“But you don’t remember any of it?”
“No, I heard about it all. Mom doesn’t talk about it, just to remind me how dangerous the reefs can be. But my friends know things from their parents. They say that she tried everything to bring him back. She’s a water safety instructor, you know. She’s got all kinds of certificates. But”—he shrugged—“nothing worked on Dad. She kept at it for hours; the doctor who came from Islamorada finally had to pull her away and sedate her.”
Mike touched Jason’s hair. “I’m sorry, son. It sounds like he was a real great man. A hero.”
Jason set the portrait back on the mantel. “We’ve got to do something about you before she gets out of the bathtub.”
“Pardon?”
“You’ve been dripping everywhere. I’ll get some paper towels. You go take a shower.”
Jason took off for the kitchen to get the paper towels. Mike had to grin; it had been a long time since he had been in conspiracy with an eight-year-old to save his hide from a chewing out.
But a hot shower would feel damned good right now. He felt chilled to the bone.
He followed Jason to the kitchen. “Can I borrow your shower?”
“Yeah, sure, but you don’t need to. There’s a guest bedroom all set up next to my mother’s. There’s towels, soap, even extra toothbrushes. And there should have been enough water left in the heater for it to be warm.”
Mike smiled gratefully and headed toward the guest bedroom. When he found it, he instinctively tried to switch on the bedroom light. The gloomy darkness remained, and he remembered that the power was shot.
He looked around curiously. It was a warm room with a queen-sized bed in the center, an armoire, an old-fashioned mirrored dresser with a washbowl and ewer in an early-American blue-and-white floral pattern. Bookcases flanked the bed; there was an afghaned recliner by the window.
He passed through the room and into the ultramodern bath. The tub was spacious and deep, “Roman” style, in gold-threaded pink marble; there was a matching sink and dark-crimson curtains to complete the picture.
Mike quickly shed his clothing and even more quickly adjusted the water; he knew that the leftover hot water in the tanks couldn’t last long. As soon as it turned cold on him, he stepped out of the tub and grabbed one of the immense white-and-gold towels off the rack. He vigorously dried his face, then paused, realizing that he hadn’t anything to put back on. Grimacing, he wrapped the towel around his lower torso—thankful that it was such a large one—and decided that Jason might be able to help him find something to wear.
He started down the hallway. It had gotten so dark that he could barely see. At the edge of the living room he paused. Candles were burning on the coffee table.
There were voices coming from the kitchen.
“—that’s crazy, Mom! We were supposed to have been gone!”
“Jason, they canceled! Someone called and—”
“But, Mom—”
Mike grimaced; obviously Jason had taken his words on the phone to heart; he was trying to talk his mother out of legal action.
“If you’d give him half a chance, you’d like him too!”
“I don’t dislike him.” This was spoken crisply, very crisply.
“Then quit being such a—witch!”
“Jason!”
It was time for him to step in, Mike decided. He’d enjoyed his young champion, but he didn’t want family dissension between them over him, not on top of everything else.
Yet he hesitated, confused by the flash of raw emotion that flashed through him.
I like you, too, Jason, he thought. I love Toni more than anything on earth, and I never knew that I was missing anything, but I guess I would have liked a son: someone just like you, eager and adventurous, so open to life.
His thoughts switched from the boy to the mother, and he shuddered with a sizzle of sudden, red-hot heat. How could he want her so badly, so completely? With such yearning, such fascination? They’d just barely met.
No, he’d held her: in fantasy, in reality. He had held her, known her, touched her, loved her, and he could not forget. He knew the shape and form and substance of her like the back of his hand. They’d fought the wind together; he was certain he’d even touched her soul despite the walls of steel around it.
He gave himself a shake. Let it lie! He warned himself firmly. In time he’d be gone. She would slip back into her private world, unaware that it had ever been shattered. And he could go back to his own escape: work, his dream that he could change things, that what had happened to Margo might never, never come to pass again. Oh, it was idealistic, yes; it would never come in his lifetime. But what else had he left but the vision, the dream, the prayer that it could all be changed?
Katrina’s just a woman, he told himself, and stepped into the kitchen.
Katrina, sorting out silverware and about to snap at Jason, looked up. She had not heard him approaching, but nevertheless she had been aware that he was there. He was a presence, eclipsing everything else around her.
He was there, all right: standing in front of her in nothing but a towel. Stupidly, she just stared at him for a minute. He was nicely built, well muscled, tanned, possessing a thickly, golden-haired chest. He looked like a fighter, with a flat stomach and perfectly tapered waist.
His eyes caught hers; she realized that she had been staring, and she flushed furiously, then lashed out to cover her embarrassment.
“Captain Taylor, what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
“Mrs. Denver,” he said smoothly, inclining his head toward her a bit, “I’m quite sorry if I’ve—startled you. But I’m afraid I simply forgot to grab a change of clothing for the evening.”
She flushed again at the insinuative sound of his voice.
“Give him something of Dad’s,” Jason suggested.
“Don’t be ridiculous; your father’s things would never fit him,” Katrina murmured.
“What about a robe?”
“Umm, I suppose,” she muttered, now watching the man in her kitchen with a hardened jaw and wary eyes. She set the silver down, warned Jason to watch the soup bubbling on the Sterno fire, and picked up one of the candles she had burning on the counter.
“Come on,” she told Mike briefly, walking past him. “I’ll find … something to lend you.”
“That’s very generous,” Mike murmured sarcastically.
“Anything is better than you walking around half nude,” she sweetly retorted.
“Why? Do I excite you too much?”
She stopped dead in her tracks, then flung around so quickly that she almost burned him with the candle.
“Hardly, Captain. Uniforms—or the lack of them—never did excite me much.”
Mike just smiled, with a cryptic look in his eyes that made her want to hit him at the same time it made her feel as if she was melting into a pool of rippling heat.
Once again she turned, throwing open the door to her own room, setting the candle on her dresser, and burrowing through the left set of drawers.
“It’s going to have to be a robe,” she muttered. “James was a very slender man.”
Mike crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the door frame, watching her with a curious frown. The entire left set of drawers was still filled with her husband’s clothing.
“You’ve kept all your husband’s things, Mrs. Denver?”
“I—uh—haven’t had time, I guess, to clear them out.”
“Five years, and you haven’t had time.”
“Oh, shut up! Who asked your opinion? You’re lucky, Captain Taylor, that you’re in the house at all. After what you did, I should leave you out in the damn storm.”
“Oh, I don’t think that I’d stay there.”
“Forcing your way in would be illegal.”
“You’re suing me anyway, what difference would a few more offenses make?”
“Here!”
She tossed something at him; it was a robe, m
uch like the one she had borrowed from him on the boat, but velvet instead of terry.
“Thanks,” he said softly.
She was just sitting on the bed. In the candlelight her eyes had a strange luster.
“I’m sorry that I have to touch your husband’s things.”
He was—and then he wasn’t. Someone needed to wake her up.
She shook her head briskly. “He never wore that, Captain, so it doesn’t matter in the least.”
Something about the cool tone of her voice irritated him all the more. “Well, like I said, thanks. I’ll be real careful not to let the slit fall too far open, knowing the effect naked flesh seems to have on you.”
“Oh!” she exclaimed, and looked at him, as if realizing just how naked he would be beneath the robe.
She started digging through the drawers again.
Amused and somewhat confused, Mike grinned. “His pants couldn’t possibly fit me.”
She produced a pair of snow-white briefs and tossed them to him. He held them, eying her inquiringly.
“They’ll fit?”
“Oh, do get out of my way!” she snapped, rushing past him. “Fruit of the Looms fit anyone!”
He couldn’t help laughing as he watched her hurry back toward the kitchen. But then his laughter faded, and he was sober again. He’d felt that he’d violated her; that he’d had no right. He could keep her innocent of it—and he had no idea if it would be the only right thing to do, or the crime of the century.
He didn’t look much better in the robe, Katrina decided; it was probably because he’d looked so damned good in the towel. He was barefoot and casual, and she realized once again, as she served Sterno-heated soup, salad, and fried steaks at the kitchen counter, that what bothered her most about him was the simple fact that he was so very male. He was male in the sound of his voice, in his laughter, in his stance, in the way that he looked at her, in the way that he filled the air around her.
“That’s plenty, thanks!”
She paused, staring at the man in her thoughts. She might have been feeding a dozen rabbits, she’d put so much salad on his plate. But she wasn’t about to admit that her mind had been wandering around him.
“Are you sure?” she asked politely.
“Yeah, quite sure. But thanks very much.”
“Boy, I’m sure glad she did that to your plate and not mine!” Jason said. “I’d have to eat it all. You’re a guest; if you can’t scarf it all down, you don’t have to.”
“Jason!”
He stared down at his food and offered a contrite “Sorry, Mom.” But Mike could see the smile that played about his lips, and he had to glance down to hide his own smile.
Katrina ignored them both and sat next to Jason rather than Mike. “He’s not really a guest,” she told Jason, staring at Mike over her son’s head. “He’s kind of a refugee, a waif from the storm.”
“Or a forcible foe, Mrs. Denver?”
“Her first name is Katrina,” Jason piped up.
“I know.”
“Do you think that she’s cute?”
“Very.”
“Jason, you can pack yourself off to bed this instant!”
“Yes, ma’am!” Jason agreed convivially, too convivially. Katrina realized too late that her eight-year-old was in the middle of matchmaking and that she had fallen straight into his trap.
She felt a little numb as he humbly kissed her cheek. “Night, Mom.” He offered Mike a hand. “Good night, Captain Taylor.”
“I’ve got a first name, too, Jason. It’s Mike, and you’re welcome to use it.”
Jason grinned in a way that tugged at Katrina’s heart. She realized how much he had missed male companionship.
Sorry, son! she thought, watching his slim back disappear from the kitchen. This just isn’t it! I’m not at all sure what I’m doing with this man in my house except that I can’t throw him out into a storm.
But I couldn’t even if I wanted to, she thought wryly. I couldn’t budge him an inch in a direction in which he didn’t want to go!
She looked up suddenly, sensing Mike’s eyes on her. But when her gaze met his, he rose, picking up his dish.
“We’ve still got running water?”
“Ah—Cold, yes. But listen, I can pick up—”
“You made the meal,” he said lightly. “Quite a good one, especially under the circumstances. Not many refugees eat this well.”
“Captain Taylor—” She started to rise with her dishes; he caught her wrists against the counter.
“I’m a good dishwasher, and you’re anxious to go tell your son good-night again, because you snapped at him. Go do it.”
“I did not snap at him. His behavior was atrocious.”
“He’s a hell of a good kid and you know it; he’s wise beyond his years. Kids who lose a parent tend to be that way, Katrina. Soften up! Go to him; it’s what you want to do.”
She shot him a belligerent stare, more than ready to argue again for the sake of argument, except that he was right. Jason was behaving badly, but she should have understood and shrugged it off. Yet she couldn’t, because Mike had been on her mind, somehow touching her too deeply. She didn’t want to remember what it was like to want someone and be wanted in return, to laugh and flirt, because love was something that hurt.
Without another word she left the kitchen and headed for Jason’s bedroom. He was already in pajamas; she could smell Crest on his breath.
She hugged him, and he hugged her back, tightly. “I love you,” he whispered.
“I love you too. More than anything in the world.”
“You’re special, Mom.”
“You are too, Jase.”
“So’s he.”
“Oh, Jason—”
“No. I’m serious. And you—you never date, Mom.”
“I just haven’t met anyone I want to date, Jason.”
“But he could be different.”
“Jason, he might be married, for all I know.”
“He’s not.”
“How do you know?”
“I asked him.”
“Oh, Jason!” She stared into his eyes; they were like James’s eyes, dark and sincere and sensitive. “I realize that you want a father, honey, but you can’t go picking out a guy in one day! And I have a definite, and very important, bone to pick with this particular man! We could have been hurt—”
“But we weren’t! Be a little nice to him, okay?”
Katrina sighed. There really wasn’t any way to win an argument with a determined eight-year-old. She kissed him on the forehead and stood up. “Night, son.”
“Love you.”
“Love you.”
She left him, thinking that Mike was right; Jason was old for his age. That fact made her proud, but it also hurt her a little.
She entered the meagerly lit kitchen. Mike wasn’t there.
“Pssst!”
Katrina turned around. He was sitting on the sofa. He’d made coffee for them both and brought it out to the living room, where a few candles burned, very intimately.
He smiled—a bit devilishly, she thought. His eyes were truly silver in the night, in the candle glow. He patted the spot on the couch beside him. “Mrs. Denver?”
Enter the lion’s den!
She wasn’t afraid of him. She was, however, very afraid of herself, of her thoughts, of her feelings. He’d brought his strange potions to her island, and her chemistry hadn’t been at all the same since.
And the problem was, she wasn’t under the influence of any drug anymore.
CHAPTER FIVE
“I WANT TO HEAR about this phone call,” Mike told Katrina, watching her stir cream into her coffee. “Or rather, start at the beginning for me. You agreed to rent out the island, right?”
He wasn’t touching her, and it certainly didn’t seem as if he intended to, either. His leg was slightly hiked as he sat, his back to the curve of the couch. He sipped his coffee, that was it.
“Yes, I
agreed. They said they were working on experimental exercises.” She paused, reflecting dryly. “I thought they wanted to crawl through the foliage or something. Anyway, I received the papers, I showed them to my attorney, he said they were fine, and he returned them for me. Then I got a call from a man named Admiral Riker—”
“Riker?”
“Yes, I’m positive—”
“There is no Admiral Riker; not that I know of. It must have been a prank that someone played on you.”
“But no one knew! I told my parents I was just going over to Islamorada for relaxation. That’s the same story I told everyone!”
He stared at her, exasperated. “You just accepted a phone call that it was off and that was it.”
“Well, yes, he was official—”
“He wasn’t official!”
“Then it’s the damned Navy’s fault, not mine!”
He frowned. “So, the Navy will get to the bottom of it, I promise you. But what about you?”
“What do you mean?”
“Are you going to sue?”
“I—I don’t know,” she faltered. “Maybe if you told me more about this project.”
He stared at her a long, long time. “All right. But it is highly classified information.”
“You’ll trust me?” she asked dryly.
“I plan on asking you to trust me.”
She inhaled sharply, watching his eyes. “Go on.”
He sipped his coffee, returning her stare so intensely she grew even more confused.
“I’m working on a gas that’s a defensive weapon. It can counter a number of chemical and germ weapons, keep them from harming and killing people. It has a side effect, though—”
“Dreams?” Katrina swallowed and asked.
“Yes. Physically, it doesn’t do any harm. But—well, it’s similar to mind control, which, if used improperly, could be horribly insidious. And this island is a rare biological wonder. Endless small creatures. I intended to study the duration of the drug on animals—”
“Such as humans?” Katrina interrupted tartly, despite herself.
He gazed at her patiently.
“We’ve calculated,” he said, “that the effect on large animals wears-off in forty-eight hours maximum. On smaller creatures it ranges from three days to a week.”
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