Sydney, the Temptress (The Delaneys of Killaroo)

by Fayrene Preston

  “Leslie, try to be quiet like a good girl.”

  “Last night you didn’t want me to be quiet.”

  “I’m not believing this,” Mike muttered to himself as his eyes searched the ceiling for inspiration. “In fact...”

  Sydney turned to go.

  “Wait!” Mike called. “If you’re going to use the helicopter. I have to give authorization.”

  “Then give it.”

  Leslie adjusted the sheet over her breasts. “... Last night I distinctly remember...”

  Ignoring Leslie’s seemingly perfect recall of their activity the night before. Mike said, “First tell me when you’ll be back.” But he was already reaching for the phone.

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But you will be back, right?”

  She threw him a surprised glance. “Of course. I haven’t accomplished my goal yet.”

  Leslie broke off her reminiscing. “Hope everything works out okay, Sydney.”

  “Thanks, Leslie.”

  Sal was waiting for her in the hall, and if she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn his normally expressionless eyes held laughter. “Sal, will you take me to the helicopter, please?”

  He bowed.

  * * *

  Nicholas stood at the window of the control room, looking down at the casino. Behind his back, one hand was clenched and lay in the palm of his other hand. “Dammit, Mike, this is all your fault! You should never have let her go.”

  “I didn’t have much choice, Nick. Besides, she said she’d be back. She will.”

  “But it’s been three days!”

  “She’ll be back,” Mike said soothingly. “In the meantime, we have other worries. I’ve received word that Mandarin has recovered from her infection and is gathering her forces.” When Nicholas didn’t say anything, he added. “And she’s found out that Josh is dead.”

  A spasm of pain contorted Nicholas’s face. “I would give all I possess if he were still alive.”

  “He betrayed you, Nick.”

  Nicholas shook his head as if in denial. Just then Julian lumbered into the control room and whispered something into Mike’s ear.

  With considerable relief on his face, Mike turned to his employer. “Sydney was on the evening launch, Nick. She’s in her room now,”

  Nicholas wheeled away from the window. “Why wasn’t I told?”

  “You just were.”

  * * *

  The first thing Sydney did when she got back to the room was take a long hot shower. The smells and the grime of the racetrack washed away easily enough, but the tiredness in her bones stayed. It had been a busy three days, she mused, but well worth the effort. Addie’s problem had been solved.

  Stepping out of the shower, Sydney reached for a towel. The friction of the terry cloth felt good against her flesh, stimulating the blood under her skin so that when she got through rubbing, her body looked pink instead of ivory.

  She poured out a handful of lotion and began smoothing it over her leg, and as she did, her thoughts turned to Nicholas. Although she didn’t like the lack of control over her thoughts, it was something she was beginning to accept out of necessity. For even in the middle of all the excitement in Melbourne, her mind would return to Nicholas. At night she would picture him pacing the length of his control room, or standing on the highest level of his suite above the casino, staring out at the night. During the day she would think of him in his house on the wild side of the island, and she would wonder if he slept.

  And constantly her mind replayed their last meeting. He had said he wanted to free her from the chains of her stutter. That was impossible, of course. It couldn’t be done. She knew that if she knew nothing else.

  He didn’t understand, and she couldn’t explain. The pain went too deep. She could still remember those occasions when her family would visit other stations for socials and how embarrassed she would be when her stutter betrayed her and exposed her to ridicule from the other kids.

  There had actually been a six-month period right after her mother had died when she hadn’t spoken at all. But with a lot of love from her father and her sisters, she had gradually begun to speak again, acquiring the control over the words and her emotions that would later allow her to go out among people so successfully.

  No, he didn’t understand. But... “Dammit all!” she muttered as she realized that the most disturbing thing was that she wanted to see him again. Badly.

  She slipped on her silk nightgown and stepped into the bedroom.

  “Where have you been?”

  Her hand went to her breast in alarm. “N-N-Nicholas! How long have you been here?”

  “Long enough to decide that I would go into the bathroom and get you if you didn’t come out soon.”

  She stiffened. As glad as she was to see him, she refused to let him put her on the defensive. “Nicholas, I am paying good money for this room, and as long as I am, it should be considered mine and I should be protected from intruders.”

  “And so you shall be... except from me. There is no protection from me, Sydney. Don’t you know that by now?”

  He was steps away from her, yet she could feel his strong will as if it were a black velvet lariat attempting to wrap around her and draw her to him. In defense, she reached for her robe.

  “Where have you been?” he asked again.

  “Didn’t Mike tell you?”

  “He told me that your leaving involved a family emergency.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me you were leaving?”

  No one had ever been able to get her so angry, so quickly. “Maybe, Nicholas, because you’re so damned inaccessible!”

  “My inaccessibility doesn’t extend to you, Sydney, and I’ll make sure Mike knows it.” He reached out and, with a gentle touch to her throat, he defused her anger. “Why won’t you tell me about your emergency?”

  “I—I—I can’t. It’s a private matter.”

  He jammed his hands into his pockets. “Then tell me this. Will you be leaving again?”

  “Not until I’ve won the five hundred thousand dollars.”

  “And of course you won’t tell me why you want to win so much money either, will you?”

  She shook her head.

  “Rich or poor, Sydney, I’ve never begged anyone for anything in my life.”

  She found herself going to him and laying her hand on his chest. “I’d tell you if it involved only me, but it doesn’t.”

  He glanced down at her hand. “I hope the man you’re doing this for appreciates all the trouble you’re going to. Is he a good lover?”

  She whirled away, her anger leaping forward again. “Tell me you have no secrets, Nicholas! Convince me! Then maybe I’ll tell you mine.”

  He smiled, but it wasn’t a particularly warm smile. With an easy motion he grabbed the sash of her robe and pulled her back to him. “All right. How much have you won to date?”

  “Almost thirty thousand dollars.”

  “That’s a long way from five hundred thousand.”

  “I’ll make it. I have to, and I have three more weeks.”

  “So... three weeks or five hundred thousand dollars, whichever comes first. That’s not a lot of time, Sydney.”

  “You don’t think I can do it, do you?”

  “Very few people could. The point is, I don’t care whether you do or not.”

  “Are you that rich?”

  “Yes.”

  His simple statements always took her breath away. “What do you care about, Nicholas?”

  “I care about a lot of things.”

  “But you just choose to let very few people know what those things are, right?”

  “Correct.”

  “You protect yourself, Nicholas, so allow me my protection.”

  “I want you, Sydney, you must know that.”

  His words, spoken so matter-of-factly, scared up a thrill inside her. “Yes.”

  “Well?” His hand
was on her throat again, softly caressing.

  “I-I-it can’t be,” she said. “It just can’t be.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you want too much.”

  He gave her the gentlest smile she had ever seen, and it affected her way too much. “How do you know what I want?”

  “You want everything.”

  “You’re absolutely right.”

  His outrageous honesty was a hard weapon to combat, she thought wearily. “How can I fight you, Nicholas?”

  “You don’t,” he whispered, and gathered her into his arms. “You don’t.” His lips grazed over hers. “I missed you, Sydney.”

  She felt something melt inside her and hoped it wasn’t her strength giving away completely. Nevertheless, she admitted, “I missed you too.”

  Then her mouth opened hungrily under his. Emotions swelled—sweet needs and tempting desires. She wanted the aching sweetness that curled through her like ribboned fire, she wanted his tongue in her mouth, she wanted...

  He slipped the robe from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. With his lips he nibbled and kissed across her cheek and down her throat. With his fingers he pushed back her hair from her face, tucking it behind her ear so that he could kiss the sweetly scented pulse point there. He dipped his head, but suddenly stopped. “What is this?”

  “What?” she asked, confused.

  “Behind your ear. It looks like paint.” He rubbed his finger across the place, then looked at it. “It’s... shoe polish!”

  “I—I—I must have missed that spot when I showered.” Hastily she rearranged her hair so that it covered the telltale brown color.

  “What in heaven’s name is going on, Sydney? You disappear for three days, and when you reappear you have shoe polish behind your ear. Do you realize how much polish you would have to use before you could get it behind your ear?”

  “W-w-well, I must have...”

  “Don’t even bother to tell me you were polishing shoes, because I don’t think I would believe you.”

  She tried to summon indignation and failed. Neither could she think of an acceptable explanation. “What do you think I was doing with the shoe polish?” she asked very slowly.

  “I don’t know. Sydney, look at me.”

  Reluctantly she lifted her face.

  “Are you in trouble?”

  “No, of course not.”

  “Sydney, whatever’s going on with you, I can help. Trust me.”

  Trust him? She had never even considered the thought. “Why should I?”

  He smiled sadly. “I can’t think of a reason in the world. Good night. Sleep well.”

  * * *

  It was the early hours just before dawn, when night was fading and the day had not yet decided to appear. Sydney rolled over and thumped her pillow. Since two o’clock she had been trying to sleep, quite unsuccessfully.

  She simply had too much on her mind, and she couldn’t tune it out. It had been four days since she had returned from Melbourne, and the days had been full. She had been trying very hard to concentrate on her gambling and not let Nicholas intrude upon her thoughts, but she had increased her winnings by only twenty thousand dollars, so that now she had a total of fifty thousand dollars. At this point she should have had much more, and the fact that she didn’t worried her.

  She gave up trying to sleep and got out of bed. Her bedroom had a window that overlooked the back of the hotel, and she wandered to It. Leaning against the window frame, gazing out over the grounds, she decided that she was going to have to amend her plans and give up being so cautious. But to do that, she told herself, she was going to have to get her mind off Nicholas. He had the power to make her goal secondary, and she couldn’t allow that to happen.

  Yet each night Nicholas seemed to find a way to convince her to spend a few hours with him, and she had to admit she put up very little protest. Although she was a long way from understanding him, she was growing more and more to enjoy being with him. Just last night they had sat and listened to music. It had been a pleasant relaxation for her, a break from the tensions of the casino.

  Of course, the evening had presented a different type of tension altogether. Nicholas had stayed well apart from her, but he had touched her all evening—with his words, with his voice, and with his eyes. As usual, his presence had unsettled her, like nettles under the skin.

  Outside in the pale light a movement caught her eyes. A man was making his way across the grounds of the hotel toward the thick vegetation that marked the beginning of the rain forest. She stiffened. It was Nicholas! Her eyes followed him, and a strange thrill coursed through her that for once she could watch him without his being aware of it.

  He reached the edge of the landscaped grounds, and he was about to enter the forest when something stopped him. To her surprise, Nicholas knelt and carefully picked up a baby bird that had fallen from its nest.

  He cradled it in his hand for a moment, and through the pale dawning light she saw his dark head bend to the bird as he stroked its feathers with one long finger. Even more astonishing, he appeared to talk to it. Then with extraordinary care he placed the tiny bird back in its nest. She expected that he would continue on his way, but he didn’t.

  Instead, he stepped back a few feet and waited. At first she wasn’t sure what he was waiting for, but then she saw the mother bird fluttering above his head in a tree, and she realized he was waiting to see if the mother bird accepted the baby back in the nest.

  High in her room, separated by distance and glass, Sydney sensed Nicholas holding his breath and, unaware, she did the same. The mother bird hovered above the nest for long moments, then at last settled into the nest beside her baby.

  Sydney’s gaze flew to Nicholas. A small, gentle smile slowly curved his lips as his eyes rested on the mother bird and her baby, then he set off through the rain forest.

  There were two things that struck her at once. One, how alone he seemed as he walked back to his house on the wild side of the island, where he would sleep the day away until night came again. And the other, how gentle he had been with the fragile bird, how attuned he had been to what might happen. He had cared, and the mother bird had sensed it and trusted him.

  Not for the first time, she told herself that Nicholas Charron bewildered her, and she wondered if such a man could ever be fully understood.

  * * *

  The lounge bar where Sydney sat nursing a tall glass of iced tea opened onto the swimming pool. The sun had already begun to set, and still Sydney didn’t move. She realized it was the first sunset she had seen since she had been on the island. Usually at this time of day she was in her room, dressing for the evening ahead.

  Clouds had been forming over the island all day long, and now the undersides were a brilliant red-gold. She wondered if there was a storm brewing. Certainly that might explain this vague aching of her head and the restless energy she was feeling that was making it impossible for her to relax.

  Unexplainably she had been able to sleep after she had seen Nicholas in the hour just before dawn, so she wasn’t particularly tired.

  But there was something else bothering her, something that was niggling at the back of her mind and had been for some time. She had a feeling it was important, and she was sure it had something to do with Nicholas. If she could only remember.

  The mention of the name Nicholas Charron had her jerking her attention back to the lady sitting beside her. “I’m sorry, Miriam. What were you saying?”

  Miriam, an elegant middle-aged lady, was someone Sydney had struck up a casual acquaintance with over the past few days. Miriam’s husband, an English banker, was an enthusiastic but not very skilled gambler. Miriam had told Sydney that the trip to the reef had been a tradeoff. In exchange for spending two weeks with her husband on the Isle of Charron, he in turn would accompany her to Paris for two weeks.

  “I was simply asking if you had read that booklet of rules in your room, the one put out by order of Nicholas Charr
on.”

  “Yes, I have, as a matter of fact.”

  “Well, my dear, I don’t know about you, but I resent being told that shell collecting is not allowed on his island. I’ve never heard of such a thing! This is a tropical island, after all, and a resort!”

  Sydney had never met a person less in need of protection, yet she felt a strange urge to come to Nicholas’s defense. “I think he’s just concerned that the guests of the hotel not disturb the ecology of the reef, Miriam. In particular, I read, he doesn’t want any of the giant tritons collected. They prey on the starfish that destroy the coral, and natural control of the starfish is far better than anything that man can do.”

  “Yes, the crown-of-thorns is a definite problem,” Miriam admitted grudgingly. “And”—she leaned forward as if she were imparting a delicious bit of gossip—“I’ve heard that Mr. Charron is actually financing a study on the problem of the crown-of-thorns infestation of the entire reef. I’m sure he wouldn’t want that information getting around. He’s such a private man, you know.”

  “Yes, I’ve heard.”

  Miriam patted her gray hair. “I suppose, though, that all of his care is paying off. I went out in the glass-bottomed boat today. It was lovely and well worth the trip, although mostly what we saw was the staghorn coral. It was quite the most exquisite shade of deep blue. You should have seen it, my dear. And a school of parrot fish swam under us. From above they looked just like a blue and green cloud. Then we came upon a section of the tabular coral in beautiful yellows and pinks. But actually, you know, the really picture-book sea gardens can’t be seen unless you dive down to them.”

  Sydney took a sip of her tea. “I understand the hotel offers gear and instructions. Why don’t you try it?”

  Miriam shuddered. “You couldn’t get me into that water for an Oscar de la Renta gown. The Great Barrier Reef has the most poisonous snakes in the world, and then, of course, there are the sharks.”

  “Perhaps to get to the beauty you have to accept the danger.” Now, why had she said that? Sydney wondered, and rubbed her forehead as her gaze drifted back to the setting sun.

  Miriam shook her head. “You strike me as far too sensible a young lady to believe that.”

  “I used to think I was sensible too,” Sydney murmured. And then she remembered what it was that had been bothering her. It had been something Nicholas had said before she had left for Melbourne, something about being at the lagoon at sunset. “Excuse me, Miriam. I’ve got to go.”