Nights with a Thief

by Marilyn Pappano

  Lisette fingered the fine fabric of the shirt, a vivid hue of coral, just one of the wild colors in the skirt, and sleeveless with a long row of small buttons. Could Jack’s capable hands undo them? Would he have the patience to work at them, or would he be more in favor of pulling the thing off and replacing it later if necessary? She would be happy either way.

  The skirt reached down her calves, thin and light and full of movement, while the top did the opposite, hugging her as if it had been stitched into place. With sandals, she felt like what her mother had always told she was: an island girl.

  This island’s girl. She stared at her image, wondering if any of the residents might see her mother or her father in her face. Would they wonder if they’d met her before, or would they simply write off her familiarity as a Caribbean thing, not a Deux Saints thing?

  Padma returned with a case filled with hair clips, clamps, bands and such. As she went to work, she asked, “Do you realize that if your parents hadn’t left, you would have been born here? Would have grown up here? You would have played with Charming and Simon when you were kids, and now you’d probably be—”

  “The upstairs maid? The lowliest assistant to the lowliest of the gardeners?”

  A dozen bobby pins clenched between her teeth made speaking difficult for Padma, but she managed. “Probably Cap’n Jack’s mistress.”

  “You’ll be the water goddess, and I’ll be a mistress?” Lisette snorted.

  Padma poked the last bobby pin harder than necessary, then asked, “What do you think?”

  Lisette studied her image. The style was retro, her hair parted, rolled to the back, the loose ends braided and pinned up. It was cool and neat and flattering. “You’re good at that.”

  “My mom hasn’t worn her hair down in forty years and I’ve been the designated braider my whole life.” Unexpectedly, Padma hugged her from behind. “I’m glad things weren’t different. If you’d been born here, you wouldn’t have been my best friend for forever, and my life would have been so much sadder.”

  Lisette squeezed her hand. “Aw, you believe in karma. We’d’ve met somehow. It was meant to be.”

  Padma met her gaze. “I do believe in karma. I believe things happen for a reason, and sometimes it’s terribly good, like you and me, and sometimes it’s terribly sad, like your mom and dad, and sometimes... Well, we just hope for the best. I’m really hoping for the best for you and Jack.”

  Lisette considered what could possibly be the best for them. Her first vote would go to living happily ever after. Maybe not with each other, but being happy with themselves was important, too. Maybe Jack not hating her was the best she could hope for. Or Jack not being hurt. Or Jack not letting Simon report her to the authorities. Or Jack not regretting the day he’d met her.

  Because by the time this was over, she would regret the day they’d met more than any other day in her life.

  * * *

  A phone call from Simon woke Jack at a quarter to eight, dumping the first crisis of the day on him even though he was groggy from too little sleep. Padma, it seemed, was up and being her usual self, and Simon wanted reinforcements. He wasn’t the friendliest person first thing in the morning—or, for that matter, middle of the afternoon or late at night—and he seemed to think that being alone with Chatty Padma might be even riskier than having Bella Donna sleeping under the same roof as the family art.

  Maman Marisol had set a table on the patio with places for six, meaning Toinette and probably Ali were joining them, but only Simon was in his seat. Thoroughly amused by the wariness Padma had stirred in him, Jack sauntered to the cloth-covered table a few yards away and fixed a cup of coffee before sitting on Simon’s left. “Where’d your scary bad companion go?”

  Simon scowled. “To wake Lisette.”

  “I can’t believe you don’t know how to handle a woman like Padma.”

  “I know exactly how to handle women like that. I fire them.”

  “But she’s not an employee.”

  “No, she’s a guest—and not even my guest.”

  Jack wondered at Simon’s grouchiness. Padma was energetic and inquisitive and outspoken, but she hadn’t yet annoyed him, not even when she’d hit him for failing to keep Lisette safe. “She talks a lot when she’s excited. Or worried. Or scared. Enjoy whatever distance you get between you two, because it’s not going to last. Remember when I asked you about the water supply here?”

  “Eighteen hours ago? Of course I remember.”

  “That was Padma asking. She works on water projects for a nonprofit, trying to supply clean water everywhere. Once she gets comfortable, she’s going to have a lot of questions for you.”

  Simon looked as if that was a conversation he might hate or maybe tolerate or possibly even enjoy. He was much more hands-on in the running of the island than Jack was, and if talking to Padma was for the good of Deux Saints, he would do it. After a while, he might even have fun with it. He needed some fun, Jack always thought. And Simon thought Jack needed more seriousness in his life. In the next few days, they might each get what the other wished for.

  The door leading to the kitchen opened. Jack glanced that way, expecting to see Maman Marisol, and sure enough he did, but right behind her, a head taller and less than half as wide, was Lisette. She was wearing one of her new outfits, colors so bright that they held their own against the competition of the tropical setting. With her smooth dark skin and her black hair more neatly contained than he’d thought possible, with the shirt clinging to her curves and the lines of her body softened by fabric dancing in the breeze, she looked exotic and lovely and, damn, incredibly sexy.

  Her gaze skimmed the patio before stopping on him, and a sweet smile spread across her face. His breath caught, heat and pleasure and need exploding inside him. If he’d been on his feet, the impact would have been staggering. As it was, he had to set his coffee cup down so the faint tremors in his hand didn’t cause it to spill.

  Padma trailed Lisette, and all three women carried serving platters, with Maman wearing a stern look for Simon. Jack knew the meaning of that look: it was rare when guests wanted to help out around the house, and Simon didn’t approve. It was the way he was raised—Jack, too—but helping out was the way Lisette and Padma had been raised. It was their nature, and one of the things he admired about them.

  Maman’s platter held Simon’s favorite breakfast, a casserole made of salted cod, green bananas, ackee and callaloo. Lisette carried Jack’s favorite: yams, tomatoes and cheese with sunny-side-up eggs tucked in among them. Both dishes contained Scotch bonnet peppers—the stuff tears were made of—and were accompanied by Padma’s dishes: glazed plantains and vitumbua, coconut rice pancakes served with caramel sauce. The sight of them started his mouth watering.

  Ali was approaching the table from the direction of his office when Maman dusted her hands, satisfied with the placement of the dishes, then took two icy pitchers from the side table. “Papaya or orange juice?” Without looking behind her, she raised her voice. “Anyone who isn’t seated by the time I pour the last glass doesn’t get any.”

  Lisette and Padma hastily slid into the chairs opposite Jack. He laughed. “She’s talking to Toinette,” he explained, gesturing to Simon’s assistant, hustling up from the beach. “Maman likes to keep a schedule. Toinette likes to dawdle.”

  “I don’t dawdle.” Toinette claimed the chair next to Jack. “My clock is set to island time.”

  “I’ve been on these islands twice as long as you, Antoinette, and yet I manage to be on time,” Maman chastened. She rounded the table, filling glasses, nudging Ali in greeting with one elbow, before stopping suddenly next to Lisette. “Ooh, baby girl, them bruises... What did you do?”

  Lisette stiffened, her face going pale for a moment. She wasn’t superficial enough to care about honestly earned bruises, so Jack’s mind skipped to the
next possibility: Had her mother called her baby girl in that island-accented way? Surely she was missing her today on her first visit to the area Mom had come from.

  After an instant, Lisette shook it off, lifted one arm to look at the dark marks on the back of it and grimaced. “I fell off a...” Meeting his gaze, she smiled faintly. “A boulder while rock climbing.”

  Maman would have planted one fist on her hip if her hands hadn’t been full. “This your fault, Master Jack?”

  His brows arched. She hadn’t called him that in years. In fact, she only called him that when his parents were around or he’d gotten himself in trouble...again. Which made it rather fitting now, didn’t it? He was in trouble, not only with David but with Lisette, too. “No. I mean, I was there. It was my idea—the climbing. But I didn’t make her fall. I tried to catch her.”

  Maman continued to glare at him until she bent to press her cheek to Lisette’s. “He’ll take you to see Annie after breakfast. She’ll make you better.”

  “I was already planning to do that,” he protested halfheartedly.

  After fussing a few more moments, she went back into the house, leaving silence while everyone filled their plates. Jack hadn’t thought to ask Lisette if she liked Caribbean cooking—or the Scotch bonnet—but she ate Indian food, and Mexican, and probably used wasabi with her sushi. Besides, she took small portions of everything except for the vitumbua, which filled half her plate. She’d rightly guessed that anything served with homemade caramel sauce was worthy of eating.

  Simon was the first to break the silence. “Aunt Gloria called this morning. Wanted to know what you’d done to Candalaria. She said he’s got—and I quote—‘a burr under his saddle’ and is looking for you.”

  His telling him in front of the others didn’t surprise Jack. Toinette knew everything that happened on the island—business, personal, didn’t matter—and as head of security, Ali knew practically everything, without Toinette’s interest in gossip. Jack cut into his egg, freeing the yellow yolk to spread over the yams and tomatoes. “I’m guessing she told him to kiss her I-don’t-give-a-damn.”

  “She did. Made him apologize for getting snippy with her. Once he’d groveled sufficiently, he politely asked her to let him know when she heard from you. She was on her way to visit a gentleman friend somewhere around Naples when she called, but she did suggest you make Candalaria suffer a bit before you take pity on him.”

  “I have no pity for him.” And he preferred no contact with him. It was only good luck that Lisette hadn’t been hurt in the fall, that she and Padma had escaped serious injury when the SUV plowed into them, and that they were now safely in hiding. But Aunt Gloria didn’t know any of that. David wouldn’t tell her, and Jack had no intention of worrying her until the danger was past. Whoever and wherever her friend was, she was safe.

  “I took a call this morning from a man wanting to know if you were here,” Toinette said, “but he wouldn’t give his name. I told him do I look like my only job is to track Jack’s whereabouts? No, I do not. He is a big boy with a big plane and a lot of money. He could be anywhere in the world. He could be in Denver. Just because the plane is gone, I told him, doesn’t mean Jack is gone.”

  She speared a bite of food on her fork before going on. “Oh, there was one other call. Isn’t it amazing how we go entire months without getting calls for Jack, and you hook up with these two ladies and suddenly everyone’s calling?” She followed the words with a wink at the two ladies in question. “I like a woman who shakes up a man’s life.”

  The last call was from Dominic, a message that he’d sent two men to spend the night at Lisette’s house, where their sleep had been interrupted by two other men trying to break in. “After a little, um, persuasion from his guys, the men waited quietly for the police to pick them up.” Toinette grinned at Ali. “I think we can all guess what kind of persuasion was involved.”

  Lisette swallowed the last bite of her last vitumbua, then sighed softly. “Poor David. Things aren’t going the way he planned.”

  “Yeah, poor David.” Padma followed her fake sympathy with a snort. “I wish someone’s guys would use a little persuasion on him. I don’t like it when people mess up my life.”

  “But it’s a good mess up, right?” Toinette asked, raising her arms to encompass everything around her. “Look where you are, who you’re with. You’re safe. You can be as lazy as you want. You can study your water issues firsthand, maybe even meet with experts from other islands. There are worse ways to go into hiding.”

  “And you got to meet Toinette,” Ali added drily. “That’s usually the highlight of anyone’s trip to paradise.”

  The highlight of Jack’s trip was going to be spending time with Lisette—some of it, hopefully, in bed. Eh, make that a lot. Toward that end, he folded his napkin and laid it aside, then pushed his chair back. “Lisette, are you ready to meet our nurse practitioner?”

  He was expecting a brush-off and might have gotten it if sliding her own chair back hadn’t stirred some pain. “I believe I am. Padma—”

  Padma’s grin was quick and broad, and it was directed, just slightly, at Simon. “I’m going to get my feet wet, so to speak, and find out about the water situation here. I’m sure I’ll find someone—” her gaze shifted between him and Toinette “—who can educate me.”

  Jack circled the table, waited for Lisette to join him, then turned toward the nearest path. “We’ll see you at lunch then. Have fun with the water stuff.”

  Simon looked at him as if he’d never heard the word before.

  * * *

  “Are you surprised she abandoned us?”

  Lisette glanced over to see Padma and Simon walking away from the patio, then turned back to watch her step. “I am. I expected at least a day of goofing off, relaxing and doing nothing before she dived headfirst into work.”

  “So to speak.”

  She laughed. “Talk with her long enough, and you’ll hear every play on words having to do with water that ever existed.” Drawing as deep a breath as her ribs would allow, she took in the view from every angle. She wished she had a camera to record everything she saw, touched, smelled, heard, for those lonely times in the future when she missed her mom, her dad...and Jack. Knowing the island’s no-photos rule, she would settle for sketches drawn from sweet memories.

  None of it yet was unfamiliar. Simon might be able to control physical access to the island, but he couldn’t stop satellites far overhead from posting pictures on the internet. She had printouts in her files that she’d studied until she knew them by heart. The trail they followed led to the village, where the nurse worked from a small pink cottage with a shingle out front, a red cross on a white background. The only places a person could see the ocean from the compound were on the upper floors; the roof of the main house held a luxurious living space that provided views to the far horizon. From a boat at sea, there was no hint of a mansion, work buildings, the village or a thriving population.

  She knew everything...and nothing.

  “Why did the saints build inland?” she asked. She knew that, too. She just wanted Jack to talk.

  “Privacy. They discovered the island when they were blown off course in a storm. Sailors back then avoided this area. It had difficult currents, lots of unexplained sinkings—sort of a Bermuda Triangle reputation. According to the official family history, it took them a year to find it again, and when they did, they didn’t tell anyone but their most trusted crew members. Once they’d scouted the entire island, they decided to build their headquarters here.

  “They used prisoners and slaves—” he hesitated, discomfort and a bit of shame in his voice “—to build the houses, the cottages, the fishing boats; to plant the fields and the gardens and take care of the saints and their families; and they spent the rest of their lives here. They married and had kids, and their kids stayed, too. Some
of the current residents have lived here less than fifteen years, but we have a lot who have spent their entire lives here.”

  If Lisette’s girly skirt had pockets, she couldn’t find them among the airy layers, so she clasped her hands behind her. Did he have any idea all those generations of people had stayed because they’d been forbidden to leave? That leaving had been an action punishable by death? Did he know that policy had extended into his own lifetime?

  She doubted it. He was uncomfortable admitting that his and Simon’s families had used slave labor to create their amazing island. How much worse would he feel if he’d known Simon’s own father had held his people hostage?

  How did she feel, knowing family had been prisoners or slaves? That before crossing paths with the Sinclairs and the Toussaints, they’d been free to do as they wished—to travel, settle down, pray, raise families, make decisions, live their lives? Then bad luck, being in the wrong place at the wrong time, had turned them into nothing more than a possession, to be used or disposed of upon a whim.

  “So much to be proud of. Pirates, prisoners and slaves,” Jack said ruefully, making Lisette realize that she’d been quiet since his admission.

  “It doesn’t reflect on you,” she said, freeing one hand so she could lay it on his wrist. “I have this vague image of my family, back to the beginning of time, living quiet, simple, happy lives—the men fishing, like my father did, the women cooking and cleaning and birthing babies, like my mother. Getting together with family to celebrate on Saturdays, going to Mass to do the same on Sundays.

  “Deux Saints isn’t the only island with that history. My great-great-grandfathers could have been slaves or prisoners. My great-great-grandmothers could have been kidnapped from their homes and families to make new homes and new families with strangers. All of them could have been taken—” had been taken “—from the lives they knew to make someone else’s life more comfortable or profitable.”