically at her as she started across the street toward them. Despite the wave, Micayla could tell from the way she was walking she was mad.

  At Jenny, though. Not at her. Her mother rarely got mad at her. “Micayla’s my good girl,” was what she always said.

  Because Micayla always was.

  “We went out to get some milk,” Jenny hissed, backtracking to grab Micayla’s hand. “Hear? We were just going to walk down to the little all-night grocery on Hines because you wanted milk, but we got scared and decided to come back. Got that? Don’t you dare say anything about us spying on the guys.”

  “She’s gonna know.…”

  Jenny squeezed her hand so hard Micayla yelped. “Not if you don’t tell her, she won’t.”

  “Okay. You don’t have to hurt me.”

  “You just better not tell.”

  “I won’t.”

  “You girls get over here right now!” It was their mother’s stern voice. Micayla felt sorry for Jenny. Jenny got in trouble a lot, and Micayla hated it every time, whether Jenny deserved it or not.

  “The guys took off,” Lori muttered to Jenny, who glanced back.

  Micayla glanced back too and saw that the boys were indeed nowhere in sight. Only she, Jenny, and Lori were left to face her mother’s wrath. Micayla felt a sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Jenny would probably get her face slapped at the very least, and the prospect made Micayla feel sick. She hated it when Mom and Jenny fought. What their mother would say was, Jenny was the one who’d been left in charge, and Jenny was older. Sometimes Micayla felt bad because, according to their mother, nothing was ever her fault. Although if she lied like Jenny wanted her to and got caught, this time it might be her fault and this time she might get her face slapped, too.

  That wasn’t so good, either.

  “Come on.” Jenny yanked on her hand. Lori had dropped back, obviously glad she wasn’t the one whose mom was furiously marching toward them. By this time, Wendy had almost reached their side of the street. Stumbling a little because of the relentlessness with which Jenny was pulling her, Micayla kept her eyes on their mother as Wendy stepped carefully up onto the packed-snow path between the drifts that led to the sidewalk. Head bent, Wendy was watching her feet. The moonlight brightened her short blond hair, gleamed off the slick wet blackness of the street behind her, and sent her long shadow stretching out toward the hurrying girls.

  That moment—the sight of her mother bathed in moonlight, the feel of Jenny’s warm hand clamped on her own, the wet smell of the snow, the sounds of the retreating car and their crunching footsteps, and the bite of the icy, blowing wind on her cheeks—was frozen forever in Micayla’s mind. The last tick of before. If only she could stop time right there.…

  Because the after began a heartbeat later, when shots exploded through the night.

  Crack! Crack!

  The sound still bounced off the buildings, still reverberated in Micayla’s ears, when Wendy crumpled. Just like that, like her bones had suddenly turned to dust. She toppled face-first into the snow, which instantly began to turn scarlet around her.

  Micayla screamed.

  And woke up.

  Cold as if she’d actually been outside on that frigid night again.

  Which of course she hadn’t been.

  She was inside. The air around her was warm. The cold she was experiencing came from the frosty window glass she was doing a full-body press against. The curtain had been pulled back, and beyond the window—actually one section of a wall of sliding glass doors—the pool area glistened under the fresh layer of pristine white snow that had been falling since she’d arrived at her uncle Nicco’s
lakeside mansion shortly after five p.m. Except for the pale gleam of moonlight reflecting off the snow, the world beyond the window was black as ink. Earlier, at the stroke of midnight, an explosion of fireworks had lit up the night sky as cash-strapped Motor City had thrown its cares aside and celebrated the New Year. She’d watched, alone, through a downstairs window, then gone to bed.

  If it hadn’t been for the glass, she would have been out there wandering barefoot in the snow right now, Mick thought, and felt her stomach knot.

  At least, from the absence of sound echoing around her, she felt safe in assuming that the soul-shaking scream she’d let loose with had been all in her head.

  Please God.

  She didn’t need to see a clock to know that the time was right around 2:30 a.m. Just like it had been then. Plus it wasn’t long after Christmas, cold as a meat locker outside, spurting snow. And she’d been upset when she’d fallen asleep.

  Of course she’d been sleepwalking again.

  I’m twenty-seven fricking years old. Am I never going to outgrow this?

  Peeling herself away from the window, Mick ignored the mild vertigo that she always experienced when she woke up abruptly under these conditions and took a deep, hopefully steadying breath. Her heart, which had been pounding like a SWAT team at an unsub’s door, started to slow down. Looking around, she tried to get her bearings.

  Having gone to sleep in one of the eight second-floor bedrooms, she was now two stories below, in the part of the vast, elaborately finished walk-out basement that led to the pool and tennis court. With no memory at all of how she had gotten there.

  Carefully she closed the curtain, blocking out the night.

  Her hands shook, but she chose to ignore that. Just like she ignored the ringing in her ears, the dryness of her mouth, and the racing of her pulse.

  With the curtain closed, she was left standing in the dark. A pinpoint-sized red glow up near the ceiling reminded her that security cameras were everywhere. At the thought that her unconscious perambulation might have been witnessed by one or more of the security guards manning the monitors from the gatehouse out front, she felt a slow flush of embarrassment creep over her body. The good news was, it chased away the last of the chill.