She could have whispered right then that she loved him, because she did, heaven help her. He was the only man for her, right or wrong, guilty or innocent. He had been the only one from the moment he saved her from drowning.
And now she was in love with him, awash in passion for him, holding him deep inside where their child had come to life.
“Rafe,” she gasped, reflexively tightening her heat around him, then fitting her mouth to his and taking more pleasure still from his thrusting tongue.
He moaned and thrust up, time and again until her first spasm seized her. Then his hips rolled hard and fast as the explosive rapture took her, shook her, blew her away. With a radiant cry, she arched her spine and threw her head back, shuddering, bursting within, again and again.
Rafe gave way with an ecstatic shout, pulsing inside her until they were both breathless, dazed and spent.
LATER, AS THEY LANGUISHED in contentment, Rafe pressed his lips to her tousled hair. Head on his shoulder, she lay half beside and half on him, snuggled against him.
He chuckled softly. “I think you fixed my back.”
“For the worse, no doubt,” she murmured, twining her fingers in the hair on his chest.
“Really, it feels better. That one spot that hurt so badly all the time.”
Terra trailed her fingers down to his naval and teased the rim. Then she slipped her hand lower. “What about this spot? Is it fixed, too?”
“Not quite.”
“Does what I’m doing help any?”
“Only if you keep doing it.”
She kept on and on. Rafe closed his eyes and let her wield her womanly power. She was the woman of his dreams, and he was a fool for her. He knew he’d be a sad, lonely fool after she returned to San Francisco in less than a week.
He’d be a dead fool after that, if his plan didn’t work. Not that he could think much past the present moment with Terra in bed beside him doing wondrous things with her soft, supple hand.
So he closed his eyes and stopped thinking. He was a fool in love.
TERRA CRAMMED a lot of work into the next morning, including her daily call to Macy.
Macy was jubilant. “Ta da! We’re going to be in the news.”
“What news?”
“The Chronicle food section. A reporter dropped in this morning, doing a feature article on menu writers, so I wasted no time telling her how fantastic Camden Consulting is. She boggled when I said you were at Bride’s Bay doing big things there. She’s going to lead off her piece with us.”
“You better have told her you’re my assistant, not my secretary, Macy Medford.”
“Actually, I did, but it scared me half to death to say it.”
“You’re finally accepting my offer after more than a week of waffling about it?”
“If you’ll still have me once you see my practice projects, yes.”
“Congratulations!” Terra exclaimed. “Run a helpwanted ad for your replacement!”
“Don’t you want to see my projects first?”
“Of course not. They were just to keep you from having a nervous breakdown while I’m gone.” Terra bit her lip, not wanting to think of how little time was left, yet needing to face it.
Macy said, “It’s a good thing you’re coming back soon because there’s more superb news. Bradford Congden called ten minutes ago and wants you for all four of his South Bay restaurants.”
“Wants us, Macy. Superb is the word. You’ll be just the help I need.”
“Good thing you got a vacation tucked into your project there. After the news feature, we’re going to be even hotter than we are, I’ll bet. Still having fun there?”
“Hours and hours.” Terra’s hormones sent up a heat wave in memory of the reckless, perilous hours she’d spent with Rafe. There would be more later today, after she finished taking a boat lesson.
“Have you stolen Kent away from me yet?”
“No, and neither has anyone else. He’s all yours to daydream about.”
“Really, you haven’t even had a teensy romance?”
“No teensy anything.” Only an enormously dangerous, nerve-racking affair.
They concluded the call and Terra returned to work with Columbia in the main kitchen. Though busy and productive, Terra found herself so impatient to be with Rafe again that the time seemed to crawl.
Impatient, impetuous, swept away by emotions and a situation she couldn’t control, she hardly knew herself. She knew one thing, though: she’d never be the same Terra Camden after this.
TIME MOVED AN IOTA faster that afternoon when Terra learned the basics of motorboating with one of Kent’s marina assistants, Bobby Boyes, a likable twenty-one-year-old. Kent himself was attending one of Thomas Graves’s security procedures classes. Terra had heard complaints in the employee ranks about the mandatory classes, and the extensive surveillance system he was designing for the resort.
Bobby, a bit cocky and quite voluble, grumbled, too, as he gave her motorboating advice in a small inboard model. “This place is going to be so tight-laced,” he complained. “Wherever you turn there’ll be a security camera staring you in the eye. Half of the time nobody will know if they’re being watched or not. It gives me the creeps.”
“Management must feel it’s necessary,” Terra reasoned, steering figure eights in the bay at his direction with an ease and enjoyment that surprised her.
“True,” Bobby conceded reluctantly, “some weird things have happened around here before now. Even a murder back in March, which nobody likes mentioned.”
“There was a small item in the San Francisco papers,” Terra recalled.
“It was mondo news in S.C.,” Bobby said, rolling his eyes. “Not as bad publicity as Miz Elizabeth’s grandson, but not good, however you cut it.”
Terra kept a neutral expression. “Rafe Jermain, you mean? Liz’s brother?”
Bobby nodded. “That’s as bad as anything gets. Not that I’d ever say so around the Jermain family. I was a kid when that happened and from then to now there’s never been a word out of the Jermains about him except ‘no comment.’”
Terra shivered inside, thinking of the news flash there would be about Rafe now should he come to light. She had a sinking suspicion that the undisclosed part of Rafe’s plan had something to do with the upcoming diplomats’ conference. If he intended to enter the hotel property in a bid to prove something, hidden cameras would catch him on film.
She wished she could pump the employees she knew best about the conference without them wondering why and perhaps reporting it to the security chief. But since it was unrelated to her work, they’d wonder. What would a menu specialist care about a conference that would occur after she left Bride’s Bay? Why would she want to know if there were any Leons on the conference list?
How could she find out? Perhaps by a simple call to the future bookings line to confirm whether he had a reservation or not. She resolved to make that call, from a pay phone rather than her room, so no one would know who was curious.
“You know,” Bobby said, “you’re taking to this boat like a champ. You’re ready to try a spin around the island.”
During that spin, Bobby explained about tide schedules. At just the right point, she oh-so-innocently got him to show her how to pull up at the Hamiltons’ pier and cast on in case she ever wanted to “stop by and see Lalie” while boating. It scared her how good she was getting at criminal conspiracy.
She was even shrewd enough to say blithely, “Hmm, I might even rent this little charm one evening and cruise around Charleston, see the city lights.”
“You bet,” Bobby agreed. “Guests do it all the time on nice nights. Some put in there for the nightlife. Bride’s Bay is a snooze after dark compared to Charleston and, hey, the last ferry to here is at midnight. Way too early, for sure, when you’re having fun.”
Although she didn’t need to know where to dock in Charleston, she asked anyway, since it seemed a likely question for an out-of-town boater to ask.
“The marina where we dock the Indigo Moon,” he said. “With clear weather and a compass, back and forth from here to there is a snap.”
All very comforting to know. All for an illegal purpose. Rafe hadn’t revealed exactly why he wanted to go to Charleston, but she was certain it wouldn’t comfort her to know. She was afraid he wanted to get a gun there, by hook or by crook. Either way could get him caught.
As for the Leon angle, she called future bookings from the marina pay phone after she finished with Bobby. The reservations clerk searched the conference reservations for first-or last-named Leons and found none.
Rafe’s intentions remained a mystery.
RAFE REFUSED TO ANSWER her questions later, when she went to him after her boat session. She went, of course, because there was no staying away now, because he was her lover and she was too much in love with him to stop herself.
He cut off her inquiries with hot, heady kisses that sent the questions melting to the back of her mind.
“Rafe, you’re not answering m—”
His tongue slid in against hers, not a reply, but a sensual request for her undivided attention to his need for her. It was insatiable, urgent, unquenchable—like her own need for him.
His mouth eating hers, he unbuttoned her blouse enough for her breasts to spill out into his hands. Thumbs focused on the taut tips, he circled and pressed, circled and pressed.
Terra’s mind hazed with desire, losing recall of whatever questions she’d had. She slid her hands under his shirt and then went to the bed without question, desire exploding within her, hunger so explicit and primitive that she was gasping from it before they even got their clothes off.
Rafe’s caresses were urgent as she sank down to sit on the edge of the bed. He knelt on one knee at the side of it, his hips framed by her legs, and suckled her breasts, sending shock waves radiating from the sensitive peaks to the throbbing ache between her thighs.
His tongue swirled on her, curled around her nipples, side to side, left them hot and wet when his mouth drew away to kiss her shoulders and the valley between her breasts.
“Terra,” he breathed, “Terra.”
She framed his face in her hands, thinking, I love you, Rafe. I always will, no matter what. But she didn’t speak the words to him, knowing instinctively that her emotions would only add to his heavy burden of danger and uncertainty.
She simply invited more kisses and caresses from him, stroking his hair as his head moved lower, as his hands pushed up her skirt.
Then he was the one gasping loudly, for she had come to him bare and welcoming, eager for him, wearing nothing under the skirt. So eager.
He muttered something dark and impetuous as she leaned back slightly, parting her thighs a fraction wider for him to take his pleasure and give to hers.
“For you, Rafe,” she murmured. “Only you.”
“The luckiest man in the world,” he rejoined huskily, stroking his fingers from her knees inward along the tender surface of her inner thighs, then brushing his fingertips lightly over the curly cloud of hair that shielded her secrets. “I can’t tell you how beautiful you are. You’ve just got to take my word.”
He kissed the path his fingers had taken, each side, drawing his open lips along her skin until she was writhing for him to do more, more.
He did, nuzzling her downy center, tasting within, laving her sultry folds with his tongue and then capturing her tenderest flesh between his lips.
Terra laced her fingers in his hair and reveled in the emotion, the sensation, the exquisite intimacy of his loving mouth. She responded, willing and trusting, panting with pleasure.
“Oh, Rafe…yes…please…”
Her fingers clenched, her hips tensed, lifted up and up to the crest and beyond. His name burst from her in a broken chant as she released to him without reserve, lost to the depths of her heart in love.
LATER, THEY DRIFTED, their bodies loose and languid as they lay together under the moon-starred fresco, Rafe on his back and she on her side next to him.
“Rafe, one question.”
He stopped sifting her hair through his fingers. “Don’t ask again. For your own good, I’m not going to tell you.”
“It’s not about your plan.”
“Oh.” He took up sifting again. “What?”
“Did you have any serious relationships before?”
“Nothing serious.” He was silent a moment. “There was someone special, though. But it was a long time ago, and prison did some strange things to my memories of her. And strange things to the rest of me, too.”
Terra didn’t like wanting to know what she wanted to know. But she couldn’t help probing. “What was she like?
“You don’t want to know about her, okay?”
“You still care about her, then.”
“I don’t kiss and tell, Terra. Would you tell me about the lovers you’ve had?”
“Ah, so you were lovers.”
“Terra, for Pete’s sake, what is this with you all of a sudden?”
“It’s curiosity of the ugliest sort,” she agreed ruefully. “Why, I can’t say. Jealousy, maybe, or a competitive streak I didn’t know I had until right now. I’m sorry, truly I am.”
Rafe gave her a slow, forgiving smile. “I’m not such a saint myself, to be honest. I’ve wondered more than a few times about your love life in San Francisco.”
“It’s best described as few and far between,” she told him frankly. “I don’t have any talent for serial relationships.”
“Well, if you’re still curious—and don’t take it the wrong way—you remind me a little of my memorable lover. At any rate, it was a unique situation and she called herself Mermaid. So there, you know.”
Soft tears sprang to Terra’s eyes and a tremulous smile quivered her lips. “Ohhh, how romantic.”
Rafe turned her face to his and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. “You’re what’s romantic. And beautiful, understanding, smart, sexy—”
Terra stopped him with a kiss, tender and true from her heart to his. Mermaid, mother of his son. Later, alone, she’d cry bittersweet tears for the unknowing gift her child’s father had given her.
THE NEXT AFTERNOON, Terra took a boat out by herself after another session with Bobby. She put the boat in at the Hamiltons’ pier, the tide being right for it, and went to Lalie’s to get Josh.
The day before, Rafe had asked her to bring the boy for another swim. “I miss the little guy,” Rafe had said somewhat wistfully. Heartwarmed by his request, Terra had agreed.
They had a wonderful time that afternoon, the three of them together in the pool. It was well worth foregoing the sexual intimacy she could otherwise have had with Rafe during that precious time, and she loved him all the more for not wanting only sex with her.
At the same time, though, she was tortured by thoughts of Josh’s reaction should Rafe get captured. It would be news she’d have a tough time keeping from a child Josh’s age. TV, newspapers, magazines would show Rafe’s face, and how would she prevent Josh from seeing every image? Would Josh be convinced that Kermit and Rafe Jermain looked a lot alike, but weren’t the same man?
Kermit. Thank heaven—Lalie—at least, for that whimsical name.
Watching father and son play in the pool, Terra was acutely aware of precious time passing too quickly. Only a few more days remained before she’d leave Bride’s Bay and never see Rafe again. Unless his plan worked, whatever it was. If it didn’t, what then? He was taking the boat to Charleston tonight. Why?
She wanted to know! And she wasn’t the only one. Lalie was fretting about it, too. But Rafe wasn’t saying a word.
TERRA TOOK THE BOAT back to the marina after leaving the estate late in the afternoon. Josh loved the ride, of course, everything about it. Back at the marina, she rented the boat in advance for the evening and later had dinner with Josh in the employee cafeteria. After that, Lalie came by and collected Josh to baby-sit him at her own house.
W
ith Josh taken care of, Terra dressed as if casual dance clubs might be on her evening agenda and took a warm coat along with her to the boat. Kent was in the marina office when she got there and, to her alarm, the security chief, Thomas Graves, was also present.
They both seemed more concerned than Bobby had been about her plan to cruise around Charleston on her own. Graves, a no-nonsense man in his early fifties, had hawklike blue eyes and an unobtrusive manner that Lalie had mentioned was deceptive. Terra was instantly on guard, although careful not to show it.
She kept a confident, mildly surprised expression, as she countered their concern. “I understand it’s not unusual for guests to boat to Charleston. You feel I’ll have more problems than other guests do after several hours of boating lessons?”
“Not very many guests go to Charleston alone,” Kent patiently explained.
“Single females, you mean?” she asked not quite innocently. “Or single guests in general?” She met each man’s eyes with an engaging, inquiring smile that found it impossible to believe a nice, world-class resort would discriminate against anyone’s gender.
Kent and Graves exchanged discomfited glances. Graves said, “Point well taken, Ms. Camden. Still, be sure to stay on course between ports, and if you debark in Charleston, take care.”
“I appreciate your understandable concern,” she said graciously, “but rest assured that a native San Franciscan like me has plenty of day-to-day, big-city experience.”
They both looked as if they’d made a regrettable judgment call, if not an outright blunder, so she gave them a forgiving smile and put out her hand for the key.
“Anything else before I go?”
In nervous, embarrassed unison, they both replied, “No, ma’am.”
Kent hastened to give her the key and offered his help to get her started and on her way. She accepted gladly, as if she found limited chivalry agreeable at times, and Graves bowed out in a controlled hurry.
Going to the boat with Kent, Terra was amazed at how very good she’d gotten in the art of deception and criminal conspiracy. Daunting the estimable security chief was no easy task, yet he’d practically scuffed his toes on the floorboards with sorry-ma’am chagrin.
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