Sure, Keegan, he told himself with a sneer. Sure. You want to offer Cari a happily-ever-after, when you don’t even know whether you’ll have an “after,” happily or otherwise.
She had her future all planned out, in nice, neat increments. She’d finish her thesis. Get her doctorate. Move up through the professorial ranks. Maybe do a book about costuming through the ages.
He didn’t know whether he’d be swinging a club or making motor-oil commercials a month from now. Whether he’d be the man he’d been until the accident, or someone altogether different. How could he ask Cari to commit to that someone when he didn’t even know himself who he might be?
“What are you doing?”
He turned slowly, the seven iron loose in his hand. Cari hadn’t showered. Hadn’t changed. She still wore the white slacks and navy-blue T-shirt imprinted with a bust of Alexander the Great that she’d worn when they explored Saint Thomas this afternoon. Her hair drifted in soft, silky waves around her face, tinted to a deep gold by the late-afternoon sun.
“I thought I’d come up and knock off a few shots while you got ready for dinner.”
“Dinner’s not for an hour yet. It doesn’t take me that long to shower and pull on my dress.”
To Josh’s consternation, she perched on the end of a deck chair and tucked her feet under her.
“I’ve never seen a golf game, or a pro golfer in action. Do you mind if I watch?”
That was all he needed. Thinking about Cari distracted him enough. Knowing she was perched just a few feet away while he duffed his shots certainly wouldn’t improve his concentration.
“I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t I give you your first golf lesson?”
“Me? No way! I wasn’t kidding when I told Eric about remedial gym class.”
“You can’t be that bad.”
“Trust me, I can.”
He walked over to her, smiling a challenge. “You told me I was a good instructor. Maybe I can do better than…Who was it? Mrs. Lancaster?”
She held up both hands in protest. “No, Josh. Seriously, I have zero coordination. Less than zero. Twenty below zero.”
Laughing, he caught one of her hands in his. “Come on, Cari. You might as well take something home from this cruise besides a sunburned nose and a scalded thigh.”
She was. Cari’s heart twisted with the silent admission. She was taking far more home from this cruise than she had ever dreamed she would. More than he would ever know. She was taking the memory of Josh’s lip-tilted grin. The vivid image of his broad shoulders silhouetted against a gold Caribbean sun. The feel of his hand wrapped around hers.
Her palm brushed the ridge of calluses at the base of his fingers, calluses she now knew came from years of swinging a club. She’d never held a golf club in her life.
The feel of his toughened skin only emphasized how far apart their lives were. They inhabited totally different worlds. She with her books and her long-dead Tudors. He with his tournaments at places like Maui and Saint Andrews. For just a moment, just this one moment, Cari felt the urge to bridge their worlds, to share a little of his.
“Okay,” she replied, letting him tug her off the deck chair. “I just hope you won’t regret this.”
“I won’t.”
“Mrs. Lancaster,” she warned gloomily, “developed ulcers.”
Cari hugged his rich, deep laughter to her chest like some precious gem.
“I’m not Mrs. Lancaster. I use a different instructional technique.”
No kidding! As best Cari could recall, the high school gym teacher had never positioned her students parallel to a net, then wrapped her arms around them.
“Relax.”
Sure. Uh-huh. She was supposed to relax, when Josh’s hips were nudging her bottom and his breath was warming her left ear?
“Now hold out your hands, palms up.”
He reached forward to lay the club in her palm. With the movement, more than his hips nudged Cari’s bottom. Her face flamed an instant bright red as she once again pictured Josh in slashed doublet and tight hose, with his masculine attributes emphasized in the bold and bawdy Elizabethan manner.
“Just wrap your fingers around the shaft,” he instructed.
Cari squirmed, her body heating as it touched his at a hundred different contact points. “I don’t think this is going to work, Josh.”
“Sure it is. Got a good grip? Okay, now look at the face of the club. See how it’s lined up? Square to the ball, and to the trajectory you want it to follow?”
Gradually Josh’s patience and teasing persistence drummed the basics of stance and swing into Cari. To her utter astonishment, she actually hit the ball on her first solo attempt. The fact that it ricocheted off the toe of the iron and sailed over the rail into the sea didn’t lessen her amazement.
“I can’t believe it! I hit it! Did you see that? I hit it!”
She swung around, ecstatic. Just in time, Josh ducked. The iron missed his head by inches.
“I saw it. Good shot.” His hazel eye glinted with laughter. “Want to try another?”
“Sure.” She thumped the carpet with the club and assumed a stance. “Think I can get this sucker in the net?”
She didn’t get it in the net. She didn’t get it anywhere near the net. In fact, she missed the ball completely and spun around in a full circle.
“Try again,” Josh ordered.
Cari’s euphoria took wing when she connected once again. This time the ball whizzed straight up in the air, came hurtling back down, bounced off the teak deck and splashed into the sea off the starboard rail.
Laughing, she twisted around to look over her shoulder. “I hope you’ve got a good supply of balls.”
As soon as the words were out, she blushed brick red. Josh, of course, grinned wickedly.
“Don’t worry. Just keep swinging.”
She put a half dozen more into the sea before disaster stuck.
Cari was aiming for the net. She really was. She had no idea how the ball managed to cut ninety degrees to the left, hit the launch support, zing backward and smash into the radar dish mounted atop the flying bridge. She whirled around, eyes wide with dismay, as pieces of electrical components tinkled to the deck.
Josh bit his lip. “Maybe my instructional techniques aren’t much better than Mrs. Lancaster’s, after all.”
Cari’s horrified gaze was fixed on the shattered radar dish. “Do you think it can be fixed?”
“Replaced, maybe.” He took the club from her limp grasp. “It’s okay, Cari. It was an accident. Accidents happen in golf, just as they do in all other aspects of life.”
His quiet comment helped Cari put the disaster in perspective. It took more than a quiet reply to defuse the captain’s tight-lipped fury, however.
Paxton’s anger took Cari by surprise. Until this point, the whiskered, weathered captain had displayed nothing but bluff affability. He wasn’t the least affable or bluff as he marched out of the bridge and demanded to know what the hell was going on. Cari blinked at the lash in his voice, but refused to take refuge behind Josh’s cool explanation of an impromptu golf lesson.
“Guess I hit an unlucky shot. I’m sorry, Captain.”
“Unlucky?” Paxton almost spit out the word. “I’ll say it was unlucky. Do you have any idea how expensive that piece of equipment is?”
“No, I don’t,” Cari replied, her chin lifting. “But I’ll pay to repair or replace it, of course.”
She tried to ignore the sinking sensation in the pit of her stomach. Replacing the radar dish would no doubt eat up what was left of her savings, and then some. Even with the grant, she’d have to work at least parttime to pay for the blasted thing. The chances of finishing her thesis within the deadline seemed more remote than ever before.
“If anyone’s responsible for the damage, I am,” Josh informed the captain coolly. “I took it on myself to instruct Cari, and I’ll cover any costs your insurance doesn’t.”
Insurance! Of c
ourse! Cari heaved a huge sigh of relief. Prematurely, as it turned out.
“Cost isn’t the problem,” Paxton growled, plucking off his billed cap to slap it against his leg. “The problem is that we won’t make it to Saint John. Not today, anyway. I’ll have to turn back to Saint Thomas, locate a new dish and get it installed. That’ll throw us off schedule by at least a day.”
“I’ll explain the delay to the other passengers,” Josh replied. “I’m sure they’ll be disappointed at missing Saint John and the pig roast, but we’ll have another evening in Charlotte Amalie as consolation.”
The captain slapped his cap against his leg again, muttering something under his breath about pig roasts that made Josh’s eye narrow and Cari’s widen.
Paxton caught their expressions and grimaced. “Sorry. I guess all old sea dogs get a little crusty when something happens to their ship. I’ll get us headed back to Charlotte Amalie, then call the passengers together to announce the change.”
Cari watched him stride away, still stiff with anger. “Whew! For a moment there, I thought he was going to tie me to the mast and drag out the cat-o’-ninetails.”
Josh didn’t answer, his brows drawn together in a slashing frown as he watched the captain stride toward the bridge.
“Do you really think insurance will cover most of the cost?” Cari glanced up at the silent man beside her. “Josh?”
“What?”
She blinked, finding no trace of the laughing, teasing Josh of a few moments ago in this man’s face. It was all hard planes and tight lines. She might be an uncoordinated klutz, but she wasn’t stupid. Something other than a smashed radar dish was worrying him.
“What’s the matter?”
“I’m not sure,” he said slowly, his gaze flicking to the bridge once more. “I’m just trying to understand why our captain reacted so strongly to the idea of a change in schedule.”
She chewed on her lower lip for a moment. “You’re thinking that a man whose business depends on the whims of weather and the sea should be more flexible?”
“Something like that.”
“Well, maybe he has to reserve anchorage in advance. Or take on supplies at certain specified points.”
“Like diesel fuel,” Josh murmured.
“Right.”
“That could be it,” he said thoughtfully.
At that moment, the Nautilus III began a slow, banking turn. Josh glanced beyond Cari at the island in the distance, and made a visible effort to shrug off the unpleasantness of the past few moments.
“The change in schedule might have put a dent in Captain Paxton’s mood, but we won’t let it ruin ours. Why don’t we go ashore for dinner tonight?”
“Just you and me?”
“Just you and me.”
“No Eric?”
“No Eric. No Evelyn and Paul. No anybody but us.”
Ever afterward, memories of that night could bring a dreamy smile to Cari’s mouth. Hopeless romantic that she was, she gloried in the idyllic setting and her dashing companion.
In crisp tan slacks and a blue cotton shirt with the sleeves rolled up to reveal tanned, muscular forearms, he radiated casual sophistication. The black eye patch only added to his rakish male charm. Cari felt her heart pound out an erratic beat as he tucked her hand in the crook of his arm and led her to the outboard stairs.
Enrique’s dark eyes skimmed over Josh, then settled on Cari. “So, you go ashore? Just you and your man?”
Her face heated at his casual use of the possessive. “Yes, just us.”
Ignoring Enrique’s offer of help, Josh handed her into the launch himself. He sat beside her on the center seat and looped a casual arm around her waist while the steward steered the small boat through brilliant, shifting bands of aquamarine, lapis lazuli and sapphire toward Charlotte Amalie’s main pier.
“What time do you want me to come back?” Enrique asked, steadying the launch as Josh helped Cari onto the pier.
“We’ll call the ship when we’re ready.”
They followed the curving waterfront street lined with three-story pink-and-white buildings, and it seemed as natural as breathing for Cari to take the hand Josh held out to her. Together they peered down narrow alleys, strolled under intricate archways erected by the Danes who had originally settled the island and admired the fancy grillwork that added such architectural character to the city.
Cari wasn’t blind to the fact that Josh garnered as much admiration as the architecture. More than one female head turned for another look at his tall, athletic frame. If he caught any of the glances sent his way, he didn’t show it. His attention stayed wholly and exclusively on Cari. As a result, she felt just like Maria in West Side Story—pretty and witty and wise. Incredibly so.
She might have acquired her mint-green V-necked cotton tunic and long, matching jacquard print skirt on sale several years ago, but Cari didn’t feel the least obligation to tell Josh that. Especially not when be complimented her on the color and mentioned that it brought out the sunshine in her hair.
Nor did she protest when he tugged her toward a taxi stand and answered her inquiries about where they were headed with a shrug and a grin. All he would tell her during the twenty-minute ride was that the spot he was taking her to was special.
It was.
So special that Cari gasped when she stepped out of the taxi onto the high, windswept promontory known as Drake’s Seat. An ornate wooden sign proclaimed that the English privateer had once climbed to this very spot and watched treasure-laden galleons of every flag sail through the passage he himself had first navigated in 1580.
“Oh, Josh! I don’t believe it! I’m standing where Sir Francis Drake once stood!”
The tanned skin at the corner of Josh’s mouth crinkled. “I thought that might thrill your little Elizabethan soul.”
“How did you know about this place?”
“Paul Sanders mentioned it to me while I was giving Eric his lesson this morning. Said he’d tried to talk Evelyn into driving up here to see the view, but couldn’t pry her out of the shops.”
“Can you imagine anyone passing this up?”
Awed by the panoramic view of the U.S. and British Virgin Islands caught in the slanting rays of the setting sun, Cari spun in a slow circle. For a few heartbeats, it seemed as though time and space were compressed to this single instant.
She was breathing in the same air, viewing the same spectacular scene, as those long-ago seafarers. She could almost hear the distant crack of sails and shouts of sailors as they strained at the ropes. Almost feel their excitement as they spotted a rich prize trying to slip through the passage. Never had history come so alive for her.
She closed her eyes and breathed it into her pores. Then she turned to Josh, smiling.
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
His answering smile pierced the mists of time and gave Cari a glimpse of her future. No matter what happened in Cancún, she knew she would hold this special place and this very special man in her heart forever.
She’d once called him an oversexed, overmuscled jock. Yet he’d given her a gift more precious to her than diamonds. He’d understood her passion for history and brought her here to share it. Josh Keegan possessed more sensitivity, more innate respect for her as a person, than Dr. Edward Grant ever had.
The thought humbled Cari…and made her realize that her vow to swear off all men from now until the next millennium might have been a bit hasty. Sometime in the past few days she’d come perilously close to tumbling into love with a man she hardly knew.
The realization sobered her, and gave her the courage to ask the questions she’d shied away from until this point.
She waited until they were ensconced in huge straw plantation chairs on the verandah of the Mountain Top restaurant. Sipping her banana daiquiri, Cari let Josh order for them both. For the moment, she was content to watch the breeze ruffle his dark hair and listen to the counterpoint of his deep voice against
the bright beat of the island music coming from inside the restaurant. Their conversation drifted while they waited for dinner, ranging from treasure-laden galleons and privateers to the history of this string of islands.
“Columbus landed here on his second voyage,” Cari related as the waiter deposited huge platters of succulent sea bass smothered in fried plantains in front of them. “Supposedly he named these islands for the followers of Saint Ursula.”
“Her followers all being virgins, I suppose?”
“All eleven thousand of them,” Cari replied primly. “According to legend, at least.”
Josh choked on a forkful of sea bass. “Eleven thousand virgins! No wonder these islands were overrun with rogues and brigands. They were all probably looking for a few of Saint Ursula’s followers.”
Never one to gloss over historical fact, Cari made a face. “Among other things. Both the people and the lands in this part of the world were systematically raped in the mindless quest for treasure.”
“Sounds like another good topic for a paper. Maybe you should research it when you get home.”
“Mmm…maybe. I’ll have plenty of research to keep me busy as it is when I get home.”
She hesitated, then decided to use the opening he’d given her. “What about you, Josh? What are you going to do when you get back to the States?”
His mouth curved in the beginning of a crooked grin, and Cari held up a quick hand.
“Don’t! Please, don’t turn me off with a smile and a joke,” she pleaded softly. “Not tonight.”
His grin didn’t make it to full power. For long moments, he searched her eyes.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do,” he said finally.
“What about golf?”
“I don’t know, Cari.”
For a moment, she thought that was all he was going to say. Disappointment washed through her in rolling waves. Then he began to trace an aimless pattern on the table with his fork. Slowly, hesitantly, he shared a small part of himself with her.
“Golf is all I know. My dad started taking me out on Sunday mornings before I was big enough to know which end of a club was up. I was a PGA junior prospect in high school, and went through college on a golf scholarship. It’s more than a game to me, Cari. It’s an avocation. A way of life. Or it was.”
Halloween Honeymoon Page 11