Charmed By You ((Destiny Bay Romances-The Islanders 5))

by Conrad, Helen

  “You didn’t tell me you were expecting such a delightful visitor, Mitch,” Kevin said lightly. “I’ll bet you planned on keeping her all to yourself.”

  “I didn’t know she was coming.” His sidelong glance flashed her way. “She dropped like an angel from the sky.”

  Heather could detect no sarcasm in his voice. There was something curiously open and vulnerable about Mitch at the moment. She couldn’t understand it and tried to brush the thought away with methodical control.

  “This angel,” she said evenly, “came on business rather than a mission of mercy. Did you sign the papers?”

  He shook his head. “Not yet.”

  She wanted to shake him. “When are you planning to do that little task?” she asked sharply.

  He frowned. “There’s not much hurry at this point. You can’t possibly get out of here until morning.”

  “Maybe not,” she said grimly, “but I’d feel better if I had them signed and in my possession.”

  His long fingers combed back his silky black hair with undisguised impatience. “Don’t worry,” he said, his voice deepened by a disquieting huskiness, “you’ll have them signed. I won’t hold out on you.” His low laugh was taut with an emotion she couldn’t identify. “The final seal of approval, isn’t it Heather? The last word.”

  She turned away from him. There was something in his dark gaze that she didn’t want to acknowledge. She looked at Kevin instead. “I’m going to need a place to stay tonight,” she said. “Do you know where I could get a room?”

  “I thought you were going to stay with me,” Mitch objected.

  How had he conceived such an absurd idea? “Don’t be silly.” She looked to Kevin for help.

  “Mele lets the rooms upstairs here,” he told her, his eyes on Mitch. “I’m sure she’d have something.”

  “Oh, good.” Heather tried to throw Mitch a challenging look, but the fire in his dark eyes startled her.

  “You can stay with me,” he said firmly. “We’ve got things to talk about.”

  A flicker of panic spread through her. She couldn’t let him take over—kiss of death. If she stayed with him, she knew exactly what would happen. She couldn’t risk becoming entangled with him again. Her heart hadn’t healed from the last time.

  On an impulse inspired by desperation, she turned again to Kevin, who was looking from her to Mitch with puzzled inquiry. She could see he wasn’t sure what was going on. He probably couldn’t decide if she was really trying to avoid being alone with Mitch or just playing hard to get.

  “I think I’ll go find Mele,” she began, but Mitch’s hand on her arm stopped her.

  “Heather,” he warned meaningfully, “don’t be absurd.”

  She stared down at the strong fingers that held her.

  “What are you planning to do, Mitch, drag me back to your cave by my hair?”

  Kevin shifted uneasily in his chair, obviously unsure what his options were. Heather threw him an artificial smile.

  “Is he always this macho with the island girls? Somebody ought to clue him in to the new century. This rough stuff just doesn’t go over any more.”

  Kevin was frowning. “Listen, Mitch, why don’t we let Heather stay where she wants to?”

  Mitch’s eyes glittered dangerously. “’We’ have nothing to do with this, Kevin, my friend. This is between Heather and me.”

  Kevin leaned forward. “You may consider her a girl friend, but she obviously—“

  “I don’t consider her my girl friend at all,” Mitch broke in decisively. “I consider her my wife.”

  It seemed to Heather that the world stood still for a moment. There was no sound, no movement. She and Kevin both stared at Mitch in stunned silence while he looked back impassively.

  Then reality flooded through her. Of course, he didn’t mean that. He was only using it as an argument, a rationalization, a way of establishing a claim that excluded Kevin. But why did he feel the need to do that? She gazed at Mitch searchingly, wondering.

  “You and Heather are married?” Kevin asked at last.

  “No,” she said quickly. “We were married, but that’s all over now.”

  Mitch didn’t say a word. He only looked at her, his hand still on her arm.

  “Well, listen,” Kevin said, appearing a bit uncomfortable, “I think I’ll go over to the clinic and check some stuff out. I guess you two do have things to talk over.” He rose but stopped to look down at Heather before leaving. “My house is the blue Quonset hut at the end of the road, just in case you need anything,” he told her quietly. He glanced at Mitch but got no reaction. “See you later.” And he was gone.

  “You got rid of him very efficiently,” she said to Mitch. “Now if you will just let go, I’ll leave, too.”

  “That’s just the point, Heather,” he said softly. “I don’t want you to leave. Not ever.”

  It was just the same as on that day in anatomy class. The same dizziness swirled around her. The same weakness attacked her legs. She couldn’t see anything but the haunting depths of his dark, cloudy gaze, couldn’t hear anything but the rich timbre of his husky voice.

  “When I opened my door and found you standing there with the sunlight turning your hair to spun gold, I knew I had to have you again.” His free hand reached out and smoothed her hair away from her neck. His finger stroked a fiery trail of sensation behind her ear. “You know it, too. Isn’t that why you really came?”

  Was it? Suddenly she wasn’t sure at all. She was floating on a cloud, arching into his caress and loving it, but she knew there was nothing holding that cloud up. When the white gauzy mist evaporated and let her plummet back to the ground, would she be able to rise and dust herself off and go on about her business?

  “Mitch...”

  His hand curling about her chin came up to cup her lips, and she found herself almost kissing his palm as his other arm slid around her shoulders.

  “Come stay with me, Heather,” he urged. “Come share my bed and my life, just like you used to.”

  If only it were that simple, she would do it in a moment. But she knew what else was implicit in his suggestion. He was asking her to resume the passion they’d once shared, but he was offering no commitment. The price was too high.

  Slowly she pulled away. Her lips were trembling when she spoke. “I can’t, Mitch. I didn’t come for that. I only came to cut the last strings that bind us together. Don’t try to weave new ones. It won’t work.”

  He sank back in his chair, his eyes hard and flat again.

  “Where’s Mele?” he asked evenly. “I need a drink.”

  Heather slid her tropical concoction across the table toward him. “Have this. I couldn’t drink it.”

  She quickly slipped into her shoes and rose. “Please send over the papers when you’ve signed them,” she said dully. He didn’t look up. “Good-bye, Mitch,” she whispered, then fled into the interior of the building, forcing herself not to look back. But the picture of him sitting all alone, his face an expressionless mask, stayed with her for a long time.

  Chapter Three

  The air felt as soft and thick as cat’s fur when she woke. The evening light was shaded from violet to deep purple where it caught in corners. Heather slid out of bed and went to the window to look out over the inky blue sea.

  Mele had given her a room with a view of the lagoon and most of the village. It was a small space, but nicely furnished with a madras bedspread and white painted wood chairs and dresser. She’d stretched out to get some rest, but now she realized she must have slept for four or five hours.

  There was a light on in the clinic. She wondered if Mitch was there, reading over the papers she’d left for him to sign.

  He’d said he wanted her to stay, but she wouldn’t think about that. It coincided too neatly with the guilty, hopeless dreams she kept locked away in her heart. The whole idea was too good to be true. Just as their life had been when they’d first been married.

  Everything had
followed storybook lines. Mitch’s residency was right in town. Heather had opened her studio and enjoyed immediate success with her pastel portraits. Mitch had seemed to love his work. When his hours got longer and longer and his attention became more and more distracted, she’d assumed he was preoccupied with his practice, and she’d accepted the situation. After all, he was a doctor. That’s how it was with dedicated professionals. She tried to become the best wife she could in more concentrated doses.

  Meanwhile, her own work was becoming popular among the country club set. Something about her feather-light style caught the fancy of most everyone who saw it. When she let it be known that she was interested in doing house portraits, she was suddenly all the rage. Everyone in her social circle had to have one.

  Success started when she did a large portrait of her own family house, capturing as much of the personalities of her bubbly mother and reserved and dignified father in the drawing as she could. It was displayed at the country club, and everyone who saw it wanted one of their own. Soon she was invited into the best homes in the town to do portraits of the family or the family house. Heather Carrington was a hit. With everyone, that is, except her husband.

  She’d never understood why he couldn’t accept her success. He’d been so supportive of her art until then. Had he been jealous of her accomplishment—of her friends? She’d never been sure. She only knew her success had been the seed that had grown into their estrangement.

  Strains of music from the jukebox below were filtering into her room. “You cain’t go back to Jackson County...” An occasional burst of laughter punctuated the song.

  Heather felt strange here, caught in a web of loneliness. She longed to see a friendly face. Perhaps she’d find one in the dining room of this unique establishment. The pilot who had stranded her here had at least stopped long enough to throw her suitcase out on the pier. Someone had brought it by the Coconut Club, and Mele had sent it up to her. Opening it, she pulled out a soft silk blouse in fuschia with a mandarin collar and a linen drawstring skirt in forest green. As she slipped into them, she wondered if she would see Mitch again tonight.

  Would he still be on the veranda? Would he be eating a late meal in the dining room? She hoped not. But her heart beat faster at the possibility.

  They’d had such fun dinners together when they were first married. Sometimes he surprised her with the full treatment, chef’s hat and all. Other times she carefully followed recipes from gourmet magazines, sometimes with disastrous results. But the worse the disaster, the harder the laughter. She still cherished those memories.

  As she’d become busier with her work, such shared dinners had become fewer and farther between. Everyone seemed to want to entertain her as well as hire her. At first Mitch had come along to the parties she was invited to. But it was obvious to the hosts that he scorned them as well as the people he met there.

  “Nice pool,” she’d heard him tell a man who had just commissioned her to do a set of portraits of his entire estate. “The kids on the Navajo reservation could use a pool like this. Ever think of that? I’ll bet you’ll get less use out of this thing in your lifetime than they would in one hot summer weekend.”

  Similar remarks came thick and fast. Mostly they were relayed to her by irritated friends. “Heather, I don’t know who that husband of yours thinks he is, but he told Gerald that moneylending had been considered immoral through the ages. Now you know Gerald has just been promoted at the bank...”

  Finally even her mother had warned her. “Mitch is becoming impossible, dear. Try to do something about that chip on his shoulder.”

  She tried, but his response wasn’t especially encouraging. “I’m supposed to be careful of the feelings of people who trample on the rest of us to line their pockets?” He laughed. “I’ve got better things to do. Leave me out of the socializing from now on.”

  So she had. Her cousin Trevor became her escort on the more formal occasions.

  “You and Trevor make a great pair,” Mitch would tease. “You should hire out as partygoers just to add class to the more common run of get-together.”

  The cutting remarks began to find a target closer to home. The differences in their backgrounds had added interest to their relationship at first. But now it became a bone of contention.

  Her own father was one of Flagstaff’s leading attorneys. Mitch’s father ran some kind of store in the Hawaiian Islands—Heather really didn’t remember much about it. But she assumed, from the things he said, that they hadn’t had much money.

  “My Dad could put a whole combination deli and restaurant, complete with dance floor, in a room this size,” Mitch had complained when she first showed him the master bedroom of the house she wanted to buy. But she had enough money from her own work to put a down payment on it, and he grudgingly agreed to buy it with her.

  Sometimes she thought the house had been a fitting background for their estrangement. Once they moved in, it seemed they lived in twin armed camps, he on his side, she on hers. Maybe Mitch was right: The place was just too big for two people. Built of stained redwood and tinted glass, the house had stood impassively by as their marriage fell apart. Now she intended to get rid of this last reminder of their love.

  She slipped out of the little room and walked swiftly through the hall, then down the polished wood stairway. No one greeted her on the main floor, but she could hear sounds of revelry in the barroom to her right. She had only to walk into the room and she would be with people again.

  Heather hesitated, looking out across the dark veranda at the light in the clinic across the road. Maybe it would be better to go over and get the papers from Mitch. It would only take a moment, and then her worries would be over.

  Over? Closing her eyes, she slowly shook her head. Why did she seem to be fighting a part of herself to keep away from him? This was insane. Resolutely, she turned and marched into the high-ceilinged room she had decided must be the dining room.

  “Welcome, sleepy head.” Mele’s good-natured face broke into a wide grin at the sight of her. “I was afraid you were going to sleep the night away.”

  Heather found herself echoing the irresistible smile. “I just might have if the music hadn’t woken me.”

  The music seemed to play a constant backdrop to life in this strange house, and Heather wondered if she would ever get used to it enough to ignore it. Even here, in the large dining room set with eight different tables all crowded around a central buffet, she could hear the warbling complaints of unfulfilled love.

  The large woman shook her head sympathetically. “There’s nothing I can do about that,” she told Heather. “The boys have got to have their music. I’d have a real revolution on my hands if I tried to turn it down.” She grinned again. “And now I bet you’re ready for some dinner.”

  Heather nodded, glad to feel so completely at home with the woman. But the dining room was empty and seemed to be laid out for the next morning’s breakfast. “I hope it’s not too late.”

  Mele shrugged grandly. “Sure it is, but that’s no matter. In fact, I cooked you up something real special.” She winked. ‘’But first I got a message you’re supposed to run over to Dr. Mitch’s place as soon as you wake up.”

  “A message?” Heather’s natural suspicions were aroused, but so was her curiosity. “Who sent the message?”

  Mele was already propelling her toward the door. “Mitch, I guess. Who else?” She grinned. “Say, did he tell you? I’m from the same island he’s from. I used to baby sit for his cousin Malia when she was a little girl. Her mom and I were very good friends.”

  “So you knew Mitch before?”

  “Sure. Forever. Now you just run on over there and I’ll take care of everything else.” She gave her an encouraging shove. “You go on to the back door, not the clinic entrance. He lives in the back part of the building. He’s waiting to tell you something.”

  Heather started to turn away, then whirled and stopped Mele with a quick breathless question. “Where i
s Dede Sablan?”

  Mele blinked. “You know Dede? She’s not around much these days. Mostly she goes from one island to another where they don’t have any doctors and takes medicine and such.” She patted her wide apron. “We call her ‘circuit nurse’ around here.”

  Not around much these days. Heather hated the warm glow she felt at those words.

  With a friendly wave, Mele left Heather on the veranda and hurried back to her kitchen. After one last glance around the lighted room, Heather abandoned it for the dark tropic night. She had a cowardly impulse to go back to her room instead, but she fought it down. Then she wondered if she shouldn’t warn Mele to send someone after her if she didn’t show up within the next ten minutes. But when she tried to think up credible terms in which to couch her request, she realized how silly it sounded.

  No, she would face Mitch on her own. Whatever the problem was, she would soon clear it up and return for a good dinner and friendly conversation with the Hawaiian woman.

  The back door to Mitch’s building was much more inviting than the front. Even in the dark Heather could see flowers blooming next to his porch.

  She hesitated, her hand curled, ready to knock, and took a deep breath, pulling in the blossom-scented air. Then she rapped with what she hoped was business-like authority.

  What she faced when he opened the door was even worse than she’d feared. Mitch stood in a muted golden light that laid shadows across his dark face, hiding the expression in his eyes but revealing the determined set of his jaw. He was dressed in jeans faded almost to white that fit tightly across his muscled legs and hips. His flowered shirt was casually tucked in and open at the neck. His feet were bare. He looked like a pirate in his island lair.

  He stood back without speaking, waiting for her to enter, but she shook her head. “No.” She wished she had one of those forceful voices that everyone obeyed without question. “No, I can’t come in there. Do you have the papers ready?”