Eden's Spell

by Heather Graham

  She started to place her wavering signature on the paper, but then she paused.

  “Admiral, this isn’t going to be so simple. There is my son to consider. I will not disrupt his life. Three days, yes, but I can’t keep him out of school for a month.”

  “Mrs. Denver, we don’t intend to deny that the Navy is working on your island, studying island life forms. After this week he’ll be perfectly free to go back to school.”

  “Admiral, there’s still going to be trouble. My in-laws live right across the water in Islamorada. They’re going to be concerned; in fact, they’ll probably be here soon. I work with my brother-in-law; do fishing charters, snorkeling parties, and teach scuba classes out on the reefs. And my parents live in Key West.”

  Nevertheless, Katrina found herself setting her signature to the paper. She had the strangest feeling that if she didn’t, things would be taken out of her control anyway.

  Mike frowned as he saw the dinghy approaching the shore. There were three people in it, not two: Jason, Harry, and a third man.

  For a moment then, his heart began to beat quickly. He might have been seeing a ghost. The third man in the boat bore a striking resemblance to the picture on Katrina Denver’s mantel, the picture of her husband.

  “There’s Mike!” Jason’s excited voice came to him as the trio pulled the aging motor boat to the sand. Then he, Harry, and the other man were hurrying to him.

  “Mike!” Jason cried. “This is my Uncle Frank. I told him we were okay, but he wanted to see Mom anyway.”

  Mike automatically stretched out a hand to the tall, thin man in jeans and T-shirt. A slight frown was bunching his dark brows, but there was a pleasant smile on his lips as he accepted Mike’s hand and surveyed him openly.

  “Frank Denver,” he said, “Captain …?”

  “Taylor. Michael Taylor.” Mike said, glad that Katrina’s brother-in-law seemed to like what he saw. “I take it that you’re …”

  Frank laughed easily. “Yes, Trina’s brother-in-law. I assume you saw the picture of James. There’s just a strong family resemblance, huh, Jase?” He ruffled his nephew’s hair affectionately, then looked back at Mike. “Jason said you were here through the storm, and I’d like to say that I’m grateful for your care of my sister-in-law and Jason.”

  Mike grimaced with pain. “They would have been better off without me,” he said truthfully.

  Frank shook his head. “The way it came up, so suddenly, it was just good to hear that they weren’t alone. We usually evacuate even the main islands, Captain. Kat’s house is as solid as a rock, but even so …” He shrugged, then frowned again. “Captain, what is going on here?”

  “Mike,” he replied automatically. “The Navy thought it had rented use of your sister-in-law’s island, Mr. Denver—”

  “Frank, please,” the other man interrupted.

  “We’re, uh, studying wildlife,” Mike said lamely.

  “Mike, where’s Mom?” Jason tugged at his hand.

  Mike smiled down at him. “She’s with the admiral.”

  “An admiral!” Jason’s eyes lit up appreciatively. “A real one?”

  Mike had to laugh. “Oh, yeah! I promise that Larson is real, very real! Want to come meet him?”

  “Oh, boy!”

  The admiral was going to get to handle this one, too, Mike decided grimly.

  “Frank, want to come?”

  “Definitely,” the young man said.

  Something touched Mike, something deep, that hurt. So this is what James Denver would have been like: tall, lean, browned by the sun, with dark eyes that were bright and keenly aware of the world, interested in everything, with a high capacity for laughter. Frank Denver couldn’t have been more than twenty-five, but he had a sense of maturity about him.

  I’ve just met him—and I like him, Mike realized. I would have liked his brother.

  The man whose widow had stumbled into 44DFS. The woman with whom he had become so passionately involved, who had come to him, and touched what he had thought was a heart of ice, long buried.

  The woman who now wanted his scalp.

  “Well, shall we go then? Harry, do you mind taking your boat over? They apparently decided not to send one back for us.”

  Harry saluted very properly. “Aye, Captain, at your service!”

  “Yeah, let’s go. I’m really anxious to see Katrina,” Frank said.

  So am I, Mike thought. So am I! His fingers curled into tight fists at his side. He knew he wouldn’t see her. He didn’t want to influence her decision in any way.

  She had to do what she felt was right. If he saw her, he was going to want to touch her. If he touched her, she was going to believe that he was trying to sway her, when he simply—cared; when he just wanted to hold her, give her strength.

  But she didn’t want his strength. She wanted his neck!

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  KATRINA HAD NEVER SEEN things happen so quickly in her life. One minute she was in the gracious environment of the richly carved and paneled dining room with its Old World flair; the very next she found herself in a roomy but sterile cubicle.

  Just as the papers had been ready for her, so had the room. There was a typical hospital-style bed, soothing music, a bedside stand, and even some kind of a VCR system—all incredibly neat and clean. Just like the white gown she’d been given to wear.

  She’d been brought in by a nurse, a young lieutenant who was certainly one of the most beautiful women Katrina had ever met. She was sophisticated looking, with a perfectly made up face and a short cap of gleaming brown hair. Katrina had been given her rank and last name, but the nurse had cheerfully told her, “I do get so sick of titles! Please call me Amy!”

  Amy had taken her blood pressure and her pulse, checked her temperature, and pricked her finger for a sample of blood. Then she had left her, promising that she was only a ring of the bedside buzzer away.

  There was a cabin connected to hers, and Katrina had explored it with no hesitancy. It was, she knew, for Jason. She was a little stunned and resentful at the speed of things, and felt no qualms whatsoever about completely checking the room inside-out herself.

  It was while she was in that room that a new man made an appearance in her life.

  “Mrs. Denver?”

  She walked through the connecting door to her own cabin and instantly decided that she liked the man who had addressed her. He was probably about five nine, slim and wiry, graying slightly, and good-natured looking, with a pair of gold-rimmed glasses that slid down his nose as he looked at her.

  “Hi.” He offered his hand. “Stan Thorpe, Mrs. Denver. I’ve come to talk to you about the phone call.”

  She told him about the call; he made notes. He muttered that the two officers sent to the island to make sure that it was clear should have found her anyway, shook his head, then smiled. “We will find out what happened, Mrs. Denver!” he promised her, and she felt like laughing because it was becoming such a standard promise.

  “Can I get you anything? Coffee, tea, soda?”

  She shrugged, not really wanting anything. Yet it seemed that he wanted an excuse to stay, so she asked for hot tea.

  “Will do,” he replied, pleased.

  He returned with the tea quickly, and settled in the recliner across from the hospital bed.

  “How did you fare through the storm, Mrs. Denver? We would have reached you much sooner without her blowing in, you know.”

  He was so pleasant, but she sensed that his conversation wasn’t idle. And to her horror she blushed.

  “We were fine through the storm. My house was built very sturdily, with lots of pilings. There was no flooding. And living here, I always have Sterno, canned stuff, candles, and the like.” She hesitated a second, then asked bluntly, “Are you for the project?”

  “I am.”

  “And—are you a friend of Captain Taylor’s?”

  He laughed. “Yeah, well, Mike and I go back a long way.”

  “Then what
do you think of Captain Stradford? He doesn’t seem to think too much of—of 44DFS—isn’t that it?”

  “Umm. 44DFS,” Stan murmured. He shrugged again, hunching forward a bit in his chair. “Al’s a conventional kind of guy. He believes in old and tried and true methods—and he doesn’t often feel kindly toward the enemy.”

  “Oh,” Katrina murmured. “And that’s why he’s so against Mike Taylor?”

  “No” was his unexpected answer. “Al and Mike just have bad chemistry.” He grinned, studying her features. “We’ve all been career military. Al, Stan, and me. We’ve been around a lot together. I think if the chips were really down, the two of them would pull together. In fact, Mike pulled Al out of a burning ship once, back in Nam. Maybe it’s hard to like the guy who saved you, I don’t know. They’re both good doctors, good men. They just have this thing about each other, you know.”

  “Two forty-year-olds acting like kids?”

  Stan chuckled sheepishly. “Kind of.”

  “What is it that you want to know from me, Stan?” Katrina asked him softly.

  He had the grace to blush. “I guess I want to know what you’re feeling about the whole thing.”

  “Did Captain Taylor send you?”

  “Hell, no! Mike would never send anyone to—” He broke off. “Sorry. No, I guess I’m just concerned.”

  “Then I’ll tell you, in all honesty, that I don’t know what I feel at all right now,” Katrina said softly. “I have to figure things out myself first, okay?”

  “Fair enough,” he told her, standing. “Mind if I come back to see you now and then?”

  “To keep probing?”

  “No, ’cause you’re the best-looking thing these eyes have seen in a long, long time.”

  “I don’t believe that!” Katrina laughed. “I’ve just met a Navy nurse.”

  “Oh, Amy. Yeah, Amy’s pretty. But she’s old hat. Like living with a sister.”

  Katrina laughed, quite certain that Amy could never really be old hat to anyone. But she liked Stan, no matter what he was up to.

  She raised her hands. “I promised the Navy three days, Stan. I guess I’ll be here.”

  He smiled. “Oh! One more thing! Your brother-in-law is here. We told him you had bruised ribs from a falling palm branch, and that we’re here to study flora and fauna. Okay?”

  “Ah, yes, I guess so.”

  Lying to Frank wouldn’t be easy.

  Telling him the whole truth would be far worse!

  Frank arrived soon after Stan left. “Hiya, kid!” he greeted her, giving her a quick hug, then looking around.

  “Frank, I’m twenty-seven. You’re twenty-five. I’m not the kid.”

  He whistled softly, dark eyes darting from the bed to the VCR. “Cushy setup. Not bad. A three-day paid vacation with everything you could want at your fingertips.”

  Katrina shook her head, wondering for a moment what Frank had gotten into. They’d always been close, even before she had married James. And when James had died, they’d naturally come even closer. They’d had to keep afloat together, and they’d done it very well.

  “Have you been drinking?”

  “Just one Scotch in the dining room, short stuff.”

  She hesitated just a second. “What are you doing here?”

  “I was at McHennesy’s getting ready to light out and make sure you and Jason had gotten through the storm okay. I came back with him to see how you were—you know Frank to the rescue! Then I learned that the Navy had already been to the rescue. A sailor to help you through the storm, and now hospital care for you both. I’m impressed—and damned glad.”

  She sniffed: “I’m not. This is very inconvenient.”

  “Why?”

  “Why? Don’t we have a fishing party coming up?”

  “So? I can handle it.”

  “Are you insinuating I’m not needed?”

  He laughed. “No, partner, nothing like that.” His dark eyes flashed. “You are, however, best at assuring our customers of a decorative view for the day!”

  “Thanks! Hey, who’s senior partner here?”

  He ignored her. “And I’ve a new, luscious blond girlfriend who fills the bill admirably.”

  “Well! The hell with you!” she retorted playfully. “Besides, there’s my social life that’s being inconvenienced….”

  “What social life, Kat?” He interrupted her very softly.

  “Frank, if you came to sit there and insult me …”

  “I didn’t come to insult you. I just spoke the truth. You live like a hermit.” He paused. “James wouldn’t have wanted that.” He didn’t give her a chance to reply, but continued on. “This is an interesting situation. The Navy is here, and you’re getting shook up a little bit. I like it.”

  “Frank!” She moaned. “Go home!”

  He laughed, tousling her hair. “I am going home. I just wanted to see you, short stuff.”

  “You’ve seen me! Let me suffer in peace!”

  “Bye, Kat. Take care. I’ll see you soon, huh? And don’t worry about anything, just make sure that everything is okay. They say they’re keeping Jason with you. That’s great too. He loves it. Really, that they should be so concerned …”

  “It’s wonderful. Just wonderful,” Katrina murmured. He frowned curiously at her reply, then kissed her forehead. “Take care. Call me as soon as you’re home.”

  He started to leave, then paused in the doorway. “By the way, I like that Taylor guy. Jason does too.”

  “He’s just a doll,” Katrina said acidly.

  Frank lifted a brow. “My, my, the Kat’s got her claws bared, watch out!”

  She smiled sweetly. “Frank, go home.”

  He grinned. “Bye.”

  Jason came in next, all excited. Mike, it seemed, had gotten permission from the admiral to show him all around the ship. He talked nonstop to Katrina for about half an hour. She finally managed to ask him if he had spoken with his grandmother Matty. “Oh, she’s mad. At you. Says you should have come over and talked to her too. Grandpa said that she should hush up, though. That you were a big girl.”

  Katrina grimaced, but decided she’d better ask for a phone and call her mother before she could call her. She talked to both her parents, swearing that she was fine, promising to see them soon. The story had already spread that the Navy was there, studying something-or-the-other. Mathilda wanted to rush over to see Katrina’s “poor ribs,” but Katrina’s father managed to calm her down and free Katrina from the phone with a loving “We’ll see you soon, kitten, as soon as it’s convenient.”

  Then Amy came in, patient and ready to listen to Jason’s nonstop excitement, too, and managed to get his blood pressure, a blood sample, a temperature, and everything else she needed from him at the same time.

  Dinner came next, served on trays by the chief petty officer. Katrina and Jason managed to eat on her bed, with the trays between them.

  The admiral came to say good-night and to warn her that he’d be spending a lot of time with her the next day. Then Al Stradford came by to say good-night; he was very polite and charming.

  When he left, Jason went into his own bed, exhausted from the day’s excitement.

  Katrina lay awake a long time, burning miserably inside. What had she expected from Mike? she asked herself bitterly. And what did she want from him?

  Nothing! she told herself, and in time she finally drifted to sleep.

  She woke strangely, slowly, with the sensation that someone was watching her. Someone was. He was sitting in the recliner, staring at her patiently, as if he knew his presence could wake her up.

  As soon as her eyes touched his, she sat up, as wary as if he were a snake. “What are you doing here?” she demanded hoarsely.

  “It’s the first chance I’ve had to come by.”

  “I don’t want to see you. I only agreed to do this because the admiral said that he was taking charge.”

  “Don’t worry, Mrs. Denver,” he said coolly. “I’
m not your doctor.”

  “Then why are you here?” She didn’t know why she was lashing out at him so bitterly. Yes, she did. It had just been last night that she had walked into his room, last night that he had held her so tenderly and forced her to make love with her eyes open, forced her to admit her desires, enjoy them, enjoy him, and fall a little bit in love with him because of his strength and his care and his vital masculinity.

  And then this morning—the terrible truth!

  His sandy head bent slightly. “I wanted to tell you, too, that I’ve taken a leave of absence.”

  “What?” She frowned, and he smiled mockingly.

  “Sorry, I will still be around on the island. But I asked for a leave of absence because I believe it’s me you want to hang, not the entire military.” He stood, and she looked away. She didn’t want to watch him because she’d want to touch him. His hands, with their tapering fingers and neatly clipped nails. His shoulders, muscles occasionally straining against the white of his shirt when he moved. His eyes, with all their silver-and-steel magic. “I’ll still be working, but working on my own.”

  “For the Navy,” she murmured.

  “For—and removed from. Good night, Mrs. Denver.”

  She rolled on her side, turning her back to him. He paused, smiling bitterly. Her hair looked like a blanket of fire against the white of the sheets. His hands itched to touch it; he wanted to shake her, to tell her that what they had was unique and beautiful, and that she had to see it.

  “By the way, I’m thirty-eight—not forty.”

  The door closed behind him and she swung around, wincing. So Stan Thorpe had repeated their conversation together. What had she said to Stan Thorpe?

  Katrina spent the morning being poked and prodded, albeit very gently, by the admiral. She was amazed by the facilities on the ship, and even more amazed to gaze out the window and see that a silver dome was rising on her island.

  “That’s the lab,” the admiral told her. He grinned, proud of his achievements. “It will be up and functional by tonight.”

  Katrina was glad that no strobes were attached to her then, because she knew her heartbeat had quickened. “I understand that Captain Taylor has taken a leave of absence.”