"Good God, there must be a hundred cats around here!" Garrett was amazed by the sheer numbers of feline inhabitants.
"Forty-two," amended Shelby knowledgeably. "For the forty-two bridges in the Keys. They're all descendants of Hemingway's own fifty cats. Kittens are available for adoption but there's a fee and a waiting list."
One of the cats strolled over to them and rubbed against Shelby's ankles, seeking attention. When she stooped to pat its big striped head, it began to purr.
"He picked you out of the crowd," Garrett remarked. "Positive proof of your sheer animal magnetism. I guess both you and Laney possess it. She attracts dolphins and you attract cats."
"And you attract…" Shelby began playfully. She was going to say T-shirt shops and video arcades, miniature golf courses and motels for the masses.
"You?" Garrett interrupted. "I hope." His voice was teasing but his blue eyes were intent. She was still crouched down, petting the cat, and he slipped his hands under her arms and half lifted her to her feet.
A hushed stillness seemed to fall, encapsulating them both. For a long moment they stood there together, their bodies close but not touching, his hands gripping her, their gazes locked.
Shelby's heart was pounding and her thoughts careered through her brain like pieces of loose shrapnel. He was going to kiss her, right here and now, in broad daylight, in front of Ernest Hemingway's house with a plethora of tourists and cats milling around.
"Garrett, no," she heard herself say. Her voice was husky but decisive. The bonds of restraint she had placed on herself through the years were too strong and too tight for her to break. A kiss on a deserted beach had been risqué enough; a kiss in the middle of a crowded tourist attraction was absolutely unacceptable.
Garrett dropped his hands but not before sliding them along the length of her torso, pausing to caress the curves of her hips. Then he straightened and shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. "Public displays of affection are taboo as far as you're concerned?"
"We … we're adults," Shelby stammered. "Not a couple of … of hormonally driven teens. We can't maul each other in front of everyone. It's unseemly, to say the least."
"The problem is, you make me feel like a hormonally driven teen, Shelby. And I'm not sure what to do about it." He laughed slightly. "Except maybe to maul you, wherever we happen to be."
Garrett stood still as a stone, struggling to regain his usual iron control. When he'd touched her it was as if some internal switch had been flipped, freeing all his masculine urges, allowing him to actively pursue what he wanted and not stop until he got it. It was not unlike his pursuits in business, except this was personal, as personal as it could possibly be. He wanted Shelby Halford. He had an almost overpowering urge to pick her up and take her to some private, quiet place where he could slip off those little shorts she was wearing and sink himself deep inside her.
Shelby stared at him, noting the flush of his cheekbones, the sexual intensity burning in his dark blue eyes. It was the hard, hungry way men looked at Laney. No one had ever looked at her that way. What man would dare risk it? Her forbidding, icy demeanor sent men running like cockroaches after a blast of insecticide.
Except Garrett wasn't running. He'd already been subjected to her most forbidding iciness, nevertheless he was looking at her with undisguised sexual desire.
She dragged her eyes away from him. Her imagination was running away with her, she decided nervously. Perhaps it was the intense heat. If so, she wasn't the only one affected.
"I—I think the afternoon sun must be getting to you," she told him lightly, attempting to sound flippant. She might have succeeded but for the tremulous note in her voice. "I am not the type to drive a man to lust."
"Something else we disagree on. I'm a man and I can offer you irrefutable evidence of the lust you've inspired."
Involuntarily, her eyes dropped to the front of his jeans where the evidence was irrefutable indeed. Mortified, she quickly looked away, feeling a sharp surge of hot color stain her cheeks.
"Shall we take the tour?" Grinning wickedly, Garrett reached for her hand and walked her to the house.
The dark clouds grew nearer and the sea breezes grew stiffer, but Shelby and Garrett ignored them and continued their exploration of the town. Since this was his first trip, she suggested that he choose the sites that interested him. The ones he chose, the Historic Key West Shipwreck Museum and the Key West Hurricane Museum, happened to be places she'd never visited before.
She found both interesting, even engrossing, surprising herself. "I've always avoided those places," she confessed as they emerged into the light drizzle that had begun to fall. "I thought they'd only appeal to ghoulish voyeur types. You know, the kind who slow down at accident sites to get a better look. The group who enjoy watching videotapes of actual catastrophes."
"There you go again, generalizing and stereotyping," Garrett admonished lightly. "Sometimes you have to try to see things from a different angle, Shelby."
Shelby looked thoughtful. "The way that you do."
He laughed. "Some might argue that I see things from a warped angle."
"No, I'm serious, Garrett. You're always open to new information and ideas, asking questions, looking at everything, seeking answers."
"A veritable creative genius," he said drolly.
She knew he was kidding, but she wasn't. She admired him, Shelby realized with a jolt. It had nothing to do with the sexual chemistry between them, which was a separate and potent issue of its own. What she was feeling now went beyond physical attraction. She admired his mind and appreciated his talent and skills in the difficult and capricious hotel business. It was both stirring and stimulating to talk to him, to laugh with him and argue with him. Even just to be with him.
When was the last time she'd felt this way about a man? For that matter, when was the first time? She couldn't remember. She'd never felt this way before and it was happening so fast. Too fast. Shelby gazed at him, apprehension and excitement surging through her, so intermingled that she couldn't begin to separate one from the other. It was both scary and exhilarating. She felt so very vulnerable, she who had always prided herself on her invulnerability.
"I think we should head back to Port Key," she said firmly, moving carefully away from him.
Garrett noticed her withdrawal and it affected him in the most primally male way. He went after her, catching her by the hand. "I'd like to buy a few souvenirs first," he said, his voice as firm as hers. He drew her toward him, his fingers tightening around hers.
"Oh, no, not that awful place with the dead alligators again!" Shelby groaned. "Garrett, we have to leave. It's getting late. Look how dark the sky is. And it's starting to rain harder."
"I don't mind shopping in, shall we say, more upscale stores, if you'll show me where they are."
"There are some wonderful bookstores and galleries here," she said slowly, remembering them. "I haven't been in them for such a long time and I would like to see what's new."
"Well, then, lead the way." He held on to her hand, rubbing his thumb along her palm, stroking in a slow, sensuous rhythm.
Shelby felt a delicious warmth tighten and throb deeply, intimately, within her. Sensation blitzed her common sense and she found herself grinning when a big, heavy raindrop pelted her in the face. Her smile didn't fade as the rain began to fall heavier and faster, offering stark proof of her current dilemma.
How could she follow the most sensible, practical course and insist that Garrett take her home without further delay when she didn't even have the sense to come in out of the rain?
* * *
Chapter 6
« ^ »
"You have remarkable stamina," Shelby told Garrett as they crowded under the umbrella they'd bought, clutching the bags filled with their purchases. "And you lay to rest the stereotype about men hating to shop." Rain splashed down, the wind blowing and spraying it on them, despite the umbrella.
"Living with a mother,
grandmother and five sisters, my brothers and I learned to tolerate shopping. At least you didn't spend hours trying on clothes. Back in high school, my sister Gracie set the world record, which still stands in the McGrath family to this day—it took her four hours to find a white T-shirt.
"You, on the other hand, have a no-nonsense approach to clothes," Garrett continued drolly. "You don't mind being outfitted by Julio's Gifts and Sundries. And a fetching outfit it is," he added, surveying her shorts and shirt.
She eyed him archly. "Maybe I'll spend the next four hours looking for just that perfect white T."
"You wouldn't!" He feigned alarm.
Their comments on time caused Shelby to automatically check her watch. She received quite a shock. "Oh, my goodness, it's seven o'clock! I didn't realize it was so late."
"Time flies when you're having fun," Garrett reminded her.
And they had been having fun, Shelby silently agreed. It was as if they were on vacation together, a couple leisurely wiling away the hours, looking and sampling and buying the local wares.
And now the day had turned into evening. "We really have to leave," Shelby said decisively.
"If you say so. Shall we have dinner, though, before we set out for Port Key?" Garrett's voice was muffled by a loud crack of thunder.
Shelby glanced up at the sky just as a bolt of lightning flashed. "The storm seems to be getting worse."
A gust of wind tugged at the umbrella, almost blowing it inside out. Garrett held on to it fast. "The wind is picking up, too. Maybe we should postpone the drive back to Port Key until the morning. We'll have dinner and then head over to the—"
"We're going back to Port Key tonight," Shelby announced. It would be so easy to slip back into the vacationing couple fantasy; a romantic dinner for two would certainly prolong the idyll. Followed by a night at a motel that they both knew had only one available room. She gulped. "And we're leaving right now."
* * *
Visibility was terrible. The sky was as black as a moon-less midnight and sheets of heavy rain swept across the road as thick as a curtain.
"This is like trying to drive through Niagara Falls," groaned Garrett as he steered the little red car slowly down the highway. It chugged gallantly along, although the wind rocked it with increasing force. The beams cast by the headlights were practically useless in the thick swirling mist. If there happened to be a car in front of them, they probably wouldn't see it until they'd run into the bumper.
"This is what I get for playing the gentleman and ceding to your wishes, against my better instincts," he lamented. "I knew we should've stayed in Key West tonight. I should have insisted, should have trusted my—"
"Please, no more about your infallible instincts," Shelby cut in exasperatedly. "You've been ranting on about them for miles. They obviously failed you this time or you would have simply refused to drive back tonight. When you're set on a course of action, nothing deters you, certainly nothing as paltry as my wishes. Our trip down here together is proof of that."
Garrett frowned. She was right, of course. That was as galling to admit as the failure of his heretofore infallible instincts.
They both lapsed into a grim silence.
Crossing the bridges in the tiny car was truly terrifying. The wind howled and the rain pelted the car from every direction. It felt as if they were suspended in space, enshrouded by the unbreakable expanse of darkness from sky to sea. The water was on all sides of them, the whitecaps growing higher and wilder, the only light to be seen. Back on land again, Garrett heaved a sigh of relief that Shelby silently seconded.
She sat, wired and tense, beside him. "During all the years I lived in Florida, I've never seen a storm come up as fast and as furious as this one." They noticed a few cars stopped alongside the road. Either they had stalled or, more likely, the drivers had decided to pull over and wait for the rain to subside.
But the rain was relentless, pounding the car with unnerving ferocity. Even at top speed, the windshield wipers couldn't clear the water away fast enough for adequate visibility. Garrett slowed the car to a crawl but kept on driving. Lightning bolts seemed to surround them, flashing in the sky in a spectacular light show. The accompanying claps of thunder were deafening. Shelby fought the childish urge to cover her ears with her hands to block out the sound.
They drove slowly on, passing yet another car on the narrow shoulder of the road. A fierce gust of wind sent the little car careening to the left and Garrett used all his strength to pull it back on course.
"This car is so tiny," Shelby whispered, her heart in her throat. "I'm afraid the wind will pick it up and toss it around like a beach ball."
Garrett was, too. But he wasn't about to admit it and further alarm her. "I wish my infallible instincts had instructed me to rent the agency's largest car instead of the smallest for this trip," he said wryly.
She couldn't help but smile. His self-mocking humor in the face of danger appealed to her and lightened the tension. That old hearse you rented back in Kansas would come in handy about now," she agreed.
"We're still in the Lower Keys. I wonder how long it'll take to get to Halford House at this rate?"
"At the expeditious speed of an inch a minute? This drive could end up lasting longer than the Crusades." Shelby made another stab at humor, trying to fight the anxiety surging through her. Being scared in a thunderstorm, however torrential the rains and high the winds, was wimpy and weak, she scolded herself. And that's all it was, a severe thunderstorm, not the evil twin of horrific Hurricane Andrew.
Garrett fiddled with the radio, finally finding a station that could be heard above the roar of static blanketing the airwaves. As luck would have it, it was a Spanish-language station, with the music, commercials, and disc jockey patter entirely in Spanish. They listened for a while, hoping for an English word. The closest they got was Miami.
"How could you be born and raised in Florida, live here for seventeen years, and not know any Spanish?" Garrett complained.
"I took French in high school," Shelby mumbled. She felt inordinately stupid.
"And then you lived in California for the next ten years and managed not to learn any Spanish there, either." Garrett frowned his disapproval. "You've lived in two states with sizable Hispanic populations and yet you've—"
"All right, all right! You've made your point. I'm sure if you'd been in my position, you would've been fluent in Spanish by now. You would probably be working as a translator in your spare time."
His lips quirked. "Undoubtedly."
"Well, I'm signing up for one of those crash courses in Spanish as soon as possible. That is, if we aren't blown away or drowned in this storm," she added gloomily.
"We aren't going to be blown away or drowned. Everything is going to be all right, Shelby."
"You don't know that. You couldn't possibly know if things will turn out all right or end tragically. You admitted yesterday that you aren't psychic."
"True. But I am realistic," Garrett said calmly. "The odds of coming through this storm unscathed are very much in our favor."
Shelby sighed. "You're one of those indefatigable optimists, aren't you? The kind who looks at a glass of water and says it's half-full instead of half-empty."
"If I see a glass with water in it, I either drink it or pour it down the sink. I don't stand around contemplating it."
They drove over another bridge and the span seemed to sway and shake from the sheer force of the wind. Knowing that the turbulent waters of the Atlantic and the Gulf swirled wildly beneath them on either side, that the safety of land was a tentative distance in both directions, added a particularly perilous touch.
"This is enough to induce a lifelong phobia of bridges," Shelby said nervously, staring out the windshield. There was nothing to see but the fog in the surrounding darkness and the rain striking the glass.
Garrett glanced over at her. She was gnawing the knuckles of one hand while tightly clenching the other into a white-knuckled fist.
"The storm shows no signs of abating," he said quietly. "If anything, the rain seems to be coming down harder and the winds are gusting even higher. We're going to have to stop, Shelby. It would be stupid to try to cross the Seven Mile Bridge in this storm. Especially in this little car."
Shelby thought of that bridge, the world's largest segmental bridge that spanned the broad expanse of water separating the Lower and Middle Keys. It was an awesome engineering feat and crossing it on a sunny day, when one could fully appreciate the combined effects of the scenery and the technology, was a high point of the drive along the Overseas Highway.
Then she imagined crossing the Seven Mile Bridge tonight with the wind and the rain and the black, churning waters serving as a frightening backdrop. Navigating the smaller bridges in this storm had been dire enough; the prospect of a seven-mile trek across the open seas was horrifying.
"Are you going to pull over and wait till the rain lets up?" she murmured.
"Who knows when that'll be? An hour from now? Or in the middle of the night? We're still hours from Port Key, Shelby. We'll have to stop for the night at the first place we come to."
Shelby protested immediately. It was understandable, even wise, to pull off the road and wait for the worst of the storm to pass. But she was not going to spend the night with him in a motel. She'd already refused to do so when the ingratiating Tony Fontana had offered them a free room at the Family Fun Inn. Her refusal still stood.
She was still arguing her case when Garrett pulled off the road, over to a dilapidated, single-story building of motel units sporting a hand-painted sign that read Seagull Motel. He stopped the car in front of the door that had Office printed on it in big block letters.
Shelby panicked. "I'm not setting foot in this place! Why, I've seen better-looking roach motels. And Norman Bates is probably the proprietor here."
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